| Fan Fiction |
by SilverDragon
“I’m listening.”
Selina turned to stare at his back, a sorrowful look in her eyes. She then turned to stare ahead as she removed Jerry from her shoulder and placed him on her knee where she began stroking him in an attempt to soothe herself.
“My mother never killed my stepfather. I did.” She saw his back stiffen slightly out the corner of her eye. “He tried to rape me and I stabbed a broken bottle into his throat. Then, two years later I killed a drunken man who was attempting to kidnap me in order to… rape me.” Selina looked down at Jerry, laughing at herself pathetically. “I seemed to attract those kinds of men, before I became...” Her voice trailed off as silence fell between them. They both knew what she meant. “I met Zhi Ping when he came to try and help me from that drunken bastard and I ended up using his gun to kill the man. He then took me to… his boss, who is now mine.”
Danson remained motionless and Selina could not tell what his reaction was. As she was about to continue with her story, Danson suddenly said, “Chen Yi Xia.”
Selina snapped her head in Danson’s direction as she glared at his back suspiciously. The look soon faded from her face as her sorrowful look returned. “I should have known you would have figured that out as well, Yu Zhe. You truly are a great detective, just as you have always wanted to be.”
He turned around to peer at her, his face a knot of frustration and anger. “Why did you still go and work for him then? And not only as his secretary, but as his – his –”
“Assassin?” offered Selina weakly. A bitter smile then curved her face. “Because I wanted revenge. Because I wanted to forget the guilt of killing someone. And because… I hated myself.”
Danson suddenly jumped towards her, gripping Selina’s shoulders tightly as he shook her, startling Jerry off her lap. “Revenge? To forget guilt? Were you insane, Xuan? And how could you hate yourself when I… when I love you.” He suddenly pulled her towards him, embracing her tightly as he slowly stroked her hair. “I love you, Xuan, and I still do. There wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t miss you, that I didn’t blame myself for causing your death. I… love you… Xuan…”
Selina closed her eyes as her arms went around Danson, returning his embrace. She breathed his scent in deeply, a deep, longing regret for the pain and misery she had put him through, wishing to return to the time before she had met Yi Xia. The sound of his beating heart echoed loudly in her ear and she smiled as she held him tighter. “I know, Yu Zhe… And I love you too.” He suddenly loosened his grip on her as he peered down in surprise. Selina used this chance to pull away from him, wiping away the tears that had formed in the corner of her eyes. “But I haven’t finished telling you my story.”
Danson continued to study her face as she kept her eyes averted, before shifting to sit down properly beside her. He reached out to hold her hand in his. “Then tell me everything.”
She turned to peer at her hand in his before looking up into his face where their eyes met. Even though there was some hint of fear and anger in them, Selina did not fail to notice the encouragement and love that shone in them. She gripped his hand more tightly before she spoke. “I suppose you would want to know how I managed to survive that car accident…”
- Ten Years Ago -
Xuan had been staring out her window at the night sky, thinking over her meeting with Danson earlier when she suddenly heard a knock on the door. Turning to peer behind her, she said, “Come in.”
The door slowly opened and she saw Zhi Ping’s head poke around the corner. Turning to peer back outside the window, she heard the soft sounds of his steps and then the chair at her desk sliding. Silence enveloped the room like a heavy fog until Zhi Ping finally spoke.
“Yi Xia has decided to start your new life tomorrow,” he said, waiting to see a response from Xuan. When he received none, he then continued. “He wants to… kill Xuan.”
At this, Xuan spun around to face him, glaring at the man in shocked suspicion. “Kill me? What do you mean by that?”
Zhi Ping raised his hands in the air as if to defend himself from an attack. “Hey, what I mean is he wants to fake your death and give you a new identity.” Xuan’s glare turned deadly. “Don’t lash out at me over it because it’s Yi Xia’s plan, not mine.” Xuan continued to glare at him for another minute before turning to stare back out her window. Zhi Ping lowered his hands, glancing around the room as he tried to figure out the best way to tell her the details of the plan. His eyes then fell on the metal tin she had retrieved from the hut. “Do you really understand what ‘new life’ Yi Xia intends to give you?” Again, he was met by silence. “He intends to train you as his assassin.”
Xuan’s head seemed to lower down from the night sky as she raised her hands to peer at. “Is that so…?” Her fists then curled into tight balls, her fingernails biting into her palms. “It seems I will never escape killing in this lifetime.”
Zhi Ping felt a sudden tug in his heart as he watched Xuan come to terms with this new revelation. He suddenly realised that what he was feeling was pity for the girl, mixed with some new feeling: guilt. He realised that if he had not brought Xuan to Yi Xia, she would never be in this position. After a few minutes, he sat up straighter, chasing those thoughts out of his head.
“For Yi Xia’s plan to work, we will need a witness to your death. I told him about your little rendezvous with that boy in the mou-”
“You what?” snapped Xuan as she turned to face him with a panicked expression. “How much did you tell him?”
Zhi Ping continued to eye Xuan until she began to grow uncomfortable under his scrutinising stare and turned away. A small smile curved his lips. “Not much. I didn’t tell him his name, if that counts. And I didn’t tell him about that box, either,” he said, pointing at the metal tin. Xuan’s eyes darted to the object and she pulled it closer to her side. “What I told him was that you were worried about these birds you kept on the mountain and ran in to some guy who seemed to be close with you.”
“Oh…” was Xuan’s soft reply. Suddenly, she felt thankful that Zhi Ping had helped her protect Danson.
“Anyway, back to the plan. Like I was saying, we need a witness and Yi Xia said it has to be your friend. He wants you to call him out for a meeting or something.” He stared at Xuan hopefully, waiting for her answer.
However, Xuan continued to remain quiet. Zhi Ping shifted on his seat, trying to see her face. He then snapped back to his original position when Xuan finally spoke. “Why does it have to be him? And… what will he see?”
Taking a deep breath, Zhi Ping then let out a sigh. He knew Xuan wasn’t going to be too willing, especially since he knew the boy was important to her. “He will see you get hit by a car, right in before his eyes. And it has to be him because the best witness is someone who knows you really well.”
More silence. Zhi Ping continued to wait patiently as he let Xuan think over it all. It was not an easy decision, to go along with this absurd plan and lie to Danson. And it wasn’t a small lie – they were playing with death here. It was not a decision to make lightly.
After nearly twenty minutes, Xuan finally spoke. “I won’t have to call him out. He’ll come to find you.”
Zhi Ping, who had lain his head down on the back of the chair in exhaustion as he waited suddenly looked up in surprise at Xuan’s statement. “He’ll come to me? How?”
“He knows I am with you. He heard me say your name. He is determined and he has… links. He’ll find out where you live, and probably by tomorrow if he continues to act as crazy as he has been lately about me.” She then fell silent, refusing to say more.
He continued to peer at her, his brow creasing slightly in worry. “So this means you’re going along with Yi Xia’s plan? Did I tell you that you’ll be really hit by a car?”
“No, you failed to mention that one little detail. But it doesn’t matter in the end, doesn’t it? My life now belongs to Yi Xia. He is free to do whatever he pleases with it.”
Zhi Ping’s frown only deepened. Then suddenly, he stood and came to pull Xuan up onto her feet. She glared up at him as she pulled her hand out of his grip. “Where are you taking me?” she snapped.
He only came to grab her hand once more and began dragging her out of the room. “To practice being hit by the car, of course! You don’t think Yi Xia wants a crippled assassin, now, do you?”
“Practice? How?” asked Xuan in surprise but Zhi Ping refused to answer her.
- Present Day -
“… I was to practice rolling onto the bonnet of the car, jumping slightly so that I could lessen the impact. Of course, I was still injured in the accident and remained in hospital for two months,” Selina ended her tale.
Danson remained quiet as he absorbed this information. His thumb slowly stroked Selina’s hand absently. “If the accident didn’t kill you, then why weren’t you breathing when you came out of the operating theatre?”
Selina let out another tired sigh. “Another cruel trick of Yi Xia’s. I was injected with a sedative that induces a death-like state for ten minutes. So technically… I was dead when you saw me.”
He turned to peer at Selina in disbelief before glancing away, running his free hand through his hair. It was all hard to believe… Xuan was really still alive and as… Selina. His brow then creased as he realised something else that had been bugging him.
“You know, Xuan… I have been wondering about this since I first began suspecting that both Selina and Xuan is the same person. It seemed incredibly… stupid of Yi Xia to allow your new identity to retain the same birth date and surname. Wouldn’t it have been obvious to change all that?”
A smile spread on Selina’s face as she turned to peer at Danson. “Who said it was Yi Xia’s idea to keep Xuan’s birth date on Selina’s profile?”
Danson turned to peer at Selina in confusion. “If he didn’t do it then… who? You?”
Selina shook her head. “No, Zhi Ping did.”
“Zhi Ping? That bastard who took you to see Yi Xia in the first place?” snapped Danson in disbelief.
A slight frown creased Selina’s brow. “You should be thanking him even more, for he has risked a lot to help me. It was he who went behind Yi Xia’s back and changed my birth date to my real one. To this day, Yi Xia still has not realised it. And as for the surname being the same, it just so happens that the identity I have been living with truly existed and Yi Xia decided to keep it seeing as Ren is quite a common surname. If you check back on Selina Ren’s medical history, you’ll realise that she was hospitalised for several months due to a car accident at the same time as Ren Jia Xuan. It was all part of Yi Xia’s plan, to hit her with a car on the same day and switch her dead body with mine.”
Danson heaved a sigh as Jerry suddenly hopped onto his lap. He began absently stroking the bird’s feathers. “Why did you change your birth date back then?”
Selina turned to peer up at the sky, a soft look in her eyes. “Because I didn’t want to lose all of myself. If there was anything I wanted to keep, it would have to be the day my mother gave birth to me. My mother was my whole life and I love her deeply. But I soon came to realise that she would be disappointed in me, at the path I have chosen in life.”
He turned to peer at Selina’s upturned face, studying it under the pale glow of the moon. He moved a hand to brush the stray fringe from her eyes. “You said you became… ‘Dawn’… because you wanted revenge.”
Selina’s face then fell as her eyes darkened. “Yes… I wanted to kill the bitch that killed my mother.”
A faint glimmer of pity flickered in Danson’s eyes as he peered at her, remembering the tantrum she had thrown when she found out that her mother’s murderer had walked free. “Who was she?” he asked, unsure whether he wanted to know.
“Dawn’s first victim,” replied Selina.
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A/N:
There. Now you have the last remaining details about Selina's accident and why her b'day is still the same. Heh, I'm not so confident that it's all believable, but yeah, this is a fictional story afterall ^_^; Umm... I just want to let you guys know that I'll be posting a series of one-shots titled 'Elements of Love' soon, but winglin is refusing to let me create a new account so it will have to be postponed for a while. So be on the lookout for it! (Oh, and it's not the secret fic I was talking about, which is now abandoned due to poor planning and lack of research ^_^)
Next Chapter: The story of Dawn's first murder and what will Danson do now he knows.
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7th February 2008
1:32PM GMT+09:00
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Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Gong Xi Fa Cai!!