Disclaimer: I own nothing but the ideas rattling in my head!

Syria - Present

Jones held out the GPS unit. "Do you want to go first?"

Emma shook her head, already scanning the ground surface. Fieldwalking was trickier than it seemed – it wasn't enough just to walk and stare at the ground. Artifacts could be small and the same color as the surrounding soil, and the smallest artifact could lead to the biggest sites (one could only hope). "Just keep us on target, Jones. We'll switch after tea break." She'd never been that much of a fan before she moved to England (and a hot chocolate with cinnamon was still her hot beverage of choice), but now she couldn't even make it through the day without a cuppa.

"That suits me." He booted up the unit and guided them over to the first section of land they had to survey. "Transect starts here."

The two of them walked in silence for the first few miles, only stopping when there was something to document. Trackways were usually not visible from the ground, especially when some of them could be several kilometers wide. No, they were searching for anything that was indicative of past human activity, from artifact scatters to possible habitation sites that were invisible on the satellite imagery. Emma found the first few features, including a small mound with bricks and sherds of pottery. "Nice find, Swan," he commented after he input that feature's coordinates into the GPS. "It looks like I was right about occupation in this area."

"Yeah, about that," she said warily as they moved on. "Are you starting a project here?"

"Looks like it, doesn't it?" was the nonchalant reply.

"This isn't even your study area, Jones." It felt like he was treading on her territory, even if they were studying completely different things (landscape studies for him, threat monitoring and cultural heritage management for her).

He snorted. "Pot, kettle, Swan. Both of us started in Iraq and Iran. Syria makes the most sense, doesn't it? Then you'll go on to Egypt and Tunisia, whilst I proceed into Anatolia. Besides," he continued as she clamped her mouth shut, frustrated that he'd hit the nail right on the head. "There's nothing wrong with broadening my horizons, especially when there's research funding on the line. They like it when you add other study areas for comparison, especially when it leads to inter-university collaboration."

Oh, she really wanted to smack him. He sounded so pompous, so utterly unlike the man who'd flipped out when he discovered a scorpion in his trench on excavation. "Oh yeah? It sounds like you and Cambridge are getting along just great."

The silence stretched between them for a long moment as they walked, each stride in perfect unison. "It's a beautiful city, Swan. But it's not the same. Not without you."

That did it. He was not allowed to talk that way. She'd been so happy for him when he received the British Academy fellowship after the PhD because those kinds of opportunities didn't grow on trees. She'd received the Global Heritage Network fellowship around the same time and they talked endlessly about how they were going to make it work, but then he'd received an offer to work in Mongolia to consult on an unrelated project and that was it. He would be gone for half a year with the option of deferring the start of the BA fellowship. There was no deferment option for Emma, and Syria needed her more than she needed to wait around for some idiotic Irishman. "Oh, go to hell," Emma spat, feeling the edges of her control fraying. This was a horrible idea. She must have been out of her mind to say yes, but now she was irrevocably stuck with him because she needed him to get her job done.

Well, no one ever said that work was pleasant.

Jones stopped walking and regarded her with eyes the same color as the sun-bleached sky above them and filled with a mixture of regret and consternation. "Now Swan-"

"You know what, Jones? This is going to go much better for the both of us if we just don't talk." The words fell from her lips, chipped and frozen, in stark contrast to the desert heat around them. Together, the two of them were a volatile mixture. Perhaps that had worked when they were students, but not anymore. She wanted more stability, and a relationship couldn't work if both halves of the pair were constantly flitting away. In truth, she didn't have to be on the ground to monitor sites, but she couldn't be the only one making the sacrifices. "I'm going for my break now."

Emma stalked away, ignoring him as he called after her. She couldn't help but think perhaps she should have carried on ignoring him, all those years ago.

Azerbaijan – Four years earlier

"You know you're never going to make friends this way."

"Who says I want to make friends?" Emma had been hiding out on the truck bed for that very reason. Fieldwork often meant close quarters, she knew that, but her current situation was downright ridiculous. Ten people, one apartment, one bathroom, two months. Those factors weren't an issue during the day, but at night? The crew wanted to unwind and that meant gossiping. Poking.

Emma was having none of that. That was why she'd taken to disappearing after dinner and only came back when she knew that people were drifting off to bed. Luckily that didn't take too long, considering long work hours. Most people tended to crash around nine o'clock.

Most people. Not Killian Jones.

"That's harsh," he commented. "Considering that most of us are in the same department and half of us have the same supervisor. And in case you hadn't realized, our supervisor is here as well. Are you saying that you don't want to be friends with him?" As he spoke, he climbed in beside her without so much as a by-your-leave.

Emma twitched in irritation. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all," was the cheerful reply. "Seriously, Swan, you're stuck with the lot of us for the next two months, if not the next three years. Do you really expect not to know us?"

"I didn't know that social skills were a prerequisite for a PhD," she retorted.

"You've seen some of the staff in the department, you know that's not true. Still, it never hurts, does it?" He pulled a bottle of clear liquid out of his jacket and offered it to her. "Come on, Swan, drink with me. You can't argue with tradition. We're on fieldwork – where we're walking ten bloody miles per day on survey, I might add. I think a drink is warranted."

Emma accepted the bottle despite herself, opened it, and took a curious sniff. "This smells like turpentine."

"I think your lot calls it moonshine." His eyes, dark now under the country night sky, glinted with challenge. "Care to give it a go?"

"Now why would I do that?" She looked pointedly from him to the bottle.

Jones' expression was comically affronted. "I resent that implication, Swan. I can assure you, I would never doctor alcohol. I like my partners to be willing."

"Uh-huh. Do I look willing right now, Jones?"

There was a long pause as he just looked at her. Emma fought the urge to squirm under that suddenly knowing gaze. "No, Swan," he replied softly. "Just lonely."

She definitely didn't like how this was going. She was used to people overlooking her, dismissing her (leaving her), but not seeing her. "Fine." She took a long swig from the bottle, managed not to gag, and handed it back to him. "Your turn."

He opened his mouth like he wanted to argue, but shrugged and knocked it back just as she did. "There now, is that so bad?"

"If you're talking about the moonshine, it's terrible."

"Feeling it already, Swan?"

Emma looked at him with pity. He had no idea what he was in for. "I'm not going to be the one feeling things, Jones."

"Ooooh. I love a challenge."

The laugh just bubbled out, surprising the both of them. Okay, he was nuts. But the good kind of nuts. "You're not going to like this challenge, trust me."

"We'll see about that," he declared.

Syria – Present

Emma shook herself out of that memory, though traces of it lingered, tinged with the clear burn of the moonshine and the faint sound of drinking songs fading into the night. She huffed with frustration and climbed into the jeep to find her thermos of strong, black, milky tea. Hydration was essential in fieldwork, but there were times when one needed something a little bit more substantial than water or Gatorade.

Movement in the distance caught her eye. She frowned and checked the rearview mirror. Dust clouds gathered on the horizon and the sun flashed off metal. "Shit," she swore, and slammed the door behind her as she turned on the engine. She tore down the bluff, gritting her teeth as the vehicle jolted, and went straight for Jones, who was still making his slow, ambling way to where they had been parked.

She jerked to a stop beside him. "Swan, what the bloody-" he began as he threw open the door.

"Get your ass in here Jones, I really don't have time to explain."

Luckily, he complied and climbed in. "I don't suppose your perusal of the satellite images yielded any useful information on possible hideouts, did they?" she inquired as she peeled away.

His brow furrowed. "Why?"

Emma jerked her chin over her shoulder. "That's why."

Jones followed her gaze and released an impressive spat of epithets when he caught sight of the convoy in the distance. "Is that-"

"Rebels or military. It doesn't bode well for us either way." She pulled them along a series of hillocks, hoping that the variation in elevation would hide them. "Find us a place to go to ground, and I swear to god, Jones, if you say that this is an adventure I'm going to leave you behind."

He bit his lip, because that was exactly what he was going to say. "I'm on it, Swan."

Please review!

Agh. I've been trying to work on the next chapter of steady hands but my latest thesis chapter is killing pretty much everything related to that (results are so boring to write). But then this happened. :) And you guys thought I wasn't going to continue this!