A/N: This is a relatively short chapter, but it felt like a good place to break things up, so here it is. There's a brief description of trauma, but that's about it. I hope you guys are all ready to meet a new character! Enjoy!

Killian sat at the cold metal table, resisting the urge to drum his fingers against the top in his impatience. He had been interrogated four times already, and he knew they were trying to decide whether he was terrorist or completely insane, or perhaps both, but Killian was neither. Every move he had made had been coolly calculated and he would have succeeded if they hadn't derailed his plans entirely and he was positively seething like a cauldron ready to bubble over.

The door to the "interview room", as they liked to call it, opened, and a new woman walked through, her heels clacking against the floor as she flicked through the manila file in her well-manicured hands. After a moment in which she paid Killian no attention and he waited silently, the woman dropped the closed file on the table and smoothed her tight-fitting dress before sitting down across from him.

"Do you have any idea how long you've been here?" she asked after considering him for another moment.

"One hundred forty-one hours, if I had to guess," Killian answered, cracking the knuckles in his fingers.

"Forty-two, actually," the woman corrected, but a raised eyebrow indicated that she was more than a little impressed. She paused as if waiting for him to offer an explanation, but he did nothing of the sort, instead continuing to stare at her defiantly. "My name," she continued, "is Regina Mills, I am the Deputy Director for Operations, which means that –"

"You're in charge of all the spies," Killian finished, and he thought he might have seen the corners of her mouth twitch upward.

"We don't have spies, Mr. Jones, this isn't the Cold War," she sneered, and Killian rolled his eyes.

"Right, agents, operatives, whatever it is you call them now."

"My job is to manage the collection and analysis of intelligence," Ms. Mills continued, undeterred.

"Must not be doing a very good job if you needed to follow my lead into Donetsk," Killian spat, clenching his fists.

"Or, we managed to do a great job, since we were able to locate a nobody in Seattle and track him all the way to a warehouse in Ukraine," she countered.

"I did all the work for you," Killian challenged, bristling for a fight.

"Mr. Jones, I know the world sucks, and your parents were murdered when you were eight, and your brother was killed in action, and your fiancée was shot in the head by terrorists, so you think that god hates you and all you have to live for is revenge. I get it."

"No, you don't," Killian mumbled, anger boiling inside of him and he felt his temperature rising.

"Trust me, I do, but that doesn't mean you get to go around –"

"YOU HAVE NO IDEA!" Killian screamed, his arms straining against his handcuffs, muscles bulging under his t-shirt. "SHE WAS EVERYTHING TO ME, EVERYTHING! I HAD NOTHING EXCEPT HER AND THAT MONSTER…"

"I DO KNOW!" Ms. Mills yelled back, standing and slamming her hands down on the metal table. "My husband was tortured, in front of me, and my uterus was removed with my baby inside while I watched, and nothing, nothing, will every compare to that, so don't you talk about loss to me," she hissed, her black eyes narrowing, and for the first time, Killian genuinely felt intimidated by the woman in front of him, with power and barely-controlled rage radiating from her.

"I'm –"

"I went on my own revenge warpath, and listen to me when I tell you that it is a mistake," she continued. "What was your plan? After you killed the man who murdered Milah, what were you going to do next?"

Killian said nothing, because he didn't have an answer. He had never really considered that far, and if he was honest with himself it was because he never expected to get that far before he died.

"Oh I see, you're the die trying kind?" she smirked, cold and cruel. "You always expected to be killed trying to achieve your goal, so there was no plan for what happens next. Genius, really, you are. But hey, at least you knew your stupid ass was probably going to be killed."

Killian looked down at his hands, cuffed in his lap, knuckles bruised, and was surprised to find that he felt shame prickling in his gut.

"I think you might be a good fit for one of our operations," Ms. Mills stated, after taking a deep breath.

"No," Killian huffed, not wanting to hear her sales pitch about becoming a better man or patriotic duty or whatever she was planning to say.

"It's black ops, codenamed Paladin, and the purpose of it is to identify and neutralize active terrorists who pose a threat to national security," she continued as though she hadn't heard him.

"No," he repeated more firmly, his eyes firmly focused on his hands.

"Mr. Jones, it is high time you got over yourself, and started channeling your rage, hatred, and survivor's guilt into something that is useful for the rest of society," Ms. Mills stated, her hand on her hip as she tossed a stack of papers from inside his file down in front of him. "Either you get on board or you spend the next fifty years in solitary confinement, I don't really care which."

She turned and swept out of the room, her heels clicking on the floor again, and when the door closed behind her, Killian reached out an gently ran his fingertips over the ink, feeling the slight bumps of the letters. It wasn't really a difficult choice, he knew the answer was obvious, but it was taking a lot from him to pick up the pen and sign the papers in front of him. He allowed himself a minute before he told himself to knuckle down and pull himself together, and then Killian Jones picked up the pen in front of him and signed his name across the blank line at the bottom of the agreement.