Chapter Text
This time, when metal meets flesh, you are not propelled by Parisian fury or Roman fear. This time, it’s a quick and painless decision (not a decision at all, really, more like step one of many) and you drive your knife into the neck of the man in front of you without hesitation. He’s in your way, he has something you want, and you don’t feel anxiety about displacing such obstacles and claiming what’s yours anymore.
The man turns to face you, eyes wide and scared, limbs reaching out, breaths shallow and panicked, looking like a quickly dying Frankenstein. He’s clumsy - his body is scrambling to take in more information about what just happened while also fighting for just a little more life, all internal systems firing on all cylinders (it’s a futile effort) - and you move out of his way easily. You watch as he falls, sputters and convulses, finally stills. Good, you think - you weren’t certain that you’d penetrated his carotid artery. You are learning that these types of things are easier to think about, not as easy to do.
You spare a passing thought for Niko, the heat of his blood rushing through your fingers in a podunk Polish town. Immediately, you have to swallow a smirk as you consider how you just did with one prong what Dasha was unable to do with three and decades of experience. You know this already, but Jesus, you really are a bit of a monster.
After grabbing the gun tucked into his belt and yanking your knife out of his neck, you leave the man on the floor, his body growing colder and stiffer by the second. In contrast, you are all fire and loose limbs, a heat-seeking missile. You turn the corner and continue down the hallway of this empty church, momentarily aware of and grateful for the way this single minded focus of yours has pushed any feelings of trepidation or fear to the outer limits of your consciousness. You find her in a deserted room at the end of the hall - rope and zip ties binding her to a chair - long limbs restrained and useless.
This time, when you find her, you do not register pleasant surprise or manic gratitude in her expression - instead you watch her eyes go soft and honest as she looks you up and down, but then she blinks it away, clenches her jaw, and her expression morphs quickly into something more closed off.
“You found me.”
You cannot stop the smell of champagne, the feel of her delicate fingers tracing your hairline, the crunch of glass from overloading your senses for a moment. You try to shake the memory away and focus but she’s still in front of you, still bruised, still beautiful, so you just accept the double vision. You wait for her follow-up, a “well done”, and when it doesn’t come you are forced to reply anyway.
“Yeah, it seems that I did.”
You cut the knots against her back, the ties against her ankles and around her wrists. She stands, stretches, shakes. Now it’s your turn to look her over - to get more than a cursory glance at the bruises on her face, the blood underneath her nails, the rips in her clothing.
“Why are you still looking?”
She asks, after you’ve stared for a moment too long. You don’t know if that question ends with “at me” or “for me”, but either way, you know your answer so you reply quickly and with conviction.
“I want to. I wanted to - I still want to.”
She opens her mouth so you blurt out “Let me” before she can interject or cut you off. At least she can’t leave you on a fucking bridge this time.
“Eve”, she starts, looking anguished and apologetic, “you wanted it to stop. You asked me to help you make it stop.”
Your impulse is to deny, to spin, to brush it off. You fight it.
“I know, I - but I turned back, I don’t want it...this...to stop.”
You push the phrases out of your mouth, processing them only as you hear them out loud, watching your hand flail indiscriminately between the two of you as you speak. Her face softens again - god, it’s wild to think that you ever considered her above it all, impenetrable in any meaningful way, considering the way you can read her like an open book now. She looks at you with those big eyes, hopeful, open, hesitant, and you know that you will do this - the violent chase - as many times as it takes.
“We should go”, she says, starting for the door. She looks back at you and offers a small smile. “Let’s talk more when we’re alone again.”
At that your brow quirks for a second and you pause - you’re about to ask what she means when you hear faraway voices, closing in on the both of you. You book it, silently, down to the end of the corridor and back into the nave of the church. She takes your hand, confidently, and leads you towards the confessional. You feel your eyes widen and your feet slow but she pulls you close, leans down, and whispers in your ear with a warm breath.
“It’s okay, trust me. These assholes are always secretly too scared of God to ever check here.”
So you follow, your clammy hand in hers, and then you find yourself chest to chest in the booth, her back against the lattice partition, the inverse of how she left you on the bridge. It’s dark and it’s quiet, save for the footsteps and mumbles from the men looking for her. You can feel her stomach against yours, moving out with each breath. As your eyes adjust to the darkness you see her looking back at you, silently taking you in. You know she’s listening to the voices, probably fluent in whatever Eastern European language they’re speaking in (Czech, if you had to guess), and you can feel the way she’s wound up against you, ready to spring the door open and fight if she needs to, but she’s also staring at you. Just staring. You watch her watch you - see her eyes flit across your face and around your hair, drop from your forehead to your eyes to your lips to your neck. It’s the second time in the last five minutes you’ve been seen for who you truly are and it’s exhilarating and nerve-wracking and you feel yourself start to heat up under the collar of your sweatshirt.
You look back. Unless you tilt your head, your eyes are about level with her cheeks, so you start there. You see the finger-shaped bruises, dried blood on her split lower lip. Your eyes travel down and you watch the pulse point on her neck jump and jerk as her heart beats. You watch her throat bob as she swallows. Feel the breath of her exhale, steady and smooth. You think about the man you just killed, for her. The men (and women) you have killed, for her. She doesn’t know about this most recent one, the carotid Frankenstein, and the power of this knowledge is so overwhelming it almost fatigues you. Wordlessly, both because you have to be silent and because you don’t even know what you’d say, you drop your head into the crook of her neck, the place you were just staring at, and smile when you feel her arms wrap around you milliseconds later, like she’s been waiting for years to do this.
She probably has, you realize. Why you’ve been so resistant to just letting this woman love you is harder and harder to justify these days. From this spot between her neck and shoulder, humid from your breath and her sweat, you consider your life at the moment. This horrible brilliant cruel creative violent intelligent resourceful woman loves you, and you increasingly want to let her. The smile that rips across your face cannot be bitten into submission and you know she feels it against her neck, the splitting of your lips and the sharpness of your teeth.
You feel her hands drift down to your lower back and meet the grip of the gun. She stills, tilts her head so her mouth is next to the shell of your ear, and whispers. “Oh? Knives not cutting it for you anymore?” You feel more than hear her quiet chuckle at her own joke and pinch her ribs in response, reveling in the sound of her sharp inhale.
As the seconds pass, you become aware of the silence, of the quiet march of receding footsteps. You hear the heavy front door of the church swing open and shut again. Her arms relax around you and you pick your head up, out from under her chin, taking a step back. She opens the door and looks around, takes a step out. Extends a hand.
“Ready?”
This time, when you say “Yes”, you do not shake your head “no” simultaneously. You do not see her as a caricature of death looming before you in a couture gown, (regretfully) do not feel the press of her hips against yours. This time, when you say “Yes”, you are not in a mansion in Rome, feet glued to Italian marble, terrified as she flirts with disaster and death right in front of you. This time, you see her, this stupidly beautiful, awful woman, and you know she sees you. You reach out.