Chapter Text
Gaby's hands shake over stained skin, smudging the caked blood that has seeped into every crack. She desperately tries to rid herself of the drying crusted film, evidence of her first hand-to-hand kill.
Illya looked over from the driver's seat, saw her hands, pressed on the accelerator a little more.
He had helped lift the body off her, her knife still lodged in the stiff tissue of her attacker’s throat. Gaby had laid stunned, drenched in sickly warmth. She hadn't been prepared for the sputtering fountain of gore that had rained down on her.
Nothing short of a lifetime on the killing floor of a slaughter house could have prepared her for it.
At the safe house, Illya silently assists her inside where she pulls away and all but stumbles into the bathroom, frantically twisting the groaning faucets, scrubbing her hands with a manic ferocity that threatened to draw her own blood out. The water ran pink and clotted down the drain.
Her hands clean but for the crust beneath her nails, she looks up into the mottled mirror in the dim light to see her neck and chest dark with another person's snuffed life, her soaked top blending in seamlessly. She spots small flecks close to the corner of her mouth.
With a desperate choke she tears at her top, tosses it to the floor with a wet slap and splashes water on her neck and chest, smearing her skin with redness, dripping down her body, spreading everywhere. Bloodied water trails down her arms. She splashes more, nearly clawing at her chest, smearing and wiping and gasping.
Gaby clutches the edge of the sink, her knees giving way when Illya comes up behind her, catching her beneath her arms.
He lowers her to the floor, kneels beside her and wipes her trembling arms and heaving chest with a towel, blotting and absorbing the worst of the gore. She calms, leaning against his shoulder, surrendering to his care as the blood came away with each stroke.
Illya leans to soak the towel with water, returning to dab at her face, gently removing even the smallest marks from her skin. Her trembling has nearly subsided and she sighs as her head falls against his chest. Illya runs the cloth over her arms, wiping away the last of the blood. She should feel ashamed; sitting half-naked on a bathroom floor in a ruined brassiere, nearly suffering a breakdown over some stains, but she only feels comfort.
Illya drops the towel with her top, sits fully on the tiled floor as he pulled her onto his lap. Her eyes flutter close, her clean hand fisted in his shirt.
"It's okay," he says against the crown of her head.
Gaby nods, eyes still closed, believes him. Knows he has been here too, many years before. He doesn’t tell her it will get easier because maybe it won’t.
His arms wrap tightly about her, clean and comforted, the sound of his heartbeat against her ear.