DISCLAIMER: I own nothing but my own name.
SPOILERS: Spoilers for Season One, then we go off script and into a possible future. Love, angst, introspection, and spy stuff.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
FEEDBACK: To spheeris1[at]yahoo.com
The Two of Us In the Unknown
By spheeris1
It's out of your control. All of this is out of your control, isn't it?
And your hand aches a bit, small bones reverberating, and you don't move for what seems like a very long time. You don't move and everything around you is muffled, as if you have cotton in your ears, and you had no choice, you had to do this, you had to. And your hand hurts, feels frozen and heavy, and you don't move but you do blink – once, twice – and you've seen this color before.
You've seen red like this before, haven't you?
It's normal to go weeks, months even, without seeing her. It's normal to not know all the details, to trust in the process, in the machinations of the faceless entities you serve, and so it is normal to not see her for long periods of time.
She floats in and out of your life, that's how it's always been.
You'll be drinking some wine, writing down some notes, nearing to midnight and then there she'll be – like a fucking specter, shimmering into view and then dancing out of the corner of your eye. You'll take her in, feed her and ask very little, you'll take from her what she cannot give to anyone else – her iron-grip on the world, her need to be in charge – and turn it inside out, place your lips to her weaknesses and make her moan into your mouth.
And then she goes again. And you go back to what you do. In the same circles, but rarely in the same space, the two of you like ships in the forever nighttime of your existence.
You've grown accustom to it, this back and forth, whatever the motions of this movement is – she, your opus, and you, the conductor. You've grown used to it, this life, and you don't think about giving it up. Because you've already given up one life – it seems so far away now, Niko and boredom and simplicity – and you won't be letting this life slip from your grasp.
It's your new normal. It's your new everything.
Your arm is up, like you are made of concrete or bronze, a statue in the middle of violent actions. And the sounds slowly tumble into your ears, your name being said, and you manage to turn your head – god, it hurts, too – and none of this is in your control, is it? None of this is what you wanted, not really, but it had to be done. It had to be done, because if you had been just one second late... one fucking second off... and you hear your name being said again and your arm is being pushed down and you tear your gaze away from that color, the one you've seen before – red, glorious and horrible red – and she is looking at you like you are an idiot.
"Have you gone deaf? Eve? Hello?"
She's exasperated with you. Or worried. Maybe both. You stare at her, mindless, and you wish you could speak, could ask her to slap you, to wake you up, you want to wake up and have all of this be a dream. Instead, she pries the gun from your hand and then she pushes you along, out of this room and out of this building and into the dark, dark landscape of Kópavogur.
When you hear that something has gone wrong, that someone has been compromised, you start doing what you do best – annoying people with your questions, with your fiery form of doggedness – and you trace her as best you can, using every resource at your disposal, and when you don't get what you want, something inside of you breaks loose from its tether and you find that your inclination to go against the rules is endless.
You craft lie after lie. You make promises you cannot possibly keep. You travel first to Reykjavík, low on sleep and hungry and anxious, and you meet a contact there and you think you might have been followed, so you take a taxi to one place and shuffle out the back, get another taxi and do this again and again – paranoid on top of concerned, you feel like your body might shatter – and you ignore text messages and heated calls, ignore the potential fallout of your actions.
That's who you are, after all. A woman propelled forward by impulses, by an aching want, by a fascination that just won't cool. A woman with her own mad little mind, running headlong into disaster.
This is who you are.
This is who you've always been.
You are sitting in a hotel room and she is eating. She is also sort-of watching you, nudging you to eat and sighing when you don't do as she wants you to. Of course, she wouldn't get it – killing is an art to her, survival second, and never about morality – but for you, killing is tantalizing from a distance, terrifying up close. And yes, you tried it out once, with the woman sitting near you, and you realized that you didn't want that on your hands.
Her blood. Anyone's blood. You don't want that on you at all.
But things were out of your control, weren't they? And you had to make a choice, didn't you? It was some man or it was her and you always choose her. Always. It had to be done, even if you don't like it, even if you really, really hate it, because if you hadn't, then she'd be dead.
She'd be dead and then where would you be?
"What do you need?"
She doesn't usually ask questions and one glance at her face tells you that it makes her uncomfortable to do so, but she is trying and you suppose that is something. She's tried food and, before that, she took your coat off and told you to take a shower, but you didn't do a thing except sit down. She even poured you a drink, twisting the cap off something pungent from the mini-bar, and tucked the glass into your hands.
She's trying and you saved her life and you feel so out of control...
"Take off your clothes."
...and you are desperate to find solid ground once more.
It takes you two days, two days to find where they have her, two days to figure out what you are going to do – which is stupid at best, fatal at worst – and you find yourself at a building on the outskirts of the city and you don't know what you were expecting, armed guards or snipers or something, but it is relatively easy for you to creep in and sneak around corners.
You don't know why she isn't dead yet. She should be dead. You should be walking up to her corpse and feeling a sense of devastation that goes against everything anyone else would feel with her passing, but she's alive. Alive and spitting at someone, getting hit in the face, laughing in the midst of her torture, and you admire her as much as ever – cocky asshole, defiant to the very end – but you wish she'd tone it down a bit, for your sake, even if she doesn't yet know you are here.
But it all changes so fast. You have a gun, handle warmed by your touch, and you have it out but haven't used it, you've never had to use it. You know how, but still, you don't want to have to use it. But things are happening so fast and whatever patience this man has has worn down and the knife is out and she can't defend herself from this and you don't think about what you're about to do – killing someone, you are going to kill someone – and you pull the trigger and his body pitches forward and you can't hear anything anymore and it all happens so goddamn fast.
He falls. She's up. You stand there. She kicks his bleeding out body. You stand there. She takes his knife and then she looks at you and you just stand there.
You stand there until she drags you away.
She fights you a bit, but that's okay. That's what you want and she senses it. You hold tight, twist and turn and pin her down, and she rolls you a couple of times and you wrap your fingers around her throat and she gasps out in pleasure and, fuck, she makes you feel so amazing, so good that it hurts, and you slide down her body – grip firm, tongue traveling over her skin, sucking one of her nipples into your mouth and pulling back with it between your teeth and she arches into you... and you feel the rush of having her, of taking from her... and then your lips are on the scar, the one you left her with – faint and smooth now, no longer jagged – and you remember that color, so much red, all over your hands, seeping into her top, smeared onto the comforter and dotting the floor... and you remember the smell of gunpowder, the kickback through your arm and into your shoulders... and your tongue dips into her wetness, fingers leaving her neck behind and fluttering to her hips – keeping her there, digging in with the nails – and she tastes so good, so good that you never want to stop, and she tugs on your hair, encourages you, begs you... and you slid the blade into her gut and it felt amazing and it felt awful... and you pulled the trigger and watched his body fall down... and it felt like power and it felt like the last thing to lose, to destroy... and you flick the tip of your tongue over her clit, over and over, and curl one of your fingers inside of her – you feel her tense up, you feel her shake and strain – and you've never wanted anyone like this, not in all your years of living, and you've never needed anyone like this... and when she comes, you squeeze your eyes shut as tears roll down your face.
You are awake before her and you stand in the shower, hot water beating down on you. You breathe in and out, steady and sure, and you count the seconds – inhale, 1 2 3, exhale, 1 2 3 – and repeat. You scrub your hair first, body next, and your skin feels raw by the end. The steam builds and builds and seeps out the door and into the room, trails after you as you walk naked to the bed once more.
You sit down and she is still sleeping, honey-gold hair obscuring half of her face, and you see a mark or two on her back – from where you got rough, where she told you to 'do whatever you want, I like it' – and you reach out, softly, to touch her there. Wanting to fix it, fix yourself, stop this and have this at the same time. Wishing for absolution, but knowing that it'll never be delivered to you.
And usually she is the one leaving, content to disappear with the dawn, but it will be you this time. You dress and you gather up your few belongings, you call for a taxi and you stare at her until you have to go – silent in your study, already missing her and yet needing to flee, already torn between what you've held onto for so long and what you've now thrown away – it's you and her, in a liminal space made up of the messiest of loves.
It's you, no longer out of control, but still no wiser for it.