The Color After the End

by grainia

I have loved the Sylvester Stallone and Julianne Moore movie Assassins since I first saw in high school. I always wondered what happens next for a thief and a killer. This is an experiment in writing.

He buys a yacht in the Mediterranean with his half of the money. He makes sure there is a satellite and a separate cabin big enough for all of her toys. They spent an entire day out shopping for computers and other electronic things he didn't know the first thing about. She says she's retired and he believes her, but she also says it's hard to quit cold turkey. He doubts she is using her hacking skills for anything more than idle snooping, but he still makes sure the alarms are on at night just in case.

She spends hours down there in her room alone. He doesn't mind. He brings a copy of Arabian Nights with him to a coffee shop nearby, but rarely reads it. Mostly he just people watches. He makes dinner in the galley and she comes out to eat with Pearl, Pearl's boyfriend and him. She looks tired, happy and seems so full of color that it hurts his eyes. She jokes about not finding a name for the new male feline yet as they sip beers on the deck at night.

They navigate their way to Athens and laugh about almost impossibility of getting lost with all the high tech gear on board. He walks around the ruins in the afternoon and remembers the last time he was here and all blood on his hands.

She comes back from another shopping excursion to find him scrubbing his hands raw in the head. She puts her hands on top of his to stop them and he puts his head between her neck and shoulder. He asks how she can stay, knowing of all the blood that stains his hands. She says she has blood on her hands too and maybe the trick is not to try to wash it away, but to stain them another color.

He looks up and she kisses him. He can taste tears, but he's not sure if it's his or hers. He spends the night brushing his hands on her white skin or wrapping them in her red hair. He's hoping to stain them with another color, her color.

Pearl's boyfriend brings a lizard down into the galley as they eat breakfast and she decides to name the homicidal kitty Miguel. He smiles into his coffee as she scratches behind the cat's ear and his eyes don't hurt from her color anymore.