Standard disclaimer: None of the characters, places, etc. in this story are mine, but are instead the property of Majesca. No copyright infringement is intended by their use in this story.
Author's note: I put Psychonauts in a blender with bits of Gone With the Wind and The Remains of the Day, and this fic popped out. Sasha/Milla, sort of (and unrequited). Be warned: Milla's backstory has been tweaked a bit herein. I have a prequel worked out dealing with the tweak, if I ever get around to writing it. Thanks again to LadyKate, who was kindly willing to beta in a fandom she doesn't follow!
I could write you a thousand love songs
Search the world for the perfect tune and rhyme
But what good would it do
When it seems I'm out of time?
—"If I Told You," from The Wedding Singer
The door of the hotel room was warped and sticking; Sasha had to kick the bottom of it hard to get it to open. It banged back against the wall, and he juggled the briefcase he was holding, shifting it to his left hand while fumbling for the light switch with his right. He could have tripped the switch telekinetically, but he was too bone-tired; he lacked the mental strength even for that small effort.
Finally finding the light, he stepped into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him. The briefcase—containing documents too sensitive for the light of day—dropped to the floor, and he crossed the dingy carpet to sink onto the bed. He ran his hands over his face, feeling completely and utterly spent. The mission he had just come back from had been the most grueling assignment by far that he had had in several years, and it had been made worse by the fact that Milla was on vacation. He had been on his own for the whole thing, and it had left him physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted.
I must check in with headquarters, he knew. I must update them on my mission progress. He debated leaving it till tomorrow, almost decided to do so, then admitted that the Grand Head of the Psychonauts would probably want to know sooner rather than later. It took him several minutes to find the strength just to take out his scrambled cell phone, even more to actively punch in the numbers. The ringing of the phone made his already-splitting headache worse. The moment he heard someone on the other end pick up, he started speaking, without even waiting for preliminaries. "This is Agent Nein. I have a mission report for the Grand Head of the Psychonauts—"
"I'm sorry. Grand Head Zanotto is not currently available," came the chirpy, perky voice of Zanotto's secretary. It ground on Sasha's exhausted nerves like broken glass. "May I take a message?"
Sasha stared at the receiver, fighting back a wave of irritation as sudden as it was irrational. I've been through hell out there, and he can't even have the simple decency to pick up the phone? Mastering himself, Sasha replied evenly, "No. Simply tell him to contact me as soon as he gets in."
"Thank you, Agent Nein. If you—"
Sasha didn't bother to listen to the rest; he hung up the phone on the receptionist midsentence, taking a perverse pleasure in doing so. Then he ran his hands over his face again. Every muscle in his body seemed to ache; he felt as if he had been beaten with clubs.
He tried Milla next; she was due back from vacation today or tomorrow, and would need to be brought up to speed. He punched in the numbers rapidly, hoping in some distant part of his mind for the reward of her bright, warm voice, but the phone just rang and rang. His irritation spiked again, even higher than before. He remembered then that she had never bothered to set up her voicemail account and growled a curse under his breath. Unprofessional. She is always like this, never available when she is needed. He knew that was unfair, but he didn't particularly feel like being fair at the moment.
Slowly, he set the phone down beside him on the bed, rubbing at his temples and trying to relax. He contemplated getting the specially formulated painkillers out of his valise, then remembered with a groan that he had left them by the sink in his bathroom at Camp Whispering Woods. There was no relief; conventional painkillers would not touch a headache brought on by psi strain. And it feels as if an especially bad one is on its way this time.
He opened his eyes, running his gaze around the inside of the run-down hotel room, searching for more comfort than could be found in a dirty, cigarette-stained carpet, two sagging beds with frayed and running counterpanes, a chipped nightstand supporting a lamp with a crooked shade, and a big TV that only received seven channels and none of them particularly well. He thought sourly that if he weren't already in a bad mood, this room would be enough to put him there by itself. There was a connecting door—the room on the other side would be Milla's, once she got back from her vacation and joined him—but he had taken a look around that room as well, checking for bugs and the like, and knew it was no better. Ach, why is it that every time I go overseas I always end up staying some place like this? This was the fifth time he had been to London this year and probably the best accommodations he had been in so far. And that thought is so depressing I do not want to finish it. He checked his watch, noting the date and time, and realized with a start that today was his birthday. He was now officially forty.
Forty. His head throbbed, and if possible, his mood nosedived further. Normally, Sasha did not celebrate his birthday, believing birthdays to be illogical and a waste of time and money. (Milla knew, though, and would usually leave him a small gift. She had tried organizing a surprise party for him once—and only once; Sasha had seen to that.) Now, however, the knowledge added to his incipient depression.
Forty years old, he thought again. In some part of his mind, Sasha still couldn't believe it. He didn't feel forty; inside, he still felt like the wet-behind-the-ears, awkward, gangly teenager just out of the Psychic Academy. It was a sobering thought, to realize that gawky teenage boy was twenty years and more in the past. Where did the time go?
Sasha's head throbbed again, and he took off his dark glasses, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. Twenty years of service to the Psychonauts…. Always before, he had looked back on that service with pride, knowing that he had gone where others wouldn't, had done what others couldn't; that hidden in the shadows, he had played his tiny part to make the world a better place. Now, though… sitting locked inside this run-down hotel room thousands of miles and an ocean away from the closest thing he had to a home, and confronting the fact that almost half his life was behind him, the thought just made him tired.
Twenty years of jumping when they tell me to jump, going where they tell me to go, changing locations every two years, dodging bullets, psi blasts, always having to be ready to leave at a moment's notice— Twenty years and what have I to show for it? A pile of dollars in an untraceable bank account, a collection of scars that would bring pride to an army veteran, and more close calls and nightmares than any one man should have in a single lifetime. And what comes next? Another twenty years of the same?
He rubbed his eyes again, recognizing he needed to stop; this level of bitterness was neither good for him, nor characteristic of him, nor was it justified. It is the mission, that is all, he told himself. You are just reacting from the mission. You need to lie down and rest, and things will look brighter. Telling himself that didn't help. His mood did not abate.
I'm getting too old for this. By this time in their lives, he knew, most other men had put down roots, had settled; they had wives, children, houses with lawns and yards and dogs. A house? Hah! Sasha traveled and changed residences so frequently that it would have been totally pointless for him to buy a house; the small, spartan, two-room apartment he maintained in the Psychonauts compound was really more than he needed. Children? Who has time for them? Sasha could not even think about children at this point in his life…and what sort of father would he be for them anyway, always leaving on missions, never knowing if this would be the one from which he didn't come back. A wife? The same. He hadn't been on a real date since he had been promoted to full agent over ten years ago, and even back then he had never been what one would call a ladies' man, he thought with a grimace. Milla is the closest thing that I have to even a girlfriend, and she is no more than my partner….
The sound of someone fumbling at the doorknob jerked Sasha out of his reverie. Not housekeeping, he realized; housekeeping had been in earlier that day. He could have reached out with his psi, to find out who it was, but even that simple activity would have escalated his headache to truly crippling levels. He did not fancy the idea of spending the next two days lying flat on his back in bed with the curtains drawn, unable to so much as turn his head without bringing on a spike of pain severe enough to make him vomit. Slowly he forced himself up from the bed, moving to take up a position where he would be momentarily shielded when the door opened. He gritted his teeth, readying a psi blast that he devoutly hoped he wouldn't have to use; it was at times like these that he truly wished the Psychonauts bothered to issue their agents a back-up weapon to use when their psi was drained. The door swung open—
"Milla?"
The tall, statuesque Brazilian woman swept into the room like a fresh breeze, her long brunette hair swinging, her colorful dress brightening up the room more than the feeble light from the table lamp. Sasha felt his black mood lighten immediately. She dropped her luggage into a careless pile against the far wall and straightened, wincing. "Ah! This is heavy, darling!"
Sasha hurried to close the door behind her and open the one to the connecting room, then went to pick up her biggest suitcase, grunting slightly from effort. She always overpacks. "I thought you were on vacation," he said, hauling the bag into the other room.
"Oh, I can get that, there's no need, darling." Milla followed after him, carrying two more bags which she dumped unceremoniously to the floor. "I got back one day early and decided to catch up with you. How was the mission?"
"Exhausting," he said shortly. "Did you bring the psychic painkillers?"
"Yes, I saw that you left them in our shared bathroom—one moment—" She dug into her purse and tossed him the small white bottle. Sasha caught it somewhat clumsily and screwed off the top, shook out two of them, contemplated adding a third, and decided against it; psi painkillers were habit-forming, after all. And besides, with Milla there, his headache seemed to be lessening already. He swallowed them dry with a sigh of relief. His brows drew together as he turned back to her.
"I tried to call you to brief you on the mission, but received no answer."
"Oh, I'm sorry, darling," she replied, shaking her heavy hair back. "I had my phone turned off, that was all."
"That is most unprofessional of you." He felt his scowl deepen. Milla was already headed to the bathroom, but he called after her, "An emergency might have arisen and I would have had no way to contact you. Psychonaut regulations clearly state that—"
"I know what the regulations say, dearie," she called back over her shoulder. "It was only this once." One hand waved airily. Sasha followed her, standing in the doorway as she leaned into the mirror, fixing her hair.
"It is never 'only this once.' You have consistently demonstrated a clear pattern of being unavailable for contact over the history of our partnership, one that has only increased in the past several months. If you would simply—"
Milla cut him off with another wave. "Ah, darling. Nothing happened, this time or any other time, you see? You worry too much. If you could only relax a bit, you'd be a much happier person. You need to calm down, Sasha Nein." She stared intently into the mirror, working the comb through her thick mane. Sasha did not reply. His own attention had been caught by something other. There was an ornament on the hand she had waved, one that had not been there before, of that he was sure. Situated on the third finger of her left hand, it was a golden band surmounted by a sparkling, flawless diamond.
A strange, prickling feeling filled his heart. He stared, almost hypnotized, at the diamond. He was sure that she had had no such ring before her vacation, he would have seen it. That cannot be what it looks like, he thought, trying to reassure himself. If Milla had had any— I would have known. She would have said something. Wouldn't she? Yet she had been behaving rather oddly the last few months, he remembered. She had started using all of her vacation time, for one thing. Psychonauts rarely took as much vacation time as they had coming to them; the job was too unpredictable for that. She had started disappearing on weekends, and going home right after work, though usually she would stay at the office far into the night doing extra work as needed. And there had been once or twice, hadn't there, when he had walked into the office they shared to find that she had flowers on her desk? He thought there had been. At the time he had thought nothing of it—that she had bought the flowers for herself, or that one of their bosses was rewarding her for a job well-done—but now….
And even as he thought that, Milla turned toward him. "Sasha, darling," she said quietly, "there is something I need to tell you." She paused. "I have put in a request for a transfer to an intel analysis position and it has been approved. In about a month's time I will be retiring from the field."
It was strange, this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Sasha nodded. "I see."
Milla studied him for a moment. "I realize," she continued, "that this leaves you holding the bag on several of our ongoing cases and I am sorry for it. The bureau has assured me that it will have a new partner assigned to you as soon as possible, and has already suggested several names for your consideration—"
The painkillers weren't doing a damn thing for his headache; Sasha could feel the dull pounding at his temples again, worse than before. He briefly closed his eyes. "Though I regret to lose you, of course, I am sure that whoever the agency suggests will be an adequate replacement." He paused, then ventured, "May I inquire as to the reason behind your request for a transfer?"
"I have become engaged," Milla supplied readily, and held up her hand. The diamond sparkled, refracting slivers of light like shards of shattered glass.
"Ah." Sasha swallowed. Everything seemed broken around him. The sick feeling in his stomach was spreading out to engulf his entire body. "May I be the first to offer you my congratulations."
"Thank you." Milla nodded and stepped away from the mirror. She scooped up the small bag he recognized as her document case, then went through the sliding door out onto the tiny balcony. He could see her, silhouetted against the stars, as she lowered herself into one of the cheap plastic chairs and began to read.
Sasha wandered back through the connecting door into his room. The yellow light from the cracked lampshade seemed garish and glaring; the shadows too dark. The rough edges of the carpet and the counterpane whispered like sandpaper. He tried to emulate Milla and settle in with some reading, but could not. Every document he picked up looked like gibberish in the harsh light. He couldn't muster the mental stamina necessary to make sense of anything. It felt as if there was a crushing weight in his chest. Though he had closed the door behind him, he was painfully aware of her presence in the other room.
At last, he gave up pretending to work. Holding a document before him like a flimsy shield, he rapped at the connecting door.
"Ms. Vodello?"
"It's open, darling, come on in," he heard her call.
He stepped through and went to the balcony. "Ms Vodello, I—" he began, and then realized in a kind of panic that he had absolutely no idea what to say next. Milla looked up at him, her green eyes calm and inscrutable.
"Yes, darling?"
"Ms. Vodello—" His eyes fell on the document he was holding and he thrust it at her. "I had wanted to ask your opinion on the Prague matter. If you would—?"
She took the pages from him and turned it over, a delicate frown on those warm and open features. "But darling, I've already given my opinion. See? Right here, in the appended document." She handed the pages back to him, indicating a paragraph in bold with one shaped and lacquered fingernail.
"Ah. I—I had not seen that, I— My apologies for unnecessarily troubling you." He took it back with hands that trembled slightly, then stared at her. Milla looked back at him with those cool green eyes, waiting. Sasha got the feeling that she knew exactly what he wanted to say but was unwilling to help him out in the slightest. He swallowed again.
"Ms. Vodello, I—I want again to offer you my congratulations on your happy occasion," he fumbled. "May I, if it is not too presumptuous, inquire as to the identity of the fortunate man?"
"A friend of mine from a long time ago. There was always a bit of a flame between us, but we met again a few months ago and wow." She smiled fondly. "You would not know him, darling."
"Ah. I see." Sasha shifted from foot to foot. The papers he was holding crumpled in his hands. "And—and you—You are requesting a transfer from field operations?"
Milla nodded. "That's correct, darling. Raoul and I have talked it over, and we've agreed that it's not fair to either of us for me to spend so much time away from home, or to engage in such dangerous missions after we're married. An intel analysis position will involve less travel, shorter hours, much less danger, and might even pay a little better if I can get a promotion or two."
"I see." He drew a careful breath. "Forgive me, but I—I had always thought that you enjoyed field work with— I could not have seen you behind a desk."
"Things change," she said with a small smile.
"I see." Sasha thought dismally that he sounded like a broken record. He shifted again. "I—Forgive me. I hope there is—I hope there is nothing I have done that has led you to seek this transfer. If there is—"
Milla smiled again, a bit sadly. Her bottle-green eyes deepened to emerald in the starlight, and her bright earrings swung. "Sasha, I'm thirty-seven years old. I'm getting too old for this. I just want a normal life."
"I see." Damn you, man, he cursed internally, can you say nothing else?
He turned away from Milla, looking out over the end of the balcony. The lights of London twinkled in the air. Absently he shoved the crumpled document into his pocket. I should go. Their conversation was logically complete; despite the sickness in his heart, there was no reason for him to linger. He should go, he knew…but somehow his feet seemed to be attached to the floor. He had no idea what he could say, but he could not just leave it at that.
He drew another breath, then turned back to face her, swallowing. Those emerald green eyes, calm and collected, raised from the top of the page she was reading. He wet his lips. "Milla…."
She was silent, simply watching. He closed his eyes briefly, shutting out the sight of her. "Milla….I….Forgive me," he said again. "I….I had thought…."
Again, she said nothing. Miserably, he reflected that the ideal time for this conversation would have been years ago. He swallowed again. "I had thought that you….that I…."
"Yes?" More cool and closed than he had ever seen her, save once. She was not helping him out at all. His fingers clenched on the paper in his pocket, wadding the pages tightly.
"I…I may have been in error, but I had thought that we…." He closed his eyes again. Forcing his desperation into these carefully-shaped words was without a doubt the most exhausting thing he had ever done, more exhausting than any mission he had ever been on. The words seemed to have actual weight; perhaps they had been carved from the rock in his chest. "That we had an understanding."
He looked back at her with dumb hope, only to have his hopes immediately dashed. One delicate brow went up. "An understanding, darling?"
So that was the way she was going to be. He drew a breath, then another one. "Milla, I c—" He heaved a shaky sigh and cursed himself viciously, well aware that he was about to make a fool out of himself for no good reason. Why are you telling her this now, of all times? "I c…I care for you," he brought out at last.
"Why, and I care for you too, dear," Milla responded gently. "How could I not? You have saved my life as many times as I have saved yours. We've been partners for years—it would be amazing if I didn't care for you—"
"You know what I mean."
For a hellish moment he thought she was going to ask, No, darling, what do you mean? prolonging this whole sorry charade. She did not, perhaps taking pity on the spectacle he was making of himself. Instead she gave a sigh of her own, closing her brilliant green eyes. "Yes, darling," she said quietly. "I know what you mean."
"I…I had thought that you…Was I so wrong?"
"Wrong?" One delicate eyebrow quirked. Her lips curled in a small, sad smile. "Once, I would have been thrilled to hear you finally say that."
If possible, Sasha's heart sank further. "You said 'once.' And…and now?"
She did not answer, but he saw it in her eyes, just the same. "I see." He swallowed hard. "Was it something I did? Milla, why…?" It came out in the lost, lorn voice of a child.
Milla closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead. "Sasha, Sasha….The very fact that we are only now having this conversation is a good indication of why."
"I don't understand."
"Of course you don't." She shook her head slightly, then looked up at him. "It was after Madrid that I first started thinking about the two of us. You remember Madrid, don't you, darling?"
Sasha gave a single nod, though the Madrid mission was etched on his heart. It had been eight years ago, two years after he had been promoted to full agent and had Milla assigned as his partner; he had still been young enough for it all to seem rather more like a thrilling game than the deadly serious business it was. The high point of the mission—at least, by Sasha's reckoning—had come when they had been shadowing a man suspected to be a notorious terrorist leader. A bomb had gone off below them, throwing them off the balcony they had been on and collapsing part of the building on top of them. Later, Sasha had learned that the bomb had been planted by the man's rivals within the Organization, but such details had mattered little to him at that moment. What had mattered was that Milla had telekinetically protected them from the debris falling on top of them—and that he had caught Milla. He had long since forgotten the name of the man and his rival, but those few moments—with her lying on top of him, her full, warm body pressed against his, her green eyes looking into his own, her lips inches from his lips—he would never forget.
"I remember," he said hoarsely.
She nodded. "It was then that I started trying to get your attention," she told him. "Surely you must have seen the way I was acting?"
He had. They had had separate offices in those days; as a full agent, Sasha had rated his own office, though it was no bigger than a broom closet, while Milla, who was in her last year as a trainee at that time, had had to share a similar-sized space with three other trainees. It had not been until years later, after a reorganization, that Milla and he had been assigned a single, shared space. Nevertheless, after that mission, Milla had started to drop by his tiny closet more and more frequently—ostensibly to discuss business, but the matters she had to discuss were often fairly trivial. Her visits often occurred toward the close of the day, and she had not infrequently invited him to go out for drinks or coffee after the workday was ended—either with her fellow trainees, or simply the two of them, though she was always careful to suggest establishments that were public and well-populated. Sasha had usually declined, pleading a heavy workload…but the truth was, something about her visits and invitations discomfited him, even frightened him. Perhaps it was that he had not dared to admit to himself just how badly he had wanted to take her up on them. Looking back on it now, Sasha was suddenly filled with an overwhelming desire to reach back in time and wring his own neck for his obtuseness.
"I tried everything I knew to let you know how I felt, Sasha," Milla was continuing on. "I honestly don't know what else I could have done to show you I was interested in you, apart from shouting it from the rooftops, and yet there was nothing. None of it worked. I could not tell whether you truly didn't notice, or whether you just didn't want to notice—"
Now, he fumbled, "It was right during the whole Budapest affair—things were falling apart all across Eastern Europe, I couldn't—and you were still a trainee, Milla, it would have been unethical—"
"And the next year I was not a trainee. I was a full agent and your equal," she responded, looking at him directly. "As I remained the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that." Sasha swallowed.
"Yes, but then—then the Iranian matter came up, and the business in Peking, and—" He swallowed again. "It was too soon, Milla," he said, knowing it for the pathetic excuse it was. "I needed more time. More time to realize—"
"Too soon. Yes. And now it's too late." Milla sighed again, running her hand through her thick, lustrous hair. "Sasha, there was a time in my life when I found your emotional ineptitude charming, even endearing. I was much younger then and far more naïve. Now I find it merely sad." There was no accusation in her voice; it was a simple statement of fact. "I am thirty-seven years old, Sasha, and that is too old to convince myself that a glaring flaw is anything other than a flaw. I tried everything, hoping that you would say something, hoping that I wasn't imagining— I let you farther into my mind than I had ever let anyone before, hoping that you would realize…but, nothing. Perhaps I should have been more direct….ah, well." She shrugged, then looked at him carefully. "After—what happened when the orphanage burned down—"
Sasha's heart thudded painfully within him. They had been trying to crack a human-trafficking network that was suspected of serving as a source of revenue to several terrorist organizations. Part of the plan had involved Milla going undercover to work at an orphanage that was a suspected front for the network. She had thoroughly enjoyed her cover job, as Sasha had suspected she would; he had watched her come alive each day as she spoke of the children and what they meant to her, how they brightened her day—
Later, doing some digging, he had found out that the fire was actually arson, set as part of an increasingly vicious turf war that had claimed upwards of a thousand lives by the time it burned itself out. He hadn't mentioned it to Milla, though; at the time, she was still recovering from her breakdown. She had been on the premises when the orphanage burned, had been psychically connected to several of the children there, and had actually felt them die. The shock and trauma had caused her almost to lose her mind. She had needed treatment immediately for her psychic injuries, but they had been in the field, and there was no time. Sasha was the only psychic present—the only one on that side of the ocean with even the potential to treat her— and he had never been much good at psychic healing; his teachers had told him he lacked the empathic ability necessary to progress beyond basic first aid techniques. Her mental injuries had been far beyond his skill; he should never even have tried—but there had been no one else. And I had felt so helpless…
In attempting to heal her, he had hurt her very badly. That she had made a full recovery was due entirely to her own tremendous mental fortitude and inner strength, as well as her own formidable healing abilities, and nothing at all to his efforts.
"Milla, I'm sorry," he said wretchedly. "Mother of God, if I had to do the whole thing over again, I would have—"
"Stop it." Milla sighed. "Sasha, how many times in the past have I told you that you have nothing to be sorry for? You were trying to help me, and I fully understand that. I've said it enough times already that I'm sick of repeating it."
"But I—"
"No. Sasha, listen to me." She held his eyes. "This is not about that. This is about afterward. While I was recovering."
Sasha blinked behind his dark glasses. "Milla, I—I don't understand."
"No," she agreed, "you wouldn't, would you?" She sighed. "Sasha, how many times did you come to visit me in the hospital afterward?" She regarded him, waiting for an answer. "I'll tell you: You came once. For fifteen minutes or so, and even I could tell that Grand Head Zanotto was twisting your arm. Everyone else from the agency visited frequently—even Agent Cruller managed to come twice—except you. My partner. Despite the fact that I had been told—and I know you knew as well—that contact with familiar minds would speed my recovery. And yet somehow the mind most familiar to me was missing." She paused, her face shadowed. "It was then that I realized I had been wasting my time."
Sasha felt the blood drain from his face. "My God, Milla—did you think that I didn't visit you because I didn't care? That—Milla, nothing could be further from the truth, I didn't—"
Her exasperated sigh cut him off. "And yet again, you jump to exactly the wrong conclusion about what I mean. Sasha Nein, how is it even possible that you can know my mind better than anyone else, and yet still misread me so often and so consistently?" She shrugged. "Sasha, I knew exactly why you didn't visit me—"
"Milla—Milla, it wasn't that I didn't care, believe me," Sasha fumbled desperately. "It was—"
"It was that you cared too much, yes, I know," Milla finished for him, nodding. "You cared too much and you blamed yourself for the whole thing, so that rather than come to me, you slunk back to your desk and hid in your work as you always do so that you wouldn't have to deal with it. Yes, Sasha, I know all that. I always knew all that, and you know what else? It doesn't matter." She ran one hand through her heavy hair. "I had a lot of time to think while in the hospital, Sasha, and after I had tired of trying to make excuses for you, I reached a conclusion: It didn't matter why you were not there, Sasha, it simply mattered that you were not there. You were not there for me at a time when I badly needed you. The fact that it was because you couldn't deal with your own emotions is immaterial. What is the difference between a man who doesn't care for you and a man who does, but cannot show it, ever?" One delicate brow went up. "The answer is that there is no difference. It was that that made me realize that I had been wasting my time with you: that you were simply not equipped to be the partner I wanted."
Sasha's gut was crawling. He felt as if he were going to be sick. Vise clamps seemed to be screwing into his temples. He swallowed miserably. "Milla—I—if you were to give me a chance, I could make it up to you—I would make it up to you, if you just let me try…."
Milla sighed. "Sasha, I have reached a point in my life where I am no longer capable of fooling myself, nor do I even want to. You and I are simply too different. As a couple, we would not work. Or maybe we could," she continued, holding up a hand to forestall him, "but even so, it would take years, and frankly, I have no desire to put in that amount of time. It just doesn't interest me. I'm sorry, darling," she said with gentle firmness, "but that's just the way it is."
"Do you regret the time you spent with me so much?"
"Regret?" Milla tilted her head. "I regret nothing, darling. I enjoyed our adventures together greatly. I will always look back on them fondly, but now it is time for me to move on to something else." Abruptly she rose to her feet. "I'm going to take a shower and turn in. Get some sleep, Sasha," she told him, not unkindly. "Things will look better in the morning."
After she had gone, Sasha wandered back through the connecting door to his room. He paced restlessly as if seeking escape, like a caged bird fluttering frantically against its bars. The painkillers he had taken earlier were not working at all; it felt as if an iron spike was being driven straight through his head. His surroundings seemed harsh, bristling with hostility, full of jagged, sharp edges wherever he looked. His insides were hollow and aching, choking the breath out of him. All he could think of was Milla.
He was just turning away from the window with its crooked blinds when his eyes came to rest on the nightstand by the connecting door. There was a small box there wrapped in black and silver, a box that he recognized instantly, having been the recipient of many other such boxes in the years past. It was a present from Milla. She remembered. Despite it all, she remembered….
The box drew him as if by magnetic attraction. His hands moved of their own accord, picking it up, opening it. Inside was the smooth, sleek form of a BlackBerry. He had mentioned to her once a few months ago that he needed a new one. There was a card as well; in Milla's flowing, graceful script, it read:
Dear Sasha,
Thanks for everything!
Milla
Suddenly it was too much, everything was too much. He began to tremble. He stumbled to the nearest bed and threw himself down on it, one moment before he would have collapsed. He covered his eyes with one arm and tried desperately to weep, but the tears would not come. Outside, night had fallen.
Finis.