there is slaughter and then wine
They strolled down the bustling streets of London, arm in arm, looking for all the world like a couple with a slight age difference and nowhere specific to be. The truth, of course, was very much different. Maximilian Nero wore a distinguished dark suit and he wore it well, though perhaps not quite as well as Raven wore her tactical leather bodysuit, all but her legs covered with a dark, loose overcoat. They were on their way to meet Gregori Leonov, and Raven was not happy.
"I don't like this, Max." She would not tell him not to go, of course. Where Maximilian Nero walked, Natalya stalked behind him in the shadows with weapons in hand and blood stained into the grooves of her skin. It was neither her job nor her place to tell him what to do.
"So you have said on at least seven previous occasions." To anyone else, the remark may have sounded dismissive. It was not. Nero was old enough and wise enough and battle-scarred enough not to make the mistake of dismissing the advice of G.L.O.V.E's most feared assassin; but Leonov had sounded desperate and the old bonds of friendship tugged at Nero, demanding that he meet his friend.
"I hope that your trust in him is not misplaced," Raven remarked sharply. "Because if this goes bad it will go very, very bad very, very quickly."
And so it did. She saw the falling, bloodied body of Leonov mere moments before Nero's emergency signal started blaring in her ear. He needn't have bothered – Raven had already shed her coat and started sprinting. Bullets ricocheted around her and she ran on, eyes fixed on the small capsule of the London Eye being drawn steadily further and further away.
Max. I'm coming.
She almost made it. A hundred meters above the churning, angry waters of the River Thames, Raven took a bullet to the thigh and still she clung on to the moving capsule. Nero hardly looked ruffled despite the helicopters bristling with the guns of special forces troops surrounding them.
"Go." It was a command and she obeyed, crashing into the water far below.
Raven did not take failure personally. She had failed many times before, lost marks, had jobs gone awry in the most unexpected of ways, and had witnessed and caused the regrettable deaths of numerous bystanders. Raven picked up her swords, wiped the blood off her brow, and moved onto the next target, the next mission.
Natalya, however, took this failure quite personally indeed. Maximilian Nero did not have a reputation as a kind man – quite the opposite in fact – but the two of them had something between them, something more than trust, something dark and strange and loving.
Nero visited Natalya in the medical bay when she was awake to debrief her and get a professional assessment of her injuries. Max came back again when he thought she was unconscious to apologise for ordering her to walk into the jaws of danger and the path of bullets. He kissed her forehead and left cupcakes on her bedside (Max was a stress baker and nobody knew it but Natalya). He asked the Professor to develop cutting edge katana. He sent her on a pointless mission to Cuba because he knew how much she loved the sun. He laughed when she came back with bullet fragments in her knuckles and a wild grin on her lips. Max loved her the only way he knew how.
Natalya took bullets for Max gladly and was thankful that the blood that coated the floor of the Shroud was hers alone. When she was tortured she gritted her teeth and grinned viciously, blood dripping from her split gums, at her attackers because she would never give up the school that Max adored. She knew that he would come for her, she only had to hang on. When she killed an aristocrat in Venice she wasted precious minutes rooting through his cupboards in search of Max's favourite wine (expensive, of course). She seized idiotic school children from the jaws of death time and time again because she knew what they meant to him, even if they meant little to her. She scrubbed the bloodstains out of his favourite shirt. Natalya loved him the only way she knew how.
They were not, of course, two people in love, neither were they lovers. What sort of villain has time for a healthy relationship? Not these two. But they were two people who loved each other.
For three months she roamed the streets and the seas searching with a wild rage pounding in her veins and thrumming in her heart. Raven stood toe to toe with Diabolus Darkdoom.
"Max."
"I'm working on it."
Raven nodded. Darkdoom was a man of his nefarious word. She paced the cramped rooms of the Megaloden as they hunted for any scrap of information.
Failure. Failure. Failure. Thumped her heart. You failed. When the video came out, the one with H.O.P.E and Nero in an orange jumpsuit, his face worryingly thin and drawn, Raven crushed the ceramic mug she was holding. He needs you and you cannot find him. Boiling tea scalded her hands. He's been tortured. Her gaze remained fixed on Nero's pixelated eyes. Failure. Failure. Failure.
She fled H.I.V.E with Otto Malpense and his rag tag team of teenage delinquents in tow, explosions in her wake. It felt good to be finally doing something, helping someone (some kind of assassin she was, she thought with a snort), even if it wasn't him. There was only one Him. One man she'd drop everything for, charge halfway across the world on a moment's notice for, shatter criminal empires for, have her fingernails pried out for.
She prayed she wouldn't be too late.
They broke into Deepcore, they kind of task she normally would have relished in. Breaking into MI6 should've been like being six and tearing into Christmas presents (not that she'd ever done that). Raven pursued this task with the same kind of tunnel-visioned efficiency as she had everything else these past few months.
The Alps. She took fifty thousand volts to the chest, courtesy of the sister assassins Constance and Verity. The Alps. The Alps. The Alps. Her heart thrummed with the joy of it. He's in the Alps. A wild grin lit up Raven's face as the car plummeted off the bridge and into the icy water and Malpense screamed in abject terror. I'm coming.
She sent Malpense, Fanchu, and H.I.V. to rescue Nero despite everytendon in her body straining to reach him. To crack the handcuffs on his wrists and cradle his wounded and malnourished body in her arms. To whisper 'I've got you' in his ear as she took him away from this place. But Raven was a professional and so she made the choice that her brain commanded, rather than the one her twisted and desperate heart called out for.
Raven was sent reeling from a blow from Constance's peculiar staff. Unconscious again. It really was getting old. Raven, Shelby, and Laura were taken to the control centre. Her eyes were too swollen to see properly. Tender hands rolled her onto her back, supporting her back and head. Only one person dared to touch her like that. Like someone who hadn't got the blood of hundreds stained into her palms, so deep that even when she scrubbed under the nails she kept finding crusted flakes on dark red on her sheets.
"Max." Natalya lifted her cracked and bleeding lips into a half smile. Max. Nero wiped the congealing blood on her temple with the cuff of his torn sleeve. Max. Soft fingers pushed her hair away from the wound.
"Natalya." She couldn't see, but she supposed he would be smiling too. His voice turned icy. "You're going to pay for this, Trent." It was a threat. It was a promise.
Natalya lifted her hand to brush his. Max's fingers closed gently around hers as the men argued and revealed devious plots. Her head spun and she thought she might scream from the building pressure in her head. Then it all went quite. Max lifted her onto his lap.
"I'm supposed to save you, remember?" Her voice came out rasped and pained.
'Oh there's still plenty of time for that," his breath brushed across the side of her face. The students looked on, uncomfortable with the strange intimacy displayed. Otto turned away to offer a shred of privacy and Shelby and Laura exchanged bemused looks.
Nero went to the moon and back. Number One died. Raven killed Constance and watched Verity fall. The school and the students were saved. When it was finally over, Nero lounged in a leather chair at his desk in his private rooms. He'd taken off his suit jacket, unbuttoned the top few buttons of the stiff collared shirt he'd worn for the G.L.O.V.E meeting instating Darkdoom as the new head of the organisation. A glass of red wine rested lightly in one hand.
His door slid open with a snick. Only one person had virtually unrestricted access to his quarters. Raven stood in the doorway, loose cotton trousers hanging off her hips and a short-sleeved shirt exposing bandages wrapped around her torso. An angry purple bruise had flowered across the left side of her face and the fingers of her right hand didn't close properly. She looked tired. Bone weary.
Nero picked up second fluted glass with nimble fingers. They weren't shaking anymore like they had in the Alps. Good food and some rest had sorted that out. He nodded at Raven to bid her enter.
"Wine?"
"Please."
Her walk wasn't her usual stalking, predatory prowl. It was halting and jerked. Raven had suppressed the pain as she'd walked from the medical bay, forcing her gait into something more natural looking. Now she let the mask drop. The weakness made her look unbearably human. Good, Nero thought. I'm sick of machines.
Natalya accepted the glass in her left hand and their fingers brushed. Max let the weight of the last three months fall from his face and his shoulders.
"I should have listened to you. In London. You were right."
Natalya sighed. Her crooked right fingers stroked Max's lined cheek. She accepted the apology without a word, turned around and collapsed into a sofa nestled in the corner of the room. She tapped the standing lamp on and the room was bathed in a soft glow as the main light dimmed.
"I should have been in that capsule with you. I should have found you faster."
Max leveraged his slight body out of the chair and onto the sofa next to her. Natalya rested her head on his shoulder. This routine was second nature to them – the fighting, the fear, the chaos, the killing, and then the wine and the comfortable, aching silence. The apologies and unspoken forgiveness. They fell asleep like that: Max with his hand around her back, fingers resting on her shirt over her hip. Natalya curled up to protect her injuries and a knife within easy reach.
They are old beyond their years and tired and battle weary and they love with the fierceness of a wildfire.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little Max & Natalya story. This is my first H.I.V.E fanfic (and one of my first fanfics ever), so I would appreciate nice comments. I intend to write a few more Raven & Nero stories. To me they are platonic, but I guess it can be romantic if you squint!