"Your superiors told me to expect one Alexei Borodin,"

Those were the first words that he had said to her, the first of many, many more, across the short time that they had spent with one another. As the flames engulfed her physical body, she looked at him with her sapphire eyes, and smiled. He loved her so much, but yet she could not be with him, for as long as she had wished...

He had not expected her at all. She knew, she knew that he was really expected a man, and not her. She knew that night that they had spent together, had thrown all of his plans into disaster... And she, she had not expected that she would have fallen so deeply for a man like him...

"You, my dear, will be the death of me..."

Ever since she met him, she had been set with irony after irony. He was the man who had shot her, but it was with that shot, aimed only slightly lower than her heart, that she had been able to see what she had seen. And when in the end, it was he who was the one who killed her all over again, technically. And he was the one who told her that she would the death of him...

This man was the man who had caused the blood of innocents to flow like a river, the man who had caused just as much fear in Europe as Osama bin Laden had in the Middle East. Yet this man, was the only one who could destroy her nightmares, however crushing they had been. Only he was able to bring peace to her troubled mind, while only he was able to make her feel safe... She took his hand, when she knew that he was the enemy, and she had given her heart to him, even when she knew that she had all her nightmares, all the gory memories of those she had killed with her own hands, had been caused by him. She had killed all of them, just to gain his trust...

"Maria... Anya..."

She had been Maria Allen. She was a Corporal, relatively low-ranked, but she had been rising so quickly through the ranks that even Captain Price would have foreseen that she would be promoted without doubt after this whole fiasco. It had been who she was... But who was Maria Allen?

But who was Anya?

Anya was a woman, neither Russian, nor American, but her own woman. She, like Maria Allen, was a sniper, talented more than any of his men. A woman of pure feeling, young and restive, the woman that was more beautiful than any that he had ever known. She had captured his mind, and each and every single one of his senses...When she was Anya, there was nothing that she could have feared, because when she was Anya, she was with him...

"All of us have our own times of weakness... we are only human."

Those words... he had spoken out of concern, but she knew that he had meant them in his own way. Her weakness had been that she was not able to put the past behind her. She had allowed her own nightmares to destroy her. She, Price and MacTavish had taken down an entire base with only their bare hands. She had killed Shepherd, against all odds, but she knew that she could not live on like this, promise to a disembodied voice, or not.

"I can't kill you..."

She had heard those words many times, in many different occasions. She did not understand them at first, but now, she could. Like how she had so strangely felt safe around him, he had been drawn to her. The two of them had been like moths being drawn to a flame, knowing that their actions could have given them dire consequences.

He could not kill her, but what he had done for her, was more than she could have ever imagined. He had sent her back to the 141, as a double agent, to make MacTavish suspicious of Shepherd, and to rouse discord amongst them, but she had gained more than just that.

When she had been told by Shepherd that she was recruited into the 141, she was happier than anyone. Those in there, had been the best in the world, and she had been recognized as one of them... It had been an honor that she could have never thought could be hers. She could not deny that those days with the 141, even if they had been shorter than her days with him, had been the happiest that she had ever known. They had a caring and understanding Captain, but all of them, they had been like one big family. One family that to her, was like one that she had always known.

For that, she would be forever grateful to him. It should have been for that, that she was supposed to give her very soul to him, and not only her love, and her body as well...

"I came back... for someone..."

No matter how hard she had tried to dissuade him, no matter how hard she had tried to stop him from coming back for her. He still done so. She knew that he had been outnumbered three to one; that he should have made for Moscow the very moment they had parted in Kandahar. He had loved her, so much that he would risk his own life, not knowing the outcome of her mission...

But it had been too late.

She had already given up her life for her own cause. No matter how they had felt for one another, it was her decision. This man, she owed him everything, that was why she could not allow Price and MacTavish to bring him down as well. Not when she was still alive and able to stop them. She was lucky that Price had understood her. At least, she was able to pass on knowing that he had not come into harm.

"You have come so far to achieve what you have wished... why would you choose such a fate?"

This was something that he could not understand, nor something that he could ever have known. Her nightmares, her sins, everything that she had done, could not be replaced by what she had done to redeem herself. The blood of thousands of civilians, she knew that they could not be repaid. She, as a combatant of the 141, she had killed two of her own brothers in Rio de Janeiro. Even if the others could have forgiven her if they had known about it, she could never forgive herself.

She knew that she could have lived a long life of power with him, but until the end, she was still an American, she was still a patriot. He had been using her to take Shepherd down, but she had used him as well, in her own way... Without the security that he had given her, as well as the ability to return to the Task Force 141, she could not have done all that.

Even without her nightmares, she knew that she could not live a life of hatred, and of vengeance. Even if it had been little more than a week, perhaps two, she had been awfully weary. Her sapphire eyes, they could no longer see the light of life, not even with him... She loved him, but she was not like him. To hate a person, caused more pain than to love another, she could be a testament to that.

"I love you..."

To be honest, she would not believe him if he had said those three words earlier. But that the time when she was walking the fine line between life and death, and was finally able to cross over to the abyss, those words had been sweeter than anything that she had heard.

At that very moment, she was no longer Maria Allen, nor Anya, but she was just a woman, who had known that a man that loved her, despite everything that had happened. At that moment, there were only the two of them, and no one else, only the sands and the river... They had been their witness, and even when the two of them had been long gone, they would always remember them.

She sits amongst the flowers, watching as the butterflies with gold winds and sapphire "eyes" fluttered about her. They were her agents, just as she had been his, and America's. With each one that flies out of her haven unseen by others and those that were alive, she receives information about the world that she had left.

From them, she knew that he had gained control of the Russian Army, becoming their Supreme Commander. He had prevented the Americans from taking Moscow, ending the war within six months of fighting. She had been proud of him. He was able to protect his own nation, and was yet able to put down his hatred and his anger, and end the war with a ceasefire... Just as the Russians had been able to retaliate on the Americans, he had stopped the fighting by entering into talks with Price and MacTavish. The condition for the ceasefire would be that there would be no war tribunals, and that not a single soul would be tried in court for whatever they might have done in the duration of the war.

Deep down, she knew how much he had wanted this opportunity, she knew how much he had waited for this moment for the vengeance he had wanted against what the Americans and the rest of the world had done to him, but he had put everything down, for a reason that she could never fathom.

She knew that she had not loved the wrong man.

"Hey, sleepyhead," she whispered into his ear, a long while after he had fallen asleep on her lap. He did not even notice the wreath of flowers that she had placed around his neck.

Grumbling, he pulled her head down towards him and silenced her with a kiss as he always had done, before trying to continue to sleep. "What is it, my love?" he asked her, lacing his fingers with hers. My love... it had such a strange ring to it that she had to get used to it, not that she minded it anyways.

"Have you ever regretted everything that you've done, anything at all?"

Lazily, he gave her a wry smile, one that she loved, and knew. "All that I have done has led me to you, why would I regret even the slightest bit?"

She chuckled, and brushed the fingers of her free hand into his short, dark hair. Saying nothing further, she gently laid him down on the bed of flowers, and crept beside him, resting her head on his broad chest, as she had done so, almost an eternity ago, in a stately house, in the center of a valley, surrounded by snow-capped mountains and evergreen forests.

Thus, she, too, was able to sleep in peace, remembering the words that he had told her, knowing that every single one of them was true, and that they had come from his heart, and only his heart.

HAN: Alright, I blame this chapter on Makarov. He can't seem to get out of my head, poking my muse until I came out with something. CURSE YOU, YOU RUSSIAN BADASS!

Hoookay, now that it's out of my chest, I would like to thank all who read and review this two-shot sequel for Beautiful. ^.^