Ana willed the surprise from her face as she turned to see him with a bag slung over his shoulder. The glint of a rifle just visible. "You're leaving."

"I have a hit to take for your father. I won't be gone more than twenty hours." He moved a hand beneath her chin to guide her lips to his.

Ana consented to his embrace. It may be one of her last chances to find any goodness in him—she drew out their kiss, willing it to reach him on a deeper level. If there was anything of that younger boy she used to know, she and Sasha could escape Petrov's snare together. It was a hope that Ana knew would only ever be a dream, not the reality standing before her. "Can I come with you?" she pressed, hopeful. "Our last mission together before we're wed?"

Sasha looked at her sharply. "Are you consenting to becoming my wife, Ana Petrovna?"

She nodded, smiling despite her lack of joy. "I want to be yours, Sasha," she answered, the lies thick on her tongue like syrup. "I want this face, your face, to be the first and last thing I see for the rest of my life." Her hands moved over his face as she spoke and traced over his sharp features, the hard scruff of his beard. "I will, Sasha. After this mission. After we do this, we can be together." She wanted to mean it, but it was her only hope of escape.

Part of me will always be in love with that little boy…but not the man he became. Forgive me, Sasha.

A smile spread across his face. "And I will take you as mine, dear Ana."

Accompanying the words was the tiny shackle her mother had once received and consented to—a thin gold ring inlaid with diamonds and sapphires. A chain that had bound her to the bloodthirsty Petrov. A chain that wouldn't wind itself around Ana's neck.

She laughed as he slipped it on her, forcing happiness as she kissed him again. "I already packed."

"Always prepared for everything, that's my Russian butterfly."

Ana smiled pleasantly until he'd left, her eyes drifting down to the ring. It won't be me, mother. I promise. I'll escape.


Over their years together, Coulson had spent so much time in Clint's apartment that he knew the ins and outs more than Clint himself did. As soon as they were through the door, his handler rolled up his sleeves and claimed the kitchen as his own. "Get cleaned up."

Clint dropped his duffle where he stood, shaking his head at Coulson's cheek of ordering him around in his own home but consented to the shower.

As the hot water rained down washing off the sweat and grime of the past few days, he wished the guilt could be washed away as easily. He replayed every second of that hit over and over. Katya hadn't deserved to die; Ana hadn't deserved to lose her mother. What was she doing now to find him? What would she do when she did find him? Clint stood beneath the spray, eyes closed as the hurt came as physical as a knife wedged between his ribs. "I want her to find me. I want to pay the consequences for what I did to her."

It was the kind of talk that would earn him a house arrest or a suicide watch order from his handler if Coulson ever heard it.

Pulling himself together, Clint threw on a change of clothes and padded barefoot into the kitchen to see Coulson serving up a genuine steak. His face lit up. "Phil, you spoil me. Why do I need a girlfriend when I've got you in my life." Days of protein bars and rations had left him hungering for a good meal like this. Russian cuisine just didn't cut it.

Coulson chuckled. "I don't go for the office romance. Besides, a handler and his asset…imagine the talk."

Clint could only snicker. Even mentioning it in private could cause the rumors to fly around the SHIELD base. "Where am I going to find a woman who cooks half as good as you do?" He snatched the plate eagerly, inhaling in the smell.

Coulson sat across from him to his own meal, but chose to focus on Clint instead of eating. "Are you ready to talk about what happened yet?" Before Clint could even begin to complain, Coulson cut him off. "Without your list of excuses. I want it now and calmly."

Clint threw the steak a glare of betrayal. "Figures you'd only make the good stuff the drag the sob and tell out of me. I'm hurt, Phil."

"Oh I trust you. I just don't trust you to solve your own emotional problems." He adopted that tone that he knew Clint couldn't argue with. "You didn't go back just for Petrov's wife."

"I went back for the funeral. To make amends for something I shouldn't have agreed to." But even that couldn't make him stop thinking about Ana Petrovna, the girl who no longer had a mother because of him. Even worse, he'd left her alone to the mercies of Petrov—a girl like her didn't deserve that.

Coulson looked at him knowingly. "And you expect me to believe that you didn't notice her very attractive daughter?"

Clint stared at him with his poker face on. "You're reaching too far."

"She was a very attractive woman."

"Sheesh. Stop trying to pair me up with every other woman you happen to think would be good for me. I'm too good at what I do. And after I took the shot at her mother?" he shook his head. "That would be a relationship doomed from the start."

"So you're saying she wasn't at all part of the reason you went back to make amends." Coulson knew better.

"Like I said, you're reaching too far for something that isn't even there."

Dinner continues in a more comfortable banter as Coulson found ways to lower the defenses of his asset. Eventually he got what he wanted and convinced Clint to an early night, gaining the reluctant assurance that a report would be filed in the morning.


Sasha periodically glanced over at his fiancée and the ring on her finger, the promise that she was now his. He'd watched her with a longing eye since he first met her—first she was the means to Petrov and staying in his favor and now… now she was his anchor. Even though she'd pretended to resist this whole time, he'd know that she cared. All it had taken was the right moment and a shiny ring to bow her down to the level of any other woman. He'd dreamed so often of Petrov's empire and the heights he would take it to when it all belonged to him. No one would stand against him now with Ana submissive at his side but ready to back him in an instant when he asked.

He loved her, he loved her.

He would prove he deserved her when he rose to the heights no other Russian had ever risen or would ever rise again. Then she would know.