Thanks goes to lovely ladygris for beta'ing. Also, to my reviewers and followers for the support and feedback. I really appreciate it!
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"Why don't you go back?" she asks one lazy afternoon. Inga is in town, gossiping at the post office with a few friends, or buying freshly carded wool to spin from the Ovechkin's, leaving Maxim and Natasha to themselves. The baker's assistant kneaded stiff dough as her companion sipped too-sweet tea the color of chocolate syrup. Hair pinned back, flour smudged on her nose, and sleeves of her dress pushed up, it's almost easy to forget that she is a deadly force of natureClint runs a finger along the rim of the teacup, catching his flesh on the chip near the handle, watching the dark liquid quiver. "Go back?"
"To your handlers? It sounds like you were comfortable. So…why stay here? I thought you meant to go back?"
"Oh, yes," he agrees lightly, but his brow furrows. "I did intend on it."
"But you've stayed."
"Yes," Maxim says again. His eyes turn to the window. The fading sun gives his skin a yellowy tone and makes the entire room appear golden. "I have."
She waits. When it seems his thoughts are not forthcoming, Natasha sighs. She comes 'round the scrubbed table Inga uses as her prep station, stopping before her companion with her brows raised. Maxim meets her eyes with a dazed gaze, before his eyes crinkle with a smile. Natasha folds her hands, or means to, but his flash out to grab them, taking them in his own grasp. There is silence in the baker's cottage. Natasha bites her lip.
"I couldn't bear to leave another like me alone. And there is no reason to go back in a hurry. I have time."
Tilting her head, the baker's assistant considers the answer. "Ah."
"I have time," he repeats. "And what would you do without me, Natalia Fedorova?"
"Teasing. He's teasing." Pulling a hand from his grasp, Natasha reaches behind her in a huff, fingers scrambling to find the weapon she knows to be just to the right…a little more… there!
The handful of flour is tossed into Maxim's face with a slight gasp, and she leaps back, giggling madly. The spy blinks once, twice, then rises in his realization to follow her. Natasha yelps, skating across the scratched floor to the other side of the table, ducking through his hands. But Maxim is just as fast, and he's already lunging to her right, going around the table.
Breathless – my, she is out of shape! – she laughs when his hands find her waist, pulling her against him. Then, then they pause – Natasha still shaking with laughter, Maxim grinning madly. He looses his hold briefly to takes his own handful of flour to sprinkle over her copper locks. Another few fingers go to power her nose. Natasha quivers with a pent up joy, slight, almost-giggles escaping.
When the laughter fades, the pair separated, fluid as ever. They smile at the mussed up hair, powered clothes, and each other.
Inga returns to the half-cleaned kitchen, Maxim on his knees with a scrub brush, and Natalia quietly kneading dough. Neither speaks except to greet her amiably. She looks between them, spots the slips of smiles, then the sprinkling of flour upon their lean persons. The baker says nothing, but wanders from the room in a happily tempered mood.
-XXX-
But bliss can't last forever, though; that's simply not how the world works. They both sense this. At some point, they mean to gather a plan of some sorts, a strategy for escape. They meant to do this.
-XXX-
Demyan's boy couldn't take the slight on his manhood. When the opportunity rises to exact some kind of revenge, he claims it happily. The men, dressed darkly, press into the night like demons on high that his grandmother had warned him of, mysterious and foreboding. He doesn't ask questions, not after the tall one bared teeth the first time Fedor tried. From what little the young man could gather, the baker's assistant is not her own person; she belongs to them. She is theirs, in some manner, and Fedor's mind automatically turns to sinister, sexual forms of understanding. The fiery girl was a common brothel whore? Some sort of prostitute? He's even more disappointed he's not had the opportunity to taste her flesh.
The disappointment is short-lived, however, when he remembers that she'll be adequately punished for her sins. He feels a slight ache in his stomach at the thought. "Deserving," his mind whispers in return. The days he spent in bed, unable to move, forced to listen to the world move on, the angry snappy of sheets as his mother moved about the room, mumbling hateful words against the girl who his dreadful aunt took in.
They say they will take her in the night. They'll go to the cottage. Take her out, drag her back with them. No one will be the wiser.
Of course, it doesn't go that way. The dawn comes, and Inga is found in the snow, half-dead from the cold, wide-eyed, hands curled into horrid claws. When she has been warmed by the fire, she murmurs of the baker's girl, the men in the night…and on. And on.
Demyan finds the house ransacked. The front parlor's furniture has been tossed about. Utensils, pots, pans, and flour litter the kitchen – it looks, he tells the postmaster, as though a stand-off went down in his sister's bakery. Blood mixed with salt upon the floor in one corner, a paring knife lying soaked in scarlet a few feet away. Foot prints, large and menacing, can be found in the flour and the snow.
The pair of strangers that had been living in his sister's house were not to be found. Inga's stroke leaves her unable to speak properly for weeks. When she can finally say the words, it comes out simply: They came for Natalia. Maxim followed. And there was nothing more to it.
Fedor tucked himself away in the barn the night following. His aunt's hollow gaze tore through him mercilessly. The boy faced the horrid truth that he truly had no clue what he'd done.
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Two to go….
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