******
He tips her off in late October, when the leaves begin to crunch beneath his feet again. She's stunning and striking and beautiful behind a grotesque mask, a leering dragon breathing flame.
He's a man without a face, without a name, blank mask over a bandaged face, dark clothes hiding his frame. The invisible man, she whispers, her words rumbling like a laugh. He nods his head, eyes squinting at the glittering mask and its lurid flames.
They dance in circles, finding their own rhythm, and once, just once, her heel dips too quickly and clips his calf. She smiles; he frowns: she has marked him once again.
He steps in close and whispers in her ear, tells her the plot, the timing, what she must do to get away. She nods her head, lurid dragon's face dipping toward his chest, and trails the fingers of one hand down his bandaged neck.
She invites him to stay, beckoning with a nod of her head and a flick of her eyes. She invites him to follow her up the wide, winding staircase and see what he finds beneath the lurid mask, beneath the flame-colored robes that flutter against her calves. He follows her glance up the stairs, blank face beneath a blank mask, and slides his fingers down onto her wrist, where he can feel her pulse, strong and warm and erratic beneath her sleeves. He shakes his head, just once, slowly, and she trails her hands across his back as she slides away.
******
He follows a team into an empty compound and feigns surprise at what they find. Their voices echo off the blank walls and reverberate through the empty rooms. They find only her fingerprints and her handwriting and the scent of gunpowder faint on the air.
In one of the rooms, on a window, he sees the sunrays bent by dust and grime and, ever so faintly, smudges where fingers trailed across the glass. The mark of an eye. The mark she promised to stop chasing, so long ago.
He sinks to the ground, back flush against the cool cement, and rubs the bruise on his calf.
******
When he dreams of her, she comes to him in silence, fingers pressed against his lips, lips pressed against his lips, willing him not to speak. When he wakes, she comes to him again, with looks and insinuations and whispers, and he speaks to her in terse, clipped terms. Always about the mission, always about the goals. Always about what she can give him, what he wants from her. Never about what he needs.
In reality, he sits on the plane alone after she leaves, staring out the black window at white clouds whipping past beneath him. He wipes down surfaces and erases fingerprints and bandages the abrasions on his arm.
In reality, she leaves clipped instructions and a quiet goodbye. In his dreams, she knows what he cannot say.
******
He carries pictures of their daughter in his wallet, clipped small so he can hide their stiff edges behind his credit cards. She knows why he carries these -- she grabs for them with greedy fingers, plucking his wallet from the pockets of discarded clothing, sweat-slick hands staining the brown leather. She touches the photos with reverence, only on the edges, and smiles ever so slightly to see her daughter's face.
In spring, when the rains come, he removes his favorite picture and places it beside her on the bed. He traces one hand down her back before he leaves, feels the rise and fall of her breathing, and slips out before the coming day. He glances back only once before going; her fingers curl around the snapshot in her sleep.
******
In fall, when the earth is painted brown and the leaves crumple beneath his feet again, he makes the mistake of asking her what he believes: whether she means it, whether she has left it all behind.
She lies to him; he can read it in her eyes.
She dismisses further questions with a wave of her hand, fingers curling around a stub pencil as she writes the coordinates he needs on a folding map.
*******
He follows the numbers a month later, when the wind blows bitter. He follows her to this spot, white and bare and frozen, deep in the north of her home country. She wears a long coat, buttoned and belted, and her lips turn purple in the bitter wind. She reaches out for him, grasping his arm, and he can feel the heat from her fingertips through the thick leather gloves.
He walks unsteadily in the driving snow, the wind so strong and snow so white that sometimes he cannot even see her back; he can only follow the pull of her hand, the heat of her fingertips. He follows her down into the dark caves, and she never looks back at him, never hesitates, never moves her fingertips from his arm. They make the trade in pitch black, his information for the device she keeps hidden here, and when they have finished she slides off her gloves. She slides her hands up his arms, down his chest, beneath his coat, and the heat from her fingertips sears his skin.
He kisses her cheeks and her wrists and her fingertips, every place left uncovered, each portion of exposed skin. Her face is cold and coated with the driving snow; he feels it melt against his skin. She leads him out through the pitch darkness; he follows her fingertips, still damp from the melted snow. He wonders what else she safeguards in the black caves, how much of herself she keeps hidden from him.
*******
She must wish to atone for her secrets, or perhaps she misses him more than she says. She invites him to a quiet spot on the warm sand, far from any mapmaker or satellite. He thinks of her when he sees the house: natural wood and stone, graceful, hidden beneath the trees. She sits against the front door, back bare against the rough-hewn posts, and lets her feet trail in the white sand. He spends a week there when the sun grows warm, when he begins to grind flower-petals beneath his shoes. He follows her down the narrow beach, stepping around the blooms that open red on the white sand. He sits beside her in the surf, her silk sarong whipping against his legs, her hair whipping across her bare back. They stay for hours in the surf, feeling its rhythm, strong and endless and even. At night he feels her breathing beneath his hand.
She seems more in her element, in this place: the closest thing to a home that she has. She is more the Irina of his dreams, with her smooth skin and throaty laugh. He sits beside her at the front door, rough-hewn wood prickly against his bare back. He reads the words she has written there, etched in varying languages in block text.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
She writes only this in English; he reads it with his eyes and through his hands. He looks at the deep-carved letters, then up at her, the deep-carved lines around her eyes. A thought stabs through him, cold and sharp as the Russian wind, and he reaches for the warmth of her fingertips.
They spend long days at the edge of the ocean. He delays his departure once, twice, and when he leaves she watches him from her spot on the warm sand.
******