The months pass. His messages lead nowhere. It disappears into the vast carelessness of the world, the silence of the dark web, and Nika does not tug back on the threads he leaves for her.
Perhaps she doesn't know how. Perhaps she doesn't want to. It's hard to say. His dreams fade, surge again, merge into each other; his headaches lessen until it is almost nothing, just an echo of pain in the automatic clench of his teeth.
He could give into despair, he supposes. A more romantic man might indulge in that. But 47 is not that sort of man, and maybe he drinks a little more, takes on longer jobs with fewer breaks in between, but nothing else really changes.
Well - except for no longer being of the employ of his former organisation, and having to evade their ongoing attempts at re-capture. That helps to fill his days with distraction as well.
Winter comes to Europe with a sudden vicious bite and his dreams change, grow heavier and harder. They have the same feel as walking on the edge of the roof of a building: the dreading and yearning to step off. Nika starts to appear at the edge of his vision even during the day, the ghost of a dream of an incomprehensible decision that he still cannot clearly remember making. She's in the passenger seat of his car, leaning forward to scroll through the radio channels. She's smoking in the balcony of his hotel room, golden-lit and bored. She grows quieter in his dreams and hallucinations, as if in response to the snow blanketing the real world. She flickers back sometimes to an early version of herself, when her dark hair brushes the curve of her jaw, but generally her hair grows steadily longer in each snapshot vision. Her eyes grow dimmer. She laughs less. It becomes clear that for some amorphous reason, they are drifting apart - that they were drifting apart - and 47 does not know how to combat it.
He gets used to having an inconstant companion - and it appears that past-him does too, if the abrupt relocation of the backdrop of his dreams from the vineyard to the various overpriced hotels and rundown motels of the world has anything to say about it. It appears that the solution of past-him to a subdued Nika was to bring her along on more of his trips.
Of course, the problem of bringing Nika along in the past is that she now tends to inconveniently resurface in his present when he least expects it.
How long will it be before you come get me, Nika says by his ear. 47 jerks before he manages to smooth away the movement. Around him, the club pulses with its wild rhythm, the maddened heartbeat of it pounding through his bones and teeth. The target has ordered a girl for him with a sneering generosity, smiling unpleasantly as the girl twists and strips between his knees. She is very young.
The target's smile widens at his aborted movement. "Uh uh uh, touching costs more," he says. Shouts, really, to be heard above the music. Charming. "But if you're willing to join my little enterprise, maybe you'd like a glimpse into some of our perks…"
The man nods at the girl. She stops bending before him and goes to kneel before the target, near naked and unflinching against the sticky floor. Her smile is fixed.
47 looks appropriately awestruck and leans in as if for a better view, one hand absently drawing the heavy curtain across their booth. The bodyguards standing on the edge outside don't even look twice.
Later, in the scalding heat of his shower, he thinks back on the vividness of the hallucination. How long will it be before you come get me, she'd said. The young stripper, arching and twisting. Her eyes hadn't even been green.
But Nika had been there, in the girl and yet right next to him, their same resigned fear blurring them into the same creature in the space between one blink and next. I just want to know, she's said next, so I can prepare myself. Defensive, wheedling. Past-him hadn't seen the fear; had only thought that she was being difficult, demanding more information than he was comfortable giving as always. The absolute fool. I can help you better if you tell me how long you'll leave me alone with him, I'll do whatever it takes, I promise, I. I just want to know.
And now it comes: the memories, resurfacing like bubbles boiling to the surface, bursting hot and bright as if they'd always there. He had used her as a distraction, of course. To redirect the attention of targets and their predictable libido, or to create similar weak points in their guards and associates. At first for just one mission, which went well because of it - and so he had asked her again for another, and another.
No, not asked: ordered. He had ordered her. 47 hadn't seen it as such, back then, but now looking back - Christ. He remembers even thinking that this perhaps could help them both overcome this incomprehensible and growing distance between them, if she could be part of his missions. After all, didn't people do this - share their lives? This was all the life he had.
47 spends a sleepless night on the balcony with a cold whiskey in his hand and his next target open in a file on his lap. He doesn't read a word.
The next day, he pulls the flyers and cancels the ads. He books a flight to the States for after this upcoming contract ends, even though he doesn't yet have a contract there and has been largely Europe-bound since he woke from his coma - no, from his surgery. He runs ten miles, forces himself not to think of anything related to the past, and reads the damn file.
It's time to start anew, 47 thinks as he waits to be vetted and cleared. Buying illegal arms can be a surprisingly regulated and strictly civilised business, when run by a true professional, and the Moroccan whose den that 47 is waiting in is one of the best. He'll need the best for this next job; for that, 47 is willing to stand in a room surrounded by surveillance cameras, waiting to be vetted through to the inner den of arms.
He tries to look calm, without showing the edge of recklessness whitening his knuckles, restless in the soles of his feet. After all, he is being monitored right now. And it is true that it's time for him to start anew - the same way it is true that he should give the ghost named Nika Boronina the same chance to do so.
47 thinks that once he has had time to accept this beyond just intellectually, this bitter wildness thrumming under his skin will fade. Perhaps one day, even his dreams will too.
An alarm buzzes. He's cleared.
The heavy door unlocks with a soft click: 47 pushes in.
Inside, it takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. A clever tactic. He still perfectly still, deliberately so, until the familiar surroundings come into sharp focus: the walls lined with weaponry of deadly beauty, neat and slick and compact. Waist-tall and dimly lit display cases placed tastefully in rows leading up to the long steel counter at the end of the room, like a church for hushed, darker things.
Behind the counter, the Morrocan stands waiting: one of the most dangerous men in the world.
"Ah, Mr 47," he says, brisk. "It's about time. You've come for Nika Boronina at last."
/
A/N: I found this half-started scrap in my documents and had the sudden and irresistible urge to continue this story. What am I still doing on this ship? Well if you're still on it too, I'd love to hear from you :)