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I had a dog when I was young, 47 told Nika once. They were lying out in a field, the air smelling of fresh grass and a cool shower just passed. It was a pleasant night and Nika had complained it was too stuffy to sleep in the car, so they'd pulled out some old blankets from the boot and spread them out on the grass besides the cooling car. They'd paper-wrapped pitas and cold lamb for dinner, and Nika had talked idly through most of it: of her recent attempts at growing olives; the problems with pests in the garden; her adventures with her childhood pet chipmunk.
Tishka, he had said; and her startled gratification at his remembering her pet's name prompted him to continue, haltingly, I had a dog - when I was young.
He rarely spoke of his past. He didn't have the ability to camouflage pain into the mundane and extract pleasure from the ordinary. Nika's gifts in these area far exceeded his own, but still she listened hungrily when he continued, his ears were orange; he was given to me as part of my training. She was always greedy to learn more about him.
When he finally woke from that dream, it was a gradual awakening that felt like rising from a deep swim. Nika's soft-eyed understanding still warm as a heated coal within him.
Up until this moment, he had been prepared to only see that look again in his dreams.
"Mr 47," the Moroccan says. "You are here for Nika Boronina?"
A beat - then 47 is at the counter before he remembers moving. "Yes," he says. "You know where she is? Do you have her?"
The smaller man raises an eyebrow. "Of course. You gave her to me."
His stomach drops. It takes a few seconds to regroup, during which the other man watches him carefully. "I want her back," 47 manages at last.
The arms dealer ignores that. "I've heard someone's been using your name to try to find her," he says, as if to himself. "A great deal of noise for a perfectly unremarkable mark with no real skills or information, I thought. But that alone made her an asset worth keeping. But now I see it really was just you, again." He tsks and shakes his head. "How disappointing."
"What do you want?"
The Moroccan smiles faintly at him. On the cool counter, his fingers tap an idle rhythm. "Why didn't you just come straight here?"
"Name your price."
"Why do you want her back now?"
"Name your price."
The tapping stops. The Moroccan leans in. "I'll release her back to you, Mr 47, if you can answer just one question. Do you think you can rein yourself in enough to refrain from jumping over this counter and killing us both in the process to do that? Good, here it is: why did you give her to me in the first place, if you clearly want her back so badly now?"
The silence stretches like a high wire. The arms dealer is right, about killing them both in the process: 47 knows he is swift enough to get to the other man before he's stopped, but he is in unfriendly territory and he would likely follow the Morrocan a split second after his bullet enters the other man's forehead.
Besides, his loathing is directed at the wrong person. It isn't the Moroccan that 47 is furious with.
"She was a liability," he says at last. "It made sense to dispose of her."
His dreams haven't developed this far, but it's not a hard to guess why he would have done it. Even now, 47 knows it is still the logical decision to make.
The Moroccan hums thoughtfully. He nods once. He leans back. The edge of violence in the air eases down a breath.
"Some might say she is even more of a liability now," the other man observes.
"Perhaps," 47 says shortly. "Your price?"
The Moroccan laughs. "How much do you have? No, don't answer. You haven't answered a single of my questions correctly so far after all. Shall I help? Listen carefully. You didn't come straight here because you didn't know she was here. I'm guessing that you didn't know even when you stepped through my door. You want her back now because – well, that is between God and yourself. And you gave her to me, so many months ago now, because I accepted your price. You paid me for the care and hiding of Nika Boronina. Though I must say that your collection of your cargo is well overdue."
47's head is buzzing badly. But it is not just a headache, or grey static: there are voices, blurred and mingled, echoing in the aching chamber of his head. Don't leave me with them, Nika begs. At least take me home. Her fingers gripping his arm: angry, scared. He had shaken her off. It's better this way, he'd said. I can't afford to take you now. What he had meant: I can't afford to lose you. It was a bitter and largely one-sided argument that escalated all the way until he left her drugged and unconscious in the Moroccan's vetting room, disgusted with her lack of rationality and his own inability to manage it well. At that time, the Organisation had finally made him an offer to return to the fold, and he had been so sure that he would be able to negotiate a deal and return quickly. Arranging her temporary captivity with the Moroccan had just been an instinct of precaution. He had been so sure he could prove to them that his liability could be contained, kept apart from his professionalism.
He had been such a fucking fool.
His voice comes out thickly: "You know what happened?"
"No," the Morrocan says. "But I have heard whispers, and I'm starting to suspect which were right. By the way, your nose is bleeding."
47 wipes a hand under his nose; there is a smear of dark red on the back of his hand. Brain trauma, a voice whispers. There had been warnings in his medical file of the dangers of reversal, of overload. He blinks the spots away from his vision. "I want to see her," he says. His voice sounds ragged, strained. "I need to - I'm here to collect."
"We agreed on four weeks. It has been over two years. By all rights," the Morrocan says, serene, "your claim to her ended a long time ago."
A shocking sound: 47's fist slamming on the steel counter. There is no pain, no alarm at his own loss of control: 47 can only see the Moroccan standing on the other side of counter, can only feel the roar in his skull like a storm of bees and a violent desperation that tastes like copper in his mouth. "I want to see her," he repeats. He is aware he is on dangerous ground, to threaten this man in breach of the wordless rules that form a cage stronger than earth around this room. He does not care. "You have no - I have given up everything for this."
"Have you?" The smaller man's eyes flickers up and down him, cool as the rain. "She tells me you couldn't, the last time."
"How - what has she -"
"Come back in three days." The Morrocan seems abruptly tired of the conversation. He shakes his head a little, as if pityingly; a lifetime of iron control stops 47 from reaching across the counter to shake the man bodily just in time. "Perhaps you may see her then."
He starts to move to the door at the behind the counter, clearly intending to leave 47 standing behind in silent and futile rage. He pauses at the door. "My wife is fond of her, you know." And I am fond of my wife, 47 hears the heavy implication even through the fog of shock and anger. "I'll let you walk through my doors when you come back. But whether Nika Boronina will see you: well, that is entirely up to her."
The Morrocan leaves. And 47 is alone in the room once more.
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A/N: Thank you for all your lovely comments, dear readers - delighted to have company on this small ship! :)