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Kadin tells her about him, after Nika puts the kids to bed.
It is always an event that takes just over an hour, what with the goodnight hot drinks, the bathing, the teeth brushing, the putting-to-bed and re-capture of those who have escaped any of the earlier stages, the goodnight song and finally, lights off.
She usually stays in the room, legs stretched out and leaning back in the dark against Emir's bed frame until she's sure all three boys have finally fallen asleep. It can take anywhere from 20 minutes to much, much longer - but this time, when she slips out of the boys' room and closes the door silently behind her, Kadin is waiting there when she turns.
"Come with me," the older woman says. Nika follows her mistress obediently into her private resting room, where evening is starting to settle in soft purple shades on the balcony.
Kadin pets the seat on the settee next to her, waits for Nika to perch awkwardly on the cushion beside her. Her eyes are calm and gold-flecked, her olive skin smooth and luminous in the scented candlelight. Not for the first time, Nika wishes enviously for even half the grace and dignity of the other woman. She supposes that's the difference you can never really hide between someone who used to be nearly royalty and someone who used to be a whore, no matter who far they have come from their origins: class.
"Nika," Kadin says. Her hand is cool on Nika's arm. "I thought you should hear it from me. Agent 47 came looking for you today."
Nika's world freezes.
"Abdel thinks it was by accident," Kadin continues, as if from a distance. There is a great roaring in Nika's ears, a waterfall thundering like her heart. "You remember it was one of the possibilities we talked about, this... conditioning that these Organisations do on their agents. Abdel says he seemed to be surprised to find you with us. He - Nika?"
Nika has stood up, blindly. She can't stay another moment in this room, here; it's too much to be sitting still. He came back .
"I. I have to." She's already at the door; only an automatic instinct makes her turn back at the last minute, to her mistress staring back at her. "You - thank you. For telling me," she manages, and then she's out in the hallway, down the main stairs, into the walled garden outside, unseeing.
The evening is lit up as always with the hazy glow of the city, reaching up even at the height they're at. Abdel's mansion sits on a hill, just on the outskirts of the city, the sprawling gardens surrounding the house like a verdant moat. It's sheer luxury - deliberately flaunting, overly extravagant; it's a prison.
But it's not a prison meant for her but for Kadin, her mistress. Nika likes it here. It's secure. It's safe. She's never been owned by a woman before - no, scratch that, the gender doesn't actually fucking matter - she's never been owned by someone truly and consistently kind before, and Nika would willingly bind herself again and again to someone with a gentle voice, a touch that never bruises, a rare absence of cruelty like sudden silence after a lifetime of deafening shouts.
No, Nika likes it here. This is not a prison for her.
She can feel Kadin watching from the verandah, having followed her down. Nika forces herself to stop pacing, pulls herself together and heads back. She tries to smile. "Sorry-" she starts, voice cracking, but Kadin stops her with her palm up, looking troubled.
"No, I should have prepared you better. I thought you would be -" She breaks off, then seems to hesitate. "Nika, whatever you want, you must know-"
"Don't send me back," Nika says. Kadin looks startled, but Nika can barely register it. Her mouth feels numb, like the aftereffects of the drug 47 pumped her with before he dropped her here, over two years ago now. Her chest feels numb, she thinks, willing it to be true; she feels nothing. "I don't - can we not talk about this. Please."
"Of course," Kadin says instantly, as if Nika had any right to demand anything at all. "Let's go back up," her mistress suggests instead, "it's too chilly out here."
"I'll rub in some of that oil for you," Nika whispers, and they both make their way back up to Kadin's seating room, Kadin breathing in slow and steady as she goes up the stairs and Nika automatically falling a step behind, the natural buffer for any fall.
They settle on the settee again, Kadin stretching back against the broader arm, and Nika helps her unbuttoning the middle of her dress so that her stomach rises smooth and grand through the gap to let Nika rub scented oil in around the faint stretch marks. They chat slowly at first, and then gradually less stiltedly, about small things, idle ordinary things, the night crickets singing from the window, and soon it is as if Kadin had not shattered Nika's world less than half an hour ago.
"He's active tonight," Nika observes, feeling the small kicks under her palm. She rubs back soothingly, makes the shushing noises that come naturally when communicating with very small children and animals.
"May Allah make her a girl," Kadin mutters fervently.
Nika manages a huff of a laugh. "You know a boy is safer. For his own sake, anyway."
"She'll have brothers enough to keep her safe," Kadin says. "Not to mention her father."
"God help any boy who dares date her," Nika agrees, because for all his faults, Abdel will do anything to protect his family, up to and including imprisoning them. Kadin opens her eyes from where she's stretched on the settee and shares a mostly wry look with Nika, something that is only faintly bittersweet.
"He will need new rules for his children," Kadin says. It is an old topic, one they cover the most. Nika can't tell sometimes if Kadin is trying to convince her, or herself. "Not everyone can live this way. Certainly no teenager. He'll make it worse if he tries to control them." Kadin sits up, one hand protective around her belly, an old tension starting to etch familiar lines around her eyes. "Even for me… I'll speak to him again when this baby comes."
"Tell him to do it for the grandkids," Nika suggests, and it works to surprise a laugh out of Kadin, the grimness in her face lifting.
Just in time too, because Abdel is suddenly in the doorway, shaking keys into his pocket and smiling faintly.
"How nice to see you're still keeping my wife entertained, Nika," he says. Nika flinches, looks quickly at Kadin - but as always Kadin seems unconcerned about whether her husband has overheard her, only smiles serenely and leans back again, comfortable as a queen.
"Welcome home dear," she says. "Be nice."
"I'm always nice," says the man who Nika once overheard order for his ten-year employee to be sealed alive in acid for skimming his inventory. He comes into the room and Kadin lifts her face up so that her husband can kiss her forehead before placing a hand gently on her still exposed belly, his perpetual sardonic expression softening briefly as he feels his son kick. "Is he treating you poorly?"
"She's too active at night," Kadin says. "Especially if she hears me speak."
Abdel barks a laugh and straightens up. "You'll have to communicate in sign language then," he says, his lazy amusement back in full force as he looks at Nika. Nika drops her eyes immediately. "So have we decided to keep our other happy little accident then?"
"Abdel," Kadin snaps. Nika keeps her eyes on the ground, tries to keep her shoulders from hunching in too obviously. It's Kadin's decision, not Abdel's; Abdel has always made it clear that she was a gift for Kadin, her continued stay with them tied inextricably with her service to Kadin and Kadin's happiness. It's Kadin's decision, not his.
Nika holds on to that mantra to keep her rising hysteria from spilling out, and there must be some unspoken conversation over her bowed head because after half a minute, Abdel makes a soft, amused sound and his shoes disappear from her peripheral. His footsteps disappear down the hall.
When Nika looks up again, Kadin is watching her with those serious, troubled eyes again.
"Please don't sell me," Nika says quickly, desperately. She keeps her voice low, because Abdel might still be around the corner, but she can't help herself; she drops to the ground, her knees only distantly registering dull pain as they hit the cool floor. She tries to take Kadin's hand on her lap; Kadin pulls away, a horrified reaction that seems to come from instinct. Nika's gut drops like a punch. "Please. "
"I don't own you," says her owner. God, Kadin can't seriously be doing this now, not when she's about to lose her fucking mind over a reawoken terror that has followed her since she hit puberty. "No one owns you-"
"Kadin, please," Nika despairs. Her mistress stares down at her, shocked. She supposes that Kadin has never seen her like this, not after the first few raw and unguarded weeks after 47 left her - but still. Surely Kadin of all people must know that for all that they act at normality and equality and all things dreamily ordinary between them; that for all they talk about Kadin's plans for the future and the places Nika wants to visit as if Kadin could leave the four walls of her prison and Nika was just a temporary visitor slash babysitter - surely Kadin doesn't actually think Nika believes this, this illusion of freedom. Nika fell for that once; she believed in a life beyond anything she knew. She will never do so again.
"I'll watch your baby when he comes," Nika says urgently. "When she comes, I mean. I take good care of your sons, they like me, you know they do. I can, I can weed, I'll help with your orchids -"
"Stop," Kadin says. "Stop."
Nika shuts up. Kadin still looks horrified, but there is a pained pity in her expression now too. The humiliation is a hot wash, choking and familiar. Nika soaks in it for a bit, like pressing down on a closed wound; then she moves it aside to focus on survival. "He listens to you," she begs. "Don't let him trade me."
"Nika, stop," Kadin says. "You aren't a car - you aren't property. No one is selling you." Nika stays silent, loudly. The pity deepens in Kadin's face. "I've told you before," she says gentler, and Nika knows where this is going - "Agent 47 didn't sell you. We paid nothing. He left you with Abdel and - you know Abdel is not a fan of his employer, that is the only reason Abdel supplied him with firearms-"
"I don't care what you call it," Nika says, unable to bear it anymore. "I don't care about the price. Please. Let me stay. Don't make me see him again."
The other woman is silent for a while. She tugs at Nika's wrist to pull her up off the floor; Nika follows reluctantly to sit by her. "Alright," Kadin says quietly at last. Nika breathes out shakily, half a sob and half a laugh. Kadin puts a hand over hers, gentle and steadying; Nika hadn't noticed how much she was trembling. "I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you," Nika manages.
They don't speak of it anymore that evening, though Nika catches Kadin watching her every now and then, and Nika manages to pull through without thinking too much of 47 or having another breakdown.
Later that night, her dreams return.
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