/
More than a fortnight passes without anything more than Abdel making the occasional sly remark and Kadin watching her more closely than usual.
Nika tends to the boys. She is a good companion to Kadin. She goes out to the Sunday market once and Kadin makes her retell the journey in unrelenting detail, from the smell of aniseed spices to the feel of the red dust in her sandals in the southside tents. Nika exaggerates her negotiations over chicken thighs and imitates the voices and accents with comical inaccuracy, and Kadin laughs so much she cries. In the steady company of her mistress, the storm is over, and she feels mostly safe. She does not regret. Life is fine.
That is, until night arrives. Then it is just her and her own treacherous thoughts in the stark quiet of her small room. Nika lies in her bed and every night all her discipline of the last two years crumbles away as if it was those first few weeks again, that awful time when everything reminded her of 47, and even breathing felt raw.
It still hurts now, but like a bad bruise instead of being cut open. It would be better if all her memories that come visiting are of his coldness, examples of his brutal lack of sympathy or even understanding for anything approaching fear or vulnerability in another person. Of how he disappeared off the face of the earth once for almost two months and then reappeared without any explanation more than a blank look at her tears. Of how, in the morning of the day he sold her, he still fucked her in their bed, kissed her so sweet and serious in the afterglow and told her he had a plan - except it turns out the plan wasn't a plan for them as she had quietly hoped, but a plan to trade her for some fucking guns so he could prepare for his return to his fucking former employer. He had even drugged her to keep her compliant in the end, like so many other men before him.
Yes, those memories would have been easier. They were the ones that really mattered.
But instead what returns to her are the better days, the softer parts of the killer named 47. The secret parts, she'd thought once, unveiled just for her - god, shut up . Yes, she is beyond stupid for still dreaming about it even in the private dark of her room - but 47 comes to her then, and she is too weak to resist.
He had brought her a book once, when they had been living in a series of hotels and motels for a stretch, and she had complained that she missed reading her own language. She remembers teasing him for the choice of it - a book of translated poems - mostly because she didn't know how else to react to such unexpected kindness. She had asked him to read to her, and to her surprise he had obliged, settling against the bedrest with his low voice moving steadily through the prose.
The memory of him sits next to her tonight, in this small hard bed. In secret, between the shadow and the soul , he reads peaceably, entirely unbothered about the nature of the poem - even though yes, they both knew that is where 47 lives, has always lived, for her. In the tender space between her shadow and her soul.
Perhaps that is why he came back, confident in the knowledge that she would run to him - immediately, gratefully - as she always used to.
Perhaps it's not too late to beg Kadin to trade her back…
God no , no. For fuck's sake. She won't - she can't be that stupid again. She imagines 47 looking down at her then, raising an eyebrow. Yeah, well. Nika rolls around angrily, until her back is to her own treacherous memory; and in the morning she presses her palms against her eyes in an attempt to rub away the growing shadows under them.
Kadin says nothing about her increasingly obvious insomnia until one evening, she calls Nika to her room again after Nika settles the boys.
This time, Nika is prepared. She's seen Kadin watching her even more than usual these past couple of days, clearly thinking of the best way to break some news. Nika thinks she can guess what it is.
"Nika," her mistress says apologetically as Nika gets their tea ready. "We should talk about Agent 47."
The ceramic doesn't even shiver in Nika's hands. She's proud of that. "Alright," she says, very evenly. She passes Kadin her cup and starts to pour the steaming tea. Kadin frowns slightly.
"You should know that he has gone to see Abdel almost every day." The flow of the tea hitches, but continues after a beat. Kadin waits till Nika has finished pouring, and has set the pot down again, before she says, "You need to speak to him."
It's a good thing that pot of boiling water is no longer in her hands. " You promised- " Nika rises, wild, before Kadin interrupts:
"I am not selling you - Nika, please. Peace. It's not what you think." Nika stares at the other woman, heart thundering. Kadin nods encouragingly at the seat by her, shielding her cup away from Nika. "Come, sit. Peace. Peace."
She sighs when Nika starts to pace instead, but Nika can't help it - this isn't at all what she expected. "I thought you were going to tell me I shouldn't leave the grounds anymore," she accuses, and perhaps her voice is higher and more confrontational than it should really be against Kadin, but Nika can't help that either. "I said I don't want to see him!"
"I don't need to ban you from leaving the grounds," Kadin says. "You do that yourself already." Nika stops and stares at her. The other woman sighs again and puts her cup down by the side table. Her look at Nika is both fond and sad. "I always wondered why you just stayed here. Why you never went out on any trips, even if just to see more than these walls. I know you haven't tried leaving, I ordered no one to stop you. I even have to ask you to go to the market for me, and you always come straight back."
It's like her feet have been cut out under her, the feeling of staggering while standing still. "I like it here," Nika manages in a small voice. "I thought - you liked me too."
"I do," Kadin says instantly. "Very much. I'm not asking you to go, Nika." The sick pressure in Nika's chest loosens a little. Kadin smiles gently as if she can see it uncoiling. "I just want you to be sure… If this is the way you want to live Nika, I won't stop you. I made my choice to live in exile. But if you do this, you need to know: that it is a choice. You aren't - you were never meant to be a prisoner here. I don't want you living in fear anymore, even from Agent 47."
"I'm not afraid of him," Nika says numbly, before her brain catches up with her mouth. Kadin looks pleased.
"Good," she says. "I didn't think that one was fear. Prove it then - face him and tell him to leave yourself. Then come back here and we can start again."
"Start again?"
"Our arrangement," Kadin says calmly. "I've talked with Abdel. He has agreed: you'll be paid, from now on. I'm sorry I didn't look into it before. I had assumed… It will be different, from now on." Nika stays silent, hugging herself, too dazed to speak. Kadin adds, a hint of challenge in her tone, "You can tell Agent 47 that you've found new employment if he needs convincing to leave."
"He wasn't my employer," Nika whispers, stupidly. It is still hard to think. "Does he really - why does he keep coming back?"
Kadin smiles and takes up her cup again. "Ask him yourself tomorrow."
/
She sleeps barely at all that night, and in a way she's glad that Kadin hasn't given her much more notice than one night - by the time Abdel announces that it's time for her to meet her fate , as he announces mock-gravely, Nika feels ready to tremble out of her skin from the sheer lack of sleep, or perhaps nerves, or perhaps just fucking both.
She's had no time at all to parse through Kadin's unbelievable suggestion of an employment arrangement. It could just be soft words from a woman who genuinely seems to think of her as a friend; Abdel will probably clarify his own ideas with her separately in time, without his wife present.
More importantly, she's had no goddamn time at all to decide what she is going to say to the man she's about to meet.
The meeting point is in a cemetery, which seems darkly appropriate. Apparently there is an open-arch mausoleum, which sits on low ground within the cemetery grounds, and there are only two exit points in the larger fenced grounds - Nika stops listening closely to Abdel's offhand descriptions as he brings her there, too distracted by what is to come. Abdel must have realised this, because he repeats the directions to the mausoleum again when they near the cemetery gates, and then Nika is stumbling out of the car, numb with dread and something too complicated to unwind.
You'll be watched , Abdel tells her in lieu of a farewell, don't be long - and then the cars are off and it's just her alone, shivering despite the warm morning.
Kadin must have told him to let her go alone. Nika can't decide if she's grateful or resentful for it; it's hard to know what she's feeling, right now. She makes her way slowly through the rows of tombstones and it doesn't take long at all before the path curves down a slope and snakes next to a circled wall of densely packed shrubs, the arched grey tips of the mausoleum peeking above them.
Well, this is it. Last chance to think of something to say to the man who saved her, lived with her, then traded her like none of it ever mattered. Maybe she should ask Kadin to give her more time.
But then she is by the wall of shrubs, she is just outside it, and everything fades beneath her breathing.
She goes in, like in a dream. There is a man already standing under the stone arch of the mausoleum, waiting. His dark eyes snap to hers.
And -
"Nika," 47 says, and it really is him, he is every heart-scorching moment in the last two years that she longed for, cried over, hated - just right there, brought into life. She had forgotten. The way he wore a suit, like the starting standard was perfection. The tense line of his jaw, the neat precision in the way he moved, showcased even as he came towards her now, slow-moving as if also caught in a dream. She had forgotten he was handsome, carelessly and startlingly so; that he could look at her in a way that made her feel both exposed and bold, intensely aware that he was a man looking at exactly what he wanted.
She takes a step back, unthinking. 47 stops. He is only four steps, five steps from her; he is too close. She can barely breathe.
There is a long pause where 47 keeps staring at her in that awful, incredible way; then:
"Are you - well?"
His voice is deep, softer than she remembers. He sounds familiar and unfamiliar; he sounds jarringly awkward.
For some reason this spikes an anger that surfaces through the dreamlike surreality. How fucking dare he sound like he cares.
"Does it matter," she snaps. Her voice sounds strange also, high and cracking. "What, do you do small talk now?" 47 blinks at that, almost like a flinch, and her anger bubbles up like a shield around her, exhilarating and desperate. "They told me you wouldn't go until you saw me - well, I'm here. What do you want?"
47 closes his eyes again, longer this time, as if shaking off her words. When he looks at her again, it seems to take a split second to focus on her; then he's taking one step closer, another - Nika stumbles back, heart pounding. 47 stops again. She could read his controlled expressions once, the minute flickers of emotion that glimmered through when he was particularly annoyed, or frustrated, or even pleased; she can't read it now. It is something intense and almost wild, unrecognisable. He keeps looking at her as if trying to see her through murky water.
"What's wrong with you?" someone whispers, and it takes a beat before she realises its her.
47 blinks, shakes his head slightly, re-focuses on her again. "Nothing," he says. God, yes, she's forgotten about his classic non-answers too. She takes a moment to press against the sharp hurt of it, even after all this time, to use it for courage to move on to end this pointless, painful meeting quickly - when 47 swallows audibly, blinks and shakes his head again and says, slowly:
"There is… They took my memories, after I left you. When I went back to the Organisation." Nika stares at him. 47 continues, uncharacteristically uncertain, "It took a while for me to realise what I was missing. There have been... some side-effects."
What - the fuck. "What do you mean, took your memories? How?"
"Surgery, drugs." 47 shrugs one shoulder dismissively, as if experiments on his brain was an everyday thing. Kadin had suggested it once to Nika, but she had ignored it then as one of the many acts of unexpected kindness from Kadin, the white lies that you tell to the naive betrayed or hurt children. But 47 stands before her now and she can see faint broad scars on the edges of his shaven head in the morning light, now that she is looking. She remembers dimly that he once told her that they had made him so that he never scarred. Maybe this had been big enough to break that rule.
"They took my memory of everything after Belicoff," 47 says, low. His gaze has re-sharpened on her again, like hot electricity settling across her whole body. "They took everything I had of you."
Everything he had of her. 47 seems to read something in her expression, because his eyes seem to grow darker, more urgent. "I've been trying to find you for a long time now," he says, and his voice is still mostly steady, he has not moved nearer, but his words are a hand cupped around the back of her neck, around her waist, pulling her close. "I think - I know I meant to come back for you. I wouldn't have left you."
"But you did," Nika says, numbly. "You did leave me. Like you always did." A breath shakes out of her. "Like you always will."
"No," 47 says instantly. "Never again. I left my Organisation-"
"You left before," Nika points out. The shock is fading now; she tries to recall the anger from before to steady her. "Then you went back. You said they were who you are."
"That-"
"It's fine," Nika cuts him off. "You were right. I had a long time to think about it after you left and - you were right. No one really changes." 47 looks taken aback. It twists a bitter knife in her, something that feels like regret but with a molten edge. "I'm sorry about what they did to you," she says, softer. "I really am. But you still sold - you still left me in the first place. How did you know you could come back? You must have realised there was a chance you wouldn't, you - I thought you had, had loaned me to Abdel at first. And then one day he told me his trade with you had gone bad, like I fucking knew what that meant, and I had to beg for him to give me a chance to prove I was worth keeping alive." Nika stops, tries to slow her breathing again. 47 looks like she's slapped him. "But at least I know my place with him," she says, steadier. "I'm used to living like that - that's who I am. I never knew where I stood with you. And I can't... I can't live like that again."
It's a good speech. It's a smart speech, the words she used to promise herself she'd say if he ever came back, in long dark nights after 47 had abandoned her when she tried to bring herself to face her new reality. It was a perverse sort of self-torture, because it lived off the unspoken terrible hope that he would actually come back for her to say it to him.
Except now he has, and she is, and the anger she had counted on to fuel her through it all feels a lot more like heartsickness.
47 is perfectly still before her. A different man, Nika thinks dimly, would have taken this opportunity to smile, draw her into his arms, croon the right words and promise you'll always know where you stand from now on; you'll always be by my side . Or some bullshit like that.
But 47 has never lied to her. "I understand," he says after a long silence. His voice is too low for her to read his tone. His expression is -
Nika looks to the side, hugs herself. It's hard enough to keep her voice clear and her eyes dry, let alone try to decipher anything more than the hot misery churning in her. She won't be stupid again.
"Let me walk you out," 47 says after another wretched stretch of silence has passed. Nika looks at him, surprised; his composure is back again, and he looks back at her evenly. "Please," he adds, like an afterthought.
"I'm not sure - Abdel says I'm supposed to go -" Nika starts uncertainty.
"I'll stop well before the exit gate," 47 says easily, as if he was aware of Abdel's instructions and plans for extractions too, and moves towards her, pausing politely to let Nika recover when she stumbles back from him a bit, caught off guard.
They walk slowly out the path and back into the main rows of tombstones. 47 keeps a distance of more than two arms' length between them, often falling behind her, the distance between them too constant to be anything but deliberate. Nika fights the urge to look back each time. The feeling of surreality is back, except this time anchored by the sick weight in her stomach, dizzying under the speckled sunlight. She cannot believe that it was this quick: that this could be the last time she ever sees him again.
As they near the black steel gates, the shape of a car thrumming beyond it, she slows even more. The panic, a low static that has been building since they started walking, flares like a shock. Because she does want to see him again. She knows it's stupid, but she still wants it. She -
"Nika," 47 calls. His footsteps stop behind her and she turns; he is looking at her, his expression in shadow against the sun behind him, the only evidence of tension in his shoulders. "Will you. Can I see you again?"
The deja vu that hits is striking, and disorientingly inverse: how many times has she been in that position, asking that question, hoping against hope?
47 must read her stunned silence as hesitation, because he offers, quieter, "It can be where you want. When you want. Just… give me more time. Let me try again."
"Try to what?" Nika says dumbly. 47 says nothing. Ahead of them, the waiting car growls in a warning rev, then another; she turns blindly to look at it. "I should go," she says to herself, though she does not move.
Still 47 says nothing. Nika turns back to look at him, desperate to memorise his face, the slant of his jaw; the goddamn sun is still in her eyes. She should go - being close to him is making her stupider by the second, a slow moving bubble rising in her that is starting to feel dangerously like delirium that he is back, like the most irrational sort of unhappy happiness. "I need to think about it," the stupid part of her slips out. God, just go .
In the car, Abdel is not there, only two men with large machine guns she tries not to look at, one of whom slams the door behind her as soon as she gets in. The car takes off with a screech. When she manages to turn to look through the rear window, 47 is already just a dark figure in the distance, growing smaller and smaller. They turn around a bend and he disappears from sight and, that quick, 47 is gone from her life again - like it was all just a dream.
/
A/N:
Thanks to everyone who commented - it's keeping me going to know I'm not alone on this very small and old ship!
The poem they keep recalling (though 47's remembrance of it is several chapters back now) is by the wonderful Pablo Neruda of course - and one of my favourite poems.