Same disclaimers as chapter 1.
AN: Hey everyone! Long time, no see!
First of all, I want to apologize for the unforgivable amount of time it took me to finish this chapter and publish it. I am ashamed. It's been a busy few months and I'm really sorry. Thank you all for your patience and perseverance, readers!
Secondly, a special thank you to those of you who personally contacted me because you missed my story that much and wanted me to get to work on it again. You know who you are. It really did get me into gear and it made me feel like this is actually worth my time. Thank you so so much for taking the time to let me know my little story actually matters to you guys that much.
Lastly, I want to wish you all happy holidays. As recompense for my lag, I wrote you guys a longer chapter as a Christmas present. Hope you all are enjoying this time of year as much as I am. Hoping everyone has a happy holiday, enjoy!
Like always, I only knew it had been a dream when I woke up and found the evidence. My eyes opened suddenly like I'd been jolted awake, and as if by instinct, I spread my arms wide, my fingers stretching out on either side of me. And I found my evidence. This time, in the form of an empty bed on either side of me. Cold and lonely. I clutched at the sheets, my eyes slamming closed. Because that had been, by far, the worst dream I'd had yet. In all its loveliness, it had been the most terrible. So I kept my eyes shut tight against a reality I didn't want to see. I lay there, completely still, again trying to regain my grip on reality. After a long time, I allowed my eyes to slowly open, taking in the blinding brightness of the white room in the rising light. But I still didn't move. I simply lay there, staring at the white ceiling, my fingers tracing slow circles in the cold sheets. I sighed.
Finally, I moved to get up. I tried to bring my arms behind me to push me up only to find my shoulders suddenly held down. I wriggled for a moment but remained pinned as if a metal bar had been set across my shoulders. In an instant, the room darkened, like it had been dipped in black paint, and I felt a sudden weight begin at my feet. It continued to work up my legs until I felt I could no longer move them. And I could look nowhere but up because of the bar across my shoulders. I squirmed and kicked but the weight on top of me held me still.
"Calm down," he said, finally coming into my line of sight, looming directly above me. I stared at him uncomprehendingly.
"Clint?"
He raised an eyebrow. "It's me. You know. The guy who fucked you stupid last night? Ring any bells?" The voice was his, but somehow wrong. He laid his weight on me but it was no longer the comforting warmth I remembered. He was too heavy. He was suffocating me. I tried to wriggle from under him but still found myself unable to move from the weight.
"Clint, get off me now!" I said against gritted teeth, but I found my mouth suddenly blocked by his firm hand. He brought his other hand into view and I saw him wielding a small knife, the blade thin and glinting even in the darkness. My eyes widened disbelievingly. I exerted every possible ounce of energy to push him off me but still he lay on me like a rock.
"Tell me, Tasha. Do you regret it? Leaving me?" He brought the knife slowly to my neck, just below my chin, tracing the cold tip delicately across the sensitive skin there. I squirmed feebly. "Do you? Do you regret it!? DO YOU REGRET IT NOW?" His voice hiked up into a yell, the knife beginning to press harder against my neck. I felt a sting and knew he'd broken the skin. I looked at him, terrified, but his eyes didn't meet mine. He simply looked at my neck, his eyes lost and unrecognizable. With one quick movement, he pulled the knife across my neck just below my chin before jumping off of me and disappearing from my sight. I also tried to spring up but was still held down by the unyielding bar. I couldn't see where he'd gone. The room was still dark, pitch-black.
A sudden coldness began at my toes, creeping higher and higher, and with an unexplainable instinct, I suddenly knew it was water lapping up at my body. I felt it reach my thighs, my fingertips. I found I could move my legs and did so just as the water started creeping up my face. I kicked and thrashed, desperately trying to worm out from under the bar even as the black water moved higher and higher and my throat filled with blood. My breath was breaking off in gurgles, and still I couldn't get the damn bar off of me. I gasped for air, choked on my blood, kicked and squirmed and begged for reprieve just as the water covered my nose. I held my breath even as my body began to numb in the freezing water. My throat felt raw as if I'd been screaming, and my lungs begged for air but the bar wouldn't budge. My attempts weakened with each passing second, but still I held my breath and struggled. I felt my eyes roll back and found myself wondering why I didn't lose consciousness in such excruciating pain. I wouldn't be able to hold my breath much longer. My chest contracted, aching for that precious oxygen, and I knew this was the moment, this was it. I closed my eyes.
I gasped in reflexively at the precise moment the bar lifted, letting my head snap up and break the surface for air. Except I hadn't broken any surface. I opened my eyes to find myself sitting up in bed, clutching at my clean throat and gasping for air.
A nightmare. Like all the rest.
A hand touched my bare back and I nearly toppled off the bed.
"Tasha?"
I whipped around, eyes darting crazily, to meet Clint's concerned eyes as he reached for me. My breath quickened and I was choking and gasping and trying to scream all at the same time. I squirmed away from him, expecting him to pounce on me and rip open my throat again. He moved toward me and I released a high-pitched hysterical noise.
"Hey, hey, what's wrong? What is it?" He suddenly pulled me toward him, ignoring my thrashing. I squirmed away from him like a cat faced with water, but he held me firmly. He scanned my body as if looking for a wound. "What's wrong? Tell me where it hurts."
It only took a glance at him to know I was awake, finally really awake. The worry and alarm in his eyes was genuine and familiar. I heard my own indistinct sobs become even more hysterical. Because Clint actually being here somehow made everything worse. Clint was real and alive and I hadn't dreamt what had happened the night before. But he was also in my nightmares and I couldn't stop them from making me doubt the reality of every second of my life. It was horrifying not being able to tell if I was awake or not.
I clutched the sheet to me, Clint clutched me to his chest, and we sat like that for a long time as my breathing returned to normal. Clint started rocking me gently now that I had stopped kicking. My body shook with silent, tearless sobs, but he held me firmly to him, collecting me into a ball in his lap, smoothing my hair and letting his warmth cover me like a blanket. I nuzzled into him almost involuntarily, clutching at him desperately. I felt my nails rake across his smooth skin in my desperation to anchor my arms around his neck. But he said nothing, instead continuing his steady rocking motion and making soft shushing noises. I closed my eyes and let my head rest on his hard chest, the steady drumming of his heart within calming me. Slowly, I could feel his warmth start to thaw my body, letting it relax. My eyes fluttered weakly. Every nightmare left me feeling like I'd just been in battle.
"What was that?" he asked suddenly, leaning his head down as if to catch something I'd said. I looked at him in confusion for a moment before realizing I had involuntarily started whispering my usual chant without even noticing. "You are alive, you are okay, you were just dreaming."
I nuzzled my face into his chest again, suddenly embarrassed. "It's just something I got into the habit of doing when I wake up…" I murmured dejectedly. I saw his jaw clench and felt him suddenly hold me tighter, resting his head on mine. He said nothing else, continuing his soothing rocking motion. I closed my eyes and tried my hardest to somehow press myself closer to him.
I found myself whispering it again after a while, but he didn't say anything about it this time. Instead, I heard him join in, whispering "You are alive, you are okay, you were just dreaming" softly into my ear. For some reason, this brought tears to my eyes.
We stayed that way for a long time. I was never exactly sure just how long. All I knew was it was still dark when I woke up, and by the time we disentangled ourselves from each other, warm morning light was streaming in.
That was the first time I woke him up and he saved me from my hell.
I came out of the bathroom some time later in the late morning, pulling a thick comb through my wet blonde locks. Clint was fully dressed and sitting on the couch, leaning toward the television set he was watching with interest. He was watching the news. In Hungarian. I stepped closer and saw he'd put English subtitles on.
"Whatcha watchin'?"
His head flicked toward me to show he'd heard me in a manner strikingly similar to the way cats flick their ears toward noises.
"News. They're reporting all the deaths from last night. Oh, and look, they even got a nice picture of us," he said contentedly as a blurry picture of two dark figures running across a busy street hand in hand flashed on the screen. The picture was completely indiscernible except for the yellow-white blur that was my blonde hair. "You look nice."
I slapped the back of his head, almost by instinct rather than actual volition, and he laughed as I turned back into the bathroom. Just like that. For a year, I'd been a complete social shut-in except when forced to interact with people and Maria's phone calls. And in just a night, I was interacting with Clint as if he'd been here the whole time.
I heard the television click off and saw him come toward me through the mirror. He leaned in the doorway for a moment, just watching me, and I continued brushing out my hair, pretending I didn't notice.
"I do like it, you know?" he said as he stepped up behind me, looking at me in the mirror and indicating my hair. He brushed his hand through it and I felt my eyes flutter. "It's just different. But everything becomes you." He rested his head on my bare shoulder, studying me.
"Well, it's too late to back out now anyway," I muttered simply. He smiled before bowing his head to kiss my shoulder. I reached up for him, resting my hand in his soft hair and looking at the pair of us in the mirror.
At the same time, we turned towards each other, our bodies hungrily pulling for the other, but our lips meeting with a gentle sweetness. I pushed up towards him on my tiptoes, yearning to close any gap between us. How could I have ever lived without this? How could I have allowed it? How could I have ever thought I would survive without him?
The single towel wrapped around me fell away easily, but Clint, who was already completely dressed, took, in my opinion, an excruciatingly long time. We stumbled out of the bathroom, and in my eagerness to rid Clint of his shirt, not only did I rip the shirt, but I also slammed Clint into a dresser. He didn't seem to mind. He wriggled out of the remains of his shirt before spinning me around and sitting me atop the offending dresser, clearing the surface from its assortment of hotel lotions, soaps, and stationary with one easy swoop of his arm.
My legs wound around his back as I brought his face to mine, refusing to let our lips part for even the most remote of moments. He kissed me deeply, his hands running hungrily up my legs, torso, and shoulders. I hugged him to me, letting our bare chests press together. It seemed to me he was always several degrees warmer than me. And the warmth felt delicious on my skin, like offering cold hands to a fire. He ran slow kisses down my neck and collarbone, and my head fell back welcomingly, begging for more. His kisses felt like searing tattoos, sending shocks of electricity straight through me and making my spine feel ablaze. His lips found mine again, and I welcomed them eagerly. I bit his lower lip gently before locking our lips together again and allowing our tongues to play. My hands ran slowly down his back, taking a moment to appreciate each scratch and scar I found as souvenirs of past battles. I let my fingertips trace over them, feeling each one made him all the more beautiful to me.
My fingers dipped into the dimples in his lower back before reaching the edge of his jeans. I brought my hands around him and worked on his belt, pulling the entire thing out and throwing it across the room once I'd unfastened it. He smiled against my lips when he felt it go, but started suddenly when I slid my hand under the hem of his boxers, letting it run down his entire length. I closed my fingers around his penis, immediately feeling it thicken with blood in my hand. I rubbed it slowly at first, my pace quickening in time with his catching breath in my ear, until even I couldn't take it anymore. I withdrew my hand and pulled him toward me with my legs, opening them wide to let my own throbbing sensitivity feel the hard bulge under his underwear just visible above his open zipper. I grinded slowly against him, my head falling back and my hands clutching at his neck for an anchor. He leaned down to press kisses to my collarbone, his warm hands fondling my breasts hungrily. I bucked against him harder until, seeming to be unable to take anymore, he wrapped his arms tight around me and swung me off the dresser.
He carried me toward the bed, dropping me on top of it as he finally rid himself of his last remnants of clothing. I expected him to enter me immediately, but he didn't, instead letting his exposed thickness rub up and down against my clit. I groaned yearningly, using my elbows to prop myself up and kiss him. He responded passionately, sitting up and pulling me with him, kissing me hungrily and continuing the rubbing motion, his pace slowly picking up. Our hands grabbed at any part of the other they could get a hold of, one of his sliding down and under my smooth belly to find me already agonizingly wet. I pushed him back and we fell against the bed when I could take it no longer. In a fashion not unlike pinning down an opponent, I held him down as I positioned myself on top of him. He held my hips but let me go at my own pace. I moaned luxuriously as I slowly slid onto him, feeling like he was filling every empty space I'd ever felt. He closed his eyes, the veins in his neck pulsing quickly. I bent down slowly, as best as I could while he was inside me, to kiss the place where his pulse betrayed the life pumping inside of him. His pulse was strong and I felt it beating against my lips.
I slowly got up again, his hands holding my hips steady, and began a steady rocking motion against him, my hands placed firmly on his chest for support. I began as slow as he had, but with our breath mingling together, my hunger didn't allow me to hold it for long. We began to pick up slowly like the beat of a song, rising and rising as it nears the chorus. He gasped something, but I didn't quite catch it over my own thundering heart and heavy breath.
"What?" I asked, my voice feeling shaky. He seemed to take a moment to collect his thoughts before answering.
"Tell, t-tell me when you're close," he gasped, his breath catching at uneven times in the sentence. I nodded, unable to say more as I bucked against him. His hands, for all their strength, held me gently, caressing me delicately as if he was afraid I might shatter. Just as I felt the start to climb toward my peak, I looked down at him and saw his eyes were closed, his forehead crinkled as if in concentration, meanwhile the pulse in his neck throbbed faster than ever. I realized he was trying to wait for me.
"I—I'm ready," I gasped, clutching at him as energy seemed to well up inside me like a ball of consuming fire. His eyes snapped open and he caught his breath as if he'd been holding it this whole time. He sat up slowly, making me gasp loudly as he shifted inside me and pushed himself higher into me, before slowly setting me down under him. I closed my eyes, eagerly waiting for his weight to rock into me, only to feel myself suddenly emptied. My eyes opened and I realized he'd pulled out. I frowned, feeling like I was hopelessly drifting if I wasn't anchored to him. My confusion lasted only a second, however, as he quickly lifted my entire body and spun me onto my belly, lifting my hips to enter me again. I gasped, feeling him curl up into me. I clutched at the sheets as he bucked into me once, twice, three times, and finally slammed into that unreachable spot within me. A spasm curled through me, lighting up my entire body in one infinite moment, before leaving me slack like a doll. Faintly, as if from really far away, I heard Clint groan and felt the shiver course through his entire body, ending in me. I exhaled sharply, feeling entirely wasted and completely rejuvenated at the same time.
He pulled out slowly and leaned down to softly kiss my shoulder blades, his fingers brushing away strands of my hair to kiss my pale neck. He toppled down next to me and I turned myself toward him, allowing one of his arms to drape over me. I nuzzled my nose against him, taking in deep breaths of that indescribable scent unique to him. In those few moments, I knew complete bliss.
If it had been up to me, we would have stayed in that bed forever. Laying there, watching the warm sunlight dance in Clint's eyes, I was reminded of a poem I'd once read, years ago. It spoke of a smitten lover telling the sun he shouldn't work so hard lighting up the entire world. He told the sun he should just shine on the bed he and his lover shared instead, because that was the entire world in one place. If he shone upon them, that was enough.
That was us. The entire world wrapped in this bed of tangled sheets and mussed hair. If the sun shone here, it shone everywhere.
I stared at him a long time without saying anything, simply admiring him, wishing it could be as simple as staying in this bed forever. He rolled onto his side after some time, and I quickly closed the space between us, my head finding its place on his shoulder as if they'd molded together. Clint traced lazy circles on my back, his breath tickling my ear. Right here, tucked into the place where I fit beside him, I knew who I was. I wasn't a vacated shell. I wasn't a thousand different empty names. I wasn't a spy or a mercenary. I was just a person, simple and ordinary, finally completed.
I awoke in the late afternoon with a start, feeling disoriented. I felt constricted, but I felt the force give way when I pushed back against it. I looked up to see I was still wrapped in Clint's arms.
"Ah, you've rejoined the land of the living. Welcome back," he said, turning his eyes from the television to me. I looked at him warily, expecting the scene to suddenly darken or for him to suddenly put a knife to my throat. But he only stared back placidly, his eyes glinting in their usual manner. Real Clint.
I blinked. I'd slept. Without nightmares. Without anything. Just sleep. I felt, for once, well-rested.
"How long was I out?" I asked, looking around. The sun outside was low in the sky.
"All day basically," he shrugged. "Didn't want to wake you. Figured you had a rough night."
I looked down at him. "And you couldn't find a spare moment to get dressed?"
He laughed, stretching his still naked body, smelling of soap and sex. "What for? Besides, you'd get a death grip on me whenever I tried moving. I'm glad you're awake, actually. I was starving and I already ate all the mints I could reach on the bedside table."
I looked away, feeling heat color my cheeks at the thought of myself clinging to him, desperate and feeble like a child in sleep. I sat up quickly to hide my face. I cleared my throat. "Well, um, hm, you can go eat now."
He stretched again, slowly this time, several joints cracking as he sat up. I looked at the television, the reporter's jabber finally catching my attention.
"Hey, what's going on?" I asked, indicating the news. Clint huffed, a noise somewhere between annoyance and exasperation.
"More killings. Looks like we unleashed that mob war."
"But why?" I asked of no one in particular, my eyebrows crinkling. "Gaspár is dead."
"Which means every other gang lord in the city is fighting to get his spot," Clint said with a lazy air. "Looks like we're gonna be here for a while doing damage control."
My eyes flicked from the television to Clint as he slipped into his jeans and left to get food, thinking if he was here, this wasn't the worst place I could think of choosing to stay.
I got off the phone sometime later and, as Clint has predicted, Fury wanted us to stay and clean up the mess. Another three weeks of work, at the least.
It wasn't that hard to find our targets. The streets had become war zones, with gang lords and innocents dying in almost equal quantities. Clint and I were but measly specks in the masses, silently killing off both sides and going unnoticed in the tumult.
After about a month of going out every night, blades hidden in my shoes, guns strapped to every concealable body part, and with the help of competing gangs doing most of the work of killing for us, Clint and I were just about ready to head home. And I was more than ready. Loud noises had started to make me flinch like some shell-shocked war victim and the increasing number of dead civilians had started to weigh on me. Every time the number flashed across the screen during the news, I knew some of them were mine. Some of that number, I had stopped from going home to their families, maybe to a wife or husband, sons and daughters. I could feel the weight of their deaths making me heavy. Clint said that was just the weight of all the extra guns and ammo I had strapped to me, but his jokes didn't make me feel better.
Finally, we had just one target left. The last guy standing. His death meant I could go home. I could leave these streets that were glazed in blood and littered with bodies. And I'd be damned if I didn't kill him myself if it meant leaving this place.
"Hey Tasha, check it out. Tasha! Tasha, look!"
I turned from where I was sitting on the edge of the bed tying my sneakers. Today, Clint and I were playing the part of normal civilians. It was a relief to not have to run in heels anymore. Clint stood on the other side of the bed where he had every weapon imaginable spread out and was trying desperately to attach as many of them to his body as he could.
"Tasha, I got balls of steel. Geddit?" he said with the crooked boyish smile he put on whenever he was amused. I looked down to see he'd attached two state-of-the-art steel grenades to his belt loops so they hung over his crotch. The grenades glinted innocently in the light. But I knew the purpose of the grenade's steel encasement was to explode and become shrapnel, harming or killing those even out of the range of the explosion, and the idea made me wince. But for Clint's sake, I just rolled my eyes. I knew he was trying to make me feel better.
"Wise place to put them," I said as he delicately took them off. "Are you ready?" I asked, standing and straightening my clothes over my Kevlar vest. It fit me a little big and it made me look bulky. I'd tried to get Clint to take it, as it was our only one, but he was adamant about my having it. I looked at Clint, who still didn't have a shirt on, and was, obviously, not ready.
"In a minute, in a minute!" he said, throwing up his hands and starting to strap guns to his back when met with my impatient look. I made my way to the bathroom to wash my face and hands, which had recently taken to getting hot before we went out to fight. I tried to shake off the feeling. I needed to be on my feet. If everything went right, tonight would be the end of it.
I exited the bathroom to find Clint still struggling to stick something up his sleeve, literally. I rolled my eyes.
"No, Clint, you are not taking the nun chucks," I said, pulling him toward the door by the back of his hoodie. He groaned, letting the nun chucks fall back to the bed from his balled up sleeve.
It was late evening and the deep orange in the sky was dissipating quickly. Clint and I walked briskly towards the outskirts of the city, where The Last Man Standing himself, Adrienn Apa, was signing a deal with an important drug lord in North America and sealing his place, for the moment, at least, as the cocaine king of this side of the Atlantic. As far as I was concerned, tonight we'd kill two birds with one stone and be on our way.
"Relax. How many times do I have to tell you?" I heard Clint's voice drift toward me from behind. He was a few paces back, walking idly and staring at the darkening sky as the first pinprick of stars started appearing. I stopped, waiting for him and trying to adopt his easy gait as I fell into step beside him, trying to exude his effortless carelessness, as if we really were nothing more than clueless tourists, bent on nothing other than getting back to our little inn. Even so, I couldn't help standing just a little straighter, walking just a little stiffer. Clint made an exasperated noise, stepping towards me to sling his arm over me. I slumped under the weight, tempted to push him off. He made me feel restricted, unable to reach my weapons at a moment's notice, and it made me feel even jumpier.
"You don't need it now. Just go with it," he said, catching my hand that was inching toward the blade hidden in my belt and making it seem as if he just took it to kiss it. I sighed, trying to find the usual comfort I felt with him.
Slowly, the quiet streets become progressively more populated. This was no accident. These were no ordinary tourists. They walked too slowly, talked too quietly, eyed strangers too suspiciously. Body guards. Swarming Adrienn Apa's meeting place like bees surrounding a hive.
Clint pulled me down a side street and into a small inn with a wooden front. We were greeted inside by a kind old woman, her white hair pulled into a bun atop her head. I quickly checked Clint and I into the reservations Clint had made only hours ago as the travel agent of the American tourist couple we were pretending to be. We slipped into our room facing the street quietly. Clint immediately threw the duffel he'd had slung over his shoulder on the bed, unzipping it and taking out the various parts to his sniper gun. I moved toward the window and peeked through the curtains to a small building a few blocks away. There wasn't much activity that I could see. Not yet.
Clint brushed my back softly with the tips of his fingers, trying to get by to position his gun. I let him, trying to shake off the shivers he'd left behind. His random acts of gentleness still caught me off guard. Not only because I knew he was capable of cold, brutal strength, but because my guilt still weighed like a stone within me whenever his skin or his hands or his eyes found mine. In the time since he'd found me, I still hadn't spoken a word as to why I'd left. Had he figured it out? Did he know I was a coward? It seemed impossible to me that he had. Because if he had, how could he stand to look at me still?
His gentleness surprised me because I knew I deserved his scorn.
He positioned his gun on the sill and stretched, turning back to me and asking me to hand him a pillow. I jumped out of my reverie, and clenched my jaw, wishing he hadn't seen me flinch. I sat on the bed, feigning easiness, and threw him a pillow. He took it and tucked it under his knees, studying me. I raised an eyebrow, trying to reclaim the manner I took when I lied. But I felt it wither under his gaze and looked down instead. He looked back out the window, leaving me with the impression he'd just read my mind like an open book.
"So, when are you gonna wanna talk about this?" he whispered, one eye shut and the other squinting through his gun's scope. I swallowed. Open book, indeed.
"Talk about wh—?" I began.
"Spare me the bullshit; you owe me as much, Tasha," he said immediately. There was no bite to his words, but I felt as if he'd slapped me. I immediately felt foolish for even thinking of trying to play stupid with him. My eyes drifted uneasily. I idly registered his bow glinting under the pillow at his feet, never very far from reach.
I swallowed, deciding the truth was best. It was what he deserved. But when I thought I knew where to start, the words suddenly caught in my throat and I'd swallow them back and start again, leaving us in silence for nearly half an hour. He didn't turn to look at me once, but I knew he waiting. Showing me patience, like always. Finally, I asked, "What do you want to know?"
Even turned away from me, I saw his eyebrows rise in my mind. He finally turned away from his scope, his eyebrows raised in precisely the manner I'd imagined. "How is that even a question? I—I want—I—everything. I want to know everything."
His voice faded. He looked down and then in a desperately dejected voice, whispered, "I was lost without you."
It was a broken whisper, a confession, a plea for explanation.
I sat up, aching to reach for him, but stopping short, my hand half-raised between us. My mouth was open, willing the truth to spill out of me, to lay myself out on a silver platter before him, to beg for his forgiveness, but nothing came out. Tears pricked the back of my eyes, but I refused to let a single one roll down. I blinked quickly, pulling my hand back and turning slightly away from him before he could look up. We stood in silence for another moment before he cleared his throat and turned back toward the window.
And I knew the case was closed. He wouldn't ask again. And knowing me, it would die there.
We sat in silence for hours as the small room became pitch black. I found myself yearning to reach out to him, pull him to the warm bed and forget our ridiculous responsibilities for a few hours, a habit I'd formed in this past month in which every free moment had found my skin pressed to his. But I immediately felt stupid and juvenile for even thinking it, and remained in my seat on the bed in the dark room behind him, hands tucked tightly around me, watching the lights outside bathe his skin.
"Showtime," he whispered, calling me to attention. I inched closer and could have sworn I felt him tense beside me as I pulled up next to the window. But another half of me thought that was just my imagination. I peered through the gauzy curtains, trying to focus my binoculars on our targeted building. Finally, the blurry shadows materialized into people, one of which I recognized as the American drug lord, sitting at a desk and tapping his fingers impatiently. As I watched, I saw his head snap up, quickly followed by his entire body jumping out of his chair and standing at attention. I'd wager Adrienn Apa had finally made his appearance. The clicking of Clint's gun being cocked seemed to suggest I was right. A few guards walked across the window, blocking Apa as he made his way around the desk. When the guards moved to flank him, I finally saw his face and gasped.
The Last Man Standing, Adrienn Apa, was a woman. Thin, dark-haired, and particularly tiny-looking. She couldn't be any bigger than me. Yet the confident set of her chin and demeanor suggested a persona as big as any other gang lord. She finally sat, sinking into the desk chair and looking even smaller. She seemed to have engaged in polite conversation, her smile spreading wide and sickeningly sweet. Too pretty to not be venomous.
"Clint," I whispered insistently. "Take your shot."
He shushed me. I looked at him, then back again. Clint and I didn't disagree on very many things on the field. I turned back to my binoculars, trying to see what Clint was seeing. Guards everywhere, a given. Pleasantries before business; pointless, in my opinion, but nothing out of the usual. I looked around. Apa was leaning back luxuriously in her chair, hands folded in her lap, seeming entirely relaxed, while her visitor stood rigid in his. The desk was empty. Not a paper, not a pen, not anything in sight. I saw Apa's hands fidget under the desk and finally understood, a moment before it happened. There was never going to be any deal tonight. In a split second, Apa stood, her right arm stretching with a gun at its end. I blinked and next thing I knew, the American was slumped over grossly in his chair, blood streaming from his forehead.
"There we go," Clint whispered, steadying himself. I looked at him and couldn't help grinning. He'd let her do half the work for him. I had the vague urge to grab him and kiss him for his brilliance, but again resisted. Without flinching, I watched him pull the trigger and knew 500 feet away, a body was falling to the floor, as devoid of life as the one it had just claimed.
"Let's go, Tasha," he urged, jumping to his feet and snapping me back into real time. I looked out the window. Without binoculars, the window we'd been surveying was but a speck. Down below, the crowds had started running. But some were running straight for us and I knew the guard dogs would be on top of us any moment. I picked up what I could and let Clint take my hand and whisk me out through the fire escape.
Outside, yells pierced the air, each one making me flinch. Clint shook me, giving me a worried look. I tried to shut down and focus on running but the screams seemed to echo in my head, resounding over and over.
"Tasha! Tasha, your guns!" Clint yelled. He spun me against a wall when we landed on the street, shielding me with his body and shooting a man in khakis running for us. I gasped, looking at Clint disbelievingly.
"Clint! Clint, you killed him!" I yelled, horrified.
"Yes, Tasha, it's what we do!" he said, taking the tone of a teacher trying to explain something simple to someone very young. I looked at the dead man and finally, something deep inside my echoing head clicked, and I registered the gun in his hand. Right. He wasn't a civilian, he was only dressed like one. He was trying to kill us. So Clint had to kill him first. Of course.
Clint dug under my sweater, pulling out one of my guns for me and pressing it to my hand. The weight seemed to snap some part of me back to reality. The sudden return to alertness seemed to comfort Clint, who had been eyeing me worriedly.
"Ready?"
I nodded resolutely. With one last unsure glance, he ran down an alley closely follow behind by me.
The streets were chaos. Like someone had rattled the bee hive and all the bees had started to attack, flying in every which direction and attacking any and every target. Clint shot three men on one side of an alley and I took two on the other side, five falling dead one right after another. The running had started to make my muscles ache, but the pain felt good, like finally waking up. It kept me focused, grounded, together.
We ran and shot in unison, falling back into our pattern, comforting me with its familiarity. Men seemed to come from all sides, and I always fumbled for a moment when first deciding whether they were actual civilians or threats. I didn't know for sure until I saw the guns pulled on me. Then it was a matter of who was fastest. And I had always been the fastest in my class.
Clint pulled me down a narrow alley, the silver of our tiny getaway car glinting two streets away. My lungs burned but new energy thrust me forward like a runner when faced with the end of a marathon. The end was close. Our path was clear. We were less than one street's width away when it exploded.
Heat brushed my face like a caress before I was thrown back, falling awkwardly against the alley wall and scraping both my elbows and hitting my head hard. My ears were ringing and I couldn't see. Everything was too bright. I tried blinking away the spots, but everything still looked like it was glowing too bright. My throbbing head could only form one coherent thought. Clint.
I fumbled around, trying to regain my feet while my sight was impaired and feeling ridiculously vulnerable.
"Clint?" My voice came as a harsh croak. I cleared it roughly and tried again. "Clint?"
Tiny spots were still dancing around my vision, but I could start to make out shapes when I heard his groan and turned to see his vague figure slumped over on the ground. I ran to him, lifting his head gently. He blinked at me in much the same manner I imagined I was doing: frantically quick, trying desperately to regain vision. Being blind was as good as being dead.
"Clint! Clint, it's me!" I brushed back his hair, scanning his body for injuries. Like me, except for a few scrapes and a gash just under his hairline, he seemed fine. He seemed to regain himself faster than me, because in just a moment he was on his feet again, however shakily, and pulling me deeper into the alley away from the street. He looked around frantically, as if willing an escape route to just fall out of the sky. I looked at him, trying to get my brain to work. We seemed to reach the same conclusion at the same time, and our eyes met.
"Looks like we're fighting our way out," he said.
"How refreshing," I tried saying nonchalantly, but my voice shook as much as my wobbly feet. He looked at me warily.
"You're still good, right?" He scanned me then for injuries like I'd done with him. When he seemed convinced I wasn't bleeding to death, he nodded, starting to run in the direction which we'd come.
"You still know how to get to the safe house from here, right?" he yelled back to me. I thought a moment, letting the map of the city I'd learned rearrange itself according to my location. The safe house we'd arranged was not actually very far from here. I just needed to get across the river that crossed Budapest. Once I found the bridge, I'd be fine.
"Yeah," I answered as we pulled up to the mouth of the alley. We both pressed our backs to opposite walls instinctively. The explosion had caused more screaming in that direction, but this little street now seemed quiet.
"Alright, let's go," Clint said, nodding and starting to run again. I caught my last full breath before leaping after him, the night air rushing by and making my eyes tear. We dodged down side streets, melting into the shadows and trying to stay out of the light of street lamps as often as possible. We were blocks away from the bridge. My heart pumped, feeling close to the end again. We ran down an alley and crossed a group of men, these not even bothering to try to camouflage themselves amongst the civilians. They must have called for reinforcements. We stopped short at a little intersection where another alley met this one. At the end of it, I could see the bridge in the distance. Clint started shooting, only taking a moment to push me in the direction of the bridge.
"Go!" he yelled, pushing me again. I shook my head weakly but he pushed me again, harder this time, and I started to run, the sound of his gunshots ringing behind me. I was just a few streets away when another pair of men seemed to jump out of the walls and bear down upon me. I shot the first and kicked away the other's gun. He smashed me to the alley wall, and I could feel my face start to sting with new scratches. I threw my head back, crunching against his nose and turned long enough to shoot him before running again. Another man seemed to have heard the gunshots and ran into my path less than a block later. I shot at him but my gun clicked empty. He grinned. I swung at him, hitting him in the jaw with the butt of the gun, my left hand already pulling another from my back. He was dead before he hit the ground.
I was at the last intersection from the bridge when a mob suddenly burst out running behind me. I turned, shooting wildly. At the same time, a shadow moved atop the building behind them. I could have sworn I heard the slight twanging noise of his released arrow and a moment later the men flew aside, thrown by the arrow's explosive tip. The figure motioned for me to keep running. I did.
The crowds were thicker around the bridge. Easy to get lost in. I kept running, weaving and dodging through people. I heard a bullet whiz by me and hit a tree. People everywhere suddenly turned, screaming and running in every direction. I turned only long enough to see another man, this one dressed in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, with a gun outstretched. I kept running. I was almost at the bridge. The huge steel framework loomed in the darkness ahead.
In one indescribable moment of premonition, I hit the ground and shot at him on my back just as he shot again. I saw his knees buckle at the precise moment a shrill scream pierced the air behind me. I turned, and there on the sidewalk leading into the bridge, bathed in the yellow light form the street lamp above her, was a little girl, blood seeping her white dress at her ribs. For a moment, I saw a little girl with ivory skin and red curls looking back at me with wide eyes, a gun gripped at her side as the blood stained her dress. I blinked and she was gone, replaced again by the little blonde one in front of me, surely no more than seven or eight years old. She blinked at me once before toppling over. I stood, frozen, a scream welling up in my chest. I heard fast footfalls behind me, but didn't bother running. Let them come. I'd welcome death with open arms. A bullet in the head right now would be a mercy.
"Nat, go!"
It was Clint. Of course. I squeezed my eyes. I would receive no reprieve. I would suffer. He pushed me forward, slinging his bow over his arm. When I didn't move, he pulled me by the arm and starting running again. I let myself be dragged, the little girl's wide eyes still staring at me blankly from behind my eyelids. Our feet finally reached the walk on the bridge, cars whizzing beside us on the street. I could see a load of cop cars making their way in the direction we'd just come from on the other side of the bridge. Too late. Nothing they could do now except collect the bodies. Deliver the cold corpse of that little girl to her family in a wooden box.
My legs and lungs were burning, and the bridge was a wide one, but I didn't ask to stop. We were just off the bridge on the other side when bullets starting raining down on us again from a sleek black car behind us. Clint pulled me sideways, running for the nearest side street. I turned and saw the car left abandoned in the traffic at a stop light with the doors left open, four men in suits spilled out and running after us. I shot blindly, my vision seeming to tint red. Those bastards! Those bastards! She was just a little girl!
I shot one. Then another. Clint pulled me into a side street, the two remaining men following behind us, not even faltering in step as their counterparts fell. I shot a third when he came around the corner then my gun again clicked empty. I threw it back uselessly. I pulled another from my side, shooting the fourth squarely in the forehead with triumph. The shot that killed him rang at the same time as another behind me. I slammed into Clint's back as he screamed. I turned and shot at the first figure I saw, his body falling quickly. Clint fell crookedly against me, blooding staining his shirt. I froze. Not him. Not him, too. Not Clint.
"Tasha," he called feebly. I groaned, pushing the heels of my hands into my eyes. This was a nightmare. I just needed to wake up before I saw him die. "Tasha," he called again, weaker this time. I paced frantically around him, willing myself to wake up. But I couldn't. He was dying and I couldn't wake up. This was it. The end of all ends for this endless nightmare I called a life. The Kevlar vest I wore suddenly weighed me down like bricks. That idiot. I had told him to take it! I told him! My fault. My fault. My fault. My fault.
"Natalia, I need you." His voice was no more than a whisper, but carried a firmness that snapped me back. I looked up, from the stain on his shirt to his face. His eyes were resolute and sure. He lifted an arm weakly towards me, and I immediately took it. This wasn't a dream. It wasn't a dream and if I didn't get him to safety, his killing would be by my own hand.
I picked him up, brought to focus by the task at hand and blocking everything out. We were just a block from our safe house. I could get him there. I would. I would save him like all the times he saved me.
He seemed a thousand times heavier than usual, his weight bearing on me like an anchor trying to pull me to the bottom of the ocean to drown. I readjusted myself under him, my other hand poised with a gun. I half shuffled, half dragged him down the street and turned into an alley. At some point, he passed out and I saw his head lull forward lifelessly. I stopped, panicked, to check for breathing. When I was reassured by the pulse in his neck, I kept going, but faster this time. The pulse was there, but it was a ridiculous imitation of what it usually was, the strong and steady pulsing I felt beneath my lips when I kissed the spot where I could feel the life beating beneath his skin.
I stopped and propped him against the alley wall while I punched in a little window just above ground level. It swung in easily and I wedged him in through it, pushing him in slowly and letting him land softly down beneath before jumping in myself and closing the window securely behind us. We were in an old wine cellar of a small winery that had closed for a few weeks while the owners went on holiday. I covered the window with towels from the supplies we'd snuck in earlier in the week before lighting a small oil lamp. All of me ached with exertion and my arms screamed with pain when I moved to pick up Clint again. I ignored it and I shuffled him toward the small single mattress we'd put in a corner. His breathing was shallow when I laid him down. I brought over the oil lamp and our first aid kit. I tore open his shirt, bracing myself for the wound. The bullet had made a disgusting hole on the right side of his body, just beneath his ribs. But it was far to the side and I guessed it hadn't pierced any organs. I opened the first aid kit gingerly, trying to calm myself. Inside was everything from antiseptic to rolls of gauze the size of my head. After all, agents weren't usually treating just scrapes and bruises.
I placed another towel below him before opening a bottle of alcohol and, without giving myself time to pause, poured it into his wound. His eyes snapped open for one brief moment, a strangled cry escaping him before his head fell back on the pillow limply.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's okay," I shushed him quietly, leaving him only long enough to wet a towel and place it on his forehead. "This is gonna hurt, I'm sorry," I whispered to him, brushing back his hair as his eyes swam aimlessly, not really seeing. I steeled myself to retrieve the bullet with a pair of tweezers I'd cleaned with antiseptic. I dug into his flesh, anxious to get it over with. He groaned, making my heart clench, but I didn't let myself stop until the bullet was out. After a minute of painstaking digging, I fished it out. I stitched him up quickly, ignoring his moans and patching him up with a thick pad of gauze.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's okay, it's over," I kept whispering to him mindlessly. I quickly cleaned the gash on his head and his scrapes before putting the kit away. I wiped his head with more cold water and he let out a low moan, rumbling deep in his chest, and closed his drifting eyes. I didn't even think to treat any of my wounds. I just threw off my sweater and rid myself of the bulletproof vest, kicking it as far away from me as possible when it came off. In my still-sweaty undershirt, I awkwardly shuffled onto the mattress between him and the wall on the other side without moving him and gingerly rested my head on his shoulder. I lay like that for a long time, my ear pressed to the pulse in his neck.
I fell asleep listening for it to return to its usual pace, strong and even, thrumming steadily beneath me like a war drum.