For the next year and a half, they lived together as a happy couple—both taking up missions and gaining a little fortune. Their relationship was loving and overall awesome, although they both couldn't help bickering from time to time, though they never had such a bad argument as that one before they had officially gotten together.
And yeah, the sex was great and awesome too.
North being so perceptive often managed to get them to talk about a potentially volatile situation before it could escalate.
Alaska felt and hoped that this would last forever, that what she had would last forever since she felt so goddamn happy and freshly enamored even after more than a year since they had gotten their act together and had started dating.
During their time together, North noticed that Alaska was a pretty good shot and started to train her in sniping. After about a year, she was as good as him when it came to her skills, but she still was lacking routine. However, it would only be a matter of time until she had enough routine to be equal to North.
For their first year anniversary, North had given her a ring and his real name: Andrew. The ring was golden, with three sapphires and three diamonds each embedded on the top of it.
Sure, they wouldn't be able to marry one another since they both lived undercover, but it was the closest they could get.
Ala had cried for the first time since they got together when accepting the ring, putting it on her left ring finger. Afterwards, they kissed and ended up in their bedroom. Well, you can imagine the rest.
Half a year later was when shit really hit the fan.
It was a morning like any other one, except for the fact that it started for the black haired woman with a session on the toilet, retching her guts out and then going to a doctor in one of the better districts. After paying him a generous tip, he then decided to not open a file about her in general, having the appointment without someone ever knowing that she had been at his place.
After that, she returned home with a happy smile.
Only for it to be wiped off her face when she entered the apartment and saw North gearing up.
Alarmed, she closed the door.
"What's up?" she approached North, who looked up and threw her a smile before walking over and kissing her hello.
"South informed me that she's in trouble and needs my help getting something done. Looks like she bit off more than she could chew this time." He replied, reaching for his chest plate and putting it on, screwing the bolts to get the chest piece to stay in place.
"Bullshit! It's a trap!" Alaska couldn't tell where this anger came from, but she didn't want North to leave.
Not today. Or ever. He should stay with her and not always run after his sister to help her when she only ever treated him coldly and only as a means to get to her goal—not like a brother!
"She's my sister, honey." He replied, putting on his gloves before walking over and cupping her face in his hands right before he stole another kiss from his girlfriend.
"Yeah, and it's not the first time she's gotten you into trouble. Think over it again, hun. You're running into a trap with your eyes wide open!" Ala almost pleaded, trying to make him reconsider his decision.
South only had called in the past when she needed help or a place where she could stay low for a while. Or when she was beaten up and needed someone to patch her back together.
"I'm sorry. I need to go. I'll be back as soon as possible, promise." He grabbed his helmet from the couch before kissing Ala goodbye, "Goodbye. Take care, okay?"
"Yeah, okay." She said in a defeated tone, responding to the kiss and watching North leave through the door.
The moment the door closed, she took off to her office and geared up herself. When wearing her armor, she grabbed the SMGs, stuffing them in the holsters at the small of her back. She then grabbed her Katanas and put them in special transportation sheaths on her back, along with one of the two sniper rifles she fastened on her back as well as her knife which she put in the sheath on the left side of her front chest plate.
The little bag she had been carrying laid discarded on the sideboard, Ala not even giving it a second thought and leaving the apartment to follow North.
Luckily, it didn't long for her to track him and he didn't seem to notice her when she followed him with her camouflage unit on. Sure, she blended in with the surroundings perfectly fine, but when North would listen or pay attention to his surroundings more than he did right now, he would notice her.
After half an hour of walking she ended up in a ruin of some sorts, Ala not really caring about that as she stood beside a pillar and tried to listen to the siblings' conversations. She couldn't really make out their discussion and didn't want to hack into their channel as both of them would have noticed that for sure. But the way their body language changed made her be on alert.
That was how she witnessed the fight and North's death.
Hiding behind a pillar and sliding down, she bit her lip so hard it drew blood—desperately trying to suppress the whimpers and sobs escaping from her mouth when she saw her love die.
Thanks to her camouflage unit nobody would see her, but that didn't mean that they wouldn't notice the tears wetting the ground or her sobs.
She kept silent in order to avoid the brute from noticing her.
She only moved only when that brute North had called Maine disappeared, though not before Maine had torn Theta away from North with the little Fragment wailing and pleading for North to wake up.
Alaska felt like her heart was about to explode when she heard that. Theta had become something like their kid that she and North were looking after. Helping him fall asleep, playing games, joking, watching movies, almost everything a real family would do.
And now she saw Theta and North being ripped away from her and from each other.
Shakily, she got up and staggered over to North's dead body. She didn't feel the blood running down her legs when she crouched down beside the lifeless body of her once loving boyfriend, turning his upper body a bit so she could have a proper look at him.
He had died protecting his sister, taking a straight shot through his heart. At least he didn't have to suffer. It was a clean, straight shot and he was probably dead before he even noticed.
But it didn't change the fact that he had been deceived by his own fucking damn sister. Said bitch who had tricked him into protecting her so she would have a better chance of surviving.
Alaska felt a grim satisfaction, seeing his sister lying there unmoving.
Only years later she would learn that South back then only had been unconscious, having successfully used her brother as a living meat shield to survive. However, she wouldn't live much longer as she got killed some time later by Wash with a clean headshot.
Leaning down with her vision blurring again, she muttered. "I'm sorry, North. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let you go. I'm so sorry!" A sob escaped her, while she pressed her helmet against his, her right hand grasping his shoulder tightly.
Somewhere in the distance, she heard something approaching fast. It would take about another two or three minutes. Better to get some space between her and the bloody battlefield here, before this person or whatever it was, was here.
Ala doubted this person would be friendly towards her, finding her with two bodies of former ex-Special Ops—both of them dead and she having enough ammo with her to kill them ten times at least. The conclusion of her having killed one or both of them would be very logical, although wrong. But the person about to appear wouldn't know what really happened. They would only act on what they saw, and that said clearly that she had murdered both of them.
Pulling down the mesh of the undersuit at North's neck, she saw the scar and the base of where Theta's chip had been implanted. North had once shown it to her to explain how this whole connection between Theta and him worked. There was a bit of blood there, showing clearly that Maine had cut open the skin on his neck and ripped out the implant.
Soon she found what she was looking for when feeling around a bit more. Carefully, she pulled out the chain that his dog tags were on, taking them off and putting them around her neck.
She didn't care that there was North's blood on them and that she was staining her body with it. It was her only way of having a piece of him with her besides the ring. Her only way to remember.
After that, she leaned her head one last time against her dead boyfriend's head before getting up and leaving the place—running as fast as she could.
Away from this place of horror and of her biggest loss.
North wouldn't have wanted her to get killed because she was grieving for him. He would have wanted her to live.
Which is why she hightailed out of this situation and returned home as soon as she could.
Sometime during her walk home, she felt the pain in her abdomen starting to get worse the more the adrenaline wore off. But she decided to ignore it, and instead she kept on running although her lungs and legs were burning and desperately screaming for a break.
She ran until she reached her apartment, only then releasing the camouflage when she was in front of her apartment.
Her armor had been able to handle the lessening amount of blood sometime during her way back, so now she wasn't leaving a trail of red splotches on the ground up to her apartment.
When she had returned home, she hadn't bothered taking off the armor except for the helmet that she threw carelessly on the floor. She went under the shower with her gear still on, letting the water wash the grime and blood off it and making it white blue and again instead of an ugly mix of smeared brown-red and blue.
Slowly, as if in slow motion, the woman started taking off her gear, throwing it on the ground wet as it was, until she was naked under the spray.
It was warm, but she couldn't feel it.
Sitting under the spray with her knees drawn to her chest, she cried for hours. She didn't notice the water turning cold at some point or the hours ticking by. Nor did she notice how the water slowly started to clear until there was almost no blood in it anymore when she was sitting there.
She just cried, grieving the loss of the person she had cared the most for in her life.
When she woke up next, she didn't really know what time it was, but she noticed that she was shivering from the icy cold water still raining down on her.
Turning the water off, she slowly got up and reached for the towel to dry herself off.
After that, she slowly got dressed and walked over to her room, feeling powerless and tired as though she wanted to fall asleep and never wake up again.
When she was lying in her bed, she looked at the dog tags she had acquired some hours ago.
Agent North Dakota
Andrew Jackson
Underneath that was his birthday, which was only about two weeks away. He had almost gotten to twenty-nine-years-old.
"You fucker, you didn't even turn thirty for me to call you old." She muttered with a sad smile and tears again rolling down her face.
She was lying in her bed. It felt too big, too empty without North, no Drew, being with her. Without Theta joining in occasionally.
Without North being here and taking her into a tight and loving embrace, which she would have needed the most at this particular moment.
Him coming in, lying in bed with her and embracing her like he always would. But he wouldn't do that anymore in the future.
He had died, and Ala was left alone in her apartment, which suddenly felt too big for her alone to ever fill it with happy memories again.
Looking up, she could see various photographs put in frames standing on the nightstand. One was with him and Ala shortly after they became a pair, Ala having bribed North into taking a picture together with Theta.
Having intertwined their fingers, they made something of a makeshift seat for Theta to sit on while they both had their heads leaned against each other. All three of them, Ala was sure Theta was too although you couldn't see it, smiled into the camera happily. A mutual sign of happiness.
There were others, but she couldn't look at them right now.
Curling up from the pain in her heart and her abdomen, she cried herself to sleep, although she was asking herself how she still had tears after how long she had already cried.
It took about a week for her to find the energy to do more than standing up, walking to the bathroom, or getting something to eat or drink before lying down again. The pain in her abdomen slowly started to subdue, until it stopped completely.
When she got up, she wrote her previous CO, saying that she needed to get back on duty.
Sure, Hollaway would ask why so suddenly and she told him what happened since he was one of the only people who knew the whole situation to begin with.
He wrote her his consolation and said that he would look into what he could do.
When he logged off, she snatched her jacket and started walking around in the town aimlessly. She didn't want to stay in her apartment any longer. There were just too many memories of him and them.
When she passed by a Tattoo parlor which looked relatively clean, she entered it without a second thought.
Two hours later, she had a tattoo on her back: a memory she would carry under her skin forever.
When she came back home she saw that Sergeant Hollaway had written her that she would be rescheduled to a digging site under the sands as a guard and that the ship would come to pick her up along with the other soldiers and archaeologists in three days.
She thanked him, saying that she would smash the laptop and all her data and that she would inform him of her progress in another way as soon as possible.
He wished her good luck and both said their goodbyes.
After that, she left the house with some of her stuff. She threw the laptop on the ground, dragging a strong magnet over it, and throwing it in the biggest river along with some other stuff to hide her tracks.
She had transferred some of the pictures and data on it into an external hard disk in her armor before destroying the device.
A day later she had a new tenant who even gave her a decent amount of money for the stuff in her apartment that she couldn't take with her. The rest of it was sold to her contacts.
Three days later, she was standing with a packed duffel bag and her weapons on the landing station of New Bangkok and mounting the ship that came to pick her up.
She sat down on the last free spot beside an aqua-armored soldier. He looked at her, his visor turning to her fully.
"Hey there, I could use some piloting lessons. You want to help me with my joystick? You know, bow-chicka-bow-wow!"
She flipped the guy off.