вернись (Villanelle's Return)

by Snapplelinz

Try as you might, there's just no killing Villanelle. My take on that dumpster fire finale of Killing Eve season 4.

Author's Note: I'm about 6 years late to the Killing Eve love fest and Jodie Comer goddess worship, but I watched the entire series weeks ago and did some manic fanfic writing to exorcise the demons produced by that soul-crushing finale (Laura Neal is officially on my hit list).

Plus, there are only more than 100 KE fics on this site, and that just felt incredibly sad to me. So, here I am, adding my Villanelle hat to the ring because 'reasons'. Hope you like my take on what happens after Villanelle *sighs* 'went for a moonlit swim in the Thames River' :-S

Yeah, Jodie Comer's version of events is infinitely better than what Laura Neal and her writing team pooped out of their nether regions for the season 4 KE finale.

Also, I might be low-key in love with Villanelle, which is extremely problematic :-P

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the 'Killing Eve' book series by Luke Jennings (the true LGBTQ hero in this universe) nor that of the TV show created by...those people. All I own are my warped thoughts and rose-tinted musings about how Jodie Comer may be one of the most talented actresses I've seen on-screen in many moons.

---

Sadness.

Anger.

Pain.

She was so very cold.

Everything around her was green and mildewy, like a dream that had expired somehow.

If anyone could see her, they would see a drowning woman, the white of her shirt run through with red, blonde hair coiled around her throat and face like a noose.

A fallen angel.

She had felt the slightest brush of Eve's delicate fingers touching hers before they'd been wrenched forcefully apart.

Villanelle could see nothing now.

All she knew was that the water was dragging her down, further away from the only woman she'd ever loved, welcoming her to back to the abyss she'd been spat out of the day she came into existence.

She heard her mother's last words, taunting her in a flurry of hateful Russian:

"There was always a darkness inside you. You were bad from the moment you were born."

Villanelle would've laughed at the irony if she had any breath left to expel the water rapidly filling her lungs.

It was just as well.

She'd always known that she was a monster, a demon with a soul stained with the blood of the people whose lives she had stolen so brutally.

She would've accepted her fate more gladly if not for the fact that she was leaving Eve behind.

She still had the scent and feel of the raven-haired beauty seared into her memory.

Had it only been a few hours since they'd had their first kiss and finally consummated their burning passion for each other on the creaky front passenger seat of a stolen van?

"Eve, Моя любовь."

"Прости меня…"

Though she'd never believed in God before, Villanelle offered a silent prayer now filled with remorse and resolution as the water claimed her for itself.

…

…

…

The water fell away from her and she had a vague sensation of her body being pulled towards something.

Or by someone.

A young man murmuring in English near her sounded eerily familiar as she briefly flitted in and out of cognisance.

He helped the diver who'd brought her back from the depths.

Together, they dragged her limp, unconscious form away from the water, laying the assassin known as Villanelle flat on her back on the wet, sandy banks of the Thames.

CPR was performed on her for several minutes, brutally cracking her ribs in the process.

At the end, there was the faintest thrumming of activity within her sodden chest.

Though the bleeding from the multiple gunshot wounds had slowed for the time being, she was dreadfully pale, hanging precariously between Life and Death.

A woman's voice cut through the cold night air: low and authoritative. "Get her into the ambulance immediately."

"Ma'am."

Villanelle's body was lifted gently onto a gurney and herded towards an unknown fate.

---

Villanelle awoke in an unfamiliar bed.

That it itself wasn't surprising.

She'd awoken before in a number of strange beds and situations with a unknown man or woman, sometimes both, sleeping beside her.

The only bed mate she had now were a series of wires coursing through her body, connected to several machines beeping loudly in her ears.

Despite the advanced medical equipment all around her, she was in a regular room with cosy, panelled lighting fitted into the ceiling and tasteful wooden decor, like that of a luxurious cabin.

How did she get here?

A young man sat in a chair beside her bed with an iPad resting on his lap, watching her fretfully.

Though the eyes were darker, the sharpness of his nose and jawline reminded her of Carolyn Martens.

Though they'd never met before, she instantly knew who he was. And the knowledge terrified her befuddled mind.

"Oh my God, I really am dead," she croaked woefully.

Despite the strangeness of the situation, the man smiled impishly. "Afraid not."

Villanelle's pale face was rife with questions. "Kenny?"

The younger man gave a start, his demeanour becoming guarded. "How do you know my name?"

"Eve told me about you, you worked together at MI6."

Villanelle paused. "You're supposed to be dead." She continued studying every inch of his face.. "Very dead…"

Kenny relaxed slightly, though he smiled uncomfortably now. "I'm sure my sister Geraldine will still kill me after lying to her about not being dead for a year. But I assure you, I am very much alive."

"How?" It wasn't the most important question on Villanelle's mind, but she was overwhelmed with sudden curiosity.

Kenny shrugged. "I really can't say."

To anyone else, that would've implied a sense of confusion, but Villanelle knew better. She'd killed enough spies to know the tells when someone was unwilling to part with sensitive information.

Just like his shitting mother.

A tall, redhead dressed in an immaculate cream suit entered the room, her shrewd, blue-green eyes closely examining the woman lying in the hospital bed.

A host of memories engulfed Villanelle, filling her with intense hatred.

A deserted beach, a homely villa in Cuba, sharing a knowing smile in an English pub decorated with swallows.

Then the bullets and the water which had very nearly killed her - all because of this person's treachery.

"красноволосая сука!" Villanelle strained in vain against the wires holding her captive to the bed.

Carolyn Martens eyed her with a bored expression. "I assure you, I have been called far worse. So, you have finally returned to the land of the living, Villanelle."

"Fuck you! You shot me!"

"Not me, actually. I ordered it, naturally."

More choice Russian curse words escaped the blonde's mouth. "I should've killed you when I had the chance."

"But you didn't, and this is where we find ourselves at present," Carolyn said with the utmost simplicity. "Thank you, Kenny. That will be all."

Kenny eyed Villanelle's evident distress with reluctance. "Maybe I should stay, Mum."

Carolyn's eyes remained in Villanelle. "I'll be fine. She won't hurt me."

"Won't I?!" Villanelle had already catalogued every single thing in the room which she could potentially use for a weapon.

Carolyn finally turned to her only son. "Villanelle and I have a great many things to discuss. I will not ask you again."

Kenny bowed his head and nodded.

"You should tell Eve," Villanelle said out of the blue.

Kenny knew exactly what she meant though and smiled lightly before exiting the room.

Carolyn waited for the door to shut fully before turning her attention back to the Russian assassin. "I expected far more gratitude from you. I may have ordered my people to shoot you, but they had strict orders not to kill you. Given that you spared my life in Cuba, doing anything else to you would not have been very sporting."

At this, Villanelle let out a grunt of sardonic laughter. "You English and your sports. Do you say the same thing to the foxes you hunt?"

"Foxes are hardly worth your sympathy, Villanelle. Opportunistic scavengers, the whole lot of them. They also have a tendency towards emitting the most obscene noises while mating —"

"I want Eve." The look in Villanelle's green eyes would've chilled a wiser person to their very bones.

To Carolyn Martens, she was hardly phased by a death glare - given that no human had died from one as yet.

Then again, if anyone could invent and perfect such a lethal art, she would bet money on it being the Russians.

"And you shall have her once you have made a full recovery."

"Where is she?"

"Safe. My people have kept a close eye on her for 4 weeks."

Villanelle felt her whole world spin off its axis in that moment. "What the shit? I have been unconscious for 4 fucking weeks?!"

"Given the severity of your injuries when you were pulled out of the Thames, you fell into a coma almost immediately. The best specialists were brought in to stabilise you and monitor your brain activity."

"Am I supposed to thank you?"

"I rather hoped you would. This way, The Twelve are finally gone, I'm exactly where I belong at MI6, and you won't face any repercussions for your past transgressions from any government on the planet, given that everyone except myself, Kenny, and a few choice agents, thinks that you're dead."

"Lucky me," Villanelle deadpanned.

If I had a fucking ruble for every time someone thought I was dead, I could buy and sell the pig-shitting Kremlin by now.

"What is this place?" Every syllable felt like sandpaper rubbing against her vocal chords, but Villanelle was in a particularly stubborn mood now that she was finally awake.

"My home," Carolyn replied with simplicity. "It seemed the best place for you to remain incognito whilst I decided your fate."

The blonde assassin emitted a hacking cough of laughter. "What? Too chicken-shit to smother me with a pillow?"

"Don't be stupid, Villanelle. If I wanted you dead, you'd still be at the bottom of the Thames."

"Which means you're not done using me for your own purposes." Carolyn said nothing in response, but her silence was telling enough.

"When can I see Eve?"

The look on the Asian beauty's face when she got shot the first time on The Twelve's boat a month ago was seared into her waterlogged memory.

"Soon. Don't be surprised if Eve is still very angry when you meet again."

Villanelle was perplexed. "Why would she be angry at me? I haven't done anything…this time."

"Indeed, you haven't. But Eve is very much still under the illusion that I and MI6 murdered you in cold blood after you disposed of the heads of The Twelve. She is currently in Moscow making several new contacts with the sole intention of exacting her revenge on me."

Villanelle laughed incredibly hard at this till her still-healing ribs began to hurt terribly. "Ooh, Eve is going to murder you," she sing-songed.

"Yes, yes, it is dreadfully amusing. I can hardly contain myself."

Villanelle scrunched her nose in a mock pensive pose. "I wonder how she will do it. Maybe she will…hang you from the ceiling and gut you from neck to navel like a pig? If I am well enough by then, maybe I will help her with this special pig murder…"

Carolyn rose gracefully from her seat. "Oh, I imagine Eve's attempt will be far more pedestrian than that."

"What about me?" Villanelle grew more and more like a petulant child the longer she was kept in the dark.

"You, my dear, must rest. It's not every day that one gets to rise from the dead."

With a parting smirk, Carolyn left Villanelle to her own pensive devices.

---

A week later, a woman stood in Carolyn's plush living room, pointing a pistol at her.

Carolyn had been curled up on the couch in the living room with a glass of whiskey and a good book when her phone vibrated, signalling the triggering of the house's silent alarm.

She smirked ever so slightly at the woman's weapon of choice.

It was a Makarov: a subtly elegant semi-automatic with supple, steel lines and a small, brown butt boasting an impressive blowback design.

Its Cold War origins weren't lost on the senior secret agent.

"I see you've made some new friends in the Kremlin. Tell me, Eve: how is dear Vlad?"

Carolyn could only imagine how infuriated her Russian ex-lover had been when she returned to England and resumed her role as the head of MI6.

She stared with begrudging admiration at the hostile woman before her.

Eve Polastri was no longer the same woman who had foolishly tried to eat a croissant in the middle of an important meeting with the big wigs at MI6 two years ago.

Instead of her awfully conjoined blouse-sweater and skirt combos, she now sported dark blue slim-fit jeans that hugged her waist just right, tasteful brown leather ankle boots, along with a form fitting black turtleneck and leather jacket.

Her long, curly black hair was undone, spilling violently over her shoulders as she gazed with the utmost hatred at the woman who had betrayed her and murdered her assassin lover.

Carolyn sighed audibly. "For goodness sake, Eve, don't do anything foolish."

Eve's hands trembled as she held the gun aloft. "We were trying to help you. She…Villanelle fucking helped you take down The Twelve and you repaid her by murdering her in cold blood. You took everything from me, Carolyn. Now, I'm going to do the same to you."

Carolyn looked positively nonplussed as she continued sipping her whiskey. "I presume you're referring to my life and other lovely bits? Don't know how much use you'll get out of my organs after I'm dead, but I suppose my brain could be of use to some poor chap running a portable yoga camp out of a caravan park in Cornwall."

The glass in Carolyn's hand shattered spectacularly from the report of a single bullet, the amber beverage spraying all over her expensive cardigan.

Eve smiled, albeit a warped facsimile of the splendid original as she moved closer, her gun lining up perfectly with Carolyn's angular face. "Did I stutter?"

"That was a perfectly good Macallan single malt from 1926. I spent a pretty penny on it at Sothebys."

"I don't give a shit about your pretentiously expensive whiskey, Carolyn."

"Eve, put down the gun."

For nearly 10 seconds, Eve refused to turn around.

It's finally happened.

I've gone completely insane.

"Дерьмо, Eve. I know you fucking heard me. Now do it and turn around."

Even though it pained her not to heed the call of her own heart, Eve didn't dare listen.

Obedience meant happiness. And happiness, especially that of fairytales, meant Death.

"Baby, please stop. You don't need to do this."

Eve's resolve wavered ever so slightly, tears spilling down her cheeks. "You're not real."

The blonde woman sighed and stepped closer till she stood in Eve's peripheral vision. "I am always in your line of sight, even when you aren't really looking. You see me even in places where I shouldn't be. That's where I've always been ever since we first met, that's how you know I'm real now."

Eve blinked hard, keeping her eyes facing forward. "In that case, you know exactly why I have to kill her."

Villanelle marvelled at the deranged look in her lady love's brown eyes as she clicked the hammer into place against Carolyn's skull.

After all these years, I am trying to save someone, and Eve is the psycho killer.

This is fucking bananas.

"Trust me, I would love nothing better than to cut off Carolyn's lips, super-glue chunks of Gouda in their place, grab my phone and selfie stick, and make her say 'Cheese!', but she didn't really kill me, baby."

Villanelle laid a gentle hand on Eve's shoulder.

Even through layers of clothing, Eve still felt the scalding fire of the younger woman's vitality seeping back into her veins as she finally dared to look at her.

It was the first time in weeks that Villanelle was not wearing a hospital gown that made her arsehole too cold to be considered normal.

Always on-brand, she wore a trendy pair of black jeggings and a comically furry neon pink sweater with matching bunny slippers, her long blond hair hanging limply over her shoulders.

She was very pale and looked hopelessly frail, but miraculously alive somehow.

"Oksana."

Villanelle's green eyes shimmered with happiness as she leant excruciatingly closer.

In a flash, she transferred the Makarov pistol into her hand. "Oops."

"Hey!"

Villanelle puckered her bottom lip. "Sorry, пу́псик. I had to do it."

"How did you do it?"

A quizzical expression appeared on the younger woman's face as she pointedly waved the gun in Eve's face. "I used my hands?"

"No, I mean…how are you here right now? I watched you get shot. I tried to grab you before you sank…"

The walls were closing in around Eve as she thought back to that awful night a month ago.

Bursting through the surface of the water, screaming in a mesh of anguish and fury at watching Villanelle die right in front of her had haunted every step she'd taken since then.

Since then, everyone in her life had more or less started treating her like a ticking bomb that could go off at any moment, especially when she'd talked of 'going on vacation to Moscow' of all places right after the incident on the boat.

Eve could hardly blame them. She'd hardly known herself what she was meant to do after her entire world fell apart.

All she knew was that she wanted revenge on Carolyn and MI6.

She hoped Vladimir and any more of Carolyn's old Russian boyfriends might pop out of the woodworks and be willing to join her crusade after her former mentor stabbed them in the back too when she took full credit for the entire operation aimed at The Twelve.

Though she'd scanned the newspapers and watched the reports on telly for days after, MI6 only made one official statement during a press conference related to the mission aimed at the heads of The Twelve without mentioning either Villanelle or Eve's involvement.

Eve's own family and friends still didn't know she'd been that close to losing her life too.

As for Villanelle, she'd always been a walking, talking, and insulting anomaly.

The Russian assassin should have been floating lifelessly at the bottom of the Thames. She had no business standing in Carolyn's living room at that moment, arguing about the impossibility of it all as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

Villanelle smirked in familiar fashion, reading all of Eve's transparent emotions reflected on her face.

But her green eyes told of her unspeakable sorrow at Eve's last memory of her before they were separated.

"You can't get rid of me that easily. No one can." She shot an unreadable look at Carolyn over Eve's head.

"You used your…'bedroom eyes' to distract me!"

Carolyn shuddered involuntarily at this.

"Sue me." Villanelle's stoic mask morphed into a sly one. "Then hold me in contempt."

"I will stab you again if you don't give me back my gun."

"Stop. You're giving me a lady boner."

"Even if you're not really dead, why are you defending Carolyn? She tried to kill you!" Eve fumed irately.

"Not really."

Eve scoffed. "Don't tell me you actually believe her bull-crap! You got lucky because she missed!"

"It wasn't luck, Eve. Mum saved Villanelle…after giving orders to shoot her. The MI6 agents who were on the bridge that night missed their killshots on purpose."

That voice.

It couldn't be.

Much like the time when Eve watched Niko get stabbed through the neck with a pitchfork right in front of her, she could feel the mania of insanity bubbling over into her psyche yet again.

Villanelle could see the telltale signs of Eve falling apart before anyone else. "Oh…shit…"

Naturally, Eve screamed bloody soprano-esque murder when she finally dared to turn around, her eyes fastening on Kenny of all people standing in his living room, as if he'd never left.

"What the shit? What…how…oh." Her eyes rolled into the backs of their sockets as she stumbled backwards.

"Timber!" Villanelle cried, catching Eve deftly in her arms before she could collapse onto the expensive rug. "Woof, and heavy like a dead tree, too."

"Well, this is off to a smashing start," Carolyn quipped dryly.

When Eve came to seconds later, she found herself standing at a strange angle, and in Villanelle's oddly reassuring embrace.

And standing in front of her was someone she thought she'd never see again.

His brown hair was shaggier than she remembered, but he wore a polo shirt and shorts on a cold winter's night - just like always.

Kenny smiled, waving uncomfortably. "Hi, Eve."

Somehow, Eve stared in consternation at her ex-co-worker at a 75-degree angle.

"It's alright, Eve." Villanelle didn't believe that for a second, but she somehow sensed it was the right thing to say in the moment.

"Kenny?"

"Yeah, it's really me. I promise."

Eve's brown eyes filled with unshed tears. "You shouldn't be here. I watched you die."

Her bottom lip trembled as she thought back to that hideous afternoon when she thought she would reunite with an old friend only to have that happy fate cruelly ripped away from her like everything else when he'd fallen more than ten storeys off the rooftop of Bitter Pill, his old company, to his death.

Kenny sighed and Villanelle was struck by how familiar the sad notes were to her. "Konstantin was supposed to kill me that day, but made another deal with MI6 beforehand instead in exchange for giving them information about the bank account he stole six million Euros from. Long story short, Mum kept me hidden away in a safe house in Edinburgh while she figured out who inside The Twelve ordered Konstantin to kill me while looking into their finances."

"Based on Kenny's findings, we managed to secure the name of The Twelve's accountant: Herman Schultz, a banker originally from Lichtenstein. We finally ran him to ground; he was in hiding in a time-share in the Cayman Islands registered to a shell company we traced back to the bank account Konstantin stole from. From there, we found a few more names at the top of the food chain."

Carolyn looked far too pleased with herself, which made Eve want to shoot her even more.

Eve wrenched herself free from Villanelle's grip, a terrible look on her face. "Why did you do all of this, Carolyn?!"

The red-head's smile was simplicity itself. "I am a spy, Eve. We play chess with countries and people in service of the greater good."

"I am not…a fucking pawn, Carolyn. Not anymore."

Villanelle said nothing, but her answering glare echoed Eve's sentiment.

For her part, Carolyn was thoroughly unapologetic, as always. "What's done is done. There is still much work to do. All you need to know is that your efforts weren't in vain."

"Yay for us," Villanelle snapped.

"I know Mum's methods are…unconventional." Kenny stole a glance at the complex woman who'd brought him into the world. "But we're so much closer to taking the entire organisation down."

Eve smiled sadly at this. "Maybe so, but look what it cost us, Kenny."

The young man bowed his head. "I know, Eve. Look, I'm sorry I didn't get in touch sooner, but it wasn't safe for either of us and —"

Eve ignored Kenny's apology, launching herself into his arms. "You bastard," she muttered, running an affectionate hand through his dishevelled hair. "I've missed you so fucking much."

Despite his discomfort with physical affection, Kenny was extremely touched by Eve's gesture as he hugged her back, albeit awkwardly. "Me too, Eve."

Villanelle cleared her throat dramatically. "Get a room."

Just then, a figure burst into the living room, startling everyone in the process. "Did I miss it?!"

Carolyn collected herself and glared at the woman. "I'm afraid so."

"I'm really sorry, Carolyn. The traffic was a fucking nightmare, especially with the rain. Not to mention a fuel truck that overturned somewhere near Piccadilly, it was an absolute shit show."

She stopped and gazed briefly at the list of absurd characters currently situated in the head of MI6's living room. "Well, not as bad as this, at any rate."

Eve closed her eyes and rubbed feverishly at her aching temples. "I cannot deal with any more fucking surprises tonight."

"Eve, please."

"Am I some kind of joke to all of you?! Especially you?!" The Asian woman was inexplicably irate, especially at Villanelle of all people.

Villanelle pulled a funny face. "Uh…is that a trick question?"

"Why…do you…always…leave me? Every fucking time…"

Eve thumped her fists against Villanelle's chest over and over again, sobbing uncontrollably and repeating her pained mantra seemingly without end. When one thump could finally be distinguished from another as her actions finally slowed, Villanelle engulfed Eve in a fierce bear hug, murmuring soothing words of comfort as her lady love cried bitterly into her shoulder.

Carolyn eyed the reunion between the two lovers with increasing displeasure. "Well, this has been altogether unpleasant. Kenny, make some tea for Eve, I have some calls to make."

Eve finally turned her attention to her old friend, smiling awkwardly from the corner of the room. "Elena…what are you doing here?"

"Carolyn asked me to come and…stop you from murdering her."

Villanelle eyed her dubiously. "And you did a great job with that."

Elena frowned at this. "Well, I read between the lines after Carolyn explained the situation. Her actual words were 'Come in support of Eve tonight. She'll likely be in shock after learning everything, she'll need a friend'."

"And instead, she got you," Villanelle quipped with a sardonic smile painted on her face.

Eve let out a bark of disbelieving laughter as she slowly paced around the living room sofa.

"So, you knew about Kenny too this whole time?"

"God, no! Carolyn only told me a week ago about Kenny. This bell-end and I had our big reunion during an evening at the West End."

A pained grimace settled on Eve's face. "How delightful."

Elena stared between Eve and Villanelle's entwined hands. "So…you two are really together?"

While Eve nodded meekly, Villanelle stared unblinkingly at Eve's former colleague, wishing she'd give her an excuse to slit her throat.

Elena grinned mirthlessly. "This must be fun for Niko."

"Oh, he's very happy for us," Villanelle interjected sweetly. "He even wrote a special poem saying how he always knew I was a better husband for Eve than him. And that all my fake moustaches are a million times cooler than his real but stupid one."

Eve palmed her forehead in exasperation.

Elena laughed mirthlessly yet again. "Right. Bill would have a field day over this. But oddly enough, I feel like he'd understand somehow. Me on the other hand - I still need convincing."

"We'll get right on that." Baring her pearly whites made Villanelle's honeyed smile look more like a tiger's growl.

"Be nice, Oksana. We don't murder friends." Eve sing-songed.

"She's not my friend. You could do better."

"Charming," Elena deadpanned with an icy smile. "Since I've essentially failed my mission tonight, I'm going to drink a tall glass of white wine in my own home and rethink all the career moves I've made in the past 5 years. I still don't fancy getting murdered thanks to you lot. Still glad you've un-deaded yourself somehow, Kenny."

She gave both Kenny and Eve a quick but affectionate hug, murmuring something along the lines of 'call me when you can' before leaving through the front door.

Eve rubbed Villanelle's arm in a soothing manner. "She'll come around."

"Can't wait." Despite her open sarcasm, Villanelle shot Eve a look that said her words were more barbed than her true feelings.

"Elena and I watched 'The Lion King'…at The West End." Kenny piped up unexpectedly, even though no one had actually posed the question.

"So…what happens now?" Despite her bravado, Villanelle was extremely nervous about the answer.

"Mum says you're free to go and live your lives, whatever that means in your case. So, I guess…don't murder anymore people?" Kenny suggested.

"Aww, but I haven't hit my epic kill count yet," Villanelle whined jokingly, which earned her an elbow in the ribs from Eve.

Kenny eventually made Eve that cup of tea. And when she'd finished the entire thing, it felt as if it was the best thing she'd ever tasted.

Villanelle opted for a glass of the Macallan, secretly delighting in the fact that she was decreasing its value with every sip.

Two unnamed MI6 agents arrived soon after with instructions to transport Villanelle and Eve to a safe house until further notice.

Carolyn descended from the staircase as they were about to leave.

Eve purposely knocked shoulders with the redhead as she exited through the front door. "This isn't over."

Carolyn sighed. "I never imagined for a second that it would be."

---

The drive to the safe house was mostly done in silence with both Villanelle and Eve trying and failing to process everything that had happened in the past month.

The driver stopped briefly at a massive iron gate where their credentials were checked by a security guard.

They were admitted onto the property and drove for several miles through a long stretch of forest.

The safe house itself was blanketed between the lush foliage and extremely modern with surveillance cameras everywhere.

When they exited the car and one of the MI6 agents entered a code on a digital screen beside the front door, they went inside.

She and Eve discovered a surprisingly homely interior with an open-plan living space, a cosy kitchen and bedrooms on the first landing and upstairs.

In her minimal experience with these situations, Eve wondered if this safe house was normally designated for politicians and other dignitaries whose lives were threatened.

Though neither of them had brought luggage, the two agents who had accompanied them presented them with suitcases containing appropriate clothing in their sizes and accompanying feminine hygiene products.

After they had eaten some ramen noodles heated up in the microwave, they made their way upstairs.

For a long time, Eve stood by the open window, her arms folded as she stared at nothing in the darkened garden below.

"Eve…are you…ok?"

Despite being punch-drunk in love with the former MI6 agent, Villanelle still had trouble being fully invested in caring about another person's well-being without traumatic repercussions.

She'd learnt that the hard way after trying to avenge Anna all those years ago and receiving only disgust in return from the first woman she had ever loved.

Still, she'd tried on numerous occasions with Konstantin when he was still her handler, but even he had kept her at arm's length for most of their professional relationship.

It was different with Eve, though.

After two years of their mutual obsession with one another, Villanelle genuinely wanted to try harder to be…good for her and good to her.

Eve turned met Villanelle's gaze, inwardly musing at what looked like genuine concern for her well-being in her green eyes.

Despite the strangeness of the situation, Eve found herself smiling. "Not really. Everything feels incredibly fucked up, just like always. But…I'm happy that you're not dead."

Villanelle chewed on her bottom lip while leaning against the wall. "Me too. I like not being dead."

Eve's gaze grew more serious. "I really like you not being dead too. Even with that time I once stabbed you in Paris."

"Ah, but that was more of a 'love tap', when you think about it. You were just showing your deep affection for me." Villanelle wore a giant smirk on her face.

Eve rolled her eyes. "I was in fact trying to kill you, you know."

"I know, but you didn't. Just like when I shot you in Rome."

"And in both cases, we neglected to check for signs of life."

"I know. Aren't we perfect together?" Eve was surprised that Villanelle actually meant it.

Villanelle approached Eve cautiously, trying her best not to scare her off. "We have a lot to talk about, but not tonight. You almost shot Carolyn earlier and you found out that both Kenny and I are alive. I know it's a lot, so why don't we just…take a break for now? We'll shower, put on cute pyjamas, and just sleep, ok?"

Eve smiled gratefully at the thoughtful suggestion. "That sounds amazing, actually."

"All my ideas are amazing." Villanelle scrunched up her face in an adorable smile that made her dimples show.

They showered and dressed for bed separately.

Eve was surprised when Villanelle exited the bathroom 20 minutes after her, her long blonde hair damp and wearing a long night shirt with a Barbie print on it.

A stark contrast to her far more adult silken negligee with spaghetti straps. She'd left her wild mane of curly hair down too.

Villanelle toed awkwardly at the carpet in front of the bed while looking over Eve's appearance. "You look pretty."

Eve's brown eyes radiated with warmth. "Thanks. So do you."

It was a marvel when Villanelle smiled just as brightly in turn.

They climbed tentatively under the covers, feeling very unsure of the moment.

Eve reached over to the pedestal near her and switched off the lamp, enveloping them in darkness.

Villanelle turned on her side without facing Eve, trying to adjust both her mind and body to sharing a bed with the woman she'd been in love with for the better part of three years.

Eve mimicked the blonde's actions so she was situated right behind her.

Searching for anything to say in the moment, Villanelle finally settled on "This is a nice bed."

"Yip."

"The thread count feels very high too - at least 600."

"I wouldn't know. At one point, Niko wanted us to adopt geese so we could make our own sustainable bedding."

Villanelle snorted with laughter at this. "Why did you ever marry that tree-hugging donkey?"

"Because I loved him," Eve answered with dignity.

"Haven't you heard? Love hurts more than a gunshot to the chest."

Eve traced imaginary lines over a specific spot on the back of Villanelle's sleep shirt. "Does it hurt?"

Villanelle didn't need any clues to guess what Eve was talking about. "Mostly when it's cold. Which is basically all the fucking time in England."

When she regained consciousness weeks ago, Carolyn had told her that the doctor who operated on her had to remove the bullet shards from her heart by making a large incision through her back.

Even now, the muscles in that area still pulled taut without warning at any given moment, forcing her into spasms of unimaginable pain.

Even when someone is trying to save me, they always stab me in the fucking back.

Eve hesitated ever so slightly before gently wrapping her arms around Villanelle from behind.

The blonde woman tensed instantly at the sudden contact. She'd gone so long without feeling the authentically affectionate touches of someone who genuinely cared for her.

Eve had done more than break through her once-impenetrable walls; she'd torn them down completely.

It took some doing, but Villanelle gradually relaxed into the older woman's embrace.

She was suddenly very aware of every line and curve on Eve's lithe body, the older woman's breasts melding into the arches of her own back.

It was both strange and wonderful simultaneously.

"Love does hurt a lot," Eve agreed unexpectedly.

There wasn't anything else to add. Any words that still threatened to bubble from their chests would keep till the morning.

It wasn't long before their hearts slowed and synced up, soon beating calmly and methodically as one when they finally fell asleep.

---

Villanelle woke with a jerking sensation hours later. The safe house was quiet, and darkness surrounded her.

For a moment, she mistook the drops of sweat that had formed on her body for the cold, clammy sensation of a river.

She heard quiet whimpers emanating in the room she and Eve slept in.

She turned when she realised that the hapless sounds were coming from Eve herself.

With eyes closed, the Asian woman shivered and hugged herself in her sleep, pained murmurs leaving her trembling lips. "Villanelle."

The blonde woman turned around at this and switched on the lamp.

"No, you can't. Do do this."

"Stop! Come back. We have to get out of the water, you'll freeze…"

The Thames.

Of fucking course.

The assassin had experienced the exact same nightmare for weeks too. She could only imagine how much worse it had been for Eve that night.

Villanelle had never seen someone filled with so much raw terror that she wasn't personally trying to murder.

This was somehow more horrifying than the possibility of ending a life: seeing a life that would still persist, but fraught with more pain than just bleeding out.

Eve flailed haplessly about in her sleep, her movements becoming increasingly agitated. "Villanelle, stop leaving me! You can't fucking leave me again!"

When gentle touches didn't wake the older woman up, Villanelle grabbed hold of her and shook her awake.

"Wake up, dammit!"

Even as Eve became consciously aware of her surroundings, she was far too distraught over her nightmare to be rational in any sense.

"Eve, shut up, it's ok. I'm here, I'm real."

"No, no, please!"

Villanelle pinned Eve's arms at her sides while hugging her fiercely, trying desperately to make her feel the brutal tangibility of her presence. "I'm not gone."

She cupped the back of the older woman's head, taking that precious moment to breathe her in and convince her just as much.

Tears gushed from Eve's eyes. "I can't anymore, Oksana. I just can't keep losing you."

Even if she were to really die next time, she would haunt Eve with an all-consuming, fearsome love that would never leave her.

"I can't lose you anymore either, Eve," Villanelle whispered against her neck. "We have to be together, or I'll really die."

It was the gentle kiss on her cheek that did Eve in.

It reminded her all too forcefully of their last day together on the road, when Villanelle had kissed her so sweetly in the exact same spot.

It had been the start of something truly terrifying and remarkable, which got ripped away from both of them hours later.

The agony of it all made Eve gasp sharply as more tears streamed from her brown eyes.

Though only one tear had slid from Villanelle's eye, her hurt was just as palpable. "I'm here, baby. I love you so much."

Somewhere in the midst of their raw pain, their lips searched frantically and found one another, banishing the darkness for a sweet and unexpected second.

In an instant, Villanelle had yanked down the straps of Eve's lingerie, laying raw kisses over her bare shoulder and neck while rubbing her breasts through the filmy fabric.

Eve closed her eyes, moaning sharply at the heady sensations being wrenched out of her with every painstaking touch.

But she missed her so intensely, their kisses being the only thing that could stave her longing, even for a few, bright seconds.

She needed to feel alive.

She needed Villanelle.

The younger woman watched in silence as Eve's fingers fumbled with her Barbie night shirt, pulling it over her head and tossing it somewhere on the floor behind them.

It was strange seeing Villanelle in a state of undress.

Even on their last day together in the van, they hadn't removed all their clothes. There had only been enough time to savour their sweet union before demolishing The Twelve, their world coming to an abrupt and inexplicable end hours later.

But now…she could finally see all of Villanelle.

Even the crude scars that decorated her pale skin in dark intervals were a work of art as she knelt on the bed in her underwear.

"You're stunning."

Countless lovers had said it to Villanelle before, but it felt even sweeter coming from Eve's lips, knowing it was genuine and that she felt it was true too.

"So are you."

She let Eve take charge for a few minutes, sliding her underwear down past her thighs, moaning loudly at the feel of her lips dancing over her breasts.

She sensed that Eve needed this, needed to feel every inch of her to know beyond a doubt that she had cheated Death yet again, that they could finally be together.

Eve felt a chill when Villanelle pulled off her lingerie and underwear, but her arms had already closed the gap soon after, sending heat straight to the part where she needed her most.

Villanelle fell back against the pillow, pulling Eve down with her. She raked her hands over her naked thighs, prompting Eve to spread her legs while straddling her.

Eve moaned sharply, arching backwards as Villanelle dipped a tantalising finger into her wet warmth. Then she claimed her for herself after three fucking years, thrusting powerfully in and out.

Her imagination hadn't captured the secret paradise that was Eve's hips working furiously over hers, her breasts bouncing to and fro as she rode her slender fingers with total abandon.

A sloppy, writhing mess - just how Villanelle liked her prey.

There was something feral in Eve's splendid black curls framing her face, her brown eyes now pitch black with desire in the darkened room.

Villanelle's other hand worked feverishly at Eve's breast, rubbing and pinching the nipple as she fucked all the pain right out of her.

Her elbow was killing her holding it at this insane angle, but Villanelle didn't care. She'd happily break herself into tiny shards of agony if it meant that Eve could smile without an ounce of sadness for the rest of her life.

And Eve thanked her properly during panting intervals, dropping her head to meld their hot mouths together before rising up and riding her fingers again and again.

It felt oddly normal and domestic to be having sex in a bed after all this time, and with someone she loved to boot.

Villanelle hated how happy it made her feel in the moment.

Seeing the Asian woman in a complete state of utter abandon made Villanelle's centre tingle with mounting want.

She had bitten her bottom lip so hard watching Eve's sensual hips moving above her that she'd actually drawn blood.

Eve covered their mouths again so she could lick it up, right before biting down on the same wound to draw out more of that coppery warmth.

It felt better to only kill Villanelle bit by bit in this manner instead of thinking that all her life had been drained away in the Thames four weeks ago.

"I'm almost there," Eve muttered through closed eyes, feeling her body tensing up in the most beautiful way with three of Villanelle's fingers curled inside of her. "Choke me while I cum."

"Huh?"

For a moment, Villanelle still wasn't sure that Eve had said the words, even though she distinctly saw her lover's lips moving and forming each surprising syllable.

Her clit tingled at the delightful request, but the blonde assassin erred on the side of caution anyway. "Are you sure?"

Eve nodded rapidly, rotating her hips so sensually it made Villanelle want to scream bloody murder. "Do it."

Villanelle nodded below her, picking up the pace with her thrusts, her other hand moving slowly around her lover's neck.

"Let go, Eve."

Eve's eyes rolled into the back of her skull when Villanelle squeezed her throat so forcefully while brushing her thumb over her aching clit.

As the oxygen stayed trapped and expanded in her lungs, Eve felt her vision blur till all she saw and felt was Villanelle grinding into her from below, squeezing the life out of her.

Eve didn't see stars so much as whole asteroids crashing and splintering into jagged boulders of pure ecstasy as she came fast and hard.

When she'd tell Villanelle about the sensation later, the younger woman would smirk and attest that she'd 'rocked her world'.

Eve couldn't even begrudge her that terrible pun. It was hands down the best orgasm of her existence.

Villanelle gingerly removed her hand from Eve's throat, letting the older woman collapse gratefully against her in exhaustion, her breath rattling hoarsely out of her chest.

"Are you ok?" The blonde's tone was flat, but her green eyes radiated with concern.

Eve nodded, chuckling shakily in-between coughing soon after.

"Just give me a few seconds to recover."

Villanelle smirked widely in disbelief. "You really want more of that?"

"I always want more of you."

Even in the dimly lit room, it was hard not to notice Eve's tanned skin tinted with rouge from her sudden confession.

Villanelle grabbed her chin and forced Eve to look her in the eyes. "Then fucking have me."

Keeping her eyes locked on the blonde, Eve started with soft kisses all over.

She was enthralled with Villanelle's body. So petite, yet strong and riddled with mysterious blemishes that traversed her pale skin at every sinewy juncture.

The Russian assassin had never elaborated on her total number of kills over the years; Eve could only surmise that the true figure must be in the hundreds. So much death had followed Villanelle; most of it done by her hand.

Eve longed to know what each scar meant, and what the cost had been for Villanelle to carry each one forever.

She ran a devout tongue over the chiselled muscles on her stomach near the scar she'd left behind in Paris till the blonde quivered beneath her, thrusting her hips upwards as she begged for more friction.

"Eve, please," Villanelle groaned. "I need you too."

The raven-haired beauty was only too happy to oblige as she sank between Villanelle's legs and ate her alive.

It was easy for Villanelle to disappear into herself during sex. The pleasure would mount, and she would float away right along with it.

It seemed that Eve could sense this too.

Whenever it happened now, Villanelle was brought sharply back to reality with a squeeze of her breast, a scratch of nails against her skin as Eve thrusted powerfully in and out of her with her tongue.

She was savage and relentless, keeping Villanelle on the precipice of her orgasm till the younger woman might have slit her throat to have any kind of satisfaction.

"Don't fucking tease," Villanelle begged.

Eve chuckled against her pussy lips, sending delicious vibrations straight through the blonde's core.

Then she was back at it: dipping in and out of her like it was her job.

Like they had all the time in the world, she ran her tongue languidly over Villanelle's aching clit, making her stomach clench in pleasure.

Villanelle started tugging on her hair and it hurt, but Eve ignored it.

She wanted the pain from this to chase away the lingering guilt of persuading Villanelle to help her take down The Twelve in the first place.

If she hadn't, Villanelle would have either stayed safely on Gunn's island in Scotland, or left and still been far away from the fray.

It was Eve's fault that she'd almost died.

"Harder," Villanelle commanded, her knees shaking with the effort.

Eve could only obey, her jaw aching from bringing Villanelle closer and closer to her peak.

With a final swipe of her tongue over her clit, the blonde arched upwards, her orgasm rocketing through her.

Soon, Eve was drenched in Villanelle's sensual essence. It had been quickly become her favourite scent; ahead of the expensive perfume the Russian assassin had adopted as her professional alias.

Villanelle sank back against the pillow, her whole body slack and satiated.

Eve had never seen the assassin quite so…relaxed before.

There was no taunting snigger or sneer anywhere in sight. Only wide green eyes that gazed back at her in a mesh of wonder and puzzlement.

Eve offered silent clarity with more chaste kisses as the seconds ticked by.

When they were through, they lay on their backs for a while, staring vacantly at the ceiling while trying to chase their thoughts and breaths.

"Wow," Eve murmured.

"Yeah," was all that Villanelle could verbalise in the moment. "That was amazing."

"Really amazing," Eve agreed wholeheartedly.

"Why the hell didn't we fuck sooner? And why did we wait to do it in a shitting van first?"

Villanelle's innate crassness sent Eve into transports of maniacal laughter.

Soon, the blonde woman was laughing too till her belly ached. The more they chanced looks at one another, the harder they laughed.

When they finally calmed down, they turned on their sides to face each other in familiar fashion.

Villanelle's green eyes raked over Eve's naked body in a mesh of lust and paranoia.

She had to make sure she didn't have a knife stashed on her for old times' sake.

"Seriously though. Why did we wait so long?"

Eve studied Villanelle's face, which was half in shade from the dim bedside lamp behind her. She seemed genuinely curious.

Eve sighed audibly. "Because you're you…and I'm me."

Villanelle nodded, leaning forward and tucking a stray tendril of Eve's curly hair behind an ear. "We are two halves of the same coin."

"Yeah."

"We're really fucking stupid."

"No arguments here."

An earlier moment of sheer idiocy wedged its way into Eve's mind, filling her with dazed chagrin.

"I was really going to kill Carolyn tonight."

"I know." Villanelle looked sobered by the thought.

"I might still do it," Eve murmured darkly.

"I don't give a shit about her right now." Villanelle was strangely matter of fact about it too. "Four weeks ago, I was dead. And now…I'm lying on a bed with you and for once, no one is trying to fucking kill us."

Eve's brown eyes glowed intensely at this. "The night is still young."

This made the Russian woman snort with laughter once more.

Genuine, belly-aching laughter with none of the usual snark, too.

Heat simmered in Eve's chest, and she reached for Villanelle, tracing her fingers lightly over her pale arm. "I missed you so goddamn much," she whispered into the night.

Villanelle's dimples appeared and she leant closer, melding their lips together.

Soon, their kisses deepened and gathered momentum as their hunger grew, a lusty haze enveloping their trembling bodies.

Eve had once predicted that if she went down this road with Villanelle, they'd consume one another. In that moment, a death of such frenzied variety didn't seem so bad after all, not when she had felt starved her whole life.

She shuddered to think of a time when she might not crave Villanelle on a cellular level. The thought was a betrayal now to everything she'd come to know and love about the Russian assassin.

In the midst of their passionate embrace, Villanelle rolled on top of Eve, pinning the Asian beauty beneath her.

Eve moaned sharply at the feel of the assassin's lips ghosting painstakingly over her right breast and moving back up towards her collarbone. "Villanelle…"

"You're mine."

Those same words had once repulsed Eve like nothing else. But now, she wanted Villanelle to scream it from every rooftop within a 10-mile radius.

She'd been hers ever since the day they'd first met in a hospital bathroom and Villanelle had told her to wear her curly hair down instead of tying it up.

"I fucking love you, Eve," Villanelle whispered with sweet intensity.

This time, Eve actually believed her.

"I want more nights like this," Villanelle piped up unexpectedly.

Eve smirked at this. "Not bored yet?"

Villanelle scrunched her nose adorably, shaking her head. "You finally stopped being boring."

That earned her a loud scoff and eye roll from the raven-haired woman.

"How long do we have to stay here?" Villanelle asked curiously.

"Dunno. Probably till Carolyn says it's safe for us to disappear."

"And now that The Twelve are gone, we're free to do whatever we want?"

Eve shrugged. "You only killed the heads of The Twelve, Villanelle. Their organisation and networks still need to be completely dismantled so they can't reform again, that's what Carolyn says at least. But I don't trust her, not anymore. She's always working some angle."

"Yeah, like keeping me alive," Villanelle muttered.

"What do you want to do?" Eve asked curiously.

Villanelle thought it over for several seconds. "Killing people is fun."

She'd half expected Eve to refute her or slap her on the back of her head.

She definitely hadn't expected Eve to respond with 'Killing bad people is better', looking as pensive as if she was ordering new windowpanes online.

"You're right," Villanelle agreed. "When I was in Cuba, I met a woman who cooked and cleaned at the safe house where Carolyn was. She had a bastard husband who beat her and she asked me to kill him."

The surprise was evident on Eve's tanned face. "Did you?"

Villanelle smiled reminiscently. "I shoved a fire hose into his stupid mouth and pulled the lever."

Eve let that information sink into her post-orgasm brain before she let out a dry chuckle. "Of course you did. Let me guess: he was a firefighter?"

"How the hell did you know that?!"

Eve rested her head under her arm while studying her young lover's face. "You love taking away the power of that one thing which someone holds most dear to them and using it as a catalyst for their pending demise."

Villanelle thought on it, becoming more and more pleased with the idea. "I really do! Every kill is like poetry for me."

"You should do it again and help more women in need by getting rid of their bastard husbands."

"You wouldn't let me get rid of your bastard husband." The blonde assassin was still decidedly sulky about the Polish high school teacher, even after all this time.

"Niko wasn't the bastard, I was," Eve said matter-of-factly.

Villanelle inched forward till she and Eve were a mere whisper apart. "He was holding you back. That is the definition of a bastard."

Eve ignored the barbed insult aimed at her ex-husband. "I loved Niko, but I wasn't truly afraid of losing him till I saw him get pitchforked in the neck right in front of me. It was the same with you when you got shot on the boat."

Villanelle's green eyes darkened with sadness, but she stayed quiet.

"I'm tired of being powerless, made to feel afraid of my own shadow. The Twelve, Carolyn…they tried to take you away from me, I won't ever let that happen again."

"Good. Because the Thames is cold as shit."

"I'm serious, Villanelle. You should start your own agency to help these women. It felt good, right?"

"Yeah, it did."

"Then you should do it. Take on a few rich bitches first to cover admin fees and the like, then move further down the food chain to help those who can't help themselves."

Great, communism.

I thought I left Russia to get away from that dumb ideological shit.

"What about you?"

"I can dust off my Languages degree and take up a translator job somewhere. I still have my contacts from the security firm Yusuf and I worked at before. It means I can keep looking into what's left of The Twelve and their allies, figure out what Carolyn's next move will be."

"And then what? Kill her?"

Eve met Villanelle's questioning gaze without blinking. "Eventually. But first, I want to know what else Carolyn found in Lars Meier's ledger."

Villanelle furrowed her eyebrows. "Lars Meier? I thought you killed him."

"I did, but Carolyn told me she found a ledger on his body after I left. I broke into Carolyn's office weeks ago and made copies before I went to Russia."

Villanelle raised an eyebrow at this. "You have been busy while you thought I was dead."

"Someone's gotta pay for all the screwed up shit we've been through."

Villanelle propped her elbow onto the pillow. "You're serious."

"I am."

"It's a stupid plan."

"It's so stupid, it's brilliant."

"Or so stupid that it's really stupid. You know that Carolyn wants you, both of us, to go after the rest of The Twelve, right? That's probably the reason I'm not dead."

"Probably. I figured that out earlier when you appeared out of nowhere. It keeps Carolyn's hands clean if it appears that an unknown force is cleaning up shop while she curries favour with MI6. It also covers up the fact that she was probably working for The Twelve all along and covering her tracks."

"Yahtzee. Which is exactly why we should run in the opposite direction. It will be dangerous."

"I know."

"Carolyn will try to kill us again, even if we succeed."

"You're probably right."

"You really are a psycho," Villanelle murmured in disbelief.

Eve leant forward and gave the blonde a cute, Eskimo kiss. "You love it."

---

They remained at the safe house for a few more weeks till they received new identity papers, courtesy of MI6.

After that, they left England and travelled for a while, at first to visit some of Villanelle's old haunts so she could collect money and fake passports she'd stashed away for future safekeeping.

Then they travelled just for the hell of it, just to be with each other.

After doing some island hopping in Southeast Asia and returning to Europe weeks later, Villanelle jokingly suggested that they pay a visit to Niko, who had permanently relocated to Poland after nearly being pitchforked to death by Dasha.

Eve had raised an elegant eyebrow at the suggestion. "When Niko told me to 'piss off forever', I think that included you too."

Villanelle roared with laughter the first time Eve ever told her that story about her old handler trying to murder Niko and blame it on her to drive a wedge between the two of them.

"I take back what I said. Niko is very funny." Villanelle chortled, which earned her a punch in the gut from Eve.

They ended up getting an apartment in Paris, similar to Villanelle's old one, where they set up shop for the foreseeable future.

Given that Villanelle was still very much in recovery mode after taking down The Twelve, Eve convinced her to do rehab to regain her former physique.

Villanelle would die before admitting it, but rehab had done more than just heal her body. It gave her back that fighting spirit she'd lost some of after getting shot in the back with a crossbow by Gunn and nearly drowning in the Thames weeks later.

Once she was fully recovered, she and Eve got started on their various plans.

It took some doing and lots of arguments about how to proceed, but in time, Villanelle begrudgingly admired Eve's tenacity for planning and collating a database of possible outcomes.

As time went on, Villanelle took on more jobs as word spread of her specific skill-set amongst the not-so-niche demographic of unhappy wives in Paris.

It seemed there was an endless supply of bastard husbands to get rid of. She even got Pam to do some freelance clean up work for her whenever there was a body that needed to be gotten rid of under unusual circumstances.

Pam especially loved embalming the bastard husbands who looked and sounded like her own brother, whom she had murdered months ago.

Eve only assisted with the admin side of Villanelle's revenge agency from time to time, if only to make sure that her girlfriend didn't spend too much of her hard-earned money on expensive clothes and perfumes alone.

Her translator job only took a few hours out of the day, leaving the rest of her time to research The Twelve and love Villanelle with complete abandon.

And whenever there was time left over, Villanelle took great pleasure in expanding Eve's repertoire of unique fighting skills beyond Yusuf's initial training.

"You fight like a girl," Villanelle panted after pinning Eve down yet again.

"I am a girl, dumbass," Eve grunted.

She aimed a low kick at Villanelle's shin to throw her off-balance, then elbowed her sharply in the ribs to get clear of her altogether.

Villanelle guffawed at this. "Not bad, Polastri."

She combat-rolled off to the side, retrieving a small blade she'd stashed in her ankle holster as she righted herself.

Eve was on her feet once more, her poker face in place as she reached for a blade of her own off a nearby table. "Don't patronise me."

Villanelle curled her bottom lip into a cute pout. "I wouldn't dream of it."

She leapt forward with cat-like agility, the blade in her right hand gleaming menacingly.

While Eve had come far with her hand-to-hand combat training, her skill with a knife during a fight was very much still in its infancy.

It didn't help that Villanelle always teased her about it. The scars of shallow cuts all along her arms and ankles from their previous lessons were torturous enough.

Today, Eve was determined not to let Villanelle rile her up.

Her heart leapt in her throat at the blonde's feral movements as she went in for the kill.

She only managed to graze Eve's left arm before the raven-haired woman retaliated by slashing at her right hand in turn.

Eve aimed a punch at Villanelle's gut with her free hand, then her wrist to dislodge the knife, sending it clattering noisily onto the ground.

But even without a blade, Villanelle was still much stronger and wilier than Eve.

She feinted to and fro, throwing Eve off-balance as they continued their lethal dance.

Her fist connected with Eve's right cheek, sending the older woman off-kilter.

With a deft sweep of the leg, Eve landed on her back with a loud thud, dropping her own knife.

In an instant, Villanelle had straddled Eve, her knife once more in her hand.

Before she could strike, Eve grabbed at Villanelle's hands holding the blade, grunting with the effort of trying not to let the seasoned assassin stab her in the throat.

For such a slight build, Villanelle was incredibly strong.

Eve knew this from gazing far too long at the chiselled muscles on the blonde's pale stomach whenever they showered together.

Villanelle grinned wickedly, practically hearing Eve's lewd thoughts as she forced her knife closer and closer to Eve's face, which was covered in a thick layer of perspiration.

Eve relaxed ever so slightly, making Villanelle think she was giving up.

Then she used her legs instead, wrapping them tightly around the younger woman's skinny frame.

Using the heel of her foot, she buried it into Villanelle's back - right where Gunn had hit her with a crossbow months before.

Villanelle let out a grunt of pain, the grip on her knife lessening a trifle.

Eve used that opportunity to change the position of their bodies, rolling on top of Villanelle with the latter still clutching the knife in her hands.

Eve buried her fingernails deep into Villanelle's flesh, right over the scar she'd made from stabbing her two years ago.

Villanelle shouted in pain and Eve used both hands to knock the knife out of her hands.

Then she used her own hands to pin the younger woman beneath her.

Villanelle had just enough leverage to lean forward, their faces a whisper apart as they continued their grappling match. "You're really cute when you're acting tough."

"Who's acting? I'm not the same woman you sprayed in the face with bath water."

"You wouldn't shut up!"

"You broke into my house!"

"Because you're really cute!"

Villanelle's green eyes inevitably drifted down towards Eve's plump lips.

With her heaving chest, hair fanning her face and blood on her cheek and under her fingernails, the older woman was extremely fuckable.

The blonde traced a lone finger over the expanse of Eve's jawline, making the woman above her shiver with unrestrained pleasure.

"Let's skip training and I'll show you just how cute you really are."

Eve wore a lofty grin, controlling her urges for the moment. "I think the great Villanelle is losing her touch if she feels the need to distract her opponent just to stop herself from losing a fight."

The smug smile had vanished from the blonde's sensual lips as she rolled Eve onto her back once more. "Like hell I have. Let's go again."

Eve smiled evilly before head-butting the blonde in the nose for old times' sake.

---

It was two years later, and Eve and Villanelle had started building quite the life for themselves.

They didn't travel nearly as much now as they did in their past lives as assassin and secret agent.

They occasionally flew back to England incognito to visit Kenny though and kept each other updated on their lives.

He was still working for Bitter Pill while he and Audrey planned their wedding.

In another life, Eve would've wondered how much Carolyn minded seeing her only son finally getting out from under her thumb and becoming his own man, but she didn't care much what upset her old mentor anymore.

To Eve and Villanelle's surprise, Elena finally accepted a tacit invitation to visit them for a week in Paris after they'd lived there together for a year.

While she and Villanelle never really saw eye to eye even afterwards, they kept their remarks to a mere biting level for Eve's sake whenever they interacted.

As time went on, neither Eve or Villanelle hadn't made any official moves (even with their new identities) to declare their relationship to the rest of the world, the way lovers normally would.

Even though she loved Villanelle to distraction, Eve wasn't entirely sure she ever wanted to get married again.

After her rebound wedding in Spain which Dasha had interrupted and made her annull right away, Villanelle seemed even less inclined than Eve to walk down the aisle.

There were still some things they didn't know about each other's pasts and hopes for the future, but they were making steady progress every day, even when they took a million steps back.

It didn't stop them from forging an honest and open relationship that most couples would have found enviable.

So much so that Eve finally took the plunge and invited Villanelle to accompany her while visiting her parents in Toronto for two weeks to officially introduce the younger woman as her girlfriend.

Eve found it amusing that Villanelle was incredible at learning new languages, yet still struggled to speak a feasible amount of Korean.

It didn't help that Eve's Russian had finally reached an intermediate level in contrast.

"Hangul is very different from Cyrillic!" Villanelle complained for the umpteenth time when she made yet another silly, grammatical mistake on one of her translations.

Eve grasped Villanelle's shoulders firmly. "Stop stressing. My family is going to love you."

Then she fused their lips together before her girlfriend could find more reasons to argue about their mother tongues.

While Eve's father remained happily clueless about how his daughter and girlfriend really met, Eve's mother knew better.

She remembered all too well how Eve had spoken with a strange reverence about the female assassin who'd evaded MI6 capture for nearly two years and how similar she spoke about Villanelle now.

She told the two women as much in private when she purposely sent her husband out one day during their visit to buy more kimchi from the grocery store near their home.

While she didn't understand how Eve could've destroyed her own marriage to Niko for someone like Villanelle, she knew there was no point in offering up too much resistance.

Eve had been headstrong since the moment she was born and her mother knew there'd be no talking her out of this just like any of her past fixations.

She begrudgingly conceded that Villanelle was very charming and funny when she wanted to be and seemed to love her daughter a great deal. Plus, she'd never seen Eve look at Niko with so much devotion as she looked at the Russian woman while she clumsily learned to use chop sticks in the Korean style.

The visit back home had been exactly what Eve had needed. She'd kept so many secrets from Niko and her parents about the nature of her work at MI6 for years; it felt good that things were mostly out in the open.

It felt as if Eve had been sleepwalking through her entire life and Villanelle had woken her up to many new and thrilling possibilities.

Like her sexuality.

Eve had always known it would be explosive between them when they finally went down that road together; it was half the reason she'd avoided anything of the kind for so long with Villanelle, because she knew how much she'd wanted it all along.

They devoured one another during each tryst, yet still craved more with every new encounter.

Villanelle had been surprised when Eve had been the one who wanted to experiment more during their many dalliances while she instead craved sensual foreplay and a good cuddle after making love.

Eve was more than happy to give it to her too, sensing that Villanelle had never had this level of trust and intimacy with anyone before her.

Villanelle loved it best when Eve straddled her waist and she could see the raw pleasure etched into her features as they held each other tight and thrusted wildly into each other, not letting up until they were both boneless and satiated.

Though Villanelle was unsure at first about fulfilling Eve's every kink in the bedroom without hurting her physically or emotionally, they finally made up some rules and agreed on a safe word if things ever got too intense.

She remembered that one rainy night when she'd climbed up to the second floor of Eve and Niko's home and watched them having sex from the vantage point of the window.

It had driven her wild with arousal and jealousy seeing them together all those years ago.

Though it was really petty to even think it now, especially when she and Eve were completely devoted to one another, she still promised herself that she would eventually make Eve forget all about her time with her bastard, 70s porn-star-esque, moustache-sporting, first husband.

The assassin took this oath very seriously every time she tied her lover to the bed with industrial-grade zip ties (Eve's idea, not hers) and ate her out or took her roughly from behind against the fridge door with just her fingers or wearing a strap-on when they were both too impatient for release.

It was electric.

Neither woman had ever expected to feel this happy and settled in a long-term relationship.

Villanelle being dragged out of the Thames had given them both a second chance at a new life.

Together.

---

But sometimes, reality sank back in, and Eve began obsessing over The Twelve for weeks on end.

Villanelle was far too used to Eve's fixations by now to be completely annoyed.

But still, she worried sometimes.

It took some doing, but Eve enlisted Elena's help to subtly spy on Carolyn from time to time.

It finally paid off when Elena got word that Carolyn was scheduled to fly to Spain to meet with the head of Interpol about some business related to The Twelve.

Eve and Villanelle knew there'd be no getting around the heavy security detail that would surely be posted around the head of MI6 during her visit with Interpol, so they needed to improvise.

For the first time in a while, Eve and Villanelle found themselves on a flight to Madrid with the sole intention of intercepting Carolyn and getting some much-needed intel.

They rented an apartment across the street from Carolyn's hotel, keeping a strict eye on the head of MI6's movements for days.

The day had finally arrived to put their stealth to good use.

"Oksana…are you sure about this?"

The blonde, who was in the midst of spraying perfume in the air, then spinning around in it, let out a sigh of exasperation. "Yes, I am sure, Eve."

"Because it might be better if I go instead of you—"

Without any warning, Villanelle had Eve pinned against the nearest wall.

Trying to keep as much of her exasperation off her face, the younger woman ran a finger over her lover's jaw. "Eve, we talked about this…" she began in a honeyed tone which always meant trouble for the former MI6 agent.

"I know, but I was thinking—"

"I hope you didn't hurt yourself."

"Will you be serious for one second?!"

"I'm always serious. Now what's really going on in that beautifully big brain of yours?"

Eve fidgeted, unable to meet her girlfriend's eyes. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're not very consistent in these situations. You seem to, you know, go…off-book."

Villanelle raised an elegant eyebrow. "Off-book?"

"These situations call for finesse and a calm demeanour. So, when you're supposed to be tactful, you actually end up being…"

"Murderous?"

"Yes! Crazy murderous…and stabby!"

"But I'm so good at the 'stabby' stuff!"

"Honey, no one's as good at you as the 'stabby stuff'. But you can't do that this time. You know that, right?"

"Of course I do."

"Yeah, but do you really know it?"

Villanelle bristled up instantly. "What's that supposed to mean?!"

"Remember Aaron Peel? You weren't supposed him to kill him; and yet…he's super dead now."

Villanelle laughed mirthlessly, letting Eve go. "How many more times are you going to bring that up? I said I was sorry!"

"You didn't mean it!"

"No, I didn't!" Villanelle shot back. "I did the world a favour - he was a major creep! Way worse than me!"

"Villanelle, Rome was a shit show."

"It was four years ago!"

"Still! We can't be sloppy like that ever again."

"I know that already. So why are you lying to me?"

Eve blinked too many times to be considered normal. "What are you talking about?"

Villanelle smiled sadly. "I thought we were finally trying to be honest with each other, sweetie."

"We are! I mean…I am!"

"No, you're not. Now, tell me why I can't accidentally bump into Carolyn on purpose."

"Because she might shoot you again!"

The air became very still. Villanelle's pale skin felt very cold and clammy all of a sudden, bringing unwanted memories of that night spent in the Thames.

She laid a tentative hand on Eve's arm. "Baby—"

"Don't touch me! I don't need your fucking pity or condescension right now!"

The blonde ignored Eve's angry demeanour, cupping her face gently in her pale hands. "I don't have any of those things for you."

Eve let out a disbelieving chuckle but said nothing else.

"Nothing is going to happen to me."

The Asian woman wrenched herself free from her lover's grasp. "You don't fucking know that!"

"You're right, I don't know that. But guess what? I'm not scared of Carolyn."

Eve smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "You should be."

Villanelle sighed and approached the older woman once more. "We've been over this multiple times, Eve. This isn't like what happened before, we went onto that boat with fucking guns blazing and kicking ass like Chuck Norris. But this is different! We did our research and we planned everything we could."

"I still think I should go instead of you."

"Do you think Carolyn is stupid? She'll see right through you."

"You really think I can't fool her?"

"Sweetie, you couldn't even fool a dog into licking its own arsehole."

"And let me guess: you can?"

"You already know I can. I was trained to do just this: get close to my target and make them trust me," Villanelle said with dignity. "I won't try to play Carolyn for a fool. I'll just tell her what she wants to hear."

"You make it sound so simple."

"I know it won't be easy. But if you break it into little parts, then it's not so scary."

When Eve still didn't look convinced, Villanelle moved closer, resting their foreheads together. "It will be ok because we know what we're up against this time. And we won't take unnecessary risks. But if you want to get rid of The Twelve and Carolyn for good, then we have to do this, ok?"

"You know I trust you, V, but I just get so scared of losing you, I—"

Villanelle pinned Eve against the wall again, but only so she could kiss her. In an instant, Eve forgot her anxieties about what they were about to do, melting instantly into the younger woman's embrace.

"You don't fight fair at all," she complained, closing her eyes and moaning sharply as Villanelle assaulted her collarbone with sensuous open-mouthed kisses.

"You love it," the Russian assassin muttered. "And I love you. So, trust me, ok? This is going to work, I promise."

Eve was still paranoid. But her girlfriend's kisses had done just enough to convert her fear into determined resignation.

---

It was a hot summer's day in the Centro de Madrid. The sidewalks were packed to the rafters with tourists en route to do the usual tours of Parliament and the Royal Palace.

Villanelle would've preferred to be strolling languidly along the Gran Vía with numerous shopping bags trailing at her feet right about now, but she had work to do.

Eve was counting on her, and she'd be damned before she let her woman down.

She followed Carolyn at a safe distance as the older woman walked towards the Plaza Mayor, munching contentedly on a Torrijas, a brioche bread treat soaked in a unique egg and wine batter with a similar consistency and taste to French toasted, dusted to perfection with cinnamon and brown sugar.

The redhead soon stopped at a corner cafe in the popular tourist locale.

As per her request, her security detail was posted several metres away, staying incognito. Not that Carolyn thought she desperately needed protecting; she still had enough wiles and training from her days in the field to take care of herself in a sticky situation.

She chose a table on the pavement in full view of the street since it was such a lovely day with hardly any clouds in the sky.

Villanelle remained near a street vendor's stall containing some vintage looking novels, one of which the Russian assassin pretended to read while secretly keeping Carolyn in her line of sight.

She waited for the redhead to order her meal, then disappear and return from the bathroom in the main indoor section of the cafe before making her move.

"Carolyn!"

If the head of MI6 was surprised to see Villanelle, she gave no indication, her look of surprise seeming genuine.

"OMG, what a small world!"

Villanelle went for broke, enveloping the redhead in a long and awkward hug.

Carolyn's hands remained stiffly at her sides while she pondered on Villanelle's generation and their incessant need for physical touch at the most inappropriate moments.

Villanelle finally pulled away and gave Carolyn an awkward pat on the hip bone.

Her good breeding kicked in finally and a charming smile flitted onto Carolyn's face. "How lovely to see you, Villanelle. Won't you join me?"

Villanelle kept her smile in place as she sat across from the redhead. "Long time no see."

"Indeed. You look well."

The younger woman played self-consciously with a strand of her blonde hair. "Thank you. You look…old."

Carolyn chuckled at this. "Still the same as ever, Villanelle. What brings you to Madrid?"

"What else? The sun and shopping!" Villanelle's usual bravado felt foreign to her own ears. "And you?"

"Business, sadly. A woman's work is never done."

Villanelle clicked her tongue sympathetically. "So true, Carolyn. So true…"

They chatted on trivial matters for a good 15 minutes while Carolyn enjoyed a simple dish of Gambas al Ajillo, or garlic shrimp as English-speaking people would call it, while Villanelle settled for a tall glass of sparkling water.

Carolyn finally brought up the elephant in the room. "Eve isn't with you?"

Villanelle rolled her eyes dramatically. "She's taking a tour of the Prado. Boooooring!"

Carolyn chuckled appreciatively at this. "You two really are an odd couple. I must confess that I initially didn't see the appeal, but I understand better now."

The blonde woman reclined in her chair, a smirk flitting across her nymph-like features. "What can I say? We are birds of a feather. The sex is pretty spectacular, too."

"That, and you're both so hopelessly predictable," Carolyn murmured dryly.

"Eve, maybe. Not me, I am a spontaneous delight."

"That would explain your rather pointed attempts to get close to me earlier. Or did you already forget?"

Carolyn fished the listening device out of her purse which Villanelle had surreptitiously slipped in there during their long and unnecessary hug.

Villanelle was the picture of over-the-top, wide-eyed innocence. "How did that get there?"

"Playing the fool may work on the likes of Eve and your past victims, but you are being utterly transparent. We both know this wasn't an accidental run-in. Why are you really here, Villanelle?"

"I want to come work for you."

"Not killing people?"

"Of course killing people. It's my only transferrable skill-set."

"Why the sudden change of heart? Already bored with killing abusive husbands in the Parisian suburbs? Oh yes, I know all about that," Carolyn murmured in answer to Villanelle's aghast expression.

"Yes, it's very boring, and the complaints from my clients are always the same: 'He gambled away all our savings!' 'He cheated on me!' 'He beats me every night!' 'He tried to kill me!' Big yawn." Villanelle made a big show of cupping her mouth with her hand and emoting a sound of obvious exhaustion.

"While I'm entirely sympathetic to your plight, that offer has long expired. I fear you and I want very different things."

"That's not true. I want to destroy what's left of The Twelve just as much as you do. I seem to recall that I helped you a lot with that before you shot me and left me to drown."

Carolyn ignored the barb and took a sip of her wine. "And what does Eve have to say on the subject?"

It took everything in Villanelle not to grab a spoon and plunge it right through Carolyn's eye socket. It would be so easy to do. She could even come up with a clever pun and tell anyone who asked that she simply 'eye-balled it'.

Villanelle wore a dreamy smile. "Eve just wants me to be fulfilled."

"How touching."

"So…do we have a deal?" The younger woman prompted.

"I think not, Villanelle. You didn't seem very content to continue being an assassin two years ago. I rather think you've lost your touch since then."

Even though she knew they were both playing a game of chess in the moment, the remark still stung Villanelle.

"This is your final word?" She asked somewhat stiffly.

"I'm afraid so. I've always liked you, Villanelle. But I've come to realise over time that we are two entirely different sort of people. You chose your side and I have chosen mine."

Villanelle thought back to that cold, freezing night in the Thames. "Yes, you have."

"You and Eve have built a good life together these past two years. Don't ruin it by living in the past. You saved my life once and I did the same for you in turn, let's leave it at that and go our separate ways."

The Russian's lips puckered ever so slightly as she got to her feet. "I won't pretend I'm not disappointed. We could've made a great team, Carolyn."

In her hearts of hearts, Villanelle had believed it too, once upon a time. Now, the sweet memories she and the older woman had shared just made her feel incredibly sad.

As Villanelle made to leave, Carolyn's hand shot out and grabbed her arm, keeping her in place. "If you get in my way again, I'll ensure that your body never rises from the Thames again. Or perhaps it will be Eve's lifeless corpse on the next occasion."

A chill went up Villanelle's spine at this, but she kept her poker face in place while Carolyn smirked openly at her. "I spared your life in Cuba, Carolyn. I can change my mind any time and kill you too."

She shook herself free and walked away slowly, even though her heart was pounding in her chest.

Carolyn sighed and asked for the bill to be brought to her. Leaving several bank notes on the table, she soon left the cafe.

She passed by a table where a woman sat observing her. She wore a knee-high summery dress with a floral print and a chique, wide-brimmed summer hat over her black, curly hair which left half of her face in shadow.

The figure waited a full minute before she rose from her seat on the sidewalk and moved quietly after the blonde Russian woman.

---

Eve tactfully followed Villanelle on foot at a distance back to their apartment, giving her a whole 5 minutes to herself before joining her upstairs.

She shut the door behind her and locked it. "What happened back there?"

Villanelle stood beside the dining room table with an opened bottle of Nemiroff. Half of the contents were already gone. "You know, just catching up with an old friend who tried to kill me. No big deal."

"Oksana—"

"Don't call me that!" The blonde snapped.

Eve held up her hands appeasingly. "I'm sorry."

The blonde sighed before downing another shot of cranberry vodka.

"Villanelle, just talk to me. Please."

The assassin slammed the empty glass onto the table. "I can't ok. Not right now."

Eve nodded in understanding, moving closer to her lover. "What do you need?"

Villanelle clutched her face with both hands and started laughing. "I need…for everyone…to stop trying to kill me all the shitting time."

Eve interlaced their fingers. "What do you need?"

The blonde felt all her self-imposed defences crumbling the second they locked eyes. "Kiss me."

Eve obeyed, fastening their lips together in a heartbeat.

Even though the sensations were so sweet, just like Villanelle liked, her anger was muting her pleasure.

Villanelle closed her eyes and applied more pressure, nipping sensually at Eve's bottom lip.

In an instant, she'd scooped Eve up into her arms and carried her to their bed, throwing her unceremoniously down onto the bouncy mattress.

Even though Eve wanted to hold Villanelle and comfort her with words, she knew that her lover craved something else.

Keeping her eyes trained on her, Eve quickly lowered the straps of her dress, the cotton fabric pooling around her hips, exposing her lacy, black bra underneath.

Her eyes blackened with lust, Villanelle covered Eve's body with hers, scraping her nails down the length of her pale skin as they kissed hungrily.

Without breaking contact with their lips, Villanelle unfastened Eve's bra with one hand, sending it skittering across the bedroom floor, along with the older woman's dress while kicking her own heels off.

Eve couldn't take her eyes off the Russian assassin as she sat up on her knees and removed her own blouse and bra, leaving her in just her denim cut-offs.

"Are you wearing it?" She asked breathlessly.

Villanelle smirked and pulled Eve up onto her knees as well, guiding her hand to in-between her denim-clad centre.

Eve's brown eyes clouded over with want when she felt a familiar bulge between her fingertips.

The assassin had thought wearing her favourite strap-on to her impromptu lunch with Carolyn would give her some added courage.

It hadn't.

But seeing the way Eve was subtly licking her lips in anticipation more than made up for her earlier disappointment.

Villanelle groaned and kissed Eve, cupping the back of her head to hold her in place.

She unzipped her shorts with her other hand and the silicone cock sprung free from its denim confines, making Eve's brown eyes go glossy with breathless anticipation.

Villanelle moaned in pleasure at the feel of Eve's lips on her neck, her fingers gliding silkily along her silicone shaft, nudging her clit deliciously as she stroked her to perfection.

Before it could go any further, Villanelle pulled away to remove her shorts.

Once they were gone, Eve pulled her right back in, kissing her fiercely.

The blonde slowed her movements ever so slightly, her tongue trailing sensually through the valley of Eve's breasts, all the way down to her stomach as she inhaled the heady scent of her lover's rampant arousal.

"Please, Oksana." Villanelle didn't mind the use of her real name so much now. This time it meant that Eve really saw her.

Wanted her, just as much.

Eve lost her mind at the feel of Villanelle's mouth grazing against her skin, slowly peeling off her underwear bit by bit with her teeth till there were no longer any barriers between them.

The younger woman shifted her weight till she lay on top of her.

Feeling her arousal building all the more, Eve ground slowly into Villanelle, the strap-on making contact with her clit in the most delicious ways.

"Shit, Eve."

"Say it." The older woman's voice was rich with a lower, huskier tenor as she continued her ministrations.

Taking a firm hold of her hips, Villanelle pulled Eve closer, lining up their naked bodies perfectly as she nudged impatiently at her entrance.

"I want you."

The way Eve's lips parted when she was finally all the way in made Villanelle even wetter.

She began moving in earnest, withdrawing and letting Eve swallow her whole with every hypnotic thrust of her hips.

Her pale fingers were making bruising indentations all over Eve's waist as she pistoned in and out of her.

The silicone cock had the dual effect of brushing tantalisingly against Eve's aching clit while the base bumped against Villanelle's, drawing out their pleasure in frenzied thrusts.

"Fuck me."

"God, I hope so."

Villanelle's eyes rolled back into her skull as she pumped even harder at this sneaky challenge from her lover, making Eve's toes curl with sweet, aching pleasure.

The bed, an ancient wooden affair which reminded Villanelle of the bed in their own Parisian apartment which the two lovers had bought at a flea market one weekend (Eve's idea yet again), creaked precariously with every rotation of the younger woman's lithe hips, driving deeper into Eve's overpowering warmth as they ruined one another with a vengeance.

Villanelle was being extra possessive in the moment: her lips curled around her lover's areola while her nails scraped down Eve's sides as she moved in and out her with determination.

It was coming on rapidly for both of them, overloading their senses with impassioned defiance.

Eve grabbed hold of Villanelle's neck, adding just a little pressure as their hips ground deeper into each other. "I'm yours, Villanelle. I've always been yours. You can do whatever you want with me."

Those words of affirmation had Villanelle melding their lips together as she spiralled into a mind-blowing orgasm.

Eve soon followed, calling out her lover's name as her release devastated her inside and out.

Villanelle stayed on top of Eve for a few minutes, the silicone cock still buried deep within her, whole body slack with satiation.

Their coupling had been quick and intense, a rarity nowadays for what Eve recognised as a vastly transformed Villanelle.

Another surprise for Eve was when Villanelle started sobbing afterwards.

Eve had never been good with emotions, not even when Niko occasionally cried in front of her. But with Villanelle, she knew she would always try to comfort her any way she could.

Relieved when Villanelle didn't flinch at her touch, Eve pulled her into a gentle hug, kissing the sides of her face. "You're ok, everything's alright."

Albeit awkwardly, she ran her fingers through the younger woman's damp blonde hair in a soothing way to get her to settle down.

The unexpected tenderness of the moment took Villanelle back to an old, buried memory of her mother brushing her hair before bedtime, long before she'd cruelly sent her away to the orphanage, abandoning her to her fate.

She got even angrier with herself as more tears flowed freely from her eyes. "This is so stupid—"

Eve stopped stroking Villanelle's hair and cupped her cheeks instead, forcing them to make eye contact. "It's not stupid and neither are you. Whatever you are thinking and feeling right now is 100% valid, ok?"

Villanelle could only nod dumbly, though she scarcely believed what was being said to her.

She slid slowly out of Eve as she tossed the strap-on somewhere onto the floor and moved to lay beside her instead.

Eve already missed the feel of her.

She hummed sympathetically and thumbed away residual tears which clung stubbornly to the blonde's face, making her look more doll-like and fragile as the seconds ticked by.

Eventually, she calmed down more and more as Eve replaced her thumb and leant forward, kissing every single tear away instead. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Villanelle laughed mirthlessly, her green eyes stinging mercilessly yet again. "I was scared, Eve. Carolyn fucking scared me, ok!"

Eve smiled sadly, but waited for her lover to continue.

Villanelle sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose in obvious turmoil. "I never cared before whether I lived or died because it was all a fucking game. No one would miss me and I had no one to miss. But now…"

She moved curly hair out of Eve's face, tucking it behind her ear. "I would lose everything."

"So would I," Eve concurred, rubbing the sides of the blonde's arms. "I'm really sorry."

"Huh?" With a slightly red nose and shiny face from crying, Villanelle looked extra confused and adorable in the moment.

"You were calm before meeting Carolyn earlier and I got inside your head and messed you up with my own anxieties. I should've trusted that you could handle yourself, and you did. You did really well, considering how much Carolyn got under your skin."

"I didn't handle myself," Villanelle muttered abruptly. "The old me would have gutted her like a fish with a butter knife and taken a 'to-go' bag. Sometimes…I…don't know how to do any of this…this stuff with The Twelve, us."

She thought Eve would be furious with her confession.

The kindness and understanding reflected in the older woman's brown eyes were more frightening than what she'd expected.

"For what it's worth, I like the new you waaayyyy better than the old you."

Villanelle chuckled at this and Eve was relieved that it sounded more like her genuine laughter.

"Bullshit. You luuuuurved the old me…"

The blonde was rewarded with an exasperated eye-roll from her lover.

"I did, but I would love any version of yourself that you wanted to be from now on too."

"Even a Jesus Freak one?"

"Ok, except that one. The point is, you were right before when I freaked out about us getting so close to Carolyn again. Unlike the shit show on the boat two years ago, we planned better, and we took our time. I won't pretend that the odds aren't massively against us just like before, but we have each other. And that's all that matters, ok? I love you, Villanelle."

Villanelle sighed and rested their foreheads together. "You'll do."

Eve punched the blonde in the arm before pulling her closer and kissing the crap out of her.

Hours later, Eve woke up alone in their bed. Pulling herself resentfully from the warmth of the duvet, she pulled a long and baggy T-shirt over her naked frame and slipped on her underwear before going in search of her lover.

Villanelle was seated at the dining room table in front of her laptop. She sported similar attire to Eve and had tied her long blonde hair into a messy bun, sitting cross-legged on the chair with her headphones on.

Sensing someone behind her, she turned and smiled at Eve. "Did I wake you?"

Eve shook her head and made herself comfortable in Villanelle's lap. "I woke up and you were gone. I thought we said 'no porn at the dinner table'."

Villanelle snorted with laughter at this and kissed Eve's cheek affectionately. "This is way better than porn, baby."

Eve's features lit up and she finally realised that Villanelle wasn't watching a video, but rather listening to an audio stream.

"Carolyn found my second bug in her coat and asked her people to analyse it."

"Which means she turned it on instead. So, it's really working?"

Villanelle's smile was glorious. "Thanks to Yusuf, MI6 can only hear the fake argument we recorded days ago and we can hear their real intel."

"I still have no idea how this algorithm even works, but I'm so fucking happy right now!"

Eve stopped celebrating and frowned as something else occurred to her.

"What's up?"

"I still don't get why you insisted we also record us having sex on that audio."

Villanelle laughed and planted a happy kiss on Eve's lips. "I may not be able to kill Carolyn yet, but I still enjoy torturing her."

---

Their subterfuge in Madrid had been more than a little successful. Their sneaky ploys with the listening devices had recorded ample information during Carolyn's meeting with the head of Interpol, so they knew what MI6 had been doing to disband The Twelve for good.

In the past two years, most of their strategic assassinations were on the mark while a select few high-profile arrests of senior MPs within the British government had been altogether trumped up to give the agency's campaign of eradicating corruption more credence.

Eve and Villanelle were like The Twelve, spreading chaos and misinformation everywhere they went. Except that they targeted corrupt governments and institutions that had been former allies of The Twelve, including MI6.

Whenever Villanelle could convince her, Eve agreed on ways of taking out prominent members of The Twelve they'd managed to track down thanks to Lars Meier's ledger.

Instead of leaving the bodies for anyone to find, Eve insisted they dispose of them in subtler ways.

Sometimes they used Pam's embalming expertise. Other times, they grabbed shovels and a number of potent cleaning agents that did the job.

It was even more fun when they managed to get to their victims long before MI6 did.

Their latest mission, however, involved the theft of a significant number of encrypted data banks from several prominent banks in the Cayman Islands and Lichtenstein, detailing transactions of The Twelve's nefarious schemes to topple whole governments and who they'd paid off to look the other way.

The records went back several decades.

Villanelle herself had donned some of her favourite wigs and accents to bypass the banks' security to get this prized information.

Try as they might, MI6 and similar agencies failed to capture Eve and Villanelle throughout this time, though they knew full well about their culpability.

At one point, the CIA heard about their antics and even tried recruiting the two women, but to no avail.

Eve was adamant about never working for any government again. And since Villanelle loved Eve intensely and would follow her wherever she went, she shared her sentiments fully.

It wasn't a hard sell. Villanelle had always danced to the beat of her own drum, even as The Twelve's best assassin in her heyday.

They'd been very careful all these years, operating fully in the shadows.

Hiding in plain sight with Villanelle's 'Bastard Husbands Agency' (it really wasn't Eve's idea this time) while discrediting The Twelve and MI6 simultaneously.

It infuriated Carolyn Martens to no end when the shit finally hit the fan.

"How the bloody hell did this happen?!" She fumed.

She was at home, MI6 agents pouring in and out of her living room at regular intervals while they sought to contain the situation.

Several video recordings extracted from the stolen data banks had already been leaked to the press earlier that morning, implicating several more prominent members of Parliament and their involvement with The Twelve.

There was no telling how many more videos and audio files would surface in the coming days.

If they or Eve and Villanelle couldn't be located in time, it would be an unmitigated catastrophe for the agency and British politics as a whole.

Hugo, Carolyn's former underling, raced into her living room, completely out of breath.

"What the devil are you doing here?"

"You're on Sky News," Hugo choked out, clutching a stitch forming in his side.

An agent nearest to the television switched it on.

"…In breaking news, the head of MI6, Carolyn Martens, is being dubbed a 'traitor' for her purported involvement with The Twelve, a shadow syndicate which has been operating for decades, its unchecked powers being the cause of several infamous civil wars on the African continent and the toppling of political regimes in South America, the Middle East, and South East Asia. In a press conference held at No. 10 Downing Street earlier today, the prime minister has stressed the need for 'complete transparency in ridding our nation of those who threaten the very fabric of our virtuous democratic processes'…"

The news reporter turned her attention to a panel of experts who weighed in on Carolyn's fate.

A stuffy-looking economic expert emitted a grunt of satisfaction while gazing at the camera. "You should never trust someone whose entire professional career has been dedicated to preserving the outdated, Cold War ideologies of intelligence agencies acting covertly 'in the name of King and Country' without any accountability whatsoever. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if it were brought to light that the current Russia-Ukraine war was also the work of The Twelve, and that MI6 did their bidding to encourage economic and political upheaval across the continent."

Carolyn had a pretty good idea of how footage from those compromising databanks had been leaked to every single media outlet on the planet thus far.

Kenny had done some digging in the past year and uncovered the truth about Carolyn's involvement with The Twelve, which had strained the relationship between mother and son beyond repair.

The last straw had been when the young researcher hadn't taken too kindly to his mother's constructive criticism about his fiancée Audrey's ambitions of becoming a newsreader.

They'd promptly moved in together soon after and began planning their wedding in earnest.

The tension in the air was palpable as every MI6 agent glanced at Carolyn with unmistakable disdain, the news report fading into the background.

"Well, this is rather difficult," Carolyn finally said, a thin smile on her wan face.

I'm finished.

Not even the Russians would take me in now.

"Delivery for Carolyn Martens." A courier stood patiently on the threshold of the living with a white gift box in his hand.

Carolyn signed for it on a digital scanner with growing resignation, then took the lid off.

Inside the box was a crystal bottle of perfume and an expensive bit of stationery.

Carolyn drew in her breath sharply at the name on the bottle and the accompanying note:

See you soon, Carolyn.

3

E+V

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Russian translations:

вернись = come back

Моя любовь = my love

Прости меня = forgive me

красноволосая сука = red-haired bitch

Дерьмо= crap

Пу́псик = sweetie

---

Author's Note: I apologise profusely if my Russian is trash in this story :-S I used Naver Papago, which is a little more reliable than Google's translator.

EDIT: A big thank you to anotherdrama on Archive Of Our Own for helping me correct some of my Russian translations, you're best gurl :-DDD

I know the ending of my story is probably not brilliant either. I mostly just wanted to write a KE story where Villanelle and Kenny survived and weren't just inexplicably dead because 'reasons' :'-/ I don't even know how Kenny could have survived here, I just imagined something like what they did with BBC's 'Sherlock' at the end of season 2. Do with that what you will :-P

So yeah, I clearly had a lot of feelings after binge-watching all of Killing Eve for 2 weeks straight and experiencing one of the worst on-screen endings since the likes of 'Lost' and 'Game Of Thrones'. And not just for TV shows in general, but for an iconic LGBTQ romance like Eve and Villanelle's :'-(

I just feel so sad for Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer because they gave their hearts and souls to these characters despite the frequent writing team changes (were they playing scriptwriting 'Musical Chairs' every sodding season?). And for things to end that way for their characters and their compelling love story, which basically vilified lesbians as monstrous and deserving of punishment (another rousing chorus of 'kill your gays!'), is wholly unacceptable to me.

For the record, Fiona Shaw is best gurl - I love how she portrayed Carolyn Martens in the show :-D But Carolyn was also a cold-ass bitch who needed some 'just dessert till it hurt' in my humble opinion for pulling that crap on Villanelle in the finale :-O I mean, did Cuba mean nothing to her? *rotfl*

Clearly, I didn't get the memo where only KE seasons 1 and 2 were a smash hit with season 3 being good (I mean, that bridge scene in the finale was kind of everything) and season 4 being the equivalent of someone farting into my open mouth *facepalm* At least I have the book series on my shelf. God bless Luke Jennings for creating one of the most complex literary LGBTQ characters I've ever read before *slow clap for a legend*

Anyway, I hope you all like this not-so-little KE oneshot. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have way more obsessing to do over how beautiful and talented Jodie Comer is for the foreseeable future *sighs like a lovesick simp*

Pip, pip - cheerio! :-DDD