#code.country

[agentpompey]

DATE | JULY 27, 2020

LOCATION | A COFFEE SHOP IN QUEENSLAND, NZ

WITH | @daringdynamo

the thought sits just underneath the surface of his skin, and he worries at it like an itch.

what, exactly, are you doing?

for arguably the first time in his thirty eight years of living--he doesn’t really have an answer. he only has pieces, fragments that keep cutting into the skin of his palms, leaving individual scars as reminders of all the ways he had failed that day. her body, slack and so clearly lifeless. the weight of a sniper rifle with a full magazine, not a single bullet expended. the feeling of his ribs being peeled back one by one as the realization set in that cosmos--cesco, was trapped in that tomb with her, beyond where the scope of his rifle, the blade of his knife, could reach. the empty hospital bed that followed.

he is no stranger to grief--there are whole rooms in his heart painted with the blood of those he had lost before he’d even had a chance to know them--he is no stranger to death, either. he is practiced in the art of swallowing them down without choking them back up like bile--which means that the question remains. what, exactly, are you doing?

he doesn’t know--as terrifying as that is to admit. he has no idea what he’s doing, where he’s supposed to be, if there’s a battle that he should be waging--he just knows that in the same way the sun is pulled in constant orbit around the moon, so too is he pulled towards evren. who else, in the entirety of the earth he has sworn to put on his shoulders like atlas, to protect at the cost of his own life, would understand this?

you wanted me dark, you wanted me broken and jagged, he thinks to himself, as he brings his coffee cup to his lips. so here i am. make sense of it.

“do you know how many dark haired women with tattoos and murderous glints in their eyes i had to go through before i found you?” he drawls as she approaches, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “none. seems like a flaw, for someone whose very job it is to remain in the shadows.”

[daringdynamo]

date  —  june 7th, 2020

location —  estonia

status —  for @agentpersephone

 There were select few people that Evren allowed to take up space in her life — they all sat at a table, looking at her, and she, in turn, was determined to place before them the most decadent feasts. Even so, there was one who rose above the others, one who had tied a noose around Evren’s heart, and they were helpless to escape it. Not that they would ever want to, anyway, for the woman in question handled their heart so tenderly that the oracle managed to find respite for a few, fleeting moments. Still, though, that didn’t change the unabashed truth: this was a terrible idea. 

Not enough time had passed for her to mourn both Agent Kraken and Agent Hathaway. 

And if there was one thing that Evren understood  — objectively  — it was how long it took people to grieve. Their gaze slid over to Anthea, lips pursing as they leaned back into their chair. “Do you think she has arrived yet?” What was the accent they had chosen today? Their tongues curled over the words. It tasted French. “Are you sure you’re ready for this, mon amour? Because, truthfully, I think you might need more time. ” 

[agentpompey]

WHEN | AUGUST 28, 2020

WHERE | A HOTEL ROOM, HONG KONG

WITH | @agentvenus

he doesn’t need to ask the question--they know each other too well, he can tell exactly what seong-min is feeling by a hitch in her breath, by a roll of her eyes, and agent hathaway was theirs. their mistake, their shared failure. she will come, independent of his asking, because they need this--because someone needs to bleed in the place of agent hathaway’s killer, and they need to be the ones to inflict that pain.

he doesn’t need to ask her--but in that fragile, newly wounded part of his mind where certain truths had once stood monument, where fragile altars now stood empty, he needs to hear her say it. he needs to say the words in some form, even if it’s typing them slowly across the screen of his phone, sitting at a dimly lit hotel bar while jazz plays somewhere distantly, hauntingly.

will you come?

because she has always been able to read his mind, because perhaps after all this time they have become two halves of a whole person, she calls him from a burner phone and tells him that she’ll be there within the week. he exhales a breath he wasn’t aware he had been holding, drags a hand over his face where he’s certain new lines have formed, where he wishes not for the first time that there were physical scars, that would heal and stay healed, as opposed to mental ones.

she rests a hand on his shoulder now, as she comes to take the chair beside him on the balcony. he does not flinch, does not shrug out of it like he might have if someone else had touched him--he just places his own over the top, and looks up at her with his best approximation of a smile. he thinks she might love him enough not to comment on the fact that it doesn’t reach his eyes, that it’s clearly a poorly constructed front.

“he’s still sitting at his desk, catching up on emails.” he says with a long-suffering sigh and a roll of his eyes. “will you ever forgive me for dragging you out here for someone so utterly boring?”