were you in love with me back then? goodbye.
| | | | RE: PROMPT , STATUS: ACCEPTING.
𝙱ack then is not a place ──── it's a graveyard. it's half-decayed memories, it's long corridors and the footsteps of ballerinas. the copper scent of blood after training, red hair tucked behind her ear as she stripped a makarov faster than anyone else in the room.
half of him hates himself for remembering her in that goddamn place but it's part of her. part of him, stitched into the seams of them both. all the jobs where they were paired together. fake names and fake backstories. cheap motel rooms where neither of them touched the bed until the job was done, restless nights and her hands against his skin. trains cutting through eastern europe beneath winter skies. the machine wasn't built for tenderness — but natalia found traces of it beneath the programming all the same: he cleaned the blood from her hands before it had a chance to dry. checked her magazines without saying a word. took the angle that would draw fire first.
██ █ █ 𝚂omewhere beneath the conditioning, she lingered. ❪ muscle remembers what memory forgets. the trigger. the recoil. the shape of body beneath his own. ❫
" you know the answer to that. 'course i was. " something at the corner of his mouth almost softens into a smile. THE SAFE HOUSE IS SMALL: old floorboards and a single lamp throwing amber light across the room, rain tapping against the windows. it would almost feel peaceful if he didn't know better. he doesn't trust a room until he's mapped every blind corner and every line of fire but but he knows they won't be leaving before morning. he can spend the next few hours planning for what comes next ── or he can be with her. the choice isn't difficult. the couch sinks slightly under his weight, and his thumb catches a smear of dried blood beside her temple before drifting over the curve of her cheekbone. " didn't matter what they did. some part of me already made up its mind about you before they got inside my head. you're not an easy woman to forget. "
