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ramblesinshamblesgreenbus · 1 year ago

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Chapter VI - London

Because I do not hope to turn again Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

- T.S. Eliot, "Ash-Wednesday"

"You want to what?"

In retrospect, there were a few things Aleksandr could have said that would have surprised her more. 'Midori, this entire time, I've been a double agent for the CIA'. 'Midori, I want to join the French Foreign Legion'. 'Midori, I actually really fucking hate dogs'. But this. Now. Aleksandr was still looking up at her expectantly from his chivalrous pose on the sitting room floor. Midori didn't even have socks on. Surely a basic precondition of receiving a defector from an enemy power was that you ought to be wearing socks at the time.

"I want to defect. To you. To Britain. Whatever." Aleksandr dipped his head and kissed the back of Midori's hand. "I'm done. With everything you know that I do and that we politely don't talk about. I don't want there to be anything we don't talk about, ever again."

"But… Aleksandr…"

A slight frown creased his forehead. "I thought you'd be happy."

Midori squeezed his hands back, then, and pulled him up from the floor to sit on the sofa. "I am happy, Aleksandr, I am, but it's just… it's very sudden. I didn't expect this."

"Not yet, you mean?" Aleksandr's eyebrows twitched in amusement. "Because you haven't yet found the perfect novel to persuade me to hand in my party membership card and join the Fabian Society instead?"

Midori felt her face heat. "I just thought… with enough time, you might…"

"My opinions haven't changed that much. If there's a book out there somewhere to persuade me that the royal family shouldn't be taken out and shot for the advancement of socialism in this country, well, I don't think I'd want to read it." He grinned and Midori tried not to flinch. "But it doesn't matter. I don't want to defect because I've decided I love the King and it turns out every problem in the world can be solved by democracy. It's because of you. You're more important to me than anything else. I'm only sorry it's taken me so long to realise it."

Midori's heart swooped high and dropped again just as suddenly. Aleksandr was still smiling delightedly, thumbs running over the backs of her hands, and half of Midori wanted to kiss him breathless for this dramatic declaration of love. The other half shrank back, afraid. How could she possibly be enough, after everything Aleksandr had been through, to throw away his entire life for? And how could she let Aleksandr do this now, when she might not even be in England anymore by the end of the year?

"So what do I need to do? Should I talk to your employers? Does Suzume have a politician friend I could go to?" Aleksandr looked away contemplatively towards the window. "Or maybe I should make myself more valuable, first. There is a lot of information I could get for them about our agents in Britain, and more things, besides. The more I can give them, the easier this will be."

"You probably also shouldn't be living here, either, when you do it," Midori ventured.

Aleksandr's face drooped. "You're right," he sighed. "It would cause far too much trouble for you if they knew that we… it will probably be a while before things die down enough that I can be your lodger again and not raise too many eyebrows. But it'll be worth it, won't it? I don't mind waiting a few months, even another year or two, if it means getting to have my whole life with you." He let go of Midori's hand to stroke her face, and she closed her eyes and leaned into the touch.

"It's a shame I can't just marry you," she said. "That would make this all a lot easier."

Aleksandr laughed. "You, marry me? Would that mean that you’d make me wear the dress?"

"I think you'd look quite fetching in white lace."

"You're right. I could ask Ambassador Zarubin to give me away. Let's invite both governments. A true marriage of Heaven and Hell - but which is which?" Aleksandr's other hand came up to frame Midori's face and he kissed her with a smile on his lips. "I don't care if some priest or registrar wants to hear me make promises to you or not. I'll make them anyway. Anything you want."

"I just want to know that you're sure," Midori said. "I know you don't feel the way you used to, but trust me, Aleksandr, betraying your country isn't a small thing. It's permanent. Once you do this, there's no going back."

"I'm sure about you," Aleksandr said, and Midori's heart flipped over in her chest again. "One of these days, maybe I'll have you read some Marx, Midori. Countries don't matter. How is it anything but an accident that I was born in Russia and you in Japan? A different set of circumstances and maybe you would be Swedish and I would be Rhodesian, or you would be Colombian and I would be Filipino, or - or anything! What matters is… well, what matters is the international solidarity of the proletariat in revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie, if we're talking about Marx." He put a finger to his lips briefly, as if putting a pin in that thought. "But what mattered to you, more than your country, was that the world not be engulfed in fascism. And what matters to me, the only thing that matters to me, is you. Being with you. Living with you and loving you and never having to leave you. Never one day going out and not coming home again, and you not even knowing why."

She really ought to tell Aleksandr about her possible reassignment right now, but the words wouldn't come, not with him looking at her so tenderly, hand still stroking her face. She didn't want to be the one to shatter this moment. Instead, she turned her head and kissed the heel of Aleksandr's hand. "Okay," she said. "But I think we need to do this slowly and carefully. There was an NKVD agent who tried to defect to MI6 just after the end of the war, in Istanbul, and he… disappeared."

"Oh, Volkov? That was probably because we have several agents in MI6 and the Foreign Office." The total calm in Aleksandr's tone was incredible; Midori couldn't help but feel a sudden flush of panic.

"What, amongst the typists? The cleaning staff?"

"A little higher up than that," Aleksandr said with a smirk. "You know, if I can find out their real names, I think that would be worth a lot. The man in Buckingham Palace, too."

Midori studied his face, more than a little incredulous. He didn't seem to be joking. If he wasn't, and there really were Soviet spies working at high levels of the British government, the implications were frightening, but information like that would surely guarantee that Aleksandr would be granted asylum. Maybe Midori could just say no to Korea and no to Hong Kong and somehow not have it seem suspicious and, within a year or two, they would be able to embark on a real future together.

It would be a future of carefully guarding against arrest, living quietly and circumspectly, a future that could be swiftly curtailed when the next war came, like so many had in London before, but it would also be a future of falling asleep in Aleksandr's arms every night and watching his ash-blond hair turn truly grey, of sharing the paper and arguing over dinner and having the kind of comfortable, ordinary stability that most of society thought people like them completely incapable of.

"We could get a dog," she said stupidly, the tail end of a train of thought that she hadn't vocalised, but Aleksandr beamed with that adorable, heart-shaped smile.

"We could get five dogs," he said, in a manner that suggested that this was something he'd given a lot of thought to. Perhaps he'd already chosen some names. Midori couldn't help but smile back, and then Aleksandr was kissing her again and they were both laughing into it as Midori climbed into his lap, loosening his hair and running her fingers through it.

"We'll get as many dogs as you want," she said. "I promise."

"Swear?" Aleksandr giggled, whilst rocking her back and forth.

The embassy library was open and Mrs Tredyakovskaya greeted him with a smile, but it was cooler than usual, slipping off her face as soon as Aleksandr began to look away. He pretended to browse the collection of English translations of Stalin's writings and watched out of the corner of his eye as she fussed about behind her desk, as if hers was a very real and serious job and not a role she had largely created for herself after her husband's posting here.

In truth, he was buying himself a little breathing time before heading upstairs to make his pickup in Mishin's office. If he was out - and he often was, given that Mishin was as much of an administrator of student and travel visas as Aleksandr was a teacher - then it would be an excellent opportunity to search through his files for anything worth copying. Discovering solid evidence of the real identities of Hicks, Tony, Homer and Stanley would need to be his priority, as he'd discussed with Midori, but there were surely many other things that MI6 and the British government would love to lay their hands on that Aleksandr could gain access to here.

Paranoia crept up his spine on thin, insectoid legs as Aleksandr eventually ducked out of the library and made his way through the corridors. Was this how Midori had felt all the time in Berlin, like a tiny animal stealing through a predator's den? He felt as though his treacherous intent was written all over his face for everyone to see. Any moment now, a soldier or a diplomat or the tea lady would leap out of a door and point an accusatory finger, because the way he was climbing the stairs or holding his hat made it clear that he was hell-bent on undermining the Soviet Union at the behest of his British lover.

Midori would never have asked this of him, but there were many things Midori would never ask but that Aleksandr would do readily and whole-heartedly for her if the need arose. He felt as if he discovered more of them every day.

Mishin's first floor office was unlocked, but empty. Aleksandr slipped inside, picking up the slim envelope from the man's out-tray marked with an 'A' for 'Alyosha' and surveying the rest of the room. It would be best today to simply check the various cabinets and file boxes for the location of more sensitive bits of information, and wait for another occasion to sift through them. Somewhere in London, there was surely a shop that would sell him a microdot camera and film, or perhaps he could ask Midori if she had some way of obtaining one. He began with the boxes furthest from the door, alert for the slightest sound of anyone coming along the corridor, let alone Mishin himself returning.

The problem was that an awful lot of the paperwork in the little room was related to the issuing of visas. In the wake of the Allied victory and the almost simultaneous election in Britain of an at least nominally socialist government, there had been a great swell of feeling towards strengthening ties between Britain and the USSR, with an accompanying upswing in travel from the former to the latter even as both countries struggled to begin rebuilding themselves. Consequently, there was a lot of useless paper that Mishin seemed to be averse to getting rid of. Probably made it easier to hide things. That bastard.

Aleksandr flicked through box after box of dull applications and supporting documents before moving on to a filing cabinet. At the back of the bottom drawer, he found something at last. There was a dossier on an agent codenamed Liszt whom he was vaguely aware of, who had smuggled decrypted German transmissions out of the secretive British codebreaking headquarters during the war - his real name was Carlisle, but there was little on his post-war activity and he seemed to have shrunk into a small fish. Behind that was exactly what Aleksandr had been looking for - a thick folder with a small, faded photograph clipped to the inside of a smiling, blond young man with a cleft chin. Homer. He was currently stationed in Egypt for the British foreign service, second in rank only to the ambassador. Aleksandr had known for a while that it was largely thanks to Homer's prior service in Washington that the Soviet Union had as much information as it did about the United States' nuclear armoury, but now he knew the man's face and, more importantly, his name. Donald Maclean.

For a moment, he contemplated slipping the folder into an envelope and walking out of the embassy right now, cycling straight across the city to Whitehall with it tucked under his waistcoat and taking it to the Foreign Office. This dossier would be more than enough for Maclean to be dragged home from Cairo for questioning, and maybe he would give up the other three himself. But, as Aleksandr was thumbing through the file, skipping past photographs of Maclean's wife and children, he heard footsteps coming down the corridor. He shoved the file back into its place in the drawer, kicked the filing cabinet closed, and had just managed to compose himself as the door opened and Mishin stepped in.

"Oh," he said, pushing the door closed behind him. "Hello, Alyosha."

Aleksandr looked up from studying the contents of the envelope he was supposed to be there to pick up. "Good afternoon," he said, warmly. Mishin didn't return his smile.

"Did you need something?" he asked tersely, pushing past Aleksandr, to his desk. Aleksandr resisted the temptation to glance at the filing cabinet he had so recently been rifling through, to check if he'd closed it properly or not. If he hadn't, looking at it would only draw Mishin's attention.

"Oh, no, just making my pickup. I hope you are keeping well, comrade."

Mishin grunted, looked at Aleksandr, and then looked pointedly at the door. Aleksandr's smile faded. Last time they'd actually spoken he'd been quite friendly, enthusing about his favourite Fadeyev novel and his two young sons. But apparently the disfavour of Leningrad now ran very deep indeed. He nodded a goodbye and left.

On his way home, he stopped off at the Café Daquise for a cup of coffee, and to actually look through his envelope. It was mostly the usual instructions and matters to pass on to his agents, but there was a smaller envelope at the very bottom, with the address completely blacked out, but a Soviet stamp and postmark in the corner. He ripped it open with a fingernail and sat back in his chair from surprise when he recognised the handwriting.

Dear Shura,

It has been too long; I hope you are keeping well. I have thought often this last year of our many conversations about my mother, but I wonder if you recall the time we spoke of my father? These days, I think of him more and more. Perhaps it is time for me to finally follow the path he would have wanted for me, before I am too old. By the time this reaches you I may have moved, so don't look for me here. Will send on my new address when I can.

Your comrade, and loving Grandfather

Aleksandr glanced around the almost-empty café before reading the letter again. He had exchanged a couple of very stilted letters with Weisberg after the end of the war, but it had been quite obvious that the old man had no interest in maintaining contact with his former agent, and certainly they were not on the kind of terms where he would write affectionate letters signed off as though his codename was their actual relationship. And why would he talk about changing address, and about his relatives? When they had worked together, any reference to Weisberg's mother had of course meant the Soviet Union, but his father… he had mentioned once, and quite memorably, that his actual father had been a rabbi.

Suddenly, all the strange pieces of the letter fell into place. Weisberg must be going to Israel, and was an honourable enough man to have written to Aleksandr, and probably others amongst his former colleagues, to warn him in advance. The timing, only a few weeks after Aleksandr had been questioned about the Naumovs, was abysmal, but at least he could have a stern denunciation of Weisberg prepared in advance, should he need it. And who was Aleksandr to fault another man for defecting, for following his heart instead of his duty, for once?

He realised that he should probably begin to work on similar letters himself; to a few colleagues, to Issy and his mother, to Katia, if she was still free. It would be difficult to find a way to couch his message in terms innocuous enough to fool the censors, but he owed it to them to do it, and it would be the closest he would be able to come to wishing anyone goodbye.

Aleksandr finished his coffee, left a few coins on the table, and headed back out to where he'd locked up his bicycle. He'd known this wouldn't be a path without its sorrows when he'd chosen it, but the reward that awaited him was worth every single one of them. He stood up in the pedals and pressed hard for home.

Midori remembered thinking, a year into hers and Aleksandr's sporadic and clandestine affair in Berlin, that they had reached some kind of pinnacle of intimacy, of interpersonal connection; it seemed frankly absurd to look back on, as Aleksandr led her teasingly up the stairs to their bedroom. They had been building up to this all day, from an all-too lingering goodbye kiss as she'd left for work to flirting and grabbing at each other as they made dinner, and now Aleksandr was taking off her glasses for her and unbuttoning her dress and kissing her neck just a little too softly to bruise.

There was something vast and impossibly beautiful about spending all day dreaming of the man she would come home to, about making love to him greedily and ferociously at night and waking in his arms the next morning, about sharing every small and mundane thing in their lives. There were fewer secrets between them every day, and soon, soon there would be none at all.

"You don't need to be so careful," she murmured, as Aleksandr began to slowly toy with her bra straps. "Clothes just came off ration, after all."

"You won't mind?" When Midori shook her head, Aleksandr grinned wolfishly and gave her a searing kiss as he grabbed both sides of her dress and pulled hard, buttons popping off and skittering away across the floor as he pushed it back off Midori's shoulders. She wanted Aleksandr to tear her open, to be laid completely bare to him at last, wanted to be the mending of one another's broken places and the promise that nothing would ever hurt them again. Her hands tangled in his hair, stroking and tugging, and then she was backed up against the bed and she dropped them lower to grab hold of the back of Aleksandr's shirt and pull hard as she let herself fall backwards.

For a second, Aleksandr only looked down at her with wide eyes, his shirt torn clean up the back to the collar, but then he was scrabbling to pull it off completely, clambering up onto the bed himself. Their hips were moving against each other entirely involuntarily as they kissed, open-mouthed and hungry, and Aleksandr groaned delightedly as Midori rolled them over, hands against his shoulders to pin him to the mattress.

"Midori," he gasped between kisses, "Midori. I love you."

They said it almost every day now, easy as anything, but she'd never get tired of hearing it. "Tell me in Russian?" she whispered, kissing along the edge of Aleksandr's ear.

"Я тебя люблю," Aleksandr said at once, his voice dropping half an octave.

Midori pressed her nose into his hair. "Ich liebe dich."

"Je t'aime, je t'aime à la folie."

"Ti amo."

"This game isn't fair," Aleksandr said with an audible pout. "You speak more languages than I do."

Midori paused, and sat up a little. She could say saranghae, too, or scour her memory for whatever the phrase should be in Cantonese, but that would require far too much explanation. "Then I'll tell you another way," she murmured, stroking Aleksandr's cheek. "What would you like? What do you need?"

Aleksandr shifted his legs a little further apart and rocked his hips up against Midori's, a satisfied little smile appearing on his face when Midori cursed and bit her lip. "I can't wait to be yours," he said, "only yours, no-one else's ever again. And you’d be mine, all mine, for evermore. Won't you show me what it'll be like?" He propped himself up on one elbow and leaned up to whisper in Midori's ear. "Remember the very first time, in Berlin? Won't you do what you did that night, and ride me so hard it changes my entire life?"

Midori definitely remembered that Aleksandr had been much shyer and more reticent that night than the man now panting and grinning up at her like the cat that got the cream. It was quite mind-bendingly arousing to see the distance they'd travelled together written all over his face, to feel in her own heated, prickling skin just how much Aleksandr had changed her too, had led her out of her neatly controlled and partitioned life into this continent-sprawling, fate-defying love affair.

She would do the same thing, she realised, as she took his face in her hands and kissed him. If their circumstances were reversed, if she thought they had as much of a chance at happiness together in Moscow as they did in London, she would pack away all her opinions and take a briefcase of state secrets to the Soviets, for Aleksandr. Wars and borders and politics all faded away to nothing next to this. She'd been selfless before, told Aleksandr to let her go and stay behind to fight, but she didn't think she could ever do that again.

"It changed my life, too," she said, and unbuttoned Aleksandr's trousers.

She wouldn't remember, afterwards, which one of them pulled away to fish the condoms out of the bedside table drawer, how they got from her pinning Aleksandr to the bed to her head hitting the headboard while Aleksandr thrust into her, but she would never forget the way the lamplight reflected warm in his frozen blue eyes, the way he tipped his head back until his hair spilled past his shoulders like molten silver.

"There's nothing besides you," she whispered in a hoarse voice as Aleksandr lowered himself slowly, "fuck, Aleksandr, nothing, only you, I love you so much, I can't -" and then Aleksandr was kissing her forehead and her eyes and her lips and murmuring her name over and over like a prayer, a blessing, pressing his hand against Midori's chest, over her breast, over her thundering heart.

It was slow and then it wasn't slow at all, something igniting the tinder of all the softly-spoken words between them and licking up into a blaze, and they were kissing with mouths open to muffle any noise, Midori’s hands pulling at his hair while his fingers dug into her hips so hard it would surely bruise, and it felt all at once like her mind had left the atmosphere and yet her body had never been so alive and real. When they tumbled forward together, he slipped out, to which Midori huffed and drew him back in again, her heel settling at the small of Aleksandr's back.

This was her future, tangled up with Aleksandr, every part of her life taken over and turned inside out. She wanted nothing else.

It took a while before either of them was recovered enough to make it next door to the bathroom for a glass of water each and a damp flannel. Midori curled her body into Aleksandr's, head resting on his shoulder, while Aleksandr's hand traced idle patterns on her back.

"I need to tell you something," she said, eventually. "I'll be away for the last two weeks of the month. I'm going down to Hampshire. It's for work, so I can't say – well, I mean, I don't really know what it'll involve, but - "

"It's okay," Aleksandr said sleepily, his hand still moving back and forth. "You don't have to tell me. I'm still a dastardly foreign agent for now, after all. But I'll miss you."

Midori already knew she was a terrible person but, at that moment, she felt it very keenly. "We can talk more about it in the morning."

"Mmm," Aleksandr said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "Whatever you want, darling."

If only it was as simple as what she wanted.

The summer sun beat down warmly on Aleksandr's back as he walked home, a little paper bag from the grocer tucked under his arm. Midori had been away for four days and it was profoundly odd to have the flat all to himself, to eat and sleep and wake all alone. He supposed he would need to get used to it, if they would be apart for a little while when he made his defection official, but he certainly didn't have to like it. Still, the solitude gave him plenty of scope to sort out the various bits of information he had managed to smuggle out of the embassy so far.

He was building up quite the picture of Maclean and his colleague, Burgess, whom he had known as Svarog's notoriously volatile agent, Hicks. Two young men of a very comfortable background, recruited for their ideological passion, but now probably coasting along more on fear than anything else. In any other circumstance, Aleksandr might have been sympathetic. But, for all unmasking Hicks and Homer would probably be enough, he had stumbled upon tantalising hints about Stanley, the man whom MI6 would doubtless consider the biggest prize, as he was one of their own officers. He was coming through London soon on his way from Istanbul to Washington, and it was entirely possible that Aleksandr would get to actually meet him and, even if he didn't, it was an opportunity like no other.

There were still twinges of guilt in his heart from time to time, to be working against his comrades, to be planning to do to these men in particular what he had spent so many years terrified of happening to himself or to Midori in Germany. He had no idea how much their bourgeois background would be able to shield them from going to the gallows for treason, or if the British might seek to either leave them unawares to be manipulated or actively turn them to work back against Moscow. But it was worth any amount of guilt or self-recrimination. He had been giving and giving of himself his entire life, getting only scraps and stones in return, and it was finally time to be selfish.

Something gleamed at the edge of his vision and caught his eye, and he stopped and turned to find himself standing in front of a pawn brokers. In its window display, in between a stately wood-cased radio and a sleek violin, was a small display of jewellery, in the top corner of which were two plain gold bands side by side. Wedding rings. They were almost alike enough to be a pair, although, as he leaned closer to the window, he could see that one had a tiny, delicate inscription on the inside.

Marriage was for normal people, an institution of arcane rules and expectations almost as peculiar as the notion of wanting to perpetually attach oneself to a member of the opposite sex in the first place. But a ring didn't have to be a chain, nor did it comprise a burden; a ring could be a promise, just like a letter or a scarf or a book, a charm worn close against the skin. It could be a gift before he had to move out of the flat, for both of them to remember the future they were heading towards.

He could feel both rings in the inside pocket of his jacket later that afternoon, as he leaned on the railing around the tiny rooftop balcony and smoked a cigarette. The chimney pots of Pimlico were spread out around him, strewn about with chattering starlings. Midori would be home again in ten days, and then they could do as they had all through last summer, come up here wearing his shirts in the evenings, to drink and smoke and talk about nothing in particular. Aleksandr had lived in four of the world's great cities now, and it was always the smallest details that he found himself holding the most dear; the cry of seagulls in Leningrad, snow in the bare winter trees of Berlin, watching distant traffic cross the bridges over the Moskva from his Moscow flat, and here, the disorderly rooftops of London, where dark birds fluttered to and fro under the ever-present smell of coal fires.

Once his cigarette had burned down to its end, he took a small notepad and pen out of his pocket, balancing them on the railing to begin drafting a letter. It would probably be the last he would ever send as Major Aleksandr Rostislavovich Sobolevski, officer of the MGB and decorated hero of the Great Patriotic War, and he needed to make every word count.

Dear Itzick,

I am sorry, my soul, for it has been so long since I last wrote. I hope you are well, and have made a good start in your career in the air force; I'm sure your mother must be very proud; I feel myself almost bursting with it as times. I am doing as well as always.

He wondered what love had Isidor grown for Katia. Were they still starry-eyed, scrapped-kneed children, playing tag through their lives like they used to all throughout the neighbourhood? Or did he think sunlight braided itself among her tresses, did he kiss her hand and felt forgiveness far greater than any deity could offer, just washing over him? How many times did he swear he’d break his back, just for her to break a smile? Would he understand if Aleksandr said that nothing was the same as always, that his entire world had grown vast beyond imagining and he would do anything to keep running towards its endless boundaries for the rest of his life?

I know that you understand well the constraints of the kind of work that we both do, and why I may not be able to write again for a while after this. I also know you have a strong and patriotic heart that will bear you through the worst of times and lead you to the right decisions, just like your mother. Please give her my love, not before keeping most of it for yourself, my son. Sequester it in the depths of the little heart that would lull me to sleep whenever you would climb in bed with me. I beg of you, don’t let it escape, not even if you ever learn to hate me. Remember that you are grown up now, and far too old to disrespect Yelena. Remember that you are grown up now, but never too old to be my baby.

It might be a little too subtle, but if he tried to be clearer, then the letter would definitely never reach Isidor and the whole point of writing it would be lost. He still didn't know the details of what had happened between his parents in 1936, but one of the well-known and little-spoken facts of Leningrad was that Lev Zakharov was in the gulag and Yelena Sobolevskaya had sent him there. Aleksandr figured that her son must have inherited that same capacity for cold-bloodedness, should the need arise. But Isidor wasn’t Yelena’s. The boy was his. Swallowing his sobs, he willed his hand to keep on moving along the paper, clumsily spreading tarry ink, only to have it diluted by tears.

The war changed so many things for all of us, didn't it? It made you a man, Issy, and it made me an old, sentimental geezer. I hope you won't be too angry, now or in the future, to hear that I am proud of you, too. I brag about my little boy to whoever makes the mistake of lending me their ear, have I told you that? I can feel you surpassing me, growing past the borders of my love. You find them constraining, I’m sure; I’ve only ever wished for them to be shielding you, my treasure, my son, my better self. You'll leave us all in the dust one day. Remember when you were little and I use to carry you around on my shoulders? We’d draw janky stars into the ether, and then I would get on my tiptoes, stretch my arms into the sky, pin little asteroids among the clouds. You would clap your small, sticky hands, pale like wax, and then you’d glue them to my cheeks, forcing me to smile as wide as you. Now all I ask of you is to think of me when you look down from the skies.

Your comrade, your admirer, your papa,

Maj. ARS

She hadn't lingered as long over lunch with Aleksandr as she often did, and it wasn't even two o'clock yet when she walked back into the old building on Broadway where MI6 pretended not to exist. Midori was checking her pigeon-hole on the fourth floor when she felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned to see Mrs Sugden, Carlisle's long-serving and thoroughly terrifying secretary, standing behind her.

"The Director needs to see you, Takamori."

"What, right now?"

"No, in two hours, once you've had a brandy, a foot massage and a nice sit down." She rolled her eyes at Midori. "Of course right now."

Carlisle didn't offer Midori a cigarette when she entered the office, only paused in his pacing long enough to gesture for her to sit down and slide a thin folder across the desk to her. It was stamped in bright red across the centre with the words 'Top Secret'. Midori looked up and pushed her glasses up her nose.

"Sir, what - "

"You need to read it, Takamori."

The document on the top was a carbon-copy of a letter bearing the letterhead of the US embassy. It was filled with acronyms Midori didn't recognise and a lot of scientific terminology that she couldn't follow, but the final paragraph was more than clear enough.

Should the recommended meteorological flights prove inconclusive, your assistance in the realm of human intelligence is also sought. Projected test sites include previously discussed locations in Siberia, the Arctic Circle, and the Kazakh steppe. No indication has yet been gained from our agents as to the number of devices which may have been tested, or whether others have been built. The Soviet capacity clearly far outstrips our prior estimations, and decisions must be taken at once to curb the further development of their nuclear program.

"The planes will be flying again tomorrow night to try and detect whatever it is they can detect in the atmosphere, we haven't actually picked it up yet," Carlisle said as Midori stared dumbly at the piece of paper in front of her. "But we can be realistic men here… realistic people, I meant. The Soviets have the bomb. They've built one and bloody set it off somewhere, while we were all sat here happily imagining that they might come close to it sometime in '53 or '54."

Midori swallowed hard. The only thing she could think of was Nagasaki in the summertime, the thick, damp heat and endless cicada song, sunlight glittering in the waters of the bay, and the lone, gleaming aircraft that had dropped the city's doom out of the sky. She really, really wished she'd been offered that cigarette. "Why are you showing this to me, sir?" she managed to croak at last, an accusatory shudder.

"Because we've dragged our feet more than enough about Seoul. I'm sure you're a long way from fluent in the language yet, but I had an excellent report from your time at Beaulieu, and frankly, we don't have any more time to waste. We need you out there, defending British interests in the far east." Carlisle leaned forward, palms flat on the surface of the desk. "War in Korea now means we're looking at the world's first nuclear conflict. God only knows what the capacity of the Soviet weapon is, or how many others they have; all we know is what Hitler didn't, that the Russians can be crippled and starving and half frozen to death and they'll still fight like rabid animals, obstinate vermin that don’t know when to fucking drop dead already. The Americans can't just bomb Moscow and get them to kowtow, unlike… well." He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Cigarette, Takamori?"

Midori politely ignored the end of Carlisle's train of thought, and accepted a cigarette and a light. She turned over the American document and found underneath it a note addressed to herself. It was sketchy and rather superfluous in its praise of her last five years' service, but very firm in its emphasis that she was needed in Seoul. At the foot of the paper, the note was signed in green ink, with nothing but the letter 'C'.

"I'm sure you'll be tempted to show off your first green ink, but don't go waving that around," Carlisle said. "The chief doesn't normally comment directly on ops to officers, so let that be a demonstration of our seriousness."

"Is it - is it only me, sir, that will be in Korea? I won't have any colleagues around?"

"We've an established operation out there, and you'll have ostensible colleagues in the Consul-General's office, of course. But no other officers, once you've been briefed in the field. Unless you know a lot of Oxford men of the right sort of family who can blend into a Seoul crowd around here?"

Midori leaned back in her chair and suppressed a sigh. Of course it came down to that, in the end. For all she had a surname as Japanese as the rest of her, for all Suzume wasn't even that immediate of a relative, through her and Lawrence, she had been brought under the auspices of the Sutherland family and the appearance of gentry, a guise that could mask any number of sins and made implicit one's obligation to monarch and empire both. And of course her superiors imagined she wouldn't be painfully obviously Japanese in Korea, if they'd already mentally blended her into some ancient English family. Idiot British scum.

She held her cigarette between her lips and looked through the remaining documents in the folder; a few notes on Sir Vyvyan Holt, the new Consul-General to the Republic of Korea, some reports from the existing intelligence network about the activities of Soviet and Chinese agents in the country, and details and even some photographs of the Korean contacts who'd supplied the information. Carlisle cleared his throat again as Midori was reading the notes on a bored-looking young military officer named Major Lee.

"I can see when a woman's getting cold feet, Takamori; if it's any consolation, I doubt this will be a long assignment for you. Holt is… well, he's a lot of things, but he's not an idiot. He'll evacuate British diplomats if - when there's a declaration of war."

For a moment, Midori wondered, as she had before from time to time, if this could be a blessing in disguise. If she was on the other side of the world when Aleksandr defected, then there would be very little to link them, little to cast suspicion on Midori for fraternising with a known enemy agent. They wouldn't be able to live together again for some time regardless. But it was the difference between living like they had in their time together in Berlin, sneaking around and seeing each other infrequently, and living almost as they had in their years of total separation. All the diplomatic protections in the world couldn't guarantee that Midori would come home safely, and if the Soviets were as keen on civilian air raids as the Nazis…

If London met its end in a nuclear blast, she wanted to be there with Aleksandr when it happened, wanted to be holding him close when the air raid sirens sounded again after these few fragile years of silence. They had sat together in parks and shabby hotel rooms in Berlin and altered the course of the war, of human history, but, while history was far out of either of their hands now, they could still have each other.

Carlisle continued as if Midori wasn't having an existential crisis right in front of him. "Depending on our meteorological findings, we will likely be seeing an official announcement from President Truman about the Soviet bomb before the end of September. We'd like you to be at least in place in Seoul before that, so you've got the next few days to get your affairs in order and then we'll be flying you out on the fifteenth. You'll stopover in Delhi to run a quick errand there, too, I'll have Madge bring you the file over. We'll speak again on Monday." He smiled and winked. "What was your old codename, Takamori? Seems like the Nightingale flies for the empire again."

What bloody fucking empire? Midori wanted to yell. She stood up, stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray, and shook Carlisle by the hand, digging her nails into his skin before he jerked backwards, concerned. She headed back to her own office, with the top secret dossier in hand. She had to find some way out of this.

Meeting Midori for lunch in Westminster meant he'd had a fair slog back to Lewisham in order to teach his Friday afternoon class, but it was always worth it, and certainly made it easier to be hanging around waiting to meet Popovich rather than heading home to start dinner. It was starting to drizzle slightly as Aleksandr lit a cigarette, and he ducked further into the shelter provided by the looming bulk of Southwark Cathedral. Popovich always seemed to want to meet or make his drops at churches. Maybe it was the name.

Aleksandr recognised his footsteps as he approached so didn't turn around, but dropped his half-smoked cigarette in surprise when, instead of his usual cheery greeting, Popovich enveloped him in a warm, brotherly embrace.

"It is so good to see you, comrade!" Popovich exclaimed, stepping back only to clasp Aleksandr's shoulders. "I have just come from the embassy and have the most tremendous news. But please, not here, let's walk."

He kept one hand on Aleksandr's elbow as he led him away, back out onto the main road and towards the bridge. What on earth could have got him so excited? Maybe Popovich, whom he could well imagine never quite grasping the facts of life, had heard that his wife was pregnant or something. A Soviet wonder, comrade, for I have thought long and hard about off’ring her a bairn, and our great Stalin just planted my seed into her womb. Aleksandr could think of few other things that would get him so worked up. He tried to chase away the thoughts and conceal his smirk, suddenly clouded by a much greater mystery: what had he been doing at the embassy, anyway? The whole point of Aleksandr's role was to obscure the link between the ambassador's business and their intelligence gathering.

They ended up walking along a narrow, gravelled path alongside the river and underneath the bridge, where, as soon as they were immersed in the shadows, Popovich hugged him again and began speaking in Russian. "I am so glad to be the one who gets to tell you this, Alyosha. We have done it! A great triumph for socialism! Just over a week ago, we tested our first atom bomb!"

The words sank into Aleksandr's mind like bullets into treacle, their hot velocity slowed suddenly to an agonising crawl. Popovich was still embracing him - if this went on much longer, Aleksandr would begin to question his intentions - and the noise of the road still rattled and roared over their heads. Nothing had changed. And yet everything had changed, apparently, without anyone noticing at all.

"Isn't it wonderful, comrade?" Popovich asked, and before Aleksandr could examine the sudden rush of sarcasm in his tone, Popovich had snatched his arms away and Aleksandr felt them replaced by the unmistakeable shape of a pistol pressed up against the side of his ribcage. His heart stopped and started again, stuttering like a siren.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Svarog?" he snapped, trying to sound more authoritative than he felt. In the darkness under the bridge, he could only see the light glinting off Popovich's teeth as he sneered.

"I haven't actually just come from the embassy, Alyosha; I was there this morning at about the same time you were. I watched you leave. I followed you to a café in Westminster, and then I followed the woman you spent such a long time over lunch with." He laughed like a bad cinema villain. "Do MI6 really think anyone believes that building is there to sell fire extinguishers? I mean, I'm sure you'd know the answer to that, given that you're working for them."

Aleksandr's blood was running ice cold, sweat seeping off him everywhere as his skin prickled. Why didn't he carry his gun more often? Why had he so blithely assumed Popovich couldn't be a threat to him? "I am most certainly not a British agent," he said emphatically, given that it was technically true.

"Oh, of course, so you have no idea who that woman works for and were just meeting because she is your lover or something." Aleksandr couldn't help a sharp intake of breath and Popovich shifted the angle of his pistol. "She isn't, is she? I've heard the rumours about you, but you always seemed normal enough and I didn't want to believe it. With those unwashed, brain-rotted Nipponese whores?"

"Svarog, whatever it is you think you saw -"

"Don't bullshit me. I know you think I'm a fool, so I've been playing one as best I can these past two years. I've seen the way you act when anything happens that's remotely in favour of the Soviet Union. I know you've been visiting the embassy and hanging around a lot more since what happened in February, with all your lying friends back in Leningrad. Maybe you haven't become the King's new lapdog just yet, but you have a treacherous heart."

Aleksandr had to find some way to get hold of the gun. If he could distract Popovich just enough, he could grab some gravel from the path, throw it into his face, and might then be able to wrestle the weapon out of his hand. "You call me treacherous, but I'm not the one speaking about the deadliest weapon in history as if it were some kind of superstitious idol to be worshipped."

"Are you ever going to stop believing that I'm an idiot?" Popovich hissed. "This isn't just about the bomb, Alyosha. This isn't even just about the Soviet Union. I'm sure you'd love to have your British masters running the world again, but even they have to know it's not going to be them now. It's America that's going to run around the globe, snatching up other countries as prizes and imposing their capitalism on people struggling for freedom, and until now there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Japan was one of the most powerful nations on the planet and now it's a glorified colony, because the Americans had the bomb and nobody else did. That won't - that can't happen now. We are the world's other great power, and we'll build up an atomic arsenal to rival anything they can create. America will never drop the bomb on another country ever again, as long as they know that we could do the same to them." He turned his head slightly to look towards the dark river, shadows playing over his face. "It's not just a Soviet weapon. It's the weapon of every wretched and oppressed man, woman and child on this earth."

It was impassioned and more than a little persuasive, but it was also exactly the distraction Aleksandr had needed. He dropped into a crouch, seized a handful of gravel, and shoved it into Popovich's face. Popovich howled at the grit being forced into his eyes, but instead of loosening his grip, his other hand whipped up to brace the stock of the pistol and he fired blindly, the bullet whizzing over Aleksandr's shoulder.

"You're a dead man, Sobolevski!" he shouted, water streaming from his screwed-shut eyes as he fired another round, the bullet lodging itself into the mortar of the bridge arch. "We'll find you, wherever you run! The British can't protect you!" Aleksandr hesitated, shifting from foot to foot as he tried to assess the possibility of seizing the gun now, but Popovich shot again and gravel spat up centimetres from his foot. He'd underestimated the man completely. Aleksandr stared at his former agent for a moment more, and then turned and ran.

Midori was pacing back and forth across the living room when she heard the front door slam, and she knew that something was horribly wrong the moment Aleksandr walked into the room with his coat and hat still on and his face flushed red.

"Oh, Midori," he gasped, and wrapped his arms around her tight; Midori squeezed him hard in return. "Midori, my Midori, the most awful thing… I've been found out, one of my agents tailed me today and I didn't even notice him, he saw us meet and he followed you back to work too and then met me later today and fuck, Midori, my country has built the bomb, I don't, I can't -"

"Shh," Midori said, stroking Aleksandr's back and trying not to let the rush of panic overwhelm her, "shh, Aleksandr, are you okay? Did he hurt you?"

"No, though not for want of trying. He didn't start firing until after I threw gravel in his face, so he wasn't the best shot. But I couldn't get the gun off him, so he's still alive and reporting back to our superiors right now. They still think I live in Deptford so it might take a while, but they'll find me, Midori, if your people can protect me we need to go, now, but I don't -"

"I'm going to Korea," Midori blurted out, more loudly than she'd intended to. Aleksandr stopped talking at once, and leaned back a little from their embrace.

"What?"

"I'm - I mean, I'm being assigned there, by MI6, as a field officer. Next week. They know about the Soviet bomb test, and they think there's going to be a war in Korea within the next few years." Something tasted bitter on her tongue. "I'm needed to defend imperial interests out there, apparently."

Aleksandr frowned. "This seems terribly sudden. And you don't even speak Korean." He swallowed audibly and added, "Do you?"

Midori's stomach dropped hard and she looked away from Aleksandr's face. "Jogeumman," she said to the floor. "A little bit. I've… my boss told me it was a possibility, back in January. They wanted to send me overseas, either to Seoul or Hong Kong, so I've been studying Korean and Cantonese. And that's why I was away for two weeks back in May, to learn proper field techniques. I wanted to tell you, but you've been so happy and it had been so long since I'd heard anything, I thought they might have changed their minds, and I just wanted to make things easier for you to defect, and -"

Aleksandr cut her off with a single finger against her lips, before kissing her very softly. Then he sighed. "I wish you had told me sooner," he said quietly, and Midori willed the floor to hurry up and swallow her. "But if it keeps you safe - "

"How is going to a country on the brink of war safe?" she yelled, forcing away the enormous weight of shame enough to look back up into Aleksandr's face. "I'm not leaving you again. Especially not if you've been found out. And not for the sake of the British fucking empire."

Aleksandr's agitation was starting to show again as he took his hat off and ran a hand over his hair. "Midori, Sva - no, fuck his stupid codename. Captain Popovich knows your face, he knows where you work, and he might not know your name, but how many Japanese women are there working for MI6? And he's the direct contact for our two highest placed agents in this country, there's no way he won't have them root you out. Korea might not be safe, but from there you could flee to Japan if you had to. You could go home."

"No. My home is with you. You’re my only home."

The look that Aleksandr gave her was a hopeless mix of desperation and adoration. "I can't let you get hurt because of me," he said.

"Do you think it won't hurt me to be hiding on the other side of the world and not knowing if you're even still alive?" Midori pulled him back into a tight embrace, pressing her face against Aleksandr's shoulder. "I thought I could live without you once, and I was wrong. I told you: I'm not leaving you again."

Aleksandr let out another sigh, hot against Midori's ear. "Then what do we do? Do we both leave the country? Where could we go?"

"I don't know," Midori said, "but I think I do know who can help."

She'd been happy enough to be able to get hold of Suzume at the London house that she didn't really think about what she'd meant when she said she'd have to bring 'company'; now, sitting on the sofa with Aleksandr and being examined like a zoo exhibit by her, Lawrence and Niran, she wished she'd asked her aunt to clarify.

"Well, this is exciting," Niran said, as if they were all on some delightful day out. "Nice to see you again, Aleksandr, how have you been?"

"Oh, um, fine," Aleksandr said, faintly. He was looking daggers at Midori, who was doing her best to do the same to Suzume, who was pretending not to see either of them.

"So," Niran continued airily, "I'm going to assume that the reason we're all hanging about in Midori's sitting room on a Friday evening, instead of being out somewhere having a good time, has something to do with you all being spies."

Everyone in the room turned to look at him, and he casually reached into his jacket pocket and took out a cigarette. "Was I not supposed to know?" he asked innocently, lighting it and then gesturing to each of them in turn. "I mean, Professor, I've read everything you've ever published on cryptanalysis; I know what you were doing during the war. Mrs S, well, either you know a lot of people with really weird names and you somehow bribed your way into membership of the Special Forces Club, or you were definitely a spy at some point. Midori, you're fluent in German and you used to live in Berlin, and now you live in London and have a job you're always really vague about. You're incredibly obvious. As for you - " and everyone else turned with Niran as he pointed at Aleksandr " – well, I don't know, you’re a slippery little weasel, so maybe you are just a teacher. But it would seem a bit incongruous, with all this lot." He paused long enough to blow a smoke ring across the room. "Took me so long to learn to do the rings, they make it look so easy in - …Why are you all so surprised? Good gracious, it's as if you've forgotten I was in the Thai resistance."

Midori didn't know where else to look, so she looked very determinedly at her own hands in her lap. For several more seconds, no-one else spoke at all. Then, Aleksandr chuckled.

"You're right," he said. "We're all spies here, apparently. I'm a Soviet intelligence officer; a Major in the MGB. I've been in London since 1947 to supervise a wide group of agents handling intelligence sources in Britain."

Suzume's head snapped around. "Midori, did you know about this? About who he really was?" Her tone was suddenly very hard and cold. Midori started to nod, but her aunt cut her off with a wave of her hand. "Wait. In Berlin you had a Soviet contact, another intelligence agent working undercover. It wasn't… he's not…"

Midori reached over to take Aleksandr's hand and looked up, meeting her eyes. "Yes. That's how we first met. We've known each other since 1940."

Lawrence looked shocked, Niran, completely delighted. Suzume stared at her flatly for a moment before putting a despairing hand to her forehead. "Did you even try to not have a life directly out of some ridiculous novel? What's next, are you going to tell me you go around at night in a mask and a cape avenging the helpless? Did you escape from an island prison and are even now plotting your revenge against someone? Let's just get this all out into the open."

"I feel like I should add that I have been planning to defect," Aleksandr said. Suzume sat down hard into an armchair.

"Oh, good. Well done, Midori, it took nine years, but you fucked a communist into defecting. Congratulations. They should move you to counter-intelligence."

Midori's face was burning, but she cleared her throat to speak. "Look, I didn't invite you here so we could all share our deepest, darkest secrets. We need your help, aunt Suzume. Aleksandr and I have to leave the country. As soon as possible."

Suzume opened her mouth again, but Aleksandr squeezed Midori's hand and took over talking. "There is a group of four men, all currently in very influential positions in the British government, who have been acting as Soviet agents since they were recruited out of Cambridge in the 1930s. I have spent the last few months trying to piece together information that confirms their real identities and their activities on behalf of the Soviet Union. But I don't have all four of them yet, and a colleague has discovered what I've been doing. These are the same men who engineered the death of Konstantin Volkov in Istanbul. And my colleague knows I'm linked to Midori, too."

He ran his thumb soothingly over Midori's knuckles before getting up from the sofa and going over to the bookshelves, pulling out the collection of large dictionaries and taking an envelope from behind them. He shuffled a side table around to empty the envelope's contents onto and everyone gathered around it, including Niran, who was apparently now unofficially inducted into the British intelligence services by virtue of being in the room.

"These two they could arrest right now, I think. Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess." Midori's stomach took a nasty dive at the first name and she stood up too, pushing in between Niran and Aleksandr to look at the documents spread out on the table.

"Burgess?" Larry said, turning over a piece of paper. "Surely not. I met him at the club once or twice. Charming fellow, but he's Tory to the bone."

"You don't look too well, Midori," Niran said, helpfully. Midori elbowed him hard, but, when Suzume raised a pointed eyebrow at her, she sighed.

"I, um, think I might have met Maclean once. At the Boat Race. He was a communist then, at least."

"You've met him?" Aleksandr said curiously, and anyone who believed in a merciful God was clearly disproven by the fact that the floor continued to refuse to swallow Midori up.

"We… spent some time together. There was a lot of Pimms involved. And champagne. And whisky."

"Midori," Aleksandr said, and he sounded strangely impressed if anything. Suzume reached down and started gathering the documents back up into their envelope.

"Great, okay, so now we all know that Cambridge is full of communists and Midori has a type." Her tone became harder again and Midori glanced up to see that she was looking Aleksandr directly in the eyes. "You said there were four men. What do you know about the other two?"

"One of them, I only know that he works in Buckingham Palace. His codename is Tony, but that's not of any real use. The other… I was never able to get anything solid. He came through London recently, but all I could find out was his name. Kim Philby."

The name was oddly familiar to Midori, although she couldn't place it, but Suzume had suddenly gone very pale, and she and Lawrence shared a glance. "Are you absolutely certain?" she asked.

"Obviously, you have no solid reason to believe me," Aleksandr said. "But yes, I am. Philby is a Soviet agent."

"Christ, he's tipped as a future chief of the service," Larry said, weakly.

"You must know this isn't going to do much without you to back it up," Suzume said, looking intently at Aleksandr again. "I'll make sure it gets to the right people, but what am I supposed to say? 'Remember my niece who had the George Cross and five years' service in MI6 until she mysteriously disappeared recently? Well, she fled the country with her lover who was in Soviet intelligence, but they gave me this before they left'. I might as well say I got it from Father Christmas."

Aleksandr slid an arm around Midori's waist; it was a possessive gesture, but a comforting one. "Frankly, I don't give a damn if it does any good at all. I gathered this information for Midori's sake, to make sure I would be valuable to your government. I showed it to you so you would know how very serious our situation is right now. What you do with it after we're gone is none of my concern." Then he tightened his grip and used a tone of voice Midori had only heard from him a few times before, the cool voice of a soldier, a killer. "Assuming, of course, that you do intend to help us."

Suzume looked like she had something just as steely to say in response, but Larry broke in for her. "Midori is family," he said, smoothly. "Of course we'll help you. If this is…" and his gaze dropped to Midori's face, searching. "If this is what she wants."

"I don't want to leave London," Midori said, "but I can't leave Aleksandr. Not again."

Niran made a muffled squeaking noise and then suddenly he was hugging Midori - and Aleksandr, too, by virtue of his refusal to let Midori go. "I can't believe you've been having this incredibly dramatic life for years and you didn't even tell me," he muttered into Midori's jacket. "I thought you were such a bore, I felt ashamed to call you my best friend. If you don't write to me, I am going to hunt you down and talk about Gödel numbers to everyone you care about."

Midori couldn't help a little laugh. "I don't even know where we're going, or how or when. But I'll try."

"Assuming I can get hold of the right person, I think we can sort out the where." When Midori slipped out of Niran's embrace to look at her, Suzume was regarding her with an expression of exasperated fondness, with what almost seemed like a touch of admiration. "Since I'm sure we'll be getting saddled with the eventual bill, I'm going to use your telephone to place some international calls, Midori."

Aleksandr kept his arm around Midori as they sat back down on the sofa, Niran squeezing in on Midori's other side and Larry taking the armchair, looking thoroughly wrung out already. It was getting on for eight in the evening now and Midori wondered if she ought to offer everyone something to eat. Not that they had a great deal in the kitchen. Out in the hall, Suzume was holding a series of conversations in French, presumably with various different exchange operators, but Midori had it half tuned out. Aleksandr was stroking her side, leaning his weight ever so slightly against Midori's shoulder, and Midori remembered the dusty backstage of the theatre in Berlin where she'd slept fitfully with her head in Aleksandr's lap, where Dobroslav and his colleagues had shown them such kindness. She knew, thanks to Suzume, that Dobroslav had survived the war, but Midori had never thought to try and contact him again. She wished she had. Wherever Dobroslav's home country was, it was probably behind the Soviet line now, and harder to reach out to by the day.

"Merde, alors," Suzume swore, loudly, and she heard her start to dial again. This time, she didn't seem to need to wait as long, and after only a single brisk conversation with an operator, she began, in very business-like French. "Lutz. It's Coryphée. Yes, well, I'm quite surprised to be able to get hold of you in your hotel room at this time on a Friday. No, be quiet. You're retired when I say you're retired, and no sooner. Don't think I won't call your mother!" Her footsteps sounded on the floorboards as she paced. "Listen, it's very useful that you're in Paris - I need you to help some friends of mine. A friend of yours too, actually, because I'm sure you remember Nightingale. Well, if you want to know what she's done, you can ask her yourself. Can I give her this number, or - ? It should be some time tomorrow afternoon, I should think, Sunday morning at the very latest. Wonderful. Well, if I'm ever in Geneva, you can call that favour in. Okay. Goodnight."

There was a moment's pause, and then Suzume reappeared at the door to the sitting room, walking over to hand Midori a piece of paper with a telephone number written on it. "You remember Lutz, I take it? If you can make it to Paris, this is the number for the Hotel Chopin, where he's staying. He's agreed to accompany you into Switzerland, and his family can help you with your documentation once you get there. It's probably the closest you'll get to being safe in a country without leaving Europe."

"And it's not illegal in Switzerland," Niran added quietly. Midori turned to look at him, confused, and he gulped, gaze averted, while his cheeks reddened furiously. "Being homosexual. I mean, I doubt they throw you a parade or anything, but you can't be imprisoned for it. Not like here. So maybe I’ll… maybe I’ll come visit you someday?" He squeezed Midori's arm and she thought of every night out they'd spent together, of the deep, dark undercurrent of fear that ran beneath all of his smiles and his bravado.

"I’ll keep a room ready, just for you," she said hopefully, and Niran nodded.

"Good girl."

Midori looked around the room again, at her home of five years, at the people who had been her constant through all of them, until her gaze settled on Aleksandr. "I suppose we'd better pack."

All along the train carriage, the doors were slamming closed, and then there was a whistle from the guard on the platform, an answering one from the engine, and they were away. Aleksandr pressed his face to the compartment window, looking back along the long, dark platform to where the weak lights of the station concourse gleamed. This was the last he would see of London, probably for the rest of his life. On the seat across from him, Midori had a timetable booklet unfolded in her lap and a sheet of paper sitting next to it with the very rough travel itinerary that they had worked out. This was the last train out of Victoria Station, which would take them down to Dover, and, early in the morning, they would take a ferry across the English Channel to Calais. From Calais, they would need to find a train on to Paris, where Midori and Suzume's mysterious Swiss friend would be meeting them. From Paris, they would head to Switzerland, and an entirely new life.

When they woke that morning, they had lingered in bed a little too long and talked about maybe going to the cinema at the weekend, or finding somewhere interesting to go out to dinner. And now the flat, that soft, warm bed, all the comfortable accoutrements of a place that had been their shared home for a year, were gone forever. They had three suitcases between them, filled with clothes and a few books, two lives condensed down to the smallest amount of space possible.

"I can hear you blaming yourself, Aleksandr," Midori said, not looking up from her lap. "This isn't your fault. I didn't spot your agent tailing me, either."

"Can't a man self-recriminate in peace around here?" he grumbled, and Midori laughed.

"I know I'm going to feel sad about this in the future. Probably very soon. But right now… aren't you a little bit excited? To be doing this together. That whatever happens now, we'll be together, with nothing standing between us anymore." She slid her feet over to rest between Aleksandr's and smiled at him. Out of the corner of his eye, Aleksandr caught sight of the Thames glimmering with the silver of the moon and the gold of gas light as they crossed over it. In the inside pocket of his jacket, centimetres from his heart, he could feel the shape of the pair of rings he had bought in anticipation of their being separated.

The weight of everything that had happened to them both in the last day was huge, but somehow those three syllables could bear all of it. Together. He had decided months ago that it was the only thing that mattered, and Midori agreed with him. Aleksandr nudged at Midori's leg with the toe of his shoe and smiled back.

Steam from the engine streamed past the window, obscuring the flicker of lights as they travelled south and east through the city and the buildings grew further apart. Midori had folded the itinerary back into her coat pocket and was now checking over both of their passports and counting through the cash that they'd pooled. Suzume had yelled at her until she accepted a handful of notes from her and Larry, and Midori had, for some reason, had a small amount of French francs stashed away, which should tide them over in Calais until they could find somewhere to change their money.

Aleksandr let her reassure herself with double-checking, half his attention still on the dark English suburbs rolling past the window. He'd lived in London for nearly two years but barely left the city itself, and this was probably his last chance to see anything of the country. Somewhere behind them, his former comrades would be making plans, Popovich no doubt setting his agents in search of a Japanese woman in the intelligence services, but he and Midori were slipping away into the night together, out of the clutches of history, at last.

The thought had first come to him the day he decided to defect, and here was the reality. They had lived their lives as synecdoches, lonely people bearing whole nations on their backs, but now all that was left to carry were a few suitcases of their belongings and the dream they shared between them. Moonlight flickered against the window as the train passed under an arbour of trees.

It was several hours and many tiny, dark rural stations later when the train pulled into Dover in the small hours of the morning. They alighted with their suitcases and wandered out of the station into the town. It seemed even more war-ravaged than London, the husks of buildings still dotted amongst the whole ones and the moon picking out the shape of a hulking castle on a hill to the north, like some time-worn sentinel. Down at the docks, they found an all-night café and spent the rest of the night smoking and drinking awful coffee and watching the boats in the harbour slowly rise on the tide.

Midori kept a very tight lid on it, but Aleksandr could feel the agitation radiating off her as they bought their ferry tickets and headed for the small queue for passport control.

"Do you need another cigarette?" he asked quietly.

"I need us to be on the fucking boat already," Midori said out of the side of her mouth. "This is an island, Aleksandr. There's only so many ways to get off it."

"Well, if we fuck this up, let's steal a dinghy and row for it."

Midori snorted with nervous laughter and Aleksandr patted her on the back, then stepped forward to present the fake Polish passport under which he'd entered the country in 1947. The gentleman in the booth barely gave it a glance before waving him on into the waiting area.

Once they'd stowed their luggage, Midori tugged at the elbow of Aleksandr's coat sleeve and led him out from the passenger lounge and onto the deck of the ferry. There were only a few other foot passengers, and a handful more going by car, and no-one else seemed to want to brave either the early morning wind or the steam already starting to pour from the ship's stacks, so they had the outside entirely to themselves.

They ended up standing at the stern railing, looking back over the slowly awakening town, Midori sheltering her lighter with a hand so they could both dip their cigarettes into the flame. Aleksandr exhaled smoke with a sigh as the ferry gave out an almighty groan and began to pull away from the dock. He could feel the exhaustion of a long day and a night without sleep beginning to creep up on him, but for now, the cool air kept it at bay.

"I'm going to miss it," Midori said, leaning forward onto the railing and taking a slow, contemplative drag. "I didn't ever really want to be British. I just wanted to do what was right, and they wanted far too much from me because of it. But I'm going to miss it, all the same."

"Yeah," Aleksandr said. There was something about the way the morning light and shadow played across Midori's face that made his heart ache and, as he leaned down on the railing beside her, he felt the rings shift in his jacket pocket again and thought suddenly of the inscription that ran around the inside of one of them. Yes. This was the time. As the ferry drew further away from land, he could see the famous white cliffs stretching away in either direction, the rising sun painting them in all the colours of fire. There was a flock of gulls following in the wake of the ship and, at any other time, their high, wheeling calls might have reminded him of Leningrad. But this was a moment all of its own.

When they'd both finished their cigarettes, Midori stood up and started to move away from the railing, but Aleksandr caught her by the arm.

"Wait, Midori," he said. "A few months ago, when we were thinking that I would have to move out of the flat for a while, I bought something for you to have as a memento when we did. For both of us to have, actually. So I think it's time to give it to you now."

Midori frowned curiously as Aleksandr unbuttoned his coat and then reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. The almost-pair of rings were warm where they'd sat against his body for hours. He took Midori's hand and pressed one into her palm, and Midori looked down at it, then back up into Aleksandr's face, with eyes so wide and dark and beautiful that he knew he could get lost in them and never, ever want to be found.

"It's got an inscription," Midori said quietly, picking up the ring very carefully.

"Yes, it came like that when I bought it." He had wondered since, from time to time, about the original owner of the ring, about the circumstances that had led to it being in that pawn shop window on the day that Aleksandr would pass by. Fate was something Aleksandr preferred to defy than follow, but it had been briefly kind to him.

Midori held the ring up, the English coastline framed inside it as she read aloud, "'Tomorrow, when the world is free'. It's from that song."

"Well, the setting seemed appropriate."

Midori looked at him again, deep and serious, and then she stepped in and made the gap between them almost too close for a public space. "Aleksandr, if this is a question… the answer is yes. Yes, every day. For the rest of my life."

Aleksandr felt his heart lift on the sea wind and soar up and up, into the sky on wide, unbroken wings. "I - it was a question," he said, "but it was my answer, too. Not just to ask if you would. But to say that I do." He held his own ring close against his palm and reached out to take Midori's from her, then took hold of her right hand and slid the ring into its rightful place on her finger. "I do," he said again. "For every tomorrow. Until the world ends."

He could see the emotion welling over in Midori's eyes as she copied Aleksandr's actions, taking the ring from his hand and sliding it onto his finger. It was a little tight, and might need adjusting, but the subtle weight of it against his skin was the best thing he had ever felt in his life. Midori squeezed his hand slightly before letting go.

"As I understand it," Aleksandr said, "at this point we're supposed to kiss."

Midori smiled, and turned back towards the great cliffs of Dover growing smaller and smaller behind them. She took her hat off, the wind immediately whipping through her hair, and raised her right hand against the horizon. The sunlight flashed on the metal of her ring.

"Let's go to the bow. Kiss me when we can see France."

The trouble with making a romantic escape under the cover of darkness was that, eventually, the lack of sleep would catch up with you, and do it hard. Midori felt groggy and more than a little nauseous as she dragged herself and two of their suitcases down onto the platform at the Paris Gare du Nord. It was just past noon and, hours after their meagre breakfast in Calais, she was ravenously hungry, but she wasn't sure she would actually be able to keep down anything she ate.

"Oh, God," Aleksandr said behind her, sounding as terrible as Midori felt. "I think I might have forgotten how to speak French."

Midori could sympathise. Even after speaking little besides English for five years, she knew she could still switch to Japanese or German at the drop of a hat, but while she could more-or-less understand the rapid conversations that had surrounded them since they had disembarked the ferry at Calais, summoning the right vocabulary from her own mind and getting it out of her mouth was another thing entirely. Changing countries was not a good thing to do when sleep-deprived.

"We need to find a telephone," she said as they came off the platform and onto the concourse. There were sooty-feathered pigeons flitting amongst the crowds, tinny announcements of arrivals and departures ringing to the metal rafters overhead. They were carried along aimlessly in the throng of other travellers until they neared the ticket office, and Aleksandr patted her shoulder and pointed to a row of wooden phone booths.

"So who is this Mr Lutz, anyway?" Aleksandr asked, as Midori rooted in her pockets for enough centimes.

"I think the better question is who isn't he. When I met him during the war, he was a spy and a people-smuggler, but apparently that was just a side gig to being a figure skater and now a two-time Olympic silver medallist. His father is a Swiss diplomat who used to work for the League of Nations, so I think he has some fingers in that pie, too."

"And here I am, all red-eyed and unshaven," Aleksandr said sadly, as Midori slipped into the booth and pushed some coins into the slot before dialling the number Suzume had given her.

"Bonjour," she said to the receptionist at Raphaël's hotel, "ah, je voudrais parler avec Monsieur Salzner. Votre client? Je m'appelle Mademoiselle Rossignol." Why did French have to have so many complicated 'r' sounds? It should stop having them until Midori had had some sleep, or at least another few cups of coffee. She drummed her fingers on the shelf inside the booth as the receptionist took her time connecting them.

"Bonjour, Mademoiselle Rossignol," came an old familiar voice at last. "Ça fait longtemps, eh?"

"Raphaël, you speak English, don't you? Oder... wir können Deutsch sprechen?"

"English is… bearable. I take it you've arrived in Paris, then."

"Yes, we're at the Gare du Nord."

"'We'?" Raphaël sounded surprised. "I didn't realise this was going to be a ménage. How exciting. Well, if you're too tired to speak French then I suppose I had better come and get you. Wait for me at the entrance to the metro."

Raphaël hardly seemed any older at all when he came up the stairs into the main station, wearing the same glasses with gold-wrought frames and tailored grey wool coat as he had years before, in Switzerland. He seized Midori by the shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks, and then turned to Aleksandr.

"You can have a kiss, too, if you like, but I think we should at least be introduced first."

Aleksandr tipped his hat. "Aleksandr Sobolevski. You must be Mr Lutz."

"Raphaël, please. I loathe that codename. You do a double jump once and nobody wants to talk about anything else ever again. And Aleksandr, hmm?" He turned back towards Midori. "So this is the lucky gentleman you were always talking about in your sleep." Midori blushed, but Aleksandr's eyes sparkled with delight.

"So I'll ask you what I asked Coryphée," Raphaël said. "What on earth did you do now, Miss Takamori? Last I heard, you were practically the toast of London, but now you're fleeing the country?"

"It's my fault," Aleksandr cut in swiftly. "I'm being pursued by my former MGB colleagues for treason against the Soviet Union, and they know Midori's identity too, so it was no longer safe for either of us to remain in Britain."

Raphaël looked at him for a long moment as if anticipating a punchline, then looked back at Midori, who sighed.

"He's not joking."

"Well," Raphaël said, with only the slightest roll of his eyes, "my skills were mostly geared for evading Germans, but I think I can handle Russians, too. I've reserved a room for you at the Chopin - don't worry, they'll pretend not to notice you're sharing – so, once you've dropped off your luggage and freshened up, we can see about making you both look a little different. My ice exhibition is over, but I've still got some business in Paris for the next few days, so you'll need to blend in."

It was a few hours and a lot of coffee later that Midori found herself seated in the window of a Parisian barbershop, watching as Raphaël and the moustachioed barber held an animated conversation about Aleksandr's hair. Midori's was shoulder length, so there wasn't much she was willing to do to change it beyond styling it differently, but Aleksandr's long hair, even tied back in its usual bun and hidden under his hat, was something any Soviet agents in France would surely know to look out for. It would be strange to see him with short hair again, like he'd had when they met for the very first time and Midori had thought him only another Nazi to be avoided as much as possible.

"Midori."

She blinked at the sound of her name, and got up from the seat by the window to come over to where Aleksandr was beckoning her from the barber's chair. Raphaël and the barber continued, apparently unheeding, as Midori crouched down next to him. Aleksandr smiled.

"When I've actually had some sleep I'll probably remember properly, but… there's a story about a man who had unnatural strength because his hair was long, but his lover cut it off and he became an ordinary man again. Do you know it?"

"I've never heard of it."

"Mmm. Maybe it was a novel you haven't read. But, anyway, I was just thinking about it. It must have been a relief. To let go of a burden like that, for someone you love. When I was a young man, I thought there wasn't anything I could aspire to more than making my mark on history - it was why I left university to enlist in the army, why I leapt at the chance to join the intelligence service. Now I know there's much bigger things to aim for." He pressed his hand to Midori's face, warm skin with a hint of metal. "Thank you for that. For everything."

Before Midori could respond, the barber was shooing her and Raphaël both away, reaching for his comb and a pair of scissors. Aleksandr turned to face the mirror in front of him and closed his eyes, and his silvery-blond hair began to fall to the floor piece by piece.

They passed three days in Paris in relative peace. French came to them both more easily with rest, aided by the fact that most people refused to speak to them in any other language. The weekend slid into Monday and neither MI6 officers nor Soviet agents came to drag them back across the Channel. They walked along the Seine, took shelter from the weather in covered streets, steadfastly ignored the newspapers and, at night, Midori ran her hands through Aleksandr's freshly-cut hair and kissed him absolutely everywhere. In the hazy light of the evenings, tinged with the cold of the oncoming autumn, it seemed as if the city existed in another world entirely.

It was an illusion that couldn't last.

"If you keep touching it so much, it'll start to fall out," Aleksandr said, but still tilted his head into Midori's hand. His hair was cropped short all the way around the back and sides and left longer on the top in a way clearly intended to be styled up into a coif, but that allowed it to fall forward loosely into his eyes. They were lingering in bed late into their fourth morning in Paris, the pull of hunger not yet strong enough to draw them out of the cosy warmth of one another's embrace.

"It's not me that's doing that," Midori said with a smile. "Don't you think it's getting a little thinner on its own?"

"How dare you." Aleksandr's face crumpled melodramatically. "I've never been so insulted. I think you should apologise at once. Thoroughly. Get out of bed. Stop speaking to me until I deem your apologies worthy of a response."

With a giggle, Midori leaned in to press a soft kiss to Aleksandr's throat, just below his jaw. "Just how thoroughly are we talking? Me apologising, I mean."

Before Aleksandr could respond there was a knock at the door, and they both groaned.

"Ignore it," Midori said, but the knock came again, more insistently, and Aleksandr clambered out of bed with a sigh, pulling on a pair of trousers before ambling over to the door. As soon as he opened it, Raphaël pushed his way inside, fully dressed and with his face dark and troubled.

"I'm sorry to disturb your lovely morning, lady and gentleman," he said in clipped, strained French, as Midori sat up and pulled the sheets and blankets up around her chest, "but there are some distinctly shifty looking men in the lobby. Speaking in Russian."

"Is there another way out of the hotel?" Aleksandr asked, slotting bullets into the magazine of his pistol as he sat in a hard chair by the door. Midori was still frantically packing up their things, only half-dressed. The Hotel Chopin was tucked into a corner of one of Paris's many covered shopping streets, which had seemed quaint and romantic when they arrived and now seemed like the worst idea ever.

"I imagine there's a staff entrance, but I've no idea where," Raphaël said. He was leaning against the wall in a manner that looked extremely nonchalant, but Aleksandr could see the hints of tension in his body, athlete's muscles coiled and ready to spring. "I suppose we could corner a maid or a bellboy and ask, but then we'd probably have to explain that their lobby is full of Soviet agents and I have a feeling that might cause a scene."

"Because going down there ourselves and getting into a shootout wouldn't cause a scene at all."

"Who's getting into a shootout, Monsieur Soldier?" Raphaël raised his eyebrows. "Do you know how many people I walked right under the noses of the Gestapo and out of Germany, without ever firing a shot?"

"So your plan is that we just walk past them?" Aleksandr turned around in an attempt to share an incredulous glance with Midori, but she was busy putting on her tights.

"Surely you know as well as I do that, in our business, there's no substitute for sheer bravado. I'll go down and check us all out, then I'll come back up to get you and we all walk out as if nothing at all is the matter and we're all meant to be here. Then we very calmly proceed to the Gare de l'Est and very calmly buy some tickets and very, very calmly get the fuck out of here and onto the next train heading for Geneva."

"And what if they very calmly follow us?"

"If there was ever a transport network built for losing a tail, it's the Paris metro." He stood up from the wall and came over to pat Aleksandr on the shoulder. "The biggest obstacle right now is any of us losing our cool. Have a little faith in me, please. If I got Mademoiselle Takamori there out of Nazi Germany, I think I can get us all out of France."

Aleksandr turned around again to look at Midori, who was now dressed in everything but her jacket and was loading the chambers of her own revolver. She glanced up, eyes serious behind her glasses. "I trust him, Aleksandr. Raphaël knows what he's doing."

Aleksandr sighed. "Okay."

"There we go, sport." Raphaël patted Aleksandr on the shoulder again and then straightened his jacket as he made for the door. "I'll be back in fifteen minutes. Think happy thoughts, people."

Once he was gone, Aleksandr holstered his pistol and went around to where Midori was sitting on the bed, and kissed the top of her head. "By this evening, we'll be in Switzerland," he said, as encouragingly as he could. "The start of our new life."

Midori tipped her head back and Aleksandr kissed her properly this time, gentle and slow. "I'm nervous, too, Aleksandr," she said after, "but I did do this once before." She stood up and slipped her revolver into its shoulder holster before putting on her jacket and patting the spot where the gun sat, hidden. "There's plenty that I'm prepared to do again, for you." She reached for Aleksandr's right hand and brought it to her lips, kissing his knuckle just over the ring. Aleksandr felt warmth blossom in his chest, despite the heavy tension in the room.

The door banged open and they both jumped, but it was only Raphaël, this time wearing his coat and hat and carrying a suitcase of his own. "Ready to go?" he asked. "Since I made the clearly grievous error of not bringing a weapon on a routine business trip, you two take one suitcase each and keep your shooting hands free. Not that you'll need them, because we're going to be absolutely fine, but… well, you know." He picked up the largest of Midori and Aleksandr's three cases and gestured for them to follow suit.

He led them down the staircase in single file, Aleksandr bringing up the rear. Even before they descended the last flight into the lobby, Aleksandr could hear two hushed voices speaking in Russian; he caught the word 'Japanese' and leaned forward to whisper in Midori's ear.

"Pull your hat down low. Don't let them see your face."

The lobby was small, only a few feet between the staircase and the front door. They were so close. Aleksandr kept his eyes firmly trained on Midori's back, resisting the horrible urge to turn and look at the two men seated opposite the reception desk. Raphaël was at the door. A little further and they'd be safely away. Just a little further -

"Sobolevski!" barked a voice behind him. "Oстановись, вероломная собака!"

"Time to go!" Raphaël yelled, and kicked the hotel door open, careering out into the passageway, Midori hot on his heels. Aleksandr pulled his gun out of its holster as he followed behind them, glancing back over his shoulder. The morning crowd was giving them a little cover, but in the distance he could still see two dark-coated men in pursuit, shoving through groups of shoppers who recoiled at the sight of two armed and angry-looking men in their midst.

They burst out onto a back street and Raphaël immediately started jostling the door handles of parked cars. "No time for the fucking metro," he said, "let's just hope that some idiot - thank fuck." He yanked open the driver-side and rear passenger doors of a sleek little vehicle, threw the suitcases into the back, and then produced what looked like a very complicated folding knife from his coat pocket. "Think you can give me some cover while I get the engine going?" he asked, already slipping into the drivers' seat.

"I've got you," Aleksandr said, stowing his own suitcase away before crouching down on the pavement facing back the way they'd come, cocking his pistol. "Get in the car, Midori."

"Are you joking?" Midori had gone around to the other side of the car after shoving her suitcase into the back, but apparently only to use it for cover, her revolver in both hands as she leaned over the roof. Before Aleksandr could argue, there was a great clatter and their two pursuers emerged onto the street too, looking around frantically. Aleksandr saw their faces change as the two men spotted them but, a split second later, he heard the crack of a gun firing and one of the mens' hats soared clean off his head. Both of them ducked back into the passage.

"You're supposed to aim lower than that," Aleksandr called, trying not to sound too impressed, then ducked instinctively as a bullet whistled over the top of the car. He aimed towards the passage entrance and, when one of the Russian agents re-emerged, he fired once, twice, and was rewarded with a muffled cry of pain.

"If I wanted critique, I'd have asked for it!" Midori replied tersely.

A bullet whizzed into the tyre of the next car along and it started to slowly bleed air, hissing loudly. Any minute now, they were sure to start to hear sirens in the distance, and if there was one thing that would make this situation infinitely worse, it would be the police getting involved. He saw movement at the entranceway and shot again, but it was a feint, and before he could get another shot off, one of the men stepped out properly and fired, and this time he heard Midori yelp with pain and drop down behind the car.

In that moment, it seemed to Aleksandr like everything in the world slowed to a crawl. He felt his muscles suddenly flood with energy, time unspooling around him as he stood up in a single fluid motion and fired. Once, the man staggered backwards. Twice, he dropped to his knees, something red and wet spilling out onto the pavement. Three times, and then there was a sudden roaring in his ears as the car behind him spluttered into life. Reality burst back in with a cold flush of exhaustion and the sound of Raphaël yelling his name, and he stumbled into the back seat and then they were pulling away from the kerb. Midori was in the front seat, clutching her left arm, and Raphaël was hunched over the wheel.

"Midori," Aleksandr cried, leaning forward, "Midori, did he hurt you, is it bad, darling, sweet Mi - "

"I'm fine," she said, sounding distinctly not fine. "I think the bullet only grazed me. It just really fucking hurts."

"Yes, well, it's supposed to," Aleksandr said stupidly, and Midori glared at him over the seat. "Here," he said more helpfully, pulling a clean handkerchief from his trouser pocket, "you need to put pressure on it, and keep it elevated. When we can stop somewhere, we'll use my tie as a tourniquet."

"I don't suppose either of you brought a map?" Raphaël asked pleasantly, making an extremely hard right turn that almost had Aleksandr tumbling on top of all their luggage.

"Are you telling me you don't know where we're going?" Midori hissed.

"What do I look like, a Frenchman? Only idiots drive in Paris."

"Can't you just follow the street signs?" Aleksandr asked desperately.

"Oh. Yes, good idea." Raphaël glanced back over his shoulder with a slightly mad grin. "You should consider doing this for a living, Monsieur Sobolevski."

They ditched the car in a back street near the Gare de l'Est, Aleksandr's now completely blood-soaked handkerchief abandoned in the front seat. Midori had a shallow wound that ran horizontally just above her elbow, the blood and the bullet damage both wrecking her expensive coat and jacket, but it didn't look deep enough to need stitches and, once Raphaël had cleaned it out with brandy from his hip flask, they managed to jury-rig a tourniquet and dressing out of handkerchiefs and ties.

"You don't need to fuss over me," Midori said, as they waited in a secluded corner with the suitcases while Raphaël went to buy their tickets. "I told you, I'm fine."

"Who here has been shot before? That's right, me and not you. We should see about getting you a hot cup of tea once we're on the train, it's good for shock and you lost quite a bit of blood, you need your fluids." Aleksandr took Midori's right hand and squeezed it, running his thumb over the gold ring. "Let me fuss a little. It's my job now - the only one I've still got."

Midori looked down at the floor, and then up again into Aleksandr's eyes. "You killed him. The man who shot me."

"I did." He'd got his share of kills during the Battle of Berlin, and a few more on the long way home to Russia, but he'd never had quite this same visceral sense of the rightness of his actions, even when the men he was killing were Nazis. It was, he supposed, the difference between killing for one's country, and killing for one's love.

"Good." There was no equivocation in Midori's face, a little too pale but beautiful as ever. Aleksandr wanted terribly to kiss her. He would do it again, would run down all the strange and twisting corridors of his life over and over, gladly, just to be standing here with the woman he loved, on the brink of something almost like freedom. He glanced around them and was leaning in to go ahead and kiss her anyway, when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Now, don't be alarmed, my amorous friends," Raphaël said, handing out their tickets, "but there is the tiniest chance that I may have overheard another group of gentlemen speaking in Russian near the ticket office."

"The vaguer you make it, the more alarming it is," Midori said grumpily. Being shot really did not agree with her. But Raphaël only gave her a winning smile and started to pick up the suitcases.

"It's that kind of optimistic spirit that will surely get us safely out of here, Mademoiselle Midori. Come along, now, international departures are this way."

Aleksandr couldn't help glancing around as they made their way across the wide open station concourse. There was, of course, no-one with a giant sign over his head that said 'MGB agent' but, after everything that had already happened to them that morning, almost everyone looked potentially dangerous to him. Any overcoat could be concealing a gun, any hat pulled low could be hiding the intent to kill. Midori's coat sleeve still gaped open messily over her gunshot wound, and it was sure to draw the eye of anyone who glanced their way.

"All passengers for Dijon and Geneva, train now boarding at platform twenty-four," called a station guard ahead of them. "Platform twenty-four for the 11:05 service to Geneva via Dijon!" Raphaël made a smooth turn towards the platform in question.

"Sobolevski!"

He tensed up, still walking forward. The station was crowded. Surely they wouldn't - couldn't - do anything here. Aleksandr could see two uniformed police officers further down the concourse, batons at their belts.

"Sobolevski! Oстановись!"

He didn't turn around. He didn't look back. He was done, completely and utterly done, with obeying their orders. Raphaël was at the head of the platform now, their south-eastward-bound train curving down the track towards the bright sunlight at the far end of the station. Aleksandr could hear the sounds of a scuffle behind him, sharp words in French. He kept walking. Raphaël stopped by one of the open carriage doors and stepped up into it, glancing back over their heads and smiling.

"I think your friends have found themselves in a spot of trouble, Monsieur Sobolevski."

Midori's eyes flashed with something bright and amused as she followed Raphaël onto the train, but Aleksandr didn't give a single backwards glance before pulling the carriage door closed behind him with a heavy slam.

They were going home.

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triviareads · 1 year ago

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This month was all about contemporary romances for me. I got some excellent ARCs like Tastes Like Shakkar by Nisha Sharma (which pleasantly surprised me; review forthcoming) and Tessa Bailey's Unfortunately Yours (here's my review). I read a rather entertaining novella called Hard Wood that put me in my lumberjack era for a hot second. There was another book that tried to sell me on a hero named "Martin" (tbh his cardinal sin was eating mangos off her vaj, which is only topped off in terribleness by eating tiramisu off someone's vagina— Enzo you monster, cages are not where I draw the line, but the tiramisu is). Also read Dana Islay's Rules We Break which had me pondering why it's so hard to find dommes in romance novels (and rarer still to find well-written ones). All in all, a good month, and here are my favorites:

Looking by Katrina Jackson

This was recommended to me by @monarchies-history after I was asked for a list of diverse contemporary romance recs. Darren and Nadia are a married couple with twins. They want to open their marriage and arrange to meet with Jourdan (sidenote: all the mcs are Black; Katrina really does the most for diverse romances), who is very into both of them right off the bat, and the feeling is mutual (there is a park trail sex scene lolol). What I loved most about Looking is that it's such a joyful book. The dialogue is funny and clever, the sex is very hot in all its configurations (Darren and Nadia get to know Jourdan separately before they all get together— it's actually kinda "slowburn" in that sense; each of them gets their own POV section), and the three of them are just so happy to be together, you can't help but smile.

Serving Pleasure by Alisha Rai

@jeanvanjer was trying to get me to read Glutton for Pleasure for the longest time (which I did, and it was good; another throuple book), but I latched onto Serving Pleasure more, not only because I enjoyed the way the sex was written more, but also because the emotions REALLY got to me. It's also a pretty unhinged premise: The hero Micah is a recluse and an artist, and Rana lives across the street from him and like... constantly watches him, and even follows (stalks?) him at some point. Lucky for her he's very into it, even jerking off purposely at his window (out of spite, but then he stops midway out of guilt lolol). He asks her to pose for him and they began a no strings-attached fling.

Also, I really liked Rana's characterization: she's perceived as a "party girl" with no serious ambition compared to her sisters so she has to grapple with her self-perception vs. what outsides see, which was really quite novel for me to read in a South Asian heroine.

Compromised in Paradise by Samanthe Beck

This book is fun, light, and quite literally a beach read since it's set in a resort in Hawaii. Arden is a stressed-out heiress looking for a fling, but when the hero Nick catches her faking her orgasm, he decides to give her orgasm lessons. Like, what a saint amirite? With a premise like this, it can go a lot of ways but I appreciate Nick's dedication to centering their sex lessons around her and her orgasm, and then it took an unexpected but welcomed turn towards the end with the rare contemporary romance anal sex.

This book also made me read like three of Samanthe's other books on one shot, and they're all full of great banter and solid dirty talk. Would absolutely recommend this book, this series (called "Compromise Me" which should totally be the name of an HR series), and this author overall.

Salt in the Wound by Sierra Simone

Sierra Simone is back at it, y'all. Salt in the Wound is the (free!) prequel to Salt Kiss, which is coming out this fall. It's set in the same universe as the New Camelot series and Sierra's criminally underrated Sherwood (ft. female!Robin Hood/Maid Marian/Sheriff of Nottingham with a side of a hushed mention of bogeyman Mark Trevena). It centers around how Isolde gets engaged to Mark Trevena, former assassin, current BDSM club owner, and Man Who Never Stops Telling You He's A Bad Bad Man. Isolde wants to be a nun (she also learns martial arts at a nun dojo), but is put in a position where she needs to learn how to fake being Mark's sub in public. Cue kink lessons, and as it turns out she's very into it, and Mark is SHOOK (the way he flees at the end because he can't handle Feelings and masks it with a show of "I'm sooooo Bad you should have expected me to be a bitch about this"..... bravo. Couldn't have set up Salt Kiss better).

My favorite thing about Sierra's characters is just the level of zeal they have... for religion, for sex, for power, and this short story is no different. I am eagerly awaiting the Lyonesse Trilogy.

You Can Follow Me by Jo Brenner

This book was shilled in both Sierra Simone and Mila Finelli's newsletters in a span of a week so I knew I had to give it a shot. Another wild premise: Kara hooked up separately with three SEALs who were actually lovers (two of the three did *not* happen upon her by accident...) and now Circumstances lead to them kidnapping her and holding her captive. Listen, I fully admit I came here for the sex (fun sex, angry sex, manipulative sex, spite-because-she-won't-sleep-with-you-so-you-fuck-your-bros-in-front-of-her sex... you get the picture) but I stayed for the *journey* ok. Specifically how Kara deals with this insane loss of freedom even as she wants to jump all of their bones, and starts to catch Feelings.

Scorching to the Touch by Ofelia Martinez

Another excellent recommendation by Sierra Simone, this one is a somewhat toxic (until it isn't!) romance between a telenovela star (and she's plus sized) and a rockstar. Listen, sometimes all you want to do is read a romance with two hot people who know they're hot shit and also deeply messy individuals. Revenge oral 4% of the way into the book? Check. Stalking Tracking each other long after they've broken up? Check. Breaking up each other's engagements? Check. Him crying on his knees because he bruised her during sex even if it's probably him overreacting? Check. Obsession-induced erectile dysfunction? Check. It's fabulous. Would recommend.

Forbidden Harmony by Elizabeth Kelly

I feel like this post sums up the plot of this one excellently; In addition, I know Elizabeth is writing a series with exclusively older couples which I might try soon.

#trivia's book round-up #contemporary romance #katrina jackson #alisha rai #samanthe beck #sierra simone #jo brenner #ofelia martinez #elizabeth kelly #book recs

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pinkarachnia · 2 years ago

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Lesbian Anime Review #4 - Otherside Picnic

I picked this one to watch after I read the interview with Iori Miyazawa, who wrote the source material novel. I would have a beer with Iori.

The setup here is that there are two girls (great start). They’re adults who drink beer. Both of them have, through different circumstances, found gateways to another world that they call The Otherside (urasekai). I don’t think this anime is an isekai though. The Otherside doesn’t function like your usual isekai fare with the expected suite of fantasy tropes. It’s a dark reflection of earth populated with monsters that just want to kill you or make you go insane. The girls meet up and then decide to make a living from going to the Otherside to fight monsters and then sell the spoils to a researcher they know back on normal earth. Then they start falling in love because why else would I be here

I’m happy that the characters aren’t in high school. Huge plus for me. I don’t think they ever say exactly how old they are but I think they’re university students. They must be at least 20 because they drink alcohol. I like that they use very mundane methods for fighting monsters. The method is guns! These girls are carrying weapons around that they would for sure get in trouble for if someone found them out. Good for them, you love to see some crime in your gay anime.

I think the Otherside is cool. It gives me kind of a dark souls vibe because all the creatures there are extremely hostile and it looks like an ancient version of earth that’s fallen to ruin. I don’t know if they explore any more of it later in the story, but it seems so far like the monsters can’t be communicated with and they always turn to violence immediately. The protagonists never seem to question whether it’s right or wrong for them to shoot to kill, but then they’re usually attacked first. It might be cool to see them do more with that if they animate more of the novels.

I don’t have many criticisms, but a few things stuck out to me that could be improved. The show is presented from the perspective of one of the two girls, the one that’s presented as being plain looking and introverted. Her love interest is outgoing and spontaneous. Kind of get manic pixie dream girl vibes from her.

I don’t think they do a good enough job of letting the main character be her own character. She has a backstory that I won’t spoil, but it’s not a happy one. Despite that she just acts like a normal person aside from being an introvert and not having any friends. She’s practically an audience self insert character, which feels disappointing to me. If you’re going to give your character some kind of trauma, maybe let that define them just a little bit? I feel like I don’t know anything about this character as a person.

My second and more major gripe is with the CGI. I don’t have an issue with anime that uses CGI where appropriate. I get that if you want to animate a crowd of people or complicated machinery or combat scenes it can be a lot more convenient to use 3D models, but I think they use them way too much in this show, and what’s worse is that the models just look bad to me. It’s really easy to spot when it changes from 2D to 3D and they do this for any shot further away than medium distance when the main characters are doing a physical activity. It makes for mediocre looking scenes and really breaks my immersion.

I’d love to see another season of this. Since it was only 2021, I'm still holding onto some hope. While I have my issues with the quality of the presentation at times, I still liked this enough to recommend it. The yuri elements are present through the whole narrative since the main character is only really subjecting herself to horrors on the reg because she has a crush.

If I can find a way to read the books for this, I'd be interested to see where they go with it. I might come back to this review once I can do that. Or I might not.

Pros

ADULTS

Be gay

Do crimes

Dark Souls

Cons

Bad CGI

Main character too bland for me

And I’m giving this one a 7/10

#lesbian anime review

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visceravalentines · 2 years ago

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I wish you would write a fic where….

Sinclair bros. gang bang tbh

Alright Nonnie, here we are. I've been wanting to write something like this for a while but the maximum number of people I've ever had sex with at the same time is one (1) so it was kind of daunting to tackle three at once (heh). It got away from me a little bit on the buildup but I hope you like it! Happy to write more like this in the future so if you want me to give it another shot, lmk.

The Sundress

Poly!Sinclairs x Hinge!AFAB!Reader

Smut, group sex, oral, voyeurism, praise kink/dirty talk, no pronouns used but reader wears a sundress, gets called "doll" and "pretty"

This morning you decided to wear a very particular sundress.

You found it at a thrift store on a solo venture into town. It was cute, had a tiny floral print and ruffles on the straps. It wasn’t completely your style, but there was just something about it. It fit your frame perfectly and at the same time, it was both scandalously short and devastatingly low-cut. You wondered if it was too much as you gave the skirt a little twirl in the dressing room mirror. There was a time when you wouldn’t dare wear something like that out of the house for fear of the attention it would attract.

Now, however, the only attention that existed in Ambrose was much more than welcome.

You went ahead and bought it. The thought of each of your boys’ reactions made you giddy and a little smug. You hung it in your closet and waited for the right day to come along to bring it out: a day when you felt especially sexy and particularly devious. A day when things had finally calmed down after a long and busy week in which you all barely saw each other and most definitely had not spent any quality time together.

That morning, you took a few extra minutes getting ready. The stars had aligned for your little plan. Your hair was gorgeous. Your skin was glowing. You looked like a snack and felt like one too. You practically pranced down the stairs despite admonishing yourself to play it cool.

Bo and Vince were at the breakfast table, enjoying a leisurely morning after the hectic week. Bo had his nose deep in a Clive Barker novel, absently sipping his coffee. Vincent was chewing on toast and sketching.

“Good morning,” you say cheerfully, pulling open the fridge and leaning forward just a little to see if there was any orange juice left.

You hear Vincent stop chewing. Casting a glance over your shoulder, you watch him hit Bo in the arm, his eye glued to you.

“What the hell d’you – oh my.” Bo’s eyebrows shoot up and he immediately places his book facedown on the table. “Well good mornin’ to you, doll.”

You flash them a sugary smile as you pour yourself the dregs of the juice. Vinny’s eye is wide as a saucer. Bo is actually licking his lips. “Did you guys sleep well?”

“Sure did,” Bo says. “What d’you have planned for today? Anything…in particular?”

You perch on the edge of the table, skirt sliding up beneath your ass just a little bit. “It’s supposed to be real hot today, so I figured I’d go through and water all the flowers one more time.”

Vincent is scribbling absently back and forth over his half-finished sketch. “Good plan,” he signs. “Need any help?”

“Nah, I think I’ll be alright. I can manage a hose, you know.”

“Yeah I bet you can,” Bo murmurs.

You smile at him. “What do you have on the list today?”

Bo talks and Vinny signs at the same time.

“Nothin’ much – ”

“Basically nothing – ”

“ – just gonna clean up around the station a little – ”

“ – probably going to do some inventory of art supplies, super boring – ”

“ – definitely gonna be, y’know, a little bit lonely….”

“ – could use some company for sure….”

A giggle almost escapes your lips. “Well, maybe I’ll catch up with you later.” You hop off the table, adjust your skirt, flounce to the doorway and then turn around. All eyes flick back up to your face. “Hey, when does Lester get back?”

“Lester?” Bo says flatly.

“Late, I think, very late,” Vincent signs.

“Oh, okay. Good to know. Bye guys.” You give them a little wave.

The morning passes with a shocking number of chance encounters. Something is broken in almost every building you visit, and Bo simply must fix it today. Similarly, Vincent informs you he needs to do a spot check of wax figures to make sure they’re holding up alright, and wouldn’t you know it, there are flowerbeds nearby every single one.

Watering flowers is hard work, and you can’t possibly be blamed for the sheen of sweat that glistens on your face and arms, nor the number of times you are required to bend over a planter box, nor the fact that you filled the watering can too full and splashed a little water on your bodice and Bo missed his aim with a hammer and smashed his thumb.

When the heat of the day rolls around in the mid-afternoon, you decide to break for lunch and head back up to the house. The twins are nowhere to be found. You are halfway up Main Street when the rattle of a familiar truck engine reaches your ears.

You turn around and beam at Lester, who is quite literally hanging out the driver’s side window. “Hey stranger!”

“Hey yourself,” he says, parking the truck in the middle of the road. “You look – well, now – that is a mighty fine dress.” He blushes.

“Thank you!” You give him a twirl.

His mouth is actually hanging open. He quickly closes it and swallows hard. “Y’know, I would…I’d offer you a ride, but…how ‘bout I just walk you home instead?”

“I would love that.”

Lester climbs out of the truck and wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans. He is remarkably clean, nothing but a few bloodstains below his knees. He offers you his arm, which you gladly take.

“Don’t you need to move the truck out of the road?”

“Nah, it’ll be fine. Nobody comes here anyway. What have you been up to?”

“Oh, just watering flowers. It’s hot today.” You toss your head, fan yourself.

“You’re damn right. Been workin’ up a sweat, huh?”

“Absolutely.”

“Geez.” He cannot take his eyes off you. “Where’re Bo and Vincent?”

“I’m not sure. They’ve been hanging around all day, but I haven’t seen them for a minute.”

“Yeah I’ll bet they have. You’re prettier than a field o’ phlox, honey.”

You squeeze his arm. “Thank you, Les.”

He stops at the edge of the yard. “Hey listen. Lemme go change outta these clothes, then why don’t you and I sneak over to that lil meadow on the east side o’ town? Do a little catchin’ up.”

“That sounds lovely.” You start towards the house.

“Ah-ah, why don’t you wait here? I’ll just be a minute.”

You frown innocently. “But Lester, it’s hot.”

“Well I’ll grab you a drink and bring it back out with me. I jus’ don’t want you gettin’ sidetracked is all.”

“Okay I guess.” You shrug your bare shoulders.

“Be right back, sweet pea.” Lester kisses your cheek, immediately turns bright red, and practically leaps up the front steps and into the house.

Today has been quite the success so far, you think as you kick at the edge of the lawn with a sneakered foot. You’ve been in Ambrose and involved with the Sinclairs for a good while now; it’s nice to know you can still fluster them when you feel like it.

You wait around for a fair few minutes before the front door opens and Vincent steps out, beckons you. “Hey angel, why don’t you come inside? I’m almost done with lunch.”

“Aw Vinny, that’s so sweet of you. But I told Lester I’d wait for him to finish changing.”

“C’mon, you know he’ll be a while. He’s got no concept of time.”

“You’re right about that. I am pretty hungry.”

You climb the stairs, step inside. Vincent shuts the door. Your eyes fall on Lester, who hasn’t even changed yet, standing next to Bo, who has his arms crossed over his chest. Vincent comes up behind you, weaves his strong arms around your waist, holds you against him. You furrow your brow in mock bewilderment. “What’s going on, guys?”

“You’ve been a regular little cocktease all day, that’s what,” Bo says.

“Me?”

“Yeah you.”

“It ain’t fair,” Lester pipes up.

“Prancin’ around all day lookin’ like that.”

You can’t help but smirk and shrug. “Sorry.”

Vincent drops his hands to your hips, pulls you a little closer. You feel a half-established erection pressing against your ass.

“Well, lucky for you, we’ve all come together and decided on a solution,” Bo announces, moving leisurely toward you. “You wanna put on a show, darlin’? We’ll let you put on a show.”

A thrill shoots through you. “Well I suppose that’s only fair.”

“More’n fair, I think,” Bo says as he squares up in front of you.

The first press of Vinny’s lips to your neck sends chills down your back. Bo takes your chin in his hand and bends to capture your mouth. You feel Vincent suck at the thin skin behind your ear, relishing the salt of your sweat.

Already your brain begins to fray with the input of so many sensations at once. You put one hand over Vincent’s, grip Bo’s shirt in the other, and have almost forgotten there are three Sinclair brothers when you feel a gentle brush of fingers on your left thigh, then your right, and then Lester’s hands are beneath your skirt and sliding your panties down. You wonder where he can possibly fit in this arrangement for only a second before you feel his tongue on your sex.

A hopeless moan escapes your throat and Bo breaks your kiss. You open your eyes and note with satisfaction that his face is flushed beneath that smug expression.

“I sure do love seein’ you flustered, darlin’.”

“Right back atcha, sugar,” you say.

Oh, but he does love a spitfire. He seizes your lip with his teeth, running his thumb over your collarbones. Vincent slips the straps off your shoulders and continues his adoration of your skin. Lester, ever the dark horse, already has you unsteady on your feet with long, slow licks. You weave your fingers through his hair and arch your back as Vinny’s deft hands slip beneath the fabric of your dress to cup your breasts.

When you cannot possibly hold yourself up any longer thanks to Les’s ministrations, they disentangle themselves for a brief, heartbreaking moment so you can weave to the couch. You ease yourself back against Bo’s chest, let him hold your wrists in place around his neck, all but trembling with anticipation as Vincent positions himself at your entrance.

“Now darlin’,” Bo murmurs in your ear, “I don’t want poor Les feelin’ all left out here. So why don’t you keep your eyes on him while Vin makes you feel real good, alright?” You nod desperately, lock eyes with Lester, who winks at you. Bo cups your jaw, thumbs your lip. “An’ I’ll be right here, makin’ sure you know what a good job you’re doin’, what pretty sounds you’re makin’. Does that sound okay, doll?”

You open your mouth to respond and Vincent, ever the opportunist, picks that moment to ease himself into you, all the way, an inch at a time. The whine this elicits from you is positively wicked and you hear Bo chuckle against your temple.

“Goddamn, baby, you’re so much fun.”

As Vincent picks up the pace, hands running over your legs, you do your best to keep your gaze fixed on Lester, whose hungry expression leaves you feeling a whole new level of naked. All the while Bo pours a steady stream of praise and filthy commentary into your ear, rutting against your backside as his twin draws a series of sinful sounds from your lips.

Eventually Vincent trades Bo and Bo trades Lester, and you have the unique and genuine pleasure of experiencing the techniques of each one of them in quick succession. Somewhere along the way you are lost in oblivion, your body electric, lavished in kisses and caresses and admiration from all sides.

When at last you are spent and so are they, Bo brings you a glass of water, Lester plants a tender kiss on your brow, and Vincent carries you up to bed.

And that sundress sits in a heap on the floor, forgotten for now, until the next time you decide to capture your lovers’ attention.

#poly sinclairs #bo sinclair x reader #lester sinclair x reader #vincent sinclair x reader #house of wax fanfiction #bo sinclair fanfiction #vincent sinclair fanfiction #lester sinclair fanfiction #bo sinclair #vincent sinclair #lester sinclair #asks #anon asks

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artemiszy · 2 years ago

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THERE IS NO HAPPINESS | Kokushibo X Wife!Reader

Kokushibo x Wife!Reader | One-shot

"Kokushibo was a man who made a lot of mistakes during his life, but loving his wife certainly wasn't one of them, even if she too made the same mistakes."

WARNING. angst, abandonment, weird relationship(?), swearing, death, light gore(I think), manga spoilers. FEMALE READER

The Toyosaki clan was known and prosperous thanks to its reputation for possessing the most beautiful and sweetest women. Sons were kept in their own clan, while daughters were promised to powerful leaders and strong samurai.

And with (Name) it was no different.

As the third daughter of the current clan head and his wife, (Name) was only ten years old when she was betrothed to the firstborn of another clan. It was to be expected, one of her older sisters was already married and the other was engaged too, (Name) just nodded when she got the news.

At least her future husband would be kind. (Name) shuddered to remember that one of her cousins was unhappily married to a cruel, older man, but he was rich and had a reputation, and that was what mattered anyway...

(Name) was a silent child whose expression was always neutral towards everything around her, but she felt relieved when she was informed about the age of her future husband. A boy who was only two years older than (Name), a future samurai and leader. Until she was very curious to meet him.

It took about three or four months for (Name) to meet him in person, the day the clans got together to do business with each other. (Name) stayed with her eldest sister, the second daughter of Lord Toyosaki, who was fourteen years old, was the closest sister to (Name).

— "Nervous?" — Yuri's low words rang in (Name)'s ear.

(Name)'s face rose from her hands clasped under her folded legs above the mat, and she looked at her older sister. — "No."

Maybe it was a lie, after all, (Name) was in new territory, one that he would now live with more often.

— "I can see your little hands trembling, dear sister." — Yuri laughed as he tucked one of (Name)'s (h/c) behind her ear. — "Don't worry, I felt that way too the day I met Yoshimatsu-kun." — She smiled. — "You'll soon realize that things are going to work out for the best."

(Name) remembers that day, it was a year ago when during spring her sister Yuri went with her father and clan companions to officiate her engagement to Yoshimatsu of the Tanifuji clan. (Name) has yet to meet him as at that time she decided to stay with her mother, who could give birth to her younger brother at any time.

According to Yuri's words, Yoshimatsu was like one of the princes of the novels read by her sister, a kind man and a lover of the arts. (Name) still expected her future husband to be kind.

Now it was spring again.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Her future husband's name was Michikatsu Tsugikuni. (Name) first saw him while walking through the engawa with her sister and other ladies, she saw him training with a master in the estate's garden. At that moment she didn't know it was him, although her eyes met and they both stared at each other for a few seconds before they were brought back to reality.

(Name) only found out a few moments after she was finally alone and overheard a conversation between handmaidens.

— "I feel bad for the Toyosaki girl." — One of the servants whispered to the other within a region of the residence.

(Name)'s footsteps stopped at these words. Wait, were they talking about her? The girl looked into the room carefully so as not to be seen thanks to the half-open door.

— "So it is." — The other agreed. — "How did Lord Toyosaki allow (Name)-sama to marry second choice?"

Those servants seemed not to want to be heard at all.

Second option?

— "Hey! Watch your words." — The first handmaiden gave a whispery cry.

— "But it's true, the stronger son fled and what was left for the Tsugikuni was to entrust the clan to the weaker son!"

— "But look on the bright side." — The other chuckled mischievously. — "With the arrival of the Toyosaki maybe we can meet some handsome boys from the clan..."

The servants laughed and talked to each other about trivial matters now, outside, (Name) was sitting on the floor leaning against a wall now a little far from the room, thinking about what she heard.

Strongest son? Weakest son?

She remembers only once hearing around that Michikatsu had a twin brother, but she ended up putting that aside as she wasn't interested.

— "What are you doing there?" — A boyish male voice caught the attention of (Name), when she looked at him she realized it was the same boy as before, until he widened his eyes when she looked at him with those big confused and beautiful eyes. — "(Name)-sama?!"

(Name) quickly got up and covered the boy's mouth making "shhh", then looking back to make sure the handmaids didn't hear, and seeing that they didn't, she grabbed the boy's hand and pulled him out of there.

— "What were you talking about there?" — The boy asked with a slight distress and concern in his voice.

— "I overheard a conversation and…" — (Name) looked right at the boy. — ...Hmm? Wait. Michikatsu-sama?"

— "Y-Yes..."

(Name) blinked. — "Oh."

The two were silent.

— "..."

— "...So, you are my future wife...?"

— "...I am."

— "Oh."

— "..."

Michikatsu scratched his cheek and looked away with a faint pink blush appearing on his face. — "You... you're beautiful..."

— "..." — (Name) gave a small smile of happiness. — "Thanks."

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It was clear that (Name) wanted a love match, so she was happy when she was able to spend more time with her future husband thanks to certain meetings. Friendship became love in a matter of just a single year.

At sixteen, (Name) married Michikatsu. A year later she had her first child, Tsukihiro.

During this period of time, (Name) watched her husband become a stronger and more skilled man, she admired this, his dedication and talent, although she felt that sometimes something bothered her.

Two more years passed before Michikatsu approached (Name) with news.

— "(Name)..."

— "Hmm?" — (Name) looked at him as her finished feeding little Tsukihiro boiled rice.

There was also a small bulge in (Name)'s belly area below her kimono, indicating that she was expecting a baby in the next few months.

Her husband sighed and sat down on the mat beside her as Tsukihiro's face rejoiced to see his father.

— "My brother is back..." — Michikatsu informed her.

(Name) had a surprised reaction, she had already heard about Yoriichi, her husband's talented twin brother. Michikatsu talked about him in more detail at certain times, such as when Yoriichi had to live in a cubicle room and never said anything to the point where the twins' mother thought her youngest son was deaf.

Or when he ran away just so his brother wouldn't be left out.

— "(Name)..." — He began. — "Have you ever heard of demons?"

Demons. (Name) remembers hearing stories as a child of hungry beasts that fed on humans after sunset. Once, at dawn, Yuri approached (Name) in the dead of night and whispered about having heard around that a beast had torn apart a group of men in the southern mountains, it had been a terrible damage to be the work of animals.

Demons. That was the answer given by people considered crazy.

— "Once... when I was a kid... my father yelled at me and my sister when we mentioned demons." — (Name) whispered, looking down at the small bowl in her hands of nearly finished rice. — "He said we shouldn't talk nonsense."

— "They are real."

— "I know. I believe."

— "I was attacked by one."

(Name)'s eyes widened and she nearly dropped the bowl. Thanks to his samurai duties, Michikatsu often spent days and even weeks away. But (Name) could never have imagined that something related to demons would have happened this last time.

Wait, is that why Yoriichi came back?

— "I lost all my men in a demonic attack, that's when my brother arrived in time and saved me..."

— "What?" — (Name) dropped the bowl on the chabudai table as Tsukihiro was too busy playing with his father's hair to finish eating or even think about listening to the conversation between the adults. — "How did he do it?"

Michikatsu sighed as he felt a slight tug on his ponytail. — "He used a sword with a nichirin blade and... a breath."

— "Breath?"

— "You won't understand if you start to explain... but know that it's something powerful that helps to kill demons." — Michikatsu explained. — "There is a corps of swordsmen who hunt and kill demons, my brother is there and taught the other men derivations of his breath." — He seemed a little hesitant to continue. — "And I decided to join them."

(Name) was speechless, kept her gaze calm. That was dangerous, her husband would be at risk if he went. No…he was strong, one of the strongest she'd ever seen. He could manage, after all, he wouldn't be alone, his brother and companions would be there.

He's going to be fine... or at least that's what (Name) deeply prayed for.

— "I... I..." — (Name) tried to start a sentence.

— "From your reaction I don't think it's something you liked very much." — Michikatsu took a deep breath as he relaxed his body and tilted his head up.

— "I won't deny it, I didn't like that idea very much." — (Name) pulled her adorable restless son close to her so he could finish his meal and then sleep. — "I worry about you..."

Michikatsu tilted his face towards her, gave a small smile and approached her. — "Do not worry, I'll be fine." — He held (Name)'s porcelain face and placed a kiss on her lips, hearing an "eeew" from Tsukihiro. — "Don't you trust me?"

— "I trust, of course I trust!" — (Name) seemed to hesitate a little. — "B-But..." — She felt her baby move in her womb, perhaps because she was a little nervous to imagine her husband in the midst of demons, enemies much more dangerous and powerful than humans.

— "I'll be fine." — Michikatsu leaned his forehead against his wife's while still caressing her face.

— "You'll be back all right, promise?"

— "Promise."

The moment Michikatsu left, (Name) felt a tug on the fabric of the kimono on her shoulder.

— "Okaa-san!" — Tsukihiro exclaimed with a mouth full of rice. — "Where Otou-san is going?"

(Name) laughed and wiped her son's mouth, finding it adorable that he is so playful and already knows how to speak several words, even if he sometimes misses the pronunciation.

— "Work, dear…" — She smiled and hugged her son. — "You're going to miss him, aren't you?"

— "Uhm..." — Tsukihiro grumbled with his face buried in his mother's kimono.

— "Me too..."

Even though she believed in her husband, (Name) didn't feel a good feeling.

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Her husband's presence became less frequent, (Name) received news about Michikatsu's status at the hunters' headquarters and felt relieved that he was well.

However (Name) was furious and devastated when Michikatsu failed to attend the birth of Tsuyami, her newborn daughter.

It didn't take long for her to realize that something was really wrong. Michikatsu's gaze and the way his lips seemed to spit out his twin's name... (Name) recognized that this was not normal, and her suspicions were reinforced when she found her husband in a grueling training session during the night.

— "Michikatsu?" — (Name) strained her eyes to see under the rain her husband soaked by the drops but not letting go of the sword he used to slash the air.

He did not answer.

— "Michikatsu... what are you doing there at this hour?" — (Name) sighed with concern. — "Please... go back inside, I don't want you to get sick."

Again there was no response.

— "Michi--"

— "I have to become stronger..."

— "Hm?"

— "My brother... I have to get over him..." — Michikatsu growled in a mutter.

— "...What?" — (Name) squeezed the handle of the intern. — "...Michikatsu, go back inside." — Her voice was more serious.

Again there was no response, and the samurai continued to slash at the non-existent opponent with his blade.

(Name) dropped her flashlight on the engawa floor and walked quickly across the wet lawn to her husband in the rain, getting wet in the process, but that was not important.

— "Listen me!" — She grabbed Michikatsu's wrist. — "Stop it! You're already crossing the line! I don't want you to harm yourself!" — Her look was incredulous for that situation. — "How long have you been doing this, huh?!"

— "(Name)... go back inside." — He growled.

— "No!" — Her voice was raised as she brushed strands of wet hair from her face thanks to the rain. — "Look at you! Your training is too intense! It's going to end up hurting you!"

— "Fuck!" — Michikatsu turned to face her. — "I need to become stronger than my brother!" — He yelled.

(Name) blinked with a confused face, before her writhed in rage again. — "So that's it?! You'd die if it made you better than your brother by any chance?! What's on your mind?! You're obsessed!"

Michikatsu's jaw clenched.

— "This... this is madness..." — Now (Name)'s voice was one of sadness, melancholy. — "I don't want you to keep hurting yourself..."

He was hurting himself… gnawing and eating away at his blood and sweat and even his last hair to make himself stronger. While his younger brother didn't need any of that.

He was already strong without even training.

That thought was a reminder, and it made Michikatsu furious.

(...)

Days passed, Michikatsu left on a mission and no further news. (Name) feared the worst.

Until when a whole week has graduated, he comes back.

— "Michi?" — (Name) wept with relief to see her husband appear in the doorway.

Tsukihiro rejoices and tries to hug his father's leg, but the grown man walks in a specific direction, ignoring both his children and his wife. The now four year old boy stands static in the same place where his father was before, his face surprised and even in shock at how rough Michikatsu was when he passed by.

— "..." — (Name) looked in the direction Michikatsu had gone. — "Michi! What was that?"

No reply.

— "Otou-san!" — Tsukihiro ran after Michikatsu, disappearing from (Name)'s sight.

(Name) looked down into her arms and saw her daughter fidgeting and whimpering. Before she could get up and go after her son and husband, both of them appear, Tsukihiro trying to call out to Michikatsu and being ignored by him.

— "Michikatsu, why are you ignoring him?" — (Name) asks with concern, feeling the sadness in her son.

He ignores her.

— "Hey!" — (Name) gets up carefully so as not to disturb Tsuyami. — "Why do not you speak?"

— "Otou-san!" — Tsukihiro tries to get his father's attention by pulling on his hakama pants, but the boy just fell back when Michikatsu opened the shoji door without even looking back.

— "Goodbye."

Michikatsu Tsugikuni disappeared after that night.

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Everything was in chaos. Michikatsu's disappearance and his alleged family abandonment had thrown everything into chaos.

Tsukihiro couldn't stop crying and asking where his father was, and his crying resulted in Tsuyami crying. (Name) didn't know what to do, of all there she was certainly the most broken. Her husband left her without a word, left her and her children.

Things got even more tense when Yoriichi showed up at her house to let her know what happened.

Michikatsu abandoned his humanity and was now a demon. (Name) couldn't help but cry, Yoriichi gave her a shoulder for it.

And things got even worse when at the door of her property appeared other slayers demanding that (Name) commit sepukku with Yoriichi thanks to what Michikatsu have done.

(Name) thought about it, but who was she kidding? She wouldn't have the courage.

Two months passed. Two months of pure pain and conflict. During this period of time things became tense internally, Tsukihiro was supposed to become the next head of the clan as Michikatsu had been presumed "dead" and Yoriichi... well, Yoriichi was no longer an option. Tsukihiro was still too young for that, a child barely five years old, so much trouble.

(Name) just couldn't handle the whole situation, the pressure of her "new" clan and the abandonment of her husband, to make matters worse, she still had to live with the comments of people who found her situation funny.

Sometimes (Name) wished these people would die.

Her only hope now was her children, her only joy, though Tsukihiro was still upset and Tsuyami was too young to even understand what was happening. (Name) was doing her best to keep them well.

(...)

Things changed again a few days after the arrival of spring, this time in a much more drastic and intense way.

— "Nice night, don't you think?"

The unfamiliar male voice made (Name)'s eyes widen. The voice had a soft tone but there was still something about it that made its owner scream danger.

(Name) released the flower from the mansion's garden and turned her face towards the subject. He was a man much taller than she was, a handsome man she had never seen before. Curly black hair and eyes the brightest blood red.

How did he get in here?

— "Who are you...?"

The man smiled, a smile that despite looking friendly was still an evil smile. — "I am the one known as the Demon King."

Muzan Kibutsuji.

Silence. Total silence with only the noise of crickets and owls.

A wind hit (Name)'s face before she could say anything. — "...Why are you here?"

— "Your husband misses you." — The man's laugh made her shiver.

(Name) felt her chest tighten at the mention of her husband, but she tried to remain steadfast in the face of the whole situation. She knew how dangerous the Demon King was, Yoriichi had warned her.

— "That... that doesn't answer my question."

Still looking satisfied with the situation, Muzan took a few slow steps forward with the intention of getting a few meters closer to the woman.

— "Why don't you become a demon?"

— "What?"

— "I've been watching you for a while after I got Kokushibo, and I have to admit... you would be a great demon."

It was as if there was venom in his voice, those words were mean and there wasn't an ounce of genuineness in them. He was trying to manipulate her. After what Yoriichi did to Muzan, it was clear that he would need allies.

— "..." — (Name) stared at him without reaction.

— 'Think about it, you will be strong and fear nothing more." — The man's voice was strangely anxious. — "You will never grow old and will remain young for all eternity."

(Name)'s face lowered, her gaze fixed on the lawn as her hand trembled slightly, squeezing the hem of her kimono.

She knew she had no choice, by the time the Demon King appeared before her she was already doomed. Muzan wasn't the type to take a "no" and walk away. No... (Name) was smart enough to understand what would happen. He would kill her and then annihilate everyone on this property.

Including Tsukihiro and Tsuyami.

And it had been almost a month since the last time Yoriichi showed up, he wouldn't be able to help anyone in that situation.

It was the moment (Name) felt Muzan's hand enter her chest and pump his blood that she realized that maybe she wasn't that different from her husband.

She blacked out.

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A again everything has changed.

(Name) did not have the courage to appear to her children after that night, she was afraid that they would fear her or that she would hurt them. So she stood in the shadows watching everything, shedding tears at the loss of the sparkle in Tsukihiro's eyes after losing his mother and father in such a short period of time, before such a joyful and full of life child.

Like Michikatsu, (Name) was also presumed dead. It was at her "funeral" that (Name) saw her sister Yuri for the first time in so long.

She had to walk away after that day.

Meanwhile Michikatsu, no... Kokushibo, now the demon who craved more and more for power to overcome his brother no matter what, his vision was clouded by hatred and rancor that only realized that sixty years had passed when he found his brother again.

A old man, but alive, and even stronger than his brother.

Kokushibo was furious. Why was his brother still alive?! He should have died years ago for the mark!

He got even angrier when even old, his brother managed to hurt him. Nothing changed.

But his mind became even more clouded when the attack that would kill him never came, as Yoriichi had died standing up with his sword still in hand. That's when he realized that not even that man could defeat him, no one could even hurt him.

He made his older brother feel pathetic.

Kokushibo's mind screamed in rage as he cut the other twin's already dead body in two. But his mind was cleared when he saw the flute fall to the ground.

— "I think of that flute you gave me... as if it were you, brother." — A young Yoriichi smiled at the flute in his hands.

— "..."

— "I made a flute for my brother a few years ago, you know?" — A thirteen-year-old Michikatsu smiled at a (Name) of the same age as he practiced with his wooden sword.

— "Serious?" — She smiled. — "How cute! You really love your brother, don't you?"

Yoriichi... (Name)...

— "What did you do?"

That familiar voice... The man felt as if his body had stopped working for a moment.

He looked back over his shoulder and his six eyes widened at the sight of that familiar figure beneath the red moon. There she was, just as he had last seen her. The same simple yet beautiful kimono; the soft skin and delicate face; the same hair (h/c).

She looked at him with an emotionless face but at the same time there seemed to be surprise in those eyes. Those eyes that now distinguished that she was no longer human. The whites of her eyes had been replaced by black and the iris of her eyes were now white instead of (e/c).

Despite everything, she still remained the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

— "...(Name)..."

She did not answer. Instead her eyes were empty but not from sadness or melancholy, it was as if she had forgotten what it felt like to feel something. There was nothing in those eyes.

(Name) just passed by Kokushibo to see Yoriichi's body. — "Bury him, at least give him a decent burial."

Yoriichi was his brother after all.

He could feel it, that woman was a strong demon, something that had killed so many people.

During the short period of time that both of them got together to bury the dead man's body, neither of them said a word, although Kokushibo felt the burning in his chest to confront her, even though at no point did she look at him in the face.

The two buried Yoriichi in the same spot that his now-deceased wife had been buried. Then (Name) disappeared along with a mist that was probably part of her kekkijutsu.

Now husband and wife were two strangers.

(...)

About fifty more years passed. Things change again. Kokushibo, who now held the rank of "upper moon one" received the information that there was a demon rising very fast in the hierarchy, and that he was currently in the rank of "upper four".

Another year later and the demon has risen to "upper three".

Another year and the demon has risen to "upper two".

Afterwards Kokushibo received news that this demon had now become powerful enough to share the rank of "upper one" with him. And that left him seething with hatred.

Who was the bastard who was able to match his strength with his?

His bad thoughts faded and were replaced by surprise when Kokushibo was finally introduced to the demon.

And there she was again. With the same emotionless face and empty eyes.

— "(Name)..."

She didn't answer, but she blinked.

— "When did it get so strong?"

— "Just like you."

The more they feed, the more powerful the demons get. And by how quickly (Name) rose through the ranks it can only mean that she killed a lot of people at once.

You could see in the depths of those soft but opaque eyes, (Name) was a demon that craved power, a blank crockery, there was no emotion on her face other than the desire to have more strength.

And despite being his wife, Kokushibo would not allow (Name) to surpass him as a demon in the same way that Yoriichi surpassed him as a human.

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— "Ara ara~ (Name)-chan is always so serious!" — Douma's irritating voice rang out.

— "Shut up, worm." — Akaza growled.

(Name) just ignored the fight of those two annoying demons in the distance and remained with her eyes closed and an ethereal posture sitting on the mat.

The emergence of Muzan's presence made Akaza and Douma settle down before they lost their heads. (Name) opened her eyes when she felt him close by.

— "Any news on the blue spider lily?"

The demons' negative responses seemed to irritate Muzan. So long and still nothing.

He continued. — "You good-for-nothings are useless." — Muzan growled. — "I should eliminate them once and for all."

The upper moons present at the place felt as if their cells were going to explode, and that hurt a lot, (Name) had to admit, even though she had already gotten used to it thanks to Muzan's temper. When the man seemed to calm down the pain left.

That situation was already common. Muzan would come and ask about such a flower, and when the demons didn't bring answers that pleased him then he would get angry saying things like "I will destroy you all".

Kokushibo looked to the side so that she could see (Name), whose eyes were fixed on the ground. Despite everything, she was still beautiful.

When the noise of the biwa sounded, Kokushibo was now in the middle of a forest in front of an empty rice field. Next to him was (Name) sitting on a large boulder. It was rare for them to be alone together, and for the first time, (Name) didn't leave. She sat there with her eyes closed feeling the cool breeze hit her face.

— "Do you feel it?" — She muttered with her head tilted up.

— "..."

She silenced him by opening her eyes abruptly and leaning her face forward again. — "Shh."

The two were silent, until Kokushibo felt something too.

— "Humans. Nearby." — And then she disappeared again in her mist kekkijutsu.

A few meters away was a group of slayers who seemed to be looking for demons, they didn't look more than twenty years old.

— "Yeah man!" — One of them yelled and scratched his ear. — "I saw a demon pass this way!"

— "Are you sure it wasn't just a boar?" — Another rolled his eyes, tired of the whole situation and wanting to go back to the old village in the interest of seeing some pretty girls.

— "Forget it!" — Another one exclaimed, already irritated. — "Leave the demons alone!" — He snorted. — "Let's go before this mist intensifies!"

— "Wait, mist?"

By the time they finally realized that there was a dark fog surrounding them it was too late. The texture of the mist was similar to clouds, but it seemed to contain twinkling stars, until the mist covered them completely until it looked like the slayers had been transported to a "dimension" of a starry night sky.

— "What the hell is that...?" — One of them looked like he was going to get his pants dirty.

— "A demon!" — He took up his sword. — "Keep alert!"

The darkness mixed with the mist was extremely dense to the point that no human would be able to see anything. The last thing they saw was the flash of a sword's blade cut.

When the mist stopped, the slayers returned to the forest with lifeless bodies.

— "I could have done it without you." — (Name) muttered.

— "Hm."

She just sighed and approached the bodies, there were six in total.

— "Marechi..." — Kokushibo threw one of the bodies in front of (Name). — "You can... you can have this..."

(Name) blinked a little in surprise, as demons didn't usually share their dead prey, let alone marechi. Even if they were the targets of (Name) and Kokushibo he had just meddled.

It was okay, after all… he still had a lot to redeem himself if he wanted her forgiveness. If he ever had.

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Things got weird for the demons when the upper moon six died and shortly thereafter upper five and four as well. For the first time in a hundred years things have changed again, not in a good way for the demons, apparently.

Now only Muzan and his last upper moons remained, Nakime had become the upper four and Kaigaku - a boy who was turned into a demon after his encounter with the upper moon one, felt intimidated and realized he wouldn't have chances to win, knelt in front of Kokushibo accepting his blood while (Name) watched everything from behind. - It had risen in rank and was now in the upper moon six position.

Either way, they've kept to the shadows since discovering a demon that can beat the sun. Who knows what Muzan was planning.

In the sprawling hall full of columns was the spot that (Name) chose to think a little, not long before he came across her ranking companion.

Her husband.

— "Do you feel it?" — He asked in his usual distant voice.

(Name) raised her face and looked at him in silence.

— "It started." — She said.

The slayers were in the infinite fortress. It was only a matter of time before they reached the upper moon one.

Things were changing, now it was fate's turn to decide whether the last upper moons would live or die as their "companions". And if fate were truly merciful, no demons would make it through this night.

Despite keeping in mind that it was one of the strongest demons, still, deep down behind his neutral face, (Name) feared for a moment. Kokushibo sensed this and looked straight at her.

— "(Name)..." — He called out to her, and she looked at him again. — "Before... this all started... I wanted to ask you... why did you become a demon..."

She didn't respond right away, instead looking down at the floor.

— "I... I don't know..." — She replied. — "At first I was scared... I didn't want to accept the change and I even thought that things could be different but... it wasn't worth it. In the end, I just didn't want to die."

Kokushibo listened in silence. — "I see..." — He also averted his eyes to another direction other than the woman beside her. — "I allowed all my hatred for my brother to blind me to the point of leaving for more power…" — Pause. — "My biggest regret... was not coming back for you that night..."

In the end, there was nothing to complain about after all, they weren't that different.

The conversation of the two demons was interrupted as a human presence grew closer and closer.

The moment a young slayer fell from the shattered ceiling and stopped in front of the pair of demons, (Name) felt a strange sensation as her laid eyes on him.

— "You're here... demon slayer..." — Kokushibo started and put his hand on the katana bar, until he finally realized the same thing that (Name) had felt. — "Hm...? For some reason... you look very... familiar..."

(Name) agreed, still in a certain trance thanks to that feeling.

Kokushibo's six eyes narrowed with a calm expression. — "I imagined... now I understand..."

The slayer was silent as if there was a conflict in his mind. The presence of the demons was intimidating, the boy tried to pull his sword but he didn't stop shaking. It was as if there was a dangerous aura in that place.

Very dangerous.

— "What is your name...?

— "...Muichiro Tokito."

— "Right then... the name Tsugikuni must have disappeared then..." — The six-eyed demon looked thoughtful.

For a moment, (Name) felt like her body was going to fall, that feeling...

The female demon stopped her gaze in the direction of the young slayer meters away. That face… it looked like a face she'd long since forgotten about.

No... it can't be...

— "...Tsugikuni? Who was it?" — Muichiro seemed to notice the tension in the demon woman.

— "It's been centuries after all... it was inevitable... my name when I was human was Michikatsu Tsugikuni..."

Michikatsu... it had been ages since (Name) had heard that name out loud...

— "And she remained (Name)..." — The six-eyed demon continued. — "You... are a descendant of a member of the Tsugikuni family that we left behind..."

The Tsukihiro's descendant.

"Okaa-san!"

Muichiro was in shock, trying to process everything he had just heard from the male demon, who remained motionless and unsurprised. The woman on the other hand, despite trying to stand her ground and stoic like the other demon, was clearly just as surprised as the young Hashira, even looking bewildered as if she was going to fall.

As if she was going to cry.

Her mind must have been in a mess. But (Name) tried to put her emotions aside to focus on what was to come.

And the fight began.

The boy's breathing was similar to (Name's) kekkijutsu, so it wasn't that difficult for her to adapt, even if the woman had no intentions of attacking.

At least not yet.

When the mark appeared on Muichiro's face, his attack seemed to get stronger, but it still wasn't enough to defeat the pair of demons. And the moment Kokushibo played his own blade, one of Muichiro's hands flew away.

The next mist was not from Muichiro, but from that woman, who surrounded him preventing him from seeing anything. In the next moment Kokushibo threw him against a pillar keeping the boy there trapped by his own sword.

The mist cleared and (Name) approached the boy standing next to the other demon.

— "Our descendant..." — Kokushibo began. — "Allow me to turn you into a demon... so that you can be of use to that man."

— "It is surprising that you are our descendant…" — (Name) sighed. — "I feel even... happy about it. I'm glad you were born. So there's nothing to fear..."

Kokushibo agreed. — "Let me stop the bleeding... humans are so fragile."

(Name)'s eyes closed a little in anger as she noticed that the hidden slayer really thought she and Kokushibo hadn't noticed him there.

Genya tried to shoot the demons but his arm fell off.

— "GENYAAA!" — Muichiro yelled and tried to break free.

— "Be silent…" — (Name) scolded him. — "Screaming will hurt your vocal cords..."

Despite keeping his eyes fixed on Genya, Muichiro seemed to be listening intently to everything the woman said.

— "You know... you really remind me a lot of someone..." — (Name) sighed, watching Kokushibo practically slash Genya's body. — "Your face is so...familiar to me. It makes me feel strange. Even though I appreciate you being here...it makes me sick to my stomach, makes me feel angry."

The woman's voice was comforting as if she were an angel singing a lullaby. If that situation wasn't catastrophic with Genya's life hanging by a thread, Muichiro could peacefully fall asleep with that voice.

Before Kokushibo rips off Genya's head, the Wind Hashira arrives and saves him at just the right moment.

As Kokushibo was thrown backwards at the moment of impact, (Name) took a deep breath and closed her eyes as her hair and kimono fabric swayed with its dense mist appearing as if it was coming out the back of her body and the ends of her hair.

It's time.

(...)

Despite being stronger than Douma and Akaza, (Name) was still weaker than Kokushibo. After all, she wasn't really a fighting demon.

Her abilities were similar to Nakime's, she was able to create an environment that she was sure humans could not on their own. Her mist had created the same starry night sky, the slayers present there knew that this was bad as the new environment was the work of the female demon, which would clearly favor Kokushibo in the fight.

During the fight, Sanemi seemed to enjoy having an opponent worth killing according to him, even if it was giving him trouble.

Thanks to the mist, neither the female demon nor the other two slayers could be seen. Though Genya seemed to be close and both he and Muichiro could feel the intense battle between Sanemi and the six-eyed demon.

After an attack by Kokushibo, in the midst of the mist pieces of sliced pillars began to fall and Genya's eyes widened in terror as he saw his older brother standing, bleeding.

— "Aniki..." — He gasped.

The wreckage of pillars began to be "absorbed" by the mist. This is bad.

— "Hm... you held on for a long time... but it's over." — Kokushibo observed. — "If you move... your organs... will split..."

The six-eyed man felt his body go weird as he noticed his pulse change. Not only that, the mist seemed to get a little more unstable. Whatever is happening is also affecting (Name) too.

The white haired Hashira started to laugh. — "Rare blood to demons is like catnip." — He took the chance to attack Kokushibo, who staggered backwards. — "Oops man, what's the problem?! You look a little dizzy and this mist looks like it's going to dissolve!" — He laughed. — "The scent of my blood intoxicates the demons! This is the rarest blood among the rare! Feast time!"

(Name) needed to stay focused so that the mist field wouldn't dissolve, so she would take advantage of Kokushibo. She took a deep breath and the mist intensified as she regained her composure after the marechi scent faded, and she felt the demon and the slayer struggle.

Until a new presence appears in the territory and (Name) soon pull him into the mist as well.

— "They keep showing up..." — Kokushibo looked annoyed, despite remaining neutral in that situation.

The Hashira of the stone had joined the fight. Kokushibo was surprised to see a body as perfected as that in three hundred years.

The mist seemed to become a little restless again, but this time not because of (Name) but thanks to Gyomei's fighting moves.

When the chain wrapped itself around Kokushibo's neck - he was able to escape. - he realized that his flesh sword would be destroyed even before he broke Gyomei's weapons.

Despite everything, the mist still favored him making things difficult for Gyomei, who clearly realized the situation.

Meanwhile, Muichiro tried to escape from the wall, with great effort, but managed, falling to the floor panting. And after making the bandages he ran to help Genya, who asked him for the lock of hair ripped from Kokushibo.

— "I want to... fight until the end... I will protect the aniki... I don't want to let him die..." — The boy with the severed body said.

Muichiro nodded. — "Alright, let's fight together until the end. Now... we have to find and kill the demon woman."

"Kill me? How cute..." (Name) mentally chuckled.

Kokushibo and Gyomei clashed and Sanemi did her best to stop the mist from doing anything to itself while he fixed his injuries. Rising with hate in his eyes now with his mark activated.

— "It doesn't matter..." — Kokushibo counterattacked Gyomei. — "Even if we stay here... fighting for hours and hours... you will die anyway. After all... (Name) will absorb all of you through the mist little by little..."

So they had time. Gyomei thought along with Sanemi, who returned to the fight.

— "(Name)?" — Gyomei whispered, it must probably be the other demon he sensed, but he wasn't able to locate it thanks to the mist.

— "It's the wife!" — Muichiro's voice sounded close by. — "She must be killed for the mist to disappear! Genya and I will take care of her!"

Gyomei and Sanemi seemed to agree, even though the woman was nowhere to be seen.

Sanemi smiled and positioned. — "Good thing we did that training, huh Himejima-san?!"

— "Uhm."

"Kokushibo, (Name), how many hashiras have you two defeated? Don't let them get here yet."

Muzan's voice was heard by the demons. And (Name) tried to intensify her mist even more to help Kokushibo finish it soon, which required more concentration.

Whatever they were, it was the first time (Name) had seen such skilled hunters since the sengoku era.

For a moment she felt her pulse tremble, but soon she regained her composure as she felt that the real fight was only beginning after Kokushibo's sword extended absurdly.

Meanwhile, Oyakata-sama's sisters tried to observe the situation, but it was impossible thanks to the mist. But it was still possible to feel the tremor of the intense fight that was taking place.

Muichiro was trying to sense the presence of the other demon, looking for it through the mist behind some trail and even using the mist of his own breath to notice certain differences.

That's when he finally found her standing in the distance. (Name) was motionless and her hair was extremely taut, swaying and floating as if wind was blowing at it. Soon Muichiro noticed that strands of her hair were connected and fused with mist, which seemed to form from the ends.

The young Hashira tried to attack her as quickly as possible, she showed no reaction when Muichiro's blade was almost slicing through the woman's neck. That's when she opened her eyes and the boy felt chills as she stared straight at him.

— "Very slow."

Muichiro's blade slashed through (Name)'s neck as if he had tried to cut through a cloud. Muichiro fell to the ground not far away but tried to reposition himself again.

"I lost an arm and the bleeding is getting worse. I don't have much time." He thought.

Despite this, (Name)'s neck remained intact.

— "Stop looking at me, your face brings back memories, I don't want to remember..." — (Name) sighed, looking away.

Again Muichiro tried to use his breath to try to injure the woman, but to no avail, his blade continued to pierce through her body as if (Name) was made from the mist itself.

— "Your breathing... is quite interesting... matches my kekkijutsu."

Before (Name) could counterattack Muichiro, she felt her body being pierced by something small.

— "Hmm?" — She looked down and saw a small, round-shaped hole in the region of her right forearm.

Soon her body was trapped by roots.

"My body isn't going through this fucking tree..." (Name) mentally growled.

When she looked up she saw in the distance the same severed boy from before, who had consumed some of Kokushibo's hair and sword. The next moment he disappeared from there to help the Stone Hashira and Wind.

That feeling…she didn't like it at all.

Thanks to the conflict with (Name) the mist started to become unstable again, to the point that Muichiro was now able to see the fight involving the other male demon with the other three slayers.

The moment Kokushibo screamed, (Name) could feel that he felt the same way.

The woman glared at Muichiro and tried to make her mist rip him apart once and for all, but the boy managed to counterattack at the last moment with his own mist breath.

— "Your..."

"Okaa-san!"

— "...Huh?"

— "I..." — Muichiro stood up panting after (Name) was able to escape Genya's kekkijutsu. — "I didn't say anything… — He gritted his teeth.

That slayer's face... it was so familiar. It was identical to--

— "Okaa-san!" — The little boy laughed as he hugged his mother from behind.

— "..." — (Name) shivered. — "Stop looking at me..."

Muichiro advanced.

(Name)'s face seemed to fill with hatred and a wave of mist went towards Muichiro. — "I TOLD YOU TO TURN YOUR LOOK, TSUKIHIRO!"

Muichiro was able to dodge the attacks again, but one of them ended up ripping his leg off. But at the last moment his blade managed to reach (Name)'s neck as it turned red.

That face...

It's been over four hundred years... and for the first time, she remembered her son's face.

— "(NAME)!"

Half of Muichiro's body was severed, not by the mist, but by Kokushibo's blade.

The boy's body, still alive, fell to the ground, just as (Name's) head separated from her body to also fall to the ground.

The mist began to disappear definitively along the body of (Name), who was looking at Muichiro with tears in her eyes.

— "Tsuki... hiro..." — She whispered.

Muichiro used the last of his strength to drag himself to the woman's body and placed one of his hands under her back, silently. (Name) accepted this act.

Despite still being under threat from the other three slayers, Kokushibo watched (Name) disappear with silent tears welling up in his six eyes. The woman he loved was dying, and he couldn't change that.

The last thing (Name) saw before her head totally disappeared was Gyomei's destruction ball destroying Kokushibo's head, but instead of disappearing, he turned into a monster.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

(Name)'s eyes opened in a dark place that she knew was not her mist.

She turned her face in all directions in an attempt to find something or someone. Oh wait, that's right... she died. Is this the afterlife?

(Name) felt her arms get heavy and when she looked down, her eyes started to water as she saw what she was holding.

— "Tsuyami..." — The woman smiled in a whisper and hugged the baby.

Tsuyami... Unlike Tsukihiro, (Name) didn't see the baby go past the age of a newborn, which hurt her a lot just thinking about it. She must have aged and become a beautiful woman, (Name) prayed that she had found a good husband with children who loved her.

— "Okaa-san!"

This voice...

The four-year-old boy came running towards (Name) happily, hugging her by the legs.

— "Tsukihiro..." — (Name)'s tears began to stream down her face.

Tsukihiro's merry laughs and Tsuyami's babble filled that dark place.

The boy from before... Muichiro, was a descendant of Tsukihiro. Your lovely son, who must have grown into a gentle boy as he grew older.

— "We missed you!" — Tsukihiro smiled.

(Name) looked at him with sad eyes. — "Me too..."

The woman started to feel her arms become lighter as Tsuyami and Tsukihiro's bodies disappeared into a mist, leaving her there alone again. (Name) knelt down and leaned her face down with her hair falling over her and hugging herself. Now the sound of her tears and wailing was the only thing that could be heard there.

Of course, the woman would go to hell for the things she did. Her children were kind souls who should be kept in heaven.

Then she would be alone, all right… she would accept that.

— "(Name)...?"

Kokushibo's voice made the woman's face rise again.

If he's here... it means he lost too.

Her husband was in front of her, not Kokushibo, but Michikatsu. Now both of them are human again.

— "Michi..." — (Name) cried.

The man was quick to kneel in front of her and pull her into a protective hug. — "I'm sorry…" — He also cried. — "For everything... I'm sorry for everything... please forgive me..."

— "It wasn't your fault... you never forced me to do anything... everything I did for the last four hundred years was because I wanted to do it..." — Her head was against Michikatsu's chest, hugging her husband back.

— "If only I had never done that… if only I had never allowed all that hatred and envy to consume me…" — The man's embrace tightened a little more. — "Maybe you could have watched our children grow up! If only I hadn't made so many mistakes... maybe we both could have been happy..."

— "..." — (Name) held her husband's face and wiped away his tears. — "It's okay…" — She laughed even though her eyes were still sad. — "I think we were both idiots..."

Michikatsu was silent, but then he also gave a melancholy short laugh, and leaned his lips against his wife's forehead, pressing her even more against him in the embrace.

Then everything was covered by flames.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

There wasn't much to do, after all, from the very beginning happiness had already been denied to the two demons who were looking for power.

"CAW CAW! UPPER MOON ONE DEFEATED!"

In the infinito fortress, inside the huge cocoon of flesh, Muzan can't help but close his eyes and give a short laugh.

— "How pathetic."

8574 words

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mhysa-leesi · 3 years ago

Text

му вℓσσ∂у ναℓєηтιηє

{Gif Source} {Gif Source 2}

Pairing: Dark!Steve Rogers 𝒳 (femme) Reader 🩸.

Summary: "Steve Rogers is madly in love with you and he'll do anything for you to see that--no matter who gets in his way."

Word Count: 4,765 (Sorry, this is a long one!)

TW‼: Non-Con, Smut, Stalking, Yandere Themes, Murder (Description of Side-Character Death), Blood, Description of Gore, and Strong Language. 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI‼

AN: This story contains adult and dark themes, please do not proceed if you are under the age of 18 or if ANY of these warnings upset you! I am not responsible for your media consumption–you and only you are. Also, I used one of the prompts from (@the-modern-typewriter) to describe a character's death, ALL CREDIT GOES TO THEM. 𝒯𝒽𝒶𝓃𝓀 𝓎𝑜𝓊.

AN Cont.: If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual violence, please reach out for help. I do not condone ANY of the actions described in this story, this is merely a work of FICTION.

The first love letter was delivered on a gloomy Friday afternoon. The clouds above the city were dark and full of frigid torrents of rainfall. Gold and scarlet autumn leaves whispered against the chilly winds as acorns scattered about; rolling and cracking underfoot as you made your everyday walk to work. You had chosen to stray from your usual route that day, deciding on a new corner coffee shop instead of your normal stop.

You remembered that day clearly, as if it had happened just yesterday. The new coffee shop was a small, hole in the wall with plastic vines of ivy and fairylights rimming the framework of the inside. You ordered rich and dark coffees, with creamy oat milk for you and your coworkers, and an apple pecan oatmeal cookie for yourself.

Your workday was seemingly the same as any other. Pam was gossiping with Susan, and Scott was hiding from Mark, your manager, in the breakroom. You remember you were seated at your cubicle when things turned, staring at the rain against the window, and tapping your pen against your notepad, when you were startled by the mail carrier. He handed you a single, pink envelope with a heart stamp on its flap and left with a mumbled “you’re welcome”. You frowned as there was no return address or other name besides yours. You had opened it anyway.

You remembered how your frown had deepened as your stomach dropped. The paper trembled in your hands as you stared at the small heart sketched at the bottom. You frantically looked around the office for any sign of a joke, hoping to see one of your coworkers giggling at your shocked reaction. But everyone had their noses deep into their screens, typing away at their work. You turned the letter over, looking for a name or a clue as to who had sent it. But it was blank.

And you remembered how you had crumpled up the letter and tossed it as you refocused and finished the rest of that workday.

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Weeks passed before you got another mysterious love letter delivered to your desk, a small bouquet of roses and baby’s-breath with it. And again, you crumpled it up and threw it away; leaving the flowers in the breakroom. You had made a mental note that day to talk to the mailman about the delivery of these letters.

For a time they stopped and you thought you were out of the woods or thought your secret admirer had lost interest at the very least. But you were wrong. Your third envelope had been waiting for you in your mailbox when you had gotten home from work one Monday evening. You didn’t bother opening it as you sent it straight to the garbage.

You were growing paranoid and antsy as you constantly looked over your shoulder. You’d freeze every time you came across an envelope, even if it was just your monthly rent notice or bank statement. You had refused to live like this, in a constant state of anxiety and fear, so, that’s how you found yourself moving into a new apartment across town.

You were met with months of peace, you were finally readjusting to life before the letters. You had even moved in with someone you had been seeing from your new job, Chris. He was perfect, someone straight from a romance novel; tall, dark, and handsome, with a taste for adventure and romance. You were happy with him--you were in love and had long since decided that if Chris were to ask you to marry him, you’d say yes in a heartbeat.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today was your anniversary with Chris, and the two of you had an entire evening planned. Dinner at your favorite restaurant, a surprise showing of your favorite movie at the corner cinema, and then home, where you’d give him his gift. A red lacy lingerie set with fuzzy handcuffs, and a silk blindfold to match.

Your heart skipped and your stomach alighted with butterflies as you touched up your makeup in the bathroom mirror. The evening had been absolutely perfect and it was about to get even better. You stepped out into the bedroom, dressed in nothing but red lace and a bathrobe. A spritz of perfume here and a mint there, and you were ready to go surprise your man.

You walked out into the living room and seductively leaned against the wall, watching as he poured two glasses of red wine. He turned and froze, swallowing hard as he abandoned the drinks on the kitchen counter. You smirked as he pulled you to him by your hips, instantly locking his lips to yours. He looked down at you through his eyelashes, his deep brown eyes darkened with lust, and you couldn’t help but bite your lip. You wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him down to your lips once more.

Your eyes closed and moaned as he peppered kisses along the curve of your neck, tilting your head back to give him better access. His hands roamed your body hotly, squeezing and caressing your dips and curves. Chris entangled his hands in your hair as he moved you to the counter, lifting you up as if you weighed nothing. He pushed your robe down your shoulders to reveal the red lace hidden underneath, and with a groan, he bent to trace the rosette lacework that covered your breasts with his tongue. You hummed and wrapped your legs around his waist, your hands running down his back to toy with the bottom hem.

Chris gently pushed you down to an angle as he kissed down your body, stopping just below your navel to wink up at you. You bit back a laugh as you wiggled your hips impatiently as you leaned back on your hands. With your fingers splayed against the wooden countertop, your touch met something smooth and waxy--like the waxy seal of an envelope. You reached behind you and grabbed a pink envelope, with a wax stamp of a heart on its flap. Your heart seemed to stop as you stared at the envelope in your hands.

You vaguely felt Chris’s lips on your inner thighs, kissing and nipping at your skin. When he heard no reaction from you, he looked up, his brows furrowed and eyes full of questions.

“What’s that?” he asked, “You wrote me a love letter, too?” he winked as he reached for it.

You jerked it away from his grasp, your heart hammering in your chest as you ripped open the flap; ripping the waxy heart in half.

P.S. You should really lock your windows, doll. You jumped off the counter and ran to the windows, each one was locked--except for one. You locked it and double-checked its strength, fighting against the lock as you tried to open it.

“Babe? (Y/N),” Chris said sternly, snapping you out of your trance.

You looked at him now. You didn’t know what to say, you couldn’t think of how to form the words. You wanted to say everything was fine and okay, but it wasn’t--it was far from it. Whoever had been writing and sending you these knew where you lived now, and that scared you. After months of trying so hard to move on from this, you felt as if you were right back at square one again.

The rest of the night was unclear to you. You moved like a zombie, your brain on autopilot as you crawled into bed to hide under the covers until the morning sun rose. Chris asked questions, of course. But you had no answers for him. You had no idea who had been writing them and had absolutely no clue how they had found you again.

Chris had suggested going to the police, but what could they do? No one had physically harassed you, and although creepy, the letters weren’t threatening. And not to mention, you had thrown away most of your evidence. You were at a loss. Chris was supportive, always there to comfort you during the night when you were restless, but that never kept you from feeling alone.

Your paranoia increased tenfold by the end of that week. You changed your daily routine every few days, hoping that’d throw your stalker off your trail, but it never did. They always seemed ten steps ahead of you, whereas you struggled to even think to keep up with them. Your breaking point was reached on Sunday evening as you met with one of your old friends from high school for breakfast-dinner--an old tradition you two had decided to revive for the night.

Things were going good, and you even dared to forget about your own issues as you cut into your syrup-soaked pancakes. Madison was telling you about her newest fling and how good he was in the sack, and you genuinely found yourself happy to listen to the vulgar details. After painting you a vivid picture of her sex life, Madison excused herself to the restroom; leaving you alone with your pancakes and empty cup of iced coffee.

You saw a head of electric blue hair and you perked up. Your waitress came with a smile and handed you a paper cup of steaming coffee and a single napkin.

“Oh, I didn’t order this,” you said with a polite smile.

“A gentleman ordered this for you,” she winked before walking away.

You frowned as you looked at the writing on the napkin. Refusing to even acknowledge the cup of coffee in front of you.

Your mouth went dry as you stared at the familiar handwriting. Brown dress, he knew what you were wearing--he was here. You shot to your feet, the chair scraping loudly against the floor, as you looked around frantically, ignoring all of the judgemental looks and hushed whispers you were getting.

“You okay, (Y/N)?” asked Madison, her brows knitted in concern.

“Yeah,” you lied, “I just… I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’ll call you later, Mads.”

You dug through your wallet and gave a twenty to your waitress on your way out, only stopping to yell over your shoulder for her to keep the change. You practically ran home from the restaurant as your anxiety started to settle in your bones, making you heavy with unease. You called Chris, but were only met with his voicemail. The elevator ride up to your floor was tortuous as you watched the floor numbers slowly light up one by one until finally, they stopped at your floor. You panted as you slammed the door shut behind you, sliding the lock and chain in place as you dropped your head to rest against the wooden frame.

You sniffled as the words from his letter were seared into your eyelids. You just wanted him to leave you alone, you didn’t know what you did to catch his eye, and worst of all, you didn’t know how to make it stop. You choked on your hiccupped breaths as tears streaked down your cheeks. When you finally calmed down you switched on the lights and finally turned around…

You stared at Chris in horror. Blood drenched the entire living room, his corpse sat limp in a chair like a broken, bloody doll. His throat and wrists had been slashed. You tried to hold your hand over the open wounds as you screamed for help, but no matter the pressure you applied, the blood still gushed and seeped through your fingers, oozing down your arm, and dripping from your elbow. The gore of it all brought waves of nausea that went beyond physical retching, the sickness you felt was indescribable. But the smell, the smell was something much worse. Metallic, iron, copper… Your ears started to ring. You couldn’t hear, couldn’t breathe. You could only stare at the bloodstain on your hands and scream.

You left that following weekend, abandoning the big city to move back in with your parents and younger sister. You spent most of your days locked in your room, hiding from the world under the comfort of your blanket and drawn curtains. Days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. You’d look at yourself in the mirror and cry as you no longer recognized yourself as the woman you once were. You knew it was time to move on, but you couldn’t, not when you’d see Chris’s bloodied body every time you’d close your eyes.

You started small by taking baby steps toward your recovery. It started with family meals, then a cashier job at your local supermarket, shopping trips with your mother and sister. Then you eventually graduated to therapy, where you’d stare at a forest green ceiling as you reclined on the chaise longue. Therapy helped and it was admittedly one of the better moments of your monotonous days, you felt heard, seen, as you walked through your own thoughts and nightmares. Your appointments even inspired you to reach out to Chris’s parents for closure, to go with them to visit their son’s grave. It was bittersweet, leaving behind a bouquet of roses for the man you had loved so deeply instead of a kiss goodbye; but it was something you knew you’d have to come to terms with. It wasn’t your fault, that was the mantra you’d tell yourself when you’d catch glimpses of his blood on your hands.

Before you knew it a year had passed since the incident, and in that year, you had not received one letter. You had made a resolution for the first time that New Year’s Eve as you waited for the midnight ball to drop. You told yourself you’d forget, to start fresh, and become an even better version of yourself. You were a flower that was fighting against all odds to blossom.

You cut your hair, got bangs and highlights. Saved up for a brand new, off-the-lot car. And moved into a cozy apartment with your sister. Things were looking up for you and you truly believed that you had finally found your way out of the woods. But life had a habit of playing cruel tricks on those who were naive enough to believe such a thing.

It was mid-February, just a few days before Valentine’s Day, when things started to go to shit. You had just come back from the gym with your sister when you saw it. A pink envelope with no return address or any other name besides yours, with a wax seal in the shape of a heart on the back flap, sat on your pillow. It felt like it weighed a thousand pounds as you held it in your hands. You debated on throwing it away, on pretending you never received it. But you wanted to know what more this twisted bastard could have to say. You ripped it open and read.

You didn’t hesitate as you ripped the letter to shreds, throwing the pieces into the garbage with an angry grunt. Delusional piece of deranged shit, you thought. You raked through your brain for the millionth time since your first letter, trying to figure out who the fuck could possibly be the sender, but you came to the same conclusion you had been coming to for years--nothing. It was agonizing, not knowing who your torturer was. It was your shadow, how could you not know who was living in it? But, no matter how hard you thought, you kept drawing blank after blank.

Your sister comforted you with a glass of wine and dumplings from the takeout place up the street. She was going out tonight, but offered to stay home with you instead.

“No,” you shooed, “I’ll be fine, I’m a big girl.”

“You sure?” she frowned, “It’s no big deal, Girls Night is every Friday night, I can always go next week.”

“I’m fine. Go and have fun for the both of us,” you said as you waved her away.

She left a few minutes later, dressed in heels and a short skirt. You ate the rest of the dumplings and finished the bottle of wine before calling it a night. You undressed down to your underwear and threw on an oversized t-shirt and plopped down onto the bed with an unceremonious bounce. The wine coursing through your system made it easier than usual to fall asleep, and the next thing you knew, you were in a deep sleep, dreaming of a life with Chris--of a life without the letters. It was one of those good dreams you wished you’d never wake from.

Which was why you were so annoyed when a loud noise startled you awake. You looked at your phone and the time read “1:00 AM”, you frowned, it was too early for your sister to be back already. You padded along the hallway, rubbing the sleep from your eyes as you called out for her, worried she might’ve passed out drunk on the floor or something. You stopped as you reached the front room--the very empty front room. Your heart started to pound as you stood frozen, staring at the empty room before you. A shuffling from behind caught your attention, then. And against your better instincts, you turned around slowly to see a shadowed silhouette of a man standing at the end of the hallway.

You stood there for what felt like an eternity, just staring dumbstruck at the man. With every step he took toward you, you took one back. Inching closer and closer to the front door with every backward step.

“Doll, don’t,” he warned, his voice striking you with fear like a bolt of lightning.

Without a second thought, you ran toward the door, fumbling stupidly with the locks in your panicked state of mind. The man was on you in a flash, easily dragging you away from your pathetic attempt at escape. His arms slithered around you like snakes, their hold constricting as he locked an arm firmly around your neck, silencing your screams as you struggled to breathe. You slapped and clawed at his forearm as he pulled you back to your bedroom.

“Please be a good girl for me, (Y/N). I don’t want to hurt you, baby,” he said against your hair.

With his arm still wrapped around your neck, he threw you down onto the bed, quickly straddling you before you could scramble to your feet. He pinned your arms above your head with one hand and forced you to look at him with the other. His face was illuminated by the moonlight. The silver shine highlighting his familiar eyes through the holes of his helmet. You froze as he pulled off his blue cowl.

You were beyond confused, to say the least. You stared up at Captain America, your brain working overtime to try and put the puzzle pieces together. What was Captain America doing in your apartment? And why had he called you “baby”? What the fuck was going on? Were you lucid dreaming? You must’ve looked as confused as you felt because he smiled down at you, gently promising you answers to the questions that you hadn’t yet asked.

“You’re even more beautiful up-close, doll,” he said as he brushed away hairs that fell in your face from your struggle.

Your eyes widened. Doll. The nickname sent chills down your spine as the word flashed against the pink color of the envelopes, against the red of spilled blood.

“You…”

He ran a finger down your cheek and nodded, “Me.”

You paled under him, your bottom lip trembling as you shook your head in disbelief. He frowned and hushed you, caressing your cheek and wiping away the tears that fell.

“Shh… Don’t cry, baby,” he cooed, “I’ll take good care of you, you don’t need to cry.”

“W–Why?” you hiccupped through your sobs, “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I love you, (Y/N),” your stomach dropped as he answered you as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

You shook your head, “No. No! You’re Captain America. You’re supposed to be a hero!”

You fought against his grip, flailing and kicking wildly as you tried in vain to get away from him. You trashed against him, kicking against his thighs with all of your strength, but it was nothing to him--nothing but an annoying inconvenience.

“Stop,” he said, his jaw ticking with simmering anger.

But you refused to stop. You whined and fought against him.

“Stop,” he repeated, his anger coming to a rolling boil.

You shot up and headbutted him. He reeled back and glowered down at you, his jaw clenched and nostrils flared.

“I said stop,” he shouted as he finally stilled you with a sharp slap.

The sound was as sharp as the feel of it. You sobbed as the pain stung your skin, the right side of your face becoming numb from the harsh impact of it.

“Why are you doing this, Steve?” you asked again.

“Because I love you,” he answered again, “I know you love me, too, (Y/N).”

“No,” you exclaimed, “I don’t love you! I don’t love you! I don’t love you!” you sobbed.

“You will,” Something seemed to change within his eyes. No longer were there hints of green in his blue eyes, but something much darker… Something more sinister. You swallowed as you shrunk under his intense glare.

You exclaimed as he forced his lips against yours. Squeezing your jaw until he could slip his tongue into your mouth. You pushed against him, beating on his shoulders as he shoved his tongue further down your throat. He pulled away, breathless and flushed, a ghost of a content smile on his face. You gasped and tried to wiggle away once more, rolling onto your stomach as you did so. A yelp escapes you as you feel him grab your hips, pulling you back under him.

Steve puts his weight on you, trapping you underneath him as he begins to undress you. You try to roll onto your back, but his knee keeps you in place. You fight to keep your shirt on, knowing you wore nothing but your panties underneath it. But you were fighting blind. You kicked up, the heels of your feet hitting the backs of Steve’s strong thighs. He manhandles you easily as he rolls you onto your back, finally ridding you of your cotton shield.

Your hands went to your chest before he could. He pried your arms away, baring your breasts to him with a jerked jiggle. He licked his lips as he cupped and squeezed your breast. You flinched as if his touch had burned you, and in some sense, it had. Your eyes widened in shame as Steve blew on your nipples, the skin hardening into pointed peaks. He brings his lips to them, circling them with his tongue. Sucking, licking, pinching. You press your lips together to keep you from whimpering, and you close your eyes in hopes you can will him away. But your feeble defense attempts don’t last long.

Your eyes snap open as you feel his lips leave your breasts to trail kisses down to your navel, stopping at the band of your underwear.

“Please…” you beg. You bite your lip to keep it from trembling as fresh tears begin to form at the corners of your eyes.

Steve smiles against your skin, “I’m going to make you mine, (Y/N). ‘M gonna make you feel so good, doll.”

You stifle a sob as you feel him slide your panties off past your ankles, his fingers scorching your skin as they explore back up between your thighs. Instinctively, you try to close your legs around his hands. But he doesn’t stop. Steve digs his fingers into the soft skin of your inner thighs as he forcefully spreads you wide. Your pussy on full display to him. You stiffen under his gaze, your face burning with shame as he stares in awe at your spread folds. He runs a finger from your clit to your entrance, dipping knuckle-deep into your channel. Your thighs flex as your body tenses at the intrusion. He adds another and languidly pumps them in and out, curling and scissoring them. You fight against the blossoming heat within your belly. Your shame grows as you hear the squelch of your wetness around his pumping fingers.

Steve presses a firm thumb to your clit and you cry out before you can stop yourself. He pumps his fingers into you harder, faster, as he pulls more moans and cries from your lips. You sob as you feel that coil deep within your belly begin to unravel with every stroke and pump. You fight against your own body as you keep yourself from teetering over the edge of pleasure, refusing to let yourself submit to him. But Steve had other plans for you. Suddenly, before you could register his movements, you felt his tongue against your most intimate area. You mewled and curled your toes as he fucked you with his tongue, his thumb never stopping their firm and fast circles against your clit. You sobbed as your body convulsed with white-hot pleasure, and before you could stop yourself, you came on his tongue with a loud, dragged out moan.

You sniffled as you cried, but whether it was from the intensity of your orgasm or your shame and fear, you didn’t know. The lines were starting to blur for you.

Steve gently kissed around your folds before crawling up over you. He held your face and forced your lips to his once more before he began to undress, leaving the taste of yourself on your tongue as he pulled away with a wet smack. He unclothed himself, then. Stripping himself of his spangled-stars and red and white stripes. He looked down at you with dark, lust-filled eyes, and a breathless quirk of his lips.

You were limp as he folded you to his needs. Bringing your bent and spread knees to your chest as he took himself in his hands. His length stood tall and proud, the tip swollen and leaking down this thick shaft with anticipation. Your legs flinched as they tried to close on their own. You choked on a sob as he wrenched them apart. Your heart hammered in your chest as you watched him tap your pussy with his cock, running the tip up and down your folds as he wet himself with your soaking arousal until finally, he pressed himself into your entrance. You let out a strained whine as he slammed into you.

Steve’s eyes were shut and mouth slightly agape as he hisses at your tightness. His hips thrust in excitement as you clench around him. You whimper again as he slides out, just to slam himself back in. Your body jolts with every lust-driven thrust. He slides his hands under you and brings them to hold onto your shoulders, bringing you down to meet his every forceful thrust. The sound of skin slapping and lewd moans fill your bedroom, your sweat sheen bodies glowing under the moonlight. Steve speeds up, mercilessly hammering that hidden sweet spot that makes you scream and clench around his cock. You spasm and shake as Steve forces another orgasm from you.

“Tell me you love me,” he pants.

You shake your head, pushing on his shoulders as the realization of your situation comes crashing back into you.

His hand wraps around your throat as he pounds into you harder than before, “Say it, (Y/N).”

You scratch at his hand as your vision begins to dot and blacken, “I–I love you…”

“Louder,” he demands, “‘I love you, Steve’, say it, doll, I wanna hear you say it.” he moans.

“I love you, Steve,” you choke out.

He releases his grip on you then, and you cough and gasp for air. His rhythm becomes erratic as his hips drive into you with renewed vigor, “Again.”

“I love you, Steve,” you moan.

His body jerks as his hips stutter to a stop. Steve comes with your name on his lips, and you whined as you felt his warmth flood inside of you. He panted above you, his hips languidly thrusting as his abdomen clenched with his drawn out release. He pulled out of you and collected the spunk that leaked from your weeping cunt on his fingers. He brought them to your lips and forced you to suck them clean.

“I love you, too, doll. Forever and ever,”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*тαgℓιѕт*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧: @hoosier-daddi

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