Chapter Text
Four Months Later
A warm breeze sneaks through glass doors resting slightly ajar, rustling an unsightly pile of papers and sending some floating gently to the floor. Outside on the balcony, a fat, white cat sits upon the railing, soaking up the last rays of a dying Roman sun.
Just inside, Eve sits, legs folded, in a vintage wood-and-velvet contraption billing itself as a chair, staring unmoving at her laptop screen. Stares at the same words long enough they start to not look like words anymore, her brain regressing to some pre-language ennui. Another whispering breeze dislodges a curl from behind her ear. Caught in her glasses, it rests like a curtain over one eye. She doesn’t reach to move it, hoping this new, obscured, perspective might offer just the lens she needs to jar the jumbled letters back into place.
It doesn’t. All it does is make her nose itch.
Eve blinks. Her laptop screen flickers, then goes dark. Power saver mode.
God I wish that were me , Eve thinks. Wishing she could let her own circus of a brain slip into its own kind of power saver mode as it turns and turns and turns over the same bits of information over and over. A hamster on a wheel running as fast as its little legs can go before collapsing, dead but still spinning, on its own power, held there by its own centrifugal force. Eve feels it, pressing her against the wall in their little carnival ride. How long do they have left to spin? And what happens when it stops?
For a moment, one flash in the dark, Eve forgets. Forgets everything that happened, back in London, because Kenny would know how to make this all make sense. How to twist and turn each square so the colors line up. She almost, almost reaches for her phone, ready to call up Words with Friends and shoot off a coded S.O.S.
Almost.
Until she remembers.
It hits her at once like a freight train flying through a tunnel and Eve’s stomach twists, like she’s falling again. That rushing, weightless feeling, so helplessly hyper aware of every second. She’s been feeling like this a lot lately. Like she’s still falling. Like she never stopped.
It had been good. God it had been good, tearing through Italy with Villanelle like Thelma and Louise. Digging up money she’d stashed around after kills, holing up in boutique hotels, leaving their room only to collect their takeout bags and tip the driver. Eve felt like she’d become pure sensation. A wholly reactive being filled with, consumed with Villanelle. And Villanelle with her.
When they reached Rome, Villanelle set them up in a flat - sunny, top floor, overlooking the city, just as she said in the bathroom at the bar. Eve secretly thinks this was their destination all along, because Rome suits Villanelle in a way London never did. The effortless, ageless power. Eve imagines Villanelle wouldn’t be out of place at the Colosseum, watching lions devour Christians. She’s looser here. Commanding. A haughty kind of confidence that comes with distance from Konstantin, from a slack leash trailing behind her. Like a current has been shot through her bones and muscles. She wears it like a shiny new skin.
But, Eve suspects Villanelle also stopped for her. Because she knew Eve was just running. And the thing about running is, the things you’re running from never really go away. You just get more tired. Like a pack of predators chasing a wounded moose, snapping at its heels. Eve could hear them getting closer in the night, the laughing barks of coyotes in the dark.
Now if only she could make something of it, of the gesture, of the trove of data at her fingertips. Eve realized quickly she should perhaps have been a bit more … discerning in what she pulled off the MI6 databases rather than pulling files like she was running through Supermarket Sweep filling her cart with every kind of snack on the shelves. It’s good info, of course. It’s just, disjointed. A thousand tiny shards of shattered crystal, beautiful individually but useless on their own. Missing context, snipped conversations. Names, companies, transactions, correspondence — Eve sees an infinite number of threads branching out, but none braid together into a tapestry. The whole thing just, frayed ends. And frayed nerves as frustration builds up, a bubbling volcano ready to burst. If only she could step back, step out of the weeds and trees and see the forest …
A familiar, high-pitched whine scrambles Eve’s line of thought.
Biting down a smile, Eve closes her eyes and takes a breath. Counts to one, two, three, then turns.
Villanelle is draped on the couch across the room, a red silk robe dripping off her, a glass of champagne in her hand. Of course, Eve thinks. The mirror behind her catches the orange rays of the sunset, reflecting it back like a halo and her hair, left to air dry after a shower, hangs loose across her shoulders in little waves. Every bit a lion lounging after an indulgent meal. Or a devil upon her throne. Eve can almost see her radiant, curved horns in the sea of Villanelle’s hair, can almost feel the beginnings of her own itching to break through.
The last notes of one of Chopin’s nocturnes float between them and Eve feels each press of the piano key like the stroke of a fingertip against her cheek. Along her jaw.
Villanelle raises an eyebrow. Eve swallows. Stands.
There it is again. That feeling of falling. The tug in her stomach. Only now, instead plummeting into the infinite nothing, she’s plummeting toward Villanelle. Falling into orbit.
Eve stumbles a bit, her legs asleep from sitting in the chair, but she recovers smoothly as she crosses the room toward Villanelle, who clocks Eve’s approach with a heated, heavy stare. Eve feels it in her chest, in her heart. In the chambers pumping and pushing blood. Where Villanelle has wormed her way in, in the very spaces keeping Eve breathing. Ironic. That the very person sent to kill her would make her feel so alive. Villanelle likes to say people are at their most alive just before death. So maybe not ironic then. Maybe who cares. Maybe who cares about words and rules when Villanelle is sipping champagne, the tiniest drop of it rolling off the corner of her mouth. Eve watches it trace down her chin, then drip onto her neck as she rounds the couch, coming up behind Villanelle. Reaching out with a finger, she catches the wayward drop on Villanelle’s collarbone, drags her nail along Villanelle’s throat before replacing the finger with her lips, tongue searching for the sour-sweet path of champagne. Eve feels Villanelle press up and into her, feels her skin flush. Teeth replace tongue and Villanelle whines again, low this time, as much a warning as a need.
“I thought you were going to get dinner,” she murmurs against Villanelle’s throat.
“I did,” Villanelle replies with a smirk, letting her legs fall open, robe parting with them. An invitation. Eve slips the champagne glass from Villanelle’s hand.
“Champagne is dinner now?”
“No,” Villanelle pouts, turning to face Eve. Her eyes are hooded and dark. Something rises in Eve to match them. “But you were so still for so long I thought you had become a statue. I was about to drop you off at the museum but first, I thought, maybe I would try reminding you of what is important.”
Eve pauses, swirling the champagne in its condensation-slicked glass, her mood suddenly serious. How long had it been since Villanelle’s last kill? What was her longest stretch between jobs, before this? Violence and death weren’t just Villanelle’s trade, but fundamental parts of her. Parts she’d set aside while they’ve been on the run. All while Eve had been allowed to go back to her old trade of dealing in secrets. Guilt washes over her in a great, chilling wave. Villanelle was right. Time for a reminder of what’s important.
Rounding the couch again, Eve stands before Villanelle, every atom, every nerve tuned to her, buzzing with the frequency Villanelle commands. The air is thick with it, so thick Eve struggles to take a breath, feels like she needs gills to take Villanelle in. It rolls off her in waves, coats the back of Eve’s throat. She recognizes it, some old, instinctual part of her passed down from ancestor to ancestor whispering the meaning.
Power.
Villanelle wields it the way a chef wields a knife, the way a knight wields a sword — as an extension of herself and her influence in the world. She uses it to speak to the parts of Eve buried down deep, the parts still afraid of thunderstorms and a tiger’s roar. They’re listening now. Eve’s knees bend as she sinks into a kneel to the floor in front of Villanelle, whose legs spread wider to accommodate, to swallow, like the gaping mouth of a shark. All that’s missing is the teeth. Villanelle slides her hips closer to the edge of the couch and it takes all of Eve’s willpower, every inch - and it’s very short - not to look. She instead keeps her eyes locked with Villanelle’s, watching as her pupils blow wide and dark, swallowing the other colors like black ink.
“Drink it,” Villanelle says, her mouth curling around the words as she knocks Eve’s hand, the one holding the champagne glass, gently with her knee. The glass finds its way to Eve’s lips, somehow. She feels as if she’s outside herself, a weightless wisp at Villanelle’s whim. The champagne is sour and flat but Villanelle said drink so she drinks, empties the flute into her mouth, lets it run down her throat. Considers tossing the glass behind her for dramatics but with her luck she’ll step on it later and end up with stitches. She settles for setting it on the low coffee table next to her. There’s two hands and long fingers in her hair, then, tipping her head back, creating space for the lips and teeth at her throat. Tracing the arteries, following blood as it cycles from her brain to her heart and back. One day those teeth will break skin, Eve thinks, pressing herself into them, into pricking canines. One day Villanelle will lose control. Or, perhaps, find it again.
The silk bathrobe is cool against her fingertips but Eve pushes the fabric aside, finding the blazing hot skin of Villanelle’s thighs, smooth and soft over hard muscle that flexes under the drag of her nails. Against her throat, Villanelle lets out a sigh and relaxes into her for a moment. Eve feels the tip of Villanelle’s nose trace the length of her neck, tickling little circles behind her ear. They hang there, suspended, teetering in the eye of the storm and for once, for once Eve wants to fall. To plunge headlong into wherever Villanelle wants to take this, as long as it’s far, far away from whatever is happening in her own head.
“Please,” Eve sighs, her fingers curling at Villanelle’s knees. Slowly, deliberately Villanelle pulls back, stretches up to her full height until she is looming over Eve, eyes wide and alert. A perfect flower, blooming in the night, reflecting every bit of dark and light inside Eve. She feels time stretch long and thin between them, like taffy, each strand glowing silver in the shadows.
“Tell me,” Villanelle says, her voice a bass note humming deep in Eve’s gut. “Tell it to me.”
“I’m yours,” Eve whispers. Then, again, stronger. “I’m yours.”
If Eve could have seen her reflection she knows, she knows she would see her own twin horns in miniature, rising to match Villanelle’s.
With no pretense, Villanelle pushes, presses Eve down to the very core of her, the crux between her legs perched just at the edge of the couch. Her hips rise eagerly to meet Eve’s tongue as she leans back against the soft velvet, exhaling something otherworldly at the first touch, at how Eve’s tongue slides easily against slick folds. Eve loses herself just as easily, her senses filled with Villanelle, the taste of her, the feel of her. The way her fingers cinch tighter as Eve’s tongue circles her clit. The way she thrusts greedily when Eve’s tongue dips lower, presses deeper. Eve forgets to breathe here, always, with how easily, how thoroughly, she reorients herself to Villanelle. How singularly focused she is. Consuming, and being consumed. Two flames burning brightly, fueled only by each other.
Above her, Villanelle’s sighs hit a new pitch, a cresting wave. Her back arches and Eve has to hold her hips down but they’re slippery in the silk of the bathrobe. Villanelle hums with unspent, roiling energy, stoked by Eve between her legs, tongue firm and generous, lavish in smooth, wet heat. Angling her chin, Eve pushes deeper, lets her tongue curl and pulls Villanelle’s hips flush against her. There’s a hitch, a choked little sob, then Eve’s name, over and over and over …
A window shatters, somewhere deeper in the apartment.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Eve asks, half muffled by Villanelle’s thighs.
She tries to roll back onto her heels and stand to confront whatever the fuck just smashed its way into their apartment but Villanelle’s grip is like a vice, holding her there.
“Do not,” Villanelle hisses, her words sharp like a knife. “Do not stop.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Do not stop,” Villanelle answers, harder this time. The fingers in Eve’s hair are strong, but not insistent. Not pushing. Villanelle is desperate, but not forceful. The chain is loose around Eve’s neck - she could shuck it off.
Or sink back in.
She watches Villanelle for a moment, tries to read something in the deep flush of her cheeks, in her stuttered, staccato breathing. This is madness, Eve thinks. Someone is coming to kill them, probably. Someone is coming through their bedroom, down the hall, through the kitchen and the dining room. Her ears strain trying to catch the sound of footsteps but all she hears is the steady beating of Villanelle’s heart. It hypnotizes her, the rhythm of it. The power of it. This is madness, this is madness, this is madness …
Eve leans forward, leans in. Redoubles her efforts. Groans as the taste of Villanelle hits her tongue again. Hums out the vibrations against Villanelle’s clit. A head thrown back, her name again, again, as she uses her lips to suck and works her tongue.
There’s a commotion, suddenly. From her position, she can just make out a dark figure reflected in the mirror before Villanelle reaches inside the cushions of the couch. She sees the flash of a blade as Villanelle, with the flick of her wrist, sends a throwing knife toward the assailant. Villanelle’s muscles contract, her back arching as she reaches her peak while Eve watches as the figure in the mirror grabs their throat, then collapses onto the floor, unmoving.
“Wow,” Villanelle exhales. Her head is still resting against the back of the couch and she’s staring, her eyes glazed and unfocused, at the ceiling. “Having you eat me out while I kill a man? That was -”
“Incredibly stupid?” Eve finishes for her, standing. “Needlessly reckless?”
“I was going to say, very sexy,” Villanelle smirks.
“Don’t get any ideas.”
Villanelle responds with a face that spells out she has nothing but ideas. She stands to match Eve, robe falling carelessly open and goddamnit if Eve’s pulse doesn’t jump, doesn’t just fucking hiccup. Goddamn traitor. Rolling her eyes, Eve turns and stalks toward the other side of the room, where just a few minutes ago she was beating her head against a dead end. Where there’s now a dead person. In her living room. Aren’t they done with this yet? Eve wonders. Haven’t they outgrown it?
A cursory glance reveals the anonymous intruder is a male, slim build, dressed in black head-to-toe with a ski mask over his face. A knife hilt protrudes from his windpipe, a thin trickle of blood running from the wound onto the vintage wood floor. Eve sighs. They’re never getting their security deposit back. She reaches for the frayed edge of the ski mask, pulling it up over his face to reveal a perfectly generic looking man. Italian, if she had to guess, with a thin, but hard bulletproof vest tucked under his sweater. Not your run-of-the-mill cat burglar then.
“Our friend was a professional,” Eve remarks over her shoulder as Villanelle slides behind her.
“Not a very good one,” Villanelle tuts. “Their quality has really taken a hit since I left.”
“Okay, but he’s still dead in our living room.”
“Relax, baby,” Villanelle coos, laying a hand on Eve's cheek. Eve wants to bite it. “I will take care of him. How about you go to bed and wait for me?”
“Go to bed?” Eve explodes, standing up suddenly and nearly knocking Villanelle off balance. “Someone just broke in trying to kill us and you want me to just go to bed? I’m not a child, Villanelle. I’m an equal partner in whatever the fuck is happening and, and …”
And, god, the walls are closing in. The apartment compressing fully and singularly against Eve’s back, against her ribs. She can’t breathe. She feels twisted. Suffocated. Part of her yearns for the familiar, weightless freefall. The devil she knows.
“And I need to go,” Eve finishes in a rush. “I’m going out. I’ll be back. Don’t wait up.”
“Eve,” Villanelle calls after her, scrambling up from the floor. “Eve, that is not a very good i—”
The slam of the apartment door cuts Villanelle off as Eve takes the stairs two at a time down to the street.
**********
Eve is sucking down her third gelato and contemplating ditching the spy game for competitive stress-eating when she knocks shoulders with an oblivious tourist. Her dessert, cone and all, topples helplessly to the pavement and Eve watches in stunned, mournful silence, unable to even muster a half-hearted middle finger in retort. Still warm from the heat of the day, the gelato slowly liquefies on the sidewalk, running in winding rivulets through the cracks while the cone stands in stoic salute. A flag, a physical marker of Eve’s presence. She wants to kick it, to send it sailing into some perfect looking influencer, or whatever-the-fuck they’re called, posing in front of the ruins. Wants to stomp the gelato into the dirt, erase any trace she’d ever been here at all. She almost raises her foot to kick off whatever chain of events comes next, but thinks better of it. Having the Polizia show up would kind of be the opposite of what she’s going for here.
Eve longs, suddenly, for her knee-length, fur-trimmed puffer that she left back in London. A year-round wardrobe staple. She’s in Rome and it’s stifling but she wants to wrap herself in it, to disappear into it. To hide. To blend. Because that’s what she’s good at, isn’t it? Hiding. Existing in plain sight. She hid from MI6, a mouse in their machine. She hid from herself for decades. She’s fucking great at hiding. World class champion. Put a few dozen layers between herself and the world and she’s comfortable. But Villanelle would tell her she’s not a mouse. Not a pathetic, squeaking creature at the mercy of lurking predators. And that break-in was a wake-up call. A sign that things are about to get pretty fucking uncomfortable. A sign that maybe they’re done with Eve’s world and are about to transition, fully, into Villanelle’s.
“God help me,” Eve mumbles into the night. She’s about to try and bum a cigarette off a tourist when, from inside her bag, her phone starts ringing. Assuming it’s Villanelle, she reaches in and sends the call to voicemail without looking. Not ready for that, she thinks as she looks around, for the first time taking stock of where she’s ended up. She’s further from home than she realized. The crowd parts around her on the sidewalk, their faces half obscured in shadow and suddenly, Eve feels very, very exposed.
Her phone rings again. Slowly, she pulls it out of her bag. The screen displays a nonsensical jumble of numbers. Against her better judgement, she accepts the call, holding the phone to her ear but staying silent.
“Eve Polastri?”
The voice is deep and synthesized. Distorted beyond recognition. A chill runs through Eve’s spine. Someone has picked up her scent. There’s a snake in the grass, flicking its tongue in the dark.
“I’m sorry, you have the wrong num —”
“Eve Park, then,” the voice cuts in. “That’s what it is now, right?”
She needs to get rid of her phone. Throw it in the river. That would be the smart thing to do. But she’s gone through three phones already since leaving the hospital. All burners. If they found this number, they’ll find her again. They’ll always find her again.
“You look good, for someone who’s dead,” the voice continues, unbothered by Eve’s silence. “Tricky business that is. I should know, I’ve had to do it a few times.”
“Who are you?” She finds her voice again, a strangled thing, half whispered. Her feet are leading her somewhere. She hopes it’s not home.
“Let’s say I’m a ghost. A friendly one, though. Like Casper.”
“Casper the friendly ghost. Clever,” she snorts, her initial fear shedding like loose fur because she can do this. Has done this. Has played this game, one-on-one. She knows the moves, just needs to take it slow and control the ball. Let the clock run out.
“Well, Casper, this has been a great conversation but I’m going to hang up now. I’d appreciate it if you left me alone.”
“You’re not going to hang up.”
“I’m not?” Eve snaps, waving a middle finger around just in case her new friend Casper is watching. “You sure?”
“You’re not.” the voice drawls. “Because I have something you want. Something you need.”
“I don’t need anything from anyone.”
“That’s not true,” the voice tuts. “By virtue of being alive we all have things we want and need. Eve Polastri may be dead, but Eve Park is very much alive, and therefore, has things she wants. Things she needs.”
Eve swallows, wishing for that cigarette. That’s a thing she wants. The clarity that comes with a mouthful of smoke, the forced nihilism of seeing your breath with every exhale. And when she’s done she can snub it out on her hand and wake up from whatever is happening.
“For example,” Casper continues. Whatever they’re using to disguise their voice, it’s good, Eve thinks, like listening to glass being shattered at infinite pitches. “Eve Park wants to stay hidden. Wants to spin her straw into gold without anyone ever knowing. And it’s easy for her. She is very good at this, hiding in plain sight. She is quiet, unassuming. Like a mouse hidden in the walls.”
I’m not a mouse you ignorant fuck, Eve wants to bite back but she bites her tongue instead because she knows there’s power in being underestimated, in making people think you’re something you’re not. Let them think you’re a mouse right up until they grab your tail.
“But she also needs to keep her partner hidden. And Oksana is not easy to hide. She attracts attention. She feeds on it. Even with a mousy wig and terrible hat and speaking Greek or Italian or French or wherever you are. You are trying to put a wolf in sheep’s clothing but sheep do not have teeth like hers.”
“You leave her alone,” Eve growls, and if she shows too much of her own teeth so be it. Some things are off limits.
“I don’t want her. I want you,” the voice says and Eve, admittedly is intrigued. Because if this person knows she’s alive and wants her, there are probably others who know she’s alive, but want her in a different way. A more dangerous way and danger, it turns out, is always interesting, even to a mouse.
“I know you want to disrupt the Twelve. I know you are sitting on a lot of information right now, a lot of pieces, but you can’t figure out how they fit together. Because you don’t have the picture to match them to. You don’t know how to turn each piece to make them fit. You need the code, to make everything make sense.”
“I don’t know about that. I’m pretty smart.”
“You are,” the voice laughs. “In some ways. Keeping Oksana around for protection - that is very smart. Sticking your head in the tiger’s mouth, though? Very stupid.”
Eve flashes back to earlier, to the feeling of the wood floor beneath her knees. The way Villanelle, ostensibly the tiger, lay prone for her, bucking greedily against her mouth. Thinks of all the times she’s wiped tears off Villanelle's cheeks as she comes back down, and smiles.
“That’s debatable.”
“Those who seek power by riding the back of the tiger foolishly end up inside.”
“JFK,” Eve says, pausing on a bridge to watch the water move lazily under her. “Interesting choice. Why do you think you can help me?”
“Because I helped make the puzzle.”
“So let me get this straight.” Eve pushes herself off the railing. The night has gotten quiet around her. Only a certain kind of person is out at this hour and while Eve is one of them, she doesn’t want people to know she’s one of them.
“You call me out of the blue and want me to believe that you, with your cheesy friendly ghost shit, want to help me take down the organization you work for? Does that make sense to you? Whoever the fuck you are?”
Silence rises between them like a concrete monolith. Eve imagines herself in a staredown with one of those human statues down in the tourist districts, waiting patiently to see who blinks first. When the voice returns, it’s heavy and serious. She feels it crackling through the static.
“We both know, Eve, that I work for bad people. They look for any weakness they can find, that they can twist and exploit to make other people do bad things too. Things they don’t want to do, but must. Money, addictions, friends, lovers, family — it doesn’t matter to them. It’s no way to live, in fear that someone will come in the night and slaughter your family because you’ve outlived your use.”
“And what do you want from me?” Eve responds, slowly. “I’m assuming there’s a price for your help.”
“There will be little jobs along the way. For me. Nothing you can’t handle. And maybe a few you will enjoy.”
A cat hisses at Eve from an alley as she stomps past. This certainly isn’t the night she envisioned when she threw down for her first gelato. A part of her wants to go back in time to that dessert counter and try again, but another part wants to follow this thread just a little longer to see where it goes. It doesn’t matter anyways. You can never go back to before. Everything stops existing the moment you stop looking. It becomes a memory and memories are always, always, wrong.
“I still don’t know if I can trust you.”
“Trust me?” the voice chuckles. “Probably not. But my information is good. How about this — I give you a little something now. A show of good faith. With the house.”
“On the house,” Eve mumbles. She files the mistake away for later.
“Whatever. Here’s a question. If you had an important piece of merchandise out in the world, how would you make sure it wasn’t stolen? Or if it was, how would you make sure you could find it again?”
“I don’t know,” Eve says, biting her lip. “I’d track it, somehow.”
“Okay,” the voice says. “Now let’s say that important piece of merchandise has your secrets. It knows who you are and how you work. It would be very bad if that merchandise walked away and started talking to the wrong people. How would you stop that.”
“I’d track them,” Eve answers, more confidently this time. “I’d know where they are all the time. Have something hidden on them.”
“Ah. But,” they continue. “You have changed everything. Changed phones and bags and clothes and cars and guns. Like snakes, you have shed everything again and again. What is left to track, Eve? What is left?”
Without a word, Eve ends the call, slides the phone into her pocket and turns toward home. One hand snakes into her bag, thumb sliding along the edge of a switchblade in time with each step.