Chapter Text
She had been aiming at his head, as they face off. He hadn’t seen her betrayal coming, hadn’t even drawn his weapons. Though, she thinks secretly to herself in a place she’d never let anyone see, she does not think he would have drawn a gun on her, even if he’d been properly warned. Ivan was soft like that, soft for her, and it was going to get him killed. But she did not think on it, because she could not. She had made her choice, the only choice there was to make.
“я тебя люблю, зайчик мой.” He tells her, and she can say nothing to that, cannot respond in anyway as she pulls the trigger except,
“Always.”
She thinks maybe he heard her, despite how quietly she said it, for there is a smile on his face as he hits the ground. His head is still in tact, instead blood spreads out from his shoulder. He’s unconscious only because the fool fell badly, expecting to die. He should have died; she truly is a fool. She should have set up a perch across from where they were to meet. She cannot even comprehend what ridiculousness inspired her to do this face to face.
And now, he is alive instead of dead and she may have ruined everything. But it’s still fixable. She walks to his prone body and raises her gun again, aiming at his head once more. After a few moments, she lowers it again with a huff. This is the only option she has, the only one she can even contemplate; everything else is simply out of the question and she will not let something as banal as emotions stop her.
But she leaves without shooting him, and stopped the bleeding before she left.
She waits at her extraction point, pristine as always, gun already tucked away, and cannot help but dwell on what he thought would be his last words. Had he said them, knowing they would torment her? No, Ivan was many things, and though he could be cruel, he held no room in his heart for cruel love. He had said he loved her, called her his bunny, as he was accustomed to doing. If everything had gone as planned, those were his last words. Not of her betrayal, or words of spite, or denouncing their love.
Instead he embraced it, allowed her to raise her gun to him. Had their positions been reversed, she had no doubt she would have attempted to kill him. Then again, she didn’t think Ivan would ever let himself be manoeuvred into the same position she had found herself in. And, had he, she quietly suspected he would have found a way around it. Russians, as he would always tell her, were crafty.
Then again, he said a great many things about Russians, and she had long since stopped believing everything he said, if indeed she had ever believed a word of it.
Apart from that Russians were capable of great love, this she knew first hand.
It wasn’t until she was back in her flat, countries away from where she’d left Ivans body, completely alone, that she allowed herself to think on why she had done it. They had known about her affair with Ivan for some time, of course there had. There were several agents, actually, who were entangled with foreign operatives. The higher ups were always looking for any chance to flip someone, and they were content to ignore any emotions that arose from such dalliances and treat them as honeypot missions. It was actually quite good of them, even if their motivations were suspect.
There was something they could not overlook, however, and it was the one thing she’d done.
She rested her hand on her still flat stomach.
She had had to make a choice between Ivan and his unborn child. She could not have them both, for that was one tie too many to something other than her country and her job. Especially when both ties, in the eyes of her bosses, could end in her flipped and all she knew spilled to the Russians. Not that she would ever do such a thing, but she understood their caution.
Had Ivan known what she was making a choice between, she rather suspected he would have asked her for a bullet to the head rather than the idiotic mercy she’d bestowed. But Ivan would never know about their child, would only know that she’d chosen her country over her love, and that was the way it should be.
With that, she resolved to put it out of her mind. It was no use crying over spilt milk, and she had enough to do without getting emotional.
She touched her stomach once more.