Work Text:
They’re almost like a real couple. It’s a shameful thought that comes to Leon’s head unwarranted, but he can hardly help it—it is what it is.
He pulls the chair out for her as if he has even a shred of gentlemanliness in him. He waits until she seats herself primly on the lacquered mahogany chair before sitting down across from her. Then, loyally following the unwritten procedure, Leon hands her a small bouquet of flowers.
Not roses but dahlias, and red all the same. She receives them and smiles, looking up at him. “Happy anniversary,” she says, a cruel joke.
Leon smiles back. He can play that game if she wants. “Happy anniversary,” he agrees.
Their seat is tucked at the corner of the room, next to a wallpapered wall so romantically floral that Leon feels he is inside an old-fashioned honeymoon advertisement, while the chandelier hanging low above their heads is taken right out of a fire safety instruction card. Proving his point, a waiter comes and lights the candle sitting in the middle of their table.
Honestly, it’s just excessive. “Good evening to you both, monsieur, madame.”
“Very good indeed,” Ada says in fluent French. Leon manages to stay impassive when Ada reaches out to put a hand over his in the mildest show of PDA. “We are in for a special occasion. Aren’t we, hon?”
Her thumb rubs circles onto his skin and he wishes this entire dining room would just burn to hell with both of them in it. “Yes,” he says. “We are. What is the recommendation for tonight?”
“Pardon my husband's terrible French,” Ada croons. “He’s learning for me, you see. Such a dear.”
“My sincerest congratulations to you both,” says the waiter who, judging from the price range on the menu, is being paid enough to entertain the talkative couples emptying half a month’s salary for a two-hour luxury French dining experience, whatever it might entail. The waiter winks at them and says, in sotto voice, “You’re the most beautiful couple we’ve seen tonight yet.”
“How kind,” replies Ada without the slightest hint of humility.
Tonight’s special is the foie gras—which the madame prefers—and the steamed sea bass cutlet with caviar, but the monsieur would rather have the steak, please, and some drinks while at it too. “I don’t think so, dear,” Ada chastises, the picture of a doting fiancé. Wife. Girlfriend. Whatever. To the waiter, she says conspiratorially, “He has a liver problem, this one.”
“Nonsense, get the best wine you have,” Leon says, eyes on Ada. “It’s our anniversary. Ten years and counting. We are going all out tonight.”
Ada sighs as if Leon is being difficult, and as if she is used to Leon being difficult. Leon pretends not to give a shit when she takes her hand off his. ”All right, hon. But you’re paying. Aren’t you, love?”
“All my life,” Leon says.
The madame requests that they get the ‘99 Château Pétrus, please, and could we also have some dessert after our meal—the soufflé looks simply magnificent, and they’re starving. Once the waiter leaves, Leon leans back in his chair, raising a brow. “Husband,” he repeats.
There is a violin quartet at the other end of the room crooning some generic jazz—mellow and saccharine in its languorous way. The setting is comical to Leon; the candlelight dinner, the Eiffel tower glittering beyond the window, the air crisp with thyme and perfume. Like they’re stuck in the Roman Holiday.
Ada leans forward to rest her chin on her right hand as she inspects her left. The diamond on her ring finger glimmers in the low lighting, iridescent. “I could never forget your heartfelt proposal.”
That wasn't there before. “You should return that.”
“Yes, it’s not quite my style, isn’t it?” Ada taps a manicured nail thoughtfully on her lips. “Gold doesn’t look good on me. But on you..” she takes off the ring and hovers it above Leon’s hand—it does not touch him, but Leon could swear he feels the metal ghost of it, cold like a handcuff. “Perfect.”
Leon stares at the ring, and then at her. “Oh darling, you’re making me blush.”
She twirls the ring between her fingers, a magic trick. “You used to be so cute,” she says mournfully at the causticness in his retort. “I’ve missed that. Excuse me, ma’am?” abruptly, she has turned to the lady sitting at the next table. “I think you dropped this. Of course, hon, no problem. I love your hair..”
Leon sips his terrible and overpriced wine, watching Ada befriends the unsuspecting woman—Austrian, in her sixties and coincidentally is, too, on an anniversary dinner with her husband—within record time. “How did we meet?" Ada laughs, clapping her hands at the question. "Oh, it’s such a funny story. Isn’t it, love?”
“Just hilarious, love,” Leon says obediently.
“It was summer,” Ada says.
Leon can play that game. “In Paris, actually,” Leon says.
“Oh, yes. You, me..”
“A boat in the Seine river.”
“Not very good with boats, this one..”
“The worst,” Leon agrees. “Almost drowned, in fact.”
“I came to his rescue,” Ada winks conspiratorially.
“Et voilà,” Leon says. “The rest is history.”
The appetizers are too buttery for his taste, the wine too sweet. He watches Ada forgo utensils entirely and pop the canape into her mouth with her fingers—the movement casual and practical, like she’s done it a thousand times. She dabs the corner of her mouth with the napkin and tells him, plainly, “Eat.”
Leon looks at her. Her gaze is calm and dark and cold. Obsidian. “I want to watch you eat,” Ada says.
Leon eats.
Finishes his plate clean, even if his appetite isn’t particularly whetted. He’s aware of her eyes on him as he cuts the meat, as he chews, as he drinks his wine, methodical and studious. He doesn’t make a show out of it—he doesn’t intend to make a show out of it, but he feels like he is doing one anyway. He sighs. “Ada—”
“Say ah.”
He pauses. Wonders if she’s making fun of him. Then again, when does she ever not? “You’re making fun of me.”
Her fork does not waver in the slightest—a perfect slice of duck meat pierced on it innocently. “Say ah,” she repeats. He looks at her, exasperated for a moment, but she isn’t smiling—not at all. Her gaze is calm and her hold on the fork is stiller than stone. Leon swallows, dry. And then opens his mouth and lets her feed him.
She pulls her hand back. “Good,” she says, some kind of praise, and then returns to feeding herself as if satisfied by having done the action.
He stares at her, chewing and swallowing. It tastes all right. “You’re sick,” he tells her.
The small smile stays on her face but she says nothing. They eat in silence. The souffle eventually comes to their table and to Leon’s surprise, he finds himself liking it. “You like it,” Ada observes.
Leon hates the way he feels opaque when he’s with her. “It’s not too bad.”
Ada doesn’t reply, just smiles indulgently again, like she knows he’s trying to be dismissive and allows him to keep up the facade. It makes Leon feel stupid and insane. He can’t find it in him to finish the dessert.
After he pays the bill, Leon holds her coat for her, helping her to put it on. She makes no comment regarding the gesture, as if they’ve done it a thousand times. She links one arm with his and holds the bouquet with the other. “Shall we?” she says, sweet like arsenic.
Leon resents the way it feels like they’ve done it all a thousand times. “Yes.”
The rain has stopped but the streets are still wet, reflecting the golden lights of the shops and street lamps. The city smells like pavement, earth, and Ada’s perfume. Leon regrets not bringing a coat—he should’ve at least brought a jacket. Ada looks over at him and says, “Let’s get something warm to drink.”
They find an open cafe nearby canopied by beautiful greenery. A busker is playing a guitar, and at the next block, another is playing a keyboard. “Hi,” Ada says warmly to the waitress in American English. “Bonjour. Can I have a coffee please, black. What would you like, babe?”
The twang and chirpiness in her voice throw Leon off. “The same.”
After the waitress leaves, her voice returns to the unplaceable transatlantic accent Leon is familiar with. “I’ve always wanted to know how you’d like your coffee,” she says.
Anger blindsides him—abrupt and all at once. For a split second Leon wants to tell her to shut up, to stop—but then again, he’s playing the same game. “What a crucial piece of information to my profile. How much does that intel sell for, $1000?”
“Don’t sell yourself short, dear,” Ada says.
They’re in a comical scenery once again—one out of a watercolor painting. People pass by, families, workers drinking after hours, toddlers in strollers, couples hand in hand. From the windows he can see bakers baking, baristas working—all hustle and bustle. It was twilight when they went for dinner, and now the sky is dark, lit up by the lights of the city. No stars, but perhaps there is no need.
It makes him angry again—all the beauty around him. It all makes him angry. Leon looks away.
The waitress returns with their orders. “Enjoying Paris, I hope?” says the waitress with slightly accented English.
“Very much, yes,” Ada says, while Leon sips his coffee in stoic silence.
“You’re a beautiful couple.”
Ada smiles shyly. “Gosh, thank you,” she says, her voice softer than Leon has ever heard it. She glances at him, furtive, vulnerable. There was a time when he would fall for it. “This is our first date, truth be told.”
“Oh!”
Leon carefully sets his coffee down. “Not for my lack of trying, mind,” Leon says. “She plays very hard to get.”
Ada shrugs and raises her hands, as if saying guilty! “Women,” she says as an excuse.
The coffee is great. Leon wonders if Ada knows that he thinks that, if she can always map out his affinity meter towards just about anything. All his likes and dislikes, all his vices and casual addictions. He wonders if he’s really so hopelessly fucking readable to everyone or if it’s just her, and finds himself not knowing which one is worse.
They finish their coffee without savoring it, all quick efficiency. Ada puts down her cup and says, “I want to go up the Eiffel tower.”
It starts to drizzle again, so Leon buys them an umbrella and holds it over their heads as they walk to the metro. The line is forgiving; October in Paris isn’t a crowded affair, with the busier tourist months being June to August. Leon has never bothered to pass for a local—you can get away with a lot by being a tourist, and the visas are easier to craft. There are places where Leon garners attention as a white man gallivanting in far corners of the world, but here he isn’t special, and he can tell that Parisians could not give lesser shits if they tried.
Ada blends in well here, however, as well as a beautiful woman can blend anywhere. Fashionable and confident, her presence is both stark and unquestionable. It’s a trick, Leon understands, to look so furnished that people automatically look past you.
They walk out of the station in arms, one of the many couples visiting the tower on a weeknight. Her head is not quite on his shoulder, but close, and when she speaks his hair stands on ends. She looks up at the tower. “It’s smaller than I remember.”
Something about the way she says it stops him short—it’s not wistful, but it’s close to nostalgic. An admission of something true. “You’ve been here before?”
She glances up at him, mouth curved in that inside joke smile—whatever that was there before now wiped clean. “You proposed to me right here, hon. Remember?”
“Ahh,” Leon says, nodding as if he just remembered such a little thing. “Yes. It was … spring.”
“April,” Ada supplies.
“April. You, me..”
“A 5.99 carat Cartier diamond ring.”
Leon snorts. “I don’t know if my civil servant salary can afford that, hon.”
“No, I don’t think so, but your COO salary from your oil tycoon late father’s company does.”
Leon laughs, and then gets angry that she made him laugh. He smiles furiously and says, “How could I forget. And with your..” he glances at her, conjures the wildest thing he can think, “Your salary from your traveling avantgarde Fine Arts gallery exhibition on the intersectional overhaul of the late stage capitalism—”
Ada laughs, loud and loose, and Leon is suddenly overcome with something like love, or at least a demented version of it. Her eyes shine with mirth, and a little part of Leon thinks obsessively: I did that. I made you feel that. Leon continues, “The both of us can also afford a cozy little penthouse in Singapore.”
She says, a smile in her voice, “A three-story house in Morocco..”
“One jet cruise in Greece,” Leon says. “Or a dozen.”
“A nice baroque villa in Bali. Or a dozen.”
“And, obviously, a fucking mini caravan in Massachusetts.” She laughs again and he wants to kill himself. He adds, “Tax exempted, of course,” just to hear her laughter one more time.
He pays for the tourists’ entry tickets. They were let in without a hitch, dismissed as yet another couple trying to have a romantic Wednesday night necking on a three-hundred meter heap of metal. Leon gazes up at the elevator, silent and calculating. A twenty-minute ride in a tin can up the second tallest structure in the country with no escape route and no contingency plans—
Ada sidles up next to him, her voice mirthful in his ear. “Scared?”
Leon scoffs, but whatever retort he has on the tip of his tongue petters out when she takes his hand into hers to circle it around her waist—where he can feel the telltale outline of the gun that she’s managed to smuggle over the security checks.
“Don’t worry, darling,” Ada whispers, sending shivers down his spine. “I’ll take care of you.”
Leon knows full well how sick he is to believe her.
A family with rowdy children enters the elevator with them, along with an elderly couple and some teenagers. The elevator closes. Leon feels, suddenly, the weight of Ada’s head on his shoulder, and the warmth of her fingers curling over his, and the comfort of the pistol kept in the linings of her coat. He can hear the children laughing and the elderly couple talking in hushed, contented voices. He can see Paris presenting herself in front of them through the glass, pretty as a picture.
He’s struck, abruptly, by the reality of it all, the weight of the night on his shoulders. And Leon finds himself wishing that they will never reach the top of the tower. Leon finds himself thinking: please, god, if you’re looking down on us, please strike us dead right now.
But god never listens. The elevator dings open.
It’s windy at the top—the cold bites through his shirt, leaving his skin numb, more so when she leaves his side. Ada stands at the ledge, the bouquet still in her embrace as she looks out at the city. Leon walks up behind her, a silent shadow. She turns back at him and says, “It’s not as beautiful as I thought it would be.”
He desperately wants a drink. Anything to lessen the weight of whatever this is. “No,” Leon agrees. The sky and the city are spread behind her, insignificant. “It isn’t.”
Raindrops start to fall again the moment they reach the bottom of the tower. The pitter-patter of the rain is the only dialogue in their conversation for a long while as they walk across the park. They pass a few buskers singing melodramatic love songs, couples young and old leaning on each other on the benches. If he sees a proposal happening, Leon thinks he would actually shoot himself. Leon says suddenly, “I want to go on the Ferris wheel.”
When she doesn’t reply, he looks at her. She looks back. Eyes crinkled in amusement. She’s changed, he realized. Aging favors her more than it does him. “Okay,” she says benevolently, with the tone of voice you use to tell a child that he is allowed one more cookie. “Let’s go on the Ferris wheel.”
The Ferris wheel is located on Place de la Concorde, a twenty-minute silent bus ride from the tower. No queue—probably because of the rain, which gets relentlessly harder and harder. Leon passes twenty-four euros to the disinterested employee for the tickets.
They sit across from each other when the cart begins to move, slow and heavy. It’s dingier than he expected—the glass windows muddy and rusted. The cart itself smells like dust and metal. Ada asks, “How long does the ride take?”
“Ten minutes.”
Ada makes an acknowledging sound. She reaches inside her coat and freezes when Leon presses a knife to her neck.
She blinks at the knife—for a moment she almost seems surprised. “So you don’t need me to take care of you after all,” she says. Her eyes flick back to his face, the corner of her mouth lilting. “Is this how you treat all your dates?”
Leon’s mouth twists. “Just the ones who’ve tried to put a bullet in my head.”
“That’s fair.”
Her hand moves again. He presses the blade of his knife harder to her skin in a warning. “Ada.”
Her coyness stays. “Leon.”
They stare at each other in cold, tense seconds. Leon’s knife doesn’t budge. “Slowly,” he says then.
She obeys, fingers moving inside the hem of her coat to pull out—
“Can’t a girl,” Ada says. “Give her little gift in peace?”
It’s a sealed brown envelope, plain and inconspicuous, offered underneath his nose. Beats pass. Slowly, Leon takes it carefully, inspecting it over with his hands while watching her from the corner of his eyes. Deeming it harmless, he slashes it open with his knife.
He doesn’t know what he expected. Folded inside are papers, documents. He stares, silent for a long moment, losing his guard. He looks back at her.
“What’s this?” Leon says.
“Your new identity,” Ada says.
Leon’s hand runs over the passports and visas he has been gifted with—all well-crafted, he can tell. Expertly made. “What?” he says, knowing how absolutely fucking stupid he sounds at the moment. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The wheel turns as their cart climbs higher and higher. The rain is still going hard, protesting against the glass, and Paris is a blur outside of it—an impressionist mess of colors and lights. The umbrella he bought didn’t manage to do its job completely. The ends of her hair are wet, reflecting the lights like glass, and her red coat is blotched dark at some parts. Leon has it worse—one of his sleeves is completely wet—but he isn’t sure if he’s shaking from the cold or from everything else at this very moment.
“There is an undocumented airfield south of Auvers-Sur-Oise,” Ada says. “It’s a city one hour train ride from Paris. A contraband shipment is set for Munich tomorrow morning; I’ve arranged for an extra seat for you. From there you can set a course for Russia—the US has no jurisdiction there. You can disappear. I have a connection who’s cleared you a three-year work visa,” she pauses, and then says genially as if making a joke, “I do hope your Russian is better than your French.”
Leon looks at her like she’s speaking in tongues. He’s gripping the envelope so hard it nearly tears. There are many things running through his mind and every single one is incomprehensible to himself at the moment. When he finally speaks, it comes out choked and pathetic. “Why?”
“You used to be so cute,” Ada says.
Leon stares at her. She’s smiling, subdued and slight. Her lipstick is maroon tonight to match her coat, off-setting her white blouse. “I’ve missed your blond hair..” she muses, and this time, the wistfulness is definite in her voice. Palpable, as if she means it. “Gold really does look good on you.”
“Ada,” Leon says, and then finds that he can’t manage to say any other word but her name.
She doesn’t seem to mind his speechlessness. In fact, she seems to understand. She seems to read him like a fucking book. Ada leans forward to comb her fingers into his hair and Leon leans into it, like a dog, and fights the urge to close his eyes in some sort of reverence.
“They took everything from you, Leon,” Ada says. “Didn’t they?”
The cart has reached the top. Civilization feels so far down below them, so cut off, leaving them trapped alone in the sky. Slowly, however, the cart starts to trudge down again—reminding Leon that there are only two more cycles until the end of the ride. Six minutes and fifteen seconds left. “I—”
“You’re good, Leon.” She pulls away and Leon feels the loss of her touch like a gunshot. “You deserve a better life.” She pauses and then corrects herself: “You deserve a chance at a better life.”
Leon stares at her blankly. The envelope feels heavy on his lap, like a gun, or an axe. Leon’s grip tightens on his knife. And then, with quick efficiency, he rips out the wire stitched into the collars of his shirt and snaps it apart.
Ada watches on silently without reaction. Her face is neutral, impassive. Leon steps on the microphone until it splinters under his boots. He looks up at those dark, unreadable eyes. “You know, don’t you?” he says.
Ada says nothing, still watching him. Leon stares back.
“You know that I’m here under orders,” Leon says again. “You know that they’re sending me to arrest you. You knew it all along, didn't you?”
She smiles. “Oh, Leon,” she says. She tilts her head, inspecting him intently, with that same beautiful, indiscernible amusement Leon has gotten familiar with for a decade. “I was wrong, I think. You're still adorable after all this time.”
The cart is reaching the peak again soon. Three minutes fifteen seconds. Leon feels numb. But then again, he’s felt numb for a long time. “You’re surrounded,” he tells her. “This place is crawling with agents. We have you cornered, Ada.”
She doesn’t reply. She stares at him wordlessly with that knowing smile, as if she knows. As if she’s waiting. Waiting for him to break, to snap, to strip himself bare. Leon hates her and he hates himself even more when he finally does. “You gave me visas for China,” Leon says. “Not Russia.”
“Our conversation before wasn’t exactly private, was it?” she says airily. The broken pieces of Leon’s wire lie heavy between the both of them. “I lied. The airfield is in Troyes, a two-hour drive from here. The plane takes off in twenty-four hours from now. Your choice, Leon.”
One day, Leon knows, he might go insane the way Krauser did. Go against everything he once believed in. Aim the gun at his own people. Lose his very self.
But sometimes—and he only admits this to himself, in his darkest moments—sometimes, Leon isn’t sure if he already did.
“You’re giving me an out,” he says, a needless statement.
“Yes.”
He wants to laugh, or scream, he has no idea. “No,” he says. A refusal. And then, “Is there—” He can’t bring himself to say it. “Are you—?”
He shuts his mouth, can’t bear to finish his sentence. But she knows, of course. She always knows. “One seat,” she says, unbearably gentle. Her smile almost looks guilty now, or worse, pitying. “Just one, Leon.”
Leon hates her, because he knows—he knows that she knows he would fucking take it if only she—if only she would—
But she wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. They wouldn’t. They both know that. This game they’ve been playing all night, the play-acting, the pretenses; all a farce. None of it could ever be true. Nothing but a wishful carrot on a stick.
“You know I can’t,” Leon says finally, empty. “You know I won’t.”
“You can switch courses to Greece,” Ada says. “Get that jet cruise.”
Leon smiles, manic and grim. He runs a tired hand over his face—exhausted from it all. “You’re cruel, you know that?” he says, laughing hoarsely into his hands. He isn't sure what he's laughing at, the world or himself. “Absolutely fucking cruel.”
“Leon.”
“Shut up,” he says, and it sounds like a beg, a weak, miserable plea. “How could you—how could you even—” offer him something like this. Dangle it in front of his face. Because it doesn’t matter if it’s real or not, if she’s lying or telling him the truth—because it could be real. If everything was completely different, it could be.
That’s why it isn’t.
Her face is unreadable, as it always is. “I’ve looked into your file,” Ada says. “You were never meant to be in this life.”
Sentimental words. But she says it matter-of-factly, as if addressing some data error, an honest, innocent mistake. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I was there, Leon.”
September 30th, 1998. Raccoon. Where it all began. “You saved my life.”
“Do you ever wish I hadn’t?”
She might as well be twisting a knife inside his chest. Instead of answering, he shoots back, “Do you?”
Her words are sure and steady. She has a clarity towards herself and the world that Leon does not have. “I should,” she says. “I should feel bad for saving you. For pulling you into this. Destroying your life.” She reaches to stroke his hair again, a quick, casual movement. Like she’s done it a thousand times. “But sometimes..” her voice drops into a near whisper, almost drowned by the sound of rain. Like she's whispering a dirty secret. “Sometimes, Leon, I’m glad I did. Sometimes, I would think to myself: I would do it all over again.”
She leans back after her confession. “I’m sorry,” she says calmly.
The cart has reached the peak again. They only have a minute, or half. Leon pinches his eyes shut before finally looking at her—perhaps for the last time.
“Do you hate me?” Leon asks her.
Because this must be hate—all this torture, this cruelty. These empty promises of a future that could never be. It must all be some kind of punishment.
She looks at him gently—the way emptiness can be gentle when it embraces you in the dark. She raises her hand to brush her thumb over his jawline, first softly, and then roughly, fingernails digging into his skin. He leans into it despite; he can’t help it, he can’t. Her hold on his jaw feels like steel and her voice when she speaks is as tender as the October rain, and as honest.
“You make me good, Leon,” Ada says softly. “It makes me sick.”
And then she kisses him, or he kisses her—it hardly matters. Nothing hardly matters. Her warmth burns his skin, makes him yield and give. He shudders and wishes everything would just end right there.
When she pulls back he has to stop himself from chasing after her. The cart trudges down, down. They’re running out of time. Ten seconds left. Nine. “Use your gun on me,” Leon tells her. And then, “If you knew all along, why did you come? Just to give me an out you know I wouldn’t take?”
“I told you,” Ada says, a pistol in her hands, safety off. “I’ve missed you.”
Seven. Six. “I put a tracker inside your coat.”
“I know, darling,” Ada smiles, and he feels the nozzle of her gun pressing his sides, gentle like a kiss. “Thank you.”
Five. Four. “You said I wasn’t meant for this,” Leon says. “But what about you? Why don’t you give yourself a chance?”
“Oh, Leon,” she says, and nothing else.
Three. Two. Leon stares at her, pinched and hard, attempting to commit every single detail into his memory—the darkness of her eyes, the dimple when she smiles. He says, helpless and without dignity, “Will I ever see you again?”
She gives him no warning. It happens quickly—the gunshot is explosive inside the enclosed space, her kick bangs his head into the metal enclosure. Another gunshot, and then he’s showered in raindrops and glass splinters when the window breaks.
He didn’t see her leave; she was too quick. Momentarily deaf and disoriented, Leon leans back, feeling the burn on the right side of his torso where she'd shot him. He doesn’t bother to check, already knowing it’s only a graze. He stares blankly at the bouquet of red dahlias left on the seats. The rain showers on them, wetting the petals into dark maroon. Like blood clots. Like the color of her lipstick.
The wheel is shut down and several guards arrive to escort him out, speaking in rapid, panicked French. Blood trickles down the side of his temple and he wipes it out of his eyes. He’s cut his head open—shallow, but bleeds like shit. Leon swats away the hands that attempt to help him walk, as if he’s some victim, and brushes off the paramedic trying to get a look at him.
Place de la Concorde is thrown into chaos—tourists are panicking, officials swarming in. He spots DSO agents lurking in the corners. Far away, sirens have started to howl. He’s caused yet another international clusterfuck, and not for the first time. Higher-ups will be pissed.
Oh well. What are they gonna do, fire him?
The suits arrive quickly. “Agent Kennedy?” one of them approaches him, looking neither friendly nor sympathetic to Leon’s battered appearance. His English is perfect, but Leon knows he’s a federal local; Leon can spot the type from a mile away. “You’re coming with us.”
He’s fucked. But Leon feels like himself again now that she’s left. He smiles, caustic and easy. “Right on,” Leon says, mock salutes. “Drinks on you?”
They only let him go eight hours later.
Leon walks out of the embassy with a stitched-up temple, a bandaged torso, a pounding head from hours of relentless interrogation, and an unimpressed Hunnigan in his ears. “You are to report back directly to base—a chopper will pick you up 0830 hours sharp. HQ would like to speak to you in person regarding this incident.”
“Uh oh,” Leon says. Scanning his surroundings for any cafes that open at this hour. Can’t rely on these people to give him breakfast. “Somebody’s in trouble.”
“Don’t count on it—you did your job.” It’s said impersonally, not an assurance. She’s right, anyway. Leon’s task was to bring the target in—securing her is not a one-man job. To Leon’s surprise, Hunnigan adds, “It was never a good plan in the first place.”
Leon pays for his coffee and croissant at one of the only shops with their lights on, smiling at her words. “Oh yeah? Honeypotting is too passé these days?”
“For an operative of her caliber, yes.”
He wishes he could have some whiskey to go with his coffee. But he supposes he doesn’t deserve a reward after all this. “So you’re saying I’m not good enough to neutralize her.”
“I’m saying you’re not the right plan to neutralize her.”
He can see a deck arch bridge from here, spanning above the Seine river ahead—should just be a few minutes walk. The sky is still deep, solemn blue; the first light of the day hasn’t quite shown its face yet. The street is cold and smells of rain.
“It was never my pitch,” Leon says. “Any news on the chase?”
“Her tracker shows she’s heading north—we suspect she’s aiming for Germany. We’re working with the local authorities to canvas France’s borders as of now. DSO is pulling some heavy strings. But we are not overruling the chance that she is using her tracker as a decoy.”
Leon makes an acknowledging sound. He says, “They think I’m working with her, don't they.”
Such a professional—Hunnigan doesn’t even miss a beat. “It’s a possibility.”
Leon thinks he ought to be angry. They asked him to do this—to exploit whatever sentimentality they think exists between him and the mark. And now they want him to pay because they can’t catch the target that he’s sold himself out to lure? Leon should be fucking furious.
But instead, he feels nothing. He feels ... calm. Collected. The sole and only thought in Leon's head is this: You would never catch her.
What he asks next is more out of curiosity than anything else. “Do you think I’m working with her?”
“Working, no,” Hunnigan says. “Compromised, yes.”
Fair. “Is that why I’m getting babysitters, in case I run off with her into the sunset and have babies together on some private island in the fucking Bahamas?”
Two agents shadowing him since he left the embassy—his four and twelve o’clock, respectively. They’re pretty good, but not that good. “That’s out of my jurisdiction, Leon,” says Hunnigan calmly, unbothered by neither the accusation nor the expletive. “You know that.”
“Well, tell HQ their good little boy is coming home to receive his spankings,” Leon says. “But they better be giving me off in lieu for overtime.” Not waiting for a reply, he turns the comm off.
The agents are still shadowing him when Leon arrives at the bridge—Pont Alexandre III, the plank reads under the mellow streetlights—but Leon can’t be bothered to give a shit. Still wishing he has some alcohol in his system, he leans on the railing to stare out into the dark. It should be sunrise soon. He shifts, gingerly, and feels the edge of the brown envelope digging into him under his shirt like a razor.
She was being kind. Leon is not good. And he certainly does not deserve a second chance. Ada doesn’t get to decide that for him.
Below the bridge, the streams are dark like ink. In daylight, the river is beautiful, but at this moment it’s obsidian. So black like it could swallow you whole, if you would just let it—and you would never resurface again. Embraced in the dark forever, where it promises you it would be gentle when you know it won’t.
He should, Leon thinks, let the envelope fall down the Seine river. He should. That’s what he should do.
That’s what he ought to do.
Over the horizon, dawn breaks. Leon watches as the world continues to live another day once again.