Deadly Attachment

Chapter 9

- hearts are wild creatures, that's why our ribs are cages.

"Do you really need all that candy?" Natasha asked in disgust as I opened my seventh Jolly Rancher of the evening.

I stared at her and put the purple Jolly Rancher in my mouth. When she shuddered, I smiled and gave a light laugh. The laugh must have caught her off guard because she gave me a double take and then a small smile.

"Here." I gingerly walked over to her separate bed in the hotel. "Try one."

Natasha scrunched her nose up at the red Jolly Rancher in my hands. "No way." She shook her head no. "Do you know that stuff is bad for you?"

"Are you kidding?" I saw on her bed across from her. "These things are essential to your existence." I grabbed her hand and faced it palm-up. "Just try one," I begged. When she didn't oppose the idea again, I unwrapped the hard candy and dropped it in her open palm.

She placed it between her fingers and stared at it. Then, she pulled it towards her face and smelled it.

"Natasha," I groaned. "It's not poison. It's candy. You can't tell me you've never tried a Jolly Rancher before."

"Well, I'm not going to lie and say that I have." She stared at the small red candy, suspicious of it.

"It even matches your hair. Just please try it?" I looked up and met her eyes, and tried to make mine as pleading and hopeful as I could manage.

Natasha sighed heavily and put the candy in her mouth. I waited expectantly, and with what probably looked like a stupid look on my face.

"Well?" I was eager to know what she thought of it. "What do you think?"

"It's really sweet." She stated. "But I like it." I pumped my fist into the air, signifying victory. She chuckled and leaned back against the headboard of the bed. "You're pretty peculiar, you know." Her sentence made me frown for a moment, but I masked it.

"Well, gee thanks, Natasha."

"For an assassin, I mean." She folded her legs, watching me with curious eyes.

"What do you mean?" I raised an eyebrow and moved so I was sitting side by side with Natasha, on her hotel bed.

She turned her head to look at me better and began to explain herself. "You're really...alive. The most living assassin I have ever met."

"Is that a good thing?" I questioned, tossing the wrappers into the waste bin. Natasha nodded. "Well, despite all the shit I've seen, I knew that I could still be myself. If there was one thing they couldn't take away, at that horrid place they trained me, was my sense of self. I didn't want to be a mindless, heartless robot. I wanted to be Katya. Just Katya. But I soon figured out that I could be just Katya, but Katya wasn't allowed to love. Because those you love, always get hurt."

Natasha stayed silent, to look at me and search my face for a sadness she wouldn't find. I buried that sadness a long time ago. I buried it with my family.

"Why don't you allow yourself to be happy, Natasha?" I asked. It was very quiet in the hotel room.

"Same reason you don't allow yourself to love." Her blue orbs stared at me, putting me under some sort of spell. "When I'm happy, I'm less aware. People die when I'm less aware." 

Silence fell over us, but I didn't look away. I tried to memorize what her face looked like, so if by any chance we were separated, I could remember her face, and her face only.

"What were you whispering, before you killed Doctor Hummel?" She asked me.

I thought back to my little prayer of sorts and then told her, "Oh, it's just something I've grown accustomed to saying before I make the finishing kill. Or the objective kill, whatever you want to call it."

"Can you say it again?" She looked hopeful.

I nodded and began to repeat the words I said earlier in the day. "Stay low, go fast. Kill first, die last. One shot, one kill. Not luck, all skill."

She let the words sink in. "You say that every time you kill the target?" I nodded. "I saw you make the sign of the cross. You're religious?"

"Yeah," I said the word like it was no big deal. More silence followed, and now it was my turn to ask a question. "Why do you put up such a hard exterior?"

She looked away for the first time and looked at her lap. "I've never had a chance to be soft. I was always bloody knuckles and shards of glass." She clenched her jaw for a moment, then relaxed. "I wanted people to be afraid of hurting me."

"Well, you got your wish," I whispered. "I'm not afraid of you, Natasha." There was strength in my voice. "I thought I was, I really thought I was for a while, but I now realize I'm not afraid of you. All you truly want is to be loved."

"I don't want to be loved." She countered, acting very defensive.

I could see right through her. "Liar," I said with a smile on my face. "You want to be loved, but you won't admit it to anyone, even yourself."

"And you say you won't let yourself love, but I see that you already do." Her retort left me speechless for a moment. She knew.

Finally, I forced myself to speak. "Do you think that if we weren't assassins, and we met each other...do you think it would work out?" I questioned, slipping off of her bed.

"I don't see why it wouldn't." Honesty shone in her voice.

"And what about now? Do you think we could work?" I questioned, false hope in my veins.

Natasha looked tired and sad. "You know how it's going to end." She spoke barely above a whisper.

I didn't bother hiding the sadness, I just nodded. "It may end badly, but I'm willing to try." 

She crawled under the covers and turned off the lamp. "Go to sleep, Katya. The salt water is talking."

I was going to argue and say that I was thinking perfectly fine, but I stopped myself and got into my own bed. Maybe Natasha was right. Perhaps it was too dangerous to try. She didn't say it, but she didn't have to.