for jacedesbff: Codes
A Gift From: sienamystic
Type Of Gift: Fic
Title: Codes
A Gift For: jacedesbff
Rating: Teen
Warnings: None by Ao3 standards, mild sexual content, mild violence
Summary/Prompt Used: 4. World War II AU - I particularly like when they meet (or met) during the war and are reunited at the end of it. I’ve never seen one, but I could picture this working with a Cold War AU setting as well.
Author's Note: WWII AU. In occupied Paris, a story of spies and wartime
banner by frea_o
The attic room seemingly has trapped all the winter’s chill inside its four walls, and the young woman sitting in front of the small radio must periodically stop and chafe her hands to get some warmth back into them. Each moment of respite is brief, to hitch the oversized man’s coat which is slipping down her shoulders back up around her, or once to stand and walk around the room twice to get blood back to her cramped legs. She then returns to her patient watch before the radio, and every twenty-two minutes, she taps a rapid string of morse code out into the ether.
“I am here, I am here. I am ready.” She can feel the hum of the radio’s oscillation in her fingertips and in the bones of her ears. Sometimes the radio crackles to life, and she writes the string of numbers and letters down quickly, then uses her one-time pad to turn them back into words. Her pad is crumpled from where she has held it in sweaty hands, and she has to be careful to not let the cheap ink smear.
Each night transmitting is another night the roving vans of the Abwehr may find her, as they circle Paris tracking down stray transmissions coming from unauthorized locations. She knows what comes if they find her - a prolonged torture for what she knows, then a quick death. Still, she spends many nights here faithfully. But on nights where she is not...
Those other nights, she is traversing the darkened streets of Paris. She is efficient, and very quick. Men die quietly, choking on their own blood,
She does this for love of country, to see the Germans defeated.
****
Four months after she has been established in occupied Paris, and after she has killed seven men, a message is passed to her: go to Chartres. A man will be waiting for you in front of the cathedral at eight in the morning. He is your new partner. Train him, make him useful. He believes he will be working for American interests alongside you. Do what you need to make him loyal.
She knows what they expect of her, and her lip curls. At the age of 19, with red hair she hides under kerchiefs and hats and a body she hides under men’s sweaters pulled over shapeless dresses that bag and conceal, she knows she is beautiful, and that beauty is an asset. And of course, all her assets are to be dedicated to her country’s use. She feels sorry for this young man they are sending her. He will not know how it happened, years in the future, when he finds himself a loyal agent of a different country. Of course, he will probably be dead before that. So too may she. She shrugs, a small resigned gesture under the folds of the sweater, and walks to where her borrowed car is waiting. Fifty miles to Chartres, which is a lot of fuel. They must believe that this man is an important asset to obtain.
Despite the fact that the morning is bright and beautiful, the cathedral is ghostly all the same. The windows are bare of the old glass, and sandbags are heaped everywhere in piles. Her contact is studiously examining the parade of saints across the west portal, but he turns at the sound of her car and smiles cheerfully at her. He’s snub-faced, ridiculously American in his appearance, but as he greets her she discovers that his French is excellent, as if he had been born and bred in the heart of the city.
“An aunt taught me,” he says when she looks surprised. “She spoke several languages and was an excellent cook, so I learned a lot while I hung around the kitchen pestering her.”
“I see,” she says coolly. If he wants to feign that an aunt has given him his excellent Parisian accent instead of careful training by the military or some deeper American agency, it hardly matters. But it’s odd, and god help her, it may indicate a streak of whimsey she’ll have to cope with.
His multilingual auntie also has passed on to him a working knowledge of Swiss German - a little schoolboy in manner, but serviceable, as well as Italian fluent enough for him to pass as one. The name he is traveling under is Michele Gallo, and his passport says he’s an employee of a company providing some sort of lubricant for agricultural machinery to the Vichy government. It’s an identity that will only be useful entering and leaving the country, and she explains this to him carefully. While he is assigned to her, they will rely on less expensive forged papers, which need only to be good enough to fool landladies.
Her knuckles are white around the steering wheel of the car until they arrive in Paris unmolested by soldiers or checkpoints. Thankfully her passenger doesn’t attempt to distract her, but instead watches the changing scenery. He eventually falls asleep, his head slumping against the car door. She studies him, partly irritated, partly intrigued by this stunning display of nerve. Either he has ice-water in his veins, or he’s an idiot. On the other hand, the different sound of the tires on the road when they enter Paris is enough to wake him, from soundly sleeping to completely alert in a moment.
She drops off the car back where she obtained it, a garage where everyone pointedly avoids meeting their gaze. Their apartment is two streets down and five over, over a shop that repairs bicycles. It’s a four-floor walkup and the top rooms are all theirs, making rooftop access simple. She shows her new guest the topmost attic room where the radio is. He’s familiar with its operation, and he looks it over with a proprietary air. Then he sticks his head out the window, and mutters something about better placement of the antenna.
“That’s as far out as you can safely get on the roof.”
“I think I have a solution to that. I’ll show you later.”
There is lukewarm soup and some bread, and, of course, wine - a harsh red that scrapes the throat. They sit around the rickety table and eat while she talks.
“I was part of a larger group transmitting information,” she tells him. “But I have more useful skills, so they changed my orders.”
“To what?” He dunks the bread in the soup, and looks at her curiously. She returns his stare and he grins at her, a large, uncomplicated smile.
“I don’t know what to make of you, I must say. But you have been given to me, so I must make the best of you. Here is what you need to know now. The two of us comprise a group, and we are named Delta. I will give you our pertinent codes later. I am known as Widow, and you have been designated Hawk. Dare I trust that your auntie taught you morse code as well?”
“Oh yes,” he says, and drums out a quick string of letters on the table, W-I-D-O-W. “
“What a nice lady she must have been,” she says dryly. “So very useful.”
“Dear Auntie Maria...she was the only person in my family worth anything. Do I have to call you Widow? That’s going to get noticed in the streets, and it’s a little morbid.”
“Should we meet on the streets, you will call me nothing. I may be in the midst of something you must not interfere in. Otherwise, you can call me Natalia. And since you are not Michele at the moment…?”
“Clint.”
She says it, and it comes out more like “Cleent.” Her French is excellent but he can hear the thread of Russian running along underneath it, shading her words. She shakes her head.
“First of all, I hope that’s not your real name. Secondly, it’s too strange, it will make people remember it. You’re Clement, I think.”
“I can be Clement.”
They finish their soup in silence, and then he goes to bed so that he can have the first shift at the radio that night.
****
“That antenna isn’t doing us any good at all.”
He’s red-eyed from the sleepless night but still energetic. At her shrug, he gestures her to wait there and jogs down the stairs, taking them two at a time. When he returns he’s carrying the bag he brought with him.
She watches, eyes wide, as he opens it and withdraws what look like parts of a fishing rod, all segments and things that look like they twist and come apart. In fact, they do. His hands sort them deftly, reorienting and putting them together and for a moment she wonders if this is some sort of new prototype gun. Moscow has said nothing about this. But it soon takes on the shape of a gently curved arc, and when he pulls a length of braided cable from where it has been stored, coiled inside a dummy cigarette lighter, she can see that it’s a bow of some sort, not wood but some light yet strong material.
He further unearths a small collection of bundled rods and, from a packet marked “Milled Prototypes Sample #17,” he tips out a small pile of arrowheads which attach to the rods.
She curls her lip. “Has it come to this, Clement? We will give up guns and radios, and return to a more simple time of bows and arrows? Will you fight the Sherriff of Nottingham in the streets instead of Germans?”
“Useful tools never go out of fashion, Natalia. Plus, an arrow is very, very quiet.”
“So are knives,” she says drilly.
He’s too busy attaching the end of the antenna wire to an arrow. Standing at the window, he points to the chimney of a house several doors down.
“That’s where we need to be. No more nights of garbled static.”
He nocks the arrow and in one clean gesture, pulls and releases. The arrow sails smoothly out into the dim morning light and embeds itself exactly where he aimed, and where shadows will hide the fact that there is anything out of the ordinary protruding from the masonry..
She raises an eyebrow. “Very nice, M’sieur Hood. Go to bed.”
*****
He learns the codes quickly enough, and the rest of it as well. The radio is of course not a difficulty, but she further shows him how to interact with other agents in the city, which is a complicated and necessarily uncertain business. There are secret places used as drop-points: a loose brick, behind a statue in a rarely visited church, a drawer in a desk in an antique shop owned by an old woman with knowing eyes who never speaks to them. The next month is spent trading off night shifts, with rare nights free of the endless waiting by the radio.
Despite this, they get into the habit of dinner together before they go separately off to bed and to the attic room. Over sausages and scrambled eggs, Clement, she learns, has a sense of humor more suitable to a small child than an adult man. He creates an elaborate story about the portrait of the old woman that glares out at them from the wall while they eat. He makes up outlandish things about people they pass in the street. She finds herself unexpectedly laughing at a wry observation, or a story he tells. He’s from somewhere in the midlands of America, he says, with corn fields and wide skies, but also poverty pressing down on them like the dust blown in from further west, dust that covered the grazing, dust that you tasted in the back of your throat.
“It’s worse now, which is almost impossible for me to imagine” he said, leaning back in the chair until she was sure he would tip over. “Everything was so gray, and our farm was really struggling. I was an extra mouth to feed so I ran away to join the circus.”
“You what?”
“The circus! You know, tents, elephants, strongmen and tightrope walkers.” He leaps to his feet and mimes walking a rope, tottering absurdly from side to side, and then flops back down in his chair. “That’s not what I did, though.”
“Let me guess,” she says. “You were a trick shot. William Tell?”
“I did the William Tell thing a few times, but it was hard to keep assistants. Too nerve-wracking for them even if they trusted me. But for a while it was the grand finale. I can also…”
He shakes his wrist and a small knife falls into his hands. He makes a flicking gesture and the knife tumbles end-over-end to plunge into the eye of the sour-faced portrait.
“...do a little knife-throwing.”
“Oh, how wonderful, she says, clapping her hands. “But you know…”
She pulls her own knife from the small of her back, and thunks it easily into the poor portrait’s other eye.
“...I may know a little something about that as well.”
He lets out a surprised and delighted bark of laughter. “You, and me, and a bottle of vodka. We play until somebody misses.”
“Oh no, there must be stakes involved. What will the winner receive?”
“A favor.”
“Hmm, nebulous. But good enough. Tomorrow night, then? Neither of us will have a date with the radio”
“Done! I’ll find the booze.”
*****
He’s tacked a big ring of playing cards against a wall. “This was one of my tricks - you had someone do a basic card trick out in the audience and then I’d hit the card. We can just call them. But first, the vodka, which I may point out, I should have made you procure because it was really difficult to find.”
He sets out two shot glasses and pours, and they both tip them back.
“Eight of clubs!” Natalia’s card splits in two.
“Knave of diamonds!” She doesn’t even have the words completely out of her mouth before his knife hits the card.
More drinks follow. By the fourth shot, they are laughing and a little giddy, but the knives do not miss their targets.
“Four of spades!”
“Ace of hearts!”
As the evening lengthens Natalia proves to be able to stay more controlled in her movements than Clement is - he’s gotten a little slack-kneed - but she’s feeling uncharacteristically dreamy and warm. He must be feeling it too, because he waves them to a halt and they both sit down at their little table, trying not to move too much as it causes the room to spin.
“Nat?” he says.
“Hmmm?”
“Why are you doing this?”
She’s put her head down on the table, but she lifts it to look at them. “A funny question from someone doing the same thing.”
“I’m here to put a spoke in the Nazi wheel. But you know I’m not a Communist. I’m not much of anything, really.”
“You have nothing driving you, Clement? No strong convictions? No love of country?”
“Some love of country, yeah...but mostly…I don’t know, exactly. Because it’s right. Because people I trust need me here. Because it’s something I can do well. I’m good at this, and I’m needed.”
“Ah,” she says. “Yes, I suppose we’re very different. I was reared to this from a very young age. I was chosen, trained, and taken into the bosom of the party. Eventually I became a fit weapon for their hand.”
He looks troubled. “You’ve been an agent since you were a child?”
“Of course. Children may be as useful in great endeavors as anyone else. I was surrendered to the service of my country by my family, whom I never knew. I was trained alongside other girls my age. Not all of them were fit, but I was. And I will serve as long as I am able, and perhaps never see the goal I work for.”
“What about you?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t understand. What about me?”
“Don’t you want anything for yourself?”
“Myself? What do I have to do with it? I work for a bigger cause, Clement. You have to be completely devoted, or else how can you see your mission properly done? These things are bigger than we are.”
He reaches across the table and almost touches her hand, but she draws back.
“Seven of spades, Clint. Take your shot.”
It takes a minute before he realizes she’s called him Clint. And when he goes to take his throw, his knife slices into the wall, missing the card by a literal hair’s breadth. She crows in victory.
*****
He does not know, yet, about her occasional midnight excursions. But finally, one morning he hands her a scrap of paper he’s decoded.
WIDOW...BADEAUX..NIGHTMARE...HIS OWN HAND
She nods to herself, reading it, and looks up to find him studying her.
“So it means something to you?”
“Orders,” she says crisply. “I will be out tonight seeing to them. You can have a holiday, no need to mind the radio. Go find a pretty girl to have dinner with, if you wish.”
“There aren’t any prettier girls in Paris than you,” he says, but so curtly that she misses the compliment at first. “Do I get to know what you’ll be doing?”
She smiles at him and touches his forearm, letting her fingertips linger. “Paris must still be able to bring out the romantic side of people, despite her current sad condition. But you need to work on your delivery. No, Clement, you do not get to know.”
She looks into his eyes, permitting herself to play the coquette to allay his suspicions. All your assets, her orders had said. All of them. And so she mimics the flirts she has seen in the cafes or walking on the arms of young men in the streets, wide-eyed and prettily teasing.
He returns her look, and he is so...focused on her, like he’s seeing everything, seeing more than he’s permitted to. It seems to her as though the light in the room has dimmed. Natalia’s poise falters. She begins to say something but what she was going to say, she never knows. As the moment spins out, he reaches out his hand and brushes his thumb across her lower lip and the intimacy of the gesture makes her heart stutter. She takes an involuntary step back and his hand drops, his own expression changed and his breath coming a little fast.
She turns on her heel and leaves. She is not running. She is not, she tells herself.
That night he steps out of his bedroom and meets her in the hallway as she is about to leave. His expression is once again so focused on her that she wonders if he can see the outline of the slim knife strapped to her thigh, or the garotte sewn into the wide collar of her coat. But of course, even with his keen eyesight, that would be impossible. Perhaps he’s admiring the fact that for the first time since they’ve met, she’s dressed well, in an outmoded but impeccably cut dark blue dress and pert black hat. He doesn’t say a word. She blows him a kiss from red lips and walks to the stairwell, her heels clacking as she descends.
That night, she kills a French collaborator, and arranges it so that it appears to be a suicide over a woman. She is back long before the sun rises, and walking past his bedroom she wonders if he’s awake and listening for her.
She does not stop at the door of his room to find out.
*****
Their next few weeks are more or less the same as those that came before - days and nights of work, of sitting at the radio, of messages passed via a network of people who may not even realize they are being used as spies. But the shared moment disturbs the comfortable peace between them. Natalia decides that it’s for the best. The man is committed to the task he’s doing now, and more importantly, he’s been drawn into the game of spies that is impossible to truly break free of. Although he does not believe he will ever work for Moscow, there are tendrils winding their way around him that will eventually form a net he will not be able to escape. Useful people will be used.
But he has taken to disappearing at times during the day, and many of his free nights she wonders if he’s really in his bed asleep while she waits by the radio. And Natalia is hearing odd things about deaths and other mischiefs that she is not responsible for. A Nazi official falls from a balcony, supposedly drunk. A fire burns down a building and important documents are lost. One man simply disappears one night after attending an opera performance. None of these things have been ordered by her superiors.
She should be reporting her suspicions back to Moscow, but she does not, and can’t explain to herself why. Instead, she tells her handlers that she will be unavailable for several nights due to increased patrolling in the vicinity of the apartment. She sits at dinner with Clement as they silently eat, and then she bids him good-night and walks up the stairs to the attic.She quickly changes into different clothes than the ones he’s seen her in, and tightly braids her hair and hides it under a cap. A canvas bag containing useful items is waiting for her, set aside earlier that day.
She slips down the stairs and moves back into the shadows, and waits. At first, she can hear him breathing, slowly, as though he may actually be asleep. But after a time, there are other noises in the room, and eventually she hears the sash of his window lift..
She counts to ten, then opens the door and runs to the window, only to see his figure turning the corner on the street below. He has his bow slung over his back - she recognizes the curve of it, even hidden under a heavy coat. She slides herself out of the window and onto the shallow ledge, and then climbs down the exterior of the building as he did. It’s not difficult, and there are a few places where he has driven hand- or foot-holds into the building to assist. They are not new. In a few minutes she’s standing on the street and turning to follow him.
He sets a quick pace, switching directions and doubling back often, and if she weren’t so good she’d have lost him many times over. But her own skills, plus a little anger to fuel her, keep her close at his heels. Finally, he arrives at his destination, the rear of a dilapidated office building. There’s a guard, clearly bored, dozing in a chair in a little booth. Clement approaches him, and their body language looks to Natalia like they’re chatting about something innocuous. The guard steps out of his booth to point in a direction, and Clement’s hand flashes out, his thumb pressed against the man’s neck. The guard flails, flaps his hands against Clement’s stranglehold, and then sags, unconscious. Clement stuffs him back in the booth and, unruffled, picks the lock and slips into the building. She follows, a shadow behind him.
Stairs lead up to the third floor. She sees him pick a second lock on a heavy wooden door belted with iron, and again she waits, then enters cautiously.
From behind the door, his foot strikes out, lashing at her ankle. Instinct takes over before she can think, and she dodges the kick and rolls to one side, sending her heel out at his knee as she does so. He jumps back and the blow misses. She stands and the two of them glare at each other, hands open to receive any attack that may follow.
“A little extra-curricular job? Do you perhaps work for the Germans after all?”
“What? That’s crazy, Natalia. We’re not on the same path, but both of them lead to the same place.”
He strikes a match and she sees the glint of glassware around her, beakers, gradiated tubes, pipes leading from one to another with unlit bunsen burners attached to gas taps with rubber hoses.
“My intel says that they’re on the verge of a new weapon here. Some sort of corrosive gas. I’m here to wipe the lab out.”
Natalia shakes her head. “If this were such an important lab, why only the one guard?”
“Hide the important work by keeping it low-key.”
“No. They do not think that way, Clement. Not at all. When you came in, did you trip anything, did you notice anything unusual?”
“No! I…”
He’s cut off by a man’s shout from somewhere inside the building. “Sie sind hier! Schnell!” The sound of booted feet running up the stairwell echos behind him.
“You missed something, Clement,” Natalia hisses. “And now we’re trapped.”
He flips a heavy oak table, sending glass flying, and drags it further back into the room, away from the door. He slips out of his coat and unslings his bow, adjusting a quiver of arrows, and looks over at her.
“You armed?”
She rolls her eyes and draws twin Browning Hi-Power pistols, and he grins at her, just as the door is kicked in and a stream of men pour into the room.
The first few through the door die quickly, An arrow through the throat and one falls gasping to the floor, fountaining blood. The next man is down just as quickly, screaming at the arrow in his chest. Natalia’s pistols bark and two other men spin back and to the ground. The rest of the men are immediately more cautious, drawing back and firing from the cover of the doorframe.
“Cover me,” Natalia says, and Clement obligingly sends another arrow towards their enemies. This one sticks into the doorframe and explodes, and Natalia, who has used his covering fire to throw a chair through the window behind them, yelps and ducks back behind the table.
“What was that?”
“Explosive arrow,” Clement yells gleefully. “My auntie knows this guy, Tony, really good with building fun little toys…but I don’t have a lot of them.”
An automatic weapon chatters, and they crouch again as a spray of bullets fills the room. Worse yet, there’s the soft whump of gas igniting, and Natalia peeks over the table to see a burning plume of gas dancing on one of the countertops. She points at the window.
“Time to leave, Clement.”
He nods in understanding and crouch-walks to the window, sending an arrow with a line attached up into the masonry. Natalia keeps the men busy at the door, but can only fire intermittently. One shot lands, however, and the man with the automatic weapon goes down, giving them momentary relief.
“Your escape route, m’lady” huffs Clement.
He is busy slipping on a pair of heavy gloves and she nods, producing her own pair from a pocket. She sends another volley of shots towards the door and leaps, up onto the countertop and then out the window, holding on to the rope and beginning her descent. He’s right behind her but before he can completely clear the window, an explosion blooms behind him, a wave of heat and force and fire that swings them wildly out and then back to thump against the wall of the building with shattering force. Above her, Clement slackens his grip on the rope and slides, careening into her. They plummet towards the ground, half falling, half sliding, and Natalia’s gloves shred under the friction of the rope.
They hit the street in a pile of arms and legs. Natalia is up first, yanking her hand under Clement’s elbow and heaving him to his feet. In the light from a street lamp he is pale and singed. Worst of all, she sees thin trails of blood dribbling from his ears. Knowing he won’t be able to hear her, she simply pulls him and they stagger off into the night. Behind them, the building burns, and when she turns to look she sees that the flames are tinged with blue and green. She shudders, and turns away.
*****
She can’t bring them back to the apartment, so she brings them instead to a small safehouse, a room in the back of a bakery that even her handlers don’t know she has set aside. She supposes Clement might have something to say about that, but he’s in no condition to ask any questions. She sits him on the bed and goes back out, returning with warm, wet cloths that she wipes his face with. He winces, his mouth opening in a silent “O” of pain, but she continues her rough ministrations until she can see the actual damage under the soot.
“Well,” she says, “I don’t suppose you needed that eyebrow anyway.”
He looks up at her blankly, still unable to hear her, and she smiles reassuringly at him and smears some salve on his burns. When she’s done, she exaggeratedly mouths the words “lie down” and he obeys, huddling under the blanket. She leaves to go wash her hands, and when she comes back, he’s asleep.
She looks down at him, at a loss. What to do with this? He’s compromised her situation here, and Moscow will be displeased. All of her convictions and training scream to her that she should report him. But she also knows that he will now be seen as more trouble than he is worth. She would be sending him to receive a bullet in his forehead. And although it is her duty…
She sighs, locks the door, and climbs into bed, pushing him aside so she can curl up under the blankets as well. She’s asleep before she can count to ten.
*****
The morning brings the warm smell of baking bread into their little room. She discovers that in the night, Clement has nestled close against her, and she lies there feeling his warmth, her arm protectively thrown over him and listens to him breathe softly. Dried blood dots his ears and cheek. He wakes as well, and turns inside the circle of her arms to look up at her.
“Can’t hear anything,” he rasps.
She puts her finger up to her lips. The men working in the bakery don’t know about their presence in the locked room. She pulls the stub of a pencil and one of their one-time pads from her bag and writes, “Must be quiet. Bakery will be active until late morning. We will leave after they have gone. Quiet until then.”
He nods, takes the pencil from her, and writes, “thank you.” When she nods in reply, he drops the pencil and slides his hand into her hair, drawing her down towards him into a deep kiss.
She stiffens, shocked, but his mouth is so warm and insistent and she feels as though her bones are melting. She sinks down next to him, her own hand curling to hold the collar of his shirt so they stay pressed together while his mouth explores hers, then moves to press a line of kisses along her collarbone.
“Clement...Clint,” she says involuntarily, and because his mouth is on her throat he can feel the vibration of her words.
“Shhh,” he whispers into her shoulder, “don’t get us caught. Can’t hear anyway…” He covers her mouth with his once again, and his hand slides under her sweater, stroking her skin. She can feel the light scrape of his archer’s calluses and it makes her shudder against him. She makes a small noise in her throat but says nothing else, lost in the sensation of his mouth and hands.
Her busy fingers find his belt, unfastening the buckle and the button on his pants. She slides them down, her hands lingering on his hips, and he returns the favor to unfasten her own slacks. She wriggles and sheds her bulky sweater, but it’s his deft hands that unhook her bra, all the better for him as he can immediately cup her breasts, his thumbs teasing her nipples. She unties the ribbon holding her braid and runs her hands through it until it’s a tumble of curls that fall down around his face as she leans forward to kiss him again. Underneath the smell of smoke, he can smell the sharp floral of lavender.
He rolls, drawing her underneath him, and she arches upwards, her legs wrapping around his hips as he slides inside her. The urge to scream, to moan, to cry out - she has to bite her lips to stifle it all. He presses his face against her shoulder, moving slowly, enveloping the two of them in a small bubble of warmth and sensation. After an hour...a minute...a year...she presses her lips firmly together to muffle a sob and he gasps into her neck as they rock together.
If the bakers outside hear the bed squeak, they give no indication. No one bursts in on them with angry cries of discovery. Instead, the two fall back to sleep, tangled together, the sheets twisted beneath them.
******
Clint wakes in mid-afternoon to an empty bed. The bakery is empty, and on the small footstool, he sees the key to lock the room behind him. Slowly, he dresses and dons his coat. He thrusts his hands in their pockets and feels a crackling something that turns out to be a piece of paper that wasn’t there previously. He opens it. It’s a note. In Natalia’s spiky handwriting, it says,
“Clint -
It’s safe for you to leave. I will not be at the apartment, nor will I be in Paris, so don’t look for me here. But I’m calling in my favor. When this is all done - come find me. You’ll have to look hard, but I have faith in you. We can discuss politics, and many other things.
-N.”
He takes out a match and burns the paper, then crushes the ashes to a fine powder. Then, with a small resigned sigh, he goes to find his own way out of the city.
****
Rome after the war is still lovely, although evidence of bombing and military occupation are everywhere. Still, here on a little side street cafe, it’s possible to pretend that the war never happened - at least if you ignore the ersatz coffee and the wrapped biscuit that indicates it’s part of American relief supplies.
Natalia - or Natasha, as she is currently known, has shed the baggy pants and sweater of her Paris days for Dior, and from under the brim of an improbable hat, she is smirking upwards at the man standing in front of her.
“You took your time,” she says, and he laughs and pulls up a chair.
Type Of Gift: Fic
Title: Codes
A Gift For: jacedesbff
Rating: Teen
Warnings: None by Ao3 standards, mild sexual content, mild violence
Summary/Prompt Used: 4. World War II AU - I particularly like when they meet (or met) during the war and are reunited at the end of it. I’ve never seen one, but I could picture this working with a Cold War AU setting as well.
Author's Note: WWII AU. In occupied Paris, a story of spies and wartime
banner by frea_o
The attic room seemingly has trapped all the winter’s chill inside its four walls, and the young woman sitting in front of the small radio must periodically stop and chafe her hands to get some warmth back into them. Each moment of respite is brief, to hitch the oversized man’s coat which is slipping down her shoulders back up around her, or once to stand and walk around the room twice to get blood back to her cramped legs. She then returns to her patient watch before the radio, and every twenty-two minutes, she taps a rapid string of morse code out into the ether.
“I am here, I am here. I am ready.” She can feel the hum of the radio’s oscillation in her fingertips and in the bones of her ears. Sometimes the radio crackles to life, and she writes the string of numbers and letters down quickly, then uses her one-time pad to turn them back into words. Her pad is crumpled from where she has held it in sweaty hands, and she has to be careful to not let the cheap ink smear.
Each night transmitting is another night the roving vans of the Abwehr may find her, as they circle Paris tracking down stray transmissions coming from unauthorized locations. She knows what comes if they find her - a prolonged torture for what she knows, then a quick death. Still, she spends many nights here faithfully. But on nights where she is not...
Those other nights, she is traversing the darkened streets of Paris. She is efficient, and very quick. Men die quietly, choking on their own blood,
She does this for love of country, to see the Germans defeated.
****
Four months after she has been established in occupied Paris, and after she has killed seven men, a message is passed to her: go to Chartres. A man will be waiting for you in front of the cathedral at eight in the morning. He is your new partner. Train him, make him useful. He believes he will be working for American interests alongside you. Do what you need to make him loyal.
She knows what they expect of her, and her lip curls. At the age of 19, with red hair she hides under kerchiefs and hats and a body she hides under men’s sweaters pulled over shapeless dresses that bag and conceal, she knows she is beautiful, and that beauty is an asset. And of course, all her assets are to be dedicated to her country’s use. She feels sorry for this young man they are sending her. He will not know how it happened, years in the future, when he finds himself a loyal agent of a different country. Of course, he will probably be dead before that. So too may she. She shrugs, a small resigned gesture under the folds of the sweater, and walks to where her borrowed car is waiting. Fifty miles to Chartres, which is a lot of fuel. They must believe that this man is an important asset to obtain.
Despite the fact that the morning is bright and beautiful, the cathedral is ghostly all the same. The windows are bare of the old glass, and sandbags are heaped everywhere in piles. Her contact is studiously examining the parade of saints across the west portal, but he turns at the sound of her car and smiles cheerfully at her. He’s snub-faced, ridiculously American in his appearance, but as he greets her she discovers that his French is excellent, as if he had been born and bred in the heart of the city.
“An aunt taught me,” he says when she looks surprised. “She spoke several languages and was an excellent cook, so I learned a lot while I hung around the kitchen pestering her.”
“I see,” she says coolly. If he wants to feign that an aunt has given him his excellent Parisian accent instead of careful training by the military or some deeper American agency, it hardly matters. But it’s odd, and god help her, it may indicate a streak of whimsey she’ll have to cope with.
His multilingual auntie also has passed on to him a working knowledge of Swiss German - a little schoolboy in manner, but serviceable, as well as Italian fluent enough for him to pass as one. The name he is traveling under is Michele Gallo, and his passport says he’s an employee of a company providing some sort of lubricant for agricultural machinery to the Vichy government. It’s an identity that will only be useful entering and leaving the country, and she explains this to him carefully. While he is assigned to her, they will rely on less expensive forged papers, which need only to be good enough to fool landladies.
Her knuckles are white around the steering wheel of the car until they arrive in Paris unmolested by soldiers or checkpoints. Thankfully her passenger doesn’t attempt to distract her, but instead watches the changing scenery. He eventually falls asleep, his head slumping against the car door. She studies him, partly irritated, partly intrigued by this stunning display of nerve. Either he has ice-water in his veins, or he’s an idiot. On the other hand, the different sound of the tires on the road when they enter Paris is enough to wake him, from soundly sleeping to completely alert in a moment.
She drops off the car back where she obtained it, a garage where everyone pointedly avoids meeting their gaze. Their apartment is two streets down and five over, over a shop that repairs bicycles. It’s a four-floor walkup and the top rooms are all theirs, making rooftop access simple. She shows her new guest the topmost attic room where the radio is. He’s familiar with its operation, and he looks it over with a proprietary air. Then he sticks his head out the window, and mutters something about better placement of the antenna.
“That’s as far out as you can safely get on the roof.”
“I think I have a solution to that. I’ll show you later.”
There is lukewarm soup and some bread, and, of course, wine - a harsh red that scrapes the throat. They sit around the rickety table and eat while she talks.
“I was part of a larger group transmitting information,” she tells him. “But I have more useful skills, so they changed my orders.”
“To what?” He dunks the bread in the soup, and looks at her curiously. She returns his stare and he grins at her, a large, uncomplicated smile.
“I don’t know what to make of you, I must say. But you have been given to me, so I must make the best of you. Here is what you need to know now. The two of us comprise a group, and we are named Delta. I will give you our pertinent codes later. I am known as Widow, and you have been designated Hawk. Dare I trust that your auntie taught you morse code as well?”
“Oh yes,” he says, and drums out a quick string of letters on the table, W-I-D-O-W. “
“What a nice lady she must have been,” she says dryly. “So very useful.”
“Dear Auntie Maria...she was the only person in my family worth anything. Do I have to call you Widow? That’s going to get noticed in the streets, and it’s a little morbid.”
“Should we meet on the streets, you will call me nothing. I may be in the midst of something you must not interfere in. Otherwise, you can call me Natalia. And since you are not Michele at the moment…?”
“Clint.”
She says it, and it comes out more like “Cleent.” Her French is excellent but he can hear the thread of Russian running along underneath it, shading her words. She shakes her head.
“First of all, I hope that’s not your real name. Secondly, it’s too strange, it will make people remember it. You’re Clement, I think.”
“I can be Clement.”
They finish their soup in silence, and then he goes to bed so that he can have the first shift at the radio that night.
****
“That antenna isn’t doing us any good at all.”
He’s red-eyed from the sleepless night but still energetic. At her shrug, he gestures her to wait there and jogs down the stairs, taking them two at a time. When he returns he’s carrying the bag he brought with him.
She watches, eyes wide, as he opens it and withdraws what look like parts of a fishing rod, all segments and things that look like they twist and come apart. In fact, they do. His hands sort them deftly, reorienting and putting them together and for a moment she wonders if this is some sort of new prototype gun. Moscow has said nothing about this. But it soon takes on the shape of a gently curved arc, and when he pulls a length of braided cable from where it has been stored, coiled inside a dummy cigarette lighter, she can see that it’s a bow of some sort, not wood but some light yet strong material.
He further unearths a small collection of bundled rods and, from a packet marked “Milled Prototypes Sample #17,” he tips out a small pile of arrowheads which attach to the rods.
She curls her lip. “Has it come to this, Clement? We will give up guns and radios, and return to a more simple time of bows and arrows? Will you fight the Sherriff of Nottingham in the streets instead of Germans?”
“Useful tools never go out of fashion, Natalia. Plus, an arrow is very, very quiet.”
“So are knives,” she says drilly.
He’s too busy attaching the end of the antenna wire to an arrow. Standing at the window, he points to the chimney of a house several doors down.
“That’s where we need to be. No more nights of garbled static.”
He nocks the arrow and in one clean gesture, pulls and releases. The arrow sails smoothly out into the dim morning light and embeds itself exactly where he aimed, and where shadows will hide the fact that there is anything out of the ordinary protruding from the masonry..
She raises an eyebrow. “Very nice, M’sieur Hood. Go to bed.”
*****
He learns the codes quickly enough, and the rest of it as well. The radio is of course not a difficulty, but she further shows him how to interact with other agents in the city, which is a complicated and necessarily uncertain business. There are secret places used as drop-points: a loose brick, behind a statue in a rarely visited church, a drawer in a desk in an antique shop owned by an old woman with knowing eyes who never speaks to them. The next month is spent trading off night shifts, with rare nights free of the endless waiting by the radio.
Despite this, they get into the habit of dinner together before they go separately off to bed and to the attic room. Over sausages and scrambled eggs, Clement, she learns, has a sense of humor more suitable to a small child than an adult man. He creates an elaborate story about the portrait of the old woman that glares out at them from the wall while they eat. He makes up outlandish things about people they pass in the street. She finds herself unexpectedly laughing at a wry observation, or a story he tells. He’s from somewhere in the midlands of America, he says, with corn fields and wide skies, but also poverty pressing down on them like the dust blown in from further west, dust that covered the grazing, dust that you tasted in the back of your throat.
“It’s worse now, which is almost impossible for me to imagine” he said, leaning back in the chair until she was sure he would tip over. “Everything was so gray, and our farm was really struggling. I was an extra mouth to feed so I ran away to join the circus.”
“You what?”
“The circus! You know, tents, elephants, strongmen and tightrope walkers.” He leaps to his feet and mimes walking a rope, tottering absurdly from side to side, and then flops back down in his chair. “That’s not what I did, though.”
“Let me guess,” she says. “You were a trick shot. William Tell?”
“I did the William Tell thing a few times, but it was hard to keep assistants. Too nerve-wracking for them even if they trusted me. But for a while it was the grand finale. I can also…”
He shakes his wrist and a small knife falls into his hands. He makes a flicking gesture and the knife tumbles end-over-end to plunge into the eye of the sour-faced portrait.
“...do a little knife-throwing.”
“Oh, how wonderful, she says, clapping her hands. “But you know…”
She pulls her own knife from the small of her back, and thunks it easily into the poor portrait’s other eye.
“...I may know a little something about that as well.”
He lets out a surprised and delighted bark of laughter. “You, and me, and a bottle of vodka. We play until somebody misses.”
“Oh no, there must be stakes involved. What will the winner receive?”
“A favor.”
“Hmm, nebulous. But good enough. Tomorrow night, then? Neither of us will have a date with the radio”
“Done! I’ll find the booze.”
*****
He’s tacked a big ring of playing cards against a wall. “This was one of my tricks - you had someone do a basic card trick out in the audience and then I’d hit the card. We can just call them. But first, the vodka, which I may point out, I should have made you procure because it was really difficult to find.”
He sets out two shot glasses and pours, and they both tip them back.
“Eight of clubs!” Natalia’s card splits in two.
“Knave of diamonds!” She doesn’t even have the words completely out of her mouth before his knife hits the card.
More drinks follow. By the fourth shot, they are laughing and a little giddy, but the knives do not miss their targets.
“Four of spades!”
“Ace of hearts!”
As the evening lengthens Natalia proves to be able to stay more controlled in her movements than Clement is - he’s gotten a little slack-kneed - but she’s feeling uncharacteristically dreamy and warm. He must be feeling it too, because he waves them to a halt and they both sit down at their little table, trying not to move too much as it causes the room to spin.
“Nat?” he says.
“Hmmm?”
“Why are you doing this?”
She’s put her head down on the table, but she lifts it to look at them. “A funny question from someone doing the same thing.”
“I’m here to put a spoke in the Nazi wheel. But you know I’m not a Communist. I’m not much of anything, really.”
“You have nothing driving you, Clement? No strong convictions? No love of country?”
“Some love of country, yeah...but mostly…I don’t know, exactly. Because it’s right. Because people I trust need me here. Because it’s something I can do well. I’m good at this, and I’m needed.”
“Ah,” she says. “Yes, I suppose we’re very different. I was reared to this from a very young age. I was chosen, trained, and taken into the bosom of the party. Eventually I became a fit weapon for their hand.”
He looks troubled. “You’ve been an agent since you were a child?”
“Of course. Children may be as useful in great endeavors as anyone else. I was surrendered to the service of my country by my family, whom I never knew. I was trained alongside other girls my age. Not all of them were fit, but I was. And I will serve as long as I am able, and perhaps never see the goal I work for.”
“What about you?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t understand. What about me?”
“Don’t you want anything for yourself?”
“Myself? What do I have to do with it? I work for a bigger cause, Clement. You have to be completely devoted, or else how can you see your mission properly done? These things are bigger than we are.”
He reaches across the table and almost touches her hand, but she draws back.
“Seven of spades, Clint. Take your shot.”
It takes a minute before he realizes she’s called him Clint. And when he goes to take his throw, his knife slices into the wall, missing the card by a literal hair’s breadth. She crows in victory.
*****
He does not know, yet, about her occasional midnight excursions. But finally, one morning he hands her a scrap of paper he’s decoded.
WIDOW...BADEAUX..NIGHTMARE...HIS OWN HAND
She nods to herself, reading it, and looks up to find him studying her.
“So it means something to you?”
“Orders,” she says crisply. “I will be out tonight seeing to them. You can have a holiday, no need to mind the radio. Go find a pretty girl to have dinner with, if you wish.”
“There aren’t any prettier girls in Paris than you,” he says, but so curtly that she misses the compliment at first. “Do I get to know what you’ll be doing?”
She smiles at him and touches his forearm, letting her fingertips linger. “Paris must still be able to bring out the romantic side of people, despite her current sad condition. But you need to work on your delivery. No, Clement, you do not get to know.”
She looks into his eyes, permitting herself to play the coquette to allay his suspicions. All your assets, her orders had said. All of them. And so she mimics the flirts she has seen in the cafes or walking on the arms of young men in the streets, wide-eyed and prettily teasing.
He returns her look, and he is so...focused on her, like he’s seeing everything, seeing more than he’s permitted to. It seems to her as though the light in the room has dimmed. Natalia’s poise falters. She begins to say something but what she was going to say, she never knows. As the moment spins out, he reaches out his hand and brushes his thumb across her lower lip and the intimacy of the gesture makes her heart stutter. She takes an involuntary step back and his hand drops, his own expression changed and his breath coming a little fast.
She turns on her heel and leaves. She is not running. She is not, she tells herself.
That night he steps out of his bedroom and meets her in the hallway as she is about to leave. His expression is once again so focused on her that she wonders if he can see the outline of the slim knife strapped to her thigh, or the garotte sewn into the wide collar of her coat. But of course, even with his keen eyesight, that would be impossible. Perhaps he’s admiring the fact that for the first time since they’ve met, she’s dressed well, in an outmoded but impeccably cut dark blue dress and pert black hat. He doesn’t say a word. She blows him a kiss from red lips and walks to the stairwell, her heels clacking as she descends.
That night, she kills a French collaborator, and arranges it so that it appears to be a suicide over a woman. She is back long before the sun rises, and walking past his bedroom she wonders if he’s awake and listening for her.
She does not stop at the door of his room to find out.
*****
Their next few weeks are more or less the same as those that came before - days and nights of work, of sitting at the radio, of messages passed via a network of people who may not even realize they are being used as spies. But the shared moment disturbs the comfortable peace between them. Natalia decides that it’s for the best. The man is committed to the task he’s doing now, and more importantly, he’s been drawn into the game of spies that is impossible to truly break free of. Although he does not believe he will ever work for Moscow, there are tendrils winding their way around him that will eventually form a net he will not be able to escape. Useful people will be used.
But he has taken to disappearing at times during the day, and many of his free nights she wonders if he’s really in his bed asleep while she waits by the radio. And Natalia is hearing odd things about deaths and other mischiefs that she is not responsible for. A Nazi official falls from a balcony, supposedly drunk. A fire burns down a building and important documents are lost. One man simply disappears one night after attending an opera performance. None of these things have been ordered by her superiors.
She should be reporting her suspicions back to Moscow, but she does not, and can’t explain to herself why. Instead, she tells her handlers that she will be unavailable for several nights due to increased patrolling in the vicinity of the apartment. She sits at dinner with Clement as they silently eat, and then she bids him good-night and walks up the stairs to the attic.She quickly changes into different clothes than the ones he’s seen her in, and tightly braids her hair and hides it under a cap. A canvas bag containing useful items is waiting for her, set aside earlier that day.
She slips down the stairs and moves back into the shadows, and waits. At first, she can hear him breathing, slowly, as though he may actually be asleep. But after a time, there are other noises in the room, and eventually she hears the sash of his window lift..
She counts to ten, then opens the door and runs to the window, only to see his figure turning the corner on the street below. He has his bow slung over his back - she recognizes the curve of it, even hidden under a heavy coat. She slides herself out of the window and onto the shallow ledge, and then climbs down the exterior of the building as he did. It’s not difficult, and there are a few places where he has driven hand- or foot-holds into the building to assist. They are not new. In a few minutes she’s standing on the street and turning to follow him.
He sets a quick pace, switching directions and doubling back often, and if she weren’t so good she’d have lost him many times over. But her own skills, plus a little anger to fuel her, keep her close at his heels. Finally, he arrives at his destination, the rear of a dilapidated office building. There’s a guard, clearly bored, dozing in a chair in a little booth. Clement approaches him, and their body language looks to Natalia like they’re chatting about something innocuous. The guard steps out of his booth to point in a direction, and Clement’s hand flashes out, his thumb pressed against the man’s neck. The guard flails, flaps his hands against Clement’s stranglehold, and then sags, unconscious. Clement stuffs him back in the booth and, unruffled, picks the lock and slips into the building. She follows, a shadow behind him.
Stairs lead up to the third floor. She sees him pick a second lock on a heavy wooden door belted with iron, and again she waits, then enters cautiously.
From behind the door, his foot strikes out, lashing at her ankle. Instinct takes over before she can think, and she dodges the kick and rolls to one side, sending her heel out at his knee as she does so. He jumps back and the blow misses. She stands and the two of them glare at each other, hands open to receive any attack that may follow.
“A little extra-curricular job? Do you perhaps work for the Germans after all?”
“What? That’s crazy, Natalia. We’re not on the same path, but both of them lead to the same place.”
He strikes a match and she sees the glint of glassware around her, beakers, gradiated tubes, pipes leading from one to another with unlit bunsen burners attached to gas taps with rubber hoses.
“My intel says that they’re on the verge of a new weapon here. Some sort of corrosive gas. I’m here to wipe the lab out.”
Natalia shakes her head. “If this were such an important lab, why only the one guard?”
“Hide the important work by keeping it low-key.”
“No. They do not think that way, Clement. Not at all. When you came in, did you trip anything, did you notice anything unusual?”
“No! I…”
He’s cut off by a man’s shout from somewhere inside the building. “Sie sind hier! Schnell!” The sound of booted feet running up the stairwell echos behind him.
“You missed something, Clement,” Natalia hisses. “And now we’re trapped.”
He flips a heavy oak table, sending glass flying, and drags it further back into the room, away from the door. He slips out of his coat and unslings his bow, adjusting a quiver of arrows, and looks over at her.
“You armed?”
She rolls her eyes and draws twin Browning Hi-Power pistols, and he grins at her, just as the door is kicked in and a stream of men pour into the room.
The first few through the door die quickly, An arrow through the throat and one falls gasping to the floor, fountaining blood. The next man is down just as quickly, screaming at the arrow in his chest. Natalia’s pistols bark and two other men spin back and to the ground. The rest of the men are immediately more cautious, drawing back and firing from the cover of the doorframe.
“Cover me,” Natalia says, and Clement obligingly sends another arrow towards their enemies. This one sticks into the doorframe and explodes, and Natalia, who has used his covering fire to throw a chair through the window behind them, yelps and ducks back behind the table.
“What was that?”
“Explosive arrow,” Clement yells gleefully. “My auntie knows this guy, Tony, really good with building fun little toys…but I don’t have a lot of them.”
An automatic weapon chatters, and they crouch again as a spray of bullets fills the room. Worse yet, there’s the soft whump of gas igniting, and Natalia peeks over the table to see a burning plume of gas dancing on one of the countertops. She points at the window.
“Time to leave, Clement.”
He nods in understanding and crouch-walks to the window, sending an arrow with a line attached up into the masonry. Natalia keeps the men busy at the door, but can only fire intermittently. One shot lands, however, and the man with the automatic weapon goes down, giving them momentary relief.
“Your escape route, m’lady” huffs Clement.
He is busy slipping on a pair of heavy gloves and she nods, producing her own pair from a pocket. She sends another volley of shots towards the door and leaps, up onto the countertop and then out the window, holding on to the rope and beginning her descent. He’s right behind her but before he can completely clear the window, an explosion blooms behind him, a wave of heat and force and fire that swings them wildly out and then back to thump against the wall of the building with shattering force. Above her, Clement slackens his grip on the rope and slides, careening into her. They plummet towards the ground, half falling, half sliding, and Natalia’s gloves shred under the friction of the rope.
They hit the street in a pile of arms and legs. Natalia is up first, yanking her hand under Clement’s elbow and heaving him to his feet. In the light from a street lamp he is pale and singed. Worst of all, she sees thin trails of blood dribbling from his ears. Knowing he won’t be able to hear her, she simply pulls him and they stagger off into the night. Behind them, the building burns, and when she turns to look she sees that the flames are tinged with blue and green. She shudders, and turns away.
*****
She can’t bring them back to the apartment, so she brings them instead to a small safehouse, a room in the back of a bakery that even her handlers don’t know she has set aside. She supposes Clement might have something to say about that, but he’s in no condition to ask any questions. She sits him on the bed and goes back out, returning with warm, wet cloths that she wipes his face with. He winces, his mouth opening in a silent “O” of pain, but she continues her rough ministrations until she can see the actual damage under the soot.
“Well,” she says, “I don’t suppose you needed that eyebrow anyway.”
He looks up at her blankly, still unable to hear her, and she smiles reassuringly at him and smears some salve on his burns. When she’s done, she exaggeratedly mouths the words “lie down” and he obeys, huddling under the blanket. She leaves to go wash her hands, and when she comes back, he’s asleep.
She looks down at him, at a loss. What to do with this? He’s compromised her situation here, and Moscow will be displeased. All of her convictions and training scream to her that she should report him. But she also knows that he will now be seen as more trouble than he is worth. She would be sending him to receive a bullet in his forehead. And although it is her duty…
She sighs, locks the door, and climbs into bed, pushing him aside so she can curl up under the blankets as well. She’s asleep before she can count to ten.
*****
The morning brings the warm smell of baking bread into their little room. She discovers that in the night, Clement has nestled close against her, and she lies there feeling his warmth, her arm protectively thrown over him and listens to him breathe softly. Dried blood dots his ears and cheek. He wakes as well, and turns inside the circle of her arms to look up at her.
“Can’t hear anything,” he rasps.
She puts her finger up to her lips. The men working in the bakery don’t know about their presence in the locked room. She pulls the stub of a pencil and one of their one-time pads from her bag and writes, “Must be quiet. Bakery will be active until late morning. We will leave after they have gone. Quiet until then.”
He nods, takes the pencil from her, and writes, “thank you.” When she nods in reply, he drops the pencil and slides his hand into her hair, drawing her down towards him into a deep kiss.
She stiffens, shocked, but his mouth is so warm and insistent and she feels as though her bones are melting. She sinks down next to him, her own hand curling to hold the collar of his shirt so they stay pressed together while his mouth explores hers, then moves to press a line of kisses along her collarbone.
“Clement...Clint,” she says involuntarily, and because his mouth is on her throat he can feel the vibration of her words.
“Shhh,” he whispers into her shoulder, “don’t get us caught. Can’t hear anyway…” He covers her mouth with his once again, and his hand slides under her sweater, stroking her skin. She can feel the light scrape of his archer’s calluses and it makes her shudder against him. She makes a small noise in her throat but says nothing else, lost in the sensation of his mouth and hands.
Her busy fingers find his belt, unfastening the buckle and the button on his pants. She slides them down, her hands lingering on his hips, and he returns the favor to unfasten her own slacks. She wriggles and sheds her bulky sweater, but it’s his deft hands that unhook her bra, all the better for him as he can immediately cup her breasts, his thumbs teasing her nipples. She unties the ribbon holding her braid and runs her hands through it until it’s a tumble of curls that fall down around his face as she leans forward to kiss him again. Underneath the smell of smoke, he can smell the sharp floral of lavender.
He rolls, drawing her underneath him, and she arches upwards, her legs wrapping around his hips as he slides inside her. The urge to scream, to moan, to cry out - she has to bite her lips to stifle it all. He presses his face against her shoulder, moving slowly, enveloping the two of them in a small bubble of warmth and sensation. After an hour...a minute...a year...she presses her lips firmly together to muffle a sob and he gasps into her neck as they rock together.
If the bakers outside hear the bed squeak, they give no indication. No one bursts in on them with angry cries of discovery. Instead, the two fall back to sleep, tangled together, the sheets twisted beneath them.
******
Clint wakes in mid-afternoon to an empty bed. The bakery is empty, and on the small footstool, he sees the key to lock the room behind him. Slowly, he dresses and dons his coat. He thrusts his hands in their pockets and feels a crackling something that turns out to be a piece of paper that wasn’t there previously. He opens it. It’s a note. In Natalia’s spiky handwriting, it says,
“Clint -
It’s safe for you to leave. I will not be at the apartment, nor will I be in Paris, so don’t look for me here. But I’m calling in my favor. When this is all done - come find me. You’ll have to look hard, but I have faith in you. We can discuss politics, and many other things.
-N.”
He takes out a match and burns the paper, then crushes the ashes to a fine powder. Then, with a small resigned sigh, he goes to find his own way out of the city.
****
Rome after the war is still lovely, although evidence of bombing and military occupation are everywhere. Still, here on a little side street cafe, it’s possible to pretend that the war never happened - at least if you ignore the ersatz coffee and the wrapped biscuit that indicates it’s part of American relief supplies.
Natalia - or Natasha, as she is currently known, has shed the baggy pants and sweater of her Paris days for Dior, and from under the brim of an improbable hat, she is smirking upwards at the man standing in front of her.
“You took your time,” she says, and he laughs and pulls up a chair.