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Only Villanelle could bleed out gracefully.
This, predictably, is the first thought that Eve has, finding Villanelle posed like a murder victim on the steps of The Louvre, a rose caught between her fingers. The assailant is long gone, leaving only a trek of bloody footsteps and a discarded dagger, broken in two. It looked almost comically shattered, as if Villanelle had ripped it apart with her teeth. Eve would have the mind to laugh, if her mind wasn’t singularly focused on the woman’s paling face.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Villanelle coughs dryly as Eve bends over her. Because of course she’s still alive enough to be annoying.
“What the fuck happened?” Eve’s hands immediately find the wound, applying pressure. Villanelle groans.
“Mm. I do not remember. One moment I am buying a nice bouquet, the next I am pulling glass out of my shoulder. A year ago, this would have been a typical Thursday.”
Villanelle cracks a smirk despite herself.
“You’re a real dick, you know that?” Eve mutters.
The words settle on the damp cotton of Villanelle’s shirt, stained ruddy with blood. Eve can do nothing but fist the fabric in her hands, hold her hand over skin like an anchor. The wound was long and angry, a serrated cut over Villanelle’s collarbone.
“I am not a dick, Eve. If not for the blood, this would all be very picturesque. I was planning on just the roses and a bit of a neighborhood stroll, but I really should have thought to take you to the Louvre.”
Villanelle frowns, seemingly more disappointed in her lack of romantic forethought than of the amassing crowds centering around her limp body. Eve feels panic inch up her spine as she hears the tell-tale police siren approaching. They needed to get out, fast.
“We need to move, now.” Eve curls her arm under Villanelle’s waist and lifts. It feels like moving a body bag, completely deadweight. Shit.
Eve checks Villanelle’s face again and groans. The asshole―she was out cold. Eve didn’t know what had done it, the excessive bleeding or the ridiculous bravado. Probably both, but now neither. She was reduced to just two parted lips and fluttering eyelids. Eve would have considered the expression sweet if it wasn’t the consequence of heavy blood loss. Maybe she’d consider it sweet even so. Nothing quieted Villanelle quite like a shiv straight through the middle.
Eve feels a pang of guilt low in her gut. Maybe not the time to reflect on that. Not that there ever was a good time, and not that Eve ever picked a good time for anything. If poor judgement could be personified, she’d be the pick of the litter. But there was not much Eve could do about that now, she had more pressing matters. Carefully considered morals were for people with schedules and planners. Eve had tired legs and a slowly fading assassin bleeding all over her new blouse.
Eve spots a policeman encroaching, his hands gripped over a sheathed gun. Shit. Shit. Fuck. This was not the time for Eve’s never-ending internal monologue to take another spin around the ferris wheel. He was a good twenty yards out still, just far enough that they might have a running start. Eve checks Villanelle’s face again. It was paler than the Arctic. Yeah―so no running start.
Fuck. Well, there was always the dignified approach.
“He’s got a gun!” Eve screams, pointing into the crowd at no one in particular.
Instantly the mass of Louvre patrons turns into an all-out war, screeching mothers dragging children, security guards throwing tourists to the wayside. The policeman’s attention breaks from Eve and turns to the crowds, the chaos completely enwrapping the plaza.
Eve takes the opportunity to scramble Villanelle over her back, heaving her like an exhausted child. She jogs to the best of her ability through the crowds, pushing and pulling until all she can see is pavement and street lights. She feels Villanelle groan atop of her, the wound aggravated by Eve’s chaotic marathon through the streets.
“Eve…”
And the voice is like its own type of shiv. Villanelle had always been better at cutting her inside than out. The tone was weak, strained, no trace of its usual bold confidence. It made Eve’s resolve harden to stone.
“Just concentrate on not being dead, okay?”
Villanelle shifts, buries her head in the crook of Eve’s neck. Eve feels the dampness of her forehead, and the sweat is an odd sort of comfort. It is a reminder that she is still there, still a body alive and fighting.
“I do not take orders well,” Villanelle mumbles into her neck.
Eve lets herself smile.
“This was a shit Valentine’s.”
Villanelle is pouting, completely indignant. Eve is grateful.
An annoyed Villanelle is an alive Villanelle.
“I don’t think so,” Eve shrugs, tucking a damp strand of hair behind Villanelle’s ear. Against all odds, Eve had managed to drag her halfway across Paris, mid-day, without a death or a police report. If anything, this Valentine’s had been a miracle.
Villanelle raises her hand to cup Eve’s over her cheek. Eve immediately reddens. It was the small acts of intimacy that she’d never really get used to. Or tire of. Even bandaged up to the nines, Villanelle seemed to have a singular, undivided focus.
“You saved me again.”
Villanelle’s look is so soft, so brazen. It takes Eve back to Rome, but the fire sits differently in her. Everything sits differently in her now.
Villanelle bites her lip, tightens her grip around Eve’s hand.
“Do you regret it?”
Eve laughs. She laughs because it’s ridiculous. She laughs because she’s not sure when the switch flipped, when her reality shifted so starkly. Night and Day, and here she was.
“Please,” she says, as if there’s nothing more to say. And there really isn’t. She presses a soft, lingering kiss to Villanelle’s mouth.
“Happy Valentine’s day,” Eve says, and pats the wound over Villanelle’s heart, “try not to die while I grab the Rosé.”