This time the kiss is painful, searing, Yazmin bearing down on Lebedev with uncommon strength, trapping her against that wall, almost suffocating. Her teeth graze and nip and draw blood and she darts out her tongue to lick before it can fall and ruin the lipstick, and she relishes the pain she knows Lebedev will feel.

This part of her had never known any love. It was always just a performance. Rich, burning steel tempered by pain. 

Her nails scratch down the back of her neck, stinging, down, over her spine, even lower, and hook around the waist of whatever she's wearing. 

"Turn around." 

She smiles and her eyes are lidded and she tilts her head and makes as if to twirl gracefully around-

And the hands that never actually left Yazmine's hair constrict suddenly by just an inch in a sharp blow that drives oddly into the sides of her neck.

Done exactly right, it's impossible for the victim not to be suddenly-

Dizzy, light-headed, wonderfully tinglingly numb as vision fades and warmth spreads through weak limbs and words echo gently-

"I'm not the one you want to be doing this thing with." There's sadness, wistfulness, in that voice, and Yazmine is - on the ground, suddenly, though there's no pain, like she lay down instead of collapsing -

The voice echoes in her ear-

"I know you loved it." A sultry whisper. "This is good. I love it too."

A scent of something like smoke, something earthy-

"I wish I could show you now why this part of you is something beautiful, slowly, properly. But we do not have time. Your boy certainly does not have time, yes?"

In Raina's own pounding heartbeat she can hear something like drums, louder and louder-

"You need to embrace this side of you fast. He needs that, sometimes, people like us, but you must - know what you doing. I will explain."

The hand draws down her cheek, leaving behind a trail like flames - Raina still can't stand and she should be able to, she's shrugged off worse, she knows what the carotid sinus reflex is supposed to feel like but this is different, colours now are swimming in her vision, the dreamlike warmth coalescing in her veins -

"I tell truth, before. He is not upset because you hurt him, no, he could love you for that. He is like this because you are scared. Because you do not go to him after and say, well done, is done now, you do good. Different... frame."

She stands, nudging the fallen agent with the end of her shoe.

"You ask, how can you trust? Well. I know now you are not who you say you are, Raina. Nor is American. And yet I do not slit your throat or sell your name to Russia. Or America. I do not steal all these pretty things, only what I buy from you. For I give you your information, you see, and I think you agree it is worth. And while I am here-"

Footsteps click away into the darkness.

"The effects of the ritual are... Overwhelming. I guard your body while you are helpless, yes? And I tell you, I tell you how to fix your boy-"

Raina's world melts into the flashes of colour and the sound of distant tropic drums and the sinful words out of the darkness.

She struggles, at first. She doesn't know what to do and she's scared and frightened but eventually the realisation sets in that there isn't anything to do. time is fluid, anyway, like a pool. of honey... 

she... can't move... but there's nothing to do... carter is hurt... she can fix this... galina... she knows how... she can fix it... she can't run... she can listen...

she listens. 

When she comes back to herself, she knows how to piece her boytoy back together again.

And her head is resting on a coat folded into a pillow, in whose pocket is a scrap of paper with a lipstick-printed kiss and a telephone number, and on the other side a fragment of a Russian telegram - an address. 

It... makes sense. What Galina has said makes sense. And yet she doesn't want to do it. To treat him like a pet, feels... so wrong. Not yet. There's not nearly enough trust between them for that.

But she does need to see him. She makes a soup, a childhood favourite with dill and yoghurt and mint, and knocks on the door to his bedroom. 

He hesitates for a long moment to answer it, and instantly hates himself. 

He sits up untidily from his bed, not bothering to throw on a shirt - why should he? - and tugs the door open a little way. 

He can't help but be relieved that she's back - he listens, when she leaves, he counts how much time she spends away and he will never ever even hint at letting her know because she'd hate it - not that that matters any more -

Oh. 

She's here to Talk About It.

Yeah, he should have expected this. 

He schools his face into a neutral expression and looks down at her. 

"Yeah?" He'd meant it to sound flat, normal, but apparently he can't help but be gentle. Figures. 

Her eyes drink in the sight of him, the way he drinks in the gentle aroma of herbs and spices. Her gaze feels almost like a touch, the way it roves over his body, tracing the places she had hurt him. 

"I want to eat with you." 

Even in this short time, the wounds have scabbed over - and cracked open again, painfully, a dozen times - and itched madly as they crawled back together and knitted and left behind long, thin, silvery scars. They look like they could be months old. 

He doesn't remember saying anything, or even nodding. He just knows that now they're sitting on his bed and he's cupping a bowl of something warm and fragrant and there's a spoon in his hand and he remembers he hasn't actually eaten very much since it happened. 

His room is - spartan. There's something a little military about it, really, only things that need to be here are and it's all lined up as though with a ruler. Some habits run down to the bones.

It's so different from hers. Her apartment was the first place that was allowed to be just hers, and she wanted it as far from pointless luxury as possible, but it's still not this. 

Even the bed feels a little too rigid, their weight is unbalanced and it makes her lean towards him. She's leaning towards him anyway, taking the spoon and filling it with the luscious milky green broth. "Let me." 

He sits incredibly stiffly, you could bend crowbars over him. 

Then suddenly she's trying to feed him and -

- it kind of works, he'll let her. He doesn't say anything, though. 

Mint and dill and warmth explodes on his tongue, silky smooth salty and impossibly comforting. It feels good. It feels like all the nutrients his body has been crying out for. All the warmth, too. 

There's little dumplings filled with something oniony and warm floating in the soup, delicate when his teeth break their skin. 

She's watching him anxiously. 

He eats. Quietly. 

It feels hard to breathe, really hard, he's having to force himself to choke down food and it feels like he's going to crack a rib-

She keeps looking at him and now she's scared too this was a bad idea-

He does, actually, have discipline. He can not think about it and go through the motions and eventually get out of here.

She can see the tension in his muscles, the way they stand out against his skin, the way his eyes are dulled.

"Tell me how to... fix this."

It's pain, in her voice. Guilt. Regret colours her words, spills over her tongue like a bitter spirit. 

They had something, didn't they? There was something there, and he trusted her, and she broke it.

Galina's advice swirls through her head, but that's not an approach normal people would take. it's not a real option, she's being strange. 

His head twitches away, down towards the soup. 

He eats mechanically, and doesn't answer. 

It- exists in too many different pieces to make sense of-

-human brain iz an organ capable of chemical influence az well, wonderfully complex, and zo zis iz not perhaps reversible-

He carefully doesn't look at Raina, shrinking away from her further.

God, god, god, what does she do?

Galina's advice is in her head- he's so fragile, it would only make things worse. 

"I uhm. Was a precocious child," she starts, worrying the sleeve of her kameez - green, today, like a forest, like the new flag, like fresh coriander chutney. "I was arrogant and stern and laughed too loudly and scolded even louder. I only knew some girls my age, and I didn't often have a chance to play."

She takes in a breath, allowing it to brace her spine.

"The academy was no different. I was a little too fast on the training grounds to stay long enough to know anyone. And then I was sent into missions, and it never seemed like a good time to talk."

What is she saying?

"You're. Well. It's been a few months, and I started to... expect seeing you every day. And it was nice. And I had hoped that maybe, at some point, you came to rely ony presence in your day too."

The tendons on his hands stand out too much, he's worrying at his fingernails a little too much -

A little part of him does turn and pay attention when she talks like that. 

It makes sense. 

He wishes he could have seen that - could have known her sooner. He has this mad desire to see the pictures of her when she was little and-

he cuts that thought off before it hurts him more-

-he's not stupid a part of him knows this is bad but somehow the next thought just isn't there he can't stop it can't be himself it's really all he can do to keep the memories away-

I want you to talk, he ought to say, I wasn't like you, I liked sports and dancing and I never-

-I wasn't anything special until she came-

He steels all the will he has left and manages, "I did." And a kind of lopsided thing that might be a smile. 

She saw it. That little flicker of battling with something inside him before he decided to paste over it with a not-smile. Oh well. They have their secrets, don't they?

There are alarm bells ringing in her head, because she's starting to wish they didn't.

This is more than nothing, at least. 

Raina rises, returning his smile, leaving the soup for him. "I might try and follow up with Lebedev. She gave me an address. There's something going down soon." 

God Raina is so scared it feels like slipping on wet ice somehow- like something is wrong, not just with him but the whole world-

This is pathetic, he knows that on some level, he thinks he probably could pull himself together into some kind of functional shape but it would mean breaking whatever he hoped he'd built with her forever-

The crushing urge inside him to just, just stop and curl in on himself, is completely alien to him but right now it's almost impossible to resist. 

In one lightning-fast movement, he could grab her wrist - to her eyes, it wouldn't actually look like he'd moved at all - but he doesn't, not quite.

Instead he nods jerkily, and turns over. His other hand still holds the soup and he focusses all his attention on the almost uncomfortable heat, carefully not crushing the pottery to dust in his hand, letting it fill his world. 

Oh, his hair is so golden. It keeps catching the light, it never loses its lustre, and she wishes so desperately to run her fingers over the silken strands and take some of that fear from him. 

To hold him, press his face into her belly and absorb his sobs like she has the power to purge them from him. To take it all, that he might feel a little lighter. She's never wanted that before. 

Instead, she settles for flexing her fingers on the fabric of her dress, and closing the door very quietly behind her. 

It must be said that the British Empire is in a spot of bother. 

It had all been going so well before the wars, what with all the unpleasantness with the East India Company being properly dealt with and what looked like a decent return on investments. But thrashing the Hun twice had taken the wind out of their sails, and the Suez Crisis had been a poor show for reasons that were only mostly supernatural, and really this whole unsavoury business of decolonisation was starting to ruffle feathers.

It was an item of faith among the higher-ups that things were either going perfectly well, or going completely tits-up. It was their job to maintain the former state of affairs.

But worldly matters were hardly the major concern at the moment, what with the startling notion of certain outmoded and one might say exploded concepts turning out to be - very impertinently - completely real. 

Dispatching Gail to the subcontinent had turned some heads. Frankly anything the woman did turned some heads. There were always whispers, things to do with impressionable women that frankly could not possibly be believed, but- well. As long as it didn't scare the horses. 

"Reporting."