He's in absolutely no shape to be jumping rooftops so ground level is best. In fact, she's betting that he can't actually climb right now. Still, she'll use their earlier reconnaissance to find a likely doorway that leads to an unobstructed window towards the back of the plot. 

He is very warm, and even smelling like blood and sweat, he smells like fragrant wood and coffee. She likes having his arm around her. Allah knows why. 

She keeps her ears peeled for noises or shouts of alarm behind them. 

As their luck would have it, there's just gunshots. 

The burst of adrenaline is like ice-water through his veins, and he grabs her hand and kicks that door as hard as he can-

-it flies off its hinges-

-and then they're running and up and over an embankment and away as shouts ring out behind them, and it's so gloriously free for a moment in the evening sun that he looks over at her and can't help but beam at her, despite the pain and the terror. 

God, she's beautiful. 

He really wouldn't be anywhere else. 

It's not until they've put a lot of distance between them and the gunmen and made it back into the city proper that he stops to think.

It didn't go that badly! Nobody got a good look at their faces, and it's not like rival gangs never try shit like this. He has an alibi set up with Usmaan's people anyway, just came from a meeting with them, and they know he likes to hit a bar afterwards. 

Plus, Raina probably got plenty from that war room or whatever it was. 

A successful evening, in all. 

It's at this point that he collapses from blood loss. 

He wakes to numb throbbing in his flank where the knife hit him, a pillow under his head, soft light filtering in through a window. From the slant of it and the colour, he can tell it's early morning. His wound has been bandaged tightly, and he's in an unfamiliar room.

It's small, but very nice. It looks like a central living room - there's bookcases, a small television, a radio, and the walls are covered in paintings. It's nicely furnished, rich and warm and smells faintly familiar. 

There are no pictures, but that smell... 

Christ alive his head. He hasn't felt like this since he graduated and his buddies decided to really actually test his limits, just for once. 

He staggers to his feet.

It's not all unpleasant. Not at all, actually. Everything is sort of pleasantly soft. He has to really focus hard not to break anything, but he's all right. 

...Oh. 

This is her place.

He loves it immediately.

He runs his fingers over the books, taking in titles.

He wanders to find her, leaning on walls to support himself.

There's only three rooms, one of which is a bathing room (with a lavish freestanding copper bath, the only luxury that seems to exist in this space?) and he finds her in the last one. She is fast asleep on sheets of warm pink, not even covered with the thin blankets they use here, and her hair splays around her head like an unholy halo.

She is so soft, in sleep. Like a flower not yet bloomed, not yet weathered. She looks far too young for her age - how old even is she? She looks barely nineteen like this.

She also snores. She sounds like a fucking diesel generator and it's comforting to know she isn't all perfection and glittering knives. 

Carter feels the overwhelming urge to touch her. 

He reaches out without thinking, and then has the good sense to pull back before he loses a hand.

He'll just... Quietly sit down on the bed next to her, that seems like a good idea. She looks so pretty when she's asleep. 

He's having trouble resisting the urge to play with her hair. 

Maybe he can stay like this for a while. It suddenly seems unbearable to walk back out of this room and idly wander the place until she wakes up, unbearable to be away from her in the cold. 

He leans back against the headboard, eyes not leaving her face. 

The world is so soft, so warm, so dim...

The snores stop abruptly and there's a tense second where he thinks she's woken up. There's a flash and a knife is pointed at him as she struggles to wake, blinking bleary eyes at the intruder. 

"Oh. It's you." She sounds relieved when she sees him and sits up with some difficulty, leaning over to examine his wound.

His shirt, he realises, has been left unbuttoned. And actually if he's in fresh clothes that means-

"No signs of infection yet," she breathes, letting the shirt flank slip back down. Her skin is sleep-warm and soft where it touched his. "Don't rip open those stitches, okay?" she asks, the end caught in a yawn that swallow her.

He's caught her just as she wakes up and starts constructing her mask for the world. She isn't far enough into the process to put up all her stone walls, and like this, she seems... Open. Unguarded. 

"I'll be fine," he says gently, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. "Thanks. I owe you one, I guess." He likes her like this - warm and soft, strangely human in a way she wasn't before. It's so... Jarringly normal. 

...Hold on. His brain catches up to what she said.

"You stitched me up?" She undressed him?

The yawn comes to an end and she runs a hand through that luxurious hair. 

"Well, it seemed against the spirit of our agreement to let you bleed out everywhere after you saved my ass."

She sniffs. "Besides. You would have stained my divan." 

He laughs, probably harder than he should. He's still a little light-headed. "Yeah, I'd hate to inconvenience you."

He glances around her bedroom, not particularly wanting to get up. "This is your place? I'd kind of expected something... I don't know, different."

Frankly, he'd kind of expected more... weapons and bloodstains and shit.

She leans back, and all of a sudden it's very comfortable. They could even be friends, with that lingering smile playing the corners of her lips.

"Pray, tell, what did you expect?" 

His eyes linger on her hair, silky even though she's just woken up. 

"I don't know, really. Guns? Knives? Whips and chains? Something a little more... Agenty."

"Oh, this is just the front. Of course those all exist in hidden panels in the walls and under beds and things, naturally."

Another yawn erupts, and she rubs her eyes, smudging last night's kohl around them a little. It's charming and even pretty.

"Right. Chai is in order and then we need to sort through whatever the fuck is happening down there. Usmaan is mixed up in weird shit."

She starts to climb out of bed, satin white gown fluttering, and puts on her slippers as she shuffles to the kitchen. 

...Is she joking? His eyes dart about the room - nothing looks out of place, but then it wouldn't, would it. 

Right. Chai. Yes. Sounds good. 

He'll help if he can - staying away from the actual stove, he burns everything, he burned cornflakes once - and see what else she'll say when the mask is down. 

"So how long have you lived here?"

She narrows her eyes at him, though it doesn't look very threatening while she's holding a tea strainer. Some of the guard is back - it's easy to be open when you're lounging in bed, but getting up and starting the day means she remembers who she's supposed to be.

"A few years," she says casually, her voice wry. She's caught on. "How long have you been with your agency?" 

"Since a couple years after high school." He sips the chai. It's good. 

The key is not to rise to it. He's still relaxed, the blood loss helps with that. "I just kind of fell into it, I guess. Dad knew the right people."

"How did your father get into it?"

The warmth and softness is suddenly receding very rapidly and it feels more like an interrogation now. She won't quite look at him properly, busying herself with the tea. 

That's what she gets for deciding to be a little softer. People see weakness and they press their advantage. It's the first thing her stepfather taught her.

He sighs. "He joined the army to get away from home, saw what war looked like, says he decided he'd do whatever it took to make sure it didn't happen again. Turned out he's some kind of military genius leader type, always knows what to do, they pretty much worship him." He's not bitter, really. It's just- "I don't know, he's says it's easy, you just do what's in front of you - it's such bullshit. They all expect me to be like him, but," he shrugs. He's not sure if he's even making sense - he feels faint from the injury, punch-drunk. "I'm not him. Never gonna be."

She softens at him again, her brows drawing together. It's hopelessly adorable, is she even allowed to be that cute?

His vulnerability and bitterness draws her in. She's always had something for men with vendettas. It's very familiar in this part of the world.

"Why would that be so bad?" It's hushed, quiet, seems to disappear with the steam from their cups. It's like she kind of already knows the answer, maybe more than him. 

He shrugs again, uncomfortably. He doesn't talk like this with the guys normally. Doesn't have anyone he could say it to, doesn't ever get drunk enough to talk about it to the Agency guys or God forbid Dad. 

It helps that he can't take his eyes off her. She's sweet. It's hard to imagine that this is the same woman who took down three men twice her size, or danced in the club like the Whore of Babylon. 

"I... I dunno." Because then who is he, really? Just a great man's failure of a son?

She's silent for a moment. It's so quiet, but the silence isn't heavy for once. Her gaze falls to his wound, lingers there. 

Then she says, "Raina." 

Raina. The Night.

He's confused for a moment. 

Oh. 

His eyes widen. 

So that's her name. 

He smiles slowly. 

"Pleasure to meet you, Raina. Properly."

That's a mistake, because he should be a stupid American man who can't speak the tongue properly but by God it sounds like a dove taking flight in his voice.

This was a bad mistake, but she's made it now. Why doesn't it feel like a mistake?

She returns his smile, locked in his gaze and the softness of it. "The pleasure is mine, Car." 

He just beams at her, and in the scented steam of the chai and the haze of his swimming vision, she seems an angel.