Ivan
He returned to the safehouse just after sunrise, blood still drying on the inside of his sleeve. Not his. Never his, it seemed. But the cost of loyalty, even in blood, was never clean. The air in the hills was cold, scented with pine and silence, but it couldn't wash off what had happened. What he'd done. Again.
Anna was waiting.
She stood barefoot in the doorway, arms crossed over the oversized sweater he'd left for her. Her eyes scanned him like she already knew he'd done something unforgivable again. She always looked at him like that lately—not with fear, not anymore, but with that piercing calm. As if she were measuring what of him was still human.
"Who was it this time?" she asked.
He didn't answer right away. Set down the duffel, removed his jacket, his breath controlled. Mechanical.
"Someone who would have hurt you," he said at last.
"And you think that makes it easier for me to accept?"
He looked up. "No. I think it makes it easier for me to live with."
A pause.
Then she stepped aside, letting him pass. But she didn't touch him. Not this time.
He wanted to ask if it meant something—if the space between them had shifted again. But he knew better. Anna was not a possession. Not a prize. She was her own storm, and loving her meant surviving the eye of it.
In the quiet of the room, he unpacked the duffel. Weapons. Phones. Paperwork. And the weight of his future, tucked into one small manila envelope.
He hadn't expected to bring her here. But when the compound burned behind him, there was nowhere else left that felt real. This place—this temporary cocoon of steel and wood—had no memory. It could be their start.
If she stayed.
---
Anna
She waited until he was in the shower before she opened the duffel.
Inside: a map, several burner phones, a bloodied knife, and a passport with his name scratched off. Her pulse quickened. Not from fear, but from recognition. She understood what this was.
He was preparing to disappear.
She should have felt panic. Betrayal. But all she felt was clarity.
"You were going to run," she said when he emerged from the bathroom.
He didn't deny it. Just ran a hand through damp hair, his eyes shadowed. He looked like a man halfway through becoming something else.
"With or without me?"
That made him stop.
"I didn't know if you'd still want to go anywhere with me after last night."
"You didn't ask."
Silence stretched.
Then Ivan stepped forward, slower than he usually moved. Like approaching something sacred.
"Do you? Want to go with me?"
Anna looked down at her hands, then back up. "Only if we stop running from each other first."
He studied her face like it was scripture. And then—
"Then we stop," he said. "Today."
He reached into the duffel and pulled out a second passport—hers. Real. Untouched. A new life bound in ink and laminate.
She stared at it.
"What do I have to become to live this life with you?"
"Nothing you aren't already."
Her lips parted. She took the passport. Opened it.
Her name.
A new identity.
Freedom and chains in one breath.
---
Ivan
They stood by the old firepit behind the cabin, the night creeping back across the sky like bruises across skin. She hadn't spoken since she held the passport. He hadn't dared break the silence.
Until she knelt beside the firepit and said, "Burn it. All of it."
He blinked. "What?"
"Everything that ties us to what we were. The maps. The codes. The weapons. The lies. If we're really doing this, it starts with fire."
He didn't question. Only moved.
Together, they lit the warehouse blueprints, the stolen keycodes, the ghosts. Watched them curl into ash. He added his scratched passport last.
They didn't speak again until the fire died.
Even then, it was only to say:
"Let's go."
---
Anna
They packed light. Only essentials. They left behind the safehouse with its clean linens and its guarded edges. Took only what they could carry—and each other.
In the car, Anna watched the trees blur past, Ivan's hands steady on the wheel. He looked forward like a man who'd finally chosen a direction, not just a destination.
She reached out. Laced her fingers through his.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Somewhere no one knows our names."
"And after that?"
He smiled faintly. "We figure out who we are when we're not surviving."
It wasn't a promise. Not yet. But it was a beginning.
One neither of them would have chosen in another life.
And maybe that made it worth everything.