Note: In the main story the flashbacks were in a jumbled order as each related somehow to something that happened in the main story. I thought some of you might like to read them in chronological order so I've made this chapter. Some new scenes are also included: Gaby and "Victor's" second kiss, Gaby forgives Viktor after figuring out he is a spy.
Six Months
Bonus
"Schmidt!" Gaby raised her head from the paperwork she was doing to see one of the other mechanics jerk his head towards the door. "Customer." She nodded and cleared away her papers before heading towards the garage entrance.
The customer was leaning back against his car, waiting patiently to be attended to. He looked up as he heard her footsteps and immediately straightened up; he had looked tall sitting down but his new stance revealed his huge frame. Tall and broad and handsome, she felt a genuine smile cross her face as she self-consciously adjusted her dirty uniform. If there had been a mirror available she would have checked for any tell-tale dark smudges that always seemed to appear on her cheeks at the most inconvenient of times.
"Can I help you?" She asked.
"My car has broken down." Her smile faded as he spoke, his German was perfect but his accent gave away an unpopular nationality.
"We have a lot of cars in at the moment, it will be a few weeks before we can fix yours." She lied, hoping that he would go to a different garage. He merely shrugged.
"When should I come back for it?" She bit her lip as she thought it through, she didn't want him to come back and catch her in her lie.
"Come back next week, I'll have a look at it during my break. It might not need too much work."
"Thank you." To her irritation, the bastard even sounded grateful as he handed over his keys. She watched him leave, the metal ring dangling from her fingers.
"I'll need your name," she called out to him before he could get too far away, "in case you come by while I'm on a break."
"Viktor Petrov." He answered, she nodded and made a note of it in a small notebook she carried on her person. When she raised her eyes again she saw him stroll away, as though without a care in the world. She frowned in annoyance, and had to fight down the impulse to make a large dent on the hood just to wipe the expression off his face.
Gaby could hear the music of the rain as she worked on the underside of a car. The sound of each drop hitting the roof of the garage formed a pretty little song for her to listen to. She appeared to be the only one appreciating the weather as she heard plenty of customers returning to retrieve their cars and cursing as they tried to shake off the worst of the damp. She felt a slight sadistic satisfaction at the knowledge that anyone walking around that day without appropriate protection was going to be wet through. Several metres away she heard the sound of two men talking, but it was too far away for her to distinguish what they said.
"Miss Schmidt?" An accented voice said above her. Her good mood immediately soured as she realised it was the Russian from the previous week. She used her feet to propel herself out from under the car, the wheeled board under her slid smoothly over the floor.
"Yes?" She asked impatiently, glaring at him as she realised that he was dripping all over the floor. For the moment she allowed her prejudices to help her forget the floor was filthy in order to allow her to feel proper indignation. The rain clearly had not spared him, but it didn't appear to bother him.
"Is my car ready?" She dropped her wrench with an annoyed sigh and stood up, brushing the dust off her overalls. She marched off to another area of the building, not bothering to tell him to follow her. He did anyway, not apparently needing a prompt to tell him that she is taking him to his car.
"The problem was minor." She said, not bothering to conceal her boredom. "It took five minutes to fix, you could have done it yourself instead of wasting my time."
"I know nothing of cars, I would have made the problem worse. How much do I need to pay you?" She quoted him an extortionate price, irritated that he was still totally unruffled.
"That is a lot of money for five minutes of work." He noted aloud. Feeling a stab of irritation, she opened her mouth to give him a piece of mind, but closed it again when he counted out the full amount and handed it over. She felt a pinprick of guilt as she accepted the notes. "You do not like me." He said as he put away his wallet. "I would like to know why."
"That's ridiculous." She lied. "I don't have any feelings about you, positive or negative. You're a customer."
"I have met you twice, and each time you have been very impolite. I wish to know if I have done something to offend you." She realised with some shame that she had been blaming all the faults of a nation on one of its inhabitant.
"It's nothing you've done."
"Then what is it?" He looked at her unflinchingly, expecting a clear cut answer. She is suddenly struck by how very blue his eyes are. Very Aryan, her mind supplied bitterly, reminding her of the crimes of her blood relatives.
"Nothing." She examined the small pile of notes in her hands and quickly counted out roughly half of it, which she held out to him. "I'm in a bad mood, I shouldn't have taken it out on you. I charged you unfairly." He made no move to accept the money.
"The expense is no concern, I would have paid that much to have it finished so quickly, considering you are so busy." She cannot stop the flush that creeps up her neck. He did pull his wallet out again, but this time to retrieve a small card. "I appreciate that you managed to fix my car on time, if there is a favour I can do for you in return, please contact me."
She took the card he gave to her and saw it was a business card, listing his name, phone number and the business he worked at. She shoved it quickly in her back pocket and handed over his keys. She just wanted him to leave as quickly as possible so she could forget all about him. But once he had left, she didn't feel relieved, only more miserable. She couldn't even bring herself to be annoyed by the trail of water he had left in his wake.
It had been three weeks since Gaby had met Viktor, and she had managed to give little thought to him since the day he had collected his car, fully expecting never to see him again. Her days and mind were instead full of the usual- cars and wishful thoughts about the West. She had been relaxing at home with a bottle of wine one evening, when she had suddenly remembered the discrete package she had forgotten under her desk that day at work. One of her more frequent customers had delivered it that day, a little black market gift as a thank you for her speedy work on his car. A sudden panic overtook her as she realised that if one of her workers arrived the next morning earlier than her, they might find the forbidden record and report her.
Despite her inebriated state and the late hour, she had immediately rushed off to the garage to retrieve it, and had breathed out an audible sigh of relief when she had found the package in the same position she had left it. She pulled away the brown paper to reveal the name of a popular American artist and grinned in appreciation, carefully putting the record into the large nondescript bag she had brought with her. After locking up again, she had turned to head home and nearly jumped a mile when she found herself facing the large Russian man.
"Hi." She managed to say, subtly moving the bag behind her.
"What are you doing here?" He asked with a frown.
"This is my business. What are you doing here?" She said accusingly, making a poor attempt at deflecting the attention off of her.
"I could not sleep, so I decided to take a walk."
"Then walk." She had decided to storm off dramatically, but a rock underfoot had put a stop to that and made her stumble. She might have fallen flat on her face, had it not been for his quick reflexes catching her elbow and pulling her back upright.
"You are drunk." He stated.
"Is that a crime now? Are you going to report me?" She spat sarcastically.
"Drinking is not a crime." He acknowledged. "But owning the contents of that bag probably is." He pointed to the bag at her side, it had fallen open slightly during her fall and now proudly revealed its contents, she felt her blood run cold as she realised the implications of his words.
"What are you going to do?" She asked quietly, gripping so tightly on her bag that her knuckles turned white.
"I am going to walk you home. It is not safe for you to be walking around at night." His tone and facial expression revealed nothing of his intentions, and only caused her panic to increase. The unknown is always more terrifying than certainty, with certainty there is no chance for wiggle room or negotiation. The unknown is dangerous as it offers up even a meagre slimmer of hope that perhaps, if you do just the right thing, you might still escape what seems inevitable, and it was this hope that Gaby clung to.
He gestured for her to lead the way, and after some hesitation she did, her heart hammering away in her chest as she wondered what he would do when they reached her flat. And as they walked, hope struck again as she thought about what she would be willing to do to avoid imprisonment.
When they reached the door of her building, Gaby took a deep breath and promptly flung herself at him. She kissed him with the desperation of a woman trying to save her skin. It lasted for a second or two before she was abruptly pushed back a few steps, a restraining hand quickly catching her wrist to stop her from falling. Once she was steady, he let go as though her touch repulsed him.
"I am not going to report you, Miss Schmidt." He looked rather insulted by her attempt to persuade him to keep her secret.
"I'm sorry, I just thought…" She felt the tears sting at her eyes. "I'm so sick of being scared."
"You have nothing to fear from me, regardless of what you might think."
The barb was barely concealed. He had clearly figured out the reason she didn't like him and was decidedly displeased about her prejudice. Her head bowed in shame as she realised that she had judged him too harshly for circumstances beyond his control.
"Goodnight, Miss Schmidt." She watched him retreat to the street, wanting nothing more than to apologise again but unable to find the words to excuse her actions.
Gaby stared at the card in her hands, in the midst of an internal debate as to what she should do. It had been a few days since the embarrassing incident where she had drunkenly kissed the Russian man in a desperate attempt to avoid imprisonment or worse. Since that night she had barely slept, instead keeping her eyes trained on her front door, convinced that the Stasi were going to burst in. Her paranoia had also lasted during her workday where her fellow mechanics had been quick to notice how on edge she was, and even she had to admit it was exhausting being constantly aware of everything around her and flinching each time a customer arrived. After a while, with absolutely no indication that she was being closely watched or near to arrest, she started to consider that the Russian had been telling the truth when he had told her that he wasn't going to report her actions. The realisation only made her feel worse about how she had treated him, and she longed to apologise and thank him for his discretion. While thinking over potential ways she could find him in order to make amends, she had abruptly remembered that he had given her a business card when he picked up his car, and she had spent a few hours frantically searching her flat for it, eventually finding it under a pile of dirty clothes she had not yet had the time to wash.
The card listed his name, occupation, the business he was working at and his phone number. He was an accountant, not quite the occupation she would have expected. She can't imagine him sitting behind a desk all day. She considered ringing the number on the card and apologising on the phone, but that felt far too impersonal and she wanted him to know that she was sincere. Another option presented itself when she examined the name of the business he worked for and found that she recognised it, it was a pretty inconsequential place, they manufactured various bits and pieces for companies that needed them to make more interesting and expensive products.
After a day of thinking it over, she arrived at the front desk, still clinging onto the card. She gave the name on the card- Viktor Petrov- to the woman, and after a few endlessly long minutes, the Russian himself appeared. He hadn't looked too pleased to see her, but had directed her to his office after she requested somewhere a little more private to talk. Sitting in front of his desk, she felt incredibly small as he looked at her without speaking or displaying any emotion. After a while, she realised he was waiting for her to speak and would not start the conversation himself, something that made sense considering how badly she had insulted him the last time they had seen each other.
"I wanted to apologise," she began tentatively, "for the other night and for all the times at the garage. I was prejudiced and rude, and I'm very sorry for that."
"I accept your apology." His reply was curt, and he looked neither pleased nor displeased by what she had said.
"I was wondering if I could maybe buy you a coffee, to try to make up for my behaviour." His harsh gaze seemed to soften a little at that, and she was suddenly once again aware of how handsome he was. He stared at his watch for far longer than was necessary to ascertain the time.
"I can take my break now, if that is convenient." She nodded, working at a business you also owned provided significant benefits when it came to flexibility of working hours. She let him lead her to a small but clean café, and despite her offer he would not let her buy his coffee.
The fifteen minutes they spent together had been unexpectedly but extraordinarily pleasant once the initial awkwardness had faded. He was a quiet man, but only because he seemed to choose his words carefully instead of blurting out the first thing to come to mind, like other men she had known. When he had glanced at his watch and regretfully brought the interlude to an end, she had been disappointed, and before she knew what she was saying she had suggested they repeat the experience. She flushed pink afterwards, more than a little concerned that he thought her unhinged, but he had simply smiled and suggested a time and place that she agreed to. When she had returned to the garage, she found him surprisingly difficult to shake from her thoughts, and she already looked forward to their next meeting.
The second time they kissed was, by Gaby's estimation, a thousand times better than the first. Not that the bar had been set particularly high, she still blushed bright as a lobster whenever she remembered it. After their initial coffee date, had come several more dates. She was almost grateful that they began their acquaintance on such wrong footing, otherwise she doubted that they would have seen in each other again, and as she spent more time with him, she realised what a shame that would have been. He was kind, so much kinder than she would ever have guessed just by looking at him. She understood now what a massive mistake she had made by judging him purely on a superficial first impression.
Ever since that coffee date, they had been dancing around each other. Neither were prepared to make the first move, the residual embarrassment from their first kiss still tinged the atmosphere. She was comforted by the knowledge that their relationship wasn't purely friendly. She knew he desired her, she had caught him eyeing her legs or cleavage too many times to believe his interest in her was entirely platonic. And she wanted him too, more than she would ever admit. The accent that had initially irritated her had become oddly endearing the more she heard it.
She had smiled when she had heard that accent over the phone, inviting her to take an evening walk with him. She had agreed after an infinitely small moment of hesitation, the streets were not totally safe at night but she considered that they were unlikely to be bothered when taking into account the intimidating shadow her companion casted. When she had noted that he wasn't built like an accountant, he had admitted to having been a soldier before he had retrained for the new career path. She was surprised that she had accepted it so easily, had she not grown to care for him then it might have become yet another point to hold against him.
He met her at her flat and declined her invitation to come in for a quick drink before their walk. Gaby quickly brushed off her disappointment and took the proffered arm. Their walk was mostly aimless, he didn't seem to have in mind any particular destination, but she trusted him not to drag her into an alley and rape her. He had already had an opportunity, and had soundly rejected it. They eventually ended up at a park, she had immediately dropped into a seated position underneath a large tree and grinned up at him until he joined her.
"I shall have grass stains on this suit." He had complained.
"Take a risk, live dangerously." He had laughed at that, the first laugh of his she had heard.
"Silly Chop Shop Girl, you and my job are all the danger I need." Then he had moved closer and kissed her as though it was the most natural thing in the world, and as though they hadn't tiptoed around it for nearly a month. It was a good kiss, gentle and undemanding and over far too quickly for her liking.
After another half hour he walked her home, and shook his head in with a small smile when she once again suggested he come in. She had not let him leave totally unscathed, she had caught him by the lapels of his jacket as he had moved to leave, and yanked him down so she could tiptoe up and press a far less chaste kiss to his mouth.
Gaby sipped slowly at the cheap whisky, making a face as the alcohol burnt its way down her throat. If she hadn't had plans for the evening she would have downed it as quickly as possible and immediately ordered one more from the miserable looking man behind the bar before he could move on to another customer. But as it was she did have plans, and these specific plans required her to pace herself somewhat on the drinking front.
She glanced at the clock and nearly cheered when she saw it was 16:55. At her home, she had misread her watch and panicked, convinced that she was going to be late. She had near flown around the flat, throwing on the first dress she found, and rushed to the dingy bar they had arranged to meet at. When she had plonked herself down in a seat she had let out an audible groan as she saw what the actual time was. He didn't finish work until about 17:00, and so she had settled in for a long wait, glaring violently at anyone who dared try to approach her.
Taking another sip, Gaby had let her thoughts drift to her plans for that evening. It was nearly two months to the day that she had met Viktor, and after a considerable amount of cajoling she had finally managed to convince him to come to her flat for "drinks". She had worn him down, mostly by appealing to the downtime he clearly was in desperate need for. He had been tense and irritable the last time she had seen him, snapping like a wounded bear every time her teasing had struck a little too close to the bone, as it normally did. She had taken it personally until he had confessed that his job was causing him a lot of stress. She had hugged him then, feeling comically small against him, a wicked idea had come to her mind and she had risen onto her tiptoes to suggest that half a bottle of vodka would do wonders for his state of mind.
Such serious drinking could not really occur in any official establishment. She had heard rumours that informants were stationed at all the major watering holes, watching and waiting for any drunken confessions or momentary lapses in judgement leading to prosecutable slander of the state. He had agreed with her assessment, and then it had simply been a matter of convincing him that her flat was a suitable alternative.
She had tried to invite him to her home in the past but he had been surprisingly reluctant, usually finding an excuse at the last minute. She hoped he didn't try to back out that evening, he had offered to supply the alcohol after making some uncomplimentary comments about the quality of German vodka, and she was looking forward to loudly proclaiming that she couldn't taste the difference. Of course, drinking together was only going to be a small part of their evening if Gaby had her way. She had bought beautiful lace lingerie from the black market, the price had stung for a moment, but once she had put it on and taken some time to admire herself, she knew that it would be worth it just to see the look on his face. She was sure that it would be enough to melt away any lingering reluctance on his part to engage in intimacy.
Feeling a hand suddenly slide onto her shoulder, she prepared a bright smile and flirty greeting as she spun around in her chair only to feel bitter disappointment as she saw a swaying dark haired man leering at her.
"Pretty lady should not drink alone." The man slurred and nearly collapsed into the seat next to her.
"That seat is taken." She said coldly.
"No need to be so nasty, I'm just being sociable." He swayed close to her, causing her lean back as she tried to avoid smelling his noxious breath.
"Go be sociable somewhere else." Seeing that the man was not moving, Gaby grabbed her bag and prepared to sit somewhere else, but she was halted by a surprisingly strong hand wrapping around her wrist and yanking her back.
"You've been waiting a very long time. I don't think your friend is coming, maybe you should spend some time with a man who will appreciate you."
"She already is." A voice behind her said in accented German.
"Honey," Gaby said brightly to the newly arrived Viktor, "you're late!" She knew she was laying it on a little thick, but she hoped it would be enough to get their unwelcome friend to leave her alone.
"My apologies, work overran a little." He offered her his arm, which she gratefully took. Before they could quite escape, the drunk man decided to take a parting shot.
"Fucking Russian. Why don't you go home and sleep with your own kind, that is if you don't get distracted by a goat on the way." He laughed at his own crude joke.
Stealing a glance up, Gaby could see that Viktor was not impressed at all, he looked deathly calm and his fingers that were resting on the bar counter had begun to drum against the surface. She had not seen him do this before, and so she knew it wasn't an idle gesture he made. The drunk man looked as though he was going to say something else, and she quickly laid a restraining hand on Viktor's arm, worried about what he might do if the man did not shut up.
"Albert!" A newcomer squeezed past the couple to grab the drunk man. "Come on, you've had too much to drink. Leave these people alone." The newcomer gave them a glance and after seeing the look on Viktor's face, he spoke up again. "I'm sorry about him, his wife left him last week. He's not coping well." This declaration caused the man to burst into sobs as he was suddenly reminded of his recent sorrow.
There was an immediate absence that Gaby noticed after the man was dragged away, and looking down at the counter she saw that Viktor's fingers had stilled and were no longer making that strange, repetitive noise. The sight was surprisingly reassuring and she found herself releasing a breath she hadn't realised she had been holding.
One of her happier memories of that six months was surprisingly mundane. It was the simple pleasure of a shared meal- prepped and cooked twice over since the first attempt resulted in an inedible charred mess that may once have belonged to an animal. That in itself would have been enough to ruin the evening had it not been for a low chuckle accompanying the sound of a pair of hands, much larger than her own, beginning to chop vegetables for a stew. Before she could even begin to protest that she was supposed to be cooking a meal for him, a large glass of vodka was quickly pushed into her hands and she was sent away from the little kitchen. She had spent the next hour with a content smile, sipping her drink and watching him work with the same efficiency he applied to any other task. Later that evening, pleasantly tipsy, she had fallen asleep in his lap as he told her about what he had done that day at his boring accountancy job. Her last conscious sensation before she drifted off was of his lips pressing against the top of her head.
They were at an engagement party, five months into their relationship, when Gaby suddenly realised how serious her feelings for the giant, quiet Russian were. It had been a struggle just to get Viktor to attend, what with his dislike of crowded places full of drunk people, but by using an effective combination of threats and promises she had eventually convinced him. It had been a fun evening, and she had particularly enjoyed teasing Gretchen about her adoring and utterly devoted fiancée. But underneath the happiness she had felt an unexpected pang of envy, and against her will her mind had turned to silly wishful ideas about her own future, all of them heavily featuring the Russian that had spent all evening by her side.
After the party, they had returned to her flat, Gaby having to lean slightly on Viktor as they walked. He never drank as much as she did, usually forgoing alcohol altogether except for the odd occasions where he would join her for a glass of something strong. That night had not been one of those occasions. Once at the flat, he had immediately pushed her into an armchair and headed to the kitchen to get her a glass of water. She had sprawled inelegantly across the chair and unsuccessfully attempted to kick off her uncomfortable shoes. She had glared hatefully at them until he returned, handing her the glass before turning his attention to her feet and nimbly undoing the straps. She let out a blissful sigh when his thumbs pressed into the arch of her aching foot.
"Have you ever thought about getting married?" She asked suddenly, the booze still in her system coaxing the words out before she could truly consider their potential impact. She felt his fingers suddenly stop their ministrations, and she opened her eyes to see an unusual tension about his shoulders. "I don't mean us," she amended quickly, "I just meant in general." Her additional words didn't seem to have any relaxing effect on him, instead he carefully put her foot down again and leaned back against the chair from his seated position on the floor.
"I don't think I will ever be married." He admitted quietly. She frowned and struggled to sit upright.
"Why not?" There was a lengthy pause before he answered, as though he was weighing multiple options or trying to find a way to delicately phrase his feelings.
"My job requires me to move around a lot, I don't really stay in the same place long enough to think about marriage."
"You're an accountant, Viktor." She pointed out, somewhat needlessly. "You could get a permanent job anywhere." She noticed with some annoyance that he was avoiding eye contact with her.
"I work for a firm of accountants." He clarified. "They decide where I work. If they want me to be in Moscow tomorrow, I have to be in Moscow tomorrow." This seemed unreasonable to Gaby, who at that moment did not notice how uncharacteristically frank he was being about a job he had been quite vague about in the past.
"Can't you just quit the firm and work where you want?"
"No." He said humourlessly. "I can't."
After a few minutes, the penny finally dropped for Gaby, and later she would convince herself that her momentary cluelessness was solely due to her inebriation. For the first time in the months that they had known each other, she began to consider that perhaps he wasn't actually an accountant like he had always claimed. Most of the men in his supposed line of work did not look like he did- big and dangerous. And most of them didn't have scars like he did, faded and fading lines and marks forming a dense network along his torso, arms and legs. When she had first asked about them, stretched out nude across him and lightly tracing a particularly painful-looking scar, he had explained them away as old injuries from his former career as a soldier. It was only now that she began to doubt him. Some of those wounds had looked far too fresh to be years old. Unbidden, one of his earlier sentences returned to the forefront of her mind, and she quickly pushed her near-certain suspicions away allowing a fiery and crackling anger to descend over her.
"Will you be leaving anytime soon?" She demanded, the inkling of understanding doing wonders to sober her up. He continued to avoid her gaze.
"It seems likely they will transfer me in a few weeks." The confession dissipated most of her anger and caused the blood to drain from her face.
"When were you going to tell me?" She demanded sharply. "The day before you left?" He shook his head and reached for her hand, which she abruptly yanked from his grasp, almost relishing the barely concealed hurt that appeared on his face.
"I was going to tell you soon, I was waiting for the right moment."
"Get out." She said quietly. He looked a little taken aback by her order, he had clearly been expecting them to talk it through properly. But she couldn't bring herself to be the bigger person, she just wanted him gone. "I want you to leave now." For a moment, she thought he wasn't going to obey, but after a short pause he rose to his feet.
"I'm sorry, Gaby. I wanted to tell you." She dismissed his apology with a sharp hand motion, and avoided looking at him as he walked out, not wanting him to see the water that had gathered in her eyes and was drop by drop beginning to slide down her cheeks.
As the door shut quietly behind him, she no longer bothered to conceal the sobs behind her fist. The harsh sound almost seemed to echo around her flat, amplifying the overwhelming loneliness that had suddenly come over her. She wondered what was so wrong with her that led to everyone she cared about leaving her. She had thought that she had finally found someone to be a permanent fixture in her life, the knowledge that he would disappear like all his predecessors was a bitter pill to swallow.
It took Gaby a few days to calm down again after her initial burst of fury at Viktor's deception, and once the anger had faded she realised with some horror that she was really in no position to judge him. He may have been a spy, but was she any better? In all their time together she had never even hinted at him that she had links to the British intelligence services, nor had she ever told him anything about her Nazi relations. As far as he was aware she was the orphaned daughter of a car mechanic, not a weapon's developer. If anything he had been more honest that she had been, at least he had done her the courtesy of suggesting his actual occupation and his impending departure. She was fully aware that she was waiting on someone to approach her about her father, and once that occurred her own time of living in East Berlin was coming to a close. What would have happened if the situations had been reversed? If instead of him leaving it was her, would she have been trusting enough to reveal to him the truth?
Having thought it all through, she felt an overwhelming sensation of guilt at her overreaction. They both had their secrets, and she had judged him unfairly for his own which were no worse than hers. Swallowing her pride, she made her way to his flat in the evening. She knew where it was, but he had not invited her in the past- usually claiming that her home was much nicer and there was nothing to see in his.
She rang the doorbell and after a moment the door opened slowly and Viktor peeked out. "Gaby?" He said, clearly surprised by her presence.
"Can I come in?" She asked, there was a pause before he nodded and opened the door. Walking in the first thing she saw was him returning a gun to its holster underneath his shirt. It seemed that he had been holding it to the door in case his visitor was hostile. He saw her looking but didn't say anything or offer an explanation.
"What is it? Is there something wrong?"
"No, I-" she shifted uncomfortably, "I wanted to know if we could just forget the other day happened. I know you will have to leave soon, but I don't want us to part on bad terms." He looked shocked by what she said, he obviously had not expected her to be so forgiving.
"We can, if that's what you want. But-" His acceptance was all she wanted to hear at that point, and she seized the opportunity to move forward and wrap her arms around him, keeping her hands well above the gun he still carried. His steady heartbeat under her ear was a welcome sound, and she felt him embrace her back. The hug was both a gesture of forgiveness and a consequence of her suddenly being aware that every moment they had left may be the last. He had become such a big part of her life in so little time that she couldn't imagine what it would be like without him. She vowed that she would cherish every minute they were together until there were no more.
When Gaby heard about the sudden series of arrests at her lover's workplace, she knew that Viktor would soon be leaving Berlin. He had never directly confirmed her suspicions that he was a spy, he hadn't needed to and after the argument they had nearly a month before, she had not wanted to pry and risk casting a dark shadow over their last few weeks together. She knew that he had been involved in the sudden downfall of the company, his job as an accountant would have given him plenty of access to the accounts and likely to other incriminating evidence.
She had not been surprised when he appeared at her door, looking more grim than happy to see her. She knew what he had come to say, so she had not let him speak. She tackled him to the floor, accidentally knocking a vase off a nearby table and kissed him hard before he could speak. He was too surprised to resist her, and too unwilling to stop her. They didn't make it to the couch or the bed, the floor wasn't particularly comfortable but it wasn't a big enough concern for them to stop and move.
When they had finished, he said something in Russian, and for a moment she had been furious at herself for never bothering to learn the language. Before she could ask for a translation, he had picked her up and carried her to her bedroom, pulling the covers over both of them.
"What did that mean?" She asked once they were comfortably tangled together.
"What did what mean?" He played dumb. She imitated him, probably butchering the language as she did so, judging by his laughter. He repeated the words correctly, and she elbowed him in irritation when he 'forgot' to tell her the German equivalent.
"It means, 'I love you'." He told her eventually. He repeated the Russian again, but this time with an additional word.
"What does that mean?" She said the additional word.
"That means 'goodbye'." The tears came quickly and quietly, but even with her attempts at hiding it, he still noticed, and his large thumbs carefully wiped them away. "No tears." He ordered her gently.
"No tears." She echoed, and kissed him gently before burrowing into the covers and pulling his arm over so it was slung across her waist. When she woke up the next morning, the bed was cold and he was gone.
With hindsight it was clear that their relationship was doomed from the beginning. He gave her hints of this, in his own way. In the six months they knew each other, the only gifts he gave her were perishables: flowers that would wither and die after a few days, boxes of sweets that she would eat, and bottles of whisky or vodka or whatever she felt like that she would drink. No jewellery or practical gifts, like a normal lover might give. At the time she had not really noticed, accepting each treat with near child-like enthusiasm. It was only when he said his final goodbye that she realised that the only proof she had that he had been in her life were dead flowers and empty containers.
Author's Note: Sorry guys about the lateness, I totally forgot! And that's that. Again if you weren't aware I have a second fic up now called 'Sacrifices for the Greater Good' check it out if you haven't already!