Archive of Our Own

Shooting an arrow is an act of devotion. It is the arrangement of playing with fate. It is the detail of timing — finding perfection in the release, fingers meeting string; fingers releasing string. Cupid has splintered the hearts of many lovers. He has never seen splintered hearts quite like Eve and Villanelle. 

Eve bathes in shame. It is an everyday ritual achieved through different means. Today, it looks like waiting for Konstantin to leave the room, realizing her lover may not wake up, stealing her lover's pain pills, buying a bottle of Stolichnaya, and drinking herself to death somewhere conspicuous. Dying without dignity means the willingness of dying in a park, when the Sun and the Moon trade shifts, and the eerily-gray Twilight offers her solace of:

This does not have to be real. You can make it not real.

Eve has always specialized in this specific type of cheap heat. Bringing herself to the brink of death and bringing herself back. This is a version of relaxation — no strings attached. Bottle to mouth, mouth to throat, throat to stomach. Eve doesn't stop until she feels that her blood is replaced with spirit, and she keeps going until she sees doubles. 

Eve is experiencing that peculiar kind of Twilight. The No-Sleep, Drank-The-Bottle-Dry, Oxycodone-Sponsored type of Twilight. When the gray mixes with the soil, and she's unaware of the way the bark of the tree is cutting into her back, and she's slowly realizing, only now, that she mixed her substances just the right amount to bring Cupid to Cuba.

Double-vision. One monster. Two angels.

She tilts her head as he approaches. Cupid is two-times the-size of anything that any version of mythology could have prepared her for. His wings are two looming things — more hungry than loving, begging to swallow rather than give. It isn't until he bends down, and Eve has to crane a heavy head to look up at him, that she has to stifle a laugh. Cupid is ugly. Uglier than can be. Crimson chin, lips plump and pouty, and eyes too wide, too open.

He's beautiful, maybe, but so ugly. 

"You're, uh — you're naked," she laughs.

"Yes." He cocks his head. Regards her gently. "And you're trying really hard not to be."

His voice is more feminine than she expected. Deceptively soft. If Eve had a hold on sobriety, she could imagine what her expression may look like. Brows knit together, lips twisted. But she's not sober and she's only aware of the fact that she hates to be philosophized by things that don't exist. Philosophized by her own imagination. Philosophized at all. See, Eve has a knack for the straight shot. Reality is never stranger than fiction because fiction isn't all that strange. 

"You're not real."

He lowers himself into the grass. Eve can't help but stare at the way his skin folds where hips meet thigh. How he sits criss-cross, large and looming, like something that demands to exist. 

"Does it matter? You are."

"Cut the shit."

"You first."

Eve throws the bottle of Stolichnaya at his head. Through his head. He doesn't flinch. It lands somewhere in the grass with a dull thud. She flexes her fingers. 

Content to choke Cupid out. Bare hands, no mercy, veins popping until he bleeds hearts.

"It's interesting to go through such great lengths to disassociate yourself from love. I watch people do it all the time." He picks a blade of grass, holds it between fingers. "Not quite like you."

Eve bites. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Cupid gives a quiet smile. "Don't I?" 

She watches as Cupid moves a slow hand behind his back, cranes his neck, and fishes around in his wings. He stills before producing a sleek black stick — an arrow that he holds in front of him.

Eve stares at his face. Stares at his hands. Stares at the arrow. Surges forward with a body that takes too long to catch up.

When she reaches for Cupid's neck, her hands find air. When she expects to collide with his body, she falls through him. Finds herself on her belly in the grass. Body misplaced. Tasting tears in her mouth, dryness in her eyes. Cupid hums from above her. She turns onto her side to look up at him. 

One monster. Two angels. Hiding behind a quiet smile.

"Did you — I'll kill you!" Eve buries her fingers into the Earth to steady a body that can't support her weight, "I'll fucking kill you. I swear to god  — I'll kill you, I'll kill you — "

"You can't. And I did. But you didn't."

Eve goes from panting to quiet. She's aware of the way her hair hangs over her face; the way her mouth threatens to tangle her words, the way her body threatens to collapse in on itself. "What?"

"You think you're the reason that she got shot yesterday."

"I am literally the reason Hélène shot her with an arrow."

"You had no way of predicting that. You are thinking about how if you hadn't imprisoned her — that perhaps she wouldn't have gotten shot. Perhaps? Or, perhaps, Hélène would have eventually shot her anyways. We cannot predict these outcomes. You didn't think Hélène would go for Villanelle, because you would rather accept death than admit your affections — even though they are visible to everybody who encounters you."

Eve twists her face. Purses her lips. Opens her mouth to speak. Angel beats her.

"You are shameful in love, you won't let yourself live in reality. You'll blame yourself because if you didn't, you might think you are capable of deserving such things. You are ashamed, but more than that, you're petrified. You are petrified of what love will do to you — if you accept it. You never have."

Eve tilts her head. Averts her eyes. Lets her tongue roll over her teeth, and fixates on the rage that itches her stomach lining. "I've accepted it — "

"No, you haven't. You loved your husband. It was a version of love. A fine version — they're all very fine — but not the version that I am talking about. I hadn't shot you then."

Eve sits up — she does not make the mistake of standing because she is prideful and protective in the face of a God — and she fixes him with a tight smile.

"Maybe love can happen outside of you. Maybe that scares you. That you can't play with fate — "

Cupid interjects, "You don't believe in fate."

Eve narrows her eyes. "I don't."

"So, what does it matter?"

Eve goes quiet.

Cupid slowly crouches down again. He sits in front of Eve like with mastered stillness. One gargoyle. Two angels. Up close, she notices the length of his chin. His lips, pouty and plump. His eyes wide, and too open. He's beautiful, maybe, but ugly, definitely. 

"I don't create love. I inspire it. What you do with the feeling is up to you. Some nurture it; some destroy it. Nobody masters it." He runs his fingers through the grass, tentatively. "When I shot her — "

And Eve lunges forward again, because Eve never learns from her mistakes, and she falls through Cupid once more, because Eve does not become aware of things until she is moving through them, and as always, Eve lands face-down. She bites her lip real hard-like, too hard. Body-pilled and stomach-drunk that she doesn't realize she's drawn her own blood. Tooth like an arrow prick.

"Not yesterday," he whispers, in that quiet-reverb way. Like she's listening to him talk from another room, ear-cupped to the wall, a subtle echo. "Long before. Just like I did you."

And Eve isn't giving up yet. But she's close to it. She doesn't raise her face to look at him. Lets her cheek rest on soil and lets her hands bury in the grass. She closes her eyes, whispers, "When?"

"In the bathroom of a Hospital. Do you remember the one?" He traces his jaw with large fingers, smiles girlishly, "It smelled like antiseptic and bubblegum soap."

Eve pulls at soil with her fingers. Pushes her forehead against the dirt. Bites back something that threatens to shake her body. More than a cry, more than a sob. "I remember."

Cupid lays down next to Eve. In an empty park, that looms with the heaviness of pre-Dawn, his wing nudges her shoulder. She can feel how real it feels. Sturdy and stable and capable. She crosses her arms under her head; rests her cheek against her wrist. He looks nowhere in particular.

"It's been interesting to see what you've done with it," he whispers.

Eve swallows. Her body forwarns her of vomit.

"Yeah, well."

"I thought I'd have to shoot you again. I do it, sometimes. It's painful to watch mortals fumble for too long. Even Gods get tired or grow merciful. But I didn't have to. You did that for me."

Eve closes her eyes. Focuses on settling her stomach.  "Can you please stop speaking in parables?"

"You stabbed her in Paris. She shot you in Rome. And now —"

"You think that's love?" Eve opens her eyes; bellows a laugh. Spits when she talks. Thinks about the difference felt between arrow and bullet. Whether she'd know the difference. She doesn't think she does, and so, Eve grows angrier. "Being left for dead in the Ruins of Rome only to have your body discovered by tourists? God, you're more fucked up than me." 

"Not exactly. Love was there, though, even then. Clouded by obsession and all of the other things that you're more comfortable with than Love itself." Cupid turns his cheek to look at Eve. In the grayness of the air, she notes his long his eyelashes are; the delicacy of his eyes. "As I've said, nobody masters it. We go through vicious games to try to prove ourselves. Disappear ourselves. Disappear the other person. Love will eat us alive, and so, we try to eat ourselves alive instead. If you undress it, you'll find Love, when naked, is oftentimes just a version of hysteria."

Eve knits her brows. Cupid continues, in that quiet voice. In his eyes, Eve sees sentiment and nostalgia and other things that make her stomach turn and burn. 

"It doesn't have to be. It depends on what you're willing to go through. What you're willing to surrender, or sacrifice, and whether — above all — you're willing to sacrifice yourself."

In Cupid's frown, Eve thinks she sees an open wound; so, she digs her fingers in.

"What about your lover, huh? She was pregnant. You left her. She sacrificed so much for you. You didn't do shit. You left. Why?"

In the momentary quiet, Eve thinks of Psyche. A lover left to sort through cherry seeds, a lover left to collect fleece, a lover left to feed honey cakes to Cerberus, a lover left to collapse from surrendered sleep. And Eve waits in anticipation for Cupid's frown to twist, turn, taunt. But it never comes.

Instead, Cupid's eyes fall on her in a haze of whimsy and his smile is small when he says, "Because she saw me when I didn't want her to."

The lack of regret has a switchblade effect on Eve's expression. Here's the thing about Eve: no matter how desperately she has tried to fix this, she always been an easy read. Eyes gone soft; mouth turned tight. An oil lamp spilling heat. Reactive, on display, visibly naked even when she thinks she's clothed.

She tilts her forehead into her forearm, and lets the tip of her nose bury into Earth — she can't help but assign roles. Eve, on her stomach and too high or drunk to dream about worlds where she is somebody else, thinks about her role.

One monster. Two angels. Maybe three.

Because isn't that just like Eve? To find commonalities with Cupid when she's chewed Oxycodone like candy and drunk herself to the brink of death? Isn't that just like Eve? To leave through the window when her lover sees her without a mirage of darkness — the safety of invisibility? Isn't that just like Eve? To take, to take, to hate that she loves taking but not hate it enough to stop. To give sparsely. Rarely. Because she doesn't know how to give often. And when she gives, it always involves violence.

She feels Cupid's wing twitch against her shoulder.

"I came back, though," he whispers. 

And when Eve begins to cry, finally, she doesn't stop.

Eve cries in the way that she never has. The way that she was never supposed to. Full of belly shakes and open-throat noises that threaten to split a person in two. Crying like she has something to offer. As if her body even has moisture to give. To give to the Earth, to give to Cupid, to give to Villanelle. Eve, in a park, crying over monsters that pretend to be angels, and crying about angels that pretend to be monsters. Crying that there is no way to assign distinct roles in this life, and that you are either here, or there, and that if you are in-between, then you are lucky. Crying that Villanelle is dying in a room haunted with Konstantin's snores, a man who Loved her all wrong, and that Eve herself is dying next to an angel, because she didn't try to Love her at all.

"My wife only understood how to sacrifice herself because she listened to the voice deep inside of her. You have one too — yet you so desperately want to silence it. It's interesting to know what that voice sounds like. I've heard yours, Eve. I know what it says. Over and over. It never changes." And when he hums, it is with a low euphoria, because he is the God of Love and so he knows the power of it, and his words seep with blood when he whispers,

"Villanelle, Villanelle, Villanelle..."

Eve screams. Grabs ahold of one of his wings. It twitches in her hand. She can feel it. She pulls on it, and watches him twitch as result, and pulls harder. Shitty pigeon wings. She'll sacrifice it all. Build Villanelle back if it means stitching her back together. Pigeon to Dove. She'll do it. She tries to rip it from Cupid's shoulderblade, but in the very same movement, Eve releases his wing with a yelp when she feels a stab in her own back.

He chuckles that low feminine hum, and she stares.

"If you are willing to tear apart a God, then maybe you are closer to sacrifice than you think you are." He sighs, lets his arms relax behind his head again, twitches his newly-freed wing. "I say that humbly."

Eve hiccups. "Why?"

He turns to stare at her, with that open arrow-through-the-heart stare.

"Hm?"

Eve breathes out. Closes her eyes. Forgets where her body ends and Earth begins.

"Why us? Why did you — why is it me and her?"

And if Eve opened her eyes, she would see that Cupid's quiet pause is one of amusement rather than disappointment. He knows Eve. She asks no longer to reason. But to Know. Cupid is the god of Love, and thus the god of Delusion, and thus, mistakes Defeat for Acceptance.

"True love is about being understood. Seeing. Being seen — no matter the cost. It's not fated. It's created, but created only by those willing to venture to such depths. You don't think you can. I don't make mistakes. There couldn't be another pairing. There isn't one."

Eve feels her body goes heavy, eyes shut tight. Feels the Earth spin as she stays very still.

"I get the feeling you may find that lonely. That I am a God and I am telling you that there is nobody else in the world besides this one person that you have tried to sever yourself from so desperately. And perhaps, it's more lonely to understand that I am not a God at all, but I am just a product of you. I wonder if that's lonely."

Eve doesn't answer. 

"And well — if it is, remember that it always is. Love is always lonely, so long as we deny it."

"You said that I am afraid to deserve it." Eve gives a spent chuckle, barely there. "Do you understand what deserving looks like for me and her?"

"Death?" Cupid offers.

Eve doesn't answer.

"Maybe so."

And Eve grips at the Earth, notices the way she tries to pull herself into it, pulling on grass like she can pull herself underneath it. Cupid asks:

"Can I say one more thing?"

Eve doesn't answer. Eyes shut tight. Eve's body moves in trembles, crying like this with her head bowed to the Earth, pretending that this is begging. That she is capable of begging. She's capable of assuming the position of beggar — never fulfilling the role.

"You are so terrified to sacrifice yourself, and yet, you've already done it. Look at you." He coos, too gentle. "What is this if not sacrifice? Is there anything less to reduce yourself to?"

Eve steadies her breath. Keeps her eyes closed. They don't open again until her mouth does.

And just as the Sun begins to rise, Eve vomits pain pills and alcohol and grease and blood until the grass is left ruined and foul.

Cupid's wings move to engulf her.

This is when Eve loses consciousness. 

In a park, when the birds begin to chip, cocooned in a monster's embrace, and for the very first time, surrenders to something she doesn't understand.

Eve doesn't remember waking up, or being left by an angel, or walking back to the Hotel room, or the feeling of the sun as it threatened to split her skull into, but she remembers this. The act of cracking open a creaky door to a room filled with dust — Villanelle unconscious, the light illuminating the cracks in her lips and the paleness of her skin, the statue of an angel cracked by light. Konstantin and Pam drinking tea, not noticing her, and then noticing her, wide-eyed and stupefied.

"Eve," Konstantin raises an eyebrow. "I don't want to be unkind but you look... unwell."

Eve's body is ruined. Head too heavy, and eyes unable to focus. It begs for things like water and bread, and she forgoes them, only understanding the task of breaking bread rather than eating it. It's an act of sacrifice. To surrender your wellness if the other person is unwell.

And it's not much of a sacrifice, Eve thinks, as she has never really been well.

"You can leave." She croaks. Pam furrows her brow. "Both of you."

Konstantin looks to Pam. Looks back at Eve. Looks at Villanelle. Looks between Eve and Villanelle not as lovers, but as two things who were created to destroy one another. And this is what they are. And perhaps, that is one definition of Love.

"Uh — I am not sure that is — "

"You think I'll kill her."

Konstantin goes silent. 

Her mouth barely moves when she talks. The taste of dried vomit sealed into the corners of her lips. She doesn't defend herself. She doesn't waste time when she talks.

"I'm not asking you to leave. I'm telling you to." Eve lowers herself into the chair near Villanelle's bed without looking at them. And in heat of the early morning sun, she whispers, "I've got her."

And Konstantin voice is nothing but background noise, a low-hum of static when he says, 

"You know I'm paying for this room, right?"

But Eve doesn't look at him. Doesn't acknowledge him. Doesn't take her eyes away from Villanelle. A lover left. Arrow through her chest — near the heart, but not quite through it. And if Eve wants to touch her fingers to the material to dress Villanelle down, look at the hole in her skin, she won't. Because Eve knows that they both have matching scars. Invisible. Buried deep within the chest cavity. Splintered into their hearts. Branded. Eve doesn't look away. 

The white-noise sighs, says something like, "Let's go, Pam."

And then there is a shuffling of feet, a brief hand on her shoulder, the closing of a door, and then there is nothing else. Just the two of them.

Eve and Villanelle. Barely alive. Sacrificed. 

Eve sits in the chair throughout the entirety of the afternoon. She does not get up to throw up in the toilet, or drink water, and she lets dehydration wash her body dry. She reduces herself to what Villanelle is. Prisoner to her own body. Collapsed from sorting too many cherry seeds, chasing gold sheep. 

Surrendered to sleep, and Eve not surrendering, if only to watch over her. 

It isn't until evening blots the room in dull orange and muddled hues that Villanelle finally cracks open her eyes. Eve doesn't blink. Not as Villanelle opens them once, and closes them again, and opens them once more, and Eve is forced to watch a grotesque metamorphosis take place. To watch that way Villanelle's eyes focus, first, to trail her hair, skim the length of her mouth, take her in head-to-toe. Metamorphosis, because she watches as Villanelle's eyes play catch up. Starting without shield, soft-like, then growing cold. Butterflies to bullets. Eve moves slightly when Villanelle stirs.

Until she realizes that Villanelle is only moving to turn onto her side. Eve realizes that this very movement, rolling onto her side, letting fabric slide over the hole in her back, must be painful. That Villanelle is mustering this pain, mastering it, for the sole act of turning her back to Eve.

From her new vantage point, Eve stares at the soaked stain on the back of Villanelle's flannel. Gray fabric blotted with dark blood. Soaked through. She watches as Villanelle tries to take softer breaths, shallow breathes, and Villanelle's voice is only a cracked whisper when she says,

"You look like shit."

And Eve doesn't say anything. She nods, even though Villanelle can't see it. 

Eve watches as Villanelle's side inflates with the strength to muster words, and she admires Villanelle's capability, that Villanelle is the strong one and has always been the strong one, and she does not break when Villanelle says, does not whisper, but says,

"I wish you weren't here."

And even though Villanelle can't see it, Eve nods.

Fights the nausea in her stomach.

Swallows to bite back vomit.

Wets her tongue with her lips to play at hydration.

Villanelle goes back to sleep.

Eve doesn't sleep. Not even when the room is only lit with moonlight, muddied like dark water, because Eve didn't get up to draw the blinds. Doesn't sleep even when her vision goes double again. Not because of substance, because of lack of. Lack of sleep. Lack of water. Lack of the material things that her body needs to survive. She only looks away from Villanelle when she notices a shadow in the window, blocking the moonlight. Hovering, just outside of the glass, is a too-larged wing thing. Fluttering like a crow, nothing angelic about it. He smiles at her gently, but Eve doesn't keep his eyes when Villanelle stirs. 

Villanelle wakes. Groans. Moves onto her back and reaches for the nightstand. Eve moves to pick up the water glass and hand it to her. Villanelle stills.

In the silver light, she eyes Eve from her periphery. Her mouth pulls down as she takes a sip of water. There are no words exchanged between them, no sounds, just that quiet type of hatred — full of nothing — only broken by the sound of the water glass meeting wood with a quiet clank. Then there is the quiet sound of a pill bottle shaking, Villanelle's trembling hand as she pours a couple of them into her palm, the sound of a small swallow.

And then quiet again, just quiet, as Villanelle lays back down.

Villanelle turns her back to her. Fixes Eve with the sight of injury. Another whisper.

"Have you moved?"

And Eve shakes her head. Remembers Villanelle can't see it. Uses her dry throat to croak,

"No."

"Have you slept?"

And Eve shakes her head, because Eve doesn't learn from her mistakes, and she's only now learning to correct them when she uses her mouth to say: "No."

"Are you going to leave?"

"No."

And once more, just once, one more quiet bullet to split the darkness, Villanelle says:

"Good to know."

Eve takes note of what drips from her words. Villanelle summoning venom from the wound in her back to pass it forward. Villanelle being vague, but letting Eve know something like:

I'm going to kill you. When I can.

or, I'll leave you. When I can.

Eve settles back into the chair. For the first time, she begins to cry for Villanelle. Hot tears. Silent ones. Angry ones. Because she knows the burden of a splintered heart, and she knows the truth of her and Villanelle's fate, and she only cries because the truth makes her angry. That the truth is:

You could. You can. You can't.

Matching scars. Eve's spells out,

Me either.

Eve makes the mistake of falling asleep. When she wakes up to the sound of waves lapping at the shore, and sheets rustling, she awakes to a Villanelle who is already watching her. Arms crossed over her chest. Full of quiet hate. Simmering with silence. Eve swallows. Adjusts.

Villanelle looks at the bottle of pills. Looks at Eve. Raises an eyebrow.

"Did you steal some of my pain pills?"

Eve doesn't make the mistake of nodding. She's very close to passing out. Body in depletion, past depletion. "Yes."

Villanelle looks straight ahead. Eve watches her jaw go tense. Watches her run her tongue over her teeth.

Outside, seagulls scream and children laugh and the sun shines too brightly.

"Drink water."

Eve stares, "What?"

"Your lips are blue," she spits. "Drink water."

And Eve's hand trembles as she reaches for the glass Villanelle drank from hours earlier. She takes a small sip to start. Then another. Downs the glass. When she gets up to refill it, her knees buckle. Villanelle watches as she collapses on the ground. There is a small rustle of sheets, but Villanelle does not move. She remains with arms-crossed; stare fixed straight-ahead. Eve gets up.

In the bathroom, she catches sight of herself in the mirror. Hair greasy; knotted. Lips dry. Her eyes black, nothing but hollow sockets. She fills the glass up two times. Chugs both. Fills it up a last time and returns to Villanelle's bedside. Places it on wood as Villanelle watches.

"Where is Konstantin?"

Eve breathes out. "Gone."

"Why?"

"I asked him to leave."

Villanelle breathes out a shaky breath. Eve watches how she tightens her fingers against the duvet, how she goes very still but the twitch in her jaw gives her away. This is what happens when you leave your lover. She sacrifices sleep, when she thinks she's sacrificing beauty, and she collects fur from the skin of the gold sheep, collects it form branches, even though she is angry enough to kill the sheep herself. But she won't. Villanelle seethes, in whisper, when she says:

"I need to wash my wound."

Eve stills. Rubs her palms against her thighs. "Do you need me to get a washcloth — "

"No. I need to take a bath, Eve."

And Eve chews on her words before she speaks them. Thinks about sacrifice and giving without taking and whether it is ever possible. 

"Do you need my help?"

Villanelle's words are razor-sharp, too-fast, "I don't need anything from you. I don't want anything from you. I wish you weren't here."

And Eve wonders why she doesn't say, I wish you'd leave. 

Because this is what lovers left do.

They speak in volatile. They speak the truth. Bodies ravaged from lies. Bodies ravaged from time-wasted. They speak in truth. They don't lie. 

Villanelle lets her head fall back against the headboard, "Run the water. Don't fill it all the way."

Eve stares. 

Villanelle eyes her.

Eve gets up.

The bath takes ten minutes to fill half-way. Clean water, not too hot, no soap, just right. Eve spends this time sat on porcelain. Eyes the porous sponge that sits in the soap-holder. Wondering about what comes next, and wondering what won't ever come. What can't come. 

She pads a quiet trail from the bathroom to find Villanelle sitting up. Arms crossed. Eyes full of recoil.

"Uh — it's ready," Eve says. 

Villanelle pushes the sheet away to get up. Eve moves to help her. Villanelle stills, spits,

"Don't." She eyes Eve seriously, "Wait in the bathroom."

And so, Eve does.

Leans against the counter, steadies her weight against it, commits to herself to stillness, as she listens to Villanelle's ragged breaths and slow shuffling in the other room. When Villanelle finally turns the corner, she uses a hand to steady herself on the doorframe. Leans against the wall.

Villanelle nods her chin to the lower half of her body. Barely looks at Eve.

"Undress me."

"What?"

"Do it."

And Eve doesn't understand but her body moves. Too slow, too stiff.

She pushes away from the counter and has to focus on remaining steady as she stands in front of Villanelle. She raises her hands slowly to unfasten the top button of Villanelle's flannel; chances a glance up at her. Villanelle is not looking at her. She's looking over Eve's shoulder, watching this unfold in the hazed reflection of the bathroom mirror, and Eve breathes in deeply. Her hands shake. One button, then two, then three, then five, then she slides the shirt — slowly, so slowly — off of Villanelle's shoulders. She swallows. Villanelle, bare-chested and too still, keeps her eyes on the reflection of Eve's back.

In the silence that follows, Eve bends to her knees. Tucks her fingers into the waistband of Villanelle's butterfly pants and slides them down. She notices the way Villanelle's lower stomach quivers. And she knows, because Eve is dumb but not stupid, that this isn't about sex. 

Lovers left. It was always about sex. Before the being left. Denying it. Claiming it. Touching yourself over it, while the other touched herself too, but didn't touch you. She spoke in your ear. Always about sex, achieving it through static means, through letting go, but never letting go enough. 

This, though, is not about sex. 

Villanelle slowly steps out of the fabric pooled by her feet. And Eve swallows, bites the inside of her cheek, as she thumbs the material of Villanelle's underwear. Eve breathes sharply. Lungs too full of air, then too empty of it. Villanelle steps out of her underwear and Eve looks at her thighs.

Just at her thighs. Nowhere else. 

Eve stands when Villanelle moves. Waits to offer support as Villanelle lowers herself into the tub but Villanelle doesn't ask for it, doesn't allow it to be asked, denies the possibility of it. Villanelle's fingers splay over tile as she slowly puts one foot into the water, then the other, then lowers herself with a sharp inhale, and submerges herself. The water stops right below her breasts. Just below the wound that remains dressed, fabric soaked with old blood; new blood.

Villanelle brings her arms around her knees. The position doesn't make sense. Stretching the hole in her back. Eve wants to say something about that. She doesn't say a word. Villanelle looks at white ceramic tile. Eve waits for Villanelle to look at her. And when she finally does, she doesn't turn her head, she glares from her periphery. And speaks, without words, with venom in her eyes, when she doesn't say:

Do it. 

And again — the body moves without the brain's understanding. Eve gets on her knees, on the tile, does not sit on the toilet because she knows what role she is supposed to play her, and she leans over ceramic to undress Villanelle's wound. She notices the way Villanelle's fingers dig into her palm as she unsticks the gauze from rusted blood and swollen skin. Eve holds her breath as she pulls the mangled cloth away, sets it on the floor, sets her hands in her lap, and watches Villanelle's profile. Villanelle is silent for a long time. Jaw tense. No reprieve from the warm water, or if there is, she doesn't let Eve see it.

No noise, just a ripple of water when Villanelle's body moves only slightly, as she nods to the sponge. 

Eve reaches over Villanelle's body to grab the sponge. Can't feel her fingers as she grips it. Villanelle lifts her arm.

Eve delicately wraps her fingers around Villanelle's wrist, dips the sponge in the water, and begins to move it back and forth over her forearm. 

It's a quiet kind of torture. No words spoken. Just the sound of Eve's hushed breathing, sponge dipping into water, spreading over skin, and dipping again. When Villanelle lifts her other arm, and Eve takes it, Villanelle finally speaks. 

"You know what I thought about when you put me in Prison?"

Eve's blood goes cold; her throat goes tight. Eve, who can only wonder what is coming next, and Villanelle always knowing, because she orchestrated this. It was a matter of detail. Villanelle, getting Eve on her knees, making Eve look at her body, because she planned to tell her in detail, in a quiet bathroom, everything she's done to it; everything she's done to her.

Eve swallows as she moves the sponge over Villanelle's forearm.

"I thought about how it must have felt unique for you. To let somebody else have their way with me for once. It was interesting." Villanelle gives a low chuckle, mouth full of blood and teeth and other threats. "I'll admit that I didn't expect that from you, Eve. You have always gotten off on it being you, no? Being the one to do it to me. Always you. This must have felt unique for you."

Eve focuses on keeping her eyes on water. Water filling with rusted blood. Water swirling, no soap, clear water blotted with Villanelle's blood. Eve dips the sponge into it. Runs it over her clavicle. Watches her fingers.

"To me, it did not feel unique at all. In fact, you know that you are the third woman to do this to me." Villanelle sighs, a sigh manufactured with discontent. Disaffect. "First, my Mother. Next, Anna."

Eve winces, and Villanelle's body twitches.

"Finally, you."

Villanelle laughs.

With the movement, fresh blood blossoms from the hole in her back. Eve bites down on her tongue. Thinks about severing it from her mouth. Thinks about whether she would be better if she was an unspeaking, quiet thing and how that's probably the truth.

"So, you want to know what I thought about in Prison, this time?"

Villanelle waits. Eve nods, she thinks, head too heavy to separate movement from what she perceives to be movement. Eve nods, she thinks. Villanelle hums.

"That I've hated every single woman I've ever met."

And this is how lovers left talk. Hands dirted with the blood of cherry seeds, and fingers aching with the fleece of gold sheep, and sleep surrendered, and they speak not in lie, but in round-about, and Villanelle does not need to connect the dots, to say:

I've met you so many different times. The only woman. I hate you. 

And Eve closes her eyes. Releases the sponge to let it float in the water. When she re-opens them, she watches Villanelle's face, as Villanelle removes her eyes from ceramic tile, to look at Eve head-on, and Eve watches the facade of metamorphosis. Butterflies pretending to be bullets. Eyes, windows to a soul where both of these things demand to be true, and, maybe, they are.

There are no distinct roles in life. You are either here, or there, and if you are in the in-between, then you are very lucky. Bullets and butterflies.

Eve removes her hand from water, with a quiet trickle, and slowly raises her palm to cup Villanelle's cheek. Villanelle's eyes go hard, try to go hard, and she does not settle her weight into the palm of Eve's hand like she once did, but she allows the touch for now.

So, Eve speaks, and Eve tells the truth when she whispers:

"I know."

And Villanelle only looks through her. Lolls her head away from Eve's palm, and fixes her eyes back on ceramic.

"Wash my wound. I want to get out."

And Eve does. Lets her hand find the sponge again. Lets it collect water. Lets it brush over Villanelle's wound so gently, but Villanelle hisses anyways. Eve moves the sponge over her spine, over swollen skin, washes away old blood until there is just a murky crater left in the mid-center of her back.

Villanelle barely lets Eve put the sponge back before she's standing, too quickly, and stepping out. 

Eve moves to lift the drain, but Villanelle's voice speaks out from behind her.

"Don't drain it."

Eve looks over her shoulder. Finds Villanelle with a towel wrapped around her chest. Legs dripping water onto the tile. She looks down at Eve. 

"You smell like shit." Villanelle nods to the unclean water, "Do something about it."

"What?"

"Get in."

Eve's jaw tenses. Looks from the used bathwater to Villanelle's face. She recognizes the taunt there. Villanelle's eyes, saying: You won't. You wouldn't.

Eve rises from the tile slowly. Knees aching, back shot. She holds Villanelle's gaze as she brings her hands up to buttons. She unfastens the first one. The second. Villanelle averts her eyes. Eve watches her throat twich. The third. Villanelle leaves. Eve continues. This isn't about sex.

With slow hands, she undresses the rest of her body. Love is sacrificial, resused, recycled. Bathing in your lover's fifth, submerging yourself in her blood, and Eve relieved that Villanene instructed her to.

Lowers herself into a tub of metal water and brown blood. This isn't the worst part. The submerging.

The worst part is that Eve would have done it anyway. Not as an act of romance. 

But because Eve is shameful in love, desperate to burden the experience, desperate to carry weight. 

Eve forges baptisms like she wants to be forgiven. She doesn't. She wants to be punished. 

Eve watches as Villanelle's blood swirls in colors of burgundy and rust in the cold water. She trails the streams with her fingers.

Eve sighs when when she realizes she is no longer alone.

In her periphery, she watches as Cupid hovers in the corner of the bathroom. Reflected in the mirror, too large for the mirror, wings tucked and still too large. The sound in the room is still aside from the occasional rustle of water; the occasional flutter of wings. In the mirror, Eve notices a sliver of white scar tissue across his lower stomach. Their eyes meet in mirror, not in real-time.

She nods, narrows her eyes, "What's that?"

"My lover hurt me." Cupid smiles. Speaks in hymns. "It was an accident."

Eve rolls her eyes. Submerges herself further into the water. This close, she can smell the subtly of old blood. Dirty skin.

All things that once belonged to Villanelle. 

"I suppose you think we're different in that way. Accident versus intention." Cupid tilts his head, as he rests to sit on the countertop. "But I hurt her intentionally with my leaving. I suppose it isn't a competition, though."

And Eve bites her cheek to keep from saying: Isn't it?

"Obsession is a competition." Cupid reads her mind, reminds her. His wings stop moving. "Love is not. That's why you wish to make it go away."

And yes, Eve and Villanelle competed for a long time. Eve putting metal in Villanelle's abdomen, trashing her apartment — Villanelle feeding Eve fake arsenic, grabbing her waist. Competition faded to desperation with a white flag, Eve took a moment to recognize it. Eve begging to disappear Villanelle behind bars, Villanelle holding a white flag — dressed in a white flag — on her knees, in front of a fish tank. 

"Before you said that I didn't sacrifice anything for Psyche. Perhaps, that's true." Cupid sighs, looms. "I did help her though."

Eve doesn't answer. Cups some water in her hands to wash the grease from her hair. 

"I summoned the ants when she could no longer sort cherry seeds. I led her into the Underworld. I fed her Ambrosia — made her a God." Cupid relays these things not as points of pride, but as things that Eve feels she's supposed to note but doesn't understand why. "You bathe in her blood. Why?"

Eve searches his face for rhetoric. As if there is a feasible answer to that. As if she is meant to answer the monster she summoned with her mind. The water changes around her, and when she looks back to it, the tub is full of anything but water. Cherry seeds, ants, ambrosia. 

"Would you stay in here? Even now?" Cupid glances to the ants scouring her thighs, the cherry seeds pushing into the crooks of her body. "When love is punishment, will you stay?"

And Eve stares at the contents of the tub. And she does not flinch or squirm. And she sets her jaw very firmly, glares with black eyes, when she says, 

"It always has been."

The acts crawl over her clavicle. The smell of mandarine and marshmallow twist her lips.

Again, he asks, "Will you stay?"

Eve watches where her skin goes red. Where the ants mistake her for cherry seeds. Where she feels the itch, the burn. She is stern when she says,

"Yes."

And, for that reason, Love continues to be a competition. Putting the body through Hell. Seeing which body makes it out. Praying it's not one before the other.

Cupid smiles. The bathwater returns with a burnt sienna film. So cold.

Eve snorts, "You know, for the God of Love, you have some pretty twisted ideas about what it should be."

Cupid dismounts from the counter.

Eve watches the way he takes up too much space in the bathroom. Head almost hitting the ceiling. Wings restricted, folded in, by walls.

"I don't speak about Love generally. It's impossible to do so. It is different for every pairing — even if it produces the same result." Cupid's cranes his neck, stretches and flexes his fingers, "For you and Villanelle, it will always involve some form of that. Punishment, I mean."

Eve looks away. Lets her body sink lower.

"Tell me, Eve. Would you die for Love?"

Eve raises an eyebrow.  "Will I?"

"Would you?" He challenges.

"Yes," she bites. Then she closes her eyes. Feels bath water. Imagines ants. She whispers, once more, "Yes."

"Good." Cupid stretches his back, lets his wings unfold. "Go to her. She's waiting for you. She won't say it."

And Eve lowers her face under the surface of the water. Sucks some of it into her mouth. Tastes Villanelle. When she submerges, and cranes her neck to spit it in his direction, Cupid has already disappeared. 

Cupid lies.

Villanelle is fast-asleep when she returns to the room. Eve assumes her position in the chair, rejects the pleads of her spine, and notices the way her hair has dried to smell like metal. She sits very still. Traces shapes into her thigh.

Villanelle doesn't stir until sometime after three and before four in the morning, and when she stirs, she wakes. She glances at Eve. 

And she doesn't say it, but she can tell by the way that Villanelle's eyes linger, that Villanelle doesn't know how to stomach what Eve's doing. Won't name it as loyalty, because why would she? She wonders if Villanelle wants to name is as guilt. If the wooden chair creaks of shame. Eve would say yes, that's it.

In the low-light of the moon, the room silver all over again, Villanelle stares at the ceiling as she whispers, 

"You know, I'm not going to ask you, Eve."

Eve raises an eyebrow. Leans forward, only slightly. "Ask me what?"

"What you're doing. Why you're here. What fucked you up." Villanelle laughs, in that bitter way that slices the air, quiet and wanting to be lethal. "I won't ask. Because you never say it out loud. Never say anything out loud."

Eve's quiet is a dull knife. Eve's inaction is a dagger dulled. Tactics that don't hold any weight but tactics that she has gotten used to wielding. Doesn't know how to do the opposite. She stares, lets her tongue collect words that are forming, when Villanelle speaks.

"Don't act like you're all... catatonic... because I got shot." Villanelle chides. "Don't you understand that I get it now, Eve? You would have been happy if I died. It would have saved you the guilt — "

And the lover left speaks in truth, because there is no other way to speak, and the lover left who speaks is not Villanelle this time, but the other one.

"If you died, I would have killed myself."

Villanelle's body goes still. Stays still even when Villanelle slowly lets her head loll to look at her. Levels her stare, and Eve loves the way Villanelle's eyes burn even when she can barely see them. Burn in mirage. Burn in dark rooms, even when Villanelle is not there. She stares. 

Eve raises an eyebrow.

"You think I'm lying? I don't care. If you died, I would have killed myself."

She can tell Villanelle's throat goes thick. Can tell by the way she looks like she's swallowing molasses, the way her teeth clench; threaten to knot her jaw.

Villanelle's voice is low, "Stop."

Eve watches as Villanelle stares back at the ceiling.

As Villanelle silently begs that the darkness of the room can serve as veil. That not every veil exists to be pulled back.

"This is not the part where get to start saying your sorries, Eve, or wash your hands clean — "

And Eve whispers — yells in that medium. Never saying it out loud, but always yelling when she does. Never soft, always loud.

"I already said it!"

And Villanelle narrows her eyes, turns to look at her.

In the silver light, Eve watches as she forms her mouth into a tight smile. All teeth, all taunt, Cheshire-in-the-tree.

"Don't tell you made me confessions to me when I was unconscious. So cliche."

"I didn't," Eve barks.

"When, then?"

And Eve is half-standing, and balling her fists, when she shouts, "When I came back!"

And Villanelle's eyes go hazy. Like they can't decide if they want to widen or close.

She looks up at Eve, with hair splayed around her frizzy and clean, and she doesn't say a word.

"I came back," Eve chokes. Whispers. Cries — tries not to.

And isn't how that Villanelle and Eve say sorry to each other?

Never out loud. By coming back, staying, and leaving but never for long.

Now, perhaps, never leaving at all. 

Cupid has splintered the hearts of many lovers. Nobody quite like Eve and Villanelle.

Villanelle blinks.

Turns onto her side.

Goes back to sleep.

Eve and Villanelle wake up to the sound of Konstantin bringing breakfast in. He rolls in a cart with pancakes, blueberries, eggs, coffee.

When the smell hits Eve's nose, her stomach lurches.

She hasn't eaten in two days. She didn't realize. Body and mind and stomach — disconnected. Eve, barely sewn together, speaking to Angels, hunger a far-gone experience, watching Villanelle, only Villanelle. She sits up. 

"Good morning," he says, suspiciously. Looks between Eve and Villanelle. 

And to Eve's surprise, Villanelle immediately says, "Leave."

He gives that loud hyuck. Lets his hand falls to his side. Looks between her and the pancakes.

"What?"

"Leave the food and leave."

"Villanelle — "

"I'm serious," she eyes him.

He gives Eve an inquisitive look. She shrugs.

"What — " Konstantin flails, like a man, who produces that overgrown-child charm. Like a man who convinces the world he isn't capable of terrible things. Adopting daughters. Slaughtering their sanity. Slaughtering them, in the process. "Why does she get to stay?"

And Eve stills as she waits for an answer from Villanelle that doesn't come. 

"Fine. Only if Eve walks me out."

Eve narrows her eyes. Looks between Villanelle and him. Eve doesn't move.

Villanelle rolls her eyes. "Go, Eve. He is a child. He won't leave until you do."

Eve stands, slowly.

"Wait. Push the food over here."

Eve grabs ahold of the cart and arranges it by Villanelle's bedside. The energy in the room is tense, muggy with the arrows of disdain — nobody knowing where to point them. Eve fills a mug with coffee, eyes a Villanelle who doesn't look at her, and leaves to walk Konstantin out of the room. 

In the lobby of the Hotel, Eve has to shield her eyes from the direct sunlight that pours through the windows.

Konstantin looks at her with a twisted face, rubs his beard.

"Eve. Do not take this the wrong way... but you smell like shit."

Eve sips her coffee. Walks slowly alongside him. Doesn't waste words. 

"Okay, uh." She watches as he rubs the back of his neck. "What is going on here?"

Eve hums, "Where is Pam?"

"What?"

"Pam. Where is she?"

"At the pier." Konstantin sighs. Buries his hands into his pockets. "Why are you here, Eve?"

"Why are you here?"

"Because she needs me. Because I love — "

"Don't."

Konstantin's eyes go wide.

"Don't say you Love her, Konstantin. Even if you do. You kill everything you Love."

Scenes of a young man in black and white run through Eve's head. Images of an obscured spy who will fall in love with a woman, kill her father in the process, kill her son later. Fuck her daughter, later. Under different circumstances, Eve would kill him right now. But her head hurts, and the sun in the lobby is too strong, and her body is psychically attuned to the fact that she should be three floors up. Phyiscality begging for Villanelle. She doesn't have control over this.

Konstantin growls under his breath. Whispers in Russian that Eve can't understand.

"Is that why you're here, hm? Because you Love her?" Konstantin's face goes a little red. "Can't I say the same thing about you, hm? I'll be surprised if you live through the week given how Helene is looking for you. You will die, and so will she."

He urges fear. Eve doesn't feel it. Sips her coffee. Opens the door, and lets him go first. 

The Cuban air is uncomfortable against her skin. Too humid. Too fresh. Eve holds her coffee with two hands as she leads Konstantin down the steps. He is radiating a frustration that has an expiration date. She wonders what will happen when it does — expire. Doesn't care much.

"So," his face is red, he holds his hands out as his side, "Is that what you think it is now? Love?"

And Eve speaks in truths to Villanelle, and she speaks in code to Konstantin. To everybody else.

"Sure." 

"Sure?"

"Sure. Whatever you want to call it. I don't care."

Konstantin rubs his hands over his face. Clenches his teeth.

His eyes are red, all of him red, and Eve wants to ask why he's been losing sleep. She wonders if he envies her. 

"You aren't cut out for it, Eve. Nobody is. Not people like us. You may think that you love her or that you can take care of her and find a moral high ground where you convince yourself that you suddenly care about being better but Love is a trick — "

Eve barks a laugh. She has to cover her mouth to stifle a string of them.

His eyes bulge, "What?"

"I don't want to be better. What are you talking about?"

"Believe it or not, Eve, I have been in Love before. I know that you think you can suddenly learn to care about all of these things bigger than yourself — "

Eve narrows her eyes.

Above them, seagulls scream and squawk. She smells meat burning in the distance.

She could pass out, right here, if she didn't have a Hotel room to return to. 

"I don't." She states, blankly. "I don't care."

Konstantin stares at her. "About what?"

"Anything. I don't care. About what happens to you, or Carolyn, or the world, really. Seriously, I don't." Eve laughs. Her shoulders shake with the movement. "The World can burn for all I care. 

Konstantin lowers his head. Stares at her with those husky-blue eyes. Tries to find an in.

"If you don't care — "

And Eve is tired. Spent. So, she says it.

"I don't care about anything." Eve nods towards the hotel, "Just her."

A shadow falls over them. Eve figures it's a cloud.

But when she observes the way it casts itself on the sidewalk, she notices the slight movement of wings. Legs. Hands. She doesn't look.

Konstantin laughs. Tries to catch her off guard.

"You are trying too hard to be cold. You really think I believe that it's just — "

"It's just her." Eve nods. Lowers the coffee mug. "Yes."

Konstantin gapes at her. She looks over his shoulder.

"Anything else?"

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Restarts. "If you don't care, you will die, Eve. You both will die."

Eve nods. "Okay."

And Konstantin doesn't speak, nor move, nor blink.

Eve turns around, walks away, walks back.

In the hotel room, dust is collecting. The air is stale. Eve opens a window, lets some salt-air in. Villanelle has speared a pancake with her fork, eating it bite by bite. There are some old Jeopardy episodes playing on the fuzzy TV, but Eve feels Villanelle's eyes on her back. She turns around.

Villanelle chews, holds her gaze. Opens a full mouth to ask, "What did he say?"

"Oh. Just that we're both going to die," Eve says, casually, as she lowers herself into the chair.

Villanelle stares at her profile. On the TV, Alex Trebek's voice rings out:

This Roman God is casually referred to as Cupid, though it is not his formal name

Eve rolls her eyes. "Who is Eros?"

Alex Trebek echoes, "And the correct answer is Who is Eros."

Villanelle stops chewing. Looks at Eve like like something less than human, more than. Devoid of sanity. Inability to be understood.

ve looks at her, looks at the plate of pancakes, holds out her hand. "Here."

Villanelle doesn't move. Just watches as Eve cuts her pancakes into pieces. No noise besides the TV and the clank of silverware against ceramic.

As her knuckle falls into the syrup, Eve notices some soil still under her fingertips.

The next couple days continue like that. Eve opens the windows in the morning. Villanelle watches old re-runs. Eve sits in the chair. Sleeps in the chair. Villanelle sleeps in the bed. When she is not sleeping, she watches Eve like a subtle hawk. Like she's counting the minutes it'll take her to leave. It's becoming clear to Eve that Villanelle doesn't know what to do with the amount of time. They've never been in a room together this long. 

Villanelle doesn't let Eve redress her wound.

Eve picks at her fingernails to keep from fixing the way one corner of the gauze hangs from Villanelle's skin.

They don't talk that much.

Until Villanelle, in the low-evening light, when the sun has just begin to set, finally asks: "What happened to you?"

Eve eyes her from the chair. Rubs an eraser against the Crossword that she got wrong. "Which time?"

"Why are you here?"

"You haven't asked me to leave."

And Villanelle's body moves with a capability that she hasn't been able to access in days when she picks the water glass from the nightstand and throws it at the wall over Eve's head. Eve flinches, turns to watch the water drip against the drywall, lets her eyes fall on the broken pieces on the ground.

When Eve looks back to her, she notices Villanelle's fists balled in the fabric of the sheets. The sting of her eyes. The desperation of her jaw. Biting back tears. 

"This is why I don't ask you things, Eve. You never say it out loud. You are such a coward," she laughs, blinks back tears, and laughs again.

Eve is acutely aware of the way Villanelle sucks air through her nose to keep the snot from dripping down. 

Eve flinches when she hears a sound clank against the window.

She looks just in time to see an arrow hit the glass. It bends the glass, but does not break it. In that way that glass is incapable of.

"Did you see that?" Eve asks.

"Fuck you."

And Eve watches as Villanelle picks up her pain pills, pours a couple into her hand, and swallows them. She closes her eyes for a long time.

Eve notices the wetness of her lash line. 

And so, because there is never a time that is appropriate to begin when you are doomed, and when you are always Too Late, when Love is never enough, and it is never about sex, even when it is, Eve begins. 

"I stole your pain pills. I bought a bottle of Stoli. I went down to a park — some park near here. I tried to drink myself to death. I didn't. I talked to an angel. I came back."

Villanelle opens her eyes, very slowly. And when she looks at Eve, it is the fixed look of somebody who wants to poke a finger in the wound, to say:

Wow. You're more insane than me.

But she isn't. There is not one more insane than the other. So, instead, Villanelle asks:

"Why didn't you?" She leans back. Adjusts against the pillows. "Kill yourself, I mean?"

"I'm bad at it."

Villanelle tightens her jaw. Eve knows she wants to smile. 

"I know."

"What angel did you talk to?"

"Cupid." 

Villanelle blinks. Eve never says it out loud. This is sacrifice. She'll do it. Again and again. 

"What did he say?"

"That we're doomed, more or less. That I am shameful in Love. That I dissociate from Love."

Villanelle flinches like a jerked rabbit. A gun suddenly in her face when she thought she was just crossing the meadow.

Because Eve never mentions these things. Never says Love. 

The time that fills between them is quiet. TV turned off, windows closed. Just stale air and nobody knowing what comes next.

Never knowing what comes next. 

Villanelle finally whispers, croaks, "Are you?"

"What?"

"Shameful."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

More silence. No more questions about angels or what Oxycodone does when you mix it with alcohol. Eve expected more. Villanelle, always so curious about Eve, so curious that it takes nine lives, but Villanelle doesn't talk for a long time. Just stares at Eve, then the wall, then the ceiling. Eve follows the float of her pupils and notices the insecurity of her physicality. Villanelle doesn't know where to look. Doesn't know what comes next. 

But when Villanelle finally cracks her lips to speak, it is it not to waste time. It is to ask:

"Why'd you come back?"

Eve holds her eyes. "Because you hadn't died yet."

"And if I did?"

"Then I'd kill myself. I told you."

"Why?"

"Because it wouldn't matter anymore."

"What?"

"This."

"Why?"

"You know why."

And Villanelle's neck veins strain, and she tenses her jaw tight enough that Eve imagines what enamel looks like when it disintegrates, and she only warns with one word when says, 

"Eve."

And Eve masters stillness. Sits like she did with Martin in session a few years back. The level of desperation is similar — but different. She lets her body ache with sobriety, lets her body kill itself over truth. Because she says it out loud. Because she breaks their rules. Because she doesn't know what rules are left.

If they are even capable of playing them. 

"Because I can only kill myself, or be killed, and it's clear that if I am killed, it won't be by you. You don't have it in you anymore." Eve gives her a tight smile. Villanelle winces. Eve squeezes the eraser between her thumb and pointer finger. "It's fine. Me either. So really, I can only kill myself, or be killed, or come back, and I will only come back if it's to come to you. I don't give a shit otherwise. Doesn't matter. Nothing does. Just this. I don't care anymore, Villanelle. I really don't."

Matter-of-fact. No romance. Chewing on words like foreign things in her mouth, slicing her tongue, dressing up the character she never plays. Psyche's voice, clawing its way out, and reducing Eve to confessions, guiding her into the cave. 

Villanelle's lips part only slightly.

Eve prods, "I thought you wanted to hear this?"

Villanelle swallows. Eve moves to sit on the bed. 

"You want to hear me say I love you, right?" Eve swallows. Lets words slice her tongue. Unnatural in her mouth. "I do. I love you."

Villanelle's inhale is sharp. So quiet. Full of pain and arrow and bleeding hearts. Villanelle won't look at Eve. Eve will only look at Villanelle.

"I don't know what means for us. I really don't. All I know is that it started with you. It has to end with you — otherwise, I don't care. You and me at the end. I don't know what that means for us, or if we'll make it, but we probably won't. So yes, Villanelle. I love you. That probably means we'll die. I don't care." 

Eve hands shake. Whole-body. She hides it very well. Stays very still. Belly-twitching, and eyes going filmy, and there's no control over any of it because this is what it is to surrender. Villanelle's lips remain parted, and she hides her eyes as she looks at the wrinkles in the sheets. Psyche was very still when she surrendered sleep, instead of beauty, and she didn't move until Cupid found her. 

Villanelle eyes are wide and wet as she stares at the bed. Doesn't look at Eve when she says,

"Leave. Please."

And Eve doesn't move.

"Eve," she chokes. And Eve cuts herself on the word. Full of desperation and totality. Villanelle turns it into command, "Leave. Come back later. I don't care. Right now, leave."

And Eve does it slowly, so slowly that the bed doesn't dip, and Villanelle winces, but she does. Leave.

The sky is less orange and more black when he finally shows up. Eve has been wandering the pavement for hours. Thought about buying a bottle. Didn't. Experiences this pain soberly. And the fact that she is sober and well-slept and fed means that she should question her sanity when Cupid falls in step with her. Him, hovering. Her, walking. She doesn't question. She doesn't care. 

"You did it. You didn't think you could speak such words." He coos, in reverb. "How do you feel?"

"Like shit."

"It tends to feel like that."

And Eve turns on her heel, and grabs him by the throat, and in the middle of Cuba when it's early enough for the kids to not have been called back for dinner, Eve pins Cupid to a wall and threatens to cut him open. 

"You're a hypocrite. I know your story. You pricked your own fucking finger. You made a mistake. You did it to yourself, you piece of shit." Eve spits, and Cupid's mouth is not amused nor disappointed, his lips lay straight as an arrow. "I didn't ask for this."

Cupid tilts his head, "Nobody does."

Eve thrusts him against brick. Wonders what Cupid's head looks like when it cracks open.

"It was an accident. It didn't change the outcome." His Adam's apple bobs against her palm. "It was an accident that I fell in love. Yet, I still suffered. I suffered because I chose her. I still suffer."

And Eve thrusts him harder this time. The ringlets of his hair flail with the movement. 

"You will always suffer. Then," he coughs, "you will die. It is up to you the order in which you want to do those things. You have a choice. Your violence means very little to me though, Eve. I already know what you will choose."

"What?" She screams. "Tell me, then."

"It is not appropriate for Gods to tell humans of their fate."

"You decided mine!" Eve screams. Cries. Holds his throat with both hands now. 

"No," he smiles. Whispers. "I didn't."

And Eve squeezes just a little bit harder, content to kill the God of Love with both hands. But she won't be content, because Eve is never content, so she lets go. A winged thing falls to the ground in Cuba, falls to his knees. But when Eve looks up, she sees no such thing.

She just finds herself, shins to cement, and suffering — children gather to watch. 

Eve does not play the role of spectacle. Eve does not suffer for an audience, but Eve does — suffer.

And because she is suffering, and will always suffer, and chooses to suffer, Eve stands up and turns around. 

When Eve gets back to the hotel room, the air is hushed. The breeze is silent, for once, as it makes the curtains dance. The TV is off and the moonlight provides dull visibility. Eve can make out Villanelle's form on the bed. Turned on her side. Sleeping, or pretending to sleep. 

Eve lowers herself into the chair. It creaks quietly. Villanelle's breathing goes more still, too still, and this is how Eve knows she's pretending to sleep. She watches as Villanelle's side begins to move with slow breaths. Too timed, too conspicuous. Eve allows her this mistake. 

An hour passes, or maybe two, or maybe five minutes, when Villanelle doesn't turn around to look at her, but whispers without emotion, to the wall:

"You can sleep in the bed, Eve." 

The words inspire stillness. Eve doesn't move for moments. And when she finally does, she does like somebody wading through quicksand. Feet too slow, body far away, untucking the covers, lowering her body into a bath full of blood, and tucking herself in. She allows Villanelle her back at first. Lets moments pass. Doesn't notice Villanelle's breathing change. And when she moves, so slowly and so quietly, to turn around, she finds Villanelle staring at her with open eyes. 

And before Eve can say anything, disrupt the quiet, Villanelle's mouth is stern and quiet.

"Turn around."

Eve shuts her eyes tight. Bites her tongue. Tenses her jaw. Turns around.

She finds herself in the same position as before, staring at a wall, knowing that sleep will not come, but the bed dips.

Whether there was absence, a Void, Villanelle fills it.

Pushes herself into Eve too swiftly to be considered casual, snakes an arm around her waist too quick to be romantic, and buries her face into her hair without shame or remorse. Eve's mouth falls open as Villanelle's nose runs the length of her neck, as Villanelle's whisper is one of disbelief and shatter, "God, Eve." 

Eve closes her eyes. Is about to let herself fall back into Villanelle's arms when Villanelle asks,

"What do you smell like?"

And Eve rolls her eyes. Exhales through her nose. "You."

Villanelle hand stills on her hip. She doesn't remove her jaw from Eve's hair, but she doesn't push in further.

Villanelle's whisper is amused, "You really did that?" 

"You thought I wouldn't?"

A beat. Maybe two. 

"I did not think you would come back."

And it's Eve who turns around this time. Who meets Villanelle's eyes in the silver light of the room. Who prods her shoulder gently, coaxes her to lay back, and it is Eve who is tentative. Waits, until Villanelle's eyes goes half-lidded and she stares at Eve's mouth, and only then, does she lean down. Envelopes Villanelle's mouth with the entirety of her own and tastes her with her tongue. Villanelle's breath goes sharp, then still, then becomes nothing more than a whimper.

She reaches to knot her hands in Eve's hair, pulls her closer, like she could pull Eve into her, like she could coax Eve to be the arrow that splinters her heart, like they could pass through one another. Eve allows her the delusion, because Eve doesn't know the difference between reality and fiction, or monsters and angels, but she does know that she wants to watch Villanelle surrender. She breaks away, and Villanelle chases her mouth. Eve clears her throat.

"Turn on the light."

Villanelle raises an eyebrow.

"I want to see you."

If raising her arm to turn on the bedside lamp pains her, Villanelle doesn't show it.

Eve is aware of the hole in Villanelle's back, and the hole in her chest, and Eve is aware of her ability to wait to fill these things. It isn't until the light flicks on, and Eve finally gets to see Villanelle's eyes — black, spasm'd with something that outlies the boundaries of want and need — that Eve lets her hand move. She doesn't lean down to kiss Villanelle again. She lets her hand trail the low part of her belly, waits for the skin to bump and rise to meet her, and then moves further. Villanelle buries her nose into the crook of Eve's neck, only manages to undo the first few buttons of Eve's shirt with desperate fingers. 

"Eve," she chokes. Licks at the rust of her skin.

And Eve knows that Villanelle loves that she's all over Eve, long before Eve has touched her wetness, that this is probably what got her wet in the first place. Eve thumbs the elastic of her waistband. Pulls the fabric down, away, half-way down her legs — just enough. Villanelle stills in her arms. Eve lets that stillness linger. Treats anticipation like a disease, and waits, waits until it infects Villanelle enough to throw her head back, to grab Eve's wrist, to buck into Eve's palm. 

And Villanelle wastes no time in doing so. So greedy, so shameless. Eve gasps when she touches her. Villanelle is hot to the touch under Eve's palm, hot enough to force Eve's lips apart, to still her hand, until Villanelle bucks again, and Eve moves her fingers in slow circles. 

"Eve," Villanelle's voice is barely audible, muttered through teeth against skin. She pushes her cheek against Eve's collarbone. Watches Eve's hand.

Watches Eve's eyes, mouth, face. 

"Kiss me," Villanelle demands. She does not plead. She does not wait. Uses her fingers to tilt Eve's jaw down and let herself in. And Eve surrenders, indulges, until her own greed wins out. When she feels Villanelle's thigh tremble,  when she feels Villanelle go tight — too tight, she pulls away. 

Villanelle's head falls against the pillow. Lips bruised and open. Eyes half-shut, just open-enough to let Eve see. And Eve does see. A lover burned by light, balling her fists into sheets, and crying out in the same way hot oil spills:

"Eve!"

Villanelle trembles under her hand. Eve shows mercy, lets her palm travel up, linger under Villanelle's waistband.

Villanelle never closed her eyes. Let Eve watch the whole thing. Surrendered, or sacrificed, even when her body begged her for reprieve. 

Villanelle's hand is fast, but Eve catches her wrist. 

"You're hurt."

Villanelle levels her stare. "I don't care."

But Eve's eyes fall over her shoulder, watches where the sheets have caught fresh blood behind Villanelle's back, and she shakes her head slowly. "No."

Villanelle's mouth shuts. She raises an eyebrow. Leans back.

"Fine." She nods. "Touch yourself. I'll watch."

And if Eve is shameful in love, she is not shameful in sex. And this — well, it's barely about sex. She lowers herself onto her back. Spreads her thighs. Watches as Villanelle cranes her neck to lean into her shoulder, to hide her mouth in her hair. Doesn't stay there for long. When Eve's fingers dip below her the fabric of her waistband, Villanelle's fingers coax Eve's jaw towards her. "Look at me," she whispers. "Look at me."

And Eve does. Lets Villanelle watch as her brows knit, as her mouth falls open, and she doesn't close her eyes so Villanelle can watch her pupils expand, and explode, and shake. Because this isn't about sex. 

It's about surrender. It is surrender that reduces Villanelle's breath to long inhales, slow exhales. It it is surrender that cranes Eve's neck back and lets Villanelle bite at the underside of her jaw. It is surrender that makes Villanelle not good on her word and it surrender that doesn't allow Eve to chastise Villanelle when she pulls Eve's fingers away to replace them with her own. 

Less about sex, more about surrender. Surrender that draws low pants from Eve's mouth like blood, draws Eve's thighs together to trap Villanelle's hand, draws Eve's words out of like fuck, Villanelle, Vill — draws Villanelle's lips to her own to swallow her own name, draws oil out of the lamp until they are both burned, and branded, and doomed. When Eve's body shakes, Villanelle lets her face fall to her chest. Whispers. Repeats.

"I didn't think you'd come back."

Eve closes her eyes. Lets her head fall back. Speaks in whispered pants, "I told you I'd — "

"I know." Villanelle interrupts her, "I thought you'd kill yourself."

When morning comes, and light falls on them in a way that is not different from the way it falls upon monsters, or angels, Eve coaxes Villanelle onto her stomach. Eve redresses her bandage. Feeds her ambrosia. Eve kisses the nape of her neck. Makes no promise of immortality, or care for it. Eve trails her fingers down her spine. Surrenders to suffering. Lives if only to die. 

Villanelle lets her cheek fall upon the cushion. Glances up at Eve from her periphery,

"I want to hear more about the angel."

The room is a bubble waiting to be popped. A bubble where time becomes a possibility, where weight looms, where one could say:

There is so much to talk about. Where do we start?

"Later," Eve runs her hands through her hair. "They'll be here soon."

When Konstantin and Pam open the door, Eve is leaned back on her hands on the bed. Villanelle is draped over her legs, cheek on Eve's thigh, as she watches them enter. They wait until the door clicks into place, until Pam and Konstantin are stood before them with wide eyes. This is when they draw their guns.

Villanelle's on the mid-point between Pam's eyes, Eve's on Konstantin's heart.

Pam reaches behind her. Villanelle sighs, clicks off the safety. Finger on trigger. Pam stills.

"Please do not make this hard for me. I am still recovering."

Eve smiles. Stares at Konstantin. "It's time to go visit Helene, don't you think?"

Konstantin holds his hands up. Smiles. Hyucks.

"You are both going to die."

And Villanelle looks up at Eve, and Eve looks down at Villanelle. They smile. 

In a crowded car, one which Konstantin drives, with Villanelle pointing a gun at his temple, and Pam is crammed into the back seat, with hands bound, and Eve holding a gun to her neck, Eve notices a fluttering movement outside of her window.

Wings too large. Smile too gentle.

Eve waves at Cupid. Cupid waves at Eve. 

When Cupid returns to Olympus, Psyche is waiting for him. Oil lamp burning on the bedside. She holds out a hand.

He settles into her lap. She rubs at his temple.

"They are together, then?"

Cupid hums. "Yes."

Psyche gives a quiet laugh. "Do they know they're going to die?"

And Cupid lets his gaze fall on the scarred tissue of his stomach, traces it with fingers, until Psyche begins to trace it with her own.

"I'm sure they do."

Cupid has splintered the hearts of many lovers. He has never seen splintered hearts quite like Eve and Villanelle.