Today's submission comes from franztastisch, who has this to say:


Um. Ok so this was one of those things where you have an idea and you try and write it down and then half way through your brain flails and you get super stuck and you sit staring at your word doc going ffs. I mean, even this has bits in it that need changing and shit.

Basically, it was a "Clint used to be a bird" type story, because I had this idea about flying and the stuff he would miss.

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“Clint…”

He looked up from his notebook. They were doing surveillance, watching a town house in Paris which was conveniently located opposite a cheerful café with hand painted signs and a red and white striped awning. It was one of the more pleasant missions they’d been on together, and their cover story of a struggling author (him) and a student revising for exams (her – she was learning Arabic) worked wonderfully given the setting. Though it had to be said, she had drunk more coffee recently that was probably healthy, and it had apparently given her caffeine-induced courage to broach subjects in public that shouldn’t be brought up in private, if at all.

“I – you.” She was never this inarticulate, but she forced it out under her breath; “Вы когда-то были ястреба.” (You were once a hawk)


The only noticeable change that came of over the man who was once a hawk was a tightening of his fingers around his pen.


“Я взломал систему.” (I hacked the system)


He tilted his head to the side. It was such a birdlike movement she suddenly felt incredibly guilty.


“Вы доверили мне.” (You trusted me) Because he did. He always had and she didn’t know why. “Мне очень жаль.” (I’m sorry)


His eyes flicked over her face.


“Когда?” (When?)


“В феврале прошлого года.” (Last February.) It was over a year ago now. [change]


There was silence as he continued to look at her, and she fought to not shift under his gaze. Then he simply looked back down to his page.


“I still trust you,” was all he said.


She was momentarily rendered completely speechless. Why? Why did he trust her after that? Why did he trust her anyway? She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, thankful that he was looking back at his notepad so as not to see her so utterly at sea, before choking out a “why?”


He looked back up at her, a small smile on his lips which make her breath stutter for a moment.


“Because you didn’t tell anyone. And you’re still here.”


_


It took her two more days of alternating between scanning the building opposite and learning Arabic in, a bizarrely comfortable, silence with him before she managed to ask her other question; a question she had asked him on and off for the past year and a bit. A question she’d never got a satisfactory answer to.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

The man who had once been a hawk looked at her.

“Come on, you’ve never given me a proper reason.”

He shrugged, turning back to his notepad. “I could see you were also once something else.”

She laughed. She’d never been anything other than what she was now.

“Oh yeah, and what was that?”

He looked at her, unflinching and direct. “You had once been a little girl,” he said. “Before you were this, you were a little girl.”