Chapter Text
Dancing, it feels so so stupid when it isn’t as lovely as it is now. What it would mean to dance and to feel the way they did before, together and at peace. Adler can almost feel it in the swinging motion and the uneasy steps they took together when they practiced in the safehouse. How his hand fit the slot of her hips so gently and perfectly, how she looked up at him so tenderly. Her actions spoke so much about her uncertainty as they practiced, afraid of mistepping and pinching his foot with her heel, but her gentle eyes saw him with such marvel. They shone lovingly in the safehouse lights, paired with a gentle smile he wished he could see so much more often.
Dancing, then, becomes so much more fun when you know what you’re doing. It is less of a measure of nervousness but more of this symbol of grace and tenacity. He watches her grow from her anxious steps and immature movements to a blooming, beautiful, and confident being who still looks to him as lovingly as she had the very first time they met.
The first time they met as Bell and Adler.
And she dances so gracefully with him and beside him in everything they do. When she fights for him, risks her life for him, all Adler can see is the flurry of the dress she wore that night and how she danced so sweetly with Hudson. How Adler longed to have been Hudson then. To dance with the woman of his creation. It was stupid to think he could have everything, Bell was meant to be a temporary solution to their Perseus operation, something that would be concluded shortly and as it disappeared, so should she. But watching her dance and smile as she spoke to Hudson, was taunting to the things he knew he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to do.
How Adler longed for some other ending, that somehow Perseus had gotten away and he could have more valuable time with his little lovely Bell. He remembered watching her, Woods, and Mason celebrating their win and how excited she was to rip all her gear off to show them the shirt they both got her for her birthday. Mason’s smile was contagious as they ruffled her hair and joked with her, everyone watching them lovingly take her into their corner of the pack.
He tried explaining that this was how it would be. That obedient dogs that are taught to kill just don’t become the sweetest honey badgers, that they stay what they were and instead it was his perception that robbed her of her own being. But when he turned to shoot her, those doe eyes stared down the barrel of his gun and a small ribbon wrapped shirt held certainly in her hands, as most things didn’t irk him. It didn’t stop him from finishing his job but it didn’t stop him from regretting what he’d done.
The blood seeping into the shirt that Woods and Mason had given her was daunting as her walked towards her, leaning down to see her pain riddled face as she gasped for air. Her hands grasped at the pain that bloomed across her chest and she looked to him with tears in her eyes. “A- Adler.” She called out as blood gurgled into her throat and she coughed again.
He gently placed her hand on hers and looked to her eyes, they were so scared and darting side to side. “You’re fine. You’re fine.” He whispered gently, trailing his hand down the side of her face. She cried, her body shaking as she shook her head, a mantra of “you didn’t, you didn’t mean it” as she covered the bullet wound from the cold Russian evening.
Adler sat beside her until her body stopped moving and the mantra died on her lips, lighting a cigarette and taking a slow drawl from it.