Chapter Text
The room is dead quiet when it happens.
Eva is semi-conscious, half sitting and half laying in her portion of the bed, the book she had been reading discarded in her lap. Weak light spilled in from a lamppost outside and she floated in that brain-static drenched space where the subconscious starts to bleed into reality, creating a chimera of awareness.
Simon jolts upright in the bed.
A ragged, choked sound tears out of his throat, caught between a call for help and something Eva is not privy to. His breathing is sharp and uneven, chest heaving, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. In the soft orange light of the room, his eyes are wide, too lost to be pulled out by the simple act of waking up.
Eva freezes for half a second, which is a fraction of the time it took her the last time it happened. She boots her brain up fast enough to remember what he told her to do.
“Oi,” she says quietly. Not moving toward him. Not reaching out. Just breaking the silence before he drowns in it. “It’s alright. Simon. You need to breathe.”
It takes him a long moment to drag in a full breath.
His hand is fisted in the sheet, knuckles white. She can see the way he’s clenching his jaw like it’ll hold something back if he just grits hard enough.
“I said your name,” she offers, voice low. “Didn’t wanna grab you. You said not to.”
That seems to reach him. His shoulders ease a fraction. He scrubs a hand over his bare face, like he’s trying to erase whatever’s left of the dream. Somewhere along the way, he stopped having an issue with Eva seeing his face because his reason for wearing it had shattered the second he realized he wouldn’t be returning to active duty. After the torture he’d endured, he considered Simon Riley a dead man, in his skin lived the ghost that raided Manuel Roba’s manor and killed him in the process, the ghost that could survive what Simon couldn’t.
Being thrown back into civilian life felt like having to pick up the pieces of Simon Riley. Said pieces had been grinded into a fine dust by the steady fall of combat boots for years, they were the grime Ghost wiped off the barrel when he cleaned his rifle and now, they were the ashes of a soldier no one had bothered to scatter because he wasn’t dead, he was discharged and in many ways that was a harsher sentence.
Good luck putting that back together.
“Thanks,” he mutters hoarsely.
Eva shifts in bed, pulling her knees up to her chest. “You…wanna talk about it?”
A long, loaded pause.
Simon lets out a bitter noise. “Not much to say. Same shit, different night.”
“Yeah?” she asks. “What about?”
He doesn’t answer for so long she thinks he won’t at all. Then:
“Whole squad,” he says quietly. “Ambush. One minute we’re taking the piss outta each other over breakfast rations, next minute everything’s burning. That fuckin’ death smell, mix of burning flesh and…a sick kinda sweet.”
Eva listens. Doesn’t interrupt.
“Lost a good mate that day. Guy I’d known since basic. Thought he was bulletproof.” Simon laughs, there is not a trace of humor in it. “He wasn’t.”
Eva’s throat tightens. She doesn’t have stories like that but she knows what it’s like to lose someone and still catch yourself looking for them in crowded places years later.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and it’s not a deflection or the inherently demeaning kind of pity. She sincerely means it.
Simon glances over at her, something wary and naked in his face. “You don’t have to be. Wasn’t your bullet.”
“No, but… people like us,” she shrugs, “we don’t get to carry a lot. When we do, it’s heavier than it should be.”
He studies her for a moment. “You sound like you’ve been running a long time.”
She gives him a crooked smile, not quite able to meet his gaze. It was a worse mask than his balaclava “Maybe. Haven’t sat with anyone long enough to for them notice.”
“That why you keep moving?”
“Part of it,” she admits, voice soft. “Other part is… if you move like you got a purpose, you don’t have to admit you’re lost.”
They fall into a thick silence after that, but it’s different than before. Not sharp, not awkward. Just… full.
After a while, Simon is the one to break it.
“If it happens again,” he says, voice rough with sleep and memory, “don’t just say my name. Turn on a light. Something loud. Music, if you have to. I don’t always wake up easy.”
Eva swallows. That unsettles her more than the nightmare itself, his quiet expectation that she’ll still be there when it happens again. That she might want to be.
“Yeah,” she says, casual. Too quick. “Sure.”
But it sinks in anyway. The idea of staying. Seeing what happens if she does.
She tugs the blanket up from the foot of the bed, dragging it toward herself with the same unconscious possessiveness Simon had come to expect from the blanket hoarder that is Eva. He notices, of course he does, but says nothing, only shifts slightly to allow her to steal more. She settles close enough to share warmth, far enough to pretend this is normal. Platonic. Safe.
“I’m not good at this either,” she admits into the dark.
Simon gives a tired grin. Welcome to the fucking club.”
For the first time in days, maybe weeks, sleep takes them both. Not whole nor clean but for an entire night.
Morning comes slow, grey and beautifully devoid of rain. A fine mist clings to the hills like a memory.
Simon wakes to the faint noise of commotion. Once his brain has woken up enough to differentiate reality from whatever is currently wreaking havoc on his subconscious, he notices the absence of a warm body next to him.
Eva’s already up, tugging on boots by the door, hair tied up in a surprisingly neat bun. She catches him watching her and smiles.
“Rise and shine, soldier boy. We’re going into the city.” Being up earlier than a soldier was an achievement not many can pride themselves on.
Simon grunts, rubbing a hand over his face, the other was taken off and on the nightstand. “Why.”
“Because,” she says, grabbing her jacket and duffel. “I wanna see the damn place. Got this far, might as well.”
She’s halfway out the door before he even manages to get his boots on.
They drive into Edinburgh with the heater cranked as high as it’ll go and Eva hums along to some ancient punk song on the radio. The city rises ahead of them, all crooked streets and towering stone, chimneys stabbing the sky like blunt knives. It looks old and haunted in a way Simon can’t decide if he respects or resents. He himself is old and haunted and he doesn’t like that very much either.
They find a place to park near the Grassmarket and Eva practically bounces out of the car.
“I’m getting coffee,” she announces. “Real coffee. Gone are the days of that black and unsweetened disappointment.”
Simon follows without complaint. He might grumble about it, but deep down, he knows the score. When Eva wants something, she gets it and honestly? He’s starting to accept that.
The café’s small and tucked between a bookshop and a store selling questionable tourist tat. The old walls leaned in like they’re eavesdropping. Inside, it’s warm and smells like sugar and espresso. Eva orders something entirely ridiculous, a double-shot vanilla latte with oat milk plus a cinnamon raisin bagel absolutely drowned in cream cheese.
Simon settles for a black coffee.
They sit by the window, and for a while, it’s just the scrape of cutlery and the low murmur of other people’s conversations, the quiet comfort of anonymity and people-watching.
When Eva takes her first sip she actually sighs.
“Holy shit,” she says, hand hitting the table softly in emphasis, a little smile tugging at her mouth.
Simon watches her, amused in spite of himself. There’s something ridiculous and disarming about it. The way she can be so sharp-edged one minute and then genuinely, almost stupidly delighted by an over-sweetened coffee the next.
“You’re easy to please,” he mutters.
“Oi. You’re bitter because your coffee tastes like regret.”
He smiles, Eva knows because his eyes crinkle at the corners, takes a sip, and lets the warmth bleed through him. The café’s a small, safe kind of quiet. For a minute, it feels like they could be normal people. Travelers passing through. No ghosts. No runners.
He almost relaxes into it but catches himself quickly enough to remain on guard.
They head up to the castle after.
Eva practically drags him along, weaving through streets she shouldn’t know this well. And then the real horror starts.
She knows everything.
Points out old plaques and half-crumbling statues, rattling off bits of trivia like she’s been doing nothing but stockpiling them for years. Tells him about the siege tunnels, the old royal vaults, the one cannon that blew a guy’s hand off in 1830-something.
“Did you know this place used to be a military garrison too?” she says, eyes gleaming at the sheer joy sharing information brought her. “Right up until the 1920s. You lot would’ve hated it. Shitty beds, cold food, terrible bagpipes.”
Simon stares at her, a creeping, visceral dread settling in.
She’s funny. She’s so weird. She knows things she shouldn’t, and for some reason against every sensible instinct he has, he likes her. The horror.
Not in some easy-going way. In the complicated, deeply embarrassing way where you realize you’ve started looking for their reaction to little things, wanting to know what they’ll say next and making an effort to prolong their joy. It makes him uneasy. Makes him feel exposed.
And because Eva’s Eva, she catches him watching her as she prattles on about 16th-century executions and cannons the size of small cars.
“What?” she smiles brightly, hands shoved deeply into her pockets to keep them warm and to prevent any over-excited gesturing.
Simon huffs a breath, shakes his head. “I’m horrified.”
“Yeah, you love it.”
Simon keeps himself from wondering how true that might be.
Eva insists on another coffee in the castle’s Redcoat café. It’s warm and thick with the atmosphere of excited tourists and their chatter. Continuing with her indulgence, she orders a cappuccino and a slice of carrot cake. Their drinks land on the table with a soft clatter, along with Simon’s plain, humble scone on a tiny plate like it’s done something wrong by existing.
Eva eyes it with clear, theatrical disgust as she tears into her cake.
“Fucking Brits.” she says, leaning back in her chair. “You want a tea too, mate? See the queen, perhaps?”
The grin on her face is sharp, teasing, irreverent and it hits Simon like an actual punch because it’s exactly the kind of shit Soap would’ve said.
Same tone. Same grin. Same stupid joke about tea and monarchy even after the queen had been dead a year, because it was about the wind-up, not the accuracy. The words drop between them, and for a split second, Simon forgets where he is.
He blinks. The ache creeps up behind his ribs before he can shove it down. He watches her for a second, the way she casually takes a sip of her coffee, pretending she hasn’t noticed the shift in the air. But she has. He knows she has.
“Where you from?” he asks, a little too sharp, a little too sudden. They had reached a point where he needed to know at least that because the memory of Soap struck a highly raw and unwelcome chord in him.
Eva pauses mid-bite, her grin flickering like an old lamp. It’s not the usual easy avoidance. Her eyes carry a hint of warning in them now.
“Told you. Here and there.” she says, like it’s nothing. “Europe. Couple places east of here. Moved around a lot during my time.”
“Yeah, that’s not a fucking answer.”
He leans in a little, voice just above a whisper but sharp enough to get the point across a few times over. “I’ve met people like you before, y’know. People who can turn it on and off, wear whatever voice the room wants to hear. Usually intel types. Or worse.”
“I’m not one of your army ghosts, mate,” she says, cool and even. “And what difference does it make?”
“It makes a difference because you’re sitting here sounding like my dead mate one minute and some posh Londoner the next, and I want to know what mask I’m talking to.”
The café’s hum of quiet conversation seems louder now and loses every bit of comfort, like other people might be listening. She sits back in her chair, crosses her arms.
Finally, she exhales hard through her nose, scrubbing a hand down her face, drops the pretense.
“I was born near Dresden,” she mutters, not quite meeting his eyes. “That’s East Germany, for your information. A bit after the wall came down.”
Simon blinks, taken aback, not at the answer, but at the fact she gave one at all.
“You don’t sound like it.”
“Yeah. Well. Turns out survival sounds like whatever it needs to.” She shrugs, the motion tight. “It’s not some grand fucking scheme, alright? It’s habit. I grew up knowing how to use languages and accents. I didn’t get it from fuckin’ spy school or wherever you think I’m from.
Simon leans back in his seat, watching her carefully. The armor she wears is a different make than his but it’s still armor.
Neither of them says anything for a long minute but eventually it’s Eva who breaks the silence.
“I didn’t mean to sound like your mate. Just came out. I get sloppy when I’m comfortable.”
Simon huffs a humorless little laugh. “Comfortable, huh?”
She flicks a wry glance at him, not amused but not mad either. “Don’t push it.”
Simon picks up his coffee, takes a sip.
“Dresden?” he says, like testing the word for weight.
Eva smiles faintly. “Told you. Here and there. Your pronunciation is horrendous, by the way.”
As they leave the café, the city is damp and grey yet beautiful around them, Simon keeps turning that word over in his head. Dresden. A fixed point in a story that otherwise feels like smoke in his hands. He should feel better having it. A birthplace, at least. A starting line but it bothers him instead because it doesn’t explain the rest of her.
It doesn’t explain why she knows the battle history of every ruin they pass, or the weight of every word in every accent she slips into, or how she reads a room like someone trained to notice exits, weak spots, tells.
He’s seen people like her before. People who could be anyone to anyone. Chameleons with a sharp eye for survival. She reminds him of spooks, the kind who sent people like him into impossible places with a smile and a contingency plan already drawn up.
And the worst part is he likes her. That’s what really rattles him. Somewhere between the cheap coffee, the stupid grin at the castle, and her wit sharp like a scalpel, she’d slipped under his skin. It makes him feel stupid and vulnerable, and angry. He wants to pin her down. Wants to force a story out of her, clean and linear with proper beginnings and ends. He wants to know what she’s running from and what she wants out of him because people don’t just cling to strangers on empty roads for no reason. Not ones like her and if they did, never this long.
And so, without thinking, he does.
“Alright,” he says, falling into step beside her, voice low. “Dresden. Fine. What else?”
Eva glances at him, wary now. “I told you what you wanted.”
“No. You gave me a word. I want the rest of the map.”
She huffs a humorless laugh. “And why’s it matter so much to you, Simon? Is this some soldier’s instinct? Can’t stand an unknown factor on your six?”
Simon doesn’t flinch. “Maybe I just don’t like getting played.”
“I’m not playing you.”
“The hell you’re not.”
Eva’s jaw tightens. “I don’t owe you my fucking life story.”
“No,” Simon says, quieter now. “But you owe me something. Because if you’re gonna sit in my car, sleep under the same roof, wake me out of nightmares you don’t ask about then I need to know who the hell I’ve let in.”
It’s not a threat. Not quite. But it lands heavy anyway and to his surprise, Eva doesn’t snap back. She just looks… tired.
“I’m not supposed to still be here but I am.” she mutters. “That’s the truth. That’s what you get.”
Simon watches her and something sharp eases in his chest and throat because he recognizes the seemingly empty response for the admission that lays below. 'I’ve spent years mapping exit routes, but your company feels like an anchor I don’t hate. Do you have any idea how terrifying that is?’. It’s not enough. But it’s honest and for now, it’ll have to do.