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“Excuse me, miss,” Irina turns, putting on a dazzling smile for the man trying for her attention.
“Yes?” She all but purrs. The man wasn’t all bad looking — anyone else and she would’ve swooned over him. A tick of recognition in his eyes pass by, and his mouth slowly curls into a smile as he stepped closer.
“Do you by any chance know where the director’s office is?”
Of course she does, so she bats her eyes and replies with; “Just down the hall… but if you need to know where a free room is later tonight…” she trails off, a hand brushing over over his shoulder, down to his chest. They’d stepped closer together, their bodies almost brushing each other.
“Well, I suppose I might need to find you later for directions,” the man murmurs, before stepping away again.
“I’ll see you later then,” Irina calls, straightening herself out before continuing her path. She smiles to herself, satisfied.
He’d be the perfect alibi for her.
….
True to her word, she catches up to him after her day’s worth of work. Surprisingly, whatever the man’s meeting was about took long enough that they’d met at the exit.
“Well, I think I need those directions right about now,” the man grins.
“Right this way, my good sir,” she smirks. He offers out his arm, and she takes it graciously with a, “What a gentleman.”
“You’re too kind, my fair lady,” he returns.
“Oh nonsense, fine monsieur.”
They continue like that, going back and forth, and Irina finds herself enjoying the evening despite her initial stance on it being solely business and not pleasure.
She leads him to a restaurant nearby, and he raises a brow back at her and she shrugs.
“I suppose I can’t say no to some food if it means a meal with a prächtige dame like yourself,” he chuckled warmly.
And it’s nice. The meal they shared and the conversation that flowed smoothly.
Irina never connected with any of her marks like this before — but then again, he’s not exactly a mark now is he? Just some guy she met on business and is using to further her professional goals.
Also known as getting away with murder.
He makes her feel almost human, in a way, like she hadn’t before. When all she needed was blood on her hands and her target’s dead bodies and her payment for her troubles.
She’d murdered a man for far less than money in her lifetime, and she would continue to do so.
But the man in front of her, Richard, was not dying. He never was planned to be killed, and he wouldn’t be — not now, but possibly in the future when he fucks with the wrong person without realising the consequences.
But not now, not today.
…
They kiss, and a part of her feels like she died in that moment.
She doesn’t use any of her combos on him, which was surprising, and it’d been the first time in a while, but she didn’t exactly need to further seduce her target.
(Not target, she reminds herself. Alibi.)
They break away, and she strips off her jacket, moving to the bed. Tossing a flirtatious smirk behind her at the man, she was ready to tease him.
His dark raven locks were messed up from their several make-out sessions over the last few hours, finger combed back out of his face in an effortlessly styled way. He’d discarded his own jacket, hands twisted around the third button of his simple shirt in an aborted motion.
His eyes were cast down, hues of blue emitting a certain vulnerability as he looked back up at her, his lips parting in a cut off effort to speak. His body coiled and tensed and curled — nervous, anxious; a stark contrast from the confidence he’d exuded just earlier.
For a single moment, he’d looked like the oceans were crashing down on him, digging their claws into his skin and dragging him down beneath their merciless currents, beaten against their powerful waves.
And then it was over, and he shot her a cocky grin and resumed undressing, swaggering over to the bed as his shirt slipped from his shoulders down his arms onto the floor like a seamless stream.
He pushed her down so her back pressed against the soft mattress of the bed, and he arched over her with his arms either side of her head, lust choked between them as his lips captured hers again.
…
They ended up watching a movie, curled on the couch, it’s softly playing in the background.
He clutches onto her, their scarred and calloused hands intertwined. His face presses between her shoulder and neck and they almost share the same breath; their bodies so close she didn’t know where she ended and he started.
A professional hitwoman — she’d confessed.
A vigilante hero — he’d told her.
She seduced her targets and then killed them in their sleep. Sometimes she’d fuck them, sometimes they only shared a dinner.
Was he her target?
No. Just an alibi. But he was too warm for her to ignore, too human for her to simply brush away — compared to her cold heart and dead soul.
She was wrong, he told her. She was more than a weapon. She was cold, but her walls simply protected her from feeling the pain of connecting.
He’s more than a human weapon, she returned. More than a tool for people to use as they desired; his skills in fighting didn’t define him, he wasn’t just wanted if he was useful.
He tells her of a couple, both filled with greed; another, who stole from him and his lover; last but not least, a woman, a could have been. He tells her of three sinners, who all share the same sin. He tells her of his ignorance — his naivety in others; he tells her of his blindness — his inability to see; and lastly, he tells her of his weakness — his failures he made and inflicted.
She tells him of her father who beat her mother who hated her only daughter; she tells him of the man she’d been sold to for wealth and money; she tells her of the men she greenly murdered in revenge. She tells him of three sinners, a single sin they all committed. She tells him of her loyalties still unbroken; she tells him of her weakness, too young to know; she tells him of her loneliness — where no one helped.
I guess we’re all a bit broken, they shared a toast.
…
They never meet again.
A night filled with companionship found only once a lifetime — literally it seemed.
She tried, with all her power and connections and knowledge, to hunt the man down again. But all she finds is a:
RICHARD JOHN GRAYSON
DECEASED
1992 - 2010
He’d been dead for three years.
Perhaps she had dreamt the man up, but there were things that didn’t match up.
How could she cast an illusion of someone so real?
Down to the Circus he’d been told her he was previously a part of, his age and parents and the circus performers he’d worked with.
Irina doesn’t know what kind of magic led to her meeting a dead man — though deaths had and could be faked — but a part of her is glad.
Irina’s heart opens just a little from that encounter, the ghost of a man who brought faith back into her life,
So she gives them a try, and finds herself calling those students “her kids” — bratty and insolent children, but her kids still nonetheless.
There’s a knowing look in the the other teacher’s eyes, and she finds herself confessing of the man that night to him over a bottle of wine (ignoring all the shattered glass that reflected certain blue hues.)
He tells her in turn, a woman he loved, the first and only in his life. She had died in his arms, a trap, death that had aimed for him but killed her.
…
Dick Grayson searches for the woman, contacting everyone he could without raising an alarm.
He eventually finds her.
IRINA JELAVIĆ
DECEASED
1992 - 2013
He feels a part of him shatter when he learns the one he’d met that night resides in a different universe, too far away that they couldn’t take him there even for a second. Chances are, soon even her grave in this world will fade, once the effects of their universes somehow touching each other go away.
Every physical aspect of her in this world will crumble before long.
Zatanna gives him a small sad smile, telling him that they had met, but they never would again.
…
A toast to all who weep with broken souls indeed.