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'Improvisation is part of the craft,' they always said.
From the very beginning, these words were muttered in regards to their mission planning; either because the target was spotted in unexpected locations, or because the time frame for their contract turned out to be shorter than ideal, or because the security detail in the field was not as lenient as intel had them believe beforehand.
For almost a year now though, their unofficial motto had an entirely new layer of meaning. No longer was it the ideal opportunity to intercept a handover or to stage the perfect accident that dominated his schedule; not when for the first time in his life he had something more important to care about.
Balancing two high priority responsibilities—his work as a freelancer and making sure that Diana would never regret falling in love with him—wasn't alway easy, but luckily, Diana was his partner in business just as much as his partner in life.
She not only understood that sometimes, the date night they'd been looking forward to had to be postponed to another weekend; after all, it was their livelihood that depended on an sometimes unpredictable target movement. 47also knew, deep down, that she wouldn't regret their love. It hadn't always been that obvious to him, but now that the antiserum had lifted the fog, he realised that she'd been wanting him almost from the moment they first met. Twenty years of yearning for someone she thought incapable of returning her feelings; twenty years of him wishing he had the capacity to form a bond with her that reached beyond small talk and glances that lasted longer than they should've.
It must've been their fate's very own flavour or karmic irony that his flight was cancelled and he'd have to spend their very first Valentine's Day alone at the very airport they used to meet away from the ICA's all-seeing eyes, hidden in plain sight and back to back to keep the other safe.
Diana's phone was turned off. It could only mean that she was already on the plane that brought her back home from Japan, while he was stranded in South Korea, wishing for them to at least have stayed in the same time zone for easier communication. It was a habit they'd picked up when Diana started climbing the ranks and was allowed to work outside the ICA's headquarters. Never in the same country for safety reasons, but always in the same time zone.
On a whim, he strolled over to the waiting area that used to be theirs. The seats they'd preferred for their meetings as strangers in passing were unoccupied, and so he sat down in his usual seat, as this strange and new sense of longing demanded him to.
As long as he didn't glance back over his shoulder, he could pretend that the seat next to him wasn't empty, that Diana was there as she'd always been, basking in his proximity in a way he'd only recently understood. A sad smile flashed across his face.
He checked his phone again for a message from her, but there was none, and his previous messages were still undelivered. 47 closed his eyes for a few heartbeats, for as long as it was possibly safe to let his guard down without her on the other side of his backrest.
"I didn't know you were the nostalgic type, 47," whispered someone right next to his ear.
Driven by instinct, he turned around before the other person had finished saying his name, startled and ready to fight for his life; but to his surprise, the person he was staring at was neither a surviving Providence member nor an old ICA coworker with a grudg.
"Diana."
She smiled back at him. "I noticed that your flight was cancelled, so I rescheduled mine. It's not the most romantic place in the world, but it does have history for us."
47 nodded. Were they supposed to act like strangers now, too? He wasn't sure anymore what was expected from him and what was the right thing to do.
"I got us dinner." She nodded towards two brown paper bags from a nearby fast food restaurant and a small bottle of prosecco from the airport supermarket. "How about a romantic picnic to celebrate our first Valentine's Day?"
"Sounds appropriate," he said, now with a genuine smile on his face.
She leaned in closer to whisper in his ear again. "For dessert, I got us a room at the airport hotel, if you'd like to stay a while longer."
With her by his side, he wasn't in a hurry anymore to return home, and he couldn't deny that South Korea was truly beautiful this time of year.