Work Text:
It’s true that head wounds bleed copiously. Even shallow ones.
James Bond isn’t the only one who can raise himself from death.
So Severine lives and she lived by herself.
(She knew what Silva was going to do. She’s known him long enough, after all. It’s not as hard as it seems, to dodge without seeming to. Enough to end up with a glancing nick from the bullet that bleeds enough to be fatal).
Eve is nominally in charge of her relocation. It ends up being more of a friendship than they both meant it to be. But Eve understands, at least a little. She understands that Severine needs to be, to be herself.
Severine becomes Sadako. Sadi, she calls herself. She gets a job, her own job. She’s more than qualified for any number of things (the brothels saw to that, when they decided who she would be, but the work she put in is her own). She finds herself working in a museum - a curator and an educator.
Sadi finds herself dressing for herself and it’s important. She likes flat shoes - knee high flat boots, ballet flats. Tights and pea coats and collared shirts and jumpers and pencil skirts and wrap dresses. Berets. She smiles at herself, wearing very little make-up and subtle jewellery.
It becomes a matter of managing the bad days, when she still sees Silva, a client, the brothel, the prison of that luxury house. It’s good to wake up in her modest little flat, in a bed that does not have silk sheets, with a kitchen that she decorated and filled herself.
She even loves the cold, as a reminder of the life that is hers.
When she invites Eve in to her life it is an invitation. Like with James, she chooses (he doesn’t realise it, but she seduced him as much for the knowledge that she would have a chance to be free, to play Silva’s endgame, knowing what the man would do. Either way, she would be freed by his bullet from him. And James gave her that gift).
It is good to have Eve in her arms.
They have children. It is hard, carrying them, sometimes. Sometimes always, she thinks. Because some days the ghosts call to her. But she will teach them of her life, of the parts she wants them to hear. The happy parts.
The bitter is perhaps, later, when they chose to ask.