Steam rises off blood in the snow for the one instant it first
hits it, before it disintegrates into reddish slush, a corruption of once
untainted white.
He barely has to look to know he hit his target. The surprise of his enemy's
appearance did not spoil the deadliness of his aim, not even the sudden warm
spatter against his face distracts him, and he watches a faint trail of vapor
escape the dead man's mouth as his life seeps out in a growing ruination of
purity.
Adrenaline is throbbing in his ears, a deep thud timed to his heartbeat and he
touches his face with icy fingers, numb from the cold and notes distantly that
they are trembling. Delicately, he strokes the pad of one finger over his
cheek and looks at it. Brilliant crimson is stark against his skin, shining
wetly and he knows it can't possibly be from the man he just shot, he was much
too far away and there is no flower of heat blooming up from his own chest.
He hears it before he sees it, for the second time in as many minutes the
sound of a body collapsing in the snow, and no, no, it isn't possible, he shot
in time, he had, he knew he had....
He hadn't. Deafened by his own gunfire, he hadn't heard the other man shoot
and he should have known the only reason his partner wouldn't have fired would
have been that he couldn't.
Pure, guttural panic rises like nausea in his throat and he is on his knees in
a second, fumbling with hands deadened to stupidity from the cold to open his
partner's coat, and please, it can't be too bad, it can't, their backup team
should be here in only minutes.
More crimson splashes his hands in revolting, unwanted warmth. The sight of
blood has never been so appalling to him as when it belonged to his partner.
My fault, I should have heard him sooner, should have shot him faster, my
fault, please, it can't be bad, it can't.
"Napoleon! Damn you, say something! Napoleon!"
A sudden gasp for breath fogs the air between them, and Illya's exhalation
joins it, one a beautiful sign of life, the other pure relief, mingling
together in warm vapor. Dark eyes flicker open and meet his own, pain-glazed
and filled with rueful amusement.
"Don't you dare die on me," Illya hisses, the tremble in his voice
belying the threat and Napoleon chuckles weakly.
"Wouldn't dream of it," he murmurs, hardly more than a breath of
sound that is barely heard over the whirring blades of the choppers. Illya
watches as they load his partner into one, assured it was a shoulder wound,
nothing serious, and the moment it left his sight, he knelt on the ground and
wiped his partner's blood into the snow, until his hands were as clean as he
could make them.
-finis-
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