"Flash?"
"Just..." He swallowed, forcing his voice level, forcing the words. "The visions. They're bleeding into me. The waterfall. It won't stop."
She shifted, rising up on one elbow, her dark hair a curtain around them. "We're here," she said, grounding him with her gaze. "This is real. You and me, in this bed, in this life."
"I know." Too quick, too loud. "I'm here. I'm Flash. That's all."
But the weight of recognition pressed in, the impossible familiarity of her body, her mouth, the way she sighed when he touched her just there. He'd known. He'd always known.
Depth is a trap. Don't go that deep.
He grabbed for the rationalization like a lifeline, hauling himself back. Residue. Echo. The quipu was messing with hishead, making connections where none existed. He was Flash. SEAL. Never anyone else.
He pulled her down, kissed her hard, desperate to drown the thought in sensation. She responded, warm and willing, but her stillness held a question.
The knock rapped against the wood.
“Food first, then sleep," he murmured against her mouth before she slipped off the mattress and they got dressed. "We've got the hike tomorrow. The effigy. We need refueling and rest."
She settled against him, her breathing slowing, her body relaxing into trust. He held her, his face buried in her hair, and stared at the wall where the fading sun cast shadows through the gauze curtains.
The conviction waited, heavy and sharp as a stone in his gut. He was Cisco. He knew it with a clarity that made his hands tremble against her stomach. She had killed him, and she’d kill him again, if the font demanded it, if the world required sacrifice.
He shoved it down. Buried it deep, beneath operational focus, beneath the mission, beneath the lie that he was only who he appeared to be. He packed the earth over it, tamped it down, built walls.
But as he lay there in the dark, holding the woman he loved across lifetimes, the truth leaked through. Pooled in the silence between his thoughts.
Somewhere in the distance, or perhaps in his memory, the waterfall roared.
* * *
The warmth beside her shifted.Lechuza's eyes opened to the barely setting sun filtering through gauze curtains, and to Flash, sprawled on his stomach, one arm thrown across the space she'dvacated, his face turned toward her in sleep. The miracle of it stopped her breath. This man. This impossible, inevitable man, still here, still breathing.
She pushed up on her elbow, the sheet sliding to her waist, and let herself look. Her gaze traced the architecture of him, the stubble darkening his jaw, the mouth that had learned her body with devastating precision. She knew this face. Had known it before he'd kicked down that door in Caracas a year ago, before he'd ever spoken her name. The recognition hummed beneath her ribs, terrifying in its surety.
Her hand hovered over his shoulder, not quite touching. The danger was this pull toward him that operated on laws older than choice, older than the fierce autonomy she'd built her life around. Sovereignty had always been her scaffolding. Controlled access, her security protocol. Yet here she was, waking beside him with her walls in ruins, wanting not just this morning butmore. A life. A string of days that would never be enough. The wanting scared her more than any mission, any enemy.
Many fucking lifetimes might not be enough.
The thought arrived fully formed, utterly true.
She loved him so deeply, she had no words for the depth, had no idea where it began, but she was positive she saw no end. If what she feared was true, if this thread stretched back almost five centuries, to Quri standing over Cisco's body with blood on her hands, then Lechuza had already killed him once. Had been the instrument of his ending, and if the font demanded payment, if the quest that had hollowed out North and left his body breathing but vacant in a room downstairs demanded more...
She could be the hand again. She knew it with a resolve that made her stomach clench.
She slipped from the bed, pulling on her leggings and Flash's discarded hoodie, the cotton holding his delicious scent. The estate slept around her, silent except for the distant humof generators and the ever-present whisper of Peruvian wind through the eucalyptus. She moved through hallways she’d run through as a child, descending stairs, her bare feet silent on polished marble.
The room they had placed him in was originally storage, naturally cool, easily protected. He was lying in a comfortable bed, his powerful body covered with a sheet. She paused at the threshold, her hand finding the doorframe, her nails digging into the wood. Kuntur stood, his bulk filling the room, and…Twister. Her father, bless him, had sent his strongest staff member to watch over their treasure.
“You’re supposed to be resting.”
Twister nodded. “I just needed to check on him before I sleep.”
“Sure. You’d have tapped yourself out. Kuntur, if he comes back after I’ve gone, you haul him back to his room.”
Twister chuckled. “Okay, I’m going.”
“Twist?”
