Author’s Note: As I read through UA2 (again) last night, the story of Eponymous, Alex Abel’s bodyguard, and his failed love interest caught in my mind, and I had to exorcise it by writing it down. Here was the result of my scribblings while on the porcelain throne: sans the smell.

The match flared briefly, his silhouette outlined against the ruined walls that he leaned against, and he took a drag from the cigarette. The harsh Albanian winds tugged at his dirty-brown leather jacket, invisible hands that pulled him one way or another, but he ignored them: just like he ignored the small black figure- nearly invisible in the urban graveyard that they were both in- some nine hundred meters away.

Do you love me, Eponymous?

He exhaled, the back of his head damp from the cold stone that supported him. A chrome Beretta gleamed silver in the waning afternoon light, suppresser against barrel against the palm of his left hand. The smoke hung in the air for a moment, and he closed his eyes.

Give me a reason not to.

Six days. They’ve been at it for six days now. Without sleep, without rest, without food save for that which they had with them from the picnic. Soon, if the setting sun is anything to judge by, it’ll be the seventh; or maybe not, if one of them slipped and made a mistake.

What if I told you that I didn’t love you?

A shot echoed in the silence and tore through the wall he was leaning against; half an inch from his head.

Then I’ll have to kill you.

She was getting tired. He could see her in his mind’s eye: black SOCOM in her right hand, bodysuit halfway zipped to her bust, plain silver earrings glinting in the sunset. Engagement ring glinting as she slammed another clip- her last clip- into the pistol and took aim.

You wouldn’t.

He stubbed the cigarette out and pushed himself off the wall, grinding the smouldering stub against the rough brick, and walked along the wall pock-marked and ripped asunder by war, time and entropy.

He stopped smoking three years ago at her request. Put aside the Beretta and the hunting knife, the white kid gloves, the suppresser. Stopped adding notches to his pistol. He would have gave up everything he had… if she wasn’t who she was.

Try me.

They fucked like animals; tongues and feet entangled with one another’s, bodies heaving and writhing in wordless cries of ecstasy, her nails raking thin red lines down his back as she cried out his name. Eponymous… Eponymous… and he fucked her even harder, her heavy breasts swinging pendulously in the warm air scented with sweat and blood.

I have… and you were yummy.

…seven hundred meters

So were you.

…five hundred meters

Would you love me, Eponymous?

…three hundred meters

Yeah. I suppose I would.

One hundred meters.

No matter what I did?

The shot rang out despite the suppresser, startling a flock of crows feeding on one of their dead comrades, their screeches and caws marking their annoyance of having their meal disturbed. She spun around, her hand instinctively lifting the SOCOM to bring to bear in his direction, but it was too late: the nine-millimeter caught her right in the solar plexus, shattered through the ribcage and into her heart. Just like he always taught her to shoot.

… no matter what you did.

He would have loved her.