It Was Due To Happen (Yulia)

[Evgeny Demidov]

Evgeny had been in the mall he whole day. He loved it. He finally understood why girls loved it: it was so much fun. At first he went to buy a new pair of pants, but he saw those black jeans and knew he had to get them. Then there was that red shirt calling him to buy it, how to say no? Then that other pair of shorts would look perfect with his flip-flops... and those ray-bans, he just had to had them. Store from store, he then found himself buying a backpack, ties, shoes, a painting with a red ferrari, a snowglobe... there was no stop to it.

He had a little more than a dozen bags in his hands when he stopped, realizing a way to make his shopping much more efficient: spatial awareness. He closed his eyes and let his power examine all the shops around him. That jacket looks nice. I wonder its color. Wow, that watch... Is silver? God, let it be silver please. With a new objective in mind, he unfocused his power and started walking rapidly, and excited, towards the store. There was a big innocent smile in his face and his eyes were shining like a baby's.

[Yulia Sokolov]

Yulia was at the mall, somewhat against her own better judgment. She knew that she needed some jeans that were not going to rip, and therefore something a little less worn than what she could get at goodwill. The problem with the mall jeans was mostly the cut. She was still getting used to them after her military uniform, and the way they rested down her hips felt a little strange to her sometimes. She was ok with that all in all, she just always felt like they were going to fall down. However that is what belts were for, so she knew to pick up both. Still she didn’t want to go to the mall when it was swamped with tweens, so she headed up there right after work.

After all of her shopping was done she got herself a cappuccino and just sort of wandered around a bit. She could not help but this was not that bad. In fact, quiet as it was, it was kind of relaxing. That was when she saw him out of the corner of her eye. She did a double take, and then had to stop herself. No, that could not be him, she had been here before. God, was she going crazy? Why did she keep seeing him everywhere. No… no wait a minute. That looked way too much like him, that had to be… Oh god she felt sick.

Yulia stood quickly and followed him, jogging a little to catch up. She reached him, tapping his shoulder roughly, nearly grabbing, to get his attention. She spoke, her voice sharp and harsh.

“Evgeny!”

[Evgeny Demidov]

Evgeny recognized the voice. In a split-second, he remembered just about everything about that voice. In the next split-second, he focised his powers and saw her with it even though she was still behind him. He recognized her body from head to toes.

He turned around. Face full of shame, cheeks pink of blush, eyes closed and mouth open as he figured out what to say. He couldn't figure anything.

"Yulz!" He exclaimed as he opened his eyes and launched himself at her to hug her strongly, even though it proved to be uncomfortable and hard due to the many shopping bags in his hands. "It's been so long..." He was still keeping a tight lock on her, not letting her even attempt to escape from the deserved hug. "Hey, you still smell the same, gunpowder and shampoo." He chuckled as he softened his hug and released her before taking a small step back. "How are you?"

[Yulia Sokolov]

Yulia was frozen in place, staring at the figure of Evgeny there as he turned around. She was in way too much shock to even so much as move. It felt like all of the blood was rushing up to her head. She didn’t want to understand what was going on right now, though what was happening was actually loud and clear to her. He wasn’t dead, he had never been dead.

Suddenly his arms were tight around her and oh god what she would have given for that just a year ago. Now, however, she just felt angry and lied to. This person who she had loved and adored, who she had mourned deeply, was still in some ways mourning still, was alive. It made all of these seem so… worthless. It made everything she had done over the past year feel so futile because that sadness had become a part of her. She had allowed it in. And then in that moment it hit her all over again, hard. This was the second time in her life that she had ever felt like she might just crumble and fall apart.

Was she supposed to say something now?

“I thought you were dead,” she said, her voice shaky. “I thought for a year that you were dead.” Now she was kind of angry. “I thought that you were dead and that I didn’t make it up those stairs in time. I nearly died, I nearly lost my leg, but mostly I lived with that guilt and that sadness for a year. So you tell me Evgeny, how do you think I am?” She had teared up despite herself and her voice was all over the place.

“How do I look to you Evgeny? Why don’t you answer me that one.”

[Evgeny Demidov]

You really didn't have to be an intelligence expert to notice Yulia's anger in her voice. It was also twisted with sadness and confusion, but boy, anger was the winning of them all, most definitely. When her tone of voice became a little too aggressive for Evgeny to feel comfortable, he let his hug go and took a step back with an expressionless face. He knew this moment was going to happen, he just... hadn't thought exactly how it would go down. This was one of the worst case-scenarios he had thought.

"Well you look good." He let a nervous giggle out. "Hot.. as... usual, yeah."}

Showing Yulia his right index finger, ala 'one moment please', Ev dropped all the shopping backs in the ground and started to open them quickly as if searching for something. Not two moments later he found it and rose back to his one-eighty meters and offered Yulia a snowglobe with his right hand.

"I was going to wrap it and put some... chocolates or something in it, but well..." He had bought the thing an hour ago or so with Yulia in mind. It was a cheesy gift, but it was not all he had. "There's also this, though." Ev went into his neck and grabbed a metal necklace he had, turning it around to grab the lock and took it off him. There two dog tags in it. He removed one. "It was damn hard to convince them, but I did it." He offered Yulia the one he removed from the necklace. It had her code-name, blood type and some other information the Federation considered important for their Black Op teams to carry at all times in two identical dog tags. "You know how it is, they keep one."

[Yulia Sokolov]

Yulia was caught between wanting to let her jaw drop and wanting to punch him in the face as hard as she possibly could. What had he just said to her? He had called her hot and laughed as if nothing that she said mattered, at least that was how it seemed to Yulia. Then again she had to remind herself that she was in a different world now. She was in a world where she no longer yearned to hear that from him, instead she was in a place where she thought that she was yearning simply to hear his voice just one more time. However the words that were coming from that mouth made her feel sick. Was that really all he had to say about her? Hot as usual?

Had she been in any less shock than she would have walked away, but instead she stood there as he looked through a bag and then handed her a snowglobe. She took it, wordlessly and shook the thing a little. The glitter swirled through the globe, but while everything in the globe started to sparkle just a little Yulia felt the opposite. She felt almost as if she were being bought off with it. She glanced up from the globe when he said he had something else for her. Then suddenly, in his outstretched hand, was one of her tags.

Yulia jerked back almost violently, the site of it bringing her back to her senses. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t want that anymore. That isn’t me anymore, it hasn’t been for over a year.” That part of her died the day he had, but he wasn’t dead, so what did that mean? “I don’t want any of this, all I wanted was a phone call, just one to let me know that you were alive. Instead I find you here? Like this? Evgeny after seven years how could you not let me know that you were alive as soon as you could?” Did he care at all? Right now she didn’t feel like he did, but she kept that look off of her face as best she could. “What are you even doing here in Vermont?”

[Evgeny Demidov]

"Come'oon Yulz, you know things are always much more complicated than that." Evgeny's smile turned around as Yulia rejected the tag. "Look, I can't talk about it. It's classified. On paper and to everyone but Gray and two other higher ranks, I was dead. It had to include you too. You know how it is." He insisted on offering the dog tag to Yulia. "They were going to toss it when they brought you to a full body MRI. It was like a month after Spain, you were still in a coma. You were down for months and I was there most of my free time, which wasn't much."

Evgeny didn't understand women, really. He was there next to her bed at least once a week. He always had a copy of every single of her medical reports, which he didn't understood well, but he could always find someone to explain her condition to him. He kept the dog-tag with him because he thought he might want it back afterwards. The snowglobe was a reminder of their country, their weather, their usual scenery. He could understand that she was mad at him for not being there for her these months, but he couldn't understand why she couldn't understand him.

He swallowed saliva. Evgeny didn't want Yulia to be mad at him.

<<I'm sorry. I am.>> He said in their mother language. <<I was discharged just some weeks ago and came here immediately. I was trying to figure out some way to approach you. But didn't know how to. I... Forgive me, really.>>

[Yulia Sokolov]

Yulia was still set in her anger when he said something that literally took the wind right out of her. He had been there, while she was mostly dead there in Russia he had been there, and he had tried to save the thing that used to matter so much to her, to all of them. She was honestly touched and she hadn’t expected it from him. Then again, why not? After seven years she was sentimental when it came to their relationship as well. After all, how hard had she taken it all these months that she thought he was dead? The answer was hard, very hard. At the same time she also knew that he was right, he had to be dead, and that meant telling no one.

Yulia had no idea that he had kept such a vigil over her, and yet she was still resistant to giving in like this. How could she just get over the anger and sadness associated with all of this? It had defined her over the last year, had driven her, and changed her. While it was not exactly his fault she could not help feeling betrayed and that made her feel worse. She didn’t want to be mad at him about this, all the same she still refused the tag. “No, you keep it. I think it would probably mean more to you at this point than it would to me.” And that was the simple truth about the military for her nowadays.

Then came her mother tongue, which she hadn’t heard in a while. “I know… I know…” She glanced down at the floor for a long moment. “I know,” she repeated “And I’m not mad at you. I know that you could not control it. It is just going to be hard for me to get past this or get over it or whatever it is that I have to do.” She felt like she was tearing but and so she looked up and blinked a couple of times. “You don’t know what it was like to lose you…”

[Evgeny Demidov]

Evgeny couldn't really believe Yulia's words. She really didn't want the tag, like wanting to leave that in the past. It was understandable, yes, but at the same time, it felt so strange. This Yulia didn't seem to be the same he knew, but he couldn't figure if this was something good or something bad.

Then there was that soft gleaming in her eyes she tried to stop. Evgeny couldn't stand her crying, it gave him an emptiness inside which he hated. He hugged her again as she finished talking. He had no idea she was going to be this sad about her meeting. He pictured her being happy about knowing he was alive. Maybe this whole thing had been a bad idea.

"I don't know what else to say, really." He let his hug go and instead started putting her dog tag back into his necklace. "Everything will be fine. It always is." He smiled. "I'm teaching P.E. at Hammel."

[Yulia Sokolov]

All of a sudden Yulia was in another hug. She was not sure what to do about it. There was part of her that wanted to reach out but another part was trying to get this all into her head. He was alive and he was standing right there in front of her. Wasn’t that all she had wanted? Well, sort of like that, maybe with a bit more of the hugging bit.

And now as she looked at him, as she listened to him, she realized that she had just made this difficult for him too. “No, no,” she insisted. She reached up and cupped his head between her hands, pulling it down a little so he had to look at her. “Please, do not understand me. I am so happy that you are alive, I am overjoyed in fact. This is the most that I could have possibly hoped for, more than that. There is…” There is what Lia? She could not tell him that he was the person who mattered the most to her for the past eight years, that what happened had driven her, that he had made her who she was now. That she… loved him? No, she couldn’t say that. She was back in their old arrangement now, partners, and that meant none of that talk.

“There is no one I would rather run into, anytime, anywhere.” Then she finally hugged him, having very little intention of letting go for at least a few minutes. Lia kissed him on the cheek then. “I missed you, I missed you so much.”

[Evgeny Demidov]

"Ok enough with the hugs." Evgeny took a step back while laughing. "Civilian life made you soft, Yulz." He hoped she knew he was only joking to break the sad mood around. "So yeah, as I said, I'm teaching P.E. at Hammel, how is that, huh?"

He finally inserted the dog tag back into his necklace and placed it inside his shirt again. Then, looking around, he noticed the greenness of Starbuck's sign and signaled Yulia there.

"No reason to stay up." He took his shopping bags and started walking towards the coffee shop. "I hear you're a power trainer. How is it going? I don't think training american kids is nearly similar as back in the Federation."

[Yulia Sokolov]

Lia found a single moment of peace in the fact that he was here, truly here and alive and well and a million other things in her mind. But that moment, which she had longed for, was over in an instant. He stepped back from her and she was keenly aware of the space, because it had been there forever. There was the gap, the crater, and she didn’t know how to bridge it.

Her shoulders nearly slumped when he made the civilian life comment. She understood that it was just a joke to him but she did wish that he understood. She wanted him to understand that yes she had changed some, but not all that much. The people who mattered to her before still mattered to her now.

Lia followed after him to the starbucks. She needed some caffeine to function through this situation now. “I am a powers trainer, we would end up in the same place.” She laughed then, albeit briefly. “Yes it is different, training here as compared to back… home. It is a good thing though.” He should remember as well as she did just how frightening and grueling things got sometimes in Russia.

[Evgeny Demidov]

"I know we would end up in the same place, silly." Evgeny said as he sat up in one of the tables, leaving all the shopping bags aside. "I knew you were living here before I came." He looked around trying to find a waitress. "Actually I sort of always knew. You know how they keep an eye on everyone. You never truly leave."

It was only after a couple of seconds he understood that he had to go up to the counter to order what he wanted. Come'on, it was his first Starbucks experience. It was only when standing in line and looking at the menu in the wall that Evgeny remembered he didn't really like coffee. He was completely out of place, but at least there were other things to order that didn't had caffeine. When his turn came, he ordered some hot chocolate ant let Yulia order hers, but was quick enough to pay for everything without leaving time for Yulia to react in case she wanted to throw the typical 'I can pay for my things' attitude that some women love to act even if it's obvious the accompanying male will pay.

"So yeah. Tell me about you." He said as soon as they were back in their table. "Well you know, besides those things the file already says, so you can skip the where you live, who you live with and who your friends are part." Under no circumstance Evgeny thought that he was coming out as a stalker/creep/smartass, he was that naive. "Although that does leaves little to tell... right? So we should ignore I've read that file... yeah... let's start again." Ev burned his tongue while attempting to take his first sip from his hot chocolate. "Tell me about you!"