It is hard not to notice his hands.

(Granted, Illya is rather—arresting. All eight feet of him, or what have you. But Gaby confines herself to his hands.)

Of course, she has not forgotten. She has a mission to attend to. Hands are a reasonable diversion. No use for his face, then, or the line of confusion that sometimes appears on that otherwise stony brow.

She has a mission. And she is a mechanic; hands matter.

His hands are not a thief's hands. Those are Napoleon's—too clever by half, fingers slipping in and out of locks and promises.

Illya's fingers are crossed with scars, but she has felt the lightness of their touch.

She has seen those hands tremble. She has seen them still, poised over the pieces of his precious chess game.

And how many nights did they spend side by side, finding the strange truth in their cover? Was it three or five or seven, or was it a hundred?

(It felt like a hundred, when she woke up for that half-second, reaching for him.)

(She barely remembered it, afterwards.)

Gaby feels badly about the betrayal. Who would not? She may have spent her years surrounding herself in gears and wires and cold metal, but she has a heart.

.

Of course she didn't expect him to dance.

And then—well, he made a hash of it, but he almost did.

.

It isn't until the second time he almost kisses her that she realizes he's in love.

Silly boy, Gaby tells herself. A silly boy can be no use to a lonely girl, not when both of them have blood on their hands.

.

(She keeps whispering his name against her own closed lips, when she's counting the minutes down to nothing.)

.

He's a romantic, she decides. A killer with a pretty face, a cold fish with a soft heart. Only, don't get him angry.

(Well, she can. She can do whatever she likes.)

She keeps the ring.

She leaves the room.

.

Twenty minutes later, the future is together.

But the moments of walking away? It felt as if it had been a hundred moments, a hundred days. She thinks, maybe she's a romantic too.

.

(On the next mission, he takes her hand in his. She runs the edge of her thumb along the scars on his knuckles, and realizes that he's not the only one in love.)