It was her. Standing under the dim light of the street lamp, it was her. It was my Kat. The thick fog clouded my vision, making it difficult to see, but I would have recognised her figure from miles away. And it froze me in my spot.

My breath caught in my throat, bringing along with it this insufferable sense of choking, and my heart felt as if it might pound out of my chest. I hadn’t noticed straight away but my hands were curled into tight balls, shaking with an emotion I could not put into words.

She walked towards me, her long strides so smooth I thought, for a moment, she might be gliding. And then she was here. Her bright red hair, slashed at her shoulders, within reach. She was here. Her emerald eyes darted across my face, as if trying to gauge my emotions, and then they darted down to my daggers still sheathed in their leather scabbards. It was only slight but I could see her body shift, her jaw unclench, and a held breath finally released.

“Nova-“ she apprehensively said, her voice low and yet I could still hear it echo across the empty street.

“I should kill you,” I replied, my voice aiming to be cold and blunt, though I feared if you were attentive enough, and Kat absolutely was, then the slight break in my tone may have betrayed that aim.

She didn’t reply. There was something deeply sad in the way her eyes looked at me. They knew me, those eyes, they knew everything I had been through. She was the only person in the entirety of this world who could understand me, and yet she still betrayed me.

“I should kill you,” I repeated, trying and failing to mask the emotions swirling on my face, “You stabbed me in the back and then I learnt to trust you again, and you left me. You left me when I thought that maybe the love you had for me was real. That your initial betrayal was only due to the manipulation of that man, Vesh. That you had finally seen how that man is, and will forever be, the worst person to walk this planet. And then you left me.”

I took a gasp of air and held it, trying to calm the shaking in my hands which were now so tight my nails had the danger of cutting into my palms.

“I thought after we completed that mission that we would live our long lives together. But you left me.” I could hear now my voice felt sadder, more defeated. I did not enjoy that feeling. I preferred the anger.

Kat raised her hand and touched my face. Her hands were soft. That in itself was a miracle for the kind of fighting she did on an almost daily basis.

“Nova,” she spoke again, her voice now bordering on a whisper, “Both you and I know you never would have slept knowing Vesh was still alive. He would of killed you when you came for him, and you know it.”

She took a soft breath, allowing the words to circulate the cold night air for a moment.

“Nova, my love, you are the most dangerous person I know, and that man is the only person alive today who could kill you. And I the only person who could stop it.”

I knew what she meant. And then hated her for it. Kat was raised by that evil being of a man. It took me months after her initial betrayal where stopped me from killing him with a knife to my throat - after everything he had taken from me - to get her to understand what he was truly like.

We had spent ages taking down his network, stripping him from what power we could, but we had failed to kill him. And as I stepped on the boat to escape, I turned and Kat was not behind me. She was staring at me from the land with these sad eyes, whilst in the embrace of Vesh, a smug smile on his face as if to say ‘_I have won_’.

But Kat stood here now and that was enough for me to know he hadn’t. She knew I’d come after Vesh, and the only way she could protect me was from the inside. I think I knew but the feelings of betrayal had flooded back to me and my better judgment was clouded. Kat was always better with her judgment.

“You know, Kat, you have caused me so much pain, yet the love I feel for you blinds me of it!”

She flinched and her hand retracted. She didn’t like to be reminded of her initial betrayal, it pained her to think of what she had done. And I could see it in her eyes that staying with Vesh, over going with me, haunted her.

“Kat, I love you, but I need time.”

Her face twisted and something in her eyes hardened.

“That’s the problem Nova, we don’t _have_ time.”