Page 6 of Eternal

AZRA

“Can You Feel My Heart” by Bring Me the Horizon

Present

K ill and repeat.

Kill and repeat. Until all I can see is red. Until all I can smell is blood.

Kill and repeat. Everywhere they need me to. It’s been like that for two years now.

I used to love deeply when I was a kid, I had so much affection inside me. Who would’ve thought I’d end up where I am today, killing people to stop wanting to kill my younger self?

Funny thing is, two years into this, the look on their faces still never gets old.

Please. I will never do it again. Please.

And I always reply with the same thing. No, No, No.

Why would I stop… Why does he keep asking why I’m hurting him?

As if the pain in every woman’s eyes doesn’t already answer that.

“You all beg the same. It’s suffocating to hear you beg.”

The eyes of today’s victim staring back at me are pleading. Empty. Scared . But pleading for a pity I never even had for myself. Maybe it’s because he can’t speak anymore.

Should’ve never opened his damn mouth and asked again why I was here today. Stupid dinner. Stupid rich people. And stupid men .

The look on his face when he saw me waiting by his dinner table after his guests had left. Me, a stranger, calmly preparing my knife and gun, like they’d actually do some good tonight. My black matte bullets, each one engraved with an iris.

I didn’t even want to be here.

It’s been months since I’ve been back at my place, months of missions everywhere.

This week was Paris. A name, a mission, and I came here.

My birthday was four days ago. I was already in the city, sitting in my hotel room, eating a bowl of yogurt and cereal, and re-watching Casablanca.

I had this pounding headache, probably the lack of sleep, or the flight, or both. The nightmares kept coming back, like they always do around this time of year. But I had a mission.

I almost miss home.

“I don’t enjoy this, you know? You bleed just like the others. You’re just… not special.”

I get up and clean my blade on his jacket. “Thank you for being so cooperative today. I was supposed to kill you yesterday, but this stupid headache was unbearable, you know?”

Why isn’t he replying to me?

I turn around and crouch down, grabbing his head to force him to look at me.

His eyes are closed, his jaw still hangs open.

Oh . He’s already dead.

Well, that explains the silence.

Shit . It always ends up too fast.

“Too bad… But you definitely would do it again, whatever the fuck you used to do when you were… alive , I mean.”

He’d do it again, of course he would.

A man saying he’d never hurt anyone again, since when was that ever believable?

But it’s always like that, I learnt it the hard way.

They don’t care, they never did. A man like Cyrille LeBlanc never cared about other people’s suffering.

Morality is only another luxury that rich people can afford to live without. Their fortunes and money could buy them anything. Freedom, love, respect, but not my vision of justice, unfortunately.

Vik didn’t even want me to take this job. He practically begged me to stop everything and take a break to come back to Vegas, for my birthday. Kat screamed at me about it too, but it would’ve felt like a betrayal.

Not to them, to my own habits. This kind of loneliness… It's almost comforting . Almost happy, in a way. Just little old me, myself, and I

I sang her Happy Birthday too. The very next day, I was back to studying the building. A headache appeared after that, and now just like that the mission’s done.

Cyrille is dead. The mission is completed.

He probably suffered a lot before dying. That’s good news. Great, even.

I exit the building slowly, staying in the blind spots between the cameras. I’d studied the angles days ago, memorized their sweep patterns, and logged their downtime. No sudden movements, no eye contact, just another silhouette in this hotel.

Kill, breathe, repeat.

I’m clean, there’s only a small stain on my arm, blood. Red . I’ve learned to love that color. It took time, at first, it was harder than I thought.

Years ago, I visited Jordan for the first time in my life. My mother’s home. Vik paid for the trip, like he promised.

I knew who could help me get stronger. I knew his name, but I didn't know how to ask him.

I found him through my mother’s old journal, a faded photo of two men standing outside a stone blue house. One was my biological father judging by the name next to it. Alyas Al Mansour.

The other, his friend, was a military commander. She’d written his name and number on the back.

Maybe she never left her real home, because she held onto this picture, and never took it off her old journal.

I dialed, my Arabic was rough when I told him my name, explained who I was, with a small voice.

I felt… ashamed to ask the help of a stranger. Because the last time I did, I was nine, and it taught me to never ask again.

He exhaled, there was a pause, then he said he’d thought I was dead, that he cried for my mom, for me.

Said he was glad I was still alive, and then he laughed.

Not because it was funny, but because it was ridiculous.

“You’re asking me to take you in? You’re blood .

Don’t ask, please tell me when you arrive. ”

And I felt my heart lighten for a second.

I had another chance, and I took it.

He picked me up from the airport in an old gray SUV. Didn’t say much. He looked at me like I was a ghost and smiled. Honestly smiled.

We drove in silence for almost two hours, through dust and hills and cracked roads, until we reached his house. The same house as in the photo.

Blue and still beautiful.

It was strange at first. Awkward . But he kept saying, you are family. And I was family in a way.

He treated me like we shared the same blood and never asked anything in return.

I loved it there.

Jordan was beautiful. That didn’t surprise me, it was as beautiful as Mom used to describe it to me. The hills, the dust, the way the sun hit the stone buildings at dusk, it was all soft, almost gold.

And no one looked at me strangely. Not at my curls, not at my skin, not at my eyes. They smiled gently, asked if I needed anything.

And I smiled back.

I felt… okay , like I could simply be myself.

It felt good, but also a little strange . Being there, knowing this was where my mother grew up, where she was born, where she got married, and got pregnant with me .

Where my real father, the one I never knew, was buried before I was even walking.

It was beautiful.

And it didn’t judge me. It simply existed. Quiet. Still. Like it had waited for me.

And then the training began.

He showed no mercy, not once.

If I bled, I bled. If I cried, it mixed with the blood on my sleeves. I learned to stop apologizing for pain, to move faster, hit harder, and fall smarter. I learned to survive .

Tariq never shouted.

He never raised a hand in anger, but he didn’t need to. That made it different.

I had a break for five years, I didn’t even tell him what happened, I told him I left my foster house, and didn't explain how, or when or why.

But he nodded calmly and smiled. He didn’t need to yell. His voice was enough, calm, steady, impossible to ignore. “Pain is your ally, Azra,” he’d say, watching me struggle to stand. “Don’t fear the blood. Fear its absence. It means you’re failing.”

He pushed me until I broke, then he waited, watched to see if I’d put myself back together.

And I did, again, and again. For five years.

He was helping me learn more about my culture. Taught me how to cook some traditional meals and take care of my hair, even how to make a good tea.

And he was really good at communicating with me. I never stopped training, never stopped wanting to be sharper, faster, more dangerous, and it paid.

I remember how the Jordanian sun burned everything it touched, the sky, the sand, and me. It was a dry, blistering heat that hollowed you out from the inside.

My throat was cracked, my lungs shredded, but I wasn’t allowed to stop.

Tariq stood behind me and nodded every time I cried. Like the tears made me stronger in a way.

He hadn’t been sure why I was there, not at first. I told him I wanted to be stronger, for my mother’s memory. That he was the only family I could turn to, that was all it took. After that, he didn’t ask again.

He pushed me harder. “Faster, Azra,” he would say. “You think your enemies will wait for you to catch your breath?”

I hated how weak I was, hated that my body couldn’t keep up with the rage inside it.

Like it was too big to be contained, too big to be felt, like the mix of grief and abuse made it unbearable in a way.

And the pills were gone, the alcohol was gone, the only ones I’d relied on to numb everything.

I’d searched for them the first few nights, stupidly. I knew I wouldn’t find any, but I did. I tore through crates, dug through dusty cupboards, anything that might give me even a taste of silence.

Tariq caught me without really understanding what I was searching for.

Didn’t even need to raise his voice.

“You’re not here to escape, Azra,” he said. “You’re here to face what you are. And what you’re not .”

I didn’t touch another pill after that.

Not because I didn’t want to, I did, every goddamn day. But there was nowhere to hide here, no excuses, no distractions. And him .

He never shouted, or laid a hand on me out of anger. But he didn’t coddle me either, he watched, always watched. There was no mercy in his training, only sharp instructions and silence.

Then he’d cook for me, and give me a place to stay.

He had a daughter once, who died a few years ago. He told me about her, she’d been sick for a long time before resting eternally. Maybe that’s why he treated me like I was his own, maybe it made him feel a little better.

I remember the knife he threw at my feet one evening, glistening under the sun.

My hand shook as I picked it up. I gripped it until my knuckles went white, until my skin split under the pressure.

Every swing felt like it took years off my life in terms of effort. Every mistake painfully echoed in my bones time the sun dipped low, I was on my knees, my body was wrecked, and my head was screaming.

The sand beneath me was stained dark with blood and sweat. Red .

Tariq stepped forward, gave me a small nod. “Good,” he said. “You’re learning.”

And I was learning how to make pain useful. To turn it into something useful, something final . I was learning how to silence the girl who cried herself to sleep and become the kind of woman who could end someone without blinking.

But the nights… Those were the worst.

Cold sweats.

Insomnia.

Itching that felt like it came from under the skin.

Life went quiet, the stars burned too bright, and the silence made the craving worse.

I’d curl around the knife he offered me under my pillow like a secret I could only share with myself.

Whisper the words my mother once said to me, the only words I still believed in, even if they were lies.

“ Family is the one who stays .”

I don’t know if I believe that anymore. But I kept saying it. Because stopping wasn’t an option.

Red .

The blood on my sleeve is dry now, but the color, that bright red, still pulls it all back, the memories, the heat. Tariq’s voice. That version of me I had to kill to survive. The goodbye I didn’t want to give, to this country, to the people there. To him .

But that was years ago.

And right now, I’m standing in the alley behind Cyrille’s building.

He was dead in minutes. And he deserved it, even if it wasn’t for the Bratva.

Using women as exchange deals already sealed his destiny for me. I think I’d kill him even if it wasn’t the mission, to be honest.

Dead . Gutted like the trash he was, and it felt cleaner, smoother, than I’d expected.

I light up, watching the cigarette flare as I take a slow, deep drag, letting the smoke slide through my lungs. There’s something about inhaling poison that’s calming, like flirting with death simply to remind myself I’m still alive is actually working.

No cuts, no feelings, no breakdowns.

The phone buzzes, breaking my peace. I don’t have to look to know who it is.

Viktor. Always calling right on time.

“It’s done, Vik.” My voice comes out soft. “You should’ve seen it, he was practically begging. Kind of ruined half the fun, you know?”

On the other end, Vik is laughing. “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“I don’t need an audience for every kill.” I flick ash off the end of the cigarette, leaning back against my bike as I stare out at the city lights. People hugging each other, smiling, running. Happy . “Besides, you might’ve gotten in my way.”

“You keep that attitude, and I might let you handle all the messes and social interactions here,” he retorts. “Kat’s here too, by the way. She’s been hysterically asking for you, waiting for you to wrap things up. She wants to know if you’re ready to call it a night and come back home.”

Home .

I can hear Katarina’s voice in the background, “If she thinks she can just go off playing the lone wolf, she’s got another thing coming, and that other thing is me.”

I can picture her eye-roll from here. “Tell her if she misses me, she could’ve called,” I say, smirking. “No need to send a jet to fetch me.”

Katarina chimes in. “Okay, Visha, I missed you. But seriously, come back this time, you’ve been outside of the country for months. Plus… there are plenty of trashy men in Vegas waiting for you.”

“Only because you asked so nicely,” I reply, taking one last drag before lifting my heel to smother the cigarette’s glow, then dropping it in the trash.

I can almost hear her grin through the phone. And then there’s Viktor, sighing loudly. “Okay, enough you two. Az, come back to the penthouse, and we’ll wait for you to take the jet home. Oh, and good job, Kroshka .”

Good job. Two words. And my heart immediately feels warmer. It’s absurd, this quiet desperation for a pat on the back.

I’ll never tell him, but in some twisted way, he’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a family. I’ll never tell him how his faith in me feels like oxygen. Viktor is the first to give me the one gift no one else would, a chance to turn my rage into purpose.

He saw me , believed me when I said I couldn’t go back to that house, and for that, a part of me will always feel like I owe him, and maybe that’s why I feel like I’d kill for him as much as I’d kill for myself.

“I’ll be there soon, I promise.” I murmur, hanging up.

I swing a leg over my bike, and I rev it to life. My legs shift, and the old scars make themselves known, on my thighs, covered in ink now.

Years of training, of blood and sweat, all to become this lifeless.

I have a list to get through. I’ll hunt down every last piece of this twisted game and make them pay for what happened.

The scars on my skin are still here, the blood isn’t anymore, and so, I learned to embrace it.

And now, I'm Bratva's little secret destructive weapon.

They know me as Voron.