By hour four of trekking through the Russian wilderness, I had achieved a level of psychological deterioration previously thought impossible outside of reality television.
Snow crunched endlessly beneath our boots.
The forest stretched in every direction like an emotionally abusive screensaver.
I was cold.
I was starving.
And I was beginning to suspect nature itself had malicious intent.
"How far?" I demanded for what was approximately the eighteenth time.
Aries checked the small GPS device in his hand.
"Sixteen miles."
I stopped walking immediately.
"Sixteen?"
"Yes."
"ARIES."
"We've made good time."
"GOOD TIME?" I shrieked. "I spiritually died three miles ago."
Sagittarius continued trudging ahead through the snow without emotion.
Honestly, I was beginning to suspect he'd been assembled in a government laboratory.
I stumbled over a tree root and nearly collapsed.
Aries caught me automatically.
"Careful."
"Oh my God," I whispered weakly. "I used to have hobbies."
"You still have hobbies."
"No. My hobby is surviving geopolitical violence now."
The wind howled through the trees.
Snow drifted across Aries's shoulders as he scanned the forest with terrifying calm.
Meanwhile, I was undergoing what therapists would probably classify as:
Advanced Emotional Events.
"Pisces."
"What."
"You need water."
"I need civilization."
Aries handed me a canteen.
I glared at it.
"Do you even know how many toxins are probably in Russian snow?"
"We're not drinking snow."
"You don't KNOW that."
"We literally boiled it."
I took the canteen dramatically.
"Wow," I muttered. "I can't believe my relationship became prepper-adjacent."
Sagittarius glanced backward.
"You complain constantly."
"I'm an accountant," I snapped. "My body was not designed for tactical migration."
We continued deeper through the forest.
At some point the snow started falling harder.
The trees blurred together.
My legs physically stopped belonging to me around mile seven.
Aries, meanwhile, looked infuriatingly fine.
Not even tired.
Just emotionally unavailable and vaguely windblown.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
"This has happened to you before, hasn't it?"
Aries glanced over.
"What?"
"This."
I gestured wildly at the frozen wasteland around us.
"The running. The guns. The weird international suffering."
A pause.
Then, casually:
"It's not that different from my first mission in Tehran."
I stopped dead in the snow.
"...That is not fucking helping, asshole."
Sagittarius snorted unexpectedly.
Actually snorted.
I pointed at him immediately.
"Oh my God, he CAN experience joy."
Sagittarius looked vaguely offended.
Aries kept walking.
"Pisces."
"No, because WHAT do you mean your first mission in Tehran?"
"It was years ago."
"That is not a sentence normal boyfriends say."
"We weren't together then."
"That somehow makes it worse."
Another few miles passed.
At one point I became so exhausted I started hallucinating spiritually.
"I think," I whispered weakly, "the forest is judging me."
"The forest is not judging you."
"You don't know that."
"Pisces."
"I can FEEL hostility."
Sagittarius looked around at the endless snow-covered trees.
"...I think that's hypothermia."
By sunset, I had entered complete spiritual decompensation.
My aura had collapsed.
My chakras had unionized.
Every coping skill I had ever learned in therapy evaporated into the Russian atmosphere.
"I can't do this anymore," I announced dramatically, collapsing against a tree.
Aries stopped instantly.
"You're exhausted."
"No," I said weakly. "I'm becoming one with death."
He crouched in front of me.
Snowflakes clung to his dark eyelashes.
Which was honestly irritatingly cinematic.
"We're close."
"That's what you said four emotional breakdowns ago."
"This time I mean it."
"You also said you worked in goat software."
A pause.
"That's fair."
Somewhere in the distance, a low engine sound echoed through the trees.
Aries went still immediately.
Sagittarius looked up sharply.
Then Aries turned toward me.
"We're here."
I blinked.
"What?"
Headlights appeared faintly through the forest.
Then more lights.
Then figures moving through the snow.
Several armed operatives emerged silently between the trees wearing dark winter gear.
One of them pulled off her mask.
She was tall, elegant, terrifying, and somehow looked like she moisturized professionally.
"Aries," she said calmly.
"Lyra."
Her eyes shifted toward me.
A pause.
Then:
"...This is Pisces?"
I lifted one shaking hand weakly.
"Emotionally, yes."
Lyra stared at me for a very long second.
Then looked back at Aries.
"You brought a civilian accountant into an active multinational extraction route?"
Aries looked vaguely defensive.
"He's adaptable."
"I had a panic attack because of canned sardines TWO DAYS AGO," I snapped.
Lyra continued staring at Aries with the exhausted disappointment of a woman reviewing catastrophic paperwork.
Then finally:
"...Get in the vehicle."
Honestly, I almost cried.
The SUV smelled like leather, gun oil, and expensive cologne.
Which, at this point, I was beginning to understand was basically the natural scent profile of espionage.
I collapsed into the heated seat making a sound of pure spiritual relief.
"Oh my God," I whispered.
The warmth hit my nervous system so hard I nearly ascended.
Hours later, after planes, checkpoints, terrifyingly quiet conversations in Hebrew, and at least one medically concerning amount of espresso—
we landed in Tel Aviv.
The airport lights glittered against the night.
Palm trees swayed in the warm air.
And for the first time in days, nobody was actively shooting at us.
I stepped out onto the pavement looking emotionally destroyed.
"Oh my God," I whispered.
Aries appeared beside me.
"You okay?"
I stared out at the city.
"I think my nervous system is permanently in airplane mode."