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mashpotatoequeen · 4 months

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WHO DUNNIT TMBS CHALLENGE: petrichor

Despite the early hour, the day is starting to grow dark. It’s close enough to winter that the dusks have started to chase the horizon, the light fleeing quickly in a never ending game of tag. Still, it is autumn enough that it’s raining instead of snowing, the earth swallowing up the rainwater in great greedy gulps. Fallen leaves cling to the pavement.

Sticky walks through it carefully, avoiding puddles on the slick sidewalks and shuddering down to his core whenever he edges his way around a worm that has been called to the surface by the vibrations.

(He used to read more books about entomology and the phylum Annelida and arachnids. He doesn’t anymore.)

Even though his sweater is slowly getting more and more drenched, his socks are dry and warm inside his wellies because of his caution. It’s something he appreciates, and holds in almost quiet smugness; Constance- who has sloshed through every tiny body of water she could find with great gusto- has been complaining of cold toes for almost half an hour now.

She keeps splashing through puddles anyway, water filling her new red rain boots, droplets arching through the air gravity defying moment by gravity defying moment.

“George Washington,” Constance says, her voice high and loud and just this side of grating in the ways that only the voices of small children can be. Sticky sighs, and looks at her, and makes sure his polishing cloth is in easy reach: there has been no end to her litany of complaints. She has grumbled about the long walk and she has whined about being hungry and she has positively moaned about the dipping temperatures as the sun gets lower and lower in the sky.

If she’s calling him George, she must be in an onry mood indeed.

(It might be the cold toes. She’s been trying to convince him to give her his socks these past few minutes, and his refusal to consider the prospect might necessitate revenge in her small, strange world.)

Sticky never does like when Constance is feeling ornery. She’s unpleasant and brash and loud, and makes a point of pushing all his buttons. It’s a battle with his patience that he always, always loses.

All around them, the rain comes trickling down.

“Yes, Constance?” he says, and tries to sound calm and curious and not full of pre-set frustration for whatever escapes the little girl’s mouth next. Reynie is good at it, but Reynie is good at most things. Sticky consoles himself that he must at least be better than Kate, who doesn’t even try to hide it. He nods to himself and trudges onwards. They must be getting close to home by now; there is only so long you can walk before you get somewhere.

“Why are you so boring?” Constance asks, and Sticky feels his lips purse. He deftly side steps when she splashes into another puddle.

“I’m not?” he says, and is a little bit annoyed at himself that his tone comes across as more questioning than firm. He walks slightly faster, taking advantage of his longer legs, but she makes no hurry to keep up. Instead, she stops entirely to crouch down and investigate a worm with a disgusted look on her face.

Forced to admit defeat, Sticky stops, too, a safe few feet away. He blinks a few times to clear water from his eyelashes.

Constance shoots him a side-eye. “You are, though,” she says, quite calmly, like it’s not something incredibly rude, like you can just say those things to people, and the storm cloud on Sticky’s face just grows bigger. He grasps desperately for his teetering patience.

“What makes you say that?”

She groans, a little, and pops to her feet. She stomps over, each step sending water skittering across the pavement, uncaring of puddles or cracks but careful enough to avoid stepping on any worms. “We’ve been walking for nearly half an hour and I’ve not seen you go puddle hopping even once.”

Sticky blinks.

Usually, when someone declares him boring, it’s because he doesn’t want to play sports, or hasn’t seen the latest television show. It’s because his words trip out of his mouth- faster and faster- eager to share something new and interesting that he’s read only to discover that everyone around him has long stopped listening. Sticky knows he’s boring, is the truth of it. Dull and dreary seem to be labelled neatly onto his skin for everyone to see.

But he has never been called boring for something as inconsequential and reasonable as not wanting to get wet.

Sticky takes off his glasses and swipes his polishing cloth over them, once then twice and then three times. The rain speckling the lenses gives him an easy excuse. The moment’s pause gives him time to balance himself on his tightrope of patience. He says, a little sharp, “Not everybody likes to get wet, Constance.”

Constance raises her tiny hand and smacks him on the side, producing a muffled, sodden sound; the wool has been slowly absorbing the rainwater over the last half hour, getting heavier and heavier. “You’re already wet!” she declares, with a victorious grin, and then smacks him again for apparently just the fun of it.

It doesn’t hurt. Sticky feels prickly over it anyways, drawn tight and sharp and a little angry. There is a worm, some feet away, slowly squirming its way closer. Constance’s eyes are very blue. It hasn’t stopped raining, and they’re out in the open, and he’s cold.

Sticky Washington is many things, but a tightrope walker is not one of them. He takes two jerky steps forward, moving out of her reach, and then just keeps walking. It’s better to walk than to snap and say something mean. He keeps his focus on avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk, one step after another. The earthworms are given wide berths.

The clouds above them are still grey and drooping, and the rain does not stop. People have their lights on, inside their houses, probably attempting to keep the gloomy weather at bay. Sticky wishes he was back at Mr. Benedict's house, dry and warm. He wishes that it wasn’t raining, or that he hadn’t forgotten the money for the bus fare, or that he’d never agreed to let Constance tag along with him to the library in the first place.

Sticky wishes, a lot. He wishes he wasn’t scared of bugs and things that crawl and squirm. He wishes that getting caught in the rain didn’t make him feel like this, all small and drawn and anxious. He wishes that he was clever, like Reynie, or brave like Kate. He wishes that he could go about his day just not caring about all the tiny inconsequential things that always seem so worrisome to his strange tangled mind, the way Constance does.

Constance, who has to jog to keep up with him. Constance, who reaches out and snatches the fabric of his sweater, tugging as hard as she can, her bright red rain boots skidding across the wet pavement. Her tiny brow is pinched. Her face is as red as her shoes, painted in a scowl.

“Sticky,” she says, and maybe it's the use of his name, or the tone of her voice, but he stops and looks at her. He would raise an eyebrow at her if he knew how, but he doesn’t, so he just quietly waits instead.

After several long moments, the rain still falling down all around them, Constance sighs. “I just want to understand,” she murmurs, and lets go of his clothes. Her hands fall small and limp by her sides. “I don’t get why you don’t do it when everyone else does. Even Number Two!”

“Jumping in puddles?” he asks, and she nods. Her wet hair frames her face like a sticky curtain, strands clinging to her cheeks. It makes her look young.

Well. Younger.

Sticky sighs. His hands fumble for his polishing cloth, and through the soothing repetitions of cleaning his spectacles he manages to murmur, “I really do like staying dry.”

She doesn’t whack his clothes again, but she does poke him a little, where the fabric is wet and soggy.

“And?” she prompts.

“And I suppose, when I was a child, I wasn’t typically allowed. So possibly I’m just not used to it.” The words are hard to get out, each one like a heavy stone that just wants to follow gravity’s course as far down as they can, to somewhere deep and dark and safe. He says them anyway, and remembers the press of neat little outfits against his back and sides, the way his parents would hurry him along down the streets to catch the next competition, the next gameshow, the next opportunity to show off their son and win their next prize

T.V. hosts don’t tend to appreciate contestants with wet socks, is the quiet truth of it. Homeless boys tend to appreciate it even less, when you only have one pair of socks to begin with. Sticky knows, intimately, what it is to be cold and wet and with nowhere to go. He wishes he were better at not thinking about it. About not being scared.

The rain falls, and falls, and falls.

Constance’s fingers are small and wet and warm, when she grabs his hand.

He blinks at her, a little surprised, because Constance so rarely instigates physical touch with anyone who isn’t Reynie or Mr. Benedict. She ignores this, and holds on tighter. She gives his hand a little shake, like she’s annoyed at him. “You’ve very silly, Sticky Washington,” she says, and sounds self assured and exasperated both. “You still are a kid. And your parents aren’t here.” She jiggles his fingers one more time, and grins just a little sharp. “And you’re already wet, and we’re almost home.”

Sticky breathes, and then he breathes again. It smells like rain, wet minerals and the decomposition of organic compounds deep in the soil. He read a book about that, once. He’s answered quiz questions about it, too. Petrichor, he recalls, the smell of rain on dry earth.

There is a puddle collecting on the road, just off the ledge. It’s deep enough that he can’t see the bottom. It’s big enough that if a car were to pass by, they would become more thoroughly soaked than they already are. Sticky turns to it, and considers.

Constance sees this, and her hand squeezes his own. She huffs, just a little, maybe in impatience, but she says nothing at all. The kindness of it echoes, just a little, upwards and outwards and out.

It is not far to jump. The curb of the sidewalk is a few inches, at most. Kate would be able to tell for sure, but the point is that the distance is practically insignificant.

It feels momentous, regardless.

Sticky considers.

It will still be cold, is the thing. There will still be worms and there will still be a lingering, quiet sense of unease. A leap of faith cannot take away from that, no more than wishes can bend reality. Sticky is under no illusions that hopping in puddles will make him right. He has lived too long, strange and scared, to think that.

But here he is. And it is something. It will always be something, to be brave through your fear. To try. Sticky is learning that, he thinks. It's a small and gentle reminder he is tucking away into the corners of his mind.

Constance is right; they’re close to home. He has more socks, and no one to stop him from doing this but him.

He breathes, and he squeezes Constance’s hand-

And they jump.

The leap lasts less than a second. The leap feels like it lasts a minute, an hour, an entire day. Then the water bursts upwards into the air, displaced by their weight one after another. Sticky could explain why easily, the physics behind it all, but it is nice, in this one moment, to see it as something close to magic.

A huff of a laugh comes bubbling up from somewhere in his chest, and maybe that’s its own sort of magic, too.

The grin on Constance’s face is bright and pleased. She kicks the puddle with all her might, sending a spray of water into his shin and thigh. It’s shockingly cold. Sticky hesitates, then smiles right back, his boot awkwardly skimming the top to create an unpracticed wave.

It reaches her neck quite easily. Afterall, she is rather small.

Sticky grins. Constance sputters. “No fair!” she shouts, but something like a laugh is hiding in her voice. His grin grows wider, tentatively, and he splashes her again.

Seconds slide past, one by one by one. They pass in a blur of movement and water and competition, in Constance growing more and more indignant at his unfair height and Sticky growing more and more practised at using it to his advantage. A car passes, and gives two quick honks of its horn.

They pay it no mind.

This is what it is, maybe, to find healing. To do silly ridiculous things that maybe have no importance to anyone who isn’t you. To do the silly ridiculous things just because you can, because a small part of you wants to reclaim something that was lost.

(To do it not alone. That’s something Sticky is learning, too.)

Dusk starts to descend properly, light slipping away past the horizon in spits and spurts and starts. They are making their way, slowly, back home, but they keep getting distracted by the temptation of large puddles and Constance keeps getting distracted trying to rescue the worms. Sticky lets her, mostly, standing a few feet away. (He thinks that this might be okay, too; this bravery in increments. He is trying to let it be okay.)

Overhead, the streetlamps flicker on one by one by one.

“There you are!” a voice cries, and both Sticky and Constance glance up. Kate comes peeling down the street, a huffing Reynie several paces behind her. “And look, Reynie,” she says, and something mischievous sparks in her eye. “There we were, doing all this worrying, and they’ve been out here having fun! Without us.”

Reynie wheezes.

“I agree, Reynie,” Kate says with false aplomb, and her smile seems to just keep growing, scrunching her eyes up. Sticky throws Constance a look, a bit wary of whatever Kate has planned. Together, they brace themselves.

“We must seek our revenge!” Kate calls, and practically throws herself into the puddle beside them. The force of her landing sends water flying high and skittering, and a few drops splash against his cheek.

Reynie releases a breathless chuckle, and then he comes sloshing in after her. Once enemies, Sticky suddenly finds himself turning to Constance as an ally. As one, they sweep their feet through the water and send a great huge wave of it in their friends’ direction. Reynie yelps at the cold. Kate laughs.

Constance’s hand slips into his own, tugging urgently towards higher ground, and they start to run.

His socks are thoroughly soaked.

Sticky, for once, finds that he doesn’t mind at all.

#tmbs #the mysterious benedict society #who dun it mbs challenge #guess who's back back again

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liebgotts-lovergirl · 1 year

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Fire On Fire: Chapter 26 Part 2

(Ch. 26.1) ... (Ch. 1)

II Gallery II Symbol Guide II

Summary: With the Gestapo on high alert and a bounty on her head, the stakes are only getting higher for Alix as the night of her mission fast approaches. But luckily, she and Captain Nixon have some help.

WARNINGS: War, Death, Espionage, Survivor's Guilt, Nix's functional alcoholism, the usual

A/N: All disguises mentioned are actual techniques used by the OSS, SOE, & CIA! Also, Cisco is based heavily on SOE spy Juan Pujol Garcia (aka Agent Garbo) & several other Spanish Maquisards who fought the rise of fascism in Europe for years before WW2 began!💖

Taglist: @latibvles @softguarnere @brassknucklespeirs @mccall-muffin @lieutenant-speirs @bellewintersroe @emmythespacecowgirl @holdingforgeneralhugs @parajumpboots @hxad-ovxr-hxart @sleepisforcowards @suugrbunz @ax-elcfucker-blog @chaosklutz @mads-weasley @vibing-away @eightysix-baby @ithinkabouttzu

Contemporary: December 2nd, 1944. Resistance Safehouse, Signy-l’Abbaye, France.

Alix awoke to the sound of hushed voices in the hall.

Cracking a reluctant eye open, she reached for her knife just as the mantle clock chimed.

4 o'clock in the morning.

Splendid.

She must've dozed off waiting for their asset's arrival.

Silently easing herself off the couch, she crept towards the adjacent wall, her path just barely illuminated by a cool sliver of moonlight peeking through the curtains.

The voices were getting closer…

Alix relaxed instantly as she recognized her handler’s voice, dry bemusement drizzled over his every word like syrup.

"That’s all you brought, Picasso? One bag?"

There was a hearty chuckle from the darkness and then a second voice replied simply:

"They tell me pack light, I pack light."

The speaker's voice had a rather airy, almost nasal quality she hadn't heard before and a pleasant, rolling accent she couldn’t quite place.

Sheathing her knife, the spy subtly retreated to the sofa, managing to be seated just as the two men entered the room.

“Sorry we’re late, Runt,” Nixon remarked as he threw himself into his usual chair and propped his boot-clad feet up on the coffee table.

His gaze flickered over to their visitor and playfully raised his voice just loud enough for the other man to hear.

“Seems like the Spanish can’t keep to a schedule!”

"Next time, you hike the Pyrenees then, chaval," the diminutive newcomer retorted, a toothy grin appearing from underneath his scraggly beard as he removed a faded leather jacket and placed it delicately on the coat rack.

"And I will be the one to drink and complain. Besides, 'Más vale tarde que nunca', as my abuela always said."

As the asset dragged a chair from the kitchen and into the living room, Alix watched him blearily and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

He was supposed to be here at midnight, she thought with a pang of irritation. What had taken him so long?

The visitor-- Picasso, Nixon had called him-- was in his early thirties, disheveled in ill-fitting black fatigues covered in dirt and twigs, a dark cotton shirt nearly swallowing his frame whole.

Even in his beaten-in combat boots, he couldn'tve stood more than an inch taller than her and he was so slight that his clothing seemed to hang off him like the rucksack he had slung off one shoulder.

Noticing Alix's scrutinizing gaze, the visitor's smile only widened and the American spy observed a barely-visible gap between his two front teeth that reminded her vaguely of her baby cousin.

"You must be La Mariposa Negra," he noted brightly as he sat down, placing the canvas rucksack onto his lap with care.

"There is a poem in my country called that! Perhaps you have heard of it?”

“Unfortunately not,” Alix responded stiffly, still trying to figure out who on Earth this man was working for, why he was late, and why he was now sitting so casually in the living room of the safehouse as though he were part of the furniture.

“Ah, qué pena,” the Spaniard commented easily, still seeming far too cheery for the hour.

“But probably it will lose something in translation anyway."

From his chair, Nixon yawned lazily before gesturing to his protégé.

“Agent Martinelli, meet Cisco León Estrada of the Cantabria Maquis. He’ll be in town for a few days on special assignment.”

The Spaniard extended a gloved hand and they exchanged brief pleasantries before he began unpacking the canvas rucksack on his lap.

“We hear much about you on the radio, Mariposa,” he gushed as he placed two detail brushes onto the coffee table.

"How you make the Germans afraid. It will be an honor to work on you.”

Alix was instantly alert.

“On me?!”

"Correct,” Nixon commented from his place to her right, popping a caramel block into his mouth before going on:

"Cisco is a master of disguise. The SOE calls him Picasso for a reason."

“You are too kind, my friend," the Spaniard replied with a modest wave of his hand. “I have had much practice.”

"Donovan called him in for you personally, Runt,” her case officer garbled through a mouthful of candy.

“He’s going to get you– Well, ‘Tanya’ – ready for her big debut.”

A small vial of dark liquid was placed onto the wooden table top with a plink.

"Is that iodine?" Alix asked as she eyed the antiseptic nervously. “Somebody performing surgery?”

The two men exchanged glances.

"Yes" Nixon deadpanned at the same time Cisco answered with a light "No".

"Well as long as we're all in agreement," Alix snorted as the shorter man rose from his seat, scrutinizing Alix with a pensive gaze.

The former model recognized that look and remained still, patiently allowing the artist to work.

Mumbling to himself in Spanish, the Maquisard plucked absentmindedly at the bush of his beard for several minutes as he paced and studied her features, clearly trying to decide where to begin.

After a moment, he snapped his fingers.

"The eyes,” the Spaniard stated with a decisive nod. “Then teeth. Then hair.”

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Breaking an ankle during jump training hadn't been as miserable.

It had been one flash of pain when she'd collided with the ground and that was it. Mercifully, the bone had gone numb. Alix wished she could go numb now.

But instead, it felt like her scalp was being flooded with lava, each strand of hair being personally seared to the root by the peroxide Cisco was using.

She'd been sitting on the edge of the tub in a robe they'd pilfered for what felt like half an eternity, letting her stinging eyes wander the cramped bathroom.

The Spanish asset, Cisco, was standing by the counter, a needle-thin brush in hand as he painstakingly dabbed each pearly tooth of the mold with a thin film of iodine just dark enough to discolor them.

Every good agent knew the devil truly was in the details.

Eating with the wrong fork, a discontinued brand of cigarettes, a discarded receipt with a traceable bank number, even wearing a certain color too frequently could all spell disaster for an agent undercover behind enemy lines.

They couldn't afford to overlook anything; Alix's life would depend on it.

But even with Captain Nixon firing questions at her about her cover from his spot on the tile, all she could think about was the torturous burning sensation of her head and the dark blue colored contact lenses making her vision blur.

"Madonna mía, can I rinse it out yet?" she burst out finally, her fingers clenching onto the side of the tub as she tried to distract herself from the sizzling sting of the liquid seemingly seeping into every open pore.

"Please? Jesus Ch-"

"Only if you are wanting to lose half your hair," Cisco responded, his sharp eyes never wavering from his work.

"And I do not think you are wanting that."

"Where did you go to school, Tatiana?" Nixon quizzed her as he reached the third page of her cover's dossier.

Alix ignored him.

"How much longer?" she inquired and the Maquisard took a quick glance at his watch.

"Thirty more minutes, tía."

"Am I talking to myself?” Nixon complained loudly. “I said, 'Where did you go to school, Tati-'"

"It's Tanya," Alix snapped finally, dropping her voice to a lower, throatier pitch with a thick Russian accent.

"Only my mother calls me Tatiana. And I was trained at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy."

Her case officer didn't miss a beat.

"And your mother? Where did she train?"

A trick question.

"This is joke, yes?" the spy asserted, crossing her arms in front of her chest with an imperious toss of her head as she imagined a spoiled collaborationist socialite like Tanya would.

"We only train with the best. And the best have always been at the Bolshoi."

Captain Nixon gave a silent, grudging nod and Alix could see him fighting a smile at her performance.

"And your dad?" he prompted. "What's your old man do?"

"He is dignitary," she responded, the smoky quality of her lowered voice adding an extra layer of flippancy.

"That is all you need to know."

Nixon nodded his approval and drew a check mark in the margins of her dossier just as Cisco put the finishing touches on her false teeth and sat them on the counter to dry.

"I must get the, ah como se dice…El tinte– " He gestured frantically as he tried to summon the English term.

"Hair dye," Nixon supplied and the Spanish Maquisard nodded enthusiastically, scooting the large box toward himself.

"Sí, yes–" he said between grunts as he tried to pry the tightly-sealed packaging apart. "The dye! Hostia–"

With a huff of irritation, Cisco flicked a knife out from his boot and began to carve the box open to get to its contents.

“You would think–” he muttered in between laborious saws. “– they are hiding gold in here, when really, this– ”

With a final, swift cut, the Spanish operative was able to dip his hand inside and pull out a small package of Auburn Allure buried within layers of cardboard.

“– is all.”

“Dye’s hard to find these days,” Nixon commented as he shifted from the sink to the wall so Alix could finally rinse the peroxide from her hair.

“With shortages and all. Kathy’s always on about it.”

The cool rush of water on her scalp sent a shiver of relief washing through but when she flipped her hair back and looked into the mirror, Alix let out a yelp of horror at the ashen creature staring back at her.

“What did you DO?!” she shrieked as she clutched at the limp strands of her now ghastly-yellow hair.

Skip and Don were going to have a field-day with this.

“Hostia, I told you not to look yet,” Cisco scolded, swatting her hand away from her face.

“You will only scare yourself. Captain Nixon, the scissors porfa.”

Alix opened her mouth to respond but suddenly thought better of speaking sharply to a highly-trained operative with scissors now in hand.

“Not. One. Word." She growled in Nix’s direction and even though it obviously pained him, her case officer made a sarcastic zipper motion across his lips and turned back to her dossier while Alix continued to violently pantomime slitting his throat.

“Ignore him,” Estrada uttered sympathetically, swiping a portion of her bleached hair to the side and clipping it.

“We are not even halfway finished. You must trust me, vale?”

Alix sighed hopelessly and rubbed her stinging eyes again as the operative took the scissors to her beloved hair.

“Vale.”

∆∆━━━━∆∆━━━∆∆━━━∆∆

Within a couple hours, Alix had gotten used to the contact lenses and even the uncomfortable dental façade that shifted her jawline but she was still getting used to the overall person staring back at her in the mirror.

The haircut and bangs suited her face surprisingly well but being a bleach blonde did not. Luckily, the Spanish operative had a plan to fix that too.

“Damn Cisco,” Alix remarked in a tone tinged with envy as she watched him combine ingredients like an expert chemist.

"You can do hair, you can paint, you can take a dental impression, you can kill a man in probably at least 5 different ways, is there anything you can’t do?”

The Spaniard contemplated the question as he vigorously shook the bottle of dye.

“Maths,” he declared after a moment’s pause.

“When I was in university, I always struggle in Maths. Painting a scene from memory, no problem, but you ask me to solve a complicated equation? This I cannot do.”

“What did you end up studying while you were in college?” Alix inquired curiously as he began to apply the deep burgundy dye into her hair with patient strokes.

“Art,” was the wistful reply, his hand faltering slightly with his fading smile.

“But I leave university when the Guerra Civil starts… My little brother and I, we fight in the war. I make it out…Diego does not.”

“I’m so sorry,” Alix whispered, instinctively reaching to touch her rosary.

She knew the ache of that loss all too well.

“How did you end up in the intelligence game?” Captain Nixon asked, finding his voice.

In the mirror, she could see a shadow cross Cisco’s face.

“I go home to Cantabria. I see what Franco has done to mi pueblo…mi gente… mis amigos… Everywhere you look, there is death."

He swallowed hard.

“That is why I no longer go by my first name... Francisco.” He spat the word like a bitter curse.

“After what I have seen…All of the things he has done to good people, all of the things he is doing to mi amada patria…I cannot stand –”

His voice broke and he cut himself off, lapsing into a tense silence.

After a moment, he gritted his teeth and soldiered on.

“So I put down my brushes… I pick up my guns and I go to the mountains, I join the Maquis. Then the SOE, they reach out to me. They hear of my background. They want to train me in disguise and–”

He finished brushing in the dye and made a half-hearted gesture with the brush as if to say Voila, here I am.

“Bueno, what about you? Why intelligence? I am curious.”

Alix took a deep breath and shifted anxiously in her seat.

What reason could she give? There was only one reason she had stuck with the OSS for so long, only one reason she hadn’t quit the spy game long before.

This operative had just poured out his whole life story to her and she couldn’t even say a name?

“M-My brother,” she forced out, surprised at how brittle her voice sounded as the words tumbled out.

“He, um…He was a Navy lieutenant. He shouldn’tve been there that morning, on the ship, but –”

She took a shuddering breath, the words feeling like sawdust in her mouth as she slowly continued.

“– But he'd stayed the night to mediate some stupid squabble. So he was with his men that morning on the Arizona when…when–”

She shook her head, unwilling to give voice to the awful words, but she didn't have to.

"Entiendo por lo que estás pasando," Cisco intoned sympathetically as he began painting dye onto another section of her hair. "We have both lost much and it drives us here, to make a difference."

"Definitely. I tried to join the Women's Army Corps first," she admitted. "But I don’t take orders well. So suffice it to say, my superiors and I didn’t exactly get along.”

She looked over at Captain Nixon, expecting some sort of quip but he appeared to be studying the pristine white tile, so she went on:

"Luckily, Director Donovan was looking for the headstrong type and knew my father personally, so he asked if I would be interested. And--”

She shrugged, trying and failing to keep her tone light.

“Here I am.”

"Bueno," Cisco chuckled. “My wife, Yessenia, has a favorite saying: 'Pan con pan, comida de tontos'.”

Alix's brows knit in confusion.

“‘Bread with bread'…?”

“A ver, it loses something in translation,” the Spanish operative expressed with another breezy laugh. “Es como...all the same is boring, no? It is good to be different.”

Captain Nixon was strangely quiet throughout the course of the conversation and Alix stole another furtive glance in his direction.

The intelligence officer was taking a sip from his flask with a hollow stare straight past her, at the wall.

He was the odd one out, she realized, and he knew it.

The only one of them who hadn’t lost anything…or anyone.

It suddenly dawned on Alix that she had never known why he had joined the Airborne to begin with or why he had agreed to become a case officer. She never knew why he was so strict with her but lackadaisical when it came to everyone else.

To be frank with herself, Alix realized she had never thought to ask. Even if she had, she reasoned, would he have given her a real answer? Probably not.

But now that everyone else was opening up too, perhaps he just might.

"Hey Nix--" she started and it was almost like her case officer sensed that she was about to inquire seriously about a topic he was loath to discuss because he hurried to cut her off.

“Say, you two mind if I turn on the radio?”

“Madonna mia, you’ve got to be kidding,” Alix groaned, throwing her hands up in exasperation before adopting a gruff, mocking tone.

“What happened to ‘no radio for the month, Runt. It's not safe’?!”

“Well first of all," Nixon noted dryly, already exiting the bathroom to retrieve the contraband. "That impression of me could use some work!"

Moments later, he reappeared, radio in hand, and plopped it onto the bathroom counter.

"And second of all," he finished with a self-satisfied smirk at the look of indignance on Alix's face. "Since we’re leaving tonight, HQ gave the okay."

Before the young agent could respond, the saccharine voice of one of Germany's most notorious propagandists came wafting over the crackling airwaves.

“–the Andrews Sisters singing ‘Pistol Packin Mama’. GIs sure love girls and guns, don’t you? Is that why some of you are lending your aid to The Black Butterfly?"

Axis Sally let out a girlish giggle so malicious that it made the spy’s blood run cold and she exchanged worried glances with Nixon, whose expression had darkened instantly.

How did Berlin know she was getting help from American soldiers?!

Where were they getting such detailed information?

Even Cisco blanched as the announcer’s words set in, the dye brush slipping from his grasp and clattering to the floor, deep red splattering across the tile.

“You are smart men," Sally purred coquettishly, somehow sounding more threatening than if she had been yelling.

"Surely you realize you’re backing the wrong horse. After all, do you know how easy it is to kill a butterfly?”

There was a brief pause and then another chime of haunting laughter as the infamous announcer answered her own query:

“All you have to do is catch it.”

21 notes · View notes