Who: Leliana & Gale, NPC!Ritz the Cracker What: Leliana's spy network becomes divided, and an assignment is rigged to kill Gale When: Tonight Where: Undisclosed shady warehouse location Rating/Warnings: Violence, language, feels x10, shady things, and faking character death Status: Complete!
Betrayal was a familiar stench, foul and rancid, and Leliana knew she’d smelled something sour. It was the nature of the beast, the rules of the game, to hide every razor behind a velvet smile and and a threat veiled by smooth talk with a hint of condescension. All of them were liars. All of them were killers. Expertly trained in the art of bullshit and driving knives between someone’s shoulders.
Coming to the grim truth that it was a team of traitors - even if there was always a mastermind, a leader, a puppet master pulling strings - hadn’t been terribly surprising. Moles and double agents were sometimes the norm in clandestine organizations; it wasn’t the kind of thing where friendship bracelets were made and hair braiding happened. Of course, precautions had always been taken to prevent such a thing from happening but sometimes it slipped through the cracks. Leliana had become far too lax, too distracted, in a place like Orange County.
Planning bridal showers, dealing with friends suffering from a potential demon possession, emotional baggage from a life once lived, falling in love, and someone was tearing it asunder right under her nose. The depth of Gale’s involvement hadn’t been realized until it had almost been too late, and Leliana pulled out an old field agent uniform she hadn’t worn in a couple years. Typical espionage wardrobe with flexible material, skin-tight and black to snake through the shadows undetected. Cliche but trendy.
This entire operation was rigged to go wrong: two agents sent on a kill mission (Gale and a second one, though it’d always been vehemently instructed to never have Gale on a kill mission without her presence), off to infiltrate one of the mafia’s safehouses, kill the targets, obtain data from their computers for leverage purposes and report back. Sounded rather harmless, except that the boy with snares was meant to be an eliminated target as well - an entire mission to set it up as a tragic accident. To Leliana, targeting the man she shared a bed with was taken personally. Very personally.
By the time she arrived at the building (a warehouse of crates meant to be the front for shadier business), it’d been a bloodbath. More men than ‘anticipated’ (ahem, bullshit) had arrived, bullet holes splintering boxes, glass shattered and lifeless bodies on the floor. Two left, Gale and his partner, and the gun in Nightingale’s aimed.
“Well, this is very convenient, no?”
Convenient, and ominous. Many of those bodies were because of Gale himself, the intended target in this whole operation - but he wasn’t just some guy who was getting his feet wet in the world of assassinations and espionage. He was a soldier, a trained killer who appreciated that the fun of this type of work was the variety, he was a stealthy hunter and a pursuer with more panache than your standard cheerleader for the glory of Uncle Sam. He’d stalked into this mission like a storm cloud, with his usual focus and determination - nothing personal to the ones on the kill list, and really, if any mafia goon had a problem with that all they had to do was talk to the boss, the one in charge of his paychecks.
That person was Leliana, who obviously thought she could trust her second-in-command. What the woman had against Gale, that was still a mystery, but soon he’d realize that this vendetta ran deep.
Exposing emotional baggage was a nightmare. To admit that you possessed anything other than a desire for monetary gain and something calculating within your heart was dangerous. It spelled lights out for you when it came to this occupation - he and Leli both knew that, which was why they didn’t flaunt their relationship. Somehow, he’d screwed up though. Thought he was doing her a favor, making things easier for her, helping her distance herself from her dream persona while Gale in turn grew closer to his own. But it didn’t turn out like that.
“Leli - “ He’d also been shot, blood pouring from a shoulder wound, ribs cracked badly after he’d taken a pretty nasty getaway fall, but he was still alive - if completely drained of color besides the purple bruises and cuts everywhere, punctured by glass and all scraped up. Everything was hazy, and even though his strategical mind was putting the pieces together (about how he’d been set up) he still was under the impression this was his fault. “...it escalated.”
“Don’t point that at me, Nightingale,” spat Ritz, saliva a mix of phlegm and blood because the entire ordeal didn’t pan out all that well for him either, but from this standpoint he looked degrees better than the bruised and battered Gale. “Not when I’m seconds away of shooting his brain out.”
This agent was young. And stupid. And reckless, though it hadn’t been her decision to pick up a former trainwreck of a soldier. Looks like he’d been selected because he did look like someone Gale would befriend; someone he’d get comfortable with and let his guard down around, and they’d chosen well. Leliana could see the thought process behind that decision. A basic but effective tactic. “Then what, hmm?” That voice was simply unsettling - sweet, silky, lightly accented. It didn’t match the serpentine eyes, or the venom on her tongue. “You kill him, and what do you think happens to you? I did not think you were so willing to die for…” A wave of the gun in her hand to come up with the words. “Whatever cause you think is so important to cross me over for is.”
No one had banked on Leliana’s appearance. No one (didn’t they have someone tailing her, in case??) and Ritz swallowed. His finger somewhat twitched on the trigger. He refused to take his eyes off the redhead, but it meant his own aim to Gale was off.
Amateur posture, tsk, tsk. “You drop your weapon now, and we will talk about your continued survival. Only one option leads to your death.” It was as if she was willing to forgive this entire thing ever happened - wasn’t that sweet? Ritz was taking the bait. This was supposed to be his mission to shine, earn his place permanently. Was he really willing to die? His arm lowered after a shaky breath. Eventually the firearm was dropped, and her eyes softened. “There you go. Come here.”
Sorry, Ritz Cracker. Gale hadn’t gotten a chance to pull the trigger on this sorry fuck as the carnage in the safehouse wound down and everything settled to a humming buzz of sound and the scent of gunpowder, smoke, blood, iron. All because Leliana arrived on the scene, velvet tread of the huntress, storm brewing - but now we would see how well Ritz could divide his attention. You know, in between pretending to be a badass and then simultaneously begging for his life. It wasn’t looking good for him, and maybe the humane thing to do would be to let him go quietly into the night. Or maybe even to give him a second chance, now that he’d realized the error of his ways. But he’d walked into a trap, and he’d crossed into it at the right moment when he let his weapon drop to the floor - it was instinctual reaction from Gale next, he didn’t think about it. But the invisible jaws of the trap snapped shut, and it was done.
Bang
Bullet between the eyes.
There was no one left, and Gale’s broad shoulders slumped forward a bit. He’d worry about his injuries later.
Leliana didn’t know if he’d be able to deliver the blow. If not she’d been more than happy to trap the boy’s face between her hands and snap his neck in half, but Gale was keen enough to pick up the telltale signs of trap and avenge himself. Ritz fell lifeless, another count to the deceased, and she felt no remorse. Just because he was young doesn’t mean he didn’t know what he was doing, who he’d be betraying and what the consequences would be.
If she’d shown up even thirty seconds late...
She exhaled a breath she felt like she’d been clinging to forever, gun slipped away (it wasn’t her usual weapon; it felt odd in her fingers), and eliminated the gap between them. It was a strange mix of anger and concern she’d been feeling, but considering how terrible he looked, worry triumphed over anything else. Leliana was careful to touch him, afraid of pressing on broken bones, but his hands seemed safe to grab. “Can you walk?”
“Yeah...” The pain was evident in Gale’s voice, however, also accompanied by a wince as his blood-stained hands (literal and figurative, when it came to this soldier) reached for Leliana’s and squeezed gently. “Shoulder’s the worst, but...” It wasn’t the first time he’d been shot here - eerily enough, he remembered the dream injury too, taking a few bullets all in the name of rescuing Peeta from a Capitol prison.
He just wanted to get out of here, leave all the wreckage behind even if it didn’t matter because he’d see it all when he closed his eyes anyway.
Gingerly, he slid his arm around her even though Gale was a giant and Leliana was sleek and slender - but she was stronger than she looked, and he just needed a little support to make it to wherever they were going. Away from the safehouse.
There was a used vehicle out back on gravelly ground, shrouded by a couple of scraggly bushes. It was meant to be disposed later so traces couldn’t be found, but it had some equipment in there - a first aid kit, corked vials of strange liquid, extra rounds of ammo and a spare set of blades. It’d give them a good place to decompress, but the clock was ticking and soon a certain someone would expect a report back.
And she’d get a report. Leliana would make sure of it.
She helped him in the seat, but they weren’t going to be driving anywhere. “We’ve limited time,” she said, like a hissing snake, and reached over into the car to pull out the box of glass vials. “It was a set up. She will be expecting a full report back, and if she finds out this place is abandoned and you are missing, suspicions will arise.”
Why didn’t you tell me? was what she wanted to ask. She caught her tongue between her teeth to stop herself - business matters first, personal ones later. “Drink half of this.” A gift from Orange County’s Magic Guild - little healing concoctions in liquid form so Zee wouldn’t always be on someone’s speed dial. “You returning to them completely healed would give you away.”
Half of the concoction. Well, fine. Gale understood the reasoning behind it - he knew how to play the game; the army was more straightforward, so he learned more and more from a seasoned veteran like Leli. They were both veterans, in a sense, and probably both very tired already. There was just something about that kind of life though. The kind where blood was spilled and you were responsible for it - that kind of life aged you, and it aged you quickly.
Without a word of protest or question, he downed half the bottle and gave it back. Shudder, blargh. Tasted funny, but healing potions probably were meant to have the flavor of antiseptic or something. Gale didn’t expect them to taste like ambrosia and sweet cakes.
“Then I’ll make sure she has a report,” he said, reaching for Leli’s arm. “I’m just too stubborn to kill, but mission accomplished otherwise. I even got shit from the computers. Hey...” He squeezed gently. “I love you, I’m sorry.”
Best time to say that, Hawthorne, really.
Oh, Maker. It wasn’t the appropriate time to throw feelings onto the table, not when they were tangled up in a web of lies and death - a web she liked weaving, not being trapped in - but of course, there was never a good timing for something like that, was there? Leliana’s brow creased. The breath she inhaled made her bones quiver, but she eased, and her eyes assessed him.
“Is this what you have been up to, with your phone being off? Doing this? Lying to me?” It wasn’t meant to sound accusing but she wanted a clear-cut explanation of what had been going on behind the scenes. She had assumptions, but she wanted to hear it from him. “What has she been telling you, Gale?”
She loved him, but sentimentalities were on pause when her right-hand woman was out for blood. His blood. Tonight he would have been another corpse on the floor, dead, because of this, because of this stupid game she had pulled him into when she knew better.
The only way out of this entire mess was to kill or be killed. There was nothing else.
Gale sighed, and carefully reached for the first aid kit. There was nothing to be done about his ribs, they’d just have to heal on their own, but he could at least begin picking some glass out of him - and tend to the shoulder wound, which might become infected otherwise. Getting shot was such a bitch. Though not very comforting that the bullet was likely meant to be lodged into a deadlier place on him.
“Yeah,” he admitted, and he knew that he shouldn’t have lied - but he thought he’d been doing the right thing, on Leliana’s behalf. Thought he was doing the right thing in the dreams too, when he’d become so engrossed in designing better, far more superior weapons to take out the enemy (all for the liberation of Panem’s slaves) he’d failed to notice his own humanity slipping free from him. “We talked about our dreams, Leli. How they changed us. I wanted...to do everything I could to stop that from happening to you. So when she came to me and said that maybe I should take some of the more difficult jobs, to help you out, I jumped at the chance. I wanted to keep you separated from it, to not give it a chance to do what it did in the dreams.”
It was a dangerous game to play either way. Because no matter which way you turned, you’d be trapped in Panem. You’d be in the middle of a mage rebellion. One way or another, you were there - because it was all a part of you. Nothing he could do would change that.
Leliana’s arms stretched over him to switch on the interior lights. It wasn’t much, but it’d make glass glisten on his skin and easier to pluck out - which she’d take care of, considering she had the clearest vision unblurred by pain. It was taking all of her to not shove the rest of the potion down his throat to patch him up as much as possible; close everything, clear the blood, but they had to sell this. Make it believable. It wasn’t the time to go in half-cocked, and she was too damn calculating to let her temperment get the best of her.
But tonight challenged her resolve.
“But it’s happening to you,” she said through grit teeth, picking up a set of tweezers and alcohol swabs. Gale had blended in so well in the world of cloaks and daggers - the transition was practically seamless. “You could have--I could have lost you.” Leliana sounded pitifully choked - angry, sad, grateful that he was alive all in one - but kept her attention honed to every pluck of shards from his skin, breaking eye contact. “I would have become that, if they succeeded tonight.”
Gale held still, not flinching, no winces, barely even a blink as Leliana worked to rid him of glass. Plink, plink, the tiny shards disappeared, and he was silent for a moment as he considered her words. “I didn’t....expect it to happen to me,” he finally confessed. “I thought I could handle it. Especially if it meant preventing it from happening to you.”
He’d screwed up though. His good intentions fell through, everything went to shit, that cracked mirror reflection becoming more real and clearer than he would have liked. Realizing it was like a punch to the gut, over and over again.
“I don’t want it to be like this.” He closed those Seam grey eyes, so stormy, so iced over and wintry - cold, steel, vacant. No, he didn’t want it to be like this at all.
Neither did she. Tonight was a wake up call, where she’d been so close to actually losing him because of this lifestyle of poison and traps - where everything was driven by secrets and lies, where getting stabbed in the back (sometimes literally) was common on days ending in Y. The chances of this had always been there, which is why Leliana held him closer than her own shadow. Anything like this, where the risk was high-level they’d do it, together.
Everything was changed, they were compromised dumped in shark infested waters. A breach of internal security. The closest to you delivered the venomous of bites, but that was quite alright. Nightingale would bite back even harder.
“You won’t be,” she promised and licked her lips, tasting salt. Tears of frustration, perhaps. “I will get you out of this. But we have to play this smart, and play it their way.” Polish their skills of deceit and act like they didn’t notice anything was amiss. Pretend that these people they were supposed to trust didn’t have them in their sights.
The last bit of glass had been pulled, most of the blood wiped. Sapphire eyes blinked up, tear-blurred and glassy. “One last assignment. For the both of us.”
“We’re out. Together. One last assignment for the both of us,” Gale agreed, cupping Leliana’s face in his hands, and he leaned in to kiss her tears away. This was what he had been, honestly, fearful of when he first learned that she wasn’t simply some information broker or someone who ‘traveled a lot for work.’ No, she ran her own wetworks division, had her fingers in many sticky pots, and he knew firsthand that wetworks and black ops were both some nasty shit - and he was afraid that he’d lose her too. That something would go wrong (similar to how it did tonight) and it only took one second for the curtain to fall, and for her to be gone from his life forever - no matter how good she was.
They were also good at other things. They’d find their place, somehow, somewhere - separate from the tragic homeworlds that they both had the misfortune of dreaming about.
He kissed her again, a whoosh of an exhale escaping him. Play it their way, yeah. He could do that. Gale was a hunter - and now, these betrayers were the prey. “Maybe we can make her think she succeeded?” he asked. “I can fake my death. Stay out of the picture for awhile, you can ‘mourn’ my loss. She won’t think we’re really planning to make her pay for what she did.”
Faking his - what??
Gears turned in her head, glancing over her shoulder to assess the building. Someone would have to smuggle him somewhere safe and undetected. Cindy came to mind, but with the upcoming wedding...no. It’d be too much. Wisdom, perhaps, now the haze of despair had left him? “You’re sure you want to do that?” It was an idea that hadn’t struck her but it was an intriguing route - would probably work better than the original plan she’d been pulling out of her bum. “To do that, we need to make it...believable. And lie to everyone you know.” His friends, maybe even his family to officially seal the deal, keep this plan so tightly lidded not even air could seep through. They’d have to set this entire place rigged to blow to remove all traces, and nothing did that better than fire. Mission gone wrong on every level.
Leliana assumed they were prepared to deal with the consequences of assigning Gale to this. It wouldn’t set their plans off much.
“I’m sure,” Gale promised - and he really couldn’t think of a better way to close this chapter than to fake his own death. But from the ashes (literal ashes in this case - nothing cleansed quite like fire did), the phoenix would rise. When it was safe, and when he could be with Leliana without both of them having to look over their shoulders. That was what he wanted most of all - the chance, in Panem, had gone up in flames too. He wouldn’t lose it again, for the second time, in a different life with a different person and different others who meant everything to him.
Carefully, he rummaged around in their supplies - if anyone knew how to build a bomb from what looked to be essentially nothing, it was Gale. “Tell me how much time I have to get this done. And then tell me where I need to go.” He was talented at thinking on the fly, considering this mission like being out in the field during a time of war - sometimes, things didn’t go to plan and you had to change your strategy. But he trusted Leliana - she’d carve them a new path, and they’d do this the right way.
One last to-do. One last hurrah.
How incredibly impulsive, but she supposed it came with the territory of being involved with someone like Gale - who wasted no time in gathering seemingly meaningless resources to create something that’d burn this place to ruins. Explosives was a craft she lacked decent skill in, but he had honed it like a work of art.
“If you are doing this - make sure to finish that vial, first of all,” she whispered, snaking a hand behind his neck to pull him in for a kiss. He ensnared her with his lips before but hadn’t been focused enough to return it, and if they were really going to do this…
Maker knows when she’d see him next.
Leliana snatched her phone (something prepaid and disposable) and flipped it open, punching in a number from memory. “I will make the arrangements. I’d imagine they’d give you a grace of an hour or two, tops, before sending someone to investigate the scene. By then you will be out and I’ll be...home.”
Without him. Such an nconvenience they’d given to their lives, hm? Rage crawled under her skin like a slow poison but it was a skill to mold it into a serpentine smile. She’d been taught losing her temper was unladylike (a crock of shit, she was aware), though it was advice she held very dear.
The makeshift bomb involved tidbits from that first aid kit (flammable liquid - rubbing alcohol, and such) and also car parts. He planned to use the car as the explosive, actually - it was substantial enough, and with the right connections and the right triggers, the metric fuckton of metal could be used to blow this place to kingdom come. Gale assumed that Leliana would make the plans, and he nodded, letting her do that - he was in the zone, brow furrowed, focused, determined as rough and scarred hands crossed and uncrossed wires, and both built and took away.
But first he made sure to drink what was left in the vial. No sense in going into hiding while only halfway healed. His ribs were killing him, each time he breathed and wheezed, but the magic would work soon enough. Already he felt the warmth of it beginning to soothe him from the inside out.
When he looked up (and Wisdom, on the phone with Leliana, said he was on his way - hurrying, so as to beat the clock and make it there in time to steal Gale before the hour had ticked away), he was finished. Just needed to detonate the explosive and watch the world burn. “How long, do you think?” he asked, wiping his hands on the front of his pants. “Until we see each other again?” Leli would also have to tell his friends and family that he was ‘dead.’ It would be messy. But worth the struggle, to emerge from this with a new sense of freedom intact.
Messy was an understatement. Leliana’s eyes cut to him after the conversation on the phone ended with a soft merci - least she could do is be polite to the person on the other side - then clamped it shut. “Question of the century,” she answered with soft melancholy. A place would be procured, money and encrypted means of communication taken with him, and she trusted the man who could summon hellfire with his own hands to deliver Gale to the destination in mind. “If I had it my way, not even a day.”
Realistically, however…
She took his hand, pulled him close, and kissed him. Again and again, until they were both rendered breathless. “I love you,” she told him - and punctuated the sentiment with a rub of their noses, their little eskimo kisses. “And I will get this done quickly.” And quietly. Leliana would hunt down every single person and making them into shining examples of what happens when you fucked with Nightingale.
Blood would rain, but hopefully it’d be the last on her hands.
“I love you,” Gale echoed, and it felt like so long since he’d said those words - he hadn’t said it to anyone but his family, ever (though obviously meant it in a different way), but in the war-torn, ashen world of Panem he’d said it to Katniss. And yet she had never returned the sentiment - the words fizzled out and died, near meaningless, and she moved on to cast him from her life and choose Peeta instead.
To hear someone tell him now that they loved him, to pull him close and kiss him breathless, it let him for a moment think that the world fell away and nothing mattered - it was just them. And it was going to be alright.
“Guess we should get out of here,” he smiled wanly, and they’d have enough time to be out of range of the explosive. Car in neutral, on a decline toward the house, when it all went up in flames it would probably almost be pretty.
Leliana was having a bit of a hard time even letting his hand go. Distance was necessary, the story would play a vital part in making sure this was settled their way, and while she wasn’t particularly new to being the bearer of bad news, the nature of this beast was different. It was severely personal and felt like a vice grip to her chipped heart, because this exact situation was something beyond her imagination - she didn’t think it’d all come to something like this. Where distance was required to ensure his safety, and lies had to be spun like an intricate web to those who cared for him to sell the illusion. His friends would be followed for assurance, and she didn’t trust any of them to keep a secret of this magnitude; none of them were seasoned enough in these affairs, that she knew.
The explosion was decent-sized. It incinerated everything; walls, bodies, melted the weapons inside, and they braced themselves for the heated impact and the brightness a show like this yielded. Black smoke furled into the skies and their noses were assaulted with the smell of things burning, wood and flesh.
“I have a ride coming,” she said above the crackling of flames. “There is a place I have for emergencies; no one else knows its location but me, and now a friend.” It’d been procured way back when Cindy’s alien fiance had his past gather to collectively kill him and everyone he loved. It was a sensitive time when she trusted no one, not even her own circle, in case there’d been a traitor tied to the entire debacle. Better to be safe than sorry. “I’ll send a raven your way.” Baron Plucky would be the one. Gale liked him, and they could use the bird for communications if need be. “You will have everything you need, until it’s safe for you to come back home.”
Waiting there, away from the blast, Gale could still see it - could see smell the scorching debris and the remnants, smoke that singed his nose and throat raw. But his throat felt raw anyway - choked up, like he’d swallowed glass, and he nodded, bloodstained and bruised, scratched and scraped, looking worse for the wear. This was a mess he’d gotten himself into because, again, he thought he was doing what was best for people - he thought he was being strong, taking all the burdens on shoulders that had been forged strong already; yet he didn’t have to be strong all the time. Was like he had to go through hell and back to be able to understand that.
“It’ll go quicker than you think,” he promised Leliana, taking her hands in his and giving them a squeeze. “Stay safe, okay? Take care and...give ‘em hell, I guess. For us. One last time.”
There was no other choice, right?
The car Wisdom was driving wasn’t his fancy BMW, but something more inconspicuous and decidedly boring. Something used that he didn’t really drive much at all, but he arrived on the scene, crunching on the dirt path out here in the middle of nowhere, and click - doors unlocked so Gale could climb inside. He’d catch up with Leliana later, would ensure her that he brought her precious cargo to the correct destination safely. A favour for a friend, and he probably owed her a couple by now anyway.
“I’ll see you soon,” Gale promised, before he reluctantly let go of her hands.
Still, it took a couple extra seconds for Leliana to let go of his, those fingers so desperately wanting to stay entwined. This reality wouldn’t allow it until things were properly dealt with, and it ignited a dangerous level of conviction within. “Soon,” she echoed.
Eventually her hand fell back to her side. She directed a nod in Wisdom’s direction. Take care of him. As long as the secret stayed between a select few, he’d be fine.
A shame she couldn’t say the same for her second in command.