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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | With a new lease on his old memories, Roper turns to the only person who can possibly verify how real they are, or if this is a deep play being made by the new Lich King. Between the Forsaken making their moves on Southshore, and Mistake making moves on her work colleague, the spies have their work cut out for them. 5600~ words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
On the day after the Hillsbrad survivor gives his harrowing testimony of what the Forsaken have done to the former Alliance lands, another undead slinks his way into the capital city of Stormwind. This one, however, is legally allowed to be here, partially as a neutral party of the Ebon Blade, and partially as a former hero of the kingdom, an agent of SI:7 who gave his life to protect his king and country.
The place he goes to is a nondescript building on the edges of the Old Town and Dwarven District that gets good foot traffic to obscure comings and goings but is of no importance in itself. On the third floor is a small interior apartment with only one exterior facing window, too narrow for most races to fit through, that cannot be opened at all, a collection of panes set in rectangles in the sparse Stormwind post-First War style.
And between the years 20 and 22, a man who sometimes went by the name Tibault Beringer lived there.
Roper tries a key in the lock, and scoffs in annoyance when it works, muttering something low under his breath as he opens the door. The place is furnished in barest of bones — a wooden table, two chairs, a bedframe with no mattress, a small table by the bed. There are no forms of light inside, no electricity at all, but there are sconces on the wall that could be fitted with candles fueled by wax and wick or by an oil and wick, places to hang lanterns, surfaces to set a candle holder. The dark grays of the walls obscure where fire smoke would mar white, and the apartment has a closed air smell to it, lack of use, despite the housing crisis in Stormwind. It is possible that inflation has moved even this simplicity out of reach of far too many unable to shoulder the cost, and that those who could afford something of it have not wanted this particular one with so little to recommend it.
Roper closes the door behind him, and sits at the table, spreading black gloved hands over the wood, his expression oddly blank, as he waits. The clothes he wears are new from Cressidha Aspenwood, a dark gray collared shirt, that he has rolled up to just past his mid-forearms, exposing the undead skin for those looking, and flexible black mageweave pants tucked into soft, quiet soled leather boots. There's nothing over his face, not here anyway, his hair styled back neatly, more white than black these days, though still mixed into a gray.
The stairs creak under Alaisa's feet as she climbs. She is wearing the white blouse and long cobalt-blue skirt that she often wears to work in Ironforge, and she holds the skirt up with one hand as she ascends the stairs to keep it properly out of her way. Her Cobalt Company tabard has been neatly folded and left in her satchel, but were it to have been left out one might note the precision of the color-matching with her skirt, clearly a deliberate choice.
Alaisa checks her wristwatch as she climbs and picks up her pace a little; she is already going to be three minutes early as it is. Beyond the watch, her only jewelry is an oval-shaped silver locket that looks like it could contain a little portrait of someone, which Roper has seen before. Her makeup is done very subtly, but it is there, to a keen observer who has seen her face without it and can make the comparison.
Three minutes early. She knocks at the door.
It takes longer than it should for someone to cross the room and open the door, because Roper stands up and stares at the table for several long seconds, like he needs to compose himself before he can handle this task of opening the door.
When he does, it's strange. Not because it isn't familiar, but because it is — the man who opens the door is someone who has done it hundreds of times before, Tibault, Mistake's best friend, not the identity version, not Tibault Beringer, but the name that the spy wore for himself with her, a man who had been her closest and dearest friends for years, who had lived in this place and invited her to it to celebrate his birthday with him, who had left this place years ago for one final mission he would never return from. Blended into that man is Roper Sunstrike, a death knight, who has been dead for four years and undead for two, and altered forever by it.
But there within him is the other man in a way that he has not been, and for a moment his expression breaks in a hard crack like a whip on thin ice, and he makes a harsh sound of an inhale like it hurts to see her, a flinch away, before he reaches out to grab her to him, crush her against his body, like he hasn't seen her in eight long, long years, not just a few months. "Ah, fuck, Mistake," he says into the collar of her blouse, a strange discordance, an echo in his true voice. "I'm so fucking sorry."
What Roper sees is that usual searching curiosity. Mistake clearly knows something is different, something has changed, and she's trying to piece the clues together. She is jarred from presenting her hypothesis by the flinch and the hug, and she hugs him back with all the strength of a mortal rather than a Death Knight. "What the fuck, Roper. How much did you get back? When? Was it when he died?"
"I don't know. All of it? It's all over the place. Everything I burned? I don't know if it's real, or if it's just something he fucking put in my head. It's…" What it is is a startling lack of protocol for the spy. The door is still open, they're still partially in the hallway only half-carpeted with enough of an acoustic carrying that someone standing in the stairwell and angled with the right listening enhancement could hear them clearly enough to make out words. Roper realizes it belatedly, and there's an awkward shoving around of them both as he picks Mistake up and bodily shifts her into the apartment, kicking the door closed behind them, with a tsch of annoyance at himself.
"Fuck. I don't know if it's real," he repeats to her once the door is closed. "It all fits, but it's all puzzles half done and if someone directed me to just fill in the blanks and believe it, I would, I could have done it." There's a rolling speed to his words, a quick mind running on a level of panic and without brakes.
Mistake grins at him, resting her hands on his shoulders "You need verification? I can verify. You said I wouldn't recognize you as a fucking muscle monster, but I did. Didn't even need the coins for it. Test me, give me half-sentences, I can help."
Roper nods at her, quick jerky movements. "I know. That's why…I asked you here. You're the only person I can trust who can have the other side of the memory as clear, and isn't just going off what I say to play that they remember it that way, too." Roper nods again, an oddly vulnerable, living man echo, like he feels nervous and stressed. There's an energy to his movements beyond what he usually has, a tightly wound spring, and he flicks his fingers to set two coins into his hands, a double fidget, as he pulls away from Mistake to start pacing into the apartment.
"Okay. Okay, last birthday we spent here," Roper says. "We got that Kul Tiran wine from the Metrick Job, and two other drinks." He turns to face her. "I said that if I ever got to Tiragarde I would — " Tibault says, and stops, letting Mistake fill in the blanks.
The moment Roper sets the scene as 'last birthday we spent here', Mistake is already moving, unbuttoning the cuffs of her sleeves to roll them up past her elbows. She sits down against the foot of the bed, leaving space for Roper to sit to her right.
But then Mistake turns to face the left, adjusting her posture and voice in mimicry of Tibault's. "Someday, I'm gonna get to Tiragarde, and I'm gonna fucking find the person making this wine, do the world a favor an' let a fucking assassin prove they can be useful, an' rid us all of a great evil, because I'm a really nice guy like that." It isn't easy for her to get the exact quality of the rasp in his voice just right, but she hits the accent perfectly.
Then Mistake turns to the right, as if she's looking at an imaginary Tibault, and shifts the way she's sitting entirely. She picks up something imaginary from an imaginary tray on the floor, miming holding a piece of food. It's thin, like a cookie. She gestures with it at the memory of her friend. "You gonna do all the legwork for the assassin?" she asks, snickering. "Really nice guy. I'd let 'em swim."
Roper closes his eyes. "You think an assassin can do due diligence legwork and swim? Now who's bein' nice?" Tibault says, a burr to his voice, a small suggestion of a drunker version of his natural accent.
Roper tilts his head back, some tension falling from him, a relief that takes down the notch of his restlessness from extreme to high. "Okay. Okay, some of it is real," Roper allows. "I told you about the time I fucked up in my prep with Fallon's wife, back when she was just Duchess Esprit. What did I use to buy Tibault time to reschedule?"
Mistake pops an imaginary cookie into her mouth, seemingly fully ready to continue the scene, but she looks up as Roper moves on to the next. "Scotch and a sherry were the other two," she says. "The scotch wasn't great, the wine was awful, the sherry was the best of the three."
At the specific memory, her mouth twitches as she holds in laughter. "Hold on," she says, and closes her eyes. It doesn't take her long, and when she opens her eyes, she's clearly playing Tibault's part again. "I had to cry about penguins. I was desperate. You remember how Reave was talking about those fucking male emperor penguins taking care of the egg while the moms went to eat and start starving to death? It was all I could think of, and just ugly cried until she left. I need an in to the library. Your brother know where the books on fucking metal differences between shotguns and rifles will be?"
Then she angles herself differently and bursts out laughing, pressing a hand to her forehead. "Yeah - yeah, he'll know. Fuck, how long did you need to keep that up before she left? Sorry." She doesn't sound sorry, she sounds like she was thoroughly amused by this tale at her friend's expense and not above laughing about it.
"An hour," Tibault answers, and again, Roper sags a little further, moving to set both hands on the table, looking down at them like they've come into focus. "Shit. It's real, isn't it?" It's a weird blend of the Roper he's been and the Tibault he was, but it's not a 50/50 split. Roper Sunstrike is ascendant, the stronger of the two, the dominant person of who he really is, and Tibault is only a ghost tethered to him, something that has always been there, a tattered rag of holes and burns, and now though it's more whole, it is still a weak, thin cloth fluttering in the cold wind of undeath.
Mistake slides into one of the chairs - her chair. "Seems like it. What happened? The Lich King died and it all came back?"
She wasn't there. She doesn't know. She hasn't been told.
Roper shakes his head, his eyes unblinking as he stares at his hands. "No. Not exactly." He slides in a mirror of her movement to his chair, flicking his coins in and out of his palms, his gaze going to Mistake. "Everything I'm going to tell you is a secret, and most of it won't stay that way for long, but some of it will. There's no way Himself doesn't know almost everything I'm going to tell you, but unless He's got himself an Ebon Blade informant, and I don't think he does,yet, there's still something he doesn't know. You could use it as a bargaining chip if you need it, but it has an expiration date before some loudmouth Ebon Blade slips up and talks about it and it spreads."
It's so much like Tibault that there's faint echoes of phrases, the way he'd talk to her if he'd just come back from something that wasn't a mission yet, when he'd be readying a pitch for something for SI:7 and telling Mistake first what he'd found out for where they could go deeper.
"We got there to destroy Arthas, and he wiped us out with the sword. I don't even remember dropping. He killed everyone there. Gone. But the thing with how we take in energy, he took in souls, and when the sword broke, King Terenas was still in there, and he called us back. Not everyone came back, but I did. I don't know if it was then, or later. I wasn't thinking about it, because we had to destroy Arthas, and we did.
"But the cost of no Lich King meant the Scourge would go fucking crazy, swarm the world, kill everything. Bolvar Fordragon was Arthas' torture dinner, a partial survivor of the fucked up plague and the living dragon fire, constant agony but undying. And he took up the crown, put it on his fucking head, and became the new Lich King. That's why the Scourge haven't fucking done anything to rip out of Northrend. He's controlling them."
Frost creeps over Roper's face, over his hands, and he blinks. "When he did it, whatever Tirion Fucking Fordring had done to us to unchain us from Arthas was reversed or just didn't apply. We're chained again, this time to Fordragon. I don't know if he did this to me. Put it all back, or forced it, or what. And it's why I couldn't be sure it was real. Because if he wanted to chain me back to fucking serving Stormwind, maybe that's what he'd do."
Only after that does he pause for Mistake to absorb….all of that.
Mistake nods. A secret. Game face on. She listens, breathing evenly, her thoughts probably going a mile a minute as she takes that all in.
"It makes sense," Mistake concludes, and lets out a harsh, frustrated exhale. "Fuck. They're real memories, that much I can vouch for. Fuck. I didn't even - I wasn't told. And now Fordragon's just going to leave the chains hanging over you all indefinitely, as a safeguard, isn't he." She looks angry, and it shows. "It's smart of him, it's what he ought to do for the safety of the Alliance. Dangle the chains over you as a warning, in case. Or maybe he doesn't even know he's doing it, and that's just the default state of being between the standing Lich King and his knights. Either way, I hate that it comes at the expense of your freedom."
Roper makes a harsh sound, a deliberate inhale and exhale. "Yeah. He's not…doing anything, that we can tell. I can think about destroying him, unseating him, I can even hate him. Arthas never allowed any of that. But the trick of it is that you can't see the edges of where your control stops and his starts, just…I can feel the difference. I know he's there. I can feel him, and he isn't trying to disguise it."
Roper finally, at last, tips back his chair, but he holds it on two legs, flicking his coins around his hands, rolling them over his knuckles in opposite directions. "Might just be the crown. But he was still fucking noble martyr paladin enough to pick it up for that. Fordring was there, ordered the secrecy, like a fucking idiot, with hundreds and hundreds of witnesses. Fucking paladins," he spits out, real anger edging the words for a moment, and then it's fading back.
"Part of why Syarra and I are angling harder Alliance now. Can't even trust if we would be allowed to be neutral, or if he'll interfere. And we've got to get as many warm bodies between us as possible, because if Fordragon orders us to stand there and let ourselves be slaughtered, we will. If he snaps and orders us to come to kill you all, we will. There's no fighting it, no way to push back. The only hope we'll have of surviving it is the living protecting us from wholesale slaughter until someone can break the chain." Roper's smile twists across his face. "So in some ways, nothing has changed in the goal. But the stakes are higher and some secretive, and we're walking the tightrope of not knowing."
"Hundreds and hundreds of witnesses," Mistake repeats. "It's been a little over a month now and I haven't heard. No one told me. Kyris was there and he didn't - well, of course he didn't." Her expression softens a little. "Thanks for telling me, Roper."
Roper makes a tsch sound at Kyris. "Of course he fucking didn't, fucking Kyris," Roper says, with a small degree of poison to the edges of his words, scorn twisting his lip up, but he up-nods Mistake. "Of course I'd tell you, all of it. I would have even without the memories. You earned it, and you're one of mine. I wouldn't let you run this fucking blind."
"Yeah, I know." Mistake sounds pleased. "Let's see, what have I got for you? I mailed the newsletter by itself but I've got a copy of a transcript for you and Syarra." She opens her satchel and takes out a folder, and from inside that produces a single piece of paper. "This is about Southshore," she says, offering it to Roper. The writing is quite small, because she has fit the entire transcript onto a single sheet of paper. "The Crimson Coterie wiped out the group of Forsaken, led by a 'Warden Stillwater,' who destroyed Southshore." She has left it for Roper to fold up after he reads it.
Roper's expression twists in rage the moment she mentions Southshore, and he plucks the paper from her fingers, flipping it to read as she speaks.
She can tell that he's displeased by the contents, the details, not just because he bares his teeth, jaw clenched, and frost crackling over him, but also because for a moment the temperature of the room starts to plummet dangerously. Roper catches it before it hits too far where it would hurt Mistake, his left hand closing into a fist. "Sorry," he mutters, as he forces the ice back, and finishes his read with that fist kept tight, a manual key held in an invisible lock.
Mistake pulls her sleeves back down and buttons the cuffs the moment the temperature starts to drop. "It's fine," she says, waving it off.
When he starts folding up the paper, it's into a little paper figurine — a penguin.
"Well," Roper grinds out. "Fuck." He's not really smiling, even if his lips have sort of moved that way, the blaze of his eyes so hot they are literally smoking out the edges. That seems fine. "Fucking Forsaken, champions at finding a way to make doing the worst fucking thing somehow even fucking worse. I'm honestly impressed." The way he says the words though would lead someone to conclude that this kind of impressing him leads to death and dismemberment, but still, you know, impressed. "We know what the Alliance is gonna do about it, yet? What's Fallon and Ference angling, especially with Cobalt?"
"You're getting this very fresh off the presses," Mistake says. "This was yesterday, and it didn't come up at work with Jo today. I'll see what I can get from Father later tonight, and I'll keep you posted."
"So, probably safe to assume they're doing what they say here, and not pushing in new directions yet," Roper assumes. "We'll have to keep an eye on it from our side. Syarra and I are in Acherus, back to working the angle of undead versus undead. There's Cult of the Damned still working there, deeply entrenched enough to wonder how fast they moved or if they had help. If the Forsaken are starting to fracture again, or if this is just that fucking Banshee's play, we're fucked. They target Stormwind — " He has to stop the sentence partway, his jaw working so hard that there's a faintly audible click of his jaw as he pushes it to the limit, probably causing some amount of pain. The little penguin disappears around his arms, either tucked into the rolled sleeve or his glove, it's hard to tell. "They better fucking not."
"They better fucking not. I live here." Mistake pats his shoulder affectionately. "That's all I brought with me. Came here straight from work, didn't know what exactly to expect, and you know I hate keeping you waiting. What were you apologizing for when I came in? Specific or general?"
Roper shrugs at the shoulder she touches, and makes a rolling sound of disgust. "Specific, but it's like, take your fucking pick." There's an undercurrent of shame in his voice that he's keeping angry, his brows drawn down low, as he taps erratically at the table, muffled by his gloves. "I'm sorry I died on you. And I'm sorry I burned you out." He really doesn't want to look at her now. "I don't remember doing it, and I'm fucking pissed at myself that I did, because I would have killed you to survive, and Tibault, when he was alive, would have rather died than do that. I don't know how much of that choice to put myself first, to survive, came from what I am now and how much it was just Arthas and the trainers. I still don't know exactly. I'm not dying again, Mistake. I'm not. Wherever something like me goes now…I can't. But I don't think I could kill you to keep existing either."
There's an unspoken, unvoiced pause, a moment where he doesn't retract what Tibault told her before he left, what he's shown of how he cares for this Mistake as himself, as Roper Sunstrike.
"And I'm real fucking sorry I doubted you, when I came back. You know I wouldn't have ever done that if I'd remembered you. I'm sorry I hurt you because of that," Roper says, and there's a twitch to his face, the start of a bearing of his teeth.
"Hey." Mistake squeezes his shoulder once and then pulls her hand back, placing both hands flat on the table. "All forgiven, all of it." The feeling she gives off is just on the border of pain - nostalgia, a touch of melancholy, but it doesn't linger long at all before Mistake catches it and extinguishes it. "I know you wouldn't have. It was… rough. I suppose you could feel just how much it hurt, couldn't you?"
She leans back in her chair. "In a way, it felt like I was being tested. And you know how determined I can be. I just had to hold on long enough for you to see who I was. You're worth holding on to, Roper Sunstrike."
She can see it. She knows him too well, both this Roper and the one he was, that something in him immediately rebels against the assertion, a denial, no, he isn't, some shame and belief held so deeply embedded within him that all the confidence in the world of his excellence can't ever truly overturn it. The tapping stops, and he sets his hand flat down on the table in a mirror of Mistake's own.
"You said that before. When you knew I wasn't the same. That this version was good enough all on his own." The pronouns get weird, but that's how it goes sometimes with the Before and After raising from the dead into a not-entirely-fully there soul. "I'm still not him. You know that. He's dead, Mistake. I just…remember him better. I know what he knew. I feel a little more how he felt, clearer. But the core isn't the same. I'm fucked up, and he's never coming back all the way. I'm sorry for that." He reaches out a hand to Mistake's locket, a brush of his fingers at the metal. "Tibault's still in there. That Other Roper, too. You're gonna have to carry that. But at least you're not the only one who remembers him, the real him, anymore."
Mistake looks down at her necklace and smiles fondly. "Yeah. I know. I still mean it, Roper. And it's really nice to be remembered." Is she talking about him remembering her? Her remembering Tibault? Maybe both.
"Evander Favre," Roper tells her. "That was his first name, before Shale." It's a little tidbit, something Mistake didn't know, old useless information now. "He left it behind. He was gonna tell you eventually. Just thought he had more time, some event. Another birthday. A promotion." Roper tilts his head like he's listening to something, and shrugs, a quick rise and drop. "I guess that's still true, in a fucked up sort of way."
"Oh." Mistake closes her eyes. "I always wondered." There's just a glimmer of pain before she covers her face and mutters into her hands, "Shit, I am not going to start crying. Sorry. Just a sec'."
There's a slow inhale from Roper, a telltale sign now that he's feeding off the pain. The good sign though is that his version of giving her a second isn't to sit there in silence, letting the monster grow and consider.
"Averlena Coit was a whore in Theramore, camp follower to the army," Roper says, and if his voice has a softness it doesn't usually, the tone is conversational. "That's how Reynolds knew her. The Other Roper picked her for Reynolds' cover, the way to drop key information about him and establish connections that would vouch for name recognition. They fucked a few times before Reynolds was transferred." This is related without a shred of emotion, as boring a fact as Lena having blonde hair. "Lena's real good. Another version of the world, she'd have been a spy, and we'd probably have had to befriend her just to make sure we didn't all stab each other to death in competition."
It's a truth universally acknowledged that you can distract a spy by dangling tasty new information into the spy knowledge jar.
It is, in fact, an excellent method of distraction. Mistake lowers her hands from her face, nodding. "Hm." Information has been filed. She no longer seems like she's about to start crying.
Roper takes another breath, that slow inhale, before he leans forward to set the chair back on the floor. "I'm not gonna tell Him about my memories unless I have to," he says, side-stepping topics. "And I might. If he's paying any attention to me, there are some things I'm not going to be able to hide as well that I'm not supposed to know, and I'm subtle, but not using the tools I have now just to hide that I have them would be fucking stupid with the shit going on. He was paying enough attention before that back in October, after everything I'd been up to, he approached me about coming back into the fold." Roper's eyes are fixed, unblinking on Mistake, watching to see if she knew about it, before or after, or only just now.
Mistake nods. "He told me," she says. "After. That you'd declined."
Roper's eyes are unblinking forces of focus, as if searching the back of her mind with his stare, and he nods, tipping his chair back again. "Yeah, that's what I would have bet on, even then. Now, it's just a surer thing. He still trusts you enough to handle me, but he suspects there's a fucking tipping point where your loyalty might not go to him." He tips dangerously in his chair, just because he can.
Mistake lets her chair settle back down on four legs. "Yeah."
"But really, the best good news of all this, is that I'm never again gonna get fucked by myself having already pulled something on you once," Roper drawls. Yes, he is still sore about the whole he-already-used-the-trip-wire-chair-trick-before-so-it-didn't-work-the-second-time thing. "That and I remember other people, better enough to actually use the information." He clenches his right fist around a coin with no small amount of satisfaction, his gaze still holding onto hers. "You real sure about Sintha, Mistake? That's got layers and layers of how bad that could fuck up your life if it goes wrong. Talking mille-feuille crunchy layers of worlds colliding fucked up."
Mistake hesitates, which is telling on its own. "I mean, I'd love to say yes, but no, I'm fucking terrified. Probably would've been safest for me to shut down the daydreaming early on." Which she didn't do.
Roper, meanwhile, latches onto a word there. "Safest, yeah, probably. But if you were the kind of person who always did the safest fucking thing, we wouldn't be talking," he says, spreading his hands out as he balances the chair first on one leg, then the other. "So, what are you gonna do about it? Don't look to me for advice, if you're even thinking about it. I'm fucked up nine ways to Sunday emotionally, and not only did I go and marry the woman who was supposed to be my fall guy of a front leader if I ever needed a way out, but I'm so fucked up about her that I'd rather fail a mission than fail her, so obviously I'm really fucking stupid about this shit."
Mistake lets the other two legs of her chair hit the floor. "Well, she's 7th Legion now, so she's a lot busier. And - look, I know I'm in a holding pattern, and I'll break out of it eventually. Maybe if I get a good opportunity at an event." Mistake pushes up from the table and begins to pace. "I just don't want to make a move and be wrong. I'd like to get the timing right."
Roper watches her pace with the slight edge of something dangerous in his eyes, a predator spotting movement in the brush and now he's holding that lethal property in check. "Sure, what do you have to lose by waiting, besides the obvious one of you dies on mission and is resurrected almost four years later just months after the other one got married to some priest. As a random, nonspecific example," Roper drawls.
Mistake groans. "Wouldn't want that, no," she says with a bit of a grimace. "I'd like to finish making sure that the things I want in - in a relationship are the same things she wants."
Roper rocks his chair from one foot to the other. "Hey, I just said, don't look to me for advice, I'm just pointing out the fucking obvious. You should make sure you know what you're getting into, and how you'll get out of it if shit hits the fan for you. Get your exit strategy in while you can still think about making one."
"Yeah. Yeah, I know. Fair." Mistake is probably thinking more about the entry strategy at this point.
Roper snorts, as he lets his chair come back down to all four legs on the floor, rising up into an agile stand as he does. "Yeah, fair, but let's be real, you've already got it bad enough that all you're looking at are entry points." He shakes his head, moving his arms out in a what are you gonna do gesture. "Not like I can point any fucking fingers. Fucking pretty, dangerous girls with sharp weapons and sharper eyes, am I right?"
Mistake mimics the gesture. Girls, what are you gonna do? "That's the best kind."
Roper laughs darkly, as he spreads his fingers in the air, the shadows pulling together as the deathgate starts to form. "Fuck yeah they are." Cold air leaks through the portal, opened to Archerus, rather than Northrend. "And, hey, Mistake?"
Mistake reaches out to push her chair in. "Yeah?" She can let Roper get the last word in. He likes that.
"Thanks. For keeping the other me in there," he says, pointing to her pendant. "And for having this me's back. You get that event for timing, and you need back up, you know that if you call, I'll come running, no matter what else I'm doing." He doesn't give her much of a chance for a response, already stepping rapidly through the deathgate before any more Feelings can spill out, the gate snapping shut with a snap behind him.
Mistake goes and sits down on the floor by the bedframe, leaning back against it. She doesn't talk to herself - that would be a bad habit for a spy to have - but she's just going to sit there and think for a while.