- Rating: Teen
- Warnings: none
- Genre: missing scene, angst, whump
- Pairing: calbyrne, langyew
summary: Once when the nameless agent of Cohdopia was called Calisto Yew, she’d faltered in her duty and fallen in love and had a child with the man she’d later kill. Once when she was known as Shih-na, she’d been the loyal and loved secretary to Interpol Agent Lang as she fed all his secrets to the enemy.
And once, in a forgotten training facility, she was taught that the secret to a spy being able to betray everyone she ever met as to see it all as one big, laughable game.
In the moments before her arrest, she reflects on all that lead her here, and makes a decision she can’t take back.
The woman known as Shih-na, the right hand of Agent Lang, had laughed when she was taken into custody. She’d laughed like a madwoman as tears ran down her face and her smile split into something horrifying even to herself.
The perfect spy undone by a fatal flaw. She could take any name, wear any disguise and forge any document to become anyone in the world. A renowned defense attorney, an Interpol operative’s second in command, a lover, a mother, the Yatagarasu’s traitorous third leg…and nobody was any the wiser.
With an order from fair Cohdopia , she danced upon the strings she’d woven between the unsuspecting targets and fashioned them into nooses she’d render untraceable before the authorities even thought to investigate…and what little they found would be diverted by her own hand onto a convenient target.
She’d have been perfect if it wasn’t for the way she’d broken when she’d had to kill Byrne Faraday. She’d always had a tactic…a skill passed down from her handlers in the shattered Mediterranean nation she called home…to push away unwanted feelings and allow yourself to complete the mission.
Laugh. Force away the pain with a laugh. Laugh at the foolish and the haughty, at the little things in life, or at the dark humor of your grim duty. Take nothing seriously, because everything outside the mission was just a game.
Falling in love was just a game. Getting attached was just a game. Having a daughter was just a game. When the order came down from on high, she pulled the metaphorical trigger on those her cover story called friends as the latest move in the great game. It was that or her name struck out in red Babahlese ink, and the hounds of fair Cohdopia on her heels until they ripped the life from her and left her just another corpse in her bloody history.
But as she plunged the knife into his chest, the game shuddered to a stop in time with his heart. Part of her bled out on the courtroom floor alongside him, maybe the only part of her that was ever worthwhile.
So she laughed. Laughed at the silly young prosecutor and his imperious little sister. She laughed at Detective Badd’s desperation and loss. She laughed at the impotent law, and its pomp and circumstance.
When she became Shih-na, agent of Interpol out of the poverty stricken Zheng Fa, she laughed with her presumptive master…her pack leader…over the absurdity around them. But she restrained herself, as a good agent should.
But when she finally found herself cornered, that foolish prosecutor’s arguments laying the truth bare, she couldn’t hold it in anymore.
Laughter rang through the embassy, echoing through its halls as it cracked and distorted along with her. A manic cackle for a shattering pawn on the great game board rang out as her throat burned with the sound.
Like a serpent , she struck the moment opportunity knocked, stifling Kay’s shout of terror and anger turned towards her as she held the pistol to her young throat…her eyes, her face was too similar to his, carrying none of her mother with her in features or gift.
She was aware of Tyrell’s hand grabbing his gun…of the promise that the final leg of the great Yatagarasu would finally tear her from it’s body…as the shot rang out, some instinct she didn’t understand caused her to shove Kay to the side and away from its path. The crossbow bolts within her hair clattered to the ground alongside her as ‘Shih-na’ prepared to return fire.
Lang cried out in pain, and she felt his warm arms embraced around her as he shadowed her, blood pooling under one shaking leg as he wrestled her into a firm hold.
He’d protected her, shielded her from the inevitable consequence ‘because she’s still his subordinate’.
It was over. Her cover was blown, and those who thought they could trust her now understood just what sort of person she was.
She didn’t interfere when they cuffed her…she didn’t resist as Lang and her former comrades led her towards the door to meet her fate with the last laugh.
If she was to burn, she’d ensure the Ambassador burned down with it by the very hands of Byrne’s daughter.
At the very hands of her daughter.
Kay approached, the bolts in her hand.
“…Wait! Ye… I mean, Ms. Shih-na.”
“Yes?”
“When I fell to the floor earlier, these fell at my feet. “ despite the gun to her throat…despite the fact that she’d killed her father…the anger in her stare had evaporated into something too gentle for her to take now that she was without the barrier of ‘the game’ to protect the battered and terrified Cohdopian girl underneath.
She forced herself to chuckle as she shrugged. “What about them…?”
Kay Faraday’s smile was an innocence she’d never known, her warmth towards a monster who’d ruined her life almost painful to take as she raised the crossbow bolts up towards her.
“They’re such pretty hair sticks that I thought… well, that I should return them to you.”
The laughter died on her lips, and she felt the strange stirring of that same feeling that’d driven her to push Kay away from Badd’s bullet.
“Ha ha… You can have them. They’re of no use to me anymore. If you don’t want them, you can always just throw them away.”
“No…I want to keep them.” Kay seemed to accept whatever it was she saw behind her eyes. Her fingers clasped around the crossbow bolts, and she quietly drifted back to stand by Edgeworth with the very evidence that would tear this sordid little mystery apart under her master’s feet.
Lang and his pack led her away, one last clue to her handler’s undoing falling from her grinning lips on the way out the door.
The Embassy doors slammed behind her with a heavy finality, and she turned her eyes to the smoke-clouded sky as they shoved her along.
She couldn’t find it in her to laugh anymore. She felt Lang place his hand against her back, lingering just a moment too long and too tenderly.
All she could do was cry, smiling like one of his wolves at the shining moon above.