Chapter Text
The moon was high, casting a cold silver glow over the slums of Westalis, but inside the crumbling warehouse, the air was warm with tension. The scent of old blood and gunpowder clung to the rafters, but neither of the women flinched.
"Target neutralized," the woman in black said, her voice low, steady. Her gloved hands holstered a silenced pistol as she stepped over the cooling body on the floor.
From the shadows, another figure emerged. “You work clean,” Yor Briar observed, brushing a crimson stain from her sleeve with a calmness that should not belong to an ordinary city hall employee.
The woman gave a small smile. “You work quiet,” she replied.
They had never met before tonight — two whispers in a world of shadows, only recently assigned this joint execution. It was supposed to be a fast, clean double hit: two corrupt arms dealers who had crossed the wrong backchannel. Yor, under the codename Thorn Princess, was a known quantity in this hidden world. But this other woman… she was new.
Or at least, new to her.
Yor tilted her head slightly. “What do they call you?”
The woman gave a neutral shrug. “No one worth remembering knows my name. But some call me Mireille.”
It wasn’t her real name, of course. Names were masks. Identities were tools. But behind the blood-spattered calm, behind the veil of professionalism, there was a flicker of mutual recognition — not of faces, but of burdens. Women hiding in plain sight, navigating domestic masks and societal expectations… only to shed them in the dark.
Yor hesitated. “Do you—want to grab tea? Or something. After?”
Mireille blinked, then smiled. Not politely. Genuinely.
“Sure. If we’re not being followed.”
They shared a pot of cheap black tea in a hidden back room of an after-hours florist shop — another front, like so many. For thirty quiet minutes, they weren't killers. Just two women. Talking. Smiling. Almost like friends.
Yor didn’t ask what her day job was. Mireille didn’t ask about Yor’s. Some things were understood.
As they parted ways into the darkness, neither of them said goodbye.
But they both looked back.