Chapter Text
It was an outdoor café in Morocco this time, and the other was reading a volume of Shakespeare’s plays, reclining at ease in a hard metal chair that shouldn’t allow such comfort. Typical.
The man slid into the other chair at the rickety little table, deliberately jostling it so his opposite’s coffee rattled and slopped over the sides of the cup. That got no more reaction than a single raised eyebrow, disdaining such childish tactics, but the man didn’t care. He was an opportunist in the purest sense, after all; just because not every gambit played out the way you wanted was no reason not to take them anyway.
“So, you must feel you’ve been very crafty,” he told the other, leaning back and sipping from his own cup, and grimacing. He’d never been a fan of coffee.
His opponent smiled, marked her place in the book and set it down carefully, before picking up her own cup and inhaling the fumes with pointed pleasure. “Crafty?” she repeated, as if considering. “No,” she decided, at length. “I think that’s more your department.”
As always, whatever skin she wore, the eyes gave her away: swirling pools of hue, ever shifting and changing. It was far from the only difference between them, her refusal to hide this one thing of who she was, but it was the most obvious. The man smirked.
“That’s more true than you might think,” he told her, smugly. “I mean, bravo on your tit for tat, and all – the whiskey was rather bad form on my part, I admit – but you don’t actually think your little nudge did either of them any favors, do you?”
She shrugged in what was no doubt meant to be an enigmatic – and infuriating – manner. “That probably depends on your point of view,” she said, and sipped her coffee.
The man snorted. “Oh, right. Love, that many-splendoured thing, the greatest commandment, my cup overfloweth, yadda yadda yadda. All very sweet, if absurdly naïve.” He shook his head in mock commiseration. “Well, hopefully you lot will find the beauty of young Nathaniel’s love adequate compensation for everything it’s going to cost you.”
She tilted her head. “And what’s that?” she asked, curiously.
“Oh, please, don’t play stupid,” he shot back. “You know as well as I where his path was headed; that’s why I was sent in the first place. You know perfectly well what he might have done for your end, if he’d succeeded in climbing as far as his course allowed.” He grinned. “Well, fat chance of any of that happening now, is there. Even if they do ever manage to repeal that delightful law, he’s done. They haven’t even managed to elect a woman yet, much less a closeted sodomite. Ergo,” he concluded, dusting his hands together, “one… unusually pivotal possible career, utterly derailed. Et voilà.”
She didn’t react, but he knew he had her. He laughed and sat back, supremely satisfied. “It was quite clever, really, if I do say so myself. No matter what happened, I won. One way, I had Nathaniel’s soul; another, I had his misery. But this way,” and he smiled, “the whole world suffers. Game, set, and match.”
So there, he thought.
She stared at him for a moment, and then threw her head back and laughed.
The man blinked.
Her laughter was like bells, peal after peal, and drew eyes from all over the café. The man felt his jaw clenching as she continued to outright giggle, uncertainty dropping over his triumph like the proverbial wet blanket. Why was she laughing? He’d won. He was sure of it.
Hadn’t he?
Finally she regained control of herself, smothering her giggles under a bright and knowing smile. He wanted to slap it off her face.
“Oh, my darling,” she said, kindly, and the man snarled automatically in response. “You really should think twice before meddling in things you don’t understand.”
What was she talking about? He understood it all perfectly. Who did she think had bloody well invented bigotry and hatred and – oh.
“What,” he said, “you mean love?” He infused the word with all the contempt it so richly deserved, but it came out flatter than he’d meant it to.
“Well, that too,” she nodded, “but I was thinking more in terms of strategy.”
He frowned. “What?”
She raised her eyebrows, pretending surprise. “I should think it would be obvious. Nathaniel Fick beat you, you know.”
He reared his head back, affronted, and her smile became an outright smirk. “Oh, but he did. He outmatched you. And not only that, he did it without even knowing the rules of the game beforehand. Impressive work, wouldn’t you say?”
The man tried to keep his face still. “I dispute that interpretation,” he said. “And even if it were so, it hardly matters. I more than salvaged the situation.”
“Did you?” she said, thoughtfully, pursing her lips as if in thought. “Hmm. Well, if you really do think that, perhaps you should consider: if Nathaniel could beat you at your own game, on his own, with no outside help, how do you think he will do once he’s playing on his own turf?” She leaned forward. “And more importantly, how do you think he will do with someone like Brad Colbert at his side? Supporting him, every step of the way?”
The man felt himself go still, and she tilted her head.
“You’re very right, of course, that the world will set itself against them. I’m sure they will be told time and again that they face insurmountable obstacles.” She made a show of examining her nails. “I wonder,” she said, as if just thinking aloud, “what do you think people like them generally do, when told that something is just too hard? That it can’t be done? What do you think their response might be?”
He stared at her, frozen. She reached out and patted his hand.
“When at war,” she told him, gently, “it is unwise in the extreme to allow your opponents to join forces, no matter how bad their terrain. Particularly opponents as… determined as these.”
He swallowed, and considered the possibility that he had fucked up very, very badly.
She gave him a look which managed to be both smug and compassionate at once, which shouldn’t even be possible. “Ah, don’t worry,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll learn from your mistakes. Just like you lot always do, eh?” She patted his hand again, and he couldn’t even summon the energy to jerk away.
She smiled once more. “Until next time, my dear,” she said, and vanished. No one else in the café was allowed to notice.
The man didn’t know how long he sat there, staring at nothing, until he finally noticed that she had left her book behind. Slowly, he pulled it across the table to himself, and flipped it open to where she had marked her place.
The page was from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I:
And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil
By telling truth: tell truth and shame the devil.
If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,
And I'll be sworn I have power to shame him hence.
O, while you live, tell truth and shame the devil!
Despite himself, he snorted.
“Touché, you old bastard,” he murmured. “Until next time.”
A moment later the table was empty, the pages of the book ruffling gently in the desert breeze.
THE END