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So far, Beau had considered her mission a success.
She’d been laying low in a Milan safe-house after completing a covert information recovery mission. There had been some brief firefight after tripping an alarm she hadn’t noticed before, but Beau made it out of the diplomat’s villa with the information she was tasked with retrieving and her life. That was all she could really ask for at the end of the day, and for now, it was enough.
After downloading the information from the small device- a Jester Lavorre original- she began the tedious process of encrypting the data with her personal cipher. About 45 minutes into her encryption, a small notification flashed in the corner of her screen. Something had set off one of the various motion detectors around the safe-house. Her fingers stilled on the keyboard and pulled up the camera feeds for the property. Something- or someone- moved just at the edges of the back patio camera’s field of view.
Her senses immediately when on high alert, hand reaching for the pistol strapped to the bottom of the desk where she sat. Beau was certain she hadn’t been followed all the way here, and none of her fellow agents were supposed to approach because she’d activated the signal that meant it was in use. This had to be someone else.
Beau completed the familiar process of checking her gun over. The weight of the metal and roughness of the grip comforted her as she crouched and approached one of the windows from the side. Even with the wooden blinds drawn shut, there was still a thin area between each slat where she could peer out at the world safely.
When she was sure nothing was there, Beau exhaled a slow breath and began to move to the next window, flicking the kitchen lights on as she went to draw attention away from the direction she was moving. She thought about checking the camera feeds again, but was stopped by a slow, patterned knock at the front door.
It wasn’t a pattern used by the CIA, but somehow it was still familiar to her. As she approached the front door, gun held aloft and steady, Beau clicked the safety off and rolled her shoulders to relax them. She always pulled her shots when her body got too tense in the heat of the moment.
She must’ve taken long enough to answer the intruder’s knocking because the pattern was repeated again, this time a little more forcefully. Something clicked in her brain the second time she heard the pattern, a distant fuzzy memory from her chaotic Amsterdam mission three years ago.
“It can’t be…”
The whisper escaped before she could think to hold it back. Her usually steady hands shook as she undid multiple locks on the front door before throwing it open without care or caution.
Holy fuck, it is her.
“Beau…I finally found you.”
That’s all Yasha had the energy to say before she collapsed in a bloodied heap on Beau’s doorstep, the various weapons hidden across her body clanking loudly as her body hit the stone tile floor.
“Yash!”
Beau immediately rushed to the injured woman’s side, taking a moment to look over the state her former...friend was in.
Yasha looked like she’d been through hell and back. Dark bruises and various scrapes were covering the pale expanse of skin exposed by the black tank top she wore. Beau noticed wetness pooling at her knee and grunted as she flipped Yasha on her side to see what was producing all this blood.
There was a deep bullet wound in Yasha’s lower back bleeding steadily, which made her think the other woman had removed the projectile some time ago and hadn’t stopped to patch herself up. The bullet wound wasn’t what caught Beau’s attention though.
With an uneasy feeling rising in her stomach, Beau began bunching Yasha’s shirt up to expose more of her back, and more of what Beau thought she’d seen.
Scars. Tons of them crisscrossing Yasha’s back in a jagged patchwork of raised pink skin and faded white lines. Most of them were new, which brought tears to her eyes. What had Yasha been through in the years since she’d left Beau alone in a hotel room in Paris with nothing but a hastily scribbled note on her pillow?
Beau shook herself from her memories and rose to fetch the medical kit from the bathroom, her blood-covered hands fumbling with supplies as she grabbed anything she could think of to help save Yasha.
After a few minutes of cleaning and packing the few deepest wounds, Beau sat back on her heels and looked over her handy work. She’d stitched a few things up the best she could, but her sutures were nowhere near as good as what Caduceus would have done. The neatness of stitches aside, she was fairly sure Yasha would survive the night.
Beau didn’t sleep that whole night.
---
That happened days ago. She’d returned to the US with a very nervous Yasha by her side, bringing the woman into the CIA with her where the former Angel of Irons Operative had announced her intentions to defect and requested asylum. The Directors of the CIA had flat out refused to help. They didn't even grant Yasha asylum, simply their assurance that no action would be taken against her by the CIA while she was on American soil. Beau was obviously upset by this and, after verbally berating the Directors, had received a suspension of her field privileges.
Beau took two days of leave to make sure Yasha was safe and being looked after by trusted friends. When she returned, it was like watching a storm cloud tear through the office. She scowled and snapped at friendly faces, disobeyed simple orders, and told off the Directors...again.
Now Dairon was watching Beau in the training room as she sparred with some newer agents, though spar was a generous word in this case. The senior agent could tell Beau was taking her anger at the Directors out on the younger agents she was supposed to be mentoring. They’d decided to step in and allow Beau to work some frustration out, but hadn’t been ready for the fury behind Beau’s strikes. She was sloppier than normal, had let in a few hits that normally would have been easy blocks, things that concerned Dairon immensely.
“Do you remember the oath you took?”
Beau does, of course, but she doesn’t give Dairon any indication that she’s heard them. After gritting her teeth, Beau's fists fly forwards in a quick series of jabs aimed at some of the trigger points Dairon drilled into her head early on, though the blows are easily deflected by the seasoned fighter.
"You're acting like a love-sick teen."
She wants to throw a punch at Dairon for that comment, but she doesn’t. Instead, she lifts her chin defiantly and swipes at her nose with a single taped hand. Crimson immediately spreads across the white material wrapped there. Dairon shakes their head and deflects more sloppy hooks and uppercuts.
“You’re being reckless. You’re better than this Beauregard.”
This time Beau crouches and feints a sweep of Dairon’s legs- which her mentor falls for- before launching herself up at Dairon with a quick one-two combo that catches them in their solar plexus and across the jaw.
Her fist is pulled back to strike again when Dairon dives at Beau’s knees and sends them both tumbling to the mat below. The younger agent squirms underneath, attempting to break Dairon’s pin with a variety of techniques. When learned techniques fail, Beau resorts to just blindly trying to land a hit. One flailing limb strikes Dairon where a bullet recently passed through and they hiss in pain before moving to pin Beau’s fists by her head.
“Enough Beauregard! Enough...”
The agent above her is breathing heavily from the exertion of the fight. They still hadn’t been officially cleared by medical staff for training, but Dairon felt a personal responsibility for Beau's well-being and that meant making sure their young friend didn't make any rash decisions.
Beau finally gives in with a shout of frustration and lets her head fall back against the mat. Her usually bright blue gaze is dark with frustration and heavy with tears that refuse to fall.
"I have to do something Dai...I can't stay silent knowing what I do about the Angel of Irons."
Darion sighed as they stood, grimacing in pain as they offered a hand to Beau. “Please don’t throw your career...your life away for some trivial-”
The younger woman ignored Dairon's offered hand and instead executed a kip-up that would have made her mentor proud any other day. Beau was so familiar with the physics of the move and the strength of her own body that it hardly took any conscious thought. Beau was in Dairon's face the moment their feet hit the mat again, blue eyes blazing with a determination the older agent hadn't seen in a while.
“You don’t get to decide what’s trivial to me Dairon. I’m going to do the right thing, even if the agency won’t support me.“
Dairon’s eyes hold an expression of quiet regret and something that might be fear, but Beau doesn’t stay long enough to psychoanalyze. She hears her former mentor call after her once, but Beau doesn't spare a glance back.
The sound of the metal doors slamming shut behind Beauregard's retreating form echoes in Dairon’s mind for months.
---
“Beau, are you sure about this? You know we support you one hundred percent, but this could be suicide if we aren’t prepared.”
The woman in question turned to Fjord with a sigh, he was one of the people she’d known longest in this business. A talented former Navy Seal who’d left the service after one of his teammates sold information to the enemy and helped lead an attack on the base where his teammates slept. Fjord’s mentor, Vandren, had been killed during the raid on their compound, and Fjord had nearly lost his own life as well.
“Then we’ll be prepared Fjord, we can’t sit here and do nothing. The CIA flat out refused to help even though Yasha was requesting asylum.” She frowned and took a steadying breath, now was not the time to lose her temper...again.
“I won’t reveal everything I know about the Angel of Irons, that’s Yasha’s story to tell, but I will tell you that I will still try to do this, even if none of you come.”
The half-orc frowned at that and laid a friendly hand on Beau’s tense shoulder, “You are not going alone, Beau. I believe you...I just don’t want this to be a repeat of Am-”
“Yeah yeah yeah, Amsterdam. That wasn’t totally my fault-”
“The car in the canal Beau.”
“Hey! There was no one in the other car and I paid for the damages myself.” She huffed, brushing Fjord’s hand off her shoulder as she moved back towards the center of the room where planning was already in progress.
Another set of hands settled on Beau’s shoulders as she took a seat in a folding chair by the blueprints that were already covered in scribble and symbols from various people. This time they were blue and smelled faintly of burnt wiring and gunpowder.
“Beauuu...Fjord is just being a party-pooper. I already have some super cool things in the workshop, aaaand Veth and I still haven’t found a system in the world that can keep us out so this will be easy-peasy.” Jester chattered happily away in Beau’s ear as she used those magical thumbs to massage all of the tension from her shoulders.
After a few minutes of listening to Jester talk about the latest system updates she installed to help this operation run more smoothly, how her mother was doing, and what kinds of cereal she'd bought to stock the safehouse, Beau patted one of Jester's hands twice to signal that she was okay now.
"Thanks, Jessie."
"Oh! Caddy said that Yasha was patched up all nicely before he left. She's been sleeping for a while so you should go check on her." This statement was accompanied by a very heavy-handed wink from Jester, which of course drew an exaggerated eye-roll from Beau.
"I'm going, I'm going."
Jester's devious snickers followed Beau as she headed upstairs to check on Yasha, wholly unaware of the small post-it note on her back that said, "Kiss me."