Work Text:
one
It was a smaller hotel room than Verlaine was used to. Of course, he didn’t need that much room, since he was alone this time, but it was still strange at first.
He placed his bag on the desk, pulling out everything he’d need for this mission. The bed was smaller that he was used to, and he kept imagining a familiar movement out of the corner of his eye, but his tools didn’t change. Weapons, a change of clothes, a laptop to review his mission beforehand and to write the report on afterwards.
Verlaine let his eyes wander around the still room as he mentally went over the mission. Tonight would be like any other mission. Go in, kill some people, leave. Verlaine had been built and trained for this exact thing, it should be a breeze. The target’s wouldn’t be heavily guarded, and there was nothing to steal—not that the Boss would trust him to steal anything after Verlaine’s previous mission.
“So you’re telling me that you didn’t bring back A2-5-8, and your partner was lost?”
“Yes, sir.”
He opened the small laptop to look over everything once more. The only difficult part of this mission would be the targets themselves—all of them were highly trained in martial arts and various weapons. Out of the three, one was an ability user. The specifics of his skill were unknown, but the file said “emotions-based.”
However, Verlaine had already planned for all of that. He could beat any martial artist using his skill, along with most weapons. He would be surprising them in the luxury of their own home, where they’d be most relaxed, and he’d take out the ability user first.
He couldn’t afford any risks tonight. Verlaine was good but he’d never been alone before—not since he’d left Pan.
A small beep alerted him it was time to go. Verlaine snapped the laptop shut, took a deep breath, and finished strapping all the weapons to his body. He wouldn’t need them, he never did, but he hid them all anyways. Everything would go smoothly and that started with sticking to the pre-mission routine.
If nothing else, he was prepared.
Verlaine took one final glance around his hotel room. He felt as if he was searching for something, although he wasn’t certain as to what. He had everything and nothing moved. Whatever he was looking for wasn’t there. He wondered if it would ever be there again, or if this feeling of something is missing would stay forever.
“Don’t let your emotions get in the way of your mission.”
The echo of his favorite phrase still sounded in Verlaine’s ears. A gentle reminder said with unintended malice, spoken from the ears of someone gone.
Verlaine rolled his eyes at himself. He was listening to ghosts now.
It was time to go.
two
The second person collapsed. His death was as silent as the first. That one had been the dangerous target—an emotion-based ability user—but they’d given Verlaine no trouble.
Verlaine stared at the body for only a moment before glancing around the extravagant bedroom. His eyes lingered on a journal sitting on the bedside table, opened to an blank first page with a bejeweled pen sitting atop it. With a small turn, he could see outside of the room too. Had the body not been sitting in the way, he could’ve closed the door, but the physical toll of moving an adult body wasn’t worth it. It didn’t matter to the mission, so it didn’t matter to Verlaine.
Verlaine took one final look at the body to step around it. The limp form of the man was skillfully preserved. Without the onset of decay, due to their death mere seconds prior, they could almost come off as sleeping. Verlaine found little joy in his perfect handiwork as he carefully maneuvered around it to stand in fully in the large bedroom.
“I guess I’m next then.” Verlaine’s gaze met the voice across the room, which came from the final target. He was standing by the doorway to the master bath wearing a robe, as expected. His hair was damp, dark, and spilling over his shoulders. A red towel was loosely wrapped around his neck, as if he’d just stepped out of the bath. The sight was oddly familiar.
“You are. Any final words?” Verlaine began casually walking towards the final target. The only concern was the emotion-based ability user that Verlaine had just killed. This man wasn’t threatening and Verlaine wasn’t in a rush to return to his cramped hotel room.
“Yes, just a few, if that’s alright.” The man put his hands up like he was surrendering. Once, Verlaine would’ve been sad to watch his actions. This man couldn’t stop the approach of his murderer and consequential death, but he tried anyway. “Do your emotions ever bother you? When you’re attempting murder, I mean.”
“No, they don’t.” It was a strange question for this target to ask, Verlaine had already killed the man that he’d most expected to ask an emotional-driven question. It didn’t matter, Verlaine already had an answer. He’d learned countless exercises to control his emotions and used those skills on countless missions. It had been years since he let them get a hold of him—that is, not including the Suribachi Incident.
“Really? I’d think it’s pretty common for assassins.” A grin spread across the target’s face, a rare feat for someone now within arms length of an assassin. “Seeing your target up close and choosing to kill them anyways. Gotta hurt somebody’s humanity.”
“That isn’t a problem I face.” Verlaine ignored his tensening shoulders and raised his hand towards the target. This will be over soon.
“Oh? Isn’t it?” The target looked at Verlaine’s hand.
Verlaine followed his gaze. Only a few inches away from the target, his hand was ready to kill as it had been built to do. It was trembling from the strength of emotions he was just beginning to realize.
Verlaine stood paralyzed, his eyes barely able to focus on his hand. He couldn't understand why it was trembling. It couldn’t be. He had someone to kill. He needed his emotions to be under control so he could focus on his job. If he didn’t kill this person, he’d be deemed worthless and put down like a dog. Why was his hand trembling? Was he already worthless?
He’d caused the death of hundreds of people, but he’d lost one too.
“Everyone's the same.”
The voice came from the other side of the room. Verlaine looked up from his hand—the target was no longer there. He spun around to see the target opening the door at the exit.
Desperation rose up within Verlaine. Rimbaud had been right every second of the way. He really couldn’t control his emotions and it was going to cost him a mission. He had to act now.
“Their emotions prevent them from acting every time,” The man continued. “I can feel it within you too, the human struggle between action and—”
The man froze mid sentence and looked at his chest with wide eyes.
“I said, I don’t have that issue.” Verlaine’s voice was shaky but his aim wasn’t. He’d taken a hidden knife strapped against his forearm and used gravity manipulation to throw it across the room, landing smoothly in the man’s chest.
The man collapsed, soaking the carpet in blood from his wound and coughing up more. Verlaine fell to his knees, his chest tense. He’d completed his mission, why wasn’t he feeling better yet?
“I could… I could feel your guilt.” The man wheezed out. “And…. I’m sorry… for your loss.”
Verlaine stared at the corpse from across the room. He knew it was a corpse because the tightness in his own chest was fading. He was shaking from exhaustion but the intensity of his emotions had weakened. He was feeling rational again.
Except… He must’ve read the file wrong and mistaken which one had been the ability-user.
It was time to return to the hotel.
three
It was over.
Verlaine collapsed on the bed, still dressed in his spy clothes and covered with hidden weapons. This mission had been exhausting.
Perhaps it was residue stress from finishing a mission solo, or the ambush from an ability user, but everything ached regardless. His palms ached where he dug his nails into his skin to focus; his chest ached from the strain of mourning; his feet ached from walking around so much.
He took a deep breath, hoping the pain would dissipate, or that the world would disappear.
Neither happened.
Verlaine had more work to do. Though it’d only been minutes, he pushed himself up and through the motions of his after-mission routine: Remove all the weapons and change out of his clothes, put everything away and take a shower, write a report to the boss and reflect on what happened.
The first few steps were too fast and the final steps were too slow. He stripped without a pause to process, then found himself stuck staring at his computer open to the report page.
Reflection was essential to improvement, he knew that. You have to find the mistakes so you can correct them. He’d made a vital mistake and he needed to address it.
He stared at the empty page, the moment of his failure playing in his head over and over.
“Everyone’s the same.” Verlaine wasn’t the same.
“The human struggle—” He wasn’t even human!
“I could feel your guilt .” Rimbaud had betrayed him . Verlaine wasn’t at fault. The only mistake that had been made was trusting the wrong person.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Verlaine stood up at his desk, pushing the chair back. There was an absent look in his gaze—he didn’t notice the chair slam into the wall behind him.
“I’m not mourning him. Not anymore,” Verlaine said aloud. “I have no reason to mourn him.”
Verlaine paused, as if waiting for a response, but none came. Not even the echo of his own voice to serve as an imitation.
He was alone in a small hotel room, after all. One single bed, one desk with one chair, one dresser, and one bathroom. It was made for one person and there was only one person there.
Since when did he get unused to being the only one there?
Verlaine’s hand curled into a fist.
Why couldn’t he forget about his dead partner?
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Verlaine slammed his fist onto the desk, crushing the wood beneath his hand with a loud crack . The wood was bent at the point of contact and when Verlaine lifted his hand, it continued bending until it was nothing but a pile of splinters on the floor.
Verlaine watched it without speaking, letting the wood make the noise for him. The sound didn’t fill the space like he wanted it to, performing only as a weak distraction from the quiet loneliness.
And the moment the wood couldn’t be crushed any more, when there was nothing but wooden dust, the sound stopped. Silence pushed against Verlaine, only broken by the faint sound of his breath. In the quiet, he could almost hear Rimbaud’s voice, “now, don’t you think that was a bit of an overreaction?”
His rage flashed hot and he hurled a fist towards the dresser. Before contact, Verlaine paused, hand hovering less than an inch from the wood. He could feel his power under his skin, buzzing like electricity, but he didn’t need to be so barbaric to satisfy it.
Verlaine unfurled his fist and gently touched the wood with his fingertips. The wood instantly folded into itself, collapsing in a way that the Earth’s gravity wouldn’t normally allow. It was louder than the desk, partially from the larger item and partially because Verlaine wanted the noise this time–so he had focused on creating it.
A cheap TV hit the floor as the dresser turned into nothing.
He should reel it in to prevent anything from happening. The last thing he needed on his record was a destroyed hotel room. This was bad enough as it was and the higher-ups were already suspicious of him—they had been suspicious even before his dead partner and a city missing in a rival country. If there was any more proof that he couldn’t take it…
Even Verlaine’s power couldn’t save him.
But it wouldn’t need to. He could deal with this.
Verlaine looked into the mess of wood on the floor. Rimbaud had always thought he was too reactive. Rimbaud had never cared to listen to Verlaine, always insisting that Verlaine was human then criticizing any humanity he showed.
Verlaine moved his gaze from the destroyed desk to scan the entire room, the hot feeling of anger cooling in his chest. The room was still made for one person, but Verlaine didn’t feel the same loneliness when he looked around. Rimbaud hadn’t even loved him as a work partner; the newfound loneliness had been misplaced.
He had always been alone.
“I’m not sorry for my loss,” Verlaine whispered under his breath, mocking his victim. “Your sympathy is misplaced.”
Perhaps, if his partner had cared for him properly, things would be different. If Rimbaud had been more honest… Maybe, Rimbaud would’ve come with him and Verlaine would’ve been far from this suffocating hotel room. Or, the victim’s sympathy wouldn’t be misplaced, and Verlaine would need to be mourning a friend.
He wasn’t mourning his partner, and he’d never had a friend.
The realization set in slowly. It echoed around his head, “ I’ve never had a friend. Arthur was never my friend. ”
Verlaine took a deep breath. He let out a small huff that almost counted as noise. He was right not to mourn.
He didn’t have anything to mourn, after all.
He reached down to the pile of splinters where the desk formerly stood and grabbed the laptop out of the mess. It was alright, despite the drop onto the floor. He must’ve protected it in some way, understanding the possible consequences if he didn’t.
Verlaine took a deep breath and pushed the screen open. He planned to start writing his report immediately, not wanting to delay any longer, but he paused. The laptop was open to the page he’d last looked at, the overview of the mission.
As with all missions, there were a few pages dedicated to all the details on the targets that may be useful to Verlaine. This overview included a physical description of the target, their experience with fighting, and descriptions of any abilities, even the most mundane ones, amongst other information.
But the thing that made Verlaine pause was the picture of the supposed “ability user.” He scrolled between the pages to confirm, but his first glance was correct.
The images of the targets were wrong.
Verlaine could have laughed. He hadn’t made any mistakes, the report itself had been wrong. The images were swapped and the physical descriptions of the two were the same. None of this was his fault at all, it was an error in the briefing.
Verlaine looked up from the screen to glance around the room. There were a couple piles of sawdust in a rented room because he had falsely assumed a mistake. This reaction for a true mistake was bad enough, but when Verlaine hadn’t done anything, calling it an “overreaction” wasn’t strong enough. No words would be strong enough.
The only thing he was at fault for was the destruction of the room. The mission had gone alright, considering the mistake it had gone exceptionally well. There was even new information to record about one of the targets.
Verlaine took another deep breath. He was still the only one in a room full of sawdust and silence that felt mocking, but he had work to do.
He sat down on the bed to begin his report and pretended the sound of the keyboard clicking filled the air. It didn’t matter if it properly masked the silence or not. He wasn’t under the influence of anyone anymore. Not the ability user nor the ghost of Rimbaud telling him to lash out.
Verlaine was alone.
“The mission went according to plan. Every target was eliminated. Due to an error in the mission overview, one target was dealt with rather messily, there may be blood. Everything went smoothly.”