Work Text:
Thierry's care package from America arrived three days before the end of term, at a midday mail call full of the chaos of restless, hopeful students jockeying for long-expected mail. The package was the perfect size, Thierry thought -- just large enough to be interesting, but still small enough to easily conceal -- and the paper wrapper was addressed in Lily's careful handwriting. He tucked it away in the interior pocket of his uniform jacket, trying to look nonchalant; after all, not everyone at St. Alexandre's School for Wayward Boys had received mail of their own, and it wouldn't do to be seen holding onto something that might tempt the jealous hordes.
Thierry didn't dare to open the package until he was on the train home, seated in a half-empty passenger car and surrounded by apathetic adults. Carefully, he broke the tape and slid the box out of its paper wrapping; beneath the brown paper, the cardboard was a garish gold, and instinct made him take one more nervous glance around the car before he opened the lid. Inside was an assortment of mediocre American chocolates, a bit worse for wear after a few days' travel in his jacket, but a look under the paper revealed the heart of the present: a sealed envelope, and under it, a neat row of what appeared to be excellent American cigarettes. Lily had come through again.
Like so many of the blessings in Thierry's life, his acquaintance with Lily had come about thanks to the incompetence of authority. In this case, it had been the brilliant administrator on the St. Alexandre's board who had created the international pen-pal program, reasoning that connecting the boys to their reform-school peers around the world would provide them with support in their quest for moral development. What it had given Thierry, though, was a kindred spirit -- Lily, who'd been at Our Lady of Regrets Academy in Boston longer than Thierry had been at St. Alexandre's; Lily, who was every bit as stealthy as he was, and who was a better thief besides. Lily, who'd pilfered cigarettes for him and sent them to help warm up what would no doubt be a long and frigid Christmas visit home.
Thierry carefully eased the envelope out of the box, breaking the neat seal that reassured him the parcel hadn't been searched. (As if the cigarettes weren't sign enough of that! Still, it was good to be certain none of the minders had caught on.) The letter inside was much as Lily's letters always were: pleasant and chatty, but with the careful control of one who knows her words might be read by a third party, and in the idiomatic English that Thierry read better than his teachers did. School, he learned quickly, was as boring for Lily as ever, but she'd managed to earn a fair number of good-behavior passes, and the holidays had meant more field trips. All well and good -- and then he read the sentence that made his heart stop.
"I've sent you a picture."
Thierry set the box down on the empty seat next to him, reaching into the envelope again to find the familiar stiff paper of a photograph. He pulled it out, and soon he was staring at her: Lily, dressed in a heavy jacket and a fuzzy hat, standing at the edge of an icy pond. She had the smile of a girl and the body of a woman, and Thierry swallowed hard, trying to clear his mind. She was beautiful, wasn't she? She was alluring as any of the pin-ups in his collection, and she was just as far away.
He didn't need this.
From the moment he'd started to care about her, Thierry had been fighting it. What use was it falling in love with an American girl? He didn't want to end up besotted with some girl he'd never even meet; besides, there were too many girls out there to pin himself to one. Wasn't that the reason he was thinking about enlisting? As a mercenary, he'd see the world, and he'd have his fair share of beautiful women. Why should he care too much about one?
It was just the season, Thierry decided as he slid the photograph and letter back into their envelope for safekeeping. Christmas was always the season of stupid, impossible dreams, and he'd need a distraction if his mother were in full fervor and his father decided to take an interest in him. God in Heaven, if they had one more conversation about his working in the offices once he left school, he'd... Thierry sighed. He'd go outside, find a quiet corner where his mother wouldn't see him smoking, and daydream about Lily as he worked on her cigarettes.
Those daydreams, he thought with a mixture of nervousness and anticipation, might end up lasting a very long time.
"Do -- do you think we might go for a walk?"
Thierry cringed as he realized how much his request had come out as a plea, but... in some ways it was. He needed the fresh air desperately, and he needed somewhere to explain why he'd spent the whole date fidgeting. He'd dreamed of this day; how could it seem to be going so far wrong?
It was business, of course -- the messy business he's signed up for as a RED operative. He'd jumped at the first chance for a Boston deployment, even though the mission was long-term corporate infiltration; taking on a new identity had seemed to be a small price to pay for a chance to see the city, and the girl, he'd so long wondered about. He'd learned the basics of disguise beforehand, of course, but he hadn't really realized what it would mean to immerse himself in another identity. He'd spent a month in one of the Back Bay safehouses perfecting his cover: Louis McRae, an Canadian émigré and new intern in the Wright Shipping offices. McRae was a cog, a stand-up sort of fellow, and that meant he was a stretch for Thierry. The new identity felt uncomfortable, like a too-tight sweater; it was bad enough going about daily business as this man, but being with Lily as him turned his stomach. To be seen in public as himself would be to risk the operation, and probably his life, but having sat through a whole date this way made the risk seem more attractive than spending one more minute making vapid small talk and praying she understood.
To his relief (and her credit), Lily just nodded. "Let's get some fresh air." She smiled, standing to pull on her coat as he left money to cover dinner, and soon they were out the door into the frigid night. It had begun snowing again, adding a fresh coat of white to the well-trodden greyish mush on the sidewalk, and the breeze was just sharp enough to make him grateful for his coat. Lily reached for his arm, and he let her take it.
Their path led them down the sidewalk, across the street, and to one of the vast and rambling green spaces that Americans considered parks. Here it was more peaceful; the chill was keeping most of the visitors away, and the paths were surrounded by clean white expanses and frost-covered trees. Above them, through the thin cloud cover, the sky was a perfect deep blue. Thierry breathed in deeply. As cold as the air was, it was also cleaner than the city air had any right to be.
"Lily," he said at last, after one final glance behind him. "I'm sorry about this. All this pretending."
"I know. After the letter you sent me... well, I don't really know what's going on, but I understand that you can't talk about it right now. And it doesn't really matter, does it? It's still you under there, Thierry."
Some days he wondered, but he nodded anyway. "It's better that you don't know; I don't want you hurt. Please, just trust me?"
"Of course," said Lily, with a quickness he found endearing. They both knew he wasn't trustworthy, but for her, he was willing to try. "... Look, I know this coffee shop in Harvard Square. The owner's ex-military, I think, and he makes sure there's no funny business in his place. Why don't we go for a cup of coffee, and we can talk like normal people?"
"A capital idea," replied Thierry, chancing a small smile at last. "Shall we walk?" He offered Lily his arm again, and she took it; even through their coats, she was warm against him. She felt right.
Maybe being McRae wouldn't be so bad after all.
The Christmas Eve before Thierry's first battlefield deployment, he and Lily walked home from dinner in silence. It was amazing, he thought, how long a journey three American city blocks could feel sometimes. He regretted his decision to make poor McRae a pipe-smoker; a cigarette would have done wonders for his nerves.
After the three interminable blocks and four flights of stairs, they finally reached the door to Lily's apartment, and she opened it up to the living room that had become more homelike than his real home. Lily's apartment was small and simple, but it was decorated with a woman's touch, from the slipcovers on the old sofa to the framed landscape on the far wall. (Thierry's apartment, after over a year in Boston, was still full of boxes and bare furniture, just enough to live with on the nights he spent alone.) On the coffee table, in the place of her usual candy dish, Lily had put a tiny artificial Christmas tree strung with popcorn garlands and tinsel, with a few small gift boxes underneath; Thierry found himself staring at it as he took his usual seat on the sofa, studiously avoiding watching Lily as she made her way to the kitchen.
"Thank you," he murmured when she emerged from the kitchen with coffee; now that the silence was broken, it was time to force all his carefully-considered words from his mouth. "Lily, you're going to think me mad for this, but I've been thinking about marriage."
"What about it?" Lily looked away from her coffee and met his eyes, her own gaze so guileless that he felt guilty.
"It's the sort of thing that comes to mind, of course, with the deployment, but I'm not sure it's really a good idea. I'll be away so often --"
"I know it's just part of your job, though."
"You'll be in danger. This is a BLU city --"
"And you're Louis McRae, and he's loyal to BLU. Nobody'll ever know any different."
"... There'll be other women. I won't be true --"
"And you won't expect me to be, either," said Lily. "Thierry, do you think you're the only one who's thought about this? I wasn't born yesterday, and I know what being in love with a mercenary means. Now, you don't have to propose if you don't want to, but if you are proposing, let me accept?"
"All right," replied Thierry, knowing himself defeated but not feeling it. He'd only wanted her to know that he realized just what he was offering her, that he wasn't deluded about the future, but of course she wouldn't be deluded either. She'd always been every bit as clever as he was, and every bit as forward-thinking. Otherwise, he'd never have asked in the first place; there were always enough women in his life that he wouldn't consider binding himself to one who didn't really understand him. That Lily understood, and that she was willing to bind herself to him anyway, was a stroke of luck he suspected he'd never have again. "Then you'll do me the honor?"
"Of course I will, Thierry."
"Thank you. More than I can say. ... I bought a ring -- either for engagement or just for you to have, if you didn't want to do this. It's in that green box under the tree."
"Then I'll open it tomorrow with the rest of the gifts," replied Lily, standing up. "For now, though, I think it's time for bed. Come on?"
"Gladly, my darling." Thierry took her offered hand, letting her lead him to the bedroom -- their bedroom, in the apartment that already felt like their home. He'd be leaving all too soon, but for now, he had a home and a fiancée to which he'd return. Had he ever had such a good Christmas present?
By the time his Christmas leave came through, Thierry was desperate to get out of the safehouse. Even at the best of times, they turned men into caged animals, and midwinter was never the best of times; the freely-flowing alcohol only made the problem worse, ensuring that all of Thierry's involuntary housemates were either drunkenly raucous or drunkenly disconsolate all day. While he wasn't precisely relishing the journey across Europe and home, even capture and torture seemed like a better option than another night of singing from that God-forsaken Russian in the room above him. Thankfully, he'd already packed, and he soon had tickets for the midnight train to Bratislava. It was time to head west.
For the first segment of the journey, he was Franz: dour, still in his battlefield scrubs, looking up from his medical journals only long enough to scowl at his fellow passengers. Thierry'd never quite been fond of Franz -- he was a bit obvious, quite frankly, and more inherently suspicious than he preferred in his alter egos -- but on civillian train lines, he did the job of deflecting attention quite well. Franz exuded the air of a man who knew his business and couldn't be bothered with questions, and when he disappeared behind an EMPLOYEES ONLY door in the Stuttgart station, nobody cared to ask why.
He stepped back out into the station as Scotty, bright-eyed and all too happy to regale his fellow passengers with war stories in his American drawl. Scotty was a triumph of hiding in plain sight; after all, nobody here would believe that someone so desperate for attention could have any real secrets, and most of them wanted nothing more than to ignore the chattering oaf seated next to them. By the time he reached the men's restroom at the Paris airport, Thierry had to admit he was a bit weary of Scotty himself, but he'd served his purpose admirably.
When he emerged from that restroom, Thierry wore the familiar face of Louis McRae, just in time to make the flight home from one of his many business trips. After trans-European rail service, business class on a trans-Atlantic flight felt like luxury, and at last Thierry had the chance for a proper mental inventory. Whatever happened, the rest would do him good; he was particularly looking forward to seeing the boys and doing what he could to make up for lost time. (Sometimes he was afraid he'd come home and they wouldn't recognize him, and then he remembered that they wouldn't anyway; even his sons knew him first as McRae. It was strange, sometimes, the casualties his work created.)
The plane touched down in Boston shortly after midnight, and Lily was waiting for him at the gate, face showing the fatigue of a very long day. He strode towards her as quickly as his cramped legs would allow, reaching out to embrace her; at last, she was in his arms, and she leaned against him as she craned up to whisper in his ear. "Thierry. It's so good to see you."
In that moment, he couldn't decide what was better: being near Lily once again, or being himself again.
"More coffee, dear?"
"Mm," said Thierry, letting Lily refill his cup. The fireplace was doing a perfectly fine job keeping him warm, but coffee complemented his cigarette quite well, and his wife's personal brew was sublime. (Admittedly, the Irish cream liqueur added quite a bit.) "Sit down, darling? You don't need to rush this year."
"I know," said Lily, "but I'm so used to it. It's strange without the boys here for Christmas, isn't it?"
"It is at that." Stranger even than the silent house was the idea of his sons scattered as they were, finding their fortunes as fully-grown men. Michael and Kevin would bring their families to Christmas dinner, of course, but Paul was spending the holiday with his wife's family in Baltimore, and the others were all too far away to travel -- including poor Johnny, thought Thierry with a pang of regret. The boy'd ended up in service on the wrong side, and while he'd been able to pull strings with BLU contacts to spare Johnny the worst of it, he'd never been confident of his youngest son's ability to stay out of trouble.
But Johnny was beyond his helping now, and dwelling on him would do nothing but sour his time with Lily. For the first Christmas in decades, they'd be able to focus on themselves and on being together. He'd made dinner reservations at Giovanni's for Christmas Eve, letting her stay out of the kitchen the night before the madness of cooking Christmas dinner for eleven, and he'd been working since October to prepare little surprises for the day itself. This year, he hoped, all of it would convey even a small portion of his gratitude for her and the life they'd built.
This was a better life, in many ways, than he deserved. He'd gone from being a teenage sneak thief to working in industrial espionage and sabotage; he seduced the innocent, sold secrets, and gutted men like fish. He'd spent most of his adult life among the crudest and most violent men on earth, and how was he rewarded? With a comfortable fortune, a townhouse in Beacon Hill, eight fine sons, and a wife whose love he'd never begin to deserve. The wages of sin, indeed.
Lily's voice broke through his reverie. "Is everything all right? You're so quiet. I didn't put too much Irish cream in the coffee, did I?"
"No such thing," Thierry replied. "I was thinking, that's all: musing on how grateful I am to have you. If you weren't here with me, I don't even know where I'd be."
"Sneaking out of some dictator's palace before you get caught with his wife, I'm sure," said Lily, smiling. "Or out drinking with your squadmates."
"Or their wives. It's better to be with you, though. Always better to be with you."
"I'm glad," said Lily, reaching to take his hand. "You know, I had an idea. How'd you like to go ice skating tomorrow?"
Thierry'd never been ice skating; it was practically an invitation to make a fool of himself, but Lily would be there, laughing and gliding over the ice, and that was enough. Besides, he'd follow her into the mouth of Hell. Why not follow her onto the ice? "I'd be honored," he replied. "My darling."
"My Thierry."
It was still a week before Christmas, but he had every gift he would ever need, and every blessing. All he had to do now was enjoy them.