Archive of Our Own

The camp smells of pine resin, iron and cinder. The little group of people here tend to mind their own business but it’s a bunch of upfront folk, which makes the lie you’re living feel sharper.
You wear it well anyway, like your stained boots and the small maroon cap. Soft felt and battered brim, it suggests roads and honest hunger. It shadows your eyes just enough to make you forgettable. That’s the general idea.
The raven on your shoulder ruffles his feathers, glossy as spilled ink.
You’re stalling, he says, voice dry.
“I’m observing”, you murmur. “That’s the assignment.”
Across the fire, your target is laughing.
He’s unguarded, too unguarded for someone this important. He’s crouched near the flames, sleeves rolled up, his daemon stretched out beside him. Relaxed as if the world has never once sharpened a knife for his back.
You were sent to watch him.
To learn his routes, his contacts, the secret he carries.
To disappear and report back.
The usual gig.
And yet.
It’s been two weeks and you found out Shoto Todoroki is nothing like the file they gave you.
A little brat with a dangerous power that escaped the comfort of his luxurious home to play adventurer only to piss papa off.
That is not the man you met, the big guy that makes space for people, puts them at ease. Even you. You made the mistake of speaking one time and the way he listened with intention, like you were the most important scholar of the Jordan College.
He’s charming, in the most dangerous way.
Worst of all, his daemon, a snow leopard with clever eyes, keeps glancing at you like she knows exactly what you are and finds it amusing.
If she shared her thoughts, why is he still talking to you?

Shoto glances up and catches you watching. You’re so used to looks of suspicion aimed at you that when his face brightens it catches you off-guard.
He pushes a chipped cup of spiced wine toward you. “Guess the outpost today was pretty remote”, he says. Not prying. Just kind.
Kuro shifts uneasily, talons rasping the ground a little. You are going to ruin this.
You tip your cap back just a fraction, enough to meet his eyes fully. You know it, this kind of contact is wrong, not just that but a dangerous choice. Spies survive in the margins, in this field the spotlight is like a lamp when you’re a moth.
“Far enough,” you say, brushing his fingers in the exchange. The cups is warm in your hold, cold fingers greedily absorbing the heat, and you let out a small sigh.
“I know scouts are usually quiet, but you can sit closer. The fire’s warmer here”.
Kuro clicks his beak once. Careful.
You move anyway.
The firelight paints amber across his face, softening the texture of the scar on his left side.
From up close you notice how his leopard has a thin veil drawn across her left eye, a pale moon with a soft gold around its rim.

As the night deepens, the camp settles: bedrolls uncurl and everyone burrows into their tent.
Your lantern is still on as you quickly file your report. As the pen scratches the paper, you find to have memorized not just his routes and habits, but the sound of his voice when he’s tired, the way his daemon anticipates his moods, how he trusts so freely making you wonder why.
You like him, Kuro murmurs settling into your lap.

“I don’t”, you say a little too quickly. A spy’s reflex, immediate denial before evidence.
Then don’t. And act like it. There’s apprehension in his voice. We should have wrapped this up by now.
During these weeks you watched and listened. You memorized everything they required of you.
But Shoto also asked about your travels. You gave him truths trimmed down to harmless shapes. He didn’t push, and somehow that made you want to offer more.
You press you fingers to your temples in slow circles.
“Charm is a tool. This thin connection can be weaponized”, you say, not sure if to Kuro or just yourself. Which is the same thing, but stating it out loud has a different weight.
The Magisterium trained you better than this. They drilled this job in your mind and body and trusted you enough with a mission of this caliber. You think of the punishment if they catch you failing. The dark rooms. How they’d dissect your loyalty piece by piece.
Still, the thought of how he smiles at you so easily, so sincere, and you feel the careful walls inside you slip by a single, fatal stone.
Kuro climbs on your shoulder through your shirt. His beak is near your ear when he whispers "You’re compromised".
You know. That’s the real danger, you realize. Not that he’s charming. But the fact that despite being trained to survive on lies and deceit and secrets, you’re beginning to wish that this never has to be used against him.
Your raven rests his beak on your cheek. You know how this ends.
“Yes,” you do.

The north is all ice-scarred valleys and ribs of rock exposed beneath drifting snow. A deafening silence presses hard, while frosted pines stand watch. The stillness of this place is unsettling.
Your raven circles above in the pale sky, wings cutting clean arcs through the cold.
I don’t like this place. Kuro instantly mirrors your uneasiness. Let’s find them quickly.
You woke up in the morning and found Shoto’s tent gone. Damn it!
According to the others, he wasn’t supposed to leave for a few more days. He was waiting for an aeronaut -to go where he didn’t say.
You tipped him off last night. That cat’s been watching, you know.
You scoff and chose to ignore the shake of every nerve in you triggered by Kuro, focusing on tracking them.
You arrive near the edge of a frozen river. It’s so strange, you could’ve sworn it lead here.
For a heartbeat you think the shadow in the corner of your eye is just another trick of the light. Then it moves—silent, fluid—and a leopard steps out of the white, pale fur ghosted with ash-gray rosettes. It’s her.
From a rock up on a small ridge right above you, she stares, eyes gold and unblinking, and you know you’ve already been sized up.
Kuro lands on your shoulder, feathers ruffling. Careful, he warns. That one would tear out your throat before you finished thinking of a lie.
It’s the job anyway, so you don’t drop the smile but you do stop altogether.
Not far from the daemon is Shoto. He has no weapon. He just looks at you with that unsettling calm, the kind that comes from someone who has already survived worse than you.

“You’ve been following me,” he says. It’s not a question.
“You didn’t warn the others. I got worried some bears might find you”. You try to save it until the end, even knowing he knows.
“And you’re a bad liar,” he says after a moment. “Your daemon keeps flinching.”
“I do not flinch”, your raven snaps, feathers puffing indignantly.
“You absolutely flinch,” you hiss back under your breath. Every time he looks at us like that.
He watches the exchange with something between curiosity and relief. “You’re not here by accident,” he says. “Who sent you?”.
The right answer would bring him back home, you know it. To the scholars. To the people who think they own him because they made him. To that terrifying person, somehow related to him, that commissioned you.
You imagine the praise, the doors opening, the way they’d call you useful instead of expendable.
“I was sent by your father,” you admit. “He’s worried.”
The leopard stiffens instantly, ears flattening and teeth baring. You hear Shoto whispers Kelia, and the big cat quiets down a little.
You resist the urge to step back. Running would be… unwise.
Shoto’s eyes darken, his gaze cold and unimpressed as you’ve never seen. “So he sent a spy”.
You notice a fog coming out from his left side, like a breath. Either is the nerves messing with you or what you read is true after all.
That’s how higher-ups work. Politicians don’t send messengers, they send weapons wrapped in polite words.
“You’re needed back home”, you recite what you’ve been told. “Your presence would stabilize things. Elections. Alliances. You know how it is.”
“I know how he is,” Shoto says. Kelia places herself half a step closer to him, protective. “I won’t be used.”

The silence that stretches seems to last a lifetime. Snow settles on your lashes. Shoto studies you as if he’s looking past your tension, past your skin, to the shape of your intentions underneath.
“You can leave,” he finally says. “I won’t stop you.”
You’re too baffled to move. Kuro nuzzles your neck. We should go, it murmurs. You don’t get this chance twice.
Shoto sees your perplexity. “You lied to me,” and there it is, clean and simple. Then, softer, as if testing the weight of it: “But you don’t want to hurt me.”
“I was sent to bring you back,” you state. “Not to hurt you.”
He tilts his head. “There were other before you, you know”. Slowly, he steps down the ridge, his daemon at his side as they close a bit of distance.
“They never lingered around. Certainly didn’t speak to me”, the tone is teasing but not mean. “Why didn’t you turn me in?”, he asks.
He’s right. The mission should have ended there. You should have fled and reported failure. Let someone rougher be dispatched.
You’ve been watching him for weeks. Counting his steps. Measuring the distance between his solitude and the place they want to drag him back to. You were sent because you are easy to overlook, because informers are not supposed to feel the weight of a boy’s loneliness like a necklace of stones.
“Because you’re not lost,” you tell him. “They just don’t like where you’re going.”
Something in his expression shifts, maybe recognition. Like he’s been waiting for someone to say it out loud.
His shoulders loosen slightly. Kelia exhales a rumbling chuff and steps closer between you and him, watchful but no longer hostile.
Kuro lets out a low croak. Well, he says, this is new.
There’s another pause, but it feels different. Lighter.
He studies your face, searching for cracks. “You could still betray me”, he says.
“I could”, you agree. “You could also freeze me solid right now”.
“I could”.
“But you haven’t”.
“No”. Whatever he sees there must have been enough.
Your raven tilts his head studying him with one dark, clever eye. “You’re inconveniently decent”, Kuro observes.
Shoto snorts before he can stop it. “Your daemon is rude”.
“Yeah, well. A proper one would collide with a bad spy”.
There’s a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Glad they sent you to do the job”.
Glad I didn’t finish it.