New story! I've been wanting to write a Spy AU for a while, and this just kind of came to me the other night. I know I have two other works that kinda look abandoned right now, but I swear they'll be finished eventually.

(P.S. The title will eventually make sense)

Disclaimer: Not JKR and I don't own anything you recognize

Paperwork, Lily Evans seethed, was a bitch.

She wasn't usually so behind. In fact, most months, her desk was quite clear of anything except for a pen, the occasional odd piece of paper, and a bowl of jelly beans (for the particularly nasty days). Looking at her desk now, however, she could only sigh.

It, quite frankly, looked a mess. Papers littered the dark oak table, thrown haphazardly this way and that, not so much neglected as put off as a result of more pressing matters to attend to. There was always something more important than filling out case reports and inquiries and yet, somehow, it seemed that she could not escape the task.

Paperwork, Moody always said, was the root of the tree that was espionage. The metaphor was horribly crafted and even more horribly delivered (in a perpetually angry, stilted voice), but Lily woefully found that she agreed. Typing up a new report and filling out seven forms for each mission was tedious and boring and tiring, but the Agency would have run into the ground years before if the task wasn't taken care of.

It was just that, usually, there was nowhere near this much to take care of. She'd never had more than three reports to type up in a month, had never had to sign her name at the bottom of a paper so many times in a week. It was a reflection of the times, Lily knew, and of the tension that was palpable in the air, the way she now walked with one eye in the back of her head at all times, how there were very few you could trust, and even fewer you could make trust you.

Still, there had to be some sort of individual quota. A point where the god of paperwork took pity. Work was work, and Lily didn't expect it to always be enjoyable, but she was starting to walk into the building in the morning fuzzy headed, as if already preparing for what the day before her entailed.

Her cubicle was nice enough - in the center of the room, airy, light, sparsely but rather classily decorated. There was very little indication of a personal life - Lily didn't have much of one (no one at the Agency really did) - but she felt it reflected her personality quite nicely. Bright, rather fresh, but extremely functional and no nonsense. It was nothing like Marlene's, at least - a perpetual mess, covered in newspaper clippings and empty lipstick tubes and what Lily swore was a piece of a pair of fishnet stockings, but that Marlene insisted was a souvenir from a particularly exciting mission in Bolivia. Lily didn't see why it couldn't be both, but Marlene wasn't someone that liked being argued with, and Lily didn't care enough about the issue to push it.

It was Marlene that interrupted Lily from her paperwork, giving her poor hand a break as the redhead dropped her pen to the table in relief and looked up from the papers on her desk to see her cubicle neighbor standing with a hip cocked against the entry way, looking decidedly put-out.

"Is there something you need?" The question was, perhaps, a bit more angry than it needed to be, but paperwork had a way of making everything a little more annoying.

"Moody wants to see you."

Alastor Moody was not someone to be kept waiting, and Lily was eager to get away from her desk and the stifling piles of paper atop it, and so she jumped out of her chair, reaching across her desk to pluck her I.D. badge off the corner of the table. "Did he say what he wants?"

"Confidential."

Ah. This, Lily realized, was why Marlene looked as if someone had just taken her last slice of cheesecake. If there was one thing that Marlene McKinnon liked less than food stealers, it was not being in the know. It was quite ironic, really, given what line of work they were all in, but Lily couldn't exactly fault her. There was very little that was more annoying than when everyone seemed to know something except for you. Even if said something, in the wrong hands, could lead to World War 3.

"Perfect. I'll bet at the end of all this I'll have another mountain of paperwork on my desk. Remind me again why I work here?"

"You like saving the world?"

Lily pretended to contemplate it. "I suppose that's something."

Marlene laughed, her bad mood evaporating into thin air. Marlene's emotions were as volatile as a hurricane, or perhaps a raging fire. Something large, destructive, and very, very hard to escape from.

"So, reckon this has anything to do with -," Marlene's voice dropped to a whisper, "you know, him?"

"Leonardo Di Caprio? I sure hope so."

"Don't joke, Lily. I'm serious. Moody seemed… well, in a mood."

It was a testament to how serious Marlene considered the situation that she didn't give a little chuckle at the end of her sentence, that her eyes didn't crinkle in poorly-disguised humor. Tom Riddle, the whispered him, terrified Lily more than anything else, and she knew Marlene felt the same way. Most did. But she doubted that this meeting had anything to do with him or his group of followers - after all, there were many reasons one could be called into the Director's office.

She could be, of course, getting reprimanded. She didn't think she'd done anything wrong, except for perhaps fail to mention to anyone that the women's bathroom was out of toilet paper, but Moody was a hard boss to please.

She could be getting relocated. It happened often - an agent's services were needed somewhere else, and they were sent packing with only a day's notice. While this wouldn't be the end of the world, Lily had just obtained a frequent customer card at the local coffee shop, and it would be a shame to let that go to waste.

There was then, of course, the possibility that she was being recruited for a mission. This seemed the most feasible, but was also the most dreaded. She loved being in the field, of course, as that was what she had trained for years for and what, really, she was good at, but the atmosphere that surrounded missions these days was too volatile to be comfortable for anyone, and she wasn't so foolish as to doubt that there was a higher chance that she'd die than most.

Lily Evans had joined the Agency Academy through six written tests, four practical exams, an extensive interview, and many an uncomfortable situation. She'd proven herself time and time again, had graduated top of her class, was one of the best young agents that the group had seen in years, but somehow that all seemed to pale when it was acknowledged that she was not a Legacy.

None of her family had been agents. She didn't have connections ranging back decades, hadn't had a great grandfather who'd been Director, hadn't been born and bred for this line of work. Of course, to all those whose opinions really mattered, being a Legacy meant nothing. Lily knew this, but she also knew that the entire reason that things were so tense at the moment, that the reason The Agency was running a bit low on trust, was that people like her were allowed to do what Legacies were allowed to.

It was idiotic and biased and, quite frankly, disgusting, but Lily knew she had a higher target on her back than most. That The Splinter had been formed specifically for the purpose of eradicating people like her, and that she couldn't really trust anyone.

This was, however, the life she had chosen. And she'd known the risks. There was no turning back, no hesitating. And Lily, truthfully, did not have the urge to do either.

She might have been scared, but Lily Evans was no coward.

Director Moody's office never seemed to change. It was all dark colors - stained wood and expensive leather and stone. The atmosphere would have been warm if the man sitting behind the desk in the center of the room was not so stony. His dark eyes were serious as ever, gaze pinned on Lily as she entered the room.

There was already someone else sitting at one of the two chairs across the desk from the Director, and it took Lily but a second to recognize the mop of black hair that adorned his head.

James Potter.

Of course.

This, she supposed, was her trade-off. A day of mind numbing paperwork, or having to interact with Potter. She wasn't sure which was worse.

"Take a seat, Miss Evans," Moody ordered, voice gruff, file folder clutched in his hands. Lily did as she was told, pointedly looking away from Potter, although she could feel his hot gaze on her.

How was it that she was always so damn aware of his presence?

"Times," Moody continued, "are, as you know, very dark. The Splinter does not seem to be weakening, despite how much we have attempted to infiltrate their ranks. We have new intel -," his voice became even darker, "that they have foreign aid."

"How foreign, exactly?" Potter asked, voice tense and just as deep as Lily had remembered.

"The Russians."

Lily heard Potter suck in a breath, could picture his jaw tense, knuckles clamped against the arms of the chair. Momentarily, she forgot to be angry at him as she shared his sentiment, her gut sinking.

The Russians were formidable, to say the least. Expertly trained, cold-blooded, and dangerous to the core. If The Splinter had even a fourth of the Russian Agency's support, they could do serious damage. Irreversible damage. Damage that could win.

Neither Potter nor Lily seemed to be able to hide their emotions as Moody nodded gravely, throwing the file that had previously been in his hand onto the table in front of them. Both reached for it at the same time, and Lily jerked back as if she had been shocked when her pinky finger brushed Potter's palm.

This did not go unnoticed by Moody.

"Whatever the hell problem you two have with each other," he said, voice unbearably cold, "ends right now. This is dangerous. This is important. And I have chosen you because you are the best suited to this task, but I will not hesitate to relieve either of you from duty if you cannot do your job properly. Am I understood?"

A nod was not necessary - there was no disagreeing with Moody. Lily allowed herself to feel a little embarrassed, more about the fact that Moody had caught the tense situation between her and Potter than the fact that they disliked each other in the first place.

"We need infiltration, and we need it done expertly. You two were chosen because you were both top of your class during training, and have had impressive careers so far. You are also young, and this mission calls for that trait in particular." Moody fixed them with a hard glare. "Exactly what you are being expected to find is located in this folder right here. It is not to leave the briefing room -," he gestured towards the small, metal room off to the right of his office, "under any circumstance. This information, what we think the Russians might have, is extremely sensitive. I have the utmost faith in the two of you - do not let me down."

Lily could only nod. The fear that had been present since she'd sat down in the room was being overtaken by something akin to adrenaline, and she felt more prepared than she had ever felt in her life. This was dangerous, and hardly the ideal situation, but she was going out into the field. She was going to make a difference. And wasn't that why she'd trained to become an agent in the first place?

James Potter, she resolved, would not ruin this for her.

This was, Lily should have known, wishful thinking.

They sat in the briefing room, enclosed on four sides by metal walls, at a metal table on metal chairs with glares hard as metal. Potter looked no more pleased to be in a small, confined space with her than she with him, and the file folder lay unopened between them.

"You," Lily started, words biting, "are not going to mess this up for me."

Potter cocked an eyebrow, arrogant grin overtaking his face. "I," he said, leaning back in his chair, "don't mess up."

"You've messed up plenty," Lily replied cooly, placing one hand on the file.

He snatched it out from her, opening it almost lazily. "Yes, I would consider ever interacting with you quite a mistake."

His eyes skimmed the papers, jaw tense, and then his eyes widened almost imperceptibly as he read a line. He looked up to meet her gaze, amusement evident in his face. "Oh, you'll be giddy about this."

He placed the paper on the table and slid it over to her. Lily regarded it warily at first, skimming the first section, which was something about transportation, before her eyes landed on the bolded header in the middle of the page: Covers.

Had her chair fallen out from under her? Or was she just imagining the sensation of falling straight onto the floor?

It occurred to Lily that she should have seen this coming - they were going under cover, after all, and looked nothing alike and therefore couldn't have passed for sister and brother. And it would have raised unnecessary questions for them to show up with some odd friendly relationship - it would have drawn too much attention.

But, still, married?

James was chuckling, though there was very little humor in his eyes.

"Is Moody out of his mind?"

"We're spies," James deadpanned. He ran a hand through his hair, a tell-tale sign of his agitation. Lily kicked herself for knowing that. "It makes sense."

"Don't tell me that you're all gung-ho about this," Lily retorted, paper still clutched tightly between her fingertips.

"Oh, trust me, Evans. I hate this just as much as you do. But it's protocol."

"Don't lecture me on protocol!" Lily could feel her temper rising, despite every attempt to quail it. "I seem to remember being better at it than you."

"You beat me on the exam by a tenth of a point."

"I still beat you."

He glared at her, gaze hot, and she glared right back. When it came to James Potter, Lily Evans never, ever backed down.

He was insufferable, suffocating, a man with too much ego and, rather annoyingly, the skills to back it up. He was also a Legacy, and the perfect one, at that. His father had been director of the Agency twenty years prior, and his mother had been a top agent. Everyone seemed to know who he was, and those who didn't seemed to give him respect anyway. It was the way he carried himself, Lily thought. Confident. Proud. Like the room was his stage.

As if that wasn't enough, he'd been a constant pain in her ass throughout the Academy. They were always vying for top of the class, attempting to outdo each other at every turn. And then, of course, there was The Incident.

That, Lily thought, was the real reason she hated him. Because she could have, albeit with much gritting of teeth, tolerated the rest. But The Incident had been the proverbial straw that had broken the camel's back.

They spent the next four hours in silence, studying the papers between them, attempting to ignore each other's presence. This proved rather difficult to Lily, as Potter's every move seemed to draw her attention, and she could swear he was breathing loudly solely for the purpose of annoying her. Still, one didn't become an agent without possessing some semblance of self control, and so she pretended that his breaths were just the sound of the air vents and concentrated on the mission.

It was serious - the majority of the file was on a strictly need-to-know basis, and Lily could tell that there were some things about this mission that even she and Potter wouldn't have clearance for. Pettiness and childishness, two traits that seemed to bubble to the surface whenever she was around Potter, would not be welcome on this mission. Lily Evans was many things, but a fool was not one of them. She would not let her rivalry with the man sitting across from her interfere with work, and she knew enough about him to know that he wouldn't either.

It would just take a bit of effort on both of their parts.

The Agency, Lily was almost 90% positive, was not the real name of the organization she worked for. She wasn't sure what was - the official name was used in confidential government documents, and so Lily didn't think she had the clearance to know it. It was called The Agency by everyone who knew of its existence - a sort of side project by M16, solely focused on gathering international intel. It was so elite that only those chosen to be a part of it knew of its existence, and those chosen to be agents were groomed young.

She had been only eleven when she'd been picked to try her hand at being selected for The Academy - the training program that all Agency members went through. Seven years of grueling work, combat training, honing her mind and sharpening her skills and becoming the best of the best. Of course, when she'd taken the exams to get in (The Agency had never told her exactly how they'd found her, but they'd hinted it had something to do with her rather outstanding academic performance), they hadn't told her parents what the tests were for. All they'd said was that they were with the government and they were collecting survey information on children.

She'd known from the beginning that the line of work would be dangerous, but she hadn't known just how volatile the times would become. There had been disgruntled agents for years, of course, angry that they were being surpassed in skill and work by those who weren't Legacies, wrongfully scared that the "brown-bloods", as they derisively called those who were not Legacies, would expose The Agency, and convinced in the superiority of their own skills. It had always been a bit of a risk to join The Agency from no espionage background, but it was a risk that many were willing to take. Or, at least, that many had been willing to take. When Lily had visited The Academy just a few months prior, she had been informed by the Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, that recruitment from non-Legacy families had dropped seventy percent. This was, she knew, largely because of the influence of The Splinter.

The Splinter had formed when she was in her fourth year at The Academy. It had been a rumor for years - that a group of Legacies were going to do something about the "brown-blood" (Lily thought the name was downright stupid - they all had the same blood, and nothing about hers was any dirtier) problem they felt had gotten out of hand. But the rumors had been just that - whisperings that were to be taken seriously in passing and then thrown out of the mind. The group hadn't revealed itself to be real until there had been an attack on agents conducted by people who had had too much intimate knowledge on the whereabouts of the victims to be anything but members of The Agency. Their leader, an ex-agent named Tom Riddle, was the only member that Lily knew was confirmed as part of The Splinter. Everyone had their guesses, of course, as to the identities of the other members - Rosier, Mulciber, and Malfoy, to name a few - but it was almost impossible to launch an investigation when the enemy was sitting right next to you.

Lily wasn't sure what exactly their plan was - eradicate all "brown-bloods"? Give them menial desk jobs? Personally, she didn't think they'd thought their rebellion through very well, but she wasn't foolish enough to dismiss them as nothing but empty threats. They'd never try anything under Director Moody's watchful eye, of course, nor Headmaster Dumbledore's stern gaze, but Lily wasn't sure what they were capable of when no one watching.

It was because of this group that Lily could not completely fault Director Moody for pairing her with James Potter. She herself, of course, would never be a member of The Splinter because of her own "dirty blood", but James Potter had every reason to be. He was in a spot of ultimate privilege. And yet, she knew with utmost certainty that he absolutely loathed the group and that he would do absolutely anything to bring it down.

For one, he was vehement about his dislike. He made no secret of the fact that he thought that The Splinter were a group of radical idiots, that their ideas were outdated and discriminatory, and that (his words, not hers) "they could all stick live matches up their arseholes".

There were also, however, more subtle signs. Whenever anyone would bring up the idea of Legacy superiority, Potter would find a way to either change the subject or shut them down. He would glare when someone made a rather nasty joke about someone's non-Legacy status, get tense when someone would use the world "brown-blood", and she did not think she had ever, ever heard him use the term himself.

Lily didn't like him in the least, but she had a sort of grudging respect for this aspect of him.

It was this trait of his that she held on to (mostly to keep her sane at the thought of having to be married to the man) as she made it through the rest of the day, speeding through the piles of paperwork on her desk with a bit more rigor than usual. The adrenaline from the anticipation of tomorrow morning, when they'd fly out to Russia as Mr. and Mrs. Van Wright, a young, newly married couple who were looking to emerge onto the Russian business scene, was starting to build.

From what she had managed to glean from the file Director Moody had given her and Potter, they would be attending, for the most part, party after party, looking to establish themselves as regulars in the community. It was only once they were both completely free of suspicion that the mission would start.

Intel from Benjy Fenwick, before his untimely death in a rather nasty train chase in Serbia, had suggested that the director of the Russian Agency (a man whose identity was, for the moment, unknown) ran in the circles and went to the sort of parties and balls that Lily and Potter would be attempting to infiltrate. And Moody had written in the file that they had good reason to believe that, in exchange for aiding The Splinter, the Russian director had demanded information. Namely, the names of the members of the group.

It was all intel to be taken with a grain of salt, and Lily knew that there was a good chance that no such list existed, or that she and Potter would have no way of accessing it, but she also knew that if they could get their hands on it, The Splinter could be taken down once and for all.

It would be dangerous, and it would be the hardest thing she'd ever had to do, but Lily Evans had never been one to back downfrom a challenge.

And the smallest part of her was glad that her partner in the endeavor was James Potter. Whatever she felt about him, she was more than confident in his abilities. Together, they were nothing short of unstoppable.

Or, so she hoped.

This chapter was mostly exposition, and we'll get to the really good stuff next time :-) And we'll get some James POV!

Please review and let me know what you think!

- Sunny