In 26
Disclaimer: I don't own The New Avengers, nor the characters of Mike Gambit, Purdey, and John Steed. They're the property of The Avengers (Film and TV) Enterprises. This story is written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.
Faces
"Walton? Walton!"
Gambit's eyes flew open, and for one, blissful moment, he thought Purdey was standing over him. He looked up into the big blue eyes framed by the short blonde hair, and felt a welcome rush of relief. Purdey's here. Steed must have sent her. He's shut the whole operation down, and now I can go home. No more pretending. No more masks. No more doubles.
Then 'Purdey's' mouth opened, and Lolita's coarse accent broke the spell. "Shift yerself. Prator wants to see ya."
Gambit felt sick to his stomach as reality clicked back into place, bringing him to full alertness faster—and more cruelly—than a bucket of ice water to the face. "You've no right to come bargin' into my room, Lolita," he snapped angrily, only just remembering to use 'Terry's' accent instead of his own.
Lolita transferred her ever-present wad of gum from one side of her jaw to the other and scowled. "Don't look at me. I didn't ask t'come in here. Only Prator wants ya, and you're too stone deaf to answer yer phone."
Gambit forced a lascivious smile to cross his features. "Are ye sure Prator's the only one who wants me?" he leered, even though the mere idea of sleeping with Lolita made him sick to his stomach. He would've found the woman contemptible and crude at the best of times, but as a replacement for Purdey she was downright insulting. Gambit knew if the real Purdey ever crossed paths with her, she'd cut her down in seconds, be it with her wit or her right hook. But Purdey wasn't there—sadly—and so he had to be disgusted on her behalf.
Lolita curled her lips into a sneer, clearly as turned off by the prospect of them sleeping together as he was, but unlike him she had no reason to hide it. "Never gonna be that desperate," she spat, turning on her heel and stalking toward the door. "Get a move on. Couldn't pay me all the money in the world to come back in here."
"Suits me!" Gambit yelled after her, but his words were drowned out by the slamming of the door. Gambit glared at it for a moment before throwing back the bed clothes and swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress.
Two months. Two months. That was how long he'd been undercover in Prator's organization, figuring out how it worked, and pretending to learn how to be himself. He'd thought the hardest part of the job would be the layers of performance required to pretend to be Walton pretending to be him. And it had been, for the first two weeks.
Until Lolita showed up.
He hadn't been impressed at first. Between the hair and the make-up and the gum, she hadn't looked particularly Purdey-ish, certainly not enough that he'd pick up on the uncanny resemblance in a crowd.
She may not have been cultured, but Gambit had to hand it to her—the woman was a fast learner. She'd seemed a bit at a loss to start—she'd come back from the salon with a haircut and dye job that were so wrong that he hadn't even had to feign his laughter as he mocked her mercilessly for getting it so disastrously off-the-mark. She'd sworn a blue streak at him in return, but the next time she'd come back, it was right. So right that, if he wasn't thinking, he'd mistake her for Purdey, just as he had a moment ago.
She was learning Purdey's mannerisms, too—faster than 'Walton', despite his head start, a fact she loved to rub in at every opportunity. Gambit had intentionally tried to make his transition from 'Walton' to 'Gambit' a longer, harder slog, not only to buy him more time in the organization, but to keep his transformation believable. Lolita, however, was progressing with leaps and bounds. The ballet classes they were making her take were starting to make her move right, and her accent, when she really concentrated, was getting better all the time. There were moments when, if he didn't know better, he would have thought she was Purdey. And he did know better. If he wasn't careful, she was going to overtake him, and be sent out into the world to kill Purdey before he had a chance to warn her. But if 'Walton' started getting too good too fast, he risked blowing his cover.
Gambit scratched irritably at his stubble and tried to think. 'Walton' wasn't used to shaving regularly, which proved rather uncomfortable at times. Gambit was tired of being uncomfortable, tired of feeling out of place in his own clothes, his own skin, his own life. Tired of trying to dissuade Lolita, who was clinging on to the mission like a limpet, no matter how hard he tried to drive her away.
He was going to have to do something drastic, and soon. Purdey, the real Purdey, was one in a million. If he wasn't careful, there'd soon be none at all.
vvv
Purdey leaned heavily against Walton's slammed door and let out a long breath to calm herself. The man could get up her nose at the best of times, but it hadn't been helped this time around by what she'd seen in the moments before she'd roused him.
She'd been taken aback by Walton's eerie resemblance to Gambit the second she'd clapped eyes on him, but the man's behaviour had meant the similarities had stopped there. But over the past six weeks, he'd started to be believable. Not just the way he sounded or styled his hair, but little things, subtle mannerisms, that she wasn't certain even Prator noticed. She'd caught Walton working his jaw when he was worried, just as she'd seen Gambit do whenever he was perturbed. He'd adopted the rocking gait of a sailor, even when he wasn't 'in character'. She'd seen him execute the same, subtle flicks of the eye that Gambit used when he was assessing something, or concealing his reaction to an unexpected development. And to top it all off, the man was a good shot, too. "Lots of practice hunting rabbits," he'd lilted at 'Lolita'. Every day, the lines got blurrier, the tells got fewer, and Purdey started to doubt her ability to spot the fake Gambit if push came to shove.
But a moment ago, when she'd stepped into the sleeping man's bed chamber and saw him in repose, she'd felt her breath catch in her throat. She'd watched Gambit sleeping on more than one occasion, because there wasn't much to do at three in the morning on surveillance when it was her shift, and he was stretched out snoring in the seat next to her. She'd tried to tell herself that her subtle spying on her somnolent partner was down to idle boredom, and wasn't interested in exploring her motives further, especially at that moment. But it meant that she knew what Gambit looked like while he was sleeping, and Walton had looked exactly the same—peaceful, boyish, with all the cares of the world smoothed away. If he could imitate Gambit so perfectly when he wasn't even conscious, she shuddered to think of what he was capable of when he was awake.
Purdey passed the back of her hand over her mouth to wipe away the sweat beaded on her upper lip, and took another soothing breath. She had tried very hard not to acknowledge to herself how much Gambit had come to mean to her in the past few months that they'd been working together, but she couldn't deny that the idea of Walton replacing him filled her with ice cold dread. She wouldn't, couldn't, lose him. Not if 'Lolita' had anything to say about it. She squared her shoulders and set off down the hall with purpose. Her partner's life was on the line. She wasn't about to let him down.