Who is Magpie?

While Magpie dozed on, Kay was 'escorted' back to her room. Bluejay had called two other Doux to watch over Magpie so that he could be that escort himself. They had made it more than halfway to her room before Kay spoke.

"What will happen to her?" Kay demanded, the image of Magpie tear soaked face gasping for air stained in her mind.

"You are lucky that I went to get her for an assignment call and found her missing. When I found Sparrow and Nightingale skulking about I figured you two had gotten up to something different." He muttered, entirely ignoring her question. "If it helps they didn't give you up, but I saw one of the Doux that was meant to be watching the garden out of place.”

“That’s nice.” She muttered. “What about Magpie?”

He opened her bedroom door and shuffled her in. “I’m not sure you actually want to know that.” He spoke lowly, eyeing her carefully.

She didn’t break contact with his gaze as she spoke. “There is nothing I want more.”

He looked back down the hall in each direction and then pushed her further into the room and followed.

“Magpie….” He began. “He didn’t mean to keep her this long. But she got by under the radar and no one paid much attention. Plus she became good at doing what was needed and time just sort of ticked away. Until you two started doing things together he had nearly forgotten about her most of the time.”

The danger in his words did not skate by unnoticed. “What has he done?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t stop him now, and it’s unlikely you will see her again….”

…

After talking to Bluejay for only a few more minutes she could feel the tears prick behind her eyes. She shooed him out of her room, locking the door behind. She pried open the secret door and made a mad dash to the medical bay, her breathes raking painfully around the tears and panic.

She cracked the doorbell and prayed as she peaked around it that Magpie would be there. But she wasn’t. The bed lie empty with the mouth of her oxygen mask laying where a pillow should be.

She didn’t waste anytime on wishes that she could have refused to leave her side and took off for her bedroom. The corridors felt colder despite the race of her heart making her sweat. Not bothering to knock for the first time ever, she opened the hatch and burst into the room.

“Magpie! Magpie?” She called, looking around the room and even checking the bathroom.

She sat on the bedroll after seeing a small folded up bundle. It was Kay’s clothes, left there after her shower and before their walk in the garden. She picked it up sideways to throw it, but couldn’t bare move anything out of place or destroy the last thing Magpie had done to think about her. Instead she shook the bundle silently in the air, releasing a frustrated, pain grunt,… And a small bit of paper fell out.

Picking it up she noticed a quickly scratched letter K on one side, and turning it over realized it was a paper plant marker. The plant? Forget me knots, that Magpie had gotten after her first major concussion in the field. They hadn’t survived long in her room, not having adequate sun and no special light bulbs at the time, but Magpie kept the marker in a box as a memory. She had shown Kay the box, reminding her that anything worth having takes effort.

Kay clutched the small tag close to her chest as thick sobs roared from her and she remembered what Bluejay had said.

“… she’s been sent on a mission. She is to sneak into the wolves pack house and murder the alpha.”

A gasp had flown from Kay in sheer horror. “Alone?” He nodded. “That’s a suicide mission. Even if she makes it in, even if she manages to kill him, a human against an alpha wolf, she’ll never make it out.”

He nodded dismally. “But she’s human, it will never be tracked back to us because she’s never been caught. And if she succeeds our next move presses forward, if she fails… He will either play into the boldness of the humans and offer assistance to gain access, or, perhaps, more drastic plans will return from the ashes of things that were previously deemed too barbaric.”

Kay had been in a state of speechless until the end, blinking mindlessly. “You really are a piss poor example of a man aren’t you. Watching what they put that woman through all her life here, and then just show her the way to her grave, with some bullshit about dying honourably I’m sure.”

He opened his mouth to speak but wisely shut it.

“Get out.” The words were a sharp hiss from her lips before they were a shriek. “I said get out!”

…

Kay looked around Magpie’s room now as she spoke. “Who will take care of you now?” Landing her sites finally on a mirror, her teary eyes all puffy from her misery looking back on her. “And who will take care of her.”