Oyoy geezers, long time no see, huh? Again, sorry for that. I was drawing and editing previous chapters and stories, but I love this au so I always come back to this. Not sure when the next update will be, as I'm moving house in two weeks and have a lotta cleaning, downsizing and packing to get through, plus it's the end of the school year next month and I have assignments by the bagful to get through before then.

Still, not much in the way of action here, that's all to come next chapter.

...

"My agents," Andrei growled, pacing up and down in front of Luca and Peter, "I have gathered you here today for a very special task.

The trio were in the cloakroom at HQ, and the only ones in the building at that moment. Peter yawned and sipped from his cold mug of coffee, running a hand through his messy hair. It had been a bad night for him, and he'd not been able to sleep thinking about his family and their fate, both dealt and yet to be dealt. Lars had been a wake up call; just how many more younger siblings would he be forced to outlive before he received something that might be close to justice? The situation was also taking its toll on his parents' health, he could tell that much.

He glanced nervously at the make-up bag on Luca's lap. Now what exactly was he planning to do with that? The pair exchanged confused looks.

"And what would this 'special task' be?" asked Luca. "It better be important, because if Anri finds out I stole this, she'll probably shove it up my rear end." He held up the bag and winced for added measure.

"Oh it's very important indeed," Andrei grinned, "as you know, Agent Seagull, we want you to go undercover to prize information from your… target." He glanced at Luca before continuing. "Well, Agent Yogurt suggested we should give Agent Fondue a chance to disguise you, and put his skills to the test?"

"Suggested?" asked Luca in a cynical manner, though he was clearly chuffed at the news.

"Suggested, forced, does it really matter?" Andrei shrugged, breaking into a smile despite himself.

"Not particularly," Luca set the make-up bag down next to him and opened it, "so what do you need me to do?"

"I'd like to know that too," Peter was still starting at the bag, "Willie Cook doesn't wear make up."

"Who's Willie Cook?" asked Luca.

"My alias," Peter replied before Andrei could stop him. "My name when I go on missions and stuff."

There was a pause before Luca spoke again; "is that not Agent Victoria's little brother?"

"Yes," Peter replied sheepishly, "he's also my cousin. We look similar so I started using his name."

"I see."

"And Franz uses the name he'd have been called if he was a girl with his mother's maiden name, since he likes going undercover as a girl."

"Really?" Luca looked at his colleague in interest.

"Speaking of which," Andrei butted in, not at all liking how much information Peter was giving out, "that's your task, agent Fondue. I want to see how good you are at creating disguises."

"You want me to turn Peter into a woman?" Luca raised an eyebrow.

"That's the idea. He needs to be convincing though."

"Hang on a minute," Peter interrupted, "will I be doing my mission as a girl? Peronal Cook, huh?"

"Probably not," Andrei waved a hand, "this isn't some one-day thing, you'd need to play a convincing woman for a considerable amount of time, and there's a higher chance of getting caught out. It's just to test Agent Fondue."

"I think I might need more than my sister's eyeliner," Luca piped up.

"There's more costumes and wigs in that box over there," Andrei nodded at the cardboard box next to the lockers before deciding it was time to make an exit. "Well, I'll leave you to it then."

"May I ask who will be judging my efforts?"

"I will, if that's okay with you," Andrei paused at the door.

"I suppose, though I fear you might be somewhat biased."

"Meaning you'll have to do something spectacular to impress me," Andrei grinned. "But fair enough. In that case, when you're done, show Peter to Agent Yogurt and if he gets a boner, then you failed." Then he disappeared.

There was a long pause before anyone spoke again.

"He's not serious, is he?" Luca asked.

"No idea," Peter frowned, "I wasn't aware I had that effect on Tsvetan before."

Luca looked at him for a second. "Yes, he had to be joking. Now hold still while I put on your foundation."

...

"Oh, Agent Patch!"

Andrei turned around to find his brother-in-law walking towards him, shoes barely making any noise as they padded across the hall carpet. Tsvetan was once again dressed in mourning clothes: entirely in black, as he would remain for the upcoming year as a widower. His eyes were still bordered by dark rings, and his face had become more gaunt since his family's death, but this was the first time Andrei had seen him without bloodshot, puffy eyes. Maybe he was starting to heal...

"Hey," he replied as Tsvetan caught up with him.

"How are you coping, kid?" he asked, "holding up okay?"

"More or less," Andrei smiled, "still in one slightly crumbling piece at least."

"Hang in there."

"You too, old man," he replied, "I really can't afford to lose you as well now."

"Of course," there was a pause before Tsvetan spoke again, "look, I just wanted to say, well, you didn't need your parents at your funeral. They wouldn't have had anything nice to say, and you had all the support you needed from your friends, right?"

"Right," Andrei nodded, "they made their feelings clear and, in the end, it's their loss."

"You and Alin were better off without them," Tsvetan agreed, "I for one am glad to have been a part of your lives, but I think it needs to be said that they would've caused a bit of a scene at the church, and that was the last thing you need."

"You think they really would've said something," Andrei looked down, "about- you know- you and Alin and the boys? When they were lying in their coffins? Or me even?"

"Possibly," Tsvetan shrugged, "but I was thinking more about how you told everyone you were an orphan. And let's face it, the last thing any funeral needs is someone screaming about ghosts."

Andrei laughed, "a good point. Might've cheered me up a bit though."

"More so than Tino's shit of a son."

"Yeah that kid has some pretty poor timing." He nodded. "I might as well have been an orphan though, for all they cared about me and Alin."

…

"There, all done!"

Peter took the mirror Luca handed to him and gazed at his reflection, or at least, what he assumed was his reflection.

The person staring back at him didn't look like tired, stressed Peter Oxenstjärna, a thirty year-old man with a dangerous job. Instead, a young woman with a fat, blonde plait blinked in confusion from the circle of glass. His cheekbones had softened, his cheeks round and blushed with rouge and his eyes were bordered by more kinds of ink and powder than he could name. His face had been shaved of its stubble, though even Luca's best efforts with a pair of tweezers wasn't enough to tame his terrifying set of eyebrows, and had only succeeded in causing Peter a fair amount of pain.

But it seemed the pain had been worth it, as he looked pretty damn amazing right now.

"What do you think?" Luca asked, bristling with nervous excitement. He trembled as he clapped his hands together, covered in pink powder and black smudges.

"Holy shit how did you do it?" Peter exclaimed, jumping up. "I look great!"

Luca was clearly chuffed, and he broke into a rather uncharacteristic, wide grin. "You think so?"

"Yeah! Wow I'm so beautiful," Peter admired himself in the mirror, careful not to touch his face and smudge anything, "even my wig looks nicer than my real hair."

"Yeah I had it treated. Hey I don't low-budget where it counts," Luca smiled, settling onto the bench, "and I've had a lotta practice. Been helping Anri with her face since I was little."

"Well it's paid off," Peter smiled at his reflection, "shame I can't use this disguise, but I'm sure you can pull it off again, right? Think you can... cook up a Willie Cook?"

"Of course," replied Luca, "anything you like. If the boss approves, that is."

"Only one way to find out," Peter stood up and dashed to the door, throwing it open with a flourish. "Oy Patch! Come look at how well fucking fit I am now!" Then he turned back to Luca. "I'm sure he'll be along in a moment!"

"How did someone like you even become a spy?" Luca asked with a groan, "you're as subtle as an elephant."

...

"Well I'm impressed," Tsvetan commented, leaning against the wall and raising his eyebrows. Andrei found himself nodding in agreement.

"Peter looks so much better than he usually does," he added.

"Hey!"

"You mean it?" Luca asked.

"So what do you think?" Tsvetan turned to Andrei, throwing an anxious smile in Luca's direction first, "will Agent Fondue be our make-up artist from now on?"

Andrei wrinkled his nose, "excuse me? I'm the make-up artist and costume department in this business."

Luca's smile fell and Tsvetan rolled his eyes. "Oh grow up. You have enough on your plate without dressing up Peter all the time. Try to focus on being our boss and telling us what to do."

"Maybe we could both take turns in creating disguises," Luca offered, smiling hopefully.

"I suppose," Andrei sighed, waving a hand in a dramatic manner. Tsvetan, however, grimaced.

"You two? Working together on something? Can't see that lasting long, or turning out at all well." He raised an eyebrow. "In my mind there's fire, death, zombies and the general end of the world if you two were forced to get along and I feel future historians will blame me for not stopping you now."

"We'll be fine as long as Agent Fondue obeys me without question."

"Will I fuck!"

"Fucking hell you're one weird, miserable bastard, Tsvet," Peter groaned.

"And can you by any chance think of something that would have made me a miserable bastard lately?" Tsvetan narrowed his eyes, "I don't know, something horrendous to suck away any happiness I have?"

"Now you know I didn't mean it that way..."

"You were always like that even when my brother was alive," Andrei growled, "it's what drew you together."

"Well, part of it," Tsvetan smiled, melancholy behind the eyes, "I think my wit and charm helped too."

"They didn't," Andrei told Luca, who nodded along.

"So how did you two meet anyway?" he asked.

"Interesting story," Tsvetan sat down next to Peter, who was still fiddling with his plait and glancing in the mirror, wiggling his eyebrows at his reflection.

"I'd like to hear it," Luca continued, smiling hopefully and playing with his hands, "if that's fine with you."

"Of course. Well, I met him the first day I ever set foot in Berlin, funnily enough," explained Tsvetan, leaning back and regarding his co-workers. "I was on my way to a job interview, and had landed several hours before I needed to show my face there, so decided to kill some time seeing a fortune teller."

"Mr Radacanu?"

"That's the one," Tsvetan replied, poking Luca lightly on the nose, "I'm not really into all that, but his tent was near where I needed to be and it was better than walking about in the cold so," he shrugged, "I walked in and there was all this hocus-pocus halloween shite everywhere, you can imagine. And there he was in a stupid shawl and one of his silly little hats, spouting something about being able to see my future and soul, and communicate with the dead. Basically, trying to come off across as mystical and just ending up looking like a twat."

"So not love at first sight then?" Luca raised an eyebrow.

"Not in the slightest, though Al would always say otherwise," Tsvetan admitted, "hard to believe, huh?"

"Incredibly so."

"I was ready to walk back out there and then, in all honesty, but that would've been rude so I sat down and asked for a palm reading." Tsvetan held out his hand, "and he took it and began explaining to me what all these lines mean and stuff, but it soon got boring so I told him if he was really psychic he'd have made me wash my hands first."

"Oh not that line again," Andrei rested his head against the wall, "I remember him coming home and telling me that some dickhead had said that, took a long time to find out it was you though." Luca, meanwhile, busied himself with furiously wiping his nose with his sleeve, vowing to never touch Tsvetan without gloves again.

"Yeah he kicked me out of his tent," Tsvetan shrugged, "and that was the end of it really. We didn't expect to meet each other again, but fate's funny like that. It turns out that job interview I had later that day was for a little organisation recently set up by the government, and led by Alin's little brother." Andrei smiled. "We met again a few months later at a Christmas party."

"So you were the first agent Mr Radacanu hired?" asked Luca.

"I was so," replied Tsvetan, "Franz joined soon after, then Peter a year or so after, well..."

"The Oxenstjärna incidents," Peter finished, and a sombre silence fell over the four. Agent Seagull set down the mirror next to him on the bench; that year of gruelling training, a life consisting of one deadly mission after another, and he still wasn't any closer to finding out who killed Yrjan and Hemming.

"So," began Luca, voice cracked and fast, "how come you applied, Mr Borisov-Radacanu?"

"I didn't," Tsvetan shrugged, "I was contacted by Agent Magyar, who wanted more agents for the new branch of the DSA. Of course, he didn't say that to me right away, just emailed a cover story about looking for computer programmers."

"And you went all the way to Germany for a job interview?" Luca's eyebrows shot up.

"I did when I saw how much they were gonna pay me."

"And how did you even come to Magyar's attention."

"Well, I was already something of a celebrity in Bulgaria," Tsvetan threw a wink in Luca's direction.

"And by that, he means he made local news after being fined for hacking his government's website," Andrei shook his head in despair, "and Magyar found that amusing somehow."

"You hacked your own government's website?" Luca exclaimed.

"And changed every mention of the word 'president' to 'penis'," Peter added.

Luca couldn't help the laugh that escaped his lips. "Political protest?"

"No, it was simply because I was bored, and because I could," Tsvetan shrugged, "when you're unemployed for as long as I was back then, you tend to get creative with your time. Plus, it wasn't something I'd ever dare do as a child, back behind the Iron Curtain and all, and the freedom got to my head, in a way."

"And funnily enough, it won him a job," Andrei commented.

"You sure know how to pick them, Mr Radacanu."

Andrei glared at Luca, "don't blame me, Magyar found the guy!"

"Yet you interviewed him. And hired Seagull and Edelweiss."

Andrei shrugged, "true. And there really is no need to call me 'Mr Radacanu'; Andrei or Agent Patch will suffice." That being said, Andrei quite liked how Luca said that, in his soft, accented voice.

"I understand, Andrei."

"Still," Peter coughed, "whoever is doing my disguise needs to get on it, because I have a plan involving this Kuzey guy that I'm pretty keen to set in motion." He grinned, "we'll soon know all of Commonwealth's little secrets."