These are my illustrations for Traitors in Our Midst, dawnebeth's 2021 story for CI5 Box of Tricks. Visit the master post to find out where you can read the story.

I've enclosed each illustration in a set of spoiler tags so that readers who are so inclined can wait to look at it until they have reached the corresponding point in the story. And now, on to the illustrations!
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I find myself enjoying this photo manipulation tonight. It is the last MFU manip I ever made (and the only one I made outside of the intense depressive episode during which I created the others). I never did get around to posting it on AO3, partly because I liked having my farewell to Robert Vaughn as the last item in that album. I did post it on DeviantArt, though. Here's the copy I wrote at that time:

"In dreams, impressions and memories run together to create new worlds that are nevertheless familiar. Illya is dreaming of his childhood as seen through that kaleidoscope."
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Some of the photo manipulations I made during 2016 impress me quite favorably now. I made some new manips earlier this month for the Professionals seasonal card exchange, and I found that I had forgotten many of the techniques I learned then. I also found that I did not have the seemingly infinite patience that I had during that spurt of single-minded productivity. (Not that I didn't spend hours on each of the Pros manips during which I could have been making a start on Moby Dick.)

Some thoughts of Bodie's during the sleeping bag scene in Mixed Doubles.

Faith and Reasons

"No, you gotta have another reason. You gotta have a better reason than that."

He can't believe I'm that mercenary. Of course he can't.

He might be right. Maybe I like wearing a white hat—well, a light grey hat, anyway. Maybe I like it better than the money, even. I could tell Ray I do—he'd like that—but I won't, because what he's wrong about is that it changes anything.

He ought to know better, by now. After years of last week's terrorists blurring into this week's mobsters, until all you can remember is which direction they pointed their guns, he ought to know. It's actions that touch the world, that send out consequences like ripples on water. Motives never come close.

You can't explain that to Doyle, though. He may not read the lesson like Cowley does, but he's a believer, too, in the ways that matter. He thinks someone out there's keeping score, awarding points for noble intentions. He thinks that if I shoot someone tomorrow, the world will be different depending on whether I did it for money or for justice.

But the reality is, Parsali will be just as safe protected by a mercenary as by an idealist, and whatever my reason, the man I shoot will be just as dead.

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