Chapter Text
We kissed beneath the twisted trees
Our lips between the stars
Tiny ripples in a lake
This love, once lost,
Is ours
—Michael Faucet; Second Chance
-
The dinner table is often quiet these days.
It’s terribly awkward, this little game they play. He still cooks their dinners, often with his daughter’s unsolicited help, while Yor takes Bond for a walk around the park. But despite Anya cracking eggshells into the batter and getting flour just about everywhere, Loid cherishes that little time he has with her each night. She rambles on about school and Becky’s new cat, and occasionally he even catches a word or two about Damian. Despite everything that happened with his brother and parents, he still insisted on continuing his education. The thought of that boy studying all alone in his dorm room was a depressing one, but at least he wasn’t bullying his little girl anymore.
“Don’t worry, Papa, he’s not alone,” Anya pipes up, snacking on a bag of peanuts as she watches him cut up an onion. “Emile and Jeeves are with him too.”
Loid raises an eyebrow at her. Young lady, what did I say about eavesdropping on private thoughts?
Anya shrugs. “Your mind’s pretty loud, Papa. I don’t think it ever turns off.”
A chuckle rumbles through his chest unexpectedly, and Anya beams. Laughter was such a rare occurrence in his life, and every occasion was almost exclusively shared between him and his daughter. Oh? And what do I think about so loudly that you can’t help but listen in?
“It’s mostly pretty boring. Lots and lots of worrying about everything. But sometimes it’s cool stuff, like secret missions to go bust up a bad guy!”
Loid glares sharply at her. Please tell me you’re censoring out most of the finer details of my missions.
“What does “cent-sore-ing” mean?”
That you don’t listen to more than what’s appropriate for your very impressionable ears.
“Oh,” Anya wipes away some flour from the bottom of her skirt. “Does it count if your missions are way cooler than Bondman’s?”
Loid leans back his head and groans. Shit, Yor was going to kill him—Shoot, I meant to say shoot! Forget you heard that!
But Anya’s too busy laughing to hear his mind now. “Papa, you’re so funny!
“Funny?” Even he can’t help the smile spreading onto his face as well, his hands abandoning the onion and chopping board for the bag full of flour. “I’ll show you funny.”
Reading his mind a split second too late, Anya squeals and tries to run away before her father scoops her up with one arm and tickles her relentlessly with flour-coated fingers.
“Papa, s-stop! Put me down!”
“Not until you promise to stop eavesdropping on my missions.”
“Okay, okay!” she wheezes, and Twilight promptly sets her on the counter top before pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“There, was that so hard?”
Anya lets out another giggle, and he can’t stop the smile spreading across his face at the sight of his daughter’s healthy, flushed cheeks and shining green eyes. Her little black dress is covered with floured handprints, but she reaches for him nonetheless, and his heart squeezes against his ribcage. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to this—his precious child, always wanting to be held in his arms, close to his chest. “I like hearing your mind talk when you hug me,” she had confessed to him only once. “It gets all warm and fuzzy.”
Obliging her request like he did every night, Twilight gathers up his daughter in his arms and dots the tip of her nose with a bit of flour. “Alright, playtime’s over. Time to get this in the oven before your mother comes home—“
But the words are barely out of his mouth before he hears the familiar sound of the front door unlocking, followed by the tinkling of a leash being unlatched. Anya squirms out of his arms and runs toward the living room. “Mama! Mama guess what?”
All at once, the laughter inside his chest evaporates, replaced by a heavy weight that makes every part of his body ache terribly. Loid doesn’t say a word as Yor steps in through the front door with Bond in a tow, a brown paper bag filled with vegetables clutched tightly in her arm.
“What is it, Anya?” She crouches down to her daughter’s level, her cheeks flushed from the cold air that always accompanied the late winter months. She cocks her head to the side as she surveyed Anya’s sullied dress. “Why are you covered in flour?”
“Papa started a war,” Anya shrugs as if that explained everything, but Loid can’t look away as Yor’s eyes dart to his, pinning him to the spot. He’s immediately hyper-aware of how ridiculous he must look, his hair tousled in disarray, covered head-to-toe in flour. He manages to force down a dry swallow.
“I’ll clean it up, Yor, don’t worry. I can give Anya a bath too if you want some time to relax.”
For a moment, he’s afraid that he had somehow upset her (he knew how much she didn’t like a dirty house), but a small, fond smile breaks through the subdued mask of politeness she always wore around him, and he swears his breath catches in his throat. When was the last time she had smiled at him like that?
“It sounds like you two had a fun time. Do you need any help with dinner?”
He blinks, trying to stop staring at the way her frost-bitten cheeks complimented her eyes—a blooming rose in the dead of winter. “Uh, no, I should be fine. Dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes or so.”
There was a time, not so very long ago, that he would meet her at the door when she came home later than him. He’d greet her with a quick peck on the cheek before helping her out of her coat, and then he’d wrap his arms around her and kiss her slowly, thoroughly. The days were so terribly long without her. Hours spent cramped between walls and narrowly avoiding a shot to the head during a stakeout gone wrong had him practically melting as he held her to his chest, his fingers carding through her long, silken hair. And oh, how she’d light up at the very sight of him as if he had made her whole day just by walking through the door. “Welcome home, Loid. I’ve missed you.”
Yor doesn’t close the distance between them this time. She hasn’t once, not since the day he ripped himself from her grasp and lied to her, leaving her crying all alone in that empty apartment he had never intended to come back to. Her words, shards of broken glass, haunt his every nightmare."Was any of it even real?”
“Twilight?” Yor tilts her head, concern flitting in those eyes he’d drown himself in if she asked. “Are you alright?”
She never called him Loid anymore. No, that name belonged to the man she had once loved. A man that no longer existed. Twilight. What a horrid, wretched name. It gutted him to the core every time that code name passed through her lips.
“I’m fine, Yor. Just a long day at work.”
Pain fills her eyes this time—raw and open for him to see. She had never been very good at hiding her emotions, but the realization of what he had just said comes far too late.
He had lied to her again.
Perhaps it wasn’t the most atrocious lie he had ever said to her, but that was always his excuse when she caught him fretting over the state of Operation Strix at three o’clock in the morning—just a long day at work. Nothing to worry about.
“I see,” she says, her expression shifting back into that polite smile again. The one that closed herself off from him, and forbade him from coming any closer. “Well, I won’t take up too much of your time, then. Come on, Anya, time to wash up for dinner.”
Their routine is a simple one. Loid would come home around five in the evening if he didn’t have a current mission, sometimes earlier if Yor had her own assignments to attend to. They ate dinner on opposite sides of the table, the two of them being entirely entertained by a six-year-old and trying their best to act like a happy family for her sake. After the dishes have been washed and the leftovers put away, Anya would usually climb up into her father’s lap and beg for a bedtime story, her little eyes fluttering with exhaustion before she finally fell asleep in his arms.
And once she had been put to bed with reassurances that both of her parents loved her very much and they would be there in the morning for her, Yor would slip into her bedroom without another word, and Loid would resign himself to his own. There he would lie awake in his cold, empty bed for hours, dreaming of what it had once been like to share the night with his wife.
He sometimes wondered if things would be easier if he really did disappear like he originally intended to. It was a kinder fate to believe that Loid Forger, beloved husband and father, had passed beyond this thin veil of life, leaving behind a short collection of memories that were ultimately forgotten as time passed by. That’s how it was supposed to be.
But he failed. He, Agent Twilight of the West, the perfect model of everything a spy was supposed to be, had allowed himself to become undone. He had broken the number one rule and risked the most important mission in the world for a six-year-old child. A child, who drained his energy within the first five seconds of the day, who cried over basic fractions and spilled her hot cocoa almost every chance she got. A child, who drooled on his shirt whenever she got tired, snoring into his chest as he carried her to bed.
A child who could read his every warped and callous thought, and clung to him anyway.
Coming back to Anya after abandoning his family was like learning how to walk again. Slow at first, but gradually learning to reconnect the parts of himself he’d thought were long past destroyed. Understanding his daughter’s secret put pieces of the puzzle together in ways that both comforted and horrified him. She was younger than he’d originally thought. She’d been kidnapped and raised in a laboratory where doctors stuck needles into her like a pincushion. She’d seen his death—many, many times. He was still a pretty terrible excuse for a father, but no one was going to hurt her like that ever again. Not under his watch.
Perhaps that’s why he’d been granted another chance with a little girl that wasn’t even his to begin with. Why she opened her arms and called him “Papa” like nothing had changed at all. Children had always been the most vulnerable in a world so indifferent to them.
And the most forgiving.
Footsteps shuffle outside of his bedroom door, heading toward the kitchen. The soft, padded tread of his wife echo down the hall, his ears finely attuned to her every waking move. He can hear the faint sound of a teacup being taken off the shelf, the kettle being set to boil.
Apparently he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep.
Yor was kind. She had always been that way, probably since she was a child herself: selfless, compassionate, nurturing. Making sure everyone else was taken care of before giving a single thought to herself. She fretted over her husband and daughter when the weather was deemed too cold, making sure they were properly bundled up before they were allowed to walk out the door. She got terribly worried when one of them got sick, or tired, or even a little solemn. Her hands, though scarred and calloused like his own, were gentle and warm.
Don’t get attached. How many times was that critical rule drilled into every new initiative at WISE? How many times had he berated himself for slipping up because of her? For losing his edge? Whether it was fate or inevitability, Yor Forger had slipped between the cracks of his armor without even knowing what she was doing.
Don’t let your guard down.
Hesitating before Yuri Briar, choosing not to shoot the biggest threat of that entire operation, simply because he knew how much her brother’s death would devastate her.
Don’t get distracted.
Cooking with her in those quiet evenings when Anya had gone to bed. Accompanying her through the festive lights of the yearly Yuletide marketplace, watching the way her cheeks glowed against the twinkling lights. Dancing in the kitchen when she asked him to teach her the waltz.
Don’t turn a blind eye. Suspect everything.
His gun dropping to the floor with a clattering thud, refusing to shoot the bloodied assassin poising a stiletto at his throat. Cradling her tear-streaked cheeks in his hands, crushing her into his chest.
Don’t expose yourself. Stay cold. Stay detached. Stay hardened.
Kissing the swells of her breasts beneath a starless sky, her muscled thighs trembling as he lowered his mouth to her. Softened words and breathless moans escaping her lips, pushing away all rational thought like a sweetened drug. Her hands brushing away tears he hadn’t even known he’d shed.
Never lose sight of the mission. Your vulnerability will be your undoing.
All it had taken was one month. One month to toss aside Yor and Anya like they were nothing, to wallow in self-hatred and despair before finally clawing his way back to them. One month to scoop his daughter in his arms and beg for forgiveness.
One month to lose everything he had once shared with his wife.
She was never cruel to him. Never shouted profanities or threw dinner plates at his head. Once the dust of Operation Strix had settled and WISE had officially tasked him with the care of protection of Test No. 007, things more or less had gone back to the way they used to be. Anya still went to school. They still ate dinner as a family. He still took Bonds on walks (and the occasional mission when the opportunity to present itself). But Yor…never once smiled at him again. Not like she used to.
She was just his fake contractual wife again. Holding up her end of the deal, trying to give Anya the best childhood possible despite the circumstances. She’d hide behind that mask of politeness and hide in her room when she needed some space. He’d almost rather she’d scream at him. Attack him again with her sharpened stilettos. Anything to see that fire in her eyes he’d fallen in love with in the first place.
Loid leans back against the headboard, squeezing his eyes shut against the constant ache in his chest. He did this. He screwed this up. But he had no idea how to fix it when Yor clearly didn’t believe a single word he said to her anymore. She had every right to, of course, but there was a difference between thinking something in one’s head and confessing the truth of it out loud. And unlike Anya, Yor was not privy to the thoughts of his heart.
The sound of a chair being scraped against the floor echoes in the kitchen. And very softly, he can hear the soft, muffled sobs of his wife crying over her tea again. Loid clenches his fists at his side. He wanted nothing more than to go to her, beg on his knees for forgiveness, kiss away her tears and hold her tight until she fell asleep in his bed. But he was the very last thing she needed right now. She’d shut him out even more, fading into her protective shell.
And so he does nothing. Like a worthless husband, he listens to her sobs until she shuffles back into her bedroom and closes the door. The house is silent once again.
Loid turns over in his bed and stares out the window. It’s snowing again, piling up against the trees and sidewalks, illuminating the charming decorations Berlint had put up for Christmas. Yor had always expressed her fondness for the holiday in equal delight as their daughter. Perhaps…it would bring her a bit of much-needed cheer. Perhaps they could pretend to be a happy family, at least for the darkest time of the year. She deserved at least that much.
For even as he falls into an uneasy sleep, he knows. There was a part of Yor, no matter how small, that still loved him. A part of her that desired the very same thing he did. He could see it in her eyes every time he looked at her.
She just didn’t trust him anymore.