Chapter Text
“Anya, close your eyes.”
The leather of Papa’s gloved hand is smooth. It creaks as his fingers flex and bend to mask her face. Anya peeks anyway, looks down where there’s moonlight leaking through. The deck is splattered with red like paint.
“I said close your eyes.”
How did he know?
She does this time. His voice is soft, a low whisper he keeps for the night when he puts her to bed and saves her from nightmares.
This is bad, Papa thinks.
There’s six thousand other thoughts about bodies and death and weapons and his gun. Papa thinks so fast. He’s dumb but he’s clever, just like her.
It’s weird how he can go from dressing up like an idiot to saving the world. It’s what spy-men do. And he defused all the bombs. She helped. Is she a spy now?
Someone’s coming. Papa picks her up, darting behind a wall with his gun drawn. Anya hears a click. Is it a silenced pistol? Her face is pressed to his shirt but Papa’s mind paints a picture. A man and a woman and a baby fleeing. They disappear over the side of the ship. A trail of bloody footprints. Stiletto heels. Papa is moving. She can smell the sea air, salt mixed with iron, and feel a cool breeze. Papa stops, and he speaks.
“Yor…?”
Mama! She’s still here.
Anya struggles free, Papa’s arm loosening its hold so it doesn’t take much effort to be dropped to her feet. Mama is slumped against a wall, her spiky things she likes to throw hanging from her fingers. There is red on her neck and on her lips.
They’re safe, Mama thinks. They’re safe and I saved them. Loid and Anya do forgive me. I’m bleeding too much, I must be seeing things.
“Anya!” Papa has raised his gun, is aiming it at Mama. Anya steps in between them.
“Help her, Papa!”
Who are you, Yor Briar? Papa is thinking.
Anya doesn’t hear or see what Papa and Mama do, they react so quickly. Mama raises her arm and throws her spiky thing. Papa dodges and turns, a muted pop from his gun sounding out. Anya looks behind her.
There is a man dressed in black swaying on his feet. He drops to the ground, a bullet hole in his head, Mama’s spiky thing sticking out from his chest.
Concentrate, Twilight! Papa thinks. You can’t do this here.
He moves to kneel by Mama. There’s a struggle. Mama is tired, so tired, her strength is giving up, but she’s the strongest person ever. Papa’s jacket is off. He drapes it over her and lifts her up. It reminds Anya of a favorite episode from Spy Wars when Bondman rescued a princess.
“You’re safe,” he whispers. Papa’s so good at that. He walks up to Anya. “Stay by me and don’t look at anything.”
Anya only has eyes for her parents.
“Is Mama okay?”
‘Mama’ is drifting in and out of consciousness, and that’s the only thing giving Twilight the chance to survey her injuries. How did he never notice before? Yor’s arms are slim but wiry, thick veins and threads of muscle tight beneath her skin. She’s smooth and feminine, but she is hardly soft. Calloused hands with scars, not from guns but knives. She’s can’t cook; she can kill. He should have noticed. He’s an idiot. Yor is bleeding and half-smiling at him like she knows it.
“Are you having a good trip?”
He presses gauze to the deep gash on her chest, brushes the hair from her face with his other hand. “Not as much fun without you,” he says, and he means it.
“Papa was so uncool!”
The uncoolest, he thinks.
“Anya, go and watch TV.”
“What about…?”
“This isn’t—”
“Do what your father says.” Yor squeezes Anya’s hand. “We’ll have fun tomorrow.” Her eyes close again, her hand slipping from Anya’s.
“Your mother needs to sleep.”
“You’ll fix her, won’t you, Papa? Don’t be mad. She doesn’t want you to be angry.”
Am I angry?
“There are peanuts in the mini fridge.”
Anya is placated. She leaves their tiny cabin bedroom. Now it is only Yor and him.
He works diligently. Yor has fallen silent. Her pulse is faint but steady. Her skin is pale. He takes a small bottle of vodka from the mini fridge to clean her wounds (ignores that Anya has helped herself to all the candy and chips as well as peanuts). He takes off her dress. He takes his time to wash away the blood. He takes one of his shirts and dresses her in it.
Anya is asleep, drooling on the sofa and covered in crumbs, by the time he is done.
He puts her in the bed next to his wife and looks at them both.
She’s not your wife, he reminds himself. Anya is not your daughter.
He pulls up a chair, pulls out his gun. What’s his mission again?
You’re a spy.
Keep them safe.
It’s what a good husband and father would do.
Anya is asleep beside her when Yor opens her eyes.
It’s only happened once before, and Yor’s first instinct had been to reach for a weapon. She has always slept alone, at least since Yuri was grown. Anyone else was a threat, but this little girl? That first time it had been a nightmare, Anya told her, curling her small body against Yor’s. Mama will protect me. You can kill all the monsters. Loid wasn’t there. That was the cause, one of the few times he had been gone a whole night.
I can kill all the monsters. I am the monster, she thinks.
There’s a pain close to her heart. Her hand reaches and finds packed gauze. She can feel the slight tug of stitches, not too tight. Someone who knew what they were doing. Her body is covered in a shirt much too big for her. She recognizes the smell. It’s the same detergent that they use at home.
She starts to turn. She can ignore the pain. There’s someone else in the room besides her and Anya. It took too long to notice. She’s getting sloppy.
“Morning.”
Yor is not in her room. She is not in her bed. She is not in her clothes. She is with her family, but this is not their home.
“How are you feeling?”
Loid is sitting next to the bed. He looks more tired than Yor has ever seen him, slumped in his chair with his head resting in one hand and a gun casually held in the other.
“I…” Could she reach the gun before he can pull the trigger? But Anya might hear. Would he still do it?
“Oh, this?” How could he tell? Loid raises the weapon with his warmest smile. It seems fake now. “Just being cautious. Seems like there’s been some bad people around. I hope I didn’t scare you.”
“No.” Yor doesn’t know why her heart is beating so fast.
“Do you remember what happened?”
“I don’t remember a thing.”
Yor is a horrible liar, she knows. Loid looks like he knows it too. Of course psychiatrists are good at reading people. She supposes he’s just never bothered to read her before.
“You scared us,” he says.
You don’t look scared, she thinks. You don’t look like a psychiatrist. There’s something dangerous in the room, another monster lurking. Yor shapes her smile to match his.
“I’m fine.” It’s a struggle to get out of bed. She pushes herself to standing on aching and bare legs. The shirt (only a shirt; what happened to her dress?) ends at mid-thigh. “Where’s the bathroom?”
Loid’s head tilts towards a door. “You sure you’re okay?”
She takes a step and stumbles. Loid rises from his seat. He reaches for her, and she reaches for his gun. His wrist bones grind together in her grip as he twirls them around, her body slamming against a wall.
“Not so fast,” Loid whispers. She had pretended to dance with a much larger man last night, someone hired to kill that she could still overpower. It’s not that she’s weak; it’s that this time it’s Loid. “You don’t want to wake Anya.”
He leans down as if he means to devour her.
Yor closes her eyes. I don’t want to hurt you, she thinks.
“Shit.”
The head-butt he should have expected. It was the wanting to kiss her that threw him off. Still he keeps her where she is. Seeing stars and tasting blood. She doesn’t want him like this. He has never really known what she actually wanted.
“I’m sorry,” they both say. Yor lets go of his wrist, which now might be crushed to bits. In his shirt, in his arms, she is touching his face.
“You’re bleeding,” she says.
“So were you.”
He can’t move, doesn’t want to. Her deceptively fine hands hold his cheeks. Her pretty eyes will not meet his as she tries to survey the damage “Why did you save me?” Her voice is doing something to him.
I’ve broken all my rules, he thinks. I’ve broken my nose, but at least I’ve done that before. I don’t trust you, but I saved you.
I would do it again.
“I’m an idiot,” he admits aloud.
“I…” Yor looks down. As if to make his point, Twilight tilts up her chin with the nozzle of his gun.
“Don’t tell me,” he says. “I won’t ask so you don’t have to say it.” Lovely Yor. Killer Yor. Has he made her cry? What would Yuri do? “Your brother would kill me for this.” He catches a stray tear with his thumb.
“I won’t tell him either,” Yor says.
Twilight makes a show of putting away his gun before risking the only question he can’t live with without an answer: “Is Anya safe? Is she at risk?”
Yor grabs the front of his shirt. “I’d die before—!”
His hands cover her own. “That’s all I need to know.”
“And you, Loid. I wouldn’t—”
He drags her close before she can finish. At least this time when he kisses her, she doesn’t try to kill him.
“Papa, what are you doing?”
“Ow!”
Papa is swearing inside his head, but when he turns to face Anya, he only smiles like the brilliant liar that he is. “Just helping Yor to the bathroom,” he says. His nose is bleeding. Mama is leaning against the wall behind him, blushing as red as his blood.
My first kiss, Mama thinks, pressing a hand to her lips.
She dashes to the bathroom door and disappears inside. Papa moves to sit on the edge of the bed, his back to Anya. His nose is definitely broken, he thinks, and wonders if Mama now hates him as he expertly realigns it. Anya can’t see, but there’s a soft crunching sound. It doesn’t matter when there are far more important matters. Mama doesn’t hate you, Papa! She doesn’t hate you! Anya is jumping up and down on top of the mattress.
“She doesn’t!”
“What?”
“I mean, uh, she doesn’t need any help. For the bathroom!”
“Guess not.” Papa reaches behind him and grabs her by the ankle, forcing her to sit. “What’s got you so excited?”
“We get to spend the day with Mama now!”
“We’ll have to ask her.”
“Mama!” She jumps down from the bed and runs to the bathroom door, banging hard until Mama worriedly answers.
“Anya, are you okay?”
“Are you coming? Today we get to see the resort island!”
“I…” Mama looks over to Papa. “If you’ll have me,” she says. She is thinking about his mouth.
“As long as you feel up to it,” Papa says. He is thinking about her legs.
There’s a whole lot of blushing by them both. They are really bad at flirting.
“What about work?” I won’t ask, Papa thinks.
“My job’s done now.” I won’t tell, Mama thinks.
“Yay!” Anya doesn’t care as long as they can be together.
She dances around Mama’s feet, grabbing onto her hands so they can twirl around. Papa is still sitting and watching and not saying anything. Even his usually busy mind has gone eerily quiet.
“We’ll go on the rope swings and inside the caves and ride all the horsies and swim in the sea and—!”
Mama stops them mid-twirl to look down on herself. “But what should I wear?” Her eyes dart up to meet Papa’s, and then there’s too many thoughts to make much sense of any of it.
Anya doesn’t understand everything that her parents are thinking, but this much at least she can glean:
“Mama, Papa really likes you wearing his shirt.”