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what I didn’t know before
was how horses simply give birth to other
horses. Not a baby by any means, not
a creature of liminal spaces, but already
a four-legged beast hellbent on walking,
scrambling after the mother. A horse gives way
to another horse and then suddenly there are
two horses, just like that. That’s how I loved you.
You, off the long train from Red Bank carrying
a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two
computers swinging in it unwieldily at your
side. I remember we broke into laughter
when we saw each other. What was between
us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed
over. It came out fully formed, ready to run.
Ada Limón
I.
They already knew the truth even the night he proposed to her.
Twilight understood that Yor Briar was no ordinary woman, and she didn’t seem to be as naive as he thought she was. Somehow, they both knew—and yet, they married each other. He knew very well the risks of being tied with a woman like this, but even now he needs to keep an eye on her (just like she’s keeping an eye on him, her knife always ready under her pillow, his gun already resting on the night table).
The routine that begins between them is simple. Both pretend not to know that the other spends too many hours outside in the night; that sometimes, their hands are tainted in blood and that there are open wounds that hurt to heal during the next day. And yet, slowly, they begin sharing the first aid kit (silently), and he leaves it open for her in the sink and she refills it every week.
During the days, they pretend (for the mission, for appearances, for Anya).
During the nights, they avoid each other.
But to Twilight, these nights become longer, and tedious. He’s given more extra missions that he can’t keep up during the days and the nights become rougher, merciless. His body is exhausted and his scars open with haunting birds. It becomes unbearable, for a while (but he keeps going, even if it hurts, just like he always did). Twilight comes back with more wounds that are hard to heal and hide, growing wider and wider, rougher and rougher. His senses are so blurred and tired that he doesn’t pay too much attention to Yor’s eyes silently following his figure during the days, watching over him.
She knows (that he’s hurt, and that he’s tired, too).
It’s not a week later that he comes back after midnight. His suit is torn, the blood from a bullet peeking on his right arm. He’s sewing the open skin with shaking hands when Yor is suddenly peeking through the door.
“You’re doing it wrong.”
Her voice comes small, like a whisper. Hesitating. (Twilight thinks that the concern and caring he feels in her tone is just his imagination).
He looks at her for a moment, only to return to his wound. “I have been doing this on my own for a long time,” he answers calmly, kindly pushing her away. But Yor doesn’t leave (her eyes are still worried, her red soft as if some sort of affection is liquified there).
“So have I,” she says, taking a step inside the room (the light of the hallway is wrapping around her like a soft blanket). “And I have patched myself in worse states. Please, let me help you.”
Twilight opens his mouth to protest, to just send her away. It feels like they’re crossing a line that he has drawn even before he ever met her. But her hands are already on his wrists, his muscles somehow becoming softer under her touch. There’s a spell on his soul that he cannot undone (not when she’s looking at him, a silent plead that it’s almost commanding him).,
Yor’s eyes stay in him for a moment until she moves to take the first aid kit between her pale hands. The way she moves the bandages around his arm is a skill on her own, like a painter moving the pencil (and he wonders if it’s the same whenever she moves the knife, whenever the blood splashes against her skin like fresh painting).
Twilight cannot speak. His breath is caught, his chest moving in slow breaths.
Her hands are wool against his calloused skin. The tip of her fingers are threads touching his open wound. Her eyes calm and focused on the blood, sewing the wound with a skill that not even him possesses. Twilight isn’t aware that his eyes are on her the entire time. Their breaths very close together, his forehead almost touching hers, his eyes melted in soft affection as he observes her worried for him.
Her voice comes from the abyss, drawing him back to earth.
“It’s done.”
His eyes travel to the perfectly healed and sewed skin. When he looks up at her to thank her, his breath is caught in her smile. Yor’s expression is simple and filled with softness. Selfless. She’s not waiting for anything in return, she doesn’t have any second intentions. Twilight understands this immediately. It’s the first time in his whole life that he feels he can trust someone, even if for a small moment.
The words are still stuck in throat like newborn flowers even when Yor slowly gets on her feet to exit the room. His eyes follow her the whole time, hesitating, unsure.
Twilight should say thank you. He can’t say thank you.
Wait. Why can't he?
“Yor,” he breathes. “Thank you.”
She looks at him, but he cannot really see her expression in the dark. And yet he knows she’s smiling (he cannot read what there’s beyond the surface of it).
“Anytime,” she murmurs from the other side (he wants to reach her. “Good night, Loid.”
Yor shuts the door, and he’s alone (again, naturally). His heart goes with her, somehow.
II.
It’s not really the first time he has noticed the subtle, and not so subtle ways, in how Yor’s coworkers make fun of her. Somehow, he never really got used to it (to this foreign uncomfortable feeling, being so upset, his blood shaking with something he cannot perceive).
Yor is smiling the whole time.
Twilight manages to control the situation with smoothness. The conversation shifts from Yor, and even from him. He’s not aware that his voice comes hard and severe when Millie makes another comment in the dress Yor has chosen for tonight’s party (which he doesn’t understand, since she’s the most beautiful woman in the whole room), when Yor’s fingers are clinging to his coat. She had to calm him down too, in the past, like in the interview at Eden (whenever she’s insulted, whenever he cannot stand it anymore). Twilight breathes in and out. Changes the subject again. Smiles like the naive ordinary man he isn’t.
He doesn’t notice the deep uncomfortable silence between them when they walk back home until Yor breaks it.
“Loid,” she calls him from behind (her voice is a sweet honey-blues). “Please, don’t worry about it.”
He stops to look at her and sighs, his fingers combing his hair backwards to calm himself.
“We don’t have to come back, Yor,” he says. “I know it’s for the sake of keeping our appearances, but you don’t have to bear any of this.”
Yor blinks, as if confused (she’s not used to having someone looking after her, defending her). But then she smiles, again, and he can see the sadness behind it.
“Thank you. But I mean it, Loid, I don’t really mean it,” she walks closer to him. “What they say it’s the truth after all.”
“No,” he cuts her. “No, it isn’t.”
Silence. (Her heart is a sweet storm).
“R-really?”
“Yes,” he continues, sighing again. “You don’t have to listen to anything they say, Yor. They’re jealous. You’re already beautiful, you—”
“You think I’m beautiful?”
His eyes snap up to hers, wide and shining and red like a strawberry moonlight, and he can’t think of a single excuse to diffuse the situation. He’s a master of disguise, fooling every woman he has ever encountered. He can do this. He can control himself and lie to her.
And yet.
"Yes," he answers, and Twilight immediately prays for death.
His wife is blushing heavily, looking everywhere but at him. He wonders if he has screwed up. Of course he has, he tells himself, he has made her feel uncomfortable—and for that he hates himself more than ever. Twilight is about to apologize when Yor suddenly draws a brimming smile on her face, rosy and beautiful and kissable.
"Thank you," she breathes, a mere sweet whisper. "I… I think you look very handsome as well."
He cannot speak. Under the starless sky river, her eyes are filled with the softness he only finds when they’re alone (when their masks are off). They walk side by side, their hands very close together.
Her voice comes back like a calm stream reaching him.
“Uhm, thank you… again,” she murmurs (she cannot look at him).
Twilight looks at her for a moment, his eyes placed on the sky. “What for?”
“For getting angry,” Yor smiles. “For my sake.”
He looks at her this time, his eyes open in surprise.
“Angry?”
She nods. “I have noticed it, for a while now,” she says. “You always get angry for Anya, whenever she’s offended, or upset, or anyone makes her cry,” she’s still smiling. “And sometimes you’re also like that… for me. No one has before, to be honest. So… thank you.”
Twilight is speechless. His eyes stay focused on her, but Yor is looking down, her smile still intact, her cheeks filled with strawberries. He chooses not to speak, because he can’t find the words. He has felt angry before, somehow, he has always been angry. He tries to find proof that her words aren’t true, and yet, he can’t.
He doesn’t want to find any proof.
Under the moon, her little finger clings to his. Twilight doesn’t pull away. They hold each other until they reach home.
III.
If he goes back to the beginning—
(Yor was always there).
He has been uneasy the whole night. Anya has felt it, and she understands why (she cannot keep her nerves away, either). The cruise trip is supposed to be a time where his mind is off of the everyday he goes through, even if somehow he’s still on the mission. But knowing the real reason on why Yor was called here is what keeps his heart beating like a wounded bird.
They had never talked about their real work, even now. Never gotten closer, never really helped each other. Their wounds were always taken care of, there were words of comfort in the safety of the other coming back alive after a long night. But Twilight has never been so close to Thorn Princess, the side of his wife that comes like a shadow wrapping around his bones.
His imagination doesn’t let him breathe, and it’s not even two hours later that he can’t handle it anymore.
Twilight makes sure Anya is deep asleep and rushes in search of whenever Yor is, uncaring if he finds her in the middle of the job, deep down willing to fish her out of the danger if he finds her in such state. But after he searches the whole boat, panting heavily and his blood running like endless waves, he finds her with the job done between her shaking hands. She’s all alone. The only spark of life in a perfectly still world—the night, the blood, the dust hanging on her.
Twilight doesn’t realize he’s screaming her name as he runs towards her.
Yor doesn’t have time to answer him because his arms are wrapped around her, refusing to let go, and he realizes that he’s the one shaking endlessly between them. She smells like night and death, her hair a piece of river in his trembling fingers as he hides his nose on the crown of her head.
“Loid,” she whispers, her hands coming to his back, caressing him there, soothing him so that he can breathe. And this all wrong, he thinks to himself, he isn’t the one that needs to be comforted right now (despiste the raw fear that has been living with him the whole night).
He slightly pulls away, looks at her (she’s a berry under his eyes). His lips are landing on her forehead before he’s aware of himself, kissing her there, gaining a surprised gasp from her just before she closes her eyes and smiles bashfully.
“You’re hurt, Yor,” he says, very sure, worriedly scanning her from head to toe.
“I have been worse,” she giggles, but she’s tired, he can feel it. He wishes for nothing else but to cradle her in his arms and keep her safe and away from the world.
“Let me help you to your room,” Twilight insists as they both get up, pulling her arm around his neck to help her walk. Yor gently shakes her head.
“The job isn’t done yet,” she explains. “I need to clean this and… help my client.”
Twilight raises an eyebrow. “Help?” he asks, and Yor nods.
“I’m protecting someone,” she clarifies, her eyes looking somewhere for a moment then she looks at him and smiles, changing the subject. “How is Anya?”
“She’s sleeping,” he smiles at her. “Don’t worry.”
His wife smiles back, and there’s the trace of tiredness, and the sadness he can perceive. Twilight cannot see the way he looks at her, as if hurting, as if this crushing feeling is unbearable even for him. Yor understands. She always does. Because as soon as she looks back at him, the red of her eyes melt in gentle waves, her smile watery, and she’s trembling between the faint sobs.
He finally cradles her in his arms. Soothes her. Whispers her the words he always yearns to say.
“I was so scared,” she sobs, wrapping her arms around him, hiding her face on his shoulder.
Twilight gently shushes her, kisses her temple. “It’s over now,” he reassures her (and himself). Even after she nods, even after they feel safe and sound, they remain just like this in the middle of the night. Allowing to feel each other’s warmth, their heartbeats, their breaths very close together. Yor finally looks at him and her smile is genuine, her heart blooming like a lily as she rests her forehead against his. Twilight manages to smile back, knowing that she’s safe, with him.
And if he goes back to the beginning—
He knows that perhaps he lost his heart from the start.
IV.
The days come and go. They are merciless, and blissful. Somehow, nothing and everything changes between them. It’s not like Twilight can’t feel the way his wife looks at him now: the way she whispers his name, the way she blushes whenever they’re around each other. It is something he has tried to avoid at all costs, and yet, he’s failing. But it’s not like he’s doing his best in putting a barrier between them, either. The only time he did, avoiding her for a whole day, Yor looked hurt, and sad. When she asked him if she did something for him to dislike her or their marriage, the caring and sadness he could feel in her voice made Twilight hate himself more than anything. And he swore to himself that, no matter the purpose or the mission, he would never make Yor feel like that again.
But the distance between them becomes closer. And dangerous. And bewitching.
Days later after they come back from the cruise, Yor is still overwhelmed with missions. The phone rings in the mornings and mostly in the nights. Twilight is well aware who is calling, and that Yor doesn’t really have time to work at City Hall even if she wears the uniform in the morning before they part.
He feels angry, again (and his wife’s words about his anger because of others echo on his bones).
One morning, as Yor is showering, he answers the phone. It’s his first time listening to this whispering, awfully calm voice that answers him with a calm that Twilight is well aware of its fakeness. He plays the part of a well-educated and worried husband perfectly, when he requests this Shopkeeper (as he calls himself) to give his wife a few days of rest from whatever tasks he's giving her. And yet when the assassin gently denies his request, Loid Forger’s voice is less unkind, harder, and at lost of patience.
When he angrily hangs the phone, he pinches the space between his eyes. Just when was the last time he lost control of himself? Many times, a voice answers him, he always does whenever his family is involved.
He tries not to think about it for days until the night he comes back from a long mission, and Yor is there, awake, waiting for him with the first aid kit ready on her lap.
Twilight can’t help his soft smile.
“My wounds aren’t very deep this time, Yor.”
She gently shakes her head. “Still,” she replies, “let me help.”
He obeys. Yor silently treats him, her fingers touching him, their skins very close together. His eyes and mind stay in her silk touch, her lavender hands reaching him in infinity—when Yor’s voice suddenly calls him again.
“I heard what you did,” she says as her eyes stay on the bandages.
Twilight already has an idea of what she means. He clears his throat, waiting to feel annoyance in her tone. He doesn’t find any. “What do you mean?”
“With the Shopkeeper, with my agency,” she smiles at him (there’s the affection in her eyes again). “I never had anyone thinking that I need a break,” she giggles. “Thank you.”
Twilight hates how he knows he’s blushing, but smiles back at her regardless.
“I just did it because I’m worried,” he says (for the mission, he should add, but he doesn’t).
Yor’s hands slide from his arms to his hands, gently holding him there, her touch softly calloused, sending shivers down his soul. “I will be alright, Loid,” she reassures him, her smile intact. “I'm strong. We’re both strong.” Her thumb moves over his skin, still holding him there, the silence swallowing them whole. Yor seems nervous and hesitating in her next words: “Actually, I requested the same to WISE about you weeks ago.”
His eyes move from their joined hands to her. “What?”
Yor is nervous, suddenly, looking at her lap as if she’s a child that has done something wrong.
“It was for you to rest. I… know that you also have sided missions besides this thing called Operation Strix. But you barely sleep, you never rest, you’re always worried. And yet, you take care wonderfully of me and Anya, even if you don’t have to.”
New silence. Yor breathes in and out, her eyes finding his again. “That’s why I wish for you to be allowed to rest for a while. You don’t have to be perfect all the time, no matter what your agency asks of you. And if you can’t stop following orders, if you don't have time to stop… you can rely on me, even a little.”
Twilight can only stare at her smile. She looks so beautiful, so ethereal, like a flowered ghost. He wants to answer, wants to thank her, but the word is lodged in his throat like a soundless whisper. Everything feels surreal, yet he’s acutely aware of every movement he’s about to make.
Yor calls his name again, but before she can finish, he cups her cheeks between his palms and pulls her mouth against his. Maybe it’s the dizzying heat from his exhaustion, but Twilight is very certain of what he’s doing. He presses their mouths together, brief, soft. He does it again and again until Yor lets go of the first aid kit and grips his neck, kissing him back, responds in kind and suddenly there’s a different heat around them, one that is sweet and soft and overwhelming and that makes Twilight wonder how the hell is he ever going to be able to stop.
They don’t leave each other’s side for the whole night.
V.
The first time it happens, she’s waiting for Loid to come back from a late-night-call that his handler made, an urgency, according to his words. She makes sure that Anya does not worry about her papa, that she sleeps calmly—but Yor waits. She always waits. She looks at the clock, afraid, anxious, until the door is opening and he’s there, almost falling into her arms.
Taking care of each other’s wounds is a routine well established now.
His wounds aren’t deep, but the sight of them makes her shake with fear and rage. Between breaths, Loid smiles at her—reassuring, calm, almost looking at her in awe. Yor doesn’t know how to act until his longing gaze. Once she’s done with his back, bandaging the naked torso, touching his skin with drifting fingers and kissing his bare neck with her breaths, he turns and smiles at her.
Yor smiles back, letting out a sigh of relief—because he’s alive, because he’s with her.
It’s not moments later that she notices her hands being held by his bandaged ones. And when she looks up, his smile is still intact, his eyes shining with something she can’t decipher—as if affection is liquified in his blue.
She squeezes his hands, reassuring, before moving to pull back. But Loid is faster, insisting, and he’s interlacing their fingers and pulling her against him, his mouth finding hers. He kisses her heavily, slowly—the touch so warm it makes her shake, the way he bites her lip, how he opens to taste her. As if he has been waiting for too long, as if he, too, can’t wait anymore. When he pulls back, they breathe out, sigh, and come back to each other again.
And again, and again, and again.
Until her body is falling to the sheets, until he’s climbing over. No matter how much she tells him to be careful, to not open his wounds—her husband is still caging her on the bed, his bed, where she shouldn’t be. She still wonders, even if she’s pulling him against her, even if she’s biting him back—the way his hands move under her red sweater and he groans when he finds she’s not wearing anything under it. The way he whispers something between the kisses, when he sows open-mouthed kisses on her neck, his hands moving around her back—murmuring something about how long he has been waiting, how much he longed.
Yor tries to think of a reason to stop, but she cannot. She knows he cannot find it either. Somehow, they have always waited for this, waited for each other. Just like this.
After all that tension, all the build up—all the fantasies and night dreams and daydreams, Yor’s liquid courage evaporates pretty quickly as soon as she sets eyes on her own husband’s bare chest and she has no idea what to do with her hands. Both of them are so nervous, and so aware that this is finally happening, that it’s shaky and careful and tender all at once. Yor ends up on top, flustered as she is, Loid’s hands roaming her back, gentle and passionate—any noise they make is lost in their kisses.
Yor whispers in his ear that she’s ready and he trails feverish kisses down her bare chest, because maybe he’s the one who’s not ready, because maybe he wants to yearn a little longer, because maybe he likes the parched feeling in his throat, the wait and the wanting.
Twilight, Loid, remembers what his mother once told him about love—and he wonders if this is it, if this is what he always needed, all he ever wanted.
And they think they get it now. The longing. This pull of addiction—burning in the middle of the ocean.
Face-to-face, he sinks inside her, and his wife tells him again and again the words that fill his soul. The love, the need. During that night, she opens herself for him for the very first time. He takes and takes—and she lets him, and she takes from him.
Over and over again, until their skins are two rivers finding each other and they await for the moon to trace them.
VI.
The second time he marries her, there isn’t a ceremony, just like in the first time.
They’re covered in blood and dust. She’s wearing her back dress, the WISE insignia shines on his chest. Her knives, his gun. Two sides of them ready to find each other again. But they’re just Loid and Yor, letting their sides of them be seen one more time, never running away.
The vows are whispered. The rings are just his hearts given to one another. Only the summer night acting like their witness.
“I pledge myself to you,” he confessed to her the first time.
And she said yes, and says yes again at the sound of his voice when he repeats the same words without a trace of lies, calling her name in the night.
She follows and follows, until there's no space between them, until the lies are lying lifeless on the floor.
They have the same hunger for life within them, blue and fizzy and impossible to bridle: it’s in Loid’s soul, it’s in Yor’s blood.
She watches the moon wrap around them as he kisses her fervently, whispering her a name that he had buried a long time ago. His real name, his own one. Not Twilight, not Loid Forger, but a third man pledging himself to her.
Yor can only giggle as he kisses her tears when she greets him, ready to meet him all over again. Knowing that now, for the first time in their whole lives, they don’t have to hold themselves back anymore.