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After one too many times where Papa didn't recognize what she had drawn (is that me with long hair? Is that your friend from school? What about an angel?), Anya asked for art lessons for her sixth birthday.
Her real sixth birthday, which they were all pretending was her seventh. But Papa knew this now.
"Why this, specifically?" Papa had asked, and she had responded with the truth.
"Super secret spy stuff."
It is useful, I suppose, to be able to accurately draw from memory, or description. With that information, and her ability to read minds, she could accurately sketch a perpetrator or...
He cringed at the thought of her looking at memories of violence.
I don't want that for her.
"You shouldn't want to follow in my footsteps," he chided.
"... I just want to draw better." she said, quietly, also the truth. "Anya is tired of you having to guess what I drew."
He chuckled. "Okay," he said, never having intended to deny her anyway. "Anything else you want?"
"Just that, all year! And maybe longer. I know it's 'spensive."
(He got her peanuts, stuffed animals, and new toys anyway.)
As Anya grew, he knew she kept a secret art journal. He continued to pay for art lessons, since she seemed to enjoy them so much.
He always saw her looking at the world around her, scribbling mystery sketches, looking at people and thinking before jotting something down. It was most disturbing when she was staring at him.
"There better not be any state secrets in that journal," he joked.
"Don't worry, Papa, I know what not to write down. But there are some of my secrets, so stay out."
The books said it was healthy to let a child have their secrets. He would let this one go. She'd know if he peeked, and she'd show him if she felt like it.
And sometimes she did. He loved to see her progress, slow and steady.
She put so much effort into this hobby, long after she had earned more than enough Stellas for Imperial Scholar, that he hoped she had found something she enjoyed to do with her life. A peacetime career. One that was seeming more and more likely, as his mission was completed, as he transitioned to surveillance and semi-retirement.
Anya was fourteen (real fourteen, pretend fifteen) before Papa told her, "Anya! that -- that looks lifelike. I can't believe how well you captured Yor's face," and she knew he meant it.
(He knew he couldn't lie to her, but to his credit, he had tried, even in his mind, to always think of ways she'd improved.)
She had offered the portrait to him, colored pencil and watercolor, Mama's face, turned just a little to the side, looking in the viewer's eyes, surrounded in a circle of roses, and he framed it over the mantle.
She caught him looking at it, sometimes, thinking how it looked just like the day they met.
(That's exactly what she was going for.)
She was ready, now.
A few months later, it was Loid's birthday. Anya was beside herself with excitement.
It's not like her to get excited for other people's birthdays, he thought. Especially since we all know mine is fake.
But he was turning forty, or so, this year, and it did feel monumental, to him, that he'd made it to middle age, when he thought he'd die a gruesome death without knowing love. It was remarkable, after all, that he'd semi-retired, to focus entirely on maintaining the connections he had here, to maintain his family, to wake up in loving arms every morning, and watch his daughter grow up. So they had decided, as a group, to celebrate; after all, nobody actually knew the right date.
To be surrounded -- with his girls, and Damian hovering just a few inches too close to his daughter (their sneaky hand-holding not that sneaky, but she knew he didn't mind) and with Yuri (who had eventually warmed up to him, and who had quit the SSS post-war), and with Franky and Fiona (who were finally getting married this summer, after beating around the bush forever, after Fiona would properly retire from her fifteen-year service), and Bond (wizened, but still creaking around the house with cheerful borfs) -- to be surrounded by them gathered around his table at 128 Park Avenue, with a cake for him -- in peacetime -- was enough to make him feel like he had won. Yes, the war against loneliness, that he had been battered by for decades, was... not over, but receded, the front far enough away, enough of the time, that he could forget sometimes.
Anya gave him another portrait, of the whole family. And it was wonderful, and he said as much. She beamed.
"I have another secret gift for you later, Papa."
"Any clues, Peanut?"
She put her finger on her nose and stuck her tongue out at him.
I don't understand teenagers.
But it was nice, to not always have to understand.
It's evening, and he settles into the couch, after everyone has left, and it's just them, his family. Yor is draped over his shoulder, and he's reading the new book Yuri got him, Catch-22, and he's not entirely sure if it's a threat, a shared joke, an admission, or something in between. Has it been long enough, that he can read this without--?
Anya sidles up next to him. "It's a satire, Papa. About how war is bad and beaura--byoo-ah-cra-see" (she says it slowly, carefully) "is stupid. He's taking the piss at himself."
"Anya! Language!"
Though I'm impressed she knows that at her age. Eden is doing something right. I'll have to thank Henderson, again, for being a guiding force.
"Like you don't think worse."
Shit.
She squints at him knowingly, with that freaking stupid grin she knows gets in his head. Teenagers.
She sidles closer. "Papaaa, I have my secret gift for you, now!"
He huffs. "Okay, little one." And there's a glint in his eye when she glares at him for calling her little. She's getting closer to his height, though she might never surpass him.
It's another drawing, portrait sized, in a thin brown envelope.
He pulls it out partway, glimpses blue eyes, and chokes, his hand immediately covering his mouth. He'd need to hold this further from his face, to keep it safe. It's..
Tears flow down his face unimpeded. He'd long since stopped being ashamed of them. His family knows the hell he's been through. These tears are different, though. Yor's hand massages his shoulder. She doesn't know who this is.
"Papa .. do .. you like it? I'm sorry if it's not good enough.. "
He can't respond in words yet, but wipes his face, nodding, running his hand on his knee to dry it before proceeding.
"Who is it, Loid?" Yor asks, confident enough in their relationship that she's not jealous, only curious.
A blonde woman, dressed in sunny yellow, fills the frame in front of a small stone house. She's laughing, and beckoning, and the light makes it seem like a warm spring-summer day. And her face..
"...it's my mother," he whispers, and tears fall again. "It looks just like her ... I thought I forgot her face." He can't stop staring at the perfect likeness of the smile he thought he'd never know again.
"Well, you did forget, whenever you woke up," Anya says knowingly, softly, like she is embarrassed she had been peeking into his mind for this (and she should be, she knows better). "But .. I could always get bits of her in your dreams. It's... why I asked for drawing lessons, I could always feel how much she loved you, I wanted to be able to.."
But she stops, as he starts crying again. His words and his eyes can't express how grateful he is, so he looks at her and simply thinks, if I could give this to you, too, sweetheart, I would, and fills his heart with the people around him, and the family he has never deserved.
Anya tears up. He knows she, too, has forgotten her parents, far younger than he was when she lost them. She takes her place leaning on his other shoulder, and he's now sandwiched between the people he loves most in this world.
Yor sneaks her hand over his, looking at the art carefully. "You always told me how kind she was. I can really see it here, like she's welcoming us home."
"It is--" he sniffs. "Was my home. Now, my home is here."
He wraps his arms around his girls, and Bond curls up at his feet.
"Anya, thank you. This was a perfect gift."