Chapter Text
The epiphany occurred while Twilight was seated at his work desk, feigning interest in forged intake forms and case reports from his 'hospital' and casting occasional glances in Anya's direction as she cuddled with Bond before the television.
The little orphan girl had to be reminded to sit at least three feet from the screen; inevitably, she crept closer and closer. If not properly chastened, she would probably just plant her cheek to the glass as if hoping that she could sink through it, squirm past the cathode ray tube, and wind up inside that ridiculous and utterly unrealistic Spy show.
Children and their strange ideas.
Twilight indulged them as a matter of course.
But sitting too close to the television could damage her eyesight.
Not while he was her father though, fake or otherwise.
Such lax parenting would not go unnoticed at Eden Academy, jeopardizing the mission.
All for the mission.
Besides, protecting the innocent, especially children - which included their eyesight - was precisely the reason he'd become a spy in the first place.
Rubbing at his eyes in sympathy pains for Anya, Twilight sighed at the girl and her canine companion. The gesture turned into a vigorous pinching of the bridge of his nose, palm over his mouth - which was most assuredly not quirking into a smile - as a quivering Anya squeezed the massive ball of white fluff in an explosion of eager, juvenile suspense.
On the screen, a mustachioed man who, Twilight assumed, was the villain of this particular production, lit the fuse to a comically large spherical bomb and left it beside the bound Bondman.
“You can do it, Bondman!” Anya cheered into Bond's fur as if the poor wretch on screen could not only hear, but be heartened by, her cry.
He contemplated reminding her to scoot back from the television, but resolved against it, as the show was nearly over anyways.
Hopefully this wasn't a cliffhanger.
While Anya adored them because of their dramatic weight, she did get rather talkative when it came to her speculations and repetitive summaries of the 'so cool!' previous episode. Throughout the following day – or, God forbid, full weekend – while waiting for the next broadcast, she would replay events with grandiose special effects presented in pantomime, explosions mimicked by flailing arms and sputtering, uncouth guttural sounds popping from her little grinning mouth.
Twilight listened intently, of course, usually, when they were at home, with her sitting on his knee.
It was exceptional speech practice and helped develop her skills at memorization, both of which would avail her at Eden Academy.
All for the mission.
Only a fool would suggest or even think otherwise.
Twilight was all about that mission. Ever on point.
Having completed one of her relatively infrequent shopping trips, Yor had just finished putting away the last of the groceries she’d purchased, and passed him in his chair as she crossed the living area to retrieve a recently-released novel that she had been reading.
He’d thought nothing of it, of course, but an undercover agent remained aware of his surroundings at all times, attentive to every detail and their implications.
Details such as:
Luscious black tresses that had been styled and straightened into a flowing river of silk to frame Yor’s face.
High cheek bones and delicate features, including a classically styled nose and ruddy cheeks that stood out against the general peach perfection of smooth, well-exfoliated skin.
Melting ruby eyes like red honey flowing with sweetness ready to be poured out on any soul lucky enough to be so graced.
The edge of a tan along her arching collarbone fading into alabaster skin in the little hint of the swell of a breast that swished into view as the low-cut, backless red sweater he loved respected in a platonic fashion, which was odd for clothing but nonetheless, tugged forward.
A subtle mélange of odours with notes of clean skin, a fruity shampoo that she worked into her hair during her exceptionally luxurious showers that seemed to run for hours while he gritted his teeth, and that added complexity to the-
The perfume.
Twilight blinked and ran through that mental catalog once again.
Which took a while, particularly because he got caught up in recalling the potentially suspicious interstitial zone between Yor’s collarbone and stomach.
Highly relevant to the mission. Of that he was certain. He just had to figure out why.
And, now that he attended to the matter, the understated makeup, a certain fresh glossiness to the lips, the hair clips repositioned as if she’d let loose her coiffed mane and then done it up again, and the perfume.
Newly applied. Stronger. More pronounced than they had been before she’d left.
Two hours ago by his internal clock.
Too long even for Yor to spend at the grocery store, he realized while watching her, book on her lap, settle in next to Anya.
Could the trip have really taken two hours to complete? What might have distracted her? What could she have been doing all that while? A burning sensation crept up from his sternum to his throat as he debated within himself.
Shopping trips were, on Anya's request, typically family outings – the girl adored marching down the aisles, examining the various products on offer, and had, recently, taken a strange, inexplicable delight in reading off ingredient and nutritional value information.
Yor only went shopping when he gave her a list and explicit instructions to purchase nothing but the items so identified, from the aisles indicated, using the photographs that he had cut out from the relevant store's weekly flyer.
It was flirting with disaster, but ever since she had resolved to be a 'proper' mother to Anya and 'do the shopping right,' Twilight had indulged her by facilitating the affair, rendering every shopping trip completely foolproof.
All for the mission.
Yor's success as a mother could only bolster the family's reputation at Eden academy and foster Anya's healthy psychological development as she watched her 'papa' being dutifully attentive to her 'mama' in a demonstration of a mutually-supportive and satisfying relationship, even if it was all fake.
All just a part of the grim calculus of spy-craft, the machinations of a clandestine puppeteer who slunk and skulked through the grey areas, the grimy cracks and bleak colourless voids of the world, so that others could live safe and ignorant in the light.
Paradoxically, he was in the midst of complete darkness now as the light of knowledge shone upon him. When the insight finally came, and as all dread glimpses of truth, the recognition was the product of the deliberate piecing together of disparate clues, he took it like a spy and like a man.
By slamming his fist into the desktop before him, cracking off a chunk of wood.
“Goodness!” Yor was at his side in an instant, her eyes unnaturally cool and focused while the fingers of her right hand were crooked in the most awkward of ways, before her shoulders slumped and she scooped up his hand to examine him for split knuckles or lacerations and splinters in the edge of his palm.
“Are you alright, Papa?” Anya was now half hidden behind the sofa, the crown of her pink hair and wide eyes poking out from above the cushions.
At least her concern was genuine.
Someone in this house cared for him.
“We should bandage that hand.”
Not that Yor wasn't doing a relatively good job at feigning such, putting down his hand gently so that she could race to the bathroom to retrieve the visible first aid kit. It was hardly as well-stocked as the one that he had set up in the secret cache behind a false panel in the closet, but, well, she would never have need of that.
After all, his unassuming wife wasn’t imperiling her life daily.
“I'm quite alright.” Anya didn’t seem to be convinced. He tried to shake feeling back into his hand, which was beginning to throb now that the shock had worn off. “And I apologize for disturbing you while your show was reaching its climax.”
“That's okay, Papa,” Anya said sweetly, popping up from behind the sofa to race over to him and clasp onto his leg with a tiny hug, in response to which he patted her soft pink head awkwardly. “You're more important than Bondman!”
Again he was heartened by the fact that someone appreciated him.
Which did not result in his tearing up.
“Here,” came Yor's voice from the bathroom as she emerged with the small satchel, setting it down on the table to retrieve a pair of tweezers, antiseptic ointment, and gauze. “Let's clean that up to make sure it doesn’t get infected.”
As she cradled his hand in her delicate palm, she only threatened to snap three of his five fingers due to accidental over-application of force. He managed to play off the pain as inconsequential while drinking in every detail of her features, committing the myriad expressions to memory, including the pink dusting on her cheeks.
That perfume was a taunt, a provocation and a challenge that had him stiffening, unable to restrain the slight agitated tells that leaked through.
Because the perfume was the issue.
Or the window through which he caught sight of reality for the first time.
She had reapplied it after being gone, he realized, far too long at the store to account even for her struggles with grocery shopping.
She shuffled on her knees in front of him, focused so intently on her work while every faint brush of her fingertips had him shivering. Minute, even puffs of breath washed over his forearm, prickling fine golden hairs.
In a gesture of concentration, her dainty pink tongue poked from her mouth.
He had to shut his eyes.
That seemed wise.
To think.
About the mission.
Just lean back and think about Westalis.
He wiggled his rear in the chair, repositioning himself.
There was only one conclusion he could reach, then.
Twilight's extensive experience as a clandestine operative, skilled in the assessment of his targets' weaknesses, the reading of all the subtle symphonies composed by body language, left him with unerring certainty as he mentally aggregated all of the relevant data.
He was going to have to murder someone.
Granted, he didn’t know who this savage and execrably odious individual actually was, but his murder was a necessity.
Actually, that bore some judicious mental rephrasing, he realized, as Yor finished bandaging his hand.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” She shook her head as if she was being silly. “Yuri never let me go without one of these.”
With that, she leaned in again, and Twilight grit his teeth when he realized what was to come; steel himself though he might, his efforts were fruitless.
Nothing could quite prepare him.
Her luscious lips were soft as they ghosted over the gauze wrapped around his palm and threaded between his fingers, the edge of her mouth catching the branching point of the bluish veins in the back of his hand. Electric shivers shot up his arm, causing his fingers to twitch.
Her lips lingered there for a second, then two, then five, as they locked eyes.
He squirmed again.
A motion that she emulated while on the floor before him.
The spell broke. As if struck by some terrible existential horror, Yor shot to her feet, which had the unfortunate consequence of leaving her bosom at roughly face level. The way in which she then fussed over him probably would have had Yuri running through his repertoire of enhanced interrogation techniques.
At that juncture, with a few assurances to his wife, he was able to return to work, using the undamaged portion of his desk.
Yor, ever oblivious, pried Anya off his leg to rejoin Bond on the floor, giving him the time and space that he needed to work.
Taking a cue from Yuri, he spent the next few minutes doodling torture methods with a faceless stick figure man having the colloquial screws put to him. At the same time, he shuffled his papers absently, mulling and casting surreptitious and suspicious glances over at the pair of girls petting Bond's mane.
The death wouldn't be murder, per se, as it was more a matter of ensuring the peace and stability of the region and the long-term security of his nation, so justifiable homicide in service of one's country was the more accurate and inoffensive phrase, something like that one fellow had said in “Politics and the Westalis Language.”
A cool, clean, concealing dusting of snow to cover over that unsightly term.
His resolution to snuff out some as-yet anonymous man's life was only a concomitant conclusion, though.
The central one was just as evident and inescapable in light of his keen insight into the human condition and ability to identify and classify patterns of behaviour. All her absences. The bevy of, in retrospect, irrational excuses. The makeup. The reticence he had noted and passed of as social awkwardness.
That seductive perfume – that, just because it smelled so sweet and he was now feeling a mite peckish, left his mouth watering – to cover up the now evident fact:
Yor was having an affair.