Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Loid Forger’s world is made of white waves. 

When he wakes up in his room in the morning, the sky is white, the air is stifling, the walls are bleak. It is still snowing, it has been ever since he woke up in the world again. He gets dressed in a white shirt, inside his small, gray little room. His own room, he recalls, not a shared one. 

The dog that bumps his nose against his leg when he exits his room is white too. He walks to the kitchen and finds a plate prepared on the table. There’s a note next to the food, from people that promise that they will be back soon. One is at work, the other is at school. A wife and a child—theirs, apparently. They represent one of the waves, blinding white, where he can’t see them, can’t reach the shore where they are.

Doesn’t matter.

Loid Forger sits at the table and eats breakfast. The food isn’t very good, but it’s all he has. And he wonders, for a moment, what he had before. Once he’s done, he takes the newspaper and reads. There's dust and war everywhere. The world seems far-away.

And he wonders—how the world seemed to him before, what did he find in it. 

He finishes reading and goes back through the white, the white foam, this pale foreign house.

His wife is a woman of routine. 

This truth dawns upon him during the initial week after awakening. Each morning, Yor prepares breakfast, helps her daughter for school (their daughter, he reminds himself) and, subsequently, she departs for work, always coming back earlier than intended.

Her eyes always remain fixed on him, her voice a soft murmur, cautious and gentle. It is as though handling him is akin to gathering fragments of shattered glass, which she does with the willingness to bleed. 

The world remains an endless wave of blinding white: white sky, white snow, white void.

Yor is the first semblance of color into the blank existence. Everything in her is red. Her reddish sequin eyes and petal-soaked hands—her blush-painted cheeks, the way the red gleams within her moon scent and envelops her form beneath the folds of her loose sweater. 

The world kindly blooms in red. Loid closes his eyes, breathes it, and adapts.

It has been a week now.

"I'll be taking a break from work for a while," she says one day, her smile a veneer, failing to reach her eyes.

Loid has his hand resting on Bond’s fur when he looks at her. “Oh… is there a problem?”

"Not at all," she denies, her head shaking softly. "It's for the sake of staying longer at home."

If he has something else to say, she grants him no voice, retreating from the room.

The world is white.  

His daughter, Anya, doesn’t spend a single moment away from him.

It’s still strange calling like that—he can’t picture himself raising a child. But she is his daughter, no matter, even if she doesn’t look like him at all—and Loid drinks her company with welcoming hands.

“Papa, look,” she says pointing at the screen, “it’s Spy Wars. You liked Spy Wars.”

Loid blinks, “did I?”

“Oui,” Anya nods, very sure of herself, sitting next to him, “you watched it only to help me to do my homework, but you liked it a lot, even if you lied.”

"I see," he murmurs, absent-minded.

The hues flicker around the small screen, but all he perceives is pink, then green—the colors of Anya, who clutches his hand tightly. He notices the tears welling up in her eyes. If he knew better, any trace of himself, he would know how to comfort her. But he's incapable. So Loid leans into her, and she nestles her head against his arm, seeking his warmth—squeezing her little hand in return seems to keep each other safe, at least for now.

In their shared silence, they breathe the essence of pink, and green becomes their color.

His wife never seems to sleep. Night after night, she disappears into the darkness, submerged in tasks he's unaware of. He considers it just, reminding himself he never inquired, nor can he recall if he ever had. When she's home, or returns late, sleep evades her like a fleeting ghost.

Loid almost convinces himself she's watching over him, guarding against the specter of death lurking in every corner. When he dares to voice his concern, she merely smiles, assists him with his coat, and slips away, leaving him in a state of frustrated bewilderment. It's the first time irritation bubbles within him. That’s why, one restless night, he musters the courage to stay awake, waiting for her return.

When the door opens Yor walks slowly, her body tense. Alarmed, he rises from the couch, walking towards her.

“You’re injured.”

Her eyes go wide, surprised, then a peal of laughter escapes her as she brings a hand up to her cheek. “I fell on my way here,” she says. “Why are you awake, Loid?”

“I was worried,” he explains, “you didn’t say where you were going.”

Her shoulders relax. "I’m sorry," she says. "My boss called late, but it was a one-time urgency. I'll be at home from now on."

Loid’s mouth becomes a line, unable to refute her. “At least let me treat your wound,” he offers, his hand reaching toward the cut on her cheek. But suddenly Yor’s eyes widen and she’s moving away, as if his hand will burn her. He freezes in place, surprised, and even when she lets out a breath, she does not approach him.

"You... you don't have to," she murmurs, stepping away, avoiding his gaze. Then her smile is there again. "I wouldn’t want you to get dirty with my blood, Loid."

Her words sound kind, but there’s a silence that holds no tenderness. Yor smiles and wishes him a good night, disappearing behind the door as it closes softly like a question mark.

He stands alone. 

The red stays with him, somehow.

Anya returns from school earlier than usual, her lips quivering, her small frame weighed down by the burden of defeat, her cheeks and uniform dirty. Yor rushes to her daughter, and cradles her until the storm within her subsides, until she clings to her mother's shoulders and releases the cries she had been holding back.

Loid stands alone, afar. Unknown what to do.

When Anya's tears finally ebb, he approaches her with hesitant steps. Her gaze remains downward, her anger palpable, her lips set in a pout. Learning from Yor's patience, he patiently waits, allowing the tempest within his daughter to calm. At last, when Anya meets his eyes, she jumps to him, hugging him around his neck.  

Loid pats her back, unknown what to do. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asks, low, patient.

Anya just hugs him tightly. She buries her face further on his chest, but does not cry. Hesitating at first, Loid wraps his arms around her tiny body, as she lets the melody of his heartbeat lull her back to her calmness. “They made fun of papa,” she finally says, voice muffled against his shoulder.

Loid blinks, his hand instinctively finding its place on her head. "How so?" he asks, his voice reaching her like a calm stream. 

Anya's response lingers in the silence. Loid can guess what she’s being made fun of at that place, but he doesn’t say anything either. She looks up at him, as if, somehow, she can see that he understood. Anya comes back to him and hugs him tightly, refusing to let go.

“Papa, Anya got another Tonitrus Bolt, but it will be okay-dokey!” she exclaims, looking at him again with determined eyes. “Anya will get lots of Stella Stars, lots and lots, and make papa proud!”

Loid blinks, his mouth open, taken aback. He hugs her again, then, tightly. “Anya, get those Stella Stars only if that’s what you wish,” he looks at her. “Whatever happened, I know I was already proud of you.”

His words become a blade of honey, reaching her, and Anya's cries fill the air loudly—as if she’s lost, as if she’s still away from him, unable to return home. It feels strange, and lonely. All he can do is cling back to her, caressing her back, whispering words of cotton. 

On a side, unable to feel her gaze, Yor observes them, her own tears held back.

He likes to watch his wife work. It doesn’t matter if she’s sweeping, cooking or dusting. Despite her protests, he begins helping her out, no matter how much wants him to rest. Loid doesn’t want to rest, he feels that he has been doing that for a whole lifetime. On the chances they make eye contact, he offers her a smile. It seems to throw her off and make her blush, though he can’t explain why. Somewhere in his heart, it feels normal. Yor returns the smile, then, and it almost reaches her eyes.

Almost.

It’s on a glowing afternoon when Loid feels someone combing through his hair and caressing it. It feels nice, a welcome feeling compared to his numb body. He’s tempted to go back to sleep right there. But he moves, and the hand caressing it suddenly jerks away. “I-I’m sorry!” her voice reaches, flustered. He blinks awake, and suddenly Loid realizes that his head is in her lap, and that he fell asleep there. His body tenses and he jumps, moving away.

“N-no, I’m sorry,” he apologizes, embarrassed. 

And then he wonders—why are they sorry? 

Yor flashes him an apologetic smile. “It’s nothing, you were tired because you worked too much.” She stands on her feet, heading towards the kitchen. “I’m going to make dinner now. It’s stew tonight again. You don’t mind, right?” 

Loid follows her, “I can do it, Yor, you—”

“No, please, Loid. I’m your wife,” she interjects him, and her voice sounds hard, distant, and he doesn’t know what to say. But then she turns to look at him, smiling like she always does. “I want you to rely on me too, sometimes.”

He knows those are the words he should utter. Yet, in the quietness of his mind, it feels as though she speaks not to him but to a ghost—a specter lingering in the corner of the room. And so he remains rooted in his silence, watching her retreat into the distance.

Her name is one he can almost pronounce.

The days are white and endless. But he adapts, he lives through the foam. 

After being caught in the snow on his way back home, he emerges from a cozy bath. Before he can begin brushing his damp hair, Anya pulls on his wrist, urging him to join her in watching Spy Wars. Despite his attempt to tidy his hair, the brush becomes entangled in his knotted locks. Loid clicks his tongue while trying to untangle it, but suddenly, Yor appears behind him, delicately touching his wrists.

“Here,” she says softly, “allow me.”

Loid stands stiff, his heart becoming a music box. Her hands are calloused and warm, gentle, handling him with such a care it makes his chest constrict. She gets the brush out from the messy tangle easily, and begins brushing his hair, the tip of her fingers touching his nape, sending shivers down his spine. He has known for a short while that Yor possess an immense strength, one that sometimes is overwhelming even for her. And yet, she’s holding it back as best as she can as she moves her hands with care. 

She holds a kindness that not even blades can cut. He understands this instantly. 

Once she’s done, he looks up and her smile is soft and indolent. He thanks her, pretending that his heart isn’t a wild songbird, that there isn’t a trace of life tangled in his ribs.

His wife is strange. His wife is a mystery.

And she’s utterly beautiful.

Sometimes he can feel her eyes on his back. He slowly gets better at it—feeling her gaze, knowing that he’s being watched. But only from her. She stares at him with a forlorn expression, the guilty swimming in her eyes. He tells her that nothing is her fault, because even if he can’t recall anything, he’s sure of it. But Yor looks at him, pained, as if she has failed in everything. She hasn’t. And yet there are times his wife looks terribly lonely.

When he finds her sitting on the couch all alone, it hits him. She’s a wife, she’s a mother, but first and foremost, she’s her own person. A person that dedicates day and night to take care of everyone, to sacrifice everything until her hands grow cold. She gives, but refuses to take. Loid can’t let that stand.

“Yor,” he calls in the dusk, her syllables becoming dust-magic under his tongue. “Yor, everything is going to be alright.”

She looks at him, and there’s the red, and there’s the smile, and it’s all Yor. She gives him a weary chuckle in response.

“Yes. It will.”

Silvery, white-blinding waves are connecting to his wife, suddenly. 

One wave is the smile she gives at him, in sweet resignations. 

One wave is the open wound on her cheek (red).

One wave is her hand suddenly touching him, squeezing his fingers. It is a fragile, small wave—but he lets himself drown under it. Loid holds her hands between his and he holds into her reassuring smile. It all becomes red, when she smiles back. There are cherries on his mouth, a silk red thread connecting to his heart.

That night, they fall asleep against each other: her head on his shoulder, his hand over hers. Anya climbs between them at some point of the night, and so they remain: not thinking, not wondering, not drowning (even if for a moment).

They remain. Distant from one another, she feels him sigh her name and he hears her sigh someone else's back.

Chapter Text

Franky comes to visit every weekend. 

Usually, it’s him who speaks most—touching the dusty times of war, trying to find the lost trace between them. Loid tries to follow his words and recall the sound of the nothingness after the bombs, the feel of the dirt against his skin, the blood staining his tongue. Nothing. 

And as soon as he sees his mind wandering between the white, his friend changes the subject. Loid supposes he can call him his friend, as they were in the past. But Loid can’t find any shattered pieces between them. He still feels content enough. The first time he visits him, Loid calls him Francis and he laughs in response, declaring that such name doesn’t fit him at all.

It’s the first time Loid permits himself to laugh loudly, to share the ridiculousness of the situation. 

Now they’re at his house, which still doesn’t really feel like his own house, and Franky assists Anya in one of her drawings. She calls him with a funny name, he gets angry, and then laughter erupts from both of them. 

It feels ethereal, for a moment.

“You would be a good father,” Loid says.

Franky stops laughing and looks at him, incredulous. “Don’t say crazy things.”

“It’s true,” he refutes. “Yor has told me how you always took care of Anya for entire nights and days, in the past and now. And she adores you.”

“Well,” Franky says, resting his chin on his palm, “I need to find a woman that wants to marry me first.”

“You will. You’re a good catch.”

Franky smirks and laughs again. “Thanks. You helped me with my failed dating life a lot, in the past.”

Loid smiles back, and Franky's attention returns to Anya's drawing, guiding her hand with a gentle gesture. She calls him uncle and, even though his expression doesn’t show it, there's a subtle warmth that kindles in his eyes. Calling him uncle means that he’s somehow a brother of the family, and Loid can see him like that, even now. And he wonders, again, falling into the depths.

It’s Yor walking into the room who pulls him out of the water.

“More coffee, everyone?” She smiles with a tray in her hands. “Anya, dear, I made cocoa for you.”

“Yay!”

Loid’s eyes stay on Yor the whole time, watching every trace of her movements. The way her moonless hair slips over her shoulder, the gentle way she fixes the cups, the lukewarm smile she draws when she sees her daughter laughing. 

His heart is filled with bubbles.

“You’re way too obvious,” Franky says once Yor exits the room again.

“Excuse me?”

“The way you look at her,” he clarifies. “You’re giving yourself away too much.”

Loid blinks, confused, feeling a faint heat in his cheeks. “I mean… It's natural, isn’t it? She’s my wife.”

“Guess so,” he answers with a bored stare, fixing his coffee, then murmurs to himself: “You usually denied it.”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

If Anya was listening or not, she doesn’t show it, throwing her arms up. “Hurray! Anya is done!”

The air is filled with a joy he can almost touch, tangled in his fingers. Anya with her face stained in paint, showing off her artwork, Franky distancing himself to avoid the splatters of color and running away as soon Anya threatens him with her dirty hands. Loid chuckles, finding Yor walking into the room and laughing with them—her giggle this time genuine, almost wistful. His eyes immediately move to her and Loid realizes that he’s been staring for too long when Yor meets his gaze and blushes, smiling at him.

Loid smiles back, and wonders if he’s too obvious. He wonders what’s wrong with being obvious. 

He wonders.

Within the depths of his bones, the endless question echoes like the heartbeat of a minor god. 

During the few hours when he’s alone, Loid wanders around the house, seeking to mend the fragments of shattered glass. His eyes traverse the photographs adorning the walls. In these images everyone radiates joy, their smiles unfettered, and in some, he stands among them, smiling just the same. Anya clings to him in every frame, while Yor looks happy, her genuine smile a rarity, a flicker of brightness absent in their everyday life.

Mostly, he explores his room. It looks more like a study than a bedroom anyways, where he finds endless shelves laden with books whose words elude his grasp: parenting guides, manuals on marital harmony, and psychiatry. Loid tries to recall—was he good at his job? Did he have to endure a tumultuous marriage? Did the difficulty of raising Anya weigh him down? 

He recalls that Anya is the daughter of a previous marriage of his. The wife he had before Yor feels like a tale made out of paper, ruined by the water, impossible to grasp. He tries to find traces of her in his drawers, in the closets, but he fails. No photographs of her, no letters either, not a single trace—only a void that mocks him.

He wonders. He wonders all the time.

After an interminable walk through the halls, he succumbs collapsing upon the couch, defeated and weary. Bond approaches with caution, yet his smile and outstretched hand offer reassurance. Bond finally responds with a joyful wag of his tail, and yet beneath the surface, a cry emerges from him.

“What’s wrong, buddy?” he touches his head. “Are you in pain?”

Bond gazes downward, his head resting against Loid's hand, letting out another cry.

Defeated, Loid lets out a long sigh, and watches the snow fall into nothingness.

It’s been another week.

Loid contents himself with housework. He learns to sew, and to knit. His fingers get bruised because of it and Yor doesn’t like it. She sits on the couch next to him and gently takes his wounded fingers in her palms to treat him—unable to see the faint red expanding in his cheeks, trying to hold back the giddy joy spreading in his skin. 

But Loid still keeps going—it gets his mind busy and working. It takes two weeks to knit a scarf for Anya, and her pinkish joy when he wraps it around her is enough to make him satisfied enough. He wonders if he liked doing this in the past. Yor had looked at him with a trace of sadness, and uncertainty, but she smiled regardless. “You did all sorts of things in order to spoil her,” she answered, and he wondered. 

He spends most of his days with Anya. Yor is busy with the house, and despite that she has taken a break from City Hall, her absence stretches long into the night. Anya, undeterred by the mysteries of her comings and goings, never says anything about it, and Loid tries to do just the same. 

When exams are coming, Anya spends most of her days studying, ignoring Bond, and even Spy Wars.

“Do you want those Stella Stars so much, Anya?” he asks one day, sitting next to her, watching her write and write.

“Oui,” she answers without looking at him. “It’s for world peace.”

He chuckles, wondering if it’s a sort of game she has with her friends. They remain in comfortable silence. He brings her cocoa, she does her homework, he reads the books he found in his old room. After a long while, Anya asks for help with a math problem she can’t solve. 

“Oh…” he reads the pages, and finds himself in a foreign wonder. “I’m sorry, I don’t quite know how to resolve this.”

Her shoulders drop. “That’s okay. Math at school is too hard anyways.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “Did I use to help you out with your homework in the past?”

“A whole lots,” she declares, finally looking at him. “Papa was like Bondman. He knew everything!”

He chuckles. “Was I smart?”

“The smartest!”

He laughs again, and it begins to snow. They take a break and watch the snow fall, and the world is endless, and white. Loid takes a breath and counts the colors. Pink, green, red. They fill the water, the wonder. When Anya complains it’s too cold, Loid takes her in his lap and gently cradles her. Then he notices that she’s so little, so tiny, he can practically carry her with one arm. He wonders if he thought the same back then, he wonders if it made his heart filled with cotton like now. 

He stares down to see if she has finally fallen asleep. She hasn’t. Anya looks at the snow and she doesn’t look like herself again, she looks sad, and distant. He says nothing. The snow is falling, the sky is white. He has to do something about it.

“Let’s call Franky,” he smiles. “I’m sure he has time to play today.”

Her blooming smile is enough to erase the white for a while.

The days pass. They are pleasant, but merciless. 

He tries to remember, to think back before Yor, before Anya, and Franky. There’s nothing, not a trace. He feels like an abysmal night, a wandering ghost floating in the gray air. Everything is white, and pale. Disappearing into nothingness.

He tries to sink back into the red. 

It is now the end of the afternoon. Yor is returning from work, and he waits for her in the middle of the road back home. She arrives, she sees him, and smiles. He offers his arm, hopeful, awaiting, and she takes it with a shy smile. She’s lovely, always. He has forgotten his gloves, and when he realizes it, they are already far under the white and silver sky. It’s cold. They go on, walking slowly on purpose. She has her arm in his, so his hand, his bare hand, reposes on her wrist. It doesn’t have to, really, but it is.  

A flower shop. There are endless colors. He counts them all.

On one side of the showcase, roses. Loid points at them, and offers to buy a bouquet for her. Yor looks at them, smiles at him and politely declines. They already have many filling the house, she explains, perhaps they can get fresh ones next time. Loid wants to comment that most of them are in the process of withering, but he stays silent.

They walk down the white road. The walk, feeling each other’s warmth. They’re content enough.

It begins to rain. Anya eats quickly because she has to do all her homework, and rushes to her room. Loid asks if she was always this dedicated. She wasn’t, Yor says, but she always tried her best. 

Loid wonders, and there are ghosts again, and they are filling the room with their hunger.

They sit on the couch and share warm tea. When it gets too cold, he builds courage to come closer so that their hands touch. But when he reaches her bare hand, Yor flinches, startled, and he finally understands that this kind of closeness between them is unfamiliar and foreign for her.  

“I’m sorry,” he rushes, defeated, moving away to keep their proper distance.  

Silence again. 

It is a certain blade, it is a certain sea.

Loid cannot hold it anymore, and he wonders, and he asks.

“Yor,” he says, hesitating with his next words. “Was there any love in our marriage at all?”

Her eyes, who were following the raindrops, now open wide in astonishment. She looks at him with her mouth open, but she cannot find the answer. He awaits, silent, his heart a nest of nervous birds. 

“No. I mean…” she says, her voice little, wandering. There’s a pause, she breathes deeply, and continues. “Our marriage was just… a cover. We married because you needed a wife for the interview in Eden so Anya could enter the academy, because that was your previous wife's late wish. And I… needed a husband to stop raising suspicions against me.” She looks up, her eyes finding his. “We were good friends, I promise, but…”

She cannot go on. It’s the first time Loid sees her doubt like this, letting out shaky breaths, trying to hold back a sob, unable to mask herself under her paper-made smile. He finally dares to hug her, to touch her, and she melts against him, crumbling like a sand castle. 

“I’m sorry, don’t cry,” he murmurs, and she shakes her head to finally look at him. The smile she gives him makes his chest constrict—it is a sad one, defeated, silent, but it’s the first time he has seen her smile genuinely.

He goes to move back, but she’s the one who grabs him this time.

“No, stay,” she begs, and leans her forehead against his shoulder. “Please, Loid. Just…stay.”

He does. She closes her eyes and rests on his shoulder for a while. Loid stays still, and after a moment, he rests his cheek on her head. He lets himself close his eyes to the pitter-patter of the rain and the gentle reddish scent of her.

The rain is falling harder. 

Loid wonders, for a moment, how his wife was before.

How she was before the death of her brother.

But mostly, he just looks at the falling rain.

The sky is white, and endless.

Chapter Text

He has folded his sorrows like fitted bed sheets.

In the mornings he wakes up earlier than everyone, which is difficult at first, as he sleeps for many hours. Anya has said something about him lacking sleep in his past, and Loid finds it hard to believe. But he makes the effort, and spends endless hours in the kitchen trying to make something edible. If the food is good or not, he can’t tell, as Yor and Anya make an expression that he cannot decipher. They still smile, brimming, and Anya asks him in excitement to make food for them again.

Loid finds comfort in the housework. He learns to cook and buys a recipe book, marking the pages that contain his wife and daughter’s favorite dishes. He spends hours in the kitchen when he’s alone at home, thinking about them. Anya comments about how he was an expert at food and used to cook all day for them, just like now, and that he also enjoyed it—even if he denied it.

He chuckles, ruffles her hair and gives her the lunch he made for her to have at school.

The first time he cooks hamburger steak, it does not end well. Anya's initial reaction is one of distaste, yet Yor savors it as if it's the most exquisite dish she's ever known. Something shifts in Anya's gaze, her eyes alight with contemplation, tears teetering on the edge. She consumes the food hastily, as though swallowing her emotions, and Loid feels himself rocked by the waves again, floating far away.

He can almost reach shore. 

Yor goes back to work. Apparently, City Hall requests her late during the night.

He wonders, but he doesn’t ask.

Loid still finds comfort in their roles in this marriage he has found in his pockets: she works, he takes care of the house. He goes back and back. That way, perhaps, he will be able to find his old self under the surface. What brought him joy? What soured his soul? What anchored his existence day by day? His yearning hinges on the belief that this family was his whole reason to keep going, for his heart to gently beat.

What else could have been? Loid can’t picture anything else, he doesn’t want to imagine anything else.

He can’t even begin to think that at some point he was going to part ways with Yor.  

Loid begins lacking sleep when he awaits for Yor to come home. 

It goes like this for almost a week, and Yor begins coming back earlier than before, because she doesn't like to make him stay late, to see the bags under his eyes, his tired smile and sleepy eyes glowing as soon as she enters home. She always eats dinner with them, but leaves quickly after a phone call, or suddenly remembering a task she had. He never questions her, even if he wonders. He wonders all the time. But he waits for her, sometimes together with Anya who insists on waiting for her mama, and Yor begins taking no more than an hour to come back home. They still have tea, and he keeps his proper distance.

He thinks of buying her flowers, yet her earlier reaction to them makes him think she does not really like them. So he prepares tea like always and waits, and waits, and waits—until she arrives, she looks at him, and gives an apologetic smile.

“I’m very sorry,” she says, taking off her coat and rushing to him. “My boss didn’t let me go tonight either."

“That’s alright, Yor,” he smiles, helping her with her coat. “Anya couldn't wait up anymore, though. I tucked her in bed and stayed with her until she finally fell asleep.”

Her voice carries a touch of concern, it’s an autumn breeze. "You don’t have to shoulder all burdens, Loid," she offers, her smile intact and genuine. "I want you to rest. Are your wounds healing well?"

“Yes, more than well, Yor,” he answers, touching the back of his head where it used to hurt. "But please, allow me this, at least... you deserve it, after all you've done."

Her lips part, as if to respond, but silence claims the space between them. Her smile widens, a trace of sincerity etched in its contours. Her cheeks are red, tracing the shape of his hand that flinches for a fickle moment to lean in and touch the blush on her skin.

But he holds back. 

It’s the first time the silence is kind between them. The air smells soft, and of the past. 

It’s on a pale afternoon when she finds him awake very early again, despite the fact that he waited for her for so long last night.

“What are you preparing?” she asks, peeking over his shoulder. 

“Anya told me she prefers to have my food over what they offer her at school,” he chuckles. “I told her she should take advantage of what they offer her there, but she insisted.”

Yor giggles with him.  

“Her lunch seems very colorful, you still are very skilled,” she smiles.

That word lingers on his veins for a while. ‘Still’. The before, the past. Before the foam, before reaching Yor. He pretends he’s not hearing the waves and nods, resuming into the food. “I asked her what her favorite color is,” he comments, “but she ended up naming all of them.”

Yor laughs, happy, and his heart soars. 

The world is white beneath the windows' panes. The air is white in the room. Then he asks, without looking up, “What color was my favorite in the past?”

She’s silent, for a moment. “You did not have one, I think.”

New silence.

“Do you think you have one, now?” she asks.

He keeps his eyes on the food and doesn’t really have to think about it—the answer coming immediately from the depths of his bones. 

“I’m very fond of red,” he simply says.

Yor stays silent, and he doesn’t dare to look. After a moment she gently places herself next to him, offering help, and Loid doesn’t notice her blushed cheeks—the thrilled, brimming smile she’s trying to hold back. They breathe each other’s company and for a moment everything in the world feels fixed. 

He begins walking Anya to school and picking her up when she’s done. He doesn’t really have to, but it’s what he wishes. Anya eagerly waits for him at the door, urging him to hurry as she jumps with excitement, her bulky backpack swaying with her movements.

On the snowy road, they hold hands. Anya always loved taking walks with papa, she says, because he always held her hand. He worried easily, she explains, and he was overprotective, even if he pretended he wasn’t.

Loid laughs again, and he wonders. He can almost find himself on the shore. 

Sometimes, they stop by the park. He buys her a bag of peanuts and she shares them with him. She talks about school and about trying to become closer with a very important boy in her class. When Loid asks her if she likes him, she shakes her head, coming back to the reason for world peace. 

He chuckles again, pats her head, and she’s happy.

The world is a watercolor—the white is far-away.

It’s on the way back home when Anya suddenly stops walking, her eyes snapping behind her. Loid looks at her, confused, his hand still holding hers.

“Anya? What’s wrong?”

His daughter doesn’t answer, her eyes still fixated to a corner of the street.

Loid follows her gaze and notices a woman sitting alone, sipping coffee. Her strawberry-blonde hair falls gracefully, her legs elegantly crossed, while her eyes remain fixed on a book she holds in her hands. He tilts his head, then glances back at Anya, who appears puzzled, as if trying to, somehow, listen to something.

Loid tugs softly on her hand. “Let’s go, Anya. It’s rude to stare.”

She takes a moment to listen to him, and slowly begins to walk again. She looks behind her one more time, finally returning her attention to the road. 

Loid can almost swear he suddenly feels a stare pierced on his back. 

He’s carrying his wife to her room. As he approaches the entrance, he discovers her peacefully asleep on the couch, clad in her pink coat and heels. Loid cradles her in his arms, one hand supports her back while the other securely cradles her legs. Yor remains in a deep slumber, likely exhausted from a long night. The winter filtering through the window is familiar but the shivers on his spine aren’t. He wonders. Yet the pleasant feel of her warmth pressed against his chest is enough to let his thoughts wander back to her.

Loid places her on the bed and slips her from her heels. There he finds scars around her ankles and legs like thorny vines. He wonders again, and his eyes come back to her. Even in her sleep there’s a pained expression in her face, and she calls for a name. Her brother’s. Loid can only move the locks of hair falling on her eyes and caress the skin where he finds another scar. His hand lingers there, his thumb caressing the line of her little wound.

He thinks that her voice calling his name when he exits the room is just his imagination. 

It’s on a starless night when he finds a golden needle on the floor.

Earlier, urged by Yor's insistence that her work would detain her longer, he reluctantly retired for the night. Loid lingered awake in his room, resisting slumber, anticipating her return. Eventually succumbing to exhaustion, he drifted into sleep, abruptly startled awake by a commotion from the main room. Overcoming his initial hesitation and fear, he opened the door of his room and found darkness.

The silence filled him completely. 

Now, in his grasp, rests an unfamiliar weapon—an elongated, crimson-stained knife, tainted by blood. His gaze traces a trail of red leading to Yor's room, where the ominous hue spreads like a relentless tide. He pounds on the door, repeating her name fervently, desperation clouding his features. "Yor? Are you in there? Please, open the door. Please—"

Another noise. Then silence.

The golden needle is the only thing he can see in the darkness of the house. 

Loid opens the door.

He finds Yor sitting sprawled on the floor, propped against the bed's edge. Her breath is heavy, gasping, as if her whole body is submerged under endless waves. She wears an outfit he never saw on her, a black dress and high boots hugging her injured legs. There’s blood climbing around her, like piercing vines, thorny branches. As light seeps into the room, she weakly cracks her eyes open, their once vibrant red now clouded and fading like a lighthouse suddenly disappearing in the middle of the sea.

Loid hurries to her side. 

He kneels to her level and cradles her in his arms, hugging her against him, angling her face toward his. He calls her name again and again, and her eyes are open, but he knows she’s not looking at him. Running his hand over her torso, he discovers her dress ripped open, revealing a wound resembling a rift in an abyss, her blood trickling through his fingers.

He looks at her again, and she’s opening her mouth, whispering something he can’t hear.

Before his hand can reach her cheek, Yor slumps lifelessly in his arms.

He can see her open and close her eyes several times during the night.

Loid is hovering over her, up to his elbows in blood. His face is grave, his lips pressed together in a grim line. A muffled mama is awake! comes from the other side of the door where Anya waits after Loid orders her to not enter the room. He cannot afford to lose focus. Attempting to heed every single word Franky imparted to him over the phone, Loid struggles. He had called Franky in a voice he himself could barely recognize, not fully cognizant of his own words—only that he was asking for help, that Yor was fading into the ashes and that the waves were drowning him.

Yor is looking at him with half-open eyes when he’s trying to patch her together.

Her hand moves towards his, feeble, pallid, nearly vanishing. In any other circumstance, Loid would grasp her hand, striving to sense her warmth against his own. He would pour all the words, and would reach shore where she is. But he gently takes her wrist, and places it on the sheets.

 “Don’t do that, Yor, I need to finish before you lose more blood.” 

His voice is strained and tense, like he's fighting to keep it even, trying to force his usual calmness. It’s at moments like this when he hates his lack of memory the most, the way he can’t remember himself, everything for what he was useful once—if he ever was. He tries to sew the wound following Franky’s words, trying to use the little knowledge he still keeps. 

Yor closes her eyes, and she calls a name again, and this time he holds her hand. 

Even as her breathing steadies, he remains steadfast by her side. He spends hours poring over medicinal books discovered in his room, seeking any information he can find. He wonders how much did he know in the past, why did he know so much. If he ever used it with Yor, if he knew anything. He’s certain, at a moment, that he never knew. 

An hour later, Franky makes a call home to check on everything. Loid speaks to him as though delivering a detailed report, seeking reassurance—that everything is alright, that there's no need for concern, no looming threat. Franky reassures him that she's now safe, out of harm's way.

Loid still doesn’t leave her side.

He softly cradles her in his arms and carries her to his room, where it doesn’t reek of blood. He places her on his bed carefully and covers her with his sheets, and when he finds Anya peeking behind the door he finally lets her in. She runs towards her mama, and nuzzles against her. She does not cry. She just hugs her mother, and falls asleep, holding her hand.

A moment before, Anya said: “Mama was careful, before.” And he wondered, but he didn't ask.

Loid cleans her room, the sheets stained in red. Swipes the dust and even cleans the stained needle, leaving it on her night table. Once he’s done, he comes back to his room and carefully carries the sleeping Anya to her bed.

He comes back to Yor’s side. Loid doesn’t know how many hours he had without sleep.

Two, three, four more hours pass. Yor opens her eyes.

“Hello, Yor,” he says softly, tired, his voice low and thin. “How are you feeling?”

Her voice comes raspy, far-away. “Tired, dizzy,” she looks around, the room is white, the night outside is pale. Her hand moves towards her torso, where the wound was, and touches there to find the fabric of a bandage. “Did you…?”

“Heal you. Yes. I needed to follow Franky’s instructions, I was useless without them.”

Her eyes are still half-closed, but she smiles, tired. “Thank you.”

He hums, and returns back to the silence. His sleeves are rolled up, his hair a tangled mess, his elbows resting on his knees as he tries to hold his chin up and not fall asleep. Yor is looking at him, but he’s looking at the snowy night.

She licks her dry lips, looking for her next words. 

“Did I worry you?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Are you angry?”

“I am, a little.”

She hesitates, “I’m so sorry, Loid.”

He’s smiling now. 

“You’re alive, Yor. That’s all I care about.”

Her smile then is sad, but at least it is a smile. She’s glad she’s alive, she wants to say, but she doesn’t. Perhaps it is all there is, perhaps her husband is aware enough. Loid’s eyes return to the night, pale and dark. Her eyes still remain in his features, and her heartbeat becomes tender, her breath calmer. She falls asleep just like this, breathing in the sight of her husband, his hand close to hers.

When he enters the room again it’s the early hours of the morning, the sky still dark. He notices that Yor isn’t in the bed, and spots her sitting by the window, looking out and waiting for the sun to rise. She turns to him and smiles—tired, soft, beautiful.

“You should stay in bed, Yor,” he worries, following her in the faint light. She’s still dressed in her black dress, barefeet, and her hair is down, falling on her shoulders. Somehow it’s the most informal he’s ever seen her. It feels intimate, it fills his heart with wild butterflies.

“I feel all better, Loid, thanks to you.”

He sits by the window next to her. “It’s thanks to Franky, and Anya who kept me in my senses. I was useless without them,” he sighs, his voice defeated, tired from staying up all night. “Is there anything I can do for you? Say the word, and I will do it.”

She giggles.

“You’re overreacting, Loid, but you were always like that,” she says softly, her eyes filled with fondness. “But I’d appreciate it if we could have some coffee.”

Loid smiles, and nods. He brings over two hot cups and joins her by the window, the two of them sitting next to each other. The morning air is cold, and white. They sip their coffee and watch the sun peek out over the horizon. 

This silence is kind, it watches over them. It pushes his next words to fall gently like pieces fitting together. “Yor,” he breathes, his eyes fixated on the horizon. “The blood I wiped from you, it wasn’t all yours, wasn’t it?”

The sun glows faintly between the cracks of the pale sky. 

She breathes, closes her eyes—like she was waiting for his question. Yor opens her eyes again, and watches the birds ripping like scissors through the sky. “No, it wasn’t.”

A pause, and then. 

“And all those nights you came back late when your boss called to give you tasks, was it a lie?”

“No,” the sun paints a watercolor in her features, “it wasn’t a lie.”

There’s a silence again, and she waits, and waits, until their shoulders are suddenly touching and she finds home in his warmth.  

“Will you tell me all about it, someday?”

Yor breathes in, letting all the air go in a shaky breath, and smiles.

“Yes, I will.”

He doesn’t ask further, and she breathes in his patient kindness. They sit in companionable silence, their hands close, their fingers almost touching. They remain with nothing more to say, because they can trust each other even like this, even now.

They watch the colors bloom in the morning, the lavender sky filling them completely.

Chapter Text

Yor stays in bed like she promised. 

She finds herself in constant company: from her worried husband checking on her at every hour, to her daughter that cuddles her as soon as she comes back from school to their dog sleeping soundly next to the bed, guarding her.

She feels happy. Yor is happy, even for a moment. There are songbirds stuck in her open scars.

It has been five days now. 

Saturday. A cold morning. Loid oversleeps, rushes to the kitchen and already finds Yor there. She smiles at him. He smiles back—then he is serious—his eyes follow her, when she sits, when she fills her plate, when she pours coffee. He sees her bandaged wrists and the faint scar peeking on the skin of her collarbone like the trace in a map. 

She notices his intense gaze. She always did, even in the past. She never said anything.

“Would you like some milk in your coffee, Loid?” she asks.

He’s looking at her again (he always does).  

He doesn’t answer, and Yor blinks. “Is something wrong?”

“I was recalling,” he finally says. “You said you’re considering taking a break from your… work.”

“I am,” she raises her eyes at him. 

It is a while before he speaks again. “Well, I was thinking,” he says, “about helping you to take a break.”

She tilts her head in wonder. He hesitates, and then: “Would you like to go on a date with me tonight?” 

Franky accepts his requests as soon as he calls him. He hated to babysit for him in the past, he laughed, but not right now. (Loid wonders, and suspects that Franky just pretended to hate it before). When he enters home, Anya jumps to him and clings to his legs, throwing him off balance. She calls him unkie again and despite his complaints, Loid can see the smile peeping on his face. He wonders if it was always like this, he wonders if it will always be.

His attention shifts to Yor who observes the scene with eyes clouded in affection.

“Papa and mama have to promise to come back,” Anya says, her eyes watery, softly clinging to his leg.

Loid kneels to her level and pats her head. “I promise,” he smiles. “And next time, you can come with us.”

Anya scans his eyes, as if looking somewhere else, as if listening to words he cannot hear. But then she smiles and hugs him, giggling loudly when he plants a kiss on her forehead.

Yor joins them to their level and embraces her daughter, kissing her repeatedly on her cheek until Anya is laughing, loud and free and whole. Loid’s heart beats in a ballad, the way he soaks in the warmth, the way he gazes at Franky smiling at them. 

The world becomes a quiet sea.

They walk, in the beautiful, cold tenderness of the night. The white night. He should say something, he thinks, he should thank her.

Thank her for what?

He looks at her. Yor is wearing red, it wraps around her like a gentle vine. Her dress is long, and he can see the skin peeking through her exposed back—her moles looking like newborn stars. Her lips are cherries and her eyes melt in red honeysuckle. She doesn’t wear her usual headband and her hair that falls over her shoulders reminds of a night river, or opaque moonbeams. Her loose hair, he remembers—the dusk, the window, the lavender sky. The promises. Loid breathes deeply, trying to find the right words, the courage to extend his hand to her. 

He just offers his arm, she takes it. Politely. Just a mere touch.

“Your dress is lovely, Yor,” he finally says, looking at their front. You’re lovely, it's what he really wants to say, but he doesn’t.

Yor looks at the snow, her eyes shiny, her smile happy and rosy.

“Thank you.” Then after a moment she adds: “You said like red.”

His breath catches for a moment. “I do.”

New silence. They reach the main street, filled with lights. The trees are white, the houses are pale. Yor is red, holding on his arm, her fingers touching his wrist. His eyes travel from the white to the red—where her eyes are, where her dress falls gracefully on her knees.

Her red dress.

Loid soaks in the palm of her hand against his arm. 

He doesn’t have a long evening planned like he always did in the past. Yor understand this immediately. He’s not like before, she thinks to herself, at least not the part of him who needed to make her feel at ease at every moment, at every trace—every movement of his carefully planned. But he’s still her husband—the one who wants to make sure she’s well, the one who wants to make things easy between them despite that there’s always the distance, always the politeness. All smiles and proper talk, remaining in their contract, remaining oblivious to one another.

The club is loud and crowded. There’s jazz floating in the air and the couples move happily and at rhythm, bodies touching the other, hands interlaced, the smiles loud and free. She envies them, for a moment. She always did, even when she was younger. Yor comments this out loud, and before she can take it back, realizing her bold honesty,  Loid is looking at her, leaning against her to let her know he didn’t hear well.

Yor hesitates for a moment, and puts her lips close to his ear. “I never saw a dance like this before,” she says instead, which is true, but far-away from what echoes in her thoughts.

He looks at the crowd, then at her again, and his lips are closer to her ear, sending shivers down her skin. 

“Did we dance together in the past?” he says, voice low, his hand close to her.

Yor has a dust ring in her heart, beating loudly. 

“No, we didn’t.”

He looks at the crowd, but she keeps looking at him. He’s overthinking, again, he always did. But it feels strange, this time. He tentatively closes the distance, his hand is brushing her wrist. Yor follows his gaze and he’s looking at a couple that's particularly closer, eyes on one another, their foreheads very closer together.

Her husband looks at her again, smiling, hesitating.

“Why don’t we make tonight our first time then?”

Yor opens her mouth, out of words, then stutters shyly, “I don’t quite know how to dance.”

He shrugs. “Neither do I. But we can try, if you wish.”

And she does, she does . He extends a hand to her expectantly and she laughs as she accepts his offer. He guides her to the middle of the crowd and the music is now slower, a low honey-blues. Loid takes her hand and his palm is tense. His fingers go to her waist where her wound was, and he caresses her there, caring, and her heart becomes liquid smooth. 

As they step on each other’s toes and trip over their own feet, Yor learns that neither of them know what they are doing, yet that doesn’t stop them from laughing together. But Loid is a fast learner, always and now, and quickly he leads her with more grace, managing to avoid stepping on her feet and doing a funny little hop to prevent her from crushing his toes. 

Yor has the small suspicion that he actually practiced for this specific moment, and she giggles.

Deep down, her husband never changes.

The place he takes her for dinner isn’t planned either. He doesn’t remember much of the city, she recalls, but she lets him guide her around. Loid breathes in the colors, points at the lovely yellow lights of the street, the green of the small restaurant they enter. Her red dress. He looks at it again, and Yor is aware that he’s looking, and says nothing. Her cheeks are red become too, the color of the blood he wiped from her with dedicated hands was red as well.

She keeps her proper distance and so does he. It is just like the past—the past is present between them. Everything is for appearances, always polite, always the respectful coldness between their touch. It is in their nature.

Months ago, in the past, her husband never touched her (before the waves, before the white). There were only the small moments: when their hands brushed accidentally in the kitchen, when she held her arm in public for others to see. Small, sprinkled touches. Other husbands, Yor began to notice at the beginning of their marriage, touched their wives at every moment: on the elbow, the arm, the shoulder, the waist. Her husband almost did it, once, when they went to the movie theater during their first date: his hand moved towards the small of her back when they walked in the dark—but he hesitated, and his hand moved away.

Now Yor holds his arm, even like this, even now. She lingers the touch for a few more seconds than needed, and she wonders if Loid notices.

(she wonders if he noticed in the past, too).

They still have dinner. It’s small, endearing. 

Their talk is everywhere. They talk about nothing and about everything. Nothing from the past, but of the present. Then their topics reach Anya, their favorite kind of talk, where their hearts are at ease. Yor brings back memories from months ago and he laughs. Loid doesn’t have memories to share of her from her earlier life (because of his memory, Yor thinks—but it is strange that he never did it in the past, either).

“Thank you for this, Loid,” Yor says after a shared silence (she always thanks him, always grateful for the attention she thinks she should not be given). “For taking me out, I mean, despite how busy you have been.”

He chuckles. “I’m not busy at all,” he says. “All I do is take care of the house.”

“And of Anya, and of me,” she insists. “You always did this in the past too. Despite everything, despite being at work and having your own life. You had your desires and your goals, and yet you kept working day by day despiste how exhausted you were,” she pauses for a moment, her hands dropped in her lap. “When we first met, you said… that enduring a harsh work for the sake of another isn’t something that anyone would do. I agreed, I still do,” she looks at him, she smiles at his surprised eyes. “And you’re like that, even now, despite everything.” There’s a small, comfortable pause despite that they both are trying to find the right words, to fill the white, the waves separating them. Yor looks at her lap again, and adds: “That’s why I wanted to wear your favorite color tonight, and make you happy. Even if it’s something little.”

She waits for him to say something, to laugh nervously, anything. Nothing comes. She’s not looking at him, he’s still silent.

Yor stares at her hands now. “I’m sorry. Perhaps that was silly.”

“It wasn’t,” he quickly rushes. “It wasn’t, Yor,” she looks at him, and his cheeks have a faint red, and he’s smiling, and there’s softness swimming in his eyes. “It made me happy. I’m the happiest.”

There’s softness in the air. She’s smiling now, too.

“I’m glad,” she says (and she’s happy too, even for a moment).

They eat in pleasant silence. 

A faint drizzle forces them to seek shelter beneath the eaves of a closed and dimly lit flower shop. The bouquets of flowers peek from the showcases. There’s an old ballad echoing in the background that comes from one of the tall buildings. Loid breathes in the cold and watches the rain falling in thin threads. 

Yor is looking at the roses.

“Do you like them, Yor?” he asks, and when she looks at him he adds, “The roses.”

Her eyes drop to the petals again. She pauses for a moment, then simply says: “Yuri used to gift them to me all the time.”

It’s all she says, her eyes returning to the drizzle. It is a sort of answer, and he understands what she means. They don’t touch the topic again. The music echoing in the background is muffled by the rain, by their thoughts, so loud and so quiet. 

“How is your wound, Yor?” He looks at her again. “I hope it’s all better?”

Yor finally breaks into a smile. “It is, thank you.”

His expression is worried now, he doesn’t want to think of the countless times she has been in danger. His heart constricts at the thought. 

“Doesn’t your body feel exhausted? To keep going in your… tasks.” 

“It does, sometimes,” she giggles like a warm breeze. “Do you remember when we told you about the cruise trip the three of us took together? At the beginning it wore me out because of the job I had. In order to protect someone, a woman with her child, I had to stay on my guard for a long time. I still feel guilty, because I had to lie to you and Anya.” Her smile is still intact, tracing tiredness. “I fought endless people, my hands and my mind were exhausted and wounded. At some point, in the middle of everything, I lost all strength. I thought it was the end for me,” She looks at the snow. “But it’s because I remembered all of you that I could fight again,” she says, and finally looks at him, ”you all became my strength.”

Their mirthful eyes find in the dark like two streams that caress and intertwine.

It stops raining. 

The snow. The night.

They walk again.

Yor guides them to a small park. The light falls like glitter there, and the city spreads endlessly under them. Yor grips the railing and her smile spreads like freshwater, and his eyes cannot stop looking at her. 

They remain in comfortable silence for a while. Then she says, after a moment, “You brought me here during our first date, you took me to all kinds of wonderful places,” she smiles, the light is dancing around her eyes. “That day I was in terrible pain. I was so exhausted, and wounded, but I couldn’t tell you why. And yet, even so, you did your best to make me feel better.” She breathes, looks at him. “It was one of the happiest nights of my life.”

Loid looks at her silently, his eyes moving back and forth between her two red ones. His mind wanders again to the white, to the water—and yet he cannot see anything, he cannot remember. There’s a heavy weight in his soul. He finds all the courage to hold her hand just for a moment.

“Then,” he says, “I hope this night means the same for you.”

Yor blushes deeply, but doesn’t pull her hand away. Her fingers soften under his and she smiles again. 

“It does,” she says softly. “Thank you, Loid.”

He smiles again, retreating his hand, letting go of hers. He cannot see her expression, her eyes dropping in disappointment, the way her hand hesitates to touch his again. 

There’s another silence, the snow falling, the cold warming their bones. 

Loid’s mind suddenly travels back to their earlier conversation. The shop, the roses. Her brother. Yuri Briar. His name tastes differently in his mouth, bittersweet. He looks at her, and he wonders.

Silence. Then he says, carefully, “You never told me what happened to your brother, Yor. Is there… something that I should know about?”

Yor looks at him. Loid can’t really see her even in the white night. He tries to imagine her gaze, there are endless possibilities. 

New silence. 

“He was part of the secret police…” Yor begins. ”There was a man he was chasing.”

He looks at her, but she’s gazing at the blurry city lights. 

“I found out about this after he died,” Yor explains. “The police were chasing someone important to them, and Yuri was reckless and ran towards him. But he stopped. Something happened, another man stepped in.” There’s a pause, and then. “That second man shot Yuri from behind. He died instantly.”

Loid cannot speak.

He’s waiting for a movement. For him to touch her. 

He doesn’t.

The need to break the distance is always there—was it always there? Did he feel it too, in the past? Did he seek her, did he watch her from a distance like now? He wonders how did he endure, why did he endure. 

Loid wants to hold her hand. He must have wanted to hold her hand in the past. 

He wonders.

What held him back? 

They keep walking in perfect silence.

The air becomes colder and Yor wraps her arms around herself, shaking. Her eyes open with the feel of her husband placing his coat on her shoulders. She’s looking at him with her eyes clouded like a shy night but he’s focused on wrapping the fabric perfectly around her. Once he’s done, he returns to walk, and she follows. 

He walks next to her, keeping a proper distance.

Yor clings to the tips of his coat, the dew and ginger scent of him filling her completely. She glances at him, and he has a serious expression on his face, his thoughts wandering far away. He looks so lost. And Yor doesn’t know what to do, where to find the strength anymore, she just never really had it on her.

She stops. He pauses, looks at her. And then. 

“You asked me earlier, back then…” she begins, her eyes fixated on the floor, her fingers holding tightly to his coat. “You asked me if there was any love in our marriage.” Her eyes find his, and then: “There was,” she breathes. “There was, from my part.” He’s frozen, eyes wide, and there’s a faint smile blooming in her face. “At some point in our lives together I realized I loved you. And I thought I could live pretending that I didn’t… but I was wrong,” she shakes her head and her voice is slow, a thin glass. “When I wanted us to become closer, for you to know that you could rely on me, even a little, it was too late. And it was too late to know… if you felt the same.”

He‘s petrified, and lost again. He opens his mouth to find the words; his voice comes low, tentative.

“Is that why…you still hesitate to keep our distance, even now?” he asks, and she nods. 

“Yes,” she sighs. “I don’t—I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

The night is wrapping around them.

He has his hands on her arms; his grip is tight, refusing to let go. “You aren’t, Yor,” he whispers, and she does not move—she is frozen too now, hardly breathing, their foreheads so close, everything so close. “I’m certain it was the same for me. I’m sure I felt the same as you.”

She shakes her head, her voice still a thread, “how can you tell?”

He is caressing her arms. He stops.

“Because that’s how it is, even now,” he says, and cups her cheek for her to look at him. “I love you, Yor.”

There is a pause. The night is humming. The white stills. 

Yor feels flowers blooming on her bones, her blood vibrating like a lost bird. He has not pulled away, and she doesn’t wish to separate either. Loid cannot keep his eyes away. He is staring at her, studying her with such an intensity as if he wants to see through her skin—straight to the inside of her soul. To see every movement, every thought. Yor breathes slowly and let’s her forehead rest against his, so close that their lips are almost touching. Loid breathes her scent of soaked rose bushes and closes his eyes like he’s in deep pain—like this feeling is overwhelming even for him.  

Her hand raises tentatively to his arm, clinging there. His other hand around her arm slides and rests on the small of her back. He leans closer. “Please?” he murmurs, and when she nods he touches her lower lip with his thumb, caressing the softness of her skin, silky like a dewy petal; then he leans in and replaces his finger with his lips. Their mouths touch with the softness of two clouds meddling together. He can feel Yor sliding her hands around his head and spreading her fingers up into his hair. She pulls back just enough to shakily inhale but presses forward again.

He takes her bottom lip between his, pulling her closer and closer. Yor feels something moving inside her, an eclipse opening phantom wounds, healing despite everything. They separate, breathe, and sink back into each other. Again and again. Two, four, five times. Then Yor breathes and hugs him tightly, with Loid hugging her back with the same strength, with the same seeking heart. He buries his nose in her hair and she hides herself on the crook of his neck. 

And so they remain—not moving, not making a sound. Just breathing each other’s words, the melody of their heartbeats becoming one. 

The world continues to turn, and the moon finally traces them. 

Chapter Text

They don’t know how many minutes, or how many hours, they remained in the same spot—only that their bones grew cold, and their lips were pleasantly swollen. Loid does not separate from her at any moment on their way back home: his hand is on hers, on her shoulder, on the small of her back.

When they reach home there are timid smiles, happier than anything. Flowers growing between their cheekbones like cracks, and their throats full of life.

“I apologize, Yor, I made you more tired than you were earlier,” he says when they both head to their rooms. 

Yor’s eyes are filled with fondness. “You did not tire me at all. I feel like I have just finally awakened.”

He stares at her, sinking into the sight of her, the way she blushes in pink and looks away shyly. He smiles. The world feels safe, if only for a moment.

“I hope we do this again, some time,” Yor says softly.

“We will.”

They are still looking at each other. Then he leans in, and slowly brushes her cheekbones with his lips, gently kissing her forehead, her cheeks, and the corner of her lips. She laughs under his endless pecks until he’s smiling too and his lips land on her mouth and suddenly they’re kissing each other’s smiles.

They break apart, their foreheads close, laughing together again. 

Then Loid separates, he gives a step back. Yor remains in her place, still smiling.

He does not go to her room. She does not go to his.

They will hold back, if only for a little longer.

The red lingers in the room (for her, all she can see is blue).

A pause. Neither want to leave, to separate, but they say goodbye.

Loid can still see her smile when she closes the door. 

The phone rings twice during the night.

Loid answers first, and there’s a voice that does not speak, only breathing until Loid gives up. When he hangs out, Yor is there, smiling reassuringly at him. Then he understands that the call was meant for her—and he fears, but says nothing.

Their smiles are rough cotton as the pulse of the night echoes on his bones like a heartbeat. The white lingers, the waves reach him. Loid goes back to sleep and he doesn’t hear the second time the phone rings. He awakes minutes later, and when he searches for Yor through all the apartament, she’s gone.

He walks. From the room to the kitchen. From the kitchen to Anya’s room. 

The fear claws to his bones like a second shadow.

He should follow Yor, he should bring her back and make sure she’s safe. 

(safe from what? bring her how?)

Loid is in his room when he hears Bond’s legs quickly running through the apartament and Anya’s muffled voice echoing mama is in trouble! He quickly hurries to the main room to reach them, but they’re gone. The door is open, and the steps are echoing away. 

It takes two seconds for his heart to rumble on his bones again.

It begins snowing (the white lingers).

Loid takes his coat and runs.

No time for the white. No time for self-reflection or fear. His family has to be somewhere near. But he does not see them. Loid’s only skill is knowing them for a month, the few memories, the lack of strength on his hands.

The night is pale. The snow is dark. 

He calls their names. Yor, Anya, Bond. Their names taste like a blade, like bitter honey.

He runs through the night. The lights of the street are almost gone, the houses are shut. There are ghosts on every corner, watching over him. He calls for their names—one, six, a hundred times. 

He runs and finds the main canal of the city. A young couple tells him that they have seen a little girl with pink hair on top of a white dog. Loid follows their path. He finds the canal—cold water, white waves. Loid keeps running, following the water. 

The noise and voices of the city fade. He keeps running, calling them.

Nothing. No one.

There’s only white. Water, snow, waves. The sky is an endless mirror. He keeps running. He goes farther and farther, the only spark of life in a perfectly still world. In fact, he has never felt so alive, in the worst way possible: pain, exhaustion, fear. 

He keeps calling them. The snow blinds his view. 

Anya’s voice: “Papa!”

He runs. There’s a pink light in the white. He follows her.

His daughter’s shaking body. She has her uniform on, exposed to the cold. Loid takes his coat and wraps it around her. It is getting dark. Bond is crying to the freezing water, pointing at the endless white.

“Anya.”

“Mama is gone!” she sobs, shaking, she climbs to her papa’s arms. “She hurt her leg and fell!”

Anya points. The canal, the water. Loid looks around and there’s red lingering on the snow, a path of steps falling to the stream. One of the golden needles is there, tainted in crimson, tainted in her touch. Loid forgets to breathe for a moment.

He turns to look at Anya.

“You two stay here,” he commands and before she can protest, he dives under.

He is in.

Cold. Dark. Waves taking him under. 

Loid almost cannot see in the dark, but he swims deeper and deeper. The water is white, pale, and dark. He’s freezing over. He’s still in his white shirt, his thin pants. Barefoot. 

He feels numb on his skin, on his heart. And then.

A light. Golden. It’s the other needle.

Yor is there, floating far away.

(they’re away from the shore).

He extends his arms and holds her. Yor opens her eyes (red, golden). There’s white around them, red pouring from her leg and from her old wound reopening. Loid moves his legs to the surface but he has lost most strength. He cannot go on. Yet there’s Yor, and there’s the red. She’s moving, too, despiste her wounded leg. They both swim to the shore. Together.

Water gets on his chest, his bones become damp paper.

Loid cannot go on. 

When they reach the surface, everything is dark.

Long halls. Gray floors. The taste of gunpowder on his tongue.

(he had never tasted gunpowder, unless).

He’s running, he knows he is because he’s panting heavily. There’s something on his face, a mask, and a muffled voice that he follows and points—with a gun. Loid looks at his hand, why is there a gun? His body feels tired, his muscles numb. He points at the shadow and attacks.

(why is he attacking?)

A bullet dives on his arm. It doesn’t hurt, but he reacts like it does. A voice from his mind asks him why he hesitates, what is he even doing. Loid cannot answer. He looks ahead, there’s red.

Two red eyes.

Yuri Briar jumps at him. 

There’s a fight. Loid cannot really feel anything beyond the numbing pain, the way the fists are thrown and glares are pointed. Yuri Briar is yelling something, and Loid answers with his same voice (imitating him). 

Yuri Briar falls to the ground. Loid’s arm rises against him, a metal pipe on his hand. The end is coming now, he’s very sure.

He doesn’t hesitate. 

“Yor…I’m so… sorry.”

Her name fills his bones.

Loid is leaving (escaping from himself), he doesn’t know where. Yuri Briar is behind him, alive (he has hesitated again),  

There’s no blood on his hands. And yet.

Before he can fully feel him from behind, there are hands gripping him, pulling him down.

A mask. Ripped. His face is exposed, he can finally breathe.

Except that he can’t.

Yuri Briar cannot breathe either. 

“Loid Forger?”

The first name that slips from his mouth is Yor’s. Yuri, her brother (his wife’s brother) is burning white. There’s a sad anger in his eyes, and he throws his fist at him. He’s yelling, words that make Loid angrier, somehow. He should be worried about something, he thinks, what should be he worried about? 

(you have become too soft, you have lost your edge).

His face is exposed. It shouldn’t be exposed.

Bastard, traitor—Yuri Briar fills him with shallow insults that don’t hurt, but they really do, when Yor’s name comes to surface (what about her? what about my sister? how could you do this to her?)

Loid cannot speak. There’s a name slipping from Yuri’s mouth.

A name that isn’t his.

Loid is terrified (his face is exposed, there’s something that shouldn’t be seen). He fights him again, his arm hurts terribly (from Yuri’s bullet), but he fights, he keeps going. They both do it. Until Yor is there, lingering in the air like a thread, crimson and dusty. It’s all they can see, and they stop, and they cannot go on anymore. They both fall to the floor, exhausted.

“How could you?” Yuri’s voice is softer, lost. 

Loid wants to answer. He doesn’t know what to say, either. 

Yes.

How could he?

Yor is talking. But she isn’t really here.

She’s on his mind, echoing from the night.

“He was part of the secret police…There was a man he was chasing.”

(Loid was running from Yuri).

Yor’s voice is a sea. 

“Something happened, another man stepped in.”

(Wheeler is here, near him, he must escape, but he—

he is right there, peeking on the corner). 

Wheeler’s eyes find them, throwing himself at him. Loid remembers now that he is trying to get away (from him), but everything hurts. He’s tired, and the white begins lingering. He tries to move his body. Nothing. Wheeler is already here, right over him, the tip of his gun touching his head. 

Loid closes his eyes, awaiting, but Wheeler does not reach him.

(Yuri).

There’s another fight (Wheeler is the strongest, he’s an endless wave). He calls Yuri a traitor (why do you fight? why are you defending this rat?). Yuri doesn’t listen to him, he keeps going and going and going—but he cannot go on, and Loid finally gets up (he’s being called another name, one that does not belong to him yet). He gets up and throws himself at him. But everything hurts, Wheeler is stronger, he’s better than him (he had become too soft, he had lost his edge).

Franky’s voice: “Keep your emotions out of this.”

Yuri is fighting. For him.

He’s telling him to run (for Yor, do it for Yor).

Loid does not run, he stays. With Yuri.

(he became too soft, even to regret everything). 

Loid holds him down. His bones are breaking, his blood is pouring like a violent stream.

His breath is becoming slower.

Yuri’s voice is angry (if you die and abandon her, I will find you and end you).

If he dies.

Loid remembers—he cannot leave: he has a mission to keep. No, that’s wrong. There are people waiting for him at home. Anya, Bond. Yor. He cannot let his breathing stop, he must go on. He holds Wheeler down, Yuri runs for backup.

There’s a gun on the floor, very close to Wheeler’s hand. He manages to throw him to a side, and reaches it. Loid cannot follow, he’s not fast enough. There’s a white noise, a pale void he falls into.  

Yor’s voice is a wave:

“That second man shot Yuri from behind. He died instantly.”

Loid can’t fully see it because he is met with darkness. And there’s the noise of gunshots, and there’s the nothingness, and everything turns white. 

He falls to the water.

Soft hands fish him out of the current. 

His eyes are closed, but he can see her from afar, like he’s a bird. The two of them, in the same room. A lone bed—hers. Yor is saying something, her smile soft, her hands trying to reach him. But Loid cannot hear. All he can hear and feel is the crackling of the fire, and the warmth slowly pouring on his blood. He’s warm, so very warm. He pictures the yellow and orange lights, the infinite nuances of his flesh, the shimmering of her velvet hands on his.

Time passes—and slowly, steadily, Loid reaches shore.

Her legs tangled with his. Her chest against his back. His head touching hers. Her hands caressing his. 

The feel of her heart beating against his back.

“Loid,” she whispers (from shore). “Are you awake?”

Their hands are so close to each other.

Loid takes hers.

Their fingers intertwine, and his whole heart awakens. Then Yor kisses the back of his neck, his temple, his hair. She’s soft, desperate. She leans into him, to look at him. Her hands cup his cheeks for him to face her and tilt his head against hers and he can feel her breath tickling his mouth, her voice calling his name.

“Please,” she says, “come back to me.”

Twilight opens his eyes.

Chapter Text

At first, he does not think.

His thoughts are white too—yet they begin to turn. 

To red.

The red greets him first—red eyes. They’re watery, like a newborn strawberry. He wants nothing but to sink into them. There’s no white anymore, only red—and her reddish, pale voice whispering a name. 

His.

“Loid,” she sobs, repeating his name like an oath. “Loid, Loid, Loid.”

Twilight opens his eyes and looks around the world, like he’s a newborn bird. The world becomes the shape of Yor’s hands holding his face, the color of her orbits scanning the blood. Her voice is a certain blade, and a certain sea. Waves pulling him to shore. He realizes that he’s barely alive, barely clinging to life (to the shore) and that Yor is the only lighthouse guiding him awake. 

His lungs hurt, everything is frozen: his thoughts, his eyes fixated on nothingness.  

But that’s not really important to him. What is important is they are both alive.

Twilight finally extends a hand, brushes the pale skin of her face. 

“Yor.”

“Yes,” she breathes, sobbing, hugging his cold fingers between her hands. “I’m here.”

She feels him sigh her name, he hears her sigh his back. 

Loid falls asleep again—his heart lighter, clinging to the arms that hold him tight. 

The faint sun peeks through the window.

The fever still clouds his senses. But everything is clear: the memories, the pain, the joy. He feels it clearly when two little arms encircle his neck, tears against his chest, her sugar voice weeping an echo in the room. Twilight has never found more strength than when he raises his arms to squeeze Anya against him. His apologies are endless, her name leaving his voice without end.

Anya learns that he remembers her again without muttering a word. She looks at him silently, nuzzles his shoulder and falls asleep next to him. Loid raises a hand to her hair, patting her there, caressing her until she’s breathing a little easier. She is cold too. She has been ever since she ran to save her mama.

He falls asleep next to her. Every time he wakes up, Anya is right next to him, Bond faithfully leaning in against them on the other side. Anya helps her mama to take care of him. Yor is very busy. She’s in the bedroom taking care of his fever, watching over Anya, going outside from time to time. It’s been two days now. When he feels better, he can hear Yor from the kitchen. It smells of coffee and bacon.

When he thinks to himself that he’s ravenous, Anya suddenly brings him the food in clumsy hands.

They eat. He shares most of it with her. Anya is happy. 

Loid doesn’t learn the truth about her powers until Yor comes back. He had already concluded the truth a while ago, and when he did, Anya flinched. She knew. But neither of them talked about it. His daughter keeps by his side, talking to him about school and the episode of last night’s cartoon. He listens (with a smile). She never speaks of Operation Strix, or Bond, or his identity. He doesn’t touch the topic either.

When he tells Yor about it (his voice raspy, a whisper, falling back into the fever), she is not surprised. At all. She knew first—their daughter told her a long time ago (while he was still hanging in the white). It’s the first time he sees his wife smiling ever since they both fell into the canal. To Yor, nothing has changed at all. About Anya. Everything remains the same. If anything, she loves her even more than before—if that was even possible.

Loid feels the same too. Yor knows this. Anya does too (she knew first, as always).

They’re again laying on the bed. Him and his daughter. They are very silent, just like his mind. He tries not to think about anything, but Anya doesn’t mind (she tells him breaking the silence). She has grown used to papa’s mind, has grown to love it as much as he loves him—and she has missed it very much. Loid is still blank. He looks at her, pats her head, and gently rests it on the pillow next to him. 

They watch the colors blooming from the window. Sunshine washes over them. Neither of them feel cold anymore. 

My little one, he calls her, only in his mind. 

Papa, she answers, out loud.

The blue sky shines over them. The heart of the sun peeks through the window. Blue and yellow, Anya giggles, just like her papa. He can feel water running through his throat, as he cradles her in his arms, and lets her hug him around his head. She grows like joy spreading from the syllables of their words. 

They fall asleep again. In the exact position they both did on the couch the first day he adopted her. Loid dreams of that same day, calling for her in his mind, her head resting on his steady heartbeat as she lets her know that she is here. 

Midnight. 

The world is a watercolor. When he wakes up again, he is in her arms. 

The pieces of everything (the memories) are floating in a bubble—it’s fragile, and silver (like sea foam).

Yor’s heartbeat is the only sound in the world. The room (his room, Loid Forger’s, the man he has created months ago) is pulsing with the only warmth surrounding them. Twilight closes his eyes and doesn’t think, but he doesn’t forget either (never again). All he does is rest his ear against her chest : lets her heartbeat erase the sounds of war, lets her hands cradle his neck and the back of his head as she caresses him, cradles him.

As she forgives him.

For everything. Or perhaps for nothing. 

Yor parts her lips and calls a name. Not her husband’s, but someone else’s. Her voice comes low, tentative, like she’s approaching a strange animal.

“Twilight.”

He looks up (slowly), looks at the red-honey of her orbits. There is light in his eyes when he looks at her. Like she’s alive, more than she has ever been, more than when he first met her.

“Yes,” he says. The light in her eyes shakes, the red erupts like a wild rose. 

Yor’s hands do not leave his face. She just moves, hugs him closer. Her voice comes down to him again. 

“Twilight,” she repeats, firm, tasting the name. It is not the first time she has pronounced it, not the first time she has learned it. He understands this immediately. “Are you… real? Are you here… with me?

He knows what she really means. Twilight doesn’t move, he licks his lips (they’re terribly dry). He takes the hand holding his cheek and sows a kiss on her palm. 

“I am,” he murmurs, eyes closed tightly, pressing his mouth to her skin. 

Yor does not even try to take her eyes off him. 

“You saved my life,” she whispers.

Twilight lets out a low, tired chuckle. “Not at all, Yor. I believe it is the opposite.”

She shakes her head and smiles, the sadness peeking through her rosy lips. He’s warm, so very warm—but Yor feels cold in his arms, and his heart tenderly breaks, the pieces of glass opening through his wounds. He moves closer to her until his lips are brushing hers, the warmth of his mouth coating her cold one. Yor stays still, frozen in his arms, until she closes her eyes and he feels her lips pressing back against his.

When he separates, she kisses him again.

And again and again. 

Yor speaks first when she breaks the touch. “Twilight,” she repeats. Then, after a pause, she says: “Loid.”

He’s breathing in and out.

“Yes.”

“Is that you, really?” She frowns, looking back and forth between his eyes. “Is that your real name?”

He should hesitate, should lie like he would in the past. And yet, he talks carefully: “No, it’s not.”

New silence (her hands are warm now).

“What was real, then?” She breathes again.

He is not afraid this time, not like before. There’s nothing in his heart but Yor, she’s all the shape of the world. He feels unable to answer like Twilight, or Loid Forger. There’s a third man that peeks through his eyes and voice, someone he buried a long time ago, the self that has been living ever since he found home here. 

The man (not Twilight, not Loid, but himself) answers in softness:

“Everything.” 

Her red is filled in sadness again—tenderness too strong in her heartbeat. There’s a strong desire to shield her against the future and the past, against exhaustion and heartbreak. He caresses her cheek, touches her lips with the tip of his fingers. 

Slowly, her eyes are a little too bright. Then Yor slowly rises and she’s now pacing the room, kicking pieces of time as she goes. He stays on the edge of the bed, watching her. His eyes are a sweet blue—soft, tired, scared, and loving—following her, his heart anxious, birds fluttering on his tired bones.

“Yor—”

But then she kneels before him, her arms on his legs, her gaze shaking.

“I have always been ignorant to everything, everything ,” she whispers, her voice hissing, a sharp needle. “That day when I told you I wasn’t happy with our life together, I didn’t know myself at all… And I didn’t know that it would be the last time I would see you and Yuri.” She shakes her head, the memories shattering. “I have known since the beginning that on that same day Yuri died trying to save you.” Yor sees him freeze, but she has to go on. “It was your agency that told me, I mean… I had to find it by myself…” She hesitates, trying to find the words. “Even when you woke up at the hospital without knowing anything, I knew. And I knew that I had to go on, no matter what. I had help, I was never alone. And yet,” she licks her lips, “and yet I have been living to accept that my  husband and my brother wouldn’t survive together that day, no matter what I could have done if I knew.” She sighs shakily, her heartbeat aching. “I had no right to move on. No right to love you, to be loved by you, but…” Yor is clutching his arms, trying to breathe. She begs: “But please, I beg you. Whoever you really are, whatever your goal in this family is, please let me continue being your wife. I can be a good wife. I can help you. We can help you. Anya and I. Both of us. If you let us be a family even now…” 

Yor loses her voice, she cannot go on. Then, she's on her feet—his hands grip her arms tight.

“There is nothing I want more,” he whispers, shivering, the birds fluttering in his heart, “Yor, there is nothing in this world I want more,” he continues, his voice breaking. “I…” He does not meet her gaze, the words lost in his mind. “I have known it from the very beginning. That I wanted to stay with you all. There was nothing more I wished for. I thought of Anya as my daughter even the first day I found her. And I fell in love with you very early. But I was convinced that the life I adopted for so many years made a life with you impossible. And yet after your words that day, when you told me that our marriage wasn’t enough for you, I thought that I was the reason you were unhappy, and…”

Loid meets her gaze—she’s speechless. His voice is soft, careful.

“And then I stumbled into your brother. When we confronted each other, you were the only thing in my mind. I remembered every moment, every detail of you. If I was someone else, if it was any other mission, I wouldn’t have hesitated to win the fight.” He closes his eyes tightly, ashamed, her gaze burning. “I’m not the good man I pretended to be for you,” he sighs, looks at Yor, her watery eyes hurting worse than any wound. “And yet I couldn’t do it. Yuri couldn’t do it either. We both thought of you. When we stopped, a small part of me thought of a way for us to live—for your sake.” His voice breaks. “But I failed.”

Yor shakes her head. Her hands cup his face, moving him for him to look at her. 

“You returned back to me. You could have left so many times, but you never did. Yuri, he…” Her voice is lost for a moment, a staring, the name sinking on her heart like a knife. “So please, Loid, I beg you…”

She cannot go on. When she breaks, her husband's arms are around her again. He’s kneeling on the floor with her. She hides her face on his chest, his heartbeat the only sound keeping her from breaking completely. 

Minutes pass by. Or maybe an hour. Yor remains in his arms, breathing calmer, lulled by his scent. When she gazes up at him, his blue is watery, a puddle. He puts his hand on her nape, draws her closer—then kisses her slowly and longly, taking his time, holding her carefully as if she’s about to break. When they break apart, his eyes are brighter. 

“Yor,” he breathes. “I’m sorry… I’m so, so terribly sorry.”

His wife doesn’t answer, she just looks at him (to the blue). She licks her lips, looking carefully for her next words.

“What are you sorry for, darling?” she asks. “There’s still so much… so much for us to explain.”

“Yes,” he breathes. “There is.”

She hardly looks at him.

“You know,” Yor whispers, like a secret, “I have things to apologize for too.” She hesitates. “I… Sometimes, I have to become someone else.”

He hesitates too. Then: “So do I.”

She tells him about her blades, he tells her about his names.

They talk their lies and truths away and let everything out under the sun. They turn the heart ache and regrets into stories—and slowly, steadily, they both climb to shore.

The walls at WISE’s base are blue. Shimmering grays. Twilight thinks to himself that he had never noticed this before. Or perhaps he had—just not between the small details. The important details, he means. It’s the little things, that he learned to appreciate with time.

Everything around him here is familiar again, but also unfamiliar. He remembers every talk, every order, missions, and agents. (The ones who are gone too). This is Twilight’s place, he thinks to himself. This is all he ever knew. And yet, and yet —the walls are blue, the air shimmering gray, the voices soft, the eyes sharp. This is all strange to him. 

But when Sylvia (his handler) finally speaks first, her voice is calm. 

It is good to see you safe, her voice echoes. 

Yes, he simply answers (monotone, unafraid). 

Sylvia is talking, but not really. Her eyes are seeing somewhere else (to the blue). Her voice sounds as if from underwater, where he can’t really reach (he is at shore). Behind her, Nightfall stands silently and without a trace of expression. There is a sadness there that Twilight never noticed before. Memories are raining over him (of her, them, everyone and nobody at all). 

Nightfall does not look at him.

“Your wife has been keeping us updated,” Sylvia says after a moment (when he returns to the surface). “We knew right away about the incident from last night. But I took the chances and waited for her signal for us to reach you.”

Twilight nods. His eyes return to Nightfall for a mere moment. Her eyes are sharp (almost), her expression hard. She does not seem pleased with handler’s statement. Perhaps she never agreed. His eyes return to her, speaks slowly. “Handler,” he begins, trying to speak like the agent he is, the professionalism he always held (but he cannot). “You must know this first. Yor knows about my identity. I told her everything, and she has revealed to me that—”

“Yes,” Sylvia cuts him, a hand up for him to stop. “We learned everything first, agent Twilight. This might be long, so I think you should sit down first.”

He does. When his handler explains everything, Twilight isn’t surprised in the slightest. As soon as WISE made efforts to make Yuri Briar’s death look like an incident, Yor never believed it. She used her own terms and ways to discover the truth (her agency, her grief, her wrath). That is how WISE learned about the existence of Garden, and how Sylvia and Yor came in contact with each other for the first time. She is a lovely woman, Sylvia comments (smiling), terrifying too. (Nightfall is still on the sidelines, never muttering a single word). 

Sylvia promised to not interfire in Twilight’s lack of memory as long as Yor kept her updated of everything. She did. Yuri’s death was barely spoken of, because Yor never asked for more than enough. As soon as the cause of his death was revealed to her, as well as her husband’s accident, she didn’t speak of it again. 

Strange, his handler comments. She never expected Yor Briar to remain so calm, so quietly. And yet she did. Yor didn’t even do anything when she learned that Wheeler managed to escape them again. 

Twilight doesn’t wonder anymore. He doesn’t add anything to the last declaration. 

Silence. When he looks up again, Sylvia is smiling. 

Her calm demeanor doesn’t change when Twilight breaks the silence. It doesn’t change either when he announces that he wishes to retire after Operation Strix is over. And it does not change at all when Nightfall suddenly reacts—she is angry, and afraid. He had never seen her like this before. She does not accept this decision. There are words and yelling. Icing colors. Sylvia stops her. (She is still calm).

A pause, then Sylvia looks at him again; she had seen this coming. She doesn’t put on a fight or objects like he expected. 

“I understand,” it’s all she says. “The end of your last mission might take years or merely months. But we will be prepared to continue on this final work together.”

Twilight nods. When he looks at his old mentee again, her expression is still shivering. Breaking. He awaits for her to say anything, to voice her thoughts, but she doesn’t. Then she returns to her old self, turns back, and leaves without saying another word. Twilight does not seek for her.

Sylvia asks about his family. Then about him. Twilight looks somewhere undefined, on the other side of the window. Spring is coming, he thinks to himself. The white will soon be completely gone.

“I am well,” it is all he says. 

On the road back home, colors are blooming. They’re inching closer. At home, his wife’s eyes are red honey. Her touch is golden, her voice lavender. It’s endless. The white is washed away. After dinner, they tuck Anya in bed and sit on the couch. He kisses her for long minutes, grabbing her hands on htis lap, drinking the sighs she pours into his mouth. They are in silence, filling it with words from time to time (lips swollen and kissed). Then, after a moment, when Yor’s head is resting on his shoulder, he tells her about his long talk with his agency. That he will leave the old vagabond life, and stay here with them. But only after Strix is done. If she can endure together with him, if only a little longer.

Yor doesn’t say anything for a while. Then, she grabs his hand and moves it close to her heart, smiling: “And I shall be by your side.”

His kisses return. They’re endless. And blue. 

Night again. The white slowly disappears. Loid can see the spring night seeping through the window.

Yor is already in the room when he returns. Their room, he reminds himself. A shared bed. His heart is languid and calm, drumming into his blood. Loid moves around the room while feeling his wife’s soft gaze following every movement, her smile lazy and filled with indolent things when he returns her look at each change he gets.

He feels unfailingly happy tonight. A part of himself knows that he should not be—and yet he remains. He will fight for this happiness and survive. With his family. (Never alone, never drowning in the white). 

But deep down, he keeps wondering. 

“Darling.”

“Hm?”

“Come to bed.”

Her voice comes like honey, slow. Loid takes off his waistcoat and puts on his white shirt, climbing to the bed. Yor immediately wraps her arms around him. They embrace tightly, Yor nestling her head above his heart, lulled by its gentle rhythm. Loid encircles her waist with one arm, the other hand resting on the back of her head, inhaling her scent nestled in the crown of her head. In a shared silence, their synchronized breaths echo in the room. Yor senses her husband's forthcoming words, his composed voice filling the room.

“Yor, I have been thinking about something today. After I finished my meeting with my handler,” he begins, his eyes focused on the dark. “I thought it was something that she chose to hide from me, but I understood that she simply didn’t know.” He pauses, waits for her to answer. When she doesn’t, he continues. “And it’s something that I have been thinking about even before I… got my memory back,” he licks his lips, squeezes her closer. “All those nights you worked late while looking out for me—I know you did it for your real job, just like I used to,” he continues, his voice patient. “But weeks ago, when I treated your wounds, and I asked you if you were spending nights outside because of Shopkeeper’s orders, you lied to me that one time.” He pauses, his eyes staring at the wall. “You were seeking Wheeler.”

It is not a question. He still chooses to pause, waiting for her to speak, but Yor doesn't make a sound. All he can feel is her breath tickling his neck.

He is calm.

“Did you find him?”

Yor takes a moment to hear that his heartbeat is still calm under her, she closes her eyes, and says:

“Yes.”

He nods.

“Did you kill him?”

There is a small pause. “Yes.”

“Good.” 

He moves his hands, cradles her face and makes her look at him. He kisses her slowly, longly, until she’s opening her mouth and he tastes her warmth. He takes long minutes until they separate—and she’s looking at him, so calm, so tender, he smiles.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you do it.”

Yor shakes softly her head, and yet before she can respond he lunges at her mouth again, hungrier. There is nothing more to say—it is all enough. Yor understands this immediately as her arms are instantly around his neck, pulling him closer. Chasing him. 

And then he lets himself be caught.

Their mouths meet in ceaseless touches. They grab each other, nipping their lips, mouths opening for the other to taste. The colors splash everywhere. They’re endless. They’re watercolors. Loid gets lost into them, the way they take shape in the warmth of her mouth, the seasalt flavor of her—kissing her endlessly as he returns home in her arms. 

He stammers words of love in her ear and his wife holds him tightly—never to let go. 

Spring surrounds him again when he places his palm on her stomach. Yor is asleep, and so is Anya, and Bond. They’re both cuddling her on the side of the couch. The windows are open as they let the pinkish breeze seep through him. 

His wife sighs in her sleep. She’s smiling. He doesn’t notice that he’s smiling as well as his fingers travel from her swollen belly (it has been growing now for months, slowly and safely) to her blushed cheeks, caressing her there, moving a lock of hair from her skin. Then he presses a kiss on her forehead and Yor hums contentedly—brushing his hand in her sleep, squeezing his fingers for him to come closer. 

Then he intertwines their fingers. “Yes,” he murmurs, learning in close for only her to hear. “I’m here.”

She feels him sigh her name, he hears her sigh his real one back.