Chapter Text
“Are you even listening to me, Robert?” Ah, Robert. That was his current name.
He chewed his food slowly, as Karen continued to blether on about commitment. Swallowing, he wiped his chin clean ‘like a proper gentleman’ before answering. “Let’s break up,” he spoke evenly, ignoring Karen’s indignant spluttering. “I don’t sense the slightest bit of intelligence in you.”
He stood, and walked away. His acting skills had certainly improved from his previous life, keeping a cool face even as Karen called after him.
Once he vanished into an alleyway, Twilight ripped off his most recent guise, dumping the clothes and wig into a conveniently burning dumpster. There had only ever been one woman in Twilight’s heart, a spark that never got the chance to light. Memories of tittering laughter, and watching a form disappear into the horizon of Istanbul.
He sighed. The life of Deryn was long over. And Twilight had a job to do.
It was odd, growing up with the memories of another life in his head. So much was different. Gone were the cacophony of growls, whistles and snarls. The smell of the municipal clart heaps at the ends of blocks, waiting for the dungman to take them to the fields at night. Her brick house - before the bombs - rattled from the passing of trucks and trains, not elephantines.
He lived a Clanker life now, where the streets were tinged with soot and the fumes of fuel, but one more backwards than even the smallest villages back home. Twilight boarded the train, a dragon’s maw appearing on its engine in between blinks. One of his first memories as [Redacted] was going to the local library, desperate for answers.
There were no walkers here. No beasties. And though the names were different, so many faces from her history were present, but lesser. Their accomplishments smaller, the world duller.
Twilight opened the newspaper his contact had slipped him, and began to read, following the cipher. Congratulations were given for his hard work, and he fought the urge to preen at the praise. Behavior most unbecoming of a soldier. He read the message with a detached air until he reached the details of his next mission.
Get married and have a child?
She gazed longingly at wedding dresses in foreign shops, sighing to herself as she imagined Alek’s gaze upon her at the end of the aisle. Saw parents walking their children down the street, her fingers curling around an imaginary smaller hand. She turned a ring over in her palm hundreds of times, counting down the hours until her mission was done, and she could return home.
He blinked away a tear, focusing on the now.
A Donovan Desmond was threatening the tenuous peace between Ostania and Westalis. Finding out his intentions would be key to keeping this conflict between their nations cold. The best way to honor the memory of the past - of her little peacekeeper, Alek - was to keep moving.
There was no other choice. He tucked away his private dreams, the longings of a previous life. Here, he was Twilight. A man with nothing to lose. Another family taken by flames. A love a lifetime away.
Here, he would be a good soldier. The best. To be anything else would be a disgrace.
“Yor-senpai, how do I put this... You’re really private, huh?” Camilla asked.
Millie chimed in. “I know what you mean! It’s like she’s in her own little world!” She couldn’t help it if she fell back into happier times while at her ‘job’. It wasn’t important enough to be present. She could slip into a past when she was happy, between the two wars that consumed everything she loved.
“-The neighbors said she was ‘suspicious’!” Camilla tittered, punctuating an argument Yor had been ignoring. Suspicious?
As Yor listened, she thought about how difficult being a woman was. There was performance in all areas of their lives, so much work done to adhere to an arbitrary and ever-shifting standard.
No wonder Deryn found it suffocating.
“Nee-san, how have you been?” It was a bit strange, how this place so much like her former home used speech more similar to Japanese than her native German, but it was a simple task for her. She had plenty of training learning languages - but had difficulty ordering a newspaper - and this was no exception.
“I’m doing well, work has been easy.” And it was. At least the work that Yuri was aware of. She wouldn’t dream of burdening him with her true job. No, best to keep her only blood relative unaware. He was safer that way.
When she remembered being Alek, she had latched onto Yuri with a vengeance. Made an orphan twice over, she was determined not to lose any more family. Learning how to care for a younger sibling had taxed her, but she kept going, through fire, and mud and blood.
Someone depended on her, and she would stop at nothing to keep from being useless. A waste of hydrogen.
“I just worry about you, Nee-san. You’ve always been a little weird.” She couldn’t help it. Before he was stranded in status, too important to be a commoner, but too low to be royalty. Now she was stranded in time, an adult man’s memories compounded on the life of a woman. Both raised with war and enemies at every turn. She could live with ‘weird’. It was more of a wonder she wasn’t mad in the end. “Isn’t it about time you settled down? Got married? Don’t you know any nice men?”
Something dark and warm pooled in Yor’s stomach. She had grown accustomed to this body - puberty had been an ordeal- and had learned its intricacies with shame and determination in equal measures. But the thought of involving someone else only brought a twisting guilt, of a love a lifetime away.
One that had teased him relentlessly after one night where his eyes lingered just a moment too long on a visiting boffin, his shoulders broad and firm. “You must have been drawn to me even then, my little prince~”
Yuri kept speaking. “I only got this far thanks to everything you’ve done for me, Nee-san. I’m really grateful. I just want you to be happy, you know?”
“... I know.” A smile softened her face, warmth flooding her in his gratitude. Yuri was everything to her, something she knew she had done right. “Thank you, Yuri.”
Unfortunately for her, the warmth loosened her tongue a bit too much, and she absentmindedly mentioned Camilla’s party this weekend, stating that she had a date for it already.
She hung up the phone with trembling hands. Groaning, she covered her face. Dummkopf! Think before you speak!
The phone rang, and she picked it up instantly, excuses readied for her loving but nosy brother. Her eyes focused when she heard the now familiar phrase:
“A ‘customer’ requires your attention”
Her fingers curled in anticipation.
Finally, another opportunity to promote peace.
Yor had always found great pride in the strength in her body, in how fluid her movements had become after a second childhood spent refining them. Were all women this strong, or do Deryn and I alone share this?
Guards tried to stop her advance, but already her focus was beyond them. She reached through the slit in her dress, grateful for the greater freedom to her legs the garment provided.
A needle slipped perfectly into her hand, the closest to a comforting foil the Garden would allow her. As she pierced the man’s cranium, she worried that perhaps she had gone a little mad, the thrill of combat setting her heart ablaze. No longer haunted by the dead eyes of a soldier boy in a field.
Most of the time, she reasoned that her newfound acceptance was the hand of providence, keeping her from doubting her righteous work.
But at the end of the day, it didn’t matter to her.
As long as I live, she thought as she gutted her latest ‘customer’, I will not see another war, no matter what it takes.
Three had been enough.