It’s a new moon. The ink washed sky is an exhale of stars. The architectural feat rising over the landscape is the only building for miles, and it looms over the grass like the final destination it is.

After four years of searching - of living a double life - Twilight is finally at the end of his mission.

It’s been a long four years - not bad, per se. Just long. Certainly a long time to pretend, particularly with a child and a wife and a dog.

A temporary child. A make-believe wife. An interim dog. All he’s missing is an invisible white picket fence.

Maybe if he weren’t pressed against a wall waiting for his opportunity to complete this mission - a mission that requires absolute completion - he’d examine the low, anxious thrum playing in the background to the active audit his brain is performing on his surroundings. Why it’s there. What it’s trying to tell him.

But that luxury can’t be afforded to him right now. He’s been navigating this maze of a building - practically a castle - for four hours now. He’s finally found the office of the man he’s supposed to take out if there’s to be real peace between Ostania and Westalis. As he readies his gun - double checks the suppressor - and holds it up in his line of sight, he wonders fleetingly how WISE will spin this for the history books.

He steps out of the dark. Holds his weapon out. He knows there’s a guard hiding in the shadowed wings, acting as armor for the soft belly that is the ironically defenseless chief of defense. He doesn’t need to address the guard.

Their landing is measured, soft in a way that leads him to believe that they know he knows they’re hiding. If they were trying to ambush him, Twilight has no doubt they’d be able to in absolute silence. Their shoes click steadily against tile, the sound echoing faintly against all the marble and glass. Their strides are long, footfalls confident, steady. Judging by the pitch and brevity of each tap, they’re wearing heels. Thin ones. A pair they’ve worn countless times.

“Um - I’m so sorry,” says the woman. “But I’ve been appointed to guard this room. And to continue to properly make my living, I must end yours.”

Her voice is lilting. Shy. Familiar to Twilight, for some odd reason, but he can’t quite place the deadly certainty. He turns off the safety, the sound its own explosion in the quiet. But the figure in the dark never appears, and he realizes his mistake. Spinning around, he catches the weapon she thrusts towards his neck, smiling vaguely at the sight of the stiletto.

“‘Thorn Princess.’ How apt.”

A scent he recognizes drifts past. Frowning, Twilight holds tight to the end of the weapon and looks up to meet the wielder's gaze. His heart stops.

Staring back at him is Yor.

-

Four years is a long time to pretend, particularly with a temporary child, a make-believe wife, and an interim dog. Twilight has handled the growing cognitive dissonance as best he can. There are limits, of course - he promised from the beginning he wouldn’t neglect Anya in any way - and there are also boundaries.

Anya has never had much to do with those boundaries. She’s always been strange, growing only increasingly more so throughout the four years, always keeping an eye on him in a way that feels distinctly un-childish. She has an uncanny ability to speak what he’s thinking before he’s even opened his mouth.

It’s his “wife” in particular that he’s needed to exercise those boundaries with. In fact, it’d been the slow realization over the first year and a half that he may actually feel something towards Yor - beyond duty - that had prompted Twilight to create his rules.

First: no private physicality beyond anything necessary. Thankfully, passionate PDA is not in vogue - not that Twilight feels anything particularly passionate. Of course not. He’s an efficient spy through and through, practically a machine, and things like pining glances and careless whispers and fleeting touches are the very opposite of efficient. But the rule exists as a stopgap measure. A formality. A reminder that the way his heart speeds up when she dresses the occasional wound he comes home with - “tripped on the way from work” - is a dead end, and the lengths he often finds himself going to to see her smile are fruitless.

Second: no unnecessary lying. Which is hard, given that he’s a spy and everything he does is a lie tucked sweetly into a bed of lies, but what he means is: if questions of history ever come up, he will sidestep. Obfuscate. Divert attention. And while this rule may seem heartwarming at first glance, its deeper purpose is to prevent the vulnerability and intimacy that often precedes romantic feelings.

Just two rules. Simple enough. They’ve provided a peaceful balance - Anya’s antics notwithstanding - to their puzzle-pieced family. And sometimes Loid stands outside his bedroom door and bids Yor good night and considers asking her opinion of whether they should just share a room, for convenience’ sake of course, but Twilight reminds him of rule number one. And sometimes Yor comes home spent and numb, her eyes dull in a way that he doesn’t think has to do with her government job, and Loid just knows her tired but pleasant explanation isn’t honest, but Twilight reminds him of rule number two, preventing the hypocrisy of asking for the truth.

“Everybody is entitled to their secrets”

becomes his adage.

Mysterious as he suspects Yor finds him, his wife is an enigma in her own way. And if he's to play this part correctly, he'll maintain that distance between them until the very end. What remains constant and knowable between the two of them, however, is Anya - but Twilight doesn’t like to think about what he’s supposed to do with her when this mission is over. He can’t. He knows he has to. But he just can’t.

Four years inches forward like that. Like a tightrope walk across a city under a sunny sky and a cloudless day. He learns the smell of Yor’s shampoo and the nuances of every single one of Anya’s expressions. He learns Bond’s favorite foods and favorite places. He learns what it’s like to have a soft spot to land, to have people waiting for him at home, to have a dinner plate saran wrapped with his name written across it when he gets in late. He learns what life could look like if he hadn’t chosen this path.

And then he finds the reason for the growing tension between Westalis and Ostania. He finds the solution.

And now he finds Yor in the way.

-

Outside the building entrance, Anya stares wide-eyed at the steel-smooth surface. The stars glint off the windows. The night sky paints the shadows navy. Bond whines behind her.

She’s known for a while now that her mother and father’s alternate egos have been inching closer and closer to each other. She’s seen the information drift through their heads, background babble to a litany of names and places she’s not supposed to know. She’s even known that tonight is when they’ll supposedly be working in the same building, for the same reason - but on opposite sides of that reason. What she’s only found out a few hours ago, however, is that tonight, it all comes to a head. Tonight, Twilight and Thorn Princess will come face-to-face outside the same door.

In the late afternoon - before the new moon could drape its nothingness over the world - when Bond’s mind had tripped into a staticky, broken clip of her mother and father in the darkness, Anya had whipped around from her Spy Wars reruns to look at him in disbelief. His memories of the future are always fuzzy but distinguishable, and this time, one thing in particular had been startlingly clear: the way their eyes had met, the way Twilight’s gaze had closed off, and the way every wall Anya had chipped away at for the past four years had risen so visibly behind the blue of his quickly cooling stare.

So now they stand outside the very building where it all happens, in the dead of night, waiting for a sign. There’s no way for her to get in, she’s checked all over. Her confidence wavers, but one thing is for sure: she has to make sure her parents don’t meet.

-

He doesn’t do it. He can’t. How could he? He knows her favorite songs, knows how she makes his coffee, knows the careful, precise way she sets the needle on their vinyls. Knows how she dresses his wounds, the way the crown of her head smells when she’s bent over to examine a bruise on his forearm.

They say nothing. He drops his gun. She steps away, stilettos falling to her sides, eyes wide and scared and… sad. Ruby red sorrow. Twilight whirls around, disappearing out the door from which he came. His thoughts are an indecipherable map of red string and thumbtacks strung between snapshots of moments he could never explain away: her lightning-quick reflexes, her obvious martial arts training, and her tiring late nights.

Another three hours later, Yor steps out of the hallway, dressed as though she’s returning from work - her cover work. Not this work. Because this work… Twilight shakes his head, clearing the thought. He steps out of the corner to examine her. She looks at him the same way.

“How long?” So much for rule two.

“As an undercover assassin, since Yuri was young. In this specific role, three and a half years.”

A muscle in his jaw flexes. They stand there stiffly. Something between them shifts, something foundational, and suddenly, Yor is a stranger to him in a way she's never been, even the first time he'd seen her. The deft way her fingers move over a record player; calculated. The meticulousness to which she brews his coffee and makes her tea; premeditated. The care with which she puts Anya to bed - Twilight can’t even consider it. He hasn’t lost his temper in ages, but something boils just beneath his skin.

Yor ducks her head. Maybe she feels it too. Or maybe what she’s feeling is shame. “Should we go home together?” she whispers. “As an excuse, if we come across anybody and they ask why we’re out so late. A late night walk together. A couple can do that, can’t they?”

After a tense beat, Twilight nods.

“I… I’m sorry,” says Yor, voice downy and careful the way it always is. The sharp-edged assurance from earlier is gone.

He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t know what he could say that would even begin to unravel the chaos of thoughts and feelings spiraling through him. How did this go unnoticed for four years? By

him?

What else doesn’t he know? Is everything he knows about her a lie? A charade? How does he tell Sylvia this?

Does

he tell Sylvia? He’s never been so unmoored in his life.

And what of the mission? He hadn’t been able to achieve his goal tonight. Peace, for another day, lies just out of reach. His mouth thins. He steps past Yor towards the entrance, only for her to grab his hand. When he shoots her a look, she flushes. “Just in case.”

It’s unnecessary. It’s too late at night and too isolated an area for any unknowing civilian to be out here. But his hand tightens around hers anyway - not the way it does when he’s performing as a husband with his wife for the public, though. This hold is cool. Perfunctory. This is a cover. A poor imitation of normalcy, a performance by strangers for strangers who will never see. Just like that, rule one becomes obsolete.

And just like that, they take a step towards the exit.