It hit him in the golden glory of an autumn evening, as he stood in his kitchen: an innocent thought, crashing into his mind with the mundane levity of a train in motion.

There’d been nothing truly exceptional about that day, really. The sky has been bare all day if not for the occasional clouds there and here, the breeze lukewarm and friendly, the streets singing to the rhythm of animated chatter and curious passersby. The whole Forger family had been on its day off, so he’d taken advantage of the weather to lead Yor, Anya and Bond to the park, hoping – in vain, to be fair – to tire out the over energetic child.

As expected,

Loid

(he wasn’t still quite used to the name, but it was coming along nicely) had been the one who ended up utterly exhausted – but that had come with a bone-deep satisfaction and a pleased mood, magnified with the swirls of golden leaves whirling around them, rustling and swishing in wordless whispers, and the echoing laughters of delight from Anya and Yor.

The surprise had taken place upon their return, under the form of a shy request from his

wife

.

“Would you teach me how to make a stew?” she’d asked him, her hands joined and voice laced with eagerness. “I’d like to improve my cooking – it’s not fair of me to expect you to take care of every meal without participating myself.”

He’d blinked, taking in her pleading expression, and the quiet blush of embarrassment on her cheeks.

“I don’t mind cooking, Yor,” he’d said honestly, and had tilted his head ever in dismay when her expression fell slightly. “You have nothing to feel bad about, especially when you’re already doing so much around the house–”

“I know,” she’d cut in, gently. “Just– please?”

He realized then the true nature of her query – being able to cook to please, and not out of obligation – and didn’t quite manage to stop himself from smiling. “Of course. Did you have a recipe in mind?”

She did, in fact, have a recipe in mind; a simple beef stew, with potatoes, carrots and onions. Something easy enough for a beginner, yet more than rewarding and rich on the tongue.

Which was how he found himself standing in his kitchen, cutting freshly washed carrots into thin slices while keeping an eye on the broth warming on the stove. Anya was busy watching yet another episode of her favorite cartoon, humming along to the tune Loid now knew by heart; Yor had been tasked with cutting the meat into small cubes (

easier for a child to eat, he’d explained, slicing a few bits in an appropriate size for demonstration),

and she was treating her own mission with the greatest importance.

Bond, amusingly, had left Anya’s side, instead remaining glued to the kitchen entrance, poorly feigning disinterest in the cooking session as he waited avidly for a piece of meat to miraculously escape Yor’s steady hands.

He watched them, something not unlike fondness flickering in his chest, when it hit him.

This acquired domesticity was for nothing but his own benefit.

He froze, hands stilling mid-movement, eyes blinking uselessly while the realization truly took place.

There, hidden behind the façade of their home, there would have been little need to keep this charade of theirs ; he could easily ensure the success of his mission by making sure Anya was doing her homework correctly and behaving in an appropriate manner at school, while keeping a friendly and strictly professional contact with Yor. He could have merely decided to forget about the nice weather or newly opened restaurants, to instead spend his days planning and cleaning his weapons like he had done so many times in his previous times undercover.

They would still have acted as one close-knitted family to outsiders, and no one would have been able to tell the difference. Instead, they’d gone to amusement parks and museums, tried out new restaurants and food stands every week.

Before this one mission, the only instances during which he had held a knife had been far more sinister – all of them leaving a bitter taste on his tongue, blood on his hands, and an unshakable weight on his soul.

Before this one mission, he had only ever really talked to people in order to obtain information relevant to his mission. His cooking experience, acquired during a past cover as a highly renowned chef, had been swept to the back of his mind for years, his meals forsaking taste for quick and efficient nutrition.

And there he stood now, making small talk with a woman he called

his

wife, glancing fondly at a little girl he called

his

kid, cutting carrots for dinner, and half-heartedly scolding an enormous dog whenever the animal ventured a little too close to the food.

All of this would disappear, eventually. That he knew. The mission would succeed, and he would leave, to become nothing more than a flickering memory and a whispered name. The prospect of returning into the shadows’ embrace should have been a comfort –

a lesser exposure for a greater safety

was one of the prime rules of espionage, was it not?

And yet the thought caused waves of uneasiness to roll in his stomach, with him being all too well aware of the twinge of reluctance slowly taking root in his chest.

The mission would end, and Loid Forger would disappear along with it.

The back of his neck tingled, and he was suddenly aware of the insistant yet familiar feeling of being watched. Loid raised his head, eyes leaving the half-cut carrot in order to flicker around the room, and his gaze landed on Anya.

Fictional spies and magnificent adventures long forgotten, the child was now staring at him with what would have been her usual stubbornness, if her lower lip hadn’t been wobbling and her eyes shining dangerously. A tinge of concern tugged painfully at his heart as he tried to decipher her expression, morphing into full, unexplained guilt when he realized he was probably the very cause of her sudden distress.

There were days where Loid found himself regretting not having spent more time studying child behaviors and family dynamics, and this was one of them. Not knowing why the pink-haired girl suddenly looked so pale was already upsetting in itself – but not knowing how to make it better, how to make her

feel

better, was absolutely heart-wrenching. Not for the first time, he wondered how

real

parents could even bear to see their child cry, when he had felt ready to burn whole cities to ashes the first time he’d witnessed Anya shedding tears.

“Do you want to help me with cutting the vegetables ?” he offered instead, throat tight yet voice carefully gentle. There was no faking the smile that pulled at his mouth when she agreed with a violent shake of her head, brightening immediately, before all but jumping off the couch to run to him and peek at the table. He helped her settle on a stool, and she glanced eagerly at him.

“Can we add peanuts?”

A chuckle escaped his mouth before he could help it. “Maybe another time. I think we should stick to the basics for today.”

Loid grabbed a potato peeler he considered child-friendly enough from a drawer, and offered it to Anya – he didn’t quite trust her with a real knife yet. “Your mission will be to peel those potatoes. I’ll show you how to do it first.”

Mesmerized by the tool and excited at the familiar wording, the child nodded wordlessly, gaze fixated on him if looking away for a split second would result in an instant failure of the

mission

. He reached for a potato and peeled it slowly, explaining how to hold the utensil, and made her promise not to put her fingers anywhere near the blade.

Just as he finally allowed her to take hold of the peeler, Loid risked a glance to the side, curious to know how Yor was faring – just in time to witness said woman glaring at the uncooked food before her. She was holding a kitchen knife like she meant to stab the meat with unprecedented rage, fingers curled around the handle in an almost white-knuckled grip. The chunks of meat she’d already tried to cut were in a pitiful shape, lacerated and uneven for some, mashed and almost minced for others. Her usually gentle expression was distorted into a frustrated frown, and she was biting viciously her lower lip.

“Mama is upset,” Anya whispered worriedly next to him.

The child’s murmurs immediately caught Yor’s attention, and her cheeks flared crimson when she noticed both of them watching her.

“I– I’m sorry,” she stammered with an apologetic wave of the hand – not the one holding the knife, he noted gratefully. Her voice was flooded with exasperation and frustration. “I’m really bad at this.”

“It’s alright,” Loid replied soothingly, making sure Anya was still holding the peeler correctly before moving next to his

wife’s

side, stopping just behind her. The kitchen wasn't that big, after all, and it would easily get crowded with the three of them – four, counting the ever-famished Bond – around the counter. “We all start somewhere. You just need practice.”

For her benefit, he added in a stage whisper: “When I started cooking on my own, it took me several attempts before I realized I needed to add water in order to cook pasta”.

He was rewarded with the tension in her shoulders easing and her frown melting into a warm, amused smile as she turned around briefly to glance at him – maybe in an attempt to determine whether he was telling the truth or simply attempting to comfort her, to which he answered with an easy shrug. “I told you. We all have to start somewhere.”

He then reached out slowly to correct her grip on the knife, arranging her fingers on the wooden mantle with deliberate gentleness, before moving his hand above hers to guide it back to the food. Her head whipped back to the cutting board in front of her, and her hand twitched at the first contact, but she relaxed and nodded in understanding before he could offer an apology or even step back.

The kitchen was quiet, the brush of their clothes almost loud amidst the soft bubbling sounds emanating from the broth – the silence, as comfortable as it was, tickled with a feather-touch at the back of his mind in a moderate warning. There was something unnatural with that prospect, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“It’s easier if you slice it like this,” he explained instead, guiding Yor’s movement while he let her apply the required pressure. “Nerves are hard to slice through, so you might have to remove them altogether.”

Yor gave another nod, focused gaze filled with renewed determination, mouth pinched in concentration. That was something he deeply respected about her : her iron will and her refusal to let embarrassment get in the way of progress and learning were certainly wonderful qualities.

He still didn’t miss the way she was eyeing the first chunks of meat, visibly torn between ignoring their existence of presenting them to him. He answered the wordless question easily, and reached around her with his free hand to bring the morsels closer to them. “It won’t be a problem if you cut uneven bits. It’s for a stew, so it won’t change the flavor. Just make sure the chunks aren’t too big, so they can all cook properly.”

He kept his hand on hers long enough to cut some more pieces – just enough to make sure she’d gotten the gist of it, he tried telling himself – before finally stepping away. Loid watched her working smoothly, a burst of pride aflame at the tip of his lungs at her newfound confidence, biting back a smile as her quiet hums echoed around the room.

That was the precise moment his brain finally managed to catch up with the oddness of the atmosphere. The kitchen was quiet.

Almost silent.

Silence was not a word known to be commonly associated with

Anya

.

His head whipped back in her direction so fast he almost gave himself whiplash– and he could do little but blink, once again at an absolute loss with how to interpret the child’s expression. Anya was once again staring at them, but this time with her tiny mouth agape, eyes so comically wide they were almost bulging out of her head. Her cheeks were dusted with pink, potato peeler dangling from her limp fingers.

She then noticed his stare, gaze shifting to him and seemingly staring straight into his soul without ever blinking, before catching herself and quite literally shaking her bemusement out of her expression. She gave him what could only be described as a proud smile, and offered him a raised thumb. "Good job."

She glanced at Yor, who was still focused on her task, and he was overwhelmed with the uncanny feeling that she was

not

talking about showing her surrogate mother how to slice meat into cubes. His throat, for some reason, felt tight.

He distracted himself by glancing down at the half-peeled potato sitting abandoned in front of his young charge. "You too," he offered back.

Anya positively

preened

under the compliment, puffing her chest out and beaming so radiantly it could have rivaled the sun, and turned back to her potato with buzzing energy.

There was a shift in the atmosphere, after this strange scene - the kitchen became loud and crowded, alive and animated in a way that was more comfortable than Loid could have ever imagined.

Onions sizzled in the pan, the broth bubbling softly on the next hotplate.

Anya sang loudly, regally ignoring how her off-tune voice completely butchered the lyrics of a song he faintly remembered hearing on the radio as she peeled potato after potato, sometimes removing whole chunks along with the skin.

Yor hummed along as she added the meat and carrots to the pot, and Loid intervened just in time to stop her from spilling cooking oil into the now boiling broth, or adding sugar instead of salt.

Bond saw his dream come true as he somehow managed to predict the exact moment a piece of beef fell off the counter, jumping to catch the much awaited treat mid-air before anyone could tell him to stay out of the kitchen.

It was a small, domestic mayhem, a warm chaos etching itself into Loid’s memory.

It held no purpose to the mission.

He couldn’t bring himself to care.

Eventually, the collective effort came to fruition, and Anya was offered the great responsibility of tasting their meal.

Yor shifted nervously as the little girl dipped a spoon into the stew – but then she held out said spoon to him, and Loid found himself staring at it blankly.

“You have to blow on it,” Anya informed him with all the seriousness and authority a five year-old girl could muster. “You’re stronger than me, Papa, so it’ll cool faster.”

His heart gave another warm tug – he dutifully obliged, pretending to ignore how Yor’s hands failed to muffle her soft giggles, and blew gently on the spoonful until Anya finally told him to stop.

The two adults held their breaths as she took the spoon to her mouth, before freezing on the spot.

Yor sent him a panicked glance – but before he could say anything, Anya squealed, spoon still in her mouth, and jumped excitedly in the air.

“This is so good!” She cried out in explosive joy, pointing at the stew. “Mission is a success! I want more!”

The relief that washed intensely over him was not unlike the one he would feel after defusing a bomb, and it took him the entirety of his willpower not to let out an appeased sigh.

“Let’s set the table,” he managed to say, still feeling a little light-headed, “and then we’ll have dinner.”

Anya took off immediately with a cheer, obviously determined to get her hands on more food as soon as possible.

A warm weight landed on his arm.

Loid turned his head to look at Yor, who had stepped closer to hold his forearm gently.

Her eyes were glowing with delight, rubies of warmth and affection focused so intently on him it almost hurt, and for a short lapse of time the only thing he could think about was how the fading daylight spilled specks of pure gold into her irises, how it caught the arch of her lips and

oh

– her smile was worse, actually, so much worse. It was quiet and shy and yet absolutely radiant, oozing a gratitude that reached to the very core of him, taking with it all the oxygen in the room, and he couldn’t bring himself to look away –

“Thank you, Loid. For everything.”

It took him a second to remember how to breathe, and yet another to realize he was supposed to answer. It was quite honestly a miracle that his voice sounded as steady and poised as ever when he answered. “Of course, Yor. You did good. You can be proud.”

There was something strange and warm bubbling in his chest as Loid watched from the corner of his eyes the two girls setting the table, chatting excitedly about the incoming food - the feeling of it all was utterly foreign, almost dizzying and yet not quite unpleasant.

If only for moments like this, he found himself hoping he could keep being

Loid Forger

just for a bit longer.

The warmth of her hand lingered for hours afterwards.