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They both do their best not to let their nerves show, on the morning of her first day of school, distracting each other in the kitchen as they fix breakfast with the kind of little flirtations that have always made up the fabric of a normal morning.
"So!" Spy sets her plate down in front of her, putting on his best grin. "It is a big day!"
She nods, her mouth already full, her eyes wide.
She has such a delicacy to her, he can’t help but notice that. He can see himself in her, and the Sniper, but she’s so much softer and sweeter than either of them ever were, and the idea that he can’t protect her from every one of childhood’s slings and arrows is one that rankles.
Big things, big things he is prepared for. Should their lives ever come under threat, he has bags waiting in a locker in the garage with all the paperwork for three new identities, bags and papers he updates with every growth spurt.
The petty cruelties of nursery school children? That he can do nothing about.
The Sniper is less nervous about sending her out into the world than he used to be. Her last Christmas, his mother gave her the fluffiest, pinkest dress he’d ever seen, and she’d loved it. It put things at ease, a bit— it meant she wouldn’t go through what he did.
He’ll miss her, though. Most of his schooling had been by radio and computer, and the idea of sending her off to school every weekday was a hard one to deal with. So much of his life since her birth had revolved around being Daddy, he hardly knew what he’d fill his days with when she was away. He isn’t yet ready to think about the benefits.
He doesn’t mind the school itself— the Spy confessed, the night before, to worrying, but he’s come so far in the past few years that he hardly feels anything at all looking at the big sign on the gate marking ‘L’Ecole Victoria’. Well, except that it’s the place his daughter will be disappearing off to for half of every day until she’s grown up, and what will he do then?
They both drive her, with her little plaid jumpskirt and crisp white blouse, and the sweater he’d made her, and a little bag that, at her age, really didn’t need to carry much in the way of school supplies, and they barely have time to kiss her cheeks before she’s skipping up to a little knot of tiny girls, greeting them with no hesitation.
"That’s… good." The Sniper says, sitting back behind the wheel and making no move to start the car, his voice hollow.
"Right, of course. We didn’t want her to cry."
"She’s making friends." He nods.
"We already met her teacher. Impeccable records."
"She’ll be fine."
"Of course she will, she is ours!"
They sit in the parking lot a while longer, before the Sniper shakes his head and turns the key. “We ought to get a move on before we scare the other parents, two men sitting outside a primary school.”
"Right, yes. What will the neighbours think?"
"… What are we going to do all day without our little lamb about?"
"Nap. Make love." The Spy suggests, both falling a little flat. "Maybe tomorrow."
When they pick her up, however, she rushes to their arms with a big smile to tell them about her day in a babbling mix of French and English that the Sniper has come to understand easily, and all of her new friends.
It makes the next day a little easier.