Chapter Text
He was only human after all.
No one was there to witness all the near-death moments he went through on the missions where he nearly failed, where he panicked when the bomb was a second away from detonating, where he fainted when Anya received her second Tonitrus Bolt, where he found out his wife was an assassin working for the opposite side… No allies or foes knew of the person beneath the masks and wigs and fake voices and personalities. They thought of him as this god-like figure whose name itself was a guarantee that the mission would be a success, who could maintain a poker face even throughout the most ridiculous situations, who was an inspiration to the junior agents and a nightmare to his enemies.
But at the end of the day, Twilight was still a man, a human being made of flesh and blood who could feel emotions and make mistakes. So when his assassin wife who was a second away from killing him heard his real voice and realized who the person lying beneath her was, who she had stabbed and tortured and ripped the fake mask off of, he did what any other spies would do.
He ripped out his hidden knife and slit her neck, taking advantage of her shocked and distracted state.
That was his first mistake.
He watched the defeat marring her face turn into acceptance as blood spurted out of her neck and drenched him in its warmth. He watched as light faded from her crimson eyes and her body collapsed forward, toppling atop him and spilling her blood down the side of his neck. He watched as the bloodied knife fell from his shaking hand and hit the pavement with a sharp clang.
She was just a fake wife, an enemy, an assassin who had sought after his life.
He knew that, and he had prepared himself for ultimately killing her ever since he found out about her real identity a week ago.
Yet, he couldn’t prepare himself for the overwhelming agony that tore through his heart and fed him the pieces. The areas drenched with her blood felt like they were set on fire, liquid fire that seeped underneath his skin and burned their way to his heart through the veins. His hands instinctively found themselves clenching the black dress that clung to her back as he buried his shocked frozen face into her shoulders. She smelled like the body wash they shared, the perfume she used, and beneath that was a faint flowery scent with a metallic undertone.
Her death didn’t make him feel a thing. No guilt twisting his insides, no horror gripping his chest. He couldn’t explain the pain tearing apart his heart, but he was sure it was just a side effect of being fake married to her and living with her for almost a year. He was still a human after all, and it was human to feel attached to someone even if he was not. It was like childhood crushes. They weren’t real and were just a figment of their imagination.
So he pushed her lifeless body off of him, grimacing when he nearly slipped on the large puddle of blood that had gathered around them, retrieved the strip of intel she had stolen from him, and began to make plans for the next step of Operation Strix.
It was at this moment that Bond appeared out of nowhere, panting heavily and tail drooping when he caught sight of them.
It was also at this moment that Twilight noticed the hole in his judgment.
Operation Strix no longer needed a wife, but what about Anya?
The little girl who had been adopted and returned four times and yearned for a Mama.
Could she really get over Yor's death?
Or would it traumatize her forever?
Anya was just a part of his life, but he and Yor were her entire childhood.
Throwing away attachments was easy for him, but certainly not for a child who barely knew her own address!
Yor had been with her for far too long to not leave any lasting psychological damage if she died. And this would certainly affect Anya's well-being and study and… What if she did poorly in school because of this and got eight Tonitrus bolts and got expelled!? Then all their efforts to get accepted would be for nothing! And Operation Strix would fail!
Regret finally caught up to him and filled his face with shame.
Twilight, Twilight. How could you make such a rookie mistake? You should have thought of this a week ago when you pointed the gun at her head when she was asleep. You should have made a plan for every possible scenarios after finding out her real identity. The entire operation revolves around Anya so you have to take her into consideration for every stage of the operation, and you knew that. So where were your plans when Yor heard your real voice and realized who you are? Why did all logic fly out of your mind when you see the shocked and betrayed look on her face? How could you let yourself panic like a rookie and let that control your actions? Have you forgotten that panicking was the leading cause of every failed mission according to WISE’s yearly statistics?
The sticky blood dripping down his face weighed heavily on his eyelid, making each blink harder than the last. He shuddered when a harsh gale whizzed past him, accelerating the speed at which the blood was drying on his body. He turned his gaze onto the corpse lying at his feet, to the trees swaying back and forth and adding the sound of rustling leaves to the club music booming in the distance, and finally——he took a deep breath——to Bond.
The family dog always had a bland look on his face, like he was an old man who had been through a lot (which he did) and nothing could faze him any more. His beady black eyes slapped on that round face of his together with his immense stature and those mustache-like furs hiding his mouth made him give off a naturally gentle and comical aura that drew people in. Bond was the only member of the Forger family Twilight was the furthest to. Sure, they’d had their bonding moments when the dog stumbled upon him during a mission and when Bond charged into a flaming house to save a puppy so he went after him, but Twilight’s training didn’t teach him how to read a dog’s facial expression so there was always this invisible gap between them.
But when Bond’s beady little eyes stared at Yor’s body for a prolonged period of time before he trod towards Twilight slowly, yet without fear, and licked the blood off of his hand, Twilight thought he didn’t need to read a manual on dogs’ body language to understand what Bond was feeling right now. There was disbelief, sorrow, and maybe even a bit of forgiveness, but there was also guilt. And this, out of all the emotions, was the one that made Twilight second guess his ability to read his pet.
Why was Bond feeling guilty? What did he have to feel guilty for? This had nothing to do with him, and he wasn’t the cause of Yor’s death. He couldn’t have prevented this, so why did he look so defeated, so dead inside?
“Bond…” Twilight swallowed when his voice came out wrong. Too broken, too thick with emotions, wrong pitch and wrong tone. “Bond,” he tried again, reaching out with his clean hand to pat his head. “Why are you here? How did you find us?”
Bond stopped licking his hand and gazed up at him with an indiscernible look, before turning on his heels and running off, occasionally glancing back to see if he was following him and to also look at Yor one last time.
“You want me to follow you?”
Bond gave a quiet “Worf.”
“Okay, let me just…” Twilight looked at the state he was in and the body on the ground. “Let me just clean up here and then I’ll be right with you.”
Everything that happened tonight would have to be reported to the Handler. He would have loved to hide Yor’s identity from everyone, but he couldn’t handle the cleanup of his mess all by himself. Hiding, or rather, getting rid of her body, coming up with an explanation for her absence (or death), especially an explanation that wouldn’t rouse the SSS’s suspicion and could satisfy Yuri, and many more. He needed the assistance of WISE for such a large scale operation especially since the fate of Strix depended on its success and failure.
After hiding the body in the trunk of WISE’s car, cleaning the blood off of him (and off of the ground) with a few bottles of water from a nearby vending machine, and changing Hugo Großer’s outfit into Loid Forger’s outfit, he entered the car and drove carefully behind Bond who ended up leading him to an abandoned gas station.
What followed after was a fight so short it couldn’t even be called a fight and didn’t warrant being explained in detail. He killed the man who kidnapped his daughter and freed her, who was trembling from head to toe and looking at him with her eyes blown wide with fear. It was understandable, since he had just killed a man in front of her very eyes. He put up a disarming smile and tried to comfort her, but that (him smiling, it seemed) did more harm than good and made her even more scared if possible. Yeah, seeing your father kill someone and then turn to you with a smile would probably scare most kids’ heads off. Wrong move, Twilight. Wrong move.
He wiped the smile off of his face and looked at Anya solemnly as he applied ointment onto the abrasion on her arms while they sat inside WISE’s car.
“What happened?”
“What happened?”
Anya never thought there would come a day where she would fear her Papa. To her, Papa had always been a source of comfort, of warmth, of love, of yummy food and peanuts, of Bondman and spy stuff. He was the one who took her out of that shitty place and gave her a home, a name, a warm fluffy bed to sleep on, and a warm meal every night. He was her hero.
So to find that this hero, the same hero who let her play house at a castle to cerebrate her exceptance into school, who bought her a large penguin plushie so she had something to cuddle with every night, who allowed her to hog the TV as long as she did her homework, was the one who killed her Mama, the only other person she loved in her life, filled her heart with so much pain she almost couldn’t breath when he got close to her and untied her after killing the bad man.
For the first time, Anya felt scared to see Papa reach out towards her with his large, strong hands. For the first time, she wondered if faking her smarts to get adopted by a spy (her dream job) was a mistake.
“Anya?”
She stared into his ocean blue eyes and saw the confusion swimming in them along with something scarier that gave the blue a darker tinge. What would he do if he found out she knew? Everything? Him being a spy and Operation Strix and him killing Mama? Would he kill her to silence her?
She had the same worry when she messed with his spy stuff and got kidnapped on Day 1 of them being a family, but the more she spent her time with him, the less she worried about him killing her if he ever found out about her secrets. She knew he wasn’t like that. He loved her for real.
But he killed Mama, who he also loved (which he didn’t know yet).
So who was to say he wouldn’t kill Anya as well since he had already killed Mama so one more death wouldn’t hurt?
“Don’t be scared, Anya. I won’t hurt you.”
Papa tried to smile again, but it was so fake that surprisingly the fear in Anya lessened at the sight. If Papa didn’t know she knew, he wouldn’t kill her. She couldn’t trust his words, and maybe not even his mind, but she could trust the things she had picked up from him without him noticing.
Act, because people believe what they see.
Lie, because no one wants to hear the truth.
Cheat, because it’s the result that matters.
Smile, because it’s the most powerful weapon you own.
And so, Anya blinked through the tears and smiled.
“I’m okay! Papa, you saved me!” She exclaimed with false cheeriness as she wrapped her arms around his neck. The smell of blood on his neck was so strong, so gross, that she had to bite her lips to not puke on his clothes. “I saw Bond scratch the door so I opened it and he ran outside so I followed him and the bad man took me when he drove past me. I was so scared!”
Papa’s stiff neck relaxed as he hugged her back. She couldn’t stop focusing on the spots where his arms made contact and applied light pressure on her small body. The thought of him using too much force and breaking her back like what Mama was capable of doing continued to bounce around her head, but she didn’t let go of the hug; she hugged him even tighter.
“I see. I’m sure you’ve learned your lesson now so I’m not going to scold you. Let’s just go home. It’s been a long night.”
Papa let her go after a moment and Anya exhaled through her nose quietly, trying not to seem too eager to distance herself from him.
“Papa, what about…him?”
Papa glanced at the gas station in the distance where the bad man’s body was. “I’ll call the police after I send you back home. You have school tomorrow, so you’ll need to sleep early. We can talk later.”
“Okie…” Anya yawned, her heart skipping a beat when Papa chuckled, like, really chuckled. Not just a fake one. His mind was saying how it was oddly heartwarming that she could still smile and yawn after going through something like this, and how maybe it would take more than this to traw mah ties her, which meant she might not take the news too horribly after he told her Mama was dead.
That last sentence zipped through Anya’s mind like a bullet, filling her with dread and horror. But she wasn’t the same Anya as she was a few hours ago. With the fear of death hanging over her head, this Anya was forced to put everything she had learned into use and act and lie and smile as if her life depended on it (because it was).
And so, she smiled as Papa finished bandaging the cuts on her arms, she smiled as he began driving home, and continued smiling until Papa thought how weird it was that her smile never left her face.
Okay, so too much wasn’t good either.
Noted.
And this was how it all began.
Years later when Agent Starlight and renowned assassin Aurora looked back on her life and wondered how did things go oh so horribly wrong, she would point to this moment in time as the divergence that set her on a life full of treachery and suffering and, ultimately, her dawnfall and eventual rebirth.