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Their first kiss was a kiss signifying the end.
It happened in their own home. A heavy silence hung in the air while they sat together, dining chairs facing each other as the Thorn Princess worked delicately in tending to the few wounds Twilight had accumulated. She kept a firm grip on his forearm, his button-down shirt only half-worn to allow her to easily clean the gash. They had been like this for a while, wordlessly patching each other up as Anya lay asleep in her bedroom. Franky, their (reluctant) babysitter of choice, had put her to bed before they got back home.
Only, Loid and Yor had not meant to spend the night together.
They had been assigned the same mission. Well, technically. A rare collaborative mission, WISE’s agent was to create an opening for Garden’s assassin to get close enough to eliminate the target without alerting anyone. Of course, neither being informed of who the other would be meant for a rather awkward encounter when they met up at the, otherwise undisclosed, rendezvous point. Twilight, ever prepared for any eventuality, had arrived earlier to inspect the location, just in case; the Thorn Princess, confident in her ability to take on a spontaneous betrayal, had arrived as the bell tower signaled the changing of the hour.
“Good day, or should I say good eve-” The Thorn Princess stopped in her tracks when the identity of the figure before her finally registered in her mind. “Loid?!” She gaped at him, him returning the expression with wide-eyed disbelief. As quickly as she could, she tried to recall the excuse she had given him earlier in the week as to why she would be back late. “O-Oh, I get it… I made a wrong turn somewhere and didn’t even realize it, haha. This isn’t the restaurant that we were supposed to have the meeting at! I’m such a klu-”
His own expression shifted as she scrambled over herself, pieces putting themselves together in his mind as he made sense of the last few months of his life. “Yor,” he cut her off, silencing her tirade of coverups, not really sure what he was feeling. Betrayal? Certainly not in the way he was expecting the collaboration to go, but also not quite right. Not when he’d been lying to her the entire time too. Clarity? Understanding? Relief? Either way, he needed a clear answer first. “Are you the assassin from Garden? You’re the one they sent for this mission?”
She looked at him and then, consumed by guilt, away. For a brief moment she held her breath, lips quivering as she considered what this meant for their unconventional little setup. Everything they’d been through had been a lie then? The kind words he had reassured her with? The moments they shared? His deceased wife’s dream? Anya? How could Anya, in all her overflowing and empowering love, be a lie? Eventually, she sighed. “‘Thorn Princess’, that’s my codename. Please address me as such while this mission is on-going, agent…”
“‘Twilight’ would be my codename.”
With both of them unsurprisingly attuned to each other’s movements and mannerisms, the mission proceeded as smoothly as it could have gone. If not for the small incident that prompted Twilight to take a blow for her, resulting in the rather unsightly cut on his arm. Not that she couldn’t have taken it. He could see it as they fought together. Her ridiculous indestructibility, absurd resistance to pain and poison, insane reflexes were all on full display for him to witness. If they hadn’t been in the middle of combat, he was sure he would simply have watched her in awe. That said, she had her back turned when he saw one mook push himself off the floor and head straight for her with a dagger in hand. She probably could have dodged it, but his body moved before his brain could make an input.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” Her eyes refused to meet his own when she finally spoke, focusing on dabbing the disinfectant around the area, her tone laced with some mixture of concern and guilt. “I could have dodged it and you wouldn’t be hurt.”
He thought about it for a moment. Truly, his actions went against every principle that he was meant to stick to. Very easily, he could have died due to the brainless sentimentality he always lied to himself about. “Maybe you’re right, but I don’t regret it. I’d rather have ensured your safety and gotten,” he moved his arm a bit to make his point, “injured, than to have left you be and lose you.”
For once, it was the truth.
A singular hollow “Hah,” and downcast eyes were what he got as a response. She couldn’t really buy it. Her own thoughts and feelings were still a mess. Compounded with her knowledge of her own hypocrisy regarding her own lies to him from the moment they met each other, it was hard for her to just take him at his word.
Another silence fell upon them as she finished cleaning, moving on to an antiseptic ointment she massaged around the laceration. Twilight pursed his lips, watching her intently as she focused on his arm, probably to avoid speaking to him. Still, curiosity gnawed at him. She’d lived under the same roof as him for so long and, though he suspected her of knowing her brother’s ties to the SSS, he never suspected anything else about her. For his part, he’d truly been sloppy. The clues had always been there — her inhuman strength that slipped through every now and then, the completely silent grace in which she carried herself, her sudden fighting capabilities which he had chalked up to simply her being drunk. He could laugh at it all.
“How long?” Was his only question as she put the ointment down and picked up a roll of gauze bandages.
She unfurled it in her hands, biting inside of her cheek as she thought about how to go about it. “A short while after mine and Yuri’s parents died. I had to find some way to be able to provide a good life for him. I didn’t really mind if I got my hands dirty in the process.” She looked melancholic as she spoke, wrapping his arm up. It was easy to say that she never minded now, but it was different back when she had just started. It took a while to fully come to terms with her constantly staining her hands red, with all the life experiences that slipped past her. She would never complain about it, but it had been such a lonely existence.
“You really have been working so hard, haven’t you?” It wasn’t really a question. Twilight had meant to offer her some comfort, smiling a little. “You always have. I see it everyday. What I said back then during your co-workers’ party, I truly do mean it now. That it’s so admirable and wonderful that you’ve been so dedicated.”
She inhaled sharply, as if she’d just been wounded, pausing in her motions. Was this meant to be him being genuine? Was he trying to make up for the lies? She didn’t know. But, if both of them could be truthful in that moment, she would take that chance. For the first time that night, the Thorn Princess met her husband’s eyes. “And you? How long have you been working as a spy?”
He returned her gaze before looking away with a sigh. “Technically, my whole life.” It was technically the truth. Any identity he once had was thrown away at that train station. However, they were already at the point where hiding anything more was pointless. “But, truthfully, I had served in the war between Ostania and Westalis as a soldier for the West before then.” A hollow laugh left him as he recalled his enlistment, leaning back into the chair and training his eyes to the ceiling. “I even got in by taking someone else’s identity.” His life felt like some sort of twisted joke. “Must be how they took notice of me.”
She nodded thoughtfully, taking in all that he was telling her as she finished bandaging him up. A part of her — the anxious part of her — wondered if he was still lying, still hiding behind a mask. It was stymied by her desire to finally, truly, get to know him, to know Twilight, to know the man behind Loid Forger. Still, she couldn’t quite wrap her head around what he was saying. “What do you mean by ‘technically’?”
Twilight put his torn shirt back on before leaning forward with a heavy sigh. Only as he sat with his elbows on his knees, his thumbs rubbing his palms, did she see just how tired he really was from his lifetime of fighting.
“When,” his eyes closed for a moment, wondering if what he was about to say was even the least bit believable, “when you become a spy, you have to throw away whatever your life was before then. You discard your name, your home, basically your entire identity…”
Her heart broke for him. To throw everything away like that… She had a hidden identity of her own, but nothing so devastating as that, with no name to even call his own. “I’m sor-”
“Don’t be,” his voice cut her off without him even looking at her. Instead, he looked at his rugged and calloused hands. “I already lost everything I could before I even had to throw that life away anyway — my mother to a bombing, my friends who I had thought died when we were younger never made it back from their first deployment. It wasn’t too hard to just dump everything in a trash can somewhere.”
“That’s-”
Twilight gave her a smile, weak and tired from the sheer sadness he had been holding in for so many years. “I know.” His voice cracked as he spoke. It was over for him. His facade, so carefully built up from the moment he had lost everything, lay shattered at his feet. He was left helpless and defeated, good as dead.
This was his truth. His vulnerability revealed to her in its entirety.
The Thorn Princess’ shaky hands clasped around his, her grip on him so secure. Almost as though she hoped to put him back together by her gesture, by whatever warmth she could offer him. His eyes were stunned as he looked at her, mouth hanging open. She said nothing, not really sure what she could say. He had been there for her through her many plights, comforted her through her worries, and she would always be grateful for his kind words.
So she chose to believe him.
And, just like in their daily life, in this moment, she hoped that she could be enough.
When the shock at her tenderness finally faded, Twilight found himself returning her hold on him. One hand rubbed the back of her own, thumb massaging slow circular motions. “Yor…” his voice was barely audible, a mere whisper as he raised her other hand to cup his cheek. There were so many things he wanted to ask of her. For all of them, his words failed him. The answers to which, he didn’t have any right to.
Please stay.
He had never felt so desperate and selfish.
“We’ve been through a lot, haven’t we?” Her lips quivered as she smiled, quiet tears spilling from her eyes. “Even though our marriage is fake, forged for your mission, we still did say those vows, didn’t we? ‘For better or worse’? So,” she paused, her voice having broken as she spoke. “So, maybe, we can face things together from now on. We don’t have to be alone anymore.”
“You…” in disbelief and relief, his voice was small as he dared to hope. “You’re not going to go?”
She nodded. It was a promise. “‘Til death do us part.”
Twilight felt his heart swell. Through everything he’d lost and endured, he never thought that he could ever again feel such adoration and attachment for someone. It was far too overwhelming for him. So much so that the only thing he could really do was to get up and hold her as close to him as he possibly could. His arms, nowhere near as powerful as hers, wrapped tightly around her form.
Aside from her initial yelp of surprise, the Thorn Princess soon returned his hug, laughing lightly, her heart feeling like it had been released from its shackles. Truly, ever since the very beginning, their situation had been so ridiculously convoluted. Even more so now that they knew each other’s secrets. Circumstance and circumstance again had led to them meeting — them with their unusual lifestyles, with their abnormal upbringings. Somehow, despite it all, they found each other and, even through the secrets, made a home for themselves.
Sighing contentedly, she leaned her head on his shoulder. “I could stay like this forever…”
Perhaps it was due to how she said it, her voice so soft and gentle, or maybe it was exactly what she had just said, or, more realistically, maybe it was everything about her — her kind-heartedness, her loving nature, her cluelessness, her strength (in all ways), her tendencies for mishap, her earnest desire to do her best in everything that she did — that caused his heart to race against his chest. Whatever the cause may truly be, it made him want to fulfill a desire he had been silencing for almost as long as he’d known her.
Twilight pulled away, putting some space between them without letting her go. He looked at her with all the emotions he had forbidden himself from ever feeling. With one arm still secure around her, he took her hand and put it to his chest. “Yor, I…” He let out an awkward laugh, not really sure how he was supposed to phrase his feelings without sounding disingenuous while also simultaneously feeling embarrassed at how loudly his heart was beating. “I’ve had to say it in my past missions far too often to have any proper meaning, so to say that I love you would be such an understatement.”
Her eyes widened at his confession. Was she even hearing things right? She tilted her head forward, closer, needing to confirm what he was saying.
“I don’t know that I can carry on with the rest of my life if I am to be parted from you.” She watched as he inhaled sharply. “You’ve brought life back to this unfeeling organ in my chest, brought me warmth when I’d been cold for so long. You,” he stammered through his words, “you said you’re going to stay and I-”
She leaned closer, lightheaded from her own heart thundering in her ears. “Yes?”
“I can’t really find the words to describe how much I utterly adore you, how wholly devoted I am to you.” Goodness, she was looking at him so expectantly, drawing him in. His forehead touched hers, eyes half-lidded and trained on her lips. “So, please, allow me to show you instead.”
It was a request said in a quiet intimacy that stole the Thorn Princess’ breath. She responded in kind. “I would be honored.”
Eyes fluttering shut, the gap between them closed as he took her lips in his. To begin, their kiss was careful, cautious, both of them fearful of it all being a dream. Slowly, as they got lost in each other, the overflow of their emotions led to the deepening of their exchange. Her arms wrapped around his neck, his hands tightened their grip on her waist. The past few hours had culminated in this moment between them.
Truly, it was a farewell kiss to all the secrets and pretenses, to all the lies and deception.
They rose for breath, albeit only momentarily. Spurred by their long-standing longing for each other, they resumed their kiss with fervor. Finally, they needed not to subdue their emotions. No more tiring facades, no more debilitating worries… Just each other and their touch, and warmth. Their personal solace from the world.
For this was also a kiss welcoming a new beginning, one in which they did not have to hide, one in which they could simply be.
After a while, when the tension that had been built-up between them over the course of many months had sufficiently ebbed (not that they could ever have enough of the other at this point), they parted. Breathless gasps occupied the space where they had met, the heavy silence that previously loomed over them turned comfortable as they basked in each other’s presence.
A soft hum occupied the stillness of the late hour as they cleaned up the mess from the treatment of Twilight’s wound. It was only when the Thorn Princess had put everything away that she stopped with her little tune.
“‘S something the matter, Yor?” he asked, just having changed his shirt and coming back to a troubled expression on her face.
She fiddled with her thumbs. “It’s just… I know you said you threw your past away, but is that really okay? Do you not sometimes wish to reclaim your real name at the very least?”
Her question had taken him off-guard, much like anything she did. He was certain she had good intentions, that was just how she was, always so well-meaning. And he loved that about her. “Maybe if I was asked that a few years ago, I would have said yes,” he admitted. His early days as a spy were definitely the most difficult. After all, his past was not something that he could so easily throw away when it was his primary motivation.
“But?” she urged him, wondering what or how it could have changed.
He smiled at her. “Despite having only worked in the shadows, I’m glad to have taken the moniker Twilight. And also,” his hand moved to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear, “it’s only through being Twilight that I could have met you as Loid Forger. I don’t think I would have otherwise. Maybe I wouldn’t have even made it through the war.”
No longer the Thorn Princess, but rather, Yor held his hand to her face, planting a kiss on his inner wrist. She didn’t really have any words she could say to that. All she had was her affection for him. Still, she had few concerns. “But after this mission-”
“We can worry about that when we get there,” he moved his hand to the back of her head, bringing her closer to kiss her forehead. “Personally, I wouldn’t mind taking on the name of Loid Forger for the rest of my life. The lines between the acts and the truths have long blurred for me, I just could never do anything about it. Besides, I want to be the man who you thought I was, the man you fell in love with.”
Yor felt her face heat up, looking away as much as his hold on her allowed her to. “I don’t know… I think-” she breathed in deeply, embarrassed but not ashamed at what she was about to say. “I think I would have fallen in love with you, regardless of who you were.”
A stunned silence overcame him. She would keep surprising him, it seemed. “Then, maybe one day, when we’ve finally achieved peace, I’ll tell you who I once was.”
“I would like that very much, Loid.” She smiled, so loving, understanding his plight. “Until then, let’s work hard together!”
Loid took both her hands in his. “Yes, together.”
Together. For as long as life would permit them to be.