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Yor stared at the wall, trying not to tense up when Loid shifted or rolled over in his spot on the floor behind her. Had she done the right thing in agreeing when he said he'd sleep on the floor? What if her brother walked into her - no, their - room in the morning and found him there? What if Loid was offended and just hadn't said so? Should she have taken the floor? Should she have insisted on sharing the bed?
But no, that last one was at least something she had an answer for. Her fighting instincts were too strong, too well-honed. If he got too close in his sleep and she stabbed him before she'd fully woken up, where would she be then? Nowhere good.
Still, it was hard to relax, especially when she could hear from Loid's breathing that he was still awake. Her own breathing was slow and even, but every time she was reminded of his presence, it became suddenly more difficult to feign sleep. It was ironic, really. Maybe paradoxical. Certainly inconvenient.
She rolled over carefully, resisting the urge to sigh. She didn't know how to seem ordinary. She never knew how to seem ordinary, not really, not without feeling like she was pretending, but she especially didn't know how to seem ordinary and asleep. She could have watched people sleep more carefully at some point, she supposed, but even setting aside the inherent danger of hesitation in her line of work, most of her targets weren't exactly ordinary, themselves.
"It's going to be ok." Loid's voice was soft, but clear enough that it would have betrayed his sleeplessness even if she hadn't been listening to his breath as intently as if he were a target she was trying to track. She couldn't see him, too far on her own side of the bed to look down past the opposite edge to see the floor. She wished she knew what he was looking at. Maybe that would help her figure out what he meant.
"What is?" she asked.
"The rest of the visit," he answered, voice still soft, just loud enough to make it to her ears. "I think he bought our excuses for not telling him. And he's just one person. Not like-"
The party, her mind supplied. Apparently, whatever Dominic had told her brother wasn't too different to Loid's latest set of careful, protective lies.
"The school," he finished. "And he doesn't expect us to be . . . elite."
"No," she agreed softly, "He knows me too well for that."
It was an advantage and a disadvantage at once. He knew her, so he couldn't expect too much. But he knew her, so there was always a chance he'd see - whatever it was that was here.
"It's . . . surprisingly nice getting to meet him," Loid said, his voice inscrutable. There was something in his tone, but she doubted she'd be able to puzzle it out even with his face to help. He was always hard to read, and when she thought back on the night of the party, she still couldn't figure out if she didn't understand why he'd said yes to her proposal so fast because she didn't understand it, or if she just hadn't had enough time to look and think like she always seemed to need to do when people were talking.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Well. . ." he said thoughtfully, as if he wasn't any more sure what he meant than she was. "It's nice watching Anya have an uncle, anyway. I don't have anyone. Besides you two, I mean."
It was an afterthought, that last part, but she didn't know if it was because he'd forgotten he would need to say it or because he'd forgotten it was true. Did he need to say it? He always seemed to know what to say, even if the things he was saying weren't true.
"Did your - did Anya's mother have a family?" she asked.
"Anya's- no," he answered, "It was just the two of us. I'm -" his breath tightened, just a little bit, but she was listening with her whole body, now, trying to hear his face in the dark like it would tell her how to interpret him, somehow. "I don't know how she got so unlucky," he said softly, his voice taking on its first rough edge. "Anya. All those places in her life where there could be people - parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles - and here she is, with me, instead."
Maybe it was just knowing Yuri was still at least a little bit angry that a party full of people had found out she was married before he had, but Loid's voice from the night of the party was suddenly ringing in her head again. What an act of self-sacrifice. To endure such a harsh job for the sake of another, for the sake of something greater than oneself...
"You should admire yourself for that, too," she whispered, as if he'd heard what she was thinking. But he hadn't.
"For what? Being alone?" Now the roughness was easy to hear, would have been easy to hear even if she were a room away.
"Being her father," she answered, "You could have -" she paused for a moment, biting her lip. "There are lots of orphanages," she continued, "and lots of them -" she shuddered in spite of herself, shoving away thoughts she didn't like thinking. "There are places you could send a child, and no one would ask you why. No one would stop you. They wouldn't even-" Breathe. Just breathe. "There are places children go and you can't even trace where they've been anymore. Places where they lie - lie for you if you pay them enough, not just lie to you."
Loid shifted again, and then his voice was marginally closer and the top of his head was visible - he'd propped himself up on an elbow. "I didn't ask you, but-" For a moment, silence stretched between them. "Never mind."
She couldn't read between the lines. She could never read between the lines, but she couldn't leave him wondering like that. Not just now, in the middle of the night, when somehow everything was unreal and vitally important, all at once.
"It wasn't like that for us," she answered slowly, "Me and Yuri. It could have been, but I didn't let it. We ran, any time we had to, and we kept running until I-" Until she met the Shopkeeper. But she couldn't tell him that. She couldn't tell anyone that. "I made a way for us. I had to, and I did. And you're like that, too." She wasn't sure he would know what she meant by that last part. She wasn't sure she knew what she meant by that last part. She stopped talking.
Loid laid back down with a sigh, rolling onto his back.
She hated silence, when she wasn't sure if she was supposed to fill it. She hated that she never knew what to fill it with, and that she always said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Had she done it again?
Loid rolled over, and after a short pause, the loudest and most decisive rustle yet turned out to be him kicking off the blanket he'd been under and getting to his feet. "I'm -" he half stuttered, but then his voice came back strong and decisive, as if he'd never had cause to waver. "I'm going to go check on Anya," he said. "People do that. Check on their children in the middle of the night." She wasn't sure who the explanation was for, but she was pretty sure he was right. Of course he was right. He'd been a father for much longer than she'd been a mother. If she was a mother at all.
He stopped a step before the door, looking halfway back at her. "Look, if me being here is - I mean - I know you've -" She waited him out as he clenched his jaw, frustrated again that she didn't know how to read him, didn't know how to interrupt whatever it was that had him tensed up like that. "If we need to tell your brother that we sleep in separate rooms since we're both such light sleepers, we can," he said, finally, "You can think about it, for tomorrow."
He took the last step and opened the door, and then he was gone, closing the door softly behind him well before she could work her way through an attempt at putting together the half pieces with the full sentence.
She sat up, stretching her neck, and breathed deeply, taking a moment to calm herself. It was a relief to stop pretending to be asleep. It was a relief not to pretend she wasn't thinking, thinking, all the time, and about so many things that seemed not to take up the same amount of space in other people's minds.
She didn't understand how people did it, all the social things at once, all the multitasking and listening and knowing what to say. Loid knew what lies to tell. Loid could guess what questions he'd be asked ahead of time. When she knew that at all, it was only because she'd put the work in, and even then, she could never be certain. It was always work, too much work, cluttering up her brain so there wasn't ever enough room for the actual finding of things to say.
She was still sitting up when Loid slipped quietly back into the room.
"How is she?" she asked, pretending she'd been waiting to hear, not just sitting for the relief of sitting.
A faint smile twisted the corner of his mouth, a soft fond thing she only rarely managed to catch on his face, and usually only when he thought no one was looking. "She's fine. Sleeping like the dead. I think she tired herself out with the excitement of having an uncle."
Yor's mouth arced itself into an answering grin without her having to think about it. "That was nice," she answered. "I never imagined-" What? Seeing her brother with a child? Having a child herself?
Loid's smile grew, but then he seemed to notice it and shut himself down, his face going carefully neutral. "Me neither," he said, glancing briefly toward the closed door.
She was supposed to have been thinking about something. What was it? Sleeping.
Loid stepped over to his patch of floor and squatted down to rearrange the blankets.
Half on instinct, she reached out a hand toward him, grasp falling well short of his shoulder, but stopping him nonetheless.
He looked up at her with an eyebrow raised, his body suddenly statue-still.
"We can share," she said. "I'm-" What? What was she? What was she doing? She scrambled for any explanation for her own behavior. "It's like you said. We're both light sleepers. We might as well both be comfortable. It'll be - quieter if you don't have to roll over so much."
His eyes searched her face, and she couldn't even begin to guess if the face she was making was right, because she couldn't even begin to guess what he was looking for.
He straightened up and moved a step closer. "Are you sure?"
"No," she answered honestly, "But Anya's in here half the time anyway. You might as well."
She didn't know what that meant, but she wasn't sure she had to. Loid knew it, too. They were alike, like that. Light sleepers, and early risers. Equally likely to check on Anya shortly before the sunrise. Equally likely to push as quietly as possible through the other one's door to find a quickly sharpening pair of eyes looking back over Anya's head, waking up fast without letting go of the small form in their arms. Not anymore, at least. The first times - well, it had to be either comforting or worrying that Loid had the same impulse to fling the girl from his side to free his arms, and it had to be either comforting or worrying that she'd learned to dampen down that impulse when it was him on the other side of the door.
"More like a third," he said, "She does sometimes sleep where she's supposed to." He sounded like her, like there was a steady analysis under the surface that wasn't supposed to break through, and even though it had happened before, it still surprised her every time. It surprised her in a warm way that made her blush, and the fact that this wasn't the moment for that just made her blush harder.
It was only when he turned his face away for a moment that she picked up a matching blush on his face, barely discernible in the weak moonlight. "I'll - I'll stick with the floor, thanks."
He didn't move. Not to lie down, not to adjust his blankets, not to look at her. He just stood there, face half twisted away, and seemed suddenly at a loss for words, and maybe for everything else.
She got to her feet, but she didn't know what to do next. She didn't touch him, didn't know how to touch him. He'd barely touched her, just touched her in those few moments the night of the party, pushing her out of the way of danger, placing himself between her and danger like he did with Anya, the way she could never tell him he didn't need to do with her. But then, he'd also held her hand. Both hands. She didn't wear the firing pin from the grenade, because of course she didn't wear the firing pin from the grenade, you couldn't wear grenade pins, and yet -
Her hand stopped halfway to his shoulder, just like it had when he'd defended her against the younger of the men in the interview, when he'd been angry not that she couldn't cook, but that she'd been criticized for it and she'd struggled to get her head around his reaction without losing sight of the interview in front of them.
This time, she made her hand keep moving. She made herself rest her hand on his shoulder. She could feel the heat of him, the thin, soft cotton of his t-shirt warm from his skin like his jacket hadn't been, back when they were fighting in the alley. Back when he was fighting in the alley, and she was trying not to show her hand too much.
He didn't look at her, kept his head twisted away, but his other hand came up slowly to rest on top of hers.
She wanted to hold him. That was a surprise. She wanted to hold him the way she held Anya, when the little girl whispered "bad dreams" with a half whimper and Yor pulled her in and let her bury herself in the embrace. But Loid wasn't Anya, and he wouldn't just fall asleep again, like she'd fixed everything that had ever been wrong. She didn't move, didn't try to wrap an arm around him in spite of the strange ache in her arms, just let him stand there beside her, his hand gentle on hers, not moving.
She hadn't wanted a man in her arms before, and she wasn't sure why she wanted it now. She wasn't sure what it would invite if she did. She wasn't sure of anything.
He squeezed her hand gently, as if to disguise the fact that his had started quivering, just barely, right at the edge of what she could perceive.
He cleared his throat quietly. "I - I think I'm going to sleep on the floor in Anya's room. If your brother asks, we'll say she had a bad dream and wanted her Papa." It was true enough of the time, and when he said it, Loid moved away from her, pulling gently out from under her hand, which hadn't ever bothered to get a real grip on him anyway.
He was gone like lightning, in spite of never having moved very fast. She didn't know how it had happened, didn't know how her brain had gotten so far behind, how it had skipped forward so sharply once she realized he was gone.
When she laid back down, it was as much of a relief to be lying down as it had been before to be sitting. There was a tangle of emotion in her chest, right behind her breastbone, and when she curled one arm up to press her knuckles against her collarbones, it only softened the tangle a little.
Everything was too much, immediately, too loud and too confusing in the silence of her blessedly empty, blessedly private room.
She let out a forceful breath, more snort than sigh, and told herself, as her lungs refilled, that she could think about this again tomorrow. Or the next day. Or after her brother left.
Another sudden impulse told her to go out to where her brother slept in Loid's room and wrap him up in her arms like she had when he was small - when they were both small, and she'd pretended not to be because he needed it.
Maybe it was only that, then. Only... whatever it was you felt with family. I don't have anyone, Loid had said. Here she is, with me instead. And then there was the thought she'd had, herself, urgency and adrenaline filling her until she could hardly think, her brain scrambling like everything was an emergency at once, not just the men with guns. This is the only man I may ever meet who could possibly accept me as I am.
She'd held her brother because he'd needed it. She'd held Anya the same way. Surely, no one could fault her for maybe, maybe, needing things too.
Loid was still awake when she crept into Anya's room a few moments later, still laying out his bedding just so. He stopped still again, more clearly visible in the gleam from Anya's small nightlight than he'd been in the fainter light from her window, but he didn't stop her. He didn't say anything. He just watched her climb into Anya's little bed, small for adults but still too big for the child, and wrap her arms around the little girl, who nuzzled up against her without waking up, her tiny hands finding the front of Yor's pajamas and grabbing on tight.
"We can say she was the one with bad dreams," Loid said behind her. She didn't turn to look. It was safe, having him between her and the door. That was an absurd thought, an absurd thing to be true, but it was two in the morning, and it was easy to accept and just as easy to ignore.
The light went out with a soft sound as Loid pulled it out of the electric socket. Anya wasn't scared when they were there. They both knew that. She'd said it, face still damp and snotty from crying, at least until she buried it in Loid's chest and smeared tears across the front of his shirt.
Yor only knew Loid was facing the door, his back to them, because she hadn't heard him roll over after he took out the nightlight. If she did fall asleep, she wouldn't know anymore how he was lying. But that would be ok. He would stay this way. She knew it with a part of herself she was only just now daring to trust, in this life with a child and husband and an occasional impossible knowing.
She was facing Anya and Loid was watching the door, protecting their backs. That was right. She couldn't say why it was right, why any of this was right when it was so baffling at the same time, but it was.
Anya murmured quietly in her sleep, her not quite words making not quite sense, but the tone eased when Yor tightened her arms around the little girl. When Anya had been still for a moment, Yor relaxed, breathed, breathed slowly, and felt herself starting to drift off, most improbably of all.
Problems weren't so easy to solve. They were never so easy to solve. But sometimes, with Anya, they were. Sometimes, with Anya, all Yor had to do was love the child for being a child, for being somehow her child, at least as hers as her brother had been, all those years ago, at least as hers as Anya's own needing people could make her.
****
When Yor's breathing finally, finally settled into actual sleep, Twilight sighed as quietly as he could manage and let something tense inside his core relax. The longer things were like this, the longer he was here with a fake daughter and a fake wife and a terrifying suspicion that there were things even he couldn't fake, the less certain he was of what it was he was trying to hide.
You can't rely on civilians, he reminded himself, squeezing his eyes shut. You know that.
Anya was asleep, but her voice wouldn't leave his ears. I like watching at restaurants and eating the opera. But then.... Here, use my hankie.
He didn't roll over. That would make noise. It would wake Yor again, somehow. He could quiet his mind on his own. He could.
Yor had stopped the one knife he couldn't. He'd seen it over and over in his mind, seen it with the same blurring, uncertain clarity he'd seen it the first time, fast motion, impossible motion, and no knife in the shoulder blade he'd turned to protect her, and a man on the other side of the alley who had been seconds from making him bleed.
This was stupid. Dangerous. A liability.
He didn't turn to look at his family. He didn't let himself. He breathed, controlled. He kept himself controlled.
You're a professional. He told himself. And you need sleep to function.
He focused all his attention on breathing steadily, counting himself in, pausing, counting himself out, over and over, until he made all the rest of the world retreat. It was almost hypnosis, a miracle of focus keeping him pinned down inside his own chest without letting the sounds of the other breaths in the room get in the way.
The last thought he had, unbidden, before he fell asleep, was spychiatrist.