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one.
It’d never occurred to Sasha that perhaps his father, a man of great height with a scar just off of his left eye could be anything but the diplomat he said he was.
Yes, he was large. Yes, he seemed to be annoyed at most people other than his family, and yes, he was very very Russian, but he was also his dad. He was the man who taught him how to box and swim and helped him with his mathematics and history homework. He was the father who carried him on his shoulders in his earliest memories and no matter how hard he tried, could beat him effortlessly at chess.
It was only on their first family vacation to the beach, spurred by Uncle Napoleon, did he ever consider anything else.
The day was filled with Sasha ignoring Nikki’s cries in the car, playing in the water, and trying to play with Vic, who seemed perfectly content with playing on her own in the sand and didn’t need his help with her sandcastles. His mother demanded to slather sunscreen all over him claiming that he was as pale as his dad and would therefore burn to a crisp.
Sasha eyed his father, talking with Napoleon, up to their ankles in water looking out to the horizon where the water met the sky. Uncle Napoleon was laughed animatedly at something Illya said and then clapped him on the shoulder. His white button up shirt waved in the ocean breeze and the blue swimming shorts he wore made his smile look like his Uncle was ready to be one of the athletes he wanted to be on the front of his Swimmer Pro magazines he got monthly because he was six and that meant he was a big boy and could read. When Sasha looked at his dad, he had to remind himself that not all men were meant for the water. He’d taught him how to swim, and drove him to every swimming practice and tournament, but that was the extent of it.
His mother’s soft hands clapped his back, “You can go to the boys now, Sasha. Stay safe.”
He ran into the water and looked back at the two men he treasured.
“Come on!” he laughed. The water was cold and his brown hair plastered to his forehead after he dunked himself quickly.
Napoleon smiled to his dad who shifted in the sand, as if telling him to go play with his son. Sasha looked at them expectantly, the waves flowing around him.
Then Napoleon stripped himself of his shirt smoothly and threw it to his dad’s chest, “C’mon Peril, a little water couldn’t hurt, could it?”
Sasha laughed happily as Napoleon joined him in the water and sand. He turned briefly to see his father still on the beach looking out at them solemnly but then Napoleon tapped his shoulder and he laughed. They swam out even farther and dived down into the water opening their eyes for brief moments to see the sandy bottom of the ocean until they got tired and swam back to where they could touch the bottom.
Napoleon picked him up and held him upside down as he walked them over to their mother who was calmly resting under the umbrella in a chair while Victoria poured sand on her feet.
When he was upright again he found himself being slathered with sunscreen again looking through the crowds for his dad.
It didn’t take him long to see his very large and very pale frame bent over, holding his brothers tiny hands up as he helped Nikki splash around in the very shallow water. And maybe it was with the bright sun and the tanned people around them, but Sasha found himself amazed that he hadn’t noticed it before. Tiny scars littered his dad’s body. He spied a couple on his sides and back and his shoulders and arms hadn't been spared either.
Napoleon tapped his shoulder and ruffled his hair and challenged him to who could swim the fastest to the buoy in the water and the set off in a sprint behind his cackling Uncle as he yelled that Napoleon had gotten and head start and that was simply, not fair.
two.
Victoria wasn’t stupid.
She knew all eyes were on her dad as he stood in the back of the room of her second grade classroom with all the other dads.
He looked very similar to all of them. They all nervously shifted from foot to foot, dressed in suits that they probably didn’t want to be in, and with hair that had most likely been cut just for the occasion.
But she knew better. Her daddy wore suits all the time cause he was a very important man who needed to travel all the time to meet other important people and he always wore suits and his hair always was the same length because she knew her mummy liked to cut it for him. And he was super big and cool because he could carry both her and Nikki in his arms when they were tired of walking and could lift her on his shoulders when she couldn’t see something.
She’d never been embarrassed of him before.
But there was a special day for all the grade twos because they were learning about all the different jobs there were and what they could be when they wanted to grow up so everybody had their dads come in to tell them what they did and their mums would come a week later. And Victoria felt different and embarrassed.
At Wesford Elementary School her daddy sounded different from everybody and looked different from everybody and even had a different job from most of her classmates. Jimmy’s daddy was a banker. And so was Mary’s and Macy’s and Jacob’s dad worked as an accountant, which she supposed was very similar. And most other dads worked at companies that they were told were white collar jobs.
Then her dad came up to the front and was almost taller than the blackboard and told them he worked as a foreign affairs specialist which meant that he worked for the government to talk to other governments. He explained he traveled a lot and took many planes and trains and cars. He told them that the job was very interesting because he got to go everywhere but at the same time it was difficult because he had to be away from home most of the time and couldn't be with his gorgeous daughter and Victoria blushed but felt proud. She remembered complaining about it when she was smaller so he balanced her on his knees and while he braided her hair, explained that his job was very important and that she would have to be a very big girl and be okay with him going off to do his very important things. Whenever she felt sad that he wasn’t there to congratulate her on her dance performances she remembered he was doing very important things and would always hug her when he was home.
But then she saw Conner and Westley snickering at a piece of paper and craned her neck to see it and…
Vic's dad speaks weird.
He forgets words too!
Victoria knew that he spoke different but she knew that that was because he didn’t grow up here and instead in some place called Russia and so sometimes he forgot small things.
So she took her eraser and flicked it at Conner’s head and glared at him and felt better.
The rest of her social studies class went well and she waved to her daddy and he waved back and she felt happy and proud again no matter if he sounded different and looked too big in her classroom and Mrs. Miller could barely pronounce his name. Thirteen minutes later she was dismissed from class and skipped down to her cubby and coat hook to find her lunch to bring back to the classroom when she heard two men talking.
“Couldn’t be a foreign affairs specialist, not with that build.”
“And he’s Russian, Jackson, why would we want a bloody Russian doing our country’s work?”
“But he’s English? I heard he has his papers.”
“He’s English in name but Russian by heart. I mean, look at him! Scar by his eye, shaking hands, and the way he fills that suit up. He’s a soldier. And I bet he’s shot up men. I bet he’s gone shooting with his kid.”
“Ritch, you can’t say that.”
“Yes I can. He might be a foreign affairs specialist but I bet that’s not all he does. ”
Victoria felt her eyes water. They were talking about her daddy in a rude way and thought that she was weird when the only weird thing about her was that she liked ketchup on her carrots. Victoria looked at her lunchbox and pondered for a moment. She knew her father had a scar on his eye and she knew his hands shook but he could still braid her hair just fine in the mornings. He sang her Russian lullabies to sleep and helped her with her ballet and he always told her the truth even if she didn’t like it.
She looked to her daddy talking to Mrs. Miller politely in the doorway and tried to imagine him being one of the scary men she saw in that bad movie that had her wrapping her arms around her daddy's torso and burying her face against the soft fabric of his night shirts, but she couldn’t.
Her daddy was her daddy.
He walked over to her and leaned down and kissed her forehead and wished her a good rest of her day and Victoria remembered to smile.
He had a very important job and she would always be proud to be his daughter.
three.
Nikki prided himself in being fast.
At least, fast for his size.
It was hard to play football when he was the shortest on the pitch and could easily be bowled over by his opponents, so he’d gotten creative with his speed. If they could use strength, he would use trickery.
After all, it was the game he’d been playing all his life being the baby of the family.
Sasha was graduating high school this year and he swam and boxed and was tall enough to not be thinking about his height all the time. Victoria seemed to get the best of both worlds from their parents with his mother’s tanned skin and dark hair and slim figure but some of their father’s height which enabled her to look graceful and dangerous at once, something that translating beautiful into her dancing.
And then there was him. Little Nikki because no school wanted to figure out that it wasn’t the English Nicholas, but Nikolaus, a German way to spell it instead. He had the blonde hair and blue eyes of his father but a tanner complexion from his mother that simply did not match his other physical attributes. What made it even worse was that he was short.
The only thing he had going was that he was smart. Much smarter than his other siblings. Sasha was intelligent enough but the athletics would always suit him and Victoria was a good student, but nothing like him. Nikki played chess with his father all the time and they were evenly matched this year as he absorbed more and more plays and styles of the game and thrived in it. He skipped a year in school and read history books for fun. He loved it when Uncle Napoleon would suddenly pop in at their place. Napoleon encouraged his love for language and they played games in which mid-conversation or even mid-sentence, they would switch languages and the other would have to as well.
He played football because his mind was much faster than his body, and found ways to complete plays and passes despite his small stature. Nikki knew how to make the best of a situation and would practice football with his mates for hours until the sun went down and he could collapse in bed.
Of course that plan was ruined by Uncle Napoleon sitting in the lounge, reading a newspaper when he got home.
“Hello, Nikki,” he said, not looking up from the newspaper, “Do you know what time Abendessen ist ? I’m quite famished and haven’t had dinner yet. Ja?”
“Nein. Mama und Papa bringen Abendessen es auf dem Rückweg vom Flughafen mit.,” Nikki said, effortlessly switching languages, “Что вас сюда привело, дядя Наполеон?”
“Ah. Dinner on the way home from the airport…” Napoleon mused, “They never were true gourmets for food,” he frowned and looked up to Nikki from his seat in the chair, “Would you like me to whip something up while we wait?”
Nikki shrugged. He noticed that Napoleon had ignored his question he’d asked in Russian about why he was here, so it was most likely for the talks occurred behind closed kitchen doors.
Napoleon hummed happily, knowing their kitchen quite well, and fetching things from the various cupboards, “Where are the other two?”
Nikki paused. Sasha would probably come home next morning smelling of alcohol and girls from the party. Vic would be home around eleven after her rigorous dance training.
“パーティー。ダンスの練習。” he responded.
“Ah,” Napoleon smiled, looking down at him, “I see all three of you are busy,” he nodded at his muddy football kit.
Nikki nodded, “¿Qué le gustaría beber?”
“Scotch on the rocks, por favor.”
Nikki busied himself making the drink and sat on the counter, staring at Napoleon.
Something was slightly different.
Nikki wasn’t quite sure what it was. Whether it was something physical or emotional, he couldn’t tell. He’d often guessed that Uncle Napoleon Solo was not the man that he showed himself to be. To Nikki, the first memory he had of the man was of him carrying him in his left arm and soothingly rubbing his back with his right, softly murmuring to him that it would be ok. It was when Sasha had appendicitis and needed to go into surgery and Nikki didn’t understand and thought he was dying. In that memory he felt comfort from the man, but also sympathetic understanding.
“Are you dying?” he asked suddenly, not quite sure why.
Napoleon stopped and looked over at the twelve year old, “No,” he frowned, “What on Earth has you thinking that?”
Nikki shook his head, “No reason. You’re just different today.”
Napoleon smiled, “Quite astute,” he paused, turning back to the stove not facing him, “Would you like to know why?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer the question, but went with an, “If you don’t mind.”
Napoleon continued to stir the carrots and broccoli, frying in the skillet as he calmly answered, “I was shot.”
“What?”
Napoleon unbuttoned his shirt to show a white undershirt and showed Nikki his bandaged right shoulder, “I was shot,” he repeated.
Nikki leaned forwards, “Why? How? Who?”
“Well Nikki, in my profession, I deal with some people who are very paranoid.”
It was true. Napoleon was an enthusiastic arts collector as well as an appraiser for gemstones and jewelry. He had a shop in Paris and a showroom in America, but travelled around the globe, locating, bartering, and trading the rare valuable metals and rocks of the Earth and the masterpieces of artists. Nikki heard stories of clients who were paranoid of thieves attempting to get their jewelry or paintings, or ones that were convinced that Napoleon was lying when he told them that they had fakes instead of the legitimate treasures.
“Today, I was dealing with a rather rude Italian client who decided that,” he paused, giving Nikki a look that a parent would give to a child, “I was rather half brained.”
Nikki snorted.
“I appraised his mother’s gold and sapphire brooch, only to realize that some of the sapphires had been recut, and rather crudely. It devalued the price. He got rather angry.”
Nikki decided to pour another round of scotch into Napoleon’s finished glass.
“Thank you.”
“Are you okay?” Nikki frowned, “And the plane ride! How did you manage that?”
“Not very comfortably.”
Then the doorbell rang and Nikki opened the door for his parents. They sighed as soon as they saw Napoleon holding a bowl of stir fry and chopsticks questioningly.
“Cowboy.”
“Peril. Gaby.”
Nikki took his father’s suitcase and moved it off to the side as they shed their jackets. Illya’s movements seemed a bit stiff and he had bags under his eyes.
“Thank you, Nikki,” Gaby smiled, “Good football practice?”
He nodded.
“Nikki, could you just give us five minutes? Perhaps bring daddy’s bag upstairs? This conference was quite tiring for him,” she kissed the top of his head.
“Yes, Mum.”
“Thank you.”
She left him in the hall with the large suitcase and he looked at it with narrowed eyes. His dad never packed light.
A minute later he was breathing heavily at the top of the stairs and pushing the suitcase into the master bedroom, finally happy that he was done moving the wretched thing. He stretched his back popping it and something caught his eye.
His hands were slightly black.
He tried to clap it off but some of it stayed and now that he was away from the kitchen the bag smelled a bit weird. Nikki slowly brought his hand up to his face and took a small sniff, then he slightly dabbed a finger on his tongue. He’d never actually smelled it before, or seen it, but that didn’t matter.
His mind raced, faster than it felt like it ever had making connections. In the same night Uncle Napoleon was shot and Illya smelled like gunpowder.
Nikki looked in the direction of the stairs that led to the kitchen where he could hear the sounds of voices but no actual words and for the first time in his life, he was genuinely curious as to what was said behind the closed door of the kitchen.
four.
Boxing was one of the few things that could calm him.
Swimming was fun, it hyped him up, filled him with adrenaline and made his body vibrate in excitement.
But boxing, Sasha had to smile as sweat dripped off his forehead and he drank from his water bottle. It made him feel strong and powerful and capable. He could express his anger at school or petty annoyances in his punches. It was a sport that would suit him. He was over six foot but big enough to look even taller. He could pick up his eleven year old brother with one arm and throw him in the swimming pool with ease. His sister could beat him to the initial punch but after that he could beat her in a fight.
Sasha couldn’t beat his old man at a fight though.
There he was, calmly undressing his hands from the boxing tape, and with a sheen of sweat over his body but not looking like he’d spent much effort like Sasha did. Sasha knew he was breathing loud enough for his father to hear across the room, but he couldn’t even hear a single breath from him. His friends whispered around him, congratulating him on the fight, and commenting about the execution. One thing was very, very clear.
Illya Kuryakin was an animal.
He could smile those small knowing smiles all he wanted, he could be the coach of Wesford’s Boxing and Judo Gym and spend hours with a large smile on his face teaching little ones how to throw a proper punch, he could explain the weirdest of chemistry ideas in a way that Sasha would understand, but he couldn’t completely keep Sasha’s mind at rest.
No foreign affairs specialist needed to be as big and work out as well as him, and Sasha was calling bullshit on the 10k daily morning runs that Illya did for fun.
He called bullshit on the story as to why he had so many gunshot wounds when he was smaller –his diplomatic party was ambushed and was he caught in the crossfire- but there were too many scars to be explained. The one next to his left eye. The many on his hands. One that looked scarily like the beginning of a word in Russian. Illya called them ‘unfortunate accidents’ that was part of the job.
Sasha called them complete lies.
Sasha knew he wasn’t as smart as his sister and that Nikki was probably able to be at his grade level if he really wanted, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew when something wasn’t right, and he knew when to speak up or shut up and when to push somebody or offer them a shoulder in support. He might not be good academically, but being a genuine person was what counted, and he wondered why his father and perhaps mother weren’t.
Illya wasn’t the only one with scars. His mum who was half a foot shorter than him and probably weighed less than 55 kilos was scarier than his dad. Illya was big and angry and once even punched the wall without breaking his hand in front of Sasha. He was always having to take deep breaths and count to ten, and couldn’t stand traffic for the life of him without flipping somebody off. Gaby was a different kind of angry. An anger that never got loud and violent but something slow and slippery and more lethal. The kind that waited for him to arrive home at 3am in the morning to question where he’d snuck out to with extreme nonchalance and a glass of wine. The quiet terrifying kind. The kind that tells you they've done worse to better people and aren't afraid to go further. The odd scar running on her tanned skin proved that.
Then there was Uncle Napoleon who made way too many bug and insect jokes and it finally clicked.
When the rest of the family was out on one of the rare and precious days he had alone in the house he made it his mission, and a boyish glee came out and he was grinning as he had a mission and how cool did that sound!
It was only confirmed when he found a mysterious little black thing behind a family picture hanging in the stairwell and another strange glass looking thing that was disguised in the chandelier and the orange envelope hidden on the underside of a kitchen drawer filled with fake passports and lots of money for the whole family did it really sink in.
His parents were spies.
Or they could have been wanted by some organization, or something and his dad worked for the government. Perhaps he worked for a different branch than what everybody else thought…Sasha stood in the living room arms crossed, pacing trying to plan out his next move.
While they hadn’t really gone out of their way to convince their children otherwise, they still had fake names for their jobs and fake stories for their pasts, so Sasha decided that his parents would prefer if this was a secret that stayed a secret. But what if he made it a secret that he knew about their secret? How spy like. Yes, Sasha smiled. He would play innocent and act the way he’d been acting for the last seventeen years and it would be fine.
Of course that didn’t stop him from having a James Bond marathon.
five.
“Illya, he needs clothes.”
“No,” his father said firmly from the table, “We wait until we get back.”
Nikki sunk down in his chair putting his head down and shoveling cereal into his mouth despite it being noon.
It’d innocently started a week ago with his mother stating that he was astonishingly hungry and sleeping a lot these days and him responding that perhaps he was finally growing because his legs had been hurting him recently. Then somehow in a week he’d grown enough to make him need new clothes.
Nikki looked at his father, massive at the table despite sitting down and then at his mum, looking quite judgmentally at the man with a wooden spoon in her hand from cooking up tomato soup for a quick lunch before their departure.
“And why, would we do that?” she questioned.
“He is growing.”
Nikki looked up suddenly. He was?
“Illya…”
He looked up firmly, “I had my doubts, but Nikki is like me. He will grow too fast to make it worth it to buy new ones. It is summer anyways. Nobody to impress.”
The look his mother gave could kill, “They’re clothes Illya!”
“That he will not fit in two months. Guaranteed.”
Gaby sighed, “This isn’t Russia.”
“I know. But I was not allowed another set of clothes-” and he suddenly stopped and sighed, “It was very hard for me to buy new ones with the money I had.”
Nikki frowned back at his bowl of Cheerios. This was always happening. Whenever there was an argument his parents would sometimes say something, only to slightly change it. The only time it didn’t happen was when they were fighting alone and the sound carried throughout the house.
“It’s okay mum,” Nikki said, “I’m probably not growing anyways.”
Then Illya turned to him seriously, “Nikolaus,” he would sometimes call him by his full name, “While we are gone, if you grow, do not hesitate to borrow anything, yes?”
Nikki nodded and sighed as he glanced to the two bags in the hall of the house. His parents were going on a month vacation and anniversary, as well as meeting up with Napoleon throughout Europe. They’d been planning it for months, and with the reassurance that Nikki was the most responsible child and in Year Ten, that he would be fine.
“I won’t,” he promised, nodding his head and Illya smiled, his eyes sparkling with happiness.
“Gaby?” he asked his wife.
She looked up.
“Can you take a picture?”
Nikki fought the urge to groan. His dad, no matter how big and scary he could be, was really the biggest dork that had ever walked upon the Earth.
He would never drink his coffee unless it was black. If anybody ever brought up something about Russian he would pounce upon it, with intense pride of his motherland. He’d practically forced Sasha to learn Russian despite the boy being awful at language and he cried when Victoria performed Swan Lake with her ballet group. Nikki wasn’t sure, even to this day if his father was obsessed with fashion, or simply liked arguing with his mother over what they were going to wear to fancy events.
And perhaps worst of all; he was an avid photographer.
Every stage of their lives was properly documented and in his office were thick binders, three of which were labelled for each of his children and two for Gaby. Nikki had had to hide the pictures around their house of his childhood due to sheer embarrassment when they had company or his mates dropped by.
Gaby sighed a happy sigh and took the camera that was always ready and waiting to be used in the living room and took a picture of Illya with his arm around his shoulder and a proud smile. Then Nikki had one with just him and Gaby looking the ever happy husband and wife and Nikki saw his father writing “The Morning – Day 1” in Russian and the intense recording of the month long trip had begun.
But he helped his parents with their luggage and drove them to the airport to wave goodbye and receive crushing hugs and last minute reminders to feed the cat that wasn’t really theirs but they still fed, to get enough sleep, and to eat healthily.
“I’ll be fine,” he promised.
Three and a half weeks later Nikki was laughing at the irony of his last words.
“I’ll be fine,” he groaned to himself clutching his toe and swearing colorfully in the many languages he knew.
His shoes did not fit. His shirts were unbearable and he’d taken to simply walking around the house without one. He’d gotten sunburnt because of his new strange exhaustion and had fallen asleep in the sun. His back had stretch marks and the ache in his legs were a constant. He’d fallen down the stairs when his calved cramped. Nikki constantly checked his BMI in wonder and fear as it moved radically. His head banged the bunk-bed in his room that was now his own because Sasha had moved out. The garage door had banged his head too many times to count. The cat that they’d adopted had kittens and for the first day of his life he felt terrified that he was too big for something and hands were going to hurt the tiny balls of puff that had high pitched mews if he gripped them too tight.
It was with relief that he remembered way too late the words that Illya had said on their day of departure and he’d flung himself up the stairs two by two to search for a shirt that would fit him.
Nikki almost cried when he buttoned up a black shirt and it felt comfortable. He rapidly pulled clothing from that half of the closet and then promptly stubbed his toe which was why he was on the ground feeling death in his right foot and cursing this new thing called clumsiness.
When the pain was gone, Nikki surveyed the closet with a much more critical eye. While Illya was perhaps one of the best dressed dads out of his friends, he still dressed like a dad and Nikki wouldn’t have been caught dead in half of the clothes he wore. He decided to spend his morning going through the closet finding the items that would get him by for five days until his parents came home.
Halfway through the search and filled with glee from finding absurd amounts of old 60s clothing that had been packed away for most likely sentimental purposes, he’d found a briefcase and opened it.
In this suitcase there were no old relics of the past.
Or perhaps they were, Nikki realized with slow dread as his hands shook and went through the briefcase. There were papers. Papers upon papers upon papers. Accompanying the papers were pictures, all with a red X drawn over them and even worse, a newspaper clipping about their deaths. Most of them claimed to be accidents. At the very bottom was a soft bag with a chord and he wasn’t sure what to expect to find but his hand gripped cold hard metal and he felt sick.
The next five days slowly ate away at him and he decided that the best course of action was to sleep and accept all the sudden strangeness in his life and wait for Saturday.
Then Saturday came and he didn’t know what to do until he heard the familiar sound of a car in the driveway and fear shook his body. He opened the door to welcome his parents then anger flooded his mind and he glared at his father and took the gun out of the waistband of the sweatpants that he borrowed and held it at his chest level, careful to point it at the ceiling despite checking that there was no ammunition.
“What the hell is this?” he growled in Russian, ignoring the fact that perhaps he didn’t have to look up so much to his father and he now was looking a fair amount down at his mother.
And then his father shocked him the most by turning to his wife and with a smug smile, “I told you.”
He looked at his mother incredulously as she opened her purse and handed him a ten pound note.
As if they didn’t even care he had a gun in his hand, one with a silencer on it, Illya have him a casual side glance as he opened up his wallet and tucked the money in it, “I won the bet. You grew over two inches," he squinted, "Just under six feet now."
Nikki was ready to scream.
Then Illya seemingly noticed the gun for the first time since they’d entered, “Took you long enough. Victoria beat you to it when she was eight. Sasha,” he sighed, “Ignorance is bliss.”
“What?”
“I of course, had my money on you,” his mum sighed as she pulled sunglasses off her face, “But Victoria found the suitcase when you three were playing hide and seek.”
Nikki lowered the gun and looked up to his dad. Never before did his eyes ever look dangerous, or the scars scare him but now…he took a step back, “You’re an assassin! You’ve murdered people! How can you live with what you’ve done? Look at us like that? After all that you've done?”
Illya sighed, “KGB had me kill, and UNCLE had me save.”
“The KGB?”
He nodded.
Nikki turned to Gaby, “And you’re okay with that?”
He watched his father kiss the top of his mother’s head, “She was fighting right beside me.”
“And you know it,” she murmured happily and Nikki really did not think that now was the time for a romantic moment.
Gaby sighed, “Well, I guess we have some explaining to do, but first off,” she gave him a terrifying glance that Nikki could only describe to be the mum-knows-what-you-did-don’t-ask-how glance, “We weren’t assassins.”
Illya smiled as Gaby stood up to her full height, “We were spies.”
one.
When Victoria was eight she was hiding in the closet when she found the gun and when it was her bedtime she asked her parents why her dad had a gun in the closet and so they told her they were spies.
She lived the rest of her childhood in fascination as to why they weren’t as interesting as James Bond.
She also lived the rest of her childhood in cloud of strange knowledge that the man who called himself Waverly was most likely not just her dad’s boss but somebody much more important. She could guess that Uncle Napoleon’s magic tricks were just the tip of the iceberg on what he could also make disappear. On her father’s 50th birthday he got a card from the Prime Minister herself, and her mother getting a similar card on her 50th but from the Queen and she was the only one who knew why.
The novelty wore off when she realized just how hard it was to help carry the burden of a heavy secret. Victoria couldn’t just talk to her best friend and tell her she had spies for parents who definitely had killed and saved people’s lives and were on a first name basis with the Prime Minister. No, that wouldn’t do at all.
When Nikki realized what was up the weight felt significantly lighter as the two spent many evening just in awe at the fact that their parents were indeed, spies. They even realized that their parents had spent a large portion of time and money keeping them safe. There were false identities ready in case of an emergency. There were thousands of dollars in different currencies in many banks across the world in their name. There were two guns, ready to fire stashed around the house. And lastly, all of their children were athletic.
Sasha could box and fight, and could swim like a fish. Nikki could run for hours and hours due to his football training and his mind was like a computer. And when Victoria thought about it, her agility and speed was incredible from her dancing, and perhaps the few self-defense lessons her mother taught her in precautions of “in case a man comes onto you and you don’t want it, you need to be ready Victoria,” were a bit over the top because she didn’t just know how to stop unwanted advances, but practically leave the person in a hospital. No, Victoria was very sure that none of them had any plans on becoming a new generation of spies, but knowing that their parents had encouraged their hobbies with a slight ulterior motive was both interesting and frankly horrifying was quite the reality check.
Especially when she got a boyfriend and decided that it was serious enough to bring him over for dinner and he later asked her if his dad was a soldier.
It was horrible choosing between her family and the boy standing across from her, staring at her so deeply but she finally smiled, shook her head, "My father is simply a very big man who loves his daughter a lot," she comforts him and kisses him for good measure.
"Ah," he says, "You can't blame me for being worried then."
"Not at all."
It hurts to lie like this.
It lessens over time.
No, her mother was just a woman who grew up on the East side of Germany and that’s why she was sometimes so scary. No, her father was a foreign affairs specialist and he’d been caught in the crossfire once. No, they were simply who they said to be, despite a couple very weird coincidences.
There is hardly no sting anymore.
“After all, why would a Russian KGB spy and a spy from East Germany have children? Surely, they would have killed each other first,” she joked with Sasha and Nikki later when they were home for Christmas.
The two across from her gave her a knowing glance and laughed appropriately. She couldn’t have felt better when her father kissed the top of her head, his eyes sparkling. Her mother simply raised her eyebrow and poured her more eggnog.