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The world is spinning – veritably, irritably so, where everything pans in a blur, in a masterful of greying fringes, tinged by sunlight, rays edging to edges, to crevices, to the wall that he has been staring, and staring, and staring.
The grey is overwhelming, and so is the bile in his throat, the pressing pressure on his chest, as his stomach roils, and roils, and roils like the ocean churning, and churning, and churning. The taste of pizza is still there, and so is the grease, and so is everything else even after days of withholding anything to eat save for something bland, something easy like the crackers Yor had forced him to eat, or the wheat of the oatmeal she bought somewhere.
Sweat beads, sweat rolls down his forehead, down the length of his spine, and he is so unsure – about this collapse, about having Yor here day in and day out, about having insisted she stay after days on where she would find herself by his bedside, taking care of whatever heaving he carves out of his chest and the weeping of his sweat glands. There are so many things he is unsure of – just how he is so unsure how this has happened, how he had ended up being under the weather for days on end, the seventh today, and he is still pale.
The doctor did not help – no prescriptions to prescribe save for antacid, no diagnosis to the desperate to be diagnosed, just a hypothesis of over exhaustion and over exertion that befuddled him. Twilight has always been over exerted, pulled apart where needed, so this development is completely, entirely unlike himself.
Frankly, he isn’t sure if he is Twilight sometimes, most times nowadays. He isn’t sure who he is anymore.
The reflection in front of him sometimes doesn’t make sense – everything is askew, apart from the fact that he has gained weight and seemed to be losing hair; there’s still bags underneath his eyes, the same gaunt, haunt, but his eyes are different, clouded with a shimmer that is out of place.
A man that appears to be a stranger, and he wonders, could it be because he has been – no!
Because it can’t, it shouldn’t be – it wouldn’t, doesn’t make sense. If anything, the only reason he looks different is because he has aged, and WISE has been tormenting him with thousands of missions, and not to mention, the party he had thrusted himself in voluntarily, when it could have been so easy to say no.
Even though, he knows, deep within the crevices of his cold, aching heart, now seemingly warm, and beating in a panicked skitter, skitter, skitter, that the reflection in front of him started making less sense some months ago. Some months ago when he would care about the odd gashes on Yor’s skin more than he used to, or when she would appear consumed by insecurity and he would make it a point to fuss, to soothe, to understand more than he used to, or when he would stay, wait up for her even if it’s not required, or when his irksome had multiplied itself by tens when it came to her co-workers, or when he discarded his safety and prioritized Yor’s life, stepping in front of the barrel of the gun. Or, or, or…
It's endless, relentless, and he told himself, still tells himself that the ache, the weight on his chest has nothing to do with it. He just has a bad stomach flu, even when the doctors have told him he was fine, even when none of the symptoms in the endless books he has read does not fit the fluttering weight on his chest, the lack of appetite, the fatigue, and the change in everything else.
He had been hooked on an IV line, punctured with numerous needles, but it’s the same thing – nothing is wrong with him, even when there is, even when there should be. Admitted the same day, discharged the next – page after page, day after day, days on end of being told he is fine even though he suspects it might be IBS, or chronic fatigue, or ulcer, or gastroenteritis, or gallstones, or anything to put a name to this bug that he cannot seem to shake off.
He has recited the same symptoms – a migraine starting at the base of his skull to the socket of his eyes that is dizzying, a flutter in the wells of his stomach that is akin to nausea, a dislike to whatever food is on the table, sleep that averts him, a weight on his chest that feels a lot like a pressure cooker against his chest, and a warmth that never cease to ease. He had told them about it so many times, underwent too many tests for his wife and his daughter’s comfort, but they still resulted to the fact that he is fine.
Fine, fine, fine – even when he is not, especially when he is in close proximity with his wife, which happens to be every single day, every single night after the collapse, after they deemed it will be easier to care for him when she is right next to him.
But the thing is, it gets worse when she is near, when she is here – and Twilight has his suspicions, but it does not make sense!
It does not! Because he is not in love. Twilight does not fall in love. Twilight does not know love. Twilight cannot love. Twilight cannot, cannot, cannot – what is he even thinking? Why is he even thinking about this?
It’s unlike him. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not within his code, within the cells that make up Twilight – but is he Twilight anymore or have the lines blurred and he is Twilight and Loid Forger and the dead boy he had decided to bury so long ago?
Twilight runs a hand through his hair, and it doesn’t make sense – it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it doesn’t because there has to be a symptom, a diagnosis that has rendered him useless for seven days.
He doesn’t fall in love. This is not love. This is not, this is not, this not –
“Loid?”
The door opens to reveal his wife, and his heart does that funny thing where it decides to commit suicide, and plummets within the acrid acid of his stomach. He feels it flutter, feels the restlessness, and he thinks he is going to throw up once more.
Nonetheless, he thinks, she is a vision, the way her eyes are as red as rubies, her lips pursed and seemingly like rose petals arranged, her hair as stark as midnight, veiling features morphed into an expression of sympathy, of worry, and if he squints, love – no!
“Hm?” He says, under the scrutiny of her eyes as he fully turns to her, and disregards the ceiling he has been staring at for hours on end.
His back aches, his neck is protesting, and his heart screams: Yor, Yor, Yor!
Loid – no, Twilight wants to throw up. He wants to throw up, and he should, and maybe if he does, he will throw up this heart within his chest that is betraying his code, screaming her name.
“Are you okay?” She asks because of course she sees, of course she notices – she has always been perceptive, yet lately, she sees through to him so clearly as though he is opaque. He hates it – this opacity that has seemingly begun to become so futile, this language he has seemingly become fluent in and written on his face, this whatever this is that he cannot quite name, or rather does not want to.
“I’m alright, Yor,” he tells her, says her name like he is trying to find ground so desperately, but only finds a hearse, and a coffin that is her warmth, her name, and her eyes – so red – as funeral flowers – God!
She exhales a sigh of relief, her hand loosening its grip on the doorknob, her shoulders seemingly less taut as she side steps, and into his room. If this had been some months ago, Twilight would have had a panic attack, would have asked her to leave, but he is unsure if he is Twilight anymore, and he is sick, sick, sick he might as well be dying.
“Okay,” she tells him as she opens the door further, and Sylvia is there, and yes, of course, of course, he is dying, he is dying, he is dying. “One of the nurses came to visit you.”
Twilight pales, and Yor is immediately – his sweet, sweet, sweet wife – right next to him, pressing the back of her hand on his forehead, his neck, and his heart skitters, and so does his stomach, churning in warning. He’s about to throw up – his heart, his life, this, this, this – yet instead, he coughs, and it’s empty, empty, empty the way his heart should have been.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” She asks as she procures a warm towel, and erases each bead of sweat from his hairline, her eyes watered down rubies, so bright, so warm, yet so clouded with worry.
He reaches with the lack of judgment, and cups her jaw, in a way that inflicts war within her face, but also soothes something within her as though she is settling something in her chest as well. He nods, and he catches the look that Sylvia throws from across the room – perplexity, highlighted by the rise of a brow, and a quirk of a lip. He knows he has been perceived.
“I’m okay,” he tells her as he rubs the pad of his thumb against the corner of her lips, lips she has often used to press against his forehead some time into the three days of self-confinement.
Yor nods, something more to herself, as she inspects him further, takes in his pallor. She leaves the hot towel, now warm, on his forehead. “Alright – well, Nurse Nancy wanted to personally check on you, so I will leave you to it.”
There is a hesitation in her body that Twilight sees, and he eases a smile to ease the worries so littered within the planes of her shoulders. She takes it in – in stride, in a resolve more so to herself – and then takes her leave, pushing Sylvia into the room further with a polite smile that reaches her eyes despite how watered down her irises are.
The door clicks, and so does the logic behind his Handler’s visit. He knows he is in trouble, but in his defense, he had been thrown into numerous compromising situations that not only can be a threat to Strix, but to WISE and Twilight himself. And while his reputation is stellar, he is still human after all.
Twilight goes rigid, but he makes no effort to greet her, and averts his gaze to the ceiling, where the sunlight that is waning is more welcome than the piercing grey in her eyes. He sees her move towards the chair he often occupies when he is reading files in the middle of the night. It takes a toll on his stomach further, and he wishes Yor was here.
What an odd thought.
“You look terrible,” Sylvia says, breaking the silence, her tone curt, calculating, but within it, there is a hint of care, within the littlest of inflection. She will never admit it, though.
Twilight turns to face her, and he winces, as the knot on his neck protests due to the lack of use, or maybe because of the migraine – he truly does not know at this point. He watches Sylvia push her glasses up the bridge of her nose, and it’s apparent that she is by the pews, praying for patience.
“I went to the doctor,” he pauses, and in his head, adds, numerous times, “and they said I was fine,” he tells her, and there is a desperation in his tone that makes the statement so raw, incredibly so that she winces.
“Uh-huh,” she offers as she studies him, the greying steel of her gaze so sharp even under the guise that she has donned.
Twilight knows that there is something there – sees the cogs shift, the questions answered by herself. He knows that he’s caught, terribly so, but if there is one thing he is good at, it is lying by omission.
Sylvia knows his tells, knows it like the back of her hand, and someone else’s. Whatever he tries is futile. She has seen it miles away, months away, and yet, she’s here, patient, the way she had been patient when it was Nightfall.
“It’s like somebody put a weight on my chest,” he tells her as though she is the doctor herself, the doctor he has told so many times, many faces, many, may differing names under the same specialty, underneath the incandescent light of Berlint General Hospital, hooked into the IV line that, “my head is spinning, and my stomach is sick.”
She nods, and there is something by the way that she lifts her ankle to hook it above her thigh that tells Twilight that she knows. It unnerves him, so much so that he looks away, back to the ceiling that has become a friend when he couldn’t quite get out of bed.
Because what is he supposed to say? What is there to say – that he has jeopardized Strix despite trying to look for distractions, hoping the feeling passes despite it, despite this getting harder every day? Lying about a stomach ache is easy than saying that the SSS has coaxed a truth within him he has been trying to bury – that he has fallen so deeply in love with his wife he cannot carve his way out of the grave.
He shifts just as the door opens. He immediately looks towards the intrusion, and some part of him is thankful, as Yor comes in, sheepish with a tray in her hands, tea for both him and his Handler. She smiles that smile of hers where she’s trying to make herself seem small that Twilight finds himself, some times, most times, wanting to erase. She glances over at Sylvia, then over to him, where her smile becomes wide, gentler that causes his heart to stutter in the way that it mimics her name.
He hates it. He doesn’t.
“Hi, just, uh,” she says as she comes further in, and he watches Sylvia study him through the corner of her eyes. “It would be rude not to, and Loid needs to take his medicine so he can eat tonight – he hasn’t been eating lately, and I’m so worried. Oh, I hope you will be able to help him out! I know he has been out for a while, and I have been trying to nurse him to health – I’m such a terrible wife – “
“ – You’re a wonderful wife, Yor,” he interjects because he can’t have her taking responsibility for his imperfection.
It’s not her fault he’s in love with her – huh?
Regardless, he smiles at her – genuine, warm, something she can tuck in her chest, in her sleeves – and she does, by the way the lines on her forehead smoothens, and she approaches him without uncertainty. Twilight sits up, and takes the tea, just as she’s putting the medicine in his open, waiting mouth.
Sylvia, on the other hand, watches, mouth pressed into a thin line that he does not catch.
“You’re too kind, Loid,” his wife tells him, and before he can affix that she is fake, she is already out the door.
Twilight straightens, and actively avoids Sylvia’s piercing gaze through the rim of the teacup. He clears his throat, resting his rigid back against the headboard, and taps his finger absentmindedly on the ear of the cup as though to count seconds.
“I have done everything, but I’m not – “ feeling like myself, he wants to say, “I just – can’t get out of bed, it seems,” he tells her instead as he drinks, and drinks, and drinks, the way she drinks him in, in strategized silence.
What is there to say? How can he even say it when something so simple isn’t simple, when he is unsure if this is something he wants? That he has tried meditating the feeling away with a bottle of wine only for it to upset his stomach further, and render him useless?
Sylvia narrows her eyes at him, and he knows, he knows, he knows he has been read to filth. “Do you want my professional opinion?” She asks him, and it’s a trap, he knows.
Twilight swallows the scathing tea, and the chamomile is assaulting instead of relieving, but not enough to soothe the ache in his chest. The pain of love, and being so easily read is more painful, it seems – or rather, the pain of losing himself day by day.
“I – go on,” he replies because she will say it regardless, and it reminds him of the time when he had agreed to a Neo Strix that she had declined (thankfully).
“I know what’s wrong with you,” she begins, and he winces, because of course, she does. She mentored him. She raised him to be the man that he is. She spoke his language, even if it’s something she isn’t fluent in entirely, and oft times, disagreed with it (lately more so, than before).
Twilight inhales – and it’s sharp enough to forget every symptom he has listed – as he takes in the knowing underneath the sharpness of her gaze. “What is it?”
Sylvia watches him, the way she has watched him soften in front of Yor Forger, the way she watched him fight everything within himself to appear so genuine, so sincere, only to come defeated, watched him invite her in his space without second thought, watched him reassure her with the truth than a practiced lie.
She knows what’s wrong with him, the way she knew that Nightfall would sacrifice her life for him.
He would do the same thing for Yor Forger.
And it’s unlike him – so transparent, so, so, so…
“Yor is what’s wrong with you,” and the way his face shatters, tells her she’s right, and that he’s lying to himself about this not being what he wants.
Because he does want this, and that’s exactly what’s wrong with him.
Or so, he thinks. Sylvia, on the other hand, thinks that what’s entirely wrong with him is trying to outrun it to the point of collapse, point of ruin.
But, that’s a lesson for another time.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Yor is what’s wrong with you.”