Work Text:
Let's fast forward to three hundred takeout coffees later,
I see your profile and your smile on unsuspecting waiters.
You dream of my mouth before it called you a lying traitor;
You search in every maiden's bed for something greater.
—
40 D - (7) Neckties [see attached footnotes for breakdown]
170 D - (2) Suits [see attached footnotes for breakdown]
—
He receives the itemized list of every purchase and reimbursement submitted during his two years working Operation Strix. It’s three months into his current mission. Two countries away.
Across the bright blue face of a sticky note, his handler has written: Read it. Review it. Make sure it’s right. If you find any mistakes, correct them. Send it all back to me. The altered amount will appear in your account in 14 business days.
The folder holds all of five pages, front and back. More than he’d expected, less than he’s comfortable with—but that’s his own fault. He had, after all, stopped submitting expense reports towards the end. Cumbersome, he’d thought. Tedious.
Stupid, his mind had whispered as he’d logged the first time he’d brought home roses.
—
2 D - (1) Keychain, Skeleton
70 D - (1) Full Outfit — Cruise [see attached footnotes for breakdown]
—
“Papa?”
He jerks from his giggling company, the sear of her touch on his arm burning cold. Goosebumps. A little girl—hazel eyes, hair the color of wood chips—stares up at him from a few tiles away. Surrounded by grocery shelving and tin cans, his heart fights itself in his throat.
He remembers to smile. “Hi, sweetheart.” Slick, easy, cool. (Not Loid Forger.) (Exhausted). “Are you lost?”
“You’re not my Papa.”
“Afraid not. Do you need help finding him?”
She takes a wary step back, childish accusation and apprehension in her gaze. She shakes her head. “No. Papa told me not to talk to strangers.”
He watches her disappear around the corner, thoughts hollow.
—
300 D - (1) Keychain, Sheep
—
She is nearly as tall as her mother now. Still awkward, yet more normal than he remembers. There are no paws scuffing tile this time.
“Hello?”
“I must have the wrong address.”
Her long stare believes him. (Does she?) “Alright.”
When one door closes, a deeper voice slips past the crack. Not the usual one. “Who was it?”
“Nobody we know.”
“‘We?’ I don’t associate with your ilk, Forger.”
No ruckus, no blood. Ten years later, her name hasn’t changed. Neither has her laughter.
—
12 D - (1) Lipstick
—
In bed, unfamiliar skin draped like tape over his chest, she says, “You’re good with kids.”
Smoke trails off the end of his cigarette, casting hazy white stripes, reaching for the ceiling and disappearing before he can remember when he picked the habit back up.
“I like them,” he murmurs as he reaches over her to stamp out the ashen end.
“That’s really attractive.”
“Is it?”
“You don’t know?” When he shakes his head, her lips—swollen, stained, re-painted stoplight red—curl at the corners. “That makes it even more attractive.”
He smiles (feels every muscle). She draws herself up, duvet slipping down her hips. They kiss. The next morning, he drops her off at her father’s mansion. In his apartment, wig off, facing the mirror as he scrubs the moles dappled under his bottom lip, his eye, his disguise, he sees the bleeding gash across his collar, only to realize it’s a lipstick print.
(Exhausting.)
—
240 D - (12) Lessons, Swimming — Weekly
—
One of his assignments puts him in Ostania for the first time in four months. He gives into one of his baser, more deeply smothered desires.
Under the guise of a salesman, he knocks. When it’s Anya who opens the door, he forgets the script. She stares right at him. She comes to his chest now. “Hi.”
Behind her shoulder, the inside has changed. His palm sweats around the handle of the suitcase. “Hey, kiddo! Is your ma home?” Square-shaped syllables press through his lips, corners clattering against hardwood beneath his feet.
“She can’t come to the door.”
The script stumbles. He knows she’s home. He saw her entering. He scrambles to correct himself, but one unraveled thread undoes the whole tapestry. “Uh—”
“And my Papa’s dead.”
Right. “I… I’m sorry.”
“Okay.” She slides the door shut until all he’s left with is a single eye. Under the brightly lit light of the landing, it glows up at him like carefully curtained judgment, and he is the prosecuted. “I don’t think you should come back.”
Right. “I’ll… I’ll let my boss know to take you off the list.”
“Okay.”
—
30 D - (1) Men’s Cologne
6 D - (1) Hair Gel
—
He grows used to being touched and touching, to the heat of skin and the facsimile of intimacy, vulnerability. Kissing through plastic sheets, slipping cold hands between rib cages to grasp at pumping hearts, then pulling away and changing face.
Every body slips between his. He grows used to the intrusive thought: Yor and I never touched much, did we?
He gets used to how wrong it feels. He’s not sure which part.
—
730 D - (730) Newspaper
—
“Yor?”
Standing opposite him in a cold clearing, she flinches. The lines carved around her eyes, her face, canvas joy. Her terror is unfamiliar. Her knuckles clench tighter, bleeding white around her weapon. “Pardon?”
Layers deep in costume and makeup, Twilight remains unrecognizable. Unknowable. But he stares at her face, still familiar even with the age that's painted across her features, adding details that only make her prettier. She stares back, uncomprehending. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, making clouds with every syllable, watching the truth spiral up and disappear. “You’re in my way.”
Later, stumbling back to his car while he bleeds red in rivers down his side, he’ll wonder how he missed all the signs. But where there should be pain, there is only relief.
—
13 D - (1) Backpack
85 D - (1) School Uniform — Eden Academy, Primary
85 D - (1) Textbooks [see attached footnotes for breakdown]
—
Summer greens and blues blur past the train window on the way to his next assignment. He flips through the folder, scanning each line, but in lieu of numbers and names, he sees the accusation in bright green eyes, the mud they make with grief. He sees beady, black eyes frowning at him from over their snow white bank.
They don’t know (they can’t) (can they?), but he can’t shake the feeling she’s always watching. Even so many countries away, the look in those always-prying, always-seeking eyes chases him.
The longest days are always bottle green.
—
60 D - (30) Movie Ticket
46 D - (23) Popcorn, Family Size
—
The years paint every window. It never stays green long enough, it never passes green fast enough. From the corner of the street, he always sees red.
—
400 D - (3) Medical, Pediatrician
120 D - (1) Medical, Pediatrician — Emergency Call [see attached footnotes for breakdown]
—
When he sees her these days—finds her—the weight pulling her shoulders down grows lighter. More and more each time, until her spine pulls straight again, until her head is back in the clouds. Until she grows towards the sky again, not the ground.
Until she is as she should be.
—
40 D - (8) Toilet Paper — 12 pack
13 D - (8) Toothpaste
—
“You’re not allowed to change your mind later.”
“When have I ever changed my mind?”
“I’m just warning you.”
“I won’t change my mind. Send the obituary to the paper.”
—
600 D - (3) Medical, Veterinarian
—
Some missions are less of a commitment. Those missions, despite his best efforts, chase him to Ostania in his downtime. He takes the train, one stop, two, three. Sometimes eight, sometimes 15, two hours waiting for a destination he shouldn’t be stopping at.
He busks on sidewalks, vends miscellaneous wares, watches the crowds. Different hair, different glasses, different uniform every time. Pink hair passes by—frequent, no accompanying sidelong glances—while out on walks, while running errands, while growing up.
It’s cold for too long before the world bursts into color again. He sees Yor for the first time. There are lines around her eyes he doesn’t remember. Her smile is heavier than his memory supplies on claustrophobic nights, when somebody else’s breath clouds his judgment.
She looks exhausted.
—
170 D - (24) Dog Food
6 D - (1) Dog Leash
6 D - (1) Dog Collar
—
Another friction point soothed, another friction point to mend. He adjusts the bowtie of his uniform as he skims the restaurant for his newest target. 2100 in red, the cipher had said.
Five minutes past nine, one of the seasoned servers lets him know he’s just had a table seated. “Thanks,” he says, grinning broadly (exhausting).
As he nears the table, he double takes. Not the short, styled bob he’d been briefed with, but a long sheet of black cascading over knit red. A headband—red, not white. Gold earrings. Before logic shakes him by his shoulders, he says, “Yor?”
The woman turns. Brown eyes. Surging disappointment. He twists the urge to frown into a smile.
“My…?”
“Sorry. I must have been thinking out loud. You’re beautiful. That’s all.”
Her eyes widen. She flushes, coy, but the smile that stretches over her face is anything but. “Why, thank you.”
“Of course. Now, can I get you and your…?”
“Friend.”
“Can I get you and your friend started with drinks?”
—
200 D - (1) Cavalierhaus, Dinner
300 D - (1) Zur Waage, Dinner
—
At the end of the night, the hostess hands him a napkin. Scrawled across it is his target’s phone number and a looping Call me.
He will. He does. He ends up in her bed.
It’s the expected outcome. She’s cold to the touch. After, in a boxcar of a room, he heaves into porcelain.
—
60 D - (6) Cakes
6 D - (1) Candle, 7
6 D - (1) Candle, 8
6 D - (1) Candle, Assorted — 12 pack
—
His seventh mission post-Strix takes him back to Ostania for the second time in three years. The timing is a coincidence.
“I have a surprise for you at home!” says Yor when Anya flies into her arms.
“Cake!” yelps Anya.
Yor balks. “How did you know?!”
“‘Cause you always buy me cake for my birthday!”
“Oh, I guess I’ve become predictable,” moans Yor.
Anya laughs and takes her hand. “I like that about you, Mama.”
Her words cast a shadow. Twilight feels the cool of it from this distant bench. Anya and Yor turn to head towards the apartment—they’ve planted more trees along the street, updated the landscaping in a swathe beyond this home—and for a brief second, he could swear Anya’s eyes sweep over him, her gaze more blue than green from this far away.
But they disappear into the entrance of 128 Park Avenue, so Twilight takes off, too.
—
182784 D - (24) Rent
1700 D - (24) Utilities
—
“I love you,” they say, he says, they lie, he lies.
We never said that, did we? He ponders beside breathing forms, unnameable nothingness the pulse in his chest, the slip through his veins darker than this closed room.
I never told her.
—
36 D - (17) Coffee, To-go
—
The last time he visits (he should stop) (he has to) (this isn’t proper) (it’s inappropriate) (it could cost him his job) (it could cost him much more than that) is three years ago.
On the alcove outside 128 Park Avenue, Yor smiles into the light spilling out of the landing. She nods, laughs, and steps into warmth Twilight hasn’t felt in years. He follows her, helpless, a moth drawn to the glow.
Somebody else helps her up the stairs, holds her hands outside their apartment door. She tells him she loves him, face red. He smiles, and returns the same words to her. Their door opens, their daughter shouts in glee, about time! They step in together.
Before the last of them disappears inside, she turns, evergreen eyes finding him in the shadows. The corners of her mouth fall just enough, landing softer than snow. She shakes her head, just enough to make out. To know it’s for him. Then she turns away, smile curling back up her face, becoming brightness that is no longer for him. Shades of red and green that are no longer his to celebrate.
The door shuts. Twilight descends, back into cold, unfeeling arms, into dissolving cigarette smoke and ash. The sun will come up as it always does.
Loid Forger dies for the last time.
—
2142 D - (30) Long Stem Roses, Red — Bouquet, 24 [see attached footnotes for date of omittance]
—
Fuck it up, laugh it off, and I lost you.
If I pull through, is it too soon?
Turn it up, close my eyes, then I’m with you.