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Despite his namesake, Agent Twilight most often preferred working under the cover of complete darkness. He had long since been attuned to orienting himself in the absence of light, sensing the heat of an opponent’s body or the predicted movement of their next attack. At this point it was mere child’s play to him, but that didn’t make it any less useful. It was impossible to cast a shadow in the dark.
Twilight pulls the cover of his mask up to his nose, trying to block out the never-ending sheets of dust that swirled up around him. The entire warehouse was full of it, piled on top of metal racks and long-forgotten platforms stacked high up to the ceiling. It smells solidly of unbound mold, and the building itself creaks and groans like it was just waiting for the chance to tumble to the ground. But he mustn’t give it the chance to betray his presence. Not yet.
Voices float up from below, and he shifts slightly to gain a better view of them from his chosen rafter arched high above. Eleven in total, each of them armed and talking in low voices. Twilight strains to hear them better, not wanting to come closer until it was absolutely necessary.
“—better pay us real good tonight. It’s getting harder and harder to hide our tracks these days.”
“Where’s Hawkins at, the boss should be here any moment—”
“Quiet!”
There’s a sudden grunt, and a hushed silence falls over the group. Muffled footsteps fall in succession over a carpeted floor of dust. The figure’s hidden partially from his view, but Twilight can already assess the newcomer. Over six feet tall, probably around 190 centimeters if he had to guess. Slightly overweight based on how hard his boots are hitting the ground. His voice comes out strained and raspy. “Good evening, gentlemen. I apologize for my tardiness, but it seems out dear Mr. Hawkins was trying to rat us out to the SSS. Such a mess, I’m afraid, and all over my newest suit. Ah, well…”
Twilight baits his breath as he silently creeps onto a lower rafter, committing every word of their newest plan to memory. Compromised positions, relocation to a different city, moving tonight—
His eyes widen. That didn’t give him very much time at all, a tiny window of opportunity before the situation fell out of his hands. This was supposed to be a simple stakeout, not a full-blown trafficking bust. But if that’s what it came down to…
Twilight grits his teeth, a thousand different possible scenarios running through his mind while still clinging onto every word of the conversation below. Just give me the locations, that’s all I need. Where in the hell are you hiding them?
He’s seriously considering using brute force by means of interrogation when the front door to the warehouse bursts open from below, and one of the thugs is thrown into the opposite wall almost immediately, a golden needle protruding from his heart.
“Oh, shit!” he hears one of the surviving gunmen yell. “It’s her!”
She is quite the sight to behold—a pure aura of unparalleled strength and agility that he’d been on the receiving end more times than he’d like to admit. But he doesn’t have time to watch her. Already she’s making a clean sweep of the scene as her blades barely miss his intended target by an inch. He jumps down from the rafter and rolls onto the ground amongst the thronging chaos, making a beeline for their retreating leader who looks at their uninvited assassin like she’s materialized straight from hell. Twilight’s mildly surprised that the Garden sent her here tonight, but he should have expected it at this point. Sloppy, once again.
There’s a call for reinforcements ringing throughout the empty warehouse as their boss sprints through the open door, but Twilight manages to hurl a tracker underneath his target’s pantleg before the man disappears into an awaiting getaway car. He’s just about to follow when he’s quite literally swept off his feet, his back hitting hard against the cold, cement floor before he can even register what’s happening. His attacker easily detaches his gun from his grip and pins his arms uselessly above his head.
“So you’re the last one,” she pants, and his blue eyes meet her crimson ones in an instant.
It was unmistakable—the scent of roses and blood mixed on her breath. He feels it hot against his cheek, the tip of her golden needle poised just above his throat as the weight of her body restrains him beneath his would-be-assassin.
Twilight smiles up at her. “You here to finish me off, Sweetheart?”
The Thorn Princess stares down at him in surprise. Her cheeks tinge bright red with her mouth slightly open, and he commits the sight to memory. This is a chase he’ll never get tired of. She shakes her head, trying to regain what little was left of her composure. “Agent Twilight, how unexpected. I suppose I could spare your life tonight.”
“Much obliged,” he smirks. “I assume we’ve been assigned the same mission by accident again?”
She nods, blinking down at him as though she still can’t quite believe he’s really there. “Apparently. I have a requested hit for Jack Messina by the Garden. We have evidence that he’s been behind those terrorist bombings that happened a few weeks ago by the shopping mall. What about you?”
“Hmm. Same man, but for charges of human trafficking.”
“Some bastard.” She releases her grip on his wrists and helps him to his feet, her needles tucked securely back into the holster at her thigh. Her face is still slightly flushed. “I’m sorry if I interrupted any plans of yours.”
Twilight shakes his head and takes out the small device that was still tracking the location of his current target. “No, I was in a need of a good distraction. Besides, we can catch him on the east side of the river if we take a shortcut through midtown.”
“Do you need him dead or alive?”
Twilight turns, recognizing the familiar glower in her eyes. That’s right. The Thorn Princess still had a mission to complete, and he certainly wasn’t going to be the one to stop her.
He picks up the last of her discarded needles from the ground and hands it back to her. “My mission only requires that I get the locations of the trafficking fronts. According to my intel, there should be five hidden around the city. After that, he’s all yours.”
“Well then, let’s get started,” she says, wiping a splatter of blood off her cheek and setting her shoulders back in determination.
Twilight cocks his head and smirks. “Since when was this a partner mission?”
“If you even think about pulling the line, ‘I work alone,’ you’ve got another thing coming.”
There’s a low grumble outside the warehouse as dozens of armored vans skid to a halt in front of the building, filled with gunmen spilling out of them one by one with murderous expressions on their faces. “You won’t get out of there alive, Thorn Princess!”
“There’s those reinforcements,” his partner sighs beside him.
Twilight tugs on his gloves, loaded gun in hand, his back to hers. A sizable supplementation of reinforcements to send, but really, against a famed secret agent’s wife who also happened to be one of the world’s most feared assassins?
Some people just never learn.
-
“I assume Anya’s with Franky tonight?”
Yor sits next to him on their bed, her face furrowed up in concentration as she threads a small needle through the skin just below his shoulder, his bloodied shirt discarded on the floor. She shakes her head. “No, Becky actually invited her over for an impromptu sleepover a couple hours after you left. They even wanted Bond to come in order to act out—will you sit still, Loid?”
He laughs, loving how his albeit fake alias sounds coming from her lips. “Apologies, Princess. I’m afraid I’ve never been very patient when it comes to dressing my own wounds.”
“So I’ve noticed,” she clips. “And don’t call me that at home.”
“What would you prefer, then? Honey? Darling?” He raises an eyebrow, wondering if he dares with a needle in her hand. “Baby?”
She lightly smacks him on the chest. “Just Yor is fine. And stop using your 'twilight mode' on me. It’s not real.”
“I could show you something real.”
His wife glares at him before breaking off the last of the thread with her teeth. “Bathtub. Now.”
Loid throws his hands up in surrender. “I’m going, I’m going.” But then he takes her hand, rubbing circles into her calloused knuckles. “And if I asked you to join me? We’re both a little worse for the wear.”
Her cheeks take on a familiar rosy hue, and he leads her to the bathroom to where she’s already filled up the tub with steaming hot water. With torn outfits and tattered gloves folded neatly on top of the bathroom sink, Yor climbs in and settles herself against his chest. Loid’s careful to rest his wounded arm on the porcelain rim of the tub, careful not to undo the hard work his wife put into patching him up.
They stay there for a while, enjoying the way the heat seemed to seep out the stress and tension of the day. Yor eventually shifts to face him and fingers his shoulder tentatively, careful not to touch the stitches she left there. “You idiot. That knife was meant for me.”
“Hence the reason I pushed you out of the way.”
But she bites her lip, eyebrows furrowing once again. “The only time you ever get hurt is when you’re trying to protect me.”
“Hey,” He tips her chin up with a finger, and her eyes gaze up at him with such vulnerability and trust that it makes his heart want to burst. “I know this relationship was built on a sham, and there’s no telling when WISE or the Garden or even the SSS are eventually going to catch onto us—but you and Anya are my world now, and I’ll protect you both for as long as this life permits me to do so. Just as I know you would do the same right back.”
Loid pushes back her dark, damp bangs from her forehead and presses a kiss to her temple. “You are my mission now. You and Anya.”
Yor smiles, bringing herself closer to him. She still smells slightly of roses and blood, and he probably does as well. He loves her anyway.
“Real?” she asks, and he bends down to kiss her fully this time.
“Real.”
They cuddle on the couch afterward, watching some rerun of Berlint in Love, though Loid isn’t really paying much attention to the plot. It’s sickeningly predictable, and he’s much too focused on how good it feels to have his wife safe once again in his arms, endlessly trying to distract her with kisses down her neck.
Yor pushes him away playfully. “I think I’m going to need some wine if we’re going to continue down this path.”
He can’t help himself at this point. “But what if I want you to remember tonight?”
She turns the brightest shade of red he’s seen on her all night, but her response is saved by the sound of the phone ringing off the hook. With a slight sigh of being interrupted, Loid releases his still-blushing wife and goes to answer. “Forger residence.”
“Papa?” a child’s voice answers through the receiver. “Are you back home yet? Are you and Mama safe?”
A small chuckle escapes him at the sound of his unusually perceptive daughter. “Yes, why wouldn’t we be?”
Anya pauses at the other end, as if she’s not quite sure what to say. “Well, um…Oh! Me and Becky were watching Bondman and he failed his mission and he was hurt and all bloody and I was scared you got hurt at the feelings place and that Mama—”
“Anya,” he stops her. Honestly, the ideas she got from that show. “We’re fine, I promise. Don’t worry, okay? Just enjoy your sleepover and we’ll see you in the morning.”
“Okey dokey, Papa! Goodnight! Tell Mama goodnight too, kay?”
“Goodnight, Anya.”
The line clicks, and he places the phone carefully back in its place. He feels Yor’s arms wrap around him from behind as she rests her head against his good shoulder. “We really got lucky with her, didn’t we?”
Loid laces his fingers through hers and nods, feeling her simple wedding band snug and warm against his touch. They weren’t a perfect family. There were still far too many secrets between them, along with broken memories and forgotten names from a past long ago. Perhaps they really were just a liability to each other. The possibility of losing even just one of them was not an unlikely conclusion to their story.
But if it meant making one little girl happy, even just for a moment—if it meant coming home to a loving wife and a laughing daughter for as long as he could make it possible—that was worth it to him. Handler would say the fate of the world depended on it, the outward appearance of their social contract in order to gain invaluable intelligence from the other side. But what they had, him and Yor and Anya…that was real to him.
And he would fight as hard as he could to make it stay that way.