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Against Time

Chapter 3: regrets

Summary:

Twilight finds who they've been searching for, but it's not the reunion that he had in mind.

Notes:

Spoilers for chapters 62 and on! I'll preface by saying at least that, haha. Thank you again for the lovely reviews! I am so so hoping that I can do this chapter fic justice! The chapters keep coming out later and later... But now that I'm done with my old job, I can focus on writing for a bit. So sorry for any errors... it's 5am here... Please enjoy!

Also, I've gotten a couple votes for mega angst, please let me know what you think in the comments!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Everything froze the moment that Twilight saw the familiar green eyes and pink hair, barely visible in the remaining light coming from outside the open cellar doors. His breath was still caught in his throat, waiting for him to wake up from this dream — this nightmare — where Yor was bleeding out behind him and his adult daughter was pointing a gun at him. It was just too jarring of a change. One minute he was hugging the little girl and saying goodbye and the next she looks to be only a few years younger than Yor. His mind was reeling from the shock of it all, so much so, that he didn’t realize how weak the grip on his gun was until it was knocked from his hand with a swift kick.

The end of the silencer rose back up and was pointed back at him with no hesitation this time. “Who are you? Because you’re definitely not Loid Forger,” Older Anya asked briskly, a tone that he would have never thought he would hear from her, even as an adult.

We really are in the future, Twilight hurriedly told himself while the evidence continued to unfold in front of him. Okay, take that in, process it. Now, focus.

“Anya, I know this will be difficult to believe,” Twilight started. “But it is me, Loid, your… your dad.” Normally, lying came to him as easily as breathing did, but at that moment, the words felt heavy on his tongue. 

The last thing he expected was to feel the cold metal of the gun press against his forehead, sitting right between his eyes. 

“Don’t lie to me! Loid Forger died in an explosion twenty years ago,” Anya’s hair, which was longer now, just touching the bottom of her shoulder blades – just like Yor’s – flew around as she shook her head vehemently. A hardened stare bore into him, “Loid Forger died that day – along with the rest of the Forger family.”

Twilight’s gut plummeted. Even in the poor lighting, he could see that time had taken a toll on his daughter. Her hair and skin, which had once glowed with a youthful sheen was now flat and dull, split ends crowding the bottom of each strand. A sweat-stained tank top and cargo pants replaced the black dresses she had been so fond of. What stood out the most to Twilight, however, was her eyes, which had always sparkled and gleamed with bubbliness and life, were now lightless. If he were to put it plainly, she looked miserable; almost like…

him – 

– at the end of the war, at the start of Twilight’s career as a spy and the first year onwards. He had been devastated when his home was destroyed, but the straw that broke the camel’s back had been when he had been given a glimmer of hope, shown something to live for, and then had it yanked away. When his friends had died, so did his capability of giving a damn. For a long time after he started with WISE , he just existed, haunted by the terrors of war and death. 

That was what Anya looked like. Twilight now knew where she had come from and what hell they had put her through before he took her away from that orphanage. That kind of experience would crack anybody. But he knew that whatever Anya had been through after he and Yor had “died” hadn’t just cracked her, it had shattered her completely. 

Not only that, but it had been twenty years. Anya had to be at least twenty-seven by now. That was twenty years of missed birthdays, twenty years of loneliness. That was twenty years of grief – of him breaking his promise. 

Come home, Papa.

The words cinched around his heart like a vice.

I’m sorry, Anya, Twilight thought. I’m sorry that we made you an orphan again. I’m sorry that we–.

“S-STOP!” Anya shouted suddenly, her voice shaking. Twilight still didn’t dare move, but his eyes roamed around, trying to see who she had been speaking to. “Stop thinking !”

His hands were still in the air, surrendered, but they drooped a bit at that, “What?”

“This can’t be real…” Anya mumbled to herself, no longer staring at him, but somewhere far away. “You can’t be him.”

Just a second later, he heard a horrible choking noise from behind him along with a deep, gurgling wheezing. 

Yor’s choking on her own blood! 

Twilight growled in frustration, but before he could get a word out, Anya glanced over his shoulder. He saw the way her eyes widened and, as terrible as the situation was, hoped this would help his case.

“Who is that?” Anya asked, her voice uncertain.

“Anya, please. It’s Yor! She’s been shot, you have to let me help her,” Twilight could hardly believe that he was begging his daughter to save her mother.  “If the blood is in her lungs, especially after the hours it took us to get here, the bullet did a lot more damage than I thought. We need to–.”

“Tell me something only you would know,” she said, her voice reverting back to being emotionless and even. 

“Anya!”

“Now!” The barest hint of movement from him caused the pressure on the gun kissing his skin to grow.

Twilight’s attention darted from Anya threatening him and back to Yor. Panic was nearly settling in. “You love peanuts!”

“I haven’t had peanuts since I was six, try again.”

He cursed and made another shoot, “You like pistols with silencers!”

Anya nearly laughed and she gestured to the gun in her hand, “My, my, how did you guess that one? You’re not being very convincing.”

The taunting did nothing to help the fact that Twilight was ready to scream to the heavens. Yor was dying behind him and he was playing Anya trivia with his mentally scarred daughter. Still, he forced himself to relax and really think. If there was any chance of saving Yor, he would most likely need Anya’s help. He needed her on his side.

Think, Twilight , he cursed quietly. It would have to be something that only happened when Anya was younger. The first thing he thought back to was saving Anya from the kidnappers when they had just become a family, but Loid wasn’t technically there or aware of any of that. He couldn’t seem to think of anything besides their usual routine, but something told him that mentioning any of that wouldn’t be enough to convince her. If it was something sentimental she was looking for, he was grasping at straws. Yor was always better at those kinds of things. 

Wait! While thinking of Yor, he remembered something.

“You gave us 100 points,” he said, his words barely a whisper until he forced more power into them. “You said you loved us… and you wanted to stay with us forever.”

The memory was almost painful to recall, but before he had even finished speaking, Anya was moving. With her pistol completely disregarded, she rushed past him and over to Yor. At first, he had instinctively tried to stop her, not completely trusting the version of his daughter that had been ready to kill him only a second ago. His worries were quickly put to rest as Anya hurried to pull Yor onto her side, allowing the blood to leave her airway. Yor, who was still very much unconscious, began to cough hoarsely, blood misting anything in her path. To her credit (and Twilight’s silent horror), Anya didn’t flinch away at all, not even when her arms and torso were splattered crimson. 

Instead, she went to work, bringing the lamp closer to her and tearing away Yor’s clothes. “I need you to grab some stuff from down that tunnel, Papa.” She pointed briefly down one of two paths, the one with a small light at the end of it. “That’s where all the supplies are. There should be medical supplies and an AED. Bring a gallon of water, too. Looks like the bullet went through, but if you’re right and her lung is punctured, surgery would be the likely option. Best case scenario is that she only has a contusion and the gunshot is just a separate problem.” 

With his daughter’s commands, he shifted into Twilight mode, “Do you have anything to numb the pain? I assume she’ll need stitches at the very least.”

Anya laughed bitterly, “We don’t have anything like that right now. The best you’ll probably find is some Tylenol or Advil. Just bring it all here, we can figure out what she needs.”

Twilight watched as his daughter worked methodically, checking Yor’s pulse and listening to her breathing. It reminded him of back when Sylvia had gotten Anya a toy doctor’s kit for her birthday and the little girl had spent the next week pretending to give Mr. Chimera shots and wrapping him in bandages. He was snapped out of his recollection when Anya took a blade and tore down the middle of Yor’s blouse, revealing a modest bra and toned, albeit bloodstained, stomach. He swung his head away from the sight, but apparently not quick enough to avoid Anya catching it.

“Are you serious, Papa? You’re still keeping that up?” If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought that Anya actually sounded annoyed. “You’re both hopeless… Hurry and go get the supplies!”

Feeling oddly scolded and also just downright embarrassed, Twilight practically ran down the tunnel.


The next hour or two was full of blood, sweat, and tears, quite literally. Anya had been right that Yor had suffered from a lung contusion and the bruising had been what had caused her to cough up the blood. Where Anya had gotten such a wealth of knowledge in medicine, he didn’t know, but she was obviously very skilled as a medic. While she had informed him that there wasn’t much they could do about the contusion except to let her rest and give painkillers when needed, the gunshot wound was a different, but luckily lesser matter. The bullet hadn’t splintered or bounced around; it had been a clean entry and exit. Of course, the tissue damage was immense, but that would also heal with time. At some point during the stitching, Yor had thrashed awake and it had taken both him and Anya to hold her down and settle her back into an exhausted slumber.

“Anya… You’re ‘ere…” Yor had mumbled after her small fight of resistance, her glazed stare fixed on Anya. “Did ya do your homework?”

Anya went rigid at the question. She had completely halted any efforts to finish her sewing work in fear that Yor would hurt herself more on the needle while moving about. There was a set to her jaw and Twilight saw the warring emotions flying across her face. 

“Y-Yeah. All done.”

Yor, who was seemingly still in her incoherent state, took a beat to process that. Then, even with sunken eyes and pale skin, the beam that she gave their daughter was still enough to light up the whole room. “Tha’s good. Loid will be happy… that you finished…” Her hand slipped into Anya’s empty one, clutching it tightly as she drifted back to sleep. 

Both Twilight and Anya slouched at the sound of light snoring, relief rushing out of them. Yor waking up so suddenly was most likely in response to the pain from the stitches, but it also let them know that she was still fighting. Twilight felt like he could finally breathe. 

Anya let out a low sigh and reach for some of the water and a cloth. Then, Anya gently began to rub away the blood from Yor’s hands, finishing only to move onto her own. Twilight had taken that chance to move closer to their side to finish up the stitching and clean the rest of the wound. While he did so, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Anya, still gripping Yor’s hand. She said nothing as she brought it to her forehead, shaking slightly, and he had left her to have a moment with her mother. 

Now, Yor was sleeping soundly, covered by a thin, but decent quality blanket. Her chest rose and fell evenly, but underneath only he and Anya knew of the expanse of bandages that covered her abdomen. 

Anya, who had been sitting as a statue, quietly rose from her seat. The younger woman was conscientious enough to slowly sneak her hand back from Yor, laying her mother’s arm down and covering it up, as well. He wasn’t surprised when she walked away, saying nothing to him. Initially, he had stood up to go after her, but he stopped himself.

It must have been a shock to find out that her parents weren’t dead, but to also learn that they were somehow from the past. Twilight admitted that even he was still trying to process that last part. To her, it meant that he and Yor were nearly the same age as her, but to him it meant that Anya had grown up and was now only a year or two younger than Yor. The image that he had in his head of the bright-eyed little girl was now mixing with this new version of Anya, and he wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about it yet. Instead, he focused on the things he did know.

The fact that he had found Anya in the safehouse proved two things. One, Anya had managed to get to safety the day that they had vanished, and two, Anya knew about WISE . He wasn’t sure if he was ready to bet that she was an agent just yet, but her form and conduct showed clear signs of it. He also noted that there didn’t seem to be anyone else inhabiting the tunnels and the supply crates that he had accessed appeared to have a sizeable sum of rations left. Either the storage had recently been replenished, or Anya had been on her own for quite some time.

Twilight inspected Yor again, making sure that he saw her chest rise and fall at least three times before he felt comfortable enough to leave her to her rest. He wanted to go talk to Anya, but he decided to give himself some time to wander around the space, or at least what little of it that he could. His hands pressed against the concrete walls and he had to commend WISE s engineer for how well made and stable the safehouse was. It was limited in the sense that the ceiling was low and there wasn’t any automatic or electric lights, but it was comfortable enough to hide in, for sure. He supposed that was the point – that safety had overridden luxury in every instance of the word.

However, there were obvious hints that it was lived in. Across the room from Yor’s cot was a table with all kinds of trinkets and small devices that had been taken apart. Rough sketches of mechanisms and electronics were taped to the wall. His fingers lightly tapped one of the inventions, some sort of wristwatch that had pieces of a speaker surrounding it. What really caught his eye after shuffling some papers around was a old and worn copy of Spy Wars sitting forgotten under the documents. Curiosity got the better of him and he picked it up, causing two loose photos to fall from its pages. 

And the air left his body like a punch to the gut.

The two pictures had been from long ago, bent and one of them nearly torn at one corner. One of them was of him, Yor, and Anya; it was their family portrait, the very one that had hung on the wall in their apartment. The second one was in worse shape and it had been bent to be condensed, but he recognized it immediately. It was the painting that the artist at the park had did of the family. Some of the paint had chipped away or been discoloured, but it was enough to see the pink of Anya’s hair and the red of Yor’s eyes. 

Twilight felt his throat constrict. How long had Anya been holding on to these photos, the last evidence that the Forger family had even existed? How many had been lost in the war?

“I’ve had those since the day I found out you two weren’t coming back.” 

Twilight almost dropped the photos in surprise and when he looked over, he saw Anya leaning on the wall near one of the tunnel’s entrances. He was too focused on her demeanor to scold himself over how easily he had just been snuck up on. Anya didn’t appear to be upset or angry, but there was something else boiling beneath the surface, that much he could tell from her crossed arms and slanted posture.

“Anya…” He started, his eyes falling back down to the pictures. “How long have you been here? In this safehouse?”

She shrugged, “Days, weeks, maybe? I stay here for long periods at a time between missions. WISE always has it stocked enough. It’s practically mine.”

That confirmed his suspicion that she was, indeed, an agent for WISE . “They send you on missions? Even with the war at full throttle?"

“They send me on missions because the war is at it’s peak,” Anya said. Her tone was rather nonchalant when she added, “I used to only be a field medic that would be on team assignments. Ever since the war started, though, I’ve been doing more reconnaissance, espionage, you name it. Handler is a slave driver.”

Twilight was genuinely surprised at the mention of his old (current?) handler, “Handler is still around? You’re her agent?”

He could practically feel the tension in the conversation thicken. If their little chat had been a fishing line, he had just yanked on the it at full force.

Anya averted her gaze, “If you’re talking about Sylvia Sherwood, she was taken a long time ago by the Ostanian police. She was the one who brought me into WISE . I was seventeen when I found out she was arrested and I haven’t seen her since. I have a different handler.”

Talking about about old acquaintances suddenly made Twilight nervous. “W-What about Frankie? And Fiona? Or even your Uncle Yuri?”

There had to be someone, anyone, that was there with her until now, Twilight hoped, prayed .

“Frankie had been caught info-gathering at a high society gala around my twentieth birthday. He’s been on the run ever since,” Anya spoke so matter-of-factly, it almost stung. “Fiona was with Frankie and they brought me here. She left once to figure out what happened to you and Mama; she was the one that told us that the building we had left you on, as well as the rest of the street, had been decimated. After, she left again and she never came back. I never heard much about Uncle Yuri. Technically, I was supposed to be in his care, but after Yuri Briar disappeared, so did Anya Forger.”

Twilight closed his eyes as the worst of his fears were confirmed. One after one, Anya had lost everyone dear to her until she was just… existing. She had a short, almost nonexistent childhood that was ripped away after he and Yor got sent to where they were now. Her teen years had been spent grieving and distracting herself from the impending doom that conflicts between Ostania and Westalis wrought. Finally, by the time war hit, there was nothing left but loss. Whatever the Playground hadn’t taken away from her, the war claimed the rest.

How could anyone possibly recover from that?

“Don’t look at me like that,” Anya said, breaking through his thoughts of guilt and despair. “Don’t.”

“Anya,” Twilight let his hands fall to his sides. “What happened after Yor and I were gone?”

As if on cue, Anya’s face contorted with pain, her eyes, that had reflected nothing but cool steel melted somewhat into sorrow. “Like I said… Fiona and Frankie brought me here, but once we heard the news that you and Mama were gone… Things got complicated. Fiona presumably went to search for you, Frankie tapped into whatever resources he could, but it was just like you two vanished off the face of the earth. There was nothing left of you, so Frankie assumed the worst. For a while, I think I was just… stuck. I didn’t want to believe that you were gone, and that made grieving harder. I pretended that everything was okay until it just became too exhausting to continue. It was around that time that I met Sylvia.”

Part of him was surprised how easily she was willing to surrender the story. Another part of him knew that something was building. He could see it in the way her shoulders were tensing, in the way her voice became tighter with each sentence. It had been a long time coming – perhaps even inevitable. He knew that his and Yor’s arrival could be the catalyst that either saved this future Anya or destroyed her. If he played his cards right, he would make sure it was the former.

Twilight waited for the other shoe to drop, “What happened after you met Sylvia?”

Anya huffed, “She was the one who formally told me that Operation Strix was over. The amount of times I heard, ‘it wasn’t your fault’ was maddening. I was expelled from Eden College as soon as they found out my parents died in an accident. No child without proper parental supervision could ever amount to anything, right? It was after that when Sylvia started to teach me. First aid, biology, weapons, espionage, everything. And then that was it. A few years later I became a spy for WISE , whose goal was then to stop the war between Ostania and Westalis.”

With as much remorse and genuine regret he could pack into his voice, Twilight said, “I’m sorry, Anya.”

At that moment, the other shoe didn’t just drop, it nosedived .

You’re sorry? ” Anya’s voice was so low he had to strain his ears to hear. However, the second time around, he heard her loud and clear. “You’re sorry ?!

Twilight braced himself.

Sorry is something you say after you forget to get something from the store, or if you bump into someone on the sidewalk. For years , I somehow thought that I had done something wrong – that you and Mama didn’t want me anymore . After I waited and pretended that you were coming back home, I was just angry! I hated you and Mama for what my life became and then I hated you both even more, because every time I would think of you, I would remember the life we had! And now you’re here, twenty years later saying sorry . What do you even want me to do with that?” 

Anya’s height barely reached his shoulders, but her glare was plenty to bring him down to her size. His brain was scattered by her grief, and some of his own. The last thing he ever wanted to do was make another child relive his experiences, but somehow he had done just that. There were no words to describe how he felt at that moment, knowing all of the heartache and pain that he had helped cause towards someone he loved.

In the end, he could say nothing except, “... We made a mistake. Please… forgive us, Anya.”

It was incredible how much he realized that he had been lying to himself – how much that he had denied that he had loved Anya Forger. It was a love that was unconditional. Whatever words she would retaliate with next were sure to break him, but nothing would ever change the now-steady fact in his mind. Anya was his daughter in everything but blood, and he would rather die than to cause her anymore pain than he already had. The silence was suffocating. Both father and daughter stared each other down, and Twilight could see Anya wanting to hold on to that bitterness, her brows furrowing more until the tension snapped.

“YOU LEFT ME!” Anya screamed, rushing at him to pound into his chest in anger and rage, and he simply pulled her closer. Her fist beat right above his heart, her words hitting just as hard. Her voice broke while she said, “Y-You’re such a liar, Papa! You promised… You promised you would come b–back…!”

“We wanted to – we want to.”

“Why? Why didn’t you come back? Everything would’ve been okay if you just came back .”

“I’m sorry, Anya.”

Twilight could only wonder how it must have looked with Anya crying in his arms, with himself, clinging to his wartorn daughter whilst both of them were stained by Yor’s blood. This wasn’t the future he wanted for Anya. This wasn’t the future he wanted at all — for anyone. The pride that parents were supposed to feel when their child grew up and followed in their footsteps wasn’t there. In fact, he felt sick to his stomach thinking about Anya going through exactly what he did. 

He had to make it right somehow. 

But for now, all Twilight could do was squeeze his daughter tight while her wails echoed down the old tunnels, repeating over again in his head - a sound he is sure he won't forget. And as he whispered endless apologies into Anya’s long locks, he closed his eyes in hope that it would shield him from his failures illuminated by the lamplight.

Notes:

I guess I can't end with a cliffhanger ALL the time...

I do not claim to have any actual medical experience except for an almost expired CPR certification. Ignore me as I handwave medical practices :)

Notes:

Other SxF authors, I love you. Thank you for feeding me during these trying times.