Chapter Text
As of twenty-fourth March of the year 1966, Yuri Briar had a call scheduled for every Friday at seven in the evening. He’d finish his chores by five and finish his lunch by six. As soon as he cleaned up and stored away the dishes, he’d wear his best suit and tie, pamper himself for half an hour, then wait at the chair next to the phone.
At seven, the phone rang.
Yuri raised the receiver to his ear and greeted his sister with the voice of a child.
He chats lovingly into the speaker, describing the dull ongoings of his teaching job at one of the universities in Sigsted. Yesterday, he brought home three new textbooks he’d like to pour over, saying he’d be interested in exploring the new horizons of computer sciences. The recently developed programming languages would keep his mind busy for the next few weeks, most likely ALGOL or PL/I.
His sister could hardly understand a word from the moment he mentioned textbooks, but she cheered him on regardless. Yuri laughed and told her he’d show it all to her one day. Just you wait, Yor. I know it seems demanding, but it’s no harder than the fractions I taught you. This, he said, all the while he kept glancing to his left, his grin threatening to melt into a grimace.
Nightfall would know because she’d hold his gaze for as long as he was able.
She loomed beside him, cataloguing his expressions, voice and vocabulary, encrypting in real time. Yuri Briar wasn’t a new cypher. He was one of the most by-the-book examples of Ostanian intelligence, weak to her undercover experiences. Unless he had miraculously formed a cypher behind her back in the little time she left him alone in the house, he would not be delivering any encrypted messages on her watch.
The phone call was finished with a chirpy: “Love you, talk to you soon!” Confirmed — clean. A perfect, saccharine farewell.
Nightfall never joined the calls. She disliked the dulcet tone of Yor Briar’s voice in person, and she couldn’t speak to her husband. Upon creation, Mrs. Briar had developed a tone so sweetened it bordered on infantile. Having her speak close to her ear was too repulsive to think about. Her brother knew resentment. He knew hatred. It made his shared genes easier to swallow. A spoonful of bitterness helped the sugar go down.
He silently sat on the chair, digesting information with one leg openly crossed over the other, taking up space even in stasis. Then, he stood up and delivered a glare, one among many. “I’m going to my room,” he announced neutrally. He had no reason to contradict himself, so Nightfall let him pass.
“Your sister is still married?” she asked calmly.
Briar paused, his hand resting on the doorknob. “Why wouldn’t she be?”
“No reason.” Nightfall dismissed, pinching the telephone cord between her fingers. “Good for her.”
They went to their separate bedrooms without a word. Hers was a repurposed childrens’ bedroom on the north side of the house with specially arranged furniture that allowed her both blunt and sharp objects within arm’s reach. Chilly air kept her active and alert. The warmest things she allowed were the pillows and sheets, dressed in the warmest shade of blue.
High temperatures encouraged drowsiness. She’d rather have Briar grow weak in the blast of heating in his room than become susceptible to a violent death by the hands of a former Ostanian officer.
Sat on the edge of her bed, Nightfall pulled a thin calendar out of the drawer of her nightstand. She made sure to draw a thin cross on twenty-second April with her silver and black Parker pen.
And out of the same drawer she left the calendar, she pulled out a small syringe stored in a box for blood-pressure medicine.
Every detail was procedure. Procedures helped her cope. It will almost be a month since her and Briar caged themselves in Halstrad 10A, Sigsted, Nortica. An entire country away from the undercover action between Ostania and Westalis. Far from agents and secret police, burrowed in neutral territory with fake names and fake lives they both hated. For a long time, there was nothing she, or him, could do about it.
But it was half past nine, her curtains were closed, and Nightfall had a box of fake blood-pressure medicine she hid for as long as she lived in her decrepit, Nortican house (with the basement as its only redeeming quality). Briar was far more suspicious of the things she showed off than the things she hid. All she had to do was wait for five more minutes.
It wouldn’t have been a problem if Nightfall kept her patience. Recently, she hated the passage of time. It rattled her bodily like a gunshot, but like gunshots, the effects could be temporarily swept under a mental rug with menial activities. Like preparing her work outfit in advance. A small delight to numb her nerves.
Resolutely, she sorted the folds of her shirt and pants on the chair behind her desk, then reached for her drawer to pick out her toothpaste and toothbrush. Briar slept late, so she had confidence she wouldn’t be seeing his snout in their shared bathroom. She had time. She leisurely left her room, her periwinkle nightgown swishing around her legs.
And then she arrived.
Nightfall steeled herself, reached for the handle—
—and was met face to face with the foaming mouth of Briar, his red toothbrush dangling from his lips.
She looked at him. He looked at her.
Adrenaline roared in her blood, demanding use of force.
Instead, Nightfall pushed her way inside, and jerked the toothbrush across her lower teeth. It was her lanky frame next to Briar’s. Her narrow, bloodless face next to his deceitful, muddy eyes. They only matched in the bluish traces under their lower eyelids, dead-eyed expressions and mouths bloated with foam and toothbrushes.
This was fine. She could improvise.
Nightfall didn’t keep count of how their spats start, and neither did Briar. She might’ve stretched out her arm in front of his face to reach her foundation. He might’ve gone to the toilet to pick up his socks and bumped her in the hip on the way. It never mattered. Whatever happened, Briar would jab her with his elbow, then Nightfall would jab back. Days of constant, pent-up frustration would spill so easily in each other’s presence. With their respective, singular sources of love in the world planted continents away from them, all that was left was hate.
And hate they did. He caught her by the arms and nearly pushed her out of the bathroom, but Nightfall had quickly twisted and locked him over the sink, desperate to slam his forehead against the porcelain edge.
Briar must’ve read her intentions. His eyes were wide, panicked. “That’s what you’re going to do, you lunatic? You’re going to make a scene!”
“I won’t. I promise.”
She just had to knock him out cold. The rest is procedure.
Nightfall used all of her body’s strength to push him into the mirror, face planting him hard into the glass once. Then twice.
“Wait, stop, stop—“ Briar stomped on her toes, his foot scrambling to hook onto her calf. “You want— you want Forger to yourself, don’t you? Huh?”
A cold, merciless feeling spread through her system quicker than cyanide. Her neck stretched down, positioning her mouth close to his ear as she hissed, low and dry:
“What would you know about Loid Forger?”
“He grabbed a hold of my sister and lied about being married to her for a year. He exhibited a multitude of suspicious behaviors prior to our exposure. I know Twilight, the faceless man, needed a contact in order to expose us—“
Skull met glass. Briar groaned, his body curling on the edge of the sink.
“You exposed us.”
“You did first—“ Smartly, he held his tongue, pocketing his temper. “I believe Forger is an associate of Twilight’s, if not an undercover spy himself. Am I right, lizard woman?”
This was enough to convince her to slip the syringe out of the box then and there. No more subtlety. If Briar refused to go down silently, then so be it.
But Nightfall had a good idea of where his thought process was going, and she smelled opportunity.
“What if he is?”
“Then he is a danger, and I want him gone,” he snarled, a shepherd out for blood. “Take Forger out of the equation in whichever way you want. I don’t care. As long as he is no longer in contact with my sister or her child. You want him, don’t you? Then take him. Take him, damn it. You have my support.”
Nightfall pulled him back, further away from the fractured mirror. “You are not an honest ally.”
“If I take out Forger myself, I’d have you on my tail for the rest of my life. If you take me out now and go after Forger yourself, you’d waste more time on getting to Berlint and setting up a farce that won’t raise suspicions. Are you catching up? I have no chance of getting back into SSS. As long as Yor is safe, my job is finished. You and your— lizards are no longer my problem.
“We can do this smoothly. Play nice, prepare and get a free ride. Or you can turn this into a circus.”
Silence, except for Briar’s heavy breaths.
Nightfall looked at the mirror decorated with a small, thin spider web of fractures. Her hair was exposed. It was a frail, pale sheet of silk that she preferred armoring with fake hairstyles, but she always freed it before bed. At least, she had a reminder to expect the unexpected. And she got to see that Briar can bruise. Hard and ugly, in fact. A fitting contrast to his clinically white and straight row of teeth.
Once again, Briar sniffed out her thoughts, and showed off his incisors in a strained grin. “You saw the rings? Good enough for your pampered tastes?”
Nightfall breathed out. Loudly. She shoved him away, opting to forego dental health for one night, and snatched her syringe box. “Get mine resized by tomorrow evening.”
As she walked out, she recalculated her plans, considered new routes. Most of them required her living with Briar for at least two more weeks.
“Not my fault your fingers are slim enough to fit inside a mouse’s butthole—“
Nightfall swiveled on her bare heel, her toothbrush out and raised above her head as she sprinted towards the bathroom. Briar was quick to slam it closed in front of her nose. A move she will pay back another day.
“This will be in your eye socket by morning.” She hissed. “Get it resized.”
She heard mumbles that sounded like an affirmative response.
It was beyond embarrassing they came down to this — former trained agents of the state degraded to childish antics one slippery edge away from turning into a murder scene. But like Briar’s calls, she had something of her own to look forward to. Her only comfort was returning to her stunning, blue sheets. She hid her syringe box in her closet, then dedicated her last conscious thoughts to blue.
Nothing but blue for those few heavenly seconds prior to slumber.