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There are times, during the several months that had passed since the beginning of Operation Strix, where Twilight is reminded of how he would have appreciated an early notice before being propelled into this new mission – if only to be able to prepare himself, and learn the necessary materials to lead the operation efficiently.
Understanding and caring for children, for instance, was one of the crash courses that could have made things significantly easier. He thinks, considering that the operation is still standing to this day, that he’s gotten the hang of it; nevertheless, he’d never quite managed to get used to the unpredictability of children and the loads of trouble that came with them, even with the help of the dozens of parenting books he’d gotten his hands on throughout the weeks.
Anya, bless her heart, is a good kid – she’s got a loud temperament, like many kids her age do, and despite the difficulties she encounters when it comes to school work, she always tries hard. She’s big-hearted, endlessly energetic, and sometimes surprisingly soft in spite of her overflowing enthusiasm.
Ever since he’d taken her away from the orphanage, Twilight had gotten to learn as much as he could about her, about the small things that made her the way she was, that would make her grow, that made her Anya.
And so he’d learnt that, unsurprisingly, she didn’t like many vegetables; but carrots, when cooked and seasoned well, had become something she actually enjoyed (he’d been proud of himself, the day he’d figured a recipe that had her finishing her plate without him having to encourage her to.) He’d figured that Anya liked strawberry ice-cream better than a vanilla-flavored one yet less than a chocolate-chip cone, that she loved going outside on rainy days so she could jump into puddles, and that she would always fall asleep in his arms if he carried her for more than ten minutes.
And yet, despite learning and memorizing all he could about her likes and quirks, there are days where Twilight feels like he doesn’t understand her at all.
It is, somehow, a painful reminder that he hadn’t known her for that long.
That reminder really gains its sting the day he earns a day off from his cover job. He’d just had a long, draining day filled with rowdy patients and dreadful paperwork, and a longer even talk with Handler – Sophia, she insisted he call her when she disguised herself as a nurse. She’d instructed him to take a day off, quoting too much overtime he had to compensate with some “well-deserved rest”.
Which meant, in Handler’s terms, that there had been a potential leak about the mission, and that he’d need to lay low for the next couple of days. That was bad news, for two reasons mostly, the first being that there was potentially a danger for the Forger family and that he could not do anything unless he was ready to risk Anya’s, Yor’s, and even Bond’s safety.
(He was not willing to risk this.)
The second reason was a more selfish one: no work meant no distractions, no paperwork to drown himself into in order not to think. It seemed a bit dramatic, indeed – but he’d been feeling… strange, lately, for a lack of a better explanation.
He attributed it to the short days that came with the end of the year, the gloomy weather and the cold seeping into his bones – and, more notably, the leisure life that Loid Forger led. At this time of the year, usually, he was too preoccupied with fighting for his life to really pause and think – chasing after targets and capturing them, throwing himself into missions that often left him with a few burnt hair and some new scars. Loid Forger, however, did not do lethal fights, nor did he go through his day with the thrill of life-or-death matters flowing through his veins; no, Loid Forger was a simple family man who cooked dinners for his family and drove his child to school. Loid Forger did, in fact, have the time to get lost in thoughts.
Many years had passed since the last time he’d been able to let his feelings and memories get the better of him – and he’d tried to ignore the feelings resurfacing and the memories gnawing at him, more or less successfully, using the pretense of a work overload to forbid his own mind from wandering to the past.
This year, it wasn’t nearly enough, and it all seemed to come back with a vengeance. He could almost hear sirens going off, could almost feel the buildings shake and crumble, the dust filling his lungs, the metallic aftertaste of blood on his tongue – and then he’d blink and it would all fade, leaving behind nothing but a blank paper he should have filled hours ago.
Which was why, really, he dreaded the prospect of one day or more without anything to do, or to hide himself with.
At least, because it was the end of the autumnal school break for Anya, he’d figured he could spend some time with her, instead of having to send her to play with her Blackbell friend for the day, or asking Franky to play babysitter in exchange for some cash.
And so, when Becky’s chauffeur brings the pink-haired girl back, after he helps her take her coat and shoes off, he tells her the news, and Anya smiles at him bright and loud. The look in her eyes, though, is muted – almost unnoticeably so, but the difference is there nevertheless; it’s like her mind is half elsewhere.
She has been growing more skittish the last few days; nothing too visible at first, and the differences had been subtle enough that he’d brushed them off at first, before they kept piling up and tickling at his throat like a feather.
Today again, Twilight tries, albeit unsuccessfully, to brush it off to the exhaustion of a day. He turns the television on for her, and lets her settle at the coffee table with paper and her favorite pencils, Bond laying down next to her, while he heats up some chocolate milk for her to sip on.
He watches her like a hawk from the kitchen while he starts working on tonight’s dinner. Tries to look for dark circles under her eyes or for the lines of a too-tight posture, for a tremor in her hands or for an uncharacteristic paleness to her skin – anything that could explain the nagging feeling scratching at the back of his throat uneasily – but the child seems normal in every way, save for the fact that she’s nowhere as noisy as he knows her to be.
Which is exactly what has him so worried – and if Bond’s increased clinginess to Anya these past few days is anything to judge by, he’s right to be alarmed.
In a last ditch attempt to probe a little further, as he pretends to be busy with preparing their next meal, he asks her some light-hearted questions.
Did she have fun today? How is Becky doing? Did they do anything nice?
Anya seems to regain some of her usual vigor when she answers, and the sight of it eases if only a little the knot in his chest. He answers with hums and more inquiring questions to the rhythm of vegetables being chopped and meat being stirred in a pan – and then, as her favorite cartoon comes up on television, he lets a comfortable silence settle in while he finishes cooking and clearing up the kitchen, letting his own mind wander to the lull of childish tunes and sound effects blaring from the TV.
Which is why the question that leaves Anya’s mouth a few minutes later feels like such a slap to the face.
“Papa, where do people go when they die?”
The knife in his hand freezes. The air in his lungs does, too.
Twilight usually considers himself a good actor - it comes with the job, doesn’t it, being able to react appropriately in any given situation. But Anya, as always, has a knack for taking him by surprise, for leaving him voiceless and breathless with nothing left for him to say but the truth.
As it comes, Loid is only able to draw a blank at his daughter’s sudden question, as she waits for his answer without even a hint of her usual enthusiasm.
There are times, albeit rare, where Anya looks too serious for a child her age, where she goes quiet and contemplative, where her eyes fill with shadows that feel foreign on her face. He hates it, when it happens; because he looks at her, during those times, and all he sees is a reflection of himself, a child isolated and scarred by war and tragedies.
Twilight tries to breathe - it comes out as a tremorous sigh. In retrospect, he should have expected this to pop up someday; it was one of those complicated questions that would inevitably be asked, once children learnt about concepts such as life and death, about how people were not, in fact, immortal – but never had he imagined it would come up in such a mundane context, with him making dinner and she working on the next drawing to display on the fridge.
He tries to suck in another breath, and asks her: “Why the sudden question?”
Anya shrugs, mouth twisted into a weird expression and eyes leaving his, and she’s still strangely quiet and withdrawn, sitting motionlessly at the coffee table, tilted over her drawings of monsters and heroes encrypted behind stick figures, so he hums and takes the time to mull over his answer.
“Some say they go to heaven,” he answers softly, keeping his gaze firmly on the chopped vegetables. There are flashes of images scratching at the back of his mind, heavy and angry – he pushes them back. The bubbling of the boiling water, next to him, feels like the memories resurfacing in his consciousness. “It’s a place very far from here, and no one really knows where it is.”
There’s a bitter aftertaste on his tongue even as he speaks. He’s not one to really believe in an afterlife – had never really dared to hope for it to exist, not when life itself could be so harsh and cruel. These thoughts, however, were not ones Loid Forger was allowed to have, and nor were they appropriate for a father trying to reassure his daughter, so Loid Forger swallows hard and smiles at the child in his living room, ignores the way his own mind is whirling with unwelcome fragments of his past, and he hopes fervently that his answer will be good enough to satisfy her curiosity.
Anya pauses, hand freezing mid-air, and she raises her head to stare at him once again. Her hand goes to her hair, eyes fluttering as if pained, but before he can ask about it she starts speaking again.
“How do people find heaven if they dunno where it is?” she presses, mouth pinched tight.
Dust fills his lungs. He drowns in the memories of rubble and ruins, of a bloodied hand emerging from it all.
“They will know the way once it’s time for them to go there,” he tries, amidst the buzzing in his mind.
Her bottom lip quivers, and he knows, right there, that he’s given the wrong answer. “Papa’s a liar,” she blurts out, and she breaks into sobs – she buries her head into her arms, curling onto herself and hiding from him. Bond startles at her outburst, lets out a long, distressed whine, and tries to comfort her with a few nudges of his muzzle before throwing Loid a pressing look.
Do something, he seems to tell him.
“Oh, Anya” he breathes out before he even realizes it. The buzzing in his head clears out, at last; his chest aches, violently so, as immediate guilt gnaws at his bones. “Don’t cry, sweetheart.”
He sets aside ingredients and knives, turns off the stove and removes his apron, before going to sit next to her. Her entire body shakes from the violence of her hiccups, tiny fists clenched so hard on the table that the skin of her knuckles has turned white.
And then he remembers just exactly who the child sitting next to him is. Remembers the dirty walls of the orphanage and the booze-induced slur of the man running it. It’s easy to forget the troubles she might have gone through, when she’s ever so happy and joyous.
But she’s still just a young child. One who he suspects has lived too many terrible things already.
“Anya,” he calls out gently. His throat feels raw, but the voice that comes out is soft, controlled.
The little girl next to him flinches, hard, but keeps her head hidden under her arms with poorly concealed sniffles.
“Anya, look at me, please.” He brings his hand onto her back, as softly as he can, and starts rubbing slow circles with the hope that the soothing motion will reach through the thick wool of her clothes. “You’re not in trouble, I promise. I’m just trying to understand.”
This seems to work; she turns away from him, sending a jolt of confusion coursing through his limbs before he realizes she’s trying to wipe her face without his noticing, and then she looks up at him with red eyes and quivering lips.
He’s not sure what hurts the most: to see her crying, or to see her trying to hide it from him.
“Is it about someone you know?” he asks gently, although part of him already knows the answer.
“I dunno,” she sniffs loudly. “Becky told me she didn’t remember her granny a lot ‘cause she died a long time ago. I just-”
She breaks off, and hiccups again as tears flood her reddened cheeks.
“It’s okay,” he tells her, even as he wraps his arm around her, breathing out in something akin to relief when she doesn’t push away and instead turns to hide her face against the fabric of his jumper.
“I dun’ wanna forget,” Anya wails against him, and the strength of the sob that follows echoes throughout his entire body.
He thinks of a little girl staring at him at the orphanage; of the tears that rolled down her face at this one cruel question from that poor excuse of a teacher during Eden Academy’s enrollment process. He has a fairly precise idea of who she doesn't want to forget.
“You won’t,” Loid says with the utmost certainty, and even as he speaks he can feel Anya relax slowly into his arms. “I don’t know much about the afterlife. But I think it would be really nice if it existed.”
The child in his arms hums questioningly.
“So no one knows if it’s real?” Her voice is small, barely reaching his ears, but her breathing is slowly growing more even, and he takes comfort in it.
“Rather than wondering if it exists,” he tries, “don’t you want to try to imagine what it’s like?”
She peeks up at him. “How?”
He smiles at her, and pulls her onto his lap. Tiny arms wrap around his torso, urgently affectionate, and he pats her head softly.
“Imagine paradise. Everything and anything you could possibly want. What would you like?”
“Anything?” she asks shyly.
He nods. “Anything.”
“A big castle,” she chirps, fiddling with her hands, and with each word that follows she slowly melts back into the joyous and confident girl he knows her as. “With slides! And a ferrish wheel, and candy and giant peanuts, and a water park, and a biiiiiig television. And you can draw on the walls!”
She pauses, just long enough for him to chuckle fondly, and that is apparently good enough of an encouragement as she starts babbling again with an ever-growing list of snacks and toys and attractions worthy of the greatest amusement park in the world.
Something in him just melts as he listens, chest filled with warmth and something that feels a tad too suspiciously like affection, even as he wishes, oh so very dearly, that she’ll never have to see this place, wherever it is and whatever it is like, before many, many decades.
Anya grows still and quiet against his chest.
“I’m not goin’ there, Papa,” she mumbles.
He freezes, confused as to the timing of her declaration. “What do you mean?”
She pulls away ever so slightly to look him in the eye, and blinks.
“I’ll go to paradice when I’m too old, right?”
“Yeah,” he breathes out, biting down on the treacherous if only it was only a matter of age that threatens to escape from between his teeth. His heart pounds hard against his ribcage, and he only hopes she doesn’t feel it. “So you’re not allowed to go before you’re very, very old, okay?”
She stares at him for a second that seems to last way too long, as if considering his words – as if hearing the thoughts behind them, whirling into his mind – but then she shakes her head, and declares solemnly, “You can’t go either, Papa. You’re old, but not old enough yet.”
He barks out a laugh, too relieved to really feel insulted.
“Your old father will do his best.” That’s the least he can promise her.
He smiles when she nods, seemingly satisfied, and they allow a comfortable silence to stretch out for a while, settling over them like a warm blanket as they watch the day fade out to the muted sounds of the television. Bond dozes off quietly; Anya, at some point, places her cheek against his chest. He wonders if she’s listening to his heartbeat.
“What about papa?” she eventually asks.
“What is it?”
“What do you want in your heaven?”
“What I want…” He pauses, and for once doesn’t fight back the waves of memories that surge in his mind, that press him to remember – to remember the harsh, cold wind biting at his skin and the gnawing hunger piercing his stomach and the fear, constant and deafening fear that kept him alert at every second. He remembers not knowing where to sleep at night, not having a safe place to go back to. Leaving his own name behind.
“I think I’d want my heaven to be somewhere warm,” he starts eventually, as Anya finds his hands and holds on tight. “Somewhere warm and comfortable. Somewhere I won’t have to worry about anything, where I won’t grow hungry, where I can just close my eyes and not think about what could go wrong.”
Somewhere safe.
One of her hands leaves his to start playing idly with his sleeve.
“Like home,” she remarks, sounding pleased, and he hears the smile in her voice before even seeing it.
Like home, something in him echoes, agreeing, and the stupor of it causes him to stop. He throws a look around. The living room is quiet, save for the television still airing cartoons and Bond’s soft snores. There’s food, fresh and nutritious and tasty, stored in the fridge – enough for several days still, and for the different people of the household. Soon, Yor will be coming home, and he’ll help her take her coat off and hang it for her, and they’ll talk about their respective days and smile without any calculative intent curled behind their lips; they’ll have dinner and wash dishes, and then at night he’ll bury himself under the soft sheets of his bed, in his own quiet room where the only expected intruders will be a young girl seeking comfort after a nightmare and the massive, gentle dog trailing after her.
He’s grown soft; this very realization should have rung like an alarm in his head, and yet –
And yet he finds himself unable, unwilling to do anything about it but to laugh as softly as he feels.
“You’re right,” he finally admits, trying to go for a light-hearted joke and failing maybe a little too obviously at it. “Maybe I’m already in paradise then.”
“That’s cheating!” she exclaims, false-pouting as she grabs at his jumper, and he chuckles even more.
She squirms on his knees for a bit, turning around and settling against him, before she reaches for a blank paper sheet and her crayons – apparently deciding that he’s comfortable enough for her to sit while drawing.
“Whaddabout Mama’s heaven?” she pipes up. She’s drawing a house, he realizes, with a weird pinch to his heart – pink tiles and big windows, blank walls outlined by her red crayon and a green-painted door.
“I wonder,” he says slowly, watching her scribble loopy clouds and a distorted, neon-yellow sun.
He ponders, for a moment, about what Yor likes. He knows her favorite dessert – apple pies, especially when they’re still warm from the oven – and the ways she prefers her tea and coffee, the kind of tunes she likes to hum along to when she listens to the radio, and how she likes best her walks through the park near their apartment: slowly, to appreciate every little flower and creature they encounter, pausing from time to time to appreciate the warmth of the sun on her skin with her eyes closed.
“It would be somewhere sunny and comfortable,” he decides. “With fields and orchards, and large trees she could sit under.”
“Nice,” Anya hums. “I’m gonna ask Mama when she comes home.”
She quietens. Fiddles with her crayon for a bit. He nudges her, gently.
“What’s wrong?”
“Papa dun’ really think paradice exists, right?”
It's his turn to go quiet, then, as he debates being truthful and potentially disappointing her in spite of the progress they’d just made, or instead appeasing her only for her to figure him out again anyway. She’d always had a sixth sense, for that - children could really be terrifying creatures, sometimes.
In the end, he decides for a gentle truth.
“It's because I’ve always imagined heaven as something we keep inside our hearts for the people who left us, and not as a place for ourselves.”
Anya turns around, blinking at him. “Whaddya mean?”
“It’s like…” he pauses, biting back a sigh. It’s not an easy thing to explain. “Imagine a house. A dollhouse. You build it inside your mind.”
“That’s silly,” Anya interrupts. “You can’t build a house with your mind.”
And she freezes, eyes widening as she looks down at her hands, as if wondering ‘Can I?’
He shushes her playfully. “You build it inside your mind. You imagine it, just like you imagine new games to play with Bond.”
She lets out an understanding noise, nodding vigorously, and he goes on with a smile.
“And so this little dollhouse, you build it in your mind for the people you love, for when they leave for where you can’t reach them anymore. It can be anyone you want. But you can’t go inside, because that little dollhouse is in your mind; you can’t even see through the windows. What you can do, though, is imagine what’s in it.”
“Giant slides!” Anya giggles.
“If that’s what you want,” he confirms. “There can be anything in this dollhouse; so you imagine it to be warm and big, full of light and laughter, never too lonely or too crowded. You think about it very carefully, so it can have all the little things that the people you love will enjoy, because you want them to be happy forever.”
“So in my dollhouse I’ll put our home for papa, a big tree for mama, and bones for Bond!”
Loid’s chest does something warm and complicated. “Exactly.”
“I like that.” Anya says.
He lets out a breath, almost surprised with himself at how glad he is to hear those words. “I’m glad, then. I’m sorry for making you upset earlier.”
The girl shakes her head. “S’okay. It was a hard question. I’m sorry for calling you a liar.”
“It was a hard question,” he confirms gently, “but I think that we came up with a good answer together, don’t you think?”
“Yeah!”
“So don't worry about Becky's grandmother or anyone else,” he adds, and she looks at him, really looks at him, and he knows she understands what he’s trying to say. “I’m sure they are in a very nice place, surrounded by all the things they enjoy.”
Anya smiles. “Yeah.”
And then she freezes; her eyes go wide and he fears he’s said something wrong again, but then she looks at him pleadingly and –
“Papa?”
“Yes?”
“I’m hungry,” she complains, whining, just as an impossibly loud grumbling emanates from her stomach.
“Alright,” he laughs. “I’ll go back to making dinner then.”
She rubs her stomach, and grins at him hopefully. “Can I get some peanuts?”
“No snacks between meals,” he reminds her, ignoring out of pure habit the puppy-eyed look she sends his way. “You won’t be hungry for dinner, otherwise.”
She grumbles good-naturedly but goes back to her drawings nevertheless, looking content enough as Loid steps back into the kitchen. He listens to her humming off-tone cartoon tunes when a new episode of Bondman starts airing, and he tries, much in vain, not to smile too obviously.
Yor comes home some time later than what he’d expected, looking tired yet happy to see them; he helps her take her coat off and hangs it for her , while she smiles at him gratefully, and he asks her about her day after she greets Anya and Bond with her usual warmth.
Anya, being herself – and never would Loid have imagined being so blatantly, so awarely glad of that fact before today – asks, with all the delicacy a young kid can muster, what Yor’s heaven will be like for her when she dies. This causes obvious and understandable confusion, almost tinged with concern, so Loid’s quick to give some light context about their earlier conversations.
And then, when Yor starts mentioning fields and orchards and a bright sun, Anya promptly proceeds to wrinkle her nose before turning to him and calling him a sap - a vocabulary he strongly suspects she’s learning from her Blackbell friend. She snickers when he grimaces, embarrassed, knowing perfectly he won’t be able to refute her claim – nor will he explain it to Yor, whose gaze is flickering between the two of them, confused once again.
It’s not like the apple pie baking in the oven would help his case.
Sleep doesn’t come to him easily that night.
He doesn’t quite manage to keep the thoughts at bay, and his mind keeps wandering to Anya – and who she was, before he found her.
Twilight had tried background checks, many of them, in the days that had followed her adoption - on her, and the drunkard running the orphanage, any and every person that may have been linked to her in any shape and form.
He’d found nothing.
Her past was entirely blank.
Almost too perfectly blank.
Usually, even with orphans, there were hints and clues to follow, even sometimes just the shadow of a trace that could lead to a precious piece of information – orphaned children, even the youngest of them, often wore with themselves clues of their past. Sometimes, they were simply, tragically unlucky – no relatives left to take care of them. Other times, they’d been lost, or abandoned, or kidnapped, and rigorous searches – assuming the one leading them had the financial and technical means to – usually led to some answers as to where they came from.
Anya, however, had been a complete mystery from the start. There was not even a hint as to her origins, as to where she'd been found.
It was as if she’d never even existed, before appearing from out of nowhere at the doorstep of that orphanage – which was, at best, suspicious. In fact, there was only one other person that Twilight knew of, who had such a past – unsearchable, unfindable to the point people could do little more than wonder if that person really existed:
Himself.
A girl this young couldn’t have hid any traces of her identity by herself, that was for sure, but who knew what had happened to her family, what had brought her to that orphanage. Twilight had an inkling it would be pointless to keep digging in that direction, unless Anya told him one day she wanted to know where she was from.
If she didn’t already know.
Anya had been old enough to remember her first, probably biological mother - that much had been obvious from her interactions, from her reactions during the Eden Academy enrollment process.
(The mere memory of it still made his blood boil.)
But did Anya know what had happened to her family?
If she did, if she’d been the witness of tragic events – which was, at this point, a certainty, considering the nightmares that still often haunted her at night – she nevertheless wouldn’t have been old enough to know how to mourn just yet.
Her question, today, and maybe her attitude of the past few days as well, might have been related to all of this. Maybe he wasn’t the only one having a hard time dealing with his memories and the pain that still emanated from them.
He could only hope his answer would appease her enough for the time to come, that she would be able to close her eyes, content with the idea that the afterlife was a place of rest and peace for the people she had lost.
The spiraling soon comes to an end, however, when the familiar creak of his door opening reaches his ear. He waits – and sure enough, his mattress soon dips under the weight of a first, small body, soon followed by a second, significantly heavier one.
“Nightmare?” he asks, barely above a whisper, but it echoes through the quiet of the room.
Anya hums in confirmation as she settles against him, and even through the thick blanket he can feel her trembling. He curses himself for not checking up on her sooner.
“Get under the blanket,” he tells her softly. “It’s cold, you’ll get sick.”
While she complies, he finds Bond’s head near his knee – the massive dog had, somehow, managed to arrange himself so he could fit onto the bed without laying on Loid directly – and pats it gratefully.
“Good boy,” he tells Bond, knowing he had woken Anya up from her nightmare and directed her to his room, just like he’d taught him to, and receives in return the soft thump thump thump of Bond’s tail wagging against the bed.
Loid lets the quiet wash over them again, knowing Anya won’t want to talk about her dreams – and then, like he’d anticipated, it doesn’t take long before both child and dog start snoring lightly again, breathing softly against him and snuggling closer to him.
He lets out a breath, mid-way between a chuckle and a sigh, and closes his eyes too.
For some reason, this time, he’s quick to follow too.
He wakes before even the first sign of dawn, to the platter of glacial rain against the windows of his room. There’s snow announced, sometime next week, but the drop in temperature has already made itself known harshly.
He rises slowly, careful not to wake up Anya, but his precautions don’t stop Bond from perking up as soon as he feels the blankets move.
Thump thump thump.
With a quick greeting pat for the dog, Loid slowly gathers Anya in his arms with the intent of taking back to her room – despite the slight jostle, the girl is like a deadweight in his hold, sleeping soundly and without a care for the rest of the world.
(As she should be able to.)
Bond follows him to Anya’s room, and stays a few seconds longer than Loid does, as if to make sure that she’s still asleep.
“I know you’re hungry, boy”, Loid tells him when Bond joins him into the living room again, just as the dog looks up at him hopefully. “I’ll fix your breakfast in a minute. With an extra, as a reward for last night.”
Yor joins him in the kitchen some time later, still in her pajamas and eyes half-closed from sleep, just as Bond finishes his bowl.
“You’re up early,” she remarks. “It’s your day off, don’t you want to sleep in? I’ll take Bond for a walk before going to work.”
She scratches the dog’s head, at that spot he likes right behind the ears, and Bond perks up instantly, tail wagging happily at the beloved word.
“It’s okay, I’ll take care of it,” he smiles, and takes a sip of coffee with the hope it’ll hide the dark circles under his eyes. “I need to get some fresh air as well. Anya should wake up in an hour or so, anyway.”
She smiles back, soft as ever. “If you’re sure. Any plans with her today? She must be happy to spend the day with you.”
“I hadn’t really planned anything, except maybe going to the park.” He throws a look through the window, the sight outside blurred through the water pearling down the glass. “That might not be the best idea, though.”
Yor hums. “You two will get sick if you spend too much time under that rain.”
“She’s been tired already, as of lately,” he adds. “I don’t want to get worse before she goes back to school.”
“Has she been having more nightmares?”
He nods. “She came to my room last night.”
She lets out a pained sigh, and glances at Anya’s closed door. “I’m sorry to hear that. I wish I was able to help more.”
“Don’t say that,” he says with a smile as he goes to refill her mug with more coffee. “She told me last week about how she sometimes comes to your room, too. You’ve been bringing her comfort. Thank you, on her behalf.”
“Of course,” Yor says, softly, fondly, the apple of her cheeks dusted pink with embarrassment. “She’s – she’s Anya. I love her very much.”
Of course, he almost echoes, but he bites back the words and goes to wash the dishes instead.
“I’ll probably be late again tonight,” she tells him, sheepish, once she comes out of the bathroom. “I hope it won’t be too much trouble. Don’t wait for me for dinner, alright?”
“You've been working a lot, lately,” he tells her, and hopes it doesn’t come across as an accusation. “Work has been tough, these days?’
“Not hard, per say,” she hums quietly, even as her eyes flicker around, suddenly shyly nervous – as she always is when she talks about her work. “But the workload has been increasing a lot. Last minute jobs, some clean-ups… these kinds of missions.”
He smiles at her, and she relaxes ever-so-slightly. “I’m sure you’ve been doing great. You should relax a bit, this weekend. Is there anything you would like to do? The weather should get better by tomorrow.”
“I’m not sure,” she laughs softly. “I just enjoy spending time with all of you.”
“So do I,” he almost says, and he feels too soft, too warm, and he really should be alarmed by this – but instead, he merely lets lets a smile stretch on his face when Yor pads into Anya’s room to kiss her goodbye, and he returns the wave she sends him as she opens the door.
Just before she leaves, however, Yor turns back towards him, her eyes bright. “Anya’s very creative,” she says, fondly. “I’m sure she would love to make something with you today.”
Loid thinks about it. Remembers crayons and a little dollhouse.
Oh.
“That’s an excellent idea. I might just have the thing for it.”
When Anya stumbles out of bed some time later, no later than eight in the morning, he smiles at her and makes her a cup of cocoa, with some marshmallows sprinkled on tops – an extra treat he often gives her after a complicated night, like a promise that this new day will be a better one.
“Are you hungry?”
She nods, yawning wide and loud in between mouthfuls of candy. Loid hides a smile behind the rim of his second cup of coffee and pushes towards her a plate with a toast cut into halves, covered in butter and honey.
“You see,” he starts after she finishes her first half of toast. “Since I’m not working today, I wanted to take you to the park, but it’s raining too hard for it to be fun. So I tried thinking about what we could do instead, and Yor gave me an idea this morning.”
Anya stops mid-bite, and blinks at him with that strangely piercing gaze of hers.
“Do you remember what we talked about yesterday?” he asks.
“Paradice and little houses?” Anya answers tentatively.
He nods. “Would you like building your own dollhouse? And decorating it together, so you can play with it later?”
“Oh,” she lets out, growing quiet and still for one long scary second before a wide, beaming grin blooms between her cheeks. “Yeah!”
The weather has cleared out, by the time they’re both ready to go out – the sun peaks out shyly from in between rare blue patches in the sky, but does little to warm up the atmosphere, and a sudden burst of wind has Loid shivering and adjusting the collar of his vest.
This doesn’t stop Anya from jumping around excitedly as soon as she steps outside, her face red from the cold and puffs of mist fading into the air with every exhale.
“Look, Papa,” she cries gleefully, stopping before him and waving her arms strongly enough for her entire body to rock along. “I’m a dragon!”
She then lets out a ferocious roar, at least effectively mimicking the smoke of a dragon’s muzzle, before cackling at her own demonstration and running in circles again.
“That you are,” he good-naturedly agrees, before ushering her to the car. “Here, put your seatbelt on.”
The thing is, he doesn’t actually know how to build a dollhouse. It’s not like he’s ever had to make one before. He’s quick to realize this when they step into the crafts store, only to draw a blank when he suddenly has to choose between too many kinds of glues and even more types of woods.
Woods, though, he knows a little about; he’s at least able to tell the ones that are easy enough to cut into small pieces, the ones that will hold well with paint and glue – and so they eventually opt for a large amount of poplar planks, bigger even than Anya but just small enough to fit into the car.
They go on to the paints after a first trip to said car to store the wood, and Anya gasps audibly when they roll their cart into a seemingly endless aisle of coloured cans, in all and every hues in existence.
It doesn’t come off as a surprise when Anya attempts to convince him to buy dozens and dozens of different colors – it takes a single glance at the price tags and a wince for him to decide that it simply won’t be possible. He can already imagine the Handler tearing into him for digging into the budget allocated for Operation Strix to buy paint cans.
The young girl accepts it good naturedly, and asks how many colors she can choose.
“Let’s pick four,” he tells her, before adding with a smile, “and we’ll get some glitter too.”
Anya cheers, nodding furiously – glitter was colorful and shiny and messy, which was everything she adored. The compromise would be good enough for her. It doesn’t make her choice of paints easier, however. After a long few minutes, she eventually chooses a vibrant red, followed by a pine-toned green and a bubble-gum pink, but then walks along the aisle again and again, chewing her lips indecisively.
Loid kneels to her, and asks her kindly, “Do you need help choosing the last one?”
She nods shyly, and takes his hand as he contemplates the hundreds of colors displayed before their eyes.
Anya likes loud colors – when they clash, when they explode, when they shine. She makes drawing after drawing, flooding the white of the paper with rainbows and stories and monsters before grabbing for a new blank sheet and going for something entirely different.
An idea pierces through his mind with light-speed clarity.
Maybe what she needs, instead of a last color, is a new canvas.
“What if”, he starts, as she turns away from the paint cans to look at him, “we choose white?”
The gaze she sends him is, at best, dubious.
“We’ll pick a washable paint,” he elaborates before giving him the chance to call his idea lame. “We’ll use it to paint the walls, and that way you’ll be able to draw on those with your crayons, and to erase it anytime you want to start over. How does that sound?”
He watches patiently – and maybe a tiny bit nervously as well – the words sink in into her mind, but then his nerves are soothed by the beaming smile she directs at him, eyes widening and shining.
And here it is again, that funny feeling in his chest. He’s not sure he’ll get away with calling it a mere fondness for much longer.
Anya squeals, and launches herself at him with her entire weight to hug him. “Papa’s the best!”
He pats her back with a smile. “I do try.”
Anya is a buzzing ball of excitement when they finally get home, welcomed by a confused yet joyous Bond. Loid’s arms are loaded with bags ready to burst from the weight of their purchases - glue and paint and wood and, more importantly, an unholy amount of glitter.
He’ll have to apologize to Yor – he can already imagine finding glitter specks in every nook and cranny of their home for the months to come.
It’s only when he places everything down that he realizes a tiny, tiny problem that had somehow escaped his notice until then: a living room isn’t exactly the most appropriate place for woodwork. He can clean off paint and glitter, but the table in their living room won’t be sturdy enough to saw and cut through planks and lumber.
“Eh,” he lets out. “We’ll find something.”
“Do I even want to know what you’re going to do with my place?” Franky grumbles even as Anya jumps in his arms with shrill laughter. Loid doesn’t miss the way he pats the girl’s hair with an almost reluctant fondness.
“Just a small craft, to keep the kid busy before school starts again,” he replies smoothly.
Franky raises an eyebrow, clearly not buying it. He can’t blame him for it – it’s only a partial truth, and the informant is good at detecting those, especially after years spent deciphering Twilight’s deflective, half-answers.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, man,” Franky sighs. “Just keep the workshop tidy, will ya? I’ll need it tomorrow.”
That’s a condition he can work with. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Uncle scruffy!” Anya calls, still in his arms. “Wanna help us?”
“Maybe another time, kiddo,” he tells her with a wink even as she whines, disappointed. “I’ve got a date waiting.”
And puts her down and ruffles her hair, just long enough for her to start giggling again,
“Thanks again, for giving us access to your workshop even though it was a last-minute request,” Loid says in a low tone as Franky shrugs his coat on and passes him – Anya’s too busy looking around to really pay attention to them, and so he pulls a wad of money from his undercoat and hands it out to the informant. “Hope you have a good time with your date.”
Franky sniffs with practiced disdain, and gives him an uncharacteristically long look before eventually grabbing the money. “Don’t mention it, you’re paying for my date.”
He pauses, as if considering whether to say something more or hold back, before sighing.
“And if it helps you two erase the gloomy expressions you’ve both been wearing lately, it’ll be good enough of a pay too.”
Loid blinks. “What do you mean?”
But the door’s already closing, and the only answer he gets is the loud clang of metal hitting the doorframe and latching close.
The first thing he does is to establish some rules with Anya.
Don’t touch the tools. Don’t run around the workshop. Don’t open drawers and cupboards you’re not supposed to touch. Don’t startle or shake Papa when he’s handling dangerous tools.
The last thing they need is to have Anya running into something sharp and hurting herself, or stumbling into a national secret or two by accident. He trusts Franky to be more careful than this, really, but the young girl has a surprising knack for finding trouble.
They don’t start woodcutting right away – first, they settle around a table with some paper and pencils, and decide on what to do – the general shape, how many floors to count for, the size of the windows, and such.
Amidst all of this, he studies Anya, who’s plunged deep into her doodles and thoughts, apparently debating whether to make square or round windows.
“Who do you want to make the house for?” he asks her kindly, pointedly not looking at her but rather his own paper sheet, where he’d been drawing elaborate plans.
Anya remains silent for a long time – she knows where the question comes from, does remember what he’d told her the day before, if the look in her eyes is anything to judge by – but then the quiet stretches long enough for him to start believing she doesn’t want to answer. Which is more than fine with him; he doesn’t want her to feel pressured into sharing something she isn’t ready for.
But then Anya starts speaking.
“The house is gonna be for my mama. Not – not our mama, but... my first mama, before you found me,” she says, slowly at first, and then talking faster and faster until she’s almost rambling, like she needs the words to get out of her mouth before she can change her mind. Her eyes flicker to him as she speaks, like she’s somehow afraid of saying the wrong thing, like she’s expecting him to scold her or correct her for not sticking to their agreed backstory, and something in-between his ribs aches at the sight.
“I see,” he tells her softly, with an encouraging nod, and he pats her head. She melts under her touch like sun-kissed butter, and he pretends not to notice the single tear that rolls down her cheek. “Then let’s make her a cozy house, alright?”
She looks at him with a tentative smile, and something that looks like adoration in her eyes.
It makes his chest feel tight.
He’s not so certain anymore that it’s necessarily a bad thing.
He starts cutting the poplar into pieces, following the plans he’d drawn, and the further instructions Anya had scrambled onto her own papers. The planks for the roof go first, followed by the walls – and then a first, a second and third floor. He cuts in a door and windows – into arches, like the young girl had eventually decided – and a door, before using the scraps to prepare a chimney
Anya looks at his work from a safe distance, occasionally going “Ooh!” and “Aah!” when he finishes a piece.
Turns out building a dollhouse isn’t actually that hard. Cutting the wood into pieces takes less time than what he’d have imagined, and once he’s done there’s a generous number of wood boards left.
“You’re just good at everything, Papa,” Anya tells him, apropos of nothing, and he chuckles.
“It’s just not my first time doing some woodwork,” he explains easily. “We’ll glue all of this together back home, alright? We might have a hard time fitting the house into the car if we build it now.”
“Okay!”
Loid gathers the freshly cut pieces, and lets his gaze wander to the untouched pile of planks. Something, shy and tiny and hopeful, starts nagging at the back of his mind.
For once, he doesn’t attempt to push it away.
Anya hadn’t been able to mourn her mom. But how was he any different from her, in the end?
He looks at Anya. “Should we make another one?”
She blinks at him, but then she’s quick to catch on. “A house for papa?”
He hums, and then adds, like an afterthought: “I’d like to make one for my mom too.”
Anya makes a noise, half-pain, half-understanding. She gets to him close enough to grip his sleeve. “Papa’s mom is in heaven?”
“I hope so,” he answers, and his throat feels too raw, too tight, but he pushes the words out anyway. “She's been gone for a long time.”
She stares down at him, once again with that soul-piercing gaze, and then she smiles at him.
“Then we should make it extra cozy,” she decides.
“Yes,” he agrees, and the air comes back in his lungs gently. “We should.”
They’re done cutting up the materials for a second house just in time for Franky’s return, right before lunch-time. He takes one look at them, covered in sawdust, and snorts softly.
Anya squints at him, dubious and also maybe vaguely disgusted. “You’re glowing, Unkie.”
“Am I? Today's just a good day.”
“Did the date go well?” Loid prods, and Franky grins at him. “You’re back early.”
“We rescheduled for a second date, she had to leave for a family emergency. So,” he explains easily.” He looks around, gesturing at the mess they’ve made, and asks, “need help cleaning this?”
He shakes his head. “I’ll take care of it.”
That’s the least he can do.
They get back home right around lunch time; Anya’s hungry, very hungry, and she doesn’t hesitate to repeat that fact every few seconds while clutching her stomach in despair. Loid calms her down with practiced ease, and fixes her a quick lunch while she excitedly lays down all the wooden pieces in the living room, one after another.
Once they’re done eating, they cover the table with newspapers, tie aprons around themselves as an additional addition against paint accidents, and Loid ties her hair into a ponytail while she fiddles impatiently.
They start with the paint, first working on the walls of both houses until they become a pristine white, as promised, and Anya laughs as he teaches her how to make good paint strokes while avoiding without difficulty her not-so-sneaky attempts at sending flickers of white paint to his face. The roofs are next – she chooses pink for her dollhouse, and Loid shrugs when she asks him what color he’s going to pick for his own.
“I’m not sure,” he tells her. “Why don’t you choose for me?”
She takes his request with the utmost seriousness, ordering him to go for the green paint and announcing, in her endless generosity, that she’ll help him with it. The doors are next, soon covered in red, and then the different floors are painted the same color as the roofs of their respective houses. They add details with markers once the paint dries enough: tiles on the roof (as well as a generous layer of glitter on top of it all), bricks on the tiny chimneys, long lines on the doors and floors to mimic wood planks. Anya, somehow, manages to get more glitter in her hair than on her appointed wood board, but she’s laughing too hard, smiling too bright for Loid to dare say anything to that.
Once it’s dry enough, they glue everything together – or, at least, he does, because he knows Anya cannot be trusted with wood glue. He can already imagine her gluing her fingers together, and doesn't even dare picture the worst scenarios that could become reality. Instead, she helps the glue to dry by puffing her cheeks and blowing or less successfully onto it – with the amount of saliva he can see flying from her mouth, he’s not sure she’s being of great help, but the intent is there, at least. She then gets to try doodling something on the wall of her dollhouse with a crayon – a mess of circles and sticks she calls a bear – and cheers joyously once they successfully erase the drawing with a few strokes of a humid sponge without damaging the paint.
By the time they’re done, arms sore and cheeks hurting from smiling too wide and too long, the day has already fallen; Bond has fallen asleep near them, snoring deeply, and Loid’s late to make dinner, but Anya’s face is bright and covered in marker strokes while his entire body feels lighter than he can ever remember it to be.
Anya plops down onto the couch, her plushie Chimera pressed against her heart. With the way her eyes are drooping ever-so-slightly, he suspects she’ll be knocked out asleep in a matter of minutes.
“Today was fun,” she tells him through a wide yawn. “Thank you, papa.”
“It was fun for me too,” he confirms, sitting down next to her and meaning every word of it.
Then she looks at him, the expression on her eyes slowly morphing into something devious, and his eyes narrow instinctively, as if sensing the trap before even seeing it.
“Papaaaaaaa?”
Definitely a trap. “What is it?”
Her eyes are wide and innocent, which means she is not. “We said home is like paradice, right?”
“We did.”
“And we can do anything we want in it?”
Oh, so this is what this is all about.
“Drawing on the walls is not something you can do in this home, Anya.”
She pouts. “But I'll make pretty things!”
“You’ll still get in trouble for it.”
“Whatever,” Anya grumbles, sinking dramatically into the couch with an exaggerated sigh, before adding, like it’s an insult, “Your walls are boring anyway.”
“Anya,” he warns, trying very hard to keep the chuckle out of his voice, and only barely succeeding.
Her disappointment doesn’t last long – she’s soon back to beaming, observing from her spot the result of their labor, in spite of her evident struggle to keep her eyes open. Loid watches as her breathing inevitably slows down, and she eventually slumps against the sofa.
He smiles at her. Just watching her makes his own eyelids heavy, he thinks, just as a wave of exhaustion crashes onto him. His head feels light, but his limbs are suddenly like lead.
He still has time to prepare some food for tonight. He’ll just close his eyes for a minute, and then –
He’s drawn back into awareness by the brush of cool fingers against his forehead, pulling a stray strand of hair out of his face. There’s an odd yet familiar weight on his chest, snoring lightly.
“Oh, dear,” a soft voice murmurs, and his treacherous thing of a body all but melts against her touch. “You two have been busy today, haven’t you?”
He cracks an eye open, and Yor blushes deeply. “Oh, I’m sorry, Loid. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“I was just resting my eyes,” he blurts out before he can even think about it, even though the croak that comes out of his throat does little to help him. “Sorry, I haven’t started on dinner.”
She smiles down at him, all soft edges and warm eyes. “It’s quite alright. I’m glad you and Anya got some rest. Don’t move; I’ll bring you a blanket.”
Had it been any other day, Loid would have argued; but this feeling, right there, of quiet belonging is too enticing to resist, too much of a nice one to protest – it doesn’t help either that he can already feel himself slip back into sleep, sinking boneless into the depths of the couch as a blanket, soft and warm, is settled over him and the child sleeping soundly in his arms.
“Thank you, Yor,” he murmurs, looking into her eyes.
Yor watches him back, as if studying him, but she speaks before he can ask.
“You look better, today.” she tells him, and the soft relief in her tone is nearly enough to make him suffocate. “Happier.”
His throat feels suddenly, oddly right. “What do you mean?”
“You seemed… sad, lately. So did Anya. I was worried.”
Loid opens his mouth so he can say something, anything – and yet there’s little more than a voiceless breath that manages to escape from his mouth.
He had been feeling… melancholic, to put it simply. Sad, even, as Yor had stated, with his mind stuck in the past, whirling with memories he couldn’t share without putting everything and everyone at risk..
And, somehow, it’s now all gone. Instead of detonations and screams in his ears, he hears the echoes of Anya’s giggles; gone are the dust in his lungs and the blood on his hands, replaced with the smell of paint lingering in the room and the glitter sticking to his skin. He doesn’t feel cold and hollow anymore – but rather terribly warm, under that blanket and with Anya against him, and there’s this fond, too fond feeling nested snuggly in his chest.
“I wasn't sure it was my place to say anything,” Yor continues, a little sadly, and a pang of guilt courses through his body for causing her to feel that way. For making her believe she didn’t belong. “
“Why?” he asks gently.
“I figured it would be…” she cuts herself off, looking at him with such hesitation that he’s suddenly submerged with the urge to take her in his arms, too, “I figured it would be about your first wife.”
He tenses before he can help it; takes a shuddering breath, and closes his eyes, pained. “It was something of the kind, I suppose.”
She gives an understanding nod, but he catches her wrist before she can get up, and lets his fingers travel up along her palm until they find hers.
“Yor,” he whispers with a sincere urgency, locking eyes with her. Anya shifts against him, but does not wake up. “You’re family. You can tell us anything.”
The bitter-sweet hypocrisy of his words fills his mouth – however, before he can reflect on it, Yor shakes her head.
“I just wish to make things easier for you.”
“You are,” he insists, fervently. “You are. Being there… being you. It makes things easier.”
He thinks of cooking lessons shared between the three of them. Her teaching him tricks to get persistent stains out of clothes. Eating dinner together. Sharing a coffee in the morning.
Never had he imagined he’d enjoy letting his guard down so much, for so long. Never had he imagined that smiling would stop hurting, that it would become a habit instead of a mask.
Yor looks at him, wide eyed, and he feels more than hears the way her breath catches a little bit when he presses lightly against her fingers.
But then she presses back, and he feels the air leaving his lungs in return.
“Rest some more,” she orders him kindly, after a second of quiet contemplation that he wishes could have been an hour, and the words echo in his bones just as his muscles uncoil again, his body already complying before his mind can even fully process the request. “I’ll take care of dinner.
He listens to the sound of her retreating footsteps with a flutter in his chest and the imprint of her fingers still hot against his skin, and Anya sighs against his chest.
“Mama's heaven, too,” she mumbles against him, more than half-asleep.
He makes a small noise of agreement, and closes eyes that are, once again, heavy with sleep. He’ll allow himself to bask in the warmth of this small heaven that they call home, just for a bit longer.
…
“... Anya?”
“Yes, Papa?”
“You’re still not allowed to draw on the walls.”
“... Aw.”