I know that the enmity between Westalis and Ostania probably isn't the result of some West-East Germany split scenario but... it's Germany. We all know that, right? It's Germany. Anyways, knowing that, I wanted a Spy x Family fic that places the family in the rise of fascism. Because... why not. Fanfiction, man. Same characters, different circumstances.

Anyways, this should hopefully be a relatively contained 3 chapter fic. This one explores them getting together and the gang's growing discomfort with the government. Middle chapter will be nice and thick and will show things continuing to get worse, contrasted with the bright spot of the familial relationship. The last one... well.

I. Fresh Sprouts

Hadn't things been better once? More and more, that was the question that snuck into his mind, poisoning every waking moment.

Now, he was no reactionary- he had cheered with the rest of them when the new flag, the White and Green, finally flew proudly over Berlint- but somehow the missions did not seem nearly so romantic as they once did.

His station was in the east, his cover that of a dealer in materials. Coal, timber, steel, whatever would work. The industrial capacity of their neighbors was a good thing to know as both countries limped out of economic disaster.

What was less pleasant were the quiet deals on dark nights, the stolen industrial blueprints, and the dinners with "entrepreneurs" who were the old money aristocracy by a different name. He sipped wine with bauxite barons and corn counts, reminiscing about the days when things used to make sense.

It hadn't made much sense to Lloyd at the time, but perhaps he was a bit too busy scraping together meals.

When commerce got boring, there were always other things to fall back on; crackdowns on political dissidents were more common now, and he was a tool for said crackdowns. The dissidents were caused by unrest, which was caused by the economy, which seemed to have been caused by the dissidents, the way some politicians talked.

(You couldn't just say that the reason was probably the spectacular failure of the wheat-dalc, as that would implicate some of the proud leaders of their mighty republic. Anyone who couldn't see the obvious sense behind tacking their currency to a good like grain was clearly blind.)

His "protege", Frost, was working to root out a particularly determined and radical longshoreman's union near King's City, which retained its name despite the lack of kings…

Some of them were really honest-to-goodness radicals. Anarchists with bomb plots, monarchists with plans to invite the old king out of his exile. Both were genuine risks to the government, but others?

He had sabotaged unions of every stripe, both through violence and more subtle means, infiltration and nurturing the seeds of disagreement into fights. (One of the only groups he hadn't been involved in handling at one point was the National Unity Party, actually. Somehow they escaped policing.)

It wasn't a pleasant business, but watching that starry-eyed idealism vanish from people's eyes… it hurt.

Those bright hopes of a better future had been dashed so many times. As the War began, the older boys laughed and drank and sang God Save the King, so absolutely certain they'd be home by the year's end that they marched joyfully into the slaughter. After the war, there were so many who thought they had it figured out, that their way would finally bring peace and prosperity. Loid had been one of those young men, and he somehow bet on the right horse.

For what little it was worth, today's mission was a bit of a change of pace. Raiding a suspicious laboratory was nice and easy and hopefully morally unambiguous. His duty was the morally ambiguous, even if it tore him up inside.

Of course, things could never be easy. Why wouldn't the illicit human experimentation be funded by a shadowy cabal of power brokers who were clearly pulling strings in the local government, up to and including recruiting police and paramilitaries?

(It was just that sort of night.)

Still, it was obvious that you didn't dedicate so many resources to guarding something inconsequential. Sneaking inside, he wasn't entirely sure what to expect. He had sabotaged chemical weapon production a few times…

Creeping through the brightly lit halls, Loid slowly worked his way towards the center of the building, the epicenter of all the scientist's work, which was busy even at this miserable hour.

The lab coat Loid had 'borrowed' for his disguise was a variegated mess of spilled ink, the air filled with the whirring and clicking of machinery. Loid saw some mechanical computers which would have made the cryptography section flush.

Yet all of these things orbited around one feature, a room, wrapped on almost all sides by transparent mirrors. They could look in, the inhabitant could never look out. Unfortunately, it was a human inhabitant. Even worse, it was a child.

Despite some vague applications of pastel paint and a few faded toys, the room was viciously spartan. A tiny little slip of a girl with pink hair was curled into a ball on top of a similarly meager bed.

Moral ambiguity? No.

Wrecking this place was actually completely morally justified. There was just the matter of the logistics of it- this wasn't just a slip in and out sort of deal.

As subtly as he could, he crept in the direction of the guard who was keeping watch, weaving between humming radios and devices so esoteric that he couldn't even begin to say what they were. In the midst of that oddity, there was something reliable, something classic: a wrench.

Pick it up- nice and heavy- and…

The guard is stumbling back, dazed. Some scientists were still working away at their projects, the more aware were starting to panic.

Another blow, the rifle swiftly kicked out of the guard's hands. A few bystanders ran away to grab the guard's friends, the rest were frozen.

A swift boot to the chest before scooping up the rifle and sprinting for the girl's room. Door is locked. He has a gun. The door's open. The girl is up now, clearly panicked.

Someone attempts to stop him, and they're answered with the butt of the rifle. Loid enters the room, sees a thousand copies of himself stretching to eternity in the mirrors. There's blood on his labcoat, mingled with the ink.

The girl is groggy, so out of it that she smiles as Loid runs to scoop her up. A bit of squirming, but nothing that prevents him from getting out (from fulfilling this stupid, stupid flight of fancy, the sort of thing that got spies killed). He ran, leaping down the stairs several at a time and skidding around corners. Once she had stirred properly, the girl was giggling and laughing like she was on some sort of adventure.

Considering the circumstances, he almost tuned her out entirely. A child wouldn't be of much use in a mess like this, she was practically dead weight, but he saw weeping war orphans in those eyes, saw so many tragedies he had once been powerless to prevent, was still powerless-

"Two bad guys around that corner!" The girl said, so confident and serious that Loid almost tripped. He recovered and slipped out of sight, but he heard the harsh retort of gunfire… exactly where the girl said it would be from.

Nonsense. It couldn't be.

It was, apparently. The situation was nothing that Loid couldn't have handled by himself, alone, but the little girl probably saved him from picking up quite a few injuries.

Then there was the answering of questions he had never asked. Vague mental musings about the potential locations of files or fleeing researchers were answered with worrying accuracy.

(He did get what he came for, of course, in the form of several sheaves of paperwork. All he needed to do to carry them all was let the girl ride piggyback.)

What paperwork he found confirmed his fears. Research into psychological powers, the sort of thing you'd find in cheap pulp novels, but painfully real- so real that she was restricting his airflow slightly as she clutched at his neck.

After his escape, he tried a few more tests. "What's the second building from the corner if you take a right out of the Intelligence Building?"

"A- a habagasher!"

"Haberdasher." She was dead on the money, barring the pronunciation.

"What flowers are growing outside?"

"The red ones!"

Right again.

This child could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the government. She'd never have a day of peace. Loid would not be complicit in robbing this girl of her childhood.

The other options… orphanages? Adoption? The girl sniffed a little, and looking back he could see, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Well… could he really trust anyone else to keep her safe, or to care for her properly after discovering her powers?

Her eyes lit up brilliantly, and he could not bring himself to ruin that smile.

"What's your name?"

"Anya. Anya Forger!"

He supposed it was only natural that she could pick up his current name.

"A distant relative, huh?" Franky grumbled.

"Yes. Anya is just the child of a late relative who I volunteered to care for."

"That simple." He scoffed. "What's the real reason, Twilight? You don't go off script like this."

"The experiments they performed on that girl… I will not let that happen again."

"And you think the government will want to experiment on her?"

"... Yes."

Franky's eyes widened at that, and at the implication that whatever this was- this marvelous thing- was being hidden away. Twilight had a lot of discretion, but to hide something so critical…?

"How're the sales, Franky?" Loid prompted, steering the conversation somewhere a little less fraught.

"Beer's gotten more expensive. Smokes, too. The latter's tariffs, but the first…?"

"The corporations?"

"Yes." He groused. "How could you possibly screw up beer in Bayern?"

"Has high command changed their policy regarding Desmond?"

"Not at all."

Loid frowned as he 'perused' the collection of cigarettes available. Should he really be smoking with Anya around? He looked over at Anya, who was craning her neck to look at the sweets. She turned to look at him and shook her head violently. A no for the smokes, then.

But that didn't have him upset, not really. Smoking was more an act he put on than anything. What really had him frowning was Desmond. For some reason, the crackdowns never seemed to be directed at the National Unity Party, and the man's popularity had ballooned, to the point that he could try something like the corporations, without any significant interference from intelligence.

Desmond's corporations were strange, strange animals, certainly not like a conventional company. The Bayern Beer Corporation was a conglomerate, a collection of brewer's unions and bosses from the whole of the region brought together by Desmond's guiding hand. No more class disputes! At least, that was what Desmond was selling.

The beer plans were suffering from growing pains, but Desmond had managed to resolve a long-running dispute between automobile workers and their bosses. Branches of the party had already taken root in Berlint and King's City, and they had practically taken over the industrial centers in the Rheintal…

Anya tugged on his pant leg, a paper-wrapped block of caramel in her hand. "Papa…"

Loid lifted her up to the counter and walked her through the delicate art of purchasing something at the store. Franky was giving him an exasperated look the entire time, but Anya had her sweets, and they were on their way to the tailor's. (Any daughter of Loid Forger would be dressed to the nines- he had the money, after all.)

Yor Briar was in a bit of a bind.

She had herself a job, but she wasn't entirely sure for how long. Being a single woman supporting herself wasn't exactly in fashion, politically. Well, to some parties it was, but to the National Unity Party? Apparently, her role was to start new lives, not end them.

(She was afraid that the numbers were already a little skewed in that regard. Deep in the red did not even begin to describe it.)

Well, no one knew about her second job, but accommodating for it made her seem… weird. The sort of weird that would get her in trouble one day. Not to mention her remarkable finances, for a woman of her station. (She had actually made a killing off the stock market for a while before she knew what insider trading was. Killing higher-ups made line go down, and she could work with that.)

And now the National Unity Party was pushing a civilian watch for suspicious activity, and parents were telling their kids to keep an eye out as well…. If they were 'the country's immune system' or some such, Yor was going to get caught up in an allergic reaction.

For a moment, she was almost considered the patches the tailor tried to sell her. Would lip service like that get NUF busybodies off her case? Probably not. She'd just be more perfidious in their eyes.

She couldn't exactly vanish into a life of… well, it wouldn't even be that of a housewife, because she wasn't married. She couldn't exactly retire without looking even more suspicious.

It would, she thought, be nice to get married. Not for the romance or anything, but just so she wouldn't be bothered about it. No more sneering about her lacking social skills, no lacking for a partner at social events, no more awkward questions or conversations petering out when people figured out she was an old maid in the making…

But it's not like a potential spouse would just fall out of the sky… she had to go out and get them, right?

(A marriage was quite different from murder, logistically speaking…)

Getting Anya acclimated to life proved a bit of a challenge. There was so much that needed to be done, it was practically a mission to rival his more regular ones. (He'd need insurance if he didn't come back from a mission one day. Franky?) Sufficient food for a growing child wasn't too much of a problem, but making sure she was looked after during the day without tipping his hand too much? Clothes?

The tailor was occupied when they arrived, so Anya took a moment to gawk and gasp at the fabrics, just marveling at pulling them through her fingers. "So soft!" She gasped.

Loid put on a fatherly grin and tried not to wonder if that genuinely was the softest fabric she had touched in her entire life. Waving down the tailor- who was desperately trying to sell something to the other customer- he began to talk. What were good fabrics and fashionable outfits for a girl Anya's age, especially with her hair color?

Of course, he kept an eye on her even as he talked, but Anya was proving shockingly adaptive at socializing. Well, perhaps it wasn't so shocking, considering she might be able to pick up rough expectations from the other person's mind. She could spy and act with the best of them…

(Bad. No.)

The other customer, a woman, knelt down to talk with Anya, smiling gently at her, but unfortunately, the tailor needed Anya's measures… he laid a hand on her shoulder. "Anya, you need to get measured now-"

"This lady would make an awesome mama, papa!"

The woman laughed. "Well, I'm glad you think so, miss…?"

"Anya!" She chirped, before turning to him. "And this is my papa, Loid!" She leaned in towards the woman conspiratorily. "You should get married!" She 'whispered' before heading towards the tailor.

"I'm sorry. Anya's just… excitable."

"It's sweet, really. She reminds me of my younger brother." She smiled, some vague fondness on her face. "But… ah, you're not married?"

He looked to Anya for a moment. "No. Anya was a child of a late relative of mine," Loid said, looking at Yor. (She just might work. Why not add another foolish idea to the pile?)

Looking down at the floor, he feigned embarrassment. "Frankly, I'm in over my head."

Turning on the charm was practically second nature at this point, even if it wasn't for the sake of a mission. (Doing something purely because he wanted to, not because it was a mission… it was a worryingly liberating feeling.) Getting closer to Yor… well, it was workable and potentially quite beneficial.

Sure, it wasn't the ideal way to fulfill his mission, but neither was adopting Anya.

Being a bachelor was a bit of an odd look in the circles he was forced to frequent, as legacy-focused as they were. Sure, he certainly impressed people, in a strange sense, by playing the part of a money-hungry psychopath without such preoccupations, but it would give him an agreeable, family-values look, and a potential means of getting closer to his targets.

Ensuring a safety net for Anya should something happen to him and possibly advancing his mission in the process? It was workable. He could spin it for the higher-ups, anyway. They gave him a lot of leeway as long as he got the job done.

When Anya's measures were all done, she was informed that they were going out for lunch with Mrs. Yor. She was positively ecstatic.

(That said date was really just a test to see if they could tolerate each other went unmentioned. Anya probably figured that out, but she was happy regardless. She knew that they would start a fake relationship if it worked out well, after all.)