Disclaimer: Spy x Family belongs to Tatsuya Endo.
Author's note: Enjoy and thank you for reading!
Chapter 4
He does call.
In fact, they exchanged text messages first before they started the phone calls. It was tricky and delicate in the beginning, especially since they barely knew each other (well, Twilight did his extensive background check on Yor, but didn't find anything suspicious)—but as time passed, and they spent more time with one another, the phone calls felt more natural.
She learned that he likes to read newspapers and keep up with the politics; she learned that he likes his coffee with just a small amount of sugar; she learned that he's a phenomenal chef; she learned that he likes to wear the same sweater over and over, and that he enjoys her mother's recipe for stew; and most of all, she learned that he's a naturally brilliant man with a kind heart, always putting others first.
Their friendship is progressing beautifully, and every time they're together, Yor feels like she's getting closer to getting accustomed to this new, peaceful life.
There is just one tiny problem.
Yor thinks she's in love.
She thinks it started when she cried in his arms that night at the park, but thinks that he peaked her interest during that night at the mixer (aside from Yuri, he's the only other person to ever call her pretty). She recognized this feeling when he called her to let her know that he had moved to this new apartment five minutes away from her place.
And her thoughts immediately started to throw images of Loid and her sharing dinner together, or having coffee together, or taking the bus together, or doing groceries together—together but separate, Yor reminds herself.
But… he certainly doesn't feel the same way. (That's what she believes anyway.)
Yor walks around her apartment, adjusting the Christmas ornaments that she placed on the old Christmas tree that she and Yuri used every year. She feels alone once again when she studies the worn-out ornaments on the off-green tree. This is the first time she spent the holidays without Yuri—without anyone really. But Yuri said not to worry about visiting him for Christmas since he would be at work for the rest of the year, though he promised he would be home after the holidays.
"I should be free for Christmas, if you aren't doing anything," was what Loid told her when she talked about Yuri unable to come home for the holidays. Yor hadn't thought of inviting someone else to spend Christmas with her, since it had always been just Yuri and Yor—but when Loid suggested it, Yor felt that warm, pleasant feeling in her chest again.
So they made plans to spend Christmas at Yor's place, because Loid didn't have any other furniture—much less holiday decorations—at his new apartment.
Yor has just turned the stove off after cooking the stew when she gets a call on her landline, and her red eyes darken as she moves towards the telephone. Yor presses the phone to her ear. She swallows dryly.
"Thorn Princess."
She doesn't know whether to smile or frown. She hasn't had an assignment in weeks (has it been months already? She can't tell because she's been spending a lot of time with Loid), and Yor even thought of dropping by the Garden to see how her boss is doing.
"Good evening, Shopkeeper," Yor greets.
"There is an assignment I need you to take on," he starts like he always does, and briefly explains who and where the target is. When she accepts the assignment, Yor lets out a deep sigh.
She was looking forward to spending a quiet Christmas dinner with Loid this evening. He said that his work might take a bit longer to finish, but that's normal for someone working at the hospital. But now, Yor thinks that she must cancel it altogether. Yor pulls out her phone to send him a message about a sudden work emergency. She doesn't wait for a reply, and she gets herself ready.
She straps her weapons around her body like she used to, slips on her black dress like she used to, and sees her reflection in her mirror. Her red eyes are bright against her dark hair and assassin attire. How many lives has she taken for the sake of peace, how many times has she almost lost her own life for the sake of peace…
"Peace…" Yor murmurs, and her thoughts move to Loid. Her stomach flips knowingly. She shakes her head vigorously. There is no time to think of Loid. A small mistake on her part can get her killed and—
And… she isn't ready to die this time.
She thinks of Loid again as she moves under the shadows, heading to the assassination site. Would she ever be able to tell him what she does? Or would he… Yor's thoughts trail off, afraid of the rejection that she may face if Loid ever finds out. Yor arrives at her destination shortly, and she pushes all other thoughts aside and focuses on finishing the job as quickly and effectively as possible. Yor presses herself against the side of the building where the shadows cover her entire being. With a deep breath, she starts.
.
.
Twilight doesn't see the text message until he's almost done with his reports.
He's at his new apartment, and just came back from a spy mission that took a few days to resolve. Handler has been hearing some reports on a possible assassination attempt on the new leaders of Ostania and Westalis during the conference that was scheduled for Monday morning, but thanks to WISE's interference, the assassination plan was discovered and put to rest—with the conference being rescheduled for another time.
It was a dangerous mission that consisted of highly skilled, ex-militia targets, and Twilight was lucky to have only injured his left hand while his right arm was only grazed by a bullet. Unfortunately, Nightfall and some other agents were involved in heavier casualties.
However, what bothers him the most is that… when he barely dodged the bullet, when he momentarily saw his life flash in front of his eyes… Yor's face popped up in his mind.
Even now, he feels rather disappointed that he wouldn't be seeing Yor this evening like they planned.
Sorry Loid… something urgent came up at work, so I'll have to cancel… I'll talk to you later! Merry Christmas, Loid reads it with her voice in his mind and he stands up to stretch. He evaluates the mess of reports on his table.
He rubs his face, trying to get himself to stop overanalyzing his micro-reactions (like thinking of Yor when he almost died) and to finish his documents instead.
"I guess I can take my time with these reports," he sighs to himself, heading to his kitchen to make some coffee.
.
.
She's in love.
Yor knows it when the knife slices deeply against her chest, when she feels the blood drenching her clothes and her vision gets blurry. Yor knows it, feels it in her bones, when she stands up, hands tight on her weapons, hands wet with her blood this time.
I'm not going to die tonight, she thinks, eyes focused on the last man standing. He's shaking as she walks towards him.
She's getting too old for this, Yor realizes as she preys on the last one. How could she have missed this guy? She must've been out of her mind. In one swift movement, Yor throws her stiletto weapon at the man, aiming for the head and… the last man crashes to the ground. She takes a deep breath but can't, and heads to the telephone perched up on the desk.
The Shopkeeper told her that there was an important meeting to be held in this building's library, and that everyone needed to be eliminated. It's a blood bath, and it's more than fifteen individuals she had to deal with. The wound on her chest isn't helping either, and she thinks she'll need reinforcement to help clean up the site at the very least.
"It's done," Yor reports, "But I need help cleaning up. I'm wounded."
"I will send reinforcements," the Shopkeeper responds. "Well done, Thorn Princess."
She winces at the name and the phone clicks, signaling the end of the call. Looking down at her chest, she swears under her breath and applies pressure with her bare hands. It doesn't look like it hit an artery so she should… be…
Yor shakes her head, fighting the urge to dose off. Maybe she's losing more blood than she thinks. Maybe the adrenaline is wearing off and she's feeling all her injuries at once. Yor feels a small ounce of panic in her stomach and before she knows it, she's dialing Loid's phone number (yes, she has it memorized). She's about to hang up, and her lightheadedness is making her feel faint when Loid picks up on the other line. Her eyes continue to scan the room, albeit with more exertion than she's used to, to make sure that everyone's been eliminated.
"It's Yor," she starts, breaths a little shallow. "Listen," Yor stops because she doesn't know what to say, placing the phone between her right shoulder and ear while she adds all the pressure she can to her wound. She grits her teeth when the pain shoots up her shoulder. "I-I'm sorry I cancelled."
"It's fine," Loid responds, the low timbre of his voice making her skin feel warm. She always liked listening to his voice through the phone; it felt like he was so close to her. "Are you okay? Why are you calling this late?"
"O-oh, sorry," she stutters, glancing around for a clock. Ah, midnight. Her head still feels light, and she grasps that the reinforcements aren't coming any sooner. "I just…" her vision is hazy, and she isn't sure if she's crying, or if it's the blood loss she's experiencing, "I…"
Loid is quiet on the other line, patient as always.
"I might di—I might not see you for a while," she says instead. There's too much of her own blood… "But I think… I think I love you."
Silence.
"A-and," Yor takes another shallow breath, thoughts beginning to feel incoherent, "Thank you for everything. J-just in case I haven't told you enough."
"Yor…" Loid says, concern lacing his tone. There is rustling of some bedsheets in the background. She must've woken him up. "Where are you? I'll come pick you up—"
"No," she shakes her head weakly, hands now trembling and pale. He can't see me like this. He mustn't, not like this… Oh god, where are those damned reinforcements, she wonders distantly, "We survive, remember? We always do. I just think… I'm a little tired… b-but I've been living peacefully thanks to you—"
"Yor," exclaims Loid on the other end of the line. "Yor, wherever you are, stay awake." His voice is starting to sound faint. "Yor, please."
"I'll talk to you later," she mumbles, eyes struggling to stay open. But it's getting harder. Maybe this is what the end feels like, Yor thinks while Loid is yelling through the phone to stay awake please, don't hang up. "Love you," Yor says again into the phone before it slips away and slams back on the handset.
.
.
"No, no, no," Twilight says under his breath. Yor didn't sound good. Whatever she did for her other job wasn't a regular job. She sounded like she was out of breath, and Yor talking about surviving while she sounded like that made him think that she was risking her life somewhere she shouldn't be.
I think I love you.
His knees felt weak when she said that, but he started to move out of his room when she began to sound like this would be the last time that they were going to speak with one another.
No, Twilight thinks, pacing in his living room. There was nothing in her file that said she was anything else… unless, his eyes narrows and he stops pacing, Unless she's like me who has something to hide.
"That's not the point," he mutters to himself and continues to pace in his room. He doesn't know where she is, how he's going to get to her, if she's still—
She's alive, Twilights tells himself.
We survive, remember? We always do.
Twilight grabs his phone and notes the number Yor called from. And then he calls Franky.
The latter picks up the phone. "You better have a good reason why you're calling me at this time," he says groggily.
"I need your help to locate Yor," Twilight says, jaw tight. His shoulders are tense. His car keys are in his hand, ready to go. "She called me from this phone number and she didn't sound good."
He hears Franky moving around on his bed, and then suddenly there is typing in the background. "What's the number?"
"It's…"
.
.
Twilight isn't sure what in the world Yor would be doing at a place like this, where highly influential individuals gather, but he moves around the building in the shadows, surveying the parameters and peering into the large windows.
It takes him a while to finish investigating the area, and he hears talk of people looking for this man and that other one too, however, Twilight doesn't care who these men are because he can't find Yor anywhere.
He does another sweep, and is tempted to do another one, when he convinces himself that there's no way Yor could be involved in things like this. That maybe she was just far too tired, or far too drunk, far too anything—which made her call him in the middle of the night and talk about things beyond reason.
He convinces himself that it isn't because she was on the brink of death, it isn't because she was in her last moments, that she gave him that ill-fated phone call.
So he slips out of the building, out of the shadows, and heads back to his apartment. But he's pacing, and he's restless, and he waits for the morning, hoping that Yor would call him to explain what had happened.
.
.
But she doesn't.
Twilight dials her phone again, yet he is sent to another automated voicemail. He swung by her apartment earlier this morning, gently knocking on the door, but no one answered. He waited for a while—even asked her neighbors about her, but they said they hadn't seen her leave the apartment since she came home in the early evening.
So he goes home again. His mind is unsettled, and his heart is racing, and he realizes that he hasn't felt like this since before he met Yor. The bout of anxiety that's waiting to tip over the edge. And he knows he has to let this out, otherwise, he'll start to spiral, down and down, away from reality and back to his darkest thoughts.
His breaths are short and shallow, fast, like the way his mind is moving from one thought to another.
This is a different kind of energy he's feeling. He hasn't felt it in a while that he nearly forgot about this sensation.
The fear of losing someone close to him.
His hands are clammy and he feels numb, but he pushes away his memories from the past, about his mother, his father, his friends… the little town he grew up in Westalis. The memories aren't helping. In fact, it's making him feel worse because he doesn't know where Yor is—
And when he doesn't know where they are, it normally means that they're gone.
"No," Twilight shakes his head, gritting his teeth together when the cold wind hits his face. This is different, he thinks—swears—to himself, because there's no more war.
She can't be gone.
But he thinks and thinks and thinks, and he runs and runs and runs… all the way to downtown Berlint and back, keeping his phone on him the entire time, waiting for Yor.
.
.
He looks for her again.
It's as if Pandora's box opened and released all the pain and suffering he struggled to put away. He remembers the anguish, the grief, the agony of losing his world to the war. But Twilight tells himself the war is over; that Yor is probably busy; that Yor…
Yor is still alive.
His chest hurts and he can't breathe in his room, in his apartment, so he goes out to take a walk, hoping he'll see a familiar dark-haired woman with upturned red eyes. He takes their usual routes. He walks around the stores they regularly visit.
Still, there's no lead, and he's so puzzled as to why he's having a difficult time reaching her. He suspects that she really is hiding something, but Twilight doesn't think it matters that much anymore when all he wants to know is if she's okay. And then he remembers what she told him:
We survive, remember? We always do.
Yes, Twilight thinks as he quickens his pace to a run, yes, we always do.