Dr. Loid Forger's office in Berlint General Hospital was as warm and inviting as a place of medicine could be. When he met patients here he did so from in front of his desk, where he gave them the choice between the traditional leather couch and a slim but comfortable armchair. The windows let in natural light without allowing anyone to peer inside, and the door closed soundly enough to block out any suggestion of noise from the outside world.
Those latter details were convenient for the patients, of course, but they were more important for Agent Twilight's work as a spy. A psychiatric session for a less than scrupulous man pulled double duty as a long, subtle interrogation session, and he was not keen to allow any other agency access to the dampness he could wring from an unsuspecting brain. That was the point of the soundproofing, of course, as well as the daily sweeps for bugs, the repeated consultation of the building blueprints for hidden passages and panels, the array of signal-jamming devices he had hidden inside his desk that were so thorough he had to avoid treating patients with pacemakers, and the janitor he had reassigned because he swept his mop in a suspicious way.
Twilight sat in the armchair and gave one of his warm, winning Dr. Loid Forger smiles to the patient sitting tensely on the couch in front of him.
"Before we work on anything else, we need to focus on getting you into a relaxed mindset for these sessions," he said. "It'll be easier for both of us if you feel safe and comfortable here, just like it's easier for a mechanic to work on your car if you turn off the engine first."
Mr. Henry Pattison took a deep breath, and nodded. His shoulders cautiously descended from their gargoyle arch. "You're right. Thank you, doctor."
He leaned back on the couch, staring off into the middle distance. Henry Pattison was here because of anxiety issues that seemed to stem from routine middle-age stress and malaise, where any chance to vent and discuss his feelings would probably do him good. Dr. Loid Forger was here to treat him because, unbeknownst to Pattison, a black-market arms trading group was using his gym locker as a dead drop location. Twilight genuinely hoped he could help Mr. Pattison, but not as much as he hoped that he could just trick him into revealing the combination instead of having to sneak a thermal lance into a men's club.
Twilight was about to suggest some simple relaxation exercises, like oh say for example repeating a well-memorized series of numbers over and over again, but was cut off by an outstretched finger from Pattison.
"Is that your family?" he said.
"Hmm?" said Twilight, turning around for show. Of course Pattison had just spotted yet another piece of camouflage, the trio of pictures sitting on his desk in full view of anyone who might ever suspect that Loid Forger was anything but a loving family man. On the left, a wedding portrait of Loid and Fiona Forger, on the right, what was supposedly a picture of Anya as a baby, and in the middle, a simple group photo of the whole family. Pattison was currently pointing at the group photo. It was the only one of the three that wasn't heavily doctored, though Twilight had eventually decided to airbrush a smile onto Nightfall's face because the untouched image scared some of his patients.
"Oh yes, that's my wife Fiona, and our daughter, Anya," Twilight said casually. "Do you have any family, Mr. Pattison?"
"Yes, I've got two boys. Peter's in high school and Patrick just got accepted into college," Pattison said proudly. "They both really take after me. Patrick's going to the University of Berlint to study chemistry, just like his old man."
"How wonderful," Twilight said with a warm smile, already plotting a winding course through the conversation from chemistry to metallurgy to the manufacturing of metal goods to gym lockers. Just as he thought of a genius segue from undergraduate-level instruction on chemical reactions to the corrosive effects of aerosol deodorant on metal, Pattison interrupted his train of thought once again.
"Pardon me for saying this, but which side of the family does your daughter take after, Dr. Forger?"
Twilight followed Pattison's gaze back to the picture of him and Nightfall with Anya, which he had to admit betrayed all the warm familiar closeness of a police lineup. The only family resemblance evident in the picture was between the nervous grimace on Anya's face and the stiff manic smile he had painted onto Nightfall's. Pattison's curiosity was completely understandable, which was why Twilight was prepared for exactly this question.
He slid into a slightly downcast expression- not despairing, not even sad, just shifting his expression ever so slightly enough to suggest that the conversation had gone down a rougher road on his mental highway. He let a pause into the conversation just long enough for it to register, and said, "She doesn't really take after either side. She takes after my first wife more than me."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Pattison said automatically, as people always did.
"It's alright, it's a natural question," Twilight said, setting his face back into 'The Ever-Compassionate Dr. Forger' mode by degrees. "Fiona is my second wife. Anya's mother died shortly after she was born."
"Illness?" Pattison asked sympathetically.
"No. Meteor strike."
A moment of silence squeezed itself between them. Twilight watched through Pattison's eyes as harried mental processes pulled open an empty drawer in the cabinet labeled "Polite Responses".
"It's strange, I know. One night she's here, the next she's a crater. It's okay. I'm at peace with it," Twilight said. This part of the backstory always gave him trouble. He had to admit he had been a bit confused when he first had it explained to him.
"Yeah. Yeah, well I suppose we all have our hard times," Pattison said, polite but still unpacking from his mental journey.
"Yes, don't worry about me. I'm perfectly happy now," Twilight said, pushing through with the rest of this strange backstory for convenience's sake. "It was an arranged marriage, and not a terribly happy one, truth be told. I was too busy with my graduate work, she was too busy with her meteorite research. I'm just lucky to have met Fiona. I knew her for a long time, we met a lot around campus, and she was there for me when my first wife was obliterated. In a way, she's the first woman I've ever really loved."
"Hey, if you want to swap places on this couch then be my guest," Pattison said with an amiable smile.
Twilight gave a gentle chuckle. "You're right, Mr. Pattison. You said your son was studying chemistry, just like you?"
The rest of the therapy session plus interrogation fell into gentle background noise, as another concern began to occupy his forebrain. He had seen Pattison's reaction a dozen or so times, quite naturally, whenever the subject of Loid Forger's first wife came up. The explanation was bizarre, overly complicated, and, frankly, silly.
It made him wonder where the hell Nightfall had come up with it.
The rest of the session was productive. Pattison walked away with a bit more confidence, and Twilight went to the rest of his workday with the information he wanted. Three more patients after lunch, some paperwork, and Dr. Loid Forger walked out of the building at 5 PM. He told his colleagues that he planned to drop by the men's club later that night for a workout, which was only about a quarter of a lie.
"Getting closer?" Nightfall said, looking back down at him from her lookout perch on top of the next row of lockers.
"Feels like it. I think I was right about the bias towards prime numbers," Twilight said, spinning the dial on Pattison's gym locker as fast as it could go without breaking it, which turned out to be surprisingly fast. "God, these things are overkill. What gym invests in solid-structure carbon steel? Wait, wait… done."
The door swung open, revealing a depleted deodorant stick and a pair of gym shorts that were about as soft and flexible as the rest of the locker. But more importantly, it also revealed a nondescript shopping bag on the top shelf.
Twilight rummaged through the bag, finding a few miscellaneous decoy items as well as a small black ledger that would be of great interest to the codebreakers at WISE. "This is it. Got the ringer?"
Nightfall nodded, and pulled out another bag, filled with its own assortment of decoy items as well as another ledger, the main difference between the two being that a cryptographer who broke the code would find it filled with the lyrics to commercial jingles that ran during Anya's favorite block of cartoons. Twilight made sure the tracer concealed at the bottom was activated, slid the bag onto the shelf, and joined Nightfall in opening a panel in the drop ceiling.
The crawlspace above the locker room was exquisitely horrible, a sort of nexus between realms of filth, moisture, decaying plumbing, and body odor. But it gave a perfect line of sight and ambush point to the area around Pattison's locker, and owing to a lack of secret passages or hidden tunnels in this gym it was the best option they had for IDing anyone who came to pick up the drop. Luckily Twilight and Nightfall had both opted for the standard black catsuit for this mission, because they burned quite easily.
"You think we're going to see anybody who isn't the target come by tonight?" Nightfall said, eye pressed against a peephole she had put into the ceiling panel.
"It's possible. Just ignore anybody who doesn't touch the locker. I'll signal you if I think we should intercept," Twilight said, drilling his own peephole. "The gym might be closed, but we might see guests trickle in and out since the showers are open 24/7."
"Good to know," Nightfall said, pulling her head up. Through her mask, Twilight could see the outline of what might have been a mischievous expression. "Maybe we could try them out later."
"Heh," Twilight said. That might have been a serious statement, since they would both come out of this adventure smelling like something that caused municipal-grade plumbing issues, but that attempt at a smile on her face suggested that, awkward as it was, it was a sincere attempt at flirting.
Nightfall and Twilight were in a relationship. It was hard to define what exactly that relationship was, because there was no convenient word for "romantic feelings for someone who could be ordered to kill you at any moment". But it existed, and she seemed to have adjusted to it much more easily than him, easily enough to deploy euphemisms and double-entendres without warning and without mercy.
He thought back to earlier today, when Pattison had asked about the family portrait, and contrasted the Cheshire smile in her airbrushed picture with the one she now used, which always wavered like a suspension bridge in an earthquake. He considered an idea that had been percolating inside him ever since Pattison left.
Bond twitched in his sleep, one leg shaking slightly in apparent distress as another can rattled to the floor. Anya retrieved it and set back to work arranging it with the others in a pyramid shape at the end of the hallway. Twilight wasn't keen on the idea of "can bowling" as an organized sport, but he wasn't inclined to scold her after she had done so well on her midterms. Besides, the downstairs neighbors were getting on his nerves.
Twilight turned back to Nightfall as she put away the dry dishes, confident that the din of rattling aluminum would cover their conversation. "Somebody at work asked me about Loid Forger's first wife today."
Nightfall didn't look up. "What did you say?"
"I sidestepped the question. Wanted to make sure we've got our stories straight. You said she would have to be dead, right?"
"Right. Why would somebody divorce Loid Forger?"
"Okay," Twilight said. He drummed his fingers on the table, staring at Nightfall's back as she worked. "So how did she die? Car accident?"
"No. Loid Forger would never marry someone with such poor driving skills."
"...Okay. Cancer, then."
"No. Loid Forger would have driven himself into massive medical debt to save his wife."
"A terrorist attack?"
"Loid Forger would have stopped it."
Twilight jumped as the room filled with a metallic clamor. From the hallway, Anya yelled "Strike!"
He turned back around. "What's your idea, then?"
Nightfall slowly untied the apron from her back and hung it on a hook with all the ceremony of a priest removing his collar. She turned a calculating eye on him.
"Well, I'm of the opinion that Loid Forger would logically be able to protect the woman he loves from anything on this Earth..."
Twilight pulled himself away from the damp peephole and rubbed his eyes with one hand. How had he not noticed? How had he stayed in denial for so long when the signs were so screamingly obvious? But Twilight was trained to overcome his biases, and it was best to just accept that, however unlikely it might seem, Nightfall had been in love with him for at least a few weeks before he noticed.
He put his lunch down on his desk and watched Nightfall at her post. She had removed a stick of what looked like chewing gum from her pocket and was masticating it with fervor. She propped open the ceiling panel slightly where she would be able to drop the chewed gum down onto the floor, right where anybody coming to open the locker would step on it and get what was actually a second tracer stuck to their shoe. Nightfall always carried around a set of gum tracers when they were on a mission, and he was pretty sure he had seen her chewing them even when they were off duty. But that was a question for another day.
"Nightfall," he said abruptly. Rule number one of interrogations, always keep the subject off guard. "How long exactly have you been in love with me?"
Nightfall froze in mid-chew. Not a muscle moved on her body, and Twilight was momentarily disconcerted to realize that she had in fact stopped breathing. After a moment, as if nothing had happened, she resumed chewing, blew a bubble, and looked up at him as if she had just heard him.
"...How long have you been in love with me, Loid?" she said accusingly, peeling gum off her face.
Twilight considered this for a moment, as if he had not been considering it daily as a means of warding off future attack. "Since a few months into the mission. I think. Skeeball was involved. But what about you?"
Nightfall nodded. "Exactly. A few months sounds like an appropriate amount of time, doesn't it?"
"It does," Twilight said, making sure to hang the right degree of skepticism off the phrase. Nightfall wasn't saying something, and she wasn't doing a good job of hiding it. In the grand curriculum of WISE tricks and tactics, evading questions by asking other questions was taught in the same class as "How to hold a pencil correctly".
"Then it's settled."
"No it's not."
"What isn't?"
"Nightfall, you're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
Nightfall sternly locked eyes with him. After a moment of letting his gaze bounce off her face, she looked away sheepishly, cleared her throat, and spat out the gum. In the silence you could just about hear the splat as it hit the floor below.
"…Sorry," she said.
Twilight sighed. "I'm sorry too. This is a bad time, let's just get focused back on the mission."
"No, no, you're right," Nightfall said, wiping her mouth. "It's a valid question. And a matter of tactical importance, considering how far back it extends into the mission."
"Far back into the mission?" Twilight said, perplexed. So even longer than he had expected. But if it had been that long, then wouldn't she have had these feelings since-
Twilight picked up the pair of toothbrushes off the bathroom counter and examined them critically. The simple utilitarian one that Loid Forger had brought with him to this apartment had disappeared overnight, to be replaced with half of a matching set, a tacky blue novelty embossed with his portrait and the word "MISTER", to pair with a pink "MISSUS" bearing Nightfall's likeness.
The pattern repeated all over the bathroom, and indeed most of the house that Nightfall had gotten to already. Matching towels. Matching mugs. Matching deodorants. He had drawn the line at matching underwear.
"You really didn't waste time getting your materials set up," Twilight said, looking up at Nightfall as she passed the bathroom, holding a cardboard box simply and somewhat ominously labeled "WIFE".
"We have to be prepared, Twilight," Nightfall said grimly. "No matter how hard it seems, or how strictly I have to maintain character, I'm prepared to maintain the role of an attentive housewife."
"I'm glad to have you on board," Twilight said. She met his smile with a nod, and passed by to resume her work.
He turned his attention back to his toothbrush. Nightfall really did prepare for anything; it would normally take weeks to get a custom item like this.
"Oh my god, I'm an idiot."
"You are not!" Nightfall said, shifting her weight to better address him, causing the crawlspace to shift with a creak. Twilight raised his head out of his palms with a heavy groan.
"It was before this operation even started, wasn't it?" Twilight said, disgusted with himself. "All that time and I didn't even consider it."
"I'm just good at hiding things, Loid. I learned from the best, didn't I?" Nightfall said, reaching over and patting his hand like she was trying to handle a box jellyfish.
"I suppose," Twilight said, giving her hand a squeeze in return. "We had a lot of time to learn from each other. I mean, we've been on so many missions-"
Twilight checked his watch and sighed. He rolled his shoulder to try and get some feeling into the arm that he had been lying on for the past six hours, and unscrewed the tripod off of his binoculars.
"What are you doing?" Nightfall said as Twilight stood up, stooping slightly to keep from banging his head on the attic ceiling. The black sweater and black beanie she was wearing only highlighted the glint of her eye, like a lighthouse glaring at him from far away.
"It's five minutes until midnight, Nightfall," Twilight said, taking one last glance back at the office building across the street. "The target didn't show, and we've both got other things we need to get back to. Let's get going."
Nightfall shook her head. "The assignment was for twenty-four hours of surveillance, Twilight. It's not like you to bail on a mission."
Twilight sighed and sat back down. Nightfall could be flexible on some things, but never schedules. She always made sure to run things down to the wire, and seemed disappointed she couldn't push them beyond that.
It wasn't like she thought that the last five minutes were going to be any different. She just spent them staring at him instead.
"I am a moron. "
"You still aren't," Nightfall said, lifting his head up off the grimy surface, clutching it like a basketball.
"Years. It's been years, hasn't it?" Twilight said, pulling his head loose. "How did you put up with it for so many years when I was so dense?"
Nightfall shook her head intently, dislodging about an inch of dust from the ceiling. "It was never about you noticing, Twilight. If I wanted you to notice I could have just told you. What I wanted was for you to see me as someone to respect. Not some fawning groupie with a crush. An equal."
"I never saw you as anything but an equal."
"You can say that but everyone at WISE knows it isn't true." Nightfall gave him a long, appraising look, like a scanner in the darkness sweeping him from head to toe, before drooping with embarrassment. "I had this… idea in my head, the idea that the only way I could get you to love me was to prove I was as good as you. I spent years not saying anything, not letting myself do anything but prove myself. That's the part that makes me feel like an idiot."
Twilight smiled, and leaned over to give her a gentle nuzzle through their masks. "And you aren't one, either."
Nightfall beat her usual record by only freezing for twenty seconds. After she started blinking again, Twilight turned his eye back to his peephole.
"I just hope the target arrives before-"
Twilight stopped in mid-sentence, and they both froze at the sound of the door swinging open in the room below. A pair of boots slapped against the tile floor as a solitary figure beelined straight towards the dead-drop locker. Twilight peered through the peephole, and his eye narrowed as he instantly recognized the target. Not just a random messenger, but an actual ringleader of the organization.
He raised his head and looked over at Nightfall, who flashed him a few hand signals confirming the abrupt change in plans. Twilight braced himself, and then, with a crash, two black figures plunged from the crawlspace in a cavalcade of damp aggression.
The fight was over in a brief instant- even the most hardened survivor of the underworld would be ill-prepared to deal with twice his body weight in special agents falling straight onto his head. Seconds after the drop, Twilight was busily knotting cord around the man's wrists and ankles while Nightfall pressed a chloroform rag to his face. They caught each other's eye across his unconscious, baffled face, and nodded in mutual acknowledgement of a job well done.
"Gonna have to sneak him out of the back," Twilight said, picking the man up by the armpits and heading back to the locker for temporary storage. "You bring the car around and drop him off at HQ. Maybe this will get Sylvia off our backs for once."
Nightfall grunted in acknowledgement, flicking a black hood over the man's head as Twilight hauled him towards the locker. "I'll try and make it sound more impressive in the report."
Twilight smiled, and opened the locker. He hadn't been lying to Pattison about one thing: he felt lucky to have met Nightfall.
"Don't embellish. It was impressive. I can't believe you were ever worried about proving you were as good as me," he said.
"You cut an imposing figure," Nightfall said, with her icy kind of warmth.
"It's all relative, though," Twilight said. "I mean, I think I told you the very first day we met. There's no point working yourself-"
Twilight paused.
Twilight tossed a towel to the new recruit, as he wiped the sweat from his own forehead. "Alright. Let's call it an evening; no point working ourselves to death just to prove we can."
"Yes sir," the recruit said, flashing him an awkward salute with one hand while clutching the towel in the other. It looked like an effort for her to stay at attention, exhausted as she clearly was, with her heavy breathing and flushed cheeks.
"Don't think I'm going to go any easier on you tomorrow," Twilight said, wrapping his towel around his neck. "Go get showered, get fed, and get some sleep."
"Yes sir," the recruit said, lingering just a moment before opening the door out of the training room. She hesitated with her hand on the doorknob, and turned around to look at him.
"Will you... be joining me in the showers, sir?" she said stiffly.
"No need to worry. We've got separate facilities for men and women," Twilight said, patting her on the shoulder as he walked out.
"Twilight? Twilight! It's going to be okay, Twilight, get out of the locker!"
