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Condensing the past few years of his life to a stack of cardboard boxes is frighteningly hard.
He's never had a mission last this long before. At the most, Twilight has gone undercover for a few months; but he'd known, during the very first briefing, that this was not going to be easy, or short. Loid Forger could not be a person who existed for an afternoon. He needed to be as real as Twilight could make him.
Loid was pleasant and thoughtful, if a bit aloof. He would have been allergic to peanuts, but that detail of the cover story had been quickly edited after adopting Anya, and thus he was allergic to shrimp. He enjoyed mystery novels and had a knack for guessing the killers correctly. He took his wife and daughter out on the weekends. He had a faint West Ostanian accent.
As he clears the last of the books from the shelf—they will be divided across a few secondhand bookshops—he thinks about what will be next.
Are you sure you don't want some time off? Handler asked. She'd looked at him over the rim of her glasses, pinning him in place. For once he couldn't read her: the way she was looking at him, her tone of voice. Someone else can handle it.
If there’s anything Twilight has learned, it’s that a quick, clean cut is best.
In about a day, the last pieces of Loid Forger will disappear. W.I.S.E. has already taken care of most of the details; Handler did good on her promise to ensure that Anya and Yor would be safe from the repercussions.
All he has left to do is leave.
He hasn’t thought about it, really. It’s his role, his duty; every part on a stage has an end, and this is no different. The world doesn’t care—the hospital will soon forget the young doctor transferring out, the school will only see him as one of many parents, and his family will move on. Twilight will move on.
He’s spent as much time away from the apartment as possible to soften the blow, and to wrap up the last of things, but in the pockets of time left Anya managed to cling to him in the mornings.
“Don’t go ,” she’s repeated, until Yor tugs her away to smooth down her hair.
“Papa will come back.”
Not as Loid, no, Twilight thinks, but even if they move on, he—
He can come back, at least once in a while. He can see it now. A handyman fixing some pipes next door. Or perhaps part-time shop help at the spiced nuts stand. A person in the crowd. No—no, it’s too dangerous, even if he’s sure his disguises are perfect.
Besides.
There’s a mask waiting for him. Sigi Meyer is forty-seven, with cropped, greying hair, a permanent scowl and a veteran-turned-accountant who will be looking very closely for embezzlement. Long enough to get close and catch the officials bleeding funds.
It’s laid on the bed—a rare move to leave it out in the open—staring back at him.
Twilight finishes packing the books. He shuts the box slowly, takes a step back, and just stares.
The room, which over time has been overtaken by trinkets and things and personal touches, now looks as it once did. Barren, new, with no trace of the person who once lived there. Even the crayon scribbles on the wall Loid had scolded Anya for—but kept—have been wiped away.
He has to get the boxes downstairs, he thinks faintly. It’s one-oh-six in the morning, and Franky is arriving soon, down the street. They have to depart at two.
He doesn’t move.
This was a person. Something sour hits the back of his throat, and Loid—Twilight shoves it down.
Move, he screams at himself.
“...Loid?”
He doesn’t move. It’s a childish thought, funny. If he doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink, then maybe she will go away.
He hadn’t anticipated the sleeping medicine to wear off so quickly. He’d measured them out carefully this evening, perfect doses into each serving of stew. Call him sentimental, for making Yor’s favorite. It isn’t nearly enough of an apology: not the stew, or the extra-long route he’d taken in the park with Anya and Bond after school, or the year’s worth of rent.
He hears the shuffle of socks against wood. Senses the presence behind him, can almost feel the hand before it so lightly touches his shoulder, palm warm.
“Loid,” Yor says again, soft and afraid. “W-What is all this?”
She’s always been a little resistant to everything except alcohol. Loid had messed up the calculation. Back when the three of them got food poisoning, Yor had seemed to shrug it off. Regular painkillers never seemed to work fully on her either. He should have taken it into account.
Excuses flit through his head. Twilight scrambles, reaching for Plan B, for Plan C, but in some massive, gaping mistake he’s forgotten to plan for this.
He just… needs to turn and smile. The one he always gives her—the one he gives only her. He just needs to tell her something, anything.
Lift your brows. Let your eyes crinkle. Smile.
He turns. He can’t. He breathes in shallowly—just let your mouth curve up. He can’t.
And then Loid meets her eyes.
Everything just… stops.
She’s still got a hand out; her fingers ghost across his back when he turns and stay, lingering. She hasn’t done her hair, Loid thinks. She’s just woken up. Her face is drawn in that terrible, devastated way that makes his heart race into overdrive. His heart manages to keep betraying him, banging against the side of his ribs, screaming, fix this, fix this, you are the reason, fix this.
Feeling too much without thinking has always been nothing short of ruinous.
He opens his mouth, and the lies die on his tongue. He doesn’t want his last words to Yor to be lies.
“Yor…”
Has his voice always sounded like that? Cracking, rough. His vision blurs for a second. He needs to keep it together, to compose himself. Control.
“Are these boxes—” Yor breaks off. Her eyes dart wildly around the room—at the blank cardboard boxes, at the stripped space, at the bed, the mask -! “Are you really going?”
Don’t go, he hears in Anya’s voice.
“Please,” he jumbles out. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep, Yor.”
She plants her feet. “N-not until you talk to me.”
You’re making this harder.
He can’t get past her, not easily, not when she’s made up her mind. Three minutes have passed. Yor looks at him. Her sleep shirt is loose, hanging off her shoulders. There; he could press on the points and knock her out. She’s fast, but if she’s not expecting it—
The plan zips through his mind. Knock her out, carry her back to her room, let her dream. It will hold long enough to get out the door.
He just has to bring his arm forward and strike.
He can’t.
Yor steps closer, and Loid feels like she really must be a witch, weaving a spell that keeps his feet rooted to the floor. That makes every logical thought in his head dissipate the more she keeps looking at him. His body is weak, refusing to listen to his commands.
Her hands take his, and electricity runs up his fingertips, his arms, his spine.
“You’re scaring me.” She swallows. “I thought we agreed. To- to be open with each other.”
Except for his last secret. And, though he never confirmed or cracked it, hers.
“Yor,” he repeats helplessly. “I’m sorry.”
At least that isn’t a lie.
“Don’t be sorry.” She squeezes his hands, holds them. “You’re shaking. What’s wrong?”
“I’m n—” He is. “I… nothing is… why can’t you just go back?”
Her brows pinch together. “I’m scared,” she whispers. “I feel like if- if I let you go you might just disappear.”
It never used to be this hard, Twilight thinks. A thousand lives, and departing from each one has never been this hard.
“This is everything,” Yor says. “You’ve packed it all away. I don’t… understand.”
Her voice goes high and light the way it does when she’s right about to cry, and Loid can’t stop himself, closing the gap between them so he can lift a thumb to swipe under her eyes.
“No,” he says, and barely recognizes himself. “No, Yor, don’t cry.”
“Are you really leaving?” Yor asks. “Is—is it me? Have I been unfit, or, or is it something I said, or if, I’m sorry if I did something to hurt you.”
“No!” he bursts out. He cradles her face. “Of course not, you’ve been—”
Yor’s voice rises. “Am I a disappointment? I’ll try—”
“No, no! You’ve been—” Wonderful. Inspiring; kind; gentle; impossible. “—You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Both of you. You and Anya, you’ve been—”
He can’t take it back anymore. The truth has wrenched itself free from his chest, that for every hint of his existence he’s scraped away there’s still some awful piece of him that will stay here.
Loid needs to let go. He pulls himself back, and the bruising grip lets go. She’s seen. It doesn’t matter; the end result is the same.
He reaches for the first few boxes. Yor makes an aborted attempt to grab him again, and the box on top spills, and—
Papers flutter to the floor around him. On instinct, they drop to the ground, gathering them. They’re not papers. They’re photographs, Loid realizes. Photographs and drawings. Anya with her first Stella, a family portrait, a candid someone kindly took. He gasps. Or maybe Yor does, a sharp inhale of air.
The person in the pictures is already gone; or rather, he was never there, but still—that person is smiling in all of them.
Yor shuffles the few she picked up into a stack. A strange, ordinary movement, tapping them against the floor to straighten them neatly. She doesn’t hand them back.
“If you can’t tell me…” she says slowly, and glances up at him. “Will you at least tell me—is this something you want?”
It hits him like a bullet, fast. “What?”
Yor swallows hard and gestures at the boxes. “This. Leaving. Is it something you want to do?”
“...”
“If it is—if it is…” She lowers her eyes. “If leaving is what you really want, I’ll let you go. If it’ll make you happy, I’ll let you go. But if there’s any part of you that wants to stay, I’ll—Loid, I’ll, I’ll do anything.”
He opens his mouth and closes it again. Yor’s knuckles turn white. She waits.
“I have to go.”
“I didn’t ask if you had to,” Yor says gently. She tucks the photos back in his hand, and stays. “Do you really want to leave me?”
It’s like her words cut his strings. Loid falls forward, just catching himself even as Yor reaches him. His forehead meets her shoulder, and a moment later, Yor wraps her arms around him. Not to force him to stay, but just to hold him.
Everything he’s wanted has been torn away from him. By war, by people, by himself, until eventually he stopped wanting. It hurts too much.
“...No,” he admits.
Yor rests her cheek against his head. Her fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt. It scares him, how much he wants this.
“Then,” she says, “can’t you stay a little longer?”