Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The first time Yor Briar met Twilight, it was the last thing she ever did.

She was wearing her black dress, boots strapped to her thighs, golden pins in her hair. The folder containing the job details was slipped to her on a green garden table. A bar in downtown Berlint serving as a meeting location for Westalian spies. Kill everyone there. Leave no witnesses.

Thorn Princess approached the bar with no preamble. It was the first clear night in a week but large puddles of murky rainwater lingered in the streets, reflecting the flickering street lamps and illuminated business signs. She opened the door and immediately all patrons fell silent as if they already knew what was to come. With a raised blade, she politely declared their sins and asked for the honor of taking their lives as penance. In response every person in that bar raised a gun.

No one ever gave her permission. Asking was a formality really, she would kill them no matter what they said. Their struggles always seemed pointless to Yor. The moment she arrived marked their death, why couldn’t they just accept that? What honor was there to be found in desperately clawing under her grip, eyes full of terror, and mouth gaping like a dead fish? She wanted to give her targets dignity, why wouldn’t they let her do that?

The fight was brief. She decapitated two spies before they could squeeze the trigger. Another dropped dead when she threw a knife through his heart. Two more with slices across their throats. One by one, the spies dropped dead, their blood soaked into the floorboards. It looked less like a bar and more like a butcher’s kitchen. Red sprayed across the walls like graffiti and the stench of iron was so strong Yor could taste it in the air.

She pulled her knife from the soft chest of a female spy and wiped the excess blood on her dress. With this final kill, the room had fallen silent save for the television propped above the bar reading out the day’s news. This job would take extra long to clean up. She was sure that brain matter had gotten stuck in the grain of the floorboards which was always a pain to pry loose.

Yor pondered over the logistics of cleaning, unaware of the shadow darkening the bar’s doorstep. Had it been anyone else, she would’ve noticed their presence. They would’ve been dead the moment she heard them. 

But it was Twilight, not some other nameless spy, who walked in on Yor that night. He likely smelled the blood or heard the gunshots. With a gun in one hand, he approached with practiced stealth to see a woman in black standing over a dead agent’s body. He raised his gun in horror. The swish of his sleeves is what gave him away. At the sound, Thorn Princess stepped back to whirl around.

Three things happened in quick succession which sealed her fate.

Her trusty boots, after diligently serving her for so many years finally gave out. The heel snapped which caused her to trip.

The knife she flung as she turned around changed trajectory due to this sudden change in movement and instead of aiming for the intruder’s forehead went to his shoulder instead. The blade sliced through his suit and dug into his flesh.

Already, in that fraction of a second, Yor knew what was going to happen.

Her body, which she could always rely on, was off balance. She was falling to the floor and for once she could not catch herself.

The man lowered his arm in pain as blood sprayed from his shoulder. The direction of his gun fell as she did and the finger around the trigger instinctively tightened.

And then Yor finally understood why people ran away from death.

***

One cold evening in Nielsberg, fifteen year old Yor Briar woke up to her little brother Yuri frantically shaking her, sobbing and begging that she wouldn’t die. She was confused. Then she realized she was laying on the floor of their tiny kitchen and her head throbbed.

Yor had worked long into the early morning hours the previous night with a Garden assignment and then spent all day today chopping and hauling wood in preparation for the coming winter. She became distantly aware that the gnawing pain in her stomach was hunger and that she hadn’t eaten anything in almost two days, content to just cook something for Yuri and go right back into work. While her mind had been fine with this arrangement, her young body wasn’t and had given out just as she was washing the dishes.

It was a similar sensation, waking up and not realizing you passed out, when Yor saw the man in an unfamiliar bathroom. The door was partially open, letting in the pale bathroom light spill out into the dark hallway where she stood. He was facing away from her in front of the bathroom sink and in the process of attempting to close a gaping wound in his shoulder. The taut muscles of his shirtless back rippled as he pressed some gauze to the cut with a small, pained grunt. Blood marred the white tile of the bathroom and speckled tiny pinpoint jewels on the mirror. It ran like red silk ribbons down his arm and fell onto the floor as if they were the first droplets of summer rain. Something gold on the counter glinted back the dull light of the bathroom.

Yor squinted her eyes. It looked like one of her knives. Distantly, she remembered seeing the man in the bar, remembered throwing her knife at him, but nothing else. Her memory was a roll of film and someone had simply cut out what had happened between now and then. Where was she, anyway? 

The more her mind churned trying to find answers, the more fatigued she felt. She couldn’t feel her limbs and her head felt so light that she could’ve floated away with a breeze. She tried once more to remember where she was or how she could’ve gotten her there, but it was no use. Yor closed her eyes, willing to herself to wake up in a world that made sense.

She didn’t remember how long her eyes remained closed, only that when she opened them, she was in a new place. It was dark, save for a few strands of light from a streetlamp falling through the curtains. In the shadows, she could see she was in a bare bedroom devoid of any individuality. Her gaze immediately fell on the man asleep on the bed. He was curled on his side with one hand resting on his shoulder.

On the bedside table was a knife.

The knife.

Her knife.

She could see it so much more clearly now. There was no mistaking it. 

The man in the bed was the man who tried to shoot her.

The spy.

Suddenly she remembered her job, the mission that she left unfinished. She’d eliminated everyone except him.

Her body acted on the first method of execution that came to mind. Without a sound, she pounced on the man and wrapped her hands around his neck. She was so overcome with rage she couldn’t even feel the warmth of his skin or the scratch of the cheap bed sheets. As she squeezed and squeezed, she realized she couldn’t feel anything, not her hair falling on either side of her face, not the fabric of her dress, not even her overlapping fingers digging into one another.

The man didn’t wake. Didn’t even flinch. It was as if his neck was made of marble; his flesh didn’t give under her grasp. An irritated snarl fell through her lips. Finally the man’s eyes flew open with a gasp. Startled, Yor leapt back as he shot up in bed, a gun in one hand.

He stared hard at her, his brow furrowed and blonde bangs falling into his eyes. She waited for him to say something, to address her, but he stayed silent. Instead, he looked around the rest of the room in confusion. Slowly, he lowered the gun.

“Wh–Who are you?” Yor demanded, desperately trying to keep her voice firm.

The man didn’t respond. He got up, clicked on the small bedside lamp, and walked straight past her to the window.

“Hey!” she snapped.

He looked through the curtains without a response. His eyes were narrowed, like he was searching for something. In the yellow light of the lamp, Yor could see that he was tense. He kept one finger flexed parallel to the trigger on his gun.

“Stop ignoring me!” Yor tried again. She went to grab his shoulder, the one that she knew was injured, but it was like all the strength had left her. When she made contact, she found his body to be made of impenetrable rock that felt neither warm nor cold.

Finally, the man huffed to himself and laid back in bed. He winced as he carefully rolled his injured shoulder and blew out a slow, pained exhale. Yor stared at him, now more perplexed than angry.

“Can you hear me?” she asked.

Of course the man didn’t respond. Instead, he opened up the bedside table, pushed around some things, and pulled out a bottle of pills. He popped out three and tossed them into his mouth before swallowing with a dry gulp.

“Can you…see me?” she asked, now quickly losing confidence.

The man didn’t seem blind, but she wasn’t exactly sure what to look for. He’d walked around and grabbed things without any sort of fumbling. She waved a hand directly in his face. No reaction. 

Completely stumped, she watched him shove his gun back underneath his pillow, turn off the lamp, and roll onto his side. She wasn’t sure how long she stared at him in the dark, totally and utterly confused. Yor could see in his shallow breathing that he didn’t fall asleep right away, as if he could somehow sense her presence. 

Unsure of what else to do, Yor approached the bedside table where her knife still lay. Tentatively she reached out, hoping to feel the familiar cool metal against her skin.

She couldn’t feel it.

When she tried to pick it up, it was like an ant trying to lift a boulder.

She swallowed the panic rising in her chest.

The only time she felt this powerless was in her dreams. That must be what this was. 

Yor stepped away from bed. For the first time that night, she thought to look down at herself. She always dreamt of the days when it was her and Yuri living in the little cottage their parents left them. Back then she liked to wear that soft pink dress with her apron.

But when she looked down instead she saw that she wore her black Thorn Princess dress.

It was odd. She usually didn’t dream of Thorn Princess. That side of her lived carefully locked away in a part of her mind that she only let loose when the time called for it.

Well she didn’t usually dream of her targets anyway, so clearly this dream was an outlier. What an outlier it was, too, because they were never this long. Instead of the flashes of nonsensical sequences and scenes, all she’d really done in this dream so far was watch this man. It was almost boring.

She tried exploring her surroundings some more, but every time she tried picking something up or opening the door, she found that her strength still hadn’t returned to her. She tried throwing herself at the door, then the walls. She tried imagining herself in a new scenario where she was free and strong again. She tried pushing the man and yelling at him.

Nothing worked.

The first rays of daylight found Yor huddled in the far corner of the room, knees clutched to her head.

She was counting her breaths, methodically relaxing her muscles one by one, and clearing her mind. It’s what she did when she was trying to sleep. She breathed in and held it.

Try not to think about what a terrible dream this was.

Slowly exhale.

Remember that this was just a dream.

Inhale.

Try to not to think about how real it all felt.

Exhale.

Remember that this was just a dream.

Inhale.

Don’t think about how she should’ve woken up by now.

Exhale.

Remember it was just a dream.

Just a dream.

Just a dream.

Just a dream.

***

Yor opened her eyes to find herself on a busy street. It didn’t feel like she’d slept. She was standing on the sidewalk but couldn’t feel her heels pressing into her feet.

Just ahead of her, the man stood in front of a boutique window admiring a wrist watch on display. 

Yor wanted to cry.

She was so sick of this already. What more was she to do? Wait out this awful dream? How much longer would it go on?

The man was leaning down to the watch display, but Yor realized his gaze was tracking the reflections of the bystanders in the glass. She’d heard about this trick before, how spies check for tails in mirrors.

“Who are you looking for?” she asked the man. Her voice was partially drowned out from the murmur of the busy street. She stepped closer and tried again. “Do you see anyone?”

She didn’t expect an answer and didn’t receive one. After a moment, the man stood up and resumed striding down the sidewalk. Yor didn’t particularly want to follow this man anymore, but something within her compelled her to anyway. She kept in pace alongside the man as he navigated the streets of Berlint, further away from main avenues and down empty roads and alleys.

His route led him to a photobooth not too far away from city hall where she worked in the daytime.

“You’re taking a photo?” she asked with some bewilderment. “Now?”

He climbed inside the booth and pulled the privacy curtain closed. Yor wasn’t exactly eager to wedge herself beside the man inside the tiny compartment, so she resolved to wait outside until he was done.

That was until she blinked and she found herself doing exactly that; sitting so close to the man in the cramped booth that she was practically sitting on his lap. She jumped back with a yelp, but hit her head against the roof of the photobooth. Thankfully this dream prevented her from hurting herself from such an impact. However, hurting herself was the furthest thing from her mind. She absolutely had to get away from this man but no matter how much she clawed at the privacy screen it stayed closed shut.

It was then that she realized the small booth was vibrating with movement. With the creak of a hidden elevator mechanism, the interior of the photobooth descended into the ground. The man checked the time on his watch like this was a normal occurrence for him.

“Wh–Where are we going?” Yor asked the man while still trying to escape the confines of the booth.

As if to answer her, the compartment came to a shuddering stop not too long after it had begun descending. The man pulled back the curtain to reveal a wide, dimly lit office space filled with rows of crowded desks. A handful of men and women —spies—sat at these desks muttering among themselves.

When the man stepped out of the booth and into the room, the murmurs paused and all eyes fell on him.

Under the flickering lights, he walked past all of them without a word and Yor followed. At first, she thought the man was some sort of unpopular colleague, thus the silence upon his arrival. But as their gazes followed the man, she realized they looked grim, pitying almost, like he was a sickly dog they saw on the street. He ignored their gloomy expressions and went straight to the back of the room where he knocked on an office door. A muffled voice beckoned him in.

Yor barely managed to slide into the office after the man before he closed the door. It was a room three times as cluttered as the one outside. At the front, a redheaded woman wearing a large hat sat at a desk overflowing with folders and empty mugs.  Yor wondered if this was what a spy’s office looked like. Why had her subconscious decided to make it so messy? Everything she’d learned about spies, other than hunting them down and killing them, was from that silly kid’s cartoon that played on television sometimes. It didn’t look anything like this. It didn’t feel right.

“Twilight,” the woman muttered. She held her head on interlaced fingers. She looked somber.

“Here’s the report,” the man—Twilight?—said, producing a folder from his trench coat to hold out to her. 

“Are you okay?” she asked without taking it.

“Well enough.” He put it on her desk in front of her. “It’s a pity, but it’s to be expected. I’ve lost colleagues before.”

“There’s losing a colleague and then there’s finding seven of them slaughtered like pigs. I saw the pictures. It looked like a massacre, Twilight.”

“I lived through war, Handler. I know what it looked like.”

“They got Nightfall.”

“I know.” He opened the folder and tapped something on the report. “But I got the killer. She’s dead.”

Curious, Yor approached the desk and leaned forward to see what he was pointing to, but the woman closed the folder before she could. Beside her, the man subtly flinched.

“Yes, thank you for that,” the woman said. “I’ve already assigned some of the other agents to look into her, but I’m starting to suspect that she was a member of Garden.”

Both Yor and the man stood up straight and looked at her.

“Garden? But I thought they were just an urban legend,” he said.

“We’re not,” Yor mumbled.

“That’s what I thought, but we got some more intel that suggests otherwise. I don’t have anything concrete yet but I’ll let you know as soon as I do,” the woman said as she rifled around her desk, looking for something. The man cleared his throat.

“I can look into it. I could find something. I have a few informants,” he offered.

“Absolutely not. I know you’re injured. You need to recuperate, I’m putting you on surveillance.”

The man sputtered. “I can handle it. Have one of the rookies do surveillance.”

“Twilight—”

Yor began to tune out the tedious back and forth of the spies. In her boredom, she walked around and inspected the office; investigating the long wilted plant in the corner, reading reports left open on shelves, and recoiling in disgust when she found a moldy pastry perched on top of the overflowing trash can. A spy office wasn’t as exciting as she’d hoped it would be. She hadn’t seen any interesting weapons yet.

“—and I will not lose another agent,” the woman said firmly. She held out a stack of folders to him. “Now go. That’s an order.”

By now, Yor was standing over the woman’s shoulder, peering at the half-written document in her typewriter. The man made an odd sound, one that sounded like a combination of confusion and surprise. She looked up.

He was staring right at her.

Not at the shelves behind her. Directly at her.

Startled, Yor jumped back, having gotten so used to being invisible that she didn’t know what to do now that she could be perceived. The man blinked, then confusion bloomed across his features. His superior, clearly having taken his silence for indignation, scowled.

“Twilight,” she barked, “This is not a suggestion. Go.”

The man blinked again then looked down to his boss.

“Yes, Handler,” he muttered.

He scooped up the files and turned to leave. As Yor followed him, he glanced over his shoulder where she had been standing behind the desk.

Had he seen her?

“Twilight,” someone called after he stepped out of the office.

He turned to see an older agent with a thick mustache approach him and clap a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” the agent said quietly. His eyes held the same sorrow that the woman had. “I heard about what happened at the bar.”

The bar.

Suddenly Yor understood why all of the spies were so somber. Guilt began to curl in her chest as she realized these were the colleagues of the spies she assassinated last night. She was the reason why all of their friends were dead. It was the most bizarre sensation. She’d never once felt bad for the people she killed. They were criminals, scum that sought to upend peace and wreak havoc.

But now all of those people she killed in that bar seemed a little less evil. How could they when she saw their friends mourn them?

And why was she dreaming of this?

“We’re gonna have a get together tonight. Not at a bar–” the agent laughed bitterly–”at Safehouse B. There’ll be some food and drink; real Westalian whiskey, not that Ostanian dish water. You wanna come?”

“I can’t. I got surveillance.”

“C’mon, Sylvia will forgive you if you pass that off to someone else tonight.”

“I’m fine, really.”

The agent sighed and leaned close to the man, his voice dropping to a murmur.

“Listen, Twilight, I know you worked closely with a lot of those agents. Especially Nightfall. And I know that people like you and me don’t exactly have a lot of freedom to talk about how we feel,” he said, “But take it from an old guy; there’s nothing wrong with feeling sad. Or feeling happy, for that matter. If you bottle it up too long, you’re gonna crack one day.”

The man nodded. “I’m aware.”

The agent looked at him hard like he didn’t believe him before clapping his shoulder again and letting go.

“If you say so, Twi-guy. The offer still stands for tonight.”

With that, he left to go converse with some of the other agents, leaving the man standing alone in the big room. His eyes swept across some of the unoccupied desks; undoubtedly where his fallen comrades had once worked. Something like a sigh escaped his lips while he thought. Beside him, Yor stood, hands clasped behind her back. Even with his ramrod posture, she could see he held a great weight within him.

“For what it’s worth,” she said softly, “I’m sorry.”

Not for the first time, she wished he could hear her.

***

She followed him all day.

Followed him to the park where he surreptitiously switched briefcases with a woman sitting at a bench. Followed him to a deli where he ate his lunch in four bites. Followed him to a cigarette stand where the clerk complained to him about women. Followed him to a rooftop where he spent several tedious hours in complete silence watching someone through a pair of binoculars across the street.

It was mind numbing.

Occasionally she would try to tap his shoulder or jiggle a doorknob. As usual, nothing happened. She resorted to people watching. It was entertaining enough until the sun began to set and the street dried of people.

Dread built in her stomach all day, festering and curdling as the realization dawned on her that this probably wasn’t a dream. They’d passed that possibility several hours ago. For about an hour while he stared through his binoculars, she’d paced in circles around the roof, wondering what to do now. If she wasn’t dreaming then what was going on? Was she hallucinating? Was she in an incredibly intense daydream?

Finally, when she’d made herself dizzy, she sat back down next to the man. For a brief moment back in that office, he’d reacted like he could see her. Maybe all she had to do was to get him to see her again. Perhaps then she could talk to him and try to get some answers.

“You still can’t hear me, right?” she asked.

He didn’t respond at all.

“Your name is Twilight,” she said, more to herself than to him. “That’s what everyone is calling you. But it’s probably just a code name.”

It was an odd code name. But who was she to judge?

“And you’re Westalian.”

She couldn’t tell by looking at him. Westalis and Ostania were born from a once-unified nation, so ethnically they were practically identical. But as a girl her brother had whispered a rumor he’d heard from his classmates at school; that Westalians had long claws like wild cats and fangs like demons.

Absent-mindedly, Yor glanced over the man’s hands. His nails were neatly trimmed, not long claws at all. She couldn’t be sure about the teeth, though. She hadn’t seen him smile and got the impression that he usually didn’t.

“You seem like a reasonable person, Twilight,” she continued, “I was hoping you could help with…whatever this is.”

His eyes narrowed behind the binoculars. She followed his gaze across the street where there was movement in an alley by a large hotel. Twilight leapt to his feet and vaulted himself down from the rooftop with the help of the fire escape. Yor easily kept up, but his agility surprised even her.

Once on the ground, he set off in the direction of the alleyway. Immediately she could see his target; a shifty looking man hunched forward in a large coat that swallowed his frame. Twilight kept a good distance from his target but was careful to not be spotted. Under the cover of lengthening shadows, Twilight and Yor slipped through alleys and ducked into doorways while in silent pursuit of the strange man. They followed him onto a main street lined with shops where there were a few people they could blend in with.

As they passed a bakery closing up shop, Twilight glanced in the reflection of the glass windows and jumped back, alarmed. Yor was so caught up in the focus of chasing down the man that his jumpiness caused her to jerk back in surprise as well. Before she could determine what had caused his panic, however, Twilight’s head swiveled back to the target down the street.

The target was gone.

Twilight muttered a curse.

He strode down the street in as fast and as long strides as his faux normalcy would allow, desperately searching for any sign of the target. However, the longer he looked, the more obvious it became that the target had vanished in the blink of an eye. After triple checking every possible turn, Twilight swore out loud, uncaring if anyone heard.

Yor glanced back down the road to the bakery they’d passed earlier. What had Twilight seen that scared him so much?

Twilight shoved his hands into his trenchcoat and began quickly walking back to a little side street not frequented by the public. Yor followed along, curious to see where he was going next. He was walking so fast that she almost had to jog to keep up. He turned into an alley then spun around to face her.

He was holding a gun straight to her forehead.

“Where did you come from?” His words were as hard and cold as ice. “How long have you been following me?”

Yor froze in her tracks, eyes wide, unsure of what to say. She’d been trying to get his attention all day and now that she had it, she didn’t know where to begin.

“C–Can you see me?” she asked cautiously.

Twilight’s frown deepened with confusion.

“Yes. Now tell me who you are and why you’re following me,” he demanded.

“I’ve been following you all day. Did you not see me before?” she said. The hand around his gun tensed.

“When did you start? Where? Who are you? Who sent you?”

“This afternoon! B–Before you went into that photobooth and–and talked to the woman with the hat!” she stammered, “I was there the whole time!”

His eyes widened and he lowered his gun ever so slightly. He spoke again, but a slight quiver in his voice betrayed his disorientation.

“What do you mean? You were in the office with Handler? You heard everything?”

“Yes–well, I wasn’t really paying attention, but yes. Didn’t you see me?”

Twilight swallowed.

“I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.”

So he had seen her!

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said desperately, “I don’t know why I’m invisible to everyone. I can’t touch or feel anything and I can’t figure out why. All I can do is just follow you.”

Her breathing began to shake but she continued anyway.

“All I remember is last night at the bar. I d–don’t know if this is a dream or if I’m going crazy, but I just want it to be over.” Her vision blurred. If she was crying, she couldn’t feel the warmth of tears on her cheeks or taste the salt on her tongue. “I’m s–sorry f–for killing your friends. Please just let me wake up.”

As she cried, the streetlamps flickered on one by one, bathing the darkening streets in soft yellow light. Twilight lowered his gun but kept the barrel pointed at Yor. Without taking his eyes off her, he reached into his trenchcoat and pulled out a manila folder. He balanced it on his arm and extracted a photo.

“You’re the assassin from last night?” he asked carefully. Tearfully, she nodded.

He sucked in a long, deep breath and held out the photo for her to see.

“You attacked me last night. But your heel snapped and you slipped.”

The photo was of a woman in a black dress lying on the floor of the bar surrounded by the splayed limbs of dead bodies. The flash of the camera made her skin look so pale that it was stark white. Dark, dried blood ran down her face from a large circular hole in the woman’s forehead.

Yor choked back a sob.

“I shot you,” Twilight murmured.

Yor reached for the photo, unsure if she could really believe what she was seeing. Twilight released his hold on the paper, but it slipped through her shaking fingers like she was made of air. It fluttered to the ground at her feet.

“You’re dead.”

***

Yor didn’t know where she was. Her body didn’t need food, water, or sleep. She couldn’t do anything except cry. The world around her moved on and continued to live; she stayed put and sobbed.

She was dead.

Her mind couldn’t comprehend it. When she tried to understand the finality of it, all she could think about was Yuri. She’d sworn to protect him when their parents died. Now she’d left him all alone without his big sister to watch over him.

She’d never talk to him again. Never hug him again. Never have him over for dinner. Never fuss over how much he was eating or sleeping. Never laugh when he insisted she meet one of his nice coworkers over coffee.

She fell apart over and over and over. And every time she did, there was a little less left to lose next time

It became clear very quickly that Twilight was the only one who could see or hear her. When she followed him home after the revelation in the alley, not one soul batted an eye at the woman wailing her heart out on the sidewalk. Twilight set his mouth in a hard, straight line and ignored her. In his apartment, she sat against the wall in the small living room and stayed there all night crying into her hands. 

Maybe she cried for days. Maybe she cried for weeks. Yor couldn’t tell. She didn’t pay attention to time crawling by. All she did was cry and follow Twilight. She didn’t want to be anywhere near him, but every time she tried walking or running away, she’d blink and find herself standing right next to him. He dragged her along no matter where he went.

She tried killing him a couple times. When his back was turned, she wrapped her hands around his neck. He only shuddered like he was caught in a cold breeze. She stopped trying after a while.

Twilight’s days were a blur of stakeouts in nondescript cars or on windy rooftops. He rarely spoke to Yor, but his gaze would occasionally drift over and he’d watch her like she was a difficult puzzle he couldn’t understand. Once he went to a doctor who showed him pictures that looked like spilled ink and scanned his head in a big metal machine.

“I can’t find anything with these results,” the doctor muttered as he flipped through the papers on his clipboard. “Have you been under a lot of stress lately?”

Twilight didn’t go back.

Finally, one evening when she was fed up with crying, she rose to her feet one night and wiped her face. She couldn’t tell if she actually had tears on her cheeks, but it was more muscle memory than anything. They were back in Twilight’s apartment, although she’d overheard him refer to it as a safehouse. He was sitting at the kitchen table in front of a myriad of open files and a cup of coffee gone cold. Between his lips was a cigarette. 

She walked to the other side of the table and placed her hands down over the files. He paused and slowly looked up.

“I’m tired of this,” she said, “I want to go.”

His eyes searched the room around her as if looking for the source of her voice before settling on her.

“You’re welcome to leave,” he murmured around the cigarette.

“Then let me go.”

“I’m not holding onto you.”

“Then why is it that when I try to leave I come back to you?”

Twilight sighed and tapped the ash from the cigarette into a full tray beside him.

“I don’t know why. I’m just as confused as you are,” he said tiredly, “I don’t want someone haunting my every move, yet here we are.”

Yor stiffened.

“Haunting you? Is that what I am? A ghost?”

“That or a figment of my imagination. I can’t tell anymore.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. He looked exhausted.

“I was hoping you’d go away on your own. Clearly that’s not going to happen anytime soon,” he continued, “Look, I don’t want this any more than you do, but maybe we can work something out. I can help you…I don’t know, pass on if you’ll quit crying nonstop and lurking in doorways.”

Yor stared hard at him, her eyebrows pushed together so closely that they almost made a straight line.

“Sorry,” Twilight quickly added, sensing her offense, “I know it can’t be easy being dead but…it’s distracting. I keep jumping every time I turn around and see you.”

It was Yor’s turn to sigh. Or at least mimic a sound like one. In the past few days, she had realized that she didn’t breathe anymore.

“I suppose so,” she said quietly. Twilight nodded.

“Good. In the meantime, however, I need to work, so…” He gestured to the empty apartment. “Make yourself comfortable.”

He winced as if he knew what he was staying was ridiculous, but made no mention of it. 

With as heavy feet one could have while being an incorporeal being, Yor wandered into the adjacent living room area and fell onto a threadbare sofa. Not being able to feel anything was driving her crazy. What she would give to feel the rough fabric of the sofa under her or the dusty floorboards beneath her feet. 

The only thing she felt was emptiness.

“Twilight,” she called into the apartment. She heard him stir.

“Yes?” he called back. 

She bit her lip with hesitation. “Could you turn on the radio for me? You can turn it down low so as to not disturb you.” Her hands fiddled with themselves. “I just…I can’t really do anything else.”

Twilight was silent for a moment before answering a simple, “Alright.”

He came over to the living room and switched on a little beige radio which sat on a shelf.

“Do you have a preference for the station?” he asked. She shook her head.

He tinkered with the dial and the radio sputtered out static and clips of songs and laughter until a man’s voice came clear through the noise. It was a local talk show where the host was interviewing a recently published author.

“Thank you,” she murmured to Twilight. He gave her a curt nod before returning to his files.

She stayed by the radio all night, listening to different shows and hosts talk about the news, politics, celebrities, movies, books, and technology. Twilight stayed up late as well, scratching away at his notes until the small clock on the wall chimed three. Without another word, he slipped into the safehouse bedroom and, a little while later, she heard his even snores through the wall. She eventually moved to sit on the floor where she held her knees tucked under her chin and she looked at her hands, the tinny voice coming from the radio passing through her like a breeze.

She still couldn’t believe it. 

How was any of this real?

How long would this last?

Her mind bounced between these thoughts and the radio for hours, spinning and spinning within endless circles.

Finally, when the dark windows of the safehouse started to turn blue with the approaching sunrise and the radio began reading out the weather forecast, her exhausted mind had to face the truth.

This was her reality now. There was no going back.

***

It turned out the man at the cigarette stand was an informant of some kind. Twilight had gone to him three times this week and every time he went, the clerk slipped him some documents in exchange for a thick envelope of cash.

“–And as soon as we got to the restaurant, she told me she had to go home to check on her cat!” the clerk complained, “Now she’s not answering any of my calls!”

“Is that so,” Twilight said flatly. He was thumbing through a packet of papers the clerk had given him with his morning newspaper.

“Yeah, and then you know what I found out?! She doesn’t even have a cat! She was—are you even listening?!”

For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Yor laughed. She was leaning against the stand a little ways away from Twilight to give him some privacy, but she couldn’t help overhearing their conversation. The clerk, while usually grumpy, always had something funny to say. Twilight gave her a small glance before looking up to the clerk.

“I’m sorry to hear that the woman who expressed obvious disinterest in you turned out to not be interested in you,” he deadpanned.

Yor giggled again.

“You don’t have to put it that way, asshole,” the clerk grumbled, “And I thought that Sherry really did like me. That’s why I asked her out.”

“If you couldn’t see the warning signs beforehand, then I fear there’s no hope for you.”

“Hey!”

After Twilight had gotten everything he needed from the clerk, Yor kept up alongside him as he strode down the sidewalk. She discovered that, as a ghost, she really didn’t need to put much effort into walking. A long time ago, Yuri had told her that the moon didn’t have strong gravity like Earth and that if you jumped or ran on the moon’s surface, you’d end up going much farther with a fraction of the effort. 

She felt like that now. Yor bounced through the air like she weighed no more than a feather. And, in a way, she weighed even less than that. Perhaps with some practice, she could fly like the ghosts she’d read about in books.

“Are you two friends?” she asked Twilight. He gave her a quizzical look.

“With who?”

She nodded in the direction of the cigarette stand. “The clerk at the stand,” she said, “You two seem close.”

For whatever reason, this displeased Twilight.

“We are not friends. People in my line of work don’t have friends,” he said with a frown.

“Your line of work? You mean being a spy?”

Even though no one else could hear or see Yor, Twilight bristled at the word “spy” and darted his eyes down the street to see if anyone else was within earshot.

“Yes,” he murmured so quietly that Yor could hardly hear him, “Spies.”

They continued walking in silence as if that single word alone had used up all the conversation left between them. Twilight reached a car parked along a busy road and pulled a set of car keys from his pocket. He was about to get into the driver’s side before he paused and glanced at Yor.

“Do you…need help getting in?” he asked hesitantly.

“Th–That would be helpful, yes,” Yor stammered.

With another quick check down the street to make sure no one was watching him, he trotted to the other side of the car and opened the door for her. She slid into the passenger seat as quickly as she could manage and he hurriedly shut the door after her. Out of the corner of her eye, she swore she saw the tips of Twilight’s ears flush pink. He climbed in and started driving. 

Yor remembered he’d driven a couple different cars in the past few days. They likely didn’t belong to him but rather to whatever agency he worked for. This car was a bit old. It puttered down the street in puffs of exhaust. The interior was covered in a thin layer of grime and ash. If she could smell, Yor guessed it probably reeked of smoke.

“How long have you been a spy, Twilight?” she suddenly asked.

“I can’t tell you. Classified,” came the immediate answer.

“Who would I tell? You’re the only person who can see me,” she said. His grip on the wheel tightened.

“Still, it’s a precaution to not divulge personal information,” Twilight explained, “I don’t know who you are nor do I completely understand your…situation. The first time I met you, you had just finished killing seven of my colleagues and were about to kill me as well.”

His words stabbed her like one of her knives. Even though she no longer had a heart, she knew that if she did have one, it would hurt right now. She started down at her hands laying limp on her lap.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

She wanted to tell him that she had no idea who those people in the bar were, only that Shopkeeper had told her they were western spies poisoning Ostanian society. She had done it to protect her country; she had done it to protect Yuri. She never wanted to hurt good people. And, from what she learned from following Twilight for this long, that the western spies were, at the very least, not the soulless monsters she thought.

“How about we make a deal,” Twilight said a bit more gently, “We can swap information about each other. It’ll be a trade.”

She clenched her fists. She knew this was him extending an olive branch, but there was one thing she had to get out of the way.

“I’ll accept on one condition.”

He spared her a glance. “What is it?”

Yor took in one big non-existent breath to calm her non-existent nerves.

“I–I have a brother,” she said carefully, “He’s my only family. You have to promise to not hurt him or…or rope him into any of your spy affairs. Okay?”

Twilight’s eyes remained on the road until he stopped at a red light. Rain began to tap at the windshield and he flicked on the car lights.

“Alright, then. Deal.”

Yor felt the slightest bit relieved, but apprehension still lingered in her chest.

“I want to know your name,” Twilight said.

She stared out the car window. Her view of the people hunched over in the rain was distorted by the water sliding down the glass. 

“Yor Briar,” she said faintly. “What is your name?”

“Twilight.”

Her head whipped around to look at him. “That’s your codename,” she protested, but immediately she began doubting herself. No sane person named their child Twilight…right?

“It’s what I’m known as, even to myself, Ms. Briar. I’ve been trained to forget my real name,” Twilight said simply as if he were discussing the weather, not the fact that he’d lost an important facet of his identity. Yor wanted to protest, but already she knew it was a pointless argument.

“Then who do you work for?” she asked instead.

“WISE. A Westalian intelligence agency.”

“And why are you in Ostania?”

He frowned. “It’s my turn. Who do you work for? Who put out a hit on that bar?” he asked.

Yor chewed the inside of her cheek. After working so hard all her adult life to keep her assassin work a secret, it felt wrong to so freely spill this information.

“Garden. And no, it’s not an urban legend.”

The car swerved on the road, narrowly avoiding a stray dog that sprinted across the street, tail between its legs. He looked at her, his eyes wide with disbelief. It was the most emotion she’d ever seen him display at once.

“You’re a Garden assassin?” he asked. She nodded bashfully.

“Was,” she quietly corrected.

His focus was tugged away from her and to the road, but he still blinked with surprise.

“My boss, the Shopkeeper, that’s what we call him, is–was–the one who gave me assignments,” she explained softly, “I don’t know where he gets the targets from or what his agenda is. All I know is that he told me we were protecting Ostania from vermin. That’s why I did it. To protect my family, to protect my brother.”

She suddenly wanted to leap out of the car and lay down on the road until someone ran over her. The words coming out of her mouth felt less like strong convictions and more like weak excuses.

“I’m sorry for killing your friends,” she repeated, voice quivering, “They sound like they were good people.”

Twilight had said that he had no friends, but even she could see the sorrow in his eyes when he had looked at those empty desks.

“There’s no need to apologize,” Twilight muttered after a long silence, “We’ve all done things for the sake of following orders; because we believe it’s the right thing to do.”

Yor stared hard out the window, counting the droplets running down the glass and trying to ignore her burning guilt.

“Is that why you’re a spy? Because you believe it’s the right thing to do?” she asked. She hadn’t meant to sound accusatory, but the tremor in her words made it sound like she was.

“Yes,” he replied solemnly, “I want this fragile peace to last. That’s why I’m a spy.”

While Yor was terrible at keeping up with politics, she’d heard whispers of war breaking out between Ostania and Westalis again. There was a tension in the air, one that kept building every day that passed, one that would have to break eventually. The question on everyone’s mind was if it would break with an explosion or a truce.

Yor knew that Garden’s objective was to protect Ostania from weeds, as the Shopkeeper put it. Maintain its beauty as a glorious garden, free from the threat of choking vines. Did that include fighting for peace between nations? Or did the safety of Ostania come at the cost of Westalis? She looked down at her hands, the ones that had been slick with red the night she died and wondered if a peace that came at the cost of so much blood was really peace at all.

“Are you going to tell your boss all of this?” she asked.

“Eventually, yes,” he replied before adding apologetically, “I’m sorry, but information is incredibly valuable, especially about an organization such as Garden. I hope you understand.”

“No, no, I…I understand,” she murmured. This is the price of knowing a spy, she supposed. Everything was information and intelligence to be used. “I just hope you understand I don’t know very much. I was just a soldier. I wasn’t the one making decisions.”

He hummed with thought. “Something is more than nothing, which is what we have.”

Yor gulped and went back to staring out the window. Was she betraying Garden by talking to Twilight? If the Shopkeeper knew she’d divulged this information, would he hurt Yuri in retaliation? But then again, how would he find out? What good would punishing her now do? And besides, if Twilight was telling the truth, then they were fighting for similar things. Surely if their goals aligned, then maybe it wasn’t so bad she was telling him this.

It still stung for some reason.

“You said you’d help me out as well,” she said, trailing off and hoping he’d pick up.

“Yes, of course,” he said, “Although I will be honest, I’m quite out of my depth when it comes to the supernatural. I’ll have to do some research.”

“I see. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

After a moment, he looked over to Yor and gave her a small smile, the first she’d ever seen from him. But it didn’t look genuine. Instead, it felt purposeful, diplomatic.

“I hope that we’ll be able to help each other out,” he said.

She stared at her boots. The heel was still broken.

“I hope so as well.”

***

Twilight’s handler had given him the clear to take on more strenuous missions. Every morning after he strode out of his safehouse room already fully dressed, he still stretched his injured shoulder with a wince while pouring himself coffee. Yor couldn’t tell if he knew he was doing it or not, but he’d insisted to his boss that he was ready for the field again. 

The living situation in the safehouse was unusual but had become familiar to them. Fortunately, the apartment was just big enough that Twilight wouldn’t rubber band Yor to him while walking around. She had claimed the sparse living room as hers where the small radio was constantly playing turned low. She spent every night laying beside it, listening to the constant murmur of host after host interviewing minor celebrities or raving about a book they read. It would’ve been nice to have a television, but the safehouse didn’t have one. It didn’t bother Yor too much.

Twilight didn’t talk to her very much in the apartment. He kept to the kitchen table where he worked on solving ciphers or analyzing intel. He didn’t seem to cook very much either, content to just eat at little delis and cafes while out and about. After that first night, Yor never went into his room, but occasionally, she’d catch a glimpse of gold on his night stand when he opened the door.

She liked it when he went out on missions, even if they had all been stakeouts so far. It wasn’t so dull and she got to walk among other people. She could pretend for just a little bit that she could feel the warmth of the sun or smell the exhaust of a passing delivery truck. She could pretend she was still alive.

That was why she was excited when the woman in the hat gave Twilight an assignment to infiltrate a military research facility to recover…something she didn’t quite catch. She was a bit distracted. The woman’s office was messy as usual, but this time she had an odd knife of some sort on her desk. Apparently it had been recovered in another agent’s mission. Yor was busy admiring the blade when Twilight got the assignment.

“A military research facility!” she gushed while he ate a kebab from a street cart after his meeting. “I’ve never seen one! I wonder what sort of interesting things they’ll have there. Maybe there will be knives like that one on your boss’s desk!”

“The Ostanian military hasn’t fought with blades in almost a hundred years. They most likely have things like bombs or planes. No one uses blades anymore,” Twilight answered dryly.

“Well, in my work, I used knives just fine,” she pouted.

He raised an eyebrow. “Just knives?”

“Yes! Well, Garden assassins are trained in all manner of weapons and we choose our specialty,” Yor explained excitedly, “I liked knives the best. I tried all sorts of knives; machetes, darts, bayonets–I even tried some swords. But I knew right away as soon as I picked up those stilettos that they were what I wanted to specialize in. I practiced with the ones that Garden provided me, but the ones I use on my jobs are custom made. I worked with my mentor to design a pair specifically made for me. We studied all sorts of bladed weapons throughout history and ended up using a lot of inspiration from rapiers and–”

It was then that she realized Twilight was staring at her, his mouth mid-chew. It wasn’t the kind of scornful stare she was used to drawing when she accidentally said something weird at city hall. Rather it was a stare of something she could only describe as intrigued; like she was a book turned to the page where the story began to pick up. If she still had blood, her face would’ve glowed red enough to use as landing lights for planes.

“…A–Anyway, um…” she stammered, all passion in her voice quickly deflating, “…I, uh, used knives…”

Twilight nodded while he swallowed his food. “You were trained in all weapons, you said?” he asked, “What kinds? Even bombs and poisonous gasses?”

Yor desperately wished she could still touch things so she could give her hands something to do and wouldn’t have to look at Twilight directly. 

“W–Well, we only focused on weapons that we could control. Bombs and gasses are too destructive and unpredictable. We did learn about poisons, though. One of my colleagues specialized in it,” she explained.

“I see,” he murmured thoughtfully, “Very interesting.”

“Is it?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“Of course. No one knows anything about Garden, this is valuable intel, Ms. Briar,” he replied and tossed the empty kebab wrapper into the trash. She frowned.

“Right. Intel,” she muttered and followed him down the sidewalk to his next destination.

Twilight was correct, of course. The research facility didn’t have any knives or swords. It was a huge brick box of a building surrounded by tall barbed chainlink fences and full of long beige corridors. Yor couldn’t hide her extreme disappointment.

However, one thing that the facility did have was guard dogs, which greatly cheered her up.

“Oh you are so cute!” she squealed while crouching down to cup the cheeks of a large brown and black dog. Her fingers went straight through his fur, but it looked so soft and fluffy she could practically feel it anyway. The dog’s ears flicked with interest.

They were inside one of the long beige hallways. Twilight was chatting with a nearby officer through a window made of reinforced glass. Next to him were two guards with obedient dogs attentively sitting by their feet. 

“You are such a good, good boy, can you hear me, Mr. Dog?” she gushed.

Twilight let out a single quiet snort of laughter. The dog’s ears flicked again but otherwise remained still.

The officer behind the window pressed a button and the door beside him popped open with a noisy click. Reluctantly, Yor followed Twilight into the next hallway. He didn’t look like his usual self. His hair was an ashy gray and he looked like he’d aged thirty years. Yor had screamed when he emerged from the safehouse bathroom in his disguise. Even his voice was different; now it was high and nasally and not at all pleasantly smooth like it usually was. He’d explained to her that he was impersonating one of the head researchers at this facility, thus the strange wig and frumpy clothes. It made sense but Yor still had a hard time believing it was really him.

As they navigated the maze of hallways, they passed by a few windows looking into large laboratories filled with strange machinery Yor couldn’t possibly begin to understand. She was dying to ask Twilight what they did because it seemed like he knew everything. But it would be weird if one of the head scientists was caught wandering around and talking to himself, so she kept quiet. They passed a few other scientists which Twilight greeted by name but otherwise the facility was empty. It was evening, after all. Distantly, Yor wondered which radio shows she was missing right now.

They came to a stop in front of an office door. After a quick glance up and down the hallway, Twilight extracted a set of lockpocks from his sleeve and set to work on the door. His fingers moved nimbly, but based on the divot appearing between his artificially wrinkled brow, the door seemed more difficult to open than he anticipated. This was almost as alarming as seeing Twilight dressed in another man’s skin; Yor had never seen him struggle with anything. She began pacing again behind him in worry while he continued to work at the lock.

The echo of approaching footsteps caused Yor to pause in her pacing. At the sound, Twilight moved a little faster, the sense of shared panic rising between both of them. Yor peeked around the corner as far as she dared where an older man in a simple lab coat chatting with two colleagues while they walked. The man looked familiar. Yor glanced back to Twilight who still hadn’t gotten the lock yet.

“Twilight, that scientist you’re impersonating–he doesn’t happen to be an identical twin, does he?” she asked nervously.

“No, he only has a sister who is six years younger than him,” he replied automatically without looking up like he was reading off a profile, “His father is a twin, but they’re fraternal twins, not iden–wait, why are you asking me this?”

“Because I think the scientist is walking down the hall right now towards us.”

“What?” he hissed.

He went to look around the corner, but Yor stepped in front of him. Even though he could pass right through her, he stopped.

“He’s coming this way, he’ll see you,” Yor whispered quickly. There was no reason for her to be quiet, but she couldn’t stop her instincts from lowering her voice. “Work on the door. I’ll keep a lookout.”

Twilight hesitated for only a fraction of a second before returning to the lock with renewed vigor. Yor looked back around the corner. The scientists had paused in the hallway to discuss something on a clipboard.

“How long do I have?” Twilight murmured.

“Uh…” Yor glanced at Twilight then back to the men in the hallway, “Well, they’ve stopped to talk about something…oh, wait, they’re walking this way–but one of them had to tie his shoe.” She worriedly looked back to Twilight. “Y–You should really hurry, you know.”

“I’m trying, Ms. Briar,” Twilight grumbled, “This paracentric keyway is a nightmare to pick.”

The door suddenly popped open and Yor let out a heavy, nonexistent sigh of relief. Twilight slipped into the small, crowded office, Yor just behind him. He immediately set to work prying open filling cabinets and sifting through documents while she nervously shifted from foot to foot. What would happen to her if they caught Twilight? She shuddered, imagining having to spend years stuck in a gray cell beside Twilight. Or worse, listening to his screams while they tortured and interrogated him.

“What are you looking for? Maybe I can help?” she asked. She couldn’t really help, being incorporeal and all, but maybe she could keep an eye out for something specific.

“I need to find diagrams of a bomb, specifically the XTPA-9684. I just need to take photographs of them, that and to find the date and location of their test drops,” Twilight whispered as he rifled through a thick stack of folders. Despite how small the room was, the sheer amount of paper and stuff would take at least a week to sort through. It reminded Yor of Twilight’s Handler’s office. “For now, just listen for–aha!”

Yor already had an ear pressed against the door when she heard the rustle of paper and the snaps of a small camera lens. It seemed that Twilight had found whatever he was looking for and was making good use of the small camera concealed in his wrist watch.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“I just need that date and location,” Twilight grunted as he shoved the blueprints back where he’d found them. “He won’t have that data just lying around somewhere.”

Both of them leapt at the jangle of keys on the other side of the door, their wide eyes meeting in mutual panic. In a silent flash of movement, Twilight unlatched and slipped through the air vent near the foot of the scientist’s desk. Yor, out of instinct, dove out of the way and into a stack of binders and boxes without a sound just as the door swung open. The scientist strode straight past Yor sprawled across the stack of boxes and straight to his desk, letting the door close behind him. He dropped into the seat with a pained groan and stretched his neck.

Yor did not dare move, fearing that somehow she would reveal Twilight’s presence. She watched without blinking as the scientist leaned forward to click on his desk lamp and sorted through some files until he found one that made him pause and read for several minutes. Yor slowly sat up to crane her neck over the edge of the desk where she could see the air vent just behind the scientist’s desk. Through the dark slats of the vent cover, she could barely make out the outline of Twilight’s figure. 

She swallowed, once again imaging being stuck with Twilight rotting away in prison if he was caught. Or worse, what if he was executed? Would they be ghosts together? Or would she float away, free of her only tie to the living world? She shook the thought away. Now was not the time to be fretting about hypotheticals. Even if she couldn’t help Twilight better conceal himself, she could still try to find the data he was looking for so he could get out of this terrifying place. Without a sound, Yor climbed back to her feet and resumed Twilight’s search. She started on the filing cabinets where she studied any files that were left out.

Yor couldn’t make heads or tails of the scientific graphs or charts she skimmed through, focused only on information that resembled dates or location names. Behind her, the scientist hummed something to himself and turned to his rusted typewriter to feed it a paper. He clacked away, pausing to reread something in his notes or to chew on his lip in thought. Yor kept him in the corner of her vision, ready to run if he happened to turn around and spot the shadow in his air vent.

A sudden, deafening trill made both Yor and the scientist jump. For a horrifying moment, she feared that someone had somehow discovered an intruder in the facility and had sounded the alarm. But instead the scientist only growled a few choice words and dug a ringing rotary phone out of a pile of books and folders.

“Hello?” he grumbled, gruff and irritated.

Yor inched closer to the phone, hoping to overhear something important. The person on the other end sounded angry, their voice high and aggressive. The scientist sighed loudly.

“I know I’m late, I’m so sorry, I just–yes, I’m late, I’m sorry–” he was interrupted by an outburst which caused him to yank the handset away from his ear with a wince. Yor eagerly ventured even closer. Perhaps this was his superior? Something in the scientist’s annoyed glare snapped.

“I said I’m sorry!” he roared, “It’s not my fault I got called into work on our anniversary! I’m trying to finish up as fast as I can!”

Yor’s eyebrows shot up. Probably not a boss then.

She leaned away, suddenly feeling rude for overhearing such a personal argument. When she did, her gaze caught on the half-written document in his typewriter. She paused and studied it, reading over the neatly typed words carefully.

“Then push back the reservation!” the scientist shouted before smashing the handset back down. He cursed out loud and slammed a fist into his desk, causing the mountain of papers and folders on it to jump and a few to slide off. This caused him to swear again, even louder this time, and he stooped down to pick them back up.

Yor gasped.

The scientist was right next to the air vent. Mere inches from where the spy was crouched in the shadows. Yor watched, fingers curled in terror, as the scientist snatched the papers off the floor, angrily muttering to himself while he did. He drew precariously closer to the vent; all he had to do was look up and become face to face with Twilight. 

The phone trilled again and the scientist whirled around, face red and eyes bulging. He yanked the handset from the phone.

“What now?!” he all but screamed, “Just cancel the reservation at this point for all I care!”

He opened his mouth to say more, but then abruptly stopped, his face turning a different kind of red. After a moment, he muttered, “Sorry, sir, I thought…well, I thought you were someone else…Yes, sir, I’m so sorry.”

His demeanor had completely flipped. Now he stood still, head down, looking as contrite as a schoolboy receiving a lecture for bad behavior.

“I can get it to you right away, sir,” he said, “…Yes. You’re welcome, goodbye.”

The scientist set the handset back down carefully like he was returning a fallen baby bird to its nest. He robotically returned to his seat and began clacking away at the typewriter, the sound of the machine the only noise in the suddenly too-small office. A brief minute later, the scientist arose, ripped the paper off the typewriter, and exited the room, his footsteps clipped and hurried. As soon as his footfalls faded down the hallway, Twilight burst from the vent, sweat trickling down his artificially wrinkled face.

“That was close!” Yor exclaimed.

“Too close,” Twilight murmured as he stood up, “He’ll be back soon and I don’t know if I’ll be as lucky a second time. I need to go.”

Before Yor could reply, Twilight swept through the office and down the hallway in the opposite direction the scientists had gone. She kept ahead a few paces, looking around corners before Twilight turned, making sure that the coast was clear. It was totally nerve wracking. She expected to turn around and find Twilight being clasped in handcuffs, hauled away in the back of an armored van. But no, he was there every time she looked back, calm and unruffled like he did this every day.

Well, Yor supposed he did do this every day.

She was all too relieved to be back under the dark, open sky when Twilight peeled away from the facility. He’d even taken the time to open the car door for her, as if he wasn’t under immense pressure to get out before they caught him. It was truly admirable how unflappable Twilight was. Granted, she’d only known him for–how long was it now?–a few weeks, but she’d literally been by his side every second of every day. She had yet to see him truly off-balanced; not even the revelation that he was being haunted by a ghost was enough to cause him to falter in his endless confidence. Yor simply had no choice but to respect him. She had been many things in life, but confident was not always one of them.

“Were you able to get everything you needed?” she asked, “Besides the test date and location, I mean.”

He nodded. By now, he’d removed his disguise and looked like himself again. The rubber mask lay like a shed lizard’s skin in the back seat. “Everything else, yes. We’ll have to make do without the extra data.”

Yor thought over the events of that evening, the mess of that little office, and the frantic words of the scientist. She’d looked over his shoulder while he worked and read the report on his typewriter.

“I think I know when and where the test drops will be,” she said uncertainly. He raised an eyebrow.

“Really?”

“Really. I saw him writing some sort of report on his typewriter which mentioned something about experiments and test explosions.”

Twilight drummed his fingers on the wheel of the car. “Is that so? What did it say?”

After a bit of hesitation and remembering, Yor recited the information she’d read off the scientist’s report. When she was done, she looked at Twilight, awaiting his reaction. She expected–hoped–that he would be pleased with her. After all, she had done him a great service and contributed to his mission, whatever it was. Instead, he stared straight ahead at the dark road without responding for a long while, merely nodding so she knew he’d heard her. Yor fidgeted. Maybe she’d overstepped somehow? Or maybe he was upset with her for some reason?

Twilight parked the car in the alley beside the photobooth and descended into the WISE headquarters. The booth was rather cramped, even with one person, but Twilight had gotten into the habit of sitting as far in as he could manage so Yor could slide in after him. The entire way down, he would intently study his shoes or admire the fabric of the privacy shade, anything that would let him avoid looking at Yor. They did so now in silence which only multiplied the underlying awkwardness. She wanted to say something, but couldn’t form the right words. She hoped it wouldn’t always be this uncomfortable between them. 

Then again, she also hoped this situation wouldn’t last long at all.

When Twilight entered his handler’s office, he held the door open just long enough for Yor to slip inside. His handler spoke up before he could even give a report.

“We’ve got an update on the assassin,” she said. 

Twilight took a seat on the couch by her desk with a tired sigh. “And?”

“And we have a name for her now. Yor Briar.”

At the sound of her name, Yor perked up. How had they gotten her name? She wasn’t even sure if Garden had any sort of paperwork or physical ties WISE could have tracked. Spies truly were a different kind of creature. She noticed Twilight had gone completely still on the couch. His handler continued speaking, but it looked like it all went through the spy’s ear and out the other.

“She worked at city hall during the day but moonlighted as an assassin, it appears. No parents and a younger brother with an impressive academic record and promising career at the embassy. Totally normal if you didn’t know better.”

Yor shifted uncomfortably where she was standing in the corner of the room. She didn’t like listening to someone list facts about her like a medical diagnosis. Twilight still appeared shocked, but was beginning to recover. He nodded.

“I see. Have her ties to Garden been confirmed?” he asked.

“Not yet. We’re still working on it. I’ll have a more concrete report for you in a few days, I just wanted to keep you updated. It’s so difficult to find any data on such an ordinary person, but we’ll find something.” She waved her hand. “But enough of that for now. Tell me what you found tonight.”

Twilight cleared his throat and dove into recounting the mission. Yor found herself drifting out of attention and took to wandering around the office, as she often did during Twilight’s lengthy meetings. But her mind kept returning to what the handler had said about her. She had described Yor like she was a background character in a novel, one whose relevance ended as soon as the page was turned. Yor had never held a particularly high opinion of herself, but it was disconcerting to have one’s life described in such a dismissive fashion. It made her feel insignificant.

“I was also able to get a hold of the date and location of the test drops,” Twilight was saying. Yor looked back up. “I’ll include them in my official report.”

“Excellently done,” his handler said, although she didn’t sound particularly congratulatory, “I expect to see that report on my desk tomorrow morning.”

“Of course.”

With that, he was dismissed. Yor followed Twilight back through WISE headquarters where he set the keys to the car on a hook by several other hanging sets. They would be walking back to the safehouse, Yor determined. She didn’t mind, she never became fatigued, but Twilight looked tired. Back on the surface, he walked through the dark streets of Berlint much more slowly than his typical quick pace. Yor glanced up and down the sidewalk, but found no one else in the glow of the street lamps.

“You told her the intel I gave you,” Yor said.

“I did,” he said plainly.

“Then why…” She hesitated. “Why did you seem displeased when I told you earlier what I read?”

Twilight’s stride did not stutter, but Yor saw his jaw flex. He appeared deep in thought, although he always appeared that way.

“I didn’t believe you,” he said at last. Yor gaped.

“D–Didn’t believe me?” she sputtered, “What in the world would I gain from lying to you?”

His jaw worked a few more times. “Perhaps that was the wrong way to put it,” he said. “It’s that I didn’t believe in you.”

“What do you mean?”

Twilight took several more strides forward before he slowed to a halt. He stared at Yor with such intensity that she suddenly felt self-conscious. The night had turned his blue eyes a dark gray.

“I didn’t read that document,” he said, “So I couldn’t have known what it said.”

“Yes, I’m the one who read it,” Yor said impatiently.

“But I didn’t,” Twilight insisted, “You must understand that all this time I wasn’t sure if you were real. I couldn’t be sure if you were simply something my mind was making up, that if you gave me information, it wouldn’t be a product of my own delusions.”

He suddenly looked pained.

“But then Handler told me your name and it lines up with everything you’ve told me so far. I cannot deny it any further; you, Yor Briar, are really dead and you truly are haunting me.”

Realization dawned on Yor. Twilight had been careful to keep her at arm’s length, to not engage in discussion with her unless it was to gather information. He hardly did more to affirm her existence than keeping doors open a fraction longer or keeping the radio turned on at all hours. He hadn’t trusted her to be real. Anger churned in Yor’s stomach. She turned away, fists shaking.

“It’s been easy for you to dismiss me as just an illusion," she said shakily, “But I don’t have that luxury. I’m reminded every second that I’m dead.”

She felt it beyond the numbness of not being able to feel the cool wind that pulled on the turned collar of Twilight’s coat. She felt it every time she was tugged along by Twilight’s presence when she wanted to stop and admire the flowers in the florist’s window. When she smiled at strangers and they stared straight through her. When she lay beside the radio all night, pretending that the talk show hosts were speaking directly to her just so she would feel just a little less lonely.

“Perhaps I’ve been…unfair to you,” Twilight murmured, his voice gentle, “I didn’t consider your feelings in the matter. I apologize for that.”

His words were a cup of water thrown on a house fire. Anger didn’t come naturally to her, yet it raged with such intensity that it made her dizzy. Yor squeezed her eyes closed.

“At least you believe in me now.” 

She turned back around and resumed walking into the darkness.