Chapter Text
“Welcome, Thorn-sis, Loid. Looks like they all went easy on you.”
They’d jumped off the zipline separately and landed in a defensive roll, ready to take on whatever their colleagues would literally throw at them next. But the only person waiting for them in the wide open space of the main hall was Gympie, clad in an oversized hoodie and sweatpants with her hands tucked into her pockets. She looked like a university student heading to a study break.
Yor relaxed and put her stilettos away. “Ooh! So you’re going to ramp things up with a new poison?”
“Only you would sound excited about that,” Loid said, but smiled down at Gympie. “Please don’t ramp things up. I’d hate to propose to my wife while vomiting up my insides.”
“I wouldn’t do that to Thorn-sis,” the young assassin said breezily, and beckoned them toward a side room. It had been set up like a cozy lounge, with a card table surrounded by four wooden chairs, and a few armchairs and a settee further in.
“Please, take a seat.”
In the comfortable silence while Gympie busied herself at the bar cart behind them, Yor looked at her husband fondly and squeezed his hand under the table.
Thank you for all of this, she mouthed.
Don’t thank me yet, he replied with an ironic grin.
Poisons had never been his strong suit, as proven by her cooking. But she trusted Gympie to be nice. Though she may have picked up some of Franky’s prankster nature, she wasn’t sadistic.
“So here’s the test. I’m pouring you three drinks. One of them is harmless. The other two are not. Obviously they won’t take you out or do any lasting harm, but they’ll definitely make the rest of the night more interesting,” Gympie explained. “And before I present them to you…Thorn-sis, turn your chair around and don’t peek. You’re not allowed to help. Don’t look at me like that, Loid. You knew this was going to be a test for you, it wouldn’t be any fun if Thorn-sis had to do it.”
Loid sighed good-naturedly. “Of course.”
“And yes, I know you have a handicap. Originally it was going to be just two drinks.”
“Alright. So a two in three chance I lose all sensation in my limbs, go blind, or get completely shitfaced.”
Yor had to catch herself from turning around. “You wouldn’t do that to him, would you Gympie?”
“Would I?” Gympie said lightly, sounding way too much like her boyfriend.
“Well, my wife’s already seen me at my worst. I’m ready whenever you are,” Loid said. Yor couldn’t tell if he was referring to the time he’d nearly died from poison gas or when he’d gone delirious from a potent hallucinogen.
“Be careful, Loid!” she urged.
The clink of glass on wood was the only signal that the challenge had begun. Yor waited with bated breath through the interminable silence as Loid considered each of the liquids placed before him.
Eventually, he ventured a question. “I suppose it might be too cliche for the foul-smelling one to be the safe choice?”
“You tell me, Doctor Forger. Is it reverse psychology at play?”
Yor clenched and unclenched her fists in her lap just to give herself something to do. If only she could get a glimpse of the potions, she might have an idea of which one did what.
“Not a word, Thorn-sis. Or any coded body language,” Gympie warned.
Another long silence, punctuated only by the clinking of glass as Loid continued to inspect the drinks.
“Alright. Here goes,” he said at last, and drank.
As soon as Gympie gave permission to turn around, Yor was back at her husband’s side inspecting his vitals. Normal pulse and breathing, still able to move, no change in complexion…
“Yor, I’m fine,” he said with a smile as she peered into his eyes. “So far, at least.”
“Did he pick the safe one, Gympie?” Yor asked, still fretting over him like a nurse.
“I’ll let you two figure that out. Should make the next trial more fun,” she answered.
“Gympie!” Yor scolded, but underneath her worry she felt proud of how much Gympie had changed in the past two years. She was more confident in her own skin and didn’t try to remain invisible anymore, except during jobs.
“Alright. Where to next?” Loid said. Yor listened carefully for anything off about his voice. It sounded normal, but as he pushed back his chair and stood up, she detected the slightest sway to his movements. Was that an effect of the drink or just a trick of the eye?
“You get to stay in this room while I swap out with your next judge or whatever. Kick back and relax while you can,” Gympie said. Despite her friendly tone, Yor did not feel reassured.
As soon as Gympie rolled the bar cart out of the room, Yor made Loid sit in one of the armchairs while she pressed her palm to his forehead. “You really don’t feel anything?”
“Not at the moment. Could be a slow-acting poison for all we know. But worst case, you can just carry me on your back through any more combat trials, right?” he said affectionately. “My strong, protective wifey.”
“Uh…” Yor frowned. Loid had never called her by that particular nickname before. He could be very sweet with his words, but not that sweet. “It’s definitely taking effect now.”
“What makes you say that? I’m sorry if I end up embarrassing you, but everyone here is a friend. Except for Hemlock.” Loid’s pleasant smile turned into a frown. “Speaking of Hemlock, you probably know already, but I was the one who placed the ad in the newspaper. After consulting his mother. I don’t envy her, having a perpetual teenager as a son.”
Dread pooled in Yor’s stomach. Her husband could be talkative as well as sweet when they were alone, but right now he was plainly rambling.
“She’s a nice woman,” he continued. “She thinks I’m an old classmate of his, and wishes he had turned out more like me. With proper manners, no tattoos, and short hair.”
“Loid, I think you’re drunk. Or something close to it, whatever was in that glass,” Yor pressed.
“But I can’t get drunk, darling. I’m trained–”
“Yes, I know, I know,” she said impatiently, having heard the same defense countless times. She would have to have a talk with Sylvia about the reckless overconfidence its alcohol tolerance training instilled in its agents.
“Even if I am drunk, imagine how much worse it would be if you’d done the trial. Actually I don’t have to imagine. You were completely sloshed last time we were here,” —again, not a word he’d ever used to describe her— “and that’s why you can’t remember anything. Except my Bondman ‘costume.’ An eye mask and gloves, psh. Three dalc at the thrift store. And still, you kicked my ass in front of virtually every WISE agent stationed in Ostania. I swear you were going to kill me. But then you slipped and knocked yourself out, and my colleagues must have thought it was all an act. Up until recently they really believed I was some sort of omnipotent god of espionage, you know? Like every single thing I did was meticulously planned for the long game, 5D chess, hell, 10D chess, blowing the WISE budget on this castle, picking a bombshell assassin for my wife–”
Yor resigned herself to waiting out the rather mortifying spell her husband had fallen into, merely smiling and nodding every once in a while as he rambled on and on. Gympie’s formulation was so strong that his usual defense mechanisms didn’t kick in. He had told her once about his methods for countering extreme intoxication—reviewing hundreds of encyclopedic facts and solving complicated math problems in his head. Drowning out his outside environment and any questions from an interrogator as much as he could.
Maybe it was the fact it was just the two of them here. He was safe with her, free to spill every random thought on his mind.
Loid was in the midst of reminiscing about their cruise vacation on the Lorelei and how much he secretly enjoyed carrying her in his arms when a sharp knock came at the door.
To his credit, his reflexes didn’t seem to be impaired, just his judgment. He stopped speaking and stood quickly, one arm extended to shield her from a hostile intruder. Yor doubted anyone was coming to fight them in this tiny room if they had the courtesy to knock first.
The door opened, revealing none other than Sylvia. Yor choked back a laugh as Loid tensed and grew pale. It seemed the poison had disarmed him of his prodigious acting skills as well.
“Shit. I mean, good evening, ma’am.”
“Ah,” Sylvia chuckled as she set down a briefcase on the card table. “Truth serum, I take it.”
“Oh no…” Loid groaned and smacked his forehead. Yor grabbed his hand and pulled it back down, wishing to spare him from as much self-humiliation as possible.
“Is that what it is?” Yor asked. “Did you and Gympie plan this?”
The commanding officer of WISE shrugged as she pressed a button near the light switch and a projector screen slowly lowered on the opposite wall. “Twilight would have no escape from this part of the night regardless. This just makes it more worth my while.”
“Handler has more blackmail on me than anyone else alive,” Loid lamented. “What's your price, ma’am? I’ll pay it. Or is this just a personal grudge because I’ve cozied up to Shopkeeper recently? I have to say, even though his face is creepy and mannequin-like, he’s actually quite nice when you get to know him—”
“Loid! Don’t talk about Shopkeeper like that!” Yor exclaimed.
Sylvia’s grin widened. “Definitely more worth my while. Impressive. Gympie’s outdone herself again.”
She invited them to sit down at the table as she finished setting up for her ‘trial.’ It soon became apparent what it would entail as she carried an overhead projector out of the closet and drew a folder of transparencies from her briefcase. Loid meanwhile had not stopped muttering about how unfair this all was, and that he could have faced down anyone else in his condition except for the woman who’d walked through the door.
As the projector warmed up with a low hum, Sylvia turned to Yor, ignoring her husband. “So how surprised were you?”
“Oh! You mean about tonight? Or about the whole idea? Um…well…I knew for a while that something was coming, thanks to Anya. But tonight completely blindsided me! I really thought it was a job. I still can’t believe he got Shopkeeper to trick me! And to get you involved too, of course! You must be so busy, I apologize for–”
“Yor, there’s no need for apologies,” Sylvia cut her off with a wave of her manicured hand. “I’d always wanted to see what the 35,000 dalc bill was for last time. And to have a bit of fun at Twilight’s expense.”
Yor’s jaw dropped. “35,000?”
“For the castle rental alone. All told, he burned more than 100,000 dalc on that little stunt. Didn’t you, agent?”
“119,207 dalc and 18 cents, to be precise, ma’am,” Loid answered. “It was Franky’s fault.”
“Loid!”
“Mm, I’m sure it was,” Sylvia drawled. She placed the first transparency on the projector. “I wonder what else might have been your informant’s fault over the years?”
The giant screen on the wall filled up with neat typewritten text, much of it redacted in heavy black bars. It took Yor a second to realize what she was seeing. A decrypted WISE mission report penned by her husband.
It took her another second to place the date at the top. The day of the grenade pin proposal.
Only two short paragraphs had no redactions.
Secured wife for Op. Strix. Yor Briar (YB), 27 y/o, City Hall clerk, never married, clean record. 20 y/o brother in Foreign Ministry, no other relatives.
Attended coworker’s party at 47 Marshall Drive. On walk home, discussed benefits of cover marriage for both sides and came to agreement. YB’s motivation: put her brother’s mind at ease and avoid SSS scrutiny over single status. Signed marriage cert at courthouse before close. Move-in date TBD.
“I’ve always been curious how exactly that little ‘walk home’ panned out,” Sylvia said, amused at Yor’s wide-eyed expression. “Twilight’s powers of persuasion are impressive indeed, but something tells me there’s more to the story.”
Yor glanced at her husband, who had steepled his fingers in front of his lips as if striving mightily to keep quiet.
“Um, there is, but I assumed he told you eventually,” Yor ventured into the awkward silence.
“Yor, this chat is for your entertainment as much as mine,” Sylvia said with a reassuring smile. “It’s Twilight who owes me answers.”
“I had a concussion,” Loid finally blurted, clearly mortified at his own lack of control. “And that was Franky’s fault. I brought him along for backup on the smugglers and he didn’t do jack shit. I fought off 38 armed men single-handedly and–”
“You had a concussion and therefore you did what?” Sylvia prompted.
“…I got to the party two hours late and introduced myself as Yor’s husband when I was only supposed to be her boyfriend. Amateur mistake. No way would I add that to the report and risk a competence eval.”
“Ah, I see,” Sylvia nodded nonchalantly. “And after you shocked everyone, including your new wife, with that announcement, you…”
“We left the party and I defended her from a bunch of stragglers from the smuggling ring.”
He was met with raised eyebrows from both women.
“We defended each other,” he corrected. “She roundhouse kicked a man ten meters straight into a wall. Gave me a second peek at those amazing legs. That’s when I knew she was the one.”
Now Sylvia turned her raised eyebrow toward Yor. “Second?”
Yor waved her hands frantically in front of her face. “It’s not what you think! My coworker flung a tray of hot gratin at me and I had to catch it with my foot!”
It took Yor a moment to realize Sylvia’s sigh of consternation wasn’t directed at her.
“In my defense, Handler, I saw you take down men twice your size in rookie training without breaking a sweat. And all those times you got mad at me, you’d just grab me by the collar and lift me straight off the ground! I just figured Yor was like you.”
Yor covered her face with her hands. This was getting worse and worse.
“I suppose I should be flattered,” Sylvia said, unruffled as ever. “So then? How did you explain why a bunch of thugs were chasing you in the first place?”
Yor sank lower in her seat.
“I told her they were my patients. And I was breaking new ground in psychiatry with a method called concussive therapy.”
Sylvia laughed in curt amusement. “Truly spoke to her assassin’s heart. The greatest case of unintentional seduction in WISE history.”
Loid grimaced, unable to keep himself from continuing. “…And then I sealed the deal with a grenade. Needed to get a ring from somewhere.”
Sylvia stared at her best agent as if unsure whether to believe what he had just said, even with the truth serum.
“I think I’ll need to call in a favor with Shopkeeper. Get a vial of that serum for future use, just so I can find out what else you omitted from your reports all these years.”
“Please don’t. I doubt you’d want to go through a list of 862 ideas for dates to cheer up my wife. She was in a terrible mood that day—”
“Loid,” Yor pleaded, wishing she could track down Gympie for an antidote. How long was her husband going to be in this addled state?
“For your wife’s sake, I’ll skip all these other reports I was curious about and let you save a few scraps of dignity,” Sylvia said, thumbing past several slides in her folder. She picked out a multicolored one and placed it on the projector instead. “A little household budgeting to close out my part.”
Yor studied the stacked bar graph with some wariness. While she was well-practiced with compiling statistics and creating such charts for her City Hall job, it was a whole different matter to see her family’s expenses neatly delineated in color and enlarged on a screen. Rent, utilities, groceries, tuition, transportation, household supplies, all the standard categories were there in appropriate proportions month to month, without only a few noticeable fluctuations.
“The first year of Operation Strix,” Sylvia elaborated.
Yor felt a tiny bit of relief. That was before she and Loid had combined their finances. But then what could Sylvia want to show them?
Academic enrichment, babysitting, hospital cover, family cover, incidentals were the other categories. Nothing out of the ordinary, at least for a Westalian spy’s expense report. There was even a footnote at the bottom of the slide explaining that the castle rental and associated expenses had been excluded from the graph so as not to skew the first month’s data.
“It took some careful sorting to figure out how you were obscuring a particular subcategory, but thanks to a particularly ambitious analyst I was able to get the answer.”
Sylvia put a new transparency on the projector. At first glance it was indistinguishable from the previous one. But soon Yor noticed it: a new category that hadn’t been there before. It sat at the top of each month’s stacked bar like a prim red cap.
Gifts for Yor Briar.
“You got me,” Loid surrendered. “Three years after the fact.”
“Oh…” Yor’s eyes widened at how substantial the red became in certain months. Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, her birthday. To her embarrassment, Loid had spent more on gifts for her than on rent in those months. Why had she never questioned how expensive all those dresses and necklaces and gourmet desserts were?
“Twilight thought he was clever, filing these under different categories seemingly at random. Sometimes it was under family cover, sometimes groceries or incidentals, even academic enrichment—”
“A charity gala at Eden counts as academic enrichment,” Loid tried to defend himself.
“I’m sure Anya’s education was very enriched by her mother’s 500 dalc Manuel Blaynik heels and 100 dalc Cece Chantelle perfume.”
The next slide was an itemized list of every such gift he had expensed to WISE in chronological order. The heat of shame rose to Yor’s face as she thought of how much of his employer’s money he had lavished on her.
“I’m sorry, Sylvia,” Yor said with remorse. “It never crossed my mind that—”
“No, no, no,” Loid interrupted, taking her hand. He turned to his boss with a frown. “Handler, you can roast me all you want, but don’t guilt trip my wife. Ruins the whole spirit of the night.”
Sylvia’s smile softened as she patted Yor on the shoulder. “Of course, that isn’t my intent. I was just getting to the punchline.”
The fourth slide was another stacked bar chart titled Year 2 of Operation Strix. The key listed all the same categories as the second slide, but the red bar was absent from every month. Gifts for Yor Briar appeared to total zero for the year.
“This was after XO Day,” Sylvia said lightly.
‘XO Day’ was the moniker Stratus had jokingly come up with after the fact, when the dust had settled from the explosive reveals of Mr. and Mrs. Forger’s secrets.
“Oh…”
Yor slowly realized what this meant as she thought back to those months. Her cheeks bloomed a fresh pink at several particularly heated memories of their marriage becoming real, a full year of suppressed yearning and self-enforced inhibitions stripped away in quick order once they’d embraced each other’s truths. Along with painfully honest conversations and physical intimacy had come a string of extravagant gifts. A necklace of jeweled thorns, a set of custom made throwing knives, a private weekend getaway to a mountainside cottage…
All of those had come out of Loid’s own pocket, invisible to the overzealous analysts of WISE. A secret all their own.
“Oh, Loid…” Yor looked at her husband and found him gazing back at her with nothing short of pure adulation.
“Worth every penny,” he said, stroking her cheek with his thumb.
“And every stolen Garden job, apparently,” Sylvia added. “You’ve outdone yourself tonight, Twilight. Hats off to you for being one thousand percent compromised and fully owning it.”
“Thank you, Handler. For tolerating my state of compromise from the start. And for making me look good for once in front of my wife,” Loid said. Yor couldn’t quite tell if he was still under the influence of the truth serum, but his words were genuine either way.
Sylvia rested her chin on her hand as she observed the two of them more head over heels for each other than ever. “I’m just grateful I never have to hear that shoddy excuse that ‘it’s for the mission’ ever again. Enjoy the rest of your big night. You both deserve it.”