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Vanderwood, how do you usually spend your Christmas?
...Did you eat something weird? Christmas doesn’t mean a thing to agents like us, Hang up the phone if you don’t have anything to say.
Vanderwood sighed as he hung up the phone, breath coming out as a mist in the night air. He adjusted his coat and scarf as he walked to his car, boots crunching against the snow. What exactly was 707 up to, anyway? For the most part, he didn’t want to know and instead lit the ignition.
You suddenly want to be a normal person and go to Christmas parties and stuff?
The words rattled around his brain as he pulled out of the driveway. Vanderwood hadn’t lost all of his humanity; he knew it was harsh to dismiss Seven’s hopes of a future. He reassured himself in the knowledge that it wasn’t personal; that an agent with no ambition of a normal life outside of the agency was safe from falling into despair.
FLORENCE, ITALY, TWELVE YEARS AGO
“It’s pretty, don’t you think?”
Vanderwood paused from unbuckling his seatbelt to follow his partner’s gaze.
“I suppose,” he shrugged.
“You suppose?”
Vanderwood and Daisy had been partners since graduating from cadet training. They had been classmates for even longer, both arriving at the agency with curious eyes as they refined themselves into something better.
Daisy had a far more excitable personality than he did, eager to know everything and forever gazing into the distance. It came as no surprise to him that she folded her arms with a huff of disapproval at his far from enthusiastic response.
Truthfully, he did think the city was beautiful. The afternoon sun bathed every building in a warm light, a skyline of ancient buildings in every given direction. He could have spent hours picking out each and every cobblestone, every hidden store, every shimmering window and had no doubts that she wanted to do exactly that. Even so, he followed up her discontent with his own.
“Don’t forget why we’re here.”
“I know, I know.”
They had the same argument every time they arrived in a new country. By then, Vanderwood was used to it and lifted their suitcases from the back of the car without further comment. Daisy bobbed on her heels a little to his left, taking in each one of the letters in the hotel sign. He had no idea how she had retained her softness even after graduation; in the lemon dress and sunglasses picked out for her by their handlers, even Vanderwood had trouble believing she was his partner and not a tourist.
“Maybe we can go to a museum while we’re here,” she said, holding open the hotel door. “I’ve always wanted to see The Birth of Venus.”
“We don’t have the time,” he said, “we’re leaving in the morning and we need time to prepare.”
Marco Esposito, leader of the Band of Four and weapons dealer among other things, was hosting a Christmas party in his Florentine mansion that very same night. Chances of infiltrating his inner sanctum were few and far between and it was too valuable an opportunity to miss.
“The party isn’t for hours,” Daisy said, picking up a nearby leaflet as they waited at the check in desk. “Don’t you want to explore?”
She waved the leaflet in front of his face, the paintings and buildings on it too blurry to make out, but magnificent nonetheless.
“No.”
Their bickering seemed to amuse the woman at the desk, who laughed out loud as she handed over their key cards.
“You make such a lovely couple.”
Vanderwood’s automatic response was to blush and fervently deny it, the same way he did when older agents made the same joke. Daisy gave him a swift thump to the arm, though, catching his denials before they ever came.
“Ahhh, thank you so much! It’s so kind of you to say.”
He supposed he ought to be grateful. They were, after all, undercover as newlyweds.
Somehow, he was still surprised when he opened the door to their room for the evening and took in the large double bed. Daisy’s response was far different. She bounced backwards onto the mattress and spread out her arms to either side of the bed.
“So this is how the other half live,” she said.
“You say this like you’ve never been in a hotel room before,” said Vanderwood, kneeling under the bed for the briefcase underneath. He entered the combination as she opened the balcony doors, the sound of the city drifting inside with the winter air.
“Come on,” he said, taking the paperwork and microphone devices from the briefcase and carefully arranging them on the bedclothes. “We have work to do.”
Esposito’s mansion wasn’t too far from the hotel. They took a cab several hours into the event, giving the party hall time to fill up and their presence become inconspicuous. Their objective was simple: make use of their target’s divided attentions and get into his home office undetected.
Vanderwood had been incognito with Daisy before. He had known her for years, had seen her decorated with sweat and blood, knew the force of her punches. He pretended not to notice when she stepped out of the bathroom in a ballgown, fiddling all the while with the clasp of her earrings.
“What do you think?” She asked, turning a clumsy pirouette as he fastened his tie.
“I think you might fool them after all.”
It did not seem to matter how well he knew her. The moment she put on the dress, she became a different person- someone he stole second glances at in the back of the cab.
They arrived as planned, long after the majority of Esposito’s guests had already arrived. Vanderwood heard their merriment long before he arrived at the front door, the sound of violins and clinking of wine glasses drowning out their footsteps as they approached the gate. Someone, probably not the host himself, had lined the driveway with Christmas trees, all of which were illuminated by candles and left a warm glow across the floor.
“Hey,” said Daisy, linking her arm in his as security checked over their invitation. “Do you suppose they lit every candle there by hand?”
She continued to admire the driveway even as they crossed the threshold and Vanderwood took a resigned glance around the room, scanning over every face and doorway. For one brief moment, he thought he saw a face that he knew, though shrugged off the idea as they disappeared into the crowd.
It was easy enough to pick out Esposito in the furthest corner, wearing a velvet suit and reaching into his pockets every so often for a cigarette that he never actually smoked.
“Either way,” he said, giving her a nudge and nodding in his direction, “it’s a fire hazard.”
In the center of the room was a Christmas tree far larger than the others, with twice the number of candles and a string quartet close at hand. Beneath the tree were presents in many different sizes and shapes, plainly all gifts from partygoers.
“I’ll head over there,” he said, breaking Daisy’s hold on his arm. She nodded and walked in the other direction, seeking out the busiest member of security for directions to the nearest restroom.
As she climbed the stairwell, he motioned to a waiter for a glass of champagne, resting it against his lips just enough to disguise the fact that he spoke through an earpiece.
“Where are you?”
“I’m…” Daisy had on high heels and he could hear them against the carpet, her gait far faster than a few moments ago. “I’m on the second floor.”
Vanderwood scanned the room, taking in its alcoves and barriers.
“There are three guys standing watch...a security camera per door.”
“Roger that.”
“Do you remember the blueprints?”
“Relax,” she said. “I’m a professional.”
He crossed the party hall, examining the parts of the room that had previously been in his blind spot, champagne bitter against his tongue. Through his earpiece, he heard Daisy reach for a door handle with a satisfied sigh, quietly closing it behind her.
“Did you find it?”
“Wow…”
“What is it?”
She sucked in a single breath, silent save for her heels against a carpet.
“What is it?” Vanderwood repeated, more urgently than before.
“This room,” she said. “It’s so…”
“So what?”
“Normal.”
Something rustled in the background and he thought he heard the clink of a lockpick.
“There’s photos of his wife in here,” she said, “and his daughters.”
“What were you expecting? Hidden buttons and a persian cat?”
She went quiet, a drawer opening.
“I...I’m not sure. I guess I thought...”
She sighed, more papers rustling.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Their clothes for the evening were expensive, as to be expected from honoured guests of one of the wealthiest men in Florence, though they served as little more than a front for the mics and cameras concealed in the fabric. Daisy had on what appeared to be a diamond necklace, which actually contained a small camera. Vanderwood heard it clicking as she turned whatever pages she happened to be reading.
“Anything interesting?” He asked.
“The usual. Rifles, cocaine… says here he has an informant, though he never refers to them by name.”
“See what you can find.”
“On it!”
She fell silent for quite some time, the shuffling of papers and opening of drawers the only sound to cross Vanderwood’s senses. She returned to his side as smoothly as she had departed, reaching out to take his arm with one hand and helping herself to a canape with the other.
“Well?”
“Nothing on the informant,” she sighed. “I guess intel will have to look into it.”
Neither had to speak to pick up on the disappointment of the other. Instead, Daisy reached for his champagne glass and set it down on the nearest table.
“What are you doing?” He asked, watching as she reached for his hand.
“This is the only song I’ve recognised so far,” she said, motioning towards the band. “I want to make the most of it.”
“You were gone for a long time,” he said, following her onto the dancefloor nonetheless. “You probably missed it.”
“Nope,” she said, taking two steps closer and guiding his hands across her body. “You weren’t the only one listening through your earpiece.”
Both Vanderwood and Daisy knew how to waltz. They learned at the same time, for the same mission several years before. They had been one another’s dance partners ever since they learned the waltz and tango, though as they took their first steps at Esposito’s party, both were overly conscious of the other. Every time Daisy’s eyes met his, she flushed a bright pink, eyes darting to her shoes. Vanderwood held himself far more rigidly than usual, more aware than ever of her ball gown and flowing skirt.
In that moment they were as familiar to one another as any other of the partygoers, though the unfamiliarity ran only skin deep.
They shared just one dance, though it lingered on in their imaginations long after their return to the hotel room. Vanderwood’s immediate instinct was to pull off his tie and earpieces, changing a side glance at Daisy unfastening her shoes.
“Go on,” he said. “What’s bothering you?”
She had spent the cab ride home gazing wistfully out of the window, never once reaching to point out anything interesting. Instead she fiddled with the handle of her purse, illuminated every so often by the glow of street lamps. Her hand trembled even after he reached out to hold it. She seemed surprised until she noticed his artificial wedding ring. They were pretending to be married, he considered at the time.
Daisy shrugged off his questions, flopping backwards against the pillows the moment her feet were bare.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
“It doesn’t seem like nothing to me.”
At first she merely scowled at him, though seemed to think better of it.
“It’s just,” she said. “I guess I thought he’d be just like us.”
“Like us?”
Vanderwood rested his jacket over the chair at the dressing table, carefully smoothing out its creases.
“His office,” she said, propping herself up on an elbow. “It’s full of pictures of his family..Disney World, picnics...birthday parties.”
“Eh, Disney World is overrated. I heard the queues are a nightmare.”
“That’s just it,” she said. “None of us have ever been.”
“I don’t follow. You’re upset because you never got to go to Disney World?”
“No,” she said. “Well...yes...but…”
She made a sound of annoyance, pushing herself into a sitting position.
“Do you ever think we chose the wrong side?” She asked. “That...in another life we might never have become agents and spent the rest of our lives sleeping until noon?”
“I think that’s a little unrealistic even for civilians, just so you know.”
“But don’t you?” She got up from the bed, every word bleeding with emotion. “In a different life...is there another version of us that work boring office jobs and complain about the government?”
“Daisy,” said Vanderwood, realising where the conversation was going. “We can’t change the past.”
“I know,” she said, tears in her eyes. “But don’t you ever wonder about what it might have been like? We could…”
Her voice was little more than a whisper, each word sounding more and more like a sob than the next. He took several steps closer, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“Listen,” he said. “I understand that this is hard for you-”
In truth he didn’t know what to say. As a younger recruit, he had been the one to question, while Daisy recited the rulebook by heart. They were not to marry, not to fraternize, not to hold any property but by the agency’s say so. Their paths had been decided long ago. Vanderwood thought he had gotten over his resentment, but ultimately her words were only repetitions of his own darker thoughts.
“Do you think,” she said, placing a hand over his, “that in another life...we might have been lovers?”
There was nobody else in the room and no need for theatrics. When he reached out to tangle his fingers in her hair, it wasn’t a performance. Neither was the way she leaned into him, shyly wrapping her arms around his middle as she had on the dancefloor. She had been so much more confident then, mischief in her eyes and laughter in her voice. Now she could barely make eye contact, cheeks flushed and more than a little bit embarrassed.
Vanderwood was unaccustomed to blushes. He did not welcome the idea that his thoughts and feelings might be visible on the surface.
He did not know how else to react, however, when she took a step backwards towards the bed and motioned for him to follow. The heat across his cheeks was uncomfortable and her gaze left him with goosebumps. He felt out of control of his body, overwhelmed by every sensation.
As he took a step closer and then two, silently allowing her to reach out for him, he thought back to his training. He could think of no lesson that might have prepared him for his conflicted feelings. Deep down he was sure that something about it was wrong; every element of his training was to avoid touches, to escape and stay hidden.
In that moment, though, he was exposed and wanted nothing more than to touch her and know her completely.
Her dress hit the ground with a whisper, his lips made their way to her neck.
They had seen one another naked before; knew the scars and contours of each other’s bodies better than any city. Even so, as they lowered themselves onto the bed, gasping for air between kisses, it felt forbidden and largely uncharted. They had trained for hundreds of feasible scenarios but not this. Desire was something forbidden and unprofessional and something they knew better than to indulge. It would burn them alive if they allowed it and each kiss only added to the blaze.
Up until that moment he had never truly known the colour of her eyes. She had never noticed the length of his eyelashes. Vanderwood froze on the spot as she reached out to unbutton his shirt, heart racing even though she had done so dozens of times before. He needed composure, deep down knew that they should stop before they reached the point of no return, but instead he found himself linking his fingers in hers and guiding it across the cobweb of scars that lined his chest. Even the ones she hadn’t stitched held a story she remembered; the burn on his forearm from when he pretended to be a waiter; the cut above his navel from his first ever stab wound.
She had scars too; one above her lip from falling out of an apple tree in childhood; another at her hip from a blade. They were trained to endure the worst of the world, yet handled one another with care.
They were both virgins; both inexperienced and unsure how to act. Even so, the gentler touches were the hardest to bear. Every kiss left them needing more, no touch was enough. They had wanted one another for much longer than they realised and only when their bodies tangled together did they ever feel whole. Their kisses were hard and passionate; kisses that were desperate, clumsy and foreign. They had cast all agency pretenses aside with their clothes, reduced to something far more simple and primal. Nothing mattered outside of that room; Esposito, their assignment. All of it faded to nothing.
It took only a matter of moments for them to discard the rest of their clothing; Daisy wrapping a leg around his waist as he dropped his trousers to the floor.
“Do you…”
Vanderwood fell silent, the question dying on his lips. He wanted to ask if she really wanted to break the rules in such a way. Once they had fucked they could never go back to being as they were. She cupped a hand against his head though, crushing her lips against his, and he knew then and there that the question had never been aimed at her.
She took deep breaths to steady herself, hand reaching for his. He guided her down across his navel and down, down to his growing hardness. Her eyes went wide at first, fingers brushing against it only tentatively
“I…” He said, instinctively embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I-”
She tightened her grip around it, though, and in that moment he couldn’t breathe. He laid onto his back, leaving her hovering over him to drink in the sight of his naked body. Her hair tickled his exposed skin as she sat up to straddle him.
“Do you,” she said, flushing the brightest red he had ever seen. “Do you want me to…?”
He reached to stroke her hair from her face and crushed his lips against hers, breath hitching in his throat as she wrapped her fingers around his erection and took a tentative stroke from base to tip. She squeezed him gently, moaning into his mouth as he closed the gap, biting at her bottom lip.
He feared he wouldn’t make it if she continued and so he rolled over onto his front, taking in the sight of her against the pillows, hair wild and unruly and face a bright pink. Instinctively, she draped an arm over her breasts, only to laugh when he linked his fingers in hers and raised it high above her head.
There was no time for finesse; in the morning everything would be back to normal, both acting as if nothing had happened between them. He rested his forehead against hers, closing his eyes at the feel of her arms around his neck. He might never know such affection again, and made a point to take in every detail. In the future he wanted to remember the warmth of her breath and softness of her body. He wanted to remember the smell of her hair as it splayed across the pillow.
She stifled a moan as he reached down to her wet folds, burying her face in his neck and sucking at his jawline. He slipped one finger into her and then two, teasing and testing, drunk on the way she bucked her hips into his touches. He knew he had the right spot when she yanked at his hair. She quivered against him, biting down on her bottom lip at the pressure building within her and promising release. A release she wanted so very desperately, but not like that.
“I,” she breathed. “I’m-”
He already knew. He felt the tension running through her body with every movement of his hand; the same tension that left him conscious of little more but the urgency of his erection. Any one of her moans could throw him over the edge and he didn’t want her to buck her hips onto his fingers, but his cock.
He drove into her, tip to hilt, losing all inhibitions at her nails across his back. She held onto him as he fucked her, pulling him closer into her with every increasingly erratic thrust. She had called his name a dozen or more times before then, but the sound of her moaning it against his lips, taking him in as deep and hard as her body allowed, left his heart fluttering as if he had never heard it before.
Vanderwood dropped to his elbows and moved faster, harder, deeper, Daisy sinking her nails into the small of his back and unraveling around him. She buried her fingers in his hair as he bit her neck, whispering a name in his ear that left something twisting and shattering inside of him. His name, no. His real name. The one he went by before recruitment and training- before he was Vanderwood.
He buried his face in her neck with an intensity that matched his climax, pressing his lips to his with whispers of his own, testing out the syllables of her real name as if he had never heard it before. He could think of nothing else than the euphoria rushing through him; of Daisy's body and scent.
He wanted to tell her that there had never been a point he had not loved her; that in that moment, he would do anything she asked. He wanted to give her flowers, to hold her hand and kiss her lips. He understood then why fraternization was forbidden; right then, with his head on her chest, he didn’t care about the mission they had been sent for, or anything that might come after that. His entire world was in that bed and everything outside of it was merely background noise.
They fell into silence as the haziness of passion subsided and reality set in. Vanderwood wondered if he should go and take a shower, but rolled on his side and wrapped his arms around her waist instead, taking in the sight of their artificial wedding rings. He didn’t want to wash away that night as if it were dirty and shameful; he wanted to be human for just a little longer.
In the end it was Daisy who got out first, insisting that it was probably better she showered. In the heat of the moment, they had not thought to use protection, too eager to indulge themselves than to consider the consequences of their actions. Vanderwood felt a twinge of bitterness as she switched on the hot water, knowing it was for the best, but considering the alternative anyway. Her earlier grief made a good deal more sense to him the more he considered the children they would never have. He told himself he didn’t want a family and especially not children. He was an agent, not a babysitter, though the longer she spent in the shower, the harder it was to accept.
He was fully clothed and rifling through their briefcase to find the details of their morning flight when Daisy finally strode out of the shower, wearing the pastel nightgown of her other identity.
“We need to be at the airport for six am,” he said, focussing on the itineraries in an attempt to distract himself from everything they had done. He couldn’t stop thinking about how she looked and felt underneath. He heard her sigh and sink down onto the bed and clumsily fastened the briefcase, considering that he wanted nothing more than to run away. There was no denying that they had made a mistake but he couldn’t find it in himself to regret it.
“Do we… have to?” She asked, echoing his own thoughts. He glanced across at her, watching as she turned the wedding ring around her finger.
“What do you mean?”
His hands were clammy, but she reached out to grab them, pulling him through the balcony doors and out into the night air.
“We could leave, right now,” she said, every inch of her shining with hope. “We could become new people, live as civilians somewhere they’ll never find us.”
She held his hands against her chest, no longer blushing at the idea.
“We could...get married,” she said. “We could have children and eat pizza in our underwear. We could take vacations and, and…”
Vanderwood couldn’t tear his eyes from the floor, knowing that everything she said was something he desperately wanted but held a heavy price. Rogue agents were not tolerated lightly, much less two that eloped.
He took a deep breath, glancing up to look in her eyes and tell her that he would follow her to the end of the world. Unfortunately, he looked across too late to spot the red spot of a laser hovering across her sternum.
Even with a silencer, the bullet was earth shatteringly loud. Daisy lifted her hand to her chest in surprise, as if she had been stung by a bee and nothing more, horror breaking out across her face at the blood seeping from her chest. Vanderwood took hold of her shoulders and shoved her down to the floor almost automatically, chancing a glance at the sniper on his way down. His blood ran cold when he realised he recognised their face. It was the same man he had seen only fleetingly at Esposito’s party; one of their own agency recruits and presumably the unidentified informant.
“Daisy,” he said, lifting her into his arms. “Daisy, we have to get out of here.”
She reached out to touch his face with blood-soaked fingers, lips dyed crimson from the blood in her mouth.
“I’ve been shot.”
“I know,” he said, “I know, but it’s going to be alright.”
“No...you… you have to go.”
She smiled up at him, Vanderwood shaking his head and squeezing his eyes shut, refusing to listen to her, refusing to look.
“I’m dying,” she said, in a calm voice at odds with the blood smeared across her nightgown. “I’m dying and..you have to go.”
Shock and disbelief left Vanderwood frozen in the moment, processing his surroundings and current circumstances. All training on the matter was black and white, that the mission came first and he should get out of the area before being compromised.
“No,” he said, more to himself than to Daisy, “this isn’t how it was supposed to be. We were supposed to get out of this life together. You and me, three dogs and a lizard. I can’t…” He rubbed away his tears with his shirt sleeve. “I can’t be that person without you.”
FLORENCE, ITALY - PRESENT DAY
He never knew exactly when Daisy died, only that he spoke to her long after her eyes fell glassy and her body limp, begging her to come back and promising all manner of impossible things. By the time Italian police arrived on the scene he was already gone, having left Daisy’s body tucked into the bedcovers, eyes closed to give the appearance of sleep. He never found out what happened to her body; if her murder ever made the news.
He let down his guard for the first and last time that evening, spending the journey to the airport repeating the story to intel with shaking hands. He left out the part where they ended up in bed together and described Daisy’s death in purely clinical terms. The reality of it did not strike him until much later, when he finally received a new partner. He did not remove the wedding ring until over a year later.
He supposed that she wouldn’t recognise him anymore; his hair was longer, his pockets full of cigarettes. He liked to think that she would have mixed feelings on the habit, annoyed by the impact it would have on his health, all while grinning in mischief at the idea of doing something vaguely rebellious that even the agency could not condemn him for. In truth, the smoke was soothing on his senses and as heady as any given one of her kisses.
As he left his car and walked through the building, shoes squeaking against the tiles, he recalled Seven’s words and sighed at the prospect of having to chastise him again. The kid meant well, even if he was all of the worst kinds of trouble.
He took a left, entering a wide open space and a room he had come to know well. It wasn’t nearly as busy, given the holidays and he crossed the room without colliding with anyone.
The Birth of Venus was much smaller than he had thought; a fact that still surprised him on his second and third visit. He folded his arms and admired the strokes across the canvas, picking out new details every time he leaned in close.
He bowed his head to the painting, recalling another woman with dishevelled hair, who had shielded her bare chest with her arm in a much similar fashion. He reached into his pocket for the crumpled flier within, a flier speckled by old blood and faded by time. He had ticked off each of the tourist spots years ago but kept the flier anyway.
He returned to Florence every year; stood before the painting to remind himself of the same singular fact he had repeated to himself over and over since the day she died- that in another life she danced to the radio and laughed out loud at her own terrible jokes, forever young and beautiful. In another life, they planted flowers and travelled the world, taking photographs of one another and obnoxiously framing them all over their home.
In another life, they had thirty seconds more.