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She’d seen it coming, like a patient terminally ill, waiting their end. Only one punishment befitted his crime. The traitor, the spy. The rebel who had adeptly thwarted the sturdy division between West and East, leaving Ostania a shadow of its former glory. A bird with wings clipped, about to be absorbed into another country to form one unified whole.
The incumbent is pleased, and there are people on the streets rejoicing, singing and dancing and pouring wine—but the socialists never wanted this. What they wanted was the wall, not a treaty.
And when they don’t get what they want, they get revenge.
Kill him.
What they don’t know is, that same act will spell her own death—because living a life without him is as good as it, if not worse.
(What she knows is, none of that matters.)
—
“We could leave it all behind, Yor.” His face is imploring, ashen. A fortuitous encounter reunites them once more, and now they’re standing by the cliff, waves fiercely crashing against tessellated rocks. The edge of the world. “I’ll find a place for us, far away from Ostania where we’ll be safe—”
“No.” They won’t be, as long as she’s with them. She’ll be branded a traitor, too—a brand which Garden doesn’t take lightly. (Yor knows the end like the back of her hand. Garden had always preferred her for such tasks because she was efficient and unfailingly polite; a clean sheet for a filthy deed.)
“No, we won’t be.”
“Yor—”
Sensing his insistence, Yor clenches her fists and schools her expression into neutrality. Something that should’ve existed between the two warring countries. “And how can I trust you—“ because she loves him—“when you’ve been lying all this time?”
He blanches, expression crumpling into a grief that mirrors her own. Anya curls into his chest, sobbing like she had been when she found her mother dead in the bathtub, but when Yor glimpses up at the moonless sky she knows it’s time to drive the stake through all their chests.
Glaring at them with feigned fury, she raises her dagger in blunt threat. “Don’t you dare show your face ever again.”
Because his death will be certain if he does. They will know. They will find her, and then him, and then there’ll be nothing of them left, renegades burnt into cinders.
“Yor, please— ”
“Traitors like you—“ Yor grips her blade hard enough to draw her own blood, biting back a sob—“have no place in my life.”
Visibly hurt, he retreats at last and slips into the night; the elusive light of freedom eliding her once more like a receding sea.
—
Since then she hasn’t seen him, but Yor knows him well enough to know he’s still lurking around. Keeping tabs on her, probably. It’s also consistent with the nature of his job. Espionage doesn’t end simply with supposed peace—which is prone to withering away any time like a fresh lily. All it takes is a single bomb to set off new shockwaves. A politician’s untimely death. A misplaced document.
A spy’s demise.
One wrong move, and she could restart a war, and then what would happen to the little Anyas, the little Grams of the world? Would history repeat itself? Would they be orphaned and starving, forced to forage through wild forests and compost heaps like herself and Loid? Would they be left to fend for themselves on the streets, scavenging bins for threadbare coats and gloves in the winter? Would they be herded into musty shelters with at least fifty others like them?
Would she be able to live with herself?
(No, but already she feels like a ghost.)
—
She haunts him, then hunts him. It’s not difficult to pick him apart from the crowd even as he dons new faces each time, because she knows that voice. It’s the voice of a stranger she can recognise anywhere—in the kitchen, the shower, in bed, as she falls over the edge. A soft, stern dulcet echoing down corridors and dark alleyways.
(It’s a voice she’s replayed countless times in her head like an ample litany, in fear she might one day forget the sound of love.)
The man with brown hair greets her cordially. Straying from protocol, Yor wastes no time on niceties and lunges straight for him, ripping half his mask off as she slips hers on.
“Hello, Princess.” Still cordial, but with a strained edge. All the same, the sight of his face, the familiar cadence of his voice nearly knocks the wind from her lungs. “Fancy seeing you again.”
“I could say the same to you.”
What Yor wants to say is this: I miss you . How are you? Have you been eating well? You look thinner. How is Anya? Is she happy? Is she growing well? How is Bond? Do you take him out for walks regularly? Are you all safe?
“You look… well,” he says, and Yor tries not to wince. It’s a knee-jerk reaction to years of insults veiled thinly as compliments, but she recognises sarcasm now, after Loid taught her how. (The old her—the girl she had been before him—would have taken it literally, smiling and nodding.)
Yor nods, mostly to duck her head and shield her eyes from his. “I am.”
“… Are you sure?”
She figures some things are easier said without the hindrance of language. And so Yor leans in to plant a kiss on his lips, firm and solid, earning the impassioned response she had anticipated and hoped for.
(After all, it’s his weakness as much hers.)
When they break apart, he’s breathless, smirking. “I know a place we can go.”
—
One way or another, they end up in a drafty motel on the outskirts of town in record time. (Loid had sped past every red, down every highway; hand on her thigh the whole way—almost like he was afraid she would vanish if he just blinked.)
She drags him across the threshold by his tie—nowadays, it’s always black and plain, perhaps intended to blend with his charcoal-gray slacks and suit—and promptly clicks the door shut. The place reeks of cheap beer and rushed sex. Nothing like their old home. In the thin slant of light from the lone lamp, a pale column of dust motes swirl and pierce the room; an ode to what they’re made of and must return to. Dust and dust.
It is only natural, Princess, that scum like him must return to dust, from which he came. That’s how we keep our garden thriving, yes? That’s how we keep our world clean. Don’t let yourself be fooled.
(She is a fool, however. Most people are when in love.)
Pushing him onto the bed, she straddles him and tugs at his tie, removing it with practiced ease. They’ve done this enough times to know each other’s bodies, each other’s preferences and weaknesses. Loid has always been an incredibly sweet and considerate lover, but she knows he’s always enjoyed having her take the lead, or at least express her desires without shame.
He’s also a huge tease. “Are you that eager to be rid of me, Princess?”
“You’re talking too much,” Yor heaves, unbuckling his belt nimbly just as he unclasps her bra in one swift, fluid motion. “And doing too little.”
A small, teasing smirk against the hollow of her throat. “And you’re too much.”
Her chin stays jutted, defiant. Yor disregards him entirely and continues her ministrations. In the past she would’ve flushed furiously at being so forward and brazen—but she doesn’t have the luxury of insecurity or self-preservation now. Nor can she afford the kind of slow, intimate lovemaking that once filled their mornings and nights.
All they have now is borrowed time for a hurried tryst.
Urgent and desperate, his mouth trails north to work hers open in a frenzy—the same mouth that had spewed lies and promised forever—and Yor reminds herself of what she’s truly here for.
(Truly, she knows she’s incapable of snuffing out the only man she’s ever loved.)
Graceless and inelegant, she pushes her underwear aside and sinks down on him. The sensation nearly brings her to tears. He fills her to the brim, completes her in a way her own fingers can’t; the pleasure shocking and bright like a magnesium flare. (A comet blazing, fading.) Throughout the course of their respective vocations they’ve had to offer their bodies as sacrifice for less than tasteful missions, but when it came to each other—it was inexplicably different. Something wanted , tender and honest. Holy, almost. A coveted pearl, after years of faux majoricas. Yor had never wanted to be wanted, until him . Then she had wanted, and wanted, so much more beyond what she could give; falling prostrate before the altar with nothing more than two copper pennies in her bloodied hands. A pithy plea for miracles, love.
A love that isn’t meant to be, that can’t be—even as he seems hellbent on contesting that verdict.
Cradling her cheek, Loid rocks his hips against hers. The frisson trailing down her spine is heady, intoxicating as sin. In a bid to steady herself, she winds her arms around his neck as he jolts into her, each motion sparking new flames. So beautiful, Princess. Through it all, he kisses the corner of her eye, now a little damp—and this is what she’s missed most about him , Loid: his tenderness. It unravels her, his softness; renders her close to falling, off the edge, in love once more.
“Come with me,” he groans. Were circumstances different she would have laughed, because she knows that he means it both ways. Still with his lips planted to her temples, reverent and devout, he snakes a hand to where they’re joined and roughly presses down, sending a fresh jolt of pleasure. Yor gasps and scrambles for purchase on his shoulders, as he thrusts into her roughly with reckless abandon. “Please.”
Not long after, they both shatter.
—
“Tell me the truth.”
“I lost my mother in the war. I grew up surviving on garbage scraps, and when I turned sixteen, joined the army to fight for my country. I should’ve died alongside my friends, but I was honourably discharged from the frontlines because of a timely injury. Then I was recruited by military intelligence—and now here we are.”
Yor steels herself with flinty resolve, even as some part of her longs to embrace that tender, broken-hearted boy; to steer him away from indiscriminate explosions, the lion’s den.
“So we’re enemies, then.”
“That depends who you ask.”
Not to her, they’re not. “Ostania… they’ll never let you off. Or Garden.”
“I know. I knew that from the start. I knew what I was getting into, but I had no choice. I was picked right after returning on a prayer and a wing, and along the way I figured I’d do my best to make a world where children wouldn’t have to cry anymore.” Yor sucks in her cheeks and wills herself not to cry. Even after all this time, he’s still the kindest soul she’s ever known. “But Yor—please, just listen to me. The socialists don’t care about you. Or anyone, for that matter.” A scream wells in her throat, which she swallows like stone. Of course she knows that. If they did, they wouldn’t have experimented so cruelly on their daughter. Or their dog. Or herself. “All they care about is lining their own pockets with gold and land and centralising power—“
And all the big words she’s never got to learn in school. Or maybe she wouldn’t have, anyway. It would be a different narrative: one of benevolence and integrity, designed to earn its citizens’ devotion like rusting pennies.
“It doesn’t matter,” Yor interjects resignedly. “Please, just…”
His mouth draws into a hard, flat line. “That’s the truth, Yor. Please believe me.”
“You’ve given me no reason to.”
“I…” Loid falters. “I know you must hate me, but—“
“No.” Her head is starting to throb again, torn between fiction and fact. “Please. Just stop.”
“Yor, you have to trust—“
“Just tell me… tell me a lie.” Like the family they had built once upon a time, gifting her a taste of happiness so transcendent, yet illusory. “Like you used to.”
At last her husband smiles, rueful and sad. “I never loved you.”
—
The aftermath is always a haze, thick and shrouding. Blinking hard, Yor drags herself out of the fog of bliss clouding her head—her better judgment—and pretends to stretch, as she always used to after sex. Then she rolls to her side discreetly to gliss the pill from pocket to mouth, and lodges it under her tongue.
“Yor?”
He calls her name so softly like it’s a prayer, a blessing. Like he doesn’t know she’s a curse.
Turning back to face him, Yor smiles strainedly and leans forward, feeling his lips tremble under hers. It’s so unlike him, to be so unsure of what they are. Where he stands. That suits her more than him; Loid wears insecurity like an ill-fitting suit.
“Are you alright?”
Still so soft and sweet; a berry ripening in her mouth. She almost wishes he wouldn’t make it so easy. That he would fight her. Bite her, maybe. Rile her up and cock his gun and threaten to blow her brains out for being little more than lying scum, like he’s done to those heartless politicians obsessed solely with lining their pockets and nothing more. In some ways death by his hand is preferable to whatever she’s about to do next.
“Yor?” he calls again, and she knows . She must strike before his suspicion spikes. And she only has a small, fractious window to do so without her thorns to aid her; killing him the usual way would be too flashy even if she cleaned up. There were other spies, too, and she knew his government had considerable influence now over the media in both states. (Something about liberating fools with the truth. In that sense, Yor was still a fool through and through.) The best way would be to do it quick, and clean, and leave no trace of evidence behind for the journalists and detectives to cherry-pick and broadcast. She could not afford to be careless. That would inevitably set another pointless war in motion.
“I’m alright. I guess I’m just… just tired.” Yor aims for what she hopes is a suitably teasing smile. “You wear me out, as always.”
Loid grins, boyish and crushingly handsome, and she pushes her lips once more towards his. Like a waltz choreographed, a flower in a spring, his mouth parts in beckoning—before sealing his fate as she slips the pill in, so small as to be practically indiscernible. Smaller than an ant, even. Ants that she used to fear, whenever they crawled and suckled the circumference of cloyingly sweet treats. (Ants that her husband effortlessly vanquished like a knight in plaid aprons.)
And there it is, inexorable. Like sugar, the drug dissolves, and in a matter of seconds his eyes glaze over—as if he’s trapped in a trance, hers for the taking. Meaning it’s worked .
And Yor gets right to work. Feeling around for his pin, she pricks his finger with it and coats his insignia with his blood, before smearing a few fresh streaks along the lapels of his coat for good measure to give the impression of a protracted tussle. Animosity between real enemies. This takes a full minute, and leaves her now with exactly two. By then she would have worn off the drug, but if her calculations are correct—and they have to be, because the alternative is unfathomable— he would lose consciousness entirely. (Already his pulse is starting to ebb away under hers, a coda fading.) Three minutes on her meant three days on him, on the average man; a formula she had painstakingly derived from the arithmetic knowledge he had patiently imparted to her through innumerable evenings, after she had shyly approached him one night asking if he could teach her so she could help Anya and be a better mother overall. Educated women were elegant women, she’d learnt. It was not enough to dress well. It was also necessary to speak well, and think well. Basic math was simply one facet of it.
Needless to say, he had gladly agreed and, like everything else, taught her with infinite patience. Like dawn, Twilight had entered and taught her a new world, how to live with a heart made full and whole—only he hadn’t taught her how to live with a broken one.
This, she thinks, is her death as much as it his.
Another half-minute passes. Yor chastens herself inwardly for wasting precious time and, tucking his pin into her pocket, trades it for another. A grenade pin—the only tangible remnant she has left of their short time together—which she presses into his palm, and closes tightly. WISE will know what to do. They may send someone else after her—Fiona, maybe, or Franky, depending on how merciful they’re feeling—to engage in cat-and-mouse, but Yor knows she has the upper hand. In a battle of swords she will always win.
(In a battle of truths, though, she will always lose.)
For good measures, she slices his wrist with the sharp edge of his pin, and watched helplessly as blood trail in thick rivulets—not enough to warrant his death, but enough to throw the vultures off their trail. His veins thrum still with life, beating, waning, easing into a halt, and she knows it’s worked. Yor nearly cries in relief, but steels herself. She has no time to cry. She doesn’t deserve to. What she will lay on in the nights succeeding this is a bed of nails, not roses—but it is one of her making nonetheless. She’s made her choice.
Once more she kisses him, light and not quite lethal.
“Yor,” he rasps, eyelids now fluttering shut. When he calls her name again his voice is warbled, miry. “What did you—“
“I never loved you,” Yor lies.
It’s open-heart surgery, watching betrayal mar the one face she so loves.
—
A recurring vision, dream, which she had journaled down one evening while inebriated:
“I apologise, for keeping all of this from you this while—”
“It’s alright,” the assassin smiles, plaintive and small. At first she had been enraged, hurt; but any rage she feels quickly dissolves when she realises just how much of a hypocrite she’s being. Hadn’t they been the same, lying to each other for their own benefit? “I understand. You couldn’t have admitted you were a spy—the same way I couldn’t have confessed I was an assassin.”
She couldn’t bring herself to confess her sins, because it would have tainted his impression of her. Any goodness he might have believed and seen in her would have been eclipsed by her past, filthy misdeeds, and where would they be then?
“You can,” the blonde murmurs, hair sun-streaked and gold. She thinks he might be an angel delivering her from fate. “It doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
Her heart springs with hope; it feels like it might explode. “You mean…”
“I mean what I said.” His eyes snap to hers, and she sees him now: the broken child who, like her, simply wanted a better world where they could live, and not just survive. The fallen angel. The scavenging youth hunting down scraps, pilgrimage for a home. “No matter what comes between us, I will always come back for you. I will always be your home.”
More than anything, Yor wishes she could say the same. But she can’t, and perhaps she’s to blame. Perhaps they would’ve stood another shot, gotten a different, softer epilogue—if she’d only worked up the courage to betray her homeland and toss it all out to sea. Because when Yor really thinks about it—really inspects every memory with a fine-toothed comb—she’s really never felt a sense of belonging here anyway. Always the outcast at the party, the sore thumb in the crowd. Her homeland was never home—
—but Loid was. He was always home . Warm, and safe; unconditionally welcome.
(And now all of that has been cruelly stripped away from them, too. Like a name, a face. Snakes shedding skin.)
—
When all is said and done, she grabs his keys, flees the scene; makes a run for his car. Only she’s crying so hard she can hardly breathe, much less slot a key into an insultingly small lock. It doesn’t help that her hands are shaking uncontrollably either. If an enemy were to spring up on her now she would be completely defenseless. Vulnerable. Prey for the vultures. In all honesty, that doesn’t sound too unappealing, but—
You have to keep going, Mama. Okay? Papa will come back one day. And then we will all be together again.
Weeping, Yor buries her face in her hands and thinks vaguely of all those nights she had spent wishing for his return—only for her to depart shortly after. Fate was a cruel thing, as her mother said; after her father had vanished one day without a trace and left her an empty husk of a woman. When he had returned, it was to a woman scorned, spewing vicious curses; brimstone and fire. Needless to say he had left once more, and left her mother to die of a broken heart. (Had it not been for Anya she might have suffered the same fate. Anya, sweet and small and bright; forever the apple of her eye.)
When Loid had returned, however, Anya and Bond had welcomed him with open arms, and even more open hearts; the telepath and psychic reading his best intentions all this while. And when Yor saw him standing in the rain, quivering like a lost hero, any anger she might have felt instantly dissolved like salt on a wound. She had nary the heart to heap any of her mother’s wrath upon him—not when he was so genuinely contrite and despondent, so eager to make up for lost time and resume their old routine of mildly charred dinners, tea growing lukewarm before incomprehensible soap operas—at least until the walls fell and governments collapsed, and Garden discovered who he was. I didn’t know he was a spy, I promise. He was just my husband. Whose crime she was abetting. Now you know. Prove where your loyalties lie. Espionage was and has always been a crime punishable by death. So is loving a spy.
So is this.
This, Yor imagines, is what dying feels like. Breathless, broken; lungs a deluge of ragged sobs and infinite regret—
—only she has no time for that today. Garden will be here soon, and then WISE. And Loid will rouse on the third day. It’s poetic, almost—how he will emerge from the tomb to a life beyond her reach or choosing. Maybe one day she will die and be finally reunited with him beside a sun-washed grave. Or perhaps one day, when she no longer has to choose between east and west, right and wrong, good and bad—she might just be able to choose him. Just him, and Anya, and Bond.
In another universe, Yor would choose them religiously and drive back home every night. Dress herself only in lace, not crime. In another universe, she would be simply Yor. A doting mother and loving wife. Nothing more, nothing less. A simple woman amassing paper stars and blunt picket-fences; sweet nothings in place of lifeless bodies. Prophecies undone.
In the cruel present, however, she is forced to drive off into the night, heart blaring siren-loud as the radio breaks into static, leaving behind the fabricated evidence of her crime. A smoking gun, as he would call it.
It’s all in his hands now.
(For now, she can only mourn what could have been; traitors like them never win.)
—
and for a fortnight there, we were forever / but I loved you, and it’s ruined my life