Work Text:
One over the other, over the other, over the other, over the other – Twilight repeats it, again, and again, and again. He is not striving for perfection – with every loop, every cross, every turn, every knot. He tangles it again, and again, and again as he watches his wife through the mirror, watches the cascade of her midnight hair over shoulders that are sculpted as though waxed by the moon, molded through starlight and the silver of galaxies. Her crimson eyes meet his in the flicker of this adoration, in the midst of this, of what he is doing, and he knows, deep within his bones, in the roots of himself where Twilight ended and the thousands of his faces began, that he would, of course he would, do it again.
He will find her again. He will choose her again. He will, he will, he will because that’s who he is now, not a coward, but someone who chooses, someone who loves, someone who tastes her without giving up, but giving in.
“You think it’s not bad we’re getting ready together?” She asks, her question bathed in sleep, in the remnants of last night where he is entangled in her, and she has him wrapped around her limbs, her hair, in that crimson eyes of her that are rose petals on the moon.
The night where starlight was their witness as they prematurely whispered their vows against each other’s skin, in the corners of their lips, in the way their eyes wept lyrical prose as they took themselves to the same heights, but crested differently in a promise. A promise of shelter, a home that envelopes, that provides warmth when the ground is too cold, when the rain is too torrential; a house that does not question, but fathoms and listens, and tucks unrestful souls to sleep.
Twilight – Loid Forger, whoever he is, with every bit of himself that is left of him, in this jigsaw of a life, tilts his head, laughter spilling from his lips in a catharsis, in a settlement, that if it is bad luck, he will do everything he can to upturn it. He would not scare so easily, not now, not when he has decided so long ago that he will let himself have this; he will let himself bleed, and be put together by her hands that are soft despite the death in each inch of them.
He hums as her naked form comes to meet him in front of the mirror, as her hands settle on his waistband, as she rests her chin against the space where his neck meets his shoulder, the space that is hers alone. He looks at her through her reflection, and smooths his hands over hers as he listens to her heartbeat that sounds a lot like his name.
“No,” he says finally, when the quiet settles, when the quiet demands words of affirmation, when he sees the fear cross her eyes in a rueful poetry of devotion. “And even if it is,” he continues because she has to hear it – how pious he is in this love affair that used to be so noncommittal, mutually beneficial like the terms of an agreement. “I will find you in every corner of the earth, and I will do it again, and again, and again with you, Mrs. Forger. Even if I would only be able to hold you for a minute, I would do it again.”
He hears her gasp – a quiet thing that puts harmonies to shame, her mouth stained with his kisses from the night before shaped in that beautiful circle he wants to kiss, to drink. Her heart thuds against his back, a dulcet he stitches into his soul that beats in the shape of this shared thing they hold so close into their chests, strung along together in a vow. He watches her fluster in the mirror – a beautiful thing that spreads from the apples of her cheeks to her neck then to her shoulders. He feels her warm from underneath his suit, and he hungers for the look of it on top of her breasts.
“You keep saying your vows,” she says, pointedly ignores the way his eyes have darkened as she presses herself closer, terrifyingly closer as though she is asking to be molded into him, to live with his skin, in the space he holds for her. He would permit her, he knows, to live within him, to stay in the cavities of his chest.
Loid, Twilight, and the boy that lost everything looks at her, and he turns so that he is facing her, completely, absolutely, in her nakedness, and he holds her again with a tremor of a man ready to face come what may to have her in arms for all eternity. He presses his lips underneath her eyes, a dust of affection, and then he descends to the slope of her nose, to the corners of her lips that is his to take.
“And I will keep saying them, even after today,” he says because he means it, because it is true.
He was never a poet, but he has learned to string along sonnets just for her. He was no Shakespeare, but he will be Juliet, and would die for her if life meant a day without her. He will follow her to the ends of the earth, and he will make sure that she knows. He will make sure that she wouldn’t have to look behind her shoulder to ensure that he is following – he will take her hand in his, and will walk side by side with her and their daughter.
“Promise you won’t get tired of saying them?” She asks, questions, and it is not made to doubt, made to imply, but it is strung along with that fear of hers that she has always carried. He does not mind – never has, if he has to tell her every second, he will, every minute, every time, and he will mean every word, though changed.
“Yor,” he captures her chin with his thumb, and pointer finger, and tilts her head so she is swimming in the oceans of his eyes that only hold affection for her. “I will never get tired of saying how much I love you. I will say it every day, every second, every minute, every hour until you get tired of me.”
She chuckles, and they sound like wedding bells as she kisses him hard, and wanting – and then, and then, and then his bow is loose and on the floor.
No matter – he will do it again, knot the bow the way he will knot himself around her every chance he can, every single time, even if it’s just for a minute.
Eventually, they part – when Sylvia peeks her head, and sees the two of them entangled in each other, in their sheets, five hours shy before wedding bells. She chastises them with a tut, with laughter contained under strictness, and takes Yor away from him like she is the last glass of wine.
He will do it again.
Franky finds him by the bartender, whiskey in his hand, Yor in his thoughts. Anya left him alone some time ago when she remarked that he is too sappy, when all she hears in his thoughts are vows, and his knotting thoughts that eventually lead to her like she is the crux of every turn, every junction, every direction.
She is – and he will take the path again; defy WISE, ask her to marry him again, steal her away from the world, shield her from this life, to have and to hold her, to build a life that is not crumbling, but theirs, and theirs alone.
He will choose her again, even if it meant being put under questioning, even if it meant treason. If treason was to love and choose her, he will betray each and every single person in the room just so he can hold her – even for a minute, even if it meant blood in his tongue. He will face each question, each judgement the way he faced them when he told them that he couldn’t die; he couldn’t leave. He would do it again without question, without hesitation.
He would tell them to put him back in it.
It’s odd – this woman before him who seemed like she is kissed by starlight and midnight, adorned in rubies for eyes that hold the world in it in an innocence that is marred, but still held in a certain way. A uniqueness he cannot put his finger to, that somehow unsettles him in a way that begs to question, to infer. He doesn’t.
Smoke curls through to the evening air – the scent of gunpowder and acrid sulfur marrying itself into the taste of the night, and Twilight holds this damsel’s hands in his as he slips the grenade pin into her ring finger with the promise. To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death (till his mission) do they part – a promise, a vow that should be weightless, but isn’t.
He doesn’t know what it is – charts it to exhilaration, to a completion that seems so easy even though unconventional; a gift in a silver platter that seems to be too appetizing to put off. There is something there he knows – a motive tucked behind the rubies in her eyes, written in a language he doesn’t understand, and he wants to question it, he truly does, but he doesn’t. The mission is important, and beggars cannot be choosers.
He is glad now he did not choose, and decided to settle as though she was a settlement than a prize (Yor is neither; she is a gift).
“Penny for your thoughts?” Franky questions as he makes himself known, sits himself on a bar stool beside Twilight.
He makes a show for ordering top shelf, a smirk written across his lips dusted by his moustache, and stretches his limbs in that way he always does when he is satisfied. Like a cat, Twilight muses as he kisses his lips with the crystal of the glass, and drinks the whiskey.
“Just thinking,” he says, even though he is swimming in his reveries, in these revelations, in these choices that he would do again. In the thought of her during the night of their vows, how starlight kissed the beauty in her visage, and how he was too ingrained in the mission to actually bask in it, appreciate it in the way he does now.
He was a different person then, Twilight knows – unfeeling, unknowing of what lay before him. He is glad he is not the same man any longer.
“You’re always thinking,” Franky remarks, and it is true – Twilight always thinks, overthinks, but this time, they are not ruminations, but a summary of his choices, and how it eventually led to her, to her warmth, to the wedding ring sitting on his finger.
He laughs because he is right, and he has no reason to deny it. Twilight shakes his head and he drinks again, the ice clinking, a twinkling thing that settles quietly in the liquid. He shares his gaze with Franky, and watches this man observe him in the way he would scrutinize him when he is trying to look for something amiss, like he is a puzzle piece he is trying to decipher which mold it belongs to.
“You’re terrified, aren’t you?” He says, and it’s untrue – Twilight has never been braver than he is now.
“No,” he replies so easily as he rests his elbow against the mahogany of the bar table, and idly studies the ring the perspiration of the glass had caused. “I’m just thinking about Yor.”
Franky tilts his head, and there’s that crack of a smile there – a true one, one that shines in his irises as though he has finally seen sunshine after a year’s worth of evenings. “She’s not running away, you know.”
“I know,” he scoffs, but there’s no edge to it. He knows she won’t run, won’t make a break for it, won’t leave him deserted. There’s no fear, not when she burned him with the intensity of her gaze that held the fervor of her feelings for him. “Just thinking about the times I have chosen her, and how I will do it again.”
It should be disconcerting – everything, the whole of this, her fingers wrapped around the gold of her stilettos like a vine, the mountain of men before her, and the mask she had ripped apart from his face.
He should kill her – end this, bury her somewhere, in a land where she can be mourned. He should. He knows he should. Protocol is telling him to, but then again, is there protocol when you find out that your wife’s an assassin?
Twilight doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to find out, either, he decides as he takes her in – the anger underneath the red of her eyes, the shimmer of her tears, the words leaving her lips. The question she asks – was any of it real?
He doesn’t know how to answer that, not when he is unsure of it, too – of the reality of the situation, where and when the truth has blurred, bled into this, and when the lies have started to taste differently, started to become honest. He doesn’t know what to do – rooted in this predicament, in this fork in the road when all he wants to do is walk the path where it leads right back to her.
There’s an ocean in between them, the tides her questions, her own ruminations voiced out. The gold in her fingers are smattered in blood, trembling in anger, and in mourning as she looks at him as though he is a stranger.
He is.
Even to himself as he advances, as he abandons Twilight, and becomes the man that he should have been or the man he has been all along, bleeding into Loid Forger, into Twilight when she started burrowing herself deep in his chest to restart his heart. He approaches her like she is a stray cat, and she hisses at him, cowers as though she wasn’t just fearless in her pursuit.
“May I?” He asks when the oceans are inches, when he feels her trembling breath against the incision on his cheek. He doesn’t know what he is asking, but he has his hands raised, his gun suddenly on the floor.
She looks at him, and there’s a curse there, in between her lips, in the skin of her teeth, but she nods nonetheless as though he is a blanket in this sudden coldness of the truth.
He wraps his arms around her trembling frame, and rests his head on the crook her neck. She tenses, and he hears each knuckle pop – a threat that dies so quickly as she relaxes against him, as she holds him as though they aren’t falling apart too soon. “I should kill you,” she says when the silence becomes tough, when the silence becomes too heavy.
He nods because he knows, he should, too. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I should, too,” but he doesn’t because, he realizes, he is choosing.
For once in his life, he is choosing for himself, and he chooses her.
“Stop rubbing your relationship in my face,” Franky says in jest as he studies him through the rim of his glass.
Twilight smirks as he presses his palm against the bar table, the sweat of the glass clinging onto his skin the way Yor has stitched herself onto him. “You will find someone, too.”
And he means it, he does, truly.
He once thought then, that wedding bells are not for him – not the boy who has died in the war, not the spy that he is, not the man that is supposed to die. But they are, and there is no doubt there, not when his choices had led him to this, to watching her walk the aisle with roses in her hands, and sunshine making her look more ethereal than she already is.
There’s a knot there – in his throat, lodged so deeply, and the tears are clinging, asking to be shed. Anya looks at him from the front pew with that smile in her face that he knows he does not have to remember in nightmares, in dreams that are fleeting – a smile that he gets to cherish in each day that he lives as the man that he has chosen to be.
Yor looks breathtaking – in this slant of the sun, the way the rubies in her eyes twinkle in that glimmer he has memorized over and over and over as though she is a language he is trying to be fluent in. She smiles at him – an angel, a goddess, and everything heavenly in between, and his heart does this thing it does after revival; that beating in the shape of her name, that skitter it does just even by the thought of her.
There is that thought that comes – a question, a doubt, but he chooses to ignore it, to swallow it down, and he decides, that no voice will echo, if it’s not her voice. He will not cling onto it; he will not let it live, not let it grow.
And it dies, the way the rest of him has died – that part of him that always questions, that always puts up a front – so easily, so quickly, and he lays flowers in his grave as he stretches his hand and takes her gloved one in his.
“Hi,” she says, breathless, underneath the veil, eyes a vibrant hue of red, rose petals he will never tire choosing, never tire looking into.
He smiles, and it’s easy, genuine – rooting from the deepest parts of his heart that whispers, screams – Yor, Yor, Yor. “Hi.”
She smiles that smile of hers, and Loid, and Twilight, and the boy he left in the war thinks, he would not change the choices he made each time for heaven is not fit to house a love like theirs.
He will love her in this earth, for every lifetime.