Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is something to be said about white walls and white floors. In a place so clean, so orderly, so squeaky nice and scientific, sometimes the walls have eyes and stare back at you because there’s nothing else to do. It’s nice to let the dust pile up sometimes, to let blood and dirt build up under fingernails, just for the repetitive motion of picking at them with some vague form of interest. 

The girl is born in a lab and taught to be human by the inhumane.

Perhaps she would’ve broken at some point, if she were normal, and turned into the mindless super weapon that they’re training her into becoming. Or, by some miracle of the gods, she would’ve protested with all the innocence of a child, brought upon by the slightest hint of compassion and humour in the scientists’ examinations of her, and would’ve become a perfectly well-adjusted little girl. Hope is inevitable, no matter how many needles, scalpels, and drills are cut into her. She’s only human.

It’s a few years later, when the lab is besieged by a third party – the secret police or spies from another country, who knows – when all the white, white tiles turn a pretty red from the alarm lights and the girl realises it’s time to go. She takes the only possession they’ve allowed her, a chimaera doll (free from any technology, she’s turned the doll inside and out many times to check), finds the corpse of the head researcher, digs through his pockets for something pointy, and uses it to escape. The scalpel, incidentally, fits perfectly into the screws for the ventilation grates, and the girl finally, finally, gets to go outside.

She got to go outside all the time Before. There was a mom, a dad, a cosy house, and a friendly neighbourhood that liked listening to her laugh and play in the grassy parks. Now, there is a city, pouring rain, dirty gutters, and rats that get too close.

But she is outside. This is a good thing.

The outside facade of the lab is an average five-story white-brick building, with tinted windows and a few purposeful strokes of wear and tear on the double doors. In this world, in this country, in this city, it could be anything from a nondescript office building to plain residential apartments. The averageness is shocking because all the girl remembers is pain, boredom, and fear, so she turns around and walks. 

One step, two step.

One foot in front of the other. The rain soaks her thin dress immediately, but she’s still grateful to be wearing actual clothes. Some of the other kids in the lab, the failed experiments, were not so lucky to be able to waste expenditures like that. One of the scientists in charge of the telepathy research group must’ve been kind enough to think that the girl would like to wear clothes between the testing periods. But shoes weren’t necessary in a laboratory or in padded rooms, so the girl feels the muddy cement scratch her delicate skin, leaving blisters and scrapes immediately. 

But this pain – this kind of pain – is rejuvenating. This is the pain of freedom. She walks, jogs, then runs, her soft feet slapping against the sidewalks, crunching on broken glass, bird shit, stray weeds, and more. Blood puddles down to mix with the rain, swirling down the drainage canals, and the colour of dirty and ugly intrigues her. 

One step, two step.

She runs. She can’t stop running, can’t stop going forward to somewhere, anywhere better than the lab. Her heart beats in her chest, squeezing, clenching, throbbing, fighting a wild battle against her own nerves, saying go, go, go, go, gogoGOGOGOGOGOGOGONOW!

There’s a rock song playing in her ears despite not having listened to the radio before in this life. But she can feel the beat pulsating, setting up a tempo that gets faster and faster with every breath she takes. She falls. She gets back up. She turns a corner, hoping to any god out there that no one is behind her, and immediately runs into a dead end. She climbs the wall, digging into the mortar of the brick edges, digging her tiny little fingertips as far as they’re able, and ignores the blood from her hands as she scrapes her way up and over the wall.

One step, two step.

There’s ice in her blood and it’s getting cold out. The sky is a blackish blue, not quite full darkness yet, but the sun has recently set and the street lamps are all lit. 

Someone grabs the scruff of her dress as she passes by the next sunken alley. Objectively, she knows it’s not someone from the lab because it’s just a homeless man living by the trash bins in between a closed down salon and liquor store. But she sees this large, looming figure, with curiosity in his eyes, and the girl cannot think of anything but terror. 

The girl has been taught not to scream or make too much of a fuss, but this is the outside world. Things are different here. Even though this isn’t the world she remembers, society ought to follow basic rules still. She screams, screams desperately for help, because even though she’s not really a little girl she’s in the body of one and there are adults somewhere in the street, please, please, please help me.

The man reacts instantly, shoving a muddy hand to her face to block the noise.

“No, stop!” He hisses. “Yer just a troublemaker, aintcha? Lost little ‘un, get back to the orphanage before the monsters come out and eat ya.”

The girl listens but it’s too late. The man is trying to be helpful. The man has nothing to do with the organisation. The man wants to guide her back. So she bites his hand, watches him tear it back in pain, grabs the scalpel in her pocket, and stabs him in the throat. Blood sprays out instantly, and even though she hears his words, he’s too dangerous, too foreign, too strange for her – so she stabs over and over again mechanically, just like the way the scientists stabbed the girl’s veins for testing, over and over again. Blood squirts out helplessly, almost comically, but he still chokes and moves around, so she reaches into the open wound with her little girl hands to pull and tear apart his trachea.

The thick, hot fleshiness of the inside of his throat is surprisingly comforting. It’s so cold outside. 

She rips out a blob of pinkish flesh that dissolves into stretchy strings in the rain, once washed of blood. The man stops moving. 

The monster has already come. 

The girl did not come into this world unaware. When the scientists gave her a name and powers, she knew exactly what her future entailed. Anya. An esper. A happy little girl, surrounded by spies, assassins, overarching governmental entities, and suffering. The girl doesn’t think she’ll ever be the perfect Anya that she’s supposed to be because that Anya was purely, truly innocent, only looking for a bright tomorrow. The girl, the current Anya, has already lived the perfect life in the Before world. Everything else here pales in comparison.

She wants to go home.

She’s been wanting to go home for the past four years.

Perhaps there’s a way – the science here, in terms of the supernatural, is far more advanced than what she knows from her previous world. If the girl becomes the new Anya and goes along with the Mission Strix, she might gain access to top secret information from both sides of the war, from the missions of the fake parents, and could possibly find a way back home. The problem arises in becoming Anya – the girl is not the innocent, cute and quirky little child that can bypass the guards of everyone around her. The girl is cold, silent, and different, but in a bad way. 

One step, two step.

The girl will take it slow, first. She aches with exertion and excitement she’s never felt before. The run down orphanage is easier to find than she expects, mostly due to the delinquent children hanging around the broken playground sets in the front yard by the gate, and they let her pass with ease. Several of them eye the blood that couldn’t be washed off with just rain, but it must not be the oddest thing they’ve seen because there’s no confrontation or worry.

“Who the hell are you?” The caretaker asks. He’s old and dumpy, but empty enough in the brain from obvious alcohol use that the girl doesn’t need to exert effort into finding sanctuary. 

“I’m new,” the girl says. “Where’s my room?”

This is a type of person who doesn’t care about digging into matters enough as long as he’s paid. She can’t imagine this orphanage being government approved – probably privately owned by a tryhard, overwhelmed charity, or a project by a wealthy paedophile who wants the option to take and choose from a large and unknown variety. But it functions as an actual orphanage enough that the girl doesn’t have to fear the environment.

The caretaker sighs, coughs, and mumbles something about a spare top bunk in one of the rooms upstairs. “No, but what’s your name. I need to add to that damned registry, kid.”

The girl is halfway up the stairs. Blood tinged rain drips down her clothes. She practises a smile, because that’s what little girls do. “Anya.”

And Anya walks up the stairs with trembling legs, bypassing the other disgusting little children, to find a shower. She rinses the blood off her body, hair, clothes, doll, feet, arms, legs, belly, neck, face, and scrubs and scrubs and scrubs her fingers raw. Her nails are chipped and her fingers and scabbed from the wall climb. They turn bright pink under the lukewarm water. It’s the ugliest thing she’s seen. She rubs at her fingers, making them turn pinker and pinker, until some other orphan girl enters the shower room. Despite having been treated like an animal for her entire life here, she’s suddenly fearful of nakedness, knowing that the research scars aren’t normal for most kids, even if they live in harsh conditions like the kids here. 

Anya quickly dries off. Her dress is wet, but there aren’t any other clothes for her here. 

The top bunk is empty for a reason. In this room, the fourth room on the left on the second floor, is large and draughty, with mostly only kids who bunk here temporarily for a chance to get off the streets or broken homes. Her bed is next to the window that doesn’t shut properly, next to the freezing cold air vent that breathes icy hell into the bedroom. If Anya curls up at the far end of the stiff mattress, making herself as small and curled like a prawn, piling stolen towels (instead of blankets, because there are no more blankets in the closet) warmly as possible, then she might be able to sleep.

The rain howls. The windows rattle. The cold aches into her very bones, despite the towel pile. The hour turns late enough for other children to come inside to sleep. It’s very quiet in the orphanage, surprisingly so – not a place for joy, then. 

Below her, a pre-teen boy starts to nod off. He thinks of warm, fuzzy sheep, and acres of prairie land. Anya infiltrates his dream, listening to his mental mumbling to drown out the other children’s dreams. His name is Khan. He’s from the southern isles of a nation that no longer exists due to the civil wars in the coastal regions. He dreams of endless blue skies, periwinkle and cloudless. Warm breeze radiates from the ground up, with soft and swishing fields of lavender and grass. His dead family’s cows moo in the distance. 

Anya listens to Khan’s dream, and sleeps.

She wakes up to his nightmare. Fuck. She’s not supposed to spend too long listening to only one person’s thoughts for this reason exactly – she gets in too deep, too far into their own brain. The scientists liked it when she could do this, to get into every facet of someone’s mind to the point where she could mimic their next words perfectly, down to speech pattern, personality, and emotion. It’s the worst sort of privacy intrusion. Masks are meant to be physical, not mental – she hates the idea of becoming someone other than herself, again, because the girl from Before is already almost gone. Bled out from the trauma of rebirth.

In the next few weeks, Anya adjusts to the new surroundings. No more tests and experiments. She sees so little of her own blood it drives her insane. The slippery flesh of the homeless man’s trachea makes an appearance in her dreams so often she starts to hunger for the taste of human meat. It sickens her, but the selfish, horrible, messed-up part of her brain needs needs needs to have more. Experience more. Try more. The power of the scientists, with their shiny instruments, except now in Anya’s hands. 

Anya is not a psychopath. She doesn’t want to kill innocent animals and people. She’s only curious about the lack of red. Where did all the blood in her life go? How could it leave her? 

Pain doesn’t frighten the girl. There is no new pain that she thinks she’ll be afraid of – pain is never forever. If a rowdy orphan punches her in the face for getting too much porridge in the breakfast line, the sting fades after a few days. Pain is not an effective deterrent for a woman in the body of a child, cut open and prodded like cattle. As a matter of fact, Anya loves and loves and loves so strongly that she thinks she might go insane if she makes a friend. She loves her chimaera doll. There doesn’t even have to be a reason for love. A girl accidentally steps on her doll and Anya forgives her. Another girl tries to steal Anya’s doll.

Anya does not know violence. The scientists were not violent. They only wanted to learn. So Anya tries to learn what this girl, Mary, is thinking. She digs deep into Mary’s mind and learns that she often thinks of the spider haunting the corner of the main room. Mary is scared of spiders.

“Give it back,” Anya says. 

Mary sticks her tongue out. Toys are rare here. The colourful patterns on the chimaera doll enticed this older girl to steal. When negotiation fails, a spider is found crawling on Mary’s face the next day.

The doll is returned.

She loves and loves so much that she’s already enamoured by the thought of her future family. Twilight wants to complete the mission to the best of his ability, and will attempt to be the best father for his fake daughter. He’ll do anything for his mission. Anya wants the comfort of a paternal figure. The Thorn Princess will do anything to maintain the facade of being a normal woman in a highly suspicious society. Anya wants the comfort of a maternal figure. They’re strong. They’ll protect her. She’s a little baby, cradled by both parents.

A few months into her new routine, a middle aged woman approaches the lone girl in the bakery. She’s learned to be good at stealing, from watching the older kids do it. The rich old men and women in the high streets try to ignore the low-life, so Anya learned to pretend to tag along behind ordinary couples without them noticing, pretending to be their child, in order for the pedestrians to not be suspicious of her character. She knows she’s cute and pretty. Thievery works like a charm.

With the petty change from pockets and pockets, Anya likes to buy sugary, calorie dense foods. The chocolate croissants are on sale today, and as soon as she exits the store to follow the woman, she stuffs all of it into her mouth in a few seconds. 

“I think you dropped it here,” the lady continues. 

Anya didn’t drop anything. She wants to see what will happen from here. The woman, someone who calls herself Martha but is actually named Mela, is beautifully cheery and perfectly charming. She could almost be a grandmother, perhaps, and that is why the baker and his attendants didn’t even think twice about a small child being led away by a stranger.

On the other side of the narrow alley, a black car awaits. There are two people in the car, thinking the same thing as the lady: this is an adorable little girl. Emerald green eyes, round and glossy, with curly lashes and a mysterious gaze. A small, pinkish button nose. A full head of thick, luscious locks. This child looks like an expensive porcelain doll worth millions. People will pay handsomely for this child. She must scream good, she must cry diamond tears, she must exude something beautiful and lost. 

Human traffickers.

The scalpel burns against the skin of her arm, permanently hidden under the sleeve of her dress. Anya tugs on Mela’s skirt. “Can you tie my shoes for me, please?”

Mela smiles with the happy wrinkles all in the right place, but the mind never lies to a telepath. “Of course, darling,” the lady says, and bends down. 

There were worn out little Mary Jane slippers in the closet of the orphanage that Anya took for herself – a lucky find. Shoes are hard to steal from stores. These shoes, made of pleather, don’t use laces.

Wait a minute, Mela thinks, but it’s too late. Anya always aims for the soft part of the neck. She cuts at a downward angle this time so the spray of tracheal blood hits the ground instead of her. She digs into the open wound, making sure blood only touches a small part of her hand, and rips away any soft flesh she can grab with her baby hands. Then the girl runs away, stepping into street corners and intersections with the grace of an innocent child playing around with imaginary friends, tagging along behind unobservant couples until she gets back to the orphanage, undisturbed.

The sight of red is magical. Beautiful. Cathartic. Like nothing else. The meat of a person is a forbidden dessert, a juicy red jello, wobbly and sweet and there for the taking. The scientists have cut open every part of Anya with Anya still awake because they wanted her to read their thoughts and learn. Learn how to be a scientist like them, to maybe provide additional insight into her powers when she’s grown. This is subcutaneous tissue, they said. Here’s an artery, don’t touch it, it supplies blood to the entire body. And she witnessed everything, high off localised painkillers and anaesthetic, and saw how her own flesh wiggled under the touch of cold metal. She wanted desperately to cut the researchers open instead, to get them to sit on the table instead of her, to see their own body displayed like a toy for them to explore. 

Anya stares at the bits of trachea in her palm. She’s sitting on her tall bunk, hidden from the world. It looks like candy.

And she eats it.

Chapter Text

Anya is excited for Twilight to come. The entire orphanage comes around and watches through the windows when adults swing by to adopt. Most of the time, they’re looking for someone younger and impressionable – a few times some couples have pointed at Anya playing with her doll by the fireplace in the main hall, and every time she’s rejected them. They huff, furious that their perfect dream child is not an obedient angel, with her kicking and screaming and biting at them if they try to force her to come. Perhaps she could’ve done a small stint in a real family to gather things she wants, like new clothes and hot baths, but the idea of missing the window when Twilight visits is too severe to even think about.

Everyone watches the babies move in and out of the orphanage. It’s also not rare for older, stronger kids to move out during the harvest season, labouring in the southern fields for farmers who can afford to feed a few mouths for hard work. But then they come right back at first snow, adjusting miserably back to city life. 

She is ready to be adopted. She’ll follow the script to a tee, putting on the best face of innocence and happiness, or maybe she should manipulate a few lines here and there to make Twilight like her more – he’s only human, and it’s better if she wears down his walls faster. Perhaps there’ll be less of a connection between them if she isn’t switched out of orphanages and foster care systems, treated like recyclable waste, but Anya is confident she can make it work.

The day a tall blond man enters through the broken gates is the day of euphoria. Karl and Matty shout at the other kids that an adult is arriving, from the top floor, and the kids who want to be adopted (there are a surprising number of those who are not interested in this affair, after numerous spectacles of constant let-downs) rush down to the first floor to look at the mystery man. Anya sits within reach of the foyer, by the main fireplace in the room meant for recreation, and pretends not to notice the caretaker lead Twilight in the building.

“–adopt through your orphanage as well?”

He sounds the way tweed and corduroy feels on her fingertips, all rough and mature, and with a subtle hint of wealth. There’s a poshness to him, in attempts of impressing the caretaker with a primary impression, but it quickly fades when he steps into the building proper, surrounded by sunken-eyed children and weeds poking through the floorboards. Still, he doesn’t hide the clear articulation of his words that are telling of innate class and education. 

Twilight is searching for a child intelligent enough to recognise his subconscious signs. This is a career spy indeed.

The adults’ conversation would be of no interest to Anya had it been between any other men, but this is a special case. As she plays with the chimaera doll, she listens and listens. One day, these words will be honey to her ears, a warming melody of the heart. 

The floorboards creak by the entrance to the recreation room. “Ideally, I’d like a child who can already read and write,” Twilight says. 

Anya wonders. She wants to turn her head back so bad it’s insane. She wants to look at him, smell him, taste him, eat him alive, and make him a part of her. Father. Daddy. Papa.

Blood sings in her veins. She swallows.

They call her over. Anya. Anya. Anya. The caretaker says her name. It’s up. This is the moment. She’ll love and love forever. Nothing can beat the love of a loveless child. 

What a creepy child, the caretaker thinks. His thoughts are shared by many others. Good riddance.

Twilight is breathtaking. He’s tall, handsome, lean, and in perfect control of his facial muscles. There isn’t a hint of a tell on his face, not a peep, as he stares straight at her with kaleidoscope eyes that manage to look plain and thinks, You have to be at least six to enrol in Eden Academy. She can’t be more than four or five…

Beautiful. She wants to touch his face and bite his fingers and smell his skin. What is it? What is it? He must be scentless on missions, but for the role of Loid Forger, he must smell like pine fresh or evergreen or something sharp yet soothing – it’s from all the green he effortlessly wears. This man is a protector, too, because the perfect control of his face must also extend to the rest of the body, where he can pierce into the organs of homeless men and scientists without even needing a weapon, and violate their insides without much care in the world. This is a broken human, on the verge of becoming a monster. Spies can’t be spies without a few cracks, after all. And he’s been fighting since childhood.

“My name is Anya and I’m six years old,” she says. 

I didn’t know that – at least now I don’t have to handle her school paperwork if this man wants to adopt, the caretaker thinks. “Oh, you’re six already?” 

Anya turns five in a month.

“I’m small for my age,” she responds, smiling up at both. “But I promise, I’m super smart!”

Twilight smiles back, a perfectly polite grin, but there are some things even the best spies can’t account for – the intuition of children. He doesn’t lean down with his back or sit on his knees or pull up a chair for her to accommodate a worthwhile conversation with Anya, which means he’s not actually all that interested in this child. This is what every child knows, and all the adults forget.

Might as well find out if this is worth my time or if I should check out a taller kid, he thinks. “What’s six times four?”

Anya delivers the correct answer. 

Then he asks four more primary school maths questions, all which are answered perfectly, then a question about grammar rules, to which she answers perfectly, then he asks about history, to which she responds… satisfactorily. Her knowledge of this world is stifled compared to her peers, as she hadn’t been able to absorb her environment and news around her until she escaped the white-barren facility.

“My history knowledge is lacking, but I promise that I’m a pro at other subjects, like science!”

Already, she knows she’s piqued his interest. Most six year olds struggle with the concept of pre-algebra, and she aced his trick question at the end perfectly – her potential, to him, is not unlimited, but still vast and exploitable enough. He looks at her with a new light, and she can tell not because his face has changed but because he leans down to fully examine her up and down. Children crave attention.

These answers are definitive proof of the degree of intelligence and charisma he’s looking for. This is what this man wants. The girl would give him the world.

Twilight turns his attention back to the caretaker, who has stepped back a bit to pull out a cigarette. “I’ll take this one,” he says. A stunning level of intellect. If her maths and language ability is this good, she shouldn’t struggle with the entrance exam. I can work with this – I doubt the other children here will be up to par.

Anya smiles brightly. She doesn’t show teeth, those are weapons, but she knows from the bottom of her heart this is the one smile she doesn’t have to put any work into at all. This is the moment. Twilight wants her. She smells iron in her nose, blood in her mouth, and flesh in her hands again, as if these scents are the great roses on an old manor wall, fresh and blooming and lovely. He wants her to call him father. He wants her to choose school equipment at the store. He wants her to say the right things, show her off in front of others, and pet her hair and call her his precious child.

Everything goes to hell far too quickly.

The script. Follow the script. But be more likeable, more loving, more deceptively innocent and charming. So when Twilight leaves for an errand in an empty flat that doesn’t feel right, she remains agreeable and he seems to trust her intentions, but this is a pivotal moment in the script that she doesn’t want to veer too far from, where he’s supposed to connect with her and pity her all at the same time. 

Anya plays with the spy equipment and waits.

A crowd of gangsters breaks in. She destroys the equipment in time, mangling wires and knobs, and feels the confusion of men upon men entering the room. They think insidious thoughts, some of them, feasting upon the naivety and lack of knowledge she presents, and take her into a new car with a promise that if she screams, they’ll break her toes and feed them to her. 

When Twilight appears, she sits patiently, scared to veer off too much from a script. This is when he connects with a lost, broken child. This is when the parental, protective instincts kicks in. This is when he saves her and she saves him. On instinct, because the rope is tight but not as tight as it could’ve been – the pain at this point is nothing to her – she slips the bindings off without even thinking about it. The scalpel has travelled up her arm and she moves to slip it back down in an accessible location, but the movement alerts the kidnappers away from Twilight and back towards her, and the big boss, the presumed head honcho of this gang, a man who smells sour yet too sweet, shoots blindly at his own men to make way to hold Anya to his front.

This isn’t supposed to happen.

Something has been fucked up here. This isn’t how it’s meant to go. Twilight is supposed to save her. Instead, she sees his faint silhouette amidst the cloudy smoke from the distraction he set up, with only one direct escape. A gun cocks at her head.

“A small, little girl?” Twilight says in a slow, seductive drawl. There is no tell-tale panic in his voice, only smooth butteriness. “Come on, Edgar. She’s got green eyes, just like Karen.”

Except his thoughts betray him. Twilight knows, with utmost certainty, Edgar is the type of shrewd man to kill when it suits him. That girl might actually die here. How could I have messed up this badly? No – I didn’t expect her to free from the bindings so easily, and for them to take notice. How do I fix this?

There is no knife, no scalpel, within reach. The arm holding her is juicy and glistening with sweat, as succulent as a roasted hog. The human jaw can exert over a hundred kilograms of force – but Anya is a child, with a mouthful of baby teeth and so far, only one adult canine. For her, she’s learned from the lab, her average bite force is three kilograms. With speed and desperation involved, she might be able to double it.

At the right angle, it’s enough pressure to break bone.

She slacks in Edgar’s grip, then takes advantage of the looseness in his hold by slipping down slightly to bite the delicate opening of his wrist. This isn’t something playful, this is something animalistic and cruel, chomping down with all the force she can muster, letting go of any subconscious mental restrictions that plague most normal humans. He howls, trying to break the arm free, but the movement only makes his pain worse because then he’s the one that separates the chunk of flesh from his body, clamped in her mouth. 

Chewy veins stick between her teeth like dental floss. His blood is sweeter than any juice or tonic, more addictive than any drug, pounding and pounding down her throat and oesophagus, where she can savour the sticky richness of the warm liquid. 

Sweet. Almost too sweet. This man must be diabetic.

When faced with this kind of pain and the slow-burn realisation of immobility in a body part, with the connective tissue and ulnar nerve ripped out of his wrist, Edgar falters in step, letting the gun drop from the other hand to stare disbelievingly at the mangled, twitching limb. 

Humans are so delicate.

Twilight works in tandem with Anya’s cannibalism, abusing the man’s howl and stutter to rip Anya out by her dress’ back collar like a baby lion cub, and emerge from the powder clouds right in the man’s face. There are quick calculations running through each man’s heads, with thoughts pounding so loudly into the extrasensory perception mindworld, because after less than a moment’s notice, Twilight kicks the man down, forces Anya’s face into the crook of his neck, blocking the view, and shoots the man in the head. 

Bang!

Anya bit through the ulnar and median nerves, the ulnar artery, and the flexor tendon. He would bleed out in less than an hour, is what the spy thinks. If he had gotten immediate medical attention, he still would’ve lost his hand from the wrist down, and his mafia would’ve caused more trouble than necessary for revenge. This was a justified kill.

Then Twilight remembers the child in his arms and freaks out. He thinks about how Mission Strix has been jeopardised, how he’ll have to find a new child on an even shorter notice now, and how Anya has witnessed the death of an entire group of gangsters. Head shot. Head shot. Head shot.

No. Fucking no. This keeps happening over and over again and now this? Wherein fortune concludes, misery begins.

She cries because she doesn’t want him to stop holding her, to be cast aside and not be able to achieve her goals of love, love, love. She curls up a tiny fist and clutches the cape of his collar, trembling, choking on the sugary blood, trying to swallow the victory of the kill but nearly puking up his remains. Waves of regret and remorse flood from Twilight’s mind, but the pity is frustrating and hellish. “Don’t leave me,” she says, whimpering, crying, begging, indulging in the warmth from the stains on her face and the body heat of the spy. “They all leave me. This keeps happening over and over again and I want it to stop but they can’t stop wanting to bleed.”

He sets her down in the sea of corpses. His face is purposefully blank, but he grabs a pristine handkerchief from his pocket and wipes the messy splatters of the meal off her face. “What do you mean by that, Anya?”

His thoughts, even after battle, are composed and organised. What does she mean by ‘this keeps happening?’ What kind of life did she live in the orphanage, or before then? Did she see her parents die? And what kind of circumstances makes a child fight that vigorously from a captor, to the point of maiming them? Does she need a protection deal? I can arrange that with retired WISE agents.

No protection deal. Anya just wants Twilight – needs Twilight. She can make him want to protect her.

“A lot of people think I’m pretty,” she murmurs shyly, but with the crying the demure effect is lost and she sounds like a desperate, broken child instead. “Someone tried to sell me, so I found a little knife on the ground and stabbed her. She died.”

Child trafficking? I thought WISE cleared up the area years ago. I need to…

“Don’t leave me, please! I’m smart and capable! If you give me away I’ll never be able to end up in a good family again, I know that you want me to enter Eden Academy and I can do it – I know I can! I don’t care that you killed these people and you want to give me away, but… But.” Anya stops. There’s no good reason for him to keep her, especially now. He knows she’s a killer, and he also knows that she knows his occupation as something less than legal. “But I can’t go back out there now. The people from the building are trying to find me. I saw you just now. You’re strong.”

The confession burns, hot and sickly in her stomach.

Lab rat. Experiment number seven. Number seven, is what they called her, before one of them gave her an actual name, far too late. Hello number seven, get on the operating table today. Hello number seven, can you try reading marine animal minds? Hello number seven, get in the x-ray machine now.

“What building?” He asks. His thoughts are incoherent. Bombs. Gunshots. Screams.

Anya closes her eyes, revelling in the softness of the handkerchief dabbing under her eyelids now. “I was born in a big white building with lots of adults in suits trying to sell me off. I escaped.”

It’s a half-truth, at least, and even the best spies can be believably lied to under these circumstances. 

“I see,” Twilight says, with a mind so chaotic and dishevelled that Anya can’t pierce through it, picks her up, lays her blotchy face against his chest, and walks out of the bloody warehouse and into the public streets. 

She sniffles into his chest. He smells like rosemary and pine nuts. The surrounding people on the streets coo at a father carrying what looks to be a sleeping daughter. “I’m smart enough to pass the exam,” she murmurs, throat still thick with mucus. “You’re a spy, right? If you need a child to enter Eden, then that means you must have a mission to investigate a family that has a child there my age. I’m a good actor, you know I am, didn’t I seem normal to you earlier? I can befriend this student and help you.”

They arrive at their apartment building. He doesn’t speak until they enter their own residence, where he sets her down on the couch. 

“You’re a child; you deserve a normal life,” he says.

It’s not a no.

“I made an accurate deduction about your job and mission, mister spy,” she croaks out, almost wittily. “And this is the best I’ll ever get. You’re doing everything you can to make a normal family, and that involves protecting me. I know this mission will end, but until then, I want to be able to experience things a child should, too. No more blood.”

This isn’t how a child, a five or six year old, should talk. But Anya knows that Twilight doesn’t care for pretences anymore, not after she’s exposed her entire heart like this to him. Instead, she tries to appeal to whatever humanity is remaining in his wartorn, warbled soul, with an appearance she knows to be manipulative, and an offer that any spy would hate to refuse. By having her around, his organisation will be able to have at least the minimum amount of information necessary to have a lead into the new third party that birthed her. Anya means for herself to be tantalising and beautiful, to be picked up like a shiny object, because although Twilight is sometimes Loid, Loid is always Twilight.

He’s been in the industry for too long, hasn’t he?

He sighs, leans back in his chair by the couch, and suffers in mental anguish. Today is the second day since receiving the portfolio. If I start hunting for a child tomorrow, then I only have four days left to find a six-year old that has some degree of physical resemblance to me with zero presence amongst any governmental system and is smart enough to pass a test or memorise over a hundred answers. By rough estimate, WISE states that this mission is expected to run between two to six years. The clinical estimate of maintaining a strong facade for that long means irreparable emotional changes – so it’s better to have someone in the know. Theoretically speaking.

Then he looks at her, with the crust around her lips and red-rimmed eyes. 

What am I thinking? Re-engagement protocol only works with agents, not literal children. However, she still is the most intelligent child I’ll find in this time restraint. It’s not easy to make deductions like that from only seeing that fight.

If Anya loses this chance, she’ll never see Twilight again, so she says, interrupting the silence, “I can deduce the mission length, for infiltrating a certain high-echelon family. Two to six years, perhaps – that’s more than enough time for whoever you work for to clear up the third party of human traffickers.”

Twilight makes her brush her teeth and wash her face while he packs up their belongings. He thinks of regret, pain, anger, indignation, fear, and enmity towards her background, and how she’s not the kind of pure, innocent child that all children should be. The sound of bombs rattles in his head, and instead of flinching at each one, Anya runs up to him and asks him to hold her hand as they head to a new flat. He thinks about how she’s so small and soft, so fragile and young. The truth is, she hasn’t been able to read anything deeper than his most apparent thoughts since the kidnapping incident – a menacing plague traps his mind, in a sticky cobweb of honey and duty. The sound of bombs ticks louder and louder. Twilight looks at Anya – what a handsome man, such an interest in her? – with an uncaring face but an insidious heart. Death, death, death, this child knows death, she saw a man blast a hole in another man’s brains, splattering everywhere like drip-drip-drip, this child is just like me. How will she sleep tonight?

She hears him report to WISE on a radio channel later that night. 

Continue. Strix. Child acquired. Orders?

Chapter Text

A man has no name. 

He starts off as a boy with a name, in the throes of youth and beauty, growing up far earlier than anyone expects him too. He remembers silky skin, the scent of warm milk, and running barefoot in green parks in a city erased from the world map. Then when the boy decided to take the name of a dead man, the boy ceased to exist. The boy became a man, a man born from a city that no longer exists, from a country that was consumed into another, and a land salted with so much decay that life no longer can be born there – this is when a man becomes Twilight.

By all means, the boy is gone. A man is what remains. That man, most days, is Agent Twilight, working for Westalis to prevent anymore wars. He hadn’t wanted to become a Westali, but the former territory of his home falls under the country’s jurisdiction, and it’s the closest hint of home that will ever exist. 

Freedom feels so far away.

As a spy – not the flashy ones on the television, but a real one with a life no one wishes to brag about – he’ll fulfil his missions to utmost perfection, for the sake of duty, to prevent wars and protect the current realm of peace. Tension rises between the two nations of Ostania and Westalis, and it’s obvious to everyone but the common folk – this is his job, to make sure they remain oblivious and happy and ignorant. Like lambs walking circles around a slaughterhouse.

Find a child, the mission said. And he did, like a good little spy.

But now, with the child napping on the sofa as Twilight reads through newspapers for any suspicious activity around the city in the seat next to her small, delicate body, he can’t help but feel as though he’s doing something wrong. Immoral.

He skimmed through all the files on her that Franky could find – that is to say, very little. Anya, no surname. Zero paperwork whatsoever. Apparently she just showed up one day at the orphanage last year and no one paid any mind, not a care in the world for unregistered children. WISE has eyes on that orphanage for that exact reason, but Sylvia reported to Twilight the other day that they need to keep the place open for future stints, of trafficking, stealing, and undercover work. A giant red herring for other missions, her supervisors said. A good price to pay.

For what – salvation? 

She’s a pretty little thing, with porcelain skin and china-doll eyes and lustrous hair that shines pinkish in warm light. She looks like the baby toy the boy found whilst scavenging in a city riddled with bombs, under shards of glass and crumbled concrete. The boy had picked the doll up, back then, and examined its unique beauty against the landscape of grey brokenness, and promptly sold it to the next skeevy man for a good chunk of cash. Pristine. Elegant. Pure. Anya is fragile, with stubby limbs and bird bones, and Twilight could take her with minimal effort and crush her with one hand.

Anya didn’t cry for most of the day. Twilight had thought himself to have found the perfect child. She’s smart, unobtrusive, obedient, and a breeze to trust – but then the crying. She mauled a man to death with two wiggly front teeth and a single adult canine, chomping at the soft part of his wrist without hesitation, reaching in for the kill like a mature lioness. The blood on the doll girl didn’t bother Twilight at all in the heat of the moment because everyone has blood and that baby toy from the city of bombs was covered in a toddler’s viscera – it all made sense. But then she cried for him, for a man without a name, for this Loid Forger who doesn’t even exist, and everything fell apart.

Children aren’t meant to cry like that. Children aren’t meant to be covered in blood. Children aren’t meant to scavenge around like disgusting animals, waiting and waiting and waiting for hope to fall their way, for an adult to step in and feed them. Twilight knows that Anya swallowed the flesh she tore away from Edgar, and wonders if this is something normal for her, for a street rat orphan, hungry and tiny. Maybe a better man would be revolted, but Twilight remembers the boy and what the boy had to do to survive when the enemy salted the fields and nothing grew for years. He never ate anyone, but others… were not so lucky. Rings of crusted blood around their mouths, diseases in their brains, and stolen skins on their bodies - these people are the type the boy has been taught to avoid.

So what is this feeling of satisfaction blooming in his chest, warmer than any fire he’s tended to, when he watches the girl eat?

Twilight wakes Anya from her nap in time for dinner. He watches her slowly bring a spoonful of fleshy red-pink meat to her mouth, good quality pork from the butcher’s shop two streets away, and allows a strange, hot emotion swell in his heart at the sight of the child being fed. There is no boy. There is no man. There is Twilight and Twilight only, acting as Loid Forger for the sake of world peace, and he enjoys the sight of the girl eating meat. The tomato sauce stains the corner of her heart shaped mouth. 

What an animal. The boy didn’t get to eat meat at her age. The irritating crying children in the city of bombs didn’t get to eat chilli-tomato stew with chunks of pork. They got to eat cold hard bread and polluted weeds. The doll girl with emerald eyes and a price tag worth far more than anything he’s ever put his hands on gets to rip into fleshy strings and savour its hearty warmth. 

“The kidnapper, back then,” he starts. “Is that the first time you’ve swallowed something you shouldn’t have?”

Baby steps. She’s six, presumably. He doubts the girl can actualise the severity of her actions, on a philosophical level. Besides, ethics and morals hardly matter, in a desiccated land where everyone’s starving and there’s nothing to chew on but your own fingers.

Street rat.

Anya looks down at her bowl. Her cheeks are rosy red from the heat. She shakes her head and says, “The woman that tried to sell me. When I hurt her, her blood went everywhere. I think I swallowed some.”

She doesn’t express any remorse for hurting that woman, it’s obvious in all of the tell-tale body language signs. A normal child should be traumatised. This child… doesn’t show disgust when she recalls the memory of swallowing spraying blood – probably arterial blood – and instead treats it as something that just happened. Last year autumn. It was record-breakingly cold last year, in this part of Ostania, Twilight remembers from newspaper clippings. The blood from someone’s body must’ve been as warm as the stew sitting in front of them. She must have been so cold.

They finish dinner, Twilight coming to his senses that cannibalising another human is wrong for a child to learn, and needs to come up with some way to teach her without discounting her own methods of survival. Anya does practise questions for all the questions that should be on the entrance exam, acing every one – the only thing she really needs to work on is her handwriting, so she scribbles out cursive and tries to learn hand-eye coordination. 

It doesn’t succeed. With her little body, the proper input for brain-hand muscle control simply doesn’t exist yet. Ah, well. If she was perfect at everything, the administration might observe a bit too closely at the Forger family. So Twilight pats her head – the parenting books promote physical affection for good work – and nods approvingly.

“I’m going to do well on the exam,” Anya promises with a bright smile. Her eyes glitter just like the gems in the doll's eyes.

There are chunks of flesh between her bottom teeth. It should be from the pork stew, but Twilight blinks and sees a helpless little girl ripping into a terrible man’s wrist. She instinctively swallowed, then, throat bobbing, and seeing someone as helpless as a little porcelain doll ravage against a man from the country that sent bombs – in that one moment, before morals kicked in, seeing her beat him just felt so good.

And scary.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Every hour, an explosion.

“You should hug me before bed time,” she says, happiness in her voice. “Practising normal parent-child behaviours will allow us to have an effortless familial relationship when we need it the most.”

The fact that this child knows his mission parameters is a breach of security, but the boy tells a man to let it happen. Twilight will learn why later.

“You talk like an old lady,” he responds, because it’s true and he’s a bit exasperated at the thought of a child doing his mission better than him. So she crawls onto the sofa where he’s sitting and into his lap, throwing both arms around his neck. He wraps his arms around her torso, testing the softness of her body and the extent to which he can squeeze more until she snaps in half – but then his heart flutters. He imagines hurting her again, but the useless organ in his chest pounds fiercely, in ugly protest. Petite. Pretty. Porcelain. A toymaker's work of wonder. A smooth and unbroken doll, a rarity in a doomed world. He hates the idea of it, but the image in his head of the toy with blood around its lips, throat swallowing, and a smile of satiation amidst the ochre-coloured gas of the city of bombs...

Anya needs to eat more. Loid can cook all the meat she wants – pork, beef, poultry, fish, goat, and more. Then Loid can turn into Twilight and watch as she spoons flesh into her tiny bird mouth. Meat. Meat. Meat. She should eat more. The boy was skinny, rib cage on display and covered in crackling, leathery skin during the worst years after the first bomb, after the boy’s mother disappeared. Anya should be (and is, unerringly is) soft, with velvety smooth skin and a curve to her smiling cheeks. 

Heat builds in his chest to his stomach.

He carries her, the girl still tucked into his chest, to brush her teeth. She blinks sleepily at him and clenches her toothbrush with an impossibly tiny doll hand.

Tomorrow, Twilight thinks, after sending her to bed. Tomorrow is the entrance exam. Children need lots of nutrients when they’re in the growth phase – lots of protein, lots of meat. Pig and cattle blood is rich in vitamin C, iron, and calcium. Animal cartilage brings benefits to skin dexterity. Red meat brings a reliable source of zinc. Liver promotes keratin production.

Anya needs to eat.

The next morning, Anya has jam on toast with a side of high quality sausages. Loid makes breakfast and Twilight sits down to watch her every movement. Something terrifying and obscene builds in the empty cavity of his insides as the doll chews and chews.

Twilight lets the boy and the faceless, nameless man watch alongside him.

The girl doesn't know what to do about Twilight and his penetrating thoughts. He seems almost aroused at the sight of her stuffing flesh into her face, in a warble of loud mental noises and continuous flashes of the colour red. So she ignores him and continues with breakfast unhindered. His trauma can wait.

From here, in central Berlint in their new flat, it’s an easy walk to the main Eden Academy campus. The crowd of elite hopefuls and anxious parents makes Anya’s head hurt, so she keeps close to Twilight, holding his hand and tugging at the seam of his suit jacket. No, this isn’t Twilight today, this is Loid Forger, psychiatrist, well behaved upper middle class member of society, and proud dad extraordinaire. 

“If you do well I’ll get you a present,” he says, patting and smoothing out Anya’s hair at the gates.

She brightens and rubs her cheek against his hand. Of course she’ll do well. No doubt about it. Anya lets an elderly woman guide her and her exam cohort into a large hall, the touch of Loid – father, daddy, papa – lingering on her skin, electric. The nervousness of the crowd sways into her brain, so she instead focuses her attention on the adult guide’s thoughts to keep the children out. 

Last year’s entrance exam had a ten percent acceptance rate, the guide thinks worryingly. These poor kids… This school is insane.

Anya memorises the guide’s name and face. The woman is a part of the administrative staff – perhaps she’ll be useful one day. At the moment, the girl can’t possibly search for any interesting pieces of information in the midst of thousands and thousands of chittering young children, all bumbling around and thinking loud thoughts, so Anya plans to wait for the opportune time – after acceptance, of course.

The test itself is easy . 

She breezes through the maths, reading, writing, and science books, but stumbles on the history book. Fuck. Are six year olds supposed to know all the chambers of the justice department? Maybe this is basic knowledge to some of these politicians’ brats, but… fuck.

The kid next to her is also struggling through the history book. Who was the thirty-second president of the Northern Isles? Uhhh… Freddy is my dog’s name, so I’ll put Frederick down.

Useless.

The interview letter comes by mail within a week. Anya passed, of course, with a strong K-212 test code emblazoned on the scoreboard outside the gates. The school must have an army of administrative staff to grade all those tests in such a short period of time, but that’s none of Anya’s concern, because Twilight has just collapsed on the sofa.

She pokes his leg. He lazily reaches out and pats her head.

“I told you I passed,” she murmurs. 

Twilight makes a vague noise in response. His thoughts are all jumbled up now, with I can’t believe I made it this far in such a strange mission and wait I need to read the rest of the letter.

Anya takes the letter from the table and climbs up the sofa. “I’ll read the rest of the letter. You should re-engage in bonding exercises.” 

The body heat of a fully grown adult, this father figure of hers, compares to none. With the mention of mission development, he complies easier into her spider web and wraps his arms around her body from behind. His breath is on the top of her head. It tickles her scalp in a rush of adrenaline and sparking love. Anya would kill for this man, no matter which face he puts on, because the faceless man still has the same heart. As Loid and Twilight, he smells of pine and something earthy, and Anya wants to lick him to test if his skin tastes the same.

“Both parents must attend with the applicant. Absolutely no exceptions,” she reads.

Twilight startles. He wakes up from his stupor, jumping out of the sofa, leaving Anya cold and alone. But no matter – if one parent is busy, then another will suffice.

Mama.

Chapter Text

Anya lets Twilight torture himself with finding a wife. If the order of events with Yor don’t naturally happen by itself, then she’ll sneak out and try to find the woman by her lonesome. She works as a civil servant, a government worker, in a nondescript office in central Berlint. It’s a large city, but with a name and description, it shouldn’t be too hard to find anyone with a public identity. 

She follows Twilight like a duckling as he paces around the living room. He thinks about all of the female agents within the ages of twenty something to forty, and their current missions this week – that is to say, everyone is booked completely full. 

Damn, he thinks, circling around the coffee table. Anya waddles behind him. No, a woman isn’t necessary. I can find a petite man with flexible working hours. Franky?

The agent appears within the hour.

Franky is an interesting character. He seems more of a caricature of a man than an actual man, with a ridiculously square-shaped face, a serious case of kindergarten drawing hair, and big bulky glasses. But his thoughts are nice and soothing, with very little evil in them, so unlike Twilight and Anya. He has a straightforward mind, with upstanding morals despite his profession, and mostly only has eyes for his own general happiness. 

She wouldn’t mind this agent as a permanent figure in her life, but as a mother…

“Even with the disguise, you’re too masculine,” the girl says. It’s meant to be a hidden compliment, which Franky picks up on and grins, but then he wipes the garish makeup from his face and complains to Twilight about the entire affair.

Damn, there aren’t any other agents that are in the area for the next month, at least, Twilight thinks, staring incomprehensibly at the floor, ignoring the ruckus. 

Then the two agents rifle through cases and cases of documents of eligible single women of the city. It’s after the first hour of work and Anya colouring on spare papers (drawing a big dragon decimating a tiny village, of course) that the girl realises that something is off. Did this happen last time? Out of the blue, Twilight and Yor met at… what was it… a store. Yes, a store of some sort, but she doesn’t remember when or what or where. 

She looks at the grandfather clock by the wall. Almost dinner time. Did it take one day or two, in the world before?

“Father,” she says, when the sky turns dark. “Do you have a map of the city?”

“What for?” He asks.

“I wanna research the environment. Museums, or…” She frowns thoughtfully. And the location of the city hall, if worst comes to worst.

This is when the men also notice the time. Franky is shooed away, but only after the girl hugs his leg and smiles at him, telling him to come again, and Twilight retrieves a folded map from his bedroom.

Whilst he cooks, Anya explores the big map, tracing a pudgy toddler finger over the coloured streets, tram lines, and station numbers. She finds their current home address, the attractions nearby, the location of Eden academy in relation to everything else, and the highlighted city hall in the damn near centre of Berlint. Oddly enough, if she squints, the boundaries of the city almost resemble a star. 

Ah, well.

Dinner is served. It’s a meat-based dish again, a type of watery bone broth that’s not indigenous to this part of the country, with chunks of oxtail, onion, and leek. The high protein intake might not be good for the girl’s nutritional needs, especially as she isn’t into sports or other excessively physical activities, but it’s hard to plan a discussion about her diet when Twilight is just so… intense about it. She hears his thoughts during the hours of night and none of them are particularly pretty.

He thinks too much. He keeps flickering in and out of the man called Twilight, and into other people, with other minds, all whilst maintaining a perfect facade of sheer cool. What a tiny mouth, he marvels. How could this child eat something like the flesh of another human? Ah, I forgot. I have to find therapy books on how to counsel children through traumatic events… But Anya doesn’t seem particularly affected by the things she’s seen. She doesn’t wet the bed, disfigure any toys, or cause harm to animals – but there is something unusual about her overall behaviour. Could it be from her past? I told the handler about it but there hasn’t been any new information from Strix…

She finishes the meal, brushes her teeth, and waddles around after Twilight, reading his thoughts about the day and amusing herself by switching between leafing through the papers Franky brought and grabbing onto Twilight’s legs. 

“What are you doing, Anya?” He asks, tired. Is this an attack?

“I’m a leg weight!” She exclaims. “A big boot.”

So she still is a child, he thinks, and he only shoos her off, exasperated but no longer suspicious. 

There are three million people living in the city of Berlin, with perhaps a million more living in the direct outskirts, in the pretty farmlands and mountain villas. Of this population number, there are perhaps only two thousand women that live close enough to the Forger flat, are independent in some way, between the ages of twenty-four (old enough to, potentially, have a child Anya’s age if a part of the backstory doesn’t go to plan) and forty, and potentially willing to fake-marry a widow with a kid. Anya flips through the papers on the coffee table, careful not to mess anything up so that Twilight doesn’t force her to go to bed early for being a troublemaker, and keeps a careful eye on the B section.

Yor Briar.

It’s here.

“She looks pretty,” Anya says, more excited than she means to sound, and slides the woman’s paper out from the tall stack.

Twilight flips a page in his notebook and scribbles something down. Judging by his thoughts, he’s forming a draft of his weekly report to his boss. “We can’t find a mother based on her looks.”

She crawls up the sofa, clenching the file, and snuggles into Twilight’s side. “Look, look.”

“Yor Briar, yes. Put it back Anya, it’s almost bedtime.”

“No,” she insists, and falls dramatically in his lap. “There are thousands of files on our table and we have a deadline. The best thing we can do is rely on intuition, because we can’t scout all the women in time to make a good guess. And I like her! She looks like an aristocrat.”

Wisdom from the mouth of babes, he thinks. Odd, but sound. If Franky and I work together we can assign at least ten minutes to observing each woman, but it might be a good idea to approach this mission with a specific target. “Fair enough.”

He picks her up by the armpits and drags her to bed.

Aristocratic isn’t a bad thing, he continues to muse as he tucks her in. It’ll certainly sell an Eden-worthy appearance during the interview. Anya’s already a quiet and put-together child, so it’ll help sell our family if we all maintain a similar level of composure.

“Don’t worry, Father,” she whispers, reaching out to hold onto his finger before he can pull away for the night. “I’ll keep your secret safe from a new mother.”

He pauses, freezes, and looks down at her. Twilight’s eyes are a bright, insidious green in the dark – glittering emeralds, and she’s the fool mining in the abyss. She turned five years old yesterday, and she wants to tell him so badly that the words are dancing on her tongue and exploding from her lips, but she keeps it shut because what they have is a delicate balance of love and unhealthy obsession. It wouldn’t do to ruin this perfection.

“Anya. It’s absolute priority number one.”

And he’s afraid. Not angry, not upset, but afraid that suddenly something will slip and she’ll reveal his status as a spy. Oh no, this won’t do.

“Pinky promise,” she says. “Can I have a goodnight kiss?”

Twilight’s thoughts are never healthy – they’re always spinning around, rarely calm, constantly thinking about the mission and his next steps as a spy. He’s carefully attuned to everything to the point of breakage, and this might be it. At this point, he knows that the child is the pinnacle of this mission’s success and he cannot, absolutely cannot, lose her now, despite the risk to her person and the liability it presents to everyone’s safety. This has created a dissonance in his mind, between Twilight, the boy, and the man with no name, that battle over Anya’s wellbeing constantly.

As such, Anya knows that she is always Twilight’s top priority. And she’ll weaken him, break down his barriers, cause his emotions to spin out of control, all for the sake of making him love her more.

Just this once, if I’m a good enough father here, maybe the pain will fade, he thinks. Twilight kisses her forehead and she smiles.

“Goodnight,” he says.

The door shuts. The thoughts from his bedroom are vast and terrible.

The fraudulent father and daughter duo attempt to catch Yor Briar during the time she walks home from work. Twilight starts first, proceeding with Plan A. Franky drives a rental car perfectly over a suspiciously new pothole in the street and briefly loses control of the wheel. The vehicle nearly hits Yor, with Twilight almost there to pull her out of the way for a valiant rescue, but then the woman leaps into a somersault, spinning over the car completely, and lands elegantly on her feet.

In heels.

Plan B commences after a moment of awe.

The girl runs in the street, eyes heavy, running carelessly until it hurts, then slows down to sniffle and walk tentatively into people’s legs. A few compassionate pedestrians stop to ask if she’s okay, where her parents are, and she hates that only now that she’s been dressed into clean and pretty clothes, presentable in the eye of the public, that there are more adults willing to help, compared to the year at the orphanage.

A real tear may have slipped into the fake ones, but no one has to know.

Then Anya bumps into the target’s legs – this time, the woman is caught off guard and easily surprised by such a small human – and then locks up, as if caught doing something naughty.

“Oh dear,” Yor says, and kneels down instantly. “Are you alright? I’m so sorry, are you hurt? Where are your parents? Are you okay?”

And Anya is frozen.

Blood, damage, hurt, pain, bones, flesh, brains, eyes, hip, fingers, chop, cut, nerves, alive, dead, BLOOD–

This woman is a monster.

Hurt, kill, rip them apart, little girl so tender and juicy, limb by limb, paint the town red, drip drip blood, zero target, yes target, new one acquired, oh little girl, female Yuri, blood, blood, crunch, stab, poison, slice, rip off ears, cauterise tongue, scramble brains, stomp stomp they’re dead, clicking heels, ow ouch, death, little girl, onlookers, public, too many people, easy death, tiny tiny, blood, muscle, tissue, bones, brains, eyes, heart, eat eat eat, blood–!

This is someone who enjoys death. This is someone who takes and takes and takes without giving back, who pollutes this world freely, who kills because she can and because she’s good at it (and is eager for the Gardener’s next call), who doesn’t have a mask because Yor is the Thorn Princess just as the Thorn Princess is Yor.

Anya feels fear again, a new type of fear that hasn’t been felt before, as she reads the mind of a serial killer.

“I’m lost,” she whimpers, sticking to the script.

The Thorn Princess may be a guise, but this woman truly enjoys the hunt and the final, decisive act of death itself. Killer. Murderer. Assassin.

“Aww, that’s not good!” Yor says, softening her voice and smiling at the child. “Do you know your address?”

The serial killer extends a hand to the cannibal.

This is Yor Briar. This is how it’s supposed to be. Anya hadn’t expected the woman to be this messed up in the head, but it is what it is. This woman is strong, loving, and protective, quite literally bathing in the blood of her enemies, and enjoying the chase of a normal, happy life. Even serial killers (psychopaths?) need a place to relax. People to love. People to claim as theirs in the game they play.

Anya imagines the woman killing someone for her, just because they got in the way – a homeless man, or a scientist in a white coat – and leaving the body nice and primed up, filleted with sharp knives, ready to eat. 

“I do,” she replies, and takes Yor’s hand.

She’s a tall woman, almost as tall as Twilight, with hair of midnight and eyes as dark as her bloodlust. There are slightly foreign features mixed in, not ostentatiously so, but enough to quietly note an exotic vibe. This woman is beautiful, with colouring only rivalling celebrities on the television after hours of care, and a pretty elegance in the lean muscle, perfect posture (from, again, the muscle), and careful reservations. Even when she is blushing and nannying over a lost child, there still remains an air of mystery about her, something tantalising, magical, and ever so sweet.

A poison apple.

After a few minutes of wandering around, Twilight finally comes to steal the show. He clamours after his lovely Anya, thanks the saviour profusely, and explains, with glittery eyes and the perfect seductive gaze, that he was out of his mind with worry. Because of his dead wife’s daughter, of course. 

“And what’s your name, miss…?”

Yor startles. The motions are cute, and the surprise makes her thoughts warble and transform into lighter drabbles. “Ah! I haven’t introduced myself yet. I’m so silly – my name is Yor Briar, nice to meet you. And you are?”

“No worries, we’re all a bit stressed out about a lost child, Miss Briar,” he says, smooth, controlled, and sexy. “My name is Loid Forger. It’s very nice to meet you, too.”

The ditziness comes as a shock, in frank contrast to the woman’s thoughts, but after thinking it over, the girl understands that the lack of organisation is a constant throughout the woman’s mind. Her life is unravelling by the seams, and it’s up to a handsome man with a perfect smile to fix it. 

Anya watches the scene play out. This is the opera of the ages, theatre rivalling the best productions, a tragedy and comedy in the making. Forbidden love. Hidden romance. A daunting tale of epic adventures and cunning debauchery. A game of subterfuge.

She smells the lust that Twilight subtly projects, the interest in the woman, and the fluttery heartbeat from Yor, the nervous pitter-patter and hope. 

The two adults, the spy and the assassin, agree to meet again.

“Good choice,” Twilight tells Anya, patting her head once they’ve gone home. She buries her face in his thigh, tugging at the hem of his blazer. 

Serial killer.

Chapter Text

“He’s going to be late,” Anya says.

Yor blinks, shocked at the sudden appearance of a small child at this hour, outside, then crouches down carefully with her pretty dress and heels. “Anya, right? What are you doing here by yourself? Where’s your father?”

Lying comes easier than telling the truth.

“I don’t know. Father told me he suddenly had to go to work because a patient was having a medical emergency. And I can walk on my home street by myself now! I’m a big girl, Miss Yor,” she replies, cheeky.

There’s a revolt in the Thorn Princess’ mind, a thing of lust and poorly hidden rage. It seeps into the static air of the world of espers, polluting all the little gaps and crevices that make up the foreign realm. It’s too real, too present, and too much.

Anya swallows.

“Oh dear,” Yor says. “The party started a few minutes ago.”

The thoughts in the assassin’s mind are less than pretty, infiltrated by the news of late, late, late, and more perverted thoughts of ripping Loid’s clothes off with her golden blades, skewering him in affection, roasting him over a fire like a proper hog, juiced up and ready to eat. She wants to cut him open for the disrespect then bathe in such a handsome man’s blood – beautiful blood, so perfect and ready to spill to the ground, perhaps on the grass of a park, perfect for a date or two or three–.

“Then I’ll walk with you, Miss Yor!” Anya erupts, holding her fragile little hand out, shivering from the cold. “Father always taught me to make sure pretty women are always happy!”

They debate a bit, Yor obviously protesting against being with a stranger’s child, but the legalities wear down against a silver tongue – and besides, Yor doesn’t actually care about any pretences. It’s all the innate moral training of her appearance leaking outwards, into the public eye. So Anya smiles, curtsies, shines her bright green eyes up into the faint moonlight, and takes the serial killer’s hand into the darkness of the night.

Mother, mommy, mama.

A better woman wouldn’t have let herself be persuaded, but Anya doesn’t need better. She needs a serial killer, an assassin, a murderer with superhuman strength. She needs someone who can crush all the puny bird bones of her hand and rip off her limbs with nary a thought. She needs the woman right next to her, holding her hand, humming a sweet tune from a foreign country, with thoughts as insidious as they are lovely.

As they cross the road to the block where the party is at, Anya hears the whisper of screams and the whiplash of speed.

“Anya?”

The girl points at the speeding trucks to their parallel. “Father’s being chased by a psychotic patient.”

“Eh?!”

Don’t be too late, don’t be too late, keep up a normal image–! But he’s being chased– he needs me? He needs me! I can help. I can c r u s h them, fragile little humans who dare cause this nuisance. Blood, bones, skin, muscle, rip, shred, tear, split, hurt.

Within the next few minutes, there’s an awful commotion where Anya barely registers; the serial killer mama picks her up like a sack of potatoes, speeds through the roads to reach the car chase, and firmly wedges herself (and poor Anya) in between the cars. The vehicle continues on, undaunted by the appearance of two civilians, and Yor slams her nightmare heel into the bonnet. As if gravity itself fears the strength of this woman, the car screeches to a halt, lifts in the back, and then careens sideways off into an industrial brick-lain building.

Anya squirms in the monster-tight grip, a bit afraid.

There’s a cough from behind. All traffic has stopped. “...Miss Yor?”

In the end, they make it to the party only fifteen minutes late. Loid, in a haze, slips up and calls Yor his wife. He’s still awfully banged up due to the car chase and almost failed mission, with blood that isn't his, staining the dark green overcoat. Yor’s heel is utterly destroyed by a combination of foot-meet-car and racing to her friend’s flat, and in a fit of roses and blushes, he carries his now fake wife outside to her doorstep.

Mission success.

The next few days (on a serious time crunch, really) are sped through in a blur. Father and Mother have a long conversation in the living room whilst Anya watches television and scribbles on a drawing pad. 

Then there’s practice for the mighty interview – dates, dinners, operas, afternoon walks – until it’s time.

“A healthy breakfast to start the day,” Twilight charms, effortlessly smiling at his fake wife. There’s nothing in particular on his mind when he’s staring at her, other than a faint melody that Anya can’t quite place. He places the dishes on the table, absently removes a cuddly toy (guilty as charged: a big unicorn toy) warming up one of the chairs, and they begin eating.

Yoghurt. Muesli. Tea. Fruit jams. Bratwurst and cold cuts.

The slimy pink flesh of the salami is cold and flimsy, tearing apart easily in her mouth. She chews longer than necessary, savouring the flavour, then pairs the sausage with lingonberry jam. The blinding red of the fruit stains the shiny char, and a thick glob of lingonberry spills off to the side. Too much jam?

Anya licks her spoon clean, feeling the red penetrate through her tongue in its tart glory. She looks up, and Twilight’s watching her eat again, but this time his mind has settled into a peaceful, serene calm. He’s satisfied. He’s brimming with positive emotion. He’s swelling up inside as she fumbles with the knife and fork against the meat and jam, delivering the meal into bite-sized pieces. She chews and chews, swallows, then looks up to Yor who’s only smiling sweetly at her upon noticing the attention.

Red.

Mother’s thoughts are on a repeat: red, red, red, red, red, red–.

The food is suddenly unappetising, but the growl of hunger in the morning forces her to pick up the utensils and keep going. Lightning sparks down her spine in a dance that makes her whole face feel numb. There are eyes all on her, but the clinking of silverware against porcelain plates drowns out the endless plague of thoughts and Anya can slowly, ever so slowly, go back to enjoying her meal.

“Thank you for the tea, Mother. Thank you for the meal, Father,” she mumbles out, staring at her hands. They look bloody and broken, but after a few blinks they’re right back to normal.

Yor smiles, and a hand that’s faster than light picks up her plate. “Don’t worry about cleaning up, young miss. You should get your uniform on!”

So the girl smiles, waves to Twilight for approval, and darts back into her room, hands clenched over her chest in what feels like fear.

It’s not fear.

The girl in the mirror is smiling with too much teeth and bits of something dark stuck on her gums. Then Anya blinks and her reflection stares back – an empty doll. It’s not a hallucination, but it’s not nothing, so she spends the morning a bit quieter than usual, holding onto a spy and serial killer’s hands whilst walking to school (to curate a better image in front of our neighbours, Twilight had said, ever so demure), captured between a long skirt and overcoat hems. They hold her tightly, afraid that she’ll get swept away in the crowd of student hopefuls, and the touch gingerly fades once in sight of the campus proper. 

From here, affection is less in touch and more in action and words, such as aristocrats do.

It all leads up to the weighted interview – the make or break of admissions.

The interview goes well until it doesn’t.

Twilight, Yor, and Anya all follow the plan of attack perfectly, improvising and never letting any distraction or side-mission affect their performance. The adults think of Anya in mind all the time and the outpour of love and affection could eat her up.

She drowns in the love from Father and Mother. Papa and Mama. Daddy and Mommy.

Even when the love turns sickeningly sweet, heavy and foul, a pungent syrup, permeating the air and polluting her mind. They love her so much that they would kill for her, rip apart her enemies, and rain down blood to anyone that dares bring her harm. 

The beginning of it starts in the middle of the interview proper. A man named Swan. Two horrified teachers. A family, targeted by greed and injustice.

“Now, do you prefer your first or your second mother?”

Anya stares into Mr. Swan’s beady eyes. He stares expectantly at her, huffing and fuming on the inside.

The answer should be obvious. She shouldn’t cry this time, make a fuss, cause any sort of disruption that’ll jeopardise her chances. Her written test scores are strong, but the waiting list is long and any reason can make her drop in the rankings.

The answer is right there.

But Anya looks down, bites her lip, and says, “My second mother has arms to hug me when I’m sad, and my birth mama didn’t– she. She had her arms ripped off in that car crash that took my mama away.” 

Mr. Swan breathes in sharply with a nervous giggle.

Good.

“So I think I choose my second mother, even if it’s for a selfish reason, Mr. Swan – but, I’m sorry, it’s a painful question that you ask me.”

Then she looks up. The teachers are horrified. Mr. Swan might throw up at any second, and Anya tries not to smile. But then the sour mood turns worse when Mr. Swan thinks up any other way to get her disqualified, citing trauma, poor words about her first mother, rude mannerisms,  not crying when speaking of a missed parent, and Anya begins to hate this man.

Hate. It’s a strong word. Ice fills her veins and heat pounds in her brain. He opens his mouth to speak, to dismiss what should not be dismissed, to override the other teachers’ discomfort based on his own weak understanding of how the world works in his selfish weasel brain, and she tries to break through his mental shield to dig as deep as possible. What will hurt this man instead? She digs and digs, piercing through glass layers, popping them like birthday party balloons, enjoying the sound of explosions that nobody else can hear or imagine. 

She’s never wanted to be this cruel before, not even to the scientists, because even they never treated her like an object to be cruel – they wanted education. Their treatment of her was a transaction, in their mind, in search of world peace. This man wants senseless torture. The passion burns, twice as bright as ever before, and something breaks.

These are no longer surface level thoughts. Anya grabs the man’s mind and twists it. 

“I’m very sorry to hear that, Miss Anya, if you’ll excuse my colleague,” Mr. Evans says, with a tight smile. “Moving on to the next question–.”

Mr. Swan’s left arm starts to twitch uncontrollably. Then the left side of his face droops, sags, and melts. Twilight points this out first, with a careful calm, and then the three teachers panic. Mr. Swan tries to speak, but the words come out slurred and unintelligible. 

He’s having a stroke.

Someone rings a bell near the back door, members of Eden’s medical team rushes into the room and carry Mr. Swan out. A new teacher, a short and wrinkly Year 5 sports coach, takes the open examiner’s spot almost immediately and the interview continues with little mention of the events that took place. He was a man of poor health, the coach snipes dismissively, as if to put the Forger family at ease. Cholesterol problems, nothing to worry about, he’ll be alright.

Anya hears Yor’s thoughts of sneaking into his hospital room and slashing out his eyes. It’ll only take a second to cut out each eye… 

On the other hand, Twilight muses on how to get the teacher fired. Indecent behaviour with students. That, or rumours of peaking into the toilets. That will always get a teacher fired, if not arrested, even if he’s the son of the previous headmaster. No, it’s even better if he has known nepotism scandals involved, because then the school will do anything to remove a poor image.

The rest of the interview goes splendidly. Everyone falls back to their scripts, on cue, on time, and does a wonderful job. 

Anya sits in her bed later that night, hardly able to fall asleep. The voices have all grown louder. She can even hear the thoughts of the neighbours from two stories away, now – a radius of twenty metres. It used to be ten.

A stroke. 

She caused a stroke.