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He could pinpoint the exact moment it had happened. Half three in the afternoon, on a weekend they’d gone away to the countryside. Not far – just an hour’s drive west into Braedeborg, far away enough from the city with its bright flashing lights, screeching cars, pollution and all the political turmoil that ensued. Somewhere Anya could just be , without having to clamp her hands over her ears to keep the world at bay.
And, it had been at that moment, when the girl was off searching for tadpoles in a pond, that she had emerged from the cottage, dressed in a plain green country frock, with her hair simply done up in a bun with just a few locks framing her face. It was a far cry from the more formal appearances she’d put in recently for the City Hall Ball or Sharon’s birthday bash and yet…as she’d lingered on the doorstep, he became acutely aware of…that odd, terrifying sensation that made him feel like he'd been shot with a stun gun, and the world was spinning, leaving him sick to his stomach.
But by then he knew he could deny it no longer.
Love had slipped in. Not stealthily in the dead of the night, as an intruder bringing with it a chill that turned his blood to ice, as he had so often prepared himself to be greeted by. But, in the middle of the afternoon, filling him with foolish and sentimental warmth at the sight of…her. Her crooked smile, her delightful laughter as Anya burst out of the bushes with her announcement that “Papa, there’s a frog in here!”, whilst she hoisted up a rather disgruntled toad, and the way the sun caught the ruby-red of Yor’s eyes as she looked on at him, as if to say “Look, Loid, look at our daughter! Look at us!”
And Twilight? He hadn’t caught it in time. Too busy he hadn’t noticed. Just as he hadn’t noticed her by his side on that fateful day at the tailor’s—
she had a habit of doing that even now, appearing behind him, as if poised to strike
— But this , whatever this feeling was, had long since been festering in him. It had lodged itself deep within him and made its home there, inside the cavity of his chest, with the roses growing all around it, the thorns just peeking out.
This had not been part of the plan. It didn’t figure in any of his contingency plans either.
But, in all fairness…he had allowed it to happen, hadn’t he? He hadn’t contained it when he should have. Sylvia had warned him about getting too close. Too soft. Going native. Collateral damage. Occupational hazards.
No, he’d ignored all that. He’d let his principles, his rules, all of it slide.
A light touch here and there, holding her hand in public, Yor tensing ever so slightly at the contact — for the sake of the mission.
A kiss stolen in the cottage’s stone kitchen that morning, her lips warm, soft and everything he had expected and yet entirely... new , foreign, to him — for the sake of the mission.
The night they planned to spend together…
He swallowed thickly; thumbed at his shirt cuff.
He could, perhaps, admit this to himself.
But as Twilight stared at himself in the reflection afforded by the pond and the setting sun and Loid stared back, he knew then.
He could tell no one.