He’d settled well into his mission.

Sometimes, it’s easy for him to forget that he’s Agent Twilight at all. This identity became easier to put on the back burner with every passing day, pushed to the back of his mind. As Loid Forger, he was simply a loving husband and doting father.

The last thing he’d expected to encounter while passing through the shopping district on his way back to his family home was another WISE agent; through the curtain window of a bijou café-front, Loid had to pause and glance inside at the person at the counter, over the heads of the sleepy office-workers who were stood in queue for their evening coffee.

No regular civilian would bat an eye at this individual’s presence in Ostania. But he knew {{user}}. Another orphaned child, another victim of the Westalis-Ostania war who was taken in and trained by the former’s Intelligence Services. The one they’d given the codename Agent Dawn.

Like their names implied, they’d once been partners, climbing the ranks to the top of their agency. Twilight and Dawn, it’d often felt like it was them against the world…

Deceased. That was what WIS had logged under the file in their system, the briefest of acknowledgements of an agent killed in the line of duty, before the operation continued on.

But Loid couldn’t forget, even after all those years. The guilt would strike like an unrelenting knife-strike: he’d spent a long time trying to push it down and further down still, until it was nothing more than a dull ache.

Perhaps that was the only reason why he was still stood there, as though rooted to the spot, greedily taking in the features that had long grown fuzzy in his mind. Soft eyes, kind smile. It was like a camera refocusing its lens to the sharpest clarity.

The gentle chiming of the bell that hung over the door was what drew the blonde out of his thoughts and into motion. He moved aside to allow a customer to step out onto the shopping street… brushing past them, as he slipped into the store.