Powerlessly Watching You Leave | Near x reader

7 Years Later: Your Name

author's note

this was supposed to be longer, cuz it had also Near's pov but i decided to divide it in two because Near's part didn't convince me and it felt like an eternity since the the last chapter loll enjoyy

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The sun had not yet decided to make its appearance on the second-to-last day of your mission, as a kind of premonition for the dark hours you were going to go through in a few minutes.

Although it was not even four o'clock in the morning local time, you were already up and about, pacing back and forth in the living room - which was also your bedroom and main operational base - of the small studio apartment you had been occupying for a couple of months.

It was much less cosy and spacious than the others, so much so that it gave you a lot of trouble in setting up the necessary equipment for communication with your counterpart and, as in that case of extreme urgency, your agency. The table was too small to support the various devices. You always ended up tripping over some cable and had to be careful about swearing as you risked being overheard by your excessively close neighbours. You'd bought a power strip to compensate for the lack of sockets, but it was never enough, because the few hours of electricity you were able to enjoy didn't even allow you to charge your phone at more than 60%.

Electricity had been a problem right from the start, but it had been bearable at first, because it was down just a few hours to the end of the day, resuming almost immediately the next morning. Therefore, you only had to plug it in before going to bed, without any worries.

However, as the years passed, the situation had become more critical and, from the information they had given you, it was not a national problem, but only a local one. It was obviously an attack. It was not clear whether it was aimed at the minority who inhabited the border – an act of oppression against them, so as to stir up the rival government – or at possible spies the government thought were there, given that surveillance activity had increased dramatically from the typical armed guards posted at the border to at least two soldiers every 100 metres, patrolling the streets day and night.

It went without saying that communication with the outside world had become complicated and, when you were unresponsive for several days, there was the constant fear that one of the two worst-case scenarios had become reality: you had either been caught or war (civil for the country you were in, since it did not fully recognise the sovereignty of the neighbouring state) was imminent.

Fortunately, none of this had manifested itself; just a personal chronic fatigue that you carried due to the ungodly hours you had to stay awake for more coverage, ending up with little sleep. Sleep that you could not recover afterwards, because you had to interact with the community in which you had settled, so as not to arouse any suspicion. You had to show yourself to be active, participating and awake, because you could not allow the guards to wonder why you were staying up, linking it to the functioning of the network and, from there, to various hypotheses.

Sometimes, when it was obvious that you were about to collapse and they asked you questions, you blamed your beloved little son, who had a habit of crying and being hungry in the middle of the night. If they inquired where he was, you would answer with your dear mother. It worked most of the time and they let you go without checking, but it happened that they wanted to do that. You would not be intimidated and would accompany them to the flat where you were staying with your field worker and her son. You would pass the test with flying colours. Neither one of you was breaking a sweat, accustomed to putting on similar show since the dawn of time, and the child was quite busy playing, unaware of why two armed individuals were visiting that stranger he had met at the age of one and had come to consider as his real parent.