“I’ll come home soon.”
“Daddy, can mommy come home now? I miss her.”
It was just a regular world.
There were no fantasy creatures soaring in the sky, no mystical ships covered in ghostly fire and demon barnacles roaming the sea, and definitely no otherworldly creature living daily lives in a modern day setting. Rest assured.
It really was just a normal city with a normal life and a normal universe.
In this reality, there was a tall man in a long jacket who held onto a briefcase and his hat in one hand. He looked down at the girl who was standing in the doorway of a little house. She could be seen clenching at the hem of his long coat, clutching her favorite rabbit doll with mismatching button eyes on top of her polka-dot dress.
The tall man smiled at the little girl with love.
“Sorry, sweetie, mommy and daddy can't be seen together, even in the same room, or else we'll get into a lot of trouble. So once I head out to Spain for work, she'll come right back home and see you, okay?"
“...Why can't anyone see you with mommy in the same room... Do you hate her?"
"No, no, no. I love your mother. It's just that she works for the CIA and I'm Russian Intelligence. Technically, it would be an international crisis if someone from either one of our agencies saw us holding hands like highschool lovers."
"........What's Cia? Is she going to be my new baby sister?"
"... C-I-A."
"But I want mommy...uuuh."
The little girl in the polka dot dress gave a small pout. It wasn't one a spoiled little ankle-biter would give to their parents, to egg them into buying an expensive cereal that tasted exactly the same as a regular dollar-store cereal (read: cardboard taste). It was the face a child would make, in hopes to convince their parents to stop fighting with each other and love her.
A different kind of spoiled.
"...S...sweetie don't look at me like that. I-I may have had experiencing in surviving hardcore interrogations from nations I can't say out loud right now, b-but I am totally defenseless to your cute eyes. D-don't be like that, please?"
"... Will Mommy be back to fix Mr. Booboo?"
"I wish she could come back and fix my Booboo...Sigh."
"... ???"
The tall man in holding the briefcase let out a sigh. He made an off handed remark that no children should ever hear, but maybe he was confident in how pure his child was he didn't think twice in slipping in a double entendre. It wasn't like she was like the other children in his neighborhood who spend 24/7 on their phones playing with violent games where their avatars were dropped in an island and had to build things while shooting at others...
".......Reminds me of that time in Borneo...That was a total f**kfest."
"...What's a f--"
"Food. D-Daddy said Foodfest... D-don't slur your words, or-or Mommy will definitely do more than smack me with a hammer and phonebook!"
The little girl stared at the one she called her father, her head tilting. The angle of her head matched the way she stood in her dress while holding her dolling in her bosom, that the tall man could not resist but taking photos of the little girl with his wristwatch...
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
...The one that was capable of overhearing conversations behind a wall, project a holoraphic map linked with an orbiting satellite, as well as a high speed camera that could take over 1000 photos with high definition graphics and a maximum range of 100 meters.
1000 photos later, the tall man straightened his collar and cleared his throat.
"Are you going now, Daddy?"
"Yes. Daddy has to intercept a bad man who is on his way to Spain to sell valuable intelligence to a Weapons Cartel hiding in France. If Daddy misses his flight, he'll have to sign a cr*p ton of paper before he can use a supersonic military jet... sigh."
"Will Mommy come back home? Will she bring back a new baby sister for me to play with?"
"... N-now, as much as Daddy is happy and ready to make a baby with Mommy, ahem, now is not the time. Our nations are staring each other in the face with guns drawn, one wrong move and they could start hitting each other for no reason. It's super stressful to hide the fact we're into our 5 years of marriage, otherwise a big bad war may start. The last thing we want to see is our organizations blowing each other up in the face."
"Uwa, uwa, uwa...So scary..."
"Don't worry, pumpkin. Mommy and Daddy will work very hard to make sure our idiot nations don't slap each other with ballistic missiles. Our house is in the middle of Canada between their maximum range of attack, that would mean you would get caught in the crossfire."
“Do missiles hurt, daddy?”
“Definitely more than pulling a bandaid."
"Uwa-uwa-uwa."
"Fear not, my little princess. Mommy should be done dismantling some my nations ICBM and substituting with pinball machine parts to render them useless. If that is the case, then it will be my turn to intercept the shipment of black market weaponry from reaching rogue parties in my nations..."
"..............Will daddy be okay?"
"Yes, of course. Daddy is a professional Russian Operative. He was trained to be able to drink Vodka while dodging a machine gun... However, I can't say the same for the people I'm going to meet in three hours...Hmm."
The little girl with the polka-dot dress gave a small node, her silky hair and the ears of her rabbit doll nodding. Unable to resist, the tall man took off his travelling hat and put it on her head.
He wasn't giving it to her like a momento between a cowboy and the young protagonist of a Wild West Film.
The fedora hat had the ability to make a holographic recording of the person wearing it, which could be re-purposed to act as a projected clone to draw fire, confirm alibi, as well as acquiring enough information to fool state-of-the-art biometric scans.
It was also convenient enough to photocopy his own daughter, so he could adore her cute features while fighting rogue organizations.
Much like how parents keep a picture of their children as the background on their phones.
To make sure the recording went smoothly, he projected a blue-colored copy of his own daughter, doing that same cute nod that made her hair and rabbit doll ears sway.
“Oh! My baby sister is born! Is she Cia?”
“Ha, ha, ha. You’re so cute.”
The tall man leaned over to pat the girl on the head. She must have been close to him, because she enjoyed his gesture like a cat to a warm hand. She even purred. The tall man went 'HNNNNNNG' and wanted to call his agency to cancel his covert operation altogether... but by the time he was halfway in typing in the secret code to contact said agency, he thought about his wife's feeling.
He was a professional. He had to act like one... even as a doting parent.
“… Well. I should be heading out now. It would be too mean for me to hold up mommy from petting you like this. She’s probably hiding in a tree taking pictures with a hummingbird drone of you nodding like a Russian Doll right now. So you be a good girl and listen to mommy while I'm at work, okay? And don’t talk to strangers.”
“Nnn. If mommy tells me to kick the man in the legs, I’ll kick him in the legs.”
“Ha-ha! That’s my pumpkin pie!”
The tall man ended up patting the little girl on the head with both hands. totally leaving the briefcase carrying the parts for his compact Dragunov sniper and an onboard machine gun completely vulnerable on the street. After giving more goodbyes than he should allow within his timeslot, the little girl watch him get into a taxi he 'borrowed' this morning and drove away.
The second the tall man disappeared around the corner, a young woman is mix-matching US Navy Seals uniform slide down on a military grade rappel and swallowed her daughter up in a great big bear hug. The little girl nearly drowned into woman's bosom, covered in a high-grade bullet-proof vest.
“UWa! Mommy is back! Mommy is back! Did you punish the badmen who were going to do bad stuff in Coco Rita?...Heh? Costa…Co…Coos…Hey! Mommy, mommy! I want a little sister, and she has to be called C-I-A!”
Although the life of a spy trying to raise their lovely family can be difficult, almost impossible, the road to normal happiness could easily be found with enough political loopholes and compromise...Yes...cough.
... None of this ever happen. You heard nothing.