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Cold War (SPYxFAMILY)

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Cold War is a Role Swap AU SPY×FAMILY fic by Pink_Reef.

In a world where Twilight had not undertaken Operation: Strix, It now falls to Nightfall to see the mission through. But she's about to learn the hard way that the role of a mother and wife may be more than she can handle. Especially when the line between necessary lies and genuine feelings begin to blur.

It is still ongoing.


Cold War contains examples of:

  • Adaptational Karma: In canon, the only punishment Murdoch Swan got for his comments towards the Forgers was a punch to the face by Henderson and is shown to still be working at Eden College in spite of his behavior. Here, he still gets punched by Henderson, though gets punched by Fiona first once she hits her Rage Breaking Point regarding his homophobic comments towards the Frost family. This is taken even further when Henderson mentions that the current headmaster used the Frost’s interview as a justified reason to dismiss Swan.
  • Adaptational Nice Girl: Fiona in canon was basically cold-blooded to everyone who wasn't Twilight, was outright hostile towards Yor for defrosting the man she was obsessed with, and Anya's reading of her mind showed that she would have been a harsh Education Mama to her had she been Loid's wife for Operation: Strix. In this fanfic, she undergoes a Defrosting Ice Queen character arc early on that has her growing to genuinely care about Anya's well-being and treat Yor far more kindly than she ever did to anyone who wasn't Loid in canon.
  • Adaptational Secrecy Downgrade: In canon, Loid Forger never finds out that his adopted daughter Anya is a telepath. In this Role Swap AU where Agent Nightfall is picked for Operation: Strix (since Twilight is already on a mission in another country), Fiona starts to get suspicious that Anya declares she is six just as she was thinking she needs a six-years-old to enroll into Eden. After a few tests, Fiona figures out that Anya is a telepath. While concerned about the information leak to point of considering killing Anya, Fiona deems that a telepath will be useful for her mission and chooses to adopt her for Operation: Strix. The author also confirms that Fiona and Yor will eventually find out each other's secret, rather than the Mutual Masquerade between Loid and Yor in the manga.
  • Adaptational Sexuality:
    • Yor is asexual in this fic. Even in her fake marriage with Fiona, she has her moments of getting flustered around her.
    • Becky, who had a Precocious Crush on Loid in canon, develops a crush on Anya instead.
  • Commonality Connection: Agent Nightfall is picked for Operation: Strix and adopts Anya after finding out about her telepathy and deeming her a useful asset. Initially, Fiona found herself annoyed by Anya's antics and mind-reading and originally planned to send her back to the orphanage the moment her mission was done. However, as she learns about Anya's frequent change of families and deduces she was a child experiment, she starts to sympathize with her due to her own Dark and Troubled Past as an orphan sold into possession during the war. It's after Fiona rescues Anya from Edgar, to the point of letting herself get captured with her identity exposed despite her professionalism as a spy, that she realizes the reason she is compromising herself for Anya is because she knew how powerless Anya felt and wanted to prevent anyone from feeling that way when she first became a spy.
  • Composite Character: Agent Nightfall takes Twilight’s place in handling Operation: Strix and the events that come foward from it.
  • Everyone Has Standards: As in canon, Housemaster Henderson holds elegance to the highest degree and is disheartened that so many applicants failed. However, he immediately overruled one colleague's attempt to fail the Frost family on the basis they were a same-sex household, deeming such an act inelegant, especially as despite the general anti-homosexual stigma in the country, it is still legal, and he wants to grade the family on their merits. Also, in a Played for Laughs example from canon, he is terrified to see how Crazy-Prepared the Frost family is.
  • Politically Correct History: Played With. While Westalis is more accepting and aware of different sexualities, Ostania has the typical heteronormative attitude expected from a European country during the Cold War. Same-sex marriage may have been legalized to allow war orphans to be adopted, but these familes are still subject to orchestration and even murder. Fiona is initially against entering a same-sex marriage when she can't bring herself to pretend-marry a man due to her crush on Twilight, as she fears Anya could be targeted and harmed for such marriage, while Yor prefers to hide that she's asexual as she worries the Ostania public would target her like with homosexuality.
  • Pragmatic Pansexuality: Fiona opts to marry a woman as part of her cover because she wouldn't be able to convincingly play the part of a wife in a heterosexual marriage due to Twilight being the only man she could ever love.
  • Rage Breaking Point: In chapter 12, despite Fiona's internal insistence that the Frost family is a temporary act for Operation: Strix, it's clear she's just as infuriated as Yor and Henderson about Housemaster Swan's homophobic comments regarding her and Yor's marriage. Then, Anya starts to cry after she hears Swan say they can't have her spreading the "disease", afraid that she failed Operation: Strix. Swan’s insistence to insult Anya's crying leads Fiona to punch the offending man in the nose before ripping him apart verbally about his hatred and leaving the interview with her family.
  • Role Swap AU: A story where instead of Agent Twilight taking on the mission of Operation: Strix, the role is given to Agent Nightfall.
  • Secret-Keeper: Fiona and Anya are mutual secret keepers of their respective secrets, that the former is a Westalis spy, and the latter is a telepath.
  • You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Fiona reacts this way during the start of the story when she’s informed that Twilight won’t accompany her in Operation: Strix as he’s dealing with another assignment in Hungaria.

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