Barry uncurled gingerly from around the little girl in his arms, got his feet under him, and staggered away from the remains of the craft he'd escaped in. After several steps, he went back and, one-handed, rigged it to explode. He wasn't sure if there was any pursuit, but one more scar in the earth would mean nothing. Letting anyone find the vehicle itself could be deadly.

Lucrezia was gone - he hoped. Bill was dead. Europe was ruined. And he was in some wasteland with the three-year-old daughter Lucrezia had meant to live on through.

"Agatha," he said.

The craft blew, behind them, and Agatha looked interestedly over his shoulder. "Woge-ze?"

The three-year-old who only spoke the Geister tongue. Of which he'd only picked up a bit, by skulking around them, himself. He suddenly felt unutterably weary. "Time for you to learn Romanian, little one," he said, and then repeated it as well as he could in their language.

Barry started walking.

Agatha was mostly a cheerful child and obviously brilliant. She reciprocated his attempts to teach her Romanian by patiently trying to teach him more of the Geister language, and his stomach twisted when he understood that she'd been asking when she would see some of the priestesses again. He was fairly sure at least one of the names belonged to someone he'd killed.

He told her never.

She asked again, as if she thought one of them had misunderstood something.

When there was no more room for confusion, she threw a screaming fit and then didn't speak to him for two days.

Agatha only tried to run away from him twice, and Barry was deeply grateful it wasn't more. The second time his heart almost stopped when he saw she'd come close to a half-buried hive engine. He destroyed it and then carried her through the night and the next day until his feet burned and he finally gave out from exhaustion, and then he sat up with her far into the next night, holding her close, talking over her head. He wasn't sure whether to hope she understood or remembered anything he told her, but the words wouldn't stop coming.

Whatever she did or didn't understand, her spirits recovered with surprising speed. Certainly faster than Barry's. He tried to be cheerful for her, remembering how Bill's dark moods and silence had weighed on him. He didn't think a pretense - if Bill had been capable of one - would really have helped, but then, he wasn't a child.

He avoided people and towns when he could, but they stopped at the occasional village to trade work for supplies. He didn't tell people he was Barry Heterodyne. For one thing, they'd have wanted to know where Bill was, and for another he still wasn't sure who might be looking for him, Geisterdamen or humans, and it was probably safer for everyone if they never knew. Ideally they wouldn't even remember him... so he didn't do Spark-work, either, unless there was a problem it was really needed to solve, and then he mostly tried to hide it.

Months later, he reached the mountains near Mechanicsburg, and that was when he heard that Baron Wulfenbach was planning to invade it.

On the face of it, this seemed unlikely on several counts. Klaus had disappeared more than six years ago. No, Barry corrected himself, he'd lost track of time somewhat. Almost eight years ago now. They'd hoped he would come back, they'd searched for him, but they'd never picked up a trail or so much as a rumour and they'd eventually concluded that he had probably run into worse trouble than even he could handle. Since finding out Lucrezia's actual plans, it had occurred to Barry with increasing frequency and discomfort that she had been their only source of information on Klaus's decision to go traveling alone, but that didn't exactly seem to make his survival more probable.

And if Klaus was alive, why in the world would he invade Mechanicsburg? (And how?) The only thing that would make the town happier than Klaus showing up was getting their Heterodynes back, and given Barry was going to have to tell them Bill was dead, Klaus would probably have a less dampening effect.

He sought out more information as he got closer, despite the greater risk of being recognized. Klaus had shown up months, maybe only weeks after he and Bill set off for outer space. Klaus had rebuilt his own town (Barry winced - he hadn't heard it needed it until then) and proclaimed he'd conquer anyone who attacked it, which was plausible as a fit of temper and which various neighbors had unsurprisingly taken as an invitation. Klaus was now planning to take over the rest of Europe in successively larger radii. Barry wasn't sure what was actually going on, but he obviously needed to be in Mechanicsburg himself.

Everything seemed to be okay when he got there, or rather, no worse than when he'd left. It was quiet. The farmers were farming. There were no encampments outside the walls, and thin but steady streams of traffic tramped through the various gates. There was a rather heavily armed airship with a winged Wulfenbach sigil floating on the near side of town, but that wasn't automatically alarming - wait. Barry paused, blinked, and looked at that again as he noticed something odd about the top of it. Was that a garden?

The airship wasn't, in fact, on the near side of town. It was farther off, and once he processed the perspective correctly, he was pretty sure it was long enough to stretch across the entire town. That wasn't just a dirigible; it was a floating city itself. How in the world had Klaus...

Several minutes later, Barry shook himself out of an analytical reverie. He stowed his binoculars, hoisted Agatha into his arms (she gave a put-upon sigh: she wanted to walk), and walked down to the road and into town. There was actually quite a bit of traffic. Most was probably local trade, but there were even a handful of tourists already. A couple of people looked twice, but he could almost see them dismiss the idea that a single travel-worn man with a child was one of the missing Heterodyne Boys. One of the great gargoyles by the gate started to turn its head, and he looked up and put a finger to his lips.

Once he got properly into town, everyone who lived there recognized him regardless of how self-effacing he tried to be. He met their eyes, as many as he could, trying to make it clear that he didn't want a fuss yet; and they kept quiet for now and directed him, with subtle head and eye movements of their own, always toward the same part of town. All right then.

When he got to the square, two things struck him. The first was actually the looming statue of himself and Bill, which had not been there when he left - ten feet tall, smiling and laughing and both giving the thumbs-up signal, on a pedestal which had for some reason been emblazoned with the words "We'll be back - cancel the milk." These had in fact been Barry's last words before their departure, and he'd hoped even the weak flippancy would be encouraging, in lieu of being able to think of anything inspirational. Seeing them immortalised was a bit strange.

The second was Klaus, talking to General Khrizhan (who was, like everyone else in town, dutifully pretending not to notice Barry) and gesturing with a book held in one hand and definitely alive.

Definitely alive. Barry shut his eyes for a moment, feeling this was one of the nicest things the universe had done in the past four years. Then he strolled up behind Klaus, taking a deep breath and expanding himself into the kind of body language that belonged to being a Heterodyne Boy rather than an inconspicuous traveler, and clapped his old friend on the shoulder. "So I'm told you're trying to take over my town."

"Hoy!" General Khrizhan protested, although he was grinning gigantically. "Ve vas havink a polite chat."

Klaus whirled and stared at him, tried to say something, sputtered instead, and then actually did manage to say, "Where have you been?" He gestured with the book as if thinking of throwing it at Barry. "Everyone said you were dead. Where's Bill?"

Barry flinched. At the words, not the book. "Bill is dead," he said, his voice low and flat but carrying. The rushing murmur of the crowd went silent and bleak. He hadn't said it before, not out loud, and he had to swallow twice before he could go on. "So is Lucrezia. This is their daughter Agatha."

Klaus swallowed too, gaze going flat for a moment. He looked down at Agatha, who squirmed around to look back at him. "I see." He held out the book to Barry, this time inviting him to take it rather than threatening to throw it at him.

The title was Raise a Child Alive. Well, that was interesting. Barry regarded it for a second and then accepted it. "Thank you. Where have you been? We could never find any sign."

"Skifander." Klaus sounded wistful, as if he'd rather like to be back there. "Lucrezia's doing," he added, and that he sounded embarrassed about.

"Long story, I'm guessing." Barry indicated Castle Heterodyne. "I'd invite you in to exchange them, but at last check my house was incoherently murderous so I think we'd have to start by finding a decent set of tools and a babysitter."

"My house is available, if you'd prefer," Klaus said, gesturing up at the hovering airship.

Barry looked at it thoughtfully. If he seriously thought Klaus was getting carried away with some scheme of conquest, going on board his airship - let alone with Agatha - was of course the last thing he should do. "Sure," he said, "but I hope your steering's improved."

Klaus gave him a look. "Don't worry. This one doesn't land," he said, drily.

"Well, that's a creative way around the problem." Barry took a steadying breath. This was hardly the time for jokes. "I should talk to Carson first, though."

Klaus swallowed again. "Carson's dead." Then he frowned, eyebrows pinching together. "I was told he died the night the Castle was attacked. But I'd assume you'd know if that was the case."

Barry's eyebrows rose slowly, and his eyes flicked momentarily up to the silent looming general. "He was alive and coordinating the rescue efforts when we got back, and still fine when we left. As much as any of us were, anyway. His son-" His jaw tightened, and his fingers curled around Raise a Child Alive. "There are probably bits of him in the crypt with little Klaus. They told you the seneschal died, didn't they."

Klaus buried his forehead in one hand. "Yes, they did. I really should have known better than to take anything at face value in Mechanicsburg."

"Sorry," Barry said. As if Klaus hadn't come back to enough bad news. "I'm not quite sure what the point was, but unless something happened to him in the past few years I'm sure he'll turn up."

"Your friendship is not quite sufficient reason to tell him all the family's secrets," Carson said, from practically at his elbow. "At least not for me to do it. Welcome back. Lord Heterodyne."

Barry closed his eyes and sighed, long and slow, through his nose. Agatha was obviously too young to inherit right now, even assuming Lucrezia and the Geisterdamen hadn't had a chance to complete their plans. "Give the tourists a chance to get out of town before you ring the Doom Bell." Especially more than once.

"I know my job," Carson said simply. "They'll have plenty of time while you repair the Castle. Popular as you are, there may yet be people outside the walls who'd be overexcited to hear you're home."

"Don't I know it," Barry muttered. "Don't worry. I know mine, too."

Klaus led the way through Castle Wulfenbach, currently a web of girders, full of people working on making it more than that. Sound echoed, metallic thumps and workmen calling to one another. Agatha was squirming in Barry's arms, trying to look over the side of the catwalk they were on. The one finished area was perched ahead of them like a steel box, and Klaus walked a little faster. Inside was a small hallway, branching off on one side into his study, bedroom and laboratory. The other side contained the school.

Barry was looking around with quite as much curiosity as Agatha and presumably a lot more analysis. Based on past experience, Klaus assumed that by the time they reached the finished area, Barry would have about twenty ideas for improvements (half of which Klaus had thought of himself but couldn't implement yet) and know at least seven ways to cause utter mayhem and possibly crash the dirigible by yanking on a mechanism or throwing a small object. It would be more if Klaus had less practice doing that himself.

As they entered the finished area, Von Pinn - whom Klaus had first spoken to a week ago, and whom he had just yesterday deemed in sufficient control of herself to come aboard and meet the students - appeared in the doorway to the school like a guardian demon. She stiffened, staring at Barry. No. At Agatha.

Barry stopped walking with an expression of shock. "Madame Von Pinn." He shot Klaus a look of frantic inquiry, then returned his eyes to the rigid construct in black leather. "You look, ah, better than I was expecting."

"Master Barry," she said, her eyes still on Agatha. "This is Lucrezia's child?"

Barry's arms tightened very slightly. "Yes, she-"

"Yes, I am," Agatha said at the same time. "Did you know my mother, Madame Von Pinn?"

Von Pinn hissed slightly. "Yes. I was charged with the protection of her child." She tipped her head back to meet Barry's eyes. "She is mine to care for." There was a note of pleading to her tone and Klaus winced. He wasn't sure Von Pinn could handle being denied a second chance to fulfil her purpose without breaking. Lucrezia had, he thought, rather overdone it with implanting a need to fulfil a purpose.

"I don't remember her," Agatha said, her voice remarkably wistful for a child who couldn't be more than four. "The-" here she said something that sounded like gibberish but clearly wasn't meant to be. "-Just told me about her."

Barry inhaled slowly. "I'll have to come get her again later," he said, without taking his eyes off Von Pinn, "but perhaps the two of you should get to know each other." Klaus could practically see the effort of will it took to extend Agatha toward her, but Agatha held out her arms and then was suddenly in Von Pinn's.

"I can walk," Agatha said, in the tones of one who had explained something many times and didn't expect anyone to listen, but was still trying to be polite about it.

"Once we are inside you can walk all you like," Von Pinn answered. She nodded at Barry. "Thank you." Her disappearance into the school was followed by a babble of young voices as the other children responded to a new arrival.

"Thank you," Klaus said, echoing her last words. "Agatha will be perfectly safe with her."

Barry let out an unsteady sigh. "I'll trust your judgement on her - and I'm impressed you got her calmed down - but we really need to talk." He gestured to the study and followed Klaus in, then said, very quietly, "Everybody here honestly thinks Lucrezia was kidnapped, but she left. She was the Other. I took Agatha away from the Geisterdamen not even a year ago."

Klaus stood stock still for a moment and then let out a breath between his teeth. When he'd last seen Lucrezia she'd been insisting that she was, in her own way, going to try being good. Her own way including shipping inconvenient temptations to Skifander. He'd guessed she wouldn't manage it; he hadn't guessed she'd fail so spectacularly. Had she been lying from the start? Why lie to someone you were about to poison? "I never imagined she was that powerful," he said, head swirling with too many emotions for him to manage a less dispassionate response while remaining coherent. Memories of her standing over him, gloating. Memories of her laughing with Bill over the latest stupid novel. "I can see the stylistic similarities, now I know what to look for."

Barry leaned against the wall, arms folded, and let his head fall back against it with a dull thunk. "We didn't actually figure it out until we caught up with her. Bill - I don't even know what Bill thought. He hadn't exactly been himself for a while, but... you remember we kidded them about how they'd die making out somewhere that was exploding..." Barry's voice failed on the last syllable, though his lips finished the word.

Klaus patted his shoulder, feeling helpless and overwhelmed by his own grief for Bill. And, annoyingly, for Lucrezia as well. He didn't want to feel anything for her but anger and resentment, but while he was feeling plenty of both he was also remembering too many times when the four of them had been together. "Did he know about Agatha?"

Barry brought his hand up blindly to grip Klaus's wrist. "Lucrezia mentioned her. That's why I went to the Geisterdamen." A wince. "She apparently had plans to copy her mind over Agatha's."

Klaus's hand tightened on Barry's shoulder. "I take it you found her before that happened."

Barry swallowed. "I really hope so."

Klaus shuddered, for a moment regretting that he'd sent Agatha with Von Pinn. She was in a room with his son. "I see."

Barry focused again and straightened up, without shaking Klaus's hand off. "I'm... nearly sure, really," he said, more crisply. "I can't see Lucrezia having any great urge to relive childhood, let alone infancy, and as far as I could gather she gave birth among the Geisterdamen and promptly took off to, uh, rain boulders and hive engines down on Europe. I didn't find anything that resembled the mind-transfer equipment in Castle Heterodyne, and Agatha's..." He trailed off and sighed. "A real sweetheart, mostly. I mean, she's got a temper, but if anything she's calmer and happier than I'd expect. Considering I basically kidnapped her from the only people she knew, all of whom adored her absolutely even if they did mean to overwrite her brain one day. But it's not like I actually know what Lucrezia would be like transplanted into a toddler." He held up the book Klaus had handed him. "Please tell me yours sounds that precocious?"

Klaus hesitated. "He died once," he said, also looking at the book. Once had been one time too many. "There's amnesia. He's precocious enough to be compensating for it by picking things up fast, but I'm not even sure how to measure his development at this stage."

"Oh." Barry was silent for a moment, looking at Klaus, jarred out of his own worries. "I'm sorry. I'm glad you managed to bring him back, though." Simple, heartfelt, and utterly unconcerned about the possibility that it sounded inane. "Ah... did someone attack him? Is that why you're not in Skifander?"

"He has a twin sister. They don't like twins, apparently." Klaus sighed. "And if I'm going to raise a child in Europe I'm going to fix it first."

"I see." Barry's tone was worryingly like the one that had come out of Klaus's own mouth over Barry hoping Agatha wasn't actually a miniature Lucrezia. Suspiciously neutral. "Tall order."

Klaus looked at him impatiently. "I know you always thought that with the monsters cleared out people could rule themselves. But it turns out that they can't. With the Other gone they either grabbed for power or ran around panicking. I started out trying to protect my home, but there's no way to do that without being willing to take down attackers. And then I owe it to the places I've taken to protect them as well. If the only way to clean up Europe is to own it, then I will do that. And I will make it work."

"Klaus," Barry said, looking... so honestly concerned that it was difficult to resent, "you do remember hating politics, right?"

Klaus snorted. "I don't like getting invaded either. I don't suppose I could convince you to do the political part?"

Barry rubbed a hand over the side of his face. "Did you just ask me to help you conquer Europe?"

"No," said Klaus, starting to find this funny and rather feeling he shouldn't. "I asked you to help run Europe after I've conquered it."

"Oh, okay. You're proposing to be the next Storm King with a Heterodyne as your chief minister. Much better. I admit, you've definitely come up with a version none of my ancestors would have signed on for." He reached up and took Klaus by the shoulders; Klaus half expected to be shaken, but Barry just stared into his eyes for a long moment instead, then sighed. "Only you," he muttered, "could be planning to conquer Europe from an airship city and still come across as grounded."

"Despite appearances I'm being practical," said Klaus, not sure whether to be indignant or amused that Barry had thought he might be in a fugue state. "If you've been travelling on foot you must have seen what a mess everything is. And if I know you, you don't intend to just let it stay that way."

Barry looked guilty at that, which was unsettling: Klaus felt an undefined jolt of triumph, even though it wasn't a reaction he'd meant to evoke, and a simultaneous sense that the world was the wrong way up. "No," Barry said after a moment. "But I admit I haven't got far thinking of how."

Klaus backed off slightly. "You don't have to do things my way. But we could accomplish more working together."

"Well, that's basically always true." The smile Barry flashed then was a shadow of what it used to be. But it was still nice to see and hear, especially given what Klaus was proposing. "I've been listening. I actually do have an idea how many people asked you to do this," he said seriously. "And how many were figuratively asking for it, too. But it's not as if anybody else appreciates being invaded either." A wry look. "Speaking of which. You obviously know pretty much everybody in Mechanicsburg likes you. I don't think they'd have put up with this from anybody else."

"Even if Carson evidently felt the need to pretend to be dead," Klaus said. He decided not to bring up the deal he'd been making with the Jägers; Barry was likely to be even less happy about Klaus's plans if they were involved. "I was fairly confident they wouldn't attack me, at least."

"Carson also told everybody else to go along with you. I hear you're good for tourism." Barry sighed. "But seriously, this is an ongoing moral and practical problem with your plan. Mechanicsburg, like I said, likes you. And saw advantages to joining your new empire, even if they were a little annoyed. But how many places have you pushed into it, that didn't attack you? And how many do you think you will?"

"I do ask." Klaus sighed. "There probably will be times when I have to choose between leaving someone known to be dangerous inside my borders because they haven't attacked me yet or pushing them to say yes. I don't have either your charisma or your ability to be taken seriously due to several generations proving it's a bad idea not to take your family seriously." He eyed Barry speculatively. "If you can convince people to rule themselves in a sensible manner and not attack anyone I'd be more than happy to leave them to it. As you pointed out, I really do hate politics."

"Generally speaking, anybody you've got surrounded is probably going to be twitchy regardless." Barry paced over to take a seat in front of Klaus's desk and propped his elbow on it, evidently reading upside-down Klaus's notes on the map that lay there. "You may have more politics but also less administration and less resentment if you ask for allies." He considered. "And it's not that much more politics, if you're mostly not removing rulers anyway."

Klaus sat down across from him. "At which point the question becomes 'allies in doing what?' Agreements not to attack each other would be a good start. Agreements to contribute to infrastructure might be harder to obtain." He quirked an eyebrow at Barry. "I assume you wouldn't object to taking people who mistreat their subjects out of power. You never did before."

"We did usually try to get them to stop first," Barry pointed out. This had been the topic of a number of past heated arguments. Even assuming the reform was real, heartfelt, and not based on fear of the Heterodyne Boys stopping by again to make a mess of things, Klaus thought it was frequently unfair to leave everyone stuck with the same person who'd been abusing them. In some cases he'd won the argument and they had quite literally removed the offending ruler. "But no."

Klaus looked down at the paperwork. "I did like your way of doing things. But it took twenty years to have anything much to show for it, and everything was undone in five. I'm out of patience for doing things the long way."

"It didn't even take five." Barry looked pensive. "I always hated it when people asked us to take over. Of course, in this case that would hardly have helped hold things together any longer. But I admit it wasn't mostly a philosophical objection."

"If it helps, I don't think anyone ever asked your ancestors to take over."

Barry snorted. "Not likely. If they did, I can't imagine it went well." He drummed his fingers on the desk, then looked up at Klaus and held out a hand. "About the last thing I want to do is fight you, you know."

It was strange to be viewed as someone Barry thought he might have to fight. Klaus had to remind himself that for all his good intentions he was, in fact, a Spark bent on conquest. "I don't want that either," he said. He took Barry's hand feeling that this was, in some way, an agreement not to do things too far from what Barry would approve of. "I'm willing to try for alliances. Will you be helping with that?" Even if things were different, even if he had taken the lead this time, he wanted Barry to stay.

"No, Klaus, I thought I'd push you to do things the hard way and then hole up in Mechanicsburg and not help," Barry said. "Of course I will."

Klaus smiled, feeling the sarcasm was probably a good sign. Barry had seemed so worn. "I'll help with Mechanicsburg too, if you like. Your Castle needs fixing before it eats anymore TPU teams."

Barry blinked. "Before it what? Why did anybody go in?" He stopped and covered his eyes. "Why do I even ask questions like that? Yes, thank you. There's nobody I'd rather have along."