This pony is for Helen1969, who dared to have a thought, and oh, how it preyed upon my mind. (Also, this story kind of goes with 'The Days After'…)

What Cannot Be Turned

O God! that one might read the book of fate - William Shakespeare (Henry IV)

Fate, when it finally came knocking at his door, turned out to be disappointingly anticlimactic.

He'd always thought, in those cold dim awakenings when his past preyed on his mind in the cool dark of the night, that it would sound like bells ringing. The approach of doom should always sound like bells ringing, since the opening up of Hell was never going to be quiet. But when it came it only knocked – a gentle kind of rapping that gave no warning of what waited patiently on the other side of the door. And Harlock, as he rose to open it, felt only the vague kind of unease that accompanied all visitors at the door in the hours after sundown.

The rapping came again, insistent now, as though the unseen knocker at the door was worried that the summons would not be answered, or that the occupants of the house might be disinclined to open up. It was maybe this that tipped Harlock's unease towards concern as he stood undecided by the fire, with his hand moving of its own accord beneath the woollen homespun of his tunic. He glanced at his wife where she sat watchful by the fire, glad that the boy was already in bed, and unclipped the safety from the weapon that he wore habitually at his hip.

'Frank,' she said, her lips pale in the light and the fire reflecting red in the deep brown of her hair. She sat alert in her chair, her knuckles showing white in the curled fists of her hands. A decade of hiding will do that to you, he thought to himself with regret, sorry he'd ever dragged her into it.

'It won't be anything,' he said with what he hoped was conviction. 'Just a traveller, lost in the night.' But his hand closed tighter around his weapon as he smiled away her concern.

The knocking came again, harder and louder and gratingly insistent, and Ilse rose from her chair to stand beside him, one hand brushing lightly at his arm as the knocking cracked apart the cool quiet of the night. Harlock glared at the battered timber of the door, thinking only that the knocking would awaken the boy, and that if this was doom approaching then he didn't want his son to see it.

He strode to the door, the rapping silent now, as though the invisible knocker had sensed his approach, and when Harlock swung the door wide upon on its hinges he found them there, spaced exactly two steps apart on the edge of the dusty porch, with their hands conspicuously away from their weapons and folded officiously behind their backs.

Harlock loomed large in the doorjamb and stared at them, his dark eyes obscured beneath the hanging fringe of his hair, and the tight curve of his mouth hidden beneath the chestnut brush of his moustache. There were two of them, the confidence in their faces melting slowly in the blood red glare of Helia's single moon as they stared at him, wondering perhaps if they had come to the wrong place after all. But then one of them, the male, caught sight of the scar beneath Harlock's falling hair and the confidence returned to his narrow face along with the self-satisfied smirk of a man for whom promotion was now a mere formality, and he couldn't wait to get to a warp feed and tell his mother.

'Commander,' the narrow face said to him, no hesitation lingering in his expression now. His chin brushed the high collar of his Coalition uniform as he spoke, his lieutenants bars bolted tight to the stiff blue leather of his tunic and shining gold in the reflected light of the moon. 'As per Item 9 Section 34 of the Gaia Special Services Act, your discharge has been revoked and you are hereby re-enlisted as per Item 12 Section – '

'I don't need you to quote Section at me,' Harlock said, cutting off Narrow-face's well-rehearsed speech before it could reach its unwanted crescendo. His gaze took in the female lieutenant that stood by Narrow-face's side, the woman twice the size of her companion and her hand now moved closer to her pistol, her slate grey eyes fixed on Harlock's hand where it rested on the butt of his dragoon. Harlock's mouth quirked beneath his moustache, disbelieving that she could possibly be that stupid. 'I wouldn't try it, lieutenant,' he said, with his hand fixed tight to his weapon.

She smirked crookedly back at him, and indicated the darkness beyond the porch with a jerk of her head. He raked the amber night with his eyes, saw shadows crouched amongst the vines, heard the unmistakeable sound of weapons being primed. Harlock's lips twitched with disgust. He was getting rusty. And old. Ten years of coaxing life out of the dead earth had made him dull, and he should have known they wouldn't send two lieutenants in like this on their own.

The woman's smirk expanded, her hand moving away from her weapon and settling itself behind her back again. The perfect soldier. At ease. 'Don't test us, Commander,' she breathed, the femininity of her voice at odds with the muscular breadth of her. 'Not with your wife and child in the house.'

Harlock didn't smile at that, his hand lowering from his gun to hang itching at his side. 'What do you want.'

Narrow-face cast his rodent eyes around the obstacle that Harlock presented in the frame of the door. 'May we come in to discuss it,' he inquired politely. 'Wouldn't want the enlisted men to overhear.'

Harlock stared at him, grazed his eyes across the contours of the thin face, vaguely insulted that the Council had sent somebody as useless as this thin, pompous, piece of shit to bring him in. He briefly considered shooting the lieutenant where he stood, since the Council had marked him as disposable by the simple dint of sending him in first, but then Harlock would have to deal with the woman, and the cadre that crouched among his crop. And he had Ilse and his son to consider, and what good would it do to have Fate catch up with them now when he'd been trying so hard and for so long to avoid it. Harlock moved aside, trying not to breathe as the lieutenants stepped across the threshold.

'You were difficult to track down,' Narrow-face said after his eyes had swept the room, lingered on the single painting on the wall and turned to rest appreciatively on the clean-skinned beauty of Ilse's pale face. 'I can see why the Corp refer to you as the Phantom.'

Harlock closed the door and turned to face him. 'I don't go by such names anymore.'

'No. I suppose not.' Narrow-face glanced disparagingly around the small room. 'You're a farmer now. A man of the earth. Growing grapes on a dusty backwater. I'm curious… why grapes?'

'I like wine,' Harlock replied slowly, with his back still to the door and his hand still itching to return to his gun.

Narrow-face laughed and sat himself down on a wooden chair. 'Please,' he said to Harlock, motioning for him to take a seat. 'There's no reason we can't be civil about this. After all, Lieutenant Sol and I are only following orders.'

Harlock ignored the invitation to sit. His eyes tracked Sol as she moved about the room, fingering trinkets with her square, blunt hands. He moved to where Ilse sat watchful by the fire and placed his hand upon her shoulder. 'Lieutenant …' he said, and waited for Narrow-face to fill the gap.

'Rike,' the lieutenant obliged good-naturedly, since now he had the upper hand. 'And my orders are to retrieve the Phantom from his hidey-hole and bring him back to Earth for reinstatement. It appears the Council has a need for a certain kind of man.'

'And if I refuse?' Harlock said, his fingers tensing on Ilse's shoulder as Sol paused lingering at his son's bedroom door. 'After all, my discharge was official. And honourable. Surely – '

'Surely,' Rike interrupted, 'you know that the wishes of the Council are inviolable.' The lieutenant inhaled, deeply, satisfyingly, and Harlock had a glimpse of the steel that lay beneath the weasel face. Not as useless as he had first thought.

Rike exhaled with as much satisfaction as he had inhaled, crossed his legs and fussed with the white leather of his gloves. 'These are legitimate orders, Commander, and you have no option but compliance. You can choose to come willingly,' he said, the gloved hands dropping to rest in his lap, 'or you can come as our prisoner. In which case,' his narrow eyes moved to Sol as she opened the bedroom door and stepped quietly through, 'I cannot guarantee the safety of your family.'

'You bastard,' Ilse said, her voice low and her eyes on the dark space beyond the open door. 'What's she doing?' She tried to rise from the chair but her husband held her down. 'What is she doing?'

'Ilse,' Harlock said, his voice preternaturally calm. 'Ist ein spiel, und wir haven keine wahl nicht zu spielen.'

'You're right, Commander. It is a game. And the Council is going to win. The Council will always win.' Rike smirked, his gaze fixed on Harlock's dark eyes for any sign of imminent rebellion. 'Of course, there is another option we haven't yet discussed – you could all come.' Rike smiled charmingly then, displayed an array of even, narrow teeth. 'Imagine the life you could have if you returned to Earth, Frau Harlock.' The lieutenant's chest swelled at his own cleverness – he'd been doing a lot of research. There was nothing he didn't know about the Council's mysterious Phantom. 'No more scratching for money,' he said to her, his voice seductive and grating by the merest of degrees. 'No more of this makeshift kind of life. You could live on your husband's estate as the wife of one of the Council's elite, surrounded by marble and finery instead of all this dust and dirt. One big happy family – '

'Liar,' Ilse said, tense beneath her husband's hand and the fire too hot against her back. 'My son and I would be condemned as hostages while my husband – '

'Don't,' Harlock warned, his fingers squeezing tight into her shoulder.

Rike shrugged, mutely acquiescing to the truth. 'Then it is in your best interests that your husband come with us now, of his own volition, and you and your son can wait here for his return. Freely. And without consequence.' He smiled again, a lame attempt at urbane amelioration. It was probably the same smile he used when he fucked his woman, crooning away all consequences of his rodent-like copulation.

'Alright,' Harlock said, because Rike was right and the Council would win the game, even if it destroyed all the pieces as it swept its far-reaching arm across the board. Harlock's hand fell abruptly from Ilse's shoulder and he took a cautionary step towards the darkened entrance to his son's room. 'Get her out of there.'

Sol reappeared instantly out of the darkness, smirked at him and closed the door carefully behind her.

'What did you do?' Ilse demanded, her voice pitched low as she rose free from her chair. 'What did you do?'

Sol shrugged and replied in her oh-so-feminine voice, 'I watched the boy sleep. A handsome lad,' she said conversationally to Rike before she turned an interested eye on Harlock. 'Takes after his father.'

'No doubt. And one day he'll no doubt be equally as problematic.' Rike rose from his chair and tugged the tight leather of his tunic back into place. If the collar chafed against the jutting reach of his chin he gave no indication. Probably he liked it. 'Now, Commander, if you please?'

'Frank.' Ilse grasped at his arm. 'No.'

Harlock didn't turn to look at her, because out of all his options Rike's second suggestion weighed most heavily on his heart – the most obvious and inevitable outcome, if this dragged on any longer. The cadre waiting amongst the vines would open fire on his family and Rike would have him anyway, a broken and condemned man.

He pulled his arm from Ilse's grip, her fingers hanging white in the air as he turned resignedly away. 'I have to go,' he told her woodenly as he moved to take his coat from the wall.

'You won't need that,' Rike called out condescendingly. 'There's a uniform waiting for you on the carrier. We have everything on board that an officer needs.'

Harlock turned with the coat hanging heavy in his hand. 'I need to say goodbye to my son.'

'Of course,' the lieutenant replied in the spirit of cooperation – after all, he had what he wanted. And it had been easy. Though truth be told it had also been an anticlimax, after almost two solid years of looking. Still, it was useful to know the man had a weakness, should the need ever arise.

'Ilse,' Harlock said, turning to the fire as a log collapsed in a shatter of sudden sparks, the embers shifting and settling in shades of black and red. He fancied he could see eyes burning dark amongst dying the flames, and a face forming wraith-like around them – a woman's face that peered out at him with dark and evil knowing. The apparition smiled, and Harlock imagined he could hear her laughing – the same laugh that his father had heard before he died, and his father's father before that. And now that the apparition had seen him, her path would never be turned.

Ice ran abruptly through his veins and he shrugged into his coat to stop himself from shivering. 'Come,' he said, reaching blindly for Ilse's hand, fingers intertwining as he pulled her towards the bedroom door.

'Five minutes,' Rike called out as they closed the door behind them, and Harlock mentally removed another week from the pompous ass's life. One month, Harlock gave him, before he found a way to remove Lieutenant Rike from his plane of mortal existence. Harlock might be returning to active duty under duress, but he still had contacts on the force, and friends in as many low places as he had in high ones. Rike had been marked for death the minute he had walked through Harlock's door, and that big-boned bitch would be soon to follow.

Harlock pulled Ilse close in the darkness of the room, held her tight against his chest, pressed his cheek into the silk-smooth veil of her hair. Rike was right in one thing at least – she deserved better than this. And Harlock would have given her better, if he hadn't scented out the corruption festering its way through the highest levels of the Council, and the Coalition's plans to quarantine the Earth as a sanctified zone. War was coming to the Solar System, and Harlock wanted his family to have no part of it.

'There's no time,' Ilse whispered as he leaned in to kiss her, his lips hot and urgent against her mouth.

'I know.' He touched his forehead to hers in the unseeing dark, lifted her fingers blind to his lips and gently kissed them one by one. 'Keep our boy safe,' he murmured, knowing Rike was standing just outside the door. 'Keep his feet on the ground. Don't let him follow me into the forces.'

'You can keep his feet on the ground yourself,' she said, her attempt at confidence betrayed by the quaver in her voice, 'because god knows I won't be able to control him. You're coming back, Frank. You're coming back…'

'Turn on the light,' he said, letting her go because in a moment he would feel tears on his face, and they wouldn't all be hers.

'Frank,' she said in the quiet dark, her voice small and lost and already fading from his reality.

'The light,' he said again, reaching a hand towards the shelf on the wall. It was there, somewhere…

Light bloomed in the room, his hand coming away with a leather-bound book grasped dusty in his fingers, the cover yellowed and fraying and marked with the skull and crossbones of his line. He turned with it to the bed, found his son awake and blinking bleary-eyed from a deep tangle of blankets.

'What's happening,' the boy asked in a sleep-heavy voice.

'Come on.' Harlock settled on the edge of the bed and placed the heavy tome next to the pillow. 'Kiss Papa good-bye.'

He leaned in to kiss his son's cheek and the younger Harlock reached out a lazy hand to bat his father's face away, hating the feel of the moustache on his skin even more than his mother did. A chuckle escaped from Harlock's lips – his son had inherited that from his mother, along with her subtle sense of humour and the rust-dark brown of her eyes. From his father he'd inherited only the worst of things – the unruly chestnut hair, the long lean limbs that promised of too much tallness, the recklessness of spirit that foretold of many careless walks into danger.

The boy's head lifted from the pillow, the lazy hand rising to brush the hair out of his eyes. He needed a haircut. They both did.

'Where are you going?' the boy asked, the hand moving now to tug at the lapel of his father's coat. 'When will you come home?'

'I don't know.' Harlock stared down at his son's unblemished face, ran a thumb softly across the smooth plane of his cheek. Perfection. 'Soon. I'll be home soon. Keep your mother safe for me.'

The boy nodded mutely, awake enough now that he could see the solemnity on his father's face, and the tears glistening brightly in his mother's eyes. 'What's the matter,' he asked her, his eyes darting to the door when a mysterious voice beyond it called out 'time.'

Harlock's lips tightened beneath his moustache. He reached for the gun at his side, slid it deliberately from its holster and handed it to his wife. 'Go,' he said to her. 'Remind that whelp that in an hour I'll outrank him.'

'What's happening?' the boy asked. 'Who's out there?'

'Vermin,' Harlock replied. 'A pair of giant rats who think they've caught me in their trap.' He coaxed his son back towards the pillow, straightened out the blankets and tucked them tight around the boy's neck. 'But that's not the story I'm telling you tonight. Tonight I'm telling you about Arcadia.'

'But I've heard that story,' the boy protested, his head restless on the pillow and his eyes darting beyond his father towards the door. He'd rather have known what was happening beyond the timber, and why his father had given his mother a gun.

Harlock lifted the heavy book, the leaves ancient and crumbling and falling open at the Face of Stanley Mountain. The same damned face that he'd seen laughing at him from the fire – an evil, grinning reminder that some fates you can never escape. He stared down at it, and now he heard bells ringing, a dark and sombre clamour as the gates of Hell opened wide upon their creaking hinges.

'No you haven't,' Harlock said as he turned the musty page. 'Not like this.'