Star Trek and all its intellectual property is owned by Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no profit made.

This story been beta-read by VesperRegina, to whom I offer my sincere thanks, as always.

This had been a bad one.

They'd known it was going to be. But they hadn't known how bad. Not until they were inside the building. And then it was too late.

Fuck, they were used to shitty jobs. That was what they were for – to do things other teams wouldn't touch. But even for them, even for the team that prided itself on its can-do, will-do, fuck-you mentality, this had been a bad one. As the York had left orbit, even Stripes had been silent; and he was usually the one who came up with some blackly humorous irreverent shit that they could all laugh at and thus begin the process of forgetting.

Not today.

Pard looked down at the tousled dark head that rested between her breasts, and stroked it. Jag always came to her bed after an op. Mostly it was to celebrate, to earth any adrenaline the action hadn't discharged. Today, however, there had been no celebration. There hadn't even been any sex. He simply held her, and said nothing. Even his eyes had given nothing away, storm-gray and utterly uncommunicative. A less self-contained man might have wept, but she suspected the hurt Jag had sustained was too bitter for the relief of tears.

Which made everything just too complicated for words.

She too had been there. Sometimes when they mated they bit each other, and licking each other's faces was an accepted sign of affection between them – probably the nearest anyone on the ship came to expressing such a thing. So she understood quite well the dichotomy between the quiet, cultured man who could occasionally be encountered in that complex personality, and the ruthless killer who didn't give a fuck who he was ordered to kill or what means he had to use to do it. They were the same, products of the same process. They were told to kill and they killed. It was as simple as that. Usually.

But not today.

It was a fine damn time for her contraceptive injection to have failed. A fine damn time for her to find out that she was pregnant, and that the father of the child inside her was not the utterly heartless bastard the process should have produced; that some of his humanity had endured, and that he was heartsick and grieving over what they'd done.

'Complicated' didn't come near what the situation was now.

She knew, even if he didn't, that for him this was the beginning of the end. It might take months, it might take years – if he lived that long – but sooner or later, Jag would leave the Section. His love affair with it was over. You joined it for excitement or revenge or just because you liked the thought of a walk on the Dark Side, but unless it succeeded in suffocating the decency in you altogether, sooner or later you'd find out the truth: that it promised more than it could ever pay, and took more than you could ever afford.

Most times she didn't bother thinking through the ethics side of it. She wasn't comfortable with self-analysis at the best of times, and certainly on a day like today she wasn't going to make an exception. The Section afforded her excitement, which she craved, and she liked the team she was with. They worked well together, their disparate personalities complementing each other in a way that made them immensely strong and effective. Maybe too effective, really – because that's the sort of team that gets handed the jobs nobody else wants. The sort of job they'd carried out today.

Fucking politics. It wasn't the first time she'd thought that and it wouldn't be the last. It had hammered through her mind, a repeated phrase in a protective stream of invective as she'd worked.

Leo hadn't said much in the pre-briefing. Just things that included civil war and resistance and holding up negotiations and complicated and, finally, in a voice that fell as flat and heavy as an oaken coffin lid: They don't want any survivors.

Which was all very well when the last pocket of resistance was comprised of hard-bitten veterans who could give as good as they got, who were fighting for pride or revenge or bloodlust, or just because there was nothing else to do with their lives except sell them for as high a price as weapons would command. Or drug dealers – the Section dealt with them on a fairly routine basis, cleaning up nests of traffickers. Being handed a drug bust always brightened the team's day. But today's job had taken things down to a whole new level. It would take time for it to sink in.

Jag's arms tightened around her momentarily, jerking her from the dark stream of her thoughts. She knew by the flick of his lashes against her bare skin that he wasn't asleep. He too was reliving the day.

She stroked his hair again. Maybe it was for comfort, though she knew that he was beyond any comfort. Maybe it was because she didn't know what else to do. The small analysis kit from the medical supplies was still in the drawer beside her, its blue light glowing in the darkness; a problem that wasn't going to go away.

The door hissed open.

She didn't move, nor did Jag. The days were long gone when any of the team didn't know what another looked like naked. As for surprising them in flagrante, well Leo knew both of them far too well to think of that.

He rarely showed anything in his face, but she found herself thinking now that he looked exhausted. Shit, they all looked exhausted. Still, as the team leader he carried an additional burden of responsibility: he'd given the orders. Not that any of them blamed him for that. If anyone at all blamed him, it would be himself. And no-one would ever know about it, except that one day he'd put a phase pistol into his mouth and that would be that.

"One of the birds died," he said quietly. He gave her and Jag a long, unreadable look, and then left again.

'Spots', their engineer, kept finches. They were a part of life on board ship. Most times wherever he was working there would be some accompanying sound of chirping or cheeping as one of his tiny charges hopped around his shoulders or his head, or perched on a wire to inspect his handiwork. He even allowed them to check out the contents of his plate at dinner, though should they show interest in anyone else's he'd immediately catch them up and transfer them back to his shoulder, his big hands deft and infinitely gentle.

Now one of them was lying on the floor of the cage, dead. She could picture the tiny claws, crooked and motionless. The bright button eyes, glazed over.

She could cry over a bird. That was okay, that was permitted. She stared up at the ceiling as the tears started to run, absolutely silent. Not so much as a quiver in her breathing gave her away. Though she didn't even know which of the birds it was that had died. Maybe it was one of the little gray ones with the orange patches, the ones that always sounded like a squeaky toy being pressed. She hoped it wasn't the yellow and white one, she was kind of fond of that one herself–

Jag shifted suddenly. He raised himself on one elbow and studied her gravely, watching the tears flow. "Cry some for me, will you, Pard?" he said at last, and then leaned down and kissed her gently.

They hardly ever kissed. Kisses were for lovers, and they didn't love each other. You didn't love anyone, not in this business. Some days she wasn't even sure she liked him, let alone loved him, but he was brilliant in bed – inventive and exciting and subtle and playful, he was all of them by turns, so that was why she found him so attractive.

Maybe he was perplexed by the gesture too. He retreated into normality, licking her face tenderly, consolingly. A low whine that was almost a moan escaped her, so that she was angry with herself for the weakness. He must have heard the click of teeth, because he licked her nose, which tickled as it always did, and then pressed his cheekbone to hers. Her tears wet both their faces, so that maybe she was crying for him too, as he'd asked.

And the problem still hadn't gone away.

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