He probably doesn't deserve to die.

But then, Penelope's father doesn't deserve to be a hollowed out shell of himself, a man so far removed from who he once was that sometimes Penelope thinks he's become a stranger. So sometimes, perhaps, just killing the Hood seems as though it won't be enough.

And, anyway, it's not as though she's going to kill him for what he did to her father. She's going to kill him because he represents a threat to global peace, because he's a menace and a maniac and for some reason, despite an awareness of his antics, the GDF have still managed to do utterly nothing in terms of finding and stopping him.

And because she had said she would.

Technically, anyway, she still has three days before the deadline, before the date she has circled in black ink in the diary she carries around, tucked into her purse and mostly written in code. There are no words, nothing blocked in for the entire week surrounding this one particular day. It's why she's at home now, in her father's study, lingering over a light breakfast, an early morning tray of tea, soft boiled eggs and toast and a little pot of that plum jam her father is so fond of.

It's nerve-wracking to have nothing to do.

Her gaze has drifted to the bookcase on the far wall, a heavy, ornate thing. Not, actually, of an age with the rest of the house, but relatively new, no more than five years old, and only fashioned in the style of the manor. It looks ancient and heavy and Jacobean, has been meticulously crafted and fitted and created to belong.

But it's new. It was installed to conceal the door to her father's panic room, six inches of plate steel, cam-drive bolts, nearly a thousand pounds of pure paranoia, for the occasions upon which her father concocts some external threat, and flees into the vault at the center of the manor, sometimes for days at a stretch.

Today is not one such day, and yet her eyes still rest on the hidden door, and she wonders what the exchange of value is between the hours of his life her father has lost to terror and panic and hours left in the life of the man who's brought him so low.

"You seem lost, petal."

Her father's comment draws her attention immediately and she meets eyes that mirror her own, though she knows that in every other feature, her father still sees her mother. There's something in the weight of his gaze that belies the truth of his thoughts, and though she bears up beneath it as well as she ever has, somehow it pulls at the already empty place inside her, takes something she didn't know was still there for the taking.

Sometimes, being seen this way, Penelope feels like a living portrait of the woman she never knew, lost to an illness that had stolen her away in Penelope's very earliest years. She's been told, though not by her father, that the only reason Lord Hugh returned from the war at all was Parker's insistence that he not leave his daughter an orphan. Otherwise, her father would have thrown away the remnants of his life without the woman he'd loved, left his daughter to be raised by his aunt, and the world would be an emptier place. Whether this is an ugly truth or an ugly rumour is something she's never sought to have confirmed one way or the other. Most probably it's just mean, malicious gossip within the intelligence community, meant to hurt and undermine her. She hopes so, at least.

"Penelope, darling?"

Penelope blinks and then waves her hand airily, sets aside the teaspoon she's been playing with. "Oh, no." She dials the brightness of her smile into precisely the correct wattage, not so dazzling as to seem false and flighty and manic, nor so wan as to seem as exhausted as she feels. Just a perfect, pleasant little smile as she tilts her head just slightly. "Tired, perhaps. Abstracted, certainly. I have given myself a week off and it's funny how nothingness seems to stack up, when one has nothing pressing to think about."

And then, in just the same way he somehow always does, her father remarks, "Your mother used to get that way. Melancholy in quietude."

"Melancholy seems rather a strong word. Pensive, I suppose."

Melancholy is, in fact, probably not a strong enough word to employ when one is on the brink of choosing whether or not to commit cold-blooded murder. Perhaps her life would be different, if it were her mother she took tea with now. The advice she wants to ask is not advice she can get from her father. Though his is a life with the relevant experiences, to ask him now would bring about one of those desperate, terrifying fits of panic that would probably end with the both of them locked behind the door at the far side of the room, and her father raving and ranting and Parker on the other side of the door, trying to convince Hugh that there's nothing to be afraid of.

Mother, how does one know when it's right to kill a man?

Well, as needs must, darling, as needs must.

"More tea, Penelope?"

"Please, thank you."

She's far too polite, has been raised far too well, to stare at the place where his finger should be. Still, though she looks away, it's always where her mind wanders. She never sees the stump on his hand, but always the little white box in her bedroom, and the way her entire understanding of the world had seemed to change in that moment.

Sometimes, sitting alongside her father, she wonders just who it is she mourns. Penelope has fixed a point in her memory, a bloody and gruesome day as the touchstone for just when everything changed, but in truth it's not that simple. In truth, her father has always been a deeply complicated and troubled man, and to try and render a simple explanation as to the truth of his circumstances is foolish, and she knows it's foolish.

She's not going to kill a man for her father's sake, is the simple truth.

Tea splashes into her china cup from the teapot in her father's trembling hand and suddenly she feels dizzy, nauseous. Sitting beside her father and coming to the conclusion that he's not worth killing for—and if her father isn't worth killing for, then is it worth killing a man at all?

Oddly enough, even if she could ask him, Penelope's not certain she'd trust her father's answer.

So she stands, rather more abruptly than might be considered polite and touches her fingertips lightly to her brow. "I'm…I do apologize, Father, but I think perhaps I may actually need a touch of fresh air."

"Are you quite all right, pet?"

Penelope nods and smiles again, carefully calibrated as ever, this time just a shade fainter than before, reassuring but a little weary. "Just a trifle unsettled, I suppose. It's been such a long while since I took the time just to sit. I think perhaps I shall walk down to the greenhouse. Just to get some air, stretch my legs."

"Ah, nervous energy, of course. Take your time, petal."

She does. She leaves her father's study feeling like she's left a stranger, and takes a great deal of time, actually. Longer than she realizes and longer than she means to.

The greenhouse behind the manor is a ramshackle old Victorian thing and not, actually, in terribly good condition. It had been her mother's passion, after all. It's tumbledown, panes of the windows are missing and cracked and loose in their frames, and the frame of it warped and rusted. Inside it's overgrown, wild and lush with the most aggressive of her mother's once prize-winning annuals. It's a dark green place, the windows all grown up and into, covered by the leaves of plants left to seek the sun. As she crosses the threshold, it becomes possible to forget that it's only early morning outside. The lack of light inside the greenhouse sets it outside of time, the deep, muffled silence makes it possible to pass hours in thought. Penelope wishes she could say that she comes here because she loves the place, but truthfully it's chilly and damp and reeks of mildew and rot, and is really only a place to go to be alone.

Penelope's finding herself quite poorly suited to being alone, and that's not her purpose in coming here. Quite the opposite.

She still carries her compact with her, out of habit, though it feels like ages since anyone's called her on it. She sits on an old stone bench in the heart of the greenhouse and knows exactly what she wants to do, and equally knows that she shouldn't do it.

It's a far smaller version of her larger problem, with its conditions polarized. Cognitively, she's aware that she should kill the Hood. That there are good reasons; sensible, prudent, fully apprehensible reasons and she understands all of them.

It's just that she doesn't want to. She doesn't want to be a person who could kill somebody. For as important and as necessary as it is, it's simply that she doesn't want to, and to have so simple and stupid a reason is beneath her. Not wanting to do something is a terrible reason not to do something, especially something necessary.

Without meaning to, thinking about the thing she should do, Penelope finds she's done something she shouldn't, and after a brief, lilting little chime from her compact, Gordon blinks into existence in the palm of her hand.

And, like daylight cutting its way into in the middle of the dim dark green, Gordon answers her call, practically chirping as he greets her, "Hi! I am, like, really super majorly not supposed to talk to you! But gimme a sec, though, I'll call you back."

And he's gone again and darkness falls, only for light to spring back about a minute or so later, as the curlicued IR illuminates once again. The call is from a number that must be on the same network, but which she doesn't recognize on sight. Still she taps the purple icon and waits for the channel to render itself properly. She squints at the slightly fuzzy image, not quite resolved and then, tentatively, "Hello?"

"Hey!" His images sharpens and he grins at her, leaning forward with his chin propped on his hand. "Sorry. Needed to borrow Grandma's comm. John looped it outside the main network so Grandma could call phone psychics. Don't tell, though, okay. She'll pull my ears off."

"Why aren't you supposed to talk to me?"

"Dunno. Scott kind of kicked my ass for last time, though, I'm sure he's got some dumbass reason."

"Oh."

"What's up, Lady P?" He's not wearing a shirt and she wonders if he knows that or not. There are twelve hours between them, and her early morning is his early evening. He's probably just finished a late, leisurely swim. She's not spent a great deal of time on Tracy Island, but at least as far as the climate's considered, Gordon has an excuse. Not that he needs an excuse. She should be better than feeling a flush of blood in her cheeks at the sight of Gordon Tracy's bare torso, especially considering the thing she's called to say.

"You shouldn't have kissed me."

The way his face falls breaks her heart, but only a little, and because she knows he's thinking of far different reasons than she is, right at the moment. And he's damningly, immediately apologetic, "Oh. Uh. Yeah. No, I mean, I guess maybe not, that was…I'm sorry. But, I mean—"

"No," she interrupts, and her voice certainly doesn't waver, because why would it. There's no excuse. There's certainly nothing as good as a reason. What she has to tell Gordon is a reason. "I mean that you—Gordon. I mean that I'm not someone—I'm not someone you should think of…the way you think of me."

There's an intensity to the way Gordon listens, sometimes, that's entirely discomfiting. He's looking at her now, as though he can really see her and as though he's heard the things she's meant, instead of the thing she's said. He's careful, considerate as he says, "Are you more bothered that I kissed you, or that I told you what I thought of you? 'Cuz I mean—like, I'd take back the kiss if it bothered you, but I didn't tell you anything that wasn't true. If this is about everything that happened with—"

It is, but—"It's not. No, Gordon, really I just—"

And I just don't think you'd do anything really wrong, Pen.

This was a terrible idea. Just like last time, this is the stupidest possible thing she could have done and she doesn't know why she's doing it. Only that she'd wanted to. A terrible reason to do anything.

Especially because now he's looking at her like he's waiting for her to continue, though she's certain he can't feel anything but dread for what she's about to say next, and maybe rightfully so. She takes a deep, shuddering breath and steels herself, and yet her voice still breaks when she says, "Gordon, you were wrong about me."

He's worried now, she can see that immediately, and this was a mistake. "How? I mean—Penelope, hey, are you…are you okay? Hey, Pen, talk to me a minute, you seem—"

"I have to go."

"No, don't do that. Penny—Lady Penelope, wait. C'mon, Pen wait, I—"

"Goodbye, Gordon."

She snaps her compact closed and then drops it, lets it fall to the floor of the greenhouse. She leaves it behind, to be swallowed up by the shadows in the greenhouse, hidden from the light of the sun outside.