Another Tuesday, another update. Only one week later than I thought, oh well. It's better than I thought it would be. College has not completely doused my inspiration. Enjoy and advertise or review, either is good. Thank you.

6. Dealing with Worries

The rest of the morning was not fun. Not even the ultimate cheer-up as some girls saw it, window shopping, could cast even an expression of interest onto Marie's face and after a while Fiona gave up. Instead she choose a restaurant for lunch and they sat down.

The silence between them was obvious even to the waiter and he said only what was necessary. In fact, as Fiona hid herself behind her menu, she desperately wished for an akuma in the hope that the trip wouldn't be a total waste of time.

The door opened and two guys walked in. Fiona carefully watched them take a seat, but was disappointed as they started discussing something loudly in heavily accented voices, that were certainly not that of akuma.

She sighed and dropped the menu onto the table. It was so heavy it slammed down harder than she had expected, a sharp slap that sounded exactly like a slap in the face. She felt the awkwardness increase tenfold. Fiona restrained from sighing loudly and drumming her fingers on the table with some difficulty and looked around at the other patrons in the restaurant, reassuring herself again that no one was an akuma, but she might as well be trying to kill her shadow, there was really no way to distinguish, only degrees of likelikood. However, there was nothing out of place.

Couples were chatting in low voices. The two guys who had recently walked in were laughing at some joke. A couple of girls were eying the handsome gentleman in the corner and occasionally glancing at Fiona and Marie, obviously confused by their odd clothes.

In the mirror, she could see that a family of four was dining early in a separate room. Nothing interesting there, so Fiona glanced towards the door and the windows out onto the street. People were walking past idly, except for the servants that all had a slightly harried look on their face.

"I always knew I was in the Order to atone for my sin."

Fiona's head flicked around so fast, she cricked her neck. Marie sighed "And now my only friend gets sent away."

Fiona would have said something, but at this point their waiter served them their tea and food.

Marie sighed again. "When will it be enough?"

"It was enough ages ago." Fiona said quietly and she saw that Marie's eyes were catching the light better than usually. "The Order may not be freedom, but it gave you a second chance. You stopped atoning once you stopped trying to kill yourself. You should have realised it the moment we held a welcoming party. When we started telling you off for not taking care of yourself. When they paired you with me and didn't just hand you a mission and send you away.

"You refused to see our open arms. I thought you were annoying and an idiot. In, fact sometimes you still are." Fiona paused, hoping to maybe get a weak smile, but no luck. "You always had a terrible way of trying to mother me." She leant over the table. "Exorcists are taught to never trust anyone. We live in a world were trust could mean getting killed. At the same time we need to be able to trust our comrades. We trust anyone in this uniform, because it would be mad to live day to day relying only on yourself. You were trying to do that.

"It doesn't work, it didn't. You tried, but after a while I saw that the only reason you could still be reckless was because you knew I was there. You can't lie to me about that. You admit it with your mothering that you care about me and I'm pretty sure that's exactly how you talked with your sister. It's your way of showing how much you care.

"The barrier you thought separated you from us never existed. Not really. I can't tell you how happy everyone in the order is when they hear that another exorcist has been found, but at the same time we know that every exorcist leaves something behind or lost something when they discovered their innocence.

"When I leave, I want you to promise me that you'll make friends with the rest of the Order. Well, maybe not everyone. There's this one really disgusting guy in the science department, you can skip him." Fiona wasn't even sure were the words were coming from, but it was obvious these were things she had wanted to say to Marie for a long time.

"Now, first things first. You have, to my knowledge, smiled exactly six times in the past year. Leaving out all the fake or forced smiles, of course. Not one of those was in front of anyone other than me. So," Fiona gave Marie a glare that made the other girl shrink into her seat. "homework today is start smiling."

"Homework?" Marie mouthed.

Fiona sipped her tea, then smiled brightly as she put it down. "See, it's not hard."

"You still look evil." Marie took a sip from her own cup.

"If this table wasn't too big and this cafe so full, I would hit you for that, my dear." Fiona retorted still smiling pleasantly as if she was engaged in cheerful conversation rather than teasing. "Would you please smile and then we'll see what the reaction of say that young gentleman in the corner behind me is."

"I refuse."

"I refuse to leave this cafe until you've smiled."

"Then we shall be in here a long time."

"Fine. Waiter!" Their waiter approached immediately. "We'll be needing more tea and a plate of your assorted cakes."

"You can't keep me here." Marie was staring at the still smiling redhead.

"You're underage, Marie. Therefore, I, as an represent of the Black Order, am your guardian."

"You're evil." Marie's voice was faintly amused, but her visage held her usual passive expression.

"Sometimes."

Fiona sipped more of her tea, watching as Marie became ever more irritated over the course of half an hour.

"Mhe-hem." Marie cleared her voice a little. "Do I really have to smile?"

"Yes."

"Is this okay?" Her eyes creased, but her smile was not warm.

"Hmm, we'll need to practice that. However, it will do for now."

"You're just bored, aren't you?"

"No, those giggling girls are getting on my nerves. If they want to talk to the guy over there, they should just do it." They paid and left.

Still not riveted by the things in the shop windows they passed, they decided to go back to the Branch. The train after all would give them another chance to talk and reminisce. Which was exactly what they did. But this only took up one of the two hours the train took, after that silence filled the air between them again. In this time Fiona mentally reviewed her speech from earlier. Editing and thinking about what else she should have said as she had been on a role.

She opened her mouth several times in an attempt to rectify these mistakes, but she thought better of it every time. Twice, Fiona glanced up at Marie to find her smiling at her reflection in the train window. The first time it looked strained and unnatural, the second time it made her look so radiant that Fiona wondered if the smiles she'd been graced with so far had still all been mere shadows of this true smile.

Seeing this Fiona sighed with relief and patted herself on the back for managing to convince Marie with her bumbling speech.

That way she could say the morning hadn't been a waste of time.

Having finally exhausted the possibility of editing previous speech further and finding nothing particularly riveting in the countryside she had seen time and again, she cast her mind around, but nothing came to her apart from a desire to work of the cake from the cafe with a nice fitness session.

"Ow!" Fiona cursed colourfully as pain jarred from her fist up to her arm.

She had just swung at a steel dummy with her fist, which she had reinforced with layer upon layer of skin until it was about twice it's usual size. However, it was now peeling like an onion as she tried to rid it of the excess skin to assess the damage she had done to her hand.

The dummy, incidentally, was not impressed, it was merely slightly dented in a way that gave it a lopsided grin.

"Now, this looks interesting."

"Give me a minute with here, Fred. There's something I need to tell him."

"I assume he won't be smiling after you're done with him?"

"I'm afraid he might no longer be in the mood."

"Well, then I certainly wouldn't want to get in the way."

The dummy was in one piece for about a minute longer. After it lay in pieces around her, Fiona discarded the pieces of greenly glinting skin and joined Fred. He gave her a kiss.

"So, was it a pleasant conversation?"

"Well, he didn't take it so well that I was breaking up with him for you." They sat down on the ground with Fiona leaning against the wall.

"Seriously, though, no innocence in here, remember?"

"Oh, there was no one around."

"And the steel dummies are only for the training weapons."

"When in the last two years did you suddenly become such a stickler for the rules?" Fiona asked. Most of their conversation regarding rules had been one or the other trying to convince the other to break some rule or other.

"Oh, I don't know. When I saw you using a technique you had discarded as failed on a steel dummy. Why did you try it out again?" Fred moved so that he was leaning across Fiona, bracing his weight with one hand on the other side of her.

"The akuma in Europe are meant to be way harder to fight than here."

Fred made a disbelieving sound. "I don't think they're harder to kill, there's just more of them."

"But then why are there no Generals in North America? There's never been a General in North America because it wasn't necessary." Fred was going to interrupt, but Fiona forestalled him by continuing. "Which means I should do everything I can to prepare myself, which means cranking up my power a little."

"You're more worried than you're letting on, aren't you?"

Fiona laughed. A high unnatural laugh. "More worried? I don't think I've ever been more worried and afraid in my life." She flung her arms around Fred. "I don't know what's going to happen to me."

"Have you ever since you entered the Order?" Fred asked softly.

"I could pretend so. I told myself that I would always come back here, back home. You, Aldea and I were a family, it was only after his death that whenever I became slightly lonely, I would to take out my golem, knowing home was just a phone call away.

"Now, I'm not sure I'll ever see you again. The atlantic is a little big to traverse regularly you know." Her sarcasm was bitter. "It takes 3 weeks to travel between the branches, I doubt they'll let me make the trip regularly."

"Stop it, Fiona." His voice was soft. "Don't you trust me to stay alive?"

"Of course I do. How -"

"If you trust me to stay alive and I promise you I will, I believe that you are better than the exorcists in Europe. Nothing is going to change between us. We just have to continue trusting that we'll both survive." The firmness of his belief was palpable in his voice. "Maybe we could at least write as well, though." Followed immediately by the slight comical lilt that Fiona associated with his grin, but right now it was absent.

"I -" She started.

"You know, you two are just plain disgusting." Both Fred and Fiona rolled their eyes at Viktor, who had chosen this moment to butt into the conversation. Fred stood abruptly and pulled Fiona up with him. "If we bother you this much we'll go somewhere more private." and with that he picked up Fiona and flung her over one shoulder.

"Oi!" She protested, as his shoulder dug into her stomach. "I can walk, thanks."

"I know you can, but I'm sure you're tired from killing the steel dummy."

Fiona would have continued protesting, but she had decided that the view wasn't so bad after all.

"Dude," said Viktor in a tone of disbelief. "she's watching your ass."

"Viktor!" Fiona squeaked, colouring immediately.

"That's okay. I watch hers, too."

"Fred!" Then she paused. "Wait, what? Really?"

"Yep." Was the answer.

Unsure whether to feel flattered about this or not, Fiona closed her mouth.

"By the way, Fred, before you sweep Fiona off. I'd like a word with you." Viktor took of his glasses and cleaned them. Fred paused at the door.

"What is it?"

"Epstain wants to see you. It's a briefing on where you're going next."

Fred turned his head, but didn't reply. Slowly, he slid Fiona down from his shoulder. "I'm sorry." He excused himself and left.

Fiona's heart pattered more than pounded, as it occurred to her just how stupid she'd been. She had counted on Fred to be there until she left, but of course he wouldn't. He had his duty to fulfil even in the time she was preparing to leave.

She suddenly felt naive, young, inexperienced, almost stupid. She had seen him for the first time in almost two years and now that they met again they had become instantly inseparable in Fiona's mind.

Fiona sighed, she could always trust Fred to screw with her mind. Or rather, she could trust her own brain to fall apart when he was around.

There was a clatter behind her. Viktor had picked up a part of the steel dummies head.

"Did you do this?" He asked. Fiona shrugged in response. "Weirdo." Viktor stretched the vowels in time with the clang the piece of metal made as he dropped it.

"Well, for some of us, training includes physical training." Fiona wasn't feeling up for a discussion with Viktor, they always ran much too wild.

"Urgh, thank God that my innocence allows me to be lazy and practice my creative writing."

"What part of creative writing includes being a coward who turns himself invisible?"

Viktor was shocked by what the girl had said. He had always thought of Fiona as a good friend, even though they had worked together only once. He hadn't never seen this side of her.

"For your information," His voice was cold. "our job is not about bravery, it's about vanquishing as many akuma and saving as many humans as possible." He turned on his heel and stalked off, his long cloak catching the air and flapping sharply.

Fiona wanted to sink into the ground and disappear because of what she had said. She wasn't even sure why she had said it. She had a great respect for Viktor's power, it was after all incredibly versatile and strong.

In fact, it was the perfect defensive innocence, possibly second only to the legendary Embracing Garden. Which again strengthened the theory that he and Fiona would be transferred together.

That made her feel worse. It would probably be awkward for days after that conversation.

Fred was indeed given a mission, but due to a reason that Fred neglected to give, Renee Epstain had given him a few days before he had to leave. He returned to the training room just as Fiona was picking up and disposing of the last pieces of the destroyed dummy.

However, he left again rather hurriedly, saying that he had something he had to take care off. Having nothing better to, Fiona continued training for a little while before finally deciding she wouldn't give that day another chance to make her feel guilty or sad and went to bed.

N/A I'm afraid there will be another chapter or two without a lot of action, but I hope to get it to pick up a little after that.