Paperwork—whether or not on actual paper—was one of the universal constraints of any bureaucracy. As soon as systems got too big for one person to keep track of, records had to be kept so that the left hand could do what the right hand needed it to be doing. The bigger the bureaucracy, the greater the number of records. Indeed, the growth was geometric rather that arithmetic, because not only did each administrative office generate paperwork detailing its own activities, but additional paperwork was needed to document the internal connections between the different parts of the bureaucracy.
The TSAB was an interdimensional federation governing dozens of worlds scattered across not merely physical space but also alternate realities. There was a reason its central data center was called the Infinity Library.
Fate had an orderly mind that was naturally good at organizing and cross-referencing data. It was one of the reasons that she was the TSAB's top Enforcer; there was a lot more to the job than just being a powerful mage. Paperwork wasn't really a burden to her. And doing it not in the sterile confines of an office or a cabin on a naval vessel, but in her own home while snuggled into an overstuffed recliner...well, that was no chore at all.
"Care for a drink?"
She turned her head at the sound of Nanoha's voice. The brunette was carrying two steaming, handleless cups.
"Tea? That was sweet of you."
"I know it's after eleven, but I figured you intended to be up for another two or three hours anyway so the caffeine wouldn't ruin your night."
"Thanks." She accepted the cup gratefully.
"I made yours the way you like it, with milk and sugar." Nanoha pulled a face; the Japanese woman's tea sensibilities had never adapted to the Midchildan abuse of green tea. The expression made Fate smile.
"Aw, you sacrificed your principles for me?" she said and sipped. "It's perfect, too. Thanks."
"You're welcome."
Nanoha perched on the chair's broad, padded arm.
"It's really good having you home again, Fate-chan."
Fate rested her hand on Nanoha's, savoring the comforting warmth. They talked often when she was on deployment, but the feeling of closeness only genuine physical contact could bring was something else.
"It's good to be back."
She took Nanoha's hand and pressed it against her cheek.
"I always miss you so much when I'm away."
Fate turned and looked up into her one-and-only's face.
"Am I crazy, Nanoha?"
So many years together let Nanoha know exactly what she was talking about even without a complete explanation.
"No, I don't think so." Nanoha smiled playfully at her. "Then again, look who you're talking to."
"But you accepted responsibility for Vivio. You've stayed her with her like a mother should, being here for her every day, while I've been an absentee for most of her life. Yuuno's done more to raise her than I have, and Zafira, and later on Vita, too." She sighed. "Even my own kids, Erio and Caro—"
Nanoha shook her head.
"They're a different case, Fate-chan, and you know it. They'd tell you right to your face if they were here. You were way too young for children then, but you did everything that you could for them. Admiral Lindy didn't just choose to be their official guardian to help you, but because she saw the same things in them as you did and wanted to make sure they were properly raised. And after RF6 broke up, they went out into the world with the environmental protection squad, so they chose to go out on deployment away from home as much as you had anything to do with it."
"Okay, you have a point," Fate conceded.
"You get maudlin when you sit around alone at night."
"It doesn't change the truth. We had a daughter to raise, and I chose to return to active duty as an Enforcer instead of requesting a transfer that would allow me to stay closer to home. They wouldn't necessarily have granted it to me, but the point is that I didn't ask."
"Fate-chan..."
She sipped at her tea, giving her a chance to collect her thoughts.
"Do you know what Vivio did when I came home yesterday?"
"Hugged you, squealed over her book, made a lot of snarky teenaged comments?"
"While you were off getting the car, she asked me for advice about boys."
"Ehh? Wait, she's not—"
Fate chuckled at Nanoha's sudden, wide-eyed discomfiture.
"Thereby explaining why she didn't go to you for advice about boys." The smile faded almost as quickly as it came. "But that's just it. She's comfortable discussing those things with me. She doesn't talk about them like she would with a mom, but as if I were an older female friend—someone who could offer a better perspective on matters, but who'd look at the situation on her terms as a potential romance, not as someone trying to be protective of her."
"Oh," was all Nanoha said, but her face told the entire story, that she understood exactly what Fate was driving at—the sense of what had been lost.
"Do you know the worst of it?"
"The...worst?"
Fate smiled up at her, the old smile, the one that went with what a nine-year-old Nanoha had named "the girl with the sad eyes."
"I think that if I had the choice again, I'd do the same thing." She thought of her past, the things she'd done both alone and with her friends and allies: lost logia recovered or sealed, lives saved, people's happiness protected.
Maybe that was the biggest difference between the three friends. Nanoha helped people because it was impossible for her to have the power to do so and not help them; it was a Calling. Hayate had a vision of the future and strove to achieve it for everyone's sake. As for Fate...
Fate didn't want anyone else to go through the things she had, to feel that sadness that had been her existence before Nanoha had come flying out of nowhere to offer her an entirely new world.
There were tears in her eyes, she realized.
"How awful does that make me?" she asked with a little sniffle.
Nanoha's arms were around her in the next moment.
"If you're looking for someone to tell you that you're a bad person for choosing important work over your own happiness, you're in the wrong family."
"Huh?"
"Remember which one of us still has that damned power limiter in effect? Do you know what it says in my medical file? 'Subject is deemed psychologically incapable of restraining herself to a power level consistent with her continued well-being.' Remember how mad you were when it first happened and I was complaining about it?"
Fate smiled. She remembered how she'd wanted to logically discuss it with Nanoha only to have it dissolve almost at once into tearful screaming about the people who'd miss her if she pushed herself until she died and finally kissing the Ace of Aces into submission.
"I remember."
Nanoha nodded.
"So you see, I never resented your absences. I really missed you, but I wasn't angry at you. I was proud of you, that you were out there doing with your own hands the things that I wanted to do but couldn't."
She smiled warmly at Fate.
"We're really alike, Fate-chan. Both of us go diving into things, putting ourselves at risk for other people's happiness before our own. But you've always understood that about me, even when you were worried for me or angry at me: Fate-chan always knew in her heart what it meant for me, why I did the things that I did. And I understand you, too. I don't see how we could have stayed together as a couple for so long without that."
Fate sighed, not unhappily, because Nanoha was right.
"Then you know why I'm so torn about Hayate's offer?"
Nanoha nodded, then drank tea.
"Of course! But...I think you're thinking about it the wrong way."
"Oh?"
"Sure. You're saying, 'I can spend more time with my family or do good things for people,' right? And trying to settle your priorities between them?"
"More or less. What am I missing?"
"You're missing what you can do as Naval Liaison Officer. I mean, the job means something to Hayate-chan or she wouldn't ask you to do it. She'd want you available, sure, because she's Hayate-chan, but she also knows your talents and would want to get work out of them. She made Signum commander of CCDF's elite commando team, for example."
"I see..."
Nanoha nodded.
"For someone like us, we'll always value other people's concerns ahead of our personal concerns. But being NLO isn't just about giving you a job where you can be at home with us. It's a job for a high-ranking naval officer. Maybe it's just another way to help people." She paused, then grinned. "Besides, just because I understand what drives you doesn't mean that I'd be against having 500-percent more Fate-chan in my life!"
Fate chuckled.
"Well, it's true that 500-percent more Nanoha and Vivio would certainly go well for me." A moment later she added, "Thank you, Nanoha. I did need a new perspective on things."
"Glad I could help. Do I get a kiss for that?"
It made Fate chuckle again.
"Yes, Nanoha, you get a kiss." She slid an arm around her first and only love's waist and pulled her in so their lips could touch. "Sorry about the milk tea breath."
Nanoha tugged gently at Fate's lower lip with her own.
"Funny, tasting it this way's giving me a new appreciation for it," she breathed huskily between kisses. She set her own teacup down on the nearest piece of furniture she could reach, then let herself slide off the chair arm into Fate's lap, and wrapped her arms around her wife's neck so she could kiss her properly.
~X X X~
Marcus Auburn had been in the interdimensional transport business for upwards of forty years, signing on as a deckhand to get away from an unhappy home and working his way up through the ranks with hard work and a hard-nosed pragmatism. This was a job, not a Sacred Calling, and his motivation was money, not some abstract ideal.
As the captain of his own freighter, he held closely to that principle. The beat-up old Lagoon would have looked out of place in the glittering spaceport docks of places like Cranagan next to elite couriers and glossy cruise liners, but then again a fair number of his better-paying customers—particularly those whose payments went directly to Auburn and a few select members of his crew—preferred that their deliveries be made through the secondary and tertiary spaceports of various worlds. "Low profile" was as close to a creed as Auburn ever professed.
This job bothered even him, though. Shadowy deliveries were all well and good, but he was used to getting them from clients, not from other ships in the same business. And the captain of the Hansel had let slip that she'd picked the delivery up not from a client but at a dead-drop site on a deserted asteroid! Someone was going through an awful lot of trouble to conceal the source of this particular shipment, which meant that it wasn't the usual drugs, arms, or bulk stolen goods. Tech, maybe, or some kind of Lost Logia? No wonder the Navy seemed to have a sector-wide burr up its ass.
But two things made Auburn shrug off his distaste. The "sector-wide burr"...well, that was a different sector, one the Lagoon had left behind not long after picking up the extra shipment. And more importantly, he'd been paid well and in advance.
He bit the end off a fresh cigar, spat the tip in the general direction of a trash bucket, and lit up. People in his line of work who started asking questions tended to be out of work in a hurry, out of work or out an airlock. The shipment meant trouble for someone, and Auburn was dedicated to making sure that it wasn't him.
~X X X~
"So what are you so busy with, anyway?" Nanoha asked.
"How did you know that it was something special?"
"Motherhood practice. If your teenager is in bed and you're still doing paperwork, it's not a routine matter."
"Deductive reasoning. Maybe you should be an Enforcer."
"I don't know; I think I may just be too subtle for their style." The two women put their foreheads together and laughed at Nanoha's joke.
"It's this last case that I was on. I hate loose ends, and a multi-million, state-of-the-art armored military vehicle is a really big one. Someone wants it for something, and I think we'd be better off knowing what that is now rather than later. I know that it's in the hands of the regional command, and that it's not a black mark on my record that the locals screwed up, but it bothers me. I can't know that a problem exists and easily walk away from it. You know what I mean."
Nanoha nodded.
"Absolutely."
"So I've been going over the case file; I have to file a fully formal report anyway for the prosecutors' office, so I have a valid excuse for revisiting it. The problem is, the only ones who know where the Nest went are the Aldorous Enclave, and they're not talking." Fate sighed.
"I'm amazed that they could order up something like that, anyway."
"Yeah—oh, blast!" Fate sat bolt upright, nearly jostling Nanoha off her lap. "If the buyer wanted something like a Nest, how would they know it was available? Maybe we've got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely?"
She unlaced her arm from around Nanoha and called up her screen and keyboard again.
Priority Memorandum: Harlaown, Fate T. to Enforcement Bureau, Regional Directorate, Region 7
Re: Case Number TI-J-7625
Suggest follow-up be pursued with Tiburon Heavy Industries. Possibility high that corporate official(s) responsible for diversion of goods had contact with intended purchaser at start of transaction.
"You get all terse and formal when you write," Nanoha observed.
"I know. But it's good practice for when my reports start getting copied to the high command."
"Since when do Enforcers' reports..." Her eyes widened and she broke into a big grin when she figured it out.
"They don't, but a Naval Liaison Officer's certainly would."
Nanoha's excited squeal even woke up Vivio.
~X X X~
A/N: Nanoha and Fate's discussion of Nanoha's power limiter references RadiantBeam's story, "Pain to Pain."