Thank you to Ludi and Ptolemais for their insight and inspiration.

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Raven's office in the capitol was her grandest by far. Tall windows gave a view of the ocean where it converged with a range of mountains running east to west. The sunsets were spectacular. In truth she wanted to spend most of her time here, close to her allies and enemies, close to splendor and wealth, close to the seat of power.

Her joy over the meeting with Nur had not dissipated, even after sending out job offers to her chosen officers. Even after transferring a trillion credits to the recruiting department and watching the shocked communiques roll in. Union funding dwarfed Oyama's admittedly generous patronage…did she still need to keep her promises to him? To make him a cabinet member somehow… With Nur's ear it could be done, if there were an opening.

Too much navel gazing was a waste of time. Where were the ships, the ammunition, the troops, the uniforms, the rations, the fuel, the nuts and bolts of a military…haha…a security firm. First those things must be in place.

Her daydreaming was cut short as her doors burst open and Buckman stormed through.

"Darkholm!"

She stood quickly. "You can't just barge in here…"

"Clearly I can."

"What do you want you fucking sod."

"I know what you're doing!" He yelled as he stomped forward.

"What am I doing?" She bit back derisively. "Protecting Nur from you?"

He sneered, his rage blinding him to the realization that the game he was playing here was now clearly a dangerous one.

"You conniving bitch. You'd be happy to be rid of Nur, don't pretend this is for his benefit. You are only aligned with him because it rescues your petty cash cow from becoming part of Dark Star."

She sat down and glared at him across the room. "Why does it bother you that KAS will be expanding? Do you think it threatens your funding?"

"That is beside the point."

"Then what is the point? Are you personally offended that Nur doesn't trust you and your cronies to be the sole guardians of the government? Or are you simply saddened by the fact that it dilutes your influence?"

Everything she said was true and he was on fire with hatred. She could feel it, curling off of him like smoke.

"I don't trust you Raven, not as far as I can throw you. I certainly do not trust you with classified information, or with the security contracts for the Union's largest operations." Trust was a strange misnomer. He knew she was capable…but he needed a reason to discredit her and this was the best he could do at the moment. Not that it mattered. There was no one to hear his tirade but the recording devices he assumed were hidden in her office. "Rest assured that I will see you crucified the first time your outfit botches a mission. Even the appearance of weakness erodes the legitimacy of the government."

"What nonsense this is."

He straightened his shirt and looked at her a beat.

"I'll be watching you Raven." And with that he turned and marched out just as he had entered. As he left, her quaking secretary peered in.

"Ma'am, I'm…I'm sorry…he just…" She stuttered.

Raven wanted to fire her. She was so incensed, but she took a breath and then another, and she remembered that this particular problem was soon to be dealt with.

"It's fine Margo…go back to your desk."

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Kurt walked up the ramp where Anna was already waiting for him.

"So, station 8." She said casually.

"Ja." He smiled at her.

"I always feel like something is going down when I take you to station 8."

They turned together and walked into the interior as the ramp closed.

"Well, something's always going down isn't it?"

She laughed and turned toward the cockpit stairs. When they were both buckled in and past the atmosphere, Kurt thought about what he wanted to say. She seemed in good spirits and he wondered if anything even needed to be said at all.

"Listen, Anna…"

It sounded serious and she rolled her head toward him with comical trepidation.

"I just want to apologize for how things happened in New Madripoor."

"It's fine Kurt."

"It's not fine." He said with enough firmness to make her furrow her brow. "I know you know I was just worried about you…"

"No, I deserved it. There was a recall, a real one, and I didn't answer."

"There's more than that." He could sense how tense she became when he said it but he continued. "You're right, you're a grown woman and you can chose your own company. You've been…better for years now. You've been as reliable as clockwork…until Remy."

"You mean Gambit." She scoffed under her breath. "You think he's making me…unreliable."

"I think he's making you take risks you wouldn't otherwise take."

She thought about that a moment and wondered if it were him, or the fact that she was off the Solian. Or perhaps it was just her own personal rebellion.

"You blame him for me missing the recall but it was my fault. You should blame me. I made a mistake and I don't know why the fact that I was out with Remy has anything to do with it. If you were out with someone and you forgot your phone when there was a recall, Raven would blame you…no one else. Why does it matter that I was with anyone? And I'll just answer you right there too…because of my history right? Because deep down you still think I'm unstable, that I'm gonna have a psychotic episode any second."

"It's not that, Anna, otherwise Raven wouldn't trust you with these missions and this ship."

"She trusts me because she trusts me. Trust is a feeling, nothing more. And I've more than earned it over the past decade haven't I? I took the pills, I saw the specialists, I…I did the shock therapy, everything that was asked of me. And I admitted it. I admitted it was all in my head, all the voices…"

"Anna, please calm down."

"…All the 'connections' were just paranoid delusions. I copped to it all. I obeyed like a dog and…" She started to choke up and locked her gaze onto the stars. "…I live for Raven, and she knows it. That's why she trusts me. What if I lived for someone else? Or worse, myself?"

Kurt was silent a moment.

"I'm really just trying to apologize. Maybe you're just my sister and I don't want some guy taking advantage of you."

"He didn't take advantage of me, we had sex."

"Wunderbar." He muttered in defeat. He knew what they had done, but he didn't want to hear it from her lips. He slumped in his chair. "Anna." He continued, "I want peace between us?"

He sounded forlorn and it made her look at him again.

"Are you ok, Kurt?"

"I just want you to believe that I care about you, and Remy in your life makes me nervous. It doesn't have to be more than that. And I mean it", he raised his voice a little. "…It has nothing to do with your 'history'. Remy's charming and any brother would be anxious for his sister around him. But, as you said, you're an adult." There was a brief pause and he went on. "If you're so bitter about 'living for Raven', why don't you do something else. Go back to school or something you want to do."

There was an idea. Just leave.

Just…leave.

Kurt let her chew on that for a minute then got up. "I'm going to make some coffee, do you want any?"

"Yeah, please."

He went to the kitchen and found the coffee powder, scooped a generous helping into two cups and filled them from the hot water tap. On his way out he saw a pile of foodstuff queued in the trash compactor. Bread, oranges, nutrient bars, rice. All untouched and unopened by the looks of it. When he returned he handed her a cup.

"Why's all that food in the trash?"

"Oh…it smelled funny."

"All of it? Like what?"

"I don't know, it just smelled…contaminated."

A fraction of a second passed before he hurriedly changed the subject and he hoped she had not noticed the pause.

At the nearest opportunity he excused himself and went to his room to think. It was almost exactly ten years ago to the day that Anna had been committed. They had found her in a utility closet pulling her teeth out with a pair of pliers. The voices in her head had been urging her to do it for some time because her teeth were contaminated, and if she didn't remove them the contamination would spread to her whole body and she would die in some horrible way. So she had finally listened to them, she had finally fully bought into her delusions, and taken a pair of needle nose pliers to her upper left incisor. She'd screamed of course and that gave it all away, but by the time someone had got to her she had pulled out three teeth and arranged them neatly on the floor. She was going at the fourth when Sage had smacked the pliers out of her hand and dragged her by the ankle out of the closet.

It wasn't until she'd received therapy that Kurt had understood her illness. Advertisements for toothpaste were secretly talking to her. The scrolling menu in the cafeteria had a code in it, meant just for her. She had certainly withdrawn since Cody had died but it was not because of sadness. It was confusion, paranoia, and a belief that there were messages hidden in plain sight telling her of some insidious infection hounding her. A belief that she was being watched. Hallucinations of not just voices but sensations. She would feel a touch on her shoulder and turn to see no one there, or a stranger conjured by her mind. Whole conversations she would have with these imaginary people.

Raven availed herself and Anna of every remedy yet known, including micro shocks to specific brain regions administered with surgical probes. She had invested in promising gene therapy research as well, but before Anna could be a guinea pig in human trials she'd seemed to recover. After shock therapy, and on a new drug, she'd gathered her wits. Therapists were very happy with her progress and after a year of treatment and observation she'd seemed normal, though somehow muted. Less bold than she was as a child. Less headstrong. And Raven didn't mind that at all.

Kurt took a walk around the ship looking for other signs of her returning illness. Everything seemed in perfect order until he came to an exposed transformer wrapped with duct tape. There was no telling what the explanation for this could be. The transformer could be 'contaminated' or some imaginary boogie man was trying to tamper with it. He glanced up at the cockpit to make sure that she did not see him making this discovery, and he snapped a picture of it with his phone, than another of the food in the compactor. He texted Raven the images and returned to Anna with a heavy heart.

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