This chapter is less heavy on the action and deals more with character development. We'll be having plenty of intrigue and action in the next few chapters, so don't feel too discouraged. I spent a good deal of time editing this chapter, and I enjoyed reading it but obviously I have writer's bias. Reviews to help me correct any faults with the story would be wonderful, simply wonderful.

For those of you still wondering, this story arc should be resolved within the next two-three chapters tops. I don't plan on dragging it out, but it is necessary to move the plot forward. After the business with Harkness is finished, we are back to recruiting more mercenaries, and the next few are pretty wild. :D

As always, thanks from reading and please review, follow, favorite, scold, beat, kiss, cherish, lavish, ravish or message me. I do so love the attention ;P

Jaroslav and Siobhan were sitting at the bar, neither one talking to the other. Siobhan was on her third beer, while Jaroslav had ordered a Nuka-Cola.

After ten minutes of sheer silence between the pair, Siobhan raises the white flag of reconciliation:

"D'you want to talk about it?" She asks, turning to face him. Jaroslav continues to look at his Cola, not responding to Siobhan's question.

She sighs and orders another beer, her third. The slimy (which is saying something for a ghoul) bartender nods and serves her another drink. He somehow manages to turn the simple act of serving a patron a beer into a profound act of shameless leering.

Siobhan merely gives him the eyebrow. He scowls and walks to the other end of the bar, off to serve other Ghoul customers.

Siobhan turns back to Jaroslav. "I understand that you are upset-"

"Don't even start." Jaroslav begins darkly.

"Right, like your threats mean absolute cock to me." Siobhan snorts out. She's taken down bigger, meaner men than Jaroslav. She knows this. She knows that he knows this. He doesn't have the grounds for making these kinds of threats.

"I mean it girl, don't go poking around where you don't belong. It's not likely to end well. I appreciate the thanks." By his tone, Siobhan deduced that he was neither thankful nor appreciative. What a bastard.

They sit in silence for several more minutes

"So Leon fiddled with your daughter…"

Jaroslav was surprisingly fast for such a big man. Siobhan just barely caught his left hook with her right hand .

Jaroslav roared and tried to move, but Siobhan clenched down on his captured fist. To Palmer's credit, he didn't cry, and this particular maneuver of Siobhan's had been making men cry from Maryland to Belfast.

"Your hissy fits, they're going to stop. As in right fucking now." Siobhan hissed at him

Palmer grunted through his pain, but Siobhan continued. "I get it; you have a beef with Leon because he fooled around with your daughter."

"She was to be married the next fucking morning! She was innocent and sworn to another! And then he showed up…" Palmer was half screaming at her, pain and anger very much evident in his voice. The various ghoul patrons began to shuffle out of the bar.

The leering bartender had one hand under the counter, with his eyes fixed on a ghoul standing in the corner.

Oblivious to the bartender and not having heard the full story, Siobhan urged Palmer to continue.

"I was so happy for her, my baby girl had reached an age where she would start a family and become a woman. She would have been happy and productive. But that isn't what happened. I had been on duty that night, so my daughter was alone. When I got home I went straight to our shared bedroom. I opened the door, and there is my daughter, on all fours on the bed…" Palmer is in tears now and he's coughing so badly that he can't finish the sentence.

Siobhan feels pity for the man, but where he has his grief, she has her logic.

"So I grabbed that bastard Sforza off of the bed, and I beat him within an inch of his life. I deposited his ass on his mother's doorstep and made him explain his actions. By the time I had returned to our home, My daughter was fully dressed and seated at the table. She did not say a word to me. I questioned her, threatened her, pleaded with her even. Nothing worked. Eventually I had to go to her soon to be husband's house and explain the situation. The family wasn't pleased, and I was left further with our family's shame."

Siobhan stared at Jaroslav for the longest time, while he didn't take his eyes off of the floor. She decided to press further.

"What happened to her?"

Palmer takes a deep, ragged breath before continuing. "Sforza's mother essentially disowned him after that incident. He packed his bags and left. I have never seen my daughter so distraught as the day he left the ship. She was standing on the flight deck, incapable of doing anything but crying."

"She remained sullen for weeks after his departure, and with every day it got worse. She would hardly eat her food; she didn't talk to any of the ship mates. She used to be such a lively girl, always curious and talkative."

"Then one day the bridge was down…" Jaroslav's eyes are glassy and clouded with pain.

Siobhan knows that at this moment, Palmer is standing at the edge, looking down into the abyss.

"I was up in the armory, cleaning weapons and going over tactics with Lana Danvers, who is Harkness' second in command. The landward tower radioed the bridge and asked them if Ariana Palmer was given permission to leave the City. I raced through the City, taking every shortcut and barreling through the front door. Landward Control had seen her, but they hadn't stopped her. She had told them that she had permission from her father to leave."

"It was there that I realized something horrible was happening. My baby hadn't said a word to anyone for weeks, and now she was talking to the guards? Something was wrong. They said that she slipped past them when they weren't looking. Fucking idiots, how do a half dozen men miss a little girl in a nightgown?!" Palmer's voice was hoarse, but Siobhan was unrelenting.

"What happened next Jaroslav?" Siobhan pronounced carefully. She is standing next to him at the edge, a hand to his back.

"I hauled ass off of the landward tower and tried to figure out where she had gone. Two of the officers came with me to help find her. Lana had personally come down to help out. We heard gunfire in the distance of the Jefferson Memorial. And then I ran." He stops. His voice is but a whisper.

Siobhan pushes him off the edge. "What happened to her?"

Palmer takes several minutes to start up again. "I was halfway down the hill when I saw her, lying there on the ground. There were two mutants standing over her. I… I… I don't know what happened next."

Siobhan looked at him, more with concern than inquisition.

"Two days later I was woken up in Doctor Preston's clinic. I had charged the Mutants head on. I even managed to kill one of them." Palmer says, bitterness oozing from his tone.

"Danvers and the others pulled me back, gathered Ariana up in her arms. She was so small, so tiny…"

"She was too far gone to be saved. We buried her at sea the next day." Jaroslav looks broken.

Siobhan has dredged up every foul memory from this dark period of his life, with little regard to what she has done to him psychologically.

'Tough Shit.' She thinks. 'No excuse to go about acting like a wanker.' She wonders abstractly if Civilization makes people weak. If Palmer were a true waste lander, he wouldn't be in this position right now. Siobhan needs to talk some sense into this man, because deep down he is a good man. He just needs a push in the right direction.

So she does the only logical thing, they only thing she knows she is good at.

She smacks him the face with the back of her left hand, while releasing her grip of his left fist. It is a light smack.

He only flies five feet to her left.

Basically a love tap is what that is.

Palmer stands up, looking stunned. She's dragged the fight out of him, made him bring his demons to light. Now she's going to educate him. Maybe the Order was onto something when they trained her in "conditioning" the new recruits. Time for her practice to pay off.

"You stupid fuck! Did you ever pause and think about why your daughter acted the way she did?"

Jaroslav looks at her as though she has grown a second head. "My daughter was embroiled by the shame she brought upon her family, at how Sforza robbed her of her inno-"

*thwack*

Jaroslav flies into a nearby table, breaking it in two.

"Stupid fucking man! Do you really think your daughter went all glass eyed cos she felt bad for your honor? She went all grim and quiet all on account of you sending off her beloved! You practically sentenced him to death by throwing his arse out into the wasteland!"

Jaroslav looks disgusted. "My little girl did not love that punk! She was in love with her fiancée!"

Siobhan gives a long, calculating stare at Palmer, evaluating his deficiencies.

Finally she speaks up. "Let me ask you this big man: Did your daughter have a say in her marriage?"

Jaroslav regards her for a minute. "As in, did she choose her husband?"

Siobhan nods.

Jaroslav pauses, thinking over what he wants to say. "She met the young man several times…" He decides on, weakly defending his now crumbling viewpoint.

"Not what I asked. Did she choose her husband?"

Jaroslav begins to see everything he believes unfurl: His entire justification erodes as he sees his daughter in a new light.

A false light. He clings to his beliefs. "She loved him."

Siobhan shakes her head in disagreement. "I doubt she did if she were knockin' boots with Leon."

Jaroslav looks angry, but it's a far cry from his earlier outbursts: Now he looks winded, almost defeated. It's the bitter anger of a man who has lost a fight, yet clings to his tattered pride.

It doesn't look so hot on Palmer, Siobhan decides.

"He seduced her. He tricked her from her marriage."

"Even if that were the case, who are you to stop them?"

"Sforza was a hound, he would have left her behind, a whore to be without a hus-"

Jaroslav sees the smack coming this time, and manages to shield himself from the worst of it. How embarrassing this would be, if the rest of the security force could see him being smacked around by a girl a foot shorter than him and easily a hundred pounds lighter.

Of course, Harkness was the only one who could best Jaroslav in a fight, so he doubted they'd be laughing for too long.

Siobhan is standing over him, eyes glimmering with frustration.

"The world has ended. Civilization is gone, and God has abandoned us. Don't you dare interrupt me Palmer, I grew up with the most devout Christians in the post-war world. The Order of Kells makes the Brotherhood look like Heretics by comparison. I know what asinine thoughts are rattling around in your brain, and I am not in the mood to debate theology with you." Siobhan's voice is acidic. It cuts through his reasoning like a blade.

The bartender has removed his weapon from behind the counter, a 10mm, and is aiming it at Siobhan. The Ghoul in the corner has drawn a wicked looking serrated knife.

Neither Siobhan nor Jaroslav notice.

"The simple fact is this: You killed your daughter. She may have made decisions against you, but you are the one who killed her dreams. You are the one who sent that poor boy off into the wasteland, where by his pure willpower to live he ended up surviving. If you had intervened on her behalf and made an honest man out of him, things may have been drastically different for you."

"He didn't love her." Jaroslav states flatly. He won't deal with this girl right now, no matter how hard she hits him or how angry she gets. The simple truth is that Sforza stole his daughter from him, and nothing will change that.

Siobhan isn't fazed. "Did you ever get his side of the story? Did you ever confirm that?"

The barman has cocked his gun. 'To hell with these crazy fucking humans.' He thinks.

Jaroslav doesn't want to have this conversation anymore. He moves to get up when the bar doors open.

Gunshots ring out behind the pair, who instinctively turn around to see what the hell is going on:

The Ghoul doctor has one of those Chinese pistols raised at the bartender. The Bartender is clutching his hands, cursing in pain. The other ghoul has raised his hands over his head, knife forgotten on the floor. Mirza is pointing his rifle at the ghoul lackey, while Leon is staring at Siobhan and Palmer. His face is grim with bad news.

"We're done here. Don't speak to me again." Palmer mutters to Siobhan. He gets up and moves towards the doors. Leon stops him.

Leon surveys the damage before facing Palmer. "We need to talk."

Palmer's eyes narrow. This day could not get any worse.

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