Frank

"I..." Cooper shook his head. "I what?"

"No. You are not ready for that." The alien said with a sound that was almost a snarl. "I shouldn't have said that. I won't hurt you again."

"I need to know." Cooper pleaded.

"No." The alien took its hands from Mara who sat frozen, her face pale. "You need rest now more than knowledge that will hurt you. It wasn't your fault, my fault, or anyone's fault. But it did hurt you. It hurt everyone and we all blame ourselves. I won't let you do that to yourself again. Once was enough!"

"WHAT DID I DO?" Cooper screamed and tried to rise, but the alien had him in all four of her hands now and the tendrils swept in.

Sleep.

The word hit him like a hammer and he was falling out of the alien's grasp. Slowly, so slowly. Mara helped catch him and her face was bleak. He tried to reassure her, but his mouth wasn't working right. He saw her eyes glisten and a tear escape. Then he knew no more.

Some time later

When Cooper woke, he was lying on a bed in a room that looked archaic. Instead of metal walls, polished until they gleamed, the walls were tile and what looked like plaster. He looked around, but he was alone in the small… No, it wasn't a room. It was a cubicle of some kind, made by a screen that hung from the ceiling on a rail. There were two walls of tile and plaster, the other two were made by the curtain. A harsh white light buzzed overhead.

A familiar voice spoke up form nearby and he listened.

"...and even with all the new help, the repairs to the hangar door will take at least two more days." Weaver sounded calm, but under her tone lay tension. "The ship took quite a bit of damage from the earthquake as well, but we focused on that. It was never designed to have a roof fall on it."

"If it takes two days, then it takes two days." The voice of the alien replied. She sounded tired. "Cooper is awake. He is rested and as calm as he can be. I should… I need to let him see."

"Milady..." Weaver sounded upset now.

"It is no one's fault, Weaver." The alien said sternly. "Least of all yours. Can you stay?" Was she begging?

"After everything you have done for us, try and tear me away." Weaver replied with just a hint of heat.

"Ah, no." The alien said a bit weakly. Steps approached and Cooper braced himself. "I am not that stupid."

"Wise incorporeal extraterrestrial." Weaver said to a chuckle from the other.

The hanging curtain was pulled away and Cooper stare d as two female human forms approached. One was Weaver. She still wore her archaic looking suit and her rifle was slung at her back. The other… Cooper felt every ounce of breath leave his lungs as his fiance's face looked at him. But it wasn't his fiance!

The face was the same, but it was stiff, immobile. It was as if someone had carved Helen's face out of rock and placed it on a body. There was no life in what had once been a vibrant young woman. The body was mobile. It walked to his bedside and sat down in a chair he hadn't seen. Weaver stood where she was, her face worried.

"What did I do?" Cooper asked in a tiny voice as he stared at the not-human human..

"You tried to bring your fiance back." The voice of the alien came from his fiance's face, but her lips did not move. "We all told you she was gone, but you could not give up on her. You simply could not. You did everything you could, you recovered her remains and your child's. The bodies were burned almost beyond any recognition. You buried your child's body, but you kept repairing hers. Nothing we said to you made any difference. You just kept trying."

"What am I, Frankenstein?" Cooper asked, dumbfounded.

"No." The alien in the body said sadly. "He was a fictional character. Besides… He did what he did out of pride and to see if he could. You did what you did, not for pride or because you could, but because the hurt inside you was so intense. You did not think you could live without her. You helped us, the Sectoids and me, but the humans who had slept here..." She looked at Weaver.

"Most of us died as we slept." Weaver said softly. "Those who survived… We took some time to wake safely. And when we did, the world had fallen. The Elders had won. The Lady here and her allies pulled us out of the rubble, but… only three of us and all needing help to recover." She smiled at the alien. "It was hell of a shock but we all swore to her when we were able."

"And I still curse you for that." The alien snapped, but her ire was fake. "I am not a ruler. I am not a queen or whatever. You all could have gone back to X-Com."

"And told them what?" Weaver demanded. "That we were survivors from another alien invasion and oh, yeah, we didn't have any of the weapons or records we were supposed to have!" Cooper looked at her and Weaver sighed. "This area was supposed to be geologically stable."

"It is." The alien in the human form said with calm assurance. "If this facility had been built on the West Coast, nothing would have survived. What happened here was a fluke."

"You know what X-Com would have done to us." Weaver said with a shrug. "It wouldn't have been pretty."

"I don't understand." Cooper said with a wince. "You have a rifle I have never seen before."

"For which we have one crate of ammunition and no way to make any more." Weaver replied with a groan. "The Sectoids have tried, but the ammo requires materials not found on Earth. Even cannibalizing the broken weapons doesn't do much, their cells decayed in the time since they were broken. The arsenal has one other functional Zadjari weapon and a whole pile of mostly archaic human ones. The ammunition store collapsed as well. At least it didn't explode. There may be more crates of energy cells buried, there may not. We cannot get to them if there are. Even if we could? Who would use them? There are only three of us left and Zimmerman is a mess."

"What happened?" Cooper asked. He could not look at his fiance's face. It wasn't his fiance. "The… she said that the stasis room was damaged."

"The whole facility was." Weaver slumped a bit. "There were ten of us who volunteered. None of us had family left and we all knew the risks. The idea was that if it happened again, if Earth was invaded again, we would have a stockpile of advanced weaponry and the wherewithal to make more as well as people trained to use and make them. We would have to steal or scrounge the materials from the enemy, but we could have. Unfortunately, most the stasis pods were damaged and all of them were buried when the roof collapsed. I should have listened to them." Grief clouded her features now. "The Sectoids warned me that the construction wasn't strong enough."

"Weaver." The alien with Helen's face said sternly. "If I cannot live in the past, neither can you."

"Yes Milady." Weaver demurred and Cooper had to bite back a laugh at the sour sound that came from the other.

"So they dug you out and woke you up." Cooper mused.

"It took them years." Weaver blew out a deep breath. "Time meant nothing to us, but all of the pods were damaged. Even the Sectoids had to go slowly. Digging us out of a collapsed room without harming the pods was dangerous work and three of them were hurt badly in the process. They saw a pod fail in front of them but they kept going. They knew others were intact and functional. The three of us who survived woke up here in the wreckage of our plan. We are all that is left of the old X-Com and we failed."

"You didn't fail." Cooper said before the other could. "Humanity still exists. X-Com still fights. You didn't fail."

"It is not my X-Com." Weaver said quietly. "It wasn't my X-Com after Faulk died. Without him, the Bureau changed. It was less about defending and more about politics. I knew it was going to be that way. Even Weir didn't have a chance against the ingrained attitudes of the bureaucrats. Cover it up, erase it all, it never happened."

"But it did." Cooper's words were very quiet.

"As far as the new post-Faulk X-Com was concerned, the veterans such as myself were liabilities. We knew too much about too much." Weaver made a face. "None of us would have talked, but a bureaucrat is not paid to care about such things."

"That has not changed since humans invented bureaucracies, Weaver." The alien with Helen's face said sadly. "It is not going to change now. I am sorry, Cooper. I had to show you. I will move this form back into stasis. It hurts you to see her face this way." Cooper surprised himself by reaching out and grabbing her hand. "Little one..." She said weakly as she sat back down.

"You didn't do this." Cooper gave the hand a squeeze. The flesh under his fingers felt alive, but the face was so dead and lifeless. "You didn't hurt me, You haven't hurt me. I did this. I made...a golem or something?"

"No. You repaired her body and attempted to shock her mind back into life." The alien said sadly. "It didn't work. Base power fluctuated severely and we ran to your lab. We found you, slumped over this inert form, crying. You had poured everything you had into it and it was not enough. What you did was incredible, but… Cooper, it was not possible. You repaired her body, but everything that made your Helen what she was, was gone."

"And then you had a body." Cooper said weakly. "I… didn't take that well, did I?"

"I was not trying to frighten you." The alien said sadly. "None of us believed what you had done. You had repaired her body almost completely. Not even the Zadjari tech could do such, Cooper. You are a genius. I was simply trying to ascertain what you had done. I touched the body and instantly merged with it. It is a fully functional female human body despite her immobile facial features. You repaired her body and it was alive, but she was not in it. When I spoke to you from this body, you had a breakdown."

"I bet." Cooper said weakly. His head fell until his jaw was on his chest. "I… What have I done?"

"You loved your Helen with all of your heart." The alien was still so sad. "Nothing more. Nothing evil. You brought her body back to life. In doing so, you repaired it almost completely. Cooper..." She rubbed his hand gently. "What you did was amazing and it was the basis for what I did for Ana and Peter and then Mara."

"I toyed with the dead." Cooper said softly.

"No!" The alien snapped. "You healed. It is what you do. All you do. She was beyond pain, beyond fear, Cooper. You did not toy with anyone, you did not hurt anyone. You were trying to bring Helen back."

"And I failed." Cooper slumped in the bed, his hand falling limp.

The two mismatched women looked at each other. Something passed between them and then Helen's body got up and left the room. Weaver looked at Cooper who stared at the ceiling.

"I bet you are asking why I am not freaking out." Weaver said softly. Cooper jerked and stared at her. "Care to hazard a guess?"

"She was watching when I developed the sponges." Cooper said softly. "She has the touch to put them in." Telekinesis would allow for much gentler surgery than scalpels.

"You are as smart as everyone says." Weaver smiled a little. Said smile fell. "No one blames you for being irrational about what happened, Cooper. You went through an incredibly traumatic episode, both physically and emotionally. Even then? You didn't hurt anyone. I would have."

"I was never a soldier." Cooper was numb now. "I cannot understand what you went through." Weaver shook her head.

"No, and that is a good thing." Weaver replied. "And what you did, what you discovered, it helps. It helps me, it helps Foster and it helps Zimmerman. We were broken by what happened. By what we had seen, what we had done. No matter my skill, I was a girl playing in a man's world. I had to be three times the soldier any other was just to fit in. After all that? I was angry. So very angry."

"Hard to blame you. And then you woke up here and things were worse." Cooper said softly. Weaver nodded. "But… She operated on you?"

"I was little better than Mara was at first when I woke." Weaver said quietly. "I was crying hysterically, huddled into a ball and it took her some time to calm me down. I had no idea why I was crying. I didn't know what had happened. But I couldn't stop. She helped. She apologized for the intrusion, afterwards. But she helped all three of us and no, it is not brainwashing. I know brainwashing. This isn't it."

"I should take your word for that." Cooper managed s small, thin smile. "I don't want you to thump me after all. But I don't know if I can."

"You will make up your own mind, Cooper." Weaver said with a smile of her own. "Everyone does. But you need to understand this: To everyone here you are a hero." She paused and made a face. "Except Mara's sister and she doesn't count. She likely won't be staying." Cooper looked at her and Weaver shook her head. "Pragmatically speaking, she is an enemy. A dangerous enemy. We should kill her and be done with it. But I am not… I am not who I was."

"No one is." Cooper agreed. "Mara?"

"Still asleep and she will likely stay that way for a while. Nothing bad, she was just exhausted and despite what she thinks, she is not fully recovered from everything else yet." Weaver reassured him. "She is a good kid. She makes me feel...different. I kind of like it."

"Different?" Cooper asked, eyeing the human woman.

"I never had the time for kids nor the inclination to have them." Weaver said with a small frown. "Suddenly, I am surrounded by them. I find myself conflicted."

"You need to find a new way too." Cooper said in sudden insight. Weaver nodded to him. "Because you don't want to be a soldier."

"Not for X-Com." Weaver agreed. "Not anymore. One reason I swore to the Lady."

"Why do you call her that?" Cooper asked, confused.

"She is not your fiance." Weaver said with a frown. "The one time someone asked to use that name she was… um… rather rude." She chuckled in memory. "Foster won't make that mistake again."

"So..." Cooper shook his head. "I mean 'Lady' is the opposite of 'Lord', right?"

"More an equivalent, but yeah." Waver shrugged. "I needed a chain of command. My boys needed a chain of command. We chose her for it." Cooper's eyes bulged and Weaver smiled. "And no, we didn't tell her beforehand."

"I wonder if her kind can look poleaxed." Cooper grinned and Weaver shared it.

"No, but… Her sputtering was priceless." Weaver shook her head. "Part of me wants to fight, but I know I cannot win against the Elders. X-Com would take whatever I have, whatever I know and then discard me as useless."

"You don't know that." Cooper protested.

"Who here worked for them?" Weaver asked in an acid tone. Cooper made a face and raised both hands in a warding gesture. "They might be somewhat gentle about it, but we wouldn't be able to contribute much now. Zimmerman lost both legs just below the hip and Foster is an egghead. Give him a gun and he will hurt himself with it."

"And you said the supplies got trashed." Cooper said slowly. Weaver nodded. "But you also mentioned a ship?"

"A bona fide flying saucer built by the good old US of A and then revamped by X-Com to fight the Zadjari." Weaver smiled at Cooper's expression. "It is big enough to carry everyone away from here and the Lady has some ideas of where to hide that even the Elder would have difficulty accessing."

"She said something about leaving the planet." Cooper said weakly. Weaver nodded. "But go where?"

"That is under the heading of 'need to know' and you don't need to know just yet." Weaver replied. "Suffice it to say that we do have options, just not as many as we had hoped."

"So, what now?" Cooper asked. "I mean, I feel..." He paused. "A little weak, but good."

"Considering the state you were in when you arrived?" Weaver made face. "That is about a thousand percent improvement. Kerry has taken over nursing, she will be in with breakfast for you in a few minutes."

"That is why she wore that outfit?" Cooper asked, incredulous. Weaver nodded with a smile.

"She is good. Smart, kind, and with no problem at all beating someone who doesn't do as she wishes." Weaver warned. "At least she is not a nun. I worry Valere is focusing on spiritual stuff to the exclusion of all else."

"That is not healthy." Cooper said quickly, but then sighed. "I am a doctor. I cannot stop being that."

"No one wants you to stop." Weaver frowned at him. "And don't compare yourself to Victor Frankenstein. He was a nut. You are just slightly bent."

"Thanks. I think."

"You are welcome."