Chapter Twelve | Falling For You. Again.

"Sorry ma'am… Do I know you?"

Bree folded her arms across her chest, as if blocking her breasts from view. She had a good reason for doing so. "Uh, yeah… You gave me a ride in your black Sedan once." When the man appeared confused, Bree continued, "You know. The one with the reclining leather seats…?"

Since Tsu'tey had given Bree the day off, Grace took the chance to whisk them all away to Hell's Gate. Jake complained that he didn't have the luxury of the day off – he had work to do. But, Grace's charm and her death stares got her to wrap Jake the way she wanted. Well, the way Miles wanted. His threat hadn't been the worst one he had ever thrown at her, but it was bad enough. Also, she felt that if she spent too much time with the Na'vi, Miles would use that way of his to stop it, undoubtedly, and she didn't think she wanted to lose Eytukan again.

Think. She didn't think. It wasn't she didn't know – she didn't think. While her and Eytukan had their fun, with Miles' ways the past few weeks, she felt that pesky little one percent creep up. That one percent that she missed Miles. While he got to her, the times they had been together, he had been able to make Grace feel hot and loved and everything in between. Eytukan managed to do that, too, but it just wasn't quite the same. Every love was different, but Miles had this uncanny ability to make him stand out above the rest. Damn him.

"So, he asked you to go, and yet you're dragging us along, too?" Jake asked as he wheeled along the hallway in RDA, heading towards the control room. "Where is the justice in that, someone tell me, please."

"We're just here to make sure Miles doesn't do anything stupid, like he's inclined to do," Grace told her student, the door moving apart on their arrival. Parker and Miles were seated around the hologram map, both of them writing information they gleamed from it on their datapads. Miles looked up as his ex walked in, and a smirk danced upon his features.

"Well, well, well," he said, putting the pad down and leaning back in the chair. "If it isn't Grace and her entourage." Parker looked up at that, merely said hello in a tone that said he didn't want to be disturbed, and went back to his work.

Grace gritted her human teeth together, making it clear that she didn't enjoy being here. "Yes. Okay, you came, you saw us, now we can go."

Miles shook his head. "Oh, come on – RDA hasn't seen you lot in ages. You can surely stay for a bit longer. Hi Jake, hi Bree."

Jake greeted Miles accordingly, and Bree replied, "Hi Miles."

"Wow, no 'Uncle Miles'? That's a bit hurtful, Bree."

Bree looked at him, at Grace and then back. "Not quite appropriate anymore."

Miles nodded understandingly. "Fair enough. Oh by the way – Mandy?"

Grace mentally groaned. She forgot about this part of the deal. She betted Mandy was some floozy or something to that extent, with breast implants and a nose job that made her look like one of those Barbie doll Brazilian models.

She had hit it perfectly.

The click-clack sound of high heels came down the corridor, and Jake, Grace and Bree turned to greet the newcomer. Grace paled as she saw her. With vibrant red hair that went past her shoulders, easily a size-D cup, and a prominent figure and purposeful walk, Grace couldn't help but feel pale compared to her. But, it was her age that stunned Grace. She had thought Mandy was about her age, maybe a little younger. She was about twenty years Miles' junior. Bree made a face when she saw this woman, and quickly erased the image of Miles and her that came into her mind, followed by him and Grace… Seriously, what was his thing for red heads?

Mandy gave Grace a smile, and stretched out a perfectly manicured hand. "Hello Grace, I'm Mandy Klein."

Grace looked at the hand presented to her, and took it in her own to shake, forcing a smile. "Nice to meet you, Mandy. I've heard… much about you."

"Oh, likewise," she smiled, coming to wrap her arm around Miles protectively. Grace found it strange how she wanted to tell Mandy to get off Miles right now. What the hell was this? "Well, I'm sorry that you haven't seen Miles too much – work and I've been riding him hard."

Grace gave Mandy a very fake smile. "Well, if anyone can go the distance, he can. I should know." Mandy's smile wavered just a little. Jake and Bree looked at one another, and could both tell they were sharing the exact same thought. They were going to be here all day. Just brilliant.

"So, what do you do?" Grace asked Mandy as they sat down with Miles a few hours later for a drink. Everyone was still around them in the control room, but since they had slacked off, and Parker had left so he didn't tell them to get back to work, the atmosphere was pretty relaxed.

Mandy took a sip of the drink in a way that told Grace she was pretty accustomed to doing that, and replied, "I'm a reporter. I deliver news from Pandora to Earth."

'That explains the boob job,' Grace thought. She nodded and smiled before Mandy excused herself to get something. Grace turned to her ex. "Well, there. I met Mandy. Satisfied?"

Miles shrugged. "I suppose," he said. He leant forward to her, and Grace looked over his handsome features. Miles looked away from her as he heard the sounds of a game being played, and looked over to see that some of the crew had started a limbo contest. Oh, the joys of Parker not being around, and Miles relaxing for once. He smirked and turned back to his ex. "Why don't you join in? I know from personal experience on just how horizontal you can get," he said with a wink to solidify the innuendo.

Grace gave a sarcastic laugh. "Oh, don't you mean how horizontal I made you?" Unfortunately, just as Grace made that flirtatious comment, her niece came to sit down with them. She quickly got up again as she heard that, making a horribly disgusted face at that. "Jesus Christ, you two, stop talking!" she said, sounding like a child who had just walked in on their parents' coitus.

Miles brought his eyes up to his ex-niece's. He smirked at her, but Bree saw the evil glint in his hazel eyes. "Well then, we can talk about something else. Why not about how you got here?" Bree paled slightly, and her jaw set. She shot a death glare at Miles. She was no longer the little girl he used to give piggy-back rides, regale her with tales of his jobs, and who used to treat her like a daughter just as she treat him like a father. She had been quite on the fence about him once she saw how hurt Grace had been by him, but now that he knew her past and seemed not at all concerned about sharing it, hatred rose up like bile within her.

Grace, not noticing the non-verbal war between the two, asked innocently, "Yeah, Bree, I never truly heard that story. I know you didn't train to become an Avatar driver… what happened there?"

Bree looked at her aunt. "That's a story for another day," she said as she left. Grace looked after her, confused, but Miles brought her right back down to Earth, changing the topic entirely. "Come on Grace. You can't be serious with this Eytukan guy. He seems pretty… well, not your type, that's for sure, considering where he's from. What happened to the girl who used to squeal at the sight of a spider and had to have me come and squash the thing with my boot? Don't tell me you've started a Save the Spiders program."

Grace took her eyes off of Bree's leaving figure. She rolled her eyes and flipped her red hair back, thinking of how to wittily reply as she did. She looked at Miles afterwards. "All right, yes, Eytukan can be pretty even keeled. But that's good. He's pretty safe after you. An invisible viper wolf would be safer than you…"

"Well, at least with our relationship, it never got dull."

Grace nodded slowly. "Yeah… the moment you stomped on my heart and told me you were leaving me since I didn't spend time with you – I spent every weekend with you, Miles, and every night – was a real blast."

Miles groaned. "Oh, the leaving – I never hear the end of it." The colonel looked pretty genuine as he said, "Grace, I am sorry for leaving you high and dry like that. But come on, you can give me credit for a faithful eighteen years."

Grace rolled her eyes, and then her ears heard the clack-clack of the high heels once more, and Mandy came back. She looked at Miles. "Yeah… but that's not counting the Christmas party of 2144."

Grace's eyes came to Miles. She cleared her throat and then looked at Mandy. "Uh… what?"

Miles stiffened himself, and as Mandy took her place beside him, her arm elegantly draped over him, he sighed. "Mandy, don't – "

Mandy brushed it off with a laugh and a kiss to Miles' cheek. "Oh, what does it matter? Your relationship is dead anyway." With a look to Grace that made the scientist go rigid, Mandy told the story. "Well… it's kind of funny. As a joke, Parker I believe put up a bit of mistletoe in the corner of the control room, and Miles and I… we sort of drifted over there. After a while, we found ourselves under that mistletoe, and we were like, 'Oh, okay. So what do we do now?' And then I smiled, and then Miles smiled, and then he reached over and started feeling me up!" Mandy nudged Miles playfully, but he didn't respond as he looked at Grace's shattered expression.

"Grace, that's not how it happened…" Miles said, trying to cover up the truth.

Grace felt that horrible sense within her when you're about to fall off a cliff, or your at the edge of something really high. The feeling of when your stomach just drops, but instead, it was her heart. Her eyes seemed to be pierced with needles, and she felt that funny sense in her throat. She suppressed the urge to let a tear fall as she got up. But then, she remembered something that Miles had said to her before, and she turned to Mandy. "Oh, and by the way… Miles told me he was still in love with me." With that as her parting note, Grace left the couple as Mandy shot Miles a death glare.

As Grace's heart was stomped on for what seemed like the millionth time in her lifetime, Bree found herself wandering over to the Na'vi artefacts they had on display. There was an impressive bow in a glass case, and Bree read the card that said something about the bow being the most prized possession of a hunter, and it was given to them as a gift. What a load of horse shit, at least the end of it. They were right about it being the most prized possession of the hunter, and looking at the scratches that had been resined over and personal imprints that would have taken years to put on, it had clearly been loved; so why would one just give it so eagerly to the RDA to be displayed?

Bree felt a sinister edge as she knelt down to examine the bow a little more. Her thoughts were so focused on the story behind it, and her eyes were fixed upon the bow itself, that she didn't notice a man about Miles' age come on the opposite of the case. After a few moments, being polite, Bree brought her eyes from the bow, and gave the man a smile. He did the same to her. Bree's smile faded then, and she looked at him, as if sizing him up. The man looked back to her, and frowned, pulling away from the case and coming over to her. He was a Lieutenant, she could tell by his uniform, and as Bree looked at him, she noticed his hands. Those hands…

The man looked at her curiously. He felt like he had seen her somewhere. "Sorry ma'am… Do I know you?"

Bree folded her arms across her chest, as if blocking her breasts from view. She had a good reason for doing so. "Uh, yeah… You gave me a ride in your black Sedan once." When the man appeared confused, Bree continued, "You know. The one with the reclining leather seats…?" The lieutenant's eyes widened. He surveyed the young girl. He had been with his share of women, but he could remember that she had been pretty memorable. And considering who she was, that was a bad thing. He quickly marched off, knocking into Jake without an apology.

Jake groaned as his wheelchair got moved off course as the man scurried away. He frowned at the elder, saying quietly, "Watch it," and then turned to Bree. She looked sickly pale, and was shivering. Jake wheeled himself over to her. "Hey, you okay?" he asked, placing a friendly hand on Bree's arm. She flinched away, and Jake retracted his hand.

Bree's eyes looked at Jake apologetically. "Sorry. And no, I'm safe to say I'm not."

Jake frowned thoughtfully at her. "How do you know Lieutenant Avery?" he asked her.

The young woman nodded. "Yeah." She gave a half smile, but it held no happiness, only pain. "We… kind of 'hit' paths back on Earth."

Jake looked at Bree, and then leaned back slightly as he caught her meaning. He let out a low breath. "Good Lord…" He looked back to where the lieutenant had disappeared, and then back to Bree. "Lieutenant Avery?" he asked, disbelieving. "Are you sure? He's a very well respected member of the military."

Bree nodded. "Yeah… Well, they all were." In a low voice, she added, "It's kind of how I ended up here." She looked at her friend, into his apologetic brown eyes. Jake was a Marine, and though he generally didn't show emotion, or he tried not to, for Bree he had a soft spot. They sort of became a little family, with Grace being their mother, and they being siblings. That was why Bree trusted him with her dirty laundry. "Please don't tell Aunt Grace," she begged. She didn't want to disappoint her, or make her feel guilty as she knew would happen.

Jake looked at her, and patted her shoulder again; she didn't flinch this time. "I won't."

· · ·

The next morning, Grace was pretty pissed off. She didn't know how he managed it, but Miles managed to quash anything that she might have been feeling yesterday, and tear her heart again. When they saw Grace smoking, swearing, and basically being everything she used to be before Eytukan became her nicotine patch, Jake and Bree knew to stay out of the way.

But one person obviously didn't.

Just as she was about to link up, hoping that Eytukan would be able to cheer her up, Grace heard a knock at the shack door. "Ugh," she muttered, going over to take a mask and then open the air-lock door. Her expression turned to one of fury as she saw who it was, just casually leaning against the shack door. "Miles… I'm busy. Go away."

Miles' head turned to face Grace, a statue of Adonis coming to life. "I came to say I'm sorry."

Grace's expression wavered, and she stood back. "Well, then I'm not doing anything. Come in." Eytukan could wait five minutes, she was sure.

Miles followed Grace into the shack, both of them taking off their masks once the door was secure, and the outside air had no way to enter. Once inside, he looked at Grace. "I am actually sorry, Grace. I honestly thought I was done hurting you."

"I thought that, too," she replied, folding her arms across her chest. So that's where Bree got it from.

"Still, that gave you no right to tell Mandy about our little conversation."

Grace sighed and looked to the horizon. She moved past Miles to the kitchenette, just for something to do as she explained. "It's just… she got me so mad. We were engaged, Miles. We were going to be married in the fall, we were going to have kids here and… she pointed out you were a manwhore that whole time and she made it seem that our relationship was nothing compared to what you two are having."

Miles listened to Grace, and then gave a slight laugh. He came over to her. "Grace… I asked Mandy to marry me last night." Grace looked around to face Miles, her shock radiating off all of her body. She slowly looked down to the floor. "Grace?" Miles asked, when she seemed a bit spaced out.

Grace put her finger up to shush him. "… Just… just give me a moment, I am asking God and Eywa to kill me…"

Miles looked at Grace. "You jealous? Having feelings for me again?" he asked in that tone that made Grace know he was smirking without having to look up at him.

Grace didn't want to admit that he was right, and she sighed. "No," she said, bringing her head back up. She forced a small smile. "I'm happy for you. Maybe now you'll stop chasing after me."

"You know that will never happen. You're still my number one girl." Before Grace could protest, Miles placed a large kiss to her forehead, ruffled her red hair and then left.