Ok…quick recount before I start apologizing once more. Since Chapter Thirteen the numbers of certain agents have changed. (This isn't terribly important so skip it if you must.)

Agent 2 is now Andrea Chilli

Agent 3 is Vesta Mux

Agent 4 hasn't changed.

Drake Cadmus is now Agent 5.

Most of you don't care…but I forgot that Drake switched with another agent and therefore had been calling him Agent 3 throughout this chapter until I checked back. If you didn't already know all of this…there it is! Wee.

Now onto business…I'm SO sorry this has taken so dreadfully long. I have college and work and a boyfriend…I've been sick lately…I have homework ALWAYS…and it's very hard to want to be artistic in my spare time when I'm spending pretty much all of the rest of my time HAVING to be artistic. (Oh right…I go to an art college…hehe…didn't make sense without that bit of information)

Still, no excuse. This chapter has been done mostly in those few hours of my spare time before work and school. Once I get a laptop (If I ever get a laptop…gas and food prices are killing me…not to mention coffee…which is an expensive addiction) I'll be able to write during my lunch hour in between classes. Until then I need to start managing my time more wisely. Ne ways…here you are…I hope it isn't disappointing in any way.

XXX

Chapter 21:

Raz and Lili Meet

He hated it when he had to be in close proximity of the mad man. It came more often for him then it would have if he weren't so good with things. Even as a young child he had been good at fixing things and making things. It had been a special talent. Not the most unusual of his talents of course. His father had been proud of him for this talent. His other talent had frightened his family.

Long story short, he was now an orphan…and had been for six years now. His father had committed suicide when he was seven. His mother, who had been frightened of him, sent him to a distant relative for a couple months to gather her thoughts…after a year or so, when it became clear that she was not returning, said relatives sent him to an orphanage. He'd burned it down…

Now he made things for a mad man. He wondered if coming here had been a good idea. News had traveled. On the streets, he'd heard of the place where psychics could go. The Psychonauts had never been an option. He was not a very good person…he knew that. He wasn't as stupid or selfish as some of the others that attended the facility…but he didn't have the record to be a government agent.

Sometimes, late at night, when it didn't feel as though the ever wandering eyes were watching he had kept Tank company on the obstacle course. They talked about things that no one dared to talk about during regular hours. He liked Tank. On nights like those he could almost see himself washing his hands of this wretched place…walking off and finding something more meaningful to do with his skills. Those feelings would fade by morning though, and the courage would wash out of him.

He made a few last minute adjustments to the plate and walked slowly towards Kellen, cradling it in his hand delicately. He picked a device off the table beside the mad man and held the plate up. Kellen had his eyes closed…and for a moment Jeremiah wondered if he was asleep. When he put the plate to the man's head however, his eyes fluttered open. He didn't look at Jeremiah, but instead gazed at the ceiling.

Jeremiah got the device in place and began the process of welding it back into Kellen's skull. It was a fairly easy task for him. His hands moved quickly and assuredly. When he was finished he set his tool down and took a step back.

"It is reinstalled, Sir." Kellen blinked and his eyes swiveled towards the young man.

"Good." He sat up and swung his legs over the table. "Go and get some rest Agent 016. You will need it for the morning."

"Sir?"

"Agent 4 has been captured by the enemy. Me and Agent 2 will have to retrieve him; therefore…you will be leading the morning activities. If you do well, there's a promotion in it for you."

"Er…what about general Cadmus?"

"He has other things he must do. Now give me my coat…I left it over there by the heater." Jeremiah, looking slightly bewildered grabbed Kellen's coat and handed it over to him. It was an odd thing in spring but Jeremiah imagined it was mostly for show, that…or perhaps Kellen wore it because, in his old age, he found he needed it even in the spring. The older man grabbed the coat and wrapped it around his shoulders.

"Hand me one of those guns," He said, as he pointed to one of the weapons that he took the last time he went to Whispering Rock. Jeremiah removed one from his worktable and handed it over. The older man stuck it in his belt after making sure the safety was on and stood.

"When I return I want you to have made several more of these. We'll need them soon." Jeremiah nodded.

"Yes sir." Kellen left the room. Once he was gone, Jeremiah relaxed. He put on a pair of safety glasses and got to work on the weaponry, wondering vaguely about what had happened to Tank.

XXX

Raz awoke to birds chirping and a far off bear being irate and excruciating pain that had somehow gotten much worse over night. He winced as he sat up and then tried to stand. A sharp pain traveled from his foot to his ankle and up through his knee. He fell backwards onto the bed again.

Raz examined his leg. Yep…it was broken all right. In fact…it was turning blue.

He frowned and tried to stand again, this time putting weight on only one leg and managed it…now all he needed to do was figure out how to get to the door. He tried to walk but it was too painful. It was as though all of the energy had gone out of his broken leg and had been replaced with pain. He sighed and began to limp unceremoniously towards the door. Raz winced in pain as he put a hand to the wall of the cabin and stared wearily at the long path ahead of him.

XXX

Lili was sitting at one of the long wooden tables in the Main lodge, staring up at where Quentin and Phoebe's instruments used to be and picking listlessly at two eggs swimming in bacon grease on her plate. Every couple of minutes she would yawn hugely, partly out of her rising tension at the thought of seeing Raz again and partly because she had barely slept at all the night before. Her stomach felt a bit queasy and currently breakfast was looking less and less attractive to her, although, she wasn't too sure that it would have looked very attractive under any other circumstances either. She wasn't entirely sure where Agent Cruller had gotten the eggs, and the amount of grease was beginning to alarm her.

Ford had excused himself forty minutes earlier, looking a little tired and confused. He had gone underground in search of a piece of psitanium large enough to carry around with him, so that he might not start to lapse into one of his other personalities until things could be straightened out. Lili had asked him if he thought she should try to contact Sasha, in case the German man was beginning to grow concerned at her lack of presence, but Ford had dismissed this idea.

'We'd better go see him personally and in private' he had said, choosing his words carefully, for Lili suspected, her own behalf. 'That way when we reveal our new found information, he wont make a scene in front of Truman.'

Finally, Lili took her plate over to the small kitchen area and dumped the contents into a scummy looking sink. Afterwards, she left the lodge and headed towards the beach. It was a little chilly and the sky had gone an ashy gray color. She felt her spirits drop a little as she headed to the dock and stood at the edge, looking at the water. It had been raining a lot lately. It was beginning to affect her mood.

She sat and then half laid on the dock with her head rested on her arm. Her claret hair flooded over her forearm. The water slapped against the beach and the edge of the dock. It made a lazy sound. She fell in and out in a light doze, imagining that she was hearing voices that weren't there.

I should get up she thought, but felt as though she couldn't find the strength, or didn't want to…or something.

XXX

Raz limped to the main lodge first, looking for Agent Cruller and dreading the moment when he would see Lili…but in a different sort of way then, say, he dreaded to see Kellen again. This sort of dread was made up of nerves and excitement and fear and shame. He could avoid her and that would make things so much easier…but if he didn't see her he knew it would leave him miserable. Agent Cruller hadn't been there and neither had Lili. Looking at the place for the first time in six years made Raz's heart ache a little. It wasn't the same without the bursts of music and then brief arguments between Quentin and Phoebe as they debated who had lost the rhythm before whom and what the hell the other had thought they were playing.

Raz smiled fondly and then limped back out again. He winced as he made his way down the steps. When he reached the bottom he leaned against the wall and looked around carefully…deciding where he would head off to next. A thin layer of sweat had coated his forehead despite the cool breeze due to the weight being put on his broken leg. He wiped it away absently and headed slowly towards the beach. It seemed as good a place as any to look for the older Psychonaut…and it was nearby.

He took the long wooden staircase that slowly dissipated into the beach sand carefully, though there were not so many stairs. With grim amusement he recalled a time when he would not have bothered with them, but rather woiuld have slid down the banister, balancing on it as though it were a tightrope or a beam. Just the thought made his bad leg scream in agony.

Even before he reached the bottom of the stairway he was aware that he wasn't alone on the beach. His eyes fell on the still figure lying on the dock. At first, during his descent, he had mistook it for something that had perhaps blown in the night before or during a previous storm…something from the small wooden structure where the canoes were kept. Now, as his heart jumped into his throat, he realized that he had been wrong.

There was one instant when he thought of climbing the stairs again. Before he could entertain that idea however, he realized that he had already begun approaching the figure cautiously.

Lili appeared to be sleeping on the dock, which struck Raz as a bit odd. She was laying in a near fetal position, with her head resting on her arm, which stood out brightly against the weathered wood.

When Raz reached where the sand kissed the dock he paused. From here he could tell she was beautiful. Her hair, the same shade of reddish purple was shorter, just barely brushing against her shoulders. She had grown a lot. He had thought that she was cute when they were twelve. But now, looking at her, he felt his legs melt underneath him.

As he moved closer a fat drop of rain splattered against his neck, startling him and making him shiver. Around him, drops began to fall. One landed on Lili's left eye and accumulated on her eye lash. Her lids fluttered open and her eyes met with Raz's.

XXX

She had thought she was dreaming. But then, in her dreams he wouldn't have looked so horrible. In the instant before she would sit up harshly and find something sharp and perhaps a little heated to say, not only to break up the moment, but to cover up her own helplessness at seeing him standing there, staring at her, her eyes took him in fully.

She had seen him the night before, but in the madness he had been almost unrecognizable. It was his eyes mostly that had changed. They had been foggy and confused the night before. Now, in the gray morning they were bright and burned with the sort of fire she had come to associate with the determined boy she had met several years before. Unfortunately, his eyes were all that looked lively now.

He was standing carefully on one leg and both of his eyes were black. She suspected this had something to do with the fact that she had broken his nose. A bandage was rapped around his head, above which his bright reddish brown hair protruded. But even through all of this, his eyes burned beautifully.

Finally, she regained herself, and sat up, her heart pounding and her palms sweaty.

"Have you come for another beating, or were you just trying to get a few free shots in before I woke up?" She saw the shock on his face before it smoothed over and became pain. She tried to push away her own feeling of shame and hurt but only managed to move it from her heart to her throat, where it became a painful and emotional lump.

Anyone else but Raz would have taken that comment to heart and would have a) either been startled to silence or b) would have walked away and avoided her for at least the rest of the day. Instead he took a few wobbly steps towards her. It was at this moment that Lili recalled how persistent he had been as a kid and how fearless. He had always been able to shake off what was said to him, or in her case, see through it…to the underlying words. In those days it drove her crazy…but it was also one of the reasons she had loved him so much.

"Look, I'm so sorry." Lili felt as though she were suddenly hit with a ton of bricks. His voice was the same and yet, so different. It was so much deeper! "I swear, if I had had any control over myself…"

"It's fine." She said, playing at her next defense mechanism, which was disinterest. This came after sarcastic cynicism and before mindless anger. "I've already heard about it from Agent Cruller." She said in a voice that was too mild to be real.

She stood up and made to brush past Raz without interest. She half feared that he would stop her. It was what he would have done four years before. He knew her routine. When he did not however, instead of relief she felt disappointment and sadness wash over her. She willed herself to keep walking…just keep walking until she reached the cabins. Then she could lay down…and probably burst into tears. Instead she turned and met his eyes again. She saw a mixture of concern and sorrow in them.

Lili swallowed hard and did the only thing that made sense to her in that moment of confused emotions. She walked back over to him and hit him in the jaw as hard as she could.

XXX

There was a loud crack and Raz's eyes widened as he grabbed the side of the dock to keep from falling into the water. Colors exploded in front of him and he tasted blood where his cheek had met his teeth unpleasantly. He reached up and touched his jaw. When he looked up into her eyes again, he saw that she was watching him coolly. In that moment, he thought he might actually take Kellen's rage over hers. 'Hell hath no fury like a women's scorn' Who had said that again?

"You…idiot." She said in a low but angry voice. "Four years? Everyone thought you were dead! Four DAMN years!" She paused, tears stinging her eyes now. "I don't give a damn about last night. Four years and you couldn't contact someone? Do…you have any…idea what you put us through? W-what you p-p-put me through?" She was crying now and it annoyed her. She wanted to yell at him some more. She wanted to tell him about the dreams that had left her feeling empty and heartbroken and how she hadn't been able to get into any other relationship because she couldn't seem to see anyone else as she saw him. She wanted to. Instead, she cried like an idiot in front of him.

He approached her hesitantly, perhaps worried that she would try to hit him again. Finally he gathered the courage to put his arms around her, to comfort her in some way, she practically fell against him and buried her face in his chest. She felt him embrace her with his skinny, yet absurdly strong arms and rested his chin her hair.

"I'm sorry." He said and then nothing else was said. For a long time they stood in each other's arms as the rain fell around them.

XXX

Yikes, fluff. I hope you guys liked this chapter. I'll try to be quicker with the next one. I'll work on Always the Same next and get it finished so that you no longer have to wait for the last blasted chapter. Luv you all.