Disclaimer: As per usual, I own absolutely nothing.

Yagami Hayate was tired.

In light of that fact, taking time to review her usual load of Shadow cases before going to bed probably wasn't the best decision she'd ever made; but when she had decided to act as Chrono's "angel on the shoulder" so to speak, she'd known right away that she was definitely not making the best decision she'd ever made.

She sighed and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her eyes, before she reached up to adjust the light of her lamp a little. Normally she would have kept the whole room alit, but her boys were sleeping just down the hall, and any small amount of brightness was enough to have them up and poking around. Honestly…. She loved her sons, she always had and always would, but sometimes she wondered where they had gotten their sense of curiosity and adventure. They were still young yet. Perhaps they would outgrow it in their teenage years, if she got lucky….

It was at that moment that Hayate noticed a warm pair of arms that hadn't been resting on her shoulders before, a hand innocently toying with the top button of her blouse. She smirked. "Dear, if you're trying to undress me, you're doing a poor job of it."

"I never do a poor job of anything." Her husband grinned before he pulled back, and she turned the chair around to face him. In the dim light of the room, it didn't escape her notice that Verossa was shirtless, and had she had some free time on her hands she probably would have taken advantage of that fact.

"Have I kept you up? I tried to keep the light down so you could sleep."

"It's fine, I've been awake for awhile." He sat down on the edge of the bed. "Besides, I could hear you thinking from here."

"Hear me think—" Of course he would, she thought with a small smirk. If there was one thing Verossa Acous was known for, it was his ability to read people even when they put on a mask. It was one of the reasons he was Chrono's friend. "I'm sorry I was so loud."

"I'm sure you didn't mean it." He patted the space beside him, a clear invitation.

Hayate knew him well enough to know that if she said no, he would understand; Verossa had never been the type to hold grudges. He'd married her knowing full well that in some cases, work would take priority over any family they had.

So she felt no guilt when she stood and crossed the room, sitting down next to him and resting her cheek against his shoulder, comforted by the warmth of his skin. She felt his hand settle on her shoulder and closed her eyes. "I feel like I'm watching a train wreck in progress."

He gave her shoulder a soft squeeze. "The talk with Chrono didn't go well?"

"It went fine. I didn't stay very long once I knew he hadn't sent Lutecia-chan out himself. I just feel like I'm on a hill watching two trains speeding right at each other, and I have no way of stopping it."

It was an odd example for the current situation, but also very fitting; Verossa knew immediately what she was talking about. "No way of stopping it, huh?"

"Putting her under suicide watch wouldn't work, though I know the medic threatened to. You can force Lutecia-chan off duty and into a psychologist's office, but she's a Shadow. She won't talk if she doesn't want to." Hayate opened her eyes and shook her head. "She's boxed herself in, Rossa. I don't know what's worse: that her superiors saw it and did nothing to prevent it, or that she worked so hard to get there in the first place."

"There's one way out of the corner," Verossa offered. At that, Hayate grimaced.

"Of course. Send in her seventeen-year-old girlfriend to work through years of self-hatred and emotional confusion, when said girlfriend has, in the past few days alone, had her whole sense of morality questioned, learned about a side of Lutecia-chan that she never saw for eight years, and if things keep going at this rate, will never see Nanoha-chan eye-to-eye ever again."

It was easy to understand Hayate's frustration when she put it like that. In essence, they were using a teenager, someone who had really only started to learn about the world, to defuse a ticking time bomb that everyone else had willingly ignored since the death of Miranda Creed.

"I still think they have a chance," he said softly. "Vivio loves Lutecia, and if anything, she's inherited Nanoha's determination. If she has to, I can see her dragging Lutecia out of that corner kicking and screaming."

The image made Hayate chuckle, just as he had hoped it would. "Considering that growth spurt, I think she's physically capable of it," the brown-haired woman murmured. "The question is, once she's dragged Lutecia-chan out of that corner, will Lutecia-chan be able to make it the rest of the way on her own?"

And that was what it came down to, in the end; not if Vivio could save Lutecia, but if Lutecia could come to terms with her own sense of self. Doing that meant taking a good, hard look at her eight years of service as a Shadow and deciding if she still believed enough in the ideal of it to keep trying in the field, or if she'd had enough and walked away from it completely to start over.

It was a risky chance; Lutecia had staked too much of her own worth into the job, had believed for far too long that she could do nothing else. Expecting her to look back on that time with a clear mind and rationally decide to completely throw it away was the same as expecting her to toss out a chunk of who she was. It wasn't impossible—it had happened before, with many other people, and they had survived it well enough—but it was hard.

But even beyond that…

"Really," Hayate sighed, "it's a question of whether or not Lutecia-chan wants to follow in Nanoha-chan's footsteps."

At that, Verossa blinked. He'd been following his wife right up until her last statement. "Nanoha?"

Seeing she had lost him, Hayate chuckled again. "Yes, Nanoha-chan. It might be a bit of a stretch, but I'd say Nanoha-chan is Lutecia-chan's ideal."

"… I'm still lost."

This time she couldn't resist and laughed softly, leaning up and kissing him lightly on the lips. Pulling back, she smiled slightly. "Think of it this way, Rossa. You've read Lutecia-chan's mission reports just as I have. Have you noticed a pattern?"

Verossa blinked, frowning slightly as he thought back on what he had read. Hayate had to resist the sudden and brief urge to jump him right then and there. "She saves people," he said at last. "It doesn't matter if it's a civilian, a fellow agent, or even one of the bad guys who got caught in the line of fire. She tries to save as many people as she can." While usually putting herself at risk in the process, but he knew he didn't need to say that.

"Exactly. And who else do we know does her best to save people, even at her own risk?"

He blinked again; he was starting to get it, she could see it in his eyes, but some threads of it were still out of his reach. "Nanoha."

"Again, exactly. Now, think of it like this." Hayate took a deep breath. "Deep down, Lutecia-chan is a kind person. She always has been, so that's part of what drives her. Then you take her and expose her to someone like Nanoha-chan, who has never hidden the fact that she believes you should find a way to save everyone without sacrificing a few."

He got it now. "It would only strengthen her own urge to save people," Rossa finished. "She's already naturally inclined to it because of her personality, but spending time with someone who believes that would only make her inclination ten times stronger."

"Right." It was the equivalent of tossing gasoline onto an already burning fire; it would only make the flames stronger.

A moment later, though, Verossa frowned and shook his head. "That thinking makes no sense," he muttered. "I don't mean to sound cruel, but Lutecia is a Shadow, first and foremost. Shadows aren't exactly the kind of agents expected to save people."

"That wasn't cruel, it was honest." Hayate sighed. "And that's where Lutecia-chan is getting all tangled up. Because of who she truly is, and because of her exposure to people like Nanoha-chan, she wants to do the heroic thing, the right thing, and save people without losing any of them. The problem is, the whole idea behind the Shadows is to save many while sacrificing a few."

It was easy to see where the ideals clashed. It was a thought of saving people, with two totally different ideas on how to do it.

Verossa's frown became thoughtful. "Do you think Nanoha knows, and that's why she's still having such a hard time accepting Lutecia?"

"I think Nanoha-chan knows that Lutecia-chan is the type who would save everybody if she could. I'm just guessing, but it would explain part of her reason why she can't fully accept Lutecia-chan." Hayate paused. "Well, besides the fact that she's also by proxy exposing Vivio to all of this."

Verossa winced and nodded; he was suddenly grateful their boys weren't old enough yet to date.

"To Nanoha-chan, you could say Lutecia-chan is the ultimate contradiction. She wants to save as many people as she can, yet she does it in such a way that she'll lose as many people as she saves." Hayate shook her head. "It's a major gray spot. Nanoha-chan always hated gray spots."

"And now her daughter is dating the gray spot."

Hayate snickered at that. "When you put it like that, it sounds funny; but it's true. And what probably makes it even worse for Nanoha-chan is that Vivio's accepted Lutecia-chan's contradiction and loves her anyway."

"…. Is there any chance we can just lock the boys up until they're thirty or so? This 'parents of a dating teenager' thing sounds painful and confusing."

"I'm considering it."

The silence that followed after that was comfortable and warm; Hayate felt as if she could fall asleep at any moment. Finally, though, she got up and went over to her files, setting them away for the night and shutting down her system. "In the end it all comes down to what Lutecia-chan decides," she said as she moved around the room. "So I guess worrying about it is pointless since it's out of my hands."

"You're worried. It's natural." Verossa leaned back on his elbows, watching as his wife finished shutting down her work station. "Are you coming to bed?"

Hayate smiled wickedly.

"If I remember right, you didn't do a very good job of undressing me."

Last line kind of bugs me a bit but eh, I thought it was good enough.

Special thanks to DezoPenguin for inspiring this piece; it's old, but it was my discussions with him about Lutecia and Shadowverse as a whole that inspired this piece, and by writing it and talking to him about it, I was able to get a better grasp on Lutecia's psyche. So, thank you to him!