How did she not recognize the voice before? She'd heard that in her nightmares for months, but she hadn't recognized it clear and low when he'd come to see Heero. Something about the way he called her princess made it click. The slight hitch between the prin and cess, the crisp condescension in his tone, it was him.

Heero's ex was a murderer. Not just a murderer, a mass murderer. He was also Tony Stark's son and a Preventer, and he obviously had friends in high places beyond his father. He was protected. People would defend him.

Oliviana wondered if Stark knew, if he knew what kind of man his son was. She wondered if he'd be willing to listen if she tried to tell him, tried to warn him. Would he be blinded by being an—apparently—unexpected father and overlook his son's indiscretions? Or would he just assume that he—and by extension, his son—were above the law? He certainly seemed to think so most of the time anyway. The only repercussions of what happened in Sokovia were the Sokovia Accords, and those still hadn't been signed. There were no professional or personal repercussions. He worked with Natasha Romanov, a literal assassin. It seemed likely that he would simply excuse what his son had done?

"Do we need to call for some help for her?" Hilary's voice somehow cut through her racing, panicked thoughts. Hilary didn't usually do concerned, and it sounded odd to her ears.

"Unless you want to attract the exact wrong kind of attention and ensure Oliviana never gets another invite? No," Dorothy replied, her usual unflappable self. Oliviana had known Dorothy nearly all her life, and she didn't think she'd ever seen the woman flustered. A hand came into her sightline and snapped, making Oliviana jump. "Get yourself under control," Dorothy said, meeting her eyes.

Her stomach swirled and she felt like she might be sick, which she absolutely would not allow herself to do in public. At least the icy napkin on her wrists seemed to help with the sudden hot flash she'd had, helping to settle her stomach a little bit. Heero handed her his water, and she took it in a shaky hand, taking just a tiny sip. The cool, clean water helped clear her palate, helped push down the taste of bile on the back of her throat, and she took another sip, letting the cold water sit on her tongue for a moment before swallowing it.

"Are you okay?" Heero asked, his eyes focused on her to the exclusion of everything else. Oliviana wanted to be reassured by his attention, but she couldn't be. Heero might fall into hyperfocused states, but not with this many people around. Not surrounded by this many strangers, by this much money. He usually tried to be very aware of everyone around him in situations like this, making sure he didn't miss any social cues, learning on reading the nuances of these conversations. It seemed like Heero had forgotten anyone else was at the table but her, and it struck her as wrong, unnatural.

He'd been able to interact with Maxwell when he was all covered up, unrecognizable. He'd seemed… almost like he was about to remember at the bar, when Maxwell stood in front of him, kissed him. Before he forgot it all. But the nightmares and migraines had gotten worse since then.

Now… now it seemed like he wasn't even registering Maxwell or anything interacting with him. It seemed unnatural, wrong.

"I'm," Oliviana started to say, made herself take a deep breath, reset because her voice trembled, then start again. "I'm okay," she said, glancing at Maxwell who watched her with those creepy, unnatural eyes of his. How could her Heero have ever been involved with this man? This monster? It made her sick to think about it, that Heero would ever touch a villain in hero's clothing.

"Are you sure we shouldn't go?" Heero asked, his eyes full of nothing but concern for her, but looking at nothing but her. The strange, too-calm, too-direct focus made panic start to claw at her throat again.

Taking another shaky breath, Oliviana put her hand on top of Heero's. "We're not the ones that don't belong here," she said, then turned to meet those purple eyes. Something in Maxwell's gaze sharpened as he met her gaze fearlessly, going from simply observing her and Heero to an almost cruel amusement. "I should report you," she said.

"Oliviana!" Dorothy hissed, low and censuring, but Maxwell bared his teeth in a near-rictus grin that was nothing nice. She wasn't sure if it was the grin or the combination of the grin and the skull makeup, but it sent a chill through her.

"Go for it, princess," he said.

"I could tell the world what you are," she said.

The vicious smile eased back into an almost amused smirk. "You can," he agreed, far too easily for her peace of mind. "But you won't."

His calm assurance made her temper rise. "Arrogant bastard," she snapped.

He shrugged. "Pot and kettle," he said easily. "But there's one very, very good reason you're not going to tell anyone anything." He dipped the tip of his finger in the top of his water, then ran it around the rim of the crystal. It made a high, humming sound that immediately made her head hurt. Dorothy put a hand over his, stilling it. He flicked a glance in Dorothy's direction, but he didn't start again when she pulled her hand back.

"I'll bite," Oliviana said, sitting up straighter and putting all of her own arrogance into her voice. "Why won't I tell anyone?"

Nodding his head in Heero's direction he said, "Because you don't want to drag your precious doll through all of this."

"Heero has nothing to do with you."

"Now," Maxwell said with an air of correction. "He has nothing to do with me now. We have everything to do with one another historically. The Jackson-Stryker Building might be where our mutual story ended, but it's not where it began, and I was with him for more years than you've known him. If you think all of that history won't be brought to light, you're kidding yourself."

"You were children," Oliviana said. "Heero was nineteen when he lost his memory."

Something sad and almost pitying came into his eyes at that, some that felt old and worn. He was her and Heero's age, only twenty-two, surely not more than twenty-three, but something in his eyes made her think about her grandfather when he talked about wars.

"You know nothing about us," he said after a moment, and his voice was almost as pitying as his eyes. It made her angry.

"You're the one who doesn't know anything," she snapped, getting even angrier because she could hear how immature and young she sounded in her own ears. She could hear the echo of her childhood self insisting that she was old enough to stay up late or old enough to watch something. As much as she hated it, she managed to hold back a wince. She didn't want to give him that much power, didn't want him to give him that victory, however tiny, however petty. "You're sitting here talking about Heero as if he isn't even here."

His eyes slid from her to Heero and rested there. She waited for them to move back to her, but when they didn't, she turned to look herself. Heero was still watching her, his own eyes full of concern, but it was clear from the look on his face that he hadn't even registered the discussion she and Maxwell were having.

"Liv, are you sure we shouldn't go? I know how much you wanted to attend, but you're still looking pale," he said, confirming he was completely disconnected from the conversation.

Something in her wanted to recoil. It was just wrong for him to be behaving like this. It wasn't normal, even for someone with his particular amnesia.

"He's not going to register anything I say anyway," Maxwell said. Oliviana whipped her head back to stare at him, and he looked sad again. "After the Stryker Building, I visited him every day, for months. He'd always forget. If I so much as left his line of sight, I'd have to start again."

The pain in his voice was muted, worn down. It was an old pain, one that Maxwell had learned to live with but not one that were ever truly gone. Just imagining it, imagining going to see Heero, imagining having him react to her the way he was reacting to Maxwell made her chest feel tight and the panic start to claw at her again. It was—terrible wasn't strong enough of a word, but it was all she had. She wondered how long she would have kept trying, kept persisting, if she would carry Heero's loss as heavily as Maxwell clearly still did.

"Yes, well, you obviously mourned him deeply if you got married, what, two years later? Three?" she sneered, going for the jugular. He was hurting her with words and with the person she loved best, and she wanted to hurt him back. It was petty and mean, but she wasn't above it.

The sadness in his eyes was replaced by an anger that made her almost physically recoil. "Rather bold of you to deride my relationship when you've been with Heero the same amount of time."

"Well, we didn't rush into marriage," she countered. She could see Hilary cringing across the table in secondhand embarrassment. The her of two years ago would be appalled at herself holding restraint over someone else's head.

"It's interesting," he said. "In one breath, you tell me that the four years I spent with Heero meant nothing because we were, in your words, children. In the next, you tell me that my marriage couldn't mean anything because it was a relationship founded over a shorter timeframe. Do you make a habit of being a raging hypocrite, or is that a charming behavior you reserve for people you think too beneath you to notice?"

Oliviana could feel the heat of embarrassment race to her cheeks. She wasn't sure what she hated more: that he was completely right and had the guts to call her out on it, or that she so dearly underestimated the intelligence of someone who used to be involved with Heero. If Heero had one thing he was unquestionably drawn to, it was intelligence. There was no way he would have been involved with Maxwell for as long as he was if Maxwell were as stupid as he looked.

As stupid as she wished he looked. Because, really, he didn't look all that stupid at all. He looked haunting and haunted. He was dangerous, she knew firsthand how dangerous he was, had seen him murder men in cold blood without flinching. She wanted him to be a fool, a clown, wanted him to be harmless, but she knew he was anything but.

"I think it's time to move on this conversation," Dorothy interrupted, saving her from having to come up with another reply. She turned her attention to Maxwell. "I know picking on the privileged is a particular pastime of yours, but this really isn't the place or the time."

Maxwell's eyes narrowed—it was really the only feature she could readily read behind the heavy makeup if he wasn't flashing teeth—and he looked like he wanted to contradict her, but after a moment, he sat back, and unnoticed tension went out of his shoulders.

When he looked at Oliviana again, he said, "You should really think about taking Heero home. At this rate, he's not going to remember anything about the night at all."

"It's bizarre," Hilary started, in a tone of voice that suggested he was just mulling over the observation, but it was a tone that Oliviana knew well and tended to precede some of his most pointed verbal jabs. "Heero was just fine before you showed up. How much must he hate you that his mind keeps erasing every instance of your existence from his memory."

It was like watching a car crash, seeing the blow coming and yet being utterly helpless to intercept it. "Hilary," both she and Dorothy said, similarly aghast at such a jab.

Something dark began to gather in Maxwell's eyes, something that made the hair stand on her arms and on the back of her neck.

Dorothy must have seen it too, and she must have understood what she was seeing better than Oliviana did. She grabbed the elbow of a passing waiter and made him turn to face her.

"Can we get another glass of water, please?" she asked.

The waiter turned, straightening his jacket from where it had been wrinkled from Dorothy grabbing him, and said, "Yes, ma'am. Of course." He turned and left without saying anything else, which struck Oliviana as odd.

She apparently wasn't the only one who thought the waiter's behavior had been off because no one else said anything until he was well out of earshot.

Maxwell looked at Dorothy. "Did you see—?"

"I did," she replied.

"Have the guidelines changed since the last time I was here with you and Lena?"

"Not that I'm aware of," she said, voice still as tight, her posture rigidly straight.

"What are you two lovebirds talking about now?" Hilary said, sounding utterly uninterested, but Oliviana knew better. He wasn't uninterested, quite the opposite. If he'd been uninterested, he'd have tried to derail the conversation, shut it down, or simply override it as boring.

"The waiter had a gun," Maxwell said.

"That can't be right," Oliviana said. "No one at the Gala is allowed to be armed. Security is meant to be restricted to the outsides—"

"Perimeter," Maxwell corrected. "That's how it was the last time I came. I was Relena's security, so I got to see all the plans. I assumed that the same would hold this year, since events like this don't usually change their security guidelines without an active threat or incident."

"They should definitely not have any armed guards among the wait staff," Dorothy said.

"How do you know that?" Hilary asked, snobbiness dripping from his tone. Oliviana hated that tone, but its track record for getting Hilary information was second to none. People could just never resist telling Hilary how wrong he was when he used that tone.

"Because Relena is a political VIP, we get special insight into the security measures," Dorothy said, equally as condescending, making it clear that Oliviana and Hilary didn't warrant that kind of insight and access. She wasn't even wrong; they didn't.

"There shouldn't be anyone in this room actively armed, then?"

Dorothy frowned. "I'd assume that your father snuck something in. The Captain and Ms. Romanov are basically human weapons in their own right—"

"Natasha got something in," he said. "I caught it, but security didn't."

Sighing like she didn't agree but wasn't surprised, Dorothy continued. "You would be the only other person here I'd expect to be armed since Yuy is…" She waved a dismissive hand.

"A pacifist?" Oliviana suggested sweetly.

"Useless," Dorothy corrected quickly. She gave Oliviana a snide look. "'Useless' is the word I was going for. A shame, really."

"Dot," Maxwell said this time, derailing their cattiness before it could really get started. "Aside from Relena and Stark, who here is going to be a priority target?"

Dorothy sat back and sighed. "I may be biased, but Relena is probably the biggest target outside of Stark. But the other Avengers, the Captain and Ms. Romanov could be targets in their own right. I don't think the general gliteratti are a concern. They tend to have individual stalkers, not the types who could or would organize an infiltration on the scale required to corrupt this event."

Oliviana stared at her as the breakdown rolled easily off her tongue, as if she had been taking it into account before.

"There's also Oliviana," Hilary pointed out. "And at least three heads of state here."

Maxwell shook his head. "Whoever has decided to infiltrate this event is looking for a big, and very public score. This isn't just personal, this is terrorism," he said, his eyes going hard and scanning around the room.

"Someone could be targeting you too, you know," Hilary pointed out. "After all, if someone has a big enough grudge against Tony Stark, they might want to target his son to hurt him."

"Unlikely," he said. "It hasn't been common knowledge for long that I'm attending at all. The Gala is set up months in advance. Whoever got in has been planning this for a while. I'm not saying that we may not be targets of opportunity, depending on who the actual targets are and why they're here, but no one targeting me that way would have bothered with this event."

"Wouldn't they have?" Dorothy asked, looking at Maxwell. "You have your own enemies."

Maxwell dropped his hand from his glass to tap a finger on the table. "You, me, Relena, Heero… the four of us here to the right people could be a tempting target. But someone would have to know who Heero is, would have had to know that I would be attending as Stark's kid."

"I thought you were going to start calling him Tony—"

He waved her off. "Not now," he said. "I just don't think that's the motivation. Heero and I aren't the targets, except maybe of opportunity."

"Ms. Potts could be too," Oliviana said. "She is the CEO of Stark Industries."

Shaking his head again, Maxwell said, "It's possible but unlikely. If she went down, Stark would just reassume control until he could find a replacement. You'd have to take them both out…" His finger stopped tapping, and his eyes began to move around the room deliberately, tracking things she didn't understand. "I don't think it's any one person," he said after a long moment.

"You don't?" Oliviana had to ask.

"No," he said. "It's a terrorist attack."

"Why wait this long to spring it, if that's the case?" Dorothy asked.

"Maximum damage," he said. "They want everyone here…" He trailed. "Cover for me, Dot," he said, waiting for a waiter to pass, and then he ducked under the table.

"What the hell?" Hilary yelped, startled.

From beneath the table, Oliviana thought she heard a soft fuck.

"Maxwell…" Dorothy said, low but meant to carry.

"Stall," he replied shortly.

A waiter stepped over to the table. He wasn't carrying a glass for anyone, and he wasn't the waiter who had been by earlier. "Everyone is supposed to be seated at this time," he said, eyeing Maxwell's empty seat like it personally offended him.

"He stepped to the little boy's room," Dorothy lied smoothly.

The waiter, who, now that she looked at him more closely, looked a lot more like badly concealed security than a waiter, frowned and said, "No one should have been allowed to leave. Everyone is supposed to be seated for service."

Hilary leaned in toward the man, all conspiratorial. "It's Tony Stark's mysterious offspring, you know?" he said, the put on an exaggeratedly sympathetic expression. "He's not used to people of our… caliber, you know? I'm afraid that all of the pomp and circumstance has been quite intimidating for him. I'm sure he'll be back soon."

The waiter seemed taken slightly aback by that. Whatever was going on, they didn't want Maxwell to be missing, which mean that Dorothy and Maxwell were right—something sinister was going on.

Doing her best to play along and seem as normal as possible, Oliviana said, "I asked the previous gentleman who came this way for a fresh glass of water." She raised her mostly empty glass. "If you could be so good as to get me one, I'd be ever so grateful. I'm sure he'll be back before you get back with my water."

She could see the distaste in the man's face but he nodded. "Of course. I'll, uh, have a word with the staff as well," he said, the words sounding awkward, like he wasn't used to being so polite. He moved away.

After a moment, Dorothy rapped softly on the table. "The coast is clear," she said.

Maxwell slid out from under the table and back into his seat as though he had never been gone. "We have a very big problem," he said. "And I need everyone to remain completely calm. I have good news and bad news."

Closing her eyes and giving a long-suffering sigh, Dorothy said, "It's bombs, isn't it?"

He nodded. Oliviana made herself inhale, count to five, then exhale while Dorothy just poked Hilary in the side.

"What's the good news?" Oliviana asked.

"That's both the good and the bad news," Dorothy said. "It's bad, because, it's well." She inclined her head but didn't say anything. "It's good because Maxwell is one of the best demolitions experts in the world."

Oliviana and Hilary both stared at him at that. He rolled his eyes.

"Let's just say that it wasn't an accident that I was at the Jackson-Stryker Building."

"You were there to diffuse the bombs," Oliviana realized. "But… but you were nineteen."

"Yeah, and I was one of the best three years ago," Maxwell agreed.

"How many of the tables do you think are rigged?" Dorothy asked.

"If it were me?" He looked around the room. They were on the edges. "Minimum risk, maximum damage? At least every other outside table, and definitely the center dais."

"Do I want to know the details?" Dorothy asked.

He shook his head. "You definitely do not."

Dorothy pulled her shoulders back, taking that in. Oliviana made herself breathe again. In, two, three, four, five. Out, two, three, four five. She was a politician's daughter. She'd been kidnapped. She'd had training on how to handle hostage situations.

The key word there was hostage situation, not terrorist situations.

"Is there anyone here who could help you?"

"Stark could, but him going missing would be a lot more conspicuous than me going missing, and in the time it would take me to get over to him to ask for his help, I could have disarmed six more."

"So, no, basically," Dorothy said flatly, glaring at Heero.

"What?" he asked, sounding mostly normal if a little confused. Which, if he was still blanking out on everything Maxwell said, made sense.

"Just looking at the useless one who used to be useful," she said coldly.

"If I can get you a gun, can you get to Relena?"

"Of course."

"What about us?" Hilary asked.

"You are not my priority," Maxwell said, blunt as a kick to the sternum.

"You are a Preventer," Hilary reminded. "Isn't it your job to protect people?"

"Yes and no, and I need to move like right now. Getting under all of these tables and trying not to disrupt people and make it obvious how I'm moving around the room isn't going to be easy. Dot, I might need a distraction."

"Get me a gun, and we can get you a distraction," she said.

He nodded and stood, moving off with a gangly, almost clumsy gait that Oliviana had never seen from him before.

"You can't possibly trust him with this," Oliviana hissed, leaning across the table.

"I trust him with Relena's life. There are few people in this world I would want at my back more than Duo Maxwell, so you need to get your head out of your ass and work with us, or a lot of people are going to die." She made a visible effort to soften her expression. "I don't know what your history with Maxwell is, and I don't care. What you need to know right now is that he is one of the very best people we could have on our side under these circumstances."

"But he's a—"

"So am I," Dorothy said shortly. Oliviana's mouth closed with an almost audible click at that. "Liv, Relena is my partner, my lover, my best friend. I trust Maxwell with not just my life, but hers. Can you please trust us?"

Oliviana didn't want to. There was almost nothing she wanted to do as little as trust Duo Maxwell, but under Dorothy's intense stare, she felt there was only one choice to make.

Maxwell was hustled back to his seat, drawing attention loudly as he was, joking and grinning widely, though with his face painted, it seemed threatening more than playful.

"All right, man, sorry. Got it. Dinner's about to be served…" He waved him off.

"Thank you," the waiter said, giving him another hard look before going back to his rounds. His rounds with no food, no water, no champagne. The rounds where no one actually got what was requested. Fear sat like a heavy stone in Oliviana's stomach.

"Well?" Dorothy asked, as calm and controlled as ever.

Snorting, Maxwell said, "Did you really doubt me?" he leaned close to her, as if intimate, then placed a soft kiss on her cheek.

"How long do you need?" she asked.

"As long as you can give me," he said, then slipped beneath their table again without a sound. It was like watching a shadow melt away, and Oliviana felt a visceral revulsion.

Dorothy braced her shoulders and turned to face Hilary. "How about it, Kincaid. Feel like making the biggest scene that's ever been had at the Met Gala?"

Looking a little pale, eyes a little too large, Hilary nonetheless nodded. "My pleasure, my dear."