AN: Oh. My. God. If I have to read another page I'll die. Sorry for the long break in updates, I've been six inches away from death by academia for the last three weeks. Paper after paper after paper, and in 20 minutes Im off to my fourth midterm in 6 days. Needless to say, I've been in a stress bubble. On a related note: Update! Everyone! I want something new to read when I manage to take a break :P

Stormy: I miss Setsuna too! He'll be coming back shortly though, thank-god. Ever since you gave me the Criminal Minds quote collection I've been pouring over it in curiosity. They have so many good ones! I may start using that exclusively for the chapter quotes, we'll see. Anne: Thank-you! Writing Hallelujah was interesting, so I'm glad that he didn't seem too OOC. Tieria...is getting harder to write, but I like writing him. I agree with you, if I could shoot every time I needed to blow off steam, my knuckles would be in much less pain frequently (I like to kickbox and box, and my fiance and I spend quite a bit of time doing Krav Maga together...so my feet and hands are pretty battered). Paper: Hahaha yeah, he's the poster boy of the feminist movement for sure :P.

Not too much to say about this chapter other than thank-you to Stormy for reading through it for me! We'll be deviating from the anime's plot for a few chapters, so that'll give some diversity. Let me know what you think!

I listened to a mix of everything and anything for this. I just needed a break and wrote! Let me know what you think!

Talk to Me

"Delay is the deadliest form of denial."

C. Northcote Parkinson

"Hallelujah's stuck."

Sumeragi's room had the feeling of an office more than anything. Information reeled over a massive collection of screens on the right side of the room, and there were actual sheets of paper everywhere. Reverie couldn't remember the last time that she'd seen something printed on paper…it may have been Tieria's welcome note when she'd first joined months ago. The left side of the forecaster's room was surprisingly spotless and well-organized, and from what Reverie could see even the alcohol fridge was carefully organized. There wasn't a single personal thing in the room that she could immediately see. Somehow she realized that she was looking at two sides of the same person. Hectic, frustrated, determined tactical forecaster, and obsessive, hopeless, surviving human being. It was interesting, to say the least. They were alone now. Anew had left shortly after she'd finished checking Reverie's throat, and according to Sumeragi, the bruising was starting to show.

"What do you mean, 'stuck'?" Reverie asked, watching as the forecaster poured a generous amount of rum into two glasses. 'Just the thing for your throat', she'd said. Reverie was skeptical.

Sumeragi stood and handed her a glass, sighing and sitting in her office chair. "Well, he can't switch back with Allelujah. Something's stopping him from being submerged."

"Are you sure he's really tried to switch places? This is Hallelujah we're talking about…"

"I know all about Hallelujah, don't worry." Sumeragi said, her voice almost laughed. "Hallelujah likes to show up when there's something to do. Kill, torment, fight, tease. If he can't do any of those things he likes to lay dormant and let Allelujah deal with the boredom of everyday life."

"What happens if he gets bored?" Reverie asked, sniffing her glass. It had been a while since she'd had a drink.

"Your neck happens." she replied.

"Ah, right. How could I forget…" Reverie said sarcastically, running a finger carefully over her throat. She took a sip of her drink and her nose twitched. It tasted like depression. It took her right back to the nights she'd spent at the bottom of several bottles as she'd tried to pass out and sleep. She exhaled slowly through her nose. "So, what can we do about it?"

Sumeragi sighed. "We're not going to do anything about it. I'll take care of Hallelujah, you're going to Katharon's temporary European branch."

"What!?" Reverie spat in surprise. She was going to leave Ptolemy when they were at their most vulnerable? They needed to know about ambushes now more than ever, and if they had to fight mobile suits that were at full strength…what then?

-Don't make this harder than it has to be…- Sumeragi sighed again. "It's actually not entirely related to Hallelujah, although he'll continue to be a problem." Reverie stayed silent and sipped, watching the forecaster curiously. She had to know this was a bad idea. Sumeragi continued. "Katharon has a mole in their temporary branch. A few days ago they requested your help in finding the culprit and I turned them down. They've asked again, and seeing as you and Hallelujah aren't the best of friends, I told them I'd reconsidered and you'd be arriving shortly."

Reverie wanted to argue her case for staying with Ptolemy, but she stayed quiet. Hallelujah obviously knew he could get a rise out of her now, and as tough as she thought she was, she wasn't any match for the super-soldier. An information leak with Katharon meant that Celestial Being's information was at stake as well, and with their vulnerability at the moment it was better to take precautions. Also, she didn't really want to be with Ptolemy at the moment. She didn't know how to face Anew, and she definitely didn't know how to speak to Lyle with his newfound disappearing game. She didn't know if she should talk to him, given her personal realizations earlier. The thought made her bite her lip. She missed him and she wanted to figure out how they'd become so strange. "When do I leave?"

"Lockon will take you over tonight."

Well, there went her terrible idea of avoiding him. "Tonight?" she asked, trying to not let her jaw drop. "Can Ptolemy really afford to be short a functioning Gundam?"

Sumeragi nodded. "We need to get you out of here as soon as possible with regards to Hallelujah, and if there's a mole in Katharon, you can bet that they'll be making themselves scarce soon. As for Cherudim, Ptolemy will be fine. With a Gundam's speed, you'll reach the Katharon base in just over an hour."

Reverie sighed. "Alright. How long will I be with them?"

"Hopefully just a week. If Hallelujah hasn't been taken care of by then, we'll just have to go ahead and bring you back on board. Ptolemy should be in better form by then and we'll be able to put your abilities to good use. Consider it a break...you'll be at your brother's branch, after-all."

Reverie couldn't deny being happy to hear that. She missed her brother more than she let on, and somehow knowing that she'd be at his branch made the tasking seem more attractive. Of course, it meant that her step-father was likely there as well. "Fine, but I expect to be showered with love and affection upon my return." She said, gesturing with her glass and pretending to bow.

Sumeragi laughed. "Seems like someone's been rubbing off on you..." -With all the time she spends with Lockon, I'm not surprised.-

"You should see me shoot." Reverie winked, hoping she'd deflected the topic of Lyle. "How are you doing, now that Hallelujah's stuck on board?"

-So you haven't forgotten then…- Sumeragi thought, still smiling, her eyes distracted.

"I'm not very good at forgetting." Reverie replied.

It was Sumeragi's turn to sigh. "It's not what you think, you know." The forecaster watched her curiously.

"That depends. What do I think?" Reverie asked, sipping from her glass again.

Sumeragi ignored her question, as had become her habit. "I care about Hallelujah as much as anyone else on this ship, if not even a little more." She took a sip of her glass and swirled it. "I know that sounds strange." She looked down. "No one cares for him other than Allelujah. They fear him, dread dealing with him, ignore him. No one really stops to think that Hallelujah is the result of the horrible things that Allelujah went through. I mean, they know it, but they don't really realize it. Hallelujah was the one standing between Allelujah and death time and time again, and it's because of him that Allelujah is with us today." She looked up at Reverie, her expression was a jumble of emotions. "That counts for something, right? What if Allelujah had been just another failed subject, sent to an incinerator somewhere, scared and alone and never having a voice? Hallelujah stopped that from happening, and that is why I care so much about him. He may not think himself capable, but I believe, somehow, that Hallelujah cares about Allelujah more than himself. I want to see the day arrive that he realizes it."

Reverie watched her curiously. "Why did the idea of me hearing that scare you so much before?" she asked. It didn't make sense at all. Sumeragi admired Hallelujah. Some people would be put off by the idea most likely, but she somehow understood it. Hallelujah was terrifying and admirable at once. It was best to not let him hear you say it, though.

"I didn't expect you to understand why I care about someone like Hallelujah. To be honest, I'm still worried about that now."

Reverie tilted her head. "Does it really matter if I understand?"

Sumeragi looked at her for a long second. "No, I guess it doesn't really. I just know how strange it must seem."

"You're speaking to someone who hears voices, about someone who has a split personality, on-board a ship belonging to a private, armed organization. To be honest, the only thing not strange here is this." Reverie said, holding up the glass of rum.

That got a laugh out of Sumeragi. "Somehow, I feel like we aren't as worried as we should be about that."

Reverie laughed and shook her head. "We're worried about enough…the whole world, remember? Besides, if we stop and actually examine how badly messed-up we all are, I think we'd sink Celestial Being." She pointed out. There wasn't a single person in the organization that didn't have a major life issue. Even Mileina was strange…she'd spent the entirety of her life as part of a terrorist organization and didn't seem particularly bothered by it.

Sumeragi was silent and stared at her glass. "I don't know how you all do it, really…" she mused, tilting the glass and watching the rum seep over an ice cube. "You all manage to keep going as though the past can't reach you."

"The past reaches everyone more than you'd think." Reverie took a sip of her drink, it burned her raw throat, but she didn't really care.

"You sound like you're thinking about something specific." Sumeragi surmised, watching her curiously.

Reverie shook her head. "No, nothing specific. I've just come to realize that everyone has a story that'll tear you apart…the only thing that separates us all is how we deal with it. When I was younger, a teen, I was stupid enough to believe that I had some kind of dark, angsty history because my father had died. Of course I grew out of it, but as my involvement with the AEU grew I started to realize that everyone around me had joined for similar reasons…they wanted to fight against things that had hurt them. The most ridiculous part was that we were all trying to fight things that no army could. I was constantly fighting the fire that took my father, never satisfied with successful missions and never really healing because in truth, the missions didn't mean a thing to me; they were temporary solutions to the hole left by that fire. I was convinced that I was broken, there was something wrong with me. I felt so guilty…"

"I read your file, there was no way you could have done anything to help him…there was no way it was your fault." Sumeragi said, sipping again.

Reverie nodded. "I realized that when I woke up after Taklamakan and could hear everyone around me. My commander was waging a private war against the cancer that had stolen his son, my colleague was fighting over and over again to kill a man that had hurt her years before. Everyone around me was hurting, and they were fighting not for any real reason other than they'd been hurt. I realized that I didn't have any right to feel so mad at my past. There were people all around me that had made worse mistakes, suffered more, seen worse things. There I was, guilty over something that I had no control of. Even if I would have been responsible, could I live knowing that my father would be mad at me for holding onto guilt? No. I was alive, plain and simple. That was enough reason to let it go." She looked up at Sumeragi, embarrassed at having gone on such a tangent. "I guess long story short, in the past five years, I've never met someone who wasn't hurting, guilty, and scarred. The past is all over the place and you're naïve to believe that you're the only one carrying a heavy burden."

-Was that directed at me?-

Sumeragi sipped her drink carefully, then snapped up attentively when she realized that Reverie was watching her. "I…Sorry, I was just thinking."

"I know." Reverie joked, lightening the mood.

Sumeragi laughed under her breath and pulled a file out of the disorganized paperwork on her desk. "Here. I'm sorry it's in paper form, Katharon sends a lot of files this way as they don't necessarily have access to the same technological channels that we do. It's all the information that they have in relation to the mole."

Reverie took the file and nodded. She hadn't been directing her tangent at Sumeragi, but the change in conversation was probably a good idea. She flipped the folder open and looked at the top sheet, her packing list and formal mission briefing. Apparently she'd be leaving in two hours. It wasn't surprising, given that Sumeragi had said 'tonight', and it was already 5pm local time. This meant it was time to get ready. "I guess I should be on my way then." She said, looking up at the forecaster.

"Make sure to finish your drink, that's expensive rum." The redhead warned, and against her better judgement, Reverie complied, her throat screaming in protest as she finished the glass. At least she had two hours before she had to see Lyle…her impending state of light-drunk would come and leave by then.

Reverie stood, handing the glass to Sumeragi and muttered her thanks before stepping out the door and waving her hurried goodbye. She had some things to do on board before she could leave.

-Come by anytime, Reverie.-

She smiled. She liked the tactician, though she was never really sure what kind of impression the woman had of her. It made speaking with her oddly free of restraints, while at the same time made it awkward. She was easy to talk to, and, as she'd demonstrated before, she'd give her honest opinion if asked.

As she felt her rum-induced buzz start to show, she grinned. She'd get honesty out of her next conversation if it killed her.

Tieria groaned in frustration as he poured over Ptolemy's current resources. Their situation was terrible and it was about to get worse. Right now, they had three operational Gundams, but only two useable pilots. Allelujah's other personality was an excellent pilot, but he was completely unpredictable and wasn't likely to take direction well. That took Arios out of the running as part of Ptolemy's defence system for the time being. This meant that they were left with Seravee and Cherudim, two suits that were generally better for defence and long-distance combat. Neither of them was particularly well-equipped for close-combat, though Cherudim was ahead of Seravee by miles in that department. Tieria had considered piloting Arios himself, but the complications created by learning a new system could cause difficulties, even for him. There was a reason each of the Meisters were chosen for their respective Gundams, after-all.

Sumeragi knew this already, and yet she'd still decided to have Cherudim take Reverie to Katharon. That left Ptolemy with one functioning Gundam-pilot mix. It was totally nonsensical. For two and a half hours they would have one Gundam, one sensible pilot, no weapons control system on the ship, no radar capabilities, and no telepath to make up for failing radar. He buried his face in gloved hands and groaned again.

Everything after Memento Mori had been one giant, frustrating mess. The surprise attack when they were low on GN particles, Losing Setsuna, Ptolemy being badly damaged in their descent, and Allelujah's injury. Allelujah's other personality had definitely made matters much, much worse. He couldn't be trusted, for one. He operated on his own fleeting motives, and Tieria had the suspicion that he wouldn't be terribly upset if he destroyed Arios in the pursuit of entertainment. That took him out of the circle of trust in Tieria's eyes. He also couldn't be trusted around the crew, as he'd proven with Lasse and Reverie, and later with Shia Mazarenco, who'd been threatened with a very deftly-placed scalpel.

They needed another Meister. The idea made him laugh cynically under his breath. How had they reached this point? The last time they'd been this poorly equipped had been when the Ptolemaios one had been destroyed, and the battle that had landed them there had significantly more mobile suits. He sighed It was embarrassing.

Give it time.

There was his strange Lockon-conscience. He inhaled slowly. The repairs to Ptolemy would be complete in the next three to four days, and they'd only be without Cherudim for two and a half hours. They could manage without Reverie's radar-like abilities if they were diligent, and Allelujah…only time would tell. It was an annoying, unnerving, question-wrought situation, but it would pass. That didn't mean he couldn't be irritated until it did, though.

He looked at the handgun that sat on the desk in front of him.

"I told you, to blow off steam." Reverie's explanation rang in his head.

He had a lot of 'steam to blow off', and his reports had been finished for now. He could go to the range for half an hour or so, right? He shook his head. There was always work that he could be doing, and he had a meeting with Sumeragi in just under an hour. Could he finish any of his work in that amount of time? Not really. He could get a head start on it, though.

He stared and the handgun, as though doing so would provide an answer. When it didn't respond, he shrugged and stood, slipping it into its holster.

He definitely had enough metaphorical steam to blow off.

Ever since he'd found out that he'd be taking Reverie to Katharon, Lyle had been having conversations in his head. The last time they'd really spoken had been the escape from Lagrange Three, and he wasn't sure what to expect from her. The idea of being stuck in a mobile suit with her for an hour had somehow become intimidating. Weeks ago he would have gladly accepted the tasking, it would have been something like a road-trip, not that he'd ever made a point of bringing people with him when he went on one. Now though, after his realization in her room, he didn't know what to do. He knew what he wanted. He wanted to return to how they'd been before…that was allowed, right? He missed their friendship, the range, her. He knew that this impromptu sardine-canning would result in either them working things out, or in Cherudim spontaneously combusting with the pressure of the awkwardness inside. Alright, maybe not quite that bad, but the situation did have the potential to be strange. They'd have to have a fairly serious talk to sort things out, that much was apparent.

"You know, they should make Gundams harder to climb." She said, stepping into the cramped space. She looked around, clearly not entirely sure where she was supposed to go. Her Haro muttered something incoherent, tucked into her arm.

"I'd agree with you, if I hadn't watched you use the ascension cable." He said, smirking. So far so good.

"Saw that, eh? Should have known I couldn't pull a quick one on you."

He held back a suggestive quip about a 'quick one', jokes could wait until they'd had a talk. She still raised an eyebrow and smirked. Apparently his quip had been heard. "You'll have to squeeze in behind the seat." he said, motioning over his shoulder. They could have been more comfortable if she'd sat in his lap, but there was no way he was suggesting it…the conversation would likely be complicated enough. She was dressed in civilian clothes, a fairly tight black t-shirt and a set of jeans that she'd presumably worn when she joined Celestial Being. It was nothing outrageous, though the shirt didn't do much to cover the purple-blue welts on her throat and collarbone, but the casualness was enough to put him more at ease. He eyed the bruises on her neck…even now they made his anger flare. If Anew hadn't stepped in-between he and Alle – no - Halleleujah, he would have shot the super-soldier. Reverie slipped into the space behind the seat and held up her beat-up backpack, her Haro rolling away under one of the panels.

"What should I do with this?" She shook her bag and he pointed under the panel that her Haro had taken refuge underneath. Her proximity was giving him that same bout of uneasiness that he'd been experiencing the past couple of days but he tried his best to ignore it, at least until she leaned around the seat and stared him directly in the face. "Why do I make you uneasy…?" So, she was going her usual direct route after-all. It was about damned time. Wait, was that alcohol on her breath? It was hard to pick up over the scent of fresh shower, but he could swear that he'd smelt something alcoholic off her. "It's Sumeragi's fault." She said, replying to his thought. So she was drunk. He wanted to smack the forecaster upside the head. He wanted them to work some things out, and she was drunk. Great. "I'm not drunk, I just had a drink with Sumeragi. If I was drunk, you'd know." She sat back and sighed, then leaned forward again. "How long have I been making you uneasy?"

"Let's get in the air, then we'll talk. We've got an hour to burn, remember?" He teased lightly.

"Alright." Reverie watched curiously as he booted Cherudim up and ran through pre-launch, flicking switches here and there and responding to Haro when he chattered. Before long they were blasting away from the damaged ship and she was leaning over a panel, watching the ground below. She hummed happily, eyes closed for a moment. She must have been listening to Cherudim's drive.

"You haven't felt the uneasiness?" he asked, bringing the topic up again. She must have, there was no way he'd been the only one.

She broke out of her happy trance and nodded. "There's no way I can't feel it. Every time we so much as enter the same room, you take off like I have the plague. It's been forever since we've joked, and about as long since you've been able to look me in the eye. What's been going on, Lyle?"

"You don't already know?" he asked quizzically, raising an eyebrow.

She raised her own. "What do you mean?"

Really? She could hear thoughts and she wondered what he meant? Her expression changed as though something had clicked, and she buried her face in one hand. "Of course…you had no way to know…" she muttered, shaking her head. She looked back up at him. "From the time I shocked myself at Lagrange Three and ended up in solitary to when I entered Trans-Am at the attack on Memento Mori, I couldn't hear anything but white noise."

That was interesting. "Nothing at all?" he asked, eyes flicking to his radar screen.

"Not unless I was in physical contact with someone, and you made very sure that that wasn't a possibility." She replied. "By the time I woke up and could hear everyone again, you were spending all your time outside my range of hearing. I never thought to say anything to you…it didn't seem important." Even if she had thought to tell him, they'd been too busy avoiding each other to have the conversation.

She hadn't heard a single thing. She hadn't heard his anger, his frustration, or his mental tug-of-war when he'd checked on her in her room. Nothing. He sighed. That explained a lot. It explained why she hadn't confronted him about any of it and why she'd seemed out-of-sorts. The whole time that he'd been angry with her she'd been as normal as any other person, not hearing a thing. No wonder they'd both been so confused. "I didn't realize that." He admitted.

"Why are you angry?" she asked, greyish eyes now searching his face more freely. She'd shifted as much as she could to look at him while they talked, while still remaining somewhat comfortable.

"Why didn't you tell me that the A-Laws telepath had my voice, the first time you heard him at the banquet?" he asked. He wasn't one to normally answer a question with another question, but he couldn't think of any other way to sum up his answer.

She watched him curiously and he hoped she was planning on answering him. He didn't want to stay mad and keep the strangeness between them going, but he needed to know why she'd left such an important detail out. The implications of the voice were disturbing, she had to know that much. She shrugged in the cramped space, a gesture that made him lose a bit of hope. "I didn't realize that his voice was the same as yours right away and by the time that I was safe and actually able to think about it, it had been a few hours since I'd been at the banquet. I explained it away, it wasn't hard to do. I knew your voice well, I was full of adrenaline, it had been hours since I'd heard the voice. It wasn't long before I doubted myself completely. By the time I returned to Ptolemy I'd decided that I'd been hearing things. I left it out of my report because I didn't want you being dragged in by Tieria for a scathing round of interrogation, and more than that I didn't want to ignite false hope. By the time I heard his voice again, he'd spoken to you. There was no reason for me to bring it up when you'd heard it first-hand, and then I lost my 'hearing' for a couple of days, and here we are."

It was all a case of horrible communication and bad circumstances. He laughed under his breath, then shook his head. It was so stupid.

There was another question nagging at him, one that he wasn't sure he wanted to ask. "What do you think of his voice?" he asked. His voice. He didn't know if he was referring to his brother or to the masked telepath. Maybe both. He'd thought about that all-too-familiar voice more than once since he'd heard it. He didn't know if he wanted to come to a conclusion about it.

He wanted to tell himself that the man most likely wasn't his brother. He wanted to rest assured that facts were facts, and that his brother had died four years earlier. Wanting that made him sick. He and his brother may not have been close in the end, but he respected Neil. He was angry with him and was frustrated with his inability to let go, but he loved him. How could he not? They were brothers, twins. They were as much a part of each other as anyone could be while still being individuals. He hated that fact, but was that enough to justify his hope that his brother would stay in the past? He'd lost his brother, but in a way that meant that he'd finally gained some small, pathetic piece of freedom. Did that make him a horrible person?

"If he was alive, would you be angry?"

He'd forgotten that she could hear, and the question felt like a kick in the gut. He couldn't hide things from her and that forced him to be brutally honest, not just with her, but with himself. "I don't know." he said, hoping she'd leave it at that.

"Are you sure you don't?"

Somewhere, that needy, honest child that he used to be yelled at him for lying. 'Respect me enough to tell me the truth' it chided, using Reverie's words from their coffee-conversation so long ago to chastise him. Fine. He would be angry. No, not angry, livid. If this man was his brother, sent to return from the past like some hero reappearing at the end of a movie, he'd be livid. There were finally people who saw him separately. Reverie, Anew, Katharon. Even the members of Celestial Being were starting to recognize him as someone else and weren't constantly comparing anymore. His brother could be alive, that was fine. His brother couldn't be alive like this, a hair away from reappearing and stealing away the bonds that Lyle was finally starting to create. He would be left with nothing, yet again. The other twin. The one who made smiles fade and expectations lower. The one who paled in comparison to his vibrant, well-loved brother. "Is that the answer you were expecting?" he asked coldly, trying to distance himself, to distance her.

She didn't seem to want that at all. She rested her head against his forearm. "No, but it was the truth...that's what matters."

The physical contact was welcome and it lightened his mood, though he tried not to admit it. They were silent for a while before she spoke again. "So, was that the only reason you were avoiding me?" she asked, tilting her head and watching her Haro roll around the cockpit.

He watched the white ball-bot roll. He'd been angry with her because of the voice and it had triggered his pride. He'd been avoiding her because she didn't want to be close to him and because he didn't want to drag himself deeper into whatever it was that he felt for her. "It's the most important one."

She seemed content to leave it at that, picking up her Haro and musing about the differences between hers and his. He knew that they had a lot more to talk about, but he had a lot of thinking to do before then. He'd have a week to himself to think about how he felt. Right now, they had half an hour of quips and teases and their usual oddball conversations to catch up on, and that was perfectly fine with him.