AN: It feels like its been forever since I last posted a chapter, and I'm really glad I got this one done. It's a bit of filler, just as the next one will be, but there are important pieces here and there. I've decided to try a new way of separating my chapters (-00-) as ff keeps erasing my line breaks. Let me know how that works out, and if it's a pain I'll try to go back to the breaks. I'm not sure when the next chapter will be up as I've got a tonne of travelling to do in the next two weeks! I may come up with a new mini-story too.

Regarding the last chapter there isn't too much to say other than I'm doing some background building. Also, if you notice that there are seemingly random reviews, it's because I've been playing 'Review Tag' in The Reviews Lounge, Too (as recommended by Stormy!). RT helped me get through studying as I would use it for study breaks, and it introduced me to a bunch of very well-written stories from different fandoms.

Here goes, and let me know what you think! I've been listening to a combination of depressing music as I'm getting ready for the action to come.

Bargaining Blame

Katharon's cafeteria was surprisingly well-equipped for being run by a poorly funded terror cell. There was a commendable amount of fresh fruit, meat, and dairy, all of which were provided by local farmers who supported the initiatives of the group. The fruit wasn't farmed in the area, of course, but when transporting it a few crates always seemed to disappear from the market trucks. The farmers would say it was normal; animals were crafty.

Reverie tried to stay out of the way as kitchen help ran this-way and that, trying to get a meal together for a returning mobile suit team. After a long talk with Klaus Graad, who was apparently quite high up in Katharon's hierarchy, it had been decided that she would work in the Kitchen meal line. She was skilled enough to work on mobile suits, knew enough languages to translate for some of the less linguistically gifted, and a decent enough shot to work defence, but they'd both agreed that the meal line was the best area for her to be. It gave her access to the entirety of Katharon's force in the European branch. She could hear everyone and she could make physical contact with them if she needed more information. Most of all though, she knew that Klaus was scared to have her work a position that would place her in any kind of danger as he didn't want to answer to Celestial Being. She was alright with that.

Her job here wasn't to pick up a weapon, it was to find a mole. That wasn't to say that she didn't have a weapon on her, of course. Deiter had slipped her a very well-adjusted older model Beretta shortly after Lyle had left. The handgun was hidden snugly under the ballistic vest that she'd been handed at her meeting with Klaus and the others. It hung a size too large, but she didn't mind. It let her hide her weapon and an assortment of important things, like Haro's backup and her communication drive for Ptolemy. The safety that it would provide in case of an attack was questionable, but the two holes in the back of it let her know that it had done its job well before, both times for someone of notable importance.

The temporary European branch was notable for many of its small amazements, such as hiding a twenty machine mobile-suit hangar underground, but its most interesting feature was its collection of important refugees. She could name several political figures that she'd seen here and there, hidden amongst mechanics and service workers. Although she recognized numerous faces there was one that she was glad to see, Marina Ismail's. Although the princess had only spent a short amount of time on Ptolemy, Reverie had become fond of her. She was kind and caring, and although she didn't agree with the ways of Celestial Being, she was willing to help them in any way that fit her personal beliefs. She toed a delicate line between her beliefs and respecting the beliefs of others. It was something Reverie – no – Karen admired.

"Hurry! Hurry!" Haro chided, unimpressed with her spacing-out. He'd been following her around through her daily chores. If anyone asked, she told them he was a gift from a friend, a pet robot. He seemed to like the title.

She lifted a set of steam-trays into place and watched the group of mostly men file in. From the tone of their thoughts and the high-fives going around, it was obvious that they considered their mission a success, whatever it had been. She scraped out a large pot of mashed potatoes into one of the trays and listened into their mental mutterings. No one was really thinking anything of interest. The trays were filled shortly, several different people running over with this and that and dumping the contents in haphazardly.

For a group of beaten-down looking pilots, they had wonderful manners and let her finish organizing the meal line before they picked up their plates and started moving through. She'd never really seen anything like it before. In Celestial Being they were polite, but Ptolemy had an atmosphere that reminded them that they were being privately funded with millions of dollars. Here, they were reminded that they were an underground organization branded as rebels. Still, they picked up their plates and thanked the soldiers behind the stations.

"You look surprised."

Reverie looked up at the grinning face of one of the older pilots. He wasn't old by civilian standards, but seeing a pilot who looked older than twenty-five was odd in organizations like this. "You're well mannered, that's all." She said, pointing at various things in the trays to load onto his plate.

He laughed. "I don't know where you were before here, but we run a little differently." He replied. –Seems the whole world runs differently these days…-

He let a few people past him and she decided she might as well keep talking if he wasn't holding up the line. "How so?"

"We all fight here, and we all pull our shifts behind the line. There's no sense in being a brat now, is there?"

"It's fun to be a brat every once in a while though, isn't it?" she questioned.

He laughed. "Every once in a while, sure. Not when the lady across from you is servin' your food, though." He winked.

She couldn't help but smile. "You might have a point there."

Her attention faded away as a new thought reached her. More accurately it wasn't a thought, but an incredibly clear, confusing picture. It was cast in red, everything except for a set of purple eyes and filaments of green hair that sat atop a porcelain face. The rest was red. A man with red hair, a red mobile suit, red spilling over fabric and a deep red sunset. Her tongs fell to the floor with a clatter and she looked up in time to see a flash of blonde hair burst through the doors of the cafeteria.

"Karen! Get over here!"

Deiter's voice had a commanding undertone that she'd never come across before. "What?" She questioned. She was shocked to see Deiter, he'd spent the better part of the last two days hiding from her and taking his Enact out on every drill and security rotation that he could find. Even when he slept he was strangely guarded and his thoughts came in disjointed bundles. She wasn't sure what to make of the situation, but the images flashing urgently in her head didn't let her focus on it.

"Get over here, we've found someone, a pilot!" he said. –A Celestial Being Pilot.-

What? She picked Haro up and darted towards the doors, trying to keep her balance as her eyes were hijacked by another series of images. Earth from space, the red-headed man again, and glowing, golden eyes. The images weren't accompanied by any kind of worded thoughts and she realized that she knew exactly who this was.

They slowed to a halt in the mobile suit hangar in time to see a blue-clad form collapse against Marina.

"Setsuna!"

"I understand that you have a licence, Captain Gallagher, but it's strongly recommended that you attach yourself to this mission." The colonel pushed an outdated manila envelope across his desk again. Gallagher wasn't sure what to make of the paper, but it seemed that he was being used for more and more nefarious missions that couldn't be entered into a computer for reasons unknown. It was annoying. He hated paper; reading off it did nothing but antagonize his right eye and leave him with a groaning headache. Still, he watched the Colonel with irritated curiosity. To the colonel's gaze he was relaxing passively in his chair, feet up on the man's desk. It wasn't a position he'd normally take, but it was a sign of assertion and disrespect at once, and the Colonel had yet to point it out. He wondered how long it would be before the man begged him to pick up the envelope.

"No matter how it's recommended, I'm not interested." He said simply.

The man leaned forward and pressed his face into his hands. –What kind of Captains are they training these days?- After a few moments, he looked up. "What could we do to make it interesting for you, Captain?"

Here it was, negotiation. "It isn't the content that doesn't interest me, Colonel, it's the medium."

"What do you mean?"

He suppressed his inward grin. "I don't see the fun in stalking around a Katharon base, equipped with little more than a pistol and tranquilizers, and with no promise of a fight of any kind."

"We need your long-range firing capabilities!" The Colonel's voice was heated; Gallagher was getting under his skin. "We need someone who can pick between the fleeing terrorists and tranquilize the high-profile targets."

That made it even less appealing. There wasn't any prospect for an interesting mission if he would be sitting hundreds of meters away and watching through a scope. "Get one of the snipers to do it. You do have snipers, don't you? I'd think you have better uses for someone with my abilities." and there was a sniper in Celestial being that he'd much rather be toying with.

"Captain, I don't have the time or inclination to continue arguing with you." –If he's going to be a brat, he shouldn't have a say.-

Brat.

Anger flared behind his mask but he stayed silent, unmoving. "I suggest you rearrange your schedule." He said calmly. If the man could see his eyes, he'd suddenly find his schedule very empty.

"Take the envelope, I'm assigning you to the mission." Instead of clearing his appointments, he tossed the envelope across the desk at the masked captain.

Enough.

He caught it harshly and was on his feet in an instant, the Colonel's hand twisting painfully in his grip. The man's body hugged the desk, his straining evident in his breaths. The thumb held in Gallagher's hand was a painful millimetre from being very out of place, and the man's arm wouldn't fare much better if the Captain applied any pressure. "Gallagher, you'll be wr-itten up for th-this" he choked out.

He laughed. "I don't think so. You seem to misunderstand the word license, Colonel. You see, I get to do what I want, and pushing me to do something else is pointless. Do you know why I have that power, Colonel?" he asked, leaning slowly on the man's arm. The whine it elicited made him almost giddy. The man barely shook his head. "Fear." He replied. "Not only because I can hear what's in your useless, empty heads, but because I like to use it to my advantage. If you didn't fear me before you certainly do now, and if you fear me, oh great Colonel, imagine how the people who gave me this ability fear me."

"You're deranged." The man choked out quietly.

Gallagher smiled. "That may be, but that won't stop me from dropping this.." he held up the envelope with his free hand. "…back on your desk."

True to his word, within a moment the envelope had landed back on the Colonel's desk and Gallagher slipped out the door, leaving the Colonel to nurse his sore arm.

He had no interested in the mission at all. He didn't care about Katharon in the slightest. If anything, the anti-government organization was making the A-Laws lives interesting with their shaded trickery and random attacks. He didn't want to intrude on their fun. Celestial Being though, that was fun that he wanted a piece of. State-of-the-art mobile suits, a world-class tactical forecaster, and the most proficient pilots in the world…that type of challenge suited him much better. Gallagher wanted to pick a fight with the whole world, after-all.

He made his way out of the building and across a shaded pavilion to the officers' quarters where he'd been assigned a temporary room. The view from his window was notably beautiful and he found it ironic that they would give the best view to a man who was occasionally blind in one eye. Regardless, when he could see it was one of the few things that he appreciated about the world. Humans could destroy everything in the world except for a sunset; and the sun would still set even after man had destroyed himself.

His eye, just like his other injuries, had apparently been sustained when he took down the Gundam and lost his memories. He didn't believe that, just like everything else about his so-called past. There may have been a time shortly after he awoke that he believed what he was told, but that time had come and gone. Regene Regetta was doing nothing to help the situation. Rather than make him believe the lies that had been crammed into his skull, the man had been giving him breadcrumbs; little bits of information meant to lead him through a dark forest of half-truths to the real story of himself. The puzzle was intriguing, but the permanent ache in his head dulled his treasure-hunt's satisfaction. He was getting sick of Regene's games and he wanted the truth now.

His need for truth was why he sat at his computer for another night, his mask resting carefully on the desk. He'd spent night after night reading news reports of the KPSA's Ireland bombing and digging up anything he could find on the Celestial Being pilot. He used the throbbing pain in his head like a metal detector, finding bits of golden information to lead him to new things. It had taken him to a number of different pages which he'd saved and poured through in great detail. Owen Dylandy, the pilot's father, had worked in shipping in Dublin but had never made a name for himself. Lyndsay, the mother, sold her own crafts online through a webpage that had now been out-dated for over a decade. The crafting web-page had lead him to a family site that showed pictures of a smiling family of five and detailed their various excursions and fun. Gallagher had never thought that he'd pour over one with remarkable interest, yet here he was.

The throbbing in his head always reached a sharp peak when he scrolled down this particular page to the picture of the five of them. Owen, Lyndsay, Amy, young Lyle. If the boy on the left hadn't been identified by the web-page as Lyle, Gallagher wouldn't have known which boy was the pilot. The source of his pain was the other grinning face; Lyle's twin brother. There was no name for the boy, unlike his identical counterpart. It was like it had been swept clean, the name removed from any mention on the family page.

How was this boy connected to Gallagher? Why did the smiling face make his head throb so painfully? If he could see Lyle Dylandy's face, maybe he'd recognize it and his memories – his real – memories, would return. That was why he'd turned down the Katharon mission. He wanted to fight with Celestial being at the attack scheduled for two days' time. He needed to fight the sniper, and he needed to see his face. Someone else could deal with tranquilizing the vice-foreign minister. He needed to fight Lyle Dylandy, because despite his search for fun and intrigue, what Gallagher really wanted were answers.

Setsuna was suspended.

He couldn't remember ever feeling so weightless in his life, free of feeling, thought, even free of the pain that should have been throbbing from his gunshot wound. For the first time he wasn't worried about his Gundam. He knew Double-Oh was fine, he'd collapsed in Marina Ismail's arms…nothing bad could happen to it if she was there. That was a strange thought. How could a machine such as a Gundam be safe around someone who saw no need for it? Double-Oh would be safe because Marina knew how important it was to him, and she was a respectful person. She wouldn't let her own beliefs about Celestial Being interfere in others' lives, just as any of her other beliefs. Double-Oh was safe, and so was he.

Making it to Katharon was a decision that had left him unsettled, but it was marginally more acceptable than passing out and dying in Double-Oh and possibly losing the suit forever at the bottom of the ocean. Even if the sea didn't claim the Gundam, the enemy would, and Setsuna would risk Katharon stealing it over the A-Laws gaining the technology. When he'd laid eyes on Marina, though, he knew that it had been a wise decision. Even as he stood in the dismount cable of the Gundam he'd felt weak and heavy, and his legs hadn't wanted to move. It was blood loss that had made him give into the encroaching fatigue. It wasn't the first time that he'd been injured like this, and not the first time at the hands of that man, Ali Al-Saachez, but it was the first time that he'd felt safe as he blacked out.

Al-Saachez. Setsuna didn't know why his thoughts landed on the man, but his thoughts were floating just as he was. That man was the personification of war. He was without nationality, allegiance, or morality. If Setsuna strived to be what a Gundam was, then Al-Saachez could only be its opposite. If a Gundam blanketed itself in truth, Al-Saachez blanketed himself in destruction. That destruction is what drove others to blame.

Setsuna had blamed him for many things over the years, until he realized that blame had no place in a changing world. To remove himself from Al-Saachez' grasp he had to release the blame that tied him to the man. Lockon Stratos hadn't done that, and Lockon Stratos had died. Lockon blamed Al-Saachez for the murder of his family, several on Ptolemy blamed Al-Saachez for Lockon's death. Even princess Marina couldn't escape the blame that she laid on the man for his single-handed razing of her country. The circle of blame was something that was twisted also. Nothing good could come of blame, that was Lockon Stratos' final message. Setsuna would find out why, and he would pass that knowledge onto others.

For now, he had to wait to wake up.

Tieria's daily to-do list was systematic, obsessive even. Wake, eat, run reports, run service on Seravee, run training scenarios in Seravee, make sure that the bridge is running smoothly, and try and extract any useful leftovers from their VEDA backup. Sometimes he added new things like visits to the range or a brush-up on his hand-to-hand combat. Today there was something very different on his list, though.

"Allelujah."

Today he had to try and bargain with his attack partner's other personality; one that had notable disdain for anyone who didn't enjoy finger-painting in blood. He hit the two-way communication button that allowed the other Meister to reply.

"Allelujah isn't here, but if you wanna come make sure I won't complain…" The tone confirmed that the pacing person on the other side of the glass definitely wasn't Allelujah.

Tieria sighed and hit the comms button again. "That won't be necessary. I'm here to bargain with you."

Not-Allelujah gave him a sideways glare through the one-way glass. "When exactly did you start bargaining, Tieria?" Of course Allelujah's other personality would know his name. After all their years of training together it would have been shocking for him not to. "Did that bitch Sumeragi put you up to this?"

He wished he could blame Sumeragi for the uncharacteristic negotiating but this was his own idea. Ptolemy was at a severe disadvantage at the moment. They had two functioning Gundams; two that were equipped for long-range attacks. Five years ago that would have been sufficient to defend themselves. Now, though, they would be severely outmatched if the A-Laws attacked. It wasn't even a question of 'if', but a question of 'when'. When the A-Laws attacked, they'd need Arios in the air regardless of the pilot. "No, she'd rather have you sit locked in that room than interfere with her tactical plan." It was a lie, but one that would hopefully work to his advantage.

Hallelujah looked away and sneered, then turned his attention back to the window. "And what do you want, Tieria Erde?"

Somehow Hallelujah managed to make the name sound like an insult. Tieria was unphased. "I want Ptolemy protected to its best ability, and that requires Arios. As our fastest-!"

"I know about the suit, what do you want, Tieria?"

Being cut off made him want to snap at the man, but he cleared his throat and continued. "As our fastest mobile suit, Arios is critical to any attack plan for Ptolemy's defence."

"Why would I care if Ptolemy is defended?" Hallelujah asked, head tilted.

"You're not an idiot, Hallelujah." Tieria replied, tone clipped. "If Ptolemy is destroyed, you die with it. We need you to pilot Arios in the event of an attack."

Hallelujah laughed, then stopped and stared straight through the divider. "Pilot it yourself."

Tieria shook his head and ran a hand over his face, something he'd picked up years ago from Lockon…it was a human sign of disbelief and frustration. "You know as well as I do that you're the only one on-board with enough physical resistance to gravitational pull to pilot it. It's too fast for anyone else to pilot without passing out." He relayed, just in case Allelujah's other half wasn't gifted with the same intelligence as his gentle half.

"I'm not the only one." Hallelujah said matter-of-factly. "What about Soma Peires, or does she get away scott-free?"

"We aren't discussing Soma Peires right now." He replied harshly. Allelujah would never allow it and Tieria wouldn't be badgered into the discussion.

Hallelujah didn't seem to appreciate the response and raised an unimpressed brow, then sighed. "What's in it for me if I decide to play lackey?"

Finally something Tieria could work with. "You'd get out of this room for the duration of the attack."

"And then right back in here like a caged dog, right?"

"We could negotiate for extra time out, but you'd have to agree to a list of security demands." He said matter-of-factly. He'd been sorely upset when Sumeragi had decided against the implementation of a shock-collar.

The super-soldier tilted his head and was silent for a few moments before he stared back through the glass. "I don't give a damn about your matchbox ship or your under-gunned defences. Get me out of here permanently and then we'll talk. Cut communication."

Tieria bristled, then breathed out slowly through his nose. He was silently cursing the tech that thought it was a good idea to have voice-activated communication cut-offs inside the padded room. Did people in padded rooms really deserve to control conversations?

He shook his head and left the hall, his hands balled tightly into fists. He hadn't expected Hallelujah to agree at the first try, but it didn't make the snippy Meister's attitude any easier to deal with. He'd have to wait and try again, but he couldn't shake the reality that his timespan was slowly growing shorter.

He'd have to get Hallelujah's agreement before the A-Laws attacked, whenever that would be.