Late 1968

Alexander had been understanding; almost too much, given how little she had been permitted out in public since her own accident. She fixed him with a sharp eye that would have withered him just a few short months earlier, but he stood firm. The last few months had left their mark. Aft et a moment, he sighed. "I'm not blind, Mari. Father wasn't even in the ground, and he's already campaigning to sweep up his shares. Do you have a plan, at all?

"Do you?" She wrinkled her nose at the blood pressure cuff strapped to her arm. "Are you planning to walk away from your work?"

Alexander sighed, took the reading, and nodded to her. His sister ripped the binding instrument from her arm with no small amount of satisfaction. The desk in front of her was littered with notebooks and papers, tracking her vitals since the summer, along with psychological assessments cobbled hastily together. Moving to the other side of their father's study in the old English estate, he untied the medical mask and sat down. He looked evenly at his sister and considered the situation.

The loss had hit them both, both psychologically and physically. Both of them had clearly lost weight. Lack of sleep and stress had put faint lines into Alexander's face that now greeted him in the mirror each morning. Marigold, however…aside from the weight loss, nearly *glowed* with good health. Still. Her eyes had lost pigment, and the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose had faded to almost nothing. Even the faint scarring of everyday accidents- she had dubiously checked her arms for faded measles scarring, shocked to find the familiar marks just gone.

The three - no, two- of them had cautiously elected to keep her medical situation quiet, at least until she was out of harm's reach by means of Dr. Marcus' petulant ambition. After the funeral...there was something wrong in the way Marcus had seemed both completely isolated and totally confident in his position. How fully convinced that he was untouchable.

Spencer seemed almost willfully blind to all of this. It would even be more worrying had they simply been shut out. He was an uncle In all but blood, but he was also cleaning up in the wake of the death, isolating the useful contagion from the more profitable part of the whole venture.

Something about the situation twisted in her gut when she had thought to disclose her condition. They - her father included, Marigold had to allow - had gone in and cleared out a local population over an old temple and some flowers. From what she had managed to surmise, everyone else who had been exposed to the pathogen therein had died. Immediately. Brutally. While...she was becoming something *else.*

Right now, she was mostly isolated, but she had some control over it. The staff had been edgy around her for the first few weeks, but they seemed to relax easily in her presence unless something alarmed her greatly. She would have to work on that. But she knew she'd have the opportunity to do so. Premature white hair, as. a symptom of trauma, was hardly unheard of.

But Marcus, a prime asset of Spencer's, under isolation and set apart and outside from the world...no. Spencer, uncle or no, would be well-meaning enough, but Marcus had turned into a monstrous person under his guidance. What would he do with her?

Alex sighed again. "I'm not planning to walk away, not from the work itself," he admitted. "The marrow samples I took from you- yes, I told you it would hurt and you still said you wanted to be awake, and now we both know that you recover astonishingly fast- anyhow, I can culture those against tissue from others hit but the same virus. Figure out the missing links."

"Meanwhile, you're isolated, and Spencer was mobilizing a full coup at the bloody reception." She drummed her fingers on the desk, looking out the window. Having control over the Europe lab means one of those people will sniff out what you have in no time..oh." Her musings intersected neatly with her line of thought. She darted a look at Alexander with a humourless smirk. "No wonder Marcus is so damn paranoid. I doubt he's done much of anything moved without Spencer's say-so for a while now."

Alexander's eyes narrowed. "You did something. That's your face when you did something and are waiting for the consequences to come storming up so you can kick them in the face."

Marigold laughed and waved the accusation off. "I took a little risk at the funeral. Might have a payoff eventually other than spite." She sobered. "So you need to be able to work in peace. Are you still chasing Veronica?"

Alexander *blushed*. "Given the memory and intelligence testing we've been running through? I'd be stupid not to. You realize I could probably train you with Father's notes; you'd be an asset in any lab? Wouldn't even have to worry about infection risk."

"*No."* She hadn't meant to shout. People would figure out something was up, and the malaria story Alexander had spun up on the fly only held so long as people weren't treating the alternative seriously, or looking too closely at the situation.

Someone downstairs dropped something in the kitchen, and a cacophony of shouting reached them in the study. The siblings both froze, waited for the confusion to subside. Alexander had posited that she had a pheromone effect, linked to her moods, on those surrounding her- the family was inured against the worst of it. There were so many things about all of this that could become problematic.

The healed scarring worried her. The 'incident', the mishap which had ejected her from London society and had led to her little trip with her family, had scarred her internally at the time. It had also effectively removed her from the marriage horse-trading of the European gentry. It had been among the worst thing that could have happened to a girl of her station, and Spencer in particular had made a point of alluding to her misfortunes when seeking to reshape her to the company's uses. If her internal scarring was gone as well, things could change again for her. The possibilities of that outcome…she kept that locked and barred firmly behind a heavy door in her mind.

She had declined to broach the topic. Her father had guessed in a quiet moment just after they had returned home, whilst her brother was attending to her blood panels in the adjoining room. He had taken her hand, so tenderly, so hopeful at the renewed possibility for future grandchildren.

She had still been weak, then. They had agreed not to discuss it further until the lab was set up, and she was feeling ready to join them there. Her father had pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, eyes shining. "My darling girl. The things we're going to do for the world."

They would never have that chance.

She took a deep breath, forcing herself back into the moment. She lightly jabbed a finger at her brother. "If I thought you were about to request an ovary I'd likely hunt down one of the dusty old swords from the great room and have a go at you." Alexander blushed even deeper at that, but it cut the rising tension well enough.

"No labs. I-" she faltered, then: "No one can know. You said yourself that Marcus wasn't convinced with the story at all, and shut his mouth to save face. Your notes said subclinical pheromone impacts when exposed to the subject, yes? Generates a highly suggestible effect?"

Alexander glared at her. "I know I don't leave my notes out."

"You left the room to put away samples, and I wanted to know why the staff was still being kept back. As I said, I took a little risk. Told him he was clearly mistaken and to keep his idiot mouth shut. Did you know the idiot will drink anything he gets handed at a party without even looking at it?"

"I don't know whether to laugh or scream at you…"

"Neither, but someone needed to cauterize that raw nerve and I could, so I did. I'll be more careful from now. So you need space to work, but also privacy."

Alexander glared, then allowed that this was the conversation she was determined to have. "That's the shape of it. We both know what happened in that lab, but it doesn't matter. Spencer wants you front and center making connections for the company…"

"And if Umbrella is thriving, he's not pulling from the Foundation anymore. Don't we have access to some remote locations? Through the estate?"

The new 6th Earl Ashford blinked, then smiled faintly back. "You know, that could work."

"Good," she smiled back. "And in the meantime, I think I need to build a little library of my own. Can you show me what I need to know to track what you've been tracking? I'm a quick study these days."

The locked door of their situation would stay shut. They each had the tools necessary to rebuild the Ashford legacy if they were quiet and clever. It was only a matter of time.

And, oh, the things they could do in that time.