Chapter 15 - The Proposal

"So you were caught—ahem, enjoying the company of this cadet in a public place, am I correct?" Commandant Lassard asked Lieutenant Harris.

"Yes, Sir."

"And you killed Birdie, correct?"

"Yes, Sir," Harris answered.

"And yet, you saved D squadron from Cadet Manson," Lassard said, eyes locked on Harris. Apparently this confrontation had been a long time in the making.

At Lassard's latest statement, Harris's eyes were still locked on the floor.

"Correct?" Lassard said, pressing Harris to speak. I suppressed a smile.

"I wouldn't say that," Harris muttered, rubbing his shoe along the floor. My jaw dropped. Even Lassard looked puzzled. Since when did Harris not take credit for something he'd done?! As I attempted to comprehend what he was doing, he continued speaking.

"I distracted Cadet Manson for a while, and while I was talking to her, two cadets got away. Then Callahan stepped forward and got Manson to take a shot, and when Manson wasn't looking, Callahan instructed the cadets to run. All I did was talk to Cadet Manson, Sir."

"Really?" I blurted, looking over at Harris with disbelief. What the hell was he trying to do? Of all the times to suppress his ego, he was going to choose right now?! I continued giving him the credit he deserved. "You were the one to distract Manson from shooting anyone. Only after she was looking at you did our squadron get to run away. You allowed for that to happen. Give yourself credit." I turned to Lassard.

"He saved us," I said insistently. "I really thought Manson was going to shoot someone today."

"Actually, you were the one to step forward and keep her from shooting me," Harris said to me. "You saved me, so you trump me."

"All I did was talk," I said, smiling at him.

"I'm confused. You said you talked to Cadet Manson," Lassard said to Harris, "and yet, you did too," he said to me. "Who ended up getting the cadet's weapon from her?"

I immediately pointed at Harris.

"That simplifies it," Lassard said, smiling at Lieutenant Harris. "You're the one who saved the squadron." There were several seconds that passed as he looked at Harris and then at me and finally back at Harris once more. I couldn't read his current expression and could only stand there and hold my breath.

"I must say, Lieutenant, I'm very very pleased with the changes you've made as of late," Lassard stated, a warm smile on his face. "Not only did you tell me the truth about Birdie, but you're also being very humble about your rather heroic behavior today. And don't get me started on the bravery that predated your shoulder injury."

"Thank you, Sir," Harris replied, bowing his head as he answered in a low voice.

"I'm not sure if it has something to do with this… relationship…. but if that is the case, I wholeheartedly support it," Lassard said regally. Now he had a mischievous look on his face. "However, Lieutenant Harris, I would strongly recommend that you two find a private place to have your fun, and for goodness's sake, try to keep your cool about it. The academy will be over in a matter of weeks." With that, he actually winked at Harris, whose head had shot up in disbelief.

"Do you, uh, have experience in this regard, Sir?" Harris asked, totally baffled. "Because it sounds like—"

"Let's just say that sometimes things pop up where you least expect them—love, women," he replied in a grand voice. "Sometimes you have to just… go with the flow." He followed his statement up with an awkward little smile. I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from bursting out laughing. What in the world was he talking about?

"But back to the point, your recent shows of bravery and taking responsibility for your actions has made me very, very strongly consider promoting you back to the rank of captain."

"Thank you, Sir," Harris replied, a brief light in his eyes as he looked up at the older man, "but I can't accept that."

"What are you talking about?" Lassard stammered, totally not expecting Harris's response. Truth to tell, neither had I. "Do you not want a promotion?"

"I do," Harris replied, "but there's too much red tape to—"

"You needn't lie to me, Lieutenant Harris," Lassard said with a smile. "This has to do with those pictures; in fact, I'm sure of it."

"Why do you say that?" Harris asked him, clearly intrigued by his comment.

"Why, because if you are promoted, all the attention will be on you again and those pictures will be everywhere!" Lassard beamed at us, looking giddy. "Well, I must inform you that the dissemination of your photographs is impossible!"

"How so?"

"Because Officer Zed gave them to me," Lassard explained. "I have the only copies."

Now Harris looked taken aback, and blinked several times before speaking.

"You do?"

"I certainly do," Lassard replied. With that, he pulled them out of his desk drawer, which was beginning to be repopulated with his stuff once again. He slid them across the desk, revealing the top picture of an aggravated, pale-faced Harris with a barely-covered lap. I watched Harris's ears turn red with embarrassment.

Lassard then fished in another drawer, pulling out a lighter.

"Now then, Lieutenant Harris, I have a proposition to make." Lassard leaned on the table with his hands, looking way more bad-ass than I could have pictured him.

"Yes?" Harris asked him, clearly taken aback.

"I will burn these pictures right here in front of you regardless of your agreement with my proposition, but I think now is a very, very good time to address the… issues we are having." Lassard straightened his back and now stood before us at his full height, towering over Harris and me. His smirk faded until it was completely gone. I was shocked by how much older Lassard looked when he wasn't smiling.

Harris squinted as he replied to Lassard, uncertainty in his voice.

"What's that?"

"That from now on, you treat me as you would a superior and not some… crazy old man," Lassard replied, his voice showing no joviality. He was not smiling, and his eyes were suddenly very tired. "Over my years of being at the academy, I have seen your many eye rolls, your many, many attempts to discredit me, and your many, many, many attempts to get me to retire." He began to shake his head. "It has been very, very, very upsetting to me."

Commandant Lassard paused for a moment to collect himself before continuing. It was clear that speaking in this manner was difficult for him.

"I know that your career is important to you, so you can certainly empathize when I say that this job is my life. I will retire when I want to. From this point on, you are to respect that… and me." With that, he clasped his hands behind his back, looking shockingly imposing. "Do we have an understanding, Lieutenant?"

I used my peripheral vision to glance over at Harris, whose face and neck was mottled red. His head was bowed and he seemed to be looking at the floor. There was a period of silence in which his eyes darted back and forth, unable to move from the ground or the desk. I felt horribly out of place, having heard the dressing-down. Slowly, Harris's eyes raised up from the floor, meeting mine for a split second before continuing towards Lassard's stoic face.

Interestingly, as Harris's eyes finally met Lassard's, he did not raise his chin. The sight of him in front of Lassard was one of repentance and shame.

"Yes, Sir," he muttered, his voice low and guttural. It was a somber moment and I felt that I had no business being there.

"Good! Now then," Lassard said, clapping his hands together. "Shall we commence with burning these snapshots?" He was once again smiling and I felt comfortable again. It was as if the tense moment hadn't even existed. Without a reply from Harris or me, the commandant grabbed the empty fishbowl from the desk and lit the first picture on fire. As it began to curl up and turn black from the heat, Lassard placed it in the fishbowl.

"Would you like to do one?" he asked Harris, giddily watching the first picture become unrecognizable black flakes in Birdie's former home.

"No thank you, Sir," Harris replied, his head still bowed. He'd not yet recovered from the brutal tongue-lashing he'd just received from a man who never had a bad thing to say to anyone. It really seemed as if Lassard's words had gotten to him.


Captain Callahan paced across the gym mat as all the cadets sat on the floor the following morning, sunglasses obscuring her eyes as her mouth frowned at the group. We were back in hand-to-hand combat training again, and it hadn't exactly been explained why. Perhaps it had been brought up by our school's lack of action in the horse accident at the parade, or perhaps it was due to the tense situation at the shooting range yesterday. Lieutenant Harris stood off to the side with his baton in hand, looking less smug than usual.

"Today we will be learning how to disarm someone who is brandishing a firearm," she said, not pausing for one moment from her pacing. No one dared mention Connie Manson, who had since been admitted to the Metropolitan Psychiatric Hospital, or the two cadets who had bullied her to the breaking point. Bordeaux and Beaner had been kicked out of the academy, which apparently left Captain Callahan with no cadets to fool around with for the time being. She seemed especially agitated today, perhaps for that very reason. It was possible that Bordeaux could try to blackmail her to stay in the academy, but I hadn't heard anything, so I assumed that things had gone smoothly enough.

"Right, just like yesterday," some guy muttered behind me. My eyes shot up to Captain Callahan, who had since stopped in her tracks and was now scanning the group for the source of the comment. She ripped off her sunglasses and glared at each cadet, her eyes seeming to stay on me for a bit longer than Mullers and Stiner, who sat on either side of me.

"Who said that?" Callahan raged, planting her fists on her hips as she scanned the group. I wasn't about to say anything.

I really believed she had set up the 'chance' meeting with Zed and Mahoney the other night and was hoping Harris would get fired. She seemed even more pissed off to see that he was still around, even though he'd saved her neck and that of the cadets. What an odd woman.


The cafeteria was packed for lunch, and someone had taken two of the floating instructor tables and incorporated them into a massive male cadet table, leaving only two instructor tables off to the side. Harris was the first instructor to enter the cafeteria and took his seat at one of the two instructor tables.

Mullers was interested in talking about Harris—I'd officially revealed that he was my boyfriend when I was trying to talk Connie down, not that it had worked.

"So, how does this… thing with you two work, anyway?" Mullers asked me. "Does your roommate take a walk at night so he can come over?"

"I haven't seen him in our dorm except for that one evening towards the start of the academy, when you hated each other," Stiner added. "So yeah, how does it work?"

"We meet up randomly," I said, feeling my face heating up at the thought of the night before last. We'd been caught with our pants down and then we'd accidentally ended up staying overnight at Harris's house.

"Kinda sucks that you can't even sit with him at lunch," Mullers noted. "Obviously you gotta keep this on the down-low."

"Right," I said. "It seems like we have gotten the blessing of at least one instructor here, but we still can't make it obvious."

"Who?" Now I had two sets of eyes staring at me—Stiner's and Mullers's.

"Obviously it isn't Callahan," Stiner said. "She can't even hide the fact that she can't stand him."

Just then Tackleberry and Jones came in, picked up their food, and strode toward the table with Lieutenant Harris, who had begun to eat. Instead of walking past him to the empty instructor table, they began to chat with him and actually sat down at his table with him. It was a bit surreal seeing the other instructors being kind toward him.

Harris must have caught me staring towards him because he gave me a quick glance indicating that he was taken aback by them. I smiled back. It really looked like Harris's foolhardy encounter with Manson had paid off. It was too bad that Callahan couldn't see past her rage in believing he'd lost her the commandant job and realizing he'd saved her ass yesterday.

Callahan didn't even come to lunch.