Hey everyone. Sorry for the delay. Between waiting for Season 7 to come out and writer's block, this chapter took longer than it should have. I already have the next chapter written out, so I'm going to try and get back to my regular Saturdays & Mondays posting schedule tomorrow. I borrowed a fair amount of dialogue from Mustang and the Jackal's interactions in Morning Star, and I also took some inspiration from some Tumblr posts discussing the ways that Nero abused both of them, along with the dialogue between Nebula and Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

Chapter 29: Cain and Abel:

Hyperion

Luna

March 24th, 2841

Virginia au Augustus was quiet as she walked the halls of the Citadel of Light. While the Rising held tactical superiority over the surface of Luna, the battle continued to rage. After Darrow had secured Endymion, fighting with the remaining Society loyalists had intensified as Cassius closed in on Imbrium. At least there was some good news on that front, however. With Endymion taken, the unity of loyalist forces was beginning to fracture. While the victory-or-death fanatics continued to battle Cassius's forces in Imbirum, Caravans of trading vessesl from the Rim cluttered the Via Appia above the northern Lunar hemisphere.

The Flaminius AstroDocks were one of the few places still in enemy hands, and so backlogs of civilian vessels staggered their way back along the Via Flamminia waiting to pass through inspection before evacuating the moon to descend into Earth's atmosphere. The high-class elite had already been fleeing the moon since the Rising first arrived, but when the Reaper took Endymion, the vessels hurled themselves into a frenzy. Many ships burst from their ordered queue to race for Venus. Some tried to bypass the docks entirely and burn for Earth. They flared silver and white as Loyalist starfighters and fast-moving gun frigates shredded engines and hulls. Dozens of vessels died to maintain the illusion of an orderly retreat. And all while the Rising fleet continued to hammer away at the remaining loyalist ships.

While her fiancé and her ex led the war on the military front, she led the charge herself on the sociopolitical front. With the Board of Quality Control dissolved, she and the Reformers had pushed through a piece of legislation that she had been telling Darrow about when he took her to Lykos before his Triumph so many weeks ago, albeit modified now that they were completely restructuring the government. It completely gutted the department of energy and redistributed power to redefine the way the meat shops her father called Helium mines were run. Dancer and the Sons of Ares were working closely with the lowRed mining clans to determine what to do regarding the migration of the miners.

Ragnar had reported that progress in freeing his people from the ice of Mars' south pole was slow going. With the aid of his sister Sefi, Ragnar had led an assault on the "gods" dwelling on Asgard Station. But convincing his people that the Golds were mortal was taking some time. Many Obsidian shamans and chieftains were aware of their people's true condition but were too pessimistic to believe that freedom from the ice was even possible. Ragnar had already been forced to kill his own mother when she tried to oppose him. Sefi had taken leadership of the Valkyrie tribe, and now that they had control of Asgard, the pace of the Obsidian liberation was beginning to pick up.

Things weren't doing too well on the diplomatic front with the Rim, however. The Joy Knight, Marcus au Saud, had been the brother of Dido au Raa, wife of the Ionian ArchGovernor Romulus au Raa. And Cassius had killed the man in the Sovereign's stateroom aboard the Invictus. Romulus and Dido were famous throughout the solar system. If Shiro were here, he'd probably call them the modern celebrity couple. But even after her marriage into the Raa family, Dido au Saud was known for her vindictiveness. The only peace terms the dragons of House Raa would accept would be the Morning Knight's head on a gilded platter, and that was something the Rising could not and would not give them.

In the meantime, to distract herself from political concerns, she was headed down to the Citadel's prison wing. Other than her and Darrow's trap to kill Octavia, Virginia hadn't properly spoken with her brother since before the Triumph on Mars over a week ago. Shiro had told her about Adrius' confession, that her twin had orchestrated Claudius' death. At first, she didn't know how to react. What to think or say to that revelation. Now, though, she was ready to confront her only surviving family. She intended to abolish the death penalty once the Solar Republic had solidified itself, but she knew that for his role in Fitchner's death and the hunting of the Sons of Ares, the Rising would except nothing less than execution for her twin brother.

So now, she was headed downstairs to his cell for one last confrontation. It would be the last chance she had to get closure before Adrius was executed for his crimes. She followed the security guards as they led her into her brother's cell. Since Adrius was one of the few Gold prisoners dangerous enough to warrant a maximum-security cell, Virginia had to go through multiple screening checkpoints before she and her escorts were allowed within ten meters of the cell door. Visitors were not permitted in the cell if they were wearing loose clothing, jewelry, or anything in their hair. When the guards fed him, they made sure that Adrius' food was pre-cut to into chewable pieces, and all plates and cups were made of paper. A doctor was assigned to come in later today to trim his nails and shave him. The guards would have to restrain Adrius while the Yellow did his work.

With most of the Aureate loyalists being held in the Citadel, she would have considered such draconian security measures overkill. But she knew her brother, and she still questioned whether those security measures were enough. She didn't believe Adrius was the type to take his own life in prison, but she was well aware of his reputation as a prolific schemer. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility for him to have prepared contingency plans among the followers he'd accrued while building his media empire over the last three years, to be implemented in the event of his capture. When her brother looked at others, he didn't see people. Rather, he saw sacks of bone and meat. People didn't really exist to him. He was the monster they didn't know how to write stories about. But the Rising at least know how to take precautions and prevent him from doing further damage to the rebellion.

He looked up at her as she walked into his cell, the security officer's keeping him restrained while her bodyguards formed a line between him and Virginia. His chin was covered in a thin layer of stubble, and his hair was growing longer bit by bit. For a minute, the Augustan twins stared at each other in silence, the last surviving members of their family. Finally, Adrius cleared his mouth to speak.

"Hello, Virginia," he commented. "Nothing to say?"

"What is there to say?" Virginia retorted through gritted teeth. She'd come prepared with a speech, but now that she was seeing her brother in the flesh, the words she'd planned to say were caught in her throat. "What words have I for a monster?" Her twin didn't even flinch at the accusation, regarding her coldly as he thought through his response.

"It is us against the world," Adrius said softly. "Do you remember telling me that?"

"No," she replied, simultaneously confused at where her brother was going with this, and sad as she realized how differently things could have gone.

"We were young," he began. "Mother had just died. I couldn't stop crying. And you said you'd never leave me. But then Claudius would invite you somewhere. And you'd forget all about me. And I'd stay at home in a big old house and cry, because I knew even then I was alone." Virginia's heart was in her throat as she thought about how much of their father's abuse her brother had endured alone. While she had had Kavax and the Telemanuses to show her a better path, Adrius had had no one.

"You speak as if you were alone in your pain," she said. "Father was abusive to us both, he merely expressed it in different ways. I was a child, just like you. And I was so focused on my own survival that I never considered what Father was doing to you. You're right. I overlooked the fact that you needed someone to support you, the way the Telemanuses supported me. But that doesn't excuse the things that you've done, brother. You could have tried to be a better person in spite of everything you'd endured, and instead you chose to be as cruel as he was."

"And you chose to betray our Color and bed a slave," Adrius spat. "He'll chew you up and spit you out, you know. He can tell his little Red friends all he likes. He lost himself among us. He yearned to be Gold. I saw it in his eyes at the Institute, and when he rode that triumphal chariot up to the steps of the Agean Citadel. Your precious reaper is so hungry for power that he'll always be alone." Virginia's eyes narrowed, recognizing the underlying subtext of what Adrius was saying.

"You're wrong, brother," she snapped. "Darrow had a wife. A family he loved. He had just a little bit and he was happy. You had everything, and you were miserable. And you always will be because you covet." She paused as her brother's foundation of calm began to crumble.

"That's why you killed Father," she continued. "Why you killed Pax. But this isn't a game, brother. This isn't one of your mazes."

"Do not call me brother, whore," Adrius retorted. But Virginia could tell from the look in his eyes that she had gotten to him. "You are no sister of mine. Opening your legs for a mongrel. For a beast of burden. Are the Obsidians next? I bet they are queued up already. You are a disgrace to your Color and to your House.

"You think you never had love, brother," she replied. "But mother loved you."

"If she loved me, why didn't she stay?" he asked sharply. "Why did she leave?"

"I don't know," Virginia answered, tears in her eyes. "But I loved you too, and you threw that away. You were my twin. We were bound for life. I defended you for years. Then I find out it was you who had Claudius killed." She paused as she blinked through the tears, shaking her head as she found her resolve. "I cannot forgive that. I cannot. You had love and you lost it, brother. That is your curse." With that, she had said everything that she felt needed to be said. There was nothing else that she could say that would elicit a response from her brother. So, without further ado, she turned and marched out of the cell, her bodyguards right behind her. She kept her head held high as she left the prison block behind and returned to her office. Only when the door was closed, and the office swept for bugs did she allow herself to cry. She wept knowing that her

Once she had finished her grieving, she wiped her face and sat down at her desk. She brought up her coms to find an incoming message from Roque. She quickly transferred the message to her datapad and hit play.

"Virginia," the Poet of Deimos began. "Shiro, Keith, and Tactus returned from the Kuiper Belt. And they've brought guests. It appears that Princess Allura of Altea is still alive after all these centuries and has come offering the aid of the Voltron Coalition to our rebellion. They've just landed at the Citadel, and I want to make sure you know they're here before we send them up to your office. Please respond when you get this. Fabii out."

She checked the time stamp on the message. Ten minutes ago. They hadn't been waiting long. She typed up a brief message and sent it off to Roque. Then she called the Citadel's head of security and instructed him to prepare one of the complex's conference rooms to host diplomatic negotiations.