Edit 11/16/17: Re-wrote to change the methods for how Mustang found out Darrow's secret, and expanded on her reaction. Lots of her thoughts and the footage are borrowed from the early and ending chapters of Golden Son.

Chapter 20: Uncomfortable Truths:

Shuttle Cabin

En Route to Europa

February 1st, 2841

"And My son, my son, remember the chains

When Gold ruled with iron reigns."

"We roared and roared and twisted and screamed

For ours a Vale of better dreams."

"And down in the Vale hear the Reaper swing

The Reaper swing,

The Reaper swing."

"Down in the Vale hear the Reaper sing a tale of winter done."

Mustang's eyes moistened as she listened to the girl known only as Persephone sing a song of hope that had cost the poor Red her life. She sat curled in a private cabin of the stolen assault shuttle as she fled towards Europa to rendezvous with the Pax. Thanks to that backstabbing bastard Pliny, Darrow's plan had failed. The Politico had orchestrated a coup for his own personal gain. Her brother had been arrested. Her aunt was dead, and the children murdered alongside six Praetors. Over twenty of her father's bannermen had sworn new oaths of fealty to Pliny. And the cherry on top was that her family had lost control of the household fleet. She had seen a great deal of death and destruction in the last week. Her forces had been stealthy when they approached the Academy, but as soon as her leechCraft had been launched towards the space station and training ships, the Bellona fleet emerged from behind one of the asteroids.

Every single boarding craft in her flotilla had been destroyed. Ten thousand men. Dead. What disgusted her the most was how merciless and cruel it was. The Bellona had enough guns that her forces couldn't do anything except surrender. In retrospect is was the typical modus operandi of Karnus au Bellona, the man who murdered Claudius. The ambush itself, however, was all Pliny. The only reason he hadn't killed her was because he craved legitimacy. The Pixie kept her under guard in her quarters as he brought the captured fleet to Hildas Station. On the way, he'd come to her and showed her holo footage of her father's failed raid on Ganymede. The ungrateful, greedy worm had told that though her house had fallen to ruin, he did not wish to see her bloodline ended.

So, he had come to an arrangement with the Sovereign. If he could provide her with peace, she would grant him position, legitimacy, and a prize of his choosing. As the ships of House Augustus burned on the hollo, Pliny batted his eyelashes and told Mustang that he would divorce his wife and allow her the honor of taking his hand in marriage. Naturally, she was disgusted by this, and cut out one of his eyeballs in retaliation while she fled. Her brother had been captured helping her escape, leaving her to continue to the rendezvous with Darrow alone. As she made her way closer to regroup with her friends aboard the Pax, she tried to pass the time by thinking about something that had been gnawing at the back of her mind ever since Sevro had arrived on Luna over two months ago.

Something had been bothering her after she'd fabricated Shiro's official backstory. She hadn't been able to put her finger on what exactly it was. It had been nagging her for weeks, but she'd never had the time to properly address what it was, as more important priorities kept being added to her list of things to keep track of. Now that she finally had time to think by herself, she finally realized what it was that had been bothering her: how similar the backstory she'd fabricated for Shiro was to Darrow's own family history. Then another thought occurred to her: Darrow knew the words to the lyrics to the song that the Red girl Persephone had sung, despite having never displayed any deep knowledge of Red culture.

No, she thought to herself as a possibility occurred to her, but she shook her head at how ridiculous it was. It's impossible. How would he even survive the carving? It's against physiology. No one could survive that. But despite trying to deny the theory, it did make a strange sort of sense. The Sons of Ares had not tried any sabotage like their propagation of the viral videos of Persephone in over three years, sticking mainly to bombings. Mustang had always felt that reforming society from within would be more effective than forcefully tearing it down from the outside. But what if the Sons of Ares figured that out as well, she realized. They don't trust any Golds to ally with their cause, and the reformers in the Senate are ultimately subservient to the Sovereign. But if the Sons miraculously managed to carve a Red into a Gold and put them through the Institute to become a Peerless Scarred, they would be able to climb the ranks, sow chaos, and eventually make a bid for Sovereign.

Mustang was pale as it dawned on her that an idea her brain had thrown at her as a joke was starting to make a disturbing sort of sense. But that doesn't prove that Darrow is their spy, she told herself. Nor does it explain the Sons' increasing reliance on bombings with rampant disregard for civilian casualties. Unless of course, the Sons of Ares splintered into different factions – Ares' group working towards their long-term goals, and the extremists in their ranks breaking away to try to bring down the Society with bombs and terrorist attacks. The more she followed her train of thought, the more her thoughts were leading towards a conclusion that made sense, but that she didn't want to accept. To take her mind off the idea and disprove it, she turned back to the holo and pressed play, listening to the forbidden song once more.

It was a beautiful song, and it always saddened Mustang to know that her people saw it as a challenge to their authority. Her father was perfectly willing to execute a girl who was no older than she was at the time simply for expressing dissatisfaction with her place in life. The recording Mustang watched was not the edited version the Sons of Ares had used in their broadcasts, but the raw footage that she'd secretly downloaded from the Yorkton security databases before she'd left Mars. At the time, she'd simply wanted a recording of the girl's song without the manipulation of the Sons' hackers. But now, her search for the source of her undefinable suspicions had prompted her to watch it again in the private cabin of her assault shuttle, a jamField erected to keep the others aboard the ship from overhearing.

As the recording reached the part where Persephone called for a girl named Dio to hear her final words before her execution, Mustang found herself morbidly curious to know what the girl's last words had been. The young woman she knew only as Persephone had been fearless as she sang, but what did she have to say when her time had finally come. Manipulating the comm equipment in the room, Mustang amplified the sound and filtered out the white noise, so she could here Persephone's final words, noticing the look of disappointment on the face of the Red boy who'd been whipped alongside the girl who had clearly been his lover. While she'd never seen the young man before in her life, there was something about him that seemed familiar to Mustang as he expressed disappointment that he hadn't been the one to hear the girl's last words. She focused her attention back on the holo as Dio stepped up to the scaffold.

"In our bedroom, there is a crib I made. Hide it before Darrow returns," The Girl whispered frantically, the virtual hologram of a dead girl oblivious to the blood draining from the living woman's face.

"A crib…" Dio murmured, as much in shock as Mustang was, but for an entirely different reason.

"He must never know," The Girl continued. "It would break him."

"Don't say it, Eo," The hologram of Dio replied desperately. "Don't."

"I am with child."

Eo. Mustang shivered despite the heat of the small ship as her mind recalled where she'd heard that name before. It had been at the Institute, when she'd nursed a would-be Primus of House Mars back to health after Cassius au Bellona had stabbed him and left him for dead. He'd murmured the girl's name in her sleep. The girl he'd loved. The girl her father had executed without a second thought. Her face was as pale as a sheet as all the pieces fell into place. Darrow was a Red. Darrow was a spy for the Sons of Ares. All his actions finally made sense. Why he was so driven to win at the Institute. Why he cast aside their ideals to become one of her father's killers. Why he started the war with the Bellona. Why he continued to expand the scope of the war to create as much chaos as possible.

Everything I thought I knew about him is a lie, she thought to herself, feeling unsure of herself now that she had realized how thoroughly she'd been wrong. I thought I knew him, but it was all just a mask. He was a Red. Her father had killed his wife. When he sang the song to me in the cave… all this was going through his mind, she thought. This place, the carving, the plan, was all inside him, all in his memory. A whole other world. A whole other… person. She shook her head, not knowing what to think anymore. Then what happened? She wondered. Eo's husband was hanged. Darrow was hanged. How did he escape? She forced herself to calm the raging storm until she found the only possible suspect. The Sons of Ares.

They carved him, she realized. But… it's impossible. The Board of Quality Control has tests, lie detectors, DNA analysis, background checks. She laughed as the next piece of the puzzle materialized. That's why he came from the Family Andromedus. Born to Gold parents who fled debt to try to strike it rich in asteroid mining. Sons of Ares destroyed their ships, altered the records, and purchased the mines so they could write Darrow's story. How did he even survive the carving? It's against physiology. What the Carver did to him… no one could survive that. The Sigils are connected to the central nervous system. And the implant in his frontal lobe can't be removed without rendering him catatonic. Mustang slumped against the far wall, her head in her hands as she tried to process everything.

She had no proof. Only two conveniently identical names and an elaborate hunch. Yet all her instincts were telling her that her hunch was correct. But given the potential revelations she'd just uncovered, could she really trust her own judgement anymore? Even if she was right, even if Darrow was a Red, she knew what he would be there to do. It wouldn't just be infiltration. It would end with the fall of the Society. Mustang wasn't blind. She knew the politics. She knew the conditions his people suffered every day. She and the Reformers believed in a better world, but she didn't want to accept that the only way forward was the sword. She knew her father and brother were cruel titans, but she refused to believe that the only way to improve their civilization required Darrow to kill them. Even if she knew the horrors both had committed, they were still her family.

How can Darrow even look at me? She wondered as her eyes watered. My father hanged his wife. He hanger her and her unborn child. Does Darrow want me to help him kill them? Does he want me to help him destroy my people? Why wouldn't he? After what we've done to his people. After what my father did to him. She unbuttoned the top few catches of her jacket as if it would help her breath through this. Her hands shook as she wondered how she could possibly live with his decision. If she reported Darrow to her father, or the Sovereign, he would die, and billions would live as slaves. But if she didn't, millions would die.

Not like they aren't going to die in this war already, a small voice in the back of her subconscious pointed out. Once she had gotten her shock under control, she removed all the footage from the computer and purged all evidence she'd ever watched any of the videos. Now that the initial shock had worn off, the was able to retreat to the shuttle's small cafeteria for a place to think everything through. The fact that the Sons of Ares had gone to so much effort to get Darrow to where he was proved that they were getting more serious about long term plans beyond a few scattered bombings with no clear endgame. If Darrow fell, someone else would rise ten years from now. Fifty. A thousand. The Sons of Ares would topple the hierarchy eventually, no matter the cost.

For all his faults, Darrow clearly cared about the friends he had made at the Institute. About her. If she had him killed, she would have to hope that whoever rose up in his place was not a monster like her father. Like she sometimes worried Darrow would become if he continued his path alone. Mustang was at a loss for what to do. This revelation had shattered not only her perception of Darrow, but her perception of herself. She used to think she was smarter than the others who followed him because she could see the flaws that others would gloss over. Now, she doubted herself. Her intelligence. Her skill. She was rocked to her core and felt that she could no longer trust her own judgement. As she came within sight of the Pax and the ships Darrow had captured over Europa, she realized that there was only one person who could help her with her emotional turmoil. Kavax au Telemanus was the only one whose judgement she trusted as much as her own. Before she talked to Darrow, she would seek Kavax's counsel first.

Yep, unlike in canon, Mustang figured out Darrow's secret on her own. The same tumblr post I mentioned in last chapter's author's note also helped me with figuring out how to sum up Mustang's reaction to learning Darrow's secret. Both in this fic and in canon.

Eo's execution: executions in the Red Rising series are typically done via hanging, but because of the low gravity, you have to pull on a person's feet to break their neck, otherwise they just kick and choke until they stop breathing and their heart gives out. They make the person's loved ones pull the feet both as a cruel "we force you to participate in your loved one's execution", and also as a way for people to say "we love you enough to make sure your death is quick and merciful." Burying dead bodies in the mines is punishable by execution, so the gallows are always full of rotting corpses that nobody dares to remove.

The chapter title is a reference to the stormsons of Europa that Lorn au Arcos talks about in his first appearance in Chapter 28 of Golden Son.

Terminology:

Stormsons: Europan slang for insanely brave young people who go out boating in the middle of gales.

Pixie: Derogatory term for arrogant Golds who care more about the benefits of their station than doing anything useful. Often used to insult someone by implying that they're not strong enough to do things on their own.