After breakfast Lelouch felt strange as Leon seemed to disappear.

Kit was upstairs in his playroom with Mitch, but Leon was no where to be found and he hadn't left the house because his truck was in the garage.

"I wonder where Leon went." Lelouch thought aloud as he sat outside on the back porch.

"He's probably in his office." said Mr. Ashtor joining him with a cup of tea.

"I still didn't know that ghosts could eat." said Lelouch with a smile.

He had found it rather strange when Mr. Ashtor had sat at the table with them, eating a bowl of cereal as he read the morning paper.

"Even Travis, Cameron and Mitch can eat. You don't exactly need solidity for that."

"This place just gets stranger and stranger by the minute." Lelouch admitted as he leaned back in the chair and starred up at the clouds.

"Oh I'm sure. I still find it somewhat strange and I'm dead."

"That's my point. So where's Leon's office?"

"It's down the end of the upstairs hall. It's just a small room that makes up a third floor. But lately something's been troubling him." Mr. Ashtor admitted with a sigh. "When he first walked in the door last night he didn't seem too happy."

"Now that you mention it, when he was in the kitchen last night, he did seem kind of distant." Lelouch admitted thoughtfully.

"Maybe we should check on him." said Mr. Ashtor.

"I'll do it." said Lelouch standing up. Then he went inside.

Up the stairs and down at the end of the hallway he found another, much smaller set of stairs that were much higher and steeper than the regular ones.

So he headed up the stairs where he found a small hallway that led to a door and inside it sounded like Leon was arguing with someone.

Unsure if he should disturb the argument, he quietly knocked on the door. After no response he knocked just a little louder. Where there was still no answer Lelouch opened the door just a tiny bit and peeked inside to see Leon arguing with a man on a gigantic computer screen on the wall via web cam.

"Berkenbridge you're not coming to work tomorrow!" the man said sternly.

"But Captain! I can't just take a day off like that! I'm a commanding officer and it's not like my squadron can do a whole lot without me!" Leon argued back.

Lelouch was about to close the door and leave but what he heard next made him pause.

"After what happened yesterday Berkenbridge I want you off for the next two weeks on medical leave."

"Two weeks?! Captain you can't be serious! It was nothing!" Leon protested.

"Nothing? Nothing?! Berkenbridge you had a small heart attack and you were unconscious for five minutes! That's not nothing!"

Lelouch was surprised.

For someone so young to have a heart attack Lelouch knew he must have been pushing himself and he suddenly felt worry and fear for his new brother's health.

"I recovered just fine Captain."

The man sighed.

"Leon I'm asking you to do this as a friend, not just a commanding officer. You need to take the time off. I mean……. look at yourself! You're only twenty and you've already had a heart attack, you barely survived what would've normally been a fatal crash after that arresting wire snapped which is what caused your hair to go white, you're joints already pop and crack. You're body's acting like it's twice your age! You need to slow down, and take a break for a while."

"I'm fine Morgan." said Leon stubbornly, using the man's first name.

"Leon this isn't an option or a request. It's an order and if you don't take this time to take a break, see a doctor and rest, I'm going to make sure they admit you into the hospital and not let you out."

"You can't do that!"

"Try me! I can and I will. Now please. It's just two weeks, that's all I'm asking of you. Spend some time with your son. Go teach him how to fly a kite or something, take a road trip, just get away from here for a while. I don't care what you spend your two weeks doing as long as I don't see you on base and as long as you make a doctor's appointment and I expect to see the paper work from that too."

Leon just grumbled and growled.

"Please Leon? Please?"

"Alright." he finally agreed. "I guess I do need some time home."

"Good, I'm glad you agree. You just got back from deployment a month ago and you've spent half that month pushing your squadron and yourself when you should be getting a bit of a reprieve. Now the rest of the squadron are thankful for some time off as well. If I see you on base at all, I'll make sure I personally kick you off."

"Yes sir." sighed Leon.

"Good, then I'll see you on May 21st."

Lelouch quietly closed the door and was about to head back downstairs when Leon opened the door.

Leon starred for a moment. "Lelouch? What are you doing up here?" he asked.

"I uh….. Came to ask you a question but it sounded like you were busy so I was just going to head back downstairs." he said quickly.

"Uh huh," said Leon slowly, obviously not buying the lie. "What were you going to ask me then?"

"If I could borrow a book that Mr. Ashtor was telling me about it earlier." he said, remember the conversation he had with the older man earlier that morning.

"And what books was that?"

"I think it was called Angels and Demons."

"Alright then, you'll have to give me a few moment's to find it so come on in." said Leon walking back into his office.

Lelouch followed and felt like he had walked into a whole new world.

The room had to of stretched the entire span of the house and it was full of shelves. One whole half of the place was like a small library, the other half was more random with shelves covered with models and other knick knacks and what not. Closer to the door was a massive desk covered with stacks of papers, text books, binders, and writing utensils. Up on the wall was the massive computer screen plus several more in which several windows were opened. There was the whir of a large processor in the corner with the cords all leading to the screens and a glowing table.

"What is all of this?" Lelouch asked in awe.

"That's my computer." said Leon looking at several shelves.

"A little big for a home computer. Don't you think?"

"I use it for more than just the internet and such."

"How does it work?" Lelouch asked, looking down at the table to see a digital key board and more windows.

"It works like a basic touch screen computer only….. Bigger." said Leon.

After a moment of silence Lelouch finally voiced his concern.

"Hey Leon, are you okay?" he asked carefully.

"I'm fine." said Leon, "Why do you ask?"

"Mr. Ashtor was somewhat worried because he said you looked somewhat troubled when you came home last night, and it seemed to me like you were pretty distant. From what I've heard from Mr. Ashtor, Travis, and Kit, that's not really like you." said Lelouch looking at shelves full of pictures.

"I've had a lot on my mind lately." he said walking over to Lelouch with a book in his hands. "Here you go."

Lelouch took the book and smiled a little when he saw the worn out cover and bent pages. "Apparently it's really good if you and Mr. Ashtor have read it so many times."

"It's interesting enough." Leon said with a shrug.

Lelouch looked up and saw that Leon had the distant look on his face again.

"Do I need to get Shirley and Euphie over here to make you smile?" Lelouch asked jokingly.

"Please don't. As much as I love the two of them I can't handle them hassling me right now." Leon muttered as he ran a hand through his hair.

Lelouch frowned. "I was just kidding."

But Leon said nothing. He just starred blankly at the wall.

"I'm sorry if I upset you. Thanks for the book." he said, then he left the room and went downstairs where he found Mr. Ashtor still on the porch.

"What's wrong Lelouch?" Mr. Ashtor asked.

"Leon's not doing so well Mr. Ashtor. I caught him in the middle of an argument with his Captain. I guess he had a small heart attack last night and he's supposed to be taking two weeks off for medical leave but he doesn't want to."

"I was afraid something like this would happen to him." Mr. Ashtor sighed. "He strives for perfection but he's at the point where you can't achieve anything more. So he pushes himself towards nothing. Intelligence is a double edged sword as I'm sure you know. He's twenty years old and he acts older than I do. I'm in my eighties."

"I'll admit you look pretty good for your eighties." he said with a tiny smile.

"That's because I'm dead."

"I know." he shrugged. "So Travis is in his nineties huh?"

"Yes."

"Yet he acts like a child?"

"He never got to grow up so I suppose he makes up for it in death. Anyway, I noticed Kit hasn't been able to cheer him up either and if he's getting that depressed we need to figure something out because last time he became like this, the results weren't very good."

"What happened?"

"He was twelve. At the time he was depressed over how different he was from even his own twin. There are very strange things about him. He's unnaturally strong, an unsurpassable genius, and he's quite large for his age. I didn't grow this tall until I was eighteen. He was already five and a half feet tall at age nine."

"Ouch. So what'd he do?"

"He ran away and he made sure I couldn't find him or get near him by blocking me out. We found him a few days later staying with a naval officer who found him freezing to death by one of the memorials in Washington D.C. which was when he was staying with family in the area. Some jerk threw him into the half frozen river in the dead of night during the winter. He managed to make it out but with no where to go I guess he sat against the Vietnam memorial until the man found him and took him in out of the cold. He was right on the edge of dying. I knew because I could feel myself fading with him. Leon's a good kid, but he never gives himself the chance to remember that he's just that."

"A kid." said Lelouch softly.

"Exactly. Leon's probably the one of the most troubled people in the family. One of the only one's that top him would be Malachai and Quatre themselves."

"The former angel of death……"

"And his counterpart. They share a body in redemption. Malachai did something during his time in WWII that got him in trouble, Quatre tried to commit suicide three times by the time he was thirteen because of an abusive father. His older brother committed suicide by jumping in front of a truck when he was twelve and his twin sister ran away leaving Quatre alone. Then his mother committed suicide when he was thirty."

"Wow, did suicide just run in the family or something? I'd be pretty troubled too if that were the case."

"I guess Quatre's father was just an extremely abusive man. Worse than my father and my father stabbed my mother to death when I was sixteen before trying to kill me too. He's why I ended up the way I did."

"Occasionally grumpy?"

"That and because of some brain damage my body didn't go through puberty until I was about twenty four. Imagine my voice at Kit's pitch. I was like that until I was twenty four. I grew taller as I went through high school. Other than that……."

Lelouch couldn't imagine a man as large as Mr. Ashtor with a voice as squeaky as Kit's.

"So I got put with the troubled brother huh?" Lelouch asked softly.

"Seems that way, through he's gotten much better about being happy. Especially with Kit and your friends around. That heart attack must've shaken him a bit to make him act this way."

"So what do we do?" Lelouch asked. "I know I've only known him for a couple of days but………. I still care about him. He has taken me in despite the fact that I was the 'mad emperor' of Britannia."

"Find a way to let him know you care. When he get's like this Kit avoids him which makes it worse and he won't let me near him. You're the only one that can get him out of this right now."

"Great, so it all rests on the new kid?"

"Seems that way." Mr. Ashtor shrugged. "Just take some time to think of something you have in common and see if you can get him to talk."

"I'll see what I can do." Lelouch shrugged. Then he got up and went into the house.