They tested the dragon outside, which was amazing, even if her uncle and the Baron hovered over them quite literally the whole time and they weren't allowed to keep the dragon around to go flying any time they liked even after they'd proved it worked safely. Agatha built more little clanks who were very helpful, and more death rays, which Gil kept trying to distract her from. They'd separated a little bit, now, Gil was setting up a tank of something in a corner while Tarvek was attempting something Muse based. He'd tried to take one of her clanks apart to see how it worked when he realised how much some of them were thinking (it had kicked him, and he'd apologised to it), and then convinced her to help with his project, which did distract her from the deathrays, but then they'd fallen asleep and while Agatha was back to work this morning the whirl in her mind was a little bit clearer and she could maybe think about things that weren't building. So when Uncle Barry said he wanted to talk to her she put her tools down without protest and handed her diagram to Tarvek with a few words of explanation before following him out.

He took her to his own room, where she hadn't been very often because when he visited Castle Wulfenbach he usually came to see her when he could and was busy the rest of the time, and then looked a little embarrassed and spent a minute tidying the workbench while she tried to see what he'd been working on. Some of it looked like a lamp. A little one, not like the big ones behind Baron Wulfenbach's fancy windows. Only it didn't have an obvious illuminating element so Agatha wasn't sure it was a real lamp.

"Agatha..." He sat down on the couch with her and looked at her seriously. "Is there anything you want to talk about?"

Agatha blinked at him. "I thought you wanted to talk."

Uncle Barry laughed a little bit, not like he was very happy, and rubbed a hand over his face. "Sorry, let me try that again. How are you feeling?"

Agatha thought about that. How was she feeling? "Like I want to build things and have lots of ideas, but I think you probably noticed that." Her fingers twitched. "Like if I build enough things I can keep the three of us safe. Only I don't think I really need to protect people from you, and not really from Baron Wulfenbach either, but it felt like just the three of us and Tarvek's scared of him still and he trusts me and I really -" She sniffed hard, eyes suddenly watering. "I really trusted Eotain and Shrdlu too, I thought they loved me!"

He pulled her into his lap all at once and held on to her like he had sometimes when they were travelling and they'd had to be quiet, tight like... like he thought somebody might try to take her away from him, she realised suddenly, and she sniffled again and started crying against his shoulder, and Uncle Barry put his chin on her head and eased up a little bit and then she felt like it was okay to make noise again.

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart," he said. "I meant to keep you safer than this." He sighed shakily like he wanted to cry too. "It's hard to feel like you don't know who you can trust."

"I'm glad they're dead," Agatha sobbed. "I was so happy to see them and they only wanted me to...to get her...and I hope I blew them up."

Uncle Barry was quiet for a minute, petting her hair, and then said, "I'm still angry with them too. It's... not exactly a good thing to be glad if somebody's dead, but they were trying to kill you and you did the right thing fighting back. You and Gil and Tarvek all did really, really well." She could kind of feel him making a face, above her head, in the way his jaw and throat moved. "I think the trouble with the Geisterdamen was... they thought of you as part of your mother, instead of as yourself."

"I hate her too," said Agatha, fiercely. "She wanted them to do that, didn't she, to k-kill me so she could have my body?"

Another sigh, and then he said, "Yes. She... planned that. And she made wasps to get into people's heads and make it so they couldn't disobey her no matter how much they wanted to. And she killed a lot of other people."

Agatha was stunned out of crying for a moment by the sheer enormity of the stuff her mother had done and all the reasons there were to hate her. "At least I don't have to feel bad about hating her," she concluded. "Even if she is my mother. Everyone should hate her."

"Uh..." Uncle Barry petted her hair again. Agatha was starting to wonder if he did this when he couldn't decide what to say. "It's okay to be angry. Hating people isn't good for them or for you, if you let it take up a lot of your mind and feelings. But... if you've heard people talk about the Other... pretty much everybody does hate her, only they don't know it was her." He stopped for a moment again. "That's because at first your father and I thought somebody had kidnapped her, instead of that she'd gone away on her own. We didn't find out what really happened for a long time."

Agatha wondered if her father had felt the way she felt about Eotain and Shrdlu when he'd found her, someone he loved and thought he was going to rescue, and realised she had left deliberately and was horrible. Bill killed her! rang through her head in the vibrant tones she'd heard it shouted at Prince Aaronev and it was perversely satisfying that he had done what she had and killed the person who hurt him like that. "Thank you for taking me away from them," she whispered. "I didn't understand, but if you hadn't they probably would have done it and I'd never..." She gulped. Never have got to meet Gil and Tarvek, or Theo and her other classmates, or to...do things she hadn't done yet but was going to. "Never have got to really be me."

She felt a hot little drip slide into her hair, against her scalp, and realised Uncle Barry really was crying too. "That's why I did. I was afraid you were going to hate me for it because they did... take care of you, and think they cared about you. But I couldn't let them keep you."

"I didn't hate you even when I didn't understand," Agatha told him, wriggling closer to hug him as tightly as she could.

"I'm glad." He squeezed her back. "I was glad then, too."

Agatha held onto him silently for a minute. "You've always been really good to me," she said, and then sighed. "Prince Aaronev was horrible too, like my mother. I wouldn't have died for him if he was my father." Not that Tarvek had, really, but he'd thought he was about to.

"I'm pretty angry with Aaronev myself, too." Uncle Barry sighed again. "And I'm sorry I let him get hold of you. I didn't exactly trust him generally, but I didn't know he thought he could get anything he wanted by hurting you."

"I'm sort of seeing why people were mad at Tarvek for telling him things now," said Agatha, wearily. "I thought if people were on your side they were, but some people just want to get things from you." It was the sort of thing Tarvek said, sometimes. Their classmates tended to be nice to him because he was both a Prince and a Spark, the same way they treated Agatha nicely because she was a Heterodyne, but Agatha had just taken them liking her at face value and Tarvek had always acted like it was a calculation, like making friends was something you had to think about to do properly. It hurt to think he might have been right.

"That's true sometimes. It's best when you really care about each other, and... it's okay when people get along because they're better off than when they don't. It gets to be bad when people start thinking it doesn't matter what they do to other people at all as long as their favourite ones are okay."

Agatha thought about that hard and then nodded. "Prince Aaronev only cared about my mother, didn't he?"

Uncle Barry cuddled her closer. "I think that's true."

Agatha closed her eyes. "Tarvek still loves him, though."

Uncle Barry swallowed. "That's... also true. I-" He stopped there, for long enough that Agatha lifted her head to look at him, and then said, "I loved my father, too, I think, even though he also did a lot of very bad things."

Agatha paused to compare that to the way she felt about her mother. "I suppose it's different if you actually know them?" she said dubiously.

"That probably makes a difference."

"Did he care about you?" Agatha asked, after more consideration. "I know that's...like you said, about only caring about your favourites and not anyone else, but it's not like loving someone who just thinks you're..." She trailed off, not sure what Aaronev did think Tarvek was. "Useful, maybe, or just sort of convenient."

Uncle Barry bit his lip then, hard enough she thought he might actually hurt himself, and gave her a long look. But then he stopped the biting and said, "You're right, that definitely makes a difference, and... yes. I doubt he'd approve of what Bill and I ended up doing, and we certainly didn't approve of what he did to people who weren't from Mechanicsburg, but we were some of the people he did care about."

"I think you're better than a parent," Agatha said. "My mother was horrible, and Prince Aaronev, and I like Baron Wulfenbach but he mostly didn't do anything for Gil at all. Tarvek's right that he let him think he didn't matter. And your father doesn't sound good either, even if he at least cared about you."

Uncle Barry rubbed the back of his neck. "I can see your reasoning," he said, "and... ah, thank you. But you're working from a limited sample. I haven't told you about my mother, for example, and she was... she was very good. And Bill was good, even if he died before we could get you back. Klaus..." He smiled a little sadly. "I can't say I think he made all the best decisions, because we did argue about his telling Gil or not. But he was really afraid that people would try to kill Gil for being his son, and he... wasn't wrong to worry about that. And he thought it would be a hard secret for Gil to keep."

"He was right about that," Agatha admitted. "It's going to be a lot easier now we're not keeping secrets, although Tarvek's good at it...I never even knew he had any and he wasn't weird about it. I'm glad your mother was good. Everyone should have somebody good." Even if some people didn't.

"You're right, everyone should." Uncle Barry kissed the side of her head. "And it's good to have people you don't have to keep secrets from. I think Klaus will be a better father now he isn't trying to pretend not to be, too." He looked at her. "And Donna and I will be trying to have children, too. I don't think I'm likely to be a lot worse as a father than an uncle, do you?"

"No," said Agatha, quickly, and then rubbed an arm over her still damp eyes and smiled at him. "Do you think I'll be a good cousin?"

"I think you'll be a fantastic cousin." He smiled back at her. "You're a good friend and I think it involves a lot of the same things."

"Thank you," she said, giving him another quick hug before sliding off his lap. She was starting to want to get back to the others and see if Tarvek had got any further with the articulation yet, but she felt a lot better. She hadn't really realised she'd been feeling bad, with her head full of building stuff, but she didn't want to build death rays so much (well, maybe ones with really interesting design principles, but she didn't feel like she needed them to protect herself and her friends from the whole world).

Uncle Barry blinked at her and then stood up. "Ready to get back to the lab?"

"Uh-huh. Want to come see what we've been working on?"

He smiled and leaned down to squeeze her shoulder. "Of course."

Klaus had been fondly amused by Agatha's bleary-eyed threats to shoot him if he tried to put her and her friends to bed, even if he was fairly sure the miniature death ray would have at least been painful. But he was relieved nonetheless, and only in part for her sake, when she stopped obsessively trying to build weapons.

He hated leaving the children in the laboratories regardless of who else was watching them. He couldn't help feeling he had the best chance of heading off impending disaster, and he didn't want to miss anything.

But there were other tasks to be done, and some of them did require his attention, and not all of them could be done when Gil was asleep.

Barry had written the letters announcing Tarvek; Klaus had distributed them to all the fastest couriers and had the students' letters home held back until the next flights. And he announced Gil, to the school, which he thought was probably more than enough public attention. It certainly caused a great deal of consternation. Klaus watched like a hawk in case there were assassins after all, but he wasn't sure how much Gil noticed.

And then there was the unpleasant research topic of what Aaronev and his confederates had been up to. Klaus and Barry were taking that in turns, examining Aaronev's notes and the von Blitzengaards' claims and all the independent evidence they could muster.

As was becoming usual now that the prospect of explosions was a little less imminent, Klaus left their nascent Sparks in Adam and Lilith's care for the evening and went to his office, where Barry was reviewing their list of conspirators. Barry started to stand so Klaus could take over at the desk; Klaus waved him back down and took another chair. "We should probably stop and discuss this at some point in addition to alternating. I think the children are fairly stable at the moment. How are things?"

"Well..." Barry stared at the papers for a moment, not entirely focussed. "The Jägers who weren't killed too emphatically for me to bring back are recovering. I think you're right about the final list, here. I think Agatha's feeling a bit better. And I am very nearly too angry to see straight."

"It's certainly disturbing reading," said Klaus. He was angry himself, but in a people trying to screw Europa up again way. He was more dismayed at the scale of it than surprised at the selfishness and stupidity behind it. "Now we've got the final list we'd better decide what to do about them."

"The guardians of Europe," Barry said, with heavy irony. Many of the conspirators were from families who had once dedicated themselves to that, supposedly. Mostly against Bludtharst, of course. He picked up the list. "I've been giving that a lot of thought. It's probably best if I do most of it. I should be able to get to several before anyone realises what's going on..." A slight frown. "The Jägers won't like it, but they'll understand. They've got Agatha, anyway. Of course, if anything happens to me, you're her guardian."

Klaus looked at him in honest bewilderment. "Back up a bit. What are you talking about doing?"

Barry glanced up, looking equally puzzled. "How to kill them."

"...I think the first consideration might be whether to kill them," said Klaus, once he'd recovered from being stunned by the idea of Barry Heterodyne as an assassin. Mostly. Partly.

"Klaus! You know what they've been trying to do." Barry gestured over the rest of their papers. "At least, we know part of it, but I really think that's enough."

"I'm not trying to suggest they don't deserve it, although I'm certainly not used to you deciding on death as a first resort, but you're talking about some of the oldest and most stable princedoms in Europa. We don't need to solve one succession crisis to cause dozens of miniature ones."

"This is not exactly a first resort," Barry said irritably. "Stable? They set out to mind-control most of Europe. They did nothing to resolve the chaos after Lucrezia decided to drop boulders on most of the Great Houses, which I'd guess they thought was a grand idea because heaven forbid they have to cope with such a thing as a stable dynasty among the upstart Sparks. And they have to know we're on to them at this point. You used to tell me and Bill we were being too trusting but at least that was with people who could be more than halfway plausible about changing their ways!"

"I'm not proposing to trust them," Klaus snapped. "But stable, in the sense that they don't suddenly decide their people would look better with tentacles, or that their land needs a twenty foot gorilla rampaging through it. They mostly deal with things like crime and maintaining infrastructure, people would not be better off with no one doing it. Yes, they were willing to mind control their people, and I'm no happier about that than you are, but neither the idea nor the methods were theirs. If we take away the wasps then they have nothing to do it with, I don't think they're likely to start researching alternative mind control methods on their own initiative. Most of them will fall back into line quickly and pretend they had nothing to do with it if given a scrap of plausible deniability."

Barry sat back and stared at him. "I didn't expect you to argue about this," he said, sounding rather wounded. "I don't know why you think they wouldn't try alternative methods. It's not as if Lucrezia was the first. And you know I could get into most of their fortresses and out again, with or without portals. I even built an invisibility device."

"That's terrifying," said Klaus, without thinking. The worst thing about Barry as an assassin was that he'd be a terribly effective one. "We'd be keeping an eye on them, and they'd know it, and if they did start attempting alternative methods we'd kill them. Publicly, and with people knowing why. Tarvek does not need to start his reign with people thinking we assassinated his competition. Especially if they're right."

"They'll only be sneakier for knowing they're watched." Barry got up and started prowling the room, voice taking on the overtones whose absence had initially fooled Klaus into thinking he was clear-headed. "And I suppose that could be a problem, but I wasn't planning to get caught."

"If half the claimants to the throne of the Storm King and their backers mysteriously die they don't have to know it was you personally to start reaching conclusions," said Klaus.

Barry stopped and shut his eyes. "I was hoping to avoid outright war with them but you're right, that's a problem."

"Barry. If you don't stop thinking that the only options here are taking up a career in assassination or starting a war then I'm..." Klaus trailed off, not sure what he could do. Barry wasn't listening to him. Heterodynes had always been famously protective of their own people, and Bill and Barry hadn't so much changed that as expanded who it applied to. This felt rather like a larger scale, and soon to be disastrous, version of trying to talk Agatha out of waving a death ray at anyone who came near Tarvek or Gil. Which did give him an idea, actually. "...calling your aunt."

Barry opened his eyes again, this time looking rather disoriented. "What?"

"You're being really, worryingly Heterodyne about this. We are not starting a war - which is incidentally what happens with either of your options, because succession in that family is a nightmare and they'd all start fighting over the places you'd left leaderless unless we stepped in and fought them - and if you're not going to accept that from me I'm calling someone you might actually listen to," said Klaus.

"Most of them have heirs," Barry protested. "Obvious ones. I think. It can't be that complicated."

"Oh, yes it could," Klaus said direly. "Barry, you somehow overlooked that you were in line to inherit Schallenburg." Admittedly, Klaus hadn't really thought about it either - Heterodynes were so very firmly associated with Mechanicsburg - but he hadn't been surprised. "I'm not trusting you to evaluate the likelihood of a succession dispute."

"So you're going to call my aunt to have her tell me not to assassinate people."

"I admit that seems ridiculous, but you're the one making it necessary," said Klaus. "Unless you'd like to listen to me?"

Barry stared at him for a long moment and Klaus decided he did not like the look in his friend's eyes a few seconds before Barry said deliberately, "Go ahead. Given my mother's success, maybe she'll have some advice."

"Fine. Just don't do anything until then." Maybe he should ask Gil for advice on distracting overwrought Heterodynes. His ones had always been pretty stable before.

"I have to do something!" It came out raw, angry, and maybe Klaus was imagining that it was just a little pleading. Not for permission, but understanding.

Klaus rubbed a hand over his face. Barry had fixed all the Jägers as much as possible for now. It hadn't surprised Klaus that he would dive into that, he certainly wouldn't leave them waiting, but he hadn't realised it was Barry needing to fix something as much as empathy for the wounded. "Have you been in the madness place yourself since Sturmhalten?" he asked. Obviously not deeply, Klaus would like to think he would have noticed that, but he'd been focussed on the kids and Barry had been been...keeping a lid on it for them probably.

"Yes, of course I-" Barry paused. "You mean the whole time." He started pacing again. "Maybe. I should probably know."

Klaus shook his head. "Sometimes it's least obvious to the person in it. I wasn't paying attention." He really was going to have to find Barry something to do, something to fix. Well, there were always plenty of those. "Right now we need a way to identify revenants. We have no idea of the extent of this problem, and I really don't want to use Agatha for that." Having her command people and seeing if they obeyed was the obvious solution. It was also likely to be terrifying for people to have that triggered, upsetting for Agatha to do that to them, and terrible publicity to continually demonstrate that she could.

"I'd think not," Barry said, looking rather startled and sounding disturbed, which Klaus felt was an improvement over saying disturbing things as if they weren't alarming. "That's-" He gazed at the wall for a moment, humming. Klaus ordinarily found the drone pleasant, associated it with interesting work and solving problems, but over the past few days he'd discovered it could be a little unsettling from a five-year-old and he honestly wasn't sure what to expect Barry to say when he stopped this time. It turned out to be, "You're trying to distract me," followed by, "but there ought to be something biochemical - I really hope it doesn't require a brain biopsy. Get me some wasp carcasses and ideally a revenant volunteer, assuming they can volunteer... I'll see what I can do."

"I think they can," said Klaus. "Now that we know, they can talk about it. Some of them have asked for help." The ones brave or optimistic enough to think they might get that rather than death. "I'll look for one. The wasp carcasses won't be a problem."

Klaus was trying to distract him. But they did need a way to identify revenants. Both to limit the damage (that hadn't been nearly all the Geisterdamen, and he didn't know how they did their travelling, other than giant spiders) and to help them. If they could help them.

Identification was perhaps the most tractable problem. Barry had to admit Klaus's point about the reaction to a lot of mysterious deaths among Europa's royalty. He didn't want to start a war. Too many people would get hurt. But the idea of leaving them free, untouched and unrepentant...

They had agreed to making slaves, mindless or not. They had spent lives like copper pennies, burnt them like grass. Sometimes a villain did have to die, painful as it was to admit somebody was beyond hope or help, was too dangerous and too unwilling to change. If anyone deserved death it was these. Agatha shouldn't have had to fight for her life at five, the Jägers shouldn't have died under claw and sword, nobody should have their will stolen that way...

He should have known, he should have seen - through Aaronev, through Lucrezia - but he hadn't and there was nothing left but to stop them now.

But there were practical problems with that and at least this was something he could solve. The dead wasps and live revenants (he had more volunteers than he'd expected, including Hengst von Blitzengaard, a fussy-looking count who'd evidently convinced Aaronev he was completely under control while helping to coalesce the opposition to Lucrezia among the Knights of Jove) had provided enough samples to identify chemical markers, but the assay was neither quick nor easily portable.

He needed something biological. Ideally something that could also look after itself if actual wasps showed up. Of course, bees were the obvious solution. But even in Mechanicsburg bees tended to mind their own business and did not have a great deal of interest in being redirected by humans. They needed something bigger, in proportion to the wasps, and more responsive... Humming fitfully, Barry made an adjustment to the vat where the new organs floated, then cycled the lighting gradually though the visual spectrum for analysis. He was on red when he heard voices.

"-Mostly seen him work on clanks," Donna was saying, as the door slid open and ruined his lighting. "Although," she added, "this is certainly very... biological."

"Barry," Klaus called, "Lady Schallen and Donna are here to see you."

Klaus really had called in his aunt. Fine, Barry would show him - and it wasn't as if he didn't want to see any of them - she'd probably agree with him. (And there was only a faint crawling suspicion that she wouldn't.) See that it was necessary and right, or the least wrong thing, anyway. But he was in the middle of something right now, and he drew his eyebrows together and kept humming, and hit the remote switch for the door so it slid shut behind them.

Gertrude said, "Can he actually hear us over that noise?"

"Probably," said Klaus. "But I don't think he's listening."

"That does seem likely." Gertrude's voice was slightly closer. "What is he working on? This does not exactly look like useful equipment for an assassination." Barry had to agree with her there, although he supposed venom harvest was a theoretical option.

"It's meant to be a way of detecting revenants," said Klaus. "It probably is, but I couldn't guess how."

"By scent," Barry said. "It's actually detectable in the breath, so we won't need tissue or brain samples. And yes, I can hear you."

"We got that," said Donna, coming over to look up at the vat. Barry glanced down at her; she looked good even lit from below in blood red, which was impressive. "Speaking of scent, this is not a lab that looks like it should smell like flowers and honey-caramel. Why does it?"

"Oh," he said. "They're mostly bees. I thought they should be able to handle wasps if they ran into any."

There was a slightly puzzled pause. "Don't wasps eat bees?" Donna ventured after a moment. "Or is that hornets?"

"Hornets eat a lot of things," Barry said absently. "Bees fight back."

"So," said Klaus. "Giant bees?"

"Yes. I've mixed them with dogs for respiratory and social reasons. I think I've got the organ design straightened out now, so I should be able to finish up the first larva and let it start pupating tonight."

Klaus had joined them to peer at the organ systems by this point. Now that he knew he was looking at a dog-bee meld, Barry expected he'd be able to sort out most of the readings for himself. This was apparently true, as the first thing he asked was, "Are bees not social enough?"

"Among themselves, sure, but they don't interact much with humans and tend to stick to defence, not go out looking for trouble."

"You don't talk to enough beekeepers," said Donna, sounding amused. "Honeybees raid. It's one of the ways to lose a weaker hive. But they don't tend to go after wasp nests, no."

Well. That was... more disheartening than it really should be, but probably didn't affect his plans much.

"Point about them not being trainable, though," said Klaus. "Having them sense revenants is more useful if we can get them to signal it rather than either ignore it as not important to them or outright attack."

"Right." Barry found himself rather grateful for being pulled back on topic. "Bees mostly tell things to other bees."

"It looks very impressive," said Gertrude. "Can you take a break? I believe we need to talk."

"Yes." He sighed and started to turn away, the hint of dread coming back. If Klaus had brought them, that might mean they agreed with Klaus about this. "I suppose Klaus filled you in-"

Gertrude hugged him.

Barry hugged back automatically and found himself relaxing before he could consciously reason why. His mother had held them close when there were things to talk through, a constant reminder that whatever else was being said, it was out of love and not rejection. (She had tended to argue with their father from across the room.) He'd found himself instinctively doing it with Agatha; he hadn't thought about her namesake learning it from her own parents but it did make sense. "So that's where she got it," he said, which didn't really follow.

"Yes," Gertrude said anyway. "It would probably have made more sense if I normally hugged you, but you looked like you needed it." A short pause. "Like you were bracing for entirely the wrong kind of argument, really."

"Possibly." Barry put his head down on her shoulder. Just for a moment. When had it begun to matter this much what his aunt thought of him? "This can't stand," he said.

"I fully believe you intend to do the right thing," said Gertrude. "It is not altogether clear to me why you think this is it."

"Klaus has to have told you what they did." He felt her shudder. "Worse than my father," he added, too bitterly. Not outside of reason, but emotionally counterproductive with her. She didn't let go of him. "They deserve to die. And I realise there are practical problems with killing or even imprisoning them, but we can't leave them as they are."

"Many people may deserve to die," Gertrude said slowly. "But mercy is better anyway, when the cost is not too high. Is it?"

"Sturmhalten's population is almost all revenants. And here we thought the Other had passed it by." He shook his head. "They remember it happening. They can feel it waiting to take them at the sound of the wrong voice. And they know their prince did it to them. We haven't personally checked the other towns yet, but Aaronev's records-" He broke off, feeling the fury in his throat and chest, choking him. He let her go and stepped back, but caught her hands. "Would you have them live under the ones who did this?"

"No," Gertrude said steadily. "Not ideally. But I think you will agree that nothing about this is ideal."

"You can say that again," Barry muttered.

"Then the cost of mercy is that their victims go unavenged and some remain under their hand."

"And that they might have further plans."

"They might. And might have drawn their heirs into them already," said Gertrude. Barry winced. "I think you will have to keep watch the same, either way. What is the price of removing them, dead or alive?"

Barry let out a pained sigh. "War, most likely, and undermining confidence in the Empire and Alliance. If we announce why - about all of them - I don't think even I could convince everyone of the real reason, no matter how much evidence we have. Doing it in secret would work a little better at first, but Klaus is right, people would notice. The only thing I can think of is spreading it out over years, and that just throws in the problems of leaving them in place as well."

"And who would you be," Donna murmured, sounding troubled, "after you spent years working out how to kill people in secret?"

He started to turn away, feeling sick at the thought and just as much so at the idea of giving up. "Does that matter?"

Gertrude's hands tightened on his, and he could have broken away but wasn't willing to. "That always matters."

Barry closed his eyes. "It could be worth it. But you don't think it would help anyway."

Gertrude sighed. "I think even with someone standing by to pick up the pieces, Europa does not need the chaos of losing half its Spark princes again."

Barry's eyes flew open and he did jerk his hands away, then. "That is not-" It was wholly unfair. That had evidently been part of Lucrezia's plan and her pawns', to break the power structure of the continent and then pick up the pieces, apparently fifteen or twenty years later after their designed heirs grew up and so many children didn't. It was not remotely what he was trying to accomplish here.

...It was too close for comfort to what would happen. Even if they already had the power. (And these were the people he'd been counting on to support Tarvek out of calculation, before he realised how deeply they'd been embedded in Lucrezia's methods.)

"It is not the same," Gertrude said, "in detail or method or reason, but it is too close in effect. Don't, Barry."

He uncurled his fists and rested his hands, carefully, on the back of his abandoned chair. "What do you suggest, then?"

"What's our goal?" asked Donna. Barry looked up at her, and saw that Klaus and Gertrude had both turned too. Donna looked a little sheepish suddenly, and Barry could practically see her wondering if the our had been out of place when everyone else there ruled a town or something more. He caught her gaze and raised his eyebrows, waiting. Donna lifted her chin. "Actually, whether we can get it or not, what would be the ideal?"

"All the revenants found and cured," Barry said, "and all of them realise why they were wrong, never do anything like it again, and step down with a clearly named heir as soon as they can in an orderly fashion." He tried to keep the derision out of his voice. It wasn't at her. His ideal outcome might be completely unrealistic but it wasn't actually a bad place to start figuring out what they could accomplish.

"I'm working on the first part," said Klaus. He gestured at the vats. "Or you are. Remorse is too much to expect. I was willing to settle for good behaviour because they don't think they can get away with bad."

Barry exhaled slowly. "If we must. Can we really convince them they can't?"

"We'd better," said Klaus, steel in his voice. "Or I might yet come around to killing them. I hope they know that."

"I should think they'd expect it," said Gertrude. "They must know if you took Sturmhalten, you'd find the evidence."

"Some of it was moderately well hidden," Barry told her. Decoys and encryption. "They might think Aaronev was more careful than he was, or that our people weren't as good."

"I never intended to simply leave them alone," Klaus said irritably. "Proclaiming their guilt would essentially be a messier way to kill them, and we should take them by surprise so they can't hide any of her tech they still have, but I don't think we're going to get rid of everything without their noticing."

Barry stopped to consider that. It would be challenging, but it probably would get the point across. "Unsatisfying," he admitted, "but practical."

"Finally," Klaus muttered.

Barry rubbed a hand over his face. "I gather I've been a little hard to deal with." He was coming down from the madness place now, and not a nice part of it; his earlier plans seemed less feasible and more sickening than before, and he felt a little unsteady and more than a little guilty over alarming Klaus. "I'm sorry about that."

"I've seen worse," said Klaus. "If not, thankfully, from you."

Barry had seen worse, too, but he had the uneasy feeling he'd specifically seen the worse version of what he'd been doing, and followed it around for three years. "I'll try not to get too carried away again."

Gertrude looked at him with concern; Donna came over and took his hand. "We all do sometimes. Klaus was mostly worried that you seemed to be listening less than usual."

"I keep insisting that talking ought to work; I'm obligated to at least listen if somebody tries it on me." Barry sighed and looked over at his vat. "I should probably get out of the lab for a little while. -Actually, I should go check on the Jägers." Which was not actually getting away from Spark-work, but it was certainly a different atmosphere. "Want to come?"

Donna blinked. "Sure."

"Apparently what really works is hugging, but I don't think it would have helped if I'd tried it," said Klaus drily. "Have fun with the Jägers, they certainly are."

Barry rubbed a hand over his face and tried not to start laughing, because it would probably still be wild enough to worry everyone at this point if he did. "I'm not sure it would have had quite the same effect, but you'd certainly have had my attention," he said.

"Dare I ask what the Jägers are doing?" murmured Gertrude.

"Being extremely smug," answered Klaus. "As far as they're concerned they're all heroes right now. Also, since they didn't get to go to the hospital that is already also a bar they've been trying to remedy the situation with stolen alcohol."

"We couldn't have stopped the Geisterdamen without them, so I think they have a point," Barry said, amused in spite of himself. "Tell me later who I need to pay back."

Klaus laughed. "I don't think anyone grudges it to them at the moment, but I'll get a list."

"Thank you." Barry looked a bit wryly at his aunt. "And thank you for talking sense into me." However painfully. "I doubt you particularly want to be invited to this..."

"Not really," she said. "And if they're still under medical care, I didn't think I'd be permitted." An amused glance at Donna. "Then again I didn't think she would be either."

"If he has to do anything I can't see before the wedding," said Donna, straight-faced, "I'll turn my back."

Klaus was willing to entertain Gertrude for the time being, and Barry left the laboratory still hand in hand with Donna, not so much brooding less as brooding on a wider variety of topics. He paused in an empty corridor (still out of earshot of the Jägers' quarters) and turned to her, and she said, "Yes, that was unsettling, no, I'm not reconsidering anything, were you going to ask something else?"

Barry did laugh then, a little hoarsely. This did have him rattled. It was the first time it had occurred to him to worry that something about him personally would really put her off. "I still want to kill them," he said. "Only now I'm trying to remember the several ways that's... also a kind of loss." Personally, politically, and because even a deserved death was lost potential, and worth mourning.

Donna squeezed his hand. "To be honest, given what they've been doing, I think I'm relieved that you want to at least a little," she said. "Although the idea of your actually doing it is hair-raising. But you did stop and listen eventually."

"I suppose if I never got stuck on a bad idea, nobody would believe I'm a real Spark," Barry said wryly. "Fortunately my aunt seems to be good at handling me, even on short acquaintance." It made sense now that he could look at it. Her methods were the ones her sister had used and he'd consciously chosen.

"I get the idea on one meeting, myself, that your aunt has a practised knack for telling people what they need to hear."

"It's a useful skill." Barry hugged her close for a moment, eyes shut, and breathed in the smoke-scent that lingered in her hair, trying to remember what he'd been doing on previous visits outside the medical level. "I suspect I've been brooding too much at the Jägers."

Donna suggested, "I suspect they'll get over it if you cheer up."

"This might be as cheered up as I can get at the moment."

"Well, it's still an improvement."

"True enough." He unwrapped from her but kept her hand as they completed the walk and went in.

The Jägers were recovered enough that most of them were no longer in the hospital beds, instead sitting on them like benches or roughhousing around them - the ones still wearing bandages meekly desisted and sat down when they saw Barry. There was a lot more beer in evidence than medicine. Wide grins widened further at the sight of Donna. "Kom in! Haff a beer!" she was greeted from a dozen sides at once.

Barry picked one of the bandaged ones partly at random to start checking, while Donna took the nearest chair and managed to accept a single bottle of the several thrust in her direction. "No ruining my work," he told Minsk, without any real severity behind the scolding. The bandage was dampened with sweat more than anything else this time; before long his only patients would be the ones who'd actually died. One of them was in a recovery tank but mostly conscious, which Barry suspected was incredibly boring. "This looks good, though."

"Yah, ve is all healink fine," said Minsk. "Ve leaf der hospital soon?"

Around Donna two groups of Jägers were vying for her attention, with a certain amount of shoving and a little bit of clawing - those who had previously bought her swords and wanted to tell her all about how well they'd performed against the wasps, and a group of Jägers who had been in the final battle alongside Barry and wanted to tell her all the details of how awesome they had been.

Barry kept an eye on her for a moment - Donna was smiling, and not in a nervous way, which would have been understandable in anyone surrounded by wrangling Jägers. She was also trying to listen to both groups at once, looking as pleased as any Spark at having her work praised (even though it was probably more common for her than the average Spark, as she made things other people actually wanted) but also eager to hear about the ones who'd been with him.

"Tired of being cooped up, huh? You'll all be out in another day or two," Barry said. "Well, almost." He tilted his head toward the revival equipment. "Good thing, too. I may need some of you to come help intimidate people."

That got the attention of even the groups around Donna. "Now dot sounds like fun," said Greb.

"More pipple vit vasps?" asked Dimo.

"It looks that way," Barry said, moving on to examine a formerly shattered tibia. Any Jägers who were still healing at this point had suffered wounds that would have killed or crippled an ordinary human without Spark intervention, and possibly required a revival even with help from someone like Sun. But they were healing cleanly, and in the case of bones the trick was to get complicated breaks set fast enough. "We're going to take those away from them. Preferably without giving anybody the chance to sic mind-controlled townspeople on us again."

"So, ve attack der masters?" said Greb.

"We scare the hell out of their masters and destroy the wasps," said Barry. "No gossip about their responsibility, though. The story is that we tracked down the Other's caches. We're not accusing them publicly unless they push things. Klaus and I need most of them alive." Muttered, not that any Jäger in the room wouldn't hear him, he couldn't quite help adding, "Unfortunately."

"Oh, ve is goot at scaring pipple," said Eugen. There were a lot of anticipatory grins.

Barry looked up at him and smiled grimly, showing teeth, which apparently caused somebody to decide he was done for the moment and hand him a beer. "I'm counting on it." And for once, that was a cheering thought.