Disclaimer: Everything in the Twilight universe belongs to Stephenie Meyer.

AN: Thanks readers and reviewers! As usual, I am indebted to edward-bella-harry-ginny for pre-reading, suggesting, and betaing this chapter.

Noble Korhedron and SolarEclipses also helped me out with some issues.

Recap: Bella has admitted to Edward's team that she is being stalked by Mystery Man and her colleague Danny Bradford has been killed. The team makes plans to protect her while ensuring their own safety. After receiving a mysterious manila envelope at her Pentagon office, Bella has rushed to her apartment in Hampton to view the 8mm film reel contained within. She discovers a WWII era film which happens to include footage of a very young General Roger Miller with Edward.

The final scene lasted only about ten seconds, but was of the older man talking to the other young man again. Behind them and to the right, almost off the edge of the frame, Roger Miller was talking with another young soldier, someone I would recognize anywhere, anytime. It was Edward.

Ch. 13. History

I wanted to face palm. I wanted to kick a hole in a wall, but I was currently being chauffeured by Mitch and a sergeant whose name escaped me but which rhymed with "alack." Jack? Mack? He looked sad all the time, so I'd associated his name with "alas and alack," but now I could never remember what it was supposed to rhyme with. Flack? Cadillac? It didn't help that my elite team had members named Jack, Brock, Frankie and Rick. It was ridiculous. Frankie was the only one I could remember consistently since she was the only female. Unfortunately, Edward had pronounced them all trustworthy after our usual screening process. Since he only picked about one out of every hundred qualified candidates, I was stuck with the four K's, as Rodney had dubbed them. And, for that matter, I was stuck with Rodney as well.

Anyway, ten years ago I would have given in to my urge to throw a tantrum, but for some reason the powers that be had seen fit to promote me to Colonel, head of an elite team. We were the best covert ops team that no one had ever heard of. And we had lost one moderately clumsy major somewhere between the front door of her apartment and wherever she had disappeared.

It was times like these that I missed General Roger Miller the most. His political savvy was second only to his cool head in a crisis. I would never forget the day he had plucked me out of my unit. I'd never really aimed higher than getting my butt out of backwoods Tennessee, but he said he'd seen something in me that made him think "leader." I wished I knew what he'd seen so I could pull a little of it out right now. I felt like the raw enlisted man I'd been over twenty years ago. I considered what my company CO would have said to me had I lost an officer in an elevator.

"Could you repeat what you just said, sergeant? Apparently I'm going deaf because I thought you said you'd lost her," I barked into my phone.

"She got in the elevator, sir, and the elevator went up to her floor, but she never got out on her floor. Sir." The male voice was becoming more tentative by the word. He only had to talk to me. I was the one who was going to have to call Edward and cue him in to the giant SNAFU on our hands. My super soldier had developed his first crush, I was sure of it. For years I'd teased him about being the iceman, but in one short month he'd gotten as hotheaded as a punchdrunk Irish boxer in a London pub.

"And you know this because…" I asked with teeth gritted.

"She doesn't show up on surveillance, sir, not on her floor, not in the lobby, and not in the parking garage." I hoped the poor sergeant wasn't wetting himself, and I had a brief surge of sympathy for him. I knew that somewhere a lieutenant was too angry or too scared to speak to me himself. It was either Rick or Brock, I thought. Or maybe Jack. Definitely not Frankie. Whoever it was, he was probably kicking the nearest wall and facepalming. Lucky slob.

"And the elevator?" I asked. Oh, the headache.

"The camera went out this afternoon, apparently, sir." This was said weakly enough that I had to strain to hear it.

"Was there an actual human under my command on site?" So I could strangle them later?

"Only in front of the apartment building, sir." I couldn't complain. We'd all agreed on the positioning, over-reliant on Shannon's magical touch with computers and cameras. Major Swan was apparently invisible to the cameras, and her phone was off, preventing GPS tracking. I shouldn't complain. Eight tantalizing insults floated up into my consciousness, and I nobly and wisely swallowed them all. I had a leaderly image to uphold. Lily Rose would have been proud but shocked.

"Has anyone thought to check if her car is still in the underground parking garage?" I asked. I thought I was calm, but the cracking noise made by the casing of my phone disagreed.

"Uh, checking sir. Um, subject's car is missing. Sir."

"So now you know what you're looking for. Move, sergeant!" I clicked off the phone and dropped it on the seat. I rolled my shoulders, rubbed my eyes, and sighed. I picked the phone back up and dialed the number.

"Sir." Edward's clipped tone was slightly bored. Everyone involved in this op was currently off-site. He had no idea what had gone down since he wasn't scheduled to take over surveillance until just after sunset.

"She's disappeared." I winced at his response and pulled the phone away from my ear. Clearly Edward had no image to uphold, especially in front of me. It was going to be an uncomfortable evening.

I sat staring, my mouth agape, unblinking, frozen, shocked…Was the film a fake, like Tyler's face on the surveillance tapes? I knew there was no way for me to tell. It was the most logical explanation. Absolutely. It was fake.

I realized the rhythmic tapping I could hear was the end of the film slapping as the reel continued to turn. I slowly unfroze and shut off the projector.

Who would fake a World War II era film with a currently living soldier in it? And who in the world had Edward's image in order to fake a film at all? The way I understood the situation, someone was using psych evals to sniff out the super soldier, and that someone currently had no proof of the super soldier's existence. Well, no proof except for vague references in the pile of documents sitting before me. I could connect the dots to Edward only because I knew about him firsthand. So why did they give me the envelope and the film?

I knew Shannon would be able to analyze the film. But what if it wasn't a fake? If this was real, she shouldn't see it. Even though I was certain the team kept secrets from me, this secret was so enormous that I sincerely doubted the whole team was aware. I could believe that McCarty knew, but not Heinz. Clearly Gen. Miller knew. Holy. Crow. The interactions between Edward and Gen. Miller suddenly took on a different light. The familiarity, the reading, the jokes, the nicknames…Gen. Miller was no mentor to Edward. He was an old pal. This was not fake. Not fake. I felt dizzy, and I had to put my head between my knees and take deep breaths.

Surely there were other explanations. I put the film back into the box and then into my bag, each movement slow and deliberate as my mind raced. Charlie would have been annoyed that I hadn't rewound the film, but there were bigger fish to fry. I smiled slightly at that Charlie-centric thought. I walked stiffly into the dark living area and back into the kitchen. I flipped on the light over the stove. I was sure Jess had something I needed in the cupboard above. Yes. Voila. A nice bottle of vodka. Two shots later, I was contemplating the alternatives.

Edward could be a clone. We could clone sheep and dogs and cats. Human clones were only a few steps of sophistication (and a whole layer of ethics) away from that. If the original Edward (Edward 1.0?) had been as talented as this Edward, cloning would have been a top priority. But he had talked with me about his parents when we were on the plane, and that conversation hadn't seemed like a lie. He didn't have to tell me that story. Then again, clones could have parents. You had to do something with them until they were old enough to be useful. And on a third hand, a clone wouldn't have that close friendship with Gen. Miller. I purposefully put the vodka away before I could be tempted to have any more. I flipped off the stove light and sat down at the kitchen table. Sitting in the dark apartment seemed fitting for this ridiculous mental argument with myself.

The answer that the documents were suggesting was that he was a prototype of some human experiment, a normal young man altered by a radioactive spider or gamma rays or the super soldier serum. The Captain America story was fresh in my mind after my internet research earlier. Steve Rogers had been injected or drank or ray-gunned with serum and hence been transformed from a weakling to the ripped giant of the comics. But if that was true about Edward, why weren't there any more of him? I had asked myself that question before. Somehow, I doubted it was because the scientist who created him was then shot and killed, thus leaving no record of the composition of the serum.

There was suspended animation. I didn't even have to look far in the comic book world to find that idea; Captain America was supposedly frozen in ice after World War II and then found and thawed out. Sure, it could happen. I rolled my eyes. I was enjoying thinking about this far too much, and I knew some of it had to do with the mystery that Edward posed. The rest of it was me taking advantage of a real reason to obsess about Edward.

Maybe Edward looked exactly like his dad. Or grand-dad. And when I said exactly, I meant exactly. His hair in the film was even the same length it was now. And that crooked smile was unmistakable. General Miller could be an old family friend.

Every possibility short of the one being offered flitted across my mind. He could not be – what? 80 years old? Super speed and super hearing were far more plausible than eternal youth.

I had a feeling only one person could really tell me the truth, and that was Edward.

I looked at the microwave clock. It was only eleven. It felt like a lot more time had passed since I had gotten in. Where was Jessica? I had time for a pretty reasonable amount of sleep before I had to get back on the road. I'd probably have to do park 'n ride at the first metro stop since morning DC traffic was the worst ever. In the universe.

I heard a key in the door. Jessica was going to be very surprised to see me, and I still didn't have any explanation for my presence in Hampton.

The door opened slowly, and I saw the silhouette in the door could not be Jessica – it was too large, too tall, and too male. The adrenaline surge of my fight-or-flight reflex rushed through my body. Faster than I could process in real-time, the door shut, and Edward was gripping my shoulders.

"What the hell do you think you were doing?" he snarled at me, but low enough that I wasn't afraid anyone would hear apart from me. "Haven't we spent the weekend devising plans to keep you from being killed?"

"Ah, I, what?" I asked dumbly. After avoiding him for most of the weekend, he was in my apartment, gripping me in a way which could have been intimate were he not mad enough to spit rocks. His beautiful face contorted in fury was still beautiful, if frightening. I had been right this weekend; angry Edward was hot. I realized that I was relieved to see him and not frightened at all.

"We've been looking for you for hours, Major Swan," he hissed. "How did you get out of DC without a trace?"

"I didn't know you'd be following me until after I had to turn in my report," I said, still slightly in shock. Why was he holding me so tightly? Why did it feel so good and so safe? Was the film a fake? What was he, really?

"How?" he demanded. His brows glowered over coal-black eyes.

"I don't know!" I shouted back, finally finding my equilibrium. "I wasn't trying to evade anyone. I just went home from work, got stuck in the elevator going up, went down the parking level, jumped in my car, and drove here."

"You're not on the cameras in the parking garage," he shot back.

"That is not my fault. Well, maybe," I admitted half-heartedly. "I sort of remembered the path you took in the garage when we went looking for the bugs in my apartment, and I was parked in that one corner the cameras don't see. But why didn't you call or something?"

"Your phone is off, Major Swan," he growled back.

"It is? No, I didn't turn it off," I answered, shaking my head vigorously. "Although, I might have forgotten to charge it last night. I was really tired." My voice trailed off.

Suddenly, he was crushing me to his chest, shaking from humorless laughter. "I thought you were gone for good, but you just wandered home for the night. What are the chances?"

"Suffocating here," I choked out. His body was unyielding against my own, and his hands were pressing my head into his chest. He smelled amazing. For a brief moment, I entertained the wild fantasy that he would find me as fascinating as I found him.

"Sorry," he apologized, loosening his grip on me. The look in his eyes was dramatically different from just a moment ago – I would have said relief or something similar had replaced a blinding rage. His eyes had faded from black to his usual topaz. "Let me call Emmett," he said quietly, his gaze nearly mesmerizing me.

"Of course." Did he know what he was doing to me? Was he worried about me for me, or because I was a weak link in his shield of secrecy?

He finally released me while he made his call. "I found the lost bird. Yes. Yes. In the morning." I noticed a look of consternation cross his features while he was listening. "Fine." Edward ended his call and turned toward me in confusion. "Why does your apartment smell like Roger?"

I'd forgotten the super soldier olfactory sense, at least in the context of the confidential file. "Yes. Well. I was going to get to that. We've discussed how I got here, but not why."

"Perhaps you should get to that now," he suggested while taking a step toward me.

"Someone left me a package when I was out to lunch," I began. His eyes bore into me, and I looked down to escape the distraction of his face. And shoulders. And…

"Where did they leave it?" he asked, interrupting my wandering thoughts.

"On my desk."

"In the Pentagon?"

"Yes, that is, in fact, where they have conveniently placed my desk," I snapped back, looking back up in annoyance. I could see him bite back a comment. "It has papers from General Miller and from an Arthur Stallings"— Edward sighed heavily— "and a movie." Edward's head popped up.

"What?"

"A movie. And you're in it." I began to fidget. "It's from—"

"I know when it's from," he snapped. He clapped both hands to his face, then ran his fingers back through his hair. When he spoke again, he was quiet, with one hand over his eyes. "I'd always thought the camera had missed us. The cameraman wasn't paying attention to the whole frame; I knew that. I should have checked." He began pacing rapidly, muttering to himself. He was so rapid that he was blurring slightly when he executed a turn at the end of the room. I was getting dizzy. "I need to see the package," he announced, abruptly coming to a stop in front of me.

"It's in here," I told him, waving him into my room. What was that about the cameraman?

Edward paused at the door to my room, standing hesitantly in the doorway. He swallowed hard before taking a tentative step into the room. His eyes took in the blank walls and unadorned bookshelves.

"Most of my stuff is in boxes; I've been in transition for a while." Actually, some of my boxes hadn't been unpacked since college. Two degrees and a deployment had contributed to a general sense that each stage of my life was transitory, a mere blip in my own history.

Edward nodded, then knelt down to examine the folder. His elegant hands brushed the surface of the folder, and then he lifted it slightly to sniff it. "This belonged to Roger. The folder smells like his old office. I wonder how it slipped out of his hands." He flipped the folder open, and ran one long finger delicately down the thank you letter from Stallings to President Roosevelt. His eyes closed briefly, and I imagined he was reliving moments long gone.

"I wasn't sure what a German spy ring in 1940 had to do with the rest of it," I said tentatively, reluctant to break what I supposed was his commune with the past. I curled up on the bed, my legs tucked under me.

"It was the first mission we did together," he said quietly, reopening his eyes. He began to riffle through the papers. A chill ran through me. It was true. The clone theory was officially dead.

"I guess I know now why you use Steve Rogers for your alias," I commented when he reached the pages with Captain America sketches.

"Yes. Stallings was a big proponent of plausible deniability."

"How did General Miller get involved?" I asked.

"It's a long story, but essentially he was picked for the first team. We were tasked with infiltrating German spy rings. He's fluent."

"That's not part of his official biography," I noted. I had so many questions to ask, but I'd been through so many shocks already, I didn't know if I was prepared for answers.

"For good reason. Anything about those days could lead to me. We thought we'd destroyed any links to that time, but obviously we missed some key pieces. Between Art and Roger, I've been protected from most of the unwanted attention that might have arisen. This movie has information that isn't known to anyone left alive outside Roger and Emmett. Even the top brass isn't aware of my complete history."

"How is that possible?" I settled on the floor next to him with my back against my bed.

"Art was well-connected politically, and he trained Roger from early on to take over his work. In turn, Roger worked with Emmett. I owe them a lot. Roger kept pulling strings behind the scenes right up until his stroke." I sensed there were stories he wasn't revealing, a long history of working with these men to serve the country and to protect his secrets.

"Do you want to see the movie?" I asked.

"Oh, why not," he groused. He sat on the edge of my bed and waited.

I pulled the film box back out of my bag and set the projector up again. Edward picked up the box containing the film and sniffed it delicately. "I can smell you and Roger, but no one else. I don't think anyone's watched it. We can always hope for the best."

I took the box from him, pulled the film back out, and set up the reels on the projector. Edward watched me intently, and at one point I stuck my tongue out at him. He rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the envelope contents. Once I had the film set, I sat beside him on the bed. We sat silently through the short film, Edward clicking his tongue when his image appeared.

"Easy to destroy, but how can I be sure there are no other copies? 'Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.' Roger likes that adage," he murmured, almost to himself. I got up to turn off the projector and returned to my spot on the bed next to him.

"I wonder if General Miller would know if there are other copies?" I mused aloud, my eyes cutting over to Edward's striking profile. Little things added up, if ever so slowly.

"I see him tonight," he answered absently. "I always go on Wednesdays."

"You're very protective of him."

"As I am of all my team members," he said, his eyes suddenly burning into mine. "I would do anything to protect you. Every time I lose another, it's like a stab to the gut." He looked away and laughed bitterly. His words put a new spin on his behavior immediately after finding me here in the apartment. The disappointment surged through me, but I tamped it down quickly. "I thought I could keep my distance from everyone," he continued. "Art arranged the first team so I could stay apart, work on my own with minimal contact. And then, a young officer who thought he was Heaven's gift to espionage got in over his head. I was too far to intervene, but close enough to save his life."

"General Miller?"

"Yes. Roger was shot, and would have been left for dead, but I dispensed of the traitors and got him to medical attention. After that, I couldn't deny the bond I developed to the team members. But it's more intense for the ones I have to rescue from imminent death." He smirked. "I wish you could hear this from Roger's point of view. He tells a good story."

"How many have you had to save?"

"A good number. I keep track of them, you know. I can't keep in contact, of course. No one knows how long my career actually is outside Roger, Emmett, and now you. About every ten years, we dissolve the team and reform under a new arm of the bureaucracy."

"The military way," I commented.

"So far it seems to have worked."

"Why do you want distance between yourself and the team?" I asked. He was an enigma, a mysterious figure to everyone around him save Colonel McCarty and the general. I knew he was opening up to me more than he had to others, and I could admit to myself that this was alluring to me. Did every woman crave a mysterious man only they could understand?

"A lot of reasons. The first reason is the secrecy. I'm only useful at my job if no one knows I'm there. The second is protection for the team. If they don't know me or anything about me, they aren't in danger from sharing the secret."

"But enemies wouldn't know your team doesn't know everything about you," I argued.

"The most likely way an enemy would learn about me is from someone on the team. If they can't tell anyone about me, then there's no need to get more information out of them." He raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

"Were there other reasons?" I asked.

"You know I'm different," he said, suddenly from across the room. I reminded myself that he could outrun a bomb shock wave, at least over short distances. He was examining the spine of a book in minute detail. "I don't age the same. Look at how time has affected Roger. We've spent so many years together, but soon he'll be gone. We went from enemies to brothers to father and son, and now he's like a grandfather to me. I can't go through that with everyone. And then, there's the other side of this transformation."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm faster and have improved senses, but there were other, more pernicious changes. We downplay this side of things, but it affected how I feel, my instincts. I have a very…predatory nature. I could kill someone if I didn't watch myself every moment. And there are times when the urge to kill is overwhelming."

I nodded to myself. I had seen the wildness, the barely-leashed power, the first time I had met him. "But you don't kill indiscriminately, Edward. You're better than you give yourself credit for."

"No." He turned to face me, and there was anguish in his features that I knew I could never understand. He'd had decades to develop pain this deep. "The aggressive side is very strong, one that I struggle with every day. Usually, I use it when I need it and then lock it away, but I've lost control before. I was working alone, but Roger knows. It was a long time ago, but it was devastating. I was out of my mind, but the memories are there. I can remember everything I did, every person who died that day. I'm not a good person to be around."

"Edward, why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you still in the army? You've put in your time, more than a lifetime's worth. You can't possibly owe the country any more service."

"I think I'd rather hear some answers from you. Haven't you learned enough about me for one night?" His lips curled into something between a smirk and a grimace.

"What could you possibly want to know about me?" I asked, disbelief coloring my tone. Edward was the most interesting person I had ever met. Why would he want to know anything about me?

"It's not a want, exactly. I need to know more about your date for this weekend. I can't go into this blindly." Edward's expression was now impassive and professional. Of course.

"Oh. Right." How much to tell? "My date is Ben Cheney; we went to high school and college together. He's a rich computer programmer now, but back then he was uber nerd and I was super geek. We were always in the library together, and we bonded over our mutual hatred of the mean girls. We were together for about three months of college, but it didn't really work. We've stayed close."

"Close friends don't fly across the country for a night out," Edward said suspiciously. "I doubt he sees you as merely a friend."

"I think you've been watching Meg Ryan movies. Men and women can be friends, although I admit it helps to have a massive dose of incompatibility."

"Incompatibility. What would make someone incompatible with you, Major Swan?" I imagined as I looked away that he had a personal interest in my answers.

"I'm not that easy to get along with," I said with a jaw-cracking yawn. "Especially when you have a habit of strewing towels, socks, shoes, comic books, dirty dishes, food wrappers, and empty beer bottles on all available surfaces." I yawned again.

"You could have caught flies with that one, Swan. Let me drive you home. You can sleep on the way."

I wanted to protest, but accepting his offer would solve most of my immediate problems. "We still don't know who's after me or you and why they wanted me to see this," I pointed out as we packed up my belongings.

"It is mysterious," he agreed, shouldering my bag. He steered me out of the apartment and helped me into the passenger seat of my car. I watched him reverse out of the parking space, his face illuminated by the dash lights. My last conscious thought was that he looked good in the driver's seat of my car.

AN2: Hi. It's been a while, and I have plenty of excuses, but they're boring. I *am* still working on AoA. The next chapter is half-drafted.

I made a blog, originally to record some of the Soldier X facts in one place, although I threw some TCW/AoA and Masen and Swan on there as well, along with teasers). It's at gleena34 dot blogspot dot com (listed as my homepage on the ff profile). You can also catch me as gleena34 on twitter.