"We meet again."
"So it would seem." Faith frowned at the imposter in front of her, trying and failing to figure out how this was happening. "What are you doing here?"
"What does it look like?" Blue eyes met hers in a rare smile and Faith's scowl deepened when she realized Zero was mocking her. "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Responsible parents make sure their kids eat right."
"You're not my parent," Faith protested. "You aren't even human. You're a machine. On Earth. And I'm in space."
He—It? Faith wondered, uncertain how to label this thing in front of her—seemed to be well aware of their location, given the surroundings that had materialized while they were talking. Faith was sitting in her chair at Duo's kitchen table with a glass of orange juice at her elbow. Her "dad" was…Making waffles? What the hell? The kitchen was warm with the oven on and the sticky-sweet smell of syrup was heavy in the air.
"Please tell me you don't honestly believe that this is eating right," Faith said. "Then again, how would you know what's healthy? You don't eat."
He only stared at her, his face a perfect copy of the too-patient expression her dad wore when he knew she was deliberately stomping on his last nerve. Faith swallowed hard, shaken by the way Zero was able to pull such personal information from her memory, and wondered what it wanted.
"Let's try this again," she said, her voice soft with fear that she couldn't quite suppress. "What are you doing in my head?"
"That data is restricted," he replied.
"Of course it is."
Faith rolled her eyes, wishing she had more than just a bare sliver of Dak's instinctive skill with computers. Then maybe she'd be able to figure out why this was happening, and possibly put a stop to it.
It was irritating to have Zero invading her mental space at his convenience. And judging from the smirk on his face, he was well aware of that.
"You make my brain hurt," she grumbled.
"A headache is the least of your problems," he replied. "Your biggest concern is your next move."
"I know that," Faith murmured. "I've been thinking about it. First things first, I have to make sure my shuttle is fully functional. I can't go anywhere without it, after all. After that—I just don't know how to proceed. I haven't ever done anything like this before."
"You can start by learning to pay more attention to your surroundings," he said. "If you can't rely on your senses and trust your instincts, this mission will fail."
Faith nodded. She didn't need to ask what would happen if she failed. She took a deep breath, wondering exactly how she was supposed to learn to rely on her senses, and choked on air that was suddenly acrid.
"Is something—burning?" she asked.
"What do your instincts tell you?" He smirked at her, his expression mocking. Faith glowered, irritated that a machine would use her dad's image to make fun of her.
"My instincts tell me that you don't know how to cook," she snapped. "And, since you already said you weren't going to help me, they're telling me I probably shouldn't trust you any more than I trust my real dad."
He shrugged. "Have it your way. If you're lucky, maybe you can do this without help. But it seems like you're about out of luck, kid."
"Why should that matter?" Faith demanded. "Why should I care about something as pointless as luck when I have so many more important things to worry about?"
The smile he turned on her was wolfish and unnatural, not something Zero had pulled from her memories of her father. Faith jerked away and hated herself for being so weak, so easy for this thing to manipulate. "You were warned about what happened to the unlucky ones," he said. "Don't make me repeat it."
He bumped the table with his hip as he walked away. It wobbled and Faith watched her glass of juice tip over and spill and finally roll off the edge of the tabletop and shatter. The slivers of glass sparkled like stars against the tile. Faith bent to pick up the biggest one and gasped when it sliced across two of her fingertips.
"Holy crap," she whispered. "This is not good."
Faith closed her eyes and started when she felt a cool hand pressed against her forehead. Is this another one of Zero's tricks, or has it decided to let me go? she wondered.
"Looks like she's back with us," Dak said, obviously speaking for someone else's benefit. "What isn't good, Fay?"
Faith sighed with relief when she opened her eyes and saw her siblings' curious stares. Dak was sitting beside her, not at his usual place at the table, and watching her with concerned eyes.
"You were sleepwalking," he explained. "You wandered in here about ten minutes ago and just sat down. You started talking just now; you said something wasn't good."
"I'm okay," Faith said, although her voice was shaky and thin in her ears. "It was just a dream."
"Zombie Fay is scary," Lexi said, although she didn't look particularly scared. "Daddy thought so, too."
"Oh yeah?" Faith asked, still trying to get her bearings. "What happened?"
"He set breakfast on fire," Mark told her, grinning. "Can't you tell? He's getting the big fire extinguisher out of the garage now because the little kitchen one just isn't doing it for him."
"So that was Duo burning breakfast," Faith said. Torstin nudged her hands from his place under the table and Faith glanced down at him while she patted his head, mildly surprised to see that she hadn't actually cut herself. "Weird."
"What's weird about it?" Chris asked. "Dad burns something every time he cooks. You ought to be used to that by now."
Faith shrugged uncomfortably. "Just a bad dream," she murmured, realizing belatedly that Chris couldn't hear well enough to understand her mumbling. "It's nothing," she added a little louder.
It was enough of an answer for Lexi and the twins, anyway. They went back to eating. Dak and Chris didn't look convinced, but Faith honestly didn't have anything more to tell them. She wasn't going to lie to her brothers and she knew the truth would freak them out.
"I'm okay," she said gently, persuasively. "Don't worry about me. It's probably just jet-lag from the trip."
"Right," Chris agreed. He grabbed the box of cereal off the top of the fridge and poured himself a bowl, apparently deciding that waiting on Duo was a waste of time. Dak was slower to look away—Faith got the feeling he didn't quite believe her—but she decided she didn't want to drag things out any longer. He'd calm down faster if she just tried to be herself for a while.
Even if she didn't feel much like herself at the moment.
Faith broke a banana off the bunch in the middle of the table and peeled it absently while she tried to process what had just happened. Maybe it was just a dream, she thought. What else could it have been? Wing Zero was still on Earth, after all, and it seemed unlikely that its cockpit system could somehow reach her from such a distance. I don't want to think about this right now, she decided. I'm just going to eat my banana and then go work on my ship. One thing at a time.
"Duo, I hope this is important. This place fell apart while I was gone, and it's going to take a lot to get everything back in order."
Duo winced into his cell phone and suddenly regretted calling Trowa over something so stupid. Especially since he'd left the kids alone in the kitchen.
"No," he admitted. "Faith's sleepwalking again and it just freaked me out. Have you ever seen that old TV show Walking Dead? It reminds me of that, kind of."
The cell didn't have video, but the brief pause gave Duo reason to believe that Trowa was rolling his eyes.
"Did she try to eat your brain?" Duo couldn't tell if Trowa was being serious or not. He sounded kinda peeved.
"Uh, no," Duo admitted sheepishly.
"Then you should probably stop watching old sci-fi shows before you go to bed," Trowa suggested. "I thought you were used to her sleepwalking, since it's related to her epilepsy."
Duo shrugged and fumbled with the handle on the fire extinguisher. "I'm used to her wandering around in the middle of the night and bumping into things, yeah," he admitted. "But this was weird! She walked right into the kitchen, pulled out her chair, and sat down. She didn't stumble, or trip over the dog—who barked pretty much the entire time—or anything. And her eyes were all rolled back and gross. It was freaky."
Another pause. This time around, Trowa was probably trying to figure out a nice way to get him off the phone and get back to work. Duo sighed.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "That kid just scares the crap out of me sometimes. I'm okay, buddy; I'll let you get back to work now."
"Wait," Trowa practically interrupted. "Before you go—did you get a chance to talk to her about…yesterday?"
"I didn't," Duo admitted. "And today isn't looking so good either. We're getting a new shipment of inventory in, so I have to put in an appearance at work today. And then I have to take Chris to the doctor this afternoon—but you don't wanna hear about all that. The point is, I'm working on it, Trowa, but I have other stuff on my plate."
"Right," Trowa murmured. It was hard to tell over the phone, but he sounded disappointed. Or maybe a little sad. "Just let me know when you find out what's wrong, okay?"
"I will, I will," Duo said. "Now. Get back to work, slacker!"
He ended the call before Trowa could say anything else and flung the garage door open wide, giving the kids a little warning so they knew they had to start behaving again. But since he didn't hear anyone scrambling to get back to their place, he decided it was safe to assume the kids hadn't burned the rest of the house down while he'd been on the phone.
Smirking, he hefted the fire extinguisher over his shoulder and sauntered into the room.
"Gooood morning, sunshine," he drawled when he saw that Faith was awake and back to herself. "Had a wild night, did we?"
"Not as wild as your morning," Faith mumbled around a mouthful of banana. "You really ought to think about replacing the batteries in those smoke detectors, Duo. Preferably before we all die in our sleep."
"I don't wanna die," Lexi whimpered. "Daddy…"
Duo grimaced. So it was going to be one of those days. He hated the attitude—really, really hated the attitude—but it was hard to argue with Faith when she was right. But there was no excuse for scaring Lexi.
He patted Lexi's head as he slipped around the table to put the fire extinguisher someplace where he could get to it in a hurry if he needed it.
"Don't be like that, Fay," he said. "I don't care what you've been through—you can still prove a point without being nasty about it."
She shot him a death glare that would have made Heero proud, but wisely kept her mouth shut. Duo gave her one last warning look, just in case, before turning his attention to Chris.
"I'm picking you up from school today, so stay where I can find you," he said. "Doctor's appointment."
"What?" Chris asked, frowning.
"Doctor's appointment," Duo repeated, slower and louder. "I don't think I need to tell you why we're going, Chris."
"Faith!" Chris yelled. "You promised!"
"I didn't tell him!" Faith yelled back. "Unlike some of us, I know how to keep a secret. If you had just kept your mouth shut around Selda, none of this would have even happened in the first place! You ruined my life, you know that, Chris? You wrecked two lives, in fact, because my dad is probably going to die because you—"
Lexi burst into tears; apparently she'd had all she could handle for one morning. Duo thought he knew how she felt. He'd had about all he could take, too, and the day hadn't even really started yet.
"That's enough," he said, walking around the table again and lifting Lexi out of her chair. She wrapped her little arms around his neck and wailed into his shirt. "Boys—not you, Chris, you stay where you are—go get your stuff ready for school. Now."
The kids hustled to get out of the room—they knew trouble when they saw it, and even the twins weren't brave enough to stick around when Duo used that tone of voice—and he waited until he heard them on the stairs before he turned back to Faith and Chris.
"You guys are old enough that you ought to know better than to fight at the breakfast table," he said, shifting Lexi a little bit and hoping he wouldn't drop her. Damn, but she was getting heavy. "Come on. What do you have to say for yourselves?"
"I think I've already said everything that's important," Faith said, obviously still pissed beyond reason. "I'm done."
Duo bit back a groan. He hated being the mediator; this was Hilde's area for a reason. Faith hardly ever lost her temper and Duo had no idea how to deal with her when she did, except leave her alone and let her cool off. But it didn't seem like that was the right way to handle her today. This was the sort of issue that was going to snowball into bigger problems if Duo let things go even for a little while.
"Faith," he said, sighing, "It is no secret that you're unhappy. And I'm not trying to say you shouldn't be—you have every right to be upset over this situation, and it isn't unreasonable that you're looking for someone to blame. But you can't pin all this on Chris. It wasn't deliberate. He didn't even know about your parents, or about the Red Fang, or Selda's connection to them, until it was way too late for any of us to stop things from turning out the way they did. Do you really think he would have let you down like this if he had known what was going to happen?"
Faith bit her bottom lip and looked away, and Duo knew he wouldn't have to worry about her bursting out with wild accusations again.
"And Chris? Son, next time try to get your facts straight before you put your foot in your mouth. Two of your teachers called me last week; they're concerned about the way your grades have been slipping and they asked me have your hearing checked again."
"Oh…"
It didn't take a lot to figure out that Chris was feeling really stupid. Duo decided that his work was more or less done. Hilde probably would have handled it better, but Duo didn't think she'd disapprove of his methods when he told her about it later.
"Now," he said, after giving the kids a second to let things sink in. "I'm not going to demand a public apology or anything, but I am going to insist that you two finish this discussion on your own time. Chris, go get ready for school while I help Lexi get her stuff together for daycare and ballet."
Chris left silently. Faith stayed put, staring at the glass of orange juice by her elbow. Duo didn't mess with her; since she'd been signed out of school, there wasn't really anything she needed to do.
"Maggie already put all my stuff in my backpack," Lexi said, her voice still quivery with tears. "Before she had to leave for practice. Can I play softball like Maggie, too, Daddy? I wanna be on the team with the big girls."
"I thought you wanted to be a ballerina," Duo said, shifting her again so he could snag a napkin off the table and wipe her face before she wiped it on his sleeve.
"I'm already the best ballerina ever," Lexi replied seriously. "Dak said so. So now I'm going to be the best softball player ever, too. Like Maggie."
"Uh-huh. That's nice, princess." Duo decided to just be happy that she wasn't crying anymore. If he'd learned anything at all from being a parent, it was that there was no easy way to have a logical argument with a weepy five-year-old. "Let's just go get your backpack, okay? Wanna piggyback ride upstairs?"
"I can get it by myself, Daddy," she said. "You don't have to carry me. I'm not a baby."
Duo couldn't come up with an argument for that, either—he wasn't quite ready for Lexi to be so independent, but rationally he knew that she couldn't be the baby forever. And if he wanted her to grow up right, he had to let her learn to do things on her own.
It sucked that it had to be today, though.
"Alright, kiddo," he said, setting Lexi back on her feet. "But let me know if you need anything."
"I'm a big girl," Lexi shouted over her shoulder as she ran for the stairs. "I don't need help!"
Duo bit back another sigh and started cleaning up, picking up dishes and pushing chairs back under the table. He shoved the last one a little harder than he'd intended and Faith's dog bolted from its hiding place at her feet. Duo jerked out of the dog's way, bumping the table with his hip as he tried not to get run over.
The table wobbled—he never had gotten around to fixing that one stupid leg—and Faith grabbed for her glass as it started to tip, snatching it up so fast that she sloshed orange juice all over the back of her hand.
"Nice catch!" Duo cheered, grinning at her. Faith looked up at him, but she wasn't smiling. Her face was sickly pale and she just didn't look so good. "Fay?"
"It was just a dream," she said. "That's all. I need some air."
And then she took off, too, and Duo was alone in the kitchen and more confused than ever. What the hell was going on with that girl now?
The library wasn't a good place to talk before class, at least not at a school where some kids valued their grades more than their lives, but Dak would take what he could get. His fingers tapped on his knees and his toes tapped on the floor, and he didn't even try to get himself under control. He figured it was cool as long as the librarians didn't say anything.
"Look," he said. "All I'm saying is that Fay seems like she's a little down. I thought it might help if she could hang out with some of her friends for a while. That's all. I did not just give you permission to date my sister, Len."
Len smirked, and Dak resisted the urge to punch that smug look off his face. This wasn't going well. He hadn't exactly gotten his hopes up or anything, but he really needed a break here and it just wasn't happening.
"She's not your sister," Len pointed out. "And if you really were her brother, she'd kick your ass if she ever heard you say she needed your permission to do anything."
Mentally, Dak kicked himself. He'd walked right into that one. Len was right—Faith was going to murder him if she ever found out about any of this. But it's for a good cause, he reminded himself, determined to stick this out. She needs help. Something.
"Additionally," Len continued, "I thought you guys didn't normally hang with us regular mortals. Whatever happened to your secret, hush-hush science projects and your rock band?"
Dak shrugged. "Fay's working on the shuttle today, actually," he said. "But I don't think we're doing the rock band anymore, at least not for a while. Too much other stuff going on."
And that was all Dak was going to say about that. Because Chris would murder him if he ever found out about Dak bringing up his hearing problems to anyone outside the family, and that wasn't such a good cause.
"That's too bad," Len said. "I went to one of your shows. You guys were pretty good."
"Whatever," Dak muttered. "Are you going to help me or not?"
Len thought about it a second, pretending to study something out of his binder, while a librarian drifted past. Dak kept his head down, too, and tried to keep his hands and feet still; he didn't feel like getting a lecture for distracting people who were trying to work.
"Okay," Len said when the coast was clear. "Here's the deal. I'll go along with this, but if I feel like asking Faith out, I'm going to do it. And if you do anything to get in my way, I'll tell her all about your little plan to keep her distracted and busy. Got it?"
Dak shook his head. "Forget it," he said. "This isn't going to work. I'll come up with something else on my own."
"If you're going to be like that, I might tell her anyway," Len said thoughtfully. "She does have a right to know when people are trying to manipulate her."
Dak decided he should have done a little more research into Len's character before letting him in on such a delicate plan. But it probably wouldn't be hard to convince Maggie to help out, and Dak didn't think Maggie would let Faith get too deeply involved with Len. She had an amazing talent when it came to picking out the douchebags in a crowd and, even better, she was as tenacious as a bulldog when it came to protecting Faith.
I don't know why I didn't just start with Maggie, Dak thought disgustedly. That would have been so much better than this.
Len cleared his throat and looked pointedly at the clock. Class started in two minutes; they really didn't have a whole lot of time left to debate.
"Fine," Dak grumbled. "I'll talk to her tonight and we can figure out a time and a place. We'll probably bring another friend of hers, too. Have you met Maggie?"
"The redhead?" Len asked. "I've seen her, but we've never really talked. Is it true what people say about her?"
"Yup," Dak said, although he had no idea what Len was talking about. People said a lot of things about Maggie. Only about half of them were true, and most of those centered around whether Maggie and Faith were just friends or whether they were secretly a couple. If that was what Len was referring to, well, it was a lot more satisfying to just keep him guessing. "I think it's safe to say that you've got competition, buddy. And Maggie's the jealous type, too, so you might want to watch your back."
Okay, so Dak wasn't entirely certain about that last part, but Len didn't need to know that. He forced a grin and crammed his binder into his backpack just as the bell rang. Len practically shot out of his chair; it seemed he wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of hanging out with a lesbian, and Dak was going to enjoy watching him squirm.
"I'll email you tonight," he said to Len's retreating back. His fake smile turned into a real one as he realized that—if Len was really as homophobic as he seemed—this had the potential to be a lot of fun.
Faith cursed quietly to herself as she surveyed the shuttle in Duo's spaceport dock. The parts she'd needed had come in while she was away and it looked like the boys had tried to install everything on their own.
Without reading the schematics first.
The design called for two layers of shielding, a thick one underneath to protect against radiation and space debris, and a thinner one on top that would burn off and break away during atmospheric entry, helping to dissipate heat and pressure changes and prevent the shuttle itself from breaking up.
Somehow, they'd managed to get the layers switched, and it was going to take Faith days to get it right again. The radiation shields were heavy and the big pieces had to be fitted together just so or she might as well not use them at all. The entry shield was made up of roughly three hundred ceramic tiles and while they weren't heavy at all, it was going to be time-consuming to remove them, fit the radiation shield into place, and then reapply the damn things.
"I hope the Red Fang gives me enough time to finish this on my own before they try anything," she said to Torstin. "But other than that, I don't see any problems with fixing this up by myself. I need something to keep me busy while everybody's in school anyway. I can do this."
And I definitely need something to keep my mind off what happened this morning, she thought, unwilling to even broach that particular subject out loud. It was just too weird, the way she'd known her glass was going to fall, just like it had in her dream, to be a coincidence.
But it had to be, right? Because there was no way stuff like that happened by design. Faith shook her head, brushing the annoying thoughts away, and started sorting through Duo's tools, figuring out what she would need and setting them where they'd be easy to reach.
Her fingers closed around the big wrench, the one longer and thicker than her arm, and her breath caught in a ragged sob. The memory hit her like lightning, and there was nothing Faith could do but ride out the storm.
Faith crouched by the door, gripping the wrench like a baseball bat and hoping she wouldn't need it. She'd managed to elude her kidnappers by going through the back entrance of the women's restroom and taking a service hallway to Duo's dock.
But that wouldn't hold them off forever. They'd find her sooner or later if Trowa and her dad didn't get to her first. And this time, since it wouldn't put her brothers and sister in immediate danger, Faith wasn't going to make it easy for them.
The keypad outside beeped softly as someone punched in a code. Faith heard the lock click and tightened her grip on the wrench.
Faith shook her head to clear it—the memory storm dissipated when no one came through the door—and set the wrench back where it belonged. She picked up the tool she did need and started for the ladder so she could get to work loosening the heavy panels of radiation shielding. If she could set a good pace, she could probably get them all off by the end of the day and get started on the more time-consuming aspect of the job—removing the hundreds of thermal panels—tomorrow.
It went well for a while as Faith settled into a routine, quietly pleased to be working alone and at her own pace instead of slowing down to accommodate someone else, until Faith became aware of the sensation of someone watching her. She kept working, certain it was Torstin and trying to ignore it, but the feeling grew more persistent and she finally had to stop what she was doing and look over her shoulder.
And sure enough, leaning against the closed door, was an all-too-familiar person. His arms were crossed over his chest and his face was carefully blank. Faith bit back a scream.
"This can't be happening," she said, swallowing hard and staring back into Zero's soulless eyes. "I'm not on Earth. I'm not asleep. You can't really be here."
"You were warned, Faith," he said seriously. "Do you remember what I told you the day we went to Sanc? About the people who weren't strong enough to master the Zero System?"
She'd never forget it. She couldn't forget it, even if she wanted to, and he knew that. But somehow, Faith felt like he was trying to get her to say it out loud. To admit what she was beginning to suspect might be true.
"The lucky ones died," she whispered. "The unlucky ones went crazy first."
The aura took her by surprise, a wash of vertigo and nausea. Her muscles spasmed and she lost her grip on the ladder. Unconsciousness followed; the darkness came before she hit the floor.
Notes: Hey, look! I finally updated! I really want to thank everyone who's been following along and reviewing so far. Sorry if I didn't get around to replying to individual reviews; I've been sick a lot lately, and I'm still trying to get back on my feet. I can't remember who got a response and who didn't, and I finally just gave up on that. So my apologies if you didn't hear from me.
Anyway, I do hope this chapter was worth the wait! I had to cut a couple of scenes because I couldn't get them to fit smoothly in with the rest of all this, but they'll either turn up in the next chapter or in my oneshot compilation, Between the Lines. So...Thoughts? Feelings? Speculations? Please let me know!