Music always sounded particularly beautiful in Batalla Hall's ballroom. The high, angled, ceilings, and marble pillars reflected the sound just perfectly, leaving the orchestra's resonate sound seemingly unaffected by the masses of people moving around, dancing, and conversing. Anden had a keen ear for music. He had played piano as a child at his mother's urging. The quick, rhythmic, motion of his fingers against the keys had come easily to him. He lost interest in playing after her death, such a thing wasn't really considered a useful skill for the future leader anyway and his tutors were quick to fill up the extra time with drills and lessons more practical for someone of his pedigree. The intuition of it though had never left the grace of his movement or the calming effect on his mind.

He wanted to be lost in the music now, to release the uncharacteristic rigidity from his body and simply let the melodies move him around the dance floor. But he couldn't, in this moment, because he was lost in something else. The pressure of her hand against his, the curve of her hip. There existed a no man's land between their bodies. Once familiar territory now uncharted waters as they no longer knew the boundaries of their new relationship.

"You really don't have to do this if you don't want to," he said, offering her one last out. He wasn't sure why he felt like he had to give her every opportunity to bow out of the situation. After all she had been the one to stride up and ask him to dance.

It had caught him off guard. He hadn't been able to find her as his eyes swept the ballroom. The grand hall was crowded and even though he couldn't see her he had known she was in the hall somewhere. Lithely moving about, stopping every now and then to make casual conversation with someone. To the uninitiated it may even appear she had the night off. But he knew that she knew his exact placement in that room, a small blip in a sea of hundreds, at any given moment. But then there she was, gracefully interrupting the gentleman that had cornered him to express the most mundane of concerns, and asking him to join her on the dance floor. An offer he was grateful for but tentative of. Their encounters since the break up had been brief, public, affairs. Gone were the days of shared lunchtimes and brushed hands under conference tables. In the absence of their conscious effort to run into each other their inertias spun them in different directions limiting their interactions primarily to sitting chairs away from each other in meetings and debriefs. They'd barely spoken in the last couple months.

"It's my job to protect you, is protection from boredom no longer in the job description?"

He couldn't take his eyes off the crinkle of her nose or the tiniest quirk of the right side of her mouth. She was being cheeky, she knew it, and it mesmerized him. It wasn't even that it took him back three months to when they were still in a relationship. It took him back to when her eyes always smiled for him.

She had made a habit of knowing when he needed a break from these situations in the days when she was there on his arm not on duty. June was a headstrong woman but she knew the power of wielding her own girlishness as a weapon. A smile and sweet offer of a dance could get him out of any tiring conversation, no questions asked. He was grateful for her intervention but he didn't expect her to honor their old rituals anymore.

"Well, you practically rewrote the job description so you'd know better than me…"

They both shared a smile remembering her first official day on the job. She'd presented Mariana with a binder detailing all the weaknesses she'd observed in his current security and ample addendums to amend them. Although a grown woman now she was still in many ways the same precocious child she'd been. Fierce, competent, but idealistic.

"I think it's under article 158, subsection c," she teased back.

Anden took a deep breath. He'd been meaning to talk to her about this, privately. But he hadn't been able to bring himself to cross the threshold of her office alone and a courier would've been too impersonal. Now seemed as good a time as any. She'd broken the ice for him.

"June, I'd actually been meaning to talk to you about your job. I'm sure you must've heard the rumors by now."

She rearranged her features to reflect only neutrality.

"Oh, yes, I had heard..."

June was unrelentingly good at her job. There was nothing she would let affect her quality of work. Her initial appointment of lead commander had been met with little opposition as she had more than proved herself during the Colonies' invasion so many years ago. However, Mariana had cornered him not long after he and June separated and asked in a hushed tone if he would consider reassigning June, perhaps to oversee units in the United Cities? His Princeps advised that it would simply seem like a professional move for June, but it would minimize the time which Anden spent directly under the protection of an ex lover, 'hell hath no fury' and the like. Anden had assured her that June was not a woman scorned. He trusted her, more than anyone else in this world. She'd put faith in him when she had no reason to and didn't let him get blown up even when that was her express mission. Anden doesn't think there's anything she could do at this point that would make him second guess his choice to place his life in her hands. He'd rejected Mariana's proposal but that hadn't stopped her words from making their way down the grapevine and everyone seemed to have an opinion about the best placement for Ms. Iparis besides the one person whose opinion on the matter he cared about.

"Do you have any thoughts?"

Confusion passed briefly across her face but she remained collected.

"I'm…. I'm employed at your appointment. That's your order to give."

A soldier at heart.

"I don't have any intention of transferring you. You do your job, and you do it well."

"Thank you."

"But it occurred to me that even though I don't want you to leave, you might want a change."

"No," she answered immediately, taken aback by the proposition, "things may be different now but you're still my Elector. I believe in what you've done here and I want to protect that."

"I just... wanted to make sure I asked what you wanted. I know I've... ignored that before."

"It's ok."

It hadn't been on purpose, but he had ignored her desires before. He couldn't help it. His country and his family were his life. And his family had been reduced to only her. When he brought up marriage he saw only her busy life in her refusals not her fear. When she told him about the baby it never once entered his head that it filled her with anxiety. That she hadn't thought of herself as wanting children and now had to reckon with her own perceived capabilities to handle this new development. He saw it as a beautiful gain, one more piece towards making them whole again. She apparently had only seen it as one more thing to lose. And this revelation tore the wound of the actual loss two years earlier open all over again. He still had one remnant, the ultrasound photo she had urged him to keep after their first doctor appointment, tucked carefully at the back of his desk drawer. The last remaining relic of their life together. When she'd left she everything but her key. That was one thing he had to give her credit for, she'd tried hard to leave the wound she'd made cleanly dressed. She'd packed everything up to form a line of even sutures. Thrown open the windows, freed the airy smell of her that would have otherwise clung to the linens so nothing could contaminate it. She wanted him to heal to be left with a scar so faint that years later he wouldn't be able to remember whether it was actually from her at all. But he couldn't help it. Everytime he pulled that single photo labelled, "Baby Girl Iparis-Stavropoulos" from his desk he picked at the scab. Wondering, 'what if?' Their daughter would be two now.

Would they still have ended up like this?

Yes...they would would have...only she would've had more to resent him for.

"You had me worried there for a while-." her words pulled him back from the memories.

"I really did mean to talk to you about it sooner but there didn't seem to be the right time. I apologize for making you worry." He hated the formal sound of his own voice.

"You don't have to apologize. I wasn't exactly making myself available."

"We both needed time to think about where to go from there."

"Yes, absolutely."

They both fell silent.

"Anden, I wouldn't let anybody hurt you. I hope you know that…"

He knew what she was asking. It was her turn to give him the out. If having her there hurt him she would leave gracefully, she wouldn't question it.

"I know you wouldn't...," their eyes locked and he was feeling brave in a way he hadn't in months, "because you're my friend."

For the first time in months a full smile bloomed on her face. She nodded and rested her cheek against his shoulder. He felt her body relax in a familiar way. Encouraged that the awkwardness and strangeness was behind them. he drew his arms tighter around her waist closing the distance between their bodies so the music could finally flow through them as one. He swept the two of them across the dance floor. He couldn't say what piece was playing but it felt like the first thing he'd heard after months of being trapped in silence. He knew that their shared melody would now be played in a different key but they'd always have their familiar rhythms...he couldn't ask for more… no matter how much he wished he could.