The Three Kings: Strike

Disclaimer: Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Studios, and TV Tokyo. Harry Potter is owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, and Warner Bros. Please support the official releases.

Warning: Mentions of blatant misogyny, sexism, racism, gore, body modification, pregnancy, rape, pedophilia, minor character death, C-sections, child abandonment, and child abuse.

Chapter 15: Completion

Max doesn't know how he's still alive. The last thing he remembers is the red bitch's claws digging into his side and blood coming pouring out of him before a blaze of power had overtaken his entire being. Then, everything was dark and cold, full of death, full of emptiness.

He wakes to a room with white walls and a white ceiling. The white sheets cover the white bed he lays on, surrounded by white muggle equipment that lets out a steady series of beeps. The wires that spill out of them are white too, attaching themselves to the bloody, weeping remains of his body. He can't feel anything.

The only other colour in the room is the red bitch. The Lady Pharaoh stands at the foot of the bed. She is short and ugly, her inky skin blending almost seamlessly into the black muggle military gear she's wearing. Her lips are too big for her face and her ridiculous red hair is pulled into unsightly ropes that Max can only assume haven't been washed in over thousands of years.

Max thinks of all the paintings that he'd seen of the Lady Pharaoh, looking young and beautiful with her creamy white legs spilling out of her silk spun robes, rising slowly from the Nile, her mysterious dark eyes wild and playful. The figure that stands before him is nothing but a disappointment.

The Pharaoh stares unblinkingly at him, her arms crossed over her flat chest. She tilts her head to the side when she realizes that he's awake, observing him like she thinks that she's better than him. Max tries to snarl at her, but all that comes out is a breathy whisper.

He moves his tongue inside his mouth and discovers that most of his teeth are gone. There are pins in his jaw that weren't there before.

Max looks down at his body again and sees all the archaic, muggle metal that they've welded to his bones. He hisses at the Pharaoh, "What have you done to me?"

She doesn't respond. The red bitch just stands there like an idiot. He wonders what the King Commander ever saw in her, for him to settle for someone so hideously stupid. Max doubts that what's between her legs could have been enough.

"Get me out of here, you dumb bitch!" He screams, blood running down his ruined jaw as he forces it open passed all the pins and needles that they've shoved into him - they've made it so that he can't feel anything, so he takes advantage of it.

The Pharaoh finally responds, not with words, but by uncrossing her arms and raising a single hand. She snaps her fingers and suddenly, all that Max knows is terrible, agonizing pain. His vision whites out and a mangled scream erupts from his throat. He can't breathe. He can't even think.

Then, as sudden as it came, its gone. Max sucks air into his lungs like he's dying as tears run down the left side of his face. He closes the only human eye he has left and feels for the divine weapon that he embedded in his own skull.

It's not there. Max tries to reach for the right side of his face, but all that he can do is shudder viciously on the bed. They haven't even felt a need to tie me down. Without the Eye, they think I'm helpless. But… He sees the carelessness in the mages' plan. They've left my wand within reach.

"Do you understand now?" The Pharaoh finally speaks, and the words that come out of her oversized mouth are barely English, her thick, alien accent mangling the language to the point where Max can scarcely discern what she's saying.

I understand that you're a moronic whore, he thinks and flails his arm towards his wand. He manages to grab hold of it before the bitch can do anything, forcing his fingers around the wood. Max points it at her and snarls.

"Avada Kedavra!" He screams.

Nothing happens.

He tries again, saying the spell louder, making the motion more pronounced. Nothing happens. Max keeps trying, getting more and more desperate with each attempt. He starts to cry, his chest heaving in between each spell, as reality sets in.

The Lady Pharaoh walks calmly over to the side of the bed where he holds his wand in a death grip, praying for it to work. She doesn't even look him in the eye when she reaches down to take it from him.

Max flinches away, hysterically screaming, "No! No, don't! It's mine! It's-"

She ignores him and pries his wand from his grasp, taking a moment to twirl it between her fingers, and then snaps it in half.

"Do you understand now?" The Pharaoh asks again, gazing down at him with her inhuman purple eyes, looking like all the god that the legends said her to be. "Do you understand what I have done?"

"I don't- How-- My magic, how did you-"

"I took it from you," she says like she's talking about the weather and not something so horrible, so impossible that Max can barely comprehend his own truth. "Just as I can control the pain receptors in your nervous system on a whim. Just as I forced you to continue to live long after your body had expired."

The Pharaoh places the broken halves of the wand on the bedside table and picks up a mirror.

"Look at yourself," she commands. "You exist inside a corpse."

Max doesn't recognize the person in the mirror. His skin is grey and sagging, lined with age and pale blue veins. His hair is wispy white and falling from his head in clumps. The right side of his face is mauled beyond repair; the hole where he'd carved out his own eye to replace it with a divine weapon is empty, raw, and scabbed over.

"The funny thing about anti-ageing potions," the Pharaoh tells him, "is that they're actually mildly addictive. Your body adapts very well to living while you take them, but can't function correctly when you cease to do so. And as a result… well…" She hums, mockingly sympathetic.

"We looked you up after Reiko Kitamori mentioned you for the first time," she continues. "Do you want to know what we found?"

Nothing. You couldn't find anything, Max thinks desperately. But he's proven wrong the moment that he says it aloud.

"We found an arrest record from 1872. One Maximillion Pegasus was arrested in Napa, California for the rape of Isabel Johnson. She was ten. You were thirty-eight," she smiles politely at his confusion. "We didn't find anything else, though. I'm sure your Department covered up the rest quite nicely. But what we did find from that one tiny slip up was your age. You were born in 1834, making you one hundred and seventy-nine years old. And right now, because you're off the anti-ageing potions that you've no doubt been taking for over a century, you are feeling each and every one of those years right now."

What else is there left? Max screams inside. Why are you keeping me alive?

Then the door opens, and he gets his answer.

Reiko Kitamori hobbles into the room, looking as tired as he feels. She's propped herself up on crutches and wearing a white hospital gown with tiny, pale green dots. She's older than he's ever seen her, which had been the reason that he hadn't recognized her in the times that they'd met. Age, he thinks, doesn't suit her.

Reiko's eyes flick from him to the Pharaoh, "What… What happened to him?"

For a moment, Max thinks that, maybe, there's still an ounce of lingering affection for him in her voice. But his hopes are drowned when Reiko's response to the Pharaoh's explanation for his state is answered with a short and cutting, "Good."

"Reiko-dear…" he tries to hiss out, reaching for her.

Her eyes narrow and she asks the Pharaoh, "Make him hurt for me."

The red bitch snaps her fingers and then, again, his world is swamped with pain. Max screams and screams, his body convulsing as his brain is unable to process it all. It should be enough to kill him, but Max knows that the Pharaoh will not let him die this way.

After what feels like an eternity, he comes back to himself. Max's single eye opens and Reiko has not moved, has not even blinked at his torture.

"Why?" He asks, so utterly confused by all of this. "Reiko, why? Why do this?"

That finally gets her to react.

" 'Why? '" She repeats, spitting the words out in anger. "After everything that you did, you have the gall to ask why?"

"All I did was love you," he whispers.

Reiko sputters, then turns to the Pharaoh, "Hurt him again." When it's over, Reiko scowls at him, "I was eleven years old. I had been taken from my mother and trained to be a child soldier. You took advantage of that and raped me for six years! You were going to do the same thing to Gara. And then you ask why? How stupid are you?"

"Gara? I never… I never wanted her… It was you, Reiko. I only ever wanted you."

"Don't lie to me," Reiko hisses, jabbing him fiercely with the butt of her crutch. "They told me what you were planning to do to her if Gel didn't keep in line."

"I never wanted her," Max repeats. "Whoever told you that… they lied, Reiko. They lied."

Reiko shakes her head, closing her eyes like she can't bear to look at him. Max can only focus on her.

"If that was the case, then why did you go looking for her baby?" Reiko finally asks. Before he can get an answer out, she snarls, "You'd only do that if Gara meant something to you, you narcissistic piece of shit. So do. Not. Lie. To me. Or-"

Max interrupts her before she can get the Pharaoh to make him hurt again, "Yes! Alright, alright! I wanted her, too. Is that what you wanted to hear, Reiko? I wanted her, too."

"Did you touch her?" Reiko asks through gritted teeth. When he doesn't answer, Reiko comes forward and reaches for his collar, dragging him upright with her incredible strength. Max remembers all the rumours that he'd heard over the years about Kiyoshi, the Department Head's invincible assassin, and realizes far too late that he's dealing with her right now. "Did you touch her too?"

Max closes his eye, not wanting to see her reaction when he whispers, "No."

Reiko drops him back onto the bed and he hears her crutches clatter to the floor. He opens his eye to see her standing there, barely supporting her own weight, and staring at him in relief.

"Oh thank god," she says finally.

He nods, "I didn't. I wanted to, but I never- "

Reiko's fist connects with his jaw so hard that he can feel the impact beneath all the numbing abilities that that Pharaoh has.

"Don't. Shut the fuck up. Do not try to explain why you wanted to rape her, too," she hisses, absolutely livid. Reiko's breath comes out between clenched teeth as her chest violently heaves. "Who's the father?"

"Albus Dumbledore," Pegasus tells her. "I was told that the Department wanted to recreate the project, using Dumbledore's blood. We could train the boy like we trained the Plants so that he'd never stray like Dumbledore did. But they scrapped it because none of the Plants could carry a boy to term.

"We switched to Gara too late. Garrish had already found Tom Riddle in a muggle orphanage by the time she gave birth," He laughs, feeling hysterically light, "It was Keith. It was Keith this entire time. Latner took him from me and kept him in the Bell Jar in the Labs for almost a century to complete some stupid little experiment. And when she was done, Latner gave Keith to the Plant program. I watched over him this entire time, made sure that he was happy. Made sure that he was safe."

"You…" Reiko looks at him, stunned. "You used her... for the project. After Gel failed…"

"Gara named him after his father, you know? That's his real name. Not Keith, but Albus. Albus Grindelwald," he continues on, babbling secrets for the sake of his own life. "Please, Reiko. You have to believe me. I only did it to make sure that Keith was alright. Please ."

Reiko doesn't say anything for a long, long time. Then, she finds the only available chair in the room and sits down, holding her face in her hands. Her shoulders start to shake.

"Latner told me herself, years after the fact when we were doing the Flamel Test together. You can ask her. I promise, she'll tell you the same thing," Max says, hoping that it will get her to stop crying. He hates it when she cries. "Hell, you can ask Gara herself. She's probably still locked up in the Labs with Bode. You can find her-" He stops talking.

Because Reiko Kitamori isn't crying. She's laughing.

"Holy fuck," she howls, arching her back and looking at the ceiling. "Oh Merlin, are you actually serious right now?"

"I don't understand," Max frowns.

"She was right. Shit, Latner was right this entire time. You really are the biggest idiot in this whole thrice damned Department," Reiko cackles madly. "You actually believed it!"

"I don't understand," he repeats again.

It takes a long time for Reiko to calm herself enough to speak coherently. And when she does, Max hangs onto every word.

"Didn't you ever wonder why Latner passed the Flamel Test and you didn't?" Reiko sneers. When he frowns, she continues, "Because the Flamel Test is something that takes decades to complete, but you thought that you could do it in under a year. Latner tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen, would you? Because the very idea that a woman could possibly be smarter than you is something you can't even comprehend. That's why you had Bagshot taken out for recommending Gara over her brother. That's why you had Keith lead his team instead of Tilla Mook, who deserved it far more than he ever did.

"And they may have stayed quiet about it, but Latner? She's not the type to do that. Latner is a sociopath and you delayed her research by thirty fucking years. She wanted you humiliated," Reiko chuckles. "And if your head weren't so far up your ass, you'd have figured it all out."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're into little girls, you sick fuck," Reiko grips the railing on the side of Max's bed. "Do you honestly think that I'd be so terrified of you finding her kid if she was a boy?"

Max's heart stops, "What?"

"Latner told me that Gara had a girl. That's why they scrapped the project - not because they found Riddle, but because they wanted a boy. She laughed when she told me that she'd convinced you that Keith was Gara's. I told her that there was no way that you'd be fooled, but she told me- and I should have believed-"

"But… I held him. I held Keith in my arms, two days after the project ended," Max is so confused, "Latner told me after they found Riddle that she would take him instead, for her experiment. Because she'd lost her twins-" He stops suddenly, barely breathing, and realizes what he's been missing all these years, "That bitch."

Keith wasn't Gara and Albus Dumbledore's child. Keith was Latner's.

"If you'd just looked at his file, you'd have figured it out," Reiko shakes her head. "His real name isn't Albus, it's Keith Howard II - not The Second, but the number two. Latner carried a pair of wizard twins so that she could use them in the Bell Jar after she couldn't get access to Gara and me - because you put her experiment on hold and delayed her entrance into the Flamel Test."

The image of Latner wells up, looking impossibly young the day after he'd found out the Reiko was still alive. She smiles at him, loathing, Maxie, honey, we work for the Department of Mysteries. And you're honestly surprised that someone lied to you?

Then she'd laughed at him because the bitch had known.

"She put Keith and his brother in the Jar and studied them for decades, ageing them back and forth, so that she could pass the Flamel Test. A test that, once you got bored cultivating Tom Riddle into the monster you needed him to be, Garrish let you take because you were favourite little pet, even though his own protege had been working on it for thirty years," Reiko explains, looking at him like she thought he was stupid. "And you thought that you'd found Nicolas Flamel living in Devonshire."

I did find him. I saw him in Devonshire myself, he thinks desperately, remembering Flamel sitting in his quaint little home, his dark hair slicked back over his withered face. His wife, Perenelle, had been sitting in the chair next to the kitchen, with her red hair and blue eyes, dressed in yellow and black. She'd smiled at him and laughed at his jokes, reminding him of the mother he'd left behind in California to join the Department.

"You were so close. Right on top of it all, but you couldn't see it," Reiko snorts. She leans down and gathers up her crutches. "Where is Gara's daughter?"

"I don't know! But… but I'll help you find her!" Max shouts, trying to keep her in the room. Don't leave me alone with her, he pleas, glancing at the Lady Pharaoh, who's standing silently off to the side. "Please, Reiko! I'll-"

Reiko looks down at him coldly, making eye contact, and then-

"Another squib," Garrish says, the distaste clear in his mouth. The Plant girl lays dead in the bloody bed, her stomach carved open in Latner's attempt to get the baby out of her. The infant is screaming wildly in Latner's arms.

Pegasus clicks his tongue, "I don't understand. Why does this keep happening?"

He misses the look of satisfaction that passes over Latner's face-

"It's been three decades," he hears Latner shout through Garrish's office door. "You told me that this project was only going to be a few years, Blaine!"

"And I told you, as soon as you can ensure these girls deliver a male heir, you can take the Test. We're running out of samples, Latner. If this doesn't work-" Garrish responds, but Latner does something to silence him. "Tris… Tris, we can't…"

"Use the Grindelwald girl. Dumbledore wanted the brother, so maybe the sister will do," Latner's voice is low and husky. "Come on, Blaine. Forget your wife, she doesn't have to know."-

He hears Plant #997's screams behind the closed door of the Gardens. He wishes the girl would be quiet, that she would give birth in silence so that they could move on with their plan without any more fuss.

Blaine Garrish stands beside him, his hair slick against his scalp, looking no older than twenty, "We used the last of the samples. She'd best have a boy."

Max licks his lips, remembering Reiko, and how, in his rage, he'd accidentally killed her. Perhaps… he glances at the door, There is still a chance for me to find the one.

"Women are too fragile for this line of work. I've told the Head this a hundred times," Garrish continues on. "If she whelps a squib, we'll have to find a substitute."

Max nods, agreeing wholeheartedly-

Two days later, Latner puts the babe in his arms, smiling crookedly, "Garrish found a better option than him: the trueborn heir of Salazar Slytherin. That'll get us the support of the pureblood elite more than the child of Gryffindor's bastards."

Max snorts, supporting the baby's head, "Gryffindor's descendants are a dime a dozen." Max looks up at Latner, "I heard about your boys."

Latner shrugs, sounding unaffected, "Blaine has a jealous wife and I was never suited for motherhood. It was probably for the best-

Then he sees a memory that isn't his and Pegasus realizes that Reiko is showing him something. To dig in the knife.

Kiyoshi slams her way into an office and Pegasus recognizes the woman inside. With her red hair and her blue eyes, Perenelle Flamel sits behind the desk, an elegant quill in her hands.

"Where is Gara's daughter?" Kiyoshi hisses, slamming her palms against the wood desk.

"Hello, Kiyoshi. How are you doing this morning?" Flamel asks without looking up, dabbing her quill to knock out the excess ink.

Kiyoshi slaps a file down in front of her. When Flamel opens it up, Pegasus recognizes the face of Cecilia Crawford, the third mage to ever go through the conversion program. He'd loved her once. Her death had hit him so hard.

Pegasus watches as Flamel swallows, "I wasn't consulted on this."

"You promised. You swore to me that you'd never let him near children again," Kiyoshi says, trembling with rage.

"She was a mage."

"She was a fifteen-year-old girl and she killed herself because of what she was doing to her," Kiyoshi growls. "Latner told me that Gara had a daughter. Where is she?"

Flamel looks up, her eyes a piercing blue, "I don't know."

"Bullshit."

"I don't know, Kiyoshi," Flamel responds. "Besides, Pegasus is an idiot. He doesn't know anything."

"Why do people keep saying that? Pegasus is a monster. If he gets a hold of Gara's girl, then he'll- he'll…" Kiyoshi grits her teeth. "Just because he wasn't smart enough figure out who you are, doesn't mean that he isn't capable of figuring things out."

Flamel looks surprised, but then she smiles with brilliant white teeth, "So? When did you figure it out?"

"I may have had a century of working next to you to help me out, but come on," Kiyoshi scoffs and Pegasus watches as her eyes travel from Flamel's black and gold robes to the name tag on her desk, "You aren't exactly subtle, princess."

Flamel regards Kiyoshi, resting her chin on her hands, "My nephew did one good thing before he died. He changed the law of succession to support equal primogeniture. So, I believe the word you are looking for is Queen." Flamel closes the file and returns to her work, "Subtly was more Sal's thing that it ever was mine. But subtly did not help him or his wife when they went off to chase rumours in France."

Kiyoshi seems taken aback by how blunt Flamel had been. A picture forms in Pegasus's head as he tries and fail to piece together why Reiko is showing him this.

"I have a mission for you," Flamel says-

Reiko pulls out of the memory and smirks.

"I didn't know!" Pegasus screams, desperate because he knows what's coming, "You see! I don't know where the girl is!"

"On the contrary, you've told me everything I need to know," Reiko laughs and turns her back on him.

"No! No!" His single eye rolls in his head, searching for a way out. "Plant #1,041, I order you to-"

"Shut up," Reiko's words punch him in the gut. She limps towards the door.

"I made you," he screams uselessly.

"No, you didn't. I made me," Reiko tells him. She snorts and shakes her head, "You know, I was terrified of you for so long. I threw up in Keith's house after I saw you for the first time at the American Ministry, just from fear. I thought you were a monster that I'd never get away from. But now, after all of this…" she pauses and delivers the final crushing blow. "You're the biggest disappointment I've ever experienced."

Reiko places her hand on the door handle, ready to leave, but the Pharaoh stops her and asks the most terrible question, "What do you want me to do with him?"

"Kill me!" He begs, hysterical with fear, "Don't leave me with her! Kill me, please! Please!"

And Max watches as Reiko- no, as Kiyoshi, the cold-hearted assassin, says, "I don't really care."

The door closes with a final click, leaving him with his judge, his jury, and his executioner.

"Please…" He pleas, hoping for mercy. "Please…"

"You killed Solomon Mutuo," she says, her voice ice cold, pupils blown wide like a hawk. "You created the program that tortured hundreds of mages. You've destroyed families. You've raped little girls to satisfy your sick fantasies."

"Please…"

"I always wondered by Bakura killed my uncle the way he did, trapped in a cell with no way to defend himself. I never understood why he did it," the Pharaoh tells him as she places her hands on either side of his head. He can feel the sparks of her power burning the skin there. "I do now."

The Lady Pharaoh shoves a hundred thousand volts through his skull, frying him from the inside out.

It's a long time before she lets him die.

Pete finds Reiko throwing up over the side of the Cerulean. He doesn't really know what to do about it.

It's easy to forgive people in the heat of battle when you honestly think that you're about to die. It's a lot more difficult to approach them afterwards when you've realized that you know absolutely nothing about who they really are.

So Pete just kind of goes, Fuck it, and walks up to her because he's got no better options.

"Hey," he says, more than a little awkwardly.

Reiko raises her head to look at him bleakly.

"Hey," she says back, wiping her mouth with her hand.

"Are… Are you alright?" Pete asks and immediately realizes that that was the dumbest thing he could have asked.

Reiko snorts, "Not really."

"Is there… anything that I can, um, do?"

Reiko sits down hard on her ass and hangs her legs over the side of the ship. Below them, the waves crash together in their endless cycle. She signs.

"Can you just… sit with me?" She asks. Pete nods and does just that.

They sit in silence for a while, just watching the sun come up over the horizon, tinting the sky pink and orange and yellow. Only a few short hours ago, Pete didn't think that he'd get to see the sunrise again. He's never appreciated them before and now he can't look away.

"Say something," Reiko finally speaks.

Pete glances at her out of the corner of his eye, "Like what?"

"I don't know. Just something."

Pete, with all this infinite wisdom, comes up with, "So, you're, like, some super assassin lady, or something?"

Reiko snorts, a smile tugging at her lips, "Yes, Pete. I'm a super assassin lady."

"Or something?"

"Or something," she confirms.

"What's that like?"

"Lots of travel. Meet a lot of new people. Pay's not that great, but the sort of immortality is a nice bonus," Reiko chuckles half-heartedly.

"That sounds cool," Pete nods, then his brain catches up with him. "Wait? Sort of immortality?"

"I'm actually over a hundred years old," Reiko tells him. His jaw drops.

"Holy shit, really? That's awesome! How the fuck'd you swing that?"

"Made a deal with the devil. Though I don't know how much longer I'm going to have that for," she shrugs.

"What do you mean?"

"Usually, Hendrix would have healed me by now. But she hasn't, so I think I'm in the doghouse for going off mission and blowing up the island."

"You… didn't blow up the island, though."

"No. But I brought in the people that could. And that's not going to win me any brownie points," Reiko shrugs.

Pete nods like he understands what she's saying, even though he really doesn't.

"So, what's the plan after this?" Pete asks.

Reiko shrugs again, "I need to ask Tilla some questions. Them I'm going to go look for an old friend and her kid, maybe her brother, too. Hole up somewhere safe before the Head sends someone after me. Figure out where to go from there."

"Sounds interesting," Pete mumbles, looking down at the sea below. Just fucking ask. "You… want some company?"

Reiko looks at him sharply, "What?"

"They think that I don't know… Keith and Mook. But I heard them talking about the Seedling program before Keith tried to kill that one mage from the Archives' break-in. I know what I am," Pete swallows hard. "There's nothing for me here. The Department's going to be in shambles after everything that it lost on the island. And even if it wasn't, I don't want to be here anymore. So I was wondering-"

"If you could come with me?" Reiko finishes his sentence for him.

"Yeah," he nods. "Look, I get it if you don't want me to. But... I don't know? You clearly knew me from before and, well, maybe I could find out who I was before all this."

It's jarring to think that the only actual memories that he has are from the last six months. It's even more frightening to think that he doesn't even know his own name.

Reiko bites her bottom lip before turning away from him and staring at the waves below. She seems to debate with herself for a good minute before saying, "Misha."

"What?"

"Your name is Misha. I don't know your parents' names because you never told me them. But you came to the Seedling program when you were six, so you were old enough to remember your life before it," she says. "You said that men in hoods came to your house and killed your parents. You had a Scottish accent. So I can only assume that your family were killed by Death Eaters in the British war against Voldemort. And you were six in 1990, so you were probably born in 1984. That's all I know for sure about who you are."

Pete's heart catches in his chest, his mind whirling. He's not American? He's actually four years older than he thought he'd been? His parents are dead? It goes against everything he knows about himself, but all that information had been implanted in his head by the Department. So what does he actually know at the end of the day?

"Why did you convince me to talk to Keith about getting on this mission?" He finally asks.

Reiko smiles softly, "Because it would have made you happy."

"What do you mean?"

She closes her eyes and leans back, kicking her legs against the side of the Cerulean, "You were the first friend I had in almost a hundred years, Misha. We worked together to keep each other alive because it's what we had to do to get through the Seedling program. And when I saw you after, I thought… maybe you'd recognize me. You didn't," she says that last bit without blame and that hurts more than it should. "Getting to work with your hero would have made you happy, so I pushed you in that direction. I thought, once the team became more established, I could ask you to recommend me to Keith, but I never thought that you'd do it from the beginning."

I did it because I liked you, he thinks. But instead, he says, "Maybe I did remember something from before. Maybe not an actual memory, but a feeling."

She looks at him for a moment before giving him a tired smile. Reiko leans forwards, places a hand on one side of his face, and gently kisses his cheek. Pete blushes so hard that his face feels like it's on fire.

"Thank you," she says.

"For what?"

"Just… just thank you," Reiko repeats herself and turns back to the sea. Pete sighs, scooching towards her, and wraps his arm around her shoulder, pulling her until she lays her head on his shoulder.

"So, Misha, huh?" He asks. When she nods, Pete smirks, "Kind of a dorky name."

"So's Pete," Reiko snarks back at him.

"Could get used to it, though," he admits.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," Reiko hums and closes her eyes. Pete rubs her back comfortably and doesn't point out that he can see her crying.

Cassie finds Meron Tadesse tinkering away in the engine room, covered head to toe in grease, wearing a battered old tank top and an equally battered pair of shorts.

"Hey," she says awkwardly. Meron doesn't even turn around.

"What do you want?"

Cassie leans against one of the humming machines, sighing, "Honestly, I don't know."

"Well, then you can get the fuck out," Meron swaps out one of her wrenches for one of a different size.

Cassie squirms uncomfortably, "They found Almeida's will under her bed."

"Really? Didn't know that she could read or write," Meron says, sounding uninterested.

"It was a video on an old camera," Cassie admits. "She left me the Cerulean."

Meron pauses momentarily, the muscles on her back shifting, and then she continues on like nothing happened.

"Of course, she did," Meron snorts.

"I don't want it," she says.

"Good. You don't fucking deserve it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cassie frowns.

Meron throws down her wrench and gets to her feet, planting her hands on her hips, "Like you don't know."

"No, I don't actually. Want to explain?"

"My mother left the Cerulean to some spoiled fucking white girl that she doesn't even know, passing over every single person on this goddamn ship who's infinitely better qualified for the job. What's what I fucking mean," Meron spits out, clapping her hands together and tilting her head to the side.

"I'm a Major in the French Navy-" Cassie starts, but Meron interrupts her.

"Was a Major. You're missing in action, remember? You live as off the grid as I do doing your shit with the Jackals. Also, didn't you only get to be a Major because of your grandfather, not because of something that you did?" She says, mockingly, "I bet you weren't even supposed to see active combat until the Department of Mysteries decided to come and get you."

It hurts because it's because it's true. Cassie throws a right hook at her face, but Meron's expecting it, ducking out of the way and letting Cassie slam her fist into the metal of the water tank she'd been fixing.

"Touch a nerve, did I? How are you expecting to captain the Cerulean when you can't even handle me getting under your skin?" Meron mocks her.

"I don't want to captain this stinking ship," Cassie throws back at her.

"Yeah, you do. Because if you didn't, you wouldn't be so fucking pissed," Meron sneers.

"I don't want the Cerulean," Cassie says again, venom dripping from every word.

"Why? Think you're too good for it? Like you're too good for our mother?"

"She's not my mother. She didn't raise me," Cassie snarls.

"She didn't raise me either, but that sure as fuck didn't stop her from dying for you," Meron spits angrily.

Cassie takes a step back. They were never able to recover Almeida's body before the island blew, "She died protecting both of us."

"No, she died for you," Meron pokes Cassie in the chest. "She didn't give a damn about me - never has. She fucked my dad when she was drunk and thinking about your dad and I was the result. She dealt with me, but she never wanted me. She wanted her perfect husband and her perfect daughter and never failed to let me know that when I fucked up.

"It was always about you. Raymond never would have done this to me… Cassandra would have been so much better at this than you…" Meron snorts. "That was all I heard my entire fucking life. She wouldn't give me or my dad the time of day, but then Raymond Blue calls her up out of nowhere-" It wasn't out of nowhere, Cassie had been as good as dead and her family had been desperate enough to try to contact Almeida, "-and she drops everything to find you. She hadn't seen you since you were a baby and she loved you more than she would ever love me."

Meron stands before Cassie, her arms tense at her side, her fists clenching until they shook with rage, "We didn't question our captain when she gave us the order to turn this boat around. We turned our back on a million dollar payload and we looked for you. I looked for you, Cassandra. I hunted the sea for the sister I should have hated. And do you know what I found?"

Cassie can't look Meron in the eye. She remembers how their first interaction went, back when Cassie was eighteen and so green that she smelt of grass. She'd hated Meron's very existence because she'd been the reminder of what Cassie could have been if her father had stayed on the Cerulean.

"I found the daughter of the man who put this entire crew in danger so that my mother would think that it was her idea to dump you two on an island. Because the life of a pirate stopped being so fun the moment that you came into the picture," Meron sneers. "You think that you're better than me."

"I don't," Cassie snaps. It's a lie, and they both know it.

"Yes, you do. You think you're better than me because you grew up in a fancy mansion with your rich daddy and your powerful grandfather. You think you're better than me because you were handed everything in life while I had to fight and sweat and bleed for it," Meron holds up her left hand, showing off the missing half of her index finger. "You think that you deserve this ship just because you walked onto it and my mother decided to give it to you, just like you've been given everything in your entire life."

"You don't know anything about me or what I've been through," Cassie growls, feeling the White Dragon bubbling just under the surface. She unconsciously tugs the electrical current running through the Cerulean, sending some of the machinery into chaos. Who was Meron to decide what she was and wasn't capable of, anyway? It's not like she was better than-

Cold runs through Cassie's veins and suddenly she sees what Meron is talking about. I don't know anything about her either. Who am I to judge?

"And neither did Almeida. Didn't stop her from making a stupid ass decision. Stop fucking with my ship," Meron rolls her eyes, pulling out her wand and firing a few spells in odd directions, calming the engines down. Cassie watches as she turns her back, sits down on the floor again, and starts tinkering with one of the machines.

They stay like that for a while, just existing in stiff, awkward silence, before Cassie asks, "'Your ship'?"

"Yeah. My ship. We all got together and had a fight to the death to decide who'd in command now," Meron says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Then she sighs, "There was a vote. I won. We're democratic like that."

"Oh," Cassie blinks and realizes that she's speaking to the new captain. She shouldn't feel as disappointed as she does. I never wanted the Cerulean… right?

Shit.

"I'm sorry," Cassie grits out, feeling like she has to say something or be trapped in another impasse.

"About what?"

"About… Almeida. And Tadesse. And… Kendrick."

Meron's shoulders tense at the name of her dead boyfriend. She puts down her tools with a soft clink.

"Thanks," Meron says, uncharacteristically soft.

"If there's anything I can do…" Cassie trails off, unsure of how to continue.

Meron rubs her shoulder, smearing grease on the already ruined tanktop, "Don't strain yourself trying to be nice. It's fucking painful just watching."

Cassie nods, mostly to herself, and almost walks away before Meron drops her head into her hands and asks in a voice that gives away just how tired she is, "If you ever… swing by Jamaica, can you swing by Kenny parents' place? I… don't make landfall their as much as I want to."

"Why?"

"I got pregnant a few years back. Had a daughter," Meron shrugs, trying so hard to sound blasé and failing miserably. "She lives with Kenny's parents. Just… I don't know. Take her out for ice cream or something."

Cassie remembers Pegasus saying something about Meron's 'screaming bastard' while he taunted them after Almeida and Tadesse's deaths. Her eyes widen when she realizes that Almeida had never mentioned a granddaughter in all her attempts to talk to Cassie's father.

Meron had made a hard choice, just like Almeida had the moment she put Cassie and her father on that beach all those years ago because she'd known that her daughter would have a better chance being happy away from the Cerulean than she would on it. And she did it knowing that she'd get no reaction from Almeida, no matter what she did. Meron did it because she loved this little girl so much and- Cassie's been so blind in her hatred of this place that she never even learned who Meron was as a person before shoving her away.

I'm an aunt, Cassie realizes. And for the first time in forever, she sees a sister in the place of a reminder of a past that never came to be.

Cassie swallows hard, pushing past everything that her parents had told her about not associating with the type of people on the Cerulean, and walks towards. She sits beside Meron, crossing her legs under her, and earns herself a raised eyebrow and a confused look for her actions.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Meron frowns.

"I screwed up," Cassie admits, picking up one of the wrenches and twirling it between her fingers. "I don't know how to fix it, or even if I can at this point. But… I want to try. Maybe not with Almeida or the Cerulean, but with you."

Meron looks her up and down before turning back to her engine and mumbling, "What if I don't want you to?"

"Then I'm gone. I won't contact you again and we can both move on from this," Cassie answers, giving Meron the out if she wants to take it.

Meron swallows hard, "That would be a lot easier, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah. It would."

They both glance at each other and, to Cassie's surprise, smirk.

"Pass me that," Meron orders, nodding to the wrench in Cassie's hand.

When she does, Cassie asks, "What are you fixing, anyway?"

"Cooling system's been on the fritz ever since that your red-haired friend hijacked it," Meron explains. And she keeps talking, describing the work that she'd need to do to get the Cerulean back up and running again, all the parts that she still needs to acquire. She mentions cousins that Cassie didn't know that they had, a whole family that she's spent years hiding from because she was too ashamed to face that side of her.

And Cassie talks back, telling Meron about her time with the Jackals, about Leo and Odion and how she misses her brothers. When Meron tells her about how she and her boyfriend met, Cassie briefly mentions a girlfriend that she'd had in high school, and how she'd thought that Seto Kaiba was cute in a nerdy kind of way.

It's not forgiveness. It's way too early for that. But it is something important, taking place nearly eight years late.

I let my prejudice run wild, Cassie thinks. But I've got to be better than that. And besides… we need the Cerulean. And it will be all the more powerful with Meron at its head than it was without her.

Cassie calls her father that night to tell him that Almeida is dead. He hangs up without saying a word.

Meron had yet to weep for her mother and father; Cassie hasn't cried about Almeida either and probably neither of them ever would. But Raymond Bleu, who'd once married the pirate captain out of Stockholm Syndrome-induced love, who'd once joined the Cerulean and fought and bled beside her, just might.

She doesn't know what to think about it. Cassie wonders if she ever will.

Hey guys!

I'd like to thank those who reviewed for the last chapter: Safiruu, Moonfirekitsune, Tz342, Dana Sto Helit, anita15, InsanityByDefinition, and dragomira. You guys are awesome!

So, a lot of things were revealed in this chapter. One: Keith is the son of Trista Latner and Blaine Garrish (aka Aloc Flint, the last leader of the Coalition of Sacred Brothers), not Gara's as Pegasus had believed. He had a twin brother at one point. She had him in order to use him in an experiment surrounding the Flamel Test.

I've been dropping hints about Keith's true parentage (at least, in regards to Latner) for a while now. The most obvious one was during Keith's prison break, where he has a vision of his past in the Bell Jar (located in the British Labs and shown to us in Order of the Phoenix) and describes the woman outside as his mother with 'dark hair and dark eyes' - a phrase that I've been using to indicate Latner.

I also know that the pre-history information that was shown in this chapter may be a bit confusing, as a lot of the background information has been dropped in bits and pieces over the course of the series. If you don't want to do a re-read, I have a timeline that I can send you. So if you want that, you can either leave a review or PM me.

Also, I've dropped one of my most blatant hints as to the true identity of the Department Head, Helena Hendrix, in this chapter, as well as the divine weapon that she possesses. Any guesses who she really is?

Until next time,

AlcatrazOutpatient