DISCLAIMER:

I do not own Sym-Bionic Titan. If I did, it wouldn't have been cancelled due to lack of merchandise.

Special thanks to: purpledragon6 and A Necessary Production, the ever-awesome fans.

Hello! So, I've been looking back at some of my old chapters, and I found some things that I had totally forgotten about. I'm kind of excited, because I'm thinking about expanding those areas in this chapter. Hey, I have an idea! Why don't you let me know how I did by REVIEWING? There are several of you who have started to follow the story and haven't written a single review…please, at least one would be fantastic, and it helps me to update faster. On a different note, I have discovered that, when reading these stories on my iPhone, the little squiggly things that I put (~~~) to indicate a change in time don't appear, so I'm changing it to this: -o-o-o- so that the letters will hopefully trigger the iPhone to show it in Google. Updating this in CCP again, and I even got ahead of Friday to write this. So easy… sorry, off topic. Enjoi, and REVIEW!

Chapter 9

He put his head in his hands and felt Amy sit down next to him on his hard mattress.

Love.

What is love, anyway? Wondered Lance. He realized he was trying to distract himself from talking to Amy, but right now his mind was in such turmoil that he couldn't really sort anything out. Love…I love Amy, but not it's not the same as how I feel when I'm around Ilana.

Is it physical? Emotional, mental? AmI mental? Lance knew the answer to that question. He groaned, but before he could delve deeper into his brain, Amy asked him a question.

"Oh, Lance, what am I going to do with you?" she asked quietly, a silent, almost sad smile in her voice.

He sighed. "I don't know", he admitted.

Amy shifted on the bed to look at him. "It seems like there are a whole lot of things you don't know tonight."

Lance shrugged.

"Well, what do you know?"

Lance looked up at her, his eyes full of confusion. Amy saw how lost he was, wandering in a whole new land, on new terrain that he had never treaded before. "Well", he croaked, utterly discouraged. "That's the question, now, isn't it?"

Amy sighed, and wrapped her arms around him. This surprised Lance, but Ilana had truly accustomed him to physical touch, because after a moment he relaxed and leaned into her. Neither one of them realized that Amy was taking over the role of their mother, some of the same characteristics leaking into the way she moved about every day. And not just to Lance, either. To the whole trio, Amy was becoming an increasingly stable environment. Within the short time she had been with them, they already viewed her as a safe haven, whether they realized it or not. Amy sighed again.

"Well, let's start from the beginning."

-o-o-o-

After getting two warm glasses of milk, some crackers, and some chocolate (they didn't want to fill up before dinner), they plopped down in the two purple beanie bag chairs across from each other in Amy's room. They had just decorated it two days ago, and rather like her it looked like a mix between Lance's and Ilana's rooms. Some warm colors, some dark colors, mostly military with a kind of girly style, and everything neat and organized. Octus had somehow distributed some weird kind of color-changing pixels in the room so they could either set it one color or she could make it so her walls changed with her mood. Octus had said he was feeling "extra-decorative" that day, but he had really just finished watching reruns of "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" with Kimmy.

They both broke off a bar of chocolate and swapped with each other. It was an old practice from when they were little, but they had both forgot that they had done it until now. Neither one of them could remember why they did it, but apparently it had survived for ten years in their subconscious.

Chocolate. Some milk. Silence.

Neither one of them knew what to do. Amy might have been starting to act like their mother, but this was a totally new realm to her. Lance was waiting for Amy to speak.

Five minutes passed. Amy chugged down the last of her milk, and put the empty glass on a coaster. She sighed, and Lance echoed her.

She finally worked up enough courage to start. She was more nervous here, in her own room, with her own brother, than she was in enemy territory on the front lines. This was a whole new kind of battle. When it was a war, you could fight, and it was mostly physical. The battle of emotions and mentality was a war where, no matter how much aid your allies could give you, in the end you had to fight it alone.

"When did it start?"

Lance sighed. So, they were doing this after all… "I don't know", he told her. "I'm not sure it ever started, or that it even appeared. It just got to the point where I realized we were different , and when I tried to look back and find the source, all I could find were those little moments when I saw her smiling, and how every time her smile…" Lance paused, looking for the right words.

"Sparked something?" Amy suggested.

Lance grimaced. "Well, I wouldn't get that mushy, but sure."

He suddenly realized something. Motioning for Amy to be quiet, he wrote her a note that said, "Is this room secure? Octus?"

Amy nodded. She had taken care of that the moment she had walked in the room. She would be alerted if the wall was breached or if another way around it was used. Lance relaxed.

They resumed their (somewhat painful) quest. "So, it was her smile?" Amy could understand that. Even in her, Ilana's smile made her feel happy. She could only imagine what it would do to a boy.

"Well, it wasn't just her smile. Though, I will admit, that's a weapon that she doesn't know is in her arsenal." Amy mentally rolled her eyes. Lance was comparing love to war. Then again, she supposed, they really aren't all that different…

"It was the other things, too. The way she would do the little things- how I would come home from the grocery store, and she'd be hanging up the clothes on the clothesline even though we have a dryer, just so that they would 'smell like sunshine'. How I would come down from doing working out, and find that she baked a cake and put a smiley face on it with frosting. How she become so worried about a B on a test, just because it wasn't an A, and resolved to study even harder next time. How she always tried to make everything better for everyone, and never cared about herself. And her laugh…" Lance found himself in space.

Neither Amy nor Lance could believe he was being this open and detailed, even with her. It was as if he had been possessed by one of those teenage boys from a boy band that always writes love songs. Lance had been about to add to the list how Ilana's eyes sparkled when she got excited, but that was crossing the line, even in the mood he was in now.

Lance looked at Amy with a kind of desperate determination. "I don't love her, though. Maybe I like her, but I'm not in love with her."

Amy laughed in disbelief. "Look, Lance, I know this is hard for you. I know that falling in love with her could jeopardize her safety, or whatever friendship may have formed between you in the last year or so. But when it comes to love, being anything but realistic will just crush the both of you. I've seen how you are around her. You protect her not only as a guardian, but really as a lover. When she talks, you can't take your eyes off of her, however discreet you attempt to be. Whenever she is in any kind of danger at all, even if it's just a wet floor, you go into overdrive-protective-mode. When you don't know where she is, you freak, and even if you do know where she is, if she's not by your side you're always wondering about her. You aren't ever really completely there for any of us except Ilana; you're in space when she's not there, and you aren't focused on anything but her when she is. I've found you smiling more, and it's in response to her. She's changed you, and you've changed for her. All of those things you just said? How it's the little things? Love is a puzzle, Lance, made up of puzzle pieces- and all of those little actions that she does that make you smile are the pieces falling into place. You find that it's becoming harder and harder to resist her when she asks you to do something, and harder not to become happy when you're around her. You want to make her happy. And, above all, you want to be happy…with her."

Lance gaped at her in disbelief at what she had just said. Where had that come from?

"Lance", Amy told him gently. "You're in love with her."

And he knew it was true. No matter how hard he tried to deny it, the inevitable evidence was staring him in the face constantly, and that evidence was a beautiful princess with blonde hair and eyes that had gradually turned green over their stay on Earth. The evidence was in Amy, who had just described perfectly what he felt every day.

Lance groaned. "Oh, man. You haven't even been here for a week. Is it really that obvious?" Lance looked as if he were to die of embarrassment. What if Ilana knew? He was going to have a heart attack. He started pacing the room.

"No, it's really not", Amy reassured him. "Look. I'm your sister, and despite how long we may have been separated, I always have and always will know you better than anyone else in the world will. As for Ilana, it's really quite amazing how oblivious she is. You may be hiding it fairly well, but I think she should have figured it out by now. She seems to be denying it just as you have, but not so much out of fear as out of disbelief. To be a princess, to be taught her whole life the 'right' way to go about dating, thinking that she'll end up with a nice prince from another country to unite their kingdoms, or for whatever other political reason- only to find something developing with a soldier? And not just any soldier, but you? No offense", she added quickly, seeing her brother's expression. "You're just not exactly the kind of person everyone must have been telling her she'd marry. It must seem highly impossible to her. But what she doesn't realize is that impossible is good. Impossible means that it just might work."

"So, no one knows." Lance sat back down in his chair.

Amy hesitated. Lance noticed, and a dread seeped back into him. "Who?" he demanded. "Is it Octus?" If Octus knew…Lance couldn't continue the thought.

"Well, no", Amy admitted. "It's only one person, too, but they know it's there and they know it's real. And before you get upset", she added quickly, "I did not tell them. Nor have I told anyone, and I am not planning to."

Lance was getting impatient. "Who?!"

"Well, you're not going to believe this, nor want this…" catching Lance's murderous glance, she quit stalling. "Kimmy", she sighed.

Lance screamed into her pillow. Loudly. Good thing it's a dense pillow, thought Amy.

Once he was done, he looked at her with a horrified expression. "How?" He asked.

"Well, I honestly don't know. I saw her glancing at you as we were talking today during lunch, and I saw something odd in her expression that I recognized. Something must have happened before I got here that showed her." Lance thought about the broccoli-cheese-soup dinner last Saturday night. "She realizes that you two are falling for each other, or that you already have." Amy paused, and a slight smirk appeared on her face. "I think she was worrying about incest…"

Lance could die. His face was both comical and pitiable. Their cover was as siblings, but if Kimmy was worried about that problem… he must have really been coming across as perverted, or at least way too strong.

"No, it's not like that", Amy said, reading his face. "She's a cheerleader. She's popular. Nothing against cheerleaders or popular people, but the way they live is different from ours- they're exposed to more… things." Amy hesitated. "I'm sure you've noticed how …close…she seems to be getting with Octus."

Lance flashed back again to the night Amy had crashed down, how just before at the door Newton and Kimmy…how they had…how Newton had… in spite of himself, Lance felt a small smile appear on his lips.

"But we're diverging. This is about the two of you, not the two of them."

Lance groaned. "I honestly think that's all I've got tonight", he told her.

Amy stared him down. "Fine", she sighed. "We'll continue this some other time." Lance groaned again. "Just one more question, then I'll go finish up dinner." (She had taken the role of chef when she was home- she was even better than Octus.)

"How are you going to deal with this?"

Lance looked at her blankly.

"Good", she said with a smile as she walked out to take off the stew.

SOOOO SORRY! I can't believe this took two weeks! I was going to add more, but it would've taken longer. I have a huge project that I should have been working on instead of this… good thing for you readers that I'm a procrastinator. I believe this is one of my better ones, at least that one paragraph from Amy. Ugh, I'm so tired…but you don't want to hear about my problems- instead, review! Have a good day all