Hey everyone! I can't believe we're going through this story as quickly as we are. I really need to get cracking on the sequel to Nightingale Syndrome. I've written about twenty pages, but I haven't quite hit my stride yet. I'll work on that!

In the meantime, please enjoy this!

The ride to the nice hotel Bentley had booked in anticipation of a celebratory arrival was a quiet one.

Violence probably hadn't been the intention at work when Kaia lost it, but she and Sly had still tussled on the ground for about a minute anyway before Bentley and Murray had managed to break it up. Though, admittedly, it had been less a fight and more Kaia grabbing the front of Sly's shirt, shaking him, and screaming 'what the hell is wrong with you' and various permutations thereof directly into his face while Sly had strongly objected to having a loud hybrid sitting on his chest and yelling at him.

For all they hadn't been trying to hurt each other, Kaia's upper lip had been cut open, probably by one of her own teeth, Sly was favoring his left leg a bit, and they were both rumpled-looking and sporting patches of mud in their fur and on their clothes.

Tensions were high, even though there was utter silence. Murray drove, Kaia in the shotgun seat, curled in on herself and pressed against the door, arm crossed and knees tucked against her chest, radiating anger. Sly sat as far away from her as possible, at the back left of the van, leaning against the back doors and rubbing his fingers carefully over the new Thievius Raccoonus pages, trying to smooth them out without compromising the old paper or the faded ink. The marks looked like hieroglyphics, but there were translations in several languages underneath.

Murray had been upset by the fighting, so he was focusing very hard on the road as he drove and not moving his hands from the correct positions on the wheel by so much as a centimeter.

Bentley, though, he was thinking. Something was clearly going on with Sly. Something had been going on with Sly for a very long time. And he knew part of it, the whole thing with the Fiendish Five and Sly's dad and the Thievius Raccoonus, that was all a huge part of it.

But he was starting to think that that wasn't all of it. That there might be something else bothering Sly.

He didn't think it was exclusive to Kaia. Maybe her presence served as a catalyst for it, but it was a problem that was already there.

If he could just figure out what it was, maybe they could fix this. Because, right then, Kaia was furious and Sly was quiet, but he looked vaguely hurt and also kind of confused and those were emotions that he didn't think he'd ever associate with either of them.

It was time to stop ignoring the situation. That clearly hadn't worked. He had to do something, before Sly pissed off someone that could actually hurt him or took another risk that could kill him.

Bentley hadn't planned on Kaia when he'd booked the rooms, but managed to wheedle his way into getting two rooms that were next to each other. Kaia immediately took one key, bit off a brusque 'I'm rooming with Murray' and stormed into the nearest room, Murray following after her, clutching an armload of coloring books and crayons, like he hoped to apply those to the problem.

Sly didn't react at all, just mechanically opened up the door to their room and shuffled inside, his backpack hanging from the strap held loosely in his fingers. He looked tired.

Bentley closed the door behind them. He was between Sly and the exit. It was now or never.

"We need to talk."

Sly immediately bristled, shoulders coming up, head going down, fist clenching around the strap of his backpack and his cane. Then he let out a breath, not quite enthusiastic enough for a sigh, but still somehow dejected, and all the bluster ran out of him.

"What?"

His voice was flat, free of inflection, like he wasn't even asking a question. Like he already knew what was about to be said, even though Bentley himself was still figuring it out.

Bentley was a turtle of subtlety, quiet manipulation. Of code, not people. People were difficult, people were incomprehensible.

People needed to use their words.

"What is going on with you?" he asked after a few seconds of tense silence. "You've been scaring me for a while, Sly, but this is different. I don't know what's going on with you, so I don't have any idea how to help."

"I don't need your help," Sly flung his backpack onto the bed nearest the door, frustration in every muscle twitch. "If I needed help, I'd help myself. That's just how it's going to have to be, I get that."

What did that-?

Oh.

Oh.

Sly thought they were going to leave him. After this one mission, he thought they were going to leave.

Guilt and confusion and frustration and indignation warred under Bentley's skin. Why would Sly think that? Had he done anything that would give that impression? No, he was sure he hadn't. Did Sly not trust him and Murray? Did he just not believe in their years of brotherhood?

It was exasperating and infuriating and upsetting and Bentley... really didn't know what to do.

Getting angry at Sly wouldn't help. He'd be expecting that, would see it as a prelude to the inevitable severance of the ties between the gang. So no matter what choice words were building up inside Bentley's mind, about the sacrifices they'd all made just to get to this point and how he didn't understand why Sly couldn't believe in them, he couldn't say them.

But what would help? If the years between them and the last few months of teamwork hadn't convinced Sly, what would? How deeply entrenched was the idea of his inevitable abandonment?

It was... scary. To think that Sly might stay like this. Running headlong into danger without a second thought, just because he believed he'd be alone soon anyway, so what did it matter?

Sly had to believe in them. He needed to believe in them. He needed to see a future beyond gathering the lost pages of the Thievius Raccoonus.

But how? This was probably the most important conversation they would ever have and Bentley didn't have any words.

He didn't have time to think about it. The longer the silence stretched, the longer Sly would take it as an affirmation, the more he would shut down.

So Bentley just started talking.

"I know where my parents are." Well, that wasn't what he meant to say, but there was no hope that Sly hadn't heard it- the raccoon's head had snapped up so quickly it was amazing he hadn't injured himself and he was looking at Bentley with straight shock on his face. "I found out, after I left the orphanage."

"That's where you wer-" Sly paused, shook his head. "I thought you were left at the orphanage before you even hatched?"

"Me too," Bentley shrugged. "Apparently, that's not the way it happened. I had a family. I had siblings. Someone found me wandering around the swamp and assumed I'd wandered away from home and got lost, you know how bad my eyesight is. The orphanage was supposed to be temporary, until the police could find my family. But when no missing children reports for a young turtle came through..."

Sly straightened, his expression fluctuating between outrage and sadness, "They never came looking for you?"

"No. I was young enough that I forgot almost all of that and, when I first started asking questions, I was told that I was left behind as an egg. I guess they thought the idea that a scared mother couldn't raise me was kinder than the thought that I had a whole family that just didn't care enough to come looking. I found out the truth when I gathered all the records on myself that I could, once I left the orphanage. I was planning to purge myself from the system, in preparation for when you, me, and Murray started working together.

"So yes, that's where I was. I should have told you guys before I left, but Murray was doing so well in his delivery service and you'd just joined the basketball team, so I thought you two would be okay without me for a couple of weeks. I didn't realize I'd come back and find Murray fired and you on the verge of expulsion."

Sly grimaced, "But... you found them?"

"Yes. I found them." It had been a surprised that it was so easy to find them, but he had. "They lived less than fifty miles from the orphanage. I have two sisters and one brother, all older than me, and my parents are still married."

Shuffling in place, Sly looked like he was more than a little uncomfortable. "Did you talk to them?"

"No."

"Why not?"

That was an excellent question. It wasn't like Bentley hadn't spent and awful long time looking at the house, walking up, letting his finger hover over the doorbell, and then running away so he could have an asthma attack in peace. He was curious about these people. He wanted to know so much.

But, ultimately, "Because they didn't look for me. Maybe there's a good reason, maybe they regret it, but they didn't come looking." He sighed, looking up at Sly. "Because they abandoned me. And even if they welcomed me with open arms, even if they were sorry, there's no way I could really trust them, not like I trust you and Murray. You guys are my family. You will always be my family. And even if I get the courage someday to go talk to them, that isn't going to change.

"I don't know what's going to happen in the long run. Maybe we'll decide we want to do separate things eventually. I can't see that right now, but it could happen. There is something I want you to know, though." Swallowing, he made sure he had eye contact before he continued, "Even if you're running around the world with an entirely different gang in a decade, I'm still going to be going through your plans before you use them and watching out for you and calling you up to yell at you for shooting yourself out of canons, you reckless idiot."

Sly's snort of laughter seemed to catch in his throat, choking him as he slowly sank to the hotel carpet, like whatever had been holding him up had vanished and he just didn't have the strength to be upright anymore. Ducking his head, he pressed a shaking hand over his eyes.

Walking over to sit next to his friend, Bentley remained silent. He'd said his piece, now he just had to wait for Sly to process it and, hopefully, he'd come up with the right conclusion.

He resisted the urge to fidget as they sat in the quiet, the only real sound being Sly's labored breathing as he fought to bring himself under control.

Finally, the raccoon let out a long, loaded breath and said, "I'm sorry."

Bentley's sigh of relief felt like it cleared out all the air in his body. He relaxed against the bed at his back, "It's okay. Well, I forgive you, but you're going to need to talk to Kaia for her to say it's really okay. And you're going to need to stop with the reckless behavior before I stop with the worry."

Nodding, Sly let his hand slide down his face. His eyes were slightly red, "I don't know why I did that."

"Yes you do. You like having friends and you like those friends to be with you. And I don't think any of us consider her less than a friend at this point."

"Maybe," Sly rubbed his fingers along the length of his cane, reassuring himself that it was there. "She's really angry, though."

"I think she's more angry that you took the decision away from her than that you tried to make her stay in the first place."

"Do you think she would've stayed if I'd asked?"

"I don't know. You'll have to ask her."

I had never been angrier in my entire life.

Well, okay, anger wasn't really the primary emotion, but it was directly caused by the primary emotion, so there was a lot of it.

I didn't usually hold onto anger for very long, I tended to progress to sadness or confusion after the initial offense, something my friend, Millie, informed me was a character flaw. This time, however, this time I was seething.

After dumping my stuff on the bed farthest from the door, I immediately commandeered the bathroom for a very hot, angry shower. It's kind of hard to stay mad during a shower, though, especially when you can just feel the days of swamp gunk being washed out of your fur and the shampoo and soap provided by the hotel smells like oranges.

I was still kind of annoyed when I got out of the shower, wrapping up in a fluffy robe the hotel had provided and systematically toweling my hair dry, but mostly I was just tired. Having emotions was exhausting, especially when those emotions were anger and hurt. I'd hung onto them longer than usual, sure, but I seriously didn't have it in me to hold onto them for very long.

That didn't mean I forgave Sly. It just meant I wouldn't attack him on sight. Probably.

Murray looked up when I shuffled back into the room, wrapped my hair up in the towel and settling it on top of my head. He was laying on his front on the floor, a coloring book in front of him and a giant box of crayons standing open. He picked up the stack of coloring books at his elbow and offered them to me, "Do you want to color?"

I considered just going to bed for a moment, but I had to admit that spending a little time coloring sounded way more relaxing.

While I didn't answer aloud, I settled on the floor next to him, taking the pile of coloring books and shuffling through them until I found one for what looked like a cartoon about ninjas.

We colored in silence for a few minutes before Murray finally asked, "Kaia, do you... hate Sly?"

That caught me a little bit by surprise, but, when I looked up and saw the worry in Murray's eyes, I realized the question probably wasn't that odd for him. "No." I went back to my coloring book. "I'm mad at him, but I don't hate him."

"Good," Murray went back to his coloring book too.

"Why do you ask?"

"My mom told me," he said quietly, "that hating someone means that you won't ever forgive them, even if they say they're sorry. And that's why you shouldn't say you hate people."

I hummed, my lips twitching, "Your mom sounds like a smart lady."

"She totally was!"

There were a lot of flowers.

That was probably a side effect of, y'know, being in the tropics, but Sly kind of hated all the choices. How was he supposed to know which one was best when there were so many?

"How mad?"

Sly looked up in surprise at the sound of someone addressing him in English. The bright sunlight stabbed at his eyes, even through his sunglasses, but the tall fox standing next to him was hard to miss.

The fox wasn't dressed for a tropical vacation. He was wearing a button-down shirt and slacks, like he'd just come from a business meeting, which was more than a little weird considering the flower stand was in the resort area on the beach and the only other people around were either on vacation or employees of the hotels and resorts.

He was wearing a smug, amused smile and Sly took a moment to play back what he'd asked, then frowned when it still didn't make sense. "What?"

"You look mad at the flowers," the fox inclined his head toward the stand. "You're trying to apologize to someone aren't you? Hard to pick the right ones, isn't it?"

"How-?" Sly started to ask, then just sighed, because starting something over flowers really wasn't worth it. "Any suggestions?"

"It depends on who you're buying them for." The fox shrugged. "My fiancé likes violets. He'll usually forgive me if violets and food are involved. Also, I'm really good at looking miserable. That helps."

"I don't know what she likes," Sly admitted, looking back at the flowers and frowning. "I don't know a lot about her really."

"You were just hoping flowers would do the trick?"

"Most people like flowers."

"True," the fox canted his head forward and peered over the flowers on offer. "Huh, no gardenias. I was going to suggest that."

Sly frowned harder, "Why gardenias?"

"No reason." The fox considered a bouquet of violets, then took a step back from the stand. "Maybe you can think on what you do know about her and go from there. Flowers aren't a requirement."

When the fox turned to go, Sly was surprised. "Aren't you going to get flowers for your fiancé?"

"Nah. I mean, I'll need to get some when I get back, accidental emergency business trips have a tendency to piss off the love of my life. I'm a long way from home, though. If I got flowers now, they'd die before I got home to him. Besides, the flower stand near where we live takes pity on me. It's the miserable face." The fox waved over his shoulder, "Good luck!"

That was weird.

Returning his gaze to the explosion of colors and scents, Sly let out a sigh. Maybe flowers weren't the right route after all. But what else would Jinx want as a peace offering, besides maybe his head on a platter?

A car drove by, windows down, blaring music and he flinched at the racket.

The he paused, thought about it, and grinned.

That could work.

I was becoming a connoisseur of hotel rooms, by this point in my summer. This one was pretty nice. Comfy beds, room service (I was driving up that tab like nobody's business, yes I was), a view of the beach, and five hundred channels.

And I was so incredibly bored.

None of the stuff in my grab bag of assorted items could hold my attention for longer than a few minutes and I was seriously just about to start pacing to get rid of some of the pent-up energy.

Then there was a knock at the door.

I paused in my attempt at folding some of the hotel stationery into paper cranes and looked up. I hadn't ordered any food since lunch, so it wasn't room service. Murray was out with Bentley, enjoying the sun. They weren't going to go, but I'd practically kicked them out when I'd seen the collection of sand-castle gear Murray had brought along.

I didn't know where Sly had gotten to, but, when the knock came at the door a second time, I had a pretty good guess.

Sighing, I got to my feet and walked over to the door. A glance through the peephole revealed, as I'd suspected, Sly Cooper. A very... nervous looking Sly Cooper. Great. This conversation was going to be fun.

Letting out a breath, I unlocked and opened the door. I'd barely opened my mouth to ask what Sly wanted before he was pushing a box and a handful of cards into my hands.

Fumbling them, I looked down and saw the box for an iPod nano and five or six twenty-dollar iTunes gift cards.

"Sorry," Sly blurted out, looking like he was about to bolt.

Staring down at the items in my hands, I took a deep breath, keeping the smile off my face through sheer force of will, because this was important. "You know why I'm mad, though, right?"

"Yeah," Sly shifted his weight, his eyes darting back and forth like he wasn't sure where to look. "I should've asked and not just... yeah."

"Right." I waited a few more seconds, just to get some petty revenge, then pulled the door open a little wider with one foot. "Come on, we're going to argue about music now."

There was a moment where Sly hesitated, like he wasn't quite ready to believe the sudden reversal of my attitude towards him. That didn't last, though. After a few seconds, the nervous energy bled out of his shoulders and he offered a hesitant smiled.

Then he stepped inside.

"This is the most pathetic excuse for a summer vacation ever," I said aloud, a week later, while rubbing at my eyes, which did absolutely nothing to banish the lingering effects of the sedative from my system. Couldn't blame a gal for trying, though.

"What makes you think that?" Bentley asked from his desk, where he was typing away mysteries into his computer. Probably the secrets of life, or something. Sly and Murray were nowhere to be seen, so they were probably off doing something illegal.

I stretched my legs and arms out, trying to get some blood flowing. "I've done nothing but sit in various rooms for the last few weeks, staring at the walls and feeling the madness set in. If one of my teachers gets the bright idea to have us write papers over our summer vacations, I'm just going to have to compare and contrast hotel rooms and ways of getting around airport security."

"Alternatively," Bentley suggested, not even looking up from his computer, "you could describe how you travelled to many different countries while in the company of a gang of internationally wanted master thieves and witnessed the takedowns of, so far, three master criminals."

"I was really only there for Muggshot," I pointed out. "And even that took place about fifty feet over my head."

"Only you could make taking down master criminals seem like nothing to write home about."

As a fairly proud person, it's difficult to admit, but absolutely true that I screeched like a brake failure when Sly's voice came from right next to me.

This, of course, sent him into peals of laughter, especially when I gave Bentley a look of complete betrayal.

Bentley shrugged helplessly. "He wanted to try out his new technique."

"Is that new technique teleportation?" I asked, one hand clutching the front of my shirt and feeling my heart go crazy inside my chest.

The pages were in Sly's hand, but I couldn't make out what was written on them. The raccoon himself was just grinning, still pleased with his success in scaring a decade off my life. "It's invisibility."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Bentley? Can you invent a time machine, so I can go to the past and explain to Sly's ancestors how the laws of physics work?"

"While that is a noble use for a time machine, I'm afraid I simply don't have the time just now."

"Besides, I don't think physics have that much to do with it," Sly said, rubbing the corner of one of the pages between his fingers. "I think that's why Mz. Ruby had the pages, I think there's something paranormal involved."

"And you were able to do it even though you don't know for sure?"

"Yeah. I think it's because I'm holding the pages." Sly seemed to notice that he'd been fidgeting with the paper and smoothed out the corner carefully. "I don't want to have them with me all the time, in case they get damaged. Still, I think it'll be okay while I'm looking for the rest of the pages."

"Hopefully it'll keep you out of trouble," Bentley said ruefully, his typing coming to a halt. "And I just found the Interpol file on the Panda King."

"Good reading?" Sly's tone was light, but his expression had slammed shut.

"So far," Bentley said absently, scrolling down, eyes flicking back and forth at a reading speed that simply couldn't be possible. "Looks like he tried for an honest life's work and turned to crime when he was rejected because of his social status."

"We could avoid a lot of world problems if rich people would stop being jerks," I grumbled, leaning my head against the back of the couch and rubbing at my forehead with my fingertips.

"That is a drastic oversimplification, but, more or less, accurate."

"Do we have a better idea for his location that just 'China'?" I heard ask as he shifted on the seat.

"Indeed. Give me a few days to get travel plans ironed out and we'll be on our way."

Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! As always, feel free to drop by the blog and I'd love a review if you have the time. See you in a couple of weeks!