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Chapter Ten

Over the Edge


"Instead of swinging back and forth between individual points of truth, each piece we learn should build upon another to bring us closer to the full truth." –Amy Layne Litzelman


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Odin and Lucrezia lead their followers on a dubious adventure; Hilde copes... less than marvelously. At the same time, Relena is kicking ass and taking names (politely), Jake falls deeper into depression, and the intrigue thickens. Marlé is having the time of her life, and Odin discovers a few more gaps in his education.

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Special thanks to my beta, The Big Fisch, both for keeping me motivated and trudging through this all before it was even vaguely organized into a timeline; the storyline on this one was pretty chaotic until the other day. Also a big thanks to violetXice, who has kept me focused on this over the past few weeks, because it probably wouldn't be done yet otherwise.

Enjoy, and seriously, feedback is, like, ambrosia.


World-building note:

I mentioned at some point in a previous author's note that based on the age range we see in the work force, I believe there's likely multiple tracks of speed that schooling can take in this universe, and that's why fifteen-year-olds like Relena and them can be in schools that say, focus completely on politics, or Zechs and Noin (at nineteen years old) show no signs of current schooling at all – Noin's even something of a professor. If they're as talented with the mobile suits as they are, that implies a strong base in physics at the least, which in turn requires a strong base in math… In the end, I'm just going to conclude that there's a school track that has you finishing high school level stuff before age fourteen.

Relena's school in canon, therefore, was more of a political science college, and Noin's students were graduating their form of Associate's degree. Zechs went into the work force fully after obtaining his "Associate" and went forward based on talent/work experience. And Noin probably went forward in more school to some degree before becoming the "professor" she seems to be in early canon. It obviously doesn't translate directly, but in terms of prestige and practical know-how, that's the basis. Additionally, if you don't want to make your kid decide what they want to do with their lives at the tender age of thirteen, I imagine a more normal track is plenty common all the same; the schools the gundam pilots went into and out of throughout the canon could have been either of the above; I doubt they gave a damn, since the only one who ever did a formal version of school was Wufei. Overall, it's probably more common for the higher-class kids to be in the faster track because their parents are more likely to try plotting out their careers before they turn six.


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July 15th 198 – Wednesday – Munich, Germany – Sarracenia

"Book?"

"Yes, Lin, book," Mu replied sarcastically without looking up from the pages. "How very observant of you."

Lincoln rolled his eyes and flopped onto the couch next to the woman, shifting forward to try to read the title. "Are you sure it's not a weapon of mass destruction? Or," he paused for dramatic license, "a sandwich in disguise?"

She lowered the paperback then to give him a wry look. "Mostly."

"You should check that out."

"If I catch you trying to eat my stuff, you die, Lin."

"Why would I try to eat a book?" he demanded in mock offense.

The American woman groaned, dropping the thing in her lap. "Okay, fine, what do you want?"

Quickly, he snatched it up so he could read the back. "I wanted to know what it was about. You seemed focused enough on it." And it actually did sound pretty interesting, from the summary. Some sort of epic adventure fantasy, looked like. "Huh."

"If I start packing around torrid romance novels, will you still do this?" Mu asked in an amused tone.

"Depends on how hot the chick is," he returned flippantly, turning the novel over to consider the cover. "So is this any good, or are you still waiting for it to pick up?"

He hadn't gone overly out of his way to get close to Mu, really. She hadn't seemed all that interested, hadn't struck out at him somehow, and the friendship didn't more or less slide into place on its own like it did with most the rest of the guard. It wasn't that he didn't like her; it just… didn't really happen. Sometimes, things just panned out that way. Normally, he'd have left it at that.

But Relena was… concerned.

So… he needed to start building a premise for snooping into her life and, in particular, possessions.

Mu snatched the book back and swatted him with it.

It might be harder than he expected, especially if the princess' suspicions did have any grounds.

"No, seriously, is it any good?" She was leaning back again to read and generally ignore him, and he was intent on making an opening to be a friend before he left her to it. He needed her attention without getting so obnoxious that she spurned him…

This would be so much easier if it was Mai. But then, Mai wasn't suspected of any duplicity… and was already his friend, without any going out of his way. Mai had been through Jake's rather harrowing selection process.

Mu Ackroyd hadn't. Knowing that alone made him curious enough to investigate, and then Lena had told him to look for anything off.

To delve for anything that seemed even slightly off with prejudice.

And to keep it completely under their favorite colonel's nose.

In other words? Total challenge of a lifetime. Best option? Win the woman's friendship for real and just be a really nosy friend. He was awful at minding his own business anyway; the best cover wasn't a cover at all, right?

He needed to keep his mind off that shit with Mitchell anyhow.

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Vulkanus, Near L3

"I agree that the situation is unfortunate," Treize soothed. "But it's hardly frantic. I have been aware of the possibility for… quite some time. Evidence has suggested such a shift for months now."

In a way, it was actually something of a relief. Váli hadn't been in any sort of real contact for nearly half a year, and it had been uncertain before that. This, frankly, resolved any doubts.

"This could be a good thing," he continued. "Try to consider the future possibilities." There were surprisingly few poor ones, really. "I respect that this may be difficult, but take a few steps back to remove yourself from the equation, and I suspect it will all resolve favorably with no further tampering." Glancing toward the timer he had started for this conversation, he grimaced. "I need to go. Have a little faith, friend."

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July 20th 198 – Monday – Newport, Sanc – Palace Grounds

"I should have guessed you had an ulterior motive." Despite the words, Noin sounded terribly amused.

"You knew I was looking for a way to tinker without an audience," Heero pointed out amiably.

"But I can't pass off the sinking impression that you tampered with the sprinkler system just so that the garden would need attention in the first place."

The gundam pilot shook his head. "It was purely opportunistic."

"And it gave you my permission to avoid your budding fan club."

He laughed. "Even you weren't going to watch my attempt at gardening."

Her general made an amused noise. "You're a colony boy; I figured the attempt would range somewhere between frustrating and hysterically sad."

For a guy Duo had always described as a socially stunted psychopath who somehow really meant well in the end, Heero never seemed to be alone for Hilde to approach and talk to. The fact that Noin seemed to have a sweet spot for him didn't make it any easier.

"Hn. I'm not actually sure I'm from the colonies."

He didn't act anything like she'd been told.

"The Earthborn don't intuitively understand zero-g."

"And the spaceborn don't think of the ocean like water. Marlé's stunned by the concept of a beach, and she's always lived on strong biome colonies."

That… was probably a good argument. Earthborn who had lived in landlocked areas most of their lives often marveled at the ocean, but the things that caused that wonder in them – the pure, impossible, largely inaccessible expanse – made the spaceborn write it off as a smaller version of space, and therefore uninteresting. Most Earthborn didn't pick up that it could be hard to think of a transition point between land and sea as any less dangerous than spaceport docks were. The fact that they were entirely open and uncontrolled was… unnerving.

It was silly, sure, but… that didn't make it not one of those things.

"You still hadn't ever planted anything in your life."

"The mechanics weren't that hard to sort out."

"Why exactly do we need three people to dig up some rosebush he planted a data chip under?" Hilde finally demanded.

Heero tossed her a confused look. "We're breaking into a palace."

"An abandoned palace," Hilde pointed out.

"An abandoned palace which stands as a memorial to the dictator's treasured childhood," Noin added dryly. "Which could be watched by any number of electronic means to maintain its sanctity. We're pretty sure we're blocking any signals to and from the area, but incase we missed a frequency or some other method of surveillance, it would be wise to have both warning before it finishes arriving, and back-up if necessary." Glancing around, she nodded. "As a matter of fact, this makes a good first vantage point. Stay here, keep a sharp eye, and check in regularly." Focusing back on Heero as she continued walking, she noted, "I imagine I'm more familiar with the grounds than you; I know a route that should give us more cover."

Hilde crossed her arms and considered for a moment before sighing and flicking her earpiece off manual mode, turning to consider the landscape. This was a stupid sort of tangle… Duo had said he wanted her to tell any other pilots about him if she met them, but not to let anyone else find out.

Adam hadn't really been Trowa, so she'd decided to not do that unless she got to talk to Duo again and he gave her the green light. But for all that it was usually rants or complaints, Duo had always talked the most about Heero instead of any of the pilots, even though he'd really spent more time with and probably got on better with Quatre. In some twisted fashion, she suspected they might have been best friends through the war; they like… clicked, or something. He would want Heero to know… Hell, she was pretty sure he'd told her she could tell the other pilots where he was just so he could give her a way to tell Heero if he did the impossible of surviving again, without admitting he was singling the guy out. He could be so stupid insecure about weird shit, sometimes… but that was just Duo.

At any rate, she needed to try tackling this a different way. It was getting more and more obvious that passive wasn't going to work.

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Budapest, Hungary

"Alright, thank-you so much!" Priya chirped as she hung up, before sighing and dropping back onto the bed she was seated on with an undignified flop. Another dead end. The trail, really, was starting to look frighteningly cold. She wasn't going to give up until she had followed every vaguely possible lead, but… She was pretty sure he'd either stopped using traceable accounts entirely – going the cash and anonymity route – or picked up a different identity. Either was… entirely possible.

If her next few ideas all failed, she was going to have to look into tracking whoever he had met up with. A total of four guests had been listed as staying in the Skyview's Stogovo suite, but only two names: Katriel Dimardin and Odin Lowe. There were a couple of possible reasons the others hadn't been listed, but… without further evidence, it was just too varied to draw conclusions from. Associates that weren't the contact point, minors, hookers, random homeless person they filled in to lead a false trail…

If you got creative, almost anything was possible.

People tended to get creative at the least expected times; better to just preempt it.

It didn't make her not want to scream about the difficulty of it all, just the same.

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July 21st 198 – Tuesday – Munich, Germany – Sarracenia

"Well I don't know about that, but if he's really gone and done it, then how should she take it?"

"Whether or not he's guilty has nothing to do with it! There's reputation to consider, and a show must be made of it if she intends to keep any respect whatsoever."

"Point, but there's cost, and in the end of the day…"

Relena tuned the young noblewomen out; she really didn't care about who was sleeping with who and what it meant on the social scene, just now. She had orders to sign off, inventories to consider, politicians to maneuver, atmospheres to twist, and at least five less inches of breathing room than she would like to do it all in.

So naturally, Dorothy and Olivia were gossiping and painting their nails in her office. She was starting to wonder if it might have been better if they remained at each other's throats.

Daniella bustled into the room a moment later, a notebook in hand. "Okay, I've got it sorted now. Lord Kalvalage can-"

Relena waved her to come closer and show her as the younger girl continued explaining, and let out something of a sigh of relief at the organized structure of what was apparently a hand drawn agenda. Jake had announced that his previous methods – fine tip colored pens and all – was going to have to be tossed due to the complicated nature of having suddenly gained her position as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He'd been keeping two separate books for a while, and frankly, it was a wonder that nothing crucial had been missed in the back and forth. And he was willing to admit – in the face of spending far too much time juggling little black books – that they probably needed an actual personal assistant at this point.

Enter the Fonne sisters, again. She hadn't gotten a terribly clear impression of which of the two was going to fulfill the role of maid versus assistant, as they kept tag-teaming any effort they put in, but if one or both of them had made sense of the mess that her life was escalating into, she had no complaints. Delegation. It wasn't a skill she had needed overly much before, but if she and Jake didn't both figure it out thoroughly and quickly, something or other was bound to go terribly wrong.

She looked over the set-up in detail as Daniella regaled her with facts, and after a minute or two told her to both get a more long-term scratch version, and put it into a digital media. "Tell Hayden to get you a tablet, whatever you think will work best for this, one with phone capabilities," she added as she sent the girl off. "If he needs more parameters, consult the colonel." He and Hayden were the ones designing the new network, though on different levels; they'd know far better than her.

"Sit," Olivia announced, suddenly in front of her, guiding her by the shoulders to one of her couches and taking a nail file from the coffee table.

"I do not have time for this," Relena didn't quite bark, making to stand.

Dorothy gently pushed her back down as Olivia took both her hands to consider. "Perspective is important. Dictate, if you must; I will write."

"I need overseers I can trust for two dozen tasks," she snapped, narrowing her eyes at the blonde, choosing to ignore the redhead starting to shape her nails. "People I can trust to be competent, and not weave around me for personal profit."

"Do you have any notes on the locals of your project sites?"

"On the desk," she admitted. "I haven't gone through them yet, but that won't-"

"The nobles will be offended if they're excluded," Olivia interrupted.

"Yes," Relena agreed.

"Check and balance, then," the redhead announced. "Against a new class of favorites we need to determine. Judicious action at the first need for action against them, fair rewards elsewise."

Relena pursed her lips, then nodded. "The top tier of each area needs to be in Romefeller hands, if I'm to win them over." Trust… trust was the problem with delegation, and that was impossible, but there were ways around it…

"Consider making selections through the non-inheriting lines first," Olivia added. "French manicure?"

Relena blinked, then focused back on her hands briefly. "Yes."

"Those are the ones with the most to gain from loyalty to you. A number of them would love nothing more than to strike out independently and make their own mark on the age."

"So you mean they're in your class," Dorothy pointed out not quite acidly.

"Therefore, I know them intimately," Olivia agreed smoothly. "Successes and failures, wants and dreams, status within their hierarchies, and consequently, exactly what pressure they could put on who to get what we want." She raised her elegantly shaped brows at the Heiress. "I'll leave you to wrangle the old crowd, while I cultivate the new." Focusing back on the princess' nails, she asked, "Tell me the required skill sets for each position."

"List the positions first," Dorothy argued, sitting down on Relena's other side with a notebook and pen so she would be able to see whatever was written. "So we don't risk a mix and match."

"Position and description of each," Olivia filled in. "Right, of course. We can determine skill sets from that."

...This probably counted as delegation too, on some level.

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July 22nd 198 – Wednesday – Navahrudak, Belarus

Definitely classrooms… Lockers? We totally should have had lockers. Never mind that her textbooks had been on a digital pad and she wouldn't have had much to put in one. Plenty of kids were milling in and out of that building over there, though… Focusing on looking like she knew where she was going and was disinterested in talking to anybody, Marlé shifted the bag on her back, fiddled with her headphones, and headed that way.

Odin had made it clear that if someone figured out she wasn't really a registered student, she'd have to get registered for however long that took in the admin office, and go through a whole day of ninth grade as a consequence. This was a test… and she had no desire to waste a whole day in public school. She'd heard Meagan brag to someone once that Marie's ACET prep school was at the same level in seventh grade as most schools were in eleventh, and she really didn't want to find out if her nanny had been exaggerating or telling the truth. Especially since she was pretty sure they were living on L3-16512 in the first place because Opal Thrush Preparatory Academy was there.

And this was her first real go at anything like spy stuff. If she messed up, with a stupid school – especially with Odin's stories of what he'd pulled off at high-end academies like hers – she would die of embarrassment. The whole point of sending her in was so they didn't have to wait until night to get the computer chip Odin had stashed here three years ago.

Working her way through the crowd, purposefully looking all focused on her cell phone, she eventually got inside, and stopped from letting out a sigh.

Cafeteria.

Still, if she was a student here she'd have known it was the cafeteria, so she made her way over to a vending machine no one was too focused on – it only had water – and reached into her pocket for some coins. She needed a reason to have come in… and it wasn't like she wouldn't drink the water.

"So I was like, 'Oh. My. God!' And he totally didn't even care, I swear, he was just standing there all-"

"That's kinda hot, though. I mean, it's all-"

"I can't believe I lost them! My dad's going to kill me!"

"Chill, man, like anyone cares if you got a B."

"Charlotte scored eight points higher, though!"

They were all… really loud. She wasn't sure if that was because they were a bunch of high schoolers or if she'd just gotten too used to Odin, though. It was this jumbled wall of suffocating noise that was bothering her more than shooting without earplugs did.

"So fine, man, you have no idea-"

"This smells wrong. Taste it and tell me if it's okay."

"You do it, I'm not getting sick because you're a-"

Someone let out a high-pitched squeal that made her ears ring. It was a happy sort of squeal, but…

Amos puts up with this five days a week how?

Collecting her water, she shouldered her way back out of the group – geeze, people in a normal crowd moved when you were making an effort to go by – and back into the courtyard area. That really only left one other building… and unfortunately it was the biggest. Internally, she sighed.

A buzzer went off, and different kids started heading to this or that part of the campus with more purpose.

Sighing aloud, she started jogging to the only building that could be the gymnasium, now. The longer this took, the more likely she was to get caught out and get stuck here. Plenty of other people were heading the same way, so she stayed with them without really being with them, or looking apart… this place was big enough that they wouldn't notice that she was new. Well, that or they just didn't pay attention to stuff.

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"Why are we doing this again?"

"Because it gives her something to do," Noin pointed out all too cheerfully.

"She's going to get caught, so why bother?"

"…Have you ever been to an intercity school like this?"

"No."

Xu snickered.

The General's voice was wry. "It's not exactly a military base; she's not going to get caught out unless she paints herself pink and tries to dance around the hallways in front of a teacher."

"…Is pink your favorite color?"

This time, Hilde snickered.

"I walked into that one, didn't I? No, it's really not. I appreciate the pony, but no more pink things, please."

"Aa. In any case, though, noise might be a factor. I'm not sure if it'll echo."

"Noise?"

"Well, I'm not worried about her gymnastic ability."

"…Noin, please tell me he's making a joke about having put it in a gymnasium."

"…What?"

"Don't get your hopes up."

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She felt like an idiot when she got inside and remembered that however big it was, it was still a gym, and almost all of the space was wide open and not someplace she could get lost in trying to figure out Odin's directions. The bleachers were the mechanized kind that folded flat against the wall, though, and all compressed right now… and the highest part was over two meters higher than she'd been figuring.

The chip she was after was in a patched hole he'd made behind the top tier, second section from the left. She really hoped the understructure was expansive, so she'd have decent footholds, but she had the sinking feeling it wasn't.

…She knew she'd known better, but seriously, Odin never did anything by halves.

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Amsterdam, Netherlands – New Renew

Sometimes, Melissa wondered idly as she considered how skillfully her husband was managing to juggle a toddler while rewiring the innards of a freezer, I really want to know what I did in a past life to warrant such good luck. The bragging rights must really be something, if the reward's this good. They weren't planning on kids for a long while, but seriously… watching him be all domestic made her want to crow victoriously at any nearby woman, never mind that there was no contest taking place.

Grinning and shaking her head, she slid back under the truck she was working on. Daddy was asleep upstairs, and Duo was more than game to attend to her father's needs if it came to it, but… Frankly, every moment she could get with him had become precious, after the bombing. He was recovering fine and all, but…

Melissa hadn't wanted so badly to maim somebody since she'd killed Cal. Bombing a civilian building? Who got off on that? She was lucky she still had a father; plenty of other people, she was sure, didn't anymore.

It was a good thing she'd mostly stockpiled the money he'd sent them over the past couple years; his medical bill was steep, and that was even with him living in the Den and them handling any of the day to day, just taking him into the hospital for checks every four days. It was going to be months before he was okay… she was just glad he was conscious, if not always all there. With Shov, wondering if he was even going to wake up had been the worst part.

Speaking of Shov, she'd believed in the princess before the riot, but after the woman had taken it upon herself to save a member of their family no matter the cost in return for Katrien helping to save her bodyguard… Relena Darlian-Peacecraft could declare herself Empress of California tomorrow and Liss would yell at anyone who laughed. That woman was going to fix the mess the world had gotten up to, and that was that. You had to have something to believe in, to be willing to fight for if it came down to the wire, and the princess had firmly nestled her way into the love of every single one of the Devils with Shov's life.

…Of course, it was also a good thing she wasn't likely to go declaring herself something insane. That would get… well, it wouldn't end well.

"Mama's home!" Karina sang as she trudged into the garage and made a beeline for her daughter.

"You're not my mother," Duo protested dryly. Melissa grinned, listening to Renee squeal delightedly as Rina presumably took her from her uncle and bounced her up to face level to rub noses with her, like she always did.

Rina blithely ignored the comment, continuing to talk in the overly sweet voice she used when her attention was on her daughter and everyone else was a distraction she only vaguely noticed. "Do you need me to take care of anything while I'm here?" She made a few kissy noises. "I brought some food from the pub. Yeah?" She giggled, her voice going even more cutesy. "Yes I did! Yes, yes! But you can't have any of it. Nope!"

The baby continued to make happy noises anyway. For all that she'd made quick work of the art of crawling and was starting to even run a few steps, she didn't know any words yet, from what they could tell.

"Go see if Will wants any," Duo suggested.

"Alright! Let's go, huh baby? Uncle Will's probably hungry, and-"

Honestly, at a certain point, Melissa just had to tune out the babble. She was happy that Karina was enjoying being a mom, and constantly talking to the child was a good way to go about encouraging her language skills, but she didn't need to listen to Karina dictate every step they took up the stairs in exciting detail.

"How's that coming?" Duo asked after a moment.

"Alright." She debated for a moment. "Give me another half hour and I think I'll be good."

"Cool. I'm going to walk Rina home in a few, but then I'm going out for a while."

She frowned, then slid back out from under the engine to meet his eyes and determine how serious this was. Not too bad, she figured from his expression, but not innocent either. "Anything I can help with?"

He bit his lip for a moment, but shook his head. "You could, but I've got this, for now." Meeting her eyes, he added, "Later this week, though… maybe."

Reconnaissance, then, she decided, nodding to show him she understood. The city was doing a damn fine job of going back to the pits, and he'd made it his personal mission to prevent that as much as was possible. The corruption within the militia hadn't gotten any worse since the uptake of spring, but it hadn't actually gotten any better than it had been in November either. The newness and civic pride had officially worn off by then, replaced by power and privilege. They still did more than the cops had been for years, but… Amsterdam was honestly run almost entirely by gang influence again.

That wasn't entirely a bad thing, really, with how the power shifts had happened. Most of the old gangs, like the Devils, were more interested in keeping things peaceable. The newer ones, formed mostly out of the new refugees, didn't understand the prosperity of the previous summer well enough to give a damn, which was potentially a problem, but they were still small, which meant they couldn't do much. So for now it was okay, but it was definitely a balance.

And it was a balance that no one but them seemed to be trying to maintain. Which meant it needed maintenance. And she need only look at how filthy her hands were right now to remind herself how messy 'maintenance' of any kind could get. It was only a matter of time before something would require a more… forceful approach.

"Just keep me in the loop," she returned agreeably. "Better over-prepped than under, all that."

"Always."

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July 24th 198 – Friday – Bialowieza Forest, Poland

Marlé couldn't seem to decide if she was awed or freaked out. "In there?"

Odin supposed he could understand why. This part of the forest was swamp-like and had something of a foreboding air about it, and honestly, he was relatively sure that anything related to the word "swamp" didn't give a good impression. She'd been disbelieving of the height of the single Christmas tree up in L5, and this was an overgrown, primeval forest; from what he remembered, some of the trees further in would require five adults spreading their arms as far as possible to encircle the trunk. "Terrain varies," he noted to her pointedly. "You have cities down already."

Hilde made an irritated noise, stepping forward. "Don't push the kid if she's spooked, geeze. I'll come with you."

"I'm not scared!" Marlé protested. "I've just never been anywhere like this before!"

Hilde shrugged, beginning to enter the tree line proper. "It's fine. Really, not a big deal."

Odin frowned. He glanced back at Lucrezia, who was pursing her lips, before focusing back on Marlé with what he hoped was a meaningful look. She scowled and followed the dark-haired woman. "I'm not losing out just because I haven't done it before. There's got to be a first time for everything."

…He was almost tempted to let Hilde keep going on blindly and not let them know they were heading in the wrong direction. With how wild this old forest was, though, it struck him as a bad idea. Not everything that lived here was small. Shaking his head, he jogged to catch up while Lucrezia chuckled softly.

Hilde, meanwhile, seemed offended that Marlé had risen to the challenge for some reason. Narrowing her eyes at him, she gestured deeper into the area. "Are you sure you can find anything in this shit? I can't even tell where we're going to walk."

"The ground, generally," he noted, looking around to settle his bearings. It had been a while, but… Mm.

"Where?" Hilde demanded.

…That was a rhetorical question, right? He wasn't sure he wanted to answer even if it wasn't. Instead, he just started walking.

She'd either figure it out, or not.

After a moment, Marlé made a happy sort of noise. "I can't see my feet! Awesome!"

"That's not a good thing," Hilde retorted.

He glanced down and supposed he could understand the argument on some level; the greenery was dense but still flexible, so he couldn't see his lower calf or beyond. Was that what she meant?

"You really don't get over stuff, do you?" Marlé asked suddenly. "That, like… explains a lot."

"Are you seriously lecturing me?"

"Just… let it go, huh? Ease off. Enjoy the… trees."

A splash; one of them had stepped into marshier ground.

"And the tree water," Marlé added.

"Swamp," Odin corrected.

"Right, enjoy the swamp water. You don't see this stuff every day, yeah?" A few moments later, the younger girl had caught up to him and hopped onto a fallen tree to walk along. "Okay, that could've gone way better," she muttered for his ears alone.

"The word swamp has poor connotations," he admitted.

She smiled up at the canopy above her. "It's actually pretty cool, though. Weird, but cool. How would you climb these things?"

"When we get to my spot, there should be a few examples to try on."

"No hints?"

"Like anything else, but scratchy." He considered. "And sticky."

"Huh."

He looked back over his shoulder to his other charge. "Are you okay?"

Hilde gave him a rather irritated look, but just sighed. "Yeah, just… waterlogged. How far is it?"

"Just up over there," he assured her, focusing back on Marlé as a different thought occurred to him. "Check for inhabitants before you climb."

"Like… birds?"

"And cats."

"Cats?" This from Hilde.

"Fairly big cats," he explained, holding out his arms to show the rough size.

"…Did you read this somewhere?" There was a new edge to Hilde's tone.

"No."

"What do they look like?" Marlé asked happily, examining their surroundings more closely.

"Yellow-brown, black spots, long ears." He frowned. "White… goatee thing."

"Neat."

"You just admitted there are large, wild cats living in the trees, and you invited her to climb them?" the brunette demanded scathingly.

He frowned, glancing back at her. "She's making enough noise that she's not going to surprise one."

"So it'll be ready?"

Finally he stopped and turned to face her. "Have you ever spent time in the wilderness?" At the short twitch of her head to indicate no, he sighed. "Animals don't like people. They don't come near you unless they can't avoid it. Cats only live in trees in jungles, and are nocturnal everywhere." He shook his head and turned back around; he could see the thicket he'd buried the chip near. "And they take a bullet about as well as anything else."

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Bern, Switzerland

"This will cripple my business," Platt argued incredulously, waving about the newly minted financial policy.

Relena offered him a sweet smile – the one that reminded people of the fact that she was barely eighteen – and Mailin forced herself to stay stoic. She was relatively sure she was out of the CEO's immediate line of sight, but it was a good practice to keep all the same. "Cripple?" she asked, all bright-eyed concern. "How might it accomplish that, sir?"

Platt smiled back, seeming to think he could charm the young woman. "It's a matter of cost and effect, Minister. If you push these 'guidelines' of yours through, then I'm afraid I would be unable to maintain my people's salaries, or I would have to resort to subpar supplies-"

"Oh, that reminds me, I'd almost forgotten!" Relena interrupted cheerfully. "Your corporation's audit begins tomorrow. They're necessary for everyone, now, and since I was already over here, the timing seemed to be of greater convenience for all involved. You see, I've come across so much unscrupulous trade in just the short time since my promotion that I feel it's necessary for those who have held to their morals to be rewarded."

He seemed to stutter at that. "Rewarded?"

"With unparalleled renown for gentlemen such as yourselves, along with government resources to account for your new investments," she explained easily.

Platt frowned. "My apologies if I'm being forward, Lady Peacecraft, but exactly where would such resources be coming from? The Regime is still young, and-"

"It's Darlian-Peacecraft, Mr. Platt," Relena corrected firmly. "But as for the assets I mentioned, why, naturally any additional resources will be secured from those businesses who will be forcibly disbanded for fraud, embezzlement, false advertising, and other offenses of power. All goods and skilled labor will be appropriately consolidated, and if expansion becomes a viable option for those still trading, a stipend will be provided to help stimulate growth." She frowned as if thinking. "Though I do wonder how subpar supplies might be an issue in the business of banking." The bright smile came back. "No matter, though, I'm sure it will all become clear once I've read through your annual reports." Tossing her hair slightly, the princess added, "In any case, the policy has already been through the Circle of Ministers my brother left in power during his absence, and passed into legislature two days ago. I'm afraid there's nothing malleable or transient about this new bill."

The man seemed at a loss for words, and knowing what she did, Mai couldn't really blame him. Relena had resolved to go after the more corrupt international organizations first, and had had little trouble in convincing her fellow Ministers that she had her brother's full approval. Her history of successes thus far in the field of economics helped too, but a casual offer to discuss the matter with Milliardo Peacecraft in a video conference over dinner went a long way towards turning the lackeys of the more capricious Peacecraft to the younger's will.

The fact that there was nothing quite like good will between the prince and princess was very far from common knowledge, and she had decided that she had no issues with manipulating that perception to her own benefit. As she had put it 'they'll believe it no matter what I do, in any case.'

The innocent until proven ruthless tactic that Relena had picked up for her more recent dealings with Romefeller family members was also priceless.

"So you see," Relena continued in a more neutral tone, "I have no plans to 'cripple' anyone. Either you will be exalted, or you will face absolute destruction." Her smile was meaningful. "And I am not in the habit of making idle threats, sir. Therefore, I will leave you to your affairs for now, and tomorrow morning, my men and accountants will begin their work. I suggest you tie up any loose ends, lest your friends find any of your indiscretions… pervasive. I am not so heartless as to disregard negotiations, but not everyone cares to be so generous." Her smile, then was, bright and startlingly genuine. "Do we understand each other?"

"…Of course. Yes, of course, Lady P- Lady Darlian-Peacecraft."

"Excellent. I'm sure we'll have occasion to speak again later."

oOo


oOo

Space – Between L1 and L4

There was one thing, really, that was singularly wrong with warfare in space.

If you weren't near the main traffic lines, you were invisible.

It made the area poor for both offense and defense. You couldn't reliably see troops coming, you couldn't reliably know what you were walking into… The only ones who reaped any benefits out of the natural backdrop were those employing guerilla tactics. After all, there was a reason the colonies had decided to use gundams as their absolute tactic.

In space, it wasn't that strange of an idea that five incredibly superior mobile suits could conquer. And they had, at least initially, done a decent job of proving the tactic on Earth.

"Shut it down," Vitorie Winner ordered after a moment, standing at the heart of the circuitry of the way station. When the markers on the main trade routes went dark, commerce would rely on the old star mapping methods and be fine, if hassled. The Regime troops tended to rely on an autopilot more often than not, though, and might not realize that they were spinning off on decoys right away... and once they did work it out, they probably wouldn't be sure which way was what for a spell.

If they were lucky, a few platoons would be outright lost. At a minimum, it would take them a lot longer to navigate to the next colony cluster than it should.

Turning on her flashlight as the lights died, she whistled sharply. "Let's get moving, people. We have another three stations before we're done with this cycle."

oOo


oOo

July 26th 198 – Sunday – Frankfurt, Germany

Hilde pulled off her helmet and gratefully gulped in fresh air, ignoring how her sweaty bangs were sticking to her forehead. That had been… a little close. Fun as hell, but still just too damn narrow of a margin for comfort. Vaguely, she noticed that Heero was sliding effortlessly from his place behind her, but the fact that he obviously wasn't as stiff as she felt – Bum leg my ass– was only a distant irritation. He'd just been a passenger to have to account for. Sure, he'd handled some of their pursuers with some well-placed shots, but that didn't make her feel like she'd gone through any less of a wringer with her life as her sole prize. She didn't even care if they'd gotten the information they'd needed, at least not yet. I'm never stealing from a mafia again.

Okay, so she knew that was a lie. She'd totally do it again. But for the next five minutes, at least, she seriously meant it.

She looked down at the bike admiringly. It was probably the nicest motorcycle she'd ever stolen – not from the mafia, just something that had been unbelievably handy. Damn fine performance. It was too bad she couldn't keep it, both because she had no way to transport it other than driving it, and because it, you know, belonged to somebody. He'd get it back through the local police enforcement, militia if nothing else, if she left it here. I'll make an anonymous call once I've put some distance down, just incase, she decided. The owner had to be pretty cool, considering what a beautiful machine it was.

"That was nicely done," Heero muttered as he started wiping the bike down.

Hilde frowned, suspicion spiking as she twisted to look over her shoulder at him. "What?"

Those very deep blue eyes met hers, his expression becoming put upon. Patronizing. "That was some good driving. Thank-you." He gestured towards her ass. "Move."

She rolled her eyes. Oh my fucking God, what, did playing backseat cramp his style that bad or something? I did good enough. I got us back out of there, didn't I? He didn't have to shoot that many people…

Or had he? She hadn't really been paying attention at the time.

Swinging off the bike and trying to not show how much her damn thighs ached, she couldn't help but snark, "But of course, I'm sure you could have done better."

Those eyes flicked back towards hers, incredulous. "Have you ever seen me ride?"

She frowned, realizing she hadn't. "No."

"Have you ever even heard of me driving a motorcycle?"

"No."

"Then how do you even know if I can?"

She gaped at him. Her heart might even have stuttered. "You can't?"

And then, he just looked annoyed. "The point is that you don't know."

Asshole. He'd just been winding her up. Again. "So you're just fucking with me, even though I was right." He didn't bother answering, just focusing on cleaning off anywhere they might have left prints or DNA, which was answer enough. Couldn't even muster a comeback. "Oh, so now you're just going to ignore me, because I won?" she demanded.

"Hn." He didn't look up as he moved to the handlebars. "Has anyone ever told you that you have an abrasive personality?"

She snorted. "Seriously?" That, coming from him? Unbelievable.

"Or that you're highly insecure?"

She scowled; in all honesty, people'd always been quick to tell her she was an arrogant bitch, so yeah, not really. "No."

"That's one thing solved, then."

"Excuse me?!" She couldn't help falling into an aggressive stance; it was instinct.

The fact that she did it, though, meant that that was right when Noin and the others pulled up with the car. "Are you two fighting?" the general asked in a bored tone.

"No!" Hilde snapped, forcing her muscles to relax even as she could feel a blush creeping up her face.

Marlé threw open the back door before Noin had come all the way to a stop and scooted back to the middle of the back seat, smiling excitedly up at her. As if that makes being crammed in the back seat like a little kid any better. She didn't bother smiling back as she ducked in and slammed the door shut. This was not her fucking day. Or month, while she was at it.

"Apparently," Heero muttered in that irritating monotone as he moved for the car, "Telling her she drives as well as Trowa is an insult."

…What?

"You know, I'm not sure that it's too great of a rubric," Noin drawled. "You guys trashed that bike."

He started to snicker as he slid into the passenger seat. "But it made such an impressive launch pad."

Noin snorted as she put the car back in gear. "I'm not saying it didn't."

"…It was decidedly unusable afterwards."

"Exactly."

"…It didn't crash until after we were off it."

"Always a good thing."

So was he bullshitting me or not? Hilde debated as she pulled her seatbelt across her chest. Maybe he actually meant it… It wasn't as if there was anyone else there to save face for or-

Fuck!

She'd been alone with Heero Yuy, actually talking with him, and she hadn't told him about Duo. Just three damn words, 'Duo's in Amsterdam', and she would have been good. No, just two, 'Duo's alive'.

…Fuck. What a fucking day.

oOo


oOo

July 29th 198 – Wednesday – L3

This is always how it starts, Cathy thought jadedly as she fought to not glower at the soldiers. Strangers, then uniforms, then guns and bombs… next thing you know, it's another revolution. As far as she could tell, nothing had ever changed for all of it, but try telling them that. Didn't matter if you'd seen at least three of their "revolutions" fail – people kept trying.

She could never figure out anymore if the hot feeling in her chest over that was just anger, or part pride too. After Trowa… well, that got a lot harder to tell apart. He was one of those people who refused to get all beaten down about it, no matter what happened to him. You just couldn't help but like him a little for that, after everything he'd been through.

Even if it was a little pride, though, that didn't make her not angry about it. It didn't matter if she'd managed to get Trowa, little Triton, back. Her parents were still dead because of war, and Trowa was hardly the man Triton would have become if they hadn't lost him in that air raid. Him not remembering it all just made it worse; she got to imagine what had happened to him to turn him into that heartless clown she'd met in 195.

"Sorry for the intrusion, Miss," a soldier offered politely as she glared at him. "We'll be along soon enough."

"After you take our supplies, I bet," she returned sourly. "You make a handsome highway robber at least, I'll give you that."

"Catherine!" hissed the manager, aghast.

He usually was, but really, he knew better than expect her to behave for these people. He'd have hid her away in the caravan if he'd thought it would do any real damage – it wasn't like she'd ever not been mouthy.

"We'll pay for the supplies," the soldier argued earnestly. "We're not robbing anyone."

"Oh yeah?" She looked him up and down, worrying at the inside of her mouth, trying to decide if he was half as honest as he looked. The sweet-looking ones were always the most trouble: just look at Trowa and his friends.

This one was more brawn, though – she hadn't been making it up about the handsome.

She let a smirk cross her mouth, leaning forward with her hands on her hips, giving him a good look down the neck of her tank top. A little feminine persuasion usually greased the gears a bit. "How much?"

oOo


oOo

July 30th 198 – Thursday – Dublin, Ireland – Trinity College Library

"I don't know, I guess the past just strikes me as really important. It makes us who we are, right? Everybody that you really knew over the years… they're important."

"I can see that," Odin agreed quietly, moving casually into the entrance lobby of the old building. His earpiece was obvious enough that it wouldn't matter if someone noticed him talking to himself; they would assume it was for his phone, not a radio.

"You don't agree?"

If she sounded a little less petulant, he wouldn't have had any problems talking the theory over. He agreed with the basics, but hadn't bothered to really explore it yet – it was a valid topic for conversation. Over the past few weeks, however, Hilde seemed to be almost going out of her way to irritate him. She'd try to get him to talk, then was annoyed no matter what he said. She challenged anything one of them said, with the same end results. Incessantly. And at this point, he was positive that she was actively following him.

The fact that Lucrezia and Xutao didn't seem to think her behavior unusual was… unhelpful. She evidently wanted to prove some point or other, but so long as he couldn't break his proximity to her, the urge to tell her to either say her piece in its entirety or shut up was steadily rising. The only thing actually holding him back at this point was the sure fact that such a statement would have no noticeable effect whatsoever. Duo hadn't ever taken well to being told to be quiet, and he dreaded that giving her the same directive would have a similar effect: of increasing the chatter in both mass and volume.

And this woman was starting to make him consider how similar she might be to Duo – Duo on amphetamines. The mood swings matched eerily well. He was willing to admit he didn't have a very broad social education, but he also didn't think he was overreaching with the comparison.

…He never wanted to see Duo on any breed of upper drug. He was also fairly sure he never wanted to see Hilde ever again after this trip was done with.

And yet he was fairly sure, again, that it was somehow going to happen anyway, and he should focus on acclimating. Duo's habits hadn't irritated him at all by the time they were both on Peacemillion… Maybe it would just… Like Relena.

No, Relena had changed over the course of that year, and continued on to become more like Lucrezia from what he could tell from the news feeds.

He was beginning to see a depressing trend in the women he came across, suggesting that this was a hormonal phase that could last several years before leveling back into sanity, and all indicators suggested Marlé was about to enter it. He was, at this point, desperately hoping he had too small of a sample size for the conclusion to be accurate. Marlé had been back to herself since she met Lucrezia…

This was something he might have asked Leia about, if Marlé hadn't closed that line of communication for the time being. He had promised he wouldn't lie to the woman when it regarded her daughter's welfare, and he had been serious about avoiding the thunderstorm that would erupt over the girl's introduction to his 'friends'. Unfortunately, he wouldn't say that Marlé's tactic – waiting to tell her until it was patently obvious no harm had come of the association – was a poor choice. In any case, if she was making her own decisions, he was going to let her make them, and she'd figure out how she handled repercussions through her own experiences.

"Heero?"

That was something else he was trying to work out. He honestly didn't care what she called him, Heero worked fine, but he was starting to think – from the others' reactions to her use of it – that it was meant to be another barb.

"Past experience builds us into who we are, yes, agreed," he returned before she could say something else again. "Relevancy?" He understood it was necessary for Hilde to be watching the surveillance net instead of Lucrezia because the younger woman needed to learn how to do it with some of her mentor's fluency while under her watch, but being used as an obstacle course was beginning to wear on him.

"Are you kidding me? What the hell do you mean, relevancy?"

He stopped walking, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The urge to just turn the radio off was becoming all too tempting.

Evidently, she caught the body language from one of the cameras. "What?" The tone was rather daring.

Clenching his jaw, he smoothly moved forward again. There were fewer students than he remembered from three years ago, but still more than enough to serve as camouflage. In his opinion, the habitability of Ireland was entirely questionable, considering the weather, but if they'd held out this long, he figured they deserved the place. Being stubborn about something could go a lot further for a cause than most people seemed to think. Training, he reminded himself. It's training. Just think of it as building tolerance.

In which case, he should probably have the damn conversation. "Explain how this discussion is relevant to the current situation," he suggested.

"You're blending in, right? You're dressed like these people, you're walking like them, and if one of them tried to talk to you, you'd respond the right way. From what I know, you didn't bother with that practically at all three years ago, so why are you now? What happened to change what you can do, or at least what you will do?"

He considered that, but he'd already figured that one out, at least, last year. "Duo proved that this way, on average, works better." He'd only bothered to start using it because he didn't always have the physical capacity to handle the side effects of a job more sloppily done on the social end, though. There had stopped being any room for discrepancies he could just brute force his way through if it came down to it; the value of Duo's ability to pass more or less unremarked – despite his very distinct braid – had become far more important after he started to rebuild his life.

Then there had been Dasha… No, Moira had been the first to pull at his interest for no practical reason; Dasha had been a venture into entirely new territory and only stood out in his mind for that reason. Then finding Marlé and the development of their relationship, the mutual give and take… That had been purely enjoyable, fulfilling, on a level deeper than he had experienced since Odin's death. Moira had been the first to start edging into that arena, but Marlé had made it… permanent. And he was far more happy, content, than he remembered being even as a young child, because of it.

"I wish I'd recorded that statement for posterity," Hilde remarked. "I'm not sure Duo will believe you actually said that."

Duo had hardly been the start of it, though, just a more recent example. His father had worked as an assassin by the same tactics; it was counter-intuitive to see beyond an average, easygoing exterior, and he had always known that… he just hadn't really cared until recently. It had become important, though, and Duo's example had not only been more recent, but a more age-appropriate template.

"Anyway, chain of events, right? If you hadn't run into OZ literally as you were coming in atmo at the start of Operation Meteor, then you probably wouldn't have run into Relena outside of school, and Duo said you two first met because you crash-landed in the ocean off Japan and he found your suit."

…If Zechs hadn't shown up when he did to fight, that day, he would have shot down the shuttle that was in his flight path, and Relena had been on it. Honestly, that was probably the reason Zechs had been in the area; he'd always had a thing about protecting her from a far removed position. The impact of Relena's death on the timeline would have been dramatic in a likely negative way, but… That really didn't relate too much back to Duo. Considering what they were doing, if they hadn't come across each other when they did, it wouldn't have taken long before they met under different circumstances.

He smirked. Actually, considering our first encounter, it's almost certain that we would have met under far better circumstances.

So, a poor example, but the idea was intriguing enough to play with. If he hadn't sustained such a severe injury during Libra's fall, he likely would not have had to adapt his tactics in such severe ways. He would never have met the Sronas, and likely would never have caught Xutao's trail and mistaken it for Wufei's. It had been pure chance – being in exactly the right place at the right time – that had led him to Mariemaia, and even if that had still lined up for other reasons… He might not have noticed her, or stopped to help her, if he was as focused as he had been during the war.

Therefore, his injury had been crucial to his current position and mental state.

But it also was far from the whole of it. When he had decided his current perspective was no longer going to be effective, he had fallen back on his father's old advice to follow his emotions, and let that guide him where it may. If that hadn't been prominent in his mind…

No, not relevant. Every time in his life that he had been faced with situations he was unsure of how to approach, he had followed that ideal. He had agreed to being made a Gundam pilot because it had felt like a direction he could focus, in the sudden blank landscape life had become with Odin's death. He had found peace in himself by offering himself up for judgment to all the families of the pacifists he had killed at New Edwards. Doing that had just felt like the right thing to do – the only way to move on without the regret that had plunged Odin into depression and eaten him alive to the point that he had tried to abandon his son on L3-X18999. He had spoken so often of regret alongside the directive to follow his heart that the two had to be connected.

So much of his relationship with Marlé was modeled after his childhood… to the point that at this point in his life, it was tempting to say that almost everything about him was due to his father's influence. Then again, he imagined that was the usual way of it; parents were there to shape and form you from infancy. Well, parents or whoever fills in the role emotionally.

He took a moment to consider the book stacks on the second floor, pulling a folded piece of paper from his pocket to consult incase he had an unseen audience. The area he was entering was almost never consulted; it would be unusual for someone to either browse or know exactly how to navigate to find the reference he needed. Making an obvious show of reading signs and referencing the paper in hand, he continued more slowly. The concept of family, however natural it was to pick up, was… intricately bizarre. Solving its inner workings had seemed possible at one point, but he was beginning to suspect that no one had a comprehensive answer.

~~oOo~~

"I need to be back with my family again," Quatre announced, slumping in his chair and staring out the window. "I've been away for so long, I'm not really sure who I am anymore."

"So that's where you're headed next?" Odin asked as he picked up a piece of chicken.

His friend was quiet for a moment, but then shook his head. "I have my men to look after, and I need to revive my old network to do what they need of me. That comes first."

"What do you need?" It sounded specific.

"Forgery supplies," Quatre admitted in a bland tone, waving one hand in a dismissive gesture. "After everything in Cambyses, they need a way to move around legitimately." He focused back on Odin, gaze sharpening. "Would you be willing to handle the digital end of things? I've never been as good at that."

Odin grinned as the idea of a trade occurred to him. "If you teach Marlé," he negotiated. His 'sister' had told him she was interested in learning before, but he lacked the training for physical papers – at least, the high quality kinds.

"That shouldn't be a problem." Quatre relaxed further back into his chair and closed his eyes. "I need to go to space to start, but I'll need to come back to deliver them in any case."

Odin thought briefly about offering to pick up that step, then dismissed it; Quatre wanted to handle it personally, or he would have asked. "Marlé could come to you in space, if that's easier."

He opened his eyes and considered for a long moment, then shook his head. "I won't have to do anything too creative to get back through customs when I come back to Earth if I only have the supplies, compared to the finished product." He sighed. "It's just as well. I want to see my sisters, but I'm not actually comfortable with the idea either." Letting out a broken chuckle, he added, "So this gives me the opportunity to run a little longer."

Odin frowned. "You want to see them, but you're running from them."

Quatre laughed. "I'm running from reality," he clarified. "When I face it, I'm going to have to acknowledge what I've done, who I've become… and how far short I fall of their expectations." He met Odin's eyes. "It's something of a double-edged blade. What they think will either lift me up or tear me to tatters, and I haven't decided if I'm ready to hand myself over for judgment just yet. I have too much that relies on me right now to risk letting justice take its due course."

~~oOo~~

He could understand the weight of that responsibility. He had taken advantage of his 'death' after he self-destructed Wing to try and balance the scales; no one took up their concerns with the dead. Giving himself over to the families of the pacifists had seemed not only logical, but innately right on a level he hadn't felt for years. But… Quatre cared for the opinion of his family and those he was close to first. Marlé, similarly, couldn't care less what anyone outside her inner circle thought. And Odin… Odin couldn't have cared less about anyone but him, as far as he could remember. His father would not have cared, if he had seen the girl Marlé had been about to freeze on some anonymous street.

If Odin was still alive, would I have gone to him, instead of the families of the people I killed?

It was hard to say. If Odin hadn't died, then he probably would never have been recruited into Operation Meteor. He might never have tried to pilot MS at all. He…

He didn't know enough about his father to make an educated guess; he didn't even know how old the man had been. Would he have retired, by now? It had never been about money… Would they have joined the war effort in some way, then or now? Odin had always insisted that he wasn't actually his father… but he had never offered any sort of explanation either. Despite the degree of influence the man had had on him, on what choices he made and who he had become because of those decisions… He knew almost nothing about the man.

That felt… wrong.

Turning down an aisle he knew no cameras covered, he grabbed one of the built-in ladders and pulled it along after him. The lack of knowledge had never bothered him before, but now that he'd acknowledged it… Hn.

"Are you just ignoring me now?"

…She'd just kept on talking, hadn't she? He smirked as he found the right place and started to climb the ladder. Oops. "There's something to be said for being concise," he muttered into his earpiece, reaching for the book he wanted. "Have you gotten to the point yet?"

She spluttered, and he took a moment to be amused at his choice. The tomes surrounding him all concerned law, but in such a historic sense as to be useless. However, they hadn't been historic when written, and it was painstakingly legal in structure, as well as entirely obsolete. If anyone wanted to look up the details of British law concerning textile exports before the After Colony calendar, they were going to look at the digital renditions that were easier to search.

He continued to tune Hilde out as he flipped the book open and turned to around the four hundred page mark, where three years ago he had used a razor to slice a centimeter deep square into the center of the pages to house a computer chip. Quickly pocketing his prize, he closed the three-inch thick text and slid it back between its brothers on the shelf.

Time to move on.

oOo


oOo

Amsterdam, Netherlands – New Renew

"I'm not sure if that sounds awesome or awful," Amos muttered as he wandered into the room.

The volume was up loud enough that Duo could hear a feminine sort of giggle and agreement. "Well, it's… Europe, but… …trees! …and then…"

Because getting every fifth word of a conversation was just that thrilling. Sighing rather pointedly, he tried to focus on the paperwork in front of him. How did Melissa talked me into doing this part, again? Spoken language was one thing, but writing…

Shit, he was pretty sure he'd slipped into German again. Or was that how the Dutch spelled it? Wasn't it supposed to have those little… circle things above the o? Why is it that I can read this so much easier than write it?

Oh yeah, because G never cared about that. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to own up to Melissa that he hadn't learned how to read, let alone write until he was eight or so, and that had only been in English. He'd started picking up bits of Japanese on his own before Father Maxwell took him in, but that was just because the engineers at the soldier's base he stole food from when he was younger had been from L1.

…Was that h supposed to look sorta Russian, or did I just get distracted again? He didn't think it was actually an h, the longer he looked at it… but he couldn't remember what it was called either, just how to pronounce it.

"That sounds crazy."

"I know! But… fun."

He gripped the side of his head with one hand, staring at the page, seriously debating asking Amos if it was pure gibberish. Maybe he can write it… Melissa had asked him to do this because she was busy, what with having two jobs, and she hadn't thought it was a big deal. He really didn't want it to be a big deal either.

"Well, no… but isn't that a little dangerous?"

Was that a pouting noise? Duo was pretty sure that was a pouting noise. Focus, he told himself irritably, staring back at the paper and trying to convince himself it made sense. …Shit.

"Who? Uh… okay. Bye." He looked up in time to see the boy pull the phone from his ear and stare at it, looking dismayed. "Who's Cory?" he muttered irritably.

Duo thought about asking for a moment, before deciding it was a bad idea. The younger teenager shook his head and wandered back out of the room as randomly as he'd come in, muttering to himself.

Duo sighed again, and started gathering his shit up. Will. I'll ask Will for help, and if the wording's off because he's high, at least it'll be legible for Liss to fix. God help him, but he'd get this some semblance of done if it killed him.

oOo


oOo

Munich, Germany – Sarracenia

"Hey, Jack."

His father hesitated on the other end of the line before asking, "Are you okay?"

Jake snorted, but couldn't really blame the man for the sentiment. "You're probably the last person I'd call if I wasn't, you know."

"Well, yeah, but… Ah, hell. Hey, Jake. What have you been up to? You never call."

It was enough of a try for normalcy that he felt no hostility in reciprocating. "I've been really busy, honestly," he admitted, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, willing himself to relax. "I'm cramming so much politicking and statistics into my head it's coming out my ears. We went and saw Des and Cassie a couple of weeks back, though."

Jack, if his tone was anything to go by, began to relax too. "Yeah, he mentioned. He'd been waiting and waiting for you to come by. Didn't want me to say anything."

Jake blew out a breath, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "I probably would have blown up at you if you had. I've…" He sighed, and tried again. "I think when I'm upset about something, part of the way I cope is distorting my time concepts. I just… stop letting myself think about it, and the next thing I know, it's been a year since I talked to somebody." He ran his tongue over his teeth, then added, "I really only meant to put you off until I got my head straight, after everything that happened with Libra."

"…I'm not sure anybody can ever get their head straight again after something like Libra," Jack muttered after a moment.

Jake made a face. "Yeah… I've been figuring that out. Anyway, I just realized, after seeing Des, that I've been letting the world pass me by while I focused on my personal shit, and… I'm not okay with that. I might have been when I was younger, but now…" He shook his head. "There's just too much out there that I'm connected to for that to work anymore."

After running back into Adelia and Daniella had caused him to look into other old acquaintances, he hadn't been able to ignore just how off his pacing seemed to be, these days. Maybe it was just the times, and his distance in peacetime had been perfectly acceptable, but after what Zechs had done, it was unlikely that that level of peace would return until he was old enough to have grandchildren. If then.

"That's good. I mean, that you noticed, and…"

"Yeah," he agreed before the man could fumble his words more. "I guess it is."

Jack hesitated another long moment before apparently deciding to plunge on ahead. "That was always something I was worried about, you know? You never really seemed to attach."

"You mean I never really attached to the things you arbitrarily decided I ought to," Jake amended, not really feeling the heat in the words. He was too damn worn out to be upset; that was actually a large part of how he'd managed to work himself up to an apology in the first place.

"I was worried," Jack returned with exaggerated slowness, "Because Odin was never interested in making any roots. Those five years after your mother died, I don't think you lived in one place for more than two weeks."

"And I still don't see why that particular fact is supposed to be relevant to my mental state," the colonel pointed out tiredly. "Seriously, Jack, it's been over a decade now. I'm pretty sure if I had some deep insecurity about where I sleep, it would have shown up by now. If anything, I'm more confident about my surroundings than anyone I've ever come across. Do we have to do this right now?" He slumped in his seat and propped his feet up on the coffee table. "He raised Mom too, didn't he? He may have been unorthodox, but I think if he was as bad a parent as you make him out to be, you never would've had us."

This conversation was remarkably easier to have over the phone. He didn't have to restrain himself from backhanding the man for spouting bullshit like it was gospel truth while they were in separate countries, and that in turn made it a lot easier to stay calm.

Contrary to what his father thought, he did understand that some aspects of his childhood had been very fucked up. However, as he was now the sole survivor of said childhood, he hardly saw any point in incriminating the dead. His uncle had loved him absolutely, and he had never doubted that the man had done the best he could imagine for his boys. It really didn't have to be any more complicated than that.

"Your mother wasn't capable of accurately handling anti-aircraft artillery at any point in her life, let alone before her eighth birthday," Jack argued. "But no, we don't have to get into it. I'm getting to be a tired old man who's sick of the fact that his kid can't stand him. I'm trying to work on changing that. So really… How are you holding up? I never really thought you might get into politics, even after you crawled into bed with Khushrenada."

You have no idea, old man, Jake thought idly as he tried to compose a response that wasn't a knee-jerk reaction to the insinuations, either crude – and entirely unintended, he was sure – or just insulting. Jack Miller, as a proud citizen of L1, had never liked that his son had joined OZ. He'd been entirely convinced, for years, that Jake had only done it to piss him off.

That had been a fantastic perk, but really? It had just given him access to the resources he needed. That had changed over the years, and he'd accordingly kept what things he liked – the people – and moved on.

Jack had made the mistake at that point of declaring he was glad Jake was done with his rebellious teenager stage. He'd quickly dissuaded him of that fact – putting him in the hospital, if memory served – and proceeded disappear for a good eighteen months.

…He wasn't about to say that his subpar familial relations were any less than equally his fault. He probably ought to claim the lion share of the blame, if he were honest, but he wasn't in the mood, and something had to be said for the fact that despite repeat performances, Jack never backed down or tried different tactics. It said something for sheer obstinacy that for the past fifteen years, he had refused to even meet his son halfway on any of their disputes, despite the consequences.

If Jake had been less capable of just leaving him in the dust for long periods of time, the tactic might actually have worked. For all that he could be tenacious when he wanted to, Jake was more inclined to ditch a poor showing and move on than whittle away at it like a dog with a bone.

It was a quality he had come to reluctantly admire in the man, if he were honest. He was more a fan of having a finger in every pot, personally, but he could understand the merits of other approaches. Bullheadedness tended to rub him the wrong way, but… Eh.

"You do realize I got into politics when I was thirteen?" he asked after a long moment, "and that it had nothing to do with Treize? I've just never been flashy about it."

"Oh?" He sounded genuinely intrigued. Almost… happy, oddly.

"It's easier to get shit done when the opposition doesn't know there's a target to shoot, let alone where it's at." Heero Yuy – the original, the politician, not the gundam pilot – had been a prime example of why being open with your enemies was a bad idea. Then a few years later, King Zachary Peacecraft had done an excellent job in cementing the reality of that folly.

Thank God Relena had grown into some common sense, instead of just running with what she'd inherited.

"Sounds interesting," Jack offered.

"Yeah, but the first rule of politics is that you don't kiss and tell." Unless it brings entirely unprecedented advantage, of course. "So the main issues I've been having lately are a mix of walking myself into being a personal assistant, which I've finally solved by foisting it onto someone else, and getting everyone I recruited trained up to acceptable levels. My men have potential, and some of them are doing great, but if I hadn't developed ethics somewhere along the way, I'd be tempted to regularly beat one of them into submission. Well, that and the fact that it might destroy his spirit, which is counterproductive. I'm half considering letting him go, but he knows too much about our main premises for me to feel comfortable with that." He shook his head, considering the puzzle of Carlisle. "So I'm being forced to come up with a more creative behavioral modification regimen."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Finally, "You consider regular beatings a behavioral modification therapy."

"It's a time-proven technique," Jake pointed out. "And it works relatively well for certain situations." Like with Zechs. Though realistically, he probably shouldn't have been able to get away with that… But for some reason OZ officers dismissed stupid teenage boy fights as normal, and Zechs had been too proud to admit how bad it got… and Lu hadn't stepped in and demanded he drop it until after the asshole started flinching when Jake got in his personal space.

He stretched out across his couch, trying to relax a little as he admitted, "I have morals and stuff now that have led me to believe in actual responsibility for my subordinates, though, so it's kinda non-optional."

"…But it is okay for other people?"

He sighed. "For the record, you don't really fit into any of my categories for how I treat people."

"I don't?"

Hm, he actually was in an honest mood. That was surprising. "It's the main reason you get under my skin so bad," he admitted. "Also, I don't have a different mindset for when I'm… soldiering, for lack of a better word. Acceptable degrees of violence is organized right next to who to be how friendly with; almost everyone has the potential to move into 'enemy' territory, and… yeah." When you worked in espionage, those lines could get dangerously blurry.

He grimaced and rubbed at his eyes, sitting back up. Fuck, Mitchell. He hadn't really wanted to do that… but fuck, he had, and that was that. His hold on his temper hadn't been this bad since he was fourteen.

He'd be willing to thank anything that Relena could pull him out of a rage as easy as Lu had always been able to.

"Why the hell did I have to get your temper?" he half whined. "I do criminally stupid shit when I see red." It wasn't like he'd ever been exposed to temper in his younger years… he'd been too young to remember his parents fighting, and his uncle had been so impossible to ruffle it could make you want to tear your hair out.

Jack snorted. "Nature over nurture, I guess. Your mom… when she got going, it was like trying to stop a runaway train. Hell of a woman, your mother… didn't take shit from anybody."

"Except you."

"I seem to remember her tossing me out on my ass on more than one occasion," his father noted wryly. "Everything with us was either… hot or cold. Never much in between. She could be sentimental and vengeful at the same time in a downright terrifying way; your brother's a damn fine example of that."

…And the other half of why he'd convinced himself to call Jack was because he knew from experience that he wouldn't be able to not think about Junior right now anyway. That and Jack was always willing to tell him stories about his mom…

Shit, he knew it was ridiculous, but he did not like to hear Jack talk about Junior. Talking about Odin rubbed him the wrong way most of the time – thinking his uncle's actual name set him off half the time, and fuck if that wasn't yet another mark of how fucked up his childhood was…

But Jack talking about his little brother was… wrong.

"You tore us apart piece by piece, that year," he muttered, unable to stop. "We were a family, and when you ripped me away, it broke him." He licked his lips. "Did it make you happy, to finally be able to hurt him back?"

"Jake…"

"He was never the same again, you know. I could barely get him to talk to me again, and every time, he was more and more locked up in his own head. I don't even want to think about what that did to Junior. But you get to act like it wasn't so bad, since you never had to see what happened to your other kid because you were selfish. We'll never really know for sure, so you can just skate the blame, yeah?" He took another deep breath before just giving up. "Fuck, I can't do this. Don't call me back." Hanging up before the other man could get a word in edgewise, he dropped the phone and pulled his knees up to his chest so he could drop his head on them.

Sometimes, he could convince himself that he could forgive Jack. Logically, he understood that Jack couldn't really be held responsible for Odin's getting himself and Junior killed; four years between incidents was a hell of a long shot from cause to effect. But something deep in his uncle's mind had shattered over that fucking custody battle, and… hell. He knew he was a psycho about this all sometimes, but… every August, it just felt raw.

His mom had died in August, after telling him to always take care of his brother. A stranger who insisted he was his real father had taken him away from everything he'd known in August, five years later. Jack had made him fail his mother that day… Then Odin had turned up dead and Junior gone without a trace almost exactly four years after that. The month was fucking cursed.

At this rate, everything with Lena would go up in flames this month too. It would have been a decade without anything too serious, if it didn't, and that was probably asking for too much. Shit, he'd fucking attacked David three weeks ago… Maybe it had just started early this year, to make up for lost time.

Junior should've been turning nineteen next week.

…And now he was going to have to call Jack back to apologize again. Though that probably needed to wait another month or two if he didn't want it to just turn into another fuck-up he had to apologize for.

Damn it all, but he fucking missed David right now. He missed Lu so bad it hurt, but it was an old ache; Dave was fresh, and entirely his own fault.

And like every year, he missed Odin's steady presence more than anything.

He was so wrapped up in his misery he almost missed the sound of Relena coming downstairs. "Jake? Are you in here?"

For a brief moment, he considered not answering. Relena… He'd lost so much of what he loved about Relena in his tangle of loyalties, and yet she was always there, tantalizingly within reach but untouchable.

He was going to burn… It was so perfect, but he'd handily designed his noose with every step he took towards her, and was closer to hanging himself with it by the day.

Could he live with himself if he just… chose? Gave in? Could she?

Hard to say, and impossible to turn back from.

"Yeah, I'm here," he called back, standing up and shifting his shoji screens to leave his private area of her bedroom. Her blouse was a deep scarlet today, and fit her curved form nearly as well as the dark grey pencil skirt she'd donned that morning. I should find her rubies for her ears, he couldn't help but think as he drank her in. "What's up?"

She gave him a faintly amused look. "Our resident noblewomen seem to have adopted Daniella. The three of them have retreated to Dorothy's for the day to do who knows what."

He raised his brows, allowing a smile to creep up his face as well. "She's probably enjoying that." The girl had honestly never gotten as much attention as she was due, growing up.

Relena just chuckled, shaking her head, as she moved to her vanity. "I've also been soundly lectured that Danny is a boy's name, and we're not to ever use it again in reference to her, so as not to further flay her self esteem."

Jake snickered a bit at that; it sounded like Dorothy had been in a mood. "I suppose I'm guilty of that one. Do you know if they asked for her input before deciding this?"

"She was so starry-eyed over their interest that I doubt she would have minded if they had made it up on the spot, but apparently it's something that's bothered her since she turned eleven – she just didn't have the nerve to bring it up." She tossed him a look over her shoulder as she began putting in simple diamond earrings. "So consider yourself warned. The two looked about ready to go on the warpath about it."

"A young woman's femininity is at stake," Jake returned mock solemnly. "It's very serious business."

She snickered, moving back for the staircase. "I suppose it is at that. Can I get your opinion on something before I send it over to Reconstruction?"

"I live to serve," he returned in a wry tone, trying to not focus overly hard on her backside as she moved into the next room. She was pleasantly oblivious to the hourglass she'd developed; or at least, oblivious as to how much it affected him. Mailin gave him all sorts of amused looks over it, but appeared to be keeping mum, thankfully. "Be up in a moment."

Even Lu had never twisted him up in knots this bad, and she'd been more forbidden fruit than Relena was. He knew the princess felt the same as he did… but he didn't want to be with someone he was lying to. It would destroy them both. She should be able to walk away from this with a clean conscience, if it came down to it.

She deserved the chance to avoid a regret or two.

oOo


oOo

August 4th 198 – Monday – Chartres, France

Being popular really fucking sucked. Well, notorious was probably a better word for it, but shit, was it too much to be able to walk down the street without a strong likelihood of being recognized? How do celebrities survive? She was only a damn terrorist – according to the current regime, mind, not anyone else – and she wasn't even allowed in the fast food joint.

No, no, let's leave Hilde with the car. We don't want to risk any extra attention. Unbelievable. How was it that Mr. Blue-Eyes didn't have his picture posted everywhere, again? All Noin bloody needed was a skirt and dark set of contacts, and apparently nobody recognized her! No fucking fair. And she'd, like, been famous or something before the war. Yanking on the lever at her side, she threw herself back in the passenger seat so it was nearly fat, and glared at the ceiling.

She was really starting to despise this car. It was just one failure after another.

Adrenaline spiked as she heard a scuff right next to the vehicle, and she jumped halfway up in a spin before realizing it was Golden Boy himself staring in through the window. Purposefully, she flopped back down and raised her eyebrows.

What? I'm staying with the car. You can't say I didn't do it right.

He just kept staring.

Finally, she sighed. What a stiff bastard. "What?"

He held up a paper bag with some cheesy logo stamped on it. "Aren't you hungry?"

Hilde blinked, sitting up at the idea because hey, greased food did sound pretty awesome, even if it was mystery meat… and froze.

He was alone. This was her chance.

A muscle in his jaw ticked, for all that his expression stayed about as clear as stone.

This is it: Duo's alive. "Du-"

Xutao literally threw himself into the back seat with an exasperated sigh. "Why is it always potatoes?"

Marlé followed him in with a shrug, munching on a fry. "They're easy."

"They're gross," Xu complained.

Heero raised an eyebrow at her, shifting impatiently. "Do what?"

Hilde floundered for a second, trying to recover, and let the first thing to come to mind pop out. "Do you mind?" she snarled.

…God, my life sucks.

oOo


oOo

Space

Space. Why did anyone ever think that coming up here would be a good idea? He didn't mean in the current sense; rather, the original colonization. It was an inhospitable, bleak wasteland, with tiny islands of refuge. And those islands were irresistibly vulnerable in so many ways… but also all too simple to make impossible to locate.

If the colonists had gotten this idea for defense even just twenty years ago, history might have gone rather differently. But then, the Alliance had been far too firmly entrenched for that tactic; it had only become viable when he had magnanimously given them free reign to handle their own affairs in return for support with Earth. He was beginning to wonder if they even knew what the words 'fair' or 'chivalry' meant. Even Heero had only ever been willing to meet him partway on those points; he always found a way to underdog his situation so he still escaped unscathed and able to say it had been the situation that determined the results, and not a matter of prowess.

No one else from the colonies seemed to even bother with a mask of understanding on that point; they seemed entirely bemused when the subject of 'being fair' came up.

Grimacing at the outward display, Milliardo decided to retreat back to his quarters; they weren't going to get anywhere anytime soon. "Call me when you start making some progress on this mess." Space. Just another junkyard. Whoever had decided to create mass debris fields to shield trade routes deserved to be drawn and quartered. The sheer collateral was ridiculous. What had they even used, in any case? In space, everything was a precious resource.

Settling into his chair, he smiled slightly at the reports in his inbox. The colors of the opinion ranged widely depending on just who was writing, but together, it made an altogether poignant image:

Relena was blossoming.

Romefeller was scrambling to pick up the pieces every time she neatly pulled apart their plots at the seams, and most recently, her new border patrol program – which even he had been highly skeptical of – had borne worthy fruit to the public eye. Someone staffed in Croatia had uncovered an extensive bribe network that had turned out to be fostered by the McKlveens… and it had only gotten more scandalous from there. Somehow, evidently it had led to the discovery of two fourteen-year-old girls dressed in burlesque in a Senator's back room. The sheer sensationalism of the details gave the movement more momentum.

He clenched his jaw as he considered the poor repercussions, though. The McKvleens were not the most powerful family of Romefeller by far, but they were also far from the weakest, and whether or not they in particular sought out retribution, Relena had officially established herself as a threat to the Foundation, with this. He could say from experience that that had a tendency to not end well. Making waves like this meant making enemies, and there were only two ways through that particular storm: absolute, untouchable power, or having far more friends than enemies. Considering her tendency to simply fling herself into danger without a second thought… It was enough to make him furious.

Does she have any idea what Pandora's box she's opened up for herself?

oOo


oOo

August 6th 198 – Wednesday – Sevilla, Spain

"That's so not appropriate."

Noin glanced up curiously, then looked in the direction Hilde was glowering. She'd asked Odin to handle the computers when they'd found this base unmanned – whether for a lunch break or for more serious reasons was unknown, so Xu was on the roof keeping a lookout. But when he'd sat down in front of them, Marlé had half hopped in his lap – carefully not putting any weight on his right leg, she noticed – and started on the keyboard before he could do anything. In response, he'd just sat back in his chair and watched her work intently.

Lucrezia hadn't thought too much of it; he wasn't exactly going anywhere, with them situated like that, and he'd catch Marlé's mistakes before she made them. Probable case in point: he was leaning forward now working the controls alongside her, his broader shoulders framing hers.

It did, admittedly, look a little intimate, but not in an amorous way if you imagined the girl maybe two years younger, or him ten years older. From some of the comments he'd made over the past few months, combined with the conversations she'd managed to have with the girl… Hm. On the other hand, if Hilde was going to keep acting like she was jealous…

"You wanted to be in his lap?" she asked all too innocently, hopefully soft enough that the two at the computers wouldn't hear. Her student blushed bright red in response, but really… with the way she had been trying to corner him the past two weeks, it was starting to look viable. She would have thought Hilde past the typical 'I pulled your hair because I secretly like you' tactics of elementary school, but… well, you never knew.

If it weren't for the fact that the man was now making a subtle study of shunning the woman, she'd be half tempted to encourage it just for entertainment's sake. Hilde was quite obviously driving him up the wall, though he was handling it better than anyone she'd met outside of Sally. She hadn't expected that, for all that she'd noted his newfound serenity back in Sudan. He brushed everything off like he didn't even notice – though, then again, maybe he didn't, entirely.

In any case, the more time she spent with him, the more she got the impression that the man could put up with a fairly fantastic amount of bullshit without losing it. She couldn't help but smile a little, watching him and the blonde girl quietly debate something back and forth before he gently batted her hands away from the keyboard and started typing. You could see, in the way they interacted and even in his attempts to negotiate Hilde off her high horse without ripping into her pride – something she'd long given up as a pointless tactic – that he was an adept teacher.

He'd proven he could more than keep up with her skill-wise, he didn't take shit, was refreshingly straight-forward, and she was starting to think he actually had the patience of the god he was named after. How did that go again? War, death, wisdom and… poetry? The Norse had had some amusing ideas about what their lead god ought to be in charge of.

All the same though… the guy was impressive. And if he kept focusing on her the way he was… She had no active interest in finding someone, especially considering how it had turned out the last time she'd pursued that line of thought, but she wasn't entirely opposed to the idea either. Hm.

She should probably start trying to smooth Hilde's feathers before the woman imploded. Girl was a damn fine soldier in terms of what she could do, but she had an attitude problem no one really cared enough to try correcting. The problem, really, was that the more she was mouthing off, the better she seemed to perform.

It also made for fairly steady entertainment, in her opinion, but the performance levels were the real reason why she hadn't resorted to duct tape yet. Hilde was just… one of those people who talked her way through a problem. It was usually total nonsense coming out of her mouth, but it was part of her process, and frankly, they needed results more than discipline to pull off this revolution. If somebody could get the job done, they could be as quirky as they wanted, so long as they did it.

"Really, why should you care?" Noin asked curiously. "He doesn't strike me as your type."

Never mind the fact that she knew Hilde was either being blind or grasping at straws to attack the man over. She'd caught Marlé staring in wide-eyed horror and confusion at the feminine products in a grocer's they ran into last week, and pretended to browse the details herself for a moment before the kid had taken a deep breath and asked for help. She was very nice and up front about it; no bravado, but no loss of pride either. Puberty was evidently a recent development – and it wouldn't be the first time she'd met a girl who looked fifteen or so that turned out to be far younger.

In any case, she was a good kid, just as steady and no-nonsense as he was, but with more… flounce. Watching them interact, Lucrezia was beginning to suspect she'd been teaching him as much as the other way around. After the grocer's incident, Marlé had happily owned up to introducing him to gummy bears, of all things, as well as movie theaters and silly string.

Hilde was stubbornly refusing to answer, so Lucrezia just shook her head and decided to prove her point. "Hey, Marlé!" When the girl looked up, she asked, "When's your birthday?"

She brightened immediately. "I'll be thirteen next month!"

"Cool!" Lucrezia chirped back, making a mental note to find a trinket somewhere for the girl, before turning back to raise a brow at Hilde's gaping mouth.

"Thirteen?" she let out with a strangled voice.

"Twelve," Noin corrected bluntly. As much as she usually avoided the tactic, with some students, you just had to rub their nose in it before they'd get something. "Feel like an ass yet?" When Hilde just blushed harder, she shook her head. "You need to stop making assumptions, or sooner than later, you'll make a deadly one. In all reality, your first mistake about the girl was deadly – she just has restraint." And considering the fact that she was his student, that restraint was something Lucrezia was going to be eternally grateful for. She was pretty sure that the girl hadn't killed yet, which was good. That was probably going to change sooner than anyone liked, but that innocence deserved to be stretched as far as it could go.

"Whatever your issue is with him," Noin went on, "I would appreciate you resolving it." However implacable the man seemed to be, everyone had a breaking point, and she had no desire to witness him snap. Odin snapping at her apprentice could damn well be disastrous, because for all that Hilde could be an obnoxious shit when she got the notion in her head, she was still under Noin's charge, and she suspected such a reaction might be violent. She only intended to have Hilde and Xu with them for a few more days, since this was their second to last recon point in their original plan before starting to carpool, but if whatever this was was allowed to fester…

Hilde could hold a hell of a grudge.

The woman in question scowled. "He just bothers me," she mumbled. "I can't figure him out; every time I think I've got it, he turns my theories upside down."

Ah. "He does think in odd circles," she agreed. "But that doesn't mean you can treat him like a dog you're not too fond of." She was pretty sure he'd gotten enough of that shit while training for Operation Meteor. The way he'd reacted and planned during the war just… didn't leave a good impression for where his psyche had been purposefully led.

There were reasons he seemed like almost a different person entirely from then, she had decided. And they were probably the kind of reasons that made her want to kill somebody, so she'd also decided to not ask.

She was pretty sure Hilde was holding back on why she'd been acting like she had, but she was her commanding officer and mentor, not her shrink. She didn't have to explain; she just had to take responsibility for her actions. "Let it go, have it out with him, or if you can't manage that, keep away from him," she ordered. "I don't care which you choose, but I'm almost to my limit on what I'll accept from you, understood? Direct this, whatever it is, elsewhere. You're digging yourself a hell of a hole, and not earning any sympathy for it."

Hilde swallowed. "Yes, Ma'am."

Noin nodded firmly in acceptance of that response and let it drop. Just a few more days, she mused, and I'll have them out of my hair for a bit. Their tour was almost done, but she intended to help Odin finish picking up the Zero drives, at least in Europe. He'd asked if she could back him up in the Americas too, but had been sketchy about the timeline; she got the impression that he was waiting for something else to happen first. Hopefully that would work out; Sally had been so thrilled to learn the system was being put back together that Lucrezia had more wiggle room to work with, but that was really only in theory. She couldn't leave her people alone for too long, but at the same time, Hilde could fly Heavyarms as if she'd been born in it. She lacked experience, but her raw talent for flying was fantastic.

Now if only her people skills would improve. Well, you couldn't have everything.

Her phone vibrated in a telltale pattern, and she considered her position for a moment before mentally shrugging and puling it out of her pocket. She had run out of things to actively do, after all, and was covered from all directions. The wonders of delegation, she couldn't help but note in amusement, glancing back to see Marlé again in charge over the keyboard.

The vibration pattern she'd felt was for social media updates, and she couldn't help but grin as she saw it was from Cassie: 'How do you serve an eviction to your uterus?!' Apparently, she hadn't realized that due dates were more suggestions than anything, especially since they hadn't started ultrasounds early enough to get the most accurate conception date.

She wished she could respond.

Cassie had always been a lively, humorous woman… that had been the main reason Lucrezia had introduced her to her father in the first place. He was always genuinely happy with the little blonde. He'd never been the same after her mom died – not until she had started bringing Cassie around. They were good for each other. And for all that he had always adored her and denied any wish for more children, Lucrezia knew he would be thrilled to have a son.

Shaking her head, she tucked her phone away again and tapped her earpiece on. "How are we looking out there, Chang?"

oOo


oOo

Munich, Germany – Dorothy's Townhouse

"Wonder what's going on up there?" Alexis mused, staring at the muted news screen. It had been saying stuff about the colonies… but really, he wasn't buying it. Information broadcasting had to be one of the easiest things to distort… and more distance usually meant more interference, no matter the field.

"Same shit, nicer backdrop," BJ decided, dropping onto the recliner with a cup. "Can't say it matters much for here, so I really don't give a damn. Never knew anyone who lived up there, even."

"I guess." It bugged him though, not knowing. "Zechs is up there, now… That can't be good for anybody."

"Gets him out of our hair." He grinned into his cup as he took a drink. "Gets him out of the princess's, and her little groupies. It should be interesting enough down here, I think."

Alexis nodded noncommittally. For all that Colonel Mitchell had moved them into a sort of safety net by hiring their resistance group on as Catalonia's house staff, not much about life had changed. The woman was rarely home, so they didn't even have to pretend, beyond keeping the house cleaner than they might have. Last he checked, he was the only one to have ever actually met Relena. "Maybe I'll ask Nan to look into it." Nan either was already keeping track of it, or knew how to find out. Generally speaking, if it was digitized somewhere, Nan could get a hold of it.

"Just don't get him too distracted," BJ muttered dismissively.

Nan also had long-term projects, the same as Lindsay and BJ. "I won't," he agreed, standing up. He and Tristan tended to do more in the moment stuff, either as muscle or whatever odd-jobs needed doing, so times like this, when there wasn't a job actively going down, he ended up bored… but Nan probably wasn't. Technically, he was head of the household, because it left BJ free to take care of other stuff… I should probably make sure everything's clean. For all that Dorothy rarely seemed to actively live in this place, there would be hell to pay if it wasn't ready for her when she did show up.

On the other hand, Nan's room, in particular, was usually where things got out of hands in terms of mess.

Grinning, he made for the stairs.

oOo


oOo

Munich, Germany – Sarracenia

"And…" Relena trailed off as she glanced outside across the grounds.

"Mm?" Jake asked, looking himself… and tilting his head. "Huh."

Mu blanched. "How much does he weigh?" she demanded.

"About as much as he looks like," Jake suggested. "Someone needs to tell that woman he's not a lapdog."

Relena couldn't help but start laughing at that – at least, that combined with the image. Mailin was carrying her dog across the grounds… her almost one hundred forty pound dog, the same way someone else might a baby. She didn't look like she was struggling, and the dog seemed perfectly happy with the situation.

"Remind me not to mess with that woman," Lieutenant Ackroyd muttered, shifting uncomfortably and rubbing at her arms in sympathy. "She's not even breaking a sweat."

It does solve the mystery of the magically disappearing dog, however, Relena decided. She'd never gotten around to asking the Major about that.

"I'm still lost on the why," Jake added after a moment. "But I can't say it's not good exercise."

"It's probably muddy," Relena pointed out. "Maybe she doesn't want to wash him again." She didn't entirely approve of a dog in the first place; a dirty dog was utterly unacceptable.

…How did she keep from dripping all over the floor, though? She had to have carried him down the stairs… Dear God, but the image of the dog wrapped in layers of towel as well as compliantly letting himself be packed about like a toy poodle made her want to giggle even more helplessly. Alternately, the idea of Mai cooing at her pet while plying him with a blow-dryer or three was even worse. The fact that the Australian woman had probably had to resort to both to leave the bathroom as nicely as she had a few weeks ago made her 'teleporting sheepdog' theory even more fantastic – the amount of effort it had to have taken must have been stunning.

"…Relena?"

She gasped for air, still trying to contain her giggles. "Just give me a minute," she protested. Next, Mai would start putting little blue bows in the foot-long dreadlocks that made up his coat… or maybe ribbon. As the images went on, however, her control entirely dissolved.

She really didn't think that hysterical laughter was inappropriate in the slightest.

oOo


oOo

August 9th 198 – Saturday – Northeast Spain

"Huh?" Marlé fumbled, startled as Odin tossed her the phone. "Oh! Um, hello?"

"Hello to you too." Quatre's voice was vaguely amused. "Did you still want to come visit for a lesson? Odin rather suggested you would."

"Yes!" she half squeaked, suddenly full-blown excited. "Where are you guys? I'll totally meet you."

"We're headed to Georgia; the one off the Black sea, not the Atlantic. Can you get there on your own?"

She frowned. "I can… but it might take me a few days. Is that okay, or do I need to figure out a plane?"

He seemed to consider for a moment. "Where are you now?"

"Um…" She tried to think of what city they were closest to for a moment, before giving up. "Spain."

"…You don't know, do you?"

"Not really," she admitted, shrugging when Odin looked back at her.

Quatre sighed. "Put him back on, please."

Obediently, she handed the phone back to her brother and dashed for her bag. Even though she was sure her stuff was packed together right, it was worth checking.

"What's up?" Xu asked curiously. They had settled into an abandoned house for the night, since they had gotten the Zero piece easier than Odin had expected and he and Hilde were headed back to wherever they'd come from the next day anyhow.

"She navigates fine," Odin was muttering into the phone.

"Meeting up with some friends," she returned vaguely, rolling onto her belly to make sure nothing had rolled under the dresser/cabinet thing she'd spilled her duffel next to earlier. "I was starting to wonder if they were ever going to call, with how long they took."

"Daroca, maybe?" He was starting to frown. "Calatayud."

"Aragón," Lucrezia suggested helpfully. "I think we're technically closer to Zaragoza than either of those towns, but you can't go wrong with the province name."

Odin's shoulders were tightening into more of a slouch. "I really don't see why this is upsetting."

"Is that your mom, or something?" Xu ventured.

Marlé laughed at that. "No!"

"I don't think that will be very helpful," Odin continued. "Especially considering the terrain." He listened for a moment. "That was willing, though. Did you have a point, with this?" Another pause. "I don't like the possible aftermath. No."

That… was starting to sound a little ominous. "He's not threatening to ditch me somewhere with a canteen and see if I can make my way back to civilization, is he?"

His returning contemplative look was not comforting. Her heart sank. "Isn't Georgia, like, desert?"

He waved a dismissive hand at her, pacing back to the far side of the little house.

…She was a lot less excited, suddenly. "I just met trees for the first time, I'm not ready for wilderness training!" she protested. He was pacing back now, his own duffel over his arm. "Odin!"

"Stop panicking," he lectured, holding the phone between his head and shoulder so he could open the top of his bag… and upend it on the floor next to her in one swift motion.

"Odin!" she squeaked, skittering back on instinct.

Rolling his eyes, he reached for hers and dumped it too. "Give us an hour, I'll call you back." Hitting the end button, he gave her a very level look. "You should pack."

Across the room, Hilde started to giggle uncontrollably.

Marlé eyed the pile dubiously. The urge to just jam half of it in his and half in hers haphazard was-

"No."

She glowered up at him. "Was there a point to that, or is it just your time of the month?"

Hilde was laughing harder, now. Xu was beginning to look wild-eyed.

Odin, however, just smirked a little at her. "I thought you wanted the canteen."

Oh crap. The water bottle had been in his bag… And her shorts, somehow, from the look of things… and when had he reclaimed the PlayPaq? "Oh."

He just shook his head a little. "Three piles: mine, yours, and shared. I need to map a route, and then I'll help." He started to move away. "And he's not ditching you anywhere."

"Okay," she returned amiably, focusing back on their stuff. She'd totally had his scarf and beanie… and socks. Why were his socks in my bag? Shrugging, she tossed them off to her right, and reached for the padded bag with most of the electronics. "Can I have the laptop?"

"We'll talk about it after I plan your route."

She sighed, scooting over and setting it to a ways in front of her in a 'share' pile. "Okay." Glancing up, she saw Xu was staring at her disbelievingly. "What?"

"Just like that?" he demanded.

"…Just like what?" she asked dubiously.

"Yes," Lucrezia inserted smoothly from her sleeping bag, digging through her knapsack… probably for her maps.

…Right, she was sure that probably made sense somehow, but she had stuff to do. She'd trust Lucrezia on this one. "Just like that," she agreed, holding up a sweater and trying to decide if it was hers or her brother's. They were pretty close to the same size anymore… and she liked this one. Shrugging, she added it to the share pile.

It wasn't like he wasn't going to debate it with her when he was done anyway.

oOo


oOo

August 11th 198 – Monday – Stuttgart, Germany

"Hey, lady," Howard greeted cheerfully. "What can I do you for?"

Lucrezia grinned at the euphemism, but decided not to comment on it. "I need an atmosphere drop to Paraguay, and a way back up. Can you make it work?"

The old man whistled lowly. "That'd be a pretty nice little ship now, missy. You promise not to break it, if I loan it out?"

She glanced sideways at Odin – who really was still Heero, in terms of his capacity to blow shit up – before shrugging. "Should be doable." He was turning out to not be too bad at low-key. Besides, there wasn't a whole lot over there to hassle them. "Do you have something that that could be ready to rock and roll in a day or two?"

"Hell, I could swing today if you needed me to, darlin'," the old engineer flirted. "But I'd prefer tomorrow, I guess. You need my help gettin' up here?"

"We've got travel plans set already," she told him happily. "We'll be in your area a couple hours into your light cycle tomorrow, if that's good."

"We, now?" he asked. "It's not a big boat, missy. Just how much is we?"

"Just two," she assured.

"Oh, ho," he crowed. "This isn't a romantic getaway, is it?"

She laughed, though she was also glad she had the volume low enough that Odin couldn't hear the old lech. "There's nothing like digging through the jungle on a crazed scavenger hunt," she told him in a sweet tone. Though truly, how much of a true jungle it was anymore was debatable. "Can you look into the weather for me, too?"

"Oh, sure, I see how it is," he groused playfully. "I'll email it to you. See you tomorrow, kiddo."

"Thanks." Hanging up, she slipped back over to the bar, and nudged a glass she'd ordered before making the call over at her partner. "Try this."

He considered the yellow liquid for a moment before sipping it. Tilting his head in what seemed to be appreciation, he took another sip. "Are you planning on always plying me with citrus?" he asked curiously.

She laughed, taking the shot of limoncello back for a sip of her own. "Only so long as it's appreciated," she noted. "Feel free to order something else."

"I didn't say it was a bad idea," he pointed out, reaching to take it back.

She let him, grinning… as the bartender set a shot of something else down in front of her.

He frowned at that. "What level of inebriation were we aiming for, again?"

"Not very," she decided. "But I detest beer. I'd rather nurse a shot or two of something stronger." Tasting what had gone down in front of her, she hummed happily, even as she grimaced. "This is good, but, if you want to try, you should wait for the lemon taste to fade. It doesn't go well with chocolate… vanilla?" She considered the glass; the liquid was amber, which certainly didn't give anything away. "It's sweet, at any rate."

"Hn." He considered for a moment, then reached for the bowl of peanuts on the counter to clear his palate. "You don't know what it is?"

"I asked for the limoncello, and for something straight up that was sweet," she admitted. "If I decide I like it, I'll ask him what it is." She took another sip and nodded; that was better. "How's your leg tonight?"

"Not bad. Irritating enough that this seemed like a good idea," he admitted with a vague gesture to the bar, "But not bad either."

She nodded; that had been about her estimation too, which was why she had pointed out the bar when they passed it. "You can have the bathroom to yourself tonight," she told him. "I'll take it in the morning, before we fly out."

He nodded. "I assume everything is good on that front?"

"I would have mentioned it, otherwise," she agreed, offering the glass when he brushed the last of the peanut shell off his hands. "I do hope you know what we're doing once we get there, though. The landscape might not be what you remember."

He nodded as he took the glass, staring at it for a moment. "The first place is… the middle ground, as it were. It should give me an idea of how bad it might be, but should be easy enough to find." He sipped, and frowned. "The second is nearby, and shouldn't be too big of a hassle, once the initial groundwork is done. That's probably all you have time for."

"Alright." She gestured back at her drink. "What do you think?" He shook his head a little, handing it back, and she grinned. "More for me, then." Glancing up at the display, she noted, "We could probably get one or two more, but I'd say that's the maxout point. Pick something else out before I do, hm?"

oOo


oOo

Munich, Germany – Sarracenia

"Relena?"

The princess turned to smile at her. "Good evening, Addie." Noticing the other woman's frown, she asked, "What is it?"

Her maid gave her an exasperated sort of look. "Do you know where Dorothy is?"

Relena frowned. "I can find her, I'm sure. What's wrong?"

She raised both her brows. "Well, she seems to have stolen my son again."

"…Again?" Never mind that Dorothy had never expressed any interest in children to her knowledge, but… again?

"Two weeks ago, she and Olivia took Danny out to lunch more or less because she said she was babysitting. Then she started helping me in the kitchen some afternoons. Then she offered to watch him the other night so I could have an evening to myself. Two days ago, she disappeared with him most of the day, and suddenly he has new clothes, which I appreciate, but…" She sighed. "I haven't seen my son in five hours, and it's unnerving me."

…Well, that gave at least part of an answer as to what the other woman had been up to, come to think of it. She hadn't been underfoot quite as often, this last week. Honestly, she'd just assumed she was off with Olivia, since their disappearances were beginning to line up rather well. That or with Daniella… who had her nephew with her at least forty percent of the time…

Huh. Well, it wasn't as though Dorothy hadn't gone in entirely unexpected directions before. "Let's go find them, then."

As it turned out, Dorothy's favorite room in the house was still her office atrium, and she had managed to collect Mai and the dog at some point as well as the toddler. Willam, at roughly two years old, was rather intent on playing with the giant dog, and Dorothy was 'helping' in the loosest sense of the word. Her bodyguard appeared to be mostly focused on paperwork, but all things considered, Relena was incredibly grateful the other woman was there. Mai had half raised her niece and nephew; she actually knew what to do with babies.

"Well look at you, little man," Addie crooned, instantly capturing the boy's attention. The tension seemed to melt off her at the sight of the child. Personally, Relena wasn't entirely sure – that dog was huge. "Are you having fun?"

He gave her a gap toothed grin, waving a handful of the giant canine's dreadlocks. "Esso."

Esso? Come to think of it, she'd never bothered to learn the creature's name.

"Are you hungry?" Addie asked, coming up to kneel next to him and scratch the dog behind the ears.

The baby immediately shook his head, flopping himself into the dog's side, and snuggling deeper with a giggle. "Esso!"

The dog affected to not notice

"He's been gnoshing all afternoon," Mai noted, setting her papers aside and stretching. "Healthy stuff, even some chicken. If you give him a bottle before bed, he'll probably go right down and stay there."

"They were playing with a ball just a minute ago," Dorothy inserted happily. "Willam was pushing it to him, and Lorenzo was nosing it back." She tilted her head. "I think he's getting tired, though."

"He does that," Addie agreed, reaching out and tickling her son's belly so he giggled more. "Did he nap?"

"Not as long as you say he does for you, but some."

Relena turned as the floorboards chirped, noticing Mai standing as well, though Dorothy and Addie kept their focus on the child. When Lin poked his head through the door and pointedly met Relena's eyes, Mai sat back down. Relena considered the group on the floor for a moment before shaking her head and moving for the door.

It really wasn't any of her concern… on average, she only vaguely noticed that there even was a baby in the house. "What's up?" she asked as she closed the door behind her.

Lin gestured for her to follow him downstairs, biting his lip. "I got a call for you… come on."

She frowned as she moved after him. "A call?" Lin didn't answer the house line, and if it was more personal, people either called her cell or Jake's.

"It's Mitchell," Lin murmured. "I think he wanted to be sure Jake didn't pick up."

Ooh. "How is he?" she asked quickly. Then, before he could answer that, "Where's Jake right now?"

"Jake's down in the range with the boys, and… I don't know, Lena." He made a frustrated noise. "He was being damned cagey, but he and I were always more coworkers than friends. He just said he wanted to talk to you."

"Where's the phone?"

"I'm heading to your suite," Lin returned by way of explanation. "It's on me, but I've got it on mute. I figured you'd want some actual privacy… the office and your suite are the only places with the nightingale floors."

"You'll stay," Relena told him firmly. She'd trusted him this far… the only thing she hadn't told him about now was Treize – and she might concede that too, before long. Lin was almost as deep in all this as she was, and he'd been there for each part of it already. "I could use a second opinion, and if someone does come in, we can be talking." After Jake, Lin and Mai were the guards she connected with most on a personal level, and everyone in the complex knew it. With the little domestic party going on in her office, no one would think it was odd if she was spending time with one of her friends in her room. As they moved through her antechamber, she whispered, "Check Jake's area while I lock the bathroom."

He nodded and split off from her, then was waiting at the bottom of the staircase for her as she came back down into her closet, holding out the cell. Taking a deep breath, she took it and turned the volume up to max before tapping the mute off. "David?"

"Lena," he greeted warmly, if tiredly. "Hey, Princess. How've you been doing?"

Taking the last few steps down the spiral stairs, she laughed a little. "You know how I'm doing, silly; I'm on television practically every other day. How are you?" She glanced at Lin, and he nodded; he could hear fine.

"I'm… okay. Had to get some Remalene and stay on light duty for a bit, but it's mended, now."

Relena closed her eyes as she moved to sit on the small couch she had in her suite. Remalene was a metabolism based drug that also amped the immune system. They used it to speed up the healing process; it could heal broken bones in one month instead of three. But, in order to be prescribed, you generally had to either have broken bones or something more severe. She'd taken it for her gunshot wound last year… and Jake had taken it for four separate three week bursts during his recovery from the riot last December. "David…"

"I know, I know," he muttered with a sigh. "It's alright now, though, okay? How is he?"

"Moody," she returned instantly. "He's hiding it well for the most part, but he's…" She shook her head a little, glancing to Lin, sitting next to her. He'd actually snarled insults at Hayden seemingly out of nowhere the other day before disappearing into town for a few hours. When he'd come back, he was calm, but… well, it was a good thing he'd been gone for as long as he had, because it had taken that that much time to convince their resident geek that his hero didn't actually hate him. "Whatever it was that was bothering him before, it's gotten worse."

"That's mostly what I wanted to talk to you about," Mitchell noted, his tone picking up. "I'm not there right now, so I need you to look after him for me, okay?"

Lin's look suggested he thought this conversation had just turned insane, but Relena just frowned. "What?"

"This time of year is always bad, Lena," the colonel coaxed. "I mean, I think it might be taking an all-time low since 188, but… he gets like this every August. Honestly, the man needs a therapist, but since there's no way that's happening… we make do. He, like… looks for reasons to hate himself in August, and when something upsets him outside of that… sometimes, there's collateral." He sighed. "Last year, it was Jack. This year, it was me. Only, I know he feels like shit about me when he didn't about Jack, so that's probably making it worse. But he's not going to talk to me until he gets over his funk, so I need you to just… be steady, for him, okay?"

"Be steady?" she asked, mind whirling.

"You've always just accepted him, no matter what. That's what he needs more than anything. It's true all the time, honestly, but it's especially so this time of year. It's not anything different from what you normally do, that's just how you are, so maybe I shouldn't have even said anything but…" He sighed again. "Just don't forget that he needs you, okay? Don't let him make you think he doesn't, because it would be a lie."

A warmth grew deep in her belly at that. She had believed it before now, and he hadn't given her any reason to doubt… but hearing it was nice too.

"Don't push him on it, but be around to talk to, okay? It doesn't always happen, but sometimes, with Noin, he'd try to talk his thoughts out to her. It's probably the closest he'll ever get to that therapy I mentioned him needing. It probably won't happen anyway, but… You've broken all sorts of rules he kept that I thought weren't ever changing."

"Thank-you, I think," she murmured.

"Only telling the truth, Lena. Either way, I should go… I'll try to talk to you again soon, okay? You can always call if you want, okay?"

"Of course." She pursed her lips. "How long do you think it will be before he talks to you again?"

"I…" He made a frustrated noise. "I don't know. Not to give him excuses, but I really did fuck up, too. It was for all the right reasons, but it's still there. Another month? Maybe three? If he doesn't find a reason to get over that other shit you mentioned, longer, but I'll probably come back and pick another fight if it gets close to five."

She closed her eyes. Another month of this tension, and she might slap him herself… Which, if Mitchell's advice was anything to go by, was probably the worst thing she could do.

She had ignored his advice about Jake once, a year ago, and regretted it. She wasn't going to repeat the venture; his point had been well proven.

"Take care of yourself, David," she told him after a moment. "He might not want to admit it right now, but he needs you too."

The man choked out a short laugh. "Yeah, don't I know it. Take care yourself; all those nobles can be as bad as anything I'm facing with these anarchists."

She smiled, resisting the urge to cry. "Don't I know it," she mimicked back at him. "I'll talk to you later."

Once she'd hung up, Lin let out a deep breath. "Well…"

"Well," she agreed when he didn't sound like he was going to continue.

He gave her a helpless look. "Honestly, that made this all about as clear as mud."

oOo


oOo

Stuttgart, Germany

"Melon," Lucrezia declared, setting the glass back down in front of him.

Odin picked it up tasted again, trying to see if he could come up with something he actually recognized. He'd picked it at random because of the liquid's neon green color, but he hadn't expected something that tasted so… fresh. It was surprisingly mild, despite the burn of the alcohol, and startlingly sweet, but… just fresh.

He didn't have a workable frame of reference for 'melon'. He wasn't even sure he knew what it looked like, honestly. Might be worth looking into,

This was the fourth shot glass, but the only one they had actually finished was the first, and Lucrezia was largely ignoring the second, apparently since the flavors of the latter two contrasted too sharply with it. The third… he thought it might be good for cleaning something, but not much else.

This one wasn't bad, though.

"Can I get some kind of cola?" she asked the bartender, offering him one of her easy smiles. Holding up her hand to give a measure of maybe four centimeters, she added, "About this much, in a glass?"

"You got it," the affable man muttered, quickly grabbing a cup and pouring. "Was going to suggest something like that if you let it sit there much longer."

"It seems like the thing to do," she agreed as he set the glass on the bar and offered her a straw. She glanced his way as she picked up the least favorite of the liquors and poured it into the soda. "You're good with that one, right?"

"I like it," he agreed, watching as she took up the other shot glass and poured it in as well. "You think that will mask it?"

"I know one way to find out," she murmured as she spun the straw through the liquid with one finger. As was usual with any of the motions of her hands, he found the gesture oddly graceful.

Lucrezia, he had decided at some point over the last month, had an appealing fluidity to her, no matter her mood. He hadn't decided if she hadn't had it during the war or if he simply hadn't paid it any attention, but was willing to admit that even if she had, he wouldn't have bothered to appreciate it. He'd been too focused on… truthfully, he wasn't sure he had actually been focused on something in particular, but he acknowledged tunnel vision. Looking back, most of his choices had been distressingly arbitrary, despite his conviction that the meanings were… for lack of a better word, deep.

So, hindsight, or transparency?

His decisions were most definitely arbitrary now… but he openly acknowledged it, even actively sought out whimsy for direction if the mood struck him. Maybe the question wasn't so much on whether a thing had meaning or not, but what meaning you decided to give it. And by that standard, you could design your own priority structure instead of simply following the orders of others…

"You're looking thoughtful," Lucrezia noted, sipping delicately from her cup.

"Introspection has become something of a hobby," he agreed, focusing back on his own drink to be sure he wasn't staring at her – that had an alarmingly high rate of occurrence if he didn't consciously subvert the action. "How is it now?"

"Mm, tolerable," she decided, taking a longer sip. "Care to share the insight, or not really?"

He shrugged. "I was just thinking about the past, and how things change," he summed up. "I've never thought things would stay the same, but… I never really tried to look ahead, either." His father had never cared to plan beyond a month or two into the future and had obviously done fine, but… He was finding, more and more, that only living in the moment limited you to a startlingly narrow view.

Maybe the assassin had just liked to keep things simple, that way, but the more he experienced, the more intolerable the lack of exploration became. Despite the fact that he was coming to realize that he wasn't actually from the colonies, in the regular sense... He didn't seem to be from anywhere else either. The constant changes in scenery he had kept his whole life was… surprisingly static, in a way. It might allow for versatility, but it disallowed outlets for growth, too.

"Change is the only static," he decided after a moment. "But there's too many options to consider directionality as a true factor."

"Mm, very philosophical." She stretched lazily, and his eyes were drawn to her again. "I'd noticed you had a loose sense of permanency, but I can't say I disagree with it. There's a famous quote somewhere about how the only thing predictable about the future is its unpredictability." Yawning, she added, "And the only way to predict the future is to craft it yourself, of course." Lips twisting into a wry smile, she continued, "It rarely goes according to plan, but that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. After all, in the end of the day, not making a decision is the same as making one." She had a faraway look in her eyes as she gazed out the window to the street. "Not that there's anything wrong with drifting, either, but that doesn't make it any less of an action, when it comes to consequence."

The thought process mirrored his own so well that he smiled, holding up his shot in a cheers motion. "Exactly."

With a mischievous grin, she leaned forward and stole a sip instead of raising her glass to clink against his, and he forced his eyes back to the bottles behind the bar as she licked her lips, focusing on regulating his heart rate.

Chuckling lowly, Lucrezia shook her head. "Introspection became something of a hobby for me too, after Libra," she admitted, nibbling at her straw as she tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ear. "I was a wreck, to put it mildly."

"I can relate to that." He took an outright gulp from his glass.

"Mm, to be sure, from what I've gathered." She kicked gently at his stool. "How's the leg, by the way? We've been taking our time, but it's all been pretty high proof."

"Good," he admitted, testing the muscles and finding them pleasantly relaxed. He'd actually forgotten, for a little while, that it had been bothering him at all.

"Mission accomplished, then," she told him with a wink, tipping her head back and downing half of the fluid in her cup. Shaking her head quickly with a grimace, she set it back down. "I think I'm done for the night, personally."

There wasn't that much of his left… With a shrug, he tipped his head back too and downed it. "Sounds good." Standing, he reached for his wallet. They'd paid before getting the last shot, but then Lucrezia had gotten the soda.

The bartender saw him and waved dismissively. "Don't worry about it."

"Tip," his friend muttered under her breath as she dropped down to her feet.

Odin nodded and retrieved a reasonable amount of cash, leaving it on the counter. The man's returning smile was appreciative and he offered them a wave that Lucrezia returned as they walked out. Each sliding into their coats, they began the short walk back to the motel they'd picked for the night.

Lucrezia let out a happy sigh. "It's nice to get some peace and quiet, again," she announced softly. "They're good kids, but that doesn't always mean I don't get the urge to just tie them up and leave them somewhere, sometimes."

A startled chuckle made its way past his lips. Before now, he hadn't thought her bothered by the three they had just finished sending off in different directions. "Hilde was the only one that irritated me," he found himself admitting. Xutao's personality was fairly subdued and unobtrusive, and Marlé… Marlé was generally amusing even when exasperating.

"Hm, it's all the bickering that gets on my nerves," she explained. "Hilde's usually the source of it, and it's funny at first, but after a while…" She shrugged. "No matter what she can do or how old she's getting, my girl's just as much of a kid as yours, still." She glanced up at him. "Maturity hasn't caught up to the numbers yet, if that makes sense."

It did. He smiled, recognizing something else she meant. "When did I stop being another kid, to you?"

"Hmm…" She thought about it for a minute as they approached their building, and he pulled the key out, not interrupting. As the door opened, she decided, "Libra, maybe; you were different, after you joined us on Howard's ship." As he shut and locked the door, she dropped to the bed and crossed her legs, still debating. "It wasn't even a question anymore when you showed up in the Carpathians a few months ago, but I didn't expect you to…" She tipped her head to one side, then met his eyes again. "It's hard to remember you're younger than me, most of the time. I haven't had a real partner, a peer, since I left OZ… maybe since I was fifteen." She shook her head. "Hindsight is a real kick in the behind, isn't it? If I had known what he was really like, then…" She sighed. "Well, it's done now, at any rate, but that kind of thing never stops hurting all the way, I think."

"No. It doesn't."

Her smile warmed him all the way down to his belly this time, setting off other reactions… but before he could decide what he wanted to do with that, her phone chirped and she let out an excited noise as she twisted to pull it from her pocket.

…That happy sort of squeak was not helping.

She was engrossed in the screen for a long moment, before gesturing for him to sit next to her. "Look…"

Feeling slightly awkward, he did so, leaning in close enough that he could pick up on that lightly floral scent he'd noticed weeks ago, that was beginning to make his head spin now; or maybe that was the alcohol. Most of the screen was taken by a photo of a newborn wrapped in blue blankets, held in the arms of an older dark-haired man that appeared too focused to have looked up for the camera. The child himself was ugly in the way that he gathered all new babies were, but contentedly asleep. A caption below the photo read: 'Lyle Noin. 7 pounds, 8 ounces'

Noin.

"I'm a sister now," Lucrezia murmured, staring at the image with a beautifully soft expression. Unexpectedly, she turned the same on him after a moment. "What I do now, it's for his future. He won't grow up in a world suffering a megalomaniac as its tyrant…" Her focus moved back to the screen. "I'll make sure he won't."

"…He won't," Odin agreed after a moment, unsure what else to say. She had literally only just gotten news of the boy's existence, but this devotion… The possessive way Odin would wrap a heavy arm around his shoulders when he doubted himself flooded his mind; how he had tousled his hair almost unconsciously when they were walking together, his always constant observation… Before the day of his death, Odin wasn't even sure when the last time he had been away from his father's side had been.

That need to take care of someone, near or far, easy or impossible… that was love, wasn't it? That was family… He looked back to the phone, to see she had flipped to a larger image of an exhausted-looking blonde woman holding the child, nonetheless beaming brightly at the camera. The man from before was leaning over her shoulders and you could see his face this time, and its resemblance to Lucrezia's.

This was family… her family.

"I'm going to take a bath," he muttered after another moment, standing. She waved him off distractedly, still focused on the pictures, and he made short work of grabbing his toiletries and retreating into the tiled room. Turning on the water, he sat to think.

He didn't have a family anymore, but he'd had a father, once.

Why didn't I ever look into his death? There hadn't been time… There never had been, back then. It wouldn't have changed anything. The man had been dead, and that was as straightforward as it got. Something had gone wrong with his end of the job… and he'd been trying to abandon him anyway.

Blinking as the room began to mist, he suddenly realized just how… bitter he'd felt about that.

It hadn't mattered, because Odin had been the one to cut the ties. Not him. He'd resented that… but it wasn't as though there was another option to follow anyway, after his death. That had just made it complete.

But the part that had always bothered him most was that even as he laid dying… he had still cared. That love he had always offered was in his last words, last advice, to always follow his emotions. He had been trying to leave him… But he had still wanted him to be happy.

…Was he trying to die, that day?

Looking back, he could honestly say that Odin had always been depressed… It hadn't affected him too badly most of the time, always focusing on the task at hand or on him, pushing the melancholy away…

The more he thought about it, the more viable of an option it seemed. Everything leading up to L3-X18999 had been odd… From an adult's perspective now, he could see that the man had been planning more than a month into the future, meticulously, instead of letting the wind carry him. He had informed him of all the details concerning the trip far earlier than usual… And he had made sure that Odin was far away from him during his part of the job. Too far to get caught in the potential crossfire, and too far to possibly help if the situation turned on him.

Suddenly, there was a bleak familiarity to when he had first handed the gun to Sylvia Noventa, fully expecting the action would be his last. Wishing for it, even… for the redemption it might bring.

Glancing at the water level, he stripped down and eased himself in, unsure of what to do with the revelation. In the end, it really didn't matter: dead was dead. But… More than ever, he was beginning to understand the importance of family. Marlé was his family now despite the lack of common blood, but Odin had been there first. Odin was the one who had molded him into the person he became… and he knew virtually nothing about him.

He was going to have to change that.

oOo


oOo


Over the Edge


oOo


I was seriously half-tempted to rename this chapter "In which Hilde attempts to annoy Odin into a conclusion, and gets all the wrong results" at one point. It ended up coming out as rather Hilde-bashing in some ways, but I think it's mostly just that she doesn't have a very mature way of handling stress, which, frankly, we've already seen. Her stress response seems to be a hell of a bitch/brat routine, which Odin really isn't sure how to react to. The fact that nothing seems to go as she plans doesn't exactly help. Also, I refuse any claim to Cathy; if you ask me, she's completely in canon character, and I have no responsibility for her behavior whatsoever.

…Feedback would be beyond amazing. I know it sucks for you guys, with my infrequent update speed, but to be honest, it's just as sucky to have it all there in my head and not be able to do anything about it because of time constraints, exhaustion, or just not being able to find the right context. I try to make up for it with chapter length and quality, for what it's worth.

Ja.