oOo
Chapter Sixteen
Resolve
Failure is not an option. It's a step.
oOo
Relena's household is finally coming together as a whole, though Jake has a few loose ends to tie up yet... and a princess to woo, can't forget that. Odin explores the details of new emotions to both the dismay and delight of everyone involved, and Duo stops a bar fight. Quatre, meanwhile, has Big Plans and Marie makes new friends. Elsewhere, Adam has something of a panic attack - for good reasons, but still with wretched timing.
Also? Butterscotch.
oOo
Edits:
Only real change here is that the group Odin and Quatre are starting with the ex-Cambyses guys has a name, when initially, I hadn't come up with one yet. If you're just skimming for new facts, it's 'Revenant Rubato' and will continue to be explained and referred to as such in future chapters.
oOo
September 27th 198 – Friday – L4 Cluster
oOo
'No questions. No commitments. Just answers.'
Odin glanced back at the flyer, his curiosity in the ad piqued by the sheer lack of… advertisement. The blues of the sign stood out… But there were no images with the words, or art. Just a symbol he didn't recognize in the same color as the writing, and in the bottom corner, an acronym. HTD.
The only other person standing by the bulletin board popped her gum loudly, then reached across him with their phone to snap a photo of a listing for a used bicycle. He shifted backwards slightly as she reached forward even further to correct her angle, eyes narrowing in irritation.
Doesn't she realize the camera has a zoom function?
He glanced back at her as the phone made a shutter noise and she offered him a broad grin as she popped her gum again, eying him up and down.
Oh. He frowned. This had been happening more often, lately. He pointedly broke eye contact and pulled his own phone out of his pocket, activating the screen. A speech bubble had popped up from Lucrezia:
'Butterscotch'
He grinned as he swiped a finger across the screen and pulled up the keyboard. 'Bananas'
He didn't always have an answer right away, after all. Considering Marlé's dismay yesterday, though, he wondered if she had said something.
"Looking for something particular?" the gum woman asked, her voice pitched low.
It wasn't half as alluring as her expression suggested she believed. "No." A new speech bubble popped up.
'Really?'
"Just browsing, huh?"
"No." Marlé had given him an incredulously revolted look when he picked up a package of single serve cups, but apparently she thought the flavor was disgusting. Lucrezia's lack of recognition meant that it might have just been an Odin thing, though, so he explained. 'Like apple slices and caramel.'
'Oh, pudding! I meant candy.'
He frowned, trying to decide what she meant. He didn't think he'd ever seen anything labeled in an aisle… but he'd admittedly never looked either. 'Candy?'
The woman next to him huffed slightly. "It's cold out here."
"Not really," he disagreed, opening a window to search 'butterscotch candy'. He was wearing his coat open and had shoved the collar wide; the wind was actually nice enough that he was a little irritated that he was wearing his coat at all. It wasn't the most uncomfortable Fall cycle he'd experienced, but apparently the meteorologists here took autumn seriously. The temperature had been kept low consistently enough to make the leaves change… and he'd heard enough to realize that having an obvious cosmetic shift to the seasons could be important. He and Marlé had passed a few families leading small children through colorful drifts of leaves earlier, and it had reminded him of the evergreens and snow in L5, last Christmas.
The more he noticed weather, the more he was finding he liked it.
He heard more than saw her make a face – her gum made an odd squelching sound. "They didn't have to make the wind so icy," she argued.
"You could go inside," he pointed out, considering the image of a gold foil wrapper. He was pretty sure he'd never seen it before, which was… unhelpful. And frustrating. He'd thought, after a year of traveling with Marlé, this would happen a little less frequently. His phone vibrated, and he flicked his conversation with Lucrezia back open.
It was a picture of a small tan oval with a raised 'G' in the same style he'd seen on the wrapper image imprinted on it… held delicately between the teeth of a woman's mouth, gently surrounded by delicate, flawless lips.
That, he decided as he stared – eyes tracing over the details of her mouth that he couldn't seem to memorize, suddenly wanting to reach out and draw his thumb over her lower lip – is very interesting.
He wondered if the thick flavor of the butterscotch would contrast with the sharp berry of her lip stain. It might not. But if it did, he was sure he could just-
"Fake chocolate syrup is proof that there is a God," Marlé announced loudly as she strode purposefully out of the coffee shop, a tall cup in each hand and a paper bag tucked under one arm. She caught him off guard enough that when she thrust one of the drinks at him that he had to toss the phone in the air briefly and catch it one handed as he grappled for a grip on the cardboard with the other.
Odin licked suddenly dry lips and quickly took a gulp of his drink, trying to bury the ache the picture had set off.
A rich flavor he hadn't been expecting redoubled the want instead, electricity surging down his nerves and through his muscles in time with his accelerating heartbeat.
He stared at his sister in disbelief.
She blinked back at him. "What?"
…It was remarkably hard to think. If he tried to force out words right now, he wasn't sure he could do more than groan.
Marlé scowled at him, growing defensive. "Just because you're gross doesn't mean I'm not going to get you stuff if I think you'll like it, you know. I'm not petty."
He stared for a moment longer, processing the words into sounds and then back again as he realized their innocence… and took another drink to buy time.
Sweet butterscotch rolled across his tongue alongside the dark, deeply spiced, coffee. The contrast was…
He took another, longer drink, dropping his back against the notice board and slouching, trying to force his body to relax.
Silencing the sudden urge to laugh with another long sip, he held the liquid in his mouth for a long moment before swallowing, trying to drag his thoughts back into straight lines. He could pursue this later – when Marlé wasn't standing in front of him expecting approval. Approval she probably deserved.
Unfortunately, he couldn't seem to do more than stare at her in what he hoped she took as shock; his pupils were blown wide enough that the overcast afternoon light was blinding.
The gum woman made an irritated noise and stormed off, and it was a relief when Marlé turned away to blink after her in confusion. The urge to laugh increased, and he bit into the soft plastic of the cup's lid. The muscles that made up his abdomen and flanks were faintly vibrating with charged energy.
He took a deep breath as Marlé tried to puzzle through the stranger's behavior, crossing his eyes for a moment and narrowing his gaze on the scarf hanging loose around her neck, forcing his pupils to constrict as he focused on the individual threads of color that made up the fabric. Only after he had defined the four distinct shades that combined to form the pale blue cloth did he let out his breath in a controlled, even motion… and reflexively took another sip.
Insistent need washed back through him as butterscotch flooded his senses once again.
It was distinctly not helpful.
He took another drink anyway.
This had never happened while away from the source before. Even then, it had never been quite so strong either… which made Lucrezia all the more exceptional, really.
But that conclusion didn't solve the problem of it happening in public with the thirteen-year-old, where he couldn't do something practical about it. If anything, it made him want to go find Lucrezia right now and see where it led… or at least shuffle Marlé off on some imagined errand so he could find somewhere private.
That idea left a bad taste in his mouth, though. And Marlé had just stood in line for almost half an hour so they could try the locally famous café's meat pies.
…Maybe if he just finished the whole cup it would sate something.
Marlé turned back to him, her eyes growing concerned. "Are you okay?"
He closed his eyes again briefly and nodded, slowing his heart and shifting his weight experimentally; it wasn't quite as uncomfortable as he'd expected. Trying for casual, he moved to tuck his free hand into his coat pocket, and realized he was holding onto the phone like it was a dead man's switch. Forcing his fingers to unclench, he jammed the device into his back pocket without looking back at it, and his hand into his coat. "Fine," he added. His voice was rough.
She bit her lip, looking doubtful, and even more worried. "Are you sure?"
He coughed a little to clear his throat, straightening from his slouch and nodding again. "Yes." It came out more normal this time. At her suspicious look, he gestured upwards with his coffee cup. "Thanks."
She smiled brightly at the praise, and he felt the pressure ease a little more – almost as if he'd been holding his breath and just remembered to breathe again. His heart continued trying to race the same way it wanted to in the excitement of realizing he'd just dodged a possibly critical blow from an enemy; he halfheartedly tamped it down again, keeping the rhythm inside an average resting range, if not close to his normal slow baseline.
"Good," Marlé decided, moving to sit on a nearby bench and unfurling the top of her bag. "If you get sick, I'd probably get it worse." She narrowed her eyes. "Again."
Odin grimaced, his stomach turning at the thought. That had happened last December, and in some ways it had been worse than recovering from blowing himself up. At least he had slept through the worst of that. He couldn't remember ever being so sick in his life, and once Marlé had caught it from him, she hadn't been much more than a morosely clingy ball of sticky, feverish spite.
For lack of any better ideas, they had refused to leave their room in a relatively nice motel for an entire six days and ordered room service that neither of them had any great success in keeping down. By the time the little girl had started refusing to let go of him for longer than it took either of them to pee, he'd been so exhausted that he'd have sworn it was logical. Even after she'd thrown up over them both in the damn bed, he'd just pulled her into the shower after him and turned the water on. At the time, he'd thought that their clothes needed to be washed anyhow so it was just easier – it wasn't until they were both shivering and even more wretched twenty minutes later that he remembered there was a process to washing clothes. And that it worked better if you weren't wearing them while you did it.
Looking back, it was a wonder they hadn't been thrown out.
Marlé pulled a pair of meat buns with flaky crust out of the bag and he shook his head as he moved to sit next to her. "We're not doing that again," he decided, taking another sip of his coffee. This time it tasted damn good, but the memories of that week had destroyed any connections it had to arousal. He reached for one of the pies, and Marlé took the other.
She made an irritated noise at him. "It's not like you plan being sick," she argued. "It just happens."
There was no point arguing with that, but that didn't make his decision invalid. "We are not doing that again," he repeated. He didn't care if that wasn't how it worked; he'd been through a lot of bad things, and he didn't care if he had to do most of it over again, but that week?
No.
For all that afterwards he'd been able to write it off as fever-induced insanity, on some level he had become convinced that week that Marlé was going to die and that there was nothing he could do about it. And while normally thinking like that upset him enough that he figured out something to do anyway, the next thing that had happened was that he woke up with his back against the bathroom wall with an armful of burning hot girl and a small elbow in his aching ribs.
And then it had happened again. And again. Then he wasn't sure if he started dreaming about the first three times, or if it really had happened another three times after that.
Marlé scrunched up her nose. "Well, no. We're totally not. I mean, we already did it." She smiled. "And anyway, even if we started to, we could, like, call Quatre or something and make him come be happy at us."
…He was fairly sure that that wasn't how that worked. But he also knew that Quatre would probably help him with anything if he asked – he'd certainly gone to extreme lengths before, even while Odin had been actively trying to convince him to leave.
Cold swept over him suddenly as he realized that, thinking back, Quatre had sat with him through fevers. They had been from infection, not sickness, and he hadn't thrown up so much as shivered and burned and tried to sleep it off… But Quatre had been there. And while he remembered the other pilot being gone frequently enough when he opened his eyes – surprised to be waking up again at all – he had always come back.
…And there was an uncomfortable amount of time that he couldn't remember from that year he and Quatre spent on the run. Time that Quatre had spent running, with Heero as little more than dead weight on his back.
He had been helpless, as hard as he had tried to deny it – then later, to forget. He would have been found in the wreckage of Wing Zero without Quatre, not even counting all the times he had kept him safe after that. Quatre was the only reason he had survived long enough to come to terms with his life in Israel.
Actually, Quatre was the only reason any of us lived through the first group assault on Libra. They were fast on their way to being overwhelmed before the tactician had rallied them into formation. Then he had been the only reason they survived again, after Dorothy took control of the doll army. Even if they had somehow pulled together out of necessity before that – which he doubted – none of them could have matched Catalonia the way Quatre had.
Quatre… Mm.
Maybe this feeling, right now, was how people who thought he was invincible and did the impossible no matter the odds, felt about him. It changed everything he knew… and at the same time, it really didn't. Quatre… was just Quatre. And he knew that he, personally, had never gotten much from the almost expectant way so many people had felt about him; it hadn't changed anything about his successes, his failures.
But Quatre always had my back, didn't he? He'd backed all of them up, without hesitation or fail from the moment he realized he wasn't the only gundam pilot to fall to Earth. The only time he had gone against any of them had been after building Wing Zero – then after that, he had taken the long road of surviving, of paying penance, instead of looking for a way out. Now, after the war, after the Sahara, he was doing it again, even when it would be easy for him to disappear into his sisters' network and never be seen again. However many times Quatre failed, or even just imagined he failed, he never stopped. He didn't even glance at the exits, easy or hard… And he still had Odin's back, despite everything.
Quatre, he was sure, would say that it was because of everything.
He met Marlé's curious eyes and smiled, feeling light… light and solid at the same time. "Quatre would come if we needed him," he agreed. It was something he'd known since he'd had proof that his friend was alive, but it felt different, to understand it. "And if he needed us," he continued, reveling in the feel of it-
"In a heartbeat," Marlé finished fiercely, her eyes lit up with the same thing coursing through him. He still didn't know what to call it – but it was something that, he realized, Marlé came to naturally. He'd had to work at it for years, chipping away at everything he'd known his entire life to even find the foundation to build it from, but she was like Quatre – she had the same intense ability to find kinship with strangers and hold on with all of Quatre's tenacity. And she could do it while she applied Odin's own brand of stubborn, even as she never lost sight of who she had been before.
"We will," he agreed. He'd never been so sure of anything as he was of this… this… Follow your emotions. This emotion had to have been what his father meant, when he said that…
"What is this?!" he demanded, suddenly frustrated.
He recognized it – he'd felt it before, if never quite so clearly, so precisely as right now, for Marlé and for Quatre. It had been there with his father, and it had been at least the start of the reason he couldn't kill Duo back in that cell three years ago – why he'd never been able to consider the possibility that the American hadn't survived, after Libra. The loss of it was what made him avoid Trowa after the amnesia – it had felt as though if he disturbed the ghost of it, if he tried to get to know the stranger wearing his friend's face, it would disappear entirely. It was the want of it that had made him chase after Xutao when he had mistaken him for Wufei, even though the two of them had never really had this, whatever it was…
Marlé stared back at him with upset eyes for a long moment as he met her gaze stubbornly, refusing to take back the question, willing her to understand what he had meant. Marlé could explain things; right from the start, she had always been able to see right to the heart of what he was trying to say and make it make sense, and despite the fact that they weren't in any kind of danger, this need, so different from earlier, was more dire than anything he had been able to imagine even just five minutes ago. And he knew, he knew that Marlé knew what it was.
He wasn't sure how long they sat like that, his chest heaving like he had just run ten miles and needing, Marlé staring at him, eyes scared and angry and adoring and cynical and so many other things he couldn't name before she made an awful whine in the back of her throat, let go of her coffee cup, and launched herself at him. He quickly dropped his own as straight as he could and caught her around the waist as she flung her arms around his neck, pulling her tight against him as she let out another awful noise that he was realizing were aborted sobs and drew her legs up behind her so she was tucked in a ball on his thighs.
She didn't fit cradled in his lap like this even half as well as she had a year ago – but she managed it all the same, and there was something comforting about that. She didn't try to bury her face in his chest or shoulder the way she did when she wanted comfort, though, instead pressing the side of her face to his hair… The same way, he dimly thought, that he had for her three weeks ago, when he was trying to think of what to say.
He felt like something in him was breaking as she started to tremble, and he closed his eyes, shame welling up even as it broke more. "Marlé," he breathed, trying to sort out how to take it back. "I-"
"Shut up!" she ordered, her arms tightening for a second and loosening, almost spasmodically. "And stop it! I'm thinking, okay!" Her voice was petulant, angry, even, but… surprisingly not tearful.
"You're not crying?" His stomach started to uncurl.
"Not because I don't want to!" she snapped. "I'm mad enough to! Why do you have to be such a stupid boy about things?!"
"…What?" he demanded incredulously, trying to pull back to see her face.
"Stop that!" she insisted, tightening her arms again. "This is the most awkward thing I've ever had to do, and you're so miserable I can't even see straight!" She made a frustrated noised that was practically a growl in his ear. "You're impossible!"
The word was like a switch – suddenly he was laughing, the broken pieces melting back together and sliding away from him. I am impossible, he decided gleefully. That, at least, he knew was absolutely right; everyone agreed.
And he liked that.
"I'm serious!" Marlé half wailed, her tone straining as her chest started to shake with choked off laughter. "What am I supposed to do? How'm I supposed to figure out how to say something you do so much better than me anyway, let alone when you look at me like that?! It's not fair!" She let out another of the not sobs. "You're awful! I can't believe you! That was the best chocolate tea I've had all month and I just had to throw it on the ground to get you to level down!"
He laughed harder, listening to the sound resonate around the square. Marlé squawked at him; he tightened his arms around her in apology, but didn't bother trying to stop.
"I can't even be mad at anybody!" she carried on. "It isn't even anybody's fault! It's just you! You're wired all funny and heroey and scary good badass!" She made a choking noise. "You don't do anything little! You don't even notice love until it's all wrapped up in trust and loyalty and half the other stuff people only admit to in movies!"
Love? Well, maybe if he ignored the movie comment; there wasn't anything he could do with that. Odin had loved him, he knew… so maybe that wasn't so big of a jump. And looking at how things had worked out, the way he was with Marlé was pretty similar to how he and his father had been… so that could be the same. Maybe he should ask Quatre.
In hindsight, Quatre might have been a better choice for this than Marlé. He was better at details.
"And now I've said it all awkward! Because there's got to be better words for it, but I don't know them, and now you probably think I'm being crazy!"
He huffed into her hair as her breath hitched. "Not crazy," he defended at a more normal volume.
"Overdramatic," she groused, taking the cue and bringing her own voice back down.
He hummed noncommittally, settling the weight of his upper body against hers, once again surprised at how… comfortable it was. Solid, and a reassurance. Strange… Six months ago, he only would have leaned his head – now, they were the same height. Leia was tall… at least six inches taller than he was… Little Marie had only just gained that teenager lankiness he had recently rid himself of, but even so, he thought she might outweigh him soon.
For all that they had started with him taking care of her, they were getting to more and more equal footing now. It had always been headed in that direction, but… well, he had expected it to take longer.
But again… it had really only been a year with Quatre, too. Less than that, with Duo, and Trowa. He supposed he really shouldn't be surprised.
"I might have deserved the drama," he decided after a long moment, resting his chin on her shoulder. He had just been riding his impulses wherever they led him this afternoon, hadn't he? Strange… And as refreshingly liberating as always.
Though a little less drama would be… appreciated.
Marlé started to giggle in a helpless way. "You totally did. Oh my God, Odin, you totally just sprung that on me out of nowhere." She tightened her grip on him briefly before leaning her weight fully back against him. "You sure you're okay?"
"Mostly." He wasn't entirely sure what had just happened, if he was honest.
She sighed. "You really do suck. I was serious about how good that tea was, you know."
"You didn't have to throw it," he pointed out.
"There wasn't anywhere to set it down," she protested.
"The ground?"
"Timing, Odin."
"I'd have waited."
She chuffed out an amused noise. "Course you would've. That doesn't mean I didn't want you to know that I care enough to say screw everything else."
He smiled. He appreciated the sentiment, but at the same time… "You just didn't think about it."
"Nope." Her arms tightened briefly. "Cause I've got priorities."
His smile widened as warmth spread through his chest. "I'll get you more."
She started to giggle again. "Good."
oOo
oOo
September 30th 198 – Monday – Korosten, Ukraine – Afternoon
Colonel David Mitchell resisted the urge to cover his eyes with one hand; for some reason, this felt like it was the final fucking straw to his hope for humanity, for all that that made no sense. It didn't even work logistically. The last group they had taken out had outright been a terrifyingly efficient Ukrainian mafia, and unfortunately he had no idea how to start cleaning up the power vacuum and economy. Instead of sitting still for a minute to figure that out, though, he'd rushed to the major city where it looked like the same thing was building up – if he could burn it down to the roots he could figure out the entire area for rebuilding, and that would be easier than having to repeat the whole process, right?
Except they hadn't been anything alike; the cunning of the southern group may have been the real deal, but this last one was the wannabe version, with a bunch of kids playing pretend and not really breaking any human rights, while instead…
How the fuck was he supposed to fill out the paperwork for taking possession of a literal metric ton of grenades without arresting any of the stupid-asses? Razo had managed to scare them enough with what he called his 'Robby impersonation' – which made the colonel decide he was glad the leader hadn't survived Cambyses – to clarify that the guy who'd shown up with all the damn things had managed to blow himself up a couple months ago.
That had gone a long way to explain the situation, actually.
Unfortunately, it still left them without a person to lay the blame on, which, alongside the fact that he hadn't made even a half-assed attempt to resolve some of the prior case, made it look like they were involved with the first group. And he couldn't convince himself that base stupidity was worth locking up a bunch of teenagers for the next decade.
God help him, he needed a fucking nap before he could sift through this shit…
"Colonel-" Cassidy started as he came up to the room he'd claimed as a study.
"It can wait at least an hour," he decided sharply, cutting the other man off as he opened the door.
"But-"
"Ignoring you," he announced loudly, in a flat tone. He was tired enough that he could probably get a REM cycle inside the next twenty minutes or so, but seriously, he wanted at least an hour, and if he did it by looking pissed in his office, then maybe people would actually think before trying to disturb him. He needed to at least get a start on this before crashing for the night, because leaving it for longer would just make it worse.
He frowned as he shoved the door closed. Isn't it usually Cassidy that forces me to take a nap when I'm hitting the end of my rope? Razo was usually the one doing it the past couple of weeks, but really, it wasn't like him to-
. . .
Jake was sitting behind his desk, his head in his hands.
Fuck! Shit! His pulse rocketed up as the adrenaline hit his system and his exhausted mind had a freaking meltdown as it tried to put together some sort of plan.
For a fleeting second, he actually debated if he could back out of the room before the younger man looked up, which was just stupid – this was Jake. The little shit had a nigh supernatural sense of his surroundings, awake or asleep. He was also more than capable of catching him if he tried to run, and he'd learned a damn long time ago that the shithead found the notion of locked doors downright hilarious in terms of barricades. Even if he found one solid enough to keep the smaller man at bay, it would only slow him down for a few seconds as he shot out and slammed through the fucking wall next to it.
It took him an embarrassingly long five seconds to realize that his friend wasn't feeling hostile, and was in fact still slumped onto the desk… and his hands had shifted to press his palms into his eyes.
Which meant he was doing his damndest to not cry.
…Shit. God, he really was tired. Grimacing, he threw the deadbolt and walked tentatively over to sit on the opposite side of the cheap desk he'd commandeered. For the first time, he was actually happy about how shallow it was; for all that it was obnoxious to sort paperwork on, it meant he could reach out and rest a hand on his friend's shoulder. Hopefully he was only here because he'd realized just how much of an ass he'd been lately… but the blonde's body language suggested something far worse.
Especially that sharp intake of breath and full body shudder that thrummed through him at being touched. And that, despite shaking, he was still hiding his face.
David's stomach dropped all the way down to his damn toes. The last time he'd seen the man this upset, he… He grimaced hard, shaking himself out of the funk his body was trying to fall into. No one close to Jake was dead, or he'd have heard about it already. Something close though, and with the way Jake's head ran…
Relena. He couldn't come up with anything else – and weren't they only just touching back down on Earth today? Actually, to be all the way over here so fast after landing he must have come straight from the Berlin port instead of escorting the princess home.
David swallowed a lump in his throat. Was I wrong about Lena? Did he finally take my advice, only to have her turn on him? He hadn't thought it possible, but… Damn it, his friend was still shaking, hiding his face, not talking…
He sighed, shifting his hand from shoulder up to card his fingers through the man's hair. Some of the tension in his frame disappeared at the familiar gesture, and David kept it up. It was dirty. He couldn't have seen the inside of a bath for the better part of three days – also not a good sign. He applied more pressure on the next stroke and scraped lightly with his nails, getting something closer to a moan in response as Jake leaned into his hand.
For all that he hated to be touched by strangers, if you were in his little circle of beloved the guy was a damn cat. Lu had said something about touch being the same as love for Jake, once – which, when he was twenty-two, had set off some serious homophobia until he realized the little blonde brat was as good as a brother. Grinning a bit to himself, he started to actively scrub at the guy's scalp, which had him leaning harder… Before he suddenly brought down his hands and gave him an exasperated look.
David grinned at him. It really was good to see him again. "Hey, kid. It's been a while."
Jake huffed out a breath. "Yeah… sorry about that."
He grimaced. "In my defense, I couldn't have known she was listening."
Jake groaned, running his hands through his hair to try to make it stop sticking up after David's ministrations. He managed to do the exact opposite before giving up; he needed a haircut. Really, whenever it got this long he ended up with, like, permanent bed head. Jack insisted that that was why he always kept his own short enough you could almost see his scalp.
"I just… lost it," the other colonel agreed. "She was right there and I just…" He blew out another deep breath. "Fuck, I'm sorry, Dave. I've been trying to work myself up to apologize for over a month now. I just kept getting so depressed about it that I needed to find something else to focus on, and…"
"I kinda figured," he admitted when the other man trailed off. "Actually, I called Relena maybe a week or so after it all went down and told her to watch out for you, once I realized it was Junior's birthday and you weren't going to call."
"Mm, she didn't mention it… and it's Lyle's birthday too, now. Nineteen years difference, but the same day, weird as that is."
"I told her not to mention it," David agreed. "Lyle?"
Jake visibly brightened, sitting up straighter. "Yeah!" He laughed a little. "Lu isn't an only child anymore, Cassie worked Des around to her point of view." His grin broadened into a real smile. "I'm a goddad again."
"Wow," David breathed, starting to grin himself. He'd kinda thought Cassie would eventually talk the old man into it, personally, but he wasn't half as close to the Noin family as Jake. "I'll have to give them a call," he decided. Snickering, he noted, "That's a hell of an age gap for Lu."
Well, at least… hopefully Lu was still around. Jake had taught her how to go to ground hard, right? That was why no one could find her…
"Yeah… She sent them a card teasing Des, so I'd bet she's pretty psyched about it all."
His heart bounced from low in his belly up to his throat. "She did?" Oh thank God! "She's okay?" he demanded.
Jake offered him a sheepish look. "Apparently she's been sending him apple bars for his birthday every year she's been missing."
David groaned, because really… they should have thought of that. That was exactly the kind of subtle thing Lucrezia would do. "We are total morons," he announced, staring up at the ceiling.
"A bit, yeah," Jake agreed, though his tone was all depressed again. "Got that shoved in my face really damn hard, while I was playing escort for Leia."
"Yeah?" David asked, still looking up at the ceiling, keeping his tone casual. Lack of eye contact and all that jazz tended to make Jake calmer about letting out secrets.
"Yeah…" He sighed, and hesitated for a long moment; long enough that David decided the ceiling really wasn't interesting enough to warrant any more attention. Instead, he forced a mildly curious look onto his face as he glanced back towards his friend.
Jake closed his eyes and brought a hand up to press on his forehead. "She already knew, Dave."
He frowned. "Knew what?"
Jake dropped his hand and stared at him incredulously. "Lena's known about our old friend Tate since June."
David's breath caught. That… that was impossible. "No," he argued breathlessly.
His friend's eyes lit up with irritation, even as he lowered his voice to be sure no one outside the room could hear them. "Apparently Wufei told her. Because the reason the Chinese wouldn't let her meet the amplifier engineers is because they're harboring a gundam pilot."
David closed his eyes. Because Wufei Chang would know the truth. Sadly, that particular loose end hadn't ever occurred to him; probably because they'd never been able to even guess where the more elusive of the two A0206 survivors might be.
Then the other shoe dropped as the implications hit home. "She hasn't told anyone?" he demanded. "She hasn't told Zechs?"
A muscle in Jake's jaw began to twitch. "She told her noblewomen, Mai, and about half of her original guard – and they've been trying to pick up clues from us to figure out which side we will take," he practically growled.
David blinked, horrified. "No…"
"She's been keeping close watch on Mu and limiting her information access since the start of July. Though they only decided she was working for Tate specifically about a month ago."
Dave frowned. "You were limiting what information Mu could access."
"Subtly," Jake agreed. "Then as soon as you visited, Dorothy had Hayden set everyone in the house up with profiles with restricted levels of access for everyone and the only things Mu could see were issues she had already been assigned." He clenched his jaw again, looking away. "Dave… the only person Relena's actually trusted since she came back to Brussels was Dorothy, until she brought a handful of her guard and Olivia into the fold. She and Dorothy decided to trust Lin about two months back, which was when they decided you and probably me were both in Tate's pocket. But when we first met her, she was convinced we would tattle on her to her brother if we got even a hint of suspicion that she had come back to remove Zechs from power." He ran his hands over his face. "She's always gone out of her way to subtly hide her loyalties, Dave… Even after Amsterdam, she was keeping us at arm's length because she couldn't get a solid grip on where our allegiance lay. She got a damn proof of life from Maxwell almost a year ago, and she's been using Dorothy and now Olivia to secure alliances within Romefeller and the space dynasties since Christmas."
He met his eyes solidly again, a darkly amused smirk on his lips. "She's been playing us and taking us for all we're worth since day one."
"…Fuck," David decided after a long silence. They'd known that Relena's skill for deception had grown in dangerous leaps and bounds since the start of her second tour, but… The idea that the seed had always been so much deeper than that was physically painful.
She's always been able to play innocent to hide one or two radical thoughts, he realized. The girl who hid the fact that the new transfer boy at her school was a colonial terrorist. The pacifist daughter of Vice Foreign Minister Darlian who tried to assassinate Colonel Une at a party. The girl who claimed to be the girlfriend of that terrorist in order to pump the resident doctor for information. Who had talked of total pacifism while she had hidden gundams beneath her castle to fight off invaders, who had responded to being made a puppet queen by bringing Romefeller to its knees. Who had passed off that success to Treize out of convenience so she could chase her brother all the way to Libra.
Libra. "What was her take on Libra?" he asked quietly. "You didn't… tell her, did you?"
"I did," Jake admitted in a flat tone.
God, why? "What'd she say?"
A hesitation. "That she had failed to do exactly the same thing, and regretted it just the same."
If he'd been standing, he would have collapsed. As it was, he slumped in his chair. "Holy shit." The successful pacifist queen who considered assassination a viable option. She'd done it over and over and over again, and yet? No one could seem to help being stunned that she carried a sharp dagger beneath her innocent mask, waiting for just the right moment.
For the first time… He realized just how stunning of a ruler Relena would make, if she had resources that she had optimized herself at her beck and call. Everything she had done before winning over Jake had been adlibbed, with no more assets than what luck granted her and sheer nerve.
Damn it all, but this was one of those moments where he was fucking proud to be a Sanc native.
"Apparently it was Dorothy's idea," Jake continued, sighing. "That's how long she's had Catalonia's loyalty, near as I can tell."
It made a terrifying degree of sense, really. "What did you do that made her decide to loop you in?" he asked.
"She didn't. She miscalculated, and took Mai with her when she told Leia that Treize had survived – before I got the chance to see her. And when it was only Lena, Mai, and me in the room, she assumed I was the one who'd enlightened the princess, and started demanding to be put in contact."
David winced. "Ow."
"Yeah," Jake agreed in a wry tone. "It… Fuck." He scrubbed his hands through his hair, gripping fistfuls and pulling. "I don't think I've been so close to fainting since I heard Treize died. I'm pretty sure I actually went into shock."
"That happens when you get so freaked out you refuse to breathe," David pointed out wryly. "That one never made sense to me."
"Like I have any idea why I do that," Jake groused, dropping his elbows on the desk without letting go of his hair. "It's stunningly stupid, and it just happens." He started to giggle almost hysterically. "Fuck, I might have passed out anyway if Mai hadn't already been plying me with cookies."
…You're kidding me. He hadn't really thought anything of it when she had asked him about Jake's favorites back in July, but he had an idea now. "What day did you reach the fleet, again?"
He laughed harder, dropping his head all the way down to the desk and letting go. "I didn't even notice until Lin shoved a pie in my lap and lit the candle. I just- I forgot! I figured the bacon hash that morning was just Daniella getting cabin fever. I was trying to not think, I think…"
David groaned, leaning back. "Well… Twenty-two." He considered and shook his head. "Twenty-one was a hell of a year for you. You'd barely acknowledged that Relena might become beloved, your last birthday, and… hell, how has it only been one year?"
"I don't know," Jake mumbled into the desk. "I'm mostly still caught on it having been the best and the worst in my life at the same time."
Yeah… He would see it that way. "I'll ask you next year," David decided. He'd have to see when the next time he could take a day or two off would fall; the idea of seeing Leia in person was exciting. "How was the rest of the trip?" He made a face. "Super awkward?"
Jake sighed and settled his chin on his arms. "A little, at first, but it leveled out easy enough." He sat up more and smirked. "Apparently Relena had promised Lin that he could be eight hours away from me when I found out."
He burst out laughing in spite of himself, and was relieved when Jake rolled his eyes. "Ah shit…" He shook his head. "Lin always has been a little flighty, hasn't he?"
"I think we broke him a bit," Jake agreed happily. "Maybe a handful of times; seems to have left a mark." He shook his head as if to clear it, a grimace returning. "I can't keep Mu; Relena only let her stay this long because she didn't want to tip her hand. For all that she genuinely likes her, she doesn't want any mixed loyalties in her own home – Sarracenia is meant to be a haven, not another political playground."
Mitchell nodded, watching his friend carefully now. "I suspected as much; she's been asking me about a transfer already."
Jake's nod looked relieved. "Good." Almost immediately, however, his shoulders hitched up again. "And I think I need to send you Carlisle; with what he knows about all of us I can't let him go, but the little shit can't get over his own ego. I already demoted him, and before we headed up to Zechs I told him the only future he had is to be our janitor for the rest of his life; that he knows enough that otherwise I'd have to take him out back and put him out of his misery."
David grimaced. The younger colonel usually had all the qualities you wanted in your commanding officer, but now and again someone would piss him off enough to get categorized as 'threat' instead of 'mine' and… Jake didn't respond to threats very well.
Well, more like he handles them a little too well.
The blonde man visibly clenched his jaw. "I've tried everything else short of beating him," he growled out "He's a danger to any operation I try to set up because he doesn't listen, and I have him on house arrest because he's so damn quick to brag I'm worried he might be telling outsiders about our security or politics." He grit his teeth, hard. "If I was still in black ops, I would've shot him and claimed he was collateral months ago."
Well, shit. Relena really couldn't afford that big of a security risk. Still, sometimes Jake was so used to thinking in the extremes of espionage that he missed simple solutions. Solutions a little less horrifying. Or permanent.
On the bright side, at least he could tell when he was being psychotic, and was willing to ask for help. "Give me access to his file, I'll see what I can come up with."
Jake sighed and nodded, the tension draining back out of him. "Thanks. He's not… bad, you know? Just an idiot."
Which would be why the sergeant hadn't already had an 'accident'. Despite having quite a few terrifying knee-jerk reactions, Jake wasn't a sociopath. He just…
Well, there were some very good reasons why Jack had immediately tried to remove his sons from Odin's custody, once he'd gotten out of the Alliance hellhole he'd been consigned to for five years. Jake rarely acknowledged it, but his uncle had been more than a little messed up in the head, and being raised by the man had left some pretty deep scars.
So he'd figure out how to handle the unfortunate sergeant – well, corporal now, if Jake had really demoted him instead of enforcing the change without filing the paperwork, he'd have to check that – before Jake had a reason to really look closer at the principles he was raised with and get depressed again.
His comments about the sanctity of the Sarracenia compound, though… His stomach sank. That… hurt, a bit. "Lena'll still let me in the house now and again?" he asked wearily.
Jake looked surprised, then shook his head. "You're fine, so long as you're not moving in for good; we'd just limit your access the same way we have been Mu."
Relief bloomed through his chest, and he could feel a tension he hadn't been aware of before ease out of his shoulders. He wasn't being ostracized… and Jake's wording implied quite a few things.
"And you two are okay?" he asked once he realized the other man wouldn't finish explaining without prompting.
"I…" He bit his lower lip, before nodding, his eyes distant. "Yeah… We really are. She said the only reason she hadn't told me last month was that she thought it might help me, to realize it was okay on my own."
David snorted. "She thinks a little too highly of you, you mean."
"Something like that," he agreed with a gentle smile. "She actually tackled me and started crying when I asked her if she wanted me to leave. Called me about three kinds of idiot before she was done."
"Accurate," David decided.
"Fuck you," Jake returned in a dismissive tone, making a throwaway gesture, eyes still unfocused. "She actually made me carry her back to our room. The woman's about a dozen kinds of perfect, and she's still furious that I'd even suggest she might want me gone."
"That's because you are a dozen kinds of idiot and don't deserve her," David agreed cheerfully. "But you're in luck, because she doesn't give a damn how damaged you are so long as you're willing to father her dynasty."
Jake groaned and kicked him hard in the shin. With those fucking boots of his it would probably make for a beautiful bruise later, but Dave couldn't help but grin harder.
This was his best friend, finally. In all his short, menacing, pissy glory.
"Seriously," the other colonel groused. "Did you really have to go there?"
"Zechs is gonna kill you," he sang. "Kill you dead and scatter the bones…"
"You're cheerful," the other man groused, kicking him again. "Like I've even done anything to piss him off yet."
"But you're thinking about it," David exclaimed happily. "Does the little virgin boy want to ask his more experienced friend?" he suggested with a naughty grin.
Jake's eyes narrowed, even as his cheeks burned bright red. "Only if you want me to beat you again," he growled.
"Aw, you know you want to know."
"Beat you with a damn baseball bat," he warned, standing up – taking a big sheaf of paperwork with him. "And maybe leave this bullshit grenade case instead of taking custody of it and tossing it at Lena's people."
David blinked a few more times before grinning broadly. "Mum's the word, then; I'm sure you already did all sorts of research online."
Jake flung the stack back onto the desk, making a loud thwak. "Leaving it."
"I meant research on romantic date spots!" he declared, switching gears. "Like parks, and Paris, and-"
"You are full of such bullshit," his best friend complained, but he did pick the papers back up as he started heading for the door. "Just have the rest of this forwarded to me once your people have all the info typed in. Eat something and go to sleep – you look like shit."
"Oh like you can talk!" David called after him, grinning broadly as he realized that yeah, he could be done for the day, if he didn't have to deal with that headache.
"I didn't hurt him, Cassidy," he heard Jake mutter as he stepped back out into the hall.
"You kicked me!" David protested, still grinning.
"He's full of shit," Jake dismissed easily.
"I am not!" he argued, trying not to laugh.
"So full of shit you can see it in his eyes," Jake persisted happily. "By the way, I have an opening if you ever want to come back into the Princess' service."
"Thief!"
"Can't steal him unless he's property, and if he is, then I'd have to turn you in to yourself," Jake continued happily. "Seriously though; the guys miss you, and living with Mailin is a fucking riot."
"…Isn't that the crazy Aussie Mitchell banged when he visited you guys?" Cassidy asked tentatively.
Jake guffawed, then started laughing so hard he doubled over. "Dave!"
"She broke into my room and did a striptease, how was I supposed to turn that down?" David defended, trying not to laugh himself. "She talked dirty in Hebrew, Jake! Hebrew! Like she'd been reading the Torah her whole life!"
Jake just groaned. "I don't know why I'm even surprised anymore…"
oOo
oOo
Szczecin, Poland
"I just… It feels like coming home, and I can stay in touch with everyone with the phones, and you said-"
"I still stand by what I said, Keo," Quatre agreed happily as he flipped through details on his tablet. "I'm not going to feel all abandoned about it. If you remember, I was expecting you all to leave this behind."
"Well, I might want to come back later," Keothany hedged. "I just want to try this out for a little while first. Either way, I'm keeping the phone. So if I get drunk off my ass, you might get weird texts in the middle of the night."
He laughed. "I'll keep that in mind," he agreed. "You figure out where you're going to stay yet?"
"Well, I'm in a hostel right now… and they said that it would be okay if I stayed there until I got a job. I figured I'd get a P.O. box tomorrow, once I cleared it with you."
"You all need to stop looking to me for approval if you want to be independent," he pointed out wryly. "But your plan makes sense." He tipped his head to one side as he considered one offer, and tapped the screen to counter it. "Do you remember the name of the hostel?"
"Um… No, but I have the business card somewhere," Keo admitted, sounding sheepish.
"Well, I'd appreciate it if you could text it to me when you get a chance," Quatre decided. "Is the location good?"
"Yeah, it's pretty central without being in a bad part of town. Why?"
"I'm thinking about buying it." He'd been looking more into hotel chains, but really… Hostels might be even better.
Either way, he'd managed to get into some of the other solid identities he had stashed, so frankly, he had the bankroll to do both and then some random others. Though, if I'm doing all that…
He wondered how long it would take Odin or Marlé to make up a shell corporation or two for him to claim.
"If you do, I totally want part of the top floor as an apartment," Keo announced, tone jaunty. "And I could totally run it, and be my own boss, maybe? It really is a good location, and rent can get pretty high out here."
Quatre snorted. "Give me the name and I'll think about it." Stockholm was enough of a traveling hub that it might be worthwhile… especially if it was a chain. And really, if he was trying to spread out the ownership so nothing became to focal on him… "Or maybe you'll inherit some forgotten relative's life insurance and you will buy it."
Keo laughed. "I can work with that," the other man decided happily. "You're kinda my hero right now, you know that, right?"
"You don't loose all your minion rights just because you decided to run away," Quatre returned, grinning like mad. "If we do this, just always keep a room or two aside for anyone of ours, or new friends we end up making. After all, right now it's just us, but there's a pretty good chance our network will keep expanding." To serve his purposes, it needed to be available as a safe house for any of theirs, or eventually Sally's people.
"Well, duh," his friend agreed happily. "That's the whole reason we got Rubato started, yeah?"
"A hole in one." That was their cover story, at least – Revenant Rubato, a new age sort of social networking group. Overall, so far they were working as one in truth, which made it easier to handle the façade. They would just hide behind the notion that it was invite only – make up some bullshit criteria. Raph had managed to get an official website and all that going as of last week and was babysitting it, trying to see how much attention it gained.
If he really did end up opening it up to other rebel factions, it'd be good to have a way to theoretically join. They had decided to claim that the group had been running for some six months before now, but that they hadn't decided to widen the circle via a webpage until recently.
He'd have to run through the details of what he'd need to make an account that looked like someone's considerable life savings – along with a death certificate and will naming Keo as the sole surviving beneficiary – by Odin and his little apprentice. Heero was a genius when it came to digital document fraud, and personally, he'd never tried to work something from the 'death of a relative' angle. He'd have to look into how to make a death certificate…
"Okay, well, I'm going to go get something to eat and dig through my backpack for that card. I guess I'll catch you later."
"Later." He ended the call and smiled down at the phone. He sounds good.
He had insisted, before they fully went through with following him around across the country trying to subvert the Regime, that the guys needed to take a week or two to travel and form an opinion about what they had missed. Some of them had gone alone, and a few with groups… Or, in Keo's case, had started off in a group before getting attached enough to an area to want to spend more time there. Some had come back immediately at the minimum one week rule he set down and others were taking their time… But no matter what they decided, they had gotten the phones set up with Marlé's custom operating system to network each other reliably and include emergency protocols. The girl had even programmed multiple layers of emergency modes, so different passwords would set off particular effects: for if they just wanted to know if someone was nearby to lend a hand versus life threatening.
Hearing how happy Keo was, Quatre was glad that he had insisted. He'd been dubious of their lack of interest in forming new lives away from him from the start; now, at least, they were recognizing that they had options.
His phone let out a noise like a gong as another counter offer came through, and he considered for a moment before forwarding the message to Erran; until he was willing to contact his sisters, he was going to continue using the cunning jack-of-all-trades entrepreneur as a lawyer. The man had been invaluable to Instructor H during the construction of Sandrock, and then again to himself, when he built Wing Zero. He possessed such a surgical level of precision when it came to the written word that, when combined with his fantastic lack of compassion and complete absence of a moral compass, made him a perfect chief of operations. The only remaining issue was loyalty; but while Erran Ahern had never demonstrated a deep loyalty for anything aside from his own skin, he had always held fast to his contracts.
Sometime during 195 he remembered having decided to see if he could lure the man into a more permanent situation. At the time, however, he had wanted to put off admitting that Quatre himself had been nearly ten of the man's best employers over the past three years – learning that you had missed that sort of situation had a way of rising a man's hackles, even when only mutual good had come of it. When he'd returned to space after Sanc's fall, he'd intended to approach him as CEO of the Winner Corporation for a consultation to sweeten the pot and keep him on contract for another year or two before suggesting a healthy salary alternative in return for exclusion agreements against Winner competitors.
But then Libra had happened. Even if he had had any way of contacting the man while on the run, only a fool would call a shark for help while actively bleeding out.
In any event, while the man had hardly become a pauper in the past three years, he also hadn't done nearly as well without the Winner Heir's patronage, and had promptly accepted the offer Quatre extended him upon admitting the referral had come from an identity the teenager had used before. Generally speaking, if you treated someone well – and paid him just above his expectations – you gained some degree of dedication.
He had just turned his screen back off and was reaching for a pen to sketch out a few ideas when the phone started to ring again. He pursed his lips, considering – it was a number he didn't recognize and certainly wasn't local – before giving a mental shrug. "Hello?"
There was a pause long enough that he started to debate if the caller had simply hung up. Then a man announced, "We met on a battlefield in 195, then went back to your place. There were belly dancers. Where were we?"
Quatre's lips widened into a broad grin. "The Sahara," he answered easily. "Adashia. I was surprised at how honest you were, and you told me you had a life motto."
Duo chuckled. His voice was definitely deeper now; but then, his own had tone had dropped as well. "'I may run and hide, but I never tell a lie.' The name's Kasey, for the record."
Quatre let out a little laugh. "Cat," he pointed out by way of agreement. "With a C. Odin said you've gotten married?"
Duo hummed an affirmative. "Found the right girl, and just couldn't let her go," he announced. "Everything's gone up and down a few times, really, but I've been okay. You? Odin didn't actually tell me anything other than your phone number."
He closed his eyes. "It… It's been bad." A living nightmare. "But the awful parts are done with, now, and it all looks to be up from here." The good thing about hitting absolute rock bottom is that after that, the only way you can go is up. "I'd rather not talk about it." He tried to grasp for anything at all that Odin had mentioned to change the topic. "I hear that your little brother is the boy my little brother is so jealous of."
Duo groaned. "I'm seriously glad we never did that shit; Amos has to be just as bad as your kid brother. It makes me want pull my hair out. The girl's cool and all, and Amos keeps insisting he's not interested in anything more than friendship, but every time she mentions the name 'Cory' he fluffs up like a pissed off cat!"
Quatre just laughed. "That sounds about right." Cory had never made any contradicting claims, but the boy had never tried to hide the fact that he practically worshiped Odin's charge.
"I don't get it."
"I do," he admitted. "But I'm not going to lie and say it's not silly." He leaned back in his chair. "They ought to either get over it or do something about it before too long; just leave them to sort it out." Duo snorted, and he grinned again, closing his eyes and trying to focus on the white noise of the call instead of what he could feel around him. It didn't actually work that way, but sometimes he could trick his mind into buying into the placebo for a little while. "Enough of that, though. You're in the Netherlands, right?"
"Amsterdam," Duo agreed. "And not in the nice part of town."
Interesting. "You know the local gangs, then?" He'd been curious about how that culture worked out since he'd heard of the city civilians taking justice into their own hands, shortly after he left Africa.
The other man snorted. "I lead one of them, so yeah. I'm, like, some sort of Robin Hood Boogeyman."
A suspicion sparked in Quatre's brain. "Which one?"
"Devil's Get."
He licked his lips, trying desperately not to laugh. "So you're the Dutchman?"
Duo groaned again. "Shit, not you too…"
oOo
oOo
October 1st 198 – Tuesday – Munich, Germany – Sarracenia
Vaughn let out a contented sigh as he pulled the car into the garage. "Welcome home."
"Thanks for the company," Jake repeated tiredly. "I think I would have had to stop and sleep somewhere if I'd gone on my own."
"Aw, no fuss, Boss," the man returned easily as he shifted into park and turned the engine off. "I've just been sitting around waiting for you all to come back; practically a paid vacation." He ran a reverent hand over the steering wheel. "And making a run with this little girl is always a treat."
Jake grinned in acknowledgement; he'd let the sergeant open up the engine a bit for the hell of it on their way back from Ukraine. Vaughn's mastery of the little sports coupe at high speeds had been deeply soothing in a visceral way, helping to loosen up the knot in his chest.
Enjoying not being the one in control was… probably something he needed to do more often.
It had been two weeks since Leia had let the cat out of the bag, and still, he felt as though he was waiting to wake up. He'd hoped that talking to David would ground him, and it had, a little, but… It was still damned surreal. The fear had disappeared in the blink of an eye, but the self-loathing he'd heaped up over the past few months was taking longer to break down.
Relena… Relena had made it clear she was willing to wait it out, accepting his presence when he was near, but not pushing for anything at all. He was glad she seemed to understand enough that he didn't have to explain what the problem was; because hell if he knew. He was starting to think that the problem was that there wasn't a problem anymore, and if that was what his brain was doing, he'd reached a whole new level of sad.
He was just… numb.
"You okay?" Vaughn asked quietly, making no move to get out of the car. "The sun'll be up in another hour or so. I know a good twenty-four seven café that's not too far – we could head back out instead. I know I could do with some pie and coffee, if nothing else." His smile was easy. "Get you feeling a little more human before you have to settle back into the groove of the castle, huh?"
"No." After a moment he offered his friend a sheepish smile, realizing that had come out a little… sharp.
The other man, however, was smirking. "Too many people?"
He glared at him half-heartedly before rolling his eyes. "Yeah." Dealing with people he didn't know meant he had to choose a persona… and he just didn't have the energy. Vaughn might not be as close to him as Lin and Mai, but their friendship had always carried a refreshingly candid note; it was unusually easy to just mirror the man's easygoing nature when it was just the two of them. Though… "Are you hungry?"
Vaughn waved in a casually dismissive way. "Yeah, but Addie's food is better, and she'll have breakfast churning out soon, if she doesn't already." He hummed for a moment before announcing, "I've got a couple co-op games that are really distracting, if you want. Not your usual type of thing, but fun enough."
Jake closed his eyes. "Just how bad do I look?"
"It's not so much how you look as how you move," he corrected hurriedly. "But? Depressed as all hell." He shifted in his seat. "Not to pry or anything, but do you need to talk about it? I mean, I know you've got the big tough boss guy image to hold, but…" He trailed off with a grimace. "I don't know, I just figured I oughta say something. Forget it."
"It's… okay," Jake told him. "I…" He grimaced himself. "I have literally no reason to be upset or anything anymore, but I'm having a hell of a time convincing myself."
The other man's grin was quick. "Need to hit refresh, huh?"
He smiled back, feeling a little lighter. "The physical version seems a bit harder than tapping a button," he agreed. "Any suggestions?"
"Do something you've never done before," he announced immediately. When Jake blinked in surprise, he made an excitedly sweeping gesture. "Clean slate, right? Go do something that you can't link back to before. Stop brooding and tell the past to go to hell because you've got better shit to do. Stop yourself from looking back for long enough that it's like it all happened to somebody else."
"Yeah?" He sounded very... absolute with that bit of advice.
Vaughn made a face. "I had some major drama crap go down when I was in secondary. Sometimes it's better to stop trying to fix something and just write new stuff over top of it instead. Works out a lot better than most people think, usually."
"Huh."
"Staying still and trying to sort it can just leave you stuck, you know?"
It sounded… liberating. "Yeah." So if he tossed aside all the mess of the past couple of months… What did he want to do?
It was stunningly simple.
"You think any florists are open yet?"
oOo
oOo
October 2nd 198 – Saturday – Szczecin, Poland
"Cat's phone!" Skye announced brightly once he'd connected the call. "I'm playing voicemail today, what's up?"
"…Doesn't he have normal voicemail?"
He laughed, pulling the phone from his ear to read the caller ID – Odin. "It was a condition," he explained cheerfully. "He hasn't slept in three days and there's no actual reason for him to be doing that. We had an intervention, but it was easier to make concessions than sedate him." Quatre had said that Odin was basically his best friend, though… And wasn't it Odin's little sister that made the network to start with? "Is there anything I can help you with?" he asked curiously. "Or do you just want me to tell him you called?"
The man on the other end of the line made a non-committal noise. "He was trying to get a hold of me earlier. I was out of service range. Do you know what that was about?"
"Mm… Not concretely?" Skye admitted. "I want to say it was about paperwork." He thought for a moment, tapping his lips. "He wanted to see if he could tempt you into a partnership? That or he already had you on board and just needed to hash out details. There was something specific about paperwork, but I wasn't helping out with that, so I don't know more."
"Aa." He made an amused noise that wasn't quite a laugh. "How long will it be until he has his phone back?"
"Oh…" He checked the time. "At least another nine hours."
He got an actual chuckle, this time. "Nine hours? How long has it been already?"
"A while. He had to make some concessions too, and it's not my fault if he was too sleep-deprived to negotiate worth a damn."
Another genuine-sounding laugh. "Point taken." A pause. Then, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Skye grinned. "Guess I'm getting a little ahead of myself. I'll tell him to call you back?"
Odin hummed an agreement… and the line went dead.
"Rude." He rolled his eyes and jammed the phone back in his pocket. There hadn't really been anything left to say, but still.
oOo
oOo
Amsterdam, Netherlands – Devil's Quarter – Evening
"I believe this was a very productive visit, yes, despite how abruptly it was put into action; certain information came to light that, due to a number of recent cyber attacks on the government's servers, required a face-to-face meeting. Unfortunately, most of that information is still sensitive. What I can tell you, however, is that whomever this group is, they are currently avoiding a confrontation; and what that gives us is time, which is an invaluable resource for our martial forces."
Mik whistled low through his teeth as he lined up his next shot. "She's smooth."
Duo snorted. "She's a politician," he countered. "She has a lot of practice."
Ruben frowned up at the TV, leaning into his cue. "But doesn't her jumping like that for him mean they're actually, like, working together? For real?"
"You're being stupid again, Benny," Markos teased happily. "Why'd we decide to let you have beer, again?"
"Fuck you, man. Fuck. You."
"Thanks, no thanks."
"-allowed us to reconnect with a number of strong allies we have outside of the Earth-Sphere and solidify a plan of action."
"Shut up, I'm trying to listen," Christiaan hollered from the bar.
"Read the captions, dumbass!" someone random called. "This ain't exactly a newsroom, ya know!"
"Those are in English, asshole!"
Duo's mouth twitched. He… actually hadn't realized that.
"-tragedy of three years ago. By keeping all lines of communication open-"
"That's because she's speaking in English you illiterate shit!"
Ah hell. Hopefully he wouldn't be breaking up a bar fight in the next few minutes; he was kinda curious to know if she was going to go into anything worthwhile in the middle of all her talking without saying anything.
"-at the negotiation table before a single shot is fired."
"-with the program or get the fuck out of my house," the bartender was growling out. "I don't know you – what the hell are you even doing here, anyway?"
Did he actually just call it his house, or am I mixing my French again? Or, really, Jérémy had a tendency to mix his languages too… 'house' hadn't been in Dutch, or English, for that matter, but he wasn't actually sure what it had been…
He wanted to say French, though?
"-important to realize that none of these past horrors have been the will of the colonies themselves."
True, that. Not that the civilians didn't agree with the ideas, at the time – but people were stupid, as a rule. It had taken him a couple years to really learn that, but you couldn't expect much from sheep.
"You have no idea what part of town you're even in, do you?" Jérémy snarled.
God damn it, Jérémy, is no one ever going to let that drop? And he was slipping more, but it wasn't French. Quatre sounded French today, that was why he was thinking French… and he couldn't remember if the bartender even spoke more than Belgium pigeon anyway. Swiss, maybe?
"-spoken with the elected officials of all five of the Colonial Nations, and agreements have been made. While I am not at liberty to discuss the details-"
He grabbed Ruben by a belt loop as he tried to stalk over to help hassle the out-of-towners. Which… really was kind of weird, come to think of it. Saying that Jérémy's little pub was off the beaten path was kinda an understatement.
"-reintegration of those we thought lost."
Warmth rushed through him and he caught the oh so subtle but there smugness in the princess' expression. It was the same damn glimmer in her eyes that she got when she conned Heero into thinking something was his idea instead of hers. She's talking about a whole lot more than Cambyses. He smirked, glad he'd managed to send her his little note last year.
And it was good, too, to hear she was behind the softening touch the media had started taking for the shit that had gone down in Africa. That made the whole thing a lot less… well, less suspicious, at least. He thought he'd have to know someone who'd been there and come back out before he could get his head around the idea that the psychos had really been 'victims of circumstance'. Seemed a little too convenient, from where he was standing.
But Relena didn't support shit unless she really meant it. She could be freaking crazy about playing with dangerous shit, but she wouldn't push for forgiveness if there wasn't a damn good reason. She'd still been crazy about Heero after New Edwards and friendly with Quatre after the mess with Wing Zero, but she'd never said a damn word about her brother and the Americas. And maybe she was playing nice with her brother too, but there were interviews on record where she straight up refused to comment on shit Zechs had done.
It probably wouldn't stand out if it weren't the only thing she ever refused to talk about. She always said something otherwise, but those questions, she seriously acted like she couldn't hear them.
"But for every example we have of a man in Cambyses who stood against the tide and protected others from the horrors committed in the Sahara, for every slum lord who has risen above their situation to take care of those around them, we have ten more instances in which no one-"
Damn it, why does everyone have to keep talking about that?!
Melissa bumped her hip into his playfully as she set down two fresh pitchers of beer on the closest of their tables. "Someone has an admirer," she sang.
"It just needs to get dropped," he groaned, covering his eyes with one hand. "If everyone would just drop it, it would get forgotten inside a week."
His wife made an amused noise, shaking her head. "Ego, love." He frowned at her, and she gestured back to the screen. He focused.
"-or child face, I have seen three more acts of kindness, despite the brutality we face in the next breath."
She was wrapping up her little spiel on a happy note, then, and apparently he'd missed something. "What?"
'Liss shook her head and gestured again. "I suppose I should be thrilled, but look at her; she's carrying herself higher."
"…Okay?" Maybe a little, but it wasn't weird or anything. The princess often got caught up in the emotions of her own speeches.
"That necklace is new," she pointed out. "It's a more complicated design than she normally wears, more delicately spun, and her earrings and bracelet match it exactly; it's a set."
"…Okay?"
Melissa snickered, leaning fully into him. "It's obviously a gift, dummy."
He frowned, bringing his arms around her and focusing on her fully. "What makes you think she didn't get it herself?"
"Yeah," Mik agreed, chalking his cue. "She's a princess – fancy jewelry's kinda what they do, isn't it?"
'Liss rolled her eyes. "Only a man would have bought that."
Mik frowned again, focusing back on the screen as Relena laughed at something the interviewer said. "I don't know," he argued. "Seems like something she'd like."
It was, really. All delicate detailing in bright metals and tiny gems; not gaudy, but something that Melissa would probably like, if he could afford it.
She started giggling into his chest as he nodded thoughtfully. "Oh my God, exactly!"
He shared a look with Mik, and the other man shrugged helplessly. Maybe 'Liss wouldn't like it? It was nice, but maybe something with stronger colors? She'd focused on it, though, which meant maybe she'd like something if it wasn't too hard to swing… She'd be mad if he actually got something expensive, at least, because it'd be wasteful.
"Just trust me, okay?" Melissa insisted, still shaking faintly with laughter. "That's definitely boyfriend jewelry."
oOo
oOo
October 4th 198 – Friday – Space – Soleil Coalition Fleet
oOo
Hey Tate,
I feel like I'm supposed to say sorry… but I'm not. At least, not about the things I ought to apologize for. So, I'm not. I also figure you know me well enough to figure out what's been going on too, and how much changed since the last time we talked. Honestly, I'm starting to think maybe you understand it more than I do, even with me going all radio silence on you. I think I probably need to sit down and talk with you for real once we have a chance and sort through it all, but... Well, I don't know when that'll be; and chances are, a little more time will sort it out anyhow.
For now, you're getting this through Michael just to keep shit from getting too complicated – your old address got shut down because you didn't use it for so long, and let's be honest, the waters are pretty fucking muddy right now. Think about it, and get back to me in a handful of weeks, maybe? Until then, we can make Mike play middle man.
…I do miss you, you know. You took me in when I was little, and protected me like the older brother I should have been to my own blood. I hate that it's been so long that it feels like you're more of an idea than a person – a thing I have to handle, instead of the family you've always been. I know I've fucked some stuff up, but… well, I think you might've done the same thing, if it was you, so… I don't know. It's hard. I'm trying, okay? You've been my anchor through all the shit the world has been for the past thirteen years, kept me as sane and as safe as I'd let you… and if it wasn't for you, I don't think I would've met anyone else I've cared about since. Everything around us has crumbled to dust so many times now, but you… you've always been there for me, guiding me and supporting me and always giving me safe harbor. If I had wanted out of all this sick shit I've surrounded myself in, I know you would have bailed me in an instant. Hell, you've done exactly that more than once, and I'm not sure I ever actually thanked you for it. So… Thanks.
But however much I miss you, I can't change what is; and maybe learning to love other people, gaining new loyalties, is… just a part of growing up. At least, that sounds like something you'd say. I'm… I'm happy, even while my stomach's twisting in knots. Hell, I always went to you for advice, and maybe that's what I miss most of all. Maybe us not really being able to talk is what got this all twisted in the first place.
I regret nothing; I refuse to regret the things I have gained, even if it's cost me more than I can really make sense of. And… well, maybe I'm making this all out to be more than it is, like Mike keeps telling me, and I haven't lost anything other than time and the happiness I might have had these past months instead of the dread I buried myself in. Maybe I'll be able to look back at this in a year or two and laugh – or maybe it'll be a wound, but one we'll get over with time and work. Just… let me know, I guess.
Otherwise, attached is a letter from someone who has missed you far more than me. She… I remember those hours before I learned the truth after the Fall; the disbelief and the despair that you had died, and how devastating it was. And I remember the world-tilting, crushing joy at finding out it was a lie. Remember that she had nearly three years between the two, to grieve and come to terms and find a way to move forward again, but… It's hard, okay? Don't forget how fucking hard this kind of shit is, and how breakable it can make somebody.
Don't put her in a hard place if she won't tell you something. There's good reasons – honestly, I think she might be smarter about all this shit than both of us put together, but hell if that hasn't always been true.
I was going to try to end this with something like closure, but I'm a fucking mess and it's the other letter you really want to read anyway, so I'm out. Take care of yourself, and get back to me when you can.
Váli
oOo
oOo
oOo
October 11th 198 – Friday – Szczecin, Poland
"Are we, like, renting this place for the month? Or did Cat actually follow through on that demand to buy me a mansion? Because I don't think a hotel counts unless we gut it and fill it with amazing things. The empty halls are either something out of a horror movie or a kickass action flick, and it's easier to believe it's the not the first option when I know I could redesign if I really wanted."
"I know, right?" Skye actually bounced. "Also, how are you in my kitchen and where have you been my whole life?"
The redhead gently transferred a bag onto the table and waltzed over to open the fridge before glancing back over her shoulder at them. "Not your kitchen, is what and where. If it's not mine, it's not anyone's. I claimed dibs, like, a month ago." She looked back in the fridge and made a disgusted noise. "Also, this is the third definitely lived in kitchen I haven't found soy sauce in – I'm not sure we can be friends."
"Under the microwave," Don offered quickly, before Skye could get going.
She practically cooed. "Ooh, Kikkoman! I take it back, you're cool."
"I'm in it, therefore? My kitchen," Skye argued, eyes narrowing.
"Well, nine tenths of the law and all, so I guess," she agreed distractedly, opening the fridge back up. "Anything in here you'd recommend?"
"You… came looking for sauce without food?" That… didn't make sense.
"It was a test," she deadpanned, not looking up. "You passed."
"What?"
"Something, something, quality control, feed me now, please and thank you," she rattled off in the same deadpan, shutting the fridge and crouching down to root through a cupboard. "Do you have a rice cooker?"
"Who exactly are you, again?"
"We cook our rice over fire, like civilized people," Skye retorted happily instead of helping.
"Currently nameless, and I'm a lazy heathen, damn it." She stood back up and eyed him critically before focusing pointedly on Skye. "If I bat my eyes and look adorable, will you cook me dinner?"
"What are you doing here?" Don tried again.
"Besides the obvious?" she asked dryly.
"Only if you're desperate," Skye decided.
"Define desperate."
"You're willing to spare my feelings and tell me it's edible desperate."
The teenager groaned and turned back around to yank open the freezer.
"Not to be rude," Don announced irritably. "But who the fuck are you?"
She tensed and shifted her stance almost instantaneously, then visibly forced her muscles to relax, shut the freezer door, and twisted back around to glower at him. "You don't really think I just waltzed in here." It wasn't a question.
"That's not what I asked," Don snapped back. He didn't care if he was being an asshole; he didn't like people in his space without a damn explanation.
"So, introduction, or get the fuck out," Skye translated, stretching like a cat to hide the motion of loosening the holsters for the knives he kept along his lower arms. "I'm kinda aboard the 'what the fuck are you doing here' train – I was just giving you time to cook something up."
"Skye," Don ground out warningly.
"Don't even start, my puns are fantastic." His eyes flicked to the bag next to him. "Also, what's in the bag?"
The girl rolled her eyes, crossing her arms and leaning back against the fridge. "Weapons of mass destruction," she informed them in a dry tone. "Or at least, it will be once it's done." She wrinkled her nose. "And seriously, the name thing is a sore topic right now. I just stormed out of Cat's room because he and my brother are rewriting my life story after he let me design it all pretty last month. Because now it's not good enough. And I don't really care if it makes sense or if he had no idea he was being an asshole, but Odin just ignored everything I did, confirmed that it's all kinda pointless, and says I can't keep being Marlé. And I've been Marlé for long enough that that's actually upsetting, which is dumb, but still. And they were too busy talking shop and finishing each other's sentences to bother explaining why."
Marlé. Oh. Well, now at least he had a face to match the name. Even if that apparently was… a thing.
"Odin's a douche," Skye offered, settling his arms back on the table and relaxing somewhat.
"A kickass douche," she agreed, making her way back over and slumping down across from them. She sniffled a little and dropped her head to the wood. "And he cut my hair!"
"It… looks good?" Don offered, not really sure what else to say.
"I have bangs!" she wailed into the tabletop.
"Oh come on, bangs are badass," Skye wheedled, stretching his arms out to press his fingertips to the crown of her head. "You can do all sorts of dramatic cool stuff with bangs."
"Bull."
Skye pouted. "Quatre has bangs."
"They're not bangs if they go past your eyes," she argued, still not looking up.
Skye poked at her again – less of a touch this time, more of a nudge. "So… We'll get your official pictures for your ID done now – no one looks good in those anyway, so no one will care – and then the problem solves itself in two months."
She sniffed loudly and shifted enough to peer up at him suspiciously. "You think all he cares about are the ID pictures?"
"Well, probably?" He frowned. "I'm guessing the point is to make you look different?"
She brought her hands up from under the table and set them under her chin, looking up to meet Skye's eyes more solidly. "Yeah. Anybody who's looking for me thinks I was going blonde."
Don frowned, considering the deep red wine burgundy of the girl's hair. It looked good, but… "That's really obviously not a natural hair color." Skye tossed him an annoyed look, but he shrugged. It was better somebody point it out now than later, right?
Instead of getting more upset though, she smirked, sitting up more. "But it's popular. And my new ID is gonna say I'm blonde."
Skye's smirk grew to match hers. "Bait and switch, I like it. What's your actual hair color?"
She looked downright devious now. "Copper red."
Skye cackled. "Oh, awesome, even better."
Her smile turned a little more happy instead of mischievous. "Odin's going to list his as his real color, but stay blonde. He says anyone who caught wind of us will assume he changed it."
"Your brother sounds like slightly less of a douche now," Skye informed her solemnly. "Or at least he's a douche with good ideas."
She started to giggle. "He's really good with this stuff. Just…" She sighed and sat up the rest of the way, huffing out a breath to ruffle the hair over her eyes. "Bangs. Not cool."
…They really did look good, though. Fashionable, and done at a slant – they were layered, and there weren't any longer strays sneaking out of her blood red ponytail.
Skye sat back too, making a show of considering her face. "I've got some ideas. They haven't made the new stuff yet, right?"
She scowled. "No. They're just planning my life for me right now – they'll let me help actually make it."
He nodded decisively. "Glasses."
She frowned. "Glasses?"
"Glasses will make you look really cool. And your eyes less obvious – they're pretty distinct, on their own. I'll help you pick them out, it'll be great."
Her expression was doubtful. "Maybe."
He pouted. "Come on, when I'm done, you'll look awesome."
She glowered. "Bangs."
Skye pursed his lips. "I can give Quatre bangs."
"…That really shouldn't make it better."
"But it totally does, doesn't it?"
She started to giggle again.
Don sighed, leaning back. Time to either detach or make a peace offering, he decided "I have a couple lasagna in my freezer." She perked up at that, and he reached out a hand to shake. "I'm Donciano."
The girl took his hand with a smile… and an automatic sounding pleasantry in Italian.
"Yeah… not so much." Despite all his father's attempts, he spoke maybe ten words of the language.
"Oh, sorry." She pursed her lips, tilting her head. "You sound…"
"American? Yeah." It felt like another lifetime, though. Sometimes he wondered if it was a good or a bad thing, that it felt like everything from before had happened to a different person. He hadn't had any family for a good ten years before the Fall, and hadn't ever kept a girlfriend for long enough to matter… so while it had still been terrifying, the evacuation had just been… something that happened. Almost like moving – except all he'd had were the saddlebags he'd snatched off his bike when the air sirens started to wail.
It hadn't been good, but it hadn't been all bad either – he didn't have to pay off his student loans anymore.
The relocation had even started off like an adventure in a new, exotic world. With the climate shift, northern Africa was going to be actually livable – even farmable with some work – and he'd never had the opportunity to get in on something at the ground level like that. So sure, he'd figured it was going to be hard, but he could put his agricultural degree to work in ways no one had ever dreamed and actually make something of his life that would've done his grandmother proud.
Then Cambyses had come to his little transplant town. And… Yeah. It was hard to remember the details of the cages now, or what had come after, and he was glad; he was okay with how he'd lived on autopilot, following orders and not really taking any of it in. Then Robby had found him… and while he didn't think everything was okay yet, he knew it could be, eventually.
But now Marlé looked upset, and he hadn't meant to turn the conversation dark. "It was a long time ago," he reassured her, smiling. "I'm not going to be sad about where I came from, you know?" Either West Virginia or the Sahara.
Her smile was tentative, but genuinely happy, and not pitying at all. For a girl with so many secrets, she was stunningly sincere. And she won more points for not trying to empathize like she understood; she just smiled and held out her hand for his room key and asked him to turn on the oven.
He might be ready to add to the hype about this kid.
It wasn't until the preheat had finished that another stranger slouched his way into the open doorway and eyed him and Skye for a moment before settling on the girl. And staring. She pointedly ignored him while she took too long to put on baking mitts she didn't need and arrange the pasta just so. Then she spent a while shutting the damn oven door and fiddling with the timer that couldn't be nearly as difficult to program as she made it out to be. Then she switched on the internal light and crouched in front of the glass to eye the food as though she expected it to explode at any moment.
The man in the doorway didn't react. He just stood, casual stance as tense as a coiled spring, waiting.
It was somehow less awkward than it should have been, though maybe only because he wasn't the one with the raptor's attention on him.
Finally, she sighed and stood up, turning to face the doorway, and glowered back at him. "What?"
"Audi." He rolled the d like an L1 native – where somehow it was a d and an r and an l sound all at once.
She perked up. "What?"
The man – Odin, or whatever name he was using now – smirked. "We found good papers for it. Audi Burton. Audi Harlé Burton, maybe." She slapped both hands over her mouth to smother giggles, and his grin widened, his slouch relaxing into something a little less predatory, before turning to eye the labels she had peeled off the food. "That looks good."
"You're welcome," Don groused under his breath. Apparently everyone else failed at going to the damn grocery store. Next time, he was making Felix go with him.
"Food does sound good," Quatre decided as he stepped around Odin. "It's what, three am?" He smiled at Don. "Good thinking; I thought I was going to have to make do with soup and sandwiches until something opened."
Of course. He rolled his eyes. "I should make you get lost and eat tomato soup with dry toast." Because there was no way any of these assholes would have remembered to buy butter.
Quatre paused at that, then narrowed his eyes for a moment… and nodded. "No."
"You did that wrong," Skye pointed out immediately.
The younger man let out an amused chuff before spinning around and moving to the couch. "No I didn't."
"Bullshit," the girl – Audi – singsonged, hoisting herself up onto the counter.
"I deny everything and instead direct you to the shifty-eyed man standing ominously in the corner," Quatre announced happily, dropping bonelessly to the couch.
…He… Actually, somehow being okay with the little redhead had sidelined the fact that this guy was armed and watching them like he was trying to decide who to eat first. The hairs on the back of Don's neck rose, and Skye honest to god jumped.
But that… wasn't right either. No one had introduced him but he was obviously Quatre's friend based on body language alone, even if he was… looming all creepy in the corner. Frowning, Don met him stare for blank, impenetrable stare… as he took three fluid steps to move out of the corner and into the kitchen without breaking eye contact.
You've got to be kidding me.
But then Quatre's laughter was just naughty enough that he suddenly wasn't sure if the guy was actually that menacing while slouching in a freaking corner, or if his feelings were the empath feeling mischievous.
The jackass just laughed harder the more suspicious he got, damn it.
Audi rolled her eyes. "Not that I don't appreciate the genius of just taking the consonants out of my name," she began plaintively. "But what was wrong with Aurelia Deloe?"
"Nothing," Odin answered immediately, dropping his weight back against the fridge.
She gave him a very unimpressed look. "And?"
"Aurelia and Rowan Deloe are perfect for what you wanted, and you guys should definitely hold onto the passports you made," Quatre explained, sinking deeper into the couch and closing his eyes. "They're perfect in a 'don't notice me' average way, but that's not going to work with what we're doing now." He rubbed his hands over his face. "You need something with stronger bones and a history full of holes."
"Full of holes," she repeated dubiously.
"Full of legitimate, sketchy holes," he agreed.
"You're in a really contrary sort of mood, Bossman," Skye announced, standing up and walking over to the couch himself.
"He's not wrong," Odin offered, crossing his arms.
"So… we can't use the Deloe names because I did a good job?" the girl demanded skeptically.
"Too thorough," Odin agreed.
"There are a couple things that will contradict down the line," Quatre told her as Skye settled next to him. "Then it could draw too much suspicion to stand even though you've dotted all your i's." He shook his head a little. "She and Rowan are still good for avoiding suspicion, but not for standing under direct scrutiny."
"…So to make it more realistic, we're going to poke holes in the cover story." Her tone was unconvinced.
Quatre smirked. "Giant, Odin-shaped holes."
"…Yeah, okay, I can see that."
oOo
oOo
October 12th 198 – Saturday – Munich, Germany – Sarracenia
"I haven't been very fair to you."
Mu startled, spinning to look over her shoulder and find Colonel Miller already shutting the door she had just come through. She fought the urge to swallow hard, but couldn't help the sharp burst of adrenaline that made her pulse begin to race.
She had respected him from the start because Mitchell obviously did, then later because she could see he was a responsible and talented commander. She had come to like him as a person, for all that there were little things about him that frankly creeped her out – that screamed 'danger' so loud she couldn't ignore them. He was a good person. He cared about the right things, and he could be fun to hang out with on his own merit. She had easily seen why David claimed him as his best friend.
Even after the two of them had their fight, she had respected this man, because, well… Dave could be a real dick sometimes, and she hadn't needed to see Miller's file to know he had a temper. It'd looked like it was all blown out of proportion, but personally, she'd figured that the man had probably deserved the beating. The obvious guilt and depression she'd watched Jake float through afterwards had just proved that despite the power they both wielded, both colonels were just men who fucked up sometimes.
But now that she knew he was Váli? That changed everything.
He sighed as he leaned back against the only way out of the room. "Don't go all dramatic on me."
"Are you shitting me?" she demanded. "Because you have seriously got to be shitting me here."
He snorted out a laugh, and something coiled tight in her belly started to unwind, even as the loss of tension made her start to panic in truth. He wanted her calm and unsuspecting, which meant that was where she shouldn't be. Váli was someone she may have hoped to work under someday in an abstract way, but while idolizing the boogeyman was one thing? Finding out he'd gone native and had been idly watching her trade information on him for the past five months made her feel like a butterfly pressed in glass.
At first, when they came back, she wasn't sure that he knew. Dave had said he'd been out of contact, after all, and she'd struggled to act like nothing was wrong. And Vaughn said he'd gone and worked everything back out with Mitchell as soon as they'd gotten back – that meant she was safe, didn't it?
So he wasn't going to hurt her, but... She started to shake.
"Christ, Mu," he groused, dropping his head back against the door, throat exposed and every line of him relaxed. "Get a grip before you hyperventilate. I don't know what you're expecting, but if it was bad, do you honestly think I would have let you see me coming?" He brought his head back up and gave her an exasperated look. "Not even going into the fact that you apparently think I'd attack you in the first place, because that actually does piss me off. Whatever clusterfuck the past couple months have been, even if you weren't one of my people, Dave and Treize are still the big brothers I never deserved."
She closed her eyes and slumped onto her bed, wanting to cave in on herself. "How long have you known?"
He scoffed. "Since I looked at your file when I was putting Lena's first crew together eighteen months ago and decided you'd be happier where you were."
"I wasn't."
"Hindsight is a bitch," he muttered by way of agreement. "Maybe I did you a disservice, but my goal was to build a solid unit to support the princess – and the loyalists I brought in were always going to be phased out eventually, myself included." He paused, shifting his weight. "Honestly? I passed you over because I thought you'd make a good ace on my next project and I didn't want to squander you on something temporary. You're too valuable for that."
Mu opened her eyes again but stared at the wall instead of looking back at the man, feeling numb. "What happened, then?"
She saw him shrug uncomfortably in her peripheral vision. "Then everything was different, after the riot; maybe before that, I don't know, but… I couldn't do it anymore, so I started stalling. Then Heavyarms showed up and we needed to move, so I just buried myself in the details of that and excused myself as being too busy… So Dave thought he'd be helpful and give me resources I hadn't approved – which turned you into a lever against me in our latest pissing contest. Lena caught on to the friction, Dorothy didn't take to you, and you got frustrated enough that something slipped in front of her. Since then, Relena's been keeping you tucked away and watched while she tries to decide if the security breech was worth knowing who her mole was, and I… I was so busy with my morally ambiguous balancing act that I dropped the ball and just sidelined anything about you beyond providing safe harbor."
He sighed. "So with the best of intentions, everyone you ought to have been able to turn to has basically fucked you over. The responsible thing would have been to immediately transfer you back out as soon as Dave slipped you in, but I got all passive aggressive instead and here we are. I'd offer to keep you as a liaison because Relena really will ally to Treize, but that's just sentiment – you'd stay an outsider here, your talent goes to waste, and it'll probably be a long time before Lena can think of you as anything other than a spy. And that's not even touching on your dynamic with the others. You'd be miserable and no one would even gain anything from it."
She refused to cry. Things were fucked up enough without adding snot to it. "Pretty fucking bleak, then."
He came closer, slowly, clearly telegraphing his motions, and she was thankful for the consideration even as it made her feel weak; she wasn't sure she could handle anything else right now. "Only if you stay here."
"I don't want to go to the Strike Force." She'd die there. She liked David, but he'd overestimate her. He'd ask for more than she could give, and she wouldn't be able to turn him down, because he'd believe in her right until the end. She wanted to be worth that regard, but just… she just wasn't, and she shouldn't have to feel ashamed of that!
"Good, because that's a shitty idea too," Jake agreed, now standing in front of her. "You're too smart for the front line; your strengths are in finesse and conviction, and even if you made it work for you, it would burn you down to nothing."
Relief flooded through her and she gasped at the strength of it, breath hitching as her ears started to thunder. She swallowed convulsively, willing the tears away. She hadn't realized just how resigned to the idea she had become despite how much she feared it, resented it. It had been crowding her thoughts this past month, trying to smother her ever since Mitchell had made the offer.
She just wanted to go home. She wanted to be done with her tour and catch the first flight back to Los Angeles and surprise her mom with lunch at work. She wanted to talk to her dad about the ridiculous politics in the fantasy novels they'd both been reading most recently and argue about what the characters should have done instead. She wanted to call up Uncle Tony and help him try to pick up his latest almost perfect and entirely unattainable crush, to get roped into the ridiculous little parties her cousins liked to throw while they cooed over their babies and prodded her about when she was going to find a husband. She wanted to drive out to the coast and people watch while she ate fresh lychee and worked on her tan.
But she couldn't. She couldn't do any of that ever again. And if she didn't find a good enough reason to have survived everyone she had ever loved, she didn't think she could bear it. There had to be something she was meant for, that needed her so badly that she had lived through this hell, and she needed to find it before the abyss swallowed her whole.
"I… know a few things," Jake muttered as he crouched in front of her, trying to look into her eyes, "about outliving tragedy."
She ducked her head to one side, trying to get a grip on her breathing.
She just started to heave harder instead.
"Everyone says time helps, but… well, I don't really believe that. It makes it easier to think about, maybe, but that's more because you get so worn down by it that you start to give in and go numb; it doesn't make it better."
She squeezed her eyes shut again, feeling her gut twist. Everyone did say that, and she hated it. It was what people said when they ran out of things they could do and wanted to act like they were in still in control anyway.
The fact that maybe he got that just made this all worse.
He reached out and pressed his hands down on where she had hers, gripping her knees. "And maybe it's different for you, but I know that the only thing that really helped me? Was finding things I could do to stop it from happening again to somebody else. Things I was good at, that other people couldn't do, or wouldn't."
Mu's breath hitched again, and her eyes burned.
"And I really fucked up with you, so I don't want you to think this is charity or any other self recriminating bullshit, because I owe you for that… But I want you to tell me what you need, and I'm going to make it happen. I don't care what it is or who it's with: you tell me, and I'm going to have it ready to roll before you walk out my door. Anything at all."
She pulled her hands away and sat back to wipe at her eyes, wondering if he had any idea how ridiculous that sounded. "Don't make promises like that," she half sobbed at him.
He made a frustrated noise. "Really? No one questioned me when I pulled this damn fortress out of a hat, but you think I can't pull some strings and get you your dream career on Earth? Disappear you so you can join Treize's fleet of analysts in space? Arrange an honorable discharge and set you up with a no kill animal shelter?"
She choked out a laugh at that, mind whirling.
"I know people – I can magic up a few investors if you want to do something big. Come on, you were freaking out a minute ago because I'm omniscient and terrifying, you can't really think I can't."
He… maybe had a point, but she couldn't make sense of it right now. This all was just… "Okay."
Jake nodded sharply and rose back to his feet. "Think about it, okay?"
She nodded a few times, trying to get herself back under control. She was mostly failing, but at this point she just wanted him out of her room. "Okay."
"Let me know." And with that, he was gone.
oOo
oOo
October 14th 198 – Monday – Munich, Germany – Sarracenia
"I want there to be more exposure, believe me," Delilah was arguing as they came up the stairs. "But I think, to be the most effective, the campaign needs to stay subtle."
"Mm." Relena frowned, palming the lock for her antechamber, passing through then holding the door open for Delilah, who had her hands full with a tray from the kitchen. "I think I understand where you're coming from, but I don't know that I agree. It is, after all, an awareness movement." She let the door swing closed, and headed for the opposite, silently counting out the forty seconds after the outer lock re-engaged. "Everything to do with the Osborne Reunion Foundation has commentary on the importance of privacy, the value of anonymity."
"No one believes everything they read, even if it's repeated enough times that you grow sick of it," Delilah argued, shifting the weight of the tray onto one hip. Relena frowned and gestured for the older woman to pass it to her, but she just gave her a dubious look and shook her head. "You have to put your money where your mouth is and practice what you preach."
Relena rolled her eyes and took the water pitcher from her. "It's barely getting any recognition."
"Which would be why I'm here to sort things out with you." She handed her a napkin, which, really, was good; she hadn't thought about how damp the glass would be from the ice. "The trick is to make what you want to show off popular, without the garish in between stage where you're just screeching for attention." Shifting the tray on her hip, she added, "I have a few tactics in mind, but not the means." She gestured at the door questioningly. "That's where you come in, hopefully."
Relena shrugged a little and began wiping at the condensation built up on the pitcher, still counting. Explaining took longer than dealing with the awkwardness, and telling someone that you had odd time-based emergency responses was counter to the point. "Oh?"
Delilah frowned, casting a glance around the dark-paneled wood of the antechamber that was part suspicion, part confusion. "Are we being scanned? Because I feel like this might be a good time to mention I carry a taser."
"Don't be ridiculous." And she'd known that – Hayden had texted her about it before she and Mai had come down to meet her guest on her first visit. "It's not as though you can get it out very quickly."
"Which would be the reason I was trying to ask if I should drop lunch and start the getting," she returned in a wry tone, rolling her eyes. "You've no intention to explain, do you?"
Relena smiled brightly before turning and pressing her palm to the pad. "A woman must always maintain an air of mystery," she quipped, holding in a laugh.
The other woman cackled. "Really? You're going to try pulling that card on me?"
Relena gave into the urge to snicker, turning the handle and twisting to meet Delilah's eyes as she hip checked the door the rest of the way open and walked in backwards. "It was worth a try," she insisted. "To see if I could make you laugh, if nothing else."
"Very well, point made." She resettled the weight of her tray once more before following. "Ooh, lovely."
Lena frowned as she stepped sideways so the door could fall shut, turning back around… and staring.
They covered practically everything. Her office was a jungle. A giant, bright yellow jungle of-
"Daffodils," her guest was exclaiming happily. "A little excessive, but certainly cheery."
She wanted to groan in exasperation. Instead, what came out was a slightly mad giggle. Excessive? She had no idea what to even do with all this! They were… Where was she supposed to put lunch? The only flat surface left was the floor, and not even it had escaped. Those were sunflowers, too, over by the windows overlooking the grounds, and red sunflowers collected in a vase on an end table, and…
She wanted to giggle helplessly and strangle him all at once. She'd been in this room not fifteen minutes ago – how had he even done this?
"Oh, wow!" Mai exclaimed, coming in from the bathroom. "Would you look at that?"
"I do not believe you are even slightly innocent in this," Relena immediately argued, focusing on the major. "Don't even try it."
"I've no idea what you're implying, Princess!" the Australian woman insisted happily. Strolling over as if the atrium was turned into a nursery every other Thursday, she started to shift pots of flowers off the coffee table and onto the floor. "I have absolutely no idea how these all got up here."
"Liar," Relena retorted, but was unable to stop her mouth from twitching traitorously into a smile. "You've been missing all morning; he put you up to this! I should have guessed."
"I had to take Lorenzo to the vet," she adlibbed.
"Olivia has a vet come to her kennel."
"It didn't work with my schedule this month." She took the pitcher from her and set it down before continuing to rearrange so that only the vase of red sunflowers stayed – most of the flowers, she realized, were still potted.
"You're lying," she persisted, and, having completely lost at stopping herself from grinning like a fool, struggled to at least not giggle like a schoolgirl.
"And your face is lit up like sunshine," her friend pointed out, beaming.
She really couldn't help it then, because, really… what else could she do? This… This was possibly the most bizarrely extreme example of your beau giving you flowers that she could have ever imagined, even as a little girl. She stood there and giggled, staring around at just… absurdly bright and cheerful yellow.
Boys had given her flowers before, but always the very carefully thought out bouquets, with an absurd amount of ceremony and etiquette surrounding it… and he wasn't even here.
"Where is he?" she demanded after a long few moments of staring around.
"You don't actually want to know," Mai informed her brightly. "You really don't." She actually looked at the food tray then, and frowned. "Isn't Dorothy supposed to be here?"
"She's not answering her phone." Relena frowned. That… was actually rather odd, come to think of it.
Mai's incredulous look let her know that she agreed. "Uh… huh."
"She's a grown woman," the princess dismissed. Jake probably had her busy helping him with whatever stunt came after this. She'd text Olivia after this meeting if she still hadn't heard back. She hadn't heard from her today either, and that really could be all the explanation needed.
Turning to smile and shrug at her guest, she gestured towards the couches, moving to sit opposite. "Extravagant gestures aside," she announced dryly, "Shall we?"
oOo
oOo
Szczecin, Poland
"What else, then?"
Quatre gestured vaguely at Odin, focused on what he had up on the board – looking for gaps, comparing them with the other profiles… debating if it would be advantageous to add more ties. Probably not. It actually might be a good idea to remove a few, considering the source. "Let it stew a while," he decided. It was good work – he was entirely confident it would be perfect once he was done – but it wouldn't hurt to take a few days to regain an outside perspective. It would be annoying to have to shore something up later because he was trying to do five things at once.
He was pretty sure he could do close to twenty things at once without blurring the streams of thought together – after Libra it was easy – but the results lacked… flavor. The entire point of working something through by hand was to give it real depth and quirk.
His lips twitched into something that fell short of a smile. After Libra, finding that state of mental equilibrium Zero gave him had become frustratingly not helpful. He and Heero had lacked the resources to apply any strategies that may have helped their helter-skelter flight through Europe.
On the other hand, he knew that, if he had been faced with the Cambyses quarantine before coming to terms with Zero? He would have allowed himself to die. After exhausting all avenues of escape from the Iron Ghetto, falling into Zero's patterns had allowed him to run through the statistics of consequence – to find the options least likely to see him dead or insane. When they had worked to see him free of the cages faster, he'd refused to let go of those patterns; instead, they had allowed him to twist his mind into the strange knot that was Robby. Finding the men who still wanted to be men instead of monsters had been more of the same; constantly calculating actions and microexpressions, analyzing everyone he met and scoring them on a sliding scale of humanity. Thinking that way had been his salvation, granting him the ability to decide who he would or wouldn't approach by their percentage on his internal rubric. Unless they consistently scored high enough, he kept his distance.
It wasn't until he had recruited over forty men – more than the Maguanacs – that he began to believe it wouldn't twist around to bite him, warping his mind into something twisted and depraved. Honestly, it wasn't until maybe a month ago that he had begun to trust that he wouldn't… regress.
He still worried that his acceptance of himself now was only a reflection of those who had placed their faith in him – of Odin's tranquil mind and the others' easy acceptance – but no man lived in a vacuum. In any case, he knew the weaknesses of his mind, and the people he surrounded himself with were the counter to those tendencies. So long as he had them, the classification of his psyche was purely academic.
Without them… Well, that's the sort of madness they write epics about. Everyone had a breaking point; if everyone he cared about died, he should hope he would break down. If you went through something that traumatic and didn't, you had an entirely different set of problems.
Besides, he thought with amusement as Odin came up beside him to consider the diagrams himself. If I structure myself around his survival, I doubt there will be any problems. It was more complicated than that, of course – but not wrong either.
"How many other projects are you using this timeline for?"
Straight to the heart of it, as always. "Six at minimum, ten at most. This ought to be the primary backbone of the story, but it would be too coincidental for everything to link back here." Real life just didn't work out that neatly.
Odin tipped his head to one side, considering the whiteboard. "That won't all fit up there."
Technically, he didn't need the whiteboard: he just liked to be able to check his work. "I'll switch to paper soon."
For all that he had come to rely on the trance-like meditative state of mind he'd gained from Zero, he would never fully trust it.
This part is done, he decided, leaning back against the table. It was still only a skeleton, but that was all it should be. Twisting around, he grabbed a blank spiral notebook and handed it to his friend. "I need as many details as you can give me," he decided. "It doesn't matter how random it seems; I need to be sure I don't write in a contradiction." He would probably keep one or two, but he didn't want enough to cause actual doubt.
Odin shrugged and sat, flipping the thing open to a blank page. "I might need prompts," he warned as he began writing.
"You think in odd circles," Quatre agreed, smirking. He turned around to sort through the notebooks he had already written in, pawing through them until he found what he wanted. Cat Wilson. American, Pacific Northwest, ACET track, doing an exchange year in Rome during the Fall for an MBA. Only child, mother deceased during early childhood, father emotionally withdrawn and reportedly in Seattle during the Fall, presumed deceased.
Most of it was close enough to his own history, emotionally, that it wouldn't be too hard to maintain. He would have to flatten his voice a little and shift his speech patterns, but it would become natural quickly enough – and anything too off target could be dismissed between the oddities of children raised into polyglots and the three years since Libra. Cat wouldn't have been home for almost four years due to the exchange program, so that would help too. He'd decided to make him a little younger too; seventeen, instead of his true eighteen. If he acted exasperated when people questioned the odd name and said his mom had been from Portland, everyone would just think 'American' and drop it.
After all, no one trying to avoid attention would try to insist his legitimate name was Cat, of all things.
Without a home to return to, his host family had insisted he simply stay, and enough of his father's assets had survived that he was able to finish his schooling and have a nest egg to start something when he was done, so long as he was careful.
The host family in Rome would be Cory's origin, since the boy was originally from Anzio and had never lost his accent. It would be difficult to maintain a façade of family to return to, too easy to disprove, but at the same time… It was ridiculous, but he was reluctant to kill off his charge's imaginary relatives.
Suspicion. He snapped his attention over to Odin in a moment, ignoring the emotion vibrating in his chest like a frantic bird; it would fade soon. "What?" In retrospect, it wasn't very strong – he likely wouldn't have noticed it in someone else – but in the smooth, deep lake that he normally read from the man, it stood out like a beacon.
Odin didn't look up, though he had stopped writing to tap his pen against his lips – another of those careless gestures he had picked up since Jerusalem that made him feel more organic, less something programmed. "I'm missing something."
Quatre resisted the urge to guffaw. That was certainly an understatement. "Can you be a little more specific?"
He tipped his head, considering, and the suspicion sunk deeper, no longer agitating his senses, but… there was a sense of something large moving beneath the surface. He wouldn't be able to feel it if he hadn't already known it was there.
"No," the other man decided after a long moment.
"Right." He did request prompts. "How do you know?"
"It's too fragmented. The earlier I go, the more it breaks down, until the pieces have almost no perspective at all."
Quatre considered not saying anything for a long moment, but decided that would be in bad faith. "That's fairly common."
"I'm explaining badly." Frustration rippled through him, then settled again into concentration as Odin closed his eyes. "I knew my father was sad. I always knew my father was sad, and that it was okay, because he was supposed to be."
Well… that was an unusual jump for a child to have made, but not bizarre. Deciding something was 'normal' was the most common coping mechanism in existence.
"But I remember him being happy," he continued. "I remember him laughing when I… I can't remember the details – only the emotions. The facts start contradicting. He's watching me try something new and I can see him ahead of me, but he also has a hand on my back. He said he wasn't my father, but I shouldn't use names, so I could call him Dad anyway. I remember being comfortable, safe, when I knew he was out getting food – but I also know that I hated to be alone when I was small."
His chin dipped closer to his chest. "None of it's reliable. Either it's all corrupt and half imagination, or…" He looked up and glared at the whiteboard. "I don't know. Either I can't trust any of it, or something… tore. Something ripped. And I don't know what."
Well... Context was an issue. "Something changed," Quatre offered. "If the before and after was severe, it might have been traumatic. The younger a person is, the easier it is for them to feel like something is the end, because they haven't seen enough to weather change yet. It's just… chaos, and since it hasn't happened before, the mind doesn't already have a stable way to adapt." He shrugged. "But it also means that kids can often handle themselves in terrible circumstances better than adults, since they don't have a solid sense of scale."
The other man's emotions felt… muddled, now. It was all beneath that glass smooth lake surface, though, so he wasn't too worried about it. Another tactic, then. "Do you feel like anything broke up like that after you self-destructed, or the Fall?"
Odin appeared to think about it for a long moment. Then, "No. Though things after Libra were strange in a different way. A lot of the time, nothing felt real. Just… like a really long, dark dream." His head tipped again. "That was probably a good thing."
"I'm going to count it as one," Quatre agreed. Heero'd come close enough to suicide all too many times even with that buffer.
"The retraining, though," Odin argued. "It happened then."
He frowned. Retraining? "When was that?"
"Mm, 194. Summer, I think? Maybe spring." He shifted, closing his eyes again, body relaxing. "The part of L1 I lived in was in a warm cycle when it started."
His emotions were serene, but Odin's life revolved around numbers. "You don't remember the dates?"
He shrugged. "It's jumbled. I stopped caring, and that was… encouraged."
Is he actually calm, or is he suppressing this somehow? "Encouraged how?" He was pretty sure he understood what the other man was implying, but-
"I don't like to think about it." Odin turned and met his eyes, still deadly calm. "So I don't."
Hell. That… sounded a great deal like how he had twisted himself into Robby, and… Well, Heero is the only successful long-term user of the Zero System. At least, he had only ever done what he had wanted before stepping into the cockpit. If Zero had broken him, it had never shown in the results.
Perhaps because the man had already been broken and healed before touching it?
He sucked in a deep breath, focusing on the steady anchor of his friend. He forced himself to let this go the same as Odin evidently already had, relishing the stillness in him, and just… accepted. If he didn't want to think about it, Quatre wasn't going to argue. Instead, he struggled to get back on topic. "That backs up the trauma theory," he decided. Shock might be a better term.
He focused back on the board. Really, he had everything he needed… His hesitation was more to do with wanting to have the linked profiles ready before implementing any of them. "Take a few days to jot down those details if you can, and I'll look them over before finalizing it."
Odin nodded. "Anything else?"
Well, he hadn't planned to ask, but since Odin had, it felt appropriate. "Your girl." Marlé – Audi, he needed to get into the habit of thinking of her as Audi now – had a talent for this the same as he did and would only benefit from the practice. Inexperienced as she was, she had been a fantastic help when crafting the new identities for his men, even before going into the digital tricks Odin had taught her.
She'd tried to show him those too, but the logic of it was… frustrating. He could probably do it if he had to, now, but she was good, and enjoyed it the same way he did time with his violin. Sitting next to her as she worked it was a pleasure by itself.
Amusement. Pride. "You couldn't stop her if you tried."
Quatre laughed. "I don't care to test that."
A spark of… attention? Not everything was always easy to define but… Getting an idea? Inspiration? "A few days, then?"
If he wanted to present everything at once, instead of piecemeal? "Likely closer to a week," he corrected. Then there was still the physical aspect of it. He'd need to slip physical forgeries into at least a few agencies… Skye might be best for that, and Sio; maybe Ardith, if he was back by then. Between the four of them, they should be able to get a decent amount of scatter.
Less that spark of idea now – more conviction, satisfaction. "I'm calling Lucrezia."
Ah. He grinned back at him as Odin smiled brightly and strode purposefully out of the room. He'd wondered before, but that… That was a good feeling too.
oOo
oOo
October 19th 198 – Saturday – Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
Mm, phone. Not really awake, she reached for it, patting the bed in the direction of the sound without opening her eyes. She felt good, deliciously sated and warm… "Hello?"
There was a pause, then, "I woke you up, didn't I?"
Dorothy smiled and yawned, opening her eyes to consider the bedroom ceiling. "What time is it?"
Relena let out an amused noise. "Eleven. Are you home?"
It's a good thing I arranged for a late check-out, then. "Lux, actually." She sat up and grimaced at her hair; she had planned to wait on showering until she got to Belgium, but the dark color was suddenly detestable. "What's going on?"
"Nothing, I just hadn't heard from you in almost a week," Relena dismissed. "Is everything okay?"
"Everything is absolutely excellent," she purred happily, shaking her hair back so she didn't have to look at it. "I'll be back in time for supper tomorrow." She paused, considering. "Was there something you needed before then?"
"Oh, no. There might be something you could do if you're already so far west as that, but I already handed it off to Olivia, so you would need to talk to her." A pause, then, "What are you doing, anyway?"
Dorothy smirked, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and heading for the en suite bathroom. "Maybe I'll tell you when you're older."
The princess scoffed in amusement at that, but didn't press. "Be that way. You sound happy, though."
"I am," Dorothy agreed. "I had a good night." She made a face at her reflection; that was a great deal too much make-up. "I need to brush my teeth," she decided, reaching for her toiletry bag. "I'm supposed to meet Olivia in Charleroi at four." She had planned to be late, but as she was awake already, she might as well do the unexpected and beat the other woman there – it wouldn't do to become too predictable.
"Alright, I'll talk to you later. I'm assuming you're in on Olivia's conspiracy involving why my schedule is suspiciously clear for three days around Halloween?"
"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," she lied cheerfully. "Didn't you already have plans with Jake anyway?"
Her friend let out a long-suffering sigh. "You're not fooling anyone. And leave the poor man alone, he's trying."
"Not hard enough, if you're still talking like that," Dorothy mused.
She could practically hear Relena rolling her eyes, and she smirked, feeling accomplished. "Good-bye, Dorothy."
"Good day to you," she chirped back before disconnecting and glowering at her reflection again, debating.
No. Shower it was.
oOo
oOo
Ieper, Belgium – Ancient Wars Memorial
"Holy shit," Hilde gasped out. "That's…" Her voice cracked and she swallowed hard. "Holy shit!"
That just about says it all, doesn't it? On the one hand, it was gratifying to know that the breadcrumb trail he had been dragging Hilde around on hadn't been imagined – he really had started to wonder if he was chasing impulse instead of facts, this time. On the other…
He had no idea what to do.
He bit the inside of his lip, trying to focus… but the deep well of knowledge about seemingly everything useful or dangerous from an earlier lifetime had… nothing.
Nothing. That… That was new.
…Trowa died in an explosion. The egg timer was counting down from eighteen something.
He ruthlessly shoved down the urge to run.
"Fuck, this is…" Hilde crouched down in front of the storage cupboard they had opened, reaching out to touch the thing before remembering herself and drawing her hands back to her knees. "Maybe…"
Adam narrowed his eyes and settled onto his toes just behind her. If I get a closer look, maybe something will click? Maybe he just hadn't stumbled on the right trigger yet. Trowa had to have worked with explosives before – he'd been a mercenary turned terrorist.
It looked… weird. No clearly professional clay or plastic – instead, it was all… Well, there were at least two containers for hair products involved.
What were the chances they could maybe… spin out more time on the clock? Was that a thing that might actually work? Probably not. At any rate, he didn't want to find out if he was wrong. Who puts an egg timer on a bomb? They'd only found the damn thing because he had heard it ticking in the supply closet when they walked by.
He'd only wanted to come to the memorial at all because of a rumor about something big going down that they'd picked up after sorting out the whole thing with drug traffickers in Italy. At a glance, they'd seemed pretty deeply in bed with the guys with the stockpile in France where Hilde had shown up to lend a hand. After they had put together that the amount of money dropped on that particular rebel cell was only a drop in the bucket – apparently there was fantastic money to be had in heroin – they had been grasping at straws to find anything meaningful to salvage out of the trip. But this…
Eighteen minutes. It had taken longer than that to get here, winding through security. If they flat out sprinted and hoped no one felt trigger happy? Ten, maybe? They had passed at least one window he might be able to shortcut through – maybe he could shave it down to something closer to five.
Blast radius? He had no idea. Looking at it, he wasn't even sure if whoever had put it together did. Maybe Duo could, but for all that Hilde claimed Duo had taught her, he was pretty sure the ex-pilot had only had enough time to cover the basics.
Seventeen.
If he was wrong, and the windows were space-grade plastic instead of easily broken glass? This was an old museum – there were enough relics and valuables that it was a possibility. The amount of variables involved…
It was business hours, on a Saturday at a popular international monument. The number of people he had seen on his way in alone would mark this explosion as a massacre.
It was one thing, to see something regrettable and not be moved by it. This was another entirely.
"Hey!" Hilde yelped as he hauled her to her feet by the back of her jacket and dragged her after him back the way they had come. "Hey, what the fuck!" She tried to jerk away, but they didn't have time for this crap, so he pulled her up off her feet and shifted so he could toss her a couple meters ahead of him. To her credit, she recovered quickly and was up almost instantly with a snarl, but it was long enough for him to take two more steps to shove up the safety cover and slam down the lever of the fire alarm.
The shrill scream of the klaxon made him wish he'd called in to the emergency line, but that was the whole crux of the problem – there wasn't any time.
"Seriously?" Hilde demanded.
He pushed down the urge to backhand her, because really? Was this a last word thing? She was wasting time.
Whatever. So long as she kept up, he didn't give a damn.
oOo
oOo
Amsterdam, Netherlands – New Renew
"Marlé?"
The girl on the other end of the line said something else, but… What?
"Hello?" he tried again. Maybe the connection's bad? "Can you hear me?"
She laughed and talked more… but it made just about as much sense as before.
The line sounded clear – but the words just didn't work. "Speak English," Amos complained. Sometimes, especially when she'd been talking a lot to Cory, she mixed her languages the same as Kay did.
He had to jerk the phone away from his ear as she howled with laughter, and he could hear at least one other voice, deep enough that it had to be a guy, laughing just as hard. Someone else, definitely another guy, was sputtering something, but he couldn't make it out any better than he could Marlé.
He blew out a breath and waited, trying not to be too annoyed at being the butt of a joke he didn't understand. He almost wanted to hang up, but he didn't have his backpack or books in here, and he wasn't ready to leave the loft and hear any more of Kay's angry monologue that was in at least three languages he didn't know. 'Liss and Rina were probably on their way back from the Den by now after helping Will home; the two of them would be able to calm the guy down enough that he stopped looking so rabid, right?
Kay wasn't dangerous or anything… but it hurt to see him so out of control. They'd been in the middle of a house call when the news about the bombing had come on the TV in the next room, and Kasey had barely said enough to let the customer know they'd be back the same time tomorrow before practically dragging him out of there by the back of his shirt. He'd let go once they were outside, but he hadn't said a word as he made them run back to the shop. Then as soon as the front door was locked behind them, he'd disappeared into the garage and started yelling and throwing things.
So Amos had gone upstairs and sat listening for a while before deciding he needed to do something. 'Liss had left a note on the front desk saying when she'd be back, so it was just until then, but… He was trying really hard not to freak out.
"Marlé?" he tried again once the laughter was calming down.
"Arlé," she corrected quickly. "No M, please."
"Um, okay," he agreed. He supposed it wasn't that much of a difference. "What's going on?"
"Not a whole lot," she admitted readily. "I'm just hanging out with Cat's friends while I wait for some stuff to dry. You?"
"I'm…" He winced as he heard something crash loud and tried to think of a good phrase – something Marlé would say. "I'm listening to Kay lose his shit."
"Ooh, I'm sorry," she decided, making a wincing sort of sound. "That sucks. What happened?"
"I guess you haven't heard the news yet…"
"No, I've been pretty busy," she agreed. "Was working with Cat pretty deep for most of today, but I went to try to bum food off Dana maybe an hour ago and found Don and Skye playing backgammon while Charlie and some of the other guys watched something. I'd just gotten in the swing of getting Don to teach me his accent when you called; I'm pretty awful at it so far, but I didn't think it was so bad it didn't sound English." There were some shifting noise sounds, and he heard a door click shut. "There, I'm on my own now. What happened?"
He swallowed and plopped himself down in one of the chairs they'd set up with a table up here for studying. "Someone set off another bomb, in Belgium this time. Kay just…" He licked his lips. "He was really freaked out when the Paris one happened, you know? Ieper is only a few hours away."
"I guess," she agreed dubiously. "That's still kinda random though, isn't it?"
"Well, 'Liss and Nolan's dad almost died in the Berlin one," he reminded her.
"Oh, I'd forgotten about that… Still, that's… I mean, what can he really do about it?"
He made a face, burying his face on his arms as he leaned on the table. "I think that's the problem. He can't. That freaks him out."
"Mmm… maybe, I guess."
Amos sighed. He didn't really get it either, but he was hoping she might, with how close she was to Odin. "Can you maybe get your brother to call him?" he asked hopefully. It seemed wrong to just… sit and waiting for him to wear himself out.
"Well, he's not here right now, so no… But I could probably get Cat to? He's probably better for that kind of thing anyway. Odin tends to just stare at people when they flip out, until they feel awkward enough to shut up."
"No… Nevermind." It was one thing to ask Odin, because Marlé was his friend, but he'd never met Cat. He knew Kay had been super happy to talk to him the other day, but that was literally all Amos knew about the guy. "'Liss should be back soon." If it wouldn't totally freak Kay out later, he'd just head home and avoid all this altogether; it wasn't like he was actually in any danger in their neighborhood, after all. But… Well, before he had officially left the church, Father Espen had invited him into his office and walked him through a lecture on PTSD and how different people coped, and asked him to please be patient if he saw Chaos have a panic attack.
He wasn't sure if this was what the Father had meant, exactly, but… it was kinda panicky?
'Liss would know what to do. He just had to wait.
"I don't get it, but okay. Um… It's Saturday, right?"
"Yeah."
"So, you just been doing practical stuff today? I know you were talking about wanting to do the math part of the test soon."
"That… not now soon," Amos disagreed, relaxing a little more into his slouch. "I don't know enough trig yet. Next month soon. Maybe."
oOo
oOo
Starguard, Poland
"No… No, that's good. Have you talked to him yet?"
"I wanted to check in first." To be fair, the other woman sounded absolutely exhausted. "See if you had anything to add, or wanted me somewhere else."
"Get some sleep first," Lucrezia decided. "Don't push it if there's no good reason to push; stock your reserves. You've been bleeding the cupboards dry the past few weeks."
"I've been a day late and a buck short, is what."
Lucrezia smiled. Hilde had probably meant that to come out as more of a growl than a whine, but… Well, she was tired. "You really haven't," she dismissed. On the contrary, from the snippets the woman managed to forward along the way, she wasn't so sure that Hilde hadn't been leading Adam by the nose just as much as he was her. "I'd like more of the story once you have a chance to sit down, but I'd rather you catch your breath and touch base with Xu first." She was certain that Chang wasn't working on anything time sensitive at the moment, but most habits you only learned by doing. Humming to herself, she checked the time. "Are you almost there?"
"Eh, maybe another twenty or thirty minutes?" A pause, then, "Shit, it's only four? Is George even there yet?"
"That was my thought." When was the last time you slept more than an hour or two at a time? She shook her head. "I'll text you. Take care of yourself, and check in with Xu in the morning."
"Alright, later."
"Later," she agreed, ending the call and opening her text log, smiling at the confirmation already there. 'Check in with me after she's made it, please,' she sent. As exhausted as she was, her she didn't want Schbeiker to sleep without someone to watch her back. 'All set,' she told Hilde. 'Stay safe.'
'Thanks, you too.'
Smiling again, she tucked away her phone and dropped back onto the bed, stretching out her arms. This was a cute little farmhouse, with its brickwork fireplace and steepled roof and rafter catwalk. Modern, yet picturesque in an oddly eclectic way that she appreciated in spite of the rather severe juxtaposition of the outside versus indoors. Set up as a rental, it had all the amenities but still felt like a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
She brought her legs up and pointed her toes at the ceiling and away, feeling the stretch… and bounced back to her feet. On a whim, she closed her eyes moved through a few forms, enjoying the smooth flow of movement – so practiced that the balance was second nature. She hadn't done any formal ballet since she was a little girl, but the conditioning she couldn't even remember learning had never lost its practicality, and there was something soothing to the motions.
Opening her eyes, she left the room and made her way across the catwalk, looking down into the kitchen at the reason why she was here. "Did they turn out?"
"I was waiting for you." Odin didn't look up from where he stood measuring out more spoonfuls of dough. "Everything good on your end?"
Lucrezia nodded as she headed for the stairs. She appreciated that he hadn't tried to pry when Hilde called, but this wasn't something she needed to keep separated. "Yes. There was a bombing earlier but they got out clean, and lowered the casualties while they were at it." She shook her head, realizing he might not have known who she was talking to. "Hilde and Adam, I mean. But as soon as they got past the security perimeter he vanished into thin air on her, and she needed an exit." The way he'd done it was kind of shitty, but not really out of character, so she wasn't going to complain – Hilde had that in hand, she was sure.
He looked over his shoulder as she came into the room properly, frowning. "But he liked working with her."
Well, he doesn't always miss the subtext, she thought ruefully, shrugging. She'd gotten that impression herself – though if the shiny phone Hilde said Adam was now carrying was any indication, Odin would know better.
Lucrezia had made it clear to Odin when this started that she didn't want any secrets between them, but they didn't talk about everything either. She trusted him, but he hadn't set down roots yet, and until he did, her work wasn't any of his business. He'd understood her need for transparency and agreed, though he'd also made it clear he was willing to help any time she requested… But he was still trying to work his own angle. He was too used to being an independent player in his own right to just slot himself into someone else's command; he thought he had more to bring to the table than that, apparently.
Given his history, it was probably going to be glorious. She was curious enough to be willing to wait for him to finish fleshing out whatever he was up to.
He shook his head and focused back on the tray. "Which profile did the bomb match?"
She made a face and moved around the opposite side of the counter. "The first." Technically no tests had been done yet, but the mess that her protégé had described really couldn't be anyone else. The bombs in the administrative buildings in Berlin and the barracks in Paris had been put together with a daunting understanding of chemistry – entirely homemade and unique, using common products. There had been others, one both before and another after Paris that the press had insisted were from the same group, but both had been demolition plastics. She knew of at least one more from the second profile that hadn't been released to the press once it was safely disarmed – the Assistant Secretary of the Austrian Department of Commerce had evidently argued that the panic such a near miss might have caused might be as bad as if his office had actually exploded.
The first profile was far more worrisome in general, but combined with the choice of the Memorial of all places… She wasn't sure what that could mean. She needed more information.
Odin grimaced as he spooned the last ball of dough that would fit onto the sheet in agreement. "Messy." Absently he brought his hand up to suck chocolate off his fingers as he picked up the tray with his other hand, and seemed to startle at the flavor before smiling in obvious pleasure.
Lucrezia smiled too. "Well, that's promising." He'd only had half the ingredients out when her phone had gone off, and he'd said he'd never baked before.
He shrugged, opening the oven with the clean pinkie and ring ringer of his left hand. "It's chocolate."
"You did find the good stuff," she agreed, still a little startled that he'd splurged. While Odin was hardly so utilitarian as he had been when they first met, it still felt odd when he went out of his way for luxuries. He glanced over at her, hearing the something in her tone, and she shook her head a little. "It's a little much for your first attempt."
His mouth quirked. "Well, it was either this or let Audi drink it the first time my back was turned," he pointed out wryly as he shut the oven door and set the timer.
Lucrezia burst out laughing. She was getting used to the name change, but the easy way he said it with an unusual accent made her think Audi might be closer to the child's true name than Marlé. "You make her sound like a recovering alcoholic," she protested.
He gave her a disbelieving look as he brought his chocolate covered fingers back to his mouth, eyes lit with amusement. "And?"
She laughed harder, leaning over the counter to swipe a finger against the edge of the mixing bowl and try herself. She hadn't had real chocolate since… Since the last time he had given it to her, actually.
Marlé might not be the only addict, she decided happily, tasting… and groaning a little. Oh, not fair. Not that she was actually complaining, but damn it, was there anything he wasn't automatically good at? Boosting herself up a bit on the edge of the counter, she leaned further this time to grab some of the dough instead of just the traces on the lip. Half expecting to get her hand smacked, she made a happy noise at her success and popped it in her mouth before she could be scolded, humming happily… maybe a little blissfully. So not fair. "I might have to keep you." She bit into something and blinked her eyes open in surprise. "Is that butterscotch?"
He was staring at her, some mix of stunned and… And then he was moving, launching himself up onto the counter in front of her and pulling her up into his lap, mouth hungry. Oh. She started laughing again as she kissed him back, really thinking about what she'd just been doing… Oh, that was kinda bad.
Not that she was complaining. At all. Slippery slope or no, she loved the intensity of this man. There was a passion to him she could hardly conceptualize but was starting to crave when he was gone.
She started laughing harder as she remembered Marlé's ranting last week. She'd assumed he was planning to take any leftover cookies back to the girl, but- "Oh no," she breathed. "You took the chocolate and put butterscotch in it! Audi is going to kill you."
"Stop talking about my sister," he ordered breathlessly, dragging the pen out of her hair and tugging apart the bun she'd had it tied in with confident strokes, pulling just hard enough to make her want to purr.
She giggled more, because wow, that was bad too, and wriggled in his lap, listening to his breath hitch. "Okay." He bit at her neck and she gasped, clutching his shoulders as he smiled into her skin. "Mm, what should I talk about instead?" she asked mischievously. "The weather? I think it's snowing outside."
"Lucrezia."
She hummed, slipping her hands under his shirt. "That seems a little egotistical," she argued cheerfully. "And I can't let you get too focused or the cookies will burn, and that would be a travesty."
He pulled her in for another kiss and her thoughts scattered long enough that she was a little confused when he pointed out, "I have nine minutes."
"That…" That was either a really insulting or really hot, depending on how she wanted to take it. "I'm not sure-" He slid around her somehow, standing in front of the counter she was now sitting on, gripping her thighs and nibbling at her collarbone, and something in her brain short-circuited at the casual way he manhandled her. "Mmnn." She wove her fingers through his hair, arching into him. "Lower." Teeth grazed her skin and she shivered as he breathed out and pointedly didn't obey. "Odin."
His laughter was deep, and rich. "No rush."
She let out a frustrated groan and pushed at his head, but he didn't budge, instead latching on a bare centimeter lower and humming. "Odin."
He just laughed.
oOo
oOo
Resolve
oOo
Thoughts? Theories/favorite things? Dislikes? I'm not changing things if someone doesn't like it, it doesn't work like that, but I'll admit that I'm terribly curious.
There's so many fun things in this chapter. Even aside from the blatant humor - and Odin's ongoing tendency for mood whiplash, holy shit - you start to see everyone just... happier. Not to mention all the mischief underfoot. We get a lot of little details about everyone's lives, TMI and otherwise... but we do still have moments like Mu's grief hitting like a sucker punch.
On the original timeline of writing this, I know I fought with the timeline I don't even know how long before I basically had to throw up my hands and move Jake and Relena fully getting over their lovesick puppy act to the next chapter, but I can promise it's not delayed more than that. It was a damn good breath of fresh air, though, to finally have Jake back to who he was at the beginning of Survival. The angst was driving me up the wall…
