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Chapter Nineteen

Perspective


I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.

Stephen Covey


Deterrence itself is not a preeminent value; the primary values are safety and morality.

Herman Kahn


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As everyone responds to the situation in Italy, it becomes clear that one's perspective is absolutely critical - right and wrong get uncomfortably grey when you bring a microscope down on any particular action. Not to mention it's important to draw bold lines between wants and needs, and to learn to recognize them... and know when 'want' is the more important factor.

You can't escape the repercussions of your actions - be careful, or you might spend the rest of your life doling out compensation for what you've done.

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Edits:

The wording was altered slightly in Lin's scene to add a few non-critical details. Otherwise, just grammar and flow changes.


Notes:

I found myself having to do a ton of research and background structural work before I could really move forward with this chapter. For example, I actually fully mapped out the Winner family, because I was honestly starting to get lost in that mess. I have to say that the NSA must hate writers, because we research some truly random and questionable shit. I've lost track of things I've had to stop myself from looking up on Google or Wikipedia while at work, but the list includes money laundering, Swiss bank security, shell corporations, cryptocurrency, police propaganda, false/black flag tactics… it goes on. I've been having these long, drawn out discussions about advertising and spinning it into politics, and how to run coups and still look good while doing it, and how governments are structured and run (with compare/contrast between countries), the anatomy and pros/cons/problems with conspiracies and cover-ups with my husband and a handful of good friends… you know who you are. These long, hours long discussions that go all over the place and just…

Let's just say I did a lot of research, by traditional means and not, and I've learned a lot that hopefully will make this story continue to expand well. Story research never really ends.

Anyhow, sorry as usual for all my delays, and I hope you enjoy! This picks up probably literal minutes after Chapter 18 ends and only covers a span of four days, so I'd suggest brushing up on what was already posted.


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November 2nd 198 – Saturday – Southern Sudan – Blue Nile Base – Officer's Quarters

Lucrezia fumbled blindly for the phone as it rang. She kept a dim light on while she slept, but it was barely enough to keep her from stumbling over her boots on her way to the light switch – the dangers of a windowless room weren't new to her, but she slept like shit if she could actually see. "Hello?" she grumbled at it without opening her eyes… then groaned when it kept ringing and tapped the screen with her thumb harder. "Hello?"

"Well good morning, sleeping beauty," Sally greeted, cheerful in the way only morning people could be.

"My alarms haven't gone off yet," Lucrezia defended, rolling back over and snuggling into her pillow. She was comfortable… and her bed still had a distinctly male musk to the sheets, even though Odin had only stayed one night. It made something warm curl in her belly. "What's up, Lady?"

"Well, I've got news, but it's a little lukewarm, and questions too," Sally admitted.

"Call back after I wake up, then," Lu protested with a yawn, starting to fall back asleep.

"I'm about to have my hands full up here, so no," the other woman negated. "And besides, the questions are about Lover Boy."

Lucrezia grinned. "Don't call him that."

"Psh, I'll call him what I want. What do you know about his friends and allies?"

"Mm… I talked to one he trusts implicitly by text once, when we were in America," she admitted. "Overheard half a conversation here or there?" She thought about it for a moment, grinning. "He thinks Odin can't navigate for shit; was kinda funny listening to them bicker about it. Audi talks to at least two different boys close to her age… and there's at least one other person he's sent her to, before she started stalking him. Why?"

"You never mentioned any of this." Her tone was reproachful.

Lu rolled her eyes. "It's been three years – I'd be a lot more worried if he didn't have any friends." Damn it, now I'm actually awake. Sprawling onto her back, she opened her eyes back up and stared at the ceiling. "What's the deal?"

Sally made an irritated noise. "Yasa says they're a pretty big group."

"Good for him?" She hadn't expected Yasa to be an icebreaker, but she wasn't going to complain if he'd managed to move things along. "Maybe he'll introduce us soon." She'd told Sally right from the start that they needed to let the gundam pilot set the pace on their relationship, and that hadn't changed when she'd gotten involved with him. If anything, that only made it more important – she didn't want whatever was growing between them to get laced with politics. She'd made that mistake with Zechs and had no interest in repeating it. "Why are you all wound up?"

Her commander sighed. "You know… Never mind, you're right. It just caught me off guard. You still sitting down?"

She narrowed her eyes. "What kind of lukewarm news needs me sitting down?" she demanded.

"The kind that isn't that bad but hits close to home," Sally dismissed. "Are you?"

Lucrezia sat up. "I'm still in bed," she confirmed. "What happened?"

"Well… Northern Italy tried to start a coup last night and announced they were seceding from the Regime."

She felt sick, tightening her grip on her phone. "Northern?"

"I've absolutely confirmed that it doesn't spread as far south as Florence, maybe not any further than Bologna," Sally reassured her quickly. "And from what the Regime's been able to put together so far, the attempt in Genoa didn't work – they're the ones who raised the alarm, and the brigadier of that area's just about foaming at the mouth. The news is just saying Italy, though, so I wanted to talk to you before you tapped the usual channels."

Tivoli was a fair bit further south than that, true, but- "Jesus, Sally, that doesn't mean a damn thing if they have suits!" A handful of Aries could drastically change the size of a battlefield, let alone if someone brought Tauruses. "Do they?"

"No Tauruses," Sally confirmed, voice tight. "Not for lack of trying, but they only took what were in the local hangars, and it looks like Zechs took most of them with him. That, and at least two depots that we know carried them got torched last night when these guys made their move."

Fuck. Throwing off her blankets, Lucrezia swung her legs out of bed. "I'm up. Make sure I've got everything relevant heading to my inbox; I need to check on the detail my ex keeps on my family before I can think straight." Hitting the light, she tugged open a drawer and started yanking out clothes.

Sally breathed out through her nose audibly. "Tell me if you decide we're breaking radio silence," she demanded, intelligent enough to not remind her general why they'd agreed they shouldn't.

"Tch. Go mind your business, Lady, I'll keep you posted," Lucrezia agreed before hanging up and pulling her sleep shirt over her head.

Zechs, if you've ever been good for a single damn thing, you'd better be keeping them safe. It had infuriated her when she first realized just how many layers of security her old lover had layered over her hometown, particularly over the neighborhood where she grew up. She'd been stupid enough to try going home that first July after she'd finally put herself back together.

It had only been dumb luck that she'd recognized Cassie's tail for what it was before walking up to her in the grocery.

Back then, the wig and sunglasses she'd picked up had mostly been a joke so she could sneak up on and surprise her old friend, but she'd been obscenely grateful for them once she caught on to the situation. That had been before they'd recognized the back door into the Regime's database for what it was – before she'd done more than accept Sally's hospitality in the Underground as a saving grace. She'd wanted to talk to her dad before she decided what to do next – get an outside opinion that she trusted, just… to be sure she hadn't missed something. Or really, to see if he could explain to her why she'd been so stupid, how she'd fallen so far… She'd hoped that maybe he could convince her that the Fall wasn't as much her fault as Zechs'. She'd known it was stupid to think it was, but that hadn't made the worry not real

She'd felt like such a little girl after everything at Libra. Some part of her had believed that maybe her father could make it better the same way he'd been able to before her mother died. She'd known it wasn't so simple as that, but in her head maybe it could be, and that was the first step before trying to tackle reality, right?

But… Zechs was having Cassie and her dad followed every time they left the house. Back then, at least, there had still been government issue vans circling her neighborhood like sharks, new neighbors all around the block in an area where sales were rare… The mail carrier was on payroll. It hadn't taken long to spot the cameras. If she'd gone right for the front door instead of trying to sneak up on Cassie, Zechs would have had her inside the hour.

It had made her skin crawl. If she hadn't been sure about hating Zechs before, that would have sealed it. She hadn't started to breathe easy until they found Jake's inlet to the Regime – it had to be Jake's, counter style be damned – and she could confirm that there were no cameras inside the villa. No one got into her house uninvited, that was the rule, and she had been afraid that that sanctity had been broken… but either the bastard still had some shred of decency left, or he had been rebuffed.

She'd gone back to Sally the night after her aborted visit and agreed to lead her resistance. She'd taken Hilde under wing seriously instead of the casual interest of before, and started transforming her into the Regime's worst nightmare; started raiding bases and stealing everything she could with no thought to the casualties when she destroyed bases, entire barracks… No dorms, no children who hadn't committed yet, but…

She had changed, and sometimes she wasn't sure it had been for the better, but she couldn't regret it. The last time she had held back, had insisted on being fair and principled, Milliardo fucking Peacecraft had almost succeeded at genocide; and his lack of success wasn't because of a single thing she had done. I will never be so useless again, she'd decided, and she had spent the next two years proving it. Stealing his equipment, his influence from him piece by piece, destabilizing his authority as quickly as they could without risking another power coming into play.

She'd been able to find her way without her father's support, without Jake or Treize or anyone but Sally and what she'd built with her own two hands, but that didn't mean she was happy about it. The security on the house disgusted her enough that she didn't look into it anymore beyond confirming that it was still happening, but while she could probably find a way around it now… They were so close, and the fact that Zechs didn't know she led his opposition was a hell of a boon.

Her dad and Cassie had eventually responded to her absence with absurd degrees of over sharing on social media, and that helped. They posted pictures of Lyle daily, kept a running blog, and she could cry because she knew how much her dad loved his privacy, that he had to be doing it for her sake… because he understood.

But if it looked like their safety was in jeopardy, she'd deal with the tactical consequences of flashing her face all over the neighborhood to get them out. Hell, she could get Heero Yuy for backup if it came to that, on top of gathering her best. As General, she knew it wouldn't be worth it to have them close again, but her family was not going to be the latest casualty of this madness.

Resting her palms on the dresser she leaned forward and forced herself to take a deep breath. He cares. He wants them safe. She might hate Milliardo in a way that made self-revulsion rise up the back of her throat, but however awful he was, all of her boys had turned to her father as some sort of surrogate dad during their Academy days. They had all needed him in different ways, and she'd gone out of her way to reinforce those ties, planning for a future that hadn't come to pass; and maybe Zechs had taken to him the least, but the bond was still there. She didn't think the protection detail over the remaining Noins was purely a plan to find her – he would have dropped it by now, otherwise.

Zechs might be a worthless excuse for a human being, but she was mostly sure she could trust him to have standing orders to evacuate them to safety at the first sign of invasion. That didn't mean she wasn't going to be ready to do it herself, but-

Calm down… Cool it… It's going to be fine. It was going to be fine because she was going to make it be fine if it wasn't, and it didn't have to be any more complicated than that. You're not any good to anyone if you can't keep a lid on this, so calm… and get it done. This was all just contingency planning anyway; Zechs loved her father enough to resort to institutionalized stalking.

She just couldn't trust the man to do anything right. Not ever again.

Fuck it. Grabbing her boots, she strode back over to her bed and sat before picking up her phone and opening a text to Odin; she had no idea what time zone he was in at the moment, and it was disgustingly early in her own anyway. 'Call me when you get a chance?' Even over the phone, there was something soothing about the man, whether it was his no nonsense attitude or the fact that she knew he would back anything he said to the hilt. She'd only been awake for a handful of minutes and her nerves were already fried – she could use some reassurance that everything would be fine, logical or not. And it doesn't hurt that by the time he gets back to me, I'll know if I need help staging a kidnapping. It wasn't exactly how she wanted to see them again for the first time in three years, but she could think of worse ways.

Smiling grimly to herself, she started lacing up her boots. Time to get to work.

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Munich, Germany – Dorothy's Townhouse

"So?"

BJ sighed as he moved back into the dining room and dropped into a chair. "Both Marcella and Chelsea have limited intel," he admitted. "But Marcella is positive that no one she knows has a finger in this, and Chels agrees that Romefeller's the most likely catalyst."

"Surprise, surprise," Tristan muttered dryly, tapping a pencil restlessly on his notebook. "Guess whose mules weren't affected by the border dispute last night?"

"Ooh, ooh, did they know exactly where to go?" Alexis asked with false cheer. "Exactly at the right time, which wasn't their usual schedule?"

"As much as drug runners have a schedule," Tristan agreed, staring into the distance unseeingly.

"Well, thank God for the Romefeller need to turn a profit," Lindsay offered sarcastically, stretching his arms overhead.

"It makes them easy to track, at any rate," Tristan agreed.

"Easy to trap too," Lindsay agreed.

"It might have their fingerprints all over it," BJ interrupted pointedly. "But I don't buy it."

"Only because it's destined to fail?" Alexis asked brightly. "Nice big flash in the pan before the fire's stoked and all the flaming bits fly everywhere?"

BJ rolled his eyes. "Minus the imagery, but yes. Nan's trying to follow the money now, but if this is them, it's just a way to stir the pot."

"Well, yeah. Have to test the waters before you launch an invasion, and the best way to do that is fire up some easy mark and convince him you've got his back before you step back and watch how he burns." Lindsay shrugged.

"You're a menace," Alexis decided with a sigh, sitting back.

Lindsay's smile was sharp as a knife. "How sweet of you. Politics is just a high stakes grift, kid, and war is the next level of politics."

"Gentlemen, we have maybe another hour before we can expect our hostess to storm back in and a to do list the length of my arm," BJ reminded them. "Let's stay on topic."

Alexis made a face. "How much say is Relena actually going to have in what happens?"

"She's… Minister of Foreign Affairs," Tristan pointed out like his friend was simple-minded. "So a lot."

"No, I mean realistically," Alexis argued, leaning forward on his elbows and tossing his head to shake his bangs out of his eyes. "Other than that one time in Sudan, she and the military operate entirely independently of each other, and she got a lot of pushback from that. It only worked because she shocked them into obedience, and there's no way Marquise didn't know this was coming, in some form or other. He's not a moron; he'll have a plan in place."

"Right." The Regime's first actions had been entirely designed to isolate the more powerful factions of Romefeller in the east, giving large chunks of Africa to China in exchange for an agreement to hold the borders against what was left of the Alliance. It had effectively penned the bastards in for the last three years, as they had little to gain by breaking the stranglehold and relatively few liberties taken…

Christ, but he didn't doubt the rumors leaking out from there about the return to a more feudal society. A few of Natalia's girls had managed to get in and out of Turkmenistan a few times last year, and the old aristocracy was making a terrifyingly efficient turnaround on changing social norms with a mix of propaganda and KGB tactics. Considering what they'd managed in just three years, he wasn't sure if he could stomach what it would be like in ten, when what human memory remained of pre-Fall conditions began fading entirely. By removing the middle generations – either inviting them into new luxury or selling them into remote work mines and farms – they'd effectively set the stage to mold the future youth into anything they wanted.

It made BJ wonder if leaving the Alliance Resistance Movement when things started to get too extreme had really been for the best. Maybe, if they hadn't all argued and split, going in different directions, this wouldn't have been possible. There were some really fucked up families in the aristocracy that needed to be put down like mad dogs… But at the same time, there were lines you couldn't cross and come back from. Some atrocities… Jesus, he still needed to be able to live with himself, after it was all said and done.

The ends didn't always justify the means, and unlike a lot of people who said that, he'd put his money where his mouth was and left. Spread the word, burned as many of the bastards as he could – which was a lot, given how high a position he'd held in both Alliance Intelligence and ARM – and dropped off the map. Laid low for a year or so, spent some time in Sanc watching the psychosis fly by… Had been thinking about how to start up a more normal life under a new name once the dust settled; try to meet someone, maybe.

And then Milliardo fucking Peacecraft had dropped a goddamn battleship on the planet, and he'd learned that there were worse things than mass assassinations of innocents born to the wrong last name.

After that? He couldn't just do nothing.

"Whether or not the princess can actually affect the playing field doesn't matter at the moment," he decided. "So long as she thinks she can, the information will be useful to her, and she's been known to surprise people."

"Except her brother," Alexis argued.

"Don't give him too much credit," BJ dismissed, rolling his eyes. "We all know a lot more is happening in Sarracenia than we have any hope of picking up, and I'm near positive that Miller, at least, knows exactly what we are." He'd been skeptical as hell of Mitchell's deal at first, but the chance to get in on Darlian's ground floor had been worth the risk – especially when he'd known ways they could have all cut and run if it went sour. He hadn't really wanted to run in any case – he'd made good progress on cutting back the forced labor and human trafficking in Central Europe, on top of building a codependent network with old friends who had left the field and come back for the same reasons as him – but he'd been ready to do it.

Thankfully, it hadn't proved necessary. Outside of a few hiccups, everything had been running smooth, and now he had the beginnings of an organization that might both be permanent and have a sense of morality attached when all was said and done.

"It's only a matter of time before we're approached again," he continued. "And I want to be as solid as possible before we actually have Princess Relena's attention on us."

"I can't be the only one who thinks Catalonia's already onto us," Alexis groused. "She's coy – and I know that's just part of her charm, don't get me wrong – but I'm almost positive she sniffed us out weeks ago."

Try months, kid. Fortunately, she was just enough like her father for that to have worked out to their benefit. Treize got away with half the shit he did before his uncle's demise not because he'd successfully hidden it all, but because Catalonia minds worked along the same lines as idle cats – so long as it wasn't a personal threat, the actions of others served as easy entertainment.

"As long as she's willing to play along, we don't have to deal with her directly," BJ informed him bluntly. "Enjoy it while it lasts." He was pretty sure at this point that they were stuck with the noblewoman for life.

It could be worse. She was insanely intelligent as well as capricious, and it wasn't that hard to smooth her feathers when she got ruffled. She understood the concept of a symbiotic relationship better than any of the old Romefeller court he had worked with before the start of Operation Meteor; OZ had been better about that, but they'd been the least of his problems, so he'd kept his distance. And she's still young. In all likelihood, the heiress would only continue to mature into a capable partner – and it was clear at this point that Catalonia and the princess were a package deal. If a situation started to morph out of shape down the line, he was reasonably sure he could appeal to their humanitarian queen to get things sorted again.

He just had to be sure they actually got the philanthropist on the throne, first.

"It's a moot point if Dorothy's already reached the same conclusion, which I suspect she has," he continued, redirecting the topic again. "We have more evidence to add to the pile, but she has a finger to Romefeller's pulse that likely means it's obvious to her. What I'm more worried about is the public's response, and how we spin this in Relena's favor, especially with this latest tour canceled." He crossed his arms. "I have a few ideas, but I want to hear what you all think first."

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oOo

Space – Near L4

Vitorie Winner sighed, shoving away from her screens and rubbing her hands over her face. "No, that's not going to work either," she muttered under her breath. Well, maybe the last few clicks? The middle was probably where she'd lost track of the numbers, but what that meant was that she needed to start over on all her math, because as it was, this route was going to leave someone dead in the water.

And to think I was almost excited for the challenge. She rolled her eyes. Shows me. Be careful what you wish for. Atia had always been fond of the phrase for a reason, after all. Plans rarely survived the battlefield and all that…

That didn't make this not annoying as fuck, though.

"Torie?"

She blinked, realizing her com light was on. Damn it. "Sorry, I must have had the ringer off." And bumped the com button with my elbow when I pushed away form the console… again. She could see the caller ID, though. "What's up, Todd?"

"Uh… You called me?" the Sweeper on the other end of the line returned worriedly.

Wow. Well, Todd was on her speed dial… and there was a downside to having a wrap-around console made entirely of touch screens. There was a reason they'd never been put in mobile suits – too prone to accidents. She sighed. "Sorry." She really needed to write program parameters into this thing; it wasn't the first time she'd called someone on accident. Usually it didn't matter because she'd just hit the lights or open her favorite web pages, but she'd never bothered playing with the call permissions because she usually kept in deep enough space that the signal wasn't good enough to manage more than text anyway. "Elbow wanted to see you, I guess," she joked.

He snorted. "That excuse is only going to work so many times before I decide you just want to hear my voice," Todd decided playfully.

She grinned, relaxing back into her chair a bit more. "You're on to me," she admitted in a dramatic tone. "I'm desperate for your company. Leave the Sweepers and come work for me?" Honestly, she was only half kidding; Todd was a damn good navigator, and had an eye for profit. He'd be a good boon for the company if she could recruit him… and he was a good friend, too. She wasn't entirely sure if she'd be able to tolerate him in person, but she liked talking to him… and she'd never been very good at figuring out how someone would affect her until they were right in front of her. She was a recluse doing deep space navigation for a reason.

That didn't mean she didn't wish she wasn't now and again, though. It got lonely sometimes.

He made a noncommittal noise. "The nice thing about the Sweepers is I can navigate or salvage, render, or build. I have options."

"And with all those options, all you do is navigate," she pointed out. It was an old argument. "With Bishop Enterprises, you could expand your systems knowledge and keep moving up." The Sweeper navigators made good money, but there was no upward mobility there – and they were hardly on the bleeding edge of technology.

"Yeah, but I want to give it another couple years to be sure I won't change my mind," he argued. "I'm young, I've got time. And I don't want to jump ship right after I finished my training contract; I owe them more than that. Don't want to look like a job hopper either, even if I can wave it off by being friends with the Victoria Bishop."

"You say it like it's my company," she complained, bringing one bare foot up against the edge of her console and considering the chipped paint on her toes. Time to redo that… If she ever got through the rest of her workload, at least, which was looking like never.

"Yeah, but you're the heiress, right? You said your sisters weren't interested, and anyone can tell your mom's been grooming you for it. And Laura Bishop might decide to drop it on you so she can go start something else too – she does that."

Torie scrunched her nose. Laina was her mom in just about every way but technicality, and had point blank said she was getting bored and she wanted Vitorie to buck up and take the reigns sometime soon, but she hadn't realized it had already made it into the rumor mill.

Lame. There was no way she hadn't done it on purpose, either; this was her big sister's favorite way up putting pressure on.

It wasn't like she wasn't interested. She just… wanted a little more time to herself before she had to be that responsible. Unlike Laina, she didn't like building companies up from the ground, and she wouldn't want to sell or hand off Bishop Enterprises after a decade at the helm. She liked the work, and was only interested in the CEO end because she didn't want to risk getting screwed over by whoever came after Laina – or even worse, some socially awkward spot where the new CEO knew he couldn't piss her off because she technically owned everything, and walked around her on eggshells. She'd have to deal with that every time she saw the guy, and she couldn't do everything through the phone. She could do a lot, but…

I need to get a better handle on this. Running away from major populations for the rest of her life had seemed like a great idea when she was fifteen, but seven years later, she was willing to acknowledge that isolation sucked and she was turning into a friendless hermit. One that might even start glowing in the dark soon, if she didn't get her freaking sun lamps repaired. I guess it was too much to hope that jumping on the rebellion train would get her to give me more time.

"Torie? You still there?"

She groaned. "Yeah… just bemoaning my very first world problems. You know how it goes. Woe is me, why did I have to be born into a family of entrepreneurs, why can't my mom just leave me alone, whine, whine, whine…"

Todd snickered. "I wasn't going to say it. And besides, all that expectation? It almost makes me glad I'm a war orphan, you know? I mean, I made it, so… No fuss, no muss, right?"

"There are so many things wrong with that whole statement," Torie argued tiredly. "And the worst thing is that I know you're totally serious."

She could practically hear him shrug. "Hard to miss what you never had. I've seen people a lot worse off, and I've seen people with more family get way more upset about it – doesn't seem to help anything to get all up in arms about it. Kinda funny, really."

God, she really did need to meet Todd in person. If he was half as chill as he talked, she might be willing to marry him. "I love you," she half whined, eyes shut again.

He snorted again. "Uh huh. When was the last time you slept, anyway? I know we're all on overtime with all the mess of the fighting, but you sound exhausted."

That was probably a valid question. "I don't know, I'd have to check the logs." No one else on her team had said anything in a while, though, and this latest plan she was fighting with was…

She narrowed her eyes as she leaned forward and really looked at her work history. She was pretty sure the last time she'd heard from Arthur had been when she was on the third L3-Luna commerce route, and she knew she'd lost track of time, but had she really plotted out twelve highways since? Four of them had already run through analytics and been accepted, another two were being dismissed based on Sweeper updates on the priors…

…And she had her ringer off. Her clock was set to standard, but Todd was supposed to be on the L4 cycle, she was pretty sure. "What time is it, local?"

"Almost three in the afternoon. Why?"

"Because it looks like I'm falling back into a thirty-six hour day cycle," she admitted, checking her messages. A few confirmations on the routes in there, some thanks… understanding that they'd catch her tomorrow since she'd decided to focus inward today… "And breaking it," she added. Even by the thirty-six schedule, she should've gone to bed two hours ago, and she hadn't actually been planning it. No wonder my math went hinky.

Todd groaned. "I don't know how you do that. Go to bed, woman, you're making us all look bad. What are you even made of?"

"Quality genes and high end supplements," she snarked back. "Maintained through the most slovenly living habits I can invent." I need to do laundry. She needed to top off her water tanks first, though… Buy groceries… Get her lamps fixed… Whine at Laina for her machinations to make sure she actually gave her the three years she'd promised before dropping the business in her lap… She started closing windows, signing out of her programs. "Which hub are you guys planning to dock at next?"

"What, are you actually going to be social?"

"Maybe," she hedged. "Depends on how close you are and how I feel when I wake up." She was ahead of quota, had been before last talking to Art, let alone now… And she was pretty sure she was out of ramen. Grimacing down at the sweatshirt falling off one shoulder, she realized she wasn't wearing a bra because she had run out of clean ones. It might be worth going to a laundromat instead of running however many loads I've built up. She'd been in enough debris fields lately too that she ought to have all her systems checked instead of just replacing what she'd noticed already…

"Now I know you're tired," Todd laughed. "You don't even like to vid chat."

"Yeah, but I need to start working on that," she groused. "Just… Can you text me your docking schedule? I'll see if I can match it once I'm back up." If she had to go in anyway, she might as well, right? Three years wasn't actually all that long of a time…

"Alright, sure. And don't worry, I won't get my hopes up; I know you."

"You're a man among men, Todd," she told him seriously, standing to start flicking switches to put her ship into true standby. She wasn't sure how many times she'd offered to meet him then ended up having to blow him off, but it had definitely been more than twice. "I'll talk to you later."

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Munich, Germany – Sarracenia

"So when do the negotiations start?" Des didn't look up.

Jake sighed, shutting the door behind him and moved to sit in the desk chair across from the bed. "We have a press conference in a little over an hour. Statement of intent, airing the issues… It's a process. How's Cassie?"

"She invited over her friends and put the house on lockdown as soon as she heard." He smiled a little tightly, still staring at the wall. "No one goes in or out until they have word. They should be fine for maybe two weeks before groceries start to become an issue."

"It shouldn't come to that."

"I fucking hope not," the older man returned, tone dark. "My house is secure against people, not suits. Any sign of the conflict moving south-"

"They'll be evacuated," Jake assured him, resisting the urge to swallow. "I checked in with your…"

"Guards?" Des finally looked up, and raised a brow at Jake, for all that he was scowling. "What? It's what they are. Decently subtle, but I'm not blind. I haven't seen Lucrezia in three years, and I know full well it's because of the company I keep these days." He shook his head. "I decided a while ago to take it as a good sign that she wouldn't back down – girl's sticking to her guns, and whatever they are, I'm pretty sure they're pointed at the old boyfriend." He sighed and collapsed a little on himself, looking at the floor. "I raised a woman of principles; I'd be disappointed if she went this far only to give in now."

Jake did swallow at that. "You know you sorta raised me, too."

"Only because you wouldn't let Jack try."

Fuck, but the old man really wasn't pulling his punches today. "Doesn't mean you didn't do it. I didn't have anything to do with the surveillance, but if Zechs hadn't done it, I'm not sure I could've left well enough alone, either."

Noin sighed. "Kid," he began, voice testy. "You're basically my kid, so quit before you get started. It wouldn't have been the same."

"Yeah, well, I kinda took it as an excuse to avoid you anyway," he admitted bitterly.

"Avoided me so hard you noticed my better investments fall through in the economic collapse and intervened before I had to go out like a normal person and get a job."

"You've been out of the field for long enough that that wouldn't have worked and you know it," Jake argued immediately. "Maybe now, but not then."

"Which you know because you checked the markets, the listings," Des continued in a bone dry tone. "I tried to get a hold of you after you set me back up, you little shit. You've got enough schemes running that I figured I could at least make myself useful. Once I realized I was under guard, I knew Lu wasn't coming home, so we could've left Italy; Cass always wanted to see more of the world anyway."

Jake clenched his jaw. "I… thought you were mad." He wasn't going to deny making himself untraceable until Des had given up on that line of thought.

"I was." He looked up again, glowering over at him. "I needed to talk to you, and you ran like a fucking ninny!" Sighing, he waved a dismissive hand. "I'm not now, but damn it all, kid, you have this absurd tendency to rabbit the moment you realize someone might give a damn."

He closed his eyes, really not interested in crying right now. "Sorry."

Des sighed again. "Shit, don't do that, that's not what I meant. The last thing I want is to undo the last three years – we've come too far for that. I wouldn't have Lyle if you'd manned up before now, and you might not have Relena, or any of all this… No. You've done good, for you and everyone else. I'm just allowed to be annoyed too."

Jake took a deep breath, running that through his mind as Des reached out and pulled one of his hands towards him – focusing on the warmth of the touch and trying to just… be. "I'm all over the place, aren't I?" he found himself whispering.

"Mm-hmm." He had both hands wrapped around Jake's one now, motions soothing. "I wouldn't say that it isn't warranted, though. Have you even come down off your high enough to realize what all this business with Junior might mean, yet?"

His stomach churned. "Can't I just be happy he's alive?"

"Of course you can. But you know it's not that simple, either." Thumbs started to dig gently into his palm in a massaging motion. "For better or worse, I've gone and raised both you and Lu to strong principles, and I know you too well to imagine you might try to skirt responsibility for the boy. You just gave him a fortune capable of ruining nations – what if you don't like how he uses it?"

"I didn't give him anything," Jake bit out, trying to keep his muscles relaxed. "It was his all along, not mine."

"That doesn't change the question," Des countered calmly, reaching for the other hand and repeating his motions. "If nothing else, I'm stunned you're not jumping at the chance to see him again."

"And what did that get me last time?" Jake demanded, pulling away and standing to pace back towards the door. "He's alive, which means he's that good at disappearing, Des. If I startle him he'll just be gone and we'll never hear from him again."

"So you're going to willingly never talk to him again instead?" The man's tone was more idly curious than anything.

Jake snorted. "Now who's being dramatic? Never is a long time, Des. He doesn't know me but he'll have a file from HTD, and he has clues riddled through his accounts. If he doesn't get curious enough to seek me out in a year, I'll try to put out a few feelers – hopefully he'll be settled enough that it won't intimidate him, by then."

"You're assuming he's rather skittish."

"Better to assume than find out the hard way. If I'm wrong and he shows up at Sarracenia's gates tomorrow asking to see me, it's not like I'll have lost anything." God, but wouldn't that be something? It was possibly the least likely scenario he could think of, but… wouldn't it be nice?

He doesn't know who I am. If anything, I'm going to register as a threat And fuck, that hurt, but it didn't make it not true.

The same way it was true in reverse.

"You'd let him in here?" Des asked skeptically.

No. Because he wasn't an idiot, and Des wasn't wrong. "I'd go out." The older man slumped in relief, and Jake rolled his eyes. "Seriously? Give me a little credit." He might love his brother, but he knew full well that he loved the child, loved the idea of him being alive, not the man he'd just learned existed.

"You have a way of forgetting," Des began quietly, "just how deadly your uncle raised the two of you to be."

"Hardly." It just didn't tend to come up in casual conversation.

Des sighed and sat up straight, staring at the wall again. "Am I the only one who remembers he almost killed Lucrezia, the day Odin died?"

His stomach sank. "Des…"

"Oh, I know, it was a fucking war zone, you were all soldiers and we live in a crapsack world where sending my daughter to an elite military school was actually a good idea, but can we acknowledge for a minute here that the only reason a nine year old in loafers didn't kill the girl three years his senior in a mobile suit was because her commander thought with his heart more than his head?"

He grit his teeth. "Lucrezia doesn't-"

"Lucrezia isn't a parent!" Des snarled. "Lucrezia's completely desensitized to people trying to shoot her dead, and if I hadn't known she would leave for the regular corps a few years later when I didn't have a say any more, I never would have let her apply to OZ!"

"Well, she's alive, so it's a good thing you did!"

"Why do you think I did it? Fuck!" He covered his face with both hands. "None of you have ever understood how horrifying that was." He shook his head. "She was wrapped in the best armor on the market… and he almost ended her with a single shot. From the ground. And the whole lot of you just shrugged it off like it was to be expected, even with Treize hospitalized, and then you disappeared, and I couldn't…" Dropping his hands back in his lap, he licked his lips and focused on the wall again. "God help you when you're a father, Jacob."

He felt like his ribcage was about to collapse. "Des…"

Looking put upon, the older man half stood and reached out to grab him by the wrist and push him back into the desk chair across from him. "Breathe."

He hadn't stopped, actually. "Des, you can't…" He swallowed. "I've done that. I've done worse." Repeatedly. I taught Lucrezia to do the same, walked her through it on the field more than once. "We… we all…"

…I'll do it again, if needs be, and I won't hesitate.

Des sighed. "Do you have any idea," he admitted quietly, "how grateful I am, that you took to Lucrezia?" He met his eyes solidly. "How glad I am that you are never someone I have to worry about coming after me and mine? That you are one of mine?" He took his hands in his again and bowed his head over them. "I just worry that… Jake, you came by your morals by the skin of your teeth, and you grew to be one hell of a man.

"What if he's you, only without them?"

Jake squeezed his eyes shut. "I can't think like that." It wasn't a new idea, he'd thought of it almost as soon as the news had sunk in, but he couldn't think like that. If it turned out that way, he'd figure it out, but… "You're making pretty big leaps, old man. We don't know anything other than the fact that he's a pretty fantastic liar." On paperwork, at least. But then, Odin had been pretty believable in person, so…

"We know he's well funded, has similarly trained friends, and is following your uncle's pattern enough to have picked up a kid that he's probably been teaching exactly the same way as Odin did you and Junior," Des reminded him soberly.

"Or he catered the life story to something that someone who knew him before might find believable," Jake argued. "No one's even seen if there is a girl with him yet." It was unlikely that there wasn't, because why make a story only to poke that kind of hole into it, but seriously? "You're filling in the blanks with all the worst parts of me; come on, you know better. At least give him a fair chance to prove he's a person, instead of my evil twin."

Des chuffed out a damp laugh. "I want to be wrong."

"Well, just give it some time, then. Don't go starting trouble just because you're bored; maybe you really do need a job again."

He curled in on himself a little. "What I need is my wife and son. I… I just started all over again, Jake, and I'm damn proud of you and my daughter, but my family needs me, and they're… behind enemy lines."

Jake sighed, nodding. "I'll fix that."

"You'd better," he groused. "Knowing that is about the only reason I haven't started climbing the walls."

Yeah… he couldn't blame him for that. "No chance you can sleep, huh?" He grinned when the man only raised his head enough to give him a clear 'are-you-fucking-kidding-me' look. "Want to come meet Leia?"

Des grimaced, pulling away to run his hands over his face. "I'm really not fit for company right now."

"So, what, you're going to hide in Krititz' old room and mope?"

"If I damn well feel like it, yes, I will," he groused, flopping back onto the bed and ignoring the colonel. "Go save my country from itself."

Jake rolled his eyes, standing. "You're sending me mixed messages here," he protested playfully.

"Go do something productive so I can make inappropriate phone calls to my wife."

He snorted. "That's a thing? And didn't you just say she has a houseful of people?"

The asshole just pulled out his phone and started dialing.

Jake sighed and opened the door. "Talk to you later, Des."

oOo


oOo

Skopje, Macedonia – The Skyview

"Yes, I really do. Greece isn't anywhere near Italy, it's fine. No… No that's a cultural thing, that's not… Dad, I'm about five seconds from just hanging up, okay? Calm down."

Priya turned up the volume on her headphones and kept her eyes glued to her tablet's screen despite the fact that it had just switched to a commercial break. At times like this, she really appreciated her mom. Maybe there'd been a few times when she was little that she'd wished she had a dad – well, a real dad, anyway – but then she'd see how controlling other people's parents could get and just… no. She liked Courtney, but sometimes it seemed like Mrs. Cavanaugh liked someone being in charge of her. If she really disagreed with Fred, she'd roll her eyes and ignore him and smile until he got over it, but for the most part…? Priya didn't get it.

Not that Taylor's parents disagreed very often – mostly, it had only started to get weird after Tay had started university, and now it was Tay and Fred that butted heads while Courtney stood to the side and smiled enigmatically, refusing to take sides. That was, like… a normal issue, with boys and their dads, right? Figuring out new boundaries when the kid starts spreading their wings? But still – for all his good intentions, the way Fred tried to control his family's lives in the name of protecting them rubbed her the wrong way.

Even when it's totally justified, she reasoned guiltily.

It had been less than a week, and she was already starting to think she shouldn't have brought Tay to Earth. They hadn't come across another mass impression yet like in Amsterdam, which was maybe a good thing? But even so, it had taken maybe a day before his lips thinned and he started wearing his favorite gloves on top of keeping his hands in his pockets. Him not wanting to touch stuff was normal, but wanting the calm of Courtney's knitting while still refusing to touch anything was… not a great sign. On top of that, with all the unexplained delays they'd faced trying to leave L1, let alone the Lunar Center, it had now definitely been too long since Quatre had stayed the night in this suite for Tay to pick up anything useful.

The only bright side was that he was sure that it had been Quatre he felt in Amsterdam, and given the timing, her lingering concern that someone else had picked up the papers for Katriel Dimardin were gone. He was alive and she'd been on to something, and that was good to have confirmed. Permilla had passed on the news last month that while another of his identities had been listed as dead in the Cambyses conflict, at least one of the men he'd led was convinced that 'Robby Stanton' had survived – and he'd apparently known enough telling details to suggest that it really might have been Quatre. However, given the fact that all they had was a relatively common name on a piece of paper and a physical description that included brown eyes, it might be a dead end.

But… Robby had been reported dead in Libya less than two weeks before Katriel Dimardin resurfaced in Egypt. They hadn't known anything turned up on the Robin Stanton identity until late August, but in hindsight? That was interesting timing.

Inez was following up on that angle; she'd already committed to the Stanton identity enough to help rehabilitate the survivors of Robby's squad, after all, and was well set up for it. Permilla had scoffed something dismissive about sowing wild oats – though Priya was still trying to figure out how starting a philanthropic organization qualified for that, exactly – but Inez had only smiled in that happy sphinx way her mom said she'd inherited from their mom and made a throwaway comment about playing the long game.

Whether she meant that from a personnel angle or directed towards support of the massive PR campaign about the Cambyses survivors presented by the Osborne Foundation and firmly backed by Princess Relena and RLTT was anyone's guess. Julianne was the only one who was ever able to get anything out of Inez when she got that look, but when Priya had tried asking her the other girl had only laughed delightedly for nearly a full minute before hanging up.

Whatever. You didn't get to choose family, and the spaceborn girls could be a bunch of enigmatic bitches sometimes. She'd figure it out or hear back eventually.

In any case, the cultural precedent being set with the propaganda was intriguing. Whether or not he had anything to do with Quatre, Robby Stanton had been the leader of the first Cambyses camp anyone came in contact with, and he had been utterly against the organization. He'd been the one to broker the deal with the Strike Force to turn the tide of cult victims back against the psychos in charge… and was honestly the reason they were able to see the survivors as anything but monsters at all.

If, alternately, the first few groups Colonel Mitchell encountered had been as bloodthirsty as rumor suggested? If their first interactions had been as grisly expected, before contact was made? So much for having any faith in humanity. As it was, people were talking about the martyr now as a kind of leading example; practically common knowledge on the same level as the Dutchman.

If that was her brother? Then she was damn proud. And if he was just some random guy, then, well, Inez had claimed him, so they'd rock it anyway. Either way, with how things were spinning out they should be able to either bring him back from the dead with accepting fanfare or rebrand him with a new name and let him carry on. You didn't just ignore people like that – you collected those gems.

"I know, Mom. I'm sorry. Thanks, I… it needed to happen sooner or later, right? World doesn't just stand back and wait for you, you know?" A sigh. "I'll think about it. And no she's not here, you can't-" He cut himself off with a groan. "Bye, I'll talk to you later. I love you too." Taylor dropped onto the bed next to her heavily, throwing his arms over his head. "Family is crazy," he complained. "I can hardly wait until Ainslee starts rocking the boat, just so they have someone else to focus on."

Priya unplugged her headphones – letting the sound switch to speaker – and twisted to look at him. "Isn't she super boy crazy already?"

Tay grinned hugely. "She's been smart enough to not bring any of them home, so Dad hasn't noticed. Mom has, but she respects boundaries so long as Lee's not stupid about it, and Russel's too focused on soccer league to have noticed she's gone all the time. Dad thinks she's joined a photography club."

She snickered, rolling over to lay on her stomach and elbows near him. "That's going to blow up in her face hardcore."

"It's going to be fantastic," Tay agreed, scooting further onto the mattress and stretching out more. "I told her it was a bad idea, and I'm just going to point and laugh when she proves me right."

She snickered. "Brotherly love, right there."

He snorted. "Like you and Ailané are any different."

"Oh my God, like Ailané can be bothered to even notice what month it is, let alone roll her eyes at what mischief I've gotten up to lately," she complained. "This degree is ruining her! She used to be fun."

Tay elbowed her. "How can anyone be ruined at twenty? Anyway, school can be hard – I'm sure she'll be fun to hang out with again once she comes up for air."

Priya rolled her eyes. He wasn't wrong, but that wasn't the point. "You didn't become a hermit when you got your Master's," she reminded him.

"Wow, way to judge," he complained, sitting up on his elbows. "I never had to write papers, or do research, or clock clinical hours. I just had lecture and work, and math is easy. Every time I check in with Aila, she's in the middle of, like, some new twenty-page dissertation or thesis – it's horrible. My brain would be goo by now."

She made a face. "I just don't get it. What's the point?"

Taylor was obviously fighting to keep a straight face. "Winning."

Priya groaned and belly flopped herself across him to reach for one of the bed's pillows – he started laughing even before she started smacking him with it. "Lame!"

Bringing up one knee to shove her off, he laughed harder and started grabbing at the pillow, trying to take it away from her. "Winning at everything!" he went on cheerfully, switching into a game show announcer sort of voice. "Even at things you can't normally win at! Like-"

"You are so dumb!" she shrieked, dropping all her weight into her hands so the stupid pillow covered his face. It meant he got his arms around it, but it only took a second to grab a second one from the head of the bed.

"-holding their countrymen hostage."

"-irony! And art!"

"I hate that meme!" she whined, smacking at him… then narrowing her eyes and dropping her rear on his solar plexus so he shut up. He guffawed and gasped, but still looked like he was trying not to laugh hysterically as he half-heartedly batted away at the pillow she was smacking at his face. "Nobody's brought it up in years, and you just had to go and ruin it!"

"If we cannot learn from the violence of the past five years, cannot advance-"

"Four hundred babies," Tay wheezed defiantly.

"Shut up," Priya ordered, frowning and looking around for her tablet. That sounded like Princess Relena's voice. Like thirty wasn't dysfunctional enough. She couldn't hear it now, which meant the speaker was buried… She bounced hard onto her knees experimentally. There was another blip of sound, but not enough to really make any sense out of. "I think you're on top of the TV."

He coughed and curled in a ball, rolling closer to her – and the princess' voice came through more clearly again.

"-unforgivable. These actions are an absolutely senseless waste of lives for little more than pride over lines on a map."

Priya blew out her breath in a low whistle. She sounds furious.

"There are more ways to achieve autonomy than violence, and whatever your grievances with the Peacecraft Regime, such action is entirely unacceptable. I am only willing to open talks for the sake of the citizens that would be endangered by military action. Every single time another of these conflicts breaks out, more innocent lives are lost; more homes destroyed, more livelihoods left in ruins. I should think that our people have been through enough after the Fall. We have spent the past three years struggling to rebuild – I will not allow all our labors to end in the fires of egocentric revolution. Not again.

"If I receive no response for a truce inside the next- Excuse me?"

Taylor jerked to one side with a frown at the abrupt change in the princess' tone, twisting at a weird angle to try to see the screen he'd been laying on. "That's not good."

"Shh."

He made a helpless sort of grabbing gesture at her, trying to look behind himself. "Pick it up, I want to see her face-"

"Shh!" All the same, she pulled him closer to her and tugged at the blankets to try and see where they were heaviest and find the damn thing.

"Well then." The scorn in the royal's voice was biting. "This conference is over. No questions. Feel free to turn the channel to your preferred news station for further updates."

There was a swell of noise from the crowd as Priya finally managed to pull the tablet free of the bedding, but Relena was already walking off stage, expression hard. Tay made an annoyed noise, rolling away from her and pulling his phone out of his back pocket to refresh his newspaper app, making an annoyed noise and immediately switching to video. "Don't turn it off, whatever just happened isn't in print yet-"

"She's the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I'm pretty sure she gets word before the papers," she reminded him, scooting back towards the head of the bed. The reporters were doing a mildly panicky thing in the crowd, and whoever was in charge of the camera was evidently debating if anyone else was going to come on stage to explain or if they should revert back to their home station.

"Well, from the sounds of it, she sure wasn't in the loop this time," Tay argued, sitting up and refreshing his screen again. "Either that, or something really damn big besides Italy just went down, and she sounds too pissed to be dealing with a sudden emergency. I'll bet you someone just stepped on her toes – and considering what she was just about to say?"

Oh no. Her stomach dropped out. "They've been showing a unified front," she protested automatically. Peacecraft had more or less handed the reigns off to his little sister when he went to deal with the rebellion in space, everyone knew that-

"I'm getting the feeling big brother gave military command to someone other than her," Taylor decided, voice dry. "Someone who really dropped the ball when it came to talking with Foreign Affairs this morning and might have just FUBARed the past two years of Regime public relations. We just saw the start of a major faction schism." He shook his head. "I don't know which way it'll go, but literally everyone just saw that break-up; they can't take it back." He grinned over at her. "Politics just got a lot more interesting."

oOo


oOo

Szczecin, Poland

"So if we use three different people on this end, that should cover it?" Audi confirmed, biting at her lip.

"On top of the diversification we already claimed on Odin's shares, yes," Quatre agreed. "It's a puppet show; he can control it from the core without anyone being the wiser."

The girl made a face. "Aren't any of your guys good at this kind of thing?"

He frowned, glancing out the patio door to where Odin was leaning against the balcony with his back to them, his phone pressed to one ear. "He likes to be in control."

She rolled her eyes. "He's also busy, Cat, and he multitasks because he has to, not because his brain'll leak out his ears if he doesn't give it enough to do. Seriously, like… delegate."

She's annoyed with me. He'd noticed both her and Odin being a little irritable all day, but it hadn't seemed to have a focus until now. Odin had been relieved when Lu called again and he had an excuse to duck out of the room, but the situation – both in terms of coordinating their assets and everything with Italy – was stressful enough to warrant it. "What am I missing?"

Audi rolled her eyes, exasperation and fondness edging around the annoyance. "Stuff you can totally figure out without me holding your hand. Do you have a couple people already with business smarts, or not?"

He frowned. "Jalee and Sio were both entrepreneurs, before the Fall," he admitted. "Raph, Cidney, Ethan, and Jon have strong management experience." Ardith might be an even better choice in some ways, but he'd been more of a white collar thief with a degree in corporate espionage than a businessman.

Relief, while the annoyance faded out entirely. "Alright, cool. Just… point that kind of thing out to him and roll with it, huh?"

Still frowning, he focused back on Odin's emotions, staring down at his own hands. There was an edge to his mood that had been lingering the for the past week – one that had disappeared while he focused on his conversation with Lucrezia…

A conversation that, from what he understood, was probably just a different kind of stressful, not social. Hmm. On its own, he'd be willing to dismiss it as the influence of their relationship, but that… didn't quite fit, did it?

"Any ideas what he'd rather be doing, if this wasn't pressing?" he asked, feeling out an idea. The timeline was irking him too, now that he knew the Maguanacs were accepting of Cambyses – that Rashid was back.

The business end of Odin's inheritance had to be sorted out before the old account manager could get a handle on just what they were doing, though; and seeing as it was the foundation of at least the next few years, if not the rest of their lives, he didn't want to rush… And he had assumed it was important to include the friend it belonged to. It was a frustrating process, but he knew he'd been furious any time his father had tried to shortcut something for him while he was learning.

If he was reading Audi right, though, that might be sheer reflection. He knew his friend well enough to say that they thought on entirely different wavelengths… but before Jerusalem, the other man had been downright neurotic about controlling their resources – or at least being entirely aware of their deficits, when that failed.

Smug pleasure, something close to calculation… He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the girl as she spoke again. "You said there's still some Zero drives missing that you'd prefer to have before you start trying to reconstruct the System, yeah?"

Quatre grimaced. "They're in the States." It was a damn good thing Asia had been too chaotic during the latter half of the war for Odin to have tried planting more than one drive there, and Japan was feasibly reachable, but at the same time… North America was an obstacle they might not overcome. "I can probably put it together from what I have, but it will take longer."

"He went to South America with Lucrezia," she pointed out easily. "And Adam's run around the Gulf of Mexico at least a couple times, maybe more."

"It's November," he reminded her.

She shrugged. "So, like… last chance before winter really sets in? A lot of him putting it off was Lucrezia and everyone else on his level being either too busy or out of touch to watch his back over there and him being too awkward to ask you to make time for it – he doesn't like asking favors, and he didn't want to go without an equal partner. If you suggest he get Adam on board and go, you can do all this faster without dragging him through the drudgery of it, and I think I can mostly keep up." An abrupt flood of excitement. "I mean… it's kinda fantastic. I don't get why my mom always said business sucked. I just want to sit and play with it, but the more we focus on it, the more Odin's doing his miserable turtle thing, and it's awful."

She pouted at him, eyes determined. "We can make him feel better and optimize this better/faster if he runs off to do the stuff he likes doing. He's just going along with this because he thinks he has to. The only time I've seen him this down but slogging through crap instead of ditching is his physical therapy, and he at least feels better, after that. This, like… doesn't end. The more complicated it gets, the more…" She made a face. "I don't have a good word for it, but he's not happy, okay? He's trying not to show it, but the last time he was this down was when he wasn't allowed to get out of bed for three weeks."

…Well, now I feel like an asshole. He was the empath, too – shouldn't he have picked up on some of that?

On the other hand, it's good to know that Odin's version of depressed is so far removed from Heero's that I couldn't tell. He trusted Audi's impressions of her mentor enough that he didn't doubt she had the right of it. I'm going to have to work on that.

A lot of what made Odin's presence so calming made him difficult to read; he was all ripples in deep water instead of the fireworks display most put on. "He wants literally nothing to do with this, does he?"

She made a face. "Probably not nothing, but… I don't know. He hasn't talked about what's bothering him, and it's not quite bad enough that I got to asking yet – I don't know what is wrong yet, just that it is, you know? If you weren't here I'd go figure it out, but, well…" She shrugged. "You're probably better for it? I don't know if I can fix what's going on, but you probably can? I thought I'd try that first."

…There were times when he just wanted to adopt Audi. She was brilliant and sweet enough that he just wanted to claim and keep her, even when she was being a little shit.

The balcony door slid open. "The Regime has the rebellion entirely circled with superior suits and a six to one manpower advantage, closing in fast," Odin announced as he came back in, phone tucked away. "They've shut down all the air traffic within three hundred miles and are shooting down anything that tries to go in or out."

Quatre raised his brows, impressed in spite of himself. "It's been… eight hours since they learned about the coup."

Odin nodded, heading over to the fridge. "Zechs anticipated this, and set everything up for it before he left. He's wising up, too – there's no record of where these troops were deployed from in his database."

Audi frowned, sinking into a spot of upset. "The same as like with my mom."

Odin nodded tightly, pulling sandwich makings out and setting them on the counter without looking back their way. "I was hoping that was a singular incident, based on how valuable a hostage she makes," he admitted. "But this is bigger than a single woman. We already knew the details on the space campaign were being kept on a separate, closed circuit; that makes sense just due to the distance involved, but he might have started to partition everything. The initial reactions to the Italian response suggest he's hiding operations from his own people when they're not directly involved; it's something I would have done form the start, but the change means he's either decided to start holding his cards a lot closer to his chest, or that he might be aware of the possibility of a leak. Lucrezia thinks there's still too much valuable information floating around the primary Regime database for him to have decided it's compromised, but I'm less sure." Turning on the sink, he set to washing his hands. "Do either of you want anything?"

"Ooh, do we have any tuna left?" Audi asked, stretching as she stood to join him at the sink.

A spark of something bright from Odin as he blinked at his hands, then smiled. "If we do, it would be in the pantry."

The girl nodded, bumping elbows with him as she washed her hands too. "And pickles, yeah? I know we have cheese – I saw Felix making a tuna melt the other day and it looked pretty easy."

The spark flared and settled into something more… happy than the initial sheer attention. "That sounds good."

Quatre stood as well, heading for the pantry. "If we don't have any in here, Dana probably does," he mused. Both he and Felix insisted that the preserved fish was a dietary staple, and had grabbed it at first opportunity whenever they found cans in Libya. Now that it was easy to get a hold of, he didn't imagine they would have changed their minds. That, and Don had groused about making sure all the occupied kitchens were stocked with the basics after the first week – which in turn had Skye and Bern working up a standard baseline of supplies for all property kitchens while Ethan, MJ, and Charlie did the same for other household supplies.

He was glad; he could have done it, after pulling everything together to keep them alive in Cambyses, but it was… nice, to know he didn't have to. He'd missed the trust he'd only ever really had for the Maguanacs while he held himself as dictator in the Sahara for sake of survival, and…

Well, that explains what Audi was talking about, doesn't it? Before Cambyses, he'd never had to manage a household – even taking care of his own day-to-day needs during the war had been new, for all that he'd risen to the challenge. He could do it, of course, and he preferred to handle his own affairs for the most part, now… but that didn't make it anything less than a chore.

Deciding he was hungry too, he pulled out enough tuna for the three of them and then a bit more, unsure of Audi's exact plans. The girl gave him a questioning look and smiled when he nodded, drying off her hands and opening cabinets to look for a mixing bowl. "Get out some more," she added as she searched. "We haven't seen Cory or Yasa in a bit, and if they already ate, it won't hurt to have extra tuna salad in the fridge for later. I'll eat it, if nothing else."

Or someone else will, Quatre thought absently, turning back around. Leftovers never lasted long with so many people in one spot, even with them all starting to disperse across other properties.

His hands dry and his apprentice having effectively taken over the kitchen, Odin shrugged and picked their glasses up off the table to refill them from the sink. "What next?"

Unfiltered anticipation came distinctly from Marie, though you'd never know it from her body language, but Odin was more complicated to filter out. Calm, contentment, determination…

…Resignation. It was buried, and the frustration had blanked out entirely since he'd come back from his phone call, but that, more than anything, let him know that Audi had hit the nail on the head.

He could have just said something, he groused internally, even as he knew it wasn't as simple as that. Like Audi had said, Odin didn't ask for help unless he was entirely at loose ends, except perhaps from the girl – he waited for others to ask if he had preferences, and if they didn't, he just… did whatever no one else looked eager to tackle. He had been taking care of himself all his life, as far as Quatre could tell – having help was a boon he was still getting used to, not an expectation.

Still, approaching the issue directly wasn't necessary – at least not yet, when there were legitimate multiple concerns – and actions spoke louder than words. Hindsight was an effective tool for explaining motives. "Does Lucrezia still think she'll need you?" he asked instead of answering.

"Hn, doubtful," Odin admitted, sitting down at the breakfast bar to watch Audi work instead of returning to the table; after a moment, Quatre joined him. "It was a contingency plan to start with, and at this point it's obvious the Regime army has the situation under control. I don't want to go to space or head further north until the Italian situation is resolved just in case, but at this rate that will only take a few more days."

Quatre made a contemplative noise. "Space is less of a concern," he dismissed. "Audi said something that reminded me of the weather patterns – they're supposed to hold for another week or two before we start sliding into true winter, which is more time than I thought we'd have. I'd have to check on how true the same is over in North America, but what do you think your chances would be of getting a couple more Zero drives?"

That bright spark again, though submerged quickly enough that he couldn't make out what it was beyond warm – whatever that meant. Determination shifted into that knife-sharp focus he usually associated the other man with. "Fair, for three," he decided after a moment. "Possibly as many as five, but… No." He shook his head. "Two, for certain." He turned a calculating eye on Quatre, something… thrumming, for lack of a better word, somewhere deep. The empath didn't have even the slightest idea how to define it, beyond being mostly sure it was positive. "Would two more be worth the effort?"

"Frankly, yes." More was better, but if he'd known there were decent odds of getting just one more of the missing drives he'd have already pushed for this. "Two would shave two months off reassembly." If not more. He hadn't ordered the hard drives in any way that Heero would have been able to determine, but for better or worse, four of the seven still in the Americas were sequential. Some gaps, he'd known he could work around before handing the pieces over – large gaps too, though it would take far more work. He was intelligent, but his memory was far from eidetic. Given enough time he was confident he could reconstruct the Zero system without any guide, but it was complex and convoluted enough that it would take years of working back through the logic of the code and all its idiosyncrasies, the variables he would have to recalculate parameters for and test repeatedly.

They already had the more insane segments that would have had him ready to pull out his hair safely collected, so there was that, but he had resigned himself spending the winter months painstakingly rebuilding the missing sections. With the addition of the Japanese drive, he'd figured he might be able to manage it inside eight months, if they couldn't get their hands on any more of them. Given the state of the Americas, it was entirely possible the remainder had been destroyed, after all. But if he could get as many as five of those seven… it might be as feasible as four months? Depending on when the thaws took and another excavation could be chanced, they might be able to shave it down again, but he wasn't inclined to get his hopes up.

"If you don't mind me taking over, I can resolve the rest of this in the next two weeks," he continued, gesturing at the table for emphasis. "Possibly less, since the majority of your colonial assets are already arranged in cryptocurrency – that means we don't have to play nearly as complex of a shell game. So long as you trust my judgment on finalizing the options we already talked about, we're set."

Suspicion swirled under the surface as Odin gave him an unreadable look. After a long moment, he pointed out, "Given the rest of our projects, I won't have the time to effectively catch up with your knowledge base for a long time. You'll be accountable for direct control of this mess for months, if not years. If I go now, I won't-"

"My father never micromanaged on the scale that I'm enforcing," Quatre cut off. If they were going to have this conversation now, he wanted there to be no misunderstandings. "He had accounting and acquisition staff for that, division boards and department heads he delegated nearly everything to and observed. I learned most of this from my sisters who handled smaller capital and I'm applying it on a scale that would make most CEOs shudder because I enjoy the rush, Odin." He gave him a meaningful look. "I was teaching you more than the basics because I assumed you'd want me out sooner than later. And even then, I assumed you would still keep staff so this didn't become a full-time job. That's…" He grasped for the right word.

"It's what normal people do," Audi inserted, squeezing mayo into the bowl. "Which, you know, you're totally not, but you don't have to specialize in everything unless you really want to. You've got enough stuff to do that doesn't stress you right the crap out."

"And given the time constraints you already mentioned, even if you decide to pursue this later, this is the optimal solution," Quatre continued. God, he referred to his inheritance as a mess. Most people in his shoes would be running rampant doing whatever struck their fancy for at least a handful of weeks after coming into this sort of money, not buckling down and treating it like a disaster.

Less suspicion, more calculation, and that thrum was back. "We didn't anticipate this," his friend argued. "It's far outside even the widest parameters for what you agreed to accept responsibility for."

The succinctly mechanical organization of his speech was sounding more and more uncomfortably like the disturbed boy he'd known when they both flew gundams, instead of the much more balanced teenager he'd reunited with in Greece. It was unsettling in a way that frankly infuriated him, because there was no reason for it.

Time to change tactics. He was still acting like this was a burden instead of a golden opportunity. "I'd have sworn I already said I like this level of control," he announced, voice sharper than he'd really intended. This entire situation was absurd, and it was getting to him. "I was just trying to play fair – if I hadn't thought you would be insulted, I'd have taken over and been done in half the time. I'd be appraising you of the results now so we could plan out next step, and you wouldn't be half so frustrated and overwhelmed because you were holding me back from enjoying myself."

He'd been raised to take over the Winner Corporation, and while he genuinely liked people enough to make concessions, that didn't mean he wasn't an egotist. He knew damn well exactly what he was capable of and how good he was at it, and he had pride. The fact that he'd managed to hurt his friend while trying to hold himself in check to be nice was maddening.

"…Aa."

"For the record, I am really glad you're willing to teach," Audi announced without looking up from the relish she was spooning into her mixture. "Even if you decide to stop, I'm with you on the power rush thing and totally want to be one of the people you delegate to. At least until I get my own massive inheritance to go crazy with."

Quatre rolled his eyes at the girl being ridiculous, but amusement lit up the room like a firework as Odin started laughing, strong enough to practically white everything else out. However, he could see how smugly pleased Audi was just from her face, with no need for empathy: excited amusement a mirror to Odin's.

Some sort of inside joke?

Shaking his head, he let it go and went back to the table to grab a tablet to look up global weather patterns before making his way back to the bar. He'd need to keep an eye on Odin's deeper emotions to make sure this didn't crop up again, but now that he'd recognized the misplaced guilt once he was relatively sure he could find it without prompting should the pattern repeat. Honestly, he should have picked it up on his own, but… sometimes it was hard to reconcile Heero's dogged resolve with Odin's nonchalant… wanderlust, for lack of a better word. Looking back, it wasn't as if the latter had been entirely absent before Israel, just… suppressed.

He resisted the urge to grimace. Realistically, bringing personality traits that were less critical to survival back to the surface couldn't be anything less than traumatic. Maybe it wasn't so bad as he'd expected when he started sinking Robby firmly into the grave, but it still wasn't easy… and the longer he thought about it, the more he realized that the war had been Odin's crucible.

The same as he was now willing to admit Cambyses had been his own. He still wasn't sure what he thought of the final result, but if befriending Heero had taught him anything, it was that perseverance made all the difference. If you lasted, you always had more time to re-evaluate – then to either change and atone, or follow through with everything you had. His knee-jerk reaction to the philosophy had been to insist it was a way to unfairly absolve yourself of guilt, but… if anything, the attitude only increased personal accountability.

It just felt off because didn't leave any room for regret.

One of the very few things he'd ever seen Odin argue vehemently about was how regret was entirely worthless. There was definitely a story there, but he hadn't been brave enough to ask. Whatever had happened, it had made his friend into who he was, and considering the other glimmers he'd gotten about the man's childhood… He wasn't sure if he was ready to stomach the truth.

Not yet. He was still coming to terms with some of the things he'd done in the Sahara. He'd ask once his headspace was a little less fractured… and maybe Odin's footing would be a little more steady by then too. Because however solid the man seemed, the cracks still ran deep.

He thought they were on a pretty good track for repairing the damage, though, and coming out all the stronger for it.

"So," he decided. "Check in with Adam and anyone else you want at your back while you're gone, and plot a route. Audi and I will wrap things up here." Odin had already laid out enough details for Darren and Josh to pick up the drive in Osaka next week, provided it had survived the apocalyptic tsunami of the Fall that had massacred the island nation. Personally he doubted it, as all but the highest mountains in most of Oceania had stayed underwater for nearly a month post-Fall, but Odin insisted that the container he'd used could very well have maintained the seal – his concern was more about if it had washed away or was buried in too much debris to retrieve. "Then once you're back, barring other complications…" He licked his lips. "Sudan."

Part of him wanted to go and see Rashid now, timetables be damned. Another part, however, was entirely content with the idea of avoiding everyone he used to know outside of Heero for the rest of his life, regardless of what he'd learned from Yasa, experience, or literally anything else.

Lining events up in a logical pattern was a compromise he'd forced himself to accept. His emotions on the subject were too scattered to base anything off of… and he'd have Odin with him, choosing Sudan as the meeting ground. With Odin vouching for him, he could go directly to Rashid before anyone recognized him… and while he felt like that confrontation would be damnation, he knew, rationally, that it would be fine.

Getting that over with, proving that it would be okay, might make the idea of facing his sisters less daunting. Since leaving the desert, he'd been waffling endlessly between whose judgment would be worse until he decided he wasn't ready for either, even when he knew he was being ridiculous. There had been enough to get done otherwise that it hadn't felt like that big of a deal to just… put it off again. The fact that he knew exactly what he was doing hadn't made him any more eager to start the landslide; at least, not until he'd met Yasashiku and realized he might be making up drama for the sake of drama at this point. Which was aggravating as hell.

And getting old fast. He'd been running himself in circles for more than three months now – the novelty of neurosis had worn off and he was frankly just… getting tired of it. The fact that he more or less had a guarantee now that he wouldn't be rejected sealed the deal, but with the way he'd been heading, he suspected he would have started to cave before the New Year even without the push.

"Aa," Odin murmured agreeably, watching Audi mix the salad, more relaxed than he'd felt in… at least two weeks. It had to have built up slowly, for Quatre to have missed just how much tension there was… Though he'd also been willing to pin any excess on the revelations of looking up his fingerprints, instead of the specifics to do with economic management.

Resisting the urge to make a face, he smiled and tapped out the tablet's pin. Don't bother with remorse – learn from it and don't let it happen again. Just because Odin set his personal happiness at a lower priority didn't mean Quatre had to. If anything, as his friend, he was going to make sure it didn't get left by the wayside again. I can't let the thirteen-year-old outmaneuver me all the time, he decided, swallowing a grin.

Between the two of them, he figured they'd do all right.

oOo


oOo

November 3rd 198 – Sunday – China

"Welcome home," Wufei muttered without shifting his attention from his desk, trying to finish what he was in the middle of without being entirely rude. Shui had been gone for three weeks after all, and he'd started to miss his roommate practically in spite of himself – he only went to the Lao household in the evenings, after all. Xiu Juan didn't care for work being brought into her home. "Was I right about the Toksun layout?" They'd been debating if there would be any appreciable difference in the change, before the other man left to survey.

There was a tired sigh from behind him as Shui dropped his suitcase and shuffled over to his bed. "I don't know."

Wufei frowned, looking up and narrowing his eyes. He was already back a day later than planned, so-

His jaw clenched as he saw his friend, and he tossed his pencil down a little more forcefully than necessary as he stood and moved over to him. "What happened?"

Shui shrugged against his pillow without opening his eyes. "A group of assholes over in Shaanxi figured I might make for decent leverage. Captain Yuen said I was with them for almost six days." He sighed, relaxing further. "On the bright side, at least now I know I'm not expendable? Yi really pulled out all the stops to get me back and, uh… show why the rebels should get better ideas in the future."

"Of course you're not expendable," Wufei scoffed as he crouched beside the other man's bed, eying his face. Both eyes were bruised black, though starting to fade brown, and he had two plasters on his face covering what were probably stitches; his neck was a mess of green and yellow. It was a wonder his voice sounded so clear as it did… and that was without considering any injuries below his collarbones.

Shui was strictly a non-combatant – he didn't even know how to fall properly. A common mugger could probably concuss him, and he'd just spent a week in hell. If they'd tried the same trick with Wufei, they would have been put in place inside the hour.

…Wufei had used his higher position over Shui to keep from being sent out to survey in the first place. Fuck. "Are you ready to be out of the hospital?" Given the way he was just collapsing in on himself now…

"I finished my first Remalene treatment yesterday, before we flew back from Wanzhou," the other man explained sleepily. "It was…" He yawned, eyes still shut. "Really big? I dunno, I heard the doctors argue about how big the dose was, but I've never had it before… I just want to sleep. They said I could sleep at home if I wanted, and I think I can sleep laying down again, so that's…" He yawned again, fingers starting to fumble at his blankets. ""m home, I just wanna sleep, don't worry. You could play that classical shit…" He blinked his eyes open and frowned at the edge of his comforter that he'd managed to peel back with confusion. "Ugh."

Well, at least the doctors gave him adequate painkillers along with his hefty Remalene dose. Wufei recognized that haze over his eyes. Shaking his head, he stood back up and started pulling the other man's shoes off. "I thought you hated my music," he offered casually. His roommate would blast rock and pop all day if Wufei let him.

"It's old," Shui whined, sitting up a little on his elbows and pulling the rest of the blanket and the sheets down from the head of the bed. "And dull. And nothing to sing to."

To the best of his knowledge, Shui relegated any singing either to the shower or when Wufei wasn't home – probably for the best, given his shitty taste. "But?" he asked curiously.

"It's nice," Shui admitted. "Boring, but nice. Nice sounds good." He scowled at the bed. "I'm doing this wrong."

Wufei snorted out a laugh and leveraged his friend up for a moment so he could drop him on the cleared space next to his pillow. Shui let out a yip of surprise, then groaned as he watched Wufei finish pulling the sheets back. "I've never been this drunk before."

Wufei smirked as he shifted the other man around so he was laying down again and pulled the covers over him. "You still haven't. Go to sleep – I'll put on some boring music to help me think." Whether it would be about anything related to engineering was up in the air, but he needed to think, to be sure.

This… wasn't okay.

"Okay," Shui grumbled back… and almost immediately began to snore.

Wufei went through the motions of putting on one of his favorite mixes – mostly done with traditional instruments, but not actually that old or classical, despite Shui's complaints. Lyrics were distracting, and repetitive beats had a way of putting him in a creative rut. He liked to work in the quiet too, but sometimes it helped – and Shui had asked.

Shui made it a point to rarely ask him for anything. Two grown men used to their independence living in a dorm like this had been a hard thing to get used to at first, and Shui had been quick to lay out boundaries and rules for them to follow. Wufei hadn't argued or added anything to it, despite Shui suggesting he do so. The situation had galled a little, but it had also been easier for him, having grown up at boarding school in the exact same living situation, only with Xutao instead of Shui. Now, after almost three years, the idea of not living with his co-worker was unsettling to the point that he'd refused when he was offered his own, nicer apartment two months ago.

Eventually Shui would move out and he'd figure something out then, but Wufei had no interest in changing the status quo.

Maybe he was attached because the dorm made everything feel a little more normal. Working, doing what he liked more than anything instead of the curriculum he'd scorned as much as appreciated. Keeping a friendly rivalry with Shui on the academic front, instead of pretending he didn't notice Xu trying – and failing – to be his competition outside the classroom. Socializing with the Lao family whenever he wasn't working, the same way he had with the Longs when he was younger…

…Like he'd been expected to again, after his marriage to Meilan. Only Yi Hsuan had passed two years before the nuptials, and Xiu Juan was too headstrong to he anyone's replacement, even his dead mother-in-law.

Also, thank fuck no one expected him to marry Yu Zi. That was a cultural failure he was supremely happy the Laos didn't agree with. Meilan had been a force to be reckoned with, and tradition had shackled her to the position of little more than brood mare. At fourteen. The idea had disgusted him even when it was first broached when he was eight, to the point where he went out of his way to avoid women in general and publicly scorn the idea of women doing anything but the most traditional roles in the hope that either his father would pick someone whose dreams he wouldn't crush or Long Yi Hsuan would be unimpressed enough to look elsewhere.

Of course, that plan had backfired spectacularly when the woman saw through him, but he had tried.

He'd known, as soon as he was old enough to understand that most fathers didn't seclude their sons from other children to better train and educate them into oblivion, that he would never escape his father's intentions, his plans for him until he was a legal adult… But Chang Xiung had cared enough about him, despite how broken the widower was, that Wufei had hoped the man could at least be swayed on the details. Instead, his father's will had signed away both Wufei and Meilan's chance at happiness by throwing them together and insisting it was 'for the best'. And maybe they would have both overcome the resentment in time, because he had cared about her, and she had died to save him so she must have too, but…

In the end of the day, Meilan had died at fourteen, three months after marrying him, and after that? It was impossible to not hate everything that had led to it.

Now, looking on the past and trying to learn from it, looking at his present and what the future might hold? He'd known he preferred to be alone because of the way his father had isolated him, but he had also believed that the results were worth it. He was talented, a genius in multiple fields, and others had proven repeatedly that working with them only slowed him down. Intellectually it was still true, with a few caveats to prove the rule of exception: his work was better completed alone, but the results improved exponentially if he remained part of a wider project that met periodically to assemble a larger whole. Quatre had been the first to show him it could be worthwhile, at Libra, and then the way the amplifier project was arranged had sealed it.

Outside of academics, though?

He didn't think he'd ever been so at ease with himself as he was now, after three years of shared space and meddling with Shui – after one year of living as Kailì's honorary son – and that was worth something. He had been careful to segregate his work from his growing home life for all that Kailì continually pushed the boundary, firm on that one point, but…

He looked back at his roommate's ruined, exhausted face, and frowned. Maybe… I've been making another mistake. Maybe I'm still not doing enough.

Maybe it was time to take another step outside of his slowly expanding comfort zone, and see what else he was capable of?

Shaking his head, Wufei settled on the floor to meditate.

oOo


oOo

Lecco, Italy

"De Leon."

Yvette gusted out a sigh of relief at her superior's voice, tense as it was – she was using a stranger's phone, after all. "Sorry I'm late, sir," she apologized, leaning back against the side of the bed in her crap motel room. "Things went rather pear-shaped, and, ah… everything was a bit dicey for a spell, there." She ruffled a hand through her bangs. "Corporal Holt, reporting in."

Marsden let out a startled little laugh. "Well God damn, Yvette, you had me 'bout tearing my hair out over here. You're okay?"

She grimaced. "Mostly. None too happy, but not terribly roughed up either. Can't say the same for my gear, or even my damn purse though, so I've got no ID or badge in a country where I speak maybe ten sentences worth of the language, in the middle of a freaking civil war… but I'm not bleeding, and no one's beating down the door. I always keep a stash of mad money in my bra, so I managed to find a place to lay low, but… yeah, I'm none too fond of the idea of either side finding me at the moment."

She'd always thought feminism was ridiculous, and the fact that she could get away with batting her eyes and looking helpless so people dismissed her as harmless despite not having any papers was now Exhibit A for why. Men her age stood out, these days – it was damn rare for them to not belong to some form of military or other violent outfit, but as soon as she threw on a blouse and skirt, she became just another young widow looking for work or shelter. Camouflage was never to be underestimated, in her opinion, and that motto had always served her well in this line of work.

She'd still memorized the address of the house she'd broken into for clothes and other basic necessities because she wasn't a total dick; she had every intention of paying them back once she was back in the clear.

Contracting was still preferable to military work in her book, but you had to roll with what the market gave you, and the Regime's pressure on Romefeller had dried up most of the private security firms post-Fall. That said, provided she didn't get shot in the line of duty? She was pretty sure she was set up at this point to be private royal security, and she was all for that. Nothing had truly been made official yet, but she could read between the lines, and the Cajun lieutenant in charge of her division hadn't made any effort to obfuscate or deny the direction things were going. Yvette didn't really know the Princess or her core players in the guard, but whoever was in charge ran a damn tight ship and she was proud to now be a part of it formally instead of a favorite in the resource pool.

Retainer for royalty was a pipe dream sort of dream job. Entirely worth the military service time – even when it lands me behind enemy lines in a miniature civil war.

Mars made an irritated noise. "Well, good news is, you won't have to sit tight for too long. I could probably go get you out now, but it'd be tricky. Rate things are goin', though, tomorrow night should be easy, depending on how far south you got."

She whistled lowly. "That fast? I'm probably fine through Wednesday, and I can figure ways to stretch it further, but I won't argue with only three days on the run. I didn't even make it across the Adda before burrowing in."

"That fast," Mars agreed, voice wry. "Blindsided everyone and their cousin's damn dog, too; fur's flying over it. Keep this phone on; I'll be in touch."

"Righto," she agreed, disconnecting the line… and considering for a moment before shrugging and checking out what free games she could download onto the little burner.

There were worse ways to handle this kind of shit than waiting it out.

oOo


oOo

Amsterdam, Netherlands – Devil's Den

"At this rate, I'm not sure how much longer 'Liss is going to be with the Militia," Adelheid mused, turning away from the doorway to check on the stove.

"She likes her patrol," Anika argued in an absentminded way, dicing vegetables.

"She also likes her shop," Gust pointed out in a dry tone, leaning against the doorframe, blatantly continuing the watch the couple quietly bickering on one of the couches. "And teaching. And her less legal patrol. If she didn't worry about it being seen as shady, she'd have left her khakis behind months ago."

Adelheid made a face, nodding. "She thinks that so long as she has that official rank to lean on as some sort of proof that she's an upstanding citizen, it'll keep more attention off the shop."

Anika frowned, looking up. "Is she right?"

"Not enough to matter, probably," Gust dismissed, still not looking at them. "Especially not now that the shop has a reputation and people are starting to wonder when the hell she sleeps." He snickered. "Daron's started muttering about her running off petrol and coffee."

She'd heard that around the office, actually. "It figures he's the one who started that." Melissa's Militia partner was frankly an ass, but thankfully everyone was taking it more as a point of admiration than the bratty whining the man had meant it as. "What do you think our chances of him accepting a transfer to a different sector are, if she does quit?"

"Eh… it would depend, I guess. If we could make it look appealing, probably? I can think of a few boys from the smaller set that wouldn't be entirely hopeless who'd sign up in a heartbeat if they knew it would be our sector." He finally turned back to face her, pursing his lips. "He likes his shift; how hard would it be for you to break it up into a bunch of little ones? If there's a spot with his favorite hours somewhere outside of Beale territory and he knew 'Liss wasn't willing to cover his ass anymore, he'd probably jump for it. I mean, he might without any changing of the hours here too, but…" He shrugged. "It'd stack the deck a little."

"Hmm… I'd have to look into it." She was high up enough in administration that she probably could, but she wouldn't if it looked like it could hurt system. Using the power she'd earned was one thing – taking advantage in a way that would be detrimental to the Militia as a whole, though, that was an absolute no. The organization had been a damn godsend for all that it still didn't cover all the gaps left behind after the Fall, and with how she'd risen in the ranks, the Amsterdam branch was practically her baby, now.

It wasn't perfect, but it made a big difference.

Gust shrugged, turning back to the living room. "Just a thought. We'll keep our sector safe enough whoever's on official staff, but it would be nice to coordinate. Especially if Kay and 'Liss keep on like this."

"I don't see what the big deal is," Anika admitted, coming over with a cutting board full of veggies ready for stew. "Kay's already set everything up here to be self-sustaining and he doesn't want to take over anywhere else, so it'll be the same. So what, if someone else reached out first?"

"It's about motives, not the doing. Amsterdam knows Kay and how he works, but between the business with the Fergusons and Rotterdam, outsiders are getting weird ideas." He rolled his eyes. "Which was inevitable, because I swear, Kay is a one of a kind – but that doesn't make this not a mess. We're too hands off to be a syndicate – that's more Cadence territory – but we don't match anything else either, so we've been classed as one. Kay's proven he doesn't take no for an answer even though he only asks for reasonable shit, and that he's determined to see further south and east to keep Amsterdam safe – but instead of 'paranoid neighbor who means well' people are getting 'power-grabbing crime lord' vibes. The tail end of what went down in Rotterdam made a lot of things easier because now everyone knows we carry weight and that it's a bad idea to lean on us, but it also means they're going to expect things. They're looking for gaps in fronts that don't exist, and the only way to really handle that is to find the middle ground and become what's expected. At least, a bit? Backing down now would only cause more problems."

"He shouldn't back down anyway," Adelheid reminded him, considering the stage her broth was at. "We all agreed on that before he started trying to extend the network, and none of those reasons have gone away." Something like Chaos' network could have prevented the riot last year, let alone all the good it had done on a local level since. The easy way Kay had tracked down and handled the situation with the mayor's daughters was clear evidence too, and with all the fighting starting up again they could find themselves in over their heads with no warning at all if they didn't extend.

Under Luc they'd always been very isolationist, and honestly, they still were, but... We can't afford that anymore. The world just kept getting bigger the more they got their feet under them, destroying any sense of peace they got as soon as they got settled in. There was nothing to say peace wouldn't be thrown to the winds again, and if there was a chance they could be ready for it this time… That could mean everything.

Losing Luc and Leah had been devastating enough, and for all that they tried to keep to themselves, they were responsible for a good chunk of the city now. If there was even a chance that they could prevent another nightmare like the riot, or one of the bombs that had struck the other major cities, she'd take it.

Honestly, though, she was with Anika on not understanding what Kay's new problem was. They'd sorted out steady agreements with the other Amsterdam groups last spring, and it had worked out well so far, at least with Cadence – and Tiger was more or less a branch of Cadence, after the riot. They'd be idiots to expect much out of Beale or Shadow, but those two were generally too busy sniping at each other to bother anyone else – basically the same way the Devils and Slingers had, once upon a time. The worst patrols were along the border to Shadow for a reason, but the assholes knew their bullshit wasn't tolerated in the Devil's sector, so they kept to themselves. Tolerant apathy, though the more domestic end of Kay's network was strung loosely through their area as well.

Most of the people Kay had talked to in Rotterdam had been amenable before the trouble went down, either seeing the advantage or being leery of the rumors about 'the Dutchman' after the Ferguson fiasco. The only group in town that he hadn't gotten to before the fight had agreed without meeting the Devils in person – though Adelheid wasn't sure if it was because they had good relations to gangs who had already agreed or if it was reactionary.

The 'ambassador' from the Hague that had shown up this morning, though – that was definitely a result of Chaos' alleyway curbstomp brawl.

Wasn't that half the point, though? In the end of the day, power responded to power; Kay was hardly new to that idea, so why the fuss?

"Anyway, we can fuss over motives later," Adelheid decided dismissively. "Everyone's selfish about something – and we're not asking for loyalty." That would be stupid. "It'll be easier for them to watch their own backs too if they cooperate – nothing to lose, so why not?"

"Because there might be something to gain if someone else is willing to show off their soft spots," Gust argued. "When Kay is instigating, he's in a position of power; when they're approaching us, they're taking the initiative and might be looking for weaknesses instead of allies."

"Which means what in a practical sense?" Adelheid was exasperated now. "We'll deal with that if it becomes an issue. Kay is in a league of his own, and we'll back him. Cadence would back him if he asked; probably without any hesitation! And then he has all his old friends from the war willing to lend a hand if he asks too." She pointed at Gust daringly. "This is just another male 'I don't want to ask for help' thing!"

Gust snickered, gesturing back to the living room. "Why do you think 'Liss has been trying to talk him down for the past half hour?"

"Ugh, Melissa's almost as bad as he is, the tomboy" Adelheid muttered disgustedly, picking up the veggies to start adding them to the stew. "Someone should go find Sin."

"Because Sin has such a good record for asking for help when she needs it," Anika drawled, trying not to laugh. "Kay was the one who straightened Rina out, or did you forget?"

"Rina is aware that she has limits, unlike those two," Adelheid huffed.

Gust rolled his eyes. "Just give it time; Kay's almost through his latest meltdown, and then he'll buck back up, like usual." He shook his head. "The man's moods are a God damn roller coaster – I think the issue is that this just went a lot faster than he expected."

"He tends to freak out more the easier something is," Anika agreed solemnly, heading into the pantry.

Ain't that the truth? "He'll get over it."

"Probably within the hour," Gust agreed.

"I can hear you jackasses, you know," Kay called in an annoyed tone.

Gust rolled his eyes again. "And?" Melissa started laughing.

"You all suck."

"We love you, Chaos!" Anika called brightly from the pantry.

"I hate everything," the younger man groused, pulling his knees up so he could bury his face in them and hide from his giggling wife.

oOo


oOo

November 4th 198 – Monday – L4

Torie glowered at her phone, willing herself to be misunderstanding this somehow. That she'd missed a change in code, or that maybe Belle was pranking her.

…None of the Etheredge girls were into practical jokes, though. And Belle had only grown more solemn since getting married and widowed in the same year – on top of everything else the war had done.

Damn it. She'd thought she had finally gotten far enough ahead of her workload to buy herself some breathing room, but according to the older woman's email that was superficially a telling of her day, there had been two more skirmishes since Italy got up on its soapbox and at least four of the satellite relays for live communication between Treize's fleet and Earth had gone dark. She scowled at the screen, laying out maps mentally, before shaking her head. She made it a point to not actually know where the troops were located as a matter of both security and personal safety, but this seemed a little excessive.

Either Khushrenada had his people spread out all over the place, or something else was eating the signal of at least one relay. She'd have to open up her network and double check exactly which were nonresponsive, but at a glance, the numbers didn't line up. It could be due to an unrelated collision, or quality control failing on her… But damn it all, she'd spent so much time on this already – she'd thought her work would last a little longer!

Nothing for it, she groused internally, shoulders slumping as she looked up at the timer on the dryer. Sometimes, crap just happened – you made it work, and if she had to retrace her steps, she would. Her ship was in the dry dock getting a full tune-up now, so she should be good to go for a couple weeks out of contact by tomorrow, if it came down to it. She could work from just about anywhere for the commerce routes, for all that it was convenient to be close…

Though if she was going where she thought she was, it might be better to run dark. Transfer over someone from the central pool and make Arthur the new hub boss – he'd done it before, and he was with her on the whole conspiracy end of things, so he'd help her cover her tracks. Maybe see if Alondra or Daisuke were up to backing her so she'd have someone she trusted to tandem with… call Caralee in a few minutes and see if she could get her to pull a few plugs and raise a fuss so it looked like there was a legit problem to go work out-

"Wow. You know, I kinda figured you were going to ghost me for another two years."

Looking up, Torie absently tucked a stray curl behind one ear and smiled. "I like my clothing collection too much to skitter off while I'm trapped in a laundromat," she informed Todd breezily, hiding her nerves.

There were only a handful of other people in the business, and they were both calm – distracted with their phones or books – and mostly outside of her range. Any moment now Todd would break into her little bubble, and if she'd misjudged him, this could get really uncomfortable really fast.

Sometimes she envied Taylor's need for a tactile interface. Most of the time, just no – because people changed from moment to moment, but at least nothing lingered. Poor Tay risked picking up years worth of emotion the moment he touched something whose owner had been attached to it… But at the same time, he could usually control what he came in contact with.

Usually being the operative word, but hey, beggars couldn't be choosers, right? Empathy was still rare enough that it wasn't that well understood – the Claflinn family had held the highest rate of incidence since the phenomena was first recorded, and even with over fifty of them spread across three generations now, there were still less than ten empaths among them. Well, probably. No one had heard from Makenna or her brood since 180, but Torie figured if Lucie, Joyce, or any kids Makenna had on her own inherited it, they would have made contact. Courtney said that both she and Tay had been showing signs of it before Quatre was born, and Camille had never been secretive about her extra sense – she'd become a freaking psychiatrist because of it, though Torie had no idea how. Jolene was still super involved in the community after raising three.

So, maybe twenty percent odds in what was left of the Claflinn line after Quaterine died, and closer to ten in the rest of the spaceborn population. Most people who acknowledged it talked about 'evolution' and called it a 'gift', but honestly? If they were right, then evolution fucking sucked. Maybe there were advantages, but the pros didn't even come close to outweighing the cons in her book, so she couldn't think of it as anything less than a goddamn curse.

On the bright side though, Todd's sheer bounce wasn't isolated to his step. He radiated warmth as he sauntered over and hopped onto the washer next to hers before holding up the two takeaway coffee cups he was carrying. "White mocha, or cinnamon dolce?"

If she didn't already know they shared the same taste in coffee she'd think he was buttering her up, offering two of her favorites like that. Taking the cinnamon, she leaned back on one hand, marveling at how happily casual he was being. "What were you going to do if you couldn't find me?"

He shrugged. "I saw a homeless guy a block or so back. He didn't look too crazy – he'd probably appreciate it, and maybe he had a couple interesting stories to tell."

He was entirely genuine too; that was the crazy part. "Oh my god, how do you even exist?" she groaned, sighing happily as she sipped at her drink.

A flicker of internal motion – like rustling feathers, only made of silent laughter. "Boy meets girl?" Pleased warmth when she groaned, rolling her eyes, and a steady increase in… clarity? "That or I spawned from the ether of space, I'm not really sure – the orphanage didn't keep very good records."

She bent forward, giggling, because wow, really? But again, he was just… there, without anything slinking underneath.

Just… effervescent.

That might just be addicting. It felt good, all bright and light as a feather… and he was absolutely flirting now, she could feel it. Unlike most girls, she'd never have to worry about what a man was thinking, what he really wanted from her – but she'd also never really thought one might have such immediate appeal either.

It was a damn shame she had to run first thing in the morning, when she knew he had a couple days leave to spend how he liked. Not that she couldn't catch him again and actually try instead of getting all passive aggressive with her own emotions let alone anyone else's, but… Lame.

Oh well. She'd figure out a way to make up for it. "You're free for dinner, right?"

oOo


oOo

Istanbul, Turkey

Tay shrugged. "Well, I've got nothing. Where to next?"

"Well, since Amsterdam was a hit, I thought we'd aim back towards that end of Europe," Priya admitted, fiddling with her tablet. "Berlin, maybe? There's a flight there with a two-hour layover in Budapest, so we can knock that off the list too, I guess. It leaves in forty minutes, but we can make it."

"That sounds like as good of a plan as any," he agreed, turning his head to watch some sort of band walk by, based on the luggage. "It's a shot in the dark, but we have to start somewhere. Forward me the confirmation once you've got it?"

"Mm hmm." Focusing on her screen again, she absentmindedly asked, "Are you hungry? The they don't have any first class left, so no in flight meal."

"Not really, but a few snacks are probably a good idea," Taylor decided, pulling out his gloves; touching Priya's things usually gave him a pleasant sort of feedback loop, but going shopping was another matter entirely. "Any requests?"

She made a face and flapped a hand at him. "You know my tastes – be generous, incase we end up chasing something as soon as we land. I'll meet you at the terminal."

The first shop didn't have the licorice he preferred, so after picking up some more generic junk food he ended up hitting a second one to check before giving it up as a bad job and heading to the gate. Between the lines and a last second decision to hit the bathroom to avoid dealing with the one on the plane, he ended up walking up after they'd already started boarding, and he honestly expected an exasperated comment from Priya while she stood waiting impatiently. Instead, however, she was still sitting, tapping furiously at her screen again with a deep frown.

That wasn't like her. "Is everything okay?"

"I got a flag," she muttered without looking up. "Sale of the shares in a small shipping company, nothing too big, and maybe a coincidence, but…"

"Oh." He glanced back at the boarding line and shrugged. "We should still get on the plane though, don't you think? We can decide if we're heading a different way from Budapest."

"I won't have a net connection on the plane," she complained. "This model doesn't offer it. I'm not even sure why I got this. Lowe is a common surname, but I put the flag down for Odin Lowe, and if I'd messed that bot up, then I'd have gotten a lot of false flags already by now, and-" She let out a frustrated noise. "Damn it, I can't do this through the local firewalls-"

Taylor rolled his eyes and plucked at the sleeve of her shirt – one of her favorites – and he soaked in the happiness at that even as he shook his head. The way she focused and over obsessed on all her belongings, but especially her clothes, always made Priya one of his favorite traveling companions – if she didn't adore something, she didn't own it in the first place. "You can sort it out once we're a little further northwest," he coaxed, sinking into the cloth's emotions until he felt like nothing could go wrong. It was a different peace than he got from his mom's knitting – more energetic, but just as good. "Come on."

"Or we'll find out he's in Egypt again and we just lost him," she half growled, turning green eyes up to glower at him."

"Yeah, except if you can get anything resembling a real location on either of them, that's what I'm here for," he reminded her calmly. "Get me in the room where either Quatre or his friend were, and I can find something to pick up an impression from. I thought that was the whole point of bringing me in in the first place; my trails don't go cold anywhere near as fast."

Also, it was just warm enough here that he was getting odd looks for his gloves – they could come back if they needed to, but he'd just as soon get further north.

"You even said it might not be anything," he wheedled when she opened her mouth to argue. "Stop brooding and just get on the damn plane already."

She let out a gusty sigh and stood. "Bossy."

"Sure, let's go with that." He wrinkled his nose and picked at her sleeve again, letting that ground him through his rising irritation at her being ridiculous. Airports were always tired and stressed, and it was hard to not go with that flow if he didn't have something else to focus on.

It was cheating, but hey, if he had to live with empathy, he might as well enjoy the perks. Priya was just stressed – there was no reason to hold her mood against her when it was justified like this. She'd been on the case long enough that she was probably warranted a bit of the defeatist attitude. So long as it didn't linger long enough to start sticking, he didn't really mind.

"Did you get chocolate?" she asked tiredly as they shuffled into line.

"Just who do you take me for?" he demanded happily. "Nothing dark, but still – Felicity's." He didn't really know the Earth brands too well, and a lot of them had taken a hit they couldn't really recover from after the Fall anyway, both with the changing economy and the sharp drop in supply. Felicity's was getting to be standard, now, and he couldn't argue with that – he'd always preferred them anyway.

Also, he was biased – Hollee had let them test new products before she put them into mainstream, growing up.

"Ooh, yes," Priya crowed, eyes lighting up as she reached for the bag.

He snorted and raised it up over her head, out of reach. "Wait until we're in our seats, geeze. Where did you even put our tickets? You're a little high strung today, calm down."

She narrowed her eyes at him and held out a hand imperiously. "I am woman – give me chocolate or face my wrath."

He rolled his eyes again, jiggling the bag over her head for emphasis. "Tickets, woman; I keep a barter system."

She rolled her eyes right back at him… but at least she started digging out the boarding passes.

oOo


oOo

Brussels, Belgium

"So long as you're there to authorize and babysit the movers when they get here, I don't really care how you manage it," Kelly decided, cutting off Sandra's dithering. "I've got too much shit to do to hold your hand, here. Captain Derusha takes possession in another hour, and barring inspection uncovering a disaster, I need to get everything off the ground by Thursday. Everything, Sandra. Save the whining for someone who has time."

The other woman groaned, and Kelly could practically see her roll her eyes through the line. "I expect back-up if I get complaints filed against me; and I'm not dealing with Sabetta."

"Done, easy," she agreed immediately. "Bye."

"I'll text updates." Click.

She smirked as her phone returned to its home screen and opened up her contacts for the next number she needed. Sandra was great, so long as she wasn't freaking out over social situations. Confidence issues or something – Kelly had never bothered to sort out the details – but there were good reasons she'd pulled the woman for the new Foreign Affairs Department almost immediately after her own recruitment. If you gave her carte blanche to steamroll through awkward crap, anyone trying to pen her in might as well try standing in the way of a tornado.

Some people just couldn't click off the safeties themselves, she supposed. Handing off control like that seemed counterintuitive to her, but people would be people, or something. Working with Relena again was going to be fun.

Still no word from Valerie about housing yet, but it was still early in the day, so she wasn't too surprised. Addie had texted wanting a confirmation of their numbers for… food. Oh, good. She sent back a confirmation and made sure she had Val's information so they'd stay on page with each other; didn't want that to get out of order and buy food before they had kitchens to stock. Jerome had said they had crews ready to follow inspection for any remodeling and they'd know by the time he was awake tonight if the Thursday deadline had any basis in reality, but said that she could assure their people that they would be getting paid whether or not everything was ready to start, and to get them settled in.

Otherwise, she'd known the move was coming for a handful of weeks, so she'd been able to more or less pack up her apartment beyond the bare necessities, but she'd only been able to start touching on her office yesterday. She'd probably have time to at least make a dent in that if not wrap it up entirely before Mary Jean Sabetta came tearing in demanding answers; the high-handed bitch was possessive of all the offices and could mostly get away with it after all the time she'd spent as Peacecraft's favorite clerk.

Free reign to tweak Mary Jean's nose was certainly a perk of taking up the job Relena offered. And maybe it was petty – who was she kidding, it was absolutely petty – but she was just… going to savor that, a bit. Karma's a bitch, bitch. Just because Princess Relena was too nice to revel in a little payback didn't mean anyone else had to take that shit lying down.

Unlocking her office door, she started her next call.

"Hello?"

"Jillian, hey," she began cheerfully. "I just wanted to check in, see if there was anything you needed."

The happy squealing of a young child came through the line as Jillian sighed. "No, it's- Thank-you, Daniel, that's perfect. Sorry, Kelly, I'm good. It's a little hectic, but we're mostly on track." In a quieter tone that suggested she'd pulled the phone away from her mouth, she added, "The Hawaiian one! If you put her in front of that she turns into a tiny zombie; she already has her crackers, and then we can finish the bedrooms." Louder again, she admitted, "Cam talked a couple of his classmates into helping, since it's a school administration day, so I've got this." She let out a little laugh. "I think I'm being extorted for cookies, but if they keep this up, they're getting brownies."

"Your mom bakes?" an excited voice demanded.

"I was only going to guilt you into it if they didn't screw up, Mom," Jillian's ten-year-old complained. "Now you're stuck."

"Bribery is traditional when friends help you move, Cameron," the woman informed her son primly. "I don't think I'm out of line for replacing the traditional beer and pizza with baked goods."

Well, it sounds like they have things well in hand. "Call me if something comes up," she insisted. "Otherwise, I'll let you know once we have more details about housing."

Jillian laughed. "Don't overdose on caffeine, Kelly."

"No promises," she returned mock seriously – or maybe not mock, depending on how the day went. "Talk to you later." She disconnected the line and considered for a moment before making a face and writing the other woman's name down on a stray piece of paper she'd left on her desk. One down… only thirty-eight other families to check on. Maybe I'll get through fifteen before my rendezvous with Sabetta.

Goals were important, right? If it came down to it, most of her office crap could be tossed in boxes labeled 'desk', 'bookcase', or 'wtf is this doing here'.

…Depending on how fantastically things went with Sabetta, she might be stealing her filing cabinet. That, or she needed to go find some boxes for files, but either way, really, she wasn't feeling too picky.

oOo


oOo

Earth Orbit – Sweepers Ship

"Well, kid, ain't you a sight for sore eyes," Howard announced with a grin as they came in through the airlock. "Heard through the grape vine that you'd been turning up, but I gotta say, a man lets you live on his ship for a month, least you could've done was say hi, you know."

Adam gave the older man a skeptical look. "Hi."

The old engineer barked out a sharp laugh, grinning even wider. "You look like you've been doing okay, at least. To hear Lu tell it, you've been just about everywhere in the past three years."

"That isn't a bad description," Adam decided, smiling a little in return as they moved closer. "I've followed where my feet led me – and my heart. Making ties seemed like a mistake, for a while."

"Well, can't really argue with that," Howard agreed. "Never really lost my taste for walking the world and seeing where it took me. Still, when you get old, eventually you find people to worry about. Don't suppose you stumbled by Duo at any point? Never much cared for that Chinese little shit, but I had half a mind to write Maxwell into my will before the Fall fucked everything over."

Odin carefully didn't react to that, turning to make sure Yasa wasn't trailing too far behind like he had no interest in the conversation. The older man hadn't said anything about Duo the last time he'd seen him, when they stayed for a day before dropping to South America, but…

Well, he wouldn't have said anything even if he'd been asked – not without checking with his friend first. On that note, he'd known that Howard was closer with the other pilot than the rest of them, but he hadn't thought it was… maybe like that?

Adam blinked a few times in hesitation before shrugging. "He's fine. Not, ah… He's antisocial, but fine. Happy; settled, even."

The man's smile became a little less manic, but no less wide. "Good to hear." Tipping his head forward, he peered over his sunglasses at Yasa, eyes curious. "You been picking up this one's bad habits and adopting too?"

"Hey, I'm one of the General's strays, thank you very much," Yasa announced with a smirk. "Or Rashid's, maybe. This lot's just fun to hang out with."

Howard's look was skeptical. "And you're how old, kid?"

Yasa rolled his eyes. "Twelve. I'm starting to feel like I should pack around my freaking birth certificate, man."

He made a face, shaking his head. "Eh… I believe you. Lu mentioned a third was coming, so she knew, and… Eh, I guess I can stomach twelve."

"I'm pretty sure I was killing for money by the time I was nine," Adam offered, looking towards the ceiling instead of meeting anyone's eyes.

…Odin wasn't sure if this was a conversation he should participate in, but he… kinda wanted to? Why not. "I stopped killing for money when I was nine."

"And this is why I supported a violent revolution in the first place," Howard announced loudly. "Child soldiers – fuck, but the teenagers are bad enough."

"Holy shit… you're serious," Yasa exclaimed, eyes wide.

Odin shrugged a little. "If it means anything, I didn't really know what I was doing until I was maybe eight, and even then, I didn't understand. I was good at it, but… that's something I promised myself I wouldn't let happen to anyone again, if I could help it."

His father had been everything to him, and he knew Odin had loved him. But after the war… after seeing how talented and still innocent Marie could be? It was hard to not be bitter about never having had a choice.

He had no idea when he'd learned to shoot, beyond the fact that he was mostly sure he'd been less than five. He didn't remember going on a job with Odin ever being new or strange; it had always just been that way. He could remember the details of probably three years worth of missions with crystal clarity – the set-up, the equipment, the different places they'd been. There was more – a lot more – that was fuzzier, or were things he remembered seeing Odin do that he didn't really care about… suggesting that it extended pretty far into the gaps in his memory too.

Despite his determination to move on, some days he was still haunted by the innocents who had died because of his actions – but at least they had been accidents. When he'd first joined Operation Meteor, he'd done his own research; he'd known who his targets were and agreed that they needed to be removed from power.

His father had never told him anything about their marks beyond location and identifiable characteristics. He'd never thought twice about it as a child, but now? No. He couldn't imagine why Odin had thought there was nothing wrong with that. The retraining was a haze and he had no idea what he might have done while under the Foundation's control, trying to escape the next punishment, but… When he had heard what Operation Meteor was really supposed to be, when Dr. J had laid out his options? Following through with the original mission parameters had never been acceptable.

It had been hard to remember how to really think back then… to plan his own consequences. If Dr. J hadn't offered to command him on an alternate course, he probably would have wrapped up their conversation with a murder suicide just for lack of ideas.

But the way the old man had spoken that day… He'd been so much more like the J he remembered recruiting him, instead of the brutal officer he'd known for the past year. He'd felt something again, that day.

Maybe it had been some old remnant of pride, that had made him decide he'd just… see how much it took to die in the line of duty, instead of being efficient. As disappointed as he'd felt every time he woke up again those first months on Earth, he'd been proud too. The things he'd been able to get away with just kept stacking up, and winding up Duo had been entertaining enough to keep pushing the envelope over domestic issues too. Then distractions kept spiking his interest, and after so many miscalculations for so many months that should have been the end?

Well, he'd gotten curious. He'd stopped thinking about the training and tried to 'follow his emotions' – as confusing as it started off – and by the time Libra fell, he felt like he'd gotten the hang of more than just professional pride and doing what other people thought he should.

He would never be anyone's tool again. Marie would never be someone's tool to use and discard, the way he had been for the Barton Foundation – she'd make her own decisions.

Maybe she would be spared the crushing regret that had killed his father – that he'd tried so hard to die from himself.

"So how old were you when you first-"

"I don't know," Odin interrupted. "I was too young to remember." I think.

Plenty of people couldn't pick out early memories – maybe the gaps were just that, and the way that Odin had never landmarked anything about time beyond the weather just confused the timeline too much for him to sort out. The way they had lived, he could rearrange events in almost any order and have them still make sense.

"Fuck," Yasa breathed, turning away.

He shrugged. "It… didn't stand out. My father was a hit man; it was just what we did."

"The sad thing is, it's not actually the first time I've heard that fucking story," Howard groused, one hand over his face. "Almost word for fucking word, too, out of assassination when he was nine and into someone's special ops. Makes me wonder just how many of those were running around. Christ."

Adam shrugged. "From what I remember, I was with a mercenary troupe. Almost all MS, only…" He furrowed his brow, thinking. "Always on the edge? Our shit was always more broken than anything – I think they kept me on because I was good at fixing things, and small enough to crawl halfway into the joints to work on wiring. When I started getting taller, they let me fiddle around in the cockpits too, instead of just cooking and fixing."

Odin tipped his head. "You remember that much?"

Adam grimaced. "Not really – it's mostly guesswork. There's a lot of random details that don't really make sense in any other scenario I can come up with, though. I have a lot more memories of when I was little than I do of the war; the doctor said it's hard to say if that's because there's just more time to draw things from, or if the more recent memories took a harder hit. The general theory is that the location of memories are organized by time, with sequences of events clustering together, but it's more accurate to say it's by association – most people just use time to tie their lives together." He shrugged. "Either way, it's always going to be fractured. There's a reason I stopped trying."

And that was solid Trowa thought processing right there, researched and gone about pragmatically, so Odin didn't really see a problem. The more time he spent with Adam, the more comfortable he was around him again. The Trowa on Peacemillion had been trying too hard to be something everyone told him about instead of himself, and that, more than anything, was what had put him off about the other man.

Adam was different from Trowa the same ways that he supposed he now was from Heero. Not so much someone new, but more. Adam was still Trowa, and he was still Heero.

The old names had just stopped being… adequate.

Yasa turned to Howard. "You know… this almost makes me feel better? I mean, I thought I'd been through some crazy shit, but there's always a bigger fish, huh?"

The old engineer sighed. "Something like that. I need a drink – we've got another six hours before we're at a good place to drop you back through atmo and conserve the most fuel, incase you run into trouble." He started walking away, clearly expecting them to follow. "I've got the weather for the next two weeks pulled up too, but I'll keep you up to date on changes, the same as last time."

oOo


oOo

Munich, Germany – Sarracenia

"Hell no. Even if it weren't for the political tap dance I'm weaving my way through, my house is currently full of construction crews who weren't expecting us home for another eighteen days. If I'd had any delusions about retirement making my life easier, the past few days would have put them down hard." He stopped by the window, looking out at the grounds. "You say it like I haven't done it before. I've actually lost count of how many times I've dropped one career to pick up another; I don't sit still very well. Three years is something of a record." He tipped his head to one side, smirking. "Besides, it's all syntax – the only thing that's changing is my focus."

Relena didn't look up from her paperwork, but her smile was very self-satisfied, and Lin supposed she had the right to that. It wasn't like it hadn't before, but Jake's world now officially revolved around her on a personal level, and the two of them were basking in it.

For his part, Lin was just glad Jake managed to get the new shoji screens installed in their bedroom before all this bullshit with Italy started and they'd had to head home instead of touring. They were at least trying to be courteous about it, but the couple was nonetheless still deep in their honeymooning phase, and the fact that the contractors had started gutting the second floor to make the layout changes they'd finalized last Wednesday meant that sleeping arrangements were already awkward. He and Mai had crashed in Jake's old Murphy bed last night – since their rooms were gone as of yesterday and night shift had claimed the solarium while Leia was in Dorothy's set-up on the third floor – and it hadn't been bad, really…

…But he also could have done without hearing his former CO's utterly wrecked gasp this morning when he was going into the bathroom. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't too bad, but he'd still made a point to take a longer shower than usual and left the fan on for white noise before he hustled out of the suite to make sure everything was ready for the day. All of Jake's old crack of dawn duties were now his purview, and while most of it ran smoothly without intervention, he wasn't familiar enough with the fine details to just glance in and out yet.

Mai had either slept through the whole thing or done a decent job pretending at it, since she was keeping to swing shift – he actually hadn't realized she was claiming the other half of his bed until he'd heard the door open last night and she'd dropped down next to him without any explanation. Not that he'd been awake enough to give a damn, and not that he actually cared now either, but before, her sleeping on him had been relegated to long car trips or drunken shenanigans.

The woman was a cuddly drunk – especially after she'd ditched whoever she'd fucked into oblivion and made her way back to Sarracenia.

And, well, she was his best friend. He'd only had to drop her ass in the shower once before she took the hint and stopped trying to crawl into his bed still reeking of sex – because hell, he had to draw the line somewhere. Having someone to come back to obviously meant something to her, and it didn't bother him, so why not? He couldn't really imagine not sleeping next to someone after spending the night with them, but he also didn't get the appeal of one night stands, so he figured it was some sort of compromise.

They'd have to revisit the whole situation if he got a girlfriend, but his life was too complicated right now for him to have any interest in looking.

Jake scoffed. "Change the subject, Dave; only warning."

Relena bit her lip, smile twisting into a smirk.

And I really should have expected that. Jake takes prude to a whole new level, and Relena… He'd seen a few too many blushing, giggling, whispered conversations with suspect gestures between Lena and the other women in the house over the past few days to not be suspicious. He also knew all too well that Mai was perfectly happy to try sharing locker room talk – with a terrifying level of detail mixed with advice that, she insisted was normal when girls did that shit.

At the same time, though, it was weird how he got the distinct impression that it was the soldier being debauched, not the princess.

"Tonight. I'm told projections have the conflict over before nightfall, but even if it isn't, it's still in the final stages, not spreading. Closing transportation to southern Italy was excessive once it was confirmed none of their suits could fly, and commercial flights are still going to take a few days to get their authorization back, but I got him set up as a ride-along with the pilot for a military flight to Rome this evening. He'll be home before midnight."

And they'd all certainly breathe a sigh of relief at that; Des was a mess right now with the whole Italy thing. Lin got it, even if he hadn't had family in a long time, but that didn't make dealing with the man when he was two inches away from meltdown any less aggravating. At least he'd warmed up to Leia after everyone got their facts straight – apparently she and Lucrezia Noin had been pretty close before the war, so they'd already heard plenty about each other that they liked secondhand. That, and Leia was separated from her daughter far more severely than Des was from Cassie and his youngest, which maybe helped put the situation into perspective.

Or, you know, they just bonded more over the fact that they were similarly separated from their daughters for more or less the same reason, and Des was coping better via commiseration. Either way, their high-strung guest had gotten much closer to his normal self when Leia was in the room at the same time.

"Right? I'm not sure what to think; I knew he had something up his sleeve, but I don't think anyone was expecting this level of competence. Hopefully it shines well on us more than it burns."

Lin somehow kept feeling like that lunch in Switzerland had been both, like, two minutes ago, and an entire lifetime. Before leaving for the masquerade, he'd thought he'd have time to rework his interactions with Jake before the next crisis; but instead he'd been caught flat-footed. He'd shrugged into the commander's coat easily enough though, and the trip back to Munich had been spent strategizing, debating tactics. By the time they'd gotten home, he'd been ready to put his nose to the grind and haul ass for as long as it took… only to have it be over as suddenly as it had started. It put him off-kilter.

On top of that? He hadn't been attached to his room and he was excited for the new layout they'd laid out in Switzerland, but that didn't change the fact that he was suddenly home yet had no personal space and entirely new social rules to figure out.

None of that was bad, exactly, he was usually cool to just roll with the punches, but… it was disorienting. Every time he felt like he was back on firm ground, it all started spinning again. It was annoying.

And in the middle of that chaos, the gradual transition of roles they had planned for the tour had been thrown out of the window while Jake openly finagled details that Lin had always thought magically handled themselves with a level of polish fit for Treize.

Fuck, but he was starting to realize they'd gotten the drop on the man purely by virtue of him being severely depressed. Maybe Relena had a natural knack for subterfuge, but he'd been reminded this weekend just how much of the princess' prowess had been learned from Miller – and how many steps back he'd taken to give her the reigns as soon as she'd shown any inclination for autonomy. At this point, he was starting to debate just how many of the little political coups they had pinned entirely on Relena had relied on her drawing attention while Colonel Batman moved backstage. It wasn't until now, when they were seeing the process he used to filter intel and tease apart clues that they were getting a hint of how much detail he'd left out and handled alone.

Depressed and overloaded. They needed to sort out some sort of organization to take some of the sociopolitical workload of their faction back off the man, because Lin suspected that might be the reason he'd started to buckle under the weight of depression in the first place. Jake had been intimidating as a concept just when they thought him a high class spy; recognizing the sheer number of balls the other man kept in the air as a matter of course to maintain RLTT was alarming as hell. The rest of them had been scrambling for time to sleep just keeping Relena's rising faction on its feet, and he was just one man.

Lin literally couldn't comprehend how the colonel coped with it all at this point – though he had the uncomfortable feeling he was about to start one hell of a crash course.

It was just as well that he'd admitted to essentially being Treize's favorite baby cousin, or little brother or whatever, because Khushrenada was probably the only one he'd ever heard of who could pull off the same kind of mental acrobatics and still have time for freaking tea in the afternoon. Plots within plots and layers of deception and misdirection to hide the core of a man's motives… and that was before even considering the physical shit.

"No, I stopped doing any major digging there after they revoked my official programmer's access last year," Jake admitted, shifting his stance to thoughtfully cup the elbow of the arm holding the phone, all fluid poise that Lin was used to only seeing in nobles. "These days, I have Hayden pull anything relevant for us. Why?"

He'd seen plenty of different types of body language from his CO over the year that he'd known him, but the closest he'd ever come to carelessly elegant like this was the dangerous jungle cat prowl that came out when he was fighting or trying to intimidate. If he hadn't spent so much time with the colonel and never seen any of this before, Lin would think that the minute shifts in weight as he considered something, the small gestures and posture, were the result of a privileged upbringing the man couldn't shake even if he wanted to. It wasn't entirely foreign – he was still the same person, the same body – but combined with everything else?

Since he'd met him, Jake had always lived out of either his uniform or baggy jeans and t-shirts; always either the precise military man, or the slouching computer nerd you'd dismiss at a glance. On the job, or off. Since coming home, though, neither had shown up. Instead, the wardrobe had shifted into something to match Relena. Neat slacks and insanely expensive, fitted shirts casually rolled up past the elbow, with understated but clearly expensive jewelry to match that old money stance.

The only things left from before were the plain black bands on one wrist and the fact that despite the neat lines of the new clothes? They were still loose enough in the right ways to hide a fucking armory.

Intellectually, he knew his friend well enough to recognize that each aspect was just a facet of himself he emphasized to the exclusion of the rest to get shit done, not a lie – but that didn't make it not eerie enough to raise the hair on the back of his neck. He knew better, but some animal instinct in him was rearing up and making him want to doubt, now that the other man had stopped layering plausible smokescreens over just how good a spook he was.

Relena had seen it months and months ago, smiling mischievously and insisting he was 'casually chameleon'. He'd agreed, he'd already known… but evidently, seeing wasn't the same as believing, and it was going to take a little time to get used to.

Since the original plan had been to spend the next three weeks in the public eye, they'd intended to transition Jake's role gradually, but, well… Italy. And since the billionaire had decided they weren't part of the crowd he had to play his charade for anymore, he'd stopped bothering with subtlety.

Coming from him, it was probably a compliment… But it was still jarring as fuck.

There was something relieving about how Jake's disbelieving little cackle was the same, at least. "What? No, are you kidding me? They hate me. I don't think they'd tell me if I was standing in a burning building." A smirk. "Well, that's because they're stupid."

Then, an absolutely delighted grin that directly clashed with his suddenly somber voice. "Oh shit, seriously?"

Relena looked up sharply at the shift in tone, then raised a brow when he actually bit his lip to stop himself from laughing as he waved a hand at her, eyes bright. "Fuck," he continued in a tone bordering between worried and pissed, then vindictive. "Think I should call them up and give a 'em big damn 'I told you so'? Do they have any idea how long it's been there?"

Cassidy tapped Relena with an elbow so she turned to him met and blandly announced, "This shit is disturbing."

God, but I missed you, man. The American's exceedingly dry sense of humor was a riot, and it had taken him all of two hours to realize the running game he and Mai kept up suggesting that she was coming up with all their ideas while he tried to keep her in check. But in typical Kansas fashion, he'd just settled in to watch the show instead of spoiling it.

"Ah, crap, I have to take care of this," Jake announced in a frustrated voice, face a damn rictus as Relena started trying to smother a laugh. "I'll catch you later." As soon as he'd hung up, he started laughing hard, bending over to hide his face.

Well, that, at least, was every bit the rough and tumble colonel from before, not the new nobleman.

"Oh, this looks promising," Mai decided as she came back in. "What did I miss?"

"I'd really love to know myself," Lin admitted, setting down the tablet he'd been coordinating on and crossing his arms. "Either he was bullshitting Mitchell, or they're both busy bullshitting someone else." He was pretty sure it was one of the two, at least.

"Ooh," she cooed, dropping onto the couch next to him. "My favorite. Is he going to tell us, or should we work up conspiracies?"

Jake snorted, leaning back against the built in desk. "Years," he crowed. "It's been… Shit, it's been almost three years, I can't believe it."

"I'll put money on it being both of them," Cassidy decided.

Yeah, me too. "Sucker's bet," Lin argued. "Who do we know who openly wants this asshole to go die in a fire but still talks to Dave?" Most people either respected Miller or had no idea who the hell he was. He usually didn't stay in one role long enough to get a reputation.

Jake laughed harder, bracing himself back on his hands and tipping his head back. "IT."

Lin frowned. "Like… Information Tech?" At his nod, he considered. "Who did you piss off in IT?"

His laughter turned naughty. "Dave called it the 'Reign of Terror.'"

Right, he was originally assigned to building the network, before they switched him over to pilot hunting, Lin realized. And, well… Jake could be a real hardass with insane standards – when he got on a roll, it tended to turn lesser beings either all starry eyed or running for the hills.

Cassidy, evidently, was thinking along the same lines. "They didn't want to shape up?"

"Oh, I wasn't in command," Jake drawled. "Zechs tried, but I made him realize tying me down in tech was stupid; he wouldn't want me to form the foundation of something of something I would ditch six months later. He'd have to restructure everything to make up the difference after he moved me to something more critical."

"Except that's, you know, what you do," Cassidy drawled right back. "Build shit up nice and ride off into the sunset."

His grin widened. "He… might be under the impression that I'm a chaotic loner that gets bored easily and changes careers at the drop of a hat."

Instead of a workaholic jack-of-all-trades with a compulsive need for secrecy. If he didn't know the guy, he guessed he could see why someone might believe it. Still. "How, exactly, is it that he thinks he knows you, again?"

"Lu asked me to play nice; after that, he decided he knew everything about me and stopped trying. It was funny, and then I got busy and didn't see him too often."

Relena groaned, dropping her face into her hands. "I can't believe I thought the two of you were close."

"He thinks we are, which works well enough as camouflage." Jake shrugged. "Before Sanc fell the second time, I thought he'd work it out eventually and I'd get to tease him about it for years. I mean, Lu was set to marry him, so I figured we'd have the time to sort it out. That, or, you know, he'd die and I wouldn't have to give him a shovel talk." He grimaced. "When he showed up on Libra, I thought might be there to sabotage it – maybe a balls out version of the mask gambit he pulled in OZ, but… Yeah. Treize said he didn't know anymore, and Lu was five steps past biased but still concerned, and it seemed like a better idea to stay in reserve until I knew which way the wind was blowing… And when I couldn't get a solid read on anything in the middle of crunch time, I took the wrong leap of faith because I wanted Lu to be right."

He swallowed, all trace of joy gone from him. "And, you know. Be willing to ever talk to me again."

Because Dorothy and Relena proved that there was no stopping Peacecraft by that point with anything short of death. And no one had really believed someone was willing to actually try to kill the planet until it was done. It was just too… insane. Some sort of bluff. And maybe it had been, because only half the planet was in ruins instead of the whole thing, but how do you explain to a woman who sees you as a brother that you killed her lover because you thought he might be willing to do the unthinkable?

Jake licked his lips, eyes down. "Should've anyway, come to find out, but… I didn't know, and he's always been able to run a damn good con… and he was supposed to be family. I didn't like him, but I didn't know him that well either, and… he loved Lu. I thought, if he loved Lu, there was no way he could do something that would kill Des. If nothing else, I thought…"

He closed his eyes, pinching his lips together tight for a long moment before puffing out a sigh. "Right, I'm not doing this right now. I made the wrong call, Zechs came to his senses after he saw what no one else was able to completely prevent, and Treize asked me to do better this time."

Holy fuck, but I hope he didn't say it like that.

"Jake-" Relena started, standing.

"I know it's not my fault," he agreed, making a sharp gesture. "I'm not that bad." He wrapped his arms around the princess' waist, pressing his nose to her hair. "Doesn't mean I don't feel shitty about not doing something, but when it comes to limiting the damage to the Americas, the only ones who got much of anything done at all were the gundams – so that's something everyone gets to feel shitty about. I'm only human. I'm going to fuck up sometimes, and I've got enough regrets without borrowing someone else's crimes."

He pulled away from Relena a little, smiling at her, before facing the rest of them again; he wasn't amused anymore, but he wasn't upset either, and Lin imagined a lot of that was because he still had one arm wrapped around the woman he loved while she leaned into his side. "Anyway. I was there for Zechs' little post-Libra meltdown that had us scrambling to keep Europe from falling into chaos and he needed a security net, and that was technically what I'd gotten hired on for with Libra anyway. So I said I'd consult on it before moving to wherever he needed me most. Played the friendship card, said I'd be there for him and we'd get the nightmare figured out somehow. All my public work history shows me as a temporary consultant anyway, never a founder or integral member, so it fit my MO."

"So what did they do to spark the reign of terror?" Cassidy asked.

Suddenly, the broad, mischievous grin was back. "Oh, no, I gave them enough help to seem legit, but otherwise I went out of my way to be the most overbearing, paranoid asshat possible – poking holes even in good work and driving them up the wall because they couldn't actually tell me no or get rid of me. Kept them feeling like they were standing on the edge of a cliff because I was the infallible friend of the dictator signing their checks, and played king of passive aggressive knives in the back. I got two different guys dismissed for stupid reasons and went out of my way to fuck up the lead's sleep cycles hardcore – though I don't think he ever realized I was behind it. It seriously took him almost three months to get a normal circadian rhythm again after I left."

Wow.

Mai laughed. "So what happened after that? You get bored?"

He snickered. "Nah, eventually someone got brave enough to file a series of complaints or went begging to Zechs or something because I was more or less forcibly transferred over to the manhunt, where zealotry was more appreciated."

Where you then proceeded to thoroughly sabotage the hunt for the pilots while feeding the actual intel to Treize and still made it look like progress. And you made yourself look damn good while you did it. He wasn't sure if he should be horrified or impressed.

Mai's eyes sparkled; obviously she was of the latter opinion. "You're evil."

He just snickered, smoothing a hand over Relena's hip. "In my defense, it took a lot longer than I expected for them to grow spines and manage it. I'm pretty sure Dorothy told Zechs I was being damned inefficient a solid two months before push came to shove, but I had this big campaign running about quality over efficiency that was absolute bullshit. I was ready to have a public meltdown about being proven wrong and everything when I got called out on it, but no one ever did." He started snickering again like he couldn't help it, all naughty schoolboy. "I bet they spread rumors, and that's why your double promotion got pushed through without any questions," he realized, meeting Lin's eyes. "No one wanted to deal with me in a snit after that whole throw down."

That… made a sad amount of sense.

Cassidy snorted. "So you had them sleep-deprived, fearing for their jobs, and probably going to absurd lengths trying to placate you for how long before you dialed it up to full revolt?"

A smirk. "Four, maybe five months."

Relena huffed. "Ignoring for the moment why you did this, why did David bring them up?"

Jake's eyes danced. "IT sent him a warning the other day that there was a Regime database compromise. Someone built a back door into the entire mainframe, and no one knows how long it's been there. They just found it."

Mailin choked out a laugh, covering her mouth. "And it's been there since…?"

The grin was sharp now. "Oh… Valentine's Day 196?"

Relena started to laugh helplessly, dropping her head to his neck.

"That's not going to cause problems for Treize, will it?" Lin asked. He knew better than to ask if it could be linked back to them. Jake was better than that, and he wouldn't be acting like this if it was a concern.

He made an amused noise. "I made it, but I never used it. I wanted it to look like it was designed for someone's particular use but with open utility, and at best maybe start a chase to waste resources on. I honestly figured they'd find it after a few months. The design is such that no one should be able to track IPs through it directly, but it was always meant to be a red herring – so if they managed to tag a worm onto a file someone grabbed, it would lead to someone other than Treize and cast suspicion away from our people. He has enough higher ups in the Regime with extensive access that there would be no point to something like this."

"And it's also one hell of a 'fuck you' to Zechs," Mai added happily.

He smirked. "That may have been the original idea, yeah. After it hit the six month mark I figured there was a good chance someone may have stumbled across and sealed it, but I never looked after I hid it; didn't want to chance drawing attention there. It's entirely possible someone found it and made some adjustments to keep it better hidden over time, but I built it to look like a hacker stumbled across the remnants of an original programmer's testing beta back door and turned it into something functional. That way, even if they locked in the timeframe to narrow down when it popped up, I'd have plausible deniability."

He rolled his eyes and suddenly, despite his clothes and the arm he still had wrapped possessively around the princess, the careworn computer nerd was back, settled deep in his stance. "You know… I was stressed, worried about Lu and barely sleeping, working on securing this huuuuuge infrastructure that had maybe a quarter of RLTT's security conflicts. Maybe I forgot to delete all my quirks out of the BIOS once we got it up and running? It's never happened before, but… shit, Zechs, how many hours a night were you getting back then? Looking back, it all starts to get a little blurry."

Relena started giggling again, softly enough that they were silent, but it still made Jake break character as he smiled and pressed his lips to the side of her neck for a moment, burying his nose in the hair tucked behind one ear before speaking again. "In any case, there's a reason I built you your own little firewall once we started working together. I've been insisting that I thought the network security was shitty since it was made, and I'm a paranoid bastard, so now I get to raise a fuss about being right."

"Because you sabotaged it yourself."

Jake shrugged, wrapping his other arm around Relena again. "I do good work?"

"Because you have an efficient skill set for subterfuge," Cassidy added agreeably, eyes dancing.

"You know, I'm never getting away from that one, so I'm just going to rock it. Yes. Yes, I do."

oOo


oOo

Brussels, Belgium

It's done. Take that, you cagey bastards. Noe closed his eyes, knuckling his forehead, and breathed.

Everything had gone according to plan; better than he had realistically hoped. And it sent the message we needed. It would be some time before Romefeller tried something like this again. It would make any potential insurgents that the bastards might try allying with think twice.

Unfortunately, it would happen again. Success now only bought more time, and he had warned Milliardo before he left: this would be a sliding scale, once it began. Kindra's work would help mitigate the damage, give them a little more breathing room, but after the Fall and the jaded view of a population that had seen more than three generations of heavy casualties? This couldn't be anything but a decline.

But it had to be done. It was the only way to stall Romefeller long enough for other steps to be taken that had any reasonable chance of success. He was already resigned to being remembered for the coming months. That hurt… but it didn't change the necessity.

He'd always been scornful of people talking about the ends justifying the means, before he'd found humanity in a position that made it straight reality. He hadn't been a part of White Fang, God no; he'd been in retirement for ten years before Milliardo had come to personally convince him he needed help cleaning up the mess he'd made. In the end, it hadn't been that hard of a decision; the last of his line had ended in the aftermath of Operation Daybreak.

In some ways, it was their loss that made him ideal for his position. No divided loyalties; no love lost for Khushrenada's leftovers any more than Barton's. Yet he still carried all the experience from his days as one of Dermail's favorite enforcers; he knew how these Romefeller asswipes thought, how they subverted and conquered… how to make them back down, at least temporarily.

The problem was two-fold; temporary was the best they could manage, and the same tactics that would strengthen them against Romefeller had a damn high likelihood of exposing their flanks to Po's Insurgence in the long-term. Short-term, done right with Kindra, and they might be able to rebuff them well enough to mitigate the future exposure, especially if they took the bait… but he'd already lost enough gambles against the woman that he didn't care for the odds.

Romefeller was one thing; Po and whoever she had on her staff maneuvered enough like Treize to make him snarl.

"General Lee?"

"Expand the perimeter and lock it down," he ordered, leaning back in his chair. The terrain of the northern border was such that the same tactic they'd used on Sanc after its initial collapse would be more than three times as effective – and that before considering the advances in technology since 182. "Turrets in Sigma configuration at the borders as soon as is feasible; active MS patrol until the border's constructed."

"…Sir?"

Noe eyed his panel of techs derisively, swallowing down bile as he played his role. "The insurgents never surrendered, and they certainly didn't fight to their last. Instead, they went to ground, leaving us with little information and no recourse. What we do know, is that they had outside assistance.

"This, ladies and gentleman, has become a quarantine."

Detainment might be more accurate, especially if there was any truth to the intelligence suggesting Hilde Schbeiker had been in the area before the initial violence began; the losses might be worth it just to contain the little bitch, but she had too long a history of sliding through his nets and appearing somewhere else entirely for him to count on it. Sometimes it seemed like the woman was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. If she appeared somewhere inside the next few days he'd dismiss the suspicion, but for now, hunting for her inside their new rebellion zone would remain a priority.

Not that that was the point – only a potential bonus. Romefeller responded best to the practices they preached, and this was one he was well familiar with. Deterrent, he thought grimly as his techs began following orders – first hesitantly, then with resolve as the idea settled in. The more pure-hearted of them probably thought it was a measure that would be rescinded after a thorough scour of the area, or at least expected a lightening of ordinances after a period of time where the area proved peaceable again.

Unfortunately, Romefeller would perceive that as weakness – therein laid the key weakness to this entire campaign.

They had just entered a war of attrition; hopefully they could hold long enough for the rest of the pieces to fall into place.

God help us all. If it worked, maybe the history books would laud him as well as condemn.

oOo


oOo

November 5th 198 – Tuesday – Soleil Coalition Fleet

"Well look at you!" Ryder announced happily as he pulled her into a hug. "Damn, but you're a sight for sore eyes. I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again."

Mu barked out a laugh as she hugged her friend back with just as much fervor, shoving away her disbelief. "You asshole," she muttered, willing tears away. "You were on the casualty lists!" They'd never been close, exactly, but they'd served together enough times that she'd felt the loss. It had only been one more drop in the ocean, but still.

He gasped, but refused to let up his grip on her when she drove a fist into his ribcage, sputtering out a laugh instead. "Why'd you think I couldn't say?" he returned breathlessly. "The dead don't talk, and if I was alive when I'm the dumbass who pulled his Excellency back out of the line of fire, too many questions would get asked. I haven't been dirtside in almost three damn years; it sucks."

She didn't answer, just buried her face in his chest as she wrapped both arms around him again and tried to sniff back the tears. Logically, that made sense; while Treize had made planetfall a handful of times and returned to space since the disaster of Libra, those trips had been deemed critical, where the risk of orders being intercepted was greater than a few calculated breaches.

"Anyway, you're not getting away from me now," he continued cheerfully, still not letting her go. "Dunno what you've been up to, but I've done pretty good for myself since the Fall. Welcome to the Dantes, central command of the Soleil Coalition." He pulled back enough that she could see his fierce grin. "My own personal cruiser. Funny how dreams come true, huh?"

Mu couldn't decide if she wanted to groan or laugh appreciatively. "You named your ship after the count of Monte Cristo?"

His grin only widened. "It's a good name; it fits." Finally stepping back, he kept a hold on her hand and started tugging her down the hall after him. "Come on. Treize wanted to greet you himself, but it's the middle of our night cycle, so you have time to get settled in first instead."

"You stayed up to meet me?" she asked, shifting the strap of her bag a little higher as she let herself be led.

Ryder made an annoyed noise. "I would've liked to, but no; I'm pretty strict to swing shift, and the Regime's turned out to be a lot more capable than we were projecting. They're hounding this part of the fleet at all hours, so we're ready around the clock until we've got them in a good spot to show our full colors. I'm heading to bed once I've dropped you off." Glancing back, he added, "You'll be on days with Treize and the rest of the big wigs, so you should try to get a nap in before morning call."

"How severe is the situation?" she demanded, hungry for more information. The intelligence she'd had access to on her transport had been minimal for security reasons, but despite the seemingly endless delays she had finally made it to the center of Treize's web, for better or worse. "The skirmishes are wreaking absolute havoc on the star lanes; I should have been here a week ago."

"It's not what we expected, but it's not a problem either," Ryder dismissed. "Minimal casualties on our side, just…" He waved a hand. "Busy. A lot of little clashes that aren't amounting to anything instead of significant progress on either side. Nothing close to what just went down in Veneto or Milan. The Regime isn't playing the game the way we expected, but so far that's not a bad thing either."

Veneto? Milan? She frowned. Italy? "Captain Duncan, I've just spent the past nine days in one dead zone of space after another; the net connections we could get were reserved for crew. What happened in Italy?"

"Commodore Duncan," he corrected, tossing a roguish grin back at her. "And a failed rebellion of some sort. I don't know much about it beyond the fact that it was brutal, and not for the Regime." He shook his head, focusing down the hall again, taking them through a handful of twists and turns Mu knew for a fact she wasn't going to remember how to navigate. "Maybe you should skip the nap and just power through the day, spend the time catching up. I made sure you have full access here, and I've got a list of topics for you to prioritize; not sure who put it together, but it's in your inbox. They knew you'd need some time to catch up, but with things how they are, we can't give you what you deserve."

"I just served six months under Colonel Jake Miller," she announced, not resisting the way her lips twisted into a smirk. "We've been pulling eighteen or twenty hour days regulating the entire damn Foreign Affairs department on top of being Princess Darlian-Peacecraft's detail; I'll get by just fine." Honestly, she imagined the pace here would be considerably more sedate than the psychosis of sixteen people managing Relena's schemes, RLTT candidacy, and an entire branch of government my themselves.

If she hadn't actively been a part of that nightmare, she wasn't sure she'd believe it was possible. For the most part, she'd avoided getting too depressed while at Sarracenia just because there wasn't time for it after Relena's appointment as Minister.

Ryder whistled lowly, shaking his head as he let go of her hand to punch his code into a keypad. "Nice. You went from one RLTT candidate to the other. No one can say you aren't good for it, if nothing else. Things slowed down for a while when we were deep in all the prep stages and I got the impression that we were given pretty free reign over the summer, but we're almost as deep here with RLTT as we are the Winners."

Her stomach dropped in surprise for a moment before amused resignation replaced it. Well, at least we aren't understaffed. Half of the pace of Relena's household had been the way the Fund snapped at their heels any time a project started to stagnate; it was a wonder they'd managed to keep up with physical conditioning, but somehow Jake had always managed to balance it out, if just barely. If she didn't know from experience that the man was a moody son of a bitch on less than six hours of sleep, she'd think he never rested at all.

The door to a small bedroom opened, and Ryder gestured her in. "Someone will be by in the morning to orient you, get you set up with security and everything else you'll need," he continued, pulling his wallet out of one pocket and starting to rifle through it. "Bathroom is two doors down that way," he gestured, "and you share it with the other female execs and pilots we've got on board. Ah." Pulling out a business card, he grinned and reached past the doorway without entering, handing it to her. "That code will open both this door and the bathroom for twelve hours after its first use, so that'll be fine until we get you properly in system in a few hours; if it doesn't work, you're at the wrong door. The sign-in on there is unique to you, and one you'll keep – change the password as soon as you open it, and you'll have full access to the files and your email. Don't be surprised if his Excellency or Blaine check in on you via mail before you figure anyone's up; they're both early risers. If you need anything else, use the com." He gestured at the speaker set in the wall with handful of buttons and dials as he tucked his wallet away again. "I think that's everything."

She smiled, dropping her bag and going back to the door to hug him again, feeling lighter than she would have imagined possible. "I'll be fine. Get some sleep; I'll find you so we can catch up, once I get a chance." Everyone who needed to be battle ready would be on strict shifts, but she doubted she was part of that group – if this was anything like her last assignment, she'd be up late enough to at least catch a meal with an old friend now and again.

"I'll look forward to it," he promised, squeezing hard enough that for a second it was hard to breathe before releasing her and stepping back again. "Make yourself at home; I'll see you around."

oOo


oOo

Southern Sudan – Blue Nile Base – Officer's Quarters

"-the devastation of both homes and life."

Rashid sighed, rubbing at his eyes with his good hand. "Am I suffering a misconception from living so long without television," he asked, tone dry. "Or does everyone else agree that this sounds as insincere as ever?"

"Oh, lack of exposure likely makes it worse," Abdul returned happily, smile sharp. "But perhaps still…" He tipped his head as though thinking hard, "decidedly duplicitous?"

Sometimes, he thought if he managed to catch the other man unawares, he'd find him recreationally thumbing through a dictionary. Him and Auda both. Quatre's speech had always been the same way, but less… consciously. With Master Quatre, it had always felt as thought he didn't realize words like 'perfidious' weren't part of common vocabulary.

…Though maybe they had all started trying to expand their English a little aggressively after first meeting the Winner Heir in 193. However amusing it was to watch the little blonde blush when he realized he was effectively speaking a different language without meaning to, it had been a little mortifying too.

"-must show a united front. Terrorists feed on fear, and we will not allow our people to be victimized again. We cannot, in good conscience, allow this to stand. We must respond. These are tumultuous times; they were even before Libra, and despite all our hopes, it's become clear that the efforts we have made to prevent more senseless violence have not been enough. The people have pulled together through crisis after crisis to get us to where we are today, and it's nothing short of remarkable – but unfortunately, this latest incident in Italy has proven that it's just not enough.

"We must do more. The people must be protected."

"I don't like where this is going," Rashid admitted, closing his eyes and leaning back in his padded recliner.

"It is a fairly ominous start," Abdul agreed. "Historically speaking, this is where they impose curfews and force a military presence into most decently sized cities."

"They lack the manpower for it," Rashid argued tiredly, ignoring the screen.

"Technically speaking, they have the Militia," his friend pointed out.

He opened his eyes again at that, eying the other man. "The Militia is only what the name implies: deputized citizens. It would not be so simple as that."

"Unless they put the right spin on it," Abdul argued. He gestured back at the screen, eyes unreadable behind his glasses. "The Militia belongs to Relena, but only in theory. If they win over enough of the right people, then this carries Relena's weight of approval too, and I judge that to be an immediate goal." He tipped his head again, smile returning. "Though that may be difficult, given the Princess' rather public display last Saturday."

Rashid pinched the bridge of his nose. Politics. It was a nightmare he had never been equipped to handle. We need Quatre. Lucrezia was good, but the Noins hadn't been nobility in four generations, and Quatre's background was irreplaceable. Where are you, old friend? He didn't want to think the worst, but surely he would have come back to them by now, if he could?

Unless he felt he was needed elsewhere. Unless he felt unworthy, again. The self-esteem issues the boy inflicted upon himself were crippling, for all that he snarled like a cat rubbed the wrong way when they tried to step in on those aspects for him. Working with Lucrezia was refreshing, on that front; she knew herself well enough to step into her strengths and sidestep her weaknesses without hesitation.

Hopefully it was a skill the young man would inherit with time.

The television was still droning on, but he'd lost all interest in listening to the Regime's latest lies; he hadn't missed the propaganda, the last six months. Getting used to modern media again, I suspect, is going to be something of a chore.

At the same time, however, he was supposed to be resting; if he got out of bed again before supper, the good doctor would have his head. "Can you put something a little more cheerful on?"

oOo


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Perspective


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Thoughts? Favorites? Theories? The Winners are, like… everywhere, I swear, and even so, still not all of them are obvious. Also, hey, Treize and his allies finally have a real name!

I hope to be writing more soon, but… moving is a nightmare, insomnia is a crapshoot, and chronic pain is as shitty as ever, especially when it escalates rapidly for no discernable reason. See you guys next time.