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Chapter Twenty-Three
Unexpected
But life inevitably throws us curve balls, unexpected circumstances that remind us to expect the unexpected. I've come to understand this is the unfolding of both karma and current. – Carrie Otis
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Moving forward means making new connections - and sometimes, reforging old ones. Not everything can be planned for, especially when someone else has been planning for a long time.
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So. Not dead.
In my defense, I had a baby. That's a thing, right? Let's call it experience and perspective and get on with actually going somewhere with this, hm? I've done thirteen pages on the next chapter in the past five days and I'm still running. This is only lightly edited, but if I sort more of it, I'll repost it with some of the grammar issues smoothed out. If you're worried about what you remember because I vanished off the face of the Earth so long… I recommend probably going back to at least Chapter 19 - 18 might be better. Sorry – I'm determined to break this slow posting crap.
To New Year's resolutions.
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December 14th 198 – Saturday
"Lluvia here."
Razo slumped against the wall, so relieved his friend had answered that he didn't know what to do with it… and a little sad that he was that relieved. "Jovi, hey," he drawled, letting his accent fall heavy as he half melted into the building he'd bought the burner in. "Ca va? Fame suits you, but it looks heavy."
The American soldier let out a low, delighted chuff of a laugh. "Razo! It's good to hear your voice, friend. Got a new phone, then? You been busy?"
He closed his eyes against the flash of an image of the inside of that truck. "It's jus' a cheap prepay, but busy, yeah," he agreed. "You know, saving the world and all."
"Mm, me too, apparently," the other man returned, tone turning skeptical. "I'm still working on the how, but I think that's just what we tell people anymore. You sound tired."
Razo grimaced, dropping his head against the wall. "It's been a day." A day, a week… Back in Libya it had always felt like an entire lifetime, but nobody could handle that, so – one day at a time. A day was everything you experienced, but still nothing at all, once you could look to the next one. Box it up neat enough in pieces and you could build yourself a mountain to conquer.
Jovi grunted in a commiserating way. "Damn."
The problem most people had when they boxed up the things they didn't want was that they stopped thinking about it, and suppressing shit was how you made a mental time bomb. The ability to compartmentalize, organize what you faced and turn each awful piece into something he could use had probably been what let him survive the desert – and it had definitely been the driving force that saw him graduate high school when more than half his class didn't. It had gotten him past the gangs and the drugs that had dragged his sister and cousins and everyone else he'd known growing up into society's underbelly. Zaria had been dead by the needle or her pimp before he hit eighteen, and they'd been so far apart by then anyway that he hadn't bothered to find out which. Either answer would've walked him into a situation where he couldn't win, so sometimes, you just… let go. Their mom had stopped bothering to come home even a couple times a month by sophomore year anyway, and the couple cousins that had bothered to stay straight had gotten reeled in by the recruiters.
He'd never forget Etienne's careless shrug after he'd run out of counters to Razo's arguments. 'It's this and away, or I'll be pushing on the streets 'fore much longer. Can't get anything else. Might as well get paid – maybe I'll even get to see space, huh?'
He still hadn't decided if it was irony or fate that saw him the last Charel alive to see the end of the world, only to end up in fucking Cambyses.
"You wanna talk, or me?" Jovi asked. "I've got time."
He couldn't really get into details, not in general and especially not over the phone, but he'd known that before calling. "I've seen so much shit, the last few weeks," he admitted. "I guess I just thought that after everything we went through, it wouldn't be so bad."
Jovi hummed. "That's good, though. It's not the kind of thing that cancels out – if you stop caring, that's when you need to back down, you know?"
"Yeah…" He hadn't really phrased that well. "I get that. What I meant…" The assholes that killed half his squad a week ago had also killed the women to obscure their trail, but that wasn't the hook that wouldn't leave him alone. It was more that, for all the horrors of his time in the Sahara? Cambyses hadn't trafficked in flesh. Well, they had all been a form of slave labor, he supposed, but had had the dubious advantage of indoctrination via the charnel house of the Iron Ghetto. As fucked up as it had been, the creed had elevated survival – self-interest as a way to create a better future.
It had been wrong. He'd never fallen into the trap of believing Cambyses' code. He'd gotten out of the cages by focusing on the future – categorizing all the shit he'd had to do as necessary to survive and boxing up his morals until he could afford them again. If you changed how you thought about any task then broke it down into enough pieces that you could streamline the process before it could sink in, you could do just about any harrowing act.
He was pretty sure Robby noticed him in the first place because the other man was doing the same thing.
Those women, though… Even before the medical reports came back, he'd known. You didn't load people into a cargo container like cattle unless you thought they were basically the same thing.
"It's more that I didn't think there would be so many people that make Cambyses look tame by comparison," he decided.
The grunt Jovi let out was a little wounded. "That's shit," he agreed. "I'm not sure I can get my head around it. We hear the rumors, but…"
"Yeah." He felt his shoulders unwind a little more. "These guys, we've been on their trail for a little over a week now, but they know what they're about, the bastards. Mitchell says we'll get there, if not directly than through some of their friends and get more leads from there, but we won't get closure in time for Christmas." They might not get those specific shitheads from Khiva until as late as Easter. The Brigadier had seen their faces and consequently they had some damn fine sketches, so they would get them, but if they'd gone deep into the East…
It might take a long time, but it would happen. In the meantime, he needed a healthier coping mechanism than revenge, and Jovi was usually a reliable starting point for decompressing – and as an added bonus, the big man got the same benefits from giving aid that any of his friends did from getting it. Entirely win-win.
"I…" He trailed off more than once before hitting on what he was trying to say. "They never dehumanized us."
"Mm." The other man thought about that for a moment before arguing, "I found it pretty dehumanizing. Compassion was a damn near sin, Raz."
"No, I mean…" He fumbled for better words. "Fucked up as it was, Cambyses was founded on the belief of individual worth? Through everything, it was always about what we brought in, what we strove for, contributed, not…" Something about his horror settled in his mind, deep and anchoring, as he realized the real difference between the men and boys in the Ghetto, and the women in the truck. "We were never things." Potential boons or liabilities, worthy or expendable, remarkable or mundane – Cambyses, from the top down, had been abjectly against the idea that its people were mindless chattel.
And that… that was another truth Robby wielded against the higher-ups. His friend had always recruited selectively, and those he took had all initially been relieved because in a sea of cultists, he'd been as close to agnostic as was allowed. Captains, or really leaders of any kind, were supposed to believe in Cambyses' code, and to actively weed out 'the weak'. The nicer ones had worked to toughen up their suspects instead of going straight to execution, but Robby… Before Roshan, no one had made waves about Robby because the man was utterly terrifying in a fight, and he had a talent for bringing that same trait out in those he took as his own. Most of the 'code' had seemingly gone over his head, but the higher-ups had decided he was doing what they wanted, and he was teaching others to do it, so… no harm, no foul?
But no one had wanted him to pick them. It was something he'd heard tossed around as a threat more than once, a Captain telling a guy that if he didn't shape up, he'd send him to Robby's encampment. Because despite his successes and avid ambition, Robby was a raging sociopath who didn't even bother hiding how he treated his people like his own personal possessions. Robby's men saw more success, less death, better food and shelter… But the others had muttered darkly, even at their most jealous, that none of that was worth the commander's insatiable need for control.
He had trained them into the ground, daily, until they fought reflexively – fought with the kind of fluidity and speed that Razo'd thought only existed in movies. He'd regimented their diet seemingly to the last crumb – though no outsiders had realized that that was to build a reserve supply to keep them on their feet through an escape into the Ramlat Rabyanah Sand Sea. Every waking hour had been ruthlessly accounted for, sleep allotments even more aggressively scheduled, and free time just as ruthlessly managed – though the last was almost entirely obscured from outside view. In a world where men were supposed to only look out for themselves and personal actions were touted to be the sum of your life, that had to look like insanity.
And Robby himself… Given how much of the man's own 'free time' had been spent weaving their wishes into a never ending tapestry of determination and hope on an emotional level, it was hardly any wonder that he'd latched onto Razo – someone he hadn't had to be anything at all for. In hindsight, the man had been depriving himself more than any of the rest of them, running a constant live performance with a million and one pieces. All to save as many as he could… by convincing everyone else he was a megalomaniac who didn't like anyone else touching his toys.
Maybe he should talk to that journalist again. She'd said she wanted to write a book. He could even get a copy and sign it before tossing it at Robby's head and asking for an autograph, just to see if he'd blush. Even with a solid tan, Robby had one hell of a blush.
"We were never just things, in the Sahara," he reiterated. "No matter how many people Robby managed to convince. I don't understand how people can let that can happen."
Jovi's grunt was more agreeable this time. "Fair."
"How do you sink so far as selling women as things? Not as prostitutes, that's a service, uneven as the scales might be, but as things, the same as a blow-up, or a vacuum."
"That sounds like a fairly textbook definition of sociopathy," Jovi offered.
"Robby played at sociopath – it's not the same thing."
"He was playing at it," Jovi negated. "His persona was literally counter to who he is on a spiritual level. I don't care how well he managed to trick everyone, that wasn't him."
"No, I mean… It's bigger than that," Razo argued, casting his thoughts out for a better explanation. "It's… endemic. This isn't a couple guys at the top working a pyramid scheme, where shit rolls downhill. It's deeper." Another anchoring feeling swept over him, balancing him back out, as he found the thing that had really bothered. "Jovi, the shit I've been seeing? I don't think it can happen on this scale without the backbone of a society behind it."
There was silence on the line for a long moment. Then, "Yeah, okay, that's pretty fuckin' awful."
"Just… How?"
Jovi groaned. "I think the entire point of this conversation is that there's no good answer to that one. Let's just go with evil. I think it's less warped ideals turned insane, like Cambyses, and more sociopathic 'Because I can'. That's all I've got."
"It sucks," Razo decided, feeling a little lighter.
"It super sucks," Jovi agreed. "I'm starting to really feel like I dodged a bullet, getting out. I'm up to my eyeballs in logistics and all sort of crap I never knew existed, let alone had to learn, but I'm glad."
"Most days, it feels worth it," Razo reasoned. "Like you said, saving the world, right? After everything… I feel like I need a bit of this – like I'm balancing the scales. I'm…" Powerful. A protector. "I feel needed out here. Like, how good I am at it makes what happened in Africa worth it." He licked his lips. "I… like I said before you left, I still feel like I need for what happened there to be worth something besides my life." Because it had never actually been worth his life, really – he'd just been stalling until he could figure out what to do, and then one kind of stalling had turned into another, and then again.
He was really trying to stop doing that. It was one of the reasons he had set himself on a hard time limit, once he'd decided he trusted David.
I need to let them know that he knows… Not that he'd gone into any depth at all beyond that first conversation, but his new friend wasn't an idiot. The brigadier had already noted how four guys besides Jovi had been plucked up almost immediately by Revenant Rubato with a curious glance at Razo, who'd only been able to shrug. If you knew just a few key facts, the dots weren't too hard to connect… but that didn't make Rubato business any business of Razo's, let alone the fucking Soleil Coalition's. It wasn't any of his business so long as he didn't bridge it back into his life again and he… still hadn't finished wrapping his head around Robby outside the Sahara, let alone as a normal person. He still hadn't decided if he fully wanted into the Coalition.
He'd told Dave he was on for the Strike Force, one hundred percent. Otherwise, he'd asked to be shown the ropes and given the highlights on the Soleil end of things before he hit a real point of no return and had to make a choice, and his friend was obliging him. He'd just take this one step at a time – step by step was okay, so long as he didn't let it stall out into another form of limbo, right?
Over the phone, even a little burner like this one, wasn't any way to start that, though. And until he had a better handle on the Coalition perspective, plausible deniability was probably best…
Except fuck the isolation bit. No one needed that.
"Everybody's starting to talk Christmas plans," he admitted.
Jovi hummed thoughtfully, like he hadn't just cut off mid conversation and changed the subject. "Did you want to come this way? We're not doing anything big, and not all together anyway, but during the week of we have a few different pots cooking. It'd be cool to see you again, and I know the others would be excited. We've made some new friends you should probably meet too."
His gut lurched, followed by a wave of guilt… which, in his defense, was only the third reason why he wasn't doing that. "No, I told Mitchell I would stay, but… I appreciate the offer." Not having any family left or real friends outside Robby or David's crews respectively, he'd volunteered to work before David had reminded them all that they were a task force, not an active duty rotation, and they were all taking the week off. All the same, he'd said he would stick close to Mitchell, which… was apparently going to be more interesting than he'd expected anyway. "I only, ah…"
Can I even ask? Am I allowed that, or is even knowing his new name a risk? Robby had worked so damn hard to give them all options in the end, including the anonymity he'd chosen for himself. With what Dave already knew, he couldn't imagine Robby would appreciate having too much given away to the very man he had shielded his face from. And if Razo didn't know the name, then he couldn't betray either side on accident. He would let Jovi or Jalee know as soon as he could manage a secure way what was known so that the others could work around that without surprises – because he had not expected the Soleil Coalition when deciding to trust Mitchell, and Robby would never begrudge him choosing to admit the barebones to someone he truly befriended and trusted… And yet, the situation was complex.
Complex enough that Jovi waited in silence instead of filling the empty space with easy talk. Lluvia always had been able to read a room, after all.
"I miss you all," he announced after a long moment, choosing his words carefully. "I think things are just as complex here as for you despite how it seemed when you signed out, but I'm in for the long haul, I think. I'll let you know if that changes, but…"
Jovi only let the quiet drag on for a few long seconds this time before prompting, "But?"
Razo licked his lips again. "I asked our friend once, how it felt to walk a tightrope for so long. How he could let his hair down with me or Cory, only to step back up again without a single stutter."
"Yeah?"
"He asked me why I thought the two were so different. That we all change what we show, depending on who we're with. I thought he wanted to oversimplify it, to wave it off the way he always would, but…" He scoffed. "He's insane, you know?"
Jovi chuffed out a laugh. "Yeah. You know, I once saw him hold a conversation with Bern in English while coding in another language and watching an Italian press release, and once the vid finished, he immediately started grousing at Yasa for sloppy footwork on the forms he'd been practicing off to one side before turning to pick over the inconsistencies in the Italian reports with Bern, who had no idea what he was talking about… and all the while, he hasn't stopped typing?"
Razo smiled even as he closed his eyes again. That… yeah, he couldn't wrap his head around that any more than it sounded like anyone else could, but it was a sort of proof of what he'd already thought he'd known. "Yeah?" He knew Jovi too, though. "What'd you do, after that?"
The other man's grin was clear in his voice. "Asked what the music he was listening to was. He rattled off something five or six syllables long followed by a few words in French and at least three numbers without a thought – then blinked and apologized, started looking around, because he thought he'd only had it playing through his earpiece, and hadn't meant to play it on a speaker when he knew everyone was listening to something else… then blushed when the rest all stared at him because he realized we couldn't hear it."
Razo laughed, trying to imagine it. "He blushed?"
Jovi laughed too. "I know, right? He's like that, though. It's… really something else."
"I can imagine." He'd suspected, given what he'd caught onto at the time, and since… Well. That was another conversation for another time, he supposed. Either way, he probably shouldn't take too much longer. "Time for me to get back to my new friends, I think, before they wonder where I went."
"Aa, okay. Can I call you back sometime?"
He made a face. "I… This only has ten minutes on it. I thought, to be sure…" To be safe, he didn't say. Any of the rest of it, they could easily misconstrue as someone else, something else, even if some of it was shaking there at the end.
"Mm, right, yeah. But if you didn't need to be? We're still friends, Raz. I don't want to lose touch entirely, even if we don't talk much."
He grimaced. "I didn't think anyone would be happy with my options," he admitted, thinking of the Regime personal line he'd been given with his post. He supposed he could get another, more permanent burner, but even with the way their conversation avoided pitfalls he was going to wreck this one once he disconnected.
Jovi softly delighted chuckle was as warm as ever. "Well, that's why you have friends, Raz. Keep an eye out for a Christmas package. I'll route it to Mitchell, yeah?"
He frowned. "That should be fine, Dave won't snoop." He didn't really see the difference between that and getting his own disposables, though, beyond Jovi having the number ahead of time. The cell companies liked to boast that they were secure, but he hadn't made it to his twenties by believing anyone's boasting.
The other man's laugh deepened into something closer to a boil. "It wouldn't matter if he did."
Huh. "Oh?"
All he got was another laugh, the kind that he knew always had Jovi shaking his head, eyes sparkling. "You'll see. Don't be a stranger, Razo. We all miss you too."
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December 15th 198 – Sunday – Prague, Czech Republic
"Ooh, yes," Sally decided happily as she reached out to help unfold the massive map. "You're officially my favorite."
Quatre scoffed, but smiled all the same. "I can tell you mean that," he noted. "But I'm almost afraid to ask what group or category I'm being classed in."
"That's because you're intelligent," she replied, not looking up. "Which is a not insignificant part of why you're my favorite."
That earned her the chuckle she'd been hoping for, and she smiled as they finished flattening the European road atlas across her table. Far more places than she had any right to expect were marked with bright green X's… and they correlated well with the sharp violet crosses she could recognize as Lu's contribution to the layout. "You've been busy."
He smirked, an expression she had never had the chance to see on him before – and with the new scar, it made him look far more roguish than she ever would have thought him able to pull off. "Well, you know me," he returned, pulling an orange felt pen out of one pocket and leaning over to start inking in something new. "It's go big or go home."
She eyed the triangle he was dropping near Berlin, debating its meaning, before focusing on the whole again. "No kidding." The green marks, she already knew, were his contributions in terms of real estate – most of it commercial short-term residences, where excess foot traffic wouldn't be noticed. They would make an impressive addition to the hole-in-the-wall safehouses – the purple – she had arranged throughout the continent on a far more limited budget. Even without going into the shipping and air lines he had detailed before starting to pull out props, the increased mobility this was going to offer was astounding.
Heero was great to have on board, and he was a real treasure when off wreaking havoc with her general… but Quatre was downright irreplaceable. She'd been doing a decent enough job organizing her people, especially compared to the shitstorm she'd run in China back when the Alliance first fell, but what she'd managed in three years compared to what this boy had in a handful of months…
Well, some of it was just that money talked, but she wouldn't try to deny the fact that Quatre was already a master of a field she was merely competent in. She'd seen glimmers of it before, on Peacemillion, but he'd always kept it shaded, hidden half behind a screen of hesitation and embarrassment. Now though, with his newfound confidence, his mind shone like a diamond.
She never would have thought that Cambyses would have done anyone, let alone sweet Quatre any favors, but… Well, damn.
"Orange?" she asked curiously as he began a new triangle, this time in Copenhagen.
"Major businesses we can seed your people through," he returned, tone distracted. "The off the books associations not known to have connections to Rubato – I'll mark the publicly acknowledged ones in blue if you give me another minute. I only got the latest confirmations of acquisition yesterday, and there wasn't really a good place to pull this back out and work on it." He flicked a curious glance up at her. "And I didn't want to overwhelm you with a rainbow right from the start. Do I need to slow down?"
She scoffed. "Not at all, please." She appreciated the thought – it was helpful to consider the safehouse layout while he filled out the rest – but she was hardly going to get confused. "The lovebirds are clearing the way for that this week?"
Quatre snorted, focused on the map again even as his shoulders practically dripped with annoyance. "Among other things," he agreed.
"I think it's sweet," she protested mildly, trying not to smirk.
"You're not getting bombarded every time they're within each other's line of sight," the empath argued. "I'd gotten glimmers before, but…" He shook his head. "Odin's emotions run deep. It's a little hard to focus when he fixates on anything emotive, but with her in the room? I have to actively work to not embarrass myself."
She raised her brows. "Really."
He shook his head a little. "I'll acclimate, and it'll probably tone down once they're not in such a deep honeymoon phase, but for now? It's irritating." Making a face and looking her way again, he offered up a shrug. "That sounds terrible. It's a good thing, and Noin… If there isn't one yet, they're going to develop a feedback loop soon. It's genuine, and they're both…" He sighed. "I just didn't expect it. The last time I was around any kind of relationship like that I wasn't even a fifth this strong, let alone using one of the participants as a filter." Smiling a little, he admitted, "Stumbling into that goes a long way towards explaining some of the changes I've seen in him."
Huh. Nothing she hadn't guessed at or decided herself, but confirmation was nice. Also good to have some scale for just how sensitive our space heart is. "I'll keep that in mind."
Quatre gave her a dubious look before shaking his head and moving on to mark another city. "Don't put too much stock in that," he warned. "It's hardly a science, and Noin is a wildcard I never really made sense of."
Sally frowned. "How so?"
"She's got something," he noted vaguely. "It's a minor ability, and most of the minor Talents have a unique set of rules… but I've caught foreign emotion off her before." He frowned, shifting to another city. "I tried to ask her about it once when we were in Sanc, but I think it might be so subtle she doesn't notice – I realized I was talking over her head almost immediately and dropped it." Wrinkling his nose briefly, he admitted, "Empathy is usually more of a curse than a boon, and the whispers I caught through her weren't… great. Not bad, but not worth wanting more of. If she hadn't noticed it on her own, I figured it was better to just leave it that way."
"Lu is earthborn," Sally argued, even as she turned the idea over in her mind.
"And space hearts only appear in the spaceborn," Quatre agreed easily, still working on his map. "But five generations ago, empaths were just new age radicals with overactive imaginations."
Sally chortled out a laugh at that, adding a few more clues into the puzzle. "I suppose." There had been a few odd instances when she tried to think about it from that angle, but if nothing else, the November before last… Hm. "What makes you so sure?"
"Well, either she has one or more people filtering into her emotions now and again, or she has a split personality popping up for only minute or so a handful of times a month," came the wry response. "Which seems more likely?"
She snickered a little, considering… But really, if Quatre isn't our best expert, then who is? "Would this be something that could turn her into a paranoid wreck when someone she cares deeply for is in a fight or flight scenario?"
The young man froze then, standing up straight to look her in the eye. "Oh?"
"When the Brussels compound was under attack last year, she just about tore this base apart looking for danger. We didn't find out about the assault until the following morning." It had been a strange coincidence at the time, but she'd been willing to dismiss it as just that, or a bizarre case of intuition. But then, with how he was implying empathy could work?
Quatre grimaced, even as he began to nod. "If… maybe. Zechs?"
Sally sighed, mirroring his expression. "Maybe, but maybe not. Relena was there, and someone Lu sees as a brother." Remembering that he wouldn't… Well, he wouldn't have been getting news at the time because of Cambyses, she added, "Relena was shot that night, and the foster brother is part of the princess' protection detail." She pursed her lips, then admitted, "Everything I was taught says that empathy is proximity-based."
His body language lightened, and he shrugged. "That's just the most common expression, and the easiest to prove – the other variations are difficult to study objectively. Noin isn't the only person I've found flickers of Talent in since coming to Earth, but they've all been weak enough to doubt… and probably easy to dismiss as instinct or intuition to anyone who didn't know what they were looking for." Twirling his pen in an absent way, he added, "When you add that to the historical perspective, the implications are stunning. Either we've always been this way and something about living in space makes the ability stronger, or we're all changing, and the earthborn are just behind the curve."
He wrinkled his nose briefly. "Though again, the milder versions are stable, so I wonder if it's just a matter of having the safeties removed somehow. Without trying to dig into it more, from what you've said? I would guess that Noin can only pick up something from people she has close emotional bonds to, and even then only for very strong emotions – which come through to her only faintly. The times I felt anything from her in 195, the emotions were in direct contrast to her active mood, and she didn't seem to notice it despite that. True space hearts can pick up a lot more, but it's… a double-edged blade."
She raised her brows. "I've always thought it's closer to a masochistic blade, personally."
"Only because most empaths never learn how to project," he returned, bending over the map again. "Though I'm not sure if that's a lack of instinct, or a form of self-preservation."
Sally stilled, running the implications of that comment through her mind. "Project?"
"It's something everyone does," he explained dismissively, inking in more orange triangles. "That's the problem, really – your average person is constantly pushing everything they feel out into the ether, with few exceptions. If you have a proximity style of empathy Talent, you get flooded any time you come near another person."
"Okay," she agreed. That gelled with what she'd been taught about the phenomenon in school. "Exceptions?"
"Some people think differently enough that they don't add to it," he admitted. "Cory, though I think that might pass as he overcomes what happened in the Sahara. People like Rashid, who… who have the emotional discipline of a saint are just so stable that they can serve as anchors. Odin is… something different that I don't really understand, but it's closer to what Rashid does than anything else. And it can be learned – when she tries, Audi can do something one of my sisters applies practically as a lifestyle, of projecting only exactly what emotions she wants to be picked up."
"Which is what you're talking about," Sally surmised.
"Courtney's not an empath," he negated. "But she is where I got the idea. What she does can only be picked up by a space heart, and she learned it as a way to keep us all calm when we were little. There's no power behind it. It wasn't until I first woke up in…" He stopped, and took a deep breath before setting the pen down and pushing up on his hands, still staring down at the map. "I thought…"
He let out a deep sigh. "A lot of the time growing up, blocking other people out felt a lot like trying to hold my breath. Every time I relaxed and breathed in a little, other things would come rushing in. It's a common metaphor, if you look up the forums in the empath community. Everyone lets out what they feel with every breath, and for some reason, space hearts just… pick it up more than everyone else. The idea is that it's always all out there, but most people don't notice. Most of us that turn up with the Talent young get really good at holding our breath when we're around people we don't want to feel.
"But in the cages, it never stopped. There was nowhere to go for relief. I'm good, I've always been able to shut it out enough to get through whatever I needed done, but it's not something I can do constantly. I started going crazy." He huffed out a dark little chuckle. "Again. I started going crazy again, falling into everyone else who was already over the deep end, and when I reflexively started to pull back to get away, I pushed too… and people reacted.
"I was caught in my own personal hell, but I figured out a way to lie that no one could bring themselves to disbelieve. They didn't question what they felt. So long as I could believe it well enough to push it out, could play the physical part in a close enough match that it didn't feel discordant, I could give people the exact impression I wanted them to have."
He sighed again. "It's the only reason I made it out of the Iron Ghetto in the first place, let alone everything that came after. Instead of fighting to turn the volume down, I weaponized my Talent. Then the more I practiced, the stronger the passive end became, until I couldn't turn the dial down without help. Caught there, I started being able to pick out the dissonant notes caused by other men lying to themselves just to survive breaking down… and I surrounded myself with them, so I wouldn't forget what I was trying to do in the first place. Eventually I found a few I didn't have to lie to… and it got easier to remember what I was fighting for in the first place."
"And so you became the first projecting space heart," Sally mused.
"No," he negated. "I never did it before because of my personality, I think, but it was still instinctual. I might be the first strong one, but I can't be the first. I would guess that it's usually either a subtle ability, or that it ends in disaster in early childhood."
…The idea of an unhappy infant being able to express itself through more than cries was admittedly daunting. Add that to a stereotypical case of postpartum depression… It didn't bear thinking about. Disaster indeed.
In any case, they had work to do. "Well, you learn something new every day," she decided. "What kind of field dispersal are we working with, for the businesses?"
"Fairly wide," Quatre admitted, picking his pen back up. "We can go over that next."
oOo
oOo
Munich, Germany – Foreign Affairs Headquarters
"No, it doesn't follow," Tristan argued. "There's always a back road, but there's no way this matches up to the Insurgence patterns, and without the tech wizardry that Po's people sling around, I can't come up with a supply line that exits the western states. They've got to be here."
BJ grimaced. He didn't disagree, but he'd wanted the other man to give him some options to poke holes in that theory. Great. Well, until he had a better lead, he was going to have to work with what he had. "It's Brussels, then."
"Has to be," Tristan agreed.
Hayden made a face. "You know they got basically nothing out of those guys, right? Despite how many we captured?"
"It was a bizarrely large dead end." BJ admitted. "We thought it was a cover-up until Miller confirmed that what the Regime has in its database is all we know about their faction."
"Marquise dropped the ball?" Alexis suggested.
"Or they're smart enough to hide a decently large MS depot in the middle of overpopulated western Europe, smart enough to compartmentalize the hell out of their faction, and zealous enough to cut their losses without significant personnel backlash," Tristan suggested, acid in his smile. "Almost like they're smart enough to know exactly how to systematically lock down a large compound with welding torches and biological weapons." He shook his head. "Now that we are in the Regime database's records, it's easy to see they probably would have succeeded that night if they'd done literally two things differently. Marquise would have died, they would have taken the base, and given how brutally they moved in the first place? There's a good seventy percent chance they could have kept the Brussels compound through at least the initial waves of chaos, maybe indefinitely. The coordination that attack took, without a whiff of betrayal ahead of time? It says a lot, and there's only one point of it that's in our favor."
Hayden frowned. "What point?"
BJ answered before Tristan could say something more derisive. "Relena. Across the board on the interrogation of the survivors that got anywhere, they were entirely scandalized after hearing Relena had been on campus. They didn't want her involved with their coup, and implied that they intended to involve her in their future government. Ergo, we have at least some goals in line, and might be able to ally with them."
"I wouldn't hold my breath for it, though," Lindsay argued. "She drew the line between her and the Regime as a whole when the Italian debacle first started, and it's been six weeks."
"Yeah, but that's the same thing going on with the Winners, and we know we're on good terms with them," Hayden pointed out with an overly exaggerated eyeroll.
"True, but we don't know enough about this group's goals to know which points are in direct conflict," Tristan argued. "At the time of the Brussels attack, Relena's footprint was much smaller. It's easier to have mixed opinions, now, when she's gained a Ministry and is seen to work with known Romefeller factionists."
"She tears them apart more often than she gets friendly."
"She lets her infrastructure tear them apart," Lindsay corrected. "You know she designed it that way, and so does most of Romefeller at this point, but publicly? She plays nice and poses for the camera in all the right ways to keep the nobles happy and politicians satisfied with the status quo, and her reformation programs tag along after her doing the dirty work." He held up a hand to stall Hayden's protests. "It's public dirty work that's above board, but the point is that it's not Relena herself seen uprooting the corruption. It's half of why the people love her so much – she's literally handing the reins back to the common man and letting them level the playing field. But her ability to claim she doesn't truly have a hand on the wheel is both a large part of what makes her campaigns so successful, and what keeps her peers on their toes."
"It lets her play whichever face she needs at the time," BJ confirmed, watching the mulish cast fade out of the younger man's face. All of Relena's work since coming back on the political scene post-Fall carried heavy tones of economics, which needed the kind of complex organizations she had built… But she had built them to be self-sustaining. If she hadn't, there was no way half the programs would still be functional at this point with how many she had crafted, but she still maintained enough control to be able to step in periodically and own a situation if necessary.
That said, it also bore mentioning that Hayden was privileged. "Also remember that with rare exceptions, the princess doesn't sling mud in the court of public opinion. She's crafted a persona of being above that unless it's dragged out in front of her first. So most of those instances where she 'tears Romefeller apart' happens entirely behind the scenes. No one without access to the databases of the programs involved with each incident know it even happened." He sighed. "So as much as people love Relena and see that she's making a difference, they also see her playing the game like any other politician and don't know half the undercurrents she's wading through. The camera is not exactly forgiving."
"The Brussels crew might know, though," Nan offered, expression far away. "They like spying, and are good at covert."
BJ resisted the urge to throw something at the other man. "Yes, because we just covered that they are covert enough to hide an MS army inside hostile territory." Which was its own personal flavor of terrifying.
The many-faced anti-establishment factions that had plagued the Regime since its inception were bad enough, creating a constant shifting smokescreen that Po's Insurgence and who even knew who else had used to their advantage. The Regime had never had any lack of critics, but the small size of any of those organizations had been the planet's saving grace. Small groups meant they found it easier to hide, but they could only affect things on a local level. Technically, he had crafted the same kind of group when he started to gather intelligence again.
But there was nothing small about mobile suits. Or tanks. Or the army of ghosts that had nearly toppled their government last year. Too many facts lined up a little too well for him to hope that their organization had crumbled under the pressure of maintaining itself so long. This group that they still didn't even have a damn name for was definitely still active… and to still be active and on that high a tier of secrecy, they had to be zealous.
In his experience, zealotry never boded well.
Hayden, meanwhile, had directed his attention back to the map. "If they've gotten this far, we're not going to get anything on them until they strike again." He tapped one finger on the table, biting at the inside of his cheek. "Barring timeline constraints and assuming they don't have a solid space presence… the remaining Regime military presence ought to be tied up here," he dropped an eraser on a base any idiot could have pointed out, "and here." A slightly less obvious site. "So if I wanted to get the drop on them, I'd instead route through here or here." He shook his head. "But without a timeline, there's nothing to really do about it."
BJ stared for a moment. He'd requested Polanski for this little brainstorming session for a reason, but… he hadn't actually expected viable occult information out of the boy. "Huh."
The kid shifted a little, looking unsatisfied. "Sorry."
Tristan snickered. "That look on his face says he's not. Good job, kid."
"What?"
For better or worse, Jake knows how to pick them. Or at the very least, how to identify exactly what he had, which was more than BJ could say for the work they had slotted Polanski into before Miller got his hands on the boy. They'd slotted that ability for pattern recognition into "digital guard duty" instead of strategy, somehow, and… well, considering the fact that Hayden himself was one of those literal two things' the Brussels group had done wrong that had fucked over their mission? Misdirecting him had worked out pretty well for the Regime anyway.
"Let's add in a few more variables," BJ decided, pulling a few more props out of his bin to help characterize the western democratic zone. "We have intel placing lesser arms depots here and here."
"Whose?" He could see the kid's eyes spark and focus this time.
"This one is confirmed as abandoned, a fallen faction. It might even be cleared out already, my information is from August, and the demo zones have been the least of my concerns." Rebuilding his little co-op network into a cohesive whole was actually going quite well, but the sheer scale was daunting all the same. There was a reason Miller's resident strategy geek was getting a working interview. "The second looks the same way, but I'm less convinced - it's a little too just so, if you follow."
Hayden nodded slightly. "What if it's theirs?"
"That's one theory. Would that alter the whole frame, do you think?"
"Not necessarily, if it's just the lesser arms," Hayden negated. "We were talking big equipment." He frowned. "We don't have enough sway in that part of France to get much more detail, do we?"
"No, but that just makes it slower, not lacking, especially with Noventa coming apace," BJ reassured him. "That said, I think it's more likely that we've stumbled on a dealer than someone's stockpile, if this one's still active."
"Mm. Can you show me why?"
"Primarily because it's within the scope of the militia," he admitted. "They're heavy in this zone, and whatever's here, they're facilitating. Without more intel I can't say for sure, and the militia is far from infallible, but-"
"But it's more likely the black market, or someone trying to play French Dutchman," Hayden finished, nodding thoughtfully.
Tristan rolled his eyes. "After all, why support the established semi-legal policing force when you can handcraft your own instead?"
"Pot, stop talking about kettles and help me lay out confirmed pseudo-Dutchman groups on the map," BJ ordered dryly.
Lindsay laughed as he stood to come closer. "I'll do that – Tristan has better tracking on the black market." Picking a few more props out of BJ's bin, he added, "The only good thing about most of these is that they're territorial as all get-out. None are even half as smart as the Devil's Get and most are causing more problems than they solve, but they don't leave much elbow-room for anyone else."
"Except for the militia?" Hayden asked, frowning.
"No, because like the Devils, they're also the militia."
Hayden blinked a few times, processing that, then looked back to the map and groaned. "God damn it."
BJ patted him on the back consolingly. "Yep. So come on, we've only got two more hours before Sobrie said he needed you back, so let's see how caught up we can get you."
oOo
oOo
December 16th 198 – Monday – Szczecin, Poland
"Where's Jovi?"
"Charming a barista, probably," Bern muttered, pulling open the folder he needed and sorting out his current to-dos. "It's about that time of day."
Sio snickered, leaning back against the table and crossing his arms. "That only lasts until they find out which order is his."
"No, he got a phone number left on his at least once," Mark argued.
"Considering the complicated crap everyone else gets, she might have been glad for the reprieve." Bern frowned, double-checked… "I'm missing the Neut paperwork." Looking over to Felix, he asked, "Is that still in flux?"
Sio answered instead when Felix – Alex, I need to start calling him Alex, and damn but that's weird – just gave him a blank look that said it was still far too early to expect him to be human. "Odin did the face-to-face yesterday on his way through to Knightly's regional office. It's done, but still being filed – you can talk about it, but it probably won't be truly official until Thursday."
"Ah, right." He could stick to generalities, but all the same… "Did it get altered at the last minute?" He had the digital copy of the contract on his laptop, after all.
"I'm not sure – there was something, but I think it was just phrasing? Cat and Audi were chattering in that godawful shorthand of theirs about something, but Odin didn't get annoyed, so it was probably simple."
Sticking to generalities, got it. At least until he got the cliff notes from Audi. I'll text her in an hour or so. Either she would get to him before that on her own, or she was still asleep – which was entirely fair, because he was doing this early morning shit out of necessity, not choice.
He really hoped Jovi was getting coffee. They needed all the damn coffee. He'd never even imaged he might be a businessman someday, let alone a visible spokesperson of what needed to be a popular venture, and it all gave him a headache trying to figure it out but he didn't want to look like a moron either.
"Bern. Blue." Dmitriy held his hands out in a placating gesture. "I want you to repeat after me: Figure. Head."
"It's not that simple," he groused, scrubbing a hand over his stubble.
"It really is. I will write all your lines for you, if you want."
"You will not," Mark cut in. "No way. If that's a thing, sure, but not Damien."
"It's not a thing," Bern assured him. "I just need to make sure I keep everything straight." He'd missed theater, and in oh so many ways this was the best improv gig ever. "I just need to make sure I know enough that I don't outpace myself."
"I will make you notecards," Dmitriy insisted. "You can be my glorified sock puppet."
Bern snorted out a laugh at that, even as Mark rolled his eyes, announcing, "And gentlemen, Exhibit A, right here, on why we don't let Damien write speeches."
"I make the best speeches," Dmitriy protested, a broad grin spreading across his face. "I'm memorable." Shooting him a wicked look back to Bern, he added, "Seriously, Blue. I found these neon index cards already and everything, we're set."
Pressing down the urge to laugh more, he poured the amusement into his best wicked, sensual smirk and leaned towards his friend, movements languid. "Boy? I am so above notecards."
"Great." Mark looked exasperated, but he leaned his weight back onto one hand as he reached for one of Bern's stacks. "So we can just-"
"Think you're bigger than that, huh?"
"Oh, sweetheart, I know-"
"Can we not do this right now?" Mark pleaded. "Please? It's too damn early for dick jokes – I'm going to do something regrettable if I have to deal with dick jokes before ten in the morning."
"…I can respect that," Bern decided, slumping back in his seat. "Caffeine first."
Dmitriy rolled his eyes, but apparently decided he didn't want to push Mark's buttons – or at least, not to the point that he might do more than whine. The man had a creative streak that meant any retaliation tended to be… on the unpredictable side.
The silence stretched for a long moment… before Felix groaned and dropped his forehead to the table. "Donuts," he groused into the table, not even bothering to tip his head to one side, so all his words were half slurred by his lips colliding with the wood. "Pastries, or pancakes."
Sio bent over to try to get a decent look at the other man's face. "Eggs?"
Felix's noise was pure irritation. "No."
"But bacon," Dmitriy protested, grinning as he also lowered his face to try to meet Felix's eyes from the other side.
"Gross," the other man dismissed.
"…you like bacon," Sio noted after another moment of silence.
"Donuts." Felix protested.
Bern bit back a smile, trying to follow the logic, because there usually was one, even if it didn't make sense to anyone but Fe- anyone but Alex. "Toast?"
Apparently that was interesting enough to warrant thought, and it probably said something about the group of them that they just watched while their friend contemplated the idea, but Blue had decided to just get over the weird that followed their whole group months ago.
"…Maybe," Alex hedged.
Hm. Almost, then, but not quite?
"Why pancakes?" Dmitriy debated. "You've never even made pancakes, and they're easy."
"They're messy," Mark immediately protested, gesturing to their piles of papers that was the source of the whole… the whole mood.
Sio had his mouth open, though whether he agreed or wanted to protest was cut off as Alex sharply brought one hand up to point at Mark in a clear 'THAT' gesture, still without sitting up.
"Light and sweet," Bern decided, turning the idea over. "Toast with jam?" Or anything sweet, I bet, he decided, but since the point turned to indicate him instead, he figured he'd gotten close enough to count-
"Still sloppy," Mark negated, though unlike the rest of them, he was clearly still focused on shuffling papers around, not watching the byplay. "Not unless it's a bearclaw or turnover."
Alex dropped his arm back down to the table with a thump.
"Donuts," Dmitriy concluded. "Those are just fancy names for donuts."
Bern considered that, alongside how Alex was starting to relax more into the table with his cheek against it instead of his nose, then nodded. "We need donuts," he agreed. Though, given the timetable… "Next time, we need donuts." Maybe the sugar would stave off this… this.
…Unfortunately, he was pretty sure there were going to be lots of next times. Why the business day couldn't start at ten so he'd still have plenty of prep time before everyone else got rolling was just… punishment for something he'd done in a previous life. If this role wasn't going to be so much fun, he'd be upset that he'd gotten shafted into this schedule.
It made complete sense, but he still felt gypped. Caffeine, sugar, and carbs were clearly needed to cope. He just wished he'd thought of this last night.
"Have any of you been online yet?" Jovi asked as he strode into the room, cardboard drink holders balanced precariously.
Mark frowned, finally pausing as he looked up. "Yes?"
Jovi grinned a little wryly, gently pulling a drink out of his tower and handing it over. "I guess I meant SV, or the social networks. It's more of a leak and speculation than news – Noventa looked like she sucked on a lemon as soon as she said it, then refused to elaborate. Might've actually cut her interview short too, though it's hard to say for sure."
Fe- Alex frowned, sitting up straight. "Pacific Reclamation Noventa?"
"You got it." The tall man scanned his tower for a moment before selecting another cup and offering it to him. "Though I'm mostly sure there aren't any other Noventas left besides her and the dowager."
Dmitriy, meanwhile, had his eyes narrowed. "What were you going to do if his was on the bottom layer?"
Jovi snorted out a laugh. "I just bought all of your favorites without needing to ask – why would I put Felix's anywhere but the top?"
Point. The agreeing noise Alex made was… more than a little vulgar, but that wasn't anything new. "Thank-you for that, by the way," Bern noted before Dmitriy could get going again. "We were just realizing we should've thought of that."
"And donuts," Dmitriy added. Alex mumbled something indistinct, still drinking, but gestured towards… Damien emphatically.
Ugh, this is annoying. He didn't seem to have a hard time using the right name in the right place, maybe as a holdover from theater, but a slip up might be a lot more than just a faux pas to laugh off if he did it in the upcoming weeks, and method acting was really the best way to go, with these stakes.
Jovi, meanwhile, was getting an almost mulish cast to his mouth as he thought that over, passing out everyone else's drinks while he turned the idea over. Then finally, "…I can't believe I didn't think of that."
"I'm disowning all of you," Mark announced in a dry tone. "Seriously?"
"Shut up and drink your ambrosia," Sio returned irritably as he leaned back. "What did I do?"
"I'm disowning everyone but Ensio," Mark corrected.
"I'm going to go get donuts," Jovi decided.
"Damn it, no, sit down!" Mark had set his coffee down to pull at his hair with both hands. "I swear, this is like herding cats. Damien can go if you're all going to be like this, I'm not even sure why he showed up. What did you see on ShareView?"
"I," Damien declared in an arch tone, "am providing moral support."
"And shenanigans," Bern added.
"It's a package deal," Damien agreed.
"I will add an industrial strength adhesive to your lube."
Damien opened his mouth to protest… then froze, apparently thinking that over. Probably debating the feasibility of the threat before committing.
Mark just watched him, gaze pointed, even as he prompted, "Jovi?"
The tall soldier laughed, loaning one hip against the table as he took a drag from his own cup. "Noventa was doing a more in depth reveal on the Pacific Reclamation last night," he explained. "The word's been out for maybe two months, but she probably let it out of the bag too soon – apparently she only just got the second wave of land survey work done." He took another slurp, hummed, then added, "Or she had a smaller area sorted, and just dramatically widened her scope? The initial ads didn't mention anything west of Midway or Fiji, but now it's all the way up to the border with China."
Bern let out a low whistle. "What does China say to that?" The most anyone really knew about the place these days was that they were both the reason the fields were growing and why the Regime had worn out their welcome in Africa.
Not that the Regime was even vaguely out of Africa, exactly – they just weren't exactly in power either.
"I don't actually have lube," Dmitriy announced, in a tone someone else might use to confess a grievous sin.
"I'm not above contaminating anything you might consider using," Mark returned, not even glancing his way.
Jovi's lips twitched, but he didn't deviate from his story. "Reading between the lines a little? China asked the new Foreign Affairs Minister to mediate the deal, and somehow RLTT got involved too."
"Oh, damn." Bern sat up straight as the implications rolled over him. Cat had classed RLTT as 'extremely interesting' but also 'extremely suspicious for Odin reasons' which… actually wasn't nearly as good of an explanation as it had felt like at the time, now that he thought about it. But either way, there was some major level of distrust involved, to the point that all of them had learned at least the basics of the R.L. Tomorrow Today Fund.
…Even if no one had any idea what the R.L. stood for. Maybe it was a little shady for non-Odin reasons too, anyway.
It was a little bit of a letdown, really. Noventa's work in the Pacific had caught Don's attention hard, which involved the rest of them at least peripherally, and he and Mark had been debating if they should suggest offering some degree of partnership with it to Cat. But if RLTT was already on it, they weren't going to touch it. They'll do a good job, though. Considering the freaking terraforming North Africa was going through now, he couldn't deny that they knew what they were doing.
And on the bright side, the Sahara is just… gone. I never have to see it again. Even if I go back to exactly where we fought, it's going to be someplace completely different. The government was literally burying the shittiest chapter of his life for good, and he was entirely for that.
Mark was frowning again. "So is RLTT going to take on a second candidate? Have they done that before?" He stood up straighter, almost at attention. "Wait, they're not moving on from the princess' candidacy, are they?"
Ooh, shit. RLTT had… at least seven massive projects running under Princess Relena Darlian-Peacecraft, and however suspicious Cat and Odin were of RLTT, all of Rubato was on board with the Insurgence's endgame. However politics fell out in the meantime, the princess was to be supported as the primary crux in power to check the East in the long-term. He was personally of the opinion that she might not even need their help, but in real life? You stacked the deck as high as you could, because you couldn't know enough to actually plan for everything.
Jovi laughed boisterously, and if he hadn't had a lid on his cup, he probably would have lost a little coffee too. "No! No, that would be in every damn media outlet within the hour, not starting to percolate into the news via social media twelve hours after a video got posted. Like I said, Noventa almost looked like she wanted to walk out of her interview over it, but when the reporter pressed? She said Relena had offered support for the Pacific Reclamation, with additional support from a third party."
"Third party?"
Jovi snorted. "Come on, Blue, what third party could they be talking about but RLTT? As it stands, I think the way she didn't directly say it is the only reason it didn't make major headlines last night."
"…Point." He took another sip of his coffee, then looked back to the clock. "So we've got a little more than two hours before I need to step onto that press conference stage. Can we go over the points from the top?"
December 17th 198 – Tuesday – Târgu Mures, Romania
"Not bad," Lucrezia decided as they slid back into the car.
"Not good," Odin countered tonelessly. "And I'm following a script. That makes it worse."
It actually hadn't been that bad, and if he'd come across as a little overly formal, the management staff of this branch of Knightly had probably expected far worse. "You weren't awkward, and you looked and sounded like you've been doing this for a couple of years instead of a couple days," she reassured him. "And they don't know there's a script."
He made a noncommittal noise. "Do you think they'll listen?"
She smiled. "Half that room was working out their packing lists or putting their affairs into order before we even walked out. Cat's terms are more than generous, and the incentives are well thought out. You did fine."
To seed their own people through Interstellar Knightly and any of the other companies Rubato had brought in as a resource, they first had to make room – and with all the other businesses Quatre was crafting seemingly out of thin air, the process was far more peaceable than usually seen in this kind of scenario. Managers and others in critical positions were getting offers in high positions in Rubato's educational programs, or in Neut, Da Capo, WendSyn… Legitimate offers because new companies would need experienced staff that could rise to the occasion on promising new ventures. Not to mention the fact that all of the Da Capo and parts of the WendSyn facilities were entirely space-based, which presented massive new opportunities for people that they couldn't get anywhere else – escaping the planet for colony life had become something of a dream since the Fall, even when the circumstances really weren't all that luxurious. Even now, despite the fighting in space, she had seen how sparks lit up in people's eyes at the idea.
How things change. Four years ago, the earthborn opinion of the colonies had largely been that of third-world countries – even according to those actually living in third world countries.
She smiled at him. "Though I am starting to wonder just what Cat blackmailed you with to stick you with this job, Mr. Acquisitions and Quality Control Executive."
He chuffed out a short breath. "He didn't and I'm not, but the work is necessary. If I'm never the person creating my own paper trail, we'll run into a different set of problems." He shrugged. "It's only a few days and it lined up decently with your itinerary, so I said I'd take care of it." Shrugging, he started the engine. "It's only a few meetings – Sid and Ensio are handling the work of it, at least for now." He tossed her a wryly amused smirk. "But officially, it's Quality Assurance Director."
She had no idea what the difference between quality control and assurance was, or if it was just bullshit business nomenclature, but that wasn't the point that caught her attention out of all that.
Huh. "You're going to keep up a stable identity?" It sounded like a lot of work for something he'd frankly never shown much sign of caring about.
Odin made a noncommittal noise as he shifted into gear. "Not much choice." Then he blinked, and the glance he sent her way was the closest she'd ever seen him to startled. "Did I… not…?" He closed his eyes, looking annoyed, and didn't take his foot off the break. "Rashid was hurt, and then… I forgot."
She bit back a smile. "Oh?"
Making another face, he looked back over his shoulder and started to back out of their parking space. "I finally looked up my fingerprints in October. I have to maintain the identity on some level now, or it'll be more trouble than I want to deal with. Cat's been helping. Audi too." He rolled his eyes. "She thinks it's fun."
Lucrezia blinked a few times as she considered that… and considered him. He'd mentioned being curious about his real name before, and he'd been off about the subject of his birthday… but evidently learning the details hadn't exactly wowed him. If anything, he seemed annoyed.
Hmm. "Not really what you were hoping for?" she guessed, trying to gauge him.
"Hn." He focused more than he really needed to on pulling out into traffic, and she let him gather his thoughts. "I found more questions than answers," he decided after a long moment. "I haven't decided what I want to do yet."
"That's fine," she reassured him. "You don't have to do anything about it if you don't want to. It's your life."
The look he sent her way was calmly content and pleased in the way he only ever seemed to direct at her. "I don't like that option either. I'll figure it out."
She laughed, remembering the last time he'd said that… and the first. Mmm. "You always do." His smirk showed he knew exactly where her mind had gone… and she decided to tweak his nose a little. "You're still not fifteen, right?"
He snorted, but winced too, which… Okay, this really is bothering him. "I'm nineteen." Shaking his head, he added, "And Odin is my middle name, but I don't care, I'm using it anyway. The rest…" He shrugged. "I'll figure out later."
Hmm. "Sounds good to me," she decided. "A lot of people go by their middle name anyway."
He relaxed a little. "Yeah, that's what Cat said. And when it comes to paperwork, it's almost an advantage, because both names are legal. So that's something."
"I hadn't thought of that."
When he didn't say anything more on the topic, she supposed that was it… which was fine, if a little concerning. Still, she knew him well enough to know he'd talk to her about it when he was ready; there wasn't any rush.
It also didn't matter. Even if they got as far as marriage before he sorted his thoughts on the matter, he could just take her name.
All the same… She had flipped through his passport when they were plotting how to get Rashid back to Blue Nile in November, and she remembered the name. She'd assumed it was just another alias, but if he'd done this back in October… Odin Burton. Well, Something Odin Burton, apparently, but that was fine. And with only three years between them she didn't think Cassie would tease her that she'd inherited the family tendency for cradle-robbing, so she'd take that as a win.
I'll ask him about his birthday when he's less touchy about it, she decided. It still felt weird to not know, but she already knew everything about her lover that actually mattered.
Hmm. Might as well have some fun with this. "So if we're trying to make a decent paper trail… what are you into?"
The look he tossed her was altogether bemused. "What?"
"The easiest way to do this is to spend money, and regular people have hobbies, Odin," she teased. "And while I respect yours, we don't want to leave one showing arms collection, hacking, and parkour, as that rather defeats the point."
He smirked, eyes back on the road. "Point."
"Though I bet we could book some time in one of those trampoline gyms somewhere," she mused. "It could be fun – and Audi would love it. It might help Yasa too, for the next time he goes to space."
Odin tipped his head considering. "If you think it's useful for that, Cat might want to have half of Rubato in one."
"It's good in the early stages for zero-G training, but only to a point," she admitted. "I assume you've been using plastic when we get coffee? And gas?"
"Aa."
"Hmm." She gave him a sideways sort of glance, feeling mischievous. "I do know one thing you're into."
"Mm?"
"Me."
That got him to grin. "Aa."
"So tonight's a wash with the need to reinstate Hilde's contacts in Timisoara, but we could go out tomorrow – somewhere fancy." She grinned. "Girlfriends can get expensive, you know."
He snorted, glancing her way again. "You want to be tied to this? Seems like an unnecessary security risk."
"Mm, only if we link an identity of mine to it," she dismissed. "Most things wouldn't even require ID on my part – your mystery date could be anyone." Arching her brows high, she added, "Anyone's. We could make a real stud out of you, a different girl in each town just waiting for you to call. That might even explain some of the more nonsensical travel you might need to do – that blonde over in Budapest has an ass like you wouldn't even believe, am I right?"
His glance this time was a little more incredulous. "Please tell me you're joking."
"I don't know, it might be fun to make up some extravagant sexual escapades," she decided. "We could even go ourselves – add some authenticity."
He frowned, still casting her glances that showed he was trying to decide how serious she was. Then, "What's in Budapest?"
"I have no idea, but now I kinda want to find out," she admitted. "It was just a name." She considered. "I know of a few good places for hot springs in the mountains, but that doesn't fit our timeline. Another time though, that might be nice. It could be nice to go out for drinks again, once we're close enough to backup that it wouldn't matter if we're a little off. Somewhere with dancing."
"Dancing?"
"I love to dance. I left ballet before auditioning for OZ, but I couldn't give up the rest. Swing is my favorite, then any kind of ballroom, but clubs are fun in a different way." She eyes him speculatively. "I know you can waltz, but tell me Odin… can you tango?"
"…I'll figure it out."
Lucrezia couldn't do anything but laugh. Of that, she had no doubts.
oOo
oOo
Amsterdam, Netherlands – New Renew
He… couldn't make up his mind. Somehow, despite the obvious issues and concerns, that… that was probably the worst part. He couldn't figure out if he was upset, or excited, or even just… anticipatory? Worried, maybe, but at the same time…
God, but when had he started to trust that Treize would do right by literally anyone, let alone the people Duo cared about?
What the actual fuck?
Duo glowered up at the ceiling of the garage, where he could faintly hear his father-in-law going over the boys' afternoon lesson – William had taken over a few of the GED basics that G had never bothered covering, on his better days. The man had an alarmingly easy trust in Khushrenada that his children thankfully had not picked up… but the way his privacy had been handled in the wake of Will outing him was reassuring. The OZ motherfucker had been very fair when it came to any more personal interactions despite how he'd been a freaking nightmare during the war, even according to Heero – according to Heero after New Edwards, even – but…
Khushrenada had risen to power over the bodies of all those he had betrayed and outmaneuvered. Maybe he'd been a more moderate commander than his predecessor – it was hard to eclipse the monstrous shadow Catalonia had cast for decades before kicking the bucket – but Operation Daybreak alone still highlighted just how two-faced the man could be.
Duo wasn't a liar. He got by where he needed to on that front, and not much more. He wasn't much good at picking out lies in other people either, if he was being honest. Body language, sure, that was easy, but anyone who learned to cover that? He had a hard time spotting them. It was a big part of what had caught his interest about Heero in the first place, even as it freaked him out – so much of the automatic motions people made with every thought were just missing in Heero. Even now, it was more like he'd been learning how to mimic what he wanted to show to add them back in, not natural motion, and it made the hairs raise on the back of his neck even as it made him want to lean in closer.
Heero, though, he had a good enough handle on to figure out. And Heero meant well, generally, even if he was weird as fuck. Treize… that guy knew how to lie every way there was to lie, knew how to play literally anyone the same way Quatre did his violin… and even knowing that, it was hard to not fall into the trap of trusting him.
He couldn't even say that it was okay because Treize took care of his own. It was probably true, saying that, but the real issue was that only Treize knew exactly who qualified as his own, and pretending you knew otherwise was just… stupid.
He looked back down at the image on Amos's school tablet again, and another well of emotion sprung up, still just as impossible to figure out. The face was styled differently than anything he'd ever seen or flown, but was still distinctly a face, and had more of a gundam's hallmarks than Tallgeese had bothered with. More of a circlet than what he'd always teased G were antennae, which meshed with Khushrenada's… style? He'd say arrogance, but come on, it was a gundam – anyone who could fly one without getting themselves dead earned themselves a bit of that, and Treize had done a hell of a lot more than skate by when he piloted.
Howard had confirmed what others had implied, that this space campaign was Treize's gambit, with the added note that he was pretty sure that at least a handful of Cat's sisters were in on it. Sisters that Quatre was… apparently not willing to talk to, despite how he'd been happy enough to mutter about his sisters' support after they ran into each other again near the end? He really didn't get it, but Howard had just said it was complicated, and Quatre wasn't talking, so… Well, it wasn't like he knew that much about homegrown families. They seemed to have totally different rules than what he'd figured out, often as not.
Whatever, he didn't know any of Quatre's sisters, they'd avoided him as soon as he'd found the guy again after the showdown in Sanc, so he'd just follow his friend's lead on that. When there were twenty-nine of them, maybe it was inevitable that you'd come to odds and refuse to talk to each other sometimes – he wouldn't really know, and his impressions of their dad weren't so hot, so…
Sure. Complicated.
Considering how good Cat had been at building suits, maybe they'd helped Treize with this beauty? Because however limited, the footage of the new suit entering the battles in space was gorgeous. The sleek, almost sinuous lines of it reminded him a little of Epyon, but despite clearly being designed for a focus on infighting, it was more balanced, the way Tallgeese and Wing had been. Smaller, he thought, than any gundam that had come before, though it was hard to be sure with the poor vid quality… I bet that does fantastic things for maneuvering. Watching it move made his fingers itch for the controls.
He didn't want to fight again, damn it, but… He could appreciate without wanting, couldn't he?
It had floored him, to see a gundam again. He'd called Heero to demand what the fuck without really thinking about it, then been relieved when it went to voicemail because he didn't want to deal with his friend's smug bullshit right now anyway. Heero was too much of an 'all or nothing' kind of guy to get that in between grounds were a perfectly legit place to stand. Normally that was something he appreciated about Heero, but lately he could be such an ass about it.
And with what he knew already, it hadn't too hard to fill in most of the blanks once he stopped to actually think. He still wanted details, but even if Heero wouldn't give him crap about it, the guy probably didn't know much, and Quatre was avoiding his sisters. Will was out of the game after his injury, not that that would've been a decent way to learn anything in the first place…
But there was still at least one person who might know something.
"Hey, stranger," Howard greeted easily on the second ring.
Duo smiled, leaning one shoulder up against the wall. "Hey back," he answered, feeling something deep in his gut start to unwind. The old man had always had something about him that just… Yeah. He hadn't really had words for it before Renee was born, but he'd missed Howard, and these days? It was pretty clear cut. Somehow, somewhere along the way, the man had become family. Not a dad, exactly, or even the pseudo-parent thing he had going with Will, and it wasn't like with Luc or Val or the other guys… but something. Maybe the eccentric uncle you can always count on? He wasn't sure if that was a real thing or just something that showed up in the media so much you kinda figured it had to be… But who cared about titles anyway? "What's up?"
"Eh, playing with blueprints. Why, your ears been burning?"
He ignored the sweet pain that sparked in his chest, wanting again but knowing better… and he'd already agreed, anyway. It wasn't like he'd changed his mind. "Workin' on my old buddy, huh?" he asked, closing his eyes and leaning back against the wall. Besides, thinking of Hilde again, the way she'd been on her last run through town, all lean muscle and spark? It was a pretty good match for his gundam. She'd grown up a lot since Libra, and he hadn't asked direct, but everyone had as good as said she was already flying Heavyarms.
If someone else was ever going to fly Deathscythe, it ought to be Hilde. And bringing the suit back from the grave… He could admit that he wanted that in a deep, gut check way he'd never try to deny. Even if it was only going to sit in a hangar, he couldn't not want that, especially with how… He wanted to see his gundam again, even if it wasn't really the same. Even though he never wanted to fight again, he wanted to see him again, because…
It sounded nuts, but the last time he'd seen him, he'd barely been more than scrap – he just… wanted to see him whole again, even if he wasn't his anymore. Even if it was only on a crappy tablet screen. Howard would at least let him see a full mock-up instead of having to catch glimpses from battle footage, after all.
"You bet," the old man returned cheerfully. "I've been real good these past few years, not playing with toys that ain't mine. Now that the leash is off, though? I've got ideas, kid."
He turned so his back was wholly against the wall and relaxed a little more and closing his eyes. "Going to make him fully custom, huh?" He liked that idea a little less… But again, it wasn't going to be his, so his opinion didn't much matter.
"Eh, yes and no," Howard hedged. "Your old boy's gettin' all the upgrades I can swing, but he's a piece of art – no need to fix what ain't broken. He's the primary source for a new suit I'm drawing up from scratch, though, so I get to pour over all the nitty gritty over and over again. Chalkydri is going to be a real badass, I tell ya."
Duo frowned, trying to place the name. He didn't exactly recognize it, but it sounded familiar, like he should… "That's… an angel?"
"Well now." Howard's tone was smug. "I think you're the first person I've talked to that didn't have to do a web search."
"I was half guessing," he admitted, opening his eyes back up and looking at the ceiling, trying to remember. "I wanna say it's from something apocryphal, though." He'd liked those books the best, when he was a kid. At least half just because it was so easy to tweak Sister Helen's nose about what was in them, but they'd been interesting too. An angel, so Old Testament, probably… But the only other thing he really remembered was that it had wings? But really, all the angels described had frankly weird numbers of wings…
"Damn kid, that's pretty good," Howard praised. "Associated with the dawn and phoenixes."
He snorted. "Because phoenixes are a Christian thing, suddenly?"
"Hey, I didn't write it," the old man protested. "I'm just rollin' with it. They're s'posed to be the carriers of the sun's heat, and I can think of a few ways to make that just as sinister as it is awesome."
He supposed he could get behind that idea easily enough. Still… "How many sets of wings does it have?" he asked teasingly.
Howard snorted. "About five too many. They're actually really crazy looking, got a chimera sort of theme running, and hell if I'm bothering with all that! But they're supposed to be reflective like a prism too, and that I can work with."
He snickered. "You're going to paint rainbows on it?" He knew better, but it was a funny idea.
"Psh. Half your stealth tech is light reflection, you know? And white reflects the spectrum. Lu's already partial to white on a suit, and I'm sure I can make it look good."
His breath caught at that. Lu? There had only ever been two white suits he could think of, and no woman had ever flown Tallgeese, which meant… "You're working with Noin?"
It came out more breathy than he'd meant it to, but with all the pieces slotting together… Oh that was perfect. Noin had been able to keep up with them while flying her Taurus, and if she'd given up on Zechs completely… Shit, she has to be the one who's been teaching Hil since the Fall! Her and Sally Po working together behind the scenes… It was no wonder the Insurgence had a rep for getting shit done.
Howard up and laughed at him. "Shit, kid, you really didn't know? With how snitty Odin was being about you saying he couldn't tell even her about you, I figured you'd at least gotten the basics."
The fuck? "Odin," he deadpanned. "Heero. Snitty."
His friend only laughed more. "Well, sullen as hell, at any rate. You know him, though. If he doesn't care for something, he just finds a way to go around or right on through in spite of the odds. She's smart enough to realize that either he or I must've made contact with you, but polite enough to not pry. She never dragged Hilde over the coals on her bullshit explanation about who saved her ass in Amsterdam either, so… You know, Lu can be pretty hard to read sometimes."
Duo groaned, really thinking about that. "Shit… I thought I saw her, during the riot last year."
"She wasn't looking for you," Howard dismissed. "I was there that day too. We had a meet set up a good six weeks before that shit went down."
Weird, but not that weird, probably. A lot of people had come in from out of town for Relena's speech that went south, and it would've been easy to hide in the crowd. Though… "Maybe it wasn't her," he amended. He'd been just about out of his mind at the time, and he'd made a point of not looking too closely. "Not unless you guys went to the hospital."
"Well shit, you probably did see her," Howard mused. "A mutual friend of ours got hurt in that clusterfuck, and she went to check on him. Said she got stuck in the lobby for almost three hours before he got out of surgery with a green light."
Great. Not exactly the kind of near miss he really wanted to think about, but at least it was Noin, and it was a miss instead of a hit, so whatever. "How'd you know your friend got hurt, anyway?"
"It was on live TV, kid, everyone saw. The princess just about had a meltdown until people started helping her pull him out from under the stage light crushing him."
Duo's stomach sank. He hadn't given a damn at the time, but that was footage that was reposted over and over for the rest of the winter, even if Katrien hadn't been one of the people saving the colonel. Shit. "The bodyguard?" he demanded. "You and Noin know the spooky shit bodyguard?"
Howard freaking cackled. "Left an impression on you, huh?"
"Enough that I decided he wasn't worth playing with," Duo agreed, dragging a hand down his face. He reminded me too much of the darker parts of me.
"Aw, no, he's good people," the old man insisted. "Lu's dad half raised him, and you like her well enough. And besides, he helped me build Peacemillion. He played mole for us on Libra – a few of the attacks we sent you boys out to handle that December, we wouldn't have heard about in time to get you loaded up before we got swamped if he didn't get a private line out to Lu."
…Well, shit. "So what about Hilde getting us intel?" he demanded. She'd almost died getting that out to them… He wasn't sure he could stomach the idea that it had all been pointless.
"Different departments, under a paranoid as hell crew," Howard countered. "Jake's lucky he could get a secure audio line for a couple minutes here or there, and Hil brought us damn near a petabyte of data." He snorted. "Not that they had any idea the other was there until after the fact. You can't coordinate if you don't know who the other spy is. Maybe if they'd worked together she could have gotten out cleaner." Groaning, he admitted, "Though… probably not. Digital espionage is one thing, especially since Jake's probably the best hacker I've ever met, aside from Odin. Physical egress… That's something else entirely."
Duo grimaced, but couldn't really disagree. "Yeah, okay." It wasn't like any of them had known what Hilde was up to until she'd been calling for help either. Spying was dangerous, but doing it without any back-up or structure was downright suicidal, and he'd told her as much at the time. Blowing out a long breath, he tried shifting the new knowledge into his worldview… and had to shake his head again. "He's a lot more than just a hacker," he argued. The way his unit had instantly responded to body language that day in Heidelberg… He'd never seen coordination so smooth, not to mention the other rumors he'd heard about Miller.
"He is," Howard agreed. "A real jack of all trades, and a Specials deserter to boot. A damn good kid all around, honestly. It was a relief when we saw he'd taken up with the princess – she's in good hands."
Duo frowned. "How the hell do you get away with deserting the Specials?" OZ had… opinions on that kind of thing.
Howard snickered. "Know just who to blackmail, apparently. And be enough of a 'spooky shit' to make them think twice about coming after you anyway."
…Yeah, okay, that lined up well enough. "Guy gives me the creeps," he groused, for all that he was willing to concede the point.
"You said the same thing about Odin. You'll get over it eventually."
He groaned, really not wanting to acknowledge that. So long as he stayed out, it really wasn't a problem he had to deal with. "Noin in a gundam, though," he mused. "That's going to be sweet."
"It already is, kid; she only lets Hilde fly when she's too busy to bother. But I can only mod Heavyarms so much – both of them flying gundams that actually suit their talents? It's gonna be damned beautiful."
He let out a little laugh at that. "Yeah… yeah it will." Shaking his head a little, he admitted. "I'm glad she's finally over Zechs." With how she'd refused to fight at Libra… It was good to hear she was actually on her game again.
"Over and under," Howard agreed cheerfully.
Duo frowned. "Under?"
The old man started cackling again. "Damn, really? They're not exactly subtle."
"What?" he demanded, bewildered.
"Stay innocent, Duo." He was still snickering. "Somebody's got to."
"I have no idea what you're trying to get at," he groused.
"Which is why I'm laughin'," Howard assured him happily. "I gotta run though, kid. I'll try givin' you a call sometime over the next few days."
Duo rolled his eyes. "Alright, fine. Catch you later, Howard."
"Take care of yourself."
Disconnecting the line, he stared down at the screen for a moment, thinking… Then groaned. All that, and I didn't even ask about the space campaigns. God damn it.
oOo
oOo
December 19th 198 – Thursday – Munich, Germany – Sarracenia
"It's a lovely counterpoint," Delilah decided. "They've been open enough about their Cambyses members and the benefits to the survivors to make it a point, but their attention to detail is so subtle under the rhetoric that they're successfully normalizing the idea of the Cambyses survivors to the general populace faster than I would have thought possible."
"A lot of that is the scope of their projects," Relena pointed out as she palmed open the door to her office. "It becomes grossly inclusive, instead of targeted."
"But still in a steady 'I'm going to stare at you until you give up and look away first because we both know you're wrong' way," the older woman countered.
"Agreed," Jake added, shifting his weight as he turned away from one of the windows, tucking his phone into a pocket. "It's crafted well – must have taken a lot of planning, and their PR guy, this Luke Levenstein, really knows his trade."
"Oh!" Mai could see the French woman's eyes practically sparkle with both recognition and happiness as she saw the colonel, so she supposed that was one question answered. "Yes, it's almost artful, despite the casual tone – I'm surprised I haven't seen his name before, but he's American, so it isn't as though we can ask for his pre-Fall references." She pursed her lips, eyes narrowing as she focused on Jake, clearly thinking. After a moment she guessed, "It was… Raoul?"
He gave her an amused look. "Jake, actually."
Her look was disbelieving, bordering on bewildered. "No it wasn't."
Jake laughed a little, shoving his hands in his pockets as he walked closer, body language entirely casual and friendly. "Since the day I was born," he confirmed. "My mom liked Jake but my dad wanted it fully as Jacob, because he got crap growing up for just being 'Jack' without it coming from a 'real' name – but it's just Jake, unless I'm doing paperwork."
Mai resisted the urge to laugh herself as Delilah continued eying him dubiously. If she wasn't literally seeing it now, she wouldn't have thought it was possible to come across as so purely wholesome and 'aw shucks' while dressed in such obviously expensive clothing. It probably wouldn't have worked if he hadn't rolled the sleeves up to the elbow and left his shoulder rig hanging off a chair with his suit coat, but seriously, this man.
"How are your ladies?" he asked as he came closer, reaching out to take her hands in his.
The confusion slid off Delilah as she smiled brilliantly, taking both his hands in hers and leaning forward into an easy la bise that Jake returned. "Lovely as ever. Iliana turns eight in just ten more days, and Helena…" She let out a downright blissful sigh as she let go. "My life is perfect. How have you been?"
The smile he offered her was his truly genuine, bright one as he stepped back and held out an arm so Relena could finish sidling up to him. Tucking her against his side, he admitted, "My life is perfect."
Delilah's eyes lit up again, flicking between the pleased expression on both Relena and his faces. "Ooh. Very good – you should have seen her face when she walked in on all those flowers." Offering him a sly smile, she added, "My Helena is fond of grand gestures too."
Relena started laughing. "That was so ridiculous!"
"And you appreciated it!" Delilah protested. "Besides, the man has good taste, both in women and flowers, it seems."
Relena hummed, looking pointedly around the atrium turned office. "And architecture."
"Ah, so you are the assistant!"
"Guilty as charged." He shrugged a little. "Well, I quit, for obvious reasons, but yes."
"Mm, and probably best to let that status settle a bit before you go public with it, considering her profile," Delilah concluded. "Helena insists she has no regrets, but she said that us not waiting certainly did have a lasting effect on her career." Her follow-up gesture of a shrugged shoulder and upraised palm was so smoothly elegant that the sheer contrast with her following words made Mai snort. "But fuck 'em, it's nobody's business who you decide to fuck."
Across the room, Cassidy barked out a startled laugh, even as Relena and Jake both blushed hard, shutting their eyes and leaning deeper into each other in as smooth a motion of solidarity as Mai had ever seen. "Hear, hear," she agreed.
Lin sighed, coming in from the bathroom. "Not that I disagree, but of course that's the line you support."
"Duh." Anyone who knew her at all knew her proclivities, and 'seriously' was not her speed. Not that she was against serious in a general sort of way, but it had yet to catch her attention, and at this point she figured it probably never would. The other woman's statement worked across the board beautifully, in any case.
"Personal lives aside," Relena announced pointedly, pulling away from Jake enough to start leading everyone towards her couches, "we do have a few professional points to cover before gossip eats away the time."
"Mm, I suppose – though really, we covered the essentials just on the walk up," Delilah argued as she followed, settling in a seat across from the couple. "At this stage, I'm inclined to let Rubato's campaign take the lead on Cambyses integration and tweak our own efforts to complement them and cover points they miss or gloss over – barring a major faux pas on their part, of course. As you said, their increased scope is giving them a freer hand than we could do without being so overt as to feel disingenuous. As the situation evolves we ought to touch base more frequently, but they effectively took the lions share of work out of our hands."
"I suppose that's true enough," Relena agreed, though she looked thoughtful – and for so many reasons really. All the reasons. "Revenant Rubato is a topic in and of itself, but my information on the organization is limited to the same public venues as everyone else." She made a face that was honestly too cute for Mai to feel comfortable calling it a grimace. "Well, almost as limited, if you want to be technical, but that avenue is so fraught that it's hardly helpful."
Delilah pursed her lips. "Oh?"
Jake's face did something complicated, a pile of micro expressions there and gone again that made for a pretty decent answer alone. "I don't know if you remember, but I mentioned when we were working on the History for Tomorrow Database that I had a personal interest in the project's success?"
"Hmm." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "A…. little brother?" Frowning, she added, "Or cousin? Under ten, I want to say."
"Brother, and lost a couple weeks after he turned nine," Jake confirmed. "Though that was in August 188, so by the time we were talking about it he was past the cutoff for the best odds."
She grimaced, nodding. "I do remember that conversation."
"Well, he looked up his fingerprints through HTD seven weeks ago. And he's a founding member of Revenant Rubato."
Delilah's smile was impressed. "Wow. That does sound complicated… But congratulations!" She shook her head. "To go so long without any real hope…" The smile shifted into sheer glow. "I love it. Sometimes, it seems like just a little bit of effort makes the world so much smaller, doesn't it?"
Delilah was seriously, just… a ball of sunshine that Mai wanted to keep in her pocket. She was gorgeous, and sweet, and so damn happy even when she was being sassy and dangerous that it really was something else. Hanging out with her was almost like visiting an art gallery – she just wanted to bask in the woman's presence.
"It feels like something of a miracle," Jake agreed. "But since I haven't seen him since he turned five…" He gave an uncomfortable shrug. "The custody battle that saw us split between our father and the uncle that had raised us was traumatic. I was told he didn't remember the trial or anything before it, so… It's fantastic news, but as Relena said, very fraught."
Her look was sympathetic. "Has he refused calls and emails?"
"I… think it's probably best to leave it up to him," Jake denied.
She raised a brow at him, though her smile was still kind. "A twenty-year-old man who to the best of your knowledge effectively raised himself and has no memory of you as family. I also remember that we talked about arranging one of the care packages for him in terms of laying out all the details, so I assume he has something to go off of, but if the custody battle was as bad as you say? Why should he be the one to reach out? Just because he looked up his fingerprints doesn't mean he was ready to digest both the story of his family and all its consequences."
Jake shifted his weight, taking a deep breath as Delilah watched him patiently, then finally admitted, "It's more complicated than I'm actually saying, but when it comes down to it? I'm not sure I have the right."
"Hmm." She shrugged elegantly. "I understand, and can even relate, but… For all that everyone throws that word around so much when it comes to relationships, family has very little to do with rights. Do as you like, but in my experience, family is about trust, not who has what right. No one does everything perfectly, and if it was about rights given or revoked, none of us would have a family after infancy. And if you're in a situation where you know so little that trust isn't possible, then the true factor in what binds a family together is faith. And when there's nothing else to start from, then someone has to make a leap."
Damn. It's almost like she does this for a living, Mai thought to herself wryly, even as she found herself meeting Lin's eyes, finding the mirror of confusion – confusion quickly bordering on suspicion – in his eyes that she was feeling. Delilah Osbourne née Criel had been orphaned in 180 in a town near Paris that Mai had forgotten the name of – an only child. A sour relationship that was close as kin, maybe? She remembered something in the woman's backstory about a couple of teenage girls living practically on top of each other in a tiny apartment for years. That was the kind of situation the bred ridiculous drama and found family both.
Flicking her gaze back to Jake, she waited to see him nod – he knew more of the woman's history, had done extensive research on her before choosing her as an RLTT candidate in 190 – but instead found him frowning. "You can relate?"
"My father could be a real piece of work," she admitted easily. "Among other things, he disowned me when I came out of the closet. My mother was convinced he'd get over it, but then she died less than a year later and, well…" She shrugged again, her smile more tired now. "As you said, family can get complicated."
More generalized, then, Mai decided.
Jake's eyes, however, narrowed. "I thought your father died first."
Delilah's smile did a slow, sly shift into something that spiked Mailin's adrenaline. Dangerous. Shit. "That's an odd detail to remember," she pointed out, tone plaintiff.
"I have a good memory," Jake said by way of agreement, body still relaxed but eyes sharp. Relena was watching him and Delilah both with a cautious gaze now, though she didn't shift away from Jake to offer him easier range of motion, so Mai decided to take that as a good sign.
"Well, he did say I was dead to him so long as I wanted to play foolish games instead of growing up," Delilah mused, leaning back and resting her elbows on the back of her couch, lounging as elegantly as a jungle cat but also leaving her body language entirely open, hands spread. "I think that goes both ways, personally. I was an orphan as soon as my mother died."
"So… your father is alive?" Mai asked cautiously.
"No," the older woman denied, tone dismissive. "He sorted that one out himself in more recent years, which was a shame, but better late than never."
Damn. That was a whole shitload of bottled angst that Mai hadn't been expecting… and yet, it was still well controlled? Very 'old vintage, hated the bastard but I got enough therapy to not care one way or the other when he kicked the bucket,' which she thought she could respect. It was a hell of a sharp contrast to her life's work, but…
…Why is Relena smiling? That dark sort of humor wasn't typically up the princess' alley, and in any case they'd still caught their friend in a major lie about her backstory. Not that it was a truly humorous smile – it was more of an appreciative one, the sort she'd seen Relena give when learning about something she found clever.
Jake's body was slightly more tense but still within an acceptable range, and all his focus remained on Delilah. "I still don't see how you relate."
She sighed. "The homophobia was frankly the least of Zayeed's sins – I actually agreed with Mama, that he would have gotten over it if everything hadn't gone to shit. He'd forgiven Tricia for far worse, after all. But you see, he purposefully broke us, for no reason at all. Three of my sisters vanished outright and haven't spoken to any of the rest of us since. I haven't seen my baby brother since he was four days old. Quatre will be nineteen in March, and he's never even met a third of his sisters, let alone our families."
Aaaand Relena's smile made sense now. "You never came here because you were curious to meet another RLTT candidate," Mai realized.
Delilah scoffed. "Of course I did – I was very curious, thank you, and had wondered if our work might benefit each other, particularly as the Cambyses situation evolved. That was why my sister Theratrice asked me if I'd be interested in getting a character reference for the lovely Minister of Foreign Affairs." She side-eyed Relena, smiling wolfishly. "I'm entirely capable of multi-tasking, I assure you."
"I'm sure," Relena agreed, smile growing warmer. "For the sake of formality, however, I need you to confirm the details."
"Of course." Delilah straightened back up and spread her hands. "Once we decided to work with you, Tricia asked me to serve as the primary point of contact, much like Belle is for our friend Treize – she's the one who confirmed that this conversation would be safe to have unannounced, so long as it took place in this room. As we have already fostered both a working and social relationship, increased contact shouldn't raise any red flags." She smiled brightly. "I have enjoyed our friendship thus far, for the record, and would love to introduce you to my more immediate family. The rest of my siblings may or may not be interested in the same, either for business or purely social reasons, but I don't speak for any of those not associating with the Soleil Coalition." She pursed her lips. "If at all possible I would like an update on my sisters Atia and Sarali Winner, but we are well aware that their continued presence within the current government is critical in maintaining a regency of the Winner Corporation until Quatre can legally take the reins."
The tactful thing to do would have been to keep her peace… but at the same time, Mai felt like she had spent enough time with the other woman that she could ask. "So you do think of them all as sisters, then?"
Delilah rolled her eyes. "Belle and Heather were eight when our mother passed, and despite Colait refusing to ever have a conversation with our father again after the split, all three of the girls she took as her own maintained a decent relationship with him." She grimaced. "Part of that was that Colait had a frankly terrifying 'whoops' pregnancy the next year, and Iria got this idea in her head that if Colait died and the three of them could spout Zayeed's ideology and follow his rules perfectly, he'd let them back into his household with Quatre. Then Iria refused to let go of the idea after Dayton came safely." She scoffed. "It says something that despite his young aunts all speaking regularly with the man, Dayton refused to ever meet his grandfather. That boy's always been a smart one."
Shaking her head, she continued with "The young ones have more degrees of separation, but Colait's brood are by far the most isolationist – well, out of the sisters that still acknowledge that we're family at all, anyway. It's best to approach us on a case by case basis – after all, there are thirty-one years between my eldest sister and our baby brother. Even without the young ones being raised apart, that makes for incredibly varied experiences."
"That is… a little strange to think about," Relena decided, frowning. "Over thirty years… All for a boy?"
Delilah grimaced. "It's a legal issue, from the original charter that allowed the Corporation to begin building L4 in the first place. Please understand that my family did everything possible to get around it, but… it's complicated. My parents were married at fourteen to merge the Winner and Claflinn lines and prevent the Carskadon family from gaining enough shares in the company to either deadlock the rest of the board or worse, take it over outright. They'd known a betrothal was on the table for years, but the marriage itself was a platonic rush job because… well, they nearly lost it.
"Theoretically, then, the worst should have been over. They were young, but Mama always said that she'd married her best friend. Together, the new Winner line gained a controlling interest in the Corporation and they had all the time in the world for love and children. Both the Winners and Claflinns had some of the worst spaceborn fertility problems you can get without dying out entirely, but the artificial wombs had proven themselves by then, so for stability's sake, they set off the first of those right after the wedding. They had all the help they needed despite being young parents, and the oldest set describe their childhood as idyllic. Tricia was about a year old when they started the pregnancy for Colait, and after that, they started a child for each year…" Delilah shook her head a little, her smile soft. "Mama said that for all his fumbling, that Zayeed was a good father, at the beginning. I think if they'd been able to be normal, or if they'd had the boy early on, maybe he would have stayed that way. She says she knew she loved him just for him by the time Makenna was born."
She closed her eyes, smile sad. "She said she was excited the first time they got a confirmation that they had a boy on the way. She'd had four girls, after all, and she was looking forward to suspenders and fedoras instead of frills and lace. She loved being a parent, my Mama, and her dream had always been to have a dozen children, ever since she was little. She had the heart for it. But he didn't make it past three months gestation. Nothing came back on the genetic testing, no flags on the functioning of the womb… just bad luck. They grieved, and mom didn't want to try again for a while… but eventually they did. That boy didn't even make it to six weeks, though there was a genetic abnormality. The next try after that was Courtney, and I think they were both just so relieved that they hadn't lost her that it didn't occur to them to worry. But then it just… kept happening."
She shook her head again. "I was my parents' thirteenth live birth. By the time I was five, I had three little sisters, and they were starting a new pregnancy every three to six months. Mama practically lived in the womb room, had it expanded into a massive playroom nursery and classroom because she was afraid… All the babies that were lost, boys and girls alike, the ones without any abnormalities or reason to pass died when she was away. There was one boy who made it to twenty-two weeks, and we had all just started to breathe easy before his heart stopped. Mama just bawled for days, because it had happened when she had fallen asleep a few feet away, and she'd been so exhausted from her self-imposed vigil that she didn't wake up for the first alarms. She… she acted like she thought it was her fault, like if she hadn't had to sleep, he would've held on another week and been viable."
"That sounds… horrible," Relena admitted.
Delilah sighed. "It's why I decided I was never going to have one of my own. I spent my childhood watching her grieve over and over again, and watching my father grow more and more distant as… well, as panic started to set in. Supposedly our bloodline is clear now and plenty of my sisters have had healthy pregnancies and children, but to me that just says there's a defect in our genetics that just hasn't been sussed out yet. I commend the bravery that has given me nieces and nephews, but I can't live through what I saw my mother experience."
"Uh… sorry if this comes across wrong," Lin interrupted as he moved closer, "but is the control of a company really important enough for all that?"
"Yes." Delilah's answer was immediate and absolute. "The Winner Corporation is responsible for a very large portion of the economy in space. If the Carskadons had the controlling share…" Her smile was dark. "Let's just say that at least Dekim Barton had standards, shall we?"
"Damn." Mai wasn't entirely sure how to take that, beyond knowing she didn't want to see it in action.
"Indeed." Delilah turned her attention back to Relena. "We need Quatre. As irrevocably stupid as the wording in the Winner Corporation's charter is, it's also ironclad. Without a direct line of male to male inheritance within the ruling family, fifty percent of our shares get spread between the remaining families evenly, and the family with the greatest share takes control. Given the fact that the other ten originating families have all sold out, married in, or died out and it's now just the Winners and Carskadons, that would definitively turn L4 and its subsidiaries into the worst rumors we're hearing out of Romefeller East."
Jake's mouth was firm as he focused all of his intense gaze on their guest. "So what happens you're less lucky than me, in terms of miraculously live lost brothers?"
"Plan B," Delilah returned, once again without hesitation. "Almost none of my sisters continued to work as part of the company and most instead are entrepreneurs in their own right – and legally? Most of us are as loosely connected to the Winner line as I myself am, these days. Many of us also inherited shares upon Zayeed's death on top of what we were gifted on coming of age. We would sell our shares to each other, then surround and conquer – association with the Soleil Coalition will help too, if we have to take that tack. But there's no way that the Carskadons will take that laying down, and if they can ferret out half our paper trails on the plotting, it'll get messy because the charter is also designed to prevent exactly what we would be doing. At least a few assassins will get sent out, likely on both sides, and none of us want to risk losing another sister, let alone the children." Her eyes hardened. "I don't care how unusual it is to have twenty-nine siblings – I'm already down to twenty-four, and that's far too few."
Jake nodded understanding, grimacing as he finally relaxed again. "The Regime truly lost all signs of him before the end of 196," he admitted. "He seemingly had an incredibly hard time staying off our radar while also covering fairly vast distances, and then by the time the new year came around, he completely vanished."
"There are a few different ways he might have accomplished that," Delilah hedged. "We have a few leads we're pursuing, but Quatre… he can be slippery when the mood strikes him. As fractured as we are, we made sure he learned every skill he might need – and while Zayeed and Iria's death during the war shattered him, he put himself back together stronger than before. I have faith that he could do so again."
"But you do have leads," Relena confirmed, looking excited.
Delilah made a so-so motion, pursing her lips. "Yes, but too many things are wrong with them – facts directly conflict. Personally, I won't be convinced until one of us has a conversation with him, and so far he's been elusive." Her smile was small, but genuine. "Which is a point in favor of having found him, but…" The gesture she made was elaborate… but frankly meaningless. "We'll see. A few of my littlest sisters are running point on that, with Tricia supervising. If he decides to seek us out on his own, it will likely be through Camille or Tamelia, the same as when he came back to space after Sanc's second fall. Or Tricia." She smirked. "I meant to ask, how did you find Tricia? Or at the very least, why would you have thought confronting her at home was a good idea?"
Mai actually had no idea who she was talking about, but Relena sighed, looking exasperated. "That would be a Dorothy question. I only found out post-fact."
"What?" Jake asked sharply, narrowing his eyes again.
"It was before I asked you to help me leave Brussels," Relena explained, looking… overly composed in a way that smelled like trouble. "I asked Dorothy to feel out alliances, particularly among Romefeller, but I left it to her discretion."
"She's lucky that Liam was out with the girls," Delilah announced, leaning back in a casual sprawl again. "If Ginny and Madeline had been home, that girl of yours would have been dead before she took three steps into the house. Theratrice likes danger, but she's the most terrifying mama bear you might ever have the misfortune to meet."
"It's Dorothy," Relena pointed out ruefully. "There was no luck or coincidence to do with the timing."
"Why am I only just hearing about this?" Jake demanded.
"Well at the time, we thought you would tattle to my brother," Relena admitted, still looking too composed.
"That's not what I meant," Jake countered. "We've been talking to Treize for months now, and since Victroff is actively supporting him, she's come up a few times – so why am I only just hearing about how Dorothy thought she could fucking waltz into Trisha Victroff's house without backup and expect that to end well?"
"In her defense, it did end well?"
"She thought it was cute," Delilah agreed. "Tricia gets a real kick out of the balls out approach, so long as you can back it. I maintain that it was stupid, but well-played all the same."
Jake took in a deep breath through his nose. "Of course."
"Dorothy now has a very big girl-crush on Madam Victroff," Relena added, finally loosening up and looking more exasperated than anything. "I'm honestly not sure I want them in the same room ever again – apparently it was 'an entirely inspiring experience.'"
"Victroff?" Lin asked, sounding dubious. "Like… the mafioso Victroffs? The terrifying space black market Victroffs that everyone knows about but no one's been able to catch out of line in over twenty years?"
"Mm." Delilah's smile was sweet and bright this time. "Tricia's never been a big believer in… boundaries, let's say. Sometimes I think my father took such a strongly pacifistic stance just to prevent any of the rest of us from following in her footsteps. Mama was always much more realistic, and whenever he went on a tear about how violence was inherently wrong, the kindest reaction the oldest set ever had was to change the subject or leave the room." She snorted. "Permilla and Janelle were known to get into screaming matches with him over his bullshit, not that it ever helped."
She shook her head, sighing. "He had no business being a father for years before Mama died, but after… I shudder to think over some of the damage he did on Quatre's psyche without a more balancing influence in the house. Courtney and Tamelia tried, but neither really had the personality to confront Zayeed – though to be fair, the man effectively excommunicated the most free-spirited of us, and almost cut Tamelia out entirely after she tried talking him into letting her raise our brother instead. The twins had better luck tempering him, but after all the Piepers but Waylon died in 193…
"It hurt us all, but Kilani's death managed to hit Zayeed even harder than it did her twin. Their shuttle was destroyed as collateral in a skirmish between some group or other of freedom fighters and the Alliance, and he took it as proof that all his rhetoric was right. He went off the deep end over that, and Amilie had enough trouble shouldering her grief and raising both baby Waylon and her own baby that she didn't have time for much else.
"Even discounting that, though, Quatre had already been refusing to talk to practically anyone for months before then, so maybe the shift in our father didn't mean much to him by that point. Three weeks after the Piepers' accident, he ran away on a shuttle that was the exact same model through contested space in a fit of pique – and it got hijacked. And somehow the ransom negotiations got interrupted in such a way that Quatre sided with the hijackers and ended up fighting in a mobile suit of all things! And winning too! It was frankly the best attempt to give Zayeed a coronary since Permilla informed everyone she'd eloped." She smirked again. "And what do you know, but it was only the prelude. The fact that none of us had even a breath of an idea that he was building a gundam shows just how well Tricia and Kilani taught him."
Shaking her head again, she finished with, "Suffice to say that Quatre forging his own path in the face of everyone's expectations is hardly new."
"You know a lot about him, for someone who never gets to see him," Lin noted wryly.
Delilah let out a musical little laugh. "You, sir, clearly don't have any sisters – we talk. The separation wasn't by choice, and while Zayeed made sure he didn't know the majority of us, we always made sure we knew him. He is family, and he is our future, and while there are ties stronger than blood, family still counts. We are stronger together than we ever were apart."
Turning back to Relena, she raised her chin slightly. "The same principle applies to allies as well. So with all the social concerns out of the way – what should we cover first?"
oOo
oOo
December 20th 198 – Friday – Dijon, France – French Intergalactic Spaceport
"Yes, that's right," Estelle confirmed. "Five bogies, barely eight minutes out, not responding to any calls. How fast can you have people down here?"
"Sergeant Geron will be there with his people in five; we always keep a few suits on standby," the corporal manning the phone replied. "You've grounded all flights?"
"Yes, though the launcher is still running hot – I wasn't sure if we should start the cooldown or just maintain it? If I back off on it now, we'll have to restart the warm-up sequence all over again and that takes a solid four hours. I'm due for a launch packet to the flight corps near L2 in forty minutes."
"Standby for now should be appropriate for now, the sergeant didn't think it would take long, but I'll check."
Estelle nodded a little to herself, taking deep breaths. She wasn't shaking, but at the same time, the espresso she'd downed before the second part of her shift wasn't doing her any favors either. And they say air traffic control is a high stress job. It absolutely was, she'd stand by that, but it was an entirely different beast when unidentified MS, flying silent, came up on your radar.
The war was over. Or at least, it was a space problem. She wasn't military, and she wasn't supposed to be dealing with this kind of shit.
The only mercy of the moment was that everything civilian was grounded, and she'd told any of the birds in the air already to redirect. All the same… Mobile suits. That was… a nightmare.
"Control, I have confirmation that you can maintain standby," the corporal announced. "Expect delays, but no need to shut everything down, we'll have this sorted shortly."
oOo
oOo
December 21st 198 – Saturday – Graz, Austria – Airport, Freight Quarter – 1:20am
"Admit it," Lucrezia crooned, tipping her head back as Odin nuzzled at her neck. "You had fun."
"Mm."
She giggled. "Come on, just admit it! You wouldn't mind doing this again."
"I wouldn't," he agreed.
"So you had fun."
"…I'm still working on it." He pulled her closer to settle his nose into her hair. "But I'd do it again."
She frowned, pulling back to see his face, feeling her heart start to sink. The club had been dark enough for anonymity, and he'd seemed… "So you didn't?"
Odin huffed out a breath and pulled her back so their foreheads touched. "I don't know. Ask me tomorrow?" He kissed her very briefly, pulling slightly on her bottom lip before adding, "It was… new. Really new." He kissed her again, a little longer. "Ask me tomorrow."
"Mm." She kissed him back, but her mind wasn't on the task. "You would've said something, if you hated it?" Jake had complained about strobe lights enough times that…
Well, now that she thought about it, that club had been really aggressive with the strobes. The industrial grit of the music had appealed to both of them, that was why they'd tried that particular nightclub in the first place, but… Sensory overload, maybe? Really, it was something of an overload, but that was half the point.
…that might be a legitimate problem for him, actually.
"Ask me tomorrow."
Her heart finished its path into her stomach and she pulled away fully, reaching out to put her hands on his arms and meet his eyes. "Odin. You do not have to do something if you don't want to. Not with me." She wanted to say 'not ever' but… the world wasn't exactly rainbows at the moment, and they didn't have desk jobs. "We could have turned around and done something else and I would've been happier knowing you weren't miserable."
The look he gave her was exasperated. "I wasn't miserable."
"But you weren't happy?"
"I have no idea," he groaned. "I haven't been it before." He cupped a hand around the back of her neck again, thumb trailing along the underside of her jaw. "I was with you, and that changes a lot of things."
"If you don't-"
"I will tell you if I don't like something," he confirmed, meeting her eyes solidly, dropping the idle caresses. "I'm never going to be pushed around by anyone's whims again. I'm never going to be anyone's tool, their weapon, again. I do what I want to do now, and if I follow someone else's lead, that's because I want to." He ran his free hand up and back down her arm once. "If I hated the nightclub and I didn't want to say it, I would have left." He sighed. "But if you're not on that plane inside the next five minutes, it will leave without you."
She sighed, not liking to end on that note, but knowing he was right. Glancing back at where the darkened car was waiting for him, she decided, "I suppose Damien wouldn't let you live that down, if I did."
"Damien can't decide if he's proud of me for admitting my reflexes are too blurred to safely drive, or if he's only present for juicy gossip," Odin returned, tone wryly amused. "I give it even odds for him being exasperated or impressed if I made you miss the flight I specifically arranged to illegally get you on. Damien is not a factor on what we should or shouldn't do."
Lucrezia grinned, and for a brief moment considered… but no, damn it, she needed to be in L'viv tomorrow before noon. Ducking forward she took one last lingering kiss… and sighed. "I'll call you tomorrow."
"I'll wait for it," he agreed. "Ten days."
"Less than two weeks," she agreed. "New Year's Day."
"Aa." He gave her an amused look when she still didn't move. "Go."
Grinning and tossing him a saucy wink – because why the hell not – she went.
oOo
oOo
Dijon, France – French Intergalactic Spaceport
"Rachelle, what the hell have you been up to and what are you even sending me? How are you still not there?"
"Ma'am, I'm not running behind," Shel argued, trying to keep her voice still. "This… this is it."
"What do you even mean, I can't see anyth-"
"This is what's left!" the reporter interrupted. "I got past the cordon, and God, it… This is why they blacked out the satellite network! The port is gone, I know it's dark, but… I don't understand how, but there's literally nothing left! A bomb, maybe? A really big bomb?" Her heart started to speed up. Don't spaceports need some kind of reactor to run launchers "I… I think I need to get checked."
There was nothing from her superior for a long moment, then… "…Fuck. Get out of there, girl."
"Oh God…"
"Are you seeing any rubble? I'm not seeing anything that I'd call a two story building."
"N-No…. There's… there's stuff, but-"
"But nothing tall?"
"N-n-no, nothing…"
"We're going to get you checked anyway, but I'm going to guess something fucked the fusion reactor – it's not what you're thinking, radiation should be minimal. But I need you out – I thought we had a scandal, not a fucking massacre. We don't touch the military's shit – their new PR team is fucking terrifying. Is Josey holding an exit for you?"
Shel swallowed, starting to shake hard. "Y-yeah. Yeah, she… she should."
"Get back to her now, and get back to my office – I'll meet you there. Get clear, and I'll make sure we're completely clear, okay? Just get out before you run into anyone else and we'll make this work."
"I… yes, ma'am," Rachelle took a deep breath to steady herself, nodding, and began to retrace her steps.
oOo
oOo
Graz, Austria – 2:00am
"Okay, I'm… super done," Audi decided, yawning. "We can sleep in tomorrow, right?"
"You can," Quatre agreed. "And I imagine Odin will too."
"He likes sleeping in when he stays up late," the girl confirmed. "I mean, he can literally sleep just about anywhere, but he likes getting a solid eight hours the same way some people like cake for breakfast."
Quatre snorted, starting to pack up their papers and laptops. "What's the difference between cake and donuts for breakfast?"
She opted to watch him carefully organize things into a neat stack instead of helping, scrunching up her face in thought. "Besides social convention?" She shrugged a little. "Portability, I guess. You have to cut and serve cake?" Frowning, she asked, "Is that the difference between cake and muffins? I mean, I guess muffins are just less fancy cupcakes, and that's in the name… Or maybe it's a texture thing? I mean, you don't put custard in cake. I think."
"Don't hurt yourself," Quatre retorted, amused. "I mostly meant it rhetorically."
"Donuts taste different than muffins and cake, though," she continued, on a roll now. "It's got to be a different dough too, or they cook them differently?" She brightened. "Did you know that you make bagels by boiling dough? I mean, who thought that was a good idea the first time?"
"…Really?"
"Yeah! You boil them, then bake them." She pulled out her phone, bringing up a search engine. "How do you make donuts?"
Quatre felt his expression turn longsuffering. "I thought you were tired." She'd been tired, but suddenly it was like he'd downed a shot of espresso. Ugh. He could still feel his own exhaustion dragging on him, yet now…
And Skye wonders why I'm such an insomniac. Not that it would really be an issue once he went to his own room where Cor was already long since asleep, but that didn't make it not irritating.
"I'm not going to bed until Odin gets back anyway," Audi protested. "And now I need to know."
He sighed. Really, Odin was the reason they were both still up at all. The ten of them had practically taken a whole floor of the business suites in this hotel, and everyone but Damien and Odin was accounted for. Though the place was really more tall than wide, so it was several floors, which he liked less for security reasons… but still not bad.
He checked the time. Really, it ought to be any minute now. He knew he could reach out and feel the other man, and depending on the strength of the connection probably tell the distance but… it would be guesswork as much as anything, and there wasn't any point. They'd be back soon.
"Huh. There's, like, five exceptions that make the rule, but apparently a baked good isn't a donut unless it's been at least partway cooked by being fried."
He blinked. "Really?"
"I know, right? But then there's, like, cake donuts, and a bunch of other things that you don't fry, so… Eh. Life mysteries, or something."
Quatre grinned a little. "Life mysteries?"
Audi tossed him a disgruntled look even as she yawned. "It doesn't taste like it spent time in a frying pan, so yeah." She frowned. "Why are we talking about donuts, anyway?"
He let out a bemused smile. "I've been told they're necessary. Apparently the best place in town opens early, sells out early, and doesn't deliver. So…" He shrugged. "I was elected."
She looked dubious. "Elected, huh?"
He grinned. "I also enjoy mornings and don't mind. I should be back before you're up and about."
"With fancy donuts."
"Well… maybe don't sleep in too much."
"…Cat?"
"Yes?"
"Please buy lots."
He laughed, both because she was giving him huge eyes and he could feel how much she meant it… and then he laughed more because he could feel Odin practically bounce as he came up the hall. Oh, wow. He'd been a little worried that a tipsy Odin recently separated from his beau would be morose, but this was… almost bubbly.
His friend had a talent for always doing the unexpected in some new and appreciated fashion, didn't he?
"Welcome back," he called, standing up and going to open the door.
"They can't hear you," Audi protested, not standing up. "This place is built solid."
Quatre didn't bother asking how she was so sure about that – he could imagine it just fine. Instead he just shrugged in acknowledgement and opened the door, leaning out.
Damien immediately flashed him a grin, waved, and started back in the opposite direction for his own room. Odin didn't really react beyond focusing on him specifically instead of in his general direction, so Quatre just smiled and held the door. The other man was bubbly happy… and tired.
"You're limping," he noted once they were both in the suite. It was slight, but definitely there.
"I had a good night," Odin countered easily. "Lucrezia likes dancing."
He considered that, reading between the lines. If he'd known he was overextending his leg, that would have been the point where he decided to ask for the ride home. "You drank to compensate, then?"
"It was more fun that way," he agreed. "And it was an option, so…" He shrugged. "Thought I'd try it out."
Well, it's definitely progress that he's willing to not only acknowledge outside help, but ask for it, especially when not in dire need. Though, not for the first time, he was glad that physical pain didn't translate well over empathy. The emotional response to pain did, but, well… this was Heero.
"Are you drunk?" Audi asked, sounding curious. Now that Odin was back and blanking everything else out, he couldn't feel it, but his ears still worked.
"I don't think so." He shifted his weight and stuttered his feet briefly as he lost his balance for a moment. "Maybe."
The thirteen-year-old giggled delightedly.
Quatre debated, but couldn't think of a better way around it, so he wistfully said farewell to another hour or two of sleep. "Do you need to soak?" He wouldn't feel right leaving his maybe drunk friend alone in a bathtub. That sounded like a safety concern. And as much as Odin and Audi ignored social convention about everything else, he was pretty sure the bathroom was sacrosanct.
Odin frowned, then shook his head… then pointedly held himself very rigidly and took a deep breath before answering verbally. "No. I'm just going to go to bed."
"You've said that doesn't work as well."
"Then it won't work as well," he agreed pointedly. "I want to sleep, and I'll figure out the rest in the morning." He frowned. "Besides, most of the muscles I'm usually trying to relax with the heat are already loose. I don't want to make a habit of this, but I should see how well it works on its own." He eyed Audi, already sitting in her pajamas. "Give me a couple minutes to change." Looking back to Quatre he asked, "What time do I need to be up by?"
Quatre smiled, waving an absent hand. "Tomorrow's mostly administrative, though I might need your input in the afternoon."
"But there's going to be donuts in the morning!"
"I've been told they're required," Quatre agreed wryly. "In significant quantities."
"Aa." Odin visibly relaxed… then frowned and went rigid again.
"Are you okay?"
He looked… resigned. "I'm not sure this is an experiment I'll try again."
Quatre smiled, and Audi giggled again. "You gain more control with repeat exposure and tolerance," he admitted. "My family believed in early exposure because of how requisite it is during important social events and business dealings, but I was too young for more than a mouthful or two." He considered. "These days, I'm not sure how it would affect me." He should probably try in a controlled setting, but… he really wasn't inclined to try. Nicotine was something of an upper, and it helped calm his empathy – he was concerned that alcohol might do the opposite.
…He wanted to ask Tay if he knew, and that was… startling. He hadn't thought about his nephew in a while. Maybe that was progress? In a lot of ways, Tay had been the closest thing he had to a peer, growing up.
"It's not worth regular exposure, even in minimal doses," Odin negated, heading for the bedroom part of the suite.
Watching the door shut behind him, Quatre couldn't help but smile. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Odin still had little to no conversational grace, and at this point, it didn't look like something he deemed important enough to pick up. Oh well. Turning to Audi, he offered her a little wave. "I'll see you tomorrow, then."
She nodded, yawning. "Good night! Sleep well."
"Sleep well."
oOo
oOo
Graz, Austria – 6:00am
He wasn't sure what woke him.
He wasn't waking right, either, which was at least part of the issue. Too slow. It felt more like taking inventory for injuries after a blast threw him off his feet… rather too much like heavy painkillers. Hn. At that dosage he wasn't surprised, but it was still annoying. It had been an experiment, though; you couldn't expect peak performance of something without testing the variables…
Marie was a solid weight against his back, and the way she felt, he didn't think she had moved; he didn't usually wake when she did anymore, used to her as he was. Unless she was sick, she didn't usually shift much at all, once she settled her spine against his.
Nothing wrong in the bed… he didn't hear any of the others moving around. The room's heater was on at the moment – he didn't think it activating could have been the trigger, as it had to have done so multiple times already. It did add a layer of white noise that could obscure other problems, though. His internal clock said not nearly enough time had passed for when he had wanted to wake up, so he needed to open his eyes.
Alone, arms crossed, no weapon in hand.
Marie shrieked as his shove tumbled her off the far side of the bed, but by the time she hit the floor he was already engaging with the intruder.
"What the hell, O- Ahh!" She cut herself off and got back down again a moment later.
The man had had the arrogance to be surprised, or the stupidity to not only have a weapon already trained on him, but none easily in reach. His responses weren't bad, but he was too slow for it to matter – most were. He brought the fight to the ground in a few short moves, and in under ten seconds he had the stranger belly down with a knee in his back, one shoulder held just a hair shy of a break that the man clearly understood, by how he immediately stilled.
Sloppy. Cat had been confident in their security, but he still should have woken up. How did he get in?
Stupid! It didn't matter what name he was using if the wrong person saw his face, and if they had connected the trail here? They could have been dead. If this idiot was halfway competent they would be dead, and with Marie's noise, any allies he had in the main of the suite would already know there were problems.
…Any of this man's allies ought to have responded by now. Alone? Or farther away?
Marie flicked on the light, the hand quickly coming back to bring a double grip to her favorite handgun, pointed directly at their intruder's head.
That wasn't a bad idea in principle, but currently unnecessary – especially with how she was faintly shaking. Marie had never been in a fight without prep before – not bad, but not helpful. "Door," he ordered, watching her nod and pivot before focusing down on his…. surprisingly pliable prisoner.
Good enough to sneak in, but not enough to injure me, despite having the drop? That was a bizarre contradiction. He'd only seen him by the barest grey morning light before Marie flipped the switch, but he'd just been… standing. Irritated body language, but… That didn't make sense, and it wasn't just the aftermath of his inebriation.
He focused down on what he could see of the man's head before quietly demanding, "Who sent you?"
The noise he made was half annoyed, half… confused. And no fear at all. "No one."
He didn't sound like he was lying, not that Odin considered himself an expert, there. Still, if this was a solo job, the most likely reason? "The bounty, then?" The Regime listing for him was still only good for bringing him in alive, but it had been a long while since anyone had both recognized him and had the nerve to try.
Not that that made his actions any more logical either.
"Bounty?"
He heard the outer door of the suite slam open – then, thankfully, Skye's voice rang out. "I don't know what the fuck is going on, but boss man is freaking out! Audi?"
"Safe!" Marie called back immediately, lowering her bead on the door. "Odin's got him!"
"Can I come in?"
"Fine," Odin called back, maintaining his hold as his thoughts whirled. Nothing about this made sense, and it wasn't just his internal fury at having allowed the situation to happen in the first place.
He made sure his breathing didn't break a normal rhythm. When did Marie call Quatre? It had only been twenty-six seconds, and she'd spent at least the first four addled. "Audi?"
"I… adrenaline?" she suggested, sounding a little breathless. "I was scared."
Ah. That kind of call.
"Coming in," Skye called as he eased the door handle, swinging the door slowly. Then, "Well, shit, where'd he come from?"
"Getting there," Odin noted.
"I'm not running," the intruder announced into the carpet. "I'm not armed, and I didn't fight any more than instinct had me. Some responses are just ingrained. Sorry."
Skye looked unwillingly impressed. "Huh. A polite B&E." He flicked a look back at Odin, then crouched in front of the man's face. "Not a good plan."
"…Yeah. Getting that."
Someone else was calling from the hall now. "Skye?"
"Yeah, call Cat back and tell him not to drop the loot, it's just… drama, or something."
"What?"
"I'm working on it!" the lanky American called back, still staring hard at their intruder. "Odin?"
He… was beginning to get truly annoyed. "Skye?"
"Did you get a look at his face before you ground it into the floor?"
"No."
"Seems relevant."
"Not really."
"…don't break him. Audi, sweetheart, see if you agree with me here."
Marie looked to him, unsure, but he just glowered, so she apparently took that as permission to fully lower her gun and kneel next to Skye. "What?"
"Pretend his eyes are blue and age him back twenty years or so."
"…No," Marie breathed.
"I mean, there's plenty of differences, but…. I'm leaning more towards poor planning than threat."
Odin grit his teeth. He was tired, he was furious with himself for fucking up this badly in the first place, and while he could continue to ignore it, his leg was screaming from how he'd disregarded it to launch himself at and take down the intruder that Skye and now Audi didn't want to call a threat.
Nothing made sense this morning. But he didn't want to stay like this any more than he wanted to handle a true threat either.
He eased off his pressure on the arm just slightly enough that he felt the man below him take in a relieved breath. "Why did you come here?" he tried.
Another slow breath. Then, "I was worried you wouldn't want to talk to me. So I didn't want you to be able to immediately leave."
…Absolutely. Nothing.
"…What."
"Odin…" Marie began leadingly. "Did you ever open that file HTD gave you on your personal history?"
"No."
"…I think maybe I should, then?" she suggested, face conflicted. "Or Cat?"
"He's got a lot of your face," Skye added. "And social skills too, seems like."
…He was so done with this. Letting go of the arm but maintaining his position on the man's back, he glared at Skye. "Get someone else in here to watch him."
Skye nodded, expression turning more serious. "Sio, you still out there?"
"You thought I'd leave?"
"Don't be like that! Come lend a hand?"
Odin held out a hand towards Marie. "Pass." She handed over the gun.
Sio came in then, along with Xutao, which was… a genuine relief. Not that he didn't trust Quatre's people, but Xu was trained down to his core, raised to it in a way that was hard to validate if you hadn't been part of the gundam programs. They'd been expecting the other man and Yasa today, but he hadn't known what time they'd be in.
Also, not all of Rubato were good with guns – out of those with them here, Damien and Jovi were the only ones he knew were crack shots, for all that the rest could be brutal when the need arose.
…He was glad Marie hadn't needed to shoot today. Good that she'd been ready, but better that she hadn't needed to. He could've reached for his gun as soon as he noticed their intruder, but he'd wanted her behind cover before any shots were fired, and if the whole thing could be done quietly, he'd thought…
He hadn't thought right. Marie had responded as well as he could plan for, but if this man had had backup, Marie would have had to shoot them. And she'd already been aiming a headshot, because in this scenario, he'd taught her she should. He wanted her to always have another way, his father had never let him even realize there were other options until after he was dead, and…
He had the sinking feeling that the day Marie killed, she was going to do it for him. And he hated it. He'd promised Leia he'd push that loss of innocence back as far as he possibly could, but today…
He hadn't screwed up this badly in years.
Maintaining his breathing, he offered the butt of the gun to Xu – he probably had his own handy, but he'd already taken the thing from Marie, handing it back would give her the wrong idea. "Make sure he doesn't hurt anyone."
"Odin?" Marie asked, sounding unsure.
He met her eyes, and felt himself smile slightly, though he doubted it was a good one. "You're right. Once you're dressed, read for me?" He hesitated. "And ask Cat too."
Her smile was right, if also watery. "Got it."
His leg was starting to shake, and he grit his teeth, looking back down at… whoever this was. He met the one eye he could see. "Name?"
The man licked his lips. "Jack."
Jack. Like him. Except he'd felt like… that was bad.
He didn't know him, but… "We've met before."
The man's dark gaze was steady. "Before Odin took you back to Earth. In 184," he agreed.
Odin. Jack Odin.
"Jack what?"
"Miller."
Miller. Like Jacob Miller.
…There's more than one, he realized, locking his muscles down before they could betray him. He wasn't sure why… but that was a new idea. Odin had acted like they had no other family… and it was more than just one other person. It wasn't a mistake, someone he'd overlooked or thought dead – it had been intentional.
He hadn't realized he'd even wanted that. Because Skye wasn't wrong – Jack's features were everything about his face he hadn't been able to trace back to Odin, enough so that it was eerie.
Odin had abandoned him – very deliberately, in calculated steps. He never implied there would be anyone else to turn to – he had literally told him to blend in with the refugees after the local coup was resolved.
Had that been to keep him away from Miller? Or… had that been the plan?
Jack Odin Lowe.
If Jack had come to find him because he opened his HTD file, and Odin had so obviously planned for his fingerprints to be used to identify him… social services would have checked his prints.
I did it to myself, he realized. When he'd struck his own path, gone off the grid with Dr J, he… Operation M, the training, the retraining, he'd done that to himself, when he'd had options.
He'd gone with J because he hadn't thought he had anything left. He hadn't expected…
Pulling himself up took more effort than he liked, and his leg almost buckled anyway. "I need to shower," he decided, and left the room.
oOo
oOo
Unexpected
oOo
God, but I've been waiting on this forever, I don't know why I got such a writer's block on so much of it… But as I mentioned baby. Also two major moves, two new jobs…. I'm out of the big city and in a small town now, since the world went nuts. I'm in a position of actual responsibility/authority at work for the first time too, which was a whirlwind at first, but is finally smoothing out to allow for more free time. Also now that my son plays by himself sometimes, there's just more… time.
I've been planning for Jack and Odin to know each other for a while now, so it's going to be a whirlwind – Though I have no idea at this point exactly where the secrets and walls will actually break down, there's too many possibilities. We'll play it by ear. Did anybody realize Delilah was lying in wait the whole time?
I love hearing back from you guys, and it's its own brand of motivation. Sorry I've been out for so long.
