The White Room was aptly named. The furniture, walls, and columns, were all a dazzling alabaster. The only other colors were the gold inlay on some furniture and the black and white checkerboard pattern on the floor and ceiling. It certainly seemed far more opulent and extravagant than what I'd come to expect from the Northern Parliament.

"So…why'd you keep the space like this?" I asked as I continued to look around.

"It's good for impressing visiting diplomats and other dignitaries, who are more easily impressed by pomp and splendor than our warmth and comradeship," Poltava smiled as she plucked several wine glasses from a nearby serving cart.

"Pah," Gangut spat as she and Sevastopol flanked her sister, watching eagerly as Poltava began to uncork the bottle. "If they cannot accept us as we are, then they do not deserve our affections."

Poltava glanced up at Gangut, a thin hint of a smile pulling at her lips as her eyes darted briefly to me. "An interesting word to describe diplomatic relations, sister," she teased. "Affections sounds so…personal."

A faint bit of red spread across the eldest sibling's cheeks as she sputtered. "Y-you know what I meant!" she blurted out, finally finding her voice. "I am not very good at these sorts of things. I'm meant for battle, not fancy words."

Sevastopol snickered at Gangut's discomfort, while Poltava gave her a reassuring smile. "I know, I know. But you're so cute when flustered." Before the elder sister could protest again, Poltava held out a glass of wine to her. "Here. Why don't you and Sevastopol catch up while I get to know our dear Comrade Commander."

The white-haired kansen froze for a half-second, a look of worry in her ruby eyes as they darted between Potava and myself. She must have caught Gangut's concerned look and smiled reassuringly. "It's just talk, don't worry."

It did little to ease the unease in her eyes, but she took the glass with a forced smile. "Of course," she said as she draped her arm around Sevastopol. "And you, what have you been up to down in the Black Sea, hmmm? Any glorious new victories?"

We watched as the two wandered off before Poltava thrust a wine glass into my hands. "Come, sit," she beckoned me as she laid down across a love seat, propping her head up on the armrest to keep her eyes on me as I took the chair across from her. "Mikhail isn't your real name, is it?"

"It's Michael," I chuckled. "Gangut was…rather insistent that I have a 'Northern Parliament' name while I'm here."

"She can be stubborn like that," she laughed softly, taking a sip of her wine as she stared intently at me. "There's something between you two." It wasn't a question.

I tried to find the words to answer before I took a long drink, sighed, shrugged, and finally replied, "It's complicated."

"So I've gathered," she smirked. "Why don't you start at the beginning? When you two first met."

I took a deep breath, downed the rest of my glass of wine, and began. "I met her when I first showed up here, leading a joint mission against a Siren stronghold. I was struck by her…enthusiasm, and when I called her 'Comrade', her eyes just…lit up. She took it upon herself to be my guide when I first got here, and she's been my constant companion ever since. We seemed to hit it off, and one night, she came by to make us her favorite dish, makarony po flotski. One thing led to another and we…" My voice trailed off as I let the implication hang in the air.

A knowing, soft smile played across Poltava's lips as she listened, refilling my glass as she did so. "Let me guess, she claimed it was just a way to relieve stress, that her heart belonged to the revolyutsiya."

I smiled wryly at her as I took a sip of the wine. "Not the first time she's done that, I take it?"

"Do not misunderstand, Comrade Commander, she is not in the habit of doing this sort of thing," she quickly explained. "But this is how relationships with her go. They grow close, they get physical, and then she tells them that it is just a way to relieve stress and nothing romantic will come of it. Some partners part ways, some stay as friends, and others continue to enjoy her…physically for a while longer. But she always tell them the same thing, that she cannot put aside her love of the revolyutsiya." She looked up at me and gave me a slight smirk. "But you…you are different."

"How so?" I asked. "I certainly don't feel different. I took the second option, stayed as friends. We seemed to work well afterwards, until…"

A fuschia eyebrow raised, and she regarded me for a moment. "Until?"

I took a sigh and a sip of the wine again. "Until a few days ago. We were running combat exercises and I noticed something was off about her performance. Turns out, she'd been wearing out the lining of her gun barrels and not getting them re-lined. I…kinda read her the riot act and ordered that she get them taken care of regularly. Ever since then, she's been…cold…distant. She warmed back up to me and we worked things out, but…" I shrugged helplessly and looked down at the wine in my glass. "I still don't know what I did wrong…"

"You tried to stop her from becoming stronger."

My head snapped up and I looked quizzically at her. "What?"

Potava sighed heavily and took a large swig of her drink. "She believes that for her to have any worth in life, she must pour every ounce, every fiber of her being into this cause. Becoming stronger so she can continue to bring the glory of the Northern Parliament to all four corners of the globe."

"But why?"

"That is the question, isn't it?" she sighed, peering into her glass as she swirled the ruby liquid around. "I wish I knew. It would certainly make things much easier. But that includes things like pushing herself past her limits, even hurting herself. And if you tried to get in the way of that…well, she would not take that well… I would even go so far as to say you hurt her a great deal with that. But that ties into why you're different than the others."

"Ah, right," I nodded. "I'm curious as to how you came to that conclusion."

"The way she looks at you." When I raised an eyebrow, she smiled and continued. "When I said I wanted to talk with you, she balked. Normally, she does not care if her former bed partners move on or not. As I said, she puts 'the revolution' first. But not this time. This time, there was worry. She doesn't want to lose you. Which is why it hurt her so much when you tried to stop her from strengthening herself."

"I was trying to keep her from doing serious harm to her rigging," I protested.

"She won't see it that way," Poltava fired back.

With a heavy sigh, I leaned back in my chair. "Okay, so…why me? What makes me so special?"

She took a sip, swishing it around in her mouth as she pondered the question. "For starters, you called her Comrade and you let her call you Mikhail. And you've kept her as a guide, companion, and aide. While I don't have the entire picture, you seem to be, at least, on the face of it, taking her seriously."

"Was I not supposed to be?" I scoffed.

A quiet giggle escapes her lips. "Most people see her as overly eager, someone who could rush headlong into danger without a second thought to the consequences. As a result, people are a bit hesitant when listening to her ideas."

"But not me."

"But not you," Poltava confirmed with a smile, raising her glass to me in salute before polishing it off. "She sees something in you, even if she's unsure of how to reconcile that feeling with the love of the Motherland."

A faint hope blossomed within me, and my heart fluttered at the thought of rekindling a relationship with Gangut. "So how do I help her reconcile those feelings?"

Her lips pursed as she pondered the question, thoughtfully tapping her chin. "You would need some kind of crucible to force her to acknowledge and deal with those feelings," she finally answered.

"And how would I go about that?"

She looked at me and gave me a thin smile. "That is for you to determine, Comrade Commander. I am sure you will find something, though."

"Find what, sister?" Gangut asked as she walked over to the couch with Sevastopol.

"Oh, nothing," Poltava smiled with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Just…life advice."

"I see…" Gangut said slowly, her crimson eyes flicking between the two of us.

"Just talking about how I could be a stronger person," I added quickly.

Any concern in her expression swiftly melted away, replaced by her usual boundless exuberance. "Let us drink to your new goals then, Comrade!"

Poltava gave me a thankful smile before refilling Sevastopol and Gangut's glasses, which the former emptied in a single gulp. "Careful, Sevastopol," she chided. "Too much too fast and you'll be on the floor before Comrade Commander here."

"Hey!" I objected. "I've been working on my alcohol tolerance ever since I got here, I'll have you know."

"With all the time you two have been spending together, you should have an iron liver by the end of the month," Sevastopol sneered.

Despite the good buzz I was starting to get, I was still fairly confident I hadn't forgotten anything from this evening just yet. "How the hell do you know about that?"

"Gangut told me," she replied, jerking her thumb in her sister's direction. "All about how you two are inseparable and you're really good in be-ack!" With a panicked cry, Sevastopol toppled to the floor as Gangut hip-checked her.

"It looks like the alcohol's already started to have an effect, sister," she declared in an overly concerned tone as she reached down to help her sibling back on her feet.

"That wasn't the alcohol, that was your fat ass!" Sevastopol shrieked as she batted away Gangut's hands and got to her feet. While the fall may not have entirely been due to the alcohol, I could already see she was having problems staying upright.

"Perhaps," Poltava interjected. "But you should still pace yourself."

Sevastopol shot her a dirty look as she held out her glass for another refill. "I can handle my liquor!"

As it turns out, she couldn't. After another two glasses of wine, she collapsed onto Poltava and began snoring loudly. We left her there, finishing off the bottle of wine and dipping into another before we drunkenly decided we should get her to bed.

As I got to my feet, I noticed that the walls and floor of the White Room had suddenly developed the nasty habit of spinning around and around, much to my consternation. Despite the room's sudden yet inevitable betrayal, I managed to make it to the couch where Sevastopol lay. However, she was much, much heavier than I remember, and neither I nor her sisters could lift her. Since we couldn't move her, a group consensus was made to lie down on the couch with her and take a nap first.

The next morning, I found I had been somehow moved to the bottom of the pile, with Sevastopol, Poltava, and Gangut all snuggled around me. And as before, Gangut had all but wrapped herself around me, holding me tight as the other two simply lay on or beside me. For a brief moment, I panicked, wondering if something had happened between the four of us, but we all seemed to be wearing our clothes, and in relatively the same state as last night, give or take a few wrinkles.

As I blinked the sleep from my eyes, I checked my watch: just before six. We still had plenty of time to get up, shuffle down to our respective quarters to freshen up, get changed, and get down to the docks to get to work on the retrofitting. If I could get everyone up, that is. I had no idea how sound sleepers any of them were. Even the two times I'd been with Gangut, one time I woke her up when I screamed, and the second she'd woken up before me. In any case, I figured I should start with her first since she would at least know how to best wake up her siblings.

"Gangut," I hissed as I gently shook her shoulder. "It's time to wake up."

Gangut made a noise somewhere between a groan and a sigh as she buried her head into my shoulder. "Nyet, Tovarish," she mumbled. "Five more minutes."

"And deprive the world an extra five minutes of your radiant glory, Comrade?" I whispered into her ear. "Perish the thought."

She let out another theatrical groan, but I could still hear the smile in her voice. "Fine, fine," she muttered as she lifted her head up and ran her hand through her hair. "Dobray utra, Comrade," she smiled softly. The smile faded as she tried to move and felt the press of her sisters upon her. She lifted her head further, inspecting all of us before the memories came back to her. "Ah, right," she said to herself, then turned back to me. "How are you feeling, Comrade?"

"Not terrible," I answered. "Bit of a headache, but that should clear up soon. How're you?"

"I slept wonderfully," she smiled softly. "You make for an excellent body pillow."

"Good to hear I'll have some marketable skills if this war goes south," I chuckled.

There was a pause, and Gangut glanced away for a moment before her eyes met mine again. "So…" she began, "What were you and Poltava talking about, truly?"

To say I was surprised she was bringing this back would be an understatement. Was she really that worried that Poltava was trying to steal me away? Despite my desire to keep the conversation private, I realized she needed to hear the truth, even if she wasn't going to like it. I met her gaze unflinchingly and answered honestly. "You."

Her eyes widened in shock, and her body went rigid. "Me?"

"Yeah," I continued, trying to keep my voice nonchalant. "About our relationship, our…night together…" I quickly moved on, not wanting to remember the details of that night at that particular moment. I didn't need certain parts of my body wanting to re-enact that night lest I find myself unbelievably embarrassed. "...how I hurt you, why, and how I could make it up to you." Okay, I lied. I wasn't entirely honest with her. But I wasn't about to blurt out how forcing myself into a crucible for truth was going to help her reconcile her romantic feelings for me. I was thinking somewhere cozier…and with fewer unconscious people on top of us.

"And how are you going to make it up to me, Comrade?"

I let out a long sigh before I answered her. "Honestly, I…we're going to have to find a balance between you pushing yourself to be stronger and pushing yourself to the point of breaking your rigging. Because I really do want to help you be stronger, Gangut, I really do." My eyes stared deeply into hers, my voice barely above a whisper. "But not at the expense of your health and well-being."

We were both silent for a long time after that, each trying to work through things. As I looked into her eyes, I could see her struggling with the idea, that it somehow violated a core tenet of who she was, but no longer able to easily cast aside my words with the notion that I was weak, or looking to make her weak. "Comrade…I…" My heart leapt into my throat as I saw her resolve wavering. Was this it? Was she about to finally open up to me? "I…"

Suddenly, Sevastopol yawned and stretched, breaking the moment as we both looked over at her, and then back at each other. Gangut's walls were back up, her vulnerabilities hidden behind that eager facade. "Perhaps we should have this discussion at another time and place, Comrade? One where there are not so many prying eyes and ears?"

I chuckled weakly, trying to hide my disappointment that the moment had passed. "Agreed," I conceded as I looked at Poltava and Sevastopol. "In the meantime, let's get everyone onto their feet and ready to go…"

A/N-So close, yet so far! Ah, I'm sure they'll get there…eventually. Until next time, fair winds and following seas!