Actually meeting the three kids who answered Heero's summons didn't do anything to ease Noin's anxiety about the whole situation. They were so young. Not that she was old, but she was at least old enough to drink legally and she felt like that was a bit of a watershed, age-wise. But in the military she had learned to make do and that no plan survived contact with the enemy, so she was going to work with what she had. Even if what she had was Chang Wufei, who did not improve once you got to know him.

A comfortable study on the main floor of the family wing had become her office and with the addition of a couple more chairs taken from the library down the hall, it could accommodate all five of them to discuss logistics. The dynamic was a little strange, since she and Heero both seemed inclined to honour the little pseudo-military, employer-employee hierarchy they'd fallen into—she was the commander and gave him orders which he passed down to his team. The others seemed used to treating him like a leader and didn't offer much criticism of his orders, only some suggestions.

"It's starting to hit me how short on manpower we are," said Duo. "Even with Hilde added to our numbers, we're stretched too thin to handle both this guard detail and the plan to take out OZ bases."

"We knew that was going to be a problem coming into this," said Heero. "Resources have always been our biggest hurdle. It would be nice if we could keep up both fronts at the same time but didn't we agree that strategically, we'd be more effective depriving them of political assets than military ones?"

"I mean, yeah," said Duo, who seemed to be the person most comfortable getting into strategy debates with Heero, "that all sounds great, on paper. Until they decide to use those military assets to get control of all the other ones."

Great. Just in case Noin had been in danger of forgetting she was in bed with the enemy. "Listen, guys," she said, "I accept that Relena is in danger from multiple parties—possibly including OZ—and I'm setting aside my loyalties to protect those interests, but I can't stand by or sanction White Fang operations against OZ bases. I just can't."

"We don't work for White Fang," said Heero.

"We're independent operators," Duo added.

"Seriously," Hilde chimed in. "I literally got fired."

"Anyway," Wufei said, inevitably wading into the fray, "those loyalties you have to OZ are fundamentally misplaced. You obviously don't even understand who you actually were working for or what you were supporting."

"Oh, really?" Noin asked. "I've had the wool pulled over my eyes, is that it?"

"I think you must have," said Wufei in an irritatingly calm voice. "If you actually knew, then for you to be doing what you're doing now... it doesn't add up."

"Listen, if you're just going to be cryptic and lord your vastly superior knowledge over me, then do me a favour and shut—"

Wufei cut her off. "Treize Kushrenada ordered the assassination of Edward Darlian."

"What?" Noin barked. "No way. There's no way he would do a thing like that."

"It was his prize attack dog, Une, who did it. I was there. I saw her. Running like a bat out of hell out of the building right before it blew. I recovered the fake press pass she'd been wearing after she ditched it."

Noin stared.

"Relena was also there," Wufei went on. "Une was speaking to her before the conference started. Presumably she was supposed to be in the room with Darlian when the bomb went off, but she was on the stairs right outside the doors instead." He shrugged. "I'm not convinced that Treize doesn't still want her dead, too."

She still couldn't think of anything to say. She was struggling for another explanation for Une being at the scene of that incident, another reason that man might have been murdered. How Treize could have ordered such a thing. And she was coming up with nothing.

"Maybe that changes the stakes for you a little," said Wufei.

Hilde had traded up yet again. She'd sublet her apartment back in the city and was getting free room and board in the palace—palace, she was living in a palace, the novelty wasn't wearing off anytime soon—to hang out with Duo and Wufei (and Heero too, she supposed) and bodyguard a princess. She was basically a knight. It was amazing. And the beds were just as wonderful as she'd hoped.

Heero (who she probably owed a bit more credit, because even if he didn't feel like a friend, he'd been very gracious about her showing up uninvited) had let her know not long after they got settled in that she was going to have a crucial role in the fall, when Relena went back to school. Being the only team member who was both female and the right age, she was going to be enrolled at Relena's school so that she'd have protection nearby during the day. Hilde was pleased; she'd be able to cover one of the weakest points in their security. And maybe even snag a high school diploma at the same time.

Until then, when she wasn't taking a shift on night patrol Hilde set herself the task of getting to know Relena a little better. Since Relena seemed to be a nice person who inexplicably had no friends, it wasn't a hardship.

"Hey," Hilde said, knocking on the open door of Relena's room. The second time Hilde had addressed her as 'princess', she'd gotten told off and had promptly taken the hint.

Relena was lying on a thick rug on the floor with her feet propped up on the side of the bed, reading a book. She rolled her head toward the door and laid the open book down across her stomach to save her place, not bothering to move otherwise. "Come on in."

Hilde took a seat on the rug with her back against the bed, facing Relena. "Whatcha reading?" She craned her neck to read the spine of the book.

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The sixth one," said Relena, stifling a little yawn.

It was quite a tome; she was halfway through it. "I've heard of those," said Hilde.

"Never read them? You must be the only one left," Relena grinned. Then she paused. "Actually, never mind. I doubt anyone in this house has read them except me. But you're like, normal."

Hilde opted to take that as a compliment. "They kinda passed me by. I wasn't much of a reader for the last few years."

Instead of replying, Relena braced her feet against the mattress, pushed herself backwards across the rug toward an overstuffed bookshelf, and tugged a much slimmer book off the shelf. She held it out to Hilde as she scooted back to where she'd been lying and put her legs back up on the bed. Hilde turned the book over to read the front cover; it was another Harry Potter book.

"Is this the first one?" she asked hopefully. It was a lot shorter and looked less like you could kill someone with it. For better or for worse.

"Yep. I have all of them so far," Relena said, waving back toward the bookshelf. "The last one isn't out yet, but read that and then help yourself to the other ones. Give you something to do when you're trying to stay awake all night to scare away bad guys!" she said brightly.

Hilde laughed and set the book down beside her. "I think the last thing I want when I'm playing guard dog is to get all wrapped up in a book, but thanks. Maybe I'll read it during my vast amounts of free time instead."

Relena gave her a thumbs-up and then patted around the rug beside her for a bookmark, marking her page and abandoning the other book on the floor. She stretched like a cat. "How do you like it here so far?"

"It's super swank," said Hilde with a wink. "How do you like it, though? I mean, I'm treating this like a holiday, not my house."

Relena shrugged. "I like Pargan and Noin. I like learning about my family and I'm glad I know about them now. My mom said she's coming back from the States to visit again in August. I'm really starting to miss her so that'll be good."

"Will she move back permanently?"

"I dunno. We haven't talked about it. All her friends are there, you know? I mean, she and—and Dad lived there for like 15 years and couldn't contact anyone they still knew here. It's a lot."

Hilde nodded in understanding and they sat in silence for a minute until Relena changed the subject.

"So do you, like," she glanced back toward the open door and the empty hallway beyond before continuing in a hushed voice, "know Heero? Very well?"

Hilde raised an eyebrow. "I haven't known him for a super long time," she said, confused but lowering her voice to match Relena's anyway. "Why?"

Relena chewed her lip for a moment, as though she was trying to decide whether to explain. "He's really cute, right?" she finally asked.

"Ohhh, I see," Hilde said, feeling a crocodile grin take over her face. "You're lost in those deep, deep blue eyes. That husky voice. That eternal scowl." Hilde faked a swoon and Relena smacked her in the leg, which made her laugh until she tipped over.

"Shut up! I mean, he doesn't scowl that much!"

Hilde laughed harder, curling in around her aching stomach. Tears started to gather in her eyes. "I just—I can't—"

"Hilde, get ahold of yourself!" Relena hissed, sitting upright with a scowl on her face that could give Heero a run for his money. The sight of it set Hilde off into another fit of giggles before she could draw deep enough breaths to calm down.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's mean to laugh at you, I'll rein it in," she gasped, still letting out tiny, hiccuping giggles. "So, what, are you trying to creep on him?"

"I—you make it sound so horrible!" Relena was blushing like a tomato. "I've been trying to like, get to know him a little better, but it's hard to get him to talk about himself. I thought you might know if he was, like, single... or might possibly be interested..." She trailed off awkwardly, staring at the nightstand like it held the secret to eternal life.

Hilde winced a little and tried to figure out how to break it to her. "I sympathize. I really do. I never said this and you never heard it," she said with a pointed look, waiting till Relena nodded to continue, "but I went through that song and dance with Duo, myself."

"Oh," said Relena, then, after a beat, "really? Duo?"

"Everybody's got their own type," said Hilde primly. Then she shrugged and added casually, "It turned out that Duo's type was, uh. Not me."

"Aw, I'm sorry."

"His type was actually an awful lot like yours: short, dark and scowly. If you get what I'm saying."

Relena frowned and Hilde watched her puzzle over that; the instant she got it, her eyes widened and she shot Hilde a startled look. "Seriously?"

Hilde nodded.

"So they're...?"

Hilde considered that for a second. She knew they'd hooked up when Heero had rescued Duo, and his weird moody funk after that had been almost as bad as when he'd thought Heero was dead. But then when he'd told her he was coming to Europe, he'd been... buoyant was a good word for it. Heero had come to see him and told him about the job, he'd said. And now they had rooms beside each other and unless one of them was busy patrolling or Heero was off plotting strategy with Noin, they were basically attached at the hip. They were being pretty stealthy, because she was billeted across the damn hall and still couldn't say much about them definitively, but it all added up. They had to be hooking up regularly. She was going to have to give Duo a lot of shit for never saying anything about it.

"Yeah, they are," she told Relena confidently, like someone who was in the loop.

Relena flopped back down on the rug. "Dammit."

Hilde reached out and patted her on the arm comfortingly. "Unavailable men are always the most attractive ones."

"This sucks."

Hilde weighed the situation. She wasn't any more experienced with having female friendships than Relena was. "Ice cream and movies?" she ventured.

"God, yes," said Relena, sounding like Hilde had thrown a rope down the well for her.

"On it," said Hilde, heaving herself to her feet.

It was an overcast Thursday afternoon and Relena was off shopping with her mom (and Noin). It was Hilde's turn to patrol the house that night and she should have been trying to take a nap before dinner, but instead she was sprawled over an armchair in the library, reading.

Wufei cleared his throat from her left and she smiled down at the book before marking her page with a finger and looking up at him.

"Finally trained to not sneak up on people?" she asked.

He sat in the chair next to her and she sat up properly to see him. "If you yell and throw things at me often enough, I learn eventually, I guess," he said.

"You could just make noise when you walk," she suggested, like she did every time.

"I don't care for it," he said, like he did every time. "What are you reading?"

She displayed the cover. "The fourth Harry Potter book."

"Aren't those for children? How come it's the size of a dictionary?"

"Well, I read the first three and now I'm invested," she said.

"Where's the princess?"

"Back-to-school shopping with her mom."

He settled more comfortably into his chair. "Don't you need to go back-to-school shopping, too, Agent Back-to-School?"

"I told Noin my shoe size and gave her the supplies list," she said dismissively, finding the bookmark to replace her finger in the book. "If Relena just gets two of everything, I'm sure it'll be fine." She put the book on the table between them and he picked it up immediately, flipping it over to read the back before returning it to the table.

"You're not excited? Nervous?" he asked.

"I hate shopping?" she offered. "Also, I haven't attended school since partway through junior high. So, you know, I guess I'll fit in about as well as Relena does."

"I hear your German is better than hers, at least," said Wufei, and Hilde snorted at the rudeness.

"Be nice!"

He gave her a shit-eating grin. "I was complimenting you! That was nice!"

"Be nicer about your boss, jackass," she shot back, unable to keep her own grin off her face. "Plus, she and I are kinda friends now. No sassing my friends."

"I'm sorry," he said very solemnly.

Hilde rolled her eyes.

"I'm just sad," he continued. "Because you're going to be in school five days a week and ditching me here with Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee while they make heart-eyes at each other all day. Maybe I'll have to start reading books, too, if I have nobody worth talking to."

He could really lay it on thick when he wanted to. By now, Hilde had seen plentiful examples of why everybody else barely tolerated Wufei—he was an asshole, she couldn't deny that if she tried—but she'd never seen him act like this around anyone else, either. He seemed to save all this smarmy charm for her. She was reminded of when Relena had admitted her crush on Heero, insisting he was kinder and less scowly than he acted around literally everyone else.

Hilde was already in this one a little too deeply. His long campaign was paying off. "You're breaking my heart, you really are," she told him, affecting an over-the-top sympathetic look.

"I appreciate your sympathy," he said. "You know what I think would make me feel better?"

Ah, yes, he was tugging the line now. "What's that?" she asked gamely.

"If you ditched all these clowns and went for dinner with me. I think that would help me endure all the school days without any sensible conversation."

She nodded slowly. "Would one dinner do it? Or are you going to need, like, regular therapy?"

He didn't miss a beat. "I think we can start at one per week and I'll let you know how I'm doing, like if we need to increase the amount."

Hilde scratched her nose to hide her smile. "I can't say no to a man in such pain," she said.

His smile outshone the lights in the room.

"So once school starts, you get one dinner per week," she concluded.

The smile vanished. She bit her tongue to keep from laughing.

"Well... what are you doing right now?" he asked a little plaintively.

"You want to go for dinner now?" she asked. "But we just had a whole conversation! You should be fine for the day, right?"

Wufei watched her for a second. She willed herself not to crack. "Haven't you heard that saying, what is it... 'an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure'?" he said.

She nodded slowly. "Okay... so like, if I go for dinner with you now, that means we can skip sixteen dinners in the fall? Interesting."

His little huff of frustration was audible. Hilde was about to burst out laughing. She couldn't hold it in anymore.

"It's just... this book is really good," she said, patting the cover and barely holding onto her poker face.

"I'm losing to fictional boy wizards? Really?" he asked, sounding deeply affronted.

She lost it.

"Your face!" she forced out between peals of belly-laughter, wiping tears from her eyes. Every time she caught a glimpse of him staring at her, she burst into a fresh round, sliding down her chair cushion. By the time she squinted her eyes open again, he was leaning over her, hands braced on the arms of her chair. He had one eyebrow raised and seemed to be suppressing a smile of his own.

Hilde grinned up at him, breathless and red-faced. He dipped his head in close to hers.

"Half an hour good for you to get ready? You're picking the restaurant," he said quietly. It sent a little shiver down her spine.

"'Kay," she breathed back.

He looked down at her lips for a moment and she swore he was going to lean in further and kiss her, but instead he straightened up and left the room silently.

She watched him go. The fictional boy wizards would keep till later.

Trowa glanced at the GPS and took the next right turn, finding himself on a winding boulevard of immaculate white and tan stucco houses, fronted by emerald lawns and sparkling stone and concrete fountains. He checked the house numbers of the one he wanted twice against his notepad; it looked like the houses on either side of it, starter-home ostentatious. He drove a few more houses up the road and parked behind a Mercedes, in front of a house with a giant date palm in the front yard.

He pushed his sunglasses back up his nose—he was starting to feel like he was cooking alive—and scooped up the papers on the passenger seat, flipping through them quickly for a refresher and to gather his thoughts.

He shouldn't have gone off half-cocked. It had wasted a lot of time. He'd only realized he was looking for a needle when he was already inside the haystack; Rashid's intel on Quatre's whereabouts was weeks old and Trowa had no way to track down H. How did you locate a person who went by a letter? At least once he was already in-country, gathering all his background intel on the family and the company and the accident (with some help from Rashid, at least initially) had been simpler than it would have been from back in Italy.

His phone buzzed. Catherine. The text was asking, as briefly as possible, for proof of life. He took the second to reply with an apology and reassurance and then tucked his phone into his pants pocket.

It was now or never. This was basically his last lead and it was time to stop stalling. Trowa got out of the car and walked back up the street to the house he wanted. The front door was painted white and had a shiny brass knocker.

He heard someone calling that they were coming only seconds after he knocked, accompanied by the muffled thumps of feet on stairs.

When Quatre's sister Nadia opened the door, it was clear she was expecting someone else; her bright smile turned to confusion as she looked him up and down. She didn't look anything like Quatre, except for the colour of her eyes.

He took off his sunglasses and folded them in his hand. "Sorry to bother you, ma'am," he said. "I'm a friend of Quatre's."

It was his turn to be surprised when her face cleared. "So you're Trowa," she said, stepping back from the door to let him inside.

"That's me," he said, following her in. A little spark of hope flared in his chest. Maybe he wasn't going to be too late.

"The car accident changed him," said Nadia, staring at her coffee cup.

Trowa sipped at his own coffee while she searched for words; it was the same kind Quatre liked, strong enough to dissolve a spoon, but she at least made it better than the Maganacs' cooks.

"There are—there were—30 of us, you know?" she said when he put his cup back down. She looked up at him with an expression that seemed a little bit lost. "We're not all close. I mean, shit," she said, swiping angrily at one eye, "I'm the eldest; I have five full sisters who feel like my actual siblings and everyone else is like… well, they're my half- and stepsisters, but it seems like that should be a stronger relationship. Anyway, that's just how it is. Quatre is a little different, or would be, maybe, if he hadn't left home so young. Since he's the only boy. He mostly grew up with Rana and Halima and, um, Farzana," she paused, "and Laila, and Sahar until she went to France for university. Well, that doesn't matter to you. Just, by the time he was school-age, he wasn't close with any of them, or anyone else. He only got to know Iria once they both traipsed off to be guerrillas, but the two of them bonded. He cared deeply about what happened to her. And he couldn't go to her funeral, or Father's, because he was still in an induced coma—" She cut herself off, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth and choking back tears.

"I'm sorry," Trowa started, "I…"

Nadia shook her head, blinked a few times and then sat up straight in her chair, clearing her throat and breathing in deeply. "When he got out of the hospital, he wouldn't even let me take him back to the house. He insisted we go to the graveyard. And once we were standing in front of their graves, he just stood there and stared. For ages. And for a while I thought he was going to cry, but then his face just… turned to stone." Tears clogged her voice again. "And he t—he told me he was going to hunt down all the animals who'd d-done it. Who'd killed them." She wiped tears off of both cheeks and turned to face Trowa, red-eyed. "I couldn't see anything in him I recognized in that moment. Quatre was gone, do you understand? And all that was left was this… demon, wearing my little brother's face. He is not even seventeen years old and it still feels like he's a baby, but I didn't doubt for a second that he meant what he said. He is going to kill people."

Trowa didn't doubt it either, but he'd already witnessed firsthand that Quatre was capable of killing people. What chilled him was the fact that Quatre had never seemed to take it personally before. There hadn't been anger and pain behind it; he was a soldier and that was just his job. He couldn't really picture Quatre in a rage. The more he considered the idea, the less he ever wanted to see it. Rashid had been right, Quatre was the proverbial loose cannon right now. "I think maybe I can stop him," Trowa ventured, although truthfully he didn't know what he could possibly do, "but first I have to be able to find him. I don't know where he is and neither do the Maganacs."

"He went back home and stayed with our stepmother and Rana and Laila for a week, and then that weird music teacher showed up again and he packed a bag and left. Nobody's heard from him since."

This was another dead end, Trowa realized in defeat. He slumped over Nadia's kitchen table, digging both hands into his hair and staring at the tablecloth. "I've tried every trick I know to turn up some trace of him, and the closest I've gotten aside from you is chasing down a lead from the Maganacs near Riyadh that was already two weeks cold. I don't know what else I can try at this point."

"I said nobody's heard from him," said Nadia, sounding a little less upset (and a little more acerbic). "I didn't say I don't know where he is."

Trowa's head snapped up so fast his neck twinged.

"My husband did some digging on the music teacher a few years ago," she said, picking up her coffee cup again. "He might be Qatari; he definitely has contacts there." She took a sip of coffee. "I'm fairly certain he took Quatre to Doha."

Trowa sternly reminded himself that he wouldn't get to Qatar any faster if he jumped up from the table and left right now, and he stayed seated. He did lean in a little in his excitement. "Contacts?" he asked, the word coming out a little strained.

Nadia considered him for a moment, chewing on her lip, and then nodded to herself as if she'd just made up her mind about him. Trowa watched her put down her coffee and push her chair back, and he felt overwhelmed by fresh hope. "Wait here," she said, waving at him to stay put as she headed out of the kitchen. "I know where the documents are, from when my husband was looking." She paused in the doorway and looked back over her shoulder at him. "I'm probably a lunatic to entrust all this to you. You just showed up at my door half an hour ago. But you're going to go save my brother from himself and bring him home to us, aren't you?"

"Or die trying," said Trowa.

That wasn't at all what he'd intended to say, but it was the truth.