Recast Steel: Succession

by Niko Nightwind

If history is an endless waltz of war, peace, and revolution, here comes the final part. That said, Marie doesn't agree with the theory - life is more of an improvised rubato, and that's only when people bother to listen. The finale of Recast Steel.

3. Stepping Up

oOo

---

Chapter Three

Stepping Up

---

Coping mechanisms can be as varied as the rainbow, and rising to the occasion looks different for everyone. Sometimes it's social… but occasionally it can be… explosive.

---

oOo

---

*squeals* Less than a month between updates! Under three weeks, even! YES! I hope someone enjoys this as much as I did. A bit over 19k words this time. Thanks again to Emily for playing beta! She found some pretty bad typos and word replacements, seriously….

---

oOo

---

April 7th 199 – Tuesday – Paris, France

"Because, first of all? I am not insane."

Ardith couldn't help but grin, even as he half hid it behind one hand. "It can't be so bad as that," he protested.

"It is actually worse," Rachelle insisted, narrowing her eyes in warning as she picked her wineglass back up. "I'm already on more than one watch list, given my recent work. Even if I found the risks acceptable in an abstract sense – which I am not – I would never reach Italy. Removing me from public would draw too much of the wrong kind of attention, so they won't, but the Regime PR engine has already been making my life difficult in other ways."

He frowned; that was news. "How so?"

She gave a small sigh and settled a grumpy look on him. "Officially, there have been paperwork problems in two different visa offices and I, along with a large group of other citizens, are subject to a number of inconveniences until the completion of a full investigation into the originating problem, some kind of computer virus, is complete. Unofficially?" She gave him a small salute with her glass. "I appear to be on a no fly list."

Are you shitting me? "They're illegally withholding your visa?"

"Technically no, and I face no issues traveling my land routes, but in essence?" She wrinkled her nose. "I don't know if you're aware, but I was a reporter on scene for the Dijon incident. I snuck through the military perimeter looking for a scoop, and found the desolation instead. My videographer and I promptly left emptyhanded and made it out without ruffling any feathers, but evidently left enough in the way of tracks that the Regime still came down on my publisher after the fact. Nothing done, per se – but threats were leveled, and the Regime has proven a willingness to both follow through and be viciously petty about it." She shook her head. "I will not let Dorchet end my career, but I am also not going to antagonize her directly after such an overt warning. My writing is one thing, and I have enough momentum now, enough people following in my footsteps, that trying to silence me outright would only hurt the image the Regime wants shown. I'm willing to connive and manipulate, the way I did to get half my intel for the first Mitchell article. But if I get caught outright breaking a law, without any possibility of he said/she said? I will disappear."

Ardith grimaced. "I hadn't realized you were facing any kind of consequences," he admitted.

"Eh, some of it comes with the territory," she returned, her tone dismissive. "Most of the time, the risks I take are negligible. But there are lines that are not worth crossing, and many of those were redrawn shortly before the space campaign started last summer." She grimaced and took another sip of wine. "Some kind of new management, as best as anyone could tell. It looked ominous enough at first, but seemed to be mostly talk up until the Italian situation began. After that?" She made another face. "People did disappear for saying the wrong thing. Maybe they're fine now, but I don't know, and most of us coped by aiming for a different flavor of story until the psychosis cooled down."

He raised his brows. "Until the French spaceport went down."

Shel pointed a finger at him. "I was there looking for scandal, not military ops. I kept my skin attached because I dropped what I found and refused to pursue once I realized."

Huh. "And Mitchell?"

"Investigating his story through third party sources versus, say, going to get information straight from the horse's mouth are completely different ventures," she argued immediately. "There is a reason he released his pieces personally, on public venues. Any reporter attached to his direct responses would have faced jail time – and that only after surviving an extensive interview deep in the bowels of a Regime base." She shook her head. "Whatever public opinion or even the princess say, David Mitchell is a fugitive wanted for treason, and anyone known to associate with him is wanted for questioning."

He bit back the urge to sigh. While he had wondered just how some of those issues managed to get slid under the rug, he hadn't realized it was such an impasse. "I don't suppose you know anyone who might be willing to play daredevil if someone of repute offered protection?" he suggested.

"If I did, I wouldn't be willing to recommend them," Rachelle denied, though she looked more comfortable as she set her glass back down to pick up her fork again. "I know you well enough at this stage to know you need someone smart. Guts will only take you so far."

That was a decent point, but that didn't make it not annoying. "So your advice is literally to drop it?" he asked idly, only just holding back a sneer. This… didn't suit her.

She gave him a dirty look. "Please. My advice is to consider your timing – if it's as big as you say, waiting until the first blows are out in the open won't cost you much. Stop being such a drama queen."

"If our government is truly trying to suppress information and access to the level you've implied, then I have to make sure the evidence is compelling enough that it cannot be suppressed in the first wave," he argued, ire rising. Given everything with Italy, Cat was very worried about exactly that.

"There's something to be said for repetition," she pointed out dryly, though she wasn't looking at him now.

"With how much collateral of journalists mysteriously finding better places to be, including thin air?" he snapped back.

Shel slapped her fork back down on the table and glared at him. "Better to be very public then. If you're implying half of what I think you are? Maybe take a page from Mitchell on the advance wave. Once you have enough attention, it's hard to suppress."

Given the plan for orbital bombardment of the barricade at two points, he knew attention wasn't going to be the problem – directing it, however, was a concern. Given the parameters Jovi had brought back from Germany this afternoon, the press had seemed the best option, but now… "What about if it was anonymously released?" he suggested. "If no one claimed it, but the evidence stood for itself?"

She pursed her lips. "It would have to be loud," she decided. "And even then, it's a massive risk. Too many of us have a particular style, or the digital files themselves could be traced back to the model of camera used. As anonymous as everyone likes to think the world is, every piece of tech carries a fingerprint, and we all have habits we can't erase – not and still pull off professional level work, at least."

"How about amateur level?" he demanded.

Shel gave an irritable shrug. "It might work, but like I said, you need to be loud. Someone else can come along later for writing after your witnesses are out and the story is too big to shut down, but poignant visuals are not as easy to capture effectively as you might think." She sighed. "Photography is probably your best bet – something that can be edited in the post-processing stage if need be, but… people go to school and practice for years for that kind of on the spot skill." Rolling her eyes, she picked her fork back up and stabbed a piece of meat. "I suppose you could go for quantity and hope you get a lucky handful of shots, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth." She shook her head. "It's something I personally have very little skill at, and I've tried. The angles, the lighting, a hundred other things I don't even remember the name of…"

She grumbled some more, shoving a bite of food in her mouth, but Ardith suddenly found himself barely listening. Because he'd heard a lecture about that shit before. More than once.

Including just yesterday.

oOo

---

oOo

April 8th 199 – Wednesday – Berlin, Germany

No one immediately paid Jake any attention when he walked in the door of the studio. That was fine – he wasn't letting himself hesitate, but it still gave him a moment to gather himself up without an audience as he tugged off his hat and ruffled a hand through his hair to resettle it before jamming it in one pocket. Unwinding the scarf Relena had shoved in his hands when he headed out this morning, he considered the subtle pattern of it. Two shades of interlocking grey but otherwise plain, and as soft as any of the rest she'd tucked into his pockets since she'd first caught him wrapping a stray child up in his knits. Half gift, half camouflage this time, he mused. It was thoroughly nondescript, and he'd managed to skew his trail enough so it looked like he was in an entirely different city today, just in case Zechs wanted to raise a stink.

The sight of Jack's coat on the large rack just to the right of the door made him smile. Not that he had imagined he might have the wrong place, but… Well, his emotions were a little difficult to pin down at the moment. A little nervous, maybe, but mostly excited? There was only one other coat hanging there – the staff must use a different area.

The entry area was closeted, the way so many of these old buildings were – he could hear faint music coming from further within, but the hallways in between were tortuous. Hm. Not a place that relied on front door representation – that could mean a great deal, or very little. Don't stall. He shrugged out of his own coat and hung it next to Junior's, taking a moment to consider the fabric. His brother's jacket was quietly expensive – quality, but not in a way that stood out until you stepped close enough to pick up the wearer's scent. The black wool of the outer shell was finely woven, cut in a classic style that rarely fell out of favor, and the shimmer of the pale inner fabric suggested silk. Before he could overthink it, he stepped closer than strictly needed to loop his scarf over the hook, jostling into Junior's coat with the motion – and smirked.

Heavy. Not enough to be considered odd, especially once you noticed the quality materials – not as heavy as his own or Relena's. But more than it should be. Armored. Probably not enough to deflect a high-powered round… though it could be hard to tell, with some designs.

He pointedly did not look for a maker's mark, and stopped snooping altogether. It was enough to know that Junior was cautious. Given the hints he'd let slip so far, it would be bizarre if he didn't make some effort to protect himself – and in any case, he might have only done it out of comfort or habit.

Junior might have been too young to understand that their coats had always been armored against ballistics; it had certainly taken him by surprise after coming to Earth. The realization that not everyone wore an extra vest or tunic under their shirt to help deflect knives had been… singular. Though he'd been too much of an arrogant brat to do more than heckle Treize about it, intent on scorning everyone's stupidity instead of considering the toxicity of his own childhood.

Stop stalling. Turning away from the outerwear, he tucked his hands in his pockets and began making his way up the warren of a hallway.

The first doorway, on his left, was clearly an office; a wall of glass opened to an empty suite next. The music drew him onward, twisting him around past another two doors and a second empty suite. The juxtaposition between the cramped entry and hall and the wide open suites was almost surreal – the dark flooring was the only thing the two spaces had in common. I suppose it shows their priorities. This one had the same set of mirrors lining two walls, as well as a long handrail anchored along the longer of the two.

The music cut off and a laugh trickled back to him, and he was able to make out a few words in German: "-you… before?" It was a woman's voice, and she sounded amused.

He picked up his pace, heart starting to race.

Someone answered, the voice low, but it didn't carry well enough for him to make out the response.

"Mm, if you insist." She sounded dubious, now.

That deeper voice again, and this time he caught a hint of the words. "-else?"

She laughed again. "Of course. Anselm?"

Jake turned the corner just after the music started again, and saw Jack leaning against the glass between them. This was the largest room he'd seen so far by a long margin, and a brunette woman with long hair was currently spinning across the hardwood dance floor with a man that… definitely could not be his brother. He frowned, heading for the door, because…

There he was. Standing further in, arms crossed as he watched the couple intently.

Jack noticed him and waved before opening the door with a gesture to be quiet, even as his eyes danced. "Just wait a minute," he muttered in Japanese. "We've still got two hours before your appointment, and he's pretty focused."

Jake concentrated on keeping his breathing steady, on not staring, and instead focused back on the couple. "Looks like a foxtrot variant," he decided. A relatively slow one.

"You'd know better than me," Jack returned, shaking his head. "They started with something called a Viennese waltz, but they stopped bothering with names a while ago."

Okay…

Jack rolled his eyes, clearly reading his expression. "She likes to dance. Apparently he was exhausted and still drunk the morning I met him because they were clubbing all night, but she likes ballroom best."

He considered that, sneaking a glance at Junior – who somehow looked so much like the only picture they had from when he was nine that it felt like fate was laughing at him – before trying to clarify. "Which type of ballroom?" There were something like thirty, officially.

His father's expression turned wry. "Yeah, they asked him that. His answer was 'Yes.'"

He snorted out a laugh before he could help it.

"I think she didn't actually elaborate," Jack added. "And he won't ask, because he's trying to surprise her."

Jake grinned, looking back to his brother again. He had his hair longer than Jake had ever let his own get, but still short in back; intentional wild bedhead, rather than approaching a ponytail. His jeans were a dark blue and fairly close-fitting – whether that was a preferred style or just a measure so the details of his legs could be seen for this lesson was debatable. Not that denim was ideal for this kind of thing, but Jake doubted he'd be willing to wear something he didn't have free movement in, no matter how it looked. He was wearing a dark green knit shirt with long sleeves and handful of buttons in front, the top three undone, and the only jewelry he could see were three dark metal hoops, maybe titanium – two in the left earlobe, one in the right. As for body type… Jack had said it on Christmas, but it was still disconcerting, how close that was to looking in a mirror.

Don't stare. He considered the dancing couple again for a moment before turning a bemused look on his father. "So he's given himself three weeks to learn?" At least, he assumed this had something to do with the proposal timeline.

Jack made a face. "It's… No."

He opened his mouth to ask what the face was about then, but the female dancer spoke up first, pulling away from her partner. "Okay, let's try this again, yes? What do you think?"

"I like the footwork," Junior returned, also in German, as he stepped forward to take her hand and lead her through a spin. "It's different."

"It is," she agreed, smiling brightly as she raised her arm and settled a hand high on his shoulder, elbow up. "From the top, please."

So they started… and Jake blinked as the instructor started up that same delighted laugh he'd caught in the hall.

It was… nearly perfect. Or at least, it was a near exact copy of what the male instructor had been doing a moment ago.

Jack shook his head. "Yeah. She keeps accusing him of playing with her, but…"

"But this is the first time he's done it," Jake agreed, noticing the little things – a few glances in the mirrors, a foot placed just slightly off sync, a pivot that looked just a little unsteady… each improving if not outright disappearing on the next set.

"From what you've said about him as a baby, I'm not actually surprised," Jack muttered. "I knew he learned fast, but…"

Jake couldn't tear his eyes away, but he understood. "He… we knew he had training beyond what Senior pushed on us," he pointed out. "Fine-tuned control of his body. This probably isn't the biggest leap." It was still insane, but… Junior had always been able to copy him within a couple days of him trying out a new punch or parkour move. He just hadn't thought…

The instructor laughed again, entirely delighted, before announcing, "Double time."

"…So what I was trying to say," Jack announced after a few spins, "is that he doesn't need three weeks."

"Yeah, getting that," Jake mumbled, just… watching.

"I think he'll probably keep coming back to practice," his father added. "Especially since he's not planning anything choreographed; he said he wants to be able to adapt and combine them all to whatever seems fitting. But to learn?" He shook his head.

"Loosen up… yes… and follow." She let go of him and spun away for a moment before stepping sharply back in, leaning into his space in a move the definitely belonged to a tango. Instead of being startled, however, he mirrored in a smooth lean back that looked downright sensual, and….

Damn. Maybe it was a move they'd gone over before he got here, but that definitely looked natural in a way only professional dancers pulled off. She only laughed again.

Jake shook his head, grinning so broadly his face hurt. "Wow." Amarianna had told him he was a fast learner, but this was something else entirely.

"I'm cutting in," the male instructor announced, pulling her away in a fluid motion that Jake absolutely clocked his brother honing in on. "Try adding a little more flavor," he suggested, spinning her with flair, gesturing broadly and canting his hips before bringing her back… and almost immediately transferring her back to Odin to try the same move.

Jack shifted, and in his peripheral vision, Jake could see him shifting to look his way. "Don't think too hard about the lack of introduction," he muttered. "When he's focused, he's just…"

"It can wait," Jake agreed, not bothering to look away from the dancers. So much for not staring – but for this, he felt validated. "Are we here up until time for Arielle?"

"No, we've been here more than half an hour already; I think we've got something like fifteen minutes." He shifted his weight again. "I figured, maybe lunch next?" He huffed out a soft laugh. "What time did you wake up? It's not a short drive."

"I'm usually up at five," he pointed out. "I just skipped conditioning and had Vaughn and Hayden work up a diversion before I slipped out the back."

A soft snort. "A diversion, huh?"

"I have business near Stuttgart today," he announced in a conversational tone. "Which I handled the bulk of digitally already, and Nadiya might be confused about meeting Polanski as my stand-in, but when I put him in a suit, he makes a decent body double at fifty meters."

Jack made a thoughtful noise. "If you say so."

"At fifty meters," Jake emphasized, watching the increasingly complicated game of 'pass the girl' progress. "I'm not asking for a miracle."

"But you are still worried about…?"

"I mean, this is something of a test run," Jake hedged. "If anyone tries to corner them, I'll have a better idea of how pissed he still is."

"Or if he ever gets their vision checked."

"It's not meant to be a penultimate test," Jake groaned. "Just enough of a misdirect that he won't know which way I did go, if he's even still having me watched."

"You seem to think he is."

"I am trying to be circumspect," he grumbled out, fighting to not clench his jaw, "because certain words were said, even though both Lena and I are fairly sure they weren't meant." That particular vid call had been far harder to field than the lies about Treize. He still wasn't sure if having Relena next to him for it had made her brother's reactions better or worse. "He has to get over it eventually."

Jack snorted. "Does he know that?"

"He wasn't the only one with a few choice phrases," Jake muttered, crossing his arms. "Sometimes I forget just how mean Lena can get, but after that conversation? It's not going to be any time soon."

Sound shifted as the door opened again, and a woman in a neat blouse and flowing skirt came in, smiling conspiratorially at them. "Hallo." She considered the group on the floor for a moment with a bemused expression. "I thought Gabriele said they had a beginner for this time," she noted. "Are you walk-ins?"

"No, he's just like this," Jack returned in German. "There's a reason we're gawking."

"Oh my. Truly?"

Jake smirked as he shook his head, turning to focus back on them. "Aa." It was something else. He felt a little less ridiculous about being jealous of the kid when they were little. If any real amount of this was showing back then? He didn't really have the context: Marie had always been precocious, he didn't pay much attention to Willam, and Lyle was only eight months old. But given the evidence?

Even if it wasn't really deserved, because what the hell had their childhood really been? He couldn't help but feel proud of the kid anyway. All grown up and still making me look bad. Ah well. What else are little brothers for?

And sometime soon, they'd actually, like… talk. Over lunch, apparently. He could work with that.

Junior finished copying some kind of convoluted method of spinning Gabriele around his back for the second time, laughing as he passed her back – then suddenly froze, staring back at them. A moment later he was striding their way, holding out an imperious hand, eyes smoldering. "No phones," he ordered, the words coming out in English.

Jake twisted to see… shit, the newcomer had apparently started filming and he'd been too damn awestruck to notice. She blinked wide eyes at him. "What?"

"Delete that," he demanded. "Now, or I'll litigate. I don't like being recorded."

"I…I– of course," she agreed, stuttering and tapping at the screen. "I- I'm sorry?" She looked genuinely bewildered. "I just… It looked so good, I thought…" She swallowed, and read the cue in his still outstretched hand. "Here, check. It's gone."

He took it. "Do you automatically upload anywhere?"

"Ah, at- At the end of the day? Not-"

"I'll just clear your cache, then," he announced, swiping through different windows quickly. "To be sure."

"I… okay?" She leaned around him to shoot her coworkers a bewildered look, which only got raised hands to either side in a classic 'beats me.' They also didn't look surprised, however. "Just… can I ask why?" She shrunk a little when he focused on her again, but evidently felt strongly enough about this to hold her ground. "It was beautiful," she insisted. "Why wouldn't you want anyone to see?"

Odin appeared to consider that moment before smirking in a darkly mischievous way and offering her phone back to her. "Keep it to yourself?"

Her eyes went big again and she actually leaned in, clasping both hands around her phone in s posture reminiscent of prayer. "Absolutely!" she insisted in a loud whisper.

"I am secretly famous."

Jake bit back a hysterical giggle.

She blinked again. "You are?"

"Very," his brother assured. "But it's messy. I don't like dealing with it."

Yeah, because his version of fame apparently involved people trying to shoot him. If that wasn't 'messy' Jake didn't know what qualified.

"Oh." She looked almost let down for a moment – but then she recovered, and actually seemed excited now. "You can count on me. I won't say a word."

Don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh…

And then, of course, she turned eyes on them. "Are you…?"

"Very," Jake reassured her, overriding Jack's 'No' as he painted on his most charming smile.

A bright spark of amusement lit up Junior's eyes as they met gazes, before he turned back to his teachers. "Day after tomorrow?"

"It's on the books," Gabrielle returned in lightly accented English before giving him an arch look. "I speak this too, you know. Is it your first language?"

He started to shrug, then stopped… and looked back at Jake. "Is it?"

Eh… How to explain this? "Your first word was in Japanese," he hedged. "But your toddler talk was a mash of at least six languages that we couldn't get you to stop interweaving until the Christmas after you turned three, when you just… quit talking altogether for two months. After…" He shrugged. "It was usually English, after that? And maybe a third or half English before."

Jack had shown up in April of 183… and half of his initial irritation with the man had been because Junior had responded by retreating back into barely talking again. Though to be fair, he hadn't said a word to Senior since before Christmas, so…

That had been… pretty alarming, looking back. Jack had probably only taken so long to freak out about it because it took a few months of forced interaction before he had enough context to recognize a veritable parade of red flags.

Ugh, and now he wanted to be mad at Jack for both trying to do something about it and also for not trying to fix it right off the bat. Stupid. His brain was stupid. Talk about ridiculous double standards.

Junior, meanwhile, just looked thoughtful as he offered his teacher a shrug. "I don't have a first language," he concluded. "We're in Germany. You spoke German first, so I went with it." He held a hand up in a half-assed, overly stoic sort of wave and promised, "Friday."

"For a man who literally speaks more languages than you can count, you're rather stingy with their use," Jack pointed out wryly as they made their way back to the front.

"Hn. Yeah," Odin agreed, twisting his head to watch Jake for a moment as he trailed just behind them.

He looked… there wasn't a question there, exactly. Or even an expectation. It probably should have felt awkward. Objectively he supposed it was terribly awkward.

It felt comfortable, though. And given his brother's barely there smile, the feeling was mutual.

Huh.

Jack scoffed. "Also, litigate? You?"

Junior's eyes danced as he turned back to their father, mischievous smirk returning. "Cat suggested it as a blanket threat that wouldn't draw too much attention," he admitted. "Mark agreed. I figured it was worth a try."

"It works," Jack agreed, though his tone was still dubious. "It's just not something you would do."

"Hn. That's fine. I've never been particularly good with threats anyway."

Jack's shoulders slumped, but he barreled onwards despite obvious trepidation. "Oh?"

"I lack follow-through," Odin agreed. "If I'm going to do something, I just do it. Talking about it is just intimidation or stalling." He tucked his hands in his pockets. "It doesn't make sense – why waste time and remove your advantage?" He tipped his head to one side in a considering way that immediately made Jake think of their uncle. "People expect it though, so it's not a bad diversion tactic."

Well, that wasn't nearly as bad as he'd expected. He was perfectly content to continue tiptoeing around the subject of the war for now, so-

"People always seem to think I mean it, though," Odin continued. "Well, not… It actually got… out of hand. With one person. But aside from her, people usually believed me. Looking back, I'm not sure why. I basically made it up as I went." He shook his head. "I wasn't even creative. I just said it, then turned around and did something else. Every time." Twisting to look at Jake again, he grinned before offering, "That seems like something I should have been called out on."

Right, so they were just skipping introductions and doing… this. Whatever this was. Sure. "You'd be surprised just what you can get away with by rocking on like you don't notice anyone questioning you," Jake suggested. "Especially on the more extreme scale – the weirder it is while you're still acting like it's just another Tuesday, the more people leave you alone." Treize had more than proven that principle, and he'd been known to abuse it a time or two himself. And, well… "Odin did sometimes pose as a traveling musician with a personal waffle iron."

…What the hell had that all been about anyway? Seriously?

That netted him a brighter grin, and this one was, again, almost a mirror of his own – and something of a gut punch. Damn. He…

It had been a long time. Had he just… forgotten what that looked like? It shouldn't have been a big deal, it was practically his own smile, but…

He swallowed down the part of him that wanted to wrap his arms around his head, huddle against this conveniently close wall, and scream. And it didn't even make any sense. What the hell did he even have to be upset about? It was a smile. Smiles were good.

I am completely fucking crazy.

"I feel like more people should have commented on the waffle iron," his brother agreed. "Could he even play the violin?"

Get your shit together. "I don't think so." Everything was fine. "At least, I never saw him use it as more than a prop."

"I think most people saw that he had children and just assumed you were picky eaters," Jack suggested. "Otherwise, I saw him restring the violin once, but I think that was just so it looked ready." He fell back slightly to bump shoulders with Jake. "Your mother never mentioned him playing."

"Hn. Cat says it's not a quick thing to learn," Odin concluded, looking back at them with a mildly curious expression – like he could tell something was off, but wasn't sure what.

Jack tried to fill the gap. "Do you think he's still annoyed about the piano?"

That almost devilish smirk came back. "I don't think he was annoyed, exactly."

Jake grasped the distraction with both hands. "Piano?"

Odin rolled his eyes, though the smirk was still in place. "I overworked my leg and had to stay off it for most of a week, and I got bored. So I looked up some videos on ShareView."

Jack barked out a laugh that was closer to a cackle as they reached their coats. "And by the time Cat swung by to check on him, he was playing something by Yann Tiersen."

I'm going to have to look that up, Jake decided, still feeling overwhelmed but… Slightly better?

"It felt good," Odin decided, eyes faraway. "It… suited. For my mood. Felt right." Then he shook his head, looking amused and conceited again. "The way he acted, you'd think I'd jumped straight into Marasy."

"Marasy is insane," Jack immediately refuted.

"I like Marasy," his brother argued, eyes shining as he stood up straighter. "He has good energy."

Jack turned a conspiratorial look on Jake. "So your brother taught himself piano last week."

"It's limited," Odin pointed out, reaching for his coat. "Only a few songs so far, and it's easier to watch a video than read music. But I can identify most of the notes by ear too, so." He shrugged, bumping into Jake's coat as he resettled his weight – and focusing on it for a long moment. "Huh." Then there was that wildly bright and broad grin again as he stepped back and started putting his arms through his sleeves. "It's literally a sliding scale of mathematically precise sounds. I've mastered worse layouts with far less feedback. I don't see why he got so flustered."

Given what he'd just watched Junior learn a few minutes ago, he wasn't entirely surprised. Especially if…

They'd been dodging the idea of MS experience, but despite dropping out, Jake was confirmed as a decent pilot, if not exceptional. And in a lot of ways… the core of the MS cockpit interface was a layered, three-dimensional version of a piano.

Don't think about it. His brother learned insanely fast and had always had a talent for languages – having an ear for music wasn't exactly a stretch. Though he was going to have to look up both of those artists – Composers? Was that the right word? – later.

"It usually takes years," Jack insisted.

"That's stupid."

Jake found himself laughing helplessly, because, okay… maybe what he'd said before wasn't so bad if the kid called everything stupid.

Jack rolled his eyes, hands out in a surrendering motion. "It's not, but I'm done defending it," he decided. "Where are we going for lunch?"

"I'll eat anything," Odin reminded him, settling his collar high and doing up a few buttons while Jake pulled his own jacket down.

"Yeah, but is there anything you want?"

"No."

Jack shook his head, looking back to Jake. "He's helpful," he noted. "How about you?"

Not something he wanted to think about. "I think there's a couple of places in the same neighborhood as the suite Arielle took over," he suggested. "We could head that way and see who has the shortest line."

"That works," Odin decided. "You have a car?"

He didn't even think about it before it just popped out. "No, I walked here from Munich in six hours."

Odin laughed. "You might have taken the train," he pointed out.

Point, he supposed. "Yeah, but I'm dodging my future in-law, so I borrowed someone else's car and bailed before he could figure out which way I went," he explained. No full, damning explanations just yet, while they tested the waters… but no reason to hide, exactly, either.

"Hm." He seemed to think about that for a moment, then shrugged. "We did walk," he admitted. "Is it far?"

He lives close, then. Which made sense, all things considered, but he still hadn't expected it. "Enough that walking might be a hassle," Jake decided. "Doable, though."

"Mm, you drive us, then." He gestured at him. "Is that Atelier's?"

Yeah, he'd thought that's what the grin had been about. "She's the best," he said by way of agreement, straightening the coat's lapels and doing up a couple buttons himself.

"So I was told," his brother agreed, looking thoughtful. "And Arielle?"

"For custom jewelry, absolutely," Jake agreed, opening up the door for everyone. "At least, on the higher end. And she likes a challenge too."

Odin considered that, looking thoughtful as he walked past him. "You do this often?"

"Eh, on and off throughout the years, but more often lately," he agreed. "I usually have to send out to L3 for her services, but she's Earth-based for the next couple of months to drum up more business." He smiled, thinking of Relena. "My Lena always wears something of hers, though I don't think she knows it." She certainly hadn't when it came to her locator necklace, and she didn't really care about designer labels in general.

Jack blinked at the way he'd shifted his cadence so 'my' and 'Lena' almost sounded like the same word, but Odin was facing away from them, so that was fine. Just extra insurance – they'd already touched on how 'Lena' was easy and common enough to use in public, and he planned to maintain that – but passive misdirection from 'Re-Lena' couldn't hurt.

Really, more than half the jewelry he'd given her was from Arielle, though less because any of it was exceptional and more because he liked her specialty work enough to give her patronage in the off times too. Most of the trinkets he'd picked up for Lena were on the generic, minimalist end.

His brother took the bait. "You're engaged?"

"Proposed in late February," he confirmed. "Though like I said, her brother's being an ass about it. We don't have a date set yet." They wanted something small and private, but it would be better to wait until both he was fully known to the public and the Accorded Nations were a little more settled.

Odin's eyes lit up, and his smile was more gentle this time. "I got ahead of myself and proposed February eleventh," he admitted.

Jake's brain… misfired. In his peripheral vision, he saw Jack stumble. "What?"

"She was very enthusiastic about the 'yes' but also said I needed to redo it," he continued, looking up at the clouds in an almost dreamlike fashion. "But we were both so busy last month out at Da Capo that I didn't have time to figure it out until now. There isn't even net access out there." He shook his head and looked back to Jake. "It can't be too big. I don't want her to have to take it off for work or risk breaking her hand when she punches someone. I don't know what else Jack told you."

"You didn't tell me you'd already proposed once," Jack announced, sounding aggrieved.

Odin blinked. "You asked if I knew for sure she'd say yes," he countered.

"I didn't-" Their father cut himself off with a groan, covering his face. "That's bad, Odin."

"She said yes," Odin repeated, tone almost like he was explaining something to a child.

He could either cut in or start laughing, so Jake chose the lesser of two evils. "It's really bad form," he explained. "Though it backs up your fast timeline, at least." Because they were already behind.

Better late than never, he supposed.

His brother rolled his eyes, jamming his hands in his pockets. "Obviously." He looked over the street. "Which car?"

Jake took the lead again, tapping the lock on his keys so the sedan lit up and honked once as a signal before tapping the unlock – he'd been able to get a close spot. "The brightest white metal you can get, a sinuous nontraditional design with a profile that won't extend past her second index knuckle, and she likes tanzanites more than diamonds," he summed up.

"I was thinking both, but the latter as accents," Odin agreed, taking a quick few steps to walk alongside him, leaving Jack to trail after. "There was a picture – with a triangular blue stone only partially wrapped in metal, and three small white ones to the side?"

He thought he remembered. "Asymmetric style?" he tried.

"Almost all the ones she would like are," his brother returned. "It's not quite right either, but it's closest?"

If he was remembering the right one, it at least fit the bill for the low profile demand. "Okay." Arielle was used to him showing up with sketches – he could go over a few ideas during lunch. He walked around the car to open the driver's side door. "Anything else?"

Odin held up one hand out in a stop gesture, then pointed at the juncture between his palm and ring finger. "Is there a reason no one ever puts a stone here?"

Jake blinked, momentarily thrown. "What?"

"I couldn't figure out if it was a logical issue or just fashion. And it would have to be very small to not limit movement. But if I could put a thin stone on this side, rectangular or a small series in a channel, it would catch light from both sides."

That… was possibly brilliant. "I have no idea," he admitted. Then he grinned, leaning against the roof of the car for a moment. "But Arielle is going to like you."

Odin raised a brow at him as he opened the passenger door and stepped in. "Is she going to give me shit about my timing too?"

"Everyone is going to give you shit about that," Jack groused as he climbed in behind him.

"For the rest of your life," Jake agreed.

Odin just snorted. "Figures."

oOo

---

oOo

Szczecin, Poland

"But, like… Don't we already know the answer?"

Felix shook his head – though to be fair, he was smiling and in general seemed very into this discussion despite it sounding half like an argument to Nick. "We have a theory we like for it, but until we gather more supporting evidence, all we have is odd coincidence and Cat's math. It's all circumstantial." He held up a finger. "Not to mention, even if we're right? Your brother's bitchfest about Occam's razor isn't wrong. Even if some of this is related to the doll theory, it might hold more gems – whether intentionally hidden or incidental because of how it was wound through other people's dirty business."

"And either way, Relena benefits from this at least as much as we do," the girl decided, her face lighting up as something clicked. "Which is good in the long run."

"Exactly," Felix agreed. "And with the task force the Accorded Nations has been putting together to investigate corruption, she's going to have far more resources to put to this – the walls we've hit on Sharpman's suspicions might not affect her at all, even without the whole…" He made one of Cat's gestures for 'tricky/interesting.' "Soleil thing."

"Because we're sure she's at least talking to them, if not working with them," Audi suggested with a nod.

"Mm… she's something with them that's not entirely hostile, but beyond that, the waters are still murky," Felix countered. "Even if she was willing to tell us outright, we can't take it entirely at face value without a lot of evidence behind it, and even then… Leverage can be applied in a lot of different ways, and the princess has become quite the politician. No matter how we look at it, she's deftly lying with great skill to someone in this mix for us to have reached the balance we're at, and it's daunting. I don't blame Razo for any of it, but he put us in an incredibly vulnerable position – given what she knows, Relena holds an insane amount of power over us. It's an uncomfortable stalemate at best." He sighed, relaxing his shoulders somewhat. "But instead of using any of it, she's been interweaving her work with us deeply enough that she would share some of the fallout should our Cambyses history come to light and otherwise biding her time while hinting that she wants more from us."

Nick bit his lip. "She's been really vocal about re-integrating ex-Cambyses men," he pointed out hesitantly, not sure if he was really… invited to this debate, but also not wanting to stay to one side.

"Both publicly and to our faces," Felix agreed, flashing him a grin. "And she's been putting her money where her mouth is on all counts, calling out those that try to step around the issue even as she falls down like the hammer of God on the people who need full rehabilitation." He shook his head. "And she's been objective with it – some of those guys probably won't ever make it back to the general population, because they're twisted and it's not coming undone." He made a conciliatory motion. "So in a lot of ways, having Jack around is ideal, because he's a second opinion on this basically being our community service instead of the official programs. Though we're also tracking everything… I mean, Anne is great, and I'm glad we have her, not to mention the couple therapists that Sally staffs, but if we ever go fully public, we're going to want to cover our asses, you know? Prove that we're not letting someone nasty slip through."

Nick stared at him. "That's… something you're thinking about?"

"It was always a consideration, but it became a goal we prepared against as soon as we learned Razo outed us," Felix confirmed, his eyes steady. "But it's not an option for Cat unless things change dramatically, or for Odin or Adam. So it's something we'd rather avoid, because as is, they'd have to formally separate before it happened to keep things on an even keel." He grimaced. "And the more public good we do as Rubato, the more stable that vision is, the easier it'll all go over. If we time it right, it'll both look like a natural conclusion everyone ought to have considered from the start and a good thing."

What the everloving fuck. "And you think you can swing this 'timing?'" Nick asked dubiously.

Felix took a moment to think before answering. "A lot of it is going to depend on Relena," he decided. "And the state of the government and public opinion, and… Yes? Mark and Cat both think it's doable, especially if we get the princess on board." He scrunched his nose. "It's the getting on board part that's tricky. Now that she's separated from the Regime we're… Well, we're in the middle of the first step. We share a little, and see what she shares back, and meanwhile just… see where it goes." He rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair to twirl a pen and grin at them both. "I've lost track of how many contingency plans are in place if any of it goes to crap, but Cat says he'd be cool just straight-talking with Relena if he could catch her without an audience."

Nick made a face. "She seems to have a good head on her shoulders," he hedged. "But that seems like a bit of a leap, since all of you are what's on the line." Crazy mutant powers or not, even with good odds…

They weren't supposed to have to gamble like that anymore. The idea made him sick.

"Mm, Odin says the same thing, basically," Audi cut in. "That if it was just her, this would be easy – but Kay checked out her security once back when it was still pretty basic and got spooked, and no one wants an incident. So the slow route is best? At least for now." She made a face. "Though it gets way weirder with the whole Miller thing. No one can figure out what exactly Odin's brother does, and Jack goes in and out of her big compound like it's no big deal when Jovi says it's really not, so, like… family drama, or something." She rolled her eyes. "Odin is so bad at family drama, I swear. If it weren't for everyone else on the line, I think he might've told his dad his old name by now just to get it over with, but… He's also gotten weirdly avoidant about all that lately? And other stuff. I was cooking the other night and in the middle of us all hanging out he suddenly went dead-eyed and shuffled me away from the stove so he could finish it himself – like, with no explanation whatsoever. He literally wouldn't talk or meet anyone's eyes for almost fifteen minutes. I thought Jack was going to have a stroke."

Nick blinked, trying to catch even half the context there, but Felix was narrowing his eyes. "That sounds like a flashback," he murmured, voice quiet.

Audi flipped out her hands in aggravation. "Over sesame chicken?!"

Oh. Oh. "Were you holding a knife?" Nick suggested. Given how much she seemed to talk with her hands… if she'd been talking while cooking, she might have been waving it around.

She pointed an accusatory finger at him. "I have knives all the time, he taught me, so stop it. But no. Tongs." Withdrawing the finger in his face, she clenched her hand like she was squeezing the grip to clack the spades together on a set of cooking tongs. "You know?"

…Yeah, that made no sense to him either. "What were you talking about?" he tried instead.

"I'm shutting this down," Felix declared, eyes hooded. "It's rude to speculate. Let it go."

The girl huffed out a breath. "Yeah, okay." She rolled her eyes. "But even without him doing that kind of thing, it's… Like, I thought him going to space for so long with his lady would help him chill out? But he's worse. I mean, he's great sometimes, but there's this underlying mood too, so… I don't know."

Felix grimaced. "He came back hurt, didn't he?"

"I thought it was that at first too, and it was, but there's something else now that he's better, and I can't figure it out," she grumbled.

He still had never met this guy and Felix had already tried to shut down the conversation, but Cat clearly looked up to him and Nick was mostly focused on not thinking about the fact that he was talking to a female. So instead of taking time to consider it, he pointed out, "It could be unrelated. If he's getting triggered more often, it could just be that bleeding into everything else."

Audi slumped. "I wish he'd talk to Anne."

Felix frowned. "He's not?"

She made a face. "She's Moira's daughter, so no, because he's even weirder about this kind of thing with her than he is Jack. He just pretends it's not there at all."

"He told me he's talked to someone about his crap," Felix argued. "I asked him, when I was trying to figure mine out." He shook his head. "He's so damn steady all the time that Cat leans on him, I thought… Who does he see?"

She squeezed her eyes shut, and Nick's stomach flipped as he realized she looked about to cry. "My mom, but they haven't… she went missing a while ago, and they haven't really talked since last spring. I…" She pressed her hands over her face and shuddered. "She said I needed to watch out for… But then it never happened until now, and now I don't know, and I can't call her. She said I needed to call or get him home again if he ever…" She let out a short sob.

Nick was grateful for the incredulous look at his continued presence followed by a dismissive gesture that Felix sent his way. It made him feel less terrible for bailing as the other man wrapped his arms around the girl – maybe a teenager, but truthfully just a child – and started talking in a low voice.

He'd made it through the conversation without freaking out. That was pretty good, honestly. Time to find someone else to bother. Maybe Mark was also working on the information angle? He wouldn't mind continuing that conversation, for all that it felt like he was missing something.

"I'm not surprised," Mark complained, leaning forward with his hands pressed against the table for balance. "But I disagree that it needs to be pretty, at least for the first wave – that's only meant as a proof for the princess, not the general public."

"And if they try to silence it at that point?" Cat argued.

"Then we still have something and it's too big of an issue to fully stomp out anyway – it won't be as big, but so what? The job still gets done."

"If they can claim we're spoofing photos from somewhere in the eastern states and generate enough doubt, then they can silence it. If we don't have something already circulating when Sally breaks the border, they can claim it's Insurgence propaganda."

"Technically, it is propaganda. Truth-telling doesn't make it any less so."

"Relena wants something already circulating before the border crashes," Jovi interjected. "It makes for better proof of foul play, and it'll make it easier for her to sweep in afterwards and make it stick. We just need enough volume and key shots to make it impossible to drown."

"And we don't have a professional willing to risk health and family to drop in, which puts us back to whatever candid shots we can get," Mark finished, shaking his head. "I don't know how well it will work, but fine. Has Adam ever taken any pictures beyond that damn heroin throne?"

Cat grinned. "Vaska took those."

"And he's still in Utah," Mark grumbled. "I'll reiterate – has Adam ever taken any photos? Because so far as I'm aware, he and Hilde are the only ones with a half decent camera in there, and we've already seen her attempts."

"I feel like I'm interrupting," Nick announced, leaning back against the doorjamb. "But it also sounds like maybe I should?"

Ardith, who he hadn't seen initially, started theatrically pointing at him repeatedly.

Mark just narrowed his eyes, standing upright and crossing his arms. "We're talking about Italy," he explained dismissively. "Scat."

"Do you want to go to Italy?" Ardith tried.

"He doesn't even want to touch his phone's camera function," Mark snapped, side-eying the other man. "Lay off."

"But-"

"We do not manipulate our friends for fun and profit, Ardith. We've been over this. Button your damn fly and go play somewhere else."

Nick's heart started to race. "You need a war zone photographer," he summed up.

Mark met his eyes, gaze serious. "I'd like one," he countered. "'Need' is a bit much. Or at least, Relena thinks we need one, but since she's not offering any suggestions, she can just deal."

"It would be ideal," Cat explained. "She hasn't even gotten through what we gave her on Sharpman, but she's already wary of what Dorchet is willing to do, and she isn't exactly wrong. It would take some muscle, but if they caught it early enough, the Regime could find enough avenues of blame to shirk responsibility on this if they have time and reasonable doubt." He listed his chin to one side in a proud sort of motion. "She wants to nail them to the wall."

"I could get you this really nice, top of the line-"

Mark shoved off the table harshly enough the rattle it, and Ardith bolted.

On some level, he appreciated that. But at the same time… Something in his chest felt warm. "I quit because it felt like I couldn't do anything worthwhile with it," he admitted, waiting for Mark to catch his eyes again. "Because I let myself fade out into madness without it. But…"

"You miss it," Cat announced quietly, after a long moment of silence.

Hearing it from outside himself made admitting it easier? "I do miss it," he agreed, looking down. He bit his lip for a moment, weighing it… the depression against the fear, the restlessness now versus… this. Not quite excitement, exactly, but… heavier?

No one tried to rush him as he turned it over a few more times, and he really appreciated that. At the same time, though? "I want to know more," he decided. It had always just been about art, before, but… Maybe his solution didn't have to be so cut and dry. So black and white. Maybe…

"Tell me more."

oOo

---

oOo

April 10th 199 – Friday – Turkmenistan

David let out a deep breath, feeling his shoulders slump. "Great." It was done. Not that the trail ended here, but these fuckers… he'd successfully avenged his team for that awful raid in Khiva, root and stem… and they'd gotten their books too, which would make the next part easier. "I need a shower."

Razo elbowed him before he could pivot and go to do just that. "Not until this clean-up is done," he reminded him, still sounding… rough.

"Fine." He was hoping he could maybe skate that, but he hadn't really expected to get away with it either. That said – body disposal was a hell of a lot easier when you worked for a government-approved organization. Even with Jake handling all the Strike Force's financial needs the same as he'd arranged Treize's funding before Soleil's formation, some of the logistics fell short.

That said, at least in this scenario, it was more containing the mess and announcing where he'd left it – there were advantages to the bizarre sort of publicly acknowledged undercover agency position he'd laid claim to. The Regime had declared that they lacked the resources to chase him for now, but with his steady stream of updates posted online, the scavengers came running to check his intel whenever he left bait. More than half the time their chatter afterwards was even to his benefit, despite the government's official stance.

He still missed having official coroners. He suspected the coroners missed him too, at least on some level – the delays had to be making their lives harder.

It was nearly twenty minutes later when Razo spoke again. "I thought it would feel better. Catching up to them."

Zuko snorted. "Joke's on you, Charel. It'll be another week before you sleep better, if at all."

Not wrong, but still rude, David decided, taking the high road of keeping his mouth shut.

"That's terrible," Razo announced after a long moment. "Why did we fixate on this, then?"

"We got hit hard and ran out of good things to fixate on," Chanel explained, tone bland. "We made the most of it. It happens." She made a disgusted noise as something evidently splashed onto her, and dropped the corpse she'd been dragging to kick it in the ribs, hard. "Fuck it. Sir, I could really use a morale boost."

He grinned, appreciating the direct approach. "I'm supposed to offer it on command?" he protested.

"Now, sir."

He laughed a little at that before relenting – he did appreciate the attitude, after all, so long as she didn't offer it on the field. "You all get three days furlough while I try to make something useful from these guys' books."

"Only one extra day?" Ivan returned skeptically.

"I'm not impressed," Razo agreed.

"Auerbach asked for morale boosting," Zuko added, dropping the arms of the body he'd claimed as he reached the room they'd decided on. "That barely exceeds standard."

Of course they wanted to razz him. "You're getting three days," David continued, "because I don't want us to be in the middle of something when shit hits the fan out west and we can make a timely appeal to both Relena and the public at large."

Chanel stood up straight. "Say that again?"

He just smirked. "I have it on good authority that an infamous military body is going to throw egg on the Regime's face before the week is out," he explained. "And I don't want to miss the show." Dropping his own body next to Strozzi's, he added, "If it's even half as big as I've been promised, we've got our in to be back under official auspices."

Zechs had had more than two months to cool down while David kept his word and did exactly what he'd said he was going to do instead of causing trouble. He'd arguably cleared out the worst of the problems to be had – or at least, he would once he finished this last trail. Relena had progressed her Accords far enough that, especially with the Regime facing bad fallout from the Italian situation, the Accords would like to hold a claim on the personal military force – albeit, a comparatively rather small one. And with Relena at the helm, even if he was still pissed about the engagement, Zechs would see the advantage of her bringing their rogues back under control – of pulling them back under a loyal banner, instead of leaving them as wildcards ready to either raise hell or piss off their neighbors to the east.

Before this last message in the drop spot from Jake, he'd thought he would have to leverage a situation out here to start his plea to the Accorded Nations. But the Insurgence pushing on Italy? Whatever the missing details contained, that opportunity was practically gift-wrapped.

"And once we've entered negotiations," he continued, "we're no longer persona non grata. And we can stay somewhere nice for a week or two." 'Nice' being a relative term – they'd been sleeping in transport caravans and camping for the last two months. Decent beds alongside real bathrooms? That alone would be a massive step up.

Then again, Jake might spring them for something actually nice. It would probably depend on availability, though. He had over ten thousand people to house – he wasn't going to ask for a miracle.

Zuko cackled, heading back to grab another – they'd dismissed most of the grunts before wrap-up, so it was just the set of them for this part. "I'll drink to that!"

"Drink what?" Razo called after him, one brow quirked. "We ran out of booze two weeks ago and these guys were dry!"

Jake paying for extra care packages and then intentionally misdirecting them from the quotas coming out of various agricultural hubs really only covered the basics. Despite being in ex-Soviet territory, the refugees didn't get an alcohol ration, so neither did they. What alcohol they did have since the end of January had been acquired from the bastards they raided.

"Whatever I pick up once I'm not worried about being arrested on sight!"

I am really looking forward to not living on the lam, David decided, following after Strozzi. He had too many responsibilities to make anything fun out of it.

oOo

---

oOo

Amsterdam, Netherlands

"And if I wanted a slice of that pie?"

"You'd have to agree to the end goals to put the effort in, continually," Duo asserted, meeting her eyes firmly. "If you crap out halfway, you won't like how I handle it." Neither would he, but if she didn't understand him well enough by now to realize that without him saying it, then there was no point to this talk.

Cadence tipped her head, her gaze – as usual – a touch unnerving. Not that she had anything on Heero, but- "Define these end goals for me."

He gave her one of his trademark grins. "Essentially? Extinction. Retirement. A place with no need for gang patrol."

She raised a brow at him. "That's asking a bit much, in Tiger territory."

That wasn't a no. "Then it doesn't start in Tiger," he returned. He hadn't expected it to, really. "The Quarter is the start, a proof of concept – it doesn't have to extend directly." In fact, it would likely be better if it didn't – what was left of Tiger separated Devil and Cadence territory, but two islands slowly stretching to meet in the middle would likely be more stable. "It might never reach Beale or Shadow," he added. "I'm not trying to take on the city as a whole, and there's history, there. But you have to start somewhere."

The history of the Amsterdam slums and their associated gangs was convoluted – while the sector now known as the Devil's Quarter had never been a great neighborhood, it hadn't fallen under gang influence until late in the war. In some ways, that had been what led to the fast descent the Devils described – more than a few groups had risen over the course of the war as displaced soldiers and deserters tried to carve out a piece of the unclaimed real estate, but largely cannibalized each other. By the time Duo had arrived in September, the worst of the turmoil had settled, leaving the Slingers and Devils at an impasse.

He wasn't sure exactly when people had started calling it the Quarter, but he thought he'd been around by then? It hadn't been 'the Devil's Quarter' until after the riot.

The Slingers had been an amalgam sort of beast that had survived five or more rebirths before Cal took them over and branded them as such – Adelheid thought the first iteration tracked back October of 195, when Treize told Romefeller to go fuck themselves over the doll issue and desertion hit an all-time high. Or at least, the highest anyone had seen yet – nothing held a candle to Libra's fallout. None of the original members from the first gang had been there by the time Duo took them down, but there had been at least two from their first run, neither of which included Cal. The Devils had pulled together in April, but had been left alone until July, when the Slingers realized there might be something worth taking from them. Beale had a similar history, excepting that they rose up from veteran refugees rabbiting from the chaos of Operation Daybreak – the rats who had known their bullshit with the Alliance wouldn't pass OZ's muster. If not for the mess of the months that came after, Tiger or Shadow probably would have absorbed them before they really came into their own.

But after the shitstorm that followed Daybreak, there had been the Treize Splinters, and after that, the World Nation, then after that Libra. The world hadn't really gotten a chance to get its pants on until after the Fall, and then it had had to limp along with three slugs in one leg – the results, predictably, hadn't impressed anyone. There was a reason he'd taken up the name Chaos when he arrived – it had become just about the only predictable thing about life in Amsterdam.

Cadence was like the Devils – a locally bred reactionary group that formed up post-Fall. The difference between the groups boiled down to real estate. The Quarter had been a barren place no one much wanted to bother with that was starting to suffer from a power vacuum, but Cadence came into being on the border between Tiger and Shadow – two full-fledged syndicates that had been taking bites out of each other for decades. She'd somehow carved out a space for herself between them by playing to the vanity and ugly wants of each, angling them against each other while simultaneously chewing through the smaller opportunists that tried to harry her same targets – and then after Beale targeted her family the December before last…

Dam Square, and therefore the riot and the majority of its aftermath, was firmly in the Devil's Quarter. The three-way gang war Beale had kicked off that morning by murdering Cadence's little brother had spilled in somewhat, but only in so much as the chaos of the disaster proved ample hunting grounds. As devastated as the Quarter had been by the Dam Square Riot, Cadence had spent that day wreaking vengeance and otherwise murdering her way through four distinct gangs in a different sector of the city. By the end of it, Beale was under new management that took no beef with her and had a far more stable border than before, the two smaller gangs he didn't actually remember the name of now were gone from memory, and Tiger, once the oldest power of the city's underbelly, was gone.

While most would consider that move a pure power grab, however, she had shown a cunning amount of practicality by pulling back to claim only a mildly expanded territory that she could control with ease. One of her lieutenants – an ex-lover turned best friend if rumor spoke true – had split off to pick up the remaining pieces of Tiger. With the old syndicate's still intact framework of established businesses, deals, and auxiliary members, they had split the difference and turned Tiger into a cadet branch of Cadence able to look after its own needs – much like Duo had chosen to handle the influx of developing crews in the wake of the riot. And it had, despite all pressures internal and external, remained stable. That spoke volumes.

He'd always mocked Cal for renaming his gang after himself. But Cadence? She had the grit to back it up. And to be honest, he wasn't entirely sure if that was truly her name, or if everyone had started calling her that as a title and she'd decided against correcting them. She had a poker face to sweep a championship and a tendency to lean into a near maniacal persona that few could read fact or reality from, and she ran a tight ship. If something fell into her territory, she protected it fiercely, and she didn't tolerate bullshit. She creeped him out sometimes, but… He trusted her integrity in a gut-check sort of way he had a hard time putting to words. And she'd always been impressed with him when they met, never read too much or too little into what he said; just kept it simple, practical. As vicious as he knew she could get, she was direct and down to earth. A kindred spirit.

Sometimes he wondered if she suspected just how close he'd come to approaching her instead of Luc. If she could see it in him, somehow. Because he might have decided to try the Devils first, but if Luc had turned him away when he first came to the city?

Cadence would have been his next stop.

He'd gone to the Devils because they were less organized – less business, more family. More crew. But Cadence had a similar backstory, of a local trying to scrape the remains of a neighborhood together in the wake of the Fall. But instead of holding onto those she considered most dear and making ends meet from there, she'd chosen to impose order onto chaos – a more proactive approach. The business end had been necessary in the part of town that stood between two old syndicates; treating with older powers meant you had to bring something to the table in order to survive at all.

He wondered sometimes, just what it had taken to make Shadow stay put with the shift in powers after the riot. Whether another war had waged largely unseen by those not involved, or if it was threats and blackmail, alliances no one knew about, or strictly a business arrangement of some kind. For a while people had wondered if he hadn't somehow wrecked Shadow too and was now controlling both of the old mafias, but there had been too many points of tension and mixed trade in the year and a half since for that to hold water. There were too many currents there for the situation to be so simple – but whatever the situation, it was stable enough to broker a deal with.

His wants didn't entirely line up with Cadence – she liked control too much for him to get comfortable with her. But given where she lived, she probably needed to like it in order to have survived, let alone thrive as she had. And whatever his distaste, the Devils post-riot were more or less exactly what her gang had been before it, and now…

She was interested. She hadn't scoffed or scorned at his explanation – was just watching him to see if he had meant it. To see if he would follow through. Because in Cadence's book, results mattered a world more than intent.

"If the Devil's Quarter fully gentrifies," he continued, not looking away, "and Cadence follows the same example, with the same colonial tech core – the influence will spread and begin smothering the rest. If that keeps up, then the cores will spread again. And again."

Done right… it would take a while, but theoretically, between this and everything Relena wash pushing through on the governmental level? They might eventually run out of slum. And wouldn't that be something?

Maybe Quatre would even be right, and by then Relena would have enough power that she would dissolve the bounty on his head. If not… Well…

He didn't want to leave Amsterdam. It was home. He had never fought for anything so hard as he had this city, had never loved a place like this once, not even Maxwell Church. It had given him something he hadn't even understood he was looking for, and he had nurtured it and its people in turn, trying to given back more than he had taken. Everything he loved about his life had only come to him because he had made this his home. But as hard as he'd fought it, the world refused to stop growing on him… and if he and Melissa had to pack up Rina and the kids, they could do it and know the others would be okay. Know that if they weren't, any Devil could ask for help and be given it, regardless of circumstances. Even if he couldn't, that was just how Heero fucking rolled, and you know… Maybe he'd questioned a lot of his life choices, but dragging that asshole home to Howard had turned out to be one of the better ones.

"I don't know if your dream is possible," Cadence eventually decided. "But I'm interested. If we fall short, we can find a way to make up the difference later."

That was fair – he still wasn't entirely sure he believed it either. He'd just seen crazier shit before, and kept having people he trusted insist that this was how it worked. "Then it's probably easiest to start with a map."

oOo

---

oOo

Merano, Italy

"It's still uploading?"

The tall twenty something didn't raise his head from the tablet he was directing a stylus over. "The resolution I was using was unwieldy at best, and without any loss of fidelity, the files are large," he offered. "I'm also not high enough priority to kill your bandwidth over."

Hilde came close enough to see that yes, he was editing a photo – something to do with the color, maybe? "And you keep editing."

"It can't hurt," he agreed. "The baseline shots are mostly through, though." Shaking his head, he stood and flipped the attached cover over his tablet screen, resettling the weight of his camera bag on his shoulder. "The urban set should be good, though I'll forward any updates. Will Adam be able to go with me to that farm, tomorrow?"

He still wasn't looking at her, which frankly put her back up… but since he did it to just about anyone, she tried to keep her temper in check. "I'd rather send you with Valencia and René." They had effectively cleared Merano of the worst offenders in short order, or at least made enough noise that they'd hide until the worst of this mess was over with, but they only had two days to finish prepping for the drop.

The photographer stilled, shoulders stiffening as he tucked the tablet into a flap of his satchel. "Why?"

"Because Adam is overkill for sightseeing, and I could make better use of him elsewhere." She had the people now to clear at least one if not two more towns nearby, so long as she arranged it right and they didn't hit major snags. The more ready they were…

The break in the border would only be the start, especially since Sally didn't think they could clear more than a ten mile window. Even if everything went according to plan and people could start walking out unaccosted, this place was going to become an utter shitstorm during the transition. The calmer the area around the new entry point, the less lives would be lost.

He let out a dry, almost wrecked sounding laugh that didn't sound funny at all. "Sightseeing, huh?"

She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean." The farm he'd talked about, or at least one of the ones they wanted proof of, had been the site of a goddamn massacre – one no one had known about until a week after the bodies were left to rot. Or did he mean the one where- "Poor choice of words," she offered by way of apology. She wasn't…

She wasn't used to it, exactly. Not really. But it wasn't… As hard? As it used to be?

…Yeah, okay, she was desensitized as shit and should maybe quit while she was ahead.

He finally looked at her then, grey eyes morose. "I went sightseeing my last spring break too," he told her.

This felt like a trap. "Yeah?"

He nodded, face melancholy, even as a vindictive light lit his eyes. "Yeah. Thought I'd even try and do some good while I was at it. Tagged along with one of those church groups to help build shelters for refugees. My mom gave me shit for it; burned up most of my savings on the plane ticket."

She was sensing a hell of a 'but.' "How'd that go?"

"I got kidnapped and indoctrinated into a cult that followed a strict survival of the fittest code," he explained blandly. "Didn't make it back out until last summer, over two years later."

Ah shit. He was one of those.

"I am here, on my goddamn spring break again," he continued, "to do something important. Because I'm the only one anyone knew who can be anonymous and can handle this shit, and because it is important. But I don't know any of you, and this place is fucking crazy in a way that's giving me nightmares, and the only one of you that Cat knows and thinks of as an equal is Adam. So if you want the poignant rural nightmare exposé before anyone else has a chance to destroy any proof it ever happened, I need someone I believe will get me out to come with me."

Hilde grimaced. "Fine." Spoiled fucking brat, but fine. What else was new when it came to spoiled rich boy Winner? It figured his people were just as fussy.

Not that Quatre was exactly… Well. That whole Robby Stanton reveal was a gut punch. Realistically, she'd never actually met the Winner heir – Duo seemed to think he was cool, so…

…I am in roaring bitch mode today, aren't I? Great. That was just… super great. Fuck it. "Sorry. All anyone bothered to tell me was that you were here for pictures." They'd probably said more than that, but she hadn't really cared – you won some, you lost some. He'd clearly been able to walk and talk and not melt down over stupid shit, so she'd just… her attention had been elsewhere.

I really need that vacation. She was starting to think that need might not just be about her, either.

Odin's pool had better be totally badass.

The guy –Abby something? – relaxed a little, shoulders losing their line of tension. "It's… fine. I'm not exactly at my best either." He sighed, shifting his weight. "I wanted to come, I'm glad to be here, just… I'm not totally okay either."

"That's fair," she reassured him, trying to ease off a little. In for a penny… "Thanks for coming despite, you know… everything. I've only gotten the short version, but the lot of you went through some utter shit." She made a face. "Duo always used to describe Quatre as 'the nice one' you know? I can't even imagine."

He gave her a dubious look.

"Okay, whatever, fine." It was a dumb thing to say – even if he had been sweetest of them – which was debatable – he was still one of the gundam pilots. They weren't exactly pushovers, and… Well, considering the competition, it probably wouldn't be all that hard to be the sweetest. Adam and Heero were utter trolls, Duo was fucking bipolar sometimes, and she had heard stories about Wufei.

Whatever.

"…Sure," he returned after too long a pause.

She scrambled for something else to say. "You're going to school somewhere, then?"

His look was incredulous. "I think I preferred the awkward silence."

She snorted out a laugh. "Oh, fuck you!"

"No, really. No reason to strain on my account. I can see it's costing you." At her renewed laugh, he smirked a little adding, "I'm not sure what, exactly, but it looks painful."

Okay, if this was one of Quatre's friends? He was either secretly as much of an asshole as the others, or he had a type.

oOo

---

oOo

April 13th 199 – Monday – Szczecin, Poland

Priya sighed when her phone rang, debating just ignoring it… but there was always a chance it was a lead. Probably not, but…

She'd narrowed Rubato founders down to five likely candidates. If she could just catch a damn break on another one…

She could call this a win if she could narrow it down to three possibilities.

It would be a lot easier if the fuckers would stop using shell identities and leaving her hanging about where the hell they really were half the time. At this point, she knew they had to be up to something shady purely because even in her family, no one honest layered on this much subterfuge.

If only all of them weren't doing it. And then introducing new variables to boot.

Groaning, she grabbed her phone… and blinked at the caller ID. What the hell? Feeling mildly alarmed, she hit the connect. "Hello?"

If this was another tourist on holiday trying to find a helpful number she was going to kill him for whatever he'd put her name under this time. Why the hell he even listed her as an emergency contact in the first place-

"Hey, Cous. Long time no see."

Well, at least it wasn't another false crisis because he'd dropped his phone in the ocean again. "Hey, Rhett," she greeted, leaning back into her chair. She was due for a break anyway. "You remembered to come up for air, huh?"

"You say that like I never do anything worthwhile," he returned in an easy drawl.

Priya grinned, practically seeing his lazy smile despite the phone being audio only. "You literally declared yourself a 'professional bum' eighteen months ago," she reminded him. "Your mother would be despairing if your dad wasn't so impressed that you were still getting away with it."

"Mm. Is your mom still impressed by it?"

"She bragged as if you were her offspring for nearly an hour when Lily visited over Christmas," she confirmed.

And there was that slow, laid back chuckle. "Well I can hardly stop now, then. Aunt Nell has a reputation to hold. I bet I can keep it up at least another three months."

She couldn't help but smile… but then she sighed. Rhett usually called with one thing in mind. "I can't drop what I'm in the middle of right now," she announced.

It was too bad. Rhett had a sixth sense for parties; tagging along when he was on the trail for a good time tended to get wild. They had legit made it onto a yacht for some kind of billionaire bachelor party extravaganza last spring. She hadn't been aware it was possible to be drunk for three days straight without facing a hangover, though she still suspected there had been something stronger in the punch that made it work. It had absolutely been worth sleeping under the tiki bar with only a stolen towel for a pillow.

Despite gate-crashing, they'd actually gotten invited to the wedding, somehow. She was mostly sure Rhett had gone, too – she'd headed back to France, but no one had heard from him for almost two weeks.

"Damn." He sighed. "Alright. How've you been?"

That was the thing about Rhett – he was basically a golden retriever for life. He'd meander off, bump into a stranger, make a new friend, have a good time, then wander on. He preferred to bring company along on new ventures, something about a risk reward balance he'd once tried to explain with way too many hand motions, but he wasn't needy either. "Pretty busy," she admitted, relaxing a little more and picking up the TV remote. "Flying hither and thither, always three steps behind – but I'm catching up."

"Mm, the gauntlet thing, right?"

"Yep. Mostly being really glad Tricia didn't impose any kind of time limit." Hey, look at that. "Did you know they were airing reruns of Aspera Stars?"

He hummed appreciatively. "No, but it's a classic," he decided.

She grinned. It was a torrid telenovela that only lacked a love triangle because it was more like a dodecahedron. But while she'd accuse most men of just agreeing to appease her, the two of them had spent way too much of the summer break before freshman year camped out in her room and mooning over that shit.

It was the only way Rhett tolerated drama. Which she completely understood, but it also made him an addict for the trashiest nonsense the internet had to offer. She had lost bets about just how deep that rabbit hole could go – turns out, if someone could conceive it, they'd find a market. The last time one of Tay's frat buddies tried to tell her the internet was for porn, she'd buried him under hours of really badly written romance with stolen surrogate babies for three hours before he conceded the point.

"What have you been up to?" she asked, turning on the subtitles. "Anyone try to make off with your tent yet?" Last time they'd talked, he'd been camping on some beach in Australia.

"Eh, I passed it along," he admitted. "Best of the season was up anyway, and the concert ticket she passed over was nice – floor admission. Hell of a mosh pit. The band was fun, and the trip there was even better."

Meaning he'd gone hitch-hiking again and probably fulfilled some male fantasy with a couple of coeds while he was at it. "What band?"

"Aries Rising."

Damn, okay, but he'd absolutely gotten the better end of the deal for his… tent… "You gave her your surfboard too, didn't you?" And probably a night – or a couple of days, knowing him.

"It's not like I was going to carry it with me all the way to Sydney." His tone said he knew exactly what she was thinking – and was laughing at her.

God, but at least the one thing Rhett did concede to spend real money on during his whacky road to enlightenment was condoms; otherwise he'd probably be breaking the family record for number of babies by now. Ever since they had turned sixteen, the one downside of hanging out with Jolene's son was the absolutely paramount need to always read the room.

Empaths came in all flavors. Some hid from the world, some coped like normal people, and apparently, some became consummate hedonists.

The space heart community, on the whole, alternated between abject horror and glowing admiration of Rhett Stahl's… unique take on life. Most empaths in his weight class had serious social issues; a handful were so consumed by their gifts that they were hermits living off of disability checks. Meanwhile, Rhett had maxed out all of the basic community standards before he'd withdrawn from testing as a kid – but while he'd refused to pursue it, general speculation was that he might be the strongest yet born. And yet… While their family had muttered and worried about it around the kitchen table when they got the results back, he'd climbed the tree in her back yard to pop her window open and ask if she wanted to check out the horses two farms down.

They had been very grounded after that. Or at least, she had been more grounded than before Rhett staged the jailbreak; he'd technically been in trouble too, but it was just… hard to tell with him? Whatever happened to him, he had a way of making you feel like that had been his goal all along.

Oh, to be eight again. At least eight-year-old Rhett had only wanted to ski and swim and eat too much ice cream. Eight-year-old Rhett had never instigated an orgy without checking to see who was in attendance first.

"Are you still in Sydney, then?" He'd been meandering Australia for… at least eight months now. Maybe closer to ten.

"Frankfurt, actually."

Priya froze. "You're in Germany?"

"Looks like," he agreed cheerfully.

…She wanted to ask how, but she also really didn't. If she didn't know, then none of her sisters/aunts could claim she should have talked him out of it. "Are you safe?"

He laughed at her. "I'm always safe," he reminded her.

"Yeah, but…" It was the main reason they'd stopped trying to chase him about the hitch-hiking, or… well, most of it, really. Rhett could sense ill intent at a range no one had ever been able to quantify. Everyone he came close enough to talk to, let alone touch, was usually half in love with him by the time he opened his mouth. If you didn't have emotions he was interested in, he left long before you knew he was there.

But since he practically lived in other people's moods… His personal concept of 'consent' was a little shaky.

He laughed again. "Let it go, Cous. If anyone's taking advantage, it's me."

"Technically debatable," she hedged.

"Did you know there's this resort in Zambia with big lofts and glass walls literally over the Victoria Falls? Panoramic balconies right over the drop. Hell of a view." His voice was… deeply sated.

Her shoulders slumped. That was probably exactly what it sounded like. "Yeah?"

"I think I might actually keep this guy's number," Rhett mused. "I had a good week."

If she didn't change the subject now, she was probably going to get blowjob tips, and she really wasn't in the mood – she needed to get back to work in another minute here, not bemoan how long it had been since she found a playmate. Get him back on track. What the hell is he doing in Europe? If he'd decided to leave Australia and not go back to space, she would have expected him to stay in Africa, given all the fur flying this far north. "Rhett, you don't speak German," she tried.

"Not a word," he agreed cheerfully. "Makes it interesting."

Right – there was no point in fussing. His current game of not taking more than a handful of cash out of his bank account every other month didn't mean he wouldn't if the need arose, especially now that he didn't have a beach to crash on. "Are you still blogging?" She hadn't seen an update in a while, but she'd been busy and it wasn't actually in her interest range.

"I took a break, but was thinking about picking it up again," he admitted. "I've had a few messages asking for an update." He hummed. "Though I was thinking I might try writing something else. I've got enough of an online following despite being inconsistent that I could probably get a jump start in the industry if I tried to publish. Maybe fiction."

Priya blinked, then sat up, grinning. "You could pull off some really torrid romance work."

"I could," he breathed, sounding excited.

"Use a pen name," she warned.

"I should use Winner, but spell it wrong – like with a Y," he decided. "And come up with something really homoerotic, just to make the old man turn in his grave."

God damn it, she loved her family. "I bet Lily would give you a cash advance for an autographed copy of that, to help you get started." She had never seen her dad again after Quatre was born, but Zayeed had tried to take an active interest in each of his grandsons – and she had memories of Jolene coming to visit them and laugh-crying through margaritas with her mom over the absolute shit Rhett had done to screw with Zayeed while somehow looking innocent. He'd taken a goddamn online poll one time for what idea he should try next, before Cedric reminded him that the man was a bigot, not an idiot, and he should probably tone it down.

That said, she was also mostly sure half of those ideas originated with Uncle Ced? He'd always been Tamelia's biggest advocate, and Rhett's dad had taken it personally when the family head shut down her offer to foster Quatre. Having raised three empaths – four, if you counted how he and Jolene had fostered Camille through her teens – he'd always been pissed about how Quatre's upbringing was handled.

"Aunt Delilah is cool like that," he agreed. Then he hummed. "Damn. I'm going to need to practice writing porn."

"I'm sure that's a real let-down," she quipped.

"I need to do some research," he decided, tone bright.

She snorted. "What are we calling the African waterfalls, exactly?"

He cackled. "No, I meant, like, word choice, and flow. I don't compose while bent over a railing."

Priya rolled her eyes. "You're definitely going to need an editor, at least for the 'romance' portion." Truthfully, probably not – he tended to wax poetic about life in a way that ought to translate well – but the point needed to be made. "It's a balance – I'm pretty sure the sexcapades can only take up twenty percent of the story if you want it to have any tension, and that's probably pushing it."

"What if-"

Priya frowned as he abruptly cut off. But it wasn't the line – the faint background music she'd been picking up the whole time was still there. "Rhett?"

"…Huh. That's interesting." He cleared his throat. "Wow."

Her stomach sunk low, and she straightened, wondering what-

That was a fucking explosion being broadcast on her screen! "Gah!"

"What's happening?" Rhett demanded.

"I don't know!" she shrieked back, clutching at the phone. "Another bombing?" she guessed, squinting at the screen. It looked pretty remote, though… but maybe that was just perspective?

"Do people usually feel righteously vindictive about bombings?" The sound quality on the line had dropped – he'd probably put her on speakerphone so he could mess with his screen.

"You did not just ask me that," she groused, eyes on the TV. There was no heading like from a news station… and it honestly looked kinda amateur? Or raw, at least – not passed through any filters to raise the production quality. It was aerial, not to mention a little shaky… maybe even collected from a drone camera?

"I don't know! It didn't seem right, but I literally avoid all signs of conflict, so, like… People are weird," Rhett argued.

"Europe is seriously all conflict right now! Why did you come here?" she protested. The dust-up from the explosion was massive, but… the barren area around it didn't seem to be involved? Despite looking messed up?

"I'm talking about people, that's a place problem," he defended. "People are just people."

That explained literally nothing. The picture was zooming out, though, and… "What the fuck?"

"What?"

"I think that tower has a turret on it!"

He made an annoyed noise. "I don't have any video, I don't know what-" But then he cut himself off to crow out a wicked little laugh.

"Rhett?" If he didn't have video, then what was he-

"It's Italy," he crooned. "Yeah!"

Her mind blanked out. "What?"

"It's the border on northern Italy!" He cackled again. "And Schbeiker's flashing her face all over it – this is Po's Insurgence forcing a play!"

She just stared at the footage. "With a bomb?" she demanded incredulously.

"On an automated turret?" he quipped back. "Come on, Cous, don't you at least read the news? That shit's been shady from the start. And this…" His voice dropped, all the enthusiasm draining out of it. "…Fuck. Open a browser, you need to see some of these shots before the Regime can take them down. If this is…" He slid into Spanish, muttering something fast and clearly rude, for all that she didn't follow it.

"Where are you looking?" she demanded, snatching her slate off the her desk and tapping out the pin.

"They literally dropped it into the home page of at least two major browsers somehow, just open anything-"

But then she wasn't listening anymore because the screen had changed and Sally Po was on now, hands braced on a desk so she could glower right into the camera lens – and damn, but that lady meant business.

oOo

---

oOo

Munich, Germany – Sarracenia

"-utterly reprehensible. It cannot stand. I will not abide by it."

David has started a trend, Des mused, watching Po's angry tirade. Unlike most, their household had known this was coming and been waiting for it, though the method was a little heart-stopping. Jake and the rest had guessed at remote explosives or even MS interference, like the second Sanc takedown, but orbital bombardment… It was a hell of a statement.

The surgical precision of the move, when contrasted with the Fall, was also very pointed – almost a calling out of the Regime on the subject of Libra, even if it didn't really pan out as an analogy. That they had done something horrifically dangerous correctly, and wanted to rub the Regime's nose in the fact.

Po herself cut an impressive figure, reminding him more than a little of Relena. She was all righteous indignation right now, smooth words with sharp enunciation as she divulged details about what she had found inside the cordon, damning everyone involved without a single curse or slur. She hadn't changed too much since the last time pictures had circulated about her – a sharp white button-up and khaki slacks wrapped a body that was all feminine curves. Her cheekbones weren't as sharp as in her wanted posters – for all that she'd been in hiding for three years, she hadn't languished. Her hair was shorter, but otherwise… that was about it. She was wearing make-up, in neutral tones but not minimal – she'd clearly planned for the camera appearance, and she looked like a capable leader.

He cast a look over to Jack, ready to make a quip about his boys having similar taste – but the words died on his tongue at the look on his friend's face. He'd expected some kind of scrutiny, or maybe even approval or pleasure. The Millers had come back from the jeweler in Berlin all smiles, joy shimmering in every move. Why did he look so dark now? "Jack?"

"I… you guys said she was Asian," Jack muttered, not turning away from the screen.

He raised one brow, nonplussed. If anything, the blush the woman was wearing accentuated her oriental cheekbones as much as the liner and shadow to her eyes emphasized the almond shape and fold. "Her coloring is white, but little else is," he pointed out. "Your boys are the same way, in different directions." Maybe the body type leaned a bit more in the Caucasian direction too – but if memory served she was only five foot four, so she was hardly an Amazon.

"Sure, but…" His mouth twisted. "I never looked at the pictures. Was she always blonde?"

Des would have called it brown, personally, but it was a light enough shade that he wasn't willing to bicker over it. "I suppose she could have changed it, but it's about the same color now as her photos," he admitted, watching the other man closely.

Jack's head ticked to one side in an almost unconscious negative motion.

It's not her, he realized. Or at least-

"They don't… There aren't any kind of strict house rules, Des," Jack offered. "Cat crashes in Odin's room when he's out of town. No one acts like a total slob, but they're not neurotically clean either. The master suite shower has a steam function and this water jet setup along one wall that can practically give a massage, and I use it sometimes because Junior's point blank offered it more than once. It's not… There are no hard boundaries." He rubbed a hand along his jaw. "His fiancée lives there, even if it's not full time. There's make-up on the bathroom counter and a jewelry box on the dresser. A pair of long earrings sit on the bar by the pool – like she took them out to swim and forgot, but the cleaning people weren't sure what to do with them, so they just set them in a pretty dish there and don't disturb them. The master closet is mostly empty, but they both have a handful of things hanging…" The hand moved up to scrub over his hair. "Linens and hard surfaces get handled by the cleaning crew, but unless it's dry cleaning, the laundry gets done when someone wants something back out of the hamper. I usually check everyone's bins when I go to do mine, since I'm home the most and the washer is enormous, and…" He looked back at the television, lingering on the woman's figure. "That doesn't fit the bill."

Des blinked, considering that, before clarifying. "You think Po is too much of an hourglass?"

"Everyone just said she was Asian and pretty," Jack defended. "I didn't think- No. I haven't done much of her laundry, but those hips?" He shook his head. "The fiancée's build is a decent pass for stereotypical Asian – or at least athletic, whatever the ethnicity. Not boy slim, but not… She's been teaching Audi barre routines, she keeps as many toiletries in the gym shower as the master suite, she leaves running shoes in a different place every time she's come and gone, and…" He gestured at the screen again. "Maybe I'm wrong, but that doesn't look like a woman who works out even half as much as I know this one does."

All decent points, Des decided. For the sake of clarity, though? "You're sure the clothes didn't belong to the kid?" he tried.

Jack snorted out a laugh. "Audi has almost as much curve to her as Po, and she's a full head taller the rest of us. And…" He closed his eyes. "Her hair is pitch black, and at least two feet long. She could have changed it since she was last to the house, but the jeweler had a full array of things to entice and he picked up some fancy kanzashi style hair pins while we were there, and…" He let out a deep, exhausted sigh. "No. It was too simple of an idea to start with. An organization as large as Po's has to have more people running things, so just… No."

He had a point, but still, it was almost a letdown. Which was ridiculous, but Jack was right – it had been a neat sort of solution. Too neat. "You figure I should be the one to tell Jake?" he offered. He didn't particularly relish the idea, but with the mood Jack was in now, they'd just pick at each other until one of them started to bleed for no reason beyond frustration.

"Why?" Jack argued.

He blinked. "We thought-"

"What difference does it make?" Jack demanded. "He adores her. He bought a hidden mansion for her! He did it because she wants kids and he bent himself into a knot trying to figure out a safe way to support that while both of them are actively hunted by the government."

Des stared at him, his breath catching. "What?"

"He's done," Jack insisted, holding out both hands. "All in, no going back. I think he was before I even met him – he's just protecting her from us." He shook his head. "Sometimes I think half this work out in deep space is that he's literally building them a new goddamn country in the name of safety. Except at this point it's clear that her priorities are Insurgence, and he's always going to back her. The light in his eyes when he talks about her? Not to mention the care he puts into every…" He sighed. "I don't care who she is. He loves her – the rest doesn't matter. But if he thinks that's threatened? He'll make Jake on the warpath look mild-mannered.

"And Jake… It went really well last week, but Jake almost crumbled half a dozen times anyway, and it… Does it matter, right now? She's high enough in Po's camp that their goals are the same, and until the politics stabilize, Po is an easy anchor for Jake to latch onto. If we take that away, he'll just come up with another conspiracy theory and fixate on that instead of focusing on his brother, who…" He closed his eyes.

Des frowned, feeling the rising elation from before start to sink. "Who what?"

His friend didn't answer for a long moment. "I think," he murmured eventually, "that he's waiting for me to lose interest. He said something the other day, and I…" He let out a heavy sigh before meeting his eyes. "He's got this… opportunistic fatalism that makes me want to scream. I think he believes the world is going to crash around his ears. He's so utterly in the moment all the time, like he's trying to savor and memorize it for when it's gone. But he looks at me sometimes like he's just waiting for it, joy and contentment and resigned heartbreak all at once…" Jack's voice cracked like he was trying not to cry. "Fuck. Is it just from Senior? He literally told the kid he didn't want him anymore, tried to abandon him repeatedly, and Junior straight up believes the man killed himself because quote 'He didn't want to look at me anymore.'"

Des sucked in a breath. Because that… Was a real knife to the heart, yeah. Jack had talked about how calmly accepting the kid was of absolute shit happening to him before, had implied more, but that still hurt.

"He has so much in his corner now, between what Jake left him and Rubato and Da Capo and everything else – and he likes it, you should see him on telecom when he's equally crafting and bullshitting with his interns at the Sigma site, not to mention everything with the Insurgence. But he still has his kid memorizing contingency plans and… Des, he's squirreling stashes of money and supplies across the continent and space like he expects to have to run at any moment, and when she complains, he just says something about… He spent a year homeless with a leg that kept going septic. I've seen his scars now, and I had to look up half the terms he used to explain the repairs he's had done, but from what I learned I can't tell how he was walking on it at all before 198. I freaking asked him, trying to reassure myself that I'd misunderstood and it wasn't so bad, but do you know what he told me?"

Oh boy. "What?"

"'It's just pain. I've done worse.'"

…So Jack was getting a good idea of what his parents would have felt if they'd known about his shit as a teenager. Not that that made this palatable, because Des's lunch wanted to make a reappearance, but-

"He is planning for everything to be taken from him like it's just what inevitably happens, Des. In spite of everything he's done to secure his life. And it freaks me out because he's deep enough in enough shit that I can't tell if it's just his trauma talking!"

As horrifying as that was, he was starting to feel lost. "What does that have to do with lying to Jake?" he tried.

Jack threw up his hands. "I don't want to lie to Jake, I just don't want to correct the latest way he's made his damn peace! Not until he has enough anchors to calm the fuck down. They're talking now, and there's this… It's weird. You put the two of them in the same room and there's this resonance, something almost symbiotic about how they… almost like how Jake is with Dave, except without any damn reference points for comfort. They just fall into it, almost like they did get to finish growing up together, except all the details are missing and Jake's somehow caught between pure bliss and wigging out at the same damn time! And with Odin, it's like… despite the time and distance he has this fascination with his brother, except he's wary, and… it feels delicate. Just…"

His head dropped. "Can't it wait?" he protested. "It doesn't change the politics of it, and it makes Jake feel like he has more control. If it truly comes up, then fine, sure, but… We could just let it happen. You said Rubato started actively trying to bridge with Lena last week – what if this could all just… mellow out? Everyone is so afraid they're going to fuck something up, but if they're talking, we could just… let it flow. If he calms first, he won't be too bothered by waiting longer for his sister-in-law's name."

Des raised his brows, thinking about it. He was only peripherally involved in Relena's politics, head buried in Lotus and the other RLTT projects Jake and Relena had had less time for, but… Rubato had been making active overtures. Rubato had always been very pointed in that they were wary of and disliked the Regime – but Relena had already detached from the government and literally had plans to light the organization on fire in the next few months. Rubato had said they weren't ready to consider talking to Soleil despite Relena's quiet endorsement – but it had been a similarly quiet 'we'll think about it later,' not a hard no, the way they were about the Regime. The balance there…

Jake needed to announce RLTT. They were almost positive that a faction of the Sweepers were involved with the Insurgence, which probably included the infamous Howard Oclaire, and Jake's connections to both Relena and the old engineer might be the final push to get their foot in the door with the Insurgence, if not Rubato as well. But he couldn't do that until Zechs dropped the not very vague death threats, or until he made sure he didn't alienate his brother with the facts that would come with the announcement…

Which boiled down to the fact that Jake needed to secure his relationship with his brother. It blew his mind a little that the kid was so interwoven as that, but… Fucking politics.

He missed Lulu so much. She'd always been able to lay this kind of thing out in a way that not only made sense, but made him immediately want to fully support it. He got there eventually on his own, but even when he'd been a CEO, he'd been more suited to the office end of underwriting and making deals than boardroom politics.

"I won't bring it up," he decided. "But I'm not hiding anything either, or claiming you said something you didn't. If he asks what you thought about this-"

"I don't want to hide anything," Jack agreed, hands out in a placating gesture. "If he realizes, fine. I just want him to sort it on his own." He grimaced. "When it comes from me, he…"

Des grimaced too. "He's been getting better," he offered.

"Oh, he's worlds better, and he might not even do it at all, now," Jack agreed, though he still looked vaguely hunted. "I just… I want this to go well."

Understatement of the year, but yeah, fair enough. "Okay," he agreed. Jack was right – a little time was probably best. Though… Jake had comfort zone issues he needed to finish getting over, especially with the coming RLTT announcement. "You need to start showing off your tattoo," he suggested. "Here and with Rubato, whenever possible. If it's not freezing, wear short sleeves, or start pushing them up."

Jack blinked on confusion. "What?"

"You're caught in the middle of this just as much as Junior is," he reminded him. "You know things you haven't told Junior's friends, and they know it. Rhea Lowe is about to become a household name. Do what you can to soften the coming blow – be proud of your wife, maybe get the ink touched up – weren't you saying it was about time for that anyway? Use that as an excuse to have it so exposed at first. It's a pretty piece – take getting compliments on it as an excuse for the change." He blinked. "Does Junior have an opinion on it?"

Jack made a face. "He's seen it, but never really commented. He's made it clear that his mom is too abstract of a concept for him to care about – I haven't… really pushed. I think he thinks it's just art."

Des grinned. "It's a bit classy for a pin-up," he argued.

His friend rolled his eyes. "I'll look for an artist," he agreed. "I have no idea what happened to the last one I saw."

"It's been a chaotic handful of years," Des offered. "Last time was, what… 193?"

Jack rubbed the side of his face with a grimace. "It's overdue," he agreed, then hesitated. "Jake mentioned Lena to him, last week."

Des raised his brows. "He'd be a fool not to," he agreed. "The engagement won't stay under wraps for much longer. Hiding it now would make it a slap in the face when they go public."

"It hit me like a two-by-four," Jack admitted. "The way he said it… Junior thinks her name is Mailina. He doesn't use nicknames unless a person insists on it over their given the way Jake does, and I just…" He blew out a frustrated breath. "I don't know, I just… this is hard."

Des gave him a skeptical look. "He's going to have a real hard time getting upset over that one, given his own lady love."

Jack's belly laugh was something of a relief, to himself as much as Des, by the looks of it. "God, yes."

Smiling, he threw an arm around the other man's shoulder. "It'll turn out fine," he reassured him. "From everything else that's been said, I bet he'll even think it's funny. Maybe it'll be what finally kicks both their asses into gear, hm?"

"Yeah, maybe." Jack relaxed, leaning into the hug for a moment, before giving him a hesitant look. "Do you think, after Relena kicks the Regime to the curb, maybe…?"

He didn't have to finish the thought out loud – they'd talked about this more than once since the Fall, and even more, since Junior came back from the dead. Still, he fought to keep the smile on his face. "I hope so." If Lucrezia had abandoned her past entirely, he didn't think she'd still send him a treat for his birthday, especially one that teased about Lyle. For all he knew, she was one of the anonymous guest commenters on the site he posted his son's pictures onto – at least, there were way too many hits on the images, steadily and by the day, for him to think she didn't look at them with some regularity. He'd been careful to keep any identifying features of their location out of the camera angles, he didn't want to open his family up to the kind of pervert who might try and steal his child when Cass or anyone else took him out into the city, but… He had to believe she was watching from afar.

He'd have stopped posting by now, otherwise.

Zechs, just… God, what would Zechs do if he found out she was alive? Especially after Jake had started weaponizing her death against him in the barbs they'd been passing back and forth these last weeks? He missed her dearly, but if she wanted to avoid any risks associated with her ex until he was out of a position of power… Hell, Jake right now was proof enough about how vindictive he could be. Hayden and Vaughn had been followed last week, for all that the motives there were still murky.

He didn't particularly want to find out what might have happened if they hadn't realized they had the wrong blonde in a suit.

He offered his friend a smile that he could tell the other man saw through, but… it wasn't entirely false. "We just have to let it mellow," he echoed back. "She'll come back when it all settles out."

He really did believe that – he was just sick of repeating it, was all.

oOo

---

oOo

---

Stepping Up

---

oOo

---

oOo

…Two ships passing in the night, dear God. I'm enjoying this waaaay too much.

I had a ton of fun with this one, especially with the banter. Rhett, for better or worse, has been lurking for a while – I honestly have no idea how Quatre's going to cope with that. I'm pretty sure his blog and/or handle on the empath forums is 'ButlersDoItBest'. I swear I poured my heart into this one, and would really love to hear what you guys think, if you have a moment.