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.

8. Dominion

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Chapter Eight

Dominion

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If possession in nine tenths of the law, how do you define control of areas too large to realistically claim? The expanse of the ocean, or space? What about intellectual concepts, or loyalty?

Welcome to the free-for-all.

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…Holiday season is generally crazy for everyone, right? Right. Especially when everyone gets horribly sick and that vacation you've been planning for the last year gets canceled because you're all alternately barfing or coughing up blood. That's… a thing. Let's just… leave it at that.

Finally named a few of 'the forums' that characters have been referencing since, like, halfway through Sedition and am going to try to introduce those names somewhat naturally, but it feels odd at the moment. 'The forums' has always been a reference for things like Reddit and Discord. There are a number in frequent use, and quite a few are more specialized – for instance, the empath community is really very solid and keeps an online presence. But if you're reading and something seems out of place, here are some of the forum names: SeenIt, Agora, Bedlam, SuitUp, and SoulSight.

Here we are despite my life issues at some 28k words, spanning 46 pages through 11 scenes. Thanks again to Emily for the hard edit. Hope you guys enjoy it. Especially since trying to format the forum portions of this chapter just about made me cry - in Word, and on BOTH and AO3. FML, seriously...

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May 3rd 199 – Sunday – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Hell's Crossing – Residential Rooftop

Melissa let out a deep sigh when she spotted him, playing up her exasperation to get a rise out of her husband.

Unfortunately, it didn't work.

She doubted very much that he had missed her somehow, even brooding as he was, but she still made a point of stepping loudly and approaching from an angle that would show motion in his peripheral vision. When she'd reached his side without getting a reaction, she sighed again and dropped her head against his shoulder, staring out into the morning light.

Staring west. They couldn't see the water from here, let alone where all the trouble was, but it wasn't hard to guess where Duo's mind was.

"The army isn't mobilizing," she reminded him, crossing her arms to tuck her fingers in her armpits. I should have worn a coat. "They just confirmed it over the web again, officially. Whether it's because of how much face they lost over Italy or by how much more thoroughly it was done, the Regime is willing to negotiate this time."

Duo growled. "They're negotiating because these guys got the Accords involved before the Regime managed to get its pants on," he countered. "They're going along with it because they can't afford the backlash if they tried to bite back after her releases yesterday."

"So Relena saved the day yet again," Melissa suggested tiredly.

"Because they were smart enough to involve her first," he argued. "And smooth enough to get it done before anyone noticed. I can't even figure how. And now that they're touting themselves as an expansion of us, all buddy-buddy? If they hold onto what they've taken, it's going to be because they're that good, and with only a short channel between them and Regime territory… If it can be retaken, it will, whatever the delays – but 'Liss, if they're good enough to hold it? That makes them a threat the Regime can't ignore." He made a mad gesture towards the west. "And they're right fucking there."

Melissa sighed. There wasn't much she could say to that beyond pointing out that Belgium was still a ways south – it was either going to hold, or it wouldn't make a difference. "What if their claims hold water?" she suggested instead. "They didn't kill off the aristocrats – and the general public didn't even know until they saw the news yesterday." And despite the talk about hostages that the Accords had immediately honed in on, Libramentum hadn't actually removed all the aristocrats from power.

Their invasion had been surgical in that they had only destroyed military sites – for all that they had pursued those with prejudice. Quite a few of the more powerful nobles in Britain had already been in Germany for the Strike Force talks, but the remaining landed nobility and their families had – supposedly – been quietly rounded up and taken to a safehouse of some sort, largely unharmed. Meanwhile, the more borderline industry-rich aristocrats had been let be.

Libramentum evidently took issue with the ruling system, not capitalism. There had been a few implications too that they weren't even trying to kick the nobles out – they didn't want a family line to have automatic power in the government, or the right to collect taxes.

It… honestly didn't sound too bad?

Duo gusted out a deep sigh. "If half the shit we're hearing is true, then they're competent as hell," he decided. "I just can't figure out if that's a good thing or a bad one." He shifted his weight, shrinking into the collar of his coat a bit, so his next words came out muffled. "Even if it all clears without any fighting, it opens a can of worms. Who's next? If the Regime is forced to let this slide, they're going to be on a hair-trigger for anything else."

Melissa sighed and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her face against his chest. "Don't borrow trouble."

"This doesn't fit the bill for my friends' talk about an invasion," he immediately argued, body still tense. "It's too small. This is either a prelude or completely un-fucking-related! And when your enemy is floundering, dealing with civil war shit, it's a great time to hit. And now these guys are right in our backyard."

"Stop borrowing trouble!" she insisted, letting go of him to reach up and grab the lapels of his coat, tugging him down so he had to meet her eyes. "You're out," she reminded him. "You wanted to be out. You trust your friends. Focus on what you've built and let them handle what they have."

His eyes were a little wild, maybe a little bit lost, as he finally seemed to see her. "I… Right. You're right." He let out a deep breath and wrapped his arms around her. After taking a few more deep breaths, he quietly admitted, "It just feels too much like the war again. Rock and a hard place and no good options – no middle ground."

"We made the middle ground," she reminded him, content to keep her arms wrapped around his neck. He wasn't much taller than her, and she was mostly sure they'd both stopped growing – she hoped so, at least. It was comfortable, like this. Amsterdam may have started as a no man's land after Libra fell, but this last year or so, ever since the opening of the northwest border? The Netherlands as a whole, despite its close location to the empire's capital, had the most neutral politics you could get outside Africa. Once you added in all the influence from RLTT and Rubato taking hold over the last six months, it wasn't even all that chaotic anymore – not exactly 'good' neutral, but no longer 'watch your back' neutral.

"Yeah, maybe," Duo returned noncommittally. "I just wish it felt less like I was waiting for someone to come set it on fire."

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Szczecin, Poland

"Frankly brilliant," Quatre continued, taking a step back from the projection to get a better look at it, bringing one hand up to his chin. "The coordination to pull it off must have been on par with the opening moves of Operation Daybreak, if on a far smaller scale – not to mention the impression everyone had that the bulk of Libramentum's power was more focal to the Iberian Peninsula. I want to say one of three things is happening: either the group is far more segmented than anyone has guessed and the southern aspect is under different management, they've undergone an internal change of power, or their questionable operations in the south have been a constructed façade." He pursed his lips. "Given the precision described about the original attack on Brussels eighteen months ago, I'm inclined to say it's the first or third option, possibly a combination." He shook his head. "But given the damage to the satellite net, it's also hard to confirm their claims of sea supremacy."

Lu grimaced and didn't disagree. Though, having been a part of Daybreak? "OZ did it without breaking the Alliance infrastructure," she pointed out.

He quirked an eyebrow without looking up from the map. "You also couldn't hold onto what you'd taken for more than a few months," he countered. "Depending on the details, they might."

Ouch. Not wrong, and pointedly one of the reasons she hadn't originally been all for the plan – but her career had been in literal ashes by then and it had been a now or never sort of decision. That and… whatever had come after, the whole point of Daybreak had been to remove the Alliance from power, and it had worked. The problems had come from underestimating the sleeping power of Romefeller after removing their favorite tool – and then in underestimating just how much insane zealotry might spring out of the woodwork in retaliation.

So no, she didn't regret Daybreak, even when he framed it like that. It had probably still been the best way to begin breaking the stranglehold of power reaching through from the worst blocs of Romefeller – it just hadn't been enough. As badly as the war had ended, they had accomplished something before Libra fell, and Relena's Accords were busy proving that point by the day.

It was just that, like last time, other underdogs were trying to steal the show – and they'd learned the hard way after Treize's party splintered into a thousand fragments that too many cooks tended to spoil the pot.

Sally's voice came through the speaker – and despite the communications issues they'd already begun noticing, the connection was smooth enough for now that it sounded like her friend stood just behind her. "How much can we confirm about their troop placements?"

Quatre began to pace in a slow circle around their projected map of Britain and its surrounding waters. "They claimed the Regime military resources placed there near wholesale, from what we can see," he began. "We have minimal evidence of collateral caused by fighting in the current satellite view, though I worry about what that meant tactically. There are a far greater number of Aries and Tauruses than before, though they could be amplifying that number by keeping empty hangars – they knew when the next wave of imaging would come by. Similarly, there's enough oceanic activity to suggest they might truly have the complete marine supremacy they're claiming. Pisces and Cancer suits have been sighted, but the window was too short to gain anything meaningful on how many are deployed or stored out of view.

"Mm." He shrugged. "That's all I can give you for now. We'll know more based on how they negotiate and what they give away at the table – or if they wipe out any more waves of satellites. But unless this is a colossal bluff, they would need a veritable army of seafaring suits to keep their prize – and by all accounts, they at least believe they can pull it off." He frowned. "Depending on how that pans out, I'm worried they might look west – we have an agricolony northwest of the Hebrides. Security there is designed against thieves and saboteurs, not conquest, and there's no easy solution to change that."

"And the satellite compromise?" Sally pressed. "How bad is 'bad?'"

"Heero is still putting together the details," Lucrezia returned. Her fiancé's code name felt incredibly foreign in her mouth, but this was an op, not their personal lives. "He wanted to run scenarios before quantifying it better."

Sally growled. "They're still physically there," she insisted. "Someone would have noticed earlier otherwise! Even with the speed involved-"

Quatre interrupted her. "They completely fried the circuitry," he negated. "Heero thinks it was a virus given the wide net on a tight window, but none of them are responding to any input, and the Sweepers picked a few up on the next cycle – the antennae are mostly intact, but the platters are slag. We might see some variation that gives us better clues on the mechanism as they pick up the rest, but too much has to be replaced to justify calling it a 'repair.'" He ran a hand through his hair, tousling it as he dragged it back – he'd let someone talk him into cutting it to collar length on Friday and was obviously still getting used to not pulling it back. "We're not getting them back on any kind of meaningful timeframe. Heero's working on the delivery mechanism, but that's mostly about seeing if we can stop it from happening again. Everyone has gotten enough in the habit of not trusting the imaging that I'm surprised they went so far, but with it already compromising our phone integrity, I wonder how much the regular cell companies are hurting. For now, let's just say that more waves of the same would make the next few months interesting."

Lucrezia rolled her eyes, amused even as she winced. At a minimum, it would be disruptive. At the worst… Well, it was maybe a good thing that between her, Quatre, Rashid, and Abdul, they could run independent armies with intermittent communication, if it came to it. The decentralized way they'd had to grow their troops under Zechs' nose had at least prepared them for that eventuality.

She hoped it wouldn't come to that. For now, she was at least glad that, wild as he was, Adam had decided against taking risks last week. He and Hilde had been far more on their own than they could have realized. She'd put together a new team that was currently on their way to infiltrate the doll factory, but…

Hell, but Hilde and Adam had been in the middle of a complete communications blackout – the only reason they hadn't known was because they hadn't tried to reach back. If something had happened to the two of them, Lucrezia might not have known something was wrong until another week had passed. As it was, she'd been worried enough over the British news and network hit that Hilde had been a bit bewildered over Lu's emotional greeting on her arrival back here.

Though now Lucrezia was finding herself more and more upset in a different way, after getting the girl back in the sims.

It had made sense to bring her here, where she and Odin had installed top tier tech, to get Hilde through a crash course on Deathscythe. And it still made sense. But while she was improving…

An extra week would not have made enough of a difference, she reminded herself yet again. After Italy, Hilde had needed some downtime – she'd been just about ready to explode. Extending that to two weeks had been a no-brainer when she realized just how badly the winter quarantine had shaken her protégé. The young woman freshly back from North America was herself again, as much as she would ever be.

But Deathscythe was starting to look like a waste. At minimum, she'd already sent Howard a message saying they were going to need a saber option… and the stealth jammers weren't going to be a factor.

And that was if they could get her back to pace on where she had been skill-wise before the quarantine in the next month.

Three weeks to deadline, then another for delivery. It was enough. They'd get somewhere in the next month.

It just might not be pretty.

"I'm less concerned about intermittent communication losses than the potential for further visual losses on the eastern border," she admitted. They could co-opt or build more satellites and cell towers quickly, and make do with a limited net if need be. Lost time couldn't be replaced if they missed the opening moves from the East.

"The visual network was already heavily compromised," Quatre countered.

"But we could tell when it was being spoofed if not what the truth was, and it was still something they were wary of," she argued. "Deterrent counts, even when it's suspect." As glad as she was to see David squirm back out of his treason charge, she was also going to miss having him loom near the border. For all she knew, the East was already pushing the line now that he'd set up a more permanent base for his troops and come west to play politics.

She hadn't been paying enough attention to the talks to know where they were at with all that, honestly. The writing on the wall was clear enough about what was going to happen – hopefully this new shit with the Isles would speed the process up instead of stalling it out, but those politics did need to get sorted to everyone's satisfaction if they wanted something stable.

Sally sighed. "Keep me posted as you learn more, please."

"We'll get more if Jovi can tell Relena you are asking," Quatre reminded her, crossing his arms.

"You could tell her you want to know, if you're so comfortable," the doctor returned, not missing a beat. Quatre's eyes slid to one side in serious contemplation, and Sally, hilariously, somehow read his lack of immediate response correctly, adding, "We want to negotiate from a position of power, remember?"

Lu rolled her eyes. "Like Libramentum?" she asked scornfully. Not that she really disagreed with the argument, but she was tired of it anyway.

"To be fair, it doesn't look too bad for them at the moment," Quatre pointed out.

"Let them be the trailblazers. I'd rather come around the back with a better hand, especially if this spins out violently. So long as Marquise is still the one in power, Relena's group of officials is only as effective as the puppet democracy the Alliance kept for show-and-tell. If she hasn't moved against him yet it's because she can't, and if we have to fish her out of the ruins of her brother's latest massacre to rebuild over the ashes of another war, I want everyone else still unsure of what we've got up our sleeves." She sighed. "I'll talk to you later."

Lucrezia sighed too as the line disconnected, setting her hands on her hips and looking over the map again. Honestly… "How much of this is conjecture?"

Quatre raised his brows, lifting one hand to his chin. "More than I like, but less than you're thinking," he suggested. "Less guesswork, more statistics from microsamples of data."

…Great. She couldn't do anything helpful with that. Odin was buried in code and more statistics and Hilde was bashing her way back through drills that would only frustrate her if she tried supervising right now… but she needed something productive to do. "Can we map out where to commission additional cell towers, if we lose more satellites?"

Quatre shrugged. "There's not much point right now, but-" He cut himself off, blinking, then frowned. "Hm." Focusing back on her with a critical expression, he asked, "Do you need to work out of this site, or was this just a decent meeting point?"

Her eyes narrowed. While the DPS system here was technically better than what she had at other bases, Hilde was rough enough that pushing that angle was more wishful thinking than anything. "Are you kicking me out?"

His expression turned wry. "I feel less bad about telling Hilde to wear a mask or stay in a specific set of rooms than I do you," he offered. "I could just lock her in the basement – her fits of pique are contradictory enough that they make me want to laugh more than anything. But my life will be easier if I don't have to worry about who my guest might see – I'm mostly sure he does part-time work with Relena's court, and he's not known for keeping his mouth shut."

She rolled her eyes again, but smiled as she shook her head. "You could have said you were expecting company before I tried to set up shop," she pointed out, already debating which base would be best. Prague was probably easiest – while they didn't keep suits there, the sims were just one tier below those installed here.

Also? It was far more central than the Carpathian or Blue Nile sites if they needed to switch things up. Enough that she shouldn't get severely disconnected if things changed abruptly and the network issues grew worse.

Sally will also calm down a bit with her favorite chicks home to roost, she mused. At least until they knew what was going to happen with the British takeover.

It was Quatre's turn to roll his eyes, even as he pulled out his phone and started tapping at the screen. "Expectation implies a plan." Bringing it up to one ear, he added, "We're at a standstill on this anyway." Then, his attention flicking away, he announced, "Hey, what are you doing?" A pause, as he raised his eyebrows at her, giving her a bemused smile as he said, "Yeah?"

Mm, better to go find Odin and Audi before trying to dig Hilde out. They'd only been here for a couple hours – she hadn't unpacked anything, for all that her bag was up in the suite Odin had staked out last the time they stayed here. Glancing around the room, she picked up her messenger bag and started looking around for anything she'd scattered while they brainstormed.

Quatre gestured to dismiss the holographic map and raise the lights back to a normal setting. "Sure, let's do it. Are you walking, or did you need an address for a cab?"

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oOo

"Are you walking, or did you need an address for a cab?"

"I mean, I'm not in Berlin right now," Rhett admitted, his excitement at not being the one to reach out first dampening. "But I can get there in a couple hours." It had been a while since anyone had come to talk to him about empathy, and it had literally never been with someone he might consider an equal. The majority of space hearts, he'd found, only wanted to experiment far enough to find a comfortable space instead of seeing what they could do with it.

He'd texted a few times after picking up a new phone, but since the weekend was still on, he hadn't expected to hear back any time soon, if at all. With Odin in the mix, Cat – Robby fucking Stanton, wasn't that a trip? – had been difficult to read, but he'd liked what he'd picked up, even as the other man's confident power had initially scared the shit out of him.

Surfing had scared him senseless at first too – the best things in life usually came after admitting you didn't have all the control, in his experience. Once you learned the rules of the game and got comfortable with the chaos, the real fun started.

He'd stopped screwing around after taking up with the Millers – he'd bummed around Germany for a couple weeks before the assassination attempt, but had already been thinking it was probably time to move on, at least on the macroscale. The people around here had a lot less to work with and a lot more to lose, which made for less fun overall. With the Millers heading south again and everything in Berlin currently in political limbo, he'd decided to catch a train north to surprise Priya. He hadn't seen her in almost two years, after all, and she was right there.

On the other hand, he could pick up with his favorite pseudo-cousin – what else could you call your aunt that was only three months older than you? – any time. He'd be willing to rent or even buy a car to get back in touch with Cat. There was a platter of sheer opportunity there that he couldn't even find the edges of.

Besides – since he'd wanted to surprise her, Priya didn't know he was here yet, so she wouldn't feel let down about him ditching.

A low laugh came through the line. "Rhett, I know you're in Poland. I called because you're in my radius."

That sent a thrill up his spine. Holy shit, really? They'd met once. Fucking hell. He'd ditched his phone and gotten lost in the underbelly of Berlin for a couple hours because the oh so casual shattering of his field alongside that comment about knowing… Rhett had thought he'd maybe done something to the phone with the quick text to his own number. But if it was empathy, not tech…

He wasn't so good at person-to-person recognition, but he tried anyway, reaching out – if someone was reaching out to him first, then maybe he had a better chance of picking it up? "Nice," he announced aloud, even as he didn't find anything that felt right – plenty of people, but nothing familiar. "What are you getting from me right now?" Because honestly, it was probably a good thing he was an adrenaline junkie, or the guy might be getting the wrong impression. Rhett had already suspected Cat's reach was longer than his own – he was more infamous for his ambient range than pure distance, and only sat in the upper mid tier for the latter – but still.

Cat, meanwhile, snorted. "Nothing, at this distance," he reassured. "I felt something familiar, and I recognized you." He hummed, then rattled off an address. "Can you look that up? I don't have a sense of directionality or distance – people in my extended ambient radius are either present or not, and without an anchor they're equally present at the edge of my scope as they are just outside my minimal range."

Rhett whistled, even as he tapped out the address in his map app. "I can tell you're part of the community just by your terms, but the fact that you're also making new ones up is a little alarming," he announced cheerfully.

"I think I always had an extended ambient range, but it was more subtle and easier to overlook before the war," Cat countered. "My father was against getting me tested – he barely tolerated me going on the SoulSight forums, and a great deal of that was that he couldn't entirely prevent me."

"That's shitty, I'm sorry," Rhett decided… and stared at his phone's screen. "I'm just over five K away." What the actual fuck. He was pretty sure that was a new record, for all that they were going to have to do a better version of nailing down what was included in 'extended ambient range' if the guy could identify a specific soul that far out without getting an emotional read.

Though it also went a long way to explain how he'd survived in the Sahara. As awful as Cambyses must have been for normal people, let alone an empath… If Cat had that level of awareness, he must be impossible to ambush. That was true for almost all space hearts that didn't need touch for their Talent, but the scale…

Holy shit. It was a wonder he hadn't completely lost his fucking mind.

…He probably had.

People always freaked out when you said things like that in a serious way, but society had this bizarrely uniform expectation that insanity was permanent for some reason. Maybe all the post-Cambyses psych and sociology work happening these days will help push that envelope. The only correlation he agreed with was that if you went off the deep end once, it was far more likely to happen again – the mind had a tendency to expand, and neuroplasticity wasn't particularly well understood. Statistically, the majority of space hearts flipped out and went existential at least once before they settled more comfortably into their adult lives – and Rhett wasn't convinced that the outliers claiming they hadn't weren't just lying to save face. It was practically a rite of passage, to the point that there had been talk of prioritizing support networks for people to fall into in the aftermath.

Then again, what most people called 'crazy' usually delved more into sociopathy, which he considered distinct. So the issue might just boil down to definitions.

…Five fucking kilometers. The fact that he'd figured out how to be functional in the middle of Cambyses was a literal miracle.

Cat made a pleased hum that was almost a purr – either he was leaning into his new name hard, or he'd chosen it for good reason. "A little further than I suspected, but it makes a few things from the last couple years make sense." There was the muffled sound of another voice before Cat noted, "About three miles." Then he snorted. "It doesn't apply to people in general, just those I know. Also, I still don't have direction until they're practically close enough to see the whites of their eyes. It's a proximity alarm, not a radar – without supplementation, it tends to be more annoying than useful."

What defines 'people I know?' Most space hearts couldn't earmark someone at will, let alone someone they'd just met – even if said meeting had been interesting. Stanton had been a leader and secret revolutionary in a violent cult – if he could claim familiarity from their meeting a few days ago, he'd have been marking everyone he considered a major threat in the desert, possibly on top of the hundred and some men he'd been trying to escape with.

That was a level of surreal existentialism that probably required some level of insanity to maintain, at least on that scale. And really, given the stories about Stanton that had come out… He probably hadn't started to get his shit figured out again until after he'd been out for a minute.

Though if he'd run straight back to Odin, as Relena's people had implied, that would have been a game changer – Odin was a bottomless fucking ocean of calm acceptance. That guy was going to have empaths dogging his steps for the rest of his life. He'd probably provided a hell of a middle ground while Cat tried to scale his senses back down to something he could keep a lid on – though of course, the 'Cory' they had mentioned was apparently also a factor.

Rhett rocked back on his heels, deciding he felt less awkward about freaking the other day – even though throwing out his phone had been pointless after all. Cat would have known if he'd tried to follow, possibly right through his 'don't notice me' trick – within a five kilometer bubble. Not being able to actively track him down within said bubble by playing hot and cold didn't make that not awe inspiring.

"You're terrifying," a husky but distinctly female voice announced cheerfully. "Go out and run your social experiments on the unsuspecting public then, and give me a minute to say goodbye."

Cat made an amused sound that bordered on incredulous, making the woman laugh, though the sound faded out quickly – more by distance than cutting off, he thought – before the other empath announced, "I'm starting to think those two are never going to come out of the honeymoon phase."

Rhett grinned. "That's supposed to be one of the joys of a feedback loop," he pointed out, mostly sure they were talking about Odin and his fiancée. "People don't drift or settle, because the emotions are always getting refreshed and bounced back through. A permanent anchor changes the rules of the game." Personally, he couldn't imagine being anchored to someone for so long without getting bored or antsy, but he figured that was the point? Space hearts of any strength trended toward monogamy from right out the gate of puberty, largely because anchoring was intense. Most apparently found it overwhelming – and the amount of dissociation you had to keep hold of in order to have sex without anchoring made the exercise entirely pointless. The lower tiers didn't seem nearly as affected and lived mostly normally until they settled on a partner long enough to form a feedback loop, but his new friend was definitely not in that category.

For all that he definitely wasn't isolationist, he probably hadn't explored that end of things yet, especially given his long term in Cambyses. From what he understood, the majority of the men that had escaped the cult hadn't been overly interested in physical intimacy while they recovered – though of course, a few had gone in the opposite direction.

On the other hand, if Cat had been hanging around Odin more or less since he got out… He'd probably been getting plenty of secondhand from his friends? So who knew.

Honestly, finding someone besides his baby sister that wasn't chicken shit about anchoring was deeply exhilarating. He barely knew anything about Cat even with the information Relena's people had been willing to drop – but there was a budding trend people had been noticing about how trauma correlated to ability, and with what Cat had implied… He wasn't going to push, but he was curious.

His cousin Dayton had just gotten the ability out of nowhere last summer – and not a minor brush, but a full-fledged, high-tier 'can I please go out into deep space so I stop barfing long enough that it doesn't hurt to breathe' slam. They'd talked on the phone a few times since while he tried to sort himself out, but… it was weird. The only trigger anyone had been able to point out had been some high-score drama between him and his friend group – which wasn't to say that that couldn't be utter hell, he respected his lack of perspective and understood that he'd had to figure some things out a lot earlier than most people and those early teen years were supposed to be majorly formative…

But Cambyses had been as much emotional trauma as physical, and Cat had implied that that had been a major factor. And he'd heard people say their abilities had changed after major accidents or having a baby or such, but the use of the word 'mutate' was intriguing. So he was curious enough that he would've wanted to chase the guy down for research based on that alone…

But he also wondered if maybe the key to what was going on with Dayton might be buried here.

Rhett loved his cousins – he probably would've chased after Cat even if he had found him genuinely disturbing, just for Dayton. Though talking to Tay again had really made him wish their younger cousin had some of Tay's same weird interface Talent, because the ability to just bottle up Odin's whammy and take it to go sounded nice.

Cat, meanwhile, made a thoughtful sort of sound. "Both of my primary anchors have a dampening effect," he admitted. "My other favorites have an optimistically calm baseline in almost any circumstance, but I only lean on that if I'm getting overwhelmed or Odin has asked me to give him space." He huffed out an annoyed sort of laugh. "He's put me through the wringer a few times – he tries to warn me, these days."

…Yeah, the idea of someone with Odin's sheer emotional depth getting extremely upset about something was… disturbing. His 'panic' in the hospital lobby had barely been worthy of the name, so something that could discombobulate this guy must be wretched.

"I would lean back into it anyway if he needed me to," Cat continued. "He'd do it for me if our positions were reversed. But I can't even dampen his peaks the way I can blunt someone else's responses, so it's healthier for us both if I anchor elsewhere and stand with him the old-fashioned way."

Now that was friendship right there – which he'd suspected based on what he'd picked up already, but it was good to have another confirmation that he wasn't making a poor decision. Grinning, he tapped the 'start' on his phone's offered route and began walking again. "Jack did mention something about you playing him like fiddle when you met." That conversation had gone a long way to explain why the older man was so chill about what he could do.

Cat snorted. "It's not nearly that precise," he argued. "As soon as people realize you have an extra edge, they conflate it. My abilities make a good supplementary tool for social engineering, but it's hardly core."

That meshed well with what Odin had said at the hospital, and Rhett felt himself growing more excited as this started to look more and more like it would be fun. He was intrigued enough to have gone full hog on it anyway, but it was looking like he might be making a genuine friend. That would be nice – very few people outside his family kept a long-term interest in him.

He stopped as he considered the happy contentment coming from a slew of sources at the little bistro on the corner – that was usually a promising sign. "I found a popular food spot," he announced. "There's a park maybe a block back too – should I keep walking your way, or would you rather meet me here?"

oOo

---

oOo

May 4th 199 – Sunday – Berlin, Germany

The general susurrus of chatter quieted when the large entry doors to the hall opened, as they technically weren't supposed to open again until the lunch recess… Then died entirely as everyone caught sight of the young woman striding in.

Sylvia Noventa cut a severe figure in dangerous-looking stilettos and a sharp charcoal grey pantsuit that fit her like a glove, the black sling encasing her right arm somehow enhancing rather than diminishing her figure. Where before she had been the image of a modern socialite, elegant and demure even while she commended attention, today marked a significant… departure. Not that she was any less feminine – far from it. Instead of the neutral flattering tones from before, however, she looked… well, like a lawyer ready to eat you alive. Her eye makeup was sharply elongated, and her light brown hair – previously waist-length and often curled – was now cut in a dramatic asymmetrical bob, highlighted and artfully layered around her face, the longest parts curling against her left collarbone.

It was downright artful, Shel decided. Instead of a victim or martyr come limping back to the fold, Noventa had strut in ready for war. As well she might – for all that multiple families held power in the British Isles, the majority of them were technically vassal houses to Noventa, which made the attack on the woman thirteen days ago look particularly calculated. Libramentum still hadn't claimed credit there, but it was an open assumption, especially now that they had made such a bold land claim in the west.

Hm. While Noventa's injured arm was entirely hidden for now, Rachelle doubted she was the only one clocking that the shorter side of her hair was on the right – as clever as the makeover came across, the haircut had likely been a matter of necessity. She doubted she would be the only one looking back over the footage later to get a better view of the bullet's path – she knew the noblewoman's hair had been loose that day, and the abrupt way that Relena's favorite bodyguard had manhandled her to take the shots himself had involved no small amount of flailing.

At any rate, arriving fashionably late had absolutely been an intentional move. She was unequivocally the most wronged party, and one of the most powerful even aside from that – she meant to take charge.

And from the look on Relena's face? The princess, while wary, was inclined to let her.

"Apologies for my earlier absence," Noventa announced, calmly looking from one side of the room to the other. "I was unfortunately detained. However, now that I am here, I feel the need to ask if we truly have the time to quibble over the facts laid out about the brigadier – or are we ready to call for a vote?"

oOo

---

oOo

Szczecin, Poland

"Rude!" Marie protested, laughing and swatting at the guy's arm – startling herself and pulling back at the last second when he didn't try to dodge, what the crap, and she had to adjust to something that wouldn't sting, because that wasn't the point. It was, just, like… the only way to have a chance at catching Odin, so… habit?

Rhett gave her a confused look – because empath, even if he didn't seem to have caught the change itself – and she just waved impatiently at him instead of bothering to explain. "Come on, seriously?" she whined instead.

"If it works, it works," he insisted. "Path of least resistance, and everybody wins."

"For a given line of thought," Quatre temporized, leaning his forearms on the table and smirking. "Not everyone would be susceptible to that line of distraction."

"I want to say that's because you weren't trying hard enough," Rhett quipped back.

"And I am saying that you've never had to deal with anyone intent on killing or at least maiming you," Quatre pointed out. "You've got a fancy 'get out of jail free' card that lets you escape anyone you mildly dislike under any circumstance, so you've never had to deal with serious intent."

"You can do it too, though."

"Not like you," Quatre disagreed. "It only works if they don't already know I'm there, and I doubt it works on everyone. I can't figure out why yours is so absolute."

Rhett hummed, nodding. "My best theory is to do with instinct and internal absolutism. My parents say I did it for the first time when I was a little over a year old and something scared me. Big panic because the baby was missing, except every time they got close, they also got confused over what the panic was about until they left the room and remembered I was missing. Eventually I calmed down enough that they could find me again and realized I'd never left my mom's office, but that was… a whole thing growing up. One of my earliest memories is of my sister Irina leaning in close and holding up one finger to solemnly tell me 'Don't hide' before taking me by the hand and refusing to let go." He shrugged. "It didn't take them long to figure out that someone touching me could see through it, at least. My oldest sister, Anelisa, has a midrange Talent, and she figured out that if she anchored on me before we did something stressful, she didn't fall under the lull – we adjusted from there. I think they were all terrified I was going to walk into traffic or something, but I was school age before I realized most people didn't want to always have someone touching them. Major paradigm shift, you know?" He shrugged. "It works because it's a toddler's concept of safety from the boogeyman." Shaking his head, he added, "Anyway, I can only include people I anchor on, and I can't hold more than two at once. You said you covered over twenty on your run south – that's wild."

"Maybe internalization versus externalization," Quatre decided, looking thoughtful. "What I do is less 'there's nothing to see' and more 'you already looked here – doesn't that over there look suspicious?' Projection of a field instead of a personal shroud. Harder to maintain and less specific, but more of an area effect. I wasn't anchoring."

"Yeah, that's not a thing for me," Rhett denied. "But it does sound like a souped up version of how I've heard anybody else with Talent explain Pushing – which is actually more common than people realize? But it's usually weak enough that they don't feel confident registering it."

Quatre leaned back, arms crossed as he considered that. "Weak because it's niche like yours, or easy to miss?"

"Both? I've gone looking a few different times – through messaging and travel both, my family had the money and gave me free reign as long as I proved I could finish my schoolwork on time. I submit the stats to the main community more than I do the writing for it, but sometimes I do both.

"Empathy comes in tandem with a Push ability fairly often, honestly, but you're maybe the second case I've seen where the differential wasn't severe – and the strong Pushers usually have barely a ghost of the regular brand. Just enough to keep them sound, I figure – that or they don't know what they're doing because no one recognizes it as Talent, but I haven't figured out a way to prove that people can be Pushers without the receiving part of being a space heart yet." He turned a speculative look to the right, obviously thinking hard, before admitting, "Might be worth getting close to Treize one of these days – part of hitting the speech in Berlin was to see if I got any kind of vibe off the princess, with how some people talk about her. But she's just focused." He shrugged, smirking a bit as he focused back on them. "Does a damn good 'enigmatic' too, which is usually people thinking about too many things at once to really sift singular emotions – but when she's into something, she's there, you know?"

Quatre smirked back. "That sounds about right," he agreed, and Marie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Which… got her two amused looks.

Because empaths. Ugh.

"I was mostly running on the assumption that there aren't many with a strong Push Talent because most didn't survive infancy," Quatre noted.

Rhett gave them a sharp grin. "Dark," he accused… then shrugged. "Maybe. It's hard to prove one way or the other. My grandma said I was Pushing before I was born, but I've been a happy, self-centered creature from the start. Plenty of babies demand attention and adoration – I was just exceptionally good at it. But you could make an argument that my ability to only run two schemes with any oomph behind them is its own sort of survival mechanism." He tapped one finger against the table. "You said yours was late onset, though, which is interesting. Getting surges after major stress isn't unheard of, especially before you hit your twenties, but a major change in how it works is odd. Though I guess if you were never officially tested, it could have been latent."

For someone who'd apparently spent most of a year camping on a beach, this guy was also remarkably scientific. But then, he'd graduated at the same age as Marie, so apparently that was more… inclination, rather than a lack of ability.

And he was giving her a knowing smirk now, which made her scoff. "I thought you didn't read thoughts."

"I don't, but I've been around the block and it's not hard to guess," he noted, dropping his head in one hand. "Let me put it this way – when else in my life am I going to be able to drop all accountability and do something fun? My family's a bunch of overachievers – they mean well, but when they started giving me a free pass? I went ahead and took the opportunity to figure out what I liked before settling down. I don't turn twenty for another year – I've got time." He gave Quatre a thoughtful look. "If these online school programs Rubato is running get a good reputation, I might go that route. Universities are… stressful. Lot of anxiety. It's gross, hard to think there. But I like teaching, and I like science, so I've been thinking about doing school again and aiming in that direction? I've made a point of getting well known enough in the space heart community to get a long distance accommodation through one of the major universities as my long-term plan, but… I dunno, I did get a job offer from Relena's guard? I've been thinking about it." He shrugged. "I'm not in a rush."

Quatre gave him a conspiratorially amused look. "You intentionally made yourself into a minor celebrity as a long-term plan for ideal schooling?"

"Popularity can carry you much further than most people think."

"And the infamy?" Quatre's tone was all too dry, even as he smirked.

Rhett just cackled. "Why not?"

oOo

---

oOo

Berlin, Germany

"Afternoon, Captain." David greeted cheerfully when Jazz answered the phone. "I hope you haven't been too bored with me gone – I'm heading back your way."

There was a pause as she clearly picked apart his words for more information before giving it up as a bad job. "Sir? They decided to clear us early?"

"Technically speaking, they decided to not decide," he admitted. "We're solidly in good favor, but they don't want the exact terms set in stone before they finish the new Libramentum negotiations." There had been a preliminary vote that was nearly unanimous, but there were a lot of details to sort out – not to mention the fact that, if the new local government of the British Isles actually cleared this, the Accorded Nations were not keen on sharing any military power with Libramentum. Clearly, they had their own forces. That alone was going to make the issue tricky, even if the Regime was so far willing to let Relena stand in the middle of all three parties and negotiate instead of firing first and asking questions later.

It was… a uniquely uncomfortable spot for the government. The opinion of the general public so far was a frighteningly even mix of fear versus quiet acceptance of the change in Britain's administration, and the latter ranged from apathy to active approval. Even if Relena hadn't stepped up very publicly after Libramentum contacted her, any attempt from the Regime to handle the issue with immediate military action wouldn't have gone over well with the populace – not after the recent clusterfuck still going down in Italy. Aside from that, though…

The Regime, while maintaining a large standing army, had not focused on the aquatic branches of mobile suits – suits which were fully capable of shooting down air troops as well as anything that tried to approach by sea. They also had a significant contingent of Leos, Aries, and Tauruses, and were firmly entrenched in solidly build bases – several of which OZ had struggled to handle even during Daybreak, when they had surprise on their side. A campaign to take the Isles back by force would be long, protracted, and bloody. But even if they could afford the political fallout, the amount of force they would be required to bring to bear?

The Regime had those forces – they possibly even had them while maintaining the secrecy of what was really going on in space with the dolls, though it would be cutting it close. But under that illusion, their far border would be entirely abandoned – a very tempting target for the East. And if Romefeller East tested that while the Peacecraft Regime supposedly had their resources all poured into the westernmost states… It was just another way to let the cat out of the bag. If the Regime committed heavily, someone was going to notice that the numbers didn't quite add up.

It was, according to Lena and Jake, likely the reason why Zechs' administration was tolerating this negotiation at all. Britain was too damn close for them to declare war against and not immediately follow up – Libramentum had proven on multiple occasions that they were more than willing to fight tooth and nail. Now that the group was moving openly and no longer needed a buffer of secrecy? Not to mention how motivated they would be to hold onto a new piece of home turf? They were probably going to be worse. Personally, David had reservations about how peaceful the takeover had been and just how happy the civilians were, wondering if their rule would stabilize – but that was a separate issue.

"For now, we're in the clear to pick back up where we left off, and the Regime's amnesty period is extended," he explained. "We're welcome to keep the base, and I said we had a final couple of cases near the border to keep us busy for the next couple weeks before our deal gets finalized." Funding was still a messy question from the political standpoint, but Jake had waved it off even as he headed back to Munich to handle other RLTT business, so they were still in the clear from that direction – the only difference between last month and tomorrow was that the public knew how he was feeding his people. Jake's subsidy was minimal, but still acceptable – and having the base on top of that same amount of funding had already made a massive difference. "I'll feel better if we wrap up the last couple of leads we got out of the books those Khiva assholes kept anyway."

"Mm, no arguments here," Captain Spencer decided. "Talamantez and I have been combing through those while you played at politics and have a couple different mission plans to float."

David grinned – for all that people had been more than a little thrown by him bringing his second-in-command with him to Germany, a lot of that had been because while Razo made an excellent bodyguard and co-conspirator? He wasn't much of a manager. The Frenchman was terrifying in a fight and had a mind for tactics, but his official military experience was rather limited. Jasmine Spencer, meanwhile, really deserved a promotion to Major. The only reason she didn't have it already was because her tendency to mouth off had combined unfortunately over her career with chauvinist superior officers. In the middle of combat, he didn't want Jazz at his side because she was as good at seeing the big picture as he was, and her organizational skills were top notch.

He was going to miss her when the deal with the Accorded Nations finalized – while he was absolutely going back to Relena's core force as a replacement for the Regime presence she had shaken off last February, Jazz would get a posting that saw her sitting at the same level of power in a different part of the continent. She was too damn talented to waste on anything but a high command post.

"Sounds good," he returned, leaning back in his chair. "I'll let you know when I've got a more solid ETA."

oOo

---

oOo

May 5th 199 – Tuesday – Munich, Germany – Sarracenia

Jake let out a slow breath as he opened the door to the atrium, smiling at the sound of happy chatter. He hadn't considered that it might be in use with Relena still up north, but her office was often a social space. He'd been of a mind to get some work done, but…

He probably needed to eat and gather himself first anyway; as much as his back was improving, practically by the hour, showering had been…

He was glad Jack had come back to Munich with him, even if it was only for a handful of days. If he kept on at his current rate of healing, this wouldn't be nearly so bad by Friday, and he could start his PT. Honestly, even just tomorrow he could probably shower by himself, but… It hadn't been an option today – at least, not if he wanted to get clean instead of simply standing under the spray. As it was he'd had to sit down for a while to catch his breath between drying off and getting dressed, and even now he was fucking exhausted.

It would pass once had gotten something into his stomach; or at least, it would become less pressing. The painkillers would drop him back down again, but it would still be a better equilibrium than where he was at now. It was tolerable. This wasn't his first rodeo.

That didn't make it not wretched, but it would pass – and it would go faster the more he could sink his mind into other problems.

Despite being downright ecstatic to get out of the hospital, he wasn't ready to be a regular human being; and while that had been acceptable while waiting for Dave's negotiations to finalize, the current firestorm required all of Relena's attention – as well as more than he was capable of putting out for RLTT in compensation. His father and Dorothy had flown back home with him Saturday night, and Helena had shown up yesterday with the full-time contract they'd debated over and set aside, and…

Honestly, the last few days were fuzzier than he wanted to admit, but that was the nature of the beast. As much as he was trying to wave it off, his limited ability to pull his thoughts together was as much to do with routing around the pain as it was trying to shove down the side effects of the painkillers. He'd done this before – he just wasn't used to the fugue lasting so long. At any rate, Des, Leia, and Helena were handling the minutia for every single project he and Relena had started while he tried to make sure the overarching details still wove together correctly, and it seemed to be working.

Though it had been as entertaining as it was embarrassing yesterday, when he'd asked Helena to proof his latest email to Rubato and she'd insisting on reading through his last five messages before agreeing that no, he was not being unusually open or familiar – that was just how things had been spinning out lately.

He'd had to grit his teeth to smile through that, but… If he kept expanding the way he had been the last two years, he was going to need someone proofing and second guessing him, and Relena wasn't always going to have the time. He liked Helena, and her skills had only matured since they'd last worked together for the HTD. He just hated feeling like his body could only hold a quarter of his brain at any given moment, even as he expressed less than half of that.

I hope Helena is still willing to consider a permanent position when this clusterfuck is done with. It had been an idea they'd floated at the start, but… this was something of a sink or swim test, he supposed. There was no way it could ever be this chaotic again, so if she found it doable… It should be viable. Most of the time, she'd be able to work from home. This week was just… crazy.

It's getting better, he reminded himself. It was. And being home meant he didn't have to think about security at all, which was a massive weight gone – he'd been twitchy at the hotel, and Relena had noticed. He'd known measures were in place, but being so close to a multitude of strangers… with his body bent out of shape, it was so much harder than usual to relax. It was a stupid instinctive problem he'd been hoping would be easier to overcome with Relena nearby, but he still couldn't sleep in a flat surface, so they couldn't even share a bed – which, it turned out, mattered to said instincts.

It sucked. As much as he'd expected leaving the hospital to be a relief, it wasn't what he'd been hoping for either.

So he'd left. His fiancée was perfectly capable of handling the politics afoot without him, and he'd built the team that would keep her safe – logically, he knew that she was perfectly safe there. Either she'd wrap things up enough to come home next week or he'd be healthy enough to set aside his insecurities and make his way north again.

Conversation stopped as he made his way into the room proper, Dorothy and Cassie looking a bit apprehensive as Olivia gave him a downright dubious look – Raina's expression was her usual dry poker face of 'of course this shit's happening now, it's Tuesday.' That woman had a level of aplomb that would see her calmly sipping tea in the face of a second apocalypse – which made sense, she was Mai's twin – and that was usually one of his favorite things about her. Addie just smiled brightly at him and held up her teacup in a questioning way, but…

What the hell were they talking about? Normally they didn't give him this kind of reaction.

…It's probably not worth asking. Most likely some form of gossip, or something he genuinely didn't care about. That, or they were still worrying over him and making assessments, which… he doubted he cut a good figure for. At any rate, they were all close enough by now that if it was about something overly domestic, like the babies – Willam was playing with some kind of block set on a blanket that Lyle was on the opposite end of – they would have just included him. He'd been bridged into a lot of that already, which he'd decided to take as a good sign. He'd sharpened his words into weapons when talking to Zechs after Treize came into the open, but…

He knew that the Noins and Dorothy weren't going to cut him out of their lives out of convenience, the way Leia had. The fact that he understood why and knew he might have made the same kind of choice before Relena had made him put his money where his mouth was on reaching back instead of running didn't make it not hurt. Mariemaia was more than half grown, and he hadn't seen her since she was five. Leia had admitted to never even telling her he existed.

What was the point of having a godparent if they weren't someone the kid knew they could run to when shit went down? She hadn't even told her about him after getting the kid back from Dekim's schemes a year and a half ago, and at that point all plausible deniability was…

It hurt. The fact that Leia had preferred to pretend he died right along with Treize rather than tell her child he even existed burned. He usually tried to not let himself think about it, he of all people knew that grief was a crazy, contrary thing to contend with… But the more he tried to mend things with Jack, the more he saw how much his behavior towards and excuses about his father had been warped reflections of how others had treated him. He couldn't examine what he'd done and not see that too.

He loved Leia the same way he did Treize. They were family. But she wasn't his favorite person these days. He hadn't exactly been avoiding her, but he hadn't been seeking her out either. They'd spoken more in the last few days than they had the last few months combined, and that had been all business, either for RLTT or to do with her taking over his treatment. They weren't…

Des said it was the tip of the iceberg, comparing that to what Jack had been dealing with all these years. And that made some things easier, even as others became so much harder. The more he came to terms with it all…

It wasn't that anything he'd felt before hadn't been real, because it was. Just… as real as some of his relationships had become, enough of the foundations were made of lies he'd clung to in order to get by, and looking back hurt. There were… a lot of things he should have done differently. But shitty history didn't mean he had to give up anything he'd gained in the meanwhile. Just that…

Well, some of his relationships probably needed to be reevaluated the same way his own with Jack had been. His perspective had gotten so skewed. Not Dave, and not the Noins, but… probably everyone else he'd known through the Khushrenadas.

And as much as he'd always dismissed his shit with Jack as irresolvable, he knew he could sort the issues with Treize and Leia. Truthfully, he was mostly sure none of it had been intentional, just… They'd all been so young. If he really thought about the shit he'd been up to when she'd last seen him… he probably shouldn't have been Marie's godfather. Which he hated to think about, but… They had chosen him for the role because they had no one else they could trust – not because it would've been much different from handing a small child to his uncle.

He didn't think he would've done that shit, he wanted to say he would've changed his life to suit raising a child if it had come to pass even at fourteen, but… She hadn't seen him in seven years. Maybe Leia had just grown up enough to realize how utterly fucked up they'd all been as teenagers, and wanted better for Mariemaia. He couldn't hate her for that. Even if it was completely wrong, because in a worst case scenario he probably would've legit moved in with Des and used him as a working model the way he'd half planned to do with Junior when on that first long hunt for him, he… he couldn't say that he wouldn't have made the same fucking choice as Leia.

It hurt, and he wasn't ready to talk to her about it, but… As much as he hated it, he couldn't bring himself to blame her either. It… was what it was.

At any rate, he had a lot more say about his life now than he had as a teenager, and, as Des had pressed before Lyle was born? He'd decided being a godfather meant being present. None of this bizarre game of pass and keep-away and letters in the night he'd been given with Mariemaia. Lyle and Jared were going to know him as they grew up, and if that meant joining in on baking and changing diapers, well, it was time he gained some new hobbies anyway.

When he'd hesitantly asked, Des agreed with Jack wholeheartedly on the idea that his uncle had never let him have a childhood. The childhood they'd tried to give Junior hadn't been much better. Maybe he'd get a better idea of how to raise a kid now, playing with these little boys while he wasn't the final authority figure, before Relena and he got around to having their own. Having a little more experience meant he'd be less likely to fuck them up, right?

He met Addie's eye and gave her a grateful nod – that didn't hurt much – before eyeing the coffee table for a source of breakfast. If they wanted to cut off their conversation awkwardly when he came into the room, that was their problem – this was his house, and while he technically had a personal office, this was also his office. He didn't begrudge them the sunshine and would be content to take his work back downstairs; but they weren't going to make him feel bad about walking around his own home. "I need at least one scone before I can stomach an oxy," he announced, making his way over to an open armchair. "What have we got?"

"Bacon cheddar and ricotta herb," Raina offered, leaning forward and grabbing a napkin and small plate before giving him an expectant look. "One of each?"

"Please." Dorothy pursed her lips in a troubling way as he sat, but stood and darted away before he could ask. "What-" He cut himself off as she stepped back into his easy field of view a moment later with one of the little side tables that tended to float around the office space – making fussy sounds not unlike an angry cat when Cassie moved to take it from her.

He wanted to laugh and groan at the same time. Dorothy, contrary to what everyone had expected, did not like people treating her like she couldn't do things because of her pregnancy – sometimes to the point of absurdity. At the same time… he hadn't thought about it yet, but he couldn't lean forward without excruciating pain, which made the coffee table unusable; and with only one hand, he'd only be able to hold the mug or the plate. The side table was roughly the same height as the arm of the chair – it would make a massive difference. "Thank-you."

At least the injury was on his left... though that was becoming something of a trend. It was probably as much a result of him subconsciously protecting his right as it was luck, but the last three times he'd taken a major injury now all involved the left side.

Well, less luck this time – the shooter had been aiming for his heart. Still, he'd need to be careful about compensatory issues and changes as he recovered. At least Remalene leveled the playing field out enough that he was just going to have to work at it instead of learning new ways around the developing scar tissue and cumulative damage. Without it, he'd have been facing down some degree of permanent handicap by now.

Dorothy visibly preened at this gratitude before flouncing back to her own seat, even as Cassie shook her head, smiling. The older woman opted to sit back down on the floor by the babies instead of heading back to the couch, reaching out to smooth a hand over her son's back.

…Yeah. He had a better relationship with both of his godsons' moms than he'd ever had with Leia. A lot of that wasn't really Leia's fault and he hadn't known any better at the time either, but… This was better.

He suddenly wished he could also reach out and touch the baby for reassurance, but he was currently a fucking invalid that needed help eating his damn breakfast. Despite doing his best to not think about his back… it was also really hard to think about anything else.

I should have showered last night. He was already exhausted enough that he wanted to go back to bed – when he did take a painkiller, it might just send him back to sleep instead of giving him increased function. That would be just his luck.

He'd barely settled his plate in his lap when Olivia announced, "You're wearing flannel."

He snorted at her aghast tone, then smiled when he met her eyes and realized her offense was entirely genuine. "T-shirts are beyond me at the moment," he pointed out. He'd managed an undershirt, but only because it was one of the stretchy, non-armored tank tops in his drawer that didn't require much maneuvering.

"I can't believe you own flannel," she protested.

He bit his lip as he smothered another laugh – technically, he didn't, which actually made her protest funnier. "It's was the softest button-up in the closet," he noted. Also? "Why is this an issue? I've seen you wear flannel."

"Not outside my own house."

"I'm in my house," he reminded her.

"I think it's a very fetching shade of pink," Addie offered, conversational tone counter to her smirk as she handed him a mug of what they were all drinking.

He met her eyes as he made sure his grip was secure, grinning. "Thank-you." He doubted the color did much for him, but he hadn't complained when Jack pointed it out as an option. Warm and soft was a nice set of priorities right now; he didn't really give a damn about propriety today. At any rate, the extra width in his shoulders was compensated decently by his lack of breasts, so Relena's shirt fit surprisingly well – especially since it was more of a true cold weather shirt instead of cute fashion tailored to her curves. She made it look good, but it was made for functional layering.

His own cold weather casual tended more toward waffle weaves, but now it might be worth getting a couple plaids just to elicit this sort of reaction.

He'd probably avoid the pink outside the house, though. Or at least, not this bright of a shade.

The door opened again as Jack came out of the bathroom, both of their day bags slung over one shoulder. "Ah…"

Raina stood again and made a casually welcoming gesture that somehow ended on pointing out an open couch on the far side of the table from Jake. "Breakfast first, and then we'll clear out," she offered.

"I can go downstairs," Jake offered.

"We only ever planned to be up here for another half hour," Raina dismissed. "Addie and I have our own work, and the younger ladies have plans too, I'm sure."

"And in any case, without Hayden, unless you wanted to go up and downstairs a few times to manually arrange it, this is the only room fully with security clearance for calling Soleil," Addie pointed out. "You're supposed to speak with Treize later this morning."

…Fuck it's Tuesday. He'd… not forgotten, exactly, but holding a single train of thought for longer than a few minutes at a time was a little like keeping hold of a fish underwater. Feasible, but easier to catch it again on the next wave than to hold on tight. "Right." Illian could run the security protocol changes if needed, the house was his purview and he never left even when the rest of them did, but… well, why bother?

"'Younger ladies,'" Cassie mused, giving the other woman an amused look. "You are barely two years older than me, you realize."

Raina's smile was a funhouse mirror of her sister's, between the glasses and very different body language, for all that it was just as mocking. "You're a twenty-something for one more week, dear. Embrace it."

Right, that was coming up – and Illian too, which… Fuck, he couldn't remember if the captain had asked for the day off. But hey, I do have our PR manager in the room. He met Addie's eyes again. "Did Captain Derusha-"

"Hayden will be coming back to cover him if Relena isn't already on her way back with everyone by then," Addie assured him.

"And my staff are here for as long as you're running solo," Dorothy reminded him.

Right. As much as BJ's team focused on intelligence reconnaissance, they did also run security and had handled a few small-scale operations before Dave recruited them. Part of the deal with him coming home alone was that they would work out of Sarracenia in the interim. While Hayden and Illian were hands down better than Nan and Alexis, especially considering how specialized most of BJ's guys were, they could more than hold down the fort – especially with Tristan along to round them out. He'd just… forgotten.

He fucking hated his brain right now. He couldn't even claim chemical influence, he hadn't taken anything today. Major injuries cut you down to minimum function, and the mental toll could be just as bad as the physical. He…

Well. There was a reason he'd come home to work with a team instead of running his usual schemes.

"The captain and I are holding a joint party," Cassie continued, giving him an easy smile. She turned a speculative gaze on Jack as he finished settling into his seat. "Can we expect you too?"

His father grimaced. "Probably not. I've basically been off work for two weeks already."

She clicked her tongue in annoyance, but nodded easily enough. "That's fair."

Jake bit back the urge to ask if Jack if he was sure he was good to stay another few days. They'd been over that quite enough already. His father knew his own mind, and for now was basically just on call anyway – if he had to go, he would, and Des would step up. The only reason they hadn't fallen to that already was because Jack had wanted to help, and…

It seemed good? Maybe? Aside from already having gotten over any embarrassment or aggravation of Jack being so close before even leaving Hildegard, it… It would be fine if Des had to help him shower, but it was also yet another too small tube he'd have to force his brain through and he wasn't going to lie and say he wasn't grateful to have thus far avoided it.

His brain was stupid. It seriously wouldn't matter. But it was nice to not have to get over something else while he had so much other shit going on at the same time.

Also, Des was handling just as much of RLTT's workload as Helena was right now, and he already felt shitty enough about that that he didn't want to ask for any other favors.

Almost as if his thoughts summoned him, the far door to the office opened and Des ducked in with Nan fast on his heels. Busy morning. That, or Raina's scones are just that good. He jammed one in his mouth for affirmation, which, okay, valid… Then realized there was enough seating already arranged for the extended party and wanted to groan. Stop making a scene of everything. None of it has to have anything to do with you. It's just breakfast. Relena's office was an excellent place for breakfast, and often as not, this was exactly what they all did.

He ignored the lance of pain that shot through his chest when he nodded a greeting at them, ignored the churning gnawing itch of the Remalene that had localized instead of fully disappearing, and tried to pick out the individual flavors making up the cheesy spiced bread in his mouth. It would pass. Everything he'd been able to read up on the drug said this was a normal progression with a heavy or long-term sustained dose. He'd just never been in this deep before, and it was fine.

But he was really starting to look forward to the burn his brother and however many people on SeenIt and Agora had described as being the end stage symptom. That had to be easier to block out and still have enough brainpower leftover to be a functional human being.

He wasn't so wrapped up in his own head that he missed Nan being more manic than usual though, and he raised his brows in question when Des only smirked at his look. Huh. Not that he was unwelcome, but… Nan occasionally went outside then blinked down at his bare feet as if confused as to how they'd gotten wet – while he was something of a savant with computers, he was absentminded as hell. He didn't really do appointments and pre-arranged meeting times. As good as the scones were, that probably wasn't why he'd shown up; not to mention the fact that there would be a good spread for everyone downstairs as well. Did they finally get something worthwhile on Libramentum? As annoyed as he and Relena had been about the lack of warning, it was what it was – the group had a recurring history of black horse tactics. Given how long it had taken to get any intel on them despite the failed Brussels attack, he wasn't inclined to blame the spymaster for being on the same playing field as everyone else.

That said, claiming territory put them more in the open, and information flow should improve from here on out.

Des smoothly took the open seat beside Jack, though both of them immediately scooted to the left to make room as Cassie rose back up from the floor, Lyle in her arms. Unsurprisingly, Nan remained standing, body language as awkward as usual as he jittered.

Dorothy sighed melodramatically. "Nan. Sit." She patted the empty spot beside her that Cassie had vacated.

"Ah…" The sixteen-year-old hacker shifted his weight. "I was just-"

Dorothy just narrowed her eyes at him, and patted the couch cushions again.

"I'm fine, I can-"

"Nan."

"Has anyone been online yet today?" the tech geek tried.

Jake took another bite of his scone, opting to wait this one out.

"Sit down before you explode, and we'll even be nice to you," Olivia ordered.

…He was only a little worried about what that said about their past interactions. Olivia half lived out of Dorothy's house these days, and the two of them were more than capable of being catty queen bee bitches when the urge hit… But as brilliant as he was in front of a computer, Nan didn't really understand people in a way that allowed for subtlety – so this might just be an established mode of communication.

"Um."

"Sit," Dorothy repeated. "Have a biscuit. Then spill the tea. It's better."

He blinked. "Tea?"

Cassie was leaning against Des, hiding her face in his shoulder as she began to faintly shake with laughter.

"Sit down!" Dorothy snapped. "I don't want to crane my neck while you give me the details!"

The kid scurried over and sat, though he pressed his fists into his lap and gave the noblewoman a mulish sort of look. "I don't like tea."

"I don't care!"

In a move that was either telling or slightly suicidal, Addie reached out from Dorothy's other side and pressed the heiress back into the couch cushions. "Nan, please tell us what has you so excited." She dodged back when Dorothy took a swipe at her, keeping a steady smile even as the other woman suddenly yelped and launched herself out of her seat. Jake startled, almost launching to his feet in spite of himself as she stumbled, as much good as that would have done – but Dorothy caught her balance and only glared at the still smiling Addie before marching around the coffee table to drop between Olivia and Raina.

That… was fair on all counts, probably. Addie's pinches could bruise, when she decided you'd been rude.

When Nan still hesitated, Raina suggested, "When did it start?"

Olivia lobbed a scone at his head.

Jake just about choked, but for all that the treat hit Nan in the forehead first, he caught it before it could tumble to the floor and blinked down at it with something like delight. Body language relaxing, he turned back to Addie and offered her a boyish grin. "It started maybe two days ago, or three, if I haven't found all the threads," he began. "Though I'm not sure how many people aside from hardcore mech heads realized before this morning?"

"But?" Raina prompted.

"But someone's been going around on SuitUp answering very specific technical questions on old speculation threads about the gundams and related events during the war."

Uh… huh. "How specific?" Jake asked, wiping off his hand on the napkin Raina had been kind enough to leave on his knee.

Nan met his eyes, biting his lip. "How to break the command tree programming in an advanced suit to reroute all power from a fusion reactor to a twin buster rifle."

There was only one mobile suit, so far as he was aware, that had ever had a fucking twin buster rifle – and only one event that might account for… "Someone went on the mech forums," he reiterated, staring at the kid, "and explained the Libra power conundrum." Because no matter how anyone had tried to slice it, Wing Zero shouldn't have been able to break down as much of the battleship as it had.

Nan's grin was downright giddy. "Yeah."

He felt cold and wanted to laugh at the same time. And he probably wouldn't fully understand, he'd never tried to dive into MS programming, but… "Show me?"

True to form, the kid whipped a small tablet out of his pocket faster than a lot of soldiers could a gun and was darting over to him a moment later. "There's a lot more," he added, tapping at the screen to navigate to what he wanted. "But this was what made people start paying attention? Or not calling bullshit, at least. And some of the mods, proven engineers, are saying it's the first feasible explanation? He's been answering all their follow-up questions too, so, like, either he's really good at bullshitting stuff way over my head, or-"

"Heero's being social?" Dorothy demanded, sitting forward on the edge of her seat like she was going to launch across the table at them.

Jake… really hoped she didn't try.

"I mean, maybe?" Nan returned distractedly, eyes on the screen. "I don't know how you'd technically prove it's him, but-" He shrugged awkwardly, looking back her way as he handed Jake the tablet. "I mean, yeah? Probably."

"The most I ever got him to talk was at sword point!"

Jake decided to just ignore that, and started reading.

Calling the initial blocks of text 'technical' was something of an understatement, but he followed the logic if not the details. On its own, he wasn't sure if he would've considered it more than a theoretical? But the follow-up posts were taking it very seriously, and even dove into the nitty gritty of a few comparative code series a few times as people tried to pick it apart for inconsistencies, pointing out more efficient ways to have accomplished the same thing – only to have their suspect poster negate the arguments with more details of how the gundam's code was laid out differently than standard, and…

The amount of detail in his responses was daunting. So while he certainly couldn't verify it…

Then, of course, someone tried asking the obvious question.

---

SuperSuits21:

Define the 'auxiliary systems' you're claiming to have diverted power from. This looks too cut and dry to work.

yesThat01:

Everything but the twin buster rifle.

SuperSuits21:

You're telling me you cut LIFE SUPPORT? For how long?

yesThat01:

I overloaded the reactor at twenty-five thousand feet to get the last eight percent push – between the backlash and the mid-atmo burn, the universal safeties locked down the core to prevent a meltdown. Total power loss at T-130 seconds to impact. I wasn't worried about oxygen.

G33R_Head:

Okay, ignoring the sheer fuckery of that statement for a moment, Wing Zero didn't crash. How do you explain the suit's appearance with Sandrock in Russia when troops arrived a few hours later, if you were dead in the air?

yesThat01:

I wasn't alone. Sandrock caught me.

---

That… was insane, but might actually work? At least on paper. It wouldn't be the first or even second time one of Yuy's comrades carried him off the battlefield either. "Huh."

Nan shifted his weight awkwardly again, biting at his lip. "It's…" He made an irritated sound and took the tablet back, flipping to a different screen. "It's not just that."

This was either going to be the highlight of his morning or a massive headache. "Okay?"

The kid huffed out a breath, the noise somewhere between frustration and a laugh, as he handed his tablet back. The screen now showed a new thread on SeenIt.

---

That time I committed identity theft and offered to take a gundam joyriding so Trowa Barton's murderer didn't have to face the music.

---

…the OP's user name was 'notTrowaBarton.'

"It… honestly gets crazier from there," Nan admitted. "He's harder to pin down on hard facts, but when I tried to track the IP's, it's… without getting really into it? They're effectively nontraceable. Equally so."

And catching Yuy out in the digital lanes was only ever possible with pre-emptive intuitive leaps and barely sleeping in order to follow a fuckton of bullshit that was never his work in real-time. For all that he was the only one to ever get consistent leads on the gundam pilot after the Fall, people didn't realize how much of it was guesswork and honest bullshit. His success was equivalent to the same error rate as spinning someone around with a blindfold before asking him to pin the tail on the donkey. He'd started the exercise as busywork to keep Zechs off his back.

He'd never understood why he got lucky so often. Past a certain point, he'd honestly just considered what options he might try in the same situation, hacked in and trapped those sites preemptively, and caught the kid out because he came knocking at the same targets. Any time he did get a promising physical lead he'd only sent people on it when the men were Treize's, but Yuy had been slippery as an eel every time – and a few of those chases probably had been other opportunistic hackers.

So no, while he wouldn't mind further clarification on if they were dealing with the real deal, he was not attempting that shit again. Even if Yuy wasn't a known friend of both Po's Insurgence and Rubato, even if he was the deranged knife in the night that Zechs had somehow spun the kid into being, Jake wasn't willing to try again. It had been an exercise of insanity in the first place, despite the success rate.

And Yuy was an ally, even if everyone wanted to keep dancing around the subject. Evidence pointed strongly to him having stabilized, and Relena believed in him besides. If Lluvia was telling the truth, and at this point, Jake believed he was…

He grinned. This… was a hell of a way to handle the media outing your dirty laundry, he supposed. Fostered by Rubato or otherwise, the general goodwill of the public towards any of the gundam pilots, but Yuy in particular, was significant. If he considered Rubato's media campaign – and what he was seeing from the outlets that he knew Junior had had good shares in before coming back – if he framed the last two weeks of spin as the first steps in a dance of a larger war instead of making a statement? Bringing in a personable presence that people could admire and relate to was a brilliant follow-up move. And with Yuy, the mech forums were absolutely the best place to start – Yuy's part in the war, however erratic, was a consistent outlier of what people considered physically possible. Whether they agreed with his actions or not, people were consistently fascinated with him. If anything, Zechs' hunt of Yuy after the Fall had only added to people's association of him to power. Getting him an online presence via the forums would humanize him – even while, given these first posts, he continued to look even more heroic.

It was fucking fantastic. He wished his head was clear enough that he could afford to talk to Cat in something approaching real-time – maybe it was more to do with Rubato's PR director, BJ thought highly enough of him, but the planning and execution here was brilliant. Even if it wasn't Yuy on the other end of the keyboard for these debates, just someone managing his account with occasional input? It was something of a master stroke.

"Is it just the two forums?" he asked, trying to think through the long-reaching implications. If it were him planning this, then-

"There are matching handles on Agora and Bedlam, like they made sure to be consistent across the board before settling on a universal user name, but minimal to no activity so far," Nan negated. "'notTrowaBarton' has a lot more posts by far, but most of what he's done on SuitUp has been more generic discussion of mechanical variants and systems, not… pointed. Like this one."

Jake snorted out a laugh, ignoring the sharp lance of pain through his chest as he reread the thread title… and tapped on it. What the hell. If it turned out to be a fabrication, it at least looked like it would be an enjoyable one. It wasn't like anyone else had offered any kind of explanation for what the fuck happened at Heavyarms' launch beyond 'chaos.' According to their intel before Meteor's launch, Leia's older brother had been the only authorized pilot, and he should have come down with a contingent of men equal to Winner's Maguanacs to cover his back. The 'Trowa Barton' that they'd gotten instead was… confusing at best. His movements had possibly been the most erratic of the five, at least by what anyone had been able to trace, especially since following in Yuy's footsteps and coming back from the dead after the resultant shitshow Winner's run with the Zero System had culminated in.

If not for Lu confirming it really was the same guy on Peacemillion, he would've thought that resurrection was a matter of titles – by all reports, the aftermath of the battle near the lunar base had been… rather absolute. Severe enough that no one had tried looking for a body. Even if things had been calmer, what with Tsubarov taking Une out, Chang and Maxwell shooting their way free, the rise of White Fang and so many separatist factions all calling themselves by 'Treize' and… even if they'd had the manpower, he doubted anyone would have tried. As it was, even Yuy and Winner had gotten 'lost' shortly after Tsubarov's lunar coup, and…

It had been a chaotic time. The entire fucking war had been, conflicts seemingly hopped up on cocaine and racing out of control in every conceivable direction, but… The lunar base had been a nexus of clusterfucks.

At any rate, he doubted someone could come up with a more fanciful version of events than he'd already imagined, trying to rationalize some of that shit.

He offered Nan a smile, picking up his breakfast plate to shift it to his left knee with his last three fingers while still keeping hold of the tablet, settling that on his right so he could pick up his tea. "Thank you." He'd give the device back and switch to one of his own after he ate, but for now this made an excellent distraction from the pain.

The kid nodded, looking pleased with himself, and went back to the couch. "I'll let you know if anything else shows up," he added.

"If one of them actually turns up on Bedlam, it's going to cause a riot," Jake noted. Unlike the regular forums, Bedlam was live discourse, with typing notifications and read receipts. Supposedly private, but far more difficult to secure in reality… He doubted they would use it as more than a holding place. Claiming the usernames more likely had to do with stopping someone else from using them than any intent to converse.

…It was still an idea he could appreciate, though.

oOo

---

oOo

Berlin, Germany – Executive Suite of the Hotel Ensō Berlin

"I think we have to," Relena admitted, her mouth a hard line. "Even if you didn't agree for the sake of your family, we don't have the means to reinstate you. I can make a solid case for your assets, even your land, but I cannot take the new government's authority back. Whether you would prefer to risk living under them or sell your estate and stay on the mainland is your choice." She listened for a long moment, then sighed. "No. I'm developing an expanded cabinet to account for the changes and would welcome you there, but I cannot make something from nothing. The democratic zones stand. Any concessions we gain will be given once, and not maintained." Another pause. "Of course. I agree – in large part because I don't trust them either. I suspect only time will tell."

BJ took a seat as he waited for the princess to finish with her call. Honestly, the talks had been going surprisingly well. They would need to spend the next week or two hammering out the details, but beyond the fact that Libramentum had instituted a violent takeover? They were surprisingly reasonable. Thus far, there had been little to no sign of the concerning zealotry seen in the Iberian branch – further solidifying his theory that they were distinct factions – and with their soft touch since approaching Relena, they were clearly planning ahead.

The biggest problem was the displaced nobles – but in reality, they had only wounded roughly a quarter of the British Romefeller families in a significant way. The Isles had been hit hard by the war's casualties, and many of the houses had technically fallen under Noventa purview because their surviving scions were too young to rule. The larger portion of the British nobility were instead industry-rich – which the usurpers were making a strong point of not interfering with. Their argument of right to rule revolved around the dissolution of landed gentry, not free market capitalism – which dovetailed remarkably well into the standard Relena was pushing with the Accords.

The secondary problem, of course, was the legality of what was actually happening here. No one was particularly happy with the precedent the Accords was setting of effectively caving to terrorists – even ones that were proving to be well-mannered. On the other hand, the British members on the Board aside from Noventa cared little about the land itself aside from nostalgia, and… Well, part of the goal of the Accorded Nations was to establish a stable meritocracy instead of preserving the semi-feudal power structure they'd all been born into. The Libramentum takeover was something of a slap in the face, but if they protested too hard against the principles themselves, they would find themselves between a rock and a hard place in the currently rising government seat.

So it was a shitshow, if not as bad of one as it looked at first glance. Never mind the fact that even Relena had made it clear, publicly, that they were only moving this quickly to talks instead of taking this as a personal attack because everyone knew military action wasn't feasible. Everyone was aware that she had opposed the actions taken against Italy's secession attempt, but she'd used all the media attention focused on her right now to point out the details and differences – going so far as to say that she very well might have condoned further military action in Italy had negotiations fallen through, though never the following quarantine.

The lack of military power gave her a weakened stance, but also made this something of a trial run – a doubled-edged one. The precedent of finding a middle ground here was vital if Relena wanted to pardon and smoothly transition Po's Insurgence the way she was Mitchell's Strike Force. Defining each action and laying down precedent now, with Libramentum, would either pave the way for that goal or make it a living nightmare.

On the bright side, the self-styled 'General' Devin Fosse had shown every sign of not only understanding his delicate position, but, knowingly or otherwise, lining the Accords up for easy future transitions.

The British Isles were not claiming independence – they were transitioning into a nationally democratic government while remaining under Regime auspices. They were perfectly willing to uphold the prior taxation requisites their new territory fulfilled. Additionally, the story was that they did not have a distinct military – the armed forces that had participated in the takeover were members of a private militia with separate careers. Supposedly, if their proposal was accepted and ratified by the Accords, Fosse would be willing to disclose the information about what the men and women who participated in the hostile takeover did as their day jobs.

He probably meant it – though whether any of those records would mean anything was up in the air. If what BJ had been able to scrounge up on Fosse was legitimate, the man had been a North American colonel with the Alliance before Daybreak, a Libra veteran that disappeared post-Fall and was quietly added to the casualty lists – though so far, he hadn't been able to make a connection to confirm that. The problem with anyone claiming American ancestry at this point was that it was an easy cop-out, because very little could be verified. They could claim practically anything, so long as their business was on a small enough scale to not have reached international popularity.

The important part of all this was whether the Regime would tolerate the 'we don't have an army' excuse. The final summation of the talks yesterday had boiled down to the British Accords members willingness to negotiate their losses instead of picking a bigger fight, so long as it did mean no imminent civil war.

It had been smart, to protect all the civilian nobility. The British houses had little enough sway post-Fall, and with a sharp eye to what had happened to the families that did see revolutions that first year… The offer to give the nobility their families back so long as everyone agreed to play democrat hit just enough of the right notes to make most swallow their pride. Not everyone was happy, of course, but…

As Relena had reminded everyone last January, the Peacecraft Regime was a product of military conquest, not democracy or tradition. While it tolerated the aristocracy for the sake of convenience, it… technically wasn't any more legitimate than Libramentum's new claim on the Isles.

And frankly? They'd done a fairly clean job of it, with minimal collateral. If anything, people who were upset about the current situation were just as pissed off at the Regime for being so inept that it was allowed to happen.

Because right of conquest. Something, something, if I can take it from you, I can protect these people better than you can – and the more complete the conquest, the louder that message.

Which… wasn't exactly a sentiment Relena had any interest in quieting, given her plans for the Accords and her brother's Regime. Especially if they got Po on board. While a gundam wasn't an absolute end-all, getting one on her side would go a long way towards lending her own organization the martial legitimacy it currently lacked – especially with how public opinion was turning on the original five pilots.

notTrowaBarton. He resisted the urge to laugh or put his face in his hands. That move was… either brilliant or insane. For the time being, he was mostly content that whoever he was? That young man was not currently his problem.

"I'll see you in a couple hours," Relena announced, sounding like she was agreeing to something. "Take care." Hanging up, she turned to give BJ an arch look. "You're hovering. What is it?"

BJ offered a wry smile – of course, if it had been something serious, he would have signaled her, not waited for convenient timing. "Did you take any equestrian classes in your last year of schooling?"

She gave him a dubious look at the non sequitur. "No."

He deflated slightly. So she probably wouldn't-

"My father gave me a pony on my fifth birthday," Relena continued. "I don't think I've had a lesson since I was eleven. Riding was one of the few hobbies I held onto as a teenager, when I started working with my father. I joined the ladies polo team at Saint Gabriel's shortly after being admitted, and I usually spent a few free periods a week on horseback, my last year."

Or not. Despite being 'non-nobility' democrats, the Darlians had been filthy rich, living on a sizable estate. He probably should have considered that angle. Try again. "Did you use the school stables for that, or a personal horse?"

She was clearly trying not to laugh, even as she looked wryly confused. "I didn't have the time to care for my own horse as I grew older. My parents kept a small stable, my mother and a few of her friends liked to ride, but…" She shook her head. "Why are we talking about horses?"

Might as well. The irony of someone named Heero going straight for the tall white horse wasn't lost on him, but at least that stallion ought to be memorable. "Do you remember any of their names?"

"I… usually tried to reserve Curry or Sunshine," she offered, still looking confused.

That was promising. "Do you remember if there was a tall white one?"

Relena blinked at him. "Is someone selling Beignet?"

God damn it. He didn't really want to bring it up, but most of Relena's classmates from before the war had still been in Japan when Libra fell, which meant very few people ought to remember the damn horse's name – the entire reason he was trying to use the detail as a possible proof.

"I… wouldn't buy him even if I wanted to keep a horse right now," the princess hedged, looking regretful. "I could handle him, but he's too hot-blooded for my taste – great energy, but aloof, and prone to picking fights if he didn't get enough exercise. I was always more interested in a smooth ride than a challenge." She bit her lip. "Olivia might know someone-"

He was pretty sure the horse was under the Pacific with the rest of Japan's population, so he cut her off. "The horse is a reference point, not a concern," he assured her, unlocking his tablet's screen and holding it out. "Here." It was one of the more inane examples of the nonsense flying through the forums this morning, but given the fact that Relena agreed with the name…

It wasn't foolproof. Beignet had been a tall, pure white thoroughbred stallion, and had stood out – others might remember him. But it was a consistent detail that stood out. In any case, this particular post, mixed in with 03's increasingly madcap declarations on SeenIt, seemed like a decent introduction to the most recent internet psychosis.

---

That time I made a horse an accessory in fraud

-yesThat01

---

Relena let out an incredulous giggle, eyes bright, and started to read.

BJ shook his head and waited, skimming the more inane commentary and responses – unlike his more technical responses on SuitUp or the entirely irreverent diatribes 03's posts turned into, Yuy was fairly succinct.

---

Inevitable_Raptor:

You were literally sneaking around to fake your tuition payment, and you picked out a white horse?

yesThat01:

He was significantly taller than any of the others in the stable. I hadn't been to Earth in over a year – I was still acclimating back to full grav, not to mention the rebound from dropping Wing into the ocean. I wanted the extra height to make the jump for the window ledge I needed.

Inevitable_Raptor:

OMG, so you and, what, SPRINKLES, just casually broke into a school office instead of taking the digital route… why?

yesThat01:

I'd gotten in late the night before and ran into a firewall when it came to payment information – hitting a couple offices and phishing a username with an obvious password was less time consuming than brute forcing it.

yesThat01:

Beignet, not Sprinkles. Though at the time, I thought it was just a pun? Ben-neigh? But apparently it's a pastry?

He liked to run. I can relate.

notTrowaBarton:

I've done worse. At least it was only ONE animal.

yesThat01:

That wasn't fraud so much as false advertising, though.

---

Relena shook her head, looking fond as she met BJ's eyes. "Looking back on it later that year, I thought he'd picked Beignet and put him through his paces so no one would guess he was spaceborn," she admitted. "After all, why would a rebel soldier from space be a half decent horseman?" Her grin broadened. "Or prone to showing off, if he was trying to fly under the radar?" She let out a small laugh. "Not that he ever tried particularly hard to blend in." Pursing her lips, she focused back down on the screen for a long moment before giving him a speculative look. "How many of these threads are there?"

"More than I've had time to read through." And more going up by the hour, thus far.

"Hm." She considered for a moment, then handed it back to him. "I think I know where my free time today is going," she decided. "It's an interesting tactic. Do you think Rubato was building up to this specifically since the article came out on Heero?"

Absolutely. "Yes," he confirmed. Given what they knew, it was too well done to be anything else.

"Good." She sat back down at the table and started shuffling through the papers they needed to review before the next negotiation. "I'll ask Dorothy to give me a general highlight reel as things progress, but if my name or a question about me comes up directly, I'd like to be informed as soon as is feasible. I'm not in a position to respond on the same medium, but it might be worth working a bit of social commentary into my press interactions. At the very least, I don't want to be surprised by anything that gets brought up."

"It's already done," BJ assured her. They were on the same page. "I talked Dorothy into a more composed write-up with links over email instead of blowing up your phone." She was still blowing up his, but he wasn't playing politics in front of a live audience – it was fine, and some of it might even turn out to be relevant.

Relena had her phone back out anyway. "I'm reminding her to not make an account to respond to anything, at least as herself, without clearing it first. I want to see how the scheme plays out before she tries to influence it."

He had also already stressed that, but Dorothy was more likely to respect it – or at least, respect it for longer – if it came from Relena. "That's valid," he agreed. Personally, he was hoping more points would come up that Relena could verify – this looked real so far, but there would be arguments both for and against it being a hoax. "How much do you know about Heavyarms' pilot?" If he could go at this from more than one angle-

"Virtually nothing," Relena returned, eyes on her phone as she tapped out her message. "We were in the same place at the same time on two different occasions, I think, but never crossed paths. I know what Noin told me about him and that Heero and Quatre both respected him, but I've never seen his picture, let alone met him face-to-face." Setting her phone back down, she sighed, meeting his eyes. "I know he's the one who saved Heero after he self-destructed in Siberia, and that he went with him to talk to Sylvia and the other surviving family members of the New Edwards debacle – that alone made up nearly three months. That was a long time to be doing anything, during the war. Mm. Noin said he was quiet." Bringing up one shoulder in an elegant shrug, she finished with, "But the last time she mentioned him to me was before Sanc fell – she'd only spent a couple of days in his company, and that while under the tension of the pending Antarctica duel. It might not be representative."

BJ nodded, even as he felt a little let down – though honestly, he had already gotten more than he'd expected. 'Quiet' certainly didn't match what they were seeing online now – but if Yuy was validating him, and if they decided one was legitimate, the other would follow. Besides, face-to-face interactions while under stress did not necessarily match what someone was willing to do in front of a keyboard. "I'll keep it in mind," he promised. The fact that 03 was something of a wildcard wasn't news, after all.

If anything, it might just be the tip of the iceberg.

oOo

---

oOo

May 6th 199 – Wednesday – Szczecin, Poland

"Hey, got a minute?"

Odin, after waiting a long moment and realizing that no one else had responded, blinked and looked away from his laptop to see Rhett leaning around the corner. He glanced around to be sure, but Skye and Trisin were seemingly engrossed in their game of backgammon, and Rhett was looking at him, so… "What's up?"

"I wanted a break and your sister says you haven't had lunch yet," their new friend announced, holding up the loaded plate he'd brought with him. "If you're busy I can sit in the corner and just mooch off your serenity, but you've been staring at a screen for long enough that I figured I should point it out."

He grinned at the description, hearing Skye snort and Trisin sigh. "Food sounds good," he decided. He'd read through most of the lifted code the infiltration team had brought back from the Canadian plant, but hadn't started picking it apart for holes yet. Though… "Did Cor go somewhere?" As much as Quatre had spent the last few days actively experimenting with his abilities in between touching on the progress of different projects, he hadn't really expected to be sought out. As far as experimentation went, Cory was a far less… variable control.

"He's arguing about his English homework with Audi," Rhett negated. It's a little cute, to be honest; it's the most animated I've seen him, and your sister is being very intentionally oblivious."

Trisin snickered, and Odin shrugged, closing his laptop and sliding it to one side as Rhett came to sit across from him. "She finds that easier than confronting the issue," he explained.

"It's probably the neatest, calmest way to handle it," Trisin agreed, picking up his dice cup and rattling it. "That boy is a ball of traumatized fluff and understands about as much of what he's doing as a neglected puppy. He's too out of touch to even understand if she tried to let him down, but he's a long way from treating his crush any differently than a five-year-old might just due to a lack of comprehension, so it's safe to leave it lie."

That was a decent explanation. "She walks away when she needs space," Odin added.

Rhett nodded. "Whatever his physical age, he feels young." Then he winced. "Younger than he should be even if we said time stood still as soon as he went to Africa, from what I can tell. I'm caught between wondering if he was delayed at baseline beforehand, or if we have a truly severe example of emotional regression instead of stasis."

"Jury's out," Skye admitted. "Though puberty didn't hit until after he was in the camps, and apparently that can add to the weirdness?"

"But he was likely a late bloomer to start with," Trisin added. "He talks about his parents sometimes, but no one else – never any friends. I can't tell if that's because he was isolated or if the relationships were just so far outside his current worldview that he can't compute them anymore." He looked up at Rhett. "His therapist has us on a supportive watch and wait kind of approach. Kid's got a tendency to drop when he gets overstimulated, and we've had better luck getting him out of his shell the longer we go between incidents."

The empath grimaced again, but nodded. "That gels." Leaning back in his chair, he looked back at Odin. "Did you need him for something?"

…That didn't compute. "What?"

Rhett raised his brows. "You just asked where the kid was? Did you need to talk to him about something?"

Oh. Odin gave him a skeptical look. "You left Cor to come find me?" When the other man only continued to look at him, expression unchanging, he shrugged and picked up the sandwich that had been pushed his way. "Seems redundant."

Skye shot him a dirty look, "Dude, I love you, but I want to make a comment about your issues having issues. What the fuck?"

Odin rolled his eyes. "It's empathically redundant," he reiterated. Though he realized he was smirking. "Also, I'm pretty sure that counted as a comment."

"Nope. I said it passive aggressively enough that it's difficult to quote and therefore harder to tattle about and still be taken seriously."

He let out a short laugh. "Is that what we're going with?" So far, most people had been polite enough to not ask him about the now famous article directly – though Jovi had come close – but he found himself appreciating the other man's irreverent attitude.

"Until I come up with something better," Skye agreed happily, picking his own dice cup up and rattling it meaningfully at Trisin. "Acknowledgement without fussing. Not that I'm against talking, but that's not exactly your strong suit."

That… wasn't a bad point. "True."

"…Dodging all that, since I'm the new guy and you're not giving me any context," Rhett announced. "You are not equivalent to what Cor has going on."

Trisin nodded, making a face at the way his dice came up before ignoring them in favor of conversation. "Cor is a blindfold," he reminded him. "Cat says you're more of a lens he can focus through."

"You're both his favorites, but not because you're on the same wavelength," Skye added, flapping his hand at Trisin. "Come on, just because we're not playing acey-deucey doesn't make that not a decent defensive combo."

"I'm trying to figure out why I agreed to let you teach me this," the other man grumbled.

"I'll play whoever wins," Nick announced as he slouched into the room and dropped into the spot between Skye and Odin. He looked… tired.

"Still waiting to hear back?" Skye asked.

"No, I just don't know what I want to do about it. It sucks."

Trisin frowned. "They said no?"

"I can finish this quarter from a distance due to the extenuating circumstances of the invasion, there's only another month left anyway, but otherwise said that if I don't want to come back, I should transfer."

"Or you could take another leave, planned this time," Trisin pointed out.

But Nick should his head. "I don't want to, and they also put an expiration on my pre-Sahara credits – since I decided I wanted to go back to my original degree, even if I only waited six months, I'd have to retake some of my earlier classes in order to graduate."

Odin frowned. "That's stupid."

"Yeah, but it's also normal," Nick dismissed, crossing his arms on the table and slumping into them. "I was going to double up on summer courses to make up the difference before, but… I don't know."

"There's other schools," Trisin reminded him.

"I know," Nick grunted. "But I don't want to think about it. What were you guys talking about?"

"Cor."

Nick straightened up slightly, body language going tense, then just as abruptly dropped back down as he narrowed his eyes at Trisin. "I just saw him," he protested. "He's playing video games with Audi. He's fine."

Trisin groaned. "So much for homework…"

"Mm." Nick blinked. "Was it for English?" he guessed. When Trisin just narrowed his eyes at him, the photographer sat up a bit and smiled, obviously pleased to have gotten the drop on something. "It's some kind of JRPG," he explained. "Lots of text exposition and complicated battle menus. She's making him read everything out loud and starting dumb running jokes when he does a bad command because he misunderstood something."

"So she's being a mini-Odin," Skye declared. "Neat."

That… was probably fair. But also annoying and amusing at the same time. Hn.

"What I was saying," Rhett announced, "with the caveat in that there are definite differences between how Cat and I perceive things, is that while Cory and Odin might both have a dampening effect on empathic abilities, they do not come across the same." He pointed across the table at Odin. "Also, I gather it's a misunderstanding on your part, but that kid is not immune to empathic influence – he keeps actively leaning into Cat despite lacking the senses to know what he's looking for, and relaxes when he finds it."

Skye narrowed his eyes. "Cat's supposed to be laying off on that."

Rhett narrowed his eyes right back. "I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing, so I'm gonna need you to explain."

"Cat and Cor have codependence issues that aren't good for the boy," Trisin explained, crossing his arms and leaning into them. "It used to go both ways, but Cat mostly leveled out and has been working with us to scale it back." He sighed. "Ideally without giving Cor a new set of issues. The thing is…" He trailed off, looking up as he bit his lip.

Nick settled his elbows back on the table, hands up and splayed out. "Thing is," he continued, "Cat developed a sort of tailored therapy for each of us while we were in the Sahara – projecting a solid framework of absolutions we could lean against, then acting in such a way to make it feel more real once the mutant magic end of it wears off."

"…Wow," Rhett deadpanned, staring at him with a flatly unimpressed expression.

Nick rolled his eyes. "Before, Cor was the only one of us who could really give anything back. He likes this guy better," he gestured to Odin, "because something about him lets Cat mellow or focus his senses instead of just blanking them."

"That's a very simplified but accurate way of putting it," Rhett agreed when Nick paused.

"Cool." He made a face then, wiggling his fingers in an approximation sort of way before continuing. "The thing is, the stamped framework Cat gives us isn't permanent, but it's not there and gone, just… sticky? He doesn't have to actively hold them, but if you notice it, you can shake it off as soon as he stops actively pressing it and it wears away pretty fast. Like… maybe a couple hours? I mean, he was layering these framework stamps on us all every day in the desert, sometimes multiple times a day, and it was still only a temporary crutch."

"It helped afterwards because it gave each of us a baseline or goal to aim at," Trisin finished, "but it's not a fix."

"And he was doing this in defensive and offensive patterns to more than twenty people on the regular," Rhett summed up, tone flat.

"Probably closer to eighty, with some variation up or down – twenty was more of a slow day, though he says sometimes it was a lot simpler."

"The stamp pattern thing was when we got deep," Nick agreed. "Apparently mood maintenance is easier. But I'm also pretty sure he pressed on at least fifty that way most days."

"Holy fuck."

"There's a reason he leaned so hard on Cor and Razo," Skye offered. "Honestly, I think it's all going way better than we had any right to expect. Cat when we first got free compared to Cat now is, like, night and day. I thought I was going to have to stand in his blind spot and be irrepressible for years. Even after we all recognized how much of a mask Robby was, he was kinda shattered, you know? Except he got over it really fast."

"Probably because Odin's the Zen garden at the center of the universe while Cor's a haunted house with so much insulation that you have this creeping realization that someone might be screaming their lungs out in the next room and you wouldn't know."

"Oh God, I did not need that analogy," Nick groaned, dropping his head into his hands.

Trisin winced. "Cor… None of us are really sure about what to do. Sometimes I think maybe he just needs that impression stamp from Cat a while longer, but…"

"But he's lazy," Skye offered.

Trisin made a face. "I don't like that word," he argued. "But yeah. If Cor is having a good day, he just settles in and refuses to budge. Which I get and he's allowed that on his own, but when it's just from Cat… it's not real. And when he stops working on it, he backslides." He shook his head. "So now that Cat doesn't need Cor to anchor him all the time, he's been easing off to try and let natural development take its own course."

"Ah." Rhett shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "Well, he's not doing anything intricate – I think it might even be a subconscious sort of push. Just a kind of 'it's okay, I'm here' and it's not directed. Subtle too – I only noticed it because I'm the newbie who probably shouldn't be so comfortable here."

Skye made an irritated noise. "Ugh, that's artificial? I didn't pick that one out either, that's just Cat."

"He only seems to do it when Cory's nearby," Rhett offered. "Back to me thinking it's not a conscious decision." He shrugged. "If it's something you feel, then he might be doing something of a copy and paste to borrow the idea. I've seen him do similar shit for convenience over the last few days – it doesn't seem half as difficult for him as even imagining it is for anyone else."

Skye made a face, also leaning back but crossing his arms. "That's probably helpful, then," he decided, tone grudging. "Nonspecific enough to not make the kid quit again."

"It's not like we won't watch it," Trisin returned agreeably.

"So long as you don't try to separate them for too long either," Nick added. "He's got this weird thing about recognizing people and major change." He turned to Odin. "Did you know he sees Adam as a totally new person since his accident?"

Calling it an accident was probably at least part of the problem? "He… basically is," Odin countered.

"Oh fuck, not you too!"

Odin just looked at him. "How are we defining a person?"

Nick stared back for a long moment, looking uneasy. "I want to be upset that this is something that requires definition, but then I remember who I'm talking to and realize it's legit relevant. Fuck my life."

He couldn't decide if that was an insult or a compliment – knowing Nick, it might be both.

Before he had to decide on a response, however, Adam swung around the corner. "I did a thing," he announced cheerfully, smirking. "You should check it out."

Odin found himself smiling back, wondering just what his friend had picked next – there had been a few options. They were trying to avoid putting too much up all at once even as they escalated, and Mark was helping them track the responses and plan it, but that didn't make the process not entertaining.

But with Rhett present, the details were going to have to wait. "After lunch," he suggested instead, taking another bite of his sandwich.

"…How are we defining a person?" Rhett asked carefully.

"Ooh, we're being existential?" Adam's smirk widened, even as his eyes slid to one side in thought. "I guess it depends on the point you're trying to make."

Nick visibly resisted the urge to groan, jaw tightening… before apparently deciding to go for it. "Do you think you're the same person as before your accident?"

Adam's brows went up. "More 'incident' than 'accident,'" he corrected. Then he shrugged, grinning again. "No idea. Who cares?"

"…Who cares," Nick repeated flatly.

Adam nodded. "Yeah. That guy was a loser."

Odin found himself laughing under his breath – which got him a sharp, wicked grin from his friend – even as Nick's shoulders hunched.

"See, I can tell you mean that, but this guy is actively horrified," Rhett interjected, gesturing at Nick. "What happened, exactly?"

"I died," Adam explained.

Nick groaned and dropped his head on the table before wrapping his arms around it. Evidently he was done talking.

"…You died."

"More or less," Adam agreed, crossing his arms and leaning back.

"I… am guessing the operative word is less," Rhett tried.

Adam laughed. "Sure, but also more. Old me had issues, okay?"

"And you don't?"

"Nope. Can't remember them, so not my problem."

There was silence for a long moment before Skye made a disgusted noise. "Dude."

Trisin cracked, starting to laugh uncontrollably.

"Dude," Adam said right back, smirking. "I might as well make the most of it." Then he rolled his eyes, stance shifting into something more relaxed. "In all seriousness, I tried the other end of things for a while," he offered. "But so much of my memory is gone that I didn't get too far. I've picked up a little more since finding my old friends, but not much – I figure there's no use in crying over spilled milk." He splayed out his hands in yet another shrug. "I did some cool shit, but most of what I've put together otherwise is depressing. Good riddance – I've got better shit to do."

"That's either amazing or terrible," Skye decided, narrowing his eyes at him.

Odin snorted out another laugh as Adam took a bow. "Thank you."

Trisin, previously starting to calm down, gasped and began laughing harder.

Nick groaned again, seeming to collapse even further in on himself.

And while there was nothing wrong with any of that… "The thing is," Odin offered, "while his memory is missing and he's a lot more expressive than before? His decision tree logic and sense of humor are exactly the same."

Adam blinked at him. "Yeah?"

"You're a lot more… carefree," Odin admitted. "Quicker to laugh. Less bothered by things, I think. But if what we are is how we choose to make decisions? How we… prioritize?" That wasn't quite right; Trowa hadn't prioritized the same things as Adam. But the way he went about it was still the same? "You're happier," he concluded, not sure how to quantify that. "You told me you felt lost, left adrift, when we met. After you saved me. You… tried to follow in my footsteps. Even though it…" He cut himself off, biting his lip, trying to come up with a better way to phrase it, but… "You were thinking about following my example just because you couldn't come up with something better aligned to follow. And I'd just woken up, but you told me that, and I didn't know you, and I didn't have a good argument because I'd just woken up after…" After trying to kill myself again. "So I made a bad joke about it, because I didn't know what to do." Death hurts like hell. "And you laughed like it was the best thing you'd heard in years."

They'd talked about this on Sunday, along with so many other things about the war, going over details they could use for their internet crusade. They were playing roles to some degree, Adam running wild while Odin kept to a more defined rhetoric, at least to start with – but Adam had forgotten so much of the war that he had to keep clarifying details for him. But whether it was because they'd already talked about the worst of it before now or if it was just easier with an excuse, having a ready framing device… There had been something soothing about going over it with him.

Maybe it was just because the process was anticlimactic after talking about so much of the retraining with Anne. Maybe talking to complete strangers whose emotional responses he didn't have to deal with was as therapeutic as she had suggested it might be…

But he'd been having fun on the forums, for all that Adam was clearly having far more.

Maybe… "It's like you forgot most of what weighed you down," he decided, "and remembered how to play." There were things about Adam now, when contrasted to Trowa, that made him think of Marie – of what she had taught him to notice again. Of things that others had shown him he could appreciate since. "Like instead of forgetting yourself, you remembered you didn't need to listen to anyone else to be okay. That…" He frowned, and met his friend's eyes. "I like that you figured out how to have your own goals," he explained. "Maybe you figured that out before, between when we split up and what happened? It looked like maybe you had." No one had told him to infiltrate OZ, after all, and there was something that rang true between that and the choices he'd made since Libra fell. "But you were still… unsure." Afraid. Waiting for it all to crash. Pulling me out of my cell partly as a mercy, to let me stretch my legs, but also to see if I had any better ideas of what to do.

Maybe the difference is because of something that had happened before – or maybe you were just too used to having someone give the orders. That part of Trowa had been so much like himself that it had both made the other man easier to understand and simultaneously made Odin want to break the habit completely, once and for all. But…

"I can still see you," he decided. "Better than before, even. Maybe losing your memory removed enough fears or insecurities that it made you freer to decide what you wanted. You're different, but… it's better."

Adam was still smirking like he knew a secret everyone else had missed, like he was looking for trouble, but there was something warm in his eyes at the revelation too. Maybe something grateful, almost? "Cool."

Odin smirked back at him. As simple as that was… it was good. It was him.

…Whatever that actually meant.

"We're talking about real, full-scale retrograde amnesia?" Rhett asked, tone… careful. When Odin focused back on him, he found the empath's expression… difficult. Eyes narrowed either critically or in concentration, but otherwise… curious, maybe?

It could be hard to read Rhett – Odin thought it might be because, like Quatre, Rhett was actively processing and reacting to an entire extra wavelength most people didn't have access to, and what he showed might not match the normal spectrum. However, unlike Quatre, he didn't seem to have been trained to conceal emotions that society deemed inappropriate for a given interaction.

Adam offered the other man a sharp grin and a nod. "I have brain damage," he added, tone chipper. "From head trauma followed by simultaneously freezing and bleeding out at the same time for hours." He waggled his eyebrows. "DIY cryostasis from a trauma-induced coma plus oxygen deprivation. Did you know that Remalene can almost completely regrow the soft tissue from frostbite damage so long as the vascular compromise isn't bone deep?"

Rhett's eyebrows went up this time. "Dude."

Adam's grin turned sly as he leaned back. "I woke up in a hospital totally blank except for fear and paranoia," he explained. "Swiped a badge, found a locker room and stole some clothes, and was long gone, standing in the rain before I realized I had no idea why I was running. Saw a sign for the circus and started in that direction because something felt right about that, and then suddenly this woman is yelling at me, asking where I've been, and says she's my sister. So. You know. We went back."

"My sisters would hand me my ass if I bailed out of a hospital," Rhett returned, looking sympathetic.

Adam made a face. "I don't want to think about having more than one," he decided.

The empath laughed. "Yeah… Tavi's not too bad, but Annie and Irina looked after me enough growing up that they try to act like they're my mom half the time. Tamelia and Camille are better about it, but all of them would wrap me up in a blanket and haul me back if I pulled something like that."

"Oh my God, I'm not the only one with five sisters," Skye declared, visibly perking up. "Are you the baby too?"

He shook his head, "Nah, that's Tavi, she's fifteen." Then he made a face. "Though, like… My family's weird. Anelisa's adopted, and Tami and Camille had moved out before I started school, and technically the three of them are my aunts." His nose wrinkled further. "Well, Camille moved back in while she went to med school? But, like… They're my sisters."

Trisin blinked at him. "Your aunts?"

Rhett offered up a helpless sort of shrug. "My grandma died a couple months after I was born and my grandad kinda went psycho."

"But your aunts are young enough that they could be adopted when this happened?" Trisin demanded, eyes narrowed.

Rhett rolled his eyes. "My family's weird, okay? But my grandparents were still teenagers when my mom was born and my parents got married before my mom turned twenty, so, like… it's not that weird." He eyed Skye for a moment, then focused back on Adam. "We were talking about trauma, though, and amnesia's…" His mouth firmed up. "I'm going to test something."

Skye shrugged and gestured back at the backgammon board. "Come on, Tris, seriously. One and two is ideal for building a barricade. Give it a try."

Adam considered Rhett for a long moment, then shrugged and turned speculative eyes on the table – which had Odin rolling his eyes and shoving the plate with the other half of the sandwich in his direction.

"I got that for you," Rhett protested, though his tone was amused. "Should I go make another one?"

"You should go make me another two," Adam declared smugly around a mouthful. "This is good."

A startled glint entered Rhett's eyes, but otherwise he just started laughing…

And Skye, in the middle of rattling his dice cup, jumped, dropping the thing as a knife appeared in his hand. "What the fuck!"

"You're way too jumpy," Trisin complained, even as he turned a wary gaze on the empath. "But yeah." He narrowed his eyes. "That was the 'invisible' thing Cat mentioned, wasn't it? You never left?"

Odin gave them both a skeptical look. "It's been less than fifteen seconds," he pointed out. With the way Rhett moved, he wasn't sure the man could have left the room in that timeframe, let alone come back and settled into the same position at the table.

"Huh." Adam eyed Rhett as he chewed. "I caught that you didn't want to be bothered, but then you talked, so… what did you expect?"

Rhett grinned. "So you felt it," he mused. "But could ignore it. Huh." His eyes flicked back to Odin. "That might actually be what you're doing too. You're just so bad at reading people that you don't get as far as dismissing it." He tipped his head to one side. "That has some interesting implications."

Odin gave him an unimpressed look, bringing his own sandwich half back to his mouth. "Like more people can see through your magic trick than you realized because your sample size was shit?"

"My sample size was excellent," Rhett returned primly. "But my rubric for people fooled versus willing to go along with it might be fucked."

"You're welcome," Adam offered, taking another bite.

"But it also means it has nothing to do with your damper effect," Rhett continued, ignoring him. "Correlation isn't causation, and all that. Hm." He looked back to Skye and Trisin. "And everyone copes differently, but I don't know about it being a trauma effect either. If it was, I think more of you ought to see through it."

Odin thought back on what he'd said earlier, finding another hole. "But Cor does see through it," he pointed out.

"That kid's brain is broken," Rhett pointed out. "I understand that it's less so than just six months ago, but I can't build any kind of premise on him."

Odin snorted, rolling his eyes.

Rhett narrowed his eyes, but Nick cut in before he could say something, lifting his head from his arms. "Cat thinks Cor's damper effect will disappear, the healthier he gets."

Rhett frowned. "Did you notice me disappearing?"

"I mentally blanked all of you to reach my happy place," Nick snarked back with a scowl. "I needed a minute to fucking deal. How should I know?"

Skye, having put his knife away, twisted and threw one arm over the back of his chair to face them better, apparently giving up on the board game entirely. "It might be less 'immunity' than that the stamps don't stick as well to some people," he suggested.

Rhett nodded. "There might be a whole range of partials I've missed too, where it would've worn off after a while or something," he agreed. "I usually do it and leave, and people don't realize they've been hit in the first place." Then he frowned again, glancing at Odin before focusing on Nick. "Why would he think the damper effect would disappear?"

"Says the boy feels like radio static because he shut down all his emotions to get by," Trisin explained. "Blanked himself out. As he finds and reintegrates them into his thought processing again, he ought to normalize."

Rhett made an incredulous face. "That… only works in a vacuum," he protested. "What the fuck?"

"What?"

"I said Cor was broken, not dead. Nothing is static, and he knows him." That last was said with a gesture at Odin. "That means it's an individualism, whether inherited or inflicted – not a generality."

Skye narrowed his eyes. "While I understand what all those words meant individually…" he announced, tone leading.

"I am not the one with sample size issues," Rhett continued. "He's thinking with his heart instead of his head."

"Look, I don't know you," Skye returned, body language growing more hostile. "Give a real explanation or get out."

This was stupid. "He's not threatening or talking down to you or anyone else," Odin told Skye. "Calm down." Even if Quatre hadn't decided he liked Rhett, he was Odin's friend at this point just for his role in helping save his brother – for being willing to step up and act as a shield for Jake while he was hospitalized, despite being an empath.

In a hospital. In an ICU trauma ward. Because he could do something to help, so he had – not because he was expecting recompense. Not to mention the fact that Rhett was Taylor's good friend as well as his cousin, and Jack liked him. Audi thought he was interesting, and if Lucrezia's identity wasn't such a lynchpin at this point he'd have asked her to come back and meet him by now.

If Skye was going to be an ass, he might just say fuck it and take the empath back to Berlin with him – he'd been talking about a job offer from Relena's security detail anyway, hadn't he?

Rhett turned a surprised look his way, even as his eyes flooded with… delight, maybe?

So that was probably a good thing. Yes. There were enough threads of himself that he felt in common with the space heart that he wanted to know him better, for all that they expressed those intentions differently in practice.

Skye threw up his hands. "I'm not dumb!" he protested. "I was pre-med track at Yale when the Fall happened, not because I wanted to be a doctor but because I could coast at that level while I figured out what I did want. Explain your terminology or use normal phrasing instead of getting sly about it and acting like you're the smartest guy in the room!"

Rhett winced, slumping a little and looking taken aback. "Shit, sorry. I read that wrong."

Tension bled out of Skye's frame, leaving him more upset than irate, and he tipped his head back. "Just explain," he suggested. "We all care about Cor, and we worry about Cat too." He gestured to Odin. "He likes anchoring with him more, but Odin has a life to go about while Cat is raising Cor, and the kid probably isn't going to be interested in moving out for another five years. If you have some kind of insight about what's going on there, good or bad, I'd like to know."

All relevant points, but Odin was also done. They were both being stupid about this anyway. "You want to know the difference between Cor's mental space and mine?"

Skye gave him a narrow-eyed look, shifting back – probably not appreciating his tone – before settling on, "Let's pretend I say yes."

Odin gave him the smile that he'd heard Howard call 'ghoulish.' "Four years."

Skye's pupils, previously dilated in something close to a fear response, narrowed down as his face crumpled in on itself. "Ah."

Well… "Cor is different," Odin continued. "He was younger, and we don't have that much in common otherwise. We're not…" He clenched his jaw. "Odin practically raised me to accept what-" He cut himself off, not interested in discussing what J had done to him right now. "The methods were different," he tried instead. "But I've been there." Sighing, bringing a hand up to ruffle through his hair, pushing back his bangs, he added, "It takes a while, but you can climb back out." Then he smirked as a thought occurred to him, and he jerked a thumb back in Adam's direction. "Ask him. He did it too, faster."

Adam snorted. "If you say so."

"You weren't much different," Odin offered.

"Yeah, but I don't remember that," he argued. "Blank slate is different than rewriting a fucked up system."

Mm. "Overwriting probably is easier," he agreed. "My family thinks I took that route when I was little." And even then, apparently it had taken most of a year… and he was still finding the collateral.

Adam blinked. "Yeah?"

"I blanked myself out for anything that happened before I turned six," he agreed. "Rewrote the few memories that came back anyway to make a corrupted sort of sense without involving the people I'd made myself forget. Cat and Anne say it's a trauma response."

"That you… stopped using?" Adam tried, looking skeptical.

Odin shrugged. "I forgot I did it in the first place?" he offered. "I was little. Jack almost panicked until I confirmed I hadn't blocked out my more recent shit, just dissociated from it." He wasn't clear on why that was better, exactly, but the man had obviously been relieved.

Adam blinked. "You told Jack?"

Odin grimaced. "No." He'd acknowledged that it was going to happen, but… he still didn't want to.

"…So the damper effect and the resistance to empathic influence are separate features of the psyche that may or may not line up together, but that doesn't rule out trends," Rhett summed up, looking at Skye. "I'd have to find more examples of both to make any kind of predictions that are better than wild guesses – all we actually have are a handful of outliers without any frame of reference to base a pattern off of. Which is why I said I thought Cat was jumping to conclusions instead of using his head."

Skye sighed, finally relaxing fully. "Okay, that makes sense." He offered Rhett a wry smile. "Tell him that? Something, something, outside perspective might help him realize he was conflating a problem and maybe he'll calm down more."

Rhett looked skeptical, but shrugged. "It can't hurt," he offered.

"Nice to see we're done dick measuring," Nick groused.

"I was gonna go get a ruler, but yeah," Trisin announced. "Glad that's not necessary."

Skye threw his dice cup at him.

oOo

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oOo

Munich, Germany – Sarracenia – Afternoon

"-ould hold, barring another wave of destruction," Jake concluded. "Which is entirely possible, since no one's had any luck clocking the mechanism. The involved satellites the Regime's picked up are too slagged to have remaining code to pick through for the trigger." He sighed, stopping himself from shrugging in time, but annoyed that he had almost done it.

His tongue felt stiff, to go along with the general lack of coordination and slow thinking from the narcotics. But as much as he focused on those side effects, he was still thinking more clearly on them than off, so…

He was so ready to be done with this. His next x-ray was on Friday, and he was hoping the ossification would be complete enough to ditch the sling a few hours a day and start working on the muscle. So much of the pain had to be from the stagnant, knotted new tissue. It always got better once you could dive into PT. If he could just trust that he could do it without causing more damage, he'd have shunted the whole of RLTT back on his team so he didn't need his brain and pushed through the physical in spite of the pain. The only reason he hadn't done it already was that he didn't want to risk a setback.

All this holding back was making him lose his fucking mind.

"Do we need any updates to public signals, for if communication gets limited?" Treize asked.

"I don't think so, but Lena and Noventa are hashing out possibilities to be sure." He closed his eyes, sitting back down. "How much more time can you reliably give us?"

Treize winced. "I'm not sure. I've been limiting engagements as much as possible while still making him feel too pressured to risk simply going home, but… Jake, nearly every battle costs me lives." He sneered, looking away for a moment, before glowering back at the camera. "I'm keeping him busy, but I'm not bleeding him. I understand the need for delay, I agreed to this plan, but I am tired of it. Relena's time for the Accords has been bought with blood as well as my reputation, and only one of these things is salvageable. You tell me – is the price still worth the boon?"

Jake set his jaw, closing his eyes. This was a conversation they needed to have, because honestly… "Barely," he admitted. "How long do you think you could run him around without actually engaging again?"

Treize, somehow, looked as exhausted as Jake felt. "I'm not sure," he admitted tiredly, rubbing one thumb across his cheek as he thought. "We… I have some missing scouts. A few things aren't lining up right. I'm beginning to worry that he's somehow flanking us. Let me look over a few reports and talk to my analysts – I can have an answer for you tomorrow."

Jake felt his jaw clench at the idea that the asshole might be able to pull some stunt off yet again… But that wasn't a mood he needed to put on Treize. As much as the two of them had their issues… That wasn't fair, and while a year ago he wouldn't have cared…

He liked to think he'd grown a little. He could be annoyed with his pseudo-brother because of what he'd done in the past, but while they needed to talk about it? Treize looked so fucking tired because he was a gundam pilot, and he was minimizing his battlefield losses by being a goddamn tank on the frontlines. He was the commanding general of the Soleil Coalition Fleet, but he was also their heaviest hitter – their safest to deploy, what with gundanium armor – and he was wearing himself as thin as was advisable.

Because it was the best he could do for his people without dropping the ball for his allies. Because he did see Jake and therefore Relena as family, because he cared, and while sometimes he had as hard a time appropriately showing that as Dorothy, too busy with the big picture to empathize with the fine detail of his schemes… He cared.

He wasn't running himself ragged. Not truly. He knew the dangers of that. But he was pushing right up against the line of that border because he'd seen what it would cost his people to pull off Jake and Relena's ploy, and instead of arguing, instead of disagreeing, negotiating, or conveniently dropping the ball, instead of letting it happen, he was using himself to try and make up as much of the difference as he could.

That was the thing most people failed to understand about Treize. If he thought he had a viable way to burn up his own mind in recompense for a ploy, his own body, he went for that option first. It was just hard to see anymore because most of his schemes were too big for that to be a viable long-term option.

So Jake knew, looking at him, looking at the reports his foster brother had given him of Soleil's situation against the doll army, that Treize was burning the candle at both ends because Treize loved him and Jake had asked him to do something he could hardly bear in holding this line. Treize had a comprehension of the battlefield that Jake had never been able to understand well enough to encapsulate, of the individual cost that… Treize had always taken the personnel costs of his orders personally. Hell, he'd as good as tried to commit suicide over it, actively baiting Wufei Chang the way he had, and while they were past that…

It hurt. It hurt no matter how he looked at it. And as mad as he was with both Treize and Leia, seeing them hurting was just another way to experience pain – one that bordered on agony.

Sometimes… Sometimes love hurt as much as it gave you strength. And that cut in both directions.

The Libramentum talks were still going surprisingly well – Relena had said today had mostly been spent hammering out the details of the free period of immigration and emigration, and Zechs' people had thus far truly shown no sign of getting involved. To some degree they were all waiting for the other shoe to drop, but…

If this finalized without serious issues? This could speak, historically, as the first big move made by the Accorded Nations. All things considered, that was auspicious. A few more weeks after this got wrapped up… If nothing explodes in our faces, that will be fertile enough ground to drop the doll bomb into and expect to survive the shrapnel, won't it?

He was probably tempting fate with a thought like that. But even if something else immediately went to hell… They were close to being stable enough to not doubt. If he was sure they had the Insurgence in the bag he might be willing to say fuck it, but…

What variables have we missed? What details did we not think of that our enemies are ready to slide in with to take us off at the knees? The issues with major plans like this, like all of Treize's scheming leading up to and through the war, hadn't been with factors they underestimated – they had been with those they hadn't realized ought to be considered at all.

He wanted to ask about the scout comment… But he'd always been an agent, not a soldier, and even if his brain wasn't half unplugged he wouldn't be able to give any kind of helpful insight. He would just be wasting time – time and bandwidth they were already wasting by having this conference over vid instead of voice or text, simply because the option was there for the moment – and very likely, it soon wouldn't be. Zechs hadn't stopped his campaign of trashing communications satellites – Soleil and the private sector had just been working triple time, recruiting and moving en masse, to combat the near constant failures. And even then… they hadn't planned on getting vid today, but since they could…

It was good to see him. He'd been so upset with Treize for most of the war, then so fucking grateful that he was alive right after that none of the rest of it had mattered as he settled into a holding pattern of resolutely not thinking about the problems. Of ignoring every aspect of his life and relationships that might allow him to break. But then that had led to a desperate need for the mask just to get out of bed each day, just to keep from shattering, and…

In hindsight, that was just asking for someone to come along with a mallet. But at least the people he loved, old and new, had only wanted to help him pick up the pieces afterwards. Whatever else had happened, on either side… the forgiveness, the understanding, the love meant everything.

"Let me know," he agreed. "Even with a conservative estimate… maybe that's the best bet."

Maybe all the false schism could just… be done. Soleil could back off, and if Zechs tried to come home despite the barricades Relena had set in place against that possibility, Treize could blow the whistle on the doll situation. Resolving the Libramentum crisis on top of recruiting Dave was giving Relena an additional kind of authority that was impossible to ignore. With the Insurgence and Rubato playing the gundam pilot angle on public opinion in the wake of all the Yuy drama…

Maybe they could pull it off neatly – like the trick where a waiter yanked the cloth off a loaded table without spilling anything. It felt downright alien to hope for it, but… maybe.

But Libramentum had come out of nowhere, and were now insisting they had had no hand in the Berlin shooting – which might be political schmoozing, but BJ had already been leaning away from that. Noventa had proof of all kinds of illegal trades being done with and through Romefeller East, either by houses she and Lena had spent the last three years limiting the influence of or by murkier powers. With only a handful of the trade manifests she and BJ's people had managed to get their hands on, let alone the realization of just how long the satellite visual feeds had been falsified…

There was no way the East had anything but a sizable army of suits. And that was discounting anything they might have been able to get dropped – escaping the atmosphere took work, required extensive launch works – but coming down, making a drop, was easy. And if any number of their enemies were so united as Relena's faction…

The Regime didn't have the numbers to definitively hold against Sylvia's projections. They might be within the realm of possibility, but it was questionable… and the quality of those troops was extremely debatable. Especially considering the people in charge over there, and the cult tactics they'd been employing since Daybreak started to collapse in on itself.

It wouldn't do any good to win against Zechs if the East or China came to roll them right after. Honestly, maybe they needed to have Treize pull his troops now – just in case he needed to bring them dirtside to save the lot of them.

Wouldn't that be a happy mess? The aftermath there would make the current negotiations look like kindergarten class squabbles.

Treize's mouth was a melancholic line, but he nodded, glancing at something off screen. "I'll talk to you tomorrow."

Something else clearly had his attention, and they'd covered everything they needed to already. It wasn't like the conversation was really going anywhere anyway. "Tomorrow," he agreed. "Take care."

oOo

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oOo

May 7th 199 – Thursday Berlin, Germany – The Berlin House – Evening

Jack raised a hand in greeting to the security guard on duty as he moved past the last of the businesses still open on this floor, a restaurant he made a point of not frequenting too regularly for sake of camouflage. Though… He needed to see what was in the fridge first, but if the others had cleaned it out again he might come back down for dinner. It had been a long week.

Not a bad one, though. Jake was finally on the upswing for all that he was climbing the walls, and… well, it had seemed like a good time to get back to his own space. They'd managed to keep from exploding at each other even over minor shit, but the more independent his oldest could be, the more of a bubble he'd create around himself. Which was fine – he needed that. Honestly… being able to help his son through something like this was its own boon, even when it got exasperating. Maybe it had been a bit tedious, but…

It was the first time since he was a toddler that Jake had let him help. And it was absolute shit that he had needed it, but… Last year, even if Jack had seen the footage live and called him? His son would have insisted he was fine and told him to get lost even if he was about to go into surgery. The year before that, he would have made sure Jack's name and photograph was on every blacklist he could think of for the hospital and its surrounding business.

So really, it was all about perspective.

He took the stairs down to the parking garage, then made his way across the lot, nodding at two more of the staff, to reach the private elevator. There were stairs too, on the opposite side, but he'd taken a cab home from the airport and had them drop him off in the general area instead of close – both for safety, and to have a chance to stretch his legs after the flight. It hadn't exactly been a workout, but if he was going to get back to work tomorrow he'd rather continue winding down instead of exercising.

He liked this security team. He knew for a fact that their information was minimal, but they were professional, discreet, and kept a neat footprint. It was strange to be on the other side after so many years, but… This was the life his sons had built for themselves, if for different reasons. Which was fine, even if he found himself wondering how closely Odin had vetted them, if…

None of these would recognize him, right? There would have been an incident by now if that was an issue, right? Or even if it wasn't a problem, Cat had been in and out of this place almost as much as Odin and Audi, and he would have caught it, right?

He… He still wasn't sure what to make of the anticlimactic little showdown at Hildegard's. He'd chosen to not tell anyone, even Des, about it. Not yet, at least. The way Junior had abruptly changed, then his almost shocky reaction in the aftermath… He'd expected shit to go down, then been bewildered when it didn't. Bewildered by the good feelings Rhett claimed he caught, and…

There was a part of him, screaming over the last week, that kept insisting that, despite all their talk over text since? That that was going to be the last time he saw his younger son. That their parole had just been revoked, and that he wouldn't even get to know why. It wasn't logical, he knew that, but…

It had happened before. With far less warning than all the alarms clanging now.

The house was dark when he opened the door – or as dark as it truly got, with the far wall of windows letting in all the downtown lights. The tech embedded in them both made the glass one-way and allowed the residents to change how much light filtered through, or even augment it. It looked natural right now, though, and he made a face at the realization that he might have the place to himself for the night – not that he was surprised. He didn't actually end up home at the same time as his son too… often…

Odin was sitting in the twilight at the table with one of the portable projectors he did so much of his engineering work on – except instead of the blueprints and models Jack usually saw him fiddling with, the space was filled with code. Layers and layers of code – duplicates, it looked like. Or rather, comparative variations of each other? Makes for a hell of a monitor, he mused, setting his duffel down by the base of the stairs and moving closer. Odin didn't greet him, but he knew he'd been noticed – he was just focused and didn't mind Jack's presence. Curious, he started reading it – or trying to, since a lot of the commands and syntax were foreign to him. Some kind of machining work? He knew baseline computer work along with a lot of what you found in most ships and maybe a quarter of the colonial functions, but too much of code was proprietary and therefore incredibly specific to… really…

He didn't know what the original code itself was for; the language was too foreign and opaque. But the part his son was writing and making changes to after implementing it and running simulations to check the results?

Odin was writing a virus.

Jack licked his lips, hesitating, but… "How illegal is this?" He made an effort to keep his tone casual – not worried, because he was mostly sure he knew Junior's ethics and overarching goals, but-

Odin hummed noncommittally. "If you're countering something both legislative and ethically illegal, does it still count?"

That was promising. It smoothed his hackles back down, at any rate. He took a moment to think about it before responding. "I suppose it depends on location and the chance of collateral consequences," he decided. Europe was a goddamn mess right now, and if he was going to introduce more chaos to the field, he should probably make an argument for-

Odin hummed again, the sound happy instead of neutral this time. "We're clear," he confirmed, pursing his mouth as he rewrote a line and executed, setting off… A lot of red? "Hn." He cleared the simulation, moving a compressed view of it up above his main workspace and starting to type again.

Not quite right, then. Jack looked around, debating. With this as his screen, it made sense that he hadn't bothered with better lighting, but… "Is it just us?"

Odin nodded without looking his way. "Audi's in Poland with Cat. I planned on heading out in another day or two, and she's mostly focused on her math homework right now – and Cat's better at explaining the concepts to her than I am, when she has trouble."

And you've made sure your fiancée is never home when you're expecting me, so there's not much point in asking. Someone else probably would've turned on a light, anyway. "Alright. I'm going to see what's in the fridge – have you eaten?"

He hadn't, but there was salad and package of uncooked fettuccini on the largely bare shelves, solving his dilemma. It didn't take long to get a wine sauce going, and before long he had dinner dished up. Odin hadn't moved in the last twenty minutes, so he grabbed silverware and took the food over, and when he came back with water, his son had turned on the light, dismissed the projection, and shoved his keyboard aside. Picking up his fork, he gave Jack a thankful nod and waited until he was seated before starting to eat.

"Good week?" he asked, unsure of what else was safe to ask. They'd passed a few texts back and forth while he was in Munich, and his boys had gotten on the phone with each other a few times, so it wasn't exactly like they'd been out of touch, just…

"Yeah. A little disconcerting, sometimes, but…" He looked thoughtful as he chewed. "Not in a bad way?" he offered. "Different."

"Yeah?"

"Mm. Have a couple of new projects I've been working on," he admitted. "Not sure how they're going to pan out. But it's interesting, so far."

Jack gestured back toward the projector. "Like this one?"

"Hn, no. More… long-range." He set his fork down and picked up his glass, taking a long drink before adding, "This is a specific one-time shot. Once it's done I need to go plant it, doublecheck that it won't need any more tweaks on site – but after that, I don't anticipate any maintenance." He shrugged, picking up his fork again. "At least, not on my part. I guess if I get access again incidentally I'll check on it and maybe try a few alterations, but in theory it shouldn't be my problem."

That… was probably a good sign? Something for the Insurgence? Or, he'd mentioned the East right after Jake got shot, and the brothers had agreed on the threat there without even seeming to realize how monumental that was, so maybe something over in that direction? Jake had kept him out of the politics despite his proximity this last week, but he'd picked up enough to be suspicious – not to mention the fact that Des had opinions on the subject. "Alright." Raphael was so far insisting he had no backlog of work to catch up on, but tomorrow he could at least review the maintenance logs and see if the level of physical breakdown was matching projections, look into whether-

"Do you want to come with me?"

He felt like his brain had shorted out, and he lifted his eyes from his plate to stare into his son's, convinced he'd… had some kind of translation error. Or something. "What?"

Odin just met his gaze, a faint smile on his mouth. "I'm probably heading out Saturday, instead of tomorrow night," he continued. "So you'd have time to wrap up anything you might need to. But if you're not interested, I need to hit up Damien or Cliff – I don't anticipate any trouble, but I've learned the hard way that it's better to have someone at my back. And I wanted to try hitting one of Odin's old stash spots, since it's not far from the site." He rolled his eyes. "There's some hiking involved. I don't think either of them are actually interested in that."

He was serious. And… "A favorite stash?"

Junior nodded, starting to twirl up another bite of pasta. "He made sure I knew where the more important ones were," he explained. "And I remember the ones he made with me, though I don't know if they're all still intact. But this is the only one I remember him returning to more than once – and I don't know what's there. He never told me." He shrugged, bringing the fork back up to his mouth, before adding, "It was his favorite place to camp. I think we went each summer – or at least, most summers. I remember four trips, I think."

That… Fuck it, he didn't care if it was in deeply contested territory behind enemy lines – this wasn't a convenient sort of tag along offer. His son wanted him to come. "Sure. Let's do it."

He'd… probably do some really inadvisable things to get this smile from him again. Some quick digital espionage and a camping trip hardly qualified.

"Good." He nodded to himself a few times, before blinking and adding, "You can tell my brother about what you see, too. It's… important. Hearing it from someone he knows will probably be good."

Uh… Okay. He wasn't at all intimidated by that – empowered, if anything, because yes, shit was finally coming together! – but… "Where are we going?"

Odin blinked, as though startled to realize he hadn't actually said it yet. "Canada."

"…Canada." His brain was broken again. Although… Hadn't Adam been-

"There's a reason I never bet against Adam, even when I don't count on him," Odin pointed out. "Half of what he does is pure bullshit, but it usually works out anyway."

Jack raised his eyebrows, but… Well, this was far less concerning that the thoughts he'd already been entertaining about Iraq. "Alright," he agreed. "Canada. Cool."

"The northwestern end," Odin added. "Then the Olympic Peninsula."

He had no idea what the fuck might be important about Canada, but sure, fine, whatever. "Sounds good."

oOo

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oOo

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Dominion

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oOo

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oOo

Hope you guys enjoyed it – looking forward to hearing what you think, if you're inclined. Writing can be an oddly solitary hobby for extroverts…

I've probably been spending way too much time wandering Pinterest lately, but I suddenly have some degree of face casting for various characters, or general mod, and that seems helpful? Mm. Well, we'll see how fast I can get the next part up…