oOo

Chapter Ten

Tipping Point

In which everyone begins to realize just how deeply they've misunderstood each other.

oOo

…So I'm remodeling my kitchen. And two of my bathrooms. At the same time. While also going crazy with spring cleaning and yard work. That makes for a significant time sink, for the record.

Well, here we are at the beginning of the final identity landslide. Thanks for sticking with me this far! I hope you've enjoyed the ride! Cheers!

Thanks again to Emily for the hard edit – I tried my best to clean it up without her first but man, this one got messy. I think the more excited I get, the more typos I make? 30k words is a lot of space to make mistakes in…

Random thing that got edited: I changed the name of one of the vaguely mentioned Libramentum generals because I realized he shared it with an established background character that's a toddler, and I really don't need that many complications in my life. Then, just to make my life funnier, a few days after 'fixing' it I realized I had replaced said general's name with ANOTHER minor character that died recently, and… I really don't need to make my life this hard, damn it. Realizing I have a Rachelle and a Rochelle that might eventually interact is messy enough. Ugh. So originally last chapter there was a Libramentum general referred to as 'Gerald' that got changed to 'Reece' for twenty-four hours or so, and is now officially 'Rex' instead.

Also realized I messed up the whole Shenlong to Altron transition last chapter, so went back and fixed that too.

oOo

May 14th 199 – Thursday – Munich, Germany – Sarracenia

"The cream, definitely. Always a classic."

Relena hummed. "I suppose."

"Stereotypes start for a reason," Jake offered, not having any actual opinion on the clothing in question. He'd learned to not argue with Leia on fashion years ago, and was trying to not argue with her in particular right now. She had apparently finally picked up on the fact that he was upset with her – or had at least decided she was no longer going to tolerate it – and suddenly she was, just… everywhere.

It was even odds on it being her own initiative or from Treize mentioning some part of their last conversation. Not that he regretted anything he'd said, and not that he'd even said anything bad, just…

The more healthy relationships he gained, the more he realized how fucked up some of his oldest standbys were. And part of growing up was trying to do better, wasn't it? And while he was more than capable of being an ass to Leia in retaliation of her lack of trust, he didn't actually want to lose her. As strained as their friendship was right now, this was clearly her way of trying to do better, and the fact that it was only making him more upset honestly only made him poignantly aware of how fucking awful he'd been to his father his whole life.

So if Jack was giving him the time of day, Leia deserved significantly more effort than he was currently putting in. Which… didn't make him not resent her. But the emotion was more lukewarm than it had been three days ago, so he was willing to call it progress.

Unfortunately, his increasing ratio of depressive apathy over rage didn't change the fact that she had apparently told Treize who was taking care of Mariemaia and demanded he not share the news with him – and the hurt from that simmered in his gut like an angry coal. The knowledge that the insistence could just as easily be due to her personal trust issues instead of a belief that he had no self-control didn't make it burn any less. After all, he'd already promised, repeatedly, to not seek Marie out – he agreed that any significant effort could draw the attention from sharks that Leia had made heavy sacrifices to keep at bay.

In the end, whatever the reasoning? It boiled down to the simple fact that Leia didn't trust him. Despite everything. And Treize had decided to agree with her. So that… Well.

It was fun to know where that line fell.

He'd get over it. It hurt as much as it did because he mostly was over it, fucking understood why they thought that way. That they didn't know any better because they didn't know him that well anymore, and… with Treize, at least, he had been the one putting all the distance between them. He knew that the only way back over that hill was to close the distance and put in the work – but that didn't mean he wasn't angry about the assumptions.

Oh fucking well. If he wanted back the trust he'd at least thought had been there, he was going to have to stop letting it bother him. He knew Treize would always wait for him to come back into the fold, but Leia had repeatedly proven she'd walk out of everyone's lives if it looked like a better bet. Which probably wasn't fair of him, because the whole world now knew that Dekim had been more of a sick twisted fuck than even Leia had imagined and maybe her choices had saved all their lives, but…

He forced himself to unclench his jaw. Even if he never rated higher on Leia's scale of priorities than how his disposition effected Treize? Even if what he remembered of their friendship before she faked her death was one-way? That didn't make him stop missing her. Leia had been a trusted confidante, an older sister that bordered on a maternal figure that held him together after Amarianna died, after everyone insisted Junior had too, and…

In the end of the day, it was a two way street – and while he apparently didn't hold much sway in her opinion of him, he was the only one who decided how he felt about her. And as much as he valued Dave and his newer relationships, he missed both her and Treize so much it made him want to gasp when he thought too hard about it.

So he was going to get over it, because he wanted them back. But it was a whole… process. And maybe the middle steps were the hardest.

Fuck, but he hoped the middle steps were the hardest.

"Is the pain bad this morning?"

Realizing he'd lost the thread of conversation long enough ago that he had no idea what was going on, he offered Leia a tight smile. That was genuine concern in her voice, and whether or not he was being treated like a patient instead of a friend? It counted. So he tested the muscles in his shoulder, tensing and releasing in minute motions to be sure… then gave her a more genuine smile and shook his head. "Not too bad. Just stressing about other things."

Her returning smile was wry. "You do have enough of that to go around," she agreed. "I'm glad, though – I was worried we pushed it too far yesterday."

"Believe it or not, I do know my limits." Physical therapy was exhausting even when you were only doing it every few days instead of pushing an accelerated program, but it wasn't that different from intense training. On the upside, at least it was easy to see the returns with the low continuous Remalene dose he'd talked Leia into keeping him on – not enough to impact the injury itself anymore, but it made a hell of a difference on the microtears and inflammation from the repetitive PT, spinning the clock on the process at three or four times the speed you'd usually expect. "It's not my first rodeo."

"I've heard of program regimens out there like what we're doing, but statistically, almost no one can tolerate it," she pointed out. "We can slow down at any point."

"I've seen the numbers," he reminded her. He'd had them waved in his face the first time he'd had a surgery and Remalene, and the time after that, and again. At this point, his medical history probably made up a significant portion of said outlier statistics. "You've seen my chart. It's not the first time." He'd gotten into an argument that he'd repeatedly won with Brussels' medical team over the recovery from his riot injury. "Any sign of a backslide, and I'll let you know." Despite the way everyone was hovering, he'd only misjudged that the first time he'd been on recovery, and the last thing he wanted was the kind of setbacks that could bring.

She eyed him for a long moment, mouth pursed – and he waited, trying to let her read the truth of it. After a long moment, she admitted, "I am worried, maybe even terrified, that I am going to hurt you."

He wanted to laugh. Too late. But that was neither here nor there, and what she actually meant was a legitimate concern. "I'm not." Not physically.

If he wanted to get over the emotional end, he probably shouldn't throw the pain in her face every time he saw an opportunity. That was how things had started with Jack, after all. And that was a part of his life he had no desire to repeat.

Relena saved him from the awkwardness, thankfully. "I trust you, but the way you're pushing through multiple sessions a day terrifies me a little too." She sighed. "I remember what recovery from just one bullet through nonvital muscle was like. If I wasn't watching you do it, I'd think it impossible."

"That was your first rodeo," he reminded her. "And you didn't exactly have a strong history of physical fitness to build from." He really hoped her first run was also the last time she took a major injury, but she did regular exercise now and had the habits to fall back on – from what everyone said, that made a big difference. Smiling, he leaned in and wrapped his good arm around her waist, dropping his face into her hair. "I know my limits," he repeated, letting go of all the uglier emotions of the morning. He just… didn't need them.

Maybe it really could be as easy as that.

Maybe that was how Jack was able to keep coming back, no matter how he laid into him.

Leia, at least, was a far better person than him. Trust issues or not, she would never sink to even a tenth of the shit he'd done to his own father, let alone anyone else. So it would be fine.

The door to the foyer swung open – he'd been distracted enough to miss the warning chirps on that, great – but his heart lifted when he saw Des walking in. "Great, you're still in here!" the man announced, baby in his arms… and Jack on his heels.

…Fuck, maybe I'm more exhausted than I thought and do need to reevaluate. When did Jack get here?

Relena only let out a laugh, pressing a kiss to his temple before pulling away. "You aren't that late," she pointed out. "Though your wife is heading that way."

"She's sleeping in," Des explained, moving over to the couches and considering the room. He looked back at Jack for a moment, then at the rest of them again before giving a sharp nod. "Alright, I can't think of a decent way to say this, so! Who normally clears out when you need to cover highly classified information?"

Jake's stomach dropped. What?

Relena pursed her lips. "What kind of classified information?"

Jack answered this time, starting to looks anxious. "It makes the Gamora's Tears thing look like grade school gossip," he admitted, voice hushed.

Fuck.

"And it…" Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing. "Your brother literally showed me so I'd know it was true beyond any shadow of a doubt, and asked me to let you know." He swallowed. "I thought about taking some video, but access was really tight and it would've just been of the screens and not… I did take some pictures, but they're not exactly direct proof. It was too involved." He shifted the shoulder strap of his laptop bag, then added, "I took a copy of some of the database too, but it's dense and I'm not sure how well any program could actually read it, someone could probably say it was made up or from anything, but-"

"Jack, please have a seat and hold on to that thought," Relena interrupted, setting down the phone she'd started typing on as soon as Des broached the subject. Raina, Addie, and Daniella had already started gathering their things. "There's at least one more person I'd like in the room, if that's okay. He should be up in a few minutes."

"That's my cue," Leia murmured, standing up from the armchair next to his and Lena's couch. "I'll see you in a few hours." They had a session to get through before lunch.

"See you," he agreed, nearly all of his attention on his father, who looked… utterly exhausted.

…Fuck. He had no idea what Jack had been doing for the last week. He felt kinda shitty for that. But at the same time, the days had been blurring together in a steady mash and he wasn't entirely sure what day it was… or how long his father had even been out of the house. There was a reason Leia was fussing – he was pushing himself harder than was technically healthy. He rarely even remembered falling asleep at night, let alone details that involved time.

It was for the best. He fucking hated sleeping in a recliner. At least it was in the same room as Relena now, he slept infinitely better when she was near – but it also almost felt like he'd been exiled back to his old murphy bed. Not being able to reach for her when half awake left him feeling guilty as he woke, like he'd fucked something up but couldn't remember what.

…He really might need to slow down. But if he could at least get far enough that he could sleep in his own bed first that would make things so much better.

For now, though? His father actually looked worse than he did, which… Honestly, that was more upsetting than the idea of some new crisis. I'm going to count that as progress, he decided. The man was still standing back despite Lena's words, a fist wrapped around the strap of the bag on one shoulder like he was caught between the decision to collapse or make a run for it. "Dad?"

Jack visibly slumped in what Jake chose to interpret as relief, fingers relaxing into a more normal grip. "Good morning," he offered tiredly. Taking a step closer, he added, "Sorry I'm back so soon."

Wow. That… defines so much of what's wrong with our relationship. But poking at it directly seemed like a bad idea. So…

"I'm going to be honest and admit that my days right now are like going through the motions of a really boring yet mildly traumatic video game that I'm very intensely trying to not pay too much attention to. I honestly can't tell if you've been gone for two days or ten." He was… mostly sure it had been at least four? Not the point. "But if not for the fact that you look like a wrung out dishtowel, I'd be okay with you not having left at all." He licked his lips. "It's… fine." He gestured at the couch across from him and Lena that the Fonnes had already vacated, along with the spread on the coffee table. "Have you eaten?"

A gentle smile spread across Jack's face, tension falling off his frame as he made his way over and claimed the cushion directly across from him. "I have," he admitted. "But thank you."

Des followed and dropped onto the cushion next to him, wasting to time in reaching for a scone, breaking it in two, and handing the smaller piece to the nine-month-old in his lap.

Addie hesitated as she finished picking up her own son's things on the far side of the sofa, then offered, "I can take him, if you'd like."

"I assure you that his language skills are not currently a threat to international security," Des announced. Then he smirked. "Thank you, but he's fine right here."

Jake grinned, watching the baby devote all his focus to jamming his mouth full of bread. Even if he could talk, he doubted the boy would be paying them any attention.

Daniella giggled and Addie rolled her eyes, shaking her head fondly. "As you like."

Jack, however, looked anxious again. "You… might want to do that," he interrupted, biting his lip. "I… this is probably going to get tense. Maybe even angry."

Oh great. All the good feelings were gone again. "I don't always lose my temper," Jake pointed out irritably.

To his surprise however, Jack only met his eyes solidly, expression somber. "This is something you should lose your temper over." He swallowed hard, looking down. "Not about me, but…" He took a deep, shuddering breath – and damnably, Lyle immediately focused his big green eyes on him, scone entirely forgotten.

Des noticed too, and grimaced, starting to stand. "I can-"

"I can take him for an hour or two," Daniella insisted, stepping into his space and reaching for the baby with a smile. "Willam's so wild now that he can run – I miss this stage." When Des visibly hesitated, she added, "You can call or text me when you're done – I'll just be watching Willam anyway."

"Because it would have been more accurate to say I was volunteering Ella instead of myself," Addie added, brushing her hair back out of her eyes and settling her own son on one hip. "At least for the next hour or so while I get through my morning docket." She gave her sister a chagrinned look. "Sorry."

"I don't mind," Daniella returned amiably. "You just said it first, before I could offer."

Des looked back at Jack for a moment – who stared straight at the coffee table, pointedly not weighing in – before rolling his eyes and holding Lyle out for Daniella to take. "Thank you." Though a moment later, he was elbowing Jack. "You could have said something earlier."

"I haven't slept in over forty hours, I didn't think about it," Jack grumbled, rubbing his face.

Jake frowned. That matched the man's appearance, but… "It can't wait?"

"It probably could but shouldn't," his father returned tiredly. Leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, he insisted, "I'm fine. It… Your brother has some really unhealthy ideas about sleep hygiene that he stops bothering to reign in when he considers himself in enemy territory. Though half of my issue isn't even from that, just… It's been a really long week."

Enemy territory? He looked around, noting that Leia and Raina were long gone and the Fonnes almost to the door. Still – the Fonne sisters technically were clear for everything that might be called classified, just not overly involved. "Where did you go?"

Jack dropped his face fully into his upraised palms before mumbling, "Canada."

"…Canada is enemy territory?"

His father just groaned.

Des, meanwhile, blinked. "Wasn't the Canada thing some kind of running joke with Adam?"

"I thought it was, but then I learned the punchline," Jack grumbled, sitting up enough so his hands only cupped his chin and giving Jake a sardonic smile. "It wasn't actually funny."

Des tipped his head and watched his friend with a calculating look for a long moment before, in a bright tone that directly contrasted with his expression, he announced, "The snowman was pretty funny."

Jack threw himself back into the couch hard enough that Relena startled, dropping his head back so it rested nearly horizontal on the cushions. "The snowman was fucked up," he argued.

"Resourcefully fucked up," Des agreed cheerfully, pulling out his phone.

Jake felt his lips quirk in a grin. "I never did get the details on the snowman story," he admitted, more than willing to ride the mood Des was offering.

Jack groaned again, staring up at the sky. "One of Adam's more questionable hobbies involves stealing and stockpiling ordinance en masse."

"To be fair," Lin pointed out dryly, having come closer from his spot by the door, "that seems like a healthy habit given some of the other hobbies you've told us the guy has."

"You have no idea." Jack made a pained noise. "His interpersonal shit might legitimately be worse, and I can't figure out what that means about Odin. Watching them, my son is half poking him with a stick to see what happens and half into it."

Des held out his phone and leaned forward to hand it across the table, and Relena reached for it before Jake could strain his back, sitting back down… and snorted out a laugh. Before he could ask, she was tipping the screen his way.

It was a snowman – a rather large one that had maybe involved a ladder to finish, given the scale. But it had a machine-fed ammo belt as a scarf, grenades for buttons, and what looked like assault rifles for arms. Its facial features were remarkably well defined with rifle rounds and what appeared to be a combat knife jammed through from the back of its head for a nose, with the way it was blade out. Which… Seemed improbable? Did they roll the ball with the knife already in it, or reshape it after? The weight of any of this shit alone…

Though honestly, the pretty knit cap in dark pink and maroon shades stretched over its crown was what tipped the whole thing over from odd to demented.

"Wow," Lin intoned in a flat tone as he looked over their shoulders. "Do you think it comes alive at night to eat people?"

Jack groaned again, still focused on the clouds. "That's a problem for eastern Canada," he decided. "I was over on the west end – the picture is from March." Sitting back upright, he gave Jake an irritated look. "And I am never making Audi another hat."

He could see why Des had saved the picture – he didn't think it was that bad, but Jack's reaction to it was hilarious. Before he could decide on a safe response to the reminder that his father regularly knitted, however, the door to the foyer opened and BJ stepped in, sealing it behind himself as he asked, "What's going on?"

Relena cut in before Jack could do more than side-eye the man. "Jack, I don't think the two of you have been formally introduced – this is my head of intelligence. He prefers to go by BJ."

His father snorted. "So that's why she was glaring at you when Britain came calling."

The spymaster grimaced but nodded as he came to take Leia's vacated seat. "Not my finest moment," he agreed. His eyes flicked back to Relena. "You said it was urgent?"

Jack sighed, looking at Jake and waiting for a nod before settling his shoulders and facing BJ. "The start of this doesn't make much sense, but the rest is worse without it," he announced. "With that said? For the last two and a half months, the most erratic of my youngest's friends, Adam, has been running around Canada for weeks at a time. All anyone would say was that he was trying to find something."

BJ pursed his lips. "'Adam' is the one most involved with the chemical bomber, correct? That got the Ieper evacuation started?"

Jack nodded. "That is sadly one of the least chaotic things I've confirmed him for, but yeah. Maybe there's a reasoning to it I haven't been read in on, but as best as I can tell? He spends his free time taking down cartels and dangerous misanthropes as some sort of thrill-seeking hobby – and when he gets in over his head, he calls Odin for back-up." He took a deep breath before adding, "As weird as he is, I honestly think not working to do the right thing when he finds a problem has never occurred to him. It comes off as haphazard because he's a modern day gypsy who can't stay in one place, and he goes looking for trouble because he enjoys playing the hero. They've implied he's always been that way, though the amnesia issue gets tricky." At BJ's frown, he explained, "Severe cognitive-only retrograde amnesia from a traumatic brain injury, as a side effect of some kind of explosion – it's been implied he got left for dead on a battlefield post-incident during the war and somehow wandered his way back into their circle later."

BJ only raised his brows, nodding. "He sounds like a good ally to have," he responded neutrally.

"Chaotic good," Jack agreed, eyeing him for a moment before focusing back on Jake. "Also, Adam seems to have even more of a connection to the Insurgence than your brother. Xutao is his friend, he's the first person who tagged along on the Canada trips, and I know Adam was heavily involved with Po's push to break the Italian quarantine last month."

BJ's brows went higher. "You say that even though your future daughter-in-law is Xutao Chang's boss?"

Jack narrowed his eyes at Jake before focusing back on BJ. "Odin seems to work more behind the scenes with them," he offered. "Heavy lifting, but specialized; trading favors, mostly focused on the bigger picture. Adam either runs for the front line, or…" He groaned. "Apparently he called Xu last summer, before he and Odin crossed paths again, and more or less demanded the Insurgence come help with a possible nuclear threat he'd found. In Texas."

"There was a nuclear threat last year in North America?" Jake demanded.

"No, apparently it was a bunch of Hispanic refugees living in an old bunker trying to tap nuclear power to keep their electricity running, except none of them had more than a grade six education or spoke a word of English, which all the relevant text was written in," Jack explained, looking exhausted again. "But it took them weeks to figure out the source of all the radiation and fix it." He sighed. "My point is that this shit is not new. Odin might be marrying an Insurgence general, but Adam just does shit and expects everyone else to climb onboard, whatever their faction. At this point even I'm half expecting to get a three am call for something obscenely random yet critical."

An Insurgence general. Suddenly Jake felt like an utter piece of shit. Because despite the entire week Jack had spent helping him do anything after getting out of the hospital, he'd forgotten to tell him what BJ suspected about Junior's fiancée. Hell, he hadn't told anyone, which was slightly better, but… Fuck. He was really looking forward to feeling normal again. Despite quitting the opiates, his brain was nearly as scrambled from rerouting around the pain as if he'd been taking them, and he was sick of it.

But for all that he'd dropped the ball on acting like a fucking family again… the way Jack said that? An Insurgence general. "You know it's not Po," he realized. Because shit – introducing that theory had been the last time they'd talked about this, wasn't it?

Jack drew himself up, pointing one finger at the ceiling. "I never said it was Po. You hopped on that train all by yourself."

His chest felt like it was caving in. "Have you met her?" Because if Jack had met her and not even said anything-

"No, but I've done her laundry and she usually leaves the shower a mess. She's built like a runner and has long black hair." His father scrubbed a hand over his face. "I didn't say anything because I didn't want to let you down when I didn't have any kind of answer either."

He thinks… "I know it's not Po," he admitted. "There's no way Po could be going in and out of Berlin like that without being recognized, and like you said, her hair's too short." That video from the breaking of the Italian cordon had shown the blonde doctor with it cut to just past her chin. "He bought her those hair sticks." He glanced over to BJ, who had pulled a tablet out of the satchel he carried everywhere. "Can you-"

"Working on it," the older man muttered without looking up.

Jack seemed to deflate slightly. "Oh."

Des, meanwhile, was giving him a very irritated look. Like he didn't already know he'd fucked up, ugh.

Relena swooped in to save him from the awkward silence. "BJ has developed a rather interesting theory," she explained, reaching back across the table to give Des his phone back, "about Hilde Schbeiker."

"It's not Hilde," Jack immediately negated.

Jake bit back his first impulse to impatiently agree only because… "Why do you sound so sure about that?"

His father groaned, sitting fully upright and taking a deep breath before meeting his eyes. "Because I've met Hilde, and your brother thinks she's the most annoying person alive but still considers her enough of a friend that she's allowed to crash on his couch without announcing herself."

Des's eyes were bright enough that he was absolutely hiding a smile behind his fist – but all he said was, "Oh my."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Also, I don't know how incompetent the Regime must be to have missed it, but Hilde was in northern Italy for the entire length of the quarantine, November to April. And apparently she's Kasey's ex who is currently sleeping with Adam – and, just like Xu and Yasa? She refers to Odin's lady as her boss." He threw up his hands. "Odin told me to feel free to kick her to the curb if she got too irritating, and Adam hustled her to the next room like he thought your brother was about to try punting her out the window. It's not her."

…Wow. That sounded both terrible and hilarious. And was also entirely not the point he was trying to make. Though I did ask.

"That actually feeds into what Relena was trying to say," BJ offered, finally looking up. "The profile the Regime has for Hilde Schbeiker is actually a compilation of two different women. Our theory is that the far more skillful one that we've seen Xutao actively defer to is their superior officer using Hilde as a body double and smoke screen." When Jack finally looked over at him, he shrugged. "So far as I can tell, every time surveillance has caught a glimpse of Hilde and she's not actively flashing her face, it's actually the second profile. The body types are similar enough that it's been missed, and they're riding the assumptions."

"Not since Hilde got irritated enough with her hair to buzz off her ponytail and dance around in front of a camera in Italy," Jack argued.

"No sightings of the stronger profile since January," BJ agreed. Shrugging again, he added, "Not that this has to be your daughter-in-law either, but it's an interesting discrepancy. I'm not sure if she's hiding her face just because they decided to pin the fame on Schbeiker to artificially create a legend, or if she has additional motives to not be seen."

Jack thought about that for a second, running a hand over his head. "I don't know," he decided. "Maybe. Odin's said his lady's officially on the Fall casualty lists, but didn't clarify if that was for convenience in the Insurgence or if she was maintaining the cover for other reasons. That doesn't really clear things up, whether or not you've pinned down some of her work history."

Point. Jake wasn't entirely sold on it either; though learning about all the extra connections with Schbeiker did make it seem more likely. "Anyway, family drama aside," Jake announced. "What's so urgent about Canada?"

BJ gave him an unimpressed look, gesturing at the tablet, then rolled his eyes when Jake shook his head. It was one thing to show the compare and contrast pictures if his father was intrigued by the theory, but clearly he was close enough to the real thing that it would only test his patience – and Jack had basically said he couldn't sleep until he got this out.

His father focused back on him then closed his eyes, visibly forcing himself to relax for a long moment before continuing. "No one will give me a straight answer about why Canada was the first suspect," he admitted. "But I'm mostly sure that's because it has something to do with a memory of Adam's before his injury; something he'd never mentioned to the rest." He sighed. "At any rate, the Insurgence went quiet in February because of the answer to some kind of statistics concern Cat presented, which set Adam off on his Canadian hunt – looking for an extra proof that none of them thought he'd actually pull off."

"Except he did?" BJ prompted when Jack went silent.

His father grimaced and started digging around in his bag. "Yeah. Odin asked me if I'd come along to watch his back – specifically so I could pass along what I saw." He pulled out a palm-sized hard drive, hefting it once before meeting Jake's eyes again. "Said he and Cat were tired of Sally dragging her feet, and that gaining hard evidence maxed out his tolerance range." His mouth twisted. "I think either Adam's always been up to his wild one-man counter-espionage shit, or maybe he spent some time working for Tsubarov."

BJ frowned. "Tsubarov?"

Jack's gaze flicked back down to the hard drive, thumb smoothing over the casing. "Yeah. I have the exact GPS coordinates written down, but… in western Canada, far enough north of Alaska that people didn't really go there even before the Fall? There's a ghost town testing facility and massive manufactory. No people running it now, all automated, but…" He licked his lips. "It's churning out mobile dolls."

No one spoke for a long moment. But Des's face was caught in a grimace as he stared at Jake… and he realized he had about five seconds to salvage this.

They did know. That had been the question he and Relena had chased around endlessly when it came to Rubato and the Insurgence. Statistics? He wouldn't mind hearing more about how they'd gotten there, but… Well, facts were facts.

"About halfway through January," he began, "one of Soleil's people running network interference and repair laid in ambush near a suspected target. A lot of things haven't made sense about the space campaign right from the start, and there were all sorts of theories about how Zechs was managing to keep his people supplied despite the amount of native sabotage Soleil put in, not to mention the absolute mess of the communications network." He grimaced. "Especially the network, since it often didn't even come close to involving the same areas of space, and people thought it might be an unrelated issue." They suspected now that those had been supply lines – just not of human necessities like foodstuffs.

The fresh dolls had to be arriving by some route. And Zechs had needed the interference to be blanket enough that it didn't paint a clear path back in his direction.

"Thing is, that navigator is an empath of some renown; one of Rhett's aunts, actually. And she saw actively moving, seemingly piloted suits well within her heart's range that didn't have any people in them."

Jack kept his gaze on the coffee table for a long moment, tapping one finger on the hard drive. Then, "You knew."

Jake licked his lips. "It's what made us decide we needed to fully separate from the Regime," he agreed. "And we've been fighting for every inch of distance we can gain since." He took in a shaky breath – and he wanted to run his hands through his hair, but doing it one-handed just made him furious that the other was still trapped in a sling. No time. No fucking time to be on the backburner now. He still didn't even know why the shooter had wanted Sylvia. "It's why Treize agreed to step up and play the villain card," he continued. "To keep Zechs strung out and away for longer – to give Relena the elbow room to pull her own faction together before all his shit hits the fan."

"My brother killed any chance the Peacecraft Regime had of being a permanent structure as soon as he failed to decommission the dolls he confiscated in the post-Fall battles," Relena added, tone somber. "Let alone when he decided to build more." She sighed. "Not that we had any idea how or where." She let out a short, bitter laugh. "Canada. Indeed."

"Might be why he poisoned the well on the satellite imaging network," Jake added. "The problems were only intermittent before the space campaign got in full swing. He needed to resupply his stock without getting caught; Treize has been bleeding him." Except Soleil are the only ones actually bleeding.

Jack let out a wet sounding laugh. "Right. Sorry. Not so helpful after all."

"On the contrary," BJ countered, calm and quiet. "We've been trying to decide how and when to let the Revenants in on the secret to form a tighter alliance before our government crashes. Learning that they're only a few weeks behind us on the information game is a big deal."

"Not to mention the fact that our primary proof is the word of an empath whose senses can't be replicated, even before we get into the fact that she's both a Winner and a revolutionary who would rather avoid attention," Lin added, tone still bone dry. "We trust her, as do Soleil, and we think we know how to find hard evidence – but we've been focused on trying to get as solid and separate of a power base as possible instead of inviting trouble we're not ready to handle."

"We've been put off lighting that particular fire on the off chance that we burn the house down on the first pass," Relena agreed.

"And it sounds like the Revenants and Insurgents have been doing the exact same thing," BJ reiterated, focusing back on Jack. "I don't suppose he's open to talking about it? At worst, I'm hoping he at least told you how much time we have before they blow the whistle."

"It's manageable as is," Relena reasoned immediately. "I wouldn't mind a little more control, especially with the East suddenly on the stand for suits, but we can go today if need be."

"It will be a mess," BJ argued.

"It was always going to be a mess."

Jack gave them an incredulous look. "I just told you he's known for months, and you think he's blackmailing you?"

"You said the hard evidence was his tolerance line," Des pointed out, though he… didn't look particularly alarmed. Mostly bemused.

"His tolerance line for talking to you about it," Jack stressed, looking at them all like they were crazy. "He thought Adam was smoking a pipe dream and has been actively making fun of him or sending him on goose chases the whole damn time – he didn't think they'd get this far without someone catching Zechs red-handed. His annoyance is over the fact that Sally is still too wary of both Treize and this compound to talk – so he and Cat decided to use me as a loophole to, quote, 'circumnavigate the problem without actively pissing off my lady's boss.'"

Jake snorted out a laugh, just seeing his brother say it – Jack was doing a decent imitation of Odin's flatly irritated affect. And as the relief sunk in that no, this really was okay… he started laughing harder.

His father grinned at him, holding the drive back up for emphasis. "He let me copy this for evidence right after we got there. He already had a few because this was not their first trip in, but he let me get my own for sake of purity or whatever before he did some shit to their programming. I didn't get a good look at the virus, but he said it should both spread to other systems currently in use and stay unnoticed until activated." He looked back to BJ. "I'm guessing that's the leverage point you were looking for. I'm not sure if it's a kill switch or what, but if Po stays wary of Treize? I assume that's how Rubato plans to extort Soleil into minding their manners."

Oh, that's perfect! And he would say as much as soon as he could stop laughing at the sheer wonder of it.

Relena giggled. "Considering the fact that Treize has been actively trying to get a conversation with Sally for over two years, I think they'll find him altogether cooperative."

"That boy is all Catalonia, whatever name he goes by," Jack returned in an unimpressed tone. "And he went out of his way to earn his reputation. I have no idea what it's going to take for any of these people to talk to him – let's take this one step at a time." He pointed at Jake. "You need to set a date for RLTT, before someone gets an opportunity to out you and Lena first – because that's not the shiny note you two want to come out on. No matter what you say, no one is going to believe the two of you kept your hands to yourselves while there was a major power imbalance – RLTT evens out that divide. Being known as a monetary equal to royalty will at least make your match socially acceptable, whatever scandals people try to make up."

He wasn't wrong, but Jake snorted out one last laugh before giving him an incredulous look. "You're lecturing me on public opinion now? You don't even watch the news."

"I watch your news, and I have been freaking out about this ever since you kissed her in the middle of a panicked crowd. I honestly don't see how the rumors aren't everywhere already!"

Jake blinked at him. "A combination of medical information privacy laws and judicious application of NDAs," he offered. There was some speculation that he was Relena's fiancé, but there had been before the shooting too; the rise in those was about what he would expect from effectively being martyred in front of Relena for the second time in as many years. As vindicated as those people would probably feel when the truth came out, no one took them seriously. When his father just gave him a suspicious look, he added, "And Relena signed a few autographs." More than a few, actually, particularly in the hospital, but the fact that the nondisclosure agreements had a very short timeline before expiring had most people perfectly willing to wait until the six weeks Helena had drawn up in the paperwork.

"We need to have Mitchell fully exonerated first," BJ remined them. "Ideally we also want the East either settled down or committed, but I don't think we can afford to wait on that." He gave Jake an assessing look. "Otherwise, I'd say you're walking and talking well enough, especially if you'll consent to a little stage make-up. You're not getting out of the sling for another three weeks at least, but I've already seen you make that look like a fashion choice instead of a need."

Jake rolled his eyes. "Thanks."

"Your father's right," BJ insisted, eyes heavy. "We're already behind schedule from the last five clusterfucks, or we'd already have this done. I'd rather your personal issues not become my next crisis to manage."

"The next full Accords meeting is on Tuesday," Relena reminded everyone before he could decide how to respond to that. "Barring an emergency that sees us forming a quorum before then, that's the day Dave gets cleared." She met his eyes, raising her brows. "Let's see if we can get something on the books for Wednesday or Thursday."

Jake nodded. "Sounds good," he agreed. They'd worked out the tactics on this months ago and settled on a few favorite options. Given everything else that had been going on lately… "Either open conference, or someone I can surprise on screen." It would help the impact. "Short and sweet," he added. "I already promised the meat of the story to Prisbrey." Dave said she wanted it, she was the Revenants' favorite too, and the woman had absolutely proven herself to be good for it.

Des stood up and stretched. "There, all done," he announced. "Nothing left to lose sleep over. I've got a spare room with your name on it."

"I…" Jake's father hesitated, then made a face, standing up. "Yeah, okay. I'm so jetlagged it's going to be shit no matter what I do."

"I'll wake you up after a few hours and we'll try to get you sorted out from there," Des offered, raising a hand in a goodbye as he tugged Jack back toward the stairs. "You've literally been camping in tundra. A real bed is going to feel great."

Jake waved his hand in return… and realized how weird it felt that Jack didn't seem to notice, tired and following Des's lead like he was.

…He wondered how often he'd made the man feel like this, only… probably a lot worse.

Wincing, he let it go and turned back around to focus on Relena and BJ. "Right then. What next?"

oOo

oOo

Munich, Germany – Dorothy's Townhouse

"Yes, that should do nicely," Dorothy agreed with a smile. "I will keep an eye out for your report – and if you need something promptly, this is an ideal number."

"Can do, ma'am. I appreciate the follow-up. We'll be in touch."

Dorothy felt her smile widen. "It's likely only temporary, but I've enjoyed branching out," she decided. "Best of luck to you."

Truthfully, the details behind the Pacific Reclamation project were fascinating, and while she had originally scoffed at Sylvia's refusal to delegate? Well, now she knew enough to understand why the other woman had preferred to delay the work rather than risk its delicate balance, and completely agreed. If anything, it was a wonder she had agreed to loop Dorothy and Olivia in at all – though a good chunk of that had likely been due to the Noventa heiress's unwillingness to involve her in the more political and espionage end of her work regarding the East. She had needed to split her workload somewhere, and the Reclamation projects sprawled broadly enough, with enough checks and balances, that it could be broken into small pieces that Sylvia could check over before fully implementing.

The Pacific project had begun when Sylvia contracted Nueva Terra to survey a few Polynesian islands the Fall had decimated that the Noventas nominally held control of. Meteor fall had peppered the Americas to disastrous effect before the final crash, creating localized extinction zones and rampaging fires that spread from each point of impact, but it had been Libra's final plumet into the ocean that had damned them. Even after you considered the massive tsunamis rolling out in all directions that destroyed the coasts, that had only been the beginning of what came from dropping pieces of superheated battleship into the ocean.

The planetary trauma of the Fall had led to a chain reaction throughout the appropriately named 'Ring of Fire' that lasted for months – that had continued happening long after everyone had become numb to the news, only cooling down in the last year. So much of the climate change they had seen these last years was truly from post-Fall volcanic activity, not the direct effect Libra had had on the atmosphere.

These were facts she had known, but at the same time… The scale of the disaster hurt to think about.

While any land that touched the Pacific had seen catastrophic disaster, the effect on both Central America and the Oceanic islands – as far north as Japan and south as New Guinea – had been cataclysmic. Several landmasses had changed, grown or subtracted by volcanic activity, but the most universal effect was flooding. Flooding to the extent that islands had been entirely underwater for days or weeks at a time – sometimes more than once. The only survivors could be counted among bacteria and limited flora – certain bugs too, apparently, but no larger fauna. Which wasn't to say that the losses hadn't been just as vicious elsewhere, particularly in South America, but… The complete loss of all life on a landmass, however small, was difficult to conceptualize.

Logically, she knew the swathe of equally dead land extending down the western length of the South American continent was more square footage than all the deserted islands put together – but it felt less horrible, because at least there was still life to the east. She knew, rationally, that the events were equivalent – people had died just as quickly on the southern continent as they had on the isles, and the immediate death count had been significantly skewed to the larger, more populated area. The numbers should be more upsetting when she looked at South America. But emotionally, the fact that those who survived the first wave had had somewhere to run to made it feel less terrible than what had happened in the island nations – despite the fact that all data indicated there had been no survivors of the first wave in either area.

Instead of getting even more upset by her newfound inability to understand math, however, she had decided to shift her focus on what good could be done – which, at the moment, was assisting in the Pacific Reclamation.

Sylvia had sunk a significant portion of the Noventa fortune into 'rehabilitating' the islands that she could legally claim – and the pure vision behind the move, now that she knew the minute, cumulative, multitudinous details took Dorothy's breath away. She hadn't thought much of the Reclamation beyond 'oh, that sounds productive' when it was first presented to her, but was willing to acknowledge that that attitude had been a gross oversight. Not to mention the sheer volume added to the project by Jake and Lena's efforts to spread the project across the entirety of the ocean… it was daunting. There was a reason Nueva Terra was so heavily involved.

However much Dorothy had already understood about Maraggos' work with terraforming technology, the changes the entrepreneur's technology had wrung back out of the islands were nothing short of miraculous. The Sahara had been so dramatically altered that it was easy to think of the land as someplace new – but in the south Pacific, New Guinea and Philippines? While they were truthfully only a shadow of what they had once been, the images sent by the forward teams looked like the equatorial paradises from five years ago. Maraggos had stressed the dangers behind the limited flora and microfauna her people had been able to reintroduce, consistently reminding them of just how delicate the balance of the ecosystem was likely to be for the next several decades – but at the same time?

It was exciting to be a part of this, however small her role. She had thought the same about the RLTT work with the hydroponics towers, with the changes in Europe's political landscape that Relena was shaping, but everything that had come before paled in comparison to the Reclamation. The research and effort that Sylvia had poured into the project for the reintroduction of different birds alone was incredible.

Before this last week, she hadn't even known Sylvia liked birds, let alone structured a significant part of her education around her near obsessive study of them! Not that Dorothy particularly cared about birds, exactly; she didn't see what was so exciting about them. But she appreciated that someone in her social class could not only become a legitimate ornithologist, but also do something worthwhile with the science instead of treating it as a hobby.

She had no idea what she might like to do with her life that she hadn't discovered already, but the possibilities were endless. Though in the short-term she was admittedly unsure of how much time she would care to devote to any extracurriculars once Jared arrived. A large part of the decision to have him had been the choice to not take after her father – she would be involved with her child, always, whatever direction that took them in. Her son was always going to come first. That said, she lacked neither the capacity nor the resources to change the world in some way while also raising her son, and she loved looking out at the shifting potential avenues expanding into the horizon now that her succession was secure.

"Which zone was that?" Sylvia asked distractedly without actually looking her way.

It was when the other woman concentrated deeply like this that Sylvia reminded her most of Relena, for all that there were also very distinct differences between them. "The Philippines," she explained. "The extra weeks did enough good for the budding rodent populations that the birds and reptiles are very welcome, and we might reach stage seven expectations by the time the initial habitats are finished and settlers arrive."

The other woman smiled softly, for all that she was otherwise still clearly focused on the papers in front of her. "Excellent. At least something was gained from what happened."

Dorothy pursed her lips, but decided that holding back would gain her nothing, and saying it might help validate her… not friend. Peer. "You have handled your injury with far more grace than I could have managed," she admitted. "I believe I would still be inconsolable at this stage." It had only been three and a half weeks since the shooting, and yet… She did not believe the other woman had faltered once.

"Giving up is the easy route," Sylvia returned flatly, raising one brow as she finally looked up and gave her a sneering sort of smirk, face all proud lines. "I refuse to be a coward."

Dorothy narrowly held in a laugh – because oh, wasn't that a convenient rhetoric? "Very masculine," she decided with a matching smirk instead. "Bravo." Competitive, bold, and absolutely not the first response anyone had to trauma – not that she cared enough to try unseating the other woman from her high horse.

After all – the height advantage suited her very well indeed.

"Hm." Sylvia considered, then gave a small, elegant shrug. "I promised myself after my grandfather died, after meeting Heero, that I would never fall so far from reality that I squandered what opportunities were left to me. If sometimes I need reminders to stay the course, that's what I keep a support network for. I will adapt." She shuffled the paper on the front of her stack to the back in a deft move worthy of a card shark or magician, not a newly crippled noblewoman with only the use of her less dominant hand, adding, "To do anything less would be spitting on the sacrifices that have brought me this far, and is therefore beneath me."

Hm. Well, first response or not, she seemed to mean it. Good for her. Personally, Dorothy thought she would be fixated on revenge.

Then again, there was nothing to say Sylvia wasn't. They just didn't have a viable target yet.

That said… "Alejandra doesn't seem to be handling it half so well," she noted, taking advantage of the fact that the other woman had stepped out for a phone call that evidently needed to be kept private. Sylvia's, ah, 'partner' had been a solemn wreck in the aftermath, and even now had a tendency to hover in a way that clearly annoyed the woman at the center of her focus.

Sylvia made an irritated noise. "It's frustrating," she admitted. "And something of a final straw as well." She made a face. "Oh well. The timing could be better, but when isn't that the case?"

Dorothy blinked, mentally backtracking. "What?"

The other woman's look was scathing. "Not everyone wants to make permanent life decisions before turning twenty." She rolled her eyes. "It was never going to last – as much as we have in common, neither of us is what the other truly needs. It was just…" She shrugged, a smirk touching the corner of her mouth again. "Easy. Fun while it lasted. But we're better as friends."

Dorothy narrowed her eyes. "You dumped your girlfriend because she was worried about you?"

Sylvia scoffed. "Please. I cut off her awkward 'I don't think I can handle this' speech before she could finish making a case for why we should wait until I was recovered to call it off. She would have guilted herself into thinking it was the right thing to do and made us both miserable." She rolled her eyes again. "Now at least it's just her problem. She'll get over it."

Dorothy raised her brows, not sure if she felt disgruntled or impressed by that line of logic. It was either deeply insightful or incredibly cold, and she couldn't tell which. "Hmm."

The other woman gave her an irritated look this time. "She can do better, and I really don't have the time or inclination to play into her fears. Seeing as I am not ready for children, I don't see how my romantic entanglements are anyone's business but my own – and unless I've misread you entirely, Alejandra's romantic interests are none of your business either, so leave it alone."

Dorothy scoffed. "I haven't bothered with any 'romantic interests,'" she reminded her. "I just thought she looked wrung out."

"Why do you think I ended it? She doesn't like stress in her personal life – business is another thing entirely, but she craves stability close to home. And I'm not going to find that any time soon – I don't even know if I want to find it." She set down her papers and glared at Dorothy. "I'm done talking about this."

If she had ever doubted her decision to bypass the 'relationship' end of getting a baby, this conversation probably would have convinced her. Breakups looked exhausting. "Understood," she murmured, flicking her gaze back to her laptop.

"I think it's funny how often people say that when they absolutely don't," Rhett mused.

Dorothy looked his way, but he was focused on his phone's screen, typing something. "I understand that the topic is closed," she pointed out. "Not the subject itself."

He blinked a few time, then looked up and smiled. "Okay, that makes more sense." He nodded, focusing back on his phone. "I can get behind that. I'm in the deep end of people's id half the time, and still don't understand it. I'd almost say the point is that it's unknowable, but enough people click together just right that I can't make the theory float."

Sylvia's mouth twisted as she flicked her gaze his way. "Am I bothering you?"

He didn't look up. "You are allowed to feel however you want – I'm against that kind of social fuckery. If an empath doesn't want someone to influence them, they have other options – they don't get to set out rules that force people to kowtow to them. Leaning into that kind of expectation does the community no favors in the long run."

"You are here to keep us safe and you also literally saved my life less than a month ago," Sylvia pointed out in a dry tone that suggested she had repeated this line of reasoning more than once. "There are very few favors within my power I wouldn't grant – managing my moods to some extent hardly rates."

"And while I'm not against the idea of favoritism, I still disagree with pushing people to shape their lives around me out of courtesy," he returned in a nearly identical tone, smirking and raising a brow at her… Reflecting her, Dorothy realized, fascinated. "The determination is nice," he decided. "There's a cutting edge to it, but you wallow remarkably little for a fresh amputee." He blinked again, and his smile turned more… manic. "I like to stay with groups because if one person doesn't suit my wants, another usually does. So regulate your emotions if you like, but not on my account. If I don't care for your wave, Thea has the vivacity of a party all on her lonesome – and the baby's always happy. I'm hardly spoiled for options."

Dorothy smiled, recognizing the shift. "He is?"

He glanced her way, and the glint in his eyes very much acknowledged the pride she was feeling for the swap as accurate. "It's rare for a fetus to not be at this stage," he explained. "They don't know anything different. If they're not happy before eight months, that usually means there's a problem – pain is a universal constant." He tipped his head. "Then it swaps. Give him another week or two, and he'll start to get annoyed. If he doesn't, you should go to the doctor's."

Sylvia frowned. "Why?"

"General consensus is because they're running out of room," Rhett explained, focusing pointedly on Dorothy. "There are exceptions, but if you're past thirty-four weeks and the baby's never irritable, you need to get checked for polyhydramnios."

"…Polyhydramnios," Sylvia repeated flatly.

"It's-"

"I've done enough biology to guess it means there's too much fluid," Sylvia interrupted. "I'm trying to figure out why you know the word."

Rhett laughed. "I have a lot of cousins," he explained. "And I'm really active with the research end of the space heart community." Shrugging, he continued with, "I've walked a bunch of ladies into emergency rooms over the years, strangers or otherwise. It's happened enough times that I did a stint shadowing in OB clinics just to see if it was consistent; I've written a couple papers on it that others have added to since." He shrugged when they stared at him, admitting, "I was, like, twelve, and was worried I was going to scare someone for no good reason. Pregnancy is dangerous, and sometimes a major stressor can be just as threatening as a physical problem."

Rolling a shoulder in a slightly more awkward motion, he added, "It's also something my family has a vested interest in seeing continued research on; both for future generations and to try and understand what went so wrong in our line. Just because we think we've nailed the issue down doesn't mean we're right – not to mention the fact that the heritability pattern so far doesn't make any sense." He sighed. "But we keep trying, because if we can sort it before any more of our ladies decide to be moms we'll be better off.

"Only about half of my aunts have the same syndrome that killed my grandma despite both their parents having it, but the pattern of heritability only gets more screwy another step down. Tavi, Juli, Ket, Ginny, Madeline, and Cheri all got it – which is a solid seventy-five percent of the girls in my generation." He shook his head, looking frustrated. "But since no one's ever seen it in my dad's line and I have one sister with it and one without despite the way it skipped my mom? She must be a carrier – which probably means I am too. Pattern stays around sixty if you don't consider gender, but if you do, heritability is lower than fifty in the boys – Tay and Waylen have it, but not Russ, Silas, Day, or me." He made a face. "Though all the boy numbers get sketchier because of the sex-linked miscarriage rates. We've had enough gestations to make our own statistics at this point, and while the artificial wombs normally neatly sidestep the worst of the disorder? The survival rate for male offspring of a mom with Mahkmudholer Syndrome in the Winner-Claflinn line is less than two percent."

Dorothy stared at him. "How many?" That… hurt to think about. She held a hand to her belly – Jared hadn't kicked in a little while, but he often napped this time of day.

Rhett gave her a tired smile. "Just one survivor – Quatre. And he was a preemie to boot." Shaking his head, he added, "My mom and aunts that managed to have boys don't have the condition. We used to think it was some kind of artificial womb compatibility problem we couldn't make sense of, maybe a heretofore unrecognized blood factor, but after Silas came out of one just fine we had to go back to the drawing board." He grimaced. "We've got a handful of theories bouncing around, but nothing provable, so I'm going to hold off on speculation – they're more conspiracy theory than science."

Sylvia eyed them both with a shrewd expression. "What is…" Her mouth twisted. "Mach-what?"

Rhett took pity on her. "Most people shorten it to Dhol Syndrome, but we've been shying away from that since mobile dolls became a thing. It's named after the two doctors that defined the trend."

"…That is an unfortunate homophone," Dorothy agreed. She could hear the extra enunciation suggesting Indian or Arabic origin in the words he was mashing together, but wasn't sure she could replicate them – which meant a significant amount of the population probably couldn't hear them.

He shrugged. "Yeah, well, the problem made an effectively disturbing sort of sense when you used an analogy about unraveling a cloth doll before, so it is what it is." Flicking his gaze back to Sylvia, he added, "It's a spaceborn problem." His tone was mostly dismissive now. "Mostly in the L4 quadrant. Distinct and common enough to name and is presumably genetic based on inheritance, but has otherwise been hard to pin down. Shows up in both genders, but history's taught us that so long as it doesn't kill you in the womb it's only relevant if you get pregnant or develop the type of fast-growing malignancy that kills you anyway, which makes it a nonpoint for men." He made a face. "Well, so long as you don't become a soldier or go into motocross. High contact sports are discouraged. Your odds of fatal injury or surgical incidence are definitely higher, but the numbers technically still fall within the standard deviation of the general population, so it's kinda whatever. There's a reason my aunts haven't bothered testing any of the earthborn boys." He tipped his head again. "Which might make for an interesting datapoint in the future, but we've only had three dirtside births so far and none of them are girls. Hm."

Dorothy raised one brow. "Why does your aunt think you're stupid, again?"

"My Aunt Delilah has never thought I was stupid," Rhett argued, narrowing his eyes. "She worries, but she's not mean. The fact that I'm unreliable and prone to flights of fancy has nothing to do with my IQ."

Sylvia laughed. Which was remarkable in that… Dorothy wasn't sure how long it had been since she'd heard the other woman laugh. Hearing it made her feel lighter, because while the other woman's stubborn determination in the face of her injury was certainly admirable… this was the first time she felt sure it wasn't a mask.

"Stahl, you do realize this is the pot calling the kettle black?"

Dorothy grinned. "I'm going to take it as a compliment," she decided.

"I will too, but I'm also going to say right now that we're not in the same weight class," Rhett temporized, leaning back slightly. "My questionable coping mechanisms have to do with my space heart, not an ability to think on an entirely different plane of existence."

"Technically debatable," Dorothy argued, feeling herself flush with pride at the compliment even as she picked at him. "Depending on how we define the physics of empath abilities."

His eyes rounded. "I have not done enough study of either meta or quantum physics to get into that debate with you."

"But you have done enough to know where I was going," she returned happily, leaning forward and resting her elbows on the table. Truthfully, she hadn't dipped more than a toe into that field either – but it was worth a thought.

"It's a common debate," he argued, shaking his head. "Anything else ends up defining empathy as 'magic,' and even if that's technically what it is, we'll find a fancy science term for it so we can claim to know what we're doing."

The door opened before she could make a comment about magic just being misunderstood science anyway, and Alejandra stepped back in with a proud sort of smile, phone in one hand. "How do we feel about moving further north?" she asked apropos of nothing. "I've got a contact in Barlinek that will only do a face to face."

The name meant nothing to Dorothy, but Sylvia perked up. "I have a property on the outskirts of Szczecin," she pointed out.

Alejandra grinned and bounced on her toes. "That works!"

Rhett visibly perked up. "Szczecin?"

Hm. Dorothy slid her eyes over to Sylvia. "We can bring my household for added security," she offered. Not BJ, and Nan wasn't exactly security, but the others could secure a facility more than adequately. Given the recent assassination attempt, more was better than less so long as they could still fly under the radar – Sylvia had already mentioned that most of her properties were limited to a housekeeper and electronic surveillance only when she wasn't in residence.

"I would love to go to Szczecin," Rhett announced.

"Traditional security is meant to compliment you, not exclude," Sylvia explained with a wave of her hand. "But of course you're welcome."

"Think we can wrap up what we need to here and go in the next couple days?" Alejandra prompted.

"Most of what we've done here can travel," Sylvia agreed. "I think we could just go now, but-"

"Better to be prepared," Alejandra agreed swiftly, her eyes lingering on the other woman's sling for a long moment before she gave another sharp nod. "I'll get the ball rolling."

oOo

oOo

May 15th 199 – Friday – Prague, Czech Republic

"I'll probably need to go back to the Sigma site in a week or so," Odin agreed, settling his head back onto the pillows and closing his eyes. "If I don't make it on delivery day, we still have enough time before Chalkydri is done that I can let them try alone at first and sort it if there's an issue; maybe raise their skills in the process. But if there are issues I'll want to be on hand."

Lucrezia hummed, tying off her sleep braid and turning off the main light before joining him, the faint amber of his portable lamp on the dresser casting her silhouette in shadows. "Did you have anything planned to delay you?"

He lifted his hips as she drew back the bedding he'd dropped on top of. "Not specifically, but Quatre has a couple balls in the air that might need an extra hand," he explained, twisting to slide under the sheets and reaching for her as she climbed in. That, and… He pulled her close, tucked his face against her temple, and forced his muscles to relax before adding, "And… maybe a family thing."

She stilled, pulling away slightly to turn on her side and fully face him. "Yeah?"

The downside of deciding to ask Sally for forgiveness instead of permission was that involving Lucrezia before they wrapped the deal was not a great idea. Not that they anticipated a fight over the issue, but Quatre had made a good point about how it could put her in an unwinnable position.

But… it really was fine. The trip to the factory had been smooth, and other than some angry muttering and a lot of staring into the distance, Jack had been… Honestly, he'd been far more shaken up over what turned out to be a trove of Odin's mementos than the news that another war was on the horizon. He wasn't entirely sure how to take that – but felt confident it wasn't bad, at least? And presumably Jack had told Jake about the dolls by now, but there had been no evidence of an event – Jack had asked if he'd be willing to meet the friend that was loaning him the car, but he was mostly sure that didn't have to do with the dolls? Though since he'd asked to do it in Munich, maybe his brother was hoping to catch him at the same time.

He was mostly sure he didn't need to feel threatened by Jake. On a personal level he was sure, at least, and if his brother was truly living and working out of the same house as Relena, the political issues were probably not a significant factor – the clip of her trying to walk off with a model of Wing had made him laugh. But he also couldn't count on that – or at least, he couldn't count on no one else raising an alert. So…

He was relatively sure he could handle himself if he stayed in the city proper and didn't go in to Relena's compound – especially if he wore a medical mask. Just because he'd dodged disaster the last time he was recognized didn't mean the next incident wouldn't fuck up the equilibrium he'd gained in his life – though Quatre seemed relatively sure it would never get so bad as what they faced in 197. Between Mark's campaign and Adam's games on the forums, his friend was insisting that it would likely even go well.

…He'd believe it when he saw it. The last time could have been a fluke. People were very different in person compared to when you gave them the power of anonymity. That, and he'd gathered that empaths weren't the only ones who found him overwhelming, which could backfire on him as easily as it could help.

But this was the first time Jack had directly asked him for something personal. And Quatre had made some noise about the man only seeming to have one friend at all, so… evidently he had passed some kind of test while Jack was passing the last of his? Which felt ironic but also… right. The more he learned about Jack, the more he understood how much of his life the man spent having just as little as he had. The similarities between them were not entirely genetic, and as odd as that felt each time they stumbled across another commonality… it was nice too.

He just wished… As much as he'd originally wanted to avoid a confrontation because he expected it to ruin what he'd gained in the meantime? Ever since finding out about the Dekim connection… Jack wasn't in denial – he'd just assumed any contact with the Bartons would have been a death sentence. Which meant there wasn't a problem. Technically. But people were just saying things about him all the time now, openly, and it was all…

He wasn't going to lose Jack, which was so much better than what he'd assumed would happen. But the man cared, maybe just as much as Marie and Lucrezia, as much as Quatre, as… There was something more between him and his brother that he still couldn't understand, but he knew it was there all the same. And he'd watched Jack lean into the more painful bits of information he'd shared, as he saw his scars, watched him carefully control his reaction despite the gutted look in his eyes… and was aware enough to acknowledge that even if the politics of being Heero Yuy went smoothly, his… Jack wasn't going to take the retraining well.

Or the first half of the war. He was willing to admit that in some ways, his broken attempts to find a 'good' way to die might actually be worse. Marie's insistence that he use her as a lens when reaching for another perspective made that… Bad. He had the excuse of effectively being in shock, struggling to shake the knot retraining had made of his thoughts, but he'd still chosen to work towards his own death. Repeatedly. With how much the very idea of Marie even considering doing part of what he'd followed through on those four months upset him…

He wasn't looking forward to his family having that particular revelation. In particular, he liked that Jack didn't give him the same kind of stumbling words or haunted looks so many had started up with – though Anne said those should mostly go away with time, and both Quatre and Mark insisted the publicity campaign would speed the process along. And maybe it wouldn't be so bad – aside from Duo's temporary insanity and Marie's lectures, those closest to him hadn't begun treating him differently. But either way, even if they weren't on a time crunch, avoiding the issue with Jack was growing to irritate him as much as he dreaded its resolution – and once they got a meeting with Relena, it was a moot point anyway. Quatre was angling for that within the next couple of weeks one way or another, so it was what it was.

At the end of the day, it was just pain, and it would either pass or it wouldn't. Trying to stay in place for much longer would bring a different kind of ache.

Still…. What he was willing to do to himself didn't always translate to others, and he was trying to use Marie as a lens. As often as he seemed to do it, he didn't like hurting Jack. So… Would it be better to introduce Lucrezia first? Jack and his brother had both been completely with him on the proposal, they knew he had valid anchor points. He'd managed to keep Lucrezia's identity under wraps despite Marie dropping obvious hints in front of Jack, but… Chalkydri was almost done. Her gundam's debut was the established point at which the Insurgence's advantage in hiding their general's identity became negligible, and if it came out a little early… Hm. Honestly, the changes to their plans would be trivial. That aside, using the information to form a tighter bond with Relena's faction would more than make up the difference. And anyway, so long as it wasn't a major concession their personal lives didn't always have to be so tied up with the Insurgence that they were inseparable. If they wanted to push the envelope…

What was the point of having your own life if you couldn't decide to do something with it? People were the only thing worth fighting for, and he was no longer so naïve as to think combat was the only kind of battlefield he'd have to face. If he wanted something enough to take a chance…

I'm tired of this, he realized, feeling his muscles relax further as he stroked a thumb over Lucrezia's side. Whatever the consequences, he wanted to be less guarded with his family – to stop juggling his personal life. And Lucrezia had wanted to meet Jack last month – and he knew by now that the man could keep a secret. Even if he'd judged him wrong, Jovi was confident that Relena's people didn't know half of the things Jack could have passed along, so…

That made it less a question of when than how.

He met Lucrezia's eyes. It was dark enough that he could only make out the general shape of them, the curve of her soft, barely there smile, as she waited for him to finish gathering his thoughts. She had told him before that it was his call – that she was content to wait for him.

But he didn't like to keep her waiting.

He felt his own lips curve as gentle warmth rushed through him, and brought his hand up to cup her face, brushing a thumb over her cheek. She… made everything easier somehow, just by being there. More than an anchor, more than his closest friendships, this was the feeling people blamed for going crazy after losing it. A personally-tailored perfection, crafted day by day in endless lockstep. He still didn't understand why someone would give up instead of seeking it again, seeking love in some form – but he understood better, now, what his brother had meant when he said that their mother had been Odin's 'everything.' He'd like to think he would do better, he was better than his father, but… At some point, losing her had become his worst case scenario.

When did that happen? It seemed ridiculous, but was true anyway. Well, mostly. Marie… He couldn't think about that. Hn. Losing Lucrezia was the worst thing he could actively consider happening, then?

Emotions were… fluid. Sometimes you couldn't hold onto them, no matter how you tried.

He'd first worked to do better for himself for Moira, then Marie – but he hadn't understood what those changes had wrought until realizing he was bound tighter than ever before to Lucrezia and yet still craved more. It was all about connection, and…

He could spiral around that for hours and not get anywhere. Also, the side effects of the combination anti-inflammatory muscle relaxer he'd taken before washing up were not helping him organize his thoughts.

Jack. Finding the next step.

Anchors.

Meeting Anne and Moira were both major calming points for Jack, he remembered. All of his people, the makeshift family he'd slowly collected – and been collected by – were anchors, bonds to stop him from ever sliding back to the despair of 194. A… proof of change. Of intent? That he wouldn't go back to the insanity of early 195. So maybe…?

"Do you think you could spend any time at home, this next week?" He hadn't agreed to an exact day with Jack yet. The logic behind meeting in Munich was that his friend lived there and preferred to not be away from his family overnight, but… Provided he didn't get tangled in some business that necessitated a quick getaway, it could be nice to just… go home, after. He wasn't bringing Marie incase the situation went unpredictably, but if it was safe, Jack could come home with him. Whether they drove or caught a train…

…If it did go poorly, he was fairly sure Jack would be game to steal a car or hop a plane illegally if he asked. Hn.

That thought was altogether comforting, actually.

…He should probably have a better set of logic before pointing that out to Quatre.

If I do end up mixed up in politics in a way that doesn't go sour, he reasoned, Jack has a better idea of how to find the middle ground.

That was obviously the better option. Even better would probably be to bring Quatre, but… this wasn't supposed to be political. His family didn't need to take a backseat to the revolution – at least, not right now. It could just be about him, which was why he hadn't even mentioned Jack's request to anyone. If it happened anyway…

Eh. It wasn't like he'd be at the forefront of any sort of negotiations in a serious way, whatever happened. He could just walk away. I'm overthinking this.

Lucrezia hummed thoughtfully in response to his question, and there was a happy, even excited note buried in the noise. "Probably only for two or three days," she decided, reaching out a hand to splay against his chest, the pressure light. "Then back here to work more with Hilde, if we don't head back to Blue Nile for war games."

Odin nodded, trailing his hand back down to settle on her side again. For the moment, the situation with the East was in a holding pattern. The Peacecraft Regime had consented to the Accords' offer to put together an investigative force on the other empire's claims of innocence, which… would absolutely include the brigadier that had accused them in the first place, but no one was making any noise about that yet. Quatre felt sure it was some kind of stalling tactic, but no one seemed to have any idea how long it might last – though of course, the situation could deteriorate into chaos at any moment if someone revealed the dolls. He could follow the logic of Lucrezia wanting to use any spare moment they had left to train her troops, especially since her gundam was still a few weeks out.

Additionally, Heavyarms was currently at the Blue Nile base, and an early incursion from the East could come across the Red Sea as easily as Turkey or Europe. If all hell broke loose, Fusion was only a few days away from the Sigma site now – if need be, he could drop to Earth without the shield-wings to handle a threat and integrate them later. The suit wasn't designed for spaceworthy maneuvers without them and he'd be operating with a handicap, but it was more than adequate for terrestrial combat.

They'd talked about all those variables already, though, and it had been a long day besides – he'd spent enough time in the sims with the ghost of Fusion that his leg ached in a way that meant he wouldn't have lost his limp by morning despite taking his meds. This was personal time, not another moment to pour into the war effort.

If the situation could dissolve into war at any moment, then sooner is better. If he was going to actually plan something, he might as well just go for it. "Tuesday?" he suggested. If he went to Munich on Monday, then Jack could come home with him, and… whichever way it went, it would be done and no longer something to stress about.

And if his brother did want to talk about the dolls, that would effectively be the point of no return against Sally, which would shuffle Quatre's schedule up enough that he could loop Lucrezia in.

She smiled and leaned forward to pull him into a kiss – sleepy and languid, but that… was good, right now. He was exhausted, and she wasn't much better. Pulling back and snuggling down into both his outstretched arm and the pillow, she closed her eyes before announcing, "It's a date."

oOo

oOo

Space – Soleil Coalition Fleet

"You want to call it, then?"

Mu felt the corner of her mouth pull in a grimace almost involuntarily. "It's past time," she agreed. "Also, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times makes a pattern – at least one of the five should have reestablished contact by now." She tapped the unfortunately large sector of space she'd already circled in red. "I'd like to define it better, but for broad strokes, there is something here working against us. I'm still hoping one or two will prove themselves to be the exception and make their way back either because they're not part of that zone or with intel about what happened, but for now? We either need to commit stronger resources to uprooting the mystery, or we need to leave it alone to focus on what's in front of us."

When Treize didn't respond immediately, Janalee bit her lip then shook her head. "None of them were supposed to be scouting there in the first place," she pointed out. "It's practically dead space – no decent resources, no major populations… hardly even any reason to pass through. The Regime shouldn't have anything to protect there."

And yet we have five, possibly six lost scout teams in that area and no decent explanation. Dayne's team wasn't technically overdue yet, but would run close enough to the rough boundary she'd drawn to worry her.

In any case, while the argument was old? If Jana wanted to rehash it in front of their commanding general, Mu was game. He seemed to want more time to think anyway. "It was supposed to be a shortcut," she agreed. "And it might be a completely unrelated issue. But it also wouldn't be the first time Zechs has undermined us by employing what look like red herring tactics as viable cover for his actual movements." She flicked her eyes back to Treize. "It's a viable shortcut to us, sir, if he has some means of knowing where we've planted."

As of last week, they'd largely disengaged from the Regime's troops – someone was going to make the call on the dolls soon, and five months was more than enough of a stopgap for Relena to work with, in her opinion. They'd changed tactics again after learning the truth of what they were facing to minimize casualties, but people had still died to get them that time. It better have been worth it.

…She knew enough about the situation on Earth, and about Relena herself, of course, to know that it was important. That Relena would never have condoned it otherwise. And the Accords looked awesome. But that didn't make it not hurt to see this side of the tactic. They were still running skirmishing little attacks, enough to keep the fuckers on their toes, but they hadn't lost anyone to those for the last week and Mu was going to hold on to that with both hands.

If someone can release the news about the dolls in such a way that the Regime is forced to surrender, we can go home, pull Leia out of a hat, and make a big to do about forming an alliance with Relena to stand with a reformed European and African empire against the East as they rise in retribution of the broken treaty. Between the troops Soleil could bear up and the actual Regime forces, not to mention whatever in-betweeners Relena was about to scrounge up, they could either hold the line or do what needed to be done in order to redraw the map and settle things out.

So long as Relena could actually pull the crumbling remains of the Regime back together under the Accords.

So long as China didn't decide to lose its shit on everyone and help kick off a war just as messy as the one in 195.

…Mu fucking hated politics. She was a soldier and an analyst, damn it.

"Let's reposition our retreat," Treize decided, taking his hand away from his chin to gesture at the display, drawing a sinuous line around the area in question with one finger. "Get on the other side of it and see if they follow us by pace or cut through. It gives us the time we want without further commitments, and maybe he'll show his hand."

Works for me. Dodging the issue either made it the same problem as they were already avoiding or their enemy's problem instead, which was a two birds with one stone kind of solution.

Jana nodded sharply. "I'll draw up a few variations on that theme for you to mesh into our battle plans," she decided.

"Keep as wide a border on what Ackroyd defined as you can without being too obvious," Treize added. "Whether it's a trap from our adversary or a third player, I'd rather not spring it."

"Yes, sir."

oOo

oOo

May 16th 199 – Saturday – London, England

"You're joking."

Brinley grimaced. "I'm really, honestly not."

Devin's stomach twisted. "We can't have missed that," he argued. "There would have been signs, details that-"

"That Rex dismissed outright and effectively suppressed because he 'didn't want that kind of bullshit fear propaganda to sway his people.'"

He stared at her. "And Rossi took that lying down?" he demanded.

Augustine snorted. "Please. It's Rossi."

Brin's lips twitched. "She laughed in his face and walked," she corrected. "Do you remember those three months when she first went off the rails? That's what kicked off her independent streak."

…That had been a really long spring. Rossi was more than a tech guru, she could scrub the internet for data the same as a master conman read a mark, and once upon a time she had been the core of Libramentum's intelligence operations. She was also kinda nuts, but… genius usually came with some quirks, right? To find out she'd maybe been pushed off the ledge instead of taking a leap…?

No. Whatever factors might be involved, he had to think of people as being their own arbiters – anything else led down a path of madness. Which brought up another point. "How much are we trusting Rossi right now?" he tried to clarify.

Auggie snorted out a laugh, but Brin only sighed through her nose, looking exasperated but also thoughtful. "Honestly, finding out Rex effectively put a gag order on her goes a long way towards explaining some of the fractures that started up in early 198."

"See, that's a good chunk of why I'm not buying this," he insisted, pointing at her. "It's Rossi."

There was that grimace again. "Evidently there was some significant blackmail involved that was probably a lot closer to extortion," she explained. "Which is also the only reason she's continued to do any work with him since. She only told me now because she thinks there's enough evidence floating around that he can't pin it on her anymore." She took in a deep breath. "But after the initial argument, there were three months of escalating move and countermove and raising of stakes before it settled out."

And those three months nearly ended the faction altogether, Devin finished in his head, the denial starting to crumble. Damn it.

"It gets worse," Auggie announced in a sing-song tone.

He turned gimlet eyes on her, but she only shrugged apologetically before focusing back on her tablet. Brin wasn't arguing, however, so he focused back on her. "You just told me that not only has our ex-head of intelligence known the Romefeller Sovereignty is very much not declawed for over a year, but she didn't tell anyone because someone in leadership managed to both threaten her into silence and keep his head attached to his shoulders – and there's more?"

Had he even been a major power in the group? Thank fuck I've left. He'd scoffed at the lacking integrity of all the people who'd jumped ship over the last two years, calling it good riddance, but… Shit. There had been two separate points when he'd thought they were done and he was going to have to rebuild the revolution out of the ashes all by himself. The second of those runs had been when he started working with Brin more regularly, and they balanced each other's perspectives well enough – and the others had gotten their shit together enough – that they'd made it.

But looking back?

Brinley puffed out her cheeks in annoyance. "She did tell some people," she pointed out. "That's why everything almost went to shit so many times those three months. She tried to build a task force around the problem as a proof and solution at the same time, looped in people she found most like-minded, but…" She winced.

He could fill in the gaps. Rossi was brilliant, but she was not a team player. She was a hell of an asset, but as well as she understood the beats and pulses of information warfare, somehow none of that translated back to real-life people. She was capricious and inconsistent and frankly obsessive about some of the weirdest shit. Her attention to detail bordered on insane, but was also… niche.

In short? The woman was a grade A shut-in agoraphobic and it showed.

If you gave her a role to play for an assignment or goal, she could act her way through anything – so long as it was through a phone line or computer screen. She liked being thorough, and enjoyed working with others if it allowed her time to gloat over her accomplishments and accept praise. She wanted positive attention. But the idea of her being in charge of something?

He couldn't imagine a scenario where it might have gone well.

Clearly, it didn't. "What did you call them the other day?" he found himself asking in a dry tone. "Rex's 'splinter bitches?'"

At this point, he was just… done. Whatever she threw at him next, he could handle – if only because he no longer possessed the emotional capacity to get upset. He was tapped out.

"That's the really short version," Brinley agreed, still looking distinctly unhappy. "Do you remember Sienna Whittle?"

He thought about that. Maybe… "The biologist?" he tried.

"Oh my God, you're such shit at science," Auggie protested, giving him a scandalized look.

He rolled his eyes, trying again. "Some kind of researcher, right?" There had been a picture of her in a lab coat, taken during some ceremony, or maybe something she'd won a prize for, he thought. "If I'm even remembering the right woman, she was pushing papers anyway, not following her field."

"Yeah, turns out we didn't know much about her 'field' because she'd been living under a false identity for a good seven years before she joined up," Brinley continued briskly.

He stared at her. "And Rossi missed that?" he demanded incredulously.

She sighed, bringing a hand up to her brow, the other settling on her hip. "She didn't, but she didn't realize the former identity was also false until the lady bailed and vanished entirely."

Great. Not only did they apparently have fucking sleeper agents from a society with distressingly different standards for 'human decency' strung throughout Europe, at least some of which were assassins, but they had also missed some kind of plant in their organization from an early stage. "Who does not-Sienna work for?" he asked, utterly fucking resigned.

That earned him a glare that he felt was undeserved. "No one. But when I asked Rossi to see what she could find on that name Miller dropped, Lyddia Sharpman? We got some real slap in the face déjà vu when we pulled her picture up."

"The word you were looking for," Auggie offered, "is chemist." She rolled her eyes. "Though not an exceptionally talented one so much as ambitious. If she could synthesize all her own shit, the crazy would have had a much wider spread."

"Auggie," Brin snapped.

"She's dead, right?" the younger woman snapped back. "If I can't make fun of dead psychos, who is fair game?"

"She's also shed her skin like a lizard how many times now?" Brinley demanded.

"She hasn't bombed anyone for five months," Augustine argued, standing up straighter. "And the body was found in a fucking tenement meth lab. If she was jumping ship, there were way better ways than leaving a look-alike asphyxiated with a garbage bag duct taped around her head."

Chemist. That painted an ugly picture. "The chemical bomber used to be one of ours?" he demanded. And then Miller, aka RLTT, had asked…

Fuck my life. This just kept getting better.

"Lyddia née Sienna née whoever-"

"Rossi thinks the Lyddia identity might actually be the original," Brinley interrupted.

"The bitch is dead with no connection to the bomber stated anywhere," Auggie continued. "Unless you're Rossi, who was mostly sure the first bomber was Sienna all along – which is why she was writing and posting equally batshit counter-manifestos any time a traditional bomb went off to try to piss Sienna off enough that she'd make a mistake and become findable."

Brin sighed, turning to give Devin an exasperated look. "Apparently she's been telling Harper that she's doing it both to help maintain a plausible deniability smokescreen. …And because she thinks it's funny."

He stared at them. "Am I the only one who actually stopped talking to Rossi when we all said we would?"

"Yes," they responded in chorus.

"Great." He was more than aware that he was the military figurehead with a target conveniently painted on his back, statecraft was not his cup of tea, but fucking A. "What else am I missing?"

"No one but us should know Sharpman was a bomber," Brinley explained grimly. "As far as we can tell, she was never even a suspect for it – even now, four months after her corpse got catalogued. There's no sign of anyone thinking she's anybody."

He fought the urge to groan. "So how does Miller know in the first place, let alone suspect enough to pin her on us," he finished, thoughts just… falling flat. "Fuck."

"And let's not forget," Augustine announced in an overly cheerful voice, "that she's the victim of a violent unsolved murder!" She gave him big, starry eyes. "And the chem lab she was found in – which the police assumed was drug-related, because they usually are – was very obviously emptied of all papers and documentation! Despite the way it was littered with multiple bulletin boards, several large desks, multiple half-used pens and pencils, and some half-empty spiral notebooks. And all the paper nibs scattered around from where someone ripped papers free." She gave him a cruel sort of smile and waggled her eyebrows again. "Remind me, please: exactly what kind of black book work was it that Miller did for Khushrenada in the eighties?"

He closed his eyes. "Fuck."

"It's speculation," Brinley added, voice tentative. "She'd been dead for a while before anyone found the body. But based on the rate of decomposition, the coroners estimated her death to have been shortly after she went missing, in the second or third week of January – and while no one was trying to track him at the time, Miller spent a lot of time out of that compound and away from the princess that month. Which was a new trend." She grimaced. "Not so unusual now, but still notable."

"Valid, but we just decided the guy runs at least three major conspiracies on a good day, let alone whatever he does to keep RLTT going," Devin pointed out. "He's not the only spook out there, and he's also powerful and connected enough to have underlings, if it was even his gig to begin with." He shook his head. "We just found out the stage is a hell of a lot bigger than we had thought – don't try to narrow it back down out of spite. He is literally marrying royalty – there's no way he isn't trading information along with everything else." Miller might have started his career with his boots on the ground, but he was absolutely higher management at this point. Though he's certainly known to take a personal interest too.

"We're also all for eliminating extremist psychos," Augustine added. "And while this conversation is certainly reminding me that he's scary as fuck, that's not exactly news."

Devin nodded along tiredly, focusing his gaze back on Brin. "Not that this isn't enough, but was there anything else you needed to tell me before I go shove my head in a bucket of ice water?" Might as well lay it all out – I'm past giving a shit anyway.

Brinley, damn it all, fucking hesitated.

Fucking A. "Brin?" He was already swimming in the deep end with the whole 'eighty percent of our nation's immigrant population from the last eighteen months meet the parameters suggesting they could be Sovereignty sleeper agents.' What the fuck else could make her hesitate?

She winced. "Remember the media chatter about some kind of government contract with Hideki Robotics for replacing the missile defense system?"

"The crumbling system that we finished flogging to death when we took this place? Yeah." He remembered, but since no detailed information was given and the satellite system certainly hadn't had an upgrade thus far, he wasn't sure whether that was just talk or not yet at a launch phase. It wasn't exactly a small project – and that was if it truly was anything beyond propaganda.

"It's real – money and supplies are moving, though Rossi can't get into the system itself to check out any details."

"Despite what she occasionally claims, the woman is not actually a tech god," he returned dryly. Though… "If we're lacking details, what's the fuss? A new satellite network is going to be in its infancy for at least another year, if not three." And that's if anyone lets the things stay in orbit.

He wasn't particularly inclined to let that goal go unanswered, personally. Globalized security had not saved them from the many different iterations of hell enacted since the Alliance first started pushing in that direction.

"Two things," Brinley countered, holding up her fingers. "First? Whatever is going on at the old shipyard in L2-Sigma, it's new tech – the NDA's on the engineers going in and out are holding firm so far, but there's a lot of excitement over it. Rumor is that it's not a surveillance system."

Huh. "Okay…"

One finger went down. "Second? The lead engineer they're all circling around? Is none other than the nineteen-year-old Revenant officially listed as 'Jack Lowe.'" Her mouth twisted. "Though the couple emails Rossi has gotten a hold of that skimped on encryption have referred to the guy as 'Odin.'"

"…Huh."

"I know, right?" Auggie muttered in a regretful tone. "I can't tell anymore if it's Miller or Relena marrying up. Current government aside, I don't think the Peacecrafts have ever been so well off as these guys."

Brinley grinned. "It brings into question exactly who was fucking who's boss," she agreed cheerfully, practically bouncing. "I feel like it could go either way."

Devin tipped his head back, closing his eyes. "If you two are going to rehash made up celebrity sex scandals again, I'm leaving." Never mind the fact that that would require getting up and walking out. Maybe if he was an ass about it, they'd stop.

…But probably not.

Luckily for him, fate – or maybe just Auggie's inability to put down her phone – intervened. "Oh my God, yes! Ambassador Kim just uploaded a statement!"

That had him perking up a bit. Of course, it could just be an update concerning this summer's amplifier tour that was due to start in three weeks – but China had been vague from the start on whether Jie Kim was simply the amplifier rep or their official ambassador to the Regime as a whole. Though seeing as they've thus far refused to interact with anyone outside the amplifiers or threatening war, it could be argued that a differentiation isn't necessary. "What's he saying?"

"I just got the video notification, it's fresh," she defended, swiping a finger across her screen. "No one's even had a chance to watch the whole thing yet. Give me a minute."

Brinley hissed a breath out through her teeth. "If they're not inclined to give the Sovereignty the benefit of the doubt and allow for investigation, I have no idea where that's going to put us," she admitted, face tight.

Particularly since you just told me we've bitten into an apple full of worms. The Sovereignty was the very darkest parts of Romefeller spun into nightmare fuel. "Nothing doing," he reminded her, feeling… Fatalistic. That's what this feeling is. "It is what it is. We'll work with what we've got." Despite all the potential problems, they were still in a much better situation than a month ago. Hell, every day they were on their own, he was more and more grateful that they had jumped ship.

He'd known he didn't see eye to eye with Rex, but… shit. If what Brin had said- No. He trusted her completely, she'd tell him if she suspected something but wasn't sure – she was good at picking things apart, and was as good at the psychology end of things as he was logistics. They made a hell of a team, if one prone to getting so caught up in the details that they got lost in the clouds – which was where Auggie and Edd evened them back out, bringing in the bigger picture. Devin trusted Brinley's grasp of intel with his life. If she said it was real, then it was.

But he was too caught up in the paradigm shift right now to really understand what it meant that at least one major player within their organization had been actively manipulating information and gaslighting the rest. Hindsight on this one was going to run deep and labyrinthine – and hurt all the more for it. Because he, Rex, and Harper had been more or less at the top of their little co-op militia – they didn't always interact, but they pooled resources, and… Fuck.

If the corruption started that high up, how many other avenues had it traveled down? What else had gotten lost in the shuffle? The point in their lack of structure had been to avoid this kind of shit.

But competent peer review and commitment options only went so far when you were willing to backstab each other for bringing in intel that didn't line up with your favorite world view. Which was evidently a category Rex fell into.

What the fuck did he use to corner Rossi? He'd thought the lady was inalienable. The realization that… she'd…

He frowned, rewinding through the conversation and trying to make sure he'd understood something right. "How many bombers were there actually, this last year?" The general public had only been told there was one, but anyone with access to the Regime database – which effectively meant everyone – had known there were two profiles. But if the copycat manifesto drama had been Rossi on a kick…

Brinley offered him a tired smile. "Other than Sienna? Rossi thinks two incidents might have been the same group, but isn't actually sure – though Cáceres was Harper. So, between the pickup in January and the couple that have been foiled but listed in the database? Mm. At least eight?"

Devin snorted out a laugh in spite of himself. Not that he was a big fan of explosives himself – they had their uses, but he preferred surgical strikes. And the non-chemical bombers had at least had clear targets and goals, legitimate tactics that weren't totally left field, which he could appreciate.

But this was one of the better examples of both the good and the bad thing about Rossi. Pure fucking chaos. "And she's gotten the Regime thinking they're trying to track down a single group?" he confirmed, still snickering.

Brin chuckled, still looking tired but not quite as downtrodden. "So far as she or I can tell, yeah."

Got them chasing their damn tails. He shook his head. Motherfucking Rossi. "Any chance we could talk her into immigrating?"

She scoffed so hard he thought she might start coughing. "No. Even if she was willing to let anyone know where she's holed up, she literally told me to enjoy living in my 'custom-made deathtrap.'"

He raised his brows. "Cheerful."

Brin rolled her eyes. "Yeah."

"I doubt it's actually as bad as we're thinking," he continued. "I mean… sabotage is a major concern, but we're also jumping at shadows." There could be thousands of sleepers, or five – but statistically speaking, it was probably a manageable number.

Then again, the Alliance probably thought that about the gundams. Five can do a lot of damage with the right tools.

"We have no way of screening for them," Brin reminded him, voice growing quiet. "We're going to have to jump at shadows."

"The fuck?" Auggie demanded – which wasn't entirely apropos of nothing, and yet…

That's not promising, he decided, letting out a sigh. It's just that kind of day, isn't it? "You have it on subtitles," he reminded her. That, or she had an earbud in – with her hair down, he wouldn't be able to see it.

"Shut up, I'm thinking!"

He blinked once, twice… then narrowed his eyes and Brin. "What have you been feeding her this morning?"

Her brows here halfway up her forehead as she stared at the other woman. "Not enough, clearly."

"Shh!"

His own brows went up as she watched her tap furiously at the screen, dragging a finger… Typing or rewinding the vid? He traded another long look with Brinley… and almost simultaneously, they reached for their phones.

Not that he was going to try and look at the same thing – that would be pointless, Auggie would explain in a minute anyway. But if this was big news, it might effect… Timeline, he reminded himself. Too fresh. Which… Well, I'm waiting anyway, right? Smirking, he gave into the temptation to open up the gundam threads on SeenIt.

He needed to regather himself anyway. It was too early in the day to have his brain so fried from bad news that he couldn't plan a response. And anyway, there was usually a new one around this time of day, though some were… better than others…

He frowned.

That time you all proved your collective IQs didn't mean shit for common sense

-Nataku_Five

Okay… The 'five' part suggested Wufei Chang, but he had no idea what 'nataku' could reference. He went ahead and tapped on it. I guess someone had to start trolling them back eventually, he mused. The Regime might even be on it, just to muddy the waters and reduce credibility.

That said, the post started with a fairly dense logic puzzle about communication logic and false flag operations, which he found himself appreciating in an abstract sense, but didn't see why…

He blinked. They're talking about New Edwards, he realized. Which was interesting if it truly had been a trap OZ laid for the gundams instead of Colonel Une having one of her characteristically spontaneous fits of violent psychosis, but could also be an academic postulation. Though… He scrolled down to look for relevant responses – choked out a harsh laugh when he found Yuy's returning jab not too far down the list.

yesThat01:

In my defense, I wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders. That was only two and a half weeks after I stole Wing and bailed out of L1-Z00736.

Cheeky motherfucker, he decided, shaking his head in something approaching exasperation but maybe verging on admiration. Yuy was… something else.

Nataku_Five:

Yes, I did hear about that.

yesThat01:

Everyone has. Anyway, it's not like, your little follow-up assassination attempt went much better. Did OZ even bother telling anyone it happened?

Nataku_Five:

I don't know. I was too embarrassed over the incident to check afterwards.

I'd thought Treize only played at swords, with how I'd known him to send others to do his dirty work. I wasn't expecting a master duelist. The fact that he not only spared me but denied his attack dog the right of pursuit made me question everything.

yesThat01:

But you still saw him, after my offer on Peacemillion?

Nataku_Five:

Zero showed me a number of things. It wasn't until after the Libra fell that I began to question my interpretation.

Devin raised his brows. He'd never heard anything about 05 attempting to assassinate Treize, so a cover-up seemed likely? Then again, Operation Daybreak had begun less than twenty-four hours after Une's attempted detonation of the New Edwards complex, so it might have been lost in the shuffle.

notTrowaBarton:

Wait, did all of us steal our gundams?

L2_Shinigami_Maxwell:

I mean… kinda? I tried to blow mine up, but G'd gotten ahead of me and removed my detonators, then told me I was being stupid and HELPED me steal it? So… Technically yes.

yesThat01:

Same thing here. J was… different that day. More like before the retraining. He found me after I'd disobeyed orders again, explained that Meteor had been authorized, and told me I had a few different options. I refused the original version Meteor, but he was cryptic enough about what a third alternative would be that I held off on killing us both until he gave me Wing's launch codes and offered to send a target list after I reached Earth.

L2_Shinigami_Maxwell:

That was SERIOUSLY your first plan?

yesThat01:

I didn't want to go back after refusing to shoot Darlian. I'd already decided to take a permanent out instead – J interrupted me. And the way we'd customized Wing, I was the only one who could fly it. With both of us gone, it would have taken months to retrofit it for another pilot, if it could be done at all.

The versions of Wing that Zechs and OZ rebuilt didn't follow the same specs. Now that we have Zero, someone else might be able to make the cut. But the last candidate to wash out almost killed herself trying to control the frame in 192.

yesThat01:

…I was being stupid, but I could barely reason through J's idea of multiple choice at the time. I wasn't well.

Nataku_Five:

I didn't steal Nataku. I did, however, reject Operation Meteor, punch master O in the solar plexus for insisting it was Shenlong because Nataku was dead, and stalled out the maneuvers to drop my home colony on Earth.

The Alliance and OZ almost succeeded in dropping a biological weapon in our vents on May 12th 194 – I launched to take justice on those who saw fit to execute an entire culture out of convenience, not to deliver the same punishment on a greater scale to yet more innocents.

TheOtherChang:

Only to have Elder Long turn around and overload the core reactor to blow everyone up ANYWAY seven months later to cover your escape.

Nataku_Five:

I didn't ask him to do that and I still don't understand why he did it. I was horrified – I would have preferred to be taken prisoner or killed. Unfortunately, he's too dead for me to demand answers of him.

…Xutao?

TheOtherChang:

So far as I know, my family still lived up the street from Auntie Yi Hsuan's old house when he massacred everyone. I guess you were the only one Shirin actually cared about after Meilan died. Too damn proud for a solo suicide, hm?

Final proof: What did you say to me when you first found out we'd been dormed together?

Nataku_Five:

…I agree.

"How alphabetical."

TheOtherChang:

Good to know you're alive, asshole.

yesThat01:

I don't think Quatre stole Sandrock.

Yeah, that's probably the real Wufei Chang. Shaking his head again, Devin scrolled back up, seeing if there were any more comments…

yesThat01:

…I was being stupid, but I could barely reason through J's idea of multiple choice at the time. I wasn't well.

PurpleDignity_21:

Uh, with all due respect… Are you sure you're 'well' NOW? That was some real psycho shit in 194, and the war wasn't exactly great either. No one would blame you.

Well, no one worthwhile would blame you.

yesThat01:

It took about six months to remember how to be a person – though success on that front was hit or miss for… probably the next year? It was difficult to THINK during the retraining, and that took time to wear off.

I didn't start prioritizing outside of imperatives until 197, and I don't think I understood what it was to be happy until almost 198. But this last year… I could've done without the article released on the retraining, but otherwise? My life is great. I keep thinking that I can't imagine how it could get any better, and then it keeps happening anyway.

On a purely personal level, at least. Earth and space have issues.

Devin snorted out a laugh. That's an understatement. Though otherwise, the response was surprisingly wholesome when you considered what the guy had been through. A nice surprise all around, he decided. They'd seen enough people who hadn't experienced even a quarter of Yuy's shit and go totally psycho – he'd count this as a boon.

Before he could kill more time wandering through threads, Augustine spoke up. "So China's waiting to see what Relena's investigation turns up," she announced. "But otherwise state that they are holding their side of the shared Sovereignty border. Or at least, the northern end – they don't consider the areas they don't rule directly as their problem, so Africa's on its own."

"That's not unexpected," Brinley mused, turning thoughtful eyes on the other woman. "What's the fuckery about?"

Auggie grinned, the expression a little on the evil side. "They basically said that anyone trying said border would be ill-advised because their chief military engineer was 'part of the team that took down Libra.' And when asked to clarify, said that given L5's history as the oldest colony, it isn't surprising that they've produced incredibly innovative engineers. And in a separate statement, Kim idly pointed out that gundams shouldn't be trifled with."

Devin felt like a sun was going supernova in his chest. And Wufei just made his online debut. Holy shit. It could be coincidence, but he doubted it. "Wufei popped onto the online forums to bicker with his old comrades this morning," he added, holding up his phone – which Brinley promptly snatched. He rolled his eyes at her, then focused back on Auggie. "If we count Maxwell's proof under the internet posts, that's confirmation of four of the five," he pointed out.

And if China had claimed Wufei in their military, that meant at least three of the five were confirmed as active in non-Regime, non-Sovereignty martial forces. Which…

It could be better, he decided. But that's not bad at all. It didn't matter if they weren't specifically on his side so long as they were against the same people – and the point of joining the Accords was to share resources with like-minded people. Relena might not like him very much just yet, but once things cooled down and they had an elected official in his post so he could shuffle back to a purely military position it ought to be smooth sailing.

So long as no one assassinates us before it's sorted. Or finds an alternate way to kick off hostilities with one of our neighbors and make it look like us.

…So possibly easy, but considering the Sovereignty sleepers, it could also go to shit fast. Which meant he needed to go back to the drawing board and think of all the ways he would try to fuck over their burgeoning new British government, so as to come up with ways to block it.

You know, with all the excess free time he didn't have. "Brin, I really need to just be a figurehead on the non-martial end," he began. They'd agreed to do this together, but in the end of the day he was a specialist. Maybe he could pick up some slack again later, but if they were going to face a crisis this early on? "I can't-"

"They think it's him," Brinley announced, cutting him off without looking up from his phone. "Yuy and Po's Chang both confirm it." She finally looked up, eyes sliding over to Augustine. "Do you think he's been in China this whole time?"

"Technically, he and not Trowa were the only ones the Regime never got a lead on," Auggie mused. "Not that they ever had much of one on Maxwell – he lost them fast somewhere in this region. There were a few possible flags, but they were either disproven or never got anywhere useful. Most of the manhunt effort got sunk in Winner and Yuy – who effectively sunk them anyway, so." She pursed her lips. "It's possible."

"If he's China's, then all it really means is that they're right – we really don't want to piss them off. Which was already true anyway." Brinley shrugged, handing Devin back his phone. "One less thing for us to worry about," she decided, meeting his eyes. "Go, focus. Do your thing. I'll let you know if we need your face for something, but I've got this. If we need extra hands, we'll call Edd back."

Devin let out a deep breath, nodding. "Thanks."

oOo

oOo

May 18th 199 – Monday – Szczecin, Poland

"I can't," Priya denied. "I'm busy."

Rhett frowned. Technically that was fine, it wasn't like he'd even told her the last time he was in town, but… It wasn't like her to just shut him down like that. If she had obligations, she usually hedged or tried to negotiate better timing – or invited him along. All he'd said was that he was going to be in town for a couple of days – she hadn't even asked for a timeline.

If he didn't know her so well, the dismissal might have hurt. But the two of them had spent so much of the last ten years together that sometimes she felt more like a sister than a cousin – let alone aunt – and this wasn't actually her shutting him out. This was her being so focused and high strung that she couldn't allow for distractions.

"Alright," he decided, letting it go; she'd have good stories for him when she came back up for air, and it wasn't like he couldn't keep himself entertained. "Another time, then."

Her voice softened. "Let me know before you leave town," she temporized. "I'm just in the middle of something, and I can't…" She sighed. "It's complicated. I don't want to give the wrong impression – your French is shit."

Rhett snorted. "My French is great; you're just a snob." Then again, Priya was French – despite being spaceborn, she'd never lived anywhere else since turning six months old. Ailané wasn't much better, having gone to the states for her undergrad, but… Eh. Honestly, it was hard to remember his aunts Janelle and Marguerite weren't actually earthborn too, most of the time. They and Delilah had gone thoroughly native even before Rita met Ilario and had her boys.

There was a reason he'd originally chosen Australia when he decided to move to Earth a while – there was no way his aunts would give him any space if he'd picked a nice beach in Europe, and even Africa might have been too tempting.

"You sound like a Spaniard," Priya argued – though she sounded like she was trying not to laugh.

"The Spanish would strongly disagree," he argued back, grinning. His accent in just about any language was very colonial, and the version of Spanish that had evolved in the part of space his father was from was very New World, with a not insignificant amount of Portuguese influence. "Besides, why does that matter?"

She made an irritated noise. "It just does. I'll tell you later."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. Catch you later."

"Thank you! I love you! Bye!"

Rhett snickered as he disconnected the line. There was a reason Priya was the favorite travel buddy of every empath in their family – her affection was effusive, and always genuine. The fact that she could be mercurial just kept things from getting too boring.

Oh well. Bringing the phone back down from his ear, he opened up his contacts and tapped on Cat's number. Odin had already said he wasn't in town, and the noble ladies had insisted they didn't need him today. Might as well see what the Rubato guys are up to.

oOo

oOo

Munich, Germany

Vaughn huffed out an irritated noise. "Okay, I get what you were saying now – parking is total shit."

"It's downtown," Des pointed out dryly. "Also, you're a professional chauffeur and have been abundantly clear that you're only here for the bribery."

"I mean, not entirely," the sergeant-major argued, rolling his shoulders as he peered out the windshield. "I talked to him a little on the phone once – he'll be fun to meet in person, if that's a thing."

"I'm sure Jack will have pointed that out." He grimaced as they turned a corner and he caught sight of the literal crowd standing outside the restaurant doors. Good thing it's a reservation. There was also absolutely zero room for the sedan. "We're going to have to walk a few blocks."

"If I have to wait in the car the whole time, you're the one walking," Vaughn pointed out, tone all gleeful schadenfreude.

Des rolled his eyes, then lifted his hips when he felt his phone vibrate so he could pull it out of his pocket. Jack. Good. "And since I got you cleared to be my plus one?"

The brat's grin was sharp, eyes lighting up with pleasure as he pulled up in front of the restaurant. "Then I'll drop you here and be along in something like ten minutes." Putting the sedan in park, he turned to point a finger at him. "Cake. Seriously."

Des rolled his eyes. "You're never letting that go," he realized.

Vaugn snorted. "It was funny, but I'm serious. If you don't text me what kind of cake they have, I'm going to assume something's gone to shit and react accordingly." He tipped his head thoughtfully. "If it is shit and you can call or text, talk about appetizers or something."

That was technically a valid argument and plan, for all that he felt insulted on Jack's behalf at the lack of trust. The fact that he'd held off on this meeting for five months was proof enough. But it also wasn't worth arguing over – the kid meant well. "Fine." He pointedly waved his phone as he stepped out of the car and up to the sidewalk… and eyed the clothes of the people around him. Huh. From what had been said, he would have assumed Junior wouldn't go for something like this. Not that he lacks the pocketbook for it. It wasn't obscenely high end, just… not something Jack would have picked? Nice enough that it couldn't be considered casual, but still a long way from black tie. Though he has stopped price checking everything since the wardrobe upgrade, he remembered.

Then again, when he stopped to think about it? Very little of his friend's new paychecks went to necessities. When he wasn't living out of hotels paid for by Da Capo, Odin's house was apparently luxurious, and his rent-free life there included a grocery butler that refused to let him see the tab – the only bills leftover were to do with gas and eating out. His only ongoing complaint these days was that no matter how much egg salad he made, he barely got to eat any before someone else inhaled it.

Though he seemed almost as proud of that as he was exasperated by the fact that neither his son or the little girl would own up to it. Then again, if he's letting Adam and various sundry Insurgence agents meander through, the kid might not even know who's doing it.

Aside from the atrocious housemate issues, Jack was living a rather charmed life these days. It was good to see. The man had always been tetchy about anything he could construe as charity except in the most desperate of circumstances, but he was much more… relaxed, now. Des would be happy to befriend Odin based on the changes he'd wrought with that alone. That said, finding out he was actively tweaking Zechs' nose on the doll issue certainly didn't hurt. And after what Jack had said…

Hm. He wondered if the kid would be receptive to a few questions. Though he was socially aware enough to acknowledge that those would probably have to wait for a later meeting.

Step by step, he reminded himself. Deciding that he'd spent enough time looking for – and not finding – Jack in the crowd, he unlocked his screen to let him know where he was, stepping to the side… and catching sight of the very sparsely populated patio area. As beautiful as the afternoon was, it was a little brisk for most people dressed for a fancy eatery to want to sit outdoors, but not too bad – and the big heaters in the umbrellas over each table probably made up the difference. Hm. That looked… far more ideal than what he could see of the interior. Any discomfort ought to be paid back by the ability to hear each other talk.

A moment later he smirked as he saw Jack come around the corner of said garden area to wave him over. Not bad. He didn't know which choices had been the kid's and which the father, but the end result was a good sign either way.

"Hey!" He reached back happily when Jack opened the gate to pull him into a hug. "No Vaughn?"

"He's parking," Des explained as he leaned back and opened a message to his ride. "And being ridiculous. What's for dessert?"

Jack blinked. "I have no idea." He frowned. "It's lunch. People do dessert after lunch?"

Good point. "I don't," he reassured him, tapping out '7 layer orange chocolate mascarpone' to Vaughn – mostly because it was intricate enough to not be questioned. And if the brat tries to order it, I can launch the stupid joke back at him. That done, he tucked the device back in his pocket and smiled. "Lead on. Did you pick the place, or him?"

"He asked me to pick something nice, but just about noped out when he saw how popular it was," Jack admitted. "At least until I talked the hostess into opening up a table back here." He huffed out a breath that was only half amusement as he started navigating around tables. "I think our waitress is annoyed – she's barely said a word to us. A few other groups saw us and asked the same, and I think I made her shift harder."

Ah. "Tipping well should soothe some of that," he offered. Though considering how far into the back they appeared to be going? "It might just be an out of sight, out of mind issue." The only place he could see where someone was sitting alone was literally the back corner, with a distinct bubble of empty tables two layers deep. "Did he ask for that spot?"

"Eh, less asking, more laying a claim no one tried to talking him out of. Come on."

The figure he'd spotted stood up as they came closer, the movement almost slow enough to hide the young man's predatory grace. Jack did say that Jake hides that better, he mused. There was a reason Vaughn was being so high strung, after all; by all accounts, Odin was just as deadly as his brother. He honestly didn't see the point of all the fuss – though he was willing to admit that his perspective was somewhat skewed.

The secure nature of their family home meant that unattended children were at significant risk even without touching on the need for the security's secrecy, so when Lucrezia had been young he'd made a point of keeping most of her meetings with friends at outside venues. There had been closely policed exceptions, but his daughter, like himself, had been raised to the idea that the house was sacrosanct and rarely wanted to bring people into it. She hadn't been the type of child with a singular best friend she held above all others; more a social butterfly that wandered between friend groups as the urge took her. It wasn't until after she'd begun at the Academy that she developed the kind of bonds that held real weight, the kind a parent needed to pay attention to, and frankly? Every good friend his daughter made registered rather high on the danger scale. At some point along the way, that had become part of his expected norm for their age group.

He felt the corner of his mouth twitch as the boy's weight shifted in something closer to uncertainty. Awkward, right. That had been mentioned as well. Let's skip that. "Hi," he called cheerfully, tucking his hands in his pockets. "I hear you're a fan of my car. How do you feel about motorcycles?" He'd long since given it up, but there were days when he missed his bike.

Odin rumbled out a thoughtful sound, also shoving his hands into his pockets. "I prefer cars," he admitted. "I like the added utility, and the cabin control."

Des laughed. "I can tell you learned to drive in space," he teased.

The boy smirked. "I can do more at once in a car," he argued. "The trade-off for immediate mobility catches up with how your position has to stay more static to keep control of a bike; I find it restrictive." Then he shrugged, the smile turning softer. "I enjoy riding pillion, though."

Jack made a thoughtful sound that was damn near identical to his son's. "Your girl rides?"

The smile deepened, and Des thought he might understand what Jack had meant about the boy having a specific smile when it came to his lady, despite the lack of other references. "She does."

"I haven't noticed any motorcycles in the garage."

"She doesn't have her own," Odin admitted. "There's a motor pool if there's a need, or…" He shrugged. "The last time we rode together was in South America. It wasn't ours, but I don't think you can call it stealing when there's no one left to take it from. And we put it back where we found it anyway."

South America, huh? Aloud, Des snorted. "You and Vaughn are going to get on like a house on fire," he decided, and, having finally closed the distance, held out a hand. "I'm Des." Jack had emphasized keeping it casual, and what Jake had told him about their first meeting followed the same mien. Best to start off simply.

"Odin," the boy returned, shaking with a firm grip – politely, without overemphasizing his strength or being half so awkward as Des had been led to expect. Hm. Physically, now that he'd gone through the family album, it was easy to tell that the few features not taken directly from Jack were clear matches for Rhea and Etsuko – and hell, but he'd almost cried with Jack over the fact that he had a picture of his own long dead mother again. It had been a deeply emotional weekend. Otherwise, the kid was definitely on the pretty side, but not enough to venture into androgyny… and the collar of his coat wasn't quite high enough to hide one of the love-bites Jack was known to idly complain he was rarely without.

Good for them, he decided. People liked what they liked, and he'd be more concerned with a lack of open affection than signs of regular attention. Not that it had to be anything that showed a mark, but… Well, there was a reason he'd sicced Cass on Lu when his girl announced she was finally officially dating her damned prince. He hadn't felt a need to know any particular details, but he'd been a little worried that they'd been missing instead of kept behind closed doors.

Not that his wife had gotten anything before Lu evidently got so embarrassed she called him to shut the interrogation down, but… Well, the relationship hadn't exactly lasted either, and history had shown that to be for the best.

He'd always been clear on the point that there was nothing wrong with exploring your options – he'd gotten into some wild shit when he was younger, and for better or worse, Lu knew the more hilarious stories, in broad strokes if not fine detail. As closeted as the Millers were on the subject, he was Italian and had always maintained that sexuality was a normal part of life – of a good life, at least. So long as everyone involved was happy, he was fine with practically anything, but…

She'd been so quick to settle. It had been concerning. Even back when he'd been willing to accept Milliardo as his daughter's choice, the young man had made Jake look excessively open with his affections, which… hadn't been particularly promising. Then again, Jake had settled a hell of a lot harder with Relena than Lucrezia's attempt with Zechs, and that had turned out damned near perfectly, so that was just… people.

They started walking back toward the table, and he noticed the kid clock his limp – not bad today, but it was usually noticeable. He looked long enough before glancing away that apparently he was curious despite trying to be polite, so Des offered up, "Motorcycle accident."

Odin blinked, a hint of a smirk touching his lips. "Ah. It made you stop?"

"Hell no. I got better and got back on for another twelve years." He shrugged. "But eventually my reflexes got old, and my wife was diagnosed with late stage leukemia." If he'd had another bad crash while Lu had been young, it would have been awful – but after they'd realized they would lose Sylvia no matter what? He hadn't been able to validate the risk of something with a steadily increasing inherent risk of leaving Lucrezia alone. "I switched to cars."

Odin blinked again, his expression turning thoughtful in a more uncertain way. Did Jack not mention that Cassandra's my second wife? Not really in the mood to get into anything about Sylvia, however, he took a calculated risk – after all, Jack said he'd never been brave enough to ask. Gesturing to the boy's right leg – which he was notably not favoring at the moment – he asked, "How'd you get yours?"

Odin stopped walking to stare at him for a long moment, before glancing at Jack. Then, "Cockpit explosion."

He heard his friend suck in a harsh breath, and knew from personal experience that his own smile had turned a little sharp. "That sounds more interesting than mine."

"I'm not sure that's the word I'd use."

Des bit back a laugh at the altogether mild protest, tucking his hands in his pockets and resettling his weight – it looked like they were going to stand here for a minute. "No? I always thought that one covered all manner of sins."

Odin mirrored him again, humming thoughtfully. "It was mostly just desperate," he admitted. "Dark. Hot. Chaotic. Someone was screaming, but I'm still not sure if it was me." He exhaled long and slow, then glanced back at Jack before adding, "Then the hatch was open and Cat was hosing me down with a fire extinguisher, so I figured it wasn't as bad as I'd thought."

Oh yeah. This one was definitely Jack's son. God damn it. What the hell was he supposed to do with that?

Normalize it, before you spook him. "Your dad ever tell you about that time he got hit by a train?"

Odin's brows went up, and a moment too late Des remembered he shouldn't have used the paternal title… but he only gave Jack a speculative look instead of quibbling. Huh.

Jack, meanwhile, was trying to not grind his teeth. "I'm starting to see Kasey's point about you and explosions," he ground out.

There was silence for a long, drawn out moment before Odin shrugged. "It was years ago."

"How close to the one that fucked up your back?" Jack demanded.

"Hn. Little over seven months."

"And did you skip the hospital in favor of letting Cathy stitch you up for that too?"

This time, the kid had the decency to grimace and take a step back, looking away. "Couldn't. Even if I'd known where she and Adam were, Zechs wanted my head. Leading his people to anyone we cared about wasn't an option." When the silence stretched, he looked back to his father and pointed out, not quite accusingly, "I told you. Dr Srona was the first professional to treat my leg."

"After you'd gone into a septic coma," Jack snarled, starting to visibly shake.

"It took more than a year for it to get that bad," Odin argued – evidently not realizing just how much worse that made his argument.

Time to derail this, Des decided. As hilariously horrifying as it was getting, and as much as it felt like karma for all the stories Jack had told him about his own youth, the end of this trail was at the bottom of a pit – a place he had no desire to visit.

Besides, Jack had mentioned something about the issue before and now Odin had said it far more openly – the change of subject could distract them and sate his curiosity. "Don't get me wrong," he interrupted, cutting into the silence before Jack could work up a better response to his son than staring at him. "I'm all for anything the man dislikes. But why, exactly, does Zechs hate you?"

Odin blinked again, those dark blue eyes back on him as his body language became more relaxed, expression turning thoughtful… and a slow, vicious sort of smirk twisted across his face. His tone a mix of burgeoning wonder and pride, he decided, "I could make a list."

Des couldn't help but laugh. Okay, yeah. He could get behind that.

"Odin…" Jack grumbled irritably.

"I'm not sure if any of those reasons are why he put out the bounty, though," he continued. "I think it's just that I embarrassed him." He frowned. "Repeatedly."

Des found himself laughing harder, closing his eyes and shaking his head. When he got a grip on himself and opened them again, however… the kid was staring at him in some cross of suspicion and surprise. "What?"

Odin glanced at Jack. "This is the friend you helped move out of southern Italy?" he demanded. "With the…" He trailed off, focusing back on Des. "You have a son born last August eleventh?"

That was less a question than it was a statement. He hadn't realized Jack had shared so much about Lyle already, but it wasn't as though he didn't post pictures of the kid on the internet daily. "Lyle Noin," he agreed.

This time it was Odin who busted up laughing. Which seemed to alarm Jack, but Des wasn't sure why – there was no desperate or manic edge to it, for all that it was a little weird. Presumably there was context somewhere, so… "Jack?"

His friend didn't take his eyes off the boy for a long moment. Eventually though, his eyes darted to Des and he muttered, "The only thing I've said about your family is that you have a baby at home."

Des frowned. If he hadn't learned from Jack, then…

His heartrate sped up as he considered Odin again – who was only just beginning to recover himself, one hand over his face. He asked after he saw me laugh. Not a chuckle or snicker, a genuine laugh… Something he knew Lu did the same way.

That's a reach, he cautioned himself. There were a number of ways to know about Lyle.

…But not much reason to know them.

That said… Lulu had told him that Sally Po had fast become a close friend during one of those rare calls home from Peacemillion. And the Insurgence was easily the most secretive of the factions rising to power right now – how else could they have successfully dodged overtures from Treize for three years?

So… maybe?

It wouldn't be the first time someone recognized something about him that matched his daughter. Their resemblance wasn't half so strong as Jack and Odin, she looked a great deal like her mother, but…

He knows how she laughs. When was the last time he had heard her let out a genuine belly laugh, even if he only counted since before she went missing? Had she laughed at all after Zechs left her to rebuild his kingdom on her own?

At minimum, he knew something. At most…

He cut that thought off before he could get too caught up in maybes. There would be time for that later – he had something far more concrete to work with. No reason to squander it.

That decided, he waited only as long as it took Odin to finish pulling himself back together, leaning back to look up at the sky for a moment, before going for it. "So when did you meet my daughter?" It could have been years ago, or just once, he reminded himself. She had known so many people given her position in OZ, had been able to network far further with little trouble because of her connections from there, but-

The young man gave him an incredulous look, huffing out another short laugh. "The first time?"

His breath caught. But before he could snap back something like 'how about the last time?' he heard Vaughn call out from behind him. "Des, Jack, hey! Where are… we…"

He half wanted to tell the other man to shut up for a minute, but they were here for lunch – they had time. And besides, he didn't sound like himself. Stuffing his frustration down deep before it could control him, he noted, "That was fast." Giving Odin one last, lingering look, promising they'd finish the discussion in a minute, he turned back to catch Vaughn's eyes. "Didn't have to go as far as you thought?"

Vaughn wasn't looking at him, though. He was stock still, staring with wide eyes… at Odin. Who, when Des looked back at him, had gone similarly still, though he appeared relaxed…

…Much like Jake did before he started some serious shit. Hm. "Vaughn?" he tried again.

He didn't answer. Odin, however, asked, "This is your friend?"

His tone was also like Jake's when he was about to lose it, lacking inflection.

"He is," Des agreed, keeping his voice even. This… was not looking so good. Cool it down. "You also talked to him on the phone briefly last January – remember the guy who made a joke about the 'abduction with benefits?' He works with your brother." Make some connections, level it out enough to talk it over…

Whatever there was to get over? They'd established that Odin had been active during the war, but he didn't know much of Vaughn's history beyond the fact that it had nothing to do with MS. Shit. He scrambled to remember what other scraps they'd put together about Jack's boy, but the only things coming to mind were about speed and a familiarity with MS that Jack was worryingly determined to make light of.

"Hn. Right." Odin watched Vaughn for another long moment, then glanced briefly back at Jack before asking, "So how is this going to go?"

Jack made an inarticulate noise, then croaked out, "What?"

When Vaughn still didn't respond, Odin continued; tone still flat, expression almost bored even as he looked ready to pounce. "This is the part where one of us either runs or start shooting," he drawled, a sanguine sort of irritation creeping into his voice. "I'm not interested in a confrontation, but I also can't run when I have more than one friend nearby to be used against me as a hostage." His head tipped to one side, again eerily like Jake in a mood. "So – what do you say? How is this going to go?"

Well that was… Disheartening. Nice to know he'd been lumped in with 'friend' so quickly – but by the time Jake dropped into the thought processing where everyone was defined by their leverage, they were damned close to the point of no return. If the sergeant-major didn't calm this down now-

Vaughn finally found his voice. "Honestly?" He slowly raised one hand and placed it over his heart in some kind of salute. "Thank you for your service."

…Huh. Didn't see that one coming.

Odin looked apparently felt the same, staring at the blonde with a vaguely incredulous look until Jack ventured a plaintiff, "Odin?"

Vaughn's throat worked, but no sound came out as Odin frowned and said, "I'm fine. Just… That's a first."

"And that's a fucking travesty," Vaughn asserted. "You're a goddamn war hero."

He didn't expect his friend's son to bark out a laugh at that, visibly relaxing. "Couldn't help yourself, hm?"

"You saved my life twice," Vaughn insisted, grinning back. "My own personal hero."

Odin's mouth pursed. "Hm. When was the first?"

…Okay, he legitimately means it. Both of them. That boded well. Confusingly, but well indeed.

The twenty-something crossed his arms, making an easy target of himself – very 'look at me and how much danger I'm not presenting right now.' Des approved. "I know your face because I was part of the group to wipe the security feeds after you kept Une from blowing us all to kingdom come," he explained. "She only bothered evacuating the important people before laying her trap for you, not all their grunts. Fuck that lady."

…Huh. He wished that narrowed things down, but…

Une had blown a lot of things up in her career. He couldn't keep track of the ones she'd tried to destroy but been unable to follow through on. He only knew as much as he did about her because after the colony attempt he'd been terrified the colonel would find a way to take Lu insulting her back out of his daughter's hide.

Odin only raised his brows, nodding slightly. "I don't think anyone misses her." He glanced to Jack and Des again before fixing his focus firmly back on Vaughn. "Are you willing to pretend you didn't see me?"

"You're not going to ask about the second time?" Jack demanded, tone edging on snide.

"I'm mostly sure I know." His gaze flicked back to Vaughn. "Unless…?"

"No, it's what you're thinking," Vaughn agreed, rolling his shoulders slightly, arms still tucked in his armpits. "I was part of the ESUN ground troops that got left behind." Then he shook his head. "But no. Sorry. I have standing orders to report any sighting of you."

What the fuck, Vaughn. If it was a genuinely touchy situation, would it really hurt to just lie for a minute?

Odin, instead of getting upset, made a thoughtful sound. "But not to bring me in?" he clarified.

"Relena's not that stupid, and I wouldn't try anyway – you're you," Vaughn insisted. "But she has my loyalty, so… That's not negotiable."

Oh goddamn it. He's serious about the personal hero thing. Why else would he be actively antagonizing someone he was clearly afraid of?

On the bright side, Jack apparently hadn't been lying about the kid being level-headed – and, you know. If Vaughn had this much respect for him, presumably none of their worst nightmares about the kid's past were coming to fruition. Trying to shut down the panicking lizard part of his brain, Des forced himself to take a mental step back… and remembered that stupid jokes aside, he usually respected Vaughn's opinion. His personality was on the bratty side, but he also tended to be wise in a way most people his own age rarely managed.

Which meant this was probably fine?

"Hn." Odin tipped his head again, the motion – thankfully – less predatory this time. "Can you delay your report?"

Smart. Calm under pressure, and clever. It had already been sitting fairly high, but his respect for Junior rose a few notches. He felt his breathing smooth back out despite the adrenaline wracking his system.

Maybe we can have lunch in peace after all. This was getting interesting

"Eh… Full disclosure?" Vaughn reached up and pulled the collar of his coat to the side, revealing a small subvocal mic pressed to his throat. "I already sent it."

…At least until his plus one decided to set the whole thing on fire.

"Ah."

Des raised his brows. Cool customer. Hm. That was yet another point in his favor. By everything he knew, there was no way the boy underestimated his brother's people – but there was still no hint of panic to him.

Unfortunately, while Odin seemed to be growing calmer with each escalation, Jack looked about ready to explode – which brought him right back to the original problem. How do I level this back out?

"On the bright side," Vaughn continued. "I've also had standing orders to offer you sanctuary since September. So if you want to leave, that's cool, I'm not stopping you. But Sarracenia is Relena's safehouse, and she would open her doors to you even if your brother wasn't ready to murder the shit out of anyone who meant you harm."

…He wanted to slap the little shit. You couldn't have started with that?

"That's good to know," Odin decided after a long moment. Sighing, he muttered a few words in a language Des didn't recognize before turning to Jack. "Are you okay?"

Oh good, he's aware of the issue. That boded well.

"Are you?"

The kid grimaced. "This isn't how I wanted to handle this, but it's far from the worst option." Letting out a deep breath and shoving his hands in his coat pockets, he glanced back at the table they hadn't quite reached before focusing on Vaughn again. "How long do we have before someone storms in here, if I don't come along?"

"I could probably hold off any storming if I reactivated the mic and said more than a code phrase, but I'm also fairly sure that Relena would invite herself to our table within fifteen minutes."

…Huh.

Odin snorted out a short laugh. "That sounds like her," he agreed. "Fine." He took a decisive step towards Vaughn, only to stop and give him a level look when the other man immediately danced a few steps back. "Seriously?"

Vaughn had the grace to blush – but he also didn't backtrack. "I know how fast you are," he insisted, "and am not stupid enough to think you're happy with me. I'm going to keep some distance."

Odin pointedly eyed the space between them. "And you think that's far enough?"

…There was a moment of silence as Vaughn very obviously debated increasing it.

Don't laugh. Don't laugh, don't laugh… Jack might lose it if someone pushed too hard right now – he thought he could hear him grinding his teeth.

It was deeply relieving when, instead of pressing on the stupidity of the moment, Odin rolled his eyes and announced, "I'd rather not do this in public. We haven't ordered anything yet. Let's go." Gesturing Vaughn toward the garden gate, he added, "You're in front." Then, turning to Jack, he pointedly asked, "How do you think he's planning to handle the car?"

"I kinda thought you'd take yours and I wouldn't be liable if you didn't show up," Vaughn muttered, pivoting to walk towards the gate.

"So I can cut off ties with my brother and wait for an ambush at some undisclosed time?" Odin returned sarcastically. "No. Besides, we took a cab – there is no second car."

"Then I'm going to hope you cool down on our way to where I parked," Vaughn shot back over his shoulder.

"I don't have a temper," Odin continued almost conversationally – it could pass if not for the overly assertive, faintly aggressive hint to his tone and cadence. "If I ever did, it was beaten out of me in 194."

What the fuck. "That's… awful." Des noted, starting to follow along when Jack did.

Odin audibly released a long, slow breath through his nose as he pulled a plain black medical mask from his pocket to fix over his face. "It was," he agreed. Despite the sigh, however, there was humor in his eyes as he glanced his way. "I don't think I actually had one, though."

"Little late for that, isn't it?" Jack grumbled, gesturing at his own face.

"Munich is as much a hub as Berlin these days, and I'd rather not make it worse," Odin argued. "I didn't expect…" He glanced at Des again and huffed out a soft laugh. "It's not the first thing I've screwed up today."

…He really didn't want to say this, but he'd still follow through. This was Jack – Jack and his family. There would be other times, other places. "I heard you before," he noted under his breath. "But I can still distract him if you want. Arrange something at another time." Also? "Your brother won't let anyone ambush you. Whatever is going on, he'll either make them be civil or lead them on a goose chase instead of letting it happen."

Another slow breath. "That's good to know," he decided. "But no. Thank you. This was coming anyway."

"What was coming anyway?" Jack demanded in a hiss.

Odin tipped his head first one way, then the other, before settling on, "Politics. Seeing Relena again. I might as well do it when she's as off balance about the situation as I am." He rolled his eyes. "Not that that ever helped."

"You know Relena?"

Jack sounded like he was trying to not cry and like he might kill something at the same time. It was terrible.

Des couldn't think of anything to help temporize it – he was mostly thinking about how much time Lu had spent with Relena during the war, and trying to not feel too let down at the realization that that was probably as far as the rabbit hole went.

"Eh… Not that well? But yes." He sighed. "It's fine. It's her brother I have issues with. I'm mostly sure she'll be happy to see me again." He huffed out a breath of laughter. "That, or she's developed a persona and become a very good actress and this is going to get…" he glanced back at Des, "interesting. Quickly. But probably not."

Oookay… "I'm going to go distract Vaughn anyway," he decided. These two seemed like they needed a minute, and he doubted his presence was helping. "I'll see you at the car." Jogging a few seconds, he quickly made up the distance to give them at least a semblance of privacy and turned to Vaughn. "So that was unexpected," he offered. He wanted to say something far more scathing, but doubted he could do it without waving his hands or drastically changing his body language in some other way, which might set off the others – so understated would have to do. Now was not a good time to rock the boat.

"That cake was a fucking lie, Des," the other man grumbled.

He smirked. "It was, but I intended it to be funnier." When he didn't get an immediate response, he pointed out, "I'm still in the woods here. What just happened?"

"It's probably not a good idea to talk about it in public," Vaughn muttered, looking up and down the relatively well-populated street. "He's not wrong about that."

Hm. "Lena really…?"

Vaughn puffed out a breath. "Yeah. He's not the only one with the offer out, but… She's going to be thrilled, Des. Like, over the damn moon. Rumor has it that the first big Peacecraft sibling fight after the Fall started when he found out she erased his pictures out of the databanks and lit the physicals on fire."

…Huh. That… was probably a good sign. It was certainly an interesting one, but Relena was just as prone to extremes as Jake could be so… Hm. "Really."

"Really," Vaughn repeated. "Like, one of the less serious but also widely acknowledged theories online is that he is her mystery fiancé. It's not even considered one of the crackpot ones. There's some history, okay?"

He didn't quite manage to hold in an incredulous giggle at that. What the fuck? This just kept getting weirder. "I'm assuming this has something to do with why, when asked why her brother hates him, he offered to write out a list?"

It was Vaughn's turn to let out a decidedly unmanly giggle. "Shit, he said- And I missed it?" He groaned. "Fuck. He could." He shook his head. "And Jack's been hanging out with him for months, while…" He groaned again. "Fuck. With them. Fuck my life."

"What?" Des frowned. "Who?" Enough whiplash turns in conversation had happened in the last few minutes that his brain was trying to turn itself off as a self-defense mechanism. That, or Vaughn was just being a self-centered moron and not giving Des appropriate cues.

It could also be both. He was willing to put money on both. He needed a moment to clear his fucking head, not mix it up even further – but he wasn't going to turn away more information at this stage, and was perfectly willing to force Jake's chauffeur to spoon feed him the relevant details until he got his critical thinking back online.

In all seriousness, Jack wasn't the only one riding the edge. Des just had better experience at hiding it.

"Jack's said there's three other guys in his peer group, right? Adam, von Koll, and… fucking Cat 'Robby' Wilson." He said the last name with an odd enough cadence, elongated into drawl, that Des gave him a confused look – which he waved off with a shake of his head. "That makes four, plus China, so… Damn." He scrubbed his hands over his face. "Jovi's got the best fucking poker face in the world, I swear to God. She's asked him directly, and… Gah!"

"I still don't know what we're talking about," Des reminded him, his annoyance rising to the point where he might actually slap the shithead. Not going to help, he reminded himself.

When he looked back over his shoulder, Jack and Odin looked… intense. Or at least Jack did – Odin still seemed calm, but his friend was turning red. Not good.

Vaughn scoffed. "Well, if we're going for a singular event explanation of Zechs' hate-on?" He leaned in closer, voice dropping further. "He sank his battleship."

Des shoved him. "I don't need more stupid game references," he hissed back. He wasn't sure what irritated him more – the switch back to dumb metaphors when they were being serious, or that the brat had decided to dumb it down to classic board games instead of pop culture, like he was fucking ancient.

Vaughn grabbed his arm and jerked him back. "Not a reference," he argued in a hoarse whisper. "December 195. In the Pacific. He shot it down."

oOo

oOo

"How do you know Lu?"

"That's the question you want to lead with?" Odin grumbled back, sounding put upon.

Jack wasn't having it. "I already told you I don't care about whatever you used to do." That, and he felt certain that whatever the fuck was going on now, Jake would keep it from getting too messy.

"You don't want to know more about Relena?"

"I'm about to hear about that from other sources," he argued, glad they'd switched to Japanese as he felt his voice pitch. "And you don't seem too upset about it anyway – am I supposed to be helping you run right now?"

His son made an irritated noise. "No. Why does everyone keep asking that? I like Relena, it's just been a while. It's everyone around her I'm leery of."

"Your brother cultivated her security team to be loyal to her alone from the start," he snapped. "Even before he built her this compound. You can trust the house." That, and Vaughn's line about his eldest murdering people who looked at Junior funny was, in all seriousness? Unfortunately accurate.

He cast a sidelong look at him. Or maybe that's fortunate after all. "This is the same thing as at the hospital?" he demanded. Rhett had said the man who nodded at his son was feeling grateful, which… matched Vaughn, if you added a massive dose of fear and caution too.

Then again, he had absolutely seen an excess of fear in the stranger at the hospital, for all that he'd apparently gotten over the latter two emotions before the empath spoke up.

"Looks like," Odin returned noncommittally.

He wanted to scream. "And there you go dodging it," he snapped. Not that his son was good at misdirecting, but the fact that he was even trying set off alarm bells. "So I'm asking again: how do you know her?"

Odin made an irritated sound. "I'm still trying to figure out where I messed this up," he complained. "It can't have just been me – someone should have caught it before now." He groaned, the noise soft and deep in his throat, but still definitely there. "How long have you been friends with him?"

"Almost nine fucking years," he hissed back. "Why-"

He cut himself off as his son let out another sharp laugh. "So if I'd ever mentioned you to her by name instead of saying 'biodad,' she would have clarified?"

His stomach sank in dread even as his heart rose at the implication. It was recent, then. "Probably." He licked his lips. "She's been missing for more than three years. The only reason he hasn't thought-"

"She sends him those tarts on his birthday," Odin finished. "I know." He let out another laugh, softer and a little more helpless this time, closer to the way he'd sounded back at the restaurant. "Jack, I was thinking about coming clean with my brother because she doesn't know where to send them this year. Because we missed when the house emptied. You've said he's good at finding people. I…" Another soft weak laugh tumbled out. "I don't regret anything about getting to know you myself. But I didn't know you had references. And now…" He groaned. "I can't call her now. Have you told anyone where the house is?"

"Of course not." He bit his lip, glancing at the two ahead before asking, "She told you about Lyle?"

He immediately wanted to take the words back. That was a stupid question. He'd already said-

"We'd just gotten back from having drinks when she saw the birth announcement."

Having…? In a flash, his face went hot and tingly all at once. Oh shit.

"It's the only time I saw his face before today," Odin continued. "I thought there was something familiar about him, but I couldn't place it at first – he's usually the one behind the camera. But she looks at the pictures almost every day, and sometimes she shows me."

Ahead of them, Des shoved away from Vaughn, but didn't fight being dragged back in. Emphasis, not altercation, some faraway part of his mind registered. Aloud, he heard himself ask, "I thought you didn't know your birthday." Because that was a viable reason to have gone out that wasn't-

"I didn't. We just wanted to go."

…Oh, they were so fucked. "It's her. Isn't it."

He couldn't see most of his face with the mask, but the sideways look his son managed to give him still came through loud and clear. "I did mention that her ex was a problem. Though I just about screamed when Audi told you he was 'a real dictator.'"

Yep. I helped my son propose to my best friend's daughter.

Des is going to kill me.

…Fuck, but he'd told the other man all sorts of shit that he now utterly, completely regretted. This was going to be like Odin all over again – except worse, because while Des wasn't half as terrifying as his brother-in-law, Jack actually liked him. Fuck! He…

What the fuck am I going to do? Contingency plans didn't even make sense, this was his best friend and his son, he… Fuck, but it felt like his brain was fizzling out like bad static.

"Jack?"

He came back to himself with a start, realizing he'd been walking on autopilot. He wasn't sure how long it had been, but Vaughn was unlocking a car, so… probably a couple minutes? Anyone other than Odin probably would have called him out of his funk before now. But all the same? "Still calibrating," he muttered, trying to make a joke – and feeling it fall flat.

It would… probably be okay? Eventually?

His kid gave him an uncertain look. "It gets worse."

Of course it did. "She's not pregnant, is she?"

That got him a genuine startle response, which was at least somewhat reassuring. "No, I…" He blinked a few times. "She would have told me." He gestured towards the car. "I meant… Me. This. It…" He stopped walking and turned to face him fully. "I thought… I was wrong. But it's still…" His shoulders drooped. "I'm sorry."

…Is he running after all? And leaving me behind? "For what?"

He looked frustrated. "I kept putting this off because it's going to hurt."

He scoffed. "So much for 'it's just pain,' huh?"

Odin shook his head. "Not me. You. And not like that." He tapped his fingers to his chest, watching Jack uncertainly. "Here."

…Oh, Odin. The apology and stunted attempt to explain was concerning as fuck, but at the same time? "I told you already," he insisted, dropping his voice. "I don't care. I'm here."

The corners of his eyes crinkled, and between that and the warmth in his next words, Jack felt confident in calling it a smile. "I know." Grabbing his hand, he started walking towards the car again.

All that said, however? Staring at Des as they closed in?

Still in Japanese, he muttered a quick, "Don't tell him until he's gotten a good measure of you." There was fucking history there that he felt pretty sure his kid didn't know about. But… Wait. How the fuck did Lu miss the connection if-

"I'm not telling anyone until I talk to her again," Odin grumbled back. "I'm still confused."

Names. There was no way she wouldn't have at least asked a few questions if she knew- He stopped walking. "Odin. Did you propose to a woman without telling her your full name?" His entire group of friends were practically allergic to the use of last names, so maybe…?

That earned him another sideways look. "I didn't know my name when we started dating. She knew that. When I told her I'd found out, she didn't ask." His son leaned back a little, apparently not liking the look on his face. "I didn't know it was important."

Okay, so they fucking deserved each other. That was almost reassuring?

He wasn't willing to count it so long as the realization also made him want to cry.

God, he hadn't actually talked to Lu since she was about sixteen. Not a real conversation, at least, and not face to face. Almost everything he knew about her was through Jake and her father – he was Des's friend, not hers. Maybe she considered him to be a semi-permanent fixture in her life because she'd decided his son belonged to her family, but…

Fuck. His sons. Both of them.

What the fuck was his life right now?

"Jack?"

"I'm fine," he replied and started numbly walking towards the car again, eyes on Des… who was watching Odin speculatively. Not in an upset way, which was a good sign – just like he was reassessing, lining up his thoughts with what was in front of him and seeing how it compared He can't know already. Does he suspect? He'd been about to demand answers earlier, but…

Neither of them had expected Junior to know Lu. No one had had even a scrap of a clue as to where she'd gone.

…Except I've apparently been living in her house for four months and didn't put it together.

Des nodded a little to himself, crossing his arms before announcing, "I have to admit it. I thought you'd be taller."

Odin huffed out a laugh, letting go of Jack to tuck his hands back in his pockets. "I've heard that before," he admitted. "But I feel like you should have known better."

…What?

"She mentioned you a number of times, but never gave a physical description," Des argued in a mild tone.

Jack stared at him. "Who?"

Des gave him an incredulously amused look back. "Lu."

…It was like he'd walked into some kind of alternate dimension where everything was backwards. Why is he so calm? "What?"

Des's eyes narrowed. "What were you two talking about?"

Fuck!

Odin plucked at his sleeve and piped up before he could make an utter ass of himself. "Lucrezia and I worked together a few times, the last five months of the war," he explained.

"If we're calling a cumulative two months out of five 'a few times,'" Des argued blandly, still looking faintly amused. Then he jerked a thumb back at Vaughn. "I'm in the same camp as him, by the way. I hate that it became necessary in the first place, particularly with what it cost you – but thank you for your service."

Jack felt his eyes slide sideways to his son, because Des was being entirely genuine… and utterly bewildering.

Odin mostly just looked uncomfortable. "Hearing it a second time doesn't mean I have any better of an idea on how to react to that."

Des tipped his head thoughtfully. "Do you disagree with the sentiment?"

"No." There was no hesitation in the response, but he proceeded to shift awkwardly afterwards, tearing the mask off his face to pocket it again, grimacing. "But it's not that simple either." Grunting, he stepped around Des to open the back door of the car and slide in, announcing, "I'm not talking about this here," before slamming the door.

Vaughn eyed the car like a snake poised to strike – which was somehow just as funny as it was irritating. "He doesn't bite," Jack snapped.

"But he does bend steel bars with his bare hands," the other man groused, making a face and pulling the driver's side door open anyway.

He what?

Des sighed, catching Jack's attention again as he stared at the car without really seeing it. "It makes an ugly sort of sense," he decided. Before he could decide what to think of that line of thought, his friend met his eyes and gave him a tired smile. "Lulu always talked about him like he was larger than life somehow, just by sheer force of will. An unstoppable force condensed down into a single person, who pulled off the impossible on the regular like it was nothing." He shook his head. "I don't know what I was expecting. But it feels right to find out he's yours."

"…Des?" While it was comforting to know that his friend somehow already had a high opinion of Odin, all the pressure of whatever the fuck was happening right now was too immense to process any emotion beyond fucking hysteria. Which was stupid, he could see what was happening, and yet…

Odin had said this was going to hurt – enough that he'd been dodging it, when he usually opted to take the bull by the horns and damn the fallout from the resulting fight. So why…?

The pity in Des's eyes hurt too, even as the arm he threw around his shoulders was a welcoming anchor. "Come on. Sit in back; I'll keep Vaughn company." He sighed. "Stick with him through this; I'll try to keep everyone else on an even keel."

He felt… numb. "Is it that bad?" It came out as a hoarse whisper. This was Des, and as frantic as he currently felt about the whole 'I've been complaining to you about every bit of evidence I find that our kids are fucking in increasingly creative places' issue, Des was usually hard to rattle. And while he wasn't exactly rattled yet, this was the planning and emotional triage that came right before that step, which…

He maintained that he didn't care what Odin had done before he found him again. Though on the plus side, apparently he'd done at least some of it with Lu, and she'd told her father about enough of it that he was on board.

…Actually, that sounded a lot better than anything else he'd come up with? Admittedly, his understanding of the war had been limited to trying to track where Jake was and getting periodic updates from Des while he otherwise ignored all the propaganda and worked at his job like he was a trained monkey. The impact on his life in Switzerland had been pretty minimal, at least until they all realized Lu's supposed wonder boy was holding a blade to the throat of the entire planet. He'd gotten the highlight reel – mostly about the ups and downs of OZ and the gundams, because that was what Des had found interesting – but his involvement otherwise was limited to toasting the fact that the colonies had somehow gotten out of the conflict with more freedom than they'd had since their inception. So he…

Actually, he had no idea what Lu had even done in the war beyond the fact that it had somehow culminated in her ending up first in Sanc, then on Peacemillion.

He said he knew Relena, and wasn't surprised that she has standing orders to give him sanctuary. That… implied a lot of good faith.

…Why was everyone freaking out, again?

"It's not," Des decided, pulling away so he could look at him face on again. "At least, currently – everyone seems to be on the same page."

Jack eyed him, starting to feel calmer. "Okay?"

There was that pity again, and he felt his stomach drop. "Some shit did happen, and I don't expect Jake to handle it."

His brain immediately flicked back to that sarcastic comment earlier about beatings. "Jake knows there was abuse," he argued. He'd been carefully inundating his eldest with the worst of the details and letting him acclimate, trying to hold off the kind of explosion the kid was renowned for. "No one has to get into the details." He'd heard Relena insisting on that logic repeatedly over the last few weeks whenever the Yuy issue got brought up – they'd hold to the same sentiment.

Des took in a deep breath through his nose, looking pained. "Even if that were feasible, that's not…" He closed his eyes. "You know how you said it was a miracle they never faced off in opposing actions?" When Jack didn't answer, he opened his eyes back up and gave him a tight smile. "We didn't get a miracle, Jack."

"…Oh."

"It's fine," Des continued, reaching out and gripping his shoulders with both hands. "If he never held a grudge against Treize, I can't see Odin doing anything other than shrugging it off. But…" He grimaced. "A septic coma?"

"I am really not in the mood to talk about my son's litany of medical horrors right now," Jack decided, feeling… flat.

Des's expression twisted in something approaching agony before he blanked it, and Jack decided not to ask. "Right. Just… I'll handle Jake." He sighed, standing up to his full height again and pulling away. "Come on. They're waiting on us."

And for lack of any better idea of what to do, he followed.

oOo

oOo

Tipping Point

oOo

oOo

Aaaaand here we go on the truth tumbling out. It feels like the end of an era – not that the story is ending, exactly, just switching gears… but still. I miss hearing from everyone. Thoughts? Favorite things? Last minute theories on how things go down? A lot of little plot points got explained or wrapped up in this one, even as we exploded into the bigger ones...