Alright, so he'd been married for nearly three months now, but the novelty still hadn't worn off. Just thinking about it could still start his heart pounding and turn his mouth dry. Every morning he woke with Wick curled against him, every day he stared in fascination at the ring on her hand, and every night he was free to leave a new brand on her skin, because now she was his.

The wedding had been a whirlwind affair, and before he knew it they were both packed up and on the transport to I. F. Central Command. It was a perfect two-month honeymoon of sorts; no one to bother them, no one to interrupt them, and Jor didn't have to talk to a single other person except Wick. The journey gave them a chance at peace together, and Jor would have liked to turn around and ride the transport straight back down to Earth, just for another two months like that.

Since arriving at the Post, they'd both been busy, although they managed to find time for one another. The schedule conflicts-- her classes in the morning, and his in the afternoon-- weren't something they could alter, but they were able to spend lunch together... and there were always the nights. Jor was, as he surprisingly admitted to himself, extremely happy.

And as if being able to call Wick "Mrs. Windhaven," wasn't enough to please him, he found that he enjoyed his work, too. The administration had decided on him being some sort of military police officer-- not anywhere close to I.A., which he didn't mind at all-- and he found that he liked their choice. It was interesting, and didn't involve the type of painstaking perfectionist work that Wick's occupation entailed. That was perfect for Jor. He got to be intimidating, and put his muscle to good use, and the prospect of someday being given real authority made his training all that much more tolerable.

He'd just finished with his afternoon courses, and headed back to the room he and Wick shared. They always met up before dinner, and he hadn't been lounging on the bed for more than five minutes before she burst through the door. Expecting to be pounced on, Jor grinned and tried to tackle her first, but the expression on her face stopped him just as he'd managed to grab her.

"Hey there, spark. Rough day?"

Now I have to explain my mood. You're a lot of trouble, Jordan.

"You could say that. Nothing I can't handle. Sorry I'm late. I stopped by the rec area." She didn't feel like elaborating. It wasn't a lie yet. She also didn't feel like talking to him, and being cheerful didn't really appeal either, but she couldn't just tell him she didn't want to go to dinner. She'd already shown more than enough deviation for one day.

It was much easier to force a yawn than it was a smile, and it got rid of some of her tension. She promised. There's nothing to be frightened of. I should look Terrence up. I should know what he does and where he does it, so we can keep a safe distance. It's only six months. That last wasn't too reassuring, but she felt better once she'd come up with a plan of action, and managed a small smile for Jor's sake and put her arms around him.

"It'll be alright," she said a little more lightly, and kissed his temple. Her previous annoyance dissipated when he smiled, and was replaced with the low-grade dread she'd not felt in years, not for real. It was the fear of the unknown, the fear of being caught, the knowledge that she was in a potentially dangerous situation that required careful handling to get out of.

It made her hungry.

She kissed him, and he took this as a sign her mood was improved and returned it far more enthusiastically than necessary. The annoyance she exhibited when he got too familiar was entirely perfunctory, and she slapped at his hands and then kissed him again while she tried unsuccessfully to pry herself away. "Dinner first," she said steadfastly, and tickled him in a strategic spot low on his side. He gasped and crunched up and let her go, and she gave him a genuine grin.

His wife was missing, and he hadn't been able to find her. Lunch had proven lonely and dull, without her seated across from him, and he hadn't had but a few minutes to look for her before his afternoon coursework began. All through class he thrummed with impatience, unable to concentrate because he didn't know where she might be, and by the time he was freed in the evening he was keyed up and irritated.

Jor irritated, on an empty stomach, was never a pleasant thing. By the time he returned to the barracks, he was well into worried anger, and huffed to himself as he palmed open the door. She was waiting inside, and most of his frustration melted away, to be replaced with relieved happiness. There she was. It wasn't until she looked up and met his gaze that he paused, and concern and suspicion coiled coldly in his stomach again.

There's something wrong.

"Spark?" His voice was too hesitant for his own liking, and he scowled a little, but hid it behind motion as he strode across the room to where she stood. "You weren't around all day. I was worried. Is something wrong?"

"I have something to tell you."

I was right. No. Maybe it's not bad. Maybe.

It's not too late. It's not too late. I don't have to tell him. It's not too late. Make something up, put this off, wait until I'm ready, until I know how I can do it, but now right now, what a ridiculous idea. Later. Some other later.

Don't.

His smile couldn't withstand the look she was giving him, and she swallowed as it faded and disappeared. For a few seconds, she faltered, but in that few seconds she could come up with no reason that could possibly explain her behavior to him, and that inability to come up with a plausible excuse kept her from lying until her resolve won out again.

"Back at Command School," she began slowly, "before what happened in the Engineering Bay, I had a meeting with Dominic Creche. He was the one getting the explosives for me. For the Talon. It was in the little room next to the Bay, the one they use as control for the Talons when they go out. It's where I was standing when you walked in and everything went all to hell."

She took a slow breath and continued. "We met there a couple of nights before so he could give me the materials, about an hour before lights out. I wanted the next evening to myself to set them up without rushing. He was there when I got there. We went over what he'd brought me. It took a while, which is probably how he planned it." Something on Jor's face shifted, and she hurried on. "We were just finishing inventory when lights out happened. The door locked." Her voice became a little rough, and she grit her teeth.

I will not cry. I will not.

Inside, however...

I don't understand. It isn't true. None of this is true. I'm sure she thinks this is worse than it is. It isn't what I think it is. It can't be. My Wick would never do that, ever. How could I think it of her? It isn't true. Nothing is wrong.

Dominic Creche. The one he'd met in the laundry room, the one who'd had his throat slit by that Kat. The twin. Jor remembered him, remembered a face dark like his own and eyes full of schemes, just like Wick's eyes, and a sudden mental image made him hiss between gritted teeth and turn his head to the side.

"I... couldn't. I'm sorry."

It's a lie. You're just lying again, spark. This can't be true.

A long, silent moment passed. He finally managed to look up again, to stare at her searchingly, as if waiting for the teasing glint to slip back into her expression, but it was absent, and her sincerity began to chip away at his denial.

He must have made her. He forced her. It's the only way.

"He forced you," Jor asserted furiously, standing up only to move across the room and grip her shoulders. "He. Forced. You." Each word puncuated by a little shake, to reaffirm his words.

"Not the first time."

"You're lying!" Jor's voice was tortured and furious, and he shook her violently, as if he could shake the truth out of her, like pennies from a pocket. When she didn't answer, his face contorted, and his hands were suddenly fists again.

Then he hit her.

Wick didn't fight back, and Jor just wanted the truth, just wanted to hear her tell him it was all make believe. Dominic had never touched her. She had never touched him, because she was his. Wick belonged to him, to Jordan Windhaven, and no one else could have her.

"It's not true, it's not true," he gasped as he knocked her to the ground and stood over her, his eyes filling with tears and making it difficult to see. What replaced his vision was worst. An image of Dominic kissing her, touching what was only rightfully his to touch... it was too much. Jor choked down a sob as he kicked Wick, shoved her out of the way as he did the same to the traitorous thoughts that insisted on taunting him, and when he leaned down to pick her up by the collar of her shirt, he didn't notice that it wasn't tears wetting his hands, but her blood.

How could you do this to me, love? How could you?

He tried to reason it all away, holding her up before him and staring into her bruised face, blinded by rage and hurt and betrayal. "But I love you," he kept repeating, his voice thick and confused. "I love you. You're lying, you're lying, Wick, spark, I know it. I love you."

The remorse in her eyes was his undoing.

It wasn't a lie.

You did... but... but you're mine. Aren't you mine?

Something inside Jor broke, and rage replaced it. It looked at all his memories, all the times he'd kissed her, loved her, held her, and it shattered them. It was oblivious to everything but his pain, and he began to hit her, fists hurting places that he used to touch, hate spilling over love that he used to treasure. Tears streamed down his face, and he couldn't even see.

Kat was standing in front of the collapsed pile of uniform and blood that was Moira Windhaven. She was bleeding, and Jordan was still standing. That was what Mode had time to register before he shot the man twice in the back with the tranquilizer pistol and yanked him backwards by his collar.

Windhaven lurched with the sudden shift in inertia and tried to hit him, but they were excellent tranquilizers, and Mode only supported him long enough to make sure he was unconscious before letting him drop unceremoniously to the floor and taking a desperately close look at Kat. She seemed to be mostly intact; she had a black eye, a split lip and a bloody nose, but there was no serious apparent damage.

His immediate relief changed into furious frustration as Kat turned and lifted one of Wick's arms, attempting to get the girl off the floor. That particular arm turned out to be a bad investment; it was twisted at a bad angle. Kat hissed through her teeth and tried to pick the taller girl up by the waist instead. He watched her struggle for a few moments with a dark, closed expression on his face, and then pushed her out of the way none too gently and lifted the girl himself.

They said nothing on the way to the infirmary, and he dropped the girl onto the nearest bed without glancing at her. Kat was already dragging one of the doctors to tend to her, and he stayed only long enough to exchange a single look. Hers was pleading, defiant and guilty.

He felt betrayed.

He left the infirmary and went back to the Windhavens' quarters. Wick's husband was still out. The tranquilizer would take at least an hour to wear off, and Mode had to make sure the man wasn't going to run into the infirmary once he woke to finish the job. After that was taken care of, he'd have to talk to the doctor, and then to one of the transports to get Windhaven off the station. He couldn't risk an investigation of this little event; Kat was on the recording, and they'd want to know how she'd known. That would be a quick trip to courtmartial, or worse.

What... what happened?

He pressed his face to the cold floor, trying to regain his bearings. Thought was running slowly, mostly in hazy flashes that left him the faint impression of pain and fury. His hands hurt when he tried to move them, and he was suprised to find them covered in dried blood. That was enough to get him moving.

"W... wick?" he muttered, groaning again as he rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. Painfully bright light made him close his eyes again, and he slowly levered himself up, holding his head in one hand and trying to clear his vision with the other. No one answered, but when he managed to sit and look around, there was a man seated on his bunk.

Asmodeus.

Jor couldn't do much more than grimace, and it didn't come out quite as furiously as he'd meant it to, but it was a decent effort. "Mode. What the hell... are you doing here?" A little desperate understanding worked its way into his conscious, and he glanced around more sharply this time. "Where's... where's Wick?"

You killed her.

"I did?" He asked out loud before he realized that he'd thought the accusation, and the gaps in his memory made him more angry. Jor glared at his hands, at the blood on the floor, and was trying to remember when suddenly he did, and he wished he'd forgotten forever.

I... No, no, spark, I...

This time his voice was uncertain, and the question remained unspoken and hidden. "Mode?"

"Mode...? What thehell...are you doin' here?" Windhaven's voice was still a little slurred from the tranquilizer, but it was understandable. He watched the man look down at his hands, at the dried blood that was beginning to fall off in flakes as he flexed them. His knuckles were swollen, and his fingers moved stiffly. "Where's...where's Wick? I did?" Still dazed, Jor glanced around the room, the dried blood on the floor catching his eyes. Realization began to dawn, and Jor stared at the blood and repeated his name.

"Mode?"

He'd have to handle this carefully. A misstep might send Jor in the wrong direction, and Mode wanted no trouble about getting him away from the Post and away from Wick. The situation was going to be hard enough to control as it was. He didn't need to add to his troubles.

"She's in the infirmary," he replied calmly, rising and walking around behind Jor to pluck out the little darts and drop them on the floor in front of him. "You had an argument." He walked back to stand in front of Jor and offer him a hand up, which Jor took absently. He got dried blood on his hand as he helped him up, but he knew better than to show disgust. He did dust his hand off, however, and glance around, as if seeing the room for the first time.

Wick... There was Wick, talking, saying nonsense about a command room and Dominic Creche and override codes. Jor shook his head and rubbed at the back of his neck, trying to clear his thoughts, but fury managed to shake off the last of the tranquilizer and made its presence known again. It gloated over the blood that covered everything, and reminded him of what he'd done, what she'd done.

I wish you hadn't told me. I'd rather not have known. And it was true... or at least, it was true now. Jor knew, or had thought he'd known, what Wick was. He'd protected her from the trouble she'd started, he'd stayed even when she'd pushed him away, and he'd loved her, in spite of her schemes and because of them. He'd thought he'd understood her enough to trust her, but...

"I want to leave." He said it, and at that moment meant it. How could he face her? It was his attentions on her skin now, but he wondered how many times he'd looked over her, imagining her to be his, when in fact they were Dominic's marks and Dominic's brands. The thought made him hiss and clench his swollen fists, and Jor looked up at the man that should have been his enemy and began to understand just how alike they were.

She broke your life, and now she's broken mine. Funny. I never thought I'd think that about you, Nathan.

Jor straightened and looked to Asmodeus with new understanding. It wasn't the best kind of understanding he might have shared with the man that had burned his wife and broken his jaw, but Jor was desperate for anything, and there was nothing but quiet resolve in his voice. "I don't want to stay here. I want to leave." He met Mode's eyes, grey to emerald green. "She did it to me, too, Nathan. Get me out of here."

Mode looked at Jor silently. The parallel was not inaccurate. It wasn't easy to overlook that it had been Jor who'd beaten him senseless at Battleschool. Even if it had been Wick's idea, it was Jor who'd carried it out - and he could remember quite clearly the happy zeal on Jor's face when he'd knocked him to the ground. On the other hand, without Jor's ignorant intervention, he and Kat would be orbiting Earth. In small pieces.

Alright, Jor. She fucked me over, and now she's fucked you over. But you asked for it. You knew what she was, and you still let her in. What did you expect?

"There's a cargo ship leaving for Elisabeta in a little over two hours," he said finally. "I can arrange the transfer to their training program. Once you're there, you're on your own." Jor didn't really react, and Mode let him sit there for a few seconds before adding a spur to get him out of his daze. "If I were you, Jor," he said in a low voice, leaning forward slightly, "I'd be packing."

That got him up, and he started to move around the room, gathering things to shove into his bag. Mode went to the terminal on the desk and made the necessary arrangements with the transport and the transfer office. He wanted to put a lock on Wick's medical record, but doing that from an unsecured terminal wasn't a good idea. He had to speak with the doctor anyway. It would wait long enough for him to get Jor to the dock.

Jor was haphazardly grabbing things to take with him, and he looked up when Mode was done with the terminal. The man's hands were bloody, his knuckles swollen, but his face was unmarked. She didn't hit him back. She probably did it so he would feel guilty later. Maybe she thought he would stop. He'd seen the first few minutes of the beating; there weren't many people who could have taken that kind of abuse without reciprocation.

I didn't.

That parallel was far more uncomfortable than the one Jor had drawn, and any remaining sympathy he had for the man disappeared.

"That's enough. Let's go."

Just now, Wick was not interested in receiving visitors. Just now, work was her life. Just now, though, the doorbell was out of place enough to make her mouth dry and set her pulse racing, and she turned and stared at the door with hopeful fear.

For three months she'd done nothing but work and sleep, with food interjected erratically as she remembered it. Memory was now a precious, dangerous thing, and delving into it when not absolutely necessary was strictly forbidden. The memory of love was not something she cared to endure. Bitterness, hatred, betrayal...those she could indulge in freely, but she allowed nothing else to exist. She permitted nothing to strike that she could not contain.

Like everything Wick turned her hand to, her focus had caused a reaction. In this case, the catalyst had been her drive to forget herself in her occupation, and the end product was her reassignment to a research laboratory on Earth, effective as soon as her training was complete. In four days she would be on a shuttle to her new post.

Maybe he knew. He's been watching me, waiting to see if I would really leave, and now he's come back to stop me. Best not to keep him waiting, or he'll know I knew it was him, and that I hesitated. She picked up her desk to have something in her hands so they wouldn't shake and opened the door.

There was a man standing there, but it wasn't Jordan Windhaven. This man was on the latter side of forty, the sort that could pass for thirty four and chose not to. Eyes the sharp blue of summer lightning looked her over with a hint of dismay; she'd flayed her disappointment into apathy immediately, but not so quickly that her uncle hadn't seen it in her face first.

"You should check with your postal service more regularly, Mrs. Windhaven," he said mildly in response to her stony silence. She tried not to look sullen and stepped aside so he could enter, and then let the door shut behind him.

She set her desk down on the table with more force than necessary and finished fastening her cuff, determined not to be intimidated. There were two chairs in the room, but her uncle ignored them both and seemed content to stand in the center of her quarters and watch her.

"Expecting someone?" he asked quietly, and she straightened her uniform top roughly and turned to face him. His reservedly concerned expression was remarkably readable, and it slowed her response from rude to brisk.

"I'm late for work." "The roster says you don't start your shift for another two hours." "The roster isn't giving a presentation tomorrow." Her uncle's concern ushered in a slight bit of sarcasm. "To display your retention of their demolitions courses. You must be nervous." She didn't give him the satisfaction of a glare and continued to get ready. When it became apparent that she was in fact leaving, he lifted her desk when she turned to get it and held it out to her. "We have much to talk about, Mrs. Windhaven."

She took the desk from him and met his eyes squarely. "I'm not interested in what you want to talk about, Adrian," she replied coldly. "Nevertheless, it does bear discussion," he replied inexorably, "and because of your obstinate refusal to answer your mail, I've come a great distance at great expense to do so, and when your shift is over, that is precisely what we're going to do."

She considered telling him to leave. He had no right to tell her what she would and would not do; he did not own her, and she owed him nothing. She didn't need the Ravenshires for money; her father had enough of it to keep her well-accommodated should the IF suddenly fail to provide for her. What she did need the Ravenshires for was something considerably less tangible, and at the moment she wasn't pining for familial closeness. What finally prevented her from throwing him out was her innate dislike for destroying opportunity unless it was absolutely necessary, and instead of replying she left.

When she finally palmed the door open, she was surprised and momentarily relieved to find her uncle absent. But there was a folded piece of paper on the table, a piece of stationery he must have brought with him, with a note on it in flowing cursive. Her experience with cursive was limited, but it was easy enough to make out.