His hands clenched into tight fists, but he held himself in place until the rage left him and he could look down at them without hatred or bloodlust. A blank sadness replaced his anger, accompanied by the tiny thread of guilt that he always felt when he fought people for someone else's sport. They didn't even give them weapons. It was unfair, and he hated providing them entertainment by knocking these poor bastards around. The best he could offer was trying not to cause any permanent damage, and even that was extremely difficult. Whatever hesitance he'd had had finally been burned out of him by the fight with the Creche twins along with the seraphim, and he was learning control of himself all over again.

Mode didn't like feeling out of control.

That made his current situation even harder to take. It had been nearly three months now since he'd awakened in the IA infirmary with only the clock for company. They'd told him nothing of their plans for him, though he had a few good guesses. Instead, since the very first day, his questions had been shoved aside as unimportant or completely ignored, and they'd done nothing but test him. At first they administered the same basic intelligence tests (or variations) he remembered enduring before the IF admitted him to Battleschool. It gradually became more advanced; problem-solving, analytical thinking, logic, ethics, astrophysics, planar geometry, history, strategy and command, navigation...anything he'd ever had training in they arranged to test him in. They never gave him any results, never acknowledged that he'd done well or poorly, just sent him on to the next battery of exams.

This treatment quickly infuriated him, and it was only his knowledge that his reaction to their testing was also a test that kept him from taking his temper out on those around him. He shut up and buckled down and took his only consolation in doing everything he could to run their tests into the ground, because he knew he had to pass them. He had to meet their standards, and then there would be training, and then he would be free. It could take years. He didn't care.

He would be free, and he would get back to Katera.

As soon as they deemed him sufficiently recovered, they removed him from the infirmary. He was given no clock, no watch, no time-keeping device of any kind. They woke him to test him, and when they returned him to his room he slept. He lived entirely on their schedule, and it was not regular. Sometimes he gauged it had been only a few hours between tests; sometimes it could have been nearly a day. They never let him go too hungry for too long, but even his meals were irregular; he had nothing to mark the time by.

When they tested his computer knowledge, he had his chance to locate the date. It was nearly three weeks since he'd left Command School. It took another five days of very careful searching to locate a malleable computerist, and even longer to convince him to do what he asked him to, but Lt. Col. von Starnburg had a long shadow, and the man finally gave in, perhaps hoping to curry favor with a ranking IA official by coddling his pet.

Mode didn't hear about it until much later.

It surprised him, but not much; the man was going back to Charybdis, and he didn't have a reason to want to live through that again. He wasn't bothered by it; he had no affection for the man. They had come to an agreement, and the IA colonel had fulfilled his half of the bargain before he'd bowed out. Mode felt no sorrow or remorse, just a cold respect.

The first of the combat testing had begun two weeks ago. They hadn't bothered testing him on any weapons; he'd never received training in anything more complicated than a flash gun. Instead, they put him in a room with three grown men who promptly attacked him. No warning was given, and no instruction was provided; none was really necessary. He had every intention of doing precisely what they wished of him until he had worked his way out of this web, but that did not include being beaten to a pulp.

In the entire time he'd been there, they'd kept him in a small room, taking him out periodically to sit him in another small room. He'd been given no athletic release at all. Maybe they thought he would be out of practice.

After the last one was on the floor gasping, he caught himself before he could do the man further injury. It took far more effort than he had expected, and it left him trembling for several minutes after the others were picked up and carried away and he was returned to his cell.

And so it went on.

It was getting easier now, that reasserting of control, but not much. He didn't like fighting - no, that wasn't true. He didn't like liking fighting, and he didn't want to do it if his life wasn't in danger, but they gave him no choice. As it was, he didn't like pulling his punches, but he wasn't going to kill anyone for them, not unless he knew it would get him back to Katera.

His cell was never dark, but he learned to sleep with the light in his eyes, and he dreamed of her. The nightmares were bad, and he woke shivering. The peaceful dreams were worse, reminding him of what had been taken from him, and from those he woke crying. Control seemed a thing of the past, and he was relearning it across the board, not just for combat. Slowly those tears came to a halt, and the shivering ceased almost immediately after he gained full consciousness. Masking emotion was just another small victory as they woke him and moved him and put him back as they pleased. His life was in someone else's hands; all he owned was himself, and he determined that he would own that self completely.

So almost as soon as the fists clenched, they unclenched, and he looked down on his fallen opponents with the same empty despair he looked at everything else. When he was fighting, he felt alive, and it was hard to turn that off and on, but he was learning.

There was a flicker of movement behind the nearly opaque glass of the viewing chamber, and he looked up, though he could see nothing of any detail. A few moments later, the door to the small arena opened and the same man who'd come out yesterday with the trainers who came to fetch him and return him to his room entered now. As before, the man paid him no mind. He wasn't in uniform, and neither was the girl with him. Both appeared completely uninterested in his existence.

Mode could relate. They could do this a thousand times over, if they wished. Katera was all that mattered.

They removed him from the arena, and he expected to be returned to his room, as before, but instead they led him to a small conference room. A metal table stood in the center, surrounded by eight chairs that had been bolted to the floor. His handlers instructed him to sit, and waited until he had done so before turning to leave. He had just begun to examine the room more thoroughly when the door slid open again, and the two strangers he'd seen with his trainers entered. The door slid shut behind them, and he took a closer look as they moved to sit opposite his chair.

The man appeared in his late thirties. He had dark hair in a short military cut, and was dressed in a grey suit that looked like it had been cut a little loose to accomodate a holster beneath his arm. He was tall, at least 6'2, with a wiry build, long hands and an ascetic face that looked older than the rest of him did. His expression was as blank as Mode's, but there was a glint of curiousity in his hazel eyes.

The girl - for she was a girl, no older than eighteen, surely - was 5'9 and built like a swimmer, with artfully unruly light brown hair that was only an inch or two longer than the man's and cornflower blue eyes. She wore a dark brown jumpsuit, and her holster was out in the open, strapped to her thigh. She did not share the man's curiousity. Her eyes held only contempt.

The man was watching him watch them, and Mode finally locked gazes with him and did not look away. The stranger relented first with a small smile. "You're quite the fighter," he said, his voice a friendly tenor that didn't quite match his appearance. "Not much on history, though." The girl smirked. Uncertain and feeling trapped, Mode said nothing.

"Do you like it here?" the man asked conversationally. As polished as his control was becoming, Mode still frowned slightly at the question. Like it? Of course he didn't like it. He flicked eyes to the girl briefly. She was still smirking, and that made him angry enough to be bold, and bold enough to answer the question, though as cautiously as he could without lying.

"There are worse places."

The man laughed, as if his statement were something truly witty. "Yes, I'd imagine there are. And you'd know a few of those, wouldn't you?" He laughed again, and then sobered somewhat, as if just remembering something. "Oh, yes. There's an officer who's expressed an interest in seeing you. Sarah will be happy to escort you." The girl's smirk disappeared, and Mode watched her struggle with her temper for a satisfying moment before she got a grip on it. The man appeared not to notice, and didn't bother rising from his chair, even after Mode stood.

Sarah withdrew her gun from her holster and leveled it at his chest. Mode looked at the gun briefly and then back to her face. "Out," she said gruffly. Obediently, he moved towards the door, and she followed him. "Open it," she snapped, and he reached out and touched the pad. The door slid into the wall, and she ordered him into the hall.

It was a long walk to the visitor's quarters. "Sarah" never missed an opportunity to correct him or give him yet another meaningless task to perform. He had an excellent sense of direction, and he was almost certain she was taking him on a far longer path than was necessary. If he'd not spent the last three months learning to control his temper, he might have lost it. As it was, he was mostly irritated and a trifle amused. The girl was obviously new to her job. Mode had extensive experience in dealing with guards, and this one was far too enamored of her firearm to be paying proper attention to her captive.

Eventually he decided that he'd had enough. Surely the IA couldn't respect someone who would withstand this sort of idiocy when it wasn't necessary. He was cooperating with them. Cold indifference he could deal with, but this child with a loaded weapon at his back was going a little too far. He suffered a short internal battle and decided they couldn't punish him too severely if he didn't hurt her. He wasn't that eager to arrive at his destination anyway. Whoever the visitor was, it wasn't Katera, and therefore it could wait.

They passed another set of doors that she made him open, and he waited until she had stepped through before turning and plucking her weapon from her easily. Her eyes were still widening when he pushed her gently against the newly-closed door with barrel of the pistol against the hollow of her throat. She looked surprised and dismayed and frozen with fear.

Whatever satisfaction Mode might have gotten from showing her how little safety pushing someone unarmed around with a weapon really offered vanished with the appearance of her unvarnished terror, and he sighed and lowered the gun until it pointed at the floor. She watched it descend as if all the danger he posed to her was contained in it, and he figured out the clip and dumped the charge cartridge on the floor at her feet before he handed it back to her. She almost dropped it, and seemed unwilling to look away from him long enough to retrieve the cartridge, and he retreated a half step.

"Stop that," he said simply, and turned around and waited with his back to her while he listened to her reload the cartridge.

There was silence as she hesitated, and then she appeared to his right, just within his field of vision. Her pistol was back in her holster, and her manner seemed much improved, in his opinion. "That way," she said almost politely, and gestured. He walked, and she followed, and they proceeded in a relatively straight line to the visitation area.

The door slid open, and Mode blinked.

Captain Robert Quistin stood in the room beyond.

Somewhat stunned, he was about to take a step forward when Sarah laid a hand on his arm. Gently. He looked down at her questioningly and was surprised to see the contempt was gone, replaced by a fair amount of almost comradely chagrin. "The forcefield," she explained apologetically. "I have to disable it." She turned and dialed a code into the keypad out of Mode's line of sight, and there was a red crackle as the shield went down. It wasn't a solid barrier, but 50,000 volts tended to discourage any unruly would-be escapees.

He should have been concentrating on his work, on this task at hand, on anything else, but focus had been a fleeting thing of late. He could barely manage a few hours of sleep each night, and the combination of anxiety and anger that fueled him onward was taking its toll. Already it looked as if he'd aged beyond his years, and he certainly felt as if that were true. Only determination and strength of will kept him functional, but had he been any other lesser officer on this station, his position would have been in jeopardy. As is, his subordinates knew better than to mention his tired haggard appearance, and there were no superiors present to comment. He was lucky, in that sense.

Not like my Katera. I warned her. I told her not to... but it was futile. Now what can I do?

It hurt him because he knew there was nothing he was capable of doing to help her. Where once he had hardly cared for the baby girl his wife had given her life for, he now agonized over her daily, hourly, by the minutes and the seconds. The first time a notice had come of her arrival at Command School, he'd been nervously jubilant, and a fragile peace had been established despite his instant wariness over her new boy. But if anything, he knew her, for she was like him, and despite worrying over the man so like Jax, he knew she was safe.

Until another notice had arrived a bare two weeks later, summoning him to the school. She had gotten in a fight, a huge bloody battle, but it wasn't until he arrived to find her deathly pale, completely withdrawn, and incapable of talking to him that he began to become angry. What he saw of her injuries enraged him further. Broken bones and knife slashes he could have resigned himself to. Those types of wounds healed... but nothing prepared him for the first time she looked at him with those blank eyes and raised her wrist. His kitten had tried to kill herself.

Nathan Terrence. Mode. Jax. It was all his fault. Screaming at her, hitting her, reasoning with her-- none of these tactics had worked, and Robert left the next day in a fury. He would find this boy of hers. He would make him pay for abandoning his precious daughter, for hurting her, for taking her spirit with him and leaving a ghost. Even Jax, that bloody little fostered bastard, hadn't killed Katera this much. Whatever Terrence had done to her, whatever his crimes were; they would be repaid tenfold.

I left Jax for her to deal with. I refuse to do the same with this one.

Ever since he'd returned to the command post he'd been puppeted by hate. The smallest irritants drew him into a rage, and old friends and soldiers began to avoid him, shaking their heads in pity for his predicament. Poor Captain Quistin, he knew they were saying amongst themselves. But he had no pity. He had no shame. Right now, all he wanted was vengeance for his daughter, and it would come.

He spent his days struggling to maintain his position in the International Fleet, and his long sleepless nights searching for Terrence. Nothing was spared. He paid a rogue systems technician an exhorberant amount of money to hack the command school files, the Charybdis mainframe... even the Internal Alliances network. When no new information returned each time the man reported in, Robert would despair and swear even more rewards if only the boy could be found.

He was torn between praying to find Terrence alive, and praying to find him already dead. Hadn't Katera been like this after Jax left her? Well, she'd certainly recovered the moment she killed the boy, and if Robert could, he would give the same fate to Mode and the same peace to his daughter. Part of him lusted to destroy... but part of him feared that outcome would only further hurt Kat. Maybe Terrence was living somewhere else, and could be returned. Maybe his baby girl would snap out of her zombie trance if her lover was brought back.

Maybe not. Maybe Robert just wanted to make the boy suffer for what he'd done to Kat.

McAvrey had reported to him only hours before, and the moment the man declared that he'd found Nathan Terrence, that the boy was here at the command post, Robert was already up and running. It hadn't taken much effort to call for a visitation, and no one cared to argue with him. But waiting... that was something Robert did not appreciate doing, especially not now when he knew the boy was within his reach. He toyed lazily with the buckle on his holster, a click as he unstrapped the gun, a snap as he tightened it again. Click, snap, click, snap, click, snap... this continued for minutes, perhaps hours, and Robert was just beginning to get that look in his eyes when the door to the small forcefield shielded room slid open.

His eyes flickered cold serpentine and narrowed dangerously.

The boy was with someone. A girl. She said something, quietly, and laid a hand on his arm. Terrence looked to her, smiled slightly, and Robert fought down every single instinct he had to launch himself at that bastard. When Terrence finally stepped inside, a tiny glint of gold caught his eyes, and this time he did growl.

How dare he wear her ring after all he's done.

This man's appearance meant one of two things; either Katera had gotten his obscure message and told her father, or her father had been looking for him on his own and somehow managed to locate him. He wanted to know, for any number of reasons, but Robert Quistin wasn't in the mood to tell him.

"I'm here for her ring. Give it to me. Now."

He stiffened involuntarily and then looked at the man with a half-incredulous, half-furious stare. This man had access to his daughter as he pleased. He could see her when he pleased, he could look on her and love her and protect her from as close or as far away as he chose, and now he demanded that Mode give up the only token he had left of the love of his life. Even the IA hadn't tried to take that away from him.

For a moment, he suffered doubt. Perhaps Katera had sent her father to retrieve the ring, unable to come herself.

Once, he'd offered the ring back to Katera, and she'd refused it. Things had been different between them at that point than they had at the end; there had still been an unspoken poison between them. That was before they had been healed, before the moment in the barracks when he knew beyond doubt that she loved and cherished him as he wanted so badly to love and cherish her, as he wanted so badly to be loved.

Never... The remembered intensity of her refusal washed away the seed of doubt before it could take root, and he eyed Quistin coldly, leaving his arms at his sides.

"No. I'll give it back to her, if she'll take it. But not to you, sir." His voice was the same temperature as his eyes. The ring was all he had of her. No one was going to take it away from him, especially not this angry, blustering fool who struck Katera just as easily as Asmodeus had, with as little forethought. If the IA intended to let Quistin kill him, he wouldn't scruple to disable him. He might even enjoy it.

He hadn't thought that perhaps Katera hadn't wanted Mode to leave, or conversely, that Mode hadn't wanted to leave her. He'd just assumed that, as with Jax, his daughter was suffering from betrayal. What that betrayal might be, he did not care to know, nor did Kat care to tell him. It did not matter. What had mattered was seeing his daughter broken, and what mattered was that the boy who had caused it was standing right here before him, refusing him with quiet determination. The ignorant bastard. Didn't he realize that even if he did not give back the ring, Robert was not about to let him see his daughter ever again?

The memory of her empty eyes gave his rage strength again, and it took hold, giving him a quietly intense aura more threatening than any blustery anger could have been. Robert met Terrence's gaze with pain in those golden jade eyes, and if his voice was low when he spoke, it was only to keep himself from screaming.

"Her life didn't belong to you to take, either."

There was silence, and Robert stared into the dark icy eyes so like the black cold ones of Jaxen Narita. He remembered when this man had been but a child, and all the hate he'd fostered since the moment his innocent Katera had brought the boy home began to flare again. He stared into those eyes and wanted to cry for her.

"Look, Daddy. I found him at school. Can I keep him?"

"Who's this, Kitten?"

"I'm Jax, sir. Jaxen Narita."

"He kicked Sammy after he called me a bad name. Then we kicked him together. I like him."

Robert winced.

"Katera, you're bleeding. What hap--"

"Go away, Daddy. Just leave me alone."

"No, Kitten, you tell me right no--"

"I SAID GO AWAY! I HATE YOU! I HATE JAX! I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!"

Robert had to clench his fists to keep from reaching for his pistol, to keep himself in check, and as every muscle in his body strained against the chains of his sanity, he wished, not for the last time, that Narita and Terrence had never existed.

"Keep it, then. But you are not allowed to contact her in any way. You are not allowed to see her. If I find out you've done anything to go against my orders, I will kill you, no matter what she wants. You're killing my daughter, Terrence, and I will never let you near her again."

Control was wonderful thing.

His first urge, quelled out of hand, was to strike the captain. He would never do anything to hurt Katera. He knew what he'd done before the fight with the twins, and he agonized over it in private each evening, but he would never do anything like that ever again. There was nothing he could do to change the past. How dare this man attempt to keep them separate? For now, it was forced; he and Katera were kept apart by unchangeable circumstance. Robert Quistin was not an unchangeable circumstance. Mode did not hit him, but he quietly swore to himself that if he had to in order to be with Katera, he would remove that circumstance - but not until then.

His second was to launch into a vicious verbal assault, to strike home to Quistin how futile an effort it would be to try to keep them apart. He loved Katera, and she loved him. There was nowhere Quistin could take her that he would not find her, that she would not find him. They were bound. They could not be separated so easily. Again his control held him back. This was not Katera; he wouldn't understand. It wasn't any of his business, aside from involving his daughter, and as far as Mode was concerned, he lost any rights as her father the moment he struck her in the barracks. This man didn't deserve to understand. He probably couldn't.

His third impulse was what finally won out over the other two. Someday, he would not be a prisoner here. He was being tested, and eventually he would be trained, and when that training was complete, he would be part of the IA, as von Starnburg had promised. As part of the IA, he would be in a far better position to deal with Quistin.

He would have power.

Anything he said or did to spark this man to a fight now would be counted against him. He had to get on with his instruction, and he wasn't going to let Quistin hold him back by giving in to the urge to attack him. Now was not the time to satisfy his pride.

Later.

He did not strike him. He did not yell. He smiled instead, a very small smile that left the rest of his face untouched. His voice was respectfully pleasant.

Part of him wanted to accept it, and move on. He had just told Terrence that his daughter was forbidden to him. The boy had just agreed-- or had he? The strange smile on his face was not in keeping with what Robert had expected. He wanted anger. He wanted rage. He wanted Terrence to scream and lash out and swear that nothing, absolutely nothing would keep him from Katera. Part of him would have actually preferred resistance, because that was something he could understand, something he could respect. Did Terrence care so little for Katera that he was willing to just concede the point? Robert didn't know.

The ice in those slate eyes and the cold smile on that face was not something he could comprehend, and that angered him further. He wanted to strike the boy. Hitting Katera was one thing, but hitting Terrence-- it would be a blow against Jax, a blow against the Jaydes, a blow against everyone and everything that had ever hurt his daughter. It was never a thought that he had done far worse to her than half her enemies. It was just so much easier to blame someone else.

His pistol was nearly out of its holster before he realized what he was doing.

It occurred to him, rather belatedly, that killing Terrence was not an option. At least, it wasn't right now, in the center of the IA compound with guards to witness and cameras to see. But someday, perhaps. If the boy insisted on going against his law and seeking out Katera. Robert knew he would, but he also knew he'd do everything in his power to keep Katera away from wherever Terrence happened to be. If it meant taking her Earthside, so be it. If it meant resigning from his position, so be it. He would do anything to give Katera life again. What she might want, what her wishes might be, never crossed his mind.

He glared at the boy and reholstered his gun before moving toward the door. He had already typed in the code for the shield when anger got the better of him, and he paused in the open doorway. If he couldn't kill the boy, then he had to do something, and making him suffer more was his rage's immediate goal.

"She tried to kill herself. She cut her own wrists."

Robert turned around and looked at Terrence once last time. "I hope you suffer."