Sol approached the end of the corridor, her heart sinking a little as another dead end came into view. This corridor had been particularly long, and she'd been hopeful. The trip back wasn't something she was looking forward to. She threw her stubborness into the category of "thorough" and marched to the end anyway.

Her persistence was rewarded when a small side passage came into view. It wasn't visible until she got quite close to it. The paint here was all the same industrial off-white, and the lighting wasn't as bright here as it was elsewhere in the station. The modern hoverlamps that lit most of the active school area hadn't been implemented here. There were only rather antiquated wall lights that looked as if they'd been riveted in quickly and dismissed, and a few of these bulbs were beginning to fade.

The passageway was smaller than the corridor she'd just left, but she hesitated only a moment before she went into it. There was still plenty of clearance, but the strange construction gave her a flicker of discomfort. Sol had no love of enclosed spaces.

At the end of the little hallway, another open doorway came into view on the right. The lights were off, and she flipped them on. More old industrial bulbs, but these were bright and relatively unused.

The room was small, but not uncomfortably so. There were lines on the floor and walls to indicate that there had once been equipment here, but what kind of equipment or what its function had been Sol couldn't begin to guess. The only other features in the room were some old metal crates and a square of black plastic set rather low on the far wall, twelve inches across and sixteen high.

Her tired hope gained some life. This room has possibilities.

The crates were empty and heavy, and looked as if they hadn't been moved in a long time. Nothing else in the room required detailed inspection, and she approached the square of black plastic with interest. She heard Gabe enter the room as well, heard him testing the weight of the crates as she stopped and studied the panel carefully. There was dust caught between the edge of the plastic and the wall, and she blew it free before she set her fingertips into the groove and pulled gently.

Metal bit into her finger, and she hissed air in sharply and yanked her hand back to stare at the little cut as blood began to gather into a droplet on its surface. Gabe was there beside her then, taking her hand in his to examine it. The old scars from their trip out of the vent had faded somewhat, but they were still easily visible on the insides of her fingers. His eyes softened a little, and he ran a thumb over them as he assessed the small wound.

Classifying it appropriately as an extremely minor injury, Gabe looked at her with a half-concerned, half-amused expression as she withdrew her hand from his, folding one arm across her chest as she put her finger to her mouth. "Alright, you figure it out," she said in mock annoyance as she nursed her finger.

Turning to the panel, Gabe made a quick, efficient examination and located the release levers on the underside, flipping them down. The plastic bowed out a little, and there was a tiny hissing sound as pressure was released. Detaching the panel carefully from its moorings, Gabe pulled it free and set it aside.

Stars.

The pane of transparent material in the little window had a strange shimmer to it, but it didn't obscure the view at all. It appeared entirely smooth, but when she reached out to touch the corner the texture was rough and grainy. Her fingertips left tiny smudges, and Sol blinked as they faded away before her eyes. Space was cold, and this room was warm. It should have been frosted over. It should have been caked with space dust.

It was impossibly clear.

He looked out at the stars. It wasn't a large window, and it couldn't compare with the scope of the Observatory's view. But it was their view.

They were home.

There were four crates of varying sizes, and so they set up three beneath the window -- two small enough to work as chairs, and the largest of the four in between like a table. They pried the top off the fourth, the smallest of all; it would be where they stored the pieces.

Gabe then left to go retrieve their set. It occurred to him, when he arrived back at the barracks, that they had no board, so he grabbed Sol's desk and brought it with him.

On the way back, he realized that he could just as easily have grabbed his own desk. That had not occurred to him at the time, however. It had always been Sol's desk they used. It was just . . . what they did.

He returned to the little room with Sol's desk and Sol's bag. She was seated on one of the crates, looking out at the stars. Gabe set both items on the table crate, and seated himself as well.

"Cozy," he said, grinning at the bare rock walls and the disporportionately low ceiling. And he was totally serious, too -- it didn't matter if the porportions were wrong, it didn't matter if it was carved right out of the rock, it didn't matter that their furniture was metal crates.

Cozy was not the word. The nicest word she could come up with was spartan, and even that seemed warm and cheery compared to this little stone pocket...but it was tidy and quiet and almost entirely free of connection to the rest of the station. There were no doors between them and the main hallway, but there was a good distance of tunnel, and much of it was bent and curved.

And it did have a great view.

Setting up the desk to display the graphic took only a few seconds, and Sol and Gabe settled down to their first game of chess at Command School with the starlight through the Formic window glimmering on the little plastic pieces. Six moves into the game she knew she'd lost, but it didn't matter, and her grin just got a little wider when he finally trapped her king. After a slight pause to acknowledge his victory, she set the board up again. She won the second, and he won the third. They were well into the fourth when a chime echoed through the distant hallway outside. It was faint, but they both looked up at each other.

Sol sighed, but stood up anyway, stretching a little and transferring the pieces to the little box next to their makeshift table and closing her desk with a snap.

Something was wrong with Gabe, that much was obvious, but he hadn't had time to elaborate on it, and she didn't want to get him in trouble with the Major over it. He would be back soon enough, and they could talk over it in more detail, but until then, she didn't really have any way of determining what was bothering him without asking him directly.

She opened the desk on her lap and checked over her own mail. A few notices from teachers to their classes, clarifying their assignments for the evening, and a brief note from Donovan Creche politely requesting that she and Gabe find someplace else to be for an hour after dinnertime. She grinned faintly at that. The twins seemed nice, just a little...focused. It was amusing, anyway. Gabe's face flickered through her head, and she sighed, but put it aside.

Her mail finished, she became a little more creative, weaving her way more deeply into the server system until she could hit other people's accounts. She found Kat's and opened up her file.

The Charybdis Institute. She'd heard of that place. That's what the white band meant. They'd sent her for mental "rehabilitation"...but it obviously hadn't been successful. Sol's jaw tightened. This wasn't fair. If the IF knew their business this should never have come up. She and Gabe should never have been in danger. She dug a little into the file. The girl had been in there a long, long time. She'd only arrived at the station a few days ago.

Moving out of the protected areas and back into the student files area, she dug into Kat's private files. Almost entirely empty.

Almost.

She pulled up the girl's email and ice encased her heart and made her gasp. When she was finally able to breathe again, she was absently surprised that it made no vapor in the air.

Kat--
I know you're here, and I know what you want.
Meet me in the Storage Bay and you'll have
your fight. Just you and me -- this time
we leave allies out of this. Be quick.
--Gabe

He'd gone alone. He'd lied to her and gone alone to fight the monster. Sol's fury took second chair to her terror, but she still noted how easily he'd managed it. Of course he did it easily. He had an excellent teacher.

The desk clattered to the floor as she stood, and she left it where it fell, open and on its side on the stone floor of their Place as she dashed out of the room and towards the Storage Bay, more and more of her falling into the same numb cold state of wrath it had in the library in Juneau, as it had in her dream, and the last of her emotion was gone before she reached the main corridor, ignoring the curious stares as she ran through the hallways. There was room in her head for only a single thought.

He took the seat nearer the door, with Sol holding his arm, like he could collapse at any second, and then she retrieved the pieces from the box and seated herself opposite him, and they began to set up the board.

As he set out his pieces, Gabe was thinking. Sol probably didn't need to be thanked for all she'd done. Coming to his rescue in the Storage Bay, of course. And going back for the knife. But also for the little things. Staying with him and holding his hand last night. Going to get his clothes for him this morning. Helping him dress, when it was clear that he could not do it himself, or at least not easily. And walking him here, ever ready to
catch him should he fall. For some reason, the little things meant every bit as much to him as the big things had. And though he suspected that no thanks were necessary, he didn't care. He wanted to say it anyway. "Thank you, Sol. For . . ."

For what? For everything.

He looked at a loss for words. Uncomfortable was too strong a word. Perhaps ... uneasy? Well, her temper injected hotly, he should. He lied to me, lied to my face. I never lied to him. It's not like I had time to stop and tell him what I was going to do when we were running from those men in the library in Juneau. Was that still this level of deception? He forgave me. Can I do any less?

But forgiveness wasn't the issue. She had forgiven him the moment she knew what he'd done, because she knew he did it for her. Forgiveness had never even been a question.

No, what was truly at stake here was trust. She would trust him with her life, without hesitation...but now she wasn't sure she could trust him with his. He was too eager to throw himself into danger to protect her. Just like...just like her father. That brought an involuntary sigh from her, and her brow knit in quiet frustration. He loved her and wanted her to be safe. She understood this, because she wanted him to be safe as well. Did she love him less because she'd waited to tell him about Kat instead of trying to deal with her on her own? Surely not.

Yet Sol felt obscurely guilty for not attempting what he had. The result would probably have been similar, quite probably worse for her than it had been for him. He wouldn't have been hacking into Kat's files...but he wouldn't have had the option to lie to her. The first deception had been hers, and she still felt twinges of it, though she knew she'd done the right thing. This was more hazy, and right now Sol wished the burden of this lie was on her shoulders instead of his.

Her desk still lay on the floor near the "table", on its side, open and flickering. She leaned down and picked it up slowly, setting it upright on their playing surface and laying it flat so they could begin to transfer their pieces to the graphic she told it to display, but she made no move to start to arrange her side. She rose and turned to sit on the crate next to him, slipped an arm around his waist and lay her head on his shoulder carefully, not wanting to aggravate his wound.

He looked at a loss for words. Uncomfortable was too strong a word. Perhaps ... uneasy? Well, her temper injected hotly, he should. He lied to me, lied to my face. I never lied to him. It's not like I had time to stop and tell him what I was going to do when we were running from those men in the library in Juneau. Was that still this level of deception? He forgave me. Can I do any less?

But forgiveness wasn't the issue. She had forgiven him the moment she knew what he'd done, because she knew he did it for her. Forgiveness had never even been a question.

No, what was truly at stake here was trust. She would trust him with her life, without hesitation...but now she wasn't sure she could trust him with his. He was too eager to throw himself into danger to protect her. Just like...just like her father. That brought an involuntary sigh from her, and her brow knit in quiet frustration. He loved her and wanted her to be safe. She understood this, because she wanted him to be safe as well. Did she love him less because she'd waited to tell him about Kat instead of trying to deal with her on her own? Surely not.

Yet Sol felt obscurely guilty for not attempting what he had. The result would probably have been similar, quite probably worse for her than it had been for him. He wouldn't have been hacking into Kat's files...but he wouldn't have had the option to lie to her. The first deception had been hers, and she still felt twinges of it, though she knew she'd done the right thing. This was more hazy, and right now Sol wished the burden of this lie was on her shoulders instead of his.

Her desk still lay on the floor near the "table", on its side, open and flickering. She leaned down and picked it up slowly, setting it upright on their playing surface and laying it flat so they could begin to transfer their pieces to the graphic she told it to display, but she made no move to start to arrange her side. She rose and turned to sit on the crate next to him, slipped an arm around his waist and lay her head on his shoulder carefully, not wanting to aggravate his wound.

And then he did find the words for it. And it was a promise Gabe could make.

Should she promise him the same thing?

There might conceivably come a day when such a promise would have to be broken. If she promised him that, then she might have to break it someday. And he hadn't asked it of her, really. He was assuming it, because she'd waited to tell him about Katera. Maybe that was for the best.

She kissed him instead, resting one hand on his cheek and taking his hand with the other. When she pulled away she brought his hand to her cheek and closed her eyes. He was alright, she was alright, they were together, preparing to play chess, and Katera was far from them, hiding with the new Jax.

He meant it, though.  Every word.  She'd needed to hear it, yes, but just as much he'd needed to say it.  He'd needed to put that vague promise he'd made to himself back in the infirmary into words.

And it was a promise he would never break.  He'd lied to Sol once, and it tore at his soul.  It was one of the worst things he had ever done.  Of all the cruel, heartless, self-cenetered things he'd done in his lifetime just to preserve his own well-being, this still ranked among the worst.  He'd done it for Sol, for her safety; that alone kept it from being the worst.  Intent counted for something, no matter the deed.  But it didn't count for much.

The warmth of her face against his palm could have kept him alive for a year in Alaska, but alas, they both knew that it would be terribly difficult to play chess like this.  So with a final brush of his thumb along her cheekbone, Gabe withdrew his hand, and Sol hers, and she returned to her seat, and when their eyes met again over the chessboard they had their game faces on.

But nevertheless, their eyes were smiling for them.

They played four games, because they were long overdue.  Gabe only won one of the four, the third, and it was by an extremely thin margin and had to do mostly with luck.  Even in his current state, Sol played for all she was worth.  It made every loss a priviledge, because it was an honorable loss.   He knew that he'd lost to her at her best; there was no acceptable alternative.

After the fourth game, and Sol's third win, they packed up the pieces again and shut down Sol's desk.  They pulled the tabel-crate a short ways away from the wall, and sat atop it together as they looked out their little window into endless space.  It was not the fantastic panorama of the observatory.   It was much more modest, but no less grand.  There were more stars out there than anyone could ever count.  He and Sol could take a ship and pick a direction and just go, and never run out of things to see.

There was no knowing if that could ever be possible.  Gabe didn't even necessarily know that that was what he wanted to do.  He wanted to see the stars, and he wanted to see them with Sol; that was all he knew for certain.   Just so long as those criteria were met, Gabe knew that he could be happy no matter what the future brought.

A long time passed in silence.  There were absolutely no words necessary.   They sat there, fingers intertwined,  Sol's head on Gabe's good shoulder, and his head leaning against hers.

And Gabe thought, Why can't all life be this way?

Why can't this last forever?

It couldn't.  The first class of the day was already almost over, and with Gabe no longer in the care of the infirmary it wasn't a good idea to skip all the day's classes.  So eventually, they had to leave.  It was sad, to end that moment.  But it was always here waiting for them.  They could always come back.  That made it okay.

The system here was a lot bigger than the one at BattleSchool, and there were fewer holocams, none in the barracks and not too many in the hallways. Locating Mode and Kat was going to be challenging, but she didn't mind.

She had the cameras cycle through in one window while she looked through the server in the other, searching for something similar to the location system they'd had in BattleSchool, but if they had one, it was well hidden. She finally created a small program to search for a specific line of commands and ran it, keeping an eye on it as she watched Gabe play with the Spyder.

It was obviously metal, but it didn't make any noise on the hard floor, and when it passed too close to her she snatched it off its little metallic feet to examine it. The thing wiggled with insect-like insistence for a few moments, and she resisted an urge to drop it in disgust and then grinned ruefully as she ran a fingertip over the ends of the "legs". Something like the texture of felt met her fingers, but she had to look very closely to see the nearly-transparent fibers that coated the metal on the ends.

No locator. Hmm. That was going to make things difficult. He should have forseen this. In Battle School, everyone and everything was very closely watched. They were tracked by their uniforms, they were holocammed twenty-four hours a day, even their games were sifted and seived and analyzed.

But this place worked differently. The adults were much more distant, their interest much more cursory. Or at least, that was how it seemed on the surface.

So it was entirely possible that there was no locator program. Perhaps it was assumed that by this time the students were here because they could take care of themselves. No one who got this far could accurately be called a child. They might not necessarily be adults -- not most of them, anyway -- but children they were not.

"You shouldn't be moving things, you nit," she said sternly. "Next time let me get it, neh? It's almost time for that bandage to be changed anyway." He looked at her expressionlessly, with a slight hint of amusement, and she tried to remain serious, but it didn't work and she gave him a reluctant smile and thumped his leg. "I mean it, damnit."

He looked back to the screen, and she sighed, watching him watch her program search. It was moving into the student areas of the server now, and there was really very little point in continuing, but she took the time to study him anyway. When she took the control from his hand he didn't even look up. It was still warm, and she placed it on her own hand, the pliable plastic mesh fitting comfortably against her palm.

The spyder marched back and forth, and she let it run as fast as it would go until she almost ran it into a wall. After that she just practiced moving it around while Gabe monitored her program for her. It could climb, but not very far, unless the surface had something the little pincers in front could latch onto. Maybe it would work in the vents. She needed to practice with the program...but not until her search was finished.

Too much seriousness over too long a period of time was beginning to take its toll on her, and Sol was tired out. She was glad that Gabe was healing, but there didn't seem much to do until they figured out where Nathan and Kat were hiding, and they couldn't do that until they established the existence or non-existence of a locator system, and the search was still running. There was nothing for her to do right now, and as she had when they'd been in the hotel and she tried to start a pillow fight, she looked for an excuse to do something mischevious.

The trouble was, it always seemed to take longer to fade than it did to bring up in the first place.

Gabe didn't know why. Perhaps simply because the mask had been his face for so very long, and when he put it on he felt . . . not comfortable, exactly. Comfortable was how he felt when the mask finally came away. No, more like secure. He felt safe behind his mask. It had been his protection for along time, and he still clung to it like a child to its blanket at times.

It was discouraging to think about. It made him realize how fragile all his advances over the past eight years, and especially the last two months, were.

So he forced himself to smile at Sol. It came out a bit crooked, but he knew that he didn't want to meet her playfulness with stoicism. The last thing he wanted her to think was that he didn't like it, and didn't appreciate it. It was amazingly pleasant, in the midst of all this darkness. That was how Sol was. Even in a situation like this, she was still playful, still warm.

There's so much I could learn from her . . .

Gabe was firmly determined to keep them both alive long enough for him to do just that.

She kissed him anyway.

Her desk beeped to announce the end of her program, and he started to pull away, but she tightened an arm about him and shut the desk with her free hand. The results would be there when they were done, and it suddenly seemed very important to her that they not stop until they were done. When that might be, she wasn't sure, but she was certain she'd know it when they arrived.

The small portion of her mind not wholly occupied with the kiss revolved around his words. He was right, that shrinking sliver of intellect acknowledged. She had no right to be playful. How could she joke when his face was still so pale, the stiff bandage rough under his uniform and her hand on his back? She kissed him more deeply, but it wasn't enough to keep her tears from running down her cheeks. He was already wounded. They should be thinking of nothing but how to keep themselves safe, how to prevent any further damage, not wasting time like stupid teenagers.

But that's exactly what she was, and for a moment or two she wished desperately that it was all she was, that they had nothing more on their minds, no reason to think of anything else but how much they enjoyed each other's company. She joked because not to joke would be to acknowledge the possibility that they would not have tomorrow to enjoy that company, and that was unbearable to her.

Nothing lasted forever, but she wanted this to last all the forever they had.

She broke the kiss and buried her face against his chest and cried silently, her shoulders shaking slightly as she sobbed her fear out against his chest, the fear she'd locked away when she'd fought with Katera, when she'd wheeled him to the infirmary and waited for them to tell her if he was dead or alive, when Mode threw her off the crates and she'd spent the moment in freefall wondering how she was going to explain her stupid mistake.

And then he felt tears on his cheeks, and he knew they were not his. Even as she kissed him, she was crying.

Happy people don't cry, was all he could think.

She then pulled her face away, and pressed herself to his chest, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

What have I done? Sol, my love, my life, what have I done?

He put his arms around her, and held her tight, and started to whisper. He didn't even think his voice was audible; his voice felt choked in his throat. But he whispered anyway. "Don't cry, Sol. Don't cry. I love you. Please don't cry."

His lips were moving, but no sound escaped them.

"You have no sense of humor," she said.

The words broke his heart. What have I done? What did I say, to make you cry like this? I didn't mean to, Sol. I never meant to.

She dragged her eyes open and blinked them clear, studied his face from the strange angle leaning her head on his shoulder gave her. He looked upset, and she mentally kicked herself. Gabe wasn't comfortable with strong emotional displays. He was still learning to cope with playful ones. She needed to show more restraint. Why was that so hard for her now? She hadn't had any difficulty handling it during BattleSchool. At least, not much. Now it was a constant battle to remember the rules...and they were changing anyway, so it wouldn't help her much. That was unsettling in itself, but she would rather deal with the fallout than go back to the way they'd been before. Wouldn't she?

There wasn't much choice.

"I'm sorry," he managed to say. His voice still sounded choked, but at least he had one now. He wasn't completely sure what he was sorry for; he didn't know what he'd done to make her cry, didn't know why she shed these tears. But whatever it was he'd said, he'd done, he was sorry for it. Anything that made Sol cry was bad. It was that simple.

For putting up with you, Sol? You are the only thing in my life I don't have to "put up with". You don't ever need to apologize for showing me what you feel. I should be apologizing to you for being incapable of understanding. You have nothing to be sorry about, Sol. Nothing.

He wanted very much to put these thoughts into words, but it was too difficult. So he summarized.

"And the next time you act like you don't deserve me, I'll . . ." his voice trailed off, because he knew that he would not smack her, and didn't even want to make the threat. ". . . I'll make a grumpy face," he said. He grinned. "I love you, Sol. And I trust you more than I trust myself. But I will never stop hating to see you cry. I will never stop trying to make it better. If it means I end up with rosy cheeks, then so be it."

He kissed her.

Her desk was just beginning to beep when she retrieved it and dragged it onto her lap, opening it up to look at the results of her search. Nothing. If this place had a locator for the students, it wasn't using anything she knew to look for. This place was far less regimented than BattleSchool had been. She sighed. This was becoming more and more complex. Or more simple. Either way, their course was clear. They had to locate Mode and Kat by hand, and that was going to be dangerous.

Python. They ranked well in the stands, fourth down from the top, fourth of 31 Quads. Their barracks was close to the end of the Quad Hallway, nearly at the edge, fifty meters from their own, give or take a few. Cas wasn't much better off in Panther, one Quad closer, but across the hall. The range Cas had given her on the little Spyder didn't extend half so far. They might have to find a different Quad to hang out in...but that didn't really seem like a possibility.

"We only have the Spyder until 1900 anyway," he said. "Assuming that we return it to Cas when we said we would. However, the boy does have talent, and I don't think we should do anything that might preclude getting more help from him in the future."

He stood, and stepped to the window to look out at the stars. His mind was off and running.

"Even in the middle of the day, hanging around the Quad hallways is too suspicious. And there's too big a chance they'll see us whenever the come or go."

She could only come up with two unattached possibilities. One was Rox, Dominic's girlfriend, and Rox didn't seem like a terribly dependable person. The other one was the boy she'd set free this morning. Dependable or not, he owed them a favor. If his Quad wasn't close enough, maybe he knew someone's that was. But she didn't know who he was, or what Quad he was in, and until she saw him again, or one of the twins told her, she wouldn't have any way to get in touch with him.

He didn't ask Sol whether she would go with him or return to their cell. He already knew. Sol was already standing and stretching.

"He gave me this," she said quietly. True enough. He had intended for her to take it, had known she would take it, or he wouldn't have given her that little show. His assurance that she would so blithely break rules and steal to accomplish her aims made her seethe internally, but she was too practical to turn down on opportunity on grounds like that. Maybe she was like her mother, in some ways. If that's what it took to keep them safe, then that's what she would be.

His first impulse was to be suspicious. So was his second. Always be suspicious of someone going out of their way to help you for no apparent reason, especially if said helps comes at their own personal risk. But Sol seemed to trust him, sort of. That is to say, she didn't sound like she thought it might be a trap. And he was family -- that meant she was better suited to judging the man's motives than Gabe, didn't it?

Or did it?

Well, he had to at least voice his suspicions. If Sol had a specific reason to trust the man, then perhaps that would explain why he might help them, despite the risk to his position.

She didn't really have an answer, so she gave him the data she did have instead.

Gabe didn't even bother to mentally exclude Sol from that rule. It was just sort of assumed. Sol was exempt.

He took the keycard, and held it up to the light, seeing the imprinted paths inside it as dark lines against the soft glow that shined through. Along one edge, the plastic was clear, and all the imprinted paths ran to that transparent strip. The rest of the card was a grey-black color, featureless aside from the name MURAIDA, GERARD in little gold letters beside the silver insignia of the International Fleet.

So. They had to find out what the keys accessed. Something restricted, obviously. Some room or area off-limits to students. And somewhere that might give Sol and Gabe an advantage against Mode somehow.

Well, that was all well and good, but even if they knew whatever it was the good doctor had planned for them, they still needed time to set things up properly. Simple killing Kat and Mode would do no good. Not if it meant that Sol and Gabe ended up bound for the Institute in their place. They were going to have to be clever about it.

But first, they needed time. They needed . . . a ceasefire. A white flag. Convincing those two psychopaths to end this war was too much to hope for. But perhaps he and Sol could at least buy themselves some time to think and plan.

The message she entered was brief and to the point.

Katera -
Meet us in the Commons at 1200.
We need to talk.
Bring your friend if you like.

-Solenis & Gabe

She sent it and nodded to Gabe, and they both stood and left to collect the Spyder from Cas. They didn't need it right now - at least, not immediately - but they wouldn't have a chance to get it later, and it would arouse suspicion if they didn't take it after she'd ask to borrow it again last night when they turned it in.

By the time they got back to the Room, breakfast was nearly over and classes were about to start. The chimes indicating the first period of the day were very faint and far away; whoever had been responsible for the lights and other human electronics in this room hadn't bothered with the intercom.

The time was easy enough to kill. They played chess, and Sol did a little research on her desk while Gabe was taking his turns. As a result, she lost the first game pretty badly, and afterwards she devoted her entire attention to Gabe and the game for the next two, winning the first one hands down and the second by only the tiniest of margins.

She quit while she was ahead, and Gabe staged moves on the board while she finished her research. Her uncle had said something about another girl and a burn injury, and she was sifting through what she could get into of the infirmary files when she came across the medical report for Moira Callenstrom. Nathan Terrence Sol had forgotten, because he'd been gone from Fox before she arrived, but Callenstrom she knew. Knew of, rather. She didn't like Wick, or the boy she hung out with, Jor. She wasn't sure why...but there was something about Wick that reminded her of her mother, and that was enough to make her dislike almost anyone.

Looking over the medical report, she winced and felt a little nauseous. What could Wick have done to incite that kind of rage from Asmodeus?

Her mind suggested a frightening possibility: Nothing.

Because it needs to be done.

She shook it off and went back to reading for a bit, memorizing what she could, and then turned the desk off and played with Gabe for the remainder of the time. He beat her, she beat him, he beat her. Conqueror, conquered and ultimately even. She grinned at him and was setting the board up for another game when her desk beeped.

11:55.

"Time to go," she said, and he nodded. Together they efficiently put the chess set away, and she fought the urge to help him stand. He was really too pale. They should have detained this meeting another day. Another day couldn't have made that much difference, could it?

Too late now.

He hoped she liked it.

Gabe stopped while they walked, and gave her hand a gentle tug toward an adjoining corridor. She looked a little perplexed, but followed. Now it was Gabe who was leading Sol by the hand. When it became clear where they were going, Sol looked a little surprised and confused, but Gabe smiled reassuringly at her.

He might have stopped when they reached the room and had her enter first, but he didn't want to raise any more suspicion than necessary, so Gabe palmed the pad beside the door, and stepped inside.

It looked different.

The most obvious detail was the maps. Walls that had once been bare rock cut right out of the asteroid, cold and bare and depressingly utilitarian, were now covered almost floor to ceiling with starmaps. There were markers on them, different colors for different ships' operational conditions. One of the tags, written in Gabe's neat and methodical script, read: "MRACKHAM - Fighter Squadron 412".

They were all here. All that Gabe could find, at least. Some of the maps were newer, with more stars that had actual names instead of just jumbled numbers and letters. And some of the maps Gabe could remember, with photographic detail, he'd been unable to attain. But every ship, every squadron, every marker was exactly the same.

Once the immediate shock of seeing the room decorated thus wore off, the eye was drawn to the faint blue glow that lit the room. As usual, a metal crate sat under the little viewport. However, the two crates that had previously served as chairs were now stacked in the corner, and in their place sat a pair of metal stools from one of the Engineering Bay workshops. The crate itself had a white bedsheet, doubled up, draped over it like a tablecloth.

Atop the crate, a pair of emergency glowrods stood like candles in the center, several centimeters apart, and cast a soft blue glow down on the two plates of spaghetti, now cold.

Gabe smiled a little sheepishly at Sol. "I'd intended to bring you right back here. It's probably congealed by now."

He glanced briefly at the little viewport over the table. He'd spent a lot of time trying to think of some way of working with that, making it bigger or at least seem like it was, or something. But detailing the maps had taken so much more time than he'd expected, and today had come so quickly...

My...my birthday...?

The Room looked like...the Room, only the other room, the empty classroom they'd spent so much time in during the last few years of BattleSchool, playing chess and ignoring the rest of the student body and trying to figure out when it was that the soldiers in the last invasion abandoned the room by the ship placements on the maps. It had been a silly project, really; they'd left it unfinished when their tenure ran out to run through the snow and cold and dodge bullets and fall in love instead. Sol had considered it a worthwhile trade.

Sol's memory had not taken Gabe's into account.

Everything she saw triggered memories of studying exactly the same maps in exactly the same positions. One of the larger maps was missing, but all the maps that were there had been relabeled in the same fashion as the originals, the archaic ship notation written out in Gabe's even hand, hundreds of tiny markers that she knew without approaching would match their old maps precisely.

She drank in the view of the old paper maps that must have taken him hours...days to locate, collect and detail and slowly remembered that he was still standing there, waiting for her to say something instead of gawking like a fish. She opened her mouth to speak, and her eyes fell on the little table near the window, and speech promptly abandoned her again. Candles, or an approximation...and spaghetti, one of the dishes the schools served that was more than tolerable. She'd never mentioned it to anyone. How did he know?

Her eyes drifted from the table to the maps, to the miniscule detail each one of them contained, courtesy of his incredible memory. How could he not? She marvelled at the depth of his perception, slightly awed that such a formidible ability had been focused on her for something as unimportant as a birthday celebration.

Sol felt loved.

She wanted to cry and could not. Her relief over Kat had already stolen her ready supply of tears. Gabe was still watching her, nearly looking nervous, and she turned in a slow circle, finally coming to a halt facing him. She had no idea what she wanted to say, or if she could say it if it magically popped into her mind, so she abandoned that, put her arms around him and kissed him.

Over the past six weeks, they had shared brief kisses, but the shadow of Kat's misery had hung over them like a cloud, and left them with comfort instead of passion. Now, the space between them had abruptly cleared, and Sol kissed him with the all the contained ardor of those six weeks, complicated as it was by her current overwhelmed state. The next few moments were dazzlingly unclear, and the only reason she knew they had moved at all was the sudden solid texture of the wall against the backs her of fingers where they rested against Gabe's back.

And then there was only Sol.

It was several moments before another thought not related to the process of kissing Sol as passionately as he knew how presented itself.

I think she liked it.

The weeks of tension, of quiet isolation, had been building up inside Gabe, and this release was euphoric. He now kissed Sol with enthusiasm and hunger that he'd never known before. Now the rush was actually pushing him, and Gabe had to consciously intercede and approve all suggestions submitted from the lower levels of his brain.

Gabe knew that he could hold his breath for two minutes. It was a fact at his immediate disposal, because Gabe would never truly stop believing that knowing such things wasn't useful. Of course, since his heart was racing and his stomach fluttering, he could not count on that to be an accurate estimate. Nevertheless, they had to part to breathe, and two minutes was a number that seemed utterly wrong. It had been much longer than that. And couldn't possibly have been that long.

Gabe rested his forehead against Sol's, listening to the chorus of their labored breathing, and thought, I could get very very used to this.

He opened his eyes to meet hers, and smiled. "I suppose we'll have to go to the mess aft-" he said, and was interrupted in mid-sentence when Sol kissed him again. This kiss did not last as long, but that didn't make it any less wonderful. "Or not," he said, with a grin.

He wanted very much to kiss her again. He wanted more. Why was he afraid? What was it that was making him hesitate?

Chess. No, she didn't want to play chess right now. She didn't want to eat breakfast or go to the Library or to class. She didn't want food or books or knowledge.

She wanted Gabe.

Her eyes widened slightly in surprise at this internal revelation, but only slightly. This was love. Nothing really surprised her any longer. She had spent time wondering silently to herself on the trip to Command School how it would happen, and almost invariably ended up blushing herself into a new and safer line of thought. As a result, she had no planned response to this. Now, caught unawares, Sol was almost afraid until a tiny thought displaced some of her anxiousness and settled comfortably in the back of her mind, expanding to wash away the rest of her concern.

It's Gabe.

Sol smiled.

His question went unanswered as she leaned forward, slid her hands to the back of his neck and kissed him a third time, more slowly and gently than before. One of her hands fell from his neck to rest on his arm, the fingers tightening slightly against his bicep as she tried to take a breath, unwilling to break the kiss. Air and Gabe's gentle scent drifted into her, and her exhale was a sigh into the kiss, a quiet contented sound sneaking past her vocal cords before she could focus enough to stop it.

They separated, and she realized she was as out of breath now as she had been before, her heart pounding just as loudly, and she smiled up at him reassuringly when a momentary shiver snuck up on her. She was blushing, she could feel it; she just didn't care. She held his eyes steadily with her own, afraid that if she looked away it might break the spell and she would remember why what she was thinking should embarrass her. The fingertips of her hand still on his neck slid to his cheek instead, and they hovered there for a moment before dropping to trace once over his lips and then fall at her side.

"...later." His dark eyes never wavered, and she sighed a bit unsteadily and finally looked away, looking around the room half as an excuse and half in renewed wonder. "I..." She looked back at him, and then put her arms around his waist and hugged him, her chin resting on his shoulder. "Thank you. It's...thank you." Her voice sounded strangely whispery, as if its strength had been sapped under the burden of love it had to carry.

She kissed him behind his ear, but did not pull away. "We should go to class," she said at last, reluctantly.

But she liked the room. He'd known she would, of course, because he knew her better than any other human being alive, but there had still been the uneasy anticipation. Knowing she'd like it wasn't the same as knowing it.

But she'd liked it. And Gabe was glad.

He'd expected that they'd skip classes today. From what Gabe had overheard since his arrival -- because he heard, if not everything, then pretty damn close, and people had a way of forgetting he was in the room after he trained them to not talk to him anymore -- that skipping class on one's birthday was not an unheard of thing, and that the disciplinary office didn't even bother to assign punishment for it. Of course, he'd be assigned to some janitorial task and assigned extra work for each class missed, but it was Sol's brithday. So be it.

Still, would Sol suggest it if she didn't want to go? Or rather, if she didn't want to avoid reprecussions more than she wanted to ditch. Maybe she just didn't want him to get stuck with the extra work. Or maybe she wanted to go to class.

Gabe always trusted Sol to tell him what she wanted. If she said they should go to class then Gabe would assume she meant it.

He kissed her on the cheek. "You are very welcome."

Now was where he was supposed to let go of her and walk with her toward the door. Really, it was. He was almost certain. Why were his arms still around her? Why were his legs unresponsive?

And they played. It had been six weeks since they'd played, and so Sol asked Gabe who had won the last game they had played, so that they could determine who would play which color. Gabe replied that he could not remember, which earned a smirk from Sol as her eyes moved over the map-covered walls. Gabe insisted she play white, and she sighed dramatically, smiled, and assented.

The game lasted much longer than usual. There was never a game that they'd not taken seriously, so to say that this game was more serious, or more involved, would be incorrect. But it was definitely different. There was definitely more to this game than there had been in a while.

It was a graceful dance. Each parry and thrust mixed the pieces more, until sides were hardly distinguishable, but their armies both remained largely intact. Neither side gave up anything. Both were playing for the win. Whether they each truly wanted the outcome that would follow their victory was immaterial; that was separate. That was like assigning outcomes to either side of a coin. It didn't matter which outcome was assigned to which side until the coin landed. The game was untouched by such things, just as the coin was. The game was incorruptible.

But slowly, their armies whittled away at each other. By the time the rest of Command School was already half an hour into first period, both sides had lost their queen, both rooks, a bishop and a knight each, and at least five pawns. Gabe looked up at Sol as he moved his knight, and smiled at the sight of her lovely blue face, at the sight of the faint battle-smirk that she always got when she was enjoying the simplicity and purity of the game, at the way her eyes sparkled with anticipation when she knew that her strategy, if not blocked, would take him in only a few more moves, and wondered if he had a strategy that would get to her sooner. They'd played each other thousands of times before, and while Gabe might not always be able to guess Sol's strategy, because her skill was constantly evolving, he could always read Sol herself. Because Sol didn't really change. Not really. She'd grown up, she'd gotten taller, her face had hardened, and her mannerisms and other such trivialities had changed over time, but Sol was still the same. And when he really thought about it, when he really stood outside himself and tried to see himself, not as from the inside, but from without, as Sol would see him, he realized that he really hadn't changed either. He was never really the same from one moment to the next; nobody was, really. But he'd always been Gabe. And he always would be. And Sol would always be Sol too.

No matter what, he could count on that. The world around them was constantly changing. People, places, events, constant flux, never the same from one moment to the next. But they were always the same. Their love was eternal. Like the game. It was always new, and always different, because over time they evolved, but the game itself was always the same.

Caught up in the game, Sol grinned delightedly as her pawn reached the back row first. Her hand swept left to retrieve the queen from the side of the board and put her back into play. She was so focused on the play that she didn't notice Gabe's small smile until after he reached to move his piece as well. Strangely, he erected no defense, and his bishop remained where it was. Instead, Gabe pushed his pawn onto the back row and retrieved his own queen as well.

Puzzled, Sol shrugged mentally and reached for her queen to finish the game, and Gabe spoke a single word in a voice pitched just loud enough for her to hear, with a hint of warmth to it.

"Check."

She blinked in confusion. Check? How could he have put her into check? It took staring at the board for several moments before it sunk in.

His queen - when it had become a queen - was on the same diagonal as her king, and as such, had placed her king into check as soon as it had promoted. Her eyes widened as she saw the second part of his trap, and she bit her lip and made sure there was no way out of it before she looked up at Gabe and grinned, the blue light of the glowsticks making him look unreal and ethereal. Her king was in check, and she had to move it...and her queen was three spaces down on the same diagonal. When she moved her king - as she had to; there was no way she could prevent it - Gabe would take her new queen with his own, and the game, for all intent and purpose, would be finished.

The final part of her birthday gift, delivered as promised; Gabe had smashed her at chess.

She moved the king aside, and Gabe reached across the board and replaced her queen with his own, and Sol sighed. The rest of the game, as predicted, went very quickly, and soon she was left with nothing but the tiny bit of endgame left as her king went through the futile dance of avoidance, trying to win a stalemate from defeat. Gabe was having none of it. Four moves after her knight was killed, Sol found herself cornered behind her own pawns, and the black queen coasted serenely in between them on her bishop's assurance and sat comfortably down next to her.

Time broke down, and Gabe had no concept of how long the kiss lasted. It had a start, and in time it came to an end, but he had no idea how much space there was in between. When they did part, their eyes met again.

And what Gabe saw there made his heart sing. No matter how many times he looked into these eyes and saw the love there, deeper than the greatest ocean, purer than the clearest stream, it never failed to make his heart skip a beat and his breathing rasp just a little. To think that somebody felt like that about him . . .

Gabe hoped it wouldn't ever lose that effect on him. Even if it meant being worried and unsure, he didn't ever want to take her love for granted. It was too precious a thing to ever truly get used to.

I feel the same, Sol. Common doesn't have the words to describe what I feel, but I feel it. I can feel it raising the hairs on my arms. I can feel it resonating through my bones. And I only hope that my eyes are clear enough windows, Sol, because I want you to know how much I love you, and no amount of saying it is ever going to do it justice.

Cradled against Gabe, her head on his shoulder where it had come to rest after their last kiss ended, unearthing such a reason seemed an unlikely prospect. Only two hours ago, Sol had been uncertain, the distance between them quiet and unbreachable in the shadow of Katera's broken heart. Everything had been healed now, and like a terminally ill person who suddenly found herself miraculously cured, Sol's disbelief was surpassed only by her happiness, and Gabe was the source. What else could she want that might entice her to move?

An answer came immediately to mind, and she blushed lightly, her face against his throat where he couldn't see.

"...Gabe?" she began slowly, speaking against his neck. His pulse was warm and alive under her lips, and she smiled a little. This morning had been as perfect as she could define it to be, and she didn't want to ruin anything, but...

"Gabe..." I love you. I want you. I'm not afraid anymore, and I hope you aren't either, or I'm going to scare the hell out of you later. Later. Not now.

She rose slowly, keeping hold of his hand and tugging him gently to his feet so she could embrace him more easily, hugging him tightly and enjoying his heartbeat. His arms were strong around her, and her unrelenting thought processes made her knees a little weak for a moment. She clung to him, grateful that love gave her an excuse to remain against his chest until her blush had faded somewhat, and when she pulled away it was only a faint tint.

Hard work didn't scare Sol. If it hadn't been for Riya, she might even have enjoyed the prospective curriculum, aside from the reduction in their free time. Riya was what she didn't want. Riya was what was making her sick to her stomach. She'd gotten too complacent after their resolution with Kat. She'd gotten too used to the idea that for now they had no enemies. She had gotten too comfortable with peace, and now it was gone.

She crossed her arms across her middle and looked up at Gabe. He was looking at her in some concern, and she summoned a reassuring smile that never arrived. Since Riya had been gone, Gabe had changed drastically. She didn't credit this to Riya's absence. Gabe hadn't paid much attention (if such a thing could be said with a straight face) to Riya or anyone else after fight, except her. But Riya had been an unpleasant object of comparison to her when evaluating Gabe in the launch, and it wasn't until now that she realized exactly how far he'd come.

They'd come.

How far was Riya going to drag them back?

Even if the course hadn't been demanding, their aura of safety had been destroyed. The only positive thing now was that the AIT was demanding enough to require a great deal of Riya's attention. Perhaps they wouldn't end up spending much time with her at all. Perhaps they would be on alternate class schedules and they could move to the point of near-comfortable distance they had in the barracks in the Launch.

Gabe remembered that Sol had never liked Riya. Even when the girl had been something of an ally, however brief that time might have been, it had been easy to see that Sol was uncomfortable around the girl. Gabe remembered that the first time he'd ever seen Sol truly upset had been in the Launchy bathroom, right after they had crawled through the vents and spied on Mai and Anderson. Her wounded fingers contributed, surely, as had Gabe's distinct lack of concern -- such a cold bastard he'd been, then. And her phobia concerning enclosed spaces could not have helped matters. But Gabe remembered the betrayed look in Sol's eyes, both when she looked at Gabe and at Riya, as though he had more in common with the cold-eyed sociopath than he had with Sol herself. Perhaps it was merely a cnostuct of his own mind; he'd not known her well at the time, and so all his interpretations of looks of internal emotions were likely to be highly inaccurate. Perhaps his memory of that interpretation was more a mirror than a window. Perhaps it had been he who was afraid that he was more like Riya than Sol. Even then, he must have known, at some level, which of them was truly admirable, which of them was truly worth learning from, even if he did not realize it.

And what Gabe could remember was that when Naomi took Sol away, to the Infirmary, and Riya returned with her cold gaze and her heartless planning, it had first become clear to Gabe that Sol was more than just an ally. For a long time now, he'd thought that it was later, when he woke up after the fight with Kat and Jax, and heard Sol's soft sobs calling him back from the darkness, that he first came to understand that she meant more to him than any mere ally could. But it was before that. It could have been anybody that called him back; that it had been Sol was merely lucky coincidence. No, Gabe could now remember how it had felt to stand in front of that sink, hands braced on either side of the basin, and know that Naomi was right, that all he did was endanger Sol, and feel worry and remorse at the idea of losing Sol. Yes, Gabe remembered now. He'd already come to care about her, as much as his tiny black heart had been capable at that time, before they ever got to the Infirmary. It had never been simple coincidence. It was something else that bound Gabe to her, something deeper. True love. Fate. Mental undertow. Whatever, Gabe didn't care. It brought them together. It drove Gabe to risk more for Sol than he would have for any mere ally. That was all that mattered.

Gabe could remember their discussion in the library, after the pendant incident and the unspoken threat in Riya's eyes. Sol had told him that she was scared. Riya unnerved her. Perhaps for the same reasons Gabe had unconsciously realized, or perhaps for other reasons entirely. But Gabe knew that whatever fear he might have for their safety, Sol's went beyond that. Rational or not, her eyes spoke of fears much greater.

But Riya was human, even if she didn't exhibit anything besides the basic biological requirements. That meant that there was no certainty where she was concerned, because Sol did not know her like she knew Kat, and she didn't trust her. There were different levels of trust. Sol would have trusted Gabe with anything, because she trusted Gabe to be Gabe. Sol would have trusted Katera with little, because she trusted Katera to be Katera. Sol did not trust Riya to be Riya, because Riya, such as she was, did not exist. There was no Riya, not really; there was something that looked human and went by that name that lived in their cell with them, something that had a reason to dislike them, if it could in fact dislike, but there was no Riya. There was nothing for her to trust in.

For once, Gabe's reassurance did not completely quell her fears, but she traced his features gently with a fingertip until she grew calmer. Gabe would be on guard, and she would be on guard, and they would be safe...but Sol didn't like being on guard. The dread shrunk and settled somewhere near the pit of her stomach. She would function. She would excel. Riya would cause them no harm, but as long as Riya shared a cell with them, Sol would not relax in her presence.

A tiny stubborn voice rose within her and brought her fingertip to a halt at the left corner of his mouth, and Sol smiled again reluctantly.

But I'll be damned if I act like I'm on guard. Why give her the satisfaction?

Still, he wished he could have said something to help.

Wish? Wish? You bastard, don't just sigh and wish and absolve yourself. Do something about it.

What? What were his options? There were always options. There was always something to be done. Nobody was ever helpless. Everyone made choices every second of their lives right up until the moment of their deaths. There was always something to be done.

Gabe opened his mouth, to say something. He didn't know what. Just that he had to say something, anything.

A voice interrupted him.

"Attention all Scorpions. Report to the Engineering Bay immediately. Repeat, report to the Engineering Bay immediately. You have three minutes."

Gabe shut his mouth and looked about. There was no comm in here; this room didn't even have proper lights installed. But the voice hadn't come from the room. It had seemed to be coming from . . .

Had ran his fingers over the Scorpion patch on his shoulder. A comm built in? Did that mean that they were being tracked now, like in Battle School?

Gabe felt a small shiver run down his spine. As far as they knew, nobody knew about this place of theirs. Not even admin. But now . . .

They kept silent in the halls; lights out had only just occurred as they were leaving the Quad, and they didn't want to be stopped. Gabe knew all the cameras, all the blindspots; getting to the room without being detected was easy.

They slipped through the door, and once they were safely inside, Gabe turned and put his arms around Sol and hugged her to himself. This whole situation was awful. It was absolutely terrible. Hale would make their days miserable. Riya would make their nights unbearable.

And in two years, when it was over, all they had to look forward to was the choice of signing on with the SOTF or cutting themselves loose of the IF's chain. Either way . . . no stars.

No stars.

Gabe shut his eyes tight and buried his face in Sol's hair.

To hell with you then, Bryant. We don't goddamn need you. Come graduation we're gone. We'll find another way to get a ship. A way we choose. You wanted us to learn special ops, Bryant? You thought that was what we'd be good at? We'll show you how goddamn good we can be at it. We'll finish this damn course, and when we grad, we'll go into business for ourselves, and we'll horde away money until we've got enough to buy our ship, and then we're gone. We don't need you or the goddamn IF, if this is what you're willing to do to us.

Gabe was upset.

Sol was too, but she'd been upset all day. She was too tired and worn right now to feel it properly, but it was there. That was something she'd almost become accustomed to. It took something spectacular to upset Gabe, and she'd never seen him like this. He'd been upset before, true, but not without serious and very personal issues bearing down on him, and even then he had for the most part borne up stoically.

Now that stoicism was showing some weak points, and it unnerved Sol more than she liked to admit to herself. At the same time, she was aware that this was not something he could show to anyone else, and not something she wanted him to show anyone else. If Gabe wanted support, she wanted to give it to him, the same way he gave to her.