The house was still, at least for his house, but it wasn't quiet enough to arouse suspicion. The TV blared in the living room, competing with a stereo upstairs and Dak drumming by himself in the garage. Those simple noises were all signs that the kids were occupied with something constructive, relaxing, or doing homework, which was just the way Duo liked it. Especially after he'd had to spend most of his day in a hospital.

He was making his rounds, checking on kids, turning off lights in empty rooms and just generally winding down for the night, when it occurred to him that something was wrong in his peaceful household. Somebody was baking in the kitchen—he could smell cookies—and Maggie was upstairs getting Lexi ready for bed.

Duo sighed as he pushed the swinging kitchen door open. He was getting really tired of having to be the bad guy.

"This doesn't look like resting," he said, crossing his arms over his chest and fixing Faith with a glare. He knew he'd never beat Heero in a staring contest, but he hoped it was enough to get his point across.

Faith only shrugged. Her face was corpse-white and she slumped in her chair, elbows on the table, chin on her fists, as if she was too tired to sit up anymore without the tabletop to support her. Mark and Luke sat across from her and since the twins weren't cracking jokes or making a mess, Duo could only guess that Faith's drained appearance had shocked them into behaving themselves. For once.

"She's making cookies," Mark said.

"She says we can't have any," Luke added.

The twins were doing their homework—without being asked, begged, or bribed—and Duo didn't want to send them packing unless he had to. It was a wasted effort anyway, since the two little sneaks would just stand in the hall and try to listen in no matter what he did.

It usually wasn't a big deal since Duo preferred to keep the lines of communication wide open, to encourage the kids to come to him if they had any problems, but this time he didn't want them to have the full grasp of what had been going on. So instead of bringing up Wing Zero—which he honestly didn't even want to think about, let alone talk about—or why Faith was avoiding Trowa, Duo stuck with the most immediate, and most innocent, gripe that presented itself.

"Faith," he sighed, trying to ignore the boys for the moment, "What are you doing in here? You're supposed to be in bed."

"It's called baking, Duo," Faith said. Her low voice was so flat with exhaustion that she sounded eerily like her old man, enough that it gave Duo the creeps. "Like Wingus and Dingus just told you. I'm making apology cookies for all the people I beat up today. Chocolate makes everything better."

"Since when? You hate chocolate, Faith."

"Other people like it."

The oven timer beeped and Faith started to push herself up from the tabletop. Duo stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and went to retrieve the tray of cookies from the oven himself. There was a spatula nearby, and he grabbed it and started carefully moving cookies onto a cooling rack. Maybe he wasn't much of a cook, but this was something he could handle.

"Can we have apology cookies for being called Wingus and Dingus?" Mark asked.

"Yeah, can we?" Luke echoed.

"Pipe down," Duo muttered to the twins. "If you boys are out of homework, I'm sure I can find some chores to keep you busy."

"Homework," the boys said at the same time.

"Lots of it," Mark added.

"Tons," Luke agreed.

Duo rolled his eyes. They were laying it on a little thick, and he could only guess that they were waiting for Faith to drop her guard so they could see where she stashed the cookies. Mark and Luke were far from unintelligent, but they were immature enough that they still didn't look too far beyond personal gain. It was unlikely that they'd figured out that something serious was going on behind the scenes in their lives, or that Duo was trying desperately to keep it that way. In the background, hopefully unnoticed and unknown forever.

His experience with the gundams had marked him for life, made him a target and a slave to his past, and occasionally forced him to act as a messenger of death. Knowing that one of them—the most dangerous one ever built, in his opinion—still existed was like the bad old days coming back to haunt him. He wasn't about to let that past touch his kids any more than it already had. If he did, then Faith's grim condition was just the beginning of his troubles.

Lost in his thoughts, Duo didn't see Torstin's tail poking out from under the table until he almost stepped on it. He stumbled, trying to avoid the dog—fervently wishing Relena hadn't sent the damn nuisance animal back with Faith—and dropped the spatula. It fell neatly into Faith's waiting hand, as if she'd planned the whole thing.

"Nice catch!" he said.

It was the same thing he'd told her that morning, he remembered, when she'd panicked over snatching a falling glass before it could shatter on the floor. Beneath Faith's bemused expression, Duo read the edge of fear behind her eyes as he took the spatula back from her.

Things started clicking into place. Relena's warning. Faith's odd behavior. The fight at the hospital. It all added up to one thing—Zero's influence, and more of it than Duo thought he knew how to deal with. It was time to call in reinforcements.

As casually as he could, Duo set down the spatula and turned to the kids.

"All right," he sighed. "You two take your tons of homework upstairs where there aren't any cookies around to distract you. Go on, pack it up."

"What?" The twins stared up at him with their most innocent—and therefore most guilty—expressions. "But Dad—"

"Nope." Duo cut them off mid-gripe. "Don't wanna hear it. It's almost your bedtime anyway, so get going."

The boys crammed their stuff into their backpacks and went, grumbling the whole way. He heard their feet on the stairs and knew they hadn't noticed anything more serious than the cookies. If they had, the little scamps would have stayed nearby to eavesdrop.

"You, too, Faith," he said. "It's time to do what the doctor said and get some rest. If you don't want to do that here, I can take you back to the hospital. Your choice, kiddo."

He meant it, too, and not just because he needed Faith out of the room. He was supposed to be taking care of her—which was something she obviously needed right now—and if another trip to the hospital was what it took to get her back in the pink, Duo would drag her there kicking and screaming if he had to.

"Like I want to spend another second in that hospital," Faith muttered. "Jeez, Duo, what's with you all of a sudden? You're planning to eat all my cookies as soon as my back is turned, aren't you?"

"And ruin my schoolgirl figure?" he asked innocently. "Hilde would kill us both. And then she'd run off with the guy in the short shorts who delivers packages to the office. All over a couple of cookies. That is so not happening, Faith."

Faith's startled burst of laughter was its own reward. The hug was a nice bonus. And the fact that she went to rest while her cookies were still cooling on the counter was a miracle. Duo put the rack on top of a cupboard—where he thought it would be safe from anyone who happened to walk in hoping for a snack—and ducked outside with his cell phone. With Dak in the garage and the house full of rugrats, the van was probably the only place he could make a private phone call.

He just hoped somebody he trusted was around to pick up.

Dak sat back on his stool and swiped a sweaty arm across his forehead. His shirt was soaked through and his arms were as limp as cooked spaghetti.

Drumming was intense when you did it with passion. Normally it was a good way to work off stress without having to go any farther from home than the drum kit in the garage. But Dak still couldn't relax, even after a session that had left him breathless and trembling.

Too much going on, he decided as he began cleaning up. But that was why he'd gone out to the garage to practice in the first place. When Dak played his drums, he could get lost in the moment, totally absorbed into the space between one beat and the next. Then, when it was time to put his things away, his mind was clear and he could concentrate on important things without warring thoughts and emotions clouding his judgment.

"Is Dad in here?"

Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot he could do about his brothers clouding his judgment.

"No."

Short answers were always best when it came to Chris. The guy was as deaf as a bag of rocks without his hearing aids and, if Dak's observations were correct, about as intelligent. Dak tried to avoid his older brother as much as possible; when Chris failed to solve a problem with logic, he usually made a last-ditch attempt to solve it with his fists. Dak was more than tired of being the butt of his brother's solutions.

"Oh." Chris looked thoughtful for a second. "Do you know anything about nanotechnology, Dak?"

It wasn't the question Dak had been expecting. Chris wasn't usually interested in anything more complicated than changing the ring tone on his cell phone.

"Nanotech is tiny robots, Chris," Dak said, trying to stick with small words. "It's mostly an experimental field. Lots of people are studying what can be done with it right now."

"Yeah," Chris said. "I was looking into a study earlier. I wanted to ask Dad about it."

Dak thought Chris was barking up the wrong tree there—their dad preferred to work with things he could see—but he really didn't care enough to discuss it further. He had other things on his mind, things that were more important than experiments being conducted in other places by other people. Like what the hell was going on with his sister. Dak's area of expertise was computers, not people, and trying to figure out what Faith was thinking was like trying to teach Chris how to write software. It just wasn't going to happen.

Chris turned to go and Dak realized that his older brother's observations might be useful after all. As much as Dak hated to admit it, Chris happened to be very good with people. Maybe he knew something Dak didn't.

"Hey—Chris, wait."

It was a good thing Chris could read lips; Dak had mostly forgotten how to sign. Up until now, Chris's hearing aids had been effective enough that he'd never needed to become really proficient at it.

"What?"

Dak sighed, wondering how to bring up the thing that had been bothering him all night. It was a touchy subject and he wasn't sure Chris would understand.

"You remember this afternoon, when Dad sent us to check the dock and get Fay's stuff?"

"Yeah."

"I found a phone with Faith's things while I was cleaning up. Preventer standard issue, just like the one Trowa has."

"So?"

"So I think it must be hers, to replace the one that got stolen when she was kidnapped. But she never gave me the number. Why not?"

Chris shrugged. "Hell if I know," he said. "She probably hasn't had time; she only got here yesterday. Why? Is it that big a deal?"

Chris didn't get it. He didn't know what it was like, though. To have just one real friend. Just one person who really got you. Chris was a jock; he was the kind of guy that came packaged a dime a dozen and he was popular on top of that, even if he was slowly going deaf. If one of Chris's friends suddenly bailed for a better life, somebody else would step right in to take that person's place. Dak, on the other hand, didn't know what he'd do if Faith left again. But he wasn't going to say all that in front of Chris.

"Forget it," he said. "I'll ask her later."

Chris shrugged again. "Whatever."

Whatever, Dak thought mockingly as he watched his brother walk back into the house. Chris just didn't understand, and Dak wasn't going to waste his breath trying to explain. He went back to his drums, cleaning up quickly so he could go inside and email Len again. It was time to put Operation Keep Faith Distracted into action.

Okay. First it was time to come up with a better name for their plan. And then they could put it into action. Soon.

"GOOOOAAL!"

It was good to have some noise in the house, Relena decided, even if she wasn't a hardcore soccer fan like her five-year-old nephew. Which was, if she was being completely honest with herself, part of the reason she'd invited Lucy and Gio over for dinner.

The house was too quiet when she was alone. It was just too big and empty, and situated too far from civilization, for Relena to feel entirely comfortable in it on her own. At least it was now that she knew what it could be when it was full of life and light.

"When is Uncle Heero coming back?" Gio asked as the game switched over into a commercial. "He likes soccer."

"He likes pretty much any sport," Relena agreed, reaching down to ruffle Gio's hair. "I don't know when he'll be back, Gio. It might be a long while this time."

Or it might be never. This wasn't an ordinary job and, although Heero wasn't an ordinary person, he was still human. Gio was too young to understand that, though, and Relena couldn't keep grappling with her fears for Heero's safety. She needed to look after herself now—which was the primary reason she'd decided to throw this little party.

"I think it's time for some ice cream," she said. "Lucy, why don't you come help me dish it up? And Gio, you can stay here and let us know when the game comes back on."

"Okay!"

Relena's stomach churned at the thought of ice cream, although it had sounded great when she'd gotten her assistant to pick it up that afternoon. She rested a hand over her grumbling abdomen and decided to pass on dessert. If she started puking, Gio would, too.

"You still feeling sick?" Lucy asked, clearly concerned. Relena shrugged.

"That's part of why I asked you to come tonight," she said hesitantly. "I was hoping you and Gio might agree to stay here with me for a while. At least until I know how things are going to work out with Heero and Faith. I'm not sure I want to be alone."

Relena thought she probably could have phrased it better when Lucy's expression changed from a concerned frown to wide-eyed worry.

"Do we need to increase your security?" she asked. "I thought things were dying down."

"No, it's not that," Relena said, although it probably wouldn't hurt to put another guard or two on duty at the office. Just in case. "It's just that I haven't been feeling so well. I don't like being alone when I'm sick."

"Is it that bad?" Lucy asked. "What's wrong? Did Sally say?"

Relena shook her head. "It's inconclusive. Sally wants to do more tests Monday morning before she'll confirm anything. But it's fine. I'm fine, and I already know what's going on. I think I would just feel better if there was someone in the house, that's all."

"Relena—"

"Nausea. Mood swings. Cravings—I swear I've eaten a whole jar of jalapenos today. I've been through this before," Relena said, cutting off what was certainly a lecture about needing to take better care of herself. "I'm afraid I'll start fainting next, and I don't want to be home alone if I pass out. That's all."

"Fainting?" Lucy's concern turned to suspicion. "And what do you mean, you've been through this before? Relena, what have you been doing to yourself?"

Relena couldn't keep a lid on her smile anymore, even though she knew she must look crazy. She hadn't wanted to spill the beans yet, not before Sally confirmed it, but she had to tell someone. Sometimes, in those rare moments when she could draw her mind away from worrying over Heero and Faith, she felt so ecstatic it was hard to breathe.

"Before," she repeated, her words coming out in an excited squeak. "Before Faith."

Understanding dawned in Lucy's eyes and suddenly Relena wasn't the only one grinning like an idiot. "No," she whispered. "Really? Now?"

"Really. Now." Relena repeated, feeling warmth flush her cheeks. "I'm going to be a mom again."

Notes: I miss you. Many thanks for all of the love you guys have shown me while I've been so busy with work. This place-and this story-keeps me going. This chapter's a little shorter than I had originally intended, but I think it's okay. I've been cutting things from my original plan, trimming the story so maybe I'll be able to get updates out sooner. Anyway. Please let me know what you think!