Perhaps

Characters: Ice, Kate

Rating: T

Summary: He wonders if she could have been just like him if she had been given no choice.

A/N: Considering the characterizations I give Kate differs a lot from some others, I always found her to be on the same side of the coin as Ice in some ways. Both of them can be driven to their cause, but act a little detached to their situations. Also I wanted to open up a few possibilities.

Ice received his first visitor in a year, the same Ranger who put him here in the first place. He almost expected her. Rangers loved to come down here to gloat to their conquests (he'd seen that redhead come by all too often). Kate was one of the rare ones who didn't waste their time here. She didn't seem like the arrogant person, but then again, Ice didn't know her very well.

What he didn't foresee was a manila envelope delivered to him when his unexpected visitor dropped in at the appointed time. He avoided her steely gaze as he opened the seal and read the fine print, his incredulity growing by the second. The Rangers' boss was officially insane.

"Criminals working for the Union?" he scoffed, looking back to the woman on the opposite side of the table. "What are you Rangers trying this time?"

"There's no joke," she said evenly. "We're employing you. Hastings was interested in your exemplary technical skills when you reprogrammed the Tower's third floor to your liking. Even Isaac agreed that you were a good choice for our upcoming missions."

He didn't deserve that much praise. "What do you want me to do? Change the screensaver of a mob boss's home laptop?"

"Something like that," the answer was uncertain. "I see you've been keeping up with current events."

How could he not? He was able to pick up bits of news from the guards that walked around here. There had always been bad blood between the League Association and the rogue nations, he knew that. The Ranger Union tended to stay away from the conflict since they were primarily a peacekeeping organization, but as the years gone by, it looked like the League wouldn't leave them alone anymore. It was an easy assumption. The Rangers did have excellent combat training and mastery over all sorts of Pokemon types. There was nothing in their repertoire that didn't spell "soldier".

"So this is it?" Ice thumbed through the pages again. "No details until I get to home base?"

"I'm only telling you what I know," she said. "And you won't be operating from the Union. We're relocating you to the Sinnoh Division."

"Aw," he expressed his disappointment. "So I won't be seeing you again after this?"

"No," she told him straight. Touchy.

"What about you, then?"

If this weren't Kate on the other side of the window, she would have bristled. "What about me?"

"They want you on the front lines or something?" he guessed, but he realized he hit too close to home when Kate bit the inside of her mouth and frowned in response.

"You don't have to share," Ice shrugged. "Isn't that stuff confidential?"

"Not exactly," she countered. "It's probably going to be on the news tonight, anyways. A lot of us are being deployed with the rest of League forces to Holon."

Ice watched her tap her fingers on the table most impatiently. "Well, how do you feel?"

"I don't know," she said tentatively. "But I'm not relieved."

Ice knew the feeling. He remembered only joining Altru the normal way: pure hard work. Typical software design for oil pumps, nothing impressive. But then he watched a fellow colleague lose a finger over something, he couldn't remember. It was bad enough to draw the attention of Blake Hall himself. The ceremony was gruesome and hard to look away from. And then a moment later, Blake gave him that guy's position, and next thing he know, he was the Sinis Trio's leader. He lost no fingers, and the pay was good. The only problem was that world domination wasn't entirely his thing. Cool backstory, still criminal.

He saw himself through and beyond the glass, staring back at him uncompromisingly and still mulling over the idea of her role as the next war machine (if she wasn't one already). He didn't pity her or want to help her out. This was merely an observation of an interesting character in his short life. Kate wasn't one of those idealistic wide-eyed rookies who started out thinking that being a Ranger was saving Glameows from trees. If she did, then she wouldn't have been the famed Rank 10 Top Ranger she was today. But as respected and influential as she was, she's here now, days away from possible death, a choice she can't refuse.

For a moment, he wondered if their roles had been reversed, if she was the one in this cold chair, and he was offering her freedom. What if she had taken the job that Blake Hall offered to her on a silver plate should she have had the slightest interest in computers? What if he himself had become a Ranger later and was told to go fight? He highly doubted the story could have changed, for better or for worse.

He let go of the thought the next second. This was Kate, a woman he barely knew, and a Ranger he didn't like (second to that idiot redhead). He'd rather not get entangled in her life, as much as she didn't want to get into his.

"Imagine that," he teased. "You're going to be the League's dog. Not so different, are we?"

"I suppose so," the Ranger said in accord. Did she actually agree with him? "What brought this on, anyway?"

"Nothing," Ice said as he reclined in his folding chair. If there was one thing he missed about being one of the Sinis Trio, it was the good office chairs. He never had those when he was still in the streets.

"Well, then," Kate was eager to finish the conversation, pushing the envelope back to him. "You want the job or not?"

"I don't really have a choice, so why do you even ask?"