Author's Note: DO NOT SKIP CHAPTER 10 (Interlude: Sky Compass)! It contains important information that will throw you off if you skip it.

So remember. This update releases TWO chapters. Before you read this one, go back and read Sky Compass.

I posted two Interludes because they are really short, just barely reaching the 2k mark with both of their word-counts combined. Now that I have internet again, my updates will become more frequent.

Andreas had short brown hair cut into a bob-cut that she curled so she matched the trends in America that she had become accustomed to after they had traveled their for their honeymoon. Their relationship had taken a turn for the better and they moved in after the war had ended and no longer did Colonnello see Andreas as his hot-headed second-in-command.

Andreas couldn't have kids, Colonnello found out, and that was why the commanding officer didn't give a rats ass if she was a woman or not. She was a damn good fighter and after she proved herself on the battlefield, the guys didn't give a damn that she was a woman. In the end, she pulled twice the weight—her own, because no one was willing to support her, and her squadron's.

Misogynistic bastards, she thought spitefully. She taught them. She taught all of them.

They weren't alive to tell the tale, however. When she and Colonnello had been captured by Russian forces, the two of them had come out being the only survivors. They had been held for years until the war ended and they were dumped off of the coast of one of the beaches in Palermo. The Italian Army found them, treated their wounds, fixed their minds and gave them a nice lump sum of cash that would help them live happily until they died.

It had lasted for five years before things got, well, boring.

Their life was simple but it was too simple.

This would have been the part where they had kids but since she couldn't, the two of them were just getting bored.

Until Andreas' old friend—a childhood friend, she told him—showed up.

The guy rubbed Colonnello the wrong way. Everything he did just irritated the fuck out of him. From the way he talked to his everyday habits, the guy was just. Fucking. Irritating.

But for all his irritating habits and traits, Colonnello could tell that his presence made Andreas happier so he put up with him. It helped that he was easy to look at—hell, if Colonnello had an interest in men, he would have said the man was attractive but during that time, he hadn't even thought about climbing in bed with another man.

That is until Colonnello walked in with Reborn shoving his tongue down his wife's throat.

He wasn't angry, he realized later. He had been jealous… of his wife.

Andreas knew him better than anyone else so it was no surprise that, after figuring out what the hell he was feeling, he walked in to find the both of them on his bed, stark raving naked—and holy hell, that was supposed to fit where?

He had a vague idea of how sex between two men was supposed to work but there was no way in hell he was going to be on the receiving end. Unfortunately, Reborn was very persuasive.

It really should have stopped after the first night. Colonnello's legs were too shaky to support his weight in the aftermath. But somehow, it turned into a rivalry that had them striving to outdo the other.

It wasn't boring anymore.

But just when it was starting to get fun, a couple of punks thought it would be funny to break into the house and steal. Reborn heard them, killed two of them and went after the third only to find that he was holding Andreas.

She got away. She always got away but, even with as skilled as he was at the time, Reborn was not fast enough to get the gun away from the last intruder before he fired off a shot.

It was sloppy and meant for him—aimed for his heart—but the gunshot had set off the hair-trigger all soldiers had. In her attempts to dodge the bullet, Andreas had fallen straight into its path and had paid for it with her life.

When the funeral was over, Reborn and Colonnello stayed under the typhoon-like rainstorm. "Are you going to leave?" Colonnello asked when the silence became too much.

There was a shift—he had startled Reborn. "...not yet. I still have a few things I want to get done around here. When I do leave, will you come with me?"

Colonnello's eyes widened behind his bangs before he shook his head. Reborn meant it. He wanted Colonnello to come with him. It hurt to deny him but something told Colonnello that now was not the right time. "I can't."

Reborn didn't ask why. "Very well. You know how to find me if you need me." Reborn made sure to give him a direct line of communication before he left.

Before he was out of earshot, Colonnello looked back at him and smirked. Reborn's eyes widened a fraction as he heard what Colonnello told him and then he threw his head back and laughed.

"Idiot. Isn't the answer obvious?" Reborn said before he was gone. Colonnello stopped, cocking his head to the side.

Maybe there was still some hope.

"Tell me, Reborn. When we meet again, will we serve under the same Sky?"

Tsuzukeru.

There may be a lot of OCs but they all die eventually.