Disclaimer: the members of Mutant X do not belong to me but any characters you don't recognize probably do.

This story is the third in a trilogy after Golddigger and Catching Up (you don't necessarily have to read those first though be warned it might help). Its set four years ish after the end of Catching Up and everything's very different.

She looked around her, her brunette hair shining in the sunlight as it moved. The smell of oil and gasoline hit her nostrils and she breathed it in. She had always liked that smell, it was warm and tangy and immediately recognisable. She walked forward, turning for a second to glance back at the car she had just gotten out of. She smiled as she looked at him, his ash blonde hair falling in his eyes as he re-tuned the radio. She would have to remember to change it back.

She turned again and moved towards the door into the garage. The sounds of a local radio station filtered through the metal and she could hear banging and clinking as somebody worked on a car. A million thoughts filled her mind. Would he want to see her? Would he want to help? Or would he want to leave it all behind just like they had all done back then? There were so many questions and uncertainties but she knew that she had to atleast ask some of those questions, she had to solve some of those uncertainties.

She pushed the door open, the sounds which had previously been dulled coming into focus. She looked around her as she tried to accustom her eyes to the relative darkness inside the building. Eventually she stopped being able to just see shapes and outlines and shadows and she took in the whole room. Two cars were in front of her, one of them raised above head level. The other was still on the ground and she looked closer at the man with his head under the bonnet. He was fiddling with something she didn't know the name of, his t-shirt covered in dark splashes of grease. He hadn't seen or heard her come in and she stood there watching him for a whole minute. He hadn't changed a bit, atleast not on the outside.

He eventually stood up, straightening his back and groaning as his muscles tensed and bones clicked back into place. He looked over at her. His eyes widened and his mouth opened as if he was about to say something. She waited expectantly, wanting to hear him speak, but he closed his mouth and just stared at her.

'Hi,' she said, lightly, hoping that her voice didn't betray her real emotions. She had become so good at that kind of thing, putting on an act that she occasionally found it difficult to stop, but with him it was different. He knew her better than most and she knew he could tell she was faking her cheery demeanor from his raised eyebrows.

'What do you want?' he replied. He frowned as the words came out. He hadn't meant to sound quite so harsh but her appearance was unexpected to say the least. He watched as the veneer reset itself on her face. Her look was that of business and he could tell that he had put her off any small talk she might have been considering. He was sorry for that, he wanted to know what had been going on in her life, how she was, if she was happy.

'We need your help,' she answered briskly.

'Who's we?' he asked cautiously.

'Take your lunch break and find out,' she said. She hadn't wanted to be so cryptic but sometimes even the walls had ears.

He considered the proposition for a moment, running the idea through his mind. Did he even want to drag up a part of his life he had left behind? He didn't know. But he couldn't let her go without listening to what she had to say. He figured he owed her that much atleast. He turned and walked towards the office located at the back of the building, a small room with filing cabinets adorning the walls, a small desk littered with papers and a few cardboard boxes housing car pieces. He pushed open the door and looked at his boss, a man more happy with his hand inside an engine than holding a pen.

'It okay if I take my lunch break now?' Brennan asked, trying to act as if it was just another day.

'Sure. Who's the brunette?' he asked, admiration present in his eyes.

'A blast from the past.'

Lexa led Brennan into a café a couple of streets away from the garage. She slid herself into a booth, looking out of the window as she did so. She checked the tops of buildings, scanned the windows across the street and looked for the car driven by Jesse. She located him and turned back to Brennan as he sat down. She had checked out her surroundings so subtly that he hadn't noticed a thing. She picked up the menu mostly so she would have something to do with her hands. She knew she was presenting a good front but that didn't make her any less nervous about talking to Brennan. The circumstances under which everything had fallen apart had not been pleasant ones and she had a feeling that neither of them were going to walk out of the café feeling like the meeting had been satisfactory.

'Can I take your order?' Lexa looked up as the waitress spoke. She ordered a black coffee, not sure that her stomach could handle food at that moment in time. Brennan ordered the same and a sandwich before leaning back in his seat. He looked at her, his eyes betraying his feelings of curiosity.

'So, who's we and what do you want help with?' he asked.

She raised her eyebrows at his brusqueness. She guessed that she deserved it and leant her elbows on the table. She knew the building wasn't bugged by the enemy but she had been ordered not to give away too much information to the man sitting in front of her. Despite her best entreaties that he was someone they could trust she was still forbidden from telling him too much.

'Jesse,' she replied, frowning as she realised that she was doing the cryptic thing again.

'Jesse's here,' Brennan said, his voice rising in excitement as he leaned forward on the table.

'Not here, but close.'

As the waitress bought over their order they both pulled apart and remained mute until she had left.

'Look, Brennan, I need to get straight to the point. There are certain things that I can't tell you and I'm sorry that I'm having to keep you in the dark about some stuff but that's just the way it has to be.'

'And I thought we had left Sanctuary,' he bit back, annoyed at the secrets.

'Brennan, I'm sorry.' She looked him straight in the eye, hoping to reassure him that she was worth listening to. 'Its about the Dominion.'

He raised his eyebrows at the mention of the name. He thought he had left them far behind him.

'What about the Dominion?'

'For the past four years myself and Jesse have been working with people to try and bring the Dominion down. We've managed to take out over fifty key players. But they're limbs, they count only in what they can give to the Dominion, they're not what make up the organisation itself. And we've learnt that that elite group do not need others to provide them with resources, they're capable of doing that by themselves. We need your help because we've gotten to the point where there are no more limbs to cut off. We're going for the big guys which is where you come in.' Having finished the speech she had written and rewritten over again in her head she took a sip of her coffee before making eye contact again. He looked away, not sure what to make of what he had just been told. He had tried to leave that life behind him a long time ago and to now be dragged back in was a little overwhelming.

'I don't know,' he said hesitantly.

'We don't have much time which means you don't have much time to make a decision about what you want to do,' she said. 'But I can give you three hours.'

He closed his eyes. Three hours was not enough to make a choice between going back to the garage and living the life he had carved out for himself or going off into the big bad Mutant X style world all over again.

He nodded as he grabbed the sandwich off his plate and stood up.

'Brennan,' she said as he walked past her. 'I don't want to force you into anything but we need you.' He dodged her gaze, unable to look into her pleading eyes, pushed the door open and stepped out onto the street.

She stood up, the coffee in front of her forgotten and walked through to the back of the café, pushing the door to the kitchen open. She walked through the room, shouts echoing off the walls and the smell of bacon and toast wafting towards her nostrils. She continued to walk through the room until she reached a door on the opposite side from the one she had entered through. She pulled it open and walked into a small back room.

'Three hours, Lexa?' a blonde man asked as he walked up to her and handed her a folder full of paper.

'I know, I know, we don't have that much time but he's having to deal with some pretty complicated stuff,' she said as she rifled through all the sheets of paper.

'These are all the new recruits of the Dominion, or at least all the ones who look like they'll be sticking around,' the man said.

She nodded as she took a seat against one of the walls of the room. After Mutant X had split up her and Jesse had been picked up by the CIA. After a period of intensive training which neither of them really needed they had begun work on taking apart the Dominion piece by piece. She had liked that they didn't have to do any of the research stuff anymore, it had been good to just go out and deal with the kicking ass part. But working for the CIA had also been a little terrifying. They had tons more resources than Mutant X had ever had but it had resulted in her knowing a hell of a lot more about the Dominion than she had ever wanted to. All the things they had done and the sheer size of their operation scared the hell out of her. But atleast she always had Jesse to keep her grounded and make her feel safe. She smiled at the thought of her boyfriend. It was a term she had never really used before in her life but that was exactly what Jesse was. And she couldn't have been happier. While so many other parts of her life were screwed up beyond the telling of it atleast he always remained steady, her rock.

She looked up from the document on her lap as she heard his voice. She watched as he looked around the room and she smiled as his eyes fell on her and his face lit up with a boyish smile of his own. He walked towards her and bent down, kissing her lightly on the lips. She moaned quietly, an unnoticeable sound in the small room full of people and wrapped her arm around the back of his neck, pulling him closer. The kiss gradually became harder, more passionate, more intense until they both broke apart, shamefaced at making out in front of so many people.

'How was he?' Jesse asked as he lowered himself to the floor next to Lexa's chair.

'Overwhelmed,' she replied. 'A little confused about everything, and he wasn't happy about the complete lack of information I gave him.'

'Do you think he'll agree?'

'I don't know.'

She looked up as the door was pushed open and sighed deeply as she saw that it wasn't Brennan. It had been three hours seven minutes since they had talked and she was getting anxious. She wasn't worried that something had happened to him, there wasn't any danger of that happening but she was worried that he simply wasn't going to turn up at all. He had no idea what was going on and he had no idea how much Jesse and she needed him. They did and the only reason she hadn't impressed that on him more was because she hadn't been able to tell him anything real.

Her eyes flicked up again as a couple, a tall red haired man and a shorter brunette woman walked in. They headed straight for a table and sat down, staring into each others eyes as an animated conversation followed. She stood, unable to wait any longer for him. She had given him enough time to turn up and although she couldn't blame him for not showing there was still a part of her that was angry at him. She couldn't quite believe that he had been so successful at leaving his old life behind.

She walked out of the café and onto the street, dodging moving vehicles as she made her way across the road towards the car Jesse was stationed in. She saw his disappointed face as she moved closer but his eyes then moved past her and they lit up fractionally. She turned and saw Brennan running across the street towards her, a bag slung over his shoulder.

'Not too late am I?' he said, breathlessly as he reached her.

She smiled in reply and motioned towards the car. Brennan slid into the backseat as Lexa got into the passenger one.

'Lets go,' she said, her voice less heavy and sullen than before. She rolled down the window as the car pulled out into the traffic and headed off to try and find the rest of Mutant X.