Disclaimer: I own none of the characters from Madlax, I'm only borrowing them for awhile. This story will have spoilers for the end of Madlax, as well as yuri content.

Madlax: Picking up the Pieces

Margaret Burton stood before the gate of the new age, and opened it. She saw a vision of the world as it was, and what it could be, and used her new found power to try to fix things. Friends had died and been wounded and Margaret did her best to fix that, too.

Of course Margaret was a young girl, so accidents did happen...

Vanessa Rene slept peacefully, wrapped in warm blankets. The black haired woman slept deeply and in sweet dreams, relaxing in the bed after a very long few days. She gradually came awake, her mind rising up through deep layers of sleep even as memory began to intrude on dreams.

Going to Gazth-Sonika looking for the Enfant data...

Hiring Madlax, working with the mysterious young gunwoman...

Moments of closeness, tenderness together. Madlax saving her life more than once, and taking up a gun herself...

An attack in the forest. A crazy sniper, a shot rang out...

Vanessa's eyes snapped open as she stared up at the ceiling of the hotel. She had been shot! In fact, Vanessa was fairly certain she had been dead. She flipped back the covers to look, relieved she didn't see any wounds or other marks.

"Could you please not do that?" a sleepy voice asked, "I'm trying to sleep."

Vanessa looked down to see Elenore Baker laying beside her in the bed, the brown haired maid clearly not entirely awake yet. 'How the...?' Vanessa wondered as she gently shook her by the shoulder. Elenore made a sleepy grumbling noise, her face creasing in a frown.

"Elenore, wake up," Vanessa said, shaking her.

"Ugh," Elenore blinked sleepily, much like her mistress Margaret might.

Vanessa played dirty, "Margaret is in trouble."

THAT registered, Elenore jerking up and looking around wildly, her eyes narrowing intently. "Where...?" she started, then realized she was naked and in bed with Vanessa. "What is going on?" she demanded flatly.

"I was sort of hoping you could tell me," Vanessa offered wryly, looking around the hotel room curiously. It looked like the room she had stayed in earlier, and she felt a flash of relief at seeing their clothes piled up neatly nearby.

"My memory isn't entirely clear," Elenore conceded, modestly wrapping the sheet around her as she got out of bed and walked to their waiting clothes. "Miss Margaret?" she asked, dropping the sheet and dressing efficiently.

"No idea," Vanessa said, taking a moment to get a good look at Elenore's naked form. The maid was quite shapely, really... She shook herself as she continued, "The feeling I get is that she's fine."

"Feeling?" Elenore raised a eyebrow skeptically, her black dress settling into place, then she tied her apron over it. The outfit looked good on her, as she tidied her skirt and made sure everything was sitting properly.

"Don't tell me you don't feel it?" Vanessa asked as she retrieved her own clothes and got dressed. White shirt and trousers, clean and almost feeling like they hadn't been worn. 'Was my old outfit destroyed or...?' she wondered.

Elenore didn't look happy, but she nodded. "Yes, I feel it too," she conceded, "but with all the strange things that have happened..."

"True," Vanessa narrowed her green eyes as she pulled her shoes on and hunted around for her purse and gun, "let's see it we can find her."

The hotel was based in the 'neutral zone' in Gazth-Sonika, but Vanessa had always heard off in the distance the sound of violence, guns and distant explosions. Now that was silent, and there was a odd feeling of peace in the air.

"It feels... different," Elenore noted as they walked, guided by a feelings and instinct rather than any logical choice..

"It's peaceful," Vanessa agreed, the two walking over a rise. They paused a moments as they looked around, then she smiled as she pointed, "Look!"

Margaret was talking with a red haired girl, the two standing on the bottom of a slope. As they watched they saw Madlax driving by in a sports car of some kind, and shockingly the sniper Limelda was in the passenger seat.

"Come on," Elenore said as she hurried down the rise, then she called out, "Miss Margaret!"

Margaret Burton's face lit up as she saw them, then she was engulfed in a hug from Elenore. "You're both all right!" she exclaimed happily.

Vanessa followed her down, still feeling oddly shaken by seeing Madlax and Limelda together. It wasn't a betrayal of her, exactly, but she knew that she and Madlax had become close, in their time on the run. It felt very strange, seeing Madlax being so close to her.

"Vanessa!" Margaret yelled as she hugged her too, the young woman's grip fierce.

Vanessa hugged her back, smiling down at her fond;y. "I'm glad you made it through, too," she told her, ruffling the smaller woman's hair. She looked up at the girl shyly standing nearby, "Who's your friend?"

"Oh," Margaret smiled shyly herself, "This is Laetita, uhm... she's kind of my sister. Sort of."

"Hello," Laetita smiled, the girl looking about the age Margaret had when she first disappeared.

"Miss Laetita," Elenore smiled at her gently, "it's good to meet you."

"Hello," Vanessa smiled at the girl, then looked over at Margaret, "I take it this is related to the three books and your gift?"

"Yeah," Margaret said, then began to haltingly explain.

It was a bit stunning to take in, that Madlax, Margaret and this girl Laetita were all aspects of the same person. Laetita was Margaret's memory before the accident and her disappearance, Margaret was the blank slate who escaped afterwards and Madlax was the personification of her primal survival instinct, in a way.

Elenore and Vanessa took charge as the only adults present, getting the girls back to the hotel even as they got things organized. Thankfully whatever Margaret had done had seemingly erased the cops chasing Vanessa and Madlax, as well as provided for their essentials. In addition to restored money for them all, Laetita even had a passport waiting at the hotel.

A fast conversation and they decided to head back to Nafrace, where they had lives to try to pick up. Though Vanessa honestly doubted she would or even could go back to her own life. She had helped reveal her bosses were in bed with organized crime, after all. And to be honest she didn't want to work for them again.

The evening flight took off as scheduled, and amusingly both Margaret and Leatita collapsed, out like a light. Elenore checked on the two sleeping girls then returned to her seat, smiling fondly. "They look adorable," she noted fondly.

"That they do," Vanessa had to agree.

Elenore looked over at Vanessa as she asked, "You seemed troubled by what Margaret told us."

"It's a lot to take in," Vanessa admitted. "I mean, knowing the Margaret rewrote reality ten years ago to split herself... then again now, to save us and stop the civil war? It's mind boggling."

"Hmm," Elenore nodded calmly. She waved down the stewardess and got them each a drink, then looked at Vanessa once she left. "But there's something else bothering you, isn't there?"

Vanessa gave Elenore a look, "You read me entirely too well."

"Practice," Elenore shrugged, "well?"

Vanessa looked out the window of the plane, taking in the clouds they were passing through. "I worked with Madlax while I was in Gazth-Sonika," she noted quietly.

"Hmm," Elenore made a sound indicating she was listening.

"She saved my life more than once, and I saved hers," Vanessa mused, "when she was hurt by a mystic attack by Enfant, I protected her."

"You were close," Elenore nodded.

"It became... something stronger than friendship, for me," Vanessa admitted uncomfortably. "I'm not in love with her, exactly, but...," she trailed off, unsure how to put it into words.

"But?" Elenore asked.

"Now I know Madlax is a aspect of Margaret," Vanessa looked kind of bewildered, "and I'm not sure how I feel about that."

"I hadn't considered that," Elenore admitted. She too had worked with Madlax after Vanessa had been shot, and had developed her own degree of admiration for the agent. The woman was a virtual one woman army, combined with a gentle, sad serenity.

Vanessa sighed, "I'm not sure if I merely transfered the friendship I felt for Margaret to Madlax, or if it was something else again..."

"I don't know," Elenore said after a moment, "but I didn't feel the same things for Madlax as I did for Miss Margaret. The feelings were very different."

"That's comforting, a little," Vanessa admitted wryly.

Elenore shrugged slightly, "You're coming back home to tie up lose ends with your company, correct? As well as to make sure everything is fine with Margaret."

Vanessa nodded, conceding that as she said, "Yes, pretty much."

Elenore shrugged, as if Vanessa were being a idiot. "Then go back to Gazth-Sonika once you;re done and see Madlax," she said, "that way you can try to determine if your feelings are real."

"I...," Vanessa hesitated, then nodded, "You may be right."

"I'm always right, Miss," Elenore smiled.

"I wouldn't go that far," Vanessa grumbled.

End

Notes: Going by the scenes with Margaret at the gate, it looks to me like she revived Vanessa and Elenore, as well as fixing everything she could that Enfant had done. I may or may not continue this, looking at the aftermath of what happened.