Trowa was aware that her health could possibly get worse before it got better, and if that became the case… well he’d just have to call in a few favors with an associate or two of his

Trowa was aware that her health could possibly get worse before it got better, and if that became the case… well he’d just have to call in a few favors with an associate or two of his. Sally would most likely take a look without asking too many questions if he indicated that discretion was in order. If worst came to worst there was a small, state-of-the-art hospice on the grounds of the Preventors HQ they might not ask any questions either out of deference for Trowa’s rank. Rank had its privileges alright. First things first he had to find a way to get her fever down; she was warming up way too fast and even with the administration of the anti-venom there was no guarantee that it would be the right kind. Kaneda might just have decided to use something really obscure, something that a general anti-venom wouldn’t take care of. Granted the odds were slim, but the possibility existed. The sooner he helped her to recover the sooner he could leave this place and return home. Besides, she nursed him, so it was only right to return the favor.

She certainly looked young, lying so limply in his arms… and oddly vulnerable, which was at odds with what he knew of her character.

<She must have the first-aid supplies she used for me lying around here somewhere. I’ll bet she’s already packed it away so I’d best start by looking through her things for it.> With that he padded softly over to her room and pulled out her small carry-bag of belongings.

Trowa riffled through the scant belongings in the very well worn (practically tattered) cari-sak Missy kept in her quarters looking for the medical supplies she surely kept. On the top there was mostly clothes, and a well worn paperback book, under it she kept the special gear she used as Shadowblade minus the weapons which were mostly likely in a hidden compartment or something along those lines. In the very botton Trowa discovered a few meager personal possessions. The box which he had taken to be the medical kit was actually the box she kept her keepsakes in. The first thing he saw had made him nearly drop the box in surprise.

A picture frame. Not of itself so uncommon; he traveled with one of his sister Catherine while he went on dangerous missions himself. The picture contained four tiny figures; a young girl of about ten with a two year old on one hip and a four year old climbing over her back. Off to one side sat a frail-looking man in a wheelchair with a cast one one leg and another little boy who was holding the girl’s hand. They were all smiling or caught mid-laugh and it was easy to see the closeness and unity of the small family group. Even the girl was laughing, her lovely blue eyes lit up from within. But the fact that the young girl in the picture was the same young woman who lay unconscious nearby was not what shocked him into a gasp. The surprising thing was that he knew that face. He knew the girl in the picture. Midii Une.

Trowa shook his head in disbelief. It was impossible, too great a coincidence. Two virtual strangers who’d meant something to one another as children didn’t suddenly bump into each other as adults. Things like that didn’t happen. Therefore, since things like that didn’t happen, that woman was not Midii Une. It couldn’t be.

The box dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers and scattered its few contents to the floor in front of him. Two more picture frames…and a cross tumbled out of the little package. It was the cross that immediately caught his eye, shining up the reflected light of mid-day at him. He stared down at it in shock.

If he’d been looking for a divine sign of confirmation there was nothing more undeniable than this. He’d worn that cross. As a boy he’d treasured it, memorizing every plane and angle, the weight, the feel… believing that it had come from someone who’d cared about him just a little. He still recalled the cold feeling that had surrounded his heart when he’d found out that everything he’d believed it had represented, trust, friendship, compassion, had all been a lie. He could still feel the tug at the base of his neck from when he’d snapped the chain off and cast the transmitter at the feet of the friend who’d betrayed him. He thought she’d given it to him because she wanted him to have some kind of protection, even if it was only in her mind; he’d thought that Midii Une had wanted him to come back alive from battle because she cared about what happened to him. She hadn’t cared; she’d only been doing her job. He’d shot the cross as a symbol. Midii had given it to him under false pretenses of friendship and he’d destroyed it as a way of repudiating her. He’d burned that bridge behind him and walked away.

<There is no denying it now,> he thought darkly. <That girl, the one who hides her work behind the mask of Shadowblade, that girl is Midii Une.>

They’d been friends once, and also enemies, which caused him to question whether they’d ever really been friends. Now what were they, passing acquaintances? He hadn’t even recognized her when he’d met her face to face. She hadn’t recognized him either… or had she?

<This is all entirely too neat to be a coincidence,> he thought suspiciously. His soldier trained mind was already busy putting facts together and taking them apart, constructing and deconstructing scenarios based on them. Trowa considered a little paranoia to be a healthy survival trait.

Well there was a catch. Who would she bring it back to? The Alliance was already long gone and that was who she’d been working for the last time they’d met.

<Well, she’s a bounty hunter apparently, she could merely sell the information to the highest bidder,> he supplied to himself. <Right, so she sells the information off and walks away with an even larger sum of money. Talk about playing both sides against the middle.>

The more he thought about it, the angrier it made him.

<She probably even tracked me down, knowing just how to act to get me to trust her,> he thought broodingly, his frown deepened. <That’s the real reason why we’ve met after all of these years. It wasn’t by accident, it was by design. That’s the only explanation. The coincidence is entirely too great to be coincidence, it had to be deliberate. She probably even planned to string me along just to see how much she could find out. That’s how spies work.>

Twice the fool now, he only had himself to blame for trusting such a sweet and innocent looking face. She looked so delicate lying there, like a little angel fallen to earth. No one would ever suspect the deviousness she hid behind that fake purity.

He’d confront her with her wrongdoings and show her that he wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t figure things out. His paths of thought had long since jumped the track from cool logic to more basic gut emotions. Part of him was still angry at her, still feeling betrayed by her and was not at all inclined to listen to or believe anything she’d said.

He shook her roughly to awaken her. Midii stirred a little, mumbled softly in her sleep, and continued dreaming. Trowa frowned in irritation. He wanted to confront her with her crimes and he wanted to do it now… before he could stare at her peaceful face for too long and lose his nerve.

“Wake up,” he ordered, shaking her roughly again. Midii blearily opened her eyes to look at him and by reflex pulled to gun out from her pillow and aimed it at him. When she got a second (more wide awake) look at the person who’d jostled her from her dreams she relaxed and put the gun away.

“Oh, it’s just you,” she said, her voice rough and heavy with sleep. “What are you doing here Mister Barton?”

“Why don’t you drop the act and call me by the name you really know me as?” he demanded sharply.

“What are you on about?” Midii questioned as she looked at him like he done lost his mind.

“You tell me Midii Une,” he said, stressing her name.

“How in the hell did you find out my name?” she demanded, running a quick mental catalogue of the things she had packed among her effects to see if there was anything with her name on it. She couldn’t think of a single thing that would leave him with a clue as to her true identity.

“Don’t play stupid, I already figured out what you’re up to,” he snapped in disgust at her duplicity.

Midii was trying to get her sleep and poison befogged wits to work through what the tall Preventor was saying. Did he mean he knew about her Consortium debt? Or was it that he knew she was really Shadowblade? She was pulling up blanks left and right. What did he mean call him by the name she really knew him as? How had he found out her real name? Midii had made absolutely certain that there was nothing linking the bounty hunter Shadowblade with the girl Midii Une. That could only mean one thing: Trowa Barton was an agent for the Consortium in disguise.

“So you know who I am and what I do… What comes now? Blackmail?” she demanded defensively. “I don’t know what the Consortium is up to, but if it concerns me pulling another job for them you can tell them I said to take their offer and shove it ‘cause I’m free-lance now. And if you’re threatening my family I’ll make sure you never see the light of another day. I’ll hunt you and any of your associates down to the edge of the galaxy if I have to.”

Trowa looked down at her glaring up at him in defiance, her entire body posture bespoke hostile defensiveness. Apparently they had some kind of miscommunication. What was that about the Consortium? How was she involved with those thugs? Something wasn’t right here.

“Consortium?” Trowa questioned. “What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t answer the questions of street thugs,” she said antagonistically.

“I can’t believe I actually almost considered trusting you.” Midii grumbled to as she pulled another gun out and trained it on him. “Fortunately for me I don’t trust anyone. I guess this means I’ll have to kill you now. I can’t have anyone walking around knowing who I am, especially Consortium scouts.”

“Ah, you think I’m working for the Consorti-”

He was cut off by a gunshot. Faster than thought, he reacted; dropping to the floor, he caught his torso with his hands as his foot shot up to kick the guns she held aside. One of them went clattering to the wall and the other skittered across the floor. Midii tried to move into a fighting stance, but the poison was still heavily laced in her system. The best she managed was a shaky crouch; however she wasn’t about to let a thing like near-death stop her from defending herself against this new threat.

“Come on,” she said challengingly, glaring at him. “You guys are tough when it comes to threatening peaceful widower’s and their kids… why don’t you pick on someone your own size? Like me for example?”

Trowa dodged a knife thrown with deadly accuracy at him. He assessed his opponent; he’d seen her in action a time or two. He was at least a match for her when she was healthy but in her present condition he could take her down without any problems at all. She was shaking with fatigue and so weak from the poison still that the arm she’d raised the throw a knife at him was slowly lowering as the strength to keep it raised drained away from her. She was still scowling at him defiantly, daring him to come at her. There was something…

<Her eyes,> he said, struck with realization. <Her eyes aren’t hiding anything. They can’t; she’s too exhausted to even see straight and the poison lacing her system has knocked all of her guards completely down. The only way she could lie to me in her present unthinking condition is to say nothing.> Midii’s eyes were burning with an intense protective anger, the anger of a mother hawk defending her nest of younglings. She knew that there was no way she’d be able to beat him in her current condition but she was going to stand and fight a losing battle against him, she was backed into a corner and defiant mainly out of desperation.

Trowa felt torn. Part of him was telling him that trusting her, Midii Une, a known spy and someone who’d betrayed him in the past was the very last thing he should do. Once a traitor always a traitor right? The other part was telling him that he didn’t even have all of the facts, and he should reserve judgment in the absence of information. There was something else going on, how was she connected with the Consortium?

He made a decision. Trowa raised both his hands in surrender, unholstered his gun and set it on the ground before him. Midii, still trembling with fatigue and illness from the poison didn’t move an inch and kept a third gun trained on him. Silence reighned in the tiny room for a minute as the two stood frozen in tableu, neither trusting the other. Surprisingly, it was Trowa who spoke first.

“Truce,” he said. “Midii, you’re supposed to put your guns down.”

“No thank-you mister Barton, if that’s even your name,” she said suspiciously. “And how did you find out my name?”

She faltered, her gun-arm dropping in exhaustion as she almost tumbled to the floor, still she would not take her eyes or her gun off him for a second. Apparently paranoia and suspicion were deeply ingrained in her.

“Sit down before you fall over,” he suggested. “I’m already unarmed, and I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Right,” she said warily. “So what does the Consortium want with me this time? And why did it go to all the trouble of making someone look like a Preventor just to get a look at one bounty hunter’s modus operendi?”

“I’m not with the Consortium Midii,” he said seriously.

“Sure you’re not, and I’m an innocent school-girl,” she snorted cynically. “If you’re not with the Consortium, then how do you know my name?”

“You really don’t know who I am, do you?” he murmured rhetorically. Inside his head he was already revising the scenario he’d constructed based on the new information gathered.

She thought he was an agent from the Consortium, which she’d obviously had dealings with in the past and from the sound of it, they hadn’t been very pleasant. She didn’t know who he was which meant that she couldn’t have sought him out deliberately. He pulled out the important details from their previous conversation… “Pulling another job for them… free-lance… bounty hunter.” Trowa would be willing to bet his favorite clown pants that she wouldn’t hve let that much slip if it hadn’t been for the poison still running through her body.

“Look at me Midii,” he said commandingly. “Don’t you recognize me?”

After a moment of study she said

“You do seem familiar,” Midii admitted grudgingly. “It’s probably the poison.”

Trowa watched her shiver in a crouch with her weapon pointed unerringly on him. Her arm was wavering a little but she was stubborn and not about to give up her one advantage. He smiled and made a noise deep in his throat that might have been a small laugh.

“Are you going to shoot me?” he said looking amused at her perversity.

“Maybe,” she replied steadily. “It depends on whether you answer my questions or not Mister Barton. Now, if you’re not with the Consortium, then how do you know my name?”

Trowa decided to give her this one, if only for the shock value.

“You didn’t always call me Mister Barton,” he said plainly. “You used to call me Nanashi.”

There was a long pregnant pause in which Midii stared at him with and completely dumbstruck expression on her face. Finally she nodded to herself and said

“It’s the poison. I’m hallucinating.”

“You’re not hallucinating,” he said, a little put out that she dismissed it so easily. Yes it was a little in the incredible side but surely she must have noticed a resemblance by now.

“Uh-huh, yeah,” She said, regarding him with a cynical look on her face. Apparently Midii Une was not someone who took anything at face value. “It’s too great a coincidence that one of the maybe three people who actually know that Midii Une is not in fact a harmless village girl would just show up one day when I’m just about to-…” She paused. “Who do really work for Trowa Barton? Are you trying to resurrect the Barton Army? Is that why you wanted Kaneda?”

“What about you?” he countered swiftly. “You’re a spy, how do I know that you’re not just trying to get information about the Preventors from me.”

Midii shot him a scornful look.

“I was a spy. And if you know that then you must be a Consortium agent because the event of you being who you’ve just claimed to be ranks right up there with the sun rising in the west. Not bloody well likely,” she said scathingly. “And furthermore, what you’ve just said already doesn’t track.”

“How so?” he inquired. He distrusted the way he’d felt a surge of hope well up in his chest when she’d said those words. He’d never quite been certain if he saw things clearly where she was concerned. He didn’t know which he trusted less in this situation; Midii Une or himself.

“If I wanted to get information from you, I would simply have injected you with truth serum as I did Kaneda while you were already poisoned in that alley where we first ran into each other. Once I had gotten what I wanted I would have just killed you and left you there for dead. Kaneda would have taken the heat for it.”

Trowa was brought up short by this. What she said made perfect sense if one put aside the creepy fact that she’d just told him she would have killed him and left him for dead if it suited her purposes.

“So then why did you save me?”

“Good business,” she said succinctly. “I had nothing to lose really, and a couple hundred credits to gain. I already had a tag on Kaneda and the other bounty hunters would be looking in the wrong town so I decided that I’d make some extra money off you by selling you back to that Une woman you work for.”

Midii certainly looked hardcore and uncaring, but then her expression softened just a little as she said

“But… it was nice… not being alone anymore for a while.”

It was at precisely that moment that her body gave out and said it couldn’t take anymore. Apparently she’d already taxed it to its limits previously and trying to push it while it was trying to wage a war against the deadly menace of poison within itself, even with the help of some anti-venom, was asking too much of it. Midii pitched forward, trying to catch herself before she hit the floor. Instead, Trowa caught her before her frail body could slam into the wood flooring. One arm cradled her head while the other supported her by the waist.

“I’m not going to thank you,” she whispered, on the verge of losing consciousness.

“Wasn’t expecting it,” he replied.

Before tucking her back in he checked her bedroll for extra weapons.

<She really doesn’t trust anyone,> he noted once his inventory was through. In her bedroll and pillow alone she’d stashed various concealable weapons, mostly small handheld guns or little throwing knives, she had one or two smallbombs to provide a distraction, several exploding smoke capsules to provide cover. She wasn’t trusting in luck where good preparation and automatic fighters instincts would work better. He didn’t even want to think about what kinds of weapons she might be concealing on her person when she went out as Shadowblade.

He sat back on the floor next to bedroll where she slept in exhaustion. The worst of the poison was probably mostly gone from her system but their little tete a tete had seemed to drain her of a lot of her strength. He sat back to consider the new information he had gleaned from their conversation. First he wanted to concentrate on what she’d said of the Consortium, the Preventors had been trying to track the Consortiums activities for some time but solid information had been hard to get. What they had was pretty vague.

Consortium: an organized crime ring in sector 5 by 76 by 12 with its main base rumored to be in Malipais. Holds some small connections to the former Alliance and managed to escape the purging done by both OZ and later by the Preventors. The kingpin is unknown. The Consortium is said to have been behind the recent assassinations of several key government officials in the new Unified Nation but such rumors have as yet been unconfirmed. Also said to have connections with the space Pirates that run raids along the trade routes, again such reports have been unconfirmed. Attempts by the Preventors to get an informant into the works of the Consortium have been unsuccessful.

<She’s had dealings with the Consortium in the past. Her words “pull another job for them. What does the Consortium want with me this time?” What kind of work did she do I wonder. She mistook me for a Consortium Agent; that must mean they have a continuing interest in her. If they know she’s the bounty hunter Shadowblade that would make sense; but she told me she worked freelance when she thought I was a Consortium agent with a job offer for her.> He snorted, <she could have merely been trying to get a higher price out of me then.>

He shook his head to clear it and started over. His thoughts were beginning to tangle on themselves, best to start with what he knew and go from there.

<She’s still very ill and I approached her in a hostile manner,> Trowa felt a small pang for that one but ignored it in favor of continuing his chain of thought. <The poison still might be affecting her judgment, whatever, but she reacted defensively. Hmmm…. No, at first she appeared mainly confused. If her confusion was genuine then she really doesn’t know who I am. It was only after I mentioned her name that she got defensive. The Consortium knows Midii Une then…. But not Shadowblade?>

That was an interesting conjecture. If she treated Shadowblade and Midii as two different people, then they might not actually make the connection. By all appearances she worked alone. Or… she might be an agent for the consortium. Trowa dismissed that one immediately however, everything in their brief conversation pointed to Midii having a strong dislike for the Consortium. She was connected to them somehow however.

<Hn. She probably merely hired out her skills as a bounty hunter to the Consortium a time or two,> he figured. <But that doesn’t quite match up with what she said… what was it? If you’re not with the Consortium then how do you know my name? That suggests that the Consortium knows her as Midii Une, not Shadowblade.>

He sighed. This was getting complicated.

She’d helped him out of interest for the money she could make from his organization but e knew it would have been far more expedient to merely leave him there to die and go after the large sum of money offered by the bounty. Instead of chasing down Kaneda, she’d dragged him to an apartment, tended to him, then after she’d gotten his word that he would stay put she did a further service by tracking down and capturing Kaneda so that Trowa could get the information that only he knew. But at the same time she was Midii Une, with unknown associations with an unscrupulous crime ring and unknown motives. She’d already betrayed him once and there was nothing preventing her from doing so again.

But she looked so vulnerable….

<Either way,> he decided firmly. <She’s not to be trusted. She has her own motives and I don’t know what they are. She has connections to a dangerous crime ring and I don’t know what they are. There is still the possibility that she is a spy no matter what her reputation as a bounty hunter is. And then there’s the final fact that she admitted herself that if she’d wanted information out of me she’d have drugged me and then left me for dead.>

The last one, if a bit unnerving, was only to be expected. Bounty hunters, spies and the like worked on expediency, not morals. They tended not to sweat the details, or hell, the ethics of anything until their primary objective had been accomplished. Their modus operendi was “by any means necessary.” Trowa fixed those thought firmly in his mind as a reminder of why he should not get any more involved with Midii Une than he already had. The requested payment in full was already in the bank account she’d given him, once she was recovered he’d leave and they never see one another again. He could simply ignore the peculiar knot of tangled thoughts and emotions she conjured up from some unknown recess inside of him and go on with his life.

His eyes, of their own volition, crept over to her face. She looked so sweet when she was sleeping… almost nothing like when she’d been awake, pointing her guns at him and glaring in defiance. Right now she made him want to protect her, despite that fact he could not trust her she still inspired a crazy, contradictory knot of emotions in him. The ingrained imperative to protect warred with suspicion over just what she was after and why she’d helped him. He wanted to trust her but he knew he couldn’t afford to; he trusted even less the strange desire he felt to want to trust her. It was insane… by his standards, she was the enemy. You didn’t trust the enemy, you watched them carefully or you killed them before they could kill you. Midii was dangerous. Keeping her around was like playing with fire, he didn’t know enough about the person she was and his own instincts in her case could never be trusted. She was too beautiful for his own good, and too damned intelligent too. A stupid person would never have made it as far as she had.

Trowa looked again at the photograph of the young Midii Une and her family.

<Maybe I know her motives after all,> he thought consideringly. <She said a long time ago that she took the job as a spy in order to take care of her family…>

This was all giving him a headache. Midii Une wasn’t any of his concern. He had nothing to do with her or any of her choices now, and once he was through nursing her back to health he wouldn’t have anything more to do with her.

* * *