Recently Ivan had been busy with resistance work, criminal conspiracies, training an apprentice, armless guys, and a good deal of physical harm. This type of schedule left precious little time to spend with those he cared about. Today, he was going to rectify this, and had something special in mind for Khymarah.

He couldn't exactly say he wasn't made a little jealous by the whole Brunnhold ball, but there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. Instead, he was going to show her, or at least try to show her, that he could do something nice for her, even if it wasn't magic, or even really anywhere near his area of expertise.

Fion can cook, right? She's a girl, of course she can cook.

Ivan didn't know how she'd been feeling, and hadn't seen her for quite a while now. It would be a good idea to hear both sides of the story in theory, but Ivan was not one to relish dealing with upset women. He hoped that things could be resolved easily, but in his experience, nothing really was ever that easy. Still, this lack of resolution was visibly weighing on Khymarah, and if he could help somehow, all the better.

He arrived at the familiar purple house and knocked twice, thinking over something pleasant to say about her being back home.

Fion heard a knock on the door and startled. She'd been doing that since she'd last seen Lochlan. Every tap on her door made her want to run out the back door and keep going until she had Piran under her arm and Vienda far behind. Even her steps further into the resistance the night before couldn't seem to settle her in her own house. She seemed to lose confidence when she was at home. It was a bitter irony, her place of safety had been compromised, perhaps irrevocably. She stood and walked to the door, opening it tentatively at first, peeking from behind the protective cover it provided.

It was Ivan.

"Shit..." She muttered under her breath, he wasn't going to be happy with her after she'd yelled at his girlfriend. "Ivan... Hello, you better come in. How are you?"

She opened the door fully, supposing she should at least face the music like an adult. Her bruise was beginning to yellow around the edges but that long red line was still bright from where she'd hit the door jam. It was more obvious in the sunlight.

"Hello Fion, it's been a wh-"

He stopped, his brow pinched together and shifted about, and his jaw tensed. The mark was clearly visible, a blunt trauma from the looks of it, and a strong one.

"Are, are you alright?"

He stepped closer and shifted about to spy the bruise from different angles.

"I should take a look at that. How did you get it?"

Surely not Dem? It didn't seem in his nature, but it was well within his ability. Ivan didn't like the idea of having to kill him. Was Fion going to get Ivan to kill him?

"Been better..." She said, dodging the question. "How're you?"



"Got pushed." She said, ruffling her own hair nervously. "I may have mentioned my childhood sweetheart? Not so sweet anymore..."

Fion turned away from his calculating, doctor's gaze. She really didn't feel like being his patient at that moment. Life had been interesting enough lately, she was trying not to think about it. Like always she was avoiding her issues.

"Shoulda married the baker Ivan, shoulda just married the baker..." She said bitterly, remembering the days when she'd been young and people had been interested in a future with her.

"The golly? What's he back in touch for? I thought he left..?"

Ivan struggled to get a good look at the injury while she squirmed away. He could understand why - he'd seen plenty of domestic injuries while he'd been in Vienda. It always pinched him when victims deflected or denied; he supposed it was at least a good thing that she was open about it.

"Hmm, well I'd reccomend something with anti-inflammatory properties for that bruise. Certain spices, chillis and ginger, have shown some promise. Perhaps Demkaih could get you some?"



"Heh, well, what can you do. You know, perhaps Vienda isn't the place for you two. Too much upheaval recently. Plus..."
He paused, thinking how best to word it,
"the Party's taken some hard hits recently. I don't think it's safe right now."

Not wanting to dwell on such a grievous subject too long, he mentioned his other reason for the visit.

"Also I've come about Khymarah. She's upset, and I know I've only heard her account of things, but I'm thinking perhaps it might be a misunderstanding?"

"He did, he saw me at work though, followed me home..." Fion wondered if there was any perspective on that, any at all, that would make Lochlan not seem incredibly creepy.



Fion's eyes watered a little. It was like an electric shock to the chest. She wondered if she was going to get over sabotaging that particular relationship any time soon.



"I need to speak to you about that..." Fion said, walking towards the kitchen, head down.

She wasn't high up enough to tell Ivan about the rescue plans but she could at least tell him some men had been captured. He deserved to know.



Fion's lower lip began to tremble and her eyes filled with so many tears that they resembled lumpy glass. Her chest puffed out and in a few times, like a child that was upset it needed enough oxygen to even get the words out. Her hands clenched into fists by her sides.

"I yelled at her!" Fion wailed, feeling rather poorly about inflicting another crying fit on Ivan, especially when it related to his girlfriend. "I yelled at her and I had no right but I'd had such a bad day and it was so awful with Piran and I didn't know how to fix it and that awful man and Lochlan and his awful friends and I was at the end of my rope and I really needed help and I feel so sorry!"

Fion sobbed for a moment, a snotty sort of "goo huu huu" sound that was both cathartic and pathetic sounding.

"And Dem dumped me!" She blurted, after appearing to have finished crying, only to start up again.

She decided it was rather woeful that the only person in the world she felt she could cry with was her doctor as much as he was her friend.

To Ivan, this man was sounding creepy already. And a Golly stalking an informant...he wondered if the resistance were going to have to get involved. Vienda really wasn't safe for her at all.



He liked to remain in the loop, and he'd been gone for a while, but nothing about Fion's posture said that what she had to say would be good news. With resistance matters it rarely was.



Ivan internally winced but he was less unfamiliar with Fion being emotional. She had every right to be, it sounded like while he'd been away her life had fallen apart. It was definitely one-of-those-hug-time-things. Taking care not to put pressure on his wound, he gave her a big comforting embrace.

"Aww, don't worry Fion. She isn't angry, just upset. Really she wants to talk, but she thinks you're still mad at her. She's feeling pretty lonely right now too."

Ivan had been away far too long, he realised.



"Wha- he did? Why?"

Fion made a high pitched noise that sounded as though it was trying to be words but wasn't quite getting there. It went on for a while as Fion snuffled into Ivan's shoulder. She burrowed into the hug a little, relieved to have the support.

"I don't know what to say!" She said tearily, finally. "I'm so embarassed. I was just so tired and..."

Well, everything.



"I found out he was in the resistance!" Fion cried, now occasionally doing a hiccup-like shudder that was only managed by the truly upset. "I saw him at a rally and he joined because of me and, and I told him that he had to choose. I made him choose and he didn't pick me!"

Fion looked miserable. She loved him so much and it was over. Part of her knew that she'd allowed herself to act on her attraction to Dem because he'd been a safe option, someone she could see a long term future with. It seemed she wasn't capable of handling a relationship with him that contained more risk than what it had when she'd started it. In a way she felt cheated but she only had herself to blame. With Dem there was a line she wasn't able to cross and it was firmly tied to her ability to worry. She already had resistance friends that risked their lives and she didn't want to add a lover to that number.

"I fucked up." Fion said, believing those words covered all of her thoughts as succinctly as was possible.

Ohhhhh...

That put Dem's strange behaviour at LaCosta's into context. Oh dear! Ivan realised how insensitive he must have seemed.

"Fion, you...oh. You don't know many mugs, do you?"

Of course he would have picked the resistance, but it was proof of how much he valued her safety. It was their damn back-asswards sense of nobility that sometimes really didn't fit well into the affairs of the heart at all. Ivan knew this better than most.



"You didn't, you didn't do anything wrong. But there isn't anything you can do about his misplaced morality, that's just the way they are."

Ivan briefly caught himself wondering if it was his being a doctor that made people open up to him more readily. It couldn't be his demeanour, that was for certain. Still in a way it felt like a duty, some unwritten section of the HMC Oath next to "do no harm". Well, it certainly didn't hurt to help, but the amount he wanted to smoke rose in direct proportion to the amount of feelings he had to deal with.

"Do you want some help with this ex problem of yours? I can get some people to do background on him if you like?"

"No?" She said, shaking her head slightly. What did that have to do with it?



"It is?" She asked, looking quite dull and blinking away some of the wetness in her eyes.



Fion rubbed at her eyes, wondering whether she should ask Ivan to kill her old lover. Probably not... Maybe? No. Fion pulled back from the hug and sighed.

"Tea, I think we need tea." She said, sounding more normal again though her face was still blotchy and pale. Her freckles stood out like ink on paper. "I have some background on him already. He works at the palace now, as a gardener. He got into some trouble when his parents found out about... well. He blames me for it."

Fion put a kettle on the stove and threw some more wood in to fuel it. She gestured for them both to sit, taking the chair that faced out the window. You could only see a tree and the back of another house but it was still soothing.

"I have some resistance things I need to talk to you about." She added, knowing this was going to be one of their heavier meetings.

Ivan liked tea. Things always seemed to make more sense after tea. Calculating his chances, he asked Fion a question that had been on his mind since he'd walked in.

"Is it ok if I smoke here?"



"Wait, a Golly knowingly sleeps with a human...then is pissed off when it bites him back? What kind of idiot...you certainly know how to pick 'em, eh?"

What did you just say?

"Gods, I'm sorry, that was insensitive. I didn't mean...ugh, nevermind. What's the resistance news?"

Normally Fion would have said no and lectured Ivan for doing something that might hurt his longevity. Fion knew all about smoker's lung. She really didn't feel like denying him one of life's small pleasures at that moment, though. He'd been kind and she didn't want to spit in his face after that.

"Sure, I'll crack open a window." She said, leaning over to do so.



Fion went very, very red. The kind of red that only came with truly painful embarassment. The worst part was that Ivan was right. She'd known what she was walking into with Lochlan, she'd just ignored the warning signs. It had bitten both Fion and Lochlan on the freckle, with Piran trapped in some void in the middle.

"Apparently." She said, still looking red and sounding quite dry.



Fion weighed up all of Ivan's good points against the boot up the arse that he'd just given her. He came up on top. Fion decided to pretend that part of their conversation had never happened.

"The gollies are stockpiling guns, it's on the quiet but the resistance caught wind of it. Some men died trying to get to the cache, the rest were captured. They're in prison right now." Fion exhaled loudly. "I need to find Ceres, I have some intel to give him, but it's going to be awkward."

Fion tried to think of a way to explain just how awkward. She wondered if adding one more cock up to the pile she'd described today would lower herself in Ivan's estimation.

It seemed that he'd dodged that bullet, though something told him he'd been very lucky this time. He struck a match before she changed her mind about letting him light up.



"Hmm, that's more than I'd heard. What would they need guns for?"

Ivan mentally marked the captured men as KIA. A resistance prisoner was just a walking corpse after all, and there was no need for untidy bookkeeping. He wondered which cell had botched the operation.

She'd mentioned something that didn't add up, and it disturbed his thoughtful silence.

"Awkward? How?"

Fion shrugged. "To shoot people, I guess."



Fion's stomach became a rather ornate knot.

"A while ago, we had a meeting and as I was leaving he kissed me." Fion started blushing again and felt deeply resentful of her own reaction, it was just a godsdamned kiss, after all. "I thought it was just a cover but... Dem and I were together at the time and I felt so guilty about it. You don't go about kissing other people when things are serious. I thought things were serious."

The kettle started to boil but Fion made no move to grab it.

"It's just... At first I thought it was nothing but things have been getting really bad at work for me. They say such horrible things." By 'they' Fion meant galdori. "About cheap materials and how much I'd cost, the things I'd be happy to do to them and for them."

Fion shivered with disgust. She could take small doses of it, she always had, she'd worked in bars her whole life. Places where people went to misbehave. It had started to be too much years ago.

"I tried to tell him but it came out all wrong." Fion felt queasiness rise in her belly like the high tide coming in. "He got all insulted but... I wouldn't know would I? It always starts out small and then it gets worse and worse. I want a fucking say in... Who I..."

Fion lost her steam entirely. She slumped a little, like a difficult moa that had finally given up and agreed to be saddled. She used to feel so sure of everything and now her foundation was crumbling.

"Do you take milk with your tea?" She asked, rising, sighing and taking the kettle off the stove.

Ivan winced sympathetically. He occasionally had to remind himself that really, he had things pretty good for a human. No real hardships growing up, decent education, and the means to live comfortably. Sure the frequent and acutely unpleasant run-ins with the seventen were his penance for it, but really it paled in comparison to her struggle.

"I really don't know how you do it."



Realisation dawned on Ivan as he pieced together the scenario from his relatively external perspective. From what he knew of the man, he was attempting nothing of the sort. His actions seemed universally utilitarian.
And yet he could see why Fion felt the way she did too. It wasn't a matter he wanted to pick a side on.

"I see."
Then, after a pause,
"Do you want me to go with you next time you see him?"



Ah! This is more my field.

"Just a dash and a spoon of sugar please."

Fion shook her head, she would have liked the company, honestly. It was just that she couldn't go forcing other people to mediate for her when she made mistakes. As Serro had said, it was a teacup kind of mission, she was going to have to do it herself.

She really didn't want to see Ceres again but she was going to have to bite the bullet.



"Sure thing." She replied, measuring out the leaves carefully and pouring the hot water into a slightly chipped teapot. She put a spoon of sugar into Ivan's cup and poured some milk into a little milk jug. It was shaped roughly like a cow, made during one of Piran's experimental phases. She brought the lot over to the small, kitchen table on a tray.

She left the pot to steep for a moment. "So, anything new with you?" She asked, a little sheepishly. She had made the conversation all about herself again and felt guilty for it.

Gods, what wasn't new with Ivan.

"Been busy as a kenser at harvest! Been to Old Rose and back for some imported medicine, got patients up to the eyeballs, a medical insurance scheme running, even got an apprentice now. A day off would certainly be nice about now."

Ivan paused, then awkwardly directed a jet of smoke towards the opened window.

"Actually, that's the other reason I'm here. I want to do something nice for Khy, since I haven't been around for a while. I was thinking of making a meal, but cooking isn't exactly my strong suit. Do you have any recipes I could borrow..?"

Fion laughed a little, low in her throat. she reached for the pot now, pouring tea into two cups. She added milk to both.

"You old smoothy, you." She said, tapping his gut with her elbow, right about where his gunshot wound was.

Ivan was a house of cards, and Fion's elbow was.....an elbow. The tap sent him folding into an untidy pile of body parts on the floor.

"Naaarghhh!"

The pile resolved into a curled up foetal position. He groaned some more, then when the most acute pain had passed, he reached for his fallen pipe and took another toke. What was he going to tell her?

"Oh my gods! Ivan!" Fion skrieked, voice an octave higher, shock causing her eyes to snap wide open. "What the clock?"

Fion fell to her knees, hands on Ivan's shoulders. Trying to gauge just what was wrong. She was rattled, shocked that such a small movement could send Ivan from his chair. It did not seem to stop smoking though...

"What on the gods' green earth have you been up to?" She asked, now fretting like a only a mother could. "Are you alright?"

A few grunts and shufflings later and he was propped up against a low cupboard and continuing to smoke obstinately. He puffed a little with resignation.

"I suppose there's no point hiding it from you,"

he lifted his shirt a little to show the mean looking wound staining the bandage slightly where it had broken open.

"Something I picked up while I was at the Harbour. I wasn't...I wasn't really there to get medicine."

Maybe she wouldn't ask any more questions? He doubted it, somehow.

Ivan's hope was indeed in vain. Fion was grateful to Ivan and she did care about him. She also believed in tough love. Her face became blank and her lips thinned ominously.

"Ivan..." She said, voice now deepening and gaining an edge of authority. "What have you been up to?"

She kept her eyes on him as she bustled around her kitchen, finding alcohol and bandages by feel. It was like a tiger looking at you, only bustier and less stripey and perhaps more dangerous. Tigers, after all, generally didn't attack you if you were facing them.

Fion was not a stealth predator. She didn't mind facing Ivan head on.

He exhaled smoke and a sigh in the same breath. How to word it.

"You know I was in the army, and you know I'm in the resistance. What you don't know is...what I did in between."

He paused, then tried a different angle.

"Have you ever heard of any other Mottonis? Do you associate the name with anything at all?"

Fion closed her eyes and counted to ten. Ivan was being quixotic again. She reminded herself that she too was quite erratic and that she should follow his line of reasoning.

"I've never heard of them, I grew up in the Stacks, most of what I know is of there." She said, now leaning down to help rebandage Ivan's wound. "Only the last ten years include even Vienda and that's not a full ten years, either."

She looked up at Ivan, hands reaching for the blood-stained linen wrapped around his chest. She was silently asking if she could work while they talked.

Ivan made a little nod and moved his arms so she could work while he continued to flounder with his explanation.

"The Mottonis were big in the crime scene in Vienda about twenty years ago. For generations the De Mottonis and the Di Credico ran things behind the scenes in the Dives. At one point, if the right four people had been killed, I would have been head of all organised crime in Veinda. I would have been fifteen, but that's not the point. About fifteen years ago the seventen started an agressive campaign which succeeded in effectively starving out human organised crime in Vienda to the level it's at now. So, with the connections I have from my roots, when I came back from Mugroba, I joined the Bad Brothers."