The plane touched town and the jolt woke Ranger. He rose from the cot he cobbled together from the materials in the back of the C-17 he hitched a ride on. Not exactly first class, but the cheapest and most direct way back from the middle east. He rubbed his jaw, the beginnings of a beard present, and stood waiting for the plane to come to a stop. He'd slipped back into some of his old Delta behavior while over seas, most noticeably letting his beard grow out. He'd been out of country off and on for months, this last trip lasting almost an entire month on its own.

When the aircraft came to a stop the back opened. The Ranger grabbed his large canvas bad his clothes and gear was in, slung it over his shoulder and made his way down the ramp to the tarmac. A wave and a thank you to the flyboys he'd hitched a ride with that were moving around in the cargo area and he was off the the terminal. Leaving and reentering the country always left people wanting to ask you questions. At least on a military base they they were a little more brief and professional.

Eventually all the bureaucratic tripe handled he climbed into the Fordasaurus and set off for home. His time over seas left his driving even more aggressive, he did everything short of pointing an M4 at people out the window on the way back to NYC.

Blackforest Tactical, the Rangers private military company, had been doing well for itself but logistics for middle eastern operations had never been well established and it had been high time the Ranger sorted it all out. It had taken nearly a year and required several trips, but finally everything was in place. Now he could, when he didn't act himself, sit back and manage operations stateside. 'Lenna might appreciate that.' he thought to himself.

Eventually he parked his mammoth of a vehicle and made his way on foot up the apartment. He'd had issues with signal and had not been able to contact Lenna and let her know he was headed back a week early, not had he been able to get his phone working back stateside yet. It also didn't help the sun went down a good 2 hours before. The Ranger unlocked the door and stepped inside, a momentary thought that Kevlar might be nice crossed his mind. Surprises can get people shot.

"I'm back."

The sound of a door knob turning in a dark empty house can elicit various reactions from people. A young mother of two might shake her husband, to jostle him out of his slumber so they could protect their children. She might not have a husband, and wake her children herself, then found them a panic room. A big burly man might go for the strategically-placed baseball bat beside his bed, and a man who enjoys having more powerful protection might get a gun from his gun cabinet or hidden gun stores, and defend his home. The gun-thing isn't limited to just men, though. The fact that Lenna now stood in front of Michael "The Ranger" Hunter with a handgun trained on him, dressed in a lilac night gown over undergarments proved that very well.

Lenna tensed, eyes on the man at her door. Then, she lowered the handgun 1 cm, but only that. She wasn't sure if she wanted to shoot him yet, and didn't want to limit her options.

"Looks that way," She said. He'd been away a very long time, and they had not really had the chance to communicate much, if at all. She'd learned something about herself. Long-distance relationships did absolutely nothing for her. Her lips drew into a thin line as she asked him "Just passing through?"

When a gun is pointed at you all you tend to see is the end of a barrel that you always swear was no less than a .50 caliber. This remains true, at least momentarily, regardless of the beauty training the gun on you.

The Ranger resisted his first instinct to turn sidewise, presenting a smaller target,in a defensive manner. He figured he did deserve this, his being gone so often lately. The slight, and it definitely was slight, lowering was about at much as could be asked for.

"No," A bag slid off his shoulder to his hand, all but dropping it to the floor, "I'm here t' stay. Logistics be damned, I'll pay someone from here on t' go deal with it so I can stay here." And he would, being gone so much taught him one thing. He cared more about Lenna than work and was glad to be home, guns pointed at him notwithstanding.

The number of people in her life Lenna had let in was invariably low. Having grown up an orphan, trained to be a killer by killers, and with a healthy degree of self-taught paranoia, it only made sense. She could count the number of people on one hand that had had its fingers systematically removed until only the middle one remained. He was standing in front of her. But lately, he'd been gone. And long distance relationships don't work.

"We need to talk," She said impassively. "I still love you, but being gone all the time can't happen. And there are other things." She hadn't told her what she'd been up to just as much as him not telling her.

The gun? She lowered it, as an afterthought. It was unlikely he was going to pull one out and shoot her with it. That chance rose dramatically the longer she held a gun on him. The Order leader knew that from history. She still trusted him, for whatever that was worth. They just needed to have some dialogue. It had been too damned long.

They needed to talk. Well that was obvious, clearly things had changed somewhat with the Ranger being gone. They hadn't had a practice of meeting each other at the door with guns drawn, likely on them, but never drawn.

"I still love you, but being gone all the time can't happen. And there are other things."

A small smile crossed the Ranger's face, it was good to hear her say that she loved him. And he knew she was right, he couldn't be gone all the time anymore. It was unfair to her to say the least.

Lenna lowered the gun and the tension the Ranger had been holding in his shoulders eased. "An' I still love you." He then dropped the bag he'd been holding in his hand to the floor. "Let's sit down an' talk." He deposited the rest of his bags on the floor, he could deal with them later.

Lenna put the gun away. She placed it on a table by a beige sofa as she sat down. It was there, if she needed it, but why would she?

The furniture had changed slightly, since Michael had been there last. There were a few new things, like the sofa. A recliner. It fit the tone more than how she had organized her apartment in the past. A better color pallet. It also said something. It said that Lenna was fine with change. Changing things in what could have been their apartment, without involving him. But then, he'd been gone. His veto rights had been revoked.

The woman looked at him, uncertainly. Where to start? His absence. It didn't help anything. And the thing she'd kept from him, that helped nothing at all. It was for a greater good, sure, but it wasn't going quite how she would have liked... and, it also hadn't really been something she had intended, from the very start. It had sort of fallen into her lap... like a lot of things lately. She waited for Michael to join her, then began.

Lenna ran a hand through her hair, and sighed. She started easy. "I can't handle long distances." She said.

As Lenna set down her pistol, Ranger looked around the apartment. The apartment had changed, it was enough different to not completely feel like home. It wasn’t bad, a few pieces of furniture and a some color changes. Nothing major, but it didn’t match his memory of the place anymore.

It was clear it was her apartment and not their apartment.

The Ranger moved to join lenna on the sofa. He kept a greater distance than he normally would have from her, the air was thick with tension and he didn’t want to set anything off. Granted, the Ranger generally didn’t respect much in regards to personal space so keeping distance just meant being more than a couple inches away.

She began. It was what Ranger had known must be coming, and he couldn’t blame her. She couldn't handle long distance.

Ranger looked her in the eye and took a moment before saying, ”I’m done with it. I’ll do what I have t’ do t’ stay stateside. I can’t promise not t’ leave New York, but It’s less distance an’ I wouldn’t be gone anywhere near as long.”

He knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but it was better than what he’d been doing. It would mean less money, but that was perfectly fine to give up to be gone no longer than a week at a time if he were to leave.

He was close, yet he felt distant to her. That's what holding back truths does. It was her mind that was causing the distance. If she just stopped thinking... but no. That was not something he deserved. He needed to know what she had been up to.

"That's good," She said. "But that isn't the only thing that's been bothering me... tell me, Michael. Do you remember when we went to Columbia?"

They'd gone to deal with part of her past, to kill Cortez... only he'd been dead when they'd arrived. The rest of the trip had been something else entirely. She hadn't really spoken about it, with anyone else.

It had been a complex affair. They'd dealt with the remnants of his organization. With the girls he'd left behind, his "army". She had wanted to seize control, to make things better for them, for an entire country, but she'd never really had the words to tell him that. She hadn't had the means, either. Lenna was not Slate. She didn't have mental powers of control. All she'd had was the cleverness to figure a way to put a puppet in charge, and control the fallout while nobody was looking. What she had wanted... was to prevent further atrocities, like what Cortez had done to her... just a little scared girl, forced into a life of murder and crime. For a while, she'd managed to control the crime in the area, weakening Cortez's base... and even profiting from it, disgusting though it was. Nature abhors a vacuum, though. It had not lasted.

While she'd been away in America, it had fallen apart. Michael hadn't really been part of the plan. He hadn't known. It had all been on her. All he'd done was help her get there, and... maybe turned a blind eye. Or maybe she'd just lied well enough, he'd trusted her and hadn't seen what she had done. Memories of that time felt hazy, like she'd read them in a book years and years before, but the writer hadn't ever really finished or hashed out the fine details. They'd waved their hands and said what basically had happened, without being precise.

What had happened in Columbia, and her seeing it fall apart as her work (and the Kabal's work) was undone, had led her the try something similar again. And that was what wasn't sitting right with her. That, and Columbia. All the things left unsaid. If she wanted to trust him, he had to know. Even if there was every possibility of it destroying them. If it destroyed them, then... maybe trusting him had never been in the cards.