It had been a while since Sabine had needed to smoke. It was a bad habit she kicked in university when she got serious about picking her life back up. It was absolutely against building codes to be smoking in a government building, let alone SUPER Headquarters, but Sabine did not want to cross paths with anyone on the smoking patio today. If someone wanted to report her, she would deal with a slap on the wrist.

After a long drag, she looked back at the papers on her desk. It was an innocuous pile, mostly. Old reports were being archived due to the loss of the home dimension. They were being given one last once-over to make sure nothing was pertinent information. It was a fluke that Sabine ended up being the Senior Agent who claimed the project. Maybe it was nostalgia or curiosity. Who would have guessed the rabbit hole those files would lead her down?

And now she was stressed out. Sabine was rarely ever off her game. That was the point; when shit hit the fan, she had decades of training to keep her steady. It did not help that she was off-book. There were protocols to deal with problems like this, but she hated all of them. Sabine had to address this off the record to decide how she should proceed, and no part of her was emotionally ready for that conversation.

And yet, that conversation was happening one way or another. Sabine extinguished what was left of her cigarette and turned the fan to let the smoke hanging in the room vent out slowly. She paged for Pippa to come to her office and advised everyone else worth a damn to leave her alone for an hour, so when the knock at the door came, she sighed. "Come in, Pippa. And close the door, please."

Pippa could smell the smoke before she walked into the office. At first she thought Sabine had someone in there, some important visitor she needed to talk to who could not be reprimanded for smoking indoors. Pippa squared her shoulders as she walked in, elegantly dressed in her powder blue work attire and high heels - but there was no one else in there except Sabine, and the faint traces of cigarette smoke. Pippa blinked in surprise, and closed the door. Sabine looked swamped in work as usual - but also more stressed out than usual.

Pippa walked over to sit in the chair she usually did when they had work meetings, and looked at Sabine curiously.

"You paged me. What's going on?"

As usual, Pippa looked great. Every time she dropped into Sabine's office, she was the most well-put-together person at SUPER. Those visits were becoming the highlight of Sabine's day because they were past the point of formality. Sabine could argue she had a real friend in the office for the first time since Kristoph left for DC.

Sabine wished she could ignore the problem at hand and act like things were normal. "I did. Sit with me, please." She gestured to the seat on the other side of her desk, finally sitting down in her own chair after an hour of nervous pacing. Her cigarette butt was still smoking on the small plate next to her file folder.

"I've been dealing with an issue that just has me all crossed up. I don't usually hit a dead end like this, and I thought you could help me." Sabine smiled. "You've really been a godsend since you showed up, you know. It was lucky; you started up with Haven... when was it? It was around the time SUPER came to this world, right?"

Sabine had to be stressed if she was smoking; Pippa had not really seen her smoke before. The pile of files on her desk was an easy explanation. Paperwork sucked on many levels, when one was in a leading position. Especially when there was a lot of it. It was more boring than fieldwork, and yet usually a lot more pressing. Pippa nodded, willing to help if she could. She was surprised, however, at the question aimed at her.

"Yes... around that time. A bit after the rift opened, actually" she nodded cautiously.

Sabine nodded, trying to keep her expression neutral. "Lucky, that. Even luckier that you'd jump into mutant activism at the perfect time to do some good. I guess some things are just fate; I think I mentioned it, but I knew a woman like you once. On the other side, she clarified nonchalantly. "Not personally; by reputation more than anything."

Needing something to do with her hands, Sabine opened her desk drawer and pulled another cigarette from the carton she kept hidden there. Now she could fiddle with her old piece-of-shit lighter. "That's honestly been racking me with guilt. It's one of those parts of my past that I still regret. You know that." They had talked about it before; Sabine struggling to come to terms with the terrible things she was complicit with before SUPER turned over its new leaf.

"So yeah, I think I need a new set of eyes. I'm going over some old files, and I'm hoping you can help me shed some light on a few things that just... aren't adding up."

Pippa had a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She watched Sabine fiddle with the cigarette and the lighter as she spoke. She didn't ask a question directly, but talking about her past... about mutant activism, and another woman like her... Pippa silently prayed this would not go the way she thought it was going. Because if it did... she couldn't take it back. She had been keeping this secret for a long time to keep herself safe. But now it felt like a betrayal.

"Sure" she swallowed, eyeing the files Sabine showed her. "What do you need?"

Sabine nodded, trying not to read into Pippa's expression. She did not want to know what was going through the blonde's mind. Not yet. Instead, she focused on the spark failing to ignite each time she flicked the starter. "Great. So we're archiving old files and I wanted to go over them one last time. Make sure it's all in the past before putting it to rest. Your doppelganger happened to be on that list."

Pushing a small stapled packet of papers across the table, the face on top of the pile was nearly identical to Pippa. The hairstyle was different and her ever-present smile was absent, but that was what you looked like as a prisoner nine times out of ten. "So she was caught by the AV!SUPER team before the rift closed, which means we got the final reports before communication was lost. And I've gone over plenty of suspect interview transcripts, but something seemed off to me. She claimed to not be a mutant, which the investigator assumed was a desperate lie. There was a lot of that, apparently. She even said her name was different, not corresponding to any documented aliases. Peggy."

Sabine pushed another set of papers. "And that sounded wrong to me. I can't access their databases, obviously, but I could check the database on this side. Sure enough, plenty of records for Peggy Swan. I didn't even realize you changed your name. That was right around the time you changed career paths. Jumped onboard with Haven."

Her eyes were stuck intensely on her failing lighter, like she was trying to will it to work despite her shaking hand. "So we have Pippa Swan, captured, calling herself Peggy, and then there's my Pippa, going by Peggy before she upended her life and showed up to be my conscience." For the first time since Pippa entered the room, Sabine looked up to meet her eye. "Make this make sense, Pip."

The sinking feeling got worse as Sabine laid out the evidence. Apparently, reports still made their way across the rift before it closed. Peggy's among them. Pippa had hoped it would get buried, and she did what she could to make information disappear before she joined Haven. But in the end, it was back to bite her in the ass. Big time.

Sabine was not looking at her. Pippa fidgeted with her gloves, looking down at her knees. This was going to hurt.

>>"So we have Pippa Swan, captured, calling herself Peggy, and then there's my Pippa, going by Peggy before she upended her life and showed up to be my conscience. Make this make sense, Pip."

Pippa looked up, and their eyes met, and she realized she was not going to be able to lie in Sabine's face. There used to be a time when she would have told a lie, made something up to get out of this, explain the whole thing away, and never blinked twice, because it was SUPER, and SUPER was evil. But now... it was different. It was Sabine. And Pippa was caught too deep in the lie to get away with it.

Then there's my Pippa

She sighed, defeated.

"I guess it was stupid to hope you'd never find out..."

At least Pippa did not insult her intelligence by lying now. She had done plenty of that already.

The sigh was all the confirmation Sabine's suspicions needed. She set down the lighter, blowing out a frustrated breath. "You're lucky I found out, Pippa. I lucked into these files. What if anyone else made this connection first? What if one of the homeworld holdouts pieced this together?" If anyone with anti-mutant sentiments put together what Pippa did, so many things would fall apart. The tenuous truce between Haven and SUPER, the efforts to keep the organization on a path of improvement, Sabine's career.

More importantly, Pippa's life. "Do you know how easily they'd pin something on you?" Her voice was low and intense; the last thing she needed was for anyone overhearing a conversation like this. "False imprisonment. Fraud. They'd find a way to deal with you and I would have been able to do nothing about it because you left me in the dark."

Sabine wanted to be angry, but she was just hurt. She knew, on some level, what Pippa did made sense. "I... I couldn't imagine what it was like in your position, Pippa. I won't pretend to. And I get you needing to be cautious, but..." She could feel the sting in her eyes when she looked at Pippa, searching for an answer. "I guess I hoped I was someone you could trust by now. I'm sorry I wasn't."

Pippa felt her cheeks burning. The secret was out now. She wasn't sure what Sabine would say; she had every right to be angry at her. Or disappointed. Which was worse. She spoke in a tense tone, but somehow, to Pippa her disappointment felt worse than anger.

>>"You're lucky I found out, Pippa. I lucked into these files. What if anyone else made this connection first? What if one of the homeworld holdouts pieced this together? Do you know how easily they'd pin something on you? False imprisonment. Fraud. They'd find a way to deal with you and I would have been able to do nothing about it because you left me in the dark."

"You mean, like lock me in a sinking ship?" Pippa was not sure if the attacks they had gone through together were aimed at her or at Sabine. Or both. She had felt guilt for a long time for that. She did not like the idea of putting anyone in danger... but also, the more she got to know Sabine, the more she felt like she did not deserve the lies.

>>"I... I couldn't imagine what it was like in your position, Pippa. I won't pretend to. And I get you needing to be cautious, but... I guess I hoped I was someone you could trust by now. I'm sorry I wasn't."

Pippa sighed, biting her lips. This was not at all how she'd imagined the secret coming out, and the leader of SUPER reacting to it. It was actually pretty far from what she'd imagined.

"SUPER... on the other side, SUPER hunted me for years. The rift was a chance to disappear." she explained, trying to put words together. "And then I somehow ended up... right here. And I told myself I could gather information, and make sure the whole 'new SUPER' was not just for show. I really thought it was. But then... by the time I started to believe you meant it, it was... kinda too late to come clean."

Pippa did politely remind her that there was reason to be on edge. They had experienced more than one public attempt on their lives. Deep down, Sabine understood that Pippa trusted her enough to know she was not involved with anyone who would hurt her. It also made sense that Pippa would think herself 'in too deep' after keeping a secret like that for so long.

It still felt like a needle prodding her. "I can't pretend I wasn't part of the problem with the old SUPER. I understand why, even after everything, you'd be cautious. I guess I want you to know, if you had come to me about this, I would have supported you. I'm still going to support you," she promised. "You did what you had to do so you could survive. I... wish I had heard it from you first. But I know now."

Sabine rubbed her temple, trying to think. "I'll double-check active records to make sure there are no red flags I missed. So I guess... I don't know, is there anything else you need to tell me? Or want to tell me." Ultimately, Pippa was her own person who took care of herself; she did not owe Sabine her trust.

Pippa was not sure if she had expected better or worse, finding out that Sabine knew her secret. On the one had, she had expected an explosion of (partially warranted) fury, and there was none. On the other hand, Sabine's disappointment somehow stung worse.

>>"I can't pretend I wasn't part of the problem with the old SUPER. I understand why, even after everything, you'd be cautious. I guess I want you to know, if you had come to me about this, I would have supported you. I'm still going to support you."

Pippa let out the breath she had been holding. Her brain was slowly catching up to what was happening, and with it the realization that this might irrevocably change her life at SUPER. Or her... friendship with Sabine.

>>"You did what you had to do so you could survive. I... wish I had heard it from you first. But I know now."

"Yeah." Pippa muttered. She wished she could have told Sabine, but she doubted she would have any time in the near future. That didn't make her feel any less crappy about it.

>>"I'll double-check active records to make sure there are no red flags I missed. So I guess... I don't know, is there anything else you need to tell me? Or want to tell me."

"I..." Pippa was at a loss, so she was quiet for a long time, looking at Sabine. What else was there to say? ".. thank you. I guess I... I don't know. I just want to tell you, that the other Pippa... Peggy... she's not me. She was not a good person. I am... who I am. I didn't make up that part. Does that... make sense?" It probably didn't.

Numbness was useful. Sabine learned how to take advantage of numbness from an early age, cutting herself off from the complicated emotions that came with what happened to her parents. Sabine struggled with volatile emotions, so when they started creeping up, it was easier to feel numb.

Pippa wasn't offering much, but that made sense; if Sabine were in her shoes, she would be in shock. Hell, she probably was in shock anyway. Neither of them walked into another bland workday expecting news that would rock the comfortable relationship they had developed over years. Pippa might have planned to take this secret to her grave.

But that was in the past now. All Pippa could do was struggle to explain that the person she replaced was not a good person. Sabine almost smirked, because she thought herself to be the "evil twin" in her own doppelganger situation. "You are a good person, Pippa. I never doubted that. Even after all this."

Sabine took a thin pile of sheets and ran it through the paper shredder under her desk. She lived the life of a spy, so destroying sensitive documents was not outside her comfort zone. The whirring mechanics filled the room with sound before the room was left silent. Sabine sat in that silence for another minute.

Eventually, the silence broke with Sabine steeling her nerves. "It might be best if we give each other some space. I can... I'm sure I could talk to Svetlana about ending your service with SUPER. I'm sorry if your time here was harder for keeping your secret."

Pippa didn't really feel like a good person right about now. If she had to do it all over again... she probably would have done the exact same thing, but that didn't mean she had to feel good about it. She watched the proof of her previous life being shredded, and twisted her gloved fingers together in her lap.

>>"It might be best if we give each other some space. I can... I'm sure I could talk to Svetlana about ending your service with SUPER. I'm sorry if your time here was harder for keeping your secret."

Pippa looked up, surprised. She had... not expected that. She didn't want that. She was not even sure why she was so sure about it, but that was definitely not what she wanted.

"That's not... Is that what you want?" she asked more quietly.

Sabine hated being put in positions like this. She could not differentiate how much of her decision-making was coming from somewhere logical and how much her emotions were playing a role in her choices. It was hard staying rational when emotions came into play, and with Pippa, emotions were definitely in play. Sabine was good at problem-solving, but she was not ready to deal with a problem centered around Pippa.

Well, that was not exactly true. Sabine had a Pippa problem, but it was something internal and easy to ignore. Until now, at least.

And then Pippa had to ask what Sabine wanted, making the stinging sensation threaten tears in Sabine's eyes. "Obviously, this isn't what I want," she shot back, keeping her voice down despite her rising frustration. "I wanted to just keep working with you and having you in my life. But how do I ask you to keep working in a place that hurt you? And you couldn't tell me because I was part of that?"

Sabine set down her lighter and cigarette, rubbing her temples. "Keeping you around would be selfish of me. I am just trying to give you an out to be safe and happy, and you're making it difficult."