It was quiet in the shop. It was also significantly earlier than Tarin had been in the shop in quite some time. The big window in the front was letting in sunlight and if Tarin hadn’t had so many things running through his head, he might have thought it was really pretty.

It wasn’t that he was angry. Besides the fact that anger wasn’t a feeling that Tarin was particularly in tune with, the things rolling around in his head just didn’t inspire anger. Curiosity? Yes. Concern? Plenty. Just not anger.

The longer they’d talked to Michael, the more it had turned out that her path had crossed with Lee’s. The things they’d talked about though, the story had seemed quite a bit different than the stories Lee had told. They were clearly two different people who’d had two different entry points to the humanitarian missions that they’d been on…but still.

That wasn’t even all of it though. Before they’d even ran into Michael Tarin had noticed something was off with Lee. While they’d all stood there and talked, Tarin had started putting puzzle pieces together and he’d formed a theory about what had Lee struggling so much on their run.

”Can I ask you a few questions?” Tarin said somewhat softly from where he was leaning against the counter, arms crossed.

The run that morning definitely had not gone as smoothly as normal. Lee had been experimenting with her energy levels and siphoning since she had the realization that she could simply stop siphoningwhen situations and activities would normally have resulted in her having been up all night. This realization had had the amazing side effect of making it possible for her to actually sleep with Tarin most nights.

The experimenting with how much energy she needed to take from Tarin in the morning to still make it through what had now become their morning run was not going so smoothly, and Lee had vastly underestimated what she needed that day.

But thankfully before she was forced to ask Tarin to stop the run early. The resulting conversation had resulted in quite a few interesting developments, including the fact that both herself and Tarin had known Michael before the day of the sparring match at the gym.

”Can I ask you a few questions?”

The silence that had descended on the shop was broken by Tarin’s voice. Looking over, she saw him leaning against the counter. ”Of course,” Lee replied, wondering why Tarin felt the need to ask if he could.

Lee was open to questions. That was good, Tarin supposed. ”Obviously you don’t have to answer all of them…any of them, really.” he said.

Where to start? Smaller was probably best. Tarin still didn’t know exactly how or what he wanted to ask about the things he’d learned from Michael.

”First. I noticed you were struggling on the run this morning.” he said, ”I was kind curious why…the only other time I can remember you struggling that much was right after…everything had happened and you’d been up for two days.”

That was a good place to start.

Tarin had noticed her struggling during the run. That wasn’t a surprise. He had asked her if she was ok when they stopped. Tarin also seemed to notice when she was uncomfortable or something else was going on with her, even when she was trying to not show it.

Walking toward Tarin, Lee leaned on the counter across from him. ”I’ve been able to sleep with you a lot more often,” Lee said, her voice a little slower than normal as she thought about the best way to put her reasoning into words. ”Which I love. It’s amazing to wake up with you right there, Tarin.”

And Lee knew that that part of the explanation wouldn’t seem like an answer to Tarin, even though it was a very important part of it. ”It’s so much faster to wake up and end up getting the energy I need for the day. But when I don’t have excess amounts, I apparently still need more energy than I do to simply start the day awake. And…”

Lee paused for a moment before giving a small shrug. ”It’s been hard figuring out how much extra I need to make it through our whole run without taking too much energy. And today…I vastl underestimated.”

Surely that made sense to Tarin. It had to, right?

Lee’s response was thoughtful, and he nodded as she looked at him across the short distance of the counter.

Waking up together was amazing. From the beginning Tarin had assumed that was something that just wasn’t a possibility, and that had been fine. A shame, but fine. Discovering that it was had been an absolutely excellent surprise, as had been Lee’s realization that she could somewhat mitigate the amount of energy she got by default when they were in close proximity. Which was a lot.

Lee continued to explain and Tarin frowned a bit. God, it sucked that Lee had to think so much about all of it just to get through the day.

”Too much in general, or too much from me?” he asked to clarify.

”Because I’m fine. It seems silly that I’m completely good to go and you’re struggling…. This isn’t some kind of noble self-sacrifice thing, right?”

Lee could say that she was simply talking about too much energy in general. It was a valid concern if she wanted to be able to sleep with him again that night. The problem was, would that be considered lying if that’s what she told Tarin?

”Both?” Lee said softly after a moment. ”If I take too much, don’t burn enough of it off and still am siphoning like normal for the rest of the day, I still might not be able to sleep again that night,” she told him.

Lee gave Tarin a small, tight lipped smile. ”I know you say you’re fine,” Lee continued, her voice still soft. ”And I do believe you, Tarin. But it’s hard to get past almost 25 years of worrying about my powers.”

Lee explained, and Tarin watched and listened to her closely. Lee said it was a little bit of both, that she was trying to figure things out.

It really made sense when Lee explained it this way, and it was definitely fair that she still worried even if he said he was fine. Tarin knew he didn’t have the best track record for being honest as far as his mental and sometimes physical state were concerned.

”I know this is rich coming from me…but let’s…communicate about it?” he said a bit awkwardly, ”I promise I’d tell you if I wasn’t okay.”

Dropping his eyes a bit, Tarin said, ”You also don’t have to run with me if you don’t want to. Just say the word…though today’s run would have been way less interesting without you there.”

A moment passed and then Tarin looked back up at Lee, ”That…brings me to my other questions.”

Tarin wanted them to communicate about this, about her little ‘experiments’ she’d been doing. Well, that probably would make things easier. And, though neither of them had a very good track record of telling the other when things were wrong, claiming to be fine when they clearly weren’t, Tarin promised that he would tell her if he wasn’t ok energy-wise.

Lee nodded. She trusted him. They couldn’t, wouldn’t be together if she didn’t trust him. ”Alright Tarin,” she agreed. ”But I like running with you. Other than not needing coffee to simply get out of bed, it’s become the best part of the morning. Today was just a lot more difficult than I expected.”

Other questions? Questions that related to how that morning’s run had been interesting? Between their previous talks about those kinds of things and what had been discussed that morning, what other questions could Tarin have? ”Ok?” she said, her confusion evident in her voice.

Well. That was something, Tarin supposed. There wasn’t really much more to ask on the topic if Lee was agreeing to talk with him about things. It was also really nice to hear, again, that she actually enjoyed the running part and wasn’t just doing it to spend time with him.

When Tarin brought up the fact that he had other questions, Lee looked genuinely confused. In fact, she looked so confused that part of Tarin just wanted to nevermind out of the whole situation and act like he’d made a mistake.

Had he missed something in the discussions that they’d had about the things that Lee had been involved with in the past? Had she, at some point, told him that what she’d been doing had required plausible deniability on the level that a private military contractor needed to be involved?

”I feel like I missed something somewhere.” Tarin said, pushing away from the counter and pacing a little bit as he tried to sort out the thoughts in his head.

”You mentioned that there were bigger plans at play with what you were doing in Columbia, and I know you were trying to help people affected by the Registration Act in Romania…but you never threw around words like, ‘vigilante’ or ‘plausible deniability’. I also don’t remember the phrase, ‘militarized police action’ ever coming up.”

Tarin stopped and looked over at Lee, ”Michael also seemed shocked and a little impressed that you even knew she was involved in that whole thing…what did she say? That it meant you had stroke?”

No. He wasn’t crazy. Lee absolutely had been working to make the world a better place. He’d just misinterpreted what she’d meant when she explained how. Ultimately it was his fault. for doing so, but now he was curious.

A very slight frown joined the confused expression on Lee’s face as Tarin said he must have missed something and started pacing. What was he talking about having missed something? How could he have missed something, Lee wondered. She and Michael had explained some of the situations to make sense in context and had answered Tarin’s questions, so what…

Oh. That.

Straightening up herself, Lee walked to the door. This went so far beyond what she thought she would ever explain to anyone. The only people she thought she would ever talk to about this, in this detail, had been involved. They already knew.

But she wasn’t going to lie to Tarin about it. And if he asked questions directly, like he was now, she wasn’t going to leave things out.

Having reached the door, Lee turned the lock so that no one could stumble their way into the shop while they were talking. Because even from just these first questions Tarin had asked, Lee knew that this conversation was going to go so far beyond what had been vaguely talked about with Michael.

The door now secure, Lee turned and made her way further into the shop once more, back toward the counter where she and Tarin had been standing. ”I didn’t need plausible deniability. That was for Slate,” Lee said as she glanced toward Tarin, then down to her hands on the counter. ”I was just a ‘consultant’ to Slate, and had gone to help in Romania on my own. Officially. And other than the camp breakout in Romania, I wasn’t involved in anything that could be even remotely considered a vigilante act.”

Pausing for a couple moments, Lee looked up at Tarin again. ”Remember that one article I showed you? The one you thought that I had scared the cartels allowing a peace with the government? That was Slate’s doing, and not through fear.

“After Columbia, I became part of Slate’s Inner Circle.” Lee took a breath as she continued looking at Tarin, her head tilted slightly as she watched for his reaction. ”I was involved in planning Romania.”

Lee frowned as Tarin spoke, and when he was done laying out all of the things he’d been thinking she stood up from where she’d been leaning on the counter.

From there, without saying a word, Lee walked to the door of the shop and turned the lock.

Tarin would have absolutely been lying if he said that a very slight tingle of apprehension hadn’t worked its way through him when Lee had done that and as she made her way back to the counter, he frowned.

Lee hadn’t been the one who had needed plausible deniability, she explained, that had been Slate, the teenager who had orchestrated the entire plan. Lee explained her role as a consultant and how she’d ended up in Romania…at least officially.

They’d talked about the breakout in Romania and it still made Tarin feel a little bit panicked inside to think about what Lee had described. All of it. Lee didn’t rehash any of that though. No, not when there was more. Lee had alluded to this a bit when she’d shown him the articles, but Tarin hadn’t asked then. It had felt like too much, now though…

Lee finished talking and that last sentence left Tarin paced a bit more, thinking over what Lee had said before he stopped to look at Lee.

”If not through fear…then how?” Tarin asked, ”And when you say planning Romania, what do you mean?”

He’d already said that she didn’t have to answer, but she’d already said a lot.

”If not through fear…then how? And when you say planning Romania, what do you mean?”

These were the big questions. The ones that, if any would, could change how Tarin looked at her, how he felt about her. She didn’t think it would, hoped that it wouldn’t change anything. So far, everything about her, her powers, what she had done, Tarin had accepted every single thing about her.

But she still felt a worm of doubt in her.

”In Columbia, Slate and Sebastian were offering to heal anyone, no matter who they were, how they got hurt, for free with no questions asked. Remember how I said that Slate could be very persuasive?” Lee asked. Then her voice grew more thoughtful as she tried to figure out how to explain without it sounding completely evil. ”When Slate heals someone, he’s apparently able to leave a suggestion in a person’s mind, such as to listen to him. So when he would tell people that it was a very good idea to end the drug war, they worked to make it happen.

“Slate really did want to help everyone. I saw him work for hours without a break at times healing people. Most of the people I saw him heal were ‘nobody’ in terms of ending the war. But even soldiers heard about it and there were quite a few, from both sides, who eventually came to be healed by Slate and Sebastian.” The fact that Sebastian was doing just as much healing of soldiers had to count for something, right?

”And as for planning Romania, I mean exactly that,” Lee said as she leaned against the counter again, looking down at her hands. ”We saw the direction they were heading. Slate lobbied against it, but we made plans for if the Registration Act was passed. Figuring out which politicians could be influenced to repeal the law, who absolutely wouldn’t. What we could do to help the mutants in the country who hadn’t been able to get out.

“For example, we were pretty sure that at least some of the X-Men would show up on their own to help. And you’ve said it yourself, they don’t tend to think before rushing in. So we factored them in, in ‘invited’ them. That way we could try and direct them in directions, on missions, that would help more in the broader plan.”

As she finished speaking, Lee looked up at Tarin again. A little nervously.

Lee answered every question that Tarin asked. There was absolutely no way that she was holding anything back or telling anything less than the whole truth either. There was no way with what she was saying that she could have possibly left anything out.

Everything made so much more sense now. Tarin had wondered how an 18 year old kid had managed to do so much, had managed to convince so many adults that they should listen to him.

It was mind control.

It was mind control, but Slate had only implanted commands to help people. To end the war between the cartels and the government in Columbia.

As for Romania, and Lee’s part in the whole thing…when she had said she had been a part of the planning, she’d meant exactly what she’d said.

The whole time the registration act in Romania had been working through the judicial system, they’d been learning about the major players and working with the X-Men to mitigate the chaos of the situation. Tarin didn’t know enough about it all to make an informed judgement on whether or not it had been the right way to handle things, but the proactive nature of what they’d done, the moves they’d made had been smart.

Clearly something hadn’t gone right there, but Tarin wasn’t going to ask. He’d already asked enough of Lee today.

Tarin sat down in one of the chairs by the table. Out of context it all sounded horrible. Context was important though, and Lee had trusted Slate and his ideas implicitly.

Tarin didn’t know Slate, and didn’t think he wanted to know Slate.

Tarin knew Lee though. Tarin trusted Lee. So when Tarin looked up and over at Lee where she was still standing by the counter there was only understanding on his face.

”That is…a lot.” he said, still processing through some of the bigger things. ”I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the whole mind control angle didn’t make me deeply uncomfortable. How do you know he didn’t use it on you?” he asked,

”But if you trusted him…and you thought it was the right thing to do. Then that’s all I need to know.”

Tarin silently took in everything that she was saying in silently. It was a lot to take in. She’d had trouble with some of it, and she’d lived it. What she had learned and what had happened had been over the course of months rather than simply hearing about it in a matter of minutes.

As Lee finished speaking, Tarin sat at the table. That was actually very reasonable.

When Tarin finally looked up at her, he looked like he…understood? Accepted?

”How do you know he didn’t use it on you?”

That was the big question. One that they had caused Lee to spend a number of hours on sleepless nights thinking about. ”It’s obviously possible, but I don’t think he did,” Lee told him. ”In Columbia, once I said no to the healing, Slate didn’t push it at all. And it definitely wasn’t Slate who forced me to be healed then rather than waiting for Sebastian.”

But did she tell him the exact reason she knew he hadn’t put the loyalty command in her head? It was probably the only way that Tarin would be able to fully believe Slate hadn’t done it to her.

”The man who was torturing them,” Lee went on softly after a few moments. ”The man that Slate healed first. Slate put the ‘listen to him’ thing in the man’s head.

“When the man saw me, he was ready to kill me then and there. Slate told him to sit down and shut up.” Lee paused, her eyes darting up to Tarin before dropping to her hands again. ”He did. With the number of times I didn’t listen to Slate, I’m as certain as I can be that he didn’t.”

Lee couldn’t be absolutely sure that she’d never been mind-controlled. The fact that she was admitting that as well as the fact that she had just told him everything she’d told him kind of suggested that she hadn’t been. What evil genius would allow that?

Lee had her own reason to believe though. The man who had tortured the Tarin from this side and Slate, the man who Slate had healed before he’d offered to heal Lee or Tarin had been given the order. And had obeyed.

Lee pointed out that with the number of times she’d neglected to listen to Slate, she was fairly certain about her thoughts.

”You, not listening? I don’t believe it…” Tarin said with a slight smile that lasted a moment before he grew serious again.

”One more question…” he said, standing up and coming back to the counter.

”You can hardly talk about a lot of the things that happened…why would you want to Michael to help you get involved again?”