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Chapter 8 is up!! And this one has a TRIGGER WARNING
The Lady Who Disarmed the President
For those who would like to read at AO3, see below:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
For everyone else, see below:
Trigger Warning: The chapter contains scenes of physical aggression, trauma responses, and manipulative behavior. Please take care while reading.
For the benefit of separating Duo Maxwell from his son Duo Maxwell II, their names shall henceforth be this.
Duo Maxwell = Maxwell
Duo Maxwell II = Duo jr, or simply Duo.
~*~
The Lady Who Disarmed the President
Chapter 8: A Dance of Shadows
~*~
The Grand Hall of Elysium shimmered under the sculpted chandelier above, every surface polished to a diplomatic shine. Music drifted through the air, soft and ceremonial, the kind meant to impress foreign dignitaries and intimidate junior politicians.
Lady Wisteria moved through the crowd with a practiced grace, offering polite greetings as she passed. A nod to the ambassador from the Colonies. A brief smile to a Martian Representative.
But her goal was the far side of the room where President Maxwell stood with First Lady Hilde and the ESUN representative, Lucian Hartgrave.
Her stride didn’t falter, but her pulse ticked faster. She kept her expression composed, the Wisteria broach gleaming at her shoulder.
As she approached, Hartgrave blinked several times, his eyesight clearing away the ghost of a woman who had long since passed. He held out a hand to Lady Wisteria as she stepped closer.
“Lady Wisteria, it is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Lucian Hartgrave, a representative from ESUN.” He bowed his head deeply. “You bear… an extraordinary resemblance to your mother. I must confess, for a moment, I thought she was the one who entered this hall.”
Lady Wisteria dipped into a practiced curtsey, voice warm but formal.
”You are too kind, Mr. Hartgrave. I do not remember my mother, but if you have stories to share, I would be honored to hear them.”
Hartgrave’s expression softened, something almost paternal flickering through his eyes.
“Of course. I would be glad to.”
Bronson huffed an impatient sigh to the exchange. It was controlled and subtle, the kind meant to signal that the conversation had gone on long enough. He stepped forward with the confidence of a man who never enters a conversation without intending to dominate it.
He offered a bow that was deeper than necessary, polished to perfection, and delivered with the kind of charm that demanded the room notice him.
“Councilor Wisteria,” he said, his tone rich and warm, “you look absolutely stunning this evening. Mars has not seen elegance like this in years.”
Lady Wisteria offered him a polite smile that carried the exact distance required for the moment.
“Councilor Bronson.”
Bronson’s gaze moved over her attire and posture with a quick, efficient assessment. He did not linger. He did not reveal anything further. He simply stepped back into place beside Hartgrave, expression smooth and unreadable, charm still radiating like a polished veneer.
Lady Wisteria, on the other hand, did not give him another second of her time. Her soft lavender eyes moved away from him entirely, the dismissal quiet and effortless, before settling on President Maxwell.
She stepped forward with a graceful incline of her head.
”President Maxwell,” she greeted, her voice warm and composed. “Thank you for hosting such a beautiful evening.”
Maxwell returned the gesture with a polite bow of his head. His expression remained diplomatic, but there was a flicker of something amused in his eyes, a subtle acknowledgment of the shift in the room the moment she arrived.
“Councilor Wisteria,” Maxwell smirked, “I should be thanking you. The hall hasn’t looked this alive in a while.”
Hilde beside him, folding her fan lightly against her palm. “Councilor Wisteria,” she softened, “it’s wonderful to see you again. Last night’s dinner was lovely, and I am very glad you could join us again tonight.”
Lady Wisteria’s smile softened, genuine and warm. “First Lady Hilde, the pleasure is mine. Thank you again for your hospitality.”
Maxwell watched the exchange with quiet amusement. He did not interrupt, but the slight tilt of his head made it clear he was enjoying the way her presence shifted the balance of the room. He let the moment breathe, savoring the subtle discomfort radiating from Bronson behind Hartgrave.
Then Lady Wisteria’s gaze drifted past them, landing on Duo half-hidden behind his father, trying very hard to look like he belonged in a room full of dignitaries.
Her expression brightened.
“Ah, the young prodigy. You clean up nicely.”
Hilde blinked at the comment. “Oh, you’ve met my son?”
Maxwell bit his lip to keep from snorting.
Lady Wisteria turned her attention back to Hilde, her posture straight and her tone shifting into something more formal and polished.
“Yes,” she said softly, “your son was of great assistance the other evening. My truck suffered an unfortunate breakdown on the roadside, and he was kind enough to stop and help me restore it to working order.”
Duo snorted in response and looked away, his ears turning a shade pinker.
“That’s not how I remember it,” he grumbled. “Who drives a GMC CCKW these days, anyway?”
Lady Wisteria’s face brightened a little, and she raised a hand to her lips to hide the soft smile that escaped. The gesture was delicate, elegant, and entirely at odds with the midnight memory Duo was reliving.
His face went hot.
He looked away quickly, shoulders stiffening, ears burning red. The giggle behind her hand did not help. If anything, it made his pulse spike and his composure crumble.
Maxwell noticed immediately.
He had been watching his son out of the corner of his eye, amused by the way Duo was trying and failing to maintain dignity. The moment Lady Wisteria giggled, Maxwell stepped in with the ease of a man who had spent several years rescuing his son from social implosions.
He cleared his throat lightly and shifted his stance, drawing Lady Wisteria’s attention back toward him.
“Councilor,” Maxwell said, his tone warm and smooth, “I believe Hartgrave was hoping to speak with you further. He has been waiting for an opportunity all evening.” Hartgrave straightened, grateful for the opening.
Bronson stepped forward immediately, shifting his stance with the confidence of a man who never lets a moment slip past him.
“My lady,” he said, extending his hand, “you promised me a dance last night.”
She looked at his hand as if she was being presented a disease. In a way… she was. It was a trap. If she declined, she looked rude. If she accepted, she looked aligned with him.
Her blank stare narrowed for a brief moment before she raised a hand and gestured to Hartgrave.
“My apologies, Councilor Bronson,” she said, her voice gentle and perfectly composed, “but I believe I have promised a dance first to Mr. Hartgrave.”
Hartgrave’s brows lifted in pleasant surprise, the corners of his mouth softening with genuine delight.
Bronson’s smile tightened, the frustration visible only in the slight tension at the corner of his jaw.
Maxwell fought back a laugh, the sound catching in his throat before Hilde discreetly pinched the top of his hand to silence him. He straightened immediately, clearing his throat as if nothing had happened.
The older gentleman offered his arm with old-world courtesy. Lady Wisteria placed her hand lightly atop it, and he guided her toward the dance floor with dignified ease.
Just before she stepped fully into the crowd, Lady Wisteria glanced back over her shoulder. Her eyes narrowed in contrast to the soft, serene smile she wore.
She mouthed a single word.
”Check”
Then disappeared into the sea of guests.
Bronson’s composure cracked for a heartbeat. A low growl escaped him, quiet enough not to draw attention but sharp enough to betray his irritation. With a dramatic flourish of his coat, he spun on his heel and strode away, the movement crisp and controlled, as if retreat itself were a performance.
Duo stared after Bronson with wide cornflower blue eyes, still pink from Lady Wisteria’s earlier giggle. He looked both stunned and impressed, like he had just witnessed a masterclass in political maneuvering and was trying to process it in real time.
”Did she just…” Duo murmured under his breath, unable to finish the sentence.
Maxwell’s mouth twitched.
Hilde hid her smile behind her fan, though her eyes sparkled with unmistakable delight. She leaned toward her husband, voice low enough for only him to hear.
“That’s one way to handle him.”
“She did,” Maxwell smirked. “And she did it without damaging her reputation.”
Duo swallowed, still watching the spot where Lady Wisteria had vanished into the crowd. “That was … kind of terrifying,” he admitted quietly.
~*~
The orchestra shifted into a slow, sweeping melody as Hartgrave guided Lady Wisteria onto the dance floor. The crowd parted for them with quiet respect, the chandelier casting cool tones across her features.
Hartgrave’s hand rested respectfully at her waist, his posture impeccable, even for a seventy two year old man. Lady Wisteria matched his steps with practiced grace, her expression serene.
But Hartgrave’s voice, when he finally spoke, was low and heavy.
”You are nothing like your mother.”
Her breath caught. The bluntness was unexpected.
He softened his tone, but not his honesty. “I mean that in the truest, most relieving way.”
Lady Wisteria’s gaze lifted. “I am aware… that my mother was not well liked.”
Hartgrave exhaled through his nose, the sound quiet but weighted. “Eludia Wisteria was brilliant. Unquestionably. But she was also made of ice. Quiet. Authoritative. A tyrant when she needed to be, and sometimes when she did not.”
Lady Wisteria’s steps faltered for half a beat.
Hartgrave steadied her with a gentle hand. “She commanded rooms through fear. You command them through presence.”
She looked down briefly, her voice soft. “I do not know if that is true.”
Hartgrave shook his head. “It is. I watched you tonight. You redirected Mark without raising your voice. You protected your reputation while undermining his. That is political instinct. But it is not tyranny.”
They turned gracefully, the crowd blurring around them.
Hartgrave’s voice lowered further. “Your mother never danced at these events. She stood at the head of the room, watching, calculating. She never allowed anyone close enough to speak freely.”
Lady Wisteria’s brow softened. “And you believe I do?”
Hartgrave smiled faintly. “You are speaking with me now, are you not?”
They glided past a column where Bronson stood, watching them with a smile that was too polished to be sincere. His eyes tracked every movement, every shift in her posture, every word Hartgrave spoke.
Hartgrave noticed. His jaw tightened imperceptibly.
“There is something else,” he said quietly. “Something I have not spoken of in years.”
Lady Wisteria’s pulse ticked faster. “What is it?”
Hartgrave hesitated, choosing his words with care. “Sir Albert Bronson once spoke of his youngest son. He believed the boy was engaged to the Wisteria heir.”
Her body stilled.
The orchestra continued its sweeping melody, but Rey felt none of it. The world narrowed to Hartgrave’s voice and the weight of the revelation settling like a stone in her chest.
Hartgrave continued, voice low. “He spoke of it with pride. He believed it would unite two powerful families. But something happened. Something that changed the course of both houses.”
Lady Wisteria’s voice was bare above a whisper. “Do you know what happened, Mr. Hartgrave?”
Hartgrave shook his head, the motion slow and heavy. “No, only that Sir Albert was found murdered in his own home… and his youngest son had run to Mars. There was no mention… of what became of you.”
She remained frozen, her hand still in his but unable to move. Her breath caught in her throat, her pulse thundering in her ears.
Hartgrave softened, worry etching the lines of his face. “He looks at you as if he were seeing someone else.”
Her breath stilled.
Hartgrave’s expression deepened with quiet concern. “Do be careful, Lady Wisteria. He is not a man who accepts being denied easily.”
They turned once more, but Rey’s movements were mechanical now, her mind racing. Hartgrave guided her gently, his posture protective, his gaze flicking toward Bronson who stood at the edge of the dance floor, watching them with a smile that did not reach his eyes.
The music swelled, the dance drawing to a close. Hartgrave stepped back, bowing his head with old‑world courtesy, but his eyes remained on her with unmistakable worry.
“You walk in dangerous territory,” he said softly.
Lady Wisteria curtsied, her voice steady despite the storm inside her. “Thank you for your honesty.”
Hartgrave inclined his head. “Of course, my Lady.”
She stepped away from Hartgrave, her emerald gown brushing softly against the polished floor as she moved through the crowd. The music swelled behind her, warm and ceremonial, but felt distant now. The sound was almost muffled, hollow.
She kept her expression composed, offering a polite nod to a passing dignitary, but her pulse was still ticking too fast. Hartgrave’s words echoed in her mind, each one heavy enough to shift the ground beneath her feet.
Engaged.
Murdered.
Fled.
No mention of her.
Of course, the details of what happened to her would be omitted.
She reached the edge of the hall, where the lighting dimmed and the noise softened. The balcony doors stood open, letting in a cool breath of Martian night air. She slipped through them quietly, unnoticed by most, her steps light but purposeful.
Outside, the air was crisp and thin, carrying the metallic scent of the terraformed atmosphere. The city stretched below in shimmering reds and golds, lights flickering like distant embers.
She exhaled slowly.
She raised both hands, pressing her fingertips gently along her jawline, grounding herself with the familiar motion. Her eyes closed, lashes lowering like shutters against the storm inside.
Inhale.
Hold.
Exhale.
Her shoulders eased, the tension melting just enough for her to breathe again. She opened her eyes, gaze steadying on the horizon.
For a moment, she allowed herself to simply stand there alone, quiet, untouched by the politics inside. The weight of Hartgrave’s revelation settled, but she did not let it crush her. She breathed through it, reclaiming her composure piece by piece.
It was short lived.
Footsteps approached quickly, too loud, too purposeful. She turned just in time to see a gloved white hand reach for her.
Bronson seized her upper arm with a force that made her stumble backward. Her back struck the wall behind the towering balcony doors, the impact sharp enough to jolt her breath. Her eyes snapped open to look up at him.
Her body froze.
Her mind screamed to move. Push him away. Lift her hands. Step aside. Do anything. But her limbs refused. Her pulse spiked violently, pounding in her ears. The world narrowed to Bronson’s grip, the pressure, the proximity, the way his shadow swallowed the balcony light.
Her throat tightened.
Words rose, sharp and cold, but they caught halfway up, trapped behind the sudden lock in her chest. Her mouth parted, but nothing came out. Not a sound. Not a breath.
His grip tightened.
He glared at her, blue eyes burning with anger and indignation. His expression was no longer polished or diplomatic. It was raw, unmasked, and far too close.
”Elizabeth,” he said, voice low and trembling with restrained fury.
Her pulse spiked, but her chin lifted, her posture straightening despite the sudden shake in her hands.
Bronson leaned in, his breath warm against her cheek. “You think you can dismiss me,” he said, voice trembling with restrained fury. “You think you can humiliate me in front of them?”
Her lungs seized.
Her fingers twitched once, uselessly.
Her mind kept shouting to move, but her body stayed pinned, frozen in place due to overwhelm.
Her voice finally scraped out, barely audible.
”Re…lease…”
The syllable broke halfway through, collapsing under the weight of her panic.
“You are not going to walk away from me again,” he growled.
Her breath stilled entirely.
The city lights flickered below like distant warnings, but she couldn’t look at them. She couldn’t look anywhere except at the man holding her in place, her body locked in a trauma she had never wanted anyone to see.
Bronson’s grip held her pinned, his anger simmering just beneath the surface. Lady Wisteria’s body remained frozen, her mind screaming to move, but her limbs refusing to obey. Her breath came shallow and uneven, her voice locked somewhere behind the panic tightening her chest.
Then Bronson’s expression shifted.
The fury drained from his face in an instant, replaced by a soft, almost tender smile. The change was so sudden it made her stomach twist.
He lifted her hand slowly, as if handling something fragile. His fingers curled around hers with a gentleness that did not match the bruising grip he had used moments before.
He brought her knuckles to his lips and pressed a delicate kiss to them. It was not romantic. It was calculated. A gesture meant to confuse, to disarm, to control.
“Honestly, Elizabeth,” he murmured, his voice warm and nostalgic, “you are always causing trouble. But trouble I would gladly keep by my side again.”
Her pulse spiked. Her throat tightened. Her voice scraped out, shaky and thin.
“Oh? … Then… why’d you put a bullet… in my head?”
Bronson’s smile grew behind her fingers. His eyes lifted, glaring up at her from beneath his brows. He looked pleased. Pleased, she remembered. Pleased she was shaken. Pleased the past still had claws in her.
He straightened, still holding her hand. His other hand braced against the wall beside her head, caging her in with practiced ease.
“That was the action of a scared little boy,” he said softly. “I assure you. I have grown significantly since then.”
Rey’s voice trembled, but her words remained sharp.
“Not in all the right places, I am sure.”
Bronson laughed. It was not kind. It was not amused. It was the unsettling sound he made when someone fought back and he enjoyed the resistance.
His breath hovered near her skin. His presence pressed in close. His shadow swallowed the balcony light.
A dignitary stepped outside.
The man froze at the sight of them, eyes widening. He stumbled backward, apologizing quickly, nearly tripping over the threshold in his haste to retreat.
Bronson pulled away at once with a sneer.
He released her hand. He stepped back. He adjusted his jacket with calm, composed movements. He knew exactly what the dignitary had seen. He knew how fast rumors spread. He knew how to weaponize them.
He smoothed his coat and looked at her with a quiet, victorious smile.
~*~
Thank you for reading!!
Comments are wonderful, and kudos make me quietly explode with joy.
I am suffering with a *broken* neck — not truly broken but not exactly pleasant.
It is also a U.S. Holiday.
Therefore, I bring you Chapter 7!! Because I am couch bound with a neck brace.
The Lady Who Disarmed the President
For those who would like to read on AO3, see below:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
For everyone else, enjoy!!
Another reminder:
Maxwell = Duo Maxwell
Duo = Duo Maxwell II or Duo Jr.
~*~
The Lady Who Disarmed the President
Chapter 7: Impossible
~*~
Morning on Elysium Island rose bright and mist‑washed, the kind of dawn that blurred edges and softened metal. The fog clung low across the Federation base, drifting between buildings in slow, pale ribbons. Moisture beaded along railings and pooled in the seams of the pavement. There was no red sand, no dust buildup, just the quiet humidity pulled inland from the northern sea.
Master Chang moved through it like a ghost.
He wore his white changshan, the long traditional robe falling cleanly to his knees, sleeves loose and fluid with each step. The fabric caught the morning light, turning him into a stark silhouette against the mist. His black cloth shoes made no sound on the damp ground, soft‑soled and perfectly suited to someone who preferred silence over announcement.
He crossed the parking lot with deliberate calm, eyes narrowed as he retraced the path he’d taken two nights before. The memory was still sharp, a shadow cutting across the sky, moving from the main administrative building to the warehouse roof with impossible speed and impossible grace.
He stopped beside the warehouse row.
The crates stacked along the siding were slick with condensation, their wooden surfaces darkened by the morning moisture. Chang studied them for a moment, calculating angles, height, and the trajectory of the airborne figure he’d seen.
Then he placed a hand on the nearest crate and climbed.
Not hurried. Not strained. Just controlled and precise movement, the kind that came from decades of discipline.
The fog thinned as he reached the top of the stack, giving him a clearer view of the warehouse roof. He crouched and let his fingertips glide across the cool metal surface. The moisture had begun to evaporate, revealing faint marks beneath it.
Across the far side of the roof, a series of flat shoe prints slid in a long arc. They were faded by time, softened by the light collection of dust and the movement of wind, but still visible to a trained eye. The stride told him the figure had been running. The distance between each print suggested either a tall individual or someone moving with assistance that allowed for greater speed.
Chang brushed the edge of one print. Dust clung to his fingertips. He turned his hand over and rubbed the particles between his fingers, studying the texture before his gaze returned to the roof. His eyes narrowed, calculating the angle of each step and the direction of the movement.
A voice rose from below.
“Master Chang, what are you doing on the roof?”
Kathy Po stood at the base of the crates, looking up at him with a mixture of curiosity and disbelief. She looked every bit like her mother, Sally Po, but without her mother’s sharp intensity. Kathy’s expression was softer, more grounded, and touched with the kind of patience only long service could teach.
She shaded her eyes with one hand as she stared up at him.
“It is barely morning. Most people start their day with breakfast, not rooftop investigations.”
Master Chang rose to his full height, the hem of his white changshan settling around him as he turned toward the edge of the warehouse roof. He stepped forward and dropped from the ledge without hesitation. His black cloth shoes struck the pavement with a muted thud. His knees protested the landing, but he dismissed the discomfort as irrelevant. He placed his hands calmly behind his back and began to walk toward Kathy.
“It was a nice view,” he lightly said.
Kathy Po watched him approach, her expression caught somewhere between curiosity and resignation. She understood immediately that Master Chang had been investigating something he was not ready to share. So she offered a gentle smile instead of a question.
”Would you like me to prepare some tea before your meeting with General Armitage?”
Master Chang passed her on his way toward the administrative building. His voice remained even.
”Yes, with cream and sugar.”
Kathy nodded once and fell into step behind him, already planning the rest of his morning.
~*~
Maxwell stood in front of his office’s wide windows, the afternoon sun casting an ambient glow around his frame as it slipped beyond the horizon. Elysium stretched out beneath in a sprawl of glass and steel, the skyscrapers catching the light and scattering it in fractured gold across the city. The room was quiet except for the low hum of the HVAC system, a steady background murmur that made the silence feel heavier rather than lighter. Maxwell rubbed his jaw, deep in thought, replaying the dinner in fragments that refused to settle.
Lady Wisteria had spoken with a cadence that neither he or Hilde wanted to acknowledge. A sharp, elegant precision that Treize Kushrenada once wielded as a weapon. Every word she delivered landed exactly where she intended, shaped with aristocratic restraint and quiet authority. It was subtle enough to ignore, but impossible to forget.
Then there were her remarks to Bronson. Polite on the surface, but sharp enough to cut through bone if you listened right. She gutted him with a sentence he thought was agreement. Treize probably would have been proud of that one.
And at the end…
God.
Bronson grabbing her hand like he owned it. Her warning was quiet, precise, and absolutely serious. And the bastard still brushed her hair, like she was some ornament he could play with.
She didn’t flinch or recoil from his touch. She didn’t let anything slip except that one heartbeat where her eyes went flat and cold.
Maxwell had seen that look before.
On soldiers.
On survivors.
On people who learned to endure instead of react.
…On himself.
None of it matched. Her poise belonged to someone who’d spent years in the dirt, not on a throne. The mask she wore was flawless, yet she laughed at his joke like someone who’d forgotten she was supposed to be performing. And the way she dismissed Bronson. Not with fear, not with tension, but with the bored indifference reserved for background noise hadn’t lined up with the way her eyes went dark. Every piece contradicted the next, and Maxwell hated contradictions. They meant danger. They meant ghosts. They meant someone was lying, maybe even to themselves.
None of it added up.
He turned from the window, his gaze landing on the laptop sitting open on his mahogany desk. His eyes narrowed. Fine. If the night wasn’t going to make sense, he’d do what he always did best.
He’d dig until the ghosts came crawling out of whatever fancy closet Lady Wisteria kept them in.
Maxwell dropped into his chair, the leather creaking under him, and pulled her file back up. Hilde had already gone down this rabbit hole, but he needed to see it for himself. The document was immaculate. Manicured. Sanitized. Nothing to sink his teeth into. No mention of the Wisteria family’s involvement with the Gundanium Alloy project. No notes about her upbringing. No political history. No campaign. She hadn’t fought for the Industrial Sector seat, she’d been offered it.
And before arriving on Mars three years ago, she didn’t exist. At least not on the Martian database.
Maxwell leaned back, jaw tightening as he scrolled. There was nothing that explained her connection with Bronson. Nothing that suggested she was his ally. Nothing that hinted at bad blood either. Just a blank stretch of silence where a light should have been.
He dug deeper, pulling up Mars’ sparse public records and scrolling through anything with the name Wisteria attached to it. A few articles popped up, small community pieces about Wisteria Coreworks donating materials, repairing old infrastructure, sponsoring youth programs. Nice things. Clean things. Things that looked good on paper but didn’t tell him a damn thing about the woman behind them.
Essentially, she was a ghost that wasn’t a ghost.
Maxwell clicked into her financial records next, more out of curiosity than anything else. The numbers loaded slowly, columns of data resolving into neat, sterile lines.
His eyebrows rose so fast he felt it in his hairline.
Four point seven trillion dollars.
His eyes widened as he stared at the figure like it might rearrange itself into something more reasonable. It didn’t. It just sat there, smug and obscene, like a number that had never met a budget constraint in its life.
“Four point seven trillion,” he muttered. “Sure. Why not. Totally normal. Love that for her.”
He rubbed his face with both hands. He had grown up counting scrap by the kilo. He had once stolen a sandwich because he hadn’t eaten in two days. He had spent half his teenage years sleeping in places that technically didn’t qualify as places.
And Lady Wisteria was worth more than the GDP of half the Earth Sphere.
With that kind of money, she could have been living anywhere she wanted. Earth, the Colonies, some estate with a private lake and a staff of thirty. Hell, she could have bought her own colony if she felt like it.
So why Mars?
Why here?
Why now?
Maxwell stared at the screen, the silence pressing in around him.
Then a soft knock came at his door.
He jolted like he’d been caught committing tax fraud.
Duo walked inside, hands in his pockets, expression already bored. “You rang?”
Maxwell slapped the laptop shut so fast the mahogany desk rattled. “Yeah—hey—good to see ya!” He tried to lean casually on one hand, then switched to the other, then abandoned both entirely when neither felt like the correct number of limbs to possess. “So… uh… you’re gonna need a tux for tonight.”
Duo blinked at him. Then blinked again. Then stared.
“Okay. First: excuse me, what? Second: why do you look like you just got caught with your hand in the cookie jar?”
Maxwell opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, then pointed vaguely at the laptop like it had personally betrayed him. “I did not get caught with anything. I am the President. I don’t even know where the cookie jar is.”
Duo raised an eyebrow. “And yet… you look guilty.”
“I am not guilty!” Maxwell said immediately, which was exactly what a guilty person would say. He rubbed his jaw, then his forehead, then tried leaning on the desk again and failed a second time. “I was just… looking into a certain councilor’s net worth… for… reasons.”
Duo barely had a chance to open his mouth when Maxwell waved both hands. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. But still—you need a tux.”
His son stared harder. “That’s your transition? Really?”
Maxwell shrugged, exhausted. “Look, being the President’s son sucks. Tonight is a gala. You have to be there. It’s formal. It’s stupid. I’m sorry.”
Duo deadpanned, “Wow. Inspiring. Truly. I feel so honored.”
Maxwell let his head fall back, staring at the ceiling like it might offer mercy. “Kid, I don’t make the rules. I just suffer under them.”
Maxwell let out a long breath, the kind that emptied more than his lungs. Duo Jr was still muttering about tuxes as he left the office, but the door clicked shut and the room fell quiet again. The sun had slipped fully behind the skyline now, leaving Elysium washed in deep violet and the first shimmer of city lights.
The gala would begin soon.
Maxwell straightened, rubbing the last trace of exhaustion from his face. Time to put the mask back on. Time to pretend everything was normal. Time to walk into a room full of people who thought they understood the world.
He reached for his jacket.
Across the city, preparations were already underway.
And the night was waiting.
~*~
The Gala began long before the first dignitary stepped through the doors.
Elysium’s Grand Hall rose like a prism of glass and steel, its architecture sharp and modern, built to impress without ever pretending to be Earth. The ceiling arched high above the crowd, a vast glass dome capturing the Martian night sky. The stars shimmered faintly through the thin atmosphere, their light refracted through the dome’s crystalline latticework.
Beneath it hung a single chandelier, not gold or crystal, but a suspended sculpture of engineered light, hundreds of thin rods glowing in soft gradients of blue and white. It didn’t sparkle; it radiated, casting clean lines of illumination across the hall like a constellation frozen mid-motion.
Tall windows lined the sides of the room, stretching from the floor to the ceiling, framed in brushed steel. Two balconies overlooked the main floor, each crowded with early arrivals leaning over the railings, drinks in hand, voices low and eager.
At the head of the room stood the Capitol doors, massive, reinforced, and locked. Their presence was symbolic: power behind wood, inaccessible, watching.
On the opposite side, the entrance platform waited. A narrow staircase descended from it, polished to a mirror sheen. Every guest would walk down those steps after their name was announced, descending into the crowd like performers entering a stage.
A live band played near the far wall, their instruments gleaming under the engineered chandelier. The music was elegant, restrained. Strings and soft brass, the kind of melody meant to fill silence without drawing attention.
The air was thick with perfume, cologne, and the warmth of too many bodies in one place. Conversations layered over one another in every direction with laughter, whispers, political speculation, the clink of glasses, and the rustle of fabric.
Maxwell stood at the head of the Grand Hall, positioned just beneath the shadow of the Capitol doors. The engineered chandelier cast clean lines of light across his shoulders, making him look every bit the statesmen he absolutely did not feel like tonight. His posture was straight, his expression diplomatic, but the tension in his jaw betrayed the truth… this was already too much.
Hilde stood beside him, poised and composed, her presence a quiet anchor. Her silver gown catching the refracted light in the room and glittering. She didn’t say anything … she didn’t need to. The subtle tilt of her head, the slight narrowing of her eyes, the way her hand rested lightly against her hip… all of it communicated one message to both Maxwell and Duo.
Behave.
Duo hovered just behind Maxwell’s right shoulder, trying to look like he belonged there. He had mimicked his father’s posture, but had inherited the unimpressed stare, and unfortunately, his father’s inability to hide discomfort. Every time someone glanced his way, he straightened abruptly, as if remembering he was supposed to be presidential-adjacent.
Dignitaries approached in steady waves.
Maxwell greeted each one with practiced calm via a handshake, a polite nod, a diplomatic smile.
“Welcome. Glad you could make it.”
”Thank you for traveling so far.”
”Please, enjoy the evening.”
A few tried to slip in personal questions and Maxwell deflected them with the ease of a man who had spent years dodging emotional landmines.
“Ah, well, you know how it is.”
”Busy week, but we’re managing.”
”Hilde keeps me alive, Duo keeps me humble.”
He said it lightly, but Hilde’s eyebrow rose just enough to remind him she was listening.
Then one dignitary made the mistake of addressing Duo directly.
”And you, young man — are you enjoying the evening?”
Duo froze for half a second, then attempted the Maxwell Smile, the one he’d seen his father use a thousand times.
”Yes,” he said, voice steady but clearly rehearsed. “It’s … very diplomatic.”
Maxwell choked on a laugh.
Hilde’s hand twitched, the universal sign of do not encourage him. She stepped in before the dignitary could decide whether the boy was being earnest or sarcastic.
Her smile was warm.
Her tone was polite.
Her eyes were a warning.
”Duo isn’t very fond of large gatherings,” she said apologetically, placing a steadying hand on her son’s shoulder. “Crowds aren’t really his thing.”
Duo nodded quickly, grateful for the lifeline. “Yeah. What she said.”
The dignitary chuckled, reassured and walked on.
Maxwell exhaled through his nose, the kind of exhale that spoke volumes of thanking Hilde for preventing a diplomatic incident.
Hilde’s slow glare in their direction spoke volumes.
Maxwell barely had time to recover from Duo’s “very diplomatic” disaster before the next wave of guests approached. However, this time, the energy shifted. It wasn’t another overeager Martian dignitary or a corporate representative trying to impress him.
It was Lucian Hartgrave, Representative of ESUN.
Seventy-two years old, still sharp as a blade, still carrying himself like a man who had survived three political eras and refused to retire from any of them. His silver hair was neatly combed back, his posture straight despite the years, and his eyes were pale, discerning but amused. He took in Maxwell’s “perfect family” tableau with immediate understanding.
He approached with a warm, knowing smile.
”Mr. President,” Hartgrave said, voice rich with old-world cadence. “I see you’ve mastered the most important rule of leadership.”
Maxwell blinked. “Which one is that?”
”A happy wife means a happy life.”
Hilde’s lips pressed together tightly, not in offense but in that dry, I swear if you encourage him way she reserved for Maxwell and Duo alone.
Hartgrave chuckled softly, bowing his head to her with genuine respect.
“First Lady Hilde,” he said warmly, “it’s clear you’re doing most of the lifting tonight. Reminds me of the great women I’ve worked beside over the decades. They’re the ones who keep nations from falling apart while the men pretend they’re in charge.”
Maxwell snorted before he could stop himself.
Hilde’s glare was immediate.
Hartgrave’s laughter lingered in the air for a moment. It was warm and genuine, the kind that eased tension rather than added to it. Maxwell felt himself relax for the first time all evening.
That calm lasted only a heartbeat.
A voice cut through the crowd. It was loud, grating, and instantly irritating. Maxwell recognized it before he even turned his head.
“Mr. Hartgrave! What a surprise! Dinosaurs still walk the Earth!”
Councilor Mark Bronson entered with the confidence of a man who believed every room belonged to him. His smile was wide and bright, but there was nothing sincere about it. The expression carried a thin layer of venom, the kind that came from someone who enjoyed hearing himself speak more than anything else.
Hartgrave’s demeanor changed the moment he saw Bronson. He did not look offended. He looked disappointed. Sir Albert Bronson, Mark’s father, had been one of Hartgrave’s closest friends. The elder Bronson had been dignified, principled, and respected. His death came as a shock to everyone.
Mark Bronson was none of those things.
Hartgrave bowed his head with respectful restraint. He honored the father even if he did not respect the son.
”Councilor Bronson,” he said evenly. “It is always a pleasure to see you.”
Bronson sneered. “Pleasure? I doubt that. You are probably here to remind everyone how things were done in the old days.”
Hartgrave straightened. His posture was impeccable, and his expression remained calm.
“The old days produced men who understood decorum,” he replied.
Bronson’s smile grew slightly, the kind of smile that suggested he believed he had found an opening. Maxwell felt his own irritation spike. Hilde’s fingers tightened around his hand, a silent reminder to stay composed.
Bronson bowed slightly in Hartgrave’s direction. “My apologies, Mr. Hartgrave. I meant no offense. I was only indicating there are new traditions being made.”
His tone was smooth, but the smugness beneath it was unmistakable.
Bronson gestured toward Maxwell with a flourish that was far too theatrical for the setting. “Such as the Mobile Suit Cessation Act that President Maxwell signed into law a few days ago.”
Maxwell’s jaw tightened.
Bronson continued, his smile widening. “I had not heard Earth’s reaction yet, but I imagine the Earth Sphere Unified Nations still clings to those relics.”
Hartgrave’s expression did not change. He simply regarded Bronson with the calm patience of a man who had endured far worse behavior from far more dangerous people.
“Earth clings to history,” Hartgrave said. “Not relics.”
Bronson’s smile thinned, but he held his posture with the confidence of someone who believed he had successfully shifted the conversation.
Maxwell inhaled slowly, forcing himself to remain still. Hilde’s presence beside him was the only thing keeping him from responding. Her hand tightened around his own, a quiet but unmistakable warning.
Hartgrave did not rise to the bait. He did not correct Bronson further. He simply allowed the silence to settle, heavy and deliberate.
Bronson seemed to interpret that silence as an opportunity. He stepped a little closer, his expression brightening with false charm.
”President Maxwell,” he said, “I imagine Mars is quite proud of you. Ending the era of mobile suits is no small decision. Though, I suppose some people will cling to the past. Earth especially.”
The older gentleman turned slightly toward Bronson.
“Tell me,” Hartgrave said, his tone polite and steady, “have you spoken to your brother since your father passed?”
Bronson’s expression froze for a moment.
Hartgrave continued, his voice still gentle. “It was a sudden loss. A mysterious one, some might say. Families often come together during times like that.”
Bronson’s jaw tightened. “My brother and I speak when necessary.”
Hartgrave nodded once. “I see. So that is a newer tradition as well. Cutting out one’s family.”
The words landed with surgical precision.
Bronson’s smile faltered. His eyes narrowed, but he did not speak. The surrounding conversations softened again, as if the hall itself sensed the shift.
Maxwell felt a sharp jolt of satisfaction, but Hilde’s grip on his hand kept him grounded. Duo, however, watched Bronson with open curiosity, trying to understand the layers of tension unfolding in front of him.
Bronson opened his mouth, ready to retort, ready to twist Hartgrave’s words into something sharp and self-serving. His posture shifted, his breath drew in, his expression tightened with the anticipation of delivering a line he thought would land cleanly.
He never got the chance.
The hall’s sound system chimed, a clear tone that cut through every conversation in the room. It was sharp enough to slice through Bronson’s voice before it could form the first syllable.
”Lady Elizabeth Reylynn Wisteria.”
The name rolled through the Grand Hall with the weight of ceremony. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. Heads turned toward the staircase in a single, unified motion.
Maxwell felt the shift like a physical force. Hilde released his hand. Duo straightened, eyes wide, glancing up at the staircase.
Hartgrave turned to look back. Turning because something in that name pulled him like gravity. His eyes strained as they shifted to the staircase.
And for a moment, he forgot to breathe.
Shock washed across his face. It was not dramatic, not loud, but unmistakable. His posture stiffened. His expression opened in a way Maxwell had never seen from him. The calm, steady diplomat was gone, replaced by a man staring at a ghost.
Lady Elizabeth Reylynn Wisteria stood at the top of the staircase, framed by the engineered lights and the crystalline dome overhead. She wore a long emerald gown that moved with a quiet, natural grace. The fabric wasn’t shimmering or magical, it simply flowed well, catching the light in soft, steady shifts as she began her descent.
The gown’s silhouette was clean and understated. The skirt fell in a smooth line, brushing lightly behind her with each step. The bodice was fitted enough to be formal without being dramatic, and the sleeves carried subtle silver accents that added structure rather than sparkle.
Her hair was pinned back loosely, allowing a few strands to fall around her face. It framed her features in a way that made her look composed, not ethereal, someone who belonged in a hall like this, someone who understood the weight of her own name without flaunting it.
Her expression was calm. Focused. Present.
Hartgrave whispered the name under his breath. “Eludia?”
Maxwell frowned, the word hitting him like a stone dropped into still water.
Bronson, however, reacted very differently.
He stared up at Lady Wisteria with a slow, calculating shift in his expression. His eyes narrowed, not in irritation this time, but in assessment. The tension in his jaw eased. His posture straightened. The corners of his mouth lifted in a small, satisfied smile.
”Good,” he murmured under his breath, just loud enough for Maxwell to catch the tone if not the words. “She still knows how to walk into a room.”
Maxwell’s violet blue eyes narrowed slightly. Hilde’s eyes flicked toward Bronson with immediate distrust. Duo watched him with a puzzled, uneasy curiosity.
Hartgrave didn’t notice Bronson at all. He was still staring at the young woman who had descended the stairs, still frozen in the shock of memory.
”…Impossible.” Hartgrave finally said.
~*~
Thank you so much for reading this chapter! Truly! You’re the reason my keyboard hasn’t burst into flames yet.
As always, comments are delightful little treasures that make my brain do a happy wiggle, and kudos are the digital equivalent of tossing confetti at me from afar.
Both are deeply appreciated, never required, and always cherished.
Chapter 6 is out! And is officially the last of the chapters that were almost done. The rest are in rough draft status. Although, I am currently on leave so I have the time to go through them.
The Lady Who Disarmed the President
For those who wish to read on AO3, see below.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
The Lady Who Disarmed the President
Chapter 6: The Blade Sheathed in Silk
~*~
Halbrecht lifted his glass, the soft chime of spoon against crystal cutting cleanly through the remaining threads of conversation. The room settled with the practiced ease of people long accustomed to his authority. Even Bronson’s voice tapered off mid‑sentence.
“Colleagues,” Halbrecht began, his tone carrying effortlessly across the table, “thank you for gathering this evening.”
He waited just long enough for the last chair to settle. His posture was impeccable, hands resting lightly on the stem of his glass, expression composed in that precise, unreadable way that had become his signature.
“As you are all aware,” he continued, “tomorrow marks the formal induction of our newest member into this Council. It is both tradition and courtesy that we welcome our incoming representatives with due respect, and tonight affords us the opportunity to do so.”
His gaze shifted toward Lady Elizabeth Reylynn Wisteria, offering a small, impeccably measured inclination of the head in acknowledgment.
“It is my honor to introduce Councilor‑designate Wisteria,” he said. “She joins us as the appointed representative of the Industrial Sector, bringing with her a distinguished background, a breadth of technical and administrative expertise, and a commitment to the Federation’s continued stability and progress.”
Halbrecht’s words settled over the table like a final brushstroke. A soft chorus of crystal followed as several councilors lifted their glasses in polite recognition. Conversation faded into a respectful quiet, the kind reserved for ceremony rather than camaraderie.
Lady Wisteria inclined her head with composed precision, hands folded neatly in her lap. The posture was unmistakable to Maxwell. Controlled, elegant, and shaped by the kind of aristocratic training Relena had once mastered when entire rooms waited to judge her.
His gaze drifted to Rey’s profile, studying the serene line of her expression, the stillness of her shoulders, the way she occupied the space without shrinking or posturing. She looked every inch the polished councilor Halbrecht had just described.
Which made the memory of Duo’s voice all the more jarring.
People call her Bosslady.
She gave me some of her food.
Maxwell shifted in his seat, jaw tightening. The woman seated beside Hilde did not look like someone who worked in a warehouse. She looked like someone raised to glide through rooms like this without ever touching the ground.
And yet…
Duo had no reason to lie.
And Maxwell had seen enough masks in his life to know when one fit too well.
Halbrecht lowered his glass, a small authoritative nod drawing the room back under his command. The shift that followed was not silence but focused attention, a subtle realignment of every presence at the table toward a single center of gravity.
“Before we begin,” he said, “allow me to make the proper introductions.”
A faint ripple of tension moved through the table. Formal introductions were not customary at dinners like this. Which meant Halbrecht was doing it deliberately, establishing order, hierarchy, and expectations before anyone else could shape the narrative.
His gaze moved to his left.
“President Maxwell,” he said plainly, “requires no introduction. His leadership continues to guide the Federation through a period of significant transition.”
Maxwell gave a polite, minimal nod. Hilde’s hand brushed his under the table, a small reminder to behave.
Halbrecht continued smoothly. “To his right, First Lady Hilde Schbeiker, whose work in civilian advocacy and intersector coordination remains indispensable.”
Hilde smiled with practiced warmth, the kind that could disarm a room without ever lowering its guard.
“Beside Councilor‑designate Wisteria is Councilor Mara Tesh, representing Infrastructure and Urban Development. Her work has shaped the very framework of Elysium and cities abroad.”
Tesh offered Rey a warm, genuine smile. She was one of the few in the room who was not performing.
“Beside her is Councilor John Rourke, representing Inter‑planetary Relations.”
Rourke inclined his head with a pleasant, unreadable expression. His eyes, however, were already studying Rey with quiet calculation.
Across the table, Halbrecht gestured to the gentleman opposite Maxwell.
“Councilor Elias Varrin, Terraforming and Environmental Systems.”
Varrin lifted his glass in formality, the movement unhurried and entirely unbothered. He took a small sip before speaking, his voice calm and even, the kind of tone that carried without ever needing to rise.
“Lady Wisteria and I are well acquainted,” he murmured over the rim of his glass. “I need no introduction from you, Councilor Halbrecht.”
Halbrecht’s expression did not change, though the stillness around his eyes tightened by a fraction. He inclined his head in a controlled, measured acknowledgment. It was neither apology nor challenge.
Maxwell hid a smirk behind his glass.
Hilde did not bother hiding her sigh.
“Councilor Amira Solis, Economic Development.”
Solis acknowledged the introduction with a cool nod. Her eyes, dark and incisive, swept over Lady Wisteria in a silent appraisal that held neither warmth nor hostility, only the practiced scrutiny of a strategist determining whether a newcomer would complicate or strengthen the balance of power.
“Councilor Mark Bronson, Defense and Security.”
Bronson’s smile widened incrementally, his eyes fixed on Lady Wisteria. She maintained her neutral expression and slowly blinked away from him to the next councilor. Maxwell noticed the lack of regard. Not avoidance. Not tension. Simply the absence of interest, as though Bronson occupied the same category as the centerpiece. He filed it away.
Corvallis offered a polite, tight smile, the kind that suggested she had already formed an opinion and was waiting for confirmation.
Halbrecht folded his hands behind his back, the gesture signaling a shift from ceremony to expectation.
“With introductions complete, let us enjoy the evening and welcome our new colleague properly.”
He lowered himself into the seat at the head of the table. Under ordinary circumstances, Maxwell would have occupied that position, but tonight was not about presidential hierarchy. Tonight was about the Council, its internal balance, and the woman being ushered into it.
Halbrecht lifted his crystal wine glass, took a measured sip, and set it neatly before him.
“Lady Wisteria, the Council always benefits from understanding what brings a new member to public service. Perhaps you might share what drew you specifically to the Industrial Sector, and what experience you feel best prepares yourself for the demands of this role.”
The question was shaped with impeccable precision. Polite on its surface, procedural in its framing, and edged with the quiet sharpness Maxwell had come to expect from Halbrecht. He recognized the maneuver immediately. Halbrecht was putting her on record before she had allies, before she had footing, before Bronson could claim her as his creation.
Lady Wisteria considered the question for no more than a heartbeat. Then she turned her head toward Halbrecht, the movement smooth and deliberate. Behind her, servers drifted between chairs, setting down platters and polished plates, the soft clink of silverware threading through the moment like a subtle underscore.
“What draws any of us to service, Councilor? A sense of duty, I would hope.”
Her voice carried a cadence that felt… shaped. Not stiff, not artificial, but honed in a way that made Maxwell’s instincts twitch. It wasn’t the words themselves. It was the way each one landed exactly where she meant it to, like a blade sheathed in silk.
He felt something shift, subtle as a draft under a closed door. Hilde must have sensed it too; her posture went still beside him in that quiet, instinctive way she had when something brushed an old memory. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t need to. There was something in Lady Wisteria’s tone, the cadence more than the content, that tugged at a place he hadn’t touched in years. Not recognition exactly. More like the faintest echo of one. A ghost passing through the room without slowing down. It unsettled him, and Maxwell had never been fond of feeling unsettled.
”The Industrial Sector has always been the Federation’s spine. I was raised to respect the structures that hold a society upright via its workers, its systems, its quiet and often unseen labor. My early education placed great emphasis on understanding the mechanisms behind power, both literal and political.”
What the hell?
Maxwell lowered his gaze to his plate, though he wasn’t seeing the food. She didn’t just sound like someone trained for politics. She sounded like someone trained to command. Someone who understood the weight of institutions and the elegance of restraint. Someone that Treize Kushrenada would have chosen, if he’d ever gone looking for a successor.
Bosslady.
She gave me some of her food.
The two versions of her didn’t match. And that mismatch bothered him.
The woman beside Hilde did not look like someone who worked in a warehouse. She looked like someone raised to glide through rooms like this without ever touching the ground.
“As for preparation… I have been fortunate to observe the Sector from multiple vantage points. Some formal, some… practical. I find that versatility serves one well in roles such as this.”
Halbrecht’s eyes narrowed by a fraction so slight most would miss it. Maxwell didn’t. Approval, yes. But also irritation. She had slipped through the gap he’d left for her, offering nothing he could pin down, nothing he could challenge, nothing he could use against her. A perfect aristocratic answer: complete, polished, and strategically empty.
As Maxwell’s attention drifted back to the table, something else caught him.
Bronson.
The look on Bronson’s face wasn’t the usual smugness Maxwell had come to expect from him. It was sharper. Hungrier. A kind of predatory interest that made Maxwell pause mid‑breath. Bronson watched Lady Wisteria with the focus of a man who believed he already understood her, already owned the shape of her future in this room.
Maxwell didn’t know the history there, if there even was one, but he knew that look. He’d seen it on men who mistook confidence for permission, poise for invitation, and silence for acquiescence.
And he didn’t like it.
Not one damn bit.
Lady Wisteria, for her part, didn’t seem to notice Bronson at all. Or worse, she noticed and dismissed him so completely it read as indifference. She held her posture, her expression, her composure, without a flicker of acknowledgement.
That, more than anything, made Maxwell’s jaw tighten.
Before the silence could settle too heavily, Tesh leaned forward with a bright, disarming smile, the kind that could cut through tension without ever acknowledging it existed.
“Well,” she said lightly, “now that Councilor Halbrecht has concluded his… very thorough welcome, I’d love to ask something a bit more human.”
Maxwell immediately smirked at Tesh and was swiftly met with a heel in his foot and narrowing cornflower blue eyes from his First Lady. He could almost hear her telling him again “behave.”
Halbrecht didn’t react to Tesh, but Maxwell caught the faintest flicker of annoyance in the stillness around his eye. Tesh continued, unbothered.
“I’m genuinely curious, Lady Wisteria. How did you become so deeply connected with the Industrial Sector? It’s not often we see someone step into this role with such a grounded understanding of its inner workings.”
Her tone was warm and sincere, an invitation rather than an interrogation like the Councilor of Ethics and Compliance.
Lady Wisteria inclined her head slightly, appreciating Tesh’s question with a composed, almost serene smile.
”My work with Wisteria Coreworks began long before Mars entered the equation. My family has operated the company for generations, managing trade routes between Earth and the Colonies. When I assumed leadership, I expanded our operations to include Mars as a third jurisdiction.”
Her voice remained even, each word placed with deliberate precision.
“As terraforming progressed, Mars began receiving a growing share of Earth’s industrial refuse. Most saw it as an inconvenience. I saw an opportunity. Rather than allow the planet to become a dumping ground, I proposed a closed-loop system. We import the refuse, break it down, refine what can be salvaged, and return those materials to circulation across Mars.”
She returned her hands to her lap.
”It is efficient. Sustainable. And it ensures that what others discard becomes the foundation of something useful. Mars gains industry. Earth loses a burden. And everyone benefits from reliable, high-grade resources. A balanced exchange, rather than a one-sided problem.”
Her tone softened just slightly.
“It’s not glamorous work. But it is necessary. And it has taught me that value often lies in what others overlook.”
Maxwell could feel the faint echo of Duo’s voice slip through the back of his mind again. It wasn’t the words she chose now, but the way she described the work. The rhythm of it. The practicality. The refusal to romanticize any part of it.
He knew that world.
He’d lived in it once.
Sorting scrap.
Breaking down refuse.
Finding value in what everyone else threw away.
That was Sweeper work. Hard, necessary, and invisible to most aristocrats.
Except she wasn’t ignoring it.
She understood it.
“Mars has had that problem since the first immigrants came from Earth,” Tesh said warmly, tilting her head toward Lady Wisteria. “I’m glad someone finally took the initiative to deal with the refuse.”
Varrin let out a low hum, sounding tired but faintly amused. ”The junk you mean. Although, to be fair, Wisteria’s recycling work has made my teams’ stabilization projects significantly easier.”
Lady Wisteria nodded once, “the stabilization towers, in conjunction with maintaining the reactors, are a significant part of Mars’ ongoing terraforming efforts.”
”Ongoing…” Varrin echoed with a sigh, rolling his shoulders back. “And never-ending. Given Mars’ mass and current lack of a complete magnetosphere, the terraforming processes must remain active.”
”I thought terraforming Mars was completed when … whatever was on the resource satellite — microbes? Fungus? — landed and produced enough oxygen to jumpstart the process.” Corvallis sipped her wine, but her tone was clipped and condescending.
“Jumpstart,” Varrin repeated, turning his head toward her with a slow, almost lazy swivel. “Not complete. Never complete.”
Hilde straightened, interest sharpening her posture. “So, you’re saying Mars will remain in a constant terraforming status?”
”Until the artificial magnetosphere is built around the planet so that the sun doesn’t blast away our progress…” Varrin replied, “yes. Constant.”
Maxwell watched him with a faint, reluctant flicker of appreciation. Varrin had that odd mix of brilliance and exhaustion he recognized from some old engineers he had worked with back as a teenager. The ones who could explain planetary mechanics with a shrug and a coffee stain. The man looked like he’d been living inside a reactor schematic for a decade and found the whole thing mildly entertaining.
“Ahem.” Halbrecht cleared his throat, the sound crisp enough to cut through the table’s drift into technical territory. Several heads turned his way. “Perhaps we have… strayed from the evening’s purpose.”
Varrin leaned back, unbothered. “Right. My apologies for the detour, Lady Wisteria.”
Maxwell hid a smirk behind his glass. Varrin wasn’t actually sorry and everyone at the table knew it.
Lady Wisteria didn’t seem bothered by the shift in topic. If anything, her posture eased, the faintest hint of interest sharpening her expression.
“Please don’t apologize, Councilor Varrin,” she said, her voice warm but measured. “The stabilization towers and reactor maintenance are far more engaging subjects than my appointment to this Council. And you’re correct that without a sustained magnetic field, Mars will always require active atmospheric support.”
Her delivery was smooth, almost effortless, but there was substance beneath it. She wasn’t repeating something she’d memorized; she understood it.
”The energy load balancing alone is extraordinary,” she continued. “Coordinating the towers with the reactor grid requires constant recalibration. Your teams’ work is foundational to every other system on this planet.”
Varrin blinked, pleasantly caught off guard. “Well,” he murmured, “someone, for once, actually reads the reports.”
Tesh and Solis chuckled softly, and the table briefly returned to their plates.
Maxwell felt a flicker of something he didn’t expect from Varrin, not quite admiration but something more akin to recognition. She wasn’t bluffing. She knew what she was talking about. And she wasn’t intimidated by the science or the scale of it.
Most aristocrats treated terraforming like a backdrop. She treated it like a system.
Across the table, Varrin leaned forward, suddenly more animated than he’d been all evening. “If you ever want a tour of the towers, Lady Wisteria, I’d be happy to—“
He didn’t get the chance to finish.
”Now, now, Varrin.” Bronson cut in with a smoothness that made Maxwell’s eyebrow twitch. “I doubt Elizabeth has any real interest in trudging through industrial scaffolding. A tour of the towers would be dreadfully dull for someone of her upbringing.”
He turned his attention fully to Lady Wisteria, smiling like he already knew her. “You don’t need to pretend to be fascinated by all this technical jargon. No one expects you to be an expert.”
The table stilled.
Lady Wisteria’s expression didn’t change, but something in her posture sharpened the way a blade shapers when drawn an inch from its sheath.
“Of course,” she said gently. “I would never presume to exceed the expectations others have set for me.”
Bronson’s smile widened, pleased and utterly convinced she had agreed with him.
But Maxwell felt the shift in the air. Hilde’s eyes narrowed, just slightly. Varrin’s brows lifted in quiet, delighted recognition.
Lady Wisteria simply lifted her glass, serene and unbothered, as if she hadn’t just gutted him with a sentence he mistook for obedience.
Varrin let the silence hang for a beat, then leaned back with a slow, thoughtful hum. It was the kind that suggested he was about to say something unhelpful on purpose.
“Well,” Varrin drawled, “if Lady Wisteria ever does decide to exceed expectations, the towers will still be standing. Mostly.”
A few councilors snorted into their glasses. Bronson didn’t get it. Of course he didn’t.
Maxwell did, and he coughed softly and quickly preoccupied himself with the brisket in front of him.
Lady Wisteria offered a polite, unreadable smile. Something that could mean anything from thank you to I see exactly what you’re doing.
Halbrecht, however, saw the room slipping out of his hands.
He cleared his throat sharply. “I believe we’ve indulged the tangent long enough. Lady Wisteria, perhaps you might elaborate on your transition to Mars and your goals for the Industrial Sector.”
The tone was polite.
The intent was not.
The conversation that followed shifted back into rigid, political formality — deliberate, pointed, and carefully controlled. Bronson, notably, kept his interjections to a minimum, though every so often Maxwell caught him watching Rey with that same proprietary interest that made his jaw tighten earlier.
Rey answered each question with calm precision, offering just enough information to satisfy without revealing anything she didn’t intend to. Hilde asked thoughtful questions. Tesh kept the tone warm. Varrin occasionally muttered something dry under his breath that only Maxwell seemed to catch.
And then, at last, the dinner wound to its natural close.
Chairs slid back. Napkins were folded. The soft murmur of polite farewells filled the room.
Rey rose with the others, offering a graceful nod to each councilor as they approached her in turn.
That was when Bronson made his move.
He stepped in close, catching her hand before she could withdraw it.
“Elizabeth,” he murmured, voice low and intimate. “I’m delighted you’ve returned to me. Truly. I hope we’ll have the chance to speak privately soon. There’s so much unfinished between us.”
From a few feet away, Maxwell saw it happen, the subtle collapse of Lady Wisteria’s serenity. Not dramatic. Not visible to anyone who wasn’t watching her closely. But her lavender eyes dulled and narrowed, the light in them shuttering behind something colder.
Her hand didn’t pull away. She didn’t flinch or stiffen.
She simply tilted her head a fraction, enough to bring her mouth closer to his ear without appearing to move at all.
Her voice was soft, barely a breath, a whisper meant for him alone.
“Councilor Bronson,” she murmured, “do take your hand back. My guard has limited patience for uninvited contact.”
Bronson snorted softly, as if she had told a charming joke. “Your guard?” His eyes flickered lazily toward the man standing by the elevator and he let out a quiet laugh. “You’re still keeping that dusty old thing around? I suppose some things never change.”
He lifted his hand and brushed his fingers against the loose bangs falling over the left side of her face, playing with the ends as if he had any right to touch her.
“Your hand.” Her voice dropped an octave and Bronson smirked.
“Of course,” he said, withdrawing his hand with a flourish. “I forget how delicate you can be.”
She stepped back with perfect poise, her expression serene.
“Do be sure to save a dance for me tomorrow night, my dear. Until then.” Bronson turned and began to walk away.
Maxwell had seen a lot of things in his life. He’d seen men bluff, posture, threaten, plead. He’d seen people cling to power, to pride, to delusions.
But watching Bronson lean in like that, close enough that Lady Wisteria had to tilt her head to avoid his breath, did something instinctive to Maxwell he wasn’t prepared for.
He watched Bronson’s fingers brush her bangs, watched the man toy with the ends of her hair like he had a right to touch her. The gesture was intimate in a way that made Maxwell’s stomach twist, not because of what it meant, but because of what it assumed.
Bronson assumed ownership. He assumed she was his to touch.
He stepped away from Hilde without a word, crossing the distance between them with the steady, unhurried gait of a man who had already made up his mind about something.
Lady Wisteria stood watching Bronson walk away, her expression serene again, but Maxwell had seen the moment her eyes went flat. He’d seen the way she held herself still, the way she endured the contact rather than reacted to it.
He stopped beside her, close enough that she could hear him without anyone else catching a word.
“Lady Wisteria,” he said quietly, the corner of his smile curled upward. “If you’d like me to beat him senseless, I know a place where no one would find the body.”
It was delivered like a joke. It was not entirely a joke.
Her head spun in his direction and her breath caught and her eyes widened faintly. For the first time all evening, something unguarded flickered across her face.
Surprise. And then, unmistakably, amusement.
A tiny spark, quick and bright, like a match struck in the dark.
Her lips parted, the beginning of a real smile tugging at the corner of her mouth before she could stop it. She angled her head toward him, lavender eyes warming with a glimmer of something alive, something unmasked.
“Mr. President,” she murmured, her voice softer than before, “that is… unexpectedly direct.”
She laughed softly, her hand rising to cover her lips. For a heartbeat, the mask slipped and Rey shone through. “But your concern is noted,” she added, the Lady Wisteria composure settling back into place. “And unnecessary.”
Maxwell smirked, but it was not the cocky grin of a teenager. It was quieter and older, worn at the edges by years of surviving things no one should have to. The expression of a man who had seen too much to be impressed and too much to be fooled.
He planted his hands on his hips, tilting his head just enough to catch her eyes.
“Yeah,” he said, voice low and even. “That is what people usually say right before they need help. Just making sure you know you have options.”
Something escaped her then, not quite a laugh and not quite a breath, and she shook her head gently, a faint spark of amusement lingering in her eyes.
“Someone should keep the wine from you, Mr. President. It is hardly appropriate to discuss the removal of one of your councilors in such a way.”
Maxwell’s smirk deepened, subtle but unmistakably real.
Before he could answer, a broad shouldered man in a black suit stepped up behind her and placed a steady hand on her shoulder. His presence was quiet but absolute.
“Lady Wisteria,” he said, his voice low and respectful. “Forgive my intrusion, but we need to be going.”
She sighed softly and turned back to Maxwell with a composed nod.
“Be well, Mr. President. Until tomorrow.”
Maxwell watched her go, the echo of her brief, unmasked laughter lingering in his mind longer than he expected.
He didn’t move at first. The room felt strangely hollow without Lady Wisteria in it, as if she had taken the air with her when she left. Her laughter, too free and too alive for someone who hid behind porcelain, still clung to him like a scent he could not place.
He did not trust people who wore masks.
He trusted even less the ones who seemed comfortable in them.
A faint prickle crawled up the back of his neck, the same instinct which had kept him alive through three wars. Something about her cadence, the tilt of her head, the way she had said tomorrow, it all scraped against a memory he did not want to revisit.
He exhaled slowly, forcing his shoulders to settle.
That was when he realized Hilde had appeared at his side, silent as a shadow. She followed his gaze down toward the elevator, her expression sharpening with the same suspicion he felt but would not voice.
She leaned in, her breath barely disturbing the air.
“Hey… was it just me, or did I hear a dead man coming from her lips?”
The words hit him harder than he expected.
Maxwell’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look at Hilde. He couldn’t, not yet. His eyes stayed fixed on the empty hallway where Lady Wisteria had vanished, as if staring long enough might peel back the mask she wore.
A dead man.
Yeah.
That was exactly it.
He gave the smallest nod, a gesture so controlled it barely counted as movement. His throat felt tight, as if speaking the name would summon ghosts best left buried.
Inside, though, the reaction was sharper. An old wound reopening. A voice he had sworn he would never hear again echoing through the delicate aristocratic lilt of a woman who should have had no connection to it.
He finally drew in a breath, steadying himself.
“You heard it too,” he murmured, voice low and almost flat. Not confirmation. Not denial. Just enough for Hilde to know she was not imagining things.
Hilde’s eyes flicked up to him, searching, but she didn’t push. She knew better. She had seen that look before, the one that meant Maxwell’s mind was already racing ahead, assembling pieces, drawing lines between people who should never intersect.
He turned away at last, the mask of the President sliding back into place.
But the echo of that dead man’s voice followed him through the building.
~*~
The townhouse door clicked shut behind them with a soft finality. Rey didn’t make it more than three steps inside before her hand found the wall, fingers splaying against the cool surface as if she needed it to stay upright. The exhaustion had hit her the moment she stepped into the car, the kind that never showed on her face at dinner but lived deep in her bones.
Her guard locked the door with one hand and set her clutch on the small round kitchen table a few feet away. He didn’t ask if she was all right. He didn’t need to. He moved past her with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this a thousand times.
“Roger,” Rey said as she sank onto the couch, “will you check AIA’s feeds later to see where he went after the dinner.”
Roger grunted as he pulled a clean glass from the top cabinet and filled it with water. “You should focus on resting.”
“Roger.”
He picked up one of the eight orange prescription bottles on the kitchen island and tapped out a small white pill. “Yes, I will check it.” He stepped down into the living room and handed her both the pill and the glass. “After I make sure you rest.”
She didn’t argue. She never did when she was this tired.
“Did you take your morning medication,” Roger asked as he returned to the island.
Rey grumbled, shoulders dropping, the pill and water still in her hands. “I don’t remember.”
He didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. He was already turning on the bathroom light around the corner, the warm glow spilling into the dim living room. The sound of running water followed, steady and familiar.
Rey rested her forehead against her hand, elbow braced on the arm of the couch. Her hair slipped forward, the carefully arranged waves from the dinner now falling loose around her face. She looked nothing like Lady Wisteria here. She looked like someone who had been holding herself together for hours and finally let go.
Roger returned long enough to place a folded set of soft clothes beside her. Comfortable ones. The ones she always reached for after nights like this.
“The bath will be ready in a minute,” he said. “Hot, not scalding.”
She huffed a tired laugh. “You always say that.”
“And you always pretend you don’t like it hotter than you should.”
Her lips curved, faint but real.
Roger watched her for a moment, his expression unreadable but steady. The kind of steady that had held her upright more times than she could count.
“You ate almost nothing at dinner,” he said.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“You’re never hungry, even after these things.”
He opened the fridge, grimaced at the lack of food, and pulled out the basic ingredients for a simple sandwich. He assembled it on the counter behind her while she inspected the pill in the dim light from the bathroom. Then, slowly and begrudgingly, she placed it on her tongue and swallowed without the water he had given her.
A plate appeared on the end table beside her. Rey blinked slowly, the weight of the evening settling over her shoulders. “Thank you.”
Roger paused for a heartbeat, and his voice softened.
“Baby girl.”
Her eyes lifted.
“You did well.”
Something in her chest loosened. Just a little. She nodded once, small and tired and honest.
Roger didn’t push. He never did. He simply stepped back, giving her space to breathe, to exist, to be something other than the woman who had held an entire council in the palm of her hand.
“The bath is ready,” he said quietly.
Rey pushed herself to her feet, slower than usual, and Roger moved to steady her without making it look like he was. She didn’t protest. She didn’t pretend she didn’t need it.
She let him guide her toward the bathroom.
~*~
Thank you again for reading!
Comments are wonderful, and kudos make me quietly explode with joy.
A/N: The characters Duo Maxwell, Duo Maxwell II, Wufei Chang and Hilde are not mine. Will never be mine. And will always be owned by the creators of Gundam Wing and Frozen Teardrop.
For the benefit of separating Duo Maxwell from his son Duo Maxwell II, their names shall henceforth be this.
Duo Maxwell = Maxwell
Duo Maxwell II = Duo jr, or simply Duo.
~*~
Maxwell returned to the presidential suite with a slow exhale, the kind that carried the weight of a long day and an even longer night. He rubbed the back of his neck as he stepped inside. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing the quiet in around him.
He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it onto the couch without looking. He loosened his tie and let it fall across the armrest. Then he ran a hand through his short hair, leaving it even messier than before, and started down the hallway.
The lights were dim. The suite felt too still. Too reflective.
He stopped in front of Duo’s door and stared at it like it had personally offended him. The longer he looked, the more the silence pressed in. Finally, he lifted a hand and knocked. The sound was soft, almost hesitant.
Nothing.
He waited a moment, then eased the door open.
Duo was there.
He lay on his back across the bed, his phone floating above his face as he tapped at the screen. His headphones were on. He did not turn his head, but Maxwell saw the slight shift in his eyes. Duo had noticed him.
Maxwell stood in the doorway for a long moment, unsure of how to begin. Eventually, he stepped inside. The movement was enough to make Duo glance over. He paused his music, slid the headphones down around his neck, and pushed himself upright. He sat at the edge of the bed and tossed his phone aside with a soft thud.
”Hey,” Maxwell spoke hesitantly. His hand drifted to the back of his neck again, and his eyes dropped to the floor.
“Hey,” Duo replied quietly.
”You’re home.”
”Yep. I kind of live here.”
”Right. Yeah…”
Silence settled between them. Thick. Awkward. Familiar in a way neither of them liked.
Duo rolled his eyes and threw off his headphones, letting them join his phone at his side. He planted his feet on the floor, looked back at his father, and waited.
Maxwell froze for a moment, as if someone had switched him off. Then he drew in a slow breath and tried again.
“Look,” he said quietly, “about last night…”
Junior’s shoulders tightened, just enough for Maxwell to notice. His face stayed turned away, jaw set, eyes fixed on some point on the floor that wasn’t his father.
”What about it?” he asked, voice cool, controlled.
Maxwell swallowed. “I… shouldn’t have blindsided you. About the Cessation Act.” His hand dropped from his neck as he exhaled. “It sorta… was thrown on my desk yesterday. Talked to Alpha about what would happen if I didn’t sign it.”
He rubbed his palm against his thigh, restless. “Basically, I got a bit cornered yesterday.”
Duo finally turned his head, brows creasing as he studied his father’s face. “Don’t they like… give you twenty-four hours to make up your mind?”
His father huffed, a tired humorless sound. “I wish it were that easy sometimes.”
Duo blinked, confusion flickering across his expression before it sharpened. “Wait… but you're the President? How do you get cornered?” His eyes stayed locked on Maxwell’s face, searching for something, anything.
Maxwell cleared his throat, gaze sliding away. “Anyways— Where’d you go last night? Didn’t find some alley or ditch to crash in, did you?”
”I’m not you.” The words snapped out before Duo could stop them, sharp and defensive. He winced immediately, shoulders tightening, and let out a breath. “Some lady on the street needed help with her truck,” he muttered, tone softer but still guarded. “Turns out she had a bunkhouse at her business. Offered to let me stay. Wasn’t really planning on going… but… it felt better than coming back here.”
Maxwell’s jaw tightened at that, a flicker of something wounded crossing his face before he smoothed it away. He folded his arms loosely, not quite relaxed. “What kind of business?”
His son shrugged. “One of those old mobile suit hangars. She moved her business into it. Called it Wisteria CoreWorks, or something.”
Maxwell went still.
It wasn’t dramatic, just a subtle, complete stop, like someone had pressed pause on him. His breath caught in his chest, and his eyes narrowed a fraction. Not in anger but in recognition. The name hit him like a dropped weight.
”Yeah,” Duo continued, oblivious to the shift. “What was her name again…?”
He tapped his fingers against the bed, gaze shifting toward the floor as he searched his memory. “Oh! That’s right, it was Rey Wisteria. But I guess people call her Bosslady. She’s the owner.” He shrugged slightly, “she also said she was going to be a new Councilor.”
Maxwell didn’t move from his spot. His expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes did. Something sharp, calculating, and suddenly very, very awake.
“Yeah, I know the name.” He finally responded, jaw flexing once.
Duo blinked. “You do?”
”Kid, I’ve been reviewing her file,” Maxwell said, tone even but edged with something that Duo couldn’t place. “Elizabeth Reylynn Wisteria. She was confirmed this morning as the next Industrial Sector Councilor.”
”Wait… Elizabeth Reylynn Wisteria? You sure that’s the same woman? She said her name was Rey.”
Maxwell took a step forward and sat on the edge of Duo’s bed next to him. The mattress dipped under his weight, and he leaned forward onto his knees. “Sounds like it.”
He didn’t elaborate what he had read in the file that described an aristocrat, not a mechanic. The disconnect scraped at him. Suddenly, Maxwell felt like he was missing half the picture, and he hated that feeling more than he let on.
He drew in a slow breath. “She let you stay there?”
Duo nodded. “Yeah, she was… nice. And this morning, she gave me some of her food before I left.”
Maxwell didn’t respond right away. His face stayed neutral. Internally, there was a flicker of concern, suspicion, and something else that he couldn’t show Duo.
His silence stretched a beat too long and Duo caught on to it immediately. The way his father’s shoulders had gone just a little too still and the way his eyes had narrowed in thought rather than irritation.
Duo caught it instantly.
”What’s your problem?” He asked, brows pulling together.
Maxwell blinked once, as if pulling himself back from somewhere else. “Huh? Oh, nothing.” The answer came too quickly. Then, a bit softer, more controlled. “Just… her file didn’t mention anything like what you said. It mentioned she had a business in the industrial sector, but didn’t specify what.” His tired violet blue eyes glance in his son’s direction. “Or a hangar. Or … any of that.”
Duo’s eyes narrowed in recognition of what was happening. He knew that look, the one where his dad’s brain was already ten steps ahead.
“She. Was. Nice.” He said it slowly, deliberately. “Dad, don’t think too hard on it.”
Maxwell raised his hands up in mock surrender, palms out. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. She’s nice. I’m the problem. Story of my life.”
He pushed himself upright with a soft grunt, smacking his palms lightly against his knees as if dusting off the conversation. “I’ll just go and do what … uh… normal dads do,” he muttered the words wobbling somewhere between sarcasm and resignation.
He took a step toward the door, shoulders hitching in that familiar way he got when he was trying to pretend something didn’t sting. Duo’s eyes narrowed just a fraction but not enough to be confrontational. Just enough to show that he had caught it. He always did.
Maxwell paused in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, the other hanging uselessly at his side. For a heartbeat, it looked like he might turn back, say something real, something heavier.
But the moment slipped.
It always did.
He cleared his throat, mask sliding back into place. “Get some sleep, kid.”
And without waiting for a reply, he stepped out into the dim hallway, the door clicking shut behind him like a period at the end of a sentence neither of them had finished.
Duo stared at the now-closed doorway for a long beat, the silence settling back over the room like a blanket he didn’t ask for. Then he let out a deep, dramatic sigh and flopped backward onto his bed, limbs splaying out like he’d just been emotionally jump-scared.
He dragged both hands down his face.
“Oh my god,” he quietly groaned into his palms. “He’s so cringe.”
He glared at the ceiling like it was personally responsible for his genetics. “Who even says stuff like that? ‘Normal dads’? Bro, you’re the President. You don’t even know what normal is.”
He punched half-heartedly at his pillow, muttering under his breath.
”And he wonders why I left.”
~*~
Master Chang stepped out of the administrative wing of the Mars Federation base, the door sliding shut behind him with a soft hydraulic hiss. The night air met him immediately, thin and cold with the metallic tang of dust that never truly settled on Mars. Above him, Phobos drifted low across the sky, its pale light washing the compound in a ghostly sheen.
He adjusted the fall of his white attire, the fabric catching faintly in the breeze. His long black hair, tied back into a low ponytail, brushed against his shoulder as he moved. Time had sharpened him rather than softened him. The boyish roundness he once carried had vanished, replaced by the clean, severe lines of a man shaped by discipline and conflict. His eyes, however, remained unchanged. They were sharp, unyielding, and always watching.
The meeting with General Armitage had been tedious. Redundant. A political formality dressed up as strategic necessity. Preventer’s continued presence on Mars, the use of Snow White, Scheherazade, Warlock, and his own Shenlong, none of it was new. None of it required an hour of circular assurances that Preventer served peace rather than the Earth Sphere United Nations.
He had no patience for bureaucrats who feared shadows more than threats.
Wufei exhaled through his nose, a quiet sound of irritation, and crossed the lot toward his vehicle. The floodlights hummed overhead, casting long and stark shadows across the pavement. The base was quiet at this hour, with only a few personnel moving between buildings, their footsteps muted in the thin air.
He reached for the driver’s side door.
Something flickered at the edge of his vision.
Wufei stilled.
A shadow, the size of a person and impossibly fast, darted from the roof of one building to the next. It did not leap or jump. It moved as if gravity had been dismissed entirely, gliding through the air with unnatural ease.
His brows drew together in a faint crease of suspicion. He turned fully, eyes narrowing as he tracked the direction the figure had vanished.
Nothing moved.
The rooftop was empty.
The air was still.
The base remained silent.
No alarms.
No shouts.
No sensor lights triggered.
Only the steady hum of the floodlights and the distant rumble of a transport shuttle preparing for takeoff.
Wufei waited another long moment, gaze fixed on the darkened roofline. His hand hovered near his hip, an old habit, reaching for a sword he no longer carried.
Still nothing.
He exhaled slowly, though the tension in his shoulders did not ease. “Hn.”
Whether it had been a trick of the light or something else entirely, he could not say. But the unease settled into his chest like a stone.
He opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat, the leather creaking beneath him. As the engine hummed to life, he cast one last glance toward the rooftops.
Whatever he had seen, or thought he had seen, was gone.
But Wufei Chang had learned long ago that shadows did not move like that without reason.
And Mars had been far too quiet lately.
~*~
The Following Night
~*~
The elevator opened onto the reserved floor with a soft chime.
Maxwell stepped out first, Hilde’s arm looped through his. He wore a black suit over a deep blue button-down, the collar open just enough to suggest the grey silk tie had been something of a negotiation. It was knotted properly but sitting slightly looser than protocol demanded, the only visible concession to the man underneath the office. His hair had been tamed for the occasion, slicked back from his face with unusual cooperation, though a few strands had already staged their quiet rebellion at the nape of his neck.
Beside him Hilde wore deep blue, a dress that fell cleanly to the floor with a short-sleeved jacket over it that managed to read as both formal and composed without trying too hard at either. Her glasses were pushed up properly for once. Her posture carried the kind of unhurried certainty that Maxwell had always quietly admired, the sort of presence that made a room feel like it had been waiting for her specifically rather than the other way around.
Together they looked exactly like what they were supposed to be.
The restaurant occupied one of the building’s uppermost floors and made no effort to be modest about it. Floor to ceiling windows lined every wall, leaving Elysium fully exposed beyond the glass, the city spread out in the dark below like something scattered and luminous. Towers and boulevards caught their own light and threw it back against the sky. Signs bled color into the lower clouds. The strait glimmered faintly in the distance where the island’s edge met the water.
Inside, the chandeliers descended from the ceiling in tiers of crystal and warm light, opulent in the specific way of establishments that had long since stopped worrying about restraint. The booths along the outer walls were separated by frosted glass panels through which soft bubbles rose in slow columns, and between them small flowering trees had been coaxed into thriving at elevation through what Maxwell could only assume was expensive intervention. The whole effect was layered and deliberate, the kind of beauty that announced money without mentioning it.
It was the kind of place Maxwell had never imagined belonging to.
He still wasn’t entirely sure he did.
The private dining room sat at the back, its doors standing open, the murmur of conversation already carrying into the corridor. The sound of people who had been there long enough to feel at home.
Hilde leaned in slightly as they approached.
“Behave,” she said plainly.
“I always behave.”
“You deadpan every time Bronson opens his mouth.”
“That’s just my face.”
“It is not just your face.”
Maxwell exhaled. “I’ll handle it.”
She gave him the look that meant she’d believe it when she saw it.
The dining room resolved around them as they entered. Maxwell took stock of the room in the practiced way of someone who had spent years reading spaces before entering them.
Mara Tesh stood near the window with Solis, her voice low and her expression genuinely warm. She wore a richly patterned robe in deep golds and blues, the fabric layered and intricate in a way that suggested someone who had long since stopped dressing for anyone else’s approval. Her silver hair was pinned back neatly, small gold earrings catching the candlelight. The lines at the corners of her eyes belonged to someone who had spent decades doing difficult work and found most of it worthwhile. She laughed at something Solis said, the sound genuine and unguarded.
Beside her Amira Solis stood with her posture relaxed but attentive. Her dark hair was swept loosely back from her face, a few strands catching the candlelight at her temples. She wore black, a well cut blazer over a turtleneck, understated and precise. Small silver earrings. A delicate necklace that caught the light when she moved. Her expression carried the kind of warmth that came from genuine interest rather than performance, and her eyes moved across the room with a quiet thoroughness that missed very little.
Near the long table Halbrecht stood with Corvallis and Rourke, the three of them arranged in the particular geometry of people who had been talking long enough to forget they were performing.
Lysa Corvallis held a glass of wine, dressed in deep green, a tailored suit over a turtleneck with several layered necklaces catching the candlelight and a small gold butterfly brooch at her lapel. Her dark hair was pinned up with the kind of precision that looked effortless and wasn’t. Her blue eyes were sharp and her expression was that of a woman who believed in the institutions she served and had never had sufficient reason to question them.
John Rourke stood at the edge of the group, his expression pleasant and his attention distributed across the room in a way that had nothing to do with the conversation immediately in front of him. He wore a dark constellation patterned suit with a compass pin at his tie, the details of a man who cultivated the image of someone who navigated carefully. His dark hair was greying at the temples. His eyes were measuring. He smiled when it was appropriate to smile and said nothing that couldn’t be walked back later.
And Bronson…
Bronson stood with his back partially to the door, one hand gesturing with the unhurried confidence of someone accustomed to holding a room. He was striking in the way that certain men were striking, not despite their awareness of it but because of it. Blonde hair swept back from a face that read as open and trustworthy at first glance, the kind of face that photographed well and smiled easily. His suit was white with dark blue embroidery along the lapels, worn with the ease of someone for whom expensive things had always simply existed. A small silver pin caught the candlelight at his collar. His eyes were blue and sharp underneath the warmth he projected so effortlessly.
He looked like someone’s idea of a visionary.
Elias Varrin stood slightly apart near the window with his arms crossed, his expression carrying the particular tension of a man being talked at rather than with. He wore charcoal grey over a black shirt, the suit well cut but worn without vanity, functional rather than decorative. Dark hair with threads of grey at the temples. A short beard. His blue eyes had the quality of someone who spent more time looking at data than at people, though they missed very little of either. Where Bronson filled space with intention, Varrin simply occupied it, solid and undemonstrative.
Maxwell and Hilde’s entrance landed in the room like a stone dropped in still water.
Which is to say it barely registered.
Tesh glanced over and offered a small acknowledging nod before returning to Solis. Rourke’s eyes moved briefly to the door and away. Corvallis didn’t look up at all.
Bronson continued talking.
Halbrecht broke away from the others with the measured efficiency of a man fulfilling an obligation. He crossed the room and inclined his head in that precise minimal bow.
“Mr. President. Good evening.” His gaze moved to Hilde. “First Lady.”
“Councilor,” Maxwell returned evenly.
Hilde smiled with the practiced warmth of someone who had been performing this particular role for years. “Thank you for organizing this evening.”
“Of course,” Halbrecht said. “Please, make yourselves comfortable.”
He turned back toward the others with the air of someone who had discharged his duty and was ready to return to more interesting business.
Maxwell stood in the middle of the room for a moment.
Hilde touched his arm lightly. A small precise pressure that communicated approximately fourteen things simultaneously without a word.
“Smile,” she said under her breath. Not unkindly.
Maxwell smiled. Forcibly.
It reached his eyes by about forty percent.
He moved toward Tesh and Solis, the safer harbor, and had almost reached them when the elevator chimed again.
The conversation in the room didn’t stop.
But it shifted. That subtle atmospheric change that happened when something altered the composition of a space. A slight recalibration of attention that moved through the room like a current before anyone consciously registered why.
Halbrecht turned first.
Then Rourke.
Then Corvallis.
A younger woman stepped off the elevator and onto the floor.
She wore black with plum trim. The gown was precise and understated in the way that required significant money and better taste, a clean silhouette with a wisteria brooch at the neckline catching the candlelight. Her platinum blonde hair was arranged with the kind of effortless architectural precision that took considerable effort to achieve. Her posture was what Maxwell would later think of as load-bearing, upright not because she was performing but because that was simply how she occupied space.
Her eyes were a pale lavender, a rare color that caught the light and held it. The shade was unusual enough to make Maxwell pause, but it was not the color alone that stopped him. It was the way she looked at the room. Her gaze moved with a quiet precision that reminded him of someone taking inventory rather than someone arriving at a dinner meant to celebrate her appointment.
Maxwell felt his posture shift before he consciously registered the movement. His shoulders tightened, a subtle bracing that came from instinct rather than thought. Everything about her presence announced aristocracy. The gown, the posture, the way she carried herself with a calm and effortless authority that suggested she had never once needed to fight for space. She walked as if the world had always made room for her.
He distrusted people like that. He distrusted the ease. He distrusted the polish. He distrusted the kind of upbringing that produced a person who could glide into a room like this without hesitation. He had spent his life around soldiers, mechanics, pilots, and survivors. People who wore their history in the way they moved. People who had been shaped by hardship rather than insulated from it.
She did not look insulated. That was the part that unsettled him.
Her posture was upright and controlled, but not fragile. It was the posture of someone who had learned to bear weight rather than avoid it. Her expression was composed, but her eyes were sharp. They were not the soft or vacant eyes he expected from someone dressed in wealth. They were observant. They were calculating. They were aware in a way that did not match the rest of her presentation.
It threw him off balance for a moment.
He could not tell if he was impressed, wary, or both. He only knew that something in him went still. He did not like that feeling. He did not like being caught off guard. He did not like the sense that she was reading the room with the same practiced efficiency he used.
He forced his expression into neutrality. His jaw tightened just enough for him to feel it.
Another aristocrat with secrets.
Just what he needed.
This was Lady Elizabeth Reylynn Wisteria.
Behind her, a few paces back at the elevator threshold, a broad shouldered man in a dark suit stopped and stayed. Not entering. Just present. Positioned. Protective.
Lady Wisteria continued forward alone.
Halbrecht moved to intercept with the practiced hospitality of a host who had been waiting.
“Councilor Wisteria,” he said. “The Industrial Sector is glad to finally have its representative present.”
Her expression remained composed, but something precise moved through her eyes.
“I won’t be the Industrial Sector’s representative until tomorrow evening, Councilor,” she said pleasantly. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”
Halbrecht blinked once.
“Of course,” he said.
It happened before anyone else moved.
Bronson had been mid-sentence when she stepped off the elevator. Maxwell caught it, the specific quality of stillness that moved through Bronson’s frame. Not a flinch. Nothing so readable as that. Just a complete cessation of motion for two or three seconds that registered as wrong before Maxwell understood why.
Bronson recovered fast.
Impressively fast.
He turned from Varrin with an expression that managed to convey warmth, surprise and proprietorial familiarity simultaneously.
“Elizabeth!”
His voice carried across the room with the ease of someone accustomed to filling spaces. He crossed toward her with unhurried confidence, as if the meeting were entirely natural. As if the name belonged to him.
“Look at you,” he said. “It has been too long.”
Lady Wisteria received this with the composure of marble receiving weather.
“Councilor Bronson,” she said. The warmth in her voice was perfectly calibrated. Present enough to be polite. Nothing more. “What a surprise.”
Tesh leaned in toward Solis. “Does it also appear to you that Councilor Bronson is familiar with Councilor Wisteria?”
Solis’s smile shifted, her dark eyes narrowing. “Fascinating.”
Halbrecht’s voice cut across the room before Bronson could continue.
“If everyone would find their seats,” he said. “Dinner will be served shortly.”
The room began to move. Chairs pulled out. Glasses lifted. The low machinery of a formal dinner engaging.
Maxwell found himself near the head of the table with Halbrecht at the head beside him. To Maxwell’s right sat Hilde and beside her Lady Wisteria, then Tesh, then Rourke. Across the table sat Varrin, then Solis, then Bronson, then Corvallis.
Lady Wisteria had barely settled into her seat, her attention still moving across the table, when Maxwell leaned slightly toward her and said quietly enough that only she could hear —
“Welcome to the circus known as the Federation. Hope you brought popcorn.”
Hilde’s head snapped in his direction.
Lady Wisteria turned minutely toward his voice. Her eyes narrowed by a fraction despite the small composed smile that followed.
“I assure you, Mr. President,” she said, “I have survived much worse.”
She turned back to face forward, where Bronson was settling into his seat across the table with a smile that knew too much about too many things.
Hilde reached over and pulled Maxwell down into his chair with a grip that was entirely more firm than it looked. A pleasant smile remained on her face throughout. The vein at her jaw told a different story.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
For those who wish to read on AO3, there is the link.
For all others, see below.
A/N: A friendly reminder from your neighborhood writer: I do not own Duo Maxwell or Duo Maxwell II, or Hilde. Those three disasters belong entirely to the brilliant creators of Gundam Wing and Frozen Teardrop. I’m just borrowing them, feeding them snacks, and returning them slightly more emotionally damaged than I found then.
Carry on!
~*~
The Lady Who Disarmed the President
Chapter Four: Faultlines
~*~
Duo stared at the table like it might swallow him whole. “Yeah,” he muttered, trying to pretend he isn’t betraying himself. “That one.”
Rey didn’t say anything at first.
But she saw it. The way his shoulders tightened, the way his mouth pulled thin, the way the anger from last night flickered behind his eyes like a pilot light that hasn’t gone out.
So that was it.
That was what had him stomping around Elysium in the middle of the night.
She studied him for a long moment, not judging, just watching him with a thoughtful look. “So that was it, then.”
Duo’s cornflower blue eyes snapped over to her. “What?”
Rey held up a hand, gentle. “Sorry. So what about the Cessation Act? Are you happy about it? Or… the other way around?”
Duo’s jaw tightened, and for a moment Rey thought he might actually answer her.
But then he turned his gaze away.
He wasn’t angry or defensive, just closed off. Like a door softly closing. A quiet retreat behind his own ribs.
“I just… don’t get it.”
Rey sat across from him, but she didn’t move or lean in. She simply waited for him to continue.
Duo stared at the table, fingers worrying the crust of the sandwich he had been eating. “Mobile suits are defense. They’re a deterrence. You take them away, you’re just… asking for trouble.”
He took a full bite of his crust, cornflower blue eyes locked onto a spot on the metal table.
“A government without weapons is a weak government,” he said impolitely as he finished off his sandwich. “A defenseless one.”
Rey leaned back in her chair, slow, acknowledging his point of view. “You’re not wrong, but… you’re not entirely right either.”
Duo’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing just a fraction. “How am I not right?”
Rey didn’t flinch at the edge in his voice. She didn’t push back or challenge him like an opponent. She just tilted her head, studying him with that calm, analytical look she wore like a second skin.
“Because you’re looking at one piece of the board,” she replied softly. “A big piece, sure. But still just one.”
Duo blinked, thrown off. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Rey said gently, “you’re thinking like someone who’s always seen mobile suits as the backbone of security. As the thing that keeps the peace.”
Duo stiffened. She wasn’t wrong. His entire life had circled around mobile suits the moment the orphanage in Lanigreene was destroyed. The moment his dad took him in and raised him, building Warlock right next to him. Mobile suits had always been part of the conversation for him. And hearing about a law that would remove them from the equation going forward unnerved him.
Rey continued, voice steady. “But there are more moving parts to a decision like this. More than what’s on the surface.”
Duo frowned. “Like what?”
She tapped her fingers lightly on the table, thinking, organizing her thoughts.
“Like the fact that taking away weapons of mass destruction doesn’t just weaken a government. Sometimes it strengthens the people’s trust in it.”
Duo scoffed under his breath. “Trust doesn’t stop an attack.”
“No,” Rey agreed. “But it stops fear. And fear’s what starts most wars.”
That made him go quiet.
“And maybe,” she added softly, “maybe mankind’s been eating through its own means for too long. Relying on big machines to solve problems that needed brains instead of firepower.”
His brows knit together. “So what? We just… hope for the best?”
“No,” Rey corrected, shaking her head. “We build something better. New kinds of protection. New ways to keep people safe without threatening the whole planet every time someone sneezes wrong.”
Duo stared at her, unsure whether to scoff or consider it.
Rey didn’t push him either way. She just shrugged and leaned back into her chair again. “You asked why people want the suits gone. That’s only what I think. Doesn’t mean you’re obligated to agree.”
Duo looked down at his hands, crumbs still clinging to his fingertips. “I don’t.”
Rey smiled warmly, not at all offended by his stubbornness. “Good. It means you’re thinking for yourself. And that’s what Mars needs.”
Duo froze.
His shoulders went still, his fingers stopped fidgeting, and something in his expression tightened like a wire pulled too taut.
His mouth twitched, not toward a smile but toward something sharper. Something uncomfortable.
“Yeah, well,” he muttered, brushing the crumbs off his hands a little too aggressively, “thinking for myself is kinda what got me in trouble in the first place.”
It came out before he could stop it. The sentiment was too honest, too revealing, even for him. He immediately looked away, jaw clenching, hands shoved back into his pockets as he sat at the table.
Rey watched him for a beat longer, not prying or analyzing, just taking in the shape of the wall he had quietly rebuilt around himself.
And she knew that was the moment the conversation ended.
So… she let it end.
With a small exhale, she pushed her chair back and stood, stretching her arms overhead until her spine popped. “All right,” she said lightly, her tone shifting like someone flipping a switch. “Enough politics for breakfast. You wanna look around? I can show you the floor, the bays, the machine shop. See if you like the place.”
Duo blinked, thrown off by how quickly she had moved on.
Rey jerked her chin toward the warehouse beyond the break room. “I’m still thinkin’ about hiring you, y’know. You’ve got the skill for it. And the attitude.” She smirked. “But mostly the attitude.”
Duo’s ears went pink. He stood abruptly, the chair skidding back and almost falling over. “I… I can’t. I should… get back.”
Rey paused mid‑stretch, one eyebrow lifting. “Oh? Is this back to the place you left storming down the streets of Elysium in the middle of the night?”
The sixteen‑year‑old froze like she had just hit him with a spotlight. His ears went from pink to red, and he whipped around so fast that the braid at his back nearly smacked him in the shoulder.
“What? I wasn’t— I didn’t—” He sputtered, hands flailing for a second before he yanked them back to his sides like they had betrayed him. “I wasn’t storming.”
The corner of Rey’s lips curled upward. “Mm‑hmm.”
“I wasn’t,” he insisted, his voice cracking on the last word like the universe hated him personally. “I was just… walking.”
“Walking with purpose.” It was clear by her tone that she was fighting against that growing smile and failing.
Duo’s face went scarlet. “Whatever. I just need to get back, okay?”
“All right,” Rey chuckled softly to herself, her hands lifting slightly in surrender. “I’ll stop givin’ you grief.”
She let the moment settle, then exhaled and rolled her shoulders back, the stretch turning into something more resigned.
“Besides,” she added, her tone shifting into something drier, “I’ve got other priorities today anyway.”
Duo blinked, thrown off. “Other priorities? Like what? Dealing with those twins from earlier?”
Rey made a face, the kind that said she would rather be doing literally anything else. “Council meeting.”
Duo’s brows furrowed, curious but guarded. “Council? As in—”
“Yeah,” she cut in, tightening her jacket around her. “As in seven soon to be eight people who try to dictate everyone’s lives in the federation. The ones that love paperwork more than oxygen.”
He stared at her, trying to reconcile the woman who drove a beat‑up supply truck, ran a warehouse full of half‑feral teenagers, and fixed machinery with her bare hands… with someone who had to sit in a room full of Federation officials.
Rey pretended not to notice his stare. She was too busy grimacing as she pulled out her phone and reminded herself of the time she needed to leave.
“It’s all red tape,” she muttered. “Appointment stuff. Clearances. Protocols. I don’t mind the hoops, but if I have to stay in the same room as… well… as those pompous old men, I just might chew my own arm off.”
Duo blinked again. “You… work with the Federation?”
“Unfortunately,” Rey said dryly. “Or rather… I will soon. Once they finish stamping every form into existence.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “So you’re not just…” He paused, chewing on the words before deciding how he wanted to say it.
“A weird lady with a truck?” she supplied for him, smirking. “Surprise. I contain multitudes.”
Duo flushed again, because yes, that was exactly what he had been thinking.
Rey didn’t linger on it. She slipped her phone back into her coat pocket with a sigh that sounded like it came from her bones.
“Anyway,” she said, rolling her shoulders back like she was preparing for battle, “I’ve gotta go pretend to be a respectable adult for a few hours.” Her lavender eyes slid in his direction. “And you’ve got a mom to go appease before she begins her hunt.”
His mouth twitched. Not toward a smile, but toward something caught between disbelief and mortification.
“Appease?” he echoed, his voice pitching up like it personally offended him. “I don’t ever appease her.”
Rey looked fully at him now, unimpressed and amused in equal measure. “And yet, here you are, saying you need to get back home so she doesn’t worry about you.”
Duo turned quickly for the door. “I’m not— I don’t—” He sputtered, his hands digging deeply into his jacket pockets. “I’m not going back because she’s worried.”
“It’s all right, Kiddo, no need to explain.” Rey giggled softly now, walking toward the door and gently opening it for him. She winked in his direction.
“Don’t worry! What happens in Wisteria Coreworks stays in Wisteria Coreworks. I won’t tell the world that you’re secretly a mama’s boy.”
He stopped dead, staring at Rey where she stood in the doorway.
He just froze.
Like someone had yanked the emergency brake on his entire nervous system.
His ears went red to nuclear, and he ducked his head and stepped through the doorway so fast that his braid nearly whipped Rey as she held the door open.
“Whatever! I’m leaving!”
Rey grinned and followed after him. “Hey, I can keep a secret! Although… I might be more inclined to tell people if you decide to never come back and be my mechanic.”
Duo slid to a stop right at the entrance to the main work zone, his boots squeaking on the concrete. He turned, painfully slowly, to glare at her.
Rey had one hand on her cheek, her elbow propped against the doorframe, looking like she was auditioning for the role of Tragic Victorian Ghost Who Lost Her Favorite Mechanic.
“It’s such a tragedy,” she lamented, her voice dripping with melodrama. “Truly. My heart may never recover.”
Duo stared at her, his jaw hanging open.
She even added a sigh. A long, theatrical sigh just to annoy him.
“Yeah,” Duo muttered, pointing at her like she was the problem. “Those twins are definitely yours.”
Rey gasped loudly, her hand flying to her chest like he had mortally wounded her.
“Mine?” she echoed, trying to keep her expression hurt, but the slow smile failed her. “Oh, the cruelty. The betrayal. The… the…”
She paused for a moment before dropping her hands with a shrug. “Yeah, okay, I’m part of the problem. I admit. But still!”
Her hands slid back into her coat pockets, her smile softening into something real. “I mean it. Please consider being one of my mechanics. You’ve got too much talent to be scowling at the streetlights at midnight.”
Duo’s face went flat, the kind of flat that absolutely covered up the embarrassment.
“There is no way I’m ever working here,” he declared, his voice cracking just enough to ruin the effect. “Not happening.”
Rey didn’t flinch. She didn’t pout. She didn’t even look disappointed. She just grinned, wide and knowing, and entirely too confident.
“Sure, kiddo,” she called after him as he stomped toward the exit. “Just continue tellin’ yourself that.”
“I’m serious!” Duo shot back without turning around.
“I don’t believe you!”
He rushed through the nearest set of sliding doors, passing a guy who looked like his glare could cut glass.
Rey cupped her hands around her mouth. “YOU’LL BE BACK!”
Duo’s muffled groan echoed from outside.
Rey smirked to herself, shaking her head as she leaned against the sliding door. She crossed her arms and watched him jog across the parking lot toward Elysium, his braid swinging behind him like a flag of teenage indignation.
A heavy shadow shifted beside her.
A man stepped up to her shoulder, silent as a ghost despite being built like a wall someone had taught to walk. Broad‑shouldered, scar‑carved, and wrapped in that black half‑mask that hid the missing part of his upper lip, he looked like trouble sculpted into a man. Burn scars rippled along his jaw and throat, the skin tight and pale; knife scars crossed the other side of his face like someone had tried to carve him out of the world.
His gravel‑rough voice scraped out of him like it had to fight its way past damaged vocal cords.
“…Rey.”
Rey didn’t turn. “Yes, Jacobsen?”
Jacobsen’s eyes followed Duo’s retreating figure. “What… was that?”
Rey’s lips twitched. “Recruiting.”
Jacobsen grunted, short, low, and unimpressed. “For Lazarus?”
“No,” Rey said, finally glancing over at him. “Relax. I’m not dragging another kid into that mess.”
Jacobsen’s gaze narrowed, the scars around his eyes tightening. “Then… why?”
Rey pushed off the doorframe, dusting off her coat. “Because Bronson’s still breathing.”
Jacobsen stilled, waiting.
She continued, her voice low but steady. “And President Maxwell’s in his line of fire. Whether that guy knows it or not.”
Jacobsen said nothing. He knew he didn’t need to.
Rey’s smirk sharpened, but it wasn’t cruel. It was calculated. “I took the councilor position to keep an eye on Bronson. And to keep Maxwell alive long enough to outmaneuver him.”
She nodded toward the parking lot, where Duo Jr. had just disappeared around the corner.
“And now,” she added, “I’ve got another angle. A way to see what Bronson might try to use against Maxwell.”
Jacobsen’s gravel‑rough voice rumbled. “…Rey.”
“What?” she said innocently, heading back toward her office in the back. “It’s called being prepared. Bronson’s planning something big. I’m not letting him blindside anyone.”
Her technician let out a rough, static‑edged sigh. It was the sound of a man who had long since accepted that Rey Wisteria would burn herself alive before she let someone else get hurt.
Rey just kept walking, humming under her breath.
Because she knew exactly what she was doing.
And Duo Maxwell II had no idea what he had just wandered into… but it might save his father’s life.
~*~
Maxwell sat behind the presidential desk, the afternoon light cutting across the room in long, sharp lines. The Capitol Building hummed around him with life. Aides moved, doors opened and closed, and the low murmur of government machinery ground on.
He hadn’t heard a word of it.
A fountain pen spun between his fingers, smooth and practiced, the motion so automatic he didn’t realize he was doing it. The stack of documents Hilde had set in front of him an hour ago sat untouched. He had “read” the first page three times.
He couldn’t recall a single sentence.
His mind kept circling back to last night.
Duo’s voice had been sharp, hurt, furious.
His own voice had been even sharper, tired, slipping before he could catch it. The way Duo had looked at him, like Maxwell had slammed a door in his face.
He hadn’t meant to.
He never meant to.
But intentions didn’t matter much when the damage was already done.
Maxwell exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand over his jaw. He wasn’t worried about his son’s safety. The kid was sixteen. He was smart, capable, and stubborn as hell. Maxwell remembered being that age. He remembered disappearing for hours, sometimes days, just to breathe.
He remembered how it felt when someone tried to chase him.
So no… he wasn’t worried in the way other fathers might be.
He was worried in the way a man worried when he knew he was losing something he didn’t know how to fix.
He set the pen down. Picked it up again. Repetition of twirling it in his fingers again.
He told himself Duo needed space.
He told himself Duo would come home when he was ready.
He told himself pushing would only make it worse.
But underneath all of that, quiet and unwelcome, was the thought he couldn’t shake.
I hope I didn’t screw up what little we have left.
He stared at the documents again. The words didn’t move. They didn’t make sense. They didn’t matter anymore.
Not right now.
Maxwell leaned back in his chair, his eyes unfocused, the pen now tapping on his desk.
He wasn’t panicking.
He wasn’t imagining the worst.
He wasn’t going to pace the room.
He was just… stuck.
Stuck between the man he used to be and the father he was trying — and failing — to become.
And Duo’s absence pressed against him like a bruise he kept forgetting about until something touched it.
A soft knock at the door broke the silence. Maxwell’s head lifted, alerted to the sound, though not entirely hopeful.
The door opened without waiting for permission. “President Maxwell, my apologies for disrupting your day,” came the calm, measured voice of Councilor Halbrecht.
Halbrecht stepped inside with the quiet, unhurried confidence of a man who had survived three administrations without ever losing his footing. His suit was an immaculate cool slate blue fabric, tailored with a precision that bordered on regal. Silver threaded through his dark hair at the temples, combed back so neatly it looked lacquered. His posture was perfect and his expression remained composed, but his sharp, piercing brown eyes were the only hint of the authority he carried.
The kind of authority that ran parallel to the presidency. And, depending on the issue, above it.
Maxwell felt the shift in the room immediately. Halbrecht always brought it with him, like a drop in barometric pressure.
He straightened in his chair, forcing a thin smile. “Councilor. If you’re here to rescue me from these budget reports, then I might actually nominate you for sainthood.”
Halbrecht didn’t acknowledge the joke. He rarely did. Instead, he crossed the room with smooth, economical steps and set a folder neatly on Maxwell’s desk, aligning it with the edge as though precision were a moral imperative.
“These require your review,” he said, his tone polite but immovable. “The finalized appointment documents for Councilor Wisteria.”
Maxwell blinked, the name cutting through the fog of his thoughts. “Wisteria… right.”
Lady Elizabeth Reylynn Wisteria.
The Industrial Sector’s newly elected representative.
Old Earth money.
Young. Sharp.
Unpredictable.
A wild card wrapped in silk and pedigree.
Alpha’s words from yesterday flickered through his mind:
She has opposed Bronson’s proposals in every preliminary review.
Consistently.
She has no alliances. No debts. No obligations.
Difficult for Bronson to control.
Maxwell exhaled slowly, picking up the first page. Her résumé. Her public service record. The election certification. A background summary that was curated. Sanitized. The kind of file that told him everything and nothing at the same time.
Halbrecht watched him with that unreadable calm, his hands clasped behind his back.
Maxwell cleared his throat, trying to shake off the lingering haze of last night’s argument with Duo. “Right. Of course. Let’s… take a look.”
The older man tilted his head a fraction, just the smallest shift, but enough to signal he had noticed the distraction.
“Mr. President,” he said smoothly, “if I may offer a word of counsel.”
Maxwell’s jaw tightened. That tone. That polite tone. “By all means.”
Halbrecht stepped closer, his hands clasped behind his back, his posture immaculate. “It is not uncommon for those new to public office to find the workload… taxing.”
Maxwell’s jaw clenched, fighting back the urge to say something sharp.
Halbrecht continued, his tone gentle in the way a blade is gentle before it cuts. “Politics is a demanding profession. It requires a certain temperament. A steadiness. Many who come from less traditional backgrounds often struggle with the adjustment.”
Maxwell’s fingers stilled on the page.
Halbrecht smiled faintly, as if he believed he was being kind. “You have done remarkably well, given your circumstances. But even the most gifted orators must learn to pace themselves. Focus is essential.”
Maxwell took a slow and steady breath. “Yeah, I’m aware.”
“Of course,” Halbrecht said, with a nod that suggested he wasn’t convinced. “Still, if you find yourself distracted, it may be wise to separate personal matters from state affairs. Attend to them outside these walls. And when you are here…” He tapped the folder lightly. “…do be fully present.”
Maxwell fought back a snarl that was creeping up and remained calm.
Halbrecht didn’t notice. “Stability in leadership is vital. Especially for someone in your unique position.”
And there it was.
A quiet implication.
The reminder that Maxwell wasn’t born into this world. He had crash landed into it.
Halbrecht stepped back, his expression smoothing into polite neutrality. “Lady Wisteria’s appointment is expected to be finalized by the end of the day. Your signature is the final requirement. Then tomorrow, we will be holding a dinner to welcome her in officially. Your presence… would be most appreciated.”
Maxwell’s eyes lifted from the page in his hands, the faintest twitch pulling at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. Not quite annoyance. Something in between. The expression of a man who had been spoken to like a well‑meaning amateur one too many times today.
“Of course it would,” he kept his voice even. “Wouldn’t want to disappoint the room.”
Halbrecht inclined his head, accepting the answer as though it were agreement.
Maxwell set the page down, his fingers tapping once against the desk before stilling. “I’ll be there,” he added, quieter but firmer. “You’ll have the signed documents before the hour’s out.”
It wasn’t enthusiasm.
It wasn’t deference.
It was duty, the kind Maxwell understood better than most.
Halbrecht seemed satisfied. “Excellent. Lady Wisteria’s induction will proceed smoothly, then.”
Maxwell hummed under his breath. It was a noncommittal sound that could have meant anything. His gaze drifted back to the folder, to the curated lines of Elizabeth Wisteria’s life, to the political wild card Alpha warned him about.
A dinner.
A new councilor.
Another aristocrat in silk and pedigree.
And he was expected to smile for the cameras.
“I’ll leave you to it, Mr. President.” Halbrecht nodded as he turned toward the door. Maxwell didn’t return the nod, his eyes drifting back to the page.
He waited until the door clicked shut behind Halbrecht before letting out the trapped snarl, his face wrinkling in response to what had just happened.
“Condescending piece of…!” Maxwell bit his tongue, holding the rest of the sentiment in as he took a deep, slow breath.
A dinner.
A potential new political ally.
A new political problem.
And a son who still hadn’t come home.
Maxwell rubbed a thumb along the edge of the paper.
The door opened again, this time without a knock.
“I just saw Councilor Halbrecht leave,” Hilde said as she stepped inside, closing the door behind her with her hip. She wore her deep blue suit paired with a skirt and black heels. Her hand reached up to shift her glasses back into place after they had evidently slipped down her nose again. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were already scanning him, taking in the tension in his shoulders, the way he was gripping the folder a little too tightly.
Maxwell didn’t look up. “Yeah. Lucky me.”
Hilde’s mouth twitched into something not quite a smile, but not quite sympathy either. “You don’t have to like the man,” she said as she walked toward his desk. “You just have to work with him.”
Maxwell huffed, a low, humorless sound. “That’s the problem. I am working with him.”
“And doing a fine job of pretending you don’t want to throw that pen at his head,” Hilde replied dryly.
He didn’t deny it. He didn’t have the energy to.
Instead, he tapped the folder. “You read this yet? Wisteria’s file?”
Hilde nodded, pulling a chair up beside the desk. “I did. Background feels curated.”
“Yep. Like mine.” Maxwell snorted as he leaned back in his chair.
“Exactly like yours,” she responded quickly, settling in. “But from what I can dig into, it all checks out. Lady Wisteria is an unknown. At least in the political sense. No alliances. No debts. No scandals. No obvious leverage points.”
Maxwell smirked. “Well, look at you. Back to snooping into people’s personal files.”
Hilde responded dryly, “No, just making sure someone doesn’t put a bullet in your head.”
Maxwell raised an eyebrow. “That supposed to make me feel better?”
Hilde ignored the comment, flipping open the folder with practiced efficiency. “She’s been running an imports and exports business here on Mars for the last three years, but it goes back decades. Originally, her family’s business ran from Earth and the Colonies, but it only included Mars three years ago. She moved her operations here shortly after she moved and became a citizen. Paid her dues. Built a reputation here in Elysium. Nothing mysterious. She’s well loved by the people in the industrial sector.”
She paused.
Maxwell caught it immediately. “But?”
Hilde exhaled through her nose. “It’s just… her family history is another problem altogether.”
Maxwell leaned to his side, resting his head against the knuckles of his right hand. “What do you mean?”
Hilde gave him a look, the kind that said he wasn’t going to like this but needed to hear it. “Do you know anything about the Wisteria family? Or were you ever taught that as a pilot?”
Maxwell grumbled, rubbing his forehead. “I didn’t really pay attention to much outside the mission. Saving people was kinda my priority.”
“I know,” Hilde said gently. “But this part matters. If I remember correctly from my training from OZ—”
“If you could trust that,” Maxwell retorted.
“Shut it.” Hilde glared. “Look. From what I remember, the Wisteria family were the ones who oversaw the gundanium alloy project on the lunar surface back in AC 180.”
Maxwell stilled.
Completely.
The air in the room seemed to thin, just a fraction. His fingers froze against his forehead. His jaw locked. Something old and sharp flickered behind his eyes.
Hilde saw it. Of course she did.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “That Wisteria family.”
Maxwell leaned back slowly, like he needed the chair to keep him upright. “You’re tellin’ me this new councilor — this imports and exports aristocrat — comes from the same line that handled that alloy?”
Hilde slowly nodded. “Every ounce of gundanium that went into the Gundams passed through their hands.”
Maxwell let out a breath that wasn’t quite steady. “I didn’t… I didn’t know that. Nobody ever talked to us about that.”
“Perhaps you weren’t meant to know,” Hilde said, softer now. “I only learned about it because I wanted to know more about the Gundams. Trent, of course, stopped me.”
Maxwell rubbed both his hands over his face, dragging them down slowly. “Great. Fantastic. Thirty six years old and I’m still learning new ways that my past can bite me in the ass.”
Hilde didn’t argue. She didn’t tease. She just let the silence settle for a moment, giving him space to breathe.
Then, gently, she asked, “You okay?”
Maxwell’s hands dropped to the desk. He stared at the folder, but he wasn’t seeing it anymore. His voice came out low, tired in a way that had nothing to do with politics.
“Yeah. Just… been worryin’ about the kid.”
She let out a quiet breath through her nose. “Of course you have,” she said, her tone flat but not unkind. “He’s your son. And you two are both stubborn as hell.”
Maxwell huffed. “Yeah, well… last night didn’t help.”
Hilde’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Last night?”
Maxwell dropped his head to the desk, resting it on the folder Halbrecht wanted him to sign. “He stormed out. Late. Upset over the Cessation Act I signed into law yesterday.”
Hilde stared at him for a beat, long enough to make it clear she was recalibrating everything she had assumed about Maxwell’s mood.
“Of course he was.”
Maxwell lifted his head an inch, frowning. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Hilde leaned back into her chair, her arms crossing, “you dropped a political bomb on the entire planet and didn’t think your son, who grew up around mobile suits, who idolizes pilots, who’s been training since he could walk, might have feelings about it.”
Maxwell lifted his head a bit more. “I didn’t—”
“No,” she cut in, “you didn’t think. You never think when it comes to him. You react. Then he reacts. And then you’re both shocked when it blows up in your faces.”
Maxwell sat up fully now. “I didn’t exactly have a choice. If I didn’t sign the damn thing, then the people would have been upset. It’s what they wanted. I didn’t want to sign it.”
Hilde’s reaction was immediate, not explosive or emotional, but cuttingly honest.
Her eyes narrowed, her jaw set, and she leaned forward slightly, her elbows resting on her knees like she was about to deliver a truth he wasn’t going to enjoy.
“Duo,” she said, her voice low but razor sharp, “don’t hide behind the people.”
Maxwell’s reaction was instant. His entire body went still at Hilde’s tone.
The kind of stillness that came from being called out by someone who had known him since he was a half feral teenager with a braid and a death wish.
His jaw tightened.
His shoulders pulled back a fraction.
And his eyes flicked up to hers, wary and a little wounded.
“Hilde…” he said, his voice equally low, a warning and a plea tangled together.
Because when she called him “Duo,” it wasn’t affectionate. It wasn’t nostalgic. It was a verbal hand on his collar.
“I ain’t hiding behind anyone,” he muttered, but the heat was gone from his voice. “I’m just—”
He stopped.
Because she was still staring at him with her arms crossed, her eyes narrowed in that way that said don’t you dare lie to me.
Maxwell exhaled, long and slow, the fight bleeding out of him.
“…I’m just trying to do the right thing,” he finished, quieter now, looking away. “For everyone.”
It wasn’t an excuse or any form of justification. It was the closest he could get to the truth without unraveling.
Hilde let the silence sit for a beat.
Then another.
When she finally spoke, her voice was steady, cool, and painfully honest.
“Trying isn’t the same thing as doing, Maxwell.”
He flinched, barely, but she saw it.
She pushed her chair back and stood, smoothing the front of her jacket with a practiced motion. “And you can’t fix everything at once. Especially not when you’re still running yourself into the ground.”
She turned toward the door, her tone shifting into something more practical.
“By the way,” she said as she walked away, “he’s back.”
Maxwell’s head snapped in her direction. “What?”
“Duo,” she clarified, her hand already on the doorknob. “Came in about half an hour ago. Didn’t say a word. Went straight to his room. Looked like he’d cooled off plenty.”
Some of the tension in Maxwell’s shoulders loosened. Not all of it, but enough that he could breathe again.
Hilde paused at the door, her fingers tightening around the knob. She didn’t turn around when she spoke next.
“You took this job because you believed you could help people,” she said, her voice low but firm. “And I believe that. I always have.”
She finally glanced back at him. “I’ll help you do it. But you can’t forget your son in the equation.”
Her gaze sharpened, just a fraction. “I’m not worried about myself. I learned a long time ago where I stand in your priorities.”
Maxwell opened his mouth to argue, to deny, to apologize all at once. But nothing came out.
Hilde didn’t wait for him to find the words. She turned the knob, pulled the door open, and stepped out.
“When you’re done in here, go talk to him,” she said over her shoulder. “Before he convinces himself you won’t.”
And then she was gone, leaving Maxwell alone with the folder, the silence, and the weight of everything he had been trying not to feel.
Maxwell sat there for a long moment, staring at the wood grain like it might offer him a way out of the conversation he now owed his son.
Silence settled. Heavy. Familiar.
He dragged a hand down his face, exhaling through his teeth.
“…great,” he muttered to no one. “Feelings. My favorite.”
He pushed back from the desk, the chair creaking under him, and eyed the stack of documents and the folder Halbrecht had so politely dropped on him.
“A/N: A friendly reminder from your neighborhood writer: I do not own Duo Maxwell or Duo Maxwell II, or Hilde. Those three disasters belong entirely to the brilliant creators of Gundam Wing and Frozen Teardrop. I’m just borrowing them, feeding them snacks, and returning them slightly more emotionally damaged than I found then.
Carry on!
~*~
The Lady Who Disarmed the President
Chapter Four: Faultlines
~*~
Duo stared at the table like it might swallow him whole. “Yeah,” he muttered, trying to pretend he isn’t betraying himself. “That one.”
Rey didn’t say anything at first.
But she saw it. The way his shoulders tightened, the way his mouth pulled thin, the way the anger from last night flickered behind his eyes like a pilot light that hasn’t gone out.
So that was it.
That was what had him stomping around Elysium in the middle of the night.
She studied him for a long moment, not judging, just watching him with a thoughtful look. “So that was it, then.”
Duo’s cornflower blue eyes snapped over to her. “What?”
Rey held up a hand, gentle. “Sorry. So what about the Cessation Act? Are you happy about it? Or… the other way around?”
Duo’s jaw tightened, and for a moment Rey thought he might actually answer her.
But then he turned his gaze away.
He wasn’t angry or defensive, just closed off. Like a door softly closing. A quiet retreat behind his own ribs.
“I just… don’t get it.”
Rey sat across from him, but she didn’t move or lean in. She simply waited for him to continue.
Duo stared at the table, fingers worrying the crust of the sandwich he had been eating. “Mobile suits are defense. They’re a deterrence. You take them away, you’re just… asking for trouble.”
He took a full bite of his crust, cornflower blue eyes locked onto a spot on the metal table.
“A government without weapons is a weak government,” he said impolitely as he finished off his sandwich. “A defenseless one.”
Rey leaned back in her chair, slow, acknowledging his point of view. “You’re not wrong, but… you’re not entirely right either.”
Duo’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing just a fraction. “How am I not right?”
Rey didn’t flinch at the edge in his voice. She didn’t push back or challenge him like an opponent. She just tilted her head, studying him with that calm, analytical look she wore like a second skin.
“Because you’re looking at one piece of the board,” she replied softly. “A big piece, sure. But still just one.”
Duo blinked, thrown off. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Rey said gently, “you’re thinking like someone who’s always seen mobile suits as the backbone of security. As the thing that keeps the peace.”
Duo stiffened. She wasn’t wrong. His entire life had circled around mobile suits the moment the orphanage in Lanigreene was destroyed. The moment his dad took him in and raised him, building Warlock right next to him. Mobile suits had always been part of the conversation for him. And hearing about a law that would remove them from the equation going forward unnerved him.
Rey continued, voice steady. “But there are more moving parts to a decision like this. More than what’s on the surface.”
Duo frowned. “Like what?”
She tapped her fingers lightly on the table, thinking, organizing her thoughts.
“Like the fact that taking away weapons of mass destruction doesn’t just weaken a government. Sometimes it strengthens the people’s trust in it.”
Duo scoffed under his breath. “Trust doesn’t stop an attack.”
“No,” Rey agreed. “But it stops fear. And fear’s what starts most wars.”
That made him go quiet.
“And maybe,” she added softly, “maybe mankind’s been eating through its own means for too long. Relying on big machines to solve problems that needed brains instead of firepower.”
His brows knit together. “So what? We just… hope for the best?”
“No,” Rey corrected, shaking her head. “We build something better. New kinds of protection. New ways to keep people safe without threatening the whole planet every time someone sneezes wrong.”
Duo stared at her, unsure whether to scoff or consider it.
Rey didn’t push him either way. She just shrugged and leaned back into her chair again. “You asked why people want the suits gone. That’s only what I think. Doesn’t mean you’re obligated to agree.”
Duo looked down at his hands, crumbs still clinging to his fingertips. “I don’t.”
Rey smiled warmly, not at all offended by his stubbornness. “Good. It means you’re thinking for yourself. And that’s what Mars needs.”
Duo froze.
His shoulders went still, his fingers stopped fidgeting, and something in his expression tightened like a wire pulled too taut.
His mouth twitched, not toward a smile but toward something sharper. Something uncomfortable.
“Yeah, well,” he muttered, brushing the crumbs off his hands a little too aggressively, “thinking for myself is kinda what got me in trouble in the first place.”
It came out before he could stop it. The sentiment was too honest, too revealing, even for him. He immediately looked away, jaw clenching, hands shoved back into his pockets as he sat at the table.
Rey watched him for a beat longer, not prying or analyzing, just taking in the shape of the wall he had quietly rebuilt around himself.
And she knew that was the moment the conversation ended.
So… she let it end.
With a small exhale, she pushed her chair back and stood, stretching her arms overhead until her spine popped. “All right,” she said lightly, her tone shifting like someone flipping a switch. “Enough politics for breakfast. You wanna look around? I can show you the floor, the bays, the machine shop. See if you like the place.”
Duo blinked, thrown off by how quickly she had moved on.
Rey jerked her chin toward the warehouse beyond the break room. “I’m still thinkin’ about hiring you, y’know. You’ve got the skill for it. And the attitude.” She smirked. “But mostly the attitude.”
Duo’s ears went pink. He stood abruptly, the chair skidding back and almost falling over. “I… I can’t. I should… get back.”
Rey paused mid‑stretch, one eyebrow lifting. “Oh? Is this back to the place you left storming down the streets of Elysium in the middle of the night?”
The sixteen‑year‑old froze like she had just hit him with a spotlight. His ears went from pink to red, and he whipped around so fast that the braid at his back nearly smacked him in the shoulder.
“What? I wasn’t— I didn’t—” He sputtered, hands flailing for a second before he yanked them back to his sides like they had betrayed him. “I wasn’t storming.”
The corner of Rey’s lips curled upward. “Mm‑hmm.”
“I wasn’t,” he insisted, his voice cracking on the last word like the universe hated him personally. “I was just… walking.”
“Walking with purpose.” It was clear by her tone that she was fighting against that growing smile and failing.
Duo’s face went scarlet. “Whatever. I just need to get back, okay?”
“All right,” Rey chuckled softly to herself, her hands lifting slightly in surrender. “I’ll stop givin’ you grief.”
She let the moment settle, then exhaled and rolled her shoulders back, the stretch turning into something more resigned.
“Besides,” she added, her tone shifting into something drier, “I’ve got other priorities today anyway.”
Duo blinked, thrown off. “Other priorities? Like what? Dealing with those twins from earlier?”
Rey made a face, the kind that said she would rather be doing literally anything else. “Council meeting.”
Duo’s brows furrowed, curious but guarded. “Council? As in—”
“Yeah,” she cut in, tightening her jacket around her. “As in seven soon to be eight people who try to dictate everyone’s lives in the federation. The ones that love paperwork more than oxygen.”
He stared at her, trying to reconcile the woman who drove a beat‑up supply truck, ran a warehouse full of half‑feral teenagers, and fixed machinery with her bare hands… with someone who had to sit in a room full of Federation officials.
Rey pretended not to notice his stare. She was too busy grimacing as she pulled out her phone and reminded herself of the time she needed to leave.
“It’s all red tape,” she muttered. “Appointment stuff. Clearances. Protocols. I don’t mind the hoops, but if I have to stay in the same room as… well… as those pompous old men, I just might chew my own arm off.”
Duo blinked again. “You… work with the Federation?”
“Unfortunately,” Rey said dryly. “Or rather… I will soon. Once they finish stamping every form into existence.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “So you’re not just…” He paused, chewing on the words before deciding how he wanted to say it.
“A weird lady with a truck?” she supplied for him, smirking. “Surprise. I contain multitudes.”
Duo flushed again, because yes, that was exactly what he had been thinking.
Rey didn’t linger on it. She slipped her phone back into her coat pocket with a sigh that sounded like it came from her bones.
“Anyway,” she said, rolling her shoulders back like she was preparing for battle, “I’ve gotta go pretend to be a respectable adult for a few hours.” Her lavender eyes slid in his direction. “And you’ve got a mom to go appease before she begins her hunt.”
His mouth twitched. Not toward a smile, but toward something caught between disbelief and mortification.
“Appease?” he echoed, his voice pitching up like it personally offended him. “I don’t ever appease her.”
Rey looked fully at him now, unimpressed and amused in equal measure. “And yet, here you are, saying you need to get back home so she doesn’t worry about you.”
Duo turned quickly for the door. “I’m not— I don’t—” He sputtered, his hands digging deeply into his jacket pockets. “I’m not going back because she’s worried.”
“It’s all right, Kiddo, no need to explain.” Rey giggled softly now, walking toward the door and gently opening it for him. She winked in his direction.
“Don’t worry! What happens in Wisteria Coreworks stays in Wisteria Coreworks. I won’t tell the world that you’re secretly a mama’s boy.”
He stopped dead, staring at Rey where she stood in the doorway.
He just froze.
Like someone had yanked the emergency brake on his entire nervous system.
His ears went red to nuclear, and he ducked his head and stepped through the doorway so fast that his braid nearly whipped Rey as she held the door open.
“Whatever! I’m leaving!”
Rey grinned and followed after him. “Hey, I can keep a secret! Although… I might be more inclined to tell people if you decide to never come back and be my mechanic.”
Duo slid to a stop right at the entrance to the main work zone, his boots squeaking on the concrete. He turned, painfully slowly, to glare at her.
Rey had one hand on her cheek, her elbow propped against the doorframe, looking like she was auditioning for the role of Tragic Victorian Ghost Who Lost Her Favorite Mechanic.
“It’s such a tragedy,” she lamented, her voice dripping with melodrama. “Truly. My heart may never recover.”
Duo stared at her, his jaw hanging open.
She even added a sigh. A long, theatrical sigh just to annoy him.
“Yeah,” Duo muttered, pointing at her like she was the problem. “Those twins are definitely yours.”
Rey gasped loudly, her hand flying to her chest like he had mortally wounded her.
“Mine?” she echoed, trying to keep her expression hurt, but the slow smile failed her. “Oh, the cruelty. The betrayal. The… the…”
She paused for a moment before dropping her hands with a shrug. “Yeah, okay, I’m part of the problem. I admit. But still!”
Her hands slid back into her coat pockets, her smile softening into something real. “I mean it. Please consider being one of my mechanics. You’ve got too much talent to be scowling at the streetlights at midnight.”
Duo’s face went flat, the kind of flat that absolutely covered up the embarrassment.
“There is no way I’m ever working here,” he declared, his voice cracking just enough to ruin the effect. “Not happening.”
Rey didn’t flinch. She didn’t pout. She didn’t even look disappointed. She just grinned, wide and knowing, and entirely too confident.
“Sure, kiddo,” she called after him as he stomped toward the exit. “Just continue tellin’ yourself that.”
“I’m serious!” Duo shot back without turning around.
“I don’t believe you!”
He rushed through the nearest set of sliding doors, passing a guy who looked like his glare could cut glass.
Rey cupped her hands around her mouth. “YOU’LL BE BACK!”
Duo’s muffled groan echoed from outside.
Rey smirked to herself, shaking her head as she leaned against the sliding door. She crossed her arms and watched him jog across the parking lot toward Elysium, his braid swinging behind him like a flag of teenage indignation.
A heavy shadow shifted beside her.
A man stepped up to her shoulder, silent as a ghost despite being built like a wall someone had taught to walk. Broad‑shouldered, scar‑carved, and wrapped in that black half‑mask that hid the missing part of his upper lip, he looked like trouble sculpted into a man. Burn scars rippled along his jaw and throat, the skin tight and pale; knife scars crossed the other side of his face like someone had tried to carve him out of the world.
His gravel‑rough voice scraped out of him like it had to fight its way past damaged vocal cords.
“…Rey.”
Rey didn’t turn. “Yes, Jacobsen?”
Jacobsen’s eyes followed Duo’s retreating figure. “What… was that?”
Rey’s lips twitched. “Recruiting.”
Jacobsen grunted, short, low, and unimpressed. “For Lazarus?”
“No,” Rey said, finally glancing over at him. “Relax. I’m not dragging another kid into that mess.”
Jacobsen’s gaze narrowed, the scars around his eyes tightening. “Then… why?”
Rey pushed off the doorframe, dusting off her coat. “Because Bronson’s still breathing.”
Jacobsen stilled, waiting.
She continued, her voice low but steady. “And President Maxwell’s in his line of fire. Whether that guy knows it or not.”
Jacobsen said nothing. He knew he didn’t need to.
Rey’s smirk sharpened, but it wasn’t cruel. It was calculated. “I took the councilor position to keep an eye on Bronson. And to keep Maxwell alive long enough to outmaneuver him.”
She nodded toward the parking lot, where Duo Jr. had just disappeared around the corner.
“And now,” she added, “I’ve got another angle. A way to see what Bronson might try to use against Maxwell.”
Jacobsen’s gravel‑rough voice rumbled. “…Rey.”
“What?” she said innocently, heading back toward her office in the back. “It’s called being prepared. Bronson’s planning something big. I’m not letting him blindside anyone.”
Her technician let out a rough, static‑edged sigh. It was the sound of a man who had long since accepted that Rey Wisteria would burn herself alive before she let someone else get hurt.
Rey just kept walking, humming under her breath.
Because she knew exactly what she was doing.
And Duo Maxwell II had no idea what he had just wandered into… but it might save his father’s life.
~*~
Maxwell sat behind the presidential desk, the afternoon light cutting across the room in long, sharp lines. The Capitol Building hummed around him with life. Aides moved, doors opened and closed, and the low murmur of government machinery ground on.
He hadn’t heard a word of it.
A fountain pen spun between his fingers, smooth and practiced, the motion so automatic he didn’t realize he was doing it. The stack of documents Hilde had set in front of him an hour ago sat untouched. He had “read” the first page three times.
He couldn’t recall a single sentence.
His mind kept circling back to last night.
Duo’s voice had been sharp, hurt, furious.
His own voice had been even sharper, tired, slipping before he could catch it. The way Duo had looked at him, like Maxwell had slammed a door in his face.
He hadn’t meant to.
He never meant to.
But intentions didn’t matter much when the damage was already done.
Maxwell exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand over his jaw. He wasn’t worried about his son’s safety. The kid was sixteen. He was smart, capable, and stubborn as hell. Maxwell remembered being that age. He remembered disappearing for hours, sometimes days, just to breathe.
He remembered how it felt when someone tried to chase him.
So no… he wasn’t worried in the way other fathers might be.
He was worried in the way a man worried when he knew he was losing something he didn’t know how to fix.
He set the pen down. Picked it up again. Repetition of twirling it in his fingers again.
He told himself Duo needed space.
He told himself Duo would come home when he was ready.
He told himself pushing would only make it worse.
But underneath all of that, quiet and unwelcome, was the thought he couldn’t shake.
I hope I didn’t screw up what little we have left.
He stared at the documents again. The words didn’t move. They didn’t make sense. They didn’t matter anymore.
Not right now.
Maxwell leaned back in his chair, his eyes unfocused, the pen now tapping on his desk.
He wasn’t panicking.
He wasn’t imagining the worst.
He wasn’t going to pace the room.
He was just… stuck.
Stuck between the man he used to be and the father he was trying — and failing — to become.
And Duo’s absence pressed against him like a bruise he kept forgetting about until something touched it.
A soft knock at the door broke the silence. Maxwell’s head lifted, alerted to the sound, though not entirely hopeful.
The door opened without waiting for permission. “President Maxwell, my apologies for disrupting your day,” came the calm, measured voice of Councilor Halbrecht.
Halbrecht stepped inside with the quiet, unhurried confidence of a man who had survived three administrations without ever losing his footing. His suit was an immaculate cool slate blue fabric, tailored with a precision that bordered on regal. Silver threaded through his dark hair at the temples, combed back so neatly it looked lacquered. His posture was perfect and his expression remained composed, but his sharp, piercing brown eyes were the only hint of the authority he carried.
The kind of authority that ran parallel to the presidency. And, depending on the issue, above it.
Maxwell felt the shift in the room immediately. Halbrecht always brought it with him, like a drop in barometric pressure.
He straightened in his chair, forcing a thin smile. “Councilor. If you’re here to rescue me from these budget reports, then I might actually nominate you for sainthood.”
Halbrecht didn’t acknowledge the joke. He rarely did. Instead, he crossed the room with smooth, economical steps and set a folder neatly on Maxwell’s desk, aligning it with the edge as though precision were a moral imperative.
“These require your review,” he said, his tone polite but immovable. “The finalized appointment documents for Councilor Wisteria.”
Maxwell blinked, the name cutting through the fog of his thoughts. “Wisteria… right.”
Lady Elizabeth Reylynn Wisteria.
The Industrial Sector’s newly elected representative.
Old Earth money.
Young. Sharp.
Unpredictable.
A wild card wrapped in silk and pedigree.
Alpha’s words from yesterday flickered through his mind:
She has opposed Bronson’s proposals in every preliminary review.
Consistently.
She has no alliances. No debts. No obligations.
Difficult for Bronson to control.
Maxwell exhaled slowly, picking up the first page. Her résumé. Her public service record. The election certification. A background summary that was curated. Sanitized. The kind of file that told him everything and nothing at the same time.
Halbrecht watched him with that unreadable calm, his hands clasped behind his back.
Maxwell cleared his throat, trying to shake off the lingering haze of last night’s argument with Duo. “Right. Of course. Let’s… take a look.”
The older man tilted his head a fraction, just the smallest shift, but enough to signal he had noticed the distraction.
“Mr. President,” he said smoothly, “if I may offer a word of counsel.”
Maxwell’s jaw tightened. That tone. That polite tone. “By all means.”
Halbrecht stepped closer, his hands clasped behind his back, his posture immaculate. “It is not uncommon for those new to public office to find the workload… taxing.”
Maxwell’s jaw clenched, fighting back the urge to say something sharp.
Halbrecht continued, his tone gentle in the way a blade is gentle before it cuts. “Politics is a demanding profession. It requires a certain temperament. A steadiness. Many who come from less traditional backgrounds often struggle with the adjustment.”
Maxwell’s fingers stilled on the page.
Halbrecht smiled faintly, as if he believed he was being kind. “You have done remarkably well, given your circumstances. But even the most gifted orators must learn to pace themselves. Focus is essential.”
Maxwell took a slow and steady breath. “Yeah, I’m aware.”
“Of course,” Halbrecht said, with a nod that suggested he wasn’t convinced. “Still, if you find yourself distracted, it may be wise to separate personal matters from state affairs. Attend to them outside these walls. And when you are here…” He tapped the folder lightly. “…do be fully present.”
Maxwell fought back a snarl that was creeping up and remained calm.
Halbrecht didn’t notice. “Stability in leadership is vital. Especially for someone in your unique position.”
And there it was.
A quiet implication.
The reminder that Maxwell wasn’t born into this world. He had crash landed into it.Guess I better get some work done,” he said, forcing a crooked half smile as he reached for the pen. “Before the next crisis decides to kick down the door.”
Drifter and Eris have been my favorite characters since I started playing D2 in 2020, and the subject of the majority of my fan art since... only fitting to draw them again now as D2 retires 💫
My Guardians, my Acolytes, my friends. How can I express all that may be said after everything we have achieved together? I will try. I must.
The Hellmouth did not end for me when I reached Luna's surface. It did not end at the death of Crota or the Taken King. It was relentless. I could not see beyond it. My nightmares persisted and I suffered their torments.
I thought that usefulness would save me, to endure despite all, to make meaning from my fear and isolation. But that did not save me.
That did not quiet my anguish.
It was you, guardians, you who have been by my side through my grief, my pain, my vengeance, and my joy, from the hatred of the Hive to the wonders of my throne.
For that, I am grateful, eternally.
So think now of love, the love between you and your ghost, the love between you and your fireteam, and the love I have for all of you.
Okay, I realize I’m a little late to the party with doing this scene but I absolutely had to do it as much justice as it deserved. And thank you to @cosmic-huntress for the wonderful request (especially with the idea to have Eris’ hood off hehe). I really hope you like it!
Also… clip paint studio has an apple blossom stamp and… I couldn’t resist.
I don't call myself an artist. I do this for fun. I do this for me. But I am curious. Do me and my acrylic paints compare in a world of digital art?
"Lucifer, The Fall of Mankind":
"You who blame all your failures on I. The highest of High. You, who failed to realize you own destruction was not at my hands, nor was it whispered torment from my own lips.
But at the cost of your own Pride. You, who should blame your Lord God for turning his 'all knowing gaze' from your plight.
But now, let me offer my help. Let ME help you, the glory of God's greatest creations."
This is my big sis’s artwork! She’s the one who inspired me as a kiddo to get into artwork! This canvas took her FOREVER to do only because she kept on touching up and changing aspects.
Anywho! Please give her some love!!
And if you ask really nicely she might do something for you - like Drifteris. *winks*
You can also read on AO3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/80444856/chapters/217895651
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
A/N: The characters Duo Maxwell, Duo Maxwell II and Alpha are not mine. Will never be mine. And will always be owned by the creators of Gundam Wing and Frozen Teardrop.
I worked very hard to make my OCs not Mary-Sue. I’m adding here that there is a reason behind every choice and that there is no fanservice or sexualization of anyone in this chapter.
Reminder:
Duo Maxwell = Maxwell
Duo Maxwell II/Jr = Duo
~*~
Chapter Two: Kiddo
~*~
Duo stopped at the edge of the floodlight’s glow, unsure if he had finally snapped or if this was actually happening.
All he could see of the woman was the lower half of her body sticking out of the engine compartment wearing jean short shorts, long legs smudged with grease, and a pair of battered combat boots planted on the front fender as she balanced on her toes. Her entire upper half had vanished into the truck like she was trying to crawl inside and fight the engine from the inside out.
Duo’s brow twitched upward before he looked down at his watch to confirm that it was indeed past midnight.
The woman muttered something unintelligible, followed by a sharp clang and a very clear curse.
Duo stared.
This was not the kind of thing he had expected to find in a quiet residential block at midnight. Or anywhere… really.
Another metallic thud. Another curse. A wrench skittered across the pavement.
“Come on, you stubborn old piece of junk,” she muttered, voice muffled somewhere inside. “Do not make me get the hammer. I swear to God, I will do it.”
Whoever she was, she was absolutely covered in grease. Streaks were on her legs, smudges on her boots, a dark smear across the back of her thigh where she must have wiped her hand without thinking.
He cleared his throat.
Nothing.
He tried again, louder. “Uh… you okay in there?”
The woman jolted so hard she smacked the back of her head on the hood. She winced immediately, a gloved hand flying up to rub the spot. A few loose strands of platinum blond hair slipped over the left side of her face as she muttered, “Ow… just had to get one on me, huh?”
She shot a glare into the engine compartment before her lavender eyes finally shifted toward Duo standing on the sidewalk beside the truck.
She blinked when she saw him. He was frozen in place, one hand still half raised like he had been about to stop her from hitting her head. The moment he realized she had noticed, his fingers curled in and he dropped his hand quickly, as if hoping she had not seen it.
“Sorry,” she said, a sheepish smile tugging at her mouth. “I didn’t know I had an audience…”
It was his turn to blink. He straightened fast, shoulders squaring as he tried to reclaim whatever dignity he had left after being caught mid gesture.
“Yeah, well—” he cleared his throat, which only made it worse, “—you were about to give yourself a concussion.”
Smooth. Real smooth.
He dragged a hand through his bangs, trying to look composed and absolutely failing. The grease on her legs, the shorts, the combat boots, the fact that she had just crawled out of an engine like it was a cave she lived in… none of it matched anything his brain had been prepared for tonight.
“So, uh…” He gestured vaguely at the truck, then at her, then at the empty street. “Why are you out here? Alone. In the middle of the night. With… that?”
It had come out sharper than he meant, the leftover anger from the Capitol still simmering under his skin. But the confusion had softened it, making it more bewildered than accusatory.
The woman’s brows lifted at his question, and for a moment she just looked at him, really looked, taking in the worn jeans, the boots, the fact that he was very much alone on a quiet street at midnight too.
Then the corner of her mouth curled. Slow. Knowing. The kind of grin that said she had already put the pieces together and found the situation funnier than she probably should have.
“Well,” she said, wiping a streak of grease across her cheek without noticing. “I was on my way home. Then my truck here decided it had other plans.”
She tapped the fender with the tip of her boot, affection and irritation mixed in equal measure.
“And you?” Her grin widened just a touch. “You look a little far from home yourself, kiddo.”
Duo’s mouth opened, then closed again. Kiddo. He had been ready to argue with the President of Mars ten minutes ago, and now he was being called kiddo by a woman who looked like she had crawled out of a scrapyard fistfight.
Heat crept up the back of his neck anyway.
“I—“ He gestured vaguely at the street, and at nothing. “I’m not far from home. I live… around here.”
It sounded defensive even to him.
Her grin only grew, slow and amused, like she was enjoying watching him try to get his footing back.
Duo cleared his throat, trying again. “And I am not the one climbing inside a truck at midnight.”
Better. Not great… but better.
He dragged a hand through his bangs again, trying to look like someone who had not just been caught staring. “So maybe let’s not throw around the word ‘kiddo.’”
She raised an eyebrow, clearly entertained. Her grin widened at his protest, the kind that said she had already decided he was funny without meaning to be.
“No the one climbing inside a truck at midnight, huh?” She echoed lightly. “Kiddo, you’re standing on a dark street talking to a stranger covered in grease. I am not sure you get to take the moral high ground here.”
Duo bristled, “I’m not a kid.”
”Mm,” she hummed, clearly unconvinced but too polite to say outright.
Then her expression softened. The grin stayed, but something warmer settled behind it. A shift so subtle Duo almost missed it. A tilt of her head. A quick, assessing glance. The kind of look someone gave when they were deciding whether to worry about you.
”Well,” she said, tapping her foot against the fender, “if you help me figure out what is wrong with Brutus here, I will take you back home.”
Duo stiffened. “I would rather freeze.”
She blinked. “Oof, that bad, huh?”
He looked away, jaw tightening. “Yeah, you could say that.”
She let that sit. No prying. No judgment. Just a quiet moment where she weighed him, weighed the night, weighed the fact that he looked like someone who had walked away from something heavy and did not want to walk back.
She clicked her tongue thoughtfully, eyes drifting toward the truck, then back to him.
“Well,” she said at last, “I do have a bunkhouse.”
Duo looked up.
”For my workers,” she clarified, wiping her hands on her shorts and finally hopping down from the fender of the truck. “It is nothing fancy, but it is warm. And no one will bother you.”
She shrugged, casual but sincere.
”Help me get Brutus running, and I will give you a ride there instead.”
Duo stared at her for a long second, the offer hanging in the cold air between them. A bunkhouse. Warm. Safe. Out of the way.
From a woman he had known for … what, two minutes?
His shoulders tightened instinctively. “You have a bunkhouse,” he echoed, not quite a question, not quite disbelief. More like he was testing the words for danger.
She nodded, casual as anything, leaning against the side of her truck, arms crossed in front of her.
Duo’s eyes narrowed. Not hostile, just wary. He had grown up around soldiers, pilots, and now politicians. He knew better than to take anything at face value, especially from strangers on empty streets.
”You don’t even know me,” he said quietly.
She shrugged. “You don’t know me either.”
He shifted his weight, braid brushing his back, jaw tightening as he looked her over again. She was covered in grease, wearing combat boots and ridiculous short shorts. Not to mention the truck looked older than the both of them combined. She didn’t feel dangerous. But danger rarely announced itself.
Still… she also didn’t feel like someone who would hurt him. If anything, she felt like someone who would shove him behind her if trouble showed up.
That was almost worse.
Duo exhaled through his nose, a short, frustrated sound. “I’m not saying yes,” he muttered. “I’m just… thinking.”
She nodded once, respectful, not pushing. “Hey, thinking is good.”
He glanced at her again, caught the faint, patient smile she was trying to hide, and looked away fast.
This was insane.
He should walk away.
He shouldn’t trust her.
He shouldn’t even be talking to her.
But the truth was simple and heavy in his chest. He didn’t want to go back home. But he also didn’t want to be alone.
So he swallowed hard and said, “fine. I’ll… help you with your truck. But I’m not promising anything after that.”
Her grin returned, warm and a little triumphant. “Fair enough.”
She hopped back up onto the fender of her truck, adjusted the flood light over the engine compartment, and tugged on her gloves.
“By the way,” she said. “The name is Rey. But people call me Bosslady.”
It was said lightly, like she did not expect him to use the title, like she was giving him the option to laugh at it if he wanted.
Duo hesitated at the edge of the fender, still not entirely sure what he was doing. She had just introduced herself like it was the most normal thing in the world, calling herself Bosslady with a straight face.
He climbed up beside her anyway.
The metal was cold under his hands. The floodlight hummed. She shifted to make room for him without comment, like she had expected him to join her all along.
”Bosslady,” he repeated under his breath, not quite believing it. He risked a glance at her.
She grinned unapologetically. “Told you. People call me that.”
He didn’t know what to do with that. Or with her. Or with the fact that she was looking at him like he wasn’t a problem to solve or a burden to carry, but just… a person who had shown up.
He cleared his throat, trying to steady himself. “Right. Well. I’m…”
He wanted to say no one.
Almost said it doesn’t matter.
Almost said you don’t need to know.
But something about the way she waited made the truth slip out instead.
”Duo,” he said quietly. “Duo Maxwell.”
Her eyebrows lifted, just a little. Not in recognition. Not in judgment. Just… interest.
”Well, Duo Maxwell,” she said, turning back to the engine with a nod toward the open compartment, “let us see if we can convince Brutus to behave.”
He exhaled slowly, tension easing from his shoulders before he even realized it.
For the first time all night, he didn’t feel like he was running from something. He felt like he was moving toward something instead.
~*~
Duo leaned over the engine, his hands moved with a confidence he didn’t bother trying to hide. Once he’d gotten past the initial awkwardness, the work itself grounded him. Machines made sense. People didn’t.
“Older trucks like this,” he mutters, reaching past a tangle of hoses, “they get clogged up all the time. Martian dust gets everywhere. Air filters need changing way more often than they did on Earth.”
Rey leaned over closer to watch what he was doing, bracing one hand on the radiator as she peered over his right shoulder. “Is it because of the particulate size?” She asked curiously. “Since the silica is finer here than on Earth?”
”Exactly,” Duo said, surprised she’d connected the dots so quickly. “It cakes inside the intake. Chokes the airflow.”
”Ah.” Rey nodded slowly, following the line of his hand as he pointed out the components. “So, that’s why she’s been coughing on startup,” she murmured, half to herself. “I just thought it was a fuel issue.”
”Nope,” Duo grunted, tightening a clamp. “Just starving for air.”
She hummed thoughtfully, absorbing every word. “Makes sense. I’m better with computer systems than with engines. Computers tell you what’s wrong. Trucks? Well…” she gestures to Brutus below both of them. “Trucks make you guess.”
Duo didn’t look up, but his shoulders eased a little at the admission.
She watched him reconnect a hose, her expression shifting from curiosity to something warmer. “You’ve got a good eye, kiddo.”
Duo froze mid-movement.
There it was again. Kiddo.
“…I’m not a kid,” he muttered, still staring into the engine compartment.
Rey raised an eyebrow, amused. “Didn’t say you were. Just a nickname.”
”Well—“ he huffed, cheeks heating, “you look like you’re only a few years older than me anyway.”
That got her attention. Rey blinked, then let out a soft, surprised laugh. “Oh, bless your heart. That’s generous of you.”
Duo’s ears went scarlet. “I didn’t mean— I just meant— you don’t look—“
She waved a hand quickly, smile growing. “Relax! I’ll take the compliment any day!”
He grumbled something unintelligible and tightened the clamp a little harder than necessary.
Rey leaned back against the radiator, eyes narrowing slightly as she watched him from the corner of her eyes. “Still gonna call you kiddo, though.”
Duo made a strangled noise that wasn’t quite a protest and looked the other way to hide the blush working over his cheeks. This woman was weird.
Hopping down from the fender, Duo turned to Rey, wiping his hands on his worn jeans. “Alright,” he said, trying to sound casual and not secretly proud of himself. “Try her now.”
Rey pushed off the radiator and hopped down beside him with a light thud of boots on pavement. “Moment of truth,” she murmured, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she rounded the front of the truck.
She grabbed the door handle. The door screeched open like a dying metal animal making Duo visibly flinch. She paused, hand still on the handle, and glanced over her shoulder at him with a raised brow. “What? She’s old.”
”That’s not old,” Duo muttered. “That’s… that’s a death cry.”
Rey snorted, shaking her head as she climbed into the cab. “You fix the engine, kiddo. I’ll fix the door later.”
Duo opened his mouth to protest the nickname again, then shut it with a quiet, defeated exhale. He folded his arms instead, pretending he wasn’t waiting with bated breath.
Rey settled into the seat, turned the key…
Brutus coughed.
Sputtered.
Growled.
Then roared to life like a beast waking from a long nap.
Rey’s grin lit up. “Well I’ll be damned. You really got her breathing again.”
Duo tried - tried - not to smile. But the corner of his mouth betrayed him. Rey leaned out of the window, pointing at him with a gloved hand. “Smile! You did that!”
He ducked his head immediately, as if the praise were a spotlight he wasn’t ready for. ”I.. it’s … not a big deal,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck like he could scrub the embarrassment off.
Rey just kept pointing at him, grin unwavering. “It is a big deal. I get to finally go home. Take a shower. Have some food. Sleep in a warm bed and then be back to work to do this all over again.”
He shifted his weight, suddenly fascinated by a crack in the pavement. “It’s just maintenance.”
”Uh huh,” her voice was full of that infuriating, impossible warmth. “And you did it.”
His cheeks warmed again like the traitors they were and he tried to scowl to cover it. “Stop saying it like that.”
Rey let him stew in that flustered silence for a beat longer than necessary. Long enough for Duo to start shifting foot to foot like he was debating whether to bolt or sink into the pavement.
Then she tapped the side of the truck twice, decisive and bright. “Alright, kiddo,” her tone shifted from warm and teasing to something more grounded, more matter-of-fact. “You’ve resurrected my chariot. Now the question is… where am I taking you?”
Duo blinked, thrown. “What?”
Rey jerked her thumb toward the passenger side. “Back home? Or the bunkhouse? Dealer’s choice.”
He stiffened immediately, his foot instinctively taking a step back. “I’m not… I don’t need a ride.”
Rey gave him a look. Not sharp. Not pitying. Just… unimpressed. “It’s past midnight,” she started, leaning her elbow on the window frame. “You’re not wandering the streets of Elysium alone. Not after you just saved my entire night.”
”I didn’t save anything,” he muttered.
”You saved me from sleeping in this truck,” she countered. “Which means you get a ride. That’s how this works.”
He opened his mouth about to argue, as was his default setting, but Rey cut him off with a raised hand.
“Before you say something stubborn, I’m not asking for your life story. I’m just asking for a destination.”
Duo’s jaw tightened. His eyes flicked toward the dark street behind him, then back to the truck, then away again. He looked like someone trying to calculate the least humiliating option.
Rey softened, just a fraction. “Hey,” she said as quietly as she could over the roar of Brutus. “You don’t have to explain anything. Just tell me where you want to go.”
A long moment passed.
Finally, Duo exhaled, a small defeated sound. “Fine… the bunkhouse. It’s … probably better than if I went home.”
Rey nodded once, like that settled it. “Alright, bunkhouse it is!”
She leaned over, more like fell over, and popped the passenger door open. It squealed just as horribly as the driver’s side.
Duo flinched again.
Rey grinned. “See? Told you. I’ll fix the doors later.”
And for the first time in years, Duo didn’t feel like he was being cornered or chased or judged. He just felt… escorted.
Safely.
Reluctantly, he climbed in.
~*~
Thank you for reading!!
Comments make me happy, but likes make my brain go brr!
Read it here on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80444856/chapters/211243861
A/N: I’ve decided I don’t care if anyone actually reads it. I want to post it for me. I shall consider this my own little project.
The characters Duo Maxwell, Duo Maxwell II, and Alpha are not mine and belong to the creators of Gundam Wing and Frozen Teardrop.
For the benefit of separating Duo Maxwell from his son Duo Maxwell II, their names shall henceforth be this.
Duo Maxwell = Maxwell
Duo Maxwell II = Duo jr, or simply Duo.
Please note: this is a SLOW BURN romance. The story takes place a year after the events of Frozen Teardrop (the little that we do know). And while I have absolutely no idea how our beloved God of Death ends up as the Third President of the Mars Federation… I’m choosing to leave most of that journey to creative interpretation. Because I can. And Maxwell DESERVES some happiness.
If you agree… please continue.
If not? Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk. See you next time!
~*~
The Lady Who Disarmed the President
Chapter One: A Spark in the Dark
~*~
It is MC 023.
The long and bitter conflict known as Operation Mythos has finally come to an end. In its wake, the red sands of Mars have settled into a fragile, hard-won peace.
At the center of this new era stands James Clark Maxwell, formerly known by some as Duo Maxwell, the God of Death. Now, he serves as the President of the Mars Federation, guiding a young government still learning how to stand on its own. At his side is the First Lady, Hilde Schbeiker, whose resolve and clarity have become a steadying force for a population exhausted by war.
Together, President Maxwell and the First Lady work to usher in a future free from the shadows of conflict. But peace, though celebrated, remains delicate. The Federation, still in its infancy, faces its first greatest test: a majority vote calling for the complete cessation of mobile suit production.
For the first time in decades, humanity dares to imagine a world without weapons of war such as mobile suits. Yet, beneath the surface of this hopeful new chapter, old fears, buried loyalties, and unspoken histories begin to stir…
~*~
Elysium, Capital of the Mars Federation, rose from the red sands like a promise to immigrants from Earth and the colonies. The old terraforming dome still stood at the city’s center, a hollow monument to a harsher era, but the city had long since outgrown it. Towers of glass and steel stretched toward the Elysium strait, the shimmering divide between the island capital and the southern continent beyond. In the distance, an extinct volcano loomed, a silent sentinel to Mars’ volcanic history.
Inside the presidential office within the Dome District, President James Clark Maxwell stared at a bill that could reshape Mars’ future.
He looked older than his thirty six years, the kind of age carved not by time but by distance. Years spent wandering the Martian frontier had left their mark on his skin. His violet‑blue eyes, once bright with reckless defiance, carried a tired weight now, a softness earned through loss and survival. His brown hair was cropped short, the back slicked neatly while the longer bangs swept across his face in a way that refused to be entirely tamed. He wore a deep blue suit over a black button up, the dark fabric sharpening the lines of his frame. A muted silver tie cut through the palette, understated but steady, the only hint of light against the somber colors he favored.
Maxwell leaned back in his chair, thumb pressed against the bridge of his nose. The irony was not lost on him. He, the God of Death, was being asked to sign away the very machines that had defined his youth, his trauma, his victories, his sins.
He flipped the page over again, as if the words might change.
“…to preserve resources, stabilize the Federation economy, and prevent escalation of arms development…”
A neat justification. Too neat.
A soft chime announced Alpha’s entrance. The man stepped inside with that quiet, precise gait that always reminded Maxwell of someone he used to know, someone colder, sharper, but unmistakably present in Alpha’s posture.
“Mr. President,” Alpha said, stopping a respectful distance from the desk. “You’re still reviewing the Council’s proposal?”
Maxwell huffed a breath. “Reviewing. Stalling. Avoiding. Pick your verb.”
Alpha’s expression didn’t shift, but something in his eyes sharpened into that Heero‑like focus, the kind that saw through excuses.
Maxwell tapped the bill with two fingers. “Tell me something, Alpha. What am I risking if I don’t sign this?”
Alpha didn’t answer immediately. He stepped closer, hands clasped behind his back, gaze flicking to the document.
“The Council expects compliance,” he said at last. “They see this bill as symbolic. A declaration that Mars is choosing peace.”
“Peace,” Maxwell echoed, leaning back. “Funny how peace always seems to come with fine print…”
Alpha continued, voice even. “If you refuse, you risk political fracture. Loss of confidence. Potential division among the people of Mars. Some may interpret it as a desire to rearm.”
Maxwell sighed, the sound low and tired. “And if I sign it?”
Alpha met his eyes. “You risk being unprepared.”
There it was. The truth Maxwell already knew but needed to be spoken aloud.
Alpha added, quieter this time, “You know better than anyone what happens when people assume war is impossible.”
Maxwell grumbled as he leaned back in his chair. The weight of the pen on his desk felt heavier than any weapon he had ever held.
“All right… tell me straight, Alpha. No sugarcoating. What would you do?”
Alpha studied him for a long second, as if confirming that Maxwell truly wanted the unfiltered version.
“I would sign it,” he said at last. No hesitation. No apology. “The political cost of refusal outweighs the strategic benefit of continued production. Mars is not prepared for internal division.”
He let that settle before adding, “But I would also begin contingency planning. Quietly. You cannot rely on peace to sustain itself.”
There was no judgment in his tone. No fear. Just the cold arithmetic Maxwell had asked for.
“In other words, Mars needs to invest in weapons that don’t look like mobile suits?”
Alpha didn’t blink. “There are already rumors,” he said. “Certain representatives have begun exploring alternative options.”
Maxwell’s eyes narrowed. “Representatives?”
“Councilor Bronson is among them,” Alpha replied. “His office has made several discreet inquiries into weapons platforms that fall outside the definition of mobile suits.”
Maxwell’s shoulders slumped slightly. “Of course he has.”
He pushed away from the desk and stood, pacing a few steps toward the window. The Dome District glowed faintly beneath the artificial lights, the old terraforming shell arching overhead like a reminder of how much Mars had survived, and how much it could still lose.
“So Bronson’s already building his little coalition,” Maxwell muttered. “And I’m supposed to smile and pretend I don’t see it.”
Alpha didn’t move. “You are not without support, Mr. President.”
Maxwell gave a humorless laugh. “Support… right.”
He turned back, leaning one hand on the edge of his desk.
“Tesh and Solis are stretched thin. Varrin’s too cautious to take a stand. Rourke’s waiting to see which way the wind blows. And Civil Affairs…” He shook his head. “Cortana would sell her own shadow if it got her a headline.”
Alpha’s expression remained neutral, but his voice softened by a fraction. “You still have General Armitage.”
Maxwell nodded once, considering. “Armitage I trust. But he’s military. He can’t counter Bronson in the Council.”
He looked down at the bill again. The neat, polished language, the promise of peace wrapped around a political noose.
“I need someone who understands the industrial side,” he murmured. “Someone who can see what Bronson’s doing before he does it.”
Alpha tilted his head. “A new Councilor is being sworn in this week. The Industrial Sector seat.”
Maxwell waved a hand, more tired than dismissive. “Yeah, I read her file. Lady Elizabeth Reylynn Wisteria.” He said the name like it tasted expensive. “Young. Sharp. Comes from the kind of old Earth money that could buy half the colonies before breakfast.” A dry smirk pulled at his mouth. “Just what I needed. Another aristocrat telling me how the world works.”
Alpha’s head tilted a fraction. It was the closest he ever came to a frown. “Her lineage is irrelevant,” he said, voice even. “What matters is her record. She has opposed Bronson’s proposals in every preliminary review. Consistently.”
He studied Maxwell for a beat, eyes narrowing slightly. Not with judgment, but with analysis.
“You distrust aristocrats,” Alpha added, not unkindly, simply stating a fact. “But Lady Wisteria is not aligned with them. She has no political alliances. No debts. No obligations.” A pause. “That makes her unpredictable. And difficult for Bronson to control.”
His aide’s words settled, precise as a scalpel, and Maxwell felt something in his chest tighten, not with surprise but with recognition. Of course she was unpredictable. Of course she was not tied to anyone. Old money with no leash was its own kind of problem.
“Great,” he thought. “A wild card wrapped in silk and pedigree. Just what this place needs.”
He rubbed a thumb along the line of his jaw, eyes drifting back to the bill on his desk. Aristocrats had never done him any favors. They had built the world he spent his youth tearing down. They had sent boys like him into machines built to kill and called it balance.
And now one of them was about to walk into his Council chamber with a title and a sector that mattered more than she probably understood.
“Young, smart, and rich enough to never have been hungry a day in her life.” He exhaled slowly. “Yeah. That’s a recipe for trouble.”
But Alpha’s tone lingered. A quiet, clinical certainty.
Difficult for Bronson to control.
Maxwell’s jaw ticked once. That part he could not ignore.
“Unpredictable,” he thought, sinking back into his chair. “Maybe that is exactly what this place needs.”
He did not believe it yet. Not really. But the thought was there, faint as a spark in the dark.
He let out a slow breath and settled deeper into the leather, the chair sighing under his weight. The bill waited on the desk like it knew how this would end. He stared at it for a long moment, jaw tight, eyes tracing the neat lines of text that promised peace while handing Bronson the narrative on a silver platter.
His hand drifted toward the fountain pen. It felt heavier than it should when he picked it up, as if it carried every mistake he had already made and every one he had yet to make. He signed anyway. Clean. Efficient. Presidential.
The pen clicked softly against its metal base as he set it down.
“Fine,” he muttered, leaning back with a tired exhale. “He gets this one.”
But even as the resignation settled in, something stubborn flickered beneath it. A thin, steady line of defiance he had not managed to kill off, no matter how many years he had tried.
And he knew Bronson would not see it coming.
~*~
A television screen flickered as the 11 o’clock news broadcast logo spun into frame before dissolving into the anchor’s composed, all too bright smile.
“Good afternoon. Our top story this evening: President Maxwell has made a radical move today, signing into law the Cessation of Mobile Suit Production Act. The bill, passed by the majority vote in the Federation Council, effectively halts all ongoing manufacturing of mobile suits across Mars.”
A graphic appeared beside the news anchor’s face, a stylized mobile suit silhouette crossed out in red.
”This marks the first major disarmament initiative since the conclusion of Operation Mythos. Supporters call it a necessary step toward lasting peace. Critics argue it leaves Mars vulnerable in a time of growing political tension.”
Her tone tightened, just slightly.
”Reactions across Mars have been swift.”
~*~
Duo was off the couch the moment the words hit him. His long braid swung behind him as he strode toward the screen, as if getting closer might somehow change what he heard. His cornflower blue eyes were wide, surprise edged with anger.
“What the hell?” he muttered to no one. “Why would he do that?”
He planted his hands on the edge of the console beneath the screen. The broadcast kept rolling, the anchor’s voice far too calm for the storm building inside him.
“…the President’s decision marks the first full cessation of mobile suit productions in Federation history.”
“Unbelievable,” Duo snapped, pushing away and pacing a tight line in front of the couch. His braid swung like a metronome ticking out his frustration. “He knows what this means. He has to know.”
He stopped, fingers digging into his hairline.
“Dad, what were you thinking…?”
The suite felt too quiet, too polished, too far removed from the hangars and battlefields where mobile suits were not politics, they were survival. He turned back to the screen, jaw clenched.
“He cannot just—” His voice cracked into a disbelieving laugh. “The old man actually did it.”
The anchor moved on to reactions from around Mars, but Duo was not listening anymore. His pulse pounded in his ears. His hands were already curling into fists.
He did not wait for the segment to end. He was already moving toward the door. Because if his dad would not explain himself to the world, he was going to explain himself to his son.
Duo threw open the suite door and stepped into the marble halls of the executive wing. The place was nearly silent at this hour, most of the staff long gone, the only movement coming from the security officers stationed at their posts. He ignored them, moving barefoot quiet in his worn jeans and light blue shirt, pulse still pounding from the broadcast.
Tonight, he was not interested in pleasantries or protocol. He was ready to storm straight into his old man’s office and demand why Maxwell had caved to the Council.
He rounded the corner at full speed and skidded to a stop.
Maxwell stood in the middle of the hallway, one hand at the back of his neck, rubbing the tension that had clearly settled there hours ago. He was still in his deep blue suit, tie loosened, bangs falling into tired violet blue eyes. He looked like he had been carrying the weight of Mars on his shoulders, because he had.
They stared at each other for a moment. Duo’s heavy breathing made Maxwell blink in surprise.
“Hey, kid,” Maxwell said, lowering his hand. “Why are you up this late?”
The younger man’s momentum was still hot in his veins when Maxwell’s voice reached him. It was too casual, too normal for the way Duo’s world had just tilted.
He did not slow down.
“Why am I up?” Duo fired back, the words sharp enough to sting. “Maybe because you just signed away the entire mobile suit program without telling anyone. Including me.”
“Oh, well, I am sorry. I did not realize I needed to get your approval to do my job,” Maxwell snapped before he could stop himself.
The words hung there, sharp and wrong. He closed his eyes for half a second, pulled in a breath, trying to reel himself back to center. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, steadier, but tired in a way Duo had not heard in a long time.
“Duo… this is not the time.”
But Duo was already stepping forward, anger pushing him past caution, fueled now completely by his father’s retort.
“Yeah, well, it sure as hell was the time when you were signing away the one thing that keeps most of Mars from getting steamrolled,” he fired back. “You didn’t think maybe your own kid deserved a heads up?”
Maxwell’s jaw tightened. He looked away, not to dismiss him, just retreating. The way a man did when he had already spent everything he had in the Council chamber and had nothing left for the people waiting at home.
“I ain’t doing this right now,” he said quietly, already turning down the hall.
And that was the moment Duo felt something in his chest twist, because it did not feel like exhaustion. It felt like being shut out. Again.
“Of course you’re not,” Duo muttered, bitterness slipping through. “Run from this too.”
Maxwell did not turn. Duo did not wait for him to.
He spun on his heel and stalked back toward the presidential suite, jaw clenched so tight it ached. He did not look at his father as he passed him. He did not slow down. He did not say a word. The suite door slammed behind him, the sound echoing down the marble hall.
Inside, the room felt too warm, too polished, too suffocating. Duo yanked on his boots, shoving his feet in without bothering to untie them first. His coat was half zipped by the time he reached the door again. He did not bother turning off the lights.
He just left.
The atmosphere shifted the moment he stepped outside the Capitol Building. The air was colder, sharper. The Dome District glowed under its artificial lights, the street mostly empty except for a few late night walkers heading home from bars or third shift jobs. Duo kept moving, hands shoved into his pockets, braid swinging behind him with every angry step.
He walked until the skyscrapers thinned out and the lights softened into the quieter hum of the residential blocks outside the Dome. The night felt bigger here. Quieter. Lonelier.
That was when he saw it.
A shape on the side of the road, boxy and tall with a canvas back. Duo slowed, frowning. As he got closer, the details sharpened under the streetlights.
An old military supply truck.
Earth era.
GMC CCKW.
Parked on a Martian street like it belonged there.
It did not.
Duo drifted toward it, curiosity cutting through his anger. He ran a hand along the canvas, fingers brushing dust and rough fabric.
“What are you doing here…?”
A metallic BANG answered him. Sharp, followed by a muttered curse from somewhere near the front of the truck. Then another clang, this one intentional, as if someone had struck the engine block on purpose.
Duo stepped around the passenger side, peering toward the noise.
The hood was propped open. A portable floodlight cast harsh white light across the engine compartment. And there, waist deep in the guts of the vintage truck, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back, tools scattered around her boots, was a woman.
Fully absorbed.
Utterly out of place.
And completely unaware she had just been found.
~*~
If you catch any canon weirdness, feel free to let me know! I’ve only read a rough translation of Frozen Teardrop, and as we all know, FT isn’t exactly consistent with its own timeline. I’m placing this about twenty years after Endless Waltz, which makes Duo roughly thirty‑six.
Characters are Duo Maxwell (post Frozen Teardrop). I took some creative interpretation to how “old” he looks now and I refuse to make him look like a sad old man. Beside him is my OC Rey Wisteria. I feel like the first couple sketches were very … rough and not even remotely close to them but after a couple more sketches I feel it got closer to Duo.
I’m trying to translate them into my art style now that I’ve written them.
Also… just a practice sketch in general. Goal is to always continue to improve.
Putting my feelers out to the Gundam Wing community.
I’ve been working on a Gundam Wing/Post-FT fanfiction and I have 4 chapters written. It’s Duo Maxwell/OC specific, with a lot of worldbuilding because FT left us with… well, vibes and confusion. So there’s plenty of creative interpretation, political structure, and character depth to make the setting actually make sense.
The OC is a fully developed character with her own arc, agency, and flaws. She is not a self-insert or a wish-fulfillment character.
The story leans political/drama/romance with violence and psychological themes. And it’s definitely a slow burn.
I’m still debating whether to post it here or on AO3. I want to share it… that’s the whole point of creating something, but I’m also nervous no one will read it or even like it.
If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, let me know. I’m just trying to gauge if there’s a corner of the fandom that would enjoy something like this.
