[Gundam 00] The Subtle Grace of Gravity (Arc 2)
Title: The Subtle Grace of Gravity
→ Arc 1: Waking
→ Arc 2: Return
Fandom: Gundam 00
Characters/Pairing: Mainly Lockon and Tieria; some Setsuna and other Ptolemy crew. Eventual Lockon/Tieria.
Rating: PG for now, eventual NC-17.
Wordcount: 5,485 (second part)
Notes: Part two of...anywhere between eight and ten, depending on how the last few scenes to be written play out. Part one can be found here.
Summary: Tieria learns more about Veda and the plan--and Lockon makes a decision to stay.
As he further mapped the lunar complex, Tieria could feel his need for his new physical form lessening.
He had required this body to make some of the arrangements for the captives, as the injured ones were not directly connected to Veda even within the moonbase. But that had been only a few gestures. He took care of the details of their health from a distance, and back on the Ptolemaios, Sumeragi handled the political ramifications of their release. As Tieria understood it, she had managed to cut some sort of deal that would lessen official pursuit of Celestial Being and allow them advance warning of most approaches.
With that arranged, and most of the moonbase opened up, Tieria could accomplish just about all he needed from within Veda. There were caches of important data that he couldn't open up with fumbling human fingers, and the complex had machines that would take care of his body indefinitely while he slipped back into the heart of the computer. Somehow, he found himself regretting this.
But it was necessary; he knew that now it was only a matter of time before he unlocked secrets that could help not just the others in Celestial Being, but humanity as a whole. He wanted that enough to ignore little things like the irrational desire to feel solid physical boundaries around him once more.
Somehow, though, the pursuit of Veda's secrets had been easier before he knew that Lockon was alive.
He slipped, now and then. But for a while, it wasn't so bad.
That didn't last. Tieria was assembling just the right collection of prime numbers that would let him into a file about the biological processes used to differentiate Innovades when he really slipped. He could have stopped himself, he knew; but he'd let his mind wander, and when it had wandered to Lockon, he hadn't bothered to rein it in quite as much as he otherwise would have. So instead of selecting the right number, he unthinkingly seized on Lockon's date of birth instead. The systems around him crackled unpleasantly with the error, and Tieria, fighting down a sudden burst of shame at his mistake, started to brace himself for the coming ejection.
But he was too deep in to merely be thrown out of that area of data--instead, he felt a security alert snap into place. Gleaming and impenetrable electronic walls flew up around him, boxing him in, and began to push him further down into the depths of the database, away from the areas he knew and the areas he wanted to reach.
At the corner of his awareness, he felt the pattern of light that was Regene flicker away in irritation at his clumsiness. Tieria resisted the urge to call out to him for help. He had been investigating Veda for months now; he could do this himself.
But the digital territory around him grew less familiar, and he began to feel like he was decohering.
A flash of impatience above: Regene. A sliver of a crack opened in Tieria's cage. You should learn to do this yourself. What would you do without me, Tieria? And he waited, expectant, as if that little opening was enough.
"It's too small," Tieria said. "I won't be able to fit through that."
He felt another wave of exasperation from above, and then, through the crack, he glimpsed Regene shaping himself into a faintly human form. "Are you really still thinking of it as a physical opening in a solid cage?"
Tieria stretched out his hands into the electronic aether. They looked translucent to him in the glow that his mind saw the information within Veda as. He was half-aware that they weren't really there, and if he shifted his awareness a little bit, they faded into nothing--but the walls around him still seemed solid.
"I still see it that way," he said.
"That's why you're trapped," Regene says. "It doesn't have to be that way." And then he was gone, leaving only the too-narrow opening at the top of the cage.
One last parting shot: Humanity isn't always a bad thing, Tieria, but there's a time and a place for it. This isn't either.
Tieria sensed that he could break through these walls--that they didn't have to be walls. But he'd have to let go of something to do that. Maybe his connection to the new body waiting for him; maybe his ability to use any body at all for some time. Maybe it would be something more, and when he went back to that body he wouldn't understand why it mattered anymore. That was the worst thought of all. But he didn't have a lot of choice. His surroundings were increasingly unfamiliar, and he felt less and less confident of his ability to find his way back to the analog world. If he adjusted his viewpoint a little, he could see the edges of himself flickering and fading out. But it was getting harder to adjust that viewpoint.
His clothes, which weren't really clothes, were dissolving into data, leaving him bare to his hostile surroundings. He was less sure why this was bad than he had been a few moments ago, or even why he was thinking of "his hostile surroundings" when that attributed unnecessary physical and intentional features to Veda.
But then there was something beyond the tiny fracture in the cage Regene had made. A voice.
"I'm at the limits of my access, but I've finally established a connection. Tieria...he should be there. Tieria?"
That was his name, wasn't it? And the voice sounded faintly familiar. He wasn't sure why it mattered, though.
"Tieria, would you please respond? This is Feldt Grace on the Ptolemy. Your connection to us was broken." There was a pause; he didn't know how long. Time was something humans measured. "Ms. Sumeragi, something is very wrong."
Another voice: "He still isn't responding." This one was also dimly familiar, but more importantly, it sent ripples of recognition through Veda. Innovator. That was interesting, but it was getting harder to care even about that.
"Here, Setsuna. Let me try."
There was no echo of Innovation in this voice; it was that of a normal human and should have been meaningless to the information that was Tieria Erde. But it was only then that he remembered that he was Tieria Erde, and he was, in his own way, human.
"Tieria, are you there?"
That same voice. Tieria felt himself resolving again, saw the solidity of the cage around him return even as the crack in it widened. Regene may have made the gap, but this voice was prying it open.
"Lockon Stratos," Tieria said, and he threw himself free of the trap.
Information blurred around him as he wound his way back to the surface, which wasn't really a surface at all. He hesitated; there was so much he could learn here in these depths of Veda he hadn't managed to access before, even if he had to risk himself again. He reached his consciousness back out along the open communications channels to contact the Ptolemaios.
"I am here. I'll explain the situation to you shortly."
"We'll keep the channel open until then," came a new voice. Sumeragi, this time.
And this voice was Feldt again. "Setsuna, did you want to say something? You looked--"
"I'm fine. I thought I saw something in the connection for a moment."
"I'm not sure what you mean. How could you..." Feldt was still talking, but Tieria was abruptly distracted. When Setsuna had spoken across the channel, the digital landscape around him had shifted and changed, responding to his voice in a way that it didn't respond even to Tieria himself. He could sense, at the edge of his awareness, a path opening through the data, and it was leading somewhere entirely new--a place that not even Ribbons, with his everpresent tendrils of influence, had touched.
"Setsuna," he said. "You did see something. Speak again."
"Ah," Setsuna said. "What do you need me to say, Tieria?"
The path flowed open entirely, and Tieria understood that it was all right that he saw it as a path. The fact that Ribbons never would have had only made it harder for him to see. "That was enough," he said. "The system has keys I was unaware of. You were one of them, or rather, the first true Innovator was." He found himself following the new trail at what would have been quite a rapid speed had he really been moving at all, and then he was out of it, into a strange and unexplored part of Veda.
"Well, I'm not surprised," Lockon began, back on the Ptolemaios, and Tieria found in himself the last part of the key he needed to enter this area.
He said, "I have some information I need to share with all of you."
* * *
The Tieria on the screen before them was not one Lockon had seen before. It was a little unsettling.
"That is why the lunar complex was built to begin with," he was saying. "It was never Ribbons Almark's creation." His mouth only sometimes moved when he spoke. At other times, the words came directly from the computers around them, while Tieria's expression remained distant, as if he were still half stuck in Veda. His eyes glowed with unnatural color. Lockon had never seen him like this, and as curious as he sometimes found himself about Tieria's strangeness, he wasn't sure he entirely wanted to. He neither looked nor sounded very human at the moment, and it was too easy to worry that this state could creep back over him permanently again.
"But what exactly does it have to do with Jupiter?" That was Lyle's voice, cutting through Lockon's thoughts as simply as a knife. "I'm not sure you really explained, Tieria."
There was still no visible expression on Tieria's face. "This was part of Aeolia Schoenberg's plan from the start. The moonbase would serve as a waystation to store the information gleaned from the discoveries on Jupiter, while allowing humans to process and study that information under the guidance of the Innovades. New technologies could be tested here safely, and new discoveries would be made with Veda's help."
"Why didn't we learn about this before?" Sumeragi asked.
"When Ribbons Almark discovered the lunar complex, he realized that, like the Gundams, it was one part of the plan that he could not fully control. So he sabotaged it, sealing off what areas he could not repurpose for his own plans and deleting or corrupting all the information about it. But Aeolia Schoenberg had anticipated this possibility and built a trap door into Veda: backups that would remain hidden and unalterable until triggered by the first true Innovator."
"Setsuna," Lockon said. He looked over to Setsuna and was even more unsettled to realize that he couldn't read his expression. It was something new to him, and his eyes weren't even lit up with that strange glow right now.
"Yes," Tieria said. "There is a great deal of work to be done before the moonbase can be returned to its intended purpose."
"We'll return to the moon right away," Sumeragi said.
But Tieria cut her off; he shook his head slightly, and when he spoke, it came from his own mouth first. "No. You need to proceed to Jupiter immediately. I will take on the task of restoring the moonbase."
Sumeragi hesitated, and Lockon took advantage of the moment to speak up. There was something he felt the need to say. Instinct told him he had an opening here that he shouldn't let go. He couldn't go to Jupiter, and this was his chance to find a better place for himself. "Hey, hey, I don't know if the rest of you guys noticed, but Tieria seemed pretty serious when he mentioned the security alert that caught him earlier. You almost got hurt there, didn't you?"
Tieria paused, and Lockon was relieved to note that he seemed to be mostly out of Veda now. He had expressions again, and Lockon could read them. After a moment, he went on to say reluctantly, "Yes. I had some assistance, but without your contact at that time..."
He trailed off, and Lockon was at once gratified to be able to understand why and what it meant once more, and alarmed at the seriousness of the situation. Tieria hadn't almost been hurt; he'd nearly been killed.
"You need some help," he said.
"It is true," Tieria said cautiously, "that according to the new data, the moonbase isn't meant to be handled by a single person. There are systems to monitor the Innovade who runs it from without, and physical defenses in case a threat approaches from without--the full complex is too large to be hidden as well as the scaled-down version."
And that was where it clicked. Lockon could say it outright now: "It sounds like we can't all go to Jupiter."
He didn't realize that Lyle, behind him and off to his right, had moved until his voice came from closer than it had before. "And somehow it has to be you who stays, Neil?"
"It makes the most sense," Lockon said, but he had a sudden awful feeling: Lyle knew why he wanted to stay. Somehow, Lyle knew that the thought of going with them to the future that waited for them farther out in the solar system left his brother absolutely cold.
"Lockon--" Tieria began, and then he stopped. There was no question as to which of them he was addressing; it was all in the tone of his voice.
Lockon couldn't articulate even to himself why he couldn't go to Jupiter with them, not entirely. All he could tell himself was that they were going to the future that they had fought so hard for, and he didn't belong there. But he could stay back here and protect Tieria. That felt almost right.
Lyle was still looking at him with a very unimpressed expression. Lockon felt--no, Neil felt, and that was the problem with being where Lyle could see him and talk to him--he felt suddenly very sure that if he took any longer to make his decision, Lyle would make every effort to talk him out of it, and he would understand the why of it even better than Neil himself.
So Lockon smiled and said, "I'll come back to the moonbase, Tieria. I'm a little out of the loop when it comes to things like Jupiter, but I think I can handle this." He reached out to the screen below Tieria's, where he'd called up information on the lunar complex's defenses. It took him only a few seconds to find what he'd been looking for. "Hey, the defense system has a sniping mode."
"And you have one eye," Lyle said, impatience starting to edge into his voice. "So I'm not sure it matters. Are you really going to do this?"
"Lockon," Sumeragi began, and then she fell silent; maybe she couldn't decide which of them she meant to address. Setsuna remained quiet and calm, though, and that was a little unsettling. He was watching them both as if he understood what they were trying to say to each other better than they did.
"That's where I'm needed," Lockon said. "You can handle things here while I'm gone. Right, Lyle?"
"It's a long way to Jupiter, Neil," Lyle said. "Soon you won't be able to come back here just to follow me around the ship and go through my things when I'm not looking."
"He wouldn't..." Feldt began, but then she stopped, looking down.
Lockon straightened up and reached a hand out to rest on Feldt's head for a moment. "It's all right," he said. "You're still the one who does the best job of using the access Tieria gave us to Veda. So you'll be in touch with us all the time." That he was all right with, but he hoped she wouldn't let Lyle use the channel too much. Maybe not Setsuna, either. He glanced back at the others, but couldn't quite bring himself to meet those two gazes. So he simply said, "I'm going to get ready. You heard Tieria, didn't you? The rest of you should get ready to go to Jupiter as soon as possible. That means dropping me off at the moonbase now." Without bothering to see how they responded to that, he turned and headed down the corridor.
He'd made it a fair way from the bridge when he heard a voice behind him. "Lockon Stratos." It was Setsuna.
Lockon paused for a moment. He could dismiss Setsuna and keep going. But now that he had the chance, he realized he didn't want to. Instead, he said, "Thank you."
"For what?" The blank look on Setsuna's face wasn't entirely familiar, but it was more so than a lot of his expressions had been lately. That was another thing Lockon was grateful for.
"For still calling me that," he said. "That's not what you came to talk about, though, so let's not get into it right now. What's up, Setsuna?"
The casualness in his voice felt hollow even to Lockon himself, but Setsuna gave no sign that he'd recognized that. "You don't have to stay with Tieria," he said. "There is always another way."
"I know," Lockon said.
Setsuna nodded, as if he'd expected to hear that. For a moment, Lockon thought he could make out his expression again, and it was sad. Then the moment was gone, and he was earnest and reserved once more. "All right."
But Lockon found that he couldn't quite turn away again so easily. Instead, he said, "I'd like it if you stayed in touch, Setsuna. Tieria will be able to maintain a channel to the Ptolemy, right? There shouldn't be a problem."
Setsuna nodded again. "I will do that."
As he turned away again, Lockon had the feeling that Setsuna was still watching. He wasn't really sure how he felt about that. But he knew that back on the moon, Tieria was waiting for him with that strange look of longing on his face. It would be better to be there after all.
* * *
The patterns of information from Veda played out across the inside of Tieria's eyelids, but he could not summon the will to immerse himself fully. A peculiar feeling centered right below his ribs fastened his mind to his body, and sometimes he had trouble remembering to breathe.
Tieria checked Lockon's estimated time of arrival again. Four hours, twenty-two minutes. Margin of error: twelve minutes. He attempted to narrow that further, but found himself unable to concentrate on the mathematics. Instead, he accessed the sensors Veda could tap into on the Ptolemaios and surveyed the information they provided him about Lockon.
His temperature and pulse were both normal for a resting state. There was nothing more Tieria could do with that information, and he still had difficulty focusing on anything else. He could have opened communications to the rest of the Ptolemy, could have asked them why Lockon chose to come here when he had so many other options now. But he was afraid, irrationally, that if he asked, it wouldn't be true anymore. Instead, Tieria summoned a video feed of the room Lockon was napping in and watched him. The way he breathed was more compelling than it should have been.
* * *
Lockon didn't really want to wear the uniform. He liked the idea of it, to be sure, and it had made him smile when he'd heard that Tieria had designed it. But he couldn't quite shake a lingering unease over the knowledge that it was his brother's spare. That brought up too many thoughts that he didn't want to deal with, that it would be much easier not to deal with. Especially now that he didn't need to. That was another reason it was good he was staying behind--he had so many things to think over now; he'd only hold them back.
Actually, he didn't really plan on thinking them over. He didn't need to confront his own problems to help Tieria. The point stood, though. He was uncomfortable fighting or whatever it was they were doing now side by side with his brother, so he should get out of the way.
But still, Tieria had designed the uniform. It was only fair that he wear it when he went to meet Tieria again.
It would be wrong to say he left the others behind on the Ptolemy without a backwards glance. Lockon was good at backwards glances, after all. But he didn't dwell on it, either. He gave Feldt a hug, told Setsuna to keep in touch, and exchanged awkward glances with Lyle. Then he passed through the complicated gates, opening and closing in a strange sequence, into the lunar complex. Tieria was waiting.
Lockon drifted to a halt as the last set of doors closed behind him, still accustoming himself to the weird part-gravity of the moon. It shouldn't be so hard, since his body, at least, had spent the last five years here, but it was still strange. Maybe he just didn't adjust well sometimes.
He could adjust well to some things, though. He lifted a hand to greet Tieria. "Yo. You didn't have to come all this way to meet me, Tieria."
"I did," Tieria said. "I've reordered the layout to bring it closer to its original position since you were last here. I won't let you get lost."
Lockon smiled and started to follow Tieria as he headed down the halls. "You're redecorating?"
"Rearranging," Tieria corrected. Then he hesitated, slowing down and finally stopping. "Lockon, should I be redecorating as well?"
"Only if you want to," Lockon said. "I wish I could help, since I spent so long here, after all, but I don't really know what sort of color scheme fits the moon."
"You're teasing," Tieria said.
"A little."
"Lockon--" Tieria paused, his words catching and halting.
Lockon found himself leaning forward a little, more curious than he'd realized about whatever it was that affected Tieria so much. Seeing him like this was still odd, but it was one of the nicer things about having woken up in this future. There were other nice things, he knew, if only he could appreciate them; but he couldn't, and it was better if he kept his distance from things like that. Things like his brother with a new resolve, risking himself for the sake of the future. Things like--no, he did want to see more of Setsuna as he was now. But not just yet. Right now, he could do more good supporting Tieria.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Lockon," Tieria said, softening rather than steeling himself, "I missed you."
Lockon blinked. It wasn't what he'd expected. "Tieria...?" But even if he didn't understand it, he knew already that Tieria wasn't just talking about the time he'd been away from the moonbase, with the Ptolemy. That much was obvious.
"They were difficult," Tieria said. "Those years without you."
This, at least, he knew how to handle. "But you didn't just make it through them," Lockon said. "You rebuilt Celestial Being, and you changed the world. It's too bad you had to miss me, but you did pretty well for all that." There was something else he could say, he thought--he could say that he was proud of Tieria. It was true, but this didn't seem like quite the right time for it. He was no longer sure how Tieria would react.
Tieria was silent for a while. He started to move forward again. Eventually, he said, "I'm glad that you're here now."
Lockon laughed. "I'm glad that I'm here too." It was the natural thing to say, and it was true that he was touched and a little charmed by what Tieria had told him, but he felt a little bad about it, too, because it wasn't that far off from a lie.
* * *
Lockon had been back at the moonbase for three days when Tieria first noticed the unauthorized change in Veda's processor allocation.
He had, of course, given Lockon access to the parts of the complex that unaltered humans could use. It was a limited access, but that was simply because of his capabilities. Tieria would have trusted him with any level of access; in fact, for some reason the idea of Lockon being able to enter Veda with him was far more appealing than it should have been. But that couldn't happen.
Still, right now Lockon's assigned duties were merely watching for security alerts, monitoring Tieria while he was in Veda, reviewing potentially valuable security footage the Innovades had stored in Veda, and keeping himself entertained (Tieria had been very firm about this last one). Whatever he had done with his new access fell under none of those categories. Tieria couldn't imagine that it was anything dangerous or inadvisable. At most, it would seem frivolous to him at first, until Lockon found a way to explain why it was important. But he still had to investigate the matter. It was possible there were unintended consequences of Lockon's new programming that Tieria would need to fix.
When he discovered this, it was late in the artificial day he had arranged prior to Lockon's return--almost past midnight. Tieria reached out to Veda to receive an update on Lockon's status; if he was asleep, this would wait until the designated morning. But he was not asleep. He had turned off most of the lights, but remained awake and alert and was even still using one of the computers. Tieria made his way to Lockon's recently assigned quarters and keyed open the door.
He realized his mistake immediately. It had been so long since he'd had to live with other people that he'd forgotten: it was both sensible and polite to alert them to one's presence before entering their rooms. Lockon was there, just as he'd read from the monitors; all lights except the one by his bed were off, and he was studying a small computer in his hands. He was wearing nothing but a pair of shorts (underwear of some kind, Tieria presumed, although his data told him that Lockon normally wore a different type, so maybe these were only for sleeping in) and his gloves.
Somehow, though, that wasn't what made him seem most naked. Instead, what struck Tieria most was that Lockon wasn't smiling. He wasn't focusing too intently to smile, either, or puzzled by something, or faintly exasperated. His expression was simply blank, the corners of his mouth turned just slightly down as if he'd forgotten to pull them into the right place. He had his left side to Tieria, and no emotion showed around his eye save for a faint weariness.
For a split-second, Tieria stopped and stared, disconcerted. In all of the memories that he'd clung to over the years, Lockon had some expression. Usually he was smiling. This sight hit him out of nowhere, but even as he realized why it was so wrong, other memories stirred faintly at the back of his mind.
And then it was gone, because Lockon had noticed Tieria's arrival. He turned off the computer, dropped it on the bed, and turned to face Tieria, expression returning to his face. He looked startled. "Tieria? Is something wrong?"
"I apologize," Tieria said. "I forgot to warn you I was coming."
"It's all right," Lockon said. "You're a little out of practice at that sort of thing, aren't you? You'll remember next time."
"Of course," Tieria said. Lockon was still looking at him; he had to explain why he was here, even if he wanted to hesitate and delay rather than pry into Lockon's personal matters. And there was no doubt this was a personal matter. He hesitated just a little more, then forced himself to continue. "Lockon, you made a change to the programmed surveillance of the Ptolemaios."
"Ah--" Lockon gave a guilty start, then a sheepish smile. "I should have known you'd notice that, huh."
"I need to notice such things," Tieria said. "Veda is my responsibility now, as is the care of Celestial Being."
Something about Lockon's expression changed. It softened; he was smiling in a gentler way now. Tieria realized that he liked to look at that smile--even if he had to see the network of scars where Lockon's right eye should have been in order to do so. There were other scars, too: long crisscrossing burns across his chest, vanishing beneath fabric at his hips, and long-healed puncture wounds and skin torn right open. How much lethal damage had been healed, all for the off chance, later discarded, of using Lockon like a piece of bait to lure Tieria back to the fold? How much of that damage was Tieria's own fault in the first place?
But it was all right that he had to see layer after layer of his own guilt laid bare like that, so long as he could see that smile as well.
"When you put it like that," Lockon said, "it's obviously your duty. I'm the one who's prying."
"The feed to the lunar complex," Tieria said. "You've rerouted a portion of it to your monitors--" He hesitated, suddenly realizing that he didn't have a good way to say what was coming next. He didn't have the right names. It still seemed deeply improper to say, The video from Lyle Dylandy's quarters, but of course he couldn't say, The video from Lockon Stratos's quarters (as if he'd ever liked saying that in the first place; he'd gotten used to the face when he realized how different the expressions were, but the name was a different story). Lockon Stratos was right here in front of him, as he should have been long ago. After a little while, he said, "The video from your brother's quarters."
"Do you need me to change that?" Lockon asked quietly.
Tieria couldn't tell what emotion lay behind that question. Lockon was so good at expressing what he felt; why not this time? "Why was it done?"
Another inscrutable moment passed in silence. Lockon frowned a little, and it seemed somehow to be more at himself than at anyone else. After a little while, he said, "Tieria, you were fighting to protect people, right? These past few years."
"Yes," Tieria said. "Setsuna F. Seiei. Mileina Vashti. Ian Vashti, Linda Vashti. Feldt Grace. Lasse Aeon. Sumeragi Lee Noriega. Allelujah Haptism. Even your brother. And everyone they fought to protect, as well." He watched Lockon's expression as he spoke, and he was gratified to see him start to smile again.
"You didn't want to know more about how they were doing?"
"I trusted them to tell me what I needed to know," Tieria said. "But there was another I did want to learn--" Out of nowhere his body betrayed him: his throat closed up, suddenly thick with the need to cry. Lockon was here, but Tieria had not been the one to save him. He hardly deserved to be in Lockon's presence. And after all that guilt, Lockon was still a mystery to him, a conflicting and confusing knot of warm feelings in the midst of this cool calm world.
"Tieria!" Lockon was up on his feet in an instant, taking hold of Tieria's hands in his own (so warm, even through the gloves) and holding him steady. "That was a stupid question of me to ask you. I'm sorry."
The ability to breathe returned to Tieria. He took advantage of it. "No," he said, after he had air again. "I understand, now, why you did it."
Lockon was silent, but his hands were still on Tieria's. For no reason he could determine, Tieria wanted them to stay that way. Finally, he said, "You're not going to change it back?"
"I will change it," Tieria said. "As it is now, the programming is--" He hesitated, not wanting to insult Lockon's abilities, but he had no other way to phrase it. "Inept. It will be noticed eventually. Probably soon. I'll refine it so that not even Haro will detect it."
"You're going to help me spy on my brother?" Lockon said, letting go of Tieria's hands at last (and too soon).
"If that's what you want," Tieria said. There was something off about this; why didn't Lockon simply spend time talking to his brother, if he wanted to learn about him so much? But it was Lockon. He had his reasons. He always did.
"Thanks, Tieria," Lockon said. He smiled, and then it didn't matter whether or not he had his reasons. It only mattered that he was smiling.
→ Arc 1: Waking
→ Arc 2: Return
Fandom: Gundam 00
Characters/Pairing: Mainly Lockon and Tieria; some Setsuna and other Ptolemy crew. Eventual Lockon/Tieria.
Rating: PG for now, eventual NC-17.
Wordcount: 5,485 (second part)
Notes: Part two of...anywhere between eight and ten, depending on how the last few scenes to be written play out. Part one can be found here.
Summary: Tieria learns more about Veda and the plan--and Lockon makes a decision to stay.
As he further mapped the lunar complex, Tieria could feel his need for his new physical form lessening.
He had required this body to make some of the arrangements for the captives, as the injured ones were not directly connected to Veda even within the moonbase. But that had been only a few gestures. He took care of the details of their health from a distance, and back on the Ptolemaios, Sumeragi handled the political ramifications of their release. As Tieria understood it, she had managed to cut some sort of deal that would lessen official pursuit of Celestial Being and allow them advance warning of most approaches.
With that arranged, and most of the moonbase opened up, Tieria could accomplish just about all he needed from within Veda. There were caches of important data that he couldn't open up with fumbling human fingers, and the complex had machines that would take care of his body indefinitely while he slipped back into the heart of the computer. Somehow, he found himself regretting this.
But it was necessary; he knew that now it was only a matter of time before he unlocked secrets that could help not just the others in Celestial Being, but humanity as a whole. He wanted that enough to ignore little things like the irrational desire to feel solid physical boundaries around him once more.
Somehow, though, the pursuit of Veda's secrets had been easier before he knew that Lockon was alive.
He slipped, now and then. But for a while, it wasn't so bad.
That didn't last. Tieria was assembling just the right collection of prime numbers that would let him into a file about the biological processes used to differentiate Innovades when he really slipped. He could have stopped himself, he knew; but he'd let his mind wander, and when it had wandered to Lockon, he hadn't bothered to rein it in quite as much as he otherwise would have. So instead of selecting the right number, he unthinkingly seized on Lockon's date of birth instead. The systems around him crackled unpleasantly with the error, and Tieria, fighting down a sudden burst of shame at his mistake, started to brace himself for the coming ejection.
But he was too deep in to merely be thrown out of that area of data--instead, he felt a security alert snap into place. Gleaming and impenetrable electronic walls flew up around him, boxing him in, and began to push him further down into the depths of the database, away from the areas he knew and the areas he wanted to reach.
At the corner of his awareness, he felt the pattern of light that was Regene flicker away in irritation at his clumsiness. Tieria resisted the urge to call out to him for help. He had been investigating Veda for months now; he could do this himself.
But the digital territory around him grew less familiar, and he began to feel like he was decohering.
A flash of impatience above: Regene. A sliver of a crack opened in Tieria's cage. You should learn to do this yourself. What would you do without me, Tieria? And he waited, expectant, as if that little opening was enough.
"It's too small," Tieria said. "I won't be able to fit through that."
He felt another wave of exasperation from above, and then, through the crack, he glimpsed Regene shaping himself into a faintly human form. "Are you really still thinking of it as a physical opening in a solid cage?"
Tieria stretched out his hands into the electronic aether. They looked translucent to him in the glow that his mind saw the information within Veda as. He was half-aware that they weren't really there, and if he shifted his awareness a little bit, they faded into nothing--but the walls around him still seemed solid.
"I still see it that way," he said.
"That's why you're trapped," Regene says. "It doesn't have to be that way." And then he was gone, leaving only the too-narrow opening at the top of the cage.
One last parting shot: Humanity isn't always a bad thing, Tieria, but there's a time and a place for it. This isn't either.
Tieria sensed that he could break through these walls--that they didn't have to be walls. But he'd have to let go of something to do that. Maybe his connection to the new body waiting for him; maybe his ability to use any body at all for some time. Maybe it would be something more, and when he went back to that body he wouldn't understand why it mattered anymore. That was the worst thought of all. But he didn't have a lot of choice. His surroundings were increasingly unfamiliar, and he felt less and less confident of his ability to find his way back to the analog world. If he adjusted his viewpoint a little, he could see the edges of himself flickering and fading out. But it was getting harder to adjust that viewpoint.
His clothes, which weren't really clothes, were dissolving into data, leaving him bare to his hostile surroundings. He was less sure why this was bad than he had been a few moments ago, or even why he was thinking of "his hostile surroundings" when that attributed unnecessary physical and intentional features to Veda.
But then there was something beyond the tiny fracture in the cage Regene had made. A voice.
"I'm at the limits of my access, but I've finally established a connection. Tieria...he should be there. Tieria?"
That was his name, wasn't it? And the voice sounded faintly familiar. He wasn't sure why it mattered, though.
"Tieria, would you please respond? This is Feldt Grace on the Ptolemy. Your connection to us was broken." There was a pause; he didn't know how long. Time was something humans measured. "Ms. Sumeragi, something is very wrong."
Another voice: "He still isn't responding." This one was also dimly familiar, but more importantly, it sent ripples of recognition through Veda. Innovator. That was interesting, but it was getting harder to care even about that.
"Here, Setsuna. Let me try."
There was no echo of Innovation in this voice; it was that of a normal human and should have been meaningless to the information that was Tieria Erde. But it was only then that he remembered that he was Tieria Erde, and he was, in his own way, human.
"Tieria, are you there?"
That same voice. Tieria felt himself resolving again, saw the solidity of the cage around him return even as the crack in it widened. Regene may have made the gap, but this voice was prying it open.
"Lockon Stratos," Tieria said, and he threw himself free of the trap.
Information blurred around him as he wound his way back to the surface, which wasn't really a surface at all. He hesitated; there was so much he could learn here in these depths of Veda he hadn't managed to access before, even if he had to risk himself again. He reached his consciousness back out along the open communications channels to contact the Ptolemaios.
"I am here. I'll explain the situation to you shortly."
"We'll keep the channel open until then," came a new voice. Sumeragi, this time.
And this voice was Feldt again. "Setsuna, did you want to say something? You looked--"
"I'm fine. I thought I saw something in the connection for a moment."
"I'm not sure what you mean. How could you..." Feldt was still talking, but Tieria was abruptly distracted. When Setsuna had spoken across the channel, the digital landscape around him had shifted and changed, responding to his voice in a way that it didn't respond even to Tieria himself. He could sense, at the edge of his awareness, a path opening through the data, and it was leading somewhere entirely new--a place that not even Ribbons, with his everpresent tendrils of influence, had touched.
"Setsuna," he said. "You did see something. Speak again."
"Ah," Setsuna said. "What do you need me to say, Tieria?"
The path flowed open entirely, and Tieria understood that it was all right that he saw it as a path. The fact that Ribbons never would have had only made it harder for him to see. "That was enough," he said. "The system has keys I was unaware of. You were one of them, or rather, the first true Innovator was." He found himself following the new trail at what would have been quite a rapid speed had he really been moving at all, and then he was out of it, into a strange and unexplored part of Veda.
"Well, I'm not surprised," Lockon began, back on the Ptolemaios, and Tieria found in himself the last part of the key he needed to enter this area.
He said, "I have some information I need to share with all of you."
* * *
The Tieria on the screen before them was not one Lockon had seen before. It was a little unsettling.
"That is why the lunar complex was built to begin with," he was saying. "It was never Ribbons Almark's creation." His mouth only sometimes moved when he spoke. At other times, the words came directly from the computers around them, while Tieria's expression remained distant, as if he were still half stuck in Veda. His eyes glowed with unnatural color. Lockon had never seen him like this, and as curious as he sometimes found himself about Tieria's strangeness, he wasn't sure he entirely wanted to. He neither looked nor sounded very human at the moment, and it was too easy to worry that this state could creep back over him permanently again.
"But what exactly does it have to do with Jupiter?" That was Lyle's voice, cutting through Lockon's thoughts as simply as a knife. "I'm not sure you really explained, Tieria."
There was still no visible expression on Tieria's face. "This was part of Aeolia Schoenberg's plan from the start. The moonbase would serve as a waystation to store the information gleaned from the discoveries on Jupiter, while allowing humans to process and study that information under the guidance of the Innovades. New technologies could be tested here safely, and new discoveries would be made with Veda's help."
"Why didn't we learn about this before?" Sumeragi asked.
"When Ribbons Almark discovered the lunar complex, he realized that, like the Gundams, it was one part of the plan that he could not fully control. So he sabotaged it, sealing off what areas he could not repurpose for his own plans and deleting or corrupting all the information about it. But Aeolia Schoenberg had anticipated this possibility and built a trap door into Veda: backups that would remain hidden and unalterable until triggered by the first true Innovator."
"Setsuna," Lockon said. He looked over to Setsuna and was even more unsettled to realize that he couldn't read his expression. It was something new to him, and his eyes weren't even lit up with that strange glow right now.
"Yes," Tieria said. "There is a great deal of work to be done before the moonbase can be returned to its intended purpose."
"We'll return to the moon right away," Sumeragi said.
But Tieria cut her off; he shook his head slightly, and when he spoke, it came from his own mouth first. "No. You need to proceed to Jupiter immediately. I will take on the task of restoring the moonbase."
Sumeragi hesitated, and Lockon took advantage of the moment to speak up. There was something he felt the need to say. Instinct told him he had an opening here that he shouldn't let go. He couldn't go to Jupiter, and this was his chance to find a better place for himself. "Hey, hey, I don't know if the rest of you guys noticed, but Tieria seemed pretty serious when he mentioned the security alert that caught him earlier. You almost got hurt there, didn't you?"
Tieria paused, and Lockon was relieved to note that he seemed to be mostly out of Veda now. He had expressions again, and Lockon could read them. After a moment, he went on to say reluctantly, "Yes. I had some assistance, but without your contact at that time..."
He trailed off, and Lockon was at once gratified to be able to understand why and what it meant once more, and alarmed at the seriousness of the situation. Tieria hadn't almost been hurt; he'd nearly been killed.
"You need some help," he said.
"It is true," Tieria said cautiously, "that according to the new data, the moonbase isn't meant to be handled by a single person. There are systems to monitor the Innovade who runs it from without, and physical defenses in case a threat approaches from without--the full complex is too large to be hidden as well as the scaled-down version."
And that was where it clicked. Lockon could say it outright now: "It sounds like we can't all go to Jupiter."
He didn't realize that Lyle, behind him and off to his right, had moved until his voice came from closer than it had before. "And somehow it has to be you who stays, Neil?"
"It makes the most sense," Lockon said, but he had a sudden awful feeling: Lyle knew why he wanted to stay. Somehow, Lyle knew that the thought of going with them to the future that waited for them farther out in the solar system left his brother absolutely cold.
"Lockon--" Tieria began, and then he stopped. There was no question as to which of them he was addressing; it was all in the tone of his voice.
Lockon couldn't articulate even to himself why he couldn't go to Jupiter with them, not entirely. All he could tell himself was that they were going to the future that they had fought so hard for, and he didn't belong there. But he could stay back here and protect Tieria. That felt almost right.
Lyle was still looking at him with a very unimpressed expression. Lockon felt--no, Neil felt, and that was the problem with being where Lyle could see him and talk to him--he felt suddenly very sure that if he took any longer to make his decision, Lyle would make every effort to talk him out of it, and he would understand the why of it even better than Neil himself.
So Lockon smiled and said, "I'll come back to the moonbase, Tieria. I'm a little out of the loop when it comes to things like Jupiter, but I think I can handle this." He reached out to the screen below Tieria's, where he'd called up information on the lunar complex's defenses. It took him only a few seconds to find what he'd been looking for. "Hey, the defense system has a sniping mode."
"And you have one eye," Lyle said, impatience starting to edge into his voice. "So I'm not sure it matters. Are you really going to do this?"
"Lockon," Sumeragi began, and then she fell silent; maybe she couldn't decide which of them she meant to address. Setsuna remained quiet and calm, though, and that was a little unsettling. He was watching them both as if he understood what they were trying to say to each other better than they did.
"That's where I'm needed," Lockon said. "You can handle things here while I'm gone. Right, Lyle?"
"It's a long way to Jupiter, Neil," Lyle said. "Soon you won't be able to come back here just to follow me around the ship and go through my things when I'm not looking."
"He wouldn't..." Feldt began, but then she stopped, looking down.
Lockon straightened up and reached a hand out to rest on Feldt's head for a moment. "It's all right," he said. "You're still the one who does the best job of using the access Tieria gave us to Veda. So you'll be in touch with us all the time." That he was all right with, but he hoped she wouldn't let Lyle use the channel too much. Maybe not Setsuna, either. He glanced back at the others, but couldn't quite bring himself to meet those two gazes. So he simply said, "I'm going to get ready. You heard Tieria, didn't you? The rest of you should get ready to go to Jupiter as soon as possible. That means dropping me off at the moonbase now." Without bothering to see how they responded to that, he turned and headed down the corridor.
He'd made it a fair way from the bridge when he heard a voice behind him. "Lockon Stratos." It was Setsuna.
Lockon paused for a moment. He could dismiss Setsuna and keep going. But now that he had the chance, he realized he didn't want to. Instead, he said, "Thank you."
"For what?" The blank look on Setsuna's face wasn't entirely familiar, but it was more so than a lot of his expressions had been lately. That was another thing Lockon was grateful for.
"For still calling me that," he said. "That's not what you came to talk about, though, so let's not get into it right now. What's up, Setsuna?"
The casualness in his voice felt hollow even to Lockon himself, but Setsuna gave no sign that he'd recognized that. "You don't have to stay with Tieria," he said. "There is always another way."
"I know," Lockon said.
Setsuna nodded, as if he'd expected to hear that. For a moment, Lockon thought he could make out his expression again, and it was sad. Then the moment was gone, and he was earnest and reserved once more. "All right."
But Lockon found that he couldn't quite turn away again so easily. Instead, he said, "I'd like it if you stayed in touch, Setsuna. Tieria will be able to maintain a channel to the Ptolemy, right? There shouldn't be a problem."
Setsuna nodded again. "I will do that."
As he turned away again, Lockon had the feeling that Setsuna was still watching. He wasn't really sure how he felt about that. But he knew that back on the moon, Tieria was waiting for him with that strange look of longing on his face. It would be better to be there after all.
* * *
The patterns of information from Veda played out across the inside of Tieria's eyelids, but he could not summon the will to immerse himself fully. A peculiar feeling centered right below his ribs fastened his mind to his body, and sometimes he had trouble remembering to breathe.
Tieria checked Lockon's estimated time of arrival again. Four hours, twenty-two minutes. Margin of error: twelve minutes. He attempted to narrow that further, but found himself unable to concentrate on the mathematics. Instead, he accessed the sensors Veda could tap into on the Ptolemaios and surveyed the information they provided him about Lockon.
His temperature and pulse were both normal for a resting state. There was nothing more Tieria could do with that information, and he still had difficulty focusing on anything else. He could have opened communications to the rest of the Ptolemy, could have asked them why Lockon chose to come here when he had so many other options now. But he was afraid, irrationally, that if he asked, it wouldn't be true anymore. Instead, Tieria summoned a video feed of the room Lockon was napping in and watched him. The way he breathed was more compelling than it should have been.
* * *
Lockon didn't really want to wear the uniform. He liked the idea of it, to be sure, and it had made him smile when he'd heard that Tieria had designed it. But he couldn't quite shake a lingering unease over the knowledge that it was his brother's spare. That brought up too many thoughts that he didn't want to deal with, that it would be much easier not to deal with. Especially now that he didn't need to. That was another reason it was good he was staying behind--he had so many things to think over now; he'd only hold them back.
Actually, he didn't really plan on thinking them over. He didn't need to confront his own problems to help Tieria. The point stood, though. He was uncomfortable fighting or whatever it was they were doing now side by side with his brother, so he should get out of the way.
But still, Tieria had designed the uniform. It was only fair that he wear it when he went to meet Tieria again.
It would be wrong to say he left the others behind on the Ptolemy without a backwards glance. Lockon was good at backwards glances, after all. But he didn't dwell on it, either. He gave Feldt a hug, told Setsuna to keep in touch, and exchanged awkward glances with Lyle. Then he passed through the complicated gates, opening and closing in a strange sequence, into the lunar complex. Tieria was waiting.
Lockon drifted to a halt as the last set of doors closed behind him, still accustoming himself to the weird part-gravity of the moon. It shouldn't be so hard, since his body, at least, had spent the last five years here, but it was still strange. Maybe he just didn't adjust well sometimes.
He could adjust well to some things, though. He lifted a hand to greet Tieria. "Yo. You didn't have to come all this way to meet me, Tieria."
"I did," Tieria said. "I've reordered the layout to bring it closer to its original position since you were last here. I won't let you get lost."
Lockon smiled and started to follow Tieria as he headed down the halls. "You're redecorating?"
"Rearranging," Tieria corrected. Then he hesitated, slowing down and finally stopping. "Lockon, should I be redecorating as well?"
"Only if you want to," Lockon said. "I wish I could help, since I spent so long here, after all, but I don't really know what sort of color scheme fits the moon."
"You're teasing," Tieria said.
"A little."
"Lockon--" Tieria paused, his words catching and halting.
Lockon found himself leaning forward a little, more curious than he'd realized about whatever it was that affected Tieria so much. Seeing him like this was still odd, but it was one of the nicer things about having woken up in this future. There were other nice things, he knew, if only he could appreciate them; but he couldn't, and it was better if he kept his distance from things like that. Things like his brother with a new resolve, risking himself for the sake of the future. Things like--no, he did want to see more of Setsuna as he was now. But not just yet. Right now, he could do more good supporting Tieria.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Lockon," Tieria said, softening rather than steeling himself, "I missed you."
Lockon blinked. It wasn't what he'd expected. "Tieria...?" But even if he didn't understand it, he knew already that Tieria wasn't just talking about the time he'd been away from the moonbase, with the Ptolemy. That much was obvious.
"They were difficult," Tieria said. "Those years without you."
This, at least, he knew how to handle. "But you didn't just make it through them," Lockon said. "You rebuilt Celestial Being, and you changed the world. It's too bad you had to miss me, but you did pretty well for all that." There was something else he could say, he thought--he could say that he was proud of Tieria. It was true, but this didn't seem like quite the right time for it. He was no longer sure how Tieria would react.
Tieria was silent for a while. He started to move forward again. Eventually, he said, "I'm glad that you're here now."
Lockon laughed. "I'm glad that I'm here too." It was the natural thing to say, and it was true that he was touched and a little charmed by what Tieria had told him, but he felt a little bad about it, too, because it wasn't that far off from a lie.
* * *
Lockon had been back at the moonbase for three days when Tieria first noticed the unauthorized change in Veda's processor allocation.
He had, of course, given Lockon access to the parts of the complex that unaltered humans could use. It was a limited access, but that was simply because of his capabilities. Tieria would have trusted him with any level of access; in fact, for some reason the idea of Lockon being able to enter Veda with him was far more appealing than it should have been. But that couldn't happen.
Still, right now Lockon's assigned duties were merely watching for security alerts, monitoring Tieria while he was in Veda, reviewing potentially valuable security footage the Innovades had stored in Veda, and keeping himself entertained (Tieria had been very firm about this last one). Whatever he had done with his new access fell under none of those categories. Tieria couldn't imagine that it was anything dangerous or inadvisable. At most, it would seem frivolous to him at first, until Lockon found a way to explain why it was important. But he still had to investigate the matter. It was possible there were unintended consequences of Lockon's new programming that Tieria would need to fix.
When he discovered this, it was late in the artificial day he had arranged prior to Lockon's return--almost past midnight. Tieria reached out to Veda to receive an update on Lockon's status; if he was asleep, this would wait until the designated morning. But he was not asleep. He had turned off most of the lights, but remained awake and alert and was even still using one of the computers. Tieria made his way to Lockon's recently assigned quarters and keyed open the door.
He realized his mistake immediately. It had been so long since he'd had to live with other people that he'd forgotten: it was both sensible and polite to alert them to one's presence before entering their rooms. Lockon was there, just as he'd read from the monitors; all lights except the one by his bed were off, and he was studying a small computer in his hands. He was wearing nothing but a pair of shorts (underwear of some kind, Tieria presumed, although his data told him that Lockon normally wore a different type, so maybe these were only for sleeping in) and his gloves.
Somehow, though, that wasn't what made him seem most naked. Instead, what struck Tieria most was that Lockon wasn't smiling. He wasn't focusing too intently to smile, either, or puzzled by something, or faintly exasperated. His expression was simply blank, the corners of his mouth turned just slightly down as if he'd forgotten to pull them into the right place. He had his left side to Tieria, and no emotion showed around his eye save for a faint weariness.
For a split-second, Tieria stopped and stared, disconcerted. In all of the memories that he'd clung to over the years, Lockon had some expression. Usually he was smiling. This sight hit him out of nowhere, but even as he realized why it was so wrong, other memories stirred faintly at the back of his mind.
And then it was gone, because Lockon had noticed Tieria's arrival. He turned off the computer, dropped it on the bed, and turned to face Tieria, expression returning to his face. He looked startled. "Tieria? Is something wrong?"
"I apologize," Tieria said. "I forgot to warn you I was coming."
"It's all right," Lockon said. "You're a little out of practice at that sort of thing, aren't you? You'll remember next time."
"Of course," Tieria said. Lockon was still looking at him; he had to explain why he was here, even if he wanted to hesitate and delay rather than pry into Lockon's personal matters. And there was no doubt this was a personal matter. He hesitated just a little more, then forced himself to continue. "Lockon, you made a change to the programmed surveillance of the Ptolemaios."
"Ah--" Lockon gave a guilty start, then a sheepish smile. "I should have known you'd notice that, huh."
"I need to notice such things," Tieria said. "Veda is my responsibility now, as is the care of Celestial Being."
Something about Lockon's expression changed. It softened; he was smiling in a gentler way now. Tieria realized that he liked to look at that smile--even if he had to see the network of scars where Lockon's right eye should have been in order to do so. There were other scars, too: long crisscrossing burns across his chest, vanishing beneath fabric at his hips, and long-healed puncture wounds and skin torn right open. How much lethal damage had been healed, all for the off chance, later discarded, of using Lockon like a piece of bait to lure Tieria back to the fold? How much of that damage was Tieria's own fault in the first place?
But it was all right that he had to see layer after layer of his own guilt laid bare like that, so long as he could see that smile as well.
"When you put it like that," Lockon said, "it's obviously your duty. I'm the one who's prying."
"The feed to the lunar complex," Tieria said. "You've rerouted a portion of it to your monitors--" He hesitated, suddenly realizing that he didn't have a good way to say what was coming next. He didn't have the right names. It still seemed deeply improper to say, The video from Lyle Dylandy's quarters, but of course he couldn't say, The video from Lockon Stratos's quarters (as if he'd ever liked saying that in the first place; he'd gotten used to the face when he realized how different the expressions were, but the name was a different story). Lockon Stratos was right here in front of him, as he should have been long ago. After a little while, he said, "The video from your brother's quarters."
"Do you need me to change that?" Lockon asked quietly.
Tieria couldn't tell what emotion lay behind that question. Lockon was so good at expressing what he felt; why not this time? "Why was it done?"
Another inscrutable moment passed in silence. Lockon frowned a little, and it seemed somehow to be more at himself than at anyone else. After a little while, he said, "Tieria, you were fighting to protect people, right? These past few years."
"Yes," Tieria said. "Setsuna F. Seiei. Mileina Vashti. Ian Vashti, Linda Vashti. Feldt Grace. Lasse Aeon. Sumeragi Lee Noriega. Allelujah Haptism. Even your brother. And everyone they fought to protect, as well." He watched Lockon's expression as he spoke, and he was gratified to see him start to smile again.
"You didn't want to know more about how they were doing?"
"I trusted them to tell me what I needed to know," Tieria said. "But there was another I did want to learn--" Out of nowhere his body betrayed him: his throat closed up, suddenly thick with the need to cry. Lockon was here, but Tieria had not been the one to save him. He hardly deserved to be in Lockon's presence. And after all that guilt, Lockon was still a mystery to him, a conflicting and confusing knot of warm feelings in the midst of this cool calm world.
"Tieria!" Lockon was up on his feet in an instant, taking hold of Tieria's hands in his own (so warm, even through the gloves) and holding him steady. "That was a stupid question of me to ask you. I'm sorry."
The ability to breathe returned to Tieria. He took advantage of it. "No," he said, after he had air again. "I understand, now, why you did it."
Lockon was silent, but his hands were still on Tieria's. For no reason he could determine, Tieria wanted them to stay that way. Finally, he said, "You're not going to change it back?"
"I will change it," Tieria said. "As it is now, the programming is--" He hesitated, not wanting to insult Lockon's abilities, but he had no other way to phrase it. "Inept. It will be noticed eventually. Probably soon. I'll refine it so that not even Haro will detect it."
"You're going to help me spy on my brother?" Lockon said, letting go of Tieria's hands at last (and too soon).
"If that's what you want," Tieria said. There was something off about this; why didn't Lockon simply spend time talking to his brother, if he wanted to learn about him so much? But it was Lockon. He had his reasons. He always did.
"Thanks, Tieria," Lockon said. He smiled, and then it didn't matter whether or not he had his reasons. It only mattered that he was smiling.