Full Metal Panic 1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Distance is not the Journey

**Author**: hungrytiger11

**Fandom**: Full Metal Panic!

**Warnings**: minor language

**Prompt:** #136 - _Again the pressure pushes me in the chair, shuts my eyes. I notice the dark red tongues of the flame outside the windows. I'm trying to memorize, fix all the feelings, the peculiarities of this descending, to tell those, who will be conquering space after me._ -- Valentina Tereshkova (born March 6, 1937), Russian cosmonaut, aerospace engineer and first woman in space. Orbited the Earth forty-eight times in three days in 1963.

**Summary**: Kaname's coming to the conclusion she might just be the smartest person in the room. And if you're smart, you don't play the victim a second longer than you have too.

**Author's Notes:** Originally written for the Femgenficathon over on Livejournal. It is a multifandom ficathon focusing on stories about female characters. This story is AU after light novel _Continuing on My Own. _Kaname-centric.

* * *

Hitting the rewind button, Kaname listens to the repeating track. Her voice, sure enough. What she was saying though…not her words. Not even a little a bit. She sounded like an alien, or a robot, or some nuclear physicist. Or maybe some weird combination of all three. An alien-robot-physicist.

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas, anymore_,_ she thinks, mind flashing back to her father's favorite Americanism.

The recording is tinny and blips in and out. Words are blurred or missing, though whether from a pillow muffling the noise or from the cheap recorder, who knew? Kaname is pretty sure it's not just her recording herself either, which at least could be passed off as paranoia, her own silliness, nothing more. They were recording her too.

Everybody wanted something.

Kaname just isn't sure why anyone would want her, to waste their money on in a not-so-nice hotel with no cable, no soaps, and no news at six to tell her where she is. But she's here and so are they and it came to her two days ago, staring at the length of her hair, unnaturally long, that maybe, just maybe, she's losing chunks of time. She thinks- she thinks, maybe she's been asleep.

It's okay, Dorothy, it was just a dream_._

This is how she got to this moment, with a recorder in her hand, listening to a manic mumble of math-on-steroids: She'd thought of dreams. Some memory had been jarred loose with that thought, an odd conversation, a million years ago, with Melissa Mao, mysterious agent of the even more mysterious pseudo-military that had once-upon-a-time been mucking about in her life. She'd told Kaname to stop studying so hard; she was starting to recite formulas in her sleep. She'd thought it a joke, not even a very good one, since, as she'd told Melissa, it was a Japanese test they'd had that day in school, not math. Sousuke was horrible at Japanese, they'd been studying almost nonstop-

No.

She wouldn't think of that.

Jindai High did not exist. It did _not_. What exists is the recorded voice, and the player in her hands and the fact that they are probably recording her listening to her recording. A maze within a maze, and lab rat with no idea how to get out.

She wonders if they're writing down every word she said in her sleep, like she is going to do right now. She wonders if they understand what she said when she slept.

Because she does.

They are not her words, not her ideas, but she can puzzle out instinctually what they mean, what the formulas _could _mean. She was always pretty good at science; hers were always the highest test scores. Kyoko'd been jealous-No.

No, no.

Kaname pushes that thought away.

Unlike Jindai High, a person named Kyoko did exist right now, in a hospital room millions of miles from where a recorded tape is being played. A girl named Kyoko went to a school that did not exist and use to be best friends with a person who apparently moonlights as an alien-robot-physicist. A girl named Kyoko is also being watched every day, every night. Kaname knows because Leonard tells her what they see.

She hits 'Rewind' again, picks up a pen and notebook and presses play. Numbers and symbols begin blooming out on the page like drawings of demented flowers.

A minute later the tape makes a strange lurching sound and she's done. But no- that isn't right, she thinks a little distractedly, she'd only started; how can she be done? Losing time- again? And eyes wide awake too. She looks outside, trying to confirm this wild thought one way or the other. The light is low in the window and, staring down, page after page is full of-Focus!

Focus.

If the light is low, someone is going to walk through that door any minute. But if they watched her all the time, where could she hide a notebook?

* * *

"What were you expecting to accomplish with this?" Leonard asks after dinner. Kaname looks up from the room service, and a spiral notebook, all scribbled over forming page after page of black ink squares, is dangling from his hands. He's smiling as he asks, and Kaname quickly forms a conclusion.

Watching. Definitely watching. On tapes, and now, he's watching in person too.

"I was hoping to win a coloring contest," she deadpans.

"I think you need work on that particular skill."

He smiles. Silver strands of hair fall over his shoulder as he reaches out to clear off the table. Kaname watches his hair catch the light. It flashes from dull to gleaming, from inoffensive to attractive. He isn't mad, but he never is. They might be talking about what she did that day (nothing), or the weather (hot), or about Kyoko (still being watched. As well.)

They might be talking about any of these things, and later they will. They always do.

But right now, between words that don't mean anything, they are talking about something more important than Leonard's disturbing tendencies towards reverse-Stockholm syndrome.

"In fact, not to crush any dreams, Kana-chan, but I don't think an artistic career is in your future. As for any other skills, however…"

Leonard doesn't like to be blunt, but Kaname has never been anything else. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

"Why does it matter what I was doing? You have recordings. You know what I'm talking about anyway. You probably have scientists working out exactly what all means right now."

Leonard smiles at her. It's that rainy-roof-I'm-going-to-kiss-you-now smile. But instead of kissing her, he straddles a chair and leans in close.

"Right on two out of three, Kana-chan. Must be slipping, only two out of three." His voice is soft. "We are recording you, of course. Nothing in the, ah, lewd sense you understand, but you are an asset to Amalgam, aren't you? Likewise, we do have scientists working on these formulas you have, but no, we don't know what you're talking about. Not really, anyway."

"Is that why you let me have the recorder I asked for?"

"Yes."

It could be a weapon he's giving her.

"What do you want me to do?"

It could be one she's handing him.

Leonard smiles.

"I thought you'd never ask, Kaname-san."

* * *

As it turns out, Amalgam wants information.

Not surprise there, Kaname supposes, though she does manage to hold her tongue when informed about this. Amalgam doesn't appreciate smartasses much, as it turns out. Once again, no surprise there.

Some things change and some things don't.

They give her a laboratory of her own, eventually. Leonard still stops by to pick her up after work most days, and his touch still might linger- on her shoulder, on her hip- a moment too long. But she can deal with that, because after sharing a meal together at his insistence every night, he let's her go back to a hotel room of her own that they give her too.

Right next to his, true, but it has cable. _The Late Night Show_ let's her know its America, and the weatherman with the too-cheery smile tells her it's L.A.

They are still recording her too. She knows, because she watches each new tape with a roomful of scientists first thing each morning. Scientists are caffeine addicts, she learns. Good coffee is about all that keeps most awake, as they slouch down in their seats, listening to the endless mutters of mathematical symbols, to numbers that keeping adding and adding and adding up to nothing at all, so far as they can tell.

They are also still watching Kyoko, a fact only somewhat less mentioned, but always in any undertone of dinner conversation. In fact, Leonard is getting almost predictable about when he'll mention it, (right before talking about her latest recording which she'll pretend to understand nothing about, but right after talking about the weather).

But what changes least of all, is that she still dreams.

There are technologies, knowledge, that shouldn't exist. They sit locked in her head, leaking through her dreams. She tries to remember who first told her this, but while she can conjure up the memory of the shiver those words brought, the voice speaking is unrecognizable, unknown and unremembered. It could have been Tessa, with her starched, crisp uniform, sleeves brushing against Kaname's bare arm as she talked, or Commander Kalinin, now called Mr. K, making idle conversation while she lay strapped to a medical table with lights shining in her eyes so that she was unable to make out the face but could see the smoke rising from his cigarette. It could have even been Kurt, telling her as she stared up at the Arm Slaves in a towering fight of metal crashing against metal, hardly believing one could be piloted by such an idiot as-

Wait.

No.

It couldn't have been Kurt, because if Kurt knew then Sousuke would have known. And he didn't_- couldn't _-have known. That is a humiliation she doesn't want to consider.

So who knew that her thoughts were not hers? Who knew that if they hit her just right she'd pop open like a piñata, spilling the secrets of military might? That she was just storage space for blue prints for weapons of mass destruction, to make Llambda drivers, A.I.s, Arm Slaves, Palladium reactors, Electronic Conceal Systems, submarines and-

Oh.

_Oh._

It's like in her dreams, where she'd been reciting equation after equation, looking to balance them out, only to realize she's never come across an equal sign yet. She's been looking for the answer before even knowing what the question is.

If the question is, '_What do they want?'_ it's not a very interesting one. Amalgam- and Leonard, and Mr. K and who knew what other spooks that made up this crazy organization that was so like Mithril and yet so not- were waiting for the secrets of this technology that should not exist, so they could make more A.I.s and Lambda Drivers and death.

They have, quite literally, handed her a weapon and they are hoping she will hand one back, bigger, better and just _more_ than before. But sitting in that room full of scientists everyday, day after day, sipping on weak Folgers and saying nothing, has taught Kaname this: She might just be the smartest person in that room.

It is an epiphany that comes like getting a slap in the head (an irony that'd make Sousuke laugh if he was here- but he's not, she reminds herself).

She's the one with the knowledge. That makes her the one with the power, right? She tells herself that's so, and when she doesn't believe it, she says it again with more force.

She's the one with the knowledge. That makes her the one with the power. They want her to make weapons, but that doesn't mean she can't make something else.

A memory flashes on staring down the barrel of a gun in the pouring rain. She'll have to save herself, just as, whenever it has really mattered, she's always had to do.

So she tells them the next morning, while nursing a burnt tongue from too-hot coffee that she knows what the numbers mean.

* * *

"Do you want to write to her?" Leonard asks at dinner one night, index finger tracing idly along the rim of his glass.

Kaname chokes a little on her spaghetti, and looks up in surprise.

"Write to who?"

"Kyoko-san, my dear Kana-chan. Please keep up. We were just talking about the poor thing's health. Off the respirator now, though I understand her health will always be somewhat sickly now. Reading the reports on her progress is like one of the those up-lifting tales about the 'triumph of the human spirit.' Only there's very little triumph from what I can tell."

"Like you'd ever read anything like that." Kaname mutters, not quite able to resist the bait, and picks up her fork again. Time to start the count down to the pointed questions about her "progress" in the lab. In three, two, and-

But the expected question doesn't come. Instead, he says, "But Kana-chan, you haven't answered my question."

Leonard stands up and leans over the table. For a second, Kaname thinks he's going to pet her arm or something disgusting like that, but instead he drops some sort of purple paper on her plate. Sauce flicks upward, and he leans back, heading to her hotel room's door.

"Think about it, Kana-chan."

And then he's gone.

Picking the paper up carefully with one hand, she finds it's an envelope. Opening it with one hand and licking sauce off the other, she's not prepared for what's inside, and drops it again. Staring up at her from on top of her half-eaten meal is a cheery Bonta-kun with sauce on his cheek and a word bubble above his head.

'_Get Well Soon.'_

Habit is about all that gets her up from her chair, and moving towards the phone to call room service to get the plates. Replacing the phone on its cradles, she walks back over to the table and stares down. Bonta-kun stares back up. In a swift swiping motion, she knocks over her Diet Pepsi, and watches the cartoon face drown in carbonation, before grabbing up Leonard's unfinished wine. Sure, she's under aged in both Japan and America- but, really, who's going to tell? Amalgam, the cooperation that kidnapped her? Or the room service people who are on Amalgam's payroll?

The answer is 'C'- none of the above.

Collapsing back onto the couch, she does not lift her head when the door opens, when the trays are piled up, or when the door clicks shut again. The card, she considers, could be a sincere gesture on Leonard's part. After all, even if she could communicate with people from her past, they know she wouldn't dare put anything down about her location or her current situation. They'd hurt Kyoko if she did that. But just what would she even say on it, if it she did send a card? 'Hey! Hope you're feeling better! Sorry you got life-altering injuries because militaristic mercenaries were after me and the other militaristic mercenaries who were suppose to be protecting me, fucked up on that count?' Yeah. That's just what you write in those things.

Still. The possibility of communication is tempting.

On sudden impulse, she jumps out the seat and yanks open the door.

"Wait!"

The busboy's head jerks up from where he's waiting at the other end of the hall. Thank goodness for slow elevators! She waves her arms, gesturing for him, and he dutifully turns around the cart to start wheeling back towards her room.

"I left something on the table that I need," she explains and opens the trash bag. A moist, rotting smell wafts out as her digs for a second before pulling out Bonta-kun's smiling face. She grins back at the busboy a huge, hundred-watts grin.

"Thanks!"

There is one thing she can write on the card, and it's not 'Sorry.' She'd had enough of being that.

* * *

The card stays in the back pocket of her bag, and Leonard doesn't mention writing to "Kyoko-chan" again. Whether it's because he figures he got his point across, or thinks she's not interested, Kaname can't tell. Quite frankly, she doesn't care either way.

She continues pretending to make something in the lab, and Leonard, who is after all a genius of sorts, continues to see all the flaws she deliberately put in every blue print that crosses his desk. But he does nothing, just their usual routine. Into the labs by seven every morning to watch her tapes, coffee break at ten, lunch scrounged up from vending machines when you get two minutes and at five, back to his room or hers for their nightly meals.

In the lengthening silences between her and her capturer's oh-so-delightful mealtime _tête-à-têtes_ Kaname plans.

In truth, these dinners have begun to seem like the tea party from _Alice in Wonderland_ (We're all _mad_ here), and she's Alice, an Alice who's been following a gun-toting, socially –inept, annoyingly endearing White Rabbit into places where most definitely everyone is mad. In fact, they're totally certifiable since, from what she can tell, these people are honest-to-goodness bent on world domination, and things have gone from bad (kidnapped and having seizures) to worse (kidnapped _again _and being blackmailed-Kaname wouldn't have thought that was worse, but it is). Only now, the rabbit's gone and things are a whole helluva of a lot more messed-up than some pack of cards wanting her head.

Well, except for the head part. That's pretty bad, really, and they _do_ want it. They want every thought that her synapses ever fired off. Well, boo-fucking-hoo for them. They think, just cause they got Kyoko under their eye they got her too.

Wrong. Because, like Alice, she dreams.

In her dreams, in recordings of the nightly mutterings that they watch each morning, she listens to herself recite equation after equation. She watches as they scurry about trying to balance them all out. Only, nobody seems to have noticed. They haven't gotten to the equal sign yet. It's all connected like one long idea being whispered into her head.

_Whispered_.

Yes, that rings a bell. That's what whoever first told her about all this called her and the other people who had black technology rattling around in their skulls. There are technologies, knowledge, that shouldn't exist, they said (and she can't, for the life of her recall who told her this, but she remembers the next part clear as day). These ideas sit locked in her head, leaking through her dreams. What she dreams is knowledge that shouldn't exist, that _couldn't_ exist yet.

But it did.

Time travel is possible, she knows. They were, everyone, moving forward through time second by second, a journey most didn't even notice. One could travel to the future even faster, if you found a way to slow your journey, while everyone else kept on as always. Cryogenics did this, she knew. Sleep did this too. She knows _that _from personal experience, since every so often she finds herself missing chunks of time and waking up strapped to surgical tables unsure of how she got there. But something that shouldn't exist doesn't come from a past barreling itself up into the future. It has to have come from the future, pushing its way back.

Still, this isn't _Back to the Future_. Paradoxes are for science fiction, emphasis on fiction. Her dreams, like a voice whispering in her ear, tell her this much. Logic fills in the rest of the gaps. Time paradoxes do not exist. Well, except for whatever had them become _Whispered_ in the first place- that might just have been some sort of paradox. But you couldn't alter the past, not really. You could _be_ in the past (which, just to make it extra-fun headache-wise, is actually your present, but that's semantics when it comes down to it), but something stops you from making the changes you want to make. Because the past has already happened. It's a story you know the ending to, and no matter what happens you can't change the ending of a story that's already been written. The kanji just won't rearrange itself on the page for you. She knows all this from looking at those equations, hears it in the numbers she's reciting in her sleep.

Sipping her half-and-half each morning, it's a continual amazement the others don't hear the numbers talking like this. But then, she is the smartest person in that room. Its not hubris that makes her say this. Well, not just hubris. It's facts. She's the only one who speaks the _Whispered_ language, as it were. She's the only one who understands what these numbers mean.

Even if, she thinks one day while sitting in those same uncomfortable plastic chairs she's sat in every morning for the past four months, only half an ear on the recording being played, travel to the past is sketchy logicistics at best, Einstein called it "time-_space_," didn't he? She's heard that from some movie. And suddenly she realizes, she's been asking the wrong questions. Again.

If time and space are the same thing then-

If time travel is theoretically possible then-

Then.

She smiles, because what she has is not the bigger, better weapon they want her to make. Not at all. The lab rat has found a way out of a maze with no exit. Sure, she's got to refine and tweak things before theory can become fact, but she will. And when she does Amalgam will be up the creek without a paddle. And then all she has to do is cut the one last cord they've got holding her to them.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Title**: Distance is not the Journey (part two)

**Author**: hungrytiger11

**Fandom**: Full Metal Panic!

**Rating**: PG-13

**Warnings**: minor language

**Prompt:** #136 - _Again the pressure pushes me in the chair, shuts my eyes. I notice the dark red tongues of the flame outside the windows. I'm trying to memorize, fix all the feelings, the peculiarities of this descending, to tell those, who will be conquering space after me._ -- Valentina Tereshkova (born March 6, 1937), Russian cosmonaut, aerospace engineer and first woman in space. Orbited the Earth forty-eight times in three days in 1963.

**Summary**: Kaname's coming to the conclusion she might just be the smartest person in the room. And if you're smart, you don't play the victim a second longer than you have too. She'll save herself.

**Author's Notes:** Originally written for the femgenficathon over on livejournal. It is a ficathon where stories center on female characters. This story is AU after _Continuing on My Own_. Kaname-centric. Part two takes place approximately two months after part one and six months after Kaname's kidnapping by Amalgam.

* * *

_  
_

She closes her eyes and walks right across the length of the lab and into the main lobby of a familiar hotel in downtown Tokyo. It doesn't even register at first she's somewhere else. With her eyes closed, she could be anywhere, and it is not so hard to imagine what the hotel will look like. She has been there once before, after all. This entire "experiment" of hers could be a failure, and when she opens her eyes, she could find she was only somewhere else in her mind. It'd two months of planning on top of four months of helplessness gone down the drain, a horrible thought. But just as this less-than-stellar possibility occurs to her, she hears it- or rather she doesn't hear it.

It is the silence that tells her something has changed. No more hum of computers, no timed beeps of stopwatches, no shuffling of feet as "assistants" press in too close, always trying to make sure she doesn't do a thing without Amalgam's direction. Reaching out, she touches the wallpaper, bumpy beneath her fingers, and thumbs the cool metal frame that should, if she remembers rightly, go around the hotel map.

She blinks.

In front of her eyes the map is staring back at her, but all she's seeing are those numbers adding and adding and adding up to this moment.

It worked.

It _worked_, and now here she is at the site of where she first saved herself one rainy night. Ironically, _also _where she first ran into Amalgam in the form of Leonard. Kaname rolls her eyes in irritation at that thought. Her life really is just one, big, happy-go-_not_-lucky trip down the rabbit hole, isn't it?

It doesn't look like much, a seedy love hotel where no one will notice a girl walking in out thin air because they're all too busy not-noticing middle-aged men in suits bringing in girls in sailor suits, and disappearing behind closed doors. Just as people will be not-noticing her doing the same thing as soon as she can find a businessman that fits her needs.

Walking out into the night, she's reassured that she has indeed timed everything right. It is late night here, the streets still full, but only with a certain kind of people. Her very skin seems to hum; she's running on pure adrenaline. This is the moment with everything on the line.

_I can do this. I can do this_ she chants in her head, eyes roaming the streets. Everything is almost on autopilot once she gets going. An eerie sense of déjà vu creeps across her as she convinces a man to come with her, leads him to the hotel and whines for that corner room, the one you can't see from the street. Her hands are clammy as she leads the way up the stairs_. I can do this. I've done this before. I can do this again._

And, okay, then she'd had half of Sousuke's arsenal of "non-lethal" weapons, but all she really needs for this to work was a good right hook, and that same room where no one can see you from the outside. And _that_ is the room The Suit just paid for half a minute ago. Score two for two for her side. _I've done this. I can do this again._

She slides the key into the lock and opens the door before her fat businessman is even all the way up the stairs. He's calling after her in a put-upon voice, but it gets cuts off as the door slams shut behind her. She's got the lamp in her hand by the time her ears register the slight buzz the lock makes as it opens again.

He manages to voice half a question about the lights not working before she slams the lamp down over his skull, shattering the glass base. A grunt and then he's collapsed to the ground. Peering down the eerily (thankfully) empty halls, it is clear no one is coming to investigate any noise they might have made. All she can hear are the muffled sounds of sex from the neighboring rooms.

_I did it_, she thinks.

Grasping his meaty palms, in slow jerks she manages to drag him into the room enough to close the door. It'd settle her nerves more if she could maneuver him into the bathtub and into handcuffs. But she has no handcuffs and, really, no time to get him to the tub. Instead, she shoves one foot under his gut and kicks him onto his back. She leans down and rummages through his pockets, coming up victorious, a wallet in hand. Shoving it into her small bag, she closes her eyes and walks a step or two forward. And before she can trip over the end of the bed she's-

* * *

-arrived in a small toilet stall in Central London. She's never been here before and nearly puts her foot in the toilet, but after a moment manages to compose herself. It worked. Going to unknown locations was a bit of a risk. She wasn't sure it would work, and she didn't have a back-up plan.

The lock on the stall isn't latched (of course not, she wasn't there a moment ago to walk into the stall and lock it shut), so she scrambles out, anxious no one should see her appearance. (And what, her scientist's mind asks, would that even look like? A poof? A distortion of the viewers' sight? Like nothing at all?) Luckily, no one is in the Underground's public toilets. Hard to understand why; they smell so lovely. But then again, it is luck they smell like utter shit, like vomit and booze, because otherwise someone would have seen her.

She feels a little claustrophobic when she emerges into the station proper, with the stale-smelling air that somehow, from nowhere, whips through the too-white, winding tunnels and across the steep escalator that barrel her up, up, up and out into the city itself.

It sounds like those wizard movies, she thinks, as she pushes her way into the noisy throngs of people, and giggles a little at the heady realization that these people here, walking the cobbled streets that twist away from Kaname, do not sound like a movie. Those Potter movies sound like _them_.

The giggling becomes impossible to stop because at that a moment it comes crashing over her. Amalgam might think to look for her in L.A. in Tokyo even, but here? All around her people are talking, laughing, rushing past, and they all have one thing in common.

No one knows who she is.

_What_ she is.

There are cameras everywhere, of course. Security cameras, traffic-monitoring cameras, tourist cameras even, snapping away, but none are watching her. She is lost in a sea of people, and it is so tempting to just stay that way, to abandon the plan, that she takes two steps towards a little café with an unassuming name before she stops herself.

No one is watching _her_, but they are still watching. In Tokyo, they are watching a girl with thick braids who's lying in a hospital bed just like she has been every morning for more than six months, just like she always will from every day on if Leonard can be believed.

Remember the plan (and there is a plan, one that will work).

How much time has elapsed since she took two steps and ceased being in a white-walled room in Los Angles? Twenty minutes to a half hour wandering the Tokyo streets in order to find that pervert in a suit. Another ten to walk back to the hotel and pay for the room. Five to knock him out and find his wallet. She's got to move fast before they decide to make good on the unspoken threat that comes from all those reports on her best friend's health.

Her feet march her to the café and right beyond it. Tucked awkwardly between a door and a pipe drain sits an ATM. There's no way to avoid the security camera as she saddles up to it, but that's all right. In fact, she's careful to lean up and give it a good view of her face. A terrifying action, one she doesn't want to do, but necessary, and one that commits her to her plan with no going back. So she cranes her neck up, winks at the camera and whispers "Beautiful weather, _don't_ wish you were here." With any luck, this, subtle as it is, will make it on to Amalgam's radar. Maybe it will and maybe it won't, but if Amalgam is looking for her in Europe, then they won't notice anything happening in Tokyo right away. And unlike her, they have to take time getting from place to place. She shimmies out the credit card she lifted off of that pervert (who was hopefully still knocked out, because -ew, high school girls?-what a perv) and shoves it into the machine.

Punching the buttons, it becomes increasingly clear there's a wrench in her plan. She can't withdraw as much as she'd hoped. There's some sort of per-day limit. Frowning, she takes what she can get, and drops the card on the ground. It's of no use now.

Originally, she was going to pay for a transfer to another hospital under a different name. She'd sort of daydreamed that maybe she'd even take the time to see Kyoko herself and give her a haircut for disguise. She'd even brought scissors, stolen from a lab worktable and now sitting like some guilty secret in her bag.

Well, screw that shit. She'll just have to play it from ear here on out. That decided she turns away from the ATM, moving just out of reach of their cameras. And if it was too crowded in the streets too notice one more joining the crush, then it was too crowded to notice one less girl, disappearing from one instant to the next.

* * *

Jindai High School is freaky quiet at night, she realizes, as she moves from a crowded, sunset-tinged street in Britain, to standing here in the night, next to the school she's been strenuously avoiding thinking about till approximately five seconds ago. It feels a little like the building is a ghost, which is fitting she supposes. Taking one last glance around, noting absently that reconstruction seems to be going well, she moves out of the school gates and into the street.

The hospital Leonard says Kyoko is at is conveniently close. It is why she chose the school to come back to in the first place, but the walk seems to take forever. She'll have to reassess the possible of traveling to the past, because walking down this road- it doesn't feel like walking back into her life, picking up where she left off. It feels like walking into her own past, where nothing can be changed; no alterations can be made to stop the future, her present. After tonight she will not walk this way again. No matter what happens she knows this is true.

All you need to do, she thinks a little wistfully, is click your heels three times and say there's -

No.

No. If she can accomplish the one thing she set out to do when she walked out of that lab almost an hour and fifteen minutes ago, then it will be okay to let go, of her past, of this place she once called home and of the people who she once knew.

The route she follows doesn't go past her apartment complex, or Sasuke's across the way. No time for memory lane now. It does take her past a building whose roof she knew Wraith liked to use when surveying her. It's a pretty quick trip, all said, and then she's there, with the hospital looming in view.

It is then it hits her that she really has no idea what to do next. She's so close.

But she's not there yet.

Taking a deep breath, she paces for a minute under the awning of a closed store. _I can do this. I can._ Memories surface of the raining hitting both bare skin and cold metal. She realizes she's always done her best going on the fly. This, while there's no assassin on her tail this time, is no different.

One last breath, a snap decision made, and a new plan starts to form in her head. She tucks into the 24-hour convenience store two doors down and marches right up to the cashier. There are sure to be security cameras, but it can't be helped. So she just asks to borrow a pen and takes out her pair of scissors.

The greasy-haired clerk behind the counter gives her an appreciative, if slightly condescending, once-over as he passes one to her.

"What you need it for?" he asks.

"You'll see," she says dismissively, already reaching into her bag again. As she pulls out the dented, stained card, he wrinkles his nose and leans back, uninterested.

She's scribbling down her message when he tries to gain her attention again. "You going to visit someone in the hospital?"

One point to Captain Obvious; they are right across from a hospital and she does have a 'Get Well' card in hand. The man is brilliant!

"Lot of writing you're doing. What's it say then? Some little poem or something?"

Kaname flicks an irritated glance up at this man. Is it just really inept flirting, or is he just bored?

Or is he an Amalgam spy who recognized her and is stalling for time?

"It says," she sneers at him while stuffing the card full of all but twenty pounds and slamming it into the envelope. "Here's money. Get out of the hospital, however you can, go to the airport, exchange the money and get as far way as you can. I'll keep the people watching you occupied. Go; it's your only chance."

The teen laughs, "That's a good one. Your friend Bond or something?"

Kaname doesn't bother replying. Instead, she picks up the scissors in one hand and her hair in the other, saws it off in three or four strokes, and then takes off, scissors clattering against the counter.

"Hey!" the man yells, " Who's gonna clean up this-"

The automatic doors close behind her, and she's running up to catch the light at the crosswalk.

* * *

The hair's probably a mess, and won't fool anyone for long, but it might just be long enough to make it to the desk. That's all her has to do. Make it to the front desk.

The crowd thins as she turns towards the main doors of the hospital. Glancing at the sign, she sees visiting hours are long gone. Unless they work here, anybody coming to the hospital tonight is going to be doing that through the emergency room.

The doors slide open with a swoosh and a draft of cool air hits her in the face, a stark contrast to the warm night air. It smells sterile and germless, just like the white lighting looks sterile and germless. Above her head, fluorescent bulbs buzz. Ick. Hospitals give her the heebie-jeebies.

Striding over to the main desk, she swallows painfully, blood beating a frantic pattern against her pulse points.

"Excuses me," her voice comes out in a small, high pitch that sounds strange to her ears. Timid is not something she's ever sounded before tonight.

The man behind the desk half-rises out of his seat as he looks up to greet her. He's mid-thirties and balding prematurely, Kaname notes distantly. His smile, like everything else in this place, is sterile and germless.

"I'm sorry, can I help you? Visiting hours are over, I'm afraid," he says, and he almost does look contrite.

"T-that's okay," Kaname says, her voice deepening as she steadies herself a bit. "I'm not here to visit. It's… this needs to go to a patient here, Towika Kyoko. It's urgent. Contains some sort of family news, and really couldn't wait until the morning."

"Oh," the man sinks back down to his seat, sounding concerned. "Of course. Just let me ring somebody to come and get-"

"No," Kaname interrupts. "Would you take it to her? It's just- just that it's really important."

She keeps her eyes on him, staring intensely, and he wilts under the gaze. Kyoko told her once Sousuke kept insisting something was after her because men loved to help out women in need. Well, she was wrong about the first part, but the second Kyoko seemed to have nailed down, because the man smiles and holds out his hand.

"Of course. I understand."

She watches him take the beat up envelope she'd carried around for the last two months in his hand. He types something into a computer and after a moment waves at her to take a seat. Keeping half and eye on his retreating back as he disappears down the white, sterile hall, she turns instead to the clock. Twelve forty-seven A.M.

One hour and approximately thirty-five minutes had elapsed between now and when she disappeared. It was entirely possible they had not even widened their search to beyond their hotel and laboratories. They would only be looking into the Greater L.A. area at the most. Well, except for now. Amalgam was sure to hear about this before they would notice her face on any far-flung security screen in London. So much for her little British misadventure.

It was possible, even now, that she might not have been detected. She could still leave. It would be fifteen steps to the door and even less to some place further. Except- there was still Kyoko. She grips the workstation counter, as if that alone might anchor her here.

Is he taking so long because Kyoko's room was far away, or because he is informing someone she's there? Or are her nerves just running at double-time and it hasn't really been long at all? The second hand seems to be moving at a snail's pace, slowing almost comically.

Just above the clock, in the corner, is a camera. Its little red light winks back at her. Doesn't matter now, she supposes. It's only a matter of time now.

A hand clasps down on her shoulder and she jumps, starling the hand into releasing her. Whipping around, she comes face to chest with the man running the desk.

"Oh!" he exclaims. "Sorry, about that. Didn't mean to give you a scare. Little jumpy tonight, huh? Well, hospitals can do that to some folks."

Kaname stares numbly at him, blood pounding in her ears. The man moves to get back to his desk.

"Hey," he calls, leaning his head out from between the glass panels that separate the workstation from the waiting room beyond it. "You named Chidori Kaname?"

The air suddenly thins around her, suffocating.

"W-why d-do you a-ask?" she manages. Behind the glass, the man shrugs.

"That girl, Towika-san, asked."

"So-so she got the card then?"

He gives her a confused look. "Of course."

He glances back down at his table as if to continue his work, but shoots his head back up again. "Hey, hey! You are Chidori Kaname, aren't you? You match this description. Watanabe-sensei said you might be coming in. Funny, she wasn't expecting you till tomorrow. Did you still want to talk to her?"

Did she still want to talk with _who_?

Who else, but Amalgam lackeys would post a description of her posted at the front desk of this place?

She walks over to the rack of magazine and picks one out without looking at the cover, and very deliberately takes a seat. Kyoko was being monitored by Amalgam. She needed to pull her watchdogs off.

"Yes. Yes, I do."

It takes everything in her to remain seated. But sitting here, like this, her mind can't help itself, flashing back to Leonard's looks that lingered too long, and to the times she groggily woke up with the cool metal of a surgical table under her back, and to staring in the mirror at strangely long hair and realizing she was loosing chunks of time. Her nerve endings are on fire. She tries to recall instead her moment of triumph, the feeling of that gun from her past, but can't. It would have been wet, because it had been raining that night, and cold because it was metal, but what did it _feel_ like? She can't remember and it's only fifteen steps to the door, even less to someplace else and-

"Chidori-san," a cool feminine voice calls out. "I've heard so much about you."

She looks up to see a woman in a white coat and at least five large men in scrubs in front of her blocking the main doors. Two more people who had been reading magazines in the waiting room stand up and move to the exit to hallway.

Oh, right, she thinks, a detached calm descending. _This _is how it felt.

A smile curves onto the woman's face.

"Well, nothing to say, Chidori-san? I'll admit, no one was expecting you here _quite _so soon. Mr. Silver is just, well, chomping at the bit to chat with you and hear all about your little trip."

The man behind the desk looks confusedly between the hospital doctor and the girl who just delivered a message to a patient.

"Is everything, alright out there?"

"Doesn't he have a smoke break or something, he could take?" Kaname asks.

The doctor laughs. "A person working at a hospital smoking?"

She turns to the man. "Why don't you go take a walk, Tanaka-san? Yuuta-san will watch the desk for you."

One last glance at her, and then the man behind the desk-Tanaka-san - walks behind the men in scrubs to the door. The woman turns her smile to Kaname again.

"There. Better?" she asks. "I could have kept him here, you know. Another Kyoko-chan as it were. But you don't need that, do you, Chidori-san?"

No, she doesn't. But not for the reasons this creep thinks. She steals a peek at the clock out of the corner of her eye. 10 minutes for that man to deliver Kyoko's card and come back. Another ten or so minutes waiting for this Amalgam doctor to arrive. That's twenty minutes total, maybe fifteen if she deducts time Tanaka-kun took to get to her room in order to make his delivery. Not much, but it might be all Kyoko gets.

"What do you want?" she asks, as if they didn't all know. But one thing she's learned from Leonard, from Mr. K, from the room full of scientists she met with everyday, is that Amalgam likes a civilized pretense. As if good manners made up for the blood on their hands. Well, that was okay. Amalgam likes pretenses and Kaname likes buying time, so she'll play their game.

"I think," the doctor says. "That we all know the answer to that. Just come quietly, my dear. The fact that you're here, trying to see dear, dear Kyoko-chan, just cements the fact that, well- how to put it politely?" The woman titters and continues in a darker tone. "Oh, yes. You don't have any choice."

Kaname told that jerk at the convenience store the truth about what she'd written, but she hadn't told him all of it. And he must not have been an Amalgam agent after all, just a jerk, because this person in front of her with her threats and false smiles didn't seem to even know about the note.

Sorry, Kyoko. That's all the time you get.

Damn. And here Kaname had promised herself she wasn't going to be sorry about anything ever again. Well, she gave her what she could.

Kaname doesn't return any smiles when she rises and slides her magazine onto the end table beside her.

"Rock and a hard place, huh? Sucks when there's no way out."

She turns toward the wall of Amalgam agents that have positioned themselves between her and the door. In her head she repeats the last lines she wrote- ever would write- to her friend.

_This is all I can give you. Sometimes shitty things happen to good people. And we can't help that. We just have to save ourselves_.

She takes a single step towards them. Two steps. Three. And between one blink and the next –

The distance between here and anywhere- Erased. Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.

The girl is gone.

* * *


End file.

Full Metal Panic, Adventure, Suspense