Ty wasn't sure when he'd realized it, but it might have been the day that Kae came home from his first day of school. Family support had approved two months of private tutoring for the boy while he worked with a counselor to overcome his biggest post-traumatic environmental triggers. While the long list of things that were more important than socialization finally started to dwindle, DECA managed to improve his language skills to a point where he could handle group learning and games.

So Kae started school on the first day of the fall session, and when he came home he was calling Astrea "Ma." He started calling Ashley "Ma" too, and he soon decided that the rest of the house was "Pa." There was nothing they could do to discourage him--not that anyone tried very hard. They did sit down and have a talk with him about where he had come from, what he was doing with them now, and why Astrea and Ashley were the ones that his teachers needed to contact when he needed permission for something.

Kae listened. Then he explained to them that parents were people who lived with you and took care of you and it didn't really matter if they were related to you or not. He knew, because one of the girls in his class was an alien orphan with Kerovan parents and another one had an alien mom. Just like Ashley, Kae said.

This led to a discussion of the word "alien," and why Ashley wasn't even one even though she was from another planet, and why Kerone technically was even though she was from KO-35. Ty wasn't sure how much of that Kae really got, but he nodded in the right places. And he kept right on calling all of them "Ma" and "Pa."

If it wasn't that day, it might have been the day that Kae's original rescuer sent them a text transmission from JT's dimension. I win, it said. Dark Spectre loses. Quantrons destroyed in the crossfire. Yours too. Small favor in payment of my debt to you. Let me know if there's anything else I can do.

The confusion this created in the house was indescribable. Ty began to understand that the seemingly inexplicable evil Rangers faced during their tours of duty was occasionally balanced by good that was equally difficult to fathom. Because the message from Astronema was no joke, and when she said "yours too" it turned out that she was referring to the spontaneous disappearance of every quantron in and beyond Border space.

She called it a "small favor." When someone finally got hold of JT to confirm the origin of the message, it became clear that in relation to what she'd done there this was less of an understatement than it seemed. In her dimension, her quantrons had actually turned on the forces of evil before they went, taking uncountable numbers of foot soldiers with them. And Dark Spectre wasn't the only leader destroyed--she had decimated his chain of command before openly throwing in with the Free Systems and declaring every world she held neutral territory under Ranger law.

Kerone was the only one who didn't seem particularly surprised by this news. Ty made a note to never anger her in the future. Or to side with anyone who did.

As hard as that day was to believe, though, his most vivid memory of it would always be the message that "Aisling" sent him afterward. I kept my word to Astronema, it said. I tracked Ryse to a rebel stronghold on Calijyt. He's still there, neutral territory now, along with the man who led his rescuers on the Dark Fortress: you.

Ty had taken everyone's patrol for a week, spending as much time as possible above the planet and away from their questions and concern. Because, to his surprise, the news was bittersweet but somehow distant, as though it belonged to someone else. Someone in another dimension, maybe.

Someone he wasn't anymore.

It might have been the day Karen came back to visit--a holiday in the middle of her own school session, she said--and told them that she had started to study anthropology because "there are people on Earth even weirder than you!" Her apparent sincerity reminded him of a time when he had cared about knowledge for its own sake. So he went and volunteered with one of the local agrec laboratories, and the work was so boring that he almost quit the first day.

On the second day he met a courier whom everyone called Pax. The man was odd, fast, and curious about everything, so Ty ended up explaining the "project" he'd been assigned and adding as an aside that it would be irrelevant before he'd even finished it. Pax hopped up on a one of the bench stools and asked why. Assuming he wouldn't understand, Ty gave him the easy version and hoped no one heard that their Ranger volunteer was already complaining about the system.

Pax just nodded sympathetically. Then he told Ty that he should be designing projects instead of carrying them out, tossed a contact card for the district development board on the bench, and skated away. Ty briefly entertained the idea that Pax knew someone on the board, but decided it was more likely that the courier just passed out cards to anyone who had suggestions or complaints. He wasn't prepared to contact the board office and see Pax on the message recording that told him to leave his name, issue, and comm code for future callback.

So Ty took over Keyota agrec, and he found himself sitting on the development board by day five. It might even have been the day of his first board meeting. Or the day he told Andros that development was becoming more important than defense, and Andros agreed. It might have been the day he went out for groceries and spent more time talking to people he met about the district than he did actually shopping, and it suddenly occurred to him that he was part of the community again.

He wasn't sure when he realized it. Looking back, maybe it hadn't been a day at all. Maybe it had been the night he was lying in his bed, staring out the balcony door while Zhane dozed beside him, and he found himself thinking about someone else. Maybe it wasn't any of those days, or maybe it was all of them, and that night was just the moment he finally acknowledged it to himself.

Ty wasn't sure when he'd realized it, but it was time for him to go.

Zhane was uncannily perceptive about it, too. As though Ty's silent epiphany had been a statement made aloud, Zhane muttered something, shifted a little, and turned sleepy blue eyes on his bedmate. "Hmm?"

Ty smiled. "Nothing," he said softly. "Just thinking."

"Can't sleep?" Zhane mumbled, sliding an arm under his pillow to prop his head up a little higher. He did a fairly convincing study of Ty's face, even blinking and only half-awake as he was.

"Not tired," Ty assured him. "Really, I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

"Mmm." Zhane rolled over on his side, facing Ty, and folded his pillow over to give him extra height. "No. What're you thinking about?"

"Would you be offended," Ty murmured, teasing only because he already knew the answer was no, "if I said, one of the guys I work with?"

"Yeah?" Zhane looked very awake now. "Which one?"

Ty put his hands behind his head and shared his amused look with the ceiling. "Did you really wake up just so you could ask me about my latest fantasy?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," Zhane said lightly.

"You must be psychic," Ty agreed, still pondering the shadows on the ceiling. How much did Zhane really want to hear right now? How much did he want to say in the middle of the night, when he might wake up tomorrow morning and laugh at his own whimsy?

"Don't have to be," Zhane's voice said, very close to his ear, "to know you've been thinking about moving out."

Ty turned his head abruptly and caught Zhane smirking at him before he blurted out, "What makes you think that?"

"Mmm." Zhane looked at him for a moment, then sighed, rolling over onto his back again. "I don't feel like being clever right now. Sorry."

Ty chased him just far enough to kiss his ear before relaxing back onto his side of the bed. Silent apology for his defensiveness, for giving Zhane a hard time just because it was hard for him. "You're right," he murmured. "You guys are my team, but you're not my family. I'm still looking for something you've already found."

"No," Zhane said softly. "You're looking again." Oddly, he added, "Congratulations."

Ty swallowed. "What if I only get one chance?" he whispered, able to give voice to it in the dark of night if nowhere else. "What if Ryse was it?"

"You get whatever you accept." Zhane's voice was quiet but utterly certain in the starlit room. "If you only take one chance, you'll only get one chance."

Ty stared out at the faint outlines of the balcony through the glass door. He had found Zhane, hadn't he? Or Zhane had found him. The Rangers had taken him in at a time when he was looking for someone to tell him who he was.

Now maybe he was starting to remember for himself.

Family support didn't come the day after they moved in. Ashley and Kerone were notified that there weren't enough vaccinated counselors to spare for residential rounds and their assessment had been postponed indefinitely. Abersiia had hit the youth and immigrant populations hard. It could take weeks for the support services to catch up.

It wasn't entirely a bad thing, Ashley decided, when the first full day in their new house turned into downtime that no one dared to schedule over. They got some time to themselves, finally, since Carlos and Gabe had left the night before and Kristet didn't come by to check in with them until that evening. Even the neighbors stopped leaving food outside their door, making Andros less twitchy and everyone else calmer by association.

Ashley spent most of the morning wandering around in her old Astro sweats. Ty made her toast, which she really could have done herself, so she made him tea and they called it even. She never did end up working out, but after she left the bedroom she was sharing with the boys she didn't dare go back in to change. When Karen finally got up just before lunchtime she borrowed some clothes so the two of them could go explore the "campground" together.

Karen didn't bat an eye at her odd request, but Ashley learned to split her clothes between the shared bedroom and her own private space. She also remembered to take anything she might need for the morning with her when she got up. The practical issues were solvable, but she didn't like the uncertainty, so she steeled herself to bring it up with Andros and Zhane.

To her surprise, Andros came up with an easy fix. Their room had two doors, after all. They just got in the habit of leaving the inner door open all the time--unless there was something happening that one of them, for whatever reason, wouldn't want to walk in on. Well, something that she wouldn't want to walk in on, or that Andros didn't want one of them walking in on. Zhane was annoyingly unconcerned about the whole thing.

The sharing took some getting used to, but in the end she decided that it actually solved more problems than it caused. Because now she didn't wonder where they were or what they were doing without her, and she didn't feel like she was taking Andros away from Zhane when they spent time together. It was Zhane's room too, and he could come and go whenever he wanted.

After the first night she and Zhane tried to watch a movie together and the entire team ended up in their bedroom, though, they did learn to be careful about how much time they spent in there. It was easy to forget that, while a couple might be just two people, three people constituted more than half the team. And when more than half the team spent the evening in any given place, the rest of the team naturally gravitated to them.

Karen seemed to find the situation entertaining but only rarely worthy of comment. She did watch the video that Ashley made for her parents on the first day, and afterwards she wanted to know who on Earth was supposed to know what. If she saw the Hammonds, should she avoid mentioning Zhane? What about teammates, former or otherwise, and assorted friends who might ask about Ashley?

Anyone who already knew, Ashley decided, was entitled to casual updates. Anyone who didn't know probably didn't need to know, and that included her parents. For now. Possibly for a long time.

Kristet only asked what they wanted on the news. They let her make her own video of the house and put it in the public domain. They let her announce Kae's adoption as long as he wasn't actually seen anywhere. And they took her advice when she said they should host a block party for their neighbors--an event that was not recorded or broadcast, but still seemed to attract more people than could possibly live in such a rural area.

Their media liaison wasn't oblivious, of course. Andros gave her the room between the kitchen and skyport to use as her office, and she spent a good deal of time at the house. But she had one thing that they didn't have when people pressed her for answers about the Kerovan Rangers' private lives: plausible deniability. Instead of saying, "I don't want to talk about it," she could reply, "I don't have any information on that," and it turned out that there were very few questions that couldn't be answered with that sentence.

It didn't keep people from asking. It did keep Andros from snapping at them, though, and that was important.

The rest of the summer was surprisingly busy for a time that didn't involve any significant attacks by the forces of evil, dimensional incursions, or internal sabotage. Ashley didn't think about how much time was passing until Karen commented one day that she had to be back at school inside of a week and she wanted to visit with Cassie before she left. Only then did it occur to Ashley that--dimensional transits aside--she hadn't been out of the Kerovan system since Karen arrived, and her parents were probably wondering if she remembered where they lived.

So she took some time off to tag along with Karen on her roundabout journey home. They stopped off at Eltare, where two of the former Psycho Rangers met them on the surface and showed them around the capitol city. They also did a brief stint on Aquitar, spending the day at or below sea level while Carlos entertained them before following them back to Earth.

Before they left the Border, though, they stopped in to see Cassie and the twins. The girls were six months old now, and nowhere on their trip did Ashley feel the time that had passed as acutely as she did in the Ranger compound on Elisia. The place that Cassie and Saryn shared with their daughters was bursting at the seams with baby gear: clothes and food and toys and the screened-off space that passed for the twins' room.

"We weren't really thinking," Cassie said, once they had retreated to the community center where there was at least room to sit down. "Raine and Azmuth make do in the compound with Shei, but of course they have an entire building to themselves. We share ours with Mirine."

Ashley tried to picture that, but the family of four was basically living in a one-bedroom apartment. "Even twice the space you have now doesn't really seem like enough," she said at last.

"We'll have to move eventually," Cassie admitted with a sigh. "But it's complicated, with Saryn still being a Ranger. And it's not like we have any free time to figure it out."

"Hey, Zhane's pretty good at picking places to live," Karen remarked. She helped herself to more of whatever Cassie had pulled out for them to snack on--sweet puffs? Ashley thought the name sounded vaguely familiar. "You should ask him for help."

Cassie laughed. "Yeah, I heard about that! Your mom sent me the video. How do you keep from getting lost in a place that big?"

"Bread crumbs," Karen answered cheerfully.

"You should come visit sometime," Ashley added, trying not to feel guilty. Not only did she live in a mansion, but her only child was well past toddler stage and the parent-to-child ratio was seriously skewed in their favor. And on top of that, had she really forgotten to send Cassie pictures?

"Maybe when the twins are a little older," Cassie was saying. "Right now, just sleeping through the night is as much of a vacation as I can ask for."

"Is there anything you want from Earth?" Ashley asked quickly. "Let me run some errands for you, at least. Is there food I can pick up for you? Ice cream? Baby toys?"

Cassie brightened. "Oh, I could make you a list! Really! How long are you going to be there?"

"Long enough to find anything you want," Ashley promised, smiling to herself. She would be, too. She'd get her mom to help if she had to--in fact, she might not be able to keep her away--and they could take advantage of the self-policing Ranger cargo rules. "Make me a list sometime before we leave, and you'll have it in a few days."

"That would be great," Cassie said, so sincerely that it made Ashley wish she'd offered before.

They sat in the community center talking for quite a while after that, but it wasn't until Saryn came back from wherever he'd been with the twins that Ashley began to understand what the two of them were really dealing with. At no point during their stay did she ever see both of them asleep at the same time. The girls were completely out of sync with each other, awake or asleep in opposite intervals, one calm while the other screamed, one bored while the other was hungry, never interested in the same thing at the same time.

"Are you sure they're related?" Karen asked at one point.

"I assure you," Saryn told her, "that is only one of many possible explanations we've considered."

Even seeing them didn't prepare Ashley for Cassie's warning when she bent over the nearest twin, though. "Hi," she told the baby girl, touching her fingers gently. "You probably don't remember me, but I'm Ashley. You're much bigger than you were the last time I saw you."

"That's Jenni," Cassie said, picking up a protesting Terra and trying to soothe her while Karen made silly faces in her general direction. "She can't hear you, but she likes to play with noses. Be careful if you get too close."

Ashley blinked, glancing over at her. "She can't hear me?"

"Jenni's deaf." Cassie was so matter-of-fact that Ashley guessed she was supposed to have already known this. "She can hear some loud, low sounds, but that's about it. Nothing close to speech."

"When did you find this out?" Ashley wanted to know.

"A couple of months ago." Cassie was giving her the surprised look right back. "I know we told you. We must have. We sent out an update with the baby pictures right after they got tested. Didn't you get it?"

"I remember the pictures," Saryn mused, when she looked to him for confirmation. "I'm afraid I don't recall to whom they were sent."

"If we got them, DECA would have them," Ashley declared. "I can't believe I missed this! Is Terra all right? Is there anything we can do?"

"They're both all right," Cassie pointed out. "Jenni just can't hear. And no, I think we're doing everything we can. But thanks."

"There must be something," Ashley insisted. "I mean, we get patched up every time we come back from a fight. Doesn't the Elisian Power come with healing ability? Can't you..."

No, obviously they couldn't, or they would have. She corrected her question mid-sentence. "Why can't you--"

"We did," Cassie said quietly. "Someone--one of the Elisian Rangers--kept her alive the day she was born with that healing power. This is her 'healed'. If she can't hear, well, I think we both feel that's a pretty small price to pay."

Ashley swallowed the rest of her protests when she saw the dangerous glint in Saryn's eyes. Right. Like they hadn't done everything they could think of already. They didn't need her advice on a situation she wouldn't have even known about if she hadn't spontaneously shown up on their doorstep.

She was suddenly very glad she had decided to come with Karen.

Andros was good at starting over. He didn't like it, but he'd had a lot of practice, and he knew how to build something from the foundation up. He just didn't approve of tearing things down to do it. Enough alliances failed all on their own that he didn't want to be the cause of yet another disbanding.

So he tried to dissuade Mirine from using the threat of secession to get anything changed within the Frontier Defense. The Border treaties had a solid history, even in the face of seemingly impossible odds, and he would rather not rewrite them. Especially when KO-35 was only nominally a Border world, and its inclusion over the distance between them did, after all, put a significant strain on Defense resources.

Mirine didn't listen. She wasn't her brother, and she made sure everyone knew it. He didn't recognize the strategy until after her vocal complaints and accusations had shaken up the Defense to such a degree that they seemed relieved to deal with someone as relatively reasonable as Andros. Ashley called it "good cop, bad cop."

When Astronema's message came from JT's dimension, Andros didn't share it with anyone outside the Rangers. But he did tell Marsie that he had intelligence suggesting quantrons were a diminished offensive force, and she agreed to send scouts to confirm it. He could take her reports to the rest of the Border governments. They were understandably less reluctant to commit to Kerovan space after that, and he didn't hold it against them.

Kerovan fighters joined the Border patrol, the Frontier Defense established a permanent presence on RS-42, and Zhane became their interplanetary liaison. It was an unexpectedly satisfying solution to a situation that had been unresolved since they returned to KO-35. And it gave Zhane a vastly expanded network of people to associate with, which kept him from obsessing over everything that happened at Wayward.

He kept them together, there was no question about that. But Andros was the first to say he didn't like being analyzed every time he turned around, and the fewer people Zhane was around on a regular basis, the more concentrated his efforts at interpersonal mediation became. He knew it drove Andros crazy as much as it saved him, but it wasn't something Zhane could turn off, any more than Andros could stop being who he was. They knew how to work with each other, though, and Ashley stayed out of it for a long time.

Until the day she asked Andros to drop off something at the local haven. He set off three alarms just by walking through the door, although they were so subtle that he didn't identify any of them as "alarms" the first time it happened. The lights flickered, just once, and he did think it was odd that the power would falter--at all, much less at that moment. There was also an unobtrusive pinging sound, which he dismissed as a door chime, and some sort of herbal scent that he didn't connect with his presence until days later.

It turned out the building had a telepathic net to boost the meditative awareness of its visitors. The net became quiescent in the presence of actual telepaths, and the alarms warned visitors of the deactivation. Andros told the haven mediator it must be mistaken, and he was assured in turn that the net's detection system did occasionally malfunction.

Only later did he find out that this response didn't actually fall into the category of "believing him," but was in fact a gesture of respect for his supposed wish to remain anonymous.

When he confronted Ashley about it the following evening, she gave him a particularly innocent look and apologized for forgetting about the net. She had only been to the haven a couple of times, she reminded him, mostly while trying to track down people who had once been associated with Wayward, and she had only heard about it in passing. Besides, whatever she'd given him to take over had been important.

He didn't appreciate being manipulated, and he told her so.

She told him that he let Zhane do it to him all the time. That was why she had wanted him to go in the first place, she added, abandoning all pretense of it being an accident. Because Zhane had someplace else to mediate now, which kept him from driving Andros crazy, and Andros needed someplace else to brood, to keep him from driving her crazy.

He objected to the use of the word "brood." He stopped by the haven again anyway, since it was important to Ashley, and he did agree that it wasn't a total waste of time. Not only did the other visitors treat him with nothing but the same quiet respect they gave each other, but the building itself had several moderately appealing characteristics.

For one thing, no one could contact him there. The spiritual retreat was completely cut off from the rest of the planet, save for an automated emergency system, and he was unreachable and mostly untraceable while he was there. Second, the place came with an assumption of solitude that meant no one who was there would bother him either. And finally, he found that he could turn the telepathic net back on with his mind, and that was just fun.

It was after his third visit that Kristet caught up with him. Andros had taken a moment to grab an apple from the kitchen when she poked her head out of her office and asked if he had time to talk. In his experience, that was rarely a good sign.

He waved for her to come over anyway. Avoiding Kristet's questions never made them go away. And he knew. He'd tried.

"I've gotten the telepath question four times in the last three days," she said.

Andros stopped. Then he reached for a second glass. "Something to drink?"

"Water," she said, pulling a stool out from the counter. "Thanks."

He poured a couple of glasses of water and passed her one as he sat down across from her. "Why?" he wanted to know.

"Probably the haven." Kristet clasped her hands around her glass loosely. "Someone there said something, or one of the others mentioned that you'd been going."

"That doesn't make me a telepath," Andros said sharply.

"It doesn't have to make you a telepath," Kristet told him. "It just has to make people ask."

Andros took a bite out of his apple, trying not to be irritated. "My religious preferences are none of their business," he muttered.

"I want to come back to the comment about religious preferences," she said. "But right now, the point is that it actually is their business. At least by law. They aren't allowed to interfere with your off-duty life, and in return they get whatever information they want. Answering their questions keeps people from spying on you."

"In theory," he retorted. "What do you call this--" He gestured with his apple. "Knowing I've been going to the haven?"

"Does anyone talk business with you while you're there?" Kristet asked. "Does anyone follow you? Take pictures? Get in your way?"

He crunched loudly on another bite of apple.

"You don't have to answer," Kristet reminded him. "But they don't have to stop asking, either. I'll keep on telling them I don't know for as long as you want, but eventually someone will catch you while you're on-duty and you'll have to say something."

Andros kept eating, silently considering the issue. The media would get hold of the question whether they had an answer or not. Speculation would make the questions that finally got back to him more and more ridiculous, until he wondered why he hadn't just said "yes" the first time and let their curiosity die.

Kristet didn't get up. She just sat there, sipping her water and waiting to see if he would say anything. She wouldn't hound him if he didn't, he knew. At least, not intentionally. She'd probably forget when they'd had this conversation by tomorrow, and they'd just have it again.

"I've been a telepath all my life," Andros said abruptly. "It doesn't have anything to do with the haven."

Kristet didn't look surprised. "Do you want people to know that?"

"Yes," he said with a sigh. "Go ahead. And yes, the thing with Zhane isn't selective," he added, anticipating her next question.

She smiled a little. "I've gotten that one too," she admitted.

He didn't know why he bothered pretending to have a private life. "What about Ashley?"

"They leave her out of it," Kristet said, studying him. "Why?"

"Not on the record," he warned her.

She shook her head. "I don't have my public camera running right now. You'll have to tell me what I can say again after I turn it on."

She didn't run her public camera in the house at all, unless it was to record a statement like the one he'd just made. He couldn't always tell when she turned it on or off. And keeping Ashley out of the telepathy question seemed worth the reminder.

"Ashley and Zhane are selectively telepathic," Andros told his apple. Taking another bite, he glanced at Kristet to monitor her reaction.

Kristet blinked. "They can read each other?"

"Most of the time," Andros said carefully. Studying her more openly, he added, "You don't seem very surprised."

Kristet actually laughed. "I practically live here," she said. "Sometimes I think I'm the only reason you talk out loud at all."

"Ty," he reminded her, disconcerted by the idea that she might have realized a long time ago.

"And Kae," she pointed out. "It was just a joke."

He munched on his apple thoughtfully. He supposed telepathy was more useful than speech, if it came right down to it, but he'd never considered it more than a supplementary kind of communication before. Maybe Kristet wasn't the only one who felt otherwise.

"You should ask Ashley," he said at last. "Whether she minds you saying anything about her. If they're asking about Zhane, they're going to ask about her."

Kristet gave him a curious look. "You just said you wanted me to keep her out of it."

He shrugged uncomfortably. "It should be up to her," he muttered.

Ashley didn't say anything to him later, but she must have told Kristet it was fine. She and Zhane were on the newsnets for a week afterward. The number of questions about them rivaled the questions about his haven visits, and finally the team gave K-Wind a telepathy-oriented interview just to shut them all up.

Kristet switched from "I don't have any information on that," to "The Rangers have already answered that," and the new approach was surprisingly effective.

She didn't have a lot of parenting experience to draw on, either first or secondhand, and to be honest her teammates weren't that much help. There was one thing that reassured Kerone more than anything else, though: her original role model. Ecliptor hadn't known what he was doing either, and she'd turned out all right.

DECA didn't hold back on advice, either. The Megaship's AI--rapidly becoming their house AI--had the most accessible and practical parenting experience of anyone she knew. The family support counselors were patient but specialized, and the support group they sent her to for adoptive parents was calming but otherwise unhelpful.

DECA, on the other hand, had not only raised orphans herself but also had vast amounts of academic knowledge that she could tailor for practical application with a minimum of experiential input. She had the added advantage of being the only person Kae obeyed unconditionally, at least at first. He quickly learned that she wasn't going to punish him the way he was used to being punished if he didn't do what she wanted.

Better than slavers, Kerone reminded herself whenever she wondered what she was doing wrong. His daytime behavior got worse even as his nightmares started to decrease in frequency, but DECA assured her that it was normal for children recovering from trauma to both retreat and rage. And the one thing she got out of her support group was that everyone worried that they weren't doing a good enough job, so she decided a certain amount of guilt was normal and tried to ignore it.

Family support gave her certain guidelines, mostly about school and socialization once their counseling requirements began to drop off. DECA advised her about rules, discipline, and the appropriate application of skills Kae had learned from his captors. Ashley offered her own childhood for comparison, and made sure the rest of the team knew what was going on so they didn't contradict each other every time they turned around.

Ashley also stayed close enough to the situation that she could give Kerone days off before school started. After the fall session began, they found that it was easier to switch off without planning for it ahead of time. One or the other of them would drop Kae off and pick him up, and then depending on what he had to do on any given afternoon, someone would either shadow him until dinner or allow him to entertain himself under DECA's supervision.

Dinner had become a team affair in a way that it never had been at the hangar: there, they'd had to make plans if they wanted to see each other for the evening meal, but now, they had to make plans not to. Otherwise everyone ate at basically the same time, either in the kitchen or on the deck, and Kae would be included in at least one person's plan for the evening. It was usually hers or Ashley's at first, but as his triggers decreased and his behavior slowly stabilized, the others would offer to help him with his homework or even take him places from time to time.

It wasn't easy, but it wasn't staying alive on the Dark Fortress, either. She didn't cry in front of anyone except Ashley--well, and Saryn, once--but she couldn't understand why taking care of one small child could upset her so much. She had done worse, and better, on a much larger scale before. And they'd both dealt with so much more; there shouldn't be anything about their lives now that could even compare.

At first, she decided that maybe she cried for him. Despite the clearly superior life he was leading now, he was still a former prisoner of war recovering in a world that he had no reason to understand. The counselors from family support assured her that she wasn't the only one grieving for what her child had been through. The important thing, they told her, was not to let him know that she felt sorry for him, because he had every chance in the world now and he shouldn't think there was any reason he couldn't have it.

When she finally let DECA talk to her about it, though, the AI suggested that maybe she was crying tears she had never cried for herself. Kae's story was traumatic, certainly. Was hers any less so? Kidnapped from her home, raised by a machine, taught that to hate and to kill was the only way to survive?

If she didn't accept her own past, DECA observed, she might teach Kae to suppress his own. That nothing he had been through mattered, and he should just be grateful for what he had. Solution-based therapy focused only on where a person was going, she said, not on where they'd been. It helped a lot of people, but it didn't make them whole on its own.

Am I a whole person, Kerone had wanted to know?

DECA's hologram had smiled at her. Only you can answer that, the AI had told her.

She told Kae who she had been. She made it very simple. She had been kidnapped from her home when she was very young, sold just like he had been, and raised by someone who was at least less evil than the people around him. She told him that she had done some terrible things because she didn't know any better.

Kae didn't seem to care very much.

He hears everything you say, DECA told her. Don't assume he doesn't understand.

At the end of the fall session, family support held a children's carnival for those orphaned or otherwise affected by war. Kae wanted to go. His friend was going, he said. And they had a giant sky ride. Still she hesitated.

Don't assume he doesn't understand, DECA reminded her. He's modeling his behavior on you. He looks to you to see what's normal and what isn't.

Kerone decided to go with him.

That night, Zhane helped her put Kae to bed. That he wanted to talk was obvious. That he knew Kae would listen at his door if they did it in her room was equally clear. Kerone decided he was too used to Andros' reticence if he thought this was a problem.

*Do you like our toy pit?* she inquired silently, as she closed Kae's door behind her.

Zhane was standing on the path that angled through the room like a dock, and he gave the ball-filled pits on either side an amused glance. *Let's just say I know why the kids at the Center wanted you to adopt them too.*

*It's a training exercise,* Kerone informed him, coming over to stand by his side. *He needs to learn how to move in zero-g, and he doesn't like water, so this is the next best thing. It teaches him to overcome his reflexes when it comes to falling before he's actually put in that environment.*

*Yeah,* Zhane said with a grin. *Right.*

She let her smile break through. *He saw it at the carnival and loved it.*

*Who needs a carnival when you've got a sorceress for a mom?* Zhane asked rhetorically.

*A child with a stunted imagination when it comes to play,* Kerone answered anyway. *The carnival was very inspiring.*

*Any kid who can go to a busy outdoor carnival the same year he was rescued from slavers, agoraphobic and scared of human contact, is inspiring all by himself.* Zhane was still smiling at her, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders as he added, *So is the woman who rescued him.*

She returned his half-hug, leaning her head on his shoulder for a long moment. Finally she asked, *Did you want to talk about something?*

*Got a busy night ahead of you?* he teased.

*I have a carnival in my room,* she returned. *Of course I'm going to have a busy night.*

*Can we play in it?* Zhane wanted to know.

She stifled a giggle. *Sure. As long as it's not when Kae's supposed to be sleeping. He'll just want to get up and jump in with you.*

*Can't you...* Zhane waved at the door. *Magically soundproof his room or something?*

*Yes,* she said, rolling her eyes. *If I didn't want to be able to hear him if he screams.*

*Ah.* Zhane looked chagrinned. *Good point.*

*I'll make you one somewhere else if you want,* Kerone promised, pulling out of his embrace to sit down on the edge of the path. This little piece of floor was all that was left now, but she would restore it when Kae got bored with the toy pit. *After you tell me what you're thinking about.*

*Family,* he said. He sat down next to her, letting his legs hang over the edge of the floor and taking care to shift the colored balls out of the way in a manner that made as little noise as possible. *Our family, specifically.*

*It's a good one,* she remarked. She was sitting cross-legged, but if she leaned forward she could reach the hollow plastic balls and toss one at him. Something to keep in mind if he started being odd.

*Yeah,* he agreed slowly. *I think... it's probably going to change, though.*

*As families do.* He meant something in particular, she was sure. Hopefully he wasn't going to make her guess just for the fun of it.

His legs moved a little, maybe poking at the plastic spheres with his feet. *It's Ty,* he said at last. *I think he's going to leave.*

She thought about that. *Okay,* she decided. *I guess we sort of knew that. I mean, that he would go at some point. Right?*

*I guess.* Zhane was frowning. *Do we know that about any of the rest of us?*

Kerone blinked. *Why would any of us leave?*

Zhane opened his mouth as though he was going to say something aloud, then changed his mind. *I don't know,* he said. But then he added, *You and Ash were going to leave, when you adopted Kae.*

*No,* she countered. *We were going to change the place where we lived. We weren't leaving you.*

Zhane didn't seem entirely convinced by this distinction. And, okay, she'd been ready to leave, for Kae's sake. But she hadn't needed to, and the way things turned out had to be at least as important as the way they could have turned out.

*What about getting married?* Zhane asked at last.

That took her by surprise. *What? Who?*

*Me and you, Andros and Ash,* Zhane answered. *Who else?*

*No,* she said. *No, I think that's a bad idea.*

Zhane knew exactly when he'd realized it, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to convince the others without drastic intervention. He'd known it the second Andros agreed to move into a house with them, even if only in the abstract. He'd seen it suddenly sneaking up on him when he found out Andros had started going to the haven on a regular basis.

The day Andros made a wistful remark about only children, Zhane had realized that the moment he knew was coming had to be right around the corner. They wouldn't be Rangers forever, and there would come a time when their insistence that they could speak for each other wouldn't be enough. They needed official family group status, or the government was going to make parenting a nightmare.

Unfortunately, there were problems. One of them was Ty, whom he knew would never stay with the rest of them, but might leave now or years from now. They couldn't ask him to be part of the group, but they couldn't not ask him, either. Not if he was still living with them.

Andros was another problem. He was oddly resistant to change, and maybe understandably resistant to public participation in his life. He would be hard to convince. And on top of that, Ashley was clearly not familiar with the idea of having multiple married partners, and until she was comfortable with it, Andros wouldn't consider it.

Kerone was the person he decided to talk to first.

*Why is it a bad idea?* Zhane wanted to know. He hadn't expected her reaction, but his amusement over her direct response helped alleviate his disappointment.

*Because Ashley and I are Kae's parents,* Kerone told him. *At least legally. If we marry other people, there will be all sorts of problems with the right-to-represent laws.*

Oh. Zhane brightened. She didn't actually understand what he was suggesting, then. That cast an entirely different light on her refusal, and he got his thoughts in order to agree that what she thought he meant was a terrible idea.

*Not to mention,* she continued, *I don't think you could watch Andros marry someone else. Even Ashley.*

*I'm thinking of something totally different,* he said quickly. *I don't think we should be two married couples. I think we should all marry each other.*

He'd caught her off guard. She stared at him for a long moment. Finally, though, she seemed to find something in her memory that helped. *You mean... is that like some kind of family group?

*Yeah, a family group. It would give us all right-to-represent for Kae,* he offered, *and it would mean that we could give each other right-to-represent in medical or contract situations.*

Kerone was shaking her head. *No, we can't,* she said. *It won't work. Me and Andros are related.*

He glanced sideways at her. Okay, legally, if not so much biologically anymore. *So?* he prompted.

*So we can't get married,* she said, smiling as though he was being deliberately goofy.

He wagged a finger at her for doubting. Like he would have missed something so obvious. *That's where you're wrong,* he informed her. *Siblings can't start a family group. But they can marry into it.*

She gave him an odd look, but she didn't say anything for a long moment.

*What?* he finally asked.

*How long have you been planning this?* she wanted to know.

*I'm not planning it now,* he said defensively. *I'm just asking you what you think about it.*

She considered that, and he found himself genuinely uncertain about her answer. It was very clear to him that this would solve a lot of problems. It was also obvious that he was the only one who'd been thinking about it in quite that way.

*I think I'm not the one who needs to be convinced,* Kerone decided at last. *I'll find out what Ashley thinks if you'll work on Andros.*

Relieved, he broke into a grin, and for some reason that made her lean down and grab a plastic ball to chuck at him. *Hey!*

*Did you think I'd say no?* she demanded. *Just because I didn't think of it doesn't mean I don't know a good idea when I hear it.*

*Hey,* he repeated, tossing a ball back at her. *I'm just glad to have a co-conspirator. Okay?*

And he was. But Andros and Ash were closed in their room for the night, so further conspiring was inevitably postponed. Kerone kept her word about the toy pit, and Zhane went to find Ty while she turned the game room into a giant pool of colored balls. It would be handy to be married to a sorceress, Zhane decided.

Ty didn't even bother being surprised. The three of them fooled around down there for the rest of the evening, with Kerone showing off for an only occasionally impressed audience. Then DECA appeared with a message from Elisia, and Kerone wandered off to talk to Kyril--but she made them a kiddie slide before she left, warning them to keep it down.

He and Ty grinned at each other. Without Kerone around, the ensuing ball war was uncontained, and they made no effort to clean up afterward. They did manage to keep from waking Kae, though, and that was probably the only thing they had to do to avert Kerone's wrath. Well, that and letting her prove that her moderate levitation abilities were more than a match for their telekinesis, which she had already done several times that night.

When Ty invited him upstairs, Zhane didn't have to think about it. Family group or no family group, he loved Ty, and he was desperately trying not to miss him before he was gone. Easy to say, hard to do. Especially when the Black Ranger was lying upside down on Kerone's kiddie slide and pretending to sleep while he deflected plastic balls without moving.

Even more especially when he was lying on pale green sheets, red-brown hair a silky shadow around his head, with the meager starlight from the balcony glinting in his gold eyes. Zhane could almost sense his restlessness. Overtired, maybe. But Zhane dozed off and Ty didn't, and it was enough to wake him up again.

"Nothing," Ty whispered, when he mumbled an inquiry. "Just thinking."

Zhane propped his head up, studied Ty, and he knew. He almost rolled over and tried to take Ty's word for it, because maybe Andros wasn't the only one who didn't like things changing on him. But he didn't.

"Can't sleep?" he asked instead.

"Not tired." Ty was smiling at him, and he wished he could keep that expression, this moment, forever. "Really, I'm fine," Ty added softly. "Go back to sleep."

"No," he murmured, turning so he could drink in Ty's shape in the darkness. Ty had been there for him when he was trying to figure out his own life, and he would never forget that. "Tell me what you're thinking."