Mal kept working to dig up as much information about White Dawn as he could. He didn't know why they'd gone under the Wolves' noses for so long, especially given they were exactly the kind of thing the Wolves were supposed to guard against. It didn't sit right with him, but he had no idea what he was supposed to do about it. He'd been so used to trusting the Wolves, even the hint of suspicion was hard to get used to.

 

He made sure to take better care of himself, too. No one else was going to do it. He hadn't made himself dehydrated and sick to deliberately hurt himself, but the fact that no one cared he was hurt rankled. He understood they made sacrifices to help others, but he hadn't realized he'd made this particular offering at the altar of justice.

 

But he had, and there was nothing he could do about it now. Maybe there was something that appealed to him about going off and starting a new life, one with connections to people who weren't Morna, but that was as much of a pipe dream as starting a family in Australia with a guy who was basically married to the US Navy. He'd been molded since before his birth for the role he filled. He knew there was no way he could just pop up somewhere, settle in, and talk about gardening over the hedge with the neighbors like a civilian.

 

So he set reminders for himself to eat and to drink water. He reminded himself to sleep and to get decent exercise. He wasn't going to get soft just because there was a baby involved.

 

Trent showed up at the apartment about a week after Mal woke up. He stopped by at his usual time, but he brought food from one of the local restaurants and a small bouquet of red flowers. "I hope you'll let me in." He swallowed, and Mal watched his Adam's apple work. "I think shock, and some kind of natural fears, got in the way of me saying some things I very much wanted to say the last time I was here."

 

Mal knew the sensible thing would be to shut the door in his face. Spending time with Trent had already gotten him into enough trouble. Right now, it could only hurt him.

 

He stood aside and let Trent in. "How've you been?"

 

"Okay." He tugged at his collar. "I've missed you. I've been worried about you."

 

Mal looked away and carried the food into the kitchen. He didn't want to get into another fight. He'd barely finished patching himself up after the last one. "Everything going well with the others? I was a little worried about Baudin's arm. How's he doing?"

 

"Oh, he's fine. He's made a full recovery. Hospital staff were pretty impressed with your skills. You could probably make a career out of emergency medicine." Trent followed him into the kitchen. "I don't know, become a paramedic. Or a nurse practitioner. That might be right up your alley, actually."

 

Mal could see that. He'd have to fake credentials, sure, but he could fake credentials in his sleep. A false degree, a false CV, and he could set himself up somewhere in Australia in no time. Of course, he'd have to do something about the baby. Maybe it could wait until the baby was born… "Do they have free child care in Australia, I wonder?"

 

"I have no idea." Trent blinked. "Why Australia?"

 

"It's far away from the Wolves." Mal shook his head to clear it and got plates. "Thanks for bringing dinner. I think Morna's gone out for the evening."

 

"She did." He cleared his throat. "She might have texted me to let me know."

 

"Ah. Good. Conspiracy. I love it." Mal sat down. "So. What's on your mind?"

 

Trent managed a weak grin. "I just wanted to say, I'm sorry I made it sound like I was only thinking about the baby. I'm kind of a family-oriented guy, and our discussion triggered that in a bad way. Even if we can't find a way to make it work, together, you still fall under that 'family' umbrella. There's a baby and you're the father. We'd always have that connection, if nothing else."

 

Mal looked down. He couldn't make himself look directly at Trent, so he looked down. Sure, he thought he'd hardened his heart against any of this nonsense, but one word from Trent and here he was. "Trent, you know there's not a way to make any of this work."

 

Trent huffed out a little laugh. "That's the difference between Europeans and Americans. You say, 'Here's a set of facts, and here's why nothing's going to work.' We say, 'Here's a set of facts, here's why it looks impossible. Now watch us make it work.' I've already got a call in to my uncles, the ones who raised me when my dad died. They're considering taking on the baby if we can't make it happen." He put a hand on Mal's, and Mal's insides melted. It felt too good to have contact with him. "It's not perfect, or even ideal, but it's an option."

 

Mal didn't pull his hand away, but he did raise an eyebrow at Trent. "Okay, you didn't want me to surrender the baby for adoption but you want to hand it off to your uncles?"

 

"Like I said, they raised me." Trent set his jaw. "It's not the same thing. The baby would be with family. My uncles live in Virginia Beach, and I'd be able to see it when I was at home." He rubbed at his neck with his free hand. "When my dad was killed, my mom couldn't cope. She was on the young side, and she took it pretty hard. So my uncles stepped in, took me to live with them, and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me." He smiled. "I wish you could meet them. They're an alpha and omega pair. I think you'd like them."

 

Mal looked down again. He'd never get to meet these uncles. "I'm glad you had them."

 

"We're still looking into other options, Mal. I don't want — I don't want you to have to do this alone. It's not something anyone should have to do alone. I'm having trouble believing you couldn't get into a hospital, but I'm not European. You know how it works here better than I do. Can't you fake an ID or something?"

 

"I'm worried about the blood and the DNA." Mal sat back, withdrawing from the comfort Trent had to offer. "If someone happened to sample it, I'd be in danger."

 

"I can't imagine why they'd do a DNA test on someone in childbirth." Trent frowned. "Look. We're still working on a way to bring you to the States. It doesn't look good, but for what it's worth, we are trying. Would you do that, if we could get you a passport?"

 

Mal stood up and walked over to the sink. "Trent, there's no point in fantasizing about that kind of thing, okay? Fantasy doesn't get people anywhere."

 

"Fantasy got humanity to the moon. Fantasy got us the internal combustion engine. Fantasy got people robotics, and laparoscopic surgery, and supersonic travel. That's how it works. People say, 'Wouldn't it be incredible if we could do the thing?' Then we find a way to make it happen." Trent followed him and rubbed his shoulders. "But we're not going to keep banging our heads against a wall if you don't want to come to America." He paused for a second. "If you don't want to be with me."

 

Mal's heart raced. "That's not possible."

 

Trent chuckled. "Which? Being with me or not wanting to be with me?"

 

The little fantasy of a house in Australia sprang before Mal's eyes again. Then it shifted. This time it became a house in Virginia Beach, someplace Mal knew only as a name. The neighbors' children looked like heavily-armed hedgehogs but Mal and Trent's children looked normal, happy and playing in the sand. "Okay, so it's a nice fantasy," he whispered, fighting the image. "But it's not —"

 

"It's not what?" Trent put a finger to Mal's lips. "Don't say possible."

 

Mal rolled his eyes. "Fine," he said around Trent's finger. "It's not something human people can cause to take place."

 

"Smartass." Trent laughed and stepped back. "Don't you worry about what we can and can't make happen. All I need to know is that it's something you want."

 

Mal turned around, and Trent took him into his arms. Mal relaxed against his chest. He shouldn't let himself hope like this. It was foolish. He knew better, for crying out loud. He couldn't keep doing this. It was only going to hurt him in the end.

 

Trent stroked Mal's head. "We'll find a way to get through this, whatever happens, Mal. It might look grim here and there, but we will find a way to get through this."

 

They finished their meal and went to bed, but they didn't have sex. Instead, they just lay in one another's arms and enjoyed the comfort of the other's presence. It wasn't something they'd done before. It was something couples did, couples with long term plans. Mal found he liked it.

 

Trent did have to go back to base, but he promised to come back the next night. They kissed good night, and Mal was alone again. He didn't feel quite so alone, and that was dangerous.

 

He'd worry about the repercussions later. Right now, it felt too good to be wanted, or part of something. The ache inside of him he hadn't always known he felt had subsided to a dull, barely-there note, and he slept better than he had in days.

 

He got back to work the next day. He'd done a lot of work to ferret out White Dawn individuals based on the hard drives of people at the Kassandreia outpost, but that had only gotten him so far. His next step was to identify their networks. He had more freedom here than anyone from the States, because he didn't need a warrant to get the details or to go through financial records.

 

Financial records and emails usually gave the best evidence.

 

Mal's concern with White Dawn centered around financing. He could tell right away their funding had to be immense. All of the equipment he could see in Kassandreia was top of the line — the best weapons, the best tech gear, the best alarms. They had a whole hotel to themselves. Operations he could link to them seemed to be equally well-funded.

 

Some, like the attack on migrants in Sete, were relatively low tech. That could have been done by any random bunch of skinheads out on a Friday night bender. Another attack that had happened near Sicily, when a high-end luxury yacht had mowed down boats filled with refugees, had required money. The boat had not been one that had been reported stolen. Clearly the yacht either belonged to the group or had been loaned for use in the operation by someone with the money to afford that kind of toy.

 

Mobile missile launchers weren't cheap either.

 

He knew who their leader was. Patrick Wolf didn't come from money. Patrick Wolf, before his jailhouse epiphany, had been the stereotype of the American skinhead. He'd lived in a trailer in an impoverished rural area and had trouble holding a job. He definitely wasn't financing the group himself. While White Dawn certainly pulled off the occasional bank heist, they didn't net enough from those operations to cover the scale of network they had.

 

Where was the money coming from?

 

As he worked, he found clues about an impending attack in Morocco. He warned both the Navy and the Wolves about it. The Wolves sent someone in to solve the problem that same night, and headlines in Rabat the next morning talked about a murder-suicide pact in a small group of "foreign" men in a hotel near the University. Mal recognized the work of his father there. Dad liked to stage things that way to send a message.

 

Chief sent him an email about that. That was quick.

 

Mal shrugged. They must have already been in the area.

 

I guess so.

 

Mal grinned. At least he could still be proud of some things about the Wolves, if not everything. It was nice to still have that capacity to be mobile.

 

At night, he and Trent talked about the future. They talked about baby names and about Virginia. According to Trent, people almost never went to the grocery store with submachine guns. "I don't know what your media's been feeding you, but that's not a thing."

 

"It's so a thing." Mal gave him a pissy look. "Pictures don't lie."

 

"They can be doctored. And sure, there are some places where folks open-carry, just because they can or because they've been out at the range or hunting and they don't want to leave the guns in the car to get stolen or something —"

 

Mal shuddered. "My God. I'll have to dress my child in body armor for preschool."

 

Trent snickered. "Come on, it's not that bad. And you, you've got guns all over the place! And bombs! You haven't got a leg to stand on!"

 

Mal had to grin at that. "Okay, true, but it's different. I don't go carrying an arsenal to pick up eggs and milk! Are they afraid the orange juice is going to fight back? Do they think there's about to be an oatmeal uprising in Aisle Six?"

 

Trent laughed and tickled Mal.

 

The more Trent told him about Virginia Beach, the more real it became. Mal could see them building a life there together. He hadn't allowed himself to think about a future, other than the next job, since he'd been a kid. Now he could see a home, with a kitchen of his own, and play space for the kids.

 

Funny how his mind had already bumped up the number of children in his head.

 

He still couldn't make himself truly believe that it would happen, but he couldn't stop himself from imagining. And he supposed there was no harm in setting himself up for such a future. He could create an identity, just for fun. He could always delete it later. He set up a new name, Malcolm Donahue. And he set up a bank account in Virginia, one that got regular deposits from some of the other accounts he had in various places. Mr. Donahue needed documents, so he created birth records, educational records, and even a driver's license.

 

He laughed at himself. It was all astonishingly simple. It might be a little harder to get a physical passport that would pass muster, but not significantly so. He didn't take that step, though. Not yet. They weren't there yet. Everything he and Trent were talking about was still just fantasy.

 

Dropping out of his life to go tearing off to America on a fantasy would be foolish, and selfish in the extreme.

 

~

 

Trent sat down with Chief at breakfast. It had become their routine. Chief would update him on efforts to bring Mal to America, legally, and Chief and Trent would discuss other steps they could take. "What gets me," Trent said, around a mouthful of potatoes, "is that this can't be the first time this has come up."

 

"It isn't." Chief curled his lip. "How many American soldiers and sailors brought home war brides, or war omegas, they met through the French Resistance or through the partisans? Times were different, then. The US was a more open country, more hopeful. Less willing to use human beings as political pawns."

 

Trent wasn't so sure about that, but he kept his mouth shut.

 

"The thing is, someone decided a few decades ago that people who had been involved with violence in any way had no business coming to America or being involved with US military personnel. I have no idea what they thought was going to happen." Chief shook his head. "So now there are a bunch of regulations and even some laws in place. I'm having a lot of trouble finding kosher ways to get around them to bring your boy to America."

 

Trent pinched the bridge of his nose. Sure, Mal had been involved with violence, but he wasn't violent. He was no different than a child soldier, really. "He's probably perfectly capable of creating a new name and a new ID for himself, but I'm not so keen on knowingly bringing someone into the country illegally."

 

"Yeah, no. We'd all get into trouble for that one, and I'm not talking about a slap on the wrist." Chief's lip curled, and he gestured to the room around him. "You'd never throw your team under the bus like that."

 

"No." Trent shifted uncomfortably. Mal was carrying his child, which made him family. But the SEALs were his family too. It was a bad situation.

 

"We'll figure something out." Chief sighed. "It might take a while, but we'll figure it out." He took a bite of his eggs. "Have you seen what he's done with White Dawn? He's ferreted out so much dirt about them we might as well call him Ferret."

 

"I don't think he'd care for that, Chief." Trent poked at his meal. What if they couldn't bring Mal back? What about all the plans they'd made?

 

What about the baby?

 

"I've only just convinced him to start hoping," he said. "I don't think that's something he was ever really allowed to do before, you know? If I can't deliver, if I can't get him out and give him and our baby a chance at a real life, I don't know what I'll do."

 

Chief shrugged. Trent knew the Master Chief wasn't apathetic. He was working his ass off to help Trent. There just wasn't a whole lot to be said right now. "We're doing what we can. It's like any other enemy, Kelly. We give it our all. This enemy just happens to be red tape."

 

Trent huffed out a little laugh, but he couldn't quite think of it that way. This "enemy" was his own country's legal system, which was somehow intended to protect.

 

He needed to trust. He needed to have faith in the process and in the Navy. They'd always had his back before, and he'd had theirs. They wouldn't leave him in a lurch now, not him and not his child. His father had fought and died for his country. His uncle had fought. Trent had fought. Everything would be okay, eventually.

 

The other guys knew, of course. There weren't a lot of secrets a guy could keep, being in each other's pockets like this. Most of them were supportive, with a healthy side of good natured ribbing. Trent didn't begrudge them that. A few were less enthusiastic. Lupo, in particular, came down on the side of those who thought the child and Mal should stay where they were.

 

"Look," he said. "I love you, you're my brother, but I mean the law is the law. If they weren't about to lift a finger for my mom or my baby brother after my dad got deported, why should they do a damn thing for Mal and his baby?" He shook his head. "I like the guy, and I do appreciate everything he did for me, but I just don't see why the rules should be different for him than they were for my family."

 

Trent didn't have a comeback for that. He could understand, in theory, Lupo's feelings on the subject. He couldn't necessarily relate to them personally, and he didn't want to. The whole reason he was working to bring Mal and the baby over legally was so he didn't have to.

 

Naturally, the Navy decided to help things along by pulling the team back to Virginia only two days after Mal and Trent had their talk. Chief gathered them in a conference room near their barracks to break the news. "Men, we'll be shipping out to Virginia tonight. You've gotten exactly as much notice as I have. You know the drill. Be ready to go at seventeen hundred hours."

 

The news hit Trent like a sucker punch to the gut. He waited for the rest of the team to clear out, and then he approached the Master Chief. "Chief, what about Mal?"

 

Chief tilted his head, just a little bit. "What about him?"

 

"Well, we can't just leave him here." His hand twitched at his side. He couldn't imagine going back to the States without Mal beside him. He just couldn't. Maybe their first meeting hadn't gone all that well, but ever since their second, Mal had become a major center of Trent's life.

 

"We can and we will." Chief pressed his lips together. "We may not like it, but that's the job. You wouldn't be able to bring him with you on deployments from Virginia, either. We'll keep working to bring him home from the other side, don't you worry, but we will follow orders and we'll follow them to a T. In fact, it's even more important right now that we follow orders and give them nothing to hold over our heads. More importantly, it's imperative we follow orders and give them nothing to hold over his head. Do you understand?"

 

Trent sighed. "Yes, Chief. I understand."

 

"All right. Good man." Chief patted his chest. "You're dismissed. Go to your boy. Explain what's going on. Make sure you've got a way to keep in touch with him, and make sure he's got what he needs to keep in touch with you. We're not going to let a little thing like the end of this deployment stop us."

 

"No, Chief." Trent scrounged up a grin and a salute and took off.

 

Mal was home when Trent got there, and he knew something was wrong right away. "You're never here this early." He sucked in his cheeks. "You're shipping out."

 

"What, you're psychic now?" Trent scratched his head.

 

"Just able to string two thoughts together." Mal snorted and let Trent inside. "I knew this would happen." He slumped his shoulders in defeat. "It was foolish to think it wouldn't."

 

"Well, it is part of the job. I'm a SEAL. Shipping out is what I do." He stroked Mal's face. "And when you make it to Virginia, I'm still going to be doing it."

 

Mal glared at the wall for a minute. Were they about to have another argument? Trent knew his lover had a hard time with the idea of leaving his current lifestyle behind. "Forgive me if I'm not feeling particularly confident at the moment."

 

"Yeah, well." Trent couldn't argue with that. He wasn't feeling all that confident himself, but he couldn't let Mal see. The guy hadn't had hope in a long time, maybe not in forever. Trent had to give Mal something to hang onto while he was gone. "It doesn't look great at the moment, but you know me and Chief are going to be working on this no matter where we are."

 

Mal screwed up his face. "Why would Chief be involved?"

 

Trent blinked. "I'm one of his men. We all help each other out."

 

"Okay, but won't this cause a problem for him? I don't want to get him into trouble. Or you," Mal added, "but you're kind of tied up in this."

 

Trent grinned. "It's America, not Stalinist Russia. It's going to be fine. We'll exhaust all of the possibilities we can find, okay? And we'll track down everything we can find. But we need to be able to stay in touch."

 

Mal nodded, and then he blushed. "That's a new one for me. Usually I'm trying to stay out of touch. It makes me too easy to track." He laughed a little bit. "It's such a weird thing to get used to."

 

"I can't even imagine. I'm used to covering my tracks, but that's a little extreme." Trent ruffled Mal's hair, and they made sure to exchange contact information.

 

Then Mal did something Trent didn't expect. He set Trent up with another account, a secret account he said couldn't be tracked or traced. "For my own peace of mind, keep anything sensitive on this account, okay? Use the other one to prove a relationship if that's what you're trying to do, but keep anything you wouldn't want your worst enemy to see on this account."

 

Trent committed the account and password to memory, although it seemed a bit odd to him. "Don't you think you're being paranoid here? We're lovers and parents to be. We're not super spies."

 

"I kind of am, remember? And something about this whole White Dawn thing has me very uncomfortable. I'm having trouble tracing the money, which is frustrating as all hell, but it seems bizarre that this organization could be as big and as violent as it is and neither of our bosses has heard of them before." He made a face. "Let's just try to be careful."

 

Trent still thought Mal was being ridiculous, but Mal knew more about this type of security than he did. And Mal might have a point. Organizations didn't get that big without showing up on someone's radar. How did the FBI not know about them, for example?

 

They made love one last time before Trent had to go. It seemed a little cliché to Trent, but he didn't want to pass up what might have been his final opportunity to bury himself inside of Mal and forget about the rest of the world for a while. They dispensed with the condom, because the horse was already out of the barn, and spent an hour committing every inch of each other's body to memory.

 

Trent returned to base, and packed up his few possessions. SEALs traveled light, for obvious reasons, but he'd picked up a couple of knickknacks here and there while they were in Souda Bay. At seventeen hundred hours they took their last meal on shore, then boarded ship. Their time in Greece was over.

 

The ship would take about a week to get to Norfolk. Trent and the rest of the SEALs helped out on board as much as they could, but the crew was a well-oiled machine and most of their job consisted of not getting in the way. Trent had a lot of time to think about Mal and everything he was missing about his time in Souda.

 

Mal was such a study in contradictions. He was brilliant, but had never

set foot in a school. He was strong and determined, but he couldn't see a life for himself outside of the Wolves. He'd sat around and dreamed of a life in Virginia with Trent, but as their gray ship sped toward Norfolk, Trent wondered how much Mal believed and how much he'd just been indulging Trent.

 

The week stretched out, an endless march of blue skies, swelling seas, and seamless days. The SEALs trained as best they could on board ship, but the close quarters and limited space left all of them chafing at their confinement. By the time Norfolk was in sight, Trent was ready to kiss the ground.

 

From Norfolk, they boarded a van to take them back to Virginia Beach. Once in Virginia Beach they debriefed, and went through a medical debrief as well. Then they were released.

 

Trent was home.

 

He got into his Jeep and drove the short distance to his condo. He didn't live on base. A lot of guys did, and that was fine for them. Trent had gotten a place in his uncles' complex. He wanted a place near them, just in case, and he wanted a place where he could retreat from military life.

 

The condo wasn't much. His uncles had sold the house where they'd raised Trent and his cousin after Jimmy had graduated from college, on the grounds they didn't need so much space and they were getting old enough that they didn't want to have to maintain a full-sized house. It was enough for Trent, and if it was going to be just him and Mal he suspected it would be enough for him too.

 

Mal would probably be okay with Trent’s condo. A guy who thought squatting in abandoned hotels without electricity or running water probably wouldn't turn up his nose at a two-bedroom condo with two bathrooms and an updated kitchen. At the same time, they were going to have a baby. Maybe it was time to look into something a little bigger.

 

Maybe Trent was putting the cart before the horse.

 

He slung his duffle bag into a corner of his condo. He dug his service weapons out and stowed them in his gun safe. Then, he stripped down and took a good, long shower. He'd showered on board, and even in Souda, but Trent had a ritual he performed every time he came home from a deployment. He locked up his guns, and then he took a shower.

 

He couldn't really wash away everything from the deployment. He couldn't scrub off the memory of seeing Lupo take that bullet, or of watching Baudin go down the way he had. All the soap in the world wouldn't erase the feeling of Baudin struggling under Trent's hands while Mal dug the bullet out of his shoulder. Trent could pretend, though. He could go through this ritual, this almost magical rite of purification, and the memories would somehow be stored in the back of his mind. He could crawl into his oversized, indulgent bed and let the memory foam mattress soothe him without jerking awake six times as memories overtook him.

 

Some guys drank. Some guys used drugs. Some guys lashed out against family members. Some guys sought relief in anonymous sex. Trent showered. Everyone had his own way of dealing. Trent's might be seen as healthier, but it was just another coping mechanism. He knew it, and he didn't care. As long as he woke up healthy and ready to do it all again tomorrow, that was what mattered to him.