LONDON CALLING

Ruby head the bang and ran into the other room " WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?" She shouted to him as she walked over and with Andrew as they helped him back into the chair " you trying to kill your self?" she looked down at him. now more angry he'd done something so stupid " reckless does not suit you Angus" she told him as she stepped back from the chair and looked at him " Robert told you ti would come back in small stages, don't push it." She paused and spoke again " Im agrey enough for the both of us, I want to be out finding those kids, but I can't becuse I was fucking taught by the mole who knows our training style I would be as good as a fish out of water, it would be as if I never trainned and wasted all those months ." she told him " thats what Im angry about, not you being unable to walk, yes I can see it on your face every time you look at me , you think your not good enough for me, you listen here , you are the only man for me..ever, I get mad, I get upset, I get quiet. gods Im human, a pregant human with screwed up emotions right now who dosn't know if shes coming or going." she told him " now, I have a kitchen filled with hungry men and women to feed and you have to get those kids home to their familys, so we can go home and have ours."

Walking back to the kitchen she paused taking a shaky breath in as she held her self together. Jack looked up as he peeled the last potato and dropped it into a large pan. " okay, pan on stove right?" he asked and she nodded " remind me not to mess with you while your pregnat" he said placing teh pan on teh stove and starting it to boil.

"half the time I don't know what Im doing Jack" she told him and sat on a stool.

"right now you should be cooking." he sid Ruby chuckled as she looked up at simone.

"Im scared Im losing him, ether that or my mind right now." she lowered her head as she sighed " Im not my brother, I am stronger than him, I listen to him I think theres more than just me, theres us."

Angus was livid with Ruby, the first time he could remember of being that angry with her. He pushed his chair out of the office and into the kitchen.

"Angus," Andrew was trying to intervene along the way. He didn't want Angus saying something he didn't mean or something that couldn't be undone. Angus wasn't listening.

"You don't get to blast me and just run off," Angus said. "That's bullshit, Ruby. I didn't tell you you had to stay back. I told you to go. I defended you, if you remember correctly, that you needed a fair chance to prove yourself. I suggested you go but that you just bloody used your head and were careful. You're the one who decided to stay back. Did you expect me to not remind you of the danger you could be in if you went out blindly, not remembering that you spent time with someone who wasn't who they said they were? Fine. And do stop blaming your mood on your pregnancy. That doesn't have anything to do with this. You blamed me for your not getting to go do field work, but I didn't even attempt to stop you. I bloody believed in you! You didn't believe in yourself, so go! Go! If you want to go, go! As a matter of fact, I think you and Jack should just..."

"Angus," Nigel said in a firm voice, taking hold of the wheelchair, "come with me. We need to talk--mission commander business." He spun the wheelchair around and took him out of the kitchen. "Wait here, Andrew. I want a word alone with Angus."

Ruby stood and listened to Angus as he ranted at her now she was fuming. Taking the knife she held she threw it at the door frame , it hit home and dug in deep as they drew level with it. " IS THAT SOME ONE WHO CAN'T LOOK AFTER HER SELF, I HAVE LOOKED AFTER MYSELF AND TWO KIDS BEFORE I MET YOU MR DONOHUE." She said turning so he could not see her tears as he walked out the door to the garden and sat down among the bushes to cry. She looked back at the house nd wondered if she should return or leave as he had said it was now she relizws her axiaty ws getting the beter of her nd she took a deep breath in to clear her mind she would not go rouge. She remembered Roberts words and so she staid put sat among the bushes a little longer . 

Now as she felt the rain start to fall, she stood up and brushed her self down , waking back in she continued to hand out the food for the workers while Jack helped Jess make first aid kits down in the sick bay, but one thing was for sure she would not go near Angus just yet and she would not leave her post.

Angus was only angrier. Her retort to him, seeming to only blame him more, seeming to apparently accuse him of not believing she could look after herself, infuriated him. She hadn't apparently heard one stinking thing he had said. He had been the one that had believed she could do this. He had been the one that had recommended that she go out in the field. He had encouraged her. And she was now believing that he had somehow said she couldn't look after herself. Where the eff had she gotten the notion that she couldn't look after herself? He'd never made any suggestion of any kind that he didn't think she could. She wasn't making any effing sense. Two kids? What two kids was she talking about? Her brothers? Was that it? If she wanted that back to herself, if that was what this was about, he'd sign off on his part of the temporary custody and she could just take care of it. He had no idea what she was on about or why she was blaming him with it, but she bloody needed to get over herself.

Everything he had done lately, he had done it for her. The house, her father and all that had ended up involving, her brothers, all of it. And, for some mad reason, she had the balls to accuse him of thinking she couldn't take care of herself? And she could toss up in his face that before she met him she apparently was taking care of her brothers just fine? He didn't know why she was throwing those arrows at him, but that had f-ing hurt. He had defended her, and how had she responded? Wounding. Screw it. He didn't need the organization if that was what this was going to cause him. He should have let Robert command this raid in the first place.

He knew one thing. The moment Robert checked back in, Angus was going to turn command over to him, and he was leaving Paris. He was done commanding this nightmare the moment he could turn it over to its rightful commander. He was done. Done, done, done. He needed to think, and that might mean that for one night, he needed some distance from her.

Ruby stopped and passed over the handing out of food to the others to some oen else. Walkign over to Simone she tapped her shoulder can you take care of the kitchen "she asked " I need a break," she said and headed at first to the main room where she knew Angus would be her hand went to the door handel. Part of her knew he had been right and part of her knew she could do her job but she also knew she needed to give him space , just as she needed and she turned towards the single womens room.

Finding a bunk she wrote a note and sent it to Angus
. "I'm sorry, I'll sleep in with the single women tonight, thought you could use the space, love Ruby" folding it into a bird she set it off to teh main office and lay down her back to the doorway.

Robert and Lee stopped back because it was getting towards dusk. They both needed to rest a bit, get a bite of food and get prepared for the night's work. Angus had gotten Ruby's note, but he had had to try to focus in on the mission and keep the teams coordinated, keep the information gathered. He believed that now, most of the children had been moved to the warehouses in preparation for the evening's auction.

Nigel had a quiet word with Robert, and Robert went to the captains office and asked Andrew to take a break for a moment. Robert shut the door and sat down with Angus. Angus was drained, and they had hours to go.

"What happened?" Robert asked Angus quietly.

"I can't do this tonight," Angus told him.

"Don't start endwise. Start at the beginning and tell me the facts," Robert told him.

"I don't want you to think bad of Ruby or..."

"What I think about anybody is my own choice. Give me the facts," Robert repeated. Angus relayed the facts as he knew them to be, and even then he wasn't sure they were the facts. He had no faith that how he saw it was how it really was. Angus tried to resign from the organization, and Robert asked him to hold on that just for a short bit. Angus wanted to leave Paris, didn't want to finish this mission, but Robert needed him just where he was. He asked again, for Angus to hold on for just a bit longer. Then he went to the single women's quarters and knocked on the door and opened it. He found Ruby there and went in.

"Give me your facts, Ruby," Robert told her quietly. "It affects this mission, so I want the facts."

Ruby heard the knock and saw Robert enter she stayed on the bed. Watching him she spoke softly about how she felt "He says I can scout, great feild expiriance, but then he says they know our fighting technique so that made me feel like all my training was waisted becuse of the shapeshifter and make me an easy target, hes telling me both sides and its confusing, do I scout or not , so I decided to stay and helped in the kitchen, but it feels like he dosn't fully trust me to know when to back off a situation in the feild. Then Im out in the garden and he tries to stand and falls, if Andrew hadn't have caught him he would have hit the deck and yes that scared me more than anything out there" she said looking at the blanket she sighed and spoke agian " yes, I shouted at him, only coz he scared me, it as then I'd decided to stay and help in the kitchen, not much I could do out there anyway becuse as he said I know these alleys too well and so will be spotted so would Jack, oh um.. I kinda threw a knife at the door frame as he was leaving, didn't hit him, but I realy need to control my anger, and no Im not like Jessie, im scared Im going to lose him like my perents and Jessie and I don't want that, ever, I don't want him to hurt himself becuse of me, I want to be of use." she lay down and faced him.

"Ruby, Ruby, Ruby," Robert sighed, realizing he was sounding more parental than he had intended. "I did talk to Angus to get his view on things. So, allow me to compare notes for one moment. And part of this, I was there for, remember? I heard him remind you that part of your training was done by Gelding's shapeshifter. I don't think you entirely got the message he was intending to send. He was trying to tell you to put the skills you had to use but to use your own head and do your own thinking and not to simply put blind trust in the lessons you got from the shapeshifter. Angus already knows you had other training as well. Do you think, for even a fraction of a second, that if he had thought you were not equipped that he would have sent you out in the field? He told you to go. Never once did he even remotely imply that you should remain behind. I myself, with my own very human ears, heard him say you had earned the right to prove yourself. He defended your qualifications to go, so I'm not sure where you think he's saying that your training was wasted. Any information you get from an enemy has potential to be valuable if you use it in the right way. And he certainly knows that.

"He can stand. He can do that now. He can't walk yet, but he can stand. That was not his best choice to try that today, I'll grant you, but Andrew was there, and Nigel and Jess were both in the house. That's a separate issue, and I touched on that with him. I have no doubt that discussion will continue but probably not tonight. Tonight we have work to do.

"Absolutely no more throwing knives in anybody's direction--period. For someone you don't want to lose, throwing a knife in their direction is a piss poor way to show it. Your anger is not the biggest problem. Your largest problem is, as I see it, two fold. First, your anxiety runs away with you. And second, you try to defend yourself against people and things that are already on your side and in your corner. Think for one minute. The thought that your training was pointless was absolutely not in anything he said. That was a conclusion you drew yourself from what you thought he said, and that wasn't what he said at all. He said he tried to explain that to you, and you responded with something that sounds to me like it was just twaddle about how you could take care of yourself and two kids. What in the world did that have to do with anything? He was telling you how much he believed in you, and you responded by shouting at him and telling him that you could take care of yourself, and then you tossed a knife at him."

"I am not going to tell you that you can't work in the field. I do wish I could take your stuck little brain out of your head and give it a good scrub to get some of these stuck notions washed out of it once and for all and then put your brain back in, but I haven't figured out how to do that. All I can tell you is that I really, really wish you would stop saying we don't want you in the field. Just stop it."

"In the meantime, whatever I decide about Angus is between me and Angus."

Ruby sat and listened to Robert talking, she just sat listening once he was done she sat quite looking at him. What else could she say he'd said it all so elequently to her. She simply sat up on the bed and looked at him "I get it and yes I raised my brothers from young, thats what I ment becuse my perents as you know didn't care, no Im not taking them away from Angus they need a stable home and as for getting my..shit together, I understand I over reacted." She stood up and walked to the doorway "Please tell Angus Im sorry." she said waiting for him to leave the room.

Once Robert had left she headed down the stairs and out to the main garden where she sat among the flowers. Roberts words echoing in her hed as she sat thinking. She'd done it this time with Angus but she could at least see the mission to its end then try and make right with him.

Robert went back and talked with Angus, trying to re-establish some confidence in Angus that he was qualified for this mission and that he was where he belonged. It had taken Robert awhile because Angus had been fairly shaken by it. He wasn't sure what would have possessed her to throw a knife in his direction. Even in a blind rage, he would have never raised a hand, much less a weapon towards her. That had truly hurt, and it had made him wonder if he really did know her enough.

He was realizing that no matter how together they were, she was going to choose to see the world through a lens of being alone. That was apparently what she had meant about raising her brothers alone. She hadn't yet had confidence they could be a pair. If she didn't believe in that, what were they having a baby for? What were they marrying for? How was that going to change such a fundamental issue of trust? If the trust wasn't there, then binding themselves together even tighter wasn't going to solidify that.

Robert urged Angus not to make any decisions right now while he was still surprised at her reactions. He worked side by side with Angus to firm up the plan for the night's raid. Angus had tried again to resign, and Robert rejected it. He needed Angus.

When the plan was in place, Robert summoned all the field agents in, left the intel agents in the field in case there were more movements. He explained to the team that Angus was really tired and Robert had asked him to rest. Robert said that while Angus regained some of his energies, Robert had agreed to brief them all on the plan for the raid. Angus and Robert that they believed the children had been all moved to the warehouses. They wanted to raid the warehouses and the event venue all that the same time and get the children out and back to headquarters. Robert believed they needed to take out the warehouses if they could do so without risking children or agents either one. Robert had been crystal clear. He wanted any agent who could be part of the raid to go along and rescue kids and bring them back to headquarters. He was leaving Simone and Nigel, for certain, to help route kids to where they needed to be, but anyone else who was physically capable of going, needed to go along to rescue the kids.

While Robert was doing that, Andrew had taken Angus next door to the captain's office to the captain's quarters so that Angus could get out of the wheelchair for a bit and stretch out on the bed there and close his eyes for awhile.