Scavenged Restoration 2 (Patreon)

Commissioned by RoyalTwinFangs

Scavenged Restoration

Chapter 2

-VB-

In an ironic twist of fate, I found myself raised from being a person non grata under house arrest to becoming the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation. 

That did not meant that the lessons I’ve learned before my house arrest and during it did not magically disappear because I became the Chancellor. I’ve never stopped learning in part because that was the only thing I could do.

And my first official act as the Chancellor was also a familial matter. I reached out to Candace. 

In a stunning turn of events, the woman who became the heir of the Capellan Confederation after our little brother’s fuck-up now found herself in my previous position: under house arrest and turned into a person non grata for having unwittingly married a Davion dog. 

Worse, she refused to renounce her marriage, because, despite everything, she loved him. 

She also loved her people and the nation. It’s why she’s been trying her hardest, sometimes in hands with me before my house arrest, to improve the people’s lives within the Capellan Confederation. 

Candace sat across from me in her own home in Sian, having been unable to escape Maskirovka while her “husband” did. Which was also weird, because Candace and Justin didn’t marry until after the Fourth Succession War in the canon timeline (I think?), so having to deal with their marriage before the outbreak of the war was … 

Like I thought to myself before, I didn’t expect to live this long with my megalomaniac father and paranoid, murderous littlest sister. 

I wondered if this was because of my existence. I didn’t exist in the “real” Battletech timeline. Could my presence have led to her relaxing more and not having to worry about the confederation like she did in the canon timeline and thus gave more thoughts about her love life? 

I don’t know. 

All I knew right now was that she had been told about Justin’s double agent nature and still refused to renounce her marriage. 

And she looked … dead. Tired. Depressed. 

Betrayed. 

I waited for her to talk. What she needed right now was someone who’ll be with her when it looked like everyone had abandoned her. 

“It started off innocuously, you know?” she asked me. 

“Hmm.”

She finally leaned back into the back of the sofa she sat on. Her normally bunned hair fell down her shoulders in a disheveled mess. When I had asked the officer in charge of her house arrest, I got a report about … this. 

It’s part of the reason why I came to see her personally. 

She was family and deserved at least the little support I could give her. That’s the least I could do after she was there for me at the start of my house arrest. 

If I had to describe her, then she was the Capellan Azula. Proud, stiff-necked, and convinced of the Confederation’s superiority… But with less arrogance and more humility. Cold and calculating when she needed to be, deeply thoughtful and gentle even when she didn’t need to be. 

But her world had been shattered so utterly that there wasn’t any chance of recovery any time soon. 

“How did it come to this…?” she muttered out loud from her barely moving lips. 

Yes, how did it come to this? It’s been a week since the coronation and I still found myself questioning my reality like I did when I was reborn. I also felt for my sister’s situation. I mean… she wasn’t the first one in the family who lost someone they loved. 

A part of my house arrest was because I nearly tried to kill dad for killing my secret lover. Man, that’s like … a decade ago. I’ve basically aged a decade in jail. God, that’s a long waste of time.

“Is this what you felt when dad stuck you in your house?” 

“... Pretty much,” I replied quietly as I took a sip of the tea her only servant got us. “At least you know he’s alive, even if it is on the run.”

“I know. I know. I … I just …”

I glanced at the servant who’s been waiting quietly in the corner. I gestured for them to leave and she did. Then I gestured to the hidden guards, and they also left, leaving us completely alone. 

“We’re alone now.”

It took a while but her tense body loosened up. And a single trail of tears fell. 

“He didn’t do it.”

I knew what she was talking about. “I know,” I replied. “The jumpship was a freak accident, and the Maskirovka already determined that he’s not the one who caused it. But he was a Fed Sun spy all the same. Bastard son of their MIIO, in fact.”

“... So?”

I glanced at her. “I’m sure he snuck a few documents here and there. I don’t care about that,” I replied. “I’m more concerned about you.”

“Me?” she laughed. “I’m now someone worse off than you were,” she said as she finally straightened herself. “You were mad with grief and tried to kill dad in your madness. I’m someone who gave her body to a Fed Sun spy.”

I blinked. “Well… Are you pregnant?”

She froze.

“I ain’t asking you to get an abortion. Calm down,” I snapped. “As if I would ever ask that of family when it’s just us two left now.”

She slowly relaxed again. 

“So you are pregnant, huh?”

“Yeah…”

“How far along?”

“Three months.”

“Three months? Jesus, you know how to keep your figure.”

For the first time, I saw mirth on her face. It wasn’t the kind I wanted to see, but it was mirth all the same. “Never ask a noble lady her secrets.”

I huffed. 

“Also, language. You’re drifting toward that wicked street-level language.”

“Yes, mom,” I drawled at her. 

She snorted. Not long after, that mirth disappeared, replaced by the previous tiredness. “So what are you doing here visiting a lady who has no future left.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Says who?”

“Last time a noble lady hung out with a Davion spy, she was executed.”

“Do you think I will do that to my own sister?” I asked her curiously. 

“No. You’re too soft. But … Aunt Ling might.”

“Over my dead body,” I told her directly. “She knows how I feel about family. If she kills you, then I’ll kill myself to spite her and plunge the confederation into irrecoverable chaos.”

That snapped her out of it. “You wouldn’t dare -!” she hissed as she shot up from the sofa. 

I smiled. 

She froze. 

“Remember what I was called?”

She looked at me like I was a snake as she slowly sat back down. “Crazy Will.”

Our dad wasn’t the Liao they called crazy. I was also called crazy, though for a very different reason. I wasn’t crazy because I was insane like dad. I was called crazy because once I decided on something, I would go as far as I could possibly go with it not because of duty or responsibility but because “I made the decision, I’m going to see it through, and who the fuck are you to tell me to stop?”

My incessant attempt at improving the confederation, despite the constant sabotage, was one such decision, and it took being physically restrained to a single house under house arrest and the threat of executing random civilians in front of me to stop me. 

Yeah, it took a lot to stop me. 

I set the teacup down. “So!” I grinned. “I came to ask if you were up for a task at improving the Capellan Confederation.”

She stared at me and then broke out into laughter. “You don’t change, do you?” she asked me even as her laughter refused to die down. “Even after being locked up for ten years and no one coming to help you, you still want to change the confederation?!” 

I smiled, even if her loud laughter and disheveled appearance made her seem like a woman gone mad, because that couldn’t be further from the truth. She and Tormano were the most sane out of us. Dad, Rom-Bitch, and I … we were the crazy ones. 

Maybe that’s why Rom-Bitch felt so threatened by me. Maybe the Capellan Confederation has an unwritten rule about either the best of the best or the most insane Liao becoming the Chancellor or something. 

“So are you willing to help?” I asked her. 

“Even though I am considered a threat to national security?” she asked me with a wistful smile. 

“Maybe to the status quo’s security, but you love the Capellans too much to truly betray me and the confederation,” I replied easily. Even though she would, in the future canon timeline, break away St. Ives Commonality from the Capellan Confederation and cause a lot of trouble. Even then, she didn’t hold onto power for the sake of power and immediately sought peace when she calculated (correctly) that her fledgling state could not win against the confederation. 

What she wanted wasn’t power. 

But it was specifically because of that I could not trust her with any position of vast importance. While she would fight, she lacked the tenacity that the rest of the family had. That wasn’t to say that she lacked tenacity at all; keeping a state functioning between two Great Successor States required some intense level of it. 

But if Romano had been in her position, then she would have fought to the very last planet or her death, whichever came first. 

“What is your proposal?” she asked me after a long silence. “Obviously, if I don’t like it, then I won’t be working under you, brother.”

“Of course,” I hummed. I snapped my fingers, and one of my personal bodyguards came in holding a suitcase. He knelt on one knee next to the table between us and opened the suitcase on his other knee. He pulled the papers out, closed the suitcase, then stood up and bowed, and finally left expediently. 

“... Dad would have had him executed for not showing enough deference.”

“Good thing I’m not dad,” I grunted before gesturing to the papers. 

She took a packet and read it. “Paper in this day and age,” she hummed. “You are still so old-fashioned.”

“Sue me,” I scoffed. 

“I’d rather not. You would have better lawyers while I would have sharks looking for prestige,” she shot back. “... Are you serious about this?” she asked me with a glare. 

“Yes,” I told her. Then paused. “Actually, what does the top of the papers say?”

“Plan 1863.”

“Ah, yes. That one. Yes, I very much plan to make it a reality. I am a firm believer that regulation has to be moderated, lest too much or too few freedoms leads to ruin.”

Her look softened a little before her gaze turned back to the papers. 

“... I would very much like to take charge of this plan,” she whispered. 

“Just that one?” I asked her with a smile. “I’ve got half a dozen plans you could take charge of.”

She sighed. “Why must you bother me in my time of mourning?” she asked me with just a sliver of a mournful tone. 

“What? I can’t see my sister after a year?” I asked with a huff. 

“Please!” she let out a bark. Approaching forty, she may be, but even then, she was still beautiful in a way that girls a decade younger than her would not be able to match. “I don’t want to hear that kind of sentimentality from you. You might love our family, but you aren’t one for emotions. Don’t you remember? You chose to improve the people’s lives because that was the most logical and reasonable way to improve the state of the Capellan Confederation.”

“And am I wrong?” I asked her pointedly. 

“No,” she sighed. “But it wouldn’t hurt to put some sincere love of your people into your words.”