Quaranteam: Aisling's Antics - Ch. 10 (final) (Patreon)

Part Ten – “An Army of Battle-Hardened Bitches”

December 23rd, 2020

Fiona was glad to be home from the trip, and Ash certainly seemed to echo the sentiment. The last week had been difficult and challenging in nearly every sense of the word, between dealing with her parents, as well as the gunshot outside of one of the signings. There had been highlights as well – meeting Andy’s nephew, meeting Niko’s mother, seeing Andy reunited with one of his writing friends as a surprise, as well as the look on Andy’s face when he’d gotten a chance to meet one of his heroes, Ewan McGregor – but the trip had done such a number on exhausting them as a group.

Her confrontation with her mother hadn’t been everything she’d hoped it would, but at least she’d gotten the chance to get everything off her chest, and she and her mother had come to some level of détente, because with the papal decree, Fiona knew her mom no longer had a leg to stand on regarding her outdated opinions of homosexuality and bisexuality.

The brides-to-be had coalesced into a much more cohesive group along the trip, having gotten better chances to bond as a smaller unit from the Team as a whole, and it had let them all grow closer to one another. The visit to Niko’s hometown had been especially enlightening, but each of the fiancées had had their moments along the trip, little snippets where two or three of them had shared something they could bond over.

It turned out Andy’s crazy idea for a trip hadn’t been so crazy after all.

As reckless as his ideas could seem at times, he generally had the best intentions at heart.

They’d all known that as soon as they got back to Rook Manor that they weren’t going to see Andy for a day or so as he took care of the needs of all his other partners who had been waiting dutifully at the Manor for their turn, so Fi wasn’t surprised to see Whitney pull him aside almost immediately, leading him into the manor for his first appointment.

Fi had taken a peek at Andy’s schedule for the next twenty-four hours and made a note that they should have a warm bath waiting for him both tonight and tomorrow night, although with tomorrow night being Christmas Eve, she wondered if Andy was just going to be up from tomorrow until Christmas morning.

“How you holdin’ up, Fi?” Ash asked her as the redhead ran into her in the hallway.

“Better than I was before we left, if I’m honest,” Fiona replied with a smile. “We got the whole thing with Emily good and buried, Piper’s brother doesn’t hate Andy, Andy’s nephew likes all of us, my mom is… trying…”

“Ah, you know how the older folk are with their clinging to religion, Fi,” Ash chuckled. “The world doesn’t change unless it has to, and now it has to. Infidelity’s definition is going to be wildly different for a whole generation. Give her time. It’s a lot to process all at once.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know…” Fi sighed. “I just wish it didn’t take an apocalypse for my mother to be okay with me liking girls as well as boys.”

“One step at a time.” She glanced over, watching Andy walking and talking with Mali and Emily before she sighed and turned to look back at Fi. “Shit. It didn’t take.”

“You can tell that just by looking at her?” Fi asked.

“Well, I’m sure I probably could’ve,” Ash grinned momentarily, “but I heard about it from Nicolette and Whitney, who’ve been doing their best to help her settle in while she’s still dealing with the pressure of having her late partner’s memory running through her every idle moment. You can just see the pain of it still on her face, though.” The smile had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “She’s still got more grief than joy. We’ll have to help her through that.”

Fi felt like she knew Ash well enough now to recognize the redhead was forming a plan of attack, starting to consider what to do, when and with whom. And Andy would be trying to help Mali with the issue as well, because that was just what Andy did for those in his orbit. Their problems were his problems, and he enjoyed helping people with problems. “We will, Ash,” Fi said in agreement. “We will.”

“God help him, though,” Ash said. “I looked at his schedule for today and tomorrow, and by the time we get to unwrapping Christmas presents, we may have to lift his arms for him. He’s got a lot of needs to tend to in a very short period.”

“I did try and warn him that maybe the trip was a little bit too long, but he didn’t want to skip any of the stops he’d mapped out.” To be fair, Fi wasn’t even sure which stop they really could’ve clipped off their little tour – NYC had given them the publicity push, Florida had let Piper see her family, Chicago had let Fi see hers, Ohio had let them all meet Andy’s nephew, South Dakota had let them meet Niko’s mom, Seattle had let them meet Andy’s old friend Larissa and Los Angeles had allowed a bunch of them to take a ton of meetings. She supposed they could’ve snipped off Denver, except the turn out for the signing they did there had been bigger than any other signing on the tour, and it felt like denying Andy that audience would’ve been a poor choice also.

“Apparently Hannah and Asha have taken up meditation to help them try and control the cravings,” Ash said with a giggle.

“Is it working?”

“Not one lick, but that’s because they figure they’re doing it wrong.”

“Are they?”

“Not really, but the two are so young and impulsive that it’s a little like showing a complex stage illusion to a house cat – what’s the point, really?” Ash smirked.

“Do we think Andy’s going to be okay?” Fiona asked.

“Well, I think he’s going to sleep through most of Christmas Day, but that’s probably okay,” Ash said. “We can’t have him burn the candle at both ends and not expect him to come through completely unburnt.”

“As long as he heals up in the end,” Fiona chuckled. “He’s the one who wanted to be gone from the house so long. You started thinking about your parts of the wedding yet?”

“A little bit,” Ash said as the two of them started to walk back down towards Ash’s studio. “I’m coming in to a Pogues song, I think, although maybe U2. I want something modern, but something definitely Irish. But it’s got to be something Andy likes as well. The last thing I want is him seeing me entering to some song he can’t stand, like Ed Sheeran or some shite.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Ash. Anyway, think we can finish up your portrait and the last bit of you telling me what happened before I got here?”

“Well, technically, you were here for this last part, just not conscious,” Ash said. “And yeah, we can do both. I’m nearly done with your part. Around the time you were showing up, shit was beginning to get a little bit out of hand, because you showed up the morning of the day we were interviewed by Katie Couric, and things couldn’t have gotten much crazier if they tried…”

* * * * * * * *

Andy was completely open about how he knew you and Moira, and he told us all the story of your relationship in college, how you both met Moira and your little tryst, but he didn’t know much about what happened to you post college, or at least that was his first story.

I’ve sort of put two and two together and figured out that while he didn’t keep close tabs on you after you both graduated, he did keep tabs on what you were working on, what stories you wrote, what sort of things you were reporting on and what was being reported about you. But he didn’t want to pry, and he didn’t dig into anything more than was on the page, so he didn’t know about Moira. When he was showing me all the stories of yours that he’d read over the years, I noticed that in your Doctors Without Borders story where you told us you met Moira again, you didn’t mention her by name, almost as if you wanted to keep that little detail private.

I don’t blame you.

Once Moira was here, well, Andy was willing to dig a little deeper while the rest of us in the house were busy getting ready for Katie Couric’s big damn interview. I’d tried to put the fear of God into the rest of the girls, because I could tell many of them weren’t taking the whole thing as seriously as we needed them to. This wasn’t the kind of thing any of us could half ass, and so while we were running around the Manor, cleaning up and making sure nothing was out of order, I was talking to each girl in turn, making sure she understood the sort of stakes we were going to be dealing with.

At first, everyone seemed to think this was going to be their moment in the spotlight, a chance to show off how pretty and happy they were in their new home, but when I took a few minutes to explain to them what sort of scrutiny we were going to be under, I could watch it dawn on them how little they’d thought about what sort of repercussions there could be if they didn’t take it seriously.

The first person I had to whip into shape was Taylor, who had made a crack about how we thought Katie Couric was going to react to hearing that she hadn’t been allowed to wear clothes after her arrival, but when Lauren and I pointed out that if Taylor mentioned that to anybody outside of the house, they might take Andy away from us, she went into an immediate panic attack, because she hadn’t really thought about it.

Five minutes later, after we’d gotten her to start breathing again, she made it absolutely clear to me and Lauren that she wasn’t going to tell another living soul about the punishment that Lauren had inflicted on her upon her arrival, even if it was with Andy’s consent.

Next, I took Lauren with me to go talk to Sheridan. At the time, Sheridan was debating on how her decision to get paired up with Andy would reflect on her sometimes employers at Cirque Du Soleil, and Lauren was worried that the 49ers wouldn’t look kindly on her appearance on 60 Minutes but for the last couple of days, I’d been sort of suggesting to the two of them that we shouldn’t be the kind of women who get nervous by what people think of us. Also, we were basically giving this interview at the request of the fucking President. Anyone who would give them shit about that would be up to their eyeballs in trouble from up on high.

The two had pretty much come to the decision on their own that they wanted to be part of the interview, but I think I gave them the final push to stop waffling about it. Either way, they resolved to make sure their presence was both heard and felt during the interview, because the last thing I wanted was the media having any possible excuse to throw Andy under the bus.

I know you’re part of the media, and so you have a positive view about most things they do, Fi, but I got the sense that part of the reason this article was happening was just in case they needed a scapegoat to pin things on, that maybe they were going to choose Phil, or maybe to lesser extent, Andy, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.

I’d called Linda to talk to her about how the interviews had gone, and she said that Katie Couric had been fair but certainly angling to figure out how the hell we’d gotten from there to here in such a short time frame. Phil, of course, had been totally prepared and hadn’t been caught off guard by a single question at any point during the interview. In fact, Linda even said he was surprised by the number of things Katie didn’t ask him about. But, as Phil had laughingly pointed out to Linda, it wasn’t his place to do Katie Couric’s job for her.

After speaking with Linda on the phone, I went to talk to the staff, and made sure they were okay with doing the whole thing, and to reassure them that they should be as candid as possible. Our Katie was still nervous about openly admitting that she was a lesbian who was still being regularly dosed by Andy, but when I asked her if Andy had ever forced himself upon her, she laughed and explained in some cases it had had to be the exact opposite, with Jenny insisting he take care of herself and Katie, leaving neither unsatisfied. I told Katie that would be a great story for air, and that she should go out of her way to make time to tell it on camera.

Past that was Tala and Jade, who Andy had also made a point to talk to, simply because they had just gotten here, and we were in the point of still figuring each other out, but Jade had come at Lauren’s recommendation, and Tala at Sheridan’s, so we felt like they would fit in fine, even if I really hadn’t gotten a chance to shake the trees all that much yet. There it felt best to let Andy set the tone. Besides, I had bigger fish to fry.

I’d saved Hannah and Asha for last, because I knew they were going to be an utter handful, and I wanted to have as much energy as possible to get them to bring it down a few notches, so I went up to their room, where they were busy getting ready, and I immediately knew I was going to have to have some serious words with them.

“Hannah, tell me you’re joking,” I said to her, seeing that she was in her cheerleading outfit from high school, the one she’d first arrived on our doorstep in. “You cannot wear that to the interview today.”

“Aww,” Hannah scowled. “Why not? I look super cute in it!”

“You look like jailbait,” I told her. “While that’s fine when you’re having romper time with Andy, you’re a college freshman, and you damn well ought to look like it. What do you think Katie Couric’s going to say if you show up dressed like that?”

“…nothing?”

I put my hands on my hips and tried to hide my Irish accent as much as possible to impersonate Katie Couric’s tone. “So, Hannah, does Andy make you dress up like that all the time or did he just tell you to do it for the interview?”

Hannah was about to snap back at me then sighed, nodding. “Shit, you’re right. It makes me look like I’m trying to act younger than I am.” She pulled off the cheerleading top and started going through her wardrobe. “Sorry, Ash, I just… I wanna make it clear how happy I am with all of you guys, and I fucking know that that reporter’s gonna try and make an issue out of mine and Asha’s age.”

Asha sniffed as if she was above it all. “Like I give a shit what some tabloid rag says about me.”

I continued on with my Katie Couric impersonation. “Asha, how does it feel to know your mother saddled you off with some man you hadn’t even been Oracle screened against because she didn’t like the man in question?”

“Hang on!” Asha said, wheeling around to point a finger at me. “That’s a bloody unfair characterization and… and… Shit, and I just took the goddamn bait, didn’t I?” She sighed and banged her fist against a wall. “Fuckin’ ‘ell!”

“We both spent a lot of time in the UK, Asha,” I told her. “Stop thinking about this like a BBC interview. It might be. If we’re lucky. But they could also be looking at us like a bunch of Page 3 girls who are barely educated enough to tell them why we’ve got our tits out to try and get famous, you understand? I’m looking out for everyone’s best interests here, not just the family’s but yours as well.”

“I thought this whole thing was about convincing the country that the Quaranteam project was a good thing, Ash,” Hannah said, holding up a Stanford t-shirt that I nodded in agreement to. Selling herself as a college co-ed was fine, but the last thing I wanted was her tarted up with the Lolita angle dialed to eleven. Andy would’ve been furious, and rightly so. He was already nervous enough about being asked how he felt about being paired up with actual teenagers, and the fact that neither of those teenagers had realized that in advance had me a bit worried.

“It is, but to do that, we can’t let her see any things that paint Andy in a majorly bad light.”

“Nobody’s bloody perfect, Ash,” Asha said to me as she was also reevaluating her wardrobe choices, going for a little less stridently slutty. “Andy’s human.”

“’Course he is, Asha, and we need to let those human parts show through. But you give a journo a meter of rope to hang you with, and they’ll have you swinging from a tree by sundown,” I said with a chuckle. “And Andy’s going to be judged not only by the actions that he’s taken but also the partners that he’s gained. How are you going to respond if Katie asks you if Andy’s too old for you?”

“I’ll tell her age is just a number, and that Andy’s been incredibly good to me, kind to me. He’s never once talked down to me, and he respects my ability to make my own decisions, but despite my youth, he still treats me like a woman, and there’s nothing sexier than that.”

I nodded a bit. “Good start. Hit home the family aspect. But be yourselves. Don’t try and lie about it. She’ll spot it if you do. She’s too good a reporter for that.”

“You make it sound like this is the inquisition, Ash,” Hannah said.

“Right now, this interview is the most important thing you’ll ever do, Hannah,” I told her. “You need to convince not only Katie Couric, but the entire fucking world that you’re good for Andy, that Andy’s good for you, that you make Andy happy, that he makes you happy and that you aren’t at all bothered by the age gap. I imagine she’s going to pull the two of you aside for a private interview, based on your ages, and try to use that to get you to say that things could be better, or that Andy is only like 40-50% of what you want out of a man.”

Hannah came over and grabbed my wrist, taking my hand in hers. “Ash. Andy has been fucking amazing to me since I got here. He’s treated me like an adult, but he’s also helped me make smarter decisions. He’s been a great fuck, and on those rare occasions when I’ve gotten sad spells, he’s put his arms around me and just held me while I had a good cry. I know you think I’m too young to understand it yet, but I’m pretty sure I love the fucking guy, okay? So I won’t do you wrong.”

I let out a very deep sigh before I looked into her eyes. “Okay, look, Hannah. I get that it may feel that way, but you’re young.”

“I—”

“Hang on, and let me say my peace first, Hannah, then you can lay into me. When you’re young, everything feels… overwhelming. Your friendships, your fears, your loves… but as you get older and you start to figure out what you want to do with your life, you start to refine your tastes, and they may change, and Andy may not thrill you like he used to. If that happens, we’ll have to keep an eye out for a way to get you reassigned that doesn’t involve his death. If not, then you just need to decide what it is you really want to do with your life. Andy’s my number one priority. Getting married to him is going be the greatest moment of my life, only to get topped by giving him a kid. And after that? I just gotta love him as strong and hard as I can, to make sure we don’t go crazy with the world going nuts around us. I have a feeling we haven’t even begun to see the rough times yet, and Andy’s a damn fine man, but he is too trusting by half, and he’s going to need someone watching out for him. You wanna get in on that dream, you can, but I’m not gonna let anyone in who aims to half-ass it, you hear? The other women he’s getting married to, I’ve taken the measure of them. Niko’s already as committed as I am; the rest’ll come around, give or take. I’m going to love him as hard as I can for the rest of my life. Are you absolutely ready to say the same?”

I watched Hannah stop and think, I mean really think, for maybe the first time in her life, as she had to consider what I’d laid in front of her. She was used to running at a million miles a minute, and there I was, asking her to stop and still for just one moment to consider what her next move was going to be. I don’t think she’d ever met anyone who’d given her pause like that, told her to slow down and look before she leaped. Everyone else caught up in her puppy dog energy, they just got swept along with her.

“I wanna be a doctor, Ash,” Hannah said to me. “I wanna be a smart enough doctor that I understand everything that this serum has done to us. You, me, Andy… every last one of us. But I don’t want to sacrifice being a major part of his life to make that happen. So I guess I want two things, and I’m not going to give up either, no matter what you or anyone else tells me. I’m gonna be a damn good doctor. And I’m gonna keep Andy as the center of my world. After college, if I still feel this way, I’ll ask him to marry me, but you’re right, I need to wait until then to be sure I’ve got a handle on everything. I need to grow up a bit more. And I’m gonna have some fun while I’m in college. But mark my words, Ash, I’m gonna be one of Andy’s wives with you eventually, okay? I’m gonna grow into being one of your partners. So keep that in mind. I’m not there yet. But I’m coming.”

I think that was the moment I finally got a good glimpse of the insanely smart mind she hides behind all that energy.

She’s going to get there, I’m pretty sure of that. But it was enough that I felt comfortable she understood how important the interview was going to be. And she would help keep Asha from getting too far into the weeds, even if Katie Couric asked too many smart questions.

That left only Katie herself.

I knew that Katie Couric was definitely going to pull Niko and I aside, since we were here since the beginning, and I knew that Katie Couric had an expectation that she could find a story beyond the one she was being handed on a silver platter.

When Ms. Couric arrived, I let Andy go down on his own to talk to her first while I considered my plan of attack. I swung by Emily as I heard Andy letting Katie in. “Remember, Em,” I told her quietly. “Treat this as a hostile interview. Don’t fall for her ‘gosh gee whiz’ schtick. She’s probing us for weaknesses.”

“I will entertain your paranoia, Aisling, but I suspect you ascribe malice where there is none to be found,” she told me. “You be on the lookout as well.”

After the group interview, most of which you saw in some form or another in the special, Katie Couric broke down to do individual interviews. She interviewed Hannah and Asha first, just to try and get a teenager’s point of view, then Sarah and Emily together, before she took her turn to interview me mostly by myself, since Niko felt like she’d said everything she needed to during their tour of the base or during the group interview.

I remember sitting down in the room across from Katie Couric, holding my breath, wondering where the hell we were going to go with this. Niko was sitting off to the side, just in case she felt like she needed to jump in. “So, Ms. Blake,” Katie said to me, “are you truly happy with Andy Rook?”

“Katie, I’m only going to say this once, so let’s not make a big thing of it,” I told her. “I’m in love with Andy Rook and if I find you’re trying to do him wrong, I will utterly destroy you. I don’t make idle threats, so don’t fuck with me, journo.”

Katie laughed at first, then saw the look in my eyes, and realized I wasn’t quite the pushover she might have taken me for at first. I sort of expected Katie to think I was just a pretty face who was bubbly and happy-go-lucky, but Andy and I were paired together, I suspect, strongly on the fact that I’m a stubborn, willful girl who’s going to make sure shit’s getting done the way it’s supposed to be.

You probably haven’t seen Andy’s Oracle profile, but I talked to Phil about it once, trying to understand how Andy got such a wild and diverse collection of women, and Phil told me that Andy’s top attractive qualities are: Smart, Capable and Resourceful, in that order. Physical beauty’s down the scale quite a bit. That’s why we didn’t really get any brainless model types, even though Andy could’ve easily gotten those, what with his ranking. But they wouldn’t have made him happy.

And yeah, I know a bunch of Andy’s women went through the Oracle system later on, but Phil said Andy pretty much stayed to type, even with requesting people’s friends. Those requests went through the Oracle system anyway, because Phil’s always looking out for Andy, and they all came back 80% or higher. Phil ascribes it to “intelligent design” rather than just “good luck,” and that design’s courtesy of Andy, me and Niko.

So when Katie Couric glanced at me and thought I might as well be a yoga instructor preaching the benefits of a kale smoothie, I knew I had shut that shit down as fast as possible.

“You might think a Team this large just gets along because it has to, Ms. Couric, but I can assure you, there’s plenty of work that goes on behind the scenes, keeping everything smoothed, just making sure nobody’s getting petty about not getting enough time with Andy, sexual or otherwise,” I told her. “Niko and I do that work, because I love the shit out of him. I’ve watched my man walk into the fire so many times, anybody should be scorched and gunshy, but Andy will keep on leaping into that fire to drag other people out of it without hesitation. Has he had to make a couple of grey area calls? Abso-fucking-lutely. But anyone surviving in this world has had to bend in order not to break. So if someone’s gonna take a fall here, it will be me before him, and sister, I will probably make sure that it’s you long before it’s me.”

Katie Couric took a moment and tried to size me up before she sighed and decided to try and switch tactics. “I think we got off on the wrong foot here, Ms. Blake.”

“Ash, Aisling or Mrs. Rook will do fine, Katie,” I told her, making sure she understood where she stood.

“Aisling, then,” Katie said. “I’m not here to do a hit piece on Andy. In fact, after everything he told me in our one-on-one, he feels a little like a small fish caught up in a big pond, what with the whole poker thing.”

“He was doing it to protect Niko’s friend Charlotte and her daughter,” I told her.

“Yes yes, Andy explained that to me in our one-on-one earlier. Do you think that’s true?”

“I think if he didn’t feel like he had to, there was no way he would’ve risked someone else’s well-being to try and save a few.”

“Even with his celebrity crush on the line?”

Niko jumped in at that point. “Andy didn’t know Sarah was there,” she said. “I didn’t tell him. I didn’t want it to influence his decision. I felt like it would be exerting undue pressure on him.”

“You made it clear what you wanted, Lieutenant Redwolf, so I’m not sure why you expect me to believe you’re not going to use every available option to you to guarantee your favorable outcome.”

“Because it wouldn’t be fair to Andy to use that knowledge against him,” I said on Niko’s behalf. “You keep thinking moment to moment, Ms. Couric, and haven’t stopped to consider the bigger picture yet, the long-term consequences of the fact that we’re tied to this man for the rest of our lives. There’s a lot more incentive not to fuck it up, you know? He’s the love of my life. He’s going to be my husband. I want him to be happy, and what makes him happy is helping people. But this was a gamble. Niko knew it, Andy knew it and I knew it, and we all agreed that if Andy thought it was worth the risk, it was worth the risk.”

“Well, if you told Andy that you thought it was a good idea, that might have influenced his decision,” Katie said to me. “He’s quite smitten with you, you know, Aisling, to the point that he thinks you’re ‘settling’ with him.”

I laughed and leaned back in my chair. You’ve seen part of this next bit that aired in the 60 Minutes special, but not the whole thing. “Andy probably told you he thinks I’m out of his league, didn’t he? What a git,” I said to her. “Andy’s self-confidence was one’a the first things I started working on as soon as I got here, because I knew it needed proppin’ up. Not for everything, mind you, but when it come to women, he’s always undervaluing himself. He’s absolutely earned if not the love, the respect from all the women of this house. But he’s the living definition of the phrase ‘stay humble.’”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Andy’s got the definition of imposter syndrome,” I told her. “He always thinks he’s not good enough, not smart enough, not capable enough, but he’ll get it done regardless because he doesn’t know any other way. We’re trying to get him to feel comfortable being proud of his accomplishments, but we also don’t want to crush that spirit of humility that he wears so proudly. He’ll get there. It’ll take time.”

“And what do you see your place in the house as being?” she asked me.

“Peacemaker. Fight settler. Flow manager. I’m the person who makes sure no small problems ever get the chance to escalate,” I told her. “Sometimes that means squashing a beef early. Sometimes that just means negotiating a truce to prevent small issues from turning into big issues. And it’s also my job to make sure Andy’s happy, whatever that takes.”

“Do you ever feel like you aren’t getting enough of his time?”

I laughed maybe a little harder at that than I intended. “I’m getting more of his time than I probably should, simply because I help keep all the other gears well-greased. The other girls like having me around, enjoy me being a part of their activities with Andy on the regular, both sexual and non. So I’ve never really wondered if I’m getting enough of his time. The last couple of days I’ve made a point to make sure I’m still getting a little bit of ‘me’ time, and let Andy get to know his new partners both with and without me around. Andy really is big on the ‘everybody’s equal’ concept, but we’ve all sort of had to drill into his head that while that can be true among us ladies, if he dies, it’s game over for all of us. He needs to keep that in mind. That’s why we’re bringing on additional security.” I glanced over at Niko with a smirk. “I love you to death, Neeks, but you’re much more of a partner than you are personal security.”

Niko giggled and nodded at us. “That’s absolutely fair, Ash. I’m a bit too emotionally compromised to make up a full member of his security detail, but I’m still the most trained person we have in terms for security until Lexi arrives.”

“Lexi?” Katie Couric asked. “Is that one of the people still en route?”

“Yeah, she’s going to be our security person for Andy, with me as back up,” Niko said.

“Are you sure that’s enough security?”

I chuckled and shrugged a little. “If it isn’t, we’ll add someone else. This house is all about adapting to whatever’s in front of you and not trying to plan too far ahead, because as Andy will tell you, long-term planning is generally a waste of time, because it’ll get blown to bits when reality rears its ugly head.”

“So let me ask again the question that I asked at the start, are you truly happy here, Mrs. Rook?”

I grinned and nodded. “I’m happier here than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I’ve got the best man I’ve ever met, I’ve got the best friends I’ve ever had and I’m having truly mind-blowing sex at least once a week. This is the kind of happiness I didn’t think I’d ever get in my life, and I know it’s going to come with all sorts of adversities at some points. But, off the record, I’m pregnant with Andy’s child and I’m genuinely looking forward to being a mom, but most of all, I’m looking forward to being a mom with Andy’s child. This is a better life than I think I probably deserved and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure I’m worth it, whatever it takes.”

“Is there anything else you want to say about Andy or anything else, on the record?”

“I think the world still doesn’t realize quite how much changed when DuoHalo was loosed onto its stage, and I think we’re going to be feeling its ramifications for generations to come, so whatever you’re going to tell people with your story, Ms. Couric, I hope you’ll remember that like that musical goes, history has its eye on you. You and the President are going to set the tone for the next ten to twenty years with all of this, maybe more. So I sure as fuck hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Me too, Aisling,” Katie Couric said to me at the close of our interview. “Me too.”

* * * * * * * *

Fiona looked up as Ash finally reached a stopping point. “Look at that,” Aisling said with a slight smile. “I think I captured you pretty nicely.”

“Can I finally look?” Fiona laughed.

“Sure, come have a gander.”

Fiona stepped off the platform she’d been on and moved around to finally see the front of the large canvas Aisling had been working on for weeks now, seeing the image beginning to take whole. Seated the middle near the top was Andy, nude like all the other figures, looking a little swaggery, like a king on a throne, a sword in his hand planted in the level next to him, with Ash, Niko and Piper sitting or reclined before him on the next level down. Niko, Fi noticed, was holding a dagger, and both her and Ash had been painted without a visible baby bump.

There were outlined rough sketches of Emily and Sarah on one side of him, Fiona fully rendered next to an outline of Moira on the other. Moving down in the next layer of the pyramid formation were slightly scattered sketched outlines of Lauren, Taylor, Sheridan, Tala, Asha, Hannah, Jade and Maya. The bottom layer was made up of staff in sketch form, with Lexi and Melody on the outsides, also holding weapons, Lexi leaning against a broadsword she’d stabbed into the ground beneath her and Melody holding an axe braced over one of her shoulders, with the middle bottom row having Jenny, Katie, Nicolette, Whitney and Mali between them.

When the whole thing was finished, Fiona imagined it would make Andy look more like Conan than he ever had. It was definitely not the kind of portrait they would hang anywhere public, but Fi could absolutely imagine it inside of his private writing room, or maybe the playroom in the basement.

She had to admit, Ash had done an exceptional job of making her look both beautiful and somehow also commanding. In fact, all of Andy’s fiancées had a sort of powerful look to them, making them look less like a harem and more like an army of battle-hardened bitches.

“I feel a little robbed without a weapon in my hand,” Fiona said with a chuckle. “I see what you did, giving all the security people weapons, but you gave Andy a goddamn sword, and now I kinda want one too.”

Ash smirked a little bit, placing her hand on her hip. “I suppose I could arm all of us without too much work. Probably easy enough to just detail them in. You think I should?”

“Definitely. It’ll be a reminder to Andy that none of us are delicate little flowers, and that he’s surrounded himself with badass women, so even if he is at the top of the pyramid, we’re all ready to fight and die, not just for him but for the women next to us. It’ll make it look more like a Frazetta or a Vallejo, not that you’re far from that already with the sort of bold brushstrokes you’re using. If you really want to have the three actual defenders set apart, make their weapons covered in flames or something.”

The redhead chuckled and nodded. “Fair enough, you’ve convinced me. I’m gonna have to haul ass, though. You can see how many I’ve got left to do.”

“I think once you move past the future wives club, the rest’ll come a little bit faster.”

Ash nodded. “That’s probably true. And it’ll keep me distracted while we’re winding up towards the wedding, so I don’t think about how many members of my family are going to show up for it.”

“Didn’t we only invite like six or seven of them?”

Ash chuckled, shaking her head. “You don’t understand, Fi. That means all of the rest of them think their invitations were just lost in the mail.”

“Well, I think this painting looks amazing, Ash, and I’m gonna definitely have a picture of it on my phone once you’re done with it,” she told Ash. “But you have to tell me, what was the second thing you were going to ask of me in exchange for the interview?”

“It’s probably something you were going to do anyway, but I want you to promise me that we won’t have secrets between us, and that we’ll be good friends who always tell each other the truth,” Ash said, taking one of Fi’s hands in her own. “I’m gonna have weak days here and there, and so is Niko. That means we’re going to need you to step up and help us keep the house in check from time to time. Nothing too out of control; just help us keep the peace. That sound fair?”

“Shit, Ash, I was going to do that anyway. I think Piper’s sort of in the same boat. We know it’s going to take some of us having to spend some time keeping the peace, and who better to do that than Andy’s wives?”

“Then we’re all good.”

“Well, we are after one thing…” Fiona said with a wry smile. “We agreed no secrets, so I’m telling you first. I made the decision a few days ago, but I hadn’t told anyone except Mo yet – I’ve stopped taking my birth control. I know we’re supposed to be trying to time our children’s arrival, but I don’t want to wait any longer. I’m the oldest woman in the house, so I’m sure my biological clock is ticking a little bit faster than the rest of yours. But I’m going to start trying with Andy. I think the next time in my cycle will come around the wedding, so maybe we’ll get lucky there.”

Ash moved over to give her a big hug, holding her closely. The two had grown quite affectionate for one another over the last month, and Fi couldn’t think of a better partner in crime to have. The two stood, hugging one another, looking at their images on Ash’s giant ass canvas.

“Guess we’d better savor how good we look now, huh?” Fi chuckled.

“Guess so,” Ash said. “Beauty is fleeting, after all.”

It would turn out to be one of the few things that Ash was wrong about in her life.

fin

(Author's postscript: As a note, I want to offer a very special thanks to Patient1 for commissioning not only this, but McCallister's Madness and Piper's Prelude. These side diversions have let me delve into some of my favorite characters in the QT storyline, and this one in particular was an utter blast to write. Ash's 'come at me' voice was the sort of overly cocky, highly confident, highly competent voice we haven't seen a lot of in QT, and I'd always known she was there in the background, smoothing things over, keeping the peace, getting everyone to work together. When he'd suggested doing Ash and we'd sort of swapped a checklist of what we each wanted to see from the story, we realized it needed to be ten chapters instead of the 5 that PP/MM had been, and it still flew by in an instant. So I hope you've enjoyed this as much as I have, because this one was an absolute joy to write, and I don't know that I would've gotten there without Patient1 suggesting we do it, and to swing for the fences. Everyone say thanks Patient1! You're one in a million, man. /cp\)