Love and War

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"Maggie, you were attacked." Kandros replied firmly, though he still didn't open his eyes. "I never hated you, only what that bastard did to you."

"Brave? That woman?" Quinn snorted. "I hardly think so. She was a brainless idiot who only cared what would make her dear husband happy."

Betty grinned, something she did often when she and Hunter were alone. "Well she wouldn't scream... so I took her uterus. Even if your pet somehow finds her, he won't want a mate who can't even give him a child."

Kandros sighed again, having heard this many times before from his son. "Finally, something we can agree on." He told his son wearily.

"Now there's something to celebrate." Hunter laughed, pulling her into his cabin and turning off the lights.

"I gotta go study." Connor muttered. "Tann is coming tomorrow to give me my Diplomatic history final. I want to pass so I can win that trip."

What she hadn't told Hunter, was that the organ was intact and in cryo, yet another part of her twisted joke when it came to her youngest child. Quinn's pain wasn't nearly through, there were yet more parts her mother could take simply to punish her.

"Does your mother know about this?" Kandros asked, catching his son's wrist before he could escape completely.

Tyros missed his wife. No matter how hard he fought to keep from it all he could do was think of her. When he walked into the settlement that night all he could do was think of how much she would hate it. He lost himself in a smile before he could stop it when he thought about how he would have told her to give them a chance. 
He was still smiling when he shot the first guard.

"No why. It's just a school thing. I'm not the only one. Stop being a bully, Dad. Damn." Connor snapped.

"What do you know of bullies, boy?" Kandros asked his son thinly. "What do you know of pain, or of losing the ones you love the most? Because that is all violence brings, and Tann is the worst of all!" He added, just as the first guard hit the ground somewhere outside.

The alarm went off a few as father and son went nose to nose. Fearful shouts from down their street were deafening. 
Connor broke away first, his chest heaving. "Where's mom?" He asked, grabbing for the breathing apparatus he'd just sworn to never wear.

Kandros didn't speak until he had made sure Connor was breathing okay. "She was teaching a class to the small children. Stay here until I come and get you." He commanded, not liking the unknown.

Connor had no intention of obeying. The moment his father was gone he picked up a gun and ran toward the shouts. 

The alarms hadn't reached Maggie's classroom. She was still in the room with the children, working on math problems. The young woman had found her happy place.

It would no doubt startle the entire room when Kandros suddenly burst in, checking the room before locking the door behind him. He had seen several bodies on his way over, but as of yet didn't know who was behind it. "Hit the lights and get on the ground!" He instructed, taking no chances.

Though she was indeed feeling out of sorts by her husband's abrupt entrance, Maggie guided the children to the ground under their desk. Only then did she fix Kandros with a questioning look.

Connor somehow missed Tyros only to run into Tann. The poor boy would have had better luck running into the broken kett who would have recognized him. When the salarian was finished with him, even his own father would have a hard time recognizing him. He'd even taken his breathing apparatus as a prize. 
The enormous kett who followed behind Tyros left the boy for dead, thinking him already there anyway.

Kandros was soon right beside his wife. "Someone is in the settlement. Several of the patrol guards are dead and I've yet to see who did it." He breathed, casting a quick glance to the windows. "I've told Connor to stay out while I can to get you and the children." He assured her, not for a second thinking their son was in any kind of trouble.

It was then that Tann's announcement came over their omni tools. "Friends, I have been advised that your settlement is under attack. Be advised that the Initiative won't stand for this. People are on their way to help. Take cover. Stay safe and know that I...we...are here to help." He said diplomatically. 
If Kandros were to look closely he would recognize the background very well. The recording had been made from his and Maggie's bedroom.

Kandros saw it right away, and glanced to Maggie, wondering if she did too. "Bullshit." He growled. "He came looking for you. Connor said..." His voice died off when he realised Connor was out there alone, while a man who wanted Maggie's family dead was somewhere in the setttlement. "Has Connor ever mentioned some contest for school to you?"

"No. Why?" Maggie asked, trying to hush a little girl who'd run sobbing into her arms. "What does that have to do with what's going on outside?" She hadn't s seen Tann. Shed been too busy comforting the girl.

"Connor mentioned Tann coming here to give him a test for one of his classes?" Kandros replied, edging out to make sure no one was coming that would hear the crying children. He had opposed so many people being allowed to reproduce, and like Connor they had all seemed to grow an accelerated rate. His reason had been that they couldn't keep so many safe, and here they were, proving him right.

"He had a test in diplomatic history but that had nothing to do with Tann. Some woman named Cora is teaching it." Maggie told him, jumping when gunfire sounded right outside the door.

"I will beat that boy senseless when I get my hands on him!" Man drops swore, realising Connor had most likely known of the ploy, even if he didn't know why his parents hated the director.

"Something isn't right..." Maggie breathed. "Kandros...go get our son." Her stomach was churning.

Kandros felt it too and nodded. "Don't move, got it?" He warned, kissing his wife before disappearing from the room again. He was muttering angrily to himself when he got back to the room where he had told Connor to wait. He hadn't run into any trouble on the way over, which set him even more on edge. "I will beat that boy purple when I find him..." he growled, never knowing someone had beaten him to it.

Tyros stood over his nephew's body, cocking his head. He felt a strong pull to the young man. He sensed something familiar in him that made him want to do something other than put a bullet in his back. 
For some reason it truly broke his heart to watch the boy struggle along the ground, dragging a line of purple blood behind him, gasping out a desperate sob for, "daddy."

Maggie's luck was as bad as ever. Jaal had relieved her of the children and she'd followed after Kandros, only to run into a very familiar female kett.

Kandros was still cursing under his breath when he saw the shape of a kett standing over one of the bodies. He stuck to the shadows, watching the figures next move. That was of course until he glanced down and saw the purple blood. Only one person in the settlement had purple blood.
"You will be wishing you had joined Quinn by the time I am through with you." He growled, his gun pressed roughly to the back of Tyros' head.

"Well, hello princess." Betty purred, her eyes damn near lighting up at the sight of her eldest.

"End it." Tyros voice was barely audible. A plea for death. "Please..." Quinn would never have forgiven him for taking his own life but if someone else did it...even Kalahira couldn't deny him. 
Connor had stopped moving, whimpering in agony. He'd just wanted to help, to be a hero like Drak said his father was.

"You..." Maggie breathed in shock, grabbing for the pistol she knew she no longer carried. "It's been a while..."

"You've killed many tonight, kett. We took you in, when our grief was strong too, and this is how you repay us? You try to kill my son?!" He hissed. "No, death is too good for you."

Betty had known what Maggie was reaching for, and smiled. "Too long, it would seem, if you see fit to walk around unarmed. Oh how you would disappoint your sister." She tutted.

"Your son? By the way he smells I would have thought he belonged to the salarian. What was his name? Tann?" Tyros mocked. "Wasn't he the one who made better use of your wife's body than you did?" 

"What would you know?" Maggie asked warily. She as preparing to run. Like a rabbit who sensed danged her nose was twitching. This female was only half her problem.

Kandros smiled darkly at that comment. "But unlike your wife, Maggie's body is intact, and not in several pieces littered across the galaxy."

"Quinn despised you for your weakness." Betty commented. "Such reliance on others, it's no wonder she wanted to die, rather than have to see you again."

Tyros howl of agony was very real. It came moments before he tackled Kandros to the ground and in the same instant Hunter was stomping Connor into the dirt. He'd seen the boy moving this time and was extremely impressed by his will to live. 

"Its something I picked up from my mother. She was always latching on to others and sucking them dry. Quinn never saw the beauty in it. Why work so hard for yourself when others can do it for you?" Maggie asked, hoping her gamble was right.

Kane rose had no intention of killing Tyros, but that didn't mean he wouldn't beat him in the same way he beli vthe d he had done Connor. The two men were rolling in the mud, aware of what was happening to the young boy.

Betty smiled thinly, her kett eyes narrowed at her daughter. "You're mother was a fool. Weak, and pathetic. Just like your sister. She came to andromeda and it made her soft!"

Hunter picked up Connor by the back of his neck and held him hip, looking him over. "What a sorry state you are in, boy. Why cry for your father? He won't help you."

"My mother made herself soft. It had nothing to do with a galaxy." Maggie snorted.

Typos would find himself lucky in that Kandros heard the voice, and wasn't now poised with his fist raised. The sight of his son struggling in the hands of another kett was almost too much.

"I see." Betty replied with another thin lipped smiled. "And your father? What of him?"

Hunter looked toward Kandros, his eyes strangely sad. "I remember when my own son was born. I held him up, somewhat similar to this. I was showing him to my clan...there was little point. Like the boy's mother he was weak and broken. He was dead. I gave him a name and threw him in the fire where he belonged. I suggest you do the..." no other words came out of his mouth. Connor twisted like a lithe cat in his grasp and caught him across the throat with a wicked looking blade. 
The kett's black blood began to cover them both and he could do little more gurgle. Finally he fell to the ground, taking the injured young man with him who had stopped moving as well.

"Who?" Maggie snorted. "My father was military.  I suppose that made him strong. I wouldn't know. Too him I was weak like my mother. He dismissed me in favor of my sister.
"Why do you care, kett? Do you like to play mind games with humans or something?" Maggie asked.