Our Bruised Bodies | Bradley Bradshaw

ACT FIVE - PART TWENTY-THREE

"We had a plan. Not the best I admit that, but a solid one and you threw it out of the window." Ice said from behind Grace, who was sitting on the Hollywood swing on the front porch of her own house as he opened the door and stepped outside of the house too, only to take the seat next to his daughter, who had been considering going inside for so long, she wondered why she hadn't done it in the end.

"I know." Grace admitted, before she turned to look at her father. "How are you doing, daddy?" She wondered, which had Ice huff out an unamused sound.

"Why did you change the plan without consulting me about it? Or Springer. He told me you even send Poppy back to him." Ice pointed out, put Grace had just turned her head back to face forward once more, her white Jeep was standing in the driveway, needing a wash, now that she truly took a look. She didn't want to think about anything else right now. Her car needing a wash was such a calmly mundane thought. It nearly gave her enough room to breathe freely.

"I talked to Uncle Slider and Uncle Chipper, just as I called Andrew about it. I was making an educated decision here, daddy." Grace assured him.

"We can't afford a war." The younger Kazansky decided to say, for she knew her father wanted and answer, even though sometimes she wondered why he even still cared. He won't live to see the outcome, he might not even live to see the war. Grace wondered if she would live to see the war, or if Cain would find a different way to get rid of her. It felt almost welcome. Her father huffed, which pulled Grace from her thoughts, while she wondered if he considered she would have acted differently would she have been a son rather than a daughter.

"Grace, sometimes wars must be fought. For there is a difference between peaceful and harmless and sometimes we need to remind people about that." He pointed out and she did agree with the sentiment. She knew that the moment people believed them to be weak, they would also consider them an easy target and they could never risk that, but this was not about a war with another nation, this was about a war within their own lines, within their own ranks. And she knew how tired everyone was. From her father to herself, to Andrew, Slider, even Springer and she knew that that wasn't just a symptom of their fraction. No one was prepared for a war.

"We can't afford a civil war when this mission will bring us a war in and on itself." She argued. A war with Russia, she was sure of it, for they won't tolerate a mission like that, they won't tolerate being made look quite so foolish.

"No matter how you look at it. The mission failing, the mission being a success. Someone will be very pissed, and thy will want revenge." Grace said. "I feel like no matter who is going to win in the end, we will lose. And I don't have the power to change that."

"Then we stand tall and handle what is coming our way. It doesn't matter any longer which plan would have been preferable, you have changed our strategy, there is no going back to the original plan." Ice pointed out and he was right, Grace knew that much as well.

But the original plan had been far more aggressive. It would have left them as the aggressor and that wasn't a good fit. She knew it as she sat at the table with Viper, trying to ignore the truth in his words, and she also knew it as she decided to offer Cyclone her cooperation rather than to hastily shoulder her way into the base and abuse her power and rank to take it from him. Even though she had made sure to have a plan to fall back onto in the form of Solomon Bates' honour as a Navy aviator.

But in retrospect Grace had been sure that Viper was right, that it had been a trap Cain had set out for her to walk right into and that this was the only way to sidestep it. To approach the whole thing defensively, one careful step after the other. There was no other way to go about it and now the lives of all those people she loved were laying in Cain's hands, but he couldn't effort to lose them all either. He was still bound to honour and duty and to the President of the United States.