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Ivory opened Trudy and Norm's front door with her foot, struggling under the weight of the mountain of snacks that Norm had requested on his girlfriend's behalf. "Trudy? If you don't come and take some of this kettle corn off of me now it's all going to end up on the floor," Ivory yelled down the hall.

Trudy shot into the hallway and grabbed an armful of junk food from Ivory with a broad grin on her face. "Thanks. Good luck, Norm has every Star Trek film lined up."

"Are you not staying to watch it?"

Trudy shook her head. "I had to sit through every single Spider-Man film this week, it's your turn. I'm going to go eat this in peace." The woman jerked her head in the direction of the bedroom. "And I'm going to watch anything but sci-fi. See you later." Trudy gave Ivory one last smile then disappeared back to the bedroom.

Ivory rolled her eyes and walked into the living room. "Hey Norm."

Norm tossed his phone onto the empty sofa cushion and looked up, an oddly bright smile on his face. "Hi. You brought the fruit roll ups I asked for!"

Ivory nodded and passed Norm the boxes. "Fucking awful things. They're all yours." The woman flopped down onto the sofa, passing Norm his mobile before tearing open a packet of Jolly Ranchers and picking out the blue ones.

"I lied." Norm said in a rush, the smile on their face dropping immediately.

"You lied?"

"Yeah. I don't want to watch Star Trek."

"Norm not wanting to watch Star Trek anymore isn't telling a lie, it's changing your mind."

"No, I needed to talk to you and saying I wanted to watch Star Trek is the only way I could think of getting you here without Trudy being in the room as well." Norm blurted. "I always want to watch Star Trek actually," he added as an afterthought.

"Spit it out."

"I don't know how, keeping things from Trudy is eating me alive." Norm's face was awash with guilt.

Ivory groaned loudly, Norm had a habit of going in circles in his head over the smallest misdemeanour until he eventually admitted to things in a guilty torrent. The last time he had behaved like this was when he admitted that Ivory's toothbrush hadn't actually gone missing and he'd knocked it into the toilet then hidden it in the bin. "Tell me what it is and then I can tell you if you need to stop keeping it from her."

"Jake called me last night."

"Yes?" Ivory's voice was hesitant, she didn't want to risk telling Norm anything that Jake didn't want people to know yet.

"He told me that he thinks there are ships coming back to Pandora, he thinks it's the RDA. I know he's spoken to you about it, he called me afterwards."

The woman let out a sigh of relief. "Thank fuck for that. I told him he needed to call you or Grace instead-"

Norm cut her off. "We're the only ones who know. I told Jake that Grace has known the RDA for the longest but he wants us to talk things through first before he says anything to anyone else."

"Why us? If he wants information to bring the RDA down Grace is the best person for him to go to."

"Probably because he's scared that Grace will yell at him for two hours for not letting her know something was wrong straight away."

Ivory couldn't help but smile. "You're probably right. I don't think it's bad that you didn't tell Trudy anything, Jake trusted you to keep it secret and you have, we can watch Star Trek later so you didn't lie to her about that."

"Thank you."

"What do you think we should do? I think we need to figure things out on our end then get in touch with Jake and see what he says."

"I think we need to go back."

A/N: Sorry about the slow updates it's exam season and I'm currently drowning in a mountain of work that I keep putting off. Will I finish my final papers or will my final papers finish me? The answer is unclear. I've also fallen into a Maze Runner wormhole (apparently it's 2015) and I'm going through the Thomas/Newt heartbreak all over again but it did mean that I found out that Newt is canonically gay which is absolutely brilliant.

Dishonourable Discharge: Grace Augustine Where stories live. Discover now