Warnings for: Discussions of emotional/mental manipulation and abuse of trust.

Gupta hadn't heard anything about Caer Kirkland for weeks.

His mother walked through the house tight-lipped with furrowed brows. She spent extra time putting on makeup in the morning and stayed later and later at work, until finally it felt like she was never at home at all.

Gupta told Feliciano Vargas, and hoped it was enough. Feliciano Vargas neither confirmed nor denied it, but sent his albino guard dog out of the room not long after, which may have been a show of trust. Gupta did not send away Sadiq.

They ferried between Pompeii and and the Academy regularly, now. Though his mother was rarely home, she accepted every time he requested to come home for a weekend. Aside from—from the other reasons he wanted to be at home, there was a faint hope twisting in his chest that said perhaps being around would help his mother in some way, even if it was just giving her an excuse to sit down and watch a tv show on the weekends. Those nights had also become fewer and fewer, though, and Gupta had to go back to the Academy after a weekend alone.

As soon as he left Pompeii, what thin streams of information he had dried up. No longer could he simply walk down the halls and hear the guards gossip about the latest events (being the quiet sort, perhaps they assumed he never took notice) or witness them right in front of him as the days passed like new laws and judgments. The Academy may have been considered an information source in itself, but it had its own structure which always came first, before the politics of the rest of the galaxy. Tangled up in grades and test scores, class hierarchies and rankings, family names.

Gupta was above all that. He did not engage. Others did not engage him. It created a barrier between himself and the rest of the world—a barrier which he could only partly surmount by reading the news or intentionally seeking it out in class, thus putting him on the same time-frame as the rest of the Empire. The Academy was meant to be a grand center of learning with the most up-to-date information, making use of current events to educate her students, yet it was still a whole day later that he found out about Caer Kirkland.

Or. The new Caer Kirkland.

"She resigned," Xiao Mei said, holding up her computer screen up for Gupta to see. In his shock, he reached out to hold the computer but wound up knocking her with his arm, dislodging the flower from her long brown hair. He immediately set to apologizing.

It was a very quiet apology, but he had been using so many words lately that he didn't quiet feel capable of using more. Clasping hands and apologetic eyes seemed to get the message through, though, and Xiao Mei allowed him to help wind the pink flower back into her hair before attempting to show him the article again.

"See?" she said. "She stepped down the day before the blockade on Britannic was let down. She's been quiet ever since, apparently. Not making any statements or been seen around anywhere. Not that I blame her, I mean, I wouldn't want to be seen by anyone after my own kid usurped my position. And her other two are still on the run. You think this new guy's even qualified?"

She scrolled down with quick fingers to the image of Llewellyn W. Kirkland provided on the page. He did not look very much like a politician, Xiao Mei was right about that. He looked a little closer to a drowned rat. No doubt once he got out of the rain and onto Pompeii, he would look better, but in the meantime, the new Caer in the image was gaunt and slightly off-color, with what looked like a bruise crawling up the side of his face. Gupta tapped at it, enlarging the discoloration.

"Uh," Xaio Mei said, "Got it from running into a force field, apparently, trying to stop his brothers from escaping. That's apparently part of why he was chosen. I guess he's loyal, at least."

Gupta nodded, and looked at the picture a bit longer. Another caption on the page said the new Caer was being brought to Pompeii within the week to claim their mother's legacy and—well, Caer Kirkland, the old Caer Kirkland, had never been much of a pleasure to be around. It was more like being in a room with a rabid dog than a human being. A rabid dog with long wild hair and a penchant for cloaks. Gupta had not liked her. He never expected her to leave like this: quietly, and without fanfare.

He did not think any of the mothers he knew in court would simply fade away so quietly. Not with an under-qualified replacement announced, calmly announced in an article that—Gupta took control over the computer momentarily to scroll to the top of the page and get the date and address—an article from an Academy-exclusive newsletter, with five other articles listed above it in importance.

He wondered, for a moment, if he turned the tv on, would he see this reported? Was it in civilian newspapers? How far buried was it, if it did exist in civilian newspapers?

Xiao Mei gently nudged him out of his thoughts with a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey," she said, "I just thought it was interesting, I didn't know it'd put that kind of look on your face. Is everything okay?"

Gupta nodded, sat back away from the computer screen, and tried to think of an excuse. She tapped him on the shoulder for his attention before he was able to come up with one.

"Hey," she said. "There's good news."

Oh? He leaned forward.

"Yeah. They're rebooting that sitcom you like," she said. Gupta frowned at her, but she pointed to a different news article on the sidebar of her screen, grinning. "See? Cleo's being remade with that one actress who played Nefertiti in The Three Hundred."

Gupta found his voice long enough to groan and cover his face with his hands, but was smiling behind his hands. Xiao Mei grinned down at him, catlike and triumphant.

"Come on, let's go get something to drink and let's see if we can find a trailer. It's gonna be great," she said, closing her computer and sliding it into its sleep mode as a metal bar. She stood and held out a hand to help him up as well. He rolled his eyes and took it.

Sadiq was not following him through the Academy. It was a vacation time for him to rest and recuperate in a nearby apartment, just outside the Academy's walls. It was strange without a second set of footsteps always behind his own. With his newfound secrets, it was lonelier and more uncomfortable without the bodyguard than it had ever been before.

But Xiao Mei and a new reboot of Cleo would be good distractions.

He would be able to forget for a while.

If he forgot, he wouldn't have to feel responsible for anything happening outside this thriving moon.

000

Arthur handled the news about his family rather well.

After a certain point in the explanation, he didn't even have the energy to cry about it.

000

Alfred had forgotten what it was like to climb the walls. He'd been able to keep his head on fairly easily for three whole years and hadn't given any thought to it, but several weeks hurtling through space in a glorified tin can had sent him back years to hurtling through space and being useless. Then they stuck him underground of all places and told him to rest when he'd been on a job full-time for three whole years, and fuck he had forgotten how easy it was to get him climbing the motherfuckin walls—

Matthew's vice grip on his hair helped.

In a painful kind of way.

But it gave him something to focus on when he was rolling on the floor trying to get out of his brother's grip.

"Holy shit Matt, let go!" He said, prying at Matthew's fingers.

"No! Not until you apologize!"

"What did I do?"

"Look at our room, asshole."

Alfred did look around, as best he could when Matthew's fingers were digging into his skull like they were. Their room did not actually consist of a room, but more of a nonspecific space surrounding their beds, as they shared the room with six other men. Four sets of bunkbeds lined the walls, one in each corner, with a box at the foot of each bunk for personal effects. To give a sense of privacy—and once upon a time, to provide cover in case of an invasion and gunfight, though that was no longer anyone's primary concern—three large barriers could be erected at various places in the room. They only served to partly block the view from the other bunks, and the top bunks were all still visible to each other, but it gave some sense of order. And everything from Alfred and Matthew's barriers to their bunk had either fallen off the bed or been tossed out of their box, leaving all their effects splayed across the floor.

"Ow!" Alfred said again as Matthew gave his hair a tug. "I didn't do this, it was like it when I came here."

"As if," Matthew said. "You were trying to hang upside down from the top bunk when I came in here, I don't believe you for a second."

"It's true, though," Alfred said, frowning up at his brother. He gripped Matthew's wrist with one hand and twisted around on the floor, rolling over entirely and bringing a leg up to swipe at Matthew's knees. He didn't fall, but he did release Alfred's hair long enough to jump back. "I mean, yeah, I was hanging upside down for a bit there, but I didn't throw everything around! I thought you hadn't finished unpacking."

"I finished unpacking this morning, there was nothing to unpack."

"Well, I didn't un-unpack anything," Alfred said with a huff.

"Well, who did?"

"I don't know. I only just got back."

"From where?"

"Breakfast. Jeez, when did you become the interrogator?"

"When—I'm not!"

Alfred noticed, then, that Matthew's cheeks were abnormally red, and his hair was in disarray. "Are you okay, dude?"

"I'm fine." Matthew balled his fists.

"Did something happen this morning? You look like shit."

"Thanks, bro, that really makes me feel a lot better." But Matthew unballed his fists. He crossed his arms instead. Still not a good sign—closed off—but at least he wasn't about to take out his frustration on Alfred's hair anymore.

"Look, I'll pick up the room if you want me to, but what happened? Seriously."

He waited until Matthew sighed and sat on the bottom bunk before setting to pick up the scattered items. Really, there wasn't much. Most of their personal possessions had been recycled when they took on the undercover job. Now, all they had were two sets of clothing (one of them the set brought from Italia), a few photographs lying on the bottom of the box, a spare blanket (just one), and a few scraps of long fabric Matthew used to tie back his hair.

Buttons, pins, stuffed animals, and electronics—those had all been recycled into the system.

"Have you talked to General Hunter, lately?" Matthew asked, his crossed arms going slack. He didn't look at Alfred. Alfred didn't look either. He sat crosslegged on the floor and started folding one of the shirts taken from Italia.

"No, I was too busy trying to hang upside down from the bed. Why?"

"Things aren't going well," Matthew said.

"What things?"

"Can you think of a thing that can go badly?"

"Yeah. A couple."

"All of those things are probably going badly."

Alfred hummed, set the shirt in the box, and moved on to a nearby pair of pants. Talking and having something to do with his hands settled his nerves a little, even though he was already running out of clothes to fold. "Arthur and Francis, too?"

"Yeah," Matthew said. He sighed. "Mostly Arthur. But yeah. They're safe in their cells, but isolation's really messing with him. I paid a visit earlier today to tell him about his family, but that wasn't… really the best news, I guess."

"Ah, yeah, that probably didn't help much," Alfred nodded, more to himself than Matthew. "Maybe you should've waited."

"Would it have been better to hide something like that from him? Tell him once he's released?"

"Maybe," Alfred said. "I mean, we have already been lying to them for a good few months, now. It wouldn't exactly be a change of pace."

"Yeah, but we're trying to not do that right now, remember? Gaining their trust?" Alfred was pretty sure Matthew was rolling his eyes right now. He was tempted to throw the folded pants at Matthew's head instead of in their box.

"I think you'll probably gain his trust more by talking about model trains or some shit, I dunno," he said instead. "Interrogations not being useful enough? Did Hunter tell you to cozy up to him more, or what?"

"No, he didn't." Matthew's sigh was louder this time. "I decided to try and be nicer to him myself. You kinda get attached to someone you've been snuggling with every single night. We talked a lot on the flight over. Unlike some people, who were having hissy fits the whole way."

"Hey." Alfred turned around and stuck a finger out at his brother. "I still resent being tied up and held ransom for two days, okay? I resent it."

"I get that," Matthew said.

"Clearly, you don't," Alfred said. "I was worried about you, dude."

Matthew leveled a look at him. "You, the kidnapping victim, were worried about me."

"Yeah?" Alfred raised his eyebrows and jerked a thumb towards the dividers between them and the rest of the empty room. "You think I trust this place to help either of us? What if they'd told you to 'go fuck yourself, don't spill any of our secrets when Bonnefoy tortures you. You signed up for this and knew what you were getting into,'?"

"I did know what I was getting into," Matthew said. He huffed again and crossed his arm, shuffling closer to sit down next to Alfred on the floor. "And I knew Steve wasn't going to abandon us."

"Steve wouldn't want to, but he's not a general because he makes good strategic decisions, it's because he's halfway levelheaded and has a basic idea of how to get people to do dumb bullshit or stop people from getting super upset over bullshit."

"Mh," Matthew said, resting his chin on his hand, eyes half-lidded and probably mostly humoring Alfred by this point. It made a part of Alfred want to climb right up that wall all over again. "You'll have to be more specific about bullshit, we've sort of waded through a lot."

With a deep breath, Alfred stood and moved closer to his brother, and putting a hand on his shoulder and leaning close to his ear to mumble, "They want to me make Francis talk about how the machine was put together."

Matthew's focus snapped back in an instant. He whispered, "What?"

"The machine they used to make Angel Assaults," Alfred said. "About all we know is it took Arthur and that machine, it sounds like a computer, but together that's how they came up with the strategies. Input data and commands on the computer, the machine uses Arthur's brain as a reference and focal point to create the plans. That's what it sounds like."

"And they want to know how it's made? What, to use the Assaults themselves?"

"Probably," Alfred said. "They're saying that's not it, but that's what it sounds like."

In a far corner of their mind, they were both watching a moon crumble in the sky, and listening to meteors the size of buses crackle burn through the atmosphere.

"I mean, I get it, but…" Matthew said, his eyes sliding down to the floor.

"Yeah, I'm worried hooking Arthur up to that is liable to make Arthur and Francis distrust us enough we'll lose any advantage we have, too," Alfred nodded.

"Oh," Matthew said, blinking. "That too."

"You thinking of something else?"

"No. Nothing, sorry. You think there's something more valuable they can give us?"

"Yeah," Alfred relaxed back, glad Matthew agreed with him. "We've been on Pompeii for a year or two, but were pretty restricted. I still can't totally give you the layout of that city in my head. Arthur and Francis? Lived on Pompeii for years, wandering around and rubbing elbows with about as top brass as we can get without having someone who actually lives in the Empire's little hivemind palace. Before that they were growing up with the current batch of generals, soldiers, and scientists. If they give us personal intel and a layout of the city, we can hit them directly and head straight for the Emperor, instead of dragging out this war even longer—which is probably what they'll expect us to do. As far as we know, Angel causes a high body count for both sides. The Empire can afford that body count way more easily than we can. Have you been to the nursery yet? There's fucking no one there."

"Maybe there's a way to tell the Angel to reduce bodycount as much as possible," Matthew said, chewing his cheek between his words. "I mean, you give it parameters by inputting information, right? Maybe there's a way you can, I don't know. Set it to using as many non-lethal means as possible?"

Alfred rocked on his heels. "Maybe. But we can't rely on that."

Matthew sighed again and ran a hand through his hair. "Okay, fine. What do you suggest we do then? Just hope Francis and Arthur know enough that we can bypass a whole galaxy's worth of defense so we can win a war in one battle?"

"I think we should cover both bases, just to be sure. But we gotta keep kinda low-key about it, because if Arthur, Francis, or the brass notice, I dunno how they'll take it and they may be totally cool but they may also fuck it up for us by getting impatient or just not liking us taking shit into our own hands."

Matthew's eyes narrowed. "What are you getting at?"

"Make nice," Alfred said. "Aside from each other, we're the only ones Arthur and Francis had any real contact with in the rebellion. We play good-cop-bad-cop with the interrogators, volunteer to bring meals, talk to them about stuff, all that sort of stuff until they trust and like us enough that they'd be willing to tell us whatever information we need—and maybe even like us enough that, if you asked him to, Arthur would step back into the machine."

"Al," Matthew said. "I see where you're going with this, and no."

Alfred frowned, beginning to gesture as he spoke."Look, Francis is a headcase and they're thinking he had some sort of intensive training to resist interrogations and confinement, especially when we're not going hardcore because we want them to trust us some. Arthur's got none of that. And he's been in a shitty headspace as long as you've known him, right? It's probably at its absolute worst right now, or it's getting there really fast. He's vulnerable, and he'll be desperate for someone to latch onto. He already trusts you some. Just—"

"I can't," Matthew said, straightening his back until he was almost looking down at Alfred.

Alfred blinked at him, his hand paused mid gesture. Matthew stared back, lips pursed.

"Al," he said. "No. I can't—whatever someone under this kind of—no. You're totally right that his headspace is completely messed up right now, so I can't lie to him like this right now. Maybe if he were still our enemy but he's not. He came to us for help."

"You've basically romanced him under false pretenses before," Alfred frowned, lowering his hand to rap his knuckles on the bedframe. "Weren't you the one who was so determined to get more information you totally went along with it?"

"Weren't you the one who said, 'fuck the mission,' when Mona wanted me to get closer to him?" Matthew got to his feet and balled his fists. His voice was about as far from a whisper as it went without shouting. "Suddenly you're super okay with this?"

Alfred remained where he stood, staring at his brother with steely conviction. "Yeah. This time, you're in control. It's a big fucking difference, Mattie. You won't be executed if he finds out."

"It'll wreck him," Matthew hissed. You didn't read his journals. "Holy fucking shit, Alfred, it'll wreck him."

"One person," Alfred whispered, leaning in close and holding a finger up to Matthew's nose. "And you help one billion people. One person, and we can finally have a real home."

000

Gilbert retired to his room late in the night, aching and tired. There'd been one incident that day, which was one more than any day he'd had guarding his brother's side. A dark, long-haired man with ratty clothes and bruised knees had come screaming and demanding to see his child. Somehow he'd gotten intel that the kid wound up on Ludwig's table.

('Which would make him a criminal,' Gilbert said, for they were in public. 'Be glad the rest of your family isn't,' and dispatched him.)

The changing of a Caer was always a hectic time, especially when it happened so suddenly and unexpectedly. No matter how tight the news was strangled by the Emperor's hand, little bits of information always seemed to get squeezed out during this time period, when the whole galaxy perked up a little to pay attention. Gilbert wondered, vaguely, if the little Britannic kid was going to be able to handle it.

Not his problem, though.

None of the Kirklands were his problem.

Gilbert followed Ludwig throughout the day, all the way from the front door of his apartment, down the street where the assault occurred, to outside his lab door, and back again. When Gilbert's shift was done, he'd tagged out and walked back into town to a bar filled with low warm lights and met with the only other red-eyed mistake he knew.

Ro was a short guy with a long temper. Cast iron balls. Snaggle tooth. Could probably have easily fixed that tooth with a skilled enough dentist or surgeon, but on Pompeii, where there was an assumption that everyone had money, keeping the snaggle tooth had turned into a sort of unique fashion statement.

Which just made Gilbert assume Ro was a clever guy, too. Guy'd navigated his way out of the service sector of Pompeii somehow, he supposed. Most people from off-world were like the bartender currently humbly making their drinks, or the waitstaff slinking through the dark taking orders, or the shaky-handed repairman who checked and replaced every light and wire in the building every night, lest the establishment suffer the shame of a flickering bulb—or any sort of crack in the perfect veneer of the place.

Just a bar where guards and other workers went after a day's work, if they had the money to.

(If Gilbert wasn't so close to being one of them, he wondered if he would have noticed them at all. Feliciano had. But Feliciano was weird. Sometimes it seemed like Feliciano noticed everything, had ears everywhere.)

"You're spacing out a lot today," Ro said, lifting his drink and tapping a manicured nail against the counter, bringing Gilbert out of his head. "Thought you wanted to talk today? But if you want to just get shitfaced you're gonna haveta drink a little faster you know."

"Nah I ain't getting shitfaced tonight," Gilbert said, lifting his own glass and taking a drink.

"Too bad," Ro said, blinking his big red eyes. They looked brown. A contrast of gently brown contacts and bright red clothes gave the impression his eyes were just a particularly vibrant brown. A natural brown, but a particularly vibrant brown. If you caught him in the exact right lighting, the red shone through brilliantly, but only in the way that brown eyes flared red as a trick of the light. "I coulda used some company tonight. But I should've known you'd want to stay as tense as possible. It's really not healthy for you, you know."

"Hah, trust me, I'll get shitfaced later, but not in public right now. Besides, I have to get up early and work tomorrow. I just wanted a breather. What's up on your end?" he said, taking another drink.

Ro huffed. "Not much. Some people are pestering me a bit because they think I gave away discount tickets for a vacation or something ridiculous like that. You don't think the spaceport would keep me on if I did something silly like that, do you? I have my friends, yeah, but I'm not the sort of person to show favoritism like that. Besides, anyone I'd want to give a vacation to isn't the sort to take me up on it. Everything's terrible."

"Wow," Gilbert said. "Sure sucks to be you."

"It does," Ro said, taking another long drink. He paused a moment and rifled through his pocket, not even flinching as a still-uniformed guard passed right behind him. "Not to mention all the weird people passing through the station lately. I know they all say you should be accommodating of people from other planets, but geez, they could at least learn some manners first and not go running around making such a ruckus. Don't think I'd like to deal with people like that again unless I have to, no sir.—aha!"

"Aha?" Gilbert drained his glass halfway and leaned closer to see what Ro was rifling through his pocket for.

"Aha," Ro confirmed, setting his glass down. "I hearda bit about you having trouble with your brother."

"What? Dude, me and Luddy are—"

"Sh, sh, sh," Ro held up a finger to silence Gilbert before revealing what was hiding in his pocket. "I have very good sources that tell me you and Ludwig had some stress lately, so I know he can get whatever on his budget, but I figured a gift would still be nice."

He pressed the bar of chocolate into Gilbert's hand without accepting any protest.

"One hundred percent dark chocolate," Ro said, grinning. "Melt and mix it up with some sugar if you want to sweeten it, but you take good care of this, you hear? Share it with someone. It'll help."

"Oh," Gilbert said. "Thanks dude, I don't even know what to say."

"No worries, we all know you're not the eloquent one," Ro said, ducking the swing aimed at his head. As Gilbet huffily drained the last of his drink, Ro laughed.

"One day, douchebag, one day," Gilbert mumbled into the rim of his cup.

"Yeah, one day I'll have a whole army of people nodding along with me. Now go rest up and don't get a hangover tomorrow, yeah? I've got to head back home too, but at least I won't get in trouble if I show up smashed at my house."

"Rub it in, why don't you," Gilbert said.

He ordered something gentler and some food before heading out, while Ro simply finished his first drink before hopping off his seat and making his way through the crowd and out of the bar.

Gilbert finished his meal, feeling only a little less tense and a little more sober, but he paid his bill and shuffled off as well.

Only once he was in the street, where the only cameras around were hindered by distance, did he pull the chocolate bar out of where he'd stashed it in his pocket. Unwrapping it, he nibbled bit at one of the corners and let his eyes wander to what should have been a blank space on the inside of the wrapper.

Cell block C. Lists of names. Printed by hand but as neat as if they'd been taken directly from the screen of a computer.

Gilbert had always wondered where political prisoners who still had use ended up.

He folded the wrapper back up, smoothed the disturbed edge down, and wandered the rest of the way back to Ludwig's apartment complex at his own pace.

Pompeii was a mess of streets, one knotting into another and into another, and so on, and so forth, from the planet's surface all the way up towards the purple sky. Tonight the sky had darkened to the warm, soft shade of a wholly ripe plum, and the walkways were lit with gold.

Ludwig's apartment complex was, technically, in the inner capital. It hovered near the border, several blocks away from the laboratories where he worked, which were definitively in the inner capital—a square mile's worth of magnanimous architecture making up secretive laboratories, Cear's housing, barracks for royal guards, and the palace of the Emperor and his heirs.

Gilbert could see it from the street in front of his brother's apartment. The palace. It was domed. Its doors arched. A house made up of balconies. Statues painted bright colors ringed the streets. Though Gilbert had never seen the Emperor—it was hard to see a man who never appeared in public after the death of his child and son-in-law—he knew his face.

It stared down at him from so many of those statues.

The worst statues were the few that had been kept marble-white.

It sort of felt like a joke at his specific expense.

The chocolate bar and its wrapper were still in his pocket. He thumbed at it a moment, watching the palace gleaming in the darkening sky before turning away and heading into the apartment complex.

Up the elevator. Down the hall. Down another hall. Until he reached his door. Fifteenth floor. He ID'd himself and went inside to his little three-by-three room, stretching his arms up over his head and yawning.

"Hey, birdy," he said to his little canary, hopping around her cage in a tizzy. He opened it with another yawn and watched her take off. "Anyone come to visit today?"

Then, his weariness fled him and turned to shock and horror as he realized the song his bird began to sing.

000

[takes a deep breath]

I am still here.

I feel like it's been a very long time, and I feel like this chapter isn't enough to apologize for the wait. I looked through some of the old reviews given to this fic and It made me want to try harder again. I'll do my best to reply to anyone who reviews as well. From here on I have mostly vague ideas and signposts of what to do with Arthur and Francis, (please go thank dyrimthespeaker bc she had to wade through an abhorrent number of typos in this chapter and listen to my convoluted plans about the future the day after finishing her finals) though I believe we're at the midway point. If there's anything you'd like to see, especially with side characters, please feel free to let me know. If you'd like to have a private conversation or suggestion, I can also be reached pretty easily on by tumblr. My username there is 'beabae' as well.

(tho while I will be able to anonymously answer responses on tumblr, I cannot do that on FFnet. If you would like a response, please remember to sign in or at least respond on a website I can reply to anons like AO3 or tumblr. I'm looking at all of you, but especially you, J'Suis Le Canada. Your review still brings me to tears and I just thought you should know that.)

I'll hopefully be able to write more over the summer. I'm starting and finishing new projects, both hetalia and other fandoms, so if you like my writing also please feel free to check those out as well. I'm taking a gap year to work and travel, so either I will write much more or become more distracted—either way, the quality of my writing I have no doubt will improve, and the harder I think the more I believe I can escape some of the corners I've written myself into. I hope that is enough to justify any waits.

Thank you to everyone who's been supporting this fic. It's been a long, hard year. Almost two years, now. But I am still here, and Angel is still ongoing. Thank you for sticking with it for so long!