Summary: "If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles." Fawkes sets out for to know the enemy and finds he learns a bit more about himself too.

Author's Note: This was inspired by the episode reaction posts! I was going to wait until the end of the season before writing anything, but this wouldn't stay still. Also, I'm trying something new and only using quotations from Sun Tzu for Fawkes. Codex is only tangentially in this (because this is my Fawkes as a slight furry stalker piece.)

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate. Sun Tzu.

Fawkes doesn't take well to being rejected. He recognizes and owns this. And so it is with a sinking feeling that even after Codex's latest rejection he feels himself paradoxically becoming more interested in her.

Risk. Diplomacy. Chess.

He is the master of strategy games. He devours military history books in his spare time. He still remembers his favorite bedtime story—Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

And yet she didn't fall to his strategy.

Codex has become interesting to him, interesting in a way that he didn't expect. Most women he dated he found were easy to understand and easy to predict. The result of his hundred battles was expected and assured. But Codex wasn't what he thought and while some might forget her he find that he wants to know her and he wants victory...the victory he lost by not truly understanding her in their last encounter.

Fawkes doesn't want to know her ovulation schedule or whether her last STD check was clean, he'll leave that to Zaboo. Rather he wants to know what makes her tick. He wants to know why it is that she is so good at avoiding his carefully planned traps and why she doesn't say yes when every other girl has in the past. He wants to know her.

He knows Codex will be at the gaming convention. The game seems to be the one constant in her life. Fawkes pauses and gathers that information but refuses to make a judgment too quickly. That is what cost him his victory last time. This time he will observe without interaction and only after that will he weigh who she is.

Of course, their shared history is working against him. Every time she sees him she is suited up in armor and to win this battle he needs to see below the armor he needs to see her essence and, the traitorous voice in the back of his head pipes in, her heart. So he finds a way to be formless. A way to be soundless. A way to be mysterious. And he has just the way to do so.

Everyone notices the furry, but no one knows who lies beneath.

True, a storm trooper would have worked just as well for formlessness but Fawkes refuses to be that cliché.

It is in his fox costume, a subtle nod to see if she's paying attention, that he first sees her. He's been waiting at check in knowing that if he waits long enough she'll appear.

And there she is. She still interests him and his heart can't help but beat just a bit faster. He might be doing this for victory but he knows it'll be more than little bit of fun.

Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move. Sun Tzu

He's been watching her since she arrived and maybe it is a bit stalker-ish-though he prefers to think of it has reconnaissance or opposition research—but it isn't all he's doing. He's going to some of the panels and trying the new expansion pack for the game (absolutely useless in his opinion) and even buying stuff in the vendor's room but he's doing it all by himself.

Bruiser is taking advantage of Bladezz being out of town and spending the weekend in with Bladezz's mom. Kwan is at some starcraft conference on the otherside of the country. Venom and Riley are off doing normal couple-y stuff—if your normal couple was into destruction, chaos and devastation. And even Valkyrie decided not to come.

Fawkes ignores the fact that's he's alone (again) and refocuses his thoughts.

And hark, hanging out in the halls is good for something—there she is.

But, she seems sad or something...the Codex that originally fascinated him was always in motion and always wore her emotions on her face. This Codex that he sees seems conflicted and it gives him hope.

A fool could see that she's trying to go back to safety with this weird thing with Zaboo—but it does worry him.

All Zaboo needs is a foothold, they are friends and they play the game together and he is always there. He moved out of his mother's house for her and all it would take is a moment of weakness on her part and Zaboo would never let her go.

His Codex deserves more than that. She deserves more than being tied up in a relationship built on bonds of obligation and guilt.

So, he watches as she has a mini-freak out with Zaboo.

So, he watches as she eats the cookies to build up her confidence.

So, he watches, prepared to jump in to cause a distraction to make sure that Zaboo and Codex never get their chance.

And yet, when the talk starts he finds himself frozen. His Codex is there and seems slightly broken. She seems to be grasping at straws reaching for something, for anything.

And this is how he knows he's in deep. Normally a neurotic mess like that would either leave him smirking or leave him ready to take advantage of and add her to the list.

But here and now he can't help be feel a tendril of guilt tighten in his stomach as he wonders if he's the reason she's like this...if he helped break her.

In his guilt he freezes and she bares what she thinks is her heart for Zaboo.

He can't bare to see the inevitable. He can't bare to watch as he loses her forever and so he leaves as fast as he can.

The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. Sun Tzu

He normally loves conventions. There are girls in skimpier costumes than they'd dare wear in real life who after a little bit of persuasion usually join him for some fun. There are panels filled with fun things and usually he has a group of friends to mock the substandard cosplayers with.

But this convention hasn't been that. This convention has been filled with being silent. He likes to talk and connect but being in a furry suit stops that. Spending all that time looking for Codex has left him with wide stretches of time to not only examine her but to examine himself.

He isn't sure he likes what he sees.

He's no longer 23 and it feels increasingly like his initial fun has become filled with excess. Being an epicurean is one thing—but it isn't the same thing as having commitment phobia.

At the Jones Soda party he finds himself in the corner contemplating just when his relationships became more of a caricature of relationships instead of real and lasting.

And then he sees her.

There is a small temptation to resist her allure because she's forcing him to examine himself again—but Sun Tzu would not appreciate that.

He watches as she gets sadder and drunker and tries to gather more jewels of information about her to add to his research.

Then she and Tink kiss—which is unexpected to say the least—but he watches and gathers the information.

Amazingly she's not with Zaboo—which means that he was wrong. He hates being wrong and he feels her worm more into his heart. He hates being wrong but he wants someone who can surprise him.

He has watched her now for two days. He has seen her sad and seen her reaching out desperately grasping for love and companionship. This he can understand and work with, this he can use to make her his.

Through battle with the Knights of Goods he has learned that she values her friends and loves them.

Through his second attempt at reconciliation he has learned that she isn't one to be impressed by shows of strength and force of power or intellect.

And now through his furry expedition he has learned that she wants connection and to be loved.

Fawkes knows he can do that. He sets out the next day, still in costume, to see if he can court her in a disguise before he reveals himself as her most hated enemy.

That fails a bit as she seems to have noticed him stalking around.

But that matters not to him. After all, as Sun Tzu says "the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." And he's ready to wage this war not with firepower but with subtle care and love until they both emerge the victors—he in love with her and she utterly in love with him.