Billy Katagiri understood secrets.

They had worked with the military and high-tech labs and the concept of non-disclosure was something he thought he grasped well. One wouldn't advance far in the field without trust. So he accepted that Leesa Kujo had her secrets, just as he had his (he might be guilty of breaches here and there, but he was aware it was his decision to divulge. She had never asked). In hindsight, her reluctance to talk about her job and the way she skirted around her own circumstance should be telling, but even that was not enough for him to harbor suspicion. She could still be haunted with her memories, she might not want to talk shop in her downtime, she could be working on another top secret project, heaven knew how many there was strewn across three factions. Not even the top officers of HRL knew the existence of the supersoldier lab. The irony was he nailed it. She was all three, just not the way he thought.

So he'd never pried. He would just listen if she were to unload her baggage, because all he wanted was trying his best to watch over her and maybe, maybe, one day she would give him a chance. Whenever she became skittish over their small talks, he would drop the subject or steer it to something else. He knew his place. He'd never pried. Not even when she was inebriated 24/7 in his house, nesting in his living room, muttering strings of apologies addressed to a set of names foreign to him. So what? She had her life, a rough one if he gleaned correctly, and all that mattered was her being safe (broken, but perhaps not beyond repair) and well-cared for. He could do that.

Yet, in the wake of the revelation, to say he was anything short of devastated was an underestimation.

There was nothing more painful than this particular betrayal, and for months he was burning in fury and anguish. However, when the anger subsided, he felt a different kind of pain. It was him who offered her a place when he saw her stumbling on the road in her drunken stupor. "Sumeragi Li Noriega", the strategist, only made use of the opportunities she was given. Leesa Kujo had probably killed herself way too many times in order to survive.

Maybe, deep down, he'd always known he lived in denial.

(The name rolled in his tongue over and over again. He quite like the ring of it, even though the appearance of these nine syllables turned his life upside down)

Later, much later, when dust had settled and enemies made ways to friends, he finally learnt what happened on the day of Fallen Angels. That information, along with just enough knowledge of the cursed mock battle in the past, slapped him with realization that Leesa had never been in a place to entertain a notion of a relationship let alone sustain one. The concept of her love life was probably the remotest idea in her mind, even if she somehow returned his feelings (as flattering as this sounded, Billy was sensible enough to know that it would only break her more). The copious amount of alcohol she forced into her system numbed her pain enough for her to function, but only barely, and asking more of it was pushing it too far. In a way telling of how twisted the war was, what had transpired between them might really be the best, for they were able to provide each other what little comfort to be had.

Billy Katagiri thought he understood secrets, but he failed to calculate just what the extent of these secrets were and what they might cost.