Three days after their first meeting at "Last Light on the Block," Morgana returned to the night diner with a preliminary answer, though she still hadn't fully decided how much trust to place in the man waiting for her in the familiar corner booth. Those three days had been anything but peaceful — Aiden had spent them dodging further questions from Valeria while quietly drafting legal documents late into the night, and Morgana had spent them talking down skeptical crew members, Finn chief among them, who watched her every move with undisguised wariness.

This time, she arrived without hiding her face beneath a hood — a small but meaningful change neither of them mentioned aloud.

"My crew is still split on this." she said, sitting down without wasting time on pleasantries. "But enough of them agreed for me to take your proposal seriously. So let's hear the specifics — this 15% threshold you mentioned, how does it actually work?"

Aiden nodded, having prepared his answer for this question long in advance. "I'll use my personal authority as Special Debt Recovery Chief to open a legal Mana credit account, registered under a charitable front organization I quietly set up some time ago — a legal shell to avoid tracing the real source. This account will carry a limit equal to roughly 15% of the Mana your crew typically has to risk stealing each month." He slid a small folder across the table, figures already worked out based on estimates from six months of recorded ATM breaches.

"So we'd receive legal Mana, no break-ins, no risk of arrest." Morgana said, skepticism still in her voice though her eyes betrayed genuine interest as she skimmed the numbers. "Sounds too good to be true."

"It's not entirely free." Aiden admitted. "In exchange, I need your help reaching areas and sources of information I can't access as a Bank employee — especially the network of trust in the slum communities, where people will never share anything with someone in a gray suit like me."

Morgana leaned back, arms crossed, weighing every word carefully. "I want to add a clause. My crew keeps the right to operate independently on matters unrelated to our shared investigation. I won't let you, or anyone at the Bank, hold veto power over my decisions just because we're accepting credit from you."

"Fair." Aiden replied immediately, without hesitation, which caught Morgana slightly off guard — she'd braced herself for a longer argument over this point. "I have no intention of controlling everything your crew does. My only goal is finding the truth behind this conspiracy. Anything outside that scope, you're completely free."

"You're not asking for anything more in return?" she asked, suspicion coloring her tone. "In my experience, no one from the Bank gives up power without conditions attached."

"I'm not the 'Bank' in this situation." Aiden said, his voice firm. "I'm an individual trying to do the right thing, even if it goes against everything I was trained to believe. If I start behaving exactly like what I'm trying to fight, this entire effort becomes meaningless."

"What about a time limit?" Morgana pressed further, continuing to probe the boundaries of the arrangement. "Does this proposal last forever, or only until we find our answers?"

Aiden paused before answering, considering carefully. "I think we should set a review point after each major phase of the investigation — not so I have an excuse to pull out whenever I want, but so both of us have a chance to reassess whether this cooperation still serves its original purpose."

Morgana nodded slowly, impressed by his approach — not trying to seize maximum advantage for himself, but genuinely attempting to build something fair for both sides. It was rare in her experience dealing with anyone connected to the Ancient Bank, where every transaction, large or small, was designed to favor whoever held power. She found herself, almost against her will, comparing his fairness to the calculated generosity she'd grown up watching in the royal court, where every concession always came wrapped around a hidden price.

"Fine." she said, a firm decision forming in her voice. "I'll support your investigation, under the terms we've just discussed. But I want to make one thing clear, Aiden."

"I'm listening." he replied, his attention fully fixed on her.

"If I find out you're using this arrangement to spy on us or betray us in any way." Morgana said, her voice dropping low with a cold weight impossible to mistake. "I won't just end our cooperation. I'll make sure everything you're trying to hide from your superiors comes out into the open, even if it destroys your career."

Aiden didn't flinch at the threat, the corner of his mouth even lifting slightly. "If I betray you, I deserve exactly that. I accept your terms." He said it with the same flat certainty he might use to confirm a routine clause in a credit agreement, and somehow that very lack of drama made the promise land harder than any dramatic oath could have.

"You accept awfully easily." Morgana observed, narrowing her eyes slightly, unconvinced by his composure in the face of such a serious threat.

"Because I don't intend to betray you in the first place." Aiden replied. "And because, honestly, if I did, I'd deserve whatever consequences you brought down on me. I'm not the type to run from the results of my own choices."

A brief silence passed between them, no longer tense as before, but carrying something close to mutual respect — two people from entirely opposite worlds who had just found solid enough common ground to build a fragile alliance.

"So how do we formalize this?" Morgana asked, breaking the silence. "I don't think there's a lawyer in Ledgerhold willing to draft a contract between the Ancient Bank and a criminal gang."

Aiden let out a light laugh — a rare sound that surprised even himself. "I'll draft it myself. I still remember enough law to write something binding, even if it'll never be filed with any official court." He'd spent eight years drafting the very credit agreements that had trapped families like Marcus Ferren's; there was a strange, almost redemptive irony in using that same skill now for the opposite purpose.

"A contract outside the law, drafted by the very officer meant to enforce it." Morgana said, shaking her head with a small smile. "Ledgerhold really is a strange place."

"You're only just realizing that now?" Aiden replied, and for a moment, they both laughed — the first time since meeting each other that laughter passed between them without any trace of hostility or wariness, just two people finding something genuinely funny in the absurdity of their situation. It was a small moment, barely worth noting on its own, but it lingered with both of them longer than either expected, an unfamiliar lightness neither had felt in longer than they cared to admit.

"I'll need a few days to draft the formal document." Aiden said once the laughter settled. "We can meet back here to sign officially, if you agree."

"I'll be here." Morgana replied, standing to leave. But before stepping away from the table, she paused, looking at him with a new kind of curiosity. "Aiden, I'm curious about something. Why are you willing to risk so much — your career, your reputation, maybe even your safety — just to investigate a conspiracy that, honestly, isn't even part of your regular job?"

Aiden fell silent for a long moment, his eyes dropping to the cup in front of him before he answered, his voice quieter than usual. "Someone I love is trapped inside the very system I'm trying to expose. That's all I'm willing to say for now."

Morgana nodded, not pressing further, recognizing that she'd just been handed a small but significant piece of the real story behind the cold, disciplined man she'd first met at Copperline only days ago. There was a rawness to the way he'd said it, a rawness she recognized because she carried a similar wound of her own, buried under years of practiced composure. She thought, briefly, of her mother alone in the palace, and wondered if Aiden's someone was a parent, a sibling, a lover — some tether to the world he'd otherwise sealed himself off from entirely.

She left with more questions than answers, but for the first time, those questions carried no suspicion — only a genuine curiosity about the person hidden beneath the gray suit and gold-rimmed glasses. On the ride back to the garage, she found herself replaying the conversation more than once, turning over the strange, unfamiliar comfort of having met someone who seemed to understand, without being told, exactly how heavy the weight of responsibility could feel.

Back at the garage that same night, Morgana found Wren waiting up for her, two mugs of reheated stew already set out on the workbench without being asked. "So?" Wren said, not bothering with preamble. "Did he try to talk you into something you'll regret?"

"He offered something fair." Morgana admitted, sitting down heavily, suddenly aware of just how tired the past three days had left her. "Fairer than I expected, honestly. It almost makes me more suspicious, not less."

"That's usually how the good ones get you." Wren said, only half joking, though her tone carried real concern beneath it. "Just... be careful. I spent years inside that building. I know how convincing they can make themselves sound when it serves them."

"I know." Morgana said. "But I also know what it looks like when someone's lying to save their own skin, and that wasn't what I saw tonight."

Wren studied her for a long moment, then let the matter drop, recognizing the particular set of her friend's jaw that meant further argument would accomplish nothing. "Then I trust your judgment. I always have. Just don't forget the rest of us are trusting it too."

The words landed heavier than Wren likely intended, and Morgana sat with them long after her friend had gone to bed, turning the weight of that responsibility over in her mind alongside everything else — the Summons Decree still folded in her jacket pocket, the uncertain alliance she'd just begun building with a Bank official, and the strange, persistent warmth she couldn't quite explain whenever she thought back on the way Aiden had looked at her across that diner table, like she was a puzzle worth solving rather than a problem to be contained.