Not really. Ace is Ace. When he got in trouble, Pops and I had to round up ever ally I could. We had over fifty thousand ready to risk their lives just to give him a chance to survive, and some of them were just people he'd only met once, but they were willing to risk a war that would tear the world apart.

Ace means the world to me in a lot of ways, but he had that effect on a lot of people. I just gave up fighting it years ago and came to peace with the terms of it.

[The grin fades a little. He came to peace with Ace becoming an instantly wildly important part of his life, but not with the removal of that insertion. It was strange really. Back then, he would have sworn anything that coming to terms with Ace being an inevitable part of his life would have been the harder part, but it had wound up so easy. Losing Ace? It was becoming ever bit as difficult as losing his father. Or maybe it was just that he lost them both at the same time.]