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Early morning, June 19th..

If you had asked me last night what I would be doing right now, right this very second, I wouldn't know what to tell you. I would have said that I didn't know.

But I definitely wouldn't have said this.

I left the Red Dragon like something was chasing me, my legs churning like machinery. I could feel the impact of each step surging up through my heels, beating in my phantom heart. Pounding in the hole in my chest. The literal wound still hadn't completely healed. This morning when I checked beneath Kenryu's bandages, it looked like a large cavity in a piece of swiss cheese. My flesh was trying to reach out to itself, spreading like algae, knitting together over a network of dull turquoise ropes I could barely see anymore. And it throbbed now, a constant reminder of the last two days.

I asked myself for the hundredth time--did I make a mistake? If I hadn't said it, if I hadn't screamed at Mayu that I loved her, would she still be here? Would she be willing to stay? Would those things that magically came up have come up at all?

Did I ruin everything?

Could I ever take it back?

Her face was a constant presence in my mind, but I'd never had to weather how her eyes looked at me that night. Or tonight. Like I was someone else, someone that she was forced to deal with. Like someone who hadn't been there, by her side for as long as she could remember. Like somebody who didn't belong.

I had thought that when we fought, she was just lashing out at me because she didn't know how to handle what I'd said. That she was mad at me because she thought I was lying to her, that I was just saying it so that she wouldn't abandon me in the end.

I knew she'd heard me, I knew she'd listened.

I'd hoped that we'd be okay.

My shoulder clips the arm of someone passing by me. A zing of pain shoots through me, but I keep walking.

Was it wrong to hope that I could get through to her? What was it about me that made me think I was so special?

And I hadn't seen her--until tonight. When she'd come back with Eri only, it seemed, to tell me that she was taking a leave of absence from this world.

That she had things she needed to take of.

And that I shouldn't be there for any of it.

"Hey, you!" comes a voice from behind me. I keep walking.

She wouldn't tell me where she was going. She wouldn't tell me what she needed to do. She wouldn't tell me why I couldn't follow.

She just told me, like what I'd said didn't matter.

I feel hands on my shoulders, pulling me to a stop, and I let them, my eyes remaining on the street ahead of me without really seeing it. Yellow streetlight glitters on black shadows. The smell of rain and liquor is all around me.

Suddenly, my vision is blocked by a dirty face a handful of years older than my own. Their teeth are yellow and so are the whites of their eyes. Their breath stinks.

"I said, why don't you say you're sorry? Eh? EH?!"

If what I said didn't matter to her, what I do matters even less.

My hands turn into fists and I swing my arms wildly to free them from the grips that bind them. Within a moment, my knuckles bury themselves in the cheek of the man before me. I feel flesh flatten and tear beneath my hand. Blood joins the stains already on the man's teeth.

Two other voices, one on each side of me, the other two who grabbed me, squawk in amazement and immediately try to reaffirm their hold on me, but I've already spun around. The first man's broad swing flies over my head when I duck and I send my shoulder into the center of his chest, knocking him backward. The third man's hands manage to grapple a hold of my wrist, but I sweep my arm back toward his face and stun him with a blow to his chin.

He staggers backward, losing his balance and falling to the ground in a mass of dirty clothes and undulating limbs.

I fall upon him, grabbing a tight hold of his collar in one hand, and making a hard fist with my other. His head snaps sideways after each subsequent blow, his cheek beneath my fist swelling until I can feel the blood pack itself tight beneath the skin.

I told her I loved her.

I jut my elbow sideways, up into the crotch of one of the men as they get closer to me.

And she left me here.

The strength with which I'm torn off the man on the ground shocks me. I find my arms pulled as far out to my sides as they can get, pain already screaming through my shoulder by the time a fist plunges into my gut. I stumble in the grip of the men and cannot get my body used to the pain by the time another set of knuckles cracks me in the mouth. My skin splits like paper, crumbling already.

She thinks I'm in the way.

I trust the grip of the men who hold me enough to push from the ground with both legs. I plant the soles of my feet into the chest of the man before me and send him sprawling on the ground away from us. The man on my right throws my arm from his grasp and unbalances us. The ground comes up to meet my back hard, the weight of the man to my left smashing into my body when I fall.

How could she?

I pitch myself to the side before he can pin me to the ground completely, the sweep of my arm crushing deeply into his throat. I hear him choke and rip my body free of his. When he attempts to rise, I put my hand on his face and shove his head back down into the street until something crunches, and his body stills.

Air scrapes in and out of my lungs. Pain throbs through me. I feel my crystal blood ooze and seep and fill the hole in my shoulder. My fingers are slick with the crimson blood of my attackers, who all lay spread around me in a grotesque triangle of unconscious drunkenness.

My face is drenched with cold sweat, my hair sticking to my forehead.

All of my horror, all of my anger, all of my shame. My guilt, my regret, my pain. It all wars inside me, each their own separate tornado, swirling and powerful, clashing with the others and fighting for supremacy.

I don't know how to feel.

I don't know how I can feel all of this.

I don't know what to do now.

I throw back my head and scream the deep breath I'd taken inside me out at the dark, cloudy sky.

Walking cleared my head. It always did.

But tonight, each step I take seems to stuff my mind fuller.

The buildings rise around me and I swear I see faces in the way that the streetlamps hit their black windows. The shadows chase me with their presence until I am running, my feet pounding the cobblestones beneath me. The summer night air sticks in my lungs until it's even more a chore to breathe through my dented side. My hands clench into fists and I fight to move faster, the blood caked on my knuckles cracking.

I turn and dart and whirl and sprint until I'm unsure of where I began and where I'm going.

If I run long enough, maybe I'll leave it all behind.

If I run long enough, maybe it'll stop hurting.

By the time I turn my last corner the tears in my eyes are there for more than one reason. I skid to a stop and the sweat on my forehead runs down my face and neck. My shirt sticks to me like plastic wrap and the light of a neon sign shines down on me, making me squint.

Ester's Convenience Store.

I stand, panting, bathing in the glow of the sign and the lights of the several refrigerators inside.

I didn't have a plan when I started running, but my feet must have known something that I didn't.

They wanted me to go home. And they were right, the damn things. There was no way I could go back to my place and handle the sight of Mayu's building next door.

I make my way quickly along the block until I come to the latched door on the picket fence gate surrounding our yard.

Unlocked. Damn it, how many times had I told Sher to throw the latch? It wasn't like it was help much with what the people of this city could do, but we didn't have to make it easy for them...

My footsteps are silent on the grass. I can see only a bit of yellow light at the top of the stairs. The oven light must be on, like always.

Some things never changed. No matter what else happened.

I press my mouth into a line. I wasn't going to cry. Not now, not ever again. Not over this. Not where anyone could see me.

I pull my keys from my pocket and start pushing one into the lock--

--when the door springs open, the keyring and all its decoration ripped out of my hand. I jump backward as the light inside flicks on, and I stare my father in the face.

Emerill looks as surprised to see me as I do him. For a moment, we just stare at each other, our mouths parted in an equal slashmarks of surprise. His eyes on mine, even though I can see them waver as they take in the bruises on my face and the blood on my hands.

It's not the first time he's seen me like this, on our doorstep and coming home after a fight. But the longer his gaze rests on me, the worse I feel. Like, maybe I should have thought first, maybe I should have apologized.

But why? says a voice in the back of my mind and it bolsters my resolve. I didn't do anything wrong.

I'm allowed this. Anyone would be if they had their heart ripped out.

I tear my keys from the lock and put them back in my pocket.

"Am I still allowed inside or should I just go?"

Emerill blinks and I can see a shadow flicker over his face. Wordlessly he steps aside. And I charge past him.

"Thanks."

"Dinner's on the table."

I pause on the stairs. That couldn't mean what I thought it meant.

I keep going without saying anything.

"I trust even you have taken notice of the presence that has left the city tonight, Emerill." The black cat's voice never made much sense to him. Deep and with a timbre like scattered gravel, if he hadn't been setting a saucer full of coffee in front of Ayane, he wouldn't have believed it.

Kenryu's hazel gaze burns like a steady candle, never wavering from beneath the low hanging brim of his canvas hat.

"Yeah, I've noticed."

"That's all you can say?" the cat asks, aghast.

"What else is there to say?" With his own coffee mug in hand, Emerill takes a seat next to Ayane. "She isn't my daughter. She is allowed to make her own decisions." A long, luxuriant slurp breaks the silence.

"You realize, don't you, the dangers that could be facing the city at--"

"What do you expect me to do about it?" he cuts the feline off. Beady ruby eyes bore into his before Ayane flings his gaze to a remarkably silent Kenryu. The man's coffee mug sits untouched, the wafting steam billowing into the canopy of his folded fingers.

"You know he's right, Ayane," Kenryu's input slices between their volley of words. "Emerill here is in the same boat as the both of us, strength wise. Aren't you, Emerill?"

He meets Kenryu's gaze without flinching. The silence rolls in like a thundercloud, crackling with static and tickling sixth senses to alertness.

Kenryu's hands slide apart and he plucks up his coffee. "It's true that you couldn't do anything to stop the Divine Maiden. She is the Divine Maiden, after all. And the one, True Queen on top of that. It's hard to think of that frail little body restraining that much power.

"But what makes you think that when we're talking about your part in this that we specifically mean you?"

He stiffens. Kenryu's eyes narrow to match the knowing smile stretching on his thin lips.

"You do have an Opes in your care, don't you? What do you think Mayu's disappearance will do to it?"

Ceramic meets wood when Emerill's mug slams down to rest there, coffee slopping over the rim like a tsunami. "He isn't ready for that."

"Well, that could have fooled me. He's been in training for a while now. He won't win any medals for progress, but at least he's making a show of trying hard."

The black cat's small head tilts between the two men as they speak.

"You've been with him through his entire journey," Kenryu continues. "None of us know the treasure he holds inside of his body, but right now it's the only thing capable of taking the Divine Maiden's place as a stand-in. A substitute.

"With the right training, he could be a force to reckon with. Without that training--with the emotional strain he's sure to suffer through after this? We could be looking at an even bigger disaster." Kenryu pauses to let his words sink in.

Emerill grimaces and looks away from his two table mates, to the partition that separated the staircase leading down to the convenience store.

"When Joslin came to us," he begins, "I didn't know what to expect."

"Joslin?" Ayane's ears perk at attention.

"A Time Worker. One of only three discovered since the Congregation began," Kenryu explains. Eyes gleam in the shadows of his hat. "She is the only one you take missions from anymore. Isn't that right, Ames?"

I don't get up three more steps when I realize Emerill lied to me. I can feel others in our house before I see them. Their tightly wound spiritual pressures are compact and familiar and I don't want to see either one of them.

So when I step into my own dining room and Kenryu turns to face me with a smile like a zipper, all I want to do is knock his teeth down his throat. Ayane, a black clump of disinterest, just stares.

And there's no food anywhere.

"How would you like to have a hand in not only the well-being of this city, but the whole Existence itself?"

"Go to hell."

I don't have time for this. I don't even want time for this. I turn around, take one step and smack right into Emerill's chest. He puts his hands on my shoulders to steady me but I jerk myself free of him. Something like pain darkens his face,

"What is this? Some kind of intervention?"

"Toby, they only came to talk to--"

"Save it," I snap, cutting a look aside to the table. "I don't want anything to do with them at all."

"That's a very selfish--"
"But you haven't even heard--"

They both start talking at once, their pleas and their barbs mixing together. I can't understand them, and soon can't hear them from all the phantom blood rushing through my ears.

I can feel power spark through me like lightning in a storm, from one end of me to the other. My fingers tremble, I can't keep them still and in my shoes my feet are cold as ice. I can see the dent in my cheek begin to glow a wicked hot cyan out the corner of my eye.

"Who the hell do you think I am? I'm nothing to you people. To either of you. If you want something done, go get--" I break off, stunned. I had been about to say her name. Even the thought of her, that millisecond of time where I can see her face as clearly as if she was standing in front of me, and hear her voice tell me that she's leaving, sucks all the anger out of me.

Minutes ago, I'd been ready to kill at the thought of her.

Now all I can do is turn away so none of them see my face. I'm halfway around Emerill, heading back downstairs when I hear Kenryu again.

"That's the problem. We can't simply go get her. She's gone. And judging by how you're acting right now? You know it."

I exhale.

"Hers is a duty that can't just be walked away from. Someone needs to take her place."

"What difference does it make?" I say, clenching my teeth so my voice stays even. "None of that changes anything. Just because she's gone doesn't mean I'm going to jump through your hoops. You've lost her so now you're turning to me? The Opes, the one with the treasure inside his fake body?" I scoff. "Believe me, Kenryu. You, Ayane, this whole city. The whole world for all I care. The whole world can go to hell for all that I'm going to do about it.

"If you won't get out of my house, I will."

I bat Emerill's reaching hand away from my shoulder and I descend back into the belly of the store below my house.

Or, what once was my house.

I don't know what I'll do. But I know that I never want to see it again.