One-night stands are interesting concepts and one that - despite my recent change in luck with them - still confused me a little. For example, Amanda, I had fucked her six ways from Sunday the night before and then again another few more times that morning; there was so much of my cum inside her, it was a minor miracle that she wasn't leaving a trail of it behind her as she walked - with something of a hobble - down the hallway and the stairs on her much acclaimed and thoroughly earned walk of shame. Did it really count as a one-night stand if it had been repeated the following day?

The question died on my lips, though, as no sooner had Amanda's blonde hair disappeared down the stairs than Jimmy's dark hair appeared coming up them. His eyes locked onto mine, a brief look of surprise flashing over his face before his eyes lit up in delight. "Pete! You're home!" He rushed forward and wrapped his arms around me in the tightest bear hug he could manage. "Dude, I've missed you! How are things going?"

I had to admit, I smiled, possibly my first genuine, heartfelt smile in months. Jimmy was my best friend, a man closer to me than family; he was - out of everyone - the only person whose mind I couldn't bring myself to block. I needed that connection; I needed something to fight for, something to keep me connected. It was never going to be my family, nor could it be now that they were dead; the same went for Becky and - to a lesser extent - Philippa as well. Charlotte was an Evo and not a connection to what I considered the real world. Evie hung between both existences in a way that none of us really understood yet. Olivia had potential, but she was too new; she wasn't a connection, just the possibility of one. Jimmy was it; he was the last grasp I had on my ever-slipping humanity; he was the link between my new life and who I had been before it; he knew me as the me I had to aspire to. For all my failings and faults as a human, I had been a good man, a man who would have been horrified at some of the things I had been forced to do.

I didn't want to lose sight of that. I couldn't. Even though he had no idea how deep the sentiment actually went, Jimmy was all I had left, all that was stopping me from falling into the maelstrom of endless, vengeful war.

I hoped he would never know how much he had done for me.

With his arms around me and the happy smile on his face - and more importantly, sensing nothing in the way of external influences over him - I felt myself relax a little, losing myself in the moment of normalcy. "Dude, what happened? Where have you been? I've been freaking the fuck out!"

I sighed heavily and stepped back out of the bear hug. "I... um... I kinda lost it a bit," I said, stepping back into my apartment and letting him follow in beside me, placing a bottle of milk on my counter before he joined me on the sofa.

"Yeah, I heard about Becky, man. I know you liked her, I'm sorry. I... Jesus, what can you say to that?"

I smiled weakly and nodded. It was time to start getting creative. "Thanks, but it's worse than that. My asshole parents went and got themselves murdered, too."

"What?!?" Jimmy spluttered around his tongue. Part of me felt bad talking about them like that, not after they had sacrificed themselves for me, but Jimmy knew my feelings about them, and there was no way to tell him what happened without explaining how I knew.

"Home invasion gone wrong," I shook my head, "Or at least that's the working theory."

"Fuuuuck! Now I really don't know what to say." Jimmy slumped further into his seat. "When did that happen?"

"Just before Christmas," I sighed. "But you know what they were like. They weren't found for a few weeks; nobody raised the alarm until they missed a few of their Rotary Club meetings."

"Didn't you say your cousin was killed before that, too?"

That was the excuse I had used to talk about the death of Faye. I just nodded.

"I'm... sorry?" He said, his eyes filled with sympathy. "I mean, you know I wasn't the greatest fan of your parents; they were pretty shitty people, but... wow."

"Yeah," I huffed out a breath. "No explanation, no closure, just... It knocked me for six a bit." I was surprised with how honest that answer was. People in my position would usually either take the condolences without comment or launch into a tirade about how it wasn't needed. My parents had been the worst sort of people right until the very end, but at the very end, they had both stood their ground to protect a child whom they had spent a lifetime torturing. There was no other way to put it; I had no idea how I was supposed to feel about that. It went nowhere near far enough to absolve them of their actions for the entirety of my life before that; it raised more questions than it answered, and yet, they had given their lives for me, seemingly without a moment's hesitation. It was totally at odds with everything I knew about them. And it really had completely thrown me through a loop.

"I... I don't know what to say, buddy," he sighed and flopped back onto his own end of the sofa. He looked around and sniffed. "You've been fucking."

"Needed to blow off some steam."

"With..." he tossed his thumb over his shoulder, "...The blonde on the stairs."

I just smiled and nodded.

"Damn, dude, you get her number for round two?" I shook my head, causing him to snort out laughing. "I've created a monster."

"How's Lori?" I asked, an intentional and highly unsubtle attempt at changing the subject.

The smile that lit up Jimmy's face answered my question better than his words ever could. Then it suddenly dropped. "Oh shit, she sent me to the store, she's waiting for me, be right back!" He hopped up and ran out of the apartment.

I blinked at the door as it closed behind him, then snorted out a laugh—same old Jimmy. I got up and headed to the kitchen area, pulling a glass out of one of the higher cupboards and filling it up with water from the sink. After having lived months on nothing other than water, it felt strange to have other options and not even consider them before still opting for that. It was automatic. For someone who very rarely, if ever, drank plain water in my life before my foray into a warzone, it was something of an unexpected change. I shrugged it off and took a large gulp from the glass before leaning on the counter.

A few seconds later, there was a knock on the door. I still wasn't quite over my paranoia despite having taken a decent amount of it out on Amanda the night before... and that morning... and I let my senses wash out to the couple on the other side of the door. A smile pulled at my lips. Jimmy could barely contain his excitement at having his friend back, and Lori wasn't far behind him, but more than that, she was happy to see her boyfriend so happy. I walked over and pulled the door open, letting them both in. Lori stopped and gave me a tight, tender hug before stepping all the way in. It was nice. To be welcomed home, to have people happy to see me just for being me, it warmed a part of me that had been left to wither in the cold for months. To make matters even better, there was no sign of corruption or influence in Lori either. "I'm sorry about your folks, Hun," She whispered to me before she pulled away.

"Thanks, Lori," I smiled back. It was nice to just... be. It was what I had hoped for with Charlotte the day before, but the incident with Marco's spy in her head, coupled with her knowing everything there was to know about my exploits in Ukraine, had thrown that out quite dramatically. Things had gone much better at the memorial - as much as things could go well at a memorial - at least between her and I, the contact with The Judge notwithstanding, and could almost seem to be back to normal by the time she'd dropped me home. But that 'normal' was not the same as this one.

There was always an edge between Charlotte and me, not necessarily in a bad way; it was just that everything about our relationship was founded on the fact that we were both Evos. That influenced everything, some ways for good, others for bad, and often it was very subtle, but it was always there. In fact, if you discounted every subject linked to our Evo nature and every conversation we'd had about something to do with it, We had barely spoken. I supposed it was a bit of a redundancy for us, though, I knew everything about her without a word about ever being spoken aloud. My friendship with Charlotte - assuming it could go back to the free and easy way it had been before the way - was as close as it was with Jimmy; I knew even more about her than anyone else in my life, but it stopped us from having... this.

In those longest nights, in the darkest hours, in the deepest pits of my rage, loneliness, and sadness, both in Ukraine and before it, this is what I had missed the most. Just being in a room with my friend and shooting the shit about any inane thought that popped into our heads. It was damned near perfect. Even more so when Jimmy jumped up after a few minutes of idle conversation and went to grab a few beers from the fridge that I hadn't even realized were there. We were halfway through April now; I doubted I had spent more than a few hours in this room before the previous evening since early December.

Well, four-month chilled beer was as good as any other, and I groaned loudly as I took my first pull from the condensation-soaked bottle.

"So," Jimmy chirped up after a swig of his own, lifting his feet onto the coffee table before Lori promptly batted them off again. "Are you back to see the king?"

"Sorry?"

"The King. Professor Jacobs? You know, the surly old dude responsible for deciding if your project has a passing grade or not? Says I'm his favorite student?" Jimmy quirked an eyebrow. "Jesus, dude, you really have been away with the fairies."

I cracked out a laugh. Fuck, there was normalcy, and then there was this. Despite my perfect memory, I had completely forgotten about my college course and the origins of my computer. It had seemed - and still seemed - so laughably inconsequential compared to everything else going on in my life. On one hand, I had found a heap of massacred civilians in Alchevs'k and discovered a plot to essentially render all of humanity into slavery, and on the other hand, I had to turn in my final project to get my degree. Chalk and cheese, oil and water, there were no conceivable analogies to the massive degrees my existence seemed to swing these days.

But then, there was a part of me that craved that level of normalcy. I had created something truly extraordinary, and it would take all of a few minutes to replicate the operating system and revert it back into a games engine from the surveillance system I had turned it into. With that and the notes I had prepared all those months ago, I was confident of not only a high passing grade, but possibly the highest grade possible. There was even a good chance that I would be asked to stay on to do my Master's degree or even PhD in the course, too.

Those thoughts flashed through my mind in an instant before I looked back up to Jimmy. "Actually, with everything going on, I had forgotten all about that," I chuckled. "But everything was finished before Christmas, all I really have to do is set up the meeting with King Jacobs. What about yours?"

"Oh, I completely revamped all of mine, thanks to this fucking genius." He nudged Lori.

"I didn't do anything, babe," she blushed.

"I know," he grumbled teasingly, "You just came up with so many awesome ideas that I would have been an idiot not to put them in there. Then I had to do all the work. Good thing you've got a nice ass."

Lori giggled and then kissed his cheek.

"What else did you add?" I asked, both intrigued and happy for the distraction from everything else I had running through my head. "Last time we spoke about it, you were putting together a VR simulator for the military or something, right?"

"Yeah, that's right. It's like a training simulator, but I thought it could have added benefits for recovering from PTSD. That last part was a little more complicated than I thought because the events would need to be identical to what actually happened to a person; a generic simulator wouldn't work; well, it would, but it wouldn't be any help. Seriously, never in a million years did I think that I would be doing research into trauma therapy for a degree in software programming. But it's still doable. Lori had the idea of extending that idea out further, though..."

"Like what?" I asked when he didn't elaborate.

"Search and rescue scenarios for disaster areas," he listed things off on his fingers, "accident simulators for EMTs to practice on, even something like training surgeons how to perform certain operations a few hundred times before they need a real patient to practice on, but even down to something as simple as virtual vacations. Get some dude to map out the slopes of Mount Everest, and then anyone could visit the peak, or walk the Great Wall of China, or... I don't know... spray paint the Grand Canyon or something. Total VR immersion."

"That... would be a hell of a lot of programming," I laughed.

"Fucking hell, don't I know it." Jimmy rolled his eyes and threw an exasperated glance at a giggling Lori. "But I only need a proof of concept for Jacobs, and that is what I have."

"Well, shit, dude," I was still laughing. "Sounds like she's been a good influence on you."

"Of course I am," She grinned playfully with a little bow. "Someone had to kick him into gear. I need a man in gainful employment, not a bum who failed his degree 'cause he slacked off at uni."

"Oooh, already thinking about the long term, eh?" I smirked at Jimmy, who, in turn, had the good grace to blush a little as he grinned back. "Any wedding dates or baby showers I should put into my diary?" I asked as I took another long sip from my beer.

"Not yet," Lori giggled. "But we've talked about it."

I promptly spat my beer out, my eyes flicking back and forth between a very pleased-with-herself-looking Lori and an equally amused-looking Jimmy. "Fuck me, you've tamed him! I never thought I'd see the day." I laughed out loud again.

"What can I say?" Jimmy shrugged, wiping a bit of the water spray from his jeans. "When you know, you know."

"I'm happy for you," I smiled and nodded. "For both of you. Really."

"Pete, I..." Jimmy started before Lori put a hand on his shoulder and silenced him.

"Pete, love," she said, looking almost affectionately into my eyes. "You've been through a really hard time, and losing Becky, shit, I can't even imagine what that must have been like. We didn't want to rub our... I don't know... our happiness in your face. But the way Jimmy says it, you two are like brothers..." she paused to let the smiling glance flick between Jimmy and me, "...and I have no intention of coming between that. So, as far as I'm concerned, going forward, when we do have a family and all that stuff, you are part of it. Okay?"

It would, I suppose, be the manly and macho thing to say that I just nodded stoically and thanked her. But if this war had taught me one thing, it was that being a man and being macho were not the same thing. I have no shame in admitting that I choked up a little at Lori's heartfelt declaration. "You are going to find someone one day, Pete. And that girl will be lucky to have you. You will find happiness, and you will have a family of your own, and when you do, she'll be part of this family too... our family."

"Thanks, Lori. That means... more to me than you know."

Seeing the emotion etched into my face, she smiled warmly, crossed the room, and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me tight and waving Jimmy across to join us.

"Nope," he coughed hoarsely. "You ain't getting me started, or this is gonna turn into a very messy night."

"Perv," she smirked at him, causing me to snort out a laugh. "But two strapping men, little old me..."

"I meant getting drunk! God, woman, get your mind out of the gutter!"

"You like my mind in the gutter."

There was a pause before he said, "Touché," then laughed loudly. We held the hug for a few more seconds before parting and returning to our respective chairs again. The next few hours raced by in that way that time only ever did when you wanted it to slow the fuck down. I wanted to savor the moment, to bask in it, and to relish every single minute of normality. It was hardly a rushed affair; Jimmy and Lori must have spent the better part of five hours just catching me up on what they had been doing for the last few months and how things were going in their relationship. It also gave me a bit more of an opportunity to get to know Lori better. I had to admit, I liked her. I didn't use any of my powers on her, at least no more than had been needed to make sure no other Evo had influenced her in any way, and with that concern satisfied, if felt... disrespectful - both to her and to Jimmy - for me to probe any further.

She was studying - of all things - psychology and spoke about her subject and course material with a passion that made me smile to myself. She reminded me of me, or the me I could have been if I had the self-confidence to talk about anything with that level of assuredness, back when my college life was the only thing about me of any consequence. I didn't ask, and I couldn't tell for sure based on that single conversation, but I got the impression that the subject meant something to her. Be that struggles of her own or witnessing the mental-health struggles of someone close to her, she spoke about her passion with the meaning and the fortitude that could only really be found in someone who had witnessed that sort of thing up close. It wasn't - as many people often do - a course taken just to satisfy a curiosity; it wasn't an interest that developed into an academic pursuit; she had wanted to learn so that she could actually help someone.

Considering the problems I'd had readjusting after my stint in the war and the fact that even I could see that I had some form of PTSD bouncing around my head, it was a sentiment that resonated with me very strongly.

There was also something else to it, though. to the conversation with these two people. I hadn't really realized it before, having been apart from what I would have considered my 'normal' for so long; I had forgotten what it was like to just be in the mundane company of humans. Sure, you could argue I had spent the first stint of my time in Ukraine with Henry and his men, but that was far from normal. For the past few months, since my self-imposed lockdown before Christmas, I had grown more and more accustomed to thinking of humans as the weak link in any problem. I had wiped the minds of almost all of the ones who knew about me; Jimmy and Lori had been the only exception, same with Olivia, but all of those had been because they had already gone away for the holidays when I made that decision.

Aside from them, I had completely cut myself off from people. More than that, humans had been the weak link when it came to finding me. Toussant, the Judge, the Praetorians, whoever it was that could be held ultimately responsible for the things that had happened to Becky and Philippa, they had used those two to get to me. And it had been practically effortless for them. Even despite what the Judge had said about the resistance in Philippa's mind, I got the impression that it was only hard work compared to a normal human, rather than it being particularly difficult. It was a sentiment I had capitalized on myself in the Praetorian compound, too. I had ripped through the minds of every human in the area; I had arrested their loyalties, stripped them of their autonomy, and turned them against their masters with - in hindsight - astonishing ease. More than a few of them had paid for that with their lives, and the rest had been handed off to the Inquisition with less than a second thought.

More than that, almost every death of every person standing between me and my target in my months-long stint in the war had been human. They were, for lack of a better word, chattel. Obstacles. Marginal inconveniences. And I had treated them that way. I hadn't consciously realized it at the time, but my safety and the safety of the people I loved were squarely rooted in a need for secrecy and security. Humans, no matter how oblivious they were to the world I now seemed to be buried in, were the weak link in that. They were a liability in any meaningful attempt at shielding myself. As a result, I had been increasingly isolating myself from them. For the last few months, I had considered that a necessary evil, something to be undone when the danger had passed, but sitting here, just talking with my friend and his love about things that were so laughably unimportant, made me feel better than I had done since the night of the party in October.

For those few hours, I was Pete again. Not the warrior, not the killer, not the burning winds of vengeance I had been for months, I was not an Evo, I was not a soldier, I wasn't anything... I was just me.

And it felt good to be just me again.

Listening to Jimmy animatedly describe the silent competition between himself and Lori's dad about who could polish off the most food at their Christmas dinner, his laughter, Lori's rolling eyes, and the time flying by with each passing second, I resolved to make this the thing I was fighting for. Because no matter what came of this war, no matter who emerged alive and victorious on the other side, this was the life I wanted... no, the life I needed to still be here when I got back to it.

The losses, the horrors, and the fury of war would leave their scars, shit, they already had done, and they would be things I would need to work through when it was over. There would be more killing, more death, and almost certainly more loss, but if I didn't have this to come home to, and if this was another casualty of this insane fucking war, then I really would be lost. I resolved to never let that happen. I would make sure that nothing happened to Jimmy, or Lori, or anyone else that mattered to me, and I would make sure that I was still the same person when I came back to them when all this was finished.

But most of all, I resolved to make sure that this would finish. This would not be a march to the drumbeat of endless war, this conflict would continue only for as long as it had to. I had a clear set of goals: Destroy the Praetorians, hunt down Marco and fucking end him, root out and destroy the treason in the Conclave, the Sect, and the Inquisition, and then make sure that I could live out the rest of my life in peace. Give or take the remaining questions about the Judge - that could go either way at the moment.

Would it be easy? Fuck no! Would it be quick? Almost certainly not, but was it impossible? I really hoped not. But I hoped that God would have mercy on the next person who came for my people because I sure as shit wouldn't. I would dedicate my immediate future to making a very graphic and very public example of them and what would happen to those who went after the people I cared about the most. The days of me only reacting to events around me were over. I would go to see Philippa that evening. Then, the next day, the war would start anew, with my mind firmly fixed on what I considered to be my victory conditions and my resolve revitalized by the only real thing that meant anything anymore.

Home.

With the drinks flowing a little too easily and the late morning giving way to the late afternoon, Jimmy and Lori finally said goodbye. Both of them were enjoying a happy buzz, and neither of them noticed my complete immunity to alcohol as - after a few more hugs - the door closed behind them. Those few hours were the best I had experienced since the end of October- the night that had left Faye dead and started this whole thing. For once, against all of the expectations of the day before, I felt hope.

********

The sun was setting when Charlotte and I pulled up outside the Sect's mansion. I could feel how much I had grown, how much more intune I was with my powers now, compared to the last time I had been here. I could tell, for example, that there were no less than thirty Evo's in the building, split into smaller groups dotted throughout it. Of course, I had only the most basic understanding of the mansion's layout, having only visited once and apparently led on a straight beeline for the conference room, but that one trip told me at least - roughly speaking - where in the building that room was. There was a large group gathered there. Another group seemed to be congregating on the opposite side of the building, and another smaller group was in one of the rooms on the upper floor. That left the two Evo presences in the basement - one that was in very close proximity to one of the very few human presences - as something that stood out rather prominently.

Evie, incidentally - at least the last time I saw her - was still completely invisible to me. Ever the fucking puzzle that one.

It wasn't that I could see them; it wasn't even that I could sense them - that implied that they were giving off something that I could detect, and although that was technically true, it wasn't what was happening now. This was more like a feeling, an awareness; I had been on such heightened alert to be on the lookout for them for so long that my mind was simply able to point to a direction and say, "There's an Evo over there," and be confident that it was right. They would not only have to be pretty powerful to block me at this point but also actively try to block me as well. I had inadvertently trained my mind into something like a radar, able to pin down the location of any Evo in the area with a pretty small margin of error.

It had been about a minute since the engine was shut off when the double-sided, large oaken doors opened, and a woman stepped out. Margaret had been the old woman who had shown us to the elders on my first visit. I hadn't liked her then, and I was certain the manner of our departure - especially her casual dismissal by a furious Charlotte - probably hadn't endeared us to her either. She stopped just beyond the threshold, crossed her arms, and tilted her head back a little to make it perfectly clear she was looking down her nose at us with something approaching a shrew-like look of scorn on her face.

"You know what they say will happen if the wind changes, don't you?" I called up at her from next to the car. I was in no mood to avoid the toes of self-important snobs. Charlotte tried her best to stifle the guffaw and failed miserably.

"Mr. Roberts," she said disdainfully. "I'm not sure that either of you are welcome here after the end of your last meeting with the honored elders."

I sighed and started toward the door. "Margaret, I don't have the time, the patience, or the crayons to explain the reasons for my visit to you, but I think it's quite cute that you think you have a say in the matter."

"I have been guarding these doors for..."

"Listen," I interrupted her. A move that seemed to be as much of a shock to her as being slapped across the face. "I'm coming in. There isn't anything you can do to stop me, and even if there was, you don't have the authority. Arthur told me to come back when I needed something so that is what I am doing. I have matters to attend to that are more important than your little mind can fathom, and you are wasting my time. If I decide to upgrade that to 'standing in my way,' then I will be forced to move you. So if you value the use of your spine for what is left of your self-important little life... Get the fuck out of my way!"

She tried to hold my eyes. That burning spark of defiance blazing behind them.

She failed, lowering her head and moving out of my way.

It was harsh and adversarial, I knew that, but I didn't care. This new resolve gained from my time spent with Jimmy and Lori somehow clarified a few things for me. Before, I was far too concerned with not making enemies, wanting to find allies and friends. Since then I had learned that these people, like the Conclave, weren't my friends, let alone my allies, and at least a number of them were outright enemies. The majority of them were, at best, neutral, not working against me, but they sure as hell weren't helping. At this point, they needed me far more than I needed them, and they had done nothing - absolutely nothing - to earn the slightest bit of leniency or consideration from me. I was going to find Philippa first and help her in any way I could, but once I was done there, a reckoning was going to be brought down on the collective, the likes of which had never been seen before. If I deemed it necessary, I would burn the whole fucking thing to the ground with all of the members of the Sect locked inside. They had bought some goodwill, providing a safe haven for Philippa, Evie, and Fiona. Still, I got the distinct impression from Charlotte that Agatha had been doing that off the books and without the rest of the Sect's knowledge, meaning that she had bought herself some goodwill. Everyone else would have to be dealt with the hard way.

"God, I hope she is one of the traitors," I whispered to Charlotte as we stepped past the now-meek-looking Margaret. "I'm already very tired of that fucking sneer."

"That's just Margaret. She thinks that fucking the Spokesman gives her some sort of authority. She's harmless."

"She's with Arthur?" I asked, looking back over my shoulder at her while images of the ancient-looking leader of the Sect Council flashed through my mind.

"Yup," Charlotte shrugged. "Her sense of superiority and entitlement have to come from somewhere, I guess."

"Look," I said, stopping in the middle of the grandiose, mahogany-lined corridor and turning to face her. "I know these are your people, and I know this is your home. I know you want to believe that nobody here could be responsible for anything... but I also know that you're wrong. At least some of the people here are working with the Praetorians. That is an established fact, and I..."

She held her hand up to silence me. "I know that you are a good man, too, Pete. I also know you aren't going to go in there all fire and brimstone, lopping off heads until you find the answer you want to find. These are my people, but if any of them are with the Praetorians, you can get behind me in the queue of people looking to deal with them. Those fuckers signed their own death warrants when they killed Becky and broke Philippa. I'm with you all the way."

I looked back and forth along the corridor and then back to Charlotte. "Are we going to expect some security or something?

I took a deep breath and nodded. "Alright, let's do this. Lead the way." Charlotte smiled; it wasn't a nervous smile, but there was definitely some apprehension behind it. "How is she?" I asked, knowing that our first stop was going to be Philippa.

"Better than she was," She answered slowly, "Agatha has worked hard on her, doing the best she can, but the damage was... catastrophic. There were always going to be limits to how much she could repair. Philippa was... well, you saw her when we found her, she was manic, it took a long time just to be able to calm her down a bit, and I'm not going to lie, there are a lot of times she needs to be sedated. Her mind is much easier to navigate and assess when she's sleeping, but the repairs done then don't seem to hold when she wakes up, so it's been very slow progress."

"Does she.... Remember?"

"What happened to Becky?" Charlotte looked up at me sadly as we walked. "Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes, she is almost completely lucid; other times, she has no idea where she is or what's going on. Mostly, she's somewhere in between. I'm not sure which ones are the hardest to see."

I sighed and nodded. I remembered thinking about bullets in Ukraine and the damage they could do to the human body; how it was perhaps a mercy - in terms of the pain suffered - to be killed by a bullet rather than left to deal with the lifelong agony of living with that level of damage. Nobody ever really recovered from a gunshot wound, not completely. Maybe the ache or the bodily weakness became manageable in time, perhaps even normal. But it never went away. This seemed a lot like that, except without the actual bullet. The last time I had seen Philippa, she had been like a woman possessed by some vengeful spirit, flicking rapidly and manically between furious rage and inconsolable sadness, all of it in front of my eyes. It had been... haunting and horrific in equal measure, and I couldn't imagine how I could possibly help.

But I was firmly resolved to try. She deserved my best and nothing less. Like Becky, she had been an innocent, caught up in a war that she didn't know was happening. What had happened to her was, in some ways, even worse than what had happened to Becky. Her blonde lover, our lover, had been killed. It had been devastating, but it had been quick; Becky wasn't in pain anymore. Philippa was suffering what could only be equated to a barbaric and savage form of mental torture all day, every day, for months. There was a part of me that knew she had given up Becky to the Toussant, that she was ultimately responsible for the Praetorians taking her and eventually killing her, but I had always known there was no way she could have stopped that, not as a human. Yet, that conversation with the Judge at Becky's funeral had made me consider something I hadn't ever thought about: She had resisted. She had fought. She had fought it so hard that her mind had shattered in the process. She hadn't given the Praetorians anything; she'd had that information mercilessly ripped out of her despite putting up a resistance that could only be described as fucking heroic.

She wasn't a failure; she wasn't a weak link; she was the best kind of person I knew, whether she would ever accept it or not. And she deserved my best in return.

No further conversation passed between Charlotte and me as we made our way through a seemingly labyrinthian series of corridors until we finally got to a door. Charlotte stopped, looked up at me with an expression between hope and apprehension, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

The lights were dimmed; eerie and ominous shadows seemed to hide in the darker corners of the room and reach out to grab at my feet and the few sparse pieces of furniture in front of me. I wasn't paying attention to them, though; my eyes were firmly and unshakably fixed on the metal-framed single bed in the middle of the room. It reminded me of those 1950's style beds you would find in a psychiatric hospital, the ones that patients would be handcuffed to before modern medicine did away with that sort of barbarism, yet that was precisely the position I found Philippa in. It was wasn't cuffs restraining her to the bed, but thick, strong-looking straps, maybe made out of the same material used in car seatbelts. She was wearing a pair of cotton shorts, the sort that would usually be part of a pyjama set, and a vest top that - possibly due to her tossing and turning - had ridden up her midriff to expose her slender stomach.

But that wasn't what held my eyes.

Her body, her entire sweat-sheened body, from her face to her arms, to her belly, to her thighs, were covered in angry, painful-looking scratches. It was like she had been attacked by a herd of furious, feral cats or, more likely, tried to rip off her own skin with her nails. Some were little more than red welts; others looked like long cuts running over her skin. Some looked like they had been there for a while and were in the process of healing; some looked like they had only been done that morning, and more than one of them was still caked in fresh, if partially dried, blood. I felt a shudder of utter revulsion run through me, not at Philippa, but at myself.

When I had been traipsing around Ukraine, she had been here, like this.

When I came home, she was here, like this.

When I had picked up some stranger to fuck the shit out of, she had been here, like this.

And that morning, when I was drinking and laughing and relaxing with Jimmy and Lori, she had been here, carving those marks into her own skin... left like this.

I had abandoned her.

"It's good to see you, Pete." A voice sounded to my left. I wheeled around to find its source, seeing Fiona and Evie stepping through a door into a side room I hadn't even noticed was there. Agatha, with a soft, sympathetic smile on her face, was behind them. Fiona was first into the room, her face looked haggard and drawn, etched with sadness as she wrapped her arms around me for a hug. Evie wasn't looking quite as bad, but then she wouldn't have been grieving Uri the same way Fiona was, but she looked no less tired as she joined the hug.

My mind reached out without thinking, slipping into both of their minds and immediately finding the corruption left by Marco. That shadow of influence that manipulated them both in the same way it had manipulated me. I crushed the life out of it in both of them, my hatred of that man growing more visceral by the moment.

Both of them seemed to suck in a deep, surprised-sounding breath and then relaxed again. "Thanks, Pete." Fiona sighed, not breaking the hug. "I feel better already. We're gonna get that bastard."

I nodded silently. Evie looked up at me, a little confusion behind her eyes, but she didn't press the matter and nestled her head back against my chest again a moment later. "Are you okay?" she whispered softly. "I was so worried about you."

"I'm... I'm as okay as can be expected under the circumstances," I tried to give her a reassuring smile, although I had no idea how successful it was. "How are you holding up?" I asked both of them.

"We're okay," Evie nodded, flicking a quick confirmatory glance to Fiona.

"It sucks that Uri's gone," Fiona sighed, "He wasn't quite like a father to me, but he took me under his wing and taught me everything I know. I just... wish there had been a way to..."

"I know," I sighed when she couldn't finish the sentence, stroking my fingers through her hair as I held them both close. "He was a good man, and it took me far longer than it should have for me to see it. You told me that he couldn't be the traitor, Jerry did too, I should have listened to you."

"We'll make them pay," Fiona nodded, firmness and a resolve echoing in her voice despite the sadness filling it.

"Every last one of them," I agreed.

"Pete?" Evie looked up at me. "Did you... did you find out anything more about... about me?"

I shook my head, "I'm sorry, I haven't found anything new yet, but I will. I promise."

She nodded and cuddled herself back against me. I looked over Fiona's head to Agatha, then back to Philippa. "How is she?"

"She's resting," the ancient woman said, her own gaze moving to the bed and its pitiful, lonely occupant. "It hasn't been a great morning, but on the whole, she is better than she was. I thought it would be better to wait for you before starting the next round of treatment."

"Thank you, Agatha." I smiled before turning my eyes back to her again. "Has Charlotte told you what is going on?"

"About the traitors? She has, yes." she sighed. "Given the Sect's complete disinterest in helping you in this war, I can't say I'm overly surprised, but I couldn't begin to guess who they could be."

"I'm sorry to do this," I said, finally nudging the girls to break the hug. "Especially after everything you've done for Pip, but..."

"You have to check me. It's okay, Pete. I understand." She smiled and reached out her hand. I took it and - as gently as I was able - probed her mind. She put up no resistance whatsoever. She was a remarkably powerful woman, and her city reflected her centuries-long life, filled with memories and experiences that I couldn't begin to comprehend, nor was I about to try, not right now. A simple look was all it took: one for the corruption from Marco, one through her library of memories to see if there was anything in there about the Praetorians, and a last one in her vault to make sure she wasn't hiding anything from me.

There was nothing. Agatha - even if only Agatha - could be trusted completely.

"Thank you," I smiled to her. "You're right; I had to check and be sure." I turned and looked down at Philippa. "Is there anything you can tell me?"

Agatha shook her head. "I've done everything I can, but I've never seen anything like it," she sighed softly, moving to one side of Philippa's bed. "The human mind is a truly remarkable thing, and most types of trauma can be bypassed and corrected. But this isn't a physical trauma; there is nothing actually wrong with her, so those new neural pathways are not being created. The only comparison I have is to say her Palace has been blown open rather than simply destroyed, except, being human, she doesn't have one. I'm at a loss, Pete. The only option I can think of is to wait and see if she gets better on her own, but..."

"But what?" I asked as she left the sentence hanging in the air.

"But I can't see how it would help. It's been months, and aside from some very limited techniques to calm her mind, all of which are temporary, there hasn't been any progress in her condition at all. It's almost cruel to leave her like this."

I sighed heavily and nodded. "Charlotte said you needed my help?"

"It's a long shot, but... you are powerful, Pete. I have no idea if it can be done or how you would go about it even if it was, but maybe there is a way for you to use your power to shore up her psyche."

I guess she'd already answered my inevitable 'How the fuck do I do that?' question, so I just took a deep breath and nodded. "I'll try, but... I don't even know where to start."

"Please try, Pete." Charlotte's voice came from the foot of the bed. I glanced over at her; she was standing with Fiona and Evie on either side of her, and all of them were staring at me with a look of something approaching wonder. Like I was the miracle worker who would rescue their friend from the hell she had been subjected to. Neither Fiona nor Evie had ever really known Philippa; they'd only ever seen her in this condition. They knew nothing about the vibrant, teasing, beautiful girl who had so easily dazzled me, who had put her happiness in my hands, who had welcomed me into her life and her heart so readily and with so much acceptance. Yet I could see from the looks on their faces as their eyes flicked down to the stricken nurse that they had both developed something of an affection for a woman who had suffered so much and so needlessly. Charlotte, on the other hand, had a look in her eye that bordered on desperation. Phillipa was not the closest person in the world to her, but she was up there. They were friends; they had been friends long before they had met me, and although there wasn't the slightest hint of blame in those beautiful eyes of hers, there was an aching need to see her friend well again.

I sighed, reached out, and rested my hand on Philippa's forehead. "Here goes nothing," I said to myself as I closed my eyes.

Existence melted away.

********

She was rocking. Sitting on the floor of the mindscape in something that looked like a white dress, Philippa had her arms wrapped around her knees, hugging them to her chest, and was rocking back and forth as if comforting herself from the endless barrage of torment that was her own mind. The mindscape around her was beyond dark, it was pure blackness, it was cold, and there was a marrow-deep sense of aloneness. Philippa herself seemed to be bathed in a soft, faint, sourceless light, just enough for me to be able to see her. "Help me," her voice whispered to nobody in particular, her eyes squeezed shut like they were fighting against a blinding light that only she could see. "Please. I need help."

I felt my heart break all over again.

"I'm lost," she whispered again. "I can't find my way out. Please, somebody, help me."

"Pip," I breathed, my chest aching from seeing her like this.

Her eyes looked up at me, her face relaxing as her eyes found me in the darkness of her mind. "Are you here to help me?" She asked, those eyes searching mine for a ray of hope to cling onto. But there was no recognition behind them, for that moment, she had no idea who I was.

"Yes, Pip. I'm going to try to help you."

"I... I can't find my way home. Do you know where it is? Do you know where I am?"

I shook my head, "No, but we can find it together."

"You're not going to leave me?"

"No, I'm not going anywhere."

Her shoulders slumped a bit as if relaxing with relief. "Can you come closer? I can't see you. It's so dark."

With a deep, apprehensive breath, I took a few steps closer to her. Her eyes, the ones that had looked at me with such hope, flickered with the spark of recognition and then darkened. "You!" she hissed in a feral snarl. "You did this to me!"

The visage of her sitting, huddle, rocking body vanished, only to reappear like a charging banshee a second later, venom marring her beautiful features as she rushed across the short space between us, lunging to wrap her hands around my throat. A haunting, paralyzing, wraith-like shriek burst from her lips as her fingers closer around my neck. "You did this! You did this to me!" She raged, "Die! Fucking Die! I want you to DIE!"

I just sighed and held her eyes. She had no power; she didn't even really have a presence here. This was an avatar of her mind, whereas I was a projection of my power. She could have squeezed my throat as hard as she was able, for as long as she could, and she wouldn't have been able to do anything to me. But I didn't want to fight her; I couldn't bring myself to stop her. I did do this. I may have come to terms with how limited my responsibility was, but I was under no illusions that I had none. Apparently, neither was she.

"Why won't you die?!?"

"Because you know it wasn't me." I'm not sure where it came from, but that was all I could think to say.

"It was you. You did this to me; I watched you do it! I looked into your eyes as you did it!"

"Philippa, you know me," I said as softly and gently as I was able to, despite starting to understand more about what had happened to her. The Judge, in his attack on my lover, had made himself look like me. "You know I love you, you know I loved Becky, you know I would never do anything to hurt you!"

"But you did! It was you!"

"Then why am I here? Why have my friends and I been doing everything we can to help you?"

Her fingers relaxed for just a moment, her eyebrows furrowing for a second before they reset themselves into that furious scowl, and she started hammering on my chest with her balled-up fists. "No! You lied to me! I know what I saw! I don't believe you!"

"Yes, you do," I answered, still trying to keep my voice calm and level while keeping my eyes locked on hers. "But you don't understand it. Philippa, I'm in your head now. We are inside your mind. Look around. Just think about where we are." She blinked and frowned again, looking around at the darkness, the starless, lightless sky, and then at the grass beneath her feet.

"I... I don't know where I am." She murmured again, her voice cracking under the strain of her shattered mind. "I'm lost. I want to go home."

"I know, Pip," I reached out and ran my fingers across her cheek, brushing a few unruly locks of her wild hair behind her ear. "I want to help you. Please let me help you." For a moment, her skin seemed to warm against my touch, and she leaned her head into it for a moment before she vanished again. This time, she reappeared a few feet away, pacing back and forth, her suspicious eyes on me.

"Okay, then tell me!" She barked. "If I don't understand what I saw, then explain it."

"I can't," I sighed. "Not all in one go, at least not in a way you will understand. It's too much. You're locked in here," I gestured out at the darkness, "You're locked inside your own mind. The man who did this to you wanted you to think it was me and then broke your mind, stopping you from being able to get out again."

"Why?" she asked after another uneasy look around her. "Why would he do that?"

"Because he wanted me, and he knew you could lead him to me." I answered her as honestly and as simply as I could. "But you fought him, you resisted, you knew something was wrong, and you pushed back. Think, Pip, try to remember; you knew something was wrong. So... he did this to you to get what he wanted out of you."

"You... you were in my mind..." She said slowly, stopping her pacing and staring intently at some point on the ground between us. "I don't know how, but you... he... was in my mind. You wanted... you wanted to know where you lived." She frowned deeper. "That didn't make sense, I... oh my god, yes, I remember!" Her eyes shot open and locked onto mine. "It was someone else! He wanted to know where you lived. I... I wouldn't tell him. He was in the house, there were four of them, they had guns... I just wanted to make sure Becky was safe. He... he made me think about her, instead, who she was, where she was..." Her eyes widened as she looked back up at me. "... he wanted to know who she was to you."

"They used you both to try to get to me."

"Becky!... you have to warn Becky! She's on her way here! They'll hurt her!" She was starting to panic again. In the real world, her eyes snapped open, and she started tugging furiously at her bonds and thrashing wildly on the bed. "Pete! We have to help her before...."

She saw the look on my face and froze.

"Pip, that was almost four months ago. I... I couldn't save her."

"But she's..."

"She's gone, Pip. They killed her."

There was silence for a few heartbeats as Philippa held my eyes in stunned incomprehension. The wail that eventually fell from her lips was a truer and more profound articulation of the pain I had been feeling than anything I had managed to conjure for myself. It was pure agony given voice. It was crushing heartbreak, soul-destroying grief, and the complete and merciless extraction of a heart as it exploded into a million pieces. She crumpled to her knees, her legs - despite where we were - becoming completely incapable of supporting her own weight.

"I told him," she managed to almost scream between heart-wrenching sobs as I dropped to my knees beside her. "I showed her to him. They used that to find her, to... kill her. It's all my fault!... I..."

"Stop!" I barked much more harshly than I had intended. "It's not your fault! It's theirs. They are fucking animals, and they used an innocent, beautiful girl to get what they wanted." Her eyes flicked up to me. "Any other person, any other person would have given them what they wanted with a smile on their face. They wouldn't have had a choice. They would have taken the knowledge out of your head without you even knowing it. But not you!" I went on, holding her eyes and willing my words to have an effect. "You fought them; you gave them nothing! They had to take it by force! They had to break your mind to get anything at all! And when they got that information, they chose to use Becky! You didn't give her to them! You are trapped here, like this, because you wouldn't give them anything. You sacrificed yourself to save us! There is no fucking way I am going to allow you to think anything differently! You are amazing, Philippa; I know it hurts, god, I know how much it hurts, but blaming yourself is just going to make it harder for us to get you home; it simply isn't true! Don't..." the tears were welling in my eyes at the mask of torturous agony etched into her face. "Don't do this to yourself. Please."

"She's gone, Pete." She sobbed as I held her. "I loved her; she was everything to me. I don't know how I'm going to live without her."

"And she loved you. You knew her, Pip," I said, hooking a finger under her chin and lifting her eyes to mine as I blinked away the tears. "You knew her better than even I did, so I want you to ask yourself. Do you think she would want you blaming yourself for what they did to you or what they did to her? Knowing.... Knowing... that there was nothing you could have done to stop them, and how much pain you have already gone through because you tried?"

Philippa held my eyes for a moment before she dropped them again and shook her head. "No, she wouldn't."

"It hurts, Pip; it really fucking hurts. I feel it, too, more than I am ever going to be able to put into words. And I promise you, there will be more than enough time to grieve her, to miss her. I'll be with you every step of the way, but right now..." I lifted her eyes back to mine with a gentle nudge of my finger. "...We need to get you home." She sniffed back her tears, her eyes firming a little.

She nodded. "I want to go home, but... how?"

I have no fucking idea.

"Pete?" the soft Irish lilt of Faye's voice came from behind me.

Pip stiffened in my arms as her eyes flashed up in fear of the new arrival. "Who's that?" her quivering voice asked.

I smiled, "That's Faye, she's a friend."

"She's in my mind, too?"

"Technically, she's in mine." I kept the smile on my face, trying to ease Philippa's nerves. "The people who killed Becky and did this to you, they killed her too. But I was there, I was able to..." I frowned; I had no idea how to explain any of this to the broken mind of a broken woman.

"He saved me," Faye said, stepping out of the darkness and coming closer. "He saved my mind, by keeping it in his. He's a good man, this one."

"You can do that?" Pip looked at me in astonishment. I shrugged and nodded. "But how?"

"That's a really long story, honey," I said, still running my fingers soothingly over her cheek. "But I promise I will tell you everything when you're better."

"Can you... can you do that for me?"

"I don't know," I answered honestly. "Faye was dying when I... rescued her. You're not dying, and I want to try to get you well before..."

Faye interrupted before I could answer. "Yer man here," she smiled as she knelt down next to me, arresting Philippa's complete attention. "Is one of tha most powerful men in tha world, maybe the most powerful. He can do some amazing things. Tha men who did this to ya, they did it to get to him, and he has spent tha last few months hunting them down and punishing them for it."

Philippa's eyes flicked to mine for confirmation. "Did you kill them?" There was a mix of pain and hope in that look.

I nodded again. "The ones I've been able to find, yes."

"Good!" Pip growled.

"Listen to me, darlin'" Faye said softly. "Pete is an Evo, just like I was. We are people who can do things with our minds that most humans would think are impossible. He would've saved Becky if he could, and he came so close; he was right there when they killed 'er, and he's been torturing himself every day since."

"You saw her... die?" Philippa's eyes shot to me with another wave of agony - this time on my behalf - washing over her face. I just nodded with a hard swallow.

"Now, I'm gonna suggest something, and Pete 'ere is gonna say no. 'cos he thinks that he is the only one allowed to make sacrifices for the greater good. But I can make yeh better."

"Wait... what?" I blinked at her.

"I can merge with her, Pete. It would be a little like an awakening; I could heal her from the inside out."

I waited a few moments, the penny not quite dropping. "... But..."

Faye smiled at me. It was a smile of someone who was trying to tell me something they knew I wouldn't want to hear, but knew it was in my best interest. "But it means I would be leaving yeh."

"What?!? No, absolutely not! I'm not losing you as well. There's another way!"

"There's not," she smiled softly. Philippa's eyes were flicking back and forth between us as Faye spoke. "And yeh wouldn't be losing me, you big lug," she said. "I'd still be alive an' well, just inside this beautiful lady."

Philippa shook her head. "If Pete thinks it's a bad idea, I do too."

"Pete doesn't think it's a bad idea, darlin'" Faye smiled softly, resting her hand on my shoulder. "He can't because he hasn't heard it yet. Pete, I've been with yeh fer six months now, and we both know how we started out. We were ne'er given a chance. But the girl ya bonded with, she's gone. She died at that party. I'm what's left; I'm everything yer brilliant mind could take in the tiny amount of time we had together. But we've lived a lifetime in those six months; hell, we've been to war together. We've fought the bad guys, and we've won. It's time teh start thinking about winning tha peace, too."

"But we haven't won yet." I countered.

"Yer gonna meet someone, one day, Pete. And yeh are carrying around the ghost of your dead girlfriend in yer head. How do ya think that's gonna work? Can you honestly tell me that you have been open to the idea of a relationship with anyone since the party?"

"People bond for life, Faye," I snapped back.

"Aye, they do," she maintained her unflappable smile. "And my life is over. At tha moment, things're grand, we have lots of fun, and I think I've helped you through a pretty shit time in yer life..."

"Of course you have; I couldn't have done any of this without you."

"But things won't be like this forever. Eventually, yer gonna have ta let me go. Cos yeh won't be able to move on with yer life if yeh don't. So why not now, when I can actually do some good?"

"How would you be able to heal me?" Philippa asked softly, interrupting the back and forth. I looked at Faye, waiting for her to provide an answer to a very good question.

"Pete would need ta agree." she started slowly, looking between us, "But he would feed me into yer lovely mind, along with some of his power..."

"But if she doesn't have the gene, she wouldn't become an Evo."

"No, probably not, but your power would keep me going, I can heal her mind from the inside out, whether she awakens or not, all this lady would have to agree to is having little old me living in her noggin."

"Like, I'd be able to hear your voice?"

"Aye, yer very own Jiminy Cricket. Yeh'd be able ta talk to me, too. And..." she turned her gaze to me, "...with yer power inside her, you'd be able to keep her safe, and still talk ta me. I just..." a sadness washed over her face. "I just wouldn't live in yer city anymore."

"What if it doesn't work?"

"It'll work."

"But what if it doesn't?"

Faye took a deep breath and held my eyes. "Then I die, my wonderful man like I should've done months ago. And I need yeh to be okay with that."

"With you dying?!? Are you out of your mind? Of course, I'm not going to be okay with that!"

"That's tha thing, love," she smiled, "I am out of ma mind. I'm in yers, and I love it there, I really do, but I was never able to stay there forever."

"You said you'd stay with me forever. You'd said I'd never lose you."

"Aye, I did. I had to say what yeh needed to hear, 'cos you were broken. My death, Becky's, what happened tah Philippa, that brief stint where we suspected Evie, Charlotte bein' kept at arm's length, yeh were breakin', and I said what yeh needed to hear. I'm sorry for tha', I really am, but yeh know it's true."

"You didn't just come up with this, did you?" I sighed

She shook her head. "I've been thinking about it for a while now, wondering if it's possible."

"And you kept it from me."

She nodded again, this time lowering her hand to lace her fingers into mine and squeezing softly. "I needed ya to see what was at stake if we didn't try. Pete, I'm already dead, ma time with yeh has been a gift I could never have imagined; yeh saved me. But I'm still dead. This girl here isn't, and she doesn't have to be." She pressed my hand into Philippa's, letting the oceanic nurse curl her fingers to mine instead of Fayes. "But look at 'er, Pete, she's suffering, and we can stop it. We have to at least try. Could you live with yerself if you said no to this and kept me for yerself, only for me to have to go anyway in a couple o' years anyway?"

I just held her eyes. I would love to be able to tell you what thoughts were running through my head; I would love to say there was a steady, coherent stream of inner monologue weighing up the pros and cons of Faye's idea or just raging at the utter unfairness of words I knew to be true. I was being asked to choose between a woman I would have willingly given my life for and spent my life with, the only person - dead or not - who meant more to me than anyone else on earth, or the person who had suffered most because of her association with me. Sure, an argument could be made that Becky had died for it, but her death had been instant, and her captivity lasted only a few days before that. Philippa had been living with the worst conceivable type of torture for months. And the only way to save her was kneeling next to me, asking me to say goodbye.

"It won't be goodbye, ya dope." She chuckled, still able to read my thoughts. "It'll be just like when ya gave yer power to Jerry. We'll be able t' talk all the time, you and Pip, too."

"If it works..." I added dryly.

"Aye," she nodded. "It's an 'if'," she smiled. "But I think it will work, and yeh do too."

"What? What do you mean I do?"

"Jeeves, love," She smiled. "He thinks it could work. He's bin through everything, all the info ya got from Uri and that shite Sterling, everything we know. He's even pretty sure he knows how tha awakening process works."

"But..." A simple inward thought was all it took for me to know she was right. It wasn't that she had been having clandestine meetings with my own subconscious, but Jeeves had been working his way through the mountains of information since we left the Praetorian compound, and for better or worse, Faye knew what I knew. "I don't want to lose you. We were supposed to be together. You were supposed to be with me till the end. I love you, Faye. There has to be another way."

Faye, the tears in her eyes matching the ones in mine, leaned in and kissed my cheek. "I love yeh, too, Pete." She forced a comforting smile onto her face. "I have done since the moment I saw yeh walk into the party. We never had a chance, and that's a tragedy. Coming so close, but still so far apart. What we've had has bin... it's bin amazing; it has bin the most wonderful dream. Yeh're incredible, my wonderful, beautiful man. You are larger than life in every way a man can be... but none of us are larger than death. It's time ta let me go."

"What's going on?" Philippa asked meekly, her voice sounding like it was scared that even the sound of it would be enough to banish away the faint glimmer of hope she could see.

Faye turned her entire attention to her. "Pete, here is the love of ma life, Pip," she smiled. "An' yeh gave everything a person is able ta give ta keep him and Becky safe, yeh sacrificed yehself for them. Now it's my turn to make the sacrifice."

"You'd die??" Philippa gasped, backing away. "No! Nononono!" she started before Faye's smile silenced her.

"No, darlin' girl. I'm already dead; I can't die twice. But no, I wouldn't die again; I would just be leaving Pete and moving into yer mind instead. I would be sacrificing what time Pete and I had left. But I would be with ya forever; we would grow old together, closer than sisters or the best of friends."

"I've... I've always wanted a sister," Philippa said slowly. "And you wouldn't die?"

"Not any more than I already am, pretty girl."

Philippa nodded and then turned to look at me. "Pete? I... I can wait, if you think there's another way, or that the risk is too big, or you don't want to part from Faye, I will understand, I will, I promise."

"Fuck!" I spat, standing up and backing away from the two kneeling girls. I didn't want to do this, I didn't want to be in this position. But I didn't have the first clue how to repair Philippa's mind, no matter how much power I had at my disposal to try. But one line that Faye had said kept bouncing around my head.

"Could you live with yerself if you said no to this and kept me for yerself,"

She was right of course. If Faye was willing, and the plan had a very high chance of success, I wouldn't stand in the way of her recovery. That inward glance to Jeeves told me the plan was a good one, and - at least for the time being - was the only realistic chance of healing Philippa anytime soon. But it would mean losing Faye.

I couldn't even begin to imagine the words that would be needed for me to articulate what Faye meant to me. Not the grief of her death, not the fear of her upcoming loss, and not the logic of having to move on without her at some point down the road. No, the English language simply wasn't equipped to detail everything that she meant to me. It was more than love. Faye, as far as a coherent definition of the term could provide, was my soulmate. She was the rising and the setting of the sun, she was the stars that twinkled in its absence, she was - and had long been - the only constant source of real warmth in such a cruel and unforgiving world.

She had kept me sane, even up to the advice the night before, and what had seemed like a ludicrous piece of logic was exactly what I needed. She had kept my company and my council for the long months of war; she had held me when I was broken; she had lifted me when I was down; she had steered me through the monsoon of emotions after Becky's death, after Uri's death, after learning of Marco's betrayal, and even after her own death. She was more than a lover or a companion; she was my rock. She had fought to defend me; she had been my conscience against my rage; she had helped me understand my anger, and she had helped me tame it.

She was, in a word, everything.

And facing the notion of giving her up, even to help Philippa out of her eternal pit of torment, was more than I could bear.

The fiery redhead stood, leaving Philippa on the ground, and walked over to me. With tears in her eyes, ones she was feeling for both herself and for me, she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close to her. "Ye'll be grand, my love, so will I." She whispered to me. "And this isn't goodbye. We'll see each other again, and maybe if this works better than we thought, it may only be temporary, but yeh have ta let me go."

"I..." the words wouldn't come. I knew what I had to do, but I just couldn't. "I... please don't make me do this."

"I love you, Pete. You are my hero," she whispered to me. "But for now, my darlin' man, this is goodbye."

"I'll never forget you," I whispered back, my arms wrapping around her and pulling her into me like I would never see her again. For all I knew, I wouldn't see her again. "I will always love you."

Philippa gasped, her eyes rolling to the back of her head as, without another word, and for the brief moment I had the inner strength to do it, I connected my mind to hers and fed Faye into her mind, following it up with enough power to account for a whole one of my city's power plants. All of it was poured into her. Philippa started lifting off the ground, her body levitating into the air, her arms slightly parted from her sides, and her head facing the lightless skies. Her whole body started to glow, a deep, ephemeral haze seeming to surround her as more and more of my power pumped into her.

The sky brightened from its starless, midnight black to the radiance of a summer afternoon in only a few moments, the warmth of the mindscape embracing us and banishing away the cold and - as I whispered the words - Faye's body faded away into nothingness, her soft, smiling, beautiful eyes staying locked into mine until the very last moment. Philippa's brand new, newly awakened city burst into existence behind her while mine shimmered into being somewhere behind me.

My arms were hugging myself as the words floated away on the pleasant warmth of the mindscape air. She was gone. And part of me was gone with her.

"Goodbye, Faye."

********