War has a funny way of connecting you to people you never want to be connected to, just like how it has a funny – he thought it was funny, with a hint of bitterness – way of ripping you out of people’s lives, of ripping people out of your life. What do you know? You’re just some momentary spark of life, no more significant than a firefly on a hot summer night. Against the massive history of the earth your life doesn’t measure up to be anything.

He thought it was bad when he watched his brother crumple to the ground, all pain and screams and finely splattered blood creating impromptu paintings across the canvas of his dirt-stained uniform. He thought it was bad when he felt rough hands drag him upright by the little concave just below the bones of his shoulders and force him to fight on for the sake of something greater than a human life.

Somewhere hidden beneath the ground was what he had been looking for. Except he didn’t know what he was looking for, because it had all been taken away.

Air, his lungs cried silently. He had not known it was possible. Air, infiltrated with the metallic taste of blood, of lead everywhere, of the slowly eradicated freshness that he had associated the outdoors with as a young boy. Air was the victim as much as any mortal body. He was only helping as part of the oppression, sucking it in and taking it over, spitting it back out as something no longer oxygen.

The thought was troubling to him.

He held his breath as he heaved himself into a wary standing position, tried to remember what he was running from and realized that he wasn’t running from anything. In fact he was running towards something and it had taken him this long to realize, as pain blossomed all over his body in great bursts in time to his heartbeat, that he had been running towards his own grave.

When we have lived in the same house for a hundred years, separation is inevitable. At first, it picks us apart one by one, slowly, but for a short amount of time, letting us get used to the feeling of utter abandonment – a feeling that none of us have experienced for ages. And then it comes like a storm, and we are all blown away from each other in an explosion, left to wander the earth hopelessly searching.

The first time we were really separated was during World War II, strewn across the continents like litter. We thought that was awful, but not even a century later, an ambitious child plucked off the cherry on our sundae and revealed all our carefully hidden weaknesses in one easy gesture. And just as we recovered from that, we were ripped apart again by the only force that we consciously allowed to change us –

Love.

And it was painful.

Marriage itself was a pretty thing between them: kisses exchanged at breakfast, socks folded neatly by her own tender hands, whispered prayers accompanied by wistful glances at her stomach on his part. They were courteous and politely affectionate.

The heir came as everyone had hoped, one warm August evening, and that was where everything began to go wrong.

Having done their first duty to the family – providing a boy to carry on the name – they were now obliged to look for a suitable wife for him. A French princess or an Italian duchessa was looking like a good  choice at the time, so at the tender age of four, the heir was betrothed to a girl who barely knew her own name. The Russian line would finally prosper now, in the capable hands of the czar who did everything the right way.

Seven years later, the spare arrived.

The spare was a pretentious little todler; he crawled around, made a mess, decorated his own face with a curly moustache modelled after his father’s. When the spare was six years old, he shattered all the glass windows in his room with uncontrolled magic alone; his face was horribly cut up, and three hours later, the cuts had healed and he was sleeping peacefully in his nurse’s bed. They grew alarmed at todlers showing signs of magic, but, eventually writing it off as a powerful storm instead, attempted to ignore any further discrepancies. They were the ones who did things correctly, so an abnormality was not an option.

Trouble came again, but not until the heir was happily married and settled for a time in St. Petersburg. Five years he had been married. Five years, and no issue. Rumours began to spread, diffusing around the great country like a plague. Something is wrong with the Prince, they would whisper. I suppose it is difficult with that Italian servant walking around the palace… The heir could not conceive. Unrest stirred within the courts at Moscow. And meanwhile, the spare also waited, waited for the dreaded word.

The spare’s sixteenth birthday was marked by a profoundly unsettling silence. No celebrations at the palace, now. Three days after the sombre affair his mother said to him, You need to help your family. And so the spare was sent off, packed light, brought too many fur coats and too many pairs of shorts. Help your family, for your brother cannot.

Mama, but, he is doing fine…

He arrived in Switzerland as someone flammable. He stopped being the spare and started being Stepan Savelijevich instead.

i. Motion - She never could sit still; when she studied, her finger tapped an ostinato at the bottom of the parchment, and when she slept, she rolled and tumbled across the bed, waking up in the morning with her head at the foot and her arms dangling from the edge.

ii. Cool - Misa didn’t like the cold much. She was forever going about during the winter months with her scarf wrapped snugly around her neck, draping down her shoulders, and never left her boots in the snow.

iii. Young - For someone who had finally reached what she considered the “upper years” of school, Misa was still surprised at the castle that hid so much from her.

iv. Last - After Tam, she swore she would never like a boy again.

v. Wrong - Misa hated being wrong, like most girls. Unlike most girls, she didn’t get the last word. Unlike most girls, she simply blasted the offending righteous person to smithereens.

vi. Gentle - Misa was rarely gentle. She saved them as special moments for people she really, genuinely loved.

vii. One – Her first love was the one who got all of her, her trust, her love, her heart. The only one.

viii. Thousand - She didn’t like to do things in excess, although she once had, simply because now she barely has the energy for anything.

ix. King - Misa believed in women’s rights. She hated men who always got the upper hand.

x. Learn - Contrary to popular belief, Tam did not teach her everything she would know about love. Years later, she swallowed back the sappy things she wanted to tell Lockie and Alice.

xi. Blur - Her sixth year passed by in one of these, so quickly that she hardly realized where she was headed until she collided head first with a wall of N.E.W.T. review booklets.

xii. Wait - Among other things, Misa was impatient.

xiii. Change - She used to be shy; she was cheery and fun-loving; she is pensive, uncertain.

xiv. Command - For all that she liked to order people around, her commands were usually harmless and fussy. It was when she needed someone to do something that she was quiet and calm.

xv. Hold - Misa was a solitude sort of person for many weeks, but during those days she never forgot the exact feeling of him, and she wondered if in the future anyone would want to hold a girl like her.

xvi. Need - As with most difficult teenagers, Misa pushed things away when she most needed them.

xvii. Vision - Her eyesight was 20-20. Her hindsight, weirdly enough, never was.

xviii. Attention - For some reason, as a baby, Misa never had to cry for attention… the attention was there until she started crying.

xix. Soul - She believed that everything had a soul. Of course, this belief was never voiced, and no one ever noticed how lightly she stepped on things.

xx. Picture - At night she saw things with her eyes closed much clearly than she had during the day, with her eyes wide, under the bright sunlight.

xxi. Fool - It wasn’t until a few hours later that Misa realised what a fool she had been to call it quits, to go running after the one thing that would never make her feel better and embrace it with all her might.

xxii. Mad - Some people thought she’d gone a bit bonkers with her books, that she was trying to do a Ravenclaw and become a hermit.

xxiii. Child - Misa has a kid brother. He is mischievous, smiley, and always cheerful. Her worst fear is having those things taken away from him.

xxiv. Now - She settles down in her office. She probes things in cauldrons and prays that they kill people.

xxv. Shadow - Once, there was a visiting ghoul in the house. It followed all the happenings of the house, and would have made it its home, had Misa’s father not panicked and ordered a team of ghoul removal experts to take care of it. The incident emptied all of his pocket money and robbed him of the ability to buy her candy.

xxvi. Goodbye - It wasn’t really goodbye, she realized as she peered through the glass in the door and saw Tam’s gleeful face waiting expectantly.

xxvii. Hide - Over and over again, she told herself that she was done hiding. That was years ago, but now she finds herself curled up in bed, unblinking, pretending not to hear any of the words floating around the room, the covers pulled over her head.

xxviii. Fortune - It was just her good luck to be stuck with an idiot for a husband and a madly grinning brother-in-law.

xxix. Safe - She thought that the war wouldn’t hurt anyone she cared about. She was right, in a way, but years later, Leon goes missing in the midst of another one.

xxx. Ghost - Misa often wondered what they did all day, milling about alone or in pairs, discussing, always discussing, fading in and out.

xxxi. Book - At first, Misa hated books, but when people started becoming what she avoided, she was surprised by how much they had in common.

xxxii. Eye - When she was little, in science class, she had blown up a model of an eye. After that she had an incurable interest in biology.

xxxiii. Never - The word didn’t exist in her vocabulary, mostly because even when it was uttered, it was used incorrectly.

xxxiv. Sing - If she was lucky and woke up early enough, she could hear Jamie singing in the shower. When he came out he always found her on the bed convulsing with laughter and dictating everything that came out of his mouth.

xxxv. Sudden - It was as sudden and unexpected as anything she’d ever experienced, but when Misa looked at him, that one time, she knew.

xxxvi. Stop - For a long while Misa wanted to stop everything and just exist. That didn’t work out so well for her, for her mother’s words and warnings hung over her head like angels and demons.

xxxvii. Time - It worked, didn’t it, she thought, it healed everything.

xxxviii. Wash - The first time Misa killed someone in a fight, no blood was shed, but she could see it on her hands, and she could never wash it off.

xxxix. Torn - At first, when she felt like she looked at Jamie funny, the feeling came with a sense of guilt.

xl. History - Misa has a history of causing fires. The thing was, she never wanted to, and feared them above all else.

xli. Power - The hungry feeling never had a pull on her. She hated being in total control. She hated playing god. She wanted to feel powerless sometimes, feel that someone was there to take care of her, but it never happened.

xlii. Bother - This was what she liked to call her brother, but never had a nickname been so insincere.

xliii. God - Before Hogwarts happened, Misa’s father privately wondered what would happen if he took his daughter to a church. The first time he tried it, she never made it out of the car; the second time, she didn’t blink once during the sermon, didn’t close her eyes, and had a load of Muggles muttering things about children and autism.

xliv. Wall - One night she realized that she would never be able to brew a love potion. The instructions, which had made sense to her third year peers, always confused her.

xlv. Naked - It was Ash, Misa suddenly sat up one night and remembered. The first guy to have ever seen her unclothed was Ash, and for a long time after that Misa wondered if it had been worth it.

xlvi. Drive - He liked to tell her to keep her eyes on the road. She did… most of the time.

xlvii. Harm - A strange thing about Misa was her lack of reluctance to harm others. Sometimes she felt like the end always justified the means.

xlviii. Precious - She used to think that her life was precious, her husband, maybe, her job, but – they put Lockie into her arms and all the answers fell miles short.

xlix. Hunger - It took years, but Misa finally learned to cook.

l. Believe - She did stop, for many weeks, to think that she could get out of this hole, but she did, and it was for the best.

ii. Waltz – The first time he learned the waltz was in France, in the 1700s, and he took a liking to it instantly.

iii. Wishes – Everyone expected Icarus to wish for a hundred more wishes, but Shin always settled for one.

iv. Wonder – He often thought about his human life, and imagine where he was really supposed to be.

v. Worry – Always, the ghosts of Shuichi and Megumi hover over his mind like hanging corpses.

vi. Whimsy – When Shin gave in to his whims, which was often, he had this gift of dragging everyone with him.

vii. Wasteland – His mind was full of useless thoughts, fears that would never come to pass no matter how many eternities went by, but there they stayed like haunted spirits.

viii. Whiskey & Rum – Shin drank often and in excess, but somehow the hangovers never hit him.

ix. War – He’s lost count of how many wars he has seen, but each one manages to hurt more by finding another way to rip them all apart.

x. Weddings – When Icarus and Yume get married, Shin ends up being the one dragging the female guests into the closet, sometimes letting them out alive, sometimes disposing of them entirely.

xi. Birthday – Like the rest of them, he spends the day of his death shaking violently in bed, and for once the rest of the family don’t write it off as one of his melodramatic antics.

xii. Blessing – Megumi.

xiii. Bias – Shin usually chose and judged by two principles: aestheticism  and thrill level.

xiv. Burning – Because his fingertips were cold, humans warmed him. He liked the feeling of warmth on his hands, as if from a roaring fireplace.

xv. Breathing – He liked to go without it for minutes at a time, just to see what he was missing out on, but he never went through with it.

xvi. Breaking – It was a bit frightening how reassuring the sound was, like a click, and affirmation, that signalled the end of any suffering with the snapping of a human’s neck.

xvii. Belief – Once, when he was still human, Shin prayed to kami that his family would please never trouble him again. It worked… for a while.

xviii. Balloon – Despite how quickly he wearied of cooing and how skillfully he hid it, he never tired of seeing Yume’s face light up, and every bit of pride he took in causing that to happen was genuine as he handed over the gift.

xix. Balcony – It was shared between Icarus and Yume, but Shin liked to sneak over anyway to impress his female guests.

xx. Bane – She was as surely a blessing as a bane, for while she provided him with endless relief, she also caused anxiety to haunt him like a disease.

xxi. Quiet – Something Shin was not. He liked to express himself, and did so with ease.

xxii. Quirks – Shin was good at inventing them for himself, mostly because he feared boring anyone who was listening to him talk.

xxiii. Question – He asked them in a way that sounded stupid, but nothing came out of Shin’s mouth that wasn’t calculated.

xxiv. Quarrel – They happened frequently, most often with Icarus, and Shin usually came out on the worse end of those.

xxv. Quitting – He never gave up, sometimes not even when it was over.

xxvi. Jump – This was something Shin tried not to do, because he thought it made him look undignified, but it happened anyway and with alarming frequency.

xxvii. Jester – Icarus said that was Shin’s purpose in the family. Shin laughed.

xxviii. Just – There wasn’t an unbiased bone in Shin’s body, and everyone knew it but him.

xxix. Jousting – The practice of jousting mysteriously escaped him, for whenever someone challenged him, he happened to have moved out of town the next day.

xxx. Jewel – He liked to look at Gumi’s eyes, and stare and stare, because he created them and made them shine so greenly.

xxxi. Smirk – Shin didn’t like to smirk. He did like to smile as dazzlingly as he could, but he avoided mirrors in public.

xxxii. Sorrow – As with all other things, Shin mourned flamboyantly.

xxxiii. Stupidity – This was something Shin exhibited on a daily basis, but like many of his words, it was insincere.

xxxiv. Serenade – Shin tried his hand at composing once. He wrote songs without melodies and melodies without lyrics but never put the two together successfully.

xxxv. Sarcasm – Social cues were spontaneous hit-and-miss in Shin’s list of gifts.

xxxvi. Sordid – His clothes, in the mid nineteenth century.

xxxvii. Soliloquy – He likes to try out for the lead roles in all the school plays; whether he earns them or not due to his acting ability is often questioned.

xxxviii. Sojourn – Every vacation in France seemed to last longer when Shin accompanied them. Which was every time.

xxxvix. Share – Shin was never stingy. He gave out his possessions as freely as his love.

xl. Solitary – He hated being alone; when he was by himself, Daiki would come back to sneer at him and Nao looked at him with reproach in his eyes.

xli. Nowhere – Running was not a favourite pastime of Shin’s. He hated it when he couldn’t actually go anywhere.

xlii. Neutral – He always chose a side. The side was usually Shuichi’s, both literally and figuratively.

xliii. Nuance – When Megumi first learned to play the piano, it was Shin who taught her the curves of the appoggiaturas and the rise and falls of the dynamics in each phrase.

xliv. Near – He had to be close to someone living and breathing. He had to.

xlv. Natural – His smile was not natural; it was calculated.

xlvi. Horizon – Shin didn’t like the sea as much as Megumi did, but when he looked out onto the blurry line separating water from sky, he was entranced.

xlvii. Valiant – He tried to be her knight, and he tried to fight her fights, but she always proved that she could take care of herself.

xlviii. Virtuous – Virtue was not in Shin’s list of virtues.

xlvix. Victory – When he won, it was the moment he closed his eyes and couldn’t picture Daiki’s face.

l. Defeat – He bows his head and tries not to cry. But he does, because he can’t restrain himself.

“I have to ask,” Misa said.

“Yes?” Jamie prompted, conscious of the fact that she was sitting very, very close to him. So maybe it was a small couch (in fact, it was a really small couch, but he had gotten a 70% discount on it), but still! She didn’t have to sit quite that close to him. Misa took no notice of this.

“What do you do for a living?”

Jamie chose to exhibit his sense of humour at that particular moment by replying dully, “I’m a dragon trainer.”

Misa frowned for a moment. “A dragon trainer, huh… I suppose that’s why you get paid so much yet spend so little and are afraid of things that blow up…”

She was silent for a few more minutes. Jamie finished the crossword on the Prophet and handed it to her so she could look it over and check the one from the previous day’s issue. She held the parchment between her fingers gingerly and stared at him. “I think you’re lying,” she said finally.

“I was joking,” he corrected.

“That’s not a very funny joke,” she argued.

“It was pretty funny to me,” he insisted. And then he laughed a very forced laugh. Misa raised an eyebrow.

“You can’t possibly be a dragon trainer. You’re too afraid of things to do that.”

Jamie had to admit, secretly, that he really didn’t want to be a dragon trainer. But he only admitted this internally; no need for Misa to know. He’d discovered, within a week of having her living here, that she was a scary thrill-seeking woman with barely any sense of danger. Just like Tam. Except female. And once a month, she was more dangerous than Tam. He idly remembered that this wasn’t one of those times, and then felt slightly creepy that he would even know this.

“I have a perfectly safe job,” he said.

“Like what? A desk job at the Ministry?”

“Oh no,” Jamie said, “It’s much better than that.”

Misa pretended to think on this again, and then she snickered, tried and failed to disguise the snicker as a cough, and asked, “You hide under the desk, don’t you?”

“Do I really look like the type of person who would hide under a desk?”

“A bit…yeah, you kind of do…” she… cackled? Jamie hoped that she hadn’t cackled. But then she cleared her throat (probably to get the rest of the cough out) and said, a bit awkwardly, “I hope you know when you should, though…”

“Should what?”

“Hide under a desk,” Misa said, her eyes trained determinedly on the Prophet in her hands, “so that you won’t get hurt.”

Jamie, privately, was a bit elated at this, but the manly part of his brain, although not a very large part, insisted that she was calling him a sissy. So a week later, he arrived home covered in bruises, with a black eye.

And Misa still didn’t know what he did to earn his money.

There was a horror of rings in front of him, blazing in all their splendour. Jamie stared and stared and stared and could decide that they were all shiny. The ring lady beamed at him. “You’ll know when you see one,” she said soothingly, “because it will call out your beloved’s name to you.”

Jamie opened his mouth to argue that Misa wasn’t his beloved, exactly, but the lady cut him off by very indiscreetly shoving the large, expensive ring into his face and rattling off the merits of it. He had to admit, the ring looked pretty nice. It was sleek but noticeable, attractive, clean and shiny… and it cost about five million pounds. He shook his head. Instead, his eyes fell onto another one. It was super cheap but sort of green.

Maybe if he just charmed it red instead… the thought flitted through his head but passed out the other ear.

An hour later, he still hadn’t heard the rings call out Misa’s name to him. In fact, he was pretty sure there was a strange buzzing in his ear now. The buzzing came from all the rings. They began to blur before his eyes, and buzz louder and louder until he began to shake his head. The ring lady looked at him strangely.

“Thinking,” he said.

Another hour later, he still had nothing. He had looked through every single damn ring in the store, and nothing had called out to him. After a while, the little, annoying voice in his head told him to go look in another store. So he left, and the ring lady looked mildly embarrassed that she had done nothing for him.

Three stores later – that was about eight hours of his life wasted, Jamie found the ring.

The Ring.

The.

Ring.

So he bought it and pocketed it and went home, conscious of the fact that this was probably the stupidest thing he had done in his entire life, aside from that hippogriff incident back when he was still a kid. In fact, this was a very Tam thing to do. He swallowed, hoping that it wasn’t some kind of omen.

“I’m home,” he said as he opened the door. When had he begun to call this apartment home? When had he even started saying ‘I’m home’ when he was? He kicked off his shoes with a sudden vindictiveness, irritated by the lack of response. Why wasn’t Misa at home (home again)? Shouldn’t she be resting? Unless she was –

But that was stupid, he thought. He went into the kitchen to get some food (bread) and ate with an energy that he didn’t feel.

Who said she would even care?

He opened the door to his room, resisting the urge to open the door to her room, even though he kind of wanted to. He liked her room. It was very warm and nice, and they used to have pleasant conversations on her bed (actually, she would lie on her bed and he would be forced to sit on the floor). Once she fell asleep with her hand hovering above his shoulder. He had stayed there for an hour trying to decide on whether taking her hand would be worth the screaming that followed (he hadn’t).

She was face down on his bed, fast asleep. In fact, so dead asleep that she didn’t even notice when he stripped off his work clothes, tossed them on the bed, and pulled on new ones. He tried not to think about why she was on his bed in the first place.

He turned towards the door again, not wanting to wake her, but he couldn’t resist watching her sleep (it really wasn’t as creepy as it sounded, he swore), and so changed course and hovered for a moment over the bed. It was then that he noticed the notebook resting near her head.

At first it looked like she had been playing hangman. Jamie extracted the notebook from the bed and almost dropped it in shock at what he was seeing. Pages upon pages of checks and ex marks, arrows, circles, squares – was this what girls did when they were bored? – greeted his face. At the end of every page, was a word – NO.

At the top of every page, in very small writing, Should I marry him?

There must have been at least fifty pages of the mysterious markings, all of which said NO at the end. Every time he saw a NO, he felt another dull blow, until, by the forty-fourth page, he could hardly feel the blows anymore. This was just as well, because on the fifty-first page, there was a large circled YES.

Underneath which was written screw this I love him. Because there were no mysterious markings on the fifty-first page. Jamie had to check the question again to make sure it wasn’t something like “should I cook dinner tonight”.

“Misa,” he said lightly, shaking her shoulder.

“Issaboy,” she mumbled in reply, shifting slightly. Jamie was perplexed.

“Misa?”

“I said it’s a boy,” she repeated; her eyes opened wide and she looked up at him, startled. “Jamie?”

“Yep, that’s me,” he replied. There was a moment of silence; he could see the wheels in her brain turning, and then she rolled over, sat up, and he caught her lips with his as she did so.

And for once she kissed him back.

And now she had NEWT exams to think about. Night after night she poured over the damn textbook, chucking it at the wall and causing general distress among her friends. A few years ago Misa would never have thought that she would turn into the rabid grade-obsessed Asian, but now she was. And the threat of being disowned if she didn’t get at least seven NEWTs loomed over her head like a large rain cloud. No, a thunder cloud. With lightning and loud noises.

“Merlin curse this book,” she muttered, setting down her quill, rubbing her eyes, and flinging the cursed book at the wall. She picked up another book to refresh her brain, but unease pricked at it; something felt weird. Like… the lack of audible sound of book hitting wall. She looked up.

“I was wondering,” Tam said, lifting an eyebrow, “if you always threw your books at the wall.”

She felt her heart beating unfairly quickly. How could he look so calm and collected? How? How did he do it? He was so loud and boisterous usually! Did he really… not feel anything? Her face, however, betrayed nothing. A quick smile, then discontent – “No. Only that one.”

“Advanced DADA?” Tam asked, inspecting the cover briefly. He looked at her. “I thought you were good at this subject.”

“I thought too,” Misa muttered. “Why are you even up this late?”

“Head Boy responsibilities,” Tam replied cheekily, his chest puffing out with pride. Misa resisted the urge to smile and, instead, trained her eyes on Advanced Potion-Making. She rubbed her fingertips across the corner of the book. She hadn’t expected to see Tam; their conversation now rarely consisted of any more than pleasantries. She didn’t want to let anything come between what remained of their friendship.

“Oh, you think it’s funny,” Tam said after a moment, when Misa didn’t speak. “I do actually take good care of Hogwarts, you know.”

“I know,” she said softly, so softly that he almost missed it. “You always took care of the things you cared about.”

Damn it. The hour was too late.

If Misa had looked up, she would have seen the expression on Tam’s face shift slightly. But she didn’t look up, and the shift was lost to her forever – although that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. She did smile slightly as she turned a page in her favourite textbook. Potions always cheered her up somewhat. A moment later the balance on the couch shifted as Tam took a seat.

“I try,” he said simply. Misa chanced a glance at his face. He smiled. She smiled back, and then, simultaneously, their gazes drifted off onto other things.

“So how’ve you been?” Misa asked, after several minutes of nothing.

“Good. You?”

“Same.”

There were things between them, Misa thought, that still weren’t fixed.

Tam rifted through several sections of the DADA book. Misa watched him read for a while, pondering about why this was. They were friends. He hadn’t tried anything. She hadn’t tried anything.

So what was the matter?

Tam looked up, his eyes catching the bit of firelight that made them spark. “Hey, Misa…”

“Hmm?”

“Do you still love me?”

Misa said nothing for several moments. Silence was as major a part of their conversation as words were. She looked away, into the fire. Shook her head. “No.”

A sigh; more silence. Evidently Tam could feel it too. “That’s good,” he said finally. “I was afraid you still did.”

“No,” she said again, with more difficulty – not that he could tell.

Tam exhaled, and the tension deflated like a balloon. He leaned over and hugged her affectionately. She strained to not hold him too tightly. “Well,” he said, rising.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Get some rest, Misa,” he said, and then he walked away leisurely, taking all of her emotions with him.

Yume fell in.

Gumi stared. Shin stared. Shuichi craned his neck from the couch and stared also.

Shin was the first to move, as always; he scooped Yume up into his arms and deposited her on the nearest couch, and then turned to Gumi. “Go get Icarus,” he commanded, as Shuichi got up and came over to inspect Yume. Gumi paused, hesitated, unsure of what was happening. Shin repeated his command. “Go!”

Gumi went. There were some times where you just couldn’t argue with Shin.

–

She found Icarus in his forge, as expected, listening to some impossibly loud music and hammering away at a piece of metal that looked as if one more hammer would send it splintering into several hundred pieces. The hammer continued to chip away at the metal, which never broke. Gumi watched this with undisguised awe in her eyes, and then remembered why she was here. “Icarus,” she called.

No response. Gumi repressed the urge to roll her eyes. “Icarus,” she repeated, louder this time.

Clang. Icarus turned to her expectantly. “What?”

Gumi hesitated, bit her lip… “It’s Yume,” she blurted out, “you have to come quick.”

“Yume?” Icarus asked suspiciously, and Gumi realized why Shin had sent her. She had a much more trustworthy face than Shin did. “What about Yume?”

“There’s no time to stand chittering,” Gumi said urgently. Chittering? Was that even a word? She grasped Icarus’s hands – he dropped the hammer – and pulled him physically out of the forge. “She’s just… she just came back… and now she’s just lying there!”

–

Yume was blinking slowly when Gumi and Icarus reached her. Shuichi was holding something wet to her forehead, and Shin was trying to calm her down. Unfortunately, Shin had never been a particularly soothing person unless Gumi and a lot of blood was involved, so Yume simply blinked her tears down her face and waited for Icarus to appear. Icarus appeared. He promptly shooed everyone else out of the living room with the order of “Hito doesn’t need to know about this unless it’s quite major”. It was probably the worst thing he could have done.

He took a seat next to Yume and smoothed her hair. “What happened?” he asked, trying to seem caring but not frightened.

“I don’t… I don’t know,” Yume managed. “I was… feeding… and then… it got really cold, like the blood was frozen in my mouth… and next thing I knew he was dead — dead, Icarus…” and she started to cry for real, convulsing with sobs that she would never reveal in front of Shin and Shuichi or even Gumi. “I didn’t even kill him…”

“It’s okay, love, it’s not your fault,” Icarus soothed, leaning down to kiss her, but she pushed him away feebly. He pulled back, hurt written all over his face.

“Don’t touch me,” Yume pleaded.

“Why — why not?”

“Something doesn’t… it doesn’t feel right,” Yume whispered. “Please, Icarus…”

Icarus grabbed a fistful of her blouse. “What’s wrong, Yume?” he repeated more insistently, his voice hushed but cracking. “Tell me what’s wrong or I’ll kiss you.”

“That blood,” Yume began. Icarus stared at her. “It didn’t… it didn’t taste right… is there… such a thing as bad blood?”

“Bad — bad blood? I’ve never heard of such a…” Icarus trailed off. Had he heard of such a thing? He couldn’t remember. Shin was better at this sort of thing. He had half a mind to call for Shin, but decided not to. Most likely Yume was just tired, he reasoned. She got tired quite easily. She’ll be better in the morning, he thought to himself, more for his own comfort than anyone else’s.

“But it just tasted strange. And now I’m… cold… like I’m freezing up inside.”

Icarus looked at her in alarm. Her lips were turning blue. He brushed them with his fingers; they were cold to the touch. He grasped her by her shoulders. “Yume?” he asked, voice suddenly frightened.

“It’s cold,” Yume said, and then she closed her eyes. Icarus shook her gently.

“Yume? Yume?”