(no subject)

[freosan]

She was exploring. This place was called the city, or that’s how he referred to it. It was about a five- minute run from his house to the first big street, so long as she avoided the areas with a lot of cars.

Cars bothered her. They moved but they didn’t look like they should. It was like people, but in reverse. She tried to stay off the main streets and in the alleys and plazas, where there were large crowds of people who never seemed to stay still, reassuring her that things were still working as they should. There were also lots of colours in the city. Even the tall, monochrome buildings managed to reflect enough of the brilliant lights to make them, not attractive exactly, but acceptable.

People sometimes stared at her as she walked slowly down the streets. Usually making eye contact was enough to stop that.

Sometimes, however… someone was following her. She started walking a bit faster, then stopped suddenly; the person – androgynous in a long belted trench coat and a ponytail – followed, and stopped just after she did.

She wasn’t worried. She never worried. She was completely capable of taking care of herself, and it simply didn’t occur to her to be scared of anything. If it could hurt her, after all, she could most likely hurt it.

The person following her – whoever it was had picked up the trail again when she’d started moving – didn’t move right. She was instinctively certain that if someone was trailing her, that person ought to move like the air itself, completely silent, utterly graceful. Every time her stalker scuffed a step or ran into a trash can, she winced inwardly. As bad as the white- uniformed nurses.

She turned to look in a window, stopping where it showed her a reflection of the street. Ah – it was a woman, with long black hair, wearing a black coat. Interesting, and more interesting that the black didn’t bother her at all. She couldn’t think of any other person she’d seen who looked right all in one colour.

The woman seemed to have noticed her noticing, and was gallantly trying to pretend interest in the display of headless models in the window. Such displays were everywhere – she hadn’t quite figured them out yet. The woman who’d been tracking her was doing a good job of pretending they were interesting, though.

She spun suddenly and started walking back the way she’d come, listening for the steps behind her. She winced when she heard the woman’s coat snag on the brick, making a loud swishing sound – too clumsy. Some people.

What would she be doing with a stalker, in any case? When she’d been at the mall with the green- and- black boy, several people had tried to speak to her – it could be one of them, except that the woman had had several opportunities to do that, and she hadn’t approached yet.

She stopped short, backed up a step, letting the woman go past her a bit before stopping suddenly, and then realizing that she’d just given herself away.

She waited until the woman had made a few false starts and glanced at her, embarrassed, before speaking. “Why?”

She knew she had a way with words, even short ones. People would fall all over themselves to answer any question they’d thought she’d asked if she simply looked down at them for a moment. This woman seemed to not be affected by the stare, though. She tried glaring. The woman flinched away from her gaze.

“Um. I think I saw you on TV. Are you that girl? With Solan Carter and the amnesia?”

She had to think about that, put the words in the proper context. If she’d been less concerned about remembering that the green- and- black boy was called Solan – by other people, anyway – she might have noticed that the woman’s nervousness was less like someone being afraid and more like someone with something to hide.

She nodded. The woman smiled, tentatively. “That’s awesome! Hey, what’s your name?” She had to think about that too, before remembering that the boy had given her one.

“…Vega.” It still didn’t sit right, having a label like that, but it seemed to be necessary. The brown- and- gold one was definitely obsessed with labels – one reason she’d not wanted the one she now lived with to speak with him. It was very difficult, trying to avoid that aim of his. Considering this, she missed the woman’s momentary look of surprise.

“Yeah? That’s it? Like Cher or something – are you a big name somewhere? Nah, can’t figure what you’d be doing here if you were! Especially not with Carter – I mean, he’s hot as anything but he’s only a local celebrity, if that. I only know him because I bartend at one of the clubs his band plays at.”

This one talked a lot too, and she wondered for a moment if the boy she lived with had misplaced a relative. Perhaps. He’d said that his sister was away at college, and his parents on a tour of some place to the East. No, this woman looked nothing like him – even the black hair wasn’t dark- brown black like his or her own was, but rather a stick- straight shining blue- black. She hadn’t seen such a colour on any other person, but it was right in this case.

She walked away, then, and the woman didn’t follow at all. In the reflection from a window, she saw the woman’s face twist into a glare of anger. She wasn’t in the city to interact with people, though, and she could not possibly care less what the woman thought of her.

She wasn’t prepared for the woman grabbing her shoulder, nor the sudden shock that gave her – why did it feel like that, it didn’t when anyone else touched her – nor the completely instinctual reaction she had, which was to throw an elbow back into the woman’s solar plexus and follow up by half- turning and planting her foot in a kneecap.

The woman’s face twisted in pain, and she fell to the ground in a swirl of black fabric.

She froze. What – why had she done that? She’d hurt the woman, badly, and she couldn’t have deserved it – she might glare but she’d never before tried to actually physically injure someone –

Had she? The boy said she’d tried to kill him. She wasn’t capable of that, she’d thought. She couldn’t be. But the way her body had just moved, hitting vulnerable areas without her conscious intervention…

She knew, rationally, that she had to have been involved in something dangerous and violent in the past – it was written all over her body. But to actually do this thing to someone –

She realized she was staring at nothing. The woman – the woman was gone. And she hadn’t seen her leave. How had she done that? She knew that knee was broken, she’d felt the crunch of bone. She couldn’t have walked out.

She turned in the direction she’d been walking before, and headed back to the house, her calm of the morning badly shattered.

***********************************

Somewhere, a woman with shining blue- black hair stomps into a white wood and jewel- toned study, and throws her trench coat at a high backed chair. A pale yellow wing comes up to block it before it hits the man sitting in it in the face.

“It went badly?”

The woman throws her hands in the air, then brings them down, rubbing her temples. “Understatement of the epoch. No flicker of recognition, no sudden epiphany – she didn’t even seem to notice I wasn’t human. And then she broke my knee.”

The man looks alarmed and makes to stand, but she waves him back down. “Relax, I took care of it. I should have known better than to grab her, she’s always had those warrior reflexes – I always wondered how Capricorn managed to sleep in the same bed with her, she tends to hit if you touch her while she’s asleep. Anyway, I’m more worried that she didn’t notice what I was.”

The man puts down the heavy leather bound book he’s been reading, and turns to her, face grave. “She should have at least caught the aura,” he says. “That’s ingrained in her psyche, not related to her wings.”

“Yeah, whatever. I think the only thing she noticed about me was that I wasn’t moving stealthily. She was more worried when I caught the edge of my coat on a trash can than she was when she first noticed I was there.” The woman bends forward, chanting under her breath, and a large, shining pair of black feathered wings extends from her shoulders. She stands straight and sighs, stretching the wings to their full extent. “That’s better.”

The man stands, walking behind her to massage the join between her wings and her back. She leans into his touch, sighing. “I just don’t get this, Tempest. We’ve been sending her dreams for weeks. Pisces is driving himself to exhaustion keeping the link open, Cancer’s feathers are falling out, and my dear sister is being even more of a bitch than usual. Why doesn’t she remember? Even fallen ones remember what it’s like to fly…” she trails off, looking somewhere that’s not visible to anyone else. A raven flies down from a bookshelf to land on her shoulder, chattering at her.

“I think someone wants you to be more of an optimist,” the man murmurs to her. He smiles, and he leans in close enough that she can feel the muscles move.

“Yeah, I guess.” She pets the bird, and it caws contentedly.

“Perhaps we should enlist another person? Aquarius was close to you, but she was so focused, someone who she fought with might have a better chance.”

The woman laughs, a short, raw sound. “And who’d she ever fight with more than me, except Capricorn? And he’s sure not going down there. No, at this point I’m the best bet – ‘cept maybe Miya, but she’s too fucking perfect to ever set wing in Earth’s atmosphere.”

“Leo is a very intelligent leader, and good at what she does.” The man’s voice is slightly reproving.

“She’s also my big sister and I can insult her if I want to. And what she does is mostly moon around looking serene and sometimes make a battle plan. If I were in charge we’d have killed all thirteen of those damn animals by now.” She’s annoyed, yes, but the tirade sounds like a rehearsed part of a long- standing argument.

The man sighs, and wraps his arms and wings around her, pulling her back into a hug. “She’s also the oldest of us in this incarnation and the only one who can talk to Him. She’s not warlike, but she is a good leader.”

The woman looks at him, raising an eyebrow, a mock scowl on her face. “Are you saying I’m a bloodthirsty harpy?” she asks.

“I never used those words,” he says.

“You should’ve, I rather like them,” she comments, letting her wings twine with his. He laughs and she can feel the vibrations through her spine.

“Really? I could call you a battle- mad demoness, too, if you like.”

“Go for it,” she says.

He does, and there are a few more words exchanged, many of them involving blood, swords and/or the possibility of death.

“They do say Death is a black winged angel,” the man says. The ravens – there are two of them now, sitting on the bookshelf to either side of a brilliantly coloured macaw – crow in unison.

“Yes? But there are so many other colours,” she says, more seriously. His smile fades.

“Yes, there are. A little unfair of them to focus only on one,” he says. “Better to let us all share the guilt.”

She shakes her head, a sad smile appearing on her lips. “No, I shouldn’t have said that. We’re not Death, we just kill.”

“We only kill the ones who are trying to kill us,” he says, softly. She nods, pulling away from him enough to turn around and lean her head on his shoulder.

“I just wish there weren’t so many of them,” she says. One of the ravens interjects that there have always been enemies, and the macaw comments that it was around when the first punch was thrown, and it wasn’t by their side.

“We keep fighting. It’s what we’re for.” He sounds perfectly certain, as unshakable as a storm. She allows herself to be comforted.

****************************

When Solan arrived at McClintock’s office, the first thing he heard was the sound of something being rapped repetitively against a wall. The secretary motioned him in, and he opened the door just in time to see his previously professional psychologist banging his head on the table.

“Solan, hello, sorry, I didn’t realize the time…” he said, trying to be surreptitious about rubbing the reddish mark on the side of his head. He recovered quickly, though. “Please, sit down.”

Solan did, though the sight of his mental health professional in that much stress wasn’t reassuring. Did he want to discuss possible psychosis with a man who gave himself concussions? A moral quandary…

Solan dropped into the chair and started talking without even waiting for the man's usual 'hi, how are you' routine. The psychologist took a moment to get started - probably his brain was still working badly what with the beating he'd given it - and then started jotting notes. Shorthand, as per usual. Solan was going to have to learn that.

He hadn't rehearsed the spiel, nor really intended to be this talkative, but his brain wasn't working fast enough to stop his mouth. He'd started with the dream, this morning, about his doppelganger or whatever it was - thankfully, he was still in enough control of himself to leave out the bit that'd had him waking up questioning his sexuality - and gone through the brand new, possibly sleep deprivation induced hallucination of feathers being everywhere.

McClintock's first reaction was to take down as many notes as he could and then, when Solan had finally finished - the chicken scratch that was the psychologist's handwriting had filled six or seven notebook pages, and Solan knew he hadn't talked quite that much, so it must have been observations, too - his second reaction was silence. Solan waved his hands about vaguely, realized what he was doing, and stopped.

“So, Solan, are the hallucinations your only symptom?” Bastard didn't even sound like he'd been listening. Solan had been pretty sure that the description of the latest dream, which had been interestingly terrifying even without the sex, would make him show some sort of reaction other than the constant, though sincere, concern.

“Yeah, we've been over that. That's it,” he said, flicking his hands to underscore the point. “Nothing else, just my mind playing tricks on me.”

“It's simply that you've been coming here for two weeks, and we've hardly gotten anywhere,” the doctor said. Solan got the feeling he was picking his words with care. “I have to wonder, based on what you've told me, if there's anything else - anything going on in your life, anything that's happened to you...?” he trailed off in a question. Solan got the implied 'you lying brat', but neglected to mention it. He knew as well as the doctor did that there was nothing medical to account for pure hallucination with no other symptoms, and that he was strange in insisting that the impossible things he saw really were impossible.

If he started showing paranoia, it'd probably make the doctor really happy, but he flatly refused to do that - he'd even started analyzing his own thought processes a lot more than normal, just to make sure they were still internally consistent. For one thing he didn't want treatment for schizophrenia. For another, the last thing he needed was to go insane.

He wondered why he didn't consider Vega a hallucination, briefly. It could be because she hadn't disappeared inside an hour. None of the other events had left any lasting mark - but could his mind be keeping the illusion going, for reasons known only to itself? But the doctor had actually talked to him about her... hadn't he?

Anything he perceived, he realized, was suspect. He only hoped that he really was a man with a slight problem with perception, instead of some random freak walking the streets talking to walls and calling them 'Mr. McClintock'.

Which thought, of course, brought him back to the fact that he'd just sat in front of his psychologist for upwards of a minute thinking hard and gesturing to himself. The other man was looking at him suspiciously, though kindly, and was clearly expecting some great revelation. With no small effort, he brought his mind back to the present.

“Nothing I can think of. Seriously, man, it's just after I found that girl. Don't know if she's got anything to do with it, but it started that night,” he said. He was aware that his connection of the hallucinations to Vega wasn't making the psychologist think him more sane, but he was doing the best he could. It had started with her. It was probably continuing with her. Maybe he should be talking to her or, hell, even dragging her in here to explain herself, rather than keep talking to this guy who didn't have a clue.

The problem with that, of course, was that he kept coming back, and he couldn't even explain that to himself. If the man ever explained it for him, Solan would probably have a heart attack. Though he could give the guy a few shocks himself so maybe that was okay.

He'd done it again; the psychologist had asked him something and he had spaced it out completely. He blinked, trying to figure out the appropriate response - try to figure out the answer, fess up and ask him again? - and paused long enough that the man made the decision for him, repeating his statement.

“Solan, if you are going to continue to tell me only part of what is happening - and I believe that you are - then these sessions have no purpose. Far be it from me to keep you from coming here if it helps, but I will not be able to help you in the way you need if I do not know what is going on.”

Okay, the man had to be a mind reader, there was no other explanation. Solan took a second to recover, and made some inarticulate noise, waving a hand. “There's nothing. I'll keep showing up - might get somewhere eventually,” he said. Yeah, and pigs might - no, wait, if his dreams were anything to go by winged pigs weren't that far off the mark. They were certainly more plausible than winged Solan, and that kept happening, so...

McClintock wasn't buying it, but Solan was okay with that. The man probably had some weird explanation involving his mother, a Catholic complex and some ancient myth, and he probably couldn't hit the truth if it were painted on the broad side of a barn. Solan was safe enough, he could keep coming back, and maybe eventually he'd convince Vega to come back, and then - maybe the lovely folks at the hospital could take her off his hands.

He got up to leave, feeling the nearly irresistible urge to bow - Vega's preferred method of greeting and parting - on his way out. He thought he managed it gracefully, though, with only a wave and some kind of meaningless thing that meant 'same time same place two days'.

The secretary smirked at him on the way out. Solan had the creepiest feeling that she knew him better than the doctor did.

*****************

She'd made it back to his house. She wasn't sure why she'd returned. Could she, should she be here? She knew she had the capacity for violence. No, that was wrong - she knew she was violent, or had been. She didn't like to lie to herself. But she knew she didn't want to be. The feel of the block, the crunch of bone, these things were strangely attractive and disgusting, at the same time.

In her dreams, she fought, and it was pure joy. It wasn't until she woke and felt the blood still staining her body - because the way she fought, it was never restricted to her hands - that she realized what she'd done. Even in dreams, the loss of life... hurt. It hurt in the way that plain coloured clothing hurt, that unmoving people hurt, a sense of something so deeply wrong and twisted that she couldn't stand to look at it, or in that case, feel it.

But still she dreamed of it every night, and it kept her awake or woke her, and sent her to his room to watch him - because he was never at rest even in sleep, and because he was calming, no matter how much he might toss and tangle himself in the sheets.

But she'd carried that violence, that wrongness, over into the waking world. Even if that woman had been unhurt, no matter how she had gotten away, she couldn't justify it. There'd been no excuse. And if she wasn't strong enough to control her own reactions, what would she do if someday she harmed the only constant person in her world?

She couldn't stay here, that much was obvious. She'd have to leave. She didn't want to, it was the only reason she'd stayed as long as she had, but. He wanted her out, she knew that. Now that she could not trust herself, she could hardly ask him to trust her further.

She didn’t want to just leave. She felt beholden to the boy, but – she couldn’t repay anything he’d given her.

She pulled down the collar of her sweater, felt the pendant shaped like a wing. For a reason she couldn’t quite explain, she broke the chain rather than unclasp it. She laid the pendant on his bedside table.

She walked out of the house without so much as a backward glance, headed for the city.

*************

Solan came home late, after a difficult band practice, to an empty house. It took him several minutes to realize why this was abnormal; he was used to living alone since his parents had decided to run off to England for a tour. He even usually liked having the house to himself.

A few days ago, he would have said that he would prefer having an empty house, given that the alternative had Vega in it and she was not conducive to mental peace. Right at this moment, though, he really wanted her there. He’d been thinking about the possibility of her being a hallucination; he needed some proof that she wasn’t, and that meant seeing her.

He wandered around the house a bit, but she wasn’t around – he should’ve known that, she was always waiting right at the door when he came home. It was when he walked into the bedroom and found her necklace on the bedside table that he knew she’d left for good. He picked the thing up. He’d never actually looked at it before, but it was some kind of stylized wing. Perfect. More angelic imagery. Maybe she was in some sort of cult. It made him nervous, but he stuck it in his pocket.

Or, of course, he just imagined that she was associated with feathers and flying, and why would he do that? But then that was the big question, wasn’t it – why would his mind do any of the crap that it was currently doing.

He sat on the couch, well more collapsed really, and stared at the ceiling. It did not stare back, which was good, because he had been half expecting it to develop eyes and give him a glare. Stupid…

He shouldn’t be doing this. What ‘this’ was, he wasn’t really sure – letting his mind get away from him, maybe. He was an artist, he was used to his thoughts going off in weird and incontrollable directions, but he had always been able to distinguish between ‘my mind is going off on a tangent’ and ‘reality has bent itself’. It wasn’t that he was worried about the ideas, weird dreams had produced some of his best lyrics, but he was worried about the fact that they were influencing his grip on reality.

The ceiling looked… wavy. Yeah, it was starting to drift off, melt and blur together, developing different colours and elegant, curvilinear shapes, like crashing waves… like wind and water, pulling into a typhoon…

His hand jerked and he woke up. Whoa. Another dream – yes, dream, he’d drifted off, he’d only had four hours of sleep last night, he hadn’t been hallucinating again…. He checked his body over quickly to make sure it hadn’t sprouted any extra appendages. No, he wasn’t hallucinating.

But he was drifting off into sleep again, and dreams of normal things around him blurring out of reality, leaving him floating.

Around him was black, black and cold like pictures he’d seen of space, empty. Also around him were lines of brilliant colour, warm and welcoming, superimposed on the blank emptiness. They were wrapped around his wrists, his ankles, his body, holding him suspended.

He was moving, using the lines of light to push off, though there was no reason to think he could. He was headed for… for that sun, there, he suddenly knew, where something would happen. What, he didn‘t know, but around him, the lines exuded anticipation.

There was a place right behind the sun where the lines twisted and broke apart, warped and broken (torn and forced) into a rough circle. He averted his eyes – it hurt too much to look, hurt to see it and know what had happened there (power and terror and too much force, too much wrong) – and even with his eyes closed, he could feel the blankness of the hole in the world (rip in the fabric). He could feel anything that happened to touch the lines, and he could tell, too, where he couldn’t feel – like Novocain. In his mind. Which was a really bad description, somehow, because it wasn’t him that felt the numbness, but the universe… but he knew what the universe was feeling.

Other things were happening. The lines around him were bending in ways that meant ‘friend’, and he glanced around (didn’t need to glance around, knew) and saw the five people around him, people whose names (weren’t important) he didn’t know, but whom he knew were friends. They were holding strange weapons (things of power, old as the world) and he was suddenly holding (had summoned) a staff with a bladed edge, holding it like he was born to it (had trained for it eight hundred sixty five years and counting).

Something was coming. The anticipation was practically tangible (was visible) and the six of them were defending, in stances that would allow them to block any attack. He was behind an array of three of the others, two women and a man, preparing to attack.

And suddenly, all the lines exploded in potential, and through the numb area in his perception, five figures – mostly human, but only in the way that he and the others were mostly human, not quite right (perfectly normal it was his own perception of himself that was wrong). He darted forward, the lines bending and moving around him, allowing him to use their power to – to push forward (to cast a spell) and to attack the others (the eternal enemy). Faster than thought (exactly at light speed) he pulled sideways, the enemies thinking he’d stopped, not seeing the wave of potential attacking them. The lines hit, forcing them back, and then they were coming towards him again…

Someone in front of him, someone he knew, someone who looked like him (but wrong, the lines around him). The man wasn’t right (was the enemy) and he pushed forward again, staff held out, ready to deliver a killing blow (how dare they take his form).

The man dodged upwards, flipping behind his back, and he spun, ready to kill again – his staff hit – the man cried out (shouldn’t, should be changing back to form) – the lines all bent – the man dissolved, and he screamed.

**********

She was walking – walking in circles, trying not to sleep. She didn’t want to sleep, to go back to that world where she killed. So she stood and walked, slowly at first, then faster and faster heading into a run, around the huge reflective building.

Since she’d come here, the reflections had changed from the brilliant light of the afternoon sun to the orange, red and purple images of sunset to the grayish light and neon signs of nighttime in the city. There had been fewer people, now there were more. She did her best to ignore them and dodged them so they wouldn’t have to acknowledge her presence by having to move. She didn’t want to attract attention. She didn’t want anyone to try and stop her.

The rhythm of her feet was echoed in her blood, in her mind, until it became her whole world. She didn’t have to try not to think – she was simply trying to keep breathing, keep moving. She entered a state of almost Zen emptiness. Right foot, left foot, breathe in, right foot, left foot, breathe out.

Images formed in her mind and she banished them quickly. That boy from her memory – so like him, and so like someone else she knew, but who? A person who stood as if rooted to the spot, a sense of complete stability and utter confidence. An image with wings, black and white feathers twining, drifting through her mind in a swirl and swish, obscuring everything else. The feel of a staff twirling through her fingers – no! She clenched her hands into fists to destroy the sensory memory. Keep the feathers, yes, they were a memory worth keeping, but the fighting – she couldn’t.

She was beginning to grow tired. She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, though it must have, sometime in the past. She slowed, though didn’t stop, and brought her breathing back to normal, listening as her heart slowed its pounding. It was cold, and she’d been sweating – she shivered. Should have brought a different outfit. This skirt was hardly appropriate for this climate at night.

People were getting out of her way now, and she noted that she did look like she was angry at the world. She tried to calm her features, but simply succeeded in making her face a blank mask. Better. Not good, but better. She drifted to the edge of the sidewalk, letting the rest of the crowd go past her. She didn’t know or care where she went from here, so she followed the largest portion of the crowd wherever it was going.

********

Solan had woken up in a cold sweat, panicked, with his voice still echoing in the house. He thought he’d screamed a name. He had no idea what it was, either. Something unusual, but it was what the man he’d… killed… in the dream, remember, it was only a really vivid dream… was called.

He had to do something about this. No, he had to find Vega. This was her fault, or maybe not her fault exactly, but had to do with her. It’d been conjecture before, but now he was sure.

In the dream, he’d been holding a staff. It’d been the same shape as her necklace.

He sat up and held his head in his hands, trying not to breathe too fast. When he’d gotten his heart rate under control, he decided the best thing to do was get to the psychologist. He’d have to explain, but the man had to know Vega at least somewhat, right? They’d be able to find her.

He was about to run out the door when he realized it was way too late for the man to be in his office. He’d call and see if he could get a contact number. He slipped his shoes back off and went to dial the phone.

Just before he could pick it up, it rang. Cursing the gods of bad timing, he answered. “Hello?”

“Solan, where the hell are you?” Ah, it wasn’t the god of bad timing, it was the goddess of bitchery. Normally he didn’t mind Coco calling him up, since he knew he was crap at timekeeping, but right now wasn’t the time.

“At my house, about to go out. I’m not gonna be there tonight, sorry,” he said. Try not to give her information…

“What? And what do you expect the rest of us to do? We’ve got a demo to produce, and if you don’t start showing up to practice you’ll never be able to perform in a studio - ”

“Something more important came up,” Solan cut her off. “Sorry, we can do it some other time.” He didn’t want to hang up on her; he’d already insulted her badly enough. The band was her life, and yeah, it’d been his up until about a month ago. Now it was just part of it, and wasn’t that an interesting realization, where’d that come from? He’d deal with it later.

“And what exactly is more important than making this CD?” Coco asked. She sounded coldly pissed off, which was worse than hot anger. She had a temper but it blew over fast. This sounded more… permanent.

On the other hand, he might not have to worry about it much, depending on what he found when he found Vega. It might just be her, of course, but he still cherished the idea that she was some kind of assassin, or something.

“…Look, you remember that newscast you asked me about a while back, where you thought I’d gotten mixed up in something?”

“Yes.” Her tone implied that this better be good; Solan had a feeling it’d be better than she expected and not nearly so believable. He didn’t have time to make up a convincing lie.

“She was living with me – not like that, okay, so don’t get started – and she’s run off somewhere, and she’s not that good at, um, human interaction, so I’ve gotta go find her before she does something she regrets,” he started, ran the sentence through his head again, and started trying to figure out how to deal with the fallout before Coco recovered from the shock.

“WHAT?” Solan was starting to really hate that word. “You’ve been – and she’s – this is what you’ve been spending time on all month?” she finally managed to get out. Solan winced. Okay, this was his fault; he’d have to make it up to them somehow, they were his friends, but…

“Fine, whatever, go do your psychotic- bitch thing, we’re going to practice,” she said, and hung up.

Solan stood for a moment with the phone pressed to his ear, slightly stunned; then he managed to get himself under control, and dialed the hospital’s number.

********

Keene had stayed late that night; he’d had things to file, impressions to record, all the usual little bits of paperwork that built up when one was dealing with a large company, which the hospital was, no matter how much it annoyed him that he had to sign forms in triplicate every time he started working with a new patient. Miss Davis had already gone home, saying something about remembering to eat. He would, eventually.

He wasn’t the kind of doctor who had to be on- call – thank God for that, though he would have been if it had been necessary – so he was surprised when his phone rang. Surprised enough that he didn’t answer it at first, but let it ring twice before he finally picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Finally! I knew you were there. Look, I have a problem.” He didn’t place the voice at first. A young man’s. Someone he knew, he guessed. Which of his patients would call him with a sudden problem? Not the schizophrenic, he was paranoid, not the MPD man, at least three of his personalities didn’t trust Keene as far as they could throw him…

“All right, we’ll talk. What’s the matter?” he asked, hoping to get some sort of clue.

“I lost her, that’s the matter. Right, you didn’t know – Vega’s gone.”

That helped not at all. Keene had a sudden urge to start hitting the desk with his head again. “Who is Vega?”

“Idiot, she’s – oh, wait, I never told you. She’s that girl, the one with the scars and the stare.” Who could he be talking about? He didn’t – wait. Scars and stare. He only knew one girl whose stare could be considered her most defining feature.

“Is this Solan Carter?”

“Of course it is, we’ve only been talking for how long now? Yeah, look, Vega was staying with me and now she left, and since she wouldn’t leave while I was telling her to I think something must have happened,” he heard. Yes, that had to be Solan – he was the only person Keene knew who could say that much without taking a breath. He imagined the man standing in his kitchen gesturing at every pause in his monologue.

This distracted him momentarily from the information, which was why it took him a moment of silence to parse the sentences. Vega – nameless girl – staying with Solan – leaving?

“Solan, what are you telling me, exactly?” He tried to keep his voice calm. For all he knew this Vega he was talking about was another hallucination. Keene knew Solan had some kind of strange relationship with the girl, or the idea of the girl, given his insistence that she had something to do with his hallucinations. That, and the graphically described dreams or kinetic- visual hallucinations, were the only mental issues he had. Other than that, Keene thought of him as a remarkably sane young man – only a little strange, understandable given that he was an artist.

“I guess you don’t listen as well as I thought, yeah? Vega was staying here – yeah, she was real, I can tell the difference, I’m that sane at least – and she was really pushy about it, and she’s been here every night by eight, and it’s ten now and she’s not back from wherever the hell she goes and she’s not, y’know, all there, so I figured you might know something.”

Keene was very attuned to speech patterns, and this was Solan’s ‘I’m trying to avoid something’ pattern, with all the filler and pauses and mildly insulting insinuations. Probably, to judge by the tone, he was trying to avoid saying how worried he was. Which was strange. Because what the hell was Solan doing with the nameless girl? Who he had apparently named. Which didn’t work with anything Keene knew of Solan, who seemed to want to stay unattached to people.

“No, I haven’t heard anything from her. It’s interesting that you mention this, though. I wasn’t aware that you’d been living with her,” he said. He kept all judgment out of his voice, but Solan sounded annoyed when he answered anyway.

“It’s not like that, you idiot. She showed up and said she was staying with me. And told me not to tell anyone.”

“What, she threatened you?” The first part of the statement had relieved some worry, but the last part had brought it right back again. He didn’t want to be wrong about her.

“No, she just told me. Look, I’m gonna come down there, okay? She shouldn’t be out by herself, someone’ll talk to her and she’ll break them.”

There was a click, and a dial tone.

Keene sighed. He’d been hoping to go home sometime before midnight, but it looked like that wouldn’t be happening.

**************

Solan stomped through the streets, daring people to get in his way. The first coat he’d grabbed had been the spiked trench coat, and when he’d put that on he’d subconsciously thrown on the platform combat boots as well, and so most people weren’t taking him up on it. When he stomped into the hospital – actually he was trying to walk quietly but the boots weren’t much good at it – the receptionist took one look at him and nearly called the cops.

“I’m here to see Dr. McClintock,” he said, trying not to scare her too badly. She looked at him sideways – probably, on reflection, telling her that he was seeing the psychologist who dealt with the unstable patients wasn’t going to help her opinion of him.

“I’m sorry, Dr. McClintock isn’t here right now. His office hours are from nine until one, or you can make an appointment…” she said, looking at him nervously. He sighed.

“Look, I just talked to him on the phone, he’s still here. Just let me go through, please?” He did his best to look nonthreatening, but he didn’t think it worked.

“Sure, sir, just a moment.” Her hand started edging toward the phone. Solan started to get really nervous. Last thing he needed was for the cops to get called. Not that he was actually doing anything wrong, but they’d want to know things, and he didn’t need the police in on the whole Vega thing. She didn’t take well to police. He’d seen that. Might be different now, but he didn’t want to take the chance.

It was just as he was contemplating bolting for the door, receptionist be damned, that McClintock walked out. He looked a bit surprised to see Solan, but figured the situation out quickly enough. With an enviable amount of grace – Solan was reminded of an old James Bond, the only thing the man needed was a martini glass – he placated the secretary and ushered Solan out of the building before he knew what was happening.

Once on the street, which was filled with people who couldn’t care less what he and McClintock were talking about, the psychologist said, “Perhaps you should explain yourself again.”

Solan had been prepared for that, and had planned ahead a bit. “Okay, but look. You know I’m, like, able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, right? You’ve got that impression?” He waited for the nod before continuing. “Good. Vega – that’s the nameless girl’s name, I gave it to her because I had to call her something – she’s been living with me for like three weeks. She’s really weird, but she refuses to leave and she was dead set on staying, so I let her.”

The psychologist did not look too convinced. “We established that part, I think. Do you know why she decided on you?”

“Haven’t got the slightest clue,” Solan responded flatly. He might suspect, but McClintock would get to know only whatever Vega had told him. The girl was messed up enough already and Solan didn’t want to add any more stress to her life.

“All right, please continue.” Psychologist voice on. The doctor had a soft, sympathetic tone he used when he was trying to get information out of someone. Solan wondered if he knew.

“Right, yeah. Anyway, so she’s at my house, and she’s being really weird, no surprise there, and she always goes out during the day while I’m gone but she’s always back by eight, and like I said, it’s ten, well ten thirty now, and she’s not home.” And that hadn’t sounded very articulate at all. Damn. He must be seriously worried. He tried not to babble, ‘cause it annoyed him when he sounded stupid, but sometimes he couldn’t help it and he kind of lost control of the words while his mind worked and now he was babbling in his own head God damn it.

His rapidly derailing train of thought was stopped by McClintock’s voice. “So the girl… Vega… has run off somewhere. Where do you think she would go?”

Solan shrugged and spread his hands. They were already walking down the street in front of the hospital – he sure didn’t know where they were going, he was hoping the doctor did. “Haven’t got a clue. You’re the psychologist, you talked to her, you tell me.”

“Yes, but you’ve lived with her for quite a while. I can talk to people as much as I want, but I still only know what they tell me.” He glanced at Solan, just assessing; Solan carefully did not flinch, knowing that the doctor expected him to but not seeing the need to be guilty about the whole thing. They dodged a large group of tourists – seemed they were heading down main street.

“Do you know what she does during the day?” the doctor asked. Solan shrugged, a movement made imposing by the spikes on his shoulders.

“We don’t talk about it. She’s not a very talkative person.” Which was the understatement of the entire year, century, millennium, and era, but properly describing the level of silence the girl could have would require about half an hour of superlatives.

McClintock nodded. Well, he’d spent a lot of time trying to get her to talk, so he shouldn’t need the description. Solan just hoped he had some idea.

“She enjoys running, or she did at the hospital. Surprised us, I can tell you. Could that be it?” McClintock asked. Solan hadn’t got a clue, and said so. McClintock looked surprised.

Suddenly – well, of course suddenly, things like this didn’t give warning before they happened – there was a flash of light at the end of the street, in front of the big mirrored skyscraper of some company or another. That wasn’t important. There were three things that were much more important, and these were: that the light came in a tower from the sky, that it was accompanied by a sound like a choir filtered through a cheap talk radio, and that no one, with the exception of Solan and McClintock, was looking at it.

They glanced at each other.

“She’s like a black hole of weirdness. She’ll be there.”

“Yes.”

They took off running, Solan in front to scare people off the path, McClintock keeping up surprisingly well.