This is my last work for the Caster Chronicles. I decided to end it on a look into my interpretation of Leah's background. ((I assumed Arelia didn't really talk about the Ravenwoods, so, if that's not canon, keep that in mind.)) There will be plenty of original characters, but I'm working as hard as I can to not make them seem as such. We'll see how long this goes, but I expect to have it finished before the year's end...probably four parts, updated every two weeks.

This is rated M, according to FanFiction standards, for its references to drugs, alcohol, etc. There's not going to be anything explicit; the rating is for 16+, and that's exactly what this is set for.

No spoilers, considering it's all back-story, and it's all based on my imagination.

Disclaimer: all rights to Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. I'm just messing around with the characters and universe they've built.

Glimmering stars, open windows, and clumsy hands. The dream never dies, and neither shall she.

She never thought she'd be the type of girl to chase a rumor. Then again, she never thought she'd believe in ghosts, either, but here she was, idly tracing heavy scores in the table. What she remembered of her childhood was fleeting—palms pressed against window sills, killing her neck staring at the stars, carrying back strays from the streets of New Orleans, and sitting on her bed thinking to a wall—but she knew that starry-eyed girl wouldn't recognize her now.

The girl wouldn't recognize the combat boots laced tightly over black skinny jeans. She wouldn't have predicted the t-shirt—she borrowed it from one of her fellow arsonists; it still smelled like ash and gasoline and had her lipstick smeared on its collar—hidden beneath the dark overcoat. She wouldn't have comprehended how her eyes were hearse glass, gleaming and old, new and worn. She wouldn't have understood why her skin was so pale, why this woman didn't share her beauty with the sunlight, why she was frequenting a bar instead in a home, why she was drinking wine instead of sweet tea, why her eyes were draped with light bags.

The girl Leah was ten years ago wouldn't have seen any of it coming. A decade ago, Leah would have still been in that attic room with posters taped to the ceiling. She would have still been in her room, splayed on her bed like a lamb, all limbs and wide eyes. She would have been hoping there was someone out there like her, with eyes like the persimmons her mother loved to bake with, with the same wiry frame she had, with a golden glow to their skin. She would have been thinking of someone older, someone who was athletic, someone whose hands were capable of creating more than just sound from instruments, someone who was interested in languages, had that Latin knack Leah could never find.

She would still have been wishing for someone completely estranged from her, except for those damned eyes.

The music was too loud, she noted, for any sort of recollection. She could feel the bass thrumming beneath her fingers. It was enough to drive a Succubus deaf, enough to distance herself from her thoughts. If she closed her eyes, if the air was slightly more sweet and clear, she could imagine herself younger. She could imagine it was two, three years ago, before she had started any of this, before she started this path to a bar filled with people far darker than she could have imagined, waiting for someone who may or may not show up.

She tipped her glass against her lips; wine stained her lips like pomegranates.

The first step she takes on her own accord is out the back door, over the fence, and towards the diner down the street. Its owner is a tired man with a wind-scarred face, and he is kind, if nothing else. She sits in the corner booth, third from the counter, and waits until closing, when she helps the owner scrub tables, sweep the floors. The owner flashes his eggshell teeth and mumbles how she has her choice of whatever wasn't sold that day. Her hands eagerly grab for starches, for rolls and twists she knows are baked with care from those knotted fingers.

If the extra loaves of bread placed in the pantry are noticed, her mother doesn't comment.

It becomes her first job, as well. Not that she's looking for one, but there's a cute house in New Orleans that she can make a down payment on, if nothing else, if she keeps this job for a few years. The bread becomes fruit, and the fruit becomes cuts from the tip jar. She gravitates towards the kitchens, washes chipped dishes. The worn man teaches her how to knead dough, how to add oats, nuts, and herbs seamlessly. She fancies him her mentor.

Months drag on, turn to years. Her hands learn how to improve recipes; she pours over the old recipe cards she finds in her mother's closet and learns to make beignets. Her palms grow heavier. Her mason jar fills like the bottom of an hourglass. That hastily scribbled mark near the top of the jar seems more attainable, reachable, even. The customers become more numerous. The owner lets her close the shop, lets her manage the cash register, imagines a baking position for her. He spends his time in his office balancing books he calls ledgers. She doesn't mind. It's fast. It keeps her busy. People begin caring about the only visible employee, asking how she is, sensing her energy like warmth. She learns on her feet, basks in the glow of something she's made flourish, unlike her mother's wisteria.

Eventually, she has her own set of keys, and she slides them onto a keychain next to her '62 Falcon's, the car her Mamma drove once and decided against driving again, the car her Mamma gave her when she turned 18. The mason jar is almost full for the umpteenth time, enough times that Leah has a payment, in the least, and she decides to tell her mother she's moving out over a cup of tea. Unsurprisingly, her Mamma isn't happy, but she is understanding, and Leah is an adult, if nothing else. Leah plans to leave within the month, spends the night drafting a script for her call to the city.

The day after, the owner offers to take her on an excursion, to those places he disappears to, those places that leave her having to close that diner on the edge of town. She tells her mother there's a meeting at work, that ledgers need to be balanced, and her old man needs help, after all. Her Mamma, Arelia, glances at her fleetingly, tells her to be safe.

Instead, she sits on the passenger side of a rugged Ford. He smokes his cigarettes and lets her place her feet on the dashboard. She lets him call her Annie. He stops outside of a small building she's never seen. Closed, but anything of consequence would be at this hour, she reasons. While the man smokes through the rest of his cigarette, she observes the scenery, takes note of the man thirty feet from them, leaning against the shadow of a street lamp, the way he favors his left leg, the tilt of his shoulders.

He grumbles. The heavy metal door is thrown wide, caught, and slammed closed. She sits in the musty, damp Ford and watches the exchange with flummoxed eyes. Her man, the one who taught her everything she knows concerning food, everything her mother rarely has time for, gesticulates vibrantly. The form he speaks to is dark, someone hiding behind the brim of a hat and intimidation. In her periphery, she can see the other man still on the edge of the pooling light. Her man's lips tighten. There's a slip. The air runs cold. The man flirting with the light is gone, the car door opens beneath her hands, and her feet take her to them before she can think otherwise.

Her man glances at her, her hands shoved in the coat her mother gave her, her eyes bright in the darkness. "Annie," he rasps. She smiles. "Annie, this is..."

"Formal business, girl." Her eyes comb over the form. "Run on home, now, before you get yourself hurt."

"Who's your friend?" Remey, her man, shoots a glance at her, a reprimand.

"I'm alone."

"The man, the one behind that corner," she starts, staring past the man opposite of her. "His shoulder is hurt." The man closest to her, all hat and grimness, stares with his gold eyes. "Blunt trauma on his right side." She meets his gaze. "Significant enough to need medical attention, don't you think?"

"Hanna," Remey's voice is strained, bitter. The man in the hat cuts him off with his drawl.

"Well, well, Remey, you found yourself a damn smart child." Hanna straightens his posture, stands taller. Leah adjusts accordingly. "Do you happen to know who we are, girl?"

"Casters," she supplies. Hanna chuckles lowly.

"Something like that. How would you like a better job than old Remey's paying you for?" His lips tug into a smirk. "What does he have you do, wait tables?"

"I bake."

"Charming." Hanna exhales. Leah can feel Remey trembling beside her. "Two weeks on the payment, Remey." Hanna's gold eyes haven't left hers. "Don't be late, girl."

Leah can't help feeling satisfied when she clamors into Remey's Ford. Remey is tetchy—his fingers fumble lighting another cigarette—and he doesn't move the truck until his hands stop shaking and the cigarette is all but ashes. "It could have gone worse," she mutters.

The sound that escapes him isn't what she expects. It's a laugh, she's sure of it, but it's a laugh she hasn't heard before, a disbelieving, shock of a snicker. Her man shakes from the force of it; the Ford swerves gently on the darkened, empty highway. "Annie, you idiot girl," he bites. His teeth dig into his bottom lip. "Hanna...he's not like us."

"He has eyes like us," she persists, even though her heart is knotted in her chest.

"That's where it ends, Annie. He...he does business, you know, in the Tunnels." Her brow furrows. "Drugs, hitmen..." he fades off. "He's not a nice man, Annie."

Suddenly, it's too humid. The cigarette smoke is cloying in her lungs, not rebellious anymore. She blows air through her teeth. "What if we don't come back, next time?"

"He'll find us. Well." His lips spread in some parody of a smile. "He'll find you." He shakes his head. "You couldn't have stayed in the truck—"

"You were in trouble." The words come out quickly. "He was going to hurt you. You didn't see that man, the one with the limp. What would you have done? Two against one? Even I know that's not an fair fight, Remey."

"And adding a child makes it so much better." Remey's hands tighten on the steering wheel. "We're coming back, Annie." His eyes tighten as though he's smiling; Leah can't look away to confirm the fact. Leah swallows.

Two weeks rush past Leah like river water through her fingers. Every day, she goes to the diner, and everything she touches feels too rough, too fragile. She scrubs tabletops until she can see her reflection in the chipped laminate, until her palms are raw. She works better than she has before, always dizzy, always furiously sweeping into the dining area with long, purposeful strides. No one asks her how she is, and Leah doesn't mind. She fancies herself intimidating.

When she goes home every night, she sits on her bed, and she slips off the flats she's worn for work, and she unties her hair from its knotted updo—hair in the food was still a transgression, no matter how delicious the dish was—she thinks of someone like her. She looks at those posters she's changed with her fledgling casting skills, the way the constellations twinkle only slightly too brightly, the way the words and images flicker with her breaths. They would have darker hair, most likely. Mamma's was black, was certainly darker than Leah's, and Leah couldn't imagine any sibling having hair lighter than hers. They would be a few inches taller than her mother, not as tall as Leah, certainly. They would be athletic—as Mamma assured her most Cubi were—and, of course, they would have the eyes like pyres, the family curse. They would be able to play piano, be able to take care of plants.

The night before the payment's due, she debates screaming into a pillow. Remey wouldn't give her an idea of what was owed, wouldn't let her even ask about it, before hours, after hours, and Leah can't begrudge him, because she doesn't want to know. She wants to run. She wants to leave New Orleans behind—it's a big city, after all, and a girl could get lost in there—wants to forget she ever met Hanna, wants to forget she ever learned to bake. There's a bus she could take at six the next morning, and all her possessions could fit in the duffel bag in the top shelf of her closet, and her mother would be absolutely devastated, but at least her daughter wouldn't be dead. Instead, she stands a foot from the bed, stares out the cracked window. She tries thinking again about someone like her and decides they wouldn't be anything like her at all.

They wouldn't have followed Remey to a shut down building in the slums of New Orleans, where they couldn't breathe, where they damned themselves to the consequences they brought upon themselves.

She debates screaming into a pillow. Instead, she throws open her window, presses against the window sill with her palms until she can feel the wood digging through her skin.

They wouldn't run away, certainly. She shudders a sigh, opens her mouth as though words could fix what she's broken in her hubris. And she nods, once, tells herself this is her fault, this is her design, this is her story, and no amount of tears or cursing will change it.

(She won't deny, later, that when six rolls around, her gut tightens, and she can feel her future cement itself in her mind.)

Dawn rises over the horizon, and Leah feels like its her execution. She gives the same daily, fleeting embrace to her Mamma, fakes a smile and doesn't fake her wave goodbye. She walks carefully to her Falcon, pretends it doesn't feel like an ending. When she pulls up to the familiar diner, she breathes a curse and leaves her truck in the farthest corner of the grassy-lawn-turned-parking-lot that she is capable of. The walk to the diner calms her nerves, if only slightly.

By noon, she almost forgets that the second hand is ticking towards her consequence.

By nine, the sun is beneath the horizon, and the stars are gleaming, and Leah's shaking, bouncing her leg, bobbing on her toes. She hasn't seen Remey, but she can see his old Ford next to her Falcon, and her stomach knots. Then, he comes in with his slicked back hair, with his stern ember gaze, a frown tugging on his lips, and she sputters out a greeting. He nods in acknowledgement. "Annie," he says, and Leah inclines her head, entertains the idea of gesturing a curtsy before crushing it. He swipes his pack of cigarettes from the counter, throws his keys into the air only to catch them.

She spends the ride into the city seeing how many constellations she can name.

Remey smokes through a cigarette and drives his old Ford steadily down the two lane highway.

By the time he pulls in front of a decrepit building with its front windows gaping, jagged, Leah's identified at least four constellations and five marker stars, and Remey's half-way through his second cigarette. There's no ominous street lamp to add atmosphere, and there's no limping henchman thirty or so feet away. She takes note of Remey, instead, of his steady hands, of the indifference that exudes from him, not in waves, but in calculated pulses. Leah doesn't know if she's seen him care less about a situation, and, somehow, it's worse than the anger she expected. He sighs a cloud of smoke, taps the cigarette on the Ford's rolled down window. "When Hanna arrives," he starts, slowly. "I want you to take this truck and drive." He takes a long drag from his cigarette; his shoulders slump. "Drive as far as you can without crashing it. There's a can of gasoline in the bed. If you think you need to burn it, Annie, burn it." His lips move for a second without words. His knotted hands contract around the steering wheel. "Don't come back. Don't you dare come back."

"Remey—" He chuckles.

"It's Charles, Annie." He hesitates. "Charles Milton Remey." The information goes through her head quickly; she'll remember it years from now, but, in that moment, there are more important things to remember.

"I can't leave you here with Hanna. What do you think he's going to do?" Remey's listless gold eyes stare forward. Leah shakes her head. "Will I have to open on Sunday?"

"You'll open on Sunday, if you want." He shrugs. "Or don't. There are better things you can do with your time." He takes a breath. "It's yours, now."

"You can still take care of it, Charles." The name rolls of her tongue haphazardly. "Don't...you're not going to be..." He meets her gaze. "You can't believe, surely..."

He mutters something under his breath, hops out of the truck as well as he can. Leah follows, shoves her hands into her pockets. His cigarette is dropped, smashed with a quick movement. The air is too hot around her, too close. He squares his shoulders, tugs on his shirt, smooths it carefully. He looks at Leah, inclines his head, tosses his keys at her. He disappears into the building. Leah cannot deny her flats slide on the white rock in an attempt to head after him, cannot deny she would have followed him until she hears a gunshot, until she jams the keys into the ignition and drives off.

She's halfway home when she thinks it will hit her, drown her. She's halfway home, and her constellations are still there, brighter, now, and suddenly it's too bright, too quiet, the thrum of a truck and the pounding of adrenaline. She fumbles with the radio, glances in the rearview too many times to count only to see an empty highway, a few streetlamps. She drives carefully, her knees pressed against the steering column, the seat not adjusted to her height, her throat dry. She doesn't think about what just happened. She doesn't think about how she didn't stop him. She drives, keeps the speedometer at a gentle 50, and focuses on breathing.

She debates burning the car on the side of the road.

Instead, she waits until she pulls into the deadened parking lot, until the Ford is pulled under the willow in the corner of the lot, and slams her palms into the wheel. She waits until she has her hands on the gas can, until she can smell the sharpness of the gasoline, until she has her lighter in hand.

She thinks of burning the diner to the ground.

Instead, she pockets the lighter with shaking hands. She twists the cap on the gas can and places it behind the driver's seat in her Falcon. She tugs Remey's keychain onto hers, slams her door, drives home in much the same manner. Her Mamma is asleep—Leah's sure of it—or she's at a meeting with Aunt Twyla, or she's divining, working late. Leah still creeps up to her room with her feet arched, with her heels in the air, and reaches her room without much of a problem except for her heavy heart.

That night, she packs her things into the duffel bag she's been contemplating for the last few weeks and leaves it next to her door. She lays in her bed, and she closes her eyes, still atop her blankets, still awake, her hands still trembling.

She doesn't hear her Mamma open the front door, assumes she's asleep.

Around two, she scrawls a note on the back of her last shopping list—I'm sorry—swings the duffel bag over her shoulder, toes on her flats, and disappears to her car.

She drives until she can't see the diner or the house anymore, glances at the envelope of bills on the passenger seat to make sure they're real. That house in New Orleans is a dream, now, just like Remey, just like the diner. When her throat tightens, she pushes the gas harder. She stops at gas stations barely a mile from the highway, keeps away from backroads, buys a pair of sunglasses the first chance she gets. Those become her new accessory, always on her, always covering up her golden eyes. She spends the night in her car, curled up in some parking lot, windows rolled up, doors locked. She knows it won't keep Hanna from finding her, knows if anyone wanted to break in—even a Mortal—they could. Somehow it makes her feel more alive.

That's when she remembers she's eighteen, she's barely an adult, and her mother has no way to contact her. She promises to buy a postcard in the next state she enters, promises to send it to the bayou that is New Orleans. She can't guarantee a stable address, but she can guarantee a note, something to validate she's still alive.

Conveniently, that's also when she remembers she is an adult, never mind the barely. She could get another job, change a few names, start a new life. Or she could find Hanna when she's better suited, when she can actually shoot, can actually fight, and might actually run into her distant family, might hear about her father.

She places her bets on the latter.