For a long time she simply sat and stared at the wall in front of her, the ring that Hale had given Kenzi attached to a chain that she held in her hand. The only reminder that her best friend that she had left.

The only thing that she could hold onto.

She could feel the tears welling up once again as she sat on her bed clutching the pendant to her chest over her heart, as if somehow the strength of it beating could bring Kenzi back to life, as if she could will life force into this pendant and by extension into Kenzi.

She heard a small creak in the house and for a moment she looked up expecting to see Kenzi approaching her room, a smile on her face, wanting to watch a horror movie marathon or to see if she wanted to go to the Dahl.

But there was nothing.

No one was standing in her doorway smiling at her.

No one was asking her to go to the Dahl.

There was no creaking coming from the floor above, no loud music being blasted as the stairs creaked above her as Kenzi danced around.

She knew that if she went upstairs she would see Kenzi's clothing strewed around her half of her loft bedroom, the bed still unmade as if it was going to be occupied that night.

She half expected to hear banging downstairs in the kitchen as Kenzi looked for something edible to feed herself or Tamsin or both. She expected to hear the TV blazing with one of her blasted cartoons or Jungle Jeeves, or maybe the sounds of her video game as Kenzi attempted to save the world from robot zombie hookers.

She expected to hear some sounds in the Crack Shack but it was deathly silent. It was like when she had first moved in, before she had found Kenzi.

It was so different now.

She wasn't used to being alone anymore. She was used to the constant presence in her life that Kenzi had become, the safety and stability of a single house that she represented.

But it was silent. It was so quiet.

She found herself hoping that at any moment Kenzi would come through the front door and tell her that the last months of her life had been a giant practical joke, that they had been a dream. She expected Kenzi to come walking through the door and acting like nothing was wrong, like Bo hadn't just witnessed her death.

She would have throttled Kenzi before she hugged her so tightly and tell her how much she loved her and how much she appreciated her and never let her out of her sight again.

But it wouldn't happen. Kenzi was not coming back, at least she wasn't going to be coming back any time soon.

She was dead.

Her best friend.

Her little sister.

Her confidant.

Her support.

Her heart.

And she was gone, just up and gone in a flash, in the blink of an eye she was gone and unless she could find a way to bring Kenzi back she would stay dead.

And her heart would remain broken and unable to heal because she didn't have it.

Most of it had gone with Kenzi, it had died when she had died.

And the tiny sliver that was left, that was keeping her alive and tied to the Earth was split between so many people, had been shattered and broken so many times.

But that tiny piece was all that was keeping her alive now, that tiny broken fragment was all she had left and if she couldn't find a way to bring Kenzi back it would be all that she would have left of herself.

She wasn't even sure if that tiny broken fragment would ever heal, if it would ever be enough. Because the people that she had trusted it with had broken it again and again, it had been trampled on and broken, fixed again and again by the love of her best friend who had protected so much of her heart and really just her whole being.

Kenzi had been one of her anchors, one of the people who had kept her grounded in her humanity, who reminded her that not all humans would fear her.

Who reminded her of her humanity and of their tenacity and their will and their unconditional love and everything that had been given to her in her first years of life being raised by humans.

Everything that she had to battle on a daily basis to not allow it to slip away.

Life was so fragile wasn't it?

It could be snuffed out in an instant.

A single stab to the chest could cause so much grief and so much pain and anguish, too much for one tiny body, for one fragile young human to bear. For one heart to get shattered and for her to be unable to do anything about it.

And now she couldn't even say sorry. She couldn't even protect her best friend, she couldn't protect the woman she loved, she couldn't protect her friends.

She could save her lover, whom in the end hadn't really needed that much saving.

But she couldn't save her best friend and her little sister?

Why? She had to wonder.

Why was it Kenzi? Of all of them why was it Kenzi who had to die? Why was it the brightest, the youngest, the most hopeful and beautiful and fragile of them that had to be broken before she sacrificed herself?

Why couldn't things just have a happy ending for once in her goddamn life!

Her first time would forever be marked by the memories of Kyle and his death.

The first time she had made love with anyone had been marred in tragedy and miscommunication and wrongly executed well meaning.

A person she had fallen in love with had given up his love in order to save her from her birth mother, someone she had only seen a few brief glimpses of as Aife, as her sane self, as the woman who could have been her mother.

When she is finally, finally ready to settle down and to make a choice, to stick with her and love her, to finally give into the pull of something she had been resisting for so long it had fallen apart all to quickly.

But for every event except the first one she'd had Kenzi there to support her, to be her guide, to pull her out of depression and to push her back into living. But now? She had no one.

"I really need your help to get over your death Kenz… I need you here and with me and I just…" She whispered as she clutched the necklace close to her chest in a death grip, as the tears began to fall down her cheeks again.

"I need you so much and now I'm alone because I can't bring myself to face everyone without you. Kenzi…" She whispered to the necklace clutched against her chest. "I just wish I had been able to tell you how much I needed you and how special you were to me, how much I needed you in my life and now… I don't even know how to live without you anymore!"

The little human who had wormed her way into her heart without her meaning to, without her consent or her control. But so quickly she found it hard to remember what life was like without Kenzi, what it had been like before her best friend and her crazy wig obsession, love of alcohol, and messy ways, the constant eating, the constant banter and commentary.

She had forgotten what life was like without it, without her daily dose of Kenzi.

And now she suddenly found herself living in that world again. Living in a world that was so much darker without Kenzi and without everything that she had meant to her.

She glanced around her bedroom as she remembered all the times she and Kenzi had been in here, whether it was Kenzi coming to her because she thought Bo needed to be cheered up after whatever the latest relationship drama had been or Kenzi coming to her for comfort because of a nightmare.

She could feel one hand running over the material underneath her. How many nights had they gotten drunk in this room collapsing on her bed because they were to exhausted to move? How many times had Kenzi crawled into bed with her during the Dyson debacle and the Lauren debacles? How many nights had Kenzi simply crawled in with her because she needed another person who loved her nearby?

She glanced around the room suddenly feeling a need to get out, to go away, to be anywhere but here, anywhere but where the memories could assault her at any moment. Without thinking she took off running out of her bedroom and into the hallway and down the stairs, only to freeze when she caught sight of the living room.

There were to many memories in this place, far to many moments and memories she associated with this room. All of the horror movie marathons, yelling at Kenzi to clean up her dishes because she had left them out so long that they could have named them for all the different things they were growing.

All of those mornings that they had watched Jungle Jeeves or some stupid cartoon or kids show, all while she complained but really just how much she had enjoyed those moments with Kenzi, the simple feeling of having another person in her life who loved her so much and who she loved in return as if they were sisters, real sisters. The feelings of understanding and sisterhood that she had with Kenzi were ones that she could not find anywhere else.

Her eyes shifted slightly and she caught sight of Kenzi's old video-game and for a brief moment she laughed at the memories of trying to play against Kenzi in those games only to lose every single time. How she not so strangely complained about how it was her best friend when she and Lauren had become involved in their relationship and had rarely come out of her bedroom.

When she shifted her gaze to the left she could see the weapons chest that they kept on the first floor. Kenzi's beloved Geraldine sitting polished and sharped, ready to be used at a moments noticed.

But it would never be picked up again by it's owner's hands, it would never…

She needed to get out of here, she needed to escape from this house and from the memories that were assaulting her everywhere she turned.

Every corner of the Crack Shack contained some reminder of Kenzi and of the life that they had built here, two misfits and people on the run, who wouldn't be considered members of polite society. But despite that, despite this being an old run down building without walls they had managed to build a home here, a small family that had started with just them, but slowly ever so slowly it had started to grow.

Trick.

Dyson.

Lauren.

Tamsin

And of course Hale.

The little family that they had built for themselves, the one that wouldn't run and wouldn't give up on them.

But for her a huge part of it had crumbled the moment she had lost Kenzi.

She hadn't had to imagine life without her little sister in a long time, and she had never really pictured life without her.

She had known in the back of her mind that Kenzi's death was immanent. She was human after all, but to her it had been decades away, something that they could maybe have planned around in the end, something that they could have cheated and something that they could have fought against.

She never thought that she would lose Kenzi to anything but old age.

But here she was standing in an empty house filled only with old memories the memories of her best friend surrounding her.

And she couldn't even stay to face them she realized as her legs finally began to move again, pumping restlessly as she tried to flee her home, the one she had built with Kenzi at its heart and all the memories that surrounded it.

But when she reached the car all she could do was sit in the seat and sob, the darkness all around her the only witness to the grief and sadness that she bore, the burden of grief crushing her soul, freezing her in place with no buoy or hope.

Leaving her directionless in the middle of a desert with no map or stars to help her navigate back home because the person who had been her home was gone.

And she was never coming back. She realized as she gripped the steering wheel harder, sobbing. The misery and grief she was feeling escaping in the tears that she shed and the memories that haunted her without mercy.

She couldn't feel any warmth.

All she could feel was the cold. The cold in the air, the cold of the car. The cold of the fall night.

The cold in her heart and the cold in her home.

She could feel her head droop as exhaustion hit her for the first time in days she felt exhausted, tired and drained.

But she also felt something else.

Arms wrap around her and pull her into an embrace, a familiar scent hitting her nose as she buried her face in that person's neck.

Lauren.