It was all the same.
The girl wanted to throw up; the world was so disgusting, so full of filth and trash and harassment and
Lies.
Oh-so-many lies.
She watched one of her best friends, Constance, be swept away by a beautiful stranger, to the land of Oz, the girl supposed. The stranger, a stunning young woman with glamorous features, the hurricane from Kansas. Constance - Connie, the girl called her, as did everyone else - was young Dorothy. Only Connie didn't have any shimmering red shoes. Connie didn't wear a blue gingham frock and her ginger hair in braids. She didn't have a cairn terrier named Toto, wasn't friends with a lion, a scarecrow, nor a tin man.
Connie didn't like dresses.
What the girl knew Connie did have, however, was a wonderful man by the name of Marco Adriano, a scolding Grandma Joel, a gun shop, and plenty of navarin for an entire lifetime.
The same week Connie was stolen from the girl, another one of the girl's acquaintances - a funny man named Yang - was shot by his own partner. Also a friend of the girl.
The girl retched.
Wiping her mouth, she remembered the look on Delico's face when he had stumbled into a chair after depositing Yang with Dr. Theo and young Nina. The terror in his eyes. The quivering of his broken speech. His nervous hands.
The girl liked those hands. She also recalled holding them before the incident; grasping them in her own small ones and pulling poor Delico - her precious, precious Delico - forward to deposit a peck on the forehead. For luck, she'd told him. To keep him safe. He'd stammered his thanks and a promise to look out for both him and his partner, and hastily hobbled away, face steaming and hair ruffled. She'd laughed at him, then skipped to the window with Nina, to watch the Monroe gang leave. It was only then, did she realize that she hadn't had the chance to bless Yang. He'd left before she could catch up.
She regretted very deeply for not giving him that kiss.
Also in that same week; Loretta's place - Bastard, was it? - was nearly eradicated. Nic was hurt and downed.
Even after he'd assured her that he would not let himself go to harm.
The girl dug red crescent moons into her palms.
She considered the aloof, quiet Twilight to be one of the most important people in her life; it didn't matter if he didn't love her back, letting her love him was enough for the girl. It made her happy.
It made her chest hurt.
Dr. Theo had broken the news; Tags never lived for very long, because of their own bodies, Mother Nature or because the Normals would eventually destroy them wasn't the cause. It was simply because they were of a different, separate breed of human.
It really, really wasn't fair. Not fair at all.
The girl especially hated the fact that she wasn't either; human or Twilight. No, she was an entirely different breed, a species from a split dimension. The birth child of fragmented episodes in fate.
A mistake.
They deemed her a Midnight. The only one of her kind; her sister - twin, sister - died long ago, died protecting her. Died smiling.
Died with no regrets.
That wasn't fair either; it wasn't fair that the one who faded away was the one so full of life, the one who made people smile by smiling, the one so kind and had eyes so bright they looked like the stars that shone just mere milliseconds past twelve.
It wasn't fair that the one who lived was the one who was trying so hard, so hard to die, and failing, while everyone else around her wilted like dandelions.
"_." The girl whipped around, hair flying, bobbing, bouncing. Her sharp glare softened when she saw Nic standing at the door, patiently waiting with his arms crossed and leaning against the rickety wooden door frame.
"I'm coming; go ahead without me." When he raised his arms to begin signing his protest - or at least, that was what the girl had predicted - she waved him away. "Shoo, I need some alone time. I promise I'll be there in a minute. Besides," She cracked a teasing grin. "Alex is going to get swallowed up by Worick if you don't stop him."
Grunting, Nic seemed to want to say something else before he stuck his tongue out and promptly vanished from sight. The girl sighed, shut her dusty old trunk, and strode to the windowsill. Opening the shutters, she pushed it open and moved to balance precariously on the outer edge.
"In a minute," She repeated, like an echo. Her voice was raspy.
Another empty promise.
Another lie.
Lovingly brushing the side of the building, she leaped, and hung suspended in the air - from her vantage point, she could see Nic hopping from roof to roof, Nina clinging to his chest and laughing. Worick was in Chad-san's squad car with Cody, blowing the poor man's mind with his incredible Wallace Arcangelo memory, the girl supposed - and
she soared.
She rose with the wind, dipped with every draft, curled her body with every soft blow, the whispering of the air. She drew lines in the cloud - she was so high up now, so to not scare the Normals below - and flew as easily and as lightly as a summer breeze. She glanced at her wonderful Nic, her beautiful Nicolas Brown who was grinning that shit-eating grin of his and holding her favourite little nurse so tightly.
The girl skidded to a stop in the middle of the sky and veered in the opposite direction.
I'll be there in a minute.
Be there in a minute.
There in a minute.
In a minute.
...a minute.
There was a wan smile on her face as she whooshed past the boundaries of Ergastulum.
Nic felt a warm breeze, and looked up. No sign of _ yet. He shrugged inwardly.
Maybe she's just taking a different route. He regretted not finishing his sentence from earlier.
'I was trying to say that I loved you, not Benedetto, you idiot.'
Wonder; was this yet another lie?