"...Just Home and Love! it's hard to guess

Which of the two were best to gain;
Home without Love is bitterness;
Love without Home is often pain.
No! each alone will seldom do;
Somehow they travel hand and glove:
If you win one you must have two,
Both Home and Love..."

- Home and Love by Robert William Service

It was a grudge, but it was small, and even in all its feral glory, it was easy to catch. Isabel watched as it flicked its tail in irritation, little claws tapping about the bubble she'd formed around it, running in circles like a hamster in a cage. Part of her wanted to keep it, because it had a tiny face like a squirrel and a bushy round tail like a rabbit with a tummy as round as it was fluffy, but it would be frowned upon and she knew that. Besides, how was she to keep it home? It clearly wanted little to do with her and Dimitri, even as they bent to the forest floor and set the little guy free. It didn't so much as wiggle its nose at them before it was off with two other spirits equally as small and cute, presumably its family.

"There" she stood up and wiped the sweat from her brow. The hike up the grassy hill was more difficult than it would have been had she not been expending so much spectral energy. Dimitri raised a hand and high-fived her, turning on the way back to the clubroom. It was a half an hour walk, but it'd be easier the second time around. "It's nice to have you back!"

"Glad to be back" he grinned that sly way he always did, behind lidded eyes that seemed to be up to no good, which Dimitri certainly was. "Think we mighta spared that poor creature a real but-kicking back there. Had Max not accidentally stepped on its paw-"

"Hey!" They both jumped at the grainy voice in the walkie-talkie she'd nearly forgotten they'd had. "I had an arm full of books and it picked the wrong time to cross the hall!"

"Quite frankly you're lucky it didn't bite you." Dimitri snickered, one finger scratching his top lip.

There was a pause, and then: "Do… can spirits have rabies?"

Isabel tossed her head back and cackled, holding her sides and leaning into Dimitri, whose shoulders were trembling as he stifled his own bout of laughter.

"Good job, children!" Spender's voice was over the walkie talkie then, though Max's disturbed musings carried on in the background, faintly dying out as Spender was taller and the talkie was well above his mouth at that point. "Return to the clubroom so we can call it a day. Stay safe."

Max blinked up at Spender, who set the talkie aside on his desk, looking a little too pleased for his liking. He got it, he guessed, it'd been a month, but it still didn't sit well with him, and he was having a hard time seeing the world continue turning as though nothing had ever happened. Sure, there was a heaviness over the student- and teacher- body, and he felt that in the air and saw it in the wide, dull eyes of his peers, but nobody lost sleep because they felt like he did. "Does that happen often?" Spender hummed, smiling at Max, taking a seat, one hand reaching for a red pen, likely to grade tests. Max sat up from where he'd taken to slouching, propping himself up on the armrest. "How often do we take care of spirits and they don't end up in a tool?"

Spender tilted his head, smile softening in the way any adult's would when they were about to explain something they didn't think a child was ready to hear. "Well, it's more rare than one would hope, but not rare enough to make us the bad guys or anything!"

Silence fell over the room, companionable, at least more than it had been when he first started seeing shades and human-spirit-mad hybrids.

Max cocked an eyebrow. "That sounds like something a bad guy would say."

"I heard it."

Spender's smile flattened, and Max could almost see a level of exhaustion, even behind his glasses, but he turned away to mark off papers before Max could really catch a glimpse of it. He sighed and leaned further into the couch, crossing his arms over his chest and hoping that his hat hid his eyes, because he might have been projecting.

"We should arrange another search party this weekend." Spender's voice was perfectly level, like he'd rehearsed it thousands of times. "I want to be perfectly certain we've covered the entire forest."

Max nodded, then mumbled "Yeah."

He couldn't exactly tell him Isaac wasn't in Mayview anymore. It'd raise too many questions, questions he knew he couldn't- wouldn't- answer.

He plopped on the couch, legs splayed across Zoey's lap against her many (many, many, many) complaints, and took the remote in one lazy hand. Even the weight of that was a burden on his arms, which felt like dumbbells for some odd reason, and he guessed it was because he hadn't been sleeping well. He wasn't quite awake all hours of the early morning, but he more often than not awoke periodically, maybe two or three times, a night.

He yawned. All he wanted to do was kick back, watch some TV- if he ever managed to find a channel he felt like watching- and nap at his sister's expense. She was hitting his calves, but softly, enough to let him know she didn't want his feet on her, just not enough to actually, ya know, hurt him or have much of an effect at all. Then again, she was, like, seven; he doubted she could if she wanted to.

Nature? Boring. Paranormal? Extra boring. Sports? Max squinted. Nah.

He flipped through channel after channel, taking a moment each time to decide whether or not he wanted to kill his brain to the screams of a horror movie or the equally as grating screams of reality TV. He was starting to wonder if he really wanted to watch anything. Max yawned again and stretched, pressing the down button on the remote.

"In other recent news…" Blegh. Local news station. No, definitely not. He raised his hand to cut to a different channel, but a flash of orange caught his attention. "Missing child Isaac O'Connor is yet to be found." Zoey yelped as he swung his legs to the floor, leaning forward, edged to the front of the couch, turning the volume up as high as he could take it. The woman on screen shuffled her papers, chestnut hair bouncing over her shoulders as she turned to her partner. "Now, after forty-eight hours, the likelihood of catching the culprit drops significantly, right?"

Zoey frowned, lips pursing. "They haven't found him yet?

"Yes, Jan, it does, and unfortunately for this kid, it's been a month." The man, tall, dark, soft instead of brooding, set his forearm on the newsdesk. "Now, that's not to say there's no hope. There have been missing kid cases that have lasted years and they turned up."

Max swallowed hard. He shouldn't have been worried so much. It wasn't like Isaac had been kidnapped or something equally as horrific. Max knew he'd left of his own volition. To do what though? Doorman wouldn't tell him, wouldn't say a word, and that scared him like nothing else.

"Now, Mark, in a situation like this, what is the probability that this kid is alive?"

His heart dropped. Zoey leaned forward with him, crossing her legs and adjusting to lay more comfortably on the cushions. "Not likely."

Max punched her in the arm, harder than usual. She yelped and rubbed at the sore spot, nose scrunching up.

"I wonder what happened to that boy…" His dad moved into the room, hulling a large basket of laundry into the living room. He balanced on one leg, shutting the laundry room door behind him. Had his interest not been elsewhere, Max might have been impressed all of the clothes still looked their regular non-shrunken size. He'd been more careful about that lately, about everything. He plopped down on the couch, setting the basket down at his feet, and looked at the screen as he reached for the first piece of unfolded laundry. "Hey, Max, that boy was your friend, wasn't he?"

Was? Wasn't? The past tense did nothing to settle the growing pit of unease sifting through his stomach. His hand tightened around the remote. He couldn't meet his dad's eyes. "Uh, something like that…"

"Hah!" Pinning people was fun, Ed had decided, especially when they were older and weren't expecting him to knock them over like speeding locomotive. The kid below him had three years on him at Hashimoto's dojo, at least, and wasn't looking too pleased about his abdomen being under Ed's knee if the red of his face and the blood vessel threatening to pop at his temple were any indication. Ed gave his best grin as consolation, peeling back at Hashimoto's order.

"Finish. Well done, Ed." It wasn't rare to see the old man smile, but it was certainly contagious. The corners of his mustache- because you couldn't very well see his upper lip- would lift, and the crease of his brows, usually furrowed in concern, would have a lightness that matched his amused eyes.

Ed rubbed the back of his neck, tittering to himself. He still wasn't used to receiving praise. The whole be an effective student thing was still shiny and new to him. "Well, it's 'cause I have something to fight for!" His smile dropped. "Also I had, like, a lot of soda before the match, like, so much soda. My bladder is about to combust."

"Aw!" Another student, who'd won the sparring match before his, a small but beefy girl who stood as tall as his waist (counting the volume of her pigtails) took a water bottle from the mini fridge one of the older kids had set at the foot of the staircase. (Hashimoto had been originally against the installation of such a cumbersome- his words- appliance, and now accepted it with grudging assent). She readjusted the white towel around her neck with one hand and smiled his way. "That's cute! Who is she?"

"Isabel!" He'd answered before he'd taken the flowers and hearts in her eyes into account, before he realized exactly what he was answering to. "She's my best friend!"

"Yeah," she hummed and let her head fall back to take a few large gulps of her water, then shook her head like a wet sweaty dog and went for the staircase. "That's how my dad fell for my mom, too."

He froze, and if his cheeks hadn't already been flushed from the workout, they would have been as red as Isabel's aura, anyway. He rubbed desperately at either side of his face, trying in vain to wipe away the evidence. "I-I'm not in love with her!"

The other student giggled and carried her weight up the stairs. "Not yet, maybe."

They'd been out on the streets of Mayview, in every district imaginable, he was sure, since school let out, and it would have been longer had the Vice Principal not caught Suzy snooping around near the front entrance during lunch. Collin sighed, moving his arms and the papers in them so that the pile wouldn't hit the ground and go flying in the wind. She'd kill him, and he knew it. "Hey, um, quick question?"

"Yeah?"

"What the flip is this actually accomplishing?" He motioned to the poster she was currently hammering into a telephone pole, trying not to pay attention to the face he knew was plastered to each one. Isaac's face. Under big bold text that read "Missing", like it wasn't already all over the news. Isaac's parents had money- a lot of it, and they were putting it into action. That's why Suzy, in all of her rare good intentions, wasn't really accomplishing anything. Well, one of the reasons. Suzy ignored him, and he took another breath and continued. "Max said he's not even in Mayview anymore. How is this helping anyone?"

She didn't respond again, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek to keep from making another remark. She never made any sense, no matter how hard he tried to unravel the mess that was the bane of his considerably short existence. He didn't even know why he tried anymore, let alone why he took the challenge in the first place. He fixed the pile of missing posters in his arms again, pressing one palm up on the bottom of the stack, but still felt some pieces sliding out of his grip regardless. He went to say something again, but Suzy chose then to finish her handwork and admire it.

"Fall break is coming up, right?"

"Huh? I, uh, I guess-"

"And other people have families outside of Mayview that they may be visiting," She gestured to the missing poster, hanging, though crooked. "Thus, posters."

"Suzy-!"

"There's a chance that somebody could see him. Not everybody watches the local news, Collin!"

He opened his mouth to argue with her, but for once? He sighed. It wasn't worth it. Suzy hadn't been so passionate about something important, something personal, in a long time. Somebody, eventually, might rip it from her, but he would not be the one to tear up her sole force for good. She continued on her way down the sidewalk, seemingly unaware of the setting sun drifting over the horizon and kissing their chance to make curfew goodbye. "Suzy, stop."

She whipped around, arms crossed, cheeks puffed, like a child throwing a tantrum. "Why?"

He fixed the papers in his arms again, but it was less about convenience and more about her attention. He smiled and held them up a little higher. "We should probably print more of these."

He didn't enjoy doing it, in fact it went against his moral code in some aspect, probably, maybe. Isaac reached up from the side of the trashcan, fingers gracing the food tray that the tall, skinny, lanky man beside him was disposing of. His attention was away for the moment, eyes latched to his newborn daughter who was sitting- er, standing- a few feet away on the table he'd taken for his wife and child. His wife, as attentive as a mother had to be, might have noticed Isaac slinking around a trash bin, or the hand he reached to the piece of bread sitting atop the otherwise devoured plates of food; she was too busy holding their toddler, keeping her wobbling legs steady in the face of a potential fall from a table top only a few feet off the ground. Both parents laughed, one urging the other to hurry and record it, because their baby was going to be a dancer and they were sure of it. Isaac took the bread in a shaking hand, then bolted down the windowless side of the restaurant before the man could notice his uneaten bread had somehow disappeared.

Sometimes he wondered if Doorman would be mad at him, if the way he'd gone about feeding himself the last month was, in any way, an act of aggression. Probably. Maybe. He tried not to think about it. He took a bite of it as he sat himself under the roof of a bus stop, lounging and spreading his legs out so he was more comfortable. It wasn't like he'd taken it from a plate not-yet finished. The bread would have been tossed anyway. Even so... Isaac exhaled, leaning back, settling his head, watching each passing car in his peripheral.

He didn't know where he was, what time it was- aside from the stars going on for yards and miles and lightyears over his head- or the month, week, day. It didn't really matter. There was no timeline for his mission, and no end to it, not a foreseeable one, anyway. He swallowed the first bite. Stale. He looked down at it and shrugged. He wasn't expecting much else. That was the way life on the road worked. He was surprised nobody had caught him yet, tried to drag him back to his home, not that anybody would have known where that was. He didn't try to buy things, and the baths he took were often in fast food joint sinks a little past midnight, so it wasn't like he'd had a lot of interaction with any adult that might have their suspicions about the dirty thirteen-year-old roaming around the country on his own. He wondered how far he was, sometimes, not often, but he never let himself linger on it. Distance, like how long he'd been gone, didn't matter. He wouldn't be coming home.

There was a scream, a squeal, something not quite human fighting something also probably not human. Isaac sighed and stuffed the rest of the bread in his pocket for later. He had something to atone for.