Disclaimer – The Sorcerer Hunters belong to Satoru Akahori and Ray Omishi. The song 'Stalactites and Stalagmites' belongs to the irrepressible Koojibear and his creator/writer/VA, Rolf Harris.

Continuity – Anime-fic. Set in the 'other life' seen in episodes 25 and 26. I'm relatively new to the fandom, but I get the impression that a lot of people didn't/don't know how to take that whole aspect of the finale, to say nothing of the final scene. Personally, I understood it as the rebirth of the souls of the central cast (Tira, Chocolate, Gateau, Marron, Big Momma and, eventually, Carrot) in another world (or dimension, if you prefer). Like reincarnation, but with different scenery. Anyway, having reached this conclusion, it also seemed to me that the cast would have to have lived their new lives up until the age they were when they died on the Spooner Continent (also the age they were called back to save/retrieve Carrot). And that got me thinking about what their new lives might have been like. And so this bit of fic was born.

Please be gentle with it. It's very shy and wants its mother.

Someone Else's Life

© Scribbler, May 2005.

'And it feels just like I'm living someone else's life.' – Michael Bublé: 'Home'

Once, when they were in high school, Tira said a word that lifted at the end, and Chocolate stopped what she was doing to stare at her.

"What?" Tira asked. "Do I have spinach between my teeth again?"

"No, you're clean."

"So why are you staring at me like that?"

"…"

"Chocolate?"

"… It's nothing. Forget it. Just some déjà vu."

The scariest thing was the simplicity.

Chocolate was only ten years old when she came to this conclusion. She figured she'd been around long enough to realise how messed up life was when it seemed simple – and worse, when it actually was. One of Mom's special it'll-turn-out-okay-in-the-wash smiles was enough to make her stomach turn over with dread, because life had this way of dishing out giant wedgies right after giant cookies.

It made the other kids wary of her. She wasn't gloomy, just far too cynical for her age, and so in touch with the bleakest of facts that it made her downright cheerful.

Tira didn't always understand, but then Tira had been born with an overabundance of abstraction anyway. She was content to stare at passing clouds while Chocolate attempted to deconstruct all that was wrong with society and put it back together again in a better shape.

"Honestly, Choccy," Daddy said one day, "can't you just appreciate the simple things for once?"

And Chocolate had looked sadly at him, because for all she loved her father, for all she worshipped him, he just didn't get it.

"I think we'll be okay," Tira said once in that quiet, unexpected way she grew out of when she reached the end of puberty and finally learned how to scream.

They were out on the porch reading – Chocolate a comic, Tira one of the books she'd lifted from their mother's study. Chocolate raised her head, mind still full of people who could fly and wore capes and shot lightning from their hands. People who could cure the world's ills with a flick of their wrists if they wanted to – or destroy it.

"What?"

"Hm?" her sister blinked. "I didn't say anything."

"Yes you did, you said 'I think we'll be okay'."

"I did?"

"Don't be dumb. You know you did. What'd you mean - " Chocolate stopped then, because the anxiety in Tira's eyes was enough to convince her she really didn't remember saying it. Tira was awful at hiding her emotions. They popped out like buttons off school shirts that no longer fitted. "You don't remember?"

"No."

It wasn't the first time. Chocolate remembered when she was small and Tira was smaller, going to Dr. Potkin's office, and the word 'Tourettes', and how Tira had cried when she thought there was something wrong with her. Chocolate didn't want to put her through that again, so she just said, "Hm. I guess I must've imagined it then." Then she went back to reading.

Ten seconds later Tira said, "Chocolate?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

Chocolate paused. "Grow up, Tira."

When Chocolate was eight and Tira was six they moved to the city. Before that they'd lived in a little town where you could walk in any direction and hit fields or forest inside ten minutes. Downtown was about twelve houses, and the air was clean.

The city was nothing like that. It wasn't like a cartoonish pall of smog hung over it, or like there were no trees in the street where they lived, but it was different. The tallest buildings were in the centre, huge skyscrapers of polished glass and metal. Daddy worked in one of them. That was the reason they'd moved. He took the girls to see it one day, and they rode the bus, which didn't bump as much as they were used to, until the last three blocks. Those they walked, each holding one of Daddy's hands.

"Well, girls, here we are," he said when their shoes were just beginning to pinch.

"You work in there, Daddy?" Tira asked with the slack-jawed wonder of the very young.

"He works on the thirty-seventh floor," said Chocolate. "And there are forty floors altogether."

"That's right, honey. Your Daddy's near the top of the food chain now."

"Cool," Tira whispered.

Chocolate coughed and wondered why there wasn't cleaner air at the top.

Until she was ten, Chocolate had a best friend called Berry. They met on the first day of school, when Berry walked across the playground and offered to play Pogs. Berry had lived in the city all her life; she had grown up thinking clean air a luxury and microwave pizza the norm. Chocolate had received the hand of friendship gladly. Momma had been especially pleased when she first asked if Berry could come over.

"Why of course, Choccy darling."

"She's vegetarian."

"Who isn't these days?"

"She only likes parmesan cheese."

"I'm sure we have some the cupboard."

"And iceberg lettuce."

"I had to go shopping today anyway."

"And low-fat salad cream."

"Chocolate, darling, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were trying to put me off, and didn't want your new friend over at all."

Chocolate had shrugged and toed the brand new beige carpet. "I asked if she could come over, didn't I?"

"Your house is weird."

"Why?"

"It makes gurgling noises."

"That's the cistern."

Berry pulled a face. "My house doesn't make creepy noises like that. We should go there next time."

Chocolate just stared at the TV and a particularly riveting commercial for some show she'd never watched. "Whatever."

After a moment, Berry sat down next to her. She made the couch bounce. "How come you don't call your mother a proper name?"

"Huh?"

"You know, like … well, like mother. Something mature."

"I've always called her Momma. So's my sister, but she just copied me when she was learning to talk." Chocolate frowned. "What's wrong with calling her Momma?"

"It's babyish, that's what. Momma? You sound like you're trying to be one of those dumb Americans. You know, with the four-litre hats and the broncos."

Chocolate looked hard at Berry, as if seeing her for the first time. The intensity of the look even bored through Berry's thick skin, and made her shift uncomfortably. The leather of the couch squeaked sweatily against the backs of her bare legs.

"Ten gallon," Chocolate said eventually.

"What?"

"They're called ten-gallon hats."

Tira hardly ever knocked when she came into her sister's room. "Look!" she said proudly, holding up a sheet of crayoning. "I made you a picture! See, here's you, and here's me, and here's Momma and Daddy, and over here is Berry. And we're all really happy, because it's Christmas and we're all going to see the ice show together and then get lots of presents."

Chocolate looked up from her geography project on the Amazon and squinted at the drawing. "Christmas isn't all about presents, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. We had to do that part in class. But the presents are still the bestest part."

"Don't be so selfish."

"I am not selfish! I made this picture for you, didn't I? That's very, uh … not selfish."

That Christmas Eve their grandmother had a heart attack and died. They never went to the ice show, and even though they opened all their presents, they didn't really enjoy them. They didn't even take any with them when they drove the three hours to their old town in the country for the funeral.

Because Chocolate was nothing if not intelligent, and nothing if not a realist, her friendship with Berry didn't last as long as her mother might have liked. When Berry punched her so she bounced backwards off the school wall, that was bad enough, but when she retaliated and clocked Berry hard enough to give her a black eye, there was absolutely no going back.

Later, when Chocolate was laying on her bed and trying not too move too much, there came a hesitant knock at the door.

"It's open."

"Chocolate?" Tira stood with one foot in the room, as though ready for immediate escape. "Can I come in?"

"Huh," Chocolate grunted, turning over to face away from the door. A number of places she hadn't known about suddenly identified their hurts – loudly.

"I … I brought you some pizza." The bed dipped, signalling Tira had sat on the end of it.

"Momma said I wasn't allowed any dinner." For fighting. Momma thought it was unladylike to fight; plus, Chocolate had torn her new school skirt when she rolled across the asphalt. Momma had been so mad about both things that Chocolate had felt even worse that she kind of enjoyed herself. Her hands had felt a little empty, but otherwise it had felt good to fight, like coming home to a warm fire and a mug of hot cocoa after being soaked in the rain.

"I sneaked it out. She doesn't know I took it."

"She probably does. Momma has eyes in the back of her head, remember?"

Instead of answering, Tira said, "It's Hawaiian."

Chocolate loved Hawaiian. The smell made her stomach rumble. She pulled the pillow over her head.

There was a long pause.

"Chocolate?"

"Yeah, what?"

"Why did you and Berry fight?"

She gave no answer.

"I thought you two were friends."

Still no answer.

"Was it because she didn't like our house?"

"No, it wasn't because she didn't like our house."

"Oh. Was it because she didn't get to go to the ice show?"

"No."

"Oh. Was it - "

"Look, just stop making such stupid guesses, okay?" Chocolate sat up, suddenly sharp. "You want to know why we fought? It was because of you. She said you belonged in a nuthouse with all the other freaks. So I hit her. There. Happy now? So it's your fault I got in a fight, it's your fight Momma's so mad at me, and it's your fault I've got to go without dinner." Eyes flashing with anger, she kicked out at Tira's hands so that the plate fell onto the floor. The pizza slice landed topping-side down.

Tira stared at it, hands bunching into fists on her knees and then unbunching again. "I … I didn't know," she said quietly.

"Yeah, well, you do now. So fu- go away."

She winced. "You know, it's not like I asked you to do it."

Chocolate flopped backwards and tugged at the edge of her pillow. She felt drained and sore. "I know."

"It's… it's not like it's the first time anyone's said stuff like that. And you didn't go beating them up."

"I know. But she was asking for it."

"Berry?"

"No, the Queen of Sheba, you moron. Yes, Berry."

Tira drew her legs up to her narrow chest. Balanced like that, it would have been easy to kick her right off the bed, but Chocolate didn't. Instead, she cricked her neck to peer across her own body at her sister.

Tira looked small and delicate, a collection of scrawny limbs sewn loosely together so that they flopped awkwardly when she moved too fast. Tira always looked like she was just learning how to run, all flapping arms and soft knees and feet thrown out at odd angles. As if afraid of people seeing this, most days at recess, rather than skipping about, or throwing a softball, or yelling at the top of her lungs for no reason whatsoever, she sat on the steps outside the locked PE storeroom, either reading or staring at the clouds and talking softly to herself. If other kids came over to try and get her to join their games, she just smiled, shook her head and went back to her little fantasy world. She wasn't one of those kids who ate paste, or went about uprooting plants from people's gardens, but she didn't click into a neat little slot like everyone else.

She was weird. Everybody said so.

Chocolate wasn't sure what was so different about Berry saying the same thing. But something had been different, whether in the identity of the speaker or in herself, and suddenly she hadn't been able to listen to it anymore. The only problem had been her method of fixing things.

"You either talk about it or walk away," Momma had said. "You do not hit out at people. Fists never solved anything, and I won't be known at the mother who raised a brawler."

Chocolate didn't think she was a brawler. But then, it was difficult to argue the point when her knuckles were split and scabbed.

"Chocolate?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks. For standing up for me."

There was a loaded moment before she replied. "It's what I'm supposed to do, right?"

When Chocolate was fifteen and Tira thirteen, Tira's remarkable intelligence was acknowledged and she was skipped forward a grade. By the end of the school year she had exceeded their requirements and was skipped forward again into her sister's grade.

Chocolate felt like she should resent that, since she was failing all classes but Art, but she couldn't summon the energy to be bothered. Besides, it made keeping an eye on Tira that little bit easier.

"You can't be your sister's keeper forever, Choccy," Daddy said one day when he was helping her with her History homework. "She's going to have to look out for herself sometime."

"She does look out for herself."

"Mm-hm. Is that why we got a call from Plum Panini's parents this afternoon?"

"Plum Panini's a big fat jerk. And he cries like a girl."

Daddy shook his head, but he was smiling as he did it. "Be that as it may, he has a new set of bruises that your mother wasn't very pleased about."

"Just because he's a jerk and a cry-baby doesn't mean I'm to blame."

"His mother says you gave him a wedgie in the playground in front of all his friends. Among other things."

"His mother hates me." Chocolate stared stiffly at a sepia photograph of a Nazi soldier in full regalia. Behind him stood a line of people – Dresdeners – all saluting and smiling with their mouths but not their eyes. There was something strangely familiar about the soldier's outfit, and had she not been scowling and concentrating so much on not meeting her father's gaze, she might have tried to figure out what it was.

Daddy sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It had gotten thinner in the years since they moved. "Just … try to hold it inside in future, okay?"

"Yes, Daddy."

Close to Tira's fourteenth birthday, the whole family – Momma, Daddy, Tira and Chocolate – went on an adventure vacation Daddy's firm awarded him for all his hard work. Momma called it subornment, but the girls were too entranced with the idea of potholing to care much.

As it turned out, the trip was more vacation than adventure, and less potholing, more wandering around really big caves with a group of other workers' families and a perky tour guide called Sharona.

"And these," Sharona said proudly, pointing to a series of pointy rocks like she'd made them herself, "are called stalactites and stalagmites, natural spikes formed by years of completely, one-hundred-percent organic development. As you can see, some point down from the roof of the cave, while others poke up from the floor. We actually have a little song to help remember which is which. Would you like to hear it?"

The response was less than encouraging. A weak chorus of polite 'yes' and 'please', with a few overenthusiastic parents crying 'woo!' Nonetheless, Sharona smiled like she'd been asked to sing for the Queen of England, cleared her throat and trilled:

"Stalactites and stalagmites,

We all know where they're found.

In subterranean caverns –

Another word for underground.

Stalactites and stalagmites

Are pointy like a crown.

See, half of them, they point-point upwards,

The other half, they point-point down.

Just one snag

Keeping track;

Is it 'stalag'?

Or 'stalac'?

They're like Tweedle-dum,

And Tweedle-dee.

How to overcome

This difficulty?

Well! Stalactites and stalagmites,

Each has a different sound:

There's 'stalac' with a 'c' for the ceiling,

And 'stalag' with a 'g' for the ground."

She finished with a beam that wavered only a fraction when a shrill scream cut the dank air.

Tira doubled over, clutching her stomach like she had some terrible pain there. Her parents fussed around her, while the other vacationers milled about uncertainly. The dullness of the trip was in disarray, and most of them were at that moment realising that they preferred dullness to distress.

"Is she having some kind of fit?" asked one.

Another whipped out his cell phone; quite forgetting any signal would be hampered by the several tonnes of solid rock above their heads. "Would you like me to ring for an ambulance?"

"Tira?" said her mother, shaking her shoulders. "Tira, what's wrong?"

But Tira had a wild look in her eyes, and seemed not to hear anyone for several minutes. In the end, Sharona the singing tour guide used her specialised walky-talky to summon help. It arrived in the form of two other guides, one college-age and covered with spots, the other in his late twenties, built like a linebacker and with tousled blonde hair. The Misu family trundled out of the caves with their youngest daughter propped on the guides' shoulders, whimpering desperately and pressing at her midriff like she was trying to force invisible entrails back in.

Daddy took hold of Chocolate's arm. She'd stayed aside from the commotion – he thought because she didn't want to get in the way while Tira was being tended to. The reality, however, was quite different.

"Come on, Choccy. Hurry up."

However, Chocolate wasn't listening. She allowed herself to be led from the caves, but she was more focussed on the hot, itchy sensation between her shoulder blades than where she was going. It was like new skin always felt when you ripped off a scab that wasn't quite ready. When she hit daylight, she tasted blood in her mouth.

"Daddy…"

"Yes, honey?"

Tira and their mother were sitting on the bench outside the information office. Tira's glasses were in Momma's lap. The linebacker tour guide was pressing a cup of water to Tira's lips. His hair wafted in the slight breeze, and his shirt looked a shade too small for him. He obviously worked out. Muscles rippled along his arms and against the fabric of his pants, but his hair was slightly too long, his eyes brown instead of blue…

Chocolate felt a pinging sensation in the base of her skull, like when she overstrained the muscles in her neck. Then she threw up all over Daddy's shoes.

"I told you before." Open-handed slap – not enough to cut his lip, but enough to make him smart for a good half-hour afterward. She kept his collar fisted to make sure he got the full effect and didn't just roll with the blow. "Leave. Us. Alone."

The kid in the button-down shirt and khakis had been a wannabe bully until Chocolate beat the snot out of him for stealing Tira's lunch money, tearing the covers off her books and leaving bruises up and down her left arm. Since then he'd skulked around the school, his credibility in tatters, and Chocolate had known he was just waiting for a chance to repay her. Kids didn't fear him so much anymore. A new bully had risen to take his place – though that one had learned to steer clear of the Misu girls.

As predicted, three weeks later the old bully accosted them outside the grocery store, where they'd gone to get milk and a loaf of bread for Momma. It was almost a cliché, dragging Tira down an alleyway, knowing Chocolate would follow, trying to get them out of view so nobody would interfere.

Well, Chocolate thought grimly, it was his choice to come down here. Could she help it if, when the tables turned and she once again beat him snotless, there was no way anyone could hear him bawling?

"Bitch!" He threw the word at her like a volley of sharp pebbles. "I'll rip your bitch head off!"

Oh will you? her expression seemed to say. Chocolate tightened her fist, raised her other hand, fingers balled this time.

And then she stopped.

Tira was staring at her. She could see her from the corner of her eye. Her cardigan hung off one shoulder where the bully had grabbed it, and the brown paper bag with the grocer's logo on the side had spilled onto the floor. Her eyes weren't horrified, or filled with disgust, or any of the other emotions Chocolate could've taken because she knew she did this kind of thing to protect her little sister. Instead, Tira's eyes were blank, as though she'd gotten so used to seeing Chocolate at work that it no longer shocked her.

Time froze for a second. Then, wordlessly, Chocolate opened her fist. The bully dropped into heap. A second later he was wheezing and crab-walking backwards towards the mouth of the alley.

"I'll call the police!" he snarled. "You'll get prosecuted for this!"

"And I'm sure they'd like to hear how you dragged two teenage girls into a dark alley in the first place," Chocolate shot back.

That seemed to stymie him. He scrambled to his feet, pointing accusingly, but his shoulders slumped as he grasped how that would affect him. There were two of them – one to support the other's story – while he had only himself and a previous record for petty theft.

His features formed themselves into a gurn of prize-winning ugliness. "You … you're freaks, both of you! You're as much a weirdo as your weirdo sister!" Then he ran, not holding a cool palm to his cheek until he thought they couldn't see him anymore. He was obviously beaten. He wouldn't bother them again.

Chocolate bent to pick up the bread and milk. They had fallen in a puddle, and were a little dirty, so she wiped at the plastic with the hem of her top. She watched her hands as they worked – peppered with old scars that could have been mistaken for paper cuts. They were like badges of past victories; only she didn't feel quite so victorious anymore.

"Chocolate?" Tira sounded uncertain.

"Don't, Tira." Chocolate just stood up and offered her a hand. "Let's just go home."

"Are we going to tell Momma and Daddy about this?"

"Do you want to?"

Tira spent a moment watching the spot where the bully had passed out of sight. "I think I would, actually."

Chocolate held back a sigh, knowing the dressing-down she was going to get for this. Like Momma really expected them to go along with whatever that pig had in mind just so they wouldn't be unladylike. "Then we will."

Only Momma didn't reprimand them. After Tira told her what happened, while Chocolate hung back with the groceries in her arms, Momma grew wide-eyed and checked her youngest daughter over for injury. Tira protested that she was fine, really, but Momma insisted she take off those grimy clothes and climb into a hot bath.

When Tira was gone, Momma turned her attention to Chocolate. Chocolate prepared herself, but the tirade never came. Instead, Momma looked at her with a strange light in her eyes, one hand raised halfway to her face.

"You know," she said quietly, "you could've been badly hurt. This boy, this bully, he could easily have been carrying some sort of weapon."

Chocolate realised she hadn't thought of that. It felt cold and a little strange somewhere in the back of her mind.

Momma looked at her a moment longer, and then turned away. "Put your clothes in the wash basket. You can use the bathroom after your sister."

"That's it? Aren't you going to chew me out?"

"Whatever personal satisfaction or self-flagellation you get from hearing lectures on the evils of fighting, Chocolate, I'm afraid you won't get it from me anymore."

That stung. Chocolate didn't like the feeling twisting around in her gut. "But I promised I wouldn't do it. I … I broke my promise." It sounded stupid, even to her.

"Tira made it sound like these were exceptional circumstances. Of course, there wouldn't have been any circumstances at all had you not taken on this boy in the first place, but…" Momma shrugged, facing away from her.

All at once, Chocolate sensed there was more to the conversation than a simple pardon for her crimes. Her stomach tingled unpleasantly. She couldn't quite believe it, but she realised she wanted her mother to reprimand her. She wanted to be reminded of her boundaries, of the higher authority that could step in and equally punish or rescue her when she needed it.

"Momma…?"

"You're nearly seventeen. You're getting old enough to understand what I mean when I say that I respect your intelligence enough to give you credit for your choices, Chocolate."

Chocolate. Not Choccy. Not honey, or darling, or dear.

Slowly, Chocolate came to an important realisation. By the time it had properly taken root, she was stepping onto the upstairs landing and pulling her top over her head.

Tira was just going into the bathroom. She stopped when she saw her sister. "Chocolate?" she asked, all possible questions in that word.

"I didn't get a lecture," Chocolate told her, an edge like crying to her voice.

Chocolate was nearly eighteen when Tira finally managed to surprise her again. Not a little jumping-out-from-behind-the-door 'Boo!' kind of surprise, or even a why-are-all-the-lights-out? 'Happy Birthday!' but a real, gut-wrenching surprise.

They were both going to the school's fancy-dress ball, and some geek from the school paper had asked Tira to go with him. Chocolate's reputation prevented her from getting a date, because despite everything she'd learned about fighting, and about how being too aggressive and full-on scared off a lot of boys, she found she just couldn't stop herself. When it came down to standing back and letting people pick on Tira because she was different, she just couldn't do it. Wouldn't.

The unanticipated break in this philosophy came on the night of the ball. Marco, Tira's date, was picking her up from their house. Chocolate waited downstairs for their father, who had agreed to chaperone the evening since their mother was away visiting her brother, and was giving his eldest daughter a lift. When the doorbell went, she was nearest and pulled it open to reveal a complete replica of Link the Elf.

"Hey, um, Chocolate," Marco said nervously. "Is Tira ready yet?"

"Nearly. Tira!" Chocolate yelled up the stairs. "Your date's here!"

"I'm on my way down!" came the equally loud reply, followed thirty seconds later by the clatter of footsteps on the landing. Tira arrived on the bottom step as a whirlwind of black pleather, silvery studs and extensive scoops of pale flesh.

Chocolate, in her flares, stacked-soles, halter-neck and afro-wig, suddenly felt woefully overdressed.

The effect was electric. Marco stood up straighter, neck bobbling like a life buoy on a choppy sea. The air of the well-ventilated hall seemed abruptly stuffy and oppressive. Dust clogged airways that had been clear just five seconds ago. The tiny overhead bulb turned hot and unforgiving. And the most astonishing thing was that Tira moved through all of it as though through silk, or cool water. Despite around eighty percent of her body being on show, she showed no discomfort, no embarrassment, and did not even hesitate in taking Marco's arm. Tira, who always wore a long-sleeved blouse buttoned right to the top, even in hot weather, and always balanced her huge glasses right on the end of her nose, now click-clacked across the floor in spiky heels she could barely walk in.

"Tira…" Chocolate said, aware she must sound like an overbearing parent and searching for a comment that wouldn't make her sound like her mother.

Tira fixed her with a clear eye, the other hidden by strategically combed hair. "Marco, will you go start the car, please?" Her voice was odd. Not high-pitched and nervous, as Chocolate might have expected in that get-up.

"Um, sure thing, um, Tira." He bounded down the front steps, obviously unable to fathom his luck, and quite possibly picturing the reception when they arrived at school.

Tira stood opposite Chocolate. The distance between then was about three feet. It widened when she folded her arms, making her boobs strain remorselessly at her … top wasn't really the right word for it. Glorified bra might do – in a pinch. It was like she'd cut out two hollows from an egg box and attached just enough string to pull them taut over her nipples.

"I don't know how you convinced Momma and Daddy to let you wear that."

Tira gave a small, secretive smile and said, "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission." Then she turned to go outside, to where Marco's engine had thrummed to raucous life.

Chocolate caught her wrist. "Tira - " she started, but Tira snapped the wrist from her grasp.

"You can't protect me forever, Chocolate," she bit out.

Then she was gone, into the faded blue Passat and away down the street. Chocolate watched them turn the corner, one hand on the doorframe. She was too bemused to catch the implications of what had just happened, but it stayed with her throughout the evening, lurking in the back of her mind.

Hungry looks followed Tira, as she danced to number after number. She didn't dance with anyone but Marco, though, and when he took off that stupid hat and wig it was easy to spot his spiky black hair from way across the gym. They slow-danced to three songs, turning in little circles with Tira's hair spread across his shoulder. Chocolate watched them from by the punch table, until they disappeared while she was talking to Crackers Chapman.

Later, perched on the bleachers in the school gym, with bits of bunting and wet toilet paper scattered around her, Chocolate spent a sharp, stupid moment being angry with Tira for suddenly becoming something she didn't understand. Then her anger refocused, cutting a path towards its true target, and she drew a sharp breath because she was nothing if not intelligent, and nothing if not a realist, and she grasped just how domineering she'd been for … well, most of their lives.

And more, because she just couldn't shake the feeling that once, a very important once, a long time ago, she really hadn't been able to protect Tira.

When Tira didn't come home until way past curfew, and staggered past Chocolate's ajar door smelling of peach schnapps, and with the top of her costume inside out, Chocolate didn't get up. She didn't go to check on her, or ask in the morning where she'd been. She waited until Tira volunteered the information, and forced herself to be satisfied with what she was willing to disclose, because she knew it really wasn't any of her business. She also knew she had to re-evaluate herself and why she did the things she did, which was much, much more difficult. Tantamount to deconstructing her own personality, in fact.

But she would do it.

"You can't protect me forever, Chocolate."

I know.

They went to college together, though they took different courses. They shared a sorority, but lived in different rooms. They were together, yet apart: sharing practically everything, yet keeping just enough secrets to feel individual and independent of each other.

It perhaps wasn't the most perfect of lives, as was attested when Daddy had his first heart attack, and Tira couldn't find Chocolate to tell her they needed to go home. Or when Momma slipped on a puddle made by a leaky roof in the mall, fell, snapped her leg so that the bone poked right through the skin of her shin, but couldn't claim compensation because the mal 'accidentally' recorded over the security footage. But it was their life, and they valued what they had. And if there were days when they felt restless, or uncomfortable for reasons they couldn't explain – well then, that was just something they had to learn to deal with, wasn't it?

Tira talked Chocolate into going to a fortuneteller, once, when the fair was in town and the fumes of graphite grease and cotton candy made them irrelevantly reckless with their time. Madame Kismet did a tarot reading for Tira, clucked to herself a lot, and examined Chocolate's palm. When she told them they would soon be going on a journey, Chocolate rolled her eyes at the reusable fortune. When she told Chocolate her restlessness was because she had an incredibly short lifeline, not even the smell of cotton candy was enough to make Chocolate stay to listen to her drivel. She slapped down some money, grabbed Tira's arm and dragged her across to the Ferris Wheel. From the very top they could see the sparkle of the sea in the midday sun.

In the end, the restlessness Madame Kismet had tried to explain translated into vague recognition of a woman on the street – a woman neither sister had seen before, but who made them feel drawn to her anyway – and an offer of a coffee that would change both their present and their past lives. It would force them to confront who they were, who they'd been, and who they wanted to be – and make them drag an old, sputtering flame into a newer, safer world.

But before then there were moments of calm that often drove them to the beach, where Tira gazed dreamily at the ocean and Chocolate read Mills & Boon novels. Sometimes they bought ice-creams from the vendor on the pier, and wandered along talking of everything and nothing. Other times they just sat and amused themselves without the need for chatter. Chocolate had finally learned how to appreciate the simplicity Tira had known about all along. And the weirdest thing? It wasn't really as scary as she'd thought it would be.

"I think we'll be okay," Chocolate said once in a quiet, unexpected way that was almost completely alien to her.

Tira looked up, startled. "What did you say?"

But Chocolate just smiled and leaned back on her lounger to catch some well-deserved rest.

FINIS.

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