A/N: Hi everybody! First new story, the second will be up after I finish the next chapter. This is a Tamers AU that operates under the premise of: "What if Juri was older when her mother died?" a challenge from my buddy remi. So I rolled with it. I'm not sure how far into the series I'm going to go, so we shall see what happens.

Warnings: Canonical character death, grief, violence, possible swearing, possibly more. Will warn in chapters when it appears.

Episode One

The month before her fifth grade year, Katou Juri saw her mother's corpse.

The doctors had hidden her face, but Juri had held those frail hands many more times in the past six months than she probably needed to. She knew each tiny imperfection and line. She knew each remnant of a blood stain or a tissue fiber. Now, she just stared at their limp selves, unable to speak, barely to continue breathing.

Mama?

It wasn't that she didn't understand. Her mother had always been sick, before she was born, her photographs had caused her to appear shrunken, out of place with the rest of the happy, healthy children in school. Always a doll next to her bulk of a husband, and always an outline to her bright daughter. It had grown worse, that fragility of sickness, in the past few years.

So, in some logical, even primal part of her conscious, Juri understood very well. That part may even be relieved.

But this... this was her mother. This was the woman who had made the hand puppet she still carried in her backpack. This was the mother who giggled at bubbles even though she was older than her, and couldn't carry things across rooms because she was a bigger klutz than her own daughter, and sometimes had gotten paper cuts on chapter books because she wasn't careful. This was her mother who had sung lullabies between coughing fits and taught her the secrets within modeling clay.

None of this was going to happen anymore.

Why was none of this going to happen?

Her father, awkward as he was, barely managed to get her out of the room before she vomited over the tile, but not before she had heard a comment, a rather thoughtless comment.

"Perhaps this was just fate. My sincerest apologies."

Somehow, those words hurt more than the fact that her mother was gone. Was fate something equivocal to god?

It must have been, because her mother would have been here longer, much, much longer, if it had been up to her, who had always prayed to the powers above.

If it had been up to her, her mother would never have been sick. But she had been, and that was the end of it.

As she dry-heaved over the toilet bowl, Juri thought of the worn puppet she kept in her backpack. She hardly used it anymore, though she rarely kept it from her person either. It was a clumsily made toy, made by shaking hands with felt. But it had been her mother's gift, and parting with it before parting with her seemed wholly inadequate.

Now that she was gone... could she keep it still?

The idea of its absence, of both of their absences, made her stomach roil, though there was nothing in it. She stuck her head between her knees, wanting tears, wanting the emptiness that came with tears.

They did not come, no matter how much she sniffled and tried to recall the odor of sulfur dangerously close to her nostrils, no matter how many sad, sad things she brought to the forefront of her heart, her mother's smile kept eclipsing them and banishing the urge away.

"It's not fair," she said softly. "Life isn't fair."

She left the bathroom moments later, dry-eyed with a ripped-up honey yellow dress, and her father held out his hand. It didn't shake, but she guessed it should have been because her father-

(never did enough, was always worrying but never doing, and she got it from him)

was sad just like she was and wanted to cry like she did but they were both absolutely terrible at it. So they didn't cry. Instead they gave respectful nods and bows and murmured the right words until they were in the car.

"What do we do now?" she asked him on the way home.

Her father looked at the streets and away from her, out of fear maybe, or out of love. "We go home, and we prepare to say goodbye properly," he said in the quiet burr that made her think of bundling in thick jackets. "Then we get ready for the end of your vacation and you go to school."

She shook her head. "Just like that?"

"... That's all we can do."

Juri kind of wanted to scream at him, scream and tug at his arm and pull them off the road into a ditch that may even kill them. It wouldn't be so bad. She would be up in the heavens and able to yell at God and then be scolded by her mother for letting go so easily.

But would that last part be such a bad thing? She didn't know, she couldn't.

She still wanted to do it.

But... that was too risky. And it would hurt her father. And no matter how much-

(he deserved to pay, he needed to say something other than that, not act like everything would be normal again because normal was on that gurney-)

she hurt, hurting him would be out of the question because what if he lived? What if he lived and she didn't? He would be so sad and all alone and nobody deserved that.

And besides... what if she survived?

Then she would be alone. And destroyed, probably.

If it all disappeared, you would be fine.

She ignored this thought because it didn't sound like her voice. She ignored it because there was no reason to listen to something that didn't sound like her, especially since she was so tired, and so cold. Juri still wanted to cry, but she decided not to... it would make her father stop driving... and they really needed to be home.

It wasn't a dream. She knew it wasn't one.

There was no point in wishing it was.

So she would sleep.

Outside the car, childlike voices would giggle and sing, flying over their car and making the power lines spark. And the tires would briefly bounce on the road as they passed through an odd patch of sparkling gravel. Juri would not notice, maybe not even care if she did. But something would spark, and in her tiny bag, something rectangular and blue would slip itself into her wallet and wait.