Sequel to And Who by Power; will not make sense otherwise. Warnings: carpter F-bombing, extensive amounts of fucked-up-edness, considerable violence in later chapters.

Beta by the lovely and amazing Mara and Camille; all the remaining typos etc. are, of course, my fault.

Enjoy, and please review!


A. Covered in Freedom

What is the difference of this night from all other nights?


Summertime, mid-morning, Southern California. Tori clung to a piece of shade, claiming a last moment before the plunge. The motel was a sprawling thing, the scattered rooms a stark contrast to the land, their whiteness harsh and bright against the dark textured red of the earth.

A motel room number made a manhunt easier, but otherwise complicated the business of an execution.

She had left Blue Bay Harbor at sunrise, her habit of catching waves at first light good enough a cover to buy her two, maybe three hours. She had taken apart her cell phone and Cam would not give her away, but Tori did not think that the guys would not get on her trail.

She hadn't said goodbye. There was no need to say goodbye to the ones who understood or who would come to understand, and she did not want to alert Shane and Blake even though they might never speak to her again.

If Shane would speak at all.

She could have her family, or she could have them safe. Blake and Shane had made their choice in October. They had their covenant; she and Hunter had theirs.

I trust you. As far as I can slit your throat.

Don't hesitate.

Trust me, I won't.

Oh, I trust you. As far as you can slit my throat.

The room's door was unlocked. She pushed it open.


She sat in her car, breakfast in a paper bag cooling on the passenger seat, and stared at the handheld Cam had lent her. The tiny, scurrying signals of woodland creatures; the engine of her van, burning white-hot on the IR display, her own heat signature invisible next to it; and the one person-sized dot moving at a walking pace faster than she'd feared and not as fast as she'd hoped.

She was staring out the front window when Shane pulled the passenger door open, moved the food out of the way and sat down like someone expelling a long-held breath. Shane had just spent an entire night out, on his own, in the darkness, at Skyla's Point. Tori wanted him to not disappear more than she wanted to yell at him, and until she managed to work that knowledge from her brain to her gut she didn't trust herself to so much as look at him.

Paper rustling. The scent of yeast, butter and chocolate stronger than it had been a moment before. The relief at Shane having the presence of mind to eat made her turn her head.

At some point, she thought, watching him tear the danish into bite-sized pieces and roll each one between his fingers before putting it in his mouth, at some point, we are going to have to talk about this.


The sounds of Loony Toons drifted out into the street through the curtains, fleeting in a nearly-nonexistent breeze. Blake, she reasoned: Daphne would have had the AC running.

Shane did get out of the car, debris of the breakfast-to-go crammed into the paper bag, but then just stood there on the curb as Tori locked the doors, walked around the van's front and started down the garden path.

He returned her gaze when she turned around and looked at him. He cocked his head to the side, minutely. She wanted to say, Don't be an idiot, but that was something Hunter might say. She ached to be able to say, Ice cream and video games, but that Shane was long dead and not even the ghost of him was present at that moment.

Shane stepped forward, catching up with her.

They entered the house as shoulder-by-shoulder as the width of the door allowed, Shane half a step behind her. Blake was slouched deliberately on the couch, working through a pint of ice cream.

"Daphne's at Tiff's," he said.

Tiffany's was good. Tiffany's was great. Tiffany's parents had a mastiff, three cats and a swing set, and they were terrific silent allies.

The television emitted the slow shriek of a cartoon drop, a crash, and then Meep meep!

She turned around and gauged Shane's state of presence. "There're clothes upstairs if you want to grab a shower," she told him. The idle cheerfulness sounded brittle, but it was better than the alternatives. "You know where the clean towels are."

She only moved in to take the paper bag after he'd given her a tiny nod. By the time she returned from the kitchen he'd already gone upstairs. She went back and grabbed a bunch of grapes, a pitcher and two glasses before joining Blake on the couch, sliding low until their shoulders touched.


"We're running up the grocery bills again," remarked Blake.

She'd used the time both boys had been upstairs to fetch chicken, apples and extra potatoes from the grocery store. By the time Blake came downstairs the chicken and the potatoes were already in the oven, and she was sitting by the kitchen table, one foot up against the chair to her right and the newspaper spread all over.

The not-quite-a-smile his lips twisted around was instead of saying, I don't know why your parents suffer us tripling their grocery bills and overrunning the house. She looked away, because the answer still was, They're just glad we're alive, and where they can see us.

Blake grabbed the chair at the head of the table, on the other side of the one she had her foot on.

"Apples?" he asked.

She shrugged. Homemade baked apple goods were the best bribe she could think of.

"His parents won't love the idea," Blake said.

"His parents can screw themselves up the ass with a shovel," she said without inflection, pushing the newspaper away. "They lean on my parents to have Shane back before it occurs to him on his own, I call Parker." The informed cooperation of Shane's older brother was well worth Eyesac's hell.

When Blake asked, "Any news?" a beat later, the hurt that leaked into his voice made her soften hers.

"No," she said, burying her face in her hands. "Cam doesn't have anything." She straightened, looked at him. "Shane didn't kick you out right away," she said.

"He made eye contact and didn't get out himself," said Blake dryly.

"Yeah, that's what I meant," she said, swinging around, putting her left foot up against the chair, too, and her palms flat against her knees.

"All the apple pies in the world won't make him talk," said Blake. He adjusted so that he was facing her with his whole body.

"I'll settle for keeping him indoors tonight."

"Yeah, one missing person is enough." Blake rubbed the back of his hand against his opposite cheek. "Fuck, Tori."

"Yeah," she said, hands moving down to her calves so that she was pretty much hugging her knees. "Because another fight from hell was really what we all needed."

The chair clattered against the floor as Blake dragged it a few inches. He leaned down, forearms against his thighs, putting his hands by her feet and his forehead nearly against hers.

"Hunter," he said, and she could hear the tears.

Disappeared the night before. All they knew was that Shane and he had been together, and that Shane had pretty much run away as well. Any of "on his own," "in the dark" or "within five miles of Skyla Point" was something that Shane just did not do. But he came back and in a better shape than expected, while Hunter had been missing without an explanation for over twelve hours.

She leaned the rest of the distance forward, pressing her forehead against Blake's. "We'll get them back," she said.

She released her calves. Blake dug his elbows into his thighs so that he could lift his hands to catch hers.

She said it again, wishing it true against the despair that suddenly suffocated the kitchen: "We'll get them back."


"And you decided it was safe to leave them home alone why, again?" was Cam's greeting when she entered the room he claimed for a study.

"Because I'm that sure that you're keeping extra surveillance," she told him, dropping into the chair he had drawn out for her, probably well before she came upstairs. They were long past Cam attempting to pretend his telepathy away.

"You do realize that the only thing between Shane and evading satellite surveillance is deciding that he needs to."

She knew her jaw was too tight as she said, "Shane has his limits, too."

Cam's expression hardened to the point of breaking. "That was different."

The words landed with the force of a double kick to the chest, all grief, fury and guilt, and Tori hissed instinctively and bared her teeth as she sucked in a breath. "Fuck you, Cam."

"Fuck you sideways," he replied tiredly. "I sincerely hope that you did not leave Blake and Shane on their own with Hunter unaccounted for so we could discuss metaphysics."

"No, I did that so we could discuss spilled milk."

"You do realize that it was you who brought this up."

"You said that the only limitation on the Karmanian power is what Shane cares enough to do. I brought a counter example."

Sensei had never quite recovered from the respiratory virus that Lothor had released three days before Valentine's. Shane had forbade a raid. Tori and Cam had thought otherwise. The serum Kapri had thrust into Tori's hand before letting her and Cam go, pretending she had never intercepted them, had only just stopped the illness from progressing. Tori and Dustin healed Sensei to the best of their ability, but there was only so much power that the fragile guinea pig body could take. The shock of being restored to human form had nearly killed Sensei. The damage went too deep, and all the healers in the Wind Clan couldn't fix it.

The inverse logic of the Karmanian power meant that Shane could drag Sensei back from the edge of death time and time again with little effort, but any attempt at proper healing would've burned Cam's father to ashes. Eventually, he had told Shane: Enough.

Sometimes she wondered if it had only been three weeks. Other times, it was difficult to believe that it had been three weeks already.

She shouldn't have brought it up. "Sorry," she said, quietly.

"Accepted," Cam said, as quietly.

After a long moment he asked, in the same voice, "How is he?"

Tori shrugged, arms crossed on her chest. "Managing."

"Better than you expected."

"Yeah." When they found Hunter she was going to kill him. Unless… "Shane could find Hunter, right?" she asked slowly. "If he wanted to."

Cam eyed her warily. "You think he doesn't want to."

She shrugged defensively. Shane wasn't acting hurt, he was acting resigned. She said so aloud.

"Alternatively," said Cam, "it was Hunter who walked away."

She considered. Shane not following if Hunter decided to break it off was marginally less implausible than Hunter running off if it was Shane who drew the line. "Then he walked away from Blake, too."

"If we don't find Hunter and fast, Blake will have to fight for the first place in that line."

Because running away would make Hunter unpopular with everyone. "Yeah, about that. Any brilliant ideas?"

Cam didn't shrug because shrugging was not a Cam thing to do, but he gave her a look that was more irritated than the usual. "He'll turn up eventually. I'm registering ninja activity in the entire state and then some."

Ninjas could cover great distances, but they also needed to rest after streaking for hundreds of miles. Cam knew exactly how much each of them was capable of, and if he thought that he had Hunter in range, Tori would trust to that. It wasn't like Hunter had packed for the trip. Eventually, he would have to resort to his ninja aspect or die.

Then again, if Hunter wanted to get himself killed, it wouldn't be the first time.


She returned home to Golden Melodies blasting from the living room radio.

"I'm home!" she called out from the front door.

"In here!" called her dad from the kitchen. "You're just in time," he added as she entered the room. He was fixing the leftover chicken into a salad. "Dinner's in twenty minutes."

"Is Mom getting Daph?" she asked. She stole a bite from the bowl, deliberately slow enough for her dad to swat her hand away.

"Mom's in the shower," he said. "Daph's upstairs with your boys."

She grabbed the appropriate number of plates and turned to the dining table. She very deliberately didn't blink. "Really?"

"Let's put it this way," he called over his shoulder. "If Shane doesn't actually enjoy playing tea party, he's pretending really well."

She opened the cupboard and grabbed three glasses with each hand. "How're they doing?"

"See for yourself."

"Okay." She set each glass on one of the placemats. "Back in a minute."

Upstairs she found Blake lounging against the wall in the hallway, keeping an eye on Daphne's half-open door.

She leaned her shoulder blades against the wall across from him, her arms loose to the sides of her body. His eyes didn't flick over to her as he said, "Could be reactive."

Or could be initiative, she completed silently, but it was the worse option that Blake had said out loud. "But?" she asked.

They spoke softly and quietly. Shane could still hear if he tried to, but that was why they kept their inflection light, affectionate.

Blake's lower lip stretched in something that wasn't a smile. "Tea party," he said.

It could be the angle, so much of his weight against the one shoulder; Blake was better than that, though, and Tori didn't think she was imagining his shoulders being hitched too close together.


The guest room couch converted into a full-sized bed, and they also had a cot. Her mom had let Blake and Shane sort that out for themselves. It worked out pretty much the way Tori had expected it to: each of the boys curled up on his side of the open couch, with the cot made up and mussed to look as if someone had slept in it.

Back to a solid surface and the windows wide open were standard Shane behavior; piling on three or four blankets too many for the season, less so. Blake's pajama top had been a concession to Tori's parents, discarded once the room's door closed and messily folded on top of Blake's backpack; he didn't ditch the pajama shorts, though, which wasn't any less unusual with the August heat.

The light from the street lamps outside wasn't enough to make out the scars, not even with a ninja's eyesight. Broken bones we can fix, she thought as she settled on her side behind him, and it'll never show in an x-ray. She snaked her arm across his body, palm against his stomach. But scars, scars can take years. Spooning, her face fit between his neck and his shoulder. Blake had used her soap, as he always did when staying over. On her it smelled like kelp and musk; on him it was salty, sweet almost, dry.

Either way, it still smelled like the ocean.


"Are these fresh?"

"Do I love you?"

Because if you're going to show up on someone's doorstep at six sharp, thought Tori, the cookies had better still be hot. She stepped aside, unblocking the doorway. "Come on in. And quiet." They didn't have school but her parents still had work to go to, and they wouldn't be as amenable to fresh cookies.

Marah stuck her chin up, huffed, and stepped in, slinking her way across the short hallway to the kitchen. She put her carrier bag – kittens chasing butterflies across a pink field with rainbows – on the counter, handed Tori the plastic box with the cookies and began unpacking the bag.

Oranges, because Marah was picky about her juice; more cookies; small loaves of rye bread from Shane's favorite bakery; half a pound of Cam's coffee, pre-ground, for the nicking of which Marah would catch half as much hell as Tori would have; and six quarts of milk, preceding –

Marah smirked as she placed the three boxes of homemade granola one on top of the other. "Am I the Queen of Breakfast, or am I the Queen of Breakfast?"

"You're the Queen of Crazy, is what you are," said Tori, laying her elbows down on the counter. "When did you get up today, four?"

"How many hours did you sleep tonight, four?"

Telling Marah to fuck off would screw Tori over with both Cam and Dustin, but Tori was nearly tired enough and frustrated enough to do so anyway. Which was, in all likelihood, the reason that Marah had arrived armed with the holy shield of homemade granola.

"We woke up a lot, between the three of us."

"M-mm," said Marah. "Can I set the table with the flowery set?"


Cam, when she called him, said she'd been gone from the room for four minutes and forty-three seconds. It was more than enough time for Shane to wake up, get dressed and get out. Shane had arrived at his parents' house in seven minutes and twelve seconds, and was out the door again at eight minutes and five seconds, having picked something up from his room and headed right out again. That he'd gone to the skate park as she said he would gave Tori enough confidence to head up to the Academy for the day.

In the final battle Lothor had set his ship to self destruct, hoping to rid himself of a captive Cam and feed the life of his remaining troops into the Abyss of Evil. Kapri had released Cam, and the two of them had hacked the systems and redirected the force of the blast to undo the stasis lock. They might never know why Lothor had not stopped at people, but the entire Academy – buildings and gardens and all – had been restored that day as if nothing had ever happened.

Some days Tori would sit at one of the meditation pagodas, observing it all; other days she'd spend at the gardens, tending to the pebbles and the miniature streams; on yet other days she'd avoid the Academy altogether; and sometimes – since Sensei's death – sometimes she would go to the farthest pagoda and weep.

This was none of these days.

She stepped through the portal with her head held high. One year before she would have been late for class; one year before she was a first-year student, on the verge of expulsion for all her promise. Now she was one of the six who had fought the war, her master's robes a badge of honour as much as merit, and her Clan Council seat more so.

Her seat exceeded quorum. So did Cam's, Dustin's and Shane's. She did not have to attend Council meetings, and she certainly did not have to be on time. Mostly, though, she did.

Sensei Watanabe had died. The Council had to choose a new Chief. They would have to do so soon, and if Tori wanted any influence on the matter then she had to behave as a councilmember should.

Whether or not she intended to keep her seat after.


Dustin was absent from council meeting that day. In itself it would have been nothing to worry about, but it was one of Dustin's usual days to attend and Cam had not volunteered an explanation. Tori knew better than to ask for one. Dustin was indeed at Storm Chargers when she came over after lunch, deliberately picking a slow hour at the store.

Dustin picked the engine he was done with up from the bench and set it aside. He must have seen her, but he didn't acknowledge it. When she drew close enough that they could speak quietly he said: "I'm not talking to you."

"Thanks for the granola," she said anyway. Complimenting Dustin for Marah's work was low, but usually effective.

Usually.

Dustin hauled an entire bike up next and did not reiterate that he was not speaking with her. Which was a good thing if it meant that her gratitude was not rejected, or a bad thing if it meant he thought she got the hint.

"Help me fix things?" she offered. That was the way it went: Dustin outlined it, and she cuffed people upside the head for it.

"Still not talking to you."

She wasn't being rejected, then. Dustin just needed to work through the anger first. Being that Marah had shown up with a full-blown breakfast then either this was about something that had completely blindsided Tori, or Marah would cash out the full guilt value later.

Knowing Marah, the latter was more likely to be true.

What she wanted to say was So you just decided I'm not going to change my ways anyway so you won't even give me a chance? but that wasn't going to help any. She couldn't fix it if Dustin wouldn't tell her what was wrong. After a long moment, that was what she said: Dustin was lousy at rejecting honesty, and she had grown lousy at offering it.

"Yeah, see, actually, you don't want to fix it," he said. "You don't want to fix it so bad, it, like, never even occurred to you."

They'd had that argument more times than she could count.

"I don't have any prejudice on who messed up this time."

"Yeah, but you don't care, either."

She wanted to punch something. She needed to punch someone. She handed Dustin a wrench instead. He grabbed the one end of the wrench even as she released the other, and that was all the forgiveness she was going to get out of him.

That, and "Go grab a soak before you summon a tsunami down on our heads or something."

She coaxed a smile out of herself, because if he was going to try then so would she. "You do know tsunamis are caused by earthquakes."

"Yeah, so?" Which could mean You can still bring a freak tide down on our heads or I'm this close to snapping and causing one myself.

"You wouldn't happen to know what the fuck happened, would you?"

"I don't care what-the-fuck happened," he said, tacking the words at the tail of one another like "what the fuck" was a technical term. He set down the wrench and laid his palms flat against the bench, shoulders tense, looking away from the bike but down, not sideways, and certainly not turning to face her. "I don't fucking care."

Infighting: Dustin only ever cared for it to stop, not for how and why it started. If she hadn't been distracted by Blake falling apart on her, by Shane disappearing before her eyes again, she would have remembered that before.

"We can't fix them, Dustin," she said, softly. "It doesn't work that way."

"Like you ever tried."

She inhaled sharply and spat, "Fuck off," in a hiss that would have made anyone but her teammates duck for cover out of sheer survival instinct. She was two-thirds of the distance to the door before she even knew what she was doing, before Dustin stopped her with a "Told you so!"

She stopped where she was; forced her hands to not clench and unclench; turned around; walked back.

"You said you're not talking to me," she said, putting careful spaces between the words. "I'm this close to not talking to you right back."

"You don't care to fix this," he said. He still hadn't picked up his tools. He was, however, looking her straight in the eye.

"I can't fix this."

"Same difference."

Her fist came down on the bench, rattling the tools to all hell, and it was all she could do to refrain from hitting Dustin because the same-difference of "will" and "can" was one of Shane's lines and Dustin had just quoted Shane at her when Shane was – "Shane is going to get himself killed."

"So you'll get someone else killed instead?"

Her lungs locked. She couldn't breathe. Dustin couldn't possible know –

"Because that's how it's going to end," continued Dustin. "You get willing to give up on people, you can't know who it's gonna be."

He didn't know. Her lungs unlocked. There was nothing she could say which wouldn't be a lie, so she spread her arms to the sides instead.

Dustin's face twisted. "Yeah," he said. "I know."


She woke up the next morning to Blake in her bed and the pre-dawn light on her face. Tori stayed put, muscles cold with sleep, breathing in the mix of Blake's dry warmth and the stinging, citrus scent her hair had left on the pillow. For three breaths, in and out, she believed that if she would just stay like that, if she could only keep that, then it would be all right.

But it wouldn't be, and she couldn't. She had to get through the day without snapping, without doing something that she might regret later or that her team would have to apologize for in her name, and to that end she needed to get herself and her board to the ocean while it was quiet and uncrowded and as safe as anything would ever be.

Anything, but Blake and her, like this, if only her parents weren't two doors down and hell to be had if they knew. She planted a kiss on Blake's shoulder before she untangled herself and slid down to the foot of the bed, careful to not wake him. She didn't bother to close the door all the way as she padded down the hallway.

Cam would have woken her up if Shane was not where he was supposed to be, but she needed to see it with her own eyes. She stood in that doorway a while, watching the slight rhythmic motion that was Shane breathing – curled up lump in the middle of the bed, blankets around and over him like a soft shield – before she could make herself turn away. She pushed open Daphne's door, too, and took the moment to kneel by her baby sister's bed, brush a stray lock of hair that wasn't really there from her forehead, just because she could.

She thought it was noticeably lighter when she finally returned to her room and closed the door behind her. Her senses weren't Ranger-sharp, anymore, but ninja-sharp was something, too. She had pulled the nightgown over her head, dropping it on the chair's seat, and was reaching for her swimsuit top when the screen of her cell phone lit up with a text message.

She snapped the top on before reaching for the phone. She didn't recognize the number, but the message –

Trained adrenaline reaction: her heartbeat slowed, instead of picking up. She replaced the cell phone on her desk, finished dressing, packed everything she would need into a sturdy Academy bag she had stashed in the back of her closet, disassembled her phone and packed that up too.

By the time she walked downstairs and fixed herself breakfast – bread with honey, granola without milk – she had already caught up to her own reactions, knew that she wasn't really thinking. Better this way, she decided. She washed the dishes and left them to dry, just as she would have done if she was really going out to surf as, ten minutes before, she had been. She even brushed her teeth, but she drove her van to Storm Chargers rather than to the beach.

The guys would catch up, but it would take them between two and four hours. Cam would get it earlier, might already know that she was going off-grid, but Cam would understand and not give her away.

She didn't pause until she closed the van's door behind her. Then she stopped. She had promised she would never let things get out of hand again. She had promised it to herself, long before she had promised it to Hunter. These promises she'd spoken out loud. She'd promised to Shane, too, and to Blake, that this was one hurt they would never have to survive again. These promises she made silently, in the relative privacy of her heart and mind, because the price of preventing one hell was –

The sun had risen. She had to go.

She didn't know if it was that she couldn't cry, or that she wouldn't.