She remembers being a child, watching her uncle play magic tricks for her and her brother. She was a child then, with Family Sunday Dinners and everyone in the area coming to see her. But her favorite was Uncle Miguel.

"Nothing behind my ears, nothing up my sleeves, nothing in my pocket... And what's this?" She murmurs the words to herself, eyes fixed on the sky that slides in and out of focus the way her laughter does in her ears.

Maybe she's snapped. Completely crazy, instead of just the half-crazy, half-alive state she was in all her life. Maybe she shouldn't trust anything she senses right now, because there's a voice singing in her ears that isn't in the room, and colors dancing in front of her eyes, and she swears she's flying, powerful wings beating from her back. She's an eagle soaring proud, and the world looks so different from here.

She should hold on for long enough to say goodbye. She owes him that much.

She can't. She can't be that girl any longer. She can't be that sinner-saint, redemption-temptress that he sees in her. She's not his girlangel/girldevil, both in disguise, to taint him and then heal him up again. She is not where he will find his glory, whatever he might think.

"And what's this?" she whispers, groping in her pocket, but she already used the last of her magic dust. And she's starting to fall, and she's beating her wings so hard, trying to stay up...

And for a moment, she's soaring, no burdens at all weighing her down. She can hear a woman's voice calling her name, but she doesn't care. She doesn't trust anything that feels real, knows that what's real is just a fake. She's flying, whatever they say -- flying, flying, flying...

The world goes black only for a moment, but when she wakes up, she's already falling too fast to stop.