A/N: Either just some kind of depressing oneshotty crap, or something I'll later add into all the Phoenix + Maya + Pearls family stuff I've been hoarding. This just kind of came out, so...my apologies if it doesn't make sense. Which it probably won't.

this night we're in

hello, darkness. thanks for returning my call.

She was alone in the apartment, waiting for the phone to ring.

She didn't know what the voice on the other end would sound like, what they would say to make her want to give up on everything, but she knew that whatever it was would tear her apart all too easily. At first, she'd thought she would get stronger, that she just needed to build up her endurance and keep whispering A lawyer can't cry until it's all over to herself in the back of her mind. Even though she wasn't a lawyer. Even though she'd already cried.

You killed your own mother, what will you do to us, your family?

You think you can save this village? You can't even save yourself.

You think that anyone cares about you, "Maya"? The only one anyone cares for is you, "Kurain Master"! And I have to tell you there are pitifully few who can say even that.

They wouldn't stop calling, waiting for her to succumb and retreat to the branch family, and she wouldn't stop answering, because they'd been hurt so much they deserved to have someone listen. But after the voice on the other end, whoever's poison she had ingested that day, after that voice on the other end fell silent and hung up without waiting for her to respond…she really did want to give up. On everything. She thought about going back to pacify them and giving up the mastership and trying to escape and even begging him for help to try to pass the bar, become a lawyer, and she thought about burning her bridges and just letting herself fall.

But she knew that the flames wouldn't stop him from trying to cross because they never had, nothing had, not even once, and she didn't want him to have only fire to remember her by. So she sat with her eyes silent and her mind still, her and the television watching each other's blank face, and waiting for the phone's trill.

Slowly the light on the glass face of her companion dimmed until finally it was gone altogether. She was still alone. If she hadn't been waiting, maybe she would have gotten up and fixed something to eat, but she was too used to cooking for two and nothing sounded good. She didn't want to eat, she wanted to eat with him, after the phone rang, and he wasn't here.

It was too dark to even see the clock anymore. It seemed fitting, that he should be the one to bring the light home, that he should be the one to flick the switch and blind her in her silent sightless little world. She loved him for that.

It was too dark.

And then it was lighter. A peach glow began to grow on one wall, so faintly she didn't even realize it at first and then she could see her hands and then she could see her face in the television mirror and then she could see the hands of the clock, and the number there… Where was he? Why wasn't he coming to her? Where was he with all his light, and why was the phone still silent?

And it wasn't until then that she realized why she couldn't burn her bridges. If they were burnt, she'd have no way to run to him. She couldn't stand up in a court of law and cry out words that would free him, but she could stand up and cry out. She couldn't break down a heavy door to reach him, but she could find the key. Maybe she couldn't even run through fire to find him. But she could run. And as long as she was the one holding the match, there would never be flames to separate them.

He came home apologizing, his file printed backwards across his face where he'd slept on it, running his fingers through his hair and flipping on the lights even though it was midday.

When the phone rang, she didn't answer it.