A/N: I forgot my account email and password for this account. Heh. I also suddenly fell into Foster's again.

Brave

It's been two weeks and three days since Mac died. This is how Bloo keeps track of time now. He scratches marks on the wall and wishes he were dead.

But Berry won't let him die. And neither will this strange woman, who looks hauntingly familiar but won't tell him her real name. When she speaks, her voice is distorted and since mind voices don't sound like regular voices, it leaves him grasping at straws. But neither of these women will let him die, which is what he wants more than anything else. He wants to die and join Mac.

The strange woman, his teacher, who teaches him regardless of whether he wants to use his powers or not, stands uncertainly in his room now. She had red hair once- he can see the redness seeping back into her roots. She wears a rabbit paw around her neck and it too, recalls a distant memory, but whenever he reaches for it, it's gone, blocked from his mind. This woman can pull the strings; she's the most powerful mental adept they have. If she wants you to forget something, you'd have a better chance of raising the dead than remembering. The dead. Oh, Mac.

He doesn't know why she's in his room. Berry told her not to stay unless she had to teach him, and she's already done that today. His room is a bland, large room he doesn't care for. It's decorated matching his skin color, and it could be all black or all red, and he still wouldn't care. The window looks out on the town and a lake nearby. Nothing. He wouldn't care if it looked out over the wilderness. He scuffs his foot on the floor and looks up at the woman standing in his room.

She's slim, wearing a green sweater, and again, the half jerk in his memory is suppressed. Like him, she doesn't speak with words, only thoughts. She told him once it was almost impossible to lie mind to mind, and after the crap he's been through, he never wants to lie again. He stares at her and balls his fists. They deny him sharp instruments; they deny him blunt instruments; they deny his body the motions that might kill him. Berry's mind control works too well, though it only provides restrictions, not observation. No one knows that this woman isn't teaching him what she's supposed to.

"Bloo," she says and he jumps, startled. Berry has forbidden anyone to call him it now, because it's associated with "dark ages" and, more notably, the name his creator gave him. Bloo doesn't even call himself it much anymore- he prefers M.B., a fusing of his name and his beloved creator's. His stomach churns and his heart sinks.

But he didn't know she knew the name. Again, another mental jerk and it slides across his consciousness, never to be seen again.

Why are you here? he thinks at her.

Bloo- she stops herself and swallows hard. Tears glitter in her eyes and she holds her hands stiffly at her sides, like she'd love to fling her arms around him but is holding herself back by a very thin wire.

Not Bloo, he snaps, irritated. Not anymore. It's M.B.

The correction scatters her thoughts too and she hesitates. Then, whatever she thought returns to her and she resumes. It's about Mac.

Almost predictably, the mental shields she taught him how to invoke slam down and she can't speak to him mind to mind anymore. Sharp steel trap teeth glint when she projects a thought at him, and sidestepping those would lead to mental land mines. He'd smile grimly, but he hasn't smiled since weeks before Mac died. He thinks it might hurt his lips now.

"Bloo, don't do this," she hisses and shuts the door.

"Don't call me Bloo!" he retorts. His voice is hoarse from disuse. "How do you even know-"

He doesn't know why he thinks it, but he sees an image of a red haired woman wearing a green jacket and purple skirt. He shakes his head at it and stares at her. Same face. Same voice, were it not for the distortion. "Frankie?"

She taught him how to build them and she knows how to wipe through them. The knowledge is plucked from his mind again, a ninja swooping in past his mental defenses and stealing it away from him. It leaves him with a faint throbbing behind his temples and he sees, for the first time, brown power seeping around him. It fades away as quickly as her real name.

"You can't know who I am," she whispers urgently. She knocks over his defenses like they're wooden blocks. It was an illusion she couldn't speak to him mind to mind; he would seethe, if there were room for anger beyond the heartbreak.

The brown you see is Mac.

He stares at her dully. He doesn't understand and he doesn't want to understand.

She sighs and rests a hand on his shoulder. Shutting her eyes, she projects an image to him and he sees himself the way she sees him. Overlapping blue and brown auras, the spots overlapping sloppy and ill defined. Whereas the blue clings to him, the brown flits in and out, almost like it's not connected to him except through certain spots of his blue aura.

She touches a spot in the air near him and he jumps, hair standing on end and jolted. You absorbed Mac's power, his personality, into you when he-

"No!" he growls. The word is shocked from his lips before he can contain himself. "No, no, no!"

Her green eyes are horribly sad and she looks at the corner of the room. There's a camera there, but the red light isn't blinking. Her arms tremble and her thoughts, which are always too quick for Bloo to catch unless she's transmitting, suggest she distrusts the camera's off switch. She doesn't touch him.

You have to accept it. Berry wants you to use both sides.

Berry can go fuck herself, he snarls. He's already tried to kill her twice.

She squeezes the rabbit's foot around her neck and he thinks it's the same shade of fur as Mr. Herriman. Her lips compress and color drains from her face.

We're all that's left.

He doesn't answer her. He's gotten things down to an art, or so he thinks, blurting sentences notwithstanding. He strides to the window, except it's got the same view as ever, and this time, cautiously probes the air where she had touched it. It resonates, a deep sadness, and he sees Mac's face before his eyes. He whirls, staring at her.

She won't let either of us rest until you're trained, Bloo- I mean, M.B.

Who are you really? he demands and she sighs, a world weary sigh eclipsing all that has gone horrifically wrong in the last six months. She glances at the camera again, hesitates, and kisses him on the crown of his head. When he looks up at her, she crushes him against her in a hug so tight it takes his breath away.

"Just a friend, Bloo," she whispers into his ears. "An old family friend."

The camera light blinks back on and she shoves him away, like she had never hugged him before, and, sniffing, she walks out. He closes the door behind her and leans against it. His mind is a whirl and he hates it. He hates thinking. He wants to dull the pain entirely and stop existing. He doesn't want the brown power fusing with his, or it to be what's left of Mac. He doesn't want any of it. If he can't have Mac back, he doesn't want life.

Sniffling, he flings himself onto his bed and feels, in a way he loathes completely, his new abilities ebb and flow around him. He remembers the woman hugging and kissing him...and he stops existing for a few hours, when his mind graciously provides him with the blackouts he's been suffering so often since Mac died.