Chapter One: Through the Rain

Running...always running but never escaping. Her friend, her sister, her Doctor...holding her hand and urging her on. Tears...constant flowing tears. Her Doctor was crying...her family by blood had just died before her eyes.Now only the family by bond remained but not for long. Running...always running… tears...always tears. Now she was dying...her Doctor still clinging to her hand, unwilling or unable to let go but she needed to. Her Doctor needed to let go or she would share her fate.This time...this time...she would save her...like her Doctor had done for her so long ago. Let go...her mind kept saying...Don't let go...her heart was screaming...Save her...her soul demanded.With a scream of anguish, she ripped her hand from her sister's grasp. Her friend, her sister, her Doctor screamed out her name as their friend dragged her away and she couldn't help it. She had to say it one more time.

"Artz!!!" She screamed bolting upright, her eyes flying open.

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she realized that it was only a dream...a dream of a memory...a memory from another time, another life...a whole different timeline that used to be hers.

The familiar shapes of her bedroom came into focus, her heartbeat slowing down...her mind going numb. The door to her bedroom flung open, light from the hallway spilling in, but she didn't move...barely registered it at all. All thoughts ceased, her emotions locking themselves deep within...a coping mechanism if there ever was one, a bad one at that.

"Anna!" The distant voice of her older brother creeped into her head as his arms wrapped around her, holding her close.

Petrichor...the smell of dust after the rain...this was her brother's natural scent...ironic really. Given the word's connection to the origin of what killed her...the reality bomb. Her favorite tv show, the one that had truly brought her and Artz together...it was an event from that very same show that had finally ripped them apart.

They had been through so much together. She often wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn't met Artz...a notion her entire being always ran away from whilst screaming bloody murder. She never wanted to be without her Doctor...to feel that loneliness again.

She could barely remember what her old life used to be like before meeting the impossible woman known as Artz Lanaria...the reflection of the Doctor. The irony was that Artz was not just some mere reflection but something else entirely.

She was as blazing hot as a thousand suns, colder than the deepest ocean, was a walking contradiction, and possessed an impossible kindness that put even the Doctor to shame. To Anna, her beloved best friend that she had completely claimed as hers...she was her very own star, bright and beautiful.

Something hot hit her bare shoulder, given that she was only in a spaghetti strap shirt and pajama pants, and slid down her icy skin.

Water?

No...tears...his tears...her brother was crying. Shit...she hated when he cried. The idiot did it so rarely that it still packed the mother of all emotional impacts...the dick and it was a trigger that her mind and heart had become conditioned to react to.

Her mind slowly came back online, a few thoughts drifted through yet fleeting. The tension in her stiff body began to bleed away as she blinked. Her amethyst eyes returning to their normal vibrant shade of purple.

She reached up with her arms to hug her brother's arm but that took all the effort she had in her. Her eyes began to close again, exhaustion setting in again...the call of sleep too irresistible to ignore.

"Sorry...Will...sleepy…" She slurred fighting to stay awake.

"Go back to sleep, Anna. I won't leave." He replied softly, lowering them back down onto the bed.

She curled up next to him, her head automatically coming to rest above his heart. She wasn't sure why his heartbeat was so soothing to her but it had the desired effect. Within moments, she was once again asleep.

True to his word, Will didn't leave. He didn't even go back to sleep. He just laid there, holding his baby sister in his arms as she slept. He tried to stop trembling, fear still gripping his system.

Every year...the same three and a half weeks...her nightmares would return. They started one week after New Year's Eve, from January the eighth to Febuary the second.

Like clockwork...he never understood why, but that didn't stop him from rushing to her side every time she screamed, an instinct that had developed when they were young. Their mother for the span of four years had been in the hospital, mainly for physical therapy.

He had been eight at the time and Anna was six. The siblings had gone camping with their mother and were attacked by some sort of animal. Their mother barely survived and she spent almoat a year in a medically induced coma just so she could heal. It took another three years before she was physically fit enough to reclaim custody of her children.

During that time, they had been in the care of their father...if you could actually call him that. He wasn't even sure how their biological father managed to get temporary custody of them at all…given the circumstances of why their parents were no longer together in the first place.

Every time Anna's nightmares started up, he would smack her around, yelling at her to shut up. Will took it upon himself to be her shield during those times. He protected her, taking most of the hits for her though it didnt stop her from getting into trouble...a lot.

Every time something was broken or shattered or cracked, she said she did it and their father would whip her with a leather belt every time...she couldn't sit down properly for almost two days each time and he would always internally flinch every time she winced or hissed in pain.

The problem was that he could never remember how those things were broken. He suffered from chronic headaches that ventured into extreme migraine territory more often than not. He actually wondered if he was the one that was breaking everything and if his baby sister was, in fact, covering for him...it wouldn't surprise him in the least.

He had never been happier in his life when their mother had come to take them home with her. He had been especially pleased when she started smacking the hell out of their father when she noticed that her children were covered in fading bruises and the welts on her daughter from where she had been whipped all the time.

Their mother wasn't always such a fierce warrior. She had been the submissive type at first, quiet and obedient...the perfect wife for their father but then she had kids. She became a mother and it was then that she realized that being married to her husband was wrong.

She had tried to make the relationship work after Will had been born but things deteriorated quickly. She tried so hard to keep the peace… to keep their family together, knowing exactly what it felt like to be raised by a single mother.

It was a terrible feeling...going through a divorce. The kids always got the short end of the stick then promptly beaten over the head with said stick. She didn't want that for her child so she did all she could think of to at least keep it civil but it just kept getting worse.

Things had gotten so bad that she had completely stopped sleeping in the same room as her husband and always stayed with her son. He didn't really remember much from that time but he did remember his mother screaming as his father forced himself on his wife.

One of the many reasons why Will hated his father so much. He had raped his wife and got her pregnant. He even forced her to get an abortion but for some inexplicable reason, the operation had failed and it was too dangerous to try again.

He did not want another brat taking up all of his wife's time which he believed belonged solely to him. He got so desperate to be rid of the fetus that he beat the living hell out of his wife. It was a miracle that she didn't have a miscarriage. The fact that his sister even existed after a failed abortion and a severe beating...mind boggling and quite frankly, impossible but that was his sister for you...an impossible thing.

He remembered when his headaches had started...the night his mother was beaten to an inch of her sanity...it was the first time he had blacked out. Not long after, his mother hit her soon to be ex husband over the head with a cast iron frying pan.

Why...because he had been trying to drown her son in the kitchen sink. When the police investigated the incident, they found no proof of the actual crime but due to her injuries, they did remove her and her son from the premises, believing that they were being abused.

She divorced the bastard and changed her name and Will's last name back to her maiden name of Zimmerman. Come to find out later that she had tried to get a restraining order against her ex husband but due to lack of evidence, mainly due to how limited technology was at the time, it fell through...the court even decided that their father could have temporary custody should anything happen to her before child services would gey involved. The bastard even changed his last name to theirs so as to 'simplify the proceedings'.

Will quickly pushed those thoughts away, knowing that it would do nothing more than incite the wrath of his migraines, and refocused on what was really important...his baby sister and extended family, mainly their god parents and their friends.

His mother gave birth about five months later to his baby sister and due to her purple eyes, she named her Amethyst, but it was their godfather, Uncle Sei, that suggested the middle name of Anna. Good thing too because as soon as she could speak, she insisted on being called Anna.

She hated it when people called her Amethyst. She hated it even more when he called her Amy but he only did so when she was being irrational or flat out petulant. His sister has an exceptionally strong will and an intelligence that has never matched up to her physical age.

People called her a genius...a child prodigy. To which she would scoff and say that they were way off base. She was studious, yes, but by no means a genius. When he asked her why she didn't believe that she was a genius, she told him about the woman from her dreams.

Shaggy dark blonde hair with eyes of a deep forest green, reasonably short at five feet, three and a half inches tall, slightly overweight, but with a mind that even Anna had problems keeping up with...a lot. The woman was apparently a true genius but like Anna, she never believed it...at least not for a long time.

According to his sister, the blonde had an imagination that could rival God and had such a high level of resourcefulness that you would think she was the MacGyver of the literary world.

Words were definitely this woman's forte along with something called Jiggery Pokery, the so called art of creative solutions. To this day, he still rolled his eyes every time he heard that ridiculous saying… especially when his sister started chanting...All Hail the Queen of Jiggery Pokery! Why...just why...why was that even a thing to begin with?

For the longest time, he hated the woman from his sister's dreams. She was the one that made his sister cry and scream in her sleep, yet Anna continued to talk up a storm about her precious Doctor. She would not shut up about this woman and over time, he became angrier and angrier.

When she called this Artz woman her sister, he blacked out again. When he woke up, his godfather was holding him in his lap and they appeared to be in a hospital. When he asked why, Uncle Sei turned him towards the bed and his blood ran cold.

Laying in the hospital bed was his baby sister, his most precious person in the world to him, and she was covered in bandages, some of them stained red from her blood. He started to panic and he could feel another headache coming on when he felt a small zap to the back of his neck.

The headache faded but it left him awfully dizzy. He kept swaying about until his godfather handed him over to his mother. She cradled him in her arms, whispering countless apologies to him. To this day, he didn't understand what happened, how his sister had gotten hurt, or why his mother kept apologizing to him over and over again.

He swore that he would always protect his sister from that day on but he needed to know more about her dreams, so a few years later, he finally worked up the nerve to ask and almost wished he hadn't because it was nuts...everything she said was fucking insane and she believed every word of it too!

He had gently tried to persuade her that they were just dreams… especially after everything that had happened with their father but she would simply smile at him, her amethyst eyes looking so much older than what they should be and said that he would have one of two reactions...he would either believe her or betray her.

He had been floored by that statement and started arguing, saying that he would never betray her but she simply replied that he would never believe her either and that although it made her unable to truly trust him, that she would never stop loving him.

For the first time in his life...he lied. He lied to his baby sister and said that he believed her...that even if no one else ever believed that he would. The smile that lit up her face that day was unlike anything he had ever seen before and she started crying tears of joy before hug tackling him to the floor, thanking him over and over again...saying he was the best big brother ever.

No...he wasn't.

After all these years...he still didn't believe. He was still lying to her and if he told her the truth now, then what she said about him betraying her would come true so he just lived with the guilt...because he would do anything to protect his sister even from himself. All he wanted was for her to smile like she did then...that smile, that beautiful and brilliant smile...how he wished he could see it again.

Every time she started telling him about Artz and her other friend Erin with a few stories about Artz's older brother, Trinity, thrown in here and there...he would listen. He had hoped that by listening to her ramble on and on that the smile he loved so much would return but it never reached her eyes like it did that day.

He always paid attention though, soaking up every detail in a vain attempt to understand her better. He would even ask questions for clarification and she would either sigh in fond exasperation or giggle like a little prankster and start explaining...more like word vomiting. Holy crow...did she word vomit!

She told him so much...about every little thing that seemed so obvious to her yet had his brain spinning in circles. She would spin out story after story, mainly the events occurring after she had met Artz, but boy did she gush when it came to the fan fiction stuff.

He'd admit that some of these stories that Artz had supposedly come up with were quite the puzzle. Some of them were so twisted that he had to actually draw up a flow chart, much to his sister's amusement, just trying to keep track of all the twists and turns then make another chart to sort it all out in a way that his brain could actually comprehend.

Some of the stories were just fucking inspiring as hell and he was often blindsided by the blonde's wisdom… solely based off of the simple observations of the people around her. The way she saw the world, mapping out its infinite possibilities, creating tales of mischief and adventure, of love and trials, of hope and despair...remarkable, simply incredible...unlike anything he had ever imagined.

He would begrudgingly admit that Artz Lanaria was the reason why he wanted to study the mind. He wanted to understand his sister and why she insisted that Artz was the true genius when the blonde was nothing more than a figment of her own imagination.

His dear younger sister was the one with the god-like imagination… though he wasn't quite sure about the resourcefulness bit. When it came to practical application...totally spot on, definitely the female version of MacGyver...but when it came to words, she seemed to fall a bit short...which never made sense to him. It was discrepancies like those that made him question whether or not his sister had a split personality.

It didn't change how he felt or that he kind of wished that the blonde haired goddess of creativity… to which he would always deny that he had ever referred to her as such... was real and not to beat the shit out of her for making his sister cry...though it would be awfully tempting.

No, he wished she was real because...because he was in love with her. He knew that she wasn't real yet listening to all those stories...he just sort of did. In his mind, she was...perfect. If he had a type...it was her which is ironic given the similarities to his sister.

Kind, compassionate, loyal, noble, brilliant, perceptive, imaginative and inspiring. She inspired his life's work of being a profiler, helping him figure out exactly what he wanted to do. She showed him how to look beyond the obvious and see everything.

Don't overlook it just because it was too easy or too predictable because more often than not, the simplest solution was the correct one. He flat out refused to admit any of this to his sister. He would never hear the end of it...he could practically feel the smugness and if she knew how he figured out he was in love with her dream girl...oh the humiliation he would endure.

It just sort of hit him one day...while he was on a date no less. He was constantly comparing his date to his sister's dream girl. He honestly tried not to but he just became so bored with her...with all of them. Every girl he dated...none of them measured up. They were all so...ordinary and he realized that he hated them for it.

He could see all the little details about every woman he dated...he managed a few long term relationships but that was before he fully committed to profiling. It was the same things over and over again; meet the girl, chit chat, test the waters, progress the relationship, incessant meaningless chatter about shit he really didn't care about...boring, so utterly boring.

He did his best to make each relationship work, despite his inability to trust any of them. Look, there were two...technically three women that he trusted; his mom, his sister, and his godmother, Aunt Gin.

It was weird though...one day Aunt Gin didn't come back and neither did their god cousin...was that actually a thing? He saw Uncle Sei one more time about a month later and then he disappeared too along with his friend, Jack.

There was one woman that he had been enthralled by. He didn't know her name so he just called her Stardust because her eyes sparkled like fairy dust and seemed to glow with a light from within. She only showed up when Anna was really young and then when she wasn't around.

He was totally her favorite and he always made certain that she smiled. She was so beautiful when she smiled and sweet Menti Celesti...her voice, the sound of it always made his head feel so much better...like he had been drowning in an ocean of noise and when she sang, everything else became muffled white noise and he could actually think properly.

But then just like Uncle Sei and Aunt Gin, his Stardust disappeared too. His mother had told him that she had passed away and at the time, he hadn't understood what that meant and he said that he wanted to follow her. He had never seen his mother look so utterly devastated in his life, not even when Anna was in the hospital. Even after he had learned what it meant...he never did quite believe it.

So depressing...his life just seemed to be one tragedy after another; the train wreck that was his parents marriage, the how of his sister's conception, the divorce, his sister in the hospital, his godparents vanishing off the face of the Earth, the supposed death of his Stardust, the rollercoaster of a shit storm that was his school and college years, and his romantic life was so far in the toilet that he was pretty sure that he was superglued in the sewer somewhere and left to rot for eternity.

Most of his relationships tanked after the fifth date, if he was lucky, and the ones that didn't had revolved mainly around sex. He was used by his exes because he was physically attractive, didn't overcomplicate things with lovey dovey crap, and he was well endowed.

He got plenty of practice over the years with the steady stream of girls that just wanted to get laid by a hot guy...good gracious, so many one night stands. Anna said that there was nothing wrong with being picky when it came to relationships but he honestly thought that he was too picky.

He wanted variety, spontaneity, predictably unpredictable, the good kind of crazy, silliness and goofiness, random debates and inspiring speeches. He wanted just one word to spark an entire conversation that lasted for hours if not days.

He wanted someone that enjoyed the simple things in life but didn't mind picking apart the complex. He wanted someone that noticed something absolutely amazing but everyone else walked by it like it never existed and she just has to point it out to him.

He wanted a woman that loved sounds...seriously, he was insanely sensitive to sounds and could tell you the make, model, and type of engine in a car from over four blocks away. He wanted a woman that could pick up that one slightly off note in an otherwise perfect performance but he also wanted a woman that would randomly bust out in song for no apparent reason.

He loved playing his electric guitar and wanted a woman that would not only listen to him play but be able to play or at least want to learn how to play an instrument. His sister favored the piano, the flute, and the sound mixer. They really needed a violinist...they had a violin and a fiddle but neither if them could play them worth a damn and the acoustic guitar had been gathering dust for almost a decade due to his obsession with his electric guitar.

Artz...that insane, impossible woman...she taught herself how to play the violin. Why...because of her love for a dub step violinist that she had stumbled across accidentally on the internet. She taught herself how to sing with and without music because of an acapella group called Pentatonix and a vocalist named Peter Hollens.

After watching one season of Dancing with the Stars, she taught herself how to dance; waltz, tango, salsa, and the list went on. If it existed, she made certain to learn it...or at least try to. Some of the dances were beyond her range of flexibility which resulted in her taking classes in a wide variety of martial Arts and meditative techniques; Tai Chi, Kung Fu, yoga and even ballet.

The woman even taught herself how to do dub step with a violin and learned breathing techniques so she could dance, play the violin, and sing all at the same time...then claims she couldn't multitask to save her life. Stick a violin in her hand and she multitasked like a fucking badass.

Artz loved listening to the rain falling on the roof...she would stare in awe at the way a street lamp lit up the misting rain at night while standing under a tree. She would be inspired by how the clouds in the lower atmosphere would move so swiftly, almost like they were being summoned, while the clouds higher up stayed perfectly still.

After a storm, she would point at the trees and say that they were weeping as the wind blew through them, knocking the water off the leaves. She would be enthralled by a single person randomly singing and if she knew the song, she would join in and if not, it didn't take her long to figure it out and join in anyways.

Sweet Menti Celesti...he really needed to stop thinking about her and all her would-be reactions. The more he thought about her, the more he loved her. The deeper he fell, the more frustrated he became. Was it so wrong...to love someone so much just from listening to stories about them?

He couldn't keep thinking like this...he needed to stop. He needed to face reality. She wasn't real...just thinking that made his heart skip a beat...he really, really wished he didn't have to date at all. His life would be so much simpler.

The only reason why he hadn't sworn off dating entirely was due to a nagging mother and an even more nagging younger sister. Both were apparently oblivious to his predicament or they knew and were trying to give him hope. That maybe one day...he would find his Artz. His Artz...a smile tugged at his lips but then stopped.

For the last fucking time… Artz Lanaria, the woman that does the impossible...the woman he would forever love...SHE ISN'T REAL!!!

It was with that thought and a sudden bolt of lightning that snapped him out of his head. His sister's face was scrunched up like she was in pain and she was gripping his shirt so tightly that her knuckles were white from the pressure.

"Light...don't. Please...don't. Poseidon...Captain...please...why… why won't you save him? Save him! Stop him! Save him! Please! Light!!" Anna mumbled before screaming that last word.

She awoke in an instant, climbed out of bed faster than his brain could comprehend, and started throwing on clothes. He managed to get untangled from the sheets as she clambered out the bedroom door while trying to lace up her shoes.

He ran to his room and threw on clothes at a faster rate, knowing that he needed to follow her. The last time this happened, they had stopped a little girl from being kidnapped from the fairgrounds but who the hell was Light and Poseidon and which one was the captain?

He didn't have time to think about it because she was already heading out the door. He followed as quickly as he could but the moment they stepped outside, he had to take her hand and let himself be dragged because the rain was so heavy that they were already soaked to the bone and the streets were already starting to flood.

Holy shit, this was a lot of rain. He had never been in a downpour this hard before...at least not while in the city. The roads already had over a foot of water and it was still raining.

The storm was so bad that he could barely keep his eyes open, his visibility decreased to only a few inches in front of his face. He could barely make out his sister's silhouette and if he hadn't been holding her hand like a vice grip, he wouldn't even know that she was there at all.

They had been sloshing through the rain for almost two hours and he could tell from how cold his sister was that one or both of them were going to get sick from this little jaunt.

His ears picked up the sounds of multiple engines, high grade diesel, heavy in weight by the deep tones of the water being pushed away. The deluge made it difficult to pinpoint the exact velocity but he managed to fixate the direction in which it was coming from.

"Oh geez!" He exclaimed barely pulling Anna out of the way as a convoy of military vehicles drove down the street, "What the hell is going on?!"

That convoy was not standard issue military. The designs were wrong, the formation was wrong, the color and weight of each vehicle was wrong...after a closer listen to the engines, they were definitely not United States military.

"It's her! They're going after her and the others! We have to get to them first!" His sister shouted over the downpour.

What? Who was her? Was Light a she, no, she had said him before so was the captain a third person that happened to be female or was it Poseidon that was female? Who were the others that she was referring to? What the hell was going on?!

"Who are you talking about?" He yelled trudging after her.

"Artz!" She shouted in response, "Light's gone, but Poseidon and…"

The rest of her words were entirely garbled because she had turned away from him and trying to pull him through the highly flooded street.

What the holy living fuck?! They were out in this fucking storm from hell because his sister's dream girl was...what...being hunted by an insane military commander?

No...he had put this off for too long and even though his heart was breaking...this had to stop. Anna needed a fucking wake up call and ground herself in reality before she completely lost herself to an endless delusion.

Hell...they both needed a fucking wake up call! He had let his heart be stolen by an imaginary woman! He had made it impossible for him to ever find love in the real fucking world!

Worse still...his most precious person...his beloved baby sister...she loved a made up sibling more than him! She was his sister! She was his! Why? Why?! WHY?!

In frustration, he yanked her hand towards him and she lost her balance. She fell into the two feet of water at their feet and as a result, her feet got twisted up with his legs and he fell too. He barely managed to stop his fall, his hands and knees banging harshly into the asphalt.

"Amy." He said and he got the usual, "I told you never to call me that, William."

"She's not real." He started his voice quiet and his tone barely concealing his rising frustration and anger.

"What? What are you talking about? We don't have time for this! Artz is…" Anna interrupted trying to push him off her but he stayed rooted in place.

"ARTZ ISN'T REAL!" He shouted in rage, making his sister go completely rigid...her eyes unblinking and completely transfixed on him...in a harsh tone laced with a quiet fury that all but demanded that she listen to him, "She's not real. She never has been. She's someone you made up...the sister you never had...someone you could trust completely because a made up person could never hurt you."

Her purple hued eyes took on that older look again...the one he hated so much and she fucking smiled.

"That's why I'm her truest believer because even if no one else believes, I always will." She stated her eyes drowning in loneliness, kindness, resignation, resolve, and an unconditional love that only a sibling could give...throwing his own words right back at him.

Hearing those words again after all these years, it struck deep...deeper than a blade ever could. Why? Why did it have to be this way. Why did they have to be this way?

"Why? Why do you believe in her...but never in me?" He asked trying to understand why he wasn't good enough.

He could hear the pain in his own voice and he realized just how much it hurt him...the knowledge that his own flesh and blood, his baby sister, the person he loved most in the real world...loved, trusted, and believed in a person she made up more than him, an actually real and living being.

He felt like such a hypocrite because he loved Artz almost as much as his sister did. If she was real, there was no doubt that she would have his complete faith and total trust...if she was real, he would believe anything she told him...just like his baby sister did.

It still didn't change how he felt...the ache in his heart of not being good enough for his sister...that she created a sibling that was so much better than him for her to believe in. He has made so many mistakes, lied to her all this time, failed to protect her like he said he would...he betrayed her; her trust, her friendship, her love.

He didn't deserve to be her brother.

"I have always believed in you, William...even when you lied to my face...ever since you said that you believed me...i knew you were lying." She answered shocking him.

That did it...his heart broke… shattered into dust. She had known… she had known the whole time. He could only stare into her amethyst eyes, knowing that everything he felt in that moment was written all over his face for all to see.

He opened his mouth to say something...anything but no words came...only hot, stinging tears mixing with the pouring, freezing rain...and still she smiled...and his heart broke again though he was pretty sure his soul had just cracked like an egg at the same time.

"I still believe in you...why? Because I love you. Why do i believe in Artz because I love her. I will not choose between you two because both of you are mine." She continued rolling them over so that she was on top and she smirked, "Which is why I'm gonna drag your sorry ass with me until I find her and then I'm going to lock you two in a fucking room."

She got off of him and pulled him to his feet then proceeded to drag him through the flooded streets. It was pretty easy to do so because he put up no resistance...simply letting her do as she wished.

"Why?" He asked all the fight in him gone.

He couldn't fight against her...not her...not his baby sister...his most precious person. She meant everything to him and he couldn't live without her. They did everything together. If ever seen alone, it was only because of work or scheduling problems.

They had gone to all the same schools, she graduated two years early just so they could start college at the same time. She had helped him with his college application and helped him land a full scholarship as well. She was always by his side.

She got a job during their college years because he had lost his scholarship...no fault of his own; they decided to only offer one full scholarship to the best candidate which at the time was his sister and three partial scholarships to the three just barely below her.

He just had the misfortune of one of his teachers being the father of one of his ex girlfriends and the jerk was always on his case, grading his work with a harshness that only a pissed off parent could pull off and he barely passed the course which meant his grade point average took a major dive.

He fell into fifth place which meant the ax for him and the two other students below his GPA. So in typical Anna fashion, she took on the task of paying for his schooling.

She worked full time, extra shifts, overtime galore, and she still managed to be a straight A student. How she managed studying for two degrees and do all this extra work just to pay for his tuition?

Coffee...lots and lots of coffee and she chugged an energy drink like every two to three hours on top of that.

It was a fucking miracle that she hadn't worked herself into an early grave but she did develop a rather nasty addiction to caffeine… years later and he still hasn't managed to break her of that habit completely.

The inevitable did occur and she collapsed from sheer exhaustion… and caffeine poisoning...yeah, that shit will kill you if you ingest a concentrated amount and she had passed that limit in a week.

She ended up being fired due to her extended absence which was total bullshit. The only reason she was let go was because she refused to have sex with her supervisor and the little prick took it personally.

Unfortunately, it was her word, the absentee employee suffering from caffeine addiction, versus the word of a well respected, filthy rich philanthropist that happened to be rather charitable to all the big time law firms capable of actually suing the bastard and winning.

As always, his sister was not ruffled in the slightest. She had just shrugged and said that she had made enough already to cover his expenses until the end of the year and with her credentials, skill sets, and absolutely fantastic resume...to which he had actually gotten on his knees and begged her to write up his when had been applying for a profiler position with the Federal Bureau of Investigation...it had been easy for her to find new employment.

Then the idiot almost worked herself into the ground again...ending up in the hospital a second time because she was working two part time jobs, maintaining perfect grades and was close to completing two doctorates after only four years which usually took anywhere from eight to twelve years depending on the field of study.

He didn't even have to yell at her because one of the nurses and one of the doctors, a woman named Sherrie and her flatmate/co-worker named Dean, had laid into his sister hard...seriously hard...even he was not spared.

They had sent her through the ultimate ringer of a guilt trip and Anna relented and gave in to their logic...first time that had ever happened and he doubted that it would ever happen again.

Then they turned on him and Sherrie scolded him for not taking better care of his sister and Dean simply smacked him in the back of the head, said he was his sister's completely whipped bitch, and that if she ended up here again because her brother was still waiting for his balls to drop that he was going to shove them into strait jackets and have them carted off to the nearest looney bin where there was a lovely white padded room reserved just for the two of them.

The irony was that the rather gruff yet rugged doctor had not been lying because Will actually checked. The closest one was a sanitarium with mainly bat shit insane serial killers, notorious sex addicts, and sociopathic scientists...and they had a reservation in the max security wing for a very small, white padded cell that was part of the isolation division where they just loved strapping patients to gurneys for the hell of it.

The siblings came to a mutual understanding and decided not to tempt fate...and a particularly sadistic doctor that was always a man of his word and not afraid to deliver on his threats. Though they were grateful that Sherrie had him on a tight leash and convinced him to call his younger brother.

Turns out that Dean's younger brother, Sam, was a lawyer for an independent firm that mainly dealt with the upper echelon of society. After meeting them and discussing Anna's termination from her previous job, Sam agreed to take the case and adamantly refused to accept payment for his services.

Why...because the Zimmerman siblings were the reason he and Dean were even speaking to each other. They had some sort of falling out, about Sherrie mainly, and hadn't spoken to each other in almost two years. Then the siblings came along and during Anna's treatment, Dean saw how similar their relationship was to him and Sam.

It was why the gruff doctor decided to reach out to his own younger sibling and the two were able to reconcile most of their issues...but they were still brothers and they still squabbled. Thus the reason for Sherrie...she scared the hell out of both of them and they just did whatever she told them to do.

After a lot of effort from all parties involved, they had successfully sued the backside off of his sister's first employer and gotten her a hefty sum of money as a settlement. It was enough for both of them to finish college, for Anna to quit both her part time jobs, for both of them to avoid a one way trip to Insanity Valley and actually buy and own an entire floor of flats in an apartment building.

He still wondered why they needed all the space but his sister had simply replied Spoilers! when asked. He was pulled out of his thoughts and back into their current conversation when she looked back at him with a grin that would make the Cheshire Cat proud.

"So you two can shag like rabbits." She said it so matter-of-factly that it made him laugh, "I'm serious, Will. I know for damn sure that you compare every woman you have ever dated and will ever date to her...without fail but let's be honest...a novelty i know...I do it too. If they can't pass my Doctor's standards then they are not worth my time or any further thought whatsoever. "

He snorted, partly in disbelief of the sex thing and partly at the fact that she was completely right...though he was glad that he wasn't the only one doing it. Still he often wondered if his sister was a mind reader, if he was just that obvious, or if it was because he never had his guard up when around his sister.

He was pretty certain that she could read minds, had eyes in the back of her head, and could see the fucking future because otherwise he could not explain even half of the shit she had pulled off over the years.

"So what if we do? It's not like she'd date me, let alone have sex with me." He replied his tone certain.

Based on all the stories his sister had told him about Artz...one: she was a virgin. Thirty years old and still a fucking virgin...two: she had an aversion to physical contact. If she didn't initiate it then she did not want to be touched...at all. He was pretty sure that it had to do with her ADHD and some kind of trauma when she was seven years old but Anna had refused to elaborate and he didn't press the matter.

Three: Artz was completely oblivious to romantic love. Correction: she was oblivious to romantic love in regards to herself. She could easily identify it in others and often played matchmaker, but when it came to her own heart...nope.

She had never felt that kind of love and her mind didn't know how to recognize it in herself nor was she able to recognize it if someone loved her. Even her love for the Doctor was something she didn't and quite possibly couldn't comprehend.

Hell...you could tell her you loved her straight to her face, point blank, looking right into her eyes...and she would not believe it.

Why...because her family had filled her head with utter nonsense like she was useless, a disappointment, that even if a man claimed to love her that all he wanted to do was get in her pants, fuck her senseless, use her like a sugar momma, mouching off of her until they found some hot piece of ass to fuck then stealing all of her money and valuables, leaving her life in ruin and she would probably be knocked up too.

It was utter fucking bullshit. They had worn her down, made her feel insignificant, that her only purpose in life was to get a job, get paid, take care of the family and that she was selfish for putting her desires and wellbeing before anyone else's.

By the time his sister and Artz had met...through the internet, yes, but through a fan fiction site...the woman had been so repressed that she was suffering from severe persistent depression and a fair bit of anxiety. At the time, she wasn't on any medication and was dealing with both of those issues on top of her ADHD and insomnia...Anna swears the woman was simply nocturnal.

It took several different online friends almost two years to get Artz to the point where she might actually be receptive to proper encouragement. Then Anna got her claws into her and did not let go. When Artz stopped messaging entirely, his sister scoured through their insanely long private messaging thread to pick out every little detail about Artz's life.

It took months, piecing everything together, trying to locate the woman that was his sister's Doctor, but eventually she succeeded...and shocked the living hell out of Artz when Anna suddenly popped up at her place of work with her friend, Erin...a fellow fan of Artz's stories.

The three of them were together ever since. Her brother became a more active participant in her life, mainly due to Anna being a stubborn bitch. They made her happy. Anna, Erin, and Trin worked diligently to try and undo three decades of psychological abuse and it wasn't until the end of the world that Artz discovered just who exactly she was...the amazing and brilliant genius that her two best friends and elder brother had always seen.

She told her mother and grandmother that their universe was being destroyed...they didn't believe her. She had told them that it was the reality bomb from Doctor Who...they definitely didn't believe that which was why she had been slapped twice with the second one sending her to the floor.

She just stood up, said a few words and they disowned her but not Anna and Erin nor did her elder brother, Trinity. As the darkness came, Artz became a star of hope, a shining beacon that called to the hearts of an entire world.

The most brilliant minds of their age were drawn to her, inspiring them to do the impossible...and they did...but it was too late...the sun faded, the darkness fell, the world screamed in despair...and yet she still had hope. If she could save just one life...Will almost lost his composure.

Anna's description of those events and the graphic novel she wrote, drew and colored herself had always been a bit too accurate for his taste. So much emotion and honest reactions...so much pain and the human race banding together like they had done in far smaller crises.

It just seemed too real and he didn't really want to think about it right now and his sister was definitely sensing the shift in him so she...well she was Anna...his ridiculous and crazy younget sister that just had to try and cheer up her depressed elder sibling.

"Dude, what rock have you been living under? Artz would not hesitate to jump your bones. Hell, she would give you her virginity without thinking twice and sweet lord...if she knew just how badass you are with an electric guitar...oh my god...she would not care who was in the room, she would rip off your fucking clothes right then and there...and you ever sing around her, I can guarantee that I will not see you for three weeks, big brother.

Why...because of one episode, that's all. It was called Fugue and you sang and holy shit...i'm pretty sure she nutted herself the first time she watched it...and quite possibly every time since. She fucking loves it when you sing. She actually blushed when she told me that she wanted to sing a duet with you.

I cannot wait to get you two together. Maybe then I can actually find myself a bloke or a girlfriend. I'm open to either so long as the two most important people in the whole of creation to me are shagging like a pair of Nubbins." Anna retorted eliciting a small smile from him and an almost inaudible chuckle.

He was going to reply when the water level in the streets suddenly decreased to nothing. The streets were actually dry...even the rain was being pulled, forming several small mid air rivers and all going to what looked to be the same place.

"What the hell?" He asked wondering what the hell was happening right in front of his eyes.

He had never seen anything like it...no, that wasn't true or had that just been a dream, an illusion? His godfather had done a magic trick when he was really young, making water seemingly float in the air. He made it spin like a mini whirlpool and Will remembered the child like wonder he had felt at the time.

His godfather had quickly tossed it into the sink when their mother had walked in. His uncle had winked at him, only for Will to notice that his godfather's eyes were a mirrored obsidian without pupils...everything except the whites of his eyes were that solid mirrored obsidian...so dark yet so much warmer than his normal blue eyes. To this day, he didn't know how Uncle Sei had done it or why his eyes changed colors.

"It's Poseidon! Come on! He's got to be close by!" She exclaimed pulling him into a full out run and forcing his brain back into the here and now.

They ran several more blocks before spotting the military convoy that had nearly run them over earlier. Anna skidded to a stop and pushed him to the side just as a massive wall of water crashed into the convoy, making it disappear.

Will was certain that it hadn't been washed away. There wasn't any groaning of metal or vehicles being turned over and pushed away, but he could no longer hear the deep throaty tones of the engines anymore. It was like it just got sucked into the water and vanished except for a few stragglers including a dark skinned man that gave the profiler a really bad feeling.

He wasn't sure what it was about the man that put him so on edge, the instinct to protect his sister hitting him full force. That man, some kind of military commander and he was probably the convoy's leader, was someone to be avoided at all costs and his sister seemed to be thinking the same thing.

His sister pulled him behind some bins to hide and he looked over at her. She was terrified, her eyes locked on to the dark skinned man as if he was a giant snake about to swallow her whole if she looked away for a fraction of a second.

He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her, his right hand cupping her face and keeping her ear right above his heart. He didn't know what else to do. He was so far outside the box that he felt like he was in the matrix telling Neo that there was no spoon...in his case there was no box.

She calmed down a little but her eyes never left the man until he was no longer in sight, seemingly retreating from whatever force that had just made his entire convoy disappear. The profiler was caught off guard when the rain suddenly returned, half drowning him because he had his mouth open.

It was weird though...the rain...it tasted like salt, rust, and something metallic, almost like copper. He would realize later why that was but then the downpour intensified making it nearly impossible for him to see anything.

He turned his attention back to the area where the convoy had vanished and he could only stare in disbelief when a human like figure rose from the water before solidifying into an actual human.

Said human, from what little he could actually make out, was dressed a lot like Hook from Once Upon A Time, one of his sister's most recent obsessions… the show not the man though he vaguely recalled her saying that Artz was obsessed with the quite frankly arrogant prick.

He didn't really like Hook. He was a self absorbed jerk that stole other people's wives and it was his own damn fault that his so called love was murdered. Anna assured him that the arrogant and rougish Captain would grow on him...like a fungus she had said. What Artz saw in the guy, he didn't know. If he had to pick someone for Artz to be paired with in the show, it would be Graham aka The Huntsman or Regina aka The Evil Queen...possibly both...it would probably take both to handle her.

He had gotten lost inside of his head because he was only now noticing a wave of water rushing towards their impromptu hiding spot. There was no way they would make it out of the way in time. Anna had barely pulled him to their feet when the wave reached them.

Anna's hands shot out in front of her and her eyes changed from amethyst to liquid silver as a silver white light shot out of her hands and formed a dome of transparent silver white light around them. The silver, while see through, was metallic like looking through a mirror. The white parts fluttering and flickering throughout the silver was like someone reflecting light off of said mirror.

Will was, quite frankly, in shock. When the hell did his sister learn how to do that? How come he didn't know about this? Why didn't she tell him? The memory of her saying that she would never be able to fully trust him slammed into the front of his mind and his brain began to short circuit...the beginning symptoms of an impending headache...no, definitely a migraine and it was going to be a whopper.

He could barely focus on what was happening, the pain in his head disrupting his ability to think properly. His sister's self generated light shield didn't stop the wave, but it did reflect it right back at the sender before the light vanished and her eyes returning to normal. Said sender merely snapped his fingers and Will watched the water flow into the man's body… like he was a fucking sponge or kin to the rain woman, Juvia, from the anime Fairy Tail.

The pirate like figure began to walk towards them, only to start swaying on his feet after a few steps. He hunched over, looking like he was in terrible pain, before he fell to his knees and started coughing up blood.

He threw out his left hand, the back of it shining with some kind of crest...a starburst, no, a hook on top of a prismatic symbol...the profiler couldn't quite make it due to his blurring vision, and the water began to rise again, the rain around him swirling into an incomplete shield.

The pirate seemed to be having trouble controlling the water of the shield, so he shifted his posture and the water changed shape. He then tossed his left hand toward them, the water forming into rather sharp looking tendrils and shooting straight towards his sister.

"Petrichor!" Anna yelled over the deluge, much to her brother's confusion.

To Will's amazement and astonishment, the attack that had been about to spear through his sister's body suddenly stopped. The tendrils now hung motionless in the air, mere inches away from her face.

The man's highly aggressive stance shifted to one of surprised relief with a touch of weariness. He said something that Will couldn't hear but he did understand what his sister said though he didn't comprehend the meaning.

"Yuna!" She yelled a look of relief on her face but also worry but not for them but for the man that had just tried to kill them twice.

Will heard something along the lines of 'Find the wench.' but he was pretty sure that he had to have misheard. Who the hell in this day and age referred to a woman as a wench...when it wasn't Oktoberfest that is?

The tendrils of water fell to the ground as the hand that had summon them into existence dropped to his side. The pirate like figure transformed into water and several streams, some being rather dark colored, flew through the air in the opposite direction of th. Zimmerman siblings.

The rain returned to the heavy deluge from before and they just stood there. His sister looked so happy, a shit ton of worry still present in her eyes but she looked more alive now than ever before.

Why...why did almost dying twice to some freak of nature make her so fucking happy?! His thoughts kept crashing into themselves, making him temporarily forget the impressive display of power from his sister mere moments ago and the headache that was making his brain pulse with a constant throbbing pain had now fully formed into a full blown migraine, the pain becoming so sharp that it felt like a knife was being stabbed into his brain and slicing him wide open.

"Anna...what the hell just happened because I don't...i can't...my head...i can't think…my head...my head is killing me. Anna..." He started the mother of all migraines hitting him so hard that his vision splintered like glass.

Pain shot through his head and into his eyes and he barely made out his sister throwing herself to the side. His vision shattered into a thousand fragments...like a mirror being broken and its shards reflecting a thousand different angles.

Why? Why was this happening again? The last time it hurt this bad was when his sister had called Artz her sister. Why? Why did his eyes hurt so much and why was he hearing that terrible buzzing sound whirling around him...no, away from him...like a...like a...like a…he couldn't think, his brain was overloading with a vengeance.

Will lost consciousness but not before hearing someone scream...was he screaming...a higher pitch joined the lower one, his sister, and he heard the subsequent shouting of his name as he fell backwards. He was out cold before ever making contact with the ground.