I'm starting to feel like this story is going over the heads of the people reading it. I promise this will all start to add up and if after you finish it you're still lost, refer to my profile and I'll provide a full explanation for everything. While I'm a little sad that people aren't digging it the way I hoped, I'm so very happy with the finished product and how it came out. But, as Primus likes to remind us, "They can't all be zingers." Hope the guys who are reading it are enjoying it. The pay off is coming!


Hal couldn't pretend like he didn't notice or even more, like it didn't bother him, that the empty chairs in his class were vacant of his male students. Only. He saw Milea smile whenever he'd turn to face his audience and let the all female attendees for that day knock him off his thought process. When he had dismissed everyone, he retreated to his office and Milea not a full minute behind him. When he looked up, she was staring at the framed pictures on the wall.

"She doesn't draw them, she takes them." She said as if she were answering an age old question.

"What?"

"Your little girl. You told the class one time that she created pictures but you never said how. She takes them. She's a little photographer. I like this one the most." She gestured to a black and white print of a beat up pair of shoes sitting alone in the middle of the hallway. It was his favorite as well but he did nothing to give her the satisfaction of knowing that even though she was strangely sincere in her observation. "Who knew footwear could be art?"

"Is there a reason you're in here Ms. Stewart?"

She turned to him. "They all dropped your class. All twenty-one of them."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, Professor Emmerich, don't play stupid and pretend like you didn't notice you were teaching in a sea of estrogen today. Everything with a Y chromosome dropped your class yesterday."

"And why would they drop my class?"

"Because they know you're a fag." She paused. "Or, at least still trying to figure if you're one or just confused." She waved her hand in the same disinterested manner she had suddenly gained for the thought itself. "Well, either way, when all the boys found out, they all opted out of your class. Even took a failing grade for the semester." Hal's body stiffened on the spot which made Milea tilt her head in sick amusement at him. "What's the matter? Cock got your tongue?"

Hal did his best to ignore her comment. "Is that true? Did all my male students drop my class because of..."

"It's as true as anything else in your life has been lately, Professor E."

Hal shook his head with vigorous disbelief. "No, that's not true. It can't be."

"Do you really need proof? You think every guy in your class caught a cold on the exact same day or something?"

"But they can't do that..."

"There's not a rule against it. If they're willing to take the 'F', they can drop any class they want anytime they want."

Hal could feel his self wanting to cringe into the corner of the room and shut down to everything around him but all it found the power to do was land in the seat behind him.

"She'll never love you if she knows who you are." He opened his eyes and saw a thin smirk forming on Milea's face underneath the distorted view of his office being reflected back to him. "That is what you think, right? About Sunny. That if she finds out Uncle Hal is Uncle Homo, she'll want to live with Dave."

"Stop it!" Hal clasped his arms over his ears, feeling like small child in his bedroom, hearing his parents' angry exchanges through his walls.

"She's the only thing you got now, Hal, and if she knows the truth, she'll hate you. Just like Dave does, just like all male students in your class do!"

"STOP!"

He could feel how anxious his heart was to escape the confines of his chest and when he realized he couldn't hear anything but the trapped sound of his own breathing, he looked up again. He was alone and strangely it felt as if he always had been.


"Say cheese Uncle Hal!"

Before Hal could look up and protest the action to follow, the whine of the Polaroid ejecting its product came into his ears followed by a mischievous little giggle.

"Oh, come on, Sunny. I look like crap. You always catch me at my least human looking."

"Don't say that, Uncle Hal. This one is going to be a good one. You'll see."

"Promise me you'll burn it."

"I can't do that, unfortunately," she said to him, "burning photographs is bad luck. Especially when you're the one who took it."

"Well, I certainly don't need anymore of that."

"What does that mean?"

He unintentionally sighed at the thought. "Things have just been a little hectic at the university is all. Nothing major."

"I'm sorry." She offered to him.

"It's not your fault, sweetheart. You don't have to apologize for other people."

Sunny took her hand and ran the back of it down Hal's cheek. "You haven't shaven for a few days." She leaned her gaze in closer to him, "Or slept. You're lying. What's really happening at the university?" She asked, narrowing her eyes at him in suspicion.

Hal smiled faintly at her but mostly at the way she was so in tuned with how he was feeling. He couldn't possibly tell her what had happened although he was sure she had noticed that she was grading the papers of only female students. Instead, he pulled the little girl onto his lap, wrapped her up immediately in his arms and buried his face into the back of his neck.

"It doesn't matter right now. I have you and that's all that matters."

"Uncle Hal--"

"I love you so much, Sunny." He told her, hugging her closer to him, "Just remember that. No matter what happens, you'll always have me."

"I know, Uncle Hal."

"Look at me," he turned her body to him and brought his hands around her tiny face. "Say it back."

"Say what?"

"That you'll love me no matter and that I'll always have you."

Sunny smiled. "You know that's true, Uncle Hal."

"Sunny, say it!"

Her smile dissolved when she saw the first tears leave Hal's eyes. Her face was trembling in his hands and she reached up and put hers over them to resteady her vision.

"Uncle Hal--"

"Tell me that you'll never stop loving me, Sunny. That nothing, nothing in this world will ever make you want to change that."

In her silence, she could feel Hal's heart starting to break in front of her. She scrambled to know where each tear coming down his face ripped from from inside of him. "Please tell me what's wrong. Why are are you so upset?"

"Sunny, please, just say it."

"I need you to tell me what's wrong."

He dropped his head for a moment, trying to gather himself and get to a part in his sobbing that allowed him to speak again.

"Why can't you say it?" He finally asked.

"Because I don't need to--"

"I need you to! I need to be sure that I'll never lose you!"

"But why?"

"Because I'm afraid..."

"Afraid of what? You don't have to be afraid of anything."

He didn't answer and could only bring his hands over his face to weep into them. Sunny grabbed and held on to him. "It's okay. Don't cry." She lifted his head from her shoulder and ran her hand over his cheeks, taking his tears with them. "I love you Uncle Hal," she told him, "no matter what."


Hal looked down at his steering wheel as he waited outside the school for Sunny. His eyes still felt too heavy and swollen to lift from crying so much. He was the only one out there, parked in the 'pick up zone' before even the earliest parents could arrive and claim a spot. His class earlier had been a disaster and a little more than fifteen minutes into his attempt to teach with a constant run of tears coming down his face, he told all his girls that they were dismissed for the day. Milea hadn't said anything and had actually filed out of the lecture hall with the rest of them to his surprise.

Soon, the normal buzz and flow of things picked up when the doors of the school propped open, letting the first rush of running students escape from the day. Hal had only programed himself to listen for the passenger side door to open and didn't respond immediately to the female voice that was calling his name. Finally, a hand reached through the window from the driver's window and shook his shoulder.

"Hi, Mr. Emmerich?" She smiled at him when he looked up but the ice that immediately began coursing through his body upon doing that went straight into the muscles in his face. "I'm Ms. Sheers, I'm Sunny's teacher."

He slowly extended his hand to accept hers, wrapping his fingers around the hand of Ms. Sheers-

-but the memory of Emma's.

Hal was slow to let go of her but she didn't seem to notice or care. She was exactly the way he had imagined his sister had she had the chance to get older, with all his modifications to the length of her hair, height, and body shape in place. He couldn't have dreamed her more perfect. She even laughed in the same voice he had picked out for her to have in her late twenties and had played in his mind so many times.

"So you're the famous Uncle Hal. I'm happy I finally caught you. I never see you at any of the PTAs."

"I'm...sorry." There was more that wanted to follow the apology but he couldn't dig it out of his head.

"It's alright. I understand you're busy. Sunny tells me you teach at the university."

"Yes," he said, the answer coming back to him like a lost memory, "Yes, I do. I teach there."

"What do you teach, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Technological Solutions."

"That sounds exciting. And complicated." She added with another one of those laughs.

"It's not. I'm sure you would have loved it."

Ms. Sheers wrinkled her forehead a moment but then smiled again. "Well, I just wanted to come out here and tell you how much I love having Sunny in my class. She's one of my favorite students. I think she's going to grow up to do amazing things." She leaned into the car window and lowered her voice, "Between you and me, Mr. Emmerich,--"

"Call me Hal. Please."

"Between you and me, Hal," she said with special care that made him smile, "I feel like I'm holding her back sometimes. She knows the answer to everything before I even say it. Maybe you should think about getting her skipped a few grades or into an advanced second grade class at the least. She's far ahead of me."

"No, I want her to stay with you."

She smiled. "Trust me when I say the departure would be bittersweet. I love your niece but she's a redwood growing in a flower pot with me."

"She loves it in your class and...and I think she'd be happiest with you. She knows you."

Ms. Sheers looked flattered but a little alarmed by Hal's insistence. She looked up just as Sunny was approaching the car and opening the passenger side seat.

"Hi, Ms. Sheers. What are you doing out here?" she asked.

"I was just telling your uncle how much I love having you in my class." she extended her hand to Hal again, "It was great meeting you, Hal."

"Wait! Don't leave! Please."

"Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, I just...I want to know more about you, what you like to do. What's your favorite movie? Are you married?"

Ms. Sheers stepped back from the car as if Hal had suddenly sprouted fangs right before her eyes and when she walked away, Hal leaped out of the car and followed her, maneuvering his way around and across the sea of waist high waves. He called to her but the further the gap between them became, the harder he ran and the easier it became to forget the name she had told him and call her name he wanted her to have.

When he threw open the doors to the school he had seen the woman disappear into, he wasn't in a school at all.

He was back in his office. Unconcerned with his strange change in location, he glanced around the small area and tore out of the door and back into lecture hall to dead silence that fell in between his beating breaths.

"No! No! Emma!"

"She's dead, Hal."

He whipped around and met his own wild eyes in the lenses on Milea's face.

"Where is she? Where's my sister?!" When she was silent, he relinquished control of himself, wrapped her shirt in his fist and smashed her back to the wall. "This is all your fault! You're doing this to me! Tell me where Emma is!"

She didn't flinch and carried her voice like a mother telling her child there was no Santa. "Emma Emmerich died in 2007 during the Big Shell incident from being stabbed by Vamp. She died in your arms, Hal."

"I saw her just now! I followed her here! TELL ME WHERE SHE IS!"

She calmly reached out and placed her hand lightly over his heart. "She's right here."

Hal cried out like she had just tried to steal it clean out his chest. "Don't tell me that! I can't lose her! Not again!" He let go of her and ran back into his small office, tearing the standing bookshelves down off the wall and anything else that he could find that would unhinge from its spot and fly across the room. He finally collapsed to his knees after turning over the desk and soon after felt a hand softly come down on his shoulder.

"Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?" He asked without looking up.

"I'm whoever you want me to be, Hal."

"Are you even real?"

"Is anything?" Though he couldn't see her eyes, he knew she wasn't mocking him this time.

"I'm real. Sunny's real. Dave's real. This university is real. You're the only thing I don't think is!"

"What's the name of this university, Hal?" As quickly as the answer should have sprung from his mind, it didn't. In fact, it wasn't actually there at all. "When was your first day teaching here? What's the address of here or even Sunny's school?"

Hal's mind ran around itself for the answers but they all felt like holes in his memory too deep to retrieve. By the time he noticed the tiny puddles building on the carpet next to him and looked up, the entire room was filling with water falling like rain from ceiling tiles. Milea placed both her hands on his chest.

"What are you doing?"

Her hands sent an electrical jolt through him that he felt rip deep into his very heart.

"What...what the hell was that? Stop that!"

"Your choice is coming, Hal."

"What...what are you talking about?"

"Trust me."

She ran her hand over softly over his face and down to his chest again. The second jolt from her hands sent him to the ground, staring directly up at her, his eyes reflecting the frantic movement that needed to reach his body in order to get away. The more he watched the rain pour down and cover them, the more static ring in his ears crawled into his skull, pushing out anything left him that wanted to fight his moment and his fate in it.

Her hands pressed down a little firmer down on his chest, solid and metallic like cold metal sending an unexplained wave of acceptance over him that made him press his hands over hers to let her feel his drop in resistance and lock in his readiness within himself. He knew it was coming and he simply closed his eyes for this one. He trusted her.

Third jolt.

Sunny...-

-to blackness.