Sorry for the delay! I got sick last weekend and so my muse has gone off and hidden somewhere in Kingdom Hearts II—like, literally in the game Kingdom Hearts II—and I think I need to complete Jiminy's Journal to find her. Seriously. Anyway, I wanted to post some Ephemerality because I know I can write it fairly quickly and I just need to start writing again. Meanwhile, HAVE SOME REVIEWER RESPONSES:

Anonymous: They don't know about it? I write when they don't have anything for me to do! Googledocs is GOD. And you're right—I was going to let Lady muse back on her time in school and settling the affairs etc just before talking to Dante, but I think actually having a short chapter that focuses on that alone would be stronger. Even if it's just a short bridge chapter, I think I need to have a little something, if only because I came up with so much for Lady's non-DMC life (like Randall—I have such a little crush on him just because he's so awesome and complicated in a minor character kind of way) and it would be a shame if I can't feature it even just a little.

Pink Priestess: I'm glad you're looking back at everything with a new perspective—that's what I was going for, after all! And my family says the same thing about me teaching them new words lol. And I'm sorry I haven't finished your giftshot yet—I've been rather busy this past week and haven't really had the time to sit down and write it. I fail. :(

KuteInsanity: I know what you mean. It's like: "Hey, look, played that earlier and now I get to read it. Woo." I like working on my own material more anyway—I feel less confined. I'm sure you can sympathize haha! And seeing as everything from this point on is new material...

This here chapter is Lady tying up Mary's loose ends, because Anonymous is right and I am wrong. X3 It's short, but it needed to be written. Now, fair readers, watch as I continue dodging giving names to locations!

Warning: Do not read this until you have read the corresponding chapter (in this case I.4/II.1) of The Passage of Time!


Ephemerality

6: Rites of Passage

(corresponds to a moment between I.4: Shared Mission and II.1: Recurring Events)

"Well, that should be it." Randall took the document back into his hands, brown eyes skimming each page with calculating interest. After looking at the last page for a moment, he put down the papers and glanced up at Lady and the other men and women sitting in the room. "Yeah. That's it."

Mr. Cole took his wife's hand, squeezing it gently. It was a silent gesture of relief—almost like: "Honey, the house is ours"—which Lady found touching, albeit incredibly unnecessary. She had put up absolutely no fight when it came to them buying her family's estate, and to be honest, she was glad that the sale had gone through without much trouble. If anything, she thought it had been a little too easy, and wondered if the buyers had been asking themselves the same thing. She had almost expected someone to ask why she wanted to sell it as desperately as she did, in which case she would have just told them: "I just want nothing to do with it anymore."

That was the last of her family's affairs. Everything in the house—furniture, books, cars—had been appraised and auctioned off, finances arranged, and now the house had been sold. The money had gone to estate expenses, lawyer's fees, tuition at the boarding school, all of the ridiculous charges like the motorcycle and tune-ups of Kalina Ann, a rather large amount of artillery and ammunition, and the four months of motels and diners that led her to Temen-ni-gru; whatever was left would buy her an apartment of some kind and keep her alive until cash started coming in more steadily.

Life after high school. Now that was a scary thought.

"Hey." Lady was jostled from her thoughts when Randall placed his hand on her shoulder. She glanced to her left, the pleased look on his face belying his concern. Of course he was in a good mood—selling the Arkham estate was a huge deal, and he made a lot of money off of it. "Everything okay?"

Lady nodded. "Just a bit distracted," she answered, quietly so that only he could hear her. "I've got a lot on my mind."

"Try to look a bit happier about the sale in front of the Coles," Randall said, patting her shoulder lightly before retracting his hand, still looking at the happy couple in front of him, who had now turned to their similarly pleased lawyer. "It looks better, you know?"

"Yeah." She tried forcing a smile with some success, as Mrs. Cole noticed and beamed back at her. Whatever that woman wanted—the estate was hers to deal with. "Look," Lady said, looking back at Randall, "I actually have to be back at school for a final at 3, so I should probably get going."

"Of course, sorry," Randall apologized, quickly standing. "Ladies, gentleman," he added to the others assembled in the room. "Miss Arkham actually has to head out; she has some academic affairs to deal with."

"Oh, don't let us keep you," Mr. Cole said, standing just as Lady did—a sign of politeness, she figured—and extended his hand. "Thank you, Miss Arkham. For everything."

Lady couldn't bring herself to answer, instead smiling politely as she shook his hand, then Mrs. Cole's hand, and then the lawyer's hand—who had a surprisingly strong grip for such a slight woman. After this entire tedious business, the next hand she wanted to shake was the hand of the headmaster as he handed her her high school diploma, which ideally would be in two weeks. Until then, she was sick of polite handshakes and would avoid them like the plague. Fortunately, Randall ushered her out after some brief goodbyes and thank yous, for which she was glad: she wasn't very good at formalities, despite how much her parents had trained her for how to deal with her father's business associates. She guessed that was something Mary had been good at, and that she had lost.

"Thanks for putting up with the name during this whole process, by the way," Randall said as they made their way towards the exit of the building. "Now that the estate is sold, we can go ahead and change it to Lady Finlow, if you still want."

"Yes, thank you," Lady answered. She had trained herself not to wince at her old name, just for simplicity's sake. Of course she still wanted to officially change it to Lady for all future documentation, but as long as she had to deal with Mary's affairs, she would have to answer to Mary's name, as unpleasant as it felt. "As soon as I graduate, I'm going to stop answering to that terrible name."

Randall sighed at those words. "Lady, your father—" He paused, but didn't wince under the harsh glare that she immediately gave him, still facing forward and walking at his usual brisk pace. "He did some terrible things there at the end, but until that point ... I mean, he was a good man, everything else aside. I know why you don't want his name, but it's not ... that bad."

She sighed. He was probably thinking of the legacy, the job opportunities that she would receive just by saying that she was the great Jonathan Arkham's only daughter—all things that were completely irrelevant in her line of work, not to mention the fact that her legacy wasn't exactly something that she wanted to shout from the rooftops. Who would people remember, the chief executive officer of a small but fairly profitable bank, or the man who went crazy and killed his wife before disappearing, or perhaps some combination of the two? Either way, it wasn't a name that she wanted following her around. Too many questions asked.

"I stand by my decision," Lady answered very flatly, turning her head forward once more to watch where she was going. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Randall shake his head, sigh, and drop the subject.

"How many finals do you have left?" he asked instead, holding the door open for her as they stepped out of the building and headed towards the parking lot. "Not many, I would imagine."

"History and calculus. Then all I have are a few ceremonies, including graduation." They approached her new motorcycle—she had bought herself a new one for quick travel between her lawyer's office in the city and the boarding school she attended a little over an hour out, and while the new bike was technically a better one she found herself missing the little quirks of her old one, particularly all of the features she had included. She actually hadn't had the time to trick out this new motorcycle yet between the amount of schoolwork she was doing to make sure that she had taken enough classes to graduate and driving back and forth between school and the city for various legal dealings. "And that's it. Nothing but the future ahead of me." It was a scary thought, but she was open to it.

"Have you thought about where you're going after graduation?" Randall stood awkwardly next to the motorcycle, watching with wary interest as she opened up the compartment in the seat to retrieve her helmet. He had long since promised her that he would stop nagging her about riding that screaming metal deathtrap, but she could see the protests sitting in the little lines on his face as he frowned and tried really hard to tell her to get a real car. It was too bad he had never seen her old bike—now that was a screaming metal deathtrap.

"Not yet," Lady admitted. The issue was giving her rather a lot of trouble, which was a bit disconcerting given how resolute she was about pursuing demon hunting for the rest of her life. She had promised herself not to hunt after anything so long as she was in school—if she had to finish her education she at least wanted to do a good job of it—but she had been trying to keep her ears open in terms of what was going on in the area. There wasn't much demonic activity in the area, which was good for the people who lived here but bad for her business. She would have to go elsewhere, but the question was: where? "I'm not staying here, though. Nothing for me to do."

Randall tilted his head slightly, as if to disagree with her in some way, but politely held his tongue. Good, because she didn't feel like arguing about career choices with him today. He said that he accepted her decisions, and yet he always seemed to be pleading with her to reconsider, follow the path that her parents would have wanted to follow for her. She was tired of reminding him that Mary would have obeyed her parents, but Lady didn't have parents to obey so was free to run her own life.

"I just need to find someplace where demons are skulking," she continued, leaning against her motorcycle. "Start chipping away at the number there until they're all dead and I'm sure that no more can come, and then move on to the next place."

"Sounds like an almost nomadic lifestyle," Randall commented. "Almost as if you're going where the winds take you."

"It's not like I'll wipe out all of the demons in a city in a month, but yeah, that's kind of what I had in mind," Lady agreed. "If that's how I need to live, then that's how I'll live."

Randall watched her with hesitant eyes, scrutinizing her intensely as if looking for an answer or permission or something else entirely. It was a little disconcerting—he had a very intense gaze—but it almost left her curious as to what he had to say, not that she would ever admit it. Instead she held firm, hoping that her resolution was enough answer for him.

Something in the air between them shifted and Randall sighed, eyes finally lowering from her face to instead rest on the handlebars of her motorcycle. "You know," he started, shifting uncomfortably as he spoke, something that she had never seen him do, "I've been paying attention to the reports about demonic activity. They're saying that ... God, what's the name of that city; you know, the one that had the tower last year..."

"Yeah?" Lady responded breathily, a little stunned that Randall of all people was going to give her a lead.

"They say there's a lot going on over there," he finished, eyes returning to hers with an absolutely unreadable look. "It's probably worth looking into."

"I'll..." she started, but quickly stopped when she realized that she wasn't exactly sure how to respond.

Going back to that city ... that was something that she hadn't thought that she would do until she had fully come to terms with everything that had happened. It also meant seeing that one demon, Dante, which she had only planned on doing when she figured out a way to kill him, and not before. And yet ... well, if it was the only lead she had, then she had no reason not to at least look into it, as Randall had said.

"Thank you," Lady said, smiling sincerely. At least he was trying to help, instead of fighting her plans.

"You're welcome," Randall answered, returning her smile with a slight one of his own. She had to admit; it was a million times more brilliant than the one he had been using in the office earlier over the signed documents, even though this was a lot smaller and subtler. Maybe he realized that he had actually done something for her personally—something that she wanted, instead of something that he or her parents might have wanted for her—and she was almost a little touched by the fact that this seemed so important to him.

"I ... should probably go," Lady said after a moment, glancing down at her watch. "It's an hour back to school, and my final—"

"No, yeah, go," Randall agreed, his impassive mask returning. "I'll give you a call when I have the paperwork for the name change. And if I don't see you before then, I guess I'll see you at graduation?"

"Sure," Lady said. A part of her registered that Randall would be the only person who would be there to see her walk and wondered what that made their relationship, but shrugged off the thought. She imagined that they wouldn't keep in touch after she graduated, both too wrapped up in their lives to call up someone with whom they had once maintained a purely professional relationship. After all, she didn't think that she would use him as a lawyer after this point: he knew Mary far too well to be of any use to Lady. It seemed a shame to lose contact with him after everything that had happened, particularly given the somewhat paternal fondness that he seemed to feel for her, but if it happened she wasn't going to do anything to fix it.

Besides, she had gotten used to the idea of having to deal with things on her own, living in her little bubble of independence away from the authority of another's opinion. She didn't talk to anyone from her school anymore, in part because everyone had figured out that she didn't want to talk to them and had given up on trying to reach out to her. They were afraid of her scars anyway and certainly hadn't bothered to ask where she got them from, though there were rumors that she occasionally heard whispered when they thought she wasn't there to hear them.

Her favorite was the one where she had spent those months working as a double agent in a foreign government. Her least favorite was the one where her father had tried to kill her too.

Even if she wanted to talk to her peers, they were all too busy talking about this college and that college and what they planned on studying. How could she be expected to participate in such conversations when her future was so different than theirs? They were looking towards the future with excitement and slight nervousness; they were overgrown children who claimed to be adults despite being as wide-eyed and juvenile as before. She looked towards the future with sobriety, aware of the fact that this was the only path for her, and that the tiny fragments of her childhood that had remained after everything would very soon be lost for good.

It seemed almost amazing that over a year had passed since she had killed her father at the top of Temen-ni-gru. She wondered if that's what adulthood was like: time moving faster than she would want it to move until she was old and broken and incapable of doing the things she had promised herself she would do. But at least being an adult meant that she could finally free herself of her obligation to Mary: soon she would be able to live her life as Lady instead of having to answer to a dead girl's name.

And yet the question remained: if Mary had been here, where would Lady go? Randall's suggestion seemed promising—she imagined that Temen-ni-gru's function as a portal to Hell remained even when the tower had crumbled, so there would be a lot of demons to kill. But she wasn't sure if she was prepared to face Dante again, not only because she still wasn't sure how to kill him, but because...

...because she had no real reason not to trust him. Dante was one of two people who knew her as both Mary and as Lady, and unlike Randall he saw her first and foremost as Lady, having christened her as such. The fact that he was an arrogant demon aside, he wanted to help and protect her, maybe even befriend her. He was a fellow demon hunter—and a strong one at that, she had seen from the way he fought—and could help her in her mission to kill all demons, even if he ended up being a casualty himself.

She hated it. She hated knowing that she could have someone she could trust. And she hated herself for doubting her own reasoning as to why she should stay away from him. Worst of all, it seemed as though she would have to come to some kind of decision about what she would do about him a lot sooner than she would have liked, if she did in fact move back to that fateful city.

But that was still a little too far in the future—Lady still had high school to finish, after all, and then she would play it by ear. Meanwhile, she shot Randall one more brief smile, put on her helmet, and swung herself onto her motorcycle.

"Take care," Randall said as she started the engine, taking a step back to give her room to drive out of the parking lot. He said it with such finality given the fact that she would see him again.

"You too," she said, and when he didn't say anything, instead staring at her with the same unreadable look on his face, she drove out of the parking lot and into the streets, following her familiar trajectory back to the boarding school. Before long Lady would graduate from high school and have to deal with the future. Meanwhile, she could enjoy the feeling of the wind as she drove her motorcycle a little too quickly, and hope that she would never grow old.