The Lost Ones

{A story about the storm and the break}

She had crumpled under the weight of his hands, under the weight of him. Her heartbeat had struggled against his fingertips and her nails had dug trenches in his skin. When he closes his eyes, he sees the memory of her face. He is with her ghost at all times.

Sammy had never wanted this. But Lace hadn't been Found even though she should have been. Prime had explained it in that slow rotation of a voice, the metal-clear slice of a boy who knew better.

Sometimes the Father just isn't enough. That's where people like Sammy come in. It's about justice and fairness and equality in life. Streets kids can get away with long hair and old clothes and all sorts of bad things, but should a Heights child so much as sneeze the wrong way, they are borne off on the Father's wings.

Her name had been Lace and Sammy had held her throat until she'd choked out her life into his hands. She had deserved every moment of that suffering. He'd counted the minutes until she'd succumbed. It had stretched longer than he'd expected. He'd cut her up just to be sure she was dead. He keeps feeling her heartbeat against his skin.

Lace isn't the first person he killed. She's just the first person who didn't deserve to die.

=={Humpty Dumpty}==

She doesn't deserve to be alive, she knows this. She can feel the shadow of her honest self whisper terrible assumptions in the back of her brain.

Harper is cold although she's curled up next to her mother. Billie's snoring. Rence is still missing but when Harper closes her eyes, she knows her sister is fine. Rence has always been fine. Harper thinks Rence will keep telling everyone that she's fine up until the day that she dies.

Her mother had storm-proofed the house but no one could storm-proof Harper's body.

She knows she's leaving. That's the worst bit, it's waking up and thinking eighteen days left, if I'm lucky.

Haper has black nails that do not break no matter how hard she tries to chew them off. Her skin is covered in fine ivory hairs that get thicker each day. Her sanity is held on by her own sadism.

Billie shivers and draws her daughter closer. For a second, Harper's something human.

=={broke}==

"It's nothing human," Nikka hisses, "You weren't out there, Taylor. It's mad fog. Aint a single smack in all the Father's kingdom that survives what's worse 'n what we got through."

Taylor rolls her eyes, padding to the door. "What happened to hero Nikka? Scared, smack?"

It occurs to Nikka that Taylor never smiles and means it. Whenever the little one is grinning, it's the ghost of cruelty stretching her lips tight.

"It was probably just debris in the wind," Landa says, waving it away. Nikka sends her a grateful look.

The knocking gets more frantic. Taylor sends the room a particularly acidic look and yanks the entrance open.

Two teens tumble in, one bleeding badly. He slams the door behind them, sliding to the floor, holding his skin together with his hands.

The girl he is with seems to exist somehow beside him and alongside him at the same time, as if their heartbeats are perfectly intertwined.

"Help," she croaks.

Nikka, startled, leaps to her feet, but Beck and Landa are already beside the boy, leading him to the couch and stripping him of his shirt so they can judge the degree of his wounds.

"Don't you open that door again," the girl babbles, "Not for crumbly nothing. Nothing. Do you un'erstand that?"

Beck slides his eyes towards her and then back to his patient. "Nikka, tear up a shirt into long strips," he barks, "Carrie, I'm glad you're awake. See if you can get Kas to boil some water for us. Taylor, reach into my bag and find a blue-green bottle with a red cap. Get a spoon."

The others spring into action. Taylor sends him a look. "You don't tell me what to –"

"Do it," the new girl snarls, squeezing her friend's hand, "Now." Her hair is streaked with water and dirt. She looks sickness-touched.

Taylor rolls her eyes and does as she's told.

"I'm Landa, and you're pretending you're not hurted," the blonde states, deft hands taking the cloth from Nikka and spooning the contents of the bottle into the boiling water. It fizzes and she doesn't flinch when she dips her skin inside of it, swirling the rags around. The two Healers clean the boy's tan skin, moving with the efficiency of practice.

Landa winks at the girl. "I'm guessin' this here smack is your significant-otherly."

"Rigby," the girl croaks. She looks empty. She has scrapes over every inch of her body. "I'm Dill."

With Nikka's help, Beck holds down the boy while they sow his long wounds together.

Rigby makes the saddest noise Dill has ever heard.

At Beck's instructions, Taylor mixes a dose of something that knocks him into numbness. He feels nothing but heat.

"I'm so sorry," he murmurs, "Thank you so much."

"You needn't be sorry for nothin', sweetie," Landa tells him, her fingers tying off his first round of sutures.

When Beck had found her, she hadn't known how to talk without waiting to be hit. He'd shown her a spine. Her girlfriend had become her heart, had carved one out of muscle and scar tissue and then had taken it with her to the grave.

"I do. It followed us," Rigby's voice is sloppy with blood and drugs. Dill tries to shush him but his eyes can't stay steady. "You're all going to die."

=={just one}==

"We're gon' make it out of here alive," Fi promises.

"How?" Nisse hisses, tiptoeing around the two teens crashed on her couch. She's exhausted from the healing, but Fi's presence is singing through her blood. She keeps closing her eyes, waiting for the moment when it turns into a dream.

Fi is dead. Nisse's father had actually cried. He had burned all of Fi's things. Nisse had hidden her twin's favorite shiny in a sock.

One day in a fit, her dad had torn into Nisse's clothing and had taken it. She's never coming back, Nisse. Get over it.

Nisse had stood on the edges of buildings and contemplated dirtying the purity of the Heights streets with her insides. She had imagined her bones slowly breaking the skin of her body. She would pop like a soap bubble. All of her dainty Heights teaching would splatter in a red sunset. Maybe if she was lucky, she'd still be breathing at the bottom while they tried to put her back together, just for that moment to laugh at all their kempt faces sucking inwards at the sight of her skull bashed against cement.

It had been all her fault. She had pushed Fi into the shadows. She had cut their connection for the sake of pride. She had rolled over on an empty bed, waiting for the weight of her twin to collide with her warm body. Instead she'd met only cold sheets and a smooth mattress.

Whenever the sirens had gone off, she'd had trouble staying still. Too much of her wanted to shed her clothes and shriek at the skies to take her. She'd stopped eating one day. It felt right to be as empty as her mind.

She'd forgotten what the streets felt like, but when she'd seen Rence and Deeter, she'd remembered. The heat that burned between them woke her up. They hadn't let her die. Maybe she doesn't want to go. Maybe the ghost of self-preservation had spoken for her.

Fi is not dead and now Nisse's skin is buzzing across her bones. It is the shock of suicide without the permanence.

"No way we'll make it out," she continues, "We'll be Found."

Fi shakes her head, crunching on a tuber. Her plans are spread along the table. "If we stick t' the path, we'll be safety. Storm'll cover us. Every smack knows the Father can't fly in this weather."

Nisse takes a deep breath, grinning. She runs her hands through her hair. "And how are we supposed to survive the storm? Where are we even going?"

Her twin gets a small smile and pulls her bag around the front, opening the flap.

Nisse almost shrieks, her hands slapping across her mouth at the last second.

A little matted-fur beast peeks up at her. She slides her fingers around his ribcage and hauls him upwards. His back paws kick a little, but he's too beaten up to do much.

Nisse's heart breaks, splattering against him. "Baby," she whispers, "What is this?"

She sets him on the table and gets him a saucer of water, running her hands over his warm fur.

"This is Solar," Fi says. Fi has a warm smile that had crushed Nisse's nightmares late at night. Fi had gone and the nightmares had stayed. "Some kinda fire fox, far as I can tell. Havoc called him… something like… I guess he's a Vulpix? Vul-pan? Vul-tari? Somethin'." She wrinkles her nose. "I'm allergical to him, though."

"Havoc? Who's Havoc?"

Nisse is already in love. He rubs his tiny wet nose against her fingers, and when she sits down, he stumbles into her lap, digging in his dewclaws to gain purchase. Solar wraps his tail around his body, hunkering down. His fur is coarse with grime.

"Well that's a whole lotta 'xplainin'," a voice says. It's Rence, rubbing her eyes, the long sleeves of her shirt bagging around her elbows. "You folks best learn to actually-factually whisper or you're gon' get'chur selves Found." She looks sleepy but content, padding to the table and pulling up a barstool. She rubs Solar's ears and he leans against her fingers.

Deeter's right behind her. He'd woken up next to her again, and it wouldn't be such a big deal if the ghost of her figure didn't still torture him with a girl he couldn't kiss. He yawns and introduces himself to Fi before making Rence tea.

Nisse's twin had brightened right away at the streets in Rence's voice. "You smacks know Havoc?" Her eyes are shining.

Rence nods her head and remembers to ask before peeling a tuber and sticking it in her mouth. "Got me one of them sky things too," she says, "But mine's a dog, I suppose." She looks distant. "Hope he's weathering the storm rightly."

Her face doesn't change in a perceptible way but rather an emotional one. Nisse witnesses one million shadows strangling a girl alive.

Deeter squeezes her shoulder and she comes back to them, smiling. "But t'aint in the least safety to keep one in the Heights, Nisse. You'll get Found 'fore you can blink."

Nisse bites her lip. "I know," she agrees as Solar sets his head down for a nap, "I can't stay in this place any longer anyway."

"Me neither," Rence grins, "I got a sister… I need to get back to." There's a peculiar stilt to her words. Each one requires strength to heave from her mouth. She darts her eyes to the window. "So whatever little 'scape plan we smacks got brewin', count me in."

=={rule}==

Count me out, Lace had said, wrinkling her little button nose and taking a step backwards. It had been four days before she died, strangled in the streets near a lamp with a stained-glass shade. She'd groped at the walls, her fingers turning bloody as she struggled.

In Addison's memory, she is still light skin and a blush across her cheeks. She still chews her lip to bleeding and still likes her hair on top of her head, out of her eyes. She still tastes like candy, but she's become bitter in the days before she dies.

He had reached out and grasped her hand in his. It's going to be ok, Lacey.

She had wrenched her arm back so quickly that it had hit the wall behind her.

Don't you call me that, she'd hissed, Addie called me that.

He hadn't asked her what that had meant. He'd stood there, paralyzed by the idea that if he took a step forward, he could fix this.

He hadn't moved at all.

"Ready?" asks Prime, and Addison shrugs, sending his friend a long look over one shoulder.

Prime's long, lean body is sprawled over Addison's bed. There's a mountain lion curled next to him, breathing in the same pattern as her master. She flexes her claws. Prime does not pet her.

Addison clears his throat and moves in front of the fire, sitting down as slowly as possible. There's a deep pressure inside of his head, and whenever it gets like this, words start invading his mind, words he can't explain. They are filled with sorrow and deceit and betrayal and he doesn't know where the ink came from, but it is killing him.

Forgive the forward nature of my wording, madam, but your beauty flat struck me dumb and thusly I cannot use poetry to convey the depth and exquisite certainty of my awestruck appreciation of your fine female form, so-to-speak. He'd winked at Lace and she'd hit him in his arm.

I know that's fancy-talk for wantin' me, she'd said. She'd never been pulled in by his whirlpool of wit, and maybe that's why he had loved her. She was the only one safe from him. She is the only one dead because of him.

Addison doesn't talk as well now. He used to be able to construct cities in his cathedral of a mouth. Now he just crumbles.

The large cat yawns, her yellow-white teeth shiny in the firelight. She stretches and jumps off the mattress, padding over to the couch. Prime follows in her wake. She comes up to his hip. She sleeps on papers when Prime tries to work.

"You'll excuse her presence, of course," flat smile, "She's necessary."

The younger boy shrugs again. It's not really like he has a choice. That cat could eat him if he refused.

"Wonderful. Then we'll begin." Prime rubs his hands together. "Try to relax."

Addison closes his eyes.

=={that's all}==

Carrie's eyes are open but she feels broken. The world is swimming strangely, the floor rushing up towards her and then quickly away. She stumbles but doesn't mention her unease. She tastes blood in the back of her throat.

She had been four years old the first time she'd seen her own bones, a yellow-white flash between layers of skin and muscle. She had fainted from blood loss.

Maybe she's not clear of her concussion yet, because she can't tell if Rigby is being serious or he's just deluded like she is.

"We're going to die?" she repeats, slipping into a chair. She can't stand up very long. It makes black dots in front of her. When she'd hit her head, she'd heard the impact inside her skull.

Beck sends her a concerned glance, but he's holding a boy's innards in with his hands. Carrie has to wait.

Dill looks extremely uncomfortable. Doesn't answer the question.

The room gets silent. Beck and Landa continue to work, Landa's cheeks hollow.

Rigby is floating in a drug haze. Dill has these bright nothing-special eyes while Rigby has a body that's everything-special. It is her soul that slips out through the cracks in her that he's attracted to. Dill has a mind that's going in every direction, and when she turns her eyes towards him, he becomes pinned. It's the crush of her solid attention that does him in – he's lost in the crushing force of being noticed.

He thinks that when she breathes, it makes his lungs expand. He gets distracted, sometimes, just looking at her, losing his train of thought in the middle of sentence because of the expectation in her eyes. One time he had found her dividing her lunch in half for a starving orphan girl named Lace.

Rigby did not mean to fall in love with her. She was the absolution of everything he should have avoided. Dill is awkward angles and a ghost-lined past, she has cracked lips and coarse hair and when she kisses him, he can't keep his heart in his chest.

He had kissed her fingertips and she'd sent him that lantern stare. So you do care for me.

Rigby would follow her everywhere. In his pocket is a ring he's waiting to put on her.

And now they're all going to die.

Carrie's the one to break the tense air between them all. "Exactly how," her voice cracks, "Are we going to die?"

The newcomer looks down to her hands. Landa's at her side, cleaning Dill's bloody skin.

"We're from the Cliffs," the skinny girl says slowly.

Everyone in the room draws a sharp breath.

She looks up. "We were just tryin' t'get out for the Showing," she blurts, "We didn't know they was following us."

Beck is on his feet instantly. "Taylor, get wood. We'll need to board the windows more. Carrie, start looking for holes, for cracks, for any way some smack could get in. Nikka, we're gonna need that bow of yours. I'll see if'n I can set you up a roost from the attic."

Taylor's black eyebrows arch. "Just why, again? I know the Cliffs t'aint safety, but…?"

Nikka's already moving, stacking boards and looking for anything that could serve as a weapon. She sends Taylor a sad look. "You're young, huh?" she wonders.

The little black-haired demon instantly snarls, showing off teeth.

Nikka shakes her head, snapping a board in half over one knee. "Listen to Beck and stay out of the way."

Landa snorts. "If'n you want to stay alive, that is." Landa's smeared something over Dill that makes the gangly teen itch but hurt less at the same time.

The Healer girl is digging through Beck's bag, setting out equipment Dill doesn't recognize.

Jason stirs from his spot on the couch. He looks ready to drop from exhaustion. "We're in a crumbly mess if'n what I think I overheard, I overheard."

Beck's lips form a straight line. "I'd suggest helpin' Carrie with securing the house."

Jason pales.

Dill clutches Rigby's hand. He's fading in and out of consciousness, but it looks like he'll make it. She'll be completely useless until he's awake, but it's not like she could have done much to help the group anyway. Her soul is swaddled in this boy's body. She cannot leave his side.

Beck washes his hands off in the sink and Landa pads over, mirroring the action.

"I saw your list," she murmurs, low enough that only he hears it. "It's longer."

The Healer boy lifts one shoulder and scrubs at caked blood.

"When it said Lace…?" she trails off, rubbing at her palms, staring at her skin.

"Yeah," he mumbles, "I was trying to find a way to tell you."

Landa does not cry. Landa sets her jaw and says, "Mercy on her." Landa does not feel anything but adds Lace to her list, too.

They are quiet in the rush of the others, making sure they get all the sanguine staining off of their skin. "Hey Beck?" she asks, and he cuts his eyes to her. "Don't die today, ok?"

He grins. "Don't die, either, Lan," he tells her. "Aint nobody got time for that."

She pulls her spine straight and dries her hands on her pants. "Ok," she calls, turning, commanding the room easily, "Dill, we're gonna need to know what's coming for us. Carrie, come talk to me."

The girl with scars instead of skin pads over, her big sad eyes expectant.

"Now, you're concussed," Landa says, "We can help with that temporarily, but I think it's best if Jason handle Kas and you see how well you can do with your knives. You're in no place to be doin' both at once."

Carrie closes her eyes, nods. "I'll tell him." Her eyes slide to Beck and then drop.

The brunette boy twists his lips to the side. "I'll come. I need Nikka's help with somethin' anyway."

She brightens and lets him lead her away.

Landa turns her attention to the little devil stacking boards against a window. Landa crooks one finger at her, beckoning. Taylor doesn't come. Landa does it again, smiling this time. Talyor rolls her eyes and stomps over.

"What?" she spits, "I'm already gettin' everythin' together. What else could you want from me?"

Landa rolls her eyes. "Go find out from Dill what we're dealing with while I set up the med station."

Taylor's nose wrinkles. "We don't need it."

"We're gonna need the station, babe. Believe me."

"I'm not your babe," Taylor spits, storming away. No one had been Landa's babe for a long time.

Dill looks up towards the girl who holds a storm in her soul. The little one plops down and doesn't do a good job hiding the disgust on her face when she sees the connection between Dill and Rigby.

"Will you please," voice clipped, "Tell me why in the Father's kingdom –"

Outside, someone howls. It's not the wind. Taylor's words die in her throat. Dill's head swivels towards the sound. "They're here," she breathes. "I'm so sorry."

"Who?"

Dill fixes all of her attention on the innocent teenager. Taylor feels like she's being swallowed whole.

"Vexes," Dill whispers.

=={so Humpty}==

She screams in agony, but Gabrielle is used to this. No one ever made friends with a Healer. She holds pain in the palm of her hands. She started this because she just wanted to help.

Her patient lies back, panting. The device unpins from her skin.

The storm outside beckons the Healer's eyes. She's going to have to go out in that, because that's what she does. There are scars on her wrist from times she hadn't worked fast enough.

She had made a lot of mistakes. They were etched into her so she could never forget.

Gabrielle packs her bag and hands the woman a salve for later.

Her pocket beeps and she slides out the communicator. She's never been good with the bulky thing, but she wrestles it open and puts it against her ear, waiting.

"Eight," she's told, and she bites her lip, hangs up.

Puts her hand on the doorknob and slings her bag over one shoulder.

=={heard}==

Nisse throws her bag to the ground, packing in a flurry. Rence paces at the door while Deeter lounges with a book, making small-talk with her twin.

She pauses to write a note to her parents but then remembers that Fi is alive and she's been lied to. Her father's tears had stained her heart. She can feel shadows crawling up her shoulder blades. She used to be someone else, back when she and Fi were children in the streets.

Clothes and a few books fly into her bag. She packs knives and pans and her flint. She has a box under her bed of precious things. They get folded between a blanket and a hairbrush.

Nisse stops at stares at her possessions. She doesn't want any of them. It has been a long time since she had wanted anything. She has held hands with the seven deadlies and the seven salvations, and they have divided her soul in seven ways.

Lust and Chastity had always in the whispers of her skin and in the curl of his hair, Lust in deep kisses and Chastity in long hugs. She had wanted a forever and a right now at the same time, she had wanted long walks in the park and a wet tongue taking a long stroll down her ribcage, she wanted her white dress to be as pure as she was and she wanted her shirt torn off her body.

She takes out a book and replaces it with a small pillow, reorganizes her socks.

Temperance and Gluttony had always been so laughable to her because she wanted to be skinny but she wanted to eat, more. Nisse experienced gluttony on a spiritual level, too, because gluttony is never having enough to fill her up, gluttony is turning around and being empty even though she's praying for salvation under a fog-covered sky. Temperance had held her hand and told her that if she stopped eating, she'd be scraped clean and turned a new kind of empty she could control.

Nisse trades a pan for her journal and a picture for cutlery.

She had wanted the ear-nips of Charity and the vicious tearing of Greed, straight down her soul. She wanted to give herself out to everyone because it killed her that there wasn't enough to go around. She had twisted into wanting someone to notice that she ended up holding nothing: at the end of the day, she gave away her heart and her head and her thoughts and her body and she ended up alone in a classroom, wanting to puke but having nothing left in her stomach. Charity ruined her because she never let Greed speak very loudly.

Creasing her brows, she slips in one of the notes Neil had passed her. Stay strong.

Wrath of course had swaddled her in wonderful power: she could be anyone and anything and the world legitimately bent to her satisfaction. When she was younger she figured out that there's some charismatic trait to her that lures people into doing as she wishes and when Wrath held her in his arms, she let go of morals and held instead onto heartbreak. Patience, being Wrath's blue twin: Patience found her and told her that if she was lucky and very very very still, the arrow in the crossbow she was building would find her eventually. She would paint the walls red with her insides.

It had taken her a long time to figure out what being a good person is like. She had looked towards Fi for instruction, but when her twin had left, so had Nisse's hold on reality.

She is Kindness, she is, because Envy knows her soul in such a way that she feels his talons in her skin. Not the envy of books that appears in a jade green color but instead a low-lighting envy, a soft kind of envy at the joy others have in life that she does not possess: she loves others for being alive. She lives vicariously through the joy in humanity. She doesn't have that. She envies the little girl she was, the girl who thought she could talk to trees. She wanted to be magic and when she grew up, she learned there's nothing to live for except her mistakes.

Nisse shouldn't, but as she puts her things in piles of keep and discard, she realizes she wishes she was walking out in the storm to die.

Pride had made her want her talents on display, Pride had made her happy when others fell down and Pride made her excited by how quickly she excelled in school. Pride told her that she had to be popular in order to show off her skills, and somewhere in her desire for love, she lost herself to Humility. She looked herself in the face and realized she was not only nothing special, she was an ugly cast-out creation of the Father, she was a terrible student and a worse daughter. She had wanted to be pretty and special and have something real. Humility told her that should curl up and let the Earth crumble around her, because she didn't deserve anything she received.

Fi was promising her a new life. Maybe somewhere out there on the streets, she'd find her heart again.

Sloth, the last: she'd lost her entire being to Sloth. Sloth is twinned with Diligence, the focus she's carrying around, the one that ensured her place in the Heights schooling system. She just wants to feel alive. Diligence had taught her that the harder that she worked for something she loves, the harder she'll fall when eventually she gets it. Sloth is kinder, Sloth is soft and tired and he will be the only one there for her when she closes her eyes and makes the jump. Sloth made her want sleep more than people. Sloth made her want peace.

She can't fight it anymore. She can't.

=={the Father's call}==

"I can," Prime says, closing his eyes, "If you'll let me."

Addison lowers his hands into Prime's waiting palms. "Are you sure this will work?" He pretends his voice doesn't shake. "And it won't give me the sickness?"

"The only thing I can say for certain is that you will experience extreme discomfort, possibly even pain. This is all part of the experience. I urge you to remain calm. In the event of an emergency –"

"An emergency?" Addison blurts, "What is this, the Showing?"

Prime's cat growls, low in her chest. It puts Addison's hairs on end. He tries to pull away, but Prime's fingers lock onto his skin.

"She doesn't like it when people interrupt me. I encourage you to think twice about doing so in the future."

Addison doesn't say anything.

"Let's begin."

The mountain lion's eyes light up. She digs her long claws into the baseboards and shakes a violet glow around her fur. It seeps onto Prime's skin and crawls its way up his arms, spreading across his torso.

Addison tries to pull away again, but the glow has reached Prime's wrists and comes in contact with the other boy's body.

Slippery warmth coats his fingertips and his palms. At first he feels nothing but heat and then suddenly he feels every particle in his system at once, dancing in the moonlight of a mountain lion. He opens his mouth to comment but he finds he's without explanation of the sensation he's undergoing.

"I want you to think of Lazaro," Prime suggests. Addison can't think of anything but the wet blanket that is buzzing at his elbows and lapping at his biceps. "Whenever you think is best."

Addison closes his eyes. Aro.

Aro had been at the bottom of a well, tucked in the shadows and sucking on a broken claw. He had eyes that shone even the darkness.

What is it? Lace had asked, A cat-weasel?

He'd grinned and gone for rope. A cat-weasel indeed, my dear. A blue cat-weasel with a red feather. I don't suppose when you asked for adventure today this is what you had in mind.

Exactly what I had in mind, actually, Lace had laughed.

"Keep your mind on Lazaro, if you would," Prime prompts. Addison jumps.

Aro, with a cold touch and soft fur and who curls up in a small ball to go to sleep. He has a soft snore and likes to hide behind Addison's leg when things get tense. Aro.

The cat's syrup-coating reaches his head and suddenly everything is tearing apart in Addison's brain. He opens his mouth but he can't even force out the scream, the glaze gets in his throat and in his lungs and he coughs but no air comes out. He jerks, his hands still caught by Prime's ten cold digits. His sight goes out and he falls to the ground, writhing, trying to spit out the thick membrane he's been saturated with.

It's inside of him and there's so much heat, burning the insides of his body and searing his soul out, he can't breathe and he can't see, wildfire licking at his insides.

Something inside of his brain cracks.

Ice explodes from every angle, sharp darkness that stabs him and coats him and chases out every inch of the cat's too-much heat.

Mine, it says, You're no longer needed.

Addison gasps. "He's here."

Prime doesn't let go. "Tell me what you see," he hisses, "Right now."

Ice and heat at the same time – he's lost all sense of extremes and is floating in a terrible numb pain. He opens his eyes and almost throws up. Everything is blurry and moving too fast. He recognizes none of the colors, none of the shapes. He knows Prime is in front of him but instead he sees a black staircase and a sad smile, blue masks and so many things flying at him, all at once.

"Aro…" he calls, same way he'd called later, snapping his fingers towards his new friend.

I think we should adopt him, Lace had said. She'd been the first to touch the weasel, pulling him out of the well and tucking him against her warm body. She'd nursed him to health and they'd spent their nights looking for patterns in the fog. Addison chased the two of them through the streets, laughing when he caught up, bowling them both to the ground. Lace got kisses and Aro got hugs. She had held both of their hands when they were hiding and had fought to keep them safe. She had curled next to the two of them even when Addison's skin had become so cold, he couldn't feel his soul.

Lace.

The ice in him disappears and the heat's back, but it's worse this time, it's uncontrolled, he can feel it unwinding inside of him, snaking through his veins and losing itself in his entrails. He starts screaming before he realizes what he's doing.

She had crumpled, but not before fighting. He can feel her gasping breaths and her last thoughts. She had no one to call out for. I'm sorry it came to this, Addison. He can feel her ghost holding him down too, cutting through the layers of his body and running her tongue down his bones.

"I told you to only think of him," Prime snarls, ripping his hands away. The heat is gone instantly and Addison tries to shake himself back into the world without much effect.

The cat leaps to her paws. Prime is still covered in her extended power, his hands in tight fists. "We were there," he growls, stepping forwards, looming over the boy on the floor, "You messed it up."

His cat's black ears pin against her head. Addison tries to scramble away, but she stalks his process, her heavy paws shaking the house.

What kind of person owns a lion? Lace had wondered. Addison had laughed.

"I am always," Prime puts one hand to his head, "Always disappointed. Honestly, I'm not sure why I even bother with this anymore." He is shining from every pore. He leans down to the simpering ball of fear that Addison has become. "It's extremely tedious." His cat opens her jaws and unsheathes her claws.

"Wait," Addison begs, throwing up his hands, "It worked."

Prime freezes and so does his lion.

"I, uh," Addison gulps, "It worked. I can… I can feel… Aro." Time was he could have lied his way out of a situation like this. Now he's sounding uncertain even though he's speaking the truth.

There's a small cold crack across his mind, the ghost of Lazaro's presence. If Addison prods it, it expands and coats him in frost.

Addison, it says, speaking less in words than in pictures.

"Excellent," Prime smiles, stepping back. His cat winds her way around his legs. "Shall I make us some tea?" He pads off towards the kitchen.

Addison gets to his feet, stumbles to the bathroom and throws up until he cannot breathe.

He had touched Lace's ghost, somehow. He had felt her die, felt the flutter of her heartbeat against his fingertips. She had wondered why no one was coming to save her.

Don't worry, says the voice in his head, It's all going to be all right.

=={and all}==

It's all going wrong, but that is to be expected. Sammy doesn't really understand people, even at the best of times.

"It's simple, father," he says, his mouth in a straight line, "There are times when killing is lawful and when living is not."

There are fingers in his brain suddenly, and he thinks of Lace when he hits the ground.

He spits out blood.

=={the Heights}==

He sucks in air. It's caught by the wind and turned against him. The cold of the storm takes the feeling from his toes and fingers almost instantly.

Owen slips his nose deeper into his borrowed scarf. He tries to take a step but ends up stumbling backwards.

Connor had taught him how to walk softly enough to stay hidden in the streets and how to walk tall when others spat at him. Connor had taught him everything except how to lose a brother and not feel broken.

The teen digs his toes into the ground and snarls at the weather. He is going to make it to Rose's house. There's no other option.

She's only four doors down, but he can tell already that he'll be wrecked by the time he gets there. He pulls his arms around his body and ducks his head and starts walking the way Connor would have wanted.

Door one. He had come home with a sown-up body of his older brother. His mother had crumpled to the floor and had never really gotten up afterwards.

Door two. He had not eaten for six days. Mason had cried into the night, but Owen had not. He had found his brother's empty bag in the streets. At the bottom was a picture of their family that Mason had drawn.

Door three. His mother had become dust and Mason had become his son. Once Owen had forgotten to take him home from school and Mason had already written him an epitaph. It was very pretty. Their mother had pecked him clean with those eyes of hers.

He lurches up her steps and slams his body against the door. It opens easily and that terrifies him, because Rose obviously didn't know how to secure the building.

Every part of him hurts with frostbite. He tries to stand but his knees buckle. He pulls himself inside, shivering, kicking the door closed behind him. It's warmer away from the wind, but not much. There's shattered glass everywhere from the windows. Fog howls in through the holes in the walls. Furniture is thrown every which way and Owen's heart sinks.

"Rose?" he calls out, "Rosie, it's me, Owen. I took you home today?"

He hears no answer.

Keeping his head low, he staggers through the rooms, calling her name.

Owen's chest starts tightening. Some strange logic in him reasons that if she's dead, Mason's dead.

He's hears a tiny mewling. His heart jumps and he lunges for the sound, following it to a small closet. He rips the door off its hinges completely by accident, adrenaline flushing his veins. He forgets that he's cold and numb and digs through a pile of clothes to a small girl with wide eyes and a black cat beside her.

Owen takes a moment to close his eyes and thank every single thing he can think of.

"Hey," he smiles, "Don't cry." He crouches to her level, taking off his gloves and wiping her tears. "I gotcha."

"He promised," she blurts, "He said he'd be here." She's shivering.

"Well, my darling, he did his best. How 'bout you be strong for him and see if you can come to him, 'stead of the other way 'round?" He grins at her and offers one finger to the cat to smell. It stares at him.

"How?" she sniffles.

"Simple as can be, little one. We'll get you bundled up rightly. Zy's just down with Miss Bree. T'aint nothin' but four doors."

Rose wipes her faces off with her sleeve. "Yeah," she decides, "Ok." She gives him a look. "Where's Mason?"

Owen does not grimace, although his soul does. "Well, Mason's awful far from here. He's back at home. Now, we've got some bit of preparation for storms, so I'm mostly relyin' on that boy's commonal sense." He makes a face. "What say you? You think Mace has got 'nough upstairs to get himself and my ma to safety?"

Rose bundles the cat into her lap, thinking. "Yeah, I'd say so," she decides. He doesn't know why, but it relaxes him immensely.

"Are we takin'… that?" he asks, watching as it curls up in her lap.

"Eclipse," she says, "He's named Eclipse. I named him." Her eyes get wide. "Please don't tell nobody. Zy says 'Lipse t'aint safety to have."

"You're right, it t'aint," Owen tells her, getting coats together for her, "But every smack knows the Father can't fly when it storms. Just who d'ya think I'd tell?"

"Yeah, but never," Rose pushes, "You can't never tell nobody." She stands up and lets him layer her. He tries to wrap a sweater around the cat and it gives him the most disapproving look he has ever received.

"Promise I won't, little girl," he smiles, "Aint nobody that benefits some cat gettin' Found." He pauses, twisting cloth into a lead so the three of them won't get separated in the wind, "Though I do reckon your brother owes me a bowl of soup at this point in our friendship."

She laughs and his lips twist. "Listen, Rosie, afore we go…" he tries to find some way of saying it, but can't.

"Zyon's hurt mighty terrible, aint he?" she asks, not making eye contact. When Owen doesn't say anything, she lifts one tiny shoulder. "Figured 's much when he didn't come get me. I weren't cryin' 'cause of me. I were cryin' 'cause of him."

"I patched him up best as I could, but I t'aint Beck and we don't got half the med stuff the Heights does. Once the storm's over, we'll see 'bout gettin' him some real help, but…" Owen trails off, running his hands through his hair.

"Don't matter much so long as he t'aint Departed or Found," Rose shrugs, "Now get me to that smack so I can punish him proper for gettin' hurt."

Owen smiles and loops the makeshift rope over one of her wrists. She holds Eclipse tight to her chest, but Owen slips a collar around his head anyway, just to be certain. After some thinking, he puts the cat under her jacket, securing him tightly against her. He puts a hat on her wild black hair and takes a deep breath.

"Ready?" he says. She nods and they step out of the closet and into the wind.

She shrieks a little, grabbing his hand and staying close to him. He covers her head and guides her through the wreck of her house. He tries to warn her before they step outside, but it's snatched from his lips. Given the way she's shivering, she knows it's bad anyway.

He wrestles the door open and guides her out. The howl of the wind slams her instantly and he's glad for the leash because he almost loses her. She tries to stand and walk but she's forced against the wall of the house.

Owen pulls his scarf up and his hat down and then takes a deep breath. He bundles the small girl into his arms, keeping her face turned towards his chest. She wraps her arms around his neck and has to shift when she chokes him by accident. The cat wriggles between them.

He takes a deep breath again and starts to walk. The wind is behind him, pushing him forwards. He makes progress down her lawn and into the road when the storm shifts and cuts at him from the front. He feels her shiver so he slings her around to his back, taking the full blast of the storm on his own.

"Hey, cat?" he calls. He's already bone-weary and frozen and it's still three houses to go, "I don't suppose you've got any kindsa psychic nonsense you could imbue me with at this point?"

"What?" says Rose.

Owen stumbles a little but catches himself. "That purple cat did it, don't see why you can't," he mutters. He can't even hear his own voice.

Door one. The wind shifts and Rose goes back around. He does his best to protect her, but her lips are turning white and her skin is blotching with the cold. Her eyes are watering from the force of the wind, but her face is set in determination.

Door two. Owen trips, and at the new center of balance that Rose affords, falls. He twists enough that he ends up under her, but he can feel his head crack against the ground. Black explodes on his iris.

The cat hisses.

What if he just died here? That wouldn't be so bad. There were worse ways to go than freezing to death. He'd heard in a kitten tale that everything actually felt kind of warm towards the end.

"Owen?" her little voice is distant in the snarl of the wind. "Owen?"

He blinks and comes back around. She's shaking him, terrified. He sits up and sees stars, but he doesn't care. He lurches to his feet and slings her onto his back. He can't stand up straight. He's turned around. The fog is everywhere and he's not even certain he made the right choice anymore.

A tiny bead of calm starts from the center of his spine and pushes outwards. The air stills and holds steady for three feet around them. It's still cold, but Owen can get his bearings and catch his breath. He steadies himself on a mailbox.

"Sky," he says. The wind is still howling around their tenuous little bubble, but she can hear him. "You wanna 'xplain that, Rosie?"

"It's Eclipse," she breathes, burying her face in the cat's fur, "But you gotta move quick-like, Owen. Don't think he can keep this up much."

The sides of their little sanctuary ripple as she speaks.

He can't stand to be in that wind again. He won't make it the next time it hits him.

Owen grits his teeth and then starts running with every ounce of desperation he has left in his body. They fly past the third door as the sphere shrinks. He careens up Bree's steps, wrenching the door open and tumbling through just as the circle collapses.

He closes his eyes. The door slams shut.

=={Healers}==

She wrenches the door open. Deeter reaches out for her hand but grabs her coat instead. She sends him a look.

"Solar?" Fi prompts. She has to clear her throat and say it louder. The little creature stirs in Nisse's arms, opening brown eyes and yawning. He unhinges his jaw and lights a fire in the back of it. Nisse blinks and pulls back at the sudden light and warmth.

Rence's eyes dance. "Think Copper's got that kinda crumbly thing?" she whispers to Deeter. He slides his eyes to her and does not mention that she let him name her dog.

They step off her porch and stick to the shadows. Solar keeps the worst of the cold off of them, but it's still hard going. Deeter puts his body between Rence and the wind. Fi wraps her fingers around her twin's. Nisse feels her soul jump.

The group weaves through the forest behind her house. Wind has stripped the branches bare. A stray limb catches Rence across her face, and the swear that crosses her lips gets caught away by the storm.

Solar is shivering so Nisse bundles him tighter against her chest. They clamber over fallen trees and Fi get cut across her knee. Deeter gets tangled and it rips his coat.

They stick to the shadows and get to the checkpoint unseen despite the light that the little fox-cat is throwing. Everyone is inside behind boarded windows. Nisse wonders if maybe now would be a good time to take an arrow and shove it through her soft palate into her brainstem.

"Ok," Fi says, leaning against the side of the building, "We're gonna have to crawl over the roof to get out. It's only one floor, but wind's crumbly harsh up there, so you all best be careful." She swings a long rope with a hook on the end of it over her shoulder onto the roof. It catches on the gutter. "I'll stay down 'n' hold it from swayin' in the wind. The rest 'a you will pull me up, how 'bout?"

They agree. Nisse hands Solar over to her twin and is the first one up, her hands skinning on the fibers. She grits her teeth and drags herself upwards and over the edge of the roof, knees slamming against the wall.

Rence goes next, but she throws her bag up first so she doesn't have to balance with it. Nisse bites her lip. It's been a while since she thought of things like that. She's less streets than she'd thought. The little brunette scampers upwards and arrives at her side, peering over the ledge to wait for Deeter.

He tosses his bag to Rence before taking a few steps back. He runs for it and jumps, catching it in his hands and hauling himself to the top. He manages the series of knots easily, his lean muscle straining against his wet clothing.

"Took you long 'nough," Rence says, arching an eyebrow, "Think I aged 'bout two wheels when you was climbin'." He rolls his eyes while Fi wraps the rope around her waist and under her arms. She braces her feet against the wall and signals them and they yank her upwards. They overestimate the amount of force required and she stumbles, scraping her hands as she flops over the gutter. Nisse gives her a sheepish grin.

The little ball of light they've been surrounded by gets smaller. Fi frowns, running her fingers over his head. "We best be getting," she suggests, "We're runnin' outta time already."

Deeter nods and keeps low to the tiles, leading the way across the long building. He swings off the edge, rolling as he hits the ground. He offers his hands to catch Rence, but she sticks out her tongue and jumps, flipping her body and landing steady on her feet. The two look at home in the storm, surrounded by the shriek of wind and fog. They hold up their arms and help Fi down.

Nisse stands at the edge and thinks about how easy it would be to fall wrong. She'd be free and they'd be free, too. She used to write books where the heroine finally learned happiness. Neil had read her poetry and said You write so beautifully. The inside of your mind must be a terrifying place.

He was the only one to realize that she was spelling the words help me one million times without ever asking for help at all. That was the best part about books, after all. They were all the same words but in different positions. If she jumped, it would be her body but with her limbs in a whole new pattern.

She lets Deeter and Rence help her down.

They sprint through the district, but the farther down the mountain they go, the worse the storm gets. By the tenth checkpoint, the rope is slick and even Deeter can't get up it easily. They pause on the lee side of the eleventh building, panting.

"One more," shouts Rence, her hands on her thighs, trying to force air into her lungs. Her lips are blue and her hair is a mess. There's a small cut alongside her eye from the tree branch and she can feel bruises forming all over. "But t'aint gon' be easy." Her voice is next to a whisper in the howl of the wind.

"It just got a whole sight less easy, too," Fi says, her eyes wide, staring over the shoulder of the teen.

Rence whips around.

A shadow in the fog lurches towards them. Rence swallows hard. "Can't be," she chokes, "Not so close to the Heights. We t'aint even at the streets level yet."

Wind starts sucking towards the figure, whipping around its body. "Can't be," Fi repeats faintly.

Two yellow eyes show up and they all break into movement. Rence grabs Deeter's hand and starts running, Fi close behind her with a grip on her twin's wrist. They can hear the creature behind them, changing the course of the wind.

"What is it?" Nisse shouts, trying to get her feet under her. They sprint down the empty streets, no bearing in mind.

"Wind Vex," Fi calls back, leaping over a tree and almost crashing into a lamppost.

"But they…" Nisse 's logic catches up with her when she realizes that the reason there's a Vex out is the same reason she was able to escape: the Father can't fly in this weather. She swallows hard. If they're very lucky, by the time the Vex catches up to them, they'll be dead from some terrible accident.

Already it's getting hard to fight the force he exudes on the air. They turn a corner and the building blocks his suction for a second, but it comes back from the side suddenly and Rence stumbles, sliding in a puddle and scraping the side of her leg. Deeter wrenches her to her feet, other hand going for his knife.

He turns. The Vex is only a building's length behind them, his cavernous mouth inhaling the fog and pulling the air towards him. His jaw comes down to his ribcage, the black contents of his throat visible from a distance: rows and rows of teeth.

Deeter aims the blade over one shoulder as Rence limps back into her stride. His weapon gets caught in the suction and sails point-first towards the beast. It won't kill the creature, but it will slow it down.

Solar's heat is the only thing stopping them from being pulled back and eaten, but it's starting to waver. Rence leads them down alleys and through lawns. Debris catches the inside of Fi's arm and whips the twins apart. Fi keeps running but she can feel where it hit her start to bleed. She glances down and does not scream when she sees a shard of glass jutting out of her coat. Nisse screams for her, realizing the pain her twin is about to be in once the shock wears off.

Wet warm silk trails down to her fingertips and she feels her arm go useless. She can't hold Solar and keep pressure on the wound at the same time, but she tries.

The suction picks up again. Rence swears as a little girl who is all mouth turns towards them and starts walking. Deeter wrenches them to the side, but the howl of the man comes at them from down the other side of the alley.

Deeter turns to find the girl behind them. His hands settle on Rence's waist and he throws her upwards. She catches the side of a roof with her fingertips and scrambles upwards as Nisse rips the glass out of her sister's arm and throws it towards the little girl. Fi feels like she's being torn in two.

Deeter laces his fingers and gives Nisse enough lift to reach Rence, who yanks the teen to safety.

Fi gives him a look. She has no free arms and the Vexes are only a thousand yards away. If she goes, he'll be stuck here to die.

The boy knows this but he still holds out his hands.

"I can't leave you," she shouts over the wind, "Rence would kill me." She puts down her bag and slings her rope-hook onto the ceiling. Her twin is shrieking her name, desperate. "Take Solar and tell my sister that I love her and this was not her fault," she says. She doesn't know if he hears her. She doesn't look at him, just takes out each of her weapons. One knife goes into the ground to steady the rope while she slings her quiver over a shoulder.

Nisse is sobbing. Rence has her arms wrapped around the girl's body, keeping her away from the edge.

Deeter gives Fi a look. "I will keep her safe," he promises, slinging her bag over his shoulder and tucking Solar against his chest. His hands grip the rope and he meets her eyes. "Thank you."

She shrugs her one good arm, lets a knife fly. The suction from the left gets worse and she dodges a flying piece of metal. "Maybe I'll make it out," she says, "But if I don't, I'm going down fighting. Don't stop running until you're clear. I'll hold them off as best as I can."

He nods, opens his mouth, closes it, and nods again. He's up the rope in seconds. For an instant she has a flash of hope that they could pull her up, but then the suction takes the hook off the roof and pulls it out of her reach.

She nocks her arrows and whispers, "Run."

They are four rooftops away when she starts to scream.

Nisse is so broken she cannot cry. She keeps going.

=={and all the streets men}==

She is at rest, for once, bouncing her knees and playing with her hands. The waiting room is quiet, soundproofed from the rush of the storm.

"Healer six-zero-one?" someone calls. Gabrielle jumps to her feet, slinging her bag over one shoulder. The secretary nods to her, handing her a clipboard. "Welcome, Sister. May I know what you're here for?"

It takes her a second to remember she's inside of the hospital, she's allowed to speak. It still feels strange. "I received a Code Eight."

The secretary stands up straighter. "Right this way."

Gabrielle nods and falls in step as they wind through the hallways. She smiles and greets each person they pass. It had taken her a while to get the Healer way correct: one has to exist while simultaneously not existing. They are tools and nothing more.

The secretary has to leave her in the seventh ward, but Gabrielle knows the way anyway. It's only a formality she'd be accompanied.

She pushes her fingers against scanners and holds her eyes against readers. She likes to sing rhymes in her head while they're making sure she is who she says she is.

The sterilization room is her least favorite, only because it's uniquely cold. By the time that she's back in her clothes and heading towards room eight, she's still feeling the buzz of chill on her extremities. She itches the healing scab on her arm, opening the door.

Room eight, ward eight is a warmly decorated room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and mahogany desks. There are plush chairs and low couches and smiling Heights Healers lounging about, nodding as she passes. They do not look at all as if they are stationed there with orders to kill intruders on sight.

She says the proper words and pads to the back of the room, slipping into a closet and hanging up her coat. She feels along the back of the wall until her fingers catch on the proper knob. A tiny door swings open soundlessly and she crouches through, pulling herself up on the other side.

Gabrielle follows the white marble hallway, padding down the black staircase and slipping into the operating room. She fits a blue mask over her face and stands over the body on the table, thrashing against its bonds.

"New one?" she asks the Healer in the room, snapping gloves over her fingers.

He nods. "Don't know what it is yet, but we'll figure it out."

Her eyes close. "That's all we need," she sighs, aiming the light and picking up a scalpel, "A new kind of Vex."

=={couldn't put Humpty together again.}==

"Familiar Vexes, mostly," Dill says, "Gotta be fire and mud in there, but Father if I didn't see a wind Vex too."

They didn't have enough time to secure the house. The only way they're going to survive is if they can keep them out long enough to cover everything. After that, it's a matter of the storm dying down. Once it does, the Father would save them.

Nikka does not think too hard about the fact that the last storm lasted for ten trains.

Carrie is stationed at one window, an array of knives beside her. She can only lose so many to throwing before she'll have to resort to hand-to-hand, and that is not her strong suit. She wants to throw up but she can't tell if it's from fear or her concussion. Jason's at her elbow, Kas in hand.

Beck hands them each a pill. "They get through that door, you take this right away, you understand?" he asks. Taylor's the only one that doesn't nod.

"What exactly is it gonna do that I must take it straight away?" she spits, despite taking it from him.

"Hopefully," he says, shouldering a plank of wood, "It will kill you before they can get you."

She's silent after that.

The shrieks get louder. Nikka nocks her crossbow, Taylor at her hip, ready to reload. They're outmanned and Dill can't help. If she's going to die, it's going to be in Rigby's arms. The only rule of her universe was him. She has a board of nails beside her just in case, but everyone knows it won't be enough if the Vexes get past the barrier.

Something slams against the roof. They can hear it crawl over the tiles, scrambling through purchase. Everyone in the house is silent, their eyes tracking the path. Several noises meet the first. They're roosting.

From her perch in the attic, she sees the first sick-orange glow of a fire Vex. Nikka bites her lip and lets an arrow fly.

Everything splinters at once.

Three pairs of wings take off the ground while other creatures light up in fire. In their glow, Nikka can see the telltale black smear of a mud Vexes in their shadow.

She doesn't have time to think. Taylor is stumbling backwards, her eyes bright and frightened. Nikka kicks over a few poles and a broomstick. "Start sharpening," she snaps, loading her crossbow, "We're gonna run out of arrows."

For once, Taylor does not argue, just starts working.

Nikka takes aim, her heart beating out of her chest. The first one misses and she swears, her hands shaking as she reloads, running across the room to the other window. They can't figure out where she's firing from or they'll kill her. Already the Vexes on the roof are shaking down debris with their claws, trying to dig through the ceiling.

She shoots into the fog and catches one black wing. The Vex shrieks before spiraling to the ground, her body breaking on the soil. Nikka shoots for its forehead, just to be sure, trying not to notice the sad beauty of the woman's face. Except for the black stains covering her and the wings out of her back, she looks entirely human. Nikka swallows vomit when her arrow pierces the woman's skull.

A mud Vex begins to fill the woman's body, pouring its skin into her. Nikka watches her skeleton twitch with it.

Swearing, the blonde takes a sharpened rod from Taylor, cracks it over one knee and lights it on fire, shooting down onto the carcass. The mud Vex shrieks, trapped in a body and burning.

Downstairs they're having a harder time. Kas is doing his best, standing in Jason's hands and spitting pure power. He takes down a mud Vex but the fire ones are completely unharmed by his attacks, smiling as they grow larger. A flying Vex spots their position and rushes towards the window.

Carrie lunges for their shutters, gritting her teeth as talons catch her across her eyes. She puts one knife in her teeth and slices through the Vex's arm with another. He shrieks and retracts enough for her to get aim. She spits her blade into her palm, bounces it straight and then whips it straight for his eyes. He goes down before she can get the shutters closed, tying them off and running with Jason to the next part of the house.

Something slams against the walls and she ducks, but Jason takes his rod and shoves it through the hole. The sharpened end comes back covered in blood. He spins it in his palm and kicks a board into his hand, slamming it against the structural weakness. He leans against it as Carrie tries to nail it in. Her hands are shaking and she can't see straight. When she walks, the ground flexes.

Jason growls a little as his body is pushed away from the wall. He digs in and fights back, sending Carrie a look to hurry up.

She drops the first nail and she almost sobs. The smell of Vex blood is in her nose and her head is all strange and she's completely useless

The board straightens and Beck flips a hammer in his palm, driving in the nails with one blow each. He holds out one hand and takes her fingers in his. "Stay by me," he says over the din of the creatures, "You're hurt."

"Where's Landa?" she shouts as they run, "Is she ok?"

"She's fine," he calls back, "She's stationed in the living room watching over Rigby. He could still bleed out any minute."

Carrie lifts her eyes to his tan jawline, but he doesn't show any particular emotion.

A window breaks over her head and she shrieks, throwing her arm up. She feels the familiar splitting of skin and knows by the depth of the pain that the glass cuts are going to scar. A fire Vex's head lunges into view, growling.

Carrie's fingers tighten around Beck's.

She lets go and whips her leg around, aiming her heel for the burned face. She feels the crunch of bone and pins the shoulders against the window frame, sliding a knife from one of the multiple sheathes in her boot. One goes in her left hand while the other slits across the Vex's throat. She's too close and she can feel the skin on the back of her knuckles fry. It takes her a second to realize she can smell her own body cooking.

Beck pushes Jason out of the way, getting him to safety. They're going to need to board up the window and Kas is out of commission of a moment, panting and shivering.

The Vex is dead but there are two to replace him. One goes for her hair and she flips the blade in her left hand towards her wrist, driving it backwards and into his skull. It misses by a fraction and it puts her off balance. There are hands on her body before she can think.

A length of rope wraps around the Vex's neck and jerks it to the side, snapping it. Beck is beside Carrie, the lead wrapped around his fists, taunt. He pulls back his fist and slams it into the next Vex's face, twisting his arm to entangle the torso. Carrie ducks under him and drives her knife upwards, right between the ribs.

There are others alerted to their position now, and the hole of the window is getting wider. A winged Vex takes Beck's rope in her hands and yanks him partly out of the house, but an arrow from Nikka strikes her dead. He falls too hard and slams his head against the wall. Carrie rushes to him but there's another Vex right behind her. She feels fingers sink into her spine and everything goes a startlingly white. Blood fills her mouth and spills over her lips. She sinks to her knees.

Beck rolls over as the Vex hauls itself over the wall. It's too big and is blocking others from getting in, but it's only a matter of time.

The Healer pulls her towards him, pressing against her wounds. "We…" he is trying to focus but his head is swimming, "You…"

The Vex puts one foot on the ground, smiling. He is beautiful. He holds out bloody palms and starts to hitch himself all the way inside.

A board connects with his temple and he falls backwards, his body taking out a fire Vex on the way down. Dill slams wood over the hole and braces herself against it. She rocks with the force of the beasts on the other side.

Beck cradles Carrie's head. He makes some semblance of a noise, trying to thank her.

Dill sends him a haunted look. Her wooden mallet is covered in Vex blood.

Jason reappears. "Rest of the house is shut down," he says. His staff is snapped in two and there a long cut from the corner of his eye down to his chest. His legs are soaked in blood. Kas is passed out on his shoulders. He slides over to Dill's side, nailing the board in. She helps him layer more wood on top as the shrieks from outside get angrier. "Thought you were staying with Rigby," he says.

The gangly blonde girl sends him a long look. "I did, too," she admits. There's a dull thump as outside, Nikka shoots down another.

She reloads her bow and flinches as claws rip through her ceiling. "Time to go," she sings, ducking the hail of plaster and insulation. She shoots blindly over one shoulder and is actually pretty impressed when she hears an answering shriek. "Taylor?"

The little black-haired girl is curled in a corner, tearing at her hair. "It can't be," she's whimpering, "It can't be."

"Taylor, darling, now is not really the best time for you to go crumbly on us," Nikka grunts, dodging a pair of talons. She takes one of the rods Taylor abandoned and drives it through the palm of something that looks utterly too human.

There's a cut over her eye and it's bleeding across her vision. She can't aim anymore, but she tries. The sound it makes tells her that she's missed. She jumps as a window breaks. A fire Vex is holding himself up, sliding through. He's burning brightly, but in the wind of the storm, he doesn't catch. Nikka is thankful enough for that, but when she aims, she knows he's too close.

"Taylor," she growls, "Get downstairs."

She rips her bolt out of the bow, takes a deep breath and rushes for him, slamming it through the back of his neck. His body hangs against the outside wall, pinned. It takes her a second to realize he'd managed to burn her. It runs along the backs of her arms and her chest. She glances at the wound, but it's not bad. She thinks it's pretty funny that after all she's been through, her skin still knows what pain is.

She sends a look over one shoulder. Taylor is even farther in the corner.

"Are… are you crying?" Nikka gasps.

Taylor shakes her head quickly, but it's obvious she is.

Nikka flinches when a board comes down. She drops her bow and runs for the girl, wrapping her hands around the skinny wrists. Nikka throws her through the hole in the floor, growling. She scrambles for her crossbow, shoving her fist against a flying Vex. It doesn't do much but it makes her feel better. She flips on her back, aims at the ceiling and fires through the rafters towards the sources of noise. She kicks off the wall and skids across the floor, reloading and firing before she finds the edge. She twists in time to get a handhold before swinging down. They've set up a series of boards which she kicks into place, grinning. The ceiling will hold for at least a day, and in that time, they'll have reinforced it.

Sighing, she slings her bow across her back and turns to the little girl. "Let's get you patched up," she suggests.

Taylor shows no signs of having cried, but her face is still pale. "I couldn't help," she croaks out.

Nikka raises one shoulder. "It was your first time dealin' with Vexes. No smack ever handled that well. I think I fainted."

"Not you," says the little one, so quietly Nikka almost doesn't hear her. The blonde creases her eyebrows and guides Taylor through the rooms back to the living room where Beck is sewing up Carrie. Nikka feels her heart drop at the look on his face.

She doesn't ask, just sits down and lets Landa look her over. She catches the Healer girl's green eyes. Landa shakes her head, imperceptibly.

Dill is sitting on the arm of the couch, staring at the body of the boy she loves. No one says anything. The Vexes outside say it for them.

The Cliffs girl jolts, her head snapping towards the sky. Nikka instinctively grabs her bow, but Landa puts a steadying hand on her thigh.

"Hear that?" the Healer girl asks, a slow smile on her face.

Nikka tilts her head. She hears nothing but the keening of the Vex children and the swish of Beck's movements.

"Sirens," Taylor breathes. She's sitting on the floor, her fingernails curled into her palms. "It's the sirens."

Beck looks up and almost smiles.

"Storm must be clearing," Landa whispers. Her eyes trace Nikka's scar, but for some reason it doesn't feel as bone-crushingly shameful as usual. Nikka feels herself blush but she can't say why. "Father's coming," Landa promises. She reaches up and lays her hands against the warmth of Nikka's cheek, just for an instant. It's the first time anyone has touched Nikka's face since the accident occurred.

Jason stands over his friend's body and his eyes cut to the black-haired demon. She's slowly pulling at her skin. He wants to comfort her but doubts she'd appreciate the gesture. His hands curl instead around Carrie's. Her fingers are cold and do not respond to him.

Taylor's mind has spilled over and become dust. She is emptied from the outside in. They should have told her. A monster: that was something she could fight. But a Vex? That wasn't a monster.

A Vex was something else entirely. This isn't her first time seeing one at all, because they've been haunting her for years now, waking her up in the middle of the night to spill sorrow down her shoulder blades. They had almost-human faces and spoke in almost-human growls and she knew exactly where she'd seen these things before. She'd seen it in her sister, because Vexes are human.

They're just what the sickness made humans into.

xxxxxxx

A.N:Hello there, darlings! Thusly ends part two of The Storm and The Break, I hope it lived up to its rather grandiose title. :)

I am indeed posting this at three in the morning because I have no sense of timing and when I sat down to edit it, it was already one, so please forgive me if there are any large and or glaring errors. I'll look it over harder once I get some sleep.

Ah, this chapter (besides being one of my favorite numbers) brings the entire total word count of The Lost Ones above 50k, which means it's officially a book.

I love everyone who reviewed and thanks just even for reading. Hopefully I'll see you next Friday. :)

Take Care.