Kerith stood at the mirror in their tiny bathroom. He was dressed in all black and currently ringing his eyes with a kohl eyeliner, smudging it as he applied it. If they were going to a goth club, he had to look the part. He didn't see his sister enter the bathroom, still in her diner uniform, until he leaned back from the mirror and blinked a few times.

She was watching him in the mirror.

"It looks good."

"I don't look like a raccoon?" He asked, looking back at her reflection.

He watched a smile tug at the corner of her lips and then her reflection vanished behind him as she leaned over to twist the faucet in the shower. When she reappeared in the mirror, Kerith was facing her.

"What are you doing tonight?"

"Going out with Oblio."

He tried not to let his face show the concern that was growing inside of him. She could take care of herself years ago at the roller rink, why was it different here? Why was it different now?

Kerith's mind kept going back to Gregory.

"Promise me you'll be careful, Janey."

He could see her shaking suddenly, ever so slightly, and he grabbed her hands in her own. He was worried he had suddenly brought the thoughts of their old life back.

But her reaction was to her own thoughts - thoughts of her brother drinking, complaining, and becoming something like the monster that they had escaped from before they had been legal adults.

"I will if you will, Keith."

"Of course." He nodded and leaned forward, planting a kiss on her forehead. "Now take a shower. You smell like cooking grease."

He left the bathroom and shut the door behind him then exited their small apartment, moving out into the cool breeze of the evening.

She had meandered from the shower to the closet of the bedroom, wrapped in a thinning, pale seafoam-colored towel and stared at her wardrobe. Thanks to the thrift stores dotted around the city, their wardrobe had grown well enough, but even then she couldn't decide what to wear. With an eyeroll aimed at herself, she scoffed at the fact that she was putting so much thought into this and grabbed a pair of black pants and a purple top. Simple enough.

Whatever.

Throwing the clothes on, Jaryn glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror once more. She grabbed a black jacket on the way out the door and headed downstairs to wait outside.

…

He had been with Dr. Tan after he left the diner, informing him that he was going to see Jaryn that evening. Tan had tried to make him wear a microphone under his clothes so he could listen in on their conversations but Oblio vehemently disagreed to that. He was fine with bringing back bits of pertinent information, but it wasn't in his nature to let someone get blatantly spied on without their knowledge.

Plus, Jaryn seemed like a nice girl. Not someone who deserved everything Tan was trying to push on Oblio to do to her.

He saw her waiting out front of the address she had given him and pulled up to the curb, taking his helmet off.

"Here," he said, handing it to her.

"What about you?"

"Your head's prettier than mine." He leaned up slightly and plopped it down on her head, then motioned behind him.

She threw her leg over the seat and planted her booted feet in the footholds near the back. His helmet was warm and it smelled like some sort of mix of patchouli and lavender. Jaryn was contentedly snorting it when he flipped the visor up.

"Put your arms around my waist and lean with me, okay?"

She nodded and he flipped the visor back down, spinning around to face the road ahead of them.

When she had climbed on the bike behind him, Oblio had to get used to the feeling of a second rider. No one had ever sat there before. It wasn't a bad feeling. It even got slightly better when she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his waist. The warmth of her body against his back would be welcome against the breeze.

"Ready?"

"Mmhmm."

He started the bike and headed through the city towards the water, tracing the coastline north towards a group of trees that sat on a tall bluff along the beach. Oblio could feel her grasp around his waist tighten, which absently caused him to speed up a bit. She had asked where they were going when he saw her at the diner earlier that day. He told her it was a surprise.

Stopping the bike by the treeline, he waited for Jaryn to climb off the back of the bike before sliding to the ground and turning to her. He watched her take the helmet off, the faded ash blonde hair disheveled and falling across her face. She tried to set the helmet down on the back of the bike with her vision obscured, but it rolled off. Her palms went to her face but ran into his right hand, the fingers of which were already brushing hair out of her field of vision.

"Sorry," she looked down at the helmet, trying to distract herself from his fingertips against her cheek. Her mind was moving at a mile a minute and she wasn't sure why. Part of her expected him to suddenly turn into Gregory and shove her back against a tree- the other part wanted his fingers to keep moving, across her cheek, under her ear, down her neck—

"No problem." He picked the helmet up and set it down where she meant to place it then fished around in the storage compartment under the seat for a rolled up blanket. "Come on."

She followed Oblio, watching him unroll the blanket as they shifted around trees and under branches. Inside of the blanket, he pulled out a bag and held it up to show her. It was from the burger joint near her apartment.

"I can't cook… so…"

Jaryn chuckled. "That's fine."

"You're lucky."

"Why?" She asked.

He held a branch out of the way for her to pass and then gently placed it back in its original spot before slipping around her and pointing out their destination. It was a small open area in the middle of the trees covered in bright green grass.

"This is my spot. I always come here alone."

"Of course," she glanced back at his—

Lone-Wolf-with-a-motorcycle thing

—bike, which was now obscured by the woods they had passed through. She was truly alone with him now and she tried to get herself to stop shaking. Would this be like Gregory? Or would this be something different? Whatever it was, she was going to face it. She always managed to in the past.

"Are you okay, Jaryn?"

"I'm fine." She pulled her jacket shut around her and watched him spread the blanket out in the middle of the clearing. The sun was slowly starting to set and peeked through the trees, bathing the grass in brilliant orange slivers of light.

They sat and ate the burgers and fries Oblio had picked up before heading to her place, talking in between bites of food and sips of soda. They talked about music, museums in the city and complimentary colors for at least an hour before Oblio brought up Kerith and what happened earlier that afternoon.

"So the guy who seated me at the diner today – that had to be the twin brother you told me about, right?"

"Kerith? Yeah, that was him."

"He didn't seem very happy to see me."

Jaryn nodded, a smile tugging at her lips. "We're… we're both very protective of each other. Over… protective, perhaps."

"I can tell." The amusement in his voice was apparent.

Her eyes went from absently staring at her can of soda up to Oblio, who popped a fry in his mouth and looked at her expectantly as he picked up his drink, as if he wanted details. She opened her mouth to speak, shut it, opened it again and then pressed her lips together.

He sat cross-legged, across from her. He had been holding his can of soda with both hands until he moved his right to rest on her forearm, his skin touching hers where she had pulled the sleeves of her jacket up while eating.

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to talk about it. Don't worry."

She was staring down at his hand, the palm cold and wet against her skin from the condensation on the can of soda.

"Kerith and I left our hometown when we were seventeen. We ran away to come here. There was nothing for us there. At all. As we grew up, our father became more and more unbearable – he was drinking all the time, sitting on the couch doing nothing, didn't pay any attention to us unless we were doing something that pissed him off. Right before we left, the few…"

Had it been months? Weeks? Days?

"He found me and Kerith in the bathroom one night, putting on makeup. It was harmless. I was trying to make myself look… less plain… I guess. He was joking around. We were just having fun. Our father came in and… took Kerith into his room and hit him."

Jaryn hadn't been looking at Oblio when she spoke; she was still looking down at his hand. She saw it tense up and then vanish from her view. Moments later he was beside her instead of across from her. If he was about to say something, she cut him off.

"It got worse after that. I would see bruises on Kerith that he never told me about. One night… one night I came home and… was… I was dancing in my room. He hit me for that. Grabbed my neck…"

"For dancing? Jaryn…"

She shook her head. "I bashed him in the skull with his ceramic ashtray. Kerith said we were leaving that night. We never had anywhere to go, not enough money to make it anywhere else – we had saved up some but it was never enough to get away. Kerith… he could put up with being hurt as long as it meant a roof over our heads, but once our father laid his hands on me… that was the final straw for my brother. We packed up that night and left. Never looked back."

"I'm so sorry." Oblio had placed an arm around her shoulders.

"No, I'm sorry. I… you wanted to know about me and Kerith and I gave you the unnecessarily long version. I was rambling."

"You weren't. You're fine."

He wanted to add you're safe now. But he didn't want to cross any lines.

"What about your mom?" He asked instead.

"She died when we were young."

"What was she like?"

"She was a dancer. She died when we were six so I don't remember too much. But I remember her being very poised, graceful… she was very supportive. She put us in dance classes and came to all of our recitals. We continued after she died, but our father took us out of classes because he didn't approve of it."

"Why not?"

"I think because our mom loved it so much. It made her happy, goals of hers always involved it… he just… didn't like it. Maybe because it was something he couldn't do? Because she talked about it all the time? I guess it was a world of hers that he could never be a part of. I don't know. I don't want to know. I just know I'm glad to be away from that."

"Easy to see why."

"What about you? What about your family?" Jaryn finally looked over at him. The last rays of the sun cast a deep red glow on his face and she watched as he pushed his bangs out of his eyes with his hand.

"I'm an only child. My dad left when I was three and my mom raised me alone until she married my stepfather. I was eight then. When I turned eighteen I moved here to the city. My mom died in a car accident shortly after that."

"That's how my mom died," Jaryn frowned. "What about her, what was she like?"

"She's the one who got me into dance too. She showed me old tapes she had recorded of TV shows that just played music while people danced. That's all the show was. Dancing. I sat in front of the TV for hours watching these tapes over and over again. She would sit on the couch beside me, braiding her long black hair. Her name was Bernice. Everyone called her Neecee."

"Neecee sounds like she was a good person." She finished her soda and set the can down ahead of her, where it fell over on the blanket because of the lumpy ground underneath. "Do you still talk to your stepfather at all?"

Oblio's mind pulled up thoughts of the man who wanted him to wear a microphone under his clothes while he was out with Jaryn.

"Occasionally," he said. He quickly changed the subject before Jaryn could ask more about him. "So your brother dances too?"

"He does." Nodding, she began absently throwing the fast food trash into the bag. "Well, did. He hasn't danced recently. Maybe because of our father… I wish he would though. He's good. He was always better than me."

"Better than you? I don't know, from what I saw, you're pretty damn good yourself."

"Thanks."

Oblio moved away from her and straightened the blanket out, collapsing onto his back as the sun finally vanished under the horizon.

"Oblio?"

"Hm?"

"Do you know anything about the group of people who gather at places around the city and just… dance? My brother and I saw them one night on the way back to our apartment – you said you saw me that night. I've heard people talking about it at the diner too. Something about a gathering at a subway station or…?"

He turned on his side and rested his elbow on the ground, palm against his cheek, holding his head up to look at her. "I do."

Oblio told her about it. How people would gather places every other weekend. Whether it was on the beach, on the pedestrian walkway across the bridge, on one of the city's rooftops – there were so many places they would transform into their own little clubs. He even told her how some of the younger dancers did it in their high school's halls and cafeteria.

"How do you get in?" Jaryn leaned forward towards him, her eyes wide.

He laughed. "Get in? You just show up and dance." Oblio pushed himself up higher on his arm, letting his face move closer to hers. "Come with me next weekend."

"You go all the time?"

"Of course I do. I don't just go, I dance."

They discussed techniques and styles of dance for awhile, Jaryn absently sprawling out on the blanket beside him at some point in their conversation. When they fell silent for a few moments, Oblio pointed at constellations in the small patch of sky they could see between the treetops around them.

He took her back to her apartment well after midnight, taking the helmet off for her this time and they said goodnight to each other. He grabbed her right hand and kissed the back of it before she started off into the building. She threw him one last wave once she made it through the dingy glass doors into the lobby and he waited until he saw her get into the elevator before he took off on his bike.

Jaryn didn't expect her brother to be home yet, so when she opened the door to an empty apartment she wasn't surprised. She found herself looking out the window down to the street. She wasn't sure why.

Stop it. He already left.

She scolded herself and retreated to the bedroom, crawling into the empty bed and falling asleep almost instantly. Before she dozed off, she felt her leg shift - where her foot would've normally run into her brother's leg, there was nothing.

…

"This one's on me," Steve used his black gloved hand to slide a beer down to the 20-year-old who sat on the stool at the end of the bar, his back to the wall beside it.

"The last four were on you."

Steve shrugged. "Everything's more fun with booze, y'know?"

Kerith's mind was hazy. He briefly saw his father somewhere in that haze. His sister. His bruises in the mirror. The dishes his sister threw down into the sink at the diner. The spreading black and blue mark that had been at the base of his sister's spine. His father's ashtray. The images were all so faint…

"Mmm," was all he managed to respond with as he grabbed the bottle and knocked it back. He let his eyes scan the sea of the mostly black-clad patrons of Cathedral. It was a mess of lace, latex and fishnet out there, glints of silver catching his gaze every now and then. The music wasn't bad, the crowd wasn't bad. Steve, Tommy and Elya were acting sort of obnoxious making fun of people here and there, but Kerith found it easy to ignore.

He finished the beer and slammed the bottle down on the table before sliding off of the barstool and making his way towards the crowd.

"Where's he going?" Tommy elbowed Steve.

"How should I know?"

"Maybe he's going to dance." Elya shifted off of her own seat and followed Kerith, the two men behind her doing the same.

They weaved their way through the crowd and found Kerith in the center, black-ringed eyes closed, head back and body moving perfectly with the beat.

He didn't acknowledge that they were there, he didn't even realize it. He had lost himself in the music. At first he had been swaying back and forth - probably thanks to the beer – but after that, when the bass of the song kicked in, Kerith found himself moving like he hadn't moved in years. The images were still in his head as he spun. He could see his mother's face, smiling at him through a glass observation window at the dance studio. He could see his sister's sleeping form, curled up in her blanket beside him on their bed at the apartment. He could see their father slamming a beer bottle against the kitchen countertop. He could see Elya, Tommy and Steve laughing at some stupid video on the internet. He could see a head of blue hair – Oblio – sitting in the diner watching his sister clean a table.

The song had been building, the bass shaking the floor. He could feel the crowd pulsing around him. Somehow they felt like they were far away from him but on top of him at the same time. He didn't dare to open his eyes and look though. Kerith just kept moving.

Things he had never seen before suddenly broke through that haze in his mind. He saw himself bleeding and shivering, stumbling along the pedestrian walkway on the bridge. He saw his father standing alongside the wreckage of their mother's car. He saw his sister pushed up against a brick wall somewhere, Gregory violently pressing himself against her to keep her there – when he was about to smash his lips into hers Gregory had shifted into Oblio. He saw that mess of people that he and his sister had seen on the bridge that night – they were on a tall rooftop somewhere; people were dancing.

They were dancing.

He was dancing.

When he woke up the next morning, he was in his bed. Jaryn wasn't there. His stomach hurt and there was eyeliner smeared all over his pillowcase.

He was breathing heavily. He knew it all hadn't been a dream.

Stumbling to the shower, Kerith prepared to face the day. He could vividly remember everything he had seen in that haze the previous night and he knew it all of it would haunt him for days, if not weeks.