Three people had been murdered in the night.

Aradia stared at the news in shock as the details were revealed, each more gruesome than the last. She'd had to deal with murders before-attempted murders, once she was through-but never anything like this. Each of the bodies had been mutilated so badly that identification would have been impossible if they hadn't had ID on them, one of them happening just off the busiest street in town without a single person noticing. Nothing had been stolen from any of the victims as far as the police could tell, and there was no apparent connection between them.

The sensationalist media was already trying to spin it into a serial killer stalking the streets of Alternia City, ignoring that 'serial killer' had an actual definition that wasn't just a scary word for murderer. Not that Aradia had known that either until knowing things about crimes had become part of her job, but she'd been thirteen back then. She thought that was a pretty good excuse.

The police reports Sollux was able to hack into were unsurprisingly much more down-to-earth. They were still searching for some kind of connection, for a start mostly trying to find out if any of them had gotten into debt to any shady characters. It had been a long time since the mobs had any real presence in Alternia, so long ago that Aradia had never needed to deal with them, but it was fairly well known that at least a couple members of the old Midnight Crew had been sly enough in their crimes to avoid prison and still lived in the city. The Maid of Time had even awkwardly crossed paths with Diamonds Droog a couple of times when doing a patrol for any crimes that had gone unreported at the end of her nights. She always felt like she probably should be doing something other than rushing by without meeting his eyes, but she couldn't just hassle a man for doing nothing more than walking down the street he lived on no matter who he was.

At least if he was still up to anything those times were probably just as awkward for him, wondering if she was about to take him to task for some crime she'd stumbled onto.

But looking at the facts, and even more damningly at the terrible photos that could only be found within the police department's computers, Aradia didn't really think it had anything to do with them. They had a style, one she'd learned early on just in case they ever did start messing with her city again, and the murders just didn't fit it. They were brutal, yes, but if one of them kept attacking a body after it was dead it was because they got so caught up in what they were doing that they didn't realize they could stop. A body might very well end up with a dozen extra bullet holes in it, but it wouldn't be absolutely pulverized the way the murder victims were.

Aside from that, she was just as clueless as anyone else trying to work out who the murderer might be or why they chose their victims. So it was lucky that neither of those things mattered to her. All that mattered were the estimated times of death.

The range of which turned out to be a good half-hour off for the first victim, but that was one thing that would never be a problem for her. She let herself stay loose from the timeline, drifting back and forth until the cheerful brassy music of that section of the city was pierced by a sudden dissonant chord and put herself down right at that moment.

She went into the fight not expecting to have any real problems with the murderer. They might be a person capable of doing terrible things, but they must have caught all their victims off-guard when this time she'd be the one with the advantage. None of the victims had been shot and guns were the only weapons she really worried about, the kind she thought most likely to kill her so quickly that she wouldn't have time to save her past self if someone got a lucky shot. In a close-combat fight she'd reached the point where she practically felt safe.

Maybe she should have worried that she was getting too cocky.

The murderer came out of nowhere at almost the same instant that she did, but the music's forewarning that he would be almost on top of her kept her from being startled. She took him down with a crack of her whip, looping it around his leg and pulling it tight. He was on the ground well before he had a chance to make a killing strike.

"Run," she told the man he'd been after, not taking her eyes off the figure on the ground. "As fast as you can to somewhere with people around. You don't want to get near him."

Luckily he listened to her. There were a depressing amount of people who wouldn't, apparently thinking that getting to watch their local superhero in action was worth risking their lives over. Or maybe they just trusted that she'd never let them get hurt, which while sweet, and true, was so mind-bogglingly stupid that she didn't know how they'd been able to live to adulthood.

But she didn't have much time to feel good he'd gotten away safely. He'd only gotten a few yards when the murderer grabbed her whip and pulled, yanking it straight out of her hands. Nobody besides Equius, the first time they'd met, had ever done that before, and maybe surprise stunned her for an instant but it wouldn't even have mattered if the move hadn't thrown her off guard at all.

One instant he was on the ground, the next on his feet then suddenly behind her, moving faster than she would have thought possible. She barely had enough time to realize that he had to have powers of his own to be that quick when some blunt object suddenly slammed into her back with such force that she could feel something cracking inside of her.

And then she was a few seconds back in time, slamming her palm into his elbow to throw off his strike before it could hit the other her standing there, then dropping to kick him as hard as she could in the kneecap though agony flared through her back with the movement.

Which was very hard indeed. She smiled grimly as this time she heard the crack, sure that the fight was as good as hers if she'd managed to break his knee. But again he was up too fast for anyone normal, not even seeming to notice any pain as he whirled towards her and brought down his weapon, a brightly painted club she could now see, on her head.

She managed to partially dodge, the hit just glancing her skull instead of coming down right in the center of it, but again bone crunched and she knew that soon enough the wound would prove fatal. She was the one who'd changed the timeline, after all, the one who wasn't allowed to live.

But as long as there was life left in her she'd do her best to help, so she kept herself between her other self and the murderer.

Or where the murderer had been. He was already gone, vanishing as quickly as he'd appeared though she spun in circles trying to spot him. Maybe the injury had bothered him more than he'd shown and he took off to heal, or maybe he just didn't like having prey that fought back. She hoped it was something like that, and he wasn't just hiding in the shadows somewhere watching them for a chance to strike. The main reassurance she had was that with his speed he constantly had a chance to strike, he didn't need to wait when he could be behind one of them in seconds.

But she didn't want to stick around to sure. "Get out of here," she gasped to her other self. "Can't fight him yet, we need a plan." It was a pretty pointless thing to say, she would have been able to tell that just by watching, but being able to pull some advice from the fight that would cost her her life made her feel a little better about the dying part of that.

Though not by much. The pain in her back she would have been able to stand, but the pain in her head she hated. It reminded her too much of her first death, the one that every one of her shared, the sharp crack and the staggering pain that pulled her off into nothingness.

The memory made her miss her mother like she hadn't in ages. She wanted the comfort of her, wanted to be cradled in her arms and have her stroke the parts of her hair that weren't quickly becoming bloodsoaked. She wanted somebody she loved to be with her when she died, to help make both the pain in her head and the pain of her memories more bearable.

That was the thought she took with her into the melody of time and the one still in her mind when she came out, not in the sea where she'd meant to go but directly in front of Equius in his main room.

His look of startled happiness made her feel like her throat was closing up, knowing that it wouldn't last for long. Sure enough even as he started to offer a greeting it turned into a choking sound just a syllable in, his expression shifting to horror as he came close enough to notice the blood that had seeped through her hood, dying it a darker shade of red and making the fabric cling to her scalp. How cruel could she be to him, coming to see him of her own whim instead of because he put his fist through a bank wall for the first time because of something like this?

"Why am I here?" she asked, to the world in general more than him, and she could hear the threat of tears in her voice because even as she spoke she realized. Realized why she'd appear there instead of in the cold waters when she'd been aching for comfort, her mind still to stuck reeling in shock over what had happened to really focus on the sea. Why the place she unconsciously had most wanted to be, the place she'd felt she might find solace as she died, was with him.

And she realized that it was horrible that she was the one who got to understand it, when that understanding was about to die with her.

He quickly crossed the remaining distance between them and pushed her hood off without asking. And she let it happen without trying to stop him. He didn't even seem to notice that her face was bare to him for the first time, all his focus was on pushing through her hair to try and find the spot where she was injured. When he pulled his hand away again it was covered in her blood and he moaned lowly at the sight of it. Aradia would never have even though he could make such a sound.

"I'll call for an ambu- no, I'll have them send a helicopter," he said, already pulling a cellphone from his pocket. "You'll have the best medical care in the-"

"No," she said, gently plucking the phone from his hands before he had time to think of using his strength to hold on more tightly. "I'm so sorry, but I'm going to die here and there's nothing you can do to stop it."

"You will not," he said, shaking his head in denial. "A successful person does not give up that easily. You will not give up that easily. This isn't the end of you."

"Who said anything about it being the end? Equius, you know how often I change the past. Why do you think there aren't hundreds of copies of me running around from all those timelines that don't exist?" She tried to force a smile for him, but flinched when even that small motion sent a new flash of pain through her head. "I never told you that you didn't work out how my powers work quite as well as you thought."

She watched the understanding dawn in his eyes, but instead of looking relieved his expression became more stricken than ever. "This is what you do for the city. This... every night, it must be for you to know where to go." He reached out towards her but stopped before he made contact, his hands hovering in the air around her like he was afraid he'd only hurt her worse by touching her. "They aren't worth it. No one in the city is worth sacrificing yourself for. You are better than every one of them combined."

"There's no sacrifice," she said as firmly as she could, though it was becoming harder to focus on the words. She sank slowly to the floor, trying to free herself from at least a little of the pain; she'd made herself stand as long as she could, but the pain in her head and the pain in her back combined were just too much to bear. He followed her straight down to the floor. "I'll still be out there in the world, and I'll never even have felt all this pain. I'll be... Equius, listen to me carefully." She cupped his face between his hands, forcing him to look at her instead of the blood oozing out of her. His eyes widened when they met hers; maybe he'd finally realized exactly what he was seeing. "Aradia will still come running whenever she sees you in the news."

Maybe it wasn't fair to tell him when she wouldn't be the one who needed to deal with any consequences, but she wanted to too much to hold back. She was going to be the one who died beside him, didn't she deserve to at least get to see the look on his face when he realized that she'd finally given him the key to all the things about herself she'd kept hidden? It wasn't her fault that any other hers out there were still too dense to realize they wanted to see it.

"Aradia," he breathed and finally wrapped her in his arms, the comforting embrace she'd longed for even if it wasn't from her mother. It didn't even matter that the new pressure on her wounded back forced her to choke back a scream before even a peep of it could be heard and make him feel worse for unknowingly hurting her. She was right where she wanted to be.

So it was a bit of a surprise when she felt the tears start streaming down her face as her consciousness slowly started to ebb away.