It took me some time to work my way further into the Temple. It was a combination of a hop and a drag across the floor, combined with some indignant yelping on my part. But I got there.

I knew that we kept a first-aid kit under the bathroom sink, but at that moment I didn't think a few band-aids and some hydrocortisone cream would help. Instead, I went for the good stuff under the sink. Genkai sure liked her hard liquor, and she wasn't tall enough to store it any higher, for which I thanked my lucky stars.

A shot or two later the sharp edge had worn down on my pain, and I settled my head down on the table. I thanked my lucky stars again, this time for short tables. It was nice not to have to stand up. The table's wood felt cool on my face, and the numbing effect of the alcohol helped to hold back the nightmares that were sure to come later.

Hands, reaching for me.

A wall that breathed and quivered.

A single candle, flinging back the darkness.

Don't you want to know who you really are?

My spiraling fear was interrupted by voices outside – Genkai's familiar crackle, and Kazuma's as well. Whatever catastrophe she had intended to divert must have been over, but her hushed tone sounded angry. I wondered why she was keeping her voice down, but as the shoji door slid open I realized it was night outside.

I caught a brief glance of Kazuma, the back of his head, as he started to descend the stairs. He doesn't want to talk to you, I thought to myself. Probably because you're a monster. I set my head down on the table and felt good and sorry for myself.

"What happened to you?" Genkai's tone was an accusation.

I looked up. Her sleeves were coated in blood.

"Bozhe moy… what happened?" I answered her question with my own.

She glanced down, barely acknowledging the blood. "It's not mine."

Not really an answer.

Genkai grabbed the bottle from the table. "This is my good sakѐ."

"Sure tasted good," I murmured, reaching to refill my cup. Genkai didn't stop me, and instead retrieved a second cup from the kitchen. She sat across from me and poured herself a hefty amount. She took several deep draughts before she spoke again.

"Tell me what happened."

"I don't think I'm ready."

"Fuck ready." She finished the cup of sakѐ. "People died tonight because of secrets. More might still die. Enough." She poured herself a full cup, and refilled mine as well. "Tell me everything."

The sakѐ must have loosened my tongue more than I realized, as the story of my multiple trips through portals of Hell tumbled out in a jumbled mess. It hurt my stomach, and sent shivers running down my spine. The hair on the nape of my neck stood up as I spoke about the man in the cave. About his ragged appearance.

"What was his name?" Genkai asked when I was done.

I wracked my brain. "He didn't tell me. Called himself 'the spider', in a way."

Genkai mulled that over. "And the man in the second room?"

"Woden." Genkai nodded at that.

Genkai looked up at me, and opened her mouth as if to speak. I tried blearily to focus on her face but it was getting more difficult. She closed her mouth, seeming to think better of what she was about to say. She stood from the table, walking around to help me stand. "You should get some rest, come on. You probably need some help to wrap that ankle, helpless kitten that you are."

And so I let the old, short, curmudgeonly woman escort me to bed, wrap my swollen ankle, and tuck me under the heavy comforter. Her hands lingered on the comforter, and – I may have imagined it, but I could have sworn she did – she smoothed my hair back over my forehead, feeling my temperature like a mother might. It was a tender concern, and it left the only clear part of my mind wondering what horrible things she had witnessed that day to leave her worried for me.

But the thoughts drifted away as I sank into a fitful sleep.

I sat on a low stool, feet buried in the coarse, stone-like sand, watching the ocean crash against the shore. It pulled at my feet, trying to drag me down, down, down. But I was firmly planted in the sand, and would not move.

The crashing waves and salty spray made a deep, rumbling bass of energy followed by the high keen of accompanying retreat. I heard the high call of a bird in reply, and the ocean roared louder. It was a beautiful unintentional call and answer made into symphonic music.

I hunched low against a powerful gust of wind, though it blew right through me anyway. The screech of a new bird called from the cliffs behind me. I turned to look and a wave crashed over me, dragging me beneath the current.

It was blue, blue, and blue everywhere I looked. There was no direction to my suffocation though there was a distinct feeling of falling deeper. It was crushing, heartless, and cold.


My hangover was positively lethal.

Hobbling to the bathroom was its own excruciating experience, and the heaving over the toilet was unpleasantly familiar. Even empty, my stomach rebelled, demanding more motion. I stood at the sink and tried splashing water over my face. It helped a little, but the residual salt sweat was unpleasant on my tongue.

My hobbling around the Temple was even less graceful than when I had been drunk. My ankle had swelled considerably in the night, and any of the pain the alcohol had dulled had come roaring back with a vengeance.

I knew Genkai would be waiting in her usual spot at the low table. I knew she would have some hot tea in front of her, and she would likely let me steal a cup if I was silent about it. I wasn't expecting her to have a bottle of painkillers waiting as well.

Concern.

"Sit," Genkai commanded. I struggled to settle myself down on the floor with only one good foot, but managed to do it without falling down entirely. Without hesitation, Genkai demanded I produce my swollen ankle. I did so hesitantly, and she palpated the bones of my ankle a little less gently than I would have liked.

"Hey!" I yelped, but she held my foot firmly. She glared at me, and I stopped fidgeting.

"It's not broken, but you should wear a boot just to be safe." She shook her head, releasing my foot.

"I don't like those," I whined. "They're heavy. And loud. I will clomp-clomp around everywhere like a horse."

"You'll wear it, and shut up about it." Genkai's threat was very thinly veiled. Do it, or I'll make you regret it. "You want to walk with a limp forever?"

"…no," I muttered, admitting defeat.

She smirked. "Then you'll wear the boot."

I sat on the wraparound porch, enjoying the slivers of sunshine slipping through the trees and under the overhang of the roof. It was peaceful at the Temple. It was a peace unlike any I had known since before I lost my hand. It was so fragile, like a tender, humming, bird heart I clutched in my hand just on the verge of crushing it. I was on the verge of destroying the world. On the verge every day.

It frightened me – power frightened me. I could try to hide it from Genkai, try to tell her that I couldn't be afraid of the power, as it was how I survived.

Survival, though, is not always without fear. Every time I had chosen to use the power, to call on Blue, I had weighed the value of my life against the cost of the situation. I had to decide that warmth was more valuable than turning sixty. I had to decide that escape was more valuable than turning fifty-nine.

I wasn't ready to make those decisions for the benefit of others. I couldn't take someone's need and weigh it against my desire to turn fifty-eight. What if I didn't find the cause… worthy? How could I explain it to them? I'm sorry, small child, but your clubbed foot isn't valuable enough for me to fix, you can live ok with it as it is.

No.

I wouldn't do it.

I would take their hate, and their rejection, and their spite – as is. I could take any amount of scorn like another scar on my flesh, I certainly had enough scars already. I would take the biting words, and the curses, and the frustration that came to blows.

I could take it.

I would live a long, fulfilling life, stained by hate.

I was ok with that.

Another example of the scorn of others, Genkai appeared at my shoulder with the boot-of-doom in her hands. "Here," she shoved it into my arms. "Don't twist your other ankle."

"That would be stupid of me to do." I struggled with the clasps of the boot and the little inflatable bits, but I eventually got it on ok. It did feel better than just an ace wrap.

"As opposed to how you are naturally?" I expected her to leave, but she stayed. She continued to stare at me, like a cat watching a bird struggle to take off on the ground.

"What?" I barked, her long gaze making me uncomfortable.

"I can't begin to understand the choices that you've had to make, but you should know this one is wrong."

I bristled. "That's your opinion." But she sounded so certain.

She turned her gaze away from me, and when I tried to follow her attention I found it to have settled on nothing at all. She was looking out over the courtyard, beyond the trees in her field of view, past the softly drifting clouds. She was lost.

"I don't think it's a coincidence that so much change has happened in the last few years." Her face was grim, and her mouth settled into a hard line as she considered her next words. "You're the third strange girl to end up at my door in that time, and you all carried in no small amount of baggage." She finally glanced at me. "You're the strangest, and definitely not my favorite."

"My feelings are greatly hurt; I feel you should know that," I responded dryly.

If the older woman was in the habit of rolling her eyes, I'm sure she would have. "You're a pain in my ass. You're the first person with so much power to change the shitty lives of others and a dead refusal to do so."

"Do you want to be the one to ask me to give up my life for others?" I spoke slowly, emphasizing the message I had repeated over and over to myself a thousand times.

"How fucking entitled are you?" she snapped. "People are dying."

"I could die!" I shouted back. "I could die soon if I try to help everyone! And I am so sorry that I don't have the mental fortitude and – and moral righteousness that you seem to have in grand supply!" I stood unsteadily, wobbling dangerously with the oddly weighted effect of the boot, but I needed to be taller than Genkai in that moment. I held my head high and squared down on her. "I have had enough of you telling me what I should do with my family's curse. If you want to kill me, you might as well do it now and save me the trouble of your eternal lectures!"

Genkai let me yell at her without interrupting, but her reply bore the smallest hint of personal pain. "You really think I want you to die?"

The rage drained from me quickly after my outburst, leaving me feeling embarrassed and a little meek. "I… I don't know what you want."

"I want you to think – hard – and make a decision that's not based in spite."

I rushed to debate: "It's not spite-"

Genkai held up a hand sharply. "Shut the fuck up – of course it's spite! You have every reason to be angry about everything that was stolen from you." She lowered the hand, leaving me thinking that she had been about to smack me. "You need to decide if you are more interested in holding onto what you have left and hunting for what you lost, which will probably never happen, or helping others retrieve what was stolen from them, which you absolutely can do."

She turned, and threw one last remark over her shoulder. "Are you going to remain fixated on the past, or the futures you can change?" She stopped in the doorway. "If you decide you want to give up on your selfishness, come find me."


Maybe it was emotional exhaustion, maybe it was the ankle, but I found myself drifting lower on the porch as the afternoon drew on. I lay down a little at a time, and eventually fell asleep on the porch like a small child.

I was home.

I was young.

My mother smiled as she swung me round and round in circles, her grasp firm around my ankles. I liked to be spun like this – all the blood rushed to my head and the world got all fuzzy around the edges.

My mother leaned down and planted a fierce kiss. A shiny charm swung out from under her loose sweater – hanging from a familiar cord. The Shuttle gleamed in the light, and my mother caught me staring.

"One day, my beautiful daughter." She hid it from me under her clothes.

It was wrong.

I was too old.

I had too many hands.

My mother smiled and took my hand-that-should-have-been-missing. "My beautiful daughter," she called to me. "Isn't this what you wanted?"

A sharp bird cry woke me from my afternoon nap. I sat up slowly, easing out a crick in my neck. That's what you get for falling asleep on the porch like a cat.

I fluffed my hair a little to free some of the looser tangles and ran my fingers through the rest of it. I braided it slowly, swinging my feet in the air (one a little slower than the other) and enjoying the late afternoon air.

I hadn't dreamt of my mother for a while. Genkai had somehow wormed her was into my unconscious mind and given me one weird dream.

If I could go back… would I change it? Only if I didn't have to remember anything, I resolved.

I had come to the Temple to find peace, security, and share my grief with someone who would understand what I had lost. That being my only goal for several years, I hadn't really constructed a plan beyond this particular moment in time.

Did I owe Genkai something for this shelter? If this was my goal, my endgame, did it matter if I died tomorrow after helping a hundred people? I gulped, swallowing the thrill of fear that crawled up my throat at the thought. But I don't want to die. I was afraid of death, which any sane person would be.

I wished deeply, powerfully, that my life had been different. I didn't want to be sitting here with an almost-broken ankle. I didn't want to be in Japan. I didn't want to be a Weaver.

I wanted to be a normal girl, gossiping with friends at a café.

I wanted the power to choose my future – get a normal job, have a boring marriage, have a couple of normal kids.

I wanted to be home, with my mother and grandmother.

I've never felt so alone. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.

A strangled noise from the other end of the courtyard drew my attention instantly.

Kazuma stood at the top of the stairs, face flushed.

I stared back.

What's he doing here?

"Hello," I greeted. He looked at me blankly. I worried for a moment – had I spoken in Russian or Japanese? I tried again, a little more clearly. "Good morning."

No answer. Kazuma stared at me blankly. Was he still angry?

Kazuma broke his gaze with me and dug around in his pockets for a moment, and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper, scanning it quickly before shoving it in his pocket. He looked ready to fight, and my heartrate accelerated as he stomped across the courtyard towards me.

He still managed to be taller than me, though he was standing on the ground and I was sitting on the elevated porch. He cleared his throat and leveled his jaw.

Kazuma struggled a few times to get words out of his mouth, but the first sounds shocked me deeply.

"Prosti menya, Pozhaluysta."


A/N: Google translate is my friend. I have gotten in the habit of translating things a few times just to be sure I'm not saying something weird, but it sure is strange trying to write a bilingual character in a realistic fashion.

I'm not super thrilled with this chapter and can't put my finger on exactly why. Hope you liked it anyway. Mmmmmmm character development...

Many thanks to my reviewers: Sanguinary Tide, roseeyes, SpiffyPixie1, and halem847!

PLEASE REVIEW!

This is the only story I'm working on right now, so more reviews means I feel good about writing and write faster!