Roxy groaned and lifted her head from her desk groggily. She had accidentally fallen asleep on her textbook again, and now her cheek hurt from being pressed against the hard surface. And her pencil was still in her hand, too! This was kind of ridiculous.

Sadly, learning did not work by diffusion, and she remained just as clueless on the mysteries of calculus as ever. All she had now was a hell of a screwed up sleep schedule and probably some bad grades coming up. Of course everything came to a head during finals week, right?

She didn't even care that much about finals, not with Jane and Dirk in the clutches of this shadowy "Lord English", but she had to study and make good grades so no one would think something was up, because Roxy Lalonde the witty university student always made good grades now that she'd managed to get better about her alcoholism.

Speaking of that whole alcohol thing... it was so very tempting to go grab a bottle of wine and turn back down that road, let it dull her mind and deaden the pain and make her feel a bit better. But no, she couldn't, Jane and Dirk would be so, so disappointed in her if she did—they had been instrumental in getting her out of that void in the first place, and she was stronger than that! She couldn't just fall again, she couldn't. It presented her with an awful dilemma though, and she had probably wasted hours clutching her head and agonizing over whether she should turn back to the bottle to temporarily assuage her aching heart.

No, it shouldn't even be a choice, really—she was going to prove to herself and everyone else just how fucking stubborn she could be. She was not going to let herself go into a downward spiral, she was not. If she did that, then there would be pretty much no way she could help Jane or Dirk, and since this whole mess was kind of her fault to begin with, she had to fix it and that meant she could not go fuck up now. So as another thought of that tempting bottle sitting in the kitchen drifted through her head, Roxy made up her mind.

Standing so quickly that her chair almost fell backwards, she determinedly walked to first her odds-and-ends drawer and pulled out some screws, a drill, a screwdriver, and a lock. With these tools in hand, she marched to the kitchen and shoved all the wine, vodka, whatever alcoholic beverages she had, into one cabinet. And then, she installed a lock on this cabinet, sealing them away in the darkness. The key... she paused. What to do with the key?

Well, on those terrible nights when she was feeling lower than dreadful, she never wanted to call her friends because they probably had something better to do with their time than deal with a sad drunk. So perhaps that was the way to put the key somewhere she wasn't going to get at it when she wasn't thinking clearly—she could give it to one of them. Well, at least she could give it to the only one who she hadn't completely fucked over yet. She'd just have to remember to bring it with her next time she went to see Jake, and until then she had to keep her head above water and just remember that going back to the depths of her own personal hell was never going to be worth it, even when she thought she could delude herself into thinking so.

Wow, Ro-Lal, way to get super deep on yourself out of nowhere, she thought to herself with a snort. Maybe she should pick up something more productive than drinking, if she wasn't going to be able to make herself study tonight. Even though she really, really ought to study, because Jane and Dirk would probably be disappointed with her if she failed calculus. Especially Dirk, because for some godforsaken reason that boy actually enjoyed fiddling with numbers and weird notation and whatever weird shit was involved in this math.

Standing in the kitchen and leaning against the countertop, her back to the cabinet while her fingers played idly with the key, turning it over and over in her hand, Roxy allowed herself a little smile of reminiscence at the thought of last winter's semester exams, when Dirk had shown up at her door one morning, his fair hair tousled by the wind that almost dramatically blew his orange scarf out behind him as he stood there in a dark coat, and all but dragged her out across campus to his apartment because he had a government project that he wanted her help with, and he already knew without her saying a word that derivatives were kind of going over her head. It may or may not have been her fault for not paying attention in grade school classes or the beginning of the college semester, but that was when she was having the worst of her alcohol problems. She was past that now, at least.

At the time, she'd laughed as he grabbed her hand and hauled her out the door as soon as she'd gotten an appropriate number of oversized sweaters on her body. They'd arrived at his apartment and the first thing she did was make some hot coffee, with a copious amount of sugar added into her mug that made Dirk wrinkle his nose in distaste and say, "Why are you emptying half of my fucking sugarpot into a single mug," in that funny way of his. Then, after the obligatory it's-cold-as-fuck-outside-so-we're-going-to-snuggle-on-the-couch-for-a-bit session, which was also known as the oh-for-fuck's-sake-Dirk-why-is-your-couch-covered-in-robots session, they'd settled down into the usual work routine. It was always laid-back and fun, even if Dirk liked to push her until she wanted to pick up the textbook and bludgeon him over the head with it sometimes.

But shit, there was nothing she wouldn't give right now if it would get her stupid infuriating best friend back here safely. Just like there was nothing she wouldn't give to bring her silly and endearing best friend back, too.

... Yeah, there was pretty much no way she was going to be able to sit down and study without her mind wandering off down memory lane, was there. What a pain. (That was a silly pun, too. A pun that sort of made her want to smack herself because this was no laughing matter, but it was kind of literally painful as well as being a pain in the ass.) But at least there had to be something she could do to keep herself from turning back to the darkest days of her life for supposed salvation.

Her eyes settled on a picture of her mother, framed and set on the corner table. Rose Lalonde had been a lovely, poised and elegant lady with a wit sharper than the knife in Roxy's boot. Her books had been bestsellers until they were declared taboo; she'd disappeared not long after the ban had been extended to her own life—she was charged with treason, and had been executed alongside Dirk's older brother a few years ago, when Roxy and Dirk were thirteen.

It wasn't until about two or three years ago that Roxy and Dirk had found out that the only reason that they'd not been persecuted themselves was that Rose and Dave had worked some magic with the system to erase all records of either of the two of them having family members. For all intents and purposes, since Roxy never knew her father and Dirk never had any parents to speak of, just Dave, the two of them were orphans.

It was only due to the chaotic lack of jurisdiction anywhere that they had stayed together and all but been a family for each other, with lots of help from Jane and Jake. But it didn't help her grief, or how much she still missed her mother.

But now that she thought... there was something that her mom had taught her from an early age. It was therapeutic and a balm to her harried mind, and certainly better for her than drinking was.

Roxy walked to the largest room in her apartment, which she kept almost devoid of furniture save around the edges just for this purpose, and turned on the music player. With a deep, almost but not quite steady breath, she squared her shoulders, raised her arms, and pointed her toes, and began to dance.

Later that same night, after she'd danced until her arms and shoulders were too tired to maintain proper frame and the room was spinning after one too many waltzes without pause, Roxy sprawled on her bed, her wavy hair fanned around her head and a few textbooks and papers, half-covered in doodles, lay scattered about. It had sort of worked, at least, and she'd made some progress on the review. But she was stuck on one problem, it was way too late to go over to any of her nearby friends' apartments—and besides, most of them would be asleep by now—and she was sick of staring at it, because at least the ceiling didn't make her feel really stupid.

There was someone she could have called by now, at least. The question was whether she had the courage to do it. Did she? Did she not? Did she? It was a question for the ages, she decided sardonically. Well, no, that was wrong, it was a question that would be decided by her actions in the next few minutes. She cast a look at the communicator that rested innocently in her palm, flipping it and tossing it between her hands a few times—ow! Fuck. She just dropped it on her own face!

That was at least something she could laugh at. Which she did. It was good to be able to laugh at oneself, right?

Welp, nothing for it now, she was going to call. This decided, she only hesitated for a moment before she punched the button that would connect her to—

"Yo, Lalonde, what's up?" AR greeted, his voice calm and almost but not quite bored as always.

"Hey, AR!" she replied, forcing cheer into her voice. "Wanna do me a favor and tell me how to work this one math problem?"

There was a slight pause, during which she could almost see Dirk's face frowning at her. "You call me at three in the morning just to ask me to help you with calculus? What the hell have you even been doing all day?"

"Dancing and crying, for your information," she answered with a frown, drumming her fingers against the blanket. "And it's not like you have anything better to do, anyway!"

"Oh," he said. "Stop crying. It's stupid and doesn't help you in any way."

Roxy was about to hang up on him then and there, cursing her own folly in bothering to call him in the first place, when he added more quietly, "But also, I hate hearing you say that you're crying when I can't do a fucking thing about it."

She sat quietly, taking a moment to gather her thoughts before she responded. It was almost too easy to forget, sometimes, that AR wasn't Dirk, because their personalities seemed to almost seamlessly meld into one another, and for a moment Roxy allowed herself to imagine that it would be okay because in a way Dirk was still with her, she still had him here and it was alright—but then she felt horribly, awfully guilty, because somewhere out there her Dirk, the one she'd grown up with and the one who could physically reach out and hold her hand and wipe away her tears, no matter how awkward he might become when trying to deal with other people's feelings, that Dirk was behind bars and probably miserable and there was no way that that would ever be okay.

"I don't like crying either," she told him with a little laugh. "Which is why I'm calling you at three in the morning just to ask you to help me with calculus."

"Oh, alright," he muttered, as if there'd ever been any question that he'd help her. "What's the problem?"

"Some bullshit thing with integrals," Roxy shrugged. "Here, let me read it to you." She rattled off a string of numbers with a liberal spattering of variables, grouping symbols, and various notations.

A little time passed in this fashion, with AR prodding Roxy toward the correct answer as she fumbled around in her own confusion for a little while before the lightbulb clicked and suddenly—"Ohhhhhh! Ohhh, I see! So it's fifteen, right?"—the solution came.

"Excellent job," AR said, without even a trace of sarcasm. Roxy beamed.

"I wouldn't have been able to do that if I'd been drunk!" she said happily, not really thinking because it was nearly four in the morning and really, who thinks at four in the morning?

"Why the fuck would you have been—oh hell no. God fucking damn it, Lalonde! You were actually doing good!" AR seethed, obviously having arrived at the conclusion that she had been drinking again. Which was almost true, but not! That almost meant a significant amount.

"Dirk! Calm down!" she exclaimed placatingly, only belatedly realizing that she'd called him Dirk. Oops. "I didn't, I didn't, I promise! When I told you all I did today was dance and cry, I meant it. Well, I did a little bit of poly-sci studies, but that's beside the point. I didn't drink today. Or yesterday. Or actually, ever since I stopped."

"Then what were you getting at a second ago?" he asked suspiciously. Apparently he had either not noticed that she called him Dirk—highly unlikely—or he was choosing to stew over it and not comment, at least for now, which was much more probable. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad one.

"I'm not going to lie to you and say I haven't thought about it," she said honestly. "But I haven't actually done it. Actually, that's what gave me the idea to dance, standing in the kitchen til I saw Mom's picture. Either way, I stop thinking about things, but dancing is a hell of a lot better for me, ya know?"

AR was silent for just a second. "Yeah. It is. I hope I never have to tell you again that you need to stay away from that shit, though, Roxy."

Oh, now, he was pulling out the first name and sober tone? This shit was getting real. "You didn't have to tell me just now. I know. It fucks you up and sucks you back in because you think it's a coping mechanism but it's really a big black hole."

"Good description," he said, and it was back to the lighter, more sarcastic voice that she was more familiar with from AR. When AR got serious, he really reminded her of Dirk. And that was... well, it hurt, because it was a blatant reminder that he wasn't there.

"Thanks, AR," she sighed, wishing it was actually Dirk so she could reach over and ruffle his hair and giggle when he complained loudly like he always would before he returned the favor and then grinned that little grin of his when her hair fell in her face and she shook her head to try and push it aside—oh god, she missed him. Talking to this not-quite-Dirk was heartrending.

And it didn't help that it was her fault, her fault and hers alone, that he and Jane were gone. It was all thanks to her that her friends were who-knows-where going through some horrible variant of who-knows-what and it was not fair, they shouldn't be there! If she'd managed to just not drop that communicator—for the zillionth time, that moment replayed in her mind as if in slow motion, the feeling of the weight in her pocket shifting as she scrambled up the wall, the sudden realization that it was gone, the loud crack when it hit the pavement, and then her continued flight. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

"I calculuate a ninety six point eight nine nine percent chance that right now you're agonizing over the fact that Dirk and Jane aren't here," AR interrupted her recollection. "Stop that."

Roxy sighed, determinedly wiping her eyes before she really started crying again. "AR?" she asked after a moment. "Do you have any leads on where they are at all?"

AR seemed reluctant to answer, but he eventually sighed and said, "You know, I had calculated that there was a zero percent chance I would ever say this. Like, less than zero. If we were playing hot and cold, this shit would be less than absolute zero. How is it less than absolute zero, you ask? Well, it's almost as cool as me, and that's how—"

"AR," she interrupted, feeling her heart sinking before she even got a straight answer. "I asked a yes or no question."

He seemed even more reluctant, but finally he admitted, "I have no fucking idea, Roxy."

That weekend, as every other weekend since the ill-fated march, Roxy made her way across campus and a ways into town to meet Jake at the underground secret base of operations. She arrived early, and after a few minutes of trying to just take a nap on the couch because she was too lazy to walk to one of the three bedrooms somewhere in the back, she sighed. It was just as she'd expected; there was pretty much no way that she could go to sleep here, not when she couldn't stop her thoughts from racing because everything around her came with memories attached.

Rolling over with a groan, she sighed loudly and pushed herself into a sitting position, then stood and ambled over to one of the computers that sat conveniently around the walls, placed there of course by Roxy herself some time ago. If she wasn't going to get any rest, she could at least try—try being the operative word—to look once again and see if she could dig up any information on "Lord English" that wasn't a compilation of folklore or other similar useless things.

The more she scrolled through every database she pulled up, the more she became convinced that these motherfuckers were not going to be easy to find at all. How were they supposed to mount a rescue operation if she couldn't get any concrete evidence that they even existed? But she wasn't about to doubt AR on this one; it definitely wasn't the Batterwitch's army that had taken them, if she remembered the dead bodies—which, rest assured, she did, a bit too well in her opinion—correctly. At least a name was better than nothing.

It wasn't like she hated reading these legends or anything; they were kind of cool, in their own way, even if they did lack neat elements like mages and wizards using magic in more fun ways than just time-tested ones that everybody in every story did. They were also part of Skaian culture, rumored to be passed down from the oldest of days. That was cool too, but so not hella useful.

"'They say the prince of demons hides in every shadow, and yet is never found in any of them, for it takes the light of a great seer to pierce his darkness. But seers, my child, are already a rare breed, and great ones are even harder to find, and not all seers can shine the light that you need,' the mage told the brave knight, who wished to rid the world of the terrible demon who fed on their very dreams. 'But it wouldn't be wise of you to seek him out on his terms at all. Find the seer first, if you can remain hidden in the void long enough that he does not notice you on this noble errand.'

'I will find the seer,' the knight vowed. 'Then I shall know the way, and with chivalry and witchcraft united we will defeat the demon prince forever!' He bowed, turned and departed—"

"Roxy?" Jake's voice asked suddenly. Roxy jumped, surprised.

"Jake!" she beamed, hopping up from her chair to run across the room and hug him. "Sorry, I guess I just got distracted reading old folklore. It's some cute stuff. How've you been, Jakey?"

"Well enough," Jake said, hugging her back. "It's been dreary as always at work, and a bit lonely, but ... but you know why that is without me saying it, I wager."

"Yeah, you'd be right about that," she sighed, looking at the floor as she tucked her hair behind her ear. A thought struck her then. "Oh, Jake, can I ask a favor?"

"Of course!" he said immediately. "What is it?"

"Can you keep this somewhere for me, and don't tell me where you put it until after we get Jane and Dirk back?" she asked, holding out the key to her locked alcohol cabinet and looking up at him plaintively.

Jake blinked, seeming to be a bit surprised by this odd request, but he took the key and nodded seriously, holding her hand for a moment before he released it to pocket the key. "May I inquire, though, what that key unlocks?"

"Yeah, no problem," she said with another sigh. "It's the key to the cabinet where I locked up all the alcoholic drinks in my apartment. I... I almost drank today, like not controlled drinking like it would be at a dinner or something, but like the kind where I mean to lose my mind and—anyway. I didn't do it, but I don't want to get to a point where that's even an option."

Jake was looking at her with a concerned expression that morphed into something akin to pride just a second before he gave her a squeeze and laughed. "Well, props to you, for managing not to do it again, Roxy! I'm proud of you."

She laughed, feeling a little warmth pervade her mind at that statement. "Thanks, Jake!"

"No problem!" he beamed.

They both sat together for a little over an hour, just enjoying the stress-free environment of an evening spent with a friend; Roxy complained to him about her exams while Jake fussed about his job and they both laughed with each other. Finally, though, the elephant in the room was brought forth.

"Have you found anything?" Jake asked after a silence, turning to face her. Even though he didn't specify what, Roxy knew exactly what he was asking about, but her news was grim and she shook her head despairingly, feeling the light, mirthful atmosphere drain away as she did so.

"I wish I had better news for you, Jakey," she buried her face in her hands for a moment. "I haven't found a thing, and neither has AR."

Jake looked so sad in that moment that Roxy couldn't help but lean over and wrap an arm around his shoulders. "We'll find something eventually, though, I'm sure of it! Perhaps the breakthrough will be next week, that would be stellar!" he offered a small smile. "We will have them home soon."

"That's the spirit!" Roxy nodded, smiling back at him broadly to hide the dismal feeling in her own heart. Hopefully "soon" would actually come soon.

AN: Look at me, I got a chapter out this week! I didn't think I was going to, but then some stuff cleared up in my schedule. Don't expect another one this week, though, sorry; I'm going to try and work on it but I'll be pretty busy with school and then this weekend I'm going home to celebrate various shenanigans with my family :D I think that's going to be fun. But anyway look, it's chapter 21! This is exciting! Over 20 chapters! :D

Pony - I'm sorry I like to give people nicknames, I'm gonna call you Pony if that's okay? And yep, you said it, creepy Doc Scratch. I don't know, he probably is going to be a bit... darker, dare I say it, than his canon self, because he's kind of over an interrogation thing and that's not going to be pretty. Ew. I don't like him. Also I'm laughing because of all the little details to notice you pick the one about the Condensce's palaces? :P Dirk might have been exaggerating, or she might legit have 50 palaces. We just don't know.

Rouge - Here's next chapter! I don't know if it's what you were expecting but it's a thing and it exists, so... yeah! c: Also I swear I am working slowly but surely on your request. It makes me happy and therefore it is long. I apparently do not know how to write short fics. Did I say that? Huh, it must have been before I finished coming up with the plotline I've got now, he has to be here. Sadly. Because he's a douchemuffin extraordinaire.

LordBeannut - ...B) Oh my god, Davesprite KILLS me with feelings! Okay look here: on page 3592 contrast what he says about himself with page 7843. I just want to hug him, the poor boy! D: D: D: I admit I have laughed at him in canon as well, but overall he creeps me out and I kind of loathe the guy he's becoming as I write him. He's so ... ugh. Creepy! Like dude, no, get away from Janey! :/

Wisdom - ... here I go, giving people nicknames again. If you don't want me to call you that just let me know :o I just like giving people nicknames! Anyway thank you soooo much, I'm always happy when new readers show up and review with things like that! (I love how all of us, myself included, are sitting here shipping DaveJade but there's no romance in this story xD)

And because Pony reminded me, here's this chapter's culinary delight: gulab jamun. More IndoPakistani food! Yum.