Wow, the final chapter (minus, of course, the epilogue). This one's a bit of a doozy, but rather short. (Which may be a good thing, as we're going to finish out NF and start posting the next saga all in one day. Woohoo!)

Stay tuned for the official announcement of Nightfall's sequel!

Warnings: torture, parental abuse, neglect, attempted murder, cult material, execution

Chapter 26

The person missing at Tessa's baby shower had distracted me all day. Considering the publicity of the trial, everyone knew not to ask. Reports had already said she died in her cell. Michael had been found dead. Dais had outdone himself, and according to the rest of the world, we only had one living parent.

I knew better.

Tessa noticed me wandering off near the end, having been distant the last hour. It was all chatting, now, people dropping off as they wanted to. She asked if I wanted company. I shook my head no. She quickly gave me a hug— me honestly more pressed against her side than front— before returning to her guests, me going deeper into the forests around Mia's house

I clapped my hands together before turning them palms outward, parting rifts between worlds as easily as a curtain of water. It used to hurt, every time I got close to this barrier. Kayura had figured it out thanks to the Ancient and Anubis, the staff holding a memory of how to travel between worlds.

Cale and Kayura were playing with the dogs in the courtyard. Instead of kneeling to pet the mini pack that trotted up to me in greeting, I absently patted one's head and scratched the other's spine. "Where's Sekhmet?"

Cale glanced towards the palace. "Here to finish what you began?"

I swallowed. Hard. "Yes."

"He's in his lab," Kayura said softly. "Do you—"

"No."

I left the dogs behind, walking through familiar halls and Sekhmet meeting me after I'd traveled not even fifty feet. "I thought you'd prefer not to backtrack too much."

My smile was more automatic than genuine. "Arigato."

He took me down into the dungeon. Behind two layers of magically protected and iron-clad doors was a chamber that still echoed with torture. Hospitals and cemeteries always had tripped my abilities to feel the past— the doors of death about to open and the windows of ended lives frozen in history.

Apparently, prisons did the same thing.

I tried to tell myself the Nether Spirit wails were only the past, only a time Talpa— Arago— had control of this place. The grim irony was not lost on me; how my mother had wanted so strongly to be one with him and here she was, held in a place that he had used to torment those who didn't follow him absolutely.

Just like she had tormented me.

She was alone in this room. Michael had been in here for all of a week as the Warlords let him die, showing a twisted form of mercy when seven days of starvation and dehydration had yet to kill him. Tessa and Rowen— she'd left the final call in his hands, for all Michael had physically attacked Rowen more— had said they didn't care how, they just wanted to know when they could move on. Michael's prolonged pain had been punishment enough, for the healing they needed. Anything longer would have simply left my sister and brother in law lurching between past and present. None of us wanted that for them.

Meanwhile, I had asked she be kept alive. At the barest level possible. The way she had kept me.

Cruel, maybe. Vengeful, most certainly. As my sister's due date drew closer I kept thinking of my nephew, or my responsibility as an aunt. It was a month before he would enter the world, now. Thirteen months before my own wedding.

I had not known what I needed to heal for months. Until last week, really, and even then— cowardice had kept me from truly acting.

I looked up at Sekhmet. "Can she hear me?"

He shook his head. "Her body has completely shut down, between the poison and starvation. As far as Dais is aware, she is hallucinating if she has moments of lucidity. Both of us doubt it." He paused, glancing down at me. "Do you wish her to?"

"No."

He gestured forward, indicating I could do whatever I wanted. All I did was step to the edge of the Nether-lava she was half sunk into, aged till her 90s. I couldn't look away, fascination mirroring that of watching a train wreck.

"You hurt me."

The spit out words acted like a quick release pin, weight of everything I had held back dropping down.

"I was your victim and you insisted you were a victim of circumstance. You might've been part of this cult but you chose to love god more than me. You chose to put some ideal over the flesh and blood— your flesh and blood. You nearly killed Tessa because you hated Dad so much you didn't want him to have her, and mistrusted doctors so much you didn't want them in your body. You spilled vitriol all over your pregnancy because it made you lose your figure. Was I not worth it? Was a child who tried to do everything right, who tried to be worthy of you— was your own child worth less than your precious waistline?"

My voice grew louder, finally free to expose the anger she had always turned against me when conscious. "You lied to me! You said you were protecting me. Protecting me from what? Kindness? Joy? Love? Everything good in this world! You stopped me from experiencing everything good in this world in the name of safety, because human attachments weren't supposed to mean anything. Because love wasn't supposed to mean anything. Yeah, you sure proved that right. The love of your child was so worthless you'd rather have me dead so you could advance your own ends. But you never had the guts to kill me outright— that would be evil. Instead you restricted my food until I was eating four hundred calories a day and a month away from death. My friends loved me more than you ever did, and I fought tooth and nail to have them."

Nails dug into my palms, voice already raw but me not about to stop shrieking. "Because everything that made people happy was a creation of hell that would slow my progress! That experiencing the wrong things would make it I never left this world to experience heaven. How sad you were that I might not get there to join you. And I listened! I cut off more people than I want to name and they all locked me out of their social groups and I nearly died from isolation more times than I care to count. And I thought you would protect me from it! I thought you were keeping me safe! You were just trying to pad out your resume and when I stopped being your perfect little doll you nearly starved me to death. Once I outlived my usefulness you nearly killed me.

"You stopped me. You stopped me at every turn. Gaslit me into thinking you were actually supportive of my job, when you'd told me not to take it because the way I got the offer was dangerous, when you'd told me if I just worked my job profile hard enough an offer exactly like that would fall in my lap just like it did. You only wanted me to do things so you could brag about them. You only like me if I do what you want and put you as my number one priority and you knew the job was the beginning of your end and it was!" I swallowed down rawness in my throat, not bothering to cuff away the tears threatening to fall. "You kept lying and lying and lying about how dangerous the world was, about god, about friendship, about romance.

"You tried to start your own cult with me as your most loyal follower. You even kept me away from other cultists, saying they were too advanced for me, reminding me how I'd failed with my spiritual progress because I didn't even fit in with people you kept telling me were the only ones who could understand me. You gave me lessons I wasn't ready for, lessons whose scars I still bear, because I was supposed to be so much better than all of them. You never treated me like I was my own age. I was supposed to be so much better but instead you gave me more responsibility than I was ready for! You made it I never looked past my own nose and you were the only person better than me so you could be the only one to teach me."

I was officially hoarse, but I couldn't stop. "You said the only person who could understand me was you because I was just that difficult, just that hard to reach, just that brilliant. I was a temperamental bitch who never took care of other people except my friends and how in private I was somebody only a saint could tolerate, how unruly and unpredictable and insufferable I was. How the only way you ever got rewards was if I achieved something. How the only way I was worthwhile was if I taught you something, or did something you thought was because of your parenting. How the only things that ever made it worthwhile were things that lead back to you, even if it was me! It was almost always me!"

My vision was completely blurred with tears, now. I almost wished Sage were here so he could know the full extent, but I had told him enough, stewed over this enough, that I simply wanted her to know. Even if she couldn't hear me. If she couldn't hear me, she couldn't fight back. I couldn't be gaslit. I was in control, not her, not anyone. She couldn't redirect my anger and tell me it was wrong. That I was wrong. She was. She had always been. And no matter how much grief I had over the past and how much I wanted to fix it, all I could do was make sure the future was free of her.

"I'm scared to marry the love of my life because of you. I'm scared to marry a man who would move heaven and earth for me if he had to— and he's had to because of you. I am scared that his best friend will take my sister away from me because of you. You were so jealous, so demanding, that you never thought anybody could ever love more than one person and you taught me that once I was married, I was a possession. That my loyalty would have to be to one person— loyalty you never gave either of your husbands. You abandoned my own sister because she loved him and you couldn't take it. A sister you nearly killed because of what? Misplaced pride? I thought it was a good thing to be born by a c-section, and I was supposed to be the 'lost' one because I was born naturally. Maybe that's why you always hovered over me. I was the lost one, who could be easily shaped! Or maybe you abandoned her because I loved her, too, and all you wanted to do was make sure I could only love you. That I could never find anyone else who loved me!"

I fell to my knees and screamed, primal sound that bounced off the walls and became another echo of torment. I wanted to kill her, I wanted to hurt her, I wanted to make her suffer the way she had made me. But my own morals kept me from doing anything worse. They nagged at me to let her die, but I couldn't. I couldn't until I had felt she knew everything, until I was no longer afraid. I knew I would only stop being afraid upon her death, but at the same time, I knew I would only stop feeling powerless if I did this.

"You lied to me about everything. About what would happen if I revealed who I was and what would happen behind closed doors. Every insufferable trait I have is your fault because I only get insufferable when people give me no choice. I'm human! I'm human I'm human I'm human I'm human you tried to tell me I was closer to god and that being human was a sin but I am human. I will only ever be human! And I don't believe I can be loved and human all because of you.

"You lied to me about a scar on your knee and now you've put me in a position where I have to lie about a scar on my stomach that you put there and I remember the betrayal and I do not want to tell my children, my nieces and nephews what happened but I will, and I will do it when they ask even if they are young because I still remember the feeling of betrayal when I overheard the true story. You didn't even have the decency to tell me when I was old enough. You treated me like a child and an adult and never my own age, never able to understand you because you were supposed to be so wise and so much better than me but I was impossible to understand because I was so advanced for my age and I'm average! I will always be average!

"And you hated tattoos. You hated them and said 'what if your twin flame hates them, would you rather live without your twin flame for your own ego wanting to decorate' and guess what. My fiancé supports me in getting this. In covering up the reminder you wanted me dead because, to you, me being dead was better than falling from grace. Than rejecting you. I know I said you were my teacher when I was four and all you have taught me is how not to live. Every skill you say I got from you I learned twice over, once corrupted and once on my own, with my friends. You tried to kill me more times than I care to count even though I will. You noticed my suicidal tendencies and never bothered asking me if I was okay. You noticed my bad relationship with food but blamed me for being too picky, instead of thinking that maybe I had a problem. You encouraged me to restrict more because the food I craved was unhealthy, instead of thinking that maybe lack of food was the problem. You didn't want me alive. You didn't want me to thrive. You've been trying to kill me and isolate me— a fate worse than death for those who want social bonds, agreed on by all the psychologists you hated so much, and I want social bonds— since as long as I can remember. Since as long as I have formed conscious thoughts.

"I'm done being who you wanted me to be. I'm done living in fear of becoming the monster you said I'd be, and I'm done living in fear of losing what I already have because I take a risk. Because I follow what's best for my life. You are not my contingency plan anymore. I am my own contingency plan. I don't want to trust a heartless monster with my life. You said god would provide but no. I will. It was always me. It wasn't even my armour. Dusk was my own spirit. Everything has always been my own spirit, and I will use it how I see fit. I will no longer rely on the narcissist that was you. You are not the most important figure in my life. I am."

I spat in the lava, getting up on knees that felt more like rubber than bone. I watched her— agony gone from her face in her coma, but not peaceful. The lack of peace, the lack of rest, made me smile, the side of me that wanted justice— the side she had called vengeful and cruel— finally satisfied.

"You may be my biological mother, and I may get my powers from you, but I choose to build my own life, without you ever touching it again. I am starting a new life with every family member you ripped away from me, and with a man I have chosen as my husband, and you will never see it. But know, beyond all doubt, it will be better than anything you could have ever helped me with. And I didn't need your heroics to get there." I turned on my heel, walking to be level with Sekhmet, head bowed. "Kill her quickly."

He paused in surprise. "Are you sure?"

I nodded. "She's been in pain long enough."

I left the dungeon while Sekhmet called up Autumn. The doors clanked behind me, but I picked up the shnik of a katana leaving its scabbard.

Kayura was waiting for me with one of the dogs outside— Inkblot, named for the patches of black on his otherwise brown fur. I fell to my knees again and hugged him around the neck, bracing myself for the doors opening.

Sekhmet came out all of five minutes later. "It is done."

I started sobbing again. This time, though, it was with overwhelming relief. She was gone. She was gone I was free I was safe she could never hurt me ever again. Her voice could live on in my mind, but it couldn't hurt me. Her physical body had been able to, and now I never had to worry about it ever again.

Kayura knelt beside me, Sekhmet hanging back in case I didn't want the person who had executed another, no matter how monstrous, near me.

"Do you want us to take you anywhere?" she asked softly.

I shook my head. "Just stay."

Sekhmet dared step closer. "Would you like us to get anyone?"

I swallowed. "C-Cye…" My eyes scrunched shut, face buried in Inkblot's ruff. "I— I want to know— what happens…"

Autumn gave the impression of a nod. A soft pop later, he was gone.

I felt like I was bleeding. That her alive had been a sword still in my liver, knotting my stomach but also preventing all the feelings— all the grief, all the anger, all the pure hatred— from escaping. I had been in danger, therefore never been able to feel it.

But as I had learned, the only way to truly heal was pull out the weapon. Now, all the pain I had shoved aside in the name of safety could pour out and I could finally register I was hurt, but also finally expose the wound and begin recovery.

Another pop, and a moment later Cye's hand slid across my back to wrap me in a hug. Sekhmet must have filled him in, because his first question was, "What do you want to know?"

I shifted my grip to my arms around his chest, still crying, saying the first thing that came to mind.

"How to heal."

—/—

My sister was being her usual stubborn self, insisting on paying for her stomach tattoo all by herself, and we were having none of it. "We" being myself, Sage, and Rowen.

Time to pull out the big guns.

"I keep saying, this is a present for myself," Alexa reiterated, again refusing Sage's offer of his card.

I levelled a look at her that, hopefully, brooked no argument. "You will not pay a cent toward this. It's the least we can do for what happened."

She swallowed. "That implies it was your fault…"

Internally muttering at myself for bringing back that train of thought, I reminded gently, "We've gone over that."

"We were the ones to take care of you after, not because it was our fault, but because we wanted to," Sage said softly, kissing her hairline. "This is part of caring for your injury. Your psychological comfort, instead of physical."

Her glance up at him was uncertain. "You've already paid for so much…"

That was almost just the opening I needed, Speaking as I reached (with difficulty) for my wallet, I said. "And it's about time I repay every instance you spoiled me, sis."

Her look of exasperation when I pulled out my card with a flourish had me grinning. "Is this how you felt when I insisted on paying for stuff?"

Rowen answered while I kept the Cheshire Cat face on. "You've spoiled all of us in one way or another. Our turn to pay you back."

She groaned, rubbing her face in consternation. "You're not going to let me get away with this, are you?"

"Nope!" we chimed simultaneously

Sage had taken the momentary distraction caused by our banter to put his card back, but then withdraw another. "If you absolutely insist on paying for it yourself, use this card." He all but crammed it into her hand, kissing her forehead again to take the sting out of the firm gesture.

I watched curiously as Alexa turned it over, then gasped; my eyebrow shot up in surprise at just being able to make out her name on the little piece of plastic. Her breath caught. "Seiji…"

His voice was soft as velvet. "We had talked about beginning to merge our finances before the wedding. This… was a natural extension of that, for me. Even though you'll have to get a new card, once your name is changed."

The gesture finally broke down her resistance, the realization that it was okay for people to want to take care of her faintly coming through to Dawn. Moving on and "resetting" after everything was already a struggle for her, made especially difficult by throwing a changing relationship into the mix. She'd done well for herself so far, though; I let my pride flow from Dawn to Dusk, telling her just that.

Everything was going to be alright.

She glanced up at me gratefully, voice watery with tears. "You can pay for it. I don't want to figure out credit card activation right now."

I handed the card to her with an understanding chuckle, glad she'd accepted. Though I couldn't physically go with her to the consultation appointment—which would also serve as one for our matching tattoos—I could at least relieve the financial burden. Small as it might be.

She stopped by my apartment the next day after flying to Ottawa by Dusk, a sheet of paper clutched in her hand. Smoothing it out on the coffee table revealed a slight color tweak to the white portions of the image.

Almost stammering through her words, she explained, "It's purple because white— wouldn't really work, ink-wise, people are prone to rejecting it or it turning yellow— and it matches Dusk this way and." She took a pause for breath. "He said it would work fine, otherwise. And that our wrist tattoos would be a piece of cake. But you would wait till after you're done breastfeeding."

Naturally, I had figured as much. I wasn't so worried about that as I had been for how she would feel about the whole process, now that she'd started the ball rolling. I hugged her as best I could around my nine-months-pregnant stomach. "I'm fine with that if you are. And once Touma's born, I can fly over to visit—either with or without him, though I don't think he'd mind either way," I reassured with a wink.

She swallowed. "He asked what caused it and I said surgery after getting mugged."

So that was why she was fidgety. I squeezed her around the shoulders and kissed her forehead. Dawn wrapped around Dusk to let her know her feelings were valid, and that I was there to support her. Quietly, she continued, "I hate lying. It just… feels like it proves her right. About how dangerous the armours are."

I lifted my hand to run it over her hair. "It's not the armors that are inherently dangerous, sis. It's like in the Marvel comics—Tony Stark announces his presence, and suddenly there are those who want to challenge their might against his. Imagine if it weren't just the cult or the youjakai that knew about the armors…"

That got a snort. "At least it's not losing them, like she said it would be."

I simply nodded, again just giving her the space to say more if she needed to. "Soul's safety versus physical safety, I guess…" She released a dry laugh. "I thought I'd be okay going against everything she ever told me about scars and tattoos but… I guess not."

"It will probably take some time," I murmured. "You're having to overcome twenty years or more of those opinions."

"And not challenging them for five years." She hugged me tightly, almost crumpling against me. "I am so glad I met you."

Smiling softly and kissing her forehead, hands still moving over her hair, I let her feel my reciprocated emotions. I had no idea where my life would have been at that moment had I not joined a writing forum almost on a whim ten years prior. Touma most certainly would not exist, at least. And something told me I would have missed that star even though I would not have been able to see it.

"So am I."