All was still on the ninth floor of Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated. Not a creature was stirring, not even one of the seven different spatiotemporal duplicates of the Candace who belonged here - Candace Four - and everything was very, very quiet. Isabella Four alone was still awake, sitting secluded in the basement, wrapped in a blanket under the cover of darkness, with her feet propped up on the table, poking around on the Internet during her midnight vigil in lieu of Candace Two, who was still fast asleep nearby.

The vicious thunderstorm had weakened with time, the dense masses of clouds becoming ragged and patchy, tearing gaps through which gleamed pale moonlight, shining down softly amidst the drizzling rain still pattering down over the sleeping city, running down in the sides of buildings in countless rivulets, puddling in the streets, collecting in oceanic puddles in the grass.

It was, by most accounts, a relatively peaceful night.

The drumming on the raindrops on the roof of the Flynn home made for a relaxing ambience, and that was an ambience that Candace Four could not have been more thankful for. Well, perhaps she could have been, had she stayed awake to express her gratitude to the weather, so unpleasant and threatening during the day, but so welcome during the night. As it was, however, she never really gave herself that chance.

Upon returning home from Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated, she'd cleaned up the house a bit (which was really starting to fall a bit into a shambles after so many days solely in the care of her children), told them a bit more about what she knew of the goings-on of that day, mindlessly watched a rerun of Let's All Dance Until We're Sick that happened to be showing, and soon retired. It was late, after all.

Phineas wasn't home when she went to bed - something to do with Two and Isabella and a bunch of stuff that Four really couldn't bring herself to care much about. All she knew for sure was that, for one reason or another, when she pulled the covers up over her head, that upstairs bedroom was empty with the sole exception of herself. And of course it was. After all, Xavier and Amanda were way past the age that the rumbles of thunder or flashes of lightning overhead would send them running to her for comfort. Perry was sleeping in his basket, and everyone was content.

And for all the craziness that had ensued over the past handful of days, when she closed her eyes that night, she was content too. And she counted sheep and listened to the rain overhead, and sleep followed closely behind.

At least for a little while.

Candace Four's eyes suddenly snapped open. Silence reigned all around in the pitch-dark room - apparently the rain had finally given out in the night. She blinked, suddenly very sure, somehow, that she was not alone the bedroom. Which only left one possibility.

"Phineas?"

She pulled herself up to a sitting position, her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. The clock on the nightstand declared it to be a quarter-to-three in the morning. It was late (well, early, but whatever) for her brother to be back, but better late than never and all that.

Still, even as the familiar objects around her came into halting focus, she somehow felt that of the people it could be, this was not her brother. Who would it be, then? One of the kids? Candace Two here to pester her about Doofengung? Candace-

"I voted for you, you know."

And at that deep, almost baritone voice, the blood in Four's veins turned to sludge and all her hair stood on end. She caught a whiff of the distinctive scent of some sort of strong tea wafting through the air, and it felt like her entire brain had seized up. No, no - it couldn't be. Not after so long…

"I voted for you - but this is much stranger." The zebra planted his picket sign into the carpeted bedroom floor and leaned into it, taking a sip of his drink. "And I have to say, I'm rather glad I was still able to find you this way."

"No, no, no, no," Four stammered, suddenly feeling like a helpless child again, cowering before the loquacious animal. "What - what are you doing? Go away! Please!" She - she couldn't deal with this. Not now. Not ever. Please, please, please.

The zebra stared at her, frowning. Well, frowning as well as a zebra could, which wasn't very. Still, he (she? it?) got the point across frighteningly well. Zebras shouldn't even be scary, not compared to everything else she'd seen, but this particular zebra had haunted her for so long that the facts of what he could or couldn't do no longer mattered. He was here, and that was all her nerves needed to go haywire.

"I must say I imagined that you would be much more receptive to my presence than this, Kevin."

"R-receptive?" Four stammered. "Why would you think-" Suddenly, something in her brain just… clicked, just like that. "Wait a second - what did you just say?" Kevin. Like always. He'd called her 'Kevin'. A name that wasn't hers - couldn't possibly be, because it was a man's name.

...unless, say, out there in the multiverse, there was a dimension in which names were genderswapped. A dimension in which she'd become the mayor. A dimension in talking animals were the norm, to the point that eating meat or dairy was unheard of.

Kevin.

"Kevin?" the zebra repeated. "I would think you would know your own name, Kevin. I did vote for you, after all."

"No!" Four exclaimed, but this time not quite so much out of fear. "No - no you did not vote for me! My name is not Kevin and I am not who you think I am!"

For the first time in her life, Four thought the zebra looked… surprised. Taken aback, even. He blinked once, slowly and took another long sip from his teacup.

"I'm sorry, Kevin? I'm afraid I-"

"I am not Kevin!" Four leapt up out of bed, carelessly tossing aside the bedding onto the floor. Though the zebra was still taller than her (as he would be, being a zebra, and all), at least this way the difference wasn't quite so marked as when she'd been sitting on the bed. "You want Kevin? You want her? Just march your furry self out of my house to the company building, and there you'll find her. Ninth floor. Kevin. Not Candace - that's me - but the actual Kevin. The one you voted for. Your mayor. Who, I repeat, is not me. Not."

"Is that so?"

"Is that - is that so?" Candace spluttered. "Yes, yes it's so! I'm not - you didn't vote for me! I've never run for an office in my life. My name is not Kevin, and I do not know you!" She gestured wildly about the room. "Does this look like Kevin's house? What about my children? I know Kevin doesn't have any - she told me so! Did that never occur to you?"

"Children?"

"Yes, children - do you not believe me? Do you want to go downstairs and wake them? I can do that. I can so do that." She stopped and sucked in a breath, trying to still her heartbeat, which felt as if it was about to explode through her chest any second now.

"No, I don't believe all that will be necessary," the zebra said slowly. "You are not Kevin, then?"

"No, no, no," Four replied softly, collapsing back into a sitting position on her bed. "Kevin's at the building. I'm not her, I swear." She looked up the zebra, as he flicked his tail back and forth in that way he did whenever she saw him. "Do you want me to take you there? I can - we can drive there right now. She's there, I promise."

"There's no need for that either," he returned. "My interdimensional holographic projection device enables me travel freely wherever I wish to here. If you would be so kind as to point me in the right direction, I will be off directly."

Directions? She could get him directions. She could do that. Candace turned, half in a daze, and whacked her nightlamp (kind of harder than she intended to - ouch) turning it on. The dim light softly illuminated only one half of the room, but it was all she needed really.

The sight of the zebra in the light was enough to send shivers up and her spine, even as she fought with her nightstand drawer. It finally jerked open, and she snatched out the pocket-sized collapsible Danville roadmap within. She didn't know why Phineas insisted on keeping around a roadmap in this day and age, much less why he kept it in her drawer, but it sure came in handy now. Her fingers were shaking a little as she unfolded it, but she wasn't about to let that stop her. Not by a long shot.

She pointed at the spot on the map, almost in the center of Danville, directly across the street from the theater. "There. That's where she is."

"Hmm." The zebra tapped his… his chin? with one black hoof thoughtfully, leaning in to view the map more closely. It was all Four could do to not cringe away. "I see. I suppose I shall be off, then. Thank you very kindly for your assistance, at any rate."

"Yeah - yeah. Don't mention it," she mumbled, shoving the map towards him. "Here - take it. You need it? Take it."

"Oh, no, I can't do that, I'm afraid," he replied, softly chuckling in his deep voice. "Holographic projections, remember? But thank you for your generosity - I appreciate it very much." He stopped for a moment and cleared his throat. "As you might imagine, this is a… rather embarrassing realization for me. I'm dreadfully sorry to have bothered you at such an early hour..." His voice trailed away awkwardly, as if he was waiting for something.

"Candace," she supplied dully, still hardly able to force herself to meet his eyes. "Like I said, don't mention it."

"Candace, then. A pleasant enough name, if a bit… masculine." He shrugged. "But who am I to judge? I'm Theodora. It's been a pleasure."

"Yeah, sure." Candace looked down at her bare feet for a second, trying to will herself to be calmer in the face of her long-time tormentor. She looked up again, clearing her throat. "I-"

But the zebra was gone.

Once again, Candace Four was alone.

She rolled her eyes and sighed exaggeratedly in exasperation, collapsing flat onto her bed and staring aimlessly at the ceiling. What even - what was - what had just happened? Not something she wanted to be thinking of long, that was for absolute sure. She turned the nightlamp off again, (touching it more softly this time) and retrieved the bedcovers from the floor, pulling them back overtop of herself.

Another shudder ran up her spine as she lay there, trying to squeeze the images out of her mind. He wouldn't come back, right? She'd directed him to Kevin - the actual Kevin - so that would be the end of it, right? Surely. Surely - it had to be, just had to.

Ugh. This would have been so much easier had Phineas been here. He would have known what to say - how to handle this - and what to do now that it was over, and the zebra gone again. (Hopefully for good, right? Oh, she so desperately hoped it was for good.) Stupid Candace Two and whatever she'd said or done or whatever that'd made him decide to stay at the company building again overnight. (It was her fault, right? It had to be - she was the always the one doing this sort of stupid stuff.)

She lay there, still, for a minute or two, listening to the silence of the room around her, broken only by the muted humming of the air conditioner unit.

What a way to interrupt a night - a night that had otherwise been so peaceful. At least it was over now, right? It should be - it had to be. Surely.

Honestly, she probably should have seen this coming eventually. It was probably pretty much straight-up guaranteed what with Kevin being here and all. Well, the zebra knew Kevin. And Kevin probably knew the zebra. And Kevin herself was… pleasant enough, if a bit weird.

So the zebra, by extension, had to be at least somewhat pleasant too?

Yeah, no, that wasn't working.

Perhaps the better way of approaching this was just… not to think about it. Yes. She would do that instead. Just scrunch down deeper under the covers and empty her mind of all thoughts of anything related to… what had just happened.

Which was how she had to think about it, right, because she didn't know what had just happened, because her mind was empty of all thought of it!

Yeah, no, that wasn't working either.

Candace Four sighed and tossed about in the bed, staring up the roof. This was going to be a long rest-of-the-night.

This was going way too easily.

From the moment that Candace Seven had realized that more than revenge, more than justice, she wanted to get away from her once-brothers and to never come back, she had started plotting. Like the last times, she'd have to start from scratch, as there was nothing in this building that was really hers – she supposed she could take some stuff that was lying around and looked like it could be useful, but she was hardly going to touch something that Phineas and Ferb had built. She'd made that mistake far too many times in the past, and always with near-lethal results as elaborate torture devices pulled her limbs apart while her brothers stood by and watched. Never again.

One thing she did take advantage of was the buffet, as she decided that she would stock up in advance for her journey into the wilderness, even if it meant having to suffer the expense of running into those arrogant phony siblings yet again. Thankfully, that interaction had been mercifully short – Phineas had been standing at the buffet table, but he had looked distinctly uncomfortable once she'd shown up and looked the other way the whole time. Maybe he was at last beginning to realize that she wouldn't be trapped in his plans as easy as her counterparts were.

The thought of those other Candaces inflamed her with anger every time. Because even if they were brainwashed into this, there was still a part of them that had given in to Phineas' twisted desires voluntarily, a part that had taken the first step into the water before he'd dragged them down into the depths of the ocean. That step was one that Candace Three – the woman who'd spent the first fifteen years of her life being her – had obviously made, and one that Five was currently making despite all the effort she'd put into getting some sense into the woman.

Seven supposed that it wasn't very rational to blame her other selves for making the mistake that she herself had made many times back in the day, not realizing just how twisted her brothers' twisted minds were until the day Phineas had erased her from history for the chance to have his way with Three. But she didn't care. Rational or not, it was still incredibly frustrating to see their blindness, at an age way beyond when they should have figured it out. Whether they were those boys' unwilling or willing play toys, Candace Seven could no longer be bothered to make any chance at saving them. She'd tried that with Five, and look at what had happened. From now on, she was looking out for herself alone.

There was something refreshing about the decision to get away from the people who had ruined her life and never see them again. It was one she'd made before, of course, but not with the same kind of determination and commitment that she was feeling for it now. The fact that she was actually doing this, packing up as much food as she could take with her so that she'd actually go out there and leave tonight… it almost made her feel a little better. Hopeful. It was certainly a welcome change from the absolute emptiness she'd been in since screaming at Phineas once more that morning.

But that hope was reason enough to worry. Because nice things just didn't happen to her, and every hope would be squashed sooner or later. And wouldn't it be just like her brothers – brothers who undoubtedly had cameras installed so that they would be able to monitor every inch of the building – to let her have that hope of getting away from them for a couple of minutes, only to brutally squash it immediately thereafter? Candace might hate them and hold their occasional foolishness in contempt, but she was not about to underestimate them. She knew she would end up paying a heavy price for that. Phineas and Ferb were thirty-three and thirty-four by now, after all – old enough to have perfected the art of breaking a person.

And that was why she could never let go of the fear that this was too easy. She couldn't… she shouldn't let herself feel that hope, even when she tried so hard to get out of that stupid building. Not when she sneaked a towel out of a bathroom to tie her food into (after soaking it in water to make sure it was clean and then letting it dry again, of course – she wasn't an idiot), not when she had watched out of the ninth floor window to see Candace Four leave, and then later; her brothers, and not when she'd checked pretty much every room to ensure no one was awake to see her leave, and she had subsequently sneaked down the stairs. Around every corner, she'd half-expected to find out that the Phineas she had seen leaving the building was a clone and that he was popping up here to squash her dreams and keep her confined in this prison. Her heart was pounding as she got to the ground floor and glanced down the stairs into the basement to make sure that Two was gone. It was a welcome relief – although she loathed the thought of what Phineas might be doing to her over at his house, Seven knew that she'd rather have it happen to Two than to herself. (Candace Two deserved it, at any rate.) At least with two Candaces to use for his fantasies Phineas was likely to be distracted for a while, and at least with Two's absence, Seven didn't have to put up with her endless whining about Doofen-something. The woman was clearly paranoid.

It took Seven only a few seconds to cross the parlor past Phineas' secretary's desk (the one who local Phineas had somehow gotten to fawn over him too, because even multiple versions of his sister just hadn't been enough for him) and get outside, but it felt like it had been hours. When the cold wind blew into her face, she could barely believe it. She had pulled it off. She was actually free.

This was, of course, no time for complacency. A quick check of her watch told her that it was a few minutes past midnight, and she was still smack in the middle of Danville. If her non-brothers were still the early risers they'd always been (she hadn't exactly been paying attention over the past days) they would likely be here at seven or eight in the morning. That meant that her time to escape – assuming that she was escaping, and this wasn't simply a more elaborate trap than she'd anticipated for – was limited.

So, where to? The first thought in Candace's mind had been to go back to Brockton, but by now she had dismissed that. She didn't think she had mentioned her current home town to Five, but she couldn't be sure, and if she had the other woman would undoubtedly spill the beans to Phineas now that she had abandoned the common sense she'd displayed over the past days in order to suck up to her brothers. And even if she hadn't outright said it to anyone, the fact that local Phineas had managed to tamper with minds in a way that had trapped Five in Four's body last year meant that even her thoughts might not have been safe in this building. No, it was better to take an entirely different approach. Brockton might not even exist in this world anyway. It had been her one safe harbor, her one refuge from Phineas and Ferb. Obviously it would cease to exist sooner or later.

And what did that leave her with? She supposed that she could go somewhere else within the Tri-State Area, but even in Jefferson County or Adjacent, she would probably be found sooner or later. No, the ideas that she'd had the previous times had been on the right track. She needed to get out of the state, possibly out of the country altogether. Maybe she could move to a big city, like New York or Los Angeles? No, moving into an urban area would only make it easier for her brothers to find her. It was probably better to move into a small, rural community. Some place where she could fly below the radar. Let those nitwits try to find her there.

Although Seven hadn't really been able to take anything with her aside from a backpack she'd found and the clothes on her back, she did have the wallet on her that she'd been carrying since the day she vanished, filled with just enough cash to get her out of Danville. All she needed to do was find her way back to that bus station, which, frankly, wasn't too hard to do. She got to the main street in front of Phineas and Ferb's obnoxious building and, in a rare moment of luck, it turned out that a bus was due in within the next five minutes. And sure enough, after a waiting period that felt like it was much longer than that, a bus showed up. Candace managed to smile to the driver – anyone who was going to take her away from this hellhole could count on her sympathies – and after thoroughly checking the bus to make sure Phineas wasn't going to pop up from behind a chair, she finally sat down.

It occurred to her as she glanced over her shoulder at the rapidly shrinking sights of Flynn-Fletcher Incorporated that today had been the last time she would ever see her brothers. It was hard to believe even now that she could be free of them permanently, and she had berated herself for holding onto that hope earlier, but… she needed hope. If she couldn't believe that this had a chance of working, there was no point in going out there. If Phineas and Ferb would track her down…

She shuddered. No. She was not going to think about that. She needed to believe – needed to hope – needed to trust that she would never have to see her children's murderer again.

Her children…

Candace's thumb pressed down on the wallet in her hand, and for a moment she was able to pretend that the shiver she was feeling was a hiccup. But it wasn't, and the brief glance of Amanda's picture that she was unable to refrain from taking confirmed it. She'd finally done something she'd been trying to refrain from doing from over a year now and acknowledged what had happened, and like with so many other things this acknowledgement was his fault. But did it even matter anymore that he'd added one more sin to his endless tally?

Her children – plucky Amanda, cheerful Xavier, laid-back Fred – were gone.

Dead.

She would never, ever see them again. She would never again be able to look out on the backyard and see Xavier and Fred lean against the digital tree, she would never be able to play Skiddley Whiffers and enjoy Amanda beating her as much as she enjoyed beating her daughter. Because that grin on her daughter's face, that sense of happiness and joy she felt from leaning against Jeremy and watching her children have fun, that was worth more to her than anything in the world. And now… she would never be able to experience it again.

Parents weren't meant to outlive their children. It was unnatural. And like with everything unnatural in life, the same two people were at fault for all of it.

Candace held no illusions about how her once-brothers had thought about her – not anymore. But to think that they would stoop so low as to kill their own niece and nephews? She had seen Phineas and Ferb hang out with them so many times, she had seen the smile on Amanda's face even the last time Uncle Phineas and Aunt Isabella had paid them a visit, which was either a couple of weeks or a couple of months before their erasure. Had Phineas been thinking of his designs upon his sister even then? Had he been asking her some tentative questions in the direction of incest – an implication she had of course missed due to her naivety about his intentions – and when he realized that she would never consent to it, had he plotted out her children's deaths even while playing catch with them in Candace and Jeremy's backyard?

Earlier on, the realization that she hated him had felt new and strange. Right now, it felt like a welcome friend. She did hate Phineas. She despised him.

For a moment, that mental clarity was able to relieve the depression she felt in her brain. But as she glanced down at the picture she was holding, Candace felt her focus slip away. It wasn't the best picture of her daughter in existence – oh wait, it was – but it was still Amanda, recognizably smiling into the camera.

Her oldest child.

And she'd never see her again.

Candace Seven had cried plenty of times in her life, but all that had abruptly dried up since the moment her brothers had ruined her life. From then on, she had absolutely refused to cry. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing how broken she was. She knew they'd relish in it like they relished in everything going wrong in her life. But now…

Now she wasn't crying over what they had done to her. No, she was crying over the loss of her children. Three smiling, happy, loving faces that didn't even have a tombstone to their names. Three bright, spirited people who were worth crying for.

And thus for the first time in almost two years, Candace Flynn allowed her tears to flow.

It took the bus about ten to fifteen minutes to arrive at the central station she'd first arrived on when they got to this dimension, which was… three days ago now? It sure felt like an eternity. For a moment, it was entirely too tempting to believe that she could just retrace her path all the way and go back into the non-dimension, only to go home from there. But that wasn't possible and she knew it. No, her best bet was to use the last money she had on her to get away from here.

The guy behind the desk at the station was the exact same man she'd met three days ago. Like last time, he looked entirely disinterested in anything going on around him, and even her question about a bus that would take her as far away from here as possible yielded nothing more than a frown as he slowly began to describe all her options. It was probably better than if he'd started questioning her about where she wanted to go and why. Candace supposed that facing this kind of attendant was one of those blessings she'd been so fortunate to have in life, just like other great things such as 'not bleeding to death on the floor', or 'not being forced into sex with my brother yet'.

It took her only two or three minutes before she got the tickets for a place which was, or so she was guaranteed, as far away as she could possibly go from here. That was also just about the only thing she could squeeze out of the attendant. Apparently her destination was Fairfax, an ambiguous place name that didn't even tell her what state she was going to, or whether it was a small or a large city. Well, given the fact that it was the end of a bus line all the way from Danville, it was probably not going to be that small. She realized that pressing for any more details was pointless when the attendant started snoring.

At least she was leaving. That was the most important thing. Candace figured that that might be another small ray of sunshine in her utterly miserable life – that she had wisely held back her wallet the last time this discussion came up so that Candace Four had been the one to pay for her transportation to the local Flynn home. Although 'not paying for a forced bus ride to the home of your nightmares' was also one of those fake reliefs that only threw into contrast how abhorrent her life had become.

She boarded the bus in a daze, once more sitting down near the end – not that there were many other passengers at this hour anyway. It was one of those self-driving buses, of whom she'd seen a couple emerging in her home dimension as well before she had been snatched out of her normal life. From what she'd seen thus far, they were increasingly common around here. In her old life, Candace might have been a little unnerved. Right now, she paid little to no attention. Being on a bus going fifty miles per hour without anyone at the wheel? Like that was any different to her ordinary life.

The other people on the bus were still a little unnerved, though, particularly the elderly couple that had taken their seats a couple of rows before hers. They became even more unnerved as they watched Candace hiccup, but a firm glare managed to get them to concentrate on… well, whatever elderly people would be doing in a bus ride ordinarily. Sleeping, probably, and looking outside. Seven felt no sympathy for them – the only thing she would want right now was to have Two's sunglasses so that she could have looked even more intimidating. Nobody had any right to stare at her. It wasn't like she'd chosen this life. If she had the choice, she would have jumped at the chance of being normal in a heartbeat.

It had been a great life. Everything she'd ever wished for. Jeremy as her husband, Amanda, Xavier and the happy surprise that Fred had represented as her kids… but thinking about them right now was only going to reduce her to tears again. But even outside that, her life had been happy: she had her parents, and… and…

…and her brothers.

A sense of shame filled Candace's heart. How could she have been so blind for so long? Yes, she had done everything that was possible to bust her brothers, and she'd even done so while unbeknownst to her her own family had been on the verge of erasure, but deep down, she knew she hadn't been much better than Candace Five. She had gotten along with Phineas and Ferb. The reasons they had been able to plot out those sinister plans at her and her children's birthday parties was because she had invited them, not every time of course, but more than once. If only she had been willing to see… if only she hadn't let family sentiment cloud her judgment… she could have protected her children, they could have been safe, alive, happy…

Tears entered her eyes once more – it kind of felt like this was becoming a pattern after she had first given in half an hour ago – and Candace snapped her eyes shut rapidly, willing them away. Somehow hiccupping seemed to help with that, too. She… she knew she wasn't to blame. Phineas and Ferb had done this, and she was not at fault for her incapacity to realize how evil they were. Maybe she should have known, maybe she could have known, but none of that changed the fact that Phineas and Ferb were the monsters here. If it hadn't been for them, Xavier, Fred and Amanda would still be alive.

It was coming for Five now too, she supposed. Five, the only other one who had children with someone other than a version of her brother. Candace supposed that she would have been able to understand Five's motivations for the actions she'd undertaken yesterday if it had been about giving in to Phineas now, so that he wouldn't see the need of going back in time and destroying her family then. She could even see and understand Five's initial naivety to understanding how evil her brothers truly were. But Five hadn't mentioned any of that when she had suddenly turned against Seven. All she had mentioned was that in her mind, her brothers were perfect and amazing. Which meant that every single thing she had said up until then, every time she'd expressed common sense and disgust regarding those worthless boys, had been a lie. Either that, or an attempt to show strength by a woman too pathetic to follow through.

Well, it was over now. Candace Five was not her… her friend. She had never been her friend. How could anyone be her friend when she didn't hate Phineas and Ferb – when she had caved so easily? And Seven refused to waste any thought on reminiscing about why Five had left, or whether she'd been deceiving her from the start or if she had started out well-meaning but naïve, but she'd simply caved in later on. She… she'd known she would lose Five sooner or later, the way she'd lost everything and everyone in her life, but Seven had never expected it to happen in this way. The more Five would see, the more anyone would see of Phineas and Ferb, the more convinced they should become of how sick and twisted they were, as long as they would simply open their minds to the possibility of those amazing boys not being so perfect as everyone proclaimed them to be. And Seven had opened Five's mind, she knew that. But Five… Five just hadn't listened.

Maybe she'd just been rotten from the start, as corrupted as all those other Candaces. It would be an uncomfortable thing to face because it would mean that Five had never truly been her companion, but Candace Seven was used to dealing with uncomfortable facts.

Her own brothers didn't care whether she lived or died. Fact.

She hated her younger brothers. Fact.

Candace Five was a traitor, and had been a traitor from the start. Fact.

They were all facts, and Candace Seven was not inclined to waste any more thoughts on them.

...but five hours is a long, long bus ride.

Maybe Five had been well-intentioned. And maybe the fact that she abandoned Seven was not something she'd been plotting for days but simply an unwillingness to accept reality, an escape into the comforts of her childhood. That didn't change anything about the fact that Five had stabbed her in the back and smacked that book against her head, no. But it did make a frightening amount of sense even to her own mind.

Because wasn't that life she'd lived, not just with Jeremy and the kids, but at her brothers' side, something she still longed for as well? No matter how much she hated her brothers, no matter how many times she'd fantasized about them meeting some kind of violent end or courtly punishments… there were still the dreams. The dreams she couldn't get rid of. The dreams she had at least every month, if not every other week, in which Phineas and Ferb weren't monsters. In those dreams, the façade of nice and helpful siblings that her brothers had presented to the world for almost forty years now was real.

It was escapism. Ultimately futile, and something that easily lent itself to the kind of delusions that Candace Five was suffering from. Phineas and Ferb were irresponsible, uncaring brats. Candace Seven knew that, and visualizing a world in which they weren't was pointless and counterproductive. She needed to stay focused on her hatred rather than long for an impossible world. Trying to achieve the impossible was something that Phineas and Ferb would do, and look how that usually ended for everyone else.

But her mind was stubborn, even after almost two years of a daily torture inflicted by Phineas and Ferb. Even after Phineas had murdered her children in order to commit incest with her, what she wanted more than a reality in which she could have their revenge (which was enough of a pipe dream in itself) or in which she would never have to see them again, was a reality in which none of that was necessary, because in that fantasy reality Five's dreams were right.

But… no. Candace glanced out of the window, watching the trees buzz past as they moved farther and farther away from Danville. She would not let Phineas and Ferb ruin this for her. She'd get out of here, safe and sound, and she would never allow those names to stain her mind again. From now on, she would be living the good life.

The bus ride dragged on and on, to the point where Candace did zone off at some point. Her dreams were chaotic and incoherent, but at least they didn't involve Phineas or Ferb in any way. They did, however, come to a sudden halt when she jolted awake. Confused, she looked around to see the bus had pulled into a garage of some sorts. That was unusual enough in itself, but stranger was the fact that it was now completely empty.

Candace walked to the front of the vehicle and managed to figure out how to open the automatic doors and get out. That didn't help her situation very much, though. She was still in a completely foreign environment. The room was dark, and the walls were only vaguely illuminated by moonlight that was shining in from somewhere. It was also completely silent, apart from the regular pitter-patter of the rain pouring down on the roof. She had, of course, noticed the bad weather earlier on the day and especially while sitting in the bus, but now that it was the only thing she was hearing it was getting unnerving.

This was Phineas and Ferb's work, wasn't it? It had to be. She… she knew that it could never be long until they would come after her, but she hadn't expected this. Had they hijacked into the bus? Candace knew she should never have trusted a bus without a human driver, and she especially shouldn't have fallen asleep while being in one (although she couldn't blame herself for craving rest after having gone so long being so stressed out due to her brothers' presence that she hadn't had a chance to sleep properly). Although come to think of it, she probably couldn't have jumped out anyway even if she had been awake. Phineas and Ferb would have simply amplified the speed of the vehicle, forcing herself to either jump to her death or stay put.

And wasn't that the story of her life? Wasn't that what had happened once again right now? Candace's lip quivered, and she tried to suppress the discomfort she felt but it was just so much harder now that she'd given into her tears over the issue surrounding her children. She was trapped. Trapped in a building only hours after escaping… and the truth was, she'd never even been free in the first place. How could she ever have expected to be able to run away from her brothers? They held all the cards, as they had from the moment they came into her life and promptly started ruining it. And she had never been able to resist it, or even get away from it. How could she, when she had never even been able to show her mother what was going on?

Candace was sure that even if she went to Lawrence and Linda Four for salvation now, they would be as blind to her sufferings as her mother had been when she was still a teenager. Considering that Phineas Four had been able to keep the fact that he was in an incestuous relationship (if such an unequal perversion could be called that) with his sister a secret for all these years, she had no doubt that he would continue to do so no matter what he did. Or maybe her parents did know, but they were too afraid to step up and do something about it? Maybe that had been the issue all along? Either way, she could expect no help from that direction. Or any direction. It was her against the people she had once obliviously called her brothers. And they had… they were…

The solitary candle of hope that was hidden deep inside her heart, beyond the darkness that had enclosed it for the past years, a candle that had burned hesitantly but yet strongly over the past hours, was flickering dangerously now.

Any moment now, Phineas and Ferb could show up and gloat at her. Any moment, her fate would be sealed. And she could do…

One of the walls of the garage caught Candace's eye. Although the wall was as dark as the rest of this building, taped on the wall was something that looked a little lighter. She supposed that it could be a map, like the one she'd seen hanging on the wall in the bus station back in Danville, the one Four had spotted three days ago and unleashed their misery with. (Well, that wasn't true. The misery in Candace's life had been there for years by that point.) It shouldn't contain anything unremarkable, but for some reason Candace felt herself compelled to walk over to it and check it out.

In the meantime, the candle stayed lit.