Tim listened to Rose very carefully, and asked a few questions. When the call was over, he had a look through his closets and then went down to the big common room, where the rest of the Titans were hanging out. "Remember a week or so ago when we all agreed we would do our best to come to the rescue if Slade's fiancée was in trouble? Well, now's our chance. She was drugged and abducted by her brother, who then crashed his SUV. The drug he gave her makes some people get up and do things, even very complicated things, without knowing it, so they think she just sleepwalked out into the mountains and got lost. Slade is—out of town on business and can't be reached."

"I'll bet he is," Cyborg said, "and I bet I can guess what kind of business he's on."

"I don't like that either, but Yukie hasn't done anything wrong, and the clock is ticking. Raven, do you think you can teleport us to this location in Japan?" He called up a bird's eye view of the hospital from a satellite street mapping site.

"Yeah, I should be able to do that," she said, surveying the screen.

"It doesn't look like this right now, though. This must have been taken months ago. Right now there's a terrible winter storm going on, so we're all going to need serious cold weather gear. It's something like thirty below without the wind chill factor. Dress in layers—lots of layers," Tim instructed. "Cover every inch of skin. Gar, take the time to research which animal can really stand up to the weather."

"Gotcha. It's probably going to be a polar bear, though—Oh, hey, is there any chance we can swing by Tokyo while we're there? You gotta meet Kitaro," Beast Boy said. "I've been thinking maybe we ought to ask him if he'd like to join the Titans for a while. I know we've already got a magic user, but there's no reason we couldn't have two, and I bet they'd learn a lot from each other."

"Where do you know him from?" Raven asked, a slightly sharp note in her voice.

"Uh—it's a long story, but he's somebody who would go out of his way to help somebody in trouble. That's the kind of person we want on the team, right?" Gar asked.

"We can talk about it later," Tim said. "Anyway, get your gear together and meet back here in half an hour."

"And don't forget to wear your long johns!" Gar added cheerfully.

Raven was the last to return, about five minutes after Gar, who was usually the tardiest. "Um, I have some news about where we're going. Remember how I said there was going to be a new Snow Elemental? Well, it's happening now, and right now, on this whole entire planet, the place with the worst wintery weather—."

"Betcha can't say that five times fast!" Beast Boy interrupted.

"Not now, doofus! The worst snowstorm on Earth is going on right there in that area. So—anybody want to guess what Yukime means? I looked it up when I realized where we were going."

Tim groaned. "Don't tell me. Winter? Frost? Ice?"

"Lady Snow, or Snow Princess. It's not a common name in Japan, not any more. It's kind of old fashioned, like if somebody named their kid Mildred over here. I don't think we have to worry about her freezing to death. That doesn't mean she's out of danger, though. The old Snow Elemental is trying to kill her right now." Raven predicted gloomily.

Starfire pointed out, sadly, "I did think we should have warned Rose. I wish we had."

"That's…really not good," Robin said. "I mean, even if she wins—think of Swamp Thing and Clayface. They're very powerful, but they're not human anymore, either. Not human enough to lead a normal life. I think either way, this is going to be a terrible loss."

"But then there is Mera, the Queen of Atlantis," Starfire said, "so it is not impossible."

"True, but she wasn't a normal human to begin with. I say we don't tell Rose we know this. She has enough to worry about right now." Robin looked around for confirmation.

"C'mon, let's hurry it up," Cyborg said. "I'm getting overheated standing around like this." Given the amount of metal incorporated into his body, he was especially vulnerable to changes in temperature, as metal conducted heat and cold much more quickly than flesh and blood.

"Yeah, me too." As Beast Boy had predicted, a polar bear was best suited to the kind of weather raging in Mount Hakkoda area right then, and polar bears tended to faint when the heat was above fifty degrees.

Raven summoned her soul-shadow form, and moments later, they were all in the hospital parking lot. Starfire, who arrived in midair because she was flying, was immediately blown across the lot into a huge snowbank, impacting with such force that she was buried completely. The wind was so fierce the snow was coming in sideways.

"THIS ISN'T A STORM," Cyborg shouted, "IT'S RAGNAROK! THE FROZEN END OF THE WORLD!"

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?" Raven yelled back. It was with no little effort that the five of them managed to get inside the medical building.

Rose met them in the waiting room. "I can't believe you guys actually came!"

"We're here to help, but I'm not sure how much help we can be," Robin said, shedding some of his outer layers of clothing. "Reading about the weather is one thing, but none of us were exactly expecting it to be that bad. I don't know what we can do when it's like this."

"But you're here for me," she said. "That matters a lot. Plus, we can volunteer around the hospital. Everybody else is stuck here too—doctors, nurses, kitchen staff. They'll have to work around the clock until the storm lets up. We might not be medical professionals, but we can still lend a hand. Come on, let me show you around."

So the six teenagers did what they could to help the somewhat bemused staff around the hospital—making beds, carrying trays, filling water pitchers, and entertaining the children in the pediatrics unit. They even managed to clear most of the snow from the hospital roof, which was built for normal snowfall in the area and already at the high end of what it was meant to bear. It wasn't like saving the world, but keeping a hospital roof from collapsing was still something you could be proud of, as Cyborg said.

When night came, Rose was once again at Kuwano Ichiro's bedside. Watching him. Staring at him. Hating him. There had never been a chance for her to question him alone, no chance to interrogate him—she had chosen not to tell Robin about the connection to Ra's, not yet anyway, because if she told Robin, the next thing he would do was tell Batman and then it would be entirely out of her hands.


Up on the peak she was climbing, inch by painful inch, Yukie found a pocket between stones to stop and rest, and also to take stock of what she had left. Her socks were worn through, so several hours before, she had made foot wraps out of the legs of her long underwear. The body of her thermal undershirt had been repurposed into a makeshift balaclava, to keep snow out of her eyes. The sports bra she simply took off and threw away because the chafing annoyed her. In addition to the hand wraps, foot wraps and improvised hat, that left her with one pair of ski pants, a camisole, a pair of panties, and a diamond ring.

If this keeps up, I will be naked by the time I get to the peak. Her hunger had not returned since her 'meal' of tanuki that day, nor was she thirsty. Or cold, though it was increasingly hard to remember when she had last been cold, or even how it felt to be cold.

I wonder if it is like being weaned for many species. Once they stop drinking their mother's milk, they can no longer digest milk at all. Forever after, they must eat meat, or whatever food it is they are meant to eat. Is my metabolism now entirely different?

I wonder where Slade is right now. And Rose. I wish—I wish we were all back in a ryokan. Eating dinner, talking, thinking about getting ready for bed. In bed. Making love, but quietly in case Rose isn't asleep yet.

I don't want to die. I don't want to change. I am becoming something else, and I—am afraid.

Wanting to be a yuki-onna was a thing of childhood and make believe, not the desire of a grown woman with family, and a home, and a future.

It was too much to bear.

Every internal wall broke at once, and she…did not cry. Not when her tears threatened to tear her corneas as they froze on contact with the air. Instead she screamed, wailed, howled out her anguish into the storm, which swallowed every sound she made as it came out of her mouth. It was bigger than she was, stronger, louder.

After a while she simply stopped. What was the point? The storm didn't care, nor the night, nor the winter. She was just so tired.

She was expecting more dream-memories, and she was not disappointed.

It liked being a little girl. It didn't have to hunt for food. People brought it to her, cut up and cooked, easy to chew and digest. People bathed her and hugged her and sang her songs. They taught her to speak, combed her hair and played games with her. Being human was so good, in fact, that she didn't want to give it up when winter came again. Yet it didn't want to give up the joy of racing over the world in the form of wind, or creating the silent stillness of falling snow. How could It be both human and the soul of snow? She decided to stay a little girl.

That winter there was no snow, nowhere near the settlement. The days were cold and short and dry, the nights long, and colder still. The Long Heat came, and the plants and trees dried up and died, for lack of snowmelt water. The animals that should have come to feed on the plants went elsewhere.

People in the settlement starved. People in the settlement died. People she knew. People she…loved. That had never happened before. She felt no attachment to the pack of wolves or even the colony of monkeys. Winter could be cruel, but the summer was crueler still. Loss, grief, pain—. So much simpler to be the ice that rimed the pond, the flurry that began the snowfall. So much easier.

That decided her. That winter, it would do as it had always done. It would consume what was left of the current host—not much, after that year's famine and drought-give the area a fine, deep winter, and take another host when the summer—that was, the Long Heat—returned. Summer was a human word, and it did not want to be human anymore.

But it didn't work. She could not consume the body she wore. Perhaps because she had been in it for too long. Perhaps because she had come to think of it as herself. Whatever the reason, she was still human. But the winter was coming, and without snow, the rest of the people-the rest of her family—would die. So she tried something else: a new host. Sending her power out over the first animal she could find, a small weasel—she froze it solid, killing it—instead.

It seemed like a horrible mistake, but when she pulled her power back—its vital essence came with it. With that life flooding through her, she could be both human and the snow…

That winter the snow was lovely, peaceful and deep, tucking the whole world in with a fluffy blanket, like a mother putting her children to bed at night. But the girl was not among the villagers; she watched from a cave above them on the mountain. The power showed; it made her skin pure white, turned her lips blue, and ice fog poured off her. It frightened her family, her people, but her heart did not turn against them. She lived on the mountain, and grew up there. The years passed, and all the people she knew were gone, died of disease, or childbirth, of falling in the lake or being mauled by a bear, and a few of them simply of old age. She had not aged, though. She simply grew up. She knew how to draw the power in now, and conceal it.

One day she decided to go down off the mountain and talk to people again, now that there was no one left who remembered her. She had all her old powers of charm and calm and allure, and she had grown up tall and straight, with skin almost as pale as snow. They made her welcome among them, and it was not long before she had suitors. She chose one. Within a year, she bore a child.

It was a girl.


Deathstroke returned to the Republic of Korea (which on paper, he had never left) exhausted, filthy, cold, hungry, and rather richer than he had been when he set out over a week before. He hadn't slept for more than three hours at a stretch in that time, and not every night at that. Although he had been sleeping that irregularly for more than twenty years now and was used to it, the last three months, during which he had been sleeping every night thanks to Yukie, had brought it home to him exactly how much the lack of sleep pissed him off and made him one of the most ill-tempered sons-of-bitches on the planet. It really put him in a mood for killing something.

But although that mode was useful, now he was ready to be done with it, for the time being. A sumptuous meal, a long soak in an onsen, and then to sleep a solid eight hours with Yukie nestled into the futons beside him—that was what he wanted. He was ready to get back to being Slade Wilson. For the moment, he would have to settle for something hot and filling in his stomach, a quick shower, and the empty bed in the room in the safe house where he left his personal effects.

After a dinner of short ribs in some sauce that made him gnaw every speck of meat off the bones, he went to the safe house and wearily slung the duffle with his armor on the bed, then showered. In his suitcase, he found his social phone, and noticed that Rose had left him seventeen messages to Yukie's five. He began listening to them, beginning with the oldest ones first. The first four days worth were full of chatty news about what they were doing, how much they missed him—and a detailed description of exactly how much Yukie missed him, and in what ways, that brought a smile to his face.

Then: "Dad? Something bad's happened. Yukie's brother showed up—." His daughter went on to explain what happened. "—so either he drugged and abducted her or somebody abducted them both. The only reason I say somebody else might have been involved is that I found a sketch Yukie did of Ra's Al Ghul at the scene. I concealed it from the police. Anyhow, that's it—except, I'm really, really worried. I wish you were here. I guess that's it. I'll leave messages when I have news to report."

Slade stopped his voice mail, called Yukie's phone. It went to voice mail. He immediately called Rose.

"Dad! Where are you?" she exploded in his ear. "Yukie's still missing, she hasn't answered her phone in days and it's still storming. I'm so afraid—."

"I just got back and got your first message. Report," he said, hoping to stave off the inevitable sobbing until he had the facts.

She told him about dealing with skeptical police officers who delayed doing anything for hours until the brother was found unconscious in his SUV, with a trail leading away cross country: someone had walked away, but the storm came before they could find whoever it was.

"Yukie's brother Ichiro came to about half an hour ago. He's saying he just happened to be in the area and stopped by to take her for a drive. He doesn't know anything about how the tea he gave her was full of crushed up sleeping pills, or the bottle with pill residue in his pocket, or why he traveled hours on a train and then rented an SUV and drove all the way here for any other reason than to see his sister. He's a very bad liar, but the problem is, if he doesn't tell the truth soon—he may not be able to remember. The carbon monoxide poisoning might wipe out whatever he knew."

"That won't matter. If he doesn't, his parents will." Slade gritted his teeth.

"Haruko doesn't know anything," Rose said. "All she did was overshare. Nobody who knew her would ever tell her something they wanted kept secret. She asked me to tell you she was sorry, she didn't know this would happen. She looked you up on line, so she knows who you are."

"I won't hurt Haruko or her children," he promised. "Where are you now?"

"At the hospital where Ichiro's being cared for. The storm is still going on—there's been fifty-six inches of snow so far, and hurricane four level winds. It hit forty below an hour ago and there's no sign of it stopping anytime soon. Yukie's still out there in it. I know because I talked to her last night. Sh—she said to remember this trip and that I was loved…."

"Rose—Rose, I need you to hold together. We'll find her, Rose. There's that GPS tracker in the zipper pull on her jacket. She's dressed for the cold, and she has more experience in arctic temperatures than nearly anyone else on Earth. We'll find her."

"I precogged that you were going to say that," she said, gulping. Her voice was still squeaky with tears. "Anyhow, they still can't send out any search parties because the storm's still so bad. Even the Titans can't get anywhere—that's right, I didn't tell you they're here. We're doing stuff around the hospital to help. A—anyway, Yukie hasn't answered her phone in twenty-four hours. She said she was going to leave you a message, too."

"I think she did, but I haven't listened to it yet. Stay there at the hospital. I'm on my way. I will be there as soon as I can. Keep them from doing anything idiotic—if you can." The Titans, separately, were not irredeemable, but collectively, all that youth and idealism made his head hurt.

"But how are you going to get here?" she asked.

"Victor Fries," he replied. "Remember, he's in Tokyo working on their giant creature problem. He used his own aircraft to get here."

"Oh—and it's adapted for use in really extreme conditions! I forgot about him! That's great! But what about Ra's Al Ghul?"

"Priorities," he said. "First we find Yukie, then deal with the family, then with Ra's as necessary. Goodbye for now—I have to get this in motion."

"Bye, Dad—and hurry!"

There was a part of him that whispered: this is why I'm better off without anyone in my life. Anyone at all. They die, they turn on you, they disappoint, disappear

But then there was this truth which countered it: in the two months he had spent with Yukie and his daughter, he had been happy, too, and he was not a man to whom happiness came easily or naturally.

He went to the last of Yukie's messages to him, and played it.

"Hello, Slade. By now I'm sure you've listened to Rose's messages. I am somewhere on Hakkoda-san. You remember how surprised I was when you told me I was not entirely human? I should not have been. My grandmother left me a secret message encoded in a letter. It said that if I wanted to find out what I was I should give up every earthly thing and go to Hakkoda-san before the plum blossoms come out."

She paused and then went on, "But every earthly thing includes you and Rose, and I could not give up the two of you. Especially you. I chose you. I chose Rose. But for all that I intended not to do this, here I am, all the same. Now that I am here, now that I'm drawing nearer to the place, I can feel that something is happening to me. I don't know what will come of it—but whatever may happen, please don't hold Haruko accountable.

"This is what happened: my brother Ichiro showed up at the ski resort, saying he had to talk to me. He gave me tea laced with sleeping pills, then told me a story about how we are descended from the Shinobi and an ancestor of ours made a deal with a foreigner to try and breed the powers back into our family line.

"The foreigner called himself 'Shutan Doji', from the tale of the Demon's Head. Ra's Al Ghul means 'the head of the demon'. Ichiro confirmed this when I drew him a picture of Ra's. I was to be the repayment of that debt. However, he crashed his SUV before he could get to whatever rendezvous they set up. I do wonder if Ra's knew what my family was up to; why would he be grooming me to work for him if he could simply claim me?

"Now for that which I do not want to say, that I wish I did not have to say: that if this is the end of everything, then I spent the last weeks of my life with the people I would have chosen above all others, doing exactly what I would have wanted to do.

"We have never said 'I love you' to each other. When I think of everything that has passed between us, it seems like the last thing we need to say. A superfluity. Because every time I said something to make you laugh, that sounded to me like 'I love you'. When you fall asleep with me, and you snore like you do, that too is 'I love you.' When we joke in French, 'Where is the catastrophe?' 'Right here'.—'I love you.' Certainly when we're making love, that is 'I love you'. When I suggested that Rose stay in Japan—when you decided to come to Japan with me in the first place, when you shouted 'Get down!' and shoved me out of the way of the rocket in the restaurant that night—. 'I love you, I love you, I love you.'

"Perhaps the night we met, when you held out your hand and offered, 'Peace', and I returned it—maybe that was the first time. In any case, we hardly ever seem to say anything else to each other. It seems like the last thing I need say to you is 'I love you.'

"But then that is the point. If this is the last thing I ever say to you, then—.

"I love you, Slade Wilson."

Into the silence that followed, he whispered, "I love you, too."


A/N: A double length chapter. Thank you to my readers and of course my reviewers Dark Lord Dobby and Swordstitcher!