It took me a while to get back, not helped by the numb haze that blanketed reality, making my movements slow, thoughts difficult to connect.

Lost? Pulled out map. Couldn't remember where camp was.

Call camp? Phone dead. Found cable. Plugged in phone. Ran engine to charge it.

Drive back? Almost out of gas. Another ten mile detour, running on fumes, to find an open gas station.

It took me several minutes sitting in the slowly cooling van after finally arriving at the camp to actually get out of the vehicle. Longer to find Pizza's trailer. Longer, still, to gather the courage to knock on the door.

Pizza was awake, at least. Made tea for me, sitting on his bed in a daze. Everything had been… everything had been going so well. Why did he leave? Was it me?

He pulled up the map on his monitors without asking. Fiddled with it. Shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "His phone isn't responding." It had probably died, like mine.

Or was it me?

He fussed over me, pulling up blankets to wrap around my shoulders. Made sure I drank the tea, mug warm in my hands. He asked me a few questions, but I couldn't gather the energy to respond with more than one word answers. How was the visit? Fine. Did he get along with your parents? Sure. Did he like your gift?

I looked over at him with what felt like tremendous difficulty. I hadn't told him about it, but he knew a lot of what went on at camp. Probably got told by Happy Pill or… no, it was Black Goat, the gossip. Yes. He had liked it. He had had me put it on him. He had seemed to be thanking me for it, afterward.

Or maybe he was saying goodbye?

My vision started to blur, so I closed my eyes. Felt my cheeks go hot, my breath start to come in little gasps and hiccups. Something soft was pressed into my hand. A tissue. I didn't bother using it.

"I am sure he is fine," Pizza insisted, a little panicked, his lightly accented words coming quickly. "He always comes back. Sometimes he gets lost for a few days, but then we will see him on the news or the Protectorate will fetch him for us. He will be back in time for the performance. He has never missed a show."

I opened my eyes just to give him a dumbfounded look. "I woke up—" sniffle "—alone in the van in the middle of fucking—" hiccup "—nowhere and you tell me he will be fine." Anger, yes. Anger was good.

He floundered for a moment, then pinched the bridge of his nose with short, pudgy fingers. His bulk deflated a little with a long sigh. "He is a man driven by purpose, Miss Mera. It is... important."

"More important than me," I said, the hiccups having faded slightly as the anger rose and fell.

"More important than all of us," he replied. His expression was solemn, and earnest in a way that gave me little doubt that he believed it was true.

I nodded slowly, considering, taking a deep breath, in and out. It still hurt—oh god, how it ached—but I would always rather see the ugly truth than a pretty lie. Better to have a higher calling than to simply not care about me… right? I would still kick his ass for leaving me like that, though.

And Pizza's ass as well, if he didn't quit being so vague and mysterious at me when I was already having a very difficult morning. "What is this top secret, super fucking important thing he keeps running off for?"

His face pinched, and I half expected yet another deflection. Or perhaps 'you are not ready for the truth, young padawan', and I'd have to go on a spirit quest or eat some shrooms or—okay maybe I was a little loopy. I sipped the tea while he thought.

"Miss Mera," he said slowly, and I braced myself for the nonsense to follow. "You have been kind to me." Wait, what? "Not once since we have met did you ever stare, or comment, or look at me with pity. It is a privilege few monsters like us are afforded." Hold on a second. Like us?

His face was determined, eyes bright. "I cannot tell you what he is doing. But I can tell you where he should be, and you may ask him yourself."

I blinked, the remnants of fog still clinging to my thoughts making it difficult to follow all of that. "I… I thought you said his phone was off?"

His smile was bittersweet and tired, old beyond his years. He gave me an address. And insisted I eat before I left. It would be a long drive.

It took me a long time to find the alleyway, even with instructions. This city had a million of them, and they were all so damn similar. What was it Ant had said once? 'You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike'?

I missed that colossal nerd.

It was in the company of the ghost of her regrets that I walked through the city at night, staring at my phone—I was in full costume, I wasn't an idiot—until I heard a familiar, bass rumble. I stopped, looking around; I couldn't see him, but I could just barely make out the words.

"No, I'm not here for you."

He was talking to someone, but… was his voice coming from above me? I kept very still, strained my ears, trying to tune out the sounds of the city, the low growls of distant traffic.

"I don't think it's a coincidence, but I'm not looking for a fight right now, either."

I couldn't hear who he was responding to, but I was starting to narrow down where he was. Was it that rooftop? I circled the building, looking for—there, a fire escape. I moved quietly, pausing every time he started to speak.

"No, I'm not with them."

It was hard to keep my boots from making a ton of noise on the metal staircase, but I did my best, my clawed fingers gripping tightly to the guard rail, testing my weight on every step, trying to keep it from—

"She's with me."

Welp. So much for that. I stopped bothering to keep quiet, instead climbing the fire escape normally. Only two floors, and then I would see his silent conversation partner, and… and him. My breath caught in my throat when I realized what he'd said.

He…

He had remembered me. Even though it had been over a day. Even though he couldn't see me yet.

I dashed up the last few steps to see an unadorned roof, just an air conditioning unit and a satellite dish on top, along with the most beautiful monster. Apex, laying on his stomach, his limbs all tucked up beside and beneath him, like a cat. His back was to me, his tail whipping back and forth slowly, then faster as I approached, boots crunching on the gravel roof top. As soon as I got within reach of it, though, it settled, laying down flat.

"I am not saying I don't want to fight you. Just that you will need to make an appointment."

His voice was low, only carrying as well as it did because I'd apparently stumbled right beneath him. Was he talking on the phone? I couldn't see anyone else on the rooftop, and his head was almost over the edge, looking slightly downward, into the streets below. As I got closer I could see a small pile of loose brick on the gravel beside him, some cracked, some scored with claw marks.

Apex's head turned slightly towards me as I drew even with his shoulders, high and hunched from his crouched posture. I could see the changes from his play sessions with Firecracker, the extra crystal growths, the lengthening and thickening of cilia along his back that were almost becoming tentacles. Simply beautiful.

He spoke his low rumble again, but I could see no phone, no headset. Like he were speaking into the wind. "I don't care how big you are right now, or how hot I make you. I am waiting for someone else. Make an appointment."

He didn't move much. Just a slight flaring of his nostrils. One of his tongues flicked out, upward, licking the base of his horn. The broken one. The one with his trophy, from me, tied around it. The other tongue darted towards me, its rough, dry texture lightly scraping my cheek. Then, as quickly as they appeared, they retracted into his mouth, whiplike.

"I know you," he said quietly, and my heart cracked, relief and pity and joy and sorrow threatening to make me burst into tears again. I reached out and dug my fingers into the fur of his neck, scraping the talons of my costume into him, his favorite scritches. He didn't purr, but his tail did start moving again, the tips of its spikes driving a furrow through the gravel behind us.

His gray-white eyes seemed to see right through me, and I remembered the first night we met, that feeling of awe. How invulnerable he seemed. Untouchable.

He sniffed again, then his head tilted towards me a little more sharply. "You've been crying. Why?"

I couldn't help it. I laughed, tears once threatening, now overflowing. I ran my other hand along the top of his muzzle, claws scraping against scale, admiring the lines of his body, even half-blind from crying.

"Oh," he rumbled, the sound transmitted through the soles of my boots as it shook the rooftop. So resigned, so full of regret. "It was me."

Before I could respond, tell him it was alright, his head jerked away, aimed at the darkness below, streets with broken lights. "No I'm not talking to you. This is a private conversation. Fuck off, you overgrown salamander."

A brief pause as I laughed at the sheer absurdity of the situation, then he finished with, "I look forward to your appointment." And then whoever he was talking to must have gone, vanished into the city, because his attention was solely on me.

"I'm sorry," he said, one of his large claws reaching up and—ever so carefully, so gently—brushing some tears from my cheek. "Whatever I did, I'm sorry."

I took his hand, nuzzled the palm against my face, feeling the warm scales on my skin. Kissed it for good measure. His whole body reacted to that, a mountain of muscle, fur and spikes shifting just enough to arc around me, as though he could wrap his whole body around me in a hug. Protective.

I tried to speak, scrounged for the right words, found nothing. Maybe I didn't need to say anything at all.

Well. One thing.

"What the hell are you doing out here, anyway?"

Without removing his hand from my grip, one of his middle arms reached down to pluck a small scrap of paper where it was buried among the cracked, clawed-up bricks. It was yellowed and stained, and the handwriting was hard to read, spidery and uneven. In the partially-moonlit darkness I had to pull my phone out to read it.

'April 11th, 2011. After midnight.'

And then, in smaller, tighter script, but still by the same hand: 'Talk to her."'

I looked at it. Flipped it over. "That's it?"

He nodded slightly.

For a long moment, I stared at him. Then at the paper. "What the fuck?"

He chuckled, his whole body shaking with the sound. The same middle limb plucked something else from the rubble. Another flash drive. I took it, wondering what was on it. I suppose we would find out when we got back to Pizza.

Then a thought struck me, and I looked down into the darkness, then over the rooftops. Distant shapes, maybe my imagination, no one else in sight. "Who are you waiting for?" It hadn't sounded like it was me, the way he was talking with whoever or whatever this 'salamander' was.

Apex just shrugged, shifting gravel with his elbows.

I leaned into him, back pressed against his shoulders, and his larger arm tucked me in tight against him, just loose enough to still breathe. He was warm, the air was chill and as silent as cities got in the middle of the night—sirens, the occasional gunshot or scream in the distance—and there was nowhere else I would rather have been.

This time, when I woke up and saw the sunrise, orange light reflected on the ocean to the east…

He was there by my side, making the world right.