Note: Yes, it's another chapter uploaded immediately after the last one. These were all supposed to be one chapter, but we just had an uploading urge. So think of these less as two super short chapters and one big two-parter that's not really a two-parter. Cool? Cool. Enjoy.

"You've reached Ilia Amitola. I can't talk now. Please leave a message."

…

"Hey, Ilia. It's me. Belle. Look, I'm…I'm sorry to call you like this. I'm using a friend's Scroll so you wouldn't know it was me. I assumed you blocked my number so…you know.

"I just wanted to talk to you one last time. I know that we, well, we haven't spoken in a while. I know we left on bad terms. I was just hoping I could hear your voice again. I really miss it. Not to get too sentimental or anything. Bad terms. Why the fuck am I sugarcoating it? God…

"Look, I, um…I know I fucked up. I realize that now. And it shouldn't have taken me this long to realize that I fucked up. I should never have made any of those mistakes in the first place. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I know you can't forgive me. I'm still not able to forgive myself. I hurt you so much, and I can't tell you how fucking sorry I am. Not just for what happened during the fight, but for everything. I treated you like trash and you didn't deserve it. You were, like, the greatest thing that ever fucking happened to me and I completely screwed you over and it just sucks. I wish I never did that. And I know, I just know that you don't care about this apology. You shouldn't. I don't deserve the chance to apologize to you. I shouldn't be calling you like some crazy stalker or something. I just…I couldn't let that be the last time we ever spoke with each other, even though it should be.

"I wanted you to know that I split from Adam. I turned my back on him. He's out of control and some of the other girls and I are going to stop him. I know this is probably crazy, but if you check the news in a few days, you'll see what I mean. Assuming it goes wrong. Honestly, I'm assuming this whole thing will go wrong. That's why I wanted to call. I'm probably not going to survive this. It's so hard to explain. But I'm…I'm doing the right thing now. I'm on the right path again. And I wanted you to know that. Even if you hate me forever, or if you never want to speak to me again, I thought that maybe you could find some solace in that fact. You could know that I'm not out hurting more people. I don't know. Maybe you just never wanted to think of me again. Maybe this isn't even your number anymore.

"Shit, how long do I have on these messages? Look, the point is that after this conversation, I'm done. I promise I won't reach out to you again. I'll stay out of your life. I don't want to burden you or anything. I wanted to try to end it on better terms, you know? Like how we used to be before I fucked everything up. So, I was kind of hoping that you'd pick up. Maybe this message would do instead.

"I was, um…I was thinking about this thing from when we were kids. I doubt you remember it, though. It was the time when—"

"Belle."

"I-Ilia? Ilia, is that you? L-Look, I—"

"Fuck off."

The end of the line went dead in an instant. Blake looked at her Scroll in silence. After a minute, she closed her eyes and sank against the nearest wall, resting her head against her knees.

"So, where the hell are you taking me?"

Tai was silent. Yin scoffed, rolling her eyes as she pressed her cheek against the window. They were so far out of the city that the lights had faded away, and there was nothing but dark countryside all around her. They were the only car on the road. At any moment, a deer could jump out in the middle of the road, and they would swerve into a tree and die. Wouldn't that be a perfect end to her life?

"You know, I had to walk home from Beacon," Yin explained. "When they left me behind, I couldn't find anyway else to get home. Beacon was under attack. I was able to get to my gauntlets from storage, but I couldn't make it to my bike. So, I had to walk back here. Just in case you were wondering why I didn't come home."

Tai kept his eyes on the road in front of him.

"I had to dodge every fucking cop car also. Because why not, right?"

Tai pointed to the glovebox. "I have some ibuprofen if you're having a headache."

"What?"

"You keep grabbing your head. If you're in pain—"

"I'm fine," Yin insisted.

Tai accepted the answer for what it was worth. Yin tried to focus on anything outside. Counting signposts. Counting minutes. She would try counting sheep, but the nagging voice in her head was keeping her awake. Every time she closed her eyes, the bitch screamed at her.

"Not so fun, is it?"

Not fun? Was that a comparison? Yin never stopped her from sleeping. She would never do something that made them so vulnerable.

"I'll keep you as vulnerable as possible. If I can stop you from eating, I would. If I could hold our breath until you passed out, I would."

Funny—wasn't she supposed to be the good one? And here she was speaking so cruelly…

"Oh, I'll be as bad as possible to you. Until you give me my body back."

Yin snickered, muttering under her breath. "Not happening."

After an hour of driving, they finally pulled off an exit and proceeded more carefully to their destination. Yin became notably silent, searching for any sign that would tell her where she was. She saw the standard indications of a small town: gas stations, chain restaurants, and outlet malls that no one ever went to. Yet Tai continued driving, steering them away from even the most distant corners of civilization. He turned onto a narrow trail that winded up a mountainside, and the darkness seemed to consume them on all sides of the van, until at the peak when she thought they were literally heading off into nowhere at all, she saw a building in the distance. It was massive, wooden yet relatively modern in design, stretching out wide instead of tall across a neatly kept green pasture. There were a few cars parked out front, yet the entire building seemed lit up from within, indicating plenty of signs of active life. As Tai rolled their van up to the front of the building and Yin tried to examine it further, she noticed a sign posted out in front of the entranceway.

South Vale Psychiatric Care: Building a Bridge for Mental Health

Yin leaned back in the seat as Tai brought the car to a stop, and she could only let out an exasperated sigh.

"Really?" she asked. "You're going to try to commit me?"

"Come on," Tai instructed, unbuckling his seatbelt. Again, he didn't seem to be bothered.

"You realize this is illegal, right?" Yin said knowingly. "You can't force someone into a mental hospital if they don't consent to it."

"This isn't a mental hospital, and I'm not bringing you here to make you stay," Tai said calmly, stepping out into the cold. He leaned back into the car, patting the van on the roof. "Come on. We're meeting someone."

Yin tried not to let her mind wander too much. Whoever she could be meeting, it wouldn't be that important. In the end, she wasn't going to be swayed. She couldn't afford to waver even for a moment. She needed to think instead about how she was going to deal with him. He was a Huntsman in his own right, but she doubted he would truly try to fight her if she tried anything. As she exited the car, she tried to picture it. Trapping him in the car. Breaking his neck. A deep chill ran down her spine. It felt almost surreal. Some awful guilt tugged at the back of her mind. She inhaled sharply and concentrated. One foot after the other. That's what she would focus on now. One foot after the other across the parking lot into the warmth of the building.

Yin's first thought was that for a mental hospital, it looked rather nice. She was excepting cold colors, sterility, and musk that overshadowed the room with a haze of death. Instead, it looked more like the entrance to some tropical beach resort. Round furniture. Fake trees. A receptionist desk in the back with a sweet-looking woman who, despite the late hour of the night, was ready to greet them with a smile.

"Taiyang, hello," she said, surprised. "I didn't know you had called."

"I didn't," Tai said, walking straight up to the desk without hesitation. Yin lagged behind, scanning her surroundings for exits or guards. "I was hoping I could see her."

"Right now?" she frowned. "This is a little after visiting hours."

"You know she's awake."

"And you know she hates when you stop by unannounced."

"Well, it's an emergency. I brought someone." He casually glanced over his shoulder, and the receptionist finally took notice of Yin standing in the center of the hall. All it took was one simple glance, and she gasped, immediately understanding the importance.

"Oh. Wow," she said. "That's really quite the resemblance."

"Resemblance?"

Yin took a hesitant step toward the desk.

"Wait. Wait a second…"

"Dad? What's going on here?"

The receptionist smiled. "She even sounds like her, too."

Yin's heart beat faster. Faster. Hold on. Hold on a damn second. She couldn't be…that wasn't—

"It makes no sense."

How?

"No. No fucking way…"

How was she…

"Dad? Dad, what the hell?"

Tai's charm dwindled when he noticed Yin begin to tremble. The receptionist became concerned until he cooled her with a steady hand.

"Can we see her?"

"S-Sure," said the receptionist. "You know where to go."

"Thanks."

Taiyang wrapped his arm around his daughter's shoulder, and she was so distraught that she couldn't even force him away. He guided her slowly away from the receptionist down one of the hallways, taking her…taking her there. Where she was.

Yin shuddered. She…she didn't…

"She's here?" Yin finally managed to mutter under her breath. "My mom is…she's here?"

Tai sighed. "I promise that this will all make sense."

Make sense? No, it didn't fucking make any sense. Her mom had disappeared. That was the story. Ever since she was born, that was all she heard. Her mom snapped and tried to kill her. The cops took her away, she escaped and wasn't heard from since. It had been that way all of her goddamn life. This wasn't possible.

"He lied to us. He lied to us again."

Tai tried leading her further down the hall, but she suddenly snapped and pulled away from him. Her face was bright red, her features teetering on the edge of collapse, and she pointed at him and screamed.

"No! No, you tell me right now!"

Tai raised his arms to calm her. "Yang, please. Be quiet. There are other people here."

Yin jammed her finger into her chest, her voice wavering through her sobs. She was quieter than before—only because she couldn't find the strength to yell. "No. No, you do not get to lie to me and then tell me how to act. You fucking don't. She was my mom, and you knew where she was all this time. All this fucking time. Why? Why wouldn't you ever…why couldn't you ever…"

"Listen," Tai said calmly. "I was doing this for you."

"For me. For me?" Yin said through gritted teeth. The tears were flowing, and she couldn't tell anymore how much of that other part of her was seeping into her emotions. She hated every moment of it. "This wasn't for me. Nothing has ever been for me. You have never, ever, ever given a shit about me. Not once. You don't fucking care, so why are you fucking lying to me? My mom went missing. That was what you told me. You told me that she tried to kill me, and they took her far, far away, and that she was nuts, and then she went missing."

"And she did go missing," Tai sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets. He clenched his jaw, parting his gaze from her to stare at the floor. "For about six hours."

"Six hours?"

"Six hours?" Yin gasped like she received a dagger through the heart. "She…she was missing for six hours?"

"She had given birth a few days earlier. She wasn't in the condition to run," Tai admitted. "Your mother—Raven—she was unwell. We knew that she was unwell for a long time. They couldn't keep her in custody because of her mental illness, so instead, they transitioned her care to me. I wasn't going to just bring her back. She tried to kill you. She tried to hurt herself. She was an active danger to everybody around her. I searched for anyplace I could that would take her. I had to move her to this awful facility up north where they treated her terribly, but I didn't know what else to do with her. I couldn't have her hurting you. You were the only thing I had."

Yin's features softened, but she still seethed uncontrollably. "That's…you still didn't have to—"

"You were just a baby," Tai told her. "I didn't know what I would be able to tell you when you grew up. I was a single dad. How would you explain to a kid that their mom went crazy and is stuck in some madhouse somewhere? That was how things used to be. But then, after Summer came back, and we had Ruby, she encouraged me to try getting in touch with her again. And when both of us went to check on Raven, she seemed to have changed. She wanted to get out of that place, and she promised that she was willing to seek treatment. Summer and I worked together, and we eventually found this place. They've been taking care of her ever since. She slowly started getting better. Eventually, the outbursts stopped, and she was able to be…well, not like her old self, but better. She was healing. But, then we had a problem. By that point, I was married to Summer, and you only ever knew her as your mom, and we didn't know what would happen if Raven stopped getting her treatments. So, the three of us all came together and we worked out a path forward. Raven was the one who suggested it."

"Stop it," Yin said desperately. She wandered off, leaning against the closest wall she could find, unable to support herself. "Stop fucking talking."

"You have to understand," Tai tried to explain. "It wasn't that she didn't want you in her life. She wanted to come back, but she was afraid of what would happen with her in your life."

"Shut up…"

"She didn't want you growing up to be like her. She didn't want to burden you with any of this."

"So you just pretend that she disappeared?" Yin cried. "That's how you decide to handle this? Just tell me that she was dead! Let me give up hope! Don't make me think about all of this and then pull this shit out from under me!"

"Yang, please be quiet—"

"No, I'm not being fucking quiet!" Yin screamed, slamming her fist against the wall. "My mother didn't want me, not because she was crazy, but just because she didn't fucking want me. It's such…it's such bullshit. I hate that you would fucking do this to me."

"Yang, let's just go see her," Tai said gently. "I promise she'll—"

"No! I'm not seeing her!" Yin shouted, turning to walk down the hall. "If she doesn't want me, I don't want her!"

"Yin, come on."

That voice. That stupid voice again.

Yin growled under her breath like a dog. She clenched her fists and bowed her head. "No. No, I won't see her."

"She's our mom. We have to see her."

"She abandoned us."

"She was trying to protect us."

"You don't buy that. I know you don't believe that."

"Maybe I don't. But we have to know, don't we? We have to know what really happened to her."

"We don't need anything. We're better off without her. She didn't trust us to be strong, but look at us. We're better than she ever was. We're in control."

"Do you feel in control right now?"

Yin's eyes shot open.

Control.

No. She hadn't.

She hadn't felt in control ever since she took over that body. Every waking moment had been a fight just to keep herself dominant over the voice in her head. It wasn't this hard before. When Yang—the other—was in control, she didn't have to struggle like this. She was able to sleep. Dream. Play. Laugh. When the other was in control, she could live just like anyone else. The other was free, but her? She was always struggling to maintain relevance, whether she was a distant voice in the back of the mind or a conscious entity walking freely on her own two feet. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Once she took over, their roles should have completely reversed.

So why wasn't she in control?

Yin looked down at her palms. She felt her weapons straining against her wrist. She had longed for so long to feel their weight upon her. All she ever wanted was the gift of touch. But, even though it had only been a few days, she felt it slipping away. The other was crawling back, and she felt like it would only take a single push to let her back in control of everything. She couldn't allow that. She couldn't give up after all the sacrifices they had made together.

Raven. Mother. Those two words barely deserved to be spoken in the same breath. She was no mother to her. Never was. But she had the condition. She had their curse. If…if she could just figure out what had happened to her, piece together that woman's story, maybe she could get some answers about what she was, about what she needed to do to stay in control. Maybe then, she could get the voice to shut up. Maybe she could finally get some sleep.

That would be worth at least a few minutes, wouldn't it?

"Yang," Tai called to her. He must have been growing nervous hearing her talk to herself. The other residents of the care facility must have heard her outburst, too. This was no time to draw attention to herself. She had to act normally. Politely. Reasonably. She was technically a fugitive. She had to be in control.

Yin straightened herself, brushing away those awkward, clumsy tears before nodding.

"It's okay. I'm…I'm fine," she lied to him.

Taiyang didn't trust her for a second, but he had no choice but to keep playing along for her own sake. He offered his hand to her, and though she didn't take it, she did agree to follow him to wherever he would take her. No one in the facility bothered to stop them as they continued making their way down the hall. Whatever ruckus she made apparently wasn't enough.

Tai led her to the end of the hall.

Up the stairs.

Down another hall.

Sharp turn right.

Then, she almost walked straight past it. It looked like any other normal room. Barely marked but for a single number: 145. Taiyang gestured to the door as if she would be the one to open it. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn't bring herself to make that call. Her father understood. He led the way inside; the door was unlocked to allow him easy access. It was a care facility, after all. They wouldn't want to lose access to their patients.

When Yin entered, she didn't see padded walls or hospital beds. It looked almost like a hotel room. A nice one, at that. Her father was wealthy from his career as a Huntsman, but she never knew he could afford to keep someone in a place like this. Taiyang marched straight ahead, and though she was briefly distracted by the décor, Yin eventually turned her gaze inward toward the center of the room. There was a couch there.

And a television.

And a very bored person watching that television.

Older. Paler. Hair dark and frazzled and loose. Dressed down in her pajamas. Eyes heavy. She turned halfway to the door, enough to notice Taiyang and immediately get irritated.

"Oh, God, they let you in here," the woman grumbled. Yin just stood by the door and watched in shock. They really did sound alike.

"Raven," Tai said calmly. "There's someone here to see you."

"Tell them that I'll keep the noise down," the woman said. "These assholes have no sense of—"

The woman noticed Yin standing in the doorway—and one set of red eyes instantly met another. Her lips curled into a frown.

"Oh. That's not good."