Avena smiled. Then she clapped her hands gleefully. With a shriek, she grabbed the steering wheel again and jerked the car back into the correct lane.

She'd found Rowen's place. Finally! She pulled into the parking lot. Finding a place to park could take a while. After searching for over ten minutes, she slipped into a tight space between a truck and a "New" Beetle. Thoroughly pleased with herself, Avena trotted towards the main entrance.

Suddenly, she saw her target. Rowen walked through the double doors, hands thrust deep in his jacket pockets. Avena ran for the door and walked through the door a mere five feet behind Rowen. She was careful to act as if she were with him but not let him know she was there. When Rowen nodded to the guard, she nodded and smiled sweetly, too.

She followed the blue-haired boy through another door. Rowen headed toward an elevator. Avena ran for a door marked "Stairs". She raced upward, two steps at a time. She had to touch her hands to the stairs often, in order to keep her balance. Even though she was quite winded by the time she reached the 4th floor landing, she grinned eagerly over the little game she was playing.

Opening the door a crack, she peeked through and saw Rowen step off the elevator. He turned down the hall, away from her. She bit her lip to keep from laughing and silently stalked after him. Near the end of the corridor he stopped and started unlocking the door marked 23D. Avena jumped into the little alcove made by the door across the hall from 23D, stifling a surprised yelp as the doorknob jabbed her in the back.

Rowen opened his door and walked inside. But he didn't close it behind him, running for the ringing phone. Avena took grateful advantage of his distraction to pad into the apartment and hid behind the doorframe of the tiny cramped hall across the den that led to the bedrooms and bathroom.

'Oooh, this such fun!' she thought, and nearly choked on a giggle.

* * * * * * * * *

"No." Rowen rolled his eyes at the persistent salesman on the phone. "No, no, no, and no!" The salesman started to protest. "Oh, go throw your sales' pitch at a baseball game!" Rowen exclaimed and slammed the phone down on the hook.

"Salesmen! Who needs them, right?"

Rowen whirled about, nearly—just nearly—surprised out of his skin. There in the doorway of the little hall stood someone he wouldn't have guessed to show up in his apartment in a million years.

"What're you doin' here?!" he demanded.

"Came to visit Cye. Thought I might drop by. Hey, that rhymes! Ooops, I did it again!" Avena giggled.

"Seriously, Avena. What are you doing in my apartment? How'd you get in here?"

"I followed you in!" she told him and pointed at the still-open door.

Rowen frowned and closed the door. When he turned back, Avena was seated on the couch. She suddenly looked startlingly serious—for Avena.

"Uh, is something wrong?" Rowen inquired uneasily. The last time he'd seen the girl half this solemn, he'd ended up falling off a roof.

"I don't know…" She looked at him, searching his face for something. "Is something wrong?"

Uncomfortable beneath her close scrutiny, he feigned ignorance. "What do you want, Ave?"

"I want you to sit down and talk to me. Now."

Unnerved by the abnormal degree of sternness in the British girl's tone, Rowen sat down. But he couldn't bring himself to talk. He just stared at his hands in his lap. Avena did much the same.

Nearly fifteen minutes after Rowen had hung up the phone and become aware of his uninvited guest, he whispered, "I'm so alone…"

Avena didn't look at him but took his hands in one of hers and said ever-so-softly, "I know…" Then she turned and squeezed his hands with both of hers, prompting him to look at her. She smiled gently. "But I won't let you be alone anymore."

* * * * * * * * *

A bell rang. 'Work's over,' he thought and put his equipment away. Ten minutes later, he was walking away from the library. But Genichirou Hashiba wasn't going home. Not yet. One stop to make first…

"The plane crashed over the western coast…"

'No. I'm not hearing this,' he silently told himself. Then aloud, "Not again."

Don't tell Touma; I want it to be a surprise…

She was doing it again. He trudged on, trying to ignore the too-vivid memories.

He found himself standing before the bar. For a moment, he almost walked away. But then…

"We found her this morning…"

I've got to go…Love you lots…

Genichirou walked into the bar.

* * * * * * * * *

"Exactly how long has it been since you ate a decent meal?" Avena asked.

Rowen stopped eating only long enough to say, "A while."

Avena set another plate of food before him. "I take it that it was a very long while?"

Rowen just nodded, cramming another piece of fried chicken in his mouth. Since she'd gotten there, they'd watched TV, discussed whether or not Cye should repaint his apartment, watched TV, argued about which flavor of ice cream tasted best, watched TV, and finally, Avena had gone and gotten a bag out of her car and used its contents to make her friend a large enough meal to keep him satisfied for at least a day.

"But you have food here. I saw it in the kitchen," she stated, confused.

Rowen swallowed and picked up a fork for the baked potato. "Yeah, but I have to make it last a long time."

"How long?"

"Sometimes, two or three weeks. It depends," he said and grabbed more food.

"Why? Can't you just buy more? That's what you used to do." This had Avena puzzled. She'd visited Japan enough to know that Rowen's father made enough money for them to live comfortably. Food expenses weren't a problem.

Rowen paused, the fork halfway to his mouth. Slowly, he lowered the utensil. He gripped the edge of the table till his hand turned white. When he looked at Avena, she was almost frightened by what she saw in his expression, in…his eyes.

But she looked at him, without a hint of a flinch. And she waited.

Rowen obviously was trying to figure out how to say something. Well, she wouldn't rush him. If it took a thousand years, she would wait.

A thousand years may not have passed, but it felt as if a couple million eternities had. Rowen was about to speak when something far worse than bad happened…

A key rattled in the lock.

* * * * * * * * *

"But I can't breathe!"

"Shhh. You can too."

"But—"

"Please, Avena, be quiet. Please."

Avena looked up at him. Something was really wrong. Rowen had pushed her into a closet and was trying to cover her up with jackets and sheets. He was trying to hide her.

He was scared.

And Avena was catching that fear.

She shut up.

"Just stay put and don't move or make a sound. No matter what. Okay?"

She nodded.

"Alright. Now remember: don't do anything." And he closed the door.

She sat there in the dark, the only light coming from the tiny slats in the closet door. 'Well, Ave,' she thought to herself, 'you've done it again. You just can't stay out of trouble, can you?…I don't like closets.'

Then she heard something she'd never forget.

"Oh dear God," she whispered.

* * * * * * * * *

"Touma, get over here!" Genichirou roared.

Rowen didn't even try to avoid it. He didn't want to bring attention to the girl in the closet. He didn't even want to think about what would happen if his father found Avena.

"Dad, I—"

"Shut up, you little bastard! Get over here!"

Rowen stepped forward, chin raised. There was too much at stake this time. He couldn't hide, as he sometimes did.

Genichirou looked at him and snarled, "What do you think you are? Some sort of little prince?"

Rowen just stood there.

Thwack.

Genichirou looked down at his son, sprawled on the floor. "Wretched little brat," he sneered. He dropped the beer bottle he'd brought home with him.

Rowen tried to get up but a foot suddenly dug into his back, pushing him down. The start of a cold spasm started in his chest. 'Oh, no. Not again, not now.' He pulled away from the foot, only to get kicked in the side.

Genichirou picked up the bottle again. Rowen got to his feet and stepped backwards. He recognized the tensing of muscles in his father's arm, shoulder, and neck. 'He's going to throw the bottle at me.' Rowen's limbs tensed, ready to react. He'd just thought of something. Sometimes, his father managed to knock him out before he crashed himself, and then Genichirou would rage around the apartment, opening doors and tossing things out of cupboards and closets. If he did that this time, he'd find Avena. So, Rowen had to stay on his feet.

His mind, of its own accord, had switched into battle mode. 'Movement. Move.' Automatically, Rowen leapt aside. The bottle flew past him and collided with the door of Avena's closet. Furious that he'd missed his target, Genichirou charged at his son.

* * * * * * * * *

Avena bit her lip to keep from crying out as a shard of broken glass sliced her cheek. She clamped a hand over the cut and pressed hard. She felt sticky warmth seep between her fingers. Her eyes widened in surprise. She opened her mouth, just to check, and found that this was far too painful, so she kept her lips firmly sealed.

Outside, she heard the sounds of a small struggle. The roars of the drunken man were very angry. She could hear Rowen trying to talk to him. There was the crash of something like glass colliding with the floor.

Curiosity finally got the better of her, despite how scared she was. Avena carefully peeked through the slats in the door. She got a glimpse of Genichirou Hashiba throwing a fist at Rowen. She pulled back further into the tiny closet and pressed a handful of sheet to the cut on her cheek. It was deep and bleeding freely.

'Dear Lord, how can this be happening?' She'd come over here to talk to Rowen because of what Aerostar had said. But she'd been thinking that all that was wrong with Rowen was the death of his mother. Instead, his problem was practically identical to Aerostar's…

'Bloody 'ell…what're the chances?!'

* * * * * * * * *

'There goes the lamp,' Rowen thought as his father knocked it over. Then, 'Oh, boy. Here comes another UFO.' He ducked the projectile, which turned out to be a fragment of the lamp base. As he straightened up, his father flew at him, fist headed for Rowen's face.

Mind still in defensive mode, Rowen reflexively grabbed the fist and swung it away, causing Genichirou to reel away, too. This maneuver had placed Rowen with his back to Avena's closet. Now, Genichirou rushed at him, enraged. He grabbed something off a table as he came.

Rowen saw the deadly glitter of metal and then his father was upon him. Rowen grabbed the wrist that held the letter opener, twisting it away from his face. Genichirou kept his grip on the potential weapon and Rowen would have broken his wrist but he suddenly realized that this was his father. He couldn't hurt him.

In only a momentary lapse, Rowen had given Genichirou an advantage. Genichirou slashed down with the letter opener, Rowen ducked it, and the sharp blade plunged through a slat in the closet as the man lost his grip. Rowen heard a muffled thud but nothing more.

He nearly panicked. 'Oh, gods, what if it killed her?!' He had to end this, now.

Without a second thought, Rowen grasped his father's shoulder, drew back his fist, and looked Genichirou in the eye.

"I'm sorry, Dad." And punched his father. The drunken scientist fell unconscious to the floor. Rowen stored down at him, tears in his eyes. He'd been like that for some time when he remembered why it had come to this.

"Avena!"

* * * * * * * * *

Avena saw the flash of light against metal and then there was the woosh of air as something flew towards her. She shut her eyes tight. 'I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die!'

Nothing happened. She opened her eyes slowly. Without moving, she looked around. 'Oh. My. God.' There was a blade of some sort less than a centimeter from her left cheek, right below her ear, stuck in the wall she was leaning against. Still pressing the sheet to her right cheek, she simply sat and stared peripherally at the letter opener that had literally come within a hair's breadth of ending her life. She didn't even know that she was forgetting to breathe.

And that was how Rowen found her.

* * * * * * * * *

"Avena, are you okay?"

"Ummm…"

Rowen yanked the letter opener away from her face. "Are you okay?" he asked again.

Avena would've answered but the pain of opening her mouth was too much. So she settled for, "Ummmmm…"

Rowen pulled her hand away from her cheek. "Damn," he growled. He helped her to her feet and led her to the bathroom. While he was cleaning the cut, he said, "You're gonna need stitches. Shit. Cye's gonna kill me."

He looked through the medicine cabinet, found some Band-Aids, and sighed. "These'll hafta do." He carefully put four of them across Avena's cut.

Avena tried again to open her mouth and decided against it. She looked puzzled for a moment and then thoughtful. Then she suddenly grabbed Rowen's chin and forced him to look her in the eyes.

In that mahogany gaze, Rowen saw what Avena couldn't say. "Yes, he was very drunk. I'm fine. I know I should've told…someone… Really, I'm fine. C'mon." He led her back to the kitchen.

He sat down and glanced at the clock. He looked at her again, then at the clock. "Look, Ave, you should head down for the hospital. I've got things to do."

Avena shook her head. Besides, she didn't know where the hospital was. She made a writing motion with her hand. Rowen understood and got a paper and pen. Avena wrote: I don't know where the hospital is. And what about your father?

Rowen sighed. "I can take care of it. And the hospital's seven streets away to the right when you walk out the front door of the building. Go on now. You're already bleeding again."

Sure enough, Avena could feel the trickle of blood down her cheek. She wrote: I'll tell the security guard about your father on my way out, ok?

"No! Don't you dare!" Rowen growled.

He was too serious for Avena to disregard his warning. She wrote: Ok! But her expression portrayed her confusion.

Rowen fidgeted and kept glancing at the clock. Then he said, "Okay, look. You have to go. Right now."

Avena shook her head again.

Rowen tried a sterner tone. "Avena, you have to go."

Avena shook her head and opened her mouth to snap a "no!" but ended up just snapping her mouth shut again. She shook her head a 4th time to make up for it.

Rowen looked ticked. He grabbed Avena's arm and yanked her to her feet. "You," he growled, nearly forgetting to speak in English, "are leaving!"

Avena tried to pull away and argue, but this time the pain of attempted speech shocked her into a near stupor. Next thing she knew, she was standing beside the door outside the building. Her cheek throbbed. Her first thought: 'Heavens, that guard must be deaf and blind!'

Still not completely sure of what she should do, the 16-year-old stood there. She was suddenly terribly aware of the fact that her head hurt. Bad. 'Oooh, I hate it when Cye's right!' she thought, realizing that this latest addition to her hurts was a result of her fall from the balcony.

'Go get in your car,' she told herself. 'Go to the hospital.' Then, 'No, stay here. You need to do something about Rowen.'

In the end, she just stood there. She hated this! She absolutely didn't know what to do. 'I said I hated driving in Japan… I think maybe I shouldn't come 'ere anymore… It might be in the best interest of my health.'

* * * * * * * * *

Rowen looked down at his father, sorrow more poignant than ever in his eyes. Sitting down on the floor beside the man, he smiled wanly at Genichirou's beard. Facial hair wasn't exactly approved of in Japan. "You always were a bit weird, Dad…" He fingered his own hair. "Guess you'll never know how "weird" I am."

He was all but crying. Time to end this… He kissed his father's cheek. "Bye, Dad."

Hefting the duffel bag to his shoulder, Rowen left the apartment.

* * * * * * * * *

Avena turned to leave. She was halfway to her car when she heard the doors close. She turned back. '?' she thought.

Rowen was walking away from the building, a duffel bag over his shoulder. Avena blinked and looked at the apartment building. She looked at Rowen. Building. Rowen. Building. Rowen. Then she looked at her rental car. Then the building. Rowen. Car. Building… Rowen. Avena took off after her chosen target.

As she trotted along, blood began to really flow down her cheek. Her tank top would be ruined… She nearly let out a squeak as she had to upgrade her speed to keep Rowen in sight. She didn't think her body would much appreciate being forced to run right now.

And to think she'd come to visit Cye for a holiday.

* * * * * * * * *

Rowen had only gotten half a block from the complex when he realized someone was following him. 'Dammit! I told her to go to the hospital.' He sped up. He was conscious of Avena speeding up too, but not trying to run.

At the end of the block he decided that he had to lose her. He took off running.

* * * * * * * * *

Eyes wide with surprise, Avena halted and then ran after Rowen. He was running? Why?

As she'd predicted, her body complained immediately. Her head pounded, her cheek throbbed. Her mind raced.

I'm going to have to do 1 of 4 things: run away…

The last two words of Aerostar's statement echoed through her mind. 'Rowen is…running away?'

Ahead of her, Rowen abruptly turned a corner. Wanting to scream for the pain of it, Avena ran full out.

* * * * * * * * *

Rowen suppressed a gasp. A cold spasm was growing in his chest. The bus station was less than three blocks away. He knew Avena was running behind him and he knew it had to be painful for her. She couldn't, mustn't, follow him to the bus station. Once there, there would be no losing her. So, despite, the terrible cold pain spreading through his chest, he ran as fast as he could manage.

He was suddenly aware of a light-headed feeling and the uncharacteristic dullness of things he saw. Almost as if the colors and outlines were fading and dimming. He shook his head and ran on.

The duffel bag seemed to be getting heavier, the cold was almost unbearable. Why did everything look so odd?

* * * * * * * * *

'What the hell?'

He was looking up at a darkening sky. No, it was supposed to be blue still. Why was it getting so dark around the edges? There was a hard, cool, damp something beneath his head. And his chest was no longer just cold. It was engulfed in a fire of ice, burning and freezing at the same time. He couldn't seem to get enough air.

Rowen lay there, gasping as his vision became dimmer and dimmer and his body ached for oxygen he couldn't supply according to demand. Then there was a strange calm, a sort of peace. He was tired beyond imagining. The urge to close his eyes and just sleep was too heavy to ignore… Why not?

With one last gasp and a final sigh, Rowen let go.