"There was a time in my life..."

In a little apartment with a view of the Los Angeles skyline, and an open window, Leon lay in a bed that was not his own. One arm was under the pillow that, for the past few nights, was his, and his other arm was around the slender body of his lover. Neither was, nor had been, soundly sleeping. They had merely been each other's comfort. They had discovered ways to block the pain, in each other's embrace, but the relief was temporary, and the pain was deep and lasting. The night had been quiet for the pair, the sound of the cars didn't even interrupt as if they knew the night would be important.

"Are you going to hurt me Leon?" The woman asked as she sat up in bed and pulled her partner's discarded T-shirt on.

"I could probably ask you the same thing, Mystic. You do kind of have a reputation as being a heartbreaker." Leon brushed his fingertips through the woman's hair as she stood and he watched her walk over to the window.

"There was a time in my life when I wasn't," She said turning her honey eyes back to the man occupying her bed. "There was a time in my life where love meant something, because I believed it was possible. A time when I believed in the goodness of people."

"Mystic?" Leon sat up, he was beginning to get wary of the turn this conversation had so rapidly decided to take. He didn't mean for it to, but his voice showed it.

"I'm sorry," looking down at the floor, her voice was ashamed, and quiet, "I guess I just need to talk to someone and you're are the only one I think I can talk to right now."

Leon wrapped a blanket around himself as he stood, and asked, "Why me, though?"

"You are the only one left," Mystic answered as Leon took a seat on the window sill. "Romeo's dead. Tia's gone, and a certainly can't talk to Dominic. Though he would probably understand the most, things I need to say would probably just make the loss worse for him." A soft sigh escaped her and she looked into her lover's brown eyes, "So now there's just you Leon Vegas. You are the only one left. You are the only one I can talk to now."

Leon sat silent for a moment, thinking about what she'd said. He knew she'd had a relationship with Romeo, and that she'd been friendly with Tia after the pink haired woman painted her car. He seemed like she had more of a history with the two though, and he didn't know that story. "I can't guarantee that I'll understand, but I'll try."

"I have more of a history with Romeo, than you or the team knows. We went to high school together. I was a freshman when he was a senior, but we started dating. We ended up being the talk of the school. Real life Romeo and Juliet."

"Juliet?" Leon asked with a small smile.

Mystic laughed a bit, "Yeah, Juliet, it's my real name. I don't like it a whole lot. Juliet Tuesday Morris, just doesn't have a nice ring to it."

"Well Leon Storm Vegas isn't any better."

"Yes it is. Has a much nicer, more powerful ring to it." She laughed again then sat on the window sill with Leon. "Anyway, we dated in high school. Fell in love and all that mushy stuff. He had to graduate though and I knew it wouldn't work. So in the typical teenager fashion I got depressed, but never told him, or anyone what was wrong. That didn't stop him from asking, or my parents from worrying, but I didn't care. I thought my world was ending.

"It's kind of silly I know, but hey teenagers are like that. One day though, and this wasn't the first time I had done it, but it was the first time anyone else did anything about it. One day though, I chased a bottle of, what was it... Extra Strength Tylenol, brand new, still had the cotton in it when I opened it, with a bottle of Absolute. I think I got the idea from a movie."

"Why did you do it?"

Mystic scoffed slightly, "I had a headache."

"So what happened?" Leon asked, prompting her to continue.

"My parents being the overly moral, overly religious kind, thought at once I was suicidal and had me institutionalized, for a year and a half the first time. That was fun," Mystic added sarcastically. "The place is called Rostengburg Falls. It's a facility for the mental unwell. It's up in the mountains and there's a little waterfall nearby."

"You're own parents had you committed to a loony bin?"

"Yes, and don't call it that. That's where I met Tianna, and she is not loony. Neither was Gavin, or me."

"I'm sorry," Leon said holding his hands up in surrender, then questioned, "Gavin?"

"That's not my story to be telling. If we ever get Tia back you'll have to ask her."

"Tia was in Rostengburg?"

"Yes, unfortunately," Mystic sighed as she remembered the day she'd met Tianna, "She was cute, only about eleven or twelve years old. She didn't say a lot to anyone except Gavin. He had I were both already there when she came, he was sixteen, and loved her the moment he laid eyes on her. He protected her, well he tried to."

"Protect her? From what?"

"The doctors. They had all sorts of treatments they wanted to give Tianna for being disturbed. You have to understand though, she wasn't lying about anyone the things they said she was. But they gave her serums, and pills, and drugs. That first year wasn't so bad, she didn't understand anything then. She was still just the quiet little girl who had showed up that first day, on the day I left.

"A year later though, being the fucked up teenager I was I did something else my parents didn't approve of and they sent me back. Tia was still there, and Gavin. The drugs were fucking her up. One day she'd be the quiet little girl I remembered then she'd be violent, or suicidal, or just unresponsive to anything. There were times she didn't even blink for hours."

"Why doesn't anything be done about the things these doctors do?"

"Because no one wants to spend their tax dollars on the insane." Mystic looked out over the skyline and continued with her story, "I was in and out of the Institution and every time Tia was still there, and Gavin, until the last time... but that's still not my story to tell. Just know that the treatments got worse with her, she should've died from all they did to her. The shock therapy was the worse. It left her damaged. She got out the year after I finally left. It was just coincidence that she happened to work at Romeo's, coincidence that I dated the man again for a time, Coincidence that brought us together. It was kind of bad though, that Ro, who had come to visit me a few times when I was first committed, had said something about the girl I was always around, but he didn't recognize her when she began working at his restaurant."

"Could be fate." Leon said after Mystic had finished her story.

"Do you believe in fate, Leon?"

"It seems like too much to be a coincidence. If you and Romeo were in love, why'd you break up with him?"

"I still loved him, but we'd both moved on with our lives. The affection was still there, the friendship, but the love was gone. It had hurt, both of us when we did it, but we agreed to stay close and we did even though we didn't act like it. It had become a sort of game for us, the whole love hate thing. It made racing each other more fun, it helped the time pass a bit more quickly when things began to remind us of what we had."

"I think I understand... at least why you couldn't tell Dominic, why you had to come to me. Your confidant, and the friend you'd been through hell with are both gone. You really didn't have anyone else to talk to."

Mystic just shook her head, and slid into the arms of her lover. She felt him wrap the blanket around her and the embrace, just touched her. She wasn't alone. There love may not be the kind she and Romeo had, and it might not even be love of the stay together forever sort, but for now what they had was enough. It helped her feel better, that she had talked to this man. She could move on now. At least past the pain of death and loss. She could move past the time in her life, that had happened days ago, and lingered on her mind until moments ago.