Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ, I am only borrowing them please insert the standard disclaimer here. I do however own Maya.

Author notes: With thanks and affection to Doramouse and her ever useful Character Compendium. I'm not really sure how well this chapter works as a continuation from the last one, however I've done my best. My Japanese isn't terribly good so if you happen to be fluent in Japanese and see some glaring error please tell me. Thank you for coming this far, please read and review.

"Double quotations indicate conversations."

'Single quotations in italics indicate thoughts.'
Asterisks indicate telepathic conversations

Glossary :

Ohayo: Good morning

Baka: Idiot

Kuso: (Generally) damn or shit.

Hai: Yes

Otousan: Father

Katana: literally a Japanese sword, generally refers to the typical samurai sword.

The muted light from the hall only just reached the bottom of the stairs. There was no moonlight; it was dark, and very still, so still, that his heartbeat seemed to drown out everything else. Yajarobe looked down at dark form, hair spilling every which way over the end of the chair. He couldn't sleep, not when Maya's ki reverberated through the whole house. His mind had gone back and forth over everything that had happened since the fight with the saiya-jin. The Senshi had gotten a lot of media attention over the fight and he himself had loved it. Some recognition at last! But Maya, he'd watched Maya side step all the attention as neatly as if it were second nature. The one reporter with the nerve to approach her sparking eyes and all had been told to go and do something constructive like feed the starving orphans. Despite all his persistence, he'd ended up scuttling off with his tail between his legs after one of Maya's savage little glares. Aside from the fact that the top of Maya's head had barely been level with his shoulders, Yajarobe had to be content just to grin at the look on the reporters face. Laughing just wouldn't have been dignified!

Yajarobe sighed. He looked down at Maya in the half light, sharply aware he still didn't know all that much about her. The fact turned it over and over in his mind like a pebble in a stream. The more he thought about it the more he questioned his right to question her. In the end, he was just a ronin with many secrets of his own. He exhaled quietly, pondering on the exhaustion that prevented her from snapping awake, not noticing his own careful quietness. His eyes trailed over the bright hair and the long fine hands with their hard calluses, he felt again the same strong pull. He knew he'd seen enough to realise that in some ways her values were more the traditional samurai values than his own. He was a samurai in his heart and bone. 'But…' Yajarobe sighed. He'd long since started to lose his belief in the bushi-do. For a long time he'd kept asking himself who she was, but now he found himself caring less and less. He was sinking and he knew it and the ronin in him pulled both ways. In the pre dawn darkness, the hour before the dawn, he walked out still a ronin at heart. The moon was gone and the sun had not yet risen, and his feet were silent on the frosty grass. He disappeared into the dark.

She traced the trails of floral garlands on the ceiling with her eyes. In the early dawn light the whole expanse of it was more pink than white. She sighed. Her back hurt from spending the night on the lounge instead of in her bed. The long hard fingers of her right hand trailed in her hair and pressed against her scalp. She sighed again and dragged her self up right. The day had started and she had work to do, and there were her three refugees to attend to.

Saffron flicked her head over the half door and whickered her usual greeting. She was quite the old lady now with deep hollows above her eyes and grey hairs in her coat. Her eyes where still bright and she remained her curious cheerful self. Maya didn't ride her much now she was too willing. She would behave for anyone, Gohan could ride her with little more than a rope slung round her neck, but for Maya she would lay down and die, she only had to ask. Her spirit was still that of a young horse but her legs weren't. All those years of guerrilla tactics had damaged Saffron's body too, and there was no Kami to make her young again. 'But still…' With the other horses fed and out on pasture and the boxes clean, Maya looked up at the sky. It was still early, she shivered in the crisp air. Still half an hour's freedom and solitude would help her no end.

Saffron walked out across the sand leaving a little u shaped pattern in her wake until the ocean gobbled it up. She strode out confident in Maya's hands and legs that had guided her unerringly her whole life. Maya breathed the sharp salty air with pleasure, ran her hands though Saffron's dark mane and turned back for home with some reluctance. 'How,' she wondered, 'are we going to get it through Ranshi's head that Tien will be back.'

There was no Yajarobe. She should have known, should have sensed it but she'd been too distracted to notice. Now she did, she was surprised at how her heart sank over it. The whole place felt so heavy and quiet her skin crawled. The saiya-jin had stirred up so much inside each of them. The saiya-jin and the devastation they had left had brought out both their strengths and insecurities. So she told Ranshi alone. And told her over and over in the hope of penetrating her mind.

Ranshi sat hunched over the kitchen bench her dark eyes focused on the shinning surface. Maya had just finished explaining Namek and the dragon balls and most importantly what Buruma and Kuririn were up to, for the second time. It wouldn't penetrate. Ranshi had seen Tien die true, it had been on television but she had seen it and Tien had been revived once already.

Her mind couldn't cope, since that moment it had simply shut down. Yet here was Maya abruptly trying to jar her back to life. Ranshi's mind was adamant she didn't want to wake up, at least in this ambient state, not really alive and not really dead and most certainly not present, she didn't hurt. If she believed this hard, stubborn woman, she'd have hope again but she'd hurt again. 'No! No!' She couldn't bare it. She felt Maya's fingers under her chin. Hard calloused fingers cool, firm strong fingers. They held her lightly with utmost gentleness yet they were firm they would entertain no argument. Against her will she found herself gazing straight into Maya's blazing brown eyes. They were kind but frustrated.

"People are risking their lives to bring Tien back to you the least you can do is acknowledge it!" Maya's voice was a low angry growl. She had tried her best to be kind and compassionate, but her own emotions were in such a tumultus mess that she'd have given anything for 24 hours away from all human kind. She hardly even thought of herself as human any more, hated people in her personal space and kept her distance in general. Private she called it, but she looked into Ranshi's wide almost frightened eyes and softened. The blonde woman was suffering, she knew that deep dark shattering pain all too intimately not to know. Then softly, very gently, but with that ever present steel behind it.

"I know it hurts. But it's time to wake up Ranshi." She slid her fingers out from under Ranshi's chin and leaned back playing with the end of her plait to observe Ranshi from a more comfortable distance. Maya pretended not to notice Ranshi glancing up at her slyly from under her lashes, considering what she'd said weighing it up. Maya twitched her fingers aware she was little more than a silhouette with the light streaming in from the window behind her. 'Pfft...Who needs Yajarobe I'm managing so far without him. So far at any rate.' Ranshi didn't seem to make a decision one way or the other. She did however brighten a little and allowed Chichi to drag her to the Son residence.

The sunlight went gold, as the sun sank she lent against the veranda Socrates in her arms. She felt deeply lonely standing there, with just her cat. It irritated her she'd trained herself to manage alone and to not miss company but now and then the little cracks appeared. Telling a truth all their own, one she didn't care to admit to. She didn't feel that it paid to be vulnerable and being lonely certainly counted, all the same, she wished, he'd at least said good bye. Maya lent her cheek into Socrates fur, he purred while Maya's eyes followed Chichi as she dragged Ranshi down the drive. But all the same, she still felt like she was on her island remote from everything. Normally she liked it made her feel safe, but right this second it didn't feel too pleasant at all.

Restless she released Socrates and stepped down off the veranda. She just walked. Her feet lead her through the trees and down to the sand. The sea was golden, a wide endless expanse of shining gold. It slipped up on to the shore and then retreated with a single drawn out sigh. Maya shuffled along the sand, the crisp breeze tugging little strands of hair free from her long plait. She gazed out across the water….her eyes not really seeing it at all. Her hand ran to the end of her plait and pulled it free. The breeze lifted, fluttering, transforming her hair into a bright vivid banner against the golden sea. Why had he gone, without a word, it wasn't something he normally did. He was surly sometimes without a doubt but she herself could be terribly abrupt when it suited her. She sighed and the sea seemed to sigh too. 'They don't see me as a threat any more.' Somehow, she wasn't sure if that pleased her or not.

Maya sat down and attempted to shake herself back to normalcy. Her hair fluttered about on the wind. No amount of will power seemed to be able to close the crack in her outer self. The events over the past few weeks had chipped at her defences and reopened the gapping holes within her and of them, her self enforced loneliness was by far the worst.

The sun had almost dropped in to the sea, and the light had become very gold indeed. Her bright, beautiful hair fluttered in the strong breeze, her eyes looked out across the sea, but she wasn't there. Yajarobe paused in the trees. She was so still. His feet touched almost silently down on the sand. She didn't move.

"You left without saying goodbye." He glanced down at her she was motionless, still, staring at the gold drenched sea.

"Does it matter so much?"

"No, I suppose not." She was lying they both knew it. Yajarobe looked at her wondering. Korin was probably right the more she had people around her the more she realised how lonely she was. 'Or is it something else.' The gold sea slowly turned red with the light of the setting sun, and Maya shivered. Her eyes wide. She shivered again and closed her eyes. It wasn't the sea she could see but blood. Yajarobe watched her covertly giving nothing away.

"What are you thinking about?" Maya looked down at the sand and shook her head smiling sadly. There was along pause Yajarobe looked out at the sea and wondered. 'What brought that shivering on, what did she see?' Maya stared at her hand running in through the sand. Then sighed.

"Home…." Yajarobe glanced at her startled.

"That's what I was thinking about…." There was a long awkward silence. During which they both berated themselves. The sea still looked like an ocean of blood but she'd shaken herself free of the revere now. Maya listened to the sea. She breathed in the sea air some how it soothed her. She had been born near the sea, and when things had fallen apart, it had protected her. Yajarobe glanced at Maya.

"Maya what really happened to you?" He said it softly his heart thudding in his chest. Yajarobe felt torn, it seemed strange that Maya had lived for so long amongst them, yet no one really knew anything much about her at all. Deep down he wanted to know, even if at the same time he had come to care less. He wanted to know, he wanted to understand her, as it was sometimes she left him feeling baffled. Maya stared at the sea. There was a long drawn out pause. She took so long answering that Yajarobe though she had not heard. Everyone it seemed to Maya was gnawing at the question like a well chewed bone. At first, it had been easy to side step the questions. Maya keep to herself totally in some ways. Nevertheless, even she knew that those few softly spoken words were inevitable. Besides when he asked her how many lives she'd taken even then she'd side stepped, 'only those who are dieing,' that was what she'd said. ' But everyone is dieing one breath at a time.'

"A lot of things…too much to ever explain, ….and I don't think I could." She didn't take her eyes from the sea, her voice was very soft and resigned. Maya felt Yajarobe's dark eyes watching her. She wondered if somewhere along the way she'd lost her own self, she could still remember the past however distant with a sharpness and clarity that seemed some how out of place. She could still see their faces clearly even now when some of it was all so long ago.

"And anyway it wasn't just me, I was just one of a wave, a sea of humanity." She sighed.

"That bled. And died and will end with me." ' The only difference is that I lived and they died. And that makes all the difference in the world. Heh, now you're being melodramatic.' She looked up at him, tired and resigned. Pulling away from the long bloody talons of the past. She sighed she didn't want to explain it, over the years she'd learnt more than she cared to know. Living in the underground, in the shadows. Like a hundred thousand others had all over the world time and time again though out history. Only unlike those others, they'd been fighting people who'd grabbed for mortality and come oh so very close to obtaining it. 'How on earth do I explain such a thing to someone who has no idea about it at all, especially when I don't really want to?' Maya looked up at the sky, the stars had appeared as pale white smudges in the slowly darkening blue expanse.

"It was the deavel that started it." The foreign word rolled off her tongue but it meant nothing to Yajarobe. Maya fell silent and stared out at the churning sea. Seeing only the past sliding before her eyes.

The last days, the broken cities mere upheavals of half rotting debris. The world, her world forever in twilight of death. Shattered and decayed. Twisted bodies of man and manmade things lying entombed in a wasteland and herself entirely alone. Gutted, wild and almost without sanity she had hunted the fathers of this mass apocalypse down, and failed. What had they called her back then, before she'd been left alone, Ren's father and the other's….'Saishuu ten ken.' Roughly, the last sword of heaven, it had been given half in jest, but in the end, she made it breathe. So in some strange way it had become a person of it's own sperate from herself. And Kami, Kami had let her live to regret it. It might have been funny if it hadn't been so dreadful.

Yajarobe sat down in the sand beside her, his forehead knotted in confusion. 'Deavel…'

"What's a Deavel?" Maya started.

"The devil. They were people, men mostly, and wealthy too. They didn't want to die you see, so they poured money so much money into building bodies for themselves that wouldn't die. That was the idea anyway but it wasn't very popular. Once people heard about it they wanted to put a stop to it." She dug her fingers into the sand recalling the carnage that followed. One person could change the world but that didn't mean they should.

"They had so many people against them, but they wouldn't give in, they wanted it so much. They started using scare tactics and it just escalated from there till there was hardly anyone left."

Maya sighed her eyes had gone a strange colour and the colour had left her face. Yajarobe just watched ready to grab her if she fainted or started to cry. She didn't do either but she took several unsteady breaths and closed her eyes. Shivering knowing she was breaking the seal on Pandora's Box. The memories controlled, as they were, still existed vivid and strong. After all how could she forget.

"People died not one or two but hundreds, thousands, millions more even I suppose. Too many to count. I lost everything my parents, my husband, my daughter…and the others in the end I lost everyone." Yajarobe started at her his stomach sinking.

'They came these men with their wealth and power up against governments that would not yield. They had the means and the desire and they ran with both. Ordinary people were the ones that got caught up in the middle of it. Ordinary people like Kioshi…'

"Kioshi was waiting at the corner in the shopping strip to meet me. And then out of nowhere it…it…" Maya's shaking had increased. Her fists clenched into tight knots.

She remembered running forward pushing again the crush of many panicking people. Her feet crunching on glass. Stumbling over the fallen. Black sky and the gloom, the smoke. Her own heart hammering against her chest urgently. Dragging, clawing, fighting her way through the rising tsunami of humanity. To Kioshi. Kioshi's eyes, his dark kind eyes filling with rain. Kneeling in the gutter, in the blood, in her husband's blood. Her skirt and lap soaked with the steady flow of blood and rain. Their blood, the blood of many.

"Oh god Yajarobe. They just left him…. they left him laying on the concrete half in the gutter. There was blood everywhere. I couldn't do a thing. I put my hand over the wound but the blood…. the blood…. I couldn't stop it. It ran through my fingers and down the gutter and there wasn't a damned thing I could do!" Maya shook, blood trickled over her fingers from where her nails had cut into her palms. The memory was still there even after all this time. Still strong, and vivid, it had shocked and shattered her at the time and still had the power to hurt.

For Maya it had been the start of an endless ocean of blood letting. Blood that ran down her hands and into an ever widening sea at her feet. The blood of the fallen and the blood she'd spilt herself. It all flowed together. She did not cry. She forced herself to calm down. As her bright hair was whipped about by the wind, she suddenly understood. It wasn't the saiya-jin that had shaken her, it was Napa's warm blood spilling down her hands. Drained and silent, Maya stood up, blood dripping from her fingers down into the sand. She looked down at Yajarobe, she could not say any more and the dark had closed in. Yajarobe was silent. He just gazed back at her and sighed. It was just the tip of the iceberg, that alone made his heart sink.

(2004)