At the end of the show Jane sat back in her chair and rubbed her face with her hands. She sighed, got up, and moved over to a bench in the back of the booth to lie down. She was too tired to drive home.

Mac went in to get the laptop and anything else the other guys needed out of the booth himself, not wanting to disturb her. After he had returned it Daren sought him out. "Where's Jane?"

"Asleep in the sound booth. Disturb her and die." Mac's tone was conversational but Daren did not doubt he meant his words, the only question was whether Mac would kill him or she would. "What can I do for you?"

"I wanted to thank her for saving our show."

Mac raised an eyebrow and almost laughed. "Thought she rubbed you the wrong way?"

Daren rolled his eyes. "She does, doesn't change the fact that we wouldn't have had a show without her. Besides, she mentioned how little sleep and food she had gotten lately."

"Ah. Well, she'll sleep for about three hours on that bench before getting up to go home." Mac turned to go, "Oh," he turned back, "she saved your show for my benefit, not yours." He smiled as he left.

Daren cocked his head, not really sure what to make of these people. It was the strangest club he had ever been to. The tech was a witch who apparently abandoned one of the most successful music careers ever to work here, and the manager always seemed to know something you didn't and was apparently highly amused by that fact, not to mention his strange relationship with the girl; was he like a father? Did he know what she was? And that light show she had "improvised" for him was better than the one he normally had. He had to know why she stopped performing, if she really was who that guy claimed she was.

Jane woke almost three hours later, just as Mac had said, stretched, yawned, and left the sound booth. She fell back against the wall and cluched her chest when she saw Daren sitting there, waiting for her. "Merlin! This place is supposed to be empty. What are you still doing here?" Had he recognized her? Why had he just waited rather than waking her up?

Daren chuckled. "Sorry, didn't mean to frighten you. Just wanted to thank you for saving my show."

She rolled her eyes. He was hitting on her! How pathetic. "I did it for Mac, not you." She started walking toward the exit.

"That's what he said, but it doesn't matter. I owe you. I figured since it was my tech's absence that pulled you back out here after such a long day the least I could do would be to provide a decent meal." His hands were in his pockets and his elbows were almost stiff, giving his shoulders a slightly shrugged look. He had his head down just enough that he had to look through his hair to see her. There was a cocky grin on his face.

He was insufferable! She could not believe how arrogant and self assured he was. However, food was food and she was starving. "You know, when you're right you're right? You do owe me and food is what I need." She was surprised at how dangerously close to flirting her answer was, but she mentally shook herself and chalked it up to sleep deprivation.

"Excellent! Lady's choice, anywhere you want to go as long as you can get me there." He opened the door for her and put his hand on the small of her back as she passed through. She rolled her eyes; this was going to be a long... she looked at the sky... breakfast. What was it with having concerts so late? Sure, she had slept three hours but it was dawn, six o'clock, that meant the concert was over at three and hadn't started until... Too much math. She told him there was a twenty four hour place just around the corner and they could walk.

Neither of them said anything until they were seated and that was to order drinks. After that they turned to their menues. Conversation did not resume until their orders had been placed. He ordered a country fried steak breakfast with scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast; and she asked for the pancake breakfast with eggs over medium, sausage, and biscuits.

"Please tell me that you saved a copy of the light programs you wrote for us. They are much better than the ones we've been using." He somehow managed to sound impressed by her work and exasperated by his tech's at the same time.

She laughed. "Of course I did. Only, I won't give it to you unless you promise to find a better tech."

He exaggerated rolling his eyes. "Without hesitation!" She laughed again. By that time the coffee was out to their table and they sipped for a few moments before he spoke again. "Is it true that you were Artist Unknown?"

She slowly set down her coffee and sighed. "Mac told you?" She leaned back against the booth and met Daren's eyes. He nodded. "Yes, it's true, but I don't really like people to know that."

"I figured, mostly by the fact that no one does, supported by your reaction just now. Why stop recording? Why would you give up such a successful career?" He was genuinely interested.

She sighed again and picked her coffee back up and took a sip before answering. "Well, to me it was never about the career, it was the art. I had something to say so I said it my way. As it turned out, my way was exactly what the world needed at that moment. The way people reacted to my music was a phenominon; if I had ever tried to experiment again it might have been accepted, but I probably would have been crucified for not 'living up to' my debut. Not that it would have mattered to me either way, I simply say that to point out that my career might not have been as successful as everyone believes." She shrugged. "It was never about the money to me, or the fame either. I could live without both and been happy. In fact, it was the fame that made me stop recording. There was no privacy anymore. Everywhere I went I was followed. Cameras were always in my face and microphones held to my mouth, it was invasive." She half-laughed. "That was a bit more than an answer I think."

Daren set his mug down and hesitated in his reply as the food was set before them. "No...no, that...that was a complete answer. So you wouldn't let scorn turn you away from your art but you're willing to let acceptance do so?"

"Hm..." she swallowed a bite of eggs. "No. I let it redirect my art. I still consider what I do art. I make performances possible. Sure, you were the one singing and playing the guitar, but I feel completely justified in sharing the credit. No one hears my songs or music anymore but they see my work. What I do adds so much to the concert experience. Without me you might as well go home and listen to the album. I exentuate what other artists say, make it more real if possible, add visual effects, etcetera." She went back to eating.

Daren was fascinated. "What else do you do?" His eyes kept flicking back and forth between her and the toast he was buttering.

"How'd you guess?" She laughed a little and took a quick bite of sausage. "I outline, sketch-out, semi-direct, and edit music videos for a label here in town." She dove back into her eggs.

He took a sip of orange juice and nodded. "You seemed so intense, not to mention that I had a hard time figuring out what you had been doing for seventeen hours."

She laughed and covered her mouth to keep from spitting out the apple juice she was choking on. "Yeah, I suppose that would be a good question, seeing as how I jumped right in and had your show up in a heartbeat." She munched on her biscuit for a second. "So, how about you, what got you in music?"

"You did." He was a little too intently cutting his steak. She paused as she poured syrrup over her pancakes and looked up.

"Me?"

He cleared his throat. "Yes." She ressumed what she was doing and shook her head.

"Why?"

"I had written songs before, but I kept them all to myself, didn't figure anyone else would want to hear them. When I listened to your album, though, I realized how important my music was to me and how meaningless the rest of my life felt. I decided that if it meant that much to me I should at least try to do something with it. Something about your music made me realize that anything I was passionate about would mean something to someone else out there and if what I was saying expressed what only one other person felt but could not express than it was worth it." He had explained all of this to a piece of bacon.

She attempted to recover the pancake pieces that had fallen off her fork and smiled sweetly. "Than I'm glad I released it."

"Me too."

Jane blushed and then swallowed hard. She was NOT attracted to this man. She couldn't be! It was absurd. But then, it had been so long, and he seemed such a different person than he used to be. For that matter, so was she.