"So Maura's impulsiveness continues to resonate," Janette acknowledged Nick's predicament, not without sympathy. He hadn't come to her for advice, merely to unburden himself to someone who wasn't already bearing an equal load.

"If LaCroix had just refused to get involved," Nick muttered pointlessly. He knew the truth before Janette spoke.

"We have discussed this before, Nicolas. Nothing would have dissuaded her, and it is certain that there would be more… difficult consequences had she gone elsewhere for help."

Nick nodded and stared at the candle flame. Janette took one of his hands in her own. "Poor Nicolas," her tone bore no irony, "it is painful to see you struggle with this."

He squeezed her hand and smiled a little grimly as he looked across the room. "Poor both of us." Maura was at her usual post near the end of the bar, keeping one eye on the bouncers and one on the dance floor, grateful for the distraction of professional vigilance. "The punishment seems to far outweigh the crime this time, don't you think?" Janette knew he wasn't talking about himself. Her gaze followed his.

"Life is a merciless creditor, cheri, even our version of it. But we have the luxury of knowing that given enough time, all things balance one another."

"I just wish I knew how much time is 'enough'." The gentle pressure of Janette's fingers drew his eyes back to hers.

"Life with a mortal has made you impatient."

"I've always been impatient, Janette." His smile warmed. "It's been a favorite flaw for you to observe and tend to through the centuries."

Now Janette smiled too. She leaned her head against his shoulder and mused, "How many temporary tragedies have we endured, Nicolas? How many unwinnable struggles have engaged us, only to fade away when we outlasted them?"

He turned his head to kiss her. "That's what I told her, that she'll outlast this. She doesn't believe me of course."

"Of course. Mortals have the tiresome need to 'believe'. It has never affected reality, and never will. I imagine Maura is quite tormented by that need, yes?"

"'Belief' has often been an issue with us, more hers than mine. But sensible or not, it's a formidable obstacle. She's convinced her presence is an insult to me, that the only way she can repair the damage she's done is to leave. She 'believes' it's the perfect justice for her 'perfect justice'..."

No response from Janette but movement of her fingers on his arm. "And you will outlast that 'belief'."

"From your mouth to," Nick's thought was interrupted when Janette abruptly raised her head, and eyebrows.

"Just an expression," he assured her, then he grew sadly pensive again. "You know she asked me to kill her last night."

This shocked Janette. "Surely you misunderstood."

"Not a bit. Well she didn't ask me in words, exactly, I just felt it, it was very deep, maybe just a momentary impulse."

"It came to you in her blood."

"Yes. She swore to me this morning that it was an impulsive thought, that she never meant it."

"You do not sound convinced." The concern in Janette's voice was echoed on her face as she turned her attention again to where Maura was now chatting amiably with Miklos and Vachon. "Perhaps if I were to talk to her…"

"It's a nice thought, Janette, but unless she comes to you and not vice versa not much will come of it. She's only now beginning to open up to me about what's happening inside, and waiting for the times she's ready hasn't been easy."

"Do you think she might do something reckless?"

"You mean dangerous. No, I don't. But talking does no good unless she's willing to listen, and it's hard to know when the time is right. She wants so badly to have an answer, she worries her mind into fits looking for a way to fix things. If there's a magic combination of words to get her to understand it's not her job, it's a mystery to me."

"We are a willful and secretive little family, n'est-ce pas?"

"D'accord," Nick agreed with a sigh, and with nothing more to say they reached arms around one another's shoulders and remained joined in sympathetic silence as they had so many countless times over hundreds of years. Such constancy, at least, was a comfort to Nick as the chaos that had invaded his life mocked his attempts to subdue it.

Miklos had gone to serve some customers at the far end of the bar, leaving Vachon and Maura to themselves.

"So Vash, has LaCroix been around lately?" Her attempt to sound casual failed miserably. Vachon simply knew her too well to be fooled.

"Who wants to know? And why do you ask? Answer the second question first." She hadn't confided in him regarding Kevin's demise, but he suspected there had to be some connection between LaCroix and Maura's recent turmoil.

"Sorry I asked, if you're gonna get all weird. Stack 'em by the door, will you? It's that time."

With a tolerant smile and shake of his head that said "Foiled again," Vachon brought two cases of empties to leave by the alley door. When Maura had placed them by the dumpster and turned to go back into Raven she was somehow not surprised to see LaCroix leaning against the wall by the door.

"You've been asking after me?"

He never gives up on the drama, does he, Maura thought to herself. "On top of things as always, LaCroix." The tall, elegant vampire ran a delicate finger along the corner of his mouth as if to tidy up.

"Yes, well, as a matter of fact I was, until I heard my name." The large quantity of blood he'd taken during his single attack on Maura had left behind a one-way psychic link, far weaker than what he shared with Janette or Nick but undeniably permanent. A faux-nostalgic smile spread across LaCroix's face and he waved an elegant hand.

"Just think, Maura, this is where we first met. Where you and Nicholas first met. Why it seems the most vital relationships of your recent life were formed here." The reference to Christopher did not go unnoticed.

"So you've come to, you should pardon the expression, poke me with a sharp stick?"

"My dear, it was you who asked for me." He sat down on a nearby crate. "Do tell me what is on your mind. I imagine what with the recent turn of events it must be weighty indeed."

"Fuck you, LaCroix," and she felt a childish pleasure at his displeased expression. He so hated vulgar language. "You know my little farewell-to-Kevin has sent everything all to"

"Hell?" LaCroix broke in helpfully. "It isn't as if I didn't warn you. If you remember, I raised the issue of consequences, however briefly… and now they have arrived."

Worn out by the eternal verbal swordplay, Maura dropped with a thump onto an adjacent box and looked at LaCroix as she might look at a fellow passenger who shared an unpleasant trip. "Okay, yeah, you warned me. And like so many you've known, and probably just like you if you're feeling honest, I saw nothing but my own private payback. I don't have to tell you any of it, you know what it's like to be cornered by a bad decision."

An odd look passed over LaCroix's features for barely a heartbeat. "Yes, well, you have me there." His attention was suddenly drawn by a sound around the corner that Maura couldn't hear. "I believe you have a visitor. We can continue this… tête á tête … another time." He was gone before Maura could reply. What LaCroix had heard first now was apparent to Maura: hesitant footsteps approaching. As the figure drew nearer into the circle of the alley light Maura realized with a start that it was Karen Mitchell.

"He told me I'd find you here." She sounded almost apologetic.

"Who told you?"

"That man by the bar, the younger one, with the dark hair. He told me you were out back, and I figured if I came around this way I wouldn't startle you. He said sometimes you sit out here for awhile before going back inside."

"Not so much now. But thanks." An awkward silence followed.

"I didn't come to make excuses, or to apologize," Karen blurted out suddenly. "I just, I don't know, I just wanted to see what was here, who he knew. I don't know, maybe I figured if I see and hear enough and meet the people he knew, I could figure out why… you know. How he turned out this way. He really wasn't always like that, something changed him. You do understand, don't you, that people can turn out different than they started."

Maura let out a slow breath. "Oh yeah, I understand. You have no idea how I understand."

"You knew my brother."

"Not exactly. I met him a few times, he hung around when I was hanging with Christopher."

"I tried to talk to Christopher's family, they were polite but they said they didn't want me to call again."

"Can you blame them? The only reason you know who they are is because Kevin killed Christopher. Would you want to talk to someone who killed your brother?" The words were out before she could stop them. "Look, I have work to do. I met your brother, yeah, and no offense but I wasn't impressed. He was rude and nasty to me, and he tried real hard to get Christopher to help him rob Darren. You know what happened when he said 'no'. What more is there to say?" Maura rose and waited just long enough for politeness' sake before she opened the door. "You wanna come in?"

"No thanks. Look, I won't say I know what you've been going through because I don't. I know your boyfriend Nick and his partner are working really hard to find Kevin, and I know what will happen when they do. I'm not going to get in the way. I thought maybe I could help…"

Maura's eyes shut as she fought the impulse to run inside. She turned to face Karen. "You can't change what happened. Wanting it to have been different, wanting to have made different decisions, I mean I don't know about your relationship with your brother but I can guess maybe there are things you'd want to have done differently. But it's just too late for that and 'wanting' will only drive you crazy. Go home, Karen, wherever that is. Whatever Kevin became since you saw him last, the Kevin I saw couldn't have been him. Trust me, if you ever loved him when he was someone else, you don't want to know who he was in the end."

"But wherever he is now, maybe…"

"You can't reach him, he's too far gone for that now. Don't ask me how I know, but I do. You've lost him as sure as I lost Christopher, and for all of our futilely good intentions neither one of us can do a goddamned thing about it."

The two women stood with gazes locked, sharing little information but undeniable understanding. Karen reached a hand to Maura's arm.

"I know. I do, really. Sometimes you just can't stop yourself."

Maura looked away, up, down, anywhere else. "You got that right."

"I won't intrude again. I told Detective Schanke I'd meet with him tomorrow, but after that I think I'll go home. You're right, I'm just driving myself crazy. Done is done, we've all made our choices and we have to live with them."

Maura nodded without speaking as Karen turned to go, then stopped and turned to her again.

"Seattle."

"Huh?"

"Seattle. That's home."

"Lots of rain there," Maura said stupidly.

"Yeah, but it's home. Rain and all."

"Take care, Karen."

"You too."

After she went back into the club Maura laid her head against the locked door, overwhelmed. She jumped as a hand gripped her shoulder.

"You wanna take a break, Luna?" Vachon. She was absurdly grateful it wasn't Nick, she just didn't want to face him right now.

"Yeah, Vash, do you mind?" She knew he could feel how close she was to the divide between whole and shattered.

"C'mon in back, there's nothing to do but wait out the stragglers to leave." She let him lead her into the office, and after he closed the door he turned her to face him.

"Hey, I know you can't tell me everything. But it's okay. You know I'm here if you need me."

That was all it took to push her over the edge. Maura reached for her friend and coworker, who knew little about what was torturing her but was there for her, as always, anyway. He was neutral territory, and only this second did she realize how desperately she needed that.

"Oh shit, Vash," she sobbed, "I've fucked up everything so bad, I don't know what to do anymore. I did something so terrible, and so many people are paying for it, I'll just never be able to make it up to them."

He considered this as she clung to his shoulder, petting her head a bit awkwardly. "Well maybe you don't have to, did you ever think of that? Maybe it's because I've been alive so long, and I'm gonna live forever if I can avoid pissing off the wrong people and stay outta natural light, but it just doesn't make sense to keep score like that because like the bookies say in the long run the best you can do is break even. No matter how great you are or how many times you fuck up, sooner or later you only break even."

The tears stopped then as she raised her head to look him in the eye. "You think so?" She'd never really looked at it in terms of even a mortal lifetime.

"How do you think Janette and Nick have stayed together after so long? Yeah they had their knock-down drag-outs, they fucked up and did some really, stupid/bad/ugly things. But they've been around long enough to see how the lines smooth out in the long run. The really long run. It only looks like the edge of a cliff to you because you're looking at such a small picture. If you back away far enough, oh several hundred years or so, the drop looks a whole lot shorter."

"But I can't do that, can I? I don't have several hundred years to see it like that."

"Well can't you just take my word for it? When you wake up in the middle of the night you can't see in the dark like I can, but you still know you're at home, right? You know Nick's there with you even when you can't see him, right?"

She nodded, beginning to feel dense in the face of his vampire common-sense, something Nick hadn't been able to offer because he was as deep inside the chaos as she was.

"All right, then. Quit going mental over how to 'fix' things and leave it to the ones that know how, if they do. Hell, something breaks on the 'stang, you think I try to fix it myself?"

This triggered a laugh, as Maura pictured Vachon's panic when anything went amiss with his beloved '66 cherry-red Mustang. "Okay, I think I get it."

"Good." He gave her another hug. "You gotta quit worrying me like this, Luna. It just doesn't have to be this hard, you know? You'd never make it as an immortal, you have no sense of perspective."

"Thanks, Vash. Y'know it's funny, mortals think of you guys as soulless monsters and all I've known since I've come to Toronto are people more 'civilized' than any mortals I've ever met."

Vachon shrugged. "I guess being brought across raises your standards."

Maura gave him an affectionate shove as he led the way back into the club. "Don't go getting all uppity. I'm still the boss"