A/N: Hello again! Since the last update, I've posted another one shot over on my RotG tumblr, as well as in the "Extras! - Something Quite Peculiar" work over on my AO3. It's about Jack and Mel this time, if that's something you guys are interested in checking out. Lots of feelings and introspection again in this chapter!

It had been odd and unsettling to observe Jack dealing with that. She was already bracing herself for the impact of experiencing it firsthand.

Chapter Twelve: It Follows Me

Mount Parnassus was overwhelming.

But then, everything with the Muses was overwhelming, from their numbers to the energy that radiated from them as individuals. Rowan had barely learned all of their names and specialties a few weeks before her death, only because she had done her own research.

The main meeting room, which Terpsichore and Euterpe had shown her after showing her the kitchen, was certainly masquerading as something homey. Christmas lights and clutter decorated a few shelves that had been carefully arranged against the walls that were not artfully carved. A partially completed jigsaw puzzle was on a table in the corner

But a carving of the nine Muses, larger than life-size and obviously carved by someone very skilled, loomed over the round table and kept drawing Rowan's eye. Calliope, with writing tablet in hand, her gaze as critical as it was in reality, was staring her down from her place in the center of the stone.

Rowan was only partially listening to Euterpe explain that this was where a lot of the meetings with the Guardians had been happening recently, as Apollo, Artemis, and Tsar Lunar could not eavesdrop here.

Rowan took note that the Muses never called The Man in the Moon "Manny," as the Guardians did. They were always formal. He was always "Tsar Lunar."

She was so used to Jack referring to the man by the more casual name. It always took her a second each time to remember that Manny and Tsar Lunar were the same person when the Muses mentioned him.

Euterpe was talking about the chairs around the table now, all carefully carved with symbols for each Muse.

Rowan would acquire symbols over time, it was explained. She would have a chair soon; Clio was working on it.

Their footsteps echoed through the base as Rowan followed Euterpe and Terpsichore to the guest bathroom, which she was fairly certain was bigger than her studio apartment.

Well. Her former studio apartment. Jack had mentioned that someone else lived there now. It made sense, but it still threw Rowan off to know that the apartment truly was not hers anymore, that she could never go back, nothing was waiting for her there.

She had immediately been concerned about her security deposit, wondering if her parents had to forfeit it since she technically broke the lease early by dying. Jack had watched her quizzically before stating, in a tone more of a question than a statement, that he was sure her parents weren't holding it against her.

Rowan knew it was silly to worry about security deposits the second the words left her mouth.

But worrying about her father lecturing her about the security deposit felt better than dwelling on the knowledge that he could no longer see her and had been mourning her for a year.

All she wanted was to go back to her parents' house and hear a lecture about the security deposit, a guilt-trip over disappearing and worrying them. Rowan would take a year of nothing but disappointed looks from her parents if it meant that she got to just be their daughter again.

Even the guilt filling her stomach didn't feel quite right in this body.

Euterpe and Terpsichore showed her the arch that they had been talking to Jack about earlier. Terpsichore gestured down a nearby hall from the arch, stating that Clio's workshop, and therefore another exit, was through that way. Part of Rowan was glad that she now knew the way out of this mountain, but there wasn't much she could do if she left. Where did she have to go except for this mountain or Jack's cabin?

Rowan had spent two weeks counting down to when she would finally get to go home, daydreaming about her mother's cooking and eager to collapse onto her own bed.

Jack's cabin was comfortable, but it was Jack's cabin.

Down the hall again, passing doors with carvings indicating whose room it was. Rowan's eyes went straight to the floor as they passed the door with a skeletal, weeping tragedy mask.

Melpomene having been sincere when she said that she was going to keep Jamie safe was impossible to reconcile with the Melpomene that had lurked about Rowan's apartment in disguise, that had fed on Jack's tragedies.

Worse yet, the image of Melpomene and Jack locking lips was one that Rowan's vivid imagination would not let go of. Jack had described the incident with the fewest words necessary, but still the image was so clear, embellished by anxiety and insecurity.

Jack and Melpomene, touching each other with ease that Rowan no longer possessed. Jack and Melpomene, lips moving against each other like they had hundreds of times before. Jack and Melpomene, dancing to their song.

Of course they had a song, why wouldn't they have a song? Jack and Melpomene had been together for years, Rowan had barely gotten a few weeks with the boy. But did that matter? Rowan and Luke had a song, too, it didn't save their relationship.

But it was a reminder of intimacy that Melpomene had once had and had briefly reignited with Jack, intimacy that felt so out of reach at the moment for Rowan.

Melpomene didn't need to be anywhere nearby to inspire the insecurities in Rowan that she had before.

Melpomene was so graceful, so beautiful, with such a magnetic sadness.

Melpomene didn't need to do a thing, she was already living in Rowan's head, kissing Jack with a passion.

Rowan tried to will this image away, brushing her fingers over the sleeve of Jack's hoodie. The fabric was soft, and he had apparently worn it enough that it smelled like him, like pine trees. Wearing this was a substitution for an embrace she craved.

His absence felt so loud. Rowan hadn't spent a lot of time alone with the Muses.

Her first encounter with Clio had been without Jack, and very brief, under a minute.

Her first encounter with Melpomene had also been when she was alone. Melpomene hadn't stuck around very long either, but her date for the evening, Pitch Black, had.

Later, of course, Melpomene had cornered her alone to try to keep her from interfering with Pitch's plan to go after Jamie.

Polyhymnia had tended to Rowan after she was attacked the night of the new moon, but Rowan had not been conscious for most of that.

The most time that Rowan had spent alone with one of the Muses was when Erato, also instructed to stay at the pole until it was safe to leave, had told Rowan about her death and about the day Cupid was born.

In every other instance, Jack had been present, a friendly face among ancient and powerful beings.

But she didn't want to ask him to stay.

Rowan was already being forced to be far more dependent than she wanted to be, trying to remind herself of Jack's framing around taking money from the Muses as using the resources available to her.

She didn't want to have to rely on Jack's presence to get through being around the Muses. She didn't want to hold him back from his work with the Guardians.

Still, she couldn't help but miss him.

As long as Terpsichore and Euterpe didn't try to use any mind control on her, Rowan might just be able to get through today. Thus far, they had not attempted to touch her, and hopefully things would stay that way.

Jack trusted them, at least. In his recap of the year Rowan had missed, both Terpsichore and Euterpe had come up multiple times, particularly Euterpe. They had become friends in her absence, and the fact that Jack trusted them was a big factor in Rowan agreeing to this meeting in the first place.

Still, though, it was odd that Jack's views on the Muses had changed so much. Rowan had to keep reminding herself that it hadn't been an overnight change, despite it feeling that way from her perspective.

"… that one's my room and then this one is yours," Euterpe was saying as they approached an unmarked door. The hallway kept going, several unmarked doors further down.

"Again, you'll gain symbols and they'll be added," Terpsichore said, gesturing to the spot on the door that a carving would go. "The doorknob is enchanted; only welcome guests can open the door."

"'Welcome guests' according to…?" Rowan asked.

"According to the room's resident," Euterpe said. "Go ahead and open it."

Rowan eyed the doorknob, elegant and embossed, like most of the décor here. She reached a hesitant hand forward and turned the knob.

The only light in the room was from the floor-to-ceiling windows, much like the ones in the meeting room. The three women entered, Euterpe hitting a light switch.

The room was large, cold, and felt somewhat sterile, their footsteps echoing once more. There was a bed against one wall, covered in white sheets, with a single bedside table, also white. They were the only items in the room, and while the bed had to be at least king-sized, it seemed small and out of place in such a large area.

"The extra rooms are for guests or anyone else that might become a Muse," Terpsichore said. "You can do whatever you want with this place, make it more to your liking.

"It's so big," Rowan said. If the guest bathroom had been bigger than her studio apartment, this bedroom was about the size of four of them.

"It doesn't seem as big once you have a few centuries' worth of stuff to do something with," Euterpe said. She gestured to an archway on the far wall, the room beyond it dark, "That's the closet."

"Over here," Terpsichore said, walking over to one of two doors on another wall. She opened the door and flipped a switch, lighting up another lavish bathroom. "Is your washroom, I figure you'll want to dye your hair here."

"Sure," Rowan said. She supposed it was as good a place as any.

Terpsichore turned the light in the bathroom off before opening the other door to yet another large room, flipping a switch there. "And here's your studio space. I put a bunch of mirrors up in mine for a dance studio, Euterpe's is full of instruments, whatever you want to use this for."

Rowan walked through the doorway, looking about the empty room with furrowed brow.

She had always wanted a room dedicated to making art. She daydreamed about one day being able to have a spare room where her supplies and tools could live full time, rather than having to hide any and all traces of her clutter from her parents' well-kept home as soon as a project was done. The idea of being able to permanently take up space with her work seemed so luxurious.

And now here the Muses were, just handing her this space. Part of her was thrilled at the idea. A bigger part didn't trust it, didn't feel like she had truly earned the space and that it would just be something the Muses could take away from her or use against her at some point if she allowed herself to accept and enjoy it.

Not to mention, the only art supplies she currently had were a few pencils, a pencil sharpener, an eraser, and a small sketchbook.

Gone were the expensive colored pencils she had saved for. Gone were the canvases she bought in bulk on sale, sure that she'd end up using them for school soon enough. Gone were the brushes, the acrylic paints, the water colors, the oil paints, the gouache that she had bought for classes, unsure if she even really liked painting as much as she liked the pencils but eager to learn how to use each one anyway.

Gone were the programs she was learning to use for digital art, the drawing tablet that allowed her to sketch and paint directly into the programs.

Gone were the sketchpads with different kinds of paper for different kinds of art. Gone were the pads of tracing paper. Gone were the rulers, the circle templates, the knives and sandpaper for sharpening pencils precisely.

Gone were her paint-stained jeans and boots that she had been wearing the night she died.

Rowan had spent two decades acquiring skills and supplies along with them, and she didn't know where any of those items were now. Perhaps her parents had donated them. Perhaps they were still in boxes somewhere. Either way, Rowan could not access them, and it seemed like a waste to have an entire room for one sketchbook and a pencil case.

Filling this room now would mean taking even more money from the Muses. The room would feel even less like it was really hers, even if she built it up to be exactly the studio space she had always imagined.

Rowan crossed her arms before her again, smothering the part of her that was considering that a drafting table would be lovely right there, and over here would be a perfect spot for an easel.

Rowan had silently been eying the room for a while before Euterpe said, "I know this is overwhelming for you. There's no rush, and you can add things gradually, it's not something you have to figure out all at once."

"Mm," Rowan said, noncommittal.

Did the Muses really expect her to live here? To move into their strange sorority house like she was really one of them? To sleep in that echoing bedroom, to cook in the kitchen, to sit in on meetings in that large common room?

"Well, that's really all we had to show you of the base," Terpsichore said. "We can head out to pick up your dye and everything now, if you want."

Rowan finally glanced back at the two Muses, supposing that she should get this over-with as quickly as possible, before she talked herself out of taking their money and wound up right back at square one with this stupid new body.

"Okay. Yeah, let's go," she said.

Jack sat in a chair in North's office, staring hard at a half-finished ice sculpture on the table as a platter of cookies and glasses for a jug of milk was set down nearby. Jack barely shook his head at the offer of a glass and some of the cookies, the notion of actually eating something feeling foreign and nauseating.

He was still coming down from his panic, his pulse still a bit too fast, his breathing being the biggest improvement.

North chewed thoughtfully on a cookie as he eyed the boy, and the silence felt so uncomfortable but Jack didn't know what to say to fill it.

"How are things otherwise?" North finally asked.

"Up and down," Jack said, trying to cling to the fleeting moments of smiles or laughter that Rowan had managed since coming back. It wasn't all bad, right?

"Mostly down," he added, his voice having gotten smaller.

North nodded. "It will turn around, just takes time. Erato seemed optimistic when she learned Rowan would be getting hair dye today."

Jack nodded, hoping it would help as much as the Muses thought it would, but unwilling to get too comfortable with the idea that things would improve. The dye was obviously important to Rowan but it felt too easy for that to be a fix.

"She, uh, she came back without her tattoos," Jack said. Talking to North about Rowan's tattoos was the only truly useful thing he had been tasked with for the day and he intended to achieve at least that. "I told her I'd talk to you about Moe, ask if he might be able to re-create them."

"I am sure he would be happy to, but he would need pictures to reference," North said.

"She should be getting pictures today," Jack said.

"Good," North said. "Bring the pictures and he can get started on stencils."

Jack nodded. "I, um, need to borrow a few portals when I meet up with her later. Clio gave me a ton of them but I didn't bring enough of them along."

"That is fine," North said.

Silence again, save for the distant hum of business-as-usual proceeding in the factory. North took another cookie from the tray.

"How have things been going with everyone else? Nothing went weird on the anniversary?" Jack finally asked, supposing he should at least try to actually check in, get updates.

"Few quick moving shadows, nothing beyond that. Nothing tampered with," North said.

"Good," Jack said.

On one hand, some kind of fight would make for a wonderful distraction.

On the other, Jack was utterly exhausted from the anxiety that was still lingering in the back of his mind.

She's safe.

She's fine.

She's alive.

He begged himself to believe any of it.

Rowan did not know what city they were in, only that Terpsichore and Euterpe had assured her that they had found a strip mall in a city quite far from Burgess, but still in the United States so that Rowan would recognize the brands. They brought her along through a portal (Rowan stumbled as usual but somehow managed not to fall, missing Jack the entire way) and then walked a short distance on a salt-covered, icy sidewalk before finding said strip mall.

Rowan's eye caught the beauty supply chain she had visited before back home. Not far from there was an office supply store. A craft store was across the parking lot.

It was the middle of the day, and a weekday, with snow steadily falling. Things were not particularly busy.

Yes, this would do.

"So, while we're in there, if I ask you a question like 'which of these do you want?' don't be alarmed if Euterpe repeats your answer," Terpsichore said as they approached the store. "Just have to make it look like a normal conversation to anyone else there, and they can't hear you."

"Okay," Rowan said, frowning slightly at the reminder that, as far as any mortal nearby was concerned, she didn't exist.

It had been odd and unsettling to observe Jack dealing with that. She was already bracing herself for the impact of experiencing it firsthand.

They entered the store, a bell ringing as they went and brushed snow from their boots onto the mat placed by the door.

"Hello, welcome!" said a woman at the register, glancing over from the tweezer display she was setting up. Terpsichore and Euterpe returned her greeting, Euterpe grabbing a small basket.

So far, things didn't feel strange, and Rowan supposed that was because it wasn't obvious yet that the employee hadn't seen her. Part of her wanted to walk over and wave a hand before the woman's face to verify that she really was invisible.

A bigger part didn't want the confirmation.

"Permanent or semi-permanent?" Terpsichore said softly as they approached some dyes.

Rowan had been dying her hair with cheap box dye that was so unprofessional it could be purchased at the grocery store. She would pick up the box featuring a smiling woman whose hair had been edited to better reflect the color inside, and then move right along to get more coffee creamer.

She knew that it wasn't the best thing for her hair, but it wasn't anywhere near as damaging as bleaching it to dye it pink had been.

It was inexpensive, convenient.

It was not available to purchase here.

"Permanent, probably," Rowan said. While this new hair didn't feel right, it was also undamaged and she supposed she shouldn't ruin that completely. It was probably for the best that she didn't use the exact cheap box dye she had used before.

Besides, packages of hair color and bottle of developer would last much longer than a single box of dye. Rowan wasn't sure when she would be able to make it to a store like this again.

"Permanent," Euterpe repeated as she and Terpsichore led the way to a display of permanent colors, each with a small bit of synthetic hair near the price tags to act as a color swatch.

Rowan had barely approached the section of red swatches when she froze, eyes wide, heart racing, as the florescent light above her flickered. She glanced up at the flickering light, hands shaking, and Euterpe and Terpsichore glanced there too, each of them with furrowed brow.

"Hm," Terpsichore said casually. The other lights in the store were flickering as well.

Rowan didn't have time to worry about the casual way the other two had responded to the light, and had already sprinted halfway to the door when the employee said, "Oh, come on. We've been having brown-outs all day from the snow."

Brown-outs.

It was just a brown-out.

Rowan stopped in her tracks, still shaking. The flickering continued for a few second more before it stopped, the lights staying illuminated.

You're okay. You're okay. It's just a brown-out, it's not the Shadow People. It's the middle of the day!

Rowan took a deep breath, turning around with intentions of walking back to where she had been, praying that Terpsichore and Euterpe didn't ask what this was all about. In the process, she bumped into a shelf and knocked a few packets of conditioning treatments to the floor.

Sighing over how roughly this was all going already, Rowan kneeled down, reaching for the nearest packet, freezing again as the high heel of the store employee passed through her hand.

The employee leaned over, gathering the packets from the floor, mumbling under her breath, "I swear, the new girl doesn't know how to stock." She set the packets back on the shelf before returning to the register.

Rowan, still on the floor, stared at her hand, unsure how to react. It hadn't felt like much of anything, perhaps a slight breeze. It had happened so quickly.

She set her hand to her chest, as though to verify that she was solid.

Euterpe was kneeling beside her, obscured from the employee by the shelves. Rowan wasn't sure when she had moved here.

"Are you okay?" Euterpe asked softly.

"I don't know," Rowan confessed.

"Do you want to leave?" said Euterpe.

"No," Rowan said. This was an errand. An errand to get hair dye. She was going to get through this. She had to get through this.

Rowan got to her feet again, thinking about the fact that her footsteps made no sound to the employee as she returned to where Terpsichore was still standing.

She was going to get through this. She would deal with being walked through later.

Her veins were still buzzing with adrenaline she was hoping would wear off soon.

Red swatches. Rowan's exact shade wouldn't be here, but with any luck she would find something close. She barely glanced over the fierier shades. She paused briefly at a nice shade of auburn, but continued on.

And then she found it. A bright, purple-leaning red labeled "Brilliant Burgundy." The color swatch was precisely the color featured on the box of dye she usually bought, precisely what she had been picturing in her mind.

"This one," she said, and Terpsichore grabbed for several of the packages.

North had offered to let Jack rest for a while in one of the guest rooms. Jack had declined, both because his mind was not going to let him rest until he saw Rowan again and because he was fearful of falling asleep and waking up without her.

Instead, he had started trailing North as the man made his rounds about the factory, checking in on the yetis and elves. Jack hoped that the in-progress toys, the diligently working yetis, the excitable elves, would be enough to focus on that his anxieties might take a back seat for a moment.

It had not been very long since he left Mount Parnassus. Euterpe had said this could take hours. He could go back and lurk about the mountain, surely, but he could already hear Rowan worrying about him ignoring his work for her.

He was going to get through these few hours without her to prove to himself that he could.

A yeti at a painting station was babbling to North about the color of a doll house. Jack only understood North's side of the conversation. They seemed to be debating over whether the panels of the doll house should be painted red or blue.

"… I suppose you make good point, red would look like a barn," North was saying.

There was a bit of a scuffle up ahead as one yeti dodged around some of the others to approach North.

"Fine, fine, blue. But door should be red," North said before turning to the approaching yeti. "What is it?"

The yeti babbled, gesturing in the direction of the main platform. North sighed, suddenly seeming exhausted.

Jack raised a brow at the gesture.

"Thank you," North said. The yeti nodded and was off again. North glanced Jack's way and gestured him to follow. "Bunny is here."

"You guys having a disagreement?" Jack asked. He had been so caught up in everything with Rowan's anniversary that it wouldn't be out of the question that the others were butting heads without his knowledge.

"You could say that," North said as they stepped onto a lift. Jack furrowed his brow, wanting to ask North to elaborate but unsure if he wanted to get in the middle of this, unless the stakes were as low as North and Bunny's usual Christmas vs Easter debates.

They approached the main platform, Jack a few paces behind North. Bunny was standing with an armful of leather-bound journals, brightly colored post-it notes poking out between pages. His eyes were tired, his fur askew, leaving Jack to wonder how long it had been since he slept.

"We need to deal with this," Bunny said as soon as North was close enough to hear him, holding out the journals. "I still haven't found any direct connections to Jack but Katherine didn't want Manny anywhere near their kids, she says—"

"Connections to me?" Jack asked, falling into place beside North. Bunny jumped slightly, eying the boy in confusing, having apparently not noticed that he was there.

"Where's Rowan?" Bunny said, suddenly looking around as though he'd find the girl lurking. "Thought you'd be with her."

"She's with Terpsichore and Euterpe," Jack said, now eying the journals in Bunny's arms. "What's going on?"

"Is nothing," North said at once.

"The hell it is," Bunny said at once, teeth bared. His fur seemed to be standing on end now, making the pooka seem bigger than he was.

"Jack has too much to deal with right now," North said, watching the pooka critically, not budging or wavering at Bunny's body language for a moment. "Does not need your conspiracy theories."

"It's not a theory!" Bunny snapped. "This is a problem, that we all have to do something about!"

"What's a problem?" Jack said, glancing between the two older guardians.

"Nothing," North said sternly.

But at the same time, Bunny had said, "Nightlight."

"What about Nightlight?" Jack said, eyes wide, heart racing.

One of the questions that had been chipping away at Jack ever since he got a good look at Nightlight in the historical record Clio had shown him had been, why haven't the Guardians brought him up?

And now here Bunny was, antsy and on edge, finally bringing him up.

"It does not—" North started.

"What about Nightlight!?" Jack said again, his tone more desperate than he intended.

"I think Manny is still angry about Nightlight retiring. I think Manny had it out for him and I think it's influencing how he's dealt with you," Bunny said. Jack's heart raced and without thinking, he glanced at the opening in the ceiling for the moon.

It was not there. It was, mercifully, a new moon, and they should be able to speak freely without Manny eavesdropping.

(How odd, to be grateful for a new moon after everything with the Shadow People.)

"Mr. Qwerty and I have been going through Katherine's journals," Bunny continued. "She thinks Manny wanted to do Nightlight harm, she thinks Manny resented her for 'taking Nightlight away,' she—"

"Everything you have found has been vague, has been theories," North said.

Bunny glared at North before setting the journals on the floor, grabbing the one on the top of the stack and opening it to a marked page. He began to read the passage aloud.

"Estelle is already a fierce fighter. I knew she would be the moment I first felt her move. She gets stronger with each passing day despite her difficult entrance to this world.

"Artemis has been an invaluable resource since the birth. Despite her initial doubts, she's now sure that Estelle will make a full recovery.

"Unfortunately, Manny has taken this ordeal as an opportunity to finally release some of the anger he has been carrying for Nightlight and I. Manny says he is furious that we would go to Artemis for help with the birth, furious that we would have contact with her at all, that we would wish for mortality but go running to a goddess the moment things became difficult.

"I do not think he cares so much about Artemis. I think he is furious we had a child at all. I do not think he would be reacting so strongly if one of the other Guardians had a child and sought Artemis' help.

"He and Nightlight got into a shouting match late last night when Manny crash-landed at our doorstep. I have never seen either man so angry in my life, and was horrified when Nightlight told me that it was not the worst argument they had ever had.

"We already had plans to keep Manny's interactions with Estelle to a minimum. Once Manny left, we agreed that he will have absolutely nothing to do with her or any other children we may have.

"I have plans to meet with Toothiana to appoint her as one of Estelle's guardians and to ask her to teach Estelle how to use a sword when she is old enough. I thought that perhaps I should tell her about Manny, but Nightlight still regards this as a personal dispute between the two of them.

"So, I will not mention it. But, I will make sure my dear daughter's fighting spirit is encouraged, that she can defend herself if she ever needs to. I pray she never needs to."

Bunny snapped the journal shut, as though to punctuate what he had just read and glanced back at North. "There's more and more like this once they started having kids."

North's gaze had darkened.

Jack's mind was racing. Cupid had theorized that Manny resented Nightlight, and it seemed that Bunny's theories as well as Katherine's journals were pointing in the same direction.

("And I don't know, knowing he made you resemble Nightlight on purpose, maybe it's a coincidence… or maybe he is trying to make you a replacement, one he can keep better tabs on.")

What where they supposed to do with all of this? What was Jack supposed to do with all of this?

"We will discuss this more in my office," North said, turning to start walking that way.

Jack helped Bunny gather the other journals from the floor and they headed off after the large man.