Mako's Message: Alright, well, this is the end of my backlog(I've been working on other things(one of which should be posted later tonight)). I'm gonna be gentle on myself and my expectations, and try for one a week for awhile. I keep that up, we'll go to semi-weekly updates. I have at least one day off a week, shouldn't be hard to sit down and write one chapter. One chapter at a time.

Oh, and I heartily disagree with Mindy's sentiment at the end.


Dave came by late last night.

I don't really remember how late. I kind of lost track of time. He just kind of... appeared. That's bad. I should never let myself be that out of it.

I was lying on one of the futon couches when he came up to me and said, "Hey. Are you okay?"

I looked over at him then went back to staring at the ceiling and said, "No."

Then he picked up my feet and sat down at the other end and dropped my feet in his lap. He said, "Well, that's to be expected. I think I'd be more worried if you were avoiding everyone for no reason."

I...made some sort of noise. I don't know what to call it.

Dave rubbed my knee and asked, "Do you want to talk about it?"

I said, "No."

We sat there for a moment, with his hands resting on my legs, and then I said, "I could have killed her."

"I know, but you didn't."

"I still hurt her. I hurt her really bad. She was my friend and I hurt her."

Dave stopped patting me, then said, "Was?"

"Why would she still be my friend?"

"Because friends mess up. Friends hurt each other. Maybe she understands your reaction. I know she was worried about you."

I didn't know what to think of that. Aside from the fact that I seemed to be the one who was always screwing up.

"Why would she be worried about ME? Is she even okay?

"Oh she's fine," he said with a little wave of his hand, "She's sore, but Alice gave her some super tylenol or something and she's fine." Then he squeezed my leg again and said, "You, on the other hand, Angela said you looked like you'd seen a ghost. In fact, she thought you were going to have a breakdown. And since you've been hiding here for hours and hours while ignoring everyone's attempts to reach you... I think she might have been right."

I didn't know what to say to that. I mean, I was... I don't know. I told Dave, "I...I couldn't believe what I had almost done. I was so angry. I didn't even know if I didn't want to kill her."

Dave sighed, "You're Hit Girl. You were RAISED to be Hit Girl. You don't think like normal people. I know that, Alice knows that, and Angela knows that. You view a lot of the world in terms of Good and Evil, And...you're trained to respond to Evil with violence. You're learning there's more to it. That it's not always so cut and dried. And it's confusing. Right?

"So, you're trying to make sense of what your Dad taught you and what you're learning on your own. And that's a good thing. You know now what you did was wrong and you feel, well, apparently terrible about it. So, you just have to take this as a lesson and make better choices in the future."

I guess Dave was right about that. It didn't really make me feel better. Made me feel kinda like a freak honestly. But it was nice hearing that Dave understood what I was going through. It reminded me of why I love him so much.

I took my feet out of Dave's lap and crawled over to hug him, "Thank you for being here."

Dave hugged me back and said, "No problem. You're my partner. I gotta look out for you."

"Can we stay here tonight?"

"Sure."

"And sleep together?"

Dave took a moment to say, "How about we sleep separately? It's not like we have a shortage of cots and futons."

"What if we keep all our clothes on?" Dave didn't look like he was going to go for it, so I added, "And we sleep on top of the blanket."

Dave snorted and said, "That'd require us to get a blanket out just to not use it." He sighed then said, "Yeah, okay."

So we folded it down into a bed and just flopped down onto it. I put my head on his chest but I kept my hands to myself. He ended up putting an arm around me though. After that I guess I fell asleep pretty quickly because I don't remember much else.

He was up before me and he's making some eggs and toast now.

We're going to go out on a jog, but we're taking the rest of the day off. I promised I would take this day off since school starts tomorrow. Dave starts next week, but he works today.

I'm not looking forward to this.