Epilogue

3 Years Later

Without his quirk, the name Overhaul meant nothing. It was but a memento, pathetic and sentimental, of foiled aspirations and a hypocritical hope. Yes, even he knew it was hypocritical – even he could see the irony in it all. And yes, he'd tried to kill Hari for it. More times than he cared to remember: with guns in drunken stupors, in his dreams by driving the car into the ocean. That was until Hari decided to leave too. Indeed, even Hari left him. Fucked off to Russia to find that stupid fucking whore on whom most of the blame lay for all of this.

She was the one who'd made Hari spoil Eri in the first place. She was the one who'd put romances and fantasies inside of Eri's beautiful little head. That stupid, fucking, quirkless, worthless whore. What power did she have that he didn't? What power was power enough to have driven even Hari away, to have made even Eri bold enough to do this?

This.

Eri.

Without Eri, the name Kai was meaningless too. She left, and a part of himself went with her. He couldn't explain it. He hadn't known it until she'd been nowhere to be found – all this time, almost twenty years, she'd belonged to him without him realising that he'd belonged to her in equal measure. Every part of him had been – was – hers. His everything. Not even second to his quirk. Which is why it made sense that, without her, it would have been more sensible for him to simply kill himself: with guns in drunken stupors, in his dreams by driving the car into the ocean. However, in between measuring out enough sleeping pills to constitute a lethal dose (though never taking them) and drinking himself into a coma (never enough to not wake up though) he looked for her.

He had few resources now, but he used every one of them. He had a lot of cash, and the right people were always willing to offer favours for the right amount. He scoured the country. Feeling constantly like he only ever just missed her. Finding traces of her everywhere – in certain textures or smells or shades; strangers who smiled at him on trains; in flower shops, where he remembered that Eri liked lilies and that he'd never once given her any; shadows in the night which he always thought were her but which never were.

"Have you seen this girl? Have you seen this woman?"

Sometimes no. Sometimes yes!

Eri!

It was in Takayama that he finally found her. A greasy, teenaged shopkeeper near the train station had recognised her photo. "Oh! That's Eri-neechan," he'd cooed, mouth swollen with braces and pale plaque – it was hard to decide which was more revolting, the boy's ungodly lack of hygiene or the familiarity with which he said Eri's name. "Do you know her?"

"I'm her husband."

"Oh shit! Hectic dude."

"Where is she?"

"She's – oh, well, actually, dunno if I should say, you know? You look like a real classy guy and all, but I get the feel that there could be some weird domestic dodgies going on, if you're actually her husband. Eri-neechan's always been super sweet. Comes here all the time with little Kei-chan and–"

"Well then where will I find this Kei-chan?"

"I mean, she's Eri and Togata-san's daughter, so…"

Daughter.

He left then, and wandered aimlessly with the sense of his bones weighing themselves into the ground. So she'd kept it. So it was a little girl. So it was Lemillion's. Did it have Eri's eyes? Would it one day have Eri's quirk? All these questions raked themselves through him in furious, sickening obsessions. Hari had been right. He would have ripped the fetus out of Eri's body and torn it to shreds better than any dog would be able to do. He'd imagined it many nights over, he'd imagined making Lemillion watch. But the more he'd imagined it, the less he'd imagined it until eventually he'd started to harbor a small hope instead.

But no. It was Lemillion's. And it would probably have Lemillion's eyes. And it would probably have Lemillion's quirk.

He asked around for a few more hours with any number of stories until finally, he arrived at the edge of town before a stone house. Sakura carpeted the front wall in dazzling pinks, dotted with the pale green of budding leaves and making a tremendous mess of petals along the pavement. The gate was low and feeble, easily unlocked; and inside, the front garden was bathed in afternoon light. Sun glinted off the house's windows in shimmering mirages and cast a glow about the lilies. Lilies everywhere in stellar whites, and blue hydrangeas, and bruised-purple irises like jewels against the sliver of lawn.

And on this sliver of lawn there was a wooden table. And at this wooden table there was a little girl with mittens on her hands and two curling ponytails of dark, dark hair. She kicked her legs happily beneath herself, and babbled on in a little voice like a chime. And on the seat next to her was Eri. Eri, who looked up when Kai froze on the path to the front door. Eri, whose face fell from sweet curiosity to sweeter horror, and who glowed like ivory dusted with blush beneath the hue of the sakura tree.

She held him there. He held her there. And perhaps noticing how the air took on a sharp, bristling urgency, the little girl looked up too from the colouring book in which she clumsily busied herself. First to Eri. Then to Kai. She smiled – and even a few paces away, her honey-dawn-molten golden eyes struck a stake through his heart.

"A visitor-man!" she cried, like a bell. An exquisite little church-bell.

"No. No, my apple," Eri said, the 'apple' being Russian instead of Japanese. She placed a hand down on the table, standing straight so that she broke the space between Kai and the little girl named Kei. She looked taller. She was wearing a boyish t-shirt much too big for her, and her arms looked strong. Lithe and tanned, and more beautiful than beneath the scars. "He's not a visitor."

"Who then?"

"He's nobody."

Nobody. The girl cocked her head in a question mark heartbreakingly reminiscent of Eri herself.

Eri never looked away. The horror remained, but slowly gave way to something much sharper. Slowly, watchfully, she placed her hand on the little girl's back. "Kei," she said, eyes still fixed. "I want you to go inside and call daddy, okay? Tell him mommy says he needs to come home right now."

"On the big phone or the little phone?"

"It doesn't–"

"No," Kai interceded pointedly. "Let her stay."

"No."

"Please."

"Kei, go inside. Now."

Kei looked between Eri and Kai, torn. Golden eyes wide and familiar, and settling on Kai in an inkling look of questioning want. Like she knew just as well as she did. Like seeing him had struck some violin-string chord inside of her just as much as it had inside of him. Reluctantly, she stood – hardly the height of the table, a baby doll – and began to bop her way towards the front door. But Eri stopped her. Told her to use the back instead, and so off that dark-haired, golden-eyed, Eri-miniature went. Away. Away from Kai so that it was him and Eri alone.

After three years, him and Eri alone in a foreign garden. She'd cut her hair, wisps gathering in cloudy-curls about her jawline. The plum-coloured shadows had disappeared from beneath her eyes. There was an unfamiliar colour in her face, and as Kai came closer – indeed, she didn't move to stop him now that Kei was gone – he began to notice the fine texture of freckles across her cheeks. Freckles! Eri was prone to freckles!

"I've been looking for you," Kai said eventually, the only space between them now being the width of the table. "You look well."

"I want you to leave."

"Don't be cruel."

"Mirio will–"

"Kill me? That wouldn't be very heroic of him, now would it?" Kai sneered. "Sit, Eri. I just want to talk."

Eri's face – elfin and unnecessarily lovely now that Kai was seeing her for the first time in years – contorted into a vile, painful expression. Her fist closed on the table so that her knuckles flared white. It was the strangest thing because it seemed to Kai that Eri had never ever made a fist before. Not with such intention. "Then talk," she said. "And once you've had your say – please. Leave us."

Wordlessly, keeping his own gaze entangled with hers, Kai made a show of taking a seat himself. The wooden table was tiny and uncomfortable, but he found his place and gestured once again for Eri to sit too. She did so. So close. He could have reached out and touched her. He did reach out and touch her, hand to her cheek, its burnished colour soft and warm through his glove. However, she pushed him away. The motion was shattering and humiliating in a thousand ways, profoundly gentle though it was.

"You're not wearing a ring," Kai noted.

"Mirio and I aren't legally married yet."

"Because you're still my wife?"

Eri narrowed her eyes. Not angry. Defiant. She'd made the face once or twice before.

"Legally," Kai added, "at least."

"But not in the ways that matter."

"Come back to me, Eri." He hadn't thought about what he'd wanted to say. At first, he'd only imagined wringing her neck and then dragging her unconscious body through the streets. Then it had been become more methodical, more refined – chloroforming her in the night and slitting Lemillion's throat in their shared bed. Now, it was different. Lulled by the golden warmth of the afternoon and the small victory of having found her at last, he wanted Eri to come back on her own. "Things will be different. I'll take care of you."

Eri stared at him with the plain impression that he'd lost his mind.

Kai laid his hands onto the table in an attempt to appear reasonable. Now too, there was the little girl. Eri was a mother. "And Kei-chan–"

"Please don't say her name."

"Does she know?"

"Know what, exactly?"

"Oh, please, Eri. Absolutely nothing about that little girl reeks of Lemillion." Kai's heart did a nauseating jump. He swallowed on the feeling. "Tell me about her."

The colour in Eri's face flared to life. "Excuse me?"

A door slammed somewhere close by, and there appeared a pitter patter like rain. Zooming in from around the corner, Kei came rushing. Pink dress flapping about her little legs like the petals of an upside down flower. The dark ponytails bouncing boldly against her temples. She beamed at Kai like he was an old friend – it was Eri's smile. But there was so much in that face that wasn't Eri: the sharp nose, the high cheek bones plushly hidden behind baby fat.

Clasped between her mitten-clad hands was a blue box bigger than her head, and as she hurried closer she held it out as though presenting a wedding gift. Unabashedly, she swooshed past Eri to Kai's side of the table, and ignored the shrill way Eri squeaked out her name – or nickname. Apple!

"This! The photo! I finded it!" Kei cried, and placed the box delightedly onto the table. She scrambled onto the seat next to Kai, oblivious to the agitation with which her mother stood, and grinned while taking off her mittens. She had freckles too, Kai noticed, and he caught himself beginning to count them. "Mommy," she thrust out her palms. Her hands, her tiny fingers, were white as rosebuds. "'Anditizer, please. For me and the man."

Kai raised an eyebrow. "What on earth–?"

Eri frowned. She picked up a little bottle from her seat. "Hand sanitizer." She squeezed a drop of clear solution into Kei's rosebud-hands. "Kei thinks hand sanitizer is very important."

"And for the man?"

With deeply-tracked lines and a ferocious light in her eyes, Eri's frown deepened. "He's wearing gloves, baby. He doesn't need hand sanitizer."

"Please, Mommy! He needs!" Kei turned to smile at Kai again – those eyes, even more brilliant up close and rimmed with ebony-shadowed lashes, imprinted themselves harshly onto his memory. "Right, Ojisan?"

"Yes. Right." Kai cupped his hands. Held them out to Eri. "If you'd be so kind."

Her look spat indignity like sugar-flavoured venom. But she obliged.

The mittens were back on, and Kei threw open the box. Inside, there were photos. "I know you," Kei said, and began to pick out pictures like she was plucking fruit from a bowl. "I seen you before."

Eri sat back uneasily, saying nothing. Not objecting. Not stopping. A startling multitude of emotions crossed her face as she watched Kei and as Kai watched her. He was handed photographs with polite, sugar-spun requests that he "please hold" and that he "look, look"; he accommodated these requests in a hard hush, eyes dropping to the pictures and all the while feeling a vile mix of hate and interest and longing grow in his stomach.

There were photographs of a heavily pregnant Eri: cross-legged on picnic blankets and holding her apple-round belly, smiling like Kai had never seen her smile before, all pink-cheeked and dewy. Then there were photos of a not-so-pregnant Eri: sleeping in white bedsheets, her back and arms completely bare; drinking coffee; twirling in a pile of autumn-toned leaves; at the beach. Kai had never taken her to the beach before. Had she liked it there?

There were photos of a squealing, pruned-up newborn; first locks of dark hair, first teeth, first steps. Kei in diapers. Kei in dresses. Kei eating donuts. Kei, living a whole three years of life.

And then there were photos of the man who'd stolen all of it away. Too close to Eri. Too close to Kei. Not her father.

He wasn't her father.

And god, Kai cared a little too much.

Exultantly, as though it were a victory of her own, Kei shoved another photo into Kai's hands. "It's you!"

Him it was, in a suit and bow tie. And an eighteen year old Eri in a green, satin dress, clutching his arm and looking wide-eyed at the camera with a smile which looked less like a smile and more like she was on the verge of tears. That was the night Anya and goddamn Dimitri and his goddamn father had thrown an engagement party. That was the night Eri found out she and Kai were going to be getting married. She wasn't supposed to have found out, but fucking Anya could never keep a secret.

Though apparently she could. Hari could too, when they really wanted to.

"She likes that photo," Eri said quietly. "For some reason."

Kei nodded, and held onto Kai's shoulder with an overfamiliarity which was – shockingly – not unwelcome. "I like Mommy's dress," she said, and giggled.

"I liked it too."

"Why are you angry in the photo?"

"Angry?"

"Look~" she pointed at the image of Kai's face. "You're like this." And she put her hands over her mouth in imitation of Kai's face-mask, and scrunched up her eyes in a way which looked very eerily like the photo. Like she'd practiced it in the mirror. Somehow, the thought was not surprising and very endearing. "Like you're angry."

"Oh," Kai said. "I was just thinking."

"About?"

"Your mother."

"Okay." Eri began to gather up photos and put them back in the box. Her cheeks were enflamed. The rims of her eyes had turned an irritated red. "That's enough now. Put these back where they belong, Kei."

"No, wait, Kei-chan." Kai took the first photo he could. "Tell me about this one."

"Ooh! That's my quick."

"Your what?"

Eri snatched the photo away. "Quirk. But you don't need to tell the man about that."

Kai snatched the photo back. "Your quirk, Kei-chan?"

"Uh–" she looked at Eri, suddenly insecure, apparently aware of the way the mood fluctuated and roiled. "Yes." Then more confidently. "Yes. My querck."

"But this isn't a photo of you." Kai looked at the image again – indeed, it looked like her, a disaster of brown curls and a gangly smile. But the child in the picture was at least thirteen years old. "So how is this your quirk?"

"It is me, sill-ee."

"But how?"

Violently, Eri's hands collided with the table. Kei jumped, knocking into Kai like a clumsy lamb just finding its legs, and she threw a startled expression in her mother's direction. Eri didn't look at her though. Eri looked at Kai with luminescent, rolling tears and a trembling bottom lip. She was standing again, and in contrast to the little girl Kai had known, she was immovable. Sort of terrifyingly, strangely exquisite. Kai tried to place where in their life he'd seen her like this, if ever.

No. Never. He'd never seen her like this. She rounded the table in a flash of graceful movement, scooping Kei up and away with a practiced precision. She whispered something. She kissed Kei's forehead – three sharp, loaded kisses on that perfect, white forehead – and turned away from Kai so that his heart plunged and an old fury flared with the viciousness of a scab being torn open. Next thing, Kei was wandering back to the back of the house, looking over her shoulder with all sorts of unspoken somethings.

That was his daughter. That was his daughter. That was his daughter.

"She's mine."

"No," Eri said, still facing away. "She's Mirio's."

"Don't tell me you're fucking blind."

Eri sat back down. Not angry. Not defiant anymore either. Just sad. "Mirio is her father. You are just biology. I will never ever let her think otherwise."

Kai felt his features twist. "She knows something. She feels it."

"I know. She's too smart for her own good."

"Why are you crying?"

"Because she wants to know you. Because she looks exactly like you. I don't know."

Kai gripped Eri's wrist. It was not the same way as he'd always done it though, and she seemed to know it. She didn't pull away. "Please come back to me. Please let me be her father."

"Kai." Oh! His name on her voice! "If it had been up to you, she would never have existed," she said. "And I'm going to make sure she knows that. Mirio and I are going to tell her one day who her real father really was. If it's necessary, we'll tell her exactly what her real father would have done to her. What he did to me."

"I loved you."

"You used me." Eri slid her hand away. "You'd use her too. Her quirk–" she stopped short. Breathed unsteadily. "It manifested very early."

"How?"

"She fast-forwarded herself into a teenaged body. Then she rewound herself back a few hours later."

There could be no explaining the emotion Kai felt then. It was sort of like ecstasy when it should have been disgust – he should have been the man to hope his child would be quirkless; yet, here he was, relishing the little being he and Eri had created. That was his daughter. That was his power. He'd never been more proud of anything, though he knew close to nothing about her. Besides that she was a little too smart and a little too fearless. Besides that she was a little too curious for her own good, and she liked hand sanitizer, and she leaked an infectious, gorgeous, awful loveliness which the world would surely try to steal away.

As if by instinct, he looked towards the house, and there she was in the window. Mittens pressed up to the glass, breath fogging up before her face. Kai smiled behind his mask, feeling a strange fullness in his chest. He waved. Kei waved back.

To be able to fast-forward. That was exactly what he had been missing all these years. That was exactly what he needed to be able to make the antidote. He'd never been able to do it with Eri. She couldn't reform something already-rewound by rewinding it further – her power could never return quirks. Only take them. But Kei…

"How's Kurono?"

"What?"

"Kurono," Eri murmured. She blinked at him. She wiped her wrist across her eyes. "How is he?"

"Oh." Kai's face melted back into a frown. "I don't know. He went to Russia. So he's either dead or he's run away with Anya."

"Oh."

"He missed you."

"I miss him." Eri's lips folded in on themselves to hide their tremble. "I waited to hear from him. For a long time."

"You could have stayed," Kai said a little too bitterly. To his surprise however, Eri didn't shrink. Eri didn't squirm. She didn't do anything, resolved in her decision. He sighed. "He told me why he did it. That after what Anya went through, he couldn't see the same thing happen to you."

She pulled a face. "What do you mean?"

"Anya's abortion." Kai furrowed his brows. "Didn't he tell you?"

"No. I had no idea."

"Well," a shrug, "now you do." He looked again to Kei in the window. "I want to speak to her once more."

"No."

"Let me."

"Mirio will be home soon."

"I'll keep it short."

After some seconds of crushing, contemplative silence, Eri looked to the window too and waved in a beckoning gesture. Motherly. Soft. Reluctant. Kei vanished into the house's depths in a flash, and Kai listened carefully for that pitter-patter from the back garden. In the meantime, he considered Eri again. "Why did you keep that photo of us?"

She shrugged. "It was folded up in my matryoshka doll. I just never threw it away."

Tap-tap-tap-tap. Kei was back around the corner in a flurry of unsteady footing, and she climbed herself into Eri's lap with a gasping rush of excitement and bewilderment. Indeed, she was a porcelain doll version of her mother, and Kai – in seeing them both across the table, Eri kissing the top of Kei's head and Kei grinning at Kai as though he were the most fascinating thing – felt bowled over by a very unfamiliar sense of beguilement, a slightly more familiar jealousy, and the most familiar possessiveness.

Leaning in towards them, he searched Kei's face for more traces of him. "So Kei-chan. What's your favourite colour?"

"White!"

"Do you have a favourite food?"

"Daddy hides jelly beans under my pillow when I've been good."

"So jelly beans?"

"Yes ~ the purple ones 'specially."

As she spoke, it was possible to see one of her incisors had grown charmingly skew. "And tell me," Kai pushed around the photos on the table, "do you visit with all these heroes a lot?"

"Why are you asking her all this?" Eri narrowed her eyes, absently brushing the bangs from Kei's forehead.

"I just want to get to know her a little bit," Kai replied. "So, Kei-chan? Who do you think is the best out of all the heroes?"

She made a thinking-face that was neither his nor Eri's. "Aunty Jire. She sparkles. Like a fairy." Then she clapped her mittens together. "But! I think when Daddy 'comes a hero, he'll be the real best."

"Daddy wants to become a hero then." Kai shot a wicked look in Eri's direction. She shot one back. "Do you also want to be a hero?"

Kei shook her head.

"Oh? What do you want to be then?"

"Uh– uh–" She twisted in Eri's lap, and touched her hand to Eri's jaw. "What word again?"

"Scientist."

"A si-yen-taste!" Like being a scientist was the new equivalent of being a fairy. Or being god. "Or a maid!"

"Excuse me?"

For the first time, there was the glimmer of a smile across Eri's face. She turned away, and she laughed. She laughed – a short, honey sweet sound like the ring when circling the rim of a wine glass. Kai, in all their life, had never heard Eri laugh. He was struck dumb. How could he have never heard Eri laugh? "She likes to help keep things clean," Eri said, and brushed her hands over Kei's cheeks. "She dusts all her toys and helps wash the dishes every night."

Kai stared at her. His heart did stupid things in his chest. "Do you like cleaning, Eri?"

"Me?"

"Yes."

"Uh – I do, actually. A lot." Distractedly, she started braiding one of Kei's ponytails. "I like doing things around the house in general. I've made some friends who come once a week to garden with me."

"This is a nice garden," he lied. It was messy and overgrown. But he saw why Eri would like it, with all its petals of rich colours and sunlight.

"Thank you."

"Do you still read?"

"I don't have a lot of time to anymore."

"How come?"

She bundled Kei's hair in her hand, then let it drop in a gorgeous tumble of brown. "An unnecessarily intelligent two year old keeps me busy."

"I'm almost three!" Kei held up what could only have been three fingers beneath her mitten.

And Kai, not fully realising what he was doing until he'd done it, reached out and closed his own fingers around hers. He squeezed. The smile on Kei's face tightened for a moment before widening again, stellar and genuine. The skew incisor was the most wonderful little oddity Kai had ever seen. "What a big girl you are." He let go of her hand, and he looked at Eri. "Would you ever give me a second chance at making you happy?"

"Never," Eri said. The softness of her voice did not suit the sharpness of the word. Kei's face dropped, and she stared up at Eri in confusion.

"Well then." Kai fingered the photos on the table again. Kei in her short succession of forms. Eri, pregnant. Eri, not pregnant. Eri, no longer his. And Lemillion with the family which should not have belonged to him. With a happiness which should have been Kai's. In the photos, Kai saw Lemillion kissing Eri. Kai saw Lemillion cradling Kei in his arms. There they were! The three of them eating from a chocolate cake with a single candle in it, as though cake was really something worth photographing. And then there they were! At an amusement park with a tiny Kei strapped onto Lemillion's chest. And then there was Kei washing a window. And there was Eri running into the ocean.

Photographs of everything Kai hadn't realised he wanted. All of them fuzzy with the incandescent, bright quality of afternoon sun glinting off their gloss. Some tattered at the edges. One of a shirtless Lemillion – vain bastard – had a lipstick stain on it. When Kai looked up, Kei was watching him with an uncertain, scrunched expression. Like looking in a mirror. A young, girlish mirror.

"I want to take one of these," Kai said, and gave Eri no time to object. "You owe it to me."

Thinking for a moment, Eri loosened her arms around Kei's tummy. "Choose a photo for the man, Kei," she said. Then as Kei shot about her work, Eri said to Kai, "You can have one. One. But there's a condition."

"And that would be?"

"You will never ever try to see us again."

Kei paused. "Mommy…"

"Don't argue. This is grown up talk now."

A hard knot made its way through Kai's throat. "I used to say that to you."

"You used to say a lot of things to me I wouldn't want my daughter hearing," she replied, disconcertingly gentle. "Do you know what photo you want to give the man?"

Kei shifted her gaze again uncertainly, clutching a photo to her chest. She glanced at it, at Kai, at Eri, at all the other photos, deliberating like Kai hadn't known an almost-three-year-old could do. Then she handed it over, and Eri made an uncomfortable sound.

"Oh – uh – that's a nice choice, Apple, sweetest," she said. "But I don't think we can give him that one."

"Why, Mommy?"

"It's Daddy's favourite."

"You're right, Eri." Kai ran his thumb over the bent corners, and committed to memory the picture of Eri and Kei. Plain. Simple. Them laughing. "It is his favourite. I'll take it." He folded it in two, pressed it like a secret into his coat pocket. Then he leaned forward to tap the tip of Kei's nose. "Thank you. I will take good care of it."

"Okay. Say goodbye to the man now."

"You can call me Kai."

Kei leaned out from Eri's lap, one hand balanced on the table and the other tapping Kai's nose in return. "Byee byee, Kai-ee."

He left with an empty burn in his gut, a rapid raging in his chest which refused to be quelled. Though he didn't allow himself to look over his shoulder, he could feel Eri's eyes in his back. Perhaps more importantly, he could feel Kei's – those golden irises like the springtime dawn, those he'd never expected and now wouldn't ever let himself forget. Ever.

Hari would have liked her. No, he would have adored her like she was the secret to life itself. And in some cavernous part of himself – less angry, less proud – Kai was grateful, because he knew that Eri was right. And that Hari had been right. Had it been up to him, he would not have allowed that little girl to exist. That exquisite, extraordinary creature who was inarguably and inexorably his, his, his. Even if Eri had convinced herself that it could be any other way. Even if Lemillion thought he could steal everything from Kai and then simply go on playing house.

Eri may have been happy – yes, he saw it, he knew it, she was happy and happiness had made her into the most beautiful thing the world could ever churn out – but it was not enough for Kai if she could be happy without him. After all of this. After everything. Her gaze vanished from him, and when at last he allowed himself to turn around, she was gone. Gone with Kei into that lovely house, probably to wait for her lovely Mirio. Aching, Kai touched at the photo in his pocket. There was a condition. He'd never try to see them again.

Funny, since Eri was in no position to be making demands...

A/N: Well now, that's all (...?...) folks. Thank you x infinity to everyone's who's followed, favourited and reviewed. Your feedback is always so appreciated. Also a special shoutout to the special soul SilverIcy, who encouraged me to keep writing this story when all I wanted to do was delete it from existence. XD