Huzzah! Chapter 14! I am proud to announce that no, I am in fact not dead. ;) Thank you for asking though. Told you guys I wasn't quitting! I got super caught up with work and a social life this summer and didn't actually write the whole time like I planned. I plan to start back up on it now that I have a feel for the story again.

Betsy watched her breath fog up in front of her as she waited patiently in the alley she hoped Dahlia would pass on the way home so she could grasp her into her safety. She had watched the grey skies overhead, once bleak with the new cold front slowly turn into the darkness that they were now.

Kneeling down in the shadows and she glanced at the watch on her scaled wrist, eight. Rolling her shoulders back she tried to ease the tension building in them from the long, uneasy wait hiding in the shadows of the alley. Risking her life, really. Betsy snorted with irritation and pulled her hoodie farther over her head.

Damn it to hell. Where was that girl? No doubt still with that blotchy, scarred, green prick of a man. She regretted with every ounce of her soul that she hadn't demanded the man's address from her…and out of her own anger at that. She would never forgive herself if she didn't catch Dahlia before she got home.

A mixture of grief and anxiety sat heavily on her chest and shoulders as she thought of her adoptive daughter. Scales spread farther across her skin in her body's natural response to stress causing her to inhale deeply. A stained duffle bag sat in front of her on the hard ground and she pressed her lips together in remembrance of when she had first taken Dahlia in.

That girl…always getting herself into trouble. She shook her head as her lip started to quiver and she cupped a hand over her mouth. Who knows how many weeks she had been on the streets before that. Skinny, bruised, dirty, wounded and sick. Terribly, terribly sick.

Staying up with her for three nights straight as her body fought whatever terrible virus had decided to plague her with. She thought about holding her hair back from her face as she threw up into a bucket, shaking violently from a fever that at the time Betsy could do nothing about. All the while telling her it was okay, trying to give her the hope and comfort she needed to survive.

Nursing Dahlia back to health was no easy task. Trying to put meat back on her bones was like trying to fill a cup with a hole in it. In the weeks that followed Betsy was amazed she had survived at all.

Betsy pulled her glasses off to wipe the fog from them and sighed heavily. In a way, Dahlia was just as much her daughter as the girls she had at home. Just as she had given her daughter's life, she had given Dahlia her life back.

Dahlia scampered down the bus steps quickly and looked at her watch. Eight forty-five. Damn the bus driver for being so behind schedule! Already an hour late, though that was partially her fault for leaving work so late. Mortimer was probably sitting at home off his rocker with worry by now. (She learned that phrase from him and she was pretty proud of it.)

She rushed down the street pulling her hoodie up against the cold wind that swept violently down the street. As if this weather wasn't bad enough! God forbid things couldn't just warm up for once. The past few weeks it was a mixture of rainy and raising temperatures but now it was somehow back to freezing. The weather was as unpredictable as her mother.

Her body ached to get up on the roof tops and have a clear cut path to Mortimer's free of the sketchy people that were starting to surface on the streets at this time. The wind kept her on the ground though and deep down inside she knew it were way too risky to do something like that. She could get hurt. She shook her head. Restlessness continuously flowed in her veins, causing her to tear her palm as claws dug their ways in.

A hand reached out from an alley as she passed by, hooking her shirt and cupping a rough hand over her mouth to muffle her screams.

Dahlia was flung to the cement in the center of a group of men with wicked eyes. Her mind tried to process everything as quickly as she could, the sneers, the baseball bats, the prideful taunts. There was no doubt these were some of the anti-mutant extremist she had encountered only weeks ago.

Scrambling to her feet she was shoved into the trashcans that sat against the wall, slamming her skull into the brick and sending her to the ground once again. Tears clouded her vision as she grasped at the pain that shot intensely through her head, staring wide eyed up at the man approaching her.

"Not going anywhere this time, are you sweetheart?" He sneered, sending his foot into her side and kicking her over.

She wailed out a cry and somebody grabbed her by the hair and drug her away from the wall before sending a bat slamming down into her arm. She cried out in pain as it came down again and she curled up to block her head but a moment too late as the bat slammed down into the side of her face.

Ringing engulfed her hearing and her vision blurred as pain erupted through her body. She could just make out the glimpse of a familiar figure and long tongue wrapping around the neck of one of her many attackers. Struggling to see straight she pulled herself away from the men and hoped Toad would be able to manage on his own but before she could make it away she was grabbed by the hair and dragged around the back of a building away from the fight.

Panic and rage flooded out of Toad as he took on the multitude of men attacking Dahlia. Where was she? Where was she?! He looked around frantically, getting nailed square in the face. He spat slime at the man's face and watched him frantically claw at the quickly hardening goo as it suffocated him slowly. Three of the other men lay on the ground, with badly broken bones or a snapped neck. The remaining three men watched as their friend stumbled back and fall to the ground with his fingers bloody from broken nails desperately trying to save his life.

Toad turned his fury to them and they froze like dear in the head lights. Toad's attention snapped to the clicking of a gun from shaky hands off to the side and before the man could react Toad's tongue had wrapped around the man's wrist and flung him clean over the top of the building. He pulls his tongue back in and sauntered menacingly towards the remaining men who scattered. With the remaining men gone he called out to Dahlia.

"Dahlia!"

He listened, just barely able to make out the sound of a shuttered breath and he ran towards the back of the building, expecting the worse. When he first caught a glimpse her upon finding her she was already a bloody mess. He hated himself. How could he let her walk the streets by herself so late? She was the weakest mutant he knew. Ten tiny knives on her hands and still completely useless in battle. What he saw next stunned him, shattering his heart into a million pieces

The first thing that hit him was the stench of blood that filled the air; the next was the pool of blood that was slowly reaching out its scarlet hands to stain his shoes, and the look of utter despair of her face forever imprinted itself in his mind.

Dahlia's eye that hadn't swollen shut stared up at Toad in terror with animalistic pupils; blood matted in her hair and on her hands. What would she could she do now? This was it. She messed up and there was no going back from this; nobody who could help her, no body that could fix this for her. Her life…everything she had worked so hard for…it was over.

She turned her gaze down slowly to the blood on her shirt and to the mangled body of the man in front of her. Tears welled up and streamed down her face and she turned her childish gaze to Mortimer.

"I killed him…" She said quietly, a shuddered cry escaping her mouth. "I didn't mean to…"