Author's Note: I had fun with this chapter. Henderson's character is a very interesting one to play with. She's a character continually torn between who she was and who she is now, and this story gives her a perfect chance to go through that mental battle with herself (again). I wasn't really surprised with the way this chapter ended, though for a minute there I thought she was gonna shock me. Since the character of Henderson doesn't belong to me but is instead based on a fellow author and good friend, I did my best to keep her narrative in character. If I failed, that's totally my fault.

This chapter deals with depression. Sorry, Henderson, I didn't really mean for you to be the depressed one in the bunch, but it kinda fits. Who else was gonna be depressed over Jimmy's death? And since this is one of two chapters that focuses at all on Jimmy, you got stuck with the depression chapter.

Disclaimer: Much though I may wish otherwise, I don't own Mike, Stella, or Brixton. I don't own Jimmy either, but Henderson and I co-own this take on him. Whatsername technically belongs to Green Day, but Henderson's crafted the character into something spectacular, so she owns all that. She also owns the characters of Luke, Ryleigh, Gloria and Ryan; I'm only borrowing them (I was the one who came up with their Saint titles- for some reason they decided to be difficult and have really weird titles and powers. Leave it to the Dirnt kids, I swear…). The name Armatage Shanks doesn't belong to me, but the character does (much to Billie's chagrin), as does his title.


I stood in the shadows of the hallway, leaning against one of the row of massive pillars that held up the roof and stood in lieu of an actual wall. From the privacy of my vantage point, I had a perfect view of the ball I had no intention of joining.

I had played along, had agreed to come to the ball with my husband and children. I had even gone so far as to put on a black dress, heels, and makeup. But at the last minute, I had worked a little magic, making a seam rip on my dress. I had told Mike to go ahead with Luke, Ryleigh, and Brixton, that I'd get a maid to stitch me up and I'd be right there. As soon as they were gone, I had stripped out of my formal clothes and pulled on a pair of black skinny jeans, battered old white chucks, a white wifebeater, and a black and white checked hoodie jacket. I'd put on double the amount of eyeliner I usually did, worked some magic to put multi-colored streaks in my blond hair, onto which I put my old tiara, and put on fire-engine red lipstick. When I was done, I slipped through the palace to my current location, and I watched.

Roxie sat on her throne, watching over the people eating and talking and dancing. I knew how hard it had to be for her to sit there when all she wanted was to retreat to her and Billie's suite, but none of that impatience showed on her face. She said all the time that she admired me for always speaking my mind and doing as I pleased, but I admired her for putting her own self-interest aside and sitting through this monstrosity.

On her right side sat my eldest daughter. My little baby girl, now a mother and a widow. She looked about as impatient as I felt, eager to get out of the ballroom and drop the masks everyone was forced to don, to stop being royalty and just be a heartbroken woman.

I looked around at the assembled people, sighing. I knew that all of them had come to mourn the loss of Rox and Billie's kids. I mourned with them; they had been my godsons, and I'd loved them. But I was one of four people who would be mourning the other man who'd died, and perhaps the only one whose mind would be primarily on that man, instead of the murdered princes.

Pulling away from the column, I walked out into the palace grounds, pulling out a pack of Newports (which my husband didn't know I had) and lighting one. I closed my eyes as I smoked; though the nicotine was nice, what I really craved was the mind-numbing apathetic blissfulness that came from one drug only- Novacaine, the most prized drug in the Streets of Shame. It's been years since I touched the stuff, but I guess the craving never stops.

I walked to the willow tree where Roxie had decided to bury them. I brushed aside the branches, running my skinny fingers through my hair. It wasn't fair that even in death, he could inspire such a reaction in me- butterflies in stomach, heart clenching, unable to breathe. For a minute I just stared at the urn that contained all that remained of the man I had loved, waiting for the symptoms to pass.

It made me a traitor, I suppose, to mourn the man who had killed my best friend's sons, my daughter's husband, my grandchildren's father. He was, after all, the rival Saint who had killed two of the royal princes of Arcadia. But I couldn't help it. Jimmy O'Connell had been my first love; in another life he could have been my soul mate. I might hate him, but I had never stopped loving him, and part of me had never let him go.

We had grown up in the Streets of Shame together, Jimmy and I. He and his little sister Roxie had moved into town when she and I were 12, and he 14. I had hated him, at first, resented him for encroaching on the place where my older brother Armatage and I ruled. But it wasn't too terribly long before J and I had fallen in love, and ruled the Streets together. And we had loved each other; many thought we were going to get married.

So how, you may ask, did I go from being Saint Whatsername, ruler of the Streets of Shame and lover of Saint Jimmy, to Lady Henderson Adrienne Gloria Mefina-Dirnt (aka'd as Henderson Lee), Patron Saint of the Denial and wife of Mike Dirnt?

Everything changed when I was 15, and Jimmy 17. Our powers had woken up. I learned I was the Saint; Jimmy became the Idiot America. Jimmy's powers didn't come from the Toralean Guardians, as Roxie's, Jinx's and mine did. Instead, he got his magic from the Ashurians, the opposing force to the Toraleans and all-around bad guys.

Jimmy's power drove him insane, turned him schizophrenic. I stayed with him, at first, even after Roxie, Jinx and the others left the Streets. Armatage and I did everything we could to try to help Jimmy. But he stopped responding to his medication (when we could get him to take it at all), and he turned hateful and dangerous. After he shot me through the shoulder, I decided I couldn't take it anymore.

So I left, and turned to Mike, a fellow reject of the Streets, who I'd also known since we were 10. Mike and I got married when we were 19, and had Stella a few months after Roxie gave birth to Joey. Over the years, Stella was joined by Luke (the Jerk- a horrible title, perhaps, but it made him a genius at crafting weaponry), Ryleigh (the Angel- my kids have the weirdest titles; it one means that she guards Strangeland's borders), and Brixton (the Sage- he would someday ascend to the Guardians' realm and join them as a protecting spirit).

I was happy with Mike, truly. I love him more than life itself, and I love our children, and our life together. I loved being the Patron Saint (most days) and living in the palace (usually).

But part of me has always been Whatsername. Part of me always belonged to the Streets, and to Jimmy. Maybe it'll always be that way; maybe there's a part of me that Mike will never be able to touch. And tonight, that part of me was screaming out in agony, grieving the loss of the man she had and still did love.

I stared at the urn that contained his ashes. Jimmy had been a dynamo in life; always moving, always acting, larger than life. And now, all that was left of him was contained in this simple black jar resting on a pedestal.

I was grateful, though, that there was still this much of him left to me. The Guardians had demanded that Jimmy be cremated, to prevent his magic from passing to someone else (though Josh had shared Jimmy's title, his magic had been Toralean, not Ashurian). They had further stated that Jimmy's remains had to be tossed into the sea, but this point Roxie had defied. She had stated that Jimmy had taken care of her when the rest of the world turned its back on her, and she refused to abandon him now.

Saint Jimmy
(Christian James Eugene O'Connell)
The Idiot America
Requiem in Pace, my dearest brother.

I sank onto the bench that sat before the urn and two graves, unable to rip my gaze from Jimmy's remains. Here before me were the ashes of a previous life, and they represented more than the man who had died; they also represented that part of me that had died with him.

Maybe it wasn't so much Jimmy that I mourned. Maybe it was that I was in mourning for the memory of the J I had known, the idea of what I had left behind. I think that the actual Jimmy must have died years ago, leaving nothing but a twisted, evil shell behind. But I never let go of the memory of the real Jimmy, and I had never let go of the part of myself that belonged to him.

I sighed and looked away, turning my head as if I could actually see the Streets across the gardens. It had been years since I had been there, in any capacity. Once upon a time I had lived there as its ruler, and even after I had left I had had to return in my capacity as a Saint. But, despite Jimmy's deterioration and descent into madness, things had been quiet in the Streets for years, and there had been no reason for the Saints to make an appearance there. I had happily turned my back on it, focused on Mike and my family, tried my best to forget about who I had been.

But the Streets were still there. And now, with Jimmy dead, they needed Whatsername more than ever.

It was a tempting thought, really; to slip away in the darkness and take up the life I had left behind. My brother St. Armatage, Patron Saint of the Forgotten, had ruled the SOS in J's stead for years now. He had come up to the palace tonight at Roxie's invitation (I would have been astonished, had I not known that he still loved her and always would), and we'd had our first chance in years to talk to each other. From what he said, the Streets had deteriorated to the condition they had been in before he and I first took over. I hated to hear that; Jimmy had turned the Streets into a well-oiled machine, an absolute empire where he and I had reigned supreme. Now his creation was as dead as he was. I was Jimmy's partner and in some ways his heir; surely I would be able to bring the Streets back to their former glory.

It would be easy, so very easy. I had only to walk through the gardens, POOF myself over the garden wall (POOFing was what we called teleportation). No one would be watching; I could just walk into the Streets, and that'd be it. I would be home, and how hard would it be for Whatsername to resume control of her home?

Mike would let me go, I was sure of it. He and Jimmy had always hated each other, had constantly been in competition for my heart. But Mike had been the less demanding of the two; if he saw that I truly wanted to leave, he would let me go, even if it broke him. I had taken advantage of that when we were first married; for the first few years of our marriage I had gone back to J, had cheated on Mike again and again. I knew that if I were to leave now, Mike would understand.

But it was that understanding that held me here. Mike deserved very little of what I'd done to him (there had been that affair with one of Jimmy's Ashurian Saints- Brittney, the Antichrist, but I had killed her and put an end to that). I didn't deserve him. Yet for some reason, he still loved me, and he still stood by me. He had always been there when I truly needed him, had always been there to pick me back up when I fell. And I loved him. I didn't love him like I had loved Jimmy; J and I had shared a blazing, all-consuming firey passion, while my love for Mike was deep and abiding, like the sea. It was more real, more permanent. I might think about leaving, about running away and returning to what I thought I wanted, but I didn't think I actually could make myself walk away. I might not deserve Mike, but I was way too selfish to let him go.

Whatsername was dead, as dead as Jimmy was. Henderson, however, was still alive, and she had responsibilities to the ones she loved.

Thoughts of my responsibilities led my thoughts back to Stella. She was young, so young to have to go through the sorrow life had just put on her shoulders. But if I thought about it, she was older than I had been when I left Jimmy and married Mike. My little girl was all grown up. But she still needed me. She needed to learn how to live alone, how to go on without the person she'd loved for her entire life. I might not be good for much, but I could at least teach her how to do that.

There was also the matter of my grandchildren (God, that made me feel old). Two-year-old Gloria had assumed the full powers of the Jesus of Suburbia, now that her father was dead. As the heir of her father's and her other grandmother's power, it would fall to Roxie to teach Gloria how to use her magic. I wished her luck. Gloria was so much like Stella and me; she was likely to be a rebellious little hellion. And Ryan, our sweet baby boy, was the heir to Stella's and my magic, the future Patron Saint of the Denial. I couldn't forsake my grandchildren. They held my magic in their veins; they were the future of my country. I may not care overmuch about myself, but they were my world.

I would remain here, with Mike and our family. I would learn to be only Saint Henderson, and I would guard and protect my children and my grandchildren. I wouldn't forget Saint Jimmy, but I would remember the lessons I learned from his rise and fall, and I would protect my family from that fate.