I kept looking. Another week with nothing passed, not even a nervous breakdown interrupted my boredom. Instead I was searching, painting and fighting my urge to drink or smoke. I hadn't taken that drink after Jill visited me. Partly because I couldn't find a single drop of alcohol, and partly because of Sage. And Jill of course. Nothing I did helped though. The shadows still seemed to grow sometimes, but they never got as far as they had before. I barely got honored with a visit from my so called 'friends' either. They were busy all the time except for one exception when Eddie came by to tell me Jill and Lissa missed me on some snob dinner. I barely listened to him. Why would I? They had all stopped listening to me. It was childish, I know, but I was after all a child at heart. Nobody could deny that. If you're wondering where my father was in all this I can tell you that he didn't even care. I hadn't even seen him since that time with Sage. I had just given up on that jerk. As long as I got money I was happy. I couldn't care less about him. I kept on searching for my Sage. All I needed was a spark, anything that could tell me just a bit about what even happened to her. One day in Palm Springs she ran an errand while we were at Clarence's and just didn't come back. We found her car, simply abandoned outside of a mall, but no trace after her. I took care of the car and during the first week after her disappearance, our whole gang and the alchemist were out searching every corner of Palm Springs. Lissa offered some guardians to help, but since the alchemists were the ones in charge of this search party, they turned her down. After that first week they kind of gave up. They started muttering things like 'she's probably dead' or 'maybe it was free will'. They kind of just shrugged and moved on. It made me so angry. They just assumed that she was dead or on the run simply because they couldn't find her. They gave up. Lucky for Sage, she had me. Adrian Ivashkov. The party-boy, who had been shown by the strict alchemist that he had a drive and a fire inside of him. She had taught me to not be a quitter. And I wasn't going to quit. Not until I found her. I had some hints about what might've happened but nothing was for certain. It didn't have to be strigoi or the warriors that was the bad guys here, it might as well be an ordinary human or whatever. Either way, I was going to find those sons of bitches and beat the living hell out of them. Nobody robs me of my Sage. Nobody.

The next time I got pushed further to the edge of the pit of insanity was only a day after my complaining about being bored. I was just minding my own business with my easels and my brushes when I suddenly everything went black. When I got my vision back I could've sworn that I saw a very pale and almost see-through Sage staring at me sadly. I naturally panicked, she looked like a ghost. What if my Sage was dead? I stared at her for what felt like ages, before I opened my mouth and asked a simple question: "Is it really you Sage?", She just stared at me for a second then nodded, slowly. I thought I was going insane for sure in that moment. I was just going to ask if she was dead when Rose burst through the door and Sage disappeared as fast as she appeared. I decided to keep this incident to myself for a while since people already thought I was on the highway to insanity and I didn't want to give fuel to those rumors. Rose looked at me while I blinked hard for several moments in a desperate attempt to figure out if I really had seen a ghostlike Sage.

"Hello Rose, what brings me the pleasure of seeing you here today?", I finally asked while I narrowed my eyes at her and then returned to my painting.

"Lissa forced me to check up on you. How long has it been since you even left this room?", She asked while putting her hands on her hips.

"I don't know.., A week? Maybe two? Does it matter?", I sadly said while I kept on painting. As every so often nowadays, I was painting Sage.

"It does matter. You can't just hole up here because she is gone. I didn't even know you were that good friends. I thought she kept to herself.", Rose wrinkled her forehead. Couldn't she just leave?

"We are that good friends, we hang out a lot", I stressed the words. She wasn't gone, she was still out there somewhere. I just knew it, even though that ghostly Sage had me doubting. What if she was dead? The thought made me cold inside.

"Okay okay, I get it. She's not gone. Sorry.", She crossed her arms across her chest instead and a new and sad look was in her eyes. "You have to get out from this room though, you can't expect to find her faster if you isolate yourself from the world.", She looked straight at me. I turned my head away and instead inspected the painting I was making. It was supposed to be a bright picture of the Sage I remembered, but instead it had turned into the see-through Sage I had just seen. Suddenly an overwhelming sadness seemed to swallow me alive and I turned back to Rose.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe I need to get out.", I couldn't shake the vision of my Sage being dead. It felt like she was in the room, watching me.

"Wait, what? I didn't think it would be that easy to convince you.", She looked shocked and he dropped her hands to her sides. Meanwhile, I went to the bathroom to clean of some paint on my hands and quickly look at myself in the mirror before heading out the door with Rose at my tail. I went to the closest cafe I could find and sat down. Rose sat down next to me and I raised an eyebrow.

"Don't you have a job or something? A guardian's duty or whatever?", I wanted to be alone again. Alone with my thoughts.

"I have some time off.", She simply stated while looking at me weirdly.

"Okay. And you're sure that you want to spend it with a mental moroi?", I spoke. It still felt a bit weird that I could look at her without longing for her touch or for her love. The only girl that occupied my mind nowadays was my Sage. My Sage who I missed so dearly.

"I couldn't find better company so unfortunately you'll have to do.", Rose teased. A smile spread across her face but I couldn't bring myself to smile back. My mind had plunged itself into thoughts about Sage. Her laugh, her smile, even the stern expression she got when other alchemists were around. I missed everything. Every piece of her existence.

"Too bad for you. I'm not much of company these days.", I replied sadly.

"I know.", She said, voice barely over a whisper. "She is more than a friend, isn't she?", Rose asked while looking at me knowingly.

"Yeah, I guess she is.", I said while looking at people passing us. "She is everything."

"What do you mean 'everything'?", Rose pressed, I had sparked her interest, I could see it in her aura.

"I mean; She's the one that keeps me sane. She's the gravity that pulls me down when I feel like I'm going to float away in space. She is my sun, my love, my Sage.", The words shocked me. I never thought that I would sit in a cafe, revealing my inner secrets to my ex-girlfriend. I never thought that anyone but Sage would hear those things about me. Apparently I trusted Rose more than I knew.

"Wow.", She looked like she was still processing the information. "That was.., beautiful Adrian. It sounds like she's your soul mate or something."

"Well, I think she is.", I said matter of factly.

"But, you do know that she's human right? And an alchemist?", Rose carefully said.

"Yeah, I know. And believe me, she knows it too. I just hope we can get past that.", I said. I wanted to see what her opinion was. After all, Rose was one of the most open-minded people I knew.

"Okay, as long as you are fully aware of the risks you're taking here, and that you're aware of the fact that you might stir up a lot of opinions, then I don't see the problem. Well, except for the fact that she has been missing for almost six months now.", Rose looked me straight in the eyes.

"Five months, one week and five days to be exact. I'm aware of everything that will go to hell if she comes to her senses and admits that she likes me, but I couldn't care less. She's my soul mate, soul mates are supposed to be together.", I meant every word I said. So what if some old dusty moroi and dhampirs got shocked because of a human and moroi relationship, It wasn't them who would get affected by it. It would only affect me and Sage. Nobody else. The alchemist on the other hand might be a bit scarier if they thought Sage was doing the wrong thing. I just hoped that they would leave us alone if we got together. I lived on my hope and my dream of finding Sage. "You should know a thing or two about soul mates.", I said while looking at Rose.

"You're really counting the days? You must mean business.", Rose tried to joke again but since my mind was in a grimmer place I couldn't even care to smile. "And I do understand where you're coming from here. There's no way to separate soul mates", She simply said and looked down at her hands that was on the table. I drifted away again. The world was gray and I was constantly looking for Sage's yellow aura to turn my world colorful again.

A/N: Yeah, Hi. I'm sorry if there's any mistakes or anything that is written weird in this chapter, my friend who usually reads through my stories and corrects my mistakes is extremely busy and I really wanted to post this today so she didn't check it and help me. Sorry about that but I just really want to update as much as possible before I get all busy during Christmas and what not. Anyway, hope you liked it!