If it wasn't the greatest din in the history of dins, it was certainly the loudest to ever assault Lumi's castle, and yet Kay didn't look up. The wave of crashing-shattering-exploding mirrors advanced, making it difficult to tell what were the shards on the floor and what were parts from the mirrors on the wall. Irritation built up as he panned through the pieces, though he didn't dare look up and see the murderous intruder.

She was interfering.

Lumi had promised this wouldn't happen.

Finally he put on the glasses and decided to wait until the intruder had lost interest in this uninteresting room.

For her part, Gerda advanced with one hand up to shield her eyes against the falling and shattering mirrors. She kept almost telling Kay to do the same; he was just sitting there in the fallout, head tilted down, though the floor was quaking and rattling violently with her approach. She paused several feet from him and the mirrors slowed their breaking, though she could hear them continue to plink and bounce for a while after. Most of the mirrors in the room had broken, a small pile of shards half-burying the sword where it had skittered towards the wall.

"Have you been here long?" she asked Kay. Her voice sent a little jolt through him but his gaze never wavered from the floor, the black glasses an impregnable barrier against her. His fingers traced faint patterns over the ice, minding them.

"Go away," he said very quietly. "I'll be done soon."

She crouch next to him. He didn't respond. On a whim, she reached out and removed the glasses. The effect was like pulling the shade from a birdcage; Kay blinked in slow confusion and surprise.

Gerda gestured with the glasses. "Why would you pretend to be blind? Good grief, Kay, everyone thinks you're dead!"

He stared at her, shell-shocked, with two eyes that functioned perfectly as hers did and murmured something about seeing only one of her. The words were right; he wanted to get excited about seeing none of her sins, but the tone was lead. He said something faintly, returning his gaze to the floor, that it probably wasn't real, then. She almost reached out and clutched his hand before she remembered her mission. The mission was supposed to come before Kay.

"Kay, I came to find the weapon. I have to find it and destroy it before we can leave."

He leaned towards the floor, reaching for one of the shards like a man compelled. No one had washed the dried blood off his much-cut fingers. Gerda felt need and duty pull her in different directions, let him proceed, and heard an odd sound begin.

The mirrors on the walls tinkled and collected themselves back up into their frames, neat and perfect. As the mirrors reformed, so did the images they portrayed. One, a woman with straggly hair in need of cutting, wrapped in a too-thin coat with her hands shoved in her pockets. She rose and braced her weight on her retreating foot, looking down in anguish at her crouching companion. The other-

A man climbing headfirst into an abyss, working towards darkness with a passion that rivaled love. It wasn't metaphor: the vision of Kay in the mirrors was one of a man whose very clothes were drenched in things he had failed in, mocked by his sins, a man who would end it all if he could find a way. It wasn't a mockery of the Kay she knew. Not even that, it was a lie, something invented and fed into and fed by hatred.

The woman could not sink to her knees, because that was too passive: she tackled him away from his fixation with the floor. She rightfully didn't think he would pay attention to her any other way.

Once this action had been taken, she traded precious seconds fighting for words that weren't placating, sentimental - words that would make it through this blockade of lonely years.

"No," she said firmly. "I love you."

Startled out of his stupor and lying half-trapped beneath her from the tackle, Kay stared at her. He kept blinking hard, trying to see her.

"I still love you. If you don't pull yourself out of, out of that – pit, I'll keep saying it and I'll keep you here until you're all right again." She found that her feelings were thawing, she was dangerously close to tears.

He spoke as if trying out words. "You came?"

"I came. And we have to find the weapon, destroy it, and leave – you're cold, get off the floor—"

"I forget, is it Gerta or Gerda?"

"Are you making a joke? It's Gerda, Gerda - Kay, we have to go-"

"We can't. At least I can't." His breathing was stymied: he was trying not to laugh. "I'm dead."

"And she is going to be," Lumi said, having just come in. She now stood in the center of the room, evaluating the shards. "I'm sorry she disturbed your work to such an extent. I've repaired most of the damage. The puzzle is untouched."

Kay, who had been cold before, stiffened—the glasses went on. Gerda drew herself up, pulling him along with her.

"I came for the weapon," she said. "It's the second thing I intend to take."

"And the first is a dead man who doesn't want to go. You entered your own story a little late, don't you think? And without your angels too… did you think I would let them enter this world that easily? You've been on your own since you got here, barring Bae, who guided you close enough to me to ensure that you could not go gallivanting off on your own."

"You've never even met me!"

"The moment you gave your name to Bae, I learned everything he learned about you. Kay, do continue working on the puzzle."

He made to do so and Gerda hauled him up impatiently. "You can't."

"There is a contract. It is the only reason he has not gone to that corpse-nest Kingdom you call Haven."

"No…" It couldn't be right; there had to be some other reason. "It can't just be that you made a contract…"

"It is. It's our whole fable, Gerda," Kay murmured, staring at the floor. "There's nothing beyond the contract—"

"But we win!" she said fiercely, because she had told this story to the children a dozen times and it lived, a taunting and independent entity, in the back of her mind. She turned on Lumi. "We win, in the Mundy, and that means there has to be some way to win here!"

"Girl," Lumi said pleasantly. "You are two highly-forgettable Fables. No one noticed but you when Kay died, and he had even forgotten your name. You are powerless in the Mundy and have no magical presence here. I have power both here and there, if I ever chose to go. You die."

"But-" Gerda sought an answer with increasing desperation. "But we're both tied to the strongest Fable in the Homelands. Without us, without our story, you don't have power."

Lumi's face went quite white with anger.

"And that's what you can't help. Our stories are tied to yours and you have to pay attention to it, to the contract. When he died and came here, I had to come and save him. I was too afraid of you to come before, but I came now, and we will win. He's tied to you, but he's also tied to me. I can claim him and he can claim himself and we can both rise against you."

Lumi quieted her expression and a calm, calm smile drifted across her face. She was beautiful and decisive.

"Or I could kill you both here and be done with it. Wrap theories around that."

Kay clasped her hand – or she clasped his – and they fled to the back of the caves in the wake of the advancing Snow Queen. The temperature in the room dropped rapidly. They had seconds, maybe minutes if she wasn't in a hurry to kill them.

"Where is the weapon?" Gerda demanded of him. If they could use it, in any way at all, they could stop her, but Kay was staring at the wall in a kind of aging terror. "Kay!"

"The mirror."

"What, one on the wall?"

"The floor."

"Okay, how-?"

He was crouching again, shard in hand, murmuring something about only having a few left.

"Can we get you out of her contract somehow?" Gerda tried. He didn't answer. "Kay, please, she's going to kill us both."

"And everyone in the Mundy," he murmured.

"Everyone in Fabletown! You have to—"

He looked up at her and she was certain he was wide-eyed behind the black barriers. "But—everyone isn't…?"

"Who do you think sent me here?"

He slumped back to the ground.

"I finish the mirror." His voice didn't have any weight to it, petering out like a tired star. "And she uses it."

She bent and brushed his face with her hand, wanting to take the glasses off him again. It wasn't right, it couldn't end this way, with her quest failing and him waiting to be allowed to die.

"We'll think of something. It's definitely the mirror?"

"It is."

"Then finish it. Tell her I won't interfere. She's overcome what little I can do anyway."

There was a moment , a hiccup of sentiment, when it looked as though hope went out of Kay's face, then he nodded.

"It'll be fine," she assured, and he went back into the main room. Gerda stayed pressed in the back of the caves and waited until the woman had left. Then, waited until Kay came to her, still unblinkered by the black glasses.

"Gerda, there are two pieces missing. I've made- I've made faster progress than I thought and she said she would be back in two hours. It's been that."

They searched the floor together, hands splayed, on all fours; had there still been mirrors on the empty ceiling overhead, they would have looked like koi, making their way along their methodical invisible paths. The floor yielded nothing. Gerda finished her patrol and crawled to the ice pillar, tucking her legs under her and letting her head loll back. Kay dropped to sit next to her.

"They're in me, I think. I know she knows."

"So get them out," she said. She was very close to crying with frustration and the knowledge that she had inflicted hope on him.

"You don't think I've tried? I'm hardly… the person you knew. I've tried."

"You didn't…"

"On a regular basis. Never had the courage for open heart surgery though."

"And you've never found another way."

He looked at her wearily. He was being petulant but, she recognized, to him she probably seemed incompetent. "Don't you think I tried every way I could think of before coming to that?"

They sat in silence a moment until he stirred and moved to put the glasses back on. "She's coming."

"Just a moment." She leaned forward and pressed a hand against his chest, maintaining eye contact until he had to give up on avoiding it. The glasses hung loosely from his fingers. "We can make it out of this, Kay. We can."

He kind of shrugged skeptically and pushed himself up. The action loosened a flickering shard of glass, which fell from beneath his shirt and bounced on the floor. Gerda caught it deftly and hurried to one of the empty spots remaining. It fit.

"Just the other now," she said. Hope trembled in the air and she and Kay didn't want to look at each other for fear they'd see it in the other's eyes. So close. Lumi strode into the room, graceful as a willow, and cast her gaze over the floor.

"Just the one?" she noted, ignoring Gerda entirely. Kay stared fixedly at the far wall as he answered; the glasses had been left on the floor in his excitement and were out of reach now.

"Just one," he confirmed. Lumi nodded as if she had been expecting this and moved to his side.

"Your lover has encouraged some plot? Or perhaps it is still lodged in your eye - we'll soon have it out-" And she gripped the back of his neck, twisting him to face her fully.

"STOP!"

Whether it was the force of the command or sheer bemusement, Lumi did stop. Turned, even.

"You're still here? Oh gods, and weeping."

"Let him go. I'll get it for you."

Lumi smirked at Kay, amused. "She doesn't realize the nature of your contract? Also, girl, you can do this quickly?"

"Yes." Did it matter? The season would kill them both anyway. With the air of one making a great concession to something trivial, Lumi released Kay. He was staggering as he came back to Gerda, blinking hard, looking as if he had taken suddenly ill.

"… Gerda, please, just let me finish this and die. Please."

"Soon. Close your eyes." She leaned forward and, taking his head into her hands, kissed both of his closed eyes. It was the way the story ran; it was that tears had always healed hurts; and there was nothing else she could do to heal the break that viewing all the Snow Queen's evils would certainly cause in Kay. When she pulled away, the remaining shard had slipped down his cheek, so small it was hard to imagine it could do any hurt or taint an entire world for one life. She took the shard and placed it in his palm.

"We're going home soon. You just have to fill the contract," she told him. He walked unsteadily to the spot and, under the vigilance of the Snow Queen, pressed the last piece into the puzzle. The dazzling floor flared white for a second and ceased all movement, one brief moment where the floor was a perfect and untroubled mirror. Lumi stepped back to evaluate it, moving her hands for the first incantation of some spell.

She never got to the second, things happening in a mad rush of seconds. The framework of the puzzle trembled and rattled, much as it had when Gerda first entered the room, and Burke and Kramer came zooming up through the puzzle's expanse only seconds before the entire floor exploded.

The thousand and one shards of the puzzle leapt up into what looked like a long stream of one word, writ in foreign languages; it made its first priority winding itself loose and protective around Kay. Lumi summoned it towards herself with a puff of wind, a flick of her fingers, and this left Gerda open to rush to Kay. The man sagged like an empty shirt but gamely hurried towards the door.

Both of them kept their teeth clenched to avoid swallowing any of the dancing shards shimmering in the air. Fingers clutched at other fingers and shoulders, assuring themselves that the other was still there. Despite their silence, Lumi whirled on them, shouted a command, and an ice pillar leapt up in front of the door.

Gerda let go of Kay's hand a minute to cover her mouth, yelling "Burke!" They would never clear the ice pillar on their own. When she reached for Kay again, he was gone.