Flashing forward one last time.

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Chapter Forty-Seven: Interlude, Part III

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Lera set her stylus down for a moment. This part always… Force, and her headache just kept getting worse, the deeper she delved into Sanar's fate. Every time she gathered the courage to stare at her failure, she hit a brick wall.

"Hello, Lerasina."

She hadn't felt him coming; at least he had learned from the last time. He had tried this before. She had blocked him both times. This time, though, he was projecting—the best she could do was ignore him. She didn't really feel like her best right now.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"How are you?" He looked sincere. Tired, actually—could ghosts get tired?—but sincere. She remembered that she didn't really hate him—she had known the risks, and wanted to help anyway. It was just hard to swallow that with failure and a psych hospital.

"How do you think I am?"

Devnos looked her over with some relief. "Well," he murmured.

She suspected that he hadn't meant for her to hear that, but she flared up anyway. "'Well'?" she demanded. Alright, so maybe she was a little angry with him. Part of her episode had come from Devnos, after all. It hadn't been all her grief, or Prophecy's rage. "I'm not well; I just spent the past three months in a mental hospital. They thought I was crazy—and let's not forget how I clawed up my own skin. They thought I was a 'danger to myself and others.' Add in how I claimed a dead guy was talking to me, and…"

"You're alive," he interrupted. "Sane, and yourself. You were never out of your right mind, or in spiritual danger, or even real physical harm's way."

"They thought my eyes were bleeding. Even more than they were, that is." Lera's voice was flat. "The face bleeds the most, you know, so there was… I'd say I experienced physical pain."

"Lerasina—"

Her mood shifted suddenly. "What hurts the most, though," she interrupted him, "is that it was all for nothing. We didn't manage to change a single thing for Sanar. I knew I might get hurt, though I didn't really expect—well—this. I just hoped that maybe Sanar…"

Devnos was silent. His eyes wouldn't tell her anything, but she could imagine his grief.

"What did that letter even say?" Lera asked. "I know you couldn't tell me before, what with Prophecy and all. But now—you said Sanar read it. Why didn't she… How could she not listen?"

"I don't know," he murmured. Now he dropped his gaze, refusing to meet her pleading eyes. "She just…" He shook his head.

"Didn't you tell her an alternative way?" Lera demanded. "I mean, you told her what would happen, but—there was another way, wasn't there? Some way for her to be okay? And you told her about it, right?" Her head was really beginning to throb, now. Lera squeezed her temples between the palms of her hands. "What did you tell her?" She flinched as a particularly sharp lance of pain plunged through her head.

"Does it hurt?"

"What?" Lera stared at him blankly. For a moment, she couldn't have even said what they were talking about.

"Does your head hurt?" He looked concerned.

"Uh…" She blinked. "Yeah. A little." Slowly, the pain began to recede. Either it was her imagination (which, admittedly, was more than overactive), or Devnos had just slipped back into her mind for a moment. She didn't mind, so long as the headache backed up a bit. She didn't thank him, but she allowed him his diversion from Sanar's fate. If he wanted to talk about headaches, she could do that for a few minutes. "It's just—have you been…watching?" she asked.

He shook his head. "As soon as—I leave whenever you ask, I assure you."

She nodded wearily. "My therapist gave me a project, sort of a final exam before I leave. I'm writing about everything that—that happened."

"You mean…with Sanar?" Devnos edged closer to the desk, his eyes flicking around it as if drawn to his sister's fate, even on a data screen.

"Sanar's story, yes." Lera's expression was gentle, but she knew it didn't have to be. After all that had happened, she suspected that she understood him better than most.

"Does it help?" he asked curiously. "Is it helping?"

She laughed shortly. "Besides the sick pit in my stomach every time I get to Sanar's fate, you mean?"

"And your headache," he added. His eyes were fixed on hers.

She shrugged with one shoulder. "I didn't expect it to work—thought my therapist was the one who belonged in the loony bin, even, but…"

He smiled at her, and she realized that he understood completely. How strange, that the two who seemed to understand her best were so closely related. She rather preferred the nephew, though.

"I'm recovering," she said finally, answering his purpose in coming. "I'll be leaving quite soon, and I'll grow up, and I'll be okay." Her wisdom turned to ash in her mouth. Her head throbbed, but the ache in her heart was worse. "That's more than I can say for Sanar, I suppose."

Something like pride outshone the grief in Devnos' eyes. "You're going to be alright, Lerasina Verili."

"Yes, I am." No stuttering. She looked down at her datapad. "I'd be better if I had a happier ending for Sanar, of course." She sighed, and moved on with her life. "I should finish this."

"I came to say goodbye."

To say goodbye—she understood immediately that it was his only one. Presumably, Prophecy was no longer blocking him—but who else would he talk to? Nichyn? Nichyn hated his uncle for his part in Lera's episode. Nichyn's mother? Lera didn't think so.

"You waited around three months to say goodbye?" she asked. Despite everything, including herself, she almost felt fond of him for that.

He hesitated and glanced away for a suspicious second. "I have to go now. I wanted to make sure you were alright."

Lera frowned; something was very…off about Nichyn's uncle. She just couldn't put her finger on the exact cause. "Devnos, what did you write in that letter?" And why, she wondered suddenly, was her memory still full of holes from when he explained Sanar's fate, and his plan to rescue her?

"I have to go now." He didn't sound very apologetic for ducking her questions. He paused, though, to look at her with an odd expression, somewhere between affection and pride and admiration. "You are going to have an amazing life, Lerasina Verili. You and Nichyn, both."

She didn't know what to say to that—was it a prediction from Prophecy's once-seer, or a wish from a quasi-friend? But even as she wondered, he was fading; Lera tried one last time. "What about Sanar? Devnos!"

A whisper's shade, deep in her heart, was all he left behind: Never give up on a happy ending.

For a long time, Lera stared at where Devnos' ghost had been.

Then she returned to her writing.