The Three Kings: Strike

Disclaimer (1): Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Studios, and TV Tokyo. Harry Potter is owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, and Warner Bros. Please support the official releases.

Disclaimer (2): The McDonalds Corportation is founded by Richard McDonald, Maurice McDonald, and Ray Kroc. The Toyota Prius is manufactured by the Toyota Motor Corporation.

Warning: Mentions of child abuse, mental and physical torture, gore, minor character death, imprisonment, pedophilia, alcohol abuse, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Chapter 3: Unveil

They got one of the kids. The blond brat with the glasses and the bowl cut sits in a cell, looking at his hands, at the chains wrapped around his wrists. Keith is so drunk right now that he can barely stand.

"You're not standing," says the voice beside him. Keith blearily blinks up at Mook from his seat on the floor. Her face is blurry.

"I knew that," he says stubbornly, bringing the bottle of firewhiskey in his hand to his lips and taking a long swig. He tilts his head to look at her again and nearly falls over.

"Damn it, Bandit. You can't be…" Mook groans and snatches the bottle from him. Keith reaches to take it back and actually does fall over this time.

"That's mine," he slurs.

"You can have it back once you get yourself together."

"My shit is together..."

"You're drunk, Keith," she shouts. "You're drunk and we're in so much shit and- fuck, Coppermine just had a break down and Kitamori is in the wind and-" Mook cuts herself off, bites her lip, and then slides to the floor beside him. She lets out this humourless chuckle and takes a swig of the firewhiskey. Keith doesn't get how it's fair that she can drink and he's not allowed.

"Pegasus lost it, just like Latner said he would," Mook sighs. "He's using the Millennium Eye."

Keith pushes himself up and knocks his head slightly against the wall. He motions for Mook to share the bottle and, after giving him a disapproving look, she hands it back to him.

"Using it, like," he mimes holding the Eye in his hand and waving it in front of him, "or, using it, like," Keith pretends to carve out his eyeball with an imaginary spoon.

"The second one." Mook's response means that the only sensible thing for Keith to do is pass the firewhiskey back to her.

"Shiiiiitty," he laughs.

"Yes, Keith. It's very shitty," she says flatly.

He laughs again, but it dies out quickly, "It's all my fault…"

"You couldn't have stopped him," Mook just doesn't get it.

"No talking about that," he takes the bottle from her and takes another drink. "It's all my fault. This."

He points towards the cage were Weevil Underwood is being held. The kid hasn't moved at all. Keith wants to throw up.

"What are you talking about?" Mook frowns, gently removing the bottle from his grip and setting it aside where he can't reach it.

Keith laughs again, "Called Bakura. Gave him a warning. Told him we were looking for them. Those kids that escaped."

Mook takes a moment to process what he's just admitted, "Keith? Who's Bakura?"

"A mage," he shrugs.

"Bakura is a mage?"

"You know… The black one with," he points at his hair, "the white… you know? And the scar." He draws a line on his left cheek. "Except it's on the other side."

"You know who the unknown mage from the break in is?" Mook's voice goes up nearly an octave when she whisper-shouts, Keith notices.

He shrugs again, "He brought me a McMuffin." Keith chuckles, "It had eggs, but it wasn't about the eggs."

"The unknown mage from the break in bought you McDonalds?!"

He doesn't understand why this is so hard for her to grasp, "Yes."

"And… Merlin's tits, Keith. How long have you been spying for them?!"

"Not a spy," he tries to reach across Mook and grab the bottle, but she grabs him and hauls him upright. "Just… Just warned him, is all."

"Why? Damn it, Keith. How could you be so stupid?"

"'Cause he puts, like, so much sugar in his coffee," Keith admits, leaning his weight against Mook's shoulder. She smells like battle, like soot and smoke and blood and death. "Just like Ryou."

They were just children, Keith. I had to.

Mook doesn't say anything for a very long time. Then she whispers, "Ryou… Ryou Andrews? Your convert?"

Keith nods slowly. Mook scoffs, "But… he was just a mage."

"Don't!" Keith shouts, "Don't you fucking say that again! He's not just a mage," he's slurring his words now, barely comprehensible even to himself. "He's so… so much more… You don't-" he hiccups, "You don't understand…"

Mook snorts and picks up the bottle, taking another gulp, "Merlin help me, I think I might. And that's the worst thing."

He looks at her then, squinting through eyes that just won't seem to focus, "Who're you talking about?"

She looks at the bottle in her hand, turning it slightly, pretending to read the label. Finally she answers, "Depre Scott. He's… I was his Handler when we worked in the Gardens. He abandoned a mission to save me once."

"Sounds like he in love with you, or something," Keith mumbles. Mook offers him a broken chuckle and nothing else. "Knew it, though. Kid's totally a Plant."

"Well, he's not exactly trying to fit in," Mook tells him.

"Bet he couldn't even if he was trying."

"He could."

"Couldn't."

"Could."

"Couldn't."

"Shut up!" Mook knocks him with her shoulder and it's what makes him realize that she's probably a little tipsy herself. Then she switches the conversation back, "Underwood's one of the mages Andrews' saved, wasn't he?"

"Yeah," Keith admits and feels really crafty when he steals the bottle from Mook. "Said that he had to."

"What was he like?" She asks.

"Ryou? He was…" Keith looks down at the bottle. He's just holding it, not drinking or anything, which is kind of a waste, but his hands are shaking and he thinks that if he brings the bottle up to his face, he might hit himself in the eye. "He had this, um, treasure trove behind the wall of his bed, because he could move through walls and shit. And there were all these books and forks and jewelry that he'd hide behind there. He liked candy - anything sweet, really. And…" Keith pauses for a second, "he had a girlfriend, but I think he might have been gay.

"He was just this kid and I killed him, Tilla. I killed him," he says. "But he tried to save them," he points at Underwood, "and I asked Bakura to save them for Ryou, but he didn't and I can't-"

"Blaine Gerrish talked about the mage they killed outside Matthew Jacques' apartment. He didn't sound like the white haired mage. This Bakura… he wasn't there."

"Then he's dead, too. On some street in the middle of nowhere. Fuck," Keith swears.

"I'm sorry," Mook says.

"Yeah. Yeah, me too."

They sit there for a little while longer, passing the bottle between the two of them until they finish it. Keith turns to Mook, "It should have been you."

"Hmm?"

"Pegasus. The actually fuck was he thinking putting me in charge?"

"You're a man. You've seen how he reacts to Latner. You think someone like him wants to see women in charge?" Mook says flatly.

"You make an-" Keith hiccups again, "-an excellent point." He laughs and then shouts at the top of his lungs, "PEGASUS GAVE ME A JOB BECAUSE HE LIKES MY DICK!"

"Oh Merlin, shut up! Please just shut up!" Mook actually laughs and he sees a bit of the old partner that he used to have. They may never have gotten a long back then, but they'd still had each other's backs through thick and thin. "Seriously, the guys just carved out his eye and stuck in a mage weapon-"

"HE LIKES MY DICK, TILLA!"

"Oh my god!"

And it's absolutely stupid, but there they are, two old partners shooting shit on the floor in a prison hallway. Keith dimly wonders if Ryou walked down this hall, if this was where he attacked Coppermine and- fuck, Kitamori. Suddenly, the penny drops and the empty bottle in Keith's hands thunks to the floor.

Reiko Kitamori. He doesn't even know what to think about her. How much had been a lie? How much had just been part of her cover? There's a pit of dread in his stomach when he thinks about all that they had discussed behind closed doors, of all the times when he was asleep and she could have gone through his belongings. If Kitamori had truly been as powerful as Latner had suggested, what would have stopped her from unravelling his Occlumency shields and riffling through his memories?

"Kitamori," he says when Mook asks why he's gone all quiet. She swears again and Keith looks at her strangely. It would figure that all his good ideas come to him when he's piss drunk.

"What would you do?" He asks her. When Mook raises an eyebrow at him, he continues, "Should have been you as leader. So, y'know? Lead? Maybe?"

Mook looks up at the ceiling for a moment, thunking her head on the brick wall behind her, "We can't afford traitors."

"I know."

"We'll have to kill her."

"I… I know."

"You might have to kill her."

Keith thinks back to the first night that he and Kitamori slept together, how he'd wondered if one day he'd be holding her dead body on some street in the middle of nowhere, how she might one day be holding his. He'd never imagined that one of them might be the one to kill the other.

"I know," he says finally. "I know. Do you think… that you could kill her?"

Mook signs, "Do I have the will power? Yeah. I do. But... " Her head lulls to the side, "Am I good enough to?"

"Yeah. Same."

Keith is slurring so badly now that the two words come out as this singular, unintelligible sound of agreement, but at least Mook gets the meaning. He says something else, something that he can't even remember, before passing out cold on her shoulder.

The Millennium Eye burns in the socket of his right eye, slick with his own blood. Max should heal himself, but there's so much churning through his mind that he can't bring himself to even bother.

The King of Thieves has returned. Yuugi Mutuo will become the Lady Pharaoh. He must act. He must ensure the survival of the superior wizarding race. It's why he was chosen all those years ago, why he had been one of the final ones to willingly take the pledge to abandon all that he had, and to serve.

I will serve. I was born for this. I'm special. I can handle this-

Max's knees give out on him and he falls to the ground. He catches himself with his hands, his single working eye watching as the floor became stained with red. He brings his fingers to his nose and wipes away the blood there. His hair has fallen from it's tie at the base of his neck. He needs to fix that.

I will not be humiliated! I am in control here!

This was all Trista Latner's fault, her's and the damned bitch, Reiko Kitamori. If Latner had just stayed out of this, if she'd just let him run his plan like he'd wanted to, the mage stronghold of San Francisco would have been dust beneath their feet. But, no. She'd had to stick her nose where it didn't belong.

Max pushes himself to his feet, sneering and hissing and spitting. He leaves his office and marches down the hallway. He passes a Seedling on the way. The boy gives an indignified squawk and flattens himself against the wall, as if that could save him-

Memories and thoughts and emotions all flood into Max's head at once and it nearly knocks him clean off his feet. He sees this stupid Seedling going through his training, feels his reaction to his friends dying. Max almost screams himself when he watches the boy's arm getting cut off and grown back over and over again until he was numb with it, barely even reacting to the boning saw.

Control. Control. I can-

"Please! Please! I'll do anything! Not again, just- not again, PLEASE!"

"Shut up!" Max lashes out, cutting down the cowering Seedling in a flash of green. The boy jerks, tensing up in his final seconds, and collapses on the ground. Replaceable. They're all replaceable. There was always a new war coming and soon the Seedling program would have fresh recruits. This one meant nothing.

Just like Reiko Kitamori- no, he corrects himself. Plant #1,014. Giving the bitch a name meant that she was a person, not something that could be locked and loaded and fired at will. She'd betrayed him, after all that he'd given her. I made her, she should have been mine. Max had given her everything. All of her supposed strength, all of her skill - he'd gifted it to her. How dare she?

And… she'd wanted him, giving him promising looks out of the corner of her eyes. She'd been flirting with him ever since he'd first seen her, so soft and pliant and willing. How could any man deny himself that? So Max had taken her into his bed, promising to keep her forever, to make her eternally young. She'd cried so prettily when he told her that. He thinks that he'd loved her back then, but Plant #1,014 had taken that love and betrayed him.

I'll kill her myself. I'll destroy her like she tried to destroy me, Max promises, touching the blood-slick skin beneath his new golden eye. Nothing can stand in the way of a divine weapon. I'm invincible. I was chosen for this.

He needs to find Keith. Max continues to stumble down the hallway towards where he hopes the boy is. He focuses the power of the Eye and the world inverts for a moment. He's blasted by all the thoughts of those on the island. But he is strong, stronger now that he wields this great weapon, so he sorts through them until he finds Keith's thoughts and memories.

Max pushes aside the worst of them, focusing instead on Keith's victories and the feelings of pride that came with them. He concentrates specifically on the memory of the boy's hunt of Lindsay Devlin, a mage from Oklahoma with the power to control plant life. Max sees the girl in his mind, Chinese and pretty with slim hips and arms barely covered by the whorish muggle rags she wore. He watches as Keith brings the girl in for execution, watches the mage die as the Ring is dropped around her neck. He takes a bit of sick pleasure experiencing the orgasm Keith has with the prostitute he hires behind a bar afterwards - she's not his type, she's too old, but Keith likes her in the memory so Max does a well.

Mine, he thinks. He's mine. His memories, his successes, his life are mine to claim. Latner thinks she knows everything, but no, she's so stupid. She has no idea what I've created.

He finds Keith leaning on Tilla Mook's shoulder outside the cell of a teenaged mage. Mook is drunk. Keith is beyond that, not even conscious, drool darkening the fabric of the witch's clothing. Max is pulled into Mook's memories the moment they make eye contact. He watches that failed mission in Belfast, sees the look of rage on Plant #85,470M's face as he bursts onto the scene and slays the men that had surrounded her. He watches as the Plant kneels before her, emotion breaking through decades of conditioning, and cradles Mook's face in his hands, like the witch is something utterly precious.

"Depre, De- what are you doing?! The mission! You're target!"

"You're alive. You're alive."

The Plant rests his forehead against her's, fingers shaking with terror and exhaustion, and Max suddenly has the most powerful piece of blackmail against Mook that he could ever need.

"Stand," he commands. Mook attempts to lurch to her feet, but she stumbles and falls the first time. Keith remains unresponsive against the wall as the witch finally stands. "Wake him."

Mook actually kicks the boy in the shin. A fit of rage pulses through Max and then Mook is on the ground, shrieking at the top of her lungs and clawing at her scalp. Keith jerks awake and slurs something, ignoring Max and reaching towards the witch. Max pulls Mook out of her memories of going through the Seedling program and orders her to stand again.

"You have new orders," Max says. "I want to know everything the hostages know about the Three Kings. Use whatever force necessary. I don't care how many survive."

He'd do it himself, but he needs to rest the Eye. It takes so much out of him to wield it at full capacity that his control over its powers are slipping. I will be stronger by the time I am needed again, he tells himself.

"The… the what?" Keith asks. Max signs and steps forwards, trying to hide the shaking in his hands. He ignores how Keith flinches back when he gets close enough and draws his wand.

"The Three Kings, my boy," he says, casting a spell over Keith to sober him up. I must protect him, even from himself. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's too young. "You remember the stories, right? Your mother must have read them to you as a child."

"She did, yes sir," Keith nods, his eyes flickering between the left and right sides of Max's face, as if unsure of what to look at, how not to stare. He wants to laugh.

"It turns out that we were wrong about the Ring's untimely demise," Max explains. "The Thief King managed to survive Ryou Andrews' execution and is currently alive and well inside of San Francisco. If we don't act soon, the Pharaoh will join him. We need to know what they know."

"Sir? The… You can't be serious. He-"

Max is drawn into several of Keith's memories all at once. He sees the boy sitting on a bench, pleading for the Spirit of the Millennium Ring to save his mage convert. He gets flashes of Ryou Andrews playing chess against himself in the middle of the night, Keith trying to kidnap the mage and take him far away from the reaches of the Department, of how Andrews' final moments have been haunting Keith for weeks now.

Then-

"Bakura..." Max whispers, taken aback by the memory that Keith is frantically trying to hide. "You warned him that we were coming."

"No!" Keith shouts. "No, I swear, I swear to Merlin, sir, I didn't!"

"He came into your home and you spoke with him and you let him go without firing a single spell!" How dare he? After all that Max has done for him, how dare Keith Howard repay him like this? "All for some dead mage brat!"

Max sees the thoughts erupting in Keith's head before the boy lashes out at him. Max blocks his clumsy attempt at an attack and pushes back with just a fraction of the power of the Eye. Keith falls to the ground like Mook did, screaming and crying and coughing blood.

"You've got traitor's blood, just like that bitch Kitamori," he hisses. "I should have let you both die!"

"Please! Please! Make it stop! I'll do anything-"

"Do you know what's so funny about all of this," Max laughs hysterically. "You begged the Spirit to save your pathetic convert, so he leached away the brat's life energy and used it to come back into this world. If you'd never told him about Ryou Andrews, Thief King Bakura would still be dead. This is all your fault, you stupid boy!"

He releases Keith from the Eye's power and nearly collapses from the strain. I've used too much, Max thinks. I need to rest.

"B-Bakura?" Keith stammers, "Bakura is…?"

He doesn't say anything else. Mook takes him protectively into her arms, whispering something that Max assumes is comfort. First Kitamori and now Keith. Traitors. I should have known better than to trust them.

"The mage from the break in?" Mook asks, eyes hard. There are lines on her face from years of frowning. Any attractiveness that she may have possessed during her days in the Seedling program is long done. Only a Plant could ever delude itself into seeing something there anymore.

"The great King of Thieves, yes," Max spits. "The master of souls. The bloodborn. The child of the moon and the night and the air- yes, him. He walks amongst us again because of-"

Max sways on the spot, the world spinning around him. His nose is bleeding again. Control it. Control the Eye. I was chosen. I was chosen.

"Take him away," he shouts at Mook, looking at Keith in disgust. "If he loves mages so much, he can die with them."

Mook, pale are curdled milk, takes Keith by the arm and pulls him to his feet, leading him away by the arm and shaking the whole time. Max spits on the floor where they were sitting together and stumbles back towards the exit, only to be stopped by his house elf, Croquet.

"Master," the elf croaks, "There's been a problem with one of the prisoners."

"What now?" He snaps. I need to rest. I don't have time for this.

"It's Solomon Mutuo, sir. It seems he's escaped from his cell."

Max licks his lips and tastes the dried blood on them, "Well, then… We can't have that, can we?"

"No, sir," Croquet responds.

"Assign Mook's pet Plant to the task. We need to test his true loyalty," he orders.

"Alive or dead, master?"

"Alive preferably, but I'm not picky. Tell him to keep Mutuo's brain intact. I might need pull more memories out later," Max sneers. "And make it quick. I don't have all day."

Croquet nods and disappears with a crack. Max takes one more step towards the door before he's treated to the sound of laughter.

The mage boy that had escaped the island somehow finds this all hilarious.

"Something to say, brat?" Max asks unkindly.

"Yeah," the mage says. "When Bakura finds you, he's going to kill you."

"You think that, do you?" Stupid boy. No one outside of the Department knows where this island is. They're protected from any kind of detection. And even if the Thief King could find us, Max thinks, touching the golden orb in his socket. I have this.

"No. I know so," the mage states, a grin wide across his face. "He's going to kill you."

"Idiot," Max hisses and turns away. I was chosen for this. Let them come. Let them all come. I was chosen. I was chosen.

He slams the door behind him and doesn't look back.

Reiko sits calmly in the passenger seat of the Prius and waits to be taken to the next location. Her hands are bound together with a thin string that Amanda Green had wrapped around her wrists while chanting ancient words of power, binding her to the Spellcaster's will by the name her mother gave her. Reiko hadn't said anything then about how Green was using Mala Pukar's exact techniques, but her mind had been anything but blank or still.

Tris and Nat had joined the Inner Circle sometime in the mid seventies, the first women to do so since Holly, who was only a few decades younger than Helena herself. The Department Head had taken a special interest in the two Lab Rats after they'd co-written a paper together about mage abilities spanning across time. Apparently, there were records of mages from different centuries having the exact same powers as each other, putting a pattern to the seemingly random nature of their craft.

If what the two of them said was true, then perhaps the reason Green knew Pukar's secrets wasn't that the old Spellcaster had passed on her knowledge in secret. Perhaps Green actually was Pukar.

If that's the case… Reiko lets her thoughts trail off, unable to finish them. She stares at Green now, taking in the Spellcaster for all that she is. Merlin.

Amanda Green is strikingly beautiful, all long blonde hair and bright green eyes, her tight clothing hugging the curves of her body in a way that Reiko finds distracting. Green walks like she's six feet tall, confident and powerful and radiant. But she's also shockingly friendly and sweet, asking Reiko what she wants for dinner as she slides into the driver's seat and turns the key to fire up the ignition with no hint of malice or hatred. It's unnerving to say the least.

"I don't know," Reiko says finally, as they pull out of the parking garage beneath Seto Kaiba's condo and drive into the streets of San Francisco.

"Then we're getting shawarma. There's a great shawarma place down the road from my school. God, I hope their still in business. They're owned by this family from Pakistan and they are the nicest people on the planet, I swear to god. And they make their own zhug, it's the greatest-"

Green carries on like that for a while, prattling away about this and that. Reiko takes it all in, learning about how this family had a son in kindergarten and a daughter in second grade and a set of twins on the way. Regardless, it takes Reiko an astounding amount of time to clue into the fact that Najma and Layaali, the two people Green is talking about, are a pair of married women. And that shocks the absolute hell out of her.

The thing is, Reiko knows that Green is a lesbian. She witnessed her kissing a girl with short brown hair goodbye from across the parking lot. And it's clearly not a secret from their friends, since they'd all been there at the time. Reiko had watched as another pair, a large blond man and his slender red-headed male partner held each other's hands and walked with Green's girlfriend to the bus stop.

The fact that it's so normal here, that no one even blinks twice at the idea of two women or two men being together, makes Reiko fist her hands in her robes. I'm jealous, she realizes. Calm down. This isn't the time.

Except her memories rise up from the depths of her mind anyways, just like they always seem to be doing these days. The last time that she'd seen Gara, they'd been eighteen and Ariana Dumbledore was doomed but not dead. Helena had promised that they could see each other once more before Reiko's service had to begin.

Gara had looked as beautiful and serene as ever when Reiko walked into the room on the island. They'd given her a white silk dress that glinted in the moonlight streaming through the window, her golden hair curling around her face. She'd looked wild and untamable then, and if Reiko hadn't been in love before, she'd have fallen then.

"They said they're taking me back to the Gardens," Gara said. "Reiko, what have you promised them? What have you done?"

Reiko reached up and cupped her face in her hands, "It doesn't matter. You'll be safe."

"They haven't said anything about Gel. They're not saying anything at all," Gara pleaded.

"It will be alright," Reiko promised and kissed her softly, trying to memorize the feel and the taste of her, because this would be the last time. "I love you. Remember that. I love you."

"Reiko, what have you done?" Gara asked again, tears streaming down her face. Reiko wiped them away with her thumbs.

"I love you," she said again. There was a knock at the door. The voice behind it told her to hurry up. "Forever. Always. It will always be you."

Reiko's stirred from her thoughts when Green parks the car and reaches into the back seat for her purse, "Got any allergies I should know about?"

"No," she shakes her head.

"Gonna get you lamb, unless you wanted something else," Green comments.

"Why are you being nice to me?" Reiko asks. "If it's because Atem told you about-"

"Yeah, she told about why you're here," Green says, righting herself in her seat. She sighs and stares blankly at the dashboard.

"If this is pity, I don't want it."

"It's not pity. It's- god, I don't even fucking know," Green rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands and groans. "It's me pretending to be normal. Pretending that this is normal. That I can just go down to my favourite shawarma place that through some luck hasn't been blown up or that the people inside aren't dead and that I can just go home to babysit a prisoner of war and maybe Matt will be there instead of on some god forsaken rock in the middle of nowhere!"

She shouts the last bit, voice cracking with anger, with terror. Reiko blinks at her, saying nothing.

"And I can't even be angry at you because you've been used and abused by the same people who have been trying to kill us for centuries, even though you've been killing us for centuries, and I've always imagined you being this hulking monster but instead you're just-" Green pauses to take a breath, gesturing wildly at Reiko, "-just this."

Small, Reiko thinks. Slight. Young. There are so many possibilities that Reiko tries to stop thinking about them. She knows what people see when they look at her. They see this tiny Asian woman, who they expect to be quiet and gentle, or a dutiful housewife. They don't expect the killer underneath.

"How old were you when you killed Mala Pukar?" Green asks suddenly and Reiko's heart stops in her chest.

[Mission Report

Assassinate Mala Pukar

Status: Complete
Error? Error?]

"Late forties, I think. I stopped counting after I turned thirty eight," Reiko says. Two decades without Gara. Then, very carefully, she asks, "You remember being Mala Pukar?"

Green doesn't say anything for a minute or two. Finally, she whispers, "God, you were young." Green chuckles humourlessly, "So, you guys know about cycling, then?"

"Is that what you call it? Cycling?" Reiko tries the word out on her tongue.

Green hums in acknowledgement, "Yeah. What do you call it?"

"Reincarnation, mostly. Nat always used to group each mage into sequences. But she would never have guessed that you could actually remember…" Reiko stares at Green in wonder. "How is that even possible? To knock memories loose on a spiritual scale would take-"

"A freaking magical nuke. Yeah." Green frowns suddenly, "A nuke is-"

"I know what a nuclear bomb is."

"Seriously? 'Cause a few of the wizard born mages we've run into don't even know that the earth goes around the sun."

"I like learning about our history. Both sides of it: non-magic and wizard," Reiko shrugs. "All three sides, actually. Got to include you guys, too, I guess."

Green nods somberly and says nothing else. Reiko clamps down on the need to fidget from the silence. "I'm not sorry that I killed you."

"I'm not sorry for what I did either, so I guess we're even," Green says stiffly. She sighs again and arches her back into a stretch. Reiko very pointedly does not watch the way her shirt rides up with the motion. "So, lamb shawarma?"

"Lamb shawarma," Reiko repeats, then smirks. "Extra hot sauce?"

"Oh my god, girl, it's like you know me or something," Green smiles, talking to Reiko like she can't just order her to do anything she wants. "Stay here. I'll be right back."

Let her pretend, Reiko thinks as she watches Green practically skip into the tiny stop. The two women behind the counter greet her with open arms and tears of joy, their children clinging to Green's legs. Give her these last few moments of normalcy before war tears her apart again. And… Reiko thinks of Gara, wrapped in silk and moonlight ...Let me pretend, too. Just for a moment. Let me be a child again.

Hello again!

I'd like to thank those who reviewed for the last chapter: Trafalgar Thunderbird Law, dragomira, Rita Mu, green lilah, anita15, CrimsonStrawberry17, Chuchutu, Tz342, Evilkitten3, and Dana Sto Helit. You guys are awesome!

Sorry that I can't stay and talk for long. I'l literally about to head out the door. But if you have any comments or questions, please leave a review and I'll be able to answer them.

Until next time,

AlcatrazOutpatient