A/N: I've taken some liberties with regards to Sarah's hometown, because none of the filming locations were anywhere near large enough to contain a decent rave scene. Robbinsville, Ohio is an imaginary municipality in the greater Cleveland area which bears strange and startling resemblances to Upper Nyack, NY; Haverstraw, NY; West Wycombe Park, Buckinghamshire; and a mysteeeeerrious set constructed for no apparent purposes at Elstree Studios in 1985. I've been to Ohio twice (and by been to, I mostly mean "driven through"), so I'm basically an expert, and this seems plausible to me. It's a place with things. Some of those things are buildings. Others are parks and trees. #noresearchwednesdays #authorialprerogative #ignoranteastcoaster #dealwithit

Betaed by the many-talented syntheticaesthetic (find her work linked in my favorite authors). Seriously, she went above and beyond on this soul-destroying monster of a chapter. She rocks.

TW [see profile for key]: referenced/implied (i), (m), (v), referenced (ab), (ac), (af), (aj), (as), (av), (aw), implied (az)

Chapter 6

Five Years

I think I saw you in an ice cream parlor,
Drinking milk shakes, cold and long,
Smiling and waving and looking so fine
Don't think you knew you were in this song…

We've got five years, stuck on my eyes.
Five years, what a surprise.
Five years: my brain hurts a lot.
Five years, that's all we've got.

"Five Years," David Bowie.

Emptied onto shifting sheets,
Wearing rosary holes in my ceiling,
Waiting for my purpose to deliver,
And reveal itself to me.

"Bracing for Sunday," Neko Case.

Summer, 1991

Summer brings a return to Ohio, and, for a few awful weeks, all the trauma of the previous year. The town is rancid with memory and nowhere more so than her own home. She'd just about borne it last summer. She hadn't had the dreams to deal with then.

Her first week back, they come every night. It had been bad enough, in the weeks following the Mac incident, dying night after night in a flash of silver, only to wake, sweat-soaked and shivering, with Marjan slumbering peacefully just across the room. In the wake of Chloe's visit and Sarah's newfound resolution, the nightmares had receded a little. But now—

Now she's home again, tucked into her childhood bed, and the history in the room rises up to choke her.

"And remember, fair maiden, should you ever need us…"

"Yes, should you need us, for any reason at all…"

"I need you," she'd said, voice half-choked on desperation and longing. She'd needed them, and they had come and for a few hours, her tiny, childish, junk-filled room had been baptized anew with magic and friendship and possibility.

When she woke in the morning, she'd known—known, somehow, on a deep and visceral level that went beyond certainty—that it had been a dream, but strangely, that hadn't dampened her optimism, and she'd gone to the mirror and called out:

"Hoggle! Ludo! Sir Didymus!"

No one had responded, of course. She hadn't really expected that they would, and so she wasn't disappointed, but instead went on with her morning, and as soon as lunch was finished, ran back upstairs to try again.

By the end of the first week, she was holding out for the thirteenth day. Thirteen hours Underground, thirteen days Above—a perfect and irresistible symmetry. And still, every morning, every evening, and every stolen moment between, a litany of need, a poisonous hope:

"Sir Didymus! Hoggle! Ludo!"

On the morning of the fourteenth day, she'd pulled the hangings off her bed, tore the Escher print from her wall, and bagged up all her toys. The ones she could still bear to look at—whose faces she had never seen bright and animated with a life she'd never thought to dream of—were put aside for Toby. The rest went into a sack labeled "for charity," which she tossed onto a pile of similar sacks in the corner of the garage. Irene would never know the difference.

Now, awakening from dreams of Goblin Kings and masquerades and cat-eyed women with death in their hands and upon their tongues, she stumbles out of bed and into the bathroom. The witching hour, they'd called this time of night once, between the hours of three and four when all the world was asleep. Sarah passes it staring down the porcelain curve of the toilet bowl, nose filled with the stench of bleach and the taste of bile sour on her tongue.

The daylight hours bring their own anxieties.

A year, it seems, hasn't been enough to resolve last summer's tension. Monica still won't talk to her; Mike, as always, follows Monica's lead. Andre appears to bear less of a grudge but sides with Mike. Christine and Sarah share one exquisitely awkward lunch date ("A lunch date!" Sarah complains to Alisse afterwards. "Like, how old does she think we are?"), which, according to an unspoken agreement, is never repeated, though at least they smile when they pass one another in the street.

But there's Alisse, loyal as ever, brimming with spitfire and indignation and a savage wit that fires a mixture of gossip and ad hominems behind their backs, and, with a frequency as satisfying as it is embarrassing, to the faces of Sarah's detractors. And if it's a style of conflict management which inevitably involves a lot more burning than building of bridges, at least it's a hell of a lot of fun.

Alisse's support isn't enough to numb the sting of rejection completely, but as the days pass, Sarah finds herself with less and less time to dwell on her lackluster social life. As if her day job as a camp counselor and her babysitting duties at home weren't distractions enough, she's started her EMT training: six hours Tuesday and Thursday evenings, twelve hours on Saturday, and a volume of homework that would awe even her most draconian professors. By midsummer, Sarah can barely remember what having a normal social life is like, let alone find the time or mental energy to mourn its loss.

Beneath the exhaustion, there lurks a strange excitement. It comes to her late one night as she pours over her EMT textbook. I'm becoming myself. The thought is a fragile and delicate thing, not yet a truth, but—just maybe—the seed of one.

Gradually, the nightmares subside and are replaced with dreams about tachycardia, blowout fractures, and cerebrospinal fluid.

"What's got you so chipper?" Alisse demands.

"Stress dreams," Sarah says happily.

She'd dreamed the night before that she was taking the final exam for EMT certification, which for some reason had consisted entirely of questions about Bob Dylan's early eighties discography. "But the early eighties were his lost years!" she'd protested. "Everyone knows that!" It hadn't been a particularly pleasant dream, but the very fact that she was having nightmares about something so normal…

Alisse gives a despairing shake of the head. "God, you're weird."

"I may be weird," Sarah acknowledges cheerfully, "but I'm also driving. So, you can be nice to me, or you can walk to the concert. Your call!"

"Fascist," Alisse accuses, making a swipe for the keys.

Sarah thrusts them into the air, smiling down at her friend with all the superiority of 5'7" over 5'1". She presses her spare hand over her heart and flutters her eyelashes. "Your fascist."

As it turns out, Alisse isn't the only remaining ally Sarah has among her high school friends. Ernie Ling, in typically idiosyncratic Ernie fashion, has spent most of the summer in Vermont studying German, but he returns home for a few weeks before school starts and makes a point of tracking her down. They'd never been much more than friendly at school, and Sarah is as bemused as touched by the effort.

"We should hang out during term sometime," Ernie suggests. "You're at Amherst, right?"

Sarah's babysitting again that night, but the family car had hardly pulled out of the garage before she'd heard a rap at the backyard gate. She'd opened it to find Ernie with his niece in tow, a surprisingly warlike seven-year-old who was no sooner introduced to her host's younger brother than she opened fire on him from an artfully concealed Nerf blaster. Ernie presented Sarah with his own offering—a six-pack of White Mountain coolers—and they'd settled down together to watch the carnage.

"UMass," she agrees now, raising her bottle in toast.

Ernie clinks it. "Wicked. That's only, like, three hours from Ithaca!"

Sarah wrinkles her nose. "Four and a half."

He waves this away. "Three, four and a half, whatever. Don't be such a buzzkill, Williams. We'll work something out."

Somewhat to Sarah's surprise, they do.

Autumn, 1991

She receives her EMT qualifications just in time for the start of the fall semester. Her new EMT duties, combined with the increased workload of her second year, leave her with less time than ever for a normal social life, but since most of her upperclassmen friends have graduated, this is more a boon than anything else.

In addition to her increased workload, pressure comes from the need to choose a major. After some minor soul-searching—she falls half in love with anthropology at the beginning of the semester, but discards it as an option as soon as she realizes it requires several modules on world mythology (and surely she's had enough of myths and legends to last a lifetime)—she declares a major in political science with a minor in international development: practical, real-world, certain to please her father, and an excellent foundation for any number of possible careers as a do-gooder.

"I'm not sure that's an actual job title," says Ernie, who is visiting from Cornell. "Maybe try something a bit more specific?"

He plucks off his glasses and holds them in front of her face. "Sarah Williams," he says, making his voice deep and plummy, "international diplomat."

He squints at her for a moment, then shakes his head. "Nah, can't see it."

"You can't see anything like that," Sarah accuses, laughing. "Put those back on!"

With one hand, she sweeps her hair into a twisty updo; the other she extends elegantly towards him, wrist first.

"Sarah Williams," she drawls. "Philanthropist."

"Sarah Williams," he counters, putting a fist on his hip and striking a noble pose, "professional heroine!"

The good humor drains away from her at once.

"I thought you said I should shoot for something more specific," she says, forcing a smile.

"Heroine is plenty specific! I can just see it—Sarah Williams, Professional Heroine. Slayer of manticores, rescuer of princesses, vanquisher of villains… You could get business cards and everything."

"Yeah," she says, getting to her feet. "Sorry, have to go to the bathroom."

In the bathroom, she dabs at her face with cold water.

"Get it together," she tells her reflection.

It wasn't just the sudden rush of memory that had discomposed her—the lingering sting of failure, the weight of the secret heavy on her tongue. It was the twist of longing beneath her ribs as he mapped out her imaginary future. Sarah Williams, Professional Heroine.

"Grow the fuck up," she snaps, tossing the towel at the mirror, and turns off the light.

Spring, 1992

The need to choose a major isn't the only thing that makes sophomore year memorable. Halfway through spring term, Alisse turns up on her doorstep with a suitcase and a determinedly cheerful expression.

"Cut you off?" Sarah repeats, aghast, wedging Alisse's overstuffed duffel bag into the corner next to the sofa.

"Without a cent!"

"Jesus. That must've been some fight."

"Remember the summer I turned fourteen, when I told my mom I didn't want to be confirmed and she packed me off to my aunt's in Indiana?"

As it happens, Sarah remembers that summer quite well for a number of reasons, least among them the latest skirmish in the civil war that has been raging in the Rochefort household ever since Alisse spat the grape juice back into the cup at her first communion.

Not that she can ever tell Alisse as much. Much less what those reasons are.

So she just says, "Yeah, I remember."

Alisse takes a breath. "So, like, that, only about a million times worse."

Sarah sucks in a sympathetic breath. "What happened?"

"Told her I was a lesbian," Alisse says, in what is probably supposed to be an offhand tone of voice. "She didn't take it well."

Sarah winces. Mrs. Rochefort thinks AIDS is a judgment on the sodomites.

"Yeah," she says, "I reckon that'd do it."

For a moment, she looks at Alisse—really looks at her, noting the tension in her shoulders and the poorly masked anxiety on her face.

"Oh, c'mere," she says, stepping forward and slinging an arm around her friend's shoulders.

It's awkward at first. Sarah isn't much of a "touchy" person these days—in fact, the last time she can remember spontaneously expressing physical affection for someone other than her baby brother, she and her friend were dumped into a certain bog of eternal infamy, which is the sort of thing which tends to leave an impression.

Then Alisse turns into the embrace, and they're hugging properly, and Alisse is muttering, "You are literally the worst hugger I've ever met," and everything is all right again.

"We always knew your mom was a stone-cold bitch," Sarah says, once they've pulled apart. "My lease goes to the end of May, but if you don't get sick of sleeping on the couch first, we can hunt around for a new place then."

Alisse looks at her from under her lashes. "I kind of thought I could get the bed, and you would take the sofa," she says, innocently. "Since, you know, I'm being persecuted and shit."

Sarah grins and chucks her on the arm. "Keep dreaming."

Fall, 1993

Alisse acquires a job and a girlfriend in record time, although the latter is soon dropped in favor of classes at the local community college ("Only so many hours in the day!" she tells Sarah blithely). Sarah's roommate, unprepared for a hard-drinking, perpetually chipper, semi-permanent houseguest, moves in with her boyfriend, and Alisse takes over her room and her share of the lease.

Time passes. Sarah's life, as she approaches graduation, becomes a complex tapestry of classes, homework, extracurriculars, EMT duties, stressing out about graduation plans, dates, breakups, boozy pity parties with Alisse, more classes. Mundanity piles upon mundanity until Sarah is left with a tottering heap of normal that dwarfs the few, semi-suppressed memories and vague sense of malaise that are all that remain of her encounters with the supernatural.

It's only occasionally that something happens to bring her memories of the hidden world back in force.

It's a Thursday in October of her senior year. It's her duty night, and she's sitting in the kitchen, trying to wrap her brain around the finer points of Keynesian economics when the call comes: barbiturate overdose, possible attempted suicide.

The address is only two blocks from her apartment. Sarah's stomach lurches as she realizes she's beaten the ambulance to the scene.

Hammering on the front door, she runs through the pre-hospital treatment for barbiturate overdose in her mind: Keep the patient upright. Secure the patient's breathing. Do not, under any circumstances, let the patient fall asleep. She's just preparing to force her way in when the door opens.

A young woman stands in the doorway. She's pale—almost ashen—and there's a dazed sort of vulnerability in her gaze.

The sight strikes a faint note of discord within her—the dispatcher had said the patient was alone.

Sarah ignores it.

"I'm with Amherst Emergency Medical Services," she says rapidly. "We're responding to an emergency call made from this location."

A spark of recognition. "Right, of course."

The night is cool and crisp, but the air inside the apartment is stuffy—crowded—filled with a strange, unidentifiable heaviness.

It makes Sarah's brain itch.

She twitches her shoulders, trying to shake off the tension like a horse shakes off a fly. Focus, she tells herself. Her eyes are already scanning the room. "Where's the patient?"

"Here," says the girl. A faint wash of color enters her cheeks. "I mean, it's me."

For a split second, Sarah only stares at her. The dispatcher had said the patient had taken a dozen sleeping pills with half a glass of vodka. Yet here she is, standing upright and unsupported and apparently lucid. In spite of herself, she feels a faint frisson of apprehension. Something here doesn't…feel right.

As she conducts her examination, Sarah's urgency fades, supplanted by puzzlement and a growing unease. The girl—Tiffany—displays no symptoms of an overdose or even intoxication. Her pulse, breathing, and blood pressure are normal, her pupils undilated, her speech clear and cogent, her coordination unimpaired. The only thing out of the ordinary is the smell which clings to her, something sweet and clean and inexplicably familiar.

Tiffany insists that she feels no effects from the drugs. She's not tired, she tells Sarah. "Except emotionally, maybe," she adds with a faint, self-conscious smile. She furrows her brow. "I was before though. When I made the call. Tired, I mean, and I kept—" her voice catches "—kept knocking things over. I was trying to dial 911 but I could barely press the buttons and my voice wasn't working right. And then—" She frowns suddenly. "I can't actually remember. But after that I was feeling okay, and then you showed up."

This loss of memory comes up again and again, though from Sarah's understanding of the timeline it couldn't encompass more than a few minutes. Tiffany doesn't feel nauseous and she doesn't remember throwing up. She doesn't remember taking any other drugs.

"I don't even remember opening the window," she says, helplessly, gesturing to where curtains flutter gently in a breeze that entirely fails to dispel the thickness in the air.

"It looks like you've been very lucky so far," Sarah says finally. "But we'll still need to get you to the hospital for observation and testing."

She puts a little weight on "testing." If Tiffany is lying, it's possible the word will throw her.

The girl just nods. "Yeah." She shakes her head. "The whole thing—it's so weird, to think I— Like I'm dreaming it, except I know I'm awake. You know?"

A tingle of recognition creeps up Sarah's spine. She knows. It's all part and parcel with the déjà vu that's been shadowing her since she first stepped through the door. As she bends down to take Tiffany's pulse once more she catches another whiff of that strange, sweet smell, and in a sudden, disconcerting rush of memory, she recognizes it.

The storm hung heavy in the air, thick with the scent of petrichor and ozone. Outside the window, lightning crackled and raced across the sky. She hadn't known then—how could she?—that this was more than just another summer storm, and so she dismissed the disquieting sense of presence, the charged expectation that permeated the room, filled her lungs and sent tingles shivering down her spine.

She'd heard the creaks and rustling in the shadows and taken them for mice in the woodwork, for the sounds of the house settling. And the voices—strange voices, insinuating voices—that whispered and chittered at the edge of hearing, these she took for her own thoughts. She opened her mouth to speak—old words, powerful and treacherous, and never guessed they were not her own.

"I wish—"

A sudden groan of floorboards startles her out of her reverie. She drops Tiffany's wrist. The two women exchange looks, one vague and inquiring, the other taut and controlled.

Sarah speaks first.

"When is your roommate due home?"

Tiffany blinks at her. "What roommate?"

Sarah's heart begins to pound.

"Stay here."

Slowly, she rises to her feet, careful to angle herself so she stands between her patient and the source of the noise.

Another creak, louder now, from outside the front door, followed by a rustling—

(—from the crib, sheets flailing with uninfantlike movement to the echo of strange, creaking laughter—)

—in the corridor. Then, a thud that rattles the door, once, and then again, harder.

(—windows shuddering against the beating of wings—)

Sarah wraps her fingers around the doorknob and yanks the door open, just as a voice outside begins to speak.

"This is Amherst Emergency—oh."

The adrenaline deserts her all at once and she sags against the doorframe.

"Didn't realize you'd beaten us here," says Joey Cochrane, picking up the EMT bag from where he'd dropped it outside the door. "Roy's waiting out front."

"Who is it?" Tiffany calls, voice tinged with concern, and Sarah could have kicked herself for upsetting her patient with her stupid, baseless paranoia. Get a grip.

"It's all right," she says. "The ambulance is here."

The arrival of ambulance brings with it the reassurance of routine and Sarah's anxiety drains away as she and Joey help Tiffany onto the gurney and settle her in the ambulance.

Her relief is short-lived. Their usual ambulance driver, it seems, is off sick, forcing Roy, the most experienced among them and the only one who can reliably keep Joey in line, to take his place behind the wheel, and leaving Sarah and Joey to manage the patients alone. Joey is a competent enough EMT, but he thinks tact is something you use to attach things to bulletin boards, and he makes no effort to hide how implausible he finds Tiffany's story.

"BP 110 over 70," Sarah tells him. "Pulse of 60 bpm."

Joey just grunts.

"We should administer supplemental oxygen—"

"She's breathing fine," he says, impatiently. "Look at her."

Sarah has to admit he has a point.

Tiffany snatches at Sarah's sleeve. "What are you talking about?"

"Just discussing how best to take care of you." She smiles reassuringly. "Nothing to worry about."

Tiffany narrows her eyes at Joey. "He doesn't believe me, does he?" she says in a low voice.

Joey rolls his eyes and turns his head away.

"It's true," Tiffany insists in growing agitation. "You think I would lie about something like that?" She turns to Sarah. "You believe me, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Sarah soothes.

"I wanted to die," Tiffany says, white-knuckled hands writhing in her lap. She bites her lip. "Or, I thought I did. And then, by the time I realized…" She ends on a whisper. "Too late."

"It's not too late," says Sarah firmly. "You've been doing really well so far, and the hospital is filled with doctors and nurses who will make sure it stays that way."

But the floodgates are open.

"I remember wishing—praying—that something would happen to save me. I would have given anything…" She trails off, bowing her head over her clasped hands, her forehead creasing in some effort of intense concentration.

"Tiffany?" Sarah says, after a minute.

Tiffany raises her head and looks at her through dreamy, shell-shocked eyes.

"Do you believe in angels?"

Unbidden, an image flashes into Sarah's mind unbidden of a beautiful, otherworldly face surrounded by a nimbus of pale hair. She remembers the tension in the apartment, the strange thickness in the air, the sweet, incongruous scent of summer storms. Wishing, Tiffany had said…

Angrily, she shoves the thought aside.

"You're saying an angel healed you," Joey says, flatly.

Sarah shoots him a warning glance.

Tiffany doesn't appear to notice. "No," she says, hunching her shoulders. Then: "I don't know. I thought…" She begins to fidget, shifting restlessly in her seat. "For a second, I— But I can't—" She presses her clasped hands to her mouth, then, with a sudden, violent motion, flings them aside. "Why can't I remember?"

"Hey," Sarah says. "Hey, I'm sure it'll come back. No need to think about that now. Focus on staying calm—we'll be at the hospital soon."

Obediently, Tiffany settles down. Sarah takes her blood pressure and pulse again: both slightly elevated, but still normal.

After a moment, Tiffany speaks.

"I hope it was an angel," she says in a small voice. "I really, really…" She trails off. And then, so low that Sarah has to lean forward to hear: "Because if it wasn't— If it was something else…"

Sarah and Joey exchange looks.

"Tiffany, I don't understand. What do you mean, 'if it wasn't'?"

Silence.

"Is there something you haven't told us?" Sarah urges.

Tiffany whirls on her, eyes bright and glassy, almost feverish. "I keep telling you, I don't remember. How can I tell you anything if I can't remember?" Her voice climbs alarmingly on the last words.

Joey tenses and Sarah lifts a hand: Wait.

"I'm sorry," she says to Tiffany. "Of course you can't tell us anything you don't remember."

Tiffany's shoulders slump. She scrubs a hand over her face. "It's not— I don't— I keep getting glimpses. Like— like flashes of movement in a darkened mirror. But I can't seem to hold it."

She lapses into silence.

"Memories can be like that," Sarah says after a moment. "It's a good sign that you're remembering anything at all. But you can't force it. You have to let it—"

Tiffany stiffens, sucking in a rattling breath.

"What's wrong? Tiffany?"

Tiffany has begun to tremble. "No," she whispers. "No, no. I didn't— It's not true, I couldn't— Oh please—" She chokes.

Sarah crouches in front of her, taking Tiffany's hands in her own. "Tiffany, listen to me."

Tiffany lifts her head, and the look in her eyes is like nothing Sarah has ever seen.

"I gave it away," she says slowly, almost drunkenly. "A bargain, he said. He asked me and I gave it away."

"Listen," Sarah says, fighting to keep the urgency from her voice, to stay firm and even and reassuring, just like she's been trained. "We're pulling into the hospital now. Just stay calm. Everything's going to be fine—"

A wail of rage and anguish rips from Tiffany's throat.

"Fine? Fine? You stupid bitch, don't you know?" She tears her hands from Sarah's and seizes her by the arms, clawlike fingers gouging deep into her flesh. "Don't you know?"

Joey is out of his seat, arms wrapping around Tiffany from behind and pulling her away from Sarah, just as the ambulance comes to a stop. There's the sound of a door slamming as Roy Everett leaps out of the ambulance cab and yanks open the doors, as Tiffany gabbles away, body jerking convulsively in Joey's grasp.

"A bargain, he said, and I said anything and now it's gone, it's gone, it's gone! Don't you understand?"

"Secure her legs," Roy instructs. "Gently, now!"

Tiffany's voice soars above them like the voice of some oracle of old. "An angel of the Lord came down from heaven. His face was like lightning and his clothes black as pitch and he asked me and I said—I said—"

She gasps and stiffens, eyes bugging, mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. For one terrible moment she freezes like that, a perfect, unnatural stillness. Then she collapses in Joey's arms, keening like a wounded animal as great, pulling sobs wrack her frame.

Between the three of them, they manage to safely secure her to the gurney. Her tears slowly subside. By the time the ER nurses wheel her away, she's stopped entirely. Her eyes are lifeless—flat, pale pebbles in a face swollen from weeping. They flick once towards Sarah, then away again, up towards the ceiling. Then she passes through the doors and is gone.

Roy stops them on the way back to the ambulance. "You two all right?"

"I'm fine," Joey says. "Sarah's the one who—"

"It's nothing," Sarah says, curtly, turning half away to hide the trembling in her hands. "Just a little bruised, that's all."

Roy frowns. "Someone really ought to take a look…"

"Joey can do it on the way back."

"Sure," Joey says. He shakes his head. "What was that stuff she was saying, angels and lightning and shit?"

"It's Matthew," Roy says. "'Suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, rolled away the stone, and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow.' It's about the Resurrection."

Joey snorts. "Yeah, that fits. She got it wrong though. About the clothes."

"Well I'm sorry her psychotic break didn't meet your exacting standards," Sarah snaps.

Joey puts up his hands. "Whoa, jeez. Just saying."

She passes a hand over her face. "I need a smoke."

Roy lays a meaty hand on her shoulder. Sarah—to her credit—doesn't flinch. "Just as soon as we get to the firehouse."

She opens her mouth to protest.

"We need to be there in case there's another emergency," Roy reminds her gently.

This time she does flinch. "Right," she says. "Of course. Sorry." She turns around before he can say another word and heads back into the ambulance.

Behind the firehouse twenty minutes later, under the yellow glow of the parking lot lights, she rolls her cigarette with a shaking hand, trying not to think of Tiffany's thousand-yard stare, of the emptiness in her eyes as they wheeled her into the ER.

Eyes, they said, were windows to the soul.

Voices echo through her mind in eerie counterpoint.

"A bargain, he said—"

("It's an old bargain.")

"—and I said anything, and now it's gone!"

("I will preserve their life. In exchange for their soul.")

Then:

"Do you believe in angels?"

In the eye of her memory, she sees once again a halo of wild golden hair.

She gives her head a little shake and takes a drag on her cigarette. She's not thinking rationally. What evidence is there, really? A mentally ill woman claimed to have attempted suicide and implied that she'd been miraculously healed by an angel. She also claimed to have made some sort of bargain, presumably with the angel, which apparently involved giving something away.

Which, now she's thought it through, is no evidence at all. Her father would laugh it out of a courtroom.

She takes another defiant puff.

The parking lot is a little island of artificial light, lost in a lake of darkness. As she inhales, the edges of the light seem to contract, as though the darkness is breathing along with her.

She stares into the middle distance. The little woodland that fringes the parking lot is a patchwork of shadows. If she focuses long enough on any one patch, the others begin to dance and flicker at the edges of her vision.

Like seeing movement in a darkened mirror.

Frowning, she steps forward. There's something faint, just on the edge of hearing—a low susurration of movement, the crackle of branches.

That strange, buzzing, edge-of-the-teeth feeling is rising again, though she can't tell this time if the tension is in the atmosphere or in her.

More shifting and rustling in the undergrowth. Then a brief, faint crackle of—is that laughter? Surely not. It sounded like dry twigs snapping. She turns her head, craning for the source. Something moves in the corner of her eye and she snaps her head back.

Has that shadow always been there, tall and slender under the trees?

Slowly, she turns her head from side to side. The shadow doesn't flicker, doesn't change its shape, doesn't move in the slightest.

She steps forward, narrowing her eyes. If she could only see… If she strains, she can just about make out the vague outlines of tree trunks and bushes in the surrounding woods, even the faint texture of leaves, but here— Nothing but a long black streak, a shade or two darker than the shadows surrounding it.

Her cigarette, left to smolder unregarded, is little more than a stub now, hot against her fingertips. She lets it fall. Its light is only a distraction anyway. She takes another step forward, then another. Still the shadow refuses to resolve into anything meaningful.

She stops at the edge of the circle of light. The shadow is no more than a dozen feet away from her now.

"Hello?" she calls, low and hesitant.

No response.

She almost speaks his name then, catching the word just before it falls from her lips. Surely just speaking it could do her no harm, and yet…

Biting her tongue, she stares furiously into that obstinate patch of blackness.

A thought comes to her then, and she catches her breath on the blasphemy of it. She could… leave. Turn around and just walk away, out of this world of twilit ambiguities, of half-formed threats and crawling shadows. She chokes on a hysterical giggle. Wouldn't that just show them?

She doesn't move.

Cross that threshold, something in her warns, and there's no going back. As she thinks it, she knows it to be true, that even if—as is surely the case—there's nothing there but the projections of a mind tired and troubled searching for meaning in chaos, she'll still have made the choice.

But to walk away… To not know… After what's happened? After what she's seen? (Tiffany's eyes, large and haunted: Do you believe in angels?)

She stands, swaying slightly on the balls of her feet. Forward or back, that's the question. Any second now, she'll take that step. Any second now… She takes one great lungful of October air and shuts her eyes.

"Sarah!"

She whirls around.

The figure before her is half in shadow under the uneven glare of the parking lot lights, but she'd know him anywhere. Nothing supernatural, she thinks, cruel in her relief, would have quite so much baby fat.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to sneak up on women in empty parking lots?"

"I called your name, like, five times!" Joey says indignantly. "What are you, deaf?"

"I thought I saw something," she mutters.

"What, like a deer or something?"

"Or something."

She stares past him, tightening her shoulders.

Joey is silent a moment, waiting for her to elaborate. When she doesn't, he says, "Right, well. Roy sent me to check on you. He said you'd need a ride home."

She opens her mouth to refuse, and hesitates.

That taut, prickling sense of expectation has faded—the moment has passed—but the thought of walking home now, starting at every broken twig, every puff of air, every strange shadow…

"That'd be great, thanks."

"Cool," says Joey, relieved. "Just give me a moment to clear out the passenger's seat…"

He's already walking towards the car. Sarah holds back a moment, twisting around for one last look at the woods. The shadow—if it was ever truly there—is gone, faded back into the piebald darkness. Her throat tightens around a sudden knot of emotion: embarrassment, apprehension, relief, resentment, and loss all twisted up together so she can scarcely tell where one ends and another begins.

Then, with a twitch of her shoulders, she turns her back on the darkness, combs her fingers through her hair, and follows Joey to the car.

Spring, 1994

Sarah graduates cum laude with a GPA of 3.6. Robert Williams has contacted an old buddy from law school and arranged work for her as a paralegal at a well-regarded Boston law firm.

"You can do a lot of good as a lawyer, you know," he'd said. Then, when Sarah still hesitated, "Give it a try. Just for a year or so. Then, if you don't like it, you can always quit and go…clothe the naked or save the whales, or whatever it is you want to do with your life."

The truth is, Sarah's got no notion what she wants to do with her life, though she's pretty sure whales aren't a major factor. The closest she's come to figuring out a career is the brainstorming she and Ernie did two years before, and "professional do-gooder" still isn't an actual job-title.

She takes the job.

"Just for now," she tells Alisse. "Just until I find something better."

"Boston is better," Alisse says. "I could do Boston."

"Ernie's in Boston," Sarah informs her. "He's starting his PhD in sociology this fall."

"Always knew he was a brainy fucker."

"Yeah."

They stand in silence for a moment. Then Alisse nudges Sarah in the ribs.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey what?"

"Don't sweat it. About the future or whatever. You'll figure it out. We've got time."

"Time," Sarah echoes, tasting the word in her mouth. Then, slowly, a grin spreads across her face. "Yeah," she says. "I guess we do."

A/N: Oh, were you looking for Jareth? SO sorry, you just missed him. Twice, apparently. Unless it was all in Sarah's head. MWAHAHAHA.

For real, next chapter though, I promise. None of this ambiguity bullshit. "On a gathering storm comes a tall handsome man/ With a dusty black coat[/sparkly breastplate] and a red right hand[/black leather glove]."

Should any of you be wondering what Sarah's life would be life if she were to take up heroing as a profession, allow me to direct you to JalenStrix's More Fair Than Snow and its sequels, Beauty Sleep and Deathless by Heart. Quelle genre-savvy excellence!

Soundtrack:

"Stronger Than Ever," by Raleigh Ritchie. (Did you know Grey Worm from GoT released an album? I didn't! Thanks to syntheticaesthetic for repairing my ignorance.)

"Cough Syrup," by Young the Giant.

"Seven Devils," by Florence and the Machine.

"This Protector," by The White Stripes.

"Bracing for Sunday," by Neko Case.

Thanks so much to kellyn1604, Sazzle76, kittyspike08536, Honoria Granger, SarahlouiseDodge, eternallycaptivated, TheGris, Ebony-Dove, xoBrandyxo123, Nanenna, Diving in, CharlotteFox, FelineNinjaGrace, quaintlullabies, Ellen Weaver, and Guest for reviewing! You guys make my life.

I know I'm being very disobliging by withholding the Jareth you desire and deserve (remember, you've been missing him for the past two chapters, but I've been missing him for the two months it took to write those chapters—we all suffer together!), but please do drop me a line and let me know if you're still reading! Your reviews have motivated me to keep at this through what has been an exceptionally stressful month. It's a pretty simple feedback loop: reviews = energy = story = reviews, and so and so forth, so please. Feeeeeeeeeeeedddd meeeeee.

Murch lurve,

Silks