To the Power Born: A Tale of the Slayers

Part 15: For Stars Lie Hidden….

"… and then… then I w-was in a basement room, and there were monsters," Colin said. "Lots of monsters, all attacking a beautiful girl, and I… st-stopped them and—and the rest… you know the r-r-rest."

We all sat stunned, horrified— but not by any failure of his, he hadn't failed, not like he thought, not the way he blamed himself for failing! We were horrified and sickened and stunned by what the aliens had done— but they were to blame, not Colin!

"A-all those p-p-people!" Colin sobbed. His next words rose, became a scream. "Th-they d-d-DIED!

"I DIDN'T SAVE THEM AND THEY ALL DIED SO AW-AWFULLY, OH, GOD!"

Colin threw his head back and screamed, the scream of an animal caught in a trap, a trap that hurts and bites— but won't permit death.

I ran to him. Damn the broken leg and never mind that it hurt.

He fought me, fought us when Mi Kyong came over to try to help me calm down the man she considered her brother, tried to pull away, tried to not accept the comfort we wanted— needed— to give, but we're Slayers, and he wouldn't actually hurt us, so he couldn't do that. We both clung to him, both of us saying, "No, Colin, it's not your fault," or variations on that, over and over again. That and "It's their fault, not yours, we love you," and variations on it.

Then Buffy was there, crying, shuddering with the sheer hurt that we all felt, the understanding of the hurt Colin felt, the horror he'd seen— and hugging him, and saying it wasn't his fault, he couldn't blame himself for it. Then Joyce was there, doing much the same, and Xander, and Belinda, and… soon, Colin was the center of a mass hug.

He exhausted himself sobbing, and fell asleep, slumped between Mi Kyong and me, and people backed off some. Angel looked… sick. Like he understood, but like he was mad, too.

"Damn dumb son of a— how can he blame himself for that!?" Angel said, emphatically but quietly. "Jesus, he's not a— a xeno-psychologist. He couldn't know that the thing didn't take oaths to not-its-race people seriously!"

"You're right," Diane said. "But it's something… you see it, in my job. That assumption of blame for things you could never have prevented, I mean. You see it in cops, in firefighters, in EMTs and doctors… even Slayers. But that's okay. I know how to help him, now. I can get a foot in the door— because I know what was holding it shut.

"Listen to me, all of you— you folks have done it right. You all accepted him, you all tried to help… you all cared. That made it possible to help him. Angel, Faith, you two pushing him into talking, that made it possible to help him sooner, which will make it easier. Jocelyn, Mi Kyong… forcing him to let you hold him right now? Very much the right thing to do. And all of you hugging him—"

"You were right there with us on the hugging bit!" Aunt Dawn said. "Credit to you, too!"

"Yes, but I knew to do it— you folks just did it." Diane grinned around at us. "So… yeah. You all get points."

"Diane," Daddy said, "I have a thought or three. Giles, let's you, me and Diane talk for a few— we might be able to get her foot even more solidly in the door, if we can consolidate our arguments before he wakes up.

"And… oh, I'm almost stupid! Thomas? You can definitely help, here. Ballard, Rose, Sara, you too. And Xander, if you're up to it."

As the others moved to follow Daddy off to one side, Xander hugged Joyce, hugged and kissed Buffy, and moved to follow Daddy, saying, "I feel up to it— it's good to be able to do something positive, right now. And hey, I am a geek, this may be right down my alley."

"Very much so," Daddy said as they all went towards the farthest picnic table. "You geeks are key to my idea, here, but Giles may be best to present— authority figure, learnéd man, all that jazz…."

I watched them go, hoping they could help, and sat there, half-holding Colin while Mi Kyong held his other half, both of us watching his face. The expression he wore, even in his sleep, was that of a haunted, hunted thing, and I prayed to the Powers That Be that Daddy's idea would pan out, because seeing him hurt like that, carry so much pain so… so wrongly, that left me scared and a little sick.

After maybe ten minutes, Xander went past us, towards his house, moving at a quick trot. He came out of the house in five minutes or so, carrying a small load of comic books— and I started to have an idea about what they were maybe doing. I was only a little right, but hey— not a comic reader, so I felt pretty good about that much right.

Then Willow got called over to the group and went, pulling Lydia with her. They came back a few minutes later, and Willow said, "You should get someone to help— the big trunk is no lightweight."

"I'll help," Aunt Dawn said, standing.

"Nope, I need your brain, Dawnie," Willow said. "I need the wacky way you can turn a spell into something modern, O Chief of the Guardians. And I need Sh'rin, too— c'mere, you two, we're about to get all freaky with the mojo."

"I'll help, Aunt Lydia," Riley Giles said. "Aunt Wil's big trunk? In your room, right?"

"Bet on it, slugger," Lydia said. "The big trunk— that thing always makes me nervous."

"Why's it make you nervous?" Riley asked as they went to the house.

"I tried to open it once, thinking it was the one she meant had a dress in it I was going to borrow for Faith and Angel's wedding," Lydia said, "and the damned thing bit me!"

"Seriously?" Riley said as they went inside.

Mi Kyong and I sat, and we waited, and we watched Colin. Lydia and Riley came out with Willow's big trunk of magic supplies, and Wil pulled out a lot of things, starting with a big tarpaulin, all folded up. She unfolded it, spread it neatly on the grass, and started drawing a big magic circle on the heavy cloth, a circle around a pentagram inside it, giving her two circles, the outer one twenty feet across, the inner one and the five-rayed star inside it more like eighteen feet, with a foot of blank space between the circles. Once she was done, Aunt Dawn and Aunt Sh'rin started working on filling the blank part in, consulting with each other, some in English, some in Aunt Sh'rin's ancient Cheyenne dialect, which Aunt Dawn had learned in the fifteen years they'd been in love.

"See, the hile is the calta nen'ray," Aunt Sh'rin said. "That will pull the eye of the spell t'sen n'ree oh."

"I see it now," Aunt Dawn said. "But I'm sure glad you're here to help— never tried anything like this before.

"The ren dah sel, should that be from Colin? I mean, when we want t'sen n'ree oh, he was there-then, but now he's here-now."

"You learn well," Aunt Sh'rin said, and kissed Aunt Dawn's cheek. "But for the hile we seek, Colin is the only can'ta roh."

"Oh, right, duh," Aunt Dawn said. "You sure about this last feather in my hair, Sh'rin?"

"The magic is sure, love," Aunt Sh'rin said. "You do not escape your responsibility so easily as that."

One of these days, I'm going to pick up more than the dozen or so words of Aunt Sh'rin's language that I know— just so I can follow conversations like that. The only word I recognized was "hile," which means path, though not like a path between places, but a path of life, or of being. State of being, maybe? Metaphysical path, that works.

Aunt Dawn and Aunt Sh'rin filled in the borders of the circle, and Willow got out five crystal statues, each a different color and of a different thing, stepped into the still-open circle, and placed them carefully while I watched with wide eyes. They weren't the same as the statues in the circle that had brought Colin to our world, but they were similar. She placed them at the tips of the star's rays, too, not the points of the pentagon made by the lines of the star.

A white crystal statue of a rearing lion went at the point of one ray. A gray one of a sword, a red flame, a green one of a cresting wave, and an amber-gold one of a multi-rayed starburst thing, similar to the one Colin had worn on his Starpulse costume, but with more rays and no circle across any of the rays. And in three dimensions, of course.

Then Giles and the others came back, and Diane said, "Girls… I imagine that you're both feeling very protective right now, and that— well, I can't say it's not a good idea.

"But I want to wake Colin up, and have Giles and the others hammer some ideas into his thick damned skull— because doing it now, soon after the release of him telling us what happened, that will have a better chance of doing him good than doing it later."

"I… see the sense of it," Mi Kyong said. "I say yes— though I am not so close to him as Jocelyn, do not love him the way she does, I do love him— and would see him well."

"Heck, yes," I said. "We have to help him, Diane, because… because I can't stand that thought of him not having help with… that."

"Okay, then why don't you two wake him," Diane said. "Then… well, you're already clinging like limpets. Don't stop that, okay?"

"No problem," I said.

"Very much not a problem," Mi Kyong said. "Jocelyn, if he comes awake upset… you are more trained. I will wake him, if you will restrain him if he is… upset?"

"Good idea," I said. "Knew I loved you for good reasons."

Mi Kyong smiled at me— then took both of Colin's hands in hers while I supported his shoulders, and said, "Colin? Colin, you must wake. Wake up, my friend."

Colin stirred a little, made a low, thick sound in his throat— then sat bolt upright, drawing in a sharp breath as he did so.

"Easy, Colin!" I said. "Easy, sweetheart, we're right here, and it's okay."

"It's n-not okay," Colin whispered. "I… they died! They died b-because I w-w-was stupid!"

"No."

The voice was calm and level, not loud— but it still stopped Colin cold. Giles can just… do that. Pack so much flat, implacable authority into his voice that I'm not sure that dirtbag Warren wouldn't shut up and pay attention.

"No, Colin," Giles said. "It was not your fault, not in any way. Nothing could have prepared you for that threat, nothing could have changed this Skradal creature's mind.

"You are not to blame. You need to blame someone, I understand that— and it is a testament to your commitment to saving lives that you blame yourself.

"But you are wrong to do so. I believe that I can prove it… if you will truly listen to me."

"I… Giles, I… y-yes." Colin looked hurt, sick, weary and sad beyond belief. "I'll listen."

"Very well," Giles said. He sat down in a lawn chair that Buffy brought over to the picnic table that Colin, Mi Kyong and I sat on and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together. "Colin… answer me this; what would you do differently if you could go back and do it all over again?"

Colin opened his mouth— and froze, staring. After a long moment, he said, "I'd— I'd let the others come in with me. That might have changed things! Power alone—"

"You have indicated that the comics we've read, some of us, are accurate in their depictions of your life, your world," Giles interrupted. "Do you stand by that indication, Colin?"

"I— yes, they were accurate," Colin admitted. "Scarily so, sometimes… the writer, he n-knew what I was thinking. That's k-kind of scary."

"I can imagine that it would be, yes," Giles agreed. "But Colin, the second time that you faced off against the man called Praetor, you had allies. Shadow Dragon, Sin-fire… and Power. After that battle, Shadow Dragon congratulated you on being the single most powerful being on your world, and you tried to argue with him, claimed that Power was more powerful than you. Yet Power pointed out that she never did manage to breach Praetor's force field, let alone his armored costume, and you did both at once on more than one occasion in that battle.

"You admitted then that you had more raw power at your disposal than she did— will you deny it now?

"Is your need to blame yourself that great?"

Colin didn't answer for a moment. When he spoke, his voice sounded hurt. "All right, but maybe the two of us— or Dragon, he might have been able to teleport some of the people out."

"It was established in issue nineteen that Shadow Dragon could not teleport through force fields, through any of those he'd yet encountered, and he'd encountered many varieties." Giles leaned back a little and said, "Colin… you read Chosen to Stand. You know that Riley Finn chose to hand me command of all forces in the Battle of Bloomington. Do you remember why?"

"Because… you are the best tac—tactician alive when it comes to dealing with supernatural stuff," Colin said. "I remember."

"Yes," Giles said. "I… do not wish to sound conceited, but there is reason to believe that he was correct."

"Damn straight," Xander said. "We're all still here, for one— and you taught all of us Watchers how to be Watchers, Giles."

"Thank you, Xander," Giles said. Then he looked at Colin, said sternly, "Young man, to me, the events you describe are nothing but supernatural threats. I can understand them, think of them as things I might well encounter… and I am telling you that had I been there, had I been in charge of things, I'd have ordered you to do exactly as you did— because that was the best chance those people had of coming out of there alive! Taking your friends in with you might well have resulted in the aliens killing those people sooner— and your friends, as well as you, carrying this foolish guilt.

"Colin… that the best chance turned out to be no chance is in no way your fault— you have to accept that… or you're never going to get better.

"You owe Jocelyn and Mi Kyong better than that.

"You owe Power, Shadow Dragon, White Mongoose, Sin-Fire, Cyber Knight, Neural, Heartline, Roughneck and Armsman better than that.

"But most of all… Colin, you owe those sixty thousand people who died better than that. Yes, they died— but you destroyed their murderers, young man, and that goes a long way towards balancing the scales.

"It doesn't finish the job. To finish balancing the scales, Colin, you have to come to terms with what happened, and you have to live the best life that you can— because those people deserve better than their deaths causing you to bloody quit!"

Colin gulped hard a time or two, managed to say around a sob, "I… don't know if… if I can!"

"You have to try," Buffy said. "You have to. Giles is right, Colin. You have to try."

"Colin… I'd like to make a wager with you," Giles said. "It involves something that may well cause you pain… but it may also enable you to get past the pain."

"W-what wager?" Colin stammered, wiping furiously at his eyes.

"If I can show you that your friends outside the Homestead-Miami Speedway did everything they could to get inside and help, or to break the outside force dome, and were not successful, will you do your very best to accept that there was nothing you could have done to change things?" Giles asked. "And further, to let Diane help you come to terms with what happened?"

"I… yes," Colin said. "Yes, I… yes. Losing that bet would be… be nice."

"Willow, the floor is yours," Giles said.

"Okay," Willow said, sounding a little nervous, like she often did before a big work that mattered a lot. "Okay.

"Colin… do you know much about Wicca?"

"No, not… not a lot," Colin admitted. "I know some things— that you aren't evil at all, and that— that it comes in lots of flavors, like Christianity and— and other religions."

"Well, that's more than most people bother to learn," Willow said. "So… it's a start.

"Colin, I need you to understand— look, you know that I went crazy and almost destroyed the world once, right? That was in Rose's book, she asked me if she could put it in and I… I had to say yes, because the Wicca that I believe in pretty much demands that you fess up to stuff. See?"

"I think so, yes," Colin said. "I… like that."

"Good," Willow said. "So… look, you can see that I have a lot to make up for, right? Sure, I've helped save the world some since then, maybe even a little bit before then… but that doesn't clean my slate. Or maybe it does, but I don't feel like it, so I always try— look, when Amy tried to bring back the First Evil, I knew I could stop her, stop her as easy as you could light a fire with your powers— if I was willing to use so much power that I went into the Dark. Maybe not far into the Dark, probably not far, even. I could probably have come back, and I probably wouldn't have hurt anyone before I managed to come back to the light— but I didn't do it. Can you see why?"

"You… couldn't risk it," Colin said, very slowly. "To risk evil like that, even for the sake of something good… you couldn't r-risk it. Right?"

"Yeah," Willow said, breathing a sigh of relief that he understood. "So… will you believe me when I tell you that lying to you now, deliberately feeding you false information of any kind, even to make you feel better, that would be an evil I won't do— because it could stain my soul, and I can't risk that?"

"Yes," Colin said softly. "I believe that."

"Okay," Willow said. "So… I'm going to use a spell I worked up with Dawnie and Sh'rin to show you what happened outside the Speedway while you were inside, and maybe a little after. I don't know what we're going to see, any more than you do. But… I have enough confidence in Giles and our comic geeks that I'm willing to run the risk of maybe… you could see something bad, Colin, something… that will make things worse. It's not impossible.

"But Thomas, Xander, Rose and Ballard all say that Giles is right, and I trust them, trust him and Whitey. I trust that they're right.

"Maybe more importantly, Colin… I trust you. I trust you to have done all that you could, to have done the only right thing there was to do, and never mind that it didn't work out, it was still the right thing.

"So… I just need to get a little blood from you for the spell, and we can find out whether or not you're being all wrong-headed."

Wordlessly, Colin offered his hand, and Willow drew a silver knife and tried to cut his thumb. She grunted with effort— and barely scratched him.

"Better l-let me," Colin said. "Hold your bowl-thing and the knife— no, p-point down, please. Yes. Say when you have enough, I'll m-move my thumb away then."

Colin put his force field up, but only around his left hand, and steadied the blade of Willow's knife with that hand. He then pressed his right thumb against the blade and slid it down, held his thumb there with the blade intruding into his flesh while blood dripped into the bowl. After maybe a tablespoon had dripped out, Willow said, "That's enough," and he pulled his hands away from the knife. He dropped the force field around his left hand, used the fingers of that hand to apply pressure to the base of his thumb, stopping the bleeding, and by bedtime, there was only the narrow white line of a scar there. Even that vanished before morning.

"Okay," Willow said, moving into the magic circle and placing the bowl with the blood in the center. "Almost ready. Giles, Wes— will you two take the open points of the pentagram? Just focus on seeing the outside of the inside that Colin told us about."

Willow knelt at the cardinal point of the pentagram, looked around and said, "Couldn't have done this without Dawn and Sh'rin— they modified the spell that the Guardians of Sh'rin's time used to show her the things we original Scoobies had done, and we all combined that with a variant on the spell that brought Colin here in the first place— they do good work."

While Willow spoke, Aunt Dawn and Aunt Sh'rin knelt at the two points most nearly facing Willow, and Giles and Wesley Wyndham-Pryce took the two flanking Willow.

"Okey doke," Willow said. "Well… let's see what we see."

She started chanting in a language I didn't know (not much help, that— just meant it wasn't English), and Colin pulled Mi Kyong and I closer and shivered as we all held on to each other.

After most of two minutes of chanting, the circle lit up from the inside, images in three-dee flickering and wavering like a TV stuck between channels… then snapped into sharp focus, showing Power, Shadow Dragon and White Mongoose watching Colin as he walked to the raceway stadium to try and save the people inside.

"Noble," Shadow Dragon said with a sigh and a shake of his head. "The idiot.

"Okay, Power… what's the plan for out here?"

"Establish now whether or not you'll be able to go in after Starpulse, should it come to that," Power said. "You have difficulty teleporting through force fields, don't you?"

"Crap," Shadow Dragon said. "Crap in a hat— I forgot…. Worried, I guess. Damned fool better not get killed.

"Be right back."

In a pulse of shadow, the martial artist disappeared— and from the point on the force field that Starpulse had gone in through came a snarled, "Damn it all to hell! I can't get through!"

"I was afraid of that," Power said. "All right— then we'll have to hope I can break through, if it comes to that."

The three of them went to talk to the FBI agents, and not much happened— until four more heroes arrived close together, over the space of about a minute. A man in black and white with a sword symbol on the left side of his chest arrived first, and he looked older than the others, even under the half-mask that he wore. He might have been thirty or thirty-five, to the others' twenty.

"Hey, Armsman!" Shadow Dragon called. "You can't do modern weapons, right?"

"I'm afraid not," Armsman called back.

"So how about a ballista?" Shadow Dragon said. "Or a catapult?"

"I can make those," Armsman said. "Though a trebuchet is a better idea than a catapult."

"Sweet, we may need siege weapons— 'Pulse went all noble on us."

"All right, you'd better fill me— hello, Heartline," Armsman said.

A woman in a red coverall with a white sinus-rhythm-line across her chest had appeared in a flash of white light. Her black hair framed a face that looked elegant, gorgeous, and worried, maybe even in pain.

"Hello, everyone," Heartline said. "What's happening here?"

"A moment," Power said. "I see more coming."

A man in hi-tech armor flew in, and a woman in a plain black coverall and mask came with him, hanging on to him telekinetically to fly, by the way her flight path followed his.

"Okay, who invited the aliens to the party, and can I have any of their tech we manage to scavenge?" asked the man in armor as he landed.

"Cyber Knight, Neural, I'm glad you both came," Power said. "We may need your abilities. Listen…."

Power didn't even get to finish the briefing before Heartline went deathly pale, cried out, almost-but-not-quite-screamed, and dropped to her knees, clutching her head and keening.

"Mongoose, get her out of here!" Power snapped. "Her empathy—"

"Couldkillhergone!" White Mongoose said, speaking almost too fast to be understood, then blurring into motion, grabbing Heartline and carrying her away.

"Everyone— break that dome!" Neural shouted. "Move, move, move!"

"What—" Armsman started.

"There are two force fields, one inside the other," Neural said, "and the inner one is expanding, while the second doesn't! The people will be crushed!"

"Power, throw me!" Armsman shouted, even as a huge, studded mace of some silvery energy formed in his right hand. "Hard as you can!"

"You could be hur—" Power started.

"DO IT!" Armsman yelled.

Even as Power grabbed Armsman's belt, lifted him— he balanced and shifted as she did, so he'd go head first, they'd obviously done this before— the woman Neural gestured, and a concrete light pole snapped off near its base and flew at the force field dome, hit it hard enough to make a sound like thunder— and didn't bother it at all.

Power threw Armsman so hard that he broke the sound barrier, and his energy mace made a noise louder than the light pole had— and did no more good. Armsman picked himself up— he'd fallen right there at the field's edge— and the mace became a crossbow that he fired repeatedly, doing no good. Crossbow became sword, then halberd— and neither enabled the man to scratch the dome.

The others had attacked their own ways— Power hammered the dome with her fists, Cyber Knight pumped energy bolts of several different types at it, Shadow Dragon teleported so many times it was almost like watching a film that had been badly spliced, landed at the edge of the dome every time, never passed inside it— all to no avail.

The first splatters of red hit the inside of the dome— and Armsman screamed, "BACK AWAY, ALL OF YOU! NOW! POWER! COME HERE!"

The others cleared out as Armsman, concentrating visibly, formed a truly gigantic crossbow— a ballista, a siege weapon used in medieval times— out of his silvery energy, shaking and sweating as he did so.

Power looked at him worriedly as she passed him— the strain on him must have been huge, sweat was pouring off of him— and vaulted into the place where a bolt would normally have gone.

"Now!" Power yelled— and Armsman flipped the firing lever.

His power must have been scary— because Power, too, broke the sound barrier as the thing launched her at the dome. The sound of the double-punch she fired as she hit was scary-loud— and nothing happened other than that she fell to the ground, weeping and cursing.

"Oh, god," Neural said, staring as the red crept up the force field wall. "Oh, god, they— they're all… dead. All those people, those monsters—"

"Co—Starpulse!?" Armsman gasped, staggering forward and catching hold of Neural's upper arms.

"He's… he's alive, but… no, no, dammit!" Neural shouted. "Starpulse, LISTEN TO ME! HEAR ME, YOU IDIOT! NO!

"STARPULSE, IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT! NO, DON'T!"

The red mess on the inside of the dome got thinner, lighter in color— and I knew that the aliens had shut down the interior force field.

"WHAT!?" Armsman yelled. "WHAT IS HE DOING!?"

"He's… he thinks it's his fault!" Neural whispered. "He's… he's blaming himself!"

"What the fuck!?" Shadow Dragon said, popping into existence beside them. "He can't be— not even His Nobleness could be that stupid!"

"He thinks… he should have let you all go in with him," Neural whispered. "He's… the aliens, he's going to— I can't keep the contact, the pain he's in— I can't—"

Her eyes closed suddenly— and a horrible, crackling hissing came from inside the force field dome, even as white light flared so brightly that people put their arms across their eyes. When it dimmed, all could see the huge pit beneath the alien ship, the pit Colin had burned out when he destroyed the horrible mess that had been sixty thousand people.

"I… he's there, I feel him, but I can't reach him at all," Neural said. "I can't—"

The alien ship suddenly shuddered and boomed— and the force field collapsed even as an arrow of white-gold light punched through the ship. Explosions and crackling energy started flickering around the ship— and it fell into the pit beneath it.

"Cyber Knight!" Power called. "Can you—"

"I'm locked onto 'Pulse, I'm going after him," the armored man called back. "Someone call Heartline back here, he's gonna need her help!"

Cyber Knight started up after Starpulse at several hundred miles per hour, got maybe a twentieth of the distance up— and things went nuts. Multi-colored spikes of lightning, dozens of them, maybe hundreds, flared from the point where Starpulse had just started his descent— and in a moment, they vanished, taking the glowing form of Starpulse with them.

The others stared wordlessly as Cyber Knight flew on up to where Starpulse had disappeared, hovered there for a couple of minutes— then flew back down and landed near the others.

"He's… not there," Cyber Knight said. "Nothing organic up there, I don't think he's dead, but… there were some energies, stuff I've never seen before, similar-but-different from things I've tinkered with. I think… I'm guessing, but I think he's out of our universe. Or dimension. Or, possibly, just… out of this star system. I don't know, I'm sorry, I've never seen that kind of—"

"He's not dead," Neural said. "His pain— I couldn't read his thoughts, but I got a flash of… of surprise. No fear, just big surprise."

"Will we… see him again?" Shadow Dragon asked. "I mean… will he come back?"

"He… may not want to, even if he can," Neural said. "I'm… I know something about psychology and psychiatry.

"I don't think he'd be able to stand being here, being… anywhere near this place."

For a long, long moment, no one spoke— they all just stared up at where he'd been. Finally, Armsman said softly, "Colin… be happy, man. Get over it… and be happy."

"Excuse me," said FBI Special Agent In Charge Dixon. "Is Starpulse… is he… dead?"

No one answered for a moment, then Shadow Dragon said, "To paraphrase the immortal James T. Kirk… 'list him as missing.' "

The image held on all of them, heroes and FBI agent, staring up at the spot where Starpulse had been for a minute— then it winked out.

For a moment, utter silence reigned.

Colin sobbed, once, hard, jerking his whole body as he let go of much of the guilt he'd been carrying, grabbed on to me, then Mi Kyong when she touched his shoulder, and started weeping— weeping, not crying or screaming, but weeping, letting go of some of his hurt, not just expressing it.

Our friends and family didn't go away, wanting to be there if he needed them, if any of us needed them, but they all turned away, very deliberately didn't look at us as Colin finally admitted to himself that what had happened was not something that he had any right to feel so horribly guilty over… and wept in relief and release.