"Nice to see you too." I grumbled as I shuffled into the professor's library, tired and sore after the long boring trip.

She still didn't react to my entrance as she sat, hunched over a book, at one of the tables in the room. She had a dozen books lying open around the one she was currently looking at and occasionally she would glance from one book to another, cross referencing the information.

Several minutes before, I had walked in and offered a greeting, expecting a warm welcome from my younger friend and instead she waved a hand over her shoulder without knowing who was talking to her.

"Really? One week and you forget who I am?" I asked after I decided she wasn't going to respond to the presence that had joined her in the room about 15 minutes ago.

"Hmm?" She muttered, turning her head towards where I sat on the armrest of a couch but keeping her eyes glued on the words in a book. I glared at her and her indifference. Cupping my hands around my mouth to amplify my voice I called to her one last time.

"RAI!"

She jumped and twisted around to face me. At first she seemed to be shock to see someone in the room besides herself and then shocked at who was in the room. A smile stretched across her lips and she rubbed her eyes, most likely because she hadn't been blinking regularly while reading.

"Hey! When did you get back, Clay?" She asked me, her voice light and carefree (almost too carefree?). One week and she held herself differently already. She no longer favored her left and wasn't twisting to keep her right arm behind her at all times. The brace for her arm was missing although she was meant to wear it for at least one more month, but she showed no sign of being in pain.

"Me? Oh I've been back a couple days now but I decided to just sit here until you noticed me. I got bored and couldn't take it anymore so you know how it is." I replied with a smile. She rolled her eyes and finally stepped away from her books. "Sorry I didn't notice you." She apologized before giving me a light punch on the shoulder.

"Don't worry about it. Honestly though, I got back about an hour ago and Manning said I would be able to find you here so I figured I would stop by before I went to sleep off my trip. What are you working on?" It was an innocent enough question but she reacted when I asked.

It started with a twitch above one eye. She flicked her hair out of her face to avoid eye contact. She shifted her weight to her opposite foot and angled herself ever so slightly away from me. Her heel tapped a few times and she flexed her fingers. All of these were minuscule changes that anyone could have missed, but I had known the girl for a while now and I was good at noticing microscopic details in human behaviors. Despite popular belief, they don't just let anyone become agents.

"Book stuff." She said a little too quickly. "Abe and I were doing research on lots of mythical stuff I didn't know about and I've just been keeping that up." She corrected her lame excuse. "Right. Alright. How are you feeling lately?" I asked, filing away her odd behavior to examine later when I wasn't entirely exhausted. "Better. Not as sore or helpless." She shrugged which I knew she hadn't been able to do for quite a while.

I nodded in response. "And you? How was your amazing adventure?" Her question dripped with sarcasm and I laughed. "It was absolutely peachy. I had the worst beds to sleep on, the worst food to eat, and surprisingly not even a smidgen of fun." Her laughter was good to hear after seeing her suffer for so long.

"A smidgen?" She asked incredulously. "It's a word." I spoke seriously but one look from her had me laughing again.

"Go to bed, you are delirious." I would have done as I was told if I hadn't remembered why I had come down to speak with her. Manning had asked me to. "I will, I promise. First, I have a question for you." Rai leaned back into the table that held all of her "research" and waited for me to continue.

"What have you been up to with those Demon brothers?" I asked, serious tone returning but not as a joke this time. Rai narrowed her eyes at me. "Manning sent you," was her reply. I opened my mouth to offer an explanation other than that but she cut me off.

"I haven't done anything to put anyone in danger. I know my boundaries and I'm just trying to get some questions answered so you can go and tell Manning to bug off." Her voice was low, threatening and frustrated. I lifted my hands in a sign of peace. "It's alright. Don't shoot the messenger. I'm sure you know what you are doing. Manning just happens to panics about these kinds of things sometimes." She didn't seem any less aggravated by my response.

"I'm not doing anything wrong, Clay." Her voice was quieter when she spoke this time. It sounded like she had said this often; trying to convince herself it was true. I couldn't see any immediate danger from what she was doing but I still didn't like the idea of her talking to the creatures that almost killed her. Besides, what could they possibly tell her that she didn't already know?

"Go to bed, Clay. You look burned out and sleep is this magical thing I've heard of that can help with that." She offered a small smile and I gave her one in return before standing, apologizing, and leaving the room.

The behavior wasn't normal. Before leaving, I had asked a few friends to keep an eye on her. While I was gone, I knew she had been occupying her time with watching Hellboy's cats and working out to gain back her strength but there were times that she went missing and no one could find her. Manning had stumbled upon her leaving the high alert detention level and after asking around he discovered she had been questioning a particularly dangerous inmate.

All of this added up to something I didn't like. She was being reckless again. She was placing strain on her body, practically forcing it to recover and not realizing that she could be damaging it further. It was like she thought she needed to prove something and bench pressing her body weight somehow verified that she was a strong, independent woman. Ridiculous, her injuries could easily worsen after that kind of strain. I shook my head at the thought.

On top of everything, she wants to spend her time with her potential murderers. Manning confessed to me that little information had been recovered from the surviving Ornias Brothers by their interrogators. Was Rai any more successful extracting information from them? If she was, she hadn't told anyone. It was too reckless. Someone needed to stop her before she followed the same pattern all over again but I was in no position to tell her what to do. There was someone else who needed to speak with her. Someone who still denied how he felt and how others felt about him. Someone who needed to do as Liz said, get over her, and recognize the crazy, reckless, incredibly stubborn woman that may love him. Hellboy, get home soon you idiot.

Manning finding out about my trips to meet Mykail wasn't the worst thing that could ever happen. It took a little convincing but finally Manning relented access to the detention facility without me having to sneak around him. After several visits I still hadn't found any info to solve my problem. What I needed was to talk to the old goblin but permission for that wasn't going to come easy.

Clay was home and already looming over my shoulder wanting to be a part of my every action. His overprotective nature was sweet but in the past weeks I enjoyed the freedom that came with him not watching me. That probably sounded really harsh. I was losing patience easily with everyone these days and I could probably attribute that to my lack of sleep.

Nightmares were coming back to me. One might think these were new, fresh nightmares about the things I had experienced here in the BPRD but they weren't. The nightmares were of hot days in the desert, hunkered down in torn down villages, bullets flying over my head and blood making my gun slick and difficult to hold. There were the ones about the cold nights, following my father's death, where I watched the horizon hoping he would appear and take me home like he promised. He never does but dented and rusted jeeps eventually do and then I have zip ties on my wrists and the soldiers that had become my only family are telling me to stay quiet and stay calm. I wake up in my dull, bleak room wondering if I'm here in New York or if I'm in my cell in the Middle East waiting for some stuck up American in a well fitted suit to finish paperwork that means I can be free again.

It's been years since I had these nightmares. So why now? The PTSD was back with a vengeance when I was never even diagnosed with it all those years ago. Why now? It was all too strange, too coincidental. All of this combined with my last interrogation with Mykail had my skin crawling and my blood boiling. Nothing made sense.

"You would think a girl like you would have better things to do than ask me questions." The hulking blue-haired man smiled. His smiles were never kind. They were meant to be sarcastic or cruel and they somehow always managed to portray his hatred for me.

"Well, as of late, my schedule has been clear so, why not spend time with my favorite sociopath?" I replied, taking my seat across from him.

"I told you everything already. We tracked you by the scent of your friend's blood and only meant to use you as leverage to recover our uncle. We weren't there to kill anyone and if my uncle killed anyone on purpose, I don't know about it." He growled in his usual tone of voice. The information he regurgitated with ease had taken me two visits to claw out of him. It didn't feel like such an accomplishment when he just went ahead and said it like that.

"What about the hex?" I asked, picking up where I left off the day before. His jaw moved as he ground his teeth. Getting information from him was getting harder. "Come on, I know you know your words. Why don't you put some together for me?" Taunting him seemed like the best technique lately. He wanted to kill me desperately as he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair; anything to put distance between him and the temptation to throttle me. He had his younger brother to think about. I waited as patiently as I could.

"I don't know." He finally said, forcing himself to spit out each word as if it was the most strenuous thing in the world. I pinched the bridge of my nose. "What do you mean you don't know?" My patience was unsurprisingly slipping again.

"I mean that I know my uncle deals with black magic. I know what hexed blood smells like. I know that the hex used was common and gave off certain, let's say, vibes that set it apart from other hexes I've encountered. As for who, what, how, and why questions, I can't help you." We stared at each other in silence for a few seconds after that.

There were other questions I wanted to ask him but I needed to be careful when asking them or else I was going to lose my leverage in these conversations. I hadn't approved a plan to ask those questions yet so it was going to have to wait for the next time I came back. I stood from my seat and straightened the documents inside the case file that I always brought to our meetings. "I guess that's all for today." I started to say but Mykail cut me off and most of that sentence went unheard.

"Why don't you just ask?" I turned back to him, unsure of what he meant. "It's gone isn't it? I thought it was just something I imagined, but I know that I could feel it before and I can't now." His voice was low and although he wasn't intending to sound dangerous he was scaring me.

If he was talking about what I thought he was talking about… No, there is no way he could know.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"It was impressive. To be honest, if I was you, I'd want it back too; anything to set you apart from those pathetic humans. That's why you keep asking questions. You want to know where it went. I'm as curious as you." I was frozen in place.

How? His cruel smile appeared on his face and I realized I had let that question escape in a strained breath on accident. "I could feel it before. The power surrounded you and now, well you just don't hold the same presence you did before. It's like something just sucked you dry." He laughed, most likely at the look on my face.

"Karson bit me." If he was already talking about this I might as well cycle through all my theories before he clammed up and refused to speak. I also just needed something to say. I was standing like a frozen rock and my mind wasn't working.

"You think he had something to do with this?" Mykail's laugh grew louder. "Lady, our bite is bad, that I'll admit, but whatever happened to your power has nothing to do with Kar… our bite." He finished with a little less confidence in his tone. He couldn't say Karson's name and I tried to mentally file that away while trying to figure out how to function properly again.

"Is it in your nature to go savage after biting someone?" I asked, deflecting while I tried to think. That shut Mykail up. He locked his eyes on the table and I swear I could actually see him deflating. "That's all for today." He said, sounding exhausted. This was new behavior. I pulled the chair out again and sat down at the table with him. He refused to look up or moved at all. "Mykail?" Nothing. I knew I shouldn't get close. This was very likely a trap. I leaned forward slightly, hoping to make eye contact with the demon. "Mykail, do you know what happened to Karson after he bit me?" I asked softly. No need to poke the bear, maybe just a soft pat would do.

It was silent for several minutes. I thought about asking another question but there probably wasn't any point. This meeting was officially over.

"No." I locked my eyes on the demon. He hadn't moved but he was breathing again. Before I could open my mouth to speak he went on. "It wasn't him. He would never…" There was a pause and I was shocked to see real emotions displayed in his eyes. "Do you know what might have…" Mykail cut me off quickly."No." He didn't know what happened. He didn't know what had set Karson off. Apparently, I wasn't the only one with serious questions about what happened that night. It wasn't him and it wasn't Karson. So why did this happen? I saw an opportunity for a deal.

"I need to know everything that happened that night. If I can find out what went wrong, maybe I can find out what happened to Karson and what happened to me. We need to help each other to find answers." I explained. Mykail sat silently as usual. I waited as patiently as I could for his response. Slowly he lifted his gaze to stare at me. "I already know everything I need to know. My brother is dead. Everything else is your problem to deal with. I'm done talking." The wicked grin showcased his teeth this time.

And just like that the door slammed closed. He wouldn't talk to me anymore. He wouldn't do anything to help me when I had shown him how desperate I was. I was furious but I couldn't lose face again. I stood and calmly walked to the door. I left the room and the detention level behind. I waited until I was safely sheltered in the library by myself, before I let out the scream I had been straining to hold in.

All of that work, for nothing.

What was I supposed to do now?