Julia was standing by the closed guitar case watching Aric and Beth walk away at their very leisurely pace.

They make a good-looking couple, Julia thought as she watched her friend, and the attractive man whom Julia really knew nothing about, walk away slowly. They would stop occasionally, turning to look at each other as they talked before continuing on their way. Julia had no idea how large Passion Island was, but she didn't think it was so small that two people could complete the entire trip around its perimeter in the short time they had left. But she knew what they were discussing, and that it was not going to be a short conversation.

"I'm going to ask him tonight," Beth had said simply, after they had turned off the TV once episode 3 of Better Than Us had finished, in response to Julia's comment that she thought that the young actress playing Sonya was the cutest little girl she had ever seen. It wasn't quite a non sequitur; Julia had suspected that Beth's mind had been elsewhere for a while, whatever part of it wasn't paying attention to the Russian dialogue that Julia couldn't understand.

"You're sure you want to do that?" Julia replied after a moment, using the same quiet tone that Beth had used. They were both still looking at the now dark flat screen. Julia could see her friend's reflection in the black plastic (and Beth could see hers), so she saw when Beth turned to look at her before asking her question.

"Why wouldn't I be sure?"

"You're letting someone mess with your head. A complete stranger. Will rearrange your mind. Using what as a blueprint?"

"I don't know. I haven't asked him yet."

Julia's heart ached for the woman who was her best friend in the whole world. She could not possibly know how it felt to have two voices in her head. All she did know was that she loved the woman next to her, and she didn't want to lose her.

"You've come this far on your own without him. You've made so much progress. Why him? Why now?"

It took almost a full minute before she answered. Julia had thought that when she finally replied she would be emotional, but when Beth eventually spoke she was completely calm.

"Because I'm tired of fighting. Tired of wondering each morning when I wake up if this will be the day that Alice wins. Tired of not knowing who I will hurt next. I'm just tired, and I want it to end.

Too many suicides had said things just like that; Julia knew that. It was her greatest fear, waking up one morning and opening Beth's bedroom door, and finding...

"Well," Julia said once the knot in her throat had diminished enough to allow words to pass, her voice still soft, "I guess there's no harm in asking."

It was still warm, but she had put on a light top over her one-piece red and white pattern bathing suit. She had her hands clasped together in front of her when Rita stopped next to her, and Julia was not surprised when Rita's furry shadow appeared only a second later. She was wearing a tropical print v-neck bikini and a hand-weaved ankle bracelet that Aric had given her once they had left the marina. The shawl that she had received courtesy of Tyler was draped loosely over her shoulders. Tyler was wearing nothing, and it dawned on Julia that she had never seen him wear a collar of any type.

Not much point of one, I guess, she thought, not when you can open a bubble of folded space and call him from anywhere on the planet. And they're rarely apart anyway.

Beth had filled Julia in on the conversation that Rita, Beth, and Trish had when they had all been in Costa Rica. Julia had trouble believing it when she had first heard the details. Now, standing next to this woman who wore a bikini that left little to the imagination, she was certain that she had misunderstood what it was Beth had been saying. There was no way in hell Rita was almost sixty years old.

"She's fine, don't worry," Rita said as she brought Julia's mind back to the couple in the distance, "nothing on Earth, or off of it, is going to hurt her when he's with her."

"She's asking him, right?" Julia asked after a few seconds, her eyes once again fixed on her friend, "She's asking him to take Alice away."

Julia's question got Rita's full attention. Julia could see from her expression as she looked at her that Rita didn't know.

"I don't understand. I thought she was Alice."

Julia shook her head before glancing back at Beth and Aric. "She didn't tell you then."

"She asked if he could fix her. She said it wasn't physical. I assumed it was mental, or psychological, but I didn't want to pry."

"She and her sister Kate were kidnapped when they were very young. Kate escaped. Beth didn't."

"Beth."

Julia didn't take her eyes off her friend. "That's her name, Beth. They broke her. Intentionally. The Religion of Crime broke her mind, and remade her into what they wanted."

Rita was quiet for a moment as her own gaze traveled to the two receding figures that were about to disappear as their path curved to the right and was hidden behind foliage.

"Jesus."

"Alice is who they made her into. It's called dissociative identity disorder. She's been working for years to get better, and she's mostly Beth these days, but Alice is still in there. That's what she's asking him to do. That's what she wants him to fix."

The pair disappeared finally, their footprints in the sand the only evidence that they had ever been there.

"I had no idea. I'm sorry, Julia, I didn't realize when she asked what it was she was asking."

Another moment of silence, broken only by the sound of the ocean, and Tyler letting out a deep sigh.

"Can he do it?" Julia asked.

Rita had seen Aric do some pretty amazing things, things that no one would ever believe; but this...

"I don't know."

"Can I see it again?" Sax asked as she held out her hand to Trish.

"Jesus, you've watched them ten times already," Abby said as she drank her mojito, which was mostly ice melt now.

"My battery's at twenty percent," Trish said, "I'll text you the files later."

The four women had spent a good portion of the night together, a small subset of the larger group that had been to Russia and back - not quite in the blink of an eye, but not that far from it either. Jessica and Luke had taken the opportunity for some quiet time together while Beth and Julia...Trish got the sense that something was going on, something that had the two women keeping a bit to themselves. The thing that had surprised Trish most was the distance between Rita and Aric. She had seen them at the airport; everyone who was there saw how they felt about each other. But they had spent almost no time together since they had stepped off the boat. Trish knew from personal experience how hard it was to maintain a relationship given the nature of her day job (and her night job). It had to be orders of magnitude harder for Aric. And now for Rita. Put the two of them together and...

"Where did you learn to fight like that?" Abby asked.

"Joint Task Force 2 when I was old enough," Sharon said, "before that, my Uncle Ray. He was with the RCMP's Special Emergency Response Team for a long time before he retired. He had three sons, but no daughters. He sort of adopted me, and I trained with my cousins."

"I had no idea you're a Canadian," Trish said.

"You said that kind of sneeringly," Sharon said humorously.

"I did not. You could have just, I don't know..."

"Walked around wearing a toque, drinking a bottle of Molson?" Sharon offered.

"For example, yeah."

"Oh, for fuck sake," Sharon answered amidst a host of laughter.

"How about you?" Sax asked Trish.

"My friend Hank taught me mostly. And our mutual friend Logan, when I had advanced far enough."

"Not with Jessica?" Sharon asked.

Trish shook her head as she drained the last of her bottle of Victoria.

"Jessica doesn't train. Her method is to just hit someone really hard. When you're as strong as she is it usually works."

Sharon thought back to the safe room door, and her first glimpse of Jessica's raw power.

"I can imagine."

"That's who you called about San Diego, right? Your friend Hank?"

"Yeah. He lives in San Francisco, so he was nearby. He took it pretty hard when they couldn't find it in time. They all did."

"All?"

"He called in some help. He still has a small team, even though he's retired. I really thought they would find it in time."

"It sounds like it's getting bad," Saxon said as she shook the sand out of her oversized t-shirt before putting it back on.

"Nothing any of us can do about it," Sharon said as she stood up and stretched her long frame, which got an extended, admiring look from Trish, "but your boss, and her boyfriend...they might be able to."

"She's his ex-boyfriend," Abby said, the note of optimism clear in her voice.

"Get in line, miha," her partner said simply as everyone laughed.

"Looking forward to some downtime," Luke said as he and Jessica lay on the sand and looked up at the stars, "we should go somewhere and relax."

"We are somewhere. We could just stay here."

"We're in the country illegally, neither of us has our passports, or flight arrangements, or visas, and I'm pretty sure we would need some of those to book a room."

The sky was awash with stars. It was easy to forget when you lived in the city that there were people around the world who got to see this every night.

"Killjoy. Fine, we could do it all above board. Aric has a friend with a condo. We could get the info from Rita. Just as long as the wind's not blowing down from San Diego."

"We could always go to Maine instead," Luke said with a short laugh.

"Let's not get carried away. You know how cold the water is there? You need a wet suit in August."

"I'll go anywhere, as long as I go there with you," he answered as he turned his head to look at her.

She smiled at him before she answered.

"You really want to get laid tonight, don't you?"

His smile matched hers when he answered.

"If it wouldn't be too much trouble."

"There you are," Rita said as she approached, "we're packing up. Time to go."

"Fine by me," Jessica said, "I've got sand stuck in places that I wish I didn't."

They were on their way back to the marina, the moon climbing the night sky amidst a host of stars, when Aric took flight; as if some invisible hand gently lifted him off of the forward deck. His body seemed relaxed, his arms slightly away from his torso. It still reminded Rita a little of how ski jumpers used their arms to catch the wind and keep themselves airborne, even though she knew that it had nothing to do with how he stayed aloft. Tyler took one look at the man whom he had known his entire life before walking into the cabin and hopping up next to Elise and his small stuffed doppelgänger. This was old news for him, and a soft mattress was much more interesting. Everyone else, even those who had seen it before, paid rapt attention to the man who seemed to drift on the wind until he was about two hundred feet away when he began to glow like a small sun off the starboard bow of the catamaran, staying just a bit ahead. Jean was at the helm for the return journey, and Céline took the opportunity to join the rest of the women (Luke was once again safely stored aft) and enjoy the view. Abby and Sax had been stunned into silence at their first glimpse of the floating, then glowing, man, but when they turned to look at Rita they realized from her almost bored expression that she had seen the phenomena before. Sharon's reaction had been identical in every way, including when she turned and looked at her compatriots.

"What?" Jessica asked, "You've never seen a glowing man flying over the water before?"

Julia and Beth both laughed but otherwise stayed quiet. Beth had seen it before (as had Julia), but it felt different now. She knew what lay at the end of this glowing rainbow. Not the specifics, but the general mise-en-scène. It would not be an end to Alice. Aric had shown her that there was no Alice, not really; nor Beth neither, for that matter. Beth and Alice were two smaller parts of a larger whole. And she would be whole again, once they got back to New York.

"It's better if you sleep it off afterward," he had explained, "and there's no reason you shouldn't do that in your own bed."

Her heart was racing at the prospect of making it all the way out this time; through that final door that separated the dark hallway from the bright light of freedom.

"But you're sure you can do it?"

"Technically, it'll be us doing it. I'll be there to help you fit the pieces back together, but it'll be you doing the reassembling. But to answer your question - yes, I'm confident we can do it. What you do with it afterward, that's up to you; just like it's up to all of us what we do with our lives."

Beth had felt her confidence begin to wane, as the question came into her mind, not knowing how he would answer, or why it meant so much to her for him to say yes.

"Will you stay with me afterward, just to make sure? Please?"

Aric smiled at her when he answered, which had sent her pulse racing again as she imagined this beautiful man lying next to her while she slept, on the bed in her room that had only ever known one occupant.

"Absolutely."