It was barely 4:30 but the sun was already beginning to hide its face, at least from the residents of New York City. Harlem, and the apartment building at 111 W 130th Street in particular, were in no way immune to the fading light, and the dropping temperatures that accompanied the end of November. The apartment on the top floor, which stood only three stories above ground, and the two women, one man, and one oversized German Shepard who currently occupied it, were enjoying the last glimpses of the red sunset as the two-legged occupants set the table for a late lunch/early dinner.

"Spicy beef stew with ribbon noodles for the gentleman," Julia said as she removed items from the large plastic bag, "spicy cumin lamb with lagman noodles for me, which leaves curry stir fry for the lady of the house."

"I thought you were the lady of the house," Beth said as she sorted which iced tea belonged to each of them. She found the one labeled mango and handed it to Aric.

"It's a Monday," Julia replied as she took her tea which, like Beth's, was labeled white peach, "it's your day to be the lady of the house."

"Well, glad we sorted that out," Aric said as he looked at a fur-covered face topped with large ears, and two brown eyes that attempted to give the appearance that the canine that owned all of those things, whose name was Tyler, had not eaten in so long that he had almost forgotten what food looked like.

"Nice try, pal, but no way. We just fed you half an hour ago."

"Are we splitting the sauteed Bok-Choy?" Julia asked as she emptied the container into a bowl. "Maybe he'd like some of that?"

Tyler required only a cursory inspection of the food in question to render his opinion by walking into the living room and lying down so he could sulk in private. He placed his head between his massive paws and drew in a large breath before letting it out in a loud sigh as he announced to the world just how unfair he thought life was.

"Fine, be that way," Beth said as she walked over to him and scratched him behind the ears.

Anyone observing the three of them as they ate together would be forgiven for mistaking them for any run-of-the-mill New York City trio; a woman, her boyfriend, and her roommate (and best friend) enjoying a meal before two of them would fly off for their Thanksgiving holiday visiting family and friends. Aric continued to be careful about how he and his GSD companion of thirty years traveled to and from Beth and Julia's apartment so that either the last leg of their journey or the first one (depending on whether they were coming or going) involved them emerging from or disappearing into the parking garage that was just a short walk from the steps that led up to the front door of the apartment. And while the two women did not have the luxury of traveling anywhere on the planet using a bubble of folded space (unless Aric provided that bubble) they did have secrets that they wanted hidden from the rest of the world, and those secrets were currently hidden in an apartment on 51st street that served as their base of operations.

"You're sure you want to fly?" Aric had asked them a month earlier as Julia was searching for flights from JFK to O'Hare.

"Yes, we're sure we want to fly," Beth answered as Julia nodded her head in agreement.

"It's not that we don't appreciate the offer, but we need the paper trail for the FBI to follow. Remember, Beth is still under court-ordered supervision as part of her plea deal."

"And you said yourself that the less dark energy I get exposed to the better," Beth added.

"If you don't want to end up like me then yes, less exposure is better," he had answered before going quiet.

They had only been a couple for a few months, but Beth (and Julia) knew what it meant when his face went blank in that manner. Beth's cure for loneliness these last months had been Aric, but she knew there was no cure for his loneliness. She could play her part, and she knew from the inside (his inside, when she was in his head, and he was in hers) how happy she made him, but she also knew what it was that kept him separated from the world in general, and how much he wished it could be otherwise.

"I can't be what the world wants me to be. I can't save everyone and everything from themselves or each other, not even if everyone could agree on what that would mean," he had explained early in their relationship, but she had already heard from a former girlfriend of his how much of a burden his gift was. She had no idea how she would react if someone came up to her and asked her to bring back their little girl who had died from cancer the year before; no idea what it must feel like to look into someone's eyes and watch the hope fade when she told them that she couldn't do what they asked. She had no idea, and she had no fucking interest whatsoever in finding out.

"You don't have to be anything with me. Just be yourself," she had replied.

Beth and Julia had exchanged a look when he had gone quiet, his offer to take them from New York to Chicago in the blink of an eye politely declined. It was only a brief moment however, the end of which was marked by a slow inhalation of breath before Aric's eyes came up to find Beth's as his beautiful face adopted a slight smile.

They tried to be just a normal couple, as much as it was possible given his gifts and their respective pasts. A few exotic vacations, at least their mode of transportation was exotic, but they didn't overdo it. And they were still very careful to keep to the shallows when it came to sharing thoughts. Beth had seen firsthand what would happen if she crossed the line Aric said should never be crossed, and it was yet another thing she had no interest in experiencing firsthand. But what they did share was more than enough, so much more than enough that she still had trouble believing it at times; trouble believing it, and trouble accepting the idea that she did deserve to be this happy.

The trio sat and ate as they discussed mundane topics just like any three ordinary people who did not live double lives would do. But Beth was not above a bit of mischief, a fact she demonstrated by reaching out gently to prod Aric's mind in that way she had learned always got a reaction from him. She called it his ticklish spot, even though she knew that it was not one specific part of his brain, mind, or psyche that she was mentally touching.

Aric's chopsticks wavered for the briefest of moments in response to her teasing. He kept his eyes on his plate for a moment, but those beautiful gray eyes began to crinkle at the corners just before he responded.

tease

Beth's smile was much less clandestine, so much so that her best friend immediately knew what was up. She looked at one and then the other before shaking her head.

"God, the two of you. You're like teenagers."

A soft explosion of breath from the next room signaled Tyler's complete agreement.

"Tyler, wait," Aric said as the three of them stood at the crosswalk and waited for the light to change. He could have saved his breath - Tyler, with Aric at his side, had been navigating busy street like this one on almost every continent for the better part of his thirty year existence. But Aric knew that his four legged best friend, who Aric was keeping perpetually young, enjoyed hearing his voice. And since Aric liked talking to him just as much it was a win/win for both of them.

"I love those radar ears of his," Beth said as she scratched Tyler on the head; folding said ears down in the process only to have them pop back up again as those ears, and the brown eyes in close proximity, took in the sights and sounds moving along Fredrick Douglas Boulevard.

The sun had well and truly set, and the dropping temperatures were keeping some denizens of New York inside. Those who were still out and about were obscured by an assortment of hats and coats and scarfs. Beth wore a dark blue wool duffel toggle coat that used to belong to her sister Kate. Aric wore a black ankle length wool overcoat, which for him was pure adornment. He could stand in the middle of Antarctica at midwinter in his underwear and not feel the least bit cold. It was one of the many pluses of tapping into a limitless supply of dark energy; a collection of pluses that went quite a ways towards balancing out the minuses that his abilities brought with them. Whether it was the pluses or the minuses that won the struggle depended on what day it was, sometimes what hour it was. It was the ebbs and flows of life that dictated that; life in general, and Aric's life in particular. Aric had the door to his mind sealed tight at the moment, so Beth did not know that he was thinking of her, and how her place in the plus column of his life was growing larger every day. It was, perhaps, total coincidence that Beth was in that moment thinking of Aric in much the same way. But the direction of her thoughts quickly took a left turn when her mind's eye brought up the image of a story that Aric had told her, a story that brought a quick laugh bubbling up before it escaped her lips.

"What," he asked.

"Nothing. It's just...I still can't believe that you hate to fly."

Aric took in a deep breath before slowly letting it out. "You know I don't hate to fly. I hate to fly in airplanes. And you know why."

She was toying with him, and they both knew it. It was a game of cat and mouse that they had begun to play on their second date. And despite all his abilities, which could burn the world to ash if he wanted, Aric was always the mouse.

"That happened once. God, you can be such a baby sometimes."

"It happened once because I never got on an airplane again."

It had happened on a flight from Charlotte to Punta Cana. Aric had been going through one of his let's be normal phases. Nothing that required dark energy except for the requisite morning and evening regens. One hundred sixty passengers, and a crew of six in the metal shell of a 737-800. It was a lot of voices to block out, but he had been doing a pretty good job. He had learned some techniques over the years to district his mind so that the thoughts of everyone around him became background noise akin to the humming of a box window fan. But that humming quickly turned into screaming as the plane gave a violent shudder and began to lose altitude.

fuck me, Aric thought as he focused his mind tightly and began to scan the voices in his head like he was turning the knob on an old fashioned radio. He stopped finally when he found the two that were not radiating sheer terror as they focused on their emergency checklist.

[ENGINE START switches both to FLT]...

...{FLT Set}

[Engine inlet temperature decreasing]...

...{Affirm, EGT decreasing. 900...850...800}

[Engine start levers both to IDLE detent]...

...{IDLE detent SET}

Aric knew absolutely nothing about planes. But he knew fear. He knew how it could be all consuming. He knew what the man and woman sitting in the cockpit were feeling, but he also sensed the kernel of strength that their training and their core selves gave them, the armor that allowed them to work the problem in front of them rather than give in to the fear that was trying to overwhelm them.

It was on their third attempt to cycle the engine start levers that Aric decided he needed to do something. As he unbuckled his seat belt and stood up he began to radiate a sense of calm. He could feel it have an affect, the voices in his head growing quieter as he moved towards the front of the the cabin that continued to shake and vibrate violently. The door to the cockpit was locked when he got there, but that was not any sort of obstacle. The woman sitting on the left, and the man sitting on the right turned at the sound of his voice.

"Tell me what you need to happen," Aric said calmly.

"You saved a couple hundred lives that day," Beth said as they crossed Frederick Douglass Boulevard, "that's a good day's work however you slice it."

Aric was thinking about the events of that day, what occured on the plane and what came afterwards, as he spoke. "A good day's work. Right place, right time. What if I had decided to go to Hawaii instead? Would all those people have died? Or would it have been a flight to Honolulu experiencing total engine failure? Is the universe fucking with me, putting things in my path, telling me that it gave me these abilities for a reason, and that I'm wasting them? Or is it all just random?"

"You talk like the universe is a living thing; like it has emotions, or holds grudges," Beth replied.

"Don't you feel sometimes that the universe is testing you? That is knows your name, and places obstacles in your path, barriers designed specifically for you to trip over?"

She didn't need to speak any words to answer. They had shared that thought more than once. But life/the universe/karma had set Aric's bar orders of magnitude higher than it had set Beth's. Before she met Aric she felt that she had been dealt a pretty shitty hand. And, objectively speaking, she had. Kidnapped. Brainwashed. Emotionally and psychologically disassembled and remade into a weapon. Pretty fucking bad on the face of it. So how was it that she looked at the ridiculously attractive man walking next to her, a man that could do incredible things as he tapped into and wielded dark energy, and think that his road have been even rougher than hers?

"You were only fourteen when the universe dropped a galaxy sized gift in your lap but somehow forgot to also give you the owner's manual for it. At least I had people training me, and teaching me. I went through a lot, and I felt a lot of really twisted emotions, but I never felt like I was alone; not like you felt it."

They continued to walk in silence for several minutes, each of them - the pair that walked on two legs and the one who used four - lost in the privacy of their own thoughts.

"Sorry," Aric said eventually, his metal barriers opening up enough for Beth to feel the familiar warmth.

Beth smiled as she replied, adding her own warmth to his before feeding it back to him. "No worries."

Their route traced a generous square that would eventually place Beth back at her apartment on 130th. Aric and Tyler would turn into the parking garage that would be his stepping off point to an equally nondescript building in Buenos Aires.

Their pace slowed the closer they got to their parting. "So your coming, right?" Beth asked.

Aric's head tilted down slightly as he looked at the fur covered face that was looking back at him. "I'm coming if I'm invited."

"I'm inviting you. This is me inviting you, you dumbbell."

"You know what I mean. If it's OK with your dad and your sister."

Beth tugged on his hand to get him to make eye contact. "It'll be OK. I'll make sure of it."

Aric smiled. "OK, then," he replied.

They looked at each other for a few seconds before someone made his own request.

"Rrrrrrrrrr. Wffffff."

"Yes, you overgrown mutt, you're invited too."