four years ago

It was difficult to sleep in Omega.
Obviously.

The cold leeched into her bones despite all the magic keeping her warm. (That, at least, might have been psychosomatic.) The ever-present threat of monsters and criminals made it nearly impossible to allow for the vulnerability of sleep, regardless of the wards she put up. And even if she managed that, when she wasn't preoccupied with anything else it was impossible to keep her mind from folding in on itself in a sea of calculations, ideas she contradicted and discarded in the course of seconds, all scattering, disorganized above all of the useless feelings she was finding harder to ignore.

She had been wrong to think you could not tell the days passing in Omega. Being attuned to the place for longer had given her a sense of time passing, of days and nights, although the planet did not have its own sun or a moon, and the dull light that brightened and dimmed with the consistency of the planet's rotation was just gleaned from multiple nearby stars.

How long will it be before they stop looking for me? It may be useless to send a signal after that.

They may give up quickly.

Everyone may have already given up.

Laying in the darkness of her cave hideout, she pressed those thoughts away. None of that was useful. None of that would help her accomplish her objective. She was proceeding as quickly as possible; if everyone gave up looking for her before she could finish, there was nothing she could do about it.

Who was everyone, anyway? Her friends? The Dimension at large? Offhandedly, she wondered how her parents were faring. She was sure they were at least somewhat alright. They were model citizens of Zenith.

None of that mattered, none of it did—what mattered was that she was going to fix it.

Even though this wasn't useful, either, her thoughts wandered to Valtor. Her closing the vortex had bought them time—but, she thought with a frown, this situation left the girls with one less fairy on their side. Of course, everyone but Bloom had their Enchantixes now.

She had been thinking about that a lot before all this had happened. Technically speaking, she was the only one without an Enchantix, and the last one to get it, because she didn't count Bloom ((a) she was the vessel for the power that had created the universe, and therefore had extraordinarily powerful potential nonetheless, and (b) it was literally impossible to get her Enchantix by the ordinary means.)

Statistically speaking, there had to be Zenin who had received their Enchantixes before. She had not started doing any research into it. It was irrational, but beginning to research why it hadn't yet happened for her had felt almost like an admission of failure. The teachers at school had always said it happened when you were ready. That the forces that guided the universe would ensure you were in the place and time that would test you, and find you worthy of the powers of Enchantix—that this power was generally only able to be activated by sacrifice, even though it was theoretically possible to awaken it by brute force.

She wasn't sure if she believed all that. No, she was almost certain she did not. If the universe could put her on Andros to get her Enchantix, the universe could have closed the portal.

Now she was being bitter. Magic was a system, just like any other phenomena. Just because it was more ephemeral did not necessarily mean it was unknowable or illogical. It was a highly volatile art, a manipulation of power, both internal and external, channeled and generated—and it was tied to emotion, epiphany, sacrifice.

Mostly all qualities that Zenins tended to shun. There weren't a lot of fairies on her home planet. She had never quite understood that. Magic was about exerting control over these things, mastering them and utilizing them to their highest potential. It wasn't the shameful sort of emotionality that Zenith found so embarrassing, the sort that made one act in a materially illogical way in order to satisfy an immaterial sensation.

In any case, she had been told more than once at Alfea that she was closed off, and that was the source of any and all troubles she had had with practicing magic. She hadn't paid too much attention to that advice, although she begrudgingly conceded that in a few specific situations—attaining Charmix, for example—it was correct.

What did it matter now, then, that she had wondered just nights before Andros if being "closed off" was why she didn't have her Enchantix yet? Most days she felt as though she was completely, wildly overemotional, that she had been ever since leaving Zenith for school. To everyone else she was ridiculously cold—they were a bit more polite than they used to be, but she saw their reactions when she said things sometimes. So which was it? Was it just that she was too feeling for Zenith now and still too unfeeling to be anywhere else?

It didn't. It didn't matter now, because she had her Enchantix, for all the good it did her down here.

She gave up on the ability to go back to sleep, and instead she rose and ventured out of her dwelling place. She was extremely cautious about exploring; there was very little cover here, and someone or something could spot her from far off. Miniaturizing was slightly more helpful there, but her smaller body covered ground much less efficiently, and she was sure at least some of the creatures would be able to spot magical signatures. But she couldn't hide forever. She had to at least have some idea of her surroundings—the more information she had, the better.

As she kept closely to the cliffside, and then quickly flitted to the nearest peak of the uneven planes, trying to avoid the open spaces, she thought more about her prototype. The crystals would do well, but she would need something to amplify the signal. Fairy dust might help, but she did not want to depend wholly on it—there had to be something strong enough to get the signal off the planet, though both the natural dark energy that surrounded them and the artificial blocking imposed by Magix imprisonment spells.

In the distance she could see the next closest valley, where she suspected the group she had seen the other day might have come from. It was the next most habitable place after the high cliffs where she had made her own dwelling, and as far as she had seen none of those prisoners had looked as though they were able to fly, so a cave at the bottom of a high slope was a likely place to find them.

Tecna hovered around the next cliff face, debating climbing higher and trying to break the cloud cover, and then suddenly she was face to face with a man holding a blaster gun.

She stoped breathing for a moment at the shock, going still. The bolt of dread that seared through her was barely even fear. She was not really scared of a man with a blaster, even if she was tired and trying to conserve her energy. But this was the first person she had seen at all up close—close enough to touch.

He was a fairly unassuming looking man. He was tall and thin, and at least ten years older than she was, but probably more. He was very pale, and so was his hair, which had an almost blueish tint. He nearly blended into the ice and snow—she had not noticed him in the shadows out of the corner of her eye—and over a rather ragged version of the jumpsuit she had come to recognize as issued by Omega, he wore a white and official looking jacket that had obviously come from somewhere else.

She opened her eyes so wide it hurt a little, trying to glance around and see anything other than the dim landscape before them. Her surprise wore off almost immediately. Being in Omega was a totally anomalous scenario, nothing else could be too surprising. Instead, her mind was already turning out possible courses of action. "Who are you? What do you want?"

It was not exactly the right question to ask—she did not know the right one, she thought. These were the first words she had spoken to another person since she had first been trapped down here, and they sounded strange in her mouth even though she dictated to her computer occasionally, so this wasn't the first time she had spoken at all.

The man spoke at a normal volume, and calmly. "Just a conversation," he said, ignoring the first question. "You're worth much more to me alive than dead. I just want to make sure you know I'm the same way for you."

a/n: I'm honestly going to be amazed if anyone is still reading this story. Chapter 13 of ATW is in my doc manager with 9 days left which means it has been almost exactly one year. there is a oneshot i havent published solely because i cant figure out a title that promises in the author note to try to have this up by April (and now its August. but at least its just barely August.) but I am back. I mean, I never really left. I've been working on this story and thinking about it off and on since my last update. It's just that (1) I am a serial procrastinator and (2) I am in law school now (did I tell you guys that?). And that is kind of of a time suck. Not to mention between that and my legal copywriting job, I write a LOT and it just kind of wrings out all the will to write fun stuff later in my brain.

But if anyone is reading this, I am so grateful. Thanks for sticking with me all this time, and I promise that I am going to try to be better. I really want to finish this story. It's already all outlined, a lot is already written—I just need to be more consistent at getting words on the page, and I really want to be. Any support from readers really does mean so much, because I love writing something I love and not just something I have to finish.

Also, I am approximately ten years behind on this, i know, but I have decided to take the AO3 leap, which I resisted for this long due to nostalgia, dislike of change, and distaste for learning a new website interface, but I have put myself on the list to get an AO3 account and when I do I will probably start posting ATW there as well. Don't worry, FF will still be updated at the same time, but if you prefer AO3 or something, look out for that shortly.