Sakura Sato was, in every sense of the word, beautiful.

Jet-black tendrils of hair hung from a tightly-bound high ponytail. Crimson lipstick brought a dash of color to her pale, unblemished face; silver earrings dangled in a glittering motion that entranced Aar as he sat and watched. But something in Ms. Sato's eyes had changed, something subtle and undefinable. Whereas those eyes had blazed two weeks before, filling the room with an intensity that had astounded Aar, today they were subdued. Today they pulsed, silent; today they were the glowing embers of a fire that Aar could no longer see.

Cherry-red curtains had been drawn over the windows of Ms. Sato's office, the only light streaming from bulbs set in the ceiling and a decorative Japanese lamp on Ms. Sato's desk. The beige carpet had been recently vacuumed, and the withered lilies that had filled a vase on the sideboard had been removed. Yet the room felt just as devoid of life as it had in the weeks before Ms. Sato's arrival. Though she had re-entered the space, her presence had not touched it. Neither had the headquarters touched Ms. Sato; days after her rescue, she faced Aar with the same lifeless expression she had worn upon fleeing the Empire base, upon melting its metallic infrastructure into the ground.

"So. Maanyo." Ms. Sato's voice seemed to die where it originated, the sound traveling scarcely farther than her own lips. Her eyes met Aar's, though, and she stared into him unflinchingly. "I want to extend my personal thanks for your efforts these past few weeks. You and the other heroes have been indispensable in taking down...well, not just the Canadian convict, but also the criminals that held me hostage. And Azazel, too. Azazel was..."

"I know he was a Sentry, ma'am," said Aar quietly. The word Ms. Sato had used, "indispensable", still echoed in his mind. Sixteen heroes had been killed performing the tasks she had mentioned so briefly. Perhaps these heroes had been indispensable at the time, though, in the aftermath, Project Phoenix had been forced to continue without.

Ms. Sato nodded. "Of course. It's a shame he allied himself with criminals, but I'm grateful to you for apprehending him."

Her answer burned inside of Aar. Allying oneself with criminals—how could Ms. Sato not recognize the hypocrisy? Intelligent as she was, she could not sit there and forget the dark place from which she herself had come. But her immaculate posture betrayed nothing, and those eyes, deep and dull and dark, obscured her inner machinations.

At the very least, Aar had not forgotten.

"Ms. Sato," he said slowly. Across the desk, Ms. Sato only blinked, any surprise or anticipation muted. "At the Empire base..."

Aar had seen her file. He had not told the other Project Phoenix members, even after they had emerged breathless from the underground facility, even after they had boarded Ms. Sato's plane and slumped in their leather seats, utterly exhausted. He had been given ample opportunity to describe the file he had abandoned, in detail, and his character guaranteed he would have been believed. But he had said nothing, until today.

The file had been accurate, as far as Aar could tell. He now knew the crimes she had committed, the prestige she had secured for the same Empire that held her hostage. He knew her family name had served as cover for countless atrocities, murder and blackmail and offenses too vile for Aar to consider without feeling nauseous. Some of these she had done herself, while others had been perpetrated by her comrades. She knew of it all, though. She had witnessed enough.

Aar had been called into this office to discuss the future. Nora had already quit, and, while King and Reason seemed to be staying, the continuing status of Project Phoenix was uncertain. Aar was the last to speak to Ms. Sato, and he would be the last to answer on his future with the project. But before Aar could answer Ms. Sato—before he could feel confident in any decision that involved this woman—Ms. Sato would need to answer to Aar.

The words were lead on his tongue. "I kept watch for the others," Aar said at last, his eyes falling to the vacuumed carpet. "And a—a folder slided under a door, and..."

At this, Ms. Sato collapsed.

Something had snapped, in the air, in Ms. Sato, in her manner of carrying herself. Her head had fallen into her hands cleanly, elegantly, and Aar could hear her voice coming from between her fingers, low and rumbling: "I knew they would do this." Again and again, she said, "I knew they would do this. I knew they would."

Aar waited, and Ms. Sato's head rose once again. The eyes were different now, the clouded lens shattered. Finally, Aar could identify that burning, flickering emotion that had plagued her since her rescue—fear.

"My uncle," said Ms. Sato, her fingers drumming on the desktop, her nostrils slightly flared. "My uncle, he—well, you must know what he's like. I don't know what research you've done. He's clever, though. That entire side of the family is, they, they get what they want, and...well. You haven't told anyone, have you?"

Aar had followed nothing in her words except for the last bit. "No," he said, "I was alone for most of the mission. Afterward, I...no, I did not tell anyone."

"Thank Jesus. I'm just, I'm trying to say that that was a plant. The folder under the door or whatever, that was all staged, I bet. My uncle said something along the lines of, 'Maybe they won't want to rescue you', and I knew he would pull something like this, it's just—none of the others mentioned it, and you didn't say anything when we were leaving."

Aar sat in silence for a moment. His lingering doubts about the file's authenticity had vanished—while it had been planted, as he'd suspected after the mission, Ms. Sato's references to her uncle seemed to affirm her personal involvement in the Empire. "The folder was a setup," he said at last, "but it was true, is that right?"

"It's true, probably." Ms. Sato gazed off to the side now, her head cupped in the palm of her left hand. "They wouldn't need to embellish my record, if that's what they showed you. I did nasty things." Aar's silence appeared to prompt her to continue: "It was all because of my dad, but... I was just a kid, you know. He was in charge of the whole thing, he wanted me to take over when I was an adult.

"That's the problem, when you're a kid," said Ms. Sato softly. "When you—well, when someone you look up to and respect tells you how the world works, when they tell you who you are...you believe them."

For a while, Aar and Ms. Sato said nothing. The clock on her desk ticked quietly, but the only other sound was the shallow breathing of Ms. Sato and the steady, practiced breathing of Aar. As Ms. Sato continued to stare into the ruby-curtained window, Aar focused on Ms. Sato's fingers, which idly tapped the desktop.

"I understand," said Aar, still looking at Ms. Sato's fingers. "I suspected, when I saw the file at first, that you had cut ties with them. The big fire at their base a few years ago..."

Ms. Sato chuckled, softly and hollowly. "I couldn't help it," she said. "They'd warped my thinking so much that when I realized the truth—what heroes actually could be, who I wanted to be—I lost it. The old leader of the Sentries, Blacklight, he...well, have you ever had someone who basically re-taught you stuff you learned wrong the first time? That's who Blacklight was to me. So after learning all that from him, I finally got the chance to just obliterate the Empire, just demolish the base and the people who had taught me wrong for years, and I couldn't not do it."

Aar nodded. From his memory echoed the first day Aar had spent at Project Phoenix Headquarters, when Ms. Sato had defined the mission of the project in clear terms. She had promised they would protect the people of the world; she had promised they would promote peace, would ensure that no one but wrongdoers lived in fear. From that first meeting, he had known who Ms. Sato was, the ideals to which she subscribed. Nothing had changed. "I understand," Aar said.

"I'm just—I'm just so upset." The fear he had witnessed just moments before crackled to life again, creasing her forehead, twisting her lip. "You have to understand, Maanyo, I thought I was finished with that. I thought, if I just do one little thing, my entire past is behind me and I can start clean. New team, new life. But it doesn't work like that. Your past, it..." Her head fell into her hands again, and she let out a long breath. "Your past doesn't leave you like that. It's you. You can go anywhere, do anything, and it'll break into your headquarters with an Empire mask and... Your past matters. You define who you are, but your past stays with you. That was my mistake."

Aar nodded and murmured words of affirmation, but his mind was far away. The shadows of Ms. Sato's past had surrounded him as she'd spoken, the scenes and characters floating before his eyes, but now they wore faces that Aar recognized, inhabited phantom places he had visited. There were the bloody bodies of the Silver Fox and his daughter, and Whiskey Wonder riddled with bullet holes, and Sweetheart's pale corpse; there were the cold waters he had swum as a teenager, when he had imagined himself the loneliest person in the world. Aar's past had never left him, despite meditation and organized thought and urgent focus on the present.

But as he faced the future now—as he realized that Ms. Sato had given him the answers he needed, as he realized he would need to make a choice—he knew that he and Ms. Sato differed.

Project Phoenix had been Ms. Sato's flight from the past. She had abandoned the Empire in favor of this, a new team that spread the values she upheld. In joining Project Phoenix, however, Aar had never considered the past. Instead, he had fled himself. He had shoved his own notions of inferiority to the side for one moment, had seen something greater, and had followed it into the light.

The images of Aar's personal history still surrounded him, but they had changed. Now he stared not at bleeding bodies, but at the smiling face of his own mother. The bright hallways of his home extended before him, filled with colorful paintings and statues; the aroma of baking bread wafted through the air around him. And above it all was an endless night sky, sparkling with the stars that had twinkled the night of Ms. Sato's rescue. He remembered those stars; he remembered the threat of impending doom that had come with them, and he remembered nearly succumbing to that threat willingly. But those stars... He had not wanted to die that night, if only to see those beautiful stars one last time.

Everything fell into place.

"Ms. Sato," said Aar. The woman before him straightened and waited, dark eyes no longer distracted but pointed directly at Aar. "Ms. Sato, I made a decision."

She blinked. "Yes?" she said.

"I cannot stay with Project Phoenix."

The room was still for what felt like an eternity. "You're quitting?" said Ms. Sato, her face bearing the same stony expression as it had when Aar had entered. "Is it because of me?"

Aar paused. He could not answer before he had collected his thoughts, but, he realized, his thoughts were already clear.

"In fact," said Aar, folding his hands over the desktop and holding Ms. Sato's gaze, "it is. "You told me that your past has stayed with you. That is true. Like you, my past has stayed with me. But something else you have said is also true—you can choose who you become, who you are.

"I have struggled with my place here. I did not think the project would have use for me, because of my own limits. But I was called here because I wanted to do something great. In the end, even though I felt I was not suited for this place, I stayed here because I wanted to. I wanted to be a hero, and I think I was one.

"But you are right—my past has not left me. You have taken care of yours, and I must take care of mine."

The last words Aar said to Ms. Sato were, "Thank you." And then, again: "Thank you."

*

It was night when Aar arrived at his childhood home. The car he had parked in the front driveway was nice, too nice; it stuck out in his vision, and he swore he would change it for a more humble model in the coming weeks.

The door was still painted red, just as he remembered. The plants still flourished in the front garden, watered by a careful hand, and the eaves were still dented from the maintenance mishap a few years prior.

The doorbell still worked.

On the doorstep, he waited. A minute passed, and no one answered; Aar considered that perhaps his mother was still at work when the door creaked opened, a pair of dark brown eyes peering out from the golden space beyond.

"Aar."

He had not been called Aar for weeks. He had only answered to Maanyo, and the use of his proper name softened him. The tension left his body, and suddenly everything was well again.

"Aar." The door was wide open now, and there his mother stood, voice wavering, eyes brimming with tears. In one slow, shaky movement, she crossed the threshold, barefoot in her work jacket and pants; she smelled of cinnamon, just as she always had.

"Aar," she whispered as he fell into her arms. "You're home."

They stood there under the starlight, warm in one another's embrace, mother's small body enveloped in her son's larger frame. "Why," the mother murmured, "did you come back?"

And the son answered: "You, mother. It is because of you."

*

The image on her phone was grainy. Aar squinted to see it, adjusting the brightness as his mother boiled water for tea.

"It's just the same picture I sent you," his mother said. "You didn't show the project people, right? I know they know almost everything, but this should really be kept secret."

"Of course not." He'd only just received the message before his last meeting with Ms. Sato, after all. There had been no time to tell anyone, no reason besides.

The body in the photo was tiny, malnourished. Ribs jutted through skin, and eyes were large in a too-thin face. What drew Aar's gaze, however, were the slits in her side, the webbed fingers and toes. Her ears were rounded, not pointed, but her open mouth revealed a set of sharpened teeth.

She was the most beautiful child Aar had ever seen.

"Like I said, they wanted me to look after her, like I did for you. But I said I'm older now, I can't watch a child on my own."

"You're not alone now," Aar said softly.

"No?" said his mother.

"No." After casting one last look at the phone, he added: "Neither is she."