"They've struck," Sicilienne said blankly, slowly coming to terms with the implications of what had just transpired. "This means..."

"War," whispered the Writer, finishing her thought. The books he'd brought down from the shelves—Marina, Paul, and Libby Bear—had been thrown across the floor in frustration, and he, too, lay there motionlessly, tearing through his hair and eyes permanently frozen in a state of helpless shock. She hated seeing him like this, torn every which way by stress. But more than that, she hated that he had not known what to do. He had not saved them.

He was supposed to know everything.

Sicilienne hugged Stilts to her chest, though he squirmed. "You are putting my brother and his friends in the thick of a war that is not theirs." Her tone was accusatory.

"Oh, but it is theirs," he murmured, seemingly unfazed by her irritation. "You saw their destinies change as much as I did. This is their fight. And mine."

"Then why can't you help them?" she insisted.

"I am doing all that I can."

"Well, it isn't good enough!"

He jolted up to a sitting position, eyes burning with fury. "You don't understand, Sicilienne. This is larger than you and I." His cold stare shifted to nothingness in the distance. "The Sandman killed my mentor. My Writer. And his work will not be finished until he has killed me too. But he is a fool. He is a fool," he repeated angrily, "too blinded by his own hubris to recognize that there are other forces at play, toying with things he cannot even hope to comprehend. As Writers, we stand between the world and great evil. Your brother's friends, it seems, stand between the world and great stupidity."

Sicilienne's breath caught. The weight of everything was finally comprehensible to her, and her brother... she could not let him die this way, fighting for a cause that was not his, an unwinnable battle. Regret flooded her lungs and constricted her chest. She shouldn't have brought him here.

"You have to tell them to stop. They're going to get themselves killed."

The Writer shook his head. "It is not their lives alone that are my concern. Either they end this madness, or none of us will live to tell the tale."

She did not protest, falling silent as he swept past her to pick up Claude's life-book once more. He took a steadying breath, smoothing its pages. Like this, hat discarded and clothes distressed and hair flying every which way, he looked so much less Writer and so much more man.

"What is it?" she finally asked, tentatively. "The... curse?"

He glanced at her briefly. "Neither of us want to know. But I suspect we'll soon find out."

The Writer slammed open a drawer in the desk and pulled out a small bottle. Even though she knew it was the replay elixir, she always flinched instinctively, just a little. He put one hand on the page, shutting his eyes, and his body glittered out of sight, his mind wandering far off into Claude's story.

He appeared hovering above the Bears' residence, dropping to the porch and wincing at the pressure on his bad leg—he'd rushed the landing. He steadied himself with his cane and glanced about, taking in Claude standing at alert behind Ramona, who was being confronted by Lucien. This was where he'd begun to interfere with things, albeit ineffectively.

"I am nobody's puppet."

"But aren't you?" Lucien replied coyly.

"Aren't you just a glorified errand boy?" she retorted, pose casual but eyes flickering with annoyance. The Writer shifted his focus to Aurele. Claude would draw his weapon...

Now.

The bullet failed, he realized, not because of any magic that Aurele had but because Ajani's illusion could not be harmed. But by the time he'd figured out that it was an illusion—around the same time Claude had—it was too late. "He tried to kill me," Aurele laughed, eyes brightening like she was truly enjoying the Writer's doomed attempts. He scowled, tightening his grip on his cane.

Myra lifted her eyebrows. "Bold for a magicless thief."

"No, not him," Aurele replied, and this was when the hair on the back of his neck pricked up. "The thief is a pawn like the rest of us."

It was then that she looked past Claude—directly at him. The Writer drew in a sharp breath, meeting her stare.

It was almost as if she'd known he'd be there, watching her. But that wasn't possible.

Or was it?

Kanan had always told him to be careful where he put his pen. Too much adjustment and people might become too aware of the Writer's presence, begin to resist.

But Kanan was dead.

Kanan was dead, and he'd never been very adept at following advice. He'd never really known what he was doing, either. He was probably too young and too inexperienced to recruit an apprentice so soon, but there was a large part of him that had grown exhausted of being endlessly alone.

In the memory, Aurele's knowing eyes danced, and he feared he had put both himself and Sicilienne in more danger than she'd realized she signed up for.

"Sooner or later, I will put an end to this," the Writer told an audience of no one through gritted teeth. "This vendetta dies with me."

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"They'll hit Charming Palace next," Bear mused, pulling his hair loose from its bun and letting it fall around his face. He sat on the edge of a seat in the car, legs spread into the aisle and leaning forward to avoid hitting his head on the roof. "We have to get there first."

The thieves were in a darkened parking lot, spring rain pattering faintly against the sides of the van. Glowing streetlamps in various colors dotted the road in the distance—multicolored streetlights were a distinctly Fay occurrence. Ramona thought it was a little tacky.

"She's waking up," Minerva whispered.

Ramona jolted, standing immediately and regretting it when her wings hit several obstacles. She steadied herself, finding that she had to remind herself to breathe. "Thank godmothers."

Penny sat up slowly, the pulsating green glow on her cheek long gone. Instead, faint white veins were just barely visible where the infection had been, a sort of scar. Lindsay chewed her nails. She blinked a few times, taking in everything around her. Ramona wondered if she could sense already that something was off, that something had changed.

"How you feelin'?" Claude asked her, keeping his tone measured. She blew out a breath, pressing a hand to her stomach.

"Starving." Her eyes narrowed, roaming the others. "How long was I out?"

"Hours," Ramona said.

Penny's hands rose to her face, and she patted her skin, as if checking to ensure she was still alive. It seemed to be dawning on her that this little cut could have been the end of her. She could have died. "You guys saved me."

"Yeah, Penny," Claude replied. "That's what we do for each other. It doesn't help when you try to handle things alone."

She bristled.

Lindsay straightened her skirt, crossing her legs. "We went to Baby's parents' house. His mum fixed you up."

Penny eyed her. "This doesn't look like his parents' house."

"We were ambushed by the Alliance," Bear said quietly. "They killed them."

Alarm shot through her tone. "What?"

Lindsay looked at her pointedly. "If you hadn't put off treating your injury, then maybe—"

"Don't do that," Bear growled. "There's plenty of blame to go around. If I hadn't chosen to go home. If Penny hadn't waited to treat the sting. If Ramona hadn't brought us to the Blackhearts. If Claude hadn't gotten us caught up in the Writer's fight with these guys. If I hadn't left home and continually told myself that maybe my life of crime wasn't so bad. If I wasn't so self-righteous, so willfully ignorant, if I'd been more protective, more loyal, if I'd thought ahead. It doesn't matter anymore, Lindsay. This is what we've got. Penny's alive. My parents and my sister aren't. No amount of blame will go back and change that."

They all lingered there, drinking in what he'd said. Minerva's voice cut through the quiet.

"We can't go in on just any day."

Bear cleared his throat, looking away from Penny and Lindsay and turning towards her, dipping his head. "You're right. Breaking into a Central Palace isn't easy. Do we know of any event going on—a ball, a festival, a ceremony... something that'll distract the security?"

"The Alliance will be doing the same thing," Claude realized aloud. "Exploiting a point of weakness. We have to show up on the same day as they do or it's all for nothing."

"So if we find a convenient time..." Minerva said, emphasizing her point from before. "We'll both be taking advantage of the same opportunity."

It would be a calculated risk, but a risk all the same. "We won't be able to figure that out 'till we get there," Ramona told them, sparing a glance at Bear, as if slightly nervous that since his parents had died at any moment he could conceivably snap. "We can hit the road in the morning. Minerva, go into the drugstore, we need to restock first aid." She nodded to the inn across the street, pulling on her knitted cap. "I'll go book us rooms. Boys, could you get takeout?"

Claude nodded, with Bear somewhat reluctantly following suit. Lindsay didn't complain about being the one to have to stay behind with Penny, settling back and placing a sleep mask over her eyes. Penny didn't look happy about it.

"That's it? We're moving on?"

"Let it go, Pen," Baby said gently, extending to her a plastic water bottle. She opened her mouth to protest, but he pushed the bottle into her hands, shaking his head. "Let it go."

He followed Ramona and Claude out of the car, Minerva slinking out wordlessly after him. They had all by now changed into sensible clothes, Bear in his dullest plaid and dirtiest jeans. He fell into step with Claude's quick, sloping stride and they headed down the street opposite the direction Ramona was going, diverging from Minerva once they passed the glowing twenty-four-hour drugstore with an ogre-sized front door.

The night here in Fairy was not like the night in the forest country where he'd been raised. Everything still seemed to be alight and bustling. Colorful streetlamps on their own were fascinating to Bear. They pulsated in shades of pink and yellow and blue and green, just softer than neon, enough to be easy on the eyes. And cars whizzed by on the highway, parking lots cluttered with the squawking birds in the trees and people clustered in groups playing music dialed up on high volume and drinking. Fairy never slept. "Crime never sleeps," Claude had grunted when he'd made the observation before. Bear didn't want to think of Fairy as synonymous with crime, although that was probably a far enough assessment. He tried to see past that, to see the way the people lived, the way they all got up to dance the moment anyone uttered the words ballroom hour, the way they innovated here, the art, the music, the technology.

He liked the simple life, too, chopping wood and carrying lumber across town to sell, but there was something, well, magic about this patchwork of wonder around him. Claude had never seemed to agree, but he always got the feeling that Claude felt at home here, even if the magic of it all was long lost on him.

The two of them entered what Bear would've called a diner, a fast food burger joint with permanently stained tables. Another thing he liked about Fairy—he appreciated that he didn't have to duck through the door. The only sign in here that night had fallen was the darkened view through the outside windows. He and Claude shuffled slowly through the line to order, and Bear watched curiously the other customers wandering about: women with self-driving strollers, gaggles of teenagers of various species all scrolling through smartphones that they could snap their fingers and teleport if they misplaced, even a family of pixies sitting at one of many tiny tables that hovered in the air.

"What'll it be?" said the cheery satyr employee who greeted them with a practiced smile once they reached the counter, jostling Baby out of his thoughts. He hadn't known any satyrs had migrated out of the Unicorn Forest.

Claude's gloves flashed in his peripherals as he brought a hand up to skim the menu screen from afar. "Uh... four double-stacks and two flats, and take off the lettuce on one of those last two, Minerva hates lettuce."

"Alrighty. And regular fries with all of those, or dusted?"

"Yikes, you still call 'em that?"

The satyr grinned. "Yeah, I know."

"Make half the fries dusted. Why not, right? Not like we'll get the plague."

She cackled, punching in his order. "Will that be all?"

"Hmm..." He turned to Bear. "Milkshake?"

He shrugged, mind mostly elsewhere. "I guess."

"Two milkshakes, one caramel and one starberry. Be a doll and make it to-go, will you?"

"Not a problem. Cash or card?"

Claude smirked crookedly. "In West Fairy, you've still got to ask?"

She took the wad of yellowbacks and stuffed them into the register. "It's polite to pretend anyone's respectable." A slip of paper rattled out from the order machine, and she tore it off, hooves clacking as she turned to stick it on the side of the open kitchen window. "Four double-stacks and two single-stack burgers, one without lettuce, half fries dusted and one caramel and one starberry milkshake for the hairy lumberjack and metrosexual Robin Hood!" she called, receiving a grunt from the cook in response.

Bear glanced over at Claude, who shot him a scandalized look. Metrosexual Robin Hood, he was mouthing, looking torn between being offended and taking it as a compliment.

They took a seat at one of the little round tables while they waited. The half-tense silence between them—initiated by the fact that Bear had no desire to talk, just to wallow in his thoughts for a while—was thankfully drowned out by the raucous noise that stuffed the place from wall to wall.

Claude looked around the diner, eyes wandering from the hanging lights to the baby blue wallpaper. When he finally spoke, it startled Bear a little. "I think maybe that if I wasn't a thief, I'd like to run a bed and breakfast."

Bear cracked a smile. "Really?"

He shrugged. "I mean, I like taking care of people."

"I guess I don't know what I want to do," Bear admitted. "I went out looking for it. But I haven't figured it out yet. And..." His slight smile slipped. "Now there's nothing for me to go back to."

Claude took a deep breath, pushing around the loose condiment packets someone had left on the table. "Yeah," he said. "That's tough, man. I—uh—I know what it feels like to lose your family. To lose everything. Sicilienne is all I have left. And I don't even have her, really."

He glanced over at him, biting down on his tongue. The tears were coming again.

"So how'd you deal with it?"

Claude tilted his head up, thinking about it. "I don't think you... deal with it, necessarily. It's more like, life goes on. And if you let it, it'll go on without you, leaving you behind. You don't wanna let that happen. So it's always gonna be there. That feeling you have right now doesn't just magic itself away. You grow. And things change. And maybe you do a good job of moving on, or maybe you don't."

Bear quickly wiped his eyes with the base of his palms and lifted his eyebrows. "Did you?"

Claude shook his head. "Definitely not. But I'm here, ain't I?"

"Is that—is that enough?"

"Not everyone makes it that far, Bear, you have to understand," he told him, sounding somewhat exasperated and toying with the hem of a glove. "It's enough just to get up every day. It's enough to get out of bed, to put one foot in front of the other, to survive. Maybe one day you'll move past surviving and you'll really live. That day might not be today. And that's fine."

An employee over at the pickup counter squinted at their receipt. "Uh... order for 'metrosexual Robin Hood'?"

Claude rolled his eyes, but they both got up, snatching up the takeout bags and going back the way they'd come. Exhaustion set in as the littered sidewalk trailed underfoot, and the stars dotting the cotton-candy-clouded skies became a blur past his vision.

In the van, while the thieves got everything ready to move into a new hotel room, Bear tried to focus on tending to Penny, ignoring her stubborn defiance and making sure she ate and drank water, making sure she was okay. Minerva practically shoved painkillers down her throat, even though she insisted she was fine. Everyone seemed to be lying anytime those two silly little words were uttered. I'm fine. Bear himself didn't bother. It was better to remain silent than to lie.

Ramona flicked three key cards from her sleeve, enticing Lindsay to greedily snatch one up.

"Three this time?"

Ramona lifted a pair of their usual luggage bags over one shoulder, one of which was partially unzipped so that chicken, or rooster or something, that she kept taking care of could breathe. "Rooms were cheap. Don't blame me if there's rats." Her hair had come loose, the strands of her bangs crashing every which way, and she ran a hand through it, letting out a weary sigh. "I'm already so done with this saving-the-world garbage and we ain't even started yet."

Bear took a second key card, examining it. "Me an' Claude?"

"Yeah. Boys' night. And hide the complimentary beers from him if you find any in the minifridge, will you?" Claude eyed her for the comment but didn't retort.

"Sure," Bear said.

"I'll take, ah..." She glanced right and chose the first person her eyes landed on. "Lynon."

Lindsay dangled her card in front of Penny eagerly. "That means you and me, darlin'!"

Penny's eyes were closed, head against the side of a seat. "Oh, goody," she replied dryly.

"Well," Ramona began, fingers loosening and tightening on the straps of her bags as if she didn't know what to do with her hands. After a stilted pause she said, "G'night."

"Night," Claude muttered back, not looking at her. Bear echoed the same reply. She and Minerva disappeared from the van, Lindsay and Penny eventually following suit. The two of them stayed, Claude fiddling with money somewhere up front—counting and recounting, no doubt—and Bear in the back, gathering his things.

He wondered what it was like for Claude to be away from his sister, whether it was difficult for him. He seemed to care for her a great deal. All this time Bear had hardly thought of his family. Now he could think of nothing else. His family, whom he'd abandoned, his family, who he'd left behind, allowing himself to forget about them—selfishly, selfishly, to prioritize himself.

His sister, who would never see her thirteenth birthday.

His mother, the only reason Penny was still alive.

His father, who he'd never do anything to make proud, now that he was gone.

And the girl who'd killed them. The anger he'd felt had not disappeared, he'd simply balled it up, shoved it down, hidden it away. He would wait. His time would come. They'd face the Alliance of Darkness again. This time, when they did, they'd be ready. He'd be ready.

Bear swung his club over his shoulder as they entered the inn, and he did not duck as he was accustomed to when he went through the towering front doors. Somehow, he did not feel quite so small or nearly so helpless as he had before.

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Minerva lay in bed on her side, watching the bathroom light flare on, listening to the rushing tap, watching the shadow of Ramona's footsteps back and forth. The light went off. Ramona paced no more. Minerva closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep. Feathered wings brushed up against her back. Chicken Fingers ruffled his own feathers from his cardboard box on the side table, shifting and resettling himself.

For Ramona, the unfamiliar was familiar, and with no real home to return to, she rarely felt homesick. But tonight, despite the convenience of having a real bed, sleep evaded her. Claude's absence was bothering her for whatever reason. Comfort, maybe. The only sense of familiarity she ever did get. Whether they slept in the van or she ended up on some carpeted floor, he was usually nearby. Here it was just her and Minerva, a polite distance apart so she could sleep winged out, one pillow each.

Alone with her thoughts, her mind replayed the day, over and over and over again. The morning. The Blackhearts. Penny falling sick. The drive, the house, the conversation with Bear's parents, the moment of stillness with Claude, Corpse Flower's arrival, going inside, the horror that awaited. Driving again. Always driving, always on the road. Maybe this wasn't what she wanted after all, how she wanted to live. Not like this, not if it meant that people she cared about got hurt. It was far too late to turn back now.

Marina Bear hadn't had to be so kind to them. Dead. And—

"It's my fault," Ramona whispered, almost inaudibly, soft as midnight rain under her breath.

Minerva turned over, jade eyes wide open. This tore Ramona from her tumbling spiral. She'd been under the mistaken impression that she'd long fallen asleep by now.

"It's always your fault," came Minerva's thick Villagetowner accent that, like Penny's, came through stronger when she was half-asleep, blurring words together like cursive. "And it's our fault for trusting you. Nothing to be done about it."

Ramona's laugh echoed in the dark. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"Not my job to make you feel better. It's my job to be hot and right all the time."

"Well, one of us has to be."

"'Xactly."

There was a beat of blissful quiet, Ramona's thoughts dissipating until all that was left was the prospect of what the next day would bring. "We leave for Central Fairy at dawn," she whispered. They had days of driving and planning ahead. Always driving. Always on the road.

"Then shut up and hit the sack," Minerva said, and that was that.

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈

Sorry it took so long to come back with an update, but I'm here! I've been preoccupied with reviews and other stories and this horrible summer term I'm taking.

So here it is, the aftermath chapter. Cleaning up the loose ends and all that. Figuring out how to write shorter chapters is going to take some getting used to, so bear with me for a bit, but it should mean I'll update a little more often?? The same amount of stuff will have to happen in, like, twice the amount of chapters, so here's hoping. We have a banner now too, yay :D All my other stories have one (in lieu of a/n's because I'm lazy) so I wanted to match.

My editor is back in business, for which I am very glad, because her input was seriously needed and I actually had a lot of fun revising and rewriting parts of this chapter! Today's poll: name an underrated animated movie! I'll start. Rise of the Guardians (2012).