The razor pressed against her temple, hovering. She breathed in, out, watching herself in the mirror—could she really do this, again, after seven years? It wasn't the same, she told herself, if she wasn't being forced to do it, if it was her choice, but still, she could practically feel the hand of the prison barber up against the back of her neck, hear the buzzing in her ears.

"Duckie."

Ramona jolted, instinctively lowering the razor. She spun to see Bear maneuvering himself through the doorway, exhaling. "Scared me." She eyed him, adding, "Been doing that a lot lately."

He scratched his beard. "Sorry," he replied, tonelessly. His eyes flicked to the razor in her hand, and he shook his head. "Don't do that."

She set it down. "Yeah. I shouldn't." The confirmation of that decision brought relief. It would be easier, she told herself, just like it was easier to retract her wings. Easier to hide, always. Didn't mean that she should.

Bear folded his arms, sidling against the wall. "So... how d'you feel? After everything."

Ramona looked at him sidelong, curiously. "What are you asking me for?"

Because I always ask. "Nobody else does."

She tossed the question back. "How do you feel?"

"Like we failed again, Duckie, what do you think?" He sighed, head knocking back against the wall. "Are you sure about this? Putting ourselves in the middle like this. It's a lot of risk for something you never wanted to do."

"We're already in the middle, Baby. Whether I like it or not. I know I'm... not... the most selfless person out there." She glanced away, toward the floor. "I never meant for that to turn into something that affected you."

"You're not blaming yourself for what happened."

"Well, it's me or you."

"S'pose we can share. Lighter that way."

Ramona cracked a smile. "Yeah. I guess."

"If I wanted to go back home, I would've, a long time ago. But I care about you. And Claude. And everyone. I meant everything I said to my mom. It's not just you—I like the rush, too. And that's probably selfish of me."

"I would chase it forever if I could. But that's looking less plausible." Ramona turned the razor over on the counter, before letting it go, stepping back. "What you did at the palace. You..." Her eyes lifted, tentatively. "I mean, I'm not gonna sit here and give you some moral lecture. But are you okay?"

Running a hand down his face, Bear intended to lie. But he'd been a bad con artist for as long as he'd been doing this. "I—I mean, does it look like it, Ramona?"

Ramona shot him a look of surprise. Not at the response, but the name. Some two and a half years, but Ramona was new. It was foreign coming from him and not from Minerva or Claude. "Do you think..." she began slowly, starting out unsure what to say, the words tumbling out without much thought. "Do you think all of that—even if you kill her, even if you can do it—do you think it's all worth it? Won't you wake up one day and regret doing this to yourself, killing yourself, slowly, for her?"

"I just..." Bear stared just behind her, eyes drifting into a world she couldn't see. "It's all there, and I have to just let it out. My anger, I guess. Or something worse. It gives me so much control, you don't understand."

She shrugged. "You seem pretty out-of-control to me. Maybe it just feels easier to take it out on someone than to wallow in it."

Bear fell silent.

Eventually, he spoke again. "Won't you regret it, too?"

She knew what he meant instantly. Not a feeling, but a life, the path she'd chosen. Bear was choosing his path, too, whether he realized it or not. "Think I'd have to have something to want to go back to. Some better alternative. For me to regret."

It was what she always said. "Then maybe you're stupider than all of us."

"Thanks."

Bear took a breath. "So. You got a plan?"

"Well." Ramona pushed off the counter to rifle through her bag in the corner. She had maps stacked together and laced with twine. "Should probably get a binder for these. Here." She dropped one onto the counter—general world map. Her finger found the ocean between Fairy and Rose. "Little birdie tells me Rose is next. And the only way to get there faster than the border..."

"Pirate's Bay?" Bear said skeptically, coming to trace over the map himself. "Seems unwise."

"Best time to hit a mark's when he's distracted," Ramona told him, eyes glinting with their usual mischief just a little. "And the pirates are distracted, all right."

He huffed stray hairs from his eyes. "Alright. D'you know enough people to pull that off?"

"Eh... I can't guarantee us a safe trip across the bay. But it's not like we have anything left to lose."

He nodded towards the doorway. "We've got that kid now."

"Yeah, that." She encircled the doodle of the Great Serpent haphazardly plastered in the middle of the bay with her fingertip. No concrete borders, but they called the cooler waters directly connecting Fairy, Rose, and Water the Serpentine Ocean. Technically speaking, it should be the fastest route across. If it weren't for the enormous sea snake famed for swallowing ships whole. "No one's ever... I mean, there's no proof of the Great Serpent, really, is there? No pictures, no nothing."

"Don't go there."

"For all we know, it's just pirates breaking the treaty and getting away with it on the west side of the bay. A monstrous snake that tells riddles sounds absurd, anyway—"

"An building filled with mechanical portals sounds absurd, Duckie, as do cell phones that magick back into your pocket and an island with a forcefield around it. You get used to it after a while."

"And the Great Serpent's really a very uncreative name," Ramona went on, ignoring him.

"Duckie, we're standing in a country called Fairy Kingdom. I can transform into a bear and my last name's Bear. I really dunno what to tell you—"

"Okay, okay, fine," she relented, huffing her bangs out of her eyes. "But you do agree with me. Just a little bit?"

He glowered. "No. We're not taking the route past the Great Serpent."

"Have it your way, then, the longer way."

"If we leave within the week it won't be too long."

"All this traveling. I hope you're enjoying your spring vacation."

It was a dark joke for a bitter time. "It's been just fabulous."

Ramona picked up her bag and dropped it outside the door as they left the washroom. "Is Verelia awake?"

"I think so."

They found him sprawled on the pullout, not, in fact, awake. He hadn't let go of that baby since they'd escaped the room of the queen's death, nestled in the crook of his arm and with a bottle of whiskey only a quarter-empty dropped on the coffee table where Claude's free hand was splayed. Bear had tried, earlier, to pick up the kid, and he screamed bloody murder, same for Lindsay, so he and Claude remained for now attached at the hip. Ramona couldn't even remember what the prince's name was supposed to be. Either way, it'd be best not to call him by it—even small slip-ups like that could get them caught.

Chicken Fingers pecked at a spiderweb in the corner. "What should we call the thing?" Ramona whispered to Bear. He shrugged.

"Probably shouldn't let you or Penny name him. All you guys can come up with is apparently Chicken Fingers."

"Someone deserves to make good use of that lovely childhood nickname," she replied brightly. "D'you remember the kid's name?"

Bear shook his head.

"Ah, well. We'll probably just call him whatever sticks. Hopefully nothing bird-related. Always seems to happen around here." She mused bird names. "Cardinal. Hummingbird. Raven. Pigeon. Oh, we should call him Pigeon. Piggy for short—"

"Good godmothers."

She put her hands on her hips. "Let him sleep?"

Bear shrugged. "We should go cook. It's late anyhow." He picked up the whiskey. "You wanna throw it out or should I?"

Ramona waved dismissively, turning to rummage for the pop-up kitchen. "Leave it. It's been a rough day. And, y'know, live fast, die young... yadda yadda..."

"Enabler."

"I know, I know. Leave it."

The pop-up kitchen unlatched and sprang to life. Bear deposited mixing bowls on the counter while Ramona collected ingredients at his instruction. The soft sizzling of meat on the stove and Claude's occasional snores—yes, he did snore when he'd drank, which was all the time—punctuated the silence. Ramona tied up her hair, briefly grateful she hadn't sheared it all off in a bout of anxious panic. He began to hum while he cooked, all the frustration and fury and guilt of the day behind them falling away like crumbling stone in the morning light. It all gave way to a sort of peace.

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Claude shifted awake to the baby's crying. "Writer's hairy—" he grunted, picking the thing up. "Don't remember Sicilee being this noisy... s'pose it was a while ago..."

He reached instinctively for the bottle, found it moved, frowned, and left it in its place, remembering he was supposed to be cleansing for a while anyway. Swinging his legs over the side of the pullout, he set the prince down real gentle, grabbing for the pack of diapers they'd picked up from a nearby supermarket and snapping it open.

"Probably miss your mama, don't you?" he mused as he performed the change, fumbling to remember after all these years just precisely how to do it. Through his murmurings, the baby continued to scream quite unreasonably. "My ma died too. Don't know if I miss her. You won't have much to miss, either. You'll forget in about a week. Hmm. That got a bit dark." He lifted the kid up, having finished strapping straps and buttoning buttons. "Better, Your Highness?"

The aforementioned Your Highness slobbered and pouted, snotty tears pouring down his cheeks.

"Right, then. Well, I've got good news—we got you formula. Not as good as the real thing, probably, but Sicilee turned out smart enough." The baby sniffled, and Claude shot him a pointed look. "Don't look at me like that. You're not havin' any whiskey till you're at least twelve, no matter what Lindsay says. C'mon." He hitched the baby to his hip and dropped the soiled diaper in the trash. "I know, I know, but your ma woulda said the same thing."

Bear and Ramona were plating dinner in the pop-up. He washed his hands and poured a bottle for the kid while Ramona folded up the mattress back into the couch so they'd have a place to sit. Not the worst inn they'd ever stayed at, but there were rat traps lining the walls for Chicken Fingers to dig through. Ramona sat cross-legged on the floor, winged out, thank the Writer. She needed to let her issue with those things go. Bear sucked in a searing breath as he undid the bandage Penny had taped to his arm.

Claude glanced over. "That bad?"

"'S fine," he said, although it likely wasn't. "Put some painkill in the food."

"You've gotta stop doing that," Ramona insisted.

He waved her off. "Just herbs, nothin' weird." He rapped the coffee table with his knuckles as he sat. "Y'know, you could compete with that magic shite maybe. If you tried."

She scraped her fork idly along her plate. "Yeah, maybe. I doubt it."

"Just like learnin' a language."

"Kinda. You make it sound easy. The D.A. makes it look easy, but it ain't."

Claude tried sitting the baby in Chicken Fingers' cardboard box, but he disliked it immediately, so he had little choice but to hold the lump of fat in his lap while he ate. "Sorry I fell asleep."

"We all had a day," Bear said. "Dunno what you're sorry for."

The baby kept reaching incessantly for something, but he couldn't figure out what. Handing him a piece of greens he could mash onto Claude's pant leg seemed to satisfy him. "We've been having lots of these crap days. Don't wanna lay around doing nothing."

"I got into contact with Hayden," Ramona told him. "So that's one thing accomplished."

"Already?"

"Well, when you don't use bird mail," she said wryly. "I went out, bought a phone, cleared it and returned it. Took a couple hours, tops."

"Just get a burner already, Cinderella's sake."

"Yeah, but that costs more. I miss payphones."

"Think they've got payphones still somewhere. Bear, they have payphones out in West?"

"Dunno. I grew up in the woods."

After a pause, the three of them began to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all. At the conversation or maybe the day itself, too much to handle without a little unjustified laughter. If they didn't laugh they'd have long lost their sanity by now.

Catching her breath, Ramona righted herself. "Anyway," she managed, "Rose next. Or at least that's where I think Corpse Flower's headed. They already have passports, but Tower's too far to be next, so it's either that or Water. An' Rose is already in shambles, which makes it an easy target."

Claude shook his head. "That's not definitive enough."

"Look, it's logic," Ramona argued. "I got information on the payment plan for Lucien's docs. He gets new identities and licenses for X-number of people each place he goes, but he pays in increments." She grimaced. "And I pay a fee to find out what the order is. Have to match half his order for the intel."

Claude tilted his head. "So he's paid for Rose already?"

"He's started to. Hayden exchanges the stuff only as much as he pays—he won't hand out loans. So I doubt he'd start collecting Rose ID early."

"Do we have to FastTrav? That didn't go so well the last time."

"They'll run into the same problem," Bear pointed out. "It's not like they're any less wanted than we are."

"Pirate's Bay," Ramona said, pointing to Claude with her fork, and he choked. The baby flung a little fist into his plate, squawking.

"What—?"

"Not as terrible as it sounds. Or at least I hope so," she hedged. "The lot of them are on the mainland right now, anyway. It'll be stragglers in the bay—no Bluebeard to give orders. Best conditions for us to get through undetected."

"You know you sound crazy."

"Well, it's not like we can take the cruise path!"

"Mother of Merlin. Alright. This is insane."

"Only as insane as the last thing we did," grunted Bear.

Ramona leaned back on her hands, eyes wide and rapturous. "Lemme tell you guys a story," she said, as the baby made cooing noises and mushed around Claude's food. "When I was a kid, there was this prison break. It's how me an' Hayden got out. We didn't know how they did it, but someone led the guards away. Keys showed up in some of our cells. Of course we ran. It was the biggest escape in fifty years. They said it was the town ratcatcher. But Clo, your sister, she called her something else."

"Pied Piper."

She nodded. "Yeah. My point is, if we wanna beat them at their own game, we gotta think ahead. We know these guys. They're just scumbags with a few more resources than we've got. Figure out where they'd go, what they'd do. We're not anticipating their moves—they're anticipating ours."

"So..." Claude raised his eyebrows curiously.

"Forget about the money, all of it," Ramona said, eyes flaming. "We get there first. And we start with the guards."

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Peering into the cardboard bed she'd been using for Chicken Fingers, Ramona smiled wryly at the stuffing of pillows and blankets inside to cushion the sleeping baby Claude had nestled there. Bear was carrying the rooster, idly, as he brushed his teeth and climbed into bed, like it was a childhood stuffed toy. Ramona frowned to notice Chicken Fingers was thinning. He was living off bugs and rats, but they should really figure out how to turn him back into a lizard sometime soon.

Bear fell asleep the instant his head hit the pillow, like usual. In the soft lamplight, she approached the couch across the room, bangs falling forward. Claude had slumped onto it once again, although he was awake, just self-medicating. "You put the milk back in the fridge?"

"Ion 'member," he mumbled. Ramona leaned on the armrest, inspecting the bottle beside him. A spindly arm vaguely reached for it, giving up when he realized Ramona had it. Claude was hollow lately. Hunger pains are permanent, he'd said, once, in passing. Hurts to eat. He burned through the fat from the alcohol like fire swallowing fuel because he never ate more than two meals a day.

"That your first or second? Don't say third."

After a moment's pause, he held up two fingers. His eyelids fell. "Can handle it. Just tired."

He was full of cow dung. She was guessing three was more likely. His tolerance was getting out of hand. Anyone else she knew would've been out cold by now. "Verelia—"

"No, stop it." Abruptly, he tried to push himself to a sitting position, cranelike limbs askew. "Quit it with the last name thing, it's annoying."

She flicked a curl from his ear. "Clo."

"You know what you're doing. Just say it the way you say it, it's funny, anyway."

"How do I say it, Monsieur Claude Verelia?" Ramona asked in a mocking, exaggerated tone, doing a little half-curtsy for good measure.

A breathy laugh escaped him. "Like that. Clau-dah. It's more like Clohd. But I like your old VT accent."

"Like hell you do. 'S obnoxious," she retorted, code-switching almost instantly.

"See, there it is."

"Happy?"

"Very," he told her with an easy smirk. "Irritated is quite flattering on you."

Red pooled beneath her faint freckles, and she scowled. "Quit doing that. You're flirting."

He narrowed his eyes slightly, though his light, amused smile remained. "Why? I can flirt with whoever I want."

"You flirt with other people. Don't do it to me."

"It's not a thing I'm doing to you, we're bantering."

"We are not bantering."

"We banter all the time, why are you self-conscious now?"

Ramona glared sourly at him. She didn't know. "You're making it weird."

"You're making it weird."

She turned, abruptly. "You know what—"

"No, come on, now." Claude pulled her gently by the wrist. "You're not honestly sleeping on the floor again. I'm not that bad of a roommate."

"You smell like cheap whiskey," she said, jabbing at his chest. "Irresponsible for someone taking care of a kid."

"Ouch." Claude dropped her hand, settling his on his stomach.

She realized what she'd said, considering the way he'd grown up, all the drinking he'd undoubtedly done around Sicilienne. "Ah—probably shouldn't've—"

"It's fine, I know. I'm a big boy. I can take care of my sensitive feelings."

Ramona sighed, taking up the whiskey as she sat back besides him, rocking it under her nose. Smelled like something sour. She pulled her knees to her chest. "We're... we could die, Claude," she muttered, folding her hands around the neck of the bottle. "Tomorrow or next week. Anytime, really. Feels like any minute something'll come out of the shadows an' pounce."

"Thought that was what you liked about this little game."

"Don't feel like so much of a game anymore, though, right?"

"Guess not."

Ramona knocked back the bottle. It probably was cheap, but she couldn't tell the difference, anyway. Wiping her mouth with the collar of her shirt, she coughed. "How do you do this? All the time?"

Claude dragged a palm over his forehead. "Do what, Mona? Live like hell or you mean the drinking?"

"Drinking, don't you get tired of it?" She blew air out of her cheeks. "Guess you'd get tired of both."

"Tired... every day." His lavender eyes slitted shut again, and Ramona got up, fiddling with the underside of the couch.

"We've gotta do the pullout."

Groaning in protest, Claude stumbled gloomily off the cushions, folding onto the coffee table like an ironing board. Ramona yanked open the sleeper herself, patting down the mattress and tossing the pillows carelessly back onto it. He collapsed onto the pullout, eyes opening suddenly. "The kid. I'm gonna have to get the kid—"

Ramona chucked a balled-up blanket at him. "Go to bed. Kid's still asleep. I'll get him when he wakes up."

After a moment more of tense nerves, Claude finally relaxed, chewing the string of his tunic. "I hate your stupid sailing plan," he mumbled, already half-asleep, "but if I can't trust you, I can't really trust nobody else."

Wings flapping soundlessly as she hunched over the side of the bed, Ramona traced faintly over her dry lips, considering what he'd said. If I can't trust you, I can't really trust nobody else. She probably felt the same. I can flirt with whoever I want. Her cheeks warmed at the recollection of his earlier comment. Before she left home, no fellow had been down on his luck enough to catch himself flirting with her, not when she was the village laughingstock. In Nadezhda, though, enough men resembled the wrong end of a pig to find her quite the catch, along with anything else that had breasts and breathed. (Impressive, since then she'd been bald.) She wasn't good at it, but she had enough experience with that flirting nonsense to recognize when Claude was pulling it. It seemed somehow wrong coming from a friend, like they might push too far over a line they couldn't come back from.

He probably didn't mean it that way. She knew Claude—he was lonely. He'd always been lonely, that was why he did it. He didn't mean any harm to all the girls she'd heard him chat up. But everything was too fuzzy to decipher whether he was kidding or serious anymore and Ramona didn't want to have to wade through it all, not when she'd only humiliate herself. The only men who'd ever wanted her were at least a decade her senior and littered with gang tattoos, and she was all too aware of it. Hell, if she wanted a Hayden Calypso, she could probably get one. Skeevy and scarred.

Anything else was, of course, in fate's hands. She suspected fate wasn't fond of her. If it was the destiny of the Ugly Duckling to be alone, then alone the duckling would be.

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈

My mass doc for Lost Destinies is 388 pages now... wild... we might even hit 400 pages in the next chapter (or at least the one after that)! I feel like we've come so far in these past two years, which makes me really excited to keep going. And... yeah. After much discussion with my editor I have also finally agreed to put romance in this story and not just put it off to be sequel fodder, so there's also that.

PIRATES ARE COMING!!!! (laughs nervously because I haven't written anything to do with pirates before, oh boy) I have no idea what the Villagetown accent sounds like anymore. I used to have such a solid picture and now it's gotten away from me. Maybe Ramona knows.

Have I mentioned I love my characters? I thought Bear was a little boring and had such a hard time getting in his head towards the beginning of the story but now I really do feel like we're on the same page and I get why people like him. I love him so much now. There's some other characters I've struggled with in terms of making them compelling, but don't worry, I've got things coming to hopefully change that.

What was your favorite movie that came out this past year? For me I don't know if I can choose between Dune Pt. 2 and Wicked Pt. 1, the latter which I saw in the theater with my sister and had a really great time. Anyway, I'll see you guys when I write the next chapter! Whenever that is.