It was good. Not going into the city so much. Her wallet wasn't so thankful, but she didn't let Braz know how much she was hurting. She'd set up a small, permanent clinic down in the gypsy camp. Gawain said more and more of them had opted to just stay rather than their usual drifting. That was good, too, the clinic. It was a paltry sum compared to what she usually made, but it was good.

Yeah. Good.

And maybe a little boring. Okay. A lot boring.

Sira wasn't built to be idle. She'd always been a very active girl from the time she could walk. The older she got, the worse the restless feeling inside her got. She wasn't meant to sit still. She just wasn't.

Ever since Braz's....transformation....She'd been focusing all of her energy onto that. Onto him. It scared her sometimes, looking at him and realizing the depth of her feelings. The intensity. Sometimes she still wondered if all of that was her own feelings....How much of it could she be getting from him'

She hadn't been practicing. She hadn't been working on her mental shields much and had reverted to her old method of trying to push it all out or drink it all away. She hadn't told Braz how bad it'd been getting, though she suspected he knew something was up. He had his own demons to battle right now. He didn't need to shoulder hers as well.

They had been staying at Braz's house for the most part, but Sira would spend a few nights back at her house to seek out the peace and quiet. And to drink herself into a stupor with no prying eyes other than Bryn and maybe Loa.

It was cold out there on her little stone deck up against the retaining pond. All of the fish were no where to be seen, probably dug down into the mud to keep warm against the coming cold. Bryn sat nearby, ever her watchful companion. At the moment he was napping.

Sira tried again. She had her hands up in front of her, trying to repeat something she'd done by accident weeks ago. Around Halloween time. It'd scared the hell out of her, thank god Braz hadn't been around to see it, but she'd done it. So she knew she could do it again.

At first she stared at the blank space between her hands. Nothing. There was nothing there, nothing but air. But that wasn't true, there was something there. She just didn't know how to see it.

She closed her eyes. She tried to slow her breathing, but there was nothing she could do about her racing heart. She'd been at this for almost an hour with no results so far. But she was determined.

In her mind she tried to summon up the image of her sitting there. Tried to picture herself just as she was. This had never been an easy exercise for her. She hated to look at herself, think about herself. It made her edgy and uncomfortable. Right then it also made her feel patently silly.

It took several minutes for her to actually focus on a clear picture of herself. And then she added flame. Just a droplet of fire dancing between her hands. She focused her energy there, on that fire.

In her body, she could feel the warmth. Her eyes popped open and there it was! A tiny tendril of flame just as she had seen it. She laughed triumphantly, but the flame sputtered and she stopped abruptly.

"Oh no no no....don't go out," she begged it. She tried to add a little more oomph to make it more stable.

"You know, it's dangerous playing with fire."

Sira's head shot up and she stared at the man standing on the other side of her pond. Her brows knit together.

"You?"

Braz was asleep. Whatever the "brothers" had done to him in that cellar dungeon where they kept him, he was still recovering from. He was hit with some pretty heavy duty sedatives during his attempt at escape when she and Stitch had helped them free. The darts had contained enough to take down several elephants—she was surprised the doses didn't kill the man. He had barely been conscious since they had gotten back by way of the horrible shadowy paths Stitch took them. Gabriel still slumbered as well, and Stitch had gone to pass out from the strain of transporting so many at once.

There was blood on Sira's clothes. Blood from a man that Stitch had killed in close proximity to her. It hadn't bothered her at all, though she mused quietly that she should probably soak the garments now so it wouldn't set. Or maybe she'd just throw them away. They weren't exactly anything she had any attachment too. She'd changed into a tee shirt and shorts she'd pilfered from one of the dressers in the room that apparently had been Braz's at one point. Her eyes skimmed over the pictures. Family photos framed, smiling faces that she didn't recognize. Happy moments of a past that the man suffering on the bed had never shared.

They mattered to her about as much as the blood on her clothes. Which is to say very little. Should it have bothered her" Of course the blood didn't. She had gone into those tunnels knowing that people could die down there. One of those bodies down there was never going to move thanks to a bullet from her gun. She had been there to save two lives in particular and those men—and women—had been in the way. If she had not acted then they may have killed her or the others. There was a part of her that was glad there were two who had not been forced to give up their lives. The pair in the security room would wake up to chaos and have no memory of it happening.

She brushed her fingers over one of the photos without her eyes ever adjusting on the image. For some reason she felt like she was prying. They had spoken a little of family, of course. She knew some details, but others had been vague. She hadn't asked. He hadn't told. There was so much they really didn't know about each other.

It probably should have bothered her. Instead she felt numb. If she really wanted to know more about him she could just ask. So why didn't she"

A sound behind her made her turn. Braz was thrashing again in his sleep, fighting against the sedatives coursing through his system. He groaned, muttered out some curses, and then went still again. He'd be awake soon, she was sure.

She swallowed thickly and turned away again, to idly examine the room without really seeing it. Anger swelled within her. A raging fire burning in her blood. She was angry at him. She was angry about so many things that had been happening. She was angry that he kept her at arms length about things going on. His work, his duties. He didn't want her to get involved. He worried about her safety. A sentiment his brothers seemed to share. Stitch hadn't wanted her to go with him at all. Worried that Braz would be mad she was involved. She clenched her fists at her side. Now that bothered her. That bothered her a lot. She told Lexius that she wouldn't go after the Thorne brothers, that she'd keep her distance. At least in part because Braz would disapprove. The damn elf had asked her a question that bothered her, too. Did she want a mate like that' His choice of words had amused her, but the question poked at a sore spot.

She had told Braz that she loved him. Did she really' Or was she so afraid that he was going to die that it had just slipped out.

Another noise behind her drew her attention away from the turmoil in her mind. And in her heart.

Now wasn't the time to find those answers.

Control is a funny thing. It was something that Sira had struggled with ever since her mental powers had started to get stronger—back in med school. She'd had a short few years where she had managed some semblance of control. Between her new marriage and school she didn't have time to focus on her burgeoning powers. Looking back she could guess that the structure and routine of her life helped keep her mind in order.

After the miscarriage. After what they did to her in those rooms. Control had been a luxury.

The wild feeling she felt didn't go away after she was free. That was a frantic couple of years where she had so little control over anything that she kept what she did closed in an iron fist. Can't give an inch, because then everything would be lost. Every time she thought she had things worked out, settled, in their places....Everything went awry.

"I don't want to be with someone who is lost without me."

Maybe it had been a harsh way of breaking up. It was the truth. The more she reflected on that night, the more she realized how lost she felt within their relationship. Before Braz's change things had been different. He had been in control himself. Then the change. Then he was wild, too. She was the one who had to be stable for the both of them. That was not what she wanted. She couldn't trust him, because he didn't trust in her.

Once it was done she realized something else: A lightness. A freedom she hadn't noticed was missing.

She felt more in control than she had in years. Less burdened by the tangle in her mind. With the conflict gone from her heart she could finally breathe.

In the camp she was surrounded by humans. Regular, unshielded humans for the most part. Some were lycanthropes, mostly werewolves. Most didn't need her services, but it seemed that some didn't heal as quickly as the others. Even their emotions and thoughts were open to her, even though they were often so snarled and wild she couldn't get a good sense of them.

It didn't bother her so much to be exposed to the constant bombardment of intrusive emotions. The familiar prickle in the back of her mind sometimes more of a comfort than the threat that it once had been. She could deal with the surge she'd get when she'd touch someone to treat them—or what often happened in the clinic, was when they touched her unexpectedly. A hand on the shoulder, a hand shake, even a hug. It was all getting easier.

The pains in her chest were coming more often. The scaled seal on her chest growing more and more corrupted. Now half of the prismatic scales were burnt black with no signs of stopping. What it would mean when it was all charred she didn't know.

It should have scared her, not knowing. Perhaps it was because now she felt she had the opportunity to figured it out. She had pushed her problems to the wayside.

Standing there in her kitchen she waited for the kettle on the stove to boil, her eyes fixed on the "skylight" that looked into the bottom of the retaining pool above. She could see the shadowy dart of fish swimming through the murk. The radio she'd finally gotten around to setting up was softly playing classic music. It was such a peaceful moment.

Then Bryn started barking and she rushed after him up the stairs.

(This post is the aftermath/continuation of this thread)

Every bone in her body was broken. Sira lay on the gravel path gasping for breath with lungs that were refusing to work correctly. Had one collapsed" Both' Punctured" She must have at least one broken rib, even just that could making breathing feel nearly impossible. There was no way with all of the pain that she was in that she could possibly survive.

But was James okay' Where was he?"

Her eyes opened and the first thing she noticed was the ceiling above her bed. The longer she lay there, puzzled, the more the pain in her body ebbed away. Not entirely. When she finally summoned the mental strength to move, she noticed she ached from head to toe. She cautiously raised a hand to feel at her chest, her sternum, her collarbone, her neck. Time ticked by and she was certain nothing was actually broken. Nothing physical, at least.

Everything flooded back. Many months back, almost a lifetime ago, she'd had a flash of the dreams she hadn't been able to remember. From a time she was certain she hadn't been dreaming at all. She had considered it a respite as her dreams had long been a source of otherworldly turmoil she had no control over. Still, her sleep was rarely restful, hinting that there had been something going on that she simply wasn't aware of.

Tears swelled in her eyes and spilled over, accompanied by the heaving wrack of sobs. A whole life in snapshots flashed through her mind. More than the jarring moments where she had almost managed to take control of the dreams. It was everything. An echo of a life that truly had never been, but on the edges of her consciousness felt so, so real.

It took her several minutes to get a hold on herself, to slow her sobs and then her breathing from the panic she was in. She struggled to get herself up to her feet, ignoring the early morning light streaming in through her window, to go looking for her son. He didn't exist. She knew that, but that knowledge didn't stop her from tearing through the sheets on her bed, dropping down to her knees to look underneath. Then she surged up to toss open her closet doors and hunt through the hanging clothes, ripping them out and tossing them down. The rest of the house was treated the same way, right up until she got up the stairs and out onto the stone deck overlooking the retaining pond.

He wasn't in the house. He wasn't going to be in the wood. He wasn't anywhere.

Because he didn't exist.

There was no torture that Sira could think of that could have been worse than to put those false memories into her head. To make her think the child she had lost had been real. To convince her to kill?"

She shuddered. Death littered her past and she was all too keenly aware that it was her future. There was a choice she had to make, only that wasn't an option she knew she had. A third path that ultimately lead to bloodshed. Would it save her" Would it save them"

"I don't trust you," she told the air. "Father, how could you??

The last of her strength faded and she crumpled to the ground to sob again.

Much later, once she had cried so much she was sure she was dried out, she went inside to clean herself up only to find that her entire back was a mess of dark bruises.

A month had slipped by with Sira barely noticing. Wake up from tumultuous dreams before the sun, get dressed, go to the clinic, work until the sun is gone, fall into bed. Rinse. Repeat.

She would say that her days were mostly productive and overall pleasant. She had made acquaintance with a few of the women in camp who would come by with their knitting, darning, sewing, or whatever other work they had to do that could be done while seated in a circle on the benches outside her wagon and talk. A few had been teaching her about saving seeds from plants, though she hadn't an open space—or the time—to plant vegetables around her house. But now she had seeds for flowers that would do well in partial sun, as well as herbs.

Natural "medicine" wasn't something she ever really pursued. As a train physician, well....she knew that herbs could have plenty of benefits. Especially those that could be refined to make actual medicine. But many of the folks in the camp were leery about her pills and shots and she'd found it easier to mix a little old with new. High blood pressure" Sure, here, drink this basil and cinnamon tea. It'll work best if you use it to wash down this ACE inhibitor. So now she felt like a proper hedge witch with herbs drying on a line outside her wagon.

Summer was starting to slip away, and so were some of the camp folks. Those who hadn't put down roots and moved with the seasons. The numbers would dwindle over the winter and she was all too conscious of the fact that with fewer people, she would have fewer clients, and be making less money. Her financial stability being one of the mundane things that kept her up at night. It was far more lucrative treating criminals in back alleys, even though it was also far more dangerous.

Which was why she had taken a few days away from the clinic during the height of the madness triggered by the meteor shower (no one was saying so, but how could it be a coincidence") to set up shop in one of her old haunts. It had certainly put coin into her pockets and often for very little work. Much of the hysteria died on its own without any intervention from her at all. The rest was treating scrapes and bruises as well as the occasional burn or other injury from magic gone wrong. She herself had been unaffected.

That is until the sun went black.

Sira had always had a love for the stars and astronomy. Many nights in Rhy'Din she'd stare up at the sky and wonder what they were called, what constellations were up there, what planets could be seen. It was one mystery about the world she'd never really tried to find answers for. When she heard there was going to be an eclipse she made sure she would be outside to view it. There had been a partial eclipse when she was a child and that had been exciting to see, so this total was quite the treat. Except for the fact that it didn't end.

Around her were other people who had ooed and ahhed along with her as the sun was blotted out started muttering and fretting when the eclipse hadn't ended. At first Sira wasn't terribly worried. It was Rhy'Din, after all. Weird things happen in Rhy'din. Two moons mean that an eclipse might last longer, right' Some around her agreed with her assessment, and they went on their way. Sira had returned to her temporary office to do a little work. She should have gone home.

When people started coming in with bruises from fists, she rolled her eyes. Folks will get worked up over anything, she thought. But then there were stab wounds and burns, and broken bones. More things than she could handle—many things she wasn't equipped to handle. So she closed up shop in the faces of people clamoring to get help. Then she tried to get home.

Only as she tried coast through the city every where she turned there was madness. Brawling, looting, violence around every corner. As much as she tried to avoid it....it had just been impossible. All it had really taken was one person grabbing her forearm to set her off. One might argue she was justified. He'd laid his hands on her first and she'd had bruises from his grip that were still fading. But he'd probably have the burns from her touch forever. If he was even still alive—in the chaos she couldn't remember.

Never had she touched the mind of more than one individual at one time, not like this. She had been forced to try again and again during her 'reprogramming', but the best she could get was to spread a simple, mass message. And the more she spread it, the weaker the effect. This was....this was....Like the time Lexius had yanked on her mind and she swore he was going to pull it straight out of her. Except she was the one who had the iron grip on the dozen or so people who'd been crammed into the alley that she'd tried to escape down, and she was the one doing the yanking.

Rage had taken over her. She could just barely hear their screams as if they were at the end of a long tunnel, she wasn't even aware of those clutching at their heads, trying to pull free the invisible fingers tearing at their being.

It was all over in an instant, as the man holding her arm let go and the connection was severed. She was hit with a rebound of pain so intense it made her double over a vomit. But it had dispersed the crowd in the alley and suddenly she was alone. Free to clamber up the nearby fire escape to make it up to a rooftop where there were no people. Left raw and hypersensitive the madness that tore through the city tore through her mind as well until the fervor died down enough that she had managed to force her walls back into place.

A week. She'd fled from the city and she hadn't been back, she hadn't been around people, hadn't risked being exposed to their emotions—or her own guilt.

In those dark moments where she caused undue suffering she had felt something else. Elation.

She'd liked it.

Looking out from the stage was a scene she was not expecting to see. It was like she was up a million miles above the crowd bathed in a brilliant light that highlighted each and every one of her flaws while the crowd was doused in darkness. She could just about make out the shifting of shadows that must be bodies. Wraiths waiting for the colorful emcee at her side to open the floodgates. She felt naked, exposed and her emotions had been worn raw at the anticipation of this moment. For days now she had been regretting putting herself up for the auction no matter how good the cause. What a little fool she was.

Who would bid on her" No one knew her. All they could see of her was the masks she had spent years crafting to hide her very soul. And yet there under the brilliance of the lights above she swore they could see through her defences like they didn't even exist. Did they, really' Maybe they were truly transparent and all could see her for the fraud that she was. Just look at her up there playing the part of a good human.

Her breath caught in her throat. The pound of her heart so violent she could feel it in her eyes like she was suspended from her ankles and all the blood had rushed to her head. No, it was a noose drawn taut against the delicate flesh of her throat crushing her breath and strangling her so she could even scream out for help. Even if she could fill her lungs her lips were sewn shut, sharp wire shot through her jaw piecing the bone and tightened down until her teeth cracked under the force.

The lights had burned away every last vestige of protection. Every layer that kept those cruel eyes in the crowd from seeing right to her blackened, diseased core. They'd know now. They all would see her for the monster she truly was. Any moment the whispers would start. The jeers. Soon the vicious words hurled like knives would tear her down to her last thread. The bright lights would shed their illusion and reveal themselves as the white hot flames there to burn her all away.

None would want her. There would be no extinguisher to douse the pyre she'd been strapped to. Afterall it was where she belonged. What she deserved. Fire and shadow. She couldn't help the burgeoning darkness growing inside her. Sooner or later even the blind would see its creep across her being.

A shifting. A voice. Any bids" The silence roared in her ears.

"I'll have her."

There in the sea of chaos was pinprick of light. A voice so pure it sliced through the miasma to carve a path for the man to make his way to the stage. Blue eyes that a desperate part of her heart refused not to ache for. A smile crafted by angels. A jawline perpetually peppered with dark stubble. He wasn't perfect. There were flecks of grey in his dark hair. He was a flawed man. But he was there to save her from...

————-

Somehow Sira managed to open her eyes. The end of the dream had been lost to the aether as she for the very first time successfully woke herself from a nightmare without causing some bodily harm. Or so she thought. She was very aware of the ache in her head and the roil of her stomach. Her eyes focused on the roof above the bed where she lay tangled in the sheets just in time for the spins to start. There was a chill in the air but she felt feverish and sweaty. The sheets stuck to her bare body when she forced herself to move, rolling to the edge of the bed.

She was at the inn. The room she kept there still to store supplies and crash when she needed to. She didn't remember getting to the inn. She didn't remember stripping out of her clothes. She barely remembered the bottle of honey whiskey that lay mostly empty and spilled on the floor not too far from the dangle of her hand over the precipice created by the mattress. There wasn't much of a puddle, suggesting most of it had made it into her body.

The effort to get herself up onto her feet prove to be too much. One foot on the floor, a shift of weight, a shaky attempt that brought her crashing to her knees. Ah no, she was not entirely naked. She hadn't made it out of her under things. Good. That made her pathetic sprawl so much better.

She was still drunk. The moon was still out and dawn hadn't been invited to the party just yet. Somewhere over on that rack was an IV kit and a bolus filled with a mix that if she could get into her body now she might be able to wake up in a few hours feeling more alive. That is if she could make it there. The bathroom was closer.

One way or another she ended up a curled up drunken mess wondering when it had gotten that bad again until the void of sleep stole her away.

The exam room was far too sterile. It was pristine white walls, matching cabinets, spotless floor. Everything wasn't just neat and tidy, but organized and labeled down to the last item. There was nothing wrong with any of this, of course. A doctor's office should give confidence to the patient that they were in a clean environment where they could get the best of care. Sira had decided on her first visit that she didn't like it.

On this return visit the things that should have reassured her she was in good hands caused a note of anxiety to thrum through her. This place lacked the warmth of her own clinic. There weren't herbs on the wall growing in carefully hung planters. There wasn't the talismans made by the camp folk that try as hard as she could to refuse, they managed to get strung up across her windows. And the lack of windows! She felt claustrophobic in this tiny little cubicle with no natural light to speak of. There probably wasn't even an outside wall. Certainly there wasn't enough soundproofing in the walls, as she could hear all about her neighbor's goiter.

Just about when she decided she'd had enough waiting—nearly a half an hour in that room alone—and had risen to do just that, the door opened to the fake smiling face of the overburdened clinic doctor holding her chart in his hand. He wasn't the same physician she'd seen on her first visit, which made her frown and narrow her eyes.

"Miss....Arrd-haul?" He took Sira's dark look as an indication he'd mucked that up. He plowed on. "Dr. Anthis isn't in today, but I see that you're here for a follow up for..." He hadn't even read her chart prior to walking into the room. Wonderful. "...A skin check" Ah, I see you'd had frostbite. Hands and feet. Could you remove your shoes and socks for me?"

She sighed as she used her toes to work out of the flats she'd managed to fit her bandaged feet into, then eased onto the exam table. Was he expecting her to unwrap her feet as well" Oh no, he wasn't completely stupid. He turned to get the gauze scissors. "I did a dressing change three days ago, per instructions." Her voice was a soft rasp. Speaking any louder still hurt. Her hands were no longer wrapped, but were still reddened and chapped.

Her feet were worse. She lifted her eyes to not watch the doctor work in his examination. She knew what he was looking for and that he wasn't going to find it. She didn't respond when he asked to see her hands. He had a very gentle touch, she thought, and the presence of mind to respect her silence. He didn't speak again until he turned to get some fresh supplies.

"Well, I have to say that you're healing remarkably well." Instead of a roll of gauze, he showed her a couple of soft 'sleeves' made of an elastic material. "After the amount of damage you sustained, I would expect we'd be moving onto skin removal at this point." He slipped the sleeves onto her feet with a careful touch. "Now, I want you to wear sleeves like these underneath soft, loose socks for another week or so. Your skin looked like it's repairing well, but it's still very fragile. It looks like Dr. Anthis already recommended a cream for you. Continue to apply that at least twice a day. You want to avoid the skin drying out and cracking."

Sira listened and nodded dutifully even though he wasn't telling her anything she didn't already know. It had been Mercy's overreaction that had landed her in the clinic to begin with, and her sense of propriety that had her following up at all.

"Miss....Ard-hal?" Closer. "You really are very lucky. Falling into a pond like that, it's a good thing you got out and got help right away."

"Doctor."

"Hm, yes?"

"No, Doctor Ard-l." Sira grabbed her coat and bag from the chair where they waited for her as she slipped her shoes back on. Her feet ached and burned, her nerve endings stressed from just existing. "Thank you."

She didn't wait for him to give his slips of paper with scribbled instructions. She knew what to do.

She needed out of that place.