In through the passageway that left off from the stairwell, hands chilled from the brick walls and the railing, she shoved her hands in her pockets, satin lined and comfy, and swaggered her way over to the counter. A sheer layer of dust met her, pregnant with the possibility of words, nonsensical scribble to violate its pristine snowfall.

A smirk, she looked up at the ceiling, where wires hung and the scent of diesel was almost dizzying. A decrepit, well, let's be fair, it was more of a skeleton than even a wreck of a boat, off to her left, and to the furthest right, through a back room was the store room, well, more like break room, cigarette parlour, breakfast stove, as it would come to be with her managing the joint.

Spinning, she walked to the grime covered front window and deigned, after a bite of her lip and a dubious stare at the cold air puffing from her mouth, to touch it. She stared at her fingers splayed across the pane. It was freezing to the touch, and no sooner was her hand back in her pocket and she was leering over her shoulder, with a roll of her eyes, as she yelled for Larry.

The feeble, flustered lad came ambling through, paint bucket in one arm, encumbering him far too much than it looked, or was bloody worth, and the other a plank of wood.

"Larry"

"Yes, Lorana?"

She cleared her throat and smiled as polite as she good, turning to face him completely, while giving the place a mild check-over.

"It's ...frosty in here, babe. Dontcha think there is more to be on than, ya know"

she pointed a finger, a cold finger at that, at Larry's right arm, to her left, the one with the plank of wood, a prop for something other than getting the electricity wired, a foible, a distraction from a more meticulous effort, a sure fire way to get her both amused and annoyed.

"What Lorana?", he asked in that dragged out monotone, and she arched a brow, that false smile stretching, she looked akin to The Joker. Batman. Circa Jack Nicholson.

"The heater, Larry", she wrinkled her nose and smiled softly, with that look on his face and the sweat on his brow, she always gave in. Such a sweet, simple dear, and a wonder with wires, it was getting him to the point of application that was the brunt of her burden.

"Oh..."

"Yes Larry"

She smiled some more, nodding gently, her eyes soft, she unguarded for a moment, with this old friend. And bloody idiot!

"Uh..so, no sign yet?"

She folded her arms across her chest and watched as he swayed with the weight of each item in his grasp. Kindly, she stepped over and took the paint from him.

"I'll start on this when I've thought us a name, lav. You, ya know..." she gestured to the cables and fandangled whatsamacallits and thingmabops that made her hair stand on end one to many times. She wasn't as great with electricty, or at least its luck wasn't in her favour, as she was with cars.

"Now, come on. Two days time. We're almost there, mate"

She flashed a girlish wink and was on her way to that back room, to rest the tub of Primrose Pink paint on the dusky oak table at its center, and thoughtfully regarded it for a moment. A certain smile crossed her face, and then she walked out, and looked over to Larry, as he smiled over his shoulder, somewhat unsurely, about to mount the ladder.

"Ya can do it, Lawrence"

A big, his-least-favourite grin, eyes slit and teasing, like a big sister, she might as well have been, and he took each rung precariously at a time, till he was two away from the "Don't Step Higher than this Point" sign, and he looked back towards her.

"Larry....", she said flatly, and he let out a sigh, at himself, and set about figuring out what he knew best, while she turned and squiggled a coupla words into the counter top, satisifying that childish need, she blew the coating of dust from her finger and then with a chuckle she headed off back down the stairwell, her voice echoing in its cold chambers, leaving Larry alone, and very much afraid, his ear held out to the side till he heard the very last peal of that laughter he so loved to hear, well, sometimes.

Looking towards the counter, swaying a moment, he regained his balance, a hand to the ladder's arm, and looked back. On it was written..

"Hurry Up"

He couldn't help but smile. If nothing, she was persistent.

Two Days Later

Lor had been lounging about the place, circling, painting, sighing, umming and ahhing about the decor of the store. It wasn't the most "coherent" of designs in the first place, what with red bricks and an iron door painted red, with the front of the store being a pale pinky brown sandstone and the undercover and garage being pretty much the way a garage is. Smelly, dirty and far from pretty.

She had been lounging on the bonnet of a beat up Mazda, eyeing its dents and scratches when an out of place sound registered and she left the car to take a look. Her steps were slow and wide and brought her easily to the garage itself and one of the concrete islands which separated each car space, with metal ramps down from them. Gliding along there was the 6' something plus that, doing ollies on a skateboard. He bore a crimson beret and a grin, and once he knew her attention was captured, he did something tricky with those far too long legs, so that as he stood to attention, hand to his forehead in a "yes captain" gesture, the board was deftly thrown from the back of a heel to his hand and up under an arm. Spellbound, if for the strangeness of this man, she clapped and sang out "Bravo, bravo partner!" and chuckled throatily as she walked up and canted her head, inspecting him with an assessing stare, 90% playful at that.

"I didn't think vagabonds liked skates. I always picture your types clickin' yer fingers in some downtown bar, not....."

"Here", he intervened with that handsome smile, beaming down at her as she took a step and lightly landed right before her, a bend of his knees and he stood tall, towering over her 5' something, shortarse to him.

"Wanna drink?"

He nodded, glad for it, and tapped the skateboard beneath his arm. She checked it out a moment, then returned that curious slash ponderous look to his happy one, and then pointed over her shoulder with a thumb. "Thissaway, pal"

He lumbered after her, his eyes dropping to his long feet padding in silence along the concrete. He sometimes felt invisible. Just like a shadow.

Looking around, she paused before a doorway into the backroom, the same one he had found her in, the one through which was a doorway, and then up to the second story where Larry was working on the heating and the lighting.

"Ye like apple cider" Or a tooheys?"

She followed in after him, as his long strides took him to the center of the room. He looked around, sighing, and he placed the skateboard down.

"Cider"

he said absently, as he walked around, lost in his memories, at least, that was how it looked.

"You can leave that on a table if you, and how about I give a look at that wheel"

she handed him a Cascade cider from her icebox, cold knuckle to his warm, and she smiled up at him softly, then looked to the skateboard.

"The wheel looks a mess there, Morsham"

He nodded solemnly, or, was that just his way' He wasn't glum, he seemed comfortable, if thoughtful, but once again, that looked to be his nature. She followed him as he moved for the skateboard and reached out, spinning a wheel, the rent one, wonky in its turn. He stared at it and she stared after him, gulping awkwardly down her cider.

"Uh..take a seat there"

She smiled again, unsurely, and walked around so that she was before him, and pointing a Doc's toe to a light brown chair.

Without any weight at all, it looked, he collapsed onto it, and looked up at her, the spinning of the wheel percussion to the silence.

"Do you know, I did not tell you everything when I first met you lass"

His eyes wandered the room, and no longer her face, and a relief filled her. She followed his gaze, skewing her brows, and gripping the cider tightly.

"If yer about to kill me or mug me or somethin', or tell me the place is haunted, ya know, I could do without that boyo"

She winced a smile and leant against a table corner, a hand rested behind her, the other placing the bottle at her knee.

He looked at her, face open, and he laughed, a dry, short thing.

"Nay, lassie. I'm none of those"

He shook his head and she tilted her head a little, a finger drawing squiggles in the condensation that fell in rivulets down the bottles curve.

"I use to own the building. Back when Rhy'Din was young"

Her breath caught in her throat, and she coughed, spluttering on the drink and blinking furiously at him.

"Ya did?"

He moved to stand and pat her back, but she shooed him away with a chuckle as she recovered.

"I'm akay. A little surprised, eh"

She nodded, looking down at her Doc'd toe in consternation, a wet fingertip leaving the bottle to tuck some hair behind her ears, twining a longer strand of hair about her nail.

"It was a bar. Hotel for some. Now I live by the docks"

He smiled, yet.

She found herself gazing at that, inquisitive and sad at once.

"Well, I've got to take a break anyhoo, Mor. Stay here as long you please, righto"

She leant forward and grinned, an effort to cheer him up, but he wasn't even down. He got up, spun the wheel of the skateboard and stared at it, that intense expression evoking the same feeling out of her, as she watched him so intrigued, and then, abruptly, he turned to face her. "Show me upstairs?"

Without a thought, without a word, she ushered him towards the doorway and through to the stairwell.

"You could probably show me a few things about tha place, Sham"

He laughed and nodded, his eyes large and eager, as they walked upstairs in silence.

He made a pillow out of cardboard and a foot rest out of twigs, and read playing cards like tarot before the lights went out. His home was the docks, wastelands between chainlink.

He saw visions in trashcan fires. He has met Elixir Sue, One Eyed Jill and the Ace of Love, dontcha know. Whether in person or in said fire is open to debate.

He loves nothing, but likes a lot. His favourite meal is pancakes, and he has the feeling his life was about to get a whole more more flowery, er flour-y. ::big, cheesy grin::

You'll get used to him. Nice fella, though eerie despite himself.

He didn't try to be anybody. He liked being nobody. He liked that he had survived the town of Machine. That he had made it out of Absalom and Golgotha. He had seen kingdoms rise and pimp's pants fall, and all was a comedy to this wicked sense of humour.

These days, out of character, he reaches out. His eyes are tender, and he speaks of what he never has before. He's inside out, ya know.

He wonders a lot more about what he might do, where he might go, and whether his name he will keep. He liked Anonymous. His responsibility was all to himself.

There was Lor. The exception. The curiousity. She, the Mechanic, with the swagger and the strut. She who revealed little and yet it spoke a lot. Her eyes looked like thunderstorms. Her hair needed a good comb. And he wanted to. He wanted more than that. But like her, his mouth was shut on that issue. His hands. His heart. His feet from walking there.

He might even visit that Inn sometime. See what the hot fuss is about.

But for now, between storytime, he rests as a bookmark, to be sought for memory. Or to simply be a mime or a poet, and act out Coins of Virtue. Ya know, the two dollar ones at the bookstore, that was him.

For now.

In the furthest booth of the most remote bar he sat. Hood over his head, eyes distant and filled with fiction. A better life for the one he was sent to watch.

He'd seen other Protect. It was different for every being in every realm. To some it was taking the stab, a bullet, a hit, and to others being a presence to whom the Protege' could turn. Never was it with love in his experience, every being was remote.

He distanced himself too from those he had escorted. Journeys for these ones were hazy, blinding, to embark on a life and not know a word of your family or the real you, identity was sacred.

It was a hot night when the throng boarded, and with large planes and vessels overhead, neon lights and terrified screams, while Proteges' were torn from their families or thrust into a Protector's arms, there was a calm. From a gap in the crowd I saw the Youngling lift her hand, no more than sixteen summers old. On her was a crumpled leather jacket, leather pants, worn boots and a ripped t shirt. Her eye was bruised but she was fierce. The way she walked was slow, considered, even elegant for one so young, but her eyes held something that took me. That startled me. I knew I was hers to guide.

That same night, in a makeshift bed in a unit on the Upper Pass of Syche City, she lay rested. Though battered, she was bold, and she took my hand and thanked me, speaking in a tongue I did not understand, the dialect smoothed in the eloquent turn of her phrases, the way she spoke so softly, but sure. I took her into my arms and gave her love. Not the physical kind, but the kind that two need for sustainance in a city, any city, where both are equally as lost. She cried, told me how she sought her mother, how her best friend had gone missing, how everything she knew had disappeared overnight, and how an idea of her mother being alive led her from what sounded a hideous plane, and to my arms.

To look at her now, and see she's changed so little physically, still so brazen, beautiful, frank, and so so kind, I smile. I don't give credit to it. But I hope I helped her resolve back then. When she looks at me she doesn't remember. But I do, and that's what keeps me near.

Little Taja, back then, Taja born of where the lightning broke and the shadows danced, now Lorana, and she's never seen my face.

I looked outside at the sky, the vacant parking lot, the spacious grove of trees to the north west, and further on a hill, out there, away from all this, a playground, with a sloping slide in the brightest yellow. Even in the dark.

"You skateboard?"

I turned to find her crossed legged and reclined in an armchair that swallowed her. Her hair was swimming about her shoulders, and eyes the colour of leaves in deep autumn studying me right back.

"Well?"

She smirked, and shook her head, and snuggled further into the massive chair, the hand nursing the cider rocking the bottle back and forth. I know I smiled, and found myself ready to sigh. Almost to the point of telling.

"I always wanted to"

The words came out of her after a long while, by that time I was facing the window again and fumbling through my pockets for a small black band, strewn with circular beads in the shade of the moon; a gray white, like sleet, and though pearly, less sad.

"I'll take you?

I felt my cheeks lift with a real smile, and I manuevered my way over, spinning her in the chair, and then I bent so that when the turn brought her to me, my palm was proferred with the beaded bracelet.

"Boyo!", she gasped in a raspy voice, gripping the bottle tightly and pressing to her chest. Her eyes were large and reflected the pearlescent stones, and I found my hand rising closer to her face. Her hand then took mine, tightly, and her eyes stared into mine.

"I getcha..."

Her eyes narrowed, squinting at me like a suspecious child being given candy by a stranger. But there was an inkling of something alarmed, something that registered. And then came the flutter of her kisses along my jaw, her arms thrown around my neck, and her lips against mine. With abandon she tugged me closer, and I fell, beret long gone, and I lifted the bottle from behind me, as it dangled from her hand, and placed it beside us. I picked her into my arms as she went limp, and sobbed.

I hadn't expected this. I knew she'd not want Larry let alone anyone else to see this. Maybe even me, so I patted her hair and rocked her as she had the bottle, back and forth, in my arms. Her legs wrapped around me and gods, I wanted to just return the kiss, to sing her a song, to take her out on a skate, to wander carparks and the empty places of the world and fill them on us. To talk Eliot. But everything was elementary, and second to what she needed.

I took her to her bed, asking gently where her room was, once her hand finally unballed from a fist and pointed vaguely to the stairwell. I stayed only long enough to tuck her in, shoes and all, and pick up her delicate wrist, thumb to the tender flesh of her inside arm, and pull the bracelet across their. Her face was turned from me, hair an asset in hiding, and she still cried, trying so dearly to stop, but she couldn't. And then I think she wore herself out, and by the time she did stop, and sleep fell away, I was gone.

And I realised I just didn't have tact.

Stinging sunlight opened her eyes, and she sat up, wiping tangled hair from her face, pulling down the shirt that had rided up during sleep and the jeans that fell off of one hip. Barefoot she padded across to the large table that blocked the armchair, and she reached across to open a draw and slide a cigarette from its silver case. Tucked inside her mouth, and a lighter taken from a jeans pocket, she smiled sheepishly and stared out the window, watching as the shafts of glare fell inside and puddled about the lounge and too from the rectangular skylight near the doorway to the stairwell.

It was her place. Something she'd worked hard to get to. From a no one, to an apprentice and now an owner. It felt good.

Leaving the table's edge she leaned upon, she dragged her feet down the passageway and upstairs, passing Larry as he bounded down to go out for breakfast, with Wendy no doubt, and she smiled at him sleepily, as she headed for her bathroom.

The halls were so quiet, so still without Larry around, with Sands. Sands never came up, never had, that she could recall, and he was was as quiet and still when off duty as the upper story when she was alone. Toes curled and flexed as they crossed the freezing tiles of the bathroom, and she opened the small window on the opposite wall, and then turned to wash her face. It was that morning, scrubbing her face with cool water, that she actually looked at her face. And remembered a couple weeks past when she fainted and Sham brought her home. It had been such a good night, and his last words to her, about being his angel, the trace that stuck to her mind, that she had wanted to speak to him on, wanting so badly to divulge the past he didn't know, but had held from.

Her features were pretty, and more Fey than human, though both these recognitions she'd never lingered on or thought to flatter. Her eyes were long, and a dark golden, like maple, and her hair, when brushed, was waistlength and a shade she'd seen people dye their hair to attain. Her skin was fair with rosey cheeks, clear and glowing, and her body was while not especially lean, was lithe, kept well, with shapely legs under the baggy trousers, a taut stomach, toned arms from all her labour, and an elegant neck that fell to gently rolled shoulders. Appraising herself was unusual, she didn't like it, though being with Sham had made her appreciate her femininity, and she thanked him for that even if she hadn't never said it.

Into her bedroom she changed clothes, pulling onto a lightweight dusty-pink chamisole, and overalls, and some thick soled, wedged work boots, and then jumped the stairs down, grabbed a brush from a book shelf down the hallway to the first half the bottom story, and ran it through her hair once, and then walked proudly, aware of herself in a funny sorta way, and out front into the garage to start another day.

With the wind from outside still in my ears I headed inside and locked her door behind me. She'd left it open for me. Sometimes she just knows things.

Up the stairwell and down the hall and into her room and there she was, glassy eyed, a strange sight, and yet I couldn't focus or feel anything more than desire.

After, we untangled, like the locks of her hair by my fingers, as we lay side by side and cooled. I could taste the night air on her mouth, I could feel the night time in her smile. I could hear music in her breaths.

"You look beautiful there, darlin' " I heard myself say, the words out before I realised. She smiled and curled her naked figure into mine, a snug fit, and her fingers smoothed the back of my neck.

Laying there, her asleep, I heard lots of things. Not just the nights and things that go bump. Or the horned owls outside on the eaves. I heard her fear. Pinpricks at my ears. Heartbeats thudding softly at my own.

Knock, knock she says, and in my dreams I fell inside. And the mirrors of her eyes when I had arrived made perfect sense.

Six Months Later

On the roof of the Red Dragon Inn where old crates were stacked and wrappers from all sorts of things lay strewn was Lor. Perched snug on the roof's edge, back facing the stairwell door, her eyes watching the horizon. In one hand was a cigarette, and the other, a bottle of scotch, left by Maz and taken by her in the early evening of the subsequent day. She held to it, drinking straight from it intermittently, musing on the misfortune of a flooded house and no customers these past few days. Her eyes were red, her nose too, as she wet her lips and took another hit of the liquor and then a puff on the cigarette.

The last six months had brought change. Like spring begged it. She felt spritely more often than low, but her split from Morsham and her struggle with the consideration of letting Larry go were weighing, and as each day passed, were all the more pressing. In her room she still had some of Sham's clothes and she had taken the time to wash and iron them and fold them into squares and leave them on a lonely brown chair by the skylight in the completed back room. He hadn't come past in a couple of weeks and while she found she breathed easier, it was no less painful to be separated from someone she thought she would marry.

As she had half expected, due to her telling him her whole story, and him being confused about his purpose in his life-guardian, then lover, then housemate lover and then not sure of what he was protecting anymore, had brought argument after argument. She hadn't wanted to muse on what she thought "un-nessaries" as they were together and happy and that was that. But no, he wasn't. He was feeling torn as to what his role was, and if he were somehow deceiving her or himself by being a lover with someone he had saved at sixteen and was only meant to watch over. Lor didn't feel the same, and hated problems coming out of nowhere, when things were, in actuality, perfectly fine. But he was an artist, and she figured it was him realising that he longed more for the wanderer's journey than a husband's. She wasn't resentful because she knew they loved and respected one another fully, though it did hurt, and it was this lingering annoyance at his being changeable that made her anxious and shortened her fuse.

Larry had flooded the upstairs by not looking at a pipe she had asked him nicely time and time again to fix, and he had insisted it was "fine Lor, just old yeah". Now she was $1600 short and with business slow she was getting troubled.

The night before had been a welcome break from the craziness. To sit back, share a drink and a smoke with Mason had been so welcome. Her bones still ached and her head still hurt, but sometimes conversation was refreshing, and connecting with someone outside your day to day was what was needed. Though she knew it was more than that at heart.

She wasn't a deviant, she'd never been a cheater or a big time flirt, but she was ready to blossom, to grow, to learn new things. Nights alone and brought her many light bulb moments. She'd begun to sew, instead of seeing the drycleaner for all that stuff, she'd started to paint here and there, only a couple strokes in her frustrated evenings, and found a relief. But something else had found her, too. Lust.

It didn't help that she had been crossing the street late two evenings prior to grab some milk and cookies for some late night movies, when she saw Morsham and an attractive, golden haired woman slinking by his side. Lor had found herself staring into that fresh evening, alone beneath a street lamp, jaw slack and eyes salty and stinging. It was a reaction not characteristic of her, and as soon as she felt the tears she'd fought them away, and bought her milk and cookies in a mindless blur, and then found herself several minutes later curled in bed stuffing her face and weeping like a little kid who found out that the tooth fairy was her mother and santa was her father. Little illusions broke in two.

And sitting on that roof, pondering all this and more, smoke finished and bottle near empty, she left the roof's edge and headed back down the stairway and to her room. Another night till her house was not waterlogged. Another night of feeling like a stranger in her own life Watching the world go by. Watching Sham move on. Debts rise as the customers didn't come through. Watching all she'd built collapse.

It raked at her heart, it surely did.