Fear had a way of staying with him.

Ever since he was young, ever since his first real brush with mortal terror, Jay felt the shadow of fear lurking behind every encounter. It hung over every day like a shroud, and each attempt to dispel it lasted only as long as he could consciously hold the dark thoughts at bay. Every day was a fight, made all the more difficult by each set of hopeful eyes that watched his every move. But still he fought, each and every day.

Because he’d promised her.

On the day that he and Emily had sat on the curb of a city street, numbly watching a procession of EMTs and police officers on their way to comfort the dying and retrieve the dead, he’d sworn to her: Never again would Jay Jefferies hide, helpless, while evil sought to claim them.

And so they’d trained. He spurred her on just as she motivated him to continue, and the rest of the club rallied to their progress. They sought solace in each other’s willingness to overlook the other’s flaws, but it was a hollow comfort. Jay still felt that familiar sense of dread lurking in every shadow, and Emily still blamed herself for every bad thing that happened near her. Still, it was enough. They weren’t whole, but neither were they broken. They had each other, they had the club, and they had a promise.

But now, an hour or so before the sun would dawn on a night of madness and death, Jay could feel those things slipping away. The Tryhard Clubhouse had been set ablaze, and despite his and Marika’s best efforts, the dry wooden building couldn’t be saved. Every fond memory of the last three years, now only so much smouldering ash and rapidly dissipating smoke. 

Emily had disappeared, right around when everything started going crazy, and no one had any idea where she was. It made Jay feel sick, not knowing if she was still out there, where the black-robed lunatics were cutting people up. Not knowing if she was hurt somewhere, alone. He’d gotten a call from his parents about an hour ago, and Marika heard from her dad shortly after. They’d made it to the temporary refugee station that the Rainbow Cabals had erected outside the city limits. The contact had brought relief, both ways, but after the initial surge it had only served to accentuate Emily’s absence.

Jay jumped back to the present as he felt a cold hand press against the side of his neck. He sighed, then opened his eyes to give Marika a weary smile.

“Don’t do that,” Marika said quietly. She was seated on the same stump as Jay, though they were angled away from each other slightly. “Don’t smile just because you think I want to see it. What are you smiling about?”

Jay’s smile widened, though with sincerity now. Marika’s bluntness usually served to keep him grounded, and even though he sometimes took her for granted, she was always there for him. Hours earlier, when flames had sought to bring low all they’d ever worked for, it wasn’t Emily who had been at his side. Even now, Marika sought to guide him. She knew that he’d take a larger portion of the burden on himself, knew that he’d bury the pain deep inside to keep himself from showing it to the people he thought himself an example for. She was good at calling him on his bullshit, and never hesitated to do so.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” Jay answered, and he meant it.

“But you’re worried about Emily.”

“I’m worried about everyone,” Jay said, looking back out toward the darkness at the forest’s edge. “You figure something like this has got to have Cheri at the center, so I’m worried for her and Tyler. Roman lives on the north side of the city, and Dad said things weren’t too bad up there, but you know how he is. He’d head out in a heartbeat if he thought we needed him. Not to mention…”

Jay trailed off with a frown.

“Adela,” Marika supplied, her tone betraying a hint of concern. 

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. The long night must have worn on him more than he’d thought.

"There's an awful lot to worry about, on a night like this one," Jay finished. "I can't help but fear for all of them."

"But you fear most for Emily," Marika said stubbornly. There really wasn't any way to get her to drop a subject once she'd latched on like this, but Jay wasn't really in the mood to hear her badmouth Emily, as she tended to do.

"Yeah," Jay conceded. "I fear most for Emily."

"Why? She's the most capable of us by far. Why do you always fret over her so much?"

Their conversations rarely went smoothly when Emily was the topic, but after the night they’d had, Jay felt Marika might be owed a little sincerity.

“I promised her, Mari. We swore we’d be there to protect each other the next time...things turned out like this. I know she seems strong, but…”

Marika snorted as Jay trailed off again.

“She definitely seems like she’s trying to give off that impression, I’ll grant you. But I’ve never once heard her ask for help. What makes you think-”

A twig snapped in the forest, prompting the pair of them to leap to their feet. Marika pulled a baseball bat from behind the stump and held it in front of her, two-handed. Jay simply crouched, his hands held open in front of him as his eyes strained to pick out details from among the shadowed trees.

“Who’s out there?” Jay called out into the darkness. He wasn’t certain he wanted to pick a fight with whoever would be stalking about in the wake of such a horrible night, but he sure as shit wasn’t about to lay down and die at the whim of this new brand of wizard. They’d triumphed over the others, and they’d triumph now.

They had to.

A voice rang out through the clearing, cold but familiar.

“You’re not fooling anyone, girl. Put it down.”

Three figures emerged from the trees as the bat clattered from Marika’s grip. Jay clenched his jaw as he recognized them. Not who he wanted to see right now.

Julia, Xander, and Augustus stopped a short distance from where Jay and Marika stood, the two men flanking Julia’s slender form. All three wore what looked like body armor, each a different hue, though color was somewhat difficult to distinguish in the lowlight. Xander was in his demonic form, courtesy of the hour, and he gestured to the blackened remains of the clubhouse with one wicked-looking claw.

“Sorry,” he said, and to Jay’s surprise he truly did sound sorry.

Marika raised her eyebrows expectantly at Julia, who glared back at her.

“It was monumentally stupid of you two to be out here during all this,” the wizard girl told Jay. “The Cabals counted nearly four hundred casualties in the attack, and around fifty of them were our operatives. Two Mundane teenagers would have been child’s play for the lowest of bloodmages.”

“It figures,” Marika said, “that you wizards would drag your crazy race-war into our city, then show up to call us stupid.”

“Don’t just put this on wizards,” Julia said hotly. “It was-”

“It was us.”

Jay’s heart leapt as he heard Emily’s voice, then sank as he slowly parsed the meaning in her words. She had taken the same path as the three wizards, apparently unbeknownst to them judging by the level of surprise they displayed at her sudden appearance. Julia hadn’t quite managed to stifle her yelp.

“I see you at least have the good sense to follow the…” Julia began, but trailed off as Emily walked past her. “Wait, where did you get…”

As soon as Emily was close enough to make out her form, Jay began to put two and two together. She was clad in the same body armor that the three wizards were, and she held a sword clenched in one fist. It was still too dark to clearly make out her expression, but in the darkness of the night, the pale blue glow in

her eyes was impossible to miss.

She stopped just in front of him, and though he knew she thought herself an expert at masking the pain she felt, to Jay, who shared the same trauma, Emily’s facade was practically transparent. It was written all over her posture, in the clench of her jaw, it was in the hesitant shake of her quiet breath.

“Who?” Jay asked quietly.

Without warning, Emily dropped the sword. The dull clatter it made against the packed dirt rang loudly in the silence following Jay’s question. He was so focused on the question he’d asked, one that had no good answers, that he barely reacted in time as Emily collapsed toward him. 

She felt light in his arms. He could feel the plates in the body armor she was wearing, and could tell that it was heavier than normal clothing, but still. Her hands were bunched up in the front of Jay’s coat, and her legs had already crumpled, so Jay knew her whole body weight was on him, but still. It felt like there was nothing to her. Like he could run for miles with her in his arms and never feel the weight. 

“They killed my dad,” Emily sobbed into his chest. “I was too late, I could have helped him, but I...I just…”

As though her mind could no longer bear the burden of the thought she was trying to express, Emily just screamed. It wasn’t the sound of a night of terrible tragedy, either. It was a cry full of half a decade of repressed pain and quiet suffering, a ragged, lonely sound that wore down gradually from full volume to weak, airless sobbing.

“What did you mean, this is our fault?” Marika asked softly.

Emily sniffed hard, and got her feet under her. As per the usual, she seemed to reflexively close up when reminded of the presence of the others. They released each other at the same time, and Emily stepped back.  

She took a deep breath, and she walked them through the events of the night, as she’d experienced them. Jay felt exhausted by the end of it, drained further and further by each surge of emotion. A flare of anger when he heard about the officials of the Rainbow Nation torturing his closest friend, coupled with a deep sadness when he realized that Emily didn’t seem to care. A confusing loneliness when Emily talked about being pacted. It was as though a new barrier had formed between them, visible in the darkness as a pair of glowing blue eyes.

As Emily finished her re-telling, the sun was beginning to dawn.

“I caught up with the rest as they made it to the glade,” Emily said. “There were around forty corpses, all bloodmages, and no sign of Tyler or Cheri. Liara said there were indications of long-range teleportation magic, some residue left over from when that big-wig blood priest uses his magic. They’re going to try to break down the signal, find where they took her.”

“You don’t think they took Tyler?” Marika asked.

“They didn’t have any reason to. They’d have just…” Emily’s voice broke, and she cleared her throat. “They’d have just killed him.”

“But there was no corpse.”

Emily shook her head. “I came here after they...dismissed me. I figured if Tyler escaped, he’d come here first. So I searched the darkness. My new eyes are good for that.”

“No sign?”

Her expression was answer enough. “There’s sign of one or two people, moving around in the woods, but their trail is sporadic. I couldn’t figure out if I was heading the right way, it kept forking off and reappearing in ways it shouldn’t...I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your father, Browman,” Julia said suddenly, breaking her and her companions’ long silence. “On behalf of the Rainbow Nations-”

“Oh, cut it out with that shit!” Emily snapped. “It was meaningless when Will tried it, and it meant so much more coming from him. This isn’t something the Rainbow Nations need to apologize for. There’s only one person I can really blame for what’s happened.”

Jay felt his heart sink.

“And when I find her, I’m going to kill her.”

Jay and Marika exchanged glances.

“So you found out,” Xander said.

Jay could see the annoyed expression cross Marika’s face. She hated being left in the dark, hated when she was the last person to get it. He didn’t much enjoy the feeling either.

“You knew, then?” Emily responded. “Back when you were hounding her, you knew?”

Xander nodded. “I was under orders not to act, but I at least wanted to keep Mundanes from getting involved. They have a tendency to get killed when they involve themselves in her plans.”

Emily looked Xander up and down. Now that light was beginning to make its way through the forest, Jay could tell that all four of them were wearing different colored body armor. Julia was in a deep blue, Augustus was in yellow, Xander in purple, and Emily in blood-red.

“Under orders, you said,” Emily commented. “From Lady Violet, then?”

He shrugged. “Not really at liberty to discuss my orders.”

“I’ll bet not,” Emily replied coldly.

“I don’t have to justify myself to you. And I certainly don’t have to justify Lady Violet.”

"Then who," Emily started, her voice abruptly at shouting volume, "is going to take responsibility for this?! For my father? For my brother? For my home?"

She'd gotten right up in Xander's face, punctuating each question with another step, prompting a corresponding step back from Xander. When she'd finished, Xander was standing in the long shadow of a nearby pine, but if Emily was intimidated by his return to demonic form, she didn't show it. There was nothing short

of sheer fury blazing in her pale blue eyes.

"You can blame me," Julia said quietly.

Emily shot Julia a sidelong look, though she didn't budge an inch from where she stood. 

"You? Why you?"

Julia shrugged, though judging from her sour expression, she was a lot less nonchalant than she was playing. was trying to act

“I’m just saying...I don’t know. Maybe if I’d done my job a little better, if I’d been a little bit less…”

“Bitchy?” Augustus supplied while studying his fingernails.

“If I’d been less antagonistic,” Julia said, shooting her brother a glare, “I might have been able to actually bring you into the fold. I understand that isn’t something you ever wanted, but either way, we’d have discovered Cheri, gotten her home...and none of this would have needed to happen.”

Jay was impressed. It was unexpected enough to hear Julia apologizing, or at least doing her best to seem vaguely apologetic, but Jay was beginning to realize a more consistent theme. Everyone felt guilty. It wasn’t just Emily, broken by her savior complex. Julia felt it, Xander felt it, hell, Jay would put money that

Roman would find some way to blame himself for it. It was just survivor’s guilt, plain and simple.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jay said. Everyone rounded on him. “It doesn’t matter who’s to blame. What matters is what we’re going to do now.”

“We’re headed back to Avalon in the morning,” Julia said. “We’ve already met with our superiors. The exchange program here is being axed, and I’m being demoted. I’ll probably be removed from the Cabal of Shadows pending an investigation.”

“Just like that?”

Another shrug. “There’s not much else we can do. By this point, most of the other exchanges were established enough to help smooth out public opinion in response to this, but there’s not anything to be done for Haden beyond damage control.”

“What about justice?” Emily hissed. “What about finding the man responsible for this and bringing him down?”

“The man responsible for this has been responsible for attacks literally hundreds of times worse, and has been doing so for centuries. Just because you want justice doesn’t mean anyone can deliver it. Trust me, it’s at the top of the Cabals’ priorities.”

“For all that’s worth.”

“You fought with them, Browman. You know exactly what the Council is capable of when moved to action. You actually think you could do something, if they couldn’t?”

Emily and Julia stared silently at each other for a long moment before Emily looked away. Jay could see the shame on Emily’s face, and he hated it. He knew he should say something, come to his friend’s defense, but he didn’t know what he could say that wouldn’t ring as pure nonsense in the face of whatever it was Emily had seen that night. Still, wasn’t it his responsibility to be at her back, no matter what? Jay opened his mouth to retort, but a different voice answered first.

“Of course she can. She has to.”

Everyone in the clearing whirled around at the sound of Tyler’s high, clear voice. He had come from around the Tryhard Club’s burnt, collapsed frame, and still stood near the corner of the building. There was blood on him, but he stood straight, and the look on his face was as confident as Emily’s ever was.

 “Hell,” Augustus said wryly, “how many fucking people are out here?”

Emily made a pained sound, half anguish and half relief, as Tyler stepped into view. Tears immediately overflowed in her eyes as she ran to him and swept him up in her arms. Jay couldn’t make out what words passed between the two of them while they embraced, but it was enough just to see them reunited. 

When they finally separated, Tyler’s eyes shone with tears as well, but he swallowed hard and cleared his throat.

“The Prism Council is in danger,” he said. “If they go, they’ll be going into a trap.”

“And how do you know that?” Julia asked sharply. “Not exactly an operative, are you?”

Tyler turned and glanced back to the corner around which he’d originally appeared, and shifted his feet uncomfortably.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he told Emily. “But we need her.”

Emily’s face went cold, and the sword that she’d dropped reappeared in her hand with a gesture. Across the clearing, Xander also tensed up.

“What’s going on?” Jay asked. “Who do we need?”

Behind Tyler, Adela’s head poked from around the corner of the Clubhouse. Emily pointed the sword at her, and Jay could see the effort it was taking Emily to restrain herself evidenced in the shaking of her hands.

“Explain,” she said through grit teeth.

Adela sighed.

“I’m going to have to start at the beginning.”