The Universe's Mixer

John walked down the street, in a somewhat cheerful mood. He didn't have any particular reason, but running into Melody had been nice, and thing in general seemed to be improving for him. He didn't particularly have a direction in mind when he'd set out, having not explored enough of the City to traverse it with much intention. Besides, if the rumors were true, the City generally wound up getting you where it wanted you to go, intention or no.

So, when he saw the neon glare of Eric's recording studio ahead of him, he smiled slightly to himself. He'd been spending more time with the strange man, and while he still was rarely sure if Eric merely tolerated him, or enjoyed his company, they both seemed to enjoy their guitar sessions.

Wandering up and finding it unlocked and vacant looking as ever, John went in with little hesitation. There was no way to tell if Eric was here or not, but in general the vampire assumed the guitarist would have locked the door if he didn't want company, knowing John to have entered uninvited several times previously.

It had been a long five months.

Eric had given it a try, trying to hold reign on a normal type of a life. But the days were restless and the nights stretched out far too long. Every time he closed his eyes he didn't feel rested in spite of being so exhausted to the point of collapsing, and when he awoke during the evening hours it felt too long. He had adapted his sleeping schedule to be awake during the nights in hopes of catching John at the studios. Eric had been desperately trying to distract himself from the emptiness, but each day that came and went seemed like an eternity. The misery overwhelmed him when he was alone in that damned apartment. And the calendar on his mobile phone was all too eager to keep track of the days and nights so he didn't have to. They had flown by, each one had escaped him, and now he was convinced that this facade of an existence was no longer worth the effort.

Before....before the transformation into what he was presently, Eric had been able to be by himself with no concern. He hadn't needed anyone else, hadn't needed contact and presence of others to be happy. He loathed that the fairy part of him yearned so badly for that contact, the subtle motion of normal interaction. Being in Lee's presence helped, finding her on the wall was always a treat, and then there had been John. All of the time they spent together was nice, having someone to compose with, that understood the depth of music...but no matter how much time Eric spent with his friend it didn't ease him. This life he had built in Macklyn's absence was no life at all. In fact, each time Eric awoke to face the moon it was with dread. It felt like dying over and over again and he couldn't put up with it anymore.

Having made up his mind a few days ago, Eric knew it was best to escape this place while he could. There was nothing left for him here. He had entrusted Selina with Saucer, something that felt like abandoning part of his heart to a woman whom would only crush it beneath her shoe if she got the chance, but Saucer would be safer with her. And it was one less tie to the misery that had plagued him for the last five months.

This was the eve of the eve of his death. It loomed before him like a shadow and it made him hate the apartment more than usual. The couch where he slept during the day was a mess, his constant tossing and turning sending the cushions and blankets to the floor. The bedroom had remained untouched, the apartment itself was as much of a ghost as he felt like. Coats of dust covered much of it. He avoided the place when he could but having no place else to go made this the only true dwelling. He had toyed with the idea of burning it to the ground and each step closer he came to the 30th, the more pleasing the idea became.

Tonight he planned on going to the studio, though. There was a track that needed to be laid down and tampered with, and it was unfinished. He couldn't leave it like that. Hopefully John would show up at some point during the evening to approve it. If the vampire did, Eric would leave him the keys to the place. Eric knew John would keep it up and use it, which was what he had wanted.

But then something changed.

He had been about to put his keys in to the pocket of his leather jacket when he felt something in his mind switch onward and a flood of things returned. At first, it was a bit overwhelming, the connection coming back. Eric closed his eyes and savored it, letting relief wash over him. He wouldn't get his hopes up, not yet, but this was a start.

Another moment and he heard Bran in his head speaking to him.

Mara is here. She is beckoning us to return. It is time.

His eyes opened slowly. Eric wasn't sure if he was ready to face Macklyn yet. They had ended on such terrible terms and he was aware that his mate wouldn't have forgotten it. Eric couldn't even think to utter the word 'vampire' in regards to himself. He no longer thought about that part of himself. Buffy knew the phantom and the fairy, but only because of her occupation, and John wasnt worldly enough to know the difference in species.

It was time to go home.

Squaring his shoulders, Eric did push the keys in to his pocket and he was out the door of the apartment in a flash. It didn't take him long to find his way back to the little house that had once seemed a distant memory. Looking at it was painful.

Bran took his usual spot on the roof and the hybrid approached the front door unsure of what he would find. It took only a moment to open the door to the house, and once he had crossed the threshold he peered around at the dark, stale atmosphere. It felt like a shell of what had been there previously.

He wasn't sure if Macklyn was there waiting for him, they had a lot to catch up on when they did find each other again. It seemed best to just hang around and wait. He'd waited long enough already, what was a few minutes more? Slowly, Eric made his way further in to the house and settled into a shadow thrown by the kitchen to wait.

Macklyn hadn't really been back to the little house much. He made sure that the animals there were fed and taken care of and that the plants didn't die, but for the most part, he roamed and spent time by the water, or in the park, careful to use his connection to Eric to stay away from the other man. His anger at what he'd had to do to Ariel had stayed burning in his chest for a really long time. To twist that innocence, to betray somebody who was his friend. To know that he'd had to, or she would remain afraid of him and never look at him in that same way again...

But now...

The hybrid stood at the door, Mara on his shoulder. The strange bird never left his side. She was so much different than Bran, it was hard to imagine that she was technically the same creature, just changed. She needed blood to live. She was a she. She was... alive. That was truly the biggest difference. Mara had a heartbeat where Bran did not.

It had been so long that Macklyn wished he couldn't remember what they'd fought about. He wished he didn't have a vampire's mind for memory. And a fairy's for that matter. If he could only forget as a human could do, maybe he wouldn't have let this go on for so long.

He missed Eric.

They were soulmates, and that was something that he knew he could never sever. Not that he really wanted to. He needed his soulmate by his side. But he also needed to make sure that Eric understood the dangers of throwing information around. He was far too casual about the truth of himself. Macklyn hadn't lasted as long as he had in the world telling people willy nilly that he was part vampire. Hell, most never even discovered that he was a fairy, unless they were creatures that could tell right away.

The house smelled a bit stale and musty. That just wouldn't do.

"Mara. I need you to find Bran. Bring them back. I'll clean up here." It was time. Probably far beyond time. The two of them needed to reconnect, needed to make peace. Needed to be together. Macklyn opened the communication channel back up, that which he had blocked off to have his privacy. Now Eric would be able to sense him once more, in all the ways he'd been able to previously.

Eddie breathed out a sigh of relief.

This wasn't any city he knew. It was far from the Manhattan skyline he was used to, and entirely opposite of what he had expected to wake up to. It was random, refreshing and welcome. His skin crawled with the feeling of delight, the essence of freedom. Many in his position would be worried, scared that wherever they had ended up was ultimate. But to him, the newness of the finality was alright. Nobody knew his trials here, nobody would know his failures.

To his surprise, Eddie had awoken in his apartment as was usual. The peeling walls, the same smells, the clutter and the mess. There was a wall full of newspaper clippings from the Globe, articles about Spiderman....Spiderman. Hah. What a joke. But he was obsessed just the same. Had he the opportunity he would have killed that red and blue tights wearing nobody the second he could. Spiderman was the reason he'd been fired in the first place!

Revenge was a dish best served cold, and bloody...and tasty.

Eddie found himself salivating for an instant. Standing at the foot of a bed made of rumpled sheets and nightmares...he smiled some, shrugged and dressed. It was in the middle of pulling on a shirt that he noticed the laminated badge sitting on his desk. It said something to do with The City and being a part of the team there and there it was with his photograph and everything.

It was the second chance he had been waiting for.

This place, whatever it was, recognized his greatness. Finally, someone did. He wasn't a bad guy, not really. He had potential. He just needed someone to see it, to acknowledge it. He was Edward Brock, star reporter and this town would know it.

With confidence, Eddie marched in to the building of the job he had been assigned and he got straight to work proving he was better than everyone there. He had nothing to lose. And he was going to be making all of the headlines.

They would just need to wait and see.

"....I know he will be safe with you. You'll take good care of him." Eric said softly, knowing Selina would never allow any feline to come to harm if she could help it. The white Persian was better off in her care. It wasn't that Eric didn't want the cat, he adored it deeply, but where he was going the cat couldn't come. It was safer, better off with someone like her that could dote on its every whim and protect it. There were too many memories that shrouded the feline, too many to sort through and to work on.

"Why are you doing this?" Selina inquired. Her eyes narrowed in question, but her tone was different than usual. She considered them rivals, enemies fighting for the same ground, and this seemed too much like an olive branch. A peace offering. She hadn't wanted it to take this twist, she had wanted to be the one to decide when she was done fighting. But the whim for peace had yet to come and there they were together, standing at an inevitable crossroads.

"Because it's time," Eric replied.

Wayne Manor was elegant. It was very large and despite its depth there was a measure of welcome to it. He could tell that it was well work, lived in like it should be. It was far too big for someone like himself, there were too many things that echoed from the tapestry decorated walls for his liking. But if it suited Selina then that was what mattered. Their rivalry bored him, it was trivial and stupid and he was done with it.

"When are you coming back to get him?" A small measure of hope in her voice escaped despite her trying to fight it off. She hoped he wasn't coming back. There weren't many places to go, but there was a part of her that would always loathe him and was glad to see him give up the last bit of Ben to her. It was as if he had given up, like she knew he eventually would.

"Just make sure he's happy," Eric replied. It was then the Avenger turned and walked toward the door left open. The warm sun greeted him like a shadow and he didn't look back at the woman standing there, holding the purring white cat. It was over, that part was over now and Saucer would be safe there in Selina's care. He wouldn't have left the cat there if there was any measure of harm that might come to it.

Waiting for him on the roof was Bran, and with a caw coupled with the flap of his wings, the bird joined the shadow of a man as Eric crossed over the manicured lawn. There was still so much to do. So many more preparations to make before he left. Everything needed to be just right because there wasn't any coming back.

Meeting the street, Eric faded in to the darkness of an overpass and continued to make his way back to the City, all the while working over his mental checklist. The cat was done.

Now it was on to the next. He was running low on time.

Bruce made it quick. He didn't want to stick around, that fear would always be right there beneath the surface. He was setting himself up for rejection, opening himself up to pain and suffering but it couldn't compare to anything he had already experienced. Liv deserved better, with or without him.

So, he stood before her doorway, staring blankly at the pristinely painted door. He had one just like it a while back, now he barely used it. It didn't seem to matter now.

He pinned ( the letter ) to Liv's door and after a brief knock the scientist turned and walked away quickly. He didn't want to be there when she got it. Just in case...there he was running again.

He sighed, pushed open the front door to the building and disappeared in to the rain.

It had taken a complete stranger to open his eyes. Bruce hated it, but he knew the stranger had been right, and although it terrified him more than he wants anyone to know...he knew those words were the truth. It was odd and yet comforting, those words. They were simple and how he had missed it before he wasn't quite sure. For all of the intellect he posessed, for all of the great things he had done he was still just a man. A lonely man. A lonely man with a monster inside of him.

Bruce had been lingering in a book store, perusing the selections on science theory. A few selections later and the scientist had tucked himself firmly in to a couch in the corner furthest from any signs of life. He must have looked troubled or struggling as he sat there because otherwise he doubted the stranger would have approached him. But what struck him as peculiar was the way the stranger looked. How he carried himself, almost as if he knew the same pain and struggles. But that couldn't be right, could it? Bruce wasn't sure. He hadn't been sure until the man had left. The stranger had come and sat down beside him. A very large bird had rested on one of the man's shoulders until the stranger had sat down. He held no book, nothing of any interest to which Bruce could start up a conversation.

But somehow they had managed to start talking. The stranger was easy to talk to. At first Bruce had been hesitant to open up, reluctant to share. And then by some means they had trickled in to the subject of love, of being with someone.

"A woman is a good weakness to have," the stranger said to the scientist. "The moment you stop letting yourself love someone is the moment you're no longer human anymore. You really do become the monster you keep inside of yourself. Having someone to love means you've become willing to fight, and it means you're willing to allow yourself to be exposed."

Bruce sighed softly. His mouth had opened to argue, to protest....nobody could love a man with a monster. Nobody could understand. But the stranger with the bird was right. "There's nothing more human than admitting you have things to overcome, and if it was me I would pick love over anything. I would choose to have someone to protect, someone to support, even if it was a risk. Because you can't exist with regret in knowing that you could have been happy, and you chose not to be. No man deserves to be unhappy, we simply choose to be because we are afraid. That fear should compel us to overcome it, to deal with it. To have to be brave, and the first step in that journey is to admit you have a weakness just like all of the rest of us. Every person, creature, on this planet needs someone else. For procreation for their species, or simply just to be around. You can't escape it. And it's better to know that feeling than go without knowing it for your whole life."

The book Bruce had been holding had somehow managed to fall to the floor without him knowing.

"Why are you telling me this?" Bruce asked. The stranger just smiled a little bit and shrugged, "You looked like you could use it." And without another word the stranger got up and walked away. The scientist was left with the last moments of that haze and he knew the stranger was right.

Instantly Bruce got up. He didn't realize he was running until he reached the sidewalk outside and he found himself out of breath. He grabbed hold of his bike, mounted it and tore down the streets in the direction of Stark Tower.

He had a lot of work to do. A lot of making up to do.

He needed to reach out to Liv.

A stop at the Tower and he was in his lab almost instantly. He was afraid, deathly afraid, but it felt easier somehow to deal with than before. Sitting down at his desk, Bruce found some clean paper and a pen and began to write a letter. He would take it to Liv's apartment when he was done. But it had to be perfect. And he was almost always perfect when he set his mind to something.

Who knew the kindness of a stranger would have such a profound effect?

With a sigh of relief, Bruce settled and composed, knowing that when it was done he had to find the strength to follow through. He could do it. He would do it. He would take the next step.

The sun had set long ago. Unlike many of her nights, Giselle hadn't strayed to the valley in the forest to watch the mountainside turn gold and pink and purple. Instead, she'd found her way from the attic window to the top of Logan's cabin, and there she sat on the roof, watching the sky as it shaded from soft blue to deep navy.

Here in the forest, they were sheltered from the garish City lights. It was almost like home - almost, except that she couldn't ever forget that this was no Andalasia... and her life was very much different, here.

Logan had been gone for longer than she particularly liked. It was strange, living with the man. He was an odd combination of kind and fierce, but never fierce to her. She'd hate to be his enemy. She imagined most of his enemies felt that way, too. There were many good things about Logan. One of them was not how much she missed him. Was it wrong, to miss someone as she missed him? It didn't feel wrong, but it felt terribly un-right, as well. She didn't think she was ever going to make sense of it.

A sound from well behind her caught her attention. She crawled over the roof peak and saw him walking in toward the cottage. A bright smile caught her and she waved happily. He didn't see her. He seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, and she wondered --

-- she didn't wonder what he was thinking for long, because her bare foot slipped from where it was bracing her. She squealed and clutched for anything and missed everything on her slide downward.

She'd gone out at night, eager to find her friend Eric. Though she could have made the journey across the water to the edge of the City, to that wall that overlooked the eerie forest beyond, she chose instead to try to find him in the City proper. A wall... Always, they met on a wall, and as she walked the nighttime streets, a wall was what she was looking for.

After some wandering, she found herself in a rougher part of town. It didn't concern her; she knew well enough that she could tend to herself, and Peter was only a panic spike away besides. Peter, she thought, was the perfect guardian. The perfect everything. Not quite her everything, but if it hadn't been for her duty to the people of Earth, he could have been.

At last, she found a suitable wall. It was broken down and rough, but perfect for scaling for all its imperfection. She easily scrambled up the side, her hands and nimble feet using the crumbling mortar and bricks to ease her passage up. And then she perched and waited, feet swinging easily against the side. Eric would come soon. She knew it in the center of herself. He always found a way to her.

She hadn't expected anyone else in the darkness.

Jono had scoured the entire city several times over looking for her. It seemed cruel to give him something and then take it away like that, but apparently, that's what had happened. Maybe he'd been foolish to think he could have anything like her in his life. Something to make him happy like she had.

Their time together had been painfully short, and Jono wasn't sure that he could bring himself to be glad that they'd had any time at all. Laura had been the only one to understand what it was like, to feel like he had. Isolated and alone, they'd found one another and built a friendship, and it had become something more.

After his unsuccessful search, Jono had holed up in the apartment that the damnedable place had provided for him. Refusing to come out. If he didn't have Laura, there was nothing for him out there in that place.

Of course, fate would see to it that he needed to leave. After so many days of being plucked at, one of his guitar strings snapped. Jono waited for the City to throw him another one, or repair the instrument itself, but it did not. Frustrated, lonely, heartbroken, Jono set out and found a music store. He'd brought the guitar not wanting to leave it behind. At the store, Jono threw down for a whole set of new strings, and a backup. He also threw down for a tuner and a mini amp. All the money in his wallet was gone when he left the store, yet he knew it would be full again later.


His errand done, Jono wandered until he found a bridge overlooking water. There was a small patch of grass nearby and a bench. He plopped himself down there and set up the guitar and amp. The music that came from it was melancholy at best, discordant and spontaneous.

The resurrection of his star pianist had driven Erik forward toward an entirely new goal that had crystallized as he listened to Hannibal playing. The opera he'd planned would have to wait. The fall season would be delayed, but only, perhaps, by a month.

He'd disappeared for a full week into the sanctuary of his lake home, as fire within him took hold. He eschewed the paler parts of life - sleeping, eating - and turned his full attention instead to the forms and shapes of his music. His fingers bled; he let them. Nothing was more important than the music.

And when he finally took a full breath again, hands thin and shaking with weakness and grand magnitude, he found more satisfaction in looking at the sheaves of filled staff paper than he had felt in a very long time.

It was not an opera. But Magdelene's voice would give it the scope and grandeur that opera engendered. It was not a full orchestration. But Hannibal's playing was worth more than sections of his magnificent orchestra. And there were yet strings, crying softly through Hannibal's notes.

It was Ignite. A blaze of longing and loss and love, a fireburst of gasping, all-consuming passion, designed to overtake the senses and bathe them in heat. It would be heard. He would bring it to the City Opera, and it would live in the hearts of others, cling to the insides of their skulls, fill their lungs with moaning.

Erik dropped his body briefly into the chilled water of the lake, washing off a week's worth of sweat and blood and toil. He dressed slowly, steadying his hands when he needed to. His clothing fit more loosely than before, but he drew himself up to his full stature all the same, tucked the fire against his side gently, and started up the flights of stairs to the Opera House. There were moments of blackness that had nothing to do with the absence of light. But he made it up.

His assistant had been waiting. Wordless at all the right times, the faithful man called Erik's towncar and followed quietly beside Erik to the door of the car. There was only one moment on the stairs down that Michael felt the need to take Erik's elbow. Briefly. Erik could not muster anger at the boy. Shadows of tall trees passed across the tinted window of his car, throwing muted hypnotic zebra stripe sunlight into the cabin with him. When he lifted his head again, the manor waited for him.

He climbed the stairs, and entered his home. His legs were unsteady, so he waited at the door, one slight shoulder subtly leaning against the wall. He kept his back as straight as he could, refusing the demands of his body for a few more minutes until he could make it to his own chamber.

Contrary to what she might have thought, Bruce Wayne hadn't gone to work that day. Instead, he'd spent the entire day quietly organizing for the evening. There was much to do, and it had to be done in secrecy -- a feat not easily accomplished with an accomplished mistress of stealth in the manor.

But by 6 p.m., the northwest corner of the roof was set up to his specifications. He'd already moved an intimate dining table up, along with a bedroom suite, some days ago when Selina had been out. The final touches - the important things - were complete. Rose petals. He toed at the thick carpet of them, then glanced to the high walls around the roof. The wind would take some of them, but Alfred knew to replace them just before he and Selina brought up dinner.

He checked his pocket a third time for his grandmother's ring, then headed downstairs. He was supposed to be driving back in from the City at this time, and his decoy driver had just made it to the garage. With a nod, he snatched the keys from the air as they were tossed, pulled on the suit jacket he'd left to change into, and headed back in to find Selina.

The warehouse was as well-fitted as it could be, defensively and offensively. That had been step 1. But now he and Bane needed information -- more of it, that is, than what could be found on newspapers left littering the sidewalk in this mostly-deserted side of town. Refuse told much about a city - even living refuse that clumped in dirty piles in the alleyways - but there was only so much information that could be extracted from half-gone junkies. With distaste, the Cleric dropped the latest wellspring and dusted his gloves off gingerly.

This wasn't working.

It was a risk, but one that needed taking. Bane was too conspicuous to do the job well; it fell to Cleric Brandt, First Class. Clothes were the first hurdle, quickly overcome by a little quiet street intervention. Wearing another man's clothing, then, he took the first car he found into the City proper and ditched it on the edge of a long line of houses a few streets down from a busy part of town.

And then he began walking. A fresh newspaper was easy to pluck off a nearby outdoor table. He tucked it under his arm and kept walking until he got around the corner, then propped his arm against the side of the nearest building and began to read.

It was a nice day. The days since she'd arrived had all been nice, which Clarice had only noticed in a vague sort of way. She had been busy reading old files, familiarizing herself with the problems of the City, learning the ins and outs of the new technology, and then putting together a file on Hannibal Lecter in her spare time. He--they?--had been very quiet in her time here, but she would not be caught off guard.

The fourth time the booking officer found her asleep on a couch in the break room, he had ordered her out. "Nothing's going on, Starling," he said. "The City won't fall apart if you take an afternoon off."

Clarice, unsure of that, had protested but found herself shooed outside. There she'd noticed the weather and decided to walk in the City that she'd been studying. She found herself sitting on a bench in the park, people-watching, leaning back with her arms crossed. The vast majority of those that she saw were the people she now recognized as City-born natives, the ones with a certain something missing. They were almost uniformly pleasant but somehow emotionally flattened. Like pigeons, she thought, watching them walk by. Someone of a certain mindset could easily see them as less than human, animal-like, a subhuman flock to be hunted.

The thought chilled her.

Selina knew about the library and what it held. She had been there many times in hopes of finding something that would catch her interest. She had expected a book, something tantalizing and something she wouldn't want to give up. What she found was much different.

There was a row of displays almost as if the Library was some sort of museum. Behind glass hung things from an assortment of lives. Every life held an item or items meaningful to their existence. Even she had one of her own. Selina pressed her hands against the display gingerly and peered in at what the City had claimed of her life.

She noted the rest of what was there, a typical inventory of what was there and then she left.

That was long ago, it seemed. Before she had given up the mask and the suit. Before she had been sure of the direction that her life was going.

The one thing that had held her interest more than anything in that library was the wedding dress that was hanging there on display. Someone might as well have put a sign up that proclaimed the thing was free to the public because to her it was. To her it was better used in other ways.

Selina stood in the dark before the lit display. In her hand she held the wedding invitation dated so long ago. Her lips pulled in to a smirk. She didn't know who Shelly Webster was, but she felt pity for the girl. Who would marry a man like Eric Draven? Selina didn't know. Maybe he was a good con artist, maybe he was convincing. She didn't see it.

The invitation fell from her fingertips and fluttered to the floor.

Her eyes tilted upward and then the dress was hers. She took it from the display and left nothing to note whom had come to claim it. There were better uses for a dress like that than hanging here all by itself. Selina wondered when it was last visited. That didn't matter. It was hers now and she would stake claim to it. She wanted it, and he didn't deserve it. He had no use for it. She would find a purpose for it.

Whisking the garment away, Selina laughed. Nobody would ever know. Nobody. She was great at what she did and she was not afraid anymore of retribution. Eric wouldn't dare touch her. It was almost too easy.

Almost.

"Heithrún, stop that!" Siggy tugged at the rope around the she-goat's neck. The goat, a white-and-brown creature with long ears, bleated and dug her hooves into the dirt by the City park.

Siggy frowned, irritated. It had taken her so long to find someone to sell her a live goat, and she then had to wait until one of the females was bred. This one was newly pregnant, which meant that eventually she would have milk, real milk, and a kid goat for eventual eating. Peggy would likely protest, but the girl would agree once Heithrún was producing milk that it was for the best.

If she could only get the stubborn beast to the building and then up to the rooftop.

The City was creepy.

Rose hadn't gone straight to her apartment to find what she wanted to move to Matt's. She started making a list of the things she wanted to take, yes, but instead of heading back to Agreeable Apartments, she got on a bus and took it to the edge of the City closest to the island. Then, she caught a taxi that took her over the bridge to the island itself.

And then she walked.

It felt like a far longer walk than she remembered, getting to the TARDIS. The ship was dark and still, and it felt terrible seeing her like this. She almost didn't do what she had come to do, her heart too heavy to easily say goodbye.

Because that's why she'd come. To put her past behind her. To move on. That was what he wanted her to do, after all. She was so angry with him, angry with the Doctor, for giving up on her when she'd been willing to do whatever it took to find him and to stay.

Only, he hadn't wanted her. Her chin lifted, as she remembered the new face and the same exact eyes... He hadn't wanted her. He'd moved on, perhaps years ago. She was the only one in that relationship now, if one could ever call it that.

Rose turned the key in the lock. "Hey," she whispered into the silent room. "I came to say goodbye. There's... There's this man. And he... Well, he's not The Doctor, but he's good and he's kind, and he loves me. I love him, too. And I can't keep holding on to the Doctor when he's let go of me a long time ago. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

She set the key on the floor, then stepped back through the doors.

And she ran all the way across the bridge.

It was a little more than an hour later than she arrived back at her apartment. She'd found that the City had boxed up all the things she'd mumbled to herself that she wanted to take. Yes, the City was creepy. But at least it'd done something nice for her. She squared her shoulders, gathered up her things, and went to her new home. She went to Matt's.

And that's what she found herself doing sometime after 5pm - pushing open the door to his apartment. Now theirs.

Selina wasn't usually one for childish things, she had long since given up girly and kiddie things for more adult adventures. Even before her family burst apart at the seams her life hadn't been all sunshine and rainbows. An orphan for most of her life, Selina had learned quickly how to get what she needed to survive by any means necessary. She didn't kill, she would not tolerate blood like that on her hands. If someone died in the process, it wasn't by her purposeful doing. That wasn't to say that people didn't meet their demises, they did, but she liked to think that she was not the cause of that. It was just a part of life.

Today she had left Wayne Manor with the prospect of shopping for something. Anything that caught her eye, and anything her heart settled on. She was trying to be good for Bruce, but being good all the time was so boring! She hadn't been called the Robin Hood of Gotham for nothing in her younger years.

Stepping over a small pile of chalk, Selina made her way gracefully across the sweeping expanse of the City Park. Today she was dressed down from her usual glamorous attire, clad in denim shorts and a tank, with flats on her feet. Clothes easy to get around in, clothes that blended in to the natural fashion of the modern age. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her eyes sparkled with mischief.

Finding herself standing on the cusp of where the grass met the sand of a playground, Selina breached the barrier and found herself sitting down on one of the swings. The park was vacant. She was curious to know if the park was always so empty, or if the children just happened to all be at home or at school. Why have a park if there weren't children?

The chalk doodles on the sidewalk, the clouds and flowers and hop-scotch etchings suggested that there were children. Perhaps they had all gone in for lunch. Well, that was alright with her. She had never been one for brats anyway. Selina figured she was much too selfish for that. Cats were much more tolerable.

Swinging herself, Selina hummed and she watched the park carefully.

John was restless. The City was having a strange effect on him. The sudden return to a more normal atmosphere, with people who were usually indistinguishable from the type he'd grown up with was bit of a cold shock for the vampire. It reminded him of the first time he'd come home from a difficult tour. Everything around him appeared to be functioning normally, the way it always had been, but suddenly he saw. He saw the fragility, the illusion, the sense that most people walked around with that everything around them was normal, permanent, and peaceful. He saw how blind and ridiculous that notion was.

It was slightly different when you were a vampire, though. Before he'd felt what it was to be the line between the normal life and the horrors and chaos that threatened it. Now, by definition, he was one of those disturbances. Even in a City where the remarkable was accepted with a blink and a double take, he knew he wasn't part of the world most lived in, now.

( Finding the Crow )

The place was old and unused. Eric could see that clearly just by observing the thickness of the blanket of dust that coated everything. A mixture of cobwebs lay here and there, untouched by the weeks and years that the place had sat. To be honest and fair, Eric had not even been aware that this place existed. With all of his gifts and every clear picture from the sky, neither of them had noticed it. Too many other things had presented themselves and the shifting of the buildings and constant motion of the streets made keeping track of things a bit more difficult than he liked.

But Eric supposed that true discovery was what came with constant rotation and the unknown. It was particularly excellent in his case considering that his need for a distraction was far too great.

And so the finding of this treasure was of the utmost delight. It would need a good cleaning out, furniture would need to be replaced and it seemed that the machinery was due for a good oiling as well.

Moving further into the facility, Eric approached what seemed to be old equipment. These were things he was familiar with. He knew them from the events of his life before. The sound board, for instance, played a vital role in the structure of sound. Beyond that, through the great glass windows were rooms padded to stifle sound. To maximize the wavelengths while muffling the noise to those outside so the recordings weren't compromised.

A pair of headphones lay haphazardly on the floor of the studio. A broken microphone hung from the center of the ceiling and dangled enticingly.

Eric's dark eyes took in everything. In his mind he could visualize the past, see himself and his band recording their album. All of the time and effort put into perfecting his dreams, all of the laughter and jokes, the cigarette smoke...and it was all coming back to him bit by bit. Little by little he was warming to the place. It had been abandoned and now it was his. God forbid anyone come to try to claim it, any part of it, because he would kill anyone that tried. This was his place now, his solace, his sanctuary. It was the next step in the path that he had strayed so far from.

It was almost like home.