I see the path.

I have no words to describe what is going on in my head right now. I am sad, I am thankful… Bittersweet, that’s a good word for it. I miss Macbeth, terribly… I am still very upset… But I am also calm and clear and for the first time in my life, it makes sense.

My life makes sense.

 
I am holding half an acre
torn from the map of Michigan
and folded in this scrap of paper
is a land I grew in

 
I am buying the top floor of the Bank of America building, where he died. It is the tallest spot in the city, where he met his mentor. Where the flowers breathe the freshest of air. I will replant the garden there…it will be the way it should be, and not what it became last week. And even more than that, it’s part of a good sized office layout too…

Corazon de la Cuidad Charities. Heart of the City. Once I started thinking about setting up administration offices for it up there, the name just came to me… Like a gift, like I haven’t been trying to think of a name for it for the last year. The three soup kitchens and the halfway house I started, the free health clinics and women’s support houses Reo left me to oversee, the educational trust Macbeth’s family wants to set up with his liquidated assets… all incorporated and organized.

I was prepared to beggar myself to see it happen, to sell the Sands, stop school, and go back to living on the streets to scrape together every last dime needed to buy the place and get the charity off the ground. It felt right, and no matter how difficult it was going to be, I was going to do it.

Think of every town you've lived in
every room you lay your head
and what is it that you remember?

But then Elle made it all possible.

There’s a Trust in my name, that I was given access to when I turned 18. I didn’t even know it was there. One minute I’m prepared to liquidate everything I own, and the next I’m a millionaire.

And while it felt right before, now… now it’s all falling together, like it all fits, like its right…And I begin to see, to understand, what everyone’s been telling me. Macbeth, Elle, Gypsy… that there is something beyond what was, that everything has a purpose and while I’ve been shaped by my life, I don’t have to keep carrying it all with me.

 
Do you carry every sadness with you
every hour your heart was broken
every night the fear and darkness
lay down with you

I’m serious, if I didn’t believe in the interconnectedness of the world, if I couldn’t see it, This would convince me. So many threads of my life coming together… Ethan, Michael, and Bernie…who I met rescuing my cousin… all of them helping me find the people I need or create the contacts necessary to make this work… Ethan’s even going to come work for me, so I have a good lawyer…

Temperance wanted to go to Stetson, and now I have the means to make that happen while she uses her Poli Sci and Pre-Law degrees to be the PR person… she wouldn’t move down here without her brother, but I gave Ezekiel Michael’s e-mail a few months ago and he’s got an interview this week for a graphic design job with him… And while Job will want to kill me for helping his little siblings move down here, he’ll be glad to have them around... especially Zeke, who just became a sleepwalker… I’m…I’m not ready to think about what it might mean for me, to have Zeke down here, but there’s that too.

Gypsy is fixing my lives… So my past and my history will be my own again. I had such issues with that, Worrying that becoming Moira meant that I was no longer Martiya. But I am Moira, as much as I am Martiya…. They are the same and they are both me… And now my records will reflect that, so I don’t have to keep lying about myself to the world.

 
A man is walking on the highway
A woman stares out at the sea
and light is only now just breaking

 
Satori, that’s what Happenstance called it. A sudden and intense moment of enlightenment.  I feel like crying and laughing all at once. I wish Elle and Macbeth were both still here so I could hug them and tell them how much I love them both, So I can thank them for helping me. I want to do the same for nearly everyone in my life… Gypsy and Job and Dust and Gadget and Happenstance. There are so many people in my life I haven’t given nearly enough thanks too…  Friends, those that have continued to care for and support me no matter how difficult I’ve been…

And others…Even Faust, for being the low point that made me take a step back and look at my life… and Carlos, for pushing my buttons until I learned to be stronger for it… and even Jose for hitting me until I learned to stand up for myself.

 
So we carry every sadness with us
every hour our hearts were broken
every night the fear and darkness
lay down with us

Everyone who has touched my life has helped to shape it…every event, for good or ill, has had a purpose. All the darkness and all the light.

Macbeth was the first person in my life who died and I couldn’t make myself believe it was my fault…to do so would have belittled what he did… and now I stand here and I look back, and I see all the threads of my life leading to this point…. And I look forward and I see the path… I know what I want to do with my life.

I am going to double major in Buisness Admin and Social work, and I am going to devote myself to building something that can really help this city. That will be there to keep helping my city long after I’m gone… no matter what my Destiny ends up being.

It feels right… It feels better than right, it feels perfect. It’s like I just understood a greater plan, something outside of myself that’s been at work the entire time even if I refused to see it…. I wonder if this is what Gypsy feels like when she talks about faith and her face lights up with a burning certainty… I feel that way…full of light.

 I feel….

Happy.

 
But I am holding half an acre
torn from the map of Michigan
I am carrying this scrap of paper
that can crack the darkest sky wide open
every burden taken from me
every night my heart unfolding

But she couldn't help glancing down, for just a second, as she vaulted up over onto the roof... and let out an involuntary squeek as she realized how close the thing was.

"Note To Self... SPIDERS CLIMB FREAKING WALLS!" she berated herself as she dashed away from the roofs edge, very nearly getting hit agian as the thing came boiling up over the edge after her. It was one of the adult-size ones... nearly twice her size, stronger than her, faster... the only advantage she had at all was her intimate knowedge of Tampa and it's roofs.

And she took full advantage of that, ducking a weaving around the generators and stove pipes up here, playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the thing while she tried to think of a way out.

"I just need enough time and space to cast a portal, please Ariadne, just enough time and space to cast a portal..." She looked around furiously as she dodged, finally catching a glimpse of gold thread disapearing over the far edge of the roof.

"Dios Mio, you have got to be kidding me..."

She didn't stop to think about it, she didn't have time. She feinted around another obstruction, and then made a dash for it, casting as she ran. The thing let out an awful chittering shriek and followed after.

She got to the edge and glanced down into the alley, seeing the portal she was casting starting to form. Just then the thing caught up with her agian and hit her with one of those scythe like arms. Her Armor took the brunt of it, but it was all she could to to keep a hold of the spell through the pain as another gash opened up across her back.

No time to wait.

She jumped, finishing the spell on her way down.

There was a slight sense of disoientation as she fell through the portal just as it snaped into existance, and then an imediate wash of pain as she hit her bed in her apartment, the frame colapsing underneath the force of her fall. This time she couldn't hold onto the spell through the pain and the portal on the ceiling of her bedroom snapped shut.

"Dumb Luck... the only way that could have possibly worked was shear dumb luck..." She thought muzzily, vaugely aware that she was bleeding out all over her bed and there were internal organs that felt like they had been crushed under the weight of her fall. She managed to fish out her phone, obscurely glad that she'd pre-programed emergancy text messages into each of it's buttons. She hit #4, passing from the pain out even as she heard it beep.

 "Job
813-555-9762

I am at my appartment, and hurt very bad, please come."

Moira stayed in the park after Gypsy had left, twirling the small rose-gold ring Sean had given her around and around her finger. She should be thinking about that, about having asked Gypsy to meet her here, because she wasn’t stupid enough to have this meeting alone. About calling the vampire she still couldn’t bring herself to call ‘grandfather,’ and trying to give him back this ring…This ring that had been his wife’s…her great grandfather Dukkar’s mother’s… A family heirloom, meant to be passed down the female line… A small ancient wedding band of rose gold, with the Romani words etched on the inside ‘To My Bright One’

Digging a hole and the walls are caving in
Behind me air's getting thin but I'm trying
I'm breathing in
Come find me

She should be thinking about the whole conversation she’d just had, about her mahrime ancestor and his birthday gift. She should be thinking about family…

It hasn't felt like this before
It hasn't felt like home before you

…But instead she was sitting here twirling the worn wedding ring around her finger, thinking of Topher.

And I know it's easy to say but it's harder to feel
This way
And I miss you more than I should
Than I thought I could
Can't get my mind off of you

She and Gypsy had talked about it briefly once Sean had left…Gypsy had told her not to worry about it… But Moira was still concerned. The longer things went on this way between her and Topher the more worried she became.

I know you're scared that I'll soon be over it
That's part of it all
Part of the beauty of falling in love with you
is the fear you won't fall

Worried that he just wasn’t that into her… And it wasn’t as if they were so involved in their relationship that that thought should really pain her…but for some reason it did.

It hasn't felt like this before
It hasn't felt like home before you

She knew her previous relationships were nothing to go by; they were just a long laundry list of dysfunctional examples of what not to do in a relationship… But she still knew how men acted when they were interested…Juan had started trying to get into her pants almost as soon as he’d met her. But she and Topher barely saw each other, and even though her heart started doing flip-flops whenever they could spare time for each other, he hadn’t even so much as tried to kiss her in their four month relationship.

And I know it's easy to say but it's harder to feel
This way
And I miss you more than I should than I thought I could
Can't get my mind off of you

And recently…maybe it was because she was still grieving over Elle…but that night was the worst night in the world to have found out that Jack…knew…Topher. But this wasn’t just her being paranoid…not when they’d started out calling or texting each other at least once a day and now he didn’t return her calls.

And I hate the phone
But I wish you'd call
Thought being alone
Was better than… was better than

She’d stopped leaving messages…tried telling herself that he was busy with work…which was probably true…that he was grieving over Elle too...cause he was… She was trying to give him his space now…to not drive him off by seeming clingy or needy…but Elle’s death had been a blow…and it was killing her that the person she wanted to run to for comfort was the boyfriend she could hardly even get on the phone.

And I know it's easy to say but it's harder to feel this way
And I miss you more than I should
Than I thought I could
Can't get my mind off of you

If he wasn’t interested she wished he’d just tell her…even though that thought made her have to stop twirling the ring long enough to sniff and rub a hand across her eyes.

Can't get my mind off of you

If she was going to get her heart broken she’d rather get it out of the way.

Moira wanted to cry. But she couldn’t… she was too numb inside. It had been this way since Havoc had sat her down to tell her the news, less than a minute of violent sobbing on Gypsy’s shoulder before the numbness kicked in.

Frantic activity, something, anything to give her focus…something to do.  Havoc had buried it all, was almost scary in how calm and controlled he was…wanting to find the seers that had been causing all the problems in Tampa recently…because rolling on any seers, even if they weren’t the same ones that had…Well it was better than nothing.

“Havoc… I’m s- s- sorry…My soul’s not strong enough to make the city tell me where they are…b- b- but I can forge your destiny so that you find what you seek this night.”

Gypsy was barely holding it together… sitting in the corner with Brigade. She spent some time with them, her head on Gypsy’s shoulder. There were no words that were adequate, nothing to be said…The only comfort she could give was the shared grief and the memory of the song her grandmother had sung when her grandfather had died, as she sang the half remembered Romani dirge under her breath. It seemed to help, though Gypsy was still full of self-recriminations.

“Gypsy stop it…Don’t you d- d- dare go bugnuts on me, miri pral…I can’t loose you too…”

Miri pral…My sister. There, it was said.  If only she had ever gotten the chance to tell Elle how many times in the last year she’d almost called her Daj… Mother…

That’s when the shock took over, the numb and the cold and shaking. Macbeth catching her as she tried to stand and hit the floor instead. A blanket from somewhere and Raging Dragon handing her a cup of hot tea that almost sloshed out of the cup her hand was shaking so badly.

“I’m okay…This’s happened before…Elle knows what to do…but no dueling for the next couple of d- d- days or she’ll be mad with me…”

“Come back to us, little sister” Gypsy had said, sharing a worried look with Macbeth over her head. “Come back”

“I’m here”

“No your not…Elle’s gone”

“I…I know…”

The flash of gold and red as Gypsy slipped a bracelet onto her wrist, old and worn. A family heirloom of some sort, the sparkling of its red gems giving her something to focus on as she clawed her way back to awareness, holding the shock at bay with conversations and companionship… Gypsy and Brigade telling her that she’d been adopted…Macbeth hovering in concern… Family.

“But everyone that gets close to me dies…”

The Queen of  Swords was still missing from her deck…replaced by the darker version she’d gotten from Carlos…Elle had been carrying the original since Pensacola, the focus of a spell of good luck Moira had insisted on casting for her when she had seen such a dark future in the cards… What had she missed? She had thought that it was Elle’s Order which was the source of the darkness in that reading…had warned Elle to be careful…but what had she missed? Had she failed to see the true danger, failed to warn Elle adequately? Or had Fate veiled the truth from her on purpose… was the fact that she had cared enough about Elle to part with one of her Grandmother’s tarot cards been her death sentence?

“Havoc! Havoc g- g- give me back the King of Swords I gave you earlier…”

Finally they had the information they needed…the Seers were at their Tower of Babel in the realm of temenos…a thousand mortals about to be sacrificed. She fell asleep against Gypsy’s knee as the entered the realms of mist and shadows, the tower looming over them. She was the only Fate master there, the only one that could get them all past the wards. She grabbed the lines of their fates altering their destinies to allow them to pass. The Goetic daemon which was the manifestation of her pride failed to effect her, she was too numb to care. She brushed past it and followed the rest up the tower, caught up in their fever pitch of righteous vengeance. Havoc and Gypsy and Solomon…all of them prepared to do what they had to do to stop these Seers.

Moira didn’t even think before she threw, watching in a sort of bemused shock as her knife flew across the intervening feet to imbed itself in the Seer’s eye. Blood spurted… He fell.

She didn’t feel anything.

The top of the tower…Curses formed and cast. Her nimbus flaring with the finality of fate as she forced the lines of destiny to her will and wrought the head Seer’s doom.

She still felt nothing.

Afterward though…in the calm after the storm… Her suspicions began to run away with her. Jack tried to offer comfort, and when she mentioned wanting to check on Topher…

“Topher? As in Christopher Robin? THAT’s your boyfriend?”

She couldn’t ask how he knew Topher…the look on his face was enough…the stammered explanation he tried to give her was enough…

She rethought going up to Massachusetts immediately to share grief and comfort… The last thing Topher needed was to see the hurt look on her face as she tried to bury her suspicions and the pain they caused…she couldn’t talk with Jack anymore… she just wanted to go home…

Gyspy wanted her to come back to Orlando with her…didn’t think she should be alone…her suspicions surged again and she panicked…

“N- n- no! you can’t go back to Orlando…you’ll die too…”

Compromise….Gypsy and Sol on the futon in her living room, Moira sitting on the edge of her bed staring at her bedroom wall as she started to slide back towards shock… Percy whining in concern as he licked her hand.

And finally… alone in the dark…starting slowly and softly but with gathering violence and force…

She cried.

Moira watched the messages coming across the Free Council e-mail list with a mixture of revulsion and anger. Jimmy the Hoodwink was accused of taking advantage of some girl out west, and everybody had an opinion. It was like fucking déjà vu, everything that was being said was something she’d heard just about a year ago… ‘Get all the information first, did he use magic?, Did she say no?, it may just be morning after regrets…it may just be that she’s young and it was a poor life choice…’

Moira wanted to punch the computer screen. ‘Poor life choice?' If Havoc was in the room she would have yelled at him. It reminded her too much of last year, when Havoc had been among the first and most vocal in saying ‘It may have been skeezy and scummy of him…but it’s not a crime…it’s not rape if magic wasn’t used and you didn’t say no.”

She didn’t know what upset her more, that some other poor girl was going through the exact same crap or that Havoc, who she’d come to trust so much, was being such a fuck-tard about it again.

All this crap just stirred up far too many memories… waking up hung over with no clue where she was or how she’d gotten there. The condemning look on Father Thomas’s face as he woke her up and handed her a robe, with Faust still sleeping next to her as if nothing were wrong… Nearly everyone in her life turning a blind eye or a cold shoulder, chalking it up to more angst and stunts on her part, calling it buyer’s remorse.

Moira picked up one of her textbooks from the desktop and threw it across the room. She didn’t care what anyone said, a guy twice your age getting you deliberately drunk off your ass when he KNEW you were already emotionally vulnerable and upset… there was something vastly wrong with it… And just because magic wasn’t used and even if she didn’t say no…it was still something that needed to be addressed….

No one had wanted to do anything about Faust...it took him stalking her and rending the veil in a spectacular fashion before anyone would do anything.

She really really hoped they would do something about Jimmy…there was no doubt in her mind that he was just as skeezy, if not actually guilty.

But she reigned herself in and didn’t spit any of the vitriol she was feeling all over the lists. People who spouted off on the lists sounded like idiots and even though she was disappointed in Havoc and mad as hell, she still wasn’t going to get into a fight with him in front of the entire rest of the Free Council.

All she did was shoot off a quick message offering her help and support to the poor girl in question. She knew from experience how much someone in that situation needed someone who could understand.