Not forgotten.

Somewhere in my head, the image I have of the strong, capable, confident Katie is really, really jarred. I've never seen her break down so catacylsmically before, especially not into the sort of reflexive mental "I'm bad" processes that just plain aren't rational. This, then, would be the legacy of her past.

I am not the only thing she has. But I meant it when I said she was one of the best things to ever happen to me. She is. She *is*, dammit, and for that reason alone I couldn't ever let her go off and do something like she wanted to. God, the bitch of it all is that Seamus is really the one who's the most hell-bent on *hurting* the slavers. It's gonna be like walking a minefield, I swear.

I need to not spend a night alone with myself and my thoughts.

I've been reluctant to talk or write about this for fear of jinxing it and inviting disaster... but people are starting to learn now, so it's official. What the hell, here goes: I asked Diast to marry me, and she said yes.

Now, I knew for a fact she would say yes, she's told me as much previously, but quite frankly asking her scared the holy hell out of me. I almost didn't do it just because it scared me so damn much! But I did, and I didn't screw it up, and she accepted. She accepted!

Man. I know it's not gonna be easy, with her duties and my schooling and all the crap we have to wade through to just be together, but it's gonna be *good*. I couldn't be happier about this.

I've been kind of scared to actually, purposefully bring it up, though. I want to ask Stephen to be my best man, of course, but things have been so weird for him lately, and he's been so generally angry and upset, that I don't think he'd welcome it. He hasn't officially asked me to be his, of course, but I think it's sort of assumed. Maybe that's a dangerous assumption. But he's in no hurry, Cat's still got a couple years of school left before she graduates. Anyway, I'm worried about him; I think I need to drag him out and get him to have some fun. Cat too. I should plan for that.

Still, I'm so excited!

Diast says she believe in balance. It does seem to exist, but I wish it didn't exist by huge extremes.

So last night, some punk I've never even seen before, evidently someone Irina's been shacking up with to judge by their conversation earlier, comes up to me and tries to pick a fight with me. Says we have a mutual friend, and that I'm giving that pain grief, and I need to stop it.

So Seamus, Katie, and I are all looking at each other like, "the hell"? Because none of us have any idea where this is coming from. Turns out the punk is claiming I was somehow being criminally unfair to Irina, and he was going to mess me up if I didn't stop. Not that I WAS doing anything in the first place. Or that he could mess me up. But whatever.

Things got ugly. Katie threw him out, then threw me out after I fired back at Irina that she cheated on Jack and had leapt into the pants of available males at first opportunity once he was dead. (Which is true, he's been gone what, a couple of weeks, and she's already solidly hooked up with Dimitri and planning to have a hot tub orgy with two other guys and him, in public. Spades are spades.) So fine, I go outside... Irina accuses me of hating her for her never sleeping with me (Hee hee!) and focusing my energies on hating her. Dimitri starts babbling, I get mad at her because she DID cheat on Jack...

Katie drops one hell of a bombshell on me...

I go home, fully prepared to saddle up my chocobo and ride out to live the life of a hermit...

Diast declares that she will gladly have a future with me.

The sound you hear is my mental gear shifting from R-3 to 6 without the clutch.

We're moving in to the mansion very soon. It's going to be great.

I had thought that, with the return of Seamus, Cat, and Don, that perhaps the war was winding down. That our victory was somehow imminent, with them feeling free to let all go. That shows what I know. They simply seem to be taking a different tack.

In other words, they activated me.

To be honest, I'd half-forgotten I'd even gotten myself into this mess. Certainly the message hand-delivered to me by the mailman was a shock. "Report," it said, with a time and a place and an official seal that left no questions as to the nature of the report.

"Well," I thought, "THIS is cutting it close to school start."

Heh, that was the last time I thought that for a while.

They needed me to infiltrate a concentration camp. A freakin' Auschwitz for the supernatural. Bound down with heavens know what sort of technology, magic, or what have you to keep them contained. With mixed-breeds, mages, mythic beasts...all chomping at the bit to get free, and fighting amongst themselves in the meantime.

"Hell of a vacation," I rememeber saying. "Purely out of curiosity, why me?"
"You're of werewolf descent, so you qualify to be in the camp. Also, you won't break under the torture."

Can you imagine how thrilled I was?

Getting in was easy enough. I just got myself into a mess in their lines, deliberately bungled a seeming stealth mission. I got captured, slapped in irons, and shipped out. And I have to say, right here, it could have been a lot worse from the start. I didn't have any access to my magick, of course, since Cross was at home, but neither did anyone else. And many of them had claws, or teeth, or just a lot of anger, but I can take care of myself. I had to.

The camp was a cold, miserable place off the shore of an ocean. It had a seawall and an ocean pen for aquatic or semi-aquatic creatures. I guess some Artic current slapped up against that place, because it had nothing to say for it except cool-to-miserable temperatures. Gummy buildings hastily slapped together from concrete and cement, save for the guards' quarters which were of course quite nicer; pavilion tents mechanically heated. We were put to labor, all of us, with not enough food nor sleep...

Do I really need to go on? When I re-read this, I won't want to rememebr the tableau of suffering I saw there. I experienced it to a lesser degree, because I am myself, of course, but to watch it was simply, truly, utterly painful.

I don't want to remember it, but I will. And there was torture, to which I made the best effort to act like I was being hurt. The Chorus was better. But other people... didn't have the advantages I did, of course. Did suffer, did sometimes break.

In the end, I killed. Again. I killed the guards, a few anyway, because they thought they had broken me, and they didn't have a defense against Do. We escaped... with casualties, with injuries, with any amount of degredation to our spirits... but our spirits are no less real or valid than theirs, no matter what they might say to the contrary.

I hate killing. I hate it so much. Even that perverse, insane necromancer who killed Sashra... even his death haunts me even now. I'm not a killer. I didn't learn all this just to cut lives short. I'm a fighter. I will fight for what I believe is right. I will fight to the death to defend that which I believe in...

But how many deaths will I accept on my karma? For Sashra's memory, for Seamus's family, for the principle of thing... Is that all I'm good for?

I wonder what I bring to this world, to the people I know, that could ever balance that out.

Jack is dead; Cat is magically psychotic; Diast is summoned for a trial for gods know what reason. It's all falling apart again... slowly but surely, all falling apart.

I hope I have the strength to hold myself together one more time.

Nothing ever seems to get easier around here.

Cass disappeared on me. I don't remember if I mentioned that, I'm too lazy to flip a page back. I tracked her down. I was afraid she'd lost it, she'd slipped a little, she'd gone back to living on the street because she'd forgotten she had people out there who care about her, who don't want her to be sad or lonely. It turns out she's just been staying with that guy she's been dating.

So she didn't forget those people are out there, she just... stopped caring about it.

I don't know what to make of that. I really don't. I thought we were friends, but... all she's said to me in two weeks is that she's alive, when she popped in for a brief visit at the Rose on my shift. Other than that, nothing. Has she just decided to abandon me, her things, her animals? Her cat's still here, for heaven's sake! Her chocobo is still here! Has she just abandoned them?

Is this my fault somehow? I can't see how it isn't. This is a pattern all too familiar.

Katie is doing better, Seamus says. I've tried to stop by and visit her a couple times, but I always seem to manage to pick a bad time. She's up and around and not being different, I heard, and that's everything I could hope for. I just wish I could see her.

I said I had passed on my right to vengeance to Sal. But Seamus told me that Sal was hurt, and couldn't do anything, and so it fell to me once again. I'd taken some hair from the alley where her attackers had huddled, the day of the drowning. I traced them with Correspondance, read the names of their superiors with Mind. And I killed them. I killed them.

I traveled ten steps up that chain, leaving death in my wake, till I was stymied at the very last and could go no higher. I didn't save Connor, I didn't slaughter Vin. All I managed was to leave a trail of meaningless death and destruction in my wake. I carved a huge chunk out of his organization, but that doesn't even matter, according to Seamus.

And then a couple of days later Sal was up and around and doing fine. I did it all for nothing. NOTHING. Everything I did that day was meaningless except to weigh against me in the Record. I am nothing more than a murderer and a thug, and regardless of what I strive to be, I can never again claim to truly be anything more. I imagine this might explain why Nhairis has been distant lately.

Knight Comics has disaster written all over it. My artist is complaining about the basic setup. At least I managed to talk to her about it before it got too bad. I don't know what she expects me to do when I KNOW what she did to betray Jack, but... it isn't realistic for her to expect me to behave towards her professionally as I do personally. I just hope that that's the end of it. I may have to kill Joe if he keeps up this crap about me raping her mind to force her to sign the contract. I don't even *have* enough Mind to do that.

I told Seamus and Cat about my plan. I'm going to do it. Soon, Cass or no, even though I need her for it. If she doesn't want to... I won't be surprised. But I'll do it anyway, even if it kills me. What does it really matter if it does?

Cass is just another in a list. Kym and Ronnie just disappeared out of my life. Stephen is too busy, Cat... is distant, and I don't know why, but I can't think of the last time we hung out together. She's hurt now, sure, but even before that. Katie I get to actually see so rarely. Irina treats love and important things too casually for me to trust her. Jack I never see, with the exception of the other day when he needed me to kick ass on his behalf. Cadence dumped me for another guy. Vee seems to dislike me, I don't even know why. Sashra died, of course. Diast is not around nearly as often as I could hope. My own twin sister hates me.

Seamus and Cat think I'm an idiot, for planning to save my parents. Seamus pointed out that it wouldn't change anything, I'd still have grown up without parents. Duh. That isn't the point. The point is to give them the life they never should have lost. The point is to be of the universe, and in doing so, move with it and guide it all at once. The point is to do it because it's the right thing to do.

And maybe, just maybe, I can bring someone into my life who will stay there. Just once.

On Monday I got a call, a frantic call, from Cass. She'd had a vision, a vision of Katie dead. I begged her to go over to her house quickly (I don't know why she did it, I haven't even SEEN her since then), and I even shut the Rose down early so I could get there and stop whatever it was that could bring this vision to pass.

But my travel was intercepted. Midway through the journey, which is difficult to describe since it crosses a few steps in the space of a heartbeat, something stopped me. It appeared to be a knight, wielding a blazing sword of light. It offered no hints as to its presence or its motivations. It simply attacked.

The fight was hell, but I eventually evaded it long enough to reach the Wylies' house. Too late, of course. Seamus was giving Katie CPR on the bathroom floor. Someone had bound her and tossed her into the full bathtub. Unable to struggle, she'd drowned. By some miracle, we got her breathing again, but she stopped again by the time the ambulance came to pick her up. Seamus said it was minions of Vin, his former owner, who were making this a message. I have no doubt he's correct, given that she was marked with a V.

They took her to the hospital. Sal was there, I haven't the slightest clue how, except for the fact that he's Sal. I... He'll be taking revenge on Vin and his minions, not me. I couldn't even do that much right. And the next day, the doctors took her off the ventilator.

I could not stop them. I could not stop them, no matter how much I tried to bribe or threaten, I couldn't do it. There was absolutely nothing I could do. I failed to heal her, as well. I couldn't do anything for my poor sister, my poor dying sister. I couldn't do anything.

Now I'm just waiting, for something that's already happened. I have messages on my phone, I know what they say without even having to listen to them. I'm afraid to. Maybe if I don't listen to them, I can pretend that I don't already know what they have to say.

She's dead.

My sister is dead.

I could write a book, I swear.

Nothing ever seems to come easy. Things had been going very well with Katie living down the hall. We hung out, I watched Liam sometimes to give her a break, I learned a little bit more about cooking. What *she* got out of it I don't know, but I hope it was something. Then bam, back comes Seamus. Not only do those to reuinte with a fight, big surprise there, but Seamus pops up later about how he doesn't want Katie to live away from home. Doesn't want her to stop thinking of it as home, as if she ever could.

Back up a moment. Cass basically moved out on Irina, and I can't blame her. Nonentity is too charitable a word to describe how I regard her and the others involved... Anyway, Cass was intent on leaving, so since she and I get along well, I said she could move into my apartment. She hasn't lost the need for someone to be around to keep her from brooding, to drag her out and keep her from slipping back into old habits that are no longer useful in Rhydin. I wasn't about to let her just go rot, so there you go.

Now Seamus offers to let me sleep in the spare bedroom at their house. Now A, I didn't even know if he'd begun to discuss this with Katie, or if she wanted me there, and B, fuck! How can I watch over both Cass and Katie at the same time? Cass decided to solve the problem herself, and was on the hair's edge of moving out and abandoning everything. She and I had words about the matter. Strong ones.

In the meantime, things get shockingly weirder. Gin-Hu, a Jedi -- I'm sure I've mentioned her before -- anyway, we've been walking once or twice, walking and talking, and generally making common cause. She pops up and asks me, in a distracted way, if I view her as a woman. Confused, I finally manage to get it out of her that she has some actual interest in me. Why is it even good news is bad? I don't know if I'm ready for this. They say it takes a year to get over someone.. And when I look inside myself, I can feel how different I've become, in these short months. Scarred, is the best way to put it. I've had scars carved across myself, and when I check to see if I can move in old ways... everything's different.

I really don't know how to put it. But of course I didn't even get the luxury to think about it. No sooner did Cass tell me she was moving out than Gin-Hu pops up and tells me she's being reassigned, nice to know you, never gonna see you again. And an easy, if cowardly and painful, way out that would have been, had it evidently not been the last snowflake needed to spark massive internal rebellion against the ways of the Jedi Order. She suddenly decided to abandon her own, and abscond to the one Mer's Jedi friend belongs to, which as I understand it is more advanced in the reforms made after the re-founding of the Order. I wished her well, and said goodbye.

Things just hung for a few days. Cass apologized, and didn't leave, though she has a new friend now and I haven't much had a chance to speak to her. Gin-Hu reappeared abruptly the other day, dramatically changed in appearence and calling herself Diast now, in keeping with her new identity. It's been four years for her -- stupid Rhydin time warps, though I appreciate not having to wait that long. It seems to have helped her a great deal, the move, she definitely seems happier than she did. Maybe she just feels freer to *be* happy.

Cass shipped out today. Seamus is back, so I can only hope she won't stay away long. All I can do at this point is keep my fingers crossed for everything to work out okay.

Goodbye, little neice, who never had a chance. Goodbye, Maddy. I never met you, but I loved you still, and I always will.

Sat on it too long, waited too long, now I have too much to write. I'm an idiot.

Let's see. I had to rescue Katie from a lynch mob the other night. Seems that her group, the one Seamus made her quit, got all but wiped out in a raid. I remember Seamus getting shot.. I remember the kitchen of the Rose exploding... I don't really remember much more after that. It's like I was there, but dreaming... I guess I was under a lot of stress and my memories kind of got strange there. Earlier that day, I found out Val's father had died, and when I tried to help her -- she wanted revenge, of course -- Sal and, surprisingly, Cass, *laid* into me for trying to take her vengeance away. It was bullshit, but then again, it's okay to judge my actions and intentions quickly and without logical grounds, isn't it?

Anyway, back on track... Katie had gone off to help her friends, and she sent me some text messages asking for help. I finally caught up with her just in time to save her from a lynch mob. My only regret is that they didn't suffer more.

Things like that... Katie told me she had her eye on me, once, way back when we first met. That... I can't even begin to imagine that without hearing circuitry shorting out in my brain. I can't even remember a time when she and Seamus weren't together -- they tell me there was a nice span there, but maybe I just intuited that they were a good couple from the start, and mentally registered them as one when I saw them. And... more and more, I become convinced that she's not really happy with Seamus. They have their good times, yes, they love each other, they have a family, but.. I think Seamus constrains her. Not on purpose. He just has a different set of goals and priorities... and, well, conditions. It holds her back. I don't know what to suggest to her on that -- hell, I know I shouldn't say a thing till she brings it up, and she just might never. All I'm good for is teaching martial arts and throwing immense quantities of cash around. I don't even know what she really wants out of life.

I'd like to help her find it, though. I know what *I* want. I want to learn and keep learning, I want to be successful as a businessman and as a person. And I want to open a dojo someday. *That* will be my greatest achievement. Teaching. Not just martial arts, but *life*. Something I'm not good at myself, but I'm not bad with the philosophy behind it.

Rambling. Cass has a boyfriend now, go figure. I met him at Easter dinner. He seems like a punk, but he's a tolerable one -- at least I can see why Cass likes him. He reminds me of her just a little. I wish Cass were happier, but then, who don't I wish that for? That's a general statement, not a specific one. Cass just needs to be happier. So does Irina. So do I. At least they aren't quite so alone, more power to them.

I miss having someone who could bring light to my soul. Not that my soul is dark with evil, but it's a dark and lonely place. Sashra brought light to it. Even Cadence did, back when. Wow, there's a name that has almost no meaning to it any more. Time *does* heal wounds. Or maybe the other wounds just open up on top of the first ones, thus rendering the original wounds meaningless. I need a girl whose light brings my soul courage, hope, and grace... but I think Rhydin is out of girls like that.

Cat still wants a chocobo. I don't think she understands that the damn birds are far smarter than any given horse or cat or whatnot. It can and will cause havoc, because Cat is indulgent and loving and has no space in her kind heart for discipline. Frustrating as that girl is, I love her. In many ways t's good to have a female friend to whom I'm not attracted. Not to say that she's unattractive, I just have no desire to date her or anything. I'm glad beyond words that she and Stephen found each other. They're so good for each other. Maybe they'd get into less conflict if they were more alike, but they both give each other something the other needs.

I want to have a party. I'll invite everyone. We'll come to my apartment, and just sit around, and be friends. That would be nice.

I've finally slipped a little ways out of anger and shielding to just hurt, and it's almost a palpable relief, not just myself but for others.

Cass told me that in her world, which has fallen to Descent, I'm a Nephandus -- one of the strongest and most powerful, a veritable general of darkness. Lovely, more good news. Still, she tracked me down and tried to help, despite having no clue how. She's lost her humanity, or buried it. I suppose I have to help her get it back... if I don't, who wil?

Katie asked me to open up to her. It nearly led to an ugly scene in the kitchen of the Rose, because I can't just drop my shields any more, not when so many people are waiting to take a piece out of me the second I show a sign of weakness. She let me pass at the moment, though, and later I went over to her house. We sat... we talked... we watched X-Men. It helped. It helps me get by, anyway.

Cat and I talked. I apologized. I hope she and Stephen have made up by this point. I hate to see those two fight. Living vicariously through my friends and family is all I have left to me. It's kind of sad to think that I'll always be the odd man out, and that I'll never be able to go out with someone again without being a third wheel, or knowing they have someone waiting for them. And that someday I'll be standing at my best friend's side while Cat is walking down the aisle, but I'll never have him at mine.

Seamus is out of the hospital, and I can't help but feel that it's best for me to tread very lightly around him. I haven't the slightest idea why I feel this way, but my intuition is generally sound when it shows up, and the last thing anyone needs is another fight between me and him. I have a feeling that something very bad is going to happen, soon. It will be my fault when it does. I'd like to avoid that happening, if I can.

Maybe I can't. I certainly haven't been able to up until now.