Thank God or Shiva or the universe or whatever the ******** had gotten her here. She had a drink in her hand and she was at the biggest party of the year 2000 among some of her closest friends and that was all that really mattered, wasn't it?

It was almost hard to believe that they'd actually pulled through. Things had certainly not gone smoothly, and there were so many close calls, but the artifacts were found and destroyed and all of the deaf, blind, shadowless, normal people celebrated their New Year in relative peace.

They were greeted with champage and hugs and tears and celebration, an entire day of glorious victory. The real party came later, of course, when lights went out and the music clicked on through the waist-high speakers, hunters still abuzz with adrenaline all filing in to dance and drink the worries from the night before into nonexistence. C had waited until the perfect moment, tiptoeing that fine line between "fashionably" and "too" late. Her hair was piled messily up into a heavy bun, her curves squeezed into a dress the color of blood. She wasn't sure where the thing had come from. She didn't even really like that color of red. But she was here, and she was damn fine, and nobody had time for questions when the pounding music would eat your words and hold them forever.

Thump, thump, thump.

The music was just so godly, the electronic trills and fluctuations wrapping around each of them and leading them to one another, putting them in their proper places to ensure that this all played out perfectly. This was the biggest party of their lives. Everything had to be just right.

She navigated through the crowd with a carefully orchestrated series of dance moves and a** grabs and woooo yeahs until she was in a position to scan for the people she really cared to see. She'd already spilled half of her drink on herself, and she downed the rest in a single tip of the glass, setting it aside as she moved towards the far side of the room. The girl she was approaching, when they were in close proximity of each other, looked like she could have been her alter ego. Fellow trainees had gone so far as to make bets that they were the same person in different wigs and wardrobes. Some said once that she was C's evil twin, and she'd laughed that she didn't know about that.

There was only a brief pause on the way. Something was out of place.

"Does anybody hear a record? Is someone seriously playing a goddamn record?"

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

Selena.

Everyone always said "you can't pick your family, but you can pick your friends," or something like that. All in all, Stacy had been okay with that. Her identical twin was her best friend anyway, evidence by her insistence that there was nobody else in this world who could understand her the way that Selena could. They spent all of their time together until one day they...didn't. It was as simple as that.

It hurt the worst in the first few months that Selena fought to distance herself. Her distaste of sharing meant that there was nothing left to share, in spite of their rampant similarities. At the very least, they shared the shadows, the nightmares that tortured them into waking, the figures that followed them home and laughed at the idea that blanket forts and hugs could offer protection. She had always counted on her sister to comfort her, and always offered the same, clutching her fleece pajamas and rocking the distressed girl in her lap like their mama used to do.

Thump, thump, thump.

She had always counted on her sister for the more "normal people" problems, too. The night she'd spent crying in the bathroom would have turned into weeks of crying in the bathroom had Selena not stomped in with a biology book to prove to her that girls didn't get pregnant from tongue-kissing. The time she'd come in just before sunrise after her first night of drinking, when Selena had forcefed her toast and offered her water and held her hair back when all of it just came back up anyway. The day she had to give her parents her first "F"-stamped report card, when Selena had held her hand, in spite of her own disapproval.

Maybe she'd just grown too dependent. Maybe that was what made it so hard when Selena wasn't there. Maybe that was why the stashed-away letter from the runaway was read too many times and faded by tears.

She didn't get out of bed for a week. Her parents tried to get her to go to school for the first two days, but their grief forced them to give up in the long run. The calls from the police were fewer and far between. C never told them that she knew her sister was never coming back, because she wanted to believe that she would be. There was no way that she would abandon her, right?

When she finally showered and dressed herself and packed her books and left the house, she existed with a fire that was stronger than ever before. She'd spent most her life mirroring her sister - now she would just try to be both of them.

Living in such a way seemed to make the shadows believe that she was two people as well. They reached a level that was almost unbearable, and they were impossible to ignore, watching them on the dimly-lit streets in the early morning hours as she made her walks of shame. She was almost to her breaking point when she found a woman following her instead of the typical tendril-laced dark figures. Though that might have been more frightening than shadows to some, Velda was just about the least intimidating thing she'd ever seen.

And the things that she promised to fix were next to irresistible.

Thump, thump, thump.

Her parents were childless by the next morning.

Seeing Selena on the island should have probably brought forth a tearful reunion, but it carried a painful realization instead. She had no idea how to act around her twin anymore. They weren't twins anymore. The conversations they had were worse than what she had with strangers, and C was sure that she'd been in some strange brain-replacing experiment, because there was no way that this was the well of endless knowledge and comfort with whom she'd shared a womb.

Which might have been why the role of "twin" had been filled by someone who understood her the way that Selena once had.

He was chatting up a hunter she didn't know, and she caught his eye to give him a grin and a toast with her empty glass. Something like that was probably bad luck, but coming down from such an excellent success, a little bit of bad wouldn't ruin anything.

You make me happy when skies are grey.

Mark.

It was something like destiny that put them together for a mission. It was probably their leader that had, but destiny sounded much better than that. There had been what seemed like a neverending cascade of partners and groups who disapproved of her techniques or despised her nightly habits or took too much pleasure in correcting her when she slipped up.

Thump, thump, thump.


But Mark fixed that - and her lack-of-a-twin problem - in one fell swoop. That first mission together had been one of the most natural things she'd felt in a while, and their conversations were like chats between decade-old friends. It wasn't long before she started finding him during lunch breaks and spending her days off just wasting time with him, carting him off to parties where they'd leave with two separate strangers and reunite the next morning.

The missions that they spent apart grew more and more difficult, and though C never took the time to make the connection, the feeling was similar to the knots that would form when Selena spent her high school days away from her. They both spent the interim between their times together fabricating incredible adventures, new identities, and false memories, which were then peddled around to their fellow hunters so frequently that most of them probably had no idea what their actual names and lives were like.

C had grown up in leaps and bounds since the nights when she sought out Selena to cling to, but Mark knew exactly how to make everything better during the times when she just couldn't take it anymore.

It was a lot like having a twin.

They shared everything, including the occasional (not frequent enough, as far as C was concerned) kiss from the second-best gift this island had given her.

You'll never know, dear, how much I love you.

Em.

She'd met her at a party that was substantially less incredible than this one. The beer was cheap and the men were mediocre at best, but a party was a party, and there was no better way to waste her night. The woman was drawing much more attention than she was, which might have made her jealous, had she not been watching on in silent awe. Her hand moved in a gentle circle, swilling the beer inside the bottle into a noisy little whirlpool. She waited, her eyes following each fluid movement of her arms, each brush of her fingers against a man's stubbled jaw, until she finally came to lean over the bar and collect another free drink.

Em said something - C thought she remembered it as something about staring - but instead of responding like any person sensibly would, she snatched her up and kissed her. Just to see what the all the excitement was about.

She got more than she bargained for.

Thump, thump, thump.

The feeling when they connected was more electric than a needy man's first heavy breath on her neck. It was more comfortable than the well-worn little rabbit she kept stashed under her pillow. And it was more overwhelming than the first time she had seen the shadows laugh at her.

C made a point to seek her out whenever possible, but Em was there even when she wasn't looking, passing by with a quick wink and a blown kiss. They were never particularly close, and fortune was never on their side. Their missions were typically scheduled during separate times or in separate places, and the outposts might as well have been on opposite sides of the world. Fate didn't present her with a simple solution to drawing them together; she'd probably used up all of her luck in finding Mark. Which was a pity, because no matter how hard she tried, no kisses in varying levels of inebriation gave her the same sparks that the kisses from her. No other smiles made her feel so dizzy.

It grew less and less surprising that she felt this way. The looks Em got as she walked the halls (including laden glances from Selena, which both intrigued her and tore at her heart) proved that if nothing else, the woman was well-loved. She gave her companions meaning and contentment as effortlessly as a deity might. She was truly something else.

And she was just as hot now as the first time she'd seen her.

Laughing an energetic, ecstatic laugh, C closed her eyes and threw her arms upward, dancing with the beat of the pulsing crowd. This was perfect. She could dance forever. She could dance until the music stopped - and then so would she.

Thump, thump, thump.

Thump.

Please, don't take my sunshine away.

A tinny '40s melody rang out from an outdated alarm radio, its speaker rattling from years of bass-abuse. Though the song was meant to wake a tired Life hunter, she didn't stir, buried safely under a heavy down comforter and soft, tangled sheets. Dust motes danced to the music, twirling through beams of light as they put on their show.

The sound of bare feet on hardwood grew louder, stopping only after it had moved all the way around the bed to rest just inches away from a freckle-dusted nose.

"Wake up, baby. Today is too big to sleep the day away!" Em's slender fingers touched C's face, and the sleepy woman's fingers were tangled in them before she'd even begun to crack open her eyelids. She greeted the morning with a smile - and how could she not, when she had perfection-in-sexy-underwear to help her start the day?

It only took a moment after she slid out of bed, arm lazily draped across Em's hips, for her to see the others having breakfast in the sunroom. The light was impossibly bright through the massive windows, washing out the two forms that waited for her there.

Mark sat on the edge of the table, encased by rays of sunlight, peeling an orange so it could be fashioned into a coiled snake. There were two peels already next to him, hollowed of their fruit and put back together to look like they had never been touched. Selena turned to her with a tiny smile, a luminous halo dancing around her upper body, contrasting ferociously against her skull-printed black tank top. A cereal spoon hung from her mouth, and it appeared as if C had caught her in the middle of pouring an identical bowlful for her twin.

Breaking away from Em (after a pat on her a**, naturally), she stepped over the threshold and into the radiant warmth. It was the morning of January 1st in a new millennium. She was sharing breakfast with everyone who mattered. The sun was shining.

And there was no place that she would rather be.