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The cookies slowly expanded in the oven, filling the kitchen with the scent of cinnamon, vanilla, and chocolate. If Fallon knew Aggie like she thought she did, then the girl would be pleased with these. All the smiling Fallon had been doing in the last couple of days had started to make the muscles in her face a little sore. She spent less time in the hospital than others, but when she woke up, she still felt miserable, like there was a massive weight pushing down on her chest. The first smile she managed was like breaking through a glacier with a toothpick. How long had she been so sad for? A part of Fallon wanted to ask Imogen, but she was too afraid to ruin the pleasantness of the conversation.

Fallon leaned in and listened intently to Imogen's recollection of her own senshi and youma encounter. She wasn't alone? The relief was so intense Fallon nearly fell off her stool. "I'm glad I'm not crazy," she said, raising her eyebrows and laughing. "Sailor Virgo tackled the youma -- that's what she called it -- and then we ran. She threw me into her arms and jumped up to the roof. It was incredible." Fallon relived the moment when a blur of glowing pale green descended from the sky to save her. If angels were real, the teenager was inclined to believe that this Virgo had to be among their number.

How funny, too, that Fallon was also doing her best not to develop a crush on her own savior. For senshi, fighting off youma was nothing, but to Fallon, that experience had been a brush with death and Virgo was the only reason she was still there. That kind of gratitude could evoke lots of feelings.

Plus, she was super cute.

Imogen and Fallon had much more in common than either girl might think. "Virgo and Gemini. Like the Zodiacs. How strange. So, there are only twelve then? Twelve senshi in total running through Destiny City is what caused all this media frenzy," she said, laughing. Sailor Virgo was Fallon's first senshi encounter, but if there was a Gemini too, then Fallon figured there must be twelve of them. She had no reason to suspect that there might be more.

Fallon sipped at her coffee as Imogen spoke, nose filling with the scent of cookies rising in the oven. If the teenage chef had not eaten earlier, she might have been distracted by it. The pleasant scent was not enough to keep a look of shock from crossing Fallon's features when Imogen recounted her own youma run-ins. Plural. "You've met more than one?" she asked, a tiny note of jealousy seeping into the words. These super-powerful beings fascinated Fallon. She was hungry for more information, to understand how and why they got the power that they did. Was it so easy to obtain?

In her mind, a parade of glowing girls just like Virgo ran around, each one more powerful than the next. Girls. Just girls like her. And they were able to possess the kind of power that a girl like Fallon could only dream about... It didn't seem fair, but Fallon masked the feeling, hiding her mouth behind her coffee mug as she drank. "I haven't met anyone from the Negaverse, just Sailor Virgo. How do you know all this?" Apparently, Fallon needed to get out more, and Imogen needed to get better at avoiding trouble.

Ridiculous as it was (or perhaps a death wish), Fallon really wanted to see more of these fighters in action -- Senshi and Negaverse alike. The power that they wielded gave them control. It allowed them to dictate how events went. The very thought made Fallon's shoulders tense.

Fallon hadn't really thought about the two separate monsters. Was one senshi enough to fight off two youma? She thought back to the night she spent fleeing from the cat-like blob with Virgo. Well, they did flee. Sure, the blue-haired girl tackled the thing first, but it was definitely not out for the count when she did it. Had it died at all? Could it die? At some point, it gave up on the chase, but Fallon had no idea what that meant.

She watched as Imogen moved to get more coffee. The auburn-haired girl was a much better coffee drinker than her. Fallon was barely half done with the cup, and she was sipping gingerly on it. "I haven't looked online yet. I did hear a rumor about a YouTube account that keeps posting videos of senshi fighting," she said, tapping at her mug. Fallon had a computer and used it, but she was not an avid internet-surfer. She could not spend hours on end staring at a dull screen. She'd rather be cooking, or perhaps cross-stitching.

Fallon smiled. "I know exactly what you mean," she said, words clipping right behind Imogen's. The internet was an amazing resource, but Fallon was of the mind that too many people spent too much time on it. For the brunette teenager, the world had more to offer than the computer screen. What she failed to consider, of course, was how much more open the world could be to someone with money. If Fallon wanted to see the pyramids, she could ask her parents for a plane ticket. Others who wanted to explore in that way had to often settle for viewing the world through the lens of the computer screen.

Watching Imogen go check on the cookies, Fallon laughed a little. She knew they had two minutes left. One -- she was very precise with her baking (you really had to be). And two -- she had a bloodhound nose and had baked enough cookies to smell their ETA from across the room. The auburn-haired girl returned and Fallon smiled again, sipping at her coffee. She even maintained that smile when Imogen brought up Barren Pines. Talking to someone who was actually there too was much different than answering questions for the curious masses, even though most of Destiny City seemed to have forgotten about the school altogether.

"I remember a lot in the beginning. I remember checking in. I remember organizing my room for the first time. I remember the first month of cooking dinners and meeting people. Then... things start to fade. I lose pieces. I have memories of things that I'm not sure even happened." Fallon shook her head, but her manicured hair did not fall out of place. "There is this one," she began, her voice heavy with the act of admittance, "where I'm in our old kitchen, and the sink is just filling with blood. I mean, filling with it. It is hard to know whether that was just a nightmare I had, or if it was real. But... I don't think it could be real. Unless something with the organ ring involved drugging us? I don't know. The doctors tell me one thing. The television tells me another. And my head says something else." Fallon vaguely remembered the debriefing she received from the doctor. A group of students had been drugged and manipulated all so that their organs could be matured and then harvested. In theory, her teachers could have been drugging them... maybe?

But then why didn't anyone else remember Barren Pines? Why did it seem like some secret of the city?

Part of Fallon didn't even want to think about it because thinking about it would only remind her of how very little she knew and how powerless she was in the situation. Still, she pressed on. If she was going to talk to someone about it, it might as well be Imogen. "I tell people if they ask specific things, I guess, but mostly I avoid the question. I say I went to school in France before, which is true. I went there before Barren Pines," she explained with a shrug. "Telling people you are new is probably a good thing. You can avoid the questions. Only those of us who went through it, or knew someone who did... only we understand." Her lids dropped over her eyes. Fallon took a deep breath and a sip of coffee.

"Life is funny. Funny, and twisted," she mused. Her tone did not echo the words she spoke. Fallon was perplexed by Barren Pines, troubled. She wanted it to disappear, but at the same time, she wanted to dissect it open. If she could find a big knife and cut open the meat of that situation, she would, no matter how painful it might be. After a few moments of quiet contemplation, Fallon glanced back up to Imogen and asked, "What about you? Do you have any memories that stick out?"

Fallon set her mug down on the counter with a soft click. "I was sad too. I remember the feeling. Not just sadness, but... anxiety. A lot of anxiety," she said, suppressing a shudder. "I'm not... myself when I'm anxious." When Fallon was anxious, she lost much of the control that she prided herself upon. Things that she could let slide otherwise brought out waves of rage. For a time, her mother had wanted to medicate Fallon, but no combination of drugs ever worked out. It was just better to let Fallon handle it herself, or at least it had worked out so far.

Sue Gottschalk? Fallon didn't know much about him. He had a reputation for being a bit anti-social and unfriendly. It was no secret he preferred the company of cats to most people. In all her time at Barren Pines, Fallon never interacted with the boy. "I didn't know him personally," she said. It gave her time to process the second part of what Imogen had said. "A fire?" she said, the word escaping her lips in a whisper. "I don't remember it. How could Sue remember it if you and I can't?" Though she didn't say it, the thought of fire made Fallon's skin prickle. The girl worked in a kitchen. Fire was a job hazard. So what was this feeling? Fallon wasn't one to give conspiracy theories, and this line of thought had a creeping darkness inching up her spine. "Why would someone burn down a school and build an old, run-down insane asylum in its place? That doesn't make sense." Fallon shook her head. Imogen might be willing to believe it, but Fallon was not. If she allowed herself to believe it, then she would have to confront other lingering feelings and memories that could lead her somewhere dark and unpleasant.

As if on cue, Fallon shot from her stool. "Cookies are done," she said. Just like that, she was across the room from Imogen and pulling hot cookie sheets out of the warm oven.

Fallon wanted the Barren Pines talk to end, but a part of her knew it never would. It was a blight on her past that could never be eradicated. As long as she lived, people would want to know. Each time she looked at Imogen, she would picture that second floor kitchen and the mornings they spent around the table -- all of them. Trouble was, some of those faces were in the ground now. Or just vanished.

Shaking the thought away, Fallon slipped her hands into gloves to handle the hot trays, placing them on top of the burners. They needed a few minutes to cool, but she got out the Tupperware container anyway. There was a lot she could say about the new asylum, but instead she focused on the talk of Sue and why Imogen suddenly gave a damn about the guy. "Andeon didn't like Sue," she said, as if that might explain anything. Fallon leaned against the counter. Imogen would trust this guy with her life? Bizarre. Fallon didn't want to be rude so she didn't comment on it. Aggie, on the other hand, she was happy to chat about. "I always liked Aggie, even if she didn't let me reserve the kitchen for certain private hours." Fallon had asked a dozen times, but Aggie couldn't budge on the issue. Barren Pines wouldn't allow it. At first, she had been annoyed, but Aggie was so harmless that it was difficult to stay mad for long.

A few moments passed, and Fallon found her mind wandering back to that asylum. Did it have the same quiet hallways of Barren Pines? If Fallon walked into a hospital room there, would she get a sense of her own bedroom? Was the school really just an asylum all along? She took a deep breath, hands worrying over the plush oven mitts. "Have you ever thought about going back?" she said, voice quiet. "Have you ever thought there might be something there? Something that might help us understand?" It was a stretch, but part of Fallon wanted to sneak into the asylum, to try maybe. It seemed like the only place that might have anything to offer her about her past, other than the words of her fellow survivors.

Fallon crossed back to Imogen side, sitting back on her stool and leaning in close. This wasn't the kind of conversation that you had from across the room. In a show of caring, the young teen lifted one hand and brushed some hair away from Imogen's face. It wasn't like the touch-chin-brush-hair-lean-in-for-kiss move that she liked to use; it was more delicate. When she was younger and would awake in the middle of the night terrified that someone had reorganized her closet or poured dirt all over her carpet or removed the shingles from the roof, Fallon would cry out until her mother appeared. Together they would walk through the house to examine whatever it was that Fallon was terrified had been destroyed. And then, sitting at the table, her mother would reach over and brush the hair from Fallon's eyes, smiling. It was the single most loving gesture that had passed between the two of them.

Letting her hand return to her lap, Fallon let out a sigh. "People don't know what to do with us. They can't understand what happened to us, and what's worse, either can we. My memory is so spotty that there are days when I genuinely have to ask myself if I actually attended that school, or if I made it all up. That is why I like seeing people like you and Aggie and Andeon. It reminds me that it was real." The cookies were left to cool on the counter. They would need to anyway, and it gave Fallon the time to be there for Imogen. Even her concern for others worked on a kind of imperceptible schedule. She didn't inquire about Imogen's father. She had not known that he was dead, and Fallon was not sure what to say, or if the curly-haired girl would even want to talk about it.

After a few moments of quiet comfort, Fallon straightened on the stool, adjusting the skirt of her uniform. She preferred it to the uniform of Barren Pines. It required much more ironing. "If I go, I will make sure I take someone," she said, still not sure if she actually ever would. Maybe Imogen was right. Maybe it was just too painful.

Fallon smiled, slipping off of the stool. "Yes, we will keep in touch," she said. It was a fact, not a hollow promise. Fallon liked Imogen, and since many of her friends had not made it out of Barren Pines, she planned on keeping those who had survived as close as possible.

Moving back to the counter, Fallon quickly moved the cookies into two Tupperware containers, snapping each lid on with a soft thunk. She stacked them on each other and carried them back to Imogen. "When you go visit Aggie, send me a text. I don't want to intrude, but I would love to see her," she said, handing the Tupperware to Imogen.

Her eyes strayed to the clock on the wall. Fallon still had a lot to do that day, and though she was happy to chat with Imogen all day, it simply would not fit into her schedule. "Unfortunately, I have to run. My schedule isn't always flexible. We'll do something soon, okay? It's a promise." Leaning in, Fallon attempted to bring Imogen into a casual hug. Hugs weren't Fallon's forte, but she was overjoyed to see Imo, even happier to chat with her. When she pulled back, she let the smile hang in her eyes, offered a short wave, and then disappeared out of the kitchen, forgetting why she had gone there in the first place.