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It had been nearly two years, but she was back in Destiny City. Erika wasn’t certain that she wanted to be here, but it wasn’t as though she had much of a choice. The job Shepherd had managed to land well over a year ago had been a good one – an unexpected turn of fortune that she had known would end badly in the long run. Sighing, she fidgeted with the tape on her CD player, checking its stickiness to make sure the batteries weren’t going to fall out any time soon. It had been nice, for a while. Months of actually getting to stay with her brother, albeit in a tiny apartment – months of seeing him, of spending time with him when he was off work and actually managing to have enough money to get by.

She had even put up with the unpleasantness of a small-town public school, and willingly; she didn’t have to associate with people too often, and the school’s tiny library offered her some books to read and a place of refuge from… people. Not to mention it was far away from Destiny City, from the constant war between Chaos and Order that gripped the place. It had been too good to be true, Erika had known that from the moment Shep told her about it one weekend when she was with him. She had known, and she had feared what the eventual outcome would be. Months passed, a year, a year and a half, and everything stayed... not perfect, but okay – and still Erika hadn’t been able to quite hang onto the hope that things might actually stay that way.

Biting her lip, Erika stopped tracing the tape on her CD player and got to her feet, moving to a box and starting to rifle through it. She had yet to finish unpacking, and her room had several cardboard boxes of her things that she had yet to go through and organize. Running a hand through her hair, Erika sighed and started pulling out items, so she would at least know where they were once she had them put away.

“Hello again, St. Mag,” she whispered, and rolled her eyes as she finished identifying what was in the box – clothes and books, no real surprise there. She climbed onto her bed and wiggled backward until her back was touching the wall, then pulled her knees to her chest. She was back in Destiny City, back in St. Magdalena’s, and all she wanted right now was to be back in that tiny apartment with Shep, making ends meet a little better and having the possibility that maybe she was wrong and things would be okay.

She really should have known better than to even think of that as a possibility. Of course everything fell apart – of course the company that had hired her brother with such lucrative promises would crash, of course they’d have a run of layoffs, and of course her brother would be one of them. They’d been lucky, really, that he’d been able to find something in Destiny City again, especially so quickly, but it meant coming back here, back to seeing him on weekends if at all, back to what she’d started to hope she was finally past.

She was right back where she’d been two years ago, and it felt like nothing at all had come from her time away. Reaching into her shoe where it rested tucked against the side of her foot Erika tugged out her pen, fingering it lightly. Now that she was back here, she was going to have to resume acting as a senshi – that wasn’t really a... problem, per se, but she knew that after having almost two years off she was going to be rusty. Besides, who knew what had been happening here while she was away.

Knowing her luck, it was nothing good.

She played with the pen for a moment, before she started singing quietly under her breath; it wasn’t a song from Phantom, although that musical would always hold the top place in her heart. No, it was one from another book-derived musical, one that she had gotten to see with her brother as a birthday present last year, when things were looking up and hadn’t returned nearly full circle to where they’d been before.

“Look down, look down,
Don’t look ‘em in the eye...
Look down, look down,
You’re here until you die...”

What could she do? Things had gotten better, but those times had passed. They always did, and now here she was again as though nothing had happened, and--- and Tomlin. The fact that she hadn’t thought of the guardian cat during the entirety of her return stabbed Erika with guilt; what if he’d been hurt? What if he’d died, and she hadn’t been here to see?
She had to find him! Not now, not when she was expected to unpack and people kept coming and going thanks to her history of having been gone but now returned (she’d already heard one rumor starting, that she’d been in juvie for some reason; which was of course ridiculous, but rumors were rumors). No, she couldn’t go out to look for him now. He would either find her, or she would go out tonight.

She hoped he was okay, and that she could find him. But wouldn’t it be just her luck that something bad happened to him - something that was her fault, all because she hadn’t been here to protect him. Shoving the pen back in her shoe, Erika hugged her knees and hid her face against them, starting to sing again. This time, she sang an old favorite.

“Down once more to the dungeon of my black despair,
Down we plunge to the prison of my mind…”

At least she still had this, her musicals, her books. She still had her old refuges, and she would be able to use them again. No matter what new horrors life decided to throw at her, Erika was going to be able to make it through it on her own. And even if she couldn’t see her brother as often again, even if the job he was working now was one that would make it harder for her to see him, at least Shepherd was still around - still okay.

As long as she remembered that, and had her books and her musicals, she would be able to keep going.

Word Count: 1079 Words

Graduating. She was actually graduating. After so long having issues with spotty attendance and sketchy grades, Erika was going to graduate high school. And not just graduate, but go on to college - with a scholarship! Sure, it didn't cover all of her funds, but there was a good work-study program at the school, and she knew how to live cheaply without resorting to things like meal plans. But - how had she managed to pull this off? In less than a month now she was going to be finished with high school and moving into an adult life.

Hell, she was already an adult age-wise - old enough to vote, to be legally considered an independent adult who no longer needed guardianship of any kind... how had she made it this far? Okay, so a part of making it to this point may have been all of the focus she had put on it, to the detriment of her development and growth as a senshi, but she couldn't let that bother her.

She'd been on the sidelines for most of what had been going on, yes, but she was getting her life straightened out, and starting to feel confident in herself for once, and maybe... the brunette shook her head and looked in the mirror, checking over her still-growing waves before grabbing her bag and heading out of her room at St. Mag's. She had places to be and things to do, and she couldn't waste her time checking herself over in the mirror. Besides, she actually felt like she looked good, for once - something that still astounded her despite its decreasing rarity.

Maybe it was the space shoes - it was hard not to feel awesome in shoes like that.

The only thing that was really putting a dent in her joy was how distant she had slowly been growing from Shep. Ever since she and her brother had been tossed back to square one, with her at St. Mags and him trying to make ends meet again, they had started growing apart. Well, no, maybe it wasn't quite then - rather, the distance had started after the dreams. The dreams of that strangely dark world, where Erika had seen how strong she could be, with or without combat ability.

The truth was, she had stopped seeking approval from others as much as she had started seeking it from herself - taking quiet pride in her own accomplishments, looking at something she had done and telling herself 'I did this, I achieved this thing'. Unfortunately, Shep ... he hadn't seen it the same way. Her brother had his own problems left over from what their lives had been like before their father went to jail, and some of them had started expressing themselves in how he -

Well, Shep wasn't cruel. But he certainly didn't hand out praise for a job well done. And in fact, he was far more likely to come down hard for failures. And in an effort to protect her slowly healing - and slowly growing - self-esteem, Erika had pulled back. Oh, she still loved her elder sibling, but they weren't as close as they once were, and for her own sake Erika was learning how to live her life without him.

She was a legal adult now, after all. She didn't need a big brother to look after and protect her. The brunette caught her reflection in a storefront window as she walked past, and paused for a moment to stare at herself. Gone was the waif of a child in an oversized Evangelion shirt, with poorly-trimmed hair and a haunted look in her eyes. Staring back at her now was a young woman in a DCU t-shirt, hair curling softly at her shoulders and a thin layer of steel forming in those wide grey eyes.

Shaking her head, she continued on and stayed lost in her thoughts until she entered the door of her workplace - the thrift store she had met that nice blonde in some time ago -and offered a grin to the tired clerk behind the counter.

"Hey Sean. Give me a few minutes to get my things situated in the back room and I'll take over for you, if you want? You look like you could use some time out from the customers."

When she had first started here Erika had worked almost exclusively in the back, sorting through donated items and preparing them for resale. She hadn't been able to handle the thought of interaction with total strangers, at least not more than she absolutely had to. But here she was now, volunteering to take that duty away from someone who was arguably more socially anxious than she was.

Huh.

She really had changed a lot, hadn't she?

Word Count= 793