After leaving the hospital, Sailor Taranis’s life became a blur. He remembered his night in flashes: the light dulling in Magellan’s eyes, the crack of the Negaverse agent’s staff, the blur of headlights as he ran through traffic, the weight of her body in his arms, eyes staring at him from behind bent newspapers and foggy windows, the stark glare of the hospital lights, the feeling of her arms slipping from him, the harsh bite of the grazing bullet. He ran for hours until the buzz of chasing sirens disappeared, replaced by the thrum of downed streetlights from the car crashes of the sleep sickness epidemic. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant pain greater than he thought he could handle.

Parker woke up out of his fuku and back in his Hillworth uniform in the drainage ditch in front of a flower shop. The patron, a chubby woman with red cheeks, poked at him with the handle of a rake, murmuring something in Russian. He staggered to his feet without a word, eyes red and cheeks tear-stained.

Then this is what he did:

He went to the apartment he shared with Tate in East Heights.
He stared in the mirror, but did not see himself.
He packed a small bag, enough for maybe a few days away.
He lifted a journal and then threw it into his trashcan.
He put food out for the cats, a small miracle.
He paused at the cat bed where Derp and his own kitten slept.
He stared at them, but did not see companions.
He dropped his henshin pen and cellphone beside the guardian cat.
He did not leave a note for Tate, or anyone.
He disappeared, without a word, and did not look back.

The Greyhound station was not far away. Parker bought a ticket to a place he never thought he would go. It was not a trip he was making for himself, even if he did not outwardly admit it. Parker moved like a ghost, unapproachable, unreachable. On the bus, he felt invisible, and this was like breathing for him. Invisible, forgotten, never to be seen again: this is what Parker wanted to be.

Dani was dead, but it hadn’t hit him yet. It was a slow crawl of a sadness so deep and dark that Parker knew he was not strong enough to rise back out of it. The sun had been swallowed by darkness, the birds all ripped free of their wings to plummet like stones to the dirt. There was no question that Parker would trade places with her. Dani was stronger; Dani could handle this.

For a boy who had suffered cuts and bruises unimaginable, this was the snapping of his neck. His spirit was broken, and the threads of it bled out of him with each dry tear and trembling shiver. There was no light at the end of this tunnel, just a doomed march down the spiraling staircase to the same wretched hole that had claimed the only person he had any love left for in this life.

The bus slowed. The door opened. Parker stepped off. He was standing in front of a institution for prisoners in treatment. He was on his way to speak to a man he had not addressed in years. Dani had asked this of him. This had been their plan together. Parker did not believe that she was somewhere watching over him with glowing wings and a sunny halo, but he believed that he loved her so much that she would affect his actions for the rest of his dim and flickering existence. She was dead; he was not ready to deal with it.

The worst of it was not over. The worst of it had not even begun.