(This takes place in the same timeframe as this solo)

It was late afternoon, edging into early evening by the time that Arian let himself into the apartment.

It was quiet, with Liryn out and Lola sleeping and with Orah and Liam's room doors both shut it was hard to tell whether his two resective house mates were in or not.

Once Arian may have knocked on Orah's door, a quiet triple knock tap - his way of checking if she was in - and if she was he would have asked if she wanted to join him in a snack...

But now as he found himself doing so often as late, he stood outside her door, raised his hand and then let it fall before turning and walking over to leave his rucksack near the sofa before heading towards the kitchen.

Ever since the night where he, Orah and Liryn had all had the shared nightmare things just hadn't been the same between him and Orah.

He started reaching for ingredients. Eggs and butter from the fridge, flour, sugar and some of the himalayan pink salt that Saffy had given him from the cupboard, fetching a mixing bowl and cup sieve from another cupboard and some of the really nice chocolate that he had picked up on a grocery shop a few weeks back from a third.

Prior to that night he and Orah had had a pretty easy relationship, one that they had built on since the day, well evening really, that they had met for the first time in the community garden. That self-same evening that their powered counterparts had joined hands in the middle of the garden and promised that they would do all they could to protect the newbies - the evening when the PSSG had formed.

Ingredients out, he turned the oven on so that it could start to preheat before fetching a baking tray and lightly greased it.

He had known Tsui before Ida, first as Gwen who was Anming's from school's friend back from when he had been still in Meadowview. A chance meeting that had sprung into an unlikely friendship given the differences in his and Gwen's respective personalities.

Finding out that Gwen was actually Tsui had been another of those chance things, a planned shared study session between them had been interrupted by a youma attack and when Arian had powered up to help the unknown senshi he had found out that she was a friend in disguise - Gwen to be precise.

He creamed the butter and sugar together.

Yes he and Gwen had been friends before he and Orah had, but he and Orah had hit it off from the evening that they had first met powered - at least he thought they had. The two of them seemed to share relatively similar philosipies about the war. There was also the fact that there was something just incredibly sweet and nice about Orah.

Not to say that she was weak - far from it. Kindness and strength rolled into one - that was Orah - that was his friend. Gwen was strong too - had always been strong.

A tired sigh as he started to add in the eggs and then thought about it and fetched the vanilla and added a little into the butter, sugar and egg mixture.

He didn't have many friends and most of the few he had were part of his alter-life as a senshi, but of all his friends he would have said once that Orah along with Gwen were two of those that he was closest to. It was more than being team mates, more than him respecting them, respecting their strength - a total sum of their shared experiences that had forged the team not just into a strong unit, but also into solid friends. Friends who were on the small list of people that Arian would just about anything for.

He broke the chocolate into small chunks and started feeding flour into the butter, sugar, egg and bit of vanilla mixture.

Which is why the sudden distance and stilted conversations between him and Orah hurt - that is when they actually had conversation given that more often than not it seemed that there was silence between them - silences that were of the awkward variety.

And with Liam keeping to his room and not seeing either Gwen or Chaonis in ages, Arian couldn't help but worry - especially as he didn't know what to do - didn't know how to fix things.

He fed in the rest of the dry ingredients - the remaining flour, the baking power and the salt - well more a pinch of the salt. Then added in the self-made chocolate chips.

He didn't know how to help his team mates, didn't know what to do to stop the distance between them that seemed to be getting larger day by day.

And he couldn't help but wonder if it was something he had done, if Orah had seen something in those nightmares that he had been the cause off - after all he had seen enough in his own nightmares to know that the PSSG had collapsed - had broken and although he didn't blame Liryn, it didn't stop him from wondering if he had been the cause. After he was, for better or for worse the team leader - which meant that surely the responsibility for keeping the team together rested on his shoulders.

Even as he could feel the cracks forming as his team mates grew more and more distant. Or mayhaps it was just him - after out of the five of them he had always been the weakest - the least strong one. Hell he couldn't even fully control his own magic attack - his senshi and super magic attacks to this day having minds of their own and thus being unreliable.

The cookie dough was mixed but he didn't start on the final part, the shaping of the cookies.

No instead for a moment he looked back towards the living area of the apartment, although his gaze was distant and he wasn't really focusing on his surroundings.

What did you see Orah? Was it something that I did? Was what I do really that awful... That terrible? Is that why you can't speak to me? Why you don't need or want my help?

They were questions he couldn't answer because he didn't have the answer for them. And questions that he couldn't ask of either Liryn or Orah... Correction questions he didn't dare ask Liryn and Orah. At best they wouldn't answer and at worst they would and the answer would be something that he was increasingly starting to fear - that he was the direct cause of whatever it was that they had seen in the future. That what he had done was so terrible that Orah couldn't really look at him, couldn't talk to him. Something that had caused their former camaraderie to vanish.

And although part of him, a large part of him wanted to know why - desperately wanted to know in fact. The part of him that was afraid was bigger.

Because if he found out that he was the cause of this, that this was all because of something that he had caused... He shook his head in furious denial. He had no idea what he'd done or what it was that he would do. But whatever it was - whatever he had or would do he had to find a way to fix it... Would find a way to fix it.

But for now all he could do was watch and try, insufficient as it so obviously was, to be there for the team on top of his other senshi duties and on top of his non senshi commitments such as college, making up stuff for the shop, trips to see Saffy and catch ups with the very few friends he had who were not caught up in this war thing.

"I'll do whatever it takes" he told himself quietly as he finally started to drop cookie mixture onto the tray.

Whatever it takes to fix things.

-- 1340 words --