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{backdated to Sunday, February 9th}

She hadn't -- she hadn't known where to go. It was the early low of February, on a frigid Sunday morning, and she'd run from her parents house in nothing but a jersey-knit Henley and jeans and her Clifford socks, with nowhere to go and no way to contact anyone. Her parents had taken her phone and her computer and all her shoes -- and though Hvergelmir had shoes and a signet ring, and could power up if she needed to, her fears spoke louder: you can't transform now. Any one of the deprogrammers looking for you could be from the Negaverse, you don't know what they know about your hospital stay, you don't know what your parents told them about your life or your activities -- it's too risky. Not for a pair of shoes, not for a phone. Just run.

So she did.

It had taken her here, shivering in dirty socks, to the doorstep of a place where her best friend in the whole world used to live. A place where, Laney hoped, she'd someday still return. But a place where, in the meantime, she was counting on the possibility of a couch she could crash on for a night or two. Kent Kavanaugh lived here. Laney raised a pale, wind-bitten hand to the door and knocked.

"Does Tara know you're here?"

Laney's heart thudded in her chest, rapid-fire, for a few seconds. Tara -- Tara was still at the Surrounding. Kent knew that -- of course he knew that. Was he hoping that Laney was here at her behest, that this heralded some sign that she might be coming home at last . . . ? Did the heart really ever stop hoping for things like that? Did anyone ever really give up waiting?

It had been weeks since Hvergelmir had gone to the Surrounding -- captive, and then healing in the hospital, bed-bound. She wondered if Aquarius had worried, or if she'd just assumed Laney had given up.

Never, she thought. Oh, Tara, never.

It wasn't important right now -- Kent was looking at her and wondering why she didn't have any shoes on. She followed him inside.

"I, um. No, that's okay, I'm okay." She looked down at her hands -- her fingers were a little pale with cold, and she was still struggling to catch her breath. "I just -- need a place to crash for a few days, and I thought -- with Tara gone -- maybe -- . . . ?" She trailed off, wondering how crazy that sounded. "I'm sorry," Laney tacked on, abashed. "I didn't know where else to go."

Just being let into the apartment was relief enough. Laney stepped inside, stopping almost immediately once she realized how filthy her socks must be -- hastily peeling them off, then rolling them into a dirt-stained little ball and clutching it anxiously between her fingers -- then made her way to the couch, where Kent had indicated. It was already better, just having somewhere to sit down. Just having someone open the door to her. It was already better.

Things at home seemed a little surreal, now. A little far away.

"Thank you," she said, her voice shaky: grateful for a place to stay, but still physically and emotionally distraught from her stocking-footed flight across Destiny City. "It's not -- I didn't kill anybody or anything, I'm not in trouble or on the run from the law. It's just . . . my parents don't understand. I was in the hospital for a while again, and when I got out, they called a . . . like, a cult deprogrammer? That's what they think, that's why they think I go out at weird hours sometimes and how they think I keep getting hurt. They think I'm in some kind of a cult. It's not their fault, they just -- they don't know. I'm sure it's what any parents would do."

She twiddled her thumbs together uncertainly for a while, awaiting Kent's pronouncement of whatever his house rules were.

Until --

Until.

She can fill you in herself.

Laney was on her feet before she knew it. "Tara's here?!" she practically shouted. "She's here?!?!?"

'Okay, yes, she's here.'

Laney's heart felt like it was a fish on dry land, flopping frantically in her chest. "Where is she?" she blurted out, spinning to look around as though she expected Tara to suddenly pop out from behind a couch or hidden behind the draperies like this was some sort of a reality prank show. It was only belatedly that she realized this was a stupid thing to do, and Tara was probably not hiding under the coffee table -- so staring at the coffee table as though trying to assess whether or not Tara could fit under there was both silly and a waste of time.

Following Kent's permission, she made her way to Tara's bedroom door.

All her emotions stuffed in her throat, she raised a hand to knock.

" . . . Tara?"

Even knowing she was there, it was strange, in a way, to see Tara. When she'd arrived, Laney hadn't envisioned her here -- all her concepts of Tara now were as Aquarius, hidden away at her Outpost, shut away inside to lock out the world. Picturing her home, just living out her life, didn't quite compute yet.

"You're . . . you're home," she observed. "How -- how long have you been . . . ?"

Laney felt confused. The whole scene was odd in so many ways -- but most of all, she didn't know what Tara was talking about.

Tara had been in a bad state the last time Laney had spoken to her, and that had been months ago. Had she gotten worse? Was it really okay for Laney to be seeing her?

Why did she and Kent seem to be keeping secrets from each other?

Brow furrowed, Laney followed Tara into her room as Tara shut the door. She reached out, thinking to clasp Tara's hand, give it a squeeze -- then drew back before she could complete the motion. Kent seemed to think Tara was delicate. Laney didn't want to do the wrong thing and startle her.

"What message?" she asked softly, trying not to come across too strongly in case it seemed like she was questioning Tara's grasp of reality.

Tara had sent her a message to tell her she'd come back. Of course she had. Tara was her best friend, that just meant . . . it meant it had been since New Year's. Either while she'd been withering in a Negaverse funhouse or recuperating in the hospital, Tara had come home and had tried to contact her -- and had gotten back silence. Laney felt frustrated, and then nervous again: what could she say? If Tara had only just come home, was dealing with her own problems, was it too much to tell her everything that had happened in her absence?

Maybe it would be best to keep it vague -- at least until she talked to Kent about it and figured out what to say. Tara had been so convinced before that she was somehow the cosmic source of everyone's troubles.

She didn't need to know about the capture yet. Not until Laney was sure Tara would understand it had nothing to do with her, that lots of people had been captured who weren't victims of some magical Hurricane Tara.

"I knew that only descendent knights had ghosts," she admitted. "No one I know who's reincarnated has ever been able to talk to their past self. And most ghosts . . . I haven't met many, but -- they can show themselves to other people. Talk to them. It seemed like it might be something more serious."

What she dreaded was that Tara wanted to know about her life. About what was going on, why Laney had shown up here . . . what should she say? Should she lie? Say something stupid and vague, something Tara might see right through?

"Actually," she said, frowning, "I didn't know. That wasn't it. I actually -- I've been having trouble with my parents for a while, they've been worried about me, you know, because I've been out at all hours? And I can't really say where I went? And I went on a . . . a, like, a date with this guy who's a knight like me? And there was trouble and we both ended up getting hurt, and my parents were just -- they're convinced I'm in some kind of a cult, so they took my phone and they called in this deprogrammer. That's why no message." She looked down at her bare feet. "I came here because I thought Kent would put me up for a while until I figured out what to do."

This wasn't how Laney wanted things to be with Tara. She only had one best friend, and Laney had always sort of assumed that when Tara came home from her exile one day, things would go back to their usual near-perfection between them. She didn't like seeing Tara feel awkward or look unsure.

Laney shook her head. "I don't want my parents to know where I am right now," she decided. It was better that way: who knew when the Suttons might decide to send their hired deprogrammers around for another try. And she doubted there was anything Tara or Kent could say that would smooth things over.

"I've had . . . " She frowned, wondering how she meant to end that sentence. "I mean, it's been good to get to know people like me, you know? Not, like -- well, not like you're like me, but people with the same powers. It's a good thing, we help each other out, sort of. No one has a lot of information about what's going on, so it's like, you sort of rely on other people to tell you bits and pieces and hope you can put the whole puzzle together. It's just . . . " She sighed. "I missed you, you know? None of them are you. It's not the same."