Zack hadn't really been sleeping much these days. It should have been expected, and he was surprised so few people had noticed. Though, he really only had Cambria to even notice when something was gone, and he hated her seeing him weak like this.

It made him think, though. About who he did have in his life. Who could have even noticed.

His parents wouldn't have noticed; he texted them more than he called, and he'd found excuses to miss their invitations for family dinners. He didn't talk to his brother unless he had to, so it wasn't like he was a beacon of concern. And even if Zack had seen him, Malcolm probably would have derived some pleasure from seeing his brother so shaken and sleepless.

In a way, Zack probably deserved it for all those years of bullying and harassing him, but he'd always figured it was sort of just his right as the kid's older brother. Sometimes things had gone too far, and Zack still hadn't really learned the limit.

Either way—it was his fault on that one.

No one at work noticed, but that wasn’t saying much. He worked in a bar; the lights were dim and people came in to forget the world, not fuss over their bartender. Maybe a few regulars had noticed he wasn't on his toes so much, or wasn't as suave, but even that didn't matter. They came for the drink, not the drama.

Evan would have noticed, if he'd been at work. He'd been gone for long enough now that they'd replaced him with someone else.

Zack was cruel to the new guy; he criticized everything he made. He wasn't a bad chef—and was probably more what this bar deserved than Evan had been—but he wasn’t Evan. He was just some college dropout who spent as much time smoking in the kitchen as he did cooking in it.

Zack had thought about pulling his starseed, and even told himself that he just might—once Evan was back. Then there would be an open position, and they'd hire Evan back, and everything would go back to normal.

…If Evan even wanted to work in this dump anymore. Zack had seen to it that the locks in the back were replaced with new ones, and had even installed three new locks, himself. Zack was pretty sure one, maybe two locks would do the job, but he'd remembered Evan begging for another lock on the door. And then another, and another.

Evan's paranoia had always annoyed him, but now Zack couldn’t help but think that maybe he'd been onto something. Of course, it was easy to justify that he was right when everything had gone to hell. Hell, maybe he should have forgotten the locks and gotten Evan a gun, though that seemed a little too dangerous to give to someone with luck like that.

But it all lead back to the same thing. Evan wasn't here, and he should have done more to protect him.

Thinking about pulling the new guy's starseed was a little reassuring; he didn't even care about killing the guy. It was wrong for him to just waltz right in there and act like he owned the plaice. There was no hesitation, either.

After a week, Zack didn't even recognize the place.

And it made him mad.

Mad enough that he'd started drinking while he was still on the clock. Mad enough that he started thinking of all the ways he could get this new punk out of the kitchen. Mad enough that he thought about killing him.

But it was just a fantasy to get him through the rest of the work day; as soon as he got off the clock, he'd gone to work—his real work.

Cambria wasn't there today so he didn't have to explain why he was leaving in a huff, or reassure her that he was fine when she knew he wasn't. These days, he was barely making it out of the bar before powering up. Maybe it was cockiness, or the alcohol, or desperation, but he barely cared—just as long as he was out there doing something.

Trying to figure out what the hell was up with youma—and how they got made, and what happened to a starseed. What made it tick, what made it corrupt, what made it change.

If you knew how to break them, you could find out how to fix them.

And if he couldn’t get anyone to give him the answers he needed, he was starting to think that maybe he'd have to find a new way to figure things out.

Tonight wasn't the night he accidentally revealed to the world that Zack Everly was Captain Sanidine; he managed to change in one of the alleyways close to the bar when he figured no one was looking.

Except, someone was looking.

Wide, golden eyes watched him from the darkness, hidden in the shadows.

Like they always were.

They weren't unnerving, anymore—in fact, Sanidine barely even registered when those eyes were on him. He expected it.

Because Evan was always there when he needed him, even if Zack hadn't always been there for him. Sanidine didn't hear the little patter of feet on concrete as Evan bounded from atop the dumpsters and ran towards him. The youma pressed his face into the back of Sanidine's knees and nuzzled; Sanidine instinctively reached down to fluff the fur atop his head.

It was getting too easy to start seeing Evan like this. He hadn't necessarily forgotten what Evan's face looked like—that's not the way things worked. He'd known Evan for years—but that's what made this so much more disturbing.

When he thought of Evan, the first face that popped into his mind wasn't the slouching, scowling kid who looked at him with such love and fear in his eyes. It wasn't even the scrawny, short, too pale freshman he'd shoved into a locker on his first day of school.

When he thought of Evan, the first face to pop into his mind was the face of this youma sitting in front of him.

He was losing him.