The press of bodies collapsed nearby furniture, people climbed over them. For once, she dreamed of her daughter, and she held her daughter in her arms until the last, instead of having her torn away. Instead of that dreadful, sanity-shattering, life-ending impact.

Then—then she wasn’t herself.

Not past self, not present self. Not anymore.

She was the Fallen boy. In a parking lot. She watched as the mall employee ran. As Seir the horse-headed used a power of lightning and darkness to leap onto the girl, and hurl her to the ground. The Fallen boy had his mask off and in one hand, his face etched in anger, in twisted emotions.

This isn’t the way things go.

“Don’t fucking second-guess me. You know how this goes if you fail us. Soldier or slut, and as shitty as a soldier you’d be, you’d make for one depressing slut.”

The Fallen boy looked away.

“What? You want to fight? You want to say something?”

The Fallen boy turned his head. As he did, a thin woman in white appeared beside him.

Christine Mathers.

“No,” the boy said.

Seir shoved the employee inside, but grabbed her hair, hauling back. The girl shrieked in pain as she was yanked backward, shrieked more as the door was shut on the hair, trapping it.

She wasn’t on the ground as she had been before. But the essential elements remained the same.

Seir produced the chain, and he bound the door shut. The lock was placed through chain to secure it, but as always, it wasn’t actually locked.

The option was given.

“If you open that door, you’ll never be a soldier.”

“I’m not going to open it,” the boy said, stubborn.

As monstrous as Seir, just underdeveloped. Content to talk about murder and righteousness while a girl fumbled under the blanket they shared.

Capable of laughing as people died.

Seir left. The boy remained.

Then the explosions. The fires. The attack.

Love Lost could remember how scared Ever had been. She could remember seeing Ever’s friends, seeing them run from her as she’d tried to corral them and manage them as a group. They’d been intimidated of her.

Perhaps for the best.

There was a pause, then fists pounding on the door. The screams, the shouts.

She could count it, almost. More than a minute passed, but she knew, right down to the fraction of a second. She would hear the noise as the tables fell, the distant thud, her own scream as her daughter died.

Every night.

The lock was pulled free. Chain rattled as it was unwound. It was cast aside, and the doors opened wide.