It's familiar ground.

It's more than familiar ground. It's ground she visited nightly for five years. It's ground she pounded time and time again before a floodgate was switched in her brain, letting through torrents of fights and vampires and monsters and horrors that were a relief after knowing this.

She's here again, but she can't change it.

She can't change any of it.

"Mel.. This is stupid. We're gonna get celled..."

"Not a prayer, Scaredy. We're eating Meat tonight."

It washes over her like a blanket; warm, familiar and comforting. Family and trust, self knowledge and assuredness. And Love. Love with all of the strength and the power that can only be felt by the innocent, those yet to be hurt by love.

"Whoooaayhhh! Melaka!"

Two halves of the same person. Together forever, no matter what life throws at them in their future. They can face together. They can face anything together. Mel will always always protect her Harth.

"Scaredy. You're lucky I got two hands. 'Cause if it was you or the food..."









"You. Are the Food."

-------------------

Mel jerks in the bed, fighting the urge to scream herself awake.

-------------------

Don't scream.

Something's wrong.

Of course something's wrong. There's a lurk standing in front of Mel, lips curled back over fangs, forehead twisted in that way they have.

("Melaka..." "Harth... Just start walking.")

"Don't be frightened, little ones..."

His accent isn't Haddyn. Mel's never met anyone didn't have a Haddyn accent.

Don't think.

"Fight? You? That's..."

She's doesn't have a choice. She has to fight this lurk. This tall, thin, black haired lurk who wants to kill her - kill her brother.

Thin? Black Hair? Something's....

Don't think.

"Harth, go!"

He's not going. He's staying. He's watching. It's like a scope to him. He's not going to run. That's the problem. He's going to stand and watch his sister's face torn open and he's going to go to him and she's going to watch him be killed.

Again.

Again.

Again.

"NO!"

The hand closes over her face, and she's so terrified she's aware she might soil herself, but at the same time, she's relieved. Now she just has to fall to her doom and it'll all be over.

She has to watch Harth die first.

It's as the lurk's teeth crunch into Harth's neck, as Mel succumbs to gravity, that she realises what's wrong.

That isn't Icarus.

Think equals scream.

--------

Mel wakes herself screaming.

It was Gunther who picked up the muttering in the Haddyn underbelly. It was Erin who ran searches in the grid, talked to laws and pieced together the leads, and it was Legs, weirdly enough, who found the relevant volume in the Watcher's Library. One of these days Mel is really going to research the librarian instincts in spider monkey demons.

But weeks after the rumours first appeared, it was Mel who traced the demons to their sewer lair, switchblade glowing happily. It was Mel who rammed the stake of her scythe into the terracotta statue into which they were focusing the magic for their spell that was going to open up the New York Hellmouth again - it shattered, spilling blue energy across the floor. When it hit the sewage, blue flames dances across, lighting up the tunnel, as Mel proceeded to kill every single one of the demons.

World saved, again, but at the cost of a decent jacket: Mel has a nasty burn across her right arm, and at least one fractured bone in her left leg, when she's interrupted in her limping back to Versi by a bright overhead lamp and the command to Stand down and offer submission.

Mel points out that it's probably frowned upon in the laws to use the cars to drive sisters back to your apartment. Erin tells her to shut up, make a wish and blow out the candles. The cake is even made from real flour and eggs - Mel doesn't dare ask how much it cost.

Her wish? To see another birthday after this one.

Mel has plans for Christmas.

These involve staying well out of everyone's way all morning, eating and drinking vast amounts in the suites at around midday, then skipping out before the clean up with a huge hamper of food and drink and doing the same in the tav in Versi. She spent most of yesterday helping to clean it up, and Erin should be helping out now. It's going to be a great day.

Right now though, is part one of the plan: stay out of everyone's way and avoid all work. She's marked it as pre-dawn training, and is running around the lake a few times, wrapped up snugly in a tracksuit, but without her scythe: Steph has co-opted it for present opening.

It's not like she'll need it or anything: it's a run around the lake: what can go wrong?

She feels kinds of bitter about missing the end show down, but not very.

After all, Mel got to kill eight big pointy toothed cats, and a skull. There are worse things in life.

Oh, and a torn open thigh, on which she has no shame on limping.

"Hey! Home! Is there food?"

It's been a long night. Mel had a particularly tough grab in the Uppers, and set upon by an unusually together group of lurks on her way home. Oh, and then she had to clear up after a murder.

Rutting domestics. She hates men sometimes.

OK, not all of them. But she's tired, messy, and no longer looking forward to a shower in the near future. Maybe once she's told Mike of the situation, there'll at least be snuggles.

Once she finds him.

It's been a long night. Mel had a particularly tough grab in the Uppers, and set upon by an unusually together group of lurks on her way home. Now, she's tired, messy, and really looking forward to a shower and snuggles.

She's walking through the halls when she hears a gunblast.

By the time she hits the right corridor, she's running.

The suite's eerily quiet without babies in it.

Which is why Mel moved a four-armed monkey demon into it. And then promptly locked him in the bathroom. Maybe he'll flush himself down the waterslide and she won't have to worry about him any more.

Meanwhile, Mel has a much more important task at hand; what to do with her sword.

It's not an expensive, perfectly balanced piece of swordcraft by any means; it's a practice weapon from the bar and she's only used it once. But it did look interesting above the mantel with Lilly's sword. Without its partner now, it just looks a bit sad.

So Mel's standing in the middle of an empty suite, swinging the hardly used weapon in her hand and debating what to do with it.

Uh, little me?

What the rut are you doing?

There's been a lot going on with the tenants of suites 132 and 134, what with Slaying and grabbing and invalids and blossoming romances and relaunching businesses and security and bartending and things. A lot.

What there hasn't been, in someone's very important opinion, is enough Stampy-loving.

And when there's not enough Stampy loving, bad things happen.

Like sacred dedicated scythe-like weapons that certain miniphants won't let go off, no matter how much dangling-from-her-trunk it involves.

"No, really, Bignose, I hafta go to work."

Soemtimes, it's nice to have a warm suite and a hot shower and a loving boyfriend to come home to after a night out fighting and Slaying.

Hell, it's always nice to have that. Especially when the battle happens to have left you with what certainly feels like a broken leg.

Slam! "Honey, I'm... ow. Home!"

She's gotten so used to coming and going through her window/the front door, that Mel pretty much takes it for granted now that she can come and go between Milliways and Haddyn as she pleases. So when she climbs through the window this time round, it takes her a few seconds to realise she's not in Kansas any more.

That's a twentieth century expression. She's been hanging around Mikey too long.

Her slouched posture doesn't change as she glances around this strange formless place, but she does slide her not'scythe out of the sheath on her back, taking the opportunity as she does so to glance at the switchblade inside her wrist. Not glowing, so she's not actually in danger yet.

She stands still, waiting for something new to happen.

(You don't dream much, do you, Mel?)

Since dusting Harth, that's all changed, and Mel thinks mostly for the better. She's even stopped with the meditation - she wants to experience these things fully. But that doesn't mean she's not beginning to realise how they manage to spin her brother nuts. Every night a different dream. Vivid, all encompassing, and real.

Some of them are exhausting.

Running three hundred miles in three days, and fighting, always fighting to protect the man who carries the hope of his peopl on his shoulders, fighting to keep vampires off him, fighting to stay hidden, and finally as they reach Athens together, poison coarsing through her body, fighting to stay alive.

Some of them are exhilarating.

Flying through New York (and wherever she dreams she is, it's always these dreams she savours. Her city. No matter how old or short or backwards it looks, it's always her city) on the back of a huge bat, throwing pearls aorund its neck and driving it down to her world in the Lowers.

Some of them are downright weird.

They're tough and they're mean and they want to end the world - again - and they would have killed her if he hadn't turned up in the car. But now she needs to work out that energy...

...yeah, sex dreams about your boyfriend's ex are rutting spun. Even more so when you know it actually happened.

But then there's the other dreams. The ones Mel is pretty rutting sure aren't past lives, and they'd better the hell not be prophetic Slayer type toy. They include the Flamethrower, for one. And he's not even from her world.
Mostly, she's able to write them off to the mystery that is her brain. Even the (oh god) babies, which, if she knew a thing about any of that psych toy, she's sure she'd sign off as a weird symptom of all her friends dropping when she knows she can't have that for herself. Why it has to be with her sister's ex, she'll never know.

But that's not the worst. That's not what jerks her out of her sleep so quick it's almost violent, shaking in the bed in a cold sweat, and shivering in terror. She'd read about it in the Diaries, of course, but not until she dreamt it could she truly appreciate just how lucky she'd been in her own life.

She was at high school.

Breathing to calm down, Mel steals a fond look at the ex-turtle in the bed next to her, and slides out of the bed, to be met by Stampy, awake and eager for breakfast.

"Mornin' Bignose," she says quietly, reachign down to scritch the madam behind her ears, and reflecting, for some reason, how cool it is to  have a baby elephant.

Stupid lurks. Why do they always gotta fight back?

Mel and Mike are sleeping in 132 all the time now, so when she slips in 134, it's with the confidence that he won't be there to see her limp stiffly in and over to the guest bathroom, where she grabs a quick shower to wash the blood off. Pulling on the fresh pants and T-shirt she brought with her, she drops the blood stained clothes in the laundry as she limps back out again.

Failing to find an Indy to occupy her, she doesn't intend to stay long. Just long enough to grab a bottle of juice and head downstairs for an hour or so shift while her leg heals.

Super healing. A time honoured Slayer tradition of making sure the ones you love don't notice how beaten up you are every night.

Bar had given them all back packs. It's kind of cute, really, in Mel's opinion. small little things, containing only the essentials - a zapper pistol for each of them, a cross, a stake, a round of PB&J with the crusts cut off, a flask of milky tea, and lunch money (about 20 coi each).

Mel herself just has her own gun and scythe sheathed on her back, as she climbs through the window into her small, beaten up apartment, and holds the door open for them.

It takes Mel by surprise.

Not the lurks - though they're not as common since she killed Harth. Maybe Makita's right and the rutters are killing each other. Mel can only hope. These guys, though, are the lowest of the low, four skeletal corpses of what were almost certainly shooters, not even on the way to being pumps, before they caught vampirism like some sort of disease. She stubbled upon them on the way home from Gunther's and it's almost a welcome diversion, something to play with.

So she launches into them with characteristic lust for violence.

And it's not the ferocity of their attack that surprises her either. From the looks of things they've gone a few days without blood. From the litter strewn aorund their nest, death hasn't exactly cured them of their shooting habits, which is probably why. But a vampire starved of blood is a desperate, dangerous thing, and fights with more violence than usual.

So it's harder to dust them off than normal. They fight back. This is fine. Mel likes to fight.

Nor is it that temporarily they get the upper hand. That's OK, too, sometimes it happens. Mel will get her way up again. Besides, it's almost good. Brings a challenge, makes the blood pump just a little louder and harder, makes her feel alive.

It's not even that when one catches her a nasty blow on her wrist, it bends backwards and she's forced to drop her scythe, sending it clattering across the roof. Temporary setback.

What surprises her is the way that moment brings with it a feeling of sheer utter , which starts in her centre, seizing her lungs and heart in tight hot claws, driving out the air and sending every once of concentration from her brain. That's what surprises her, and gives the lurk fighting her the opportunity to throw her against a wall so hard blocks of concrete fall onto the roof from a few stories above. Hard enough that Mel's head whips back and hits the wall.

She's still trying to catch her breath when another of the picks her up and knocks her against the wall again and she feels her shoulders crack.

She's still trying to figure out what's going on when he laughs, and tosses her like a doll to his companion, who leers at her with yellow eyes and brings a toothy mought don to her neck.

Of course, that's when she decides she's had enough, and rams her head hard into his face.

Landing on her feet, she kicks him hard enough to send him flying off the roof, and sends the others sprawling as she sprints over to her weapon.

The sense of relief that washes over her as her hands close over the leather bound shaft is tangible. But it's not just relief, she's sure of it.

As the Slayer leaps to her feet, waving the scythe, and makes short work of one, two, three, four vampires, she feels it coursing through her, the power, the knowledge, the rightness of it all. She feels like she belongs.

Standing in the spiralling clouds of dust, she realises something's changed.

She's sort of getting used to this, going out, working, patrolling, getting a job and so on, then popping into Milliways for shifts and friends and things for a few horus everyday. Mel's life is busy, sure, but busy suits her better than bored.

So she's whistling as she wanders into the suite, tossing an apple up and down in one hand.

But she hasn't bitten into it yet. She suspects it will taste bitter.

She didn't stop in the bar. She didn't want to talk to anyone. She doesn't even know why she's here. She shouldn't be here.

Oh, right, because she wanted a shower and the window to her broken pipe now goes straight to the bar.

Mel walks straight upstairs at a steady pace, trailing her scythe behind her. Luckily the blood soaking her clothes dried on the journey back home, so she leaves no sticky footprints. Fully dressed in a dress shirt and combat pants, she steps into the shower and turns both taps on full. Then she just stands there, shower curtain still pulled back, and door to her bedroom wide open.

And she waits to start feeling something.

Mel stared out over the rooftops for longer than she could keep track of, accurately. Long after her brother's ashes had blown away or settled wherever they weren't going to move from. On her blood soaked clothes, on in her hair, some even into her partially open mouth.

Silently, she turns her back on the skyline and turns to home, holding her scythe in the same hand, and never in the back of her shirt.

Legs the monkey demon greets her with his usual loud partly-angry screech, which gets angrier when she barely seems to hear him and louder when he sees she's heading right back to the window she's spent most of the day coming in and out of.

Mel needs a shower.

Recovering from Yuppieness isn't easy. First there's the ew, what am I wearing. Then there's the did I bitch out Steph for being fat?,then hoshit I slept with a lawyer then ohmigod Mikey's a turtle again, he didn't wait for me why does this hurt it shouldn't hurt, and then, bigger than everything else: KATYA.

Mel raced out of the bar, not stopping to talk to anyone. She hurtled back into her apartment - hey, am I unbound, then? and pulled on a pair of pants for better fighting. From then, grabbing her scythe, she made her way out into Haddyn.

She knows where the Princess lives. It's just a matter of getting there and checking she's OK.

She's OK, of course she is. Mel's just being stupid.

But she's still chewing her lip when she knocks on the door.