"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled."

Matthew 5:6

10 March 2009, The Compton Building.

Sophie...grrrr. Nuff said.

I sit here with my tea in my hands, stirring the sugar into solution as I have for the last 30 minutes. The liquid has cooled now, tepid in my hands. Still, I stir it, maybe just for the noise. My stomach is upset, so drinking the stuff is completely pointless.

Rad wasn't too happy when I told him about Ford--he didn't want to have to ward the house to hell and back.

Fucking Etherites.

Why is it I am plagued by nutcase science magi who want to hurt, kill, maim, or exploit people? Or worse, make the toaster talk. I never figured that out. Okay, so Raz was okay most of the time, but she was a damn time bomb ticking away to an explosion none of us wanted to be around for. She scared Rad, a lot.

At the end, with the way things went, she scared me too. It felt like....

/Before./ was Gabriel's quiet interjection.

Yeah, I know. A little over a month home, pregnant with a demon baby, knowing what I had to do about it, working on the preparations to fix the mess, then having it blown from my control by Johnathan and his manipulations. But in the end it was that fear of being forced into an on the spot abortion that set me off like a bomb. God, if it hadn't been for Aliya shouting Raz down....

/And you resent being frightened like that, don't you?/ Again, a quiet interjection of a question. /Especially by someone who you trusted as much as Raziel?/

Yeah. Precisely. I stirred my tea some more, troubled all over again.

Guy was another case. The instant abortion kit in the tea cupboard should have warned me, you know? He just fucking lost his mind. That business with the killing set me on edge. You don't start liking killing and then switch it off. You don't threaten people like a nutcase and expect them to want to -follow- you. No way in holy hell.

He didn't do right by Aliya. He didn't do right by Kimmy. He didn't do right by Nat. Him and his gun. Him and his fucking ambulance--know how hard it is to drive that thing??! Then there is the way that the Tradition didn't bother to tell Aliya. I don't think much of them for leaving it to Kimmy to tell her, but that, like so many things, was probably Guy's fault.

/Guy betrayed everyone for his own reasons, Beatrice./ The angel paused, /Especially himself./

I wonder, honestly wonder, if I care. Damn straight I am pissed off about it all.

/Because he endangered someone you love./

And Kimmy too. Kimmy is loopy on a good day and spookily haunted the rest. I'm glad she's with Aliya, they are a good pairing. Rad doesn't seem bothered by her in the shop and the little girl is a natural part of her, but I always wonder about people who shock themselves and giggle. But you know? I just wonder sometimes if there isn't something lurking deeper, something that is going to send her off the edge, too.

/Robby Bensen and Kim have little in common, Beatrice./

No, I guess they don't. Robby Bensen was nice in a weird science sort of way, but troubled, alone, nothing but his geekatude to sustain him. I remember when he first showed up at the Crystal Spire. I also remember how he made one of his perfect hangman's nooses and dropped himself out the window of his dorm at Wayne State three days after we turned him away from the classes that were silently killing his soul.

/They were killing yours, too./ the quiet voice added. /Your conscience was strong enough to let you walk away after he died./

It doesn't take the sting out of the event, though.

Gabriel is silent a moment. /You made a choice, Beatrice. He made a choice. The world you know was shaped from them./

I stop to look at the spoon and stop stirring. My eyes flick to the flatscreen and the image of the beloved garden. I honestly don't know how to respond. It's as though it -had- to happen. I'm not sure that I like the premise.

/Freedom is about making choices...and having choices to make, Beatrice./

Was I free?

The angel provides no commentary.

David said I might not have had any choice but to walk the dark path that I did. Granna hinted at it once when I was a teenager. David, on the other hand, had been unsubtle, just saying it outright. That's our David.

/You got up again. You stayed up. Those were choices too./ comes the gently insistent thought.

Somehow, that always made things a little better. David rode herd on my ass most of the time, usually more for me than his own agenda. I'm stronger now for the challenges. Only occasionally do I have to pull back and away now. I remember all the little things he said about how to cope. I adapted, I take care of myself and Rad without a lot of problem these days.

/David is proud of you, Beatrice./

I don't know what happened to him and would give a lot for him to come back to us. I miss him. Think everyone does. Noble in spite of his grouchy demeanor, he always tried to do the right thing. He was there for Aliya after that business with the vampire. He worried about vampires, and orphans, and a lot of other things. Haunted by a past that I knew was filled with tragedy. Laura, the baby, Julius, and those Black Guard guys all had a role to play in his story. He was afraid for all of us, less than himself. I just hope that doing the right thing didn't make him decide to leave to 'protect' the rest of us.

/That's a choice, Beatrice. His choice./

We're all haunted, I guess. Every one of us, in one way or another, have been marred by something. I pause and put the cold tea aside. I think about leaving Detroit, and how things have gone here. No peace, really. We have our lives back, mostly. Yet, Manchester seems to crawl with disaffected and broken magi. Even Sue seems to have succumbed, and I never thought Sue -could-.

The quiet voice urges. /No man is an island. Everyone has parents and family and pasts to weave into their tapestries./

I adore So...um Kammie. She made such a big deal about being 'made' in a lab, like it was going to make us not want her. I guess if I was tossed out for not being what someone wanted, I'd feel that way too. This Ford asshole needs to meet up with Guy, get shot to death with Guy's stupid gun, and maybe they can rot in Hell together.

/Life is precious. It is also painfully frail, Beatrice./

I pause, remembering how I killed Jack. Yeah, I guess it is.

Thomas. I wonder about his motives. I guess I'm going to find out more about him, now that he's moving in. I feel like Sophie's mother, checking out her boyfriend. She's never been in love before. She seems so happy, but I have to wonder sometimes if the interest is 'real' or whether, like most of the Etherites would, he's just studying her. So...um Kammie is a lot better and more deserving than that.

/Love changes people for better, and for worse, Beatrice./

God, I love Rad.

The angel just approves silently. Nothing need be said.

But it all comes back to the chaos and the bumps in the road. Have I ever mentioned that my life is like some weirdassed Romper Room? No, it isn't that crap in Detroit with Johnathan and the cabal, but I feel like the den mother around here. No idea how I got the job again. I curl up against Rad at night and wonder about that. I mostly don't want to think about it.

/Because you're afraid it might happen again?/

Yes, and that I might let them down.

Again, silence.

Aliya has looked up to me since the beginning. Why being treated with respect and common decency is so alien to people is beyond me. It's one of the things Granna told me was most important. She was always stressing the importance of doing the right thing, being a little bigger, even in the face of a world of other pressures.

/That's a choice as well, Beatrice./

Whether the others 'admire' me for living through it or not isn't so important to me anymore. Okay, maybe it scares me that they admire me for surviving my own rank stupidity. That little act of rebellion damn near cost me the whole enchilada and I haven't forgotten it. I went on because it seemed like the thing I needed to do to avoid the terrors. A false front of industry to hide from the pain.

Then Vanna died, I realized that I'm only surviving. She lived more in the last hours of her life than most people do in their entire life. It was humbling to see that. I want to live, maybe for the first time in my life. Maybe the problem for me is that I'm not sure how you go about doing that.

/A day at a time, Beatrice. A day at a time./

The tea cup sits there accusing me of abandonment. I look down at my hands and consider what is being suggested. Why do I keep going? Force of habit, mostly. Do I strive toward 'living' for the same reasons? Right now, I go on. I know the answer is up ahead somewhere and I need, more than anything else in my life, to find it.

I pick up my cup to go reheat it in the microwave, I take a look at the little crystal angel on the shelf over the desk. A pause, then I say quietly "You're right, Gabriel. A day a time...."