Despite the fact that it was nearly boiling, the white haired girl sipped at her tea as if she couldn't feel the temperature at all. Sebastian gave her a look of concern.

“You're going to burn yourself,” he warned, then gently took the cup from her so it wouldn't spill and set it back on the table. He took both her hands in his one and the slightest tingle of cold passed between them as he healed the skin that had gotten just a little too hot. “You should really be more careful.”

He looked up into her amber colored eyes for just a moment, and realized that he had meant that in more ways than one. She always seemed to be getting herself hurt, not just by coffee cups, but by crazy murderers and rioting zealots. He looked away again, not wanting to imply that she couldn't take care of herself.

“Why do these things always seem to happen to you?” He wondered out loud.

She tried not to pout as he reprimanded her and took away her comfort tea. She could feel the warm spreading inside her from the esophagus and stomach out, but when he took her hands the slightest cool breeze washed through her flesh rather than over it. Little goosebumps marched up her skin and Ghost felt the first pricklings of moisture at the corners of her eyes. They widened and she looked somewhere a little above Sebastian's head so that the wetness wouldn't spill out.

He didn't let go of her hands though and the warmth of the cups that he'd erased would slowly be replaced if he continued to hold her flighty hands captive. She made no move to reclaim them.

"Can't say I don't deserve the talking to..." This was the part where she always did something with her hands to keep her eyes busy, to keep that flinching part of her brain busy. But with her hands held still she just had to face it, and him.

"And it's not like I mean to... or go looking for trouble." Usually. Once or twice she had deliberately ignored some warning signs, but everyone was a little reckless in their youth.

She wanted to tell him that it was the green-eyed man's fault for tricking her. That it was no one's fault in particular when the store was mobbed, but maybe that wasn't true. She let herself be in danger too often it seemed. And stuffed her own well being down when anything but obvious dangers were at hand. "S-sorry." Now she was looking quite pointedly at the seam of the apron strap where it was sewn onto the main apron. It was doubled back. Reinforced.

As the pale immortal took her hands, Ghost looked up somewhere over his head. Her face had the pinched look of someone who looked like they were trying very hard not to cry, as if tilting her head could somehow force the tears to drain backwards into her head rather than out. When she spoke it was in half sentences that made it sound like she was making excuses that even she didn't believe.

As she apologized, Sebastian was reminded how very young she was, practically still a child but trying very hard to be grown up even after she'd had such a terrible experience. He could heal her body, but so far he'd done nothing to help her recover mentally from what happened. What she really needed was a parent or sibling or perhaps even friend to be there for her, not to accuse or blame her for what she obviously could not have foreseen happening.

Sebastian let her have her hands back again, and put his arms around her shoulders in a hug. “You don't need to be sorry. It's not your fault that trouble finds you so easily. Fortune seems to enjoying toying with you first with the bad luck to find yourself in such dangerous situations , then with the good luck to be able to get out of it again in one piece.”

Her lower lids held on to those quivering pools of liquid. As long as she kept her eyes wide the surface tension of the water would keep it in. That was very important because she had already had hysterics once today and really didn't want to make it twice. If she let those first tears fall, there was no telling how many more would follow. If he was too nice to her she'd probably just spill her guts... hopefully not in the literal sense.

He let go of her hands and she looked down at them, the first tear squeezing out from the lowering of her lids. She didn't know what to do with her hands now so she folded them. And then unfolded them. And then folded her arms to keep herself from shaking too bad when she hunched under Sebastian's arm that now lay across her shoulders and held onto her tightly.

"I don't know if I believe in luck." Her eyes were pointed at Sebastian's shoulder, but she didn't seem to be actually looking there. She didn't seem to be seeing much of anything really, not anything physically in the shop. The water that had seeped out of her eyes unintentionally was becoming a steady stream that was fed by every blink.

Her insides twisted and she tried not to panic when she in passing thought that it felt like a hand gripping and pulling. She'd found good in the store's demise. "Wha-" She swallowed and took a shaky breath to try again. "What good can come from this?" A hand slipped out from her folded arms and she used the bottom pad of her thumb to cut off the annoying spill of moisture.

Once her hands were free, they folded and unfolded themselves. Like two white birds in a cage, they seemed unsure of what to do with themselves until Ghost folded her arms around her chest. She was shaking, and Sebastian held her all the tighter. Perhaps she needed to cry it out, to get all the fear and frustration and whatever else she was feeling out in the open instead of bottling it all up inside.

Sebastian wondered how long the debate had existed about whether luck or fortune or fate or whatever it was called was real. He couldn't remember when it had started. “I think sometimes we can make our own luck, and other times things just happen with no explanation. Sometimes those things are unfortunate, but other times they are good, too.”

>>>"Wha-- What good can come from this?"

The horned man noticed her wiping her eyes and mentally wished he had a handkerchief for her to borrow; he was almost never without one, when he had clothes, that is. Instead he reached for the napkins on the table, releasing her for just a moment before returning to the same embrace. “Here,” he handed her the makeshift handkerchiefs.

”It may be too early to tell if anything good will happen, but you never know. I'm pretty sure that when the store got attacked you couldn't see any silver lining in the hour directly after that either. Give it time and perhaps some good will yet come of this adventure.”

Ghost dabbed at her face with the mess of napkins. She couldn't seem to bother folding them properly or smoothing them as she might normally. It still bothered her to see them rumpled, but it was just a lesser bother than the twisting in her gut.

Yes. Of course it was too soon. She knew that. Sort of. She just wanted to be able to look forward to something positive.

The image of a very badly burned man swam behind her eyes. "Shouldn't you be back at the site? Healing people?" Her throat was tight and her eyes still watering. Even as she asked the question she gripped the napkins tighter, uncharacteristically crinkling them further.

It had been pure selfishness that had kept her from asking thus far and she was paying for it in a sudden rush of guilt that made her eyebrows pucker together. The creases on her forehead felt so deep that she wasn't sure she could ever relax them again.

If Sebastian left, she could cry her eyes out to her hearts content. With him here it was slightly less embarrassing to make with the brave face. And she really did worry about the people back at the scene. What if Shin or little Koga were hurt now because they'd left? Now here they were sitting in the darkened store and all Ghost could really do was leak tears despite wanting very much not to cry. "I promise I wouldn't go anywhere if you wanted to go."

She hunched over herself a bit more folding bony arms around the bony legs that were tucked up next to her chest. It would have been comfortable if her suit pants weren't cold and damp.

>>>"Shouldn't you be back at the site? Healing people?"

Sebastian grimaced at her question, remembering the hole torn in the street. Images of the people who might be trapped down there vied for his attention with the images right in front of his face of a girl with her eyebrows puckered and tears leaking in streams down her pale cheeks. He should go, but he was torn. He would feel guilty if he didn't go and try to help with the rescue efforts, but he would also feel guilty if he left Ghost in a dark store all by herself after all that happened. There was no way to avoid the heavy feeling of the guilt, like a stone tied around his heart.

>>>"I promise I wouldn't go anywhere if you wanted to go."

He should go, but he didn't want to. He knew he was being selfish, but he couldn't help it. As a healer he did his best to help as many as he could and it pained him whenever someone died who he could have saved, but he knew that he could not physically be everywhere at once and could not save every person in the whole world.

Ghost folded her legs up to her chest and hugged them like she was trying to hold herself together. Sebastian did his best to help keep her in one piece, with an arm around her back, an arm around her knees, and his tail snaked across his own lap to wrap around her ankles to her back around again to where it started. He rested his cheek against the top her her head, her hair was much softer than his own.

It might make him a terrible person, but when he had to choose who he could save and who he couldn't he saved those people who were most important to himself. In this case, he had already saved the one that was important to him, couldn't the random strangers in uniform rescue the random strangers that had been injured? Except that the kind of care the rescue workers could provide would perhaps not be enough. Except that some of those strangers were friends of Ghost's that he had left in danger. Except those people had loved ones, too, and if he was the one that could not be there to rescue the people he cared about he would want someone else to care enough to help them. More stones tied with more ropes.

“Where do you need me to be? Would it make you feel better if I went back to help or do you need me to stay with you?”

He wrapped himself around her more fully even resting his head against hers. He was warm. And very gentle. But she had resolved not to cry despite the constant trickle of tears she had still managed not to devolve into hysterics again. It was still a victory. One that would be stripped from her if he continued to be just nice enough.

He stiffened slightly at her suggestion. He was either revolted by the thought of it or the lance of guilt had gone through her and into him. He seemed to hold on to her tighter and tighter as he rolled the thought around in his head.

“Where do you need me to be?"

Need was a very strong word.

"Would it make you feel better if I went back to help or do you need me to stay with you?”

Of course it would make her feel better if both were possible, but she was not going back. She had been brave enough for today and it hadn't gotten her very far. It was time to huddle in the dark now. Alone.

Okay. So she was definitely loosing the battle to hysterics now. She grabbed on to his apron. Her fists balled in it and she pulled it against her face.

"Go."

She wasn't afraid to be alone here in the store. It was nothing like the camps. It was safe. "S-someone needs to... the cops.... and people." Her tears felt hot against her face. Despite the fact that she was telling him as firmly as she was able to go, she was quite solidly holding on to what little clothing he had left on him.

"You can come back." She whispered the words into the green canvas.

Her words said one thing, but her body language communicated something entirely different. “Go” and stay, she said simultaneously. Morally speaking, going was the right thing to do. Emotionally, leaving her here was absolutely the wrong thing to do. It would be stupid to bring her back there again, but stupid to leave here alone with no one to comfort her and keep the shadows and the specters away. She needed someone to distract her from dwelling on the incident, but if he left there would be no one. She held on tight to his apron and pulled on his heartstrings.

“I have an idea,” he whispered into her soft hair. He slowly extracted himself from her grasp, but kept a hold of her hand so she wouldn't feel completely abandoned. He stood and reached for a book from the bookshelf they had been starring at all this time, but he hadn't really looked at it until now. He ran his free forefinger over the spines until he found what he was looking for, then turned and sat next to her again holding the book up so she could see the title. Pride and Prejudice.

“You read this very carefully, and don't skip a single word. I promise I'll be back before you get to page one hundred. Deal?”

His lips moved against her hair and her goosebumps were back. He extricated himself and picked out a book for her. She nodded dumbly and ran her hands over the matte cover not really reading the title through her swimming eyes.

She wanted to say that he should remember to come back. She wanted to agree to reading the book. She wanted to say a lot of things, but finally settled on something simple and watery. "Be safe."

Ghost folded in on herself even more and cracked open the book to see the first page. Pride and Prejudice. It was a classic, supposedly, but she'd never read it. She dabbed at her face again and determinedly started to read. The sooner she got to page 100, the sooner he would be back. He said so. And so it was true.

The back door would stay open. She scrubbed at her eyes and knew she wasn't going to make it very far into the book at all.

The back door would have to be locked. There was no way he was letting any strangers wander in while he was gone. Ghost would stay safe until he got back, he was determined. She was already opening the book obediently.

“Read carefully, I'm going to quiz you when I get back,” he warned as he leaned over her to turn on a light on the counter. He couldn't let her ruin her eyes reading in the dark, just like he couldn't let her stay here without a locked door to protect her.

>>>"Be safe."

“I shall be,” Sebastian promised, then slipped back out through the employee rooms. “I'm locking you in and borrowing your keys, if that's okay,” he called back to her as he collected the keys from the table where he'd set them earlier. “I expect you to stay safe as well while I'm gone.” He wouldn't be gone long enough to merit a real 'goodbye' so he didn't say one this time.

Her mouth opened at the mention of her keys, but closed it again. He was a trusted friend. He had every right to borrow her keys. And besides, she had promised not to go anywhere. She opened her mouth again to say all that, but ended up just closing it again. All her mouth opening and closing was a little fish like.

She blinked rapidly to clear the excess water and focused very hard on the first page.

[/i][/ul]She rolled her lower lip into her mouth and wiped her eyes. She continued to read in the light of the bar's splash lighting. She huddled in her damp clothes in the island of brightness and tried to focus.

[/i][/ul]If he was going to quiz her... did that mean Sebastian had read this for himself?

It was a seven minute jog to the place he'd left his clothing. Another eight minutes saw him dressed and back to the site of the calamity. He retained his human shape for the purpose of keeping his opposable thumbs to help himself climb, but it unfortunately meant talking a few extra minutes of travel time. He doubled back through the alley again, but by now Ghost's friends and the green eyed villain were gone. Into the hole he went, not bothering to give much of an explanation to the rescue workers other than the miracles he performed healing burnt and broken skin in the muck and mire of the sewer below the street.

Sebastian healed as quickly as he could, stretching his ability as far as it could go. The victim's faces blurred together; they weren't important. He could only see Ghost's face. He forgot their injuries as soon as he finished healing them, remembering only that Ghost still needed him back. He raced against the sun that crawled across the small opening in the little hole in the ground. Not soon enough, he was using the last of his strength to climb back up the ladder and start walking back. If anyone thanked him, his ears did not hear.

Somehow he managed to stumble his way through two very quick stops on the way back to the bookstore, he hardly even was able to remember what he had purchased by the time he was out the door again. Finally, he reached the back door again. He'd come full circle. His hands trembled from exhaustion as he fit the key into the lock, but he managed to turn it and stumble inside with his packages.

“It's me,” he called, in case there had been any doubt as to who had let themselves in. As he went, he dropped the keys back on their table and his purchases in their environmentally unfriendly plastic bags on the little table next to Ghost's couch. Then he sat. He almost felt like it was only sheer determination that had gotten him back here; he probably should have collapsed at least a block ago.

She got to page twenty before she wondered how much time had passed. Her weight had wholly been on her tail bone and she needed to stretch her legs. Once she'd put the book down, her hands were freed for tea. It was much cooler now and there was no chance of burning. It also meant that it's comfort was quite less than it usually was.

She checked the clock despite the fact that she did not know when Sebastian had left. She cleaned up the tea and started making a fresh pot. She sat back on the couch. She frowned. She fidgeted and picked up the book and put it down again. She wished she could sleep.

Finally settling back onto couch with the book and a fresh cup of tea, she read on.

She jumped when the door opened and spilled cold tea on her now mostly dry pants.

"It's me." He called and she was dabbing a little confusedly at her pants by the time he dropped some bags and came to flop into the seat next to her. Ghost's eyes widened as she looked over him. His skin was streaked with the streets. Grit and all manner of muck made his white skin and hair a sort of muddled and dirty color. And he was wearing clothes. Proper clothes, not a toga in sight.

Ghost rescued the book from the floor, she'd quite lost her place, but that didn't matter. "I'll make tea." She got up and danced around the bar. Ghost put on a pot to boil and grabbed a fresh towel and dampened it before returning and offering it to Sebastian. "Thanks." Seemed a bit of an understatement, but it was a starting place at least.

Belatedly, Sebastian realized how very dirty was. He probably was leaving spots all over the couch her customers were supposed to use.

“Sorry,” he stood again, muscles and bones creaking like he was a hundred when he was currently only in his late twenty-ish body. He brushed off his spot on the couch the best he could.

>>>"I'll make tea."

That reminded him that he still had treasures to show her. “Better make mine a green tea. I bought Chinese food. At least, the sign promised it was both Chinese and food.” He doubted the verisimilitude of the restaurant's advertisement, but at this point it didn't much matter. There was one container of sweet and sour chicken, which the worker there had promised that everyone liked,another that held veggies and tofu in some kind of brown sauce, and all the rice that two people could ever want.

“We've also both managed to ruin perfectly good outfits today, so I made one more stop on the way. I figured we could both do with something more comfortable and less dirt” and blood “encrusted.” Sebastian held up his purchases for her inspection; for her, a dark blue sweatshirt that had a pattern of stars on one sleeve, a yellow t-shirt with the Chinese character for “luck”, and a pair of black sweatpants with a pink stripe down the side. They were the softest and most comfortable looking things he could find.

“For the record, this doesn't count as the shirt I owe you,” he punctuated his sentence with a yawn. He was still standing, but it wasn't a good idea. If he stood still chances were he would fall over, so he either needed to keep moving to keep upright or give up on staying upright at all. “If you don't mind, I'll go change,” he held up the final bag that contained a gray New York Yankees sweatshirt, a plain white t-shirt, and a pair of red plaid flannel pants in his size. “I don't want to ruin any more of the upholstery.”