(Takes place after Recompense and the Freaky Friday plot and before Home Is Where the Hurt Is.)

He couldn't be certain that it had been the strangest two weeks of his life, but changing into someone else and then changing back again with no explanation definitely ranked in the top ten for oddest fortnight. Of course, once he was back in his own body again, his old obligations returned and he was two weeks behind on all the things he was supposed to be doing.

Getting ready to launch a business was much more complicated than he had originally imagined, especially since he was doing it more alone than he had expected. On top of trying to become a businessman was all the other roles he was currently trying to fill as advisor, on-call healer, student, and friend. Add the stress of moving homes and the quagmire of immigration papers he only half understood and you get one very strung out unicorn.

Going back the the Sanctuary, he definitely felt like he no longer belonged. He had offered his healing services to the Sanctuary members on an on-call basis, so he assumed he was allowed on the property. Isabel had shifted all blame for Syn's mysterious 'death' onto Garrett who apparently had been rather higher up on the Order's hierarchy than the healer had been. With an apology and a promise to keep patching them up in times of need, Sebastian had apparently been forgiven. At least officially. He was still wary of the reception Abyss would give him if they ran into each other. The last time they had met Sebastian had been thrown into a building.

Lisa was, as per usual, at the front desk. Her hair was perfectly pinned and the desk was immaculate and shining. At her raised eyebrow, Sebastian gave her a quick explanation that he was here to get his things and a single white rose to decorate her desk. She had always been kind to him and she deserved a little appreciation now and then.

It was a relatively quiet day, and he didn't encounter any other Sanctuary residents in the hallways leading to his bedroom. It was just as well. He was only here to collect his things.

His room looked sadly empty after he finished packing his trunk. The bed with its generic spread and the desk with no newspaper or glasses on it, the empty closet standing open and the windowsill without plants all looked sad to see him go. It had been a good room while it had been his, but it was now ready for whomever needed it next.

The one trunk did not do much to fill in the large apartment. The emptiness of it only served to remind him of Garrett's absence. He had heard bits and pieces of what had happened from the accounts of Saturn and Mars at the Order family dinner, but there wasn't enough information there to do him any good.

The only useful bit of knowledge he had been able to extract from the two red brothers was that Garrett was somewhere in Kansas. They failed to mention, however, whether he was in the city or the state of Kansas and the unicorn hadn't known to clarify at the time. Since then, he had been spending as much time as he could calling every hospital (and morgue) he could in both the city and the state bearing the name of his only clue. Thus far, none had been able to identify any of their patients (or cadavers) as Garrett Wills.

He felt like a failure. He shopped for furniture to fill the empty spaces, but failed to find any chairs or couches that he thought would look right in the apartment. None of them could fill that empty space in quite the right way.

If it wasn't for Ghost, the somber mood he was in might have sunk into despair form which he couldn't escape. Thoughts and glimpses of her were like a breath of fresh air to a man drowning. It was good to have a friend to walk with during these rather depressing times. Drudging through the mountain of paperwork she brought for him didn't seem nearly as daunting, the situation Garrett was undoubtedly in seemed a little more hopeful, and the future looked a little brighter.

Whilst looking for chairs for the clinic's waiting room he came across an old Singer sewing machine. It reminded him of the shirt he still owed her. Using that to make it would certainly be easier and possibly neater looking than stitching the entire thing be hand. He purchased it and had it brought up the apartment. Even that one piece of furniture made the place feel a little less empty.

He felt inspired, and walked over to the fabric outlet to pick out a pattern and fabric. He found a pattern for a flowy blouse that the sales lady called a 'peasant top'. It was a style that looked similar to old fashioned shirts European women used to wear, and apparently they were back in style today.

The fabric selection was large. Being an outlet store meant that there were a plethora of fabric types, colors, and patterns to choose from. The silk area alone was two aisles long, with shelves stacked three high up to the ceiling with bolts of fabric in every hue. Choosing just was the most difficult part; he was tempted to walk over to the book store and offer to make Ghost a whole wardrobe.

About halfway down the first aisle he had already found twenty things he thought would look beautiful on Ghost. At the end of the first aisle he was up to about thirty. Halfway down the second aisle he had lost track of where his first ten options were. Three fourths of the way down, a sales lady came to ask him if he needed help making a selection. No, he assured her he could find something on his own. He'd already found twenty-five, or was it thirty-two options by now? Part way down the third aisle the colors and patterns started to blur together. He could have sworn he'd seen the exact same fabrics already.

Finally, at the end of the third aisle (which was actually the first aisle a second time through) he spotted a pale bluish purple corner just barely sticking out between a solid silvery grey and a royal blue stripe. He trotted over to investigate. Once he had wrestled the bolt free from the jam packed shelf, he could see that it was sheer and patterned ever so subtly with hydrangea flowers. The light blue violet was the exact opposite of honey, which he thought would bring out Ghost's eyes, if he remembered his color theory correctly. The sales lady swooped in once again with a bolt of silk that exactly matched the hue of the patterned fabric, but was solid. 'Perfect for the lining' she announced as she breezed them over to the table where she would measure and cut his selections for him.

He worked on sewing the shirt in his fee time, but he found that he didn't have very much of it. Getting the clinic ready was not his only business. After he tired himself for the day with scraping, patching, painting, scrubbing, mending, sawing, and hammering he drove out to Mondragon Labs to do his duty as advisor to Slate. He figured that if he was to give advice, he should at least have all the information that the person he was advising had. He read anything he could on the history of the medical company, the faction, and its members. Where there wasn't a paper file, he interviewed the staff and Slate himself.

Mondragon Labs was a very busy place, so most of the interviews took place during other activities. Parts of the evenings were often spent in the training rooms, where he worked out with the staff at the same time he discussed business. Skills that had gone rusty and muscles that had become soft were worked until they were back up to scratch. At the same time he got to know the employees and his questions were answered.

At the end of the day, he went to the extensive library to find any books on genetics, evolution, mutations, and biology that he could lay his hands on. These he took home and read until he fell asleep, physically and mentally exhausted.

The reading material left him with more questions than it answered. Science had come a long way in the last hundred years, and there was much in the books that Sebastian didn't understand. He brought his questions to Doctor Ingram, but the crotchety doctor quickly lost patience with him.

“You're going about this all backwards,” he groused at the unicorn shifter. “You can't just jump up to the top floor in the field of medicine. You have to climb the stairs all the way up in order to understand what's in those confounded books you are reading. You've got no building blocks for that knowledge, so there is no use asking your questions. Any first year medical student could answer what you've been asking, so go find one of those instead of bothering me. I have work to do.”

Ingram didn't slam the door in Sebastian's face, but it was only because the single horned healer wasn't standing in the door frame. As the doctor huffingly turned back to his ever important task, Sebastian got up from the stool he'd been sitting on and let himself out the door. Now was probably not the time to ask about how that famous artificial heart had been made. Not when the doctor's blood sugar was so low; Ingram always got like that when he forgot to eat lunch. Instead, the unicorn man trotted down to the canteen and put in a request for a plate of plain spaghetti noodles to be delivered to the laboratory.