Is there a situation when it is appropriate to be unkind?

It's not like I'm brave. I'm not. Not like them anyways.

I guess it can seem that way, sometimes, from the outside looking in. They seen what I've been and what I've done and who I used to be, and wonder and worry about the who I am now and think -- she's brave and she's strong. Because there isn't any other way she would have made it this far.

But the truth of it is, we're still different. If someone had pulled me aside, and gotten past the part where I told them they were crazy? Had explained just what those five years would be like, what exactly it would mean? I would have run away. As far and as fast as I could from everything that would send me there. I'd still be home, and my folks would still be happy and yes. For Daddy's sake, there would probably be a baby or two in that chest of drawers by now. And it'd be safe.

But even when I got there, it still wasn't about being brave. It was whatever got me from one day to the next. There were so many of them that was nothing but sameness washing over you with the double suns that all I had to tell them apart was notches in the stone. And there were some so -- not that I can't even forget them, not matter how much easier it would make things. I did what I had to. There wasn't a chance to be brave. There wasn't a choice.

I did what I had to.

So I guess there's still a part of me, every morning, waking and wondering if they're going to figure out just how different we are. How I'm not like them, no matter how much we all pretend. It isn't that I don't try. That I don't do everything I possibly can to help. But, well. You just got to look to see how different they are. And how special.

How brave.

I would never, ever want to hurt them. Never. But somehow I have.

Wesley with my words and Lorne with a knife -- though I swear that didn't hurt him anything like knowing the person that held it -- and Charles. Just by being me I hurt Charles. He saw first, I think, before any of the others how I'm not everything they thought. Sometimes when I want to feel better about myself I think that no one ever could be all that. But then I remember what I see in them, and I don't like my thoughts at all anymore. I was my only company for a long, long while. You would think I would be a bit better at it.

So I've hurt myself too. Wesley and Lorne and Charles and even Jasmine. Knowing what I know about her, what I've seen in her and how I loved her and I can't help but think how unkind I've been. How I've betrayed her. So much my thoughts are hurting all over again, because I'm smarter than this. It shouldn't have taken this long and there's more than such a thing as feeling loyalty just because you're told to, or feeling it for someone because they've earned it. Day in and day out, night in and night out they've made most anything possible.

I'm about to shoot her, but that doesn't matter.

She told me.

I'm about to shoot him too, and it does matter.

He showed me.

I just hope that it works, and that maybe even a little after that he forgives me. Because it isn't about being brave. It's about believing. It is about what gets you up, and puts you to bed and makes the days more than just a tick on the wall between. I might not like my thoughts, but I understand them. You've got to take care of what's worth believing in.

I believe in them.

I'm going to help them.

And it'll be ok.

It has to be ok.

Black and White

"Lorne?"

Fred slipped into Lorne's office on feet used to getting around quietly. Of course, the subtle entry then seemed that much more defeated by the loud echo of the door clicking back into place. Both her hands settled behind her and wrapped around the handle. She was either chastising it for being so noisy, or steadying her own resolve. It was a matter up for interpretation, and most likely the opinions would vary depending on who you worked for.

"Do you really think we don't know what they're doing? Splitting us up again, making sure we all got them when we were in separate rooms?"

They'd waited a week. A week for everyone to get settled. To get used to their cars and their offices, their budgets and their tools. Until the phone was an already more tempting way to talk, as opposed to crossing an entire building. An entire gianormous building.

"Did they think that we wouldn't talk? That we didn't know what we were getting into?"

It seemed as if Lorne was finally catching up with her. He smiled, and Fred stepped closer. It was an old, familiar habit in a new, distracting place. It felt good.

"Well I don't really know Freddles," he offered. "I don't really think I put my nose on that until now."

He was lying.

Fred didn't need to be like Lorne to know it. And actually, she was all right with that. It wasn't as if he was directly trying to manipulate her. Not really. Which already made him better than most of the people in the building. And Fred didn't think he was a part of some already-formed plan to....

But he wanted this. Fred reckoned he might even want this more than any of the rest of him. Looking at her friend she wondered, really wondered, about how much he missed his home.

Not Pylea. They were on the same page about that. But Caritas. So much had happened so fast, and he'd had to move on quicker than anyone should from something that mattered that much. It was so much of who he was. The seeing and the talking and the making things better, in his own way. Sure he was still taking care of them. Fred never doubted that he was looking after her. But a part of Lorne was never happier than when he was working the room.

Wolfram & Hart? Was a really, really big room.

She understood him wanting a little of that back. So she figured he already had too.

"Well I did think," Fred declared with no small amount of conviction. She'd learned from the best after all. "And I do know."

She thought small army of lawyers that'd come to find her in the lab, paperwork in hand. They hadn't seemed to mind when she left after, all the documents still in her possession. As if they knew, no matter what, they could find them.

They could find her.

It was part of the deal after all.

Fred dropped her small cache of papers on Lorne's desk, where it matched up with an almost identical file. A few pieces of stark white, heavily bonded paper scattered free. On each of them was her signature, the black ink seemingly twice as dark as the text she was agreeing to.

They'd find them. She had no doubt about that.

With a small, precise nod Fred left the room.