I had just twisted the knob of my dorm room open only to be greeted by Dustin with a huge smile on his face.

"Guess what I got at the store while you were out!" he said excitedly, deciding to stand in front of the doorway until I apparently answered his riddles three.

"Uh, food, I'm hoping?" I raised an eyebrow at him. I couldn't think of much else we really needed.

Except that when I said that, his eyes widened and I heard him take a sharp breath as he nodded slowly to himself in realization. "Um... what if you made a second guess, even better than that first?"

"So you forgot." I shook my head, reaching an arm to push him out of the way. I wasn't in the mood for games right now. All I wanted to do was come back and eat something, but there wasn't anything, which left me more inclined to lay on my bed than anything. I took about three steps in, when movement caught my eye, causing me to turn. There was something attached to the wall on the right end of the room. Dustin's side.

I squinted at it. "Dustin, are those–"

"Mhm!" He nodded eagerly, stepping forward to point at two, glass tanks shaped with half of a bubble hanging on the wall. Each of them was filled with water, and from there, two fish, one black and purple, the other a pink and blue, with elegant, wavy fins. "Meet our new roommates: Verbeta and Beta Version Two Point O."

My eyes landed on him, then the fish, then back to him. "Isn't there a no pet policy?"

"Well..." he stuck a hand under his hood to scratch at the back of the scruffy mop of his blond hair. "I just passed by them on the way to the store and bought them. But-"

He walked past me, leaning over to tug a sticky note from his wall. There were a few of them set up, I noticed, all with different little reminders in two different sets of handwriting. This one had a loopy, cursive script, the pen a bit smudged from him being a leftie. "I did a little research, and according to the bylaw here, anything in a tank is property, not a pet, so we're good!" Then he looked back at the black fish with a paper labeled: 'Beta v.2.0' taped to the front. "Not that I consider animals property. It's just..."

"Yeah, I got it," I told him, returning to my side quest of flopping onto my mattress, face down. Maybe on a different day I'd care more about betta fish with puns for names, but right now, I couldn't care less. All I'd wanted to do was eat, and with that out of the question, I just wanted to sleep. My body tumbled into it, sinking far more than I remember before I heard a snap, and the cushioning sunk even further under my weight. Wincing, I reached out and grabbed for my pillow, shoving my face into it to muffle the screaming I was about to do.

Moments later, there was another creak, gentler this time though, and sitting at the end of the bed. It was followed by a voice. "... are you okay? What happened?"

My face grew hot, although whether it was from embarrassment or frustration, I didn't know. I turn on my side to face Dustin, taking a deep breath. "You know how my phone was dying this morning?"

He nodded.

"Well I accidentally left it in class this morning, and when I went back to look for it, it was gone. I thought I'd lost it, and Odette tried to help me look for it but..." I let the breath drop down my shoulders with a sigh. "Turns out these two girls stole it and wanted to either use it to blackmail me, or sell it online because I'm famous or whatever."

His eyes shot wide with that before his face fell with a wince. "What? That's so crazy and awful. Why would they even do that?"

"I don't know!" I shot back, harsher than I'd meant. "Money, revenge for the Insurrection, who knows?"

"Yeah, but how is that your fault?" he asked, scooching himself closer to get a good look at my face. "We took down Dekoran before he could hurt anyone, and that includes you. You did the right thing."

"Did I though?" I sat up, glaring not really at him, but through him. "That's what the news wants to tell me, internships want to tell me so I sign up for them, my parents, you..." My hands spread, gesturing at everything, but nothing. "But it doesn't feel that way, and if anything, all this did was prove it."

I focused on him this time, the anger in my chest fading to a different, numb kind of feeling. I welcomed it. "Nothing changed, Dustin. All I did was get all of you hurt, scarred, and crippled for nothing. Security is still down our throats, everyone still hates each other, and..." A fuzzy memory popped into my head of half a conversation. "Didn't you say Witches are going missing around here?"

"Witches and Humans, actually," he clarified. "Because that's the thing Crow, things are improving." He bit his lip. "Well, not that the kidnappings are a good thing. Someone really needs to look into that, but it's not a hate crime, just a regular crime. And security always gets tighter. People used to be able to just run and board a plane with no metal detectors a hundred years ago, and look at where we are now." He shrugged, grey eyes looking downcast. "That's just how things are. People hate each other, and it's a slow, slow process that isn't fixed with a single battle. Life isn't like a movie, Crow."

"I know that," I answered, though I could manage much more than a monotone. At some point, my hands had come to grip the sheets, balling the fabric in my hands despite how much that made the scars ache.

"Not to be rude, but I... I don't think you do." Dustin shifted in place, turning back over the side of the hand, putting his hands in his lap. "I almost feel like you should look into seeing a therapist or something."

A twinge of anger shot through the numbness. "That's what you said yesterday."

"Did I?" Pausing, he rolled back his left jacket sleeve to read at the countless notes scribbled over his skin in pen. He glanced over them, landing on one. "Oh. Sorry."

"It's okay." His weird memory wasn't anything new for me, so why having to clarify this a second time was starting to irk me, I didn't know. I did it for him all the time.

"Still," he continued, and the sound of his voice made the clenching move up from my fist until the tension sat in my shoulders, which just annoyed me even further. "If anything, that just makes it more valid. I can recommend you mine, if you want. Granted, she's online, but-"

"Dustin." It came as a growl through grit teeth. "I don't need to see a therapist."

"I don't mean it as an insult. There's nothing wrong with n-"

"Dustin!" I shouted, moving to stand off the bed. "I said drop it! This is the third fucking time now!"

He fell completely silent, shrinking back into his hoodie with a desperate look of fear on his face. A tremor ran through him as he nodded again. "Okay."

Something about the look made me stop, my stomach growing heavy with Dustin sitting there, looking more terrified than he had even when we were breaking into the school or fighting off waves of cult members. Granted, there were always two modes to Dustin. I knew that already, but pretty much the only consistent thing about him was how nothing ever seemed to get to him. He either smiled through things or shrugged it off with a pair of headphones. Not... not this.

"Sorry," I muttered, unable to look at him. Instead my gaze wandered to his side of the room, settling on the first of the two fish. Verbeta, according to the sticky note on it. I watched the black fish swim around, picking at the purple pebbles and darting through the fuzzy, green plant Dustin had put in there.

"I-It's fine," I heard him reply behind me.

There was a shuffle as he limped over next to me, face entirely on the second fish. We both watched them for I don't know how long, the room ridiculously quiet until Dustin turned to look at me. "So... are we going to the party later?"

"What?" I glanced at him, at the soft smile he was trying to give me, but I didn't need my Empathy to tell he didn't fully feel it. I really wasn't in the mood to leave the dorm, much less spend the night peopling at a party, but as my eyes trailed down, I could still see his hands shaking ever so slightly.

I did that.

"Yeah man, of course." I scrubbed at my face, moving to check the time on my phone before remembering that that was exactly what put me in the mood in the first place. With a small groan, I placed it on the charger next to my bed, making sure the base was plugged in this time. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."

☾☆☽

The night wind ruffled through my hair as I continued to pull my broom through the sky with Dustin right behind, arms around my waist. It was a pain, trying to keep one hand on the broom's shaft while the other held up the map on my phone. I squinted at the bright screen with its dotted arc like a compass, trying to direct me to the right and down.

"I think we're close," I explained to Dustin, though I guess I didn't have to, given that I could just make out the start of Rutgers' campus in the distance. It was hard to miss, especially the one building with a weird, trapezoid-like top floor balancing on a rounded base, which was good, because I was ninety-nine percent sure that that was where Blyke said to meet them at.

Moments later, a bright light cut through the sky, filling my eyes like someone turned on their high beams. Except that this was a broom, and I was soaring a good several hundred feet off the ground. Then it turned off. Then on again, over and over.

"Hey!" a shout called out from below. "Hey is that you guys?"

"Blyke, are you stupid?" a girl was shouting back at him. "You're going to blind them!"

"I'm sure they'll be fine."

I closed my eyes, breathing out harshly through my nose as I prepped to land. Even so, I could stop a small smile from pulling at my face as I moved the broom closer to the ground, allowing Dustin to ease himself off it before dropping the cold feeling of magik in my chest. I turned to Blyke, though it was hard to make him out in the dark. "Actually, you made it incredibly difficult to see, and you're lucky there was nothing around for me to crash into." I raised an eyebrow at him, curiosity starting to overtake my frustration of having the rage of a thousand suns shoved into my face. "And what was that anyway?"

"Please don't as-" Gwen started.

"I am so glad you asked!" Blyke immediately interrupted, pulling something out of the pocket of his favorite bomber jacket. With a click, it turned on and I could see it was a flashlight, the light immediately catching his black hair spiked in all directions and matching black eyes. It seemed he'd ditched the red baseball cap for the party, but he hadn't dressed up much otherwise.

He then aimed the flashlight at the ground, clicking the button again and again as the light grew brighter than I felt should be legal. "I found a tactical flashlight online last week, with three thousand lumens. Look at it!" He continued to shine it on the ground, making us watch it and the surrounding thousand or so feet it lit up.

"...Congrats. It's an obnoxiously bright flashlight," I told him, not sure what he expected.

"Oh no," he answered, a brazen grin on his face. "I don't think you're understanding the full scope of this. Feel it." He handed me the flashlight.

The metal felt smooth and cool in my hands. That is, until my fingers moved up slightly further than the handle to feel an intense, hot burn.

"Ow!" I thrust it back at him. "Okay, fine. It's an obnoxiously hot flashlight."

He continued to smirk. "And what does my specialty let me do with thermal energy again?"

Oh, I thought as he held the light under his chin, dipping a tan hand into the light. He didn't have to hold it there for long before a taste like chocolate-covered pretzels hit me, his magik rearing up to shift the energy into a ball of fire that he drew back out of the beam of light.

"Tactical fire igniter!" he cackled, the lighting under his face almost making him look out of his mind. Then again, he didn't need much to do that, I supposed.

"All right. That's enough."

Gwen leaned over, and I looked up to see that she'd tied her long, blond hair back into a high ponytail, showing off the lavender underside she must have dyed in the year I hadn't seen her. She'd also traded her usual long, sage blouse for a tight-fitting, maroon dress for the night and sneakers for wedged flats. In fact, the only thing that hadn't changed were the three, clawed scars running down her right cheeks, the sleek, taunt lines shining in the light before she clicked the flashlight off. "Stop being a pyromaniac and let's get going if you don't want to be late to this party you were so set on."

Blyke slipped the flashlight back into his pocket before leaning over to poke the back of her bare shoulders. "But I'm your pyromaniac, right?"

"Don't push it," she warned him, although her tone was taunting. "I've been single before and I'll do it again."

"That's what they always say." Blyke jokingly rolled his eyes, but at least he started moving in the direction I assumed the dorms were located.

"Really," I retorted before I could stop myself, getting a smirk of my own as I got caught up in the banter. "Who's 'they'?"

"The little, invisible, non-binary person that sits on his shoulder. Didn't you know?" Dustin cut in with a laugh.

"Oh yes, of course." Blyke nodded along with a straight face. "Just one of the many people I keep on me at all times."

Something about his face got a laugh out of me, Dustin and the rest quickly following. The lights of the dorm building were nearing now, putting everyone in a much better view than the small flickering flame in Blyke palm. I could see everyone chuckling, even Gwen shaking her head trying to hide her own smile, and something about it eased some of the tightness that had sat in my stomach ever since I'd talked with Dustin before. I hadn't really noticed it in the past year, most of my time spent preparing for college, working, or sleeping the day away, but...

I missed this.

Finally, we reached the door of the building, and Gwen pulled it open to let us into a bright, glassy room of the lobby. "So, what have you guys been up to as of late? It's been a while."

And with that, the feeling came squirming back, bringing with it the image of Dustin's nervous face. "Well, uh..."

"I bought fish!" Dustin piped up. "Do you want to see pictures?"

"Oh, like salmon or something? Sure." Blyke leaned over as Dustin pulled out his phone, slowing his ridiculously long legs down to keep pace with Dustin as we headed towards the elevator. The party was supposedly on the second floor, but I could already hear the heavy thud of a bass.

"Not that kind of fish, genius," I said, pressing the button to ease the doors shut behind us. "The pet kind."

"Yeah." Dustin nodded. "They're bettas, so I named them Verbeta and Beta Version Two Point O."

I turned back to find Blyke snorting at that while Gwen took a deep breath. "And this is why I always named our pets, not you."

"Aw come on. You gotta admit those are pretty good." He elbowed her a bit, and she finally broke into a smile, shoulders relaxing.

In fact, now that I was looking at her, she seemed a lot less uptight than I remembered, shoulders relaxed, skin showing in a more revealing outfit than normal... my eyes drifted to the two-toned colors of her blond and purple hair again. It suited her.

I continued to watch as she and Blyke moved ahead of us, jokingly bickering over some random topic, with him making her laugh and her making him slow down and think at her pace.

Slowly I turned to Dustin beside me, watching with a soft but proud smile. "I think I get why you wanted to see them so much now."

He nodded. "They needed this."

I almost missed what he said as Blyke opened the door, followed by shouts and 'what's ups', but I still caught it, giving him a sharp nod back. "Yeah."

Then I turned back to the door, at the bright blue and green lights flashing behind where Gwen was entering. A deep sound rumbled through the walls, causing my eardrums to bang out in time with an ear-guitar and an entirely distorted ear-band, but I couldn't be bothered by the pain. Instead I shot one last look at Dustin, and headed in.