Abigail Hart missed her home.

Not the tiny streets of her birth place or the bustling streets of London. No. She missed Wales.

At night she dreamt of darkness, splinted by faces she knew and faces she didn't. She saw her mother, a vision of herself thirty years down the line with the same dirty blonde hair and hazel eyes. But her face was harsh and drawn and Abby could never remember a time when she hadn't looked that way. Her mother had been bitter for far too many years, angry at everyone but herself because her marriage had ended, destroyed by her own hands and one night spent with a boy half her age.

Abby had never known that kind of bitterness in her life, but she felt it now, sat by lake at the back of Redfern Manor.

It's your fault, she thought. It's your fault that dad left. It's your fault that I hated you too much to stay. I left my home because of you.

Too many dreary years had been spent in a town she hated. She may have been born there, but she had never settled in the small Lincolnshire town they had returned to after leaving Swansea. Her brother had loved it; the sense of belonging, the kinship, the peace. Chris liked seeing familiar faces wherever he went, and so did Abby. They just weren't the faces she wanted to see.

She had rebelled against the move every step of the way. She clung to her thick Welsh accent while her father and Chris succumbed to the Northern dialect. She wore the bright rainbow colours of her home, misplaced as they were amidst the dull stone buildings of Lincolnshire. She even tried not to make friends, but that had been more effort than it was worth. Abby was naturally curious about people.

It was her curiosity that had landed her here. It was beautiful, this hidden paradise, but it was not her home. She could never return there now, not with this alien power pulsing beneath her skin.

It stirred, as if roused by her thoughts of it. It swelled out, hot and heavy, until her breath was short with panic and she was tearing up clumps of grass with her hands, her bright bangles jangling.

She hated this. The loss of control. This magic was eating her up from the inside and Abby wanted rid of it. It wasn't hers. It was never supposed to be hers.

"What have you done?" she whispered, but the breeze carried her words away as if to taunt her, as if to prove that her question would never be heard or answered.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, dipping into memories that had not been lost to her madness.

There. She could see him now. Her lover, with his short black hair and grey eyes. He was always so calm, she remembered, so controlled, but passionate in a way she had never known. How had it done? How had he managed to tame that power and make it his own? It was something she would never be able to do.

But the memory served its purpose and the magic quietened, slinking back into nothingness. It would always be there, a whisper beneath her skin, but a whisper she could handle. Anything more made her afraid.

The thought struck without consent, bringing with it flashes of memory she thought she had lost. Darkness, a room, sharp blue eyes, an explosion of fireworks. She could remember nothing more, but she knew something terrible had happened that day. Something that had changed her.

Don't think about it. Don't remember. Don't--

"Abby!"

Her eyes snapped open and her hands unclenched, spilling unearthed grass on to the ground. She craned her neck to see Reed approaching.

"Ready?" he said when he reached her. His blood-red hair was wind-blown and his green eyes glittered with excitement. Either her lamia friend had just been riding or he was looking forward to this lesson far more than she was.

Reluctantly she nodded, pushing herself up off the ground. Memories buried for another day, she followed Reed to the gym.

---

She had been back not even a month and already the lessons had begun. Reed had been adamant that she needed training. Not only was he trying to teach her how to fight, but also how to control her powers through meditation. Her friend had learnt a few tricks during his travels.

Everything was going well at first. It was her third lesson of the week and the vampire was teaching her how to use her body to fight, not her powers. He was showing her some of his more dirtier tricks -- a kick to the gnads, a sharp blow to the back and a tight armlock that would render any attacker defenseless. This was the guy that had been taught by some of the best fighters in the world, and here he was, whipping her around the room like she was a sack of spuds.

It wasn't until Reed had her on her knees, arm pinned up behind her back, that everything went wrong. He wasn't even hurting her, but it was enough. Flashes of memory sliced through her like lightening.

Her boy. Her beautiful boy, forced to his knees, one arm locked behind his back like her own, knife pressed to the soft flesh of his neck. She remembered it all. The shadow that had followed them through the dark streets of London. The sight of her lover's eyes as he died, watching her. She could see him now, lips moving in a silent prayer she hadn't understood then. She did now. An incantation. A forbidden spell whispered as he lay dying on the side of the road. Abby had never seen anything like the light that had poured out of him that night, but she remembered it now; remembered that long, silent moment afterward when she had found her lover dead, his killer gone, and herself... different.

Her memories splintered then, separating into darkness and dissipating. She opened her eyes to the harsh lights of the gym.

"Jesus Christ," she heard someone say, and recognised the voice as Reed's. She realised she was laying on her back and turned her head to look at him.

He was looming over her, face horror-stricken. His features had paled and his eyes were dark with alarm. His front teeth had sharpened into fangs she rarely saw.

He took a sharp breath and leaned back a little. "I thought--"

"You thought I'd gone skitzo again," she cut in, voice hoarse. She swallowed heavily, feeling tears pricking her eyes. She didn't want to remember anymore.

She rose slowly from the floor and smiled weakly at the vampire. "Don't worry. I'm already fruitier than a Fruit and Nut bar. I doubt I can get much worse."

Reed scowled and stood. "Don't joke," he said. "You're not funny."

She smirked. "Yeah."

They stood like that for a few, long seconds of silence until Abby found herself voicing the question she never wanted to ask.

"I killed someone, didn't I?"

Reed raised his head at the sound of her soft voice and stared at her solemnly. She could tell he was considering lying to her, but he didn't. He answered her honestly, sadly.

"Yes."

Her head bowed and the sick feeling in her stomach rose up, stealing her breath away. Tears trickled over her cheeks and sobs wracked her small frame. Reed enfolded her in his arms and she cried into his shoulder.

When her sobs became whimpers and her chest hitched with hiccups, she dared herself to ask another question she didn't want the answer to.

"Who?"

Reed went rigid. He said nothing, until she looked up at him, pleading.

"The guy from the hospital."

Oh. Him. The one with the blue eyes. The one that had taken her from her family, who had used her madness against to her, who had kidnapped Reed's friend, Kushial Carrington, not once, but twice. If it hadn't been for the shapeshifter, Abby would still have been in that hospital, locked in that room.

Chris had told her that Reed hadn't known she was there. He thought her parents had found someone to take care of her. Instead they had unknowingly handed her over to him. Nobody knew who he was, or who he had been. All they knew was that he had been a human obsessed with the Night World and anyone connected to it. He worshipped them and loathed them, tried to discover how they worked, all the while convincing them that they were an abomination of God.

Abby remembered little about her years spent at the hospital, but she remembered enough. The dreams kept her awake at night.

"You did the right thing," she heard Reed say suddenly. He had probably mistook her silence for something else, maybe guilt, maybe shame, maybe horror. She felt all of those things, but she wasn't sorry.

"I know," she answered.

---

The lessons continued and Abby grew stronger. She became something she was never meant to be -- a fighter. Control came with a price and she watched as her brother grew ever more distant as the weeks passed.

He had followed her here to keep an eye on her. That, and Chris could never seem to forgive himself for all the things that had happened to her.

But now he was growing restless. He missed his home and he missed his sister.

Sometimes, when she was angry, she wanted to tell him that that girl was dead. They all thought she was the same girl underneath, even Reed. Sweet, innocent Abby. But she wasn't. She hadn't been for a long time. You couldn't spend that amount of time entrapped in your own mind and not come out of it unscathed. Abby had loved and lost and loss was a lesson that changed everyone, no matter who you were.

When her brother looked at her these days, she saw loss in his eyes and it hurt.

So she sent him home. Back to the town he loved, back to their parents who knew nothing past her disappearance. She could never see them again -- too dangerous, too hopeless -- but that didn't mean Chris couldn't.

He promised to visit as they stood together at the airport, but Abby knew he wouldn't. He didn't belong in her world anymore, just as she didn't belong in his.

So she watched him board the plane, watched it take flight, watched him disappear from her life.

And then she turned and walked away.