An earlier draft of the first three chapters was published as Aesthetics. This story is now complete and will be updated as chapters are edited. Many thanks to Arionette and Felle, without whom this story wouldn't have been finished.

The train on screen twisted and broke as fire filled the windows and travelers beat uselessly on the panes, but it was the soft boom and shatter of glass that broke Sae. The sound filled her brain, driving out the sight of her director, the smell of stale sake, the feel of carpet beneath her feet. There was only the groaning of steel and the feel of flame as the apartment burned around her once more.

Sae sucked in a breath. Not here, not now, when she had spent three years rebuilding her life and proving she belonged in this office. Another breath as cold sweat formed on her temple. She gripped her cane hard enough for the pressure to hurt and concentrated on the throb in her right leg. Pain was her lifeline, a reminder that she was alive in the present and not trapped in a charred building with her father's corpse. She hadn't been able to feel anything then.

Her director didn't seem to have noticed. "The railway company and the Ministry of Transport knew about this months ago. Heads will roll, all the way to the top."

She took more steadying breaths under the guise of thoughtfulness and the present gradually reasserted itself and she was once more in the director's office. The steps outside made it difficult for her to enter, and there would surely be other difficulties, but she was determined to make it her office one day, and to do that she needed to be of use. Not as an avenging angel or icon who promised justice that didn't exist but as a problem solver. What did he need? What the entire government needed: the reason why people lost their minds at the drop of a hat. This was nineteenth case in two years. If a reason wasn't found soon, even career civil servants could find themselves fired.

He was looking at her, searching, expecting a reply. "It's all connected," she said with only the slightest quaver in her voice. "Someone wants to cause chaos. Perhaps to bring down the government. Perhaps for something worse."

"Perhaps." Once his noncommittal response to everything would have infuriated her, but it was better than the treatment most gave her in this office. "You would need proof. Check for patterns and see if you turn up anything." His voice lightened, but it sounded false. "You and I haven't had a chance to go out for drinks. I'll make sure that they serve water."

"No!" Everything seemed louder when she was recovering from a flashback. A bar would be torture. And that was before the five seconds of dead silence that would ensue as the patrons stared at her. "That is, I have another meeting."

"You know, Niijima, there is more to this job than interrogations and trials. Certain social niceties that we endure to make our superiors happy. When I accepted your transfer from Organized Crime, it was with the understanding that you were prepared to undertake the full duties of this position."

Her eyes widened. All those long months of rehab, the painkillers, the reconstructive surgeries, they could not be undone by drinks! "I am, sir."

His eyes glittered the way hers once had when she had been about to spring the trap on still-unsuspecting yakuza bosses. "The Deputy Minister's grandson attends Kosei on an art scholarship and they're holding an exhibit to mark the beginning of the school year. The department directors and a few promising prosecutors are attending to show moral support. I understand you were an art lover. I expect you to be there."

That bastard. But she dared not refuse. Sae bowed as best she could. "Of course, sir. Now, if you'll excuse me."

The steps seemed steeper and the marble floor a longer drop as Sae stared down. Art lover. That was one way to put it. She had been very stupid, once upon a time, and why not? She had been the brilliant and glittering Champion of Justice that the public had looked to to save them from organized crime that was threatening to choke the life from the country, the brilliant and beautiful woman who had appeared on morning talk shows to tell little girls that they too could be lawyers. And she had known it. She had been like a child in a candy store, gobbling up every art piece that took her fancy. And more than one of the artists. She could still remember Benjiro's hands in her hair and the way he had begged for some relief that first night. And she remembered her own smile as she realized that the girl who had rode to school on a hand-me-down bike finally had power.

She took a step down and didn't fall. That was something. The prosecutors on the landing fell silent as she approached. Sae threw her shoulders back and raised her head high as she marched down the remaining stairs. Even when the whispers started up again.

"What were they in their so long. You don't think...?"

"Nah. There's 'dirty old man' and then there's just weird."

"Half of her is still a total babe."

Sae ground her teeth. She had been hearing innuendo like that since middle school when she was at the top of the class. It had never mattered. It didn't matter now. She would climb to the top again and again. As many times as it took.

A boy sat on a bench in the lobby. His school uniform was a stark white in the sea of dark suits. He was tall, even taller than she was, with fine features that looked as if they had been carved from porcelain. Was he a witness? They didn't usually bring minors into the office without a guardian, unless you counted Akechi. He met the curious stares of the prosecutors rushing past with stares of his own. It was a strange sight and infinitely preferable to reliving her trauma or wondering how she was going to manage an art exhibit. Sae found a chair to sit in. Just to rest. For a minute.

It was then that she noticed the sketchbook in his lap. She scowled. Another art student then. And from Kosei, if she remembered the uniform correctly. May he and the deputy minister's grandson have a long life painting dogs or somesuch. Her gaze traveled to his hands folded in his lap. He certainly had the fingers for it: long, pale, and slightly roughened from years of holding a paintbrush or pencil. Curiosity satisfied, Sae gripped her cane to stand.

And then he saw her. His gray eyes snapped into focus as he seized the sketchbook. He all but ripped the pages in his haste to find a blank sheet. Electricity arced from him and pinned her where she was. She knew that look. It was the same look Benjiro and a half-dozen others had worn. She was an inspiration.

His pencil scratched on the paper, unnaturally loud to her sensitized ears. Something sharper than the usual dull ache settled across her skin. The attention she had enjoyed before her father's death hadn't vanished. It had become twisted and perverted. Fetishists leering at her. No doubt the boy he thought capturing her scars would be an interesting technical exercise. Or worse, if the set of his jaw was any indication.

The pain in her leg intensified, warning her. The unfortunate truth was that her energy had to be rationed these days, poured like medication in a measuring cup. This highschooler wasn't worth it. Whatever he created would go no farther than a portfolio he submitted to a teacher that would hopefully give him a long lecture about the proper portrayal of disability in physical media.

"There you are, Yusuke!"

Sae stiffened. She hadn't seen Madarame in person since before the fire, but time had changed him very little. The long hair tied back, the artfully distressed kosode. Even she had to admit Sayuri was the greatest painting of the last fifty years, but the modesty was almost too much. Benjiro, Ayumi, and the other artists of their coterie had been "affronts to tradition." Even Sae herself, with her blazers and refusals to be put in a little box was suspect. Not that tradition had stopped him from sleeping with a Diet member's wife or screaming bloody murder when Sae had had her indicted for money laundering.

"My apologies, Sensei." Yusuke scrambled to his feet and bowed hastily. He gestured at Sae wildly as his voice dropped to a whisper.

Sensei? She decided she felt a little sorry for Yusuke. But of course Madarame and his exploits were no longer her concern. If she were going to rest here for a bit, she might as well make it productive. She fished out her notebook from her bag. A train crash. The Minister of Transport with his head on the chopping block. Who benefited from his fall? Who benefited from the other shutdowns? Look for patterns, her director had said. There were always patterns in these long-lasting criminal enterprises, whether the work of one person or a cabal. There would be a money trail to follow. It was chasing the yakuza all over again. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered.

She inhaled. She bothered because the alternative was being imprisoned at home while others stole glory that should be hers. Proving right every well-meaning physical therapist who had given her a pitying look and told her she would be much happier living off royalties from the Champion of Justice animation. She had two strikes against her now, not just being a woman who had wanted more than marriage and motherhood. Solving the mental shutdowns would silence her detractors forever.

"Excuse me," said a deep voice as Sae felt a presence loom over her.

She looked up. Yusuke's hands were outstretched in supplication. This close, she could see that he was not merely slim, but gaunt. His uniform seemed to hang off him. His eyes though, were possessed of a familiar mania, bright and filled with paintings. She would have followed those eyes around the world once. "Forgive me, but I'm not sure how to begin," he said.

More pain as if to remind her that the woman who would have been enchanted by him was dead. At this rate, she would have to take pain medication tonight. "Don't stammer." She tapped her lapel badge. "You should leave people who are trying to work alone." She couldn't quite keep the snarl from her voice and didn't particularly try. It usually sent gawkers diving for cover.

Not Yusuke. His voice trembled, but he gave no sign of discomfort. "But I can't leave you alone! You are the most extraordinary creature I've seen! Your hands are a part of my search for true beauty!"

As she'd thought: just another deviant looking for something to excite him. "Leave me alone before I—" Sae processed the rest of his speech. "Did you say my hands?"

They looked down at her hands together. Those she had permitted to flatter her for her looks had had so many options that her hands had never received particular attention, but they were pale and unscarred, a hint of what she had been.

"I desire only to capture true beauty. I simply couldn't stay still and silent. You must model for me."

Sae closed her eyes as memory washed over her, unbidden. Hands tugging at her robe. Staring back with a smile because this time the objectification was her choice. Making love afterwords and staring at a finished project in the afterglow. Those who had seen her as only a role model or savior would have been horrified, but she had demanded to be a lover as well. No doubt Madarame would have gotten the vapors just thinking about it. It would be almost amusing to see the look on his protégés face if she told him. A dead woman, she repeated to herself. "No."

"But—"

"Leave her be, Yusuke." Madarame closed the distance to stand beside Yusuke. His smile was warm, his tone just the right note of offended politeness. "The error is mine. He was so taken by you that I have to tell him that you were a great lover of the arts and had provided inspiration to my colleagues in the past." Just for a moment, his smile slipped and in his eyes she saw the hard glint of a predator.

Her eyes narrowed So this was his revenge for the slight against his mistress. There were rumors about what happened to those who crossed him, and great men were the pettiest of all, but she would not be cowed. "You might have told him that I only work with those who earn my trust."

He laughed. "Oh, Yusuke's desires are entirely innocent, aren't they my boy?" He placed a hand on Yusuke's shoulder and Sae wondered if he noticed Yusuke's subtle flinch. "He goes where his desire takes him, searching to grasp something that exists only in dreams."

"Sensei…" Yusuke looked at her. "Please, my mind has been a desert for so long. You must help me."

She stilled. A desert. Another thing this strange boy couldn't know: the long hours staring at the ceiling as she recovered. Desperate to think of something and finding only emptiness. It wasn't the same pain. It couldn't be. He didn't know what it was like to be dead and not dead at the same time. To be abandoned.

Dead, said a small voice within her. I have been dead. But I would like to be alive. She had enjoyed being a model. If she were going to be trapped in a body she didn't want with responsibilities she should never have had to bear, shouldn't she try to salvage what she had loved? This strange, pained boy was giving her that chance. "What would you like me to do for you?"

He blinked at her, his mouth partly open. If Madarame hoped to unleash him on the art world, he had to teach him how to better deal with people. But then Yusuke cleared his throat. "Sensei is not wrong when he says that I'm chasing after something that cannot exist. No mortal can embody perfect beauty. But the artist can blend things together to create an ideal for man to strive for." His voice grew faster and louder as he spoke, until other prosecutors were staring.

Sae raised an eyebrow. "So like a collage, with me as the hands?"

"Exactly." He thought for a moment. "Well, not exactly. I don't want to cut your hands off."

The art press was going to eat him alive.

But Yusuke seemed just as oblivious to the spectators as he did her attempts to get him to go away. "I only wish to do some sketches. A few hours of your time at most. We can work anywhere you like. I have no money for a modeling fee, but you would be doing both me and art a tremendous service. I would be willing to do almost anything to repay you."

Hands. He only wanted her hands. But that was more than anyone else wanted these days, when even her director acted as if he were doing her a favor by letting her do her job. The Champion of Justice had given way to the Detective Prince, and she couldn't imagine ever having a lover again. But she could have this. Take an interest in the next generation and leave a legacy.

Decision made, Sae fished out a business card from the case. "I'm quite busy at the moment, but I check my voicemail regularly."

He took the card and read it. "Special Investigations? How momentous. Why don't I give you my contact information as well? Ah, but what shall I do for scrap paper?" And before she or Madarame could say anything, he was leaning over her again and scribbling at the bottom of her notes, heedless of the content. Yusuke Kitagawa, Apprentice Artist and a phone number below.

"That's enough for now, Yusuke." There was hardness in Madarame's tone. "I suppose I should thank you for this surprising kindness towards my student, Ms. Niijima." He marched Yusuke towards the exit.

Well, that was enough strangeness for one day. Sae stood and limped toward her office. Hours ticked by as fatigue and pain sapped her until she could no longer deny it. Ambition demanded she worked as long and hard as possible, but her body demanded otherwise. Damn Kaneshiro. And damn her.

She had spent more than she should have on the apartment in Yoyogi. Three bedrooms on the ground floor of an apartment building with a vigilant doorman and in a good enough neighborhood that miscreants would have to spend extra effort to threaten what was left of her family. Handrails installed and anything vaguely suggestive of a step ruthlessly eliminated. Sae hobbled to the couch and collapsed with as much grace as she could muster.

"Sis, you're home!" Makoto emerged from the kitchen, looking too frazzled and pensive for someone whose school year had only just begun. Sae's heart twisted. She looked so much like their father. She thought like him too, believing so ardently in justice and that any problem could be solved with aikido or brainpower. Sae and her father had made sure that she never knew of their sleepless nights poring over investigation notebooks. A mistake in retrospect. Someday, Makoto would have to learn to bend before she broke.

"You're in pain." Makoto frowned. "Do you need me to get your medication?"

Probably. But I'm not looking forward to the aftermath. "Not yet. How's school? I trust you're performing adequately as student council president?"

"It's not as glamorous as I thought it would be. Mostly I'm running errands for Principal Kobyakawa. And the other students seem to dislike me. More than usual."

Ah. She had never been meant to be anyone's parent, but this she had known even before the accident. She gestured for Makoto to stand before her and took her hands gently but firmly in her own. "There are those who will want to see you fail because you're a woman in authority. Our only hope of success is to do that boring work and do it so well that those in power have no choice but to recognize us. We have to endure that isolation. You understand?"

Makoto nodded, but without any conviction. "But surely I'm supposed to be more than a glorified errand girl? I'm supposed to be a voice for the students? Protect them?"

A warning chill settled across Sae's skin. So much like their father. Like her, before. "Did something happen at school?"

"No, yes, I'm not sure. I'm hearing rumors, vile rumors about a teacher. That he...takes liberties he shouldn't with the female students."

No. Shujin was in one of the best neighborhoods in the city, a jewel in the crown of the education system. Such things shouldn't happen there. But of course they did. Every day, things happened in Tokyo that could make a grown woman vomit, and the powerful were the perpetrators as often as not. Her grip tightened. "Has anyone touched you?"

"Don't worry about me. I'm as safe as I can be. It's the other students I worry about. If this teacher is doing this..."

If a teacher was abusing students and Makoto was already hearing rumors about it, then it had probably been going on for some time. Which meant that he probably had the backing of the administration. Which meant a mere student would be crushed if she went against him. "Do you have any proof?"

"No. I'd have to investigate."

Investigate. Another Niijima putting herself in harm's way. Sae's nails dug into Makoto's skin hard enough for her to gasp. "It's not your job to investigate. Keep your head down and make yourself as useful as you can to the school. Make it look good."

"But—"

She could see Makoto in her mind's eye, gathering evidence with a thoroughness that would make their father proud. Confronting the teacher. Being mocked, expelled. Or worse. There was always worse for a woman. "You're just a student. You don't have the power to change the world. The only way to get power is to pass your exams and get a good job."And pray you don't end up like me. "Promise me that you'll keep yourself safe."

"I promise." She sounded like a child being ordered to eat her vegetables, but Sae chose to believe that her sister wasn't stupid.

"Good. I'm...going to take something and go to bed."

Makoto flinched almost imperceptibly. They both knew what 'taking something' would mean. "Do you want me to help you undress or stay with you?"

"I want you to study and get some sleep. Your last year in high school will be critical to your future." She wasn't a broken thing needed the help of a child.

Sae hauled herself to her feet and shuffled to the bedroom without a backward glance. She had made this apartment into a new home. She had abandoned naïve ideals, but she hadn't been able to shake her love of beautiful things. The nightstand was a rich cherry, and one of Matsuko's abstracts she hadn't been able to part with hung on the wall.

She caught her reflection in the mirror. Raised pink scars slashed across the right side of her face and snaked down her neck until they were swallowed by her turtleneck. Her pants leg was slightly more subtle, a bit of bulkiness the only hint at the brace and marring underneath. Benjiro had vomited at the twisted, crippled limb. A year in and out of the hospital for rehabilitation and surgeries, physical therapy and skin grafts, and it was the best they could do She frowned. At least her hair had grown back. It wasn't that she had been vain. Her true value had always been and would always be her intellect. But she missed soft kisses and the sheer desire. Her looks had led to unwanted attention, but not all the attention had been unwanted. She had known how to be both the lover and the lawyer.

The worst part of getting ready for bed was putting away her jewelry. It was all too easy to sneak a glance at the bottle of Armagnac, still where she and her father had stashed it so Makoto wouldn't find it. They were going to drink it when Kaneshiro hung from a noose for his crimes. She should have thrown it away. It was another reminder of her failures, and the doctors had been very clear that alcohol and her pain medication didn't mix. But she couldn't quite bear to throw away something so exquisite. Maybe she would give it to Makoto when she graduated college.

Sae undressed by halting, irregular degrees until there was nothing left but to surrender to the inevitable. The little white pills on her bedside table were the only thing the doctors had found to soothe her pain when it got this bad, but it dulled her mind and made her see things that weren't there. Took her to places that didn't exist. At least, she hoped they didn't.

She awoke in a casino. The colored lights flickered and danced on equally garish carpet as slot machines jangled. A neon sign of Lady Justice, half burnt-out, watched over the casino floor and the shadowy pit bosses and cocktail waitresses who moved among the patrons. If they could even be called patrons. The men and women who stared at the ever-spinning reels wore rumpled suits and faded dresses, but their faces were bruised and bloodied. Every so often, the wheels would stop spinning and one of them would be dragged away by the pit bosses. The screams mingled with the sounds of the games. Some of the other gamblers would flash nervous glances, but no one moved to help.

No. That wasn't right. Sae knew this place. Once upon a time, she had been the master. She had helped the wounded seek justice, and she hadn't had to rig games in favor of the house to do it. "Will none of you do something?"

"They didn't for us," said a soft, too sweet voice. Heels clattered on the floor as Sae rounded. The woman before her was her twin and yet…not. Her face and body were whole, and her yellow eyes to give off a light of their own. She wore a cocktail dress that puddled to the floor, with a plunging neckline and slit up the side that Sae never would have tried outside the bedroom and maybe not then. She twirled a yellow rose between gloved fingers. "No one cares that the man who tried to kill us still walks free. You'll never get it back, you know. You only got the Special Investigation post because people felt sorry for you. But soon enough, you'll be shoved aside."

"A tube of eyeliner isn't meant to be a one day supply."

"Then what does it say about you that I'm dressed like this? I'm the whisper in the dark, the truth you won't acknowledge."

Another scream cut through the air. Sae pressed her finger to her temples. "Make it stop."

"What makes you think I could?" The...demon sounded almost sad. "Everything we built is in ashes. All those morning show appearances and they still think you slept her way to the top. And still you persist. You even try to protect Makoto when she's nothing but a parasite!"

"Shut up!" Makoto was naïve, but she was Sae's sister. All she had left in the world. The one who had dressed her when she was too weak to dress herself. "I love her."

"Then you'll lose her," said a different voice that made Sae's blood run cold. "Maybe I'll even be the one to take her from you. Leave her corpse with you for a few minutes while the emergency crews dig her out."

Sae fell to her knees. Junya Kaneshiro was a shadow, but she knew him as well as anyone could. Three years ago, he had been an underboss in a minor yakuza clan, but his practice of enslaving teenagers for drug running and sex work had made him a priority for her and her father. For a year they had built the case. And then, the explosion. The itinerant workers who had set the bomb had been duly caught and hanged, but they had refused to divulge who had ordered the hit. Kaneshiro now ruled Tokyo's underworld unmolested. It didn't take a genius to see the connection.

She forced herself to look into his fat face. "You'll never touch her, you bastard."

"You still think you're the Champion of Justice, don't you?" asked her doppelgänger. "That would please the artist, wouldn't it? Sae Niijima, knight in shining armor. Let me show you what kind of knight you truly are." Black smoke wreathed her. What remained when it vanished was even less human. And an enormous thing in black armor that twisted in on itself. Half her face plate had been ripped away to reveal rotting flesh underneath. "Look and despair."

"Yes, look," said Kaneshiro. "I'll see you soon. Bring the family."

Sae awoke with a start. She was in a bed. Her bed. Makoto was in the next room. Tomorrow she would get up and go to work and everything would be fine. Dreams were only dreams. She was no monster and Kaneshiro didn't care that she still lived.

Only because you're useless. Have fun with the artist.