A distorted gurgle echoes down the road, too metallic to be anything human.

She can hear the gusting wind keeping it afloat, see the sand start to whisk down the street in their direction. She risks a glance around the brick corner. Its reflection shows in the shop window across the street - a hovering black shadow with a glowing red eye poking out the bottom.

"Hey, Maka," Blake says from behind, his breath frisking her ear. "Your Pops said to keep a low profile."

Maka's eyes nearly roll out of her head. "Since when do you keep a low profile?"

She gestures to, first, his wild blue hair - he found blue hair dye a few months back at a Sally Beauty store, which she never lets him live down because seriously, Unicorn Hair - and then to his sleeveless studded jean jacket and black tank top with his obnoxious blue star branding splattered on the front. She glides over his white track pants and stops at his obnoxious high tops with star doodles in permanent marker done on them, realizing she'd just gestured to all of him. All of him screams attention-hog. He is the antithesis of low profile.

He's trying to get the rest of the team to call him Black Star, for fuck's sake. Some people do, much to his delight. Helps that he sometimes refuses to give his real name when people ask - "If it's really the end of the world, why not start over? Black Star sounds a lot more kickass than 'Blake'" he said, the self-absorbed prick.

Maka stands her ground and religiously calls him Blake. She knew him back before Judgment Day, when they were just naive children on the playground and couldn't have possibly imagined a future where being hunted by machines is the norm. Boy, how times have changed.

"You're just jealous 'cause I got style and you don't," he says matter-of-factly. Her face, plain white t-shirt, and ripped blue jeans all gawk at him, clearly offended. "'Sides, it's just a scouting drone. If it doesn't find anything, it moves on. Just let it go."

"It's too close," she argues, thinking of their desert bunker only a few miles outside the city. They're only on the outskirts - most of the machines gravitate toward the city's middle, weeding out survivors hiding out in abandoned buildings - and this scouting drone feels too close to home.

Home . The underground bunker is a little rough around the edges and doesn't bode well for the average claustrophobic - Liz and all her pent-up paranoia hardly fit in there, as is - but it's the closest thing to a "home" Maka's had since Judgment Day. All her friends and her father - the resistance, her family - lives there. She isn't ready to lose it.

"We're not here to fight."

Look at him, pretending to be the voice of reason. The air of maturity surrounding him now doesn't suit him. Blake is a man of bad jokes, questionable style choices, and junk-grabbing howls. He is a wild child to his core. Perhaps Tsubaki - his maybe not , maybe so girlfriend - is really starting to rub off on him.

"Well, you're god awful at playing pacifist," she jabs, hoping to sway him to her favor. "You're an assassin , right? So, help me destroy this thing before it finds the bunker."

The com in her ear sparks to life. "Maka, Black Star has a point."

Ah, Tsubaki. Figures she'd take his side. She likes to shy away from danger and acts as the team's moral compass, mostly. But when a fight breaks out her skills in close combat are lethal. In her own words, she is a student of the blade - a katana that used to belong to her brother, she told Maka one night with a few drinks under her belt. Tsubaki once cleaved a terminator's head clean off in one swing, which must've been love at first sight for Blake. Maka imagines her watching them from a second-floor window. She spotted the drone first.

"I don't know. Maka's right, this drone is wandering into our territory. Destroying it could save us some trouble in the long run."

She could always count on Liz's all-consuming paranoia to back her up in a pinch. Aside from her hot-wired survival instincts, the skittish girl is surprisingly good with a rifle in her hands. Her aim is almost always true. Maka trusts her above anyone else to watch her back from the rooftops. She imagines Liz's crosshairs are trained on either her or the drone right now, watching, waiting for confirmation.

"Your Pops said no firefights. I don't make the rules, and neither do you, pipsqueak."

She silently curses him and his teenage growth spurt because life was so much easier when she was taller than him, damn it - especially in situations like this when he tries to disarm her with a tacky nickname that never fails to get under her skin. When he used to call her "tiny tits" back in the day, there was hell to pay.

Suddenly, the answer dawns on her, always within her grasp. Must've slipped through the cracks during Blake's feeble stab at acting "rationally," if that's even the right word for it. She could really use the old him, the Blake who took more risks and spat on the rules if they didn't work for him. Maka hasn't seen that version of him in a while.

"You're not running point."

His mouth drops into a frown.

"Papa put me in charge of this Op. You listen to me."

She says this more as a reminder to herself. For all his blabbering about playing it safe, Blake isn't the one calling the shots. He's used to being top dog, but not today. Papa handed her the reins to this search and rescue mission this morning. Nothing too risky, just checking on the outskirts for any survivors that slipped past inner-city machines. So really, it is her call.

"Maka…"

"Hand me your skateboard," she orders. The little wooden death trap with wheels - branded with a blue star, of course - hangs off his backpack, calling to her as an idea starts to come together in her mind.

"What?"

"Just do it."

"You heard the boss," Liz sing-songs over the com. "Cough it up."

Blake begrudgingly listens and hands it over. "Don't hurt her."

"Don't worry, I won't break it." That isn't the plan, anyway.

Maka places the board on the sidewalk and tests her footing on it, careful not to make too much noise. This type of drone is hyper-sensitive to movement more so than sound, but Skynet's machines are always evolving. She takes her pistol out of her gun belt holster - a gift from Papa - and brings it to her chest. She takes a deep breath.

"What are you doing?" Blake asks, but she ignores him.

Instead, Maka crouches down and lies on top of the board, stomach first, before flipping on her side. She takes another deep breath. The pistol shakes in her hands before settling, her finger resting on the trigger. This isn't the time to show fear, it's time to be brave.

"Maka, you need to think before you act," Tsubaki says, the angelic voice of reason. "This is dangerous."

This is war, Maka wants to say back, but it goes unsaid.

Suddenly, Blake catches on. What a shame that Tsubaki's intuition for bad decision-making didn't rub off on him, too.

His eyes are wide with panic. "Maka, don't -"

If you want something done right, do it yourself.

With one swift kick, Maka rolls across the crosswalk before Blake can grab her. The drone, hovering idly during her back-and-forth with her team, suddenly spurs to life. The railguns on its sides start to spin in her direction. Its sensors lock on to her movement and trajectory, its crosshairs marking her for death. But before it can rain bullets down on her she quickly lines up her shot and pulls the trigger.

The red bulb on its metal belly shatters like glass. Bullseye. The railguns start firing blindly with no all-seeing eye to guide them, twisting aimlessly in circles, but Maka is already shielded by the corner store's brick siding when they do.

"Take cover!" Blake yells, his voice booming down the block. "Shit's about to get wild!"

Maka ducks behind the brick and covers her head, hoping Liz, Tsubaki, and Blake all find cover in time. She doesn't want anymore blood on her hands. Countless faces stretch across her memory with a bloody smudge over each one, smiling unknowingly of their fates, and a chill crawls down her spine.

Not now. She still has to be brave. For the living. Their faces slowly fade away, because for them the fight is over. Hers isn't.

The drone screams like a banshee and starts laying waste to the city block. Maka covers her ears and braces herself against the brick wall as bullets fly carelessly through the air. Glass shatters, bullets ricochet off buildings, and the drone's alarms wail as the engine starts to overheat in its wild panic. A traffic light falls off its hinges and crashes in the middle of the street, spitting sparks. Bullet casings rattle and roll into the intersection.

Then, in the blink of an eye, all goes quiet. Too quiet.

"Maka, watch out!" cries Tsubaki and Liz in unison.

Maka barely rolls out of the way in time when the drone careens into the corner store and crashes through the window above the brick she hid behind. It plunges straight down into the asphalt, losing pieces of itself as it barrels down the street. When it finally stops, nestled into its own crater, she hears the engine gasp for life before turning into a dull hum. Then, nothing - the machine is dead.

"Well, shit," she says between labored breaths. Kind of hard to catch her breath between trigger-happy railguns and a spiraling drone nearly taking off her head. She swears close calls like these shave years off her life.

Tsubaki is the first to call out to her. "Maka, are you okay?"

"Y-Yes," she hiccups, embarrassed by how rattled she really is. "I'm fine. Just missed me."

Maka hears Blake before she sees him. "You. Are. A. Dumbass. Do you have a death wish?" His ridiculous Nike high tops make heavy thumps in her direction until he spontaneously appears by her side, pulling the skateboard out from underneath her in one fell swoop. She plops down on the pavement.

"H-Hey!" she yelps.

"That is debatable," quips Liz. "She acts like she wants to play martyr."

Tsubaki chips in, her voice a little shaky. "Maka, p-please. Don't ever scare us like that again."

Her team is chastising her for her carelessness, and some of what they say strike a nerve because she destroyed the damn thing, didn't she? But all Maka can think about is how thankful she is that everyone's still alive and talking. No faces to add to her death toll reel in her head.

"I had to do it," she answers, still trying to catch her breath. "It was too close." She couldn't wait on a vote - engage, or not to engage. She took matters into her own hands and now the bunker can live to see another day. Thanks to her.

Blake pulls her up roughly by the arm. "Yeah, yeah. Save the hero spiel for somebody who gives a shit. We gotta go."

"But the mission…"

The plan was to hop from building to building, clearing them as machine-free - without engaging - and taking in strays as they pop up, raiding for supplies when they could. The bunker is nearing capacity, but Sid, an army ammunitions expert in another life, swears expansion is possible.

This fight is for the living, Papa would say, we need to help in any way we can.

His words sounded so brave and honorable when she was just thirteen and Judgment Day was still fresh in her mind. Now she's twenty-three and his countless affairs with any woman he can charm into his pants has eroded away that heroic pedestal. To think, how would the scattered resistance react if they found out "mankind's last hope" was such a horndog?

"Should've thought about that before all the fireworks. You really think the machines didn't hear that?"

Maka deflates and chews on her bottom lip, eyes downcast. She never thought of that.

He turns his back on her and starts walking. "Tsu, Liz, we're rolling out."

"Copy," they both reply.

She hates how Blake takes charge seamlessly.

In the early bunker days, Sid thought Blake had leadership potential, even when the boy was just a rowdy teenager shouting about his godliness and running butt naked down the halls covered in spray paint - a dare she refused because she had sense. Sid figured he could tame the wildness out of Blake and teach him discipline. In the beginning, most of that discipline translated well in the gym. He pushed his body to the limit and bulked up, claiming he'd surpass the "gods" who let the machines take over. Though no matter how hard Sid tried, he couldn't scrub away Blake's enormous ego. He'd destroy them all, he told her one night. She told him to get in line.

Of course, there were some hiccups in his come-up.

As Maka watches his retreating figure, a bitter part of her wants to mention the Skynet hub he recklessly tried to infiltrate a year ago. He was too eager to prove himself back then (much like her, actually). He ultimately miscalculated the hub's defenses and lost both Kim and Jackie in a tight corridor firefight. They were lovers. Harvar walked out of there blind and Ox is too traumatized to function most days - he hasn't spewed a single fact or statistic at her in a long time. Blake hasn't been the same ever since.

"Hey, wait!" she calls after him. Takes a lot of willpower on her part to keep his biggest mistake from slipping off her tongue like a dagger, but she manages. "I'm still in charge, and I say we keep looking."

She can't return to the bunker empty-handed. This kind of failure will just turn into another reason for Papa to try and hold her back - he already thinks she's too reckless, and this will be like the nail in the coffin.

Maka remembers begging him as a scrawny sixteen-year-old to let her fight on the frontlines. He let Blake fight, so why not her? And in the end, he was adamant about keeping her out of harm's way, ignoring the countless hours she logged in the gym practicing hand-to-hand combat with Sid and Blake, ignoring how horribly dented the targets were in the firing range from all her rubber rounds, and ignoring the time she spent studying any "classified" intel they collected about the machines - actually, the latter pissed him off because he thought she had no right to dig up stuff like that. She argued that the daughter of the resistance had every right to learn about the enemy, and to fight like everyone else.

This, the resistance, is her legacy. He couldn't protect her from that, no matter how badly he wanted to.

He finally caved and let her have her way after a year of fighting the inevitable. The look of defeat on his face that day is forever carved into her memory, because she knows this was never the life he imagined for her, and she knows he sees too much of her mother in her, the woman who left him. He must wonder: will she leave him, too?

"Are you trying to get us all killed?"

That is far from the truth. "I want to save lives."

"Maka," Tsubaki cuts in. "We all do, but BlackStar is right. Inner-city machines will be swarming the area soon. We'll hardly be able to save ourselves, let alone any survivors. You need to let it go. Save your strength for another day."

She hates when Tsubaki plays peacekeeper like this. She's too good at operating in the middle ground between her and Blake. Here she is, taking Blake's side while simultaneously tending to Maka's bruised ego, and it's actually working her over, slowly but surely.

"Liz?" she tries, a small twinge in her voice.

Maka saved Liz's sister, Patty, from a Spider T-7T - a crab-looking thing with machine guns for arms and four crooked legs - back when they first met three years ago. Since that day, Liz acts like she owes Maka a debt. She thinks she's paying it by playing "hired gun" for the resistance when really all she wants to do is keep running; it's what she's good at, she says. Maka has always insisted that Liz doesn't owe her anything. But now she's banking on Liz's fealty to her. She really is selfish.

There's a moment of hesitation over the line. "I'm sorry, Maka. I promised Patty I'd come back."

With no one to take her side, Maka has no choice but to step down and let Blake take point. There's no use in arguing. They don't have the time for it. Soon, inner-city machines will flock to their location, drawn by all the noise, and they don't have the manpower to fight them out in the open like this. They need to disappear, now.

For a fleeting moment, she considers searching on her own…

"Don't even think about it." God, he knows her so well.

Maka ducks her head and brushes past him, heading to the back alley they promised to rendezvous at to exit the city. There, underneath a tarp, sits an old safari-looking land rover filled with fresh siphoned-off gas that's ready to put fire in the tire. Only, they all expected to have more passengers - even cleared out the back to make more room.

Liz and Tsubaki wave them over from the alley, having quickly abandoned their posts the moment Blake asked them to. They didn't even hesitate on his orders. The tarp is off the rover and in the process of being folded to store away for future use.

When Maka reaches them with Blake, her eyes instinctively glide over to the empty seats in the back. She feels his hand reach out to grab her shoulder, but he hesitates. His hand drops to his side.

This is the bed she made. Now she has to lie in it.

The ride back to the bunker is quiet at first. The only noise is the blustering sand stirred awake by land rover tires, lovingly dubbed as Blake's other deathtrap on four wheels. A sloppy blue star is painted on the hood like a bullseye; he likes to invite the machines to try him. All the windows are rolled down, inviting a breeze and all the whipped up sand inside. His tire treads pick up everything.

Maka pulls her scarf over her nose and mouth and fiddles with her old swimming goggles. She offers Liz an apologetic look - the poor girl forgot her face gear. She's rubbing her eyes and hacking up sand.

"Star, windows up," she growls, eyes closed, but Maka can still imagine the glare.

"Sorry, Brooklyn," Blake sing-songs. "No A/C, remember? Already sweating my balls off as is."

Brooklyn, NY - the only sliver of Liz's past anyone knows about, except for her sister, Patty, who lived it, too. Maka thinks they lost someone. Someone important enough for Liz to build a wall between her and anyone else who isn't Patty. Maka herself can hardly see past it most days. But she understands the thinking behind it.

The more distance you put between yourself and others, the easier it will be to move on once they're gone.

"Maybe slow down?" Tsubaki offers from the passenger's seat. The oversized aviator goggles - clearly Blake's - look funny on her porcelain doll face. Still playing mediator, like always.

Maka watches Blake start to buckle under Tsubaki's soft smile, and wishes she could work the boy over like putty in her hands, too. They'd still be back in the city searching for survivors if she could.

"Fine. But I get first dibs on a shower when we get back."

There's only one working shower in the bunker right now. Sid, army ammunitions expert and now part-time plumber, thinks he can fix the pipes in the next week or two. Until then, everyone shares one measly old stall.

"Hell no," Liz spits. "You're disgusting!"

Maka admits that finding blue hairs in the shower drain - lord, he dyed everything - was not an experience she'd wish on anybody.

"I'm sure he'll clean up after himself this time," Tsubaki says.

Liz scoffs. "Sure, once you two are done in there he'll make you clean up the mess. What a gentleman."

Maka breaks her code of seething silence and laughs, because Tsubaki's face is burning red and gaping like a fish out of water. That explains everything - they are definitely a thing . Nobody's even denying having shower sex, either. She's waiting for Blake to say something ridiculous, like how a god can bang his goddess wherever the fuck he wants, but he doesn't. It's not every day someone like Blake is stunned into silence.

"Guys, gross," Maka says between giggles.

"Whatever. Haters gonna hate. You're just jealous."

Tsubaki shrieks and slaps his arm. "Black Star!"

The rest of the ride is spent with Blake refusing to roll up the windows, Liz spitting up more sand and threatening to shoot him, and Tsubaki embarrassingly sputtering and trying to appease everyone. Maka laughs at the scene until tears well up in her eyes. She almost forgets what awaits her back at the bunker. Almost.

Maka struts down the bunker hallway with her right arm outstretched, her fingers ghosting over the uneven stone walls. Intermittent lights overhead divide the hallway into light and dark sections to save electricity and avoid a power surge. Tapping into a city transformer is risky enough, but a power surge would alert Skynet of their location in seconds. They've got their nosy circuits wired into the city's electrical grid, ready to detect and act on even the slightest of blips. Everyone is asked to limit their electrical consumption wherever they can. Survival beats out luxuries here.

Maka shivers, wishing she would've grabbed her jacket on her way out of her room. Above ground, the humidity covers her body like a second clammy skin, but below ground it is considerably colder, especially at night. Her thin white t-shirt is by no means bunker-friendly.

"Cold?" Sid says from behind, startling her. Right. She nearly forgot she has an escort. "You can have my jacket, if you'd like."

"I'm fine."

"Suit yourself."

She regards him over her shoulder, drinking in his old army fatigues and the rifle on his back. Nothing about this feels particularly welcoming. To her, Sid is harmless; the skills he learned in the service are used to kill machines, not people. Still, he normally wears a simple tank top and cargo pants in the bunker, waving off the cold like he's known worse. His army fatigues are typically reserved for above ground work. She's never seen him wear them casually around the bunker.

Why does Maka need an escort, anyway? Certainly the daughter of the resistance doesn't need help finding her father's office in the bunker she's called home the past seven years.

"Does Papa not trust me or something?" she says, some bite in her voice. This wouldn't be the first time he's treated her like a child. Not the last, either, she thinks bitterly.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Maka," he begins, and Maka can feel his eyes trained on her back. "But you've got a history of avoiding your father when you're upset. Or when you've done something wrong."

Maka visibly deflates. "Blake told you."

Of course he did - Sid is like a father to him, his mentor. There's no way something as big as Maka went apeshit and took out a scouting drone by herself - Blake's words, not hers - would fly under Sid's radar. The man knows all of Blake's tells. That, or Tsubaki spilled the beans and painted the entire story in a light that screams worried and concerned for Maka's well-being.

"Close. Tsubaki." Well, shit. He got the mushy I almost saw my friend die story. "But Blake is debriefing your father now." And now her father is getting the reckless endangerment version. Perfect.

Maka turns to face him, mouth set in a scowl. "I should be debriefing him. It was my Op."

"At ease, soldier." Her squared shoulders relax on instinct, though she keeps her fingers curled in a tight fist. "You were relieved the moment you put your own needs above the mission and disobeyed a direct order."

Maka wants to argue her side, convince him that destroying the drone was the only way to keep the bunker safe, but she doesn't. She doesn't have the patience to argue with a man as stoic as Sid. Instead, she turns on her heels and keeps walking, settling on a simmering silence to gear herself up to face her father.

In a few short minutes, her boots scuff on the glossy concrete floor outside his office. An old name plate on the door reads Commander Connor, a relic of a past life. No one's offered to take it off. Respect for the dead, she guesses.

Maka reaches to open the door but it bursts open and ricochets against the wall. Blake hurries out, bumping her shoulder and mumbling a half-hearted apology under his breath. He acknowledges Sid and quickly disappears down the hall. She blinks in surprise. It all happened so fast, but she doesn't think the apology was for bumping her.

"Maka, come in." His voice is stern and lacks any warmth or fatherly affection. Normally, she'd crave this, him taking her seriously. Treating her like a soldier for his cause. But there's a part of her that wishes for his obnoxious babbling and overwhelming displays of affection - give her a hug, a kiss on the cheek, anything, just don't bench her.

Maka walks inside, slowly, conscious of how Sid doesn't follow her in. He closes the door behind her, cutting off her only escape and trapping her inside. History of avoiding, huh? Should've known he'd box her in like this. Running away is cowardice - she knows this - but couldn't he have at least given her the choice? She sighs and repeats in her head: courage, gotta have courage. Even if it is just her dopey, hero-set-past-his-expiration-date father.

"Sit."

She complies.

Her father's office is decorated with Commander Connor's past honors and family heirlooms on the walls, but the desk is undisputedly his now. She looks at an old picture framed on the desk and almost doesn't recognize the girl in the photo, all toothy smile and bright green eyes. Hardly her anymore.

He runs his hands through his unruly red-silver hair, pulling it back into a tail, and paces behind his desk. His collared shirt is wrinkled, untucked, and stained with pit sweat. The bags under his eyes tell her he hasn't slept in at least a couple days. He looks down at his shoes as he goes back and forth. He hasn't looked up at her yet.

"My orders were very clear," he says, waving around an authoritative finger in the air. He still doesn't look at her. "Do not engage with any machines. Search and rescue only. "

"I know."

"But you didn't listen."

"Obviously."

Maka hates how badly she wants to get under his skin, to rattle his do-gooder cage - or should she say his philandering cage, because what do-gooder beds women to feel better about himself? She knows he's hurting. It's how he copes, but that doesn't make it right. Everyone's hurting and fighting with their tank flickering on empty - what gives him the right to wallow in his own self-pity with all those women? She's convinced his dumb ass thinks too much with the snake between his legs.

Men, she thinks, hardly resisting the dramatic eye roll in her father's face.

He doesn't budge on her taunt. "People could've gotten hurt, Maka, or worse, killed."

"But nobody did," she bites back. "No casualties. No injuries. Just a dead hunk of metal."

He stops pacing. His eyes finally land on her, and they're sharp at first, but then they settle into something far worse: disappointment. "Did you ever stop and think about the people you could've saved?"

Maka doesn't know what to say. She bites her lip and stares holes into the floor.

"Your mission was to search for any survivors. Instead, you recklessly took down a scouting drone that you could've let go - " She tries to sneak in a word about protecting the bunker's location but he shushes her. " - and you attracted inner-city machines to your location." He stops, contemplating his next words, but continues, face looking grim. "If there were any survivors, odds are the machines found them."

Maka feels sick to her stomach. "I-I could have saved them." She could have, if only Blake didn't take control, and if only Tsubaki and Liz chose to follow her, believe in her. Everything would've been different.

"I know you believe that." He smiles at her, but the gesture isn't comforting. If anything, it proves that he can't look at her and see a soldier for his resistance - he just sees her, his daughter, like a doll made of glass so eager to break.

"It's true." She wipes her eyes before any tears can fall. She's already fragile enough as it is in his eyes. To him, she'll always be the little dreamy-eyed girl in the photo.

He shakes his head, unconvinced. "You need time to process all this. To stew in your own mess, if you will." He looks so tired, completely resigned to the conversation at hand, but Maka's back is rigid and her fingers are digging into the wooden armchairs, knowing exactly what he means before he can speak it.

"Two weeks." He holds up two fingers for emphasis. "You're under bunker -arrest for two weeks. No missions. No going topside. Nothing."

She lurches forward in her chair. "But Papa, I - "

"Two weeks! Speak out of turn again, and I'll make it a month." She gawks at the thought of being stuck underground for thirty days. She'd go stir-crazy. Hell, she doesn't think she can last a full forty-eight hours in the bunker without losing her mind. Fresh air keeps her sane.

"We'll talk more then. You need time to reflect on your actions."

Maka wants to throw up, preferably on the younger-her and her cheeky smile.

"Do I make myself clear?"

She squirms in her seat. "Yes, sir."

"Good. Now, come give Papa a hug."

The way he switches between the leader of the resistance to her flirtatious oaf of a father is very jarring. He makes comical grabby-hands at her, eyes watering with… what? Joy? Relief? Idiocy? All solid answers in her book. Nevertheless, Maka humors him, letting him wrap his arms around her in a tight bear hug, but keeps her arms at her sides.

"Papa was so worried about his baby girl," he coos into her shoulder.

"Stop talking in the third person," she deadpans, rolling her eyes at him. Then, with a quick whiff, she pushes him away. "Gah, Papa! You reek. Go take a shower."

"But… Blake and Tsubaki are in there," he whines.

So that's where that bastard ran off to so fast, she thinks sourly.

"Whatever. Just… clean yourself up." She steps away and reaches for the door. "Wouldn't want the leader of the resistance to suffocate his own people with his stench."

He smiles, not to his eyes, but it's not sad, either. "Love you, too."

Maka hesitates with her hand on the doorknob. She almost considers returning the sentiment. Truth is, he's hard to love - sometimes Maka hates that she can't just cut him out of her heart for all he's put her through - but he's not lost to her. Not yet. She gnaws on her bottom lip. Her hand twists the knob, inviting the door to swing open and scrape against a crack in the floor.

"Where's Sid?" she asks, searching the hall for her stoic army man. He trapped her and deserted her. Some escort.

"Sid is… around." He's hiding something from her. "You're dismissed, Maka. I hope I'll see you at dinner tonight."

As if to answer, Maka lets go of the door and watches until it slowly clicks shut. Her father's face tries not to crack under her quiet stare, offering her a small smile as a peace offering between them. His eyes betray him. A whirlwind of guilt and exhaustion swirls in his irises with a pinch of fatherly love. He thinks he's hollow on the inside, but the truth is he feels too much.

"Sure," tumbles from her lips in a whisper, but she doubts he catches it.

Unlike her father, Maka feels too little, too much all at once. Her choice to destroy the drone - consequently abandoning any survivors to the machines - was terribly selfish. Is selfishness human, she wonders; does the bile crawling up her throat for the people she could've saved make her human?

At least she isn't a machine.

Skynet knows no humanity. No compassion, no love, no loyalty. Only cold calculations and bloodthirst for human lives - the cancer it's decided to purge as the only threat to its survival. How do you fight something that can't feel, can't reason, only kill?

Two weeks. She has two weeks to move past this guilt and start anew.

Maka hurries back to her room, shaking off the chill. Only time will tell.

Her nightmares are painfully real tonight.

She sees herself, too young, too naive, desperate to keep up as her father pulls her blindly ahead. His words are silent - just tiny glances back at her, mouth moving, but no sound - and all she can hear is her racing heartbeat.

Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

All around her everything feels calm, beautiful even. Just down the roadside hill, in a large dip of the land, she sees a lake that reflects the mountainside in the distance crowded by trees as far as the eye can see. The view is breathtaking - like one of the pictures on the postcards her Mama used to send her while she was away. But her father isn't stopping to sightsee, and he keeps tugging her forward roughly by the arm. He is the one thing in this picture that doesn't belong.

Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

"Papa, where are we going?" she whimpers. Again, only empty words she can't hear answer her.

Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

"Papa, you're scaring me. What's wrong?" More empty words.

Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

At the end of the road, a large rock formation surrounded by military-grade vehicle greets them. No military personnel - the place is eerily silent, abandoned. No one's been here in years. Her father rushes to the large metal doors carved into the rock, big enough to fit small aircraft, and frantically dials in a code.

How does he know the code?

Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

The door stirs to life and slowly recedes up into the rock. He tries to take her hand again, but she dodges him and backs away from the door.

Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

"What's happening!" she screams, desperate for answers.

He screams silently back at her. There are tears staining her cheeks, snot running over her lips, as a tight sob clogs her throat. She lets him pull her inside. Her body is too numb, too limp to protest. He lets go to dial the number again from the inside and the doors close. She lifts up her arm, expecting him to take it and drag her around again like baggage, but his fingers interlock with hers instead, gently encouraging her to walk with him. She does.

Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

The scene skips ahead in time, past the slow discovery of what felt like a never-ending cycle of stairs, another metal door sealing them in, boxy computers, and the president's seal painted on the floor, and straight to her staring up at a giant monitor in a daze. On the screen, she watches as several nuclear warheads blossom out of the earth and shoot up into the sky. They leave a long white trail that slowly starts to dip into an arch.

Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

"Papa, what is this?"

His words aren't empty this time. "The end of the world."

Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

She chokes up. "Y-You knew?" Why else would he know to come here?

His silhouette starts to blur as he looks away.

Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

When the warheads touch down, shaking the very ground beneath her feet, the apparition of what was once her screams. Except these screams cannot be contained.

Ba bump, ba bump, ba bump.

Maka jolts awake, fists turning white as they crumple her sheets in a tight grip. She's dripping with sweat.

"Not real," she breathes heavily. "Not really happening."

A shadow materializes at her door, careful not to encroach too much on her space. She does keep a gun under her pillow, much to her father's chagrin. She's squeezing the grip right now.

"You good?"

Not a machine.

Maka lets go of the gun, reaches for her bedside lamp, and flicks the light on. She quickly rubs the sleep out of her eyes. Standing in her doorway, clad in a white undershirt and comical star boxers, is good ol' Blake. His blue hair looks wilder than usual. It's standing up in all different directions - hah, kinda like a star. His eyes show annoyed indifference, but she knows deep down he's more concerned than he's letting on.

Does he remember how she had to pin him to the bed to stop his night terrors after the hub incident? He almost broke her arm one night. Kept screaming their names, saying he was sorry. He hasn't had an episode like that in a while, though.

"I'm fine. Just a nightmare."

"You sure?" He remembers, judging from the look he gives her now. He's not convinced.

"Judgment Day," she answers, as if it'll tell him everything he needs to know. It does.

He yawns. "I gotcha. Just… don't scream like that." He stops and swallows a lump in his throat. It dawns on her that she might have sounded like Kim and Jackie before they - "Even gods need their beauty sleep."

She can tell there's more Blake wants to say - something less ridiculous at the very least - but he slips out of her room before he can barf out any of his feelings. Men. So emotionally constipated. She wonders if he spills any of his guts to Tsubaki when no one's looking.

Then again, is she really all that different from him? She tries to keep her feelings under lock and key, too.

She turns off the light and tucks her gun back under her pillow. When Maka closes her eyes, she prays to the deadbeat gods that she doesn't slip into another memory. Luckily, she doesn't. Nothing but dark static behind her eyelids.

Eventually, she falls asleep to empty sound. To the empty voices she knows she left behind, silently crying out for help.

So really, she gets no sleep at all.