Epilogue time! This one's a bit different in that most of it is from Kaia's point of view.

For those of you who didn't immediately skip down to read upon hearing that, be sure to read the afternote! It contains a lot about what I plan to do about this in the future, when I plan to do it, etc.

Enjoy!

Things did get back to normal, eventually. For a given definition of 'normal'.

Everyone went their separate ways. Murray to the pro wrestling circuit, Dimitri to his new TV show, Melissa to her journalism, and the Inspectors to Interpol, hauling Le Paradox behind them.

The Thievius Raccoonus was whole again and Paris was back to normal and Bentley didn't want to say it was a shallow victory, but it sure felt like one.

For awhile, they'd all gravitate toward the river, where the blimp had gone down, then immediately vanished. When they ran into each other, they'd always make a point to share a few words or a meal and commiserate over what they'd lost.

Even though he knew they were out there, it still felt like they were all grieving for Sly and Kaia. Carmelita walked the shore of the river more evenings than not, Murray couldn't stand being in the Safehouse for too long, and Bentley had spotted Kaia's parents walking together one too many times for them to have coincidentally run into each other.

Bentley probably wouldn't have taken the loss well except for the fact that Kristian would occasionally come by. Sly and Murray were his brothers, but Bentley had always felt like the older, more responsible one. It was weird to be on the receiving end of the suspicious 'you're trying to pull one over on me' looks and lectured about his diet, but it wasn't bad.

Sometimes he felt like Kristian just needed something to do. He'd hacked the Inspector's case report and his joint investigation with Inspectors Fox and Jenks was the only unsolved one of the lot, but there was nothing he could do about it.

There was nothing any of them could do, really, except wait and Bentley knew how bad they all were at that.

As days stretched into weeks, he started getting postcards. He knew Penelope had broken out of prison almost immediately, but found it odd that she chose to continue to contact him when she'd been the one to initiate their last fight. Still, the places she robbed were all run by criminals, corrupt businessmen or politicians, and Bentley liked to think that was deliberate.

Maybe she was just trying to get back on his good side now that Sly was gone, he knew better than to think she'd spontaneously turned over a new leaf, but the idealistic part of him wanted there to be hope for her.

None of them were giving up. Even if the weeks turned to months and the months to years, they'd never give up. They knew their friends, their family, were out there, and they'd be ready for them when they reappeared.

Whenever that time was.

It was hot.

At first I thought I'd drifted off in the Arabian Safehouse. There was sand everywhere, in my hair, in my clothes. But then I remembered that I hadn't been in the Arabian Safehouse for weeks and that there'd been a blimp and a fight and a time tunnel and-

Sly!

I tried to move, struggling under a heavy weight that was pinning me to the ground, and winced when my side screamed in pain. That needed to be checked, immediately or not sooner, but first I needed to get out from-

Sly?

His arms were wrapped tight around me, for all he wasn't conscious, one hand clinging tightly to his cane. It took some doing to wriggle out of his hold and pull my way to freedom and it made the pain in my side morph into a searing heat.

Looking down, I saw a red stain spreading slowly through the fabric of my T-shirt. My breath came short for a moment as images of the ocean and a psychotic pirate flashed through my mind. But no. It hurt, but it wasn't 'I've been shot again' levels of pain. Besides, it was on the opposite side of my stomach and significantly lower, almost on my hip.

I placed a hand over the bloodstain, wincing at the feeling of warm, sticky blood soaking into my fur, and took another look.

My belt, the one Bentley made so I could follow after them through time, was a wreck. The clasp was twisted and slightly melted, the heat soaking through layers of cloth, uncomfortably close to burning me. The gems that had been set into it were a dull, lifeless grey instead of a luminescent green.

One, the one directly below the cut in my side, was shattered. It was shattered in that peculiar way that mostly happened to glass, where it was absolutely broken, but hadn't fallen apart yet. A chunk was missing out of the middle and I had a pretty good idea now why there was a hole in my abdomen.

I grimaced, but decided those things could wait. I'd survive, I could deal with them later. I needed to check Sly, he was still out.

Carefully, I rolled him onto his back, checking to make sure his chest was rising and reaching up to his neck to check his pulse. It was strong, but faster than an unconscious person's should have been. I needed to get him out of the sun.

Struggling to my feet, I looked around.

Sand was the main component of the area, we were definitely in a desert, and I almost dared to hope that we really had wound up back in Arabia, at least that way we could find Salim and have a starting point. But no, the air was dry and there was no sea in sight. This was a different desert.

Parts from the blimp were scattered around, the giant clock face from the time tunnel was lying nearby. I briefly entertained the thought of trying to reconstruct it to get us back home, but only wound up snorting to myself. Yeah, that might be possible after spending twenty years locked up in Bentley's lab, trying to absorb space-time equations.

I turned, expecting to see more of the same, but stopped short.

Was that a sphinx? It looked... new. Well, not new, but only slightly aged, not like the pictures in my textbooks of world history. The lines of the carving were still distinct, a bit worn, but still clear and the face was intact.

Right, so, if I remembered correctly, the Sphinx was built around twenty-five hundred B.C.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me."

That's the end of Nightingale Syndrome, folks!

Not to worry, though, because I have another story that will hopefully be out sometime either this winter or early spring. It's... difficult to describe, but it's a Sly Cooper story and Kaia is in it, but it's not the sequel to this. It'll make sense when I post the summary.

I will be writing a sequel to this! I've said that about four different times, but people keep asking me, so I do want to make it abundantly clear. It might not come out for a little while because do you know how long I've spent just trying to figure out the massive plot twist? You can't even count all the timelines I've drawn. It is coming, though! It'll be a bit different from the Syndrome Saga because it'll dangerously blur the lines between fanfic and original plot and my fanfic is very different from my original fic. Still, it'll have all the characters you know and love, it'll be funny and heartbreaking (I'm looking forward to your angry, betrayed tears), and I have the chance to actually muck about with major plot points and events rather than avoiding weighing in on them because I didn't know what the canon would establish, so look forward to basically 200 pages of my headcanons.

The other project I wanted to get up this winter has had to be postponed indefinitely, unfortunately. My cat is still dangerously ill and now my sister's cat, whom I take care of, has decided to develop an auto-immune disorder and might have to have all of his teeth extracted, so that's where all my money is going. I'm still going to do it eventually, just not, you know, any time within the next few months. I might do it between the end of the story I already have halfway written and the beginning of the sequel to this one, but we'll see.

Last thing- when I said please don't message me on ffdotnet because I'm not going to see it and it's easier to answer a lot of things at once if everyone can see the questions, which is why I use the blog for such things, I meant please don't send private messages. My askbox on Tumblr is open and anonymous is available if you don't have an account. I did not mean stop sending reviews- I love your reviews, I love seeing what you all think of the story and I love hearing that it cheered you up. I noticed reviews have really dropped off lately and I didn't want you guys to think I didn't enjoy reading them.

Actual last thing- I'm plugging the blog again. Seriously, check it out. It has fanart and answered questions and deleted scenes and commentaries and I'll occasionally ask you guys to send in prompts for short little drabbles I can write. I'll be using it to update you on my Sly 5!fic progress (though mostly to complain about how hard writing it is, seriously) and also to announce the title of the next story (not the sequel!) on Christmas Eve, then I'll post the summary and such on Christmas Day.

I think that's it for now. I hope you all enjoy the holidays and I'll see you back here very soon!

~*~Neassa