Just a little ficlet for you lovely people who so enjoyed Slivers of Hope! Nearly 2000 words of little contemplations of our girl after coming home. Will I go anywhere further with this? Ehhhh, maybe. At the moment I don't have any concrete ideas that could evolve into a full blown sequel, but I'm totally open to suggestions if anyone wants to give me a hand!

Other than this, I've got another 1000 words floating around somewhere for an AU idea, so let me know if you would like to take a look at that.

Either way, please enjoy! This is going out to all the people who helped me power through and finish my first fanfic!

It was really quite amazing how quickly humanity got their act back together. 5 years after the people found themselves, bleary-eyed and dazed, laying on the street amid ruined buildings, a seemingly impossible sense of normalcy had started to return. Rubble had been cleared away, rudimentary homes set up for those who found themselves without one, and families had been reunited.

Of course, no one really knew what happened. No one knew why their cities and homes had been reduced to ruins, or why no one seemed to remember how they got there. It took a while to figure out what year it even was, and even then what was left of the government suppressed that information when it was found that 100 years had inexplicably passed when no one was looking. It was as though the entire population of the Earth had simply… fallen asleep.

They remembered the demons, though many of them liked to pretend they didn't even when Demon sirens wailed from the speakers of public buildings.

Hope never told anyone what she knew. She got plenty of questions: What happened to your leg? What happened to your hair? What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost. She didn't need to trouble them with what she knew; they were confused enough as it was. The answers she gave them were vague at best, good enough to sate their curiosity, but never enough to scratch the surface of the truth she held.

She had stopped living with her parents as soon as she could, throwing herself into relief projects; building houses and gathering food and water. It kept people from asking too many questions, and left her tired enough in the evening that sleep came quick and nightmares infrequent. She could almost pretend that her experiences were nothing more than a bad dream; that she had slept the cold sleep in the Well of Souls with everyone else if it weren't for… several reasons.

The first reason was the most obvious. The pale scar tissue that left jagged shapes in the flesh of her left knee, where glass and stone had been embedded, still inched incessantly sometimes. Other much smaller scars littered her arms and her face, showing up white against lightly tanned skin. Surviving, as it turned out, left you more scarred than dying.

The second reason was why she had chosen to live alone. Hope could still hear the heavy sulfurous breath of demons over her shoulder, or the press of a knife into her back, held by shaking, desperate hands. Paranoia dogged her daily, making her regard others with suspicion, or reach for a rifle that wasn't there when she was walking home at night. It was the reason she slept with a dagger under her pillow and an aluminum baseball bat next to her front door.

The third reason was the crows. It had taken a while, but eventually she noticed the flocks of the big black birds that mysteriously seemed to appear wherever she went, perching in the branches of nearby trees or on newly repaired power lines. There were always at least five of them, watching intently with beady black eyes. She had written it off as coincidence until a man accosted her on her way home, brandishing a knife with wild eyes and a hysteric voice, demanding the contents of her bag. Before she could even snap and beat him into submission herself, the birds descended on him with shrieking beaks and outstretched talons. Hope watched with fascination as the crows tore into the man's arms as he raised them to protect himself before he ran screaming into the night followed swiftly by the sound of flapping wings. It took her a moment to realize that cries of the birds had made sense to her. It wasn't necessarily that the shrieks themselves meant anything, but the intent behind them was crystal clear. "Stay away from Sister! No one hurts Sister!" Apparently her stay with the Crowfather had left some sort of impression. One of them returned from their chase and settled on her shoulder, staying there until she forced her feet to move and finally made her way home. She tolerated and even enjoyed the birds' presence after that, though she was pretty sure one of her neighbors thought she was a witch.

The fourth reason was them. There were sightings and conspiracy theories that floated around the brief appearances of four huge and powerful figures and showed up wherever the demons gathered, only to disappear again before anyone could figure out who they were. But Hope knew the truth. The mention of them sent shivers of recognition down her spine, memories of sharp glowing eyes and sharper weapons. She wondered if they ever thought about her.

Her wondering was answered when she heard a sharp wrap on her front door, some day about a year after she returned. Up on her toes, she looked through the peephole only to find no one there. Her fingers curled around the handle of the bat next to the door and opened it slowly, enough for the chain lock to catch. Still no one. Undoing the chain, she poked her head out onto the landing to look for her visitor. A loud croak caught her attention. A crow the size of a cat was perched on the railing outside Hope's apartment, a small sack clenched in its talons. It looked familiar. The crow bent its head in a nod of greeting and she reciprocated hesitantly. Satisfied, the bird spread its wings and took off, dragging its package with it right into Hope's waiting hands before taking off, spiraling up into the air, higher and higher until it was no more than a speck against the sky.

Hope looked down at the package in her hands as she went back inside. It was about ten inches long, wrapped in black cloth and was fairly weighty. She pulled at the twine keeping the fabric in place and carefully unwrapped it. Nestled in the folds of cloth was dagger of dark steel, two inches wide and wicked as a fang. The handle was wrapped in bone white strips of cloth and odd runes were carved into the flat side of the blade. Hope drew back, perturbed and fascinated in equal measure.

A piece of parchment curled around the handle caught her eye and she pulled on it gingerly, trying not to actually touch the weapon. The parchment small, soft in her hands as though it had been handled frequently. The tight, scrawling handwriting on it took a moment to decipher.

Little One-

For your protection. Bind it with your blood and you will never lose it.

The note wasn't signed, but Hope didn't need it. There was only one person who called her 'Little One'. Feeling only slightly more confident, Hope slid her fingers around the dagger's hilt. It wasn't all too heavy and fit her palm like it was made for it. It occurred to her that perhaps it was. She tested the edge of the blade on the pad of thumb, drawing back with a hiss when it sliced the skin with the barest of pressure. She stuck her cut thumb into her mouth and watched as the blade seemed to soak up the bead of blood left of its edge from the cut. Her brows scrunched together as she examined the note again. Huffing with resignation, pulled her thumb from her mouth, laid her hand flat open, and dragged the edge of the blade across skin of her palm. She hissed as the wound burned, but kept the dagger where it was, letting it absorb the blood from the cut until the runes on the flat of the blade filled up with a deep crimson.

She killed her first demon with that dagger. It had been one night the following summer, working late on a construction project with a few of her colleagues from the relief corps. Demon attacks were becoming less frequent as the military pulled itself together, but there were times when the beasts still lurked in the more damaged areas of the city, waiting for some unsuspecting human to cross it's path. Hope saw it first and acted immediately, pulling everyone away from the half finished walls of a new house and around the back of the tool shed. They huddled in the darkness as the monster's footsteps thumped on the dry dirt, coming ever closer. Hope could feel her adrenaline beginning to pound, rage she thought she had buried deep bleeding to the surface as the memories came back. So much agony, all because of them!

She shook off the woman who grabbed her arm as she crept around the side of the shed, reaching into her tool belt, knowing the dagger would be there. And it was, the hilt sliding into her palm like the hand of an old friend. The demon's back was to her and Hope leapt, moving more on old instinct than any kind of logic. The demon felt an arm snake around its neck, a meager but determined weight bending it over backwards before the wicked tip of a blade pierced its throat, severing flesh and artery with disturbing ease. The beast died with a wet gurgle before it ever saw its assailant.

With a heave, Hope pushed the bulk of the demon off her and stood panting, blood dripping from her fingers. Her co-workers stared unabashedly from behind the shed as the corpse dissolved into a cloud of cinder and ash. One let out relieved cheer, which was quickly taken up by everyone else. Hope felt hands clap her on the back and it was all she could do to not lash out as the red faded from her vision. The story of her heroic exploit spread, and the attention was stifling. She tried to brush it off, saying that anyone would have done it, but those that had been there insisted on all forms of thanks. Hope declined them as politely as she could. She didn't want to be a hero; she just didn't want to lose her home again.

Eventually dissuaded by her continual "no, thank you"s, they left her alone. Finally able to breath easy, she took the long walk home by herself. The one nice thing about the city being such a wreck was the lack of light; the sky was full of more stars than she had ever seen.

A figure stood at the end of the street when next she looked and Hope stopped cold. The figure didn't move, but even from this distance, Hope could feel the power and authority rolling from like the tide. Framed in moonlight, she could make out the curve of a scythe held in one hand, the curtain of dark hair, and the familiar, fiery glow of ember eyes. Of course it was him. Hope let out the breath she had been holding and let the tension drain from her shoulders. She raised hand and gave him a short wave. After a moment, he too raised a hand. The two stood there for a comfortable moment before he turned and vanished into the mist that had not been there a before. Hope sighed and continued on her way, a slight smile touching her lips. If anything, at least she wasn't alone.