It began almost without warning. One moment Karasu was perched atop the house like the bird he was named for, with Haruka sleeping peacefully in the room beneath him and all the lights of Hakodate spread out at his feet; the next, the Ouroborous was opening up into a shimmering circle against the night sky. The incursion brushed tripwires in his mind from somewhere to the north, and he swiveled toward the harbor with his pulse pounding in his ears. How much time did he have to get Haruka out of here?

"It's La'Cryma. I'm not sure how many." The words were out of Tobi's mouth even before his form had solidified at Karasu's side. His eyes were grim as he scanned the black horizon.

They had agreed on their strategy in the event of an attack like this, but that didn't mean Karasu had no reservations. "Will you be able to -"

"Don't worry, I can handle it." He flashed Karasu a quick smile. "If nothing else, we still have Atori." Tobi's quantum model of this dimension already whirled above the back of his hand. A pinpoint of light advanced on their location - yes, from the north, and much too quickly. Karasu flickered out.

"Haruka," he said as he thumped to the floor next to her bed. Over in the corner, Baron's head came up with a startled whuff as Haruka rose on one elbow, sleep-rumpled and so very much herself that it robbed him of breath. He shouldn't be here with her like this.

"Karasu?" Rubbing her eyes, she squinted up at him. "What's wrong?" she asked, and time began to move forward again.

"We have to go." At that she was suddenly very much awake, her eyes huge and luminous as he scooped her up, awkwardness drowned in necessity. Before she could say another word, they were down the hall, out through the window and away, away, into the forest that climbed the slope toward Mt. Hakodate.

They flew just beneath the canopy - low enough to conceal them from above, but at a height where the crush of trees should confuse their position in whatever readouts Kuina or Kosagi could still manifest without Tobi's help. Her hands knotted in Karasu's cloak, Haruka clung to him inside the tight circle of his arms, as much a part of him as his own heartbeat. She was trying to tell him something, shouting the words against his chest, but the wind whistling past his ears drowned them out. "Hold on," he shouted back, though he doubted she hear him any better than he could hear her.

In dodging one low-hanging branch, he clipped another and went spinning toward the ground with Haruka's scream echoing in his ears. His hand cupping the crown of her head and his limbs caging her body, he twisted so that it was his back and shoulder that crashed through the brush first. Branches battered them but did not break their fall. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs.

Karasu lay gasping with Haruka shivering against him and too many sharp things jabbing him in the back and side. It was a moment before he could even think to uncurl enough to look her over for injuries. "Haruka," he croaked. "Are you all right?"

Only the shine of her eyes was visible in her pale face as she pushed herself into a sitting position, her hand jerking back from something prickly. "I'm fine, but what about you? Oof, I think we took out a bush." Instead of scrambling away, she leaned down over him, and vision gave way to a landscape that her fingers traced across his cheek in lines of concern.

She was so warm.

For a moment, there in the dark of the woods, she was the Haruka he had lost, and he had to clench his fist to his side to keep himself from gathering her up against his chest, where he swore he would never let anything hurt her again - except that his own strength of feeling could bind this Haruka like razor wire, if he wasn't careful.

"Oh no, you're bleeding!" Her fingertips came away from his temple dark and slick. She looked around as if for something to dab at it with, but at least it wasn't reizu. Karasu sat up with a groan, and she was still in his lap, her mussed hair tickling his cheek. It was like waking from one dream into another. He felt like a ragged scarecrow instead of a soldier as he gently disentangled himself and pulled her to her feet.

"Ow." Haruka picked up one foot to look at the sole. "I guess I'm not used to going barefoot outside," she apologized, and his shoulders relaxed - until, through the whispering leaves, he picked out the faraway sounds of spin weaponry being deployed. Haruka twisted around to look downhill, though trees and darkness obscured anything she might have seen.

"Will Tobi and Atori be all right?" she asked as he gathered her up in his arms, and he realized he hadn't even told her what was happening. Her eyes locked on his, and she touched his temple again. "Will you be all right?"

"We'll be fine," he said, hoping that was true.

Her arms twined around his neck as they flew through the woods. They lit down in a clearing small enough that the trees flanking it would shield them from above, but large enough to let a little moonlight through to the ground - enough, at least, to let Haruka see where she was putting her bare feet. She broke away from him and toed her way through the vegetation to where she could see through to the sky. A practiced dance couldn't have been more beautiful.

"Are we really on Mount Hakodate?" she said, her eyes alight. "I wonder if there are flowers I could bring back for Miho and Ai. They won't believe this." She looked down at the plants around her feet, but in this thin light they were featureless. After a moment's thought, Karasu crouched down and opened up a display over his hand, careful not to let it connect to any of the networks the other Dragon Knights could access. It didn't shed as much light as he had hoped, but it did pick out a few shy flowerheads hidden in the foliage.

"Wow, thanks!" Haruka beamed up at him, and Karasu felt his face relax into a smile. As she plucked buttercups from the forest floor, he kept his eyes on the sky and his inner senses open for any quantum movement near their location. The air was cool and wild-smelling, redolent of crushed greenery and stirred-up soil.

Some minutes later, he noticed that instead of picking flowers, Haruka was crouched in the weeds, hugging her arms to herself. When she saw his eyes on her she smiled at him, but even that seemed a little wan, for Haruka. "Kind of chilly up here, isn't it?" She rubbed her upper arms.

"You're shivering," he said, horrified. Of course she was - he hadn't even grabbed a blanket for her as they left. His only thought had been to get her out of there as fast as he could. He laid a hand on her shoulder and then pulled back, his mind racing, until she leaned into his side.

"Can't I just -" she began, and then he was sitting back in the leaves and letting her crawl into his lap, despite the sirens wailing in the back of his mind. In this position it took a little rearranging, but he wrapped his cloak around them both and hugged her to his chest, as he had while they flew.

"Is that better?" he asked her, feeling incredibly self-conscious, and Haruka nodded against him, though she was still shivering a little. She pulled in her skinny legs so that his cloak would cover her feet. They sat in silence, listening to the chirping of crickets and toads, and to the leaves stirring around them.

"It's nice being here with you like this, Karasu," she said, and his arms tensed around her. "Having everyone at the house is a lot of fun, but at night you're always up on the roof by yourself. I miss spending time with just you."

If he was honest with himself, he missed it, too. An empty space had opened up inside him when he'd moved from the storeroom to the roof. At first he'd attributed it to La'Cryma's initial reluctance to attack after Fukurou's death, though that shamed him - it seemed obscene that he should feel whole only when he was protecting her from some threat - but it was plotting defenses alongside her and her friends (his friends too, once) that had begun to fill that hole. It was beyond anything he had dreamed to see her alive again, vibrant and happy in a timespace that had not begun to crumble, and sometimes, when she smiled at him from across the room, he wondered if he had unknowingly fallen into some undeserved afterlife.

"I want to remember tonight when I can't come see you, so" She took a breath and looked up at him with flushed cheeks. "Would you give me my first kiss?"

He stared at her. The silence stretched too thin to contain everything it held, and Karasu carefully said, "Maybe you should ask Yuu after we get back."

Haruka frowned. "Well, honestly, I don't even know if he wants to."

"He does." The words left Karasu's lips without thought.

Her eyes danced like the stars overhead. "Well, you're Yuu too, so it should be okay, right?"

It should have been innocent enough. It could never be innocent enough, because Karasu knew not just her, but the woman she would become. The woman she would become in one possible future, he reminded himself, but somehow the distinction seemed less and less relevant the more he insisted on it, and that frightened him even more than her request. His head spun like it had that long-ago summer night during high school, when he visited from Tokyo and Isami got him drunk on sake he'd bought off one of his gangbanger friends.

She's not the same Haruka, he told himself again. But he didn't think he was capable of not loving Haruka, wherever or whenever he found her.

She was twelve. But he could remember being twelve and loving her.

But even if she was the same person, he wasn't. Not anymore.

Karasu's hands came up to settle on her shoulders, fragile and sharp-boned beneath the fabric of her nightshirt, and her eyes fluttered shut as he bent his head to brush the gentlest of kisses against her forehead.

When he pulled back, Haruka's eyes flew open, her lips pursing in such profound disappointment that in other circumstances he might have found it amusing. But when she saw his face, hers turned somber.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't tease you like that," she said, and then craned her neck to plant a kiss of her own on his cheek.

Karasu blinked down at her, open-mouthed. With twinkling eyes, she smiled and flung her arms around his neck in a hug that, after a moment of shock, he managed to return.

"Thank you for everything, Karasu," she whispered into his shoulder. Another her had said almost the same thing to him once, and then kissed him for the last time. His eyes stung.

"It's fine," he whispered back, and held her. To his surprise, he found that it was.

Some things could still be simple, if he let them.

They might have been holding each other that way for five minutes or five hours when nearby quantum movement brushed Karasu's mind.

"They're coming." She slipped from his arms as they stood, a tearing away that left a cold and drawing pain in him like the moment he disconnected his pipeline. "Hide, Haruka," he said, gesturing to the brush behind them, and stood with his spin weapon at the ready.

For a long time, silence. Then the leaves overhead rustled with more than just wind, and Karasu tensed, his eyes never leaving the source of the sound.

"It's just me, Karasu," said Tobi. A twig snapped, and the diminutive Dragon Knight dropped down to the ground. Reizu particles drifted from the place where his cloak hung ragged over one shoulder, but his hand was already rising to heal the damage.

Karasu let out the breath he was holding and lowered his arm. "What happened?" he asked.

"It was Kosagi," Tobi said. "It's possible she was here against orders. I dodged her attacks, drew her out to the park, and then she just vanished. None of my readouts could find her anywhere in this dimension. I wish I knew what they were planning."

"We'll know before long," Karasu said, and Haruka emerged from the bushes to stand at his side.

"There you are, Haruka." Tobi flashed her a relieved smile. "I hope no one followed the two of you up here. I couldn't monitor much else of was going on until Kosagi disappeared."

If anyone could, it would be Tobi. Karasu was uncomfortably aware that he himself had relied on his internal model of quantum movement in this timespace to the exclusion of more precise external displays - especially dangerous given the range of Kosagi's weapon. He couldn't hope to match Tobi's technical wizardry, but it was sobering to consider the possibility that he had been so caught up in Haruka herself that his inattention might have compromised her safety. Never again, he swore to himself.

Not noticing his silence, Haruka took hold of the hand that Karasu held clenched at his side. "No, there was no trouble at all, but we heard you fighting. You're not hurt, are you?"

"Nothing I couldn't heal." Tobi shook his head. "At least you weren't forced to stay out here all night."

"Oh, I don't know. We were having a really nice time," she said wistfully, then frowned up at Karasu. "We're safe now - why are you so tense?"

After they returned to what even Karasu was beginning to think of as home, the rest of the night passed without incident. If the wind was cold, it lost its edge when he remembered Haruka's arms around his neck. He tried not to dwell on those moments, but his mind kept returning to them like a bird to a favorite roost. And when the sky above Hakodate began to glow, a voice called his name from the window below. Haruka was there, smiling up at him as though she knew he would come. This time, when Karasu swept her up to the roof, the awkwardness between them faded like stars in the light of dawn.

Together, they watched the sun rise.