She was back.

She was back, she was back, she was back and all she wanted to do was see Urchin and then go home. She'd killed the woman with the son and now she had to see that hers was alright. Cara had ridden back with her on the carriage she'd hitched a ride with all the way to Old Rose.

"You're getting blood on the seats."

"Not my problem."

"You didn't even have children."

"I had one."

"What does it matter? You're dead. Go away."

"You killed me. You're keeping me here."

"I'm tired. I don't need this. You could have just listened to me. Why did you run?"

"Because I had to get away from you."

"I told you not to. You're not my problem either."

"Do you have children?"

"No. Yes. No. I don't know."

"You were going to kill me anyway."

"...Just go away. I'm too tired for this."

And she had decided that she did have a child, because suddenly the thought of that boy alone without a soul to feed him made her veins feel like ice. And what if she'd been shot? What if she'd died? Then he'd have no hope. It was true-- she hadn't thought of him the entire time she was in Vienda. Amani was a naturally selfish creature who, in general, killed for gain.

But that wasn't important. She was thinking of Urchin now.

Amani's feet were in pain, and her face hurt, and every single bone in her body ached. She hadn't eaten in a day and a half, and the woman with the dead son wouldn't stop talking to her.

"You killed me."

"Yes."

"I had a son and you killed me. You said you didn't like to kill mothers."

"I don't. Are all dead people this chatty?"

"You killed me."

Amani waved the apparition away with her right hand and swayed on the spot. She looked a little like she had when she'd first arrived to Old Rose. Drunk, unkempt, dirty, and worn out. It was funny how time seemed to turn in circles. Any day now she'd be getting a job with the Bad Brothers. And then Dren would find her and he'd go send her to kill Alstair. And then she'd kill a mother. And then she'd become a mother.

"What? I don't want to take care of a child."

"I took care of mine. I'm worth more than you."

"Yes, well I knew that." Amani laughed at the ghost and leaned against a wall, too tired to go on. The air was incredibly thick, and she was having a hard time adjusting. Her breathing was shallow, and moisture clung to her skin. It made her feel sticky and slightly cold. Or was she hot?

"I think I'm sick." She said out loud to no one.

Amani's apartment door was open, once she arrived at it. It seemed it had been for quite a while. It was almost like a welcoming, no books had been overturned, no hand had run its way through her belongings. Her kitchen had not been ransacked. She did not seem to have been robbed. There was nothing changed and nothing to find but quiet. Quiet and one other thing.

A small lump had taken up residency on Amani's couch. It was covered by a coat and sported a bloom of dark, unkempt hair at the top of it. Amani knew it to be Urchin, if only from the smell, which seemed different on that day. Distance brought both fondness and forgetfulness, it was unlikely that her nose was immune. It seemed a familiar scene, almost.

"That's him." Amani said to the ghost, except now it wasn't there. She stared at the space besides her, eyes unfocused, and then shrugged. Fine. If Cara wanted to leave she could do that. Amani wasn't going to stop her, no sir she was not. Ghosts come and go and that is the way of things.

Abstractly she realized her mind was rambling about what was most likely a figment of her imagination.

Trying to be quiet and failing, Amani approached the sleeping figure and knelt. Her knees cracked loudly. A clumsy hand ran its way over the boy's hair slowly.

"Urchin how did you get in here?" She asked, not really expecting him to hear her. Amani tried to get up again and realized that for the moment, her legs were too heavy to comply. Instead she buried her face in the boy's back, closing her eyes.

"His name's Urchin? What kind of name is Urchin?"

"Well I didn't name him." Amani told the dead woman, irritated that she'd somehow managed to come back. "And weren't you gone?"

"It doesn't look like it, does it?"

"You're a nasty thing." Amani sighed, and leaned back. Or thought she leaned back. Her eyes opened and she was still in the same position that she'd been in before, her head on Urchin's back. Dreaming, then.

Realistically, she should probably get up.

Realistically, Amani could no more do this than she could fly.

Urchin remained still, unmoving and making no sound at all as Amani rested against him. The majority of his bulk was still rags, there seemed to be very little actual boy, hiding within. His skull was cold beneath her fingers. Waiting there, the familiarity of his scent was associated with memories that flowed upon Amani like water onto land.

They were not memories of a child, so keen to have her approval. They were memories of war.

Amani's weight against him had pulled part of the coat away from his face. His skin was clammy and pallid. Black blood was congealing in his ruined, left eye. The smell of a butcher's shop at the end of the day. That was his signature now. His mouth hung slightly open, lips cracked and gummy.

He had been dead for several hours, at least.

"He's dead."

The ghost woman said it and Amani knew it was true. She got up then, and walked to her water basin. She washed her hands-- she'd noticed there was something sticky on them. Then she washed her face. The dead woman wasn't saying anything, and Amani was grateful for that small comfort. She didn't even look into the living room as she walked into her bedroom and collapsed onto her bed.

She slept for several hours, and when she got up some of her bones ached less, but her stomach was protesting the long wait for food. At least her head felt clearer. Amani went into the kitchen and drank a from a tall glass of water until the fuzzy taste in her mouth left her. She picked up the set of spare keys, some money, and shut the door on the way out. When she was down there she ate fish from one of the stands on the side of the road. It was too salty, but for once, Amani didn't complain.

She walked back up to her apartment and finally entered the room with Urchin's body in it. It seemed colder than the rest.

"The cold helps preserve the body." She told the dead woman with the son. Amani could smell the cold, and the congealed blood, and faintly she could smell how the little boy's body was beginning to decay. She picked him up carefully. He was too light. He had always been too light. For a moment the thought made her chest spasm, and Amani almost gave way to the assault of emotions inside of her. Almost. Her face had contorted into an ugly mask of pain for just a moment.

She smoothed it.

Amani walked to the graveyard holding his body, and when she got there she borrowed a shovel. Then she buried him.

"You left the gun he gave you in Vienda. At the bottom of your pack." Said the ghost woman as she dug.

"It is only a weapon. I can get another one." She paused in her digging to wipe the sweat from her forehead that was crawling down into her eyes and making them sting. "Besides, I would have thrown it out anyway. What business do I have carrying the dead around with me?"

"You tell me."

"Go away." Amani murmured as she lowered the body into the hole she'd dug. Her hands were bleeding. She licked them for a moment before beginning to shovel earth back into the pit.

When she was done she left the shovel near the grave and walked to the Black Dove. She ordered four magmas and sat down in one of the more shadowy corners.

There was something incredibly familiar to this feeling she had. She had experienced it before. When she'd first come to Old Rose there had been a very small amount of her that still felt it, even though the Plague War had long passed. Yes, that was it. This was how she'd felt after Dren had told her Mirai's reasons for the war. She'd spoken to the dead then, too.

"You should go. I am the only dead woman here." Amani told the ghost, and didn't receive a reply.

"Or at the very least I am insane."

[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJqYjL4kia8 ]