<span style="font-family: 'Arial'"><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#cc99ff">It should have been a night that left her stumbling drunk into the loft apartment with heels dangling from her fingertips as she struggled not to trip over her own bare feet. Or that on her birthday she should have been leaning heavily against a handful of giggling girls as they weaved their way down a crowded street to the next bar on the list. It was then she should have had her bestie holding back her hair sprayed hair while her cherry red nails gripped the edge of a toilet in order to leave the sour after taste of pink cocktails in her mouth. Then there would have been the cab ride back that would have been a blur. The fact that she would have stumbled into her beds with her rumpled dress and mussed hair, her mouth having only been rinsed with mouth wash, so that her memory could reboot and glitch – leaving the entire night a giant black smudge punctuated by a pounding headache when the sun filtered in through her blinds since she would have forgotten to draw her curtains.<br/>
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<i>But she had gotten lost somewhere along the way.</i><br/>
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But twenty five rolled up to the curb bearing the sounds of a hospital beep and an IV drip. The man that sat at the edge of the bed didn't look old enough to be her father, and for all the nurse that checked her vitals was aware, the bleary eyed man with the week old growth on his cheeks was just an older brother. He sat with his legs splayed and his elbows propped on his thighs, fingers steepled so that he could rest his chin in his palm. He was blank faced as he stared down at the pale face whose lashes danced in a crescent across her cheeks to follow the motion of her eyes as they flitted beneath her closed lids. His own swirled violet in their sockets, seeing nothing in the room but a path his Mind's Eye struggled to follow to try and find the girl inside the body that lay still on the bed except for the shallow rise and fall of her chest.<br/>
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The nurse cleared her throat for the third time since entering the room, her blue eyes curious but not alarmed as they studied the man's face. “James, your leg,” she murmured softly. One hand reached out to rest on his shoulder, making him jump in his seat. His eyes blinked rapidly as he jerked his attention away from the girl's face to stare at the pretty nurse standing close to him. He fought the anger, the frustration that threatened to overwhelm him in the presence of her, but judging by the set of his jaw, it was hard to contain himself. Instead he turned his attention down to the smoldering fabric of his jeans on his left side. Gritting his teeth, he placed his palm over the smoke starting to drift up, ignoring the burn pulsing into his palm.<br/>
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“Fuck, Zoey. I'm sorry, but--- just leave, OK? I just.. need to sit here for a while longer. I know you're worried about all this, but I promise I'll leave soon.” It was an excuse and he knew it. Only he wasn't supposed to sound so gruff when he said it. Olive green instead of violet now looked up at the heart shaped face that bled skepticism as she studied his features. Finally, she sighed and shook her head, but let her hand drop as she stepped away from him and the bed where the girl still lay. A bittersweet sort of smile played across her mouth before she turned to leave the room.<br/>
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“It's been five and a half hours, James. Just remember to eat something,” came the soft, melodic reply that echoed over her shoulder, followed by the click of the door. She was gone, leaving him alone with the monitor that displayed all her vitals.<br/>
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<i>They're all normal. </i>The doctors couldn't find a reason why she was lost in a coma. But he did. It was why he sat there, day after day, until visitor's hours were over and he had overstayed his welcome. Even the lunch ladies in the hospital's knew his face when he came by with his tray two hours later than most people had their lunch, only to inhale it as fast as he could chew before returning to the room to again lose himself to the Sight.<br/>
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See, his daughter was lost somewhere Unseen by the doctors that came by with their charts. The nurse that had just left could cover for him for only so long before they started asking more questions about why his daughter wouldn't wake up from her long sleep. Zoey understood that there were certain things kept hidden from the world of men, and regardless of if his daughter's body was mortal, knowing the truth would raise too many questions.<br/>
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~~~<br/>
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Tonight was supposed to be Mia's twenty fifth birthday. Innately, she knew this, even though she had lost track of time wandering the halls of another realm. She had stumbled into what would have been a Medieval keep if this had been before the kingdom of skyscrapers had taken over the world. She knew from too long wandering that time was meaningless – here. Or the fact that she arrived from a path that hadn't been there before that led up to the gates that were already flung open for her arrival. The nagging in the back of her mind was an illusion; the things she felt here weren't real.<br/>
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But they felt real.<br/>
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The fear felt real. The clenched feeling in the pit of her stomach as her feet carried her all that way until she was surrounded by damp and must felt real, just like the creeping anxiety that she just <i>shouldn't be there. </i>And yet her heart fluttered in a different way when she tried to convince herself to turn away from this, like it knew something that her intuition that this was a <b>bad </b>idea was wrong. Or like she was missing a piece to a puzzle, but if she had it, everything else would just make sense.<br/>
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She knew where to go despite the turns, the myriad of doors that she already knew led to nothing. <b>He </b>had only built this castle up from nothing to give his own kind of illusion. She knew that already, somehow, in that blanked out part of her mind – like a black out night of drinking slowly coming back, but it was still all a blur. She didn't have to consider anything when her palm shot up to push open the door to the right room because she had already done this before at some point. But this was a memory seen from a pair of rose tinted booze goggles. She didn't know what was really in front of her. <br/>
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Right?<br/>
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“Don't you know that's alcohol abuse,” came the sound of her own voice ringing in her ears from out of nowhere once the door swung shut behind her. Her tongue was quicker than she needed it to be, however. She pressed her back against the door like she might attempt to escape now that she was there, even though the violet swirl of her eyes wandered from where the spilled alcohol dripped from the wall to the man that had thrown it. Something about the way the firelight flickered across his features jerked her heart in her chest in a familiar way that sent it pounding like a drum in her eyes. It jerked something lower, too, as a less subtle reminder than something was happening. <br/>
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Mia cleared her throat after her statement, but had to use more than a little of her mental capacity to will herself to move her gaze away from him and to the rest of the room. “Kind of musty for a dream, don't you think?” The Walker grinned a lopsided stretch of mouth that sprouted dimples in her cheeks.</span></span>