Though Carmen never gave any outward sign of her grief, Ivy knew that Suhara's recent death had hurt her deeply.

Suhara had been old even as Carmen's teacher, but a month ago his age had begun to catch up with him. Quite suddenly, he had become ill and his health rapidly deteriorated. Both Carmen and Ivy had been on assignment when he starting ailing, but when Suhara was unable to rise from his bed one morning, Rodger had quickly called them back.

Ivy remembered those last two weeks all too well. Most of their time had been spent tending to Suhara in his apartment, Ivy taking over when Carmen had run out in search of yet another possible cure. Ivy didn't have the heart to tell her that all the medicines in the world wouldn't help; Suhara was too old to live much longer. Carmen tried all the antibiotics and other modern medicines she could think of, and when that didn't work, she tried herbal cures. Each night Ivy watched as Suhara grew more and more ill, and Carmen pleaded with him to get well. Carmen's appearance was even worse than it had been on their first meeting in the Kiema Room, her face more drawn from age and her near-death in the Murgo complex. She almost never slept, and her eyes were red and sunken. Her clothes were rumpled, her hair stringy and limp, and her hands shook nervously. Toward the end she would slump in a chair and begin to cry, and all Ivy could do was put her arms around her and try to comfort her.

One night, when the air was so still that not even a cricket chirped and Ivy felt suffocated in the small apartment, Carmen came in with a small bowl and a knife.

"What's that for?" Ivy asked curiously.

Carmen shifted her tired gaze from Suhara's room to Ivy. "Old superstition.” she mumbled absently. "I don’t’ remember from where. I put some of my blood in a soup, and give it to him. My spirit in the blood is supposed to help heal him."

Ivy frowned at the knife. Her rational, clear-thinking friend had surely lost her mind. "I really don't think that's going to work, Carmen. I mean, your blood doesn't really have any healing properties that would...."

"I really don't have many options, do I?!" Carmen suddenly shrieked. "What else can I do? I've tried everything! Drugs don't help, herbs don't help..."

Ivy took a step back. Putting up her hands, she made an attempt at reason. "Carmen...he's old..."

"Or don't you think my blood is good enough?" Carmen stepped forward, eyes blazing. "Is that it? You think I'll poison him? You think I'll poison him with the blood of a thief?" The last word was spoken with a cry.

Frightened, Ivy tried to struggle free. "Carmen... he never thought that way about you..."

"How can you know for sure?" Carmen's voice had risen three octaves, and she shook Ivy as she spoke. "How can you know for sure?"

Suddenly Suhara's voice came faintly from the bedroom. "Mahli Saia...Mahli Saia... come here...please..."

Carmen immediately let go of Ivy and rushed into the bedroom. Ivy stayed outside, and she could hear Suhara speaking softly to Carmen in Japanese. Ivy did not know Japanese, and she figured that what ever Suhara was saying to Carmen was between the two of them, so Ivy moved away from the door and sat down.

After a few minutes Ivy heard Carmen speaking, then a short gasp of pain. Ivy sat and waited. The air in the hot room grew oppressive. She took some deep breaths and ran her fingers through her hair. The entire room seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for something. Finally Ivy could stand it no longer and walked over to the French doors. As she opened them, she was greeted by a welcome rush of air and the familiar noises of the city below them. She walked back, the breeze in her hair and sounds of traffic behind her, when she heard another sound, coming from the bedroom. It was the sound of a woman crying, the low lonely cry of one who has suffered an irreplacible loss.

Ivy opened the door to the bedroom the slightest bit. Suhara lay silently in the bed, never to speak again. Carmen was lying with her head on his chest, crying, oblivious to the blood running down her arm and pooling into her hand.



Since then Carmen rarely spoke, and she had wrapped herself in her own silent melancholy. Not even Rodger could make her smile. She wore the same expressionless face, her eyes clouded, watching something no one else could see. She still worked, though Lynn, now nearly seventy, had pressed her to rest. In fact, she worked harder than she ever had before, if that were possible. Seldavia had told the worried Ivy that this was a normal way to deal with a loss, but Ivy suspected that there was something deeper.

"I'm worried about her," Ivy said for the fiftieth time that week to Zack in the Computer Room.

"You're always worried about her. Don't nag her so much, Ive. After a few weeks, she'll be okay. As to where she is, you know well as I do that she likes to disappear every once in a while. That's just the way she's always been. Let her have some time to herself to sort things out."

"Wait till tonight," Zack told her. "If she's not back by then, it's time to worry."



It was dark, and Carmen was not at her apartment. She was not at the Agency. She was not in the park. Ivy checked all the places that Carmen frequented, but she was not there. It was beginning to rain, and Ivy cursed herself for not trying to find her sooner. As she passed by Suhara’s apartment, she nearly decided to give Rodger the go-ahead for an official search, when she saw that the French doors were open.

Ivy opened the door to the apartment, rainwater streaming from her clothes. The rooms were dark, but she could faintly see the silhouette of a person standing outside on the porch. Ivy knew who it was, and she breathed a sigh of relief having finally found her. She walked up to the woman, who was oblivious to the rain blowing in the doors and soaking her clothes.

"I've been looking all over for you," Ivy told her. "Have you been here all this time?"

Carmen did not answer.

Ivy pulled at her arm. "C'mon, let's go in. It's cold out here."

Carmen's reply was very soft. "I want to stay here."

Ivy looked up at her, concerned, and in the faint light of the street lamps saw that her face was wet, but not from the rain. Ivy took her hand. "Carmen, you can't do this to yourself. Let it go."

"I can't," came Carmen's voice, soft and strained. "I can't take back what I said to him...years ago, in the theater..."

"Listen," Ivy told her, taking her hand. "He knew why you spoke those words. He knew what you were trying to do. He knew you didn't mean what you said."

"He told me that...the night he died..."

Ivy blinked. "He did? Then why are you being so hard on yourself?"

Carmen wiped at her eyes. "I knew it even before he told me. But the words were still there...nothing can change what I said. Nothing can change all the things I did, years ago. That's still ten years wasted...ten years that I could have spent with him, instead of..." she cut off abruptly.

"Well, I wouldn't say wasted," Ivy was quick to assure her. "I certainly enjoyed all those adventures, and I think you secretly did, too. Besides, if you hadn't done all you did, we would never have become friends. Well, okay, the friends part came later, but…"

Carmen permitted herself a brief smile. "No, perhaps not. And to say I was miserable the whole time would be a lie. I could forget all I'd been through, because I was too busy playing the part of master thief." She frowned again. "But the night in the theater, I began to remember..."

"It's over and done with," Ivy told her. "It's in the past."

"True. But I can't help wishing I'd spent more time with him, been a little kinder, helped him more...” She drew in her breath and said slowly, “I can't help thinking, what if he'd died while I was still running, and I never got a chance to apologise or even say good-bye? What if he had died alone?"

"You did all you could for him," Ivy assured her. "You tried everything you could to make him well, and you stayed by his side when he died." Ivy put her arm around her. "He knew how much you cared for him. He cared for you deeply, Mahli-Saia. We all do."

"So he did." Carmen rubbed at her eyes again. She took a deep breath and exhaled as she looked out to the city below her. Then, she took the handles of the French doors and Ivy stepped back as she closed them. "I'll meet you outside," Carmen told her. "I want a few minutes more here, alone. After that, I don't think I'll ever come again."



The pair walked together silently down the streets of San Francisco, which were slick from the recent rain and reflected the light of the street lights like mirrors. A stray cat looked up, startled, then ran off into the night. A few windows were lit, the inhabitants reading quietly to battle insomnia, or preparing for the night shift in a city that never really slept. As a cable car rattled past them, Carmen broke the silence.

"Did Suhara ever tell you the story about the case in the Barcelona castle? The one in the newspaper clipping, that you asked about the first time you met him?"

Ivy thought for a minute. "No, not really. What happened?"

"We were after some jewel theives," Carmen began, raising her head as she reminisced, "and we thought we'd ambush them in this castle. Well, believe it or not, they got the jump on us first and we were attacked from behind. Their leader thought it would be really funny if we were tied up, like in some B-movie. Suhara was all calm about it, confident that we'd get out of it, but I was still green and socked one of them for making some comment about my age. I did manage to get my hands out of the cuffs, and I grabbed a crossbow off the pillar, but I couldn't shoot straight becuase I couldn't see well. So Suhara pointed out a mirror to my side, and told me to..."

"Remember your Zen training, and hold to the point of most resistance."

Carmen stared at Ivy. "I thought you said he didn't tell you this story."

She grinned. "Just that much of it. What happened then?"

"Well, I did that, and watched the leader through a mirror to my side. I'd never have shot him, but I did aim the arrow toward a chandelier that was hanging from the ceiling. I let go, and the arrow cut right through the rope..."

The two of them walked down the streets together as Carmen continued her story. As her tale ended, they stopped and watched as the sun began to rise in the early morning. The sky turned red, then orange, and the sun rose lazily into the sky between the red-tinted clouds. The fog that blanketed the city began to fade away, and the city was bathed in sunlight as its inhabitants rose to greet yet another day.

"Ai se quenya, mala di timya!"
Behold the sunrise, and the new dawn!


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