Ivy watched Carmen pace back and forth in the Keima Room, often looking out the door that she insisted stay open. Carmen still didn't like the idea of having to sleep in the room, but most of the Juniors were not comfortable with the idea of her going anywhere that was unguarded, even to sleep.

Seldavia walked in with another box, and set it on the table. Carmen was checking its contents even before she set it down. "Relax, girl," Seldaivia told her. "I got everything on your list. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go to that Council meeting. And they'll want to see you there as well, shortly, to explain anything they don't understand." She waved and left.

"Can I see?" Ivy asked curiously as Carmen began to take things out of the box.

"There's not much of interest in here," Carmen told her. "Just a few little items that I wanted to have if I'm going to spend a lot of time in here. Personal junk."

Ivy sensed a slight dismissal in her voice, and decided that the box was probably not any of her business. "I'll be at the Council meeting, then. Seldavia said anyone who was interested could attend, right?"

"Uh huh," Carmen said absently, flipping through a book.

Ivy was about to leave when an odd object caught her eye. Among the books, picture frames, and small cultural items was a rose preserved in glass. It seemed out of place next to the leather-bound books and wood carvings, even a little tacky. Ivy wondered why Carmen would want it in her house, much less in a box of prized possessions.

"Where'd you get the rose?" Ivy asked.

Carmen gave her a strange, indecipherable look. "What?" Ivy demanded. Carmen said nothing and picked up the books, putting them in the bookshelf. "What'd I say?" Ivy asked her, baffled.

Suddenly she let out a little squeal of laughter as a sudden thought struck her. "Oh! You didn't get that from a guy, did you?" The thought of a handsome, dashing young man offering the romance-intolerant Carmen a rose set her into peals of laughter.

Carmen gave her a dirty look. "I most positively did not."

"Where'd you get it, then?" Ivy asked, wiping her eyes.

Carmen gave her that same strange look for several moments, then said in a flat voice, "You gave it to me."

Ivy stopped laughing. "What?"

Carmen seemed to be trying to figure out how to explain something. She looked at the floor and the walls, then walked over to the table and handed Ivy the item in question. "Look at it closely," she said softly. "Have you ever seen it before?"

Ivy turned it over in her hands. "Looks like an ordinary rose to me. I don't see anything special about it. It's even a little frayed around the petals."

"There is nothing special about how it looks," Carmen told her. "The reason I have it is something different altogether."

Ivy squinted at it. She couldn't remember a time when she'd given anyone a rose. A bunch of flowers, here and there, when a friend had been sick, but never a rose. She always went to the same store, because a cousin of hers worked there. Her cousin really knew her flowers, too. She knew which ones to get a sick friend, a girlfriend or boyfriend, someone recently deceased...

You say a friend just died?

Not exactly a friend. I never really knew her. But I want something to put on her grave.

It took only a split second for Ivy to understand. As she looked up with the realization clearly written on her face, Carmen took the rose from her.

"I never did thank you for this," Carmen told her, her voice low and thick with emotion.

Ivy blinked. "What’s the big deal? You were fine. We both saw you, and you made some odd comment about taking your place..." she stopped suddenly, and was silent for a few moments. "That was a lie, wasn't it?"

Carmen nodded. “Over the years, I heard so many smart remarks about bread and water and license plates that I began to wonder if anyone cared to see me around at all. I deserved some of them, I suppose, but I wondered…if I did wind up in jail, or if something happened to me…would anyone really care? So I was holed up in that mountain, and I had set things up so that I could know everything Daeslenna said; as well as what you said, through him. And I have to say," she told Ivy as she smiled through the tears that were beginning to form, "that I was quite surprised by what I saw. I thought Daeslenna might be a bit disturbed, but he was a little more than that. And as for you...well, let's just say I don't think I'd have ever seen that coming.

"But what made me feel better was the rose. I can't explain...it was like...I was walking in a graveyard or something...and expected to see just a mound of dirt, not even a headstone, because no one cares about who died. Instead there's a girl in black putting flowers on a marked grave. And the words she spoke..." Carmen cut off abruptly, placing the glass on the couch next to her and putting her hands to her face, both in emotion and a little embarrasment.

Ivy sat down next to her and picked up the glass, looking at the flower itself, and imagined Carmen fingering the soft petals...encasing the rose in glass...keeping it in as safe a place as she could...and finally asking to have it brought to her along with a few other things she considered important to her. This rose, which Ivy had given her in a gesture of sorrow and respect. The enormity of Carmen's emotional attachment to it struck a chord within Ivy "Why didn't you tell anyone you felt this way?"

Carmen wiped at her eyes. "I could never tell for sure. And what would you have done Ivy, before the incident in the complex, if I had told you what you know now? Would it have made a difference? What could you possibly do? You had your job to do, your role to play, and I had mine. We were on two very different sides. I was too afraid to try. Partly because I feared I would be rejected, and partly I feared you would want to help in a way that would endanger your career. I would never, ever ask for help from someone that would be put in danger if they associated themselves with me."

“Don't ever think that you aren't as important as anyone else,” Ivy told her softly. “That's what the rose is for."

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