Tina Minoru, Six and a Half Weeks Later
By Izzy

When she leaves her home, she suspects it’ll be for the last time. It’s been risky enough going back there every time she has, and she’s now gotten everything she needs. If she succeeds in doing this, and then the remaining children try to capture her, she might just let them. She’ll likely need their help. And she cares less about what they do to her than about destroying the last of the family that destroyed her own, even before they were all dead.

They threw it into ocean. She thought as much already. It became something only wieldable by someone they still thought of as the enemy. Never mind she has no more reason to do anything more to them, not with her daughter gone.

It’s only now she feels she has the strength to try this. She’s spent the past six weeks mostly hiding out in motels around Los Angeles, trying to remember how to think and do things for herself again. Every time she’s woken up in the morning she’s gotten scared she’s lost time again, that she who took over her has come back, and even during the day she’s constantly reviewed where she’s been and what she’s done at every hour, made sure she’s remembering. Whenever she’s ventured into a public space, she’s jumped at the unexpected sound of footsteps, been afraid to turn corners for fear Jonah’s wife will be there, waiting for her.

But there’s noone here on the Bluff Cove Trail at this time of night, noone even to spot the lantern she holds above herself as she stumbles over the rocks, until she’s standing at the foot of the ocean.

She has no idea whether or not this will work, or what she’ll do if it doesn’t. She still can’t think too far into the future anyway. She doesn’t even know if that’s from having her mind possessed, or losing everything she had ever invested any of her plans into.

It’s somewhere in the cove; she knows it. Not as close to the shore as she’d like, but maybe, just maybe, close enough.

All the time she was walking down the trail, she kept changing her mind about what she’d say. She’s not sure even as she reaches her arm out.

Not until she opens her mouth, and out comes, in a whisper, “Come back to me.” She feels almost as if she’d plead it of Amy, and Nico, and Rob, even though she knows they can’t.

But this can. She knows it’s working even before that familiar shape comes into view, tearing itself out of the water to come to her. From the way it’s gleaming in the moonlight, she doesn’t think she’ll have to worry about rusting too much.

The moment her hand closes around her staff, its power surges through her, and Tina Minoru finally feels like herself again.