AN: Warning, emotions ahead. Please be advised not to feed the emotions as they will become too accustomed to you.

EDIT: I forgot that I had planned to add a link to an interesting little tale that has returned to RRL. It's an interesting take on the VR genre in that the first ten or so chapters focuses on the real life side of the character before it will move into the VR. It has a great deal of detail and has caught my attention. If you are interesting in VR tales with deep characterization and detail give BreakDown by Snowmelts a try.

Chapter 44.2: A Bloody Mess

Reflection. It was a chance to look upon something often unseen. Whether it was the sight of an enemy as seen on a well-polished blade, or a look at the inner thoughts that were often well hidden, the usefulness of reflection remained the same.

Shara stood before a small pond within the walls of Black Dragon Keep and gazed upon the surface of the water. It was a decorative pool of water used to help keep the flowers and hedges watered. There were easier methods if magic was used. However, the addition of multicolored fish had allowed the little pond to increase the aesthetics of the area to the point that those other methods were deemed unnecessary.

It was neither the fish, nor the aesthetics of the pond that Shara sought. It was the reflection.

The ninja enthusiast reached up and gently traced her fingers along the contours of her eyebrows, and then down along her cheek. She stopped at her chin then sighed at the image. "Is that really the truth?" she said with a sigh.

She had discussed many things with Scott last night. She believed that they now understood each other better, but part of her wished that she did not. One thing that he had said had caused her a great deal more heartache than anything. She spoke those words aloud as she looked at her reflection. "How can I ever be sure that I trust you when even your face is something that you made up?"

Taken out of context that statement might have seen mean-spirited, even cruel. Shara had not taken it that way due to the rest of the conversation.

As she gazed upon her reflection images began to reappear within her mind. She clearly recalled the way things were the night before, the start of the most important part of the conversation. Soon, she was lost to the memories.

The previous night...

The night breeze was cool on her skin, slightly humid. It brought with it the scent of wildflowers and the omnipresent stench of human civilization. She loved that smell, the smell of humanity.

Across from Shara sat Scott, he was not the only Scott in existence and yet he was. Mortal souls were strange in that manner. They fooled themselves into believing that they lived a billion separate simultaneous lives, if not more. Yet, the truth was that they were essentially all one being. There were more Scott's that even a goddess might shake a stick at in the fullness of time, and yet there could inevitably be only one.

Shara sat across from Scott, a being she always saw as the same even if there were minor differences in his current cosplay. "I... Do you love me?"

Scott blinked slowly then tried to grant her a warm and friendly smile. It died halfway into completion. The resultant expression was one of confusion interlaced with a hint of sadness. "Shara, do you really want me to answer that now? I barely even know what that is in the first place."

Her eyelids dropped slightly and she lowered her head. "I don't either, but I'd like to feel that with Scott."

"With Scott, huh." He took a slight breath then blew it out before looking slightly off to the side. "Look, Shara..."

"Yes." she said quickly. Her head snapped up and her eyes widened into an innocent, heartbreakingly hopeful expression.

The words that he had intended to speak died on his lips. Shara's innocent and hopeful expression caused him to lose himself for a moment. Once he was able to speak properly he said, "I've changed a lot in the last two months."

The redhead blinked then tilted her head to the side. "Well, I guess?"

Scott shook his head. "No, I really have. I don't know how much you have seen of my life before all of this started, but I went through a lot."

"I ... Yes." she nodded. That much she understood clearly.

He curled his fingers into fists then acquired a thoughtful expression. His eyes became unfocused, the eyes of a man seeing the past instead of the present. "For a long time I was alone. No one gave a damn about me, and I didn't want to care about anyone else."

"Scott ..." said Shara gently. She fidgeted slightly, uncertain what to do. In the end, she chose to reach out and gently place her hand atop one of his fists. "I could not be around, but ..."

He nodded. "I know."

He closed his eyes briefly then decided to change the subject for a moment. "Do you remember much about my father?"

"Yeah, I liked him." said Shara with a smile.

Scott smiled as well. "He was a cop, the sort of cop people would probably write comic books about."

"Yeah, didn't he bring down that street gang running meth out of that old warehouse on Rainwater Street?" asked Shara.

"He was always doing stuff like that, but what I meant was that he refused to give in to threats or bribes. More than once we had to have police protection because some jackass or other was pissed that he busted one of their people instead of giving in to them." said Scott. Shara did not have a chance to speak again before he continued, her thoughts were focused on remembering the past as well.

Scott continued, "Dad ... he used to ..." He sighed briefly even as the rims of his eyes began to redden and swell slightly. He tried to fight back the tears, and succeeded for the most part. It had been a long time since he had talked about his father with anyone save for his reminiscences at his sister's grave.

"Well, he used to try to explain things to me ..." Scott laughed a little as a few of the tears he had been fighting slipped free of their prison. "You know, stuff about what it means to be a more than a man."

"More than a man?" asked Shara, curiously. Her head leaned lightly to the side causing her ponytail to swish sideways a little for emphasis.

Scott laughed sadly once again, his whole body shaking briefly in the process. He looked into Shara's eyes then said, "Yeah. He tried to teach me what it meant to be a good man."

Shara smiled tentatively then squeezed his hand. Tears began to form along the edges of her eyes as well. "My father, my real one... He is always working ... But he tried to spend time with me some too, tried to tell me how to be a good person."

"Your real ... Ah yeah, your parents here aren't really yours." he said softly. His tears stopped flowing and he became more focused on the present. "I'd forgotten about that." he said in a slightly annoyed tone of voice.

Shara was not always the most observant person, despite the ability to see most points in time whenever she wished to do so. However, she could hear his tone easily. "Scott, I had to have parents if I was going to be in this world for a long time."

He laughed once more, "I suppose you did." He blinked slowly then screwed his lips slightly to the left. "Who are those people anyway?"

"A couple of souls I hired to play the part. I'm not sure what they are doing now. I think they might be alive still." said Shara without much concern.

"Yeah, you've mentioned it before. I meant, who are they? Who are they, really?" asked Scott.

Shara opened her mouth then slowly closed it. "I don't know. They are just souls. Most of the time souls who incarnate on their own in a given life just choose a similar name to their current identity. Sometimes their little fragments want to try something new. We reincarnate them into specific premade lives if they want to go that route."

"Your parents wanted something new, I take it?" he asked her thoughtfully.

Shara shrugged her shoulders then nodded. "They volunteered."

Silence reigned on the rooftop for a time. Neither Scott nor Shara would look at each other for several minutes. The longer the situation continued, the more awkward it became.

Finally, it was Shara who spoke and broke the painfully quiet atmosphere. "Scott, what happened to your mother?"

Scott shook his head then gestured dismissively toward a small apartment building on the far side of the community. "She's over there somewhere."

"No." Shara bit her lower lip then chewed on it for a moment. "That's not what I meant."

She squeezed his hand a little then asked, "I know she didn't stand up for you when everything happened with your sister. She never seemed like that kind of person."

"Oh. That." Scott laughed in a small, tired, way. "Yeah. I was shocked, too."

"She always seemed so warm and intelligent. It makes no sense that she would just take that man's side." said Shara in an angry tone while she squeezed his hand once more.

Scott sighed slowly. "Mom changed a lot after dad died. I still don't understand a lot about what happened back then because I was so young."

"How did she even end up with that man? I can't imagine her settling for someone like that." said Shara.

He barked out an angry laugh. "No kidding. Dad was barely gone for a month before she started dating that guy. A few months later they were married and he lived in our house."

Shara nodded. "Yeah, I saw the records, but I still don't get why she would do it."

"That's what I'd like to know? Yeah, she would eventually need help with the bills, but it wasn't like we were strapped for cash early on. Dad had life insurance through the county, and his friends took up a donation." Scott growled low in his throat. "There was absolutely no reason to hook up with someone like that bastard."

He continued without allowing Shara to speak. "You know, I used to think that maybe things were worse than I thought. I figured that there were a lot of bills and other things that caused problems. I think she even told me that, but it's bullshit!"

"Bullshit?" asked Shara. Her expression shifted to one of curiosity and mild surprise.

"Well, if it had been a few years I might have understood it. But, it wasn't." said Scott. His nostrils flare and his upper lip wrinkled slightly. "She had the money to take care of the family. If she was lonely, she could have held out for someone worth a damn."

Scott unleashed a baleful gaze toward Shara, his eyes flared brightly with a hellish red light. "Why settle for a piece of shit like that when she could have ended up with almost anyone?"

His wrinkled lip curled into a visible snarl that showed a hint of fang as his face slightly morphed. It was almost imperceptible in the night, but his jawline was a little longer, his canine teeth a bit sharper and more exposed. "It was like she changed overnight."

Curiosity piqued, Shara leaned forward and asked, "What do you mean?"

"I... Well, it's something I recalled more clearly as I grew up. But mom changed. She..." Scott closed his eyes for the moment and searched for the memories he was trying to communicate. After he latched onto one he said, "It was like she was a broken doll."

"What do you mean?" asked Shara.

"At first she was sad, but she still met with people. She was strong and did her best for us." said Scott in a thoughtful tone. His expression and tone shifted immediately afterward. "That changed when she met him."

Scott took a deep breath then said, "She stopped speaking except for short sentences. Her eyes always had a weird look in them like she was seeing something far away that no one else saw."

"The sort of things that she said were ridiculous, too."

Shara squeezed his hand then peered into his eyes. "What sort of things?"

"Well, things. You know? She wanted us to call him father, even though she had barely known the bastard for a few days. He would go off on a meth addled tirade and smash up the house, but she'd quietly admonish us for setting him off. Instead of booting his sorry ass out of the house she would just tell us to mind our father and not to upset him." Scott growled a little and clenched his fists tighter.

"That's weird..." said Shara. It made little sense to her and made her think of her memories of the woman she had known for a year. Scott's mother had always been sweet and warm. What he described now did not sound like her at all.

"No shit." grunted Scott. "I never understood it. She was like a freaking zombie half the time. She sat in her room and just stared at the wall, except when she had to make dinner or he wanted to fuck her."

Shara's nose wrinkled at the last part. Scott clarified before she could ask. "I don't even want to think about the last part. The bastard always smirked at me before he ordered her into their bedroom. It was worse when he told us to get out of the house because."

"He threw you out?"

Scott barked out an angry laugh. "He would tell us to leave, or throw me out of my room, because he was going to fuck his bitch."

"That's just... Your mother put up with that?"

His derisive snort. "She rarely said anything about it except to mind your father."

"I don't know why she changed, but it was like she had suddenly died inside." He looked to Shara. "Just going through the motions, you know?"

She nodded slowly, but her mind raced. Something about the story that Scott had revealed to her made her distinctly uncomfortable, and not just due to the contents of the tale. It seemed so out-of-character for the warm hearted woman who had baked cookies and tried to teach her things.

Scott changed the subject. The current topic was something he would rather forget. "Sorry that I went off like that. I know it's not what you came here for tonight."

Shara shook her head slowly from side to side. "No, it's fine. We never really talk like this."

"Not anymore." he said, before looking down.

She smiled slightly then tilted her head to the side. "We used to sit up in that tree all the time and talk when we were kids."

Scott laughed weakly. "Yeah, I took so much shit from the other boys for hanging out with a girl."

Shara giggled warmly. "Little jealous kids. That's all they were."

"Yeah, it's all we were..." muttered Scott.

Shara made a slightly curious noise then asked, "Yeah...?"

He looked into her eyes and said, "You're really almost two thousand years old, right? That's what you told me once..."

The ninja goddess nodded. "Yes."

"Didn't you feel a little weird hanging out with a little kid in a tree...?" he asked her.

"No, some of my best memories happened in that tree." she said gently then offer him a warm smile. "Trust me."

Scott's eyes close softly then he took a deep breath. "I wish I could. I really do."

"You... don't trust me, Scott?" she asked. A strange feeling overcame her as she said it. Her throat seemed to close off a little and a slight cramp occurred in her stomach.

"Your parents, your life, even how you look." Scott opened his eyes and looked into hers. "You created all of that, right?"

"Yes." she said, the look in his eyes caused the cramp to worsen. Her lower lip began to quiver slightly.

Scott took a deep breath then look away briefly. After a moment he took another breath then looked into her eyes once more. "How can I ever be sure that I trust you when even your face is something that you made up?"

Shara reacted as though she had been physically struck. She flinched back, tears welled up in her eyes and her lip quivered. "S-Scott! I—"

She was silenced in the strangest manner one might think in that moment. Scott pulled her forward and kissed her softly on the mouth. Her eyes widened while the tears fell. Slowly, they began to close as Scott slipped his arms around her. Thoroughly confused, all Shara could do was cry for the longest time.

Her eyes closed completely and stayed that way even after the kiss ended. Scott pulled back, but she remained slightly forward, her lips partially open. It took her a moment to realize that it had come to an end.

Once she became coherent again, Shara opened her eyes and saw that Scott was also crying a little. She placed her fingers to her lips. Her nostrils flared gently and her face began to heat up rapidly. The cramp in her stomach made itself known, but for some reason it almost felt good now as it shifted into something light and fluttering, much like the movements of a kaleidoscope of butterflies.

"I don't know if I can ever trust you, Shara." said Scott thoroughly bringing her back to her current reality. Shara looked at him as though she could not possibly fathom his meaning.

He pulled her into a tighter hug then said, "You were my best friend growing up."

"Scott..." she said, her face flush and her voice cracking a little. He was confusing her so much right now.

"You asked me a question." he said gently. "I've loved you as a friend since I was a little kid."

A bright smile crossed her lips, but soon it screwed itself to the left as he confused her again. "I don't know if I can love you now, even if I do."

A complicated series of expressions crossed Shara's face as she tried to process what she had just heard. Was it supposed to make sense?

The memories of the past faded as Shara's consciousness returned to the present day. Once again she gazed into her reflection in the decorative pond. After a moment she sighed loudly. "Why are boys so confusing?"

She placed two fingers to her lips, and the color of her cheeks darkened. "What does any of it mean?"

**