They make it sound like he's dropped a massive bomb on the conversation. But Xander couldn't look any more indifferent. The haunting visage of death greeted him twice so far. It numbed him on the first visit and desensitized him on the second. An uncomfortable realization hammered home by Angelo's hand against his shoulder.

An ocean of stars blinked to life above him, their light reflected in the dark mirror of the sea. Killian hardly noticed the time pass. Thoughts so effortlessly pulled to a distant place in the silence.

Diamond blues find the ceiling and its numerous tiles. The silence gathering around them turned him small. Terrifying power in his veins, yet he felt powerless.

How laughably ironic.

Part of him wants to wallow in the feeling. Go back to being that helpless child stuck on his mother's floor. Alone. It's tempting. Certainly easier than fighting has been and would continue to be. But there's too much to lose by giving up. Loneliness didn't hold him anymore, and it never would again. Not because Deoxys shared his body, Killian escaped long before then. Five years ago, to be exact, when he found Lex.

She is light in a world absent of it. Killian would do anything to keep that light burning. Even step out of her glow and back into the black. If only for a while. Looking from the ceiling to her said she thought it forever.