Rebirth

They make their way through the crowded airport in Beijing. Wing's hand grips tightly to her suitcase because she is speculating that it will soon be jostled away. Her mother talks rapidly in Mandarin to the man standing next to her. Sai's head flies up suddenly.

"He's here," she hisses in English. She says something else to the man and the grabs Wing's arm and starts dragging her through the crowd.

"Where are we going?"

"This is what we came here to do." She pushes people put of her way until they reach a man who has collapsed on the floor. Running past him, she scans the area around them and selects a near empty hall.

"Here." She stops and stares at something about eight feet from the ground. People seem to sense something and the few that occupied the nearby space scatter to other parts of the airport. Sai calmly draws herself up and begins chanting. Wing hears this with a combination of shock and amusement.

"What are you doing?"

"You can't see it?" Sai asked carefully her voice edged in panic as she turns from her target to see Wing.

"See what?" Wing responded curiously.

A sudden fear washed over Sai's features, "Your powers... I thought you said... Oh no." Throwing a glance behind her, she motions at to her daughter and whispers, "Run!"

They soon had reached the main portion of the airport and were surrounded by people again.

"What was that about? Wing asks with her voice full of confusion and a frown tugging at the corner of her lips.

"Let's go to the hotel; I'll explain it there."

Wing slowly digs through the clothing in her suitcase. Picking up her other luggage, she opens her case and sighs with relief to have her weapons back. She places her knife in her boot. She feels the cold metal against her skin as she pushes her
gun in the holster under her jacket. She has almost finished arming herself when her mother emerges from the bathroom. She sits down on the edge of the bed.

"Wing-mei, we came to China for a reason.. In the years since I disappeared, I've become a... well, a mystic."

"You what?" Skepticism etches Wing's face.

"I see the future, and auras... and spirits."

Wing thinks of her long mental conversations with Zoe and a smile breaks on her face, "Oh...."

"What are you smiling about now?"

"I have a friend who sees spirits."

"Then you understand?"

"Some."

"Okay. We are here because I am hunting a demon. He feeds on those who cannot see him and those who cannot defend themselves. He was in that airport. You told me your powers were fine, but you weren't even able to see him."

"I said my shifting was normal."

"And your psionic powers?"

"I can't use them."

"Can't?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I'm feeling pretty jet-lagged. I think I'm going to get some sleep." She stands up and shuts herself in the bathroom. She wonders why she bothered getting dressed. She spends a few minutes before she comes back out in a long night gown and
her hair in loose waves around her shoulders. Sai has left for somewhere, probably to get dinner downstairs.

Wing goes to the bed and pulls back the covers. She gets in and rests on her back while she stares at the ceiling. Her mind is on the past. Finally tired of thinking, she shifts to her side and tries to fall to sleep.

When Sai returns to the room Wing sleeping. She settles on the bed next to her daughter and watches her sleep for the first time in many years. Wing mumbles in her sleep and tosses over. She begins to cry. Sai is startled; she knows she should leave her alone, but instead she reaches out touches her hand to Wing's forehead.

She is pulled into the image immediately. She is seeing from Wing's eyes, from her point of view. She wants to break away, but she cannot. Wing is jabbing a knife in her boot. She walks out on to the balcony and shifts into a crow. She flies over the city heading to some specific location. She finally lands in the backyard of a large house in a good neighborhood. She looks around carefully, checking for outer security. She then steps to the back door and disables the system on it and moves silently into the kitchen.

The house is mostly unoccupied, as it was reported that it would be. Wing pads into the living room and dispatches the secondary target with a silenced gun to the head. The primary target is on the second floor. She goes quickly up the plush-carpeted stairs and down the hallway to a bedroom. The target is sleeping peacefully.

Wing walks over to her and puts her hand to the sleeper's head starting the process of searching her mind for any information necessary to reach one of the society's goals. She mostly has happy, clean thoughts, nothing useful. After Wing finishes the reading, she starts to complete her orders by slitting the target's throat. As Wing reaches for her knife, the target opens her eyes, as if she can sense the danger. Her eyes are big and brown and they don't hold the normal pleading or fear, just trust.

Wing stops frozen. Then her training kicks in; she finishes her mission with a quick flick of her knife. Wings thoughts are whirling. She desperately hopes the victim died quickly without too much pain, that she did enough damage to her, but her conscience won't let her believe that to be true. The sheets stain red. Wing tries to leave quickly, but as she turns around, she stumbles over the teddy bear that must have fallen from the girl's arms when she died. Wing runs back downstairs and stops in the living room to make sure the baby-sitter is dead before leaving.

When Wing gets back to her room, she calls to make her report. She tells them that she didn't receive much information. They tell her that it was a standard assassination of the six-year-old daughter of a bothersome judge. Anyone could have done it, but they wanted to test her loyalty. She passed sufficiently.

The quality of the dream shifts, the one before had the clarity of reality. Now Sai watches the parents come home. She sees them opening the front door to find the baby-sitter splattered across the TV. She sees the mother sick at first and then realizing the implications. She runs up the stairs and to her daughter's room to see her wrapped in the red-stained sheets. She falls to her knees and cradles the body of the little girl to her chest. The sobs are filling her ears as she watches the husband know that his child is dead. The dream shifts again. Wing sees the child again, looking up at her with so much trust and she hears her last gurgled scream.

Wing softly cries out. Sai is finally broken free; she draws her hand away and backs up to her own bed. She collapses onto the soft bed spread. Wing-mei had said recon, but Sai feels she should have known better. She weeps for her innocent little girl and the adult that she has become.

She is still lost in her tears when Wing bolts up in her bed, her hair slapping against her back. She is shocked and awake. When she realizes that is only her usual nightmare, she slumps over her knees and looks around nervously. She sees her mother awake on the other bed.

"Mother?" She calls softly.

Sai answers in broken tones, "You... you told me recon...."

Wing pushes some loose strands of hair out of her face and behind her ears, "And...?"

"I didn't mean to, but I saw your dream."

Wing turns her face to the wall, "You didn't."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't see the need."

"Is this why you don't use your powers?"

Wing's stomach turns. She tries to stop the flow of images that make her so sick. She finally whispers, "Yes."

Sai is torn between her own emotional distance and the urges of motherhood. She could comfort Wing. She stays whereshe is. Wing wraps her arms around her knees and cries. She has done so for a while when she finally raises her head and speaks, "I didn't want anyone to know... what I did in the past is mine to know."

"I needed to know. There is a place you can get help."

Wing gives a short laugh of surprise, "Mental institute?"

"No, I meant a place of healing You could restore your powers and perhaps find some peace."

"Where is it?"

"County Kerry, Ireland. I can take you there." She pauses and then continues, "My daughter, there is nothing that can erase this from you. It as much a part of you as any joy you have experienced, but you need to be able to move past it. What you were forced to do, you hold it so close to you that it poisons everything you try. This a place where this may be altered."

A bitter lump rises in Wing's throat. She wonders what it would be like to sleep through the night again. She nods, "Okay. I'll try it."

*********

They have been tracking through the freezing rain for about half an hour, going mostly uphill. Wing pulls the thick black coat closer to her and over the white dress her mother has instructed her to wear. In front of her Sai comes to a sharp halt.

They stand on the windy bluff looking over the green terrain behind and the ocean before them. Their view is long and unfocused because of the distance. The grey sky above is drizzling rain over them and the rushing clouds portend of the soaking rain that is come. Wing's hair is loose and pouring over face. It blocks her vision and whips against her skin.

"Take off your coat and shoes."

"I'll freeze to death."

"Not here."

Her mother stands next to her with her feet bare and wearing a loose blue dress. She climbs further toward the edge. The strength of the wind against Wing's back makes her look up. All around her nature is cowering before the force of the storm. She takes off her jacket and shoes and follows her mother.

She takes position next to her mother and looks over the rolling ocean. She listens to it sweep forward and crash into the rocks below. Sai tries to say something to Wing, but the words are stolen by the gust. Instead she renews with Wing their initial connection the one that they had shared at her birth. Sai sends her daughter a feeling. Wing understands her mother's meaning. This is the cliff of forgetting. To be whole she must release herself to the moment and let the wind take her memory.

She closes her eyes and breaths in the chill damp air. All the pain she has allowed to fester in her collects; she pushes it to the surface. She can feel the slow forward momentum of her body. Her bare feet slip against the grass and pebbles on the
edge of the bluff. She takes the final step forward. Then she lets go.

She is falling downward, but she has no fear because the change can take over her in a moment. She knows that she can go a little longer before instinct takes control. She allows it all to pass away from her. Ripped away is everything that plagues her and everything that she loves. She falls and the wind makes her nothing; it peels her from the inside to the out. She screams into the darkness. She's dying. She has always been dying.

It is the last moment before she smashes into the rocks below. She is no longer conscious in any human sense, but her spirit fights against this fate. She transforms into a crow and soars upward from the rocks. She flies up the cliff and flutters to a landing in front of the blue-robed woman. The woman softly coos and places a hand gently on the bird's back.

Wing's memories come rushing back and she regains who she is. All she has lost has returned, both love and hate, joy and grief, but it is opened now. There is nothing she cannot face. She looks at her mother and sees her surrounded in a warm blue glow; their minds are open to one another now. Sai speaks to her, With your destruction, you have been reborn... healed. See for yourself, daughter.

A vision came to her through her mother's eyes. She saw herself in the familiar shape of a crow, but her feathers were white and her eyes gold. She startled into her human shape.

"How is this?!" She asked as she bent over and plucked a white feather out of the grass.

"Crows were not always black. Surely you know at least one of the legends; there are several. We are cursed to be the messengers and the seers of that which people would sooner not know. After a cleansing such as this... it's possible that..."
she trails off. She shrugs, "I do not know how long it will last."

The rain was falling in heavy, soaking drops now. Most of the fury of the storm disappeared was they walked back. Wing went over her memories slowly when she hit a section she couldn't remember
having before now: her father picking her while she giggled; running around in a playground; playing ball with her brother on a sunny day. The first three years of her life came back at a increasingly faster pace.

She shook her head, "Mother... what is this?" Wing could feel Sai enter the memories that had returned to her.

They are your memories. I should have realized they would come back. When I was changing your past, I buried your memories so that you would not know the truth. I gave you my memories of China. It seems that they have become unblocked.

Wing smiled softly. That is my father?

Yes, Wing-mei. That is Steven Rider. I apologize for the deception. I didn't know of any other way.

Wing barely paid attention instead reliving her past in a way few people get a chance to experience. The memories were fresh as if they were from a few days ago.

Sai starts to withdraw from Wing's mind to leave her in privacy. She accidentally hits another memory and chuckles out loud.

"Kat"? You didn't tell me about that. Wing begins to blush bright red.

Hey! Stay out of that! She throws a mental shield over that section of her thoughts.

I wasn't getting into it... I'm just interested in who...

Mother!! Wing cuts her off. Sai grinned and pushed her soaked hair back.

"We're going to catch our deaths out here, if we don't get warm soon. Let's jog back to the inn."

*********

They sat downstairs in the inn wearing dry clothing and eating a hot meal. The room is crowed with chattering people coming in for their evening meal. They are tucked at a corner table mostly out of notice. Sai runs her finger along the rough texture of the table and watches Wing eat.

"You are sure that your powers have returned?"

"I think so."

Sai subtly motions at a man at the next table, "What do you see?"

Wing concentrates her attention on him and whispers, "He's glowing."

"Good..." Sai mutters in relief, "We're going hunting."