Mistakes (Mia POV)

Mia Burgess was in an extremely odd position. She’d been stabbed, right through her chest. She’d been stabbed plenty of times before of course, but not like this. This had been up through her ribcage, and with her own sword, which was a powerful piece of weaponry. And no healer had been nearby to take care of it. It had barely missed her heart.

And yet, she didn’t feel the wound. Mia looked around anxiously, and didn’t see Mathias, The Enforcer, or anybody else. She was back in the mundane world. Mathias or his Fateweaver must have stopped holding onto control of the barrier so tightly. She’d heard Olivia scream to the others to go back to the Kingdom, and she hoped they were safe.

The police that had shepherded them into the little side street had since dispersed. She guessed through her haziness that Mathias had contacts in the local police? That was great. She wasn’t sure how long she had until Mathias and his guild appeared back in the mundane. She looked down at the wound on her chest. It was already closed up, the blood on her clothes nowhere to be seen.

Mia was confused about that, until she remembered that exiting barriers healed wounds temporarily, as a protection against mundanes finding out about the abyss. She sent a silent prayer of thanks to Gaia, before mentally apologising for what she was about to do.

She shakily rose to her feet, wiping the tears from her eyes, only for fresh ones to replace them. She took off and flew across the night, not knowing where, doing her best to stay to dark areas, out of view of people. Her hands shook and she sobbed as she flew.

She’d had perhaps the worst night of her life. Even worse than the night they'd spent huddled together in Gemma's old apartment, worrying if another gang was going to break in and kill them in their sleep. She'd confirmed her suspicions that they weren't doing enough, had an argument with the people she loved most in the world, then had been stabbed, nearly killed, and separated from them.

She had no way to contact her loves without Mathias potentially knowing. If he could find them like he did, he was almost certainly tapped into their phones. So here she was, all alone, fleeing the scene of a terrible crime, body shaking, sobbing as she flew through the night air, praying she wouldn't be spotted by a mundane.

Her body seized up. She nosedived, flight suddenly unavailable to her. Mia careened into the dirt of a deserted park, scraping her body against the ground. She barely felt the pain against her ****, heaving cries. Why was the world so unfair? Why did things have to be this way? Her shoulders shook and she banged her fist on the ground uselessly.

She tried desperately to keep the sounds of her crying in. She couldn't draw attention to herself. She wanted to enter into a barrier so she could scream and sob like she needed to, but she couldn't. She was terrified. She didn't know who was in there, or if her stab wound would reopen and she'd be bleeding out, just like she was before.

She couldn't breathe. Her face, knees and elbows were covered in dirt from her fall. She felt pathetic. Smaller than she had in a long time. She'd been so confident, so headstrong. To rush in, thinking she could win the fight. To lash out, thinking her surprise attack would do anything against that hulking monster. To be beaten down so easily, so mercilessly.

She had nothing left to give to this cruel world. She'd tried so hard and she hadn't done a thing. Nothing she'd done had made the slightest amount of difference. Her only regret was taking it out on the people she loved. Who knew if they were even safe? Were they feeling like she was? Helpless, alone, afraid and beaten?

Gaia she wished they were here. She'd give anything to see Paige stuttering cutely, Ivy's almost maternal smile, Skylar's quiet confidence, Gemma's steadfast leadership, hell, she missed Olivia's stubborn mentorship, Lena, Emma, Elsa. She would kill to see any of them. And now, she heaved desperately because she knew she'd alienated them.

Why was she such a fucking idiot? Why did she have to scream at them like that? Why did she take out her frustration on the people she cared about? She was angry that they weren't saving more people or making more of a difference, but no amount of saving the world was worth losing the people she loved. Her anger seemed so distant now. She couldn't bring herself to care about it anymore. All she wanted in that moment was to sink into the arms of her loves.

Mia coughed, once, twice, then came an uncontrollable coughing fit. The tears streamed from her eyes as she desperately tried to keep the noise to a minimum. She took her hand away from her mouth as she stopped coughing, only to notice there was blood in her palm. Her chest began to hurt. It would take maybe an hour, if that, for her wound to reopen. She would die if she didn't see a healer soon. She would bleed out, all alone, with nobody around to care.

She pulled herself into a sitting position, looking around anxiously to see if anybody had noticed she was there. Thankfully, nobody was around. She sobbed quietly, mourning the loss of her girlfriends, her friends, her chosen family. She'd hurt them all. She didn't even know if they wanted her back. If they wanted her to be alive and to come back to them.

Her heart ached. She had messed up. She'd messed everything up. It was all her fault. She pulled her knees to her chest and her head dropped. She remembered how she'd felt before. Her rage at the injustice of the abyss around her. Her impatience to change it, to make the world a better place. It had burned in her heart, a blazing inferno that fueled her need to change things.

She could no longer muster those emotions. She couldn't care about the rest of the abyss around her. What worth was there in making the world a better place if she lost *her* world in the process? She needed her family back. She needed her people around her, she needed that more than anything else. She wished she hadn't fucked it up.

Mia coughed again, sending herself into another coughing fit, spitting up blood in the process. How long had she sat there for, weeping for her failures? Ten minutes? Twenty? How long did she have left? She didn’t know. Her chest was starting to hurt more. She needed to do something. She just didn’t know what.

She wished there was some way she could contact her girlfriends. Ivy would have no problem fixing this up. She’d never needed to go to the abyssal Healer’s before, she had no idea how they worked or if they could treat a wound like this. Plus, they were in a barrier, and she didn’t know how long she could survive if her wound reopened fully upon entering a barrier.

She needed Ivy, but she knew that Mathias was too competent to allow them to communicate through their regular phones. He’d have intercepted their texts or calls, probably tracked her, and hunted her down to finish the job. She struggled hard to remember if there was some other way she could get in contact with them, other than through their phones.

She felt a flicker of hope inside her. She remembered that Olivia had insisted they all get technomancer encrypted backup phones and that they were to only use them in emergencies. Phones that Mathias wouldn’t know existed, and that Gemma had paid top dollar to make sure were safe to use. She reached into her pocket, hoping beyond all hope that the backup phone was undamaged. They’d never used them before, and Mia had forgotten they existed.

She held the phone up to her face, her expression falling in dismay at the cracked screen. Praying to Gaia, she pressed the power button. The screen lit up. Fumbling, she opened the phone with the stupidly long passcode Olivia had insisted upon, and she almost shouted with joy as she navigated to Gemma’s backup contact, saved as a random string of letters.

Thank Gaia for Olivia’s careful nature.

As her finger hovered over the call button, she hesitated. Would Gemma be angry at her for what happened in the car? Would she answer the call? Mia coughed again, looking down and spotting a tiny speck of blood through her shirt. The wound was a pinprick, a far cry from the gushing blood of before. But it wouldn’t be much longer. She needed to act. She hit the call button and put the phone up to her ear.