The swordswoman watched incredulously as the red-headed girl turned her back on her, coldly muttering her name and walking into the storm. She swore under her breath as she sheathed Mazdara and pulled her hood up around her once again, trying to block out the cold.

I save her life, blow my cover, and make new enemies, and this is the thanks I get?

She found herself storming after the young red-head, balling her fists at her side and intending to give the girl a piece of her mind. "Ungrateful little..." she muttered.

What did you expect? ,

The wind, normally calm, had picked up suddenly, blowing drifts of snow up against her calves. Ankaa glanced back at the bar to make sure she wasn't being followed.

All her hopes of accomplishing anything in this town were shot to hell, and the next town was miles away. Why did she always have to get involved, anyway? Furthermore, why was she following this girl? Trouble followed naivety, and this girl seemed to be the living incarnation of it.

And yet, there was some distant, haunted look in the girl's dark blue eyes, and in the brief moment when they had met gazes, Ankaa had felt sympathy for her, an uncommon emotion for her to feel and one she hated intensely.

Remember? The world isn't your problem anymore.

Grumbling, she threw up her hands in frustration and was about to turn around when she saw the girl sag to one side, desperately trying to support herself on a wall.

Turn around, said her brain. Turn around and don't look back.

Instead, she found herself rushing to the girl's side, catching her before she could hit the ground.

You idiot.

The girl's neck tilted up limply, and for a moment she thought the girl was dead. A puff of breath escaped the red-headed girl's lips just then, dissipating in the cold air as quickly as it had escaped.

She was alive, just unconscious.

Movement caught her eyes. In the distance, the bars were beginning to empty out. The girl would be easy prey, and so would she, if she stayed out any longer. There was an Inn just ahead, the one she had selected to lodge for the night hours ago. She looked down at the girl again.

Not your problem, her brain reminded her.

She looked down at the young woman, who, physically, could not be much younger than she. But mentally, that was different. She herself had already lived two lifetimes in her twenty years. The light aura of innocence had long faded around her and everything she had come to know and believe. In her world, the strong survived, and the weak struggled for breath, for any scrap of substance to feed to the dark hounds of fate that paced around their ankles, constantly ravenous. Innocence was something she had not been able to afford, not for a long time.

The girl murmured softly and thrashed, uttering the name of some forgotten time, or place or person. Ankaa knew those sighs well...had uttered them often enough herself just to hear the past spoken, to make it real again, so that she would not forget it…so that it would burn in her like fire and fuel her steps onward.

She held the limp girl in her arms, staring up briefly at the night sky. "Something tells me," she gasped as she heaved the girl onto her shoulders. "That I'm going to regret this."

She staggered up the steep steps to the inn, rushing through the doors in a mess of snow and wind.

The inn keeper, a nervous little man, pushed his glasses up his nose as he took in the sight. "Who're you?" he stammered as Ankaa walked slowly to the counter with the limp girl, Jasmin in her arms, throwing down a handful of silver pieces.

"Do you get paid to rent rooms, or ask questions?" The look in the young woman's jade eyes clearly suggested she wasn't in the mood for questions.

"Erhmm...uh, rooms. I get paid for....uh...second door on the left upstairs." he muttered, throwing the room key at her and regarding her with no little amount of caution.

How the jumpy little man managed to run an inn in a town like this eluded her.

She grumbled she ascended the stairs gracelessly, the unconscious girl slung over her shoulder like a sack of flour.

She reached the top, somehow managing to unlock the door through a miracle of balance and leverage. She stumbled into the room, dumping the girl unceremoniously on the small bed and gasping for breath.

The room was small and cramped- a single bed, a small window with a cracked pane that leaked the cold winter air, billowing out the cheap curtains. It was better than being outside, but not by much.

The girl, apparently called Jasmin, tossed and turned restlessly, calling out names of people and places that she had never heard of.

Why she had bothered to help the girl, she didn't know. Perhaps it was because she had done so little kindness lately, and seen little kindness done to others. It seemed that her past was not so forgotten…that who she had been had perhaps endured.

It was not a happy thought.

Kindness, friends, happiness…those words belonged to a different life…to a different girl.

She sat on the floor with her back pressed up against the mattress, hands over her knees, and stared out at the night sky, her eyes dulled with exhaustion.

I'll just stay here for a moment, she thought, as her eyelids drifted down. Just a moment, and then I'll figure out where I'm going to head out to tomorrow….

It was her last thought before she fell asleep.

~*~*~*~*~