Leon entered the Rose Den around noon on New Year’s Eve. The sound of a melancholic piece being played on a piano was the first thing to greet him as he walked through the door. Next was the chemical smell as the bar had just been cleaned—the place meant to be closed to all but the guests above. The pianist, Marie, watched Leon walk over to the bar and sit by himself. She continued to play, her alabaster face and unfocused black eyes remaining on him the entire time.

Hanging on the wall in front of Leon was a framed photo taken on the day of the bar’s opening. Rosa stood in the center with the old gang surrounding her, Marie standing beside her and holding a case for a violin. Leon himself was also in the photo, his left hand on Rosa’s shoulder as he stood behind her, his brown hair still full on his head, with Maven standing next to him, putting Rosa in the middle of the two. He let the music drive his emotions, recollecting old memories of the Convergence—that awful time where so much was lost but even more was gained. Friends. A family. A reason to live. But time undid those bonds, wearing away at them like it did his soul.

As the piece came to an end, Marie went over to Leon in a brisk pace as he lowered his head in thought. “Leon,” she said as she placed her hand on his back, the segmented joints of her fingers visible as she was not in uniform, not intending to serve anyone that day. “Should I tell Rosa of your arrival?”

“No,” Leon replied. “I’ll head down in a moment.”

“A drink then? Maybe a request?”

“Well… I’ll have a Monogatari.”

“With dark cherry or orange mint?”

“Make it a mystery.”

Marie went behind the bar and prepared the drink. The swirling colors mixed into a decent black as she left the glass in front of Leon. She watched him as he drank it quickly, knowing that he didn’t order it for the taste, and expecting him to want another.

Leon put the glass down, clearing his throat. “How much do I owe you?”

“First one is free today.”

He groaned as he got off the bar stool. “Best leave it at that, then. Thanks.”

Marie nodded, keeping her eyes on Leon as he passed through the door to the stairwell. She then picked up the empty glass, looking into it at her reflection, trying to get her placid face to smile.

Leon went down to the cellar where the stocks of wine were kept along with a wooden door well out of place amongst the clutter. On the door was a stained-glass panel of a closed rose which Leon knocked on the side of, knowing he couldn’t enter without magic. The glass then shifted, the rose blooming, and an eye appearing in the center of the bloom.

The eye looked at Leon, looking him up and down, then fixated on his face. A feminine voice then entered his mind. “The Nexus is a dangerous place for your kind. What reason do you have to enter?”

“I’m visiting. Ros-Ar-Oni. Take me there directly.”

“Your request has been accepted. Take care not to get lost in the maze of your own mind.”

The eye closed and the sides of the door sparked as a door-portal appeared in place of it. Leon went through into a dark hallway with mirrored shelves on each side lining the wall. Each shelf contained a row of red roses, their health denoted by the purity of their color with some turning black in spots or at the edges of the petals. He passed through without paying them much attention, finding Rosa in her office looking through a wardrobe filled with men and women’s clothes in the back corner of the room beyond her desk in the center.

“Just in time,” said Rosa as she pulled out a red designer dress in one hand and a short black dress in the other, turning to Leon for his opinion. Leon shrugged, and so Rosa put the two together, creating a red and black lace dress with an embroidered rose. “Perfect!”

“For the party?”

“Party?” Rosa turned the dress into floating rose petals that orbited around her. “It’s for later tonight.”

Leon closed his eyes, knowing it to be a joke. “I trust my presence here won’t cause any paths to cross, correct?”

Rosa waved her hand with a smile. “Elliot never comes to the bar. He’s cooped at home worried over his friend and Beth is keeping him occupied.” She then looked at herself in the full-length mirror next to the wardrobe. “There’s no reason to be scared of him.”

Leon scowled. “You know my feelings are well beyond fear, what become of my flesh and blood child. Now that chimera walks around as a mockery of a human—a blight placed on this world that I had no participation in.”

Rosa laughed. “It only goes to show that a baby won’t fix a troubled relationship.”

Leon shook his head and turned back to the hallway to leave but walking down it only had him return back to the office. “Rosa,” he said with a sharp twang.

“Don’t go running off. Elliot isn’t your responsibility—he’s mine.” Her clothes then burst away from her body as rose petals floating around her, concealing any private bits from Leon as she adjusted her features. “The parentage of the source is inconsequential to the chimera.”

“But half of his DNA—”

“More than half of your DNA is shared with a banana.” She giggled. “Humans really do care too much about parentage.”

“Then how do you mara handle it? Your children?”

“There’s really no concept of family. We come into being fully capable of independence—often immediately integrating into a host society in the guise of whatever resides in it. Not all mara are even aware of what they are, let alone know how they came to be. And a mara that has forgotten herself may as well be the thing she’s mimicking. Our illusions are that powerful… but that also opens up a way for us to die, if we believe it.”

Leon wasn’t sure if that really answered his question. “That seems… quite lonely.”

Rosa became much shorter as bat-like wings sprouted from her back with a thick, fleshy tail lowering itself to the floor with a tapered end. She then grew a pair of horns, starting as nubs that lengthened a couple inches towards her face. She then curled the horns while styling her crimson hair into a bob. The petals then returned to her body to recreate the dress she designed. “Do you like it?” she asked as she admired her work in the mirror.

Leon was a little perplexed at the mature woman’s voice coming out of someone who seemed prepubescent. “You’re going as an alp?”

“It’s what’s in style!”

“You look like a child.”

Rosa pouted, then made further adjustments to her height and face, recreating the teenage appearance she had when they first met. Her voice was similarly adjusted to mimic a teen’s but retained some wisdom. “How about now?”

“I am a grown man.”

“You were a grown man back then, too.”

Rosa playfully flapped her wings and glided over to Leon, smacking the top of his head with her hand and landing behind him.

“Hey!” he yelled as he rubbed the top of his head, finding that hair had grown. He then looked in the mirror to see that his own appearance was changed to match that of the photo in the bar.

Rosa wrapped her arms around Leon’s neck, hugging him from behind as she lifted herself off the ground. “Just for tonight.”

Leon shook his head in disbelief, fixated on how much he changed over the years. He stepped away from the mirror, turning sharply, accidentally knocking Rosa into a bookshelf and causing a multitude of old tomes to fall to the floor on top of her.

“Geez, Leon,” Rosa said under the books. “A man afraid of his own reflection.”

“Sorry,” he said as he helped her out of the mess, his hand finding its way to an old journal, causing him to freeze in place.

Rosa sat up, seeing that Leon found the journal he kept during the Convergence, full of his drawings and inner thoughts of their travels; given to her so that he could forget. She grabbed the journal from him, seeing that his mind was being tormented.

“This is too much,” he said. “Too much.” He fixated on his right hand but felt nothing despite it still being there.

Rosa threw the journal away, making it float back to its place on the bookshelf. She then hugged Leon tightly, hoping to ground him. “I’m sorry.” She broke the illusion on him, allowing his senses to return to normal. “I got a little carried away.”

Leon got up, lifting Rosa with him. “You’re still a child with too much responsibility and zero restriction.”

“Is that why you chose Maven instead of me?”

Leon gave her a stone-cold stare. “You were never a consideration.”

Rosa pouted. “I could give you everything you want! Be anything you want… Why is that not good enough for you?”

“It’s because what you offer is escapism—anodyne for a harsh reality. I don’t seek a perfectly happy life, especially not the illusion of one. Your friendship is all that I desire… but perhaps that is too painful for you?”

Rosa shook her head. “What’s painful is watching you grow old… I want you to enjoy the time you have left. And I want to enjoy that time with you in any way that I can. But, like you, I can’t just stop. You turned down my offer. You chose a different path. And now you work for those who wish to undo all that we made possible. It’s a real headache trying to understand how things ended up this way—how you ended up this way.”

Leon walked down the hallway with Rosa in his arms. “Something broke inside of me when Maven died. I’ve been trying to rebuild myself since. The Order offered me structure, but it was to create someone who isn’t me… I’m beginning to see that now.”

“Does that mean you’re going to quit?”

“No. Not yet. But I know for certain now that I’m exactly where I need to be.”