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Cybil returned from her tiny kitchen, carrying a chipped but clean mug half-full of cold tap water. "Here," she said, pushing the cup into Miranda's hands. "Drink this. I don't know if you get headaches too, but if you do I keep Advil in the bathroom." She was clearly uncomfortable in the role of nurturer - it didn't come easily to her. Shoving her long blonde hair back behind her ear, she sat down on the bed again.

Idly, she picked up the gun and set it back in the nightstand drawer. If Miranda hadn't seen it, there was no need to freak her out, and Cybil didn't feel like explaining why she owned a gun - or why she kept it so close.

She settled back, looking relaxed and at ease, as if near-total strangers had episodes like this in her little apartment all the time. "So," she said casually, "what did you see? I assume that since I am, after all, sitting right here, it wasn't me. Was it the other guy, the one you told me about before?"

Cybil listened slowly. As the story of Miranda's vision came out, she went paler and paler, until at last she was as white as the sheet she was sitting on. Her eyes looked too dark in her face - it was unquestionably the look of someone suffering through severe terror.

Stubbornly, she shook her head to rid herself of the look and nodded. "So she's dead, and she can't help us," the blonde muttered. "Figures. Don't suppose she gave you any hints? Any explanations about what these 'Dark' things are? The location of any handy step-by-step instructions for getting rid of them?" She pushed her hair back with one long-fingered hand. Her flippant tone masked honest fear. Cybil already knew what these Dark creatures were - or at least, what they looked like.

She had seen them in some visions of her own. They had spoken to her. Called her daughter.

While she stood in the centre of blood and fire and destruction.

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and made herself settle. More seriously, she said quietly, "So we're supposed to do something. We're supposed to do what this...Amanda? No, you said Abigail, right?...what this Abigail girl couldn't and get rid of these things."

She sighed and sat back. Abruptly sardonic again, she remarked, "No pressure."

Cybil scowled briefly. "Well, you don't say," she said coolly. "I was under the impression that this was all a giant game, and we will most certainly not both be in grave danger due to the accident of our births." Her sarcasm was bitingly sharp - Cybil was getting really angry, and having a hard time taming it down again.

Firmly straightening her shoulders and staring out the window in an attempt to calm herself, she listened to Miranda's words. "You have no idea," she said icily, biting off each word. "How much sway they can hold."

The death and the blood and the fire and the screaming. God, oh God.

As Miranda had predicted, Cybil's body seemed to stiffen at the insinuation that they would be working together. She leveled eyes of blue-grey ice at Miranda. There was a second of silence that almost shrieked hostility, and then - slowly, too slowly - the worst of the anger seemed to leach out of her gaze.

"I guess I don't want to die any more than you do," she said flatly, before returning her stare to the window. "But I'm not too keen on playing fortune-teller, either."

More than not too keen on - she loathed, despised, actively abhorred the idea of playing fortune-teller. The only way it would happen was if there was absolutely no other choice.

Cybil sighed. "No," she said quietly, still gazing out the window. "We can't rely on them. But when I see the same thing time and time again, the chances of it being what does happen increases exponentially." It was easy for the other girl to dismiss the horrific things coming to Cybil - and possibly, she added reluctantly, to Miranda as well. She hadn't seen them. That was Cyb's territory.

And one she guarded jealously, despite her hatred of playing fortune-teller.

When Miranda got excited, it was Cybil's turn to roll her eyes. "Give the little lady a Kewpie doll," she said dismissively. "Finally it comes together." She leaned back against the wall behind her bed. "So now that we know that not-at-all-obvious bit of information," although she might be a little biased, seeing as how she'd already seen the damage these noncorporeal creatures wrought given enough time and power, "what are either of us supposed to do with it?"

Cybil frowned, was about to answer, when she was interrupted by frantic pounding on her door. Her brows drew together a bit, and she rose. "Hang on, I better go check and see who that is." She rose fluidly from the bed and prowled towards the door. Peeping through the viewhole - one got the impression that double-checking visitors was a natural part of Cybil's life now that she lived here - she sighed.

Then she turned to Miranda. "I hate to cut the business part of our little visit short, but I've got a friend outside. Before I let him in, I have to ask - how do you feel about druggies?"

The way she phrased it made it clear that this 'friend' was the druggie in question. And despite her own better sense, she was worried about him.

She was always worried about that kid, these days. Sometimes she felt like his bloody mother.

Cybil sighed. "If you've got an issue with it, you can go lock yourself in the bathroom or something," she said coolly. "I promise he won't beat down the door."

The hammering on her front door seemed to give the lie to this statement, but Cybil calmly withdrew the chain and unlocked the door, opening it. A haggard young dark-haired boy - certainly no older than either Cybil or Miranda - came stumbling in, his eyes wide and pupils dilated. "Cyb," he panted, "they're after me. They're after me!"

The blonde cursed softly and took the boy's shaking hands. "Come on, Mark. Sit down. You're okay. You know no one can get you here." She closed the door and locked it behind him. Guiding him to the bed, she sat him down, and when his eyes locked on Miranda, he started to shriek.

"She's one of them! Her! I've seen her!"

"s**t," muttered Cybil. "Mark, just close your eyes. Lie down. I'll take her out of here."

She gestured to Miranda, rose, and pointed to the bathroom. The message was clear. We'll go in there to talk.

Then she crossed to the kitchen, picked up her knife block, and relocated it to a cabinet that she then locked. She trusted Mark, but not when he was like this.

Cybil took her time joining Miranda - her muffled voice through the bathroom door was soft, even comforting while she spoke to Mark. When she at last entered the bathroom and closed the door behind her, she took a casual position against the sink.

"Look," she said wearily, "I don't need the lecture. Why do you let druggies in, etcetera etcetera. Mark's...He's a good kid when he's not like this," she finished, waving a hand towards the door, at where the boy still muttered unintelligibly to himself. "He's had a rough time of it."

Apparently done explaining herself, she leaned a little more firmly against the sink, which groaned a little under her weight. "Okay. So, you were saying. Something about anchors, as I recall."

Cybil couldn't hide her mild irritation with Miranda, though she did try. Who was this girl to come into her life out of nowhere and start judging the people Cybil let in? Who was she to decide that they had to be a team?

She wondered what Miranda would say when Cybil let her in on a few secrets of her own.

Among which Mark was a principal one.

Cybil sighed. "So what you're saying, essentially, is that we need a psychiatrist. Someone who's supposed to be able to look into people's heads and make it all better." This was said with a sort of wry amusement, more than any trace of bitterness. "If it's emotional or mental, the only way to fix it is psychoanalysis or a lobotomy, I suppose."

She looked back at the door. Her desire to be back outside and keeping an eye on her friend was pretty clear, but after a moment or two she forced her attention back to Miranda. "And I don't know how a lobotomy is done, any more than I'm qualified as a mind doctor. You?"

Her voice was light, and she seemed to be treating the whole thing as a joke, but in reality she was scared. It was Cybil's way to treat things she couldn't easily fix as a joke - it made it a little easier to handle.