A/N: This is the last chapter. *sniffle* But I'm thinking of doing a sort of sequel to 'So Cold By Fire'. If you guys want one, just PM me or review with your pleas or whatever. I love you all who supported me through this. It's been a long journey together. And now…for the last chapter of this. I can't stand it! Here's to many more stories together!

A few weeks later

The doorbell rings throughout the house. Its chimes reach my ears, triggering memories that I block out. From my bedroom upstairs, it isn't faint. I can still hear it through the thick wood that my house is built of.

I'm alone. Mom and dad took Serena to the hospital for one of her annual checkups. Although she has been getting better, now that I can look after her while mom and dad work, she still requires a lot of attention and care. But I don't mind.

She didn't want me to come, to see her like that. It was just like when I was younger. She wanted to protect me. Save my innocence. And even though I have saved the world, I guess she still wants to feel like she's doing her job as an older sister. I'd offered, for encouragement, but she wanted me to stay home. So I did.

It had been a little over a month since I left the Shiba house. I have been faring pretty well, I'd like to say. It had been so great to come home, where it was safe and warm and familiar. Yet at every corner, I almost expect Mike to come out or to see Mia in the vast kitchen or see Kevin training outside in the warm sunlight.

I get up from my wide bed and glance out the window. I can see all of our property from the picture window. The fading sun shines through the glass, causing shadows on the fields of grass and beyond, the tress.

Despite my sadness, I did miss it here. I missed the wide open spaces. I missed the animals. I missed our big, wooden house, much too spacious for a family of four yet cozy as well.

I walk down the hall to the sweeping staircase. From the banister, I can see the entrance to our house. I can see each individual line marking the differences in the floor. The lines that will always run parallel to each other, never touching. They didn't start at the same place and they won't finish together. They will just run on and on forever, an endless race.

Like how we thought our battle with Master Xandred was.

I stop. No. I will not think about it. No. I've made myself block out some memories of being a ranger. Mostly, it's because I just don't want to think of Jayden. But I can't help it.

Jayden.

I see his face everywhere. In the bark of a tree, carved so delicately. In the shadows that I watch play across my walls at night. In the ripples of the brook that runs by our house.

I hear his voice on the wind, calling to me.

As much as I try to convince myself that we're over, that it's done, that I need to move on, I can't.

So whenever that happens, I go to the edge of our property. It's by the brook, with the water clear, so you can see the smooth round stones at the bottom, see the water run over the branches and twigs caught in the current. And when I'm there, I play my flute. It's sad, sweet, innocent tune calms me, helps me not to think. I don't talk about what I've lost. I let everything I am into the song and give it back to the world, let it fly on the soft breezes.

And when I'm there, I don't think. I just...feel. I just am.

I can see the horizon from my spot and I usually go out at evening time, when the day is almost over. When everything is getting prepared for the next day, the one they're in just a memory. When the fading sunlight illuminates what one couldn't see in the light of day.

Like in the glow of the flickering firelight.

Like in the starlight.

No. Stop.

I pad down the staircase, my bare feet hitting the creakiest spot on each one, it seems. I had grown unaccustomed to stairs, as silly as that sounds. The Shiba house…home…was one story and had not much need for stairs. There were a couple small ones, but nothing like the wide ones I have here.

Have at home.

They seem so steep when in reality, they aren't. It reminds me of what we have overcome as…rangers.

Rangers.

How when all odds are stacked against us, we still push on. We climb to get to the top, each one worse than the last. And when we finally reach the summit, we look back at what we've gone through, what we've faced and it doesn't seem so bad from up in the clouds.

And going back down is always the hardest part.

I reach the bottom of the stairs as the doorbell rings again. It's not impatient, but it wants to be answered. I roll my eyes, knowing it's probably one of my 'friends' wondering where I've been. I haven't been able to go anywhere these last few weeks without someone asking me where I've been, how I've been doing. All they really want to be now is my friend. The same people who teased me, pushed me down, never even thought I was worth a look, now are clamoring to be by my side. They're not like my real friends.

Mia. Kevin. Antonio. Mike. Jay-

No.

I know I'm more confident now. I feel better. Stronger. The little bits of me that always broke away when I was teased, when I came home crying are now whole again.

No thanks to them.

But you've forgiven them. You saved them.

Yes. I have.

I just give them the same excuse that my parents told me to use. I went to boarding school for a year.

The best time of my life…

No. Don't think about it.

I bite my lip as I bound down the last few steps. It actually was a little like boarding school. I learned so much, at the…at the Shiba house.

Not home. Not anymore. I made new friends. I guess saving the world isn't on a regular schedule, but isn't everyone trying to save their own world anyway? Trying to make their life the best it can be, trying to make it perfection, trying to save themselves?

The bell rings throughout the house once more. Slats of fading sunlight shine through the glass that tops the door. It makes shadows behind me as I grasp the cold handle and open the door.

My heart stops.

It can't be.

At first, I don't believe it. Jayden is standing before me, the dying sun outlining him. It creates golden stripes on his hair. He looks like a mirage, like if I reach out and touch him, nothing will be there because nothing was ever there.

He's in the shadows of the sunlight.

Like how it was before he came into my life. Shadowed, darkened, until his radiance shined through to me.

The red of his shirt looks almost black in the glow from the sun. With the green fields behind him, the sunset creating pastels in the sky, I've never seen him more alluring. More beautiful.

More mine.

His face lights up when he sees me, more bright then the sun behind him. I forgot the little details of him. The swipe of his hair. The curve of his face. The way he stands straight and tall.

I missed it all.

His mouth quirks to one side, the smile that always gets my heart racing.

"Hey Emily."