I will go-ness with you to the there!

Happy New Year, those of you lurking at WG.

"There are monsters there," you say. They are mean and cruel, and will eat you up, spit you out and laugh while they chew. You tell me you tried to go there earlier, and that was when I found you, running, crying, your ankle bleeding from where they clawed and bit..

You sit down on the rock beside me. I lend you a clean rag, and the water from my canteen to wash the blood away. "Stop crying, " I say. "It's shallow, it will heal. " I light a cigarette, waiting for you to stop your crying before I ask. "What do you want to do?"

"I need to go back. There is something there I need."

I wait as you take a deep breath, your voice quivering with the effort to be brave.

" I need it to live, to be who I am. To be what I can be."

I wait silently, smoking, waiting for you to finish.

"I need to go back." You close your eyes, looking as if you are about to cry, but you don't. " I need to go back."

"But?"

"I'm afraid. Aren't you?"

I smile, and put the cigarette out, and bury the stub under a stone. I close the canteen, strapping it back on my belt and stand, picking up the knapsack to carry on my back.

I walk toward the edge of the dark where you came from, and you run, catching up with me. "Can I come with you?"

I nod, so you go on, hope lighting up your face. " You will walk with me? You will hold my hand?"

I nod, holding out my hand for you to take. You grasp it happily, then ask the question I had known you would, but had hoped you would not. "Will you kill the monsters for me? Please? Will you?"

"I am sorry," I say sadly. "I cannot. " You look so sad, so crestfallen with disappointment, thatI smile, and give your hand a little squeeze. " But I will tell you a secret, if you like."

"A secret? What is it?"

" You shouldn't be afraid of the monsters, for they are more afraid of you. And I cannot kill them. I am sorry, " I sigh sadly. "Because once, I was one of those monsters too."

One never knows at whose hand a deer may die.

Crouching tigers and hidden dragons go slumming, smiling tolerantly as the wannabes pick fights all around them. The fastest gun alive in the west keeps his bar open and his mouth closed while the gun-toting drunks argue about which one is faster. And you? You are just dying to ask what the hell legends are doing in that place. So you do.

" Why in the name of all that's holy did you come here? You've got better things to do."

"Penance."

"You're not even Catholic."

"Atonement?" George Temple Jr. cleans the glass with a piece of chamois, and holds it up to the light to check for spots. He sets it down and pours you a drink from the almost empty bottle of soju he keeps for his favorite customers.

Li Mu Bai is eating ramen with Yu Shu Lien at the bar. He reaches over and absently adds soy sauce to her bowl. "Maybe in my next life, I will have made up for having used my skills and powers for evil."

"That sounds as good a reason as any. Except you're the one who's Catholic."

"Penance, then."

"I like the idea of karma, " You Shu Lien says as she spears a piece of sea urchin off her beloved's plate. "Maybe I'll be back as Anita Mui."

"Hate to break this to you, but she's dead."

"Damn. Oh well. Ramen's good. Eat up."

"It was? Really?"

"A little salty, but I'm not going to be drawing swords over that. "

At the next table, someone does, the wannabe brat who does have potential but just won't freaking listen to those who are old enough to know better, so she picks fights and steals stuff and runs away, becoming a general pain in the ass to those who are just trying to enjoy retirement in the presence of their previously unrequited loves.

Everyone dies, except brat and bartender.

But it's okay. It could have been worse.