Shade's mother's grip tightened around him as she realized who she was holding. "Shade," she gasped. "Oh, Shade, my baby, you remember me!"
Shade smiled. "I do. Now that I do though, you should apologize to Kara and Foster."
Melanie pulled back, letting go of him. A look of utter outrage was on her face. "What? Shade, I can't do that. They're the reason you lost your memories in the first place!"
"Yeah, but it was part of my job as Kara's Guardian." Shade hugged her again, then just looked into her eyes. There was so much contempt there, even though Kara truly wasn't to blame. He just had to hope she would see reason.
"Mom, I love you, but..you need to do this. Kara was really hurt by what you did, and honestly, what happened to me could've happened to any fairy. Guardians put their lives at stake for others. They always have."
His pale green eyes bored into her similar ones. "Please."
His mom shook her head, but the, after looking down at her hands and wringing them out, released a sigh and responded to him. "Oh...fine. You know I can't say no to you."
She kissed his forehead, then opened the front door of their home for him. "Go on, you little rascal," she said, pointing to the doorway. "Your sisters will be happy to see you."
Shade smiled again at the mention of his siblings. Reena and April, of course! He had missed them a lot, too. "I know."
Shade stepped inside, and the moment he did, his mother went in after him, closing the door with a contented smile. The stress lines that had been on her face were fading, fading away quickly as she followed her long lost son into their house.

Kara, Lily, and Foster left as Jett and Aqua had asked them to. Unfortunately, their necklaces had been forcibly taken from them, causing them to be soaking wet and lose the ability to breathe normally underwater. The two swam frantically upwards, partially swallowing lake water in the process. After some frantic kicks and rapid strokes, they each made it up to the surface safely, and one after the other.
Kara had had to pull Foster up due to his waterlogged wings dragging him down.
She was still seriously confused about that, and planned to question him before they parted ways. Lily's head broke through the surface of the lake first. She gasped like a fish out of water would and scrambled to reach the lake's bank. She looked around wildly as she did so, afraid that the vengeful water fairies would try to drag her and her friends back down. After she calmed down a little, Lily noticed Kara next and waved to her and Foster, who was hardly afloat at all. She was holding him upright in the water with both of her arms.
"Come on, you guys! Hurry!"
Kara nodded and groaned, dragging Foster along. The boy's skin was a pasty white. He looked almost like a corpse ready to be buried.
Why that was, she didn't know, but it worried her, so much so that she wasn't even mad about having to carry him with her.
Streaks of purple and red from his injuries trailed in the water behind them.
Though she didn't want to look at them, Kara's eyes were drawn towards her ex's new wings.
It was like seeing a car crash happen nearby.
She couldn't get herself to look away.
The wings themselves were blood stained and crystalline, with an unusually oblong shape to them, lying limply against the small of his back. There was something else too, though. Not only were the wings big, but they also seemed to have more of a black outline than usual, almost a scaliness to their edges. Upon closer examination, Kara found that the blackness she had seen had receded back, almost as if it had never been there.
Oh, well.
That didn't seem like much of an issue.
Kara reached the bank at last, and brought Foster up first. The boy's limp body was now surprisingly light behind her.
She jumped out beside him, then shivered. "Aw, great," she muttered. "We're soaked!" Lily rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know."
She trembled, too, her arms wrapping around herself to hold in warmth.
"Jesus, why's it so cold all of a sudden? It wasn't like this when we got in the first time."
"I don't know, but I do know one thing."
It was Foster. Kara watched as the boy struggled to stand. When he did so, he shook his head, jagged parts of his tawny hair falling in front of his face. His thick rimmed glasses seemed to be more badly broken up close.
"I'm not who I used to be."
Kara sighed. "I can see that. How did this happen?"
Foster shrugged, but answered honestly.
"It wasn't my fault! This girl with horns came and d-drugged me somehow! Then she made me touch this stone, and I met up with Aqua." He winced. "Ow, my back..."
Kara was puzzled. "Whoa, whoa, slow down. You were drugged by a girl with...horns? Foster, how could you not know that she was bad news? We already fought a demise beast on the roof of our school!"
Foster looked down at his feet. "I know, I know. She did something to make me want to go with her. I can't really explain it." He yawned. "I need a place to sleep."
Lily added her input on that. "Sleep? Oh, yes! Sleep would be awesome right now." She yawned too. "We need to find a place to stay. Kara, where should we go?"
Kara considered this. She wasn't welcome in the Fern household anymore, so that was out of the question. She finally thought of something, and turned to her friends then.
"We could go to Sylvan's."
"Sylvan?" Lily said in the way of a question. "Who's that?"
"You'll see." Kara stood up, pulling Foster up as she did so. The boy made a faint sound out of pain but otherwise let her do what she wanted with him. "It's weird that this happened. I mean, I dreamt about it."
"Dreamt about it?"
Kara nodded slowly. Foster was giving her a look that could've meant she had grown an extra limb. Lily just looked at her confusedly. 
"I know it sounds strange, but I did. Remember when Lily had been taken by Danny? You didn't know where she was, but I did, right?"
Foster straightened his partially broken glasses, looking interested now. "Yeah. So?"
"So it means I sort of predicted the future! I mean, I wasn't asleep at that point. It was more of a vision than a dream, but after that when I went to sleep, my dreams would be oddly specific. In the one dream I had, you were in it, but you had wings on your back."
"Wings? Really?"
Kara nodded rapidly. Lily was still looking at her like she was a basket case, but understanding and a bit of irritation showed itself on Foster's face. "Kara, that's intriguing and all, but if you knew this was going to happen, then why didn't you tell me?
I almost died!"
"I didn't know how it would happen!" she protested. "I didn't even think it was significant back then! I just thought it was just some weird dream. How could I have known this would happen at all?"
"I don't know," Foster murmured. "You most likely wouldn't have, but you knew what to do when Lily needed your help." He felt his back with his hands and winced. "Maybe from now on you should pay more attention to these weird dreams of yours. They might turn out to mean something."
"Fine. Let's just get out of here."
"But you mentioned Sylvan. Kara, that fairy wouldn't let us stay with her," Foster retorted. "She hates me! Maybe we should go somewhere else."
Kara shook her head, her eyes widening. "Foster, we don't have any other choice. You don't look like you can walk much further, and if you really had contact with someone with horns, we're going to need a fairy to check up on you that knows what she's doing."
Foster sighed. "Fine, you're right. Let's go now, though. If I'm going to get help, then it'd be best to get it as soon as possible.
I feel sort of dizzy."