A/N: Six f---ing months.

I am so sorry. Things have been getting in the way.

Previously on TFoF: Treehouses being made against all sanity! V. cool. Lots of physics. Lots of bonding. Cale wonders where the panties have gone. Ember and Cale go to town to see a man (George) about some supplies. Success! They learn from Helpful!George that Johnson’s men are looking for them and that they have taken a child from the town in addition to imprisoning all the other kids from the school.

The BIG thing: Angela is pissed. Angela is very pissed. Angela herself has been feeling hurt and left out and useless and generally resentful. A bit of grief for she’s-not-sure-what. Angela yells at Ember and informs her of her status as a selfish, condescending b who can’t see the value of human beings as thinking individuals. And that this camp is officially a democracy-republic-thing. Ember stalks off, hurt and proud and offended. Instead of taking control while he can, Cale refuses Angela’s offer to be part of the upper tier of this so-called democratic society and stalks after Ember. Who yells at him. He yells back. There is much sullen silence and then a kind of acceptance/peace. Cale falls into a river and Ember reflects on herself and leaders and herself as a leader while drying his socks over the campfire. Angela thinks on her own actions and decides that she needs to leave. Tells Ember with much coldness and much hate, then is unable to maintain this and has to leave. Ember breaks down a little. Just a little. And Cale is there and oddly, awkwardly, he offers comfort and she takes it. Clumsy, weary hugging ensues.

I don’t know. It’s hard to summarize the last chapter. I’d reread it…

“To linger in the observation of things other than the self implies a profound conviction of their worth.” –Charles-Damian Boulogne

Angela left at 5 o’clock in the morning the next day.

The sky was black and the only light came from the orange fires scattered ungenerously through the camp. I’d slept perhaps an hour. Judging by the circles under her eyes, cruelly emphasized by the flickering firelight below her position upon her newly acquired horse, Angela hadn’t slept at all. The horse, however, pawed restlessly at the ground, her winter coat shaggy, and I envied the horse that warmth. At least we were going to pick up the extra blankets and clothing today…

With her dark, wavy hair firmly braided back from her face, her features looked especially harsh. I still wasn’t used to this Angela. I wanted my Angela back—my warm, loud, obnoxious, thick-headed, impulsive, crass Angela who was impossible to control and bickered with me like an old lady but was never…like this.

Behind her sat a large messenger bag filled with letters home and, almost amusingly, college applications. I wondered if anybody really cared about the latter anymore. Future? What future was left? I certainly hadn’t seen Cale put anything in that bag.

Everybody came to say goodbye to Angela before she set out, crowding the horse, the murmurs of their voices a constant drone. My…friend (could I still call her that? But what other word did I have?) was close to stoic for most of the farewells accorded to her. She had never established too many friends outside our own group; acquaintances by the bucketful but friends were a different matter. Yet every so often a tremor of distress rolled through her features. It was close to fear.

People were by turns tense and hopeful, for despite the plumpness of her steed, Angela sat in that saddle like she’d been riding her whole life. As far as I knew, she just rode casually every now and then, but I supposed that things happened in desperate situations. People adapted. People made it through—she would make it through. It was a long journey, and I wished, I wished…

I wished at least she had deigned to allow someone to go with her. Surely in a small town like this there was at least one other horse to be had.

My teeth chattered and knocked together in an undignified manner. We needed to get those extra supplies soon. If one person caught cold, it was likely that in as close quarters as those we would be sharing, the entire camp would come down with it. But the crowd was clearing away and Angela was more or less on her own now. At this, Sara and I stepped forward. She gripped my hand tightly in her own, the wool of her mittens soft against my bare palm.

I hung back as Sara and Angela said their goodbyes, pleased in a detached sort of manner that at least they were okay. There was no more tension than would be expected with me standing so close and Angela’s imminent voyage to look forward to. When they were done, and Sara melted back, I stepped forward.

“Angela.” I said softly.

She looked down at me.

I looked up at her.

It was dizzying, the infinite spiral of darkness above her, difficult to distinguish the trees from the sky. Looking up, I felt as if I was about to fall, the universe pressing down on me with that vast, velvet blackness. A breeze swept through the clearing and the noise the trees made sounded like whispers.

Then Angela was tumbling from her horse and I was stumbling forward to catch her and then we were fumbling for Sara to grab her into our fierce hug and hair was in my mouth and up my nose but oh god, I missed my best friends and maybe what we were doing was more important in the grand scheme of things but I still wanted my friends by my side and what had been happening the past month to all of us was so wrong. I wanted to kick Mac out of Sara’s life so she could be all ours again. I wanted to be better so that Angela would be ours again. And me? What did they want me to be? They wanted to kick Cale out of my life, perhaps, so I could be theirs again.

But who am I without Cale?

I squeezed my eyes shut, choking on my own breath. No. No. Damn it, Cale did not define me. By God, hate did not define me. No. I would save this for a later date. Now was about Angela and Sara and me. Now was about us. If I wanted to prove to myself how very much Cale did not influence my life, now was the time. I wiped him away.

“I’m not going to say sorry.” Angela breathed in my ear. “Because I know that there are some things you need to think about, Ember. We…we’re going to be okay, maybe we are, but there are some things…”

“I know.” I replied. “And I will. I promise. But I’m not there yet, Ang; I can’t say the words yet. I just can’t.”

She nodded into the top of my head like she understood. Sara hiccoughed, and for one brief instant Angela’s strong arms tightened around our bodies before she let go. After the hollow space of warm breath we had formed within our triangle, the release into the bite of the cold was shocking.

“Take this.” Sara sniffled, wiping her eyes, and I leapt back with an oath when out of nowhere she was suddenly haphazardly waving a blade. She brandished that thing with what seemed to be a firm belief that it was no more dangerous than a feather, or rather like there was not actually an open switchblade emerging from the cave of her fist. “Mac gave it to me to give to you because he said you might need it if only to kill animals to eat—”

“Ew.”

“But still.” Sara pressed it into Angela’s hand earnestly. “For protection.”

Our hearts all paused at that, at the unspoken thought that Angela would need protection.

She shoved it into her pocket with a determined nod, and with one longing glance at us and at the camp, again mounted the horse. We looked at each other, our nostrils flaring. Angela’s nose was red from the cold and Sara’s was red from suppressed tears. I couldn’t exactly see my own, but I could feel my entire face swelling.

“I’ll see you.” Angela finally said, her voice cracking, before turning her horse around and setting it at a brisk trot away from the camp. The packages bumped lightly with the horse’s gait, and Angela’s silhouette was ramrod straight; brittle and strong, and maybe Angela and I were more alike than I had thought. We watched her silhouette get smaller and dimmer until it vanished into the forest at the edge of the clearing. She didn’t turn around.

We didn’t say goodbye. (We’d always liked to play pretend games.)

“Be safe.” I whispered after her.

.

Cale did not wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning to bid Angela adieu. It wasn’t because he was a little bit p-o-ed with her for being so deliberately destructive the day before. It was because he didn’t want to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning without his professional Starbucks barista coffee-maker to peel his eyelids off his eyeballs.

Well, he did blearily wake up for approximately 3.7 seconds to see what all the fuss was about and send a grudging ‘Good luck’ thought her way. But aside from that, there was no reason for him to remove himself from his comparatively warm sleeping bag into the cold. Even if his feet felt a little bit sweaty way down at the bottom and could use a bit of a breeze to de-moisturize them.

When eight came around, though, he found it impossible to even doze, what with the people clanking about and walking about and generally invading his bubble. It was a little bit embarrassing to be lying prone on the floor while the rest of the camp was up and about. He didn’t like the view.

So Cale smacked his lips, grimacing at the foul taste, and trudged slowly to the brook to try to rinse it out. Of course, all things were ying and yang, so once he was more awake it dawned on him that his toes were about to fall off from cold.

Because Ember had set his socks on fire last night. In a not horrendous pick-up line sort of way.

With his hand over his mouth to ensure nobody realized that Cale Seranden did not actually wake up with naturally minty breath, he moved to confront the pyromaniac bitch, although it took a while to reach her because he kept stumbling over objects that his watery eyes didn’t want to register. Like that random potted plant. Honestly, what kind of idiot saved a potted plant when he could’ve used that arm space to save, say, extra socks? Or toothpaste? One or the other would’ve worked.

“Come on!” He tugged Ember’s arm once he spotted her lurking glumly around a bunch of bush things. Noticing he sounded a little too much like a small boy heading towards a video store, he toned things down, schooling his face into a blank sheet of paper. “Let’s go get dental hygiene products from George!” His voice cracked and his feet voluntarily hopped of their own accord.

She looked at him aghast, and Cale, noticing the betraying twitch near her eye, prepared himself for a flaying of his immoral soul. Chyah, it was too early for this. “Aren’t you even the least bit concerned about a certain member of our camp, off riding a pony into the middle of nowhere in an attempt to get help for us?”

He pretended to think about the question to placate her, but it seemed to make her more incensed, so he hastily put a stop to the…thinking. “Of course I am.” He lied to placate her.

“No, you’re not. You’re thinking that you’re cold and smelly and you just want to get the supplies from George and in 24 hours you’ll have forgotten all about Angela.”

Hm. Perhaps truth-telling was really the best way to go.

Cale beamed at her. “Yes. It’s brilliant how you can read my mind like that. It’s like some sort of psychic connection.”

She gave up, even though for one second she looked like she could slap him. “Let’s go, you soulless ass.”

“Wait. Am I really that smelly?”

Ember looked at him like she thought he was stupid. Or socially retarded. That too. He did tend to be in the mornings before he was awake enough to remember how society functioned. “Shut up and let’s go, okay?” She finally burst out, an air of desperation entering her tone. “Just…” She was so quiet that he wasn’t sure if she was still breathing. “I can’t believe you.”

Too early. Too goddamn early to bicker with her. Cale scratched his jaw and yawned widely, amusedly noting out of the corner of his eye that she gagged at the wave of foul-smelling air that gusted out of the cavern of his mouth. “Look,” abruptly he dropped the immaturity, the wise guy snickers, and leaning wearily against a tree he told her, “I’m not a monster, okay?”

She looked at him. He’d never been looked at that hard before, like her eyes were diamonds and so was his face. “I’m not.” He repeated, wincing because he knew it was more to fill up the silence then anything else. Without a point, without meaning, words lost their significance and if his life and her life were based on words then he wouldn’t start treating them like…like that now.

“Fine.” She snapped her head away. “Can we just get some toothpaste now?”

Sounded good to him.

“And you really do have poop mouth.”

“Shut up, Briar. Yours smells like the stinky part of a farm.”

“Yours smells like milk left out in August.”

“B-O and marijuana. Sort of like a large music concert, but without the sex.”

Ember looked venomously at him, obviously more self-conscious about her morning breath than he was. “Suffice to say, we are never going to wake up next to each other and each other’s breath anyway, so I’m going to stop encouraging you to continue this ridiculous discussion right about now.”

Cale snorted, then pinched at her elbow. “Maybe you’ll be less scared to take me on in verbal battle once you’ve gotten to brush your teeth.”

He had to admire her wisdom for choosing not to reply, and was in fact a little bit perplexed himself as to why he kept prolonging the conversation, considering how very much he wanted to get to down and grab their various necessities. “Fine, going…” he trilled, and finally they departed.

On the long, long walk there Cale found himself with ample time to reflect on the circumstances that had brought them to the forest, and all the nature stuff surrounding them as they moved through the bushes. What was it people always said about nature? Something about immersing oneself in it bringing one closer to one’s roots? Back to the original state of man or something like that. He supposed so. It smelled rather nice in here, and the silence was never quite silence in the forest. There was always the breathing of trees or the creaking of branches in the cold. Maybe once this was all done he could write a small volume of poetry on nature. He could be the next Thoreau, the next Whitman, the next Frost for the new generation.

Or he could remain fascinated by the fish-belly paleness of Ember’s calves.

“Have you ever been to a beach?” He asked after an hour or so of punctuated silence.

“Of course I’ve been to a beach,” she hoarsely whispered back at him, continuing forward without turning around. “My family goes to a beach-y location every other year for the holidays. Last time was Barcelona. I cut myself on the port, got hollered at by sixty year old men wearing nothing but white speedos, and half my red-burned skin peeled off.”

“Oh.” There was really nothing else he could say to that. “Aren’t you cold in that?” He said after another ten minutes, indicating her skirt. Of course, she was possibly the only girl in the entire school who wore it knee-length, the way the frigid nuns who had designed the uniform had intended. Even Cale had more girl-fashion sense than Ember did.

Granted, this was from furtively looking at Victoria’s Secret catalogs and the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated in various bathrooms scattered across the globe, but that was beside the point.

“Yes.” She gritted out. “Yes, Cale, I am cold. So let’s hurry up so I can get some bloody pants and don’t have to steal Daniel’s or, God forbid, yours in the near future.”

“Why, Ember, if you wanted to—”

“Don’t even start. Don’t you know that kind of humor is the lowest form belonging to the most primitive branches of civilization? That is, little horny boys who think they have something to prove.”

“We really need to get over this penis envy of yours, Ember.”

.

The town looked like the set of a bad movie about the Cold War, except that the people walking around with guns and sunglasses were perfectly adept at English and, as far as Cale could tell, didn’t have the remotest hints of Russian accents. Even the lighting was appropriate; it seemed that the formerly cheery, sunny town had been submerged by the permanent dreariness of Westfield, and that its newfound lack of color wasn’t due solely to the onset of winter.

And hell, Cale really, really hated that his life was beginning to resemble some kind of effed-up virtual reality game. He’d have to get through men with guns to retrieve toothpaste and blankets and hand towels and tampons and godknowswhatelse. And he didn’t even get to have, like, health shrooms or AK-47s or even a goddamn hammer.

“I’m sorry,” George had whispered once they’d sprinted into the obscurity of his home. “I can’t help you get there.” To Cale’s horror, he’d then given Ember a Swiss Army knife (“for the upcoming weeks”), and the chit began muttering about knives suddenly sprouting up around her like weeds.

Cale desperately hoped that this did not mean that Ember had more than one sharp object at her disposal. He made a note to privately tell George to refrain from giving Ember, aka One Seriously Angry Female, objects that could be used as weapons in the future. The list included toothbrushes.

Ember yawned.

On second thought, the toothbrushes would be okay. Like those could really hurt anybody. Like those could be shoved down jugulars and shoved up orifices and poked in eyeballs and scratched against things for a century until nipples wore away and…

Cale was stopping. Really he was.

Ember was looking at him with a perturbed expression. “What?” He barked. Ruff ruff.

“Until we got into the wild I didn’t realize how weird you were. And you get weirder. I thought you were the less neurotic one.” She revealed in an unusual moment of total forthrightness.

“It’s much easier to do things when you’re half-mad.” Quite truthfully, he informed her.

“And unhappy.”

“That too,” he conceded.

They looked at each other. Then they shuddered. And got about their business.

Cale’s vanity stung as he observed the cracked surfaces of his knuckles. The constant cold and lack of proper hydration did not do good things for his complexion. The surfaces of his hands now possessed angry red blotches that shone against its white-and-purple backdrop. “Anyway,” pausing in his wallow session, “so we’re supposed to crouch by this damnable wall for the next how many hours?”

Ember adjusted her own uncomfortable position, shivering slightly. He had no pity for her. “Only for another fifteen minutes or so, Cale,” she snipped. “Until right as they realize it’s their lunch break time, and right before their replacements arrive.”

“Right. Because human beings are predictable by definition.” He said ruefully, reminding himself—

“I hate that phrase.”

“I forget your aversion for the blazing glory that is truth, thou creature of darkness and dismal dampened depression.”

He felt her eyeballs scratching the inside of her eyelids as she rolled her eyes in his direction. As if talking to a very small, very stupid little child, she told him, “No, as in who is anybody to judge what human behavior is or isn’t, or what rules mankind is governed by? Certainly not you.”

“Ah, but womanunkind is a different matter, is it?”

She sent him a shriveling look that would render most men impotent. Luckily for his future spawn, Cale had grown used to it and over the years had developed some sort of invisible evolutionary codpiece that protected him from all manner of Ember’s pointy, cutting-type words.

“While I’m aware that you possess an un-unique propensity for the devaluation of women—in the process continuing a cycle of bigotry that applies to the entire human race, congratulations, if you ever happen to be out of work I’m sure various hate groups have open positions as the rest of the world progresses towards a slightly better and more intelligent version of itself than it was—if you could at least try to place your hulking grunting comments in context? Oh, time to go.”

Cale gritted his teeth, feeling as if bits of his brain were grating and squealing against each other from frustration, and then quickly ran after the fading shadow of Ember across the short expanse to the warehouse.

Some guards they were. He and Ember made it to one wall without even being noticed, pressing themselves flat against its ridged gray surface.

“Okay, okay, quickly now,” she panted in his ear. “Go!”

The two men posted at the entrance had briefly convened at one edge of the door as a black van pulled up, one moving to greet it while the other hung back, idly playing with his gun holster. Cale gulped. And then, as their hands reached to grasp each other, they walked soundlessly around the corner and disappeared into the fluorescent lit blankness of the storage unit.

It was like entering another world—a strange, futuristic world where everything came from the same place, in the same packaging. There were no name brands; only hemp bags full of grain and clear plastic wrappings and glistening cans and fabric folded army-like, lining an entire shelving unit the size of the ones in Home Depot that usually held heavy drill machinery. Cale took a step forward, and winced as it echoed. At the same time Ember gasped at the size of the building—it had looked much smaller on the outside—and Cale clapped a hand over her mouth.

They took their shoes off, simultaneously shuddering as the cold floor made contact with their feet—in Cale’s case, bare—and then silently gathered some what they needed with relentless efficiency, the wrinkled paper of their lists flapping softly. They tiptoed up stairs, shoving their groceries into the sacks that they had, thank goodness, had enough foresight to bring, exploring the shelves and stacks from floors 1 up to 3.

Thank god almost everything was vacuum-packed. They would have to make multiple trips here, because there was a limit to how much Ember and Cale could carry, and there was a limit to the amount of people that could make the trip for fear of discovery. But it was better than where they were.

Gaze curious, Cale dangled another clear packet up to the light.

“Ember, they even have condoms!” He stage whispered.

“Bring some back to camp so that safe sex and no babies are promoted!” She whispered back, apparently giddy with joy at the prospect of canned peaches and beef jerky and…um, toilet seat covers…

“People needed diaries.” She said defensively.

The image was too much. Cale giggled.

And then there was a shout from outside, and the white-gray light overhead seemed not so much the reflection of a holy sending of condoms and beef jerky—why did that sound so disgusting—as it was a trap.

.

Some kind of bloody redemption this was.

Angela scowled at her evil horse as it swayed its evil haunch in front of her own head thinking evil thoughts. This was ridiculous. She’d gotten the horse so that she could sit her butt down on its back and travel in relative comfort across the country-ish. Not that she remembered too much about the few riding lessons she had had in her lifetime, but her plan was to get acclimated to it. Learn with the process.

But no, she was hiking behind it and had already stepped into its green shit twice with her Ralph Lauren riding boots. Ralph. Lauren. The horse owed her a lifetime of equestrian fashion. Because the damn horse refused to let her ride it for longer than fifteen minutes before halting in the middle of the wilderness, feigning weariness, until she dismounted.

And the beast had the worst natural instincts she had ever witnessed. As they were not traveling on the roads, there was danger lurking at every turn in the form of low branches and little brooks and hidden drops into forest hollows full of bracken and thorny bushes. The horse had nearly walked straight over these drops at least five times while Angela wasn’t paying close attention. Well, she had learned her lesson now. She was on the alert 24/7 to prevent her animal from killing itself and her with it.

At least Angela had a compass. No map. But at least a compass. Oh god, she wished she had paid closer attention in school, or at least in geography, rather than on memorizing the plains of that one boy whatsisname with the particularly luscious lips in her class while he in turn had apparently been ogling the hillocks of her chest… Once he had actually tried to climb every mountain, though, it was a quick so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen to him and his roving hands, and later on his ability to get a date on Saturday night for the rest of the year.

Ah, memories. Angela looked down at her watch. Oh goody. She’d managed to draw that memory out for a grand total of six minutes.

Wilderness was boring.

“I’m getting back on you, hoss.” She drawled, barking with amusement at her own wit, and paling. It was way too early in the journey to go crazy.

So. Objectives.

She needed to reach the nearest town with a telephone and call her daddy or mommy or hell, her grandparents. Someone who would know what to do, who had access to a large police department, the FBI, or better yet, the CIA. Yeah. She’d love to see Johnson’s face when Sydney Bristow alias Jennifer Garner came and took her down to Chinatown.

To do that she would need to cross forest and lakes and hills and apparently a small mountain range. Good God. She was stupid for signing up for this. She would not have been picked for this duty had apocalypse rang, because anyone who knew Angela—and almost everyone knew Angela—knew that her idea of a fun time did not involve walking or hiking or animals or winter. It involved sparkly shirts and loud music and sometimes lovely numbing drinks.

However, she’d eventually reach civilization. Then she’d mail out the college applications and letters to parents and—she flipped through another one—wills.

And following that, she’d get the agents, the NYPD, whoever was coming, to pick her up from whatever lonesome town-in-the-middle-of-nowhere she found herself in to take her back to camp. Back to home.

Some things were bigger than jealousy and inferiority complexes.

Not that Angela thought that she was completely out of order. She had valid points. She knew it, Ember knew it, and now all there was to do was change. And wait.

With a groan, Angela pulled on the horse’s reins and clawed her way back onto its rump. “Okay, dudette. Let’s get this over with. You give me fifteen minutes of rest and then I’ll give you your half hour. Unfair trade? Yeah, I think so, but my ass is so desperate not to work its gluteus maximi that I’m willing to do anything.”

Once settled, she pulled her messenger bag to her again, gleefully dismissing all notions of propriety and privacy and opened up another heartfelt letter from a spoiled fuckup apologizing for his misdeeds to his rich parents.

‘…and the time you walked in on me naked on your bed with five dogs and a bird and then I tried to push one of the dogs out the four-storey window because I was high on pot and drunk on two bottles of your wedding champagne—’

That was disgusting, she laughed soundlessly.

Angela chortled again and, with a flourish, opened up another letter.

After a period, though, rifling through people’s private, personal items got a little old, and she sunk back into bitterness. She’d noticed that about herself, in the rare moments that she had time to herself, to think, without outside noise sweeping away the inner. She held grudges a lot and got them easily. Ember did too, but Angela’s was different.

Angela was petty.

And she hated that about herself. If she was being truthful, her…actions at camp in the last 48 hours were not born out of moral standards. It was because she was envious. Not jealous. But it had felt like envy had snaked its vines over her arms and her chest and her face, clogging her until it was like she couldn’t breathe unless she fought back against the cause of that envy.

Because despite Ember being Ember, when it came down to it, she was right for the job she had carved out for herself. Angela was by far the last person to idolize her, but Ember had one of the strongest set of principles that she had ever seen, and she fought only against those that violated those things that were bigger than just Ember, that lay outside her frail mind—the beliefs and universals upon which humanity had operated for millennia.

Angela took a shuddering breath, and kicked her horse to a trot, twigs whipping across her dry skin. She approached the unknown with her typical reckless lack of fear for her future, but there was a different tint to it. Now her future meant those of others, and she began to get a sense of what Ember felt.

Redemption was such a haughty word.

She clutched the bag of letters to her side, letting the warmth and emotion of the superficial language in it seep into her and help her breathe.

.

A small wind fluttered the ends of Daniel’s shirt as someone collapsed next to him on the mossy, slightly damp log. They were all beginning to develop a weird immunity to the cold; their long-sleeved uniform shirts were enough for most of them now. He looked up, startled, thoughts interrupted.

“Hey man, what’s got your dreads twisted?”

Daniel moved over a bit so that Mac’s skinny ass would have more room. He thought a bit, gathering his thoughts and compiling them into intelligible sentences. “Just…this.” So that didn’t come out so clearly. To elaborate, he swept his hand around him, vaguely indicating the campground. “We weren’t ready.” He said quietly. “This wasn’t supposed to happen until after December. And I’m still trying to figure out why this is happening.”

“Yeah, well, life tends to suddenly dump crap like this in our laps, way before schedule.” Mac said, feigning a c’est-la-vie attitude that Daniel knew Mac didn’t genuinely feel. Especially since now, when he looked at the McSara phenomenon, there was a hurried sense of urgency about their relationship that he knew Mac hadn’t planned for and certainly didn’t embrace.

Smiling weakly, Daniel replied, “Then again, you’re also used to living a much less structured life than I am.”

“Oh?” There was a sharp glint in his eye.

“I thinking a profession in spying requires infinitely more improvisation than being the tech guy.”

“Yes.” Mac accepted. The two of them sat there for about an hour in silence, thinking thoughts that mirrored the other’s. The fire crackled and conversation drifted in and out. The thumps of banging hammers and the sliding of rope against rough bark. Debates on quantum mechanics and the repercussions of the late Maoist government on the economic dealings of China in a capitalist world market. After those 60 minutes were over, Mac pushed himself up and grinned contentedly at Daniel, giving him a manly hand-clap on the shoulder. “This was cool, dude. We’ll do it again sometime.”

“Fo shizzle.”

The space surrounding Daniel was different again. Not a bad different. He leaned forward, staring at the frosted tips of the long winter grass again. There was a space in the camp as a whole, too, with Angela’s departure.

Was it an omen of some sort? He reminded himself for the 89078979th time that not everything in life was a metaphor, but he couldn’t help thinking that the fact that Angela had left might mean something terrible. Or something wonderful, and that help would be on its way because despite the glowing optimism of everybody around him, Daniel, at least, didn’t feel anywhere near adult enough to take on a sort of military secret society led by a frigid old bitch who looked more like a cupcake than a human being.

Ember had looked like she had had a small part of her ripped out, and Daniel wondered what, exactly, had happened between them. Everyone had heard of the attempted ‘coup’, if the effort could even be called that. Angela’s departure had actually solidified Ember’s power. But something else had happened between the two of them, and it seemed as if even Sara didn’t know, because she had had the same bewildered, floundering expression that Daniel felt.

In fact, the only person who hadn’t looked at Angela&Ember with the slightest hint of curiosity was Cale, but that didn’t count because the bear had been sleeping, blanket over his head, during the whole farewell process.

Another gust of wind as it was pushed out of its place by someone’s descending bottom. “So I know that you’re a watcher, without the looking-after-vampire-slayers complication, and that either way you don’t really get involved. But if this wouldn’t interrupt your poetical process could you give us a hand with building this?”

Daniel found himself gazing at the buxom breasts of one Nicole Gardener, and nerdily pushed up his glasses out of sudden agitation. Then a corner of his mouth lifted up and he said quietly, hoping his voice didn’t shake and betray how aware he was that every single person in her grade had a crush on her and she was the reigning beauty of 10th year, “You just gave yourself away as a watcher yourself, Nicole.” She started when he said her name. He pushed up with his bony knees, wobbling to a standing position. “The treehouse that looks like a collapsed ribcage, is that the one you needed help with?”

Nicole smiled a little bit. She had been beautiful in the stone halls of Westfield, her blonde hair perfectly wavy and her lips rosy. Now, with her lips pale and chapped and her hair lying flat on one side and poofy on the other, Daniel thought she looked more real and hotter than before. “Yes,” she answered. “That’s the one.”

He yawned, stretched, let out a triumphant trumpeting fart (43!), and strolled east towards the skeleton.

.

Cale dropped a toilet plunger and gathered up his shit, packages falling off shelves with dulled ker-slaps with his clumsy movements. On the other side of the warehouse he heard the loud crinkle of plastic as Ember mirrored his movements. Securing everything in his arms, he dashed towards her, using his outstretched elbow to signal her.

“Shit,” he allowed himself one cuss, screamed in a whisper, and then the warehouse doors slammed open and the dull fluorescent lights turned into blazingly white, in the dentist’s chair suns. He and Ember froze as the sound of footsteps—three or four people?—emerged near the doorway. There was nothing left to do. Ember nudged him. Oh god. They would be caught. The one thing that held even the slightest possibility—Ember nudged him—for a future that didn’t include Iron Maidens was dropping the supplies and making a run for—Ember nudged him—it.

Before he could do so, Ember’s nails dug into his cheeks and his jaw was forcibly angled towards her. Though her mouth was occupied holding a large package of tampons, her eyes were blazingly cross enough that she communicated well enough despite her silence.

Using her talons, she gestured furiously towards—a side entrance! He was saved! They were saved. (He was saved!)

The only problem was that it was on the other side of the warehouse, and the space between their current position and their checkpoint was being meticulously scanned by Johnson’s men for errant schoolchildren. And because they had no other choice and delaying the moment served no purpose, he and Ember crept towards the wide open center and probable doom.

“I don’t see anything,” one of the walkie-talkies fizzled. The man nearest them snatched it up and snarled into the black box, “Well, I heard something, and it’s our asses on the platter if someone’s here and we don’t get them.”

Cale listened hard, trying to pinpoint the origins of echoing sounds. There were two men on the main floor, their boots tapping loudly on the material of the ground. At least one on the second, and he thought he heard another set of footsteps climbing metal stairs to the third. The man they were closest to—in fact, were separated by one flimsy shelf on which were stored huge cardboard boxes of canned beans, fruits, and peanut butter—craned his head to watch the antics of his peers.

They would have no better opportunity.

It was Ember who made the first move. Out of the corner of his eye, Cale saw her grab one of the cans in her small fist. In a split second he was yanked out of the relative safety of the bean-shelf, slipping and sliding across the gray speckled floor, his head pushed down as a can flew over it to knock Johnson’s man, just barely in the process of a slow turnaround, in the temple.

He stared in disbelief.

“CALE!” Ember screamed, and then it was far too late to hide. It had been too late to hide the moment this crazy plan had been concocted, and by that he didn’t mean just this invasion of the warehouse.

“Oh my god!” Cale shrieked as he saw a jet of white-blue light—no, goddamn motherfrigging electricity—shoot past his elbow and into one of the metal shelves, which crackled ominously. “Tasers? Tasers??”

This was one messed-up version of laser-tag.

He heard heavy footsteps pounding down the stairs, seeing another bolt of electricity just barely miss the top of Ember’s head. His Santa sack of goodies weighed him down, but he figured that he could use it as a shield or something if he had to. He felt the warm flesh of Ember’s palm wrap around his wrist—the urge to scrub himself didn’t rise, oddly—as they dashed around a stack of pillows towards the blinking EXIT sign.

They were always running from these goddamned people.

Panting, Cale slammed against the door, unable to stop himself as momentum careened him into the metal surface. Hand on the handle, he pulled it down—

“It’s stuck, Ember!”

“No, no, it’s not stuck, it’s not stuck,” She pushed it down too, her eyes wild and frantic as more footsteps neared them, shadows approaching them. “Nonono!”

“We’re dead.” He whispered, leaning back, closing his eyes.

She slapped him.

His eyes snapped open, anger propelling him away from the wall to grab her shoulders and shake her small frame.

She slapped him again. “Are you giving up, you bastard?” She shrieked. “This is not just us right now. How dare you disrespect that!”

Yanking his head away from her, he saw an opening at the same time she did to the main door. It was unguarded, as all the men had departed their posts to chase after them within the walls of the building. It was perfect. Only a logpile of sleeping bags stood in their way.

Cale and Ember raced for it.

A stray tase ricocheted off something and glanced off Cale, buckling his knees for one agonizing second before he was pulled up by Ember. Her hair was coming out of her prim ponytail, and there was dirt smudged across her nose, and she looked insane. She was probably scaring off Johnson’s army of black-clad toy soldiers.

He took a deep hacking breath, and forced his jelly-like legs to make the last step out of the warehouse, horrified cries ringing behind him. He waited another two seconds, stumbling outside with his sack clenched in a death grip, and then all the effects faded. His vision and thoughts cleared.

“Cart,” he croaked, pointing at the sole means of transportation that Johnson had been able to wrangle up in this godless-freaking-town. As more men poured out of the building, he and Ember threw their sacks into the cart, jumped into the seat, mindlessly cracked the whip and flapped the reins and screamed at the horse like drivers did in Western movies, and careened out of the town, packets of vacuum-packed condoms flying every which-way on the road to escape.

.

We staggered into camp half an hour before the usual time of sunset, to a hero’s welcome.

Two minutes later, Tiffany crashed through the bracken, shivering in the cold, hugging herself like she was going to fly into a million pieces if she didn’t. She was supported by one of the sentries, Brad, that we had posted in that direction.

I was the first to see her. “Tiffany!” I stood up, and with that action everybody else near me turned towards her too, and everyone near them, and everyone near them.

She wavered, and then exhaustion caught up to her and she fell to her knees. Sara was suddenly there, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. I rushed to help her, noticing, as I got closer, the dark smears under her eyes, peering through her fading orange tan.

“Are you serious?” Tiffany said, her voice thin. “Here? It took me five freaking hours to find you guys, and I only succeeded because one of your scouts was out and about and saw me.” And she smiled softly, the first smile I had ever seen on those candyglossed lips. “Good choice, betch.”

“Tiffany—”

She looked up at me with scared blue eyes. It was also the first time I had ever seen her and fear go hand in hand, her without daddy’s credit card or extended protection in Westfield. It was strange, as Tiffany made the first steps towards transition from bitchy slut to human babbler. “They’re going to use us, Briar. It’s part of a…an exchange or something. Experimentation for biological weapons. And it sounds retarded, like something out of a shitty TV drama, but that’s why we’re being held there, in containment. I don’t know. I think this is for another organization, and Johnson is just the leader of some mercenary corps or something, and they’re getting something out of this, I just don’t know what.”

“Why us?” I said hoarsely, imagining horrible things that I had only read about.

“I don’t know.”

“Why—”

Tiffany looked at me, miserable. “I don’t know! Okay? I’m sorry that this isn’t good enough for you, but I worked damn hard to get out of there and I lost Danny on the way and they caught him and I don’t know what they did with him but can you just shut your trap for five seconds and let it go and I’m sorry.”

I closed my eyes. Calmly, I replied, “Have some food, Tiffany. And grab extra clothing if you need it. You look cold.” With this gentle admonishment, I sent her off, watching as she scrubbed at her eyes. Her mascara had smeared all over her face.

The rest of the crowd followed after her, everybody seeming to want to come in contact with her. Her morose expression quickly lifted, her mouth curling up in her customary snoot, as she enjoyed her turn as the hero. Cale looked at me once, with one raised eyebrow. I waved him on, making a face. Shrugging, he joined the crowd, flirting and sneering and bantering like usual.

I didn’t feel like joining them—there was only so much of Tiffany I could take, and although I was very, very happy that she had returned, and the very fact that she had returned had brought hope and a morale boost to camp, I still preferred to spend as little time as possible in her company.

Also, I was in a very emo mood and wasn’t sure if I wanted everybody else to see it.

Ridiculous.

A small slope led to a larger hill that almost crested above the height of the shorter trees. It was high enough, at least, that for once the almost oppressive leaning of the forest over the ground was relieved, and I could see sky without having to tilt my head ninety degrees. There were skinny trunks dotting the knoll, and I clumsily scrabbled up its brown surface, devoid of grass save for occasional tough patches that looked utterly inedible even for goats.

On my emo wanderings amongst the bare-nekkid trees, I bumped into Mark, resident boy genius of the camp and really of the school and possibly of the world at large.

He looked up, and the calm I saw in his eyes didn’t seem like they could belong to anyone younger than Buddha. “Hi Ember.”

Slowly, I lowered myself down beside them. “Whatcha doing?” I asked in a subdued tone, somehow unable to lift myself out of my funk. I supposed I deserved funk-time, though, considering Angela had left, Cale had been weird and human, Tiffany had been human, and I had been tasered at rather a lot.

“Not much.” The twelve-year-old kid said, stirring up the ground with a twig. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

He grinned up at me, a tooth missing. “Nothing you’d be interested in, trust me.”

I smiled involuntarily back, adjusting my new pants and hugging my knees to myself. “Try me.”

“Particle physics.”

“…Oh.”

“Told you.” He continued stirring the dirt, peacefully. “I can tell you about it, if you like.”

“It’s okay.” I smiled gratefully. “Thanks anyway. But you can tell me why you’re thinking about particle physics.”

“Physics in general. I think I wanna be an astronaut. Not sure though.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, look at that.” I looked up as he gestured, and saw that the sun was approaching the horizon, white in the icy non-color of the sky. “There’s our sun. That’s where the gods of our world come from, because it was such a great, majestic thing; it was the thing that gave life, y’know? But you think about it, and here we are, just tiny organisms on an insignificant planet orbiting one of the averagest stars in the universe. There’s a lot more out there. But we’re extraordinary because of one thing: because we understand our universe, or at least we’re beginning to, and that’s what makes us specialer than we might be otherwise.”

I blinked at the burgeoning sunset, and then at him, looking at the serene smile on his face and the way his small face turned towards the light. “You’re gonna do great someday.” I said softly. “You know that?”

He blushed, and grinned, standing up. “Thanks, Ember.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m gonna go back and get dinner. Coming?”

“Nah. I think I’ll just stay here a bit. And think.” I smiled goodbye to him as he walked back in that swift half-skip I’d noticed most kids his age had, like they were in a hurry to get somewhere or sometime when they would take bigger footsteps than their shorter legs could manage.

I felt very small sitting on the top of that hill. An odd feeling welled up inside me, and I struggled to name it, but then it came.

Happiness. Utter content—not complacency, but contentedness—with the world, with life, with self. There are no words to describe the simple ecstasy of that uncomplicated gladness.

It was as if nothing in that moment need be changed. And it was nice.

I felt slow, hesitant footsteps come up beside me, and I almost smiled helplessly at the fact that he had apparently appointed himself my reluctant guardian. Or perhaps to watch to see if there were any other moments of weakness he should know about. But either way, Cale was on that hill beside me, had come to seek me out, and I wasn’t in the mood for talking or fighting just yet.

The sun began to set, first so slow I barely noticed the sky growing oxymoronically brighter, the gray blazing to a deep light, and so smoothly that the sky looked like a giant salad bowl tipped upside down over the earth. Then the sun sped up, eagerly stretching across all it could view, sending splinters of pink and orange and gold skittering across the clouds.

Don’t spoil this. I begged the boy who clasped his hands, expressionless, beside me. Do anything, but don’t spoil this.

And he didn’t. For once he repressed his bastard tendencies and seemed content enough with himself to just sit and watch and not do anything. And I knew how hard it was for him to do that, because part of the reason he was such a horrible person all the time was because he was very aware of his own deficiencies—I supposed that when one appeared so perfect, one’s faults were all the clearer. And I supposed that the annoyingly rebellious, wild-child part of Cale Seranden decided that since he couldn’t be a god, he might as well take the whole faulty thing and go all out.

Things would be different tomorrow, but right now I closed my eyes against that vision and felt peace linger on my lids before brushing away.

.

A/N: Thanks also to SKoW for giving me the Judges’ Pick for Best Het Couple on the last contest round. Thanks to you readers for nominating me.

I’m so horribly sorry that this chapter is late. But I think that this one, at least, isn’t a bad one. A lot of characters, a lot of conversation. For some reason it feels like a television show, what with the ensemble cast and everything. :D Thanks for reading.

Please review!