When Ashley woke up, he didn't trust himself to get out of bed immediately. He didn't even open his eyes. First, he ran over everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours and verified that his memories were in fact reality, and not some nightmare he'd had over the night. He let all that had transpired ruminate in his head for a while until he was able to accept it once again (evidently, acceptance had slipped away over the night).

Eventually, he came to the conclusion that he was ready to face this new day. He opened his eyes and rolled over. No one was there on the other side of the bed- Alexis was gone.

"Altaira!" He knew not to yell her real name, knew that she would answer to her legal name even if it weren't her given one. Ashley had searched the hotel room upon realizing that she was not in the bed, but to no avail. At this point he'd run outside their motel room. Their car was there, but Alexis was nowhere to be seen.

"Over here!" came the call from behind the building. Sighing with relief, he rounded the room to see her standing beside a thin strip of garden at the back of the motel. She was holding up her Swiss Army knife and focusing on a strip of her hair.

"Hey," he said, walking up to her. "What are you doing?" She chopped off a bit of her hair and dropped it into a small hole she'd toed into the dirt.

"Mom's funeral," she said simply, kneeling down to cover up her makeshift grave. "Obviously I can't go to the real one, so…" She straightened up and bent her head, lips moving soundlessly as if she were saying her last goodbyes. Ashley put an arm around her, shaken by how adaptable she was after all that had happened.

"Do you want me to pray?" he asked her softly. She shook her head. A teardrop fell into the dirt and stained the spot where she'd buried the lock of her hair.

"That's okay," she murmured, letting him pull her into a hug. They remained like that for just over a minute, holding each other and being quiet in a long moment of silence to honor Meredith. It wasn't the first time she'd done this same sort of memorial service. Ever since Gram was shot at her father's funeral, Alexis hadn't felt safe attending the things.

"Sorry for leaving," she said as they walked back to the motel room. "I wasn't going to be gone for long, I didn't think you'd wake up."

"Don't worry about it," he said, unsure as to how he should be acting around her. She'd just, in a way, attended her mother's funeral and now she seemed ready to plow on ahead. It was something new about her that he was having trouble getting used to. The Alexis he'd known hadn't been so ready to move on after a tragedy, had always been caught up with whatever had happened days after receiving the news.

There was only one solution, he realized- this Altaira was a different person than the Alexis he'd known. The chase and the unending tragedy had hardened her, changed her, and caused her to evolve into this cool, calm, badass of an escape artist. It was unnerving, and he wished that he could erase all that had happened and bring back the girl he'd known as a teenager.

"So," said Alexis once they were back in the room, after checking to make sure the windows were covered, "we need a plan."

"Plans are good," he agreed, sitting down at the one table. She ripped open a bag of Twizzlers and popped the end of one in her mouth, where it dangled like a lizard's tongue.

"This place is okay," she said, patting the wall, "but we'll have to leave soon."

"What, you think they followed us?" he asked, surprised. A Chicago apartment to a Minnesota motel seemed like a long jump, and no one had been following them on the drive up- they'd kept checking. It seemed like a safe enough place to him, but obviously she didn't agree.

"It doesn't matter, they'll track us here eventually," she explained, "and I'd like to be somewhere far, far away when that happens." This was the reason she was still alive- she kept on the move, like a shark in the water. Never pausing, never resting, every home a temporary one. "I should've left Chicago days earlier, it was dumb to stay there so long." She got a twitchy feeling when she'd been in one place for too long, and it had been working at her days before Ashley showed up.

"You want to talk about where to next?" he guessed. She bit her lip and glanced around the room, then pulled back a chair and sat at the table across from him.

No, she wrote using the hotel stationary, we probably shouldn't say it out loud.

Ashley's brow furrowed. He took the pad of paper and the pen and wrote Bugs? Beneath what she'd written. Alexis nodded.

Maybe. We can't be too safe, she wrote. I was thinking, close as we are, we should go to Canada. Leave the country.

He nodded and wrote When?

Couple days, she replied. We can stock up on food and get out of here.

"'Kay," said Ashley. The silence was buzzing in his ears, and he didn't like it. Now that they were done with proper nouns and times, he figured it was safe to speak out loud. "You're really good at this," he observed, looking at her. "All the cloak-and-dagger, running in the night."

"Seven years of practice," she shrugged, tearing up the first few sheets of the pad so that no one would be able to make out what they'd discussed. "You'll catch on quick enough," she assured him.

"Yeah," he said with sarcasm, doubting it.

"Well, you'll catch on eventually," she amended with a smile. "But it's not like you're totally hopeless. You saved my life."

"At what point in all the running and screaming did I save your life?" laughed Ashley.

"You got the getaway vehicle," she said, leaning over and kissing him in a way that said both "Thank you" and "I believe in you." She stood up and crossed the room to get another breakfast Twizzler. He watched her, amazed by her ability to evade capture and live under the radar. He was beginning to wonder, though, if it was the best thing for her, if she wouldn't feel better running towards this killer instead of away from him. Sure, it was safe, but it couldn't possibly be satisfying. There was so much closure she'd never get from hiding.

The Alexis he'd known hadn't been much for vengeance- then again, she'd never had anything to get revenge for. This woman was almost entirely different from the seventeen-year-old girl he'd known, though. He couldn't be certain that revenge wasn't exactly what she needed most.