It was already dark by the time He decided to return to his forest. He was prepared to face the silence, he had been for some time now. Everything would be back to the way things had been before. Everything would be fine. This was for the best, for Him and for Her.

That's what he reminded himself. He had to keep telling himself this was for the best.

Regretting returning, he was finally back to where was familiar as the sun was rising over the trees. He kept to the shadows in the trees as a few big trucks were driving by. They never noticed him, but he always tried to steer clear of them. Big trucks like them had a tendency to not slow down. Even if hurting him was not so easy, it was still a messy ordeal He preferred to avoid.

Slumping his shoulders, he finally stopped. He had been staring ahead as he moved that he really never noticed the change in scenery. Even though the forest all looked the same, there was still something different to his home. He spent years building up a certain level of serenity to differentiate his home from the trees around. It was built to a point to make anyone who entered uneasy, and so that he could always tell what entered and left the forest. Even now, he could tell the trees were barren of life.

As he turned back to the road, something close to the ground caught his eye. It was familiar, it was dressed in a blue hospital gown, and it was more than excited to see him.

It was Her. Somehow, she was here. She found her way back to this place. He wanted to be happy to see her, overwhelmed the way humans got when they saw someone they missed. But, despite wishing she had still been by his side, he couldn't quite place what he was feeling.

"Father!" She called out to him.

He didn't move. One thing he was sure he was feeling was disappointment. Despite being returned to her own kind and taken care of, maybe even finding a new family to look after her, she still left it all behind to be out here in the middle of nowhere. Humans are confusing creatures, He thought to himself. As he watched her, he noticed the spider he had sent to watch her rushing across the road towards him.

"Hey! Boss!" It called out to him.

He sighed and slumped his shoulders a bit as it reached him and began to climb to his shoulder, "What are you doing here? I told you-"

"Boss, it's not your fault!" It said as it was getting closer, "She-"

He cut off as a loud sound permeated through the trees. There was the loud horn of a truck and the squealing of its breaks. Followed by a little scream that already began to fade away.

The truck had driven off the road at this point, the driver jumping out to see what had happened. As he walked around the front, his hands began to shake and his pulse quickened. His silver truck was stained red, just a little but off to the side, but enough to notice. He turned around in a panic and began to check underneath the tires and bed. He couldn't make out what he had hit, but something in the opposite side of the truck caught his gaze.

It was just a pair of feet.

"Hello? You didn't happen to see...?" As he stood and walked around the truck, he froze in place. The world around him began to fade to black, the only light coming from one round white source. The shadows danced around him and began to take control of him. He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe. The overwhelming anger, the sense of dread, it began to crush him.

The man with no face was not kind. He couldn't see anything through his blinding anger for this one human. How dare he. How dare he attack the one thing He truly cared about! How dare he and his giant machine run her down when she was most vulnerable.

Then, He remembered Her. Yes, she had been attacked by this man and his truck. In an instant, he dropped the man and moved away. The man crumbled to the ground, still barely just breathing.

The truck was still ascew across the road, the trail of red leading off the road. He followed it, the little spider already was ahead of him. He seemed to be waving him over, calling to Him. But no sound reached him now. There was just a ringing all around him, as if all the sounds in the world were gone.

And then he saw Her.

Her head was turned to the side, the little bit of hair she had covering her face. She was lying crooked, her arms turned in odd ways, though her legs seemed to lay straight. As He got closer to her, he could see she wasn't breathing. But, he could still hear her heart beat, if only faintly. It was the only sound he focused on now.

"Child," he called out to her. He moved closer and knelt beside her. He leaned over her, the scent of her blood much stronger now, "Child?"

She didn't move. Though he didn't expect she would, he still had hoped. He froze for a moment as the sound of her heartbeat began to fade. He leaned closer to her, lifting her a little with his arms. He turned her over to lay her more comfortably in his arms. He head slumped to the side, leaning against him. She felt different. Her bones had shifted a great deal, some of them even felt too soft.

He cradled her close to his chest as he stood up straight, "Child... you must wake up... please."

Her heartbeat faded, until finally, it was quiet once again.

The sunlight shone down through the tree tops, lighting the forest as a gentle breeze blew through. It was another morning, same as it always was. Outside the walls of the little shack, there was a murmur of chatter. Everyone else had woken as well, all ready to begin their day.

"Is she awake yet?"

"Do you think it worked?"

"Never has there been a human here for so long."

The spiders all talked amongst themselves as they were huddled together on the ground outside the shack. At a glance, it seemed like only a few, but when the door finally opened, more spiders than you could count dispersed. They all crawled away, spare one with a tiny bandana who waited on his own.

"'Eya, pal! Good ta see you up and about!" He said, walking towards the figure in the doorway, "C'mon. The Boss has been worried sick."

The spider scurried ahead down the path, with the figure following close behind. The trees swayed their greetings as the pair ran off towards the clearing where the man without a face waited.

In the center, He stood with good back to them. Each of his tendrils seemed to doing something different. Whether it was reaching up to branches, down to the ground, or just waving behind His head, everything seemed to keep itself busy. As he heard their approach, he turned to face them. His tendrils settled and stopped as his gaze fell on the figure behind the spider.

"Boss-"

He held his hand up to the spider to stop him and stepped closer. As the spider moved out of the way, He knelt down and observed.

The child's skin had turned ghostly white, much paler than it had been. She also was wearing a light pink frilly dress that seemed to be her favorite, as she wore it very often. A pair of mismatched colored socks protected her feet from the dirt and a long white ribbon was tied in a knot around her waist. The little bit of hair she had once had was gone, not a trace left behind. And her face...

Her face now mirrored that of her father, just as smooth and blank as his.

"Child..." the man began as he used a pair of tendrils to fix the ribbon on her back into a proper bow, "how do you feel?"

She did not seem to understand the question as she watched him tie her bow the right way. She felt her face for a moment, running her fingers along the smooth skin. She then looked up at him and did the same to His face. He leaned closer to her so she could continue in her investigation, though he was unsure how she was really handling this. Though she was only a small child, it was still a big deal to take her entire identity away from her. He hoped it was not one she would come to resent him for.

Finally, she stopped and just looked into his face, right where she was sure his eyes were, and nodded. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him as tight as she could, surprising him.

"Now we're the same, Father." She said to him, putting her face to his as if to kiss his cheek.

He was stunned for a moment. The feeling surging through him as She hugged him was one he hadn't expected. Even when she walked into the clearing, even when she took her first steps out if the shack, even after the first time she called him Father, nothing amounted to this moment.

He put his arms around her and hugged her close to him, "Yes, my child. We are the same."