A great deal of their time, spent in the apartment, where she was more comfortable, was used cleaning. Not just normal cleaning, since Kale seemed to be quite the neat freak to Autumn, who always had to be reminded to take her cup back to the kitchen. No, this was deep, couch-moving, wall-washing cleaning. It kept their hands occupied while she rambled on about whatever she was thinking.

Today, she was thinking about who she had been before her amnesia. She was having a lot of fun coming up with rather implausible back stories, which he occasionally made sarcastic comments on.

"I was raised by wolves, you know." She said, while dusting his shelves. They'd already pulled everything off of it and moved it away from the wall. Kale was washing the wall behind it. "Abandoned as a child. The wolves found me, and I grew up in a cave north of here. I was their head groomer. They brought me food and kept me warm in exchange for my champion belly rubs. Then, when someone finally found me, they discovered my true talent..."

"As a circus performer." He butted in. "I can see it now, 'Come one, come all, and see the wolf-girl! Running around naked on all fours, eating raw meat, and the howling... I tell you folks, it's not to be missed. Could shatter glass from a hundred paces...'" He ducked the cloth she threw at his head. "No?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "I was originally born a thousand years ago..."

"Wow, you don't look more than a day over three hundred. Don't know how you do it."

Her glare made him shut up, though he was still grinning unrepentantly. "Anyways, I was born a thousand years ago. However, as a child I was abducted by faeries due to my sweet and charming nature..."

"Which they replaced."

"...And they raised me as their own, the princess of the fae. I was greatly beloved by my subjects, and the truth of my birth was kept from me. However, eventually a great plague came over the shadow realms. Much was the suffering. Then word came of a cure, but it was an item much coveted by humans, and the wards around it wouldn't allow a creature from the Otherworld to touch it. I knew there had to be a way to retrieve it, and went out on a quest to obtain it. On the way I learned I could handle the item, not being fae myself. After I halted the plague and restored peace to my land, I petitioned my parents to allow me to discover myself among the humans and learn my own abilities. They grieved, but allowed it once they realized my heart was set..."

"Ah, that explains everything." She shot a glare to where he was setting up the vacuum. "They clouded your memories and threw you out on the street. Then you stumbled into an over-amorous drunk and freaked. That was how I found you."

He cut off her rebuttal by switching on the machine and miming being unable to hear. She just sat on the arm of his sofa and pouted. Once he finished, he came over and lifted her chin. "Couldn't resist the chance to give you a hard time." He whispered in her ear, before leaving a lingering kiss on her waiting lips.

She just smiled, all ill humour wiped away with the feel of his mouth moving on hers. She jumped up to help him as he moved back to where the shelf had been put, ready to help him move it back. After they got it settled, they began putting the books and boxes back on it. When they got to the top shelves, her job was only to bring him the articles. She couldn't reach, even on tiptoes. She was passing him the last box when she saw the brief flash of... something, some pain or sadness, in his eyes. Startled, she let go of the box before he had a good grip on it. It fell to the floor and opened, spilling the contents all over the floor.

"Oh no!" She moaned, mortified. To be that clumsy, and right in front of Kale! She flushed and dropped to her knees to pick up the articles. Some books, some letters, a movie, and some pictures. She gathered them all together as he knelt down to help. One of the photos in particular caught her eye. She picked it out of the pile without considering that it might not be something he wanted her to see.

"Autumn? Autumn, are you okay?" He pulled the photo out of her hands and took a look at it. "Ah. It would be this one. What caught your attention about it? Surprised that I had friends?" She shook her head, not even noticing that his cold mask was back in place for the first time in a week.

"It's... I... I know that place. I've been there before." She said, still surprised. It had hit her like a flash, her first clear memory of before since she'd come here.

She looked up at the building in surprise. "Whoa, it's huge! And your friend lives here? Just her and her grandfather?" She whistled, impressed. "She must spend a lot of time cleaning."

She heard a laugh from behind her. "That she does. She's always complaining about it." She didn't bother to turn around. The place before her was just too majestic to look away from...

"You've been to the Cherry Hill Temple?" Kale asked, bringing her back to the present. His voice was surprised. "It's seven hours from here."

"That far?" She asked, suddenly dismayed. She wanted to go there, wanted to see what clues it held to her past.

"Well, only about six to the city, but it's on the west side of the city, and from here you'd enter on the east." he looked at her sharply, not missing her crestfallen look. "You want to go there that bad?"

She shook her head, then shrugged, then nodded. "You want to, but don't want to make me drive all day to get you there?" He questioned, trying to interpret her signals.

She looked up at him sheepishly and nodded. He sighed as if expecting that. "I see. It would be there, wouldn't it?"

"I...I think... I think the girl that lives there knows me. I think I met her." She said quietly, trying to justify the desire.

"Raye?" He asked, surprised. "You know Raye?"

She looked at him, just as startled. "You know her?"

He raised an eyebrow sardonically. "Well yeah, can't you tell?" He showed her the picture again, pointing to one of the people in it. "That's her."

"Oh." She said, in a very small voice. She was feeling silly for not noticing the people in the picture while she'd been staring at it before. The raven-haired girl in it did look rather familiar. So did most of the other girls in it. The guys too, but more peripherally. Except one...

She took another look at it, her eyes narrowing at the happy image of an obvious couple in the middle of the shot. The girl looked maddeningly familiar, but that wasn't what caused her sudden bad mood. That was caused by the smiling man holding her close. An all-too-familiar man with long, platinum blonde hair and blue eyes.

Kale!

She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. Relax, she told herself. That was then. He can't even be twenty-five in that picture! It was a long time ago. He's not still with her. She doesn't still have him.

She looked up at him, watching him look at the picture. From the faint lines between his brows, she read what she didn't want to see. She still has a part of him, though.

She closed her eyes and counted to ten, getting ready to ask what she really didn't want to know. But she needed to know, needed to ask. "Who's that blonde girl?"

He looked up sharply, hearing something besides the query itself in her voice. He put the photo down carefully and began sorting through the rest of them. Whether he was looking for something in particular of just avoiding her, she couldn't tell. "Her name's Serena. Serena Thomas. And she was the love of my life, or, at least, I thought she was."

She felt a little shiver of recognition at the name, but her attention was caught more by the second half of his comment. "What happened."

He halted his search to look straight at her. After a moment he relaxed and started talking again, resuming stirring the pile of photos. "I was in my last year of university. She was in her first. We took the same bus and started talking. I tutored her in math. She's... very easy to care for. I fell, hard. I thought she felt the same way."

He gave a humourless laugh. "Hell, she thought she felt the same way. We were together for those eight months. It was one of the happiest times of my life." She knew that he didn't have any family, and 'happy times' had been few and far between. She felt a sudden surge of anger at this girl who had hurt Kale.

He interrupted her temper by handing her another photo. This one showed him with another man. A tall, black-haired, blue eyed man. Even just in the photo she could tell they were very fond of each other. "This was my best friend, Darien. He didn't go to school with us. He'd tried for, and gotten, a full ride scholarship to a University across the country. He'd been in the same foster home while we were teenagers. I'd missed him while he was gone. When we graduated, he went back to our hometown. I couldn't wait to introduce him to my girlfriend."

He was quiet for a moment. She interrupted his musings gently after waiting for him to come out of it himself. "What happened?"

He shrugged, only the tenseness in his muscles and bleakness in his eyes betraying his hurt. "They took one look at each other, and that was it. They were absolutely, completely, totally head-over-heels for each other. They both tried to hide it at first, but it didn't work. I was furious. With them, with me, with our mutual friends, with everyone. I left town, after yelling at Darien that he could have her and rot in that town, for all I cared. I didn't know where I was going, and wouldn't have told them anyway. I haven't been back since."

She moved forward to gather him to her. "Oh, you must have been so hurt! Oh, poor Kale. I can't believe someone would do that to you! Even if they loved each other, they didn't have to do it like that!" She held him close and ran her fingers through his hair, inwardly fuming that anyone could care so little for his feelings. He deserved better than that.

He looped his arms around her and nestled his face in the crook of her neck. "I was. I have been for a long time. But I can see why they did it." his voice was surprised, as if this idea was an entirely new one. "They just cared for each other way too much. Too much to hide, too much to wait. They didn't not care for me, I think they just didn't realize how much it would hurt me. Didn't realize that I couldn't know what they were feeling."

"Didn't you? You loved her...?" She let him read what he would out of that question.

He shook his head slightly, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "I thought I did. I did, in a way. Just... not enough. Not that way. I couldn't. I also couldn't know that it was what she needed. Heck, until she met Dare, even she probably didn't know what she needed. I'm kind of glad it happened, though."

She started in shock. "Glad? How can any part of this make you glad?"

He shrugged, trying to figure out himself what he meant by that. "That it happened when it did? It was only fool's gold. Imagine if we'd gotten married before she found that sort of love. How do you think that would have worked out. There were no children, no pets, no house, nothing like that. Everyone who was affected was an adult who could deal with the fallout. If there was this problem, then it would have come out eventually. Even if it hadn't been him, without that sort of connection, we wouldn't have been happy. We'd only have thought we were. The only reason I didn't consider her side of it was because I felt like I was being discarded. Like I wasn't good enough. Pride has kept me from considering it for years."

She was silent for a minute, considering. "So you really don't mind?"

Snort! "Mind? Of course I mind! That's not something I can just ignore! They didn't... They..." He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "Both of them! They told me I was so important to them, but they couldn't even spare me a thought while they were wrapped up in each other. I felt like the only reason the two most important people in the world to me just noticed me peripherally as something, some road block, between them and Paradise. I mind!"

She hugged him closer. "Good."

He could feel the satisfaction in her voice. "Good?" He asked, amazed. "Why good?"

He felt her blush in the heat rising in her neck. "Well, I'd feel like a bitch being mad at them if you weren't."

She smiled as he fell from her to the floor, laughing.