Days dragged by into a week. I found myself falling into a routine. The music would blast out on alternate mornings and evenings, giving a longer period for the soldiers to hear it, but also a longer timeframe for my other visitors to come by. Most of the time, however, I was alone. I kept busy; there was always something that needed to be done around the gas station, weeding to be done outside, water to collect and clean, houses to search. The valley had been surprisingly lucrative, yielding up a whole stack of buckets as well as some more gardening tools from one house. I didn't even know what some of them were meant to be used for, but they were lined up along the outside of the gas station, a camouflage of sorts.

For all my keeping busy and telling myself that I didn't mind the solitude, it was having some undeniable, unexpected, and unwelcome, effects.

My ghosts were haunting me. One in particular.

For a while, the music had helped. Even when it wasn't playing, I would hum snippets back to myself, singing random words in various, mostly poor, levels of tune. But after a while, that would fade, and I would fill the silence by talking. I managed to convince myself that I was talking to myself, or to the empty forest in general, until the first time I used his name.

My imagination never managed to fill in Koba's responses to my musings, but I could picture his expression easily enough.

All in all, I was very glad when Blue Eyes came to visit.

.

.

It was the morning of the eight full day that I'd been at the gas station when I heard a noise on the ridge to the north. I was on full alert at once, coming slowly to my feet as I peered through the trees. Only when he moved again did I pick him out of the undergrowth, and my face broke into a wide smile as I jogged around to newly planted vegetable plot to meet him.

"Hello," I signed.

He hesitated, looking around suspiciously, eyes darting back to my short hair. "Danger?" he signed back.

I grinned and shook my head.

"Practising," I said aloud. I pointed at him and mimed speaking, then pointed to myself and waved my fingers around, throwing in a few random signs as well. Now, good, help. My mood darkened slightly as I remembered Cedar teaching me that one, over Grey's dying body.

Blue Eyes, oblivious to my sudden preoccupation, gave a panting laugh and nodded.

"It won't last," I said warningly, smiling again at his amusement, which instantly set him off into more laughter.

"No," he agreed, still panting a little. "How you? Your eye? Your hair."

I shrugged but struggled to keep the smile on my face. "No better," I signed, then shrugged again. "No—" I frowned. "no-better?"

He panted in more amusement, then raised both hands in front of him with the thumb, first finger, and middle finger all perpendicular, like he was going to demonstrate Fleming's left-hand rule and right-hand rule simultaneously. With his thumbs pointing back towards him, the back of his hands visible, he crossed his two hands over deliberately.

"Worse," he said.

I nodded eagerly, repeating the sign.

"No better no worse," I signed.

He didn't look pleased.

"Family?" I changed the topic quickly. "Father, mother, brother?"

"Okay," Blue said. "Busy. Father always busy. Moving family. Many still injured. Cornelius misses you."

I laughed. "I didn't think like me again after being stuck with me for a whole day."

"He young."

We both laughed again at that.

"He is young," I said. "Or he's young."

"Hiss young," Blue Eyes said, and I grinned. "He is young," he compromised.

I nodded as he wandered around the gas station.

"You been busy too," he observed.

"Yep," I grimaced. "Got to fill the time somehow."

"No sight of soldiers?"

I shook my head. "No. I've been down into the valley a few times, and to the coast, but I haven't seen anything. Have you?"

He shook his head.

"What about Red?"

Blue's lips pulled back as he hissed angrily.

"No," he growled. "No sign. No body. Some others left afterwards. Father thinks they ran, rather than face him."

"Caesar angry scary," I signed as I sat on the lip of the door.

He joined me with a snort, sitting on my right side and looking at my face long enough to make me recoil slightly.

"What?" I asked suspiciously.

He reached out and touched my left cheek.

I scowled and turned my face away. "Can we not? It could have been worse. A lot worse. And it's in the past now anyway. Nothing either of us can do about it."

Blue Eyes sighed through his nose and pressed his shoulder against mine. I returned the pressure and we sat in silence for a little while.

"When will you come back?" he asked suddenly.

I hesitated. "I don't know," I admitted. "That depends on how long the soldiers take to move up here, and then if they take the bait, and then how long I can keep up the pretence. Hence the hair."

Blue Eyes hummed, poking at my exposed neck and ear.

"Anyone from the colony who came back and survived is probably still with them," I continued, trying not to squirm under his ticklish fingers. "So there's a chance they might send one of them up here to check that I'm not lying. Hopefully the haircut with throw them off for a while. Between that and my finger, descriptions won't sound like me, so maybe they won't send someone right away."

Of course, if they did work out what I was doing, and for whom, it wouldn't be a case of simply getting back to the apes, but of trying to get away before they killed me. I didn't say that to Blue Eyes.

He didn't seem reassured, shifting nervously despite my omission.

"Dangerous," he muttered.

I sighed but was unable to muster the energy to argue with him further.

"How's Jasmine? And Oren? And Lake?" I asked instead.

"Better," he said. "Leg heal good. Lake always watching me"

"Well," I corrected him. "Healed well. And what do you mean Lake is always watching you?"

He shrugged, not meeting my gaze. "They miss you too," Blue Eyes said.

I groaned. "Blue, please don't."

"Come back. This not worth it."

"I think it is," I said bluntly, turning to look straight at him. "I think it will be worth it."

We stared at each other for a second, both defiant, but he was the one to look away, turning his whole body as he presented his shoulder to me.

I rolled my eyes at the moodiness of the movement and ran my fingers through his fur. He didn't say anything, but his head hung a little lower as I groomed his arm.

"Be careful," he said eventually, after a long silence.

I stilled my hands, waiting until he turned back towards me.

"I promise," I said seriously, then grinned. "How do I sign that?"

He raised his index finger to his lips, then moved it away, flattening it until his palm came into contact with the top of his other hand, formed into a fist.

I copied the sign. Finger to my lips, spreading to a flat hand on top of my other fist. Promise. I smiled at him and he returned the expression with slight trepidation. His hands came up and covered mine, squeezing my 'promise' tightly.

.

.

The days grew slowly shorter with no sign of any activity from the soldiers. My cabbages germinated like they'd been waiting for me, and the peas with only mild reluctance, but I knew it would be a long time before they were harvestable. Scavenging remained my main source of food, but after I told Blue Eyes that I'd seen an elk herd just to the north, he surprised me with a whole haunch of meat. His visits were unpredictable, which was for the best, and never overly frequent. A couple of times he was accompanied, once by Rocket, Ash's father, who prowled around my little camp while Blue Eyes and I had fun trying and failing to hang a washing line made of string. The other time it was a chimp that I didn't recognise, who stayed for only a few moments before travelling on further south. Blue told me he was scouting and we both sobered for a moment.

For a while, I continued in that stasis, cultivating my garden, playing the music, checking the water to make sure it wasn't souring, foraging from the forest. I made a couple more trips down into the valley for supplies, and scavenged a proper washing line, though it was shorter than I would have liked, and Blue Eyes kept coming to visit me.

Then things changed. I got a visitor of a different kind to my usual one. A whole different species in fact. My species.