Hey everybody, did you miss me? :) I missed you. I'm sorry it's been so long since I updated but it's been a crazy few weeks: we had Christmas at my house and everybody was sick, so lo and behold I got sick too a few days after Christmas. First week back studying, I had an assignment and well, sad to say I lost my muse for a bit but now I'm excited! The reaction to the last chapter was so amazing, I couldn't go another day without writing the next chapter and putting Aaron very much alone for the first time in this fic. I love him.

P.S. It's my 23rd birthday this Wednesday and my friend and I are having a Renner movie marathon (including Legacy of course!) to celebrate. Leave me some love so I have even more muse-returnings!

Thank you all so much for every review, favourite, read and very special author favourites too :) love you guys.

25

So much can go wrong in the space of a few minutes. Aaron twirls the flash drive between his fingers without looking, performing the usual circus tricks for his too-clear mind. He's camped out for the night while his injuries heal; the itch on his superhuman skin is trying to drive him insane, of course but there's more to preoccupy him. He's lost a lot more in the past couple of days, more than he's ever even had in his life. A friend in Jason, a love in Marta… now he knows why people like him were meant to be alone and stayed that way.

If he were alone, things would be easier. So… so much easier, without guilt or pain. Fuck, he can't think about that now. It'd be stupid to take her back and use the flash drive between his fingers while he can hear his cracked ribs healing inside him. Thanks to her hypodermic needle, he'd be close to normal in a few hours; he should have thanked her for that. There's a lot of things he's listing, things he should have done. He should have listened closer when she talked about how it worked; it's all science-y stuff he could understand if he listened but her eyes got little sparks in them when she talked about it and damn him if it isn't the most fantastic thing he's ever seen. He should have kissed her more but he knows he will again and absence will always make his heart grow fonder when it comes to Marta. He's become soppy and romantic, huh?

Aaron chuckles and folds his aching arms under his head. He misses that thing about her; how she gets the gold sparks that seem to glow around her like an aura and emanate from her skin. Not that he believes in auras or whatever; life for Aaron is visceral. He believes what he sees, hears, smells, feels, tastes. Maybe it's just blind hope that another plane of existence doesn't exist, since Aaron wouldn't be allowed in a paradise of any kind. Life is all in the now; it's up and down and pain and pleasure, happiness and regret, love and apathy.

He's travelled and killed people the world over, heard women and children and good men screaming in pain; mothers and daughters, fathers and sons mowed down worldwide under the name of the flag. Old glories never die. It's not like he's the normal soldier but every single man he served alongside, all of them, had nightmares. Nobody talked about it but it was always there, bubbling under the surface of everyone's brains. Aaron looks up into the rafters of the shack he's bedding down in for the night and wishes it was stars or her eyes so he could have a distraction from himself. Pain and sadness define us as much as happiness or love, and he is defined by his. People look up at beauty and see their futures or feel pretty damn small in the big scheme of things, but when Aaron looks up at beauty all he sees is something to worship in the absence of power.

He's always been easily led.

He wakes up just before dawn like always, programmed into him at a molecular level most likely. Aaron sits up and presses the pads of his calloused fingers into his sides, checking for pain. There's a little spike over a couple of areas but he knows she'd write him off as ready for action with that diagnosis, so he quickly bundles what's he's managed to scavenge – steal – from bags and purses and slips out of his temporary home, making sure there's not even a flake of skin left for Byer to find him by. No stone turned back over. He slips a worn blue cap on his head and walks parallel to the only road he can see, a slick of tarmac and chipped paint from fifty years ago. This place is pretty remote, still. Abandoned storage sheds and barns are precursors to houses, probably warm with people and families with pets, food, and coffee. God he misses coffee. Ten miles down, walking through bushes and trees, he sees the first road sign in days. It's old and worn like him but he can see it clear as day and it makes the hope he has climb (what little it seemed like, at times); City Limits 5 miles. He's not sure there's a sweeter feeling in the world. He runs the next 5 miles and the earth feels like a cloud beneath his feet.

A few miles past the limits, Aaron finds a diner and sees a wealth of cars in the front, begging for him to pick the locks. It'd be so easy, to dig out his pickers and crack a door open, hotwire it and barrel it through Sterisyn like a knight in armour. He can see people inside on barstools directly looking out at the lot and realises he'd be immediately… Then he sees it through the glass. The TV in the diner flashes her photo. Her photo with the word 'captured' in bright red; Byer must have sent it out for Aaron to see, for him to find and incense his violent streak. It's working. Aaron runs inside and immediately goes up the counter, craning to see the TV.

"…say that Dr Shearing's terrorist connections may remain at large still on the east coast. According to inside witnesses, when under interrogation for her crimes against the United States of America, Dr Shearing said only this; 'Oh when I know to free hate, to sever no-one.'" Aaron frowns for a second, ignoring the waitress calling him. "So far, that is all we have but stay tuned for more on that story at 6." There's a millisecond pause before the suited reporter goes onto another piece and Aaron reels back. "Oh when I know to free hate, to sever no-one?" he mutters aloud to himself.

"Sounds weird, right?" the waitress perks up and he finally notices.

"What does?" Aaron asks testily, staring at her. She's blonde and fairly young, younger than he is he'd say. Her hair is wavy and put up into a ponytail, her eyes a piercing green he immediately finds naivety in. The red apron around her curved hips holds something inside. Cataloguing was his distraction, the past two days. Anything to keep his mind busy.

"The… phrase thing she said." The waitress pours out coffee for a trucker sat to Aaron's left a couple seats away, "It doesn't mean anything. Just random words…"

The trucker grumbles as he sips his coffee, voice rough and hewn with smoke, "Well what'd you expect? She's a terrorist. They ain't gonna make sense anytime soon."

It's a true testament to Aaron's stronger will and Marta's calming effect on him that he didn't slit that guy's throat and watch the blood and coffee drip out of him with relish. Breathe, instead.

The waitress raises her eyebrow at the trucker-guy and chuckles, "She don't look like a terrorist to me. Those eyes… they're scared eyes… something's not right." She sighs to herself, looking at Aaron, "Coffee, hun?"

Aaron decides he likes her a little more. He nods at her question and sits down, taking off his backpack. A little rifling and he grins for a second as he digs out a stray piece of paper, "You got a pen?" he asks as she pours a cup out for him, Aaron immediately drinking down half of it in one go.

"Sure." She pulls one from her apron and sets it in front of him without question. "I'm-"

"Michelle, I know." He gestures to her name tag, "Thanks, Michelle."

She smiles a little sweetly and he looks back down, eyes drawn to the paper and focussed. He's saying that phrase over and over in his head, mulling it over. Aaron sighs internally and looks around, trying to find a trigger for his slowness. Strange sounding sentences were always some kind of encrypted data, some code or … numbers. Numbers… "Oh when I know…" he says quietly to himself, writing down 0… 1… 9… 0… on the scrap paper. "To free hate…" he writes down 2…3…8, "To sever no-one." 2…7…0…1…

His eyes widen in glee, pure unadulterated happiness, unable to comprehend how fantastic she was, even locked up in her own workplace. Her beautiful, beautiful encrypted brain set him free. Aaron downs the rest of his coffee and gets up, leaving Michelle's pencil behind and a buck for the coffee, beaming to himself. He runs out into the sun and feels it warm his once cold skin as he steps from the diner's porch. "01902382701." He says aloud, the hunger and pain completely gone from within his bones. Aaron looks at the scrap paper he'd written the numbers on and back at the diner, no longer caring about her photo on the news, the red captions not bothering him a bit. He knows Marta and her brilliance, her genius.

Aaron takes out his map as the wind threatens to whip it away from his fingers, going around the back of the diner out of sight. Numbers… Marta… numbers but… what the hell do they mean? He thinks to himself as he looks over his map. What is it with that woman and making everything ridiculously complicated and impossible?! He closes his eyes. Marta had said a phrase, encrypted with numbers for what purpose? Aaron rubs his fingers, putting a foot on top of the map as wind picks up. Doubt is starting to creep up on him; doubt and guilt in tandem are driving him insane. Maybe they weren't numbers; maybe those words were just her genius brain on virals, lit up with fevered fire and delirium. He can't stand the thought of her alone and scared like he was before he got into Outcome. Some scared kid blithely looking…

"You okay?"

Aaron's head pops up, startled. Michelle, the waitress, has a bag of trash in her hands and is looking at him with some degree of concern and confusion.

"What… yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

"You…err… you were muttering to yourself there…" she looks at him and her eyes flick to the paper his hand, scribbled with the numbers, "If you're looking for the library, it's about a half mile off the highway." Michelle dumps the bag of trash in the dumpster and wipes her hands on her apron, starting back inside.

"Library?" he asks and she turns.

"Yeah, the numbers?" she chuckles, "That's their phone number… I know, I used to work there when I was in school." She shrugs.

Aaron chuckles, the weight lifted. "Phone number for the library? Of course it is…" He laughs, the wind dying down to a flutter. He could kiss this naïve, sweet girl… he would, but Marta would murder him after he saved her. Quite rightly too

"You sure you're okay? You look kind of…"

"Michelle, you got a pay phone in there?" he cuts her off, taking out the last quarter in his pocket.

AN: Credit for the number/word homonym encrypted thing goes to the writers of Jonathan Creek (freaking brilliant TV show). I certainly don't have the brains to make something like that up :) please review for them too.