Sorry, somehow this chapter disappeared, but now it's back. Yay.

It was only a week later when Vaughn ruefully had to return to the island. Usually, Sunshine island was his favourite part of the week. This was no longer the case. He watched his boat go, wishing for anything that he could be on it. When no such miracle granted it. He sighed, peeling his eyes from the horizon. He didn't have any animals to deliver this week so he headed straight to the animal shop.

On the way he began to notice things. Subtle curious glances from the islanders as he past and he grit his teeth in embarrassment. Someone must have told them, either Julia or Chelsea about how he was rejected. Felicia whispered to Chen and he glared at them, the two quickly dispersing.

He opened the store doors only to find Julia and Mirabelle at the counter, both looked at him with uncomfortable expressions.

"What is going on?" He finally asked.

"Vaughn…" Julia said sadly, looking directly in his eyes, "What exactly did you say to Chelsea the last time you saw her?"

"What?" He asked, caught off guard. He didn't think his confession was particularly strange, and he actually handled the rejection with only a mild amount of anger.

"No one has seen her since." His cousin played with the hem of her shirt.

"She's missing?!" He asked in alarm. "You don't think I-"

"No!" Julia quickly clarified, "She's not missing or anything like that and I know you'd never do anything to her!"

"Then what's happened?"

"She just sort of stopped coming into the town. No one's seen her leave the ranch and Ruth is being very evasive with why. All anyone knows is that you were the last to see her."

He looked at her blankly for a minute, before quickly turning heel and heading out the shop.

Anger finally caught up to him when he was out the door and possessed by it, he stormed to the ranch furiously. How dare she? How dare she rip his heart apart and then have the AUDACITY to play the victim? She didn't wish to see people? Well that was just too bad because he had to give her a piece of his mind.

He took in a deep breath at the farmhouse door and knocked lightly, he needed to control his temper, it's not like she'd answer if he frightened her. He stood and crossed his arms, losing patience in less than a minute and pounding at the wood. "Chelsea!" He bellowed, wishing he could just rip the door off its hinge. So much for his self-control.

The door opened outwards slowly despite that fact that he was still pounding on it mercilessly. Ruth kept the door only open a sliver. "She's not taking visitors right now." She said in her soft and chilly voice.

"Like hell she's not." He growled and tried to pull the door open surprised when it didn't budge.

Ruth's eyes narrowed, tightening her un-quivering grip on the knob "I don't think you heard me, she's not up to seeing you." The door closed gently and he stood there dumbstruck, before turning the doorknob and bursting in.

Ruth looked back apathetically. "Leave now. You don't want to see her like this."

"I'm just fine." He muttered, believing she was referring to his own state of mind but when he turned the corner he froze.

The brunette was curled up in the corner of the living room, head buried in her knees. "Chelsea." He said sternly and marched over to her, grabbing her shoulder. It happened in an instant. The brunette grabbed his hand in one swift movement and turned it until he was forced to flip over onto his back. The air in his lungs was forced out on impact with the floor. She swivelled on top of him and thrust her thumbs into his throat robotically, each movement made with complete efficiently and pin point precision.

He wheezed, panicking when he couldn't get any air and tried to push her off, all in vain in his weakening. All he could do was look up at her, into her unseeing, darkened eyes, losing himself in the deep blue. For a moment, it was like he was pulled right into her vast oceans, gasping for breath that wouldn't come the dozen fathoms he had sunken. He closed his eyes, sure he was about to die.

Ruth tore her off and Chelsea went limp again, head bobbing down. Vaughn sat upright, coughing violently and disoriented by the after images speckling the corners of his vision from the oxygen deficiency. "It's because you went at her so suddenly." Said Ruth matter of factly, putting Chelsea back into her spot gently as if positioning a doll. "It's a defensive reaction." Was all she felt she needed to offer up in explanation.

"What is going on?" He managed to say.

She stood slowly and turned back to him. For the first time he looked at the girl, and this time really looked. She was different, or rather than different, she regressed. Her blank stare was reminiscent of the day he first met her in the city. Her tangerine eyes did not betray a single one of her thoughts, it was almost unnerving.

"You broke her." She finally said. Nothing showed, there was no hint of betrayal, or anger in the way she looked at him. "You were supposed to be the one that made her better and you broke her." She turned her attention back to her guardian, and gently tucked her loose bangs out of her face and behind her ear, once again revealing those hauntingly deep and hollow blue eyes and he had to look away.

There was wave of grief, then guilt flood over him and he was floored. "Me?" He asked dumbly, his voice hardly above a whisper.

"No." Ruth said regrettably, ceasing to preen the catatonic farmer. "I'm sorry, I was mad. This was always how things were going to turn out. She wasn't well. She wasn't well and she was finally pushed of the edge."

"How do we help her?" He asked.

Ruth stiffened at a mid-crouch as she was beginning to stand up, a shadow falling over her face. "We can't."

"There has to be someth-" He started

"We can't." She reasserted, balling her fist and straightening her back, she turned to him with an empty look, "It's too late now."

"What do you mean?" He asked in distressed frustration. Usually he found Ruth's short and to-the-point sentences refreshing but today he needed real explanations.

"When an item breaks you repair it, when a bone breaks you heal it, when a person breaks like this, they can't be fixed. She's gone." She said.

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "That can't be true! There must be something!" He said firmly gripping her arms. "There's other alternatives to leaving her like this." He argued, "We can take her to the city and get help."

"No!" She said quickly, her poker face finally crumbled to reveal true unbridled fear. "They'll find us!" The very realization drained her face, "and then they'll kill her, and then they'll find me. I don't know if they'll kill me though..." She said with wide eyes. "They might take me back instead." The way she said this, dying was clearly her preferred option. "I don't want to be the person I was." She whispered.

"Who-?"

"There's no cure," She told him quickly, "So don't look for one! This has happened to people a lot more "valuable" than Chelsea and they had to be put down."

He was speechless and at first she made no attempt to fill in the silence. He took off his hat with a disgruntled and defeated sigh, dropping it on the counter and falling into the closest chair. He needed a drink.

Finally, after a very long pause the girl spoke up. "Why does this happen?" She asked out loud, possibly to no one in particular, possibly to him. "I don't understand how people feel so strongly that they break." She said.

He wasn't sure what to do, the only thing he could think of was to comfort her. He got up and slowly he guided her to the couch and she nestled into the crook of his arm with some coaxing. Obviously she had to actually be very upset. He himself felt like he needed a little consoling, but he knew Ruth came first.

"Do you know what a sociopath is?" Ruth asked suddenly.

"Yeah, vaguely." He said uncomfortably.

"That what they always called me. It's what they called both of us, we were always in it together, two of the same I thought." Ruth looked at her hands in disgust, "But that was never the case. She's not like me, If she were like me, she wouldn't have broken."

He pulled her close, "I've known you for a while now. There's nothing wrong with you, you're just like me, you express yourself differently.

"I've caused a lot of people a lot of pain." She said quietly shaking her head. "I think since coming to the island, I'm starting to understand a lot of things. I've never 'played' or spent a lot of time with other people. Why is it the more happy things I learn, the sadder and more hurt inside I feel? There's this coldness gnawing inside me right here," She said pointing at her stomach. "it's called guilt?"

This was not the conversation he thought he would be having with an… eight year old? Maybe nine? He was starting to feel a little useless. He had always known Ruth wasn't like any other child though.

"I've never seen any value in life before. People die and they can't really miss being alive, they're dead. So I always just thought, why does anyone care? We come from a place where no one forms ties with other people, so no one is missed when their gone… But if you died, or Chelsea, Elisa, Gannon or Charlie died, I'd feel sad."

"Of course you would." He said. "They're important to you."

I wonder if I'd feel sad enough to break though… Maybe I'll never understand other people." She said. Her sad gaze drifted back to the corner where the brunette sat. "When I found her, I sat in front of her for an hour and yet… I couldn't cry. I knew she was gone forever and I was sadder than I've ever been, but my hands didn't shake, and my eyes didn't water. All the people on this island, Natalie, Julia, Elliot, Denny, they all feel too much and I don't understand."

He frowned. "Ruth." He said in his deep baritone, "Why exactly did this happen to Chelsea?"

"She lost everything once. Apparently this happens to people who…." She looked at him in surprise.

"What?" He asked.

"Chelsea wouldn't want you to know." She said.

"Know what?"

"The things we've… done." She said somewhat ominously. A chill formed somewhere in the back of his spine as, for the first time, he detected something dark and worrying reflected in the depths of her tangerine eyes. A painful secret that was locked away in their recesses.

"But I promise," she pleaded, "She's a good person, she did them 'cause she had to! And I… I didn't know it was bad. It was the first thing I ever knew."

Saying more words than she had likely said in all her life, all she could do was sigh at all that seemed wrong in the world. At the injustice of how Chelsea had finally managed to escape her old life only to be sucked back into it. Vaughn just sat with her trying but failing to understand or accept anything of what was happening. Ruth's eyelids began to droop and she hunched into him exhausted, it was only then he noticed the lines under her eyes. She hadn't been sleeping. This thing that happened to Chelsea had to be a week ago. Yet the brunette herself looked clean, her hair tidy and clothes pressed.

Ruth must have been taking care of her, keeping islanders away dodging questions. Again that weird almost paternal ache she always seemed to awaken in him burrowed into his gut. That feeling of wanting to protect and yet knowledge that whatever pain she had went through before meeting him would always be a secret the two would keep away from him. There was always this rift between them that left him feeling isolated and useless. Somehow, he felt whatever this girl felt would be way beyond his comprehension, and it frustrated him.

"I'm sorry." She said tiredly. "I'm sorry for…." Her breathing changed and he realized she was asleep.

He settled her down gently as he stood up, pulling a cushion down for her head and headed to the closet for blankets. His heels clicked on the wooden floor of the farm house and he walked slower, the quiet in the room was unnatural and left him on edge. Each step he took felt like the loudest noise he ever made but Ruth didn't stir and Chelsea remained still as a corpse, completely catatonic. He picked the fluffiest blanket and tucked it in around the little girl before quickly leaving the suffocating farmhouse.

Everything just felt so wrong. Chelsea was a little dishevelled but perfectly normal the last time he saw her, a shadow hung over the farm that used to be a peaceful getaway. On closer inspection, as hard as Ruth tried to keep it up, the farm was slowly falling into disrepair, weeds were creeping their way into the fields, in their first throw of their invasion to begin fighting out the crops.

There was this haunting feeling of rot that overtook his senses and he just had to leave, he got all the way to the main village but even it didn't feel the same, not anymore.

He desperately wondered if there was anything to be done. He would be willing to take her to any doctor if he had too, maybe there was a pill? Though Ruth would probably know better than him if this was apparently a normal occurrence where they were from.

Then he remembered something. This island had something that could possibly do what modern medicine couldn't, this island had magic.

There was a witch that lived in the forest as hard as it first was for him to believe, she'd helped villagers before too.

Without a second of delay he bee-lined to the old house, racing through the forest, ignoring how the lower branches lashed out at him violently as he ran through the less used trails. He finally emerged out the other end.

The Witch was outside, plucking poisonous blood-red grasses. She noticed him immediately and grimaced in irritation. "What?" She asked.

"Chelsea needs your help." He explained, catching him breath.

The leaves in her hand burned in an instant. "I'm sick of you mortals thinking I someone you can go to for help on everything. I'm a witch, and not one of those friendly witches you all advertise now-a-days."

"She's very sick and you're the only-" He started to argue back but she cut him off.

"I don't care about you're pitiful human lives, you'll all die soon anyways, you only live a little longer than rabbits, I don't see why you get all worked up!"

He stood his ground and she scowled. "Now leave this place and send a message back to your people. I am NOT open for business."

He slumped through the forest dejectedly. He was never good as expressing sadness or grief, so he replaced it all with something he did know. Anger. He was fuming, mad at the witch, mad at himself and just mad at the world. He wound up at the goddess pond and fell to his knees in front of the water, unable to look at the reflection of his powerless self for more than a second before chucking a nearby stone as hard as he could, disrupting the surface, not caring when the resulting splash soaked the front of his clothes.

Nothing happened for a moment but then there was a flash of light and he looked up in alarm.

"Dun-da-da-daaa!" A voice sang.

A beautiful and somewhat transparent woman stood in front of him, balancing weightlessly on one foot over the water's surface.

"What the-" He started but she spoke up before he could finish his exclamation with whatever profanity he had on the tip of his tongue.

She puffed out her cheeks childishly which did not fit her elegant image, and she put her hands on her hips in a huff, "I don't like you're offering very much your lovely Aunt didn't raise you to behave like this young man."

"Who-" He started but she cut him off again.

"I am the Harvest Goddess." She announced, reading his mind. She expression softened, "You are feeling great pain right now, I know, but this island needs Chelsea and only you can save her.

"I can?" He asked.

"I can connect dreams." She said, "She is currently locked in her own mind and won't be able to get out on her own… but I can send someone in to retrieve her."

"I'll do it." He said, not skipping a beat.

"I guarantee it's perfectly harmless…" She continued.

"I said I'll do it he said impatiently.

She sighed, "I'll just ignore your rudeness and instead admire your courage and dedication, though it's really rude to interrupt people while their talking you know."

He wanted to grind his teeth she was so infuriating but she could help Chelsea and that meant something. The ground disappeared them and they floated in blank space. "You need to remind her who she is." Said the Goddess and he nodded.

"And one more thing. Don't die in the dream." She warned.

"Why?" He asked in alarm, "you said this was harmless."

"It is." She insisted, "But if you die, you will be ejected from her mind and even I won't be able to send you back in."

"Will there be things trying to kill me?" He asked in confusion.

She shook her head sadly, "Honey, this is Chelsea's memories you're entering, everything will be trying to kill you."

There was no time to think over what that meant, everything was already beginning to fade in preparation to his linking to Chelsea.

"Also Vaughn," She said and he looked at her, "Next time you want to ask a favour, I like strawberries, but flowers will do too." With that she was gone and he was swept into Chelsea's mind.