When Ash first returned to his human body, it was like being a child again, with no memories or understanding of complex emotions. It was a breath of joy after a long long winter.

Of course, things like that don't last. At least not for him.

Slowly he fell all the way back into being human. It wasn't a gentle fall. Things weren't just safe or unsafe anymore. There were emotions again like guilt and terror and hatred. Things he didn't remember how to cope with anymore. Dru tried to help, she really did, but this wasn't the part of unbreaking that she could help with.

There were times where he would just shake while flashbacks of being Broken beat at him. He didn't want to be touched then. Not even by Dru. If someone tried, his wulfen form would take him and he tried to bite anyone close by.

They took to locking him in the cage again.

Ash didn't care. At least people stopped touching him. Stopped asking him to be okay and to shake it off.

Ash knew he couldn't just shake it off. He didn't remember most of his time as one of the Broken and that was merciful. But his body remembered. It tensed when he was close to the djamphir. It cramped and writhed when he smelled a nosferat and was not allowed to kill it.

Being on missions helped sometimes. Ripping with his teeth and watching the life blood drain from a nosferat helped sometimes. Seeing an injured werewulfen did not help. Seeing any sort of injury on a wulfen nearly paralyzed him with guilt and shame. It would bring on the shaking.

If someone tried to touch him, he would attack, and then that would bring more shame. He didn't know how to explain these things to his comrades. They stopped letting him go on missions. He wasn't sure if that was a good or bad.

Even though his humanity was coming back, it felt more like a shadow of what humanity should have been. Words were hard. He hadn't thought in words, especially English words, in a very long time. Even before being Broken, he wasn't sure if he had had the words to explain what was going on.

So he growled and threatened and tried to make everyone go away so things wouldn't get worse. Of course, this only made him look crazy.

Maybe he was crazy.

With all of this, it didn't take long for everyone to realize that he couldn't stay. It was almost a relief when they packed him off to join Graves.

Graves had more words than Ash, but he was still having a hard time of it too. Were there words to explain being Broken? There were some, but they were the kind of words that polite people liked to forget. As if forgetting those words would also make the bad things go away. It sounded like a stupid plan to Ash but most things seemed stupid to him right now.

Like the werewolfen not letting him join the hunts. Or them thinking he would ever stop be a raving half-Broken wolfen. This was as fixed as he could be. It was as fixed as he could handle.

Fighting to stay this unbroken took most of his will and energy. Why did the werewolfen expect anything more? Or if they really did think he could change, why didn't they show him how to fix himself? Why leave him in this torturous in-between?

These questions nagged at him in the dark hours, accompanied by Graves' screaming. It made him irritable in the mornings and liable to snap at whoever asked him to join breakfast. If they were going to leave him like this, couldn't they at least give him peace and quiet as well?

But peace only came in death. At least that's how it seemed to go for Ash.

So one day he just left.

They hadn't locked him in for a long time. They thought he wanted to be there. Maybe there was a tiny part of him that did. But not enough of him. And not enough to stay.

He left when the sun was high and the compound was at it's most quiet. It was the least likely time to be attacked and so the guards wouldn't be as vigilant. He probably should have told someone he was leaving. But who wouldn't have tried to stop him? No one would have understood.

Besides, he was sure they would let out a breath of relief when he disappeared. He was too needy. Too much work to take care of. No one needed that.

There was a certain freedom as everyone's expectations dripped from him the deeper he hiked into the forest. Sure he wasn't okay, but at least he didn't have to pretend he was okay for anyone either. So he gladly went deeper into the forests that would eventually lead him to the mountains and complete solitude.

Maybe in the mountains he could finally hear himself think. Maybe there he could untangle the pain and anger that roiled in his gut whenever it was quiet. Maybe there he could finally find peace.

It was only after several hours of walking that he thought he should have gotten food before he left. Sure, it would be easy to find something to eat or drink in his wulfen form, but that wasn't how a human would do it. Wasn't he trying to become more human?

Did he still want to be human?

What was so good about being human anyway? Now that he was released from Sergej, he was freed from other's rules as well. Maybe he could just go back to being a wulfen full time. He probably would have transformed that very moment if he hadn't been unsure what to do about his clothes. He might need those someday.

He decided to wait until he had found the place he would make his den. That wouldn't be for another day at least. So he ignored the gnawing hunger and walked.

Long ago he had learned to detached himself from his body and things like hunger or pain. On long 'assignments' for Sergej he wouldn't eat until he had finally completed the directive burned into his mind. In comparison, this was nothing.

On the second day his body had started to list as he walked. It was only when he accidentally brushed against a tree that he came out of his daze. In this state it would be easy to follow him. He needed to stop, rest, and take care of his thirst and hunger.

After he slept that day, he was more careful about his trail, making sure to leave nothing that a nosferat or werewulf could pick up. He hiked for four more days, the lingering sound of cars driving him farther than he had planned. But finally he did not hear the sounds of a highway, construction equipment, or other hikers. Finally his companions were only mountain goats and nervous squirrels.

Then Ash hunted for a place to make his den. He spent more time near weather-worn areas where a bear or cougar was less likely to wish to make their home. With his human hands he could manage to make protection where others might not.

And so his days passed quietly. It was hard work, surviving like this, but it left him little time to think about the past. His emotions were simple again. Safe and unsafe.

Summer was brief and then there was even more work as he prepared for a winter hibernation like all the other animals around him. Even with the extra work, more thoughts had been intruding of late. Did anyone miss him? Or had they all just breathed a sigh of relief and moved on with their lives? Had they even tried to look?

Then winter came. Whenever he didn't need human thumbs he spent his time as a wulfen. It was warm enough, especially when he made fires in one of the deeper caves he had found. But his imagination used the fire to conjure up images of friends or nightmares. Sometimes he turned human just so he could talk to himself. So he could hear a voice out loud and try to ground himself in reality rather than those shifting shadows in the fire.

Yet when he talked, it was about pain and the past. He couldn't help it. Talking opened the dam of all the things he had tried to push down. No matter what he did, he could not find peace in the mountains. He couldn't find peace anywhere. Not when Ash carried the very opposite in his soul.

Whenever he slept, the dreams came back. Nightmares, really. He was so sick of trying to keep everything quiet that there came a time when he just let them come. When he woke up in a cold sweat he would whisper to those who haunted his dreams, the ones that he had killed.

At first it was just a repeated whimper of 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry.' Eventually, though, he took to telling them about his life with Sergej as well. He asked them what he could have done. He rambled about the images that still haunted him. In the dark corners of the caves he scratched out the worst of the nightmares: the ones with Sergej. Then he beat against them with rocks until the images scratched over and his hands were bloodied.

He screamed his rage and helpless fury at the mountains and listened when they echoed it back to him. He cried brokenly for days that somehow turned into months.

These things continued: him talking in circles and then beating at the rage that still burned in him. He thought about what his friends might say to him if they truly understood. Wondered what he would have told Graves if Graves had been dragged down to a similar fate.

These things became habits for Ash. Something as fundamental to his life as the fight for survival in the cold winter months. He told his stories and screamed and cried. Then somehow some of those stories began to feel like actual campfire stories. The emotions felt distant. Like they happened as long ago as they actually had. Maybe even to someone else.

It was about this time that he realized other things were changing too. The winter had started to thaw and the snow banks were slowing melting. Then one day he found a wildflower poking through a muddy patch.

He knelt down to get a closer look. The bright purple of it was shocking after the greyish browns and dark greens of winter. He gently stroked the soft petals so delicate he barely felt them on his calloused fingers. Had he ever noticed the thin elegance of a flower like this before? It was as if it held all the majesty of divinity in it's tiny perfect curves.

The beauty was so overwhelming that he started to cry. He sank into the emotion and realized that these tears weren't quite like the old ones. Part of him was grieving over missing so much beauty in the world for so long, that was true. There was also the part of him who was just so touched by the beauty of that simple flower that there was no reasonable response except to cry at the joy of it.

He sat there a long time, letting the spring breeze chill his tear-tracked face. He held onto that joy as long as it would stay, greedy for it.

Eventually, though, it passed. He stood and bowed his head in respect to his little flower. Then he continued on his way.

Slowly, spring truly came. The occasional wildflower in the snow gave way to fields of them bobbing in the wind. The trees shook off their dreary gray and grew plump green buds. Ash would lay in the grass and suck in the sun as if it was he was a flower too. With the changes of the season, Ash felt his spirit awakening too.

Without much conscious decision, he started making plans to go back. He tried to find a reasonable explanation for showing back up. They might really be happy with him gone for good but there had to be someone who would still be happy to see him. There was a new part of him that was confident he would find someone happy to see him.

So, as the days grew longer, Ash made his plans to leave the mountains. He had his crying spells and raging fits but it was different somehow. Spring had somehow wormed it's way into him and even how he viewed his Brokeness.

When the time finally came, it was still hard to leave though. It was as if he was leaving a lifetime there. He went to his pit where the last fire had been extinguished hours ago. He gathered the ash of his past life and made one last drawing. He drew a simple flower in the midst of all his battered nightmares.

It was that first flower after winter. It had been his first sign of hope. That hope had grown into a quiet assurance that things could change. His time had come. He finally believed he could grow again.

Ash had a chance at spring again.

...

A/N: I wrote this at the same time as the first chapter but didn't know how to finish it until now. Hopefully you have spring soon as well :)