Apologies for this late update. I got caught up in the mundane, routine commitments of life. Hopefully, the next update will happen sooner than this one.

I would like to thank all of you who have been reading this story. Thanks to all those who reviewed on the last chapter: Yung Warrior, Son of Whitebeard, ems32 and Katherine (You forgot to write your name last time. XP)

Hopefully, I haven't driven all of you away by this terribly long wait.

I'm going to shut up right there and let Tori do the talking.

Tori

But I'm only human
And I bleed when I fall down
I'm only human
And I crash and I break down
Your words in my head, knives in my heart
You build me up and then I fall apart
'Cause I'm only human.

Human,

Christina Perri.

By now, I have formed a rhythm in my mind; a pattern. My hands are working on automatic, the counting is happening perfunctorily. It is all very mechanical, comfortably and conveniently mechanical. No need to think, no need to feel, just work.

My fingers flip through the pages again.

One. Two. Three.

Count again.

One. Two. Three.

Stack.

My fingers wrap around the cold metallic body, the coldness providing me with a certain warmth.

The pages are sandwiched between the open arms of the stapler: nowhere to go, no place to breathe, no escape.

One press and the pin pierces through the paper, binding it, fastened together, strong for the moment but one brutal tug at the paper and all that is left is an unbound mess of torn sheets, no longer strong, just weak and exposed.

My stapling escapade ranges the entire morning. In all my fury and distracted detachedness, I almost a drive a pin through my fingers once, and that compels me to cut down on the speed of my murderous venture.

I do not notice when the clock strikes twelve: time for a class. The minutes drag on, more and more pages being stapled, bound, when there is a knock on the door. I jump at that since I am not expecting anyone.

"Come in," I call out.

The door opens slowly and for a moment, I think it is him.

That thought fills me with ambiguous feelings: anger at first that he would have the nerve to come here, longing and desire to see him, and then contentment that perhaps it could be, and would be fixed.

But it isn't him, it is the Air Ninja who appears through the door.

"Shane," I sigh and I hear the disappointment in my voice.

Hope he doesn't.

Hope I hadn't.

"Tori," he says and sits down in the chair opposite to mine.

There are lines of worry appearing on his face and I know that this is not just a friendly visit.

"What did you want?" I ask him, stapling another bunch of sheets.

He does not reply and I am forced to lay aside the stapler for a while and meet his eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asks, eyebrows furrowing.

I am surprised at the question because as far as I was concerned, I was convinced that I had made a decent attempt at hiding in my room the entire morning under the pretext of arranging official documents, and not doing anything that would suggest that I was not okay.

Because, hell, I was not okay.

Not at all.

"Of course I am," I chuckle. "Why wouldn't I be?"

The worry on his face persists.

"I don't know," he sighs. "You do not really forget to go to classes."

My eyes widen at that and the realization comes crashing in that I have a class now.

"Fuck," I curse under my breath, springing up from my chair. "I got too wrapped up in the damned papers."

Shane gets up from his chair too.

"How the hell did I forget?" I ramble to myself.

"It's okay, Tori, it really is," he reassures me. "You could take the day off, you know."

"No. No, I can't take the day off. Why would I want to take the day off?" I retaliate, the mordant words surprising me.

There is silence for a few seconds and I feel uncertainty and nervousness seep into me.

"Tori," he begins calmly, voice authoritative and commanding. "I do not know what is wrong. I do not know if something is wrong. But clearly, you are stressed and you being tired is not going to help anyone, not your students, not you."

I sense my grit fading, my facade of strength weakening, the mask that I have been wearing from the morning slipping.

"I think you need some time off from the Academy. We all know that you have been overworking yourself and one afternoon off surely wont hurt," he continues. "And I don't want you telling me that you don't need a break because you do. You deserve a break."

I sigh.

"What about the Water Ninja classes? I have two more classes in the evening."

"Let me look into that."

I narrow my eyes at him.

"It's water, Shane. What looking into will you do?" I ask sceptically.

"Leave that up to me, Tor," he says. "Take the afternoon off and pamper yourself for once. It will do you some good."

I nod, too tired to protest.

Besides I do need time away from the Academy. I need some time away from people, I need some solitude and peace.

He nods and turns around to leave.

"And Tori?" he turns back, voice softening, no longer domineering. "You can always talk to me if something is wrong."

I smile, gratitude swelling up within me, his words a reminder that even when the world changes colours faster than a blink, some things remain constant, some bonds remain, strengthening silently and surfacing with their powerful constancy when the variables all around get too chaotic.

I see blue eyes in the halls of the Academy, I see what I am trying to run away from.

Not running away from him.

Guilt washes over me when I see him.

Why, I do not know. I had not done anything wrong. Not really.

I had not shot barbed words, blatantly telling him that it was over, that whatever we had was wrong, that it was a mistake that needed stopping.

That was him.

It is always him, trying to end things, to break things, pushing others away, and it is always me, trying to fix his mess.

But how long can one hold together fractured fragments that only want to break away?

"You too?" the Samurai raises his eyebrows.

"Sorry?"

He rolls his eyes.

"Never mind," he mutters. "It's quite alright. I can do with all my teachers wanting the afternoon off."

"Who else?"

He raise his eyebrows again, disbelief written all over his face.

"Who else?" I reiterate.

"Hunter."

I do not know where I am going until I find myself in Storm Chargers, under the heavy glare of a redhead.

"What in the world did you do to yourself?" she asks, raising he eyebrows, startled perhaps, to find me as a drunken broken dishevelled mess.

I look around; the shop is unnaturally empty for a weekday afternoon.

"Why is no one here?" I ask her, evading her question.

She narrows her eyes before replying. "There is a skating event today. I do not expect customers till the evening."

"Oh," I sigh, finding nothing more to say.

I look away, suddenly regretting my decision to come here. I had not realized that my appearance was so telling that one look at me and people could tell how much of a fucked up mess I was.

"What happened to you?" she asks again.

"Hangover."

"And?"

"And nothing."

I know she does not believe me. I am bad when it comes to looking at people in the eye and lying without missing a beat.

"Okay," she says. "So why are you here? Aren't you working?"

Kelly- and the world- knows that I work at a school, an hour away from Blue Bay Harbour, as a martial arts teacher. Hunter's is the same lie. Shane works for his father and so does Dustin. Cam does not need a cover, not really. It is easier to lie about jobs like these- jobs that people will never bother looking into.

"I took the day off," I tell her. "I was not feeling up to it in the morning. I still don't."

"I did not think that you were the type that got drunk and had a shitty hangover the next morning," she tells me, slight amusement in her words.

"I did not either," I mumble.

"But there were reasons," I find myself telling her. "Reasons why I got drunk."

"Yeah?"

I chew on my bottom lip and nod lamely, wondering why the hell I told that to her.

"Care to explain, maybe?"

I sigh.

It isn't that I don't want to explain my situation- my predicament- to Kelly but doing so will involve questions that I do not want to answer, questions that I do not have answers to.

Kelly has always been a friend: not too close, not too distant. I am beginning to realize that is the kind of friends that remains. She has always been there for us, especially me. She did not stop being a friend even after the guys stopped working here, telling us that Storm Chargers remained open to us.

She is still looking at me, expecting an answer and I tell her the only thing that comes to my mind.

"I really really screwed up."

I wait for a reaction, so much as a blink, widening of her eyes, something, but there is nothing.

"We all do," she quietly sighs.

"I did something that I should not have done and I ended up hurting someone I… someone I really care for," I eject, half-processing all that I am saying.

I am under no compulsion to tell her all this. I could just lie. I probably would not be very good at it but I could always lie.

But today, for some reason, I do not want to lie. I want to let it all out: this tangled mess of lies, complications, feelings and emotions.

I could not have possibly told all this to Shane or Dustin, or Cam, for that matter. They are too close. And sometimes, it becomes difficult, opening up to someone that close.

I can trust Kelly with all that I am saying, all that I am about to say. She is a patient listener who rarely gets tired of listening to others.

"What happened exactly?" she asks, dropping down on the ground, her back resting against the couch.

I drop down too, sitting across her.

"Lots of things happened. Crazy things happened. Things that should not have happened, happened and I liked those things, I let those things happen but… I sound like a complete idiot," I trail off, realizing how ridiculous I sound.

"No, you don't," she tells me. "I know what this is all about."

My eyes probably widen at that and a shocked expression writes itself all over my face.

"It's Hunter, isn't it?"

I feel my face flush at her words. There is utter abhorrence that I feel for myself for being so damned transparent and there is the faint stirring of something within me at the mention of his name.

My silence gives her the answer that she wants.

"I have always had this part of me that has told me so," she says. "You know, he really cares about you. I know Blake comes first for him but after that, it is clearly you. Sometimes I'm convinced he cares about you more than he cares for Blake. He-"

"He hates me now, Kel," I whisper, tears forming in my eyes.

I am not going to cry over this.

"I hurt him. I pushed him too far. I crossed a line that was not to be crossed," I ramble, my voice breaking. "He deserves to hate me. I-"

"He could never hate you, Tori," she says. "I know Hunter tends to keep things bottled up and hell, there is no one better than him when it comes to lying and pretending but if there is one thing about him that is not a mystery, it is how he feels about you. I have seen him change ever since the two of you became close. He is a different person, a better person, because of you. You make him happy and he makes you happy. I have seen your face light up when he is around and you cannot really gauge Hunter's emotions from his expressions but he likes having you around. I have never seen him talking to someone as much as he does with you. You have not seen him worry about you when you disappear for hours, trying to catch a wave."

I feel a ghost of a smile settling across my face at that, but I am shaken by the brutal truth of reality.

"I believed we had something. I thought that there was something between us and if I gave it time, if I gave Hunter his space, someday he would open up to me, stop being so aloof and dark. And that we could perhaps become something more: that I could be something more to him.

"And I know that he feels the same way about me. I know that he wants me just as much as I do. We have been in this complicated shit for months, for years. We have been more than friends yet we have been nothing but friends. We never crossed that line. Initially, it was Blake, I think, that held us back. But even after that. We never really crossed that line. I dated other guys and he, well, he slept around but despite all that, I know that he means more to me than any of those guys and that I mean more to him than any of those girls.

"And although every step of every day, I grew to crave for more, I did not let that change anything because for me, it was more important to have him in my life, than not to have him at all."

"What has changed?"

"Everything, I think. I thought maybe when we did cross that line, things would fall into place, that he would let me in but clearly that is not how things work. We went out last night. We got drunk. And I don't remember a thing but he tells me that we made out. He was so different in the morning, Kelly. He was once again that guy with all his issues buried deep underneath and he just would not let me in.

"He told me that what we were was wrong, that it was a mistake that should be stopped. He told me he could not give me what I wanted."

"And what do you want?"

I bury my face in my palms.

"I thought I wanted security, some sort of stability but now I am beginning to realize that all along, all that I ever wanted was him."

She gives my arm a squeeze.

"Why do you think he hates you?"

"Because I made him do something that he would never have done. He is too hard on himself, you know that."

"You think you made him do something? Tori, this is Hunter. He does things only if he wants to."

"He wouldn't have done it had I not behaved like a drunk, throwing myself all over him."

"How do you know that?"

"Because he was explicit enough in explaining how we were wrong in the morning."

I do not understand where she is going with all this but I have had enough false hope and I cannot let her make me things that will never happen. I let things get to me very easily, I fall for illusions far too easily, I can't let it happen all over again, I won't let it happen all over again.

"He is scared, Tori. That's all he is. You have to give him some time and he will come around."

Not going to believe that.

"He does not hate you, that much I can reassure you. Just give it some time."

"I don't think we can go back to being what we were."

"No, you probably can't but maybe you could be something more like you have always wanted."

"Right now, I would be happy to just have him in my life," I say, letting out a sad laugh. "I don't want him to build his walls and hide behind them again."

"Then, don't let him."

"And how am I supposed to do that?"

"You know how: go talk to him."

"Did you even listen to all that I said?" derision leaks out of my voice.

"Of course I did and I know that it will be infinitely better for both of you to just talk and fix things than to wallow in self pity and drown in your self inflicted pain."

"But why me? Why should I talk? I am not the one who screwed up, who always screws up."

"You could let your pride come in the way and do nothing to fix this or you could set aside your pride and give it another try."

I open my mouth to protest but the glass door to the shop opens and a customer walks in.

Kelly is on her feet at once and turning around, she shoots her final words, leaving me in a daze.

"Think what you want and work towards it. You don't want to wait till it's too late."

That night, I toss and turn in bed. I am haunted by memories, vibrant images of the past. I cannot sleep and after hours of futile attempts to drift off, I finally give up.

I remove the covers off me and get p to dress up and leave. The bright blue light of the digital clock has 4:08 displayed on it and suddenly, I know exactly where I have to go.

Surfboard in hand, I am at the beach half an hour later. The sun has not risen yet and the beach is empty.

Empty but for that one lone figure in the distance: sitting alone, so forlorn, shrunken to a tiny speck, threatening to disappear at any moment.

Mind made up, I walk towards him, Kelly's words playing in my ears, knowing exactly what I have to do.

One deep breath and a few long strides and I am behind him.

"Hunter?"

His back stiffens and after a moment's hesitation, he finally turns back to look at me, the look in his eyes empty and ghostly.

"Tori," he sighs, looking away into the distance.

He sits up straighter and I take that as an invitation to sit.

I let myself sink into the sand, not too close to him, not too distant.

He does not look at me again and I don't either. We do not speak, just bask in the presence of the other as we watch the sun come out and cast its blinding light upon us.