A/N: sorry for the long gap between updates. I'm bad, I know….
Ashelin watched out the window at the city below. It was still early morning, and traffic was a slow-moving, sleepy stream of men and women on hovercraft heading off to their early-morning jobs. A paper delivery boy walked slowly by, his thin shoulders hunched against the wind whipping through the narrow streets. A dog growled at him, and he swore at it, seeming unafraid but walking a bit faster nonetheless. She sighed and closed her eyes. She was tired, and as she closed her eyes they watered and burned. She hadn't slept much. She had lain awake much of the night, just thinking and trying not to remember.
She didn't know what to do next. She had to rescue Natasha from the Bahzre, that was obvious, but how? It wasn't as though she could simply go up to her father and ask him for a transport to take her out of the city and over to the Bahzre fortress so she could rescue her sister who was supposed to be dead. No, there must be a better plan than that….
She dialed a number on her phone, listening for one ring, two, three… "Hello?" Torn answered.
"Torn?"
"Ashelin?"
"Yeah, it's me." She winced at how tiny and how… well, scared she sounded. "I was wondering… if I could ask you for a favor." She hated asking favors, but then again this was for her sister's life. Anything she could do, she would do.
"Depends on the favor," he said carefully, not sure what she was getting at.
"I need access to a Hellcat cruiser. Can you get me a security pass?" she asked.
Although she couldn't see him, she could almost hear in his voice that he was rolling his eyes. "You're going to look for Natasha, aren't you?"
"Yes," she said, deciding if she planned on his help she had better at least be honest with him. "And I need a way to get out of the city."
"Well, there isn't one. Not a legal one, anyway."
"You think I give a shit whether it's legal or not? Torn, she's my sister! I have to help her. The Bahzre... they might grow tired of holding her in their fortress... they might just kill her and be done with it," Ashelin said. She felt a lump in her throat and swallowed hard.
"I'll get you a security pass," he said finally. "But you have to let me come with you when you go."
"What?" she cried. "You?"
"Yes," he said, sounding tired. "Me. Do you agree?"
"No! Of course not!" she snapped. "It's bad enough one person from our city is with those awful people, and also bad enough I have to go rescue her. Why would you put yourself in danger like that?"
"Because two are better than one. You can't just go into the Wasteland without backup," he said. Ashelin saw that it did make sense for someone to go with her, but she had stated her case and wasn't about to admit she had been wrong.
"Whatever," she sighed eventually. "Come over to my apartment as soon as you can."
"As soon as you can" turned out to be about twenty minutes later. Ashelin was still in the shower and she got a little freaked out when she heard someone pounding on the door -- was it someone her father had sent, come to kill her once and for all?
She took a deep breath, put on a bathrobe, and opened the door.
"Er... hello," Torn said. He blushed slightly when he looked at her. The bathrobe was not fastened all the way and left little to the imagination.
"Wait here," Ashelin muttered, and fled into her bedroom.
When she was decent again, she went into her main room to find him lounged on the couch. "You've got a nice place here," he said. "How'd you rent it on such short notice?"
She shrugged. "My father arranged it. I guess there are perks to being the Baron's daughter." She made a face. "Not that I want them."
Torn didn't answer. He couldn't think of anything to say.
"So," Ashelin said after a few seconds of awkward silence, "Did you get the security passes?"
He nodded. "Not too hard to get. You'll find that all of the city officials are very corrupt."
She grinned. "So not much has changed since I first left."
He frowned at her. "How is that funny?"
"Oh.. sorry. I guess you wouldn't know. When Natasha and I were sent out to the Wasteland, our father told us that when we came back we would be so surprised because the city would be such a different, better place." She laughed mirthlessly. "We've seen how accurate that it."
"Hm," Torn murmured. "Well... should we go, then?"
"Yeah. I'm ready, we'll just have to stop and buy some food." Ashelin reached underneath the couch and pulled out the two guns she had taken from the Bahzre trackers. Although it had only been a few days, to both of them that day they met seemed like months ago. So much had happened.
Torn shook his head. "I got some. Actually, I just took all the preserved food from my house. It'd go on city records if we just bought a bunch of food. I mean, that counts as suspicious behavior, right?"
She nodded. "Smart. I forgot about that."
When they left the city and flew over Haven Forest, their direction did not immediately take them to the Wasteland. First they had to cross the Eastern Plains. This area was new to Torn, so he left Ashelin to navigate the Hellcat.
"Shit!" he yelled when he saw the seemingly endless sea of grass, completely flat and uninhabited. "Gods! It's green!"
Ashelin laughed at him. "Torn, you are a dipshit. It's grass."
He glared at her. "I know it's grass. It's just... a LOT of grass!"
She raised her eyebrows but said no more for a few moments, until, "What's that?"
"Where?" Torn asked, looking around in the Hellcat.
"Out there!" she yelled. "What we just flew over!"
He turned and looked. "Oh. It's a house. And a well. And an old woman throwing fire at little kids."
Ashelin's eyes widened. "We're landing. Now."
"Now? What the fuck? Why?" Torn asked.
Ashelin didn't answer him. She landed the Hellcat in the tall grass and jumped out, running in the direction of the small house they had seen.
The old woman, it was revealed, was not "throwing fire at little kids." She was tossing large orange seeds to them and they were planting them. She looked up when Ashelin came nearer. The kids stopped and looked at Ashelin as well. Then, one of the children, a girl of about ten, screamed and ran to Ashelin.
"...Anya?"
