A/N: So short, I know….. everyone read The Tainted, it has stolen my focus for the time being….

Disclaimer: Don't own it.

"What the hell?" Ashelin muttered. She stared at the huge line of incoming vehicles, all headed toward the Bahzre fortress. They were unmistakably red, the deep red of Krimzon Guard warcraft. "Torn," she muttered. "Hide."

He didn't move. She grabbed his arm and pulled him behind some rocks, deeper and deeper into a small cave in the center of the pile of rocks. "Ashelin," Torn said, "this whole thing could collapse on us..."

"I know," she replied grimly. "Or, we could go out there and be shot."

He raised his eyebrows. "Let's see... death by being CRUSHED, or death by being SHOT. I'm gonna have to think about that." He buried his face in his hands. "God, Ashelin. How did you know this was in here, anyway?"

"I didn't," she said with a shrug. "We could've hidden okay without it. This is just better."

"This is more dangerous," he argued.

"Not," she murmured as the ground shook with the weight of the huge tanks rolling past them. "It's just as dangerous out there."

He leaned against the wall, but sprang back toward Ashelin just as quickly. "Shit! I swear I felt that move when I leaned against it!"

"It did not... just hold still for a minute, and we can get out of here when I'm sure the coast is clear."

"And what puts you in charge? Maybe I already think the coast is clear!" he snapped.

"You sound like a two-year-old. Please act your age," she snapped. "Just wait a few minutes, okay?"

"I'm not acting like a fucking two-year-old," Torn muttered, pouting slightly.

Oh, God...

"Fine, you're not. Just cool it."

Just then a huge explosion rocked the ground. The pile of rocks fairly shuddered around them, but did not fall. Torn jumped a mile, and found himself in an odd position, sitting/laying on Ashelin. "Shit, you're heavy," she muttered, her eyes flashing. "Get the fuck away..." She shoved him with all her strength, so that he was next to her. To their horror, they noticed that the ceiling of the little cave, which had been about five feet, was barely four feet tall now.

"Can we get out of here now?" Torn asked in a gruff voice.

"Yep," she said in a small voice. "Now would be a good time for that... just out of here though, not out of the rocks altogether."

They found themselves squished together in the small rocky tunnel, with the light of day visible at the end of it. Ashelin tried not to think of what might be happening outside. In her effort to think of something different, she found herself remembering what had happened between them last night, and, she guessed, just now when they found themselves in an awkward position. She shook her head to clear her mind as she thought of another image, on of them, together, kissing and touching and doing things she never wanted to thinnk about again, free of memories and nightmares, content just with each other.

Torn hadn't spoken for a few minutes. "You okay?" Ashelin asked him.

"Yeah..." he muttered. He was very close to her. "Do you hear something?"

Faintly, yes, she realized. Screams, and gunshots, from very far away, just close enough to be heard. "They're attacking the fortress," she breathed. "Now's our chance to get in there -- we're dressed like Krimzon Guards!"

"Ashelin, don't you think they're there to rescue Natasha?" Torn asked. "What would be the point of us going, when they could just do it for us?"

"Sh!" she hissed.

Silence filled the tunnel, and their minds. Absolute silence for a few moments, and then the rumbling of the warcraft again as the took off and sped away.

Boom

"What the heck?" Ashelin said, once she could hear again and her mind had cleared from the huge, deafening noise. It was the loudest explosion she had ever heard. She crawled out of the tunnel with Torn right behind her, trying to avoid looking at a certain part of Ashelin that was directly in his line of vision.

When they were in the bright, hot sun of the desert again, Ashelin stared toward the fortress. Her eyes were filled with tears from the change of very dim light to some of the brightest sun in the world. But even now, when she could not help having tears, she did not surrender and allow them to fall. She wiped her eyes on her wrist and stared.

The fortress was gone. There was nothing on the horizon, nothing but sand.

That day and night they did not stop flying. They were headed straight toward Haven City, the most direct route, straight over the mountains. Inside her head, Ashelin was screaming with questions. Torn was asleep. How could he possibly sleep at a time like this?

Ashelin didn't know how she could possibly ask her father about what had happened in the desert that day, without incriminating herself. She went to the palace. She went to what had been her mother's apartments. She didn't think they would've been touched even in the ten years since her mother had died -- no one used that part of the Palace.

She was correct. The rooms were dusty, but the same as she remembered them. She curled up on a couch and tried to think rationally. She couldn't. Where was Natasha? Had she died, in the attack?

"No," Ashelin muttered. "Don't think don't think don't think..."

"It's good to think."

Ashelin turned around and nearly choked at the sight of the person standing there. She looked just like Ashelin, only paler and with blue-white hair in dreds...

At his apartment, Torn had collapsed on the couch. He wanted to sleep. He didn't want to think of what the destruction of the Bahzre fortress could mean for their city. He didn't want to think at all. Mostly he didn't want to think of Ashelin.

It was the reunion, the one Ashelin thought would never happen. She and Natasha stayed up all night that night, talking and talking, using up all the words they had been meaning to say to each other in the weeks since they had last been together. Ashelin needed answers, and Natasha was just the person to provide them.

"I don't know why the KG showed up," she said with a shrug. "Some guys just came bursting in and dragged me out. I was pretty weak, and didn't really care. I didn't put up a fight. I figured they were going to kill me or something... then, they put me in this tank, and I heard them blowing up the fortress. They brought me back here, and Praxis... " Ashelin noted that Natasha no longer referred to him as their father -- "told me you were... dead...

"So, I came here, to grieve, or whatever... and here you were." After this narrative, Natasha began to cry anew and couldn't say more. No more was needed. Ashelin hugged her sister and best friend.

Reunion.