There is no comfort in the seraphic forest; in the warmth of a summer with sunlight caressing her cheeks, grasses beneath her feet, in the scent of wind carrying morning dews, and in grassland birds taking flight and finding freedom in a vast sky. No comfort when she has a job to do.

The trees are old, older than the Clan, with their roots all twisted and turned in spirals. They are the perfect place to hide away the supplies she had been stealing little by little so that when the time came for her to run away and never look back she wouldn't have to stop and have the risk of being caught.

Carlene didn't want to be doing this, she didn't want to be taking money and food from the people who have known her all her life and have taken care of her. The freedom her parents granted Carlene allowed her plenty of time to work on the goals she had set for herself. And after the first plan had failed she turned to theft, the Chief's words still stung and she resisted the urge to flinch.

"Carlene, you haven't been yourself as of late… you were just bedridden for a week! For you wouldn't eat or move, now you're raging about people coming-" the Chief said in his gruff voice, and even with the thick facial hair Carlene could tell he was frowning as she cut him off.

"Please, Elder! Just listen to me! There is a dangerous group of people coming! Even if you just sent half the Clan to a different location-!" The Chief slammed his cane to the ground causing the fifteen year old girl to quiet down.

"Carlene, you will listen to me. There is nobody coming, and even if someone was to try they wouldn't be able to find the village. The Lukso Province keeps us safe, nobody but us know how to safely navigate these lands. Rest for a bit longer, I will not bring this up with the other elders for your sake, but we will not be having this discussion again." As he walked away her eyes started to take a scarlet hue, but she blinked and they went back to stormy gray.

She pushed the memory away as she covered her stolen goods back up with some moss, a part of her wished she had more time but she had spent the first week unmoving in a body not hers, that there was no going back to the life she had as the Carlene from before memories slowly joined her own.

Despite how much she wished otherwise, she couldn't find it in herself to keep on denying the truth of what had happened to her. Her mother in the before wouldn't have been pleased to hear that she was allowing herself to waste away.

And she wished there was something she could do because she knew that the moment she left this village there was no going back.

And the feeling of missing her family so damn much that it ached to breathe every time they crossed her mind- because she would never see them again; would never hear their voice, their laughter, feel their embraces on her skin. God how was she supposed to live without her family there to let her know that things would be alright- how was she supposed to keep on going when she had nothing left- had already started to sink into her bones and she can only hope the pain won't suffocate her once they were gone for good.

Carlene only gave herself a week to mourn the people she had left behind without a word of farewell, and within the same week she came to terms with her death and subsequent her new life that was destined to end.

There had been a part of her for those first few days that insisted that all of this was just a bad dream; that she didn't really slip through the cosmic fingers of whatever divine being was in charge of the whole reincarnation thing, and that she didn't take over the body of a girl who was to die with the rest of her people five weeks after the twelve year old Kurapika left to explorer the outside world.

There was a time when she tried to convince herself that she hadn't woken up in a fictional story, that she couldn't really exist in the world of Hunter x Hunter.

She often dreamt of horrible things. Of things she remembered from a lifetime ago.

Of stories full of tragedy that fit with the world she was born into.

Of children fighting monsters that would eat anything in their path.

Of a lone survivor knowing they could not run from their self made duty or they would fill with an unbearable emptiness.

Of assassins and crazy clowns.

Of thieves who carried the thirteen legged spider on their back and the wasteland that they came from.

Of magic used to get stronger and a quest to find out why a father left.

Of massacres and far too many funerals.

Of brothers, betrayal, fractured psyches and death. She never got to know how the story ended before she died.

The community of the Kurta Clan was a tightly knit one; residents lending a helping hand to each other in their times of need and standing united as a race. Children running around in their brightly colored garments, the swirls of their clothes shimmered in the light. The older members did small tasks around the village, some of them called Carlene's name as she passed and she gave them a small smile.

A small part of her screamed inside, questioning how none of them noticed how a dead thing stole the body of one of their own.

The darker part of her head constantly pointed out things that made the tight knit community seem less safe, comparing the Kurta to the last mammoths alive that were stranded in a similarly isolated area like Lukso Province and how the small gene pool caused their extinction. Or how cult-like they can seem sometimes, how the village Elders seed to worship the Scarlet Eyes that so few of them held like deity.

But she ignored that part of her head, she could make theories once she was far away from the forest she called her home, she had only three weeks left to get run away and save herself.

"Carlene!" A male voice called and she stopped in her tracks, she turned and looked at the blond rushing to meet her, green meets gray and she wished to be anywhere but here.

Pierrot came back to the Clan a few days after Kurapika's departure and the day before Carlene's body got taken over, and within that day the original Carlene had become smitten and the moment she took over she felt as if life was messing with her.

Pierrot was all light blond hair and big wide green eyes and equally wide smile. But Carlene couldn't move past the… striking resemblance he had to someone she didn't want here. Someone who just might be the reason why they found the Kurta.

"Pierrot…" the blond's smile grew even more when she responded to him, and she couldn't help but wonder how nobody noticed the lack of warmth behind his eyes despite the mask he wore and chalked it up to them ignoring the things they didn't want to understand.

"How have you been? I haven't seen you since you first got sick- and that was weeks ago! If I didn't know any better I would think you were avoiding me!" Pierrot said with a bright smile.

"Oh, my bad, ever since I got sick I just haven't really seemed to feel myself. I didn't mean to avoid you, I've kind of been avoiding everyone." The best lies are the ones sprinkled with truths.

Because she wasn't the Carlene he meet on that warm evening when he came back to the village after years of exploring the outside world, the Carlene who blushed up to him shyly. And she wasn't lying when she said she was avoiding everyone, trying to put some distance between herself and the others that way when the massacre hits she would have already mourned the loss of her people.

He laughed a little and rubbed the back of his head. "Oh, well, if you feel up to it you should go on a walk with me! It's been such a long time since I last been here, so I'm still having some trouble navigating through the trees"

"Oh course, I'm a bit tired today, but I'll let you know when it's a good time for it." She smiled then and the upward curl of her lips was forced, like it hurt her to do so. Like her smile was made out of shattered glass. Like she didn't notice the way the effort made her bleed. Like she couldn't taste the blood that filled her mouth at the words that escaped her.

'You truly live up to your nen type…'

She felt pity for the original Carlene, wondering if she felt as if she helped kill her people even though she didn't know at the time that the person she blushed so prettily for would willingly soak the land of his birth with blood.

"Okay! I'll keep you to your word!" As soon as he turned away her smile fell. She watched as Pierrot started a conversation with some of the elders, a bitter feeling filled her gut that made her turn away from the sight in front of her.

Pierrot left the village when Carlene was only eight years old, her memory of the day was foggy and filled with the cold winter breeze of that day. He hasn't been back since, most believed he had died, but here he is, alive and well seven years later at the age of nineteen and the face of death. For Carlene knows him by a different name and she knows of his fate.