When Miguel woke up that morning, he remained lying in bed for a long time, alone with his thoughts, waiting to see if Hawk would stir awake soon, too. They set their own schedules now, after all. No alarms. And with only the sound of the ceiling fan whirling above them, Miguel checked his phone while he waited. No messages or calls, of course. He still had everyone blocked.

He pulled up Instagram, ignoring his DMs like had become his habit, and hesitated for a few seconds before selecting the option to make a new post. It was hard to choose from all the pictures he'd taken of the ocean yesterday, but he managed to pick one and added a comment:

"I've been feeling as turbulent as a hurricane for such a long time now. I don't know if this approaching calm is the end or the eye of the storm."

Miguel's thumb hovered over the post-button. If he sent it, his family and friends would be alerted that he wasn't in Mexico City anymore. And he'd wanted to get off the grid, to throw everyone off his and Hawk's trail. Well, they didn't need to know what beach this was. And something inside him ached to let his mother know he was doing better.

So he made the post and exited out of the app.

Half an hour later, Hawk still hadn't woken up. Miguel's stomach started to growl. Figuring he might as well grab them some lunch, he left Hawk a text telling him what he was doing and that he'd return soon. Slipping on his shoes, he left the hostel and stepped outside in the bright sunlight. And for a long minute, he stood there, eyes closed, letting the sun warm his skin before the rumbling in his stomach enticed him to keep moving.

After the emotionally rough few days he'd had, Miguel was yearning for some comfort food from back home. And since there was nowhere to get his Yaya's cooking in Veracruz, he checked his cell and located the nearest McDonald's. It was pretty far. He'd have to take a local bus to get there.

Miguel knew it was silly to spend that much time just to grab some American fast food, but he did it anyway. He got two orders of nuggets and fries, along with some sweet bread, and then hopped on the bus back from whence he'd come. He didn't even know what was motivating him at this point beyond a reach for the familiar.

The whole trip took him way too long, and it was well past noon when he reached the hostel. An odor made him pause at the door, but only for a couple of seconds. And when Miguel stepped inside, he spotted the source in the small green pile on the nightstand that Hawk was carefully packing in a rolling paper.

"Hey, man," greeted Hawk, jutting his chin out. Eyeing the McDonald's bag, he added, "Oh, good call. Gonna probably be in the mood for some fries here soon."

"Where'd you get that?" asked Miguel, pointing to the marijuana with his free hand while setting the lunch down on his bed.

After taking a moment to lick the blunt together, Hawk explained, "I smelled that someone had lit up again, so I went to go check it out. Turns out it's our neighbors. These three dudes, Jorge, Rafael, and Eduardo, they're on vacation from Guanajuato. I asked them if I could buy some of their weed. Heh, I remembered the word you taught me. I mean, they joked about how stilted my Spanish is, but this one guy, Jorge, had this fucking badass tattoo of Santa Muerte on his arm. So I showed off my Grim Reaper to them. Rafael even complimented my hawk tattoo. And then they sold me a dime. They're nice, you should go say hi to them sometime."

"Sounds like you made some friends," Miguel chuckled, handing Eli his nuggets and fries.

Setting the food down on the nightstand, Hawk stretched out on his bed and pulled out a lighter. "You cool if I light up in here?"

Miguel shrugged, stuffing some fries in his mouth; they'd gone cold from the ride to the hostel. "Go for it." It wasn't like the people in charge of the hostel had done anything about their neighbors smoking. Everyone seemed to mind their business around the place.

Chewing on some nuggets, Miguel watched Hawk take some long hits off his blunt. He assumed Eli must've learned how to roll and smoke from Moon. "So, how are you feeling?" he asked.

Hawk inhaled deeply then let out a breath of smoke towards the ceiling, where the fan blew it around the room. "Should be pretty relaxed here in about five minutes."

"No, I mean about yesterday," clarified Miguel, popping another nugget in his mouth.

Hawk puffed smoke in the air again. "Better."

Given that he was currently smoking weed, Miguel questioned the truth of that, but he decided not to push it. At least Hawk didn't sound embarrassed, and he was glad for it. And he figured weed was better than alcohol for numbing someone to their troubles.

And, well, he had his own troubles, too.

Miguel shrugged and asked, "Can I have a hit?"

"Sure." Stretching his arm out between the twin beds, Hawk passed it to him.

"Thanks," Miguel said, accepting the blunt between his fingers. Cracking a grin, he added, "Don't take a picture of this."

Eli just chuckled while Miguel took a few hits off the blunt, coughing on the first hit when he breathed in too deep. Yeah, he definitely didn't need documented evidence of this on either of their phones. His mother wouldn't be happy if she found out he was smoking weed. His Yaya would probably have found it funny, though. Sensei Lawrence, too.

Between the hits he took, and the second-hand smoke that was hovering over their heads, Miguel was already starting to unwind when he passed Hawk the blunt back. And after a few minutes of eating more of his lunch, it unwound his tongue.

"Hey, I'm sorry I wasn't around much after what happened between you and Cobra Kai," said Miguel, frowning as he stared down at the box of nuggets in his hands. His gut clenched, and he couldn't be sure if it was from the food, the weed, or the guilt. Perhaps from all three mixing together. "It's just, when you didn't respond to my texts, and then when you didn't show up to school, I thought you wanted to be left alone for a while. That's how I felt after I got out of the hospital."

"You don't have to apologize for anything, dude," said Hawk, sounding like the high was hitting him when he passed the blunt back to Miguel. But even as relaxed as he was, Eli still had an adamant look in his eyes, like he wanted Miguel to know he was being serious, even if the weed was slowing his speech down. "I didn't want to face any of you guys. It was embarrassing. I just wanted to quit the world and get away from everything. And I definitely wanted to quit karate."

Miguel almost choked on his next inhale. "Quit karate?" He hadn't known about that. "Wait, what convinced you to go to Miyagi-Do then?"

"I told you, that was just a favor for Demetri," Hawk reminded him, picking a fry out of its carton. "He came to my place and told me he didn't think he or the other guys in the dojo could stand a chance against Robby. He said Miyagi-Do needed me."

"Because Mr. LaRusso needed a male champion," said Miguel, remembering again what Hawk had told him. He took another slow puff from the blunt, which was dwindling down to the size of a roach now.

Hawk stared up at the ceiling. "Yeah. And, well, after everything I did to everyone in that dojo, I figured it was the least I could do to help. I just wish it didn't mean bailing on Eagle Fang, though. I mean, after you pulled the muscle in your back…."

Miguel shook his head. "Miyagi-Do was already way ahead in points from the skills category by the time of our match," he pointed out. "It was actually good you helped them out because they had the better shot at winning the Grand Championship compared to Eagle Fang. I only hope the guys understand why I had to bail out."

It wasn't so much the guilt of letting Sensei Lawrence down that bothered him. Because, well, Sensei had let him down when he pressured him to keep fighting; not just to beat Cobra Kai, but so they could also own Mr. LaRusso. But Mitch, Bert, Devon, and the others all paid the price for him choosing to put his own wellbeing ahead of the dojo's survival.

"They didn't seem angry when I talked to them," Hawk assured him. "They were pretty bummed that the dojo's gotta shut down, but they were mostly just worried about you."

Miguel finished off the blunt with two more hits, lying back against the headboard of the bed. Perhaps it was from the fog starting to relax his senses, but he was hit with the sudden urge to turn on his phone and finally read the comments everyone had been sending him. Not only from the Eagle Fangs but the Miyagi-Dos as well. Because he knew Hawk was right. Of course all his friends were worried about him. Just like he was worried about them.

But before he could pull his cell out of his pocket, Hawk spoke up again.

"Y'know, if Eagle Fang and Miyagi-Do fought together as one dojo, we would've beaten Cobra Kai." Hawk's brows knitted together, driving a deep, troubled crease between them. "At first, I blamed myself for not hitting that board in the skills competition. And Sam was really hard on herself for losing to Tory. But I did the math. Even if Eagle Fang was in sixth place going into the boys' and girls' championships, if we'd combined the points, it wouldn't have mattered if Cobra Kai won the girls' division…."

"…Because Miyagi-Fang would've won the Grand Championship," Miguel concluded for him, letting the harsh reality of that fact sink in.

From his bed, Hawk stared across at him, a sudden profound sadness in his eyes. Where before he'd been flippant about the dojos being forced to close when he'd first tracked Miguel down, Hawk now confessed, "I wish the dojos hadn't been split up."

Miguel sighed, his shoulders sagging. "Me, too."