The sun has set completely, leaving darkness to swallow the beach he and Lenny stand on. The sky is starless; the moon is cloaked by dark clouds. Murky waves slip onto shore and quickly retreat, leaving tangles of slimy seaweed behind. Off the ocean, a strong, bitter gale rushes and lowers the temperature enough to make Mott shiver. He can't imagine how cold Lenny must be. At least Mott is somewhat built for this kind of cold. Part of him worries Lenny might blow away. That part of him is small and silent compared to his worry over Lenny's wounds, though.

They really shouldn't have come to the beach, his injuries could get irritated or infected by the sand—but this was Lenny's choice. Not the inn, where they usually would be, but the beach. Mott tries not to think about why that might be. He suspects it's insurance for Lenny, so that if this discussion goes south, he won't have to drive Mott out of the inn.

The thought of an impending discussion makes Mott's hair stand on end in nervous anticipation. He hasn't the slightest clue what direction the conversation will be headed, but he can infer that it won't be a fun one. Why would it be? After everything that happened between them—after everything Mott ruined—why would this talk be anything but unpleasant? As his thoughts run circles around his head, the only thing he can focus on is the last thing Lenny said to him:

We need to talk.

That phrase is never followed by anything good. Ever. It usually comes right before a crippling split in a relationship, forever burning a bridge. Could Lenny be aiming to break ties with him? Mott tries to recall Lenny's tone when he said it, to parse out any hidden intentions it might reveal, but all he can conjure up is Lenny's blank face as he said it.

Lenny's body language doesn't give him many clues, either. He hugs himself, but Mott can't tell why. To close himself off? To comfort himself? Or is he just cold? His back is straight and his shoulders are poised. His feet are planted close together, not moving an inch. There's no nervous fidget or anxious tick that Mott can see. Maybe Mott's the only one nervous, here.

Nervous does no justice to describe what he's feeling. He trembles so excitedly that it feels like his bones are rattling inside him. His breath comes in short, thin gasps and his throat is always dry. He's nearly shuffled a hole in the sand beneath his feet, he's so high-strung. His heart beats so fast he almost feels hysterical.

He tries to catch a glimpse of Lenny's face to brace himself for whatever might be coming, but Lenny's head is turned away from him, watching the waves roll in farther down the beach. With a chill, he remembers Lenny's uncharacteristically blank expression. He doesn't know why it unsettles him so much. He'd almost rather see Lenny furious with him than see him so devoid of emotion.

The only sound is the rhythmic crash of the ocean. It's not soothing. It's tumultuous.

Then, there's a powerful gust of wind, and Mott instinctively moves forward to catch Lenny—but Lenny doesn't fall. He stumbles back and runs into Mott's chest, looking over his shoulder when they collide. His eyes are wide and surprised from his near fall. With ridiculous relief, Mott is grateful that Lenny isn't fixing him with that empty stare. It almost makes things feel a little more normal.

When the wind dies down, though, Mott is suddenly aware of their contact. It feels wrong, like he's pushing a boundary. He hastily backs up.

"Thanks," Lenny says, for the catch or for backing away, Mott's not sure. But that one word is enough to make his heart weep.

He missed Lenny. The days he spent divided from him were bleak, like he'd lost a part of himself. Even if he's known for a while how much Lenny means to him, he never realized the extent it had grown to. To him, Lenny has become irreplaceable. Too bad he realized it too late.

"I wasn't expecting to find you in the middle of town with a wagon full of money," Lenny remarks, carefully neutral. Mott holds his breath and clings to every word. "But I'm glad I did. I'm glad you changed your mind and started helping folks out, again."

He doesn't know what to say, so he only manages to croak, "I'm glad, too."

Silence.

Between the two of them, silence has never been common. Lenny's chatterbox nature ensured that conversation would always be flowing, and Mott has grown to enjoy quipping back or adding to Lenny's ramblings. In the rare instances that they were quiet, the silence was comfortable and natural.

This silence is not that. This silence has Mott shifting and scrambling for something to say. It's uncomfortable almost to the point of pain. Mott's incredibly thankful when Lenny speaks up again, only for the discomfort to return full force when Lenny asks a simple yet probing question.

"Why did you?"

Why did he do what? There's so many turns he's taken in one day that he can hardly keep track of them.

Lenny looks him in the eye, elaborating, "Help them folks, I mean."

"Oh," he says, intelligently. He clears his throat. "Because I… screwed up. Bad. It was eating at me and I just knew I had to fix it."

Lenny nods, and that damned silence returns. Mott wishes he had more to say. Lenny deserves a better explanation than that, but that's all Mott has. His head is still spinning from the whirlwind of all of these events that he hasn't had much time for introspection.

"And why did you start working with your uncle?"

Lenny's voice is cold. It makes Mott's hair stand on end.

"That's," he starts, halting as he thinks the question over, "a good question."

He tries to transport himself back in time. Back to when he made that stupid, fateful decision. He can see himself approaching the grandeur of his uncle's estate with the sincerest intentions. He'd really meant to help the people, didn't he? He'd been so convinced that he would. But then he was surrounded by the luxury of his old life and he sunk back into it as naturally as anything. The suffering of all those people went to the back of his mind, just as it has so many times before.

"It's because I'm selfish," he answers, sitting exhausted on the sand. "I tried to tell you before, in Moressley Town, with the mercenaries and my bandana." He tugs the bandana off his arm, holding it in his hands with somber remorse. Turning it over, he studies it for a moment before setting it in the sand. Looking at Lenny with weary eyes, he says, "I'm selfish. I've only ever done things for myself. So when my uncle gave me the opportunity to come back into the family, I took it."

Lenny examines him like he's a complex equation. "I don't think that's true. That's not something you would do."

"Well I did, didn't I?" He snaps, bitter. Immediate guilt gnaws at him for getting short with Lenny. Turning his head to the dark ocean, he says, "You won't believe I'm selfish because you don't want to believe it, but I am. I am. I've always made the wrong choices; I've always disappointed everyone in my life. It was only a matter of time before I disappointed you too."

Another moment of dreadful silence falls over them, and Lenny taps his hands together. It's the first anxious tick Mott has seen from him all night.

After some time, Lenny settles down in the sand beside him. They both gaze out at the ocean.

"There's a difference between making a selfish choice and being a selfish person," Lenny states, absentmindedly drawing swirls in the sand. "You made a selfish choice. I won't argue against that or try to excuse it. What you did was selfish—but that doesn't make you selfish."

Mott closes his eyes. "That's easy for you to say. You've never been selfish a day in your life."

When he opens his eyes, he sees Lenny giving him a bewildered if not unimpressed look. "I left my impoverished family behind to travel."

"That's different—"

"I'm not some saint. Everyone makes selfish choices, Mott. That don't make everyone inherently selfish."

Mott keeps his mouth shut and returns his attention to the ocean. The wind has picked up, and the waves crash with mighty vigor. There could be a storm looming on the horizon.

"Besides," Lenny adds, crossing his legs, "I don't think you did what you did simply for self-gain."

Mott scoffs. "Then what did I do it for, if you've got me so figured out?"

Lenny throws him an annoyed look. Then, inexplicably, it softens. "I think you were scared."

"Scared?" Mott nearly blurts. A laugh is startled out of him. "Scared of what?"

"You've changed a lot since we started our journey. Your temperament, your actions, your goals—they're all different, now. You're turning into a new person, and that can be scary. I think you went to your uncle because he made you feel like your old self again. He made you feel less afraid."

He mulls it over. Lenny's not entirely wrong. For some time, now, Mott has had no motivation. He doesn't know why he does what he does anymore, and it's unnerving. Could he have returned to his uncle to try and compensate for it?

"Maybe," he allows, drawing circles in the sand. "Maybe."

Lenny watches him for a while, long enough that Mott has collected a small army of sand circles. Then, he says, "Y'know you could've just talked to me, right? You could've told me you were scared. I would've listened."

Mott's finger pauses in the sand, his circle half complete. Drawing his hand away from it, he says nothing. How could he have told Lenny? Then he'd know how weak and inadequate he really is. Mott wouldn't be able to live with the shame of that. Would Lenny even want to stick around him if he knew how pathetic he was?

That's assuming Lenny doesn't already have an idea. If Mott's constant failures haven't clued him in, his latest failure to clean up his own mess probably has. It's not like it's exactly a secret. His inadequacy is what got him kicked out of his family in the first place. His failures were the catalyst for this doomed quest.

"Why didn't you just talk to me?" Lenny asks, his voice broken and small. "I share my feelings with you all the time. Why don't you share with me?"

Mott swallows. He looks down at the sand, tapping his fingers against his incomplete circle.

He knows Lenny is waiting for an answer, but he doesn't have one to give. Lenny stares at him, waiting, his expression slowly shifting from hurt to that unbearable blankness. The seconds drag on in painful increments, like needles burying themselves down to his bone. With every moment that passes, he becomes more and more aware of the hole he's digging himself into by not answering. Yet, he can't bring himself to do it.

"Have I been overstating our importance to each other? Is that it?" Lenny wonders, his voice weary. He pokes a hand in the sand near Mott's, but doesn't move. "Did I confuse us for something we're not?"

When Mott looks up to Lenny's face, he sees his eyes are just as tired as his tone. The sight makes his heart lurch.

"What are you talking about?" Mott says, feeling a faint sense of panic rise up in him.

"I'm not dumb. I know you didn't want me tagging along at first," he responds, absentmindedly drawing a swirl in the sand. "But as time went on, it felt like maybe you'd gotten over it, and I thought we were friends. Family, even." Lenny looks up at him, his eyes void of emotion. "But that's not how it is, is it?"

The simmering panic in him begins to boil over, bubbling and pouring over with frantic urgency.

"It feels like you don't care about me half as much as I care about you. I share everything with you but you share nothing; I try to give you the space to open up on your own time but you never do." Lenny looks away, blinking a few times. Trembling moonlight reflects from the tears pooling in his eyes. "I could never understand it, but now I think I do. You never wanted me around, did you?"

The panic bursts like dam, and Mott has to physically restrain himself from jumping up and shouting denials. His head is so cluttered and frazzled that he'd look like a raving lunatic if he tried to articulate everything—but there's so much he wants to say. His impulse is to deny all of it, to explain that he's never wanted to be so close to another person, but what good would that do? It's not like he has much evidence to back it up. All he'd be able to do is promise and swear and vow that he means it, but after the events with his uncle, he knows his promises mean shit.

But he means it. He means it more than he's meant anything in all his life. These few months with Lenny have been some of the best, some of the worst, and some of the most enlightening months of his life. They've been thrilling and terrifying, delightful and miserable, victorious and devastating. Never before has his life been so rich with possibility, so fraught with tension. Living in an ivory tower all his life dulled his perspective and understanding of his surroundings. It closed the universe down to a bubble that existed solely for him. It killed the nuance of the world. It's because of this journey—because of Lenny—that he's been able to truly open his eyes for the first time.

He wishes he had the words to convey it all. What he'd give for a moment, for the ability to stop time, just so he could write down everything he's feeling. He'd wrangle in his delirious, rambling thoughts and iron them out into something genuine, something contrite, and present them to Lenny only when they're perfect. Because Lenny deserves perfect, and he's far from it.

"That's not true," Mott pathetically blurts, instead. He winces at how weak his own denial sounds.

Clearly, it's not enough to convince Lenny. "Do you even care about me?"

Mott's eyes flick down to Lenny's bandages instinctively. They're so close to the sand, they shouldn't be that close, what if they get infected?

He swallows anxiously. "Yes."

"Then why don't you talk to me?" Lenny demands, irritated. "Even now, you're holding back on me!"

Mott doesn't know what to say.

"Are you ashamed of me?"

"No."

"Are you upset that you don't have your fancy rich friends anymore; are you upset that you're stuck with me?"

"No."

"Are you embarrassed that you have to mingle with some dumb country bumpkin?"

"No!" Mott shouts, jumping to his feet in a blind fit of rage. "I'm embarrassed by myself!"

Pure, unfiltered anger channels into his water abilities, rushing out from him and causing a spray to shoot out from the ocean. Culminating into a large wave, it nearly threatens to crash down on them—but he unsheathes his scallop shell and slashes through it. With the flow of the wave disrupted, the water sprinkles harmlessly around them. Mott hangs his head, feeling the water rain down on him as it spatters into the sand.

When he faces Lenny, he's met with wide eyes and a look of surprise. He's still sitting in the sand, his limbs splayed out as droplets trickle down his face.

"I'm ashamed of myself," Mott says, his voice a broken whisper. "I fail at everything I do; I can't even fix my own mistakes." A bitter laugh escapes him. "Hell, I don't even know what I want to do with my life or who I am anymore. I have no direction. I'm just a—worthless, useless, no-good waste of time."

Silence.

Too late, it occurs to Mott that he just brought about the very thing he'd been trying to avoid—revealing just how weak he truly is. He wishes that he could take every word back and shove it down, keep it hidden. The pain of being seen, truly seen, is too much to bear. He looks away from Lenny, unable to stand against the scrutiny of his gaze.

"You ain't useless," Lenny says, softly. "How can you think you're useless when you and I just helped all those townsfolk?"

Lenny looks out at the ocean before returning his eyes to Mott, dusting the sand off himself.

"How can you be useless," he continues, "when you help people everywhere you go?"

"It's not enough," Mott argues, glaring down at the sand. The incomplete circle he'd drawn stares back at him. "I have no motivation."

"That's okay," Lenny assures, his voice soft. Reaching a hand out, he draws a swirl next to Mott's half-circle. "You don't have to know what your motives are, right now. It's okay to just exist and do your best."

"But doesn't that make me directionless?" He asks, almost pleading. "Are you really willing to stick around someone who's going on a suicide mission for no reason?"

"Sure," Lenny says with a shrug. "Even if you don't got a reason for it, I got reasons of my own for sticking around."

Mott recalls what Lenny told him, back in Moressley Town: he wanted to travel and see the world. "You can find someone else to travel with, you know. There's a million people you could see the world with."

"Who said that's my reason for sticking around?"

For a moment, Mott is thrown off guard. "...You did."

"It was my reason, at first. But motives change," he points out, still drawing in the sand. "I kinda think you're going through a change in motivations, too, and you don't know what to do with it. That's okay. I was pretty confused when my goals changed, too."

But… if seeing the world isn't his goal anymore…

"Then why are you doing this?" Mott asks, lost. "Why stick around?"

Lenny etches a curve in the sand, connecting his swirl to Mott's incomplete circle.

"Because," he responds, "I wanna be with you."

Something inside of Mott breaks. It splinters and shatters in a billion pieces, smashing apart. It hurts like hell, but it's a good break, he thinks. It hurts like hell and it stings in his eyes, and before he knows it, tears are rolling down his face.

"Can you forgive me?" He sobs, his throat sore and his lungs tight. "Can you forgive me for screwing all of this up so bad?"

Lenny stands, picking up Mott's discarded bandana and walking over to him. Mott watches with bated breath as Lenny ties the bandana back onto his arm, patting it when he's satisfied. Then, he wraps his arms around Mott's neck.

"I already have, silly," Lenny whispers, gently.

Mott hangs his head and returns the embrace, gripping him like a lifeline.

"Let's be a team again."

Mott weeps.


Even if Mott feels like floating on air after their reunion, he's grounded enough to know their work here in New Crestmount City isn't finished. That's why they've arrived on the doorstep of Uncle Theobald's estate in the dead of night, rapping impatiently at the door. His uncle answers the door, disgruntled and irate.

"Do you know what time it is?" His uncle demands, ill-tempered. "And where is my money, Montgomery? I know you took it!"

"Yeah, I did," Mott answers with a casual shrug. "But it wasn't really yours in the first place."

"I beg your pardon? I made that money through honest, hard work—"

"No, you didn't, but that's a different conversation," Mott interrupts.

"We're here to ask you to lower your taxes," Lenny finishes, folding his arms.

Uncle Theobald scoffs. "And why would I do something like that?"

"Because," Mott says, "you probably don't want my father finding out you stole New Crestmount City from him."

His uncle's face falls, and his eyes dart frantically between them. "I haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about."

"All existing properties and other such real estate shall henceforth belong to Lennox Alcott," Mott recites, recalling the words from his grandfather's will. His uncle's eyes widen comically large. "Last time I checked, New Crestmount was classified under properties and other such real estate. And last time I checked, your name wasn't Lennox."

"There was a codicil," Uncle Theobald blurts, pathetically.

"We both know my grandfather's handwriting didn't look like the shit on that codicil."

Uncle Theobald grits his teeth. Mott and Lenny exchange a glance, and Lenny smirks. Mott can't help but do the same.

"Name your rate," his uncle seethes.