A full year had passed since Hazel and Gretchen had first found themselves alone in the world.

Maybe not completely alone, but alone all the same.

After everything that had happened, finding a way to carve a way of life out of close to nothing was hard. They could lean on the nearest village to a certain degree, but Hazel and Gretchen had always wanted to try and do it on their own. Their only family had dried up years before.

All that the two of them had left was ultimately each other, and their father's old cabin.

Despite all of that, the two of them did their best to make their existence, though.

Holding it together for his sister's sake had been the hardest thing that Hazel ever had to do in his entire life, but he managed to find a way. The same way that Gretchen did the same for him.

The ordeal had quickly turned into an impromptu education in survival. It hadn't been long before they'd been out of food, and how Grimm never clawed their ways to their doorstep Hazel wasn't entirely sure of. A part of him knew that any grimm would have been quickly taken care of anyways, but still he feared it.

What he and Gretchen were doing wasn't living though. It was only surviving.

The only thing that made the two of them decide to try and find somewhere else to live was that they were getting older, and living in the woods wasn't something that could last them forever. They both needed to find opportunities outside of forest living. They needed futures, they needed something that wasn't subsiding on foraged foods and whatever Gretchen had managed to hunt down for the two of them.

Hazel folded a shirt and placed it in the bottom of an old crate that he and his sister had managed to find in town, all while Gretchen chattered away.

"You know—" She said, smiling as she folded a blanket into a sloppy shape that only really managed to loosely resemble a square. "I don't think we've ever been to Vale."

"We haven't." Hazel grumbled, more focused on the task at hand than anything else.

Gretchen groaned. "I could have sworn that we went with—"

Hazel looked over at her and she quieted down all at once. The same realization settling over them both.

"You're right." Gretchen relented, almost shrinking in on herself over the realization of what had just happened. "Sorry."

"It's not your fault." Hazel replied, placing another piece of folded clothing down in the crate. It tasted like a bitter lie on his tongue. She approached him with the blanket and set it down on top of what he'd just put in, even though it didn't make all that much sense for their things to be packed in that way.

Gretchen sighed. "I know." She replied, turning back to begin folding again. "I just hate that it has to be like this."

And that Hazel could agree with. They'd lived in the little shack in the woods for their entire lives, always the same shack. It had belonged to their father, and then his father before him, and then back so long that Hazel didn't even know how long it had been in their family.

One day, Hazel knew, it would have been his, and he would have been meant to pass it on to his sons should he ever have any.

But living there wasn't working anymore, so they were going to Vale. Giving up their familial tie to the land itself in search of something else. Some vague future that Hazel had failed to piece together in his head time and time again.

"Me too." He finally said quietly.

He jerked slightly when Gretchen's hands found his shoulders, hugging him close. "But at least we've still got each other." She squeezed him, so tight that Hazel couldn't help the slight smile that spread across his face. "We can survive Vale. And who knows, maybe we'll be coming back here before we know it."

"I'd like that."

Gretchen let him go. "Good!" She exclaimed. "So we're out of here—"

"By morning."

"Right." She began to fold again. "And then we're taking the train to get into the city, right?" Gretchen turned her back away from Hazel, but it did nothing to make her sound any quieter. "Because I don't think we've done the train before."

"We do." Hazel replied, going back to folding. "But we need to be there early if we're going to be able to get on in time."

"And then we've got a place lined up in Vale—"

"We do."

Gretchen paused, quieting down. "And we're paying for it by—"

"We're using what's left of dad's money." Hazel said. "And…." Guilt settled down in the pit of his stomach at the realization of how bad of a mistake he'd made. "And from selling."

Gretchen locked up. "We're selling?"

"We can't afford any of this otherwise."

"But—" She clenched her hands into fists at her sides. "What about coming back?"

Hazel let out a heavy sigh. "It might not be possible. I don't know." He found himself hanging his head, paused over the packing that he was doing. "It depends on how things go for us in Vale."

Gretchen let out an annoyed huff. "You aren't happy about this, right?"

"I'm not."

"Good." She sounded as bitter as he felt.

Hazel did his best to swallow down the lump that had formed in his throat. He felt horrible, and there was no turning around and getting away from it. He should have told Gretchen sooner, but what was there that he could honestly hope to say? It would never go well.

And then she'd leave, and he'd be alone.

He couldn't lose her. Not like their parents.

The two of them went to packing in silence, Hazel left to stew in his own guilt over what was happening to their parent's hut. But he'd been born first, so it was his to handle. Even if he should have talked to Gretchen about it first, something had needed to be done.

Otherwise, they wouldn't have had anything.

Vale was, in a way, their only hope.