Velvet and Hansel soared through the air, away from the burning wreckage of the Atlesian transport that they had just rammed into the trees. She couldn't help but wonder why she felt a pang of guilt within her. It wouldn't go away, no matter what she attempted to fill her mind with. After several more seconds such as this, it hit her.

"Hansel! We have to go back! We can't let the fire spread!" Velvet shouted at Hansel.

Hansel sighed loudly, to Velvet's dismay. She scowled at him for this and continued this until Hansel looked at her, and caught the full brunt of her gaze.

"Fine, Fine, Fine. I can go back and put it all out. It's more risky and it'll use a crapton of Dust, but we can."

"We can't risk the fire spreading and hurting innocents. We don't need their blood on our hands."

"We attacked Atlesians, stole their ship, and you crippled a member of Mistral royalty. How could you possibly worry about a bit of collateral damage right now?"

"Because they don't deserve to die because of us. My leg and our escape can wait. The lives of the people we may have put in danger are more important at the moment. If you won't go back, I will."

"Ok. Let's go back and handle it quickly. I don't wanna hang around any more than we have to."

Velvet was slightly put off by Hansel's apathy towards any people who they may have put in danger.

You can't blame him, Velvet. He's in as much danger as you. He's just looking out for the both of you.

With this, any apprehension felt towards Hansel disappeared. The two had already turned and begun to fly in the direction that they had just came. The stress of the new objective on Hansel was evidenced by the furrowing of his brow. He had ceased to perform any stylistic, visually spectacular maneuvers to propel himself from tree to tree. He simply clawed into the trunks and pushed forward, with the occasional somersault and strafe for stability and to adjust his trajectory.

Velvet looked down at him occasionally as he kept his eyes straight forward. It appeared to her that he was focused only on getting to their destinations safely. Velvet kept herself vigilant to ensure that they would not be ambushed by any Atlas soldiers anticipating their return. If there was anything worse than capture, it was her being the cause of said capture.

The sky had begun to take on its familiar purple hue. A small mass of rain clouds had begun their advance upon the land in a subtle manner, nearly unnoticeable to the naked eye, miles away. Directly over Velvet was several other, whiter puffs that had merged themselves with the backdrop of the evening sky. Remnant's shattered moon occupied a large portion of the sky, it's discrete chunks in their normal positioning, slowly trailing away from it's host into either oblivion or Remnant's atmosphere. No matter how many nights she had spent looking up at it, Remnant's moon had never failed to fascinate (and, in times of existential crisis, frighten) Velvet and fuel her imagination.

It often pained her to think of how no one had yet managed to enter the area outside of Remnant's atmosphere to study it further. She often would imagine all of the potential alien races and new forms of Dust present on the moon's surface to pass the time.

Velvet liked to imagine whimsical things such as this to take her mind off of stressful situations. It gave her a means of escape, a reason to leave reality for a spell. For a small moment, in fact, Velvet had forgotten why she was flying in the first place.

"Velvet. Remnant to Velvet!" Hansel shouted, effectively snapping her out of her trance.

"What is it?" Velvet replied, with more of a exasperated tone than she had intended to employ.

"Ok, calm down for a second. I just wanted to say we're almost to the crash site."

"Of course. I'm sorry. I was just imagining things." She said with an air of remorse.

"Things like what?"

All Velvet could manage was a look back up at the moon and utter a three-word phrase that she used to remember her parents saying when they would reminisce about their days at Beacon.

"Days gone by."

Velvet did not bother to look over at Hansel. The phrase began to cause her to bring additional memories into the light of her mind. Said memories were mostly comprised of experiences that her father and herself had experienced together. She felt her eyes beginning to well, paired with the imminent tears welling her vision. Velvet wiped her eyes with the side of her hands closed into fists. Despite her attempt to do this in a subtle manner that did not attract attention, Hansel calling her name was the first indicator that her attempt had failed.

"I'm fine." She called out.

"The tears in your eyes telling a different story. Do you wish to talk about it?" Hansel asked, apparently forgetting the need to remain vigilant.

"No. We can't afford any distractions like that. We have to focus on reaching that fire and putting it out, by any means necessary." Velvet said in a quickened voice, similar to one of a child who had fallen off of his/her bike and was doing their damnedest to not cry in front of their friends.

Velvet was silently ashamed of this childish behavior, but made it impossible to tell from the perspective of an outside observer. She wiped her eyes once more, in a calmer, more open manner than before. When her eyes cleared, along with her emotions, Velvet caught sight of the large billowing trail of smoke that was previously invisible to her.

"Hansel."

"I see it. I've seen it for a while now. I was trying to call you about a little while ago when you snapped at me."

"Right. Sorry about that, again."

"It's fine. We'll talk about all of that later on. For now, let's put out this fire."

As Velvet had feared previously, the fire had begun to spread, using the trees in the immediate vicinity as fuel to quench it's insatiable hunger. The pair continued flying until they were directly above the raging flames. Hansel, once again, equipped his Wind Wheel and flung a Dust-powered gust at their new, elemental opponent.

This only served to spread the wall of flames further outward. This, in turn, made Hansel cry out a string of swears. In a panic, he attempted to throw several more wind gusts as it. This worsened the situation tenfold, causing Velvet to become silently annoyed at Hansel.

"Stop it. You're only making the situation worse. Hold on. Let me try something." Velvet said as the two landed in the area between the trees below.

She let her wings disappear and summoned Tierra's earth-controlling gloves once more. Velvet lifted a titanic mound of dirt from directly ahead of her, uprooting several trees in the process. She strained to lift the mound that left a large crater in front of her, a mere sibling to the ones that the wreckage of the Atlesian troop transport had created already.

Curling her hands, placing one above the other, Velvet realized that she could rotate the mound at will, just by spinning her hands around each other. She did this several times in succession, creating the momentum necessary to set her plan into motion. When she felt that the time was right, Velvet hurled the mound at the flames.

Initially skeptical as to whether or not the mound would survive the impact of slamming into the trees between it and it's destination, Velvet was delighted to watch as it swallowed the vegetation with ease. It didn't appear to be slowed down in the slightest. Instead, it had the desired effect of reaching the targeted flames. Velvet felt a smile cross her lips as she watched most of the flames suffocate under the large, brown mass of terra firma mixed with large spikes of foliage.

"Its working." Velvet said, knowingly stating the obvious.

"Not entirely. The large flames are gone, but there're still a few stragglers that don't look promising." Hansel observed.

Velvet was about to reply when she was cut off by the all-too familiar drone of incoming Atlas ships. She listened intently to determine the number of ships, the location of them, and their distance from Hansel and herself. After a few moments of intent listening, and ignoring questions from Hansel as to why her ears were flicking, Velvet found the answers to suffice her inquiries.

There were approximately 3 Atlas gunships inbound, about 4 miles away. Unless her ears had forsaken her, the ships were approaching from the north of their position.

Velvet turned to Hansel, and informed him of what she had learned. Without a word of reply, he turned in the opposite direction of the direction of the incoming ships and began to run. Hansel pulled his arm back and sent it forward, signaling to Velvet that he wished for her to run. Velvet had already begun to perform such action.

The two began to sprint. Velvet's extended use of her Semblance had exhausted her, and she was unable(and unwilling) to employ it once again.

"Why aren't you clawing into the trees?" Velvet asked.

"That would require me to sail in the air. It would make me an easy target to any ships. I'd get shot out of the sky. Plus we need to stay under the trees to maintain low visibility. The only way that we can be seen from here is ground-level troops and heat-detecting cameras. We should be fine if keep here." Hansel shakily explained.

"You know, it just occured to me. Why is the military chasing us, and not, I don't know, the actual Vale Police Force?" Velvet had found it easier than Hansel to simultaneously speak and sprint.

"This is an international incident, Velvet. They likely are keeping the Vale Police within the cities, should we be stupid or desperate enough to go there."

"Fair point. But you'd think they'd at least have them out here with hounds or something."

"No need. Atlas has Hi-tech crap. More efficient than dogs." He gasped.

"Maybe you shouldn't talk," Velvet suggested. "You sound like you're about to keel over with every sentence you speak."

Hansel agreed and kept his mouth shut while they continued running in silence. Velvet was slightly disappointed with herself in not previously finding out just where Hansel intended to lead the two of them. She felt uneasy with simply having to stay silent and trust what she knew may simply have been his attempt to wing it. That probability was one Velvet could not afford to risk.

"Hansel: one last thing. Where are you leading us?"

"There's a place near here that has a barn. If we're lucky, it'll be free of animals and the house will be vacant. We can hide out there, and I can get that Dust bullet out of your leg."

"And if there are people?"

"We improvise." Hansel said with a smirk.

Velvet felt momentarily uneasy by the manner in which Hansel said "improvise", but it passed, and she focused on running once more.

Their arrival to the farmhouse came sooner than Velvet had anticipated. She could not see it through the dense trees, and it came out of what seemed to be nowhere. Her eyes struggled for a small period to fully take in the massive property. It was one of the largest houses of its kind that Velvet had ever seen up to that point.

The house was a large, gray cobblestone structure that possessed two floors stacked on top of each other, with a circular shutter above the two that indicated to Velvet that the house possessed a cellar. Each of the stories had, from what Velvet could tell, had four windows at the rear of the house. All of the visible windows were fitted with maroon silk sheets that were fringed with frills of the same color. Velvet took the time to ensure that there was no one near the windows looking out before Hansel and herself stepped out of the trees. Satisfied that no one was present, Hansel and Velvet stepped out of the treeline and rushed over into the barn.

The barn was, like the house that accompanied it, two stories tall. The exterior was adorned with a deep red color, it's weathered paint beginning to succumb to the elements. Velvet ran her hand along the barn as they ran by, unintentionally peeling off chips of paint that stuck to her hand. She shook her hand furiously as they entered the barn and latched the large door shut from the inside.

Velvet turned to fully take in the large, spacious interior of the structure they had locked themselves in. In the far corner of the wall rested a ladder that led up to the second level of the barn, which appeared to be home to large bags of animal feed and small, rusty pieces of farming equipment. On the lower floor, along with Velvet and Hansel, were empty stables with names engraved in wood resting on chains above each stable. There were four stables on each side of the barn, with the exception of a large empty space reserved for the area around the ladder, where a small array of more modern tools and farming equipment rested, paired with a wide wooden workbench that had found a place behind the base of the ladder. All of the stables were empty, yet there was brown wood-chips strewn all over the floor of both the stables and the wide area in the center of the barn between the two rows of stables as bedding.

"We can use that stable in the corner." Hansel thought aloud.

Velvet was about to ask what for, but she was reminded by the painful sensation of the bullet in her leg.

"Right. I suppose we should do that right away." She suggested.

Hansel nodded, and the two proceeded to advance across the barn to the location of the bench. Positioning themselves on either side of the supported piece of wood, Velvet and Hansel lifted the workbench at the same time and began the relatively short journey into the stable that was adjacent to the space that the bench originally of them tightly gripped the thin plywood, suspicious of the possibility that the bench wasn't too old to fall apart the moment it had taken the slightest pressure. The bench was a long piece of plywood that was nailed into two wooden legs that appeared as inverted capital 'A's. It looked as if it had not been used in ages, slowly becoming overcome with a layer of dust as a result of it's apparent neglect.

There were small nicks in the plywood, evidence of moments in which one had cut too far into a project of theirs and accidentally began to cut into their platform. Velvet felt a small period of kinship with herself and the condition of the wood. Both of them had been pushed too far in the past by others and had scars that seemed only to exist to remind them of the pain that the Gods of Creation and Destruction had allowed them to endure. She pushed these thoughts out of her mind, however, suddenly aware of how silly and depressing it was to compare herself to an inanimate workbench.

Hansel and Velvet softly placed the bench down onto the bedding. Hansel squatted down onto the level of the bench's legs to make sure that it was level, moving away clumps of wood chips to achieve such equilibrium. When Hansel was satisfied, he stood back up and faced Velvet, who had been watching him during this process.

"Are you ready for this?" He asked.

"Doesn't matter. If we wait any longer, I could die. You have to do this now. Is there any anesthesia in that kit?" Velvet, despite leaving herself vulnerable by being put under, would rather put herself at that risk rather than stay awake thorough the entire operation and risk going into shock. She saw the former as the lesser of two evils. She saw no safer alternative than putting her life into the hands of Hansel. "Do you know how to perform this type of operation? Or any form of operation?"

"Of course I do. And yeah there is. It was the first thing I looked for." Hansel began, with the slightest hint of offense, as if he interpreted Velvet's question to be one of a condescending nature towards his abilities as a surgeon. "My father taught me how to extract a Dust bullet from someone in the wild, under worse conditions than the ones we have right now. He also taught me other procedures, but those aren't important. Believe me, I can do this in my sleep."

"Ok, but please don't. I don't trust you that much." Velvet requested, trying her best to joke. She felt a small sense of satisfaction hearing Hansel laugh.

"No promises. It's been a bit of a long day." He joked back, making it Velvet's turn to laugh. The two then looked into each other's eyes for a long period of time, keeping their mouths in subtle smiles to convey the joy that they(or at least, in Velvet's case) felt within themselves as a result of the other's presence and personality. Velvet realized that there was a small twinkle in Hansel's eyes that had not been there before. She questioned why she had not seen it before now. Her mind pondered what else there was about Hansel that she had not seen before. Knowing that she needed to go under, Velvet elected to find out the minute she awoke.

After several deep breaths, Velvet positioned herself on the workbench, lying with her back down against the wood. She looked up at Hansel once again and chuckled for no reason. Hansel chuckled back, likely out of politeness, and balanced the white plastic box on the thick wall of the stable they had set themselves in. He opened it and extracted a small, green metallic cylinder that came complete with a spigot on the top, attached to a long, thin plastic tube. This, in turn, was connected to a clear mask of a pyramid shape, comprised of the same material as it's tubular companion.

Hansel bent down to place the mask over Velvet's mouth and nose. His advance was stopped, however, by Velvet's sudden tight grip around his wrist as she shot her closest hand up. Hansel looked at her with a look of concern and inquired what the problem was.

"I swear, if you something other than what you have to, or you let me die here, I will make it my mission to ensure that you spend the rest of eternity paying for it. Do you understand?"

"Of course, Velvet. I wouldn't dare take advantage like that. Don't you trust me?"

Velvet thought long and hard before she could answer.

"Of course I do. I'm trusting you with my life."

"I'll die before I let anything happen to you, Velvet."

Hansel maneuvered his free hand over Velvet's as it still gripped his wrist.

"I promise I won't." He added in a soft voice that only Velvet's sensitive ears would be able to coherently and fully make out.

She allowed Hansel to place the mask on her face, now fully trusting of him. Velvet's vision blurred as the anesthesia began to kick in. All of the blurs melded into one, the only perambulatory portion being what she recognized as Hansel. Soon, all faded to black as her eyes closed. She was almost immediately transported back to her home in Valkryite, sitting in the living room next to the fireplace with her little brother asleep in her lap. Her mother sat across from them, being caressed and held close by-

"Father."

Velvet's father turned to look at his daughter. He closed his eyes and laughed, as she would always recall him doing when she was small.

"You seem surprised to see me, hon."

"Why shouldn't I be? You-You're-" Velvet couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence. Her father knew, and shushed her before she could manage to.

"We must'nt speak of such unpleasant things now. Why not savor our little reunion while we can?" Her father suggested.

Velvet took in every detail of her father's figure and recalled every memory in that one instant. His name had been Zandu Scarlatina. He had chestnut hair that was always tied back into a bun. He was wearing his favorite long-sleeved collared shirt, one of black cotton, paired with a set of white slacks. On his feet was a mixture of both in the form of hand-stitched leather shoes. Over his shirt was a red bow-tie that was always oddly aesthetically pleasing to young Velvet, just as she found it to be now. Velvet recalled how, while many would secretly scorn her father's style of dress, just as many from all over the region would herald him as "The snappiest dresser in all the Vale, if not all of Remnant". This also brought forth the memory of her pride when she would hear someone say this.

On the mantle over the fireplace rested Zandu's Gladius, next to his shield on a hook. Not only were they fierce weapons of combat, but also a conversation piece that Velvet's father loved to show off whenever he had company over. He loved to explain the smithing process that brought his prized duo to fruition. Zandu loved fawning the edges of the black-and-white striped sword's anatomy, and the beauty of it's sister, a large, round, white shield with a black ring around it's circumference and a large black dot in the center that rose over the sea of white surrounding it.

Velvet remembered the story vividly: Zandu had worked for two years at a local farm to earn enough Lien to be able to afford a brand-new set of Gladius and Shield. He often told anyone who would listen about how he had known just what he would to ask the smith to make, ever since he had first realized he had a Semblance. Everyone would eventually tire of Zandu's stories, but little Velvet would always be willing to sit on her father's lap and listen for hours on end. She idolized the man, made him her hero, even up to the day when-

"Why don't you sit here, next to me? It's been a while, so I'm sure there's quite a bit I'm not caught up on." Zandu patted the cushion of a red leather recliner adjacent to the loveseat that he and the now-dormant mother of Velvet sat upon. With the care that only a sister would be capable of, she gently laid the sleeping Jacob on the wicker chair that they had just occupied. Velvet walked over and took a seat next to her father, never taking his eyes off of him while the transition was happening.

"Where should I begin?" Velvet asked of her father in a shaky voice.

"Velvet, my dear. I think we both know the answer to that."

Velvet nodded and, keeping her eyes on her father's, relayed what had transpired in her life since Zandu had, as many in-denial loved ones had told Velvet as a child, "went away on a business trip". She made sure to not leave out any details, from her constant maltreatment as a Faunus and her heightened fighting capabilities. She told of her aspirations to become a Huntress (eliciting an "I'm not surprised. It would be a waste of talent if you didn't." from her father). After the span of what felt like hours, Velvet had come to the most recent point in her life.

She paused, and looked down at the ground. Her father patiently waited for her to speak once more, visibly twiddling his thumbs in his lap as he so often did when Velvet was a child. Finally, Velvet relayed the unprofaned tale of her crime. It made her feel like a coward and a lowly criminal to hear the account spoken out never took her eyes off of the ground as she told this particular chapter of her life. Zandu said not word as all of this occurred. The silence, save for the crackling of the wood in the fireplace, made it all the more difficult to tell. Hearing all of her own actions out of her mouth made Velvet question whether or not she would be making the morally sound choice of running away and not attempting to defend herself in the legal system.

Oh, who am I kidding? Velvet thought to herself with angst. With my luck, I'd get an anti-Faunus judge who'd put me to death or throw me in a cell for the rest of my life. It wouldn't be much different if I hadn't decided to run. I'd be branded a terrorist, just like they did now.

When Velvet finished, Zandu remained silent. Rather, he gently slid Velvet's mother's body off of himself and positioned her in a comfortable position on her back with her head against the armrest, a pillow as a cushion. Her legs hung off of the side, which Velvet's father corrected and lifted them onto the area of the loveseat where he had just rested himself.

"Oh, Magenta. You always were such a deep sleeper." Zandu turned to his daughter once more. "Velvet, did I ever tell you about my days at Beacon?"

Velvet looked up at her father once more, smiling at the joyous recollections that he had stirred up within her.

"Of course, Father." She replied almost immediatley. "You always did love telling those stories, almost as much as I adored listening." Velvet had often stayed up after her bedtime as a little girl listening to, as her father would say, "The Marvelous Misadventures of Team OZDN", the last word being pronounced as 'Obsidian'. This always served to aggravate Velvet's mother, but she didn't care. She loved spending as much time as possible as she could with her father. It was this that she was the most grateful for later on in life, when her father was no longer there to regale her of such tales.

"Well, my dear, there were things that I never told you about. Things that you were too young to understand. While we're here, I'd like to tell you about a particular story that falls into that category. I told you about who was who on the team, right?"

"Not exactly. You told me about your friends Oz and Dorian, but you never told me about who 'N' was. Whenever I would ask, you'd just get quiet and say "I'll tell you about them when you're older."

Zandu exhaled through his nose and ran his hand down his face. He looked away from his daughter and planted his sights on the roaring flames that were slowly consuming the ashen-surfaced blocks of wood. His face had lost its glow and took on the same grave expression that would be present when the 'N' character from his past would be brought up in any way.

"Well, you're old enough now, I suppose. Ok, now it's my turn to tell a slightly uncomfortable story." Zandu said with a deep breath to complement his diction.

"You don't have to if you aren't comfortable, Father."

Zandu laughed, and looked back at his daughter with the same warm smile that she recalled from her childhood.

"I appreciate your concern, Honey Bun, but I couldn't live with myself if I missed this opportunity to tell you. You deserve to know everything about me, and this is the one thing that desperatley needs saying above all else. I'm sure one day you'll either meet up with Oz or Dorian and they can fill you in on all the rest that I never had the chance to tell you. All I ask is that you don't let yourself judge me too harshly for what I did in those days. I was only a teenager, and I made some very bad mistakes. I'm about to tell you about one of those mistakes, probably the biggest one of my young life."

Velvet crossed her legs and patiently waited for her father to begin his tale. She watched as he took another deep breath, followed by a shallow exhale. Zandu looked at the fire once more, then back to his teenage daughter. He then began to pace around the living room, as if that would bring him the words he required to bring his verbal recollection of his memory into motion.

"When I was at Beacon, I was placed into team OZDN, with three other first-years. There was two Huntsman-in-the-making, Oz and I, on the team. Some politically-correct people, as few as there were then, threw a fit and cried 'Sexism' when our letters were put at the beginning of the team's name. We didn't care, though. None of us did. We simply saw it as either a weird coincidence, or a gauging of our levels. We all shrugged and left it at that, aside from Oz being made our team leader. Anyways, I'm rambling. The two Huntresses on the team: they were Dorian Graymond and..." Zandu paused before revealing the fourth and final name, his eyes becoming misty. Velvet leaned forward, hopeful that the name would strike a memory in her. She secretly pondered, as she had pondered for years, if this single letter would be the precedent to a longer name. Velvet wondered if this person would be someone who had a large impact on her life at some point in the past, leading to Zandu's repression of this person from both his own memory and Velvet's. "Neopolitan, or Neo, as we called her for short. She never did tell us her last name. She never told us anything, as a matter of fact."

Velvet took her father's subsequent silence as an opportunity to ask a question. "What do you mean, Father?"

"Well, Velvet, she never told us anything because she couldn't. She was mute, you see. Neo had come from...let's call it a rough home. Some very bad things happened there that made her that way. It wasn't her fault. Regardless, we took her in like she was family. We all learned sign language just so we would be able to effectivley communicate with her. We all became friends and family as we learned how to protect the innocent and fight the Grimm. Oz, Dorian, and I would protect Neo from anyone who would make fun of either of her conditions."

"Either, Father?"

"Along with her muteness, was another condition. As soon as Neo hit 15, she stopped aging. Years passed, and she still looked as if she was just a kid. While we all got taller and physically matured, Neo stayed the exact same as always. Some people liked to tease her for it, but the three of us made sure to put an end to it almost as quickly as it started. It's like I said, we were family, with Neo being the little sister that we all felt a need to protect.

"After a while, she started to become fed up with it. She felt as if she were being a burden on the rest of us, not being able to protect herself. After a while, we found out that she had started hanging around with some...less-than-desireable people. They started leading her down the wrong path, causing her studies to suffer as a result. She became more distant from the rest of us, not bothering to respond when we tried to sign to her. Looking back, I know we should've done more to help her. We should've seen just how bad it truly was, before..." Zandu's voice trailed, his face going a pasty white. Velvet knew better than to prod someone with such a sensitive memory, so she rested her hands on her legs and patiently waited.

"It all started when she tried to rob a store. Oz was the one to suggest that we all pitch in enough Lien to bail her out, since the store owner wasn't going to press charges. That's exactly what we did, went to the station and all. Whe n we got there, there wasn't a single one of her friends waiting for her. At first we thought, 'Maybe they got arrested, too', but they were nowhere to be found. In her time of need, they had abandoned her. When we bailed her out, we all could see the look of betrayal on her face. The minute that we got her possessions and left the Police Station, she took her things and walked off into the darkness. Not a single one of us tried to stop her. Oz didn't speak to anyone for a week. Dorian cried her eyes out for three days, then fell into a deep depression that never really left her. Me? I wasn't much better off than those two. I took up drinking for a while, as well. Nasty habit that took me a long time to kick."

"What ever happened to Neo?" Velvet asked.

"Last time I saw her, it was on a wanted poster with her mug shot next to a fellow with the name of 'Roman Torchwick'. It made me feel like I'd failed her. The reason that I told you all this,Velvet, is this. I don't know what to tell you to do about your problem. I understand that it's all just one bad thing topped against another, and the world is literally against you. All I can tell you is to make sure that you do what feels right in your heart, and not willingly go down the wrong path like Neo did. Promise me that much, Velvet. Because there's so much that you're still destined to do.

"Destined, Father? Destined how?"

"It will all make itself clear in time, my dear. Promise me you won't stray."

"I promise."

Velvet rose and hugged her father, who returned the action by wrapping his hands around his daughter.

"Follow your heart, and you will never be wrong, no matter how bad the consequences. Your heart is not wrong, only the situations around it. Never forget that."

"I wont, Father."

It was then that Zandu told Velvet the one thing that he wanted to tell her one last time.

"I love you, Velvet."

Tears beginning to stream down her face, Velvet repeated the three word phrase. As soon as she did, she felt herself snap back into consciousness, with a blurry sight that she had fallen under with. The only thing she saw moving was a blob she recognized as Hansel.

"It's fine," He said. "She's out cold. I couldn't move her before because of her healing leg. It's been a day and a half. She's good to go now."

"Hansel." She mumbled, her vision beginning to clear. She nearly missed him place what looked like a Scroll in his pocket. "Who were you talking to?" Velvet asked as she propped herself on her elbows.

"I was setting up arrangements for our next safehouse. Oh, Velvet. I've been waiting for you to wake up for so long." He knelt down and hugged Velvet. He pulled back just enough so that their faces were inches from each other. Velvet pushed her hair behind her ear and began to feel herself blush once more.

"Well, here I am. And you didn't answer my question."

Hansel lowered his head, seemingly formulating an appropriate response within his mind.

"Look, Velvet. If we're gonna be doing this for a while, we need to be planning ahead like this. I know a lot of people who would be willing to help—good people. You just have to trust me with this, ok? I know what I'm doing."

"Where's the phone from?" Velvet questioned, silently resolving to further interrogate about the identity of the other person on the phone the day after.

Hansel sighed. "You're not coherent enough to be speaking right now and, for the most part, neither am I. Now, why don't you get some more rest, as will I? I'll answer all the questions that you need answered, ok? I promise."

Velvet crossed her arms and huffed, knowing perfectly well that Hansel was right, despite her comatose state. She then held out her hand with the palm up.

"Hand me the phone. I'll hold onto it for now."

"Fair enough." Hansel said, complying with Velvet's demands.

"You know I can't stand secrets."

"I know that. That's why I'll sit up above to give you some alone time." He began walking away when Velvet clutched his wrist. She felt a wave of embarrassment at her mistrusting nature towards Hansel, and felt the need to rectify herself.

"No. Please stay. I don't want to be alone right now."

"I understand." Hansel laid down next to Velvet at a comfortable distance.

Velvet felt her vision fading once more as she drifted off to sleep once more.

"Goodnight, Velvet." He said.

Velvet responded in a like manner, then fully lost consciousness once more.