Chapter Nine:
Feeling Good

Note: 'Dying Light' has been posted on my profile; a series of drabbles, word prompts, and one-shots that didn't quite make the cut for 'Left Behind', but nonetheless were important enough for world-building, character development, and general relationship shenanigans.

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It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
- "Feeling Good" by Nina Simone

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When child and parent reunited, it almost made up for the near-sullen glares thrown his way the moment he had returned with the girl, Jinora, in tow. Even those with their surly dispositions briefly forgot their ire and relief was put in its place.

The girl was quickly embraced by her father and mother and even her siblings and other assorted family members. Allen endured the return of bitter looks, if only because he hadn't come back empty handed. They were probably not very happy he and Ash had left without consulting with them or allowed them a chance to volunteer with helping in her retrieval. At the very least, none of the raptors had remained to stay after they had led him and Jinora back. They would have sensed the tension still lingering in the air and snapped at it without ceremony or thought. Or they probably would have tried to start a fight with that bear-dog creature or eat the flying lemur that chittered and glided about in the air.

That would have made things more awkward than they already were.

It was just better that none of them were here, period. Their aggressive behavior often times made them chillingly unpredictable.

After the others were assured no other party members were missing—or on the island either—the entire group seemed to settle, if only just barely. He went about trying to make amends, and managed to gain most of everyone's amiable side. If Ash wasn't going to be a proper diplomat in handling affairs with these people, the very least he could do was be that person himself. Of the two of them, he could proudly say he had much better people skills.

The hours ticked by and well into the night and still the werewolf wasn't back. Most of the food from storage had been taken, cooked, and eaten. A good chunk of their guests had retired for the night, but some lingered by the campfire, feeding wood to the flames on occasion. It wasn't until the very late hours when very few were still left awake that Ash had finally returned.

He was only mildly alarmed when he saw that she had streaks of blood and long tears in her clothing, as well as three arrows sprouting from her backside. Her breathing was labored and he reasoned she must have had a lung nicked by way of an arrowhead. He was the first to reach her. Two women, one fairly young and the other a little more aged, both in blue-and-white-trimmed clothing followed in his wake. He recognized the young girl as Katara, and the older woman as Kya. They were some of the few that were still awake and both of them began pulling water from pouches at their sides, the liquid floating midair by their will. There was a mixture of professionalism and worry creasing their faces as they approached.

"How are you still walking?" The older woman asked with alarm in her voice. Ash's face pulled into an unwelcome snarl, her eyes flashing in the firelight.

"I'll handle it myself," she growled at them. Kya and Katara were both taken aback and exchanged worried looks. Katara scrunched her face up.

"We're just trying to help you! Is that really such a bad thing for you to need it? You're injured!"

"I don't need it from you lot. I'll take care of it myself. Now move over."

Kya had a similarly obstinate look adorning her face as much as Katara did. Yet, she chose a slightly different approach. She spoke a little more gently, coaxingly even. "You can barely breathe and I still can't even comprehend how you're walking around, much less talking. Just let us help get those arrows out of your backside and we can see how bad the damage is—"

"I SAID BACK OFF!"

Silence rang off the cavern's walls. Those still gathered around the campfire turned all eyes on Ash. Kya and Katara, in Allen's opinion, rather admiringly held their ground. When she met his gaze to avert it from the others who were all now staring at her, he saw a completely different message in her eyes: 'Help me'.

The younger of the two had an obstinate look on her face that kept her rooted to the spot. Kya didn't look as likely to retreat either.

"You have three arrows in your back!" Katara protested.

"I've also had one in my head before," Ash replied blandly back. Surprise and horror flickered on their faces. Allen himself didn't exactly like the image of an arrow sprouting out of the werewolf's head. She shrugged. "I got better."

Katara opened her mouth to argue, but was interrupted before she even started as Ash limped right past her, her shoulders tight and hunched over. She had been dragging a sled with a slab of meat on it. It was only when he took in her entire profile that he realized she also had two more arrows in the back of one of her legs, right in the meaty part. Her tail had mostly covered them up, which was most likely why none of them had noticed them. She left the sled by the metal wall and continued on toward her converted room. Allen sheepishly followed, ignoring the stares of disbelief, worry, distress, concern. They looked to him, as though he had all the answers and he could only shake his head in apology before he turned back around to traipse after Ash.

Apparently, none of them had ever met a werewolf.

Ash left the sleds filled with meat near the newly crafted stove and beckoned him to follow, while the few others awake watched mutely. Allen felt their stares at his backside as he traipsed after the limping werewolf.

It was dark inside, predictably enough, but almost as soon as he crossed the threshold, the candles sprang to life unassisted. Ash was busy inspecting her renovated living space, leaning heavily on the leg that didn't appear as badly injured. After a minute, she grunted, limped over to a battered chair, and flipped it so she could lean forward on the seat backing.

"Just…yank them out. And hurry. I can't breathe that well." She said to him. There was a tight a strain in her voice that hadn't showed itself out in front of their guests. He could certainly hear the pain in it now.

Allen hesitated, just barely within her room as he stared at the arrows and her sagging form.

"They're scared of you," he said quietly. She scoffed softly and it was a terrible wet sound that turned into a heavy, painful wheeze.

"Everyone's scared of something," she said. "Doesn't surprise me that most people are afraid of me, just because I ain't human. I can smell it just fine."

He frowned at her. "You came in here, bloodied up and with arrows sticking out of your body. How else would you expect them to feel?"

"I honestly expected someone to scream. There's usually always one who does."

"Do you have no shame in how you present yourself or in how you treat others? You could at least have taken them out before coming back!"

"If I had no shame, I'd be prancing around here naked with no fucks to give. My fields are practically barren enough as it is."

His face flushed red at the thought of her doing just that and he was suddenly grateful she had some amount of humility. Or so he hoped she did. He didn't want her getting ideas…

"I can't…I can't reach my back. It's…"

He startled back, listening to her intently, although it was mostly in surprise.

"I…can't lift my arms around at…at certain angles. It's my shoulders, they're—they're fucked up. I don't want them helping, I don't…trust them. To-to do it right."

He was momentarily stunned at the admission. She didn't trust the others, but she trusted him enough to ask for help? It also wasn't just a plea for help; it was a confession of weakness, and it was a weakness she'd kept hidden for quite some time from him, and rather well at that. When he failed to answer quickly, she started to get up.

"If you can't or won't do it, I'll get the raptors to do it."

He stepped forward, waving for her to sit back down. "I can do it; just…what do I need to do?"

"Yank it out. Don't ease it out. Just yank. Don't worry about the blood; don't worry about any fleshy chunks. It'll heal. It'll always heal. I'll be fine."

He found himself at her side, a hand on one of the arrows in her back, sitting just below her shoulder blade. He could hear her wet wheeze as she struggled to take in a breath and realized she was probably bleeding into her lungs. He could have been fooled by her earlier bravado. In fact, he had been. He grasped the arrow shaft tightly and when he saw her nod, he gave a hard yank. She hissed between clenched teeth when it didn't give.

"Again," she growled hoarsely. "Pull harder than that."

He did and he didn't miss the fact that her entire frame was braced and tense, nothing but a solid wall of corded, lean muscle. He moved on to the second arrow, this one dangerously close to her spine. Beneath the shredded clothing material, he could make out pale scars, slick and smooth in comparison to her tanned, healthy skin. Those were most definitely over her spine, and they looked like claw marks. He refrained from touching, from grazing his fingers over them at the very last moment. "What…happened here?"

She was quiet at his inquiry and kept her gaze locked on the wall ahead.

"A monster," she said at last, her words just barely above a whisper.

"Carmilla?" He ventured tentatively. The pattern was too large to be that of the raptors' handiwork. He's seen it before. He flinched when her golden gaze flicked to meet his out the corner of her eye. He was unnervingly reminded of the raptors with the way she stared at him. A shiver rolled down his spine, cold as ice water.

"I said a monster." Her eyes settled back toward the wall, her brows knit and her lips pulling into a thin hard line. "Carmilla isn't a monster."

She fell back into that obstinate silence that declared she was done talking. It left him stewing in an equally tense silence as he helped tug out the rest of the arrows. Just as she said before, all her wounds healed the moment the offending protrusions had left, with no marks or scars whatsoever.

He still couldn't get the thought of the ones on her back out of his head.

She shouldn't be able to walk at all, he thought, as he later disposed of the arrows. Those were too deep to be superficial.

But what kind of monster could leave such damage so permanently on a werewolf who could otherwise heal from just about anything?

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The boat was no longer a bullet-riddled hunk of fiberglass and metal. Allen didn't know why that surprised him, yet it did.

All signs of damage and blood from its previous venture had been wiped clean. Most of the snow had finally melted by the time they all made their way down to the beach. The rains from the last few days made sure of that. Himiko and most of the Solarii and Oni had been dispatched of as well, so their trek was largely uneventful, thankfully. Allen came to learn that most of the individuals in their very large group of rescued survivors were called 'benders' and each could control one of four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. One of the boys with arrowhead tattoos along his body was called an Avatar, a being who controlled all four at once.

Strangely enough, the girl named Korra was also an Avatar.

Apparently, this was a major problem amongst their separate core groups, as only one Avatar could be in existence at a time. Allen didn't necessarily have a difficult time figuring that much out. Some thought there was some kind of fluctuating error that was severely messing with the order of things and there was some talk of spirits and whatnot. The way they continued diving into the subject, it went clear over his head.

When the conversation had turned into shouting matches and demanding to be heard, it had nearly threatened an upheaval in the cave between the two core groups before they left. Ash had quickly intervened with her usual brusque and blunt attitude. Allen could only watch in a mixture of amusement, horror, and embarrassment as she seemed ready to start slamming everyone's heads against one another to get the in-house arguments to quell.

"Put your fucking existential crisis crap on hold until you're not in danger of being shot at and you're off the fucking island. I did not risk my ass for you lot just to have you all kill each other over something as stupid as fucking spiritual reincarnation!"

Apparently, it shut everyone up rather quickly, mainly from shock. Allen later realized it was because she had figured what was going on a lot sooner than he had. Regardless, it had strangely enough kept everyone from starting anything else up—to an extent. They at the very least agreed to refrain from bringing the topic up until after they had successfully left the confines of the island and its lethal inhabitants.

Ash led them down to the beach and after they arrived near the end of the day, camp was quickly established in and around the bunkers. Their broken husks were still there, just as Allen remembered. Some of the old docks were also intact. A few boars had taken up residence on the beach, hiding out in a cleft hidden in one of the stone beach spires, but after Ash drew them out, they had food for the whole group. Or most of it; some of the others did not eat meat, at all. For them, she had been collecting edible plants, unquestioning and oddly very understanding of their dietary needs.

While the others slowly mingled, testing the waters on what was safe to talk about and what wasn't, Ash kept to herself. Allen sought her out when he was able to extricate himself from conversation, retreating from the warmth of the fire and the comfort of other people. He found her tinkering away at the boat engine, a globe of flame hovering near where she worked. He stared in absolute fascination for a few moments. In comparison to her earlier fury, this was a rather tame display of her apparent control of fire.

"Permission to come aboard?" He called to her with faint amusement. She paused, ears flickering a little on her head. She grunted at him. He took that as a yes and clambered over the gunwale. She didn't look at him as she worked, tugging a tool from her belt and replacing it with another to sit in the many pouches that lined it.

"Anything I can help with?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

She stopped for a few seconds. "Any food left?"

"Not much."

She mulled over that. "Don't worry about it then. Let the others have it."

Allen was almost ready to argue that, but thought better of it. Once Ash made up her mind, he'd be hard-pressed to change it. Instead, he sat on the gunwale opposite of where she worked, watching as she ducked down into the compartment where the engine sat. It was a rather comfortable silence between them, amazingly enough. But, after a while, he found he needed more than the soft clinks and clangs around the engine and the distant laughter of the others or the crash of the tides against the beach to fill the void.

"Are you going to work on this through the night?"

"Might as well. I can get it up by morning if I do."

"You want them to go that soon?"

"Yes."

He frowned at her, and glanced over his shoulder, back toward where he could just make out the faint smudge of light from the campfire. Someone was shouting and then everyone was laughing. A cold wind coming in from the sea began to pick up and tugged at his clothes and slithered through the fabric, making him shiver. He yearned to go back to the warmth, the comfort, the familiarity of the company of others. Yet, he remained rooted to the spot, unable to tear himself away quite yet.

"You should go back and sit with them. Spend time with people if you miss it. I'll be fine," Ash said to him, cutting through the relative quiet sharply, unexpectedly. Allen hesitated. She didn't even have to look at him to know how he felt. She still had her back to him, her focus wholly on the boat engine. In the faint glow of the fire floating beside her, he could tell her arms were already greasy and dirtied from cleaning and fixing it, dark smudges almost up to her elbow.

She stopped working when he didn't move and craned her neck over her shoulder to look at him.

"I know I'm not the best of company and you're not exactly obligated to stick around while I work. You'd probably be better off talking with them than sitting around quietly with me. Go on. I'll be all right by myself. I'm a big girl."

She flashed a very wane smile at him before returning to her work. He stared, flabbergasted at first, before it quickly melted and gave way to anticipation. Allen knew he didn't need her permission to go off and leave her be, but just to hear her say she'd fine, it was almost a relief. He just hoped that things would go smoother than it had the last time they had been on the beach together. No Solarii, no attacks, no bullets raining down on them.

Allen offered a quiet goodbye, and left Ash to her work. She grunted out her own parting, but only because she had a sizeable wrench clamped between her teeth this time.

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True to the werewolf's word, the boat had been fixed by morning. The quiet chugging of the engine was what he realized he had been hearing most of the morning. Although to be fair, he didn't quite notice it until someone actually pointed it out. As soon as people began noticing it, they also started cleaning up and breaking down camp. The little shelters hastily erected by the earthbenders were quickly stomped down with their strange power. One of the firebenders, a scar-faced young man named Zuko, put out the campfire after everyone had eaten breakfast. The waterbenders were taking into account their supply of water and the airbenders the food. He could hear them talking amongst one another, excited to get off the island and back to where they came from. There were also conversations peppered with worry about how they were going to fix this potential 'two Avatars at once' problem as well.

"So, do you really live on this island with her?"

Allen turned to the voice, distracted. He had been staring out at the cold grey waters beyond the bay. When he found the source, he recognized it to be Korra. She was waiting for him to speak up and he nodded to her.

"I do, yes."

"She seems a bit…" Korra paused, lips quirking. "I'd say 'rude', off of first impressions."

"She's rough around the edges, I'll admit," Allen chuckled. "She has her moments, though, please don't doubt that. She really does care about keeping the people who wash up on Yamatai's shores safe, it's just in her own gruff way."

"If you say so. I mean, I'm not complaining, she's helping us get out of here. I'm still confused as to why you stay here, stuck with her. Or why she won't leave herself."

"She can't leave and I…I don't want to leave her behind. It seems unfair that she can't leave, for whatever reason, but everyone else she has helped can."

"I guess." Korra said, although she sounded doubtful to his explanation. "Is she really…you know…hundreds of years old?"

"I couldn't say for certain, but she definitely has been here for a very long time. She's not human, I'm sure you noticed, so I wouldn't doubt she's incredibly long-lived. She doesn't recall much from her younger years, she's told me."

"I did, but I thought she was a spirit."

"But…she's alive." Allen cocked his head to the side just a smidge, confused at what Korra was getting at. Spirits were intangible most of the time, but there were exceptions.

"Spirits can manifest physical forms," Korra said, as though that explained it all. Allen frowned at her. She frowned back.

"You…don't know much, do you?"

"Not about what you're talking about. I don't even think we're on the same page." He admitted and she sighed.

"Probably," the young woman answered. She placed her hands on her hips and glanced out at the sea. "You know…you don't have to stay. No one's really keeping you here. She isn't, right? I mean…you can leave anytime."

Allen considered her offer. Or at least, he assumed it was one. It was rather open-ended to interpretation but the message was still the same: he could leave anytime he wanted, and that was true enough. He could. Ash had wanted him to, and she wasn't entirely coy about it either.

She's stopped pestering me, though. I think she's used to the idea of someone else being around.

And sometimes, he wanted to believe she might even enjoy having someone else close by as well. A secret soft spot yearning for company but unable to fully admit it to herself...

He shook his head, drawing Korra's attention back to him.

"Thank you, I appreciate the sentiment, but I'll be all right. I think I know how to handle her just fine, and this place isn't all that bad."

Korra eyed him uncertainly but she nodded all the same. "If you say so."

Someone called for her then, just from where camp was. She craned her neck to glance up the steep bunker and sand wall. "Guess we're almost set. And thank you, for all your help, Allen. Really."

She took off after that, quickly rounding toward the crumbling staircase on the far end of the beach. He watched her go before trailing after the sandy footprints she left behind. Camp was empty, everyone already gathered where the boat was waiting to be boarded. Naga took up most of the room, but somehow, as people got on, they managed to work around the large animal. Momo the flying lemur took up residence on the Naga the polar bear-dog's head and the two seemed to hit it off rather amiably enough. Ash was speaking with the dark-haired young woman, Asami, about the boat's steering off to the side when he approached.

Asami was dutifully listening, especially as Ash got into the details about the engine, although it was a fairly short lesson.

"Just hit it."

Asami blinked at her. "Hit it. You want me to just…hit it."

Ash nodded. "Smack it hard if it acts up. Trust me."

"O-kay, I suppose I will have to trust that…piece of advice." Her lisp curved into a faintly bemused smile as she regarded the werewolf for a moment longer before she added, "Thank you, by the way. For everything you've done.'

Ash, in all her grace, simply shrugged. "It's what I do. Go south, like I said before. You'll get picked up, one way or another."

With another shrug, the werewolf stuffed her grease-stained hands into her pockets and walked off back toward camp.

"Wait!"

Ash faltered for only a moment, glancing over her shoulder. Jinora, the young girl he and Ash had rescued, leapt over the gunwale. Her father, Tenzin, called out for her to come back. Jinora continued trotting over to the werewolf. Ash stared at the girl, taken aback when she threw her arms around Ash's middle into a tight hug.

Ash, in all her grace, just stood there gaping like an idiot, her hands springing out of her pockets to hover uselessly at her sides, her spine straight as a board and shoulders locked with tension. For good long while, they stood there like that. Allen was secretly hoping Ash would return the embrace, if only to stop looking the way she did in that moment, but she didn't. In fact, Ash looked incredibly uncomfortable with the embrace altogether, like she didn't know how to respond in kind.

Allen surmised in that moment that Ash hasn't been shown an ounce of affection often enough from people, if she's ever been shown it at all. She was so used to bellowing voices and slamming back at opposing forces with as much energy and fervor and rage as she could muster when it came to a fight. She was so used to hardened words, throwing fists and kicks and firing arrows and bullets that a simple hug was beyond comprehension. She could dish out a fight just fine; it was reacting to the softer end of the emotional spectrum like genuine fondness and warmth that she didn't seem to understand.

Jinora soon realized she wasn't going to get a hug back and slowly peeled herself away, looking slightly disappointed. Grateful, but disappointed all the same.

"Thank you. I know it probably wasn't easy getting inside that fortress, but…thank you. You saved my life."

Ash stared at the girl with her mismatched eyes. Then, with all her grace, Ash regained her unconcerned expression once more and simply shrugged.

"It's what I do."

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The boat was still in the bay, but it was quickly making headway in leaving Yamatai. The seas were calm. The skies were mostly clear. It was slow going, with all the people and creatures aboard, but it was making its way out, which was the most important thing. Ash was still tense, like she was trying to ride out the ghostly feeling of being embraced with warmth and not violence.

"You can still go, you know. They're close enough to flag back."

Her voice was edgy, as though she was torn between an internal confliction of some sort. Allen looked to the boat, quickly chugging away. Some of the younger children were waving at them. He waved back. Ash didn't.

"I know," he said after a minute. He smiled at her when he saw she was looking at him, studying him. Like she was trying to figure out why the hell he hadn't gone. "I chose not to."

Her eyes narrowed. He recognized the gesture.

"I chose not to, because you obviously still need help looking after. You have the raptors, true. And Báthory and Carmilla, no doubt. You're not alone, but…you don't have any positive human contact. You act like you don't want or need it, but…sometimes I think you do. I've seen moments where you genuinely needed it and I think you need someone to have that with."

She kept her gaze pinned to him for a very long minute. He's learned not to squirm under her gaze, coolly regarding it with his own. She looked away back at the boat, quickly disappearing into the horizon.

"You should have stopped at 'I chose not to'."

He grinned at her and chuckled.

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The next several weeks passed in a blur. He wasn't sure how many, but there were enough to bleed into one another, adding to his time on Yamatai. Ash was putting him through the wringers, too. She taught him the right flora from the wrong to pick for medicinal and consuming purposes. She coached him in recognizing the individual vocalizations of each creature on the island, so that he didn't accidentally stumble upon an opposing predator's territory, or worse, right into their awaiting hungry jaws. She taught him how to stay downwind or upwind of the animals, to prevent his scent from being picked up—especially by territorial predators such as Dilos, Carnies, or Compies.

He was given instruction on how to identify them further by their tracks, and how to recognize game trails through the forests. The Dryosaurs were small and able to traverse easily through the forests and mountains. The larger herd animals, not so much. There were exceptions, however rare they were and he'd need to remain vigilant, she stressed to him. She showed him the hidden caches and hidey-holes around the island, some of which were former Solarii resting spots or places of worship to Himiko. The bodies they found were put to rest and burned on pyres, their ashes scattered by the wind.

"Why do we burn them? Why not bury them?"

It was a general question he mulled over on his own for some time. There were pros and cons he wrestled with, of course, such as it took time to dig a grave, and perhaps even a cairn or grave marker of some sort would be needed to mark the dead. But then again, it took time to build the pyres as well. She gave him a rather simple, if macabrely eloquent answer.

"There're enough ghosts on this island. We don't need them hanging around, reminding us that we couldn't save them." She paused, looking away from him. What she was looking at, he wasn't too sure. There was hardly anything noteworthy or out of place where they were, but she always seemed aware of something out there, in the forests.

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They were scavenging old World War II-era biplanes today. Ash wanted the cockpit pilot seats to serve as their new makeshift couch seats. The John Doe who had died on her last one soaked it enough blood that made even him gag at the smell of it, so they had had to burn it.

One such plane was overhanging a waterfall, not far from where their homestead was. It dangled precariously over the edge of the falls, its metal hide pitted with so many holes, he could see its skeletal framework beneath the panels. He stayed behind on the cliff as a lookout, while Ash descended, slowly and carefully, into the belly of the contraption. He had to secretly marvel at the thing. There were plenty of them littering the island and this was the closest he's been to one in a while.

According to Ash, the Second Great War was called as such because it had encompassed most of the countries around the world. Nearly every country had, in some way or another, been affected by it. American forces had intended to sit the war out—until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii halfway through the war. Troops were sent out, both to Europe and the Pacific Theater. In the latter, their forces island-hopped, all the way up to Japan's main island. It had been a bloody campaign, and a good chunk of their fighting had been done in the air, with these very airplanes. Now they were merely relics of a bygone era and a long-dead war, slowly being worn away by nature.

"Some things haven't been touched, though," she said with a faint smile touching her lips. "I'm hoping the seats aren't too far gone. They're not all that comfy, but they're better than having nothing at all."

She was close to the nose of the plane now, where the cockpit sat. It was the farthest end down, and he began to get a creeping feeling that something was going to go wrong.

I should have gone down there with her. Or gone down there myself, he thought as the feeling grew and ballooned until it hurt inside his chest. He didn't care if Ash would have glowered at him for such a suggestion, if only he'd made it. She made it obvious what she thought of such "antiquated gender-based roles," as she liked to call them often enough that he could hear her scolding him already. "Just because I'm a woman, doesn't mean I'm not capable of undertaking a difficult task. I'm not a delicate fucking flower. I'm pretty sure you know that by now."

And he knew. Oh, he knew that fact like he knew the back of his parasitic-type Innocence-imbedded hand. She was as tough as they came and then some. She sometimes reminded him of Lenalee; they were both such determined women, he was in awe at their drives, their passion, their very will to keep going. It had nothing to do with Ash's gender, all in all. He would be a gentleman, of course, when it called for it.

No, he didn't worry because of her gender. He worried because she didn't worry at all. She cared less about herself that it was downright irresponsible and terrifying. She had made it clear she knew she wasn't invincible, and while she was apparently a near-immortal being, it didn't mean she couldn't get hurt or feel pain. He still flinched in sympathy every time she came back home, bloodied and bruised with something else sticking out of her like she was a damned pincushion and didn't have any cares to give for her own well-being.

He sometimes worried that she's forgotten what it once meant to care for herself as much as she should care for other people, or she truly didn't give a damn what happened to her. Ever. That probably scared him the most.

Ash had finally reached the cockpit. He could peer over the edge of the cliff near the falls and see her progress. She was surveying the chair he could quite clearly see at the front, just behind a thin pane of cracked and dirtied glass. Beneath all that, he could make out the forest reaching up toward her, but it was so far below…

The airplane groaned as Ash shifted her position. She was starting to dislodge the seat. She had her tool belt around her waist. She already had a tool out, working away at something to loosen the pilot seat. His heart leapt into his throat when the plane gave another tremendous moan of protest.

"Ash! The plane…!"

"It's fine," she called back, unconcerned. She kept her head down as she worked. "These old bastards like to talk up a storm when things start getting jiggly."

A minute crawled by, and he swore up and down that it was the longest minute he's had to endure for a very long time to date. The plane continued its protests, but otherwise it remained lodged in its place as Ash worked.

"Damn," she said after the minute had passed. "It's rusted in there tight. I'm not gonna get anywhere with anything I got on me. I'm gonna have to rip it out."

And that's when it all seemed to start going downhill. A horrid screeching rent through the air. Ash was too busy pulling and yanking on the pilot seat she was so obsessed with, that she failed to notice that the plane was becoming dislodged from its anchoring point in the cliffs.

Allen noticed. A moment of sheer panic tore through him, keeping him pinned to his spot, watching on in horror as it sank an inch down, then another, and then another. The ground shuddered abruptly beneath him and Carmilla came swinging into view right above him, trumpeting so loudly it made his ears ring in pain. The white beast craned her head and torso over the cliffs, snatching her long arms around the tail end of the plane and gripping it tightly. The jarring stop knocked Ash out of her position and she yelped below. Allen rushed over, nearly pressing up against Carmilla as he peered down below. Ash was lying up against the glass and he could see the spider web cracks forming beneath her, rapidly growing in size and number the longer she laid there.

"I'm coming down," he said, already calculating how far he should jump down before catching onto something without injuring himself. Ash was hauling herself up, trying to anchor herself back into her prior position between the bulkhead and the seat.

"Stay up there!" She snarled back up at him, surprising him. Carmilla timbered back a soft and rumbling croon while her crimson eye flicked his way. Her jowls parted and shivered visibly, showing off her jagged, conical teeth in response, as though in warning.

He glowered back and signed to the dinosaur, 'She'll fall if I don't help'. Carmilla lowed again, as though the Indominus Rex was considering his answer. Perhaps she was. Her jaws closed almost completely and she returned her gaze back toward Ash below. Allen took this as a good sign and began to slowly lower himself over the edge of the cliff and onto the teetering edge of the plane. Ash was so preoccupied with her work, she didn't notice him until he was halfway down to meet her. Carmilla rumbled above, looking as unabashed as a dinosaur could when Ash craned her head up to glare at the Indominus.

'Traitor', she paused to sign up at to Carmilla. The dinosaur snorted in response, pointedly looking away unabashed. Allen ignored the exchange, more focused on finding his next handhold that would endure his weight.

"I told you to stay up there," she finally said to him as he passed the halfway point.

"If I did everything you told me to do, as you dictated, you would be much worse off. You probably wouldn't even be here," he quipped back. He heard her growl in annoyance.

"Goddamned humans…"

"Hey now, that's not very nice. I don't pick on you for being a stubborn werewolf," he teased, although his voice was high and strained. The plane shuddered and Carmilla roared, startled. Talons scraped along the plane and suddenly, her curved claws were stabbing back into the metal hide again, readjusting her grip. His heart hammered away in his chest at the abrupt jostling, his right hand's knuckles bone white as his grip remained tight and unrelenting.

"Dammit. Fine. Just get down here and help me unhinge this fucking thing."

"Language," he chided with a cluck of his tongue. "Didn't your mother teach you manners?"

"I don't remember my mother, so your argument is invalid. Follow-up question: did yours?"

He winced. Should have seen that one coming.

At least she was talking. She'd been quiet for the last few days, strangely even more so even for her.

By the time he reached her, she had already dislodged most of the seat, but he could see she was being as delicate as she could, obviously due to their precarious situation. The seat was anchored to the flooring of the plane by thick bolts. Those, over time, had grown rusted over and would be nigh impossible to uproot, not without brute force at least. Given where they were literally hanging over, however, that too was just about as impossible.

He thought it over for only a moment before he flicked his left hand, and felt the familiar sensation of flesh and blood melding seamlessly into bladed digits. Carefully, he dug his clawed appendage along the edge of the rusted end of the seat's metal roots and nodded to Ash.

"I'll loosen up this rust as much as I can. You pull, but do try not to kill us both by ripping it out?"

She ticked a brow at him. "I make no guarantees."

She readied herself and grabbed it beneath the seat proper. She nodded back to him and he began dragging his claws into the metal. The old plane's metal was so weak and brittle, having been worn away by the weather for so long, it was easy to cut into it rather than whittle the rust away. Ash easily extricated the seat and lifted it away from its previous home. He grinned at her when she pulled it free.

"I was almost beginning to think something terrible was going to happen," he admitted to her.

"Not too late for that. Day's not over yet," she remarked back, to which he frowned. She jerked her head upwards. "Let's get this thing back up there. Carmilla's starting to get tired. She can't hold us for forever."

They managed to get it up and out of the plane through an awkward dance of "Pass the Chair Up".

The night he learned of Ash's arm rotation limitations, he began to notice it more. She would leap rather than climb, or find some way around an obstacle she otherwise couldn't get up. She kept everything at ground or chest level, despite there were now more makeshift shelves for them to utilize in their home. Sometimes he'd catch her rolling her shoulders, a strained look on her face when she tried lifting her entire arm up until it shook tremendously with effort. Her left side seemed weaker than the right in those instances, but they both couldn't put up with the strain.

When she had to pass him the pilot chair, she would utilize her legs more often than her arms for any lifting, or she'd outright underhand toss it to him if she could afford to. Then she'd simply shimmy her way up past him rather than reaching and grabbing handholds like he would. It was rather impressive she'd managed to survive in such a harsh environment that otherwise demanded an individual to climb sheer vertical surfaces. She always found a way around it, somehow.

She adapted and overcame.

He didn't mention it to her, however. Something told him if he did, he'd bring an end to this oddly blissful co-operative yet still tenuous relationship they've established. She still tiptoed around him, like she wasn't sure what to do with him half the time. He did mostly the same, partly because he wasn't sure what would set her off into another morose silence. He didn't want that; she actually spoke with him now, considered his opinions with a seriousness she wouldn't have months before. She even asked advice every now and again, although that was rather rare.

He found her enduring, strangely enough, likeable even, to a point. In that odd way she presented herself when she wasn't around too many people or being shot at, anyways. Ash was a confusing enigma, a puzzle he was still trying to piece together, but he had a good feeling that she was secretly appreciative for his company.

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