Chapter Sixteen:
Running Scared

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I don't wanna lose you
To some bullshit hurt that could've been helped
I'm trying to tell you something
That a good, good heart is your greatest will
-"What Are We Gonna Do" by Glen Hansard

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Home was a wreck. Furniture was broken, books were thrown asunder. Cards lay littered all over the place. Board game pieces lay scattered across the ground. Broken arrows, a shattered bow, fragments of a rifle, pots and pans bent askew…

His first thought was a fight had broken out.

His second thought corrected that almost immediately when he saw no bullet holes, no fired arrows imbedded in anything, no blood trickled or spattered across the floor. No scorch marks to be had. This had been a rage-induced fit, plain and simple. He cautiously picked his way across the main floor and peeked into the rooms, one by one. They were all untouched. Even his room.

When he got to Ash's room, however, it was a different story altogether. Everything was broken, shattered, splintered to bits. From the Triceratops skull hanging on her wall to the dresser than held her clothes and all the books she had piled everywhere; it was nothing but ruin. He stared in disbelief before slowly backing out of the way of the open doorframe.

He felt a purring breath gush against the back of his neck and instinctively reached out to pat Clover. She was the only one who followed him here the entire way. She gazed upon the destruction that lay before her with anxious chitters, her body language clearly belying her distress.

"We'll find her. Don't worry."

"You won't have far to look," a familiar voice called from across the way. Light flooded the chamber from outside, if only briefly. Then they were cast back into the glow of candles and dying firelight. The metal door slammed home and he winced. Clover shrieked. Ash ignored her. She had her gaze on Allen. "What the fuck are you still doing here? After everything I did to get you nice and ready to leave like you wanted, you come straight back here."

His jaw clenched. She ticked a brow at him and he was reminded of when he first met her, but this…this was a pale imitation to that first time.

He motioned to the entire room instead.

"What did you do here?"

"Cleaned house. What's it fucking look like."

"You didn't do this to my room."

"Not your room anymore. And I was getting to it."

"You trashed your room," he pointed out.

"Why do you care?" She sounded vaguely exasperated and annoyed. He took a few steps forward before stopping completely when she reacted to him in a way she never had before: she reached for her knife, dropping herself into a ready position to fight. Her eyes never left him.

"You would seriously fight me?"

"Until you left," she replied. "You're not welcome here anymore. You overstayed it for four years. You should leave of your own free will before I make you leave."

"What changed?"

"You were supposed to leave, and you didn't."

"No—I mean…why the sudden change of heart?"

"Because I'm tired of a human living in my space."

"That's not what I meant!"

"Pretty sure it is."

"You didn't kill the Solarii! You—you spared them. You never spare them, not if you could help it!"

"Once in a blue moon fault of judgement. Won't happen again." She narrowed her eyes and flicked her gaze toward Clover. She jerked her head to the side, motioning for the raptor to move. Clover remained steadfast beside Allen. He stared at the raptor in awe. Ash growled. "Get out of the way, Clover."

The raptor hissed, baring her teeth at Ash. For a moment, the werewolf was thunderstruck, staring between Allen and Clover. Her surprise dropped away fairly quickly when she pinned him under her heavy gaze once more.

"Leave."

"No."

Ash growled deeper the second time around and boomed out louder, "LEAVE!"

"No."

She stalked forward. Allen braced himself. If she wanted to play the stubborn brat, then he could do the same. Clover stepped forward before Ash got near him, however, and screamed in the werewolf's face. When Allen placed a gentle hand on the raptor's flank, she stopped instantly and craned her neck to look at him and warbled softly. Ash was furious and looked ready to pounce on both of them.

"What the fuck did you do to my raptor?"

"I didn't do anything. She's doing this on her own."

"Bullshit," she spat at him. He threw up his hands in mock surrender.

"I swear!"

"No, you don't. I swear. You find other ways around it."

He sniffed, a half-chortle on his lips. She didn't even crack a smile. His eventually faded. Allen was quite aware of how itchy-fingered Ash could get. If he kept pushing his luck, she'd definitely snap. He's seen her close to it before and he didn't fancy being on the receiving end of her temper, if he could help it. He motioned for her to calm down.

"Please, just…I have to know something," he said softly. She growled again and it was a noise that couldn't possibly be made by a human. She was not-so-subtle in reminding him that she was very much so not human, indeed. When she didn't respond beyond that, he continued. "Why bother? With any of it, I mean. You didn't have to do anything that you did last night. The fire, the Solarii brothers, the…the pack. All my stuff. You didn't have to bring any of that, or help me at all. You didn't have to put up with me at all, and for four years almost, too."

She watched him with that unrelentingly sharp gaze of hers, not missing a detail as she stared him down. Clover purred beside him, watching, waiting.

"You're under my watch until you leave this island. Until the moment you leave, I'm responsible for everything; from your good health to your injuries. If you got hurt, it would be under my watch and I failed to keep you unharmed. I don't need that on my conscience."

Her response surprised him more than he believed at first. And she wasn't joking.

"Are we done here?" She pressed impatiently. He didn't miss the flick of her eyes between himself and Clover. The raptor hissed back softly in warning. Ash bared her teeth. To the raptor, she said, "You and I are having words later on."

Clover snapped her jaws in response to the challenge.

"Ash…"

"Don't call me that anymore! It's not my name, it never was! You chose it, so take it with you when you leave!"

He recoiled at her words, but it didn't deter him. He moved closer. She, shockingly, took a step back.

"Ash—"

"Stop it!"

He reached for her. She reached back, with her fist to his jaw. It would have made for a beautiful right hook—if he hadn't been the recipient. He went flying and at first, the pain in his jaw and the jarring crash to the floor didn't register. It hit him only moments after landing. His injured shoulder and burnt leg ached in unison with the rest of his new injuries, like hot nails biting into the afflicted areas. It took him a few extra moments to catch his breath.

Ash was a tightly clenched ball of tension and frayed nerves, mere feet away from him. She looked ready to pounce. She held back. She could have broken my jaw, easily enough.

Even so, his entire face now hurt. He gingerly prodded at his cheek and his fingertips came away red. Even if she was holding herself back, she still had managed to cut his cheek open with her bare knuckles. Her eyes were locked on him and both were blazing hot gold as she regarded him. Clover bellowed and quickly positioned herself between Ash and Allen, screaming bloody murder into the werewolf's face.

"Get out of my way, Clover. Or you're next." Ash rumbled. Clover shrieked back in challenge, yet she remained where she was, not advancing but neither was she retreating.

"Clover…Clover, it's all right. Please. Move over."

The green-feathered raptor squawked and warbled curiously as she glanced over at Allen. Eventually, she stepped aside and the living barrier between himself and Ash was gone. Clover shivered on the spot, distressed and anxious as she danced from foot to foot off to the side. Allen propped himself up carefully, wincing as everything decided to ache all at once.

"Ow…"

Ash snorted. Her hands were still balled up at her sides, trembling with rage.

"If you think, for one second, that I'm playing the part of a hero while I'm stuck on this fucking hellhole of a wet rock, Allen, think again. I'm just the lesser of all evils that's living here. I'm not a hero. I'm not good, and I never was to begin with. I just happen to do good things from time to time. You have no idea what I'm capable of or what I've done."

"You're right, I don't. I've only seen a fraction of it, and…it is pretty awful, when you think about it."

She blinked at him, clearly not expecting that answer. He pressed forward, as he slowly pushed himself to his feet.

"But I'm willing to bet—and you know me, I'm a bit of a gambling man, I can beat you at cards any day of the week—that even you don't know what you're capable of."

She didn't answer him. Instead her jaw tightened further. Clover's soft hisses ceased altogether, drowning them in silence. Allen gently prodded at his shoulder and when his palm came away wet and red, he sighed.

"Shit. Seems like I didn't bandage that right." He muttered to himself. Turning back to Ash, he said, "I may not know all the bad things you've done, and you probably don't even remember half of them yourself. But I've seen all the good you've done since I've been here. You've saved people, not just me, even when you could have turned a blind eye to everyone. You trained the most dangerous predators on this island to communicate and work with you, so that they wouldn't hurt people. Well, except when you tell them to, of course, but that's beside the point."

Allen offered a faint and tired smile, one Ash didn't return.

"I've seen the good you've committed yourself to. You didn't have to put up with me for nearly four years when I decided to stay. You taught me how to hunt and how to craft arrows. You taught me first aid in the field. You taught me what plants are good and which are bad to consume, or to use for medicine or even which ones are poisonous. Would a horrible person, like you claim to be, teach anyone survival skills of any kind to someone they didn't intend on helping keep alive? And the treasure—you went and literally risked your life, you nearly died, just to grab a few coins and knickknacks, all because I made a joke about going treasure hunting and pirates!"

She ducked her gaze, if only for a few seconds, but it was enough. Even her stance was less edgy.

"You saved a little girl from being burned to death and reunited her with her family. You kept a peace when it seemed like chaos was going to erupt. Albeit, it was in your usual gruff manner but…it works for you. Sort of." He offered a lopsided grin but winced when it tugged at his rapidly swelling, hurt cheek a little too much. "Ash…you think you're a monster, just because you're not human, and…granted it was probably humanity that deemed it an appropriate nomenclature for your kind, but…you're a lot closer to being human than most of the actual humans that live on this island than you believe."

That broke the tension. She flinched. A great, big twitchy flinch, like he'd struck her fully across the face. She opened her mouth, but he cut her to the chase.

"I'm not taking it back, so don't even say it. I refuse to take that back, because I mean it. You know that I mean it."

She leered at him angrily, her jaw clacking shut with an audible click and she pivoted sharply on her heel, making for the exit. She was running away again.

He started after her and she predictably turned to face him. He was ready this time around. She struck empty air and he hit home, pinning her tightly in an embrace. She was belated in her response, shocked as what he was doing registered a lot later than she probably would have liked.

"Let go of me."

"Ash—"

"I told you to stop calling me that!"

She tried to struggle, and he only held on tighter. She could have easily overpowered him, but she didn't. He took that as a good enough sign to keep pushing forward.

"No. You're right when you said I chose that name, so I'll keep calling you that, until I leave. Then you can go back to being whoever it was you want to be: the monster you pretend to be or the lonely woman who doesn't have a clue what to do with herself."

She froze in his arms.

"I don't know who you were before you came here…but I'm also willing to bet, the woman I've grown to know and have become accustomed to just might be the closest I'll get to knowing her. I don't think the visage you portrayed when I first met you is the real you. You've put up a wall to keep everyone out, because you're more afraid to let anyone in than anything, even losing just one person you've decided to save."

He squeezed her tighter, briefly. She was still stiff in his arms, unsure of whether to push him away or to continue standing still. She seemed to decide on the latter for the moment.

"I once made a promise to save humans, to kill the Akuma and save the souls that were bound to them. And…I don't know what happened to the Secret War, now that I'm here. I want to assume that we won, the Exorcists and the Black Order—but I'm afraid to leave and find out. I don't think I'll find anyone associated to the Order if I left to go find them. I don't think I'd find any Akuma, either. I might be the last Exorcist left on this planet and that…that scares me. Not only because I'm the last one left, but also because I'm afraid to find out I failed to uphold my promise."

A promise he made to himself, to the souls bound to the Akuma, and most importantly, to Mana. A promise to keep moving forward and walk his own path, no matter what.

"I'll leave this island, if that's what you want. But I'm making you a promise, here and now; I won't rest until I find a way to get you off of Yamatai."

His throat tightened and his eyes grew hot. He squeezed them shut, pushing back the urge to cry. Slowly, he unwound his arms from her and backed away. She hadn't made a move. That was good so far, right?

"I'll go now, all right? Just like you wanted. You won't have to worry about me imposing on you any longer."

Clover squealed when he started heading toward the door and her light footsteps followed in his wake. Ash didn't stop him, and mostly, he was relieved. A part of him, however, was almost disappointed.

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Back on the beach. Again. The waters were choppier now than they were earlier. He wasn't going to have a pleasant time getting back out, he could already feel his shoulder aching painfully in anticipation. The way down hurt a lot more, that was for sure. The campfire was long dead and out, just the way he'd left it.

But the raft wasn't where he'd left it. In fact, it wasn't there at all. When he scanned the waters, the sands, the bunker, the docks—he found pieces of it everywhere, most of which were floating in the waters.

"No, no, no…"

Clover peeped at him. More voices joined in and he found himself surrounded by the pack, warbling and vocalizing in those deceptively cute squabbling noises they liked to make when they made play. He wasn't distracted enough to not notice the giant three-toed footprints littering the sands all around.

Carmilla or Báthory—or both—had sabotaged him. They had destroyed the raft that Ash had built for him. He sank to his knees and dropped his pack, hands gripping the sides of his head.

"No, no, no—what am I going to do? I don't how to build a raft!"

Maybe I could build it from memory—it didn't look that hard of a design!

He'd have to head back up into the forest to collect the wood, though, first. And then he'd have to find enough rope to lash them all together. Where was he going to find all of that, though, at this time of the day? It was nearly night and he didn't fancy running into a Carnotaurus or a Dilophosaurus in the dark, let alone a pack of Compsognathus.

Allen groaned. Sol and Luna bumped him on either side as they passed him by, squawking. He glowered sullenly at their retreating backsides.

"You probably helped put them up to this, didn't you?"

They chittered as innocently as they could before trotting away from sight. He sighed heavily and brought his knees to his chest, burying his face against them.

"Damn it…"

He was startled at the clunk of wood dropping on concrete in front of him. He was expecting some of the raptors to be playing cute. Allen wasn't expecting Ash. She watched him with an impassive mask, but her eyes told him more than enough. It was hard putting it all back on at once.

"You broke my raft."

She crossed her arms over her chest.

"I worked hard on that, you know."

He stared at her, her words not clicking right away. When they did, he leapt to his feet and pointed at her. "You destroyed it, didn't you!"

"I just got here. And are you trying to get eaten by a Dilo or do you prefer death by Compies? I mean, they are kind of cute and all, rather fitting really, and it is getting dark out. They're always looking for easy prey. But I've told you time and time again, if you're staying out at night and prefer to remain alive, put up a damn fire, it'll drive them away! Have you forgotten everything I taught you?"

"I…but you…and the raft—"

"And get that finger out of my face before I bite it off. I told you—I just got here."

"Then—then one of your rexes did it!"

"Not my fault you didn't tell them not to play with it before you left it lying around," she shrugged. Ash kicked her foot out and it connected with something that went flying. It struck his boot. He flinched back on reflex.

"Build your damn fire before you get eaten."

He stared at her, dumbfounded.

"You…you told them to…break it…"

"I did no such thing." She huffed, looking offended. "But then again, you don't cheat at cards, now do you?"

He blushed and muttered under his breath.

"Wait…" He blinked and looked back up at her. "What're you doing here?"

"You need a new raft, don't you?" She sighed, stepping away. Her claws clicked and scratched against the concrete. She stopped by the bunker, where her pack was lying up against it. She swung it onto her shoulder. "I suppose I can help build you a new one. For a price, this time around."

"I…" he hesitated. "What…price?"

"Keep your promise," she simply said. All the malice she had once held in her visage earlier, all the rage and exasperation and so much more that had lined her face back at the cave was gone. Whether she was truly over it or not, he couldn't tell, but the fact that she was no longer practically frothing with fury made him feel somewhat better.

"…what changed?" He pressed. She watched him for a long time before shrugging.

"Does it matter?"

"It does to me."

"Then…I don't really know. I honestly don't anymore."

When she didn't answer and he didn't either, she sighed and clapped her hands, pointing at the wood at his feet.

"What did I say about the fire? C'mon, chop, chop! Unless you want to get eaten, then that's your choice."

He hurriedly scrambled to gather the fallen firewood. A pack of matchsticks was tossed beside him.

"Can't you start it? I know you can," he grumbled as he picked it up.

"Can, but don't want to. Besides, I won't always be around to do it, Allen."

He blinked at her. She ticked a brow up in return. "Well?"

"Fine, fine…"

It took him a better part of fifteen minutes to stack the wood and get the fire going. It was slow-going, but satisfying as the flames rose higher. When he sat down to rest by the fire, he began digging into his pack for the food he'd found in it earlier. Allen nearly jumped out of his skin when Ash plopped down beside him, pressing her shoulder to his.

"Um…" He could see her from the corner of his eye. She wasn't looking at him. Instead, she had her gaze locked on the flames. "You…don't normally sit this close. Or even next to me, like this."

"I'm trying something new."

"Which is…?"

"Getting close to someone."

His breath hitched as she drew her knees up to her chest, chin resting on her arms wrapped around her legs.

"I'm not the most likeable person in the world. I know I'm not exactly the golden child in that department but…" She faltered, scratching the back of her head. Her ears flicked in response, twitching until she finished. "I'm an asshole. I already know I'm an asshole and…it's…hard for me to trust people. Especially when they're here and gone before I can even…remember anything about them, and I freaked out. Internally. When you decided to stay, I mean. And I thought you'd eventually leave, just like everyone else did, because that's what everyone does. Everyone leaves me behind. But when you didn't, I just…I don't know. I don't know how to deal with people on a personal level and… I treated you like shit. I'm sorry."

He turned to look at her. She kept her gaze locked on the fire. He hadn't been expecting such a drastic change of heart from her—not this soon. Not ever, in fact. He nearly flinched when she teetered over to lean her head on his shoulder.

"You…you can leave, if you want. I never would have stopped you. I wouldn't wish this hellhole on anyone. Not even those stupid Solarii brothers. It's…not their fault, not really, that they got drafted by a psychopath to be his expendable lapdogs, I guess." She sighed heavily, closing her eyes. "But you don't have to leave either, if you wanted to stay, I mean. It's your choice. It was always your choice. I don't want to take that away from you. I won't force you to stay or to go."

Allen didn't answer, not right away. It was mainly because he didn't know how to answer that. He had always known she would never stop him from leaving—in fact, she'd been trying to encourage him for years, just a few shades shy of forcing him to go. But it really had always been his choice. She had never shoved him on a raft. She had never shoved him on the boat either. Twice now, they've had it in working order, and twice still, he's refused to board it and she's never forced him on it. Everyone else had been more than eager to leave, barely giving their impromptu guardian a second thought as to why she was staying behind.

He remembered how Korra, the pretty blue-eyed girl with the other benders, had offered to take him, even if room on the boat had been scarce. He remembered how Elena and Drake, and even the older gentleman, Sully, had tried to convince him to leave. They had even offered to take Ash.

Even when he had been ready to go the other day, ready to leave Yamatai for good—he came back. He couldn't have left her. She had something in her worth saving. A piece of humanity still buried inside her that she hid from everyone else and even herself, but he's seen glimpses of. She wasn't the monster she often claimed to be. She wasn't human, but she wasn't any less a person.

Something in her has changed, whether she acknowledged it fully or not.

Allen seized the chance to lean his head on hers, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She didn't fight it for once, although she seemed braced for the contact.

"I think I'll need the night to think about it, if that's all right."

"…take your time."

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Concrete made for a terrible bed. He woke up feeling even worse than when he went to sleep. At least Ash had helped patch up his shoulder and redressed his burn wound. She even apologized for clocking him in the face and cleaned that mess up. She admitted she shouldn't have hit him, either.

And now I'm paying with all sorts of bumps and bruises, he thought with a long, drawn-out groan. The sun had barely risen, but that was just fine. He had a long day ahead of him, regardless.

When he stepped out from the bunker he and Ash had taken shelter in, he found camp was already neatly set up. There were several large fish roasting over the campfire, and quite a few more laid out on large leaves, just waiting for him. His stomach gave a painful, hungry lurch and he didn't think twice as he sat down to devour them all. By the time he began wondering where Ash had gone, he was down to the last fish.

She must have eaten already, if she laid all this out for me.

When he finished, he got up to check inside the bunker again. Her pack was still there, as was her sleeping roll. She had even brought his as well. At least it was warm, sleeping next to her.

The moment the thought struck him, he felt his cheeks flush.

"Ow, sonuvabitch! Fuckin' hell!"

He jumped at the sound of Ash's voice, drifting its way over toward him. It came by the water. He hurried over to the edge of the walkway overlooking the sea, and he saw Ash down below on the sandy beach. She already had a raft halfway built. A pile of materials were sitting well away from the water, ready to be picked up and added to the contraption. He made his way to the staircase on the other side of the crumbled compound that led to the beachhead. She didn't look at him as he approached, but her ears occasionally swiveled in his direction.

She sucked at her thumb for a moment, and yanked it away to inspect it.

"Fucking splinters. Fuck you."

"You're in a mood of sorts," he called. She glanced at him finally, looking rather sullen.

"Fuck. Splinters."

"If you'd woken me up, I would have helped." He told her, to which she only shrugged. Instead, she returned to inspecting her thumb, before picking at it.

"Aha! Got you, you stupid sonuvabitch."

"You realize you're yelling at a splinter and it can't actually understand your anger at it?"

"Do you want a few F-bombs dropped your way?" He held up his hands in mock surrender as an answer. She snorted. "S'what I thought."

She continued lashing together a few pieces of wood and he stood idly by, watching. She worked quickly and without pause, her hands a flurry of movement that had already memorized this kind of work. How many times has she had to do this when the PT boat was not here, he wondered.

"Did you eat?" She asked abruptly. He blinked in momentary surprise.

"What?"

"Did you eat," she repeated, looking his way. Her eyes flicked over him before dropping to her hands.

"I did, yes. Thank you." He closed the distance between them, stooping down to still her hands. "And I've also decided."

She looked up from her work, her lips pursed. She didn't meet his gaze. "You've decided to stay, haven't you?"

He nodded, smiling sincerely at her.

"What about all that other stuff you've talked about, in bits and pieces? Your…Black Order and the Exorcists? I thought you made some kind of promise to them first."

His smile faltered, if only for a moment. He sat back onto the cool sand and sighed.

"I'm…having doubts that the Black Order is still out there. But I'm also having doubts that the Millennium Earl and the Noah and the Akuma are still around, either. If they were still around, I don't think there'd be any people left in this world. I want to believe things went right for us, even if I wasn't there to witness it."

"How can you have that much faith?"

"It's just a feeling I have. Just like the one I have with you, for example."

"Me."

"Yes. You claim to have been born near…the late twentieth century. That's over a hundred years after I was born. If people didn't exist, then how does it explain you? The Solarii on this island? My point is, if there are still people in the world, then the Akuma and their masters failed to destroy everything. We must have won. But if that's true, then there's…just no place for me out there. Where would I even go, if I left here? It's hundreds of years past my own time. I'll bet that the world's changed so much since then, and even more if you're really a few hundred years old. I'd be more lost than I usually get. I wouldn't know where to start in trying to start a new life out there."

Ash was watching him with curiosity now and not her narrow-eyed suspicion she usually regarded him. It was more endearing to see her as such, in fact.

"Everyone I knew is gone…there'd be no one left. I'd be a name in a history book, if I'm lucky enough, although I doubt it'd be public knowledge. But here, I can try to help you at least. And you'd probably assimilate more quickly than I could on my own out in the world. Maybe…if we get off this island together, we could…" He hesitated. He had never really thought that far.

Ash heaved a sigh of her own, exasperated by his lengthy silence.

"I was born in America, I think. Maybe we could…travel there. I don't know how well that'd work out, though, since I don't have a passport and you kind of need one these days…"

"I needed a passport to travel too, you know," he grumbled back.

"Simmer down, old man, I get it. It was harder in your day and us young'uns have got it easy."

"Old man!" He squawked back indignantly. She laughed quietly and waved him down.

"Chill, would you? The white hair is actually very charming. Suave, even. Not a lot of people can pull it off as young as you. I know I would never be able to," she said with a conspiratorial wink at him. She returned to working on the raft, her tail swaying back and forth behind her as she went. It could almost be called a wag, if it weren't so slow an arc. She laughed as she did and he felt his face go red.

"I mean, maybe we could travel. I dunno. We'd have to get to actual land first, and not swept back to this wet rock. Even without Himiko jacking shit up, the Dragon's Triangle makes the Bermuda Triangle down in the Bahamas look like Disneyland."

"What's Disneyland?"

"Oh, shit that's right, that's…that's spoilers right there. Um…look, the point is, there's enough storm systems that move through this particular area that could ruin our day. It's definitely why we experience a higher rate of getting hit by them than most other areas in the world. After that, though…I don't know, man."

She rocked back on the balls of her paws, looking at her hands and the raft.

"If you were born in America…then we could visit there, first. Do you recall what part?"

She glanced back up at him and he grinned back. She stared at him like he had grown a second head. "I…I was joking."

"Well, I wasn't. I told you, I promised I'd find a way off this island for you. And I intend to keep that promise." He stood and brushed the sand off his pants before offering his hand to her. "I'm staying. You can stop working on the raft now. I won't need it. We won't, in fact. Not until we've found a way to stop Himiko from coming back, permanently."

She stared at his hand for a long time, hesitating. Fear. That was in her eyes, he instantly recognized. She was afraid. Afraid to accept his offer, his promise, to move forward, even. She'd been at this for too long, been here for far too long and far too alone. He wiggled his fingers expectantly. "Come on, Ash. I know we can figure something out together."

She transferred her mismatched gaze to his face, studying it, scrutinizing it, trying to find a lie when in reality, there was none. He wasn't joking. He wasn't lying. He intended to keep his promise to her.

Maybe when we leave together—not if—we can try to find where the Black Order used to stand. And I can pay my respects to my friends, find out what happened to them. If the world is still standing, then they succeeded. I have to thank them for that, at the very least.

Then, very slowly, she reached for his hand and took it in her own, squeezing it in hers. He pulled her to her feet.

"Deal," she said, cracking a very thin, crooked smile. "By the way…you look ridiculous, with your cheek all swollen like that."

And the moment was gone. He scowled at her. "And whose fault do you think that is?"

"I know, I know…I am a complete and utter asshole. I'm sorry I punched you in a fit of rage. I'll try not to let it happen again." He snorted, but he couldn't find it in him to stay mad. He felt too good at that moment. Allen felt like he'd finally made progress with this stubborn woman.

It just took four years to do so.

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