An hour later finds us sitting in my truck, GPS leading to Lash's specifications, music playing from the radio, and two cups of coffee only freshly in the cupholder- hers something that resembles a milkshake with a mile of whipped cream, frilly chocolate circles, and pink filling, mine a steaming cup of black coffee. She's got her legs crossed in front of her, typing on her computer and occasionally taking large gulps from her drink, and I'm staring straight ahead as we drive on one of the few remaining backwoods highways in Green Earth, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel to an old CD I found in the car.

You could almost mistake us for friends.

I look out the windows, since there's barely any traffic. Trees are intermittent, and every third building we pass in the hinterlands is either hollowed out or blown to bits. Many crossing roads are more dirt, tread marks, and disruptive turmoil than actual black strips of pavement with yellow lines. It's hard not to look at my passenger with derision for her involvement in the whole fiasco, but my vitriol, as confined as it may be, has always been aimed at Hawke. Many of the COs from Black Hole were either social rejects given power, or young people like Lash who were born impressionable in a world of chaos. From the very first moments I knew Hawke, he was competent, self-aware, powerful, and above all, self-serving. Even when he moved from enemy lines to allies, I never was convinced that he was acting on anything more than survival instincts, one of the few emotions I was convinced he contained, until his mind broke and he stayed to die in Von Bolt's citadel.

If I restrain my pride, I can look past Lash, because I'm next to her as she seat-jams to my Fleetwood Mac album even though she prior called it old-people music. She's a child. Hawke knew what he was doing, and all I knew is that he was productive at it. Even if I don't bleed as green as someone like Eagle, who had half-a-mind to throw Hawke off of a transport copter even as he worked to restore Omega Ruins, he was the enemy. Not Black Hole, not Sturm. Hawke was the one who almost singlehandedly had us at our knees. Everything we work to rebuild is because of him.

So wrapped up in my thoughts I am that I hit a bump in the road, sending everything up in the air. Lash yelps, the coffee lid pops off and stains my seat, and I hit my head on the roof of the car. "Damn it," I groan. "Sorry about that."

Lash shrugs. "My coffee's fine. Don't know about yours."

I pay it no mind, taking a sip, as if one sip will immediately restore me to full energy despite going off of less sleep than I normally regimented. Lash looks at it with disgust. "I never got how Hawke drinks liquid tar like that," she says. Immediately, I bristle at his name, but do my best to ignore it. "If it doesn't have, like, explosive taste, then it's not worth drinking as far as I care."

"Eh." I brush my tension off by humoring her. "It's fuel. Gets you through the day."

"Like your smokes."

I nod, not bothering to indulge her look of overdramatic disgust. I focus back on the music again for a short time until I reevaluate Lash's comment about Hawke.

"Drinks?" I ask as innocuously as an interrogator.

She becomes so pale that her veins nearly turn neon. "Oh…" she says, in the way that a teenager caught with a secret has.

"Care to explain?" I ask as sweetly as my mother would after I threw rocks at my neighbor's cat.

"I dunno," she admits, looking down. "Like… I guess I'm just hopeful. He's… probably dead, whatever. But, like… maybe he got away. I don't think I saw him die, and I have, like, a bajillion theories, so…"

"I understand," I answer as if I actually mean it.

She swallows, and shuts the computer. "Kind of wish I did, though."

"Did what?"

"Saw him die. Just get it over with."

"Oh," I breathe, and this time it's genuine.

Before we can get bogged down in emotional bullshit, though, you add, "but like I said, I have theories. And who knows, maybe they're right. Speaking of theories, how long til we get there?"

You spit that out so fast that I'm not even sure what you said until I play it back in my head, turning down the radio so I can hear it replay. "Oh. If the GPS is right, we're almost there."

"Ooh, neato." She perks up and looks out the window. "It's about time."

I look at the GPS. It still reads "Brahm's Port" with all that the intents imply. I haven't been to the actual bay in ages, and I only vaguely remember the land around it I sent my tank brigade through to destroy a batch of unmanned, unarmed battleships. It all looks similar to the semi-ruined state it was left in, the reconstruction money still working its way upstate. We exit another hamlet on the south side of things, hitting another streak of hinterland plains. It looks as normal and barren as usual, until…

"Look at that!" she squeals, pointing straight ahead.

I look up from the road at the surroundings. "Holy shit."

I pull the car to a stop right between two lush patches of grass that obstruct the tan plains. Like mystified children, we climb out, Lash hopping out of the truck onto her feet. Through the landscape I can already see the saplings of trees and the stems of newly blooming flowers amid miles of pure grass. To be honest, I never thought I'd see the day. Even the weeds are growing back in, albeit sporadically. I suppose even the pariahs of nature deserve their fair share.

Between a few flowers I can already see the dandelions peeking their heads, covered in fragile seeds that even today I'd like to believe still hold a wish in them. Then again, there are many things I'd like to do, but that doesn't make them possible. Lash is busy diving into the grass like a happy dog, scampering around in the knee-deep grass with glee. She's taking it all in and here I am staring at one dandelion out of what already have to be thousands. It's a strange flower to consider a favorite, but perhaps it's the beauty in the mundane that I see, that I've lost. I want to pick it out of the ground and relive some childhood nostalgia, but I can't bring myself to tamper with it. If I tamper with it, it could reveal itself to be another distant dream.

Lash finally crawls out of the grass, covered in loose green plantlife. "What do you think?" she asks, grinning like a student who knows she's getting an A. "Isn't it freakin' awesome?"

I nod as she brushes off her trenchcoat and shakes foliage out of her hair. "It's amazing. How did this happen?"

She blinks. "Well, like I said, I have some theories, but even then I'm not sure. I actually don't have much of a clue what's going on and I'm certainly not behind it. Wish I was, that'd be awesome. I just know an act of God when I see one."

"I thought you were a scientist."

"I'm a realist. Science just happens to fall into realism ninety-five percent of the time. And this is, like, the other five percent."

I nod. "Yeah. I just wonder who God is in this scenario."

Lash shrugs, but I can tell it's not as nonchalant as she thinks. "I don't know. All I know is that I just want to make sure whatever this is gets to do what it needs to. Like… that's why I messed with the road map. And that's why I've been acting kind of funny. I didn't plan this. I wish I did. It just… happened. It happened where I used to make the opposite happen. And as weird as it sounds, especially from me, I really want this to happen."

I put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs me off, forcing a smile. "But yeah, this is pretty much it. I knew it happened in Lockley, I heard it was happening here. I just thought I'd show you that this is the real deal."

"This barely feels real to me, though."

For once in her life, Lash is quiet, looking off into the distance. We spend a good amount of time completely silent, the sun rising in the sky and the plant life growing at an alarming rate that still didn't feel fast enough. The grass slowly spreads across the nothingness, the flowers bloom in slow motion, and the trees go through years of time in merely an hour. It's bizarrely spiritual.

"Never thought I'd actually enjoy watching grass grow," I admit some amount of time later.

Lash giggles. "I know right?" Reluctantly, she turns away and says, "but we should kick it. We got reconstruction to do, right?" Before I answer, she's hopped into the truck, hoisting herself up into it. That seems to be that, and if Lash is going to have the right attitude about it, I'm with her. I walk to my side of things and hop in, starting the car. The coffee is cold as I take a sip, and Lash's is a bizarre concoction of melted leftovers, but she guzzles it down anyway.

I start the car and go straight ahead. Lash looks confused, asking "aren't we heading back?"

I nod. "I'm just looping around."

And I do, about an hour later, after driving through the entirety of Brahm's Port, finally as green as the Green Earth I remember. As we return to reality I wipe my eyes before Lash sees that I'm crying, but the road ahead still looks blurry, and I can't tell if that's because everything looks depressingly the same or if I wish I'd never left.