A/N: Hey guys! I made a Spotify playlist to listen to while I wrote this chapter that turned out to capture the vibes that I want to emulate with this story pretty well, so I thought I'd share it here (even though there's no hyperlinking on here). Feel free to type the following key-by-key into your browsers if you want something to compliment your reading with: playlist/5CH8gVXwNna0yWb6KdUQky?si=_PE_Nk16R7S5USJGx1SdrA

Step Two. Anticipate nauseating amounts of sentimentality when you return to your hometown, even if you are literally there against your will.

I was sobbing in a Suvarnabhumi Airport toilet stall when I remembered I had to call Rama - it was only polite to let my boss know I was being deported, after all.

"Hey Rama! Ari here! Listen, I got caught with an expired visa while I was at that shelter and I have to go back to the States, so I'm probably not going to be able to help with that clean-up after all. I'm going to try and be back in a couple of weeks or so, but if you come across my passport, could you just mail that to 1241 East Main Street, Stamford, Connecticut? Okay, you take care. Bye for now."

I got back to the task at hand as soon as I hung up the phone, weeping violently into the back of my head. Please don't make me go back there, please, please don't make me go back there, I thought to myself.

Though I can look back now and recognise that my definition of okay had been warped by T-R-A-U-M-A, things seemed like they were going so well in Thailand. How was I supposed to just pack up and leave for anywhere, let alone the place where everything had happened to me?

For awhile, I was counting on my grandpa (the literal billionaire) swooping in and doing something gratuitous and over-the-top like get the US ambassador to Thailand involved, but, in the end, he had done absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, the moment I mentioned I was being asked to leave Thailand, he insisted on putting my grandma on the call so I could 'tell her the good news as well'. With the power of hindsight, I realise how badly he just wanted me to come home. However, as the person who would have happily walked the five hundred and sixty miles back to The Pink Moon if it meant I could stay, I felt a unique kind of betrayed.

I continued to wallow in my own misery for a few more minutes before deciding that, if there was nothing I could do about having to leave, the only thing left to do was try and distract myself. So, I started scrolling through my contacts, trying to work out if there was anybody left to call regarding my unexpected homecoming - more specifically, anybody I wanted to call.

A large portion of my contacts were people from school that I'd fallen out of touch with; it's actually quite amazing how much wealthy, private school friends begin to drop off like flies after your life takes a turn not dissimilar to an episode of the Jerry Springer show. I mean, I don't exactly blame them. I wouldn't know what to say to them about monumental family melodrama either when the majority of our conversations revolved around whose pool we were hanging around that weekend or which guy from our brother school's ass were going to look at on the next field day.

I wanted to call my little sisters desperately - I felt so shitty for not keeping in touch with them the same way I did with Uncle Shane and my cousins. That being said, if I wasn't able to handle being on the phone with my mother amidst a near panic attack, I sincerely doubted my ability to complete a simple "Hi, can I talk to my sisters?"

I wondered how much they knew about everything. Did they hold it against me that I left? Or did they hold it against Mom? Were they even aware of everything that was going on? They had to at least have some idea - my mom was the certified queen of suppressing the truth, but surely even she could not have brushed off the entire breakdown of everything those girls had ever known with an "Oh, it's a secret."

"Good afternoon, international passengers. This is a pre-boarding message for flight EK28 to New York John F. Kennedy International Airport. Regular boarding will begin in ten minutes." A grainy intercom sounded.

"Oh, Jesus fucking Christ." I whispered, phone going to my lap and head to my hands. The thought briefly crossed my mind to just start running as if it was a matter of life and death - maybe all the way back to Ko Dao, maybe west to Cambodia, just somewhere where I could still be Ari in Asia, not Ariette Levesque in Greenwich, Connecticut. In the end, however, I surmised that I would be done for as soon as my grandpa realised what was going on. I was well-aware of how Vince McMahon dealt with familial issues, and I knew for a fact that he was not above ratting his own granddaughter out to Thai immigration police.

"Jesus fucking Christ…" I repeated.

After one last eye wipe, a generous sniff and a quiet exhale, I rose to my feet and headed towards my boarding gate. At some point along the way, I passed by a shiny statue of Buddha - dark bronze in colour and just overtaking me in height. It was a near exact replica of the Buddha that was kept outside of the Pink Moon, and I could not help but to take a moment to stop and stare.

I had never been religious - not even a little bit - but something about the statue made me want to raise my head a little higher. Maybe because it reminded me so much of Ko Dao, maybe because it reminded me that, among all the uncertain and ugly, there could and would still be something serene and absolute.

Waiting until I thought nobody was watching - because I knew full well that I shouldn't have, I gently leaned forward and high-fived the statue's outstretched hand.

"Bye, Buddha. I'll see you back in Ko Dao soon." I said, a soft smile etching at my lips.

After that, I continued my journey towards the boarding gate, footsteps marginally less shaky and head marginally more clear. And when I finally spotted EK28 amongst all the other flight numbers on all the other gates, I didn't scream or blow chunks or even quietly sob like I thought I would.

As a matter of fact, all I did in the end was take a deep breath, join the end of a very long line and begin to brainstorm how the fuck I was going to make it through a seventeen-hour flight.

I didn't quite know how I got there or how long I'd been there, but eventually I found myself on Lake George. No one had explicitly told me that it was Lake George, but I remember the sea of red maples and yellow birches, the movement of the river and the curves of the mountaintops all like I had just been there yesterday.

It took me a few moments to note that I was sitting in a narrow aluminium boat, butt planted firmly on a thin layer of marine carpet laid out across the bottom. I gently gripped the side of the vessel and peered downbeat into the water. Darkened by the overcast sky, I could just barely see my own reflection staring back at me; I looked nineteen - just how I thought I would - but, for some reason, I felt so young and small.

"Careful, Ari."

I looked back to see two men sitting back to back, each holding tall fishing rods cast deep into the lake. Both of them looked at me with identical looks of worry, but somehow I knew it was the taller man who had just spoken.

"I am being careful." I replied, scooting closer to the two. I shot a daring half-smirk towards the shorter man and he pretended to shake his head exasperatedly before tapping the bench seat he was on. My face broke out in a full beam and I plopped beside him, both of us just looking at each other for a moment before he took his hat off his head and put it on mine.

"Now what do we have here? We've got ourselves a cowgirl." The shorter man cooed, and we both giggled together.

"Hey, Ari, why don't you tell this guy what you got at school last week?" The taller man interjected, looking back from his fishing pole at us.

"Oh goodness, what did this brainiac do now?" The shorter man added on.

"Umm…" I trailed off just for dramatic effect before bobbing up and down in excitement, "I got an Excellence Award from the principal!"

The shorter man gasped deeply and wrapped around me, "The cheque I sent to him must have finally cleared." He beamed.

"Hey! He told me I'm an asset to the Greenwich Academy community!" I protested.

"That means my cheque must have cleared too!" The taller man exclaimed. The two shared a belly laugh whilst I began to sulk, crossing my arms and staring at the ground.

"Hey, come here…"

The taller man put his fishing rod down and beckoned me closer. With a scowl etched onto my face, I slowly scooted over before the man wrapped his arms around me.

"Look at me." He said, and I complied. "I am so, so proud of you. I mean, I'm always going to be proud of you, but I am so proud of you right now that it almost hurts. You are smart, sweet, beautiful, talented, funny… And you obviously inherited your mother's knack for schmoozing authority figures." The taller man added before kissing the top of my head.

"What does schmoozing mean?" I asked.

"Ass-kissing." The shorter man interjected.

"I'm telling Mom you think she kisses asses!"

"Hey, no swearing." The taller man gently scolded. Keeping his arms around me, he gently leaned forward towards the shorter man, "She'll do it; she's a little snitch. What can we possibly do to buy her silence?"

I laughed as the shorter man exaggeratedly looked off into the distance and rubbed his chin in thought.

"You know, there's a pancake restaurant that we'll go right past on the way back. Maybe we can stop there for dinner?"

"Can I really have pancakes for dinner?!" I squealed, swiveling from side to side excitedly.

"I don't know… I heard you can also have waffles… or a sundae." The shorter man spoke.

"Sundaes for dinner?!"

"As long as you promise not to tell your mother about it… and the ass-kissing." The taller man chimed in, his head going to my shoulder and his pinky finger raising up in front of me.

"I won't." I replied, grinning from ear to ear and grabbing the finger with my own.

Sensing someone else's eyes on me, I looked up and met the shorter man's gaze. However, I seemed as if as soon as I had caught it, he looked away. I softly furrowed my eyebrows before a gentle squeeze from the taller man distracted me.

"I thought we were all going to do some fishing on this trip. You said you liked it." He sighed, gesturing towards a smaller, purple-coloured pole, resting alone atop the hull of the boat.

"Sorry…" I peeped, looking up sheepishly at the taller man.

"I think she just didn't want to miss anything." The smaller man said, shrugging his shoulders.

"I just wanted to spend time with guys." I whispered.

The two men cooed in unison, "Aw, she wants her cheque now." The taller one laughed.

"Hey!" I protested.

"You know I'm just kidding." He said, before tucking a piece of hair behind my ear, "But, come on, it was hard work finding a fishing pole I thought you'd like, just do a little bit of fishing with us."

"I'll even cast your line for you." The shorter man added on.

I thought for a moment before nodding my head, "Okay, I'll get my line."

"Good girl." The taller man, patting my back as I got up and walked towards the narrow hull.

I couldn't quite remember what happened - maybe the boat rocked all of a sudden or cloddish little me just lost her balance, but before I could reach my little fishing pole, I fell to the side and abruptly toppled right over the edge of the boat, a sharp yelp exiting my mouth.

"ARI!"

I heard the sound of fishing poles hitting into the water as the two men raced over to the edge, their big hands and arms outstretched. Just like their looks of worry before, the two men's faces of pants-shitting terror were identical as they raced to grab me. Unfortunately, I fell too fast for either of them reach me, just as my back touched the icy water…

"Dad!" I gasped, jerking forward and gripping my armrest.

It took me until I met a flight attendant's horrified gaze to realise what had happened and where I was. Still getting my bearings again, I gave a painfully loud nervous laugh and a slight shrug, trying to give this woman the impression that I was just as mystified about my behaviour as she was. Unsure of what else to do - even after my sense of self-awareness returned, I held a chuckle until the flight attendant turned on her heel and disappeared behind a curtain.

"She's seen a lot worse.." I reasoned, flopping back into my seat and finally rubbing the sleep out my eyes. Only then did I realise that the businessman sitting beside me was also giving me a critical look. Tragically, any kind of damage control would be useless with him as, three hours and four vodka sodas into the flight, I had forcibly told this man my entire life story; he had thought I was a fruit loop long before I had awoke like a horror final girl at the start of a sequel. By that point, the best I could offer was avoiding prolonged eye contact.

Eventually, the businessman simply shook his head and looked back at a Neil deGrasse Tyson book sitting in his lap. God, I wish I had remembered to take a book with me when I left Ko Dao, I thought as I stole a glance.

No, that wasn't true. What I really wished for is that I remembered to take my passport with me when I left Ko Dao.

"Excuse me, Miss?" I called as another flight attendant walked back. She leaned towards me, hands on her knees as if she was my mother coming into my room to see what I was doing up there when I was seven. "Can I get another vodka soda?"

"Unfortunately, we will be beginning our descent into JFK soon, so food and beverage services have been suspended."

"Oh." I squeaked through gritted teeth, "… Great."

That was only three-quarters sarcastic; a part of me was just relieved that I had made it through a long-haul flight without having lost all touch with reality, regardless of where I was landing. When the plane actually did begin to drop lower and lower however, I found myself frigid in my seat, hands tightly gripping the armrests again. My heart beat fast in my chest just like it did when I had seen that the Englishman's shirt, and my eyes clamped shut.

"You don't like landings?" The businessman asked sardonically.

"No. I just don't like this country."

It was 6:03 in the evening when the plane touched down on New York soil. The October sun was low and purple on the horizon and, unlike everything else I had ever known in this goddamn place, nothing about the city felt like it had changed. Not since the last time I was here a year ago. Not since the first time I remember being here. It was always just bright, busy, vaguely-filthy, vaguely-breathtaking New York.

Equipped with my singular tote bag, I drifted directly past baggage collection and towards a tightly-packed crowd of waiting people. Some simply stood holding white signs adorned with neat black marker, whilst others just hollered and waved their arms high in the air.

When I finally caught sight of my uncle, I saw that he was doing both.

"Ari! Ari!" He called. Above his head, he held a sign that, in big bold letters, said: "SORRY YOU GOT DEPORTED FOR HAVING A DUD VISA".

Shane laughed and, after a few moments, so did I.

In the end, the two of us met each other in the middle, enveloping each other in a bear hug. Shane squeezed me so tightly that it was a little hard to breathe, but I say anything for fears that he would let me go if I did.

"Hey, kiddo."

"Hey, Uncle Shane."

We stayed like for a few moments before Shane spoke up again:

"Let me get a look at you…"

He took a step back, grabbing my face in both of his hands. Personally, I didn't think I'd changed that much since he last saw me; eighteen to nineteen years old was one of those time periods where all you did was get a little drunker and, if you were lucky, a little smarter.

"You really are your mother's daughter." was all that Shane said after a long pause.

That much I could never deny. I had been my mother's twin basically since I exited the womb: same eyes, same nose, same smile, hell, we even had the same curvatures to our hands and feet. I had run hundreds of thousands of miles away to separate myself from this woman, but, no matter how much I abhorred her, one glance in the mirror was always all it took to remind me that I would never fully escape Stephanie McMahon.

"Unfortunately." I sighed. Shane only shook my head sympathetically in reply.

"Come on, kid, I'm taking you all the way to Greenwich tonight."

"Oh, god, why?" My intention was to just have Shane drop me off in Manhattan and I would figure things out for myself but, knowing my family, I should have realised straight away that that was never destined to actually happen.

"That's a story for the car." Shane replied, wrapping an arm around my shoulder, "Now let's get the fuck out of here."

We were well on our way to the Long Island Expressway before either Shane or I said anything more. He had driven his old Chevrolet Corvette into the city to come and pick me up, and I couldn't help but sit there in the passenger seat for some time in silence, letting the New York air blast through my hair. The feeling made me nostalgic for a place I knew I would never be able to return to again; a place that, the more I think about it, probably never actually existed at all.

"So?" Shane abruptly said, someplace near Kew Gardens Hills.

"So what?"

"Aren't you going to ask about what you've missed? How everybody's doing?"

"I hate to break it you, Uncle Shane, but that's exactly what you guys have been telling me about in your phone calls for the past year. I know that Grandpa's always working, no surprise there, Grandma's doing… as you said… whatever Grandma does, you're still, quote, loving the corporate life, Marissa's going back to work, the boys are doing great St Anthony's - Declan's even playing varsity football now, and my sisters, while they do miss Greenwich Academy, are thriving at Sacred Heart."

"Oh, wow." was all that Shane had to say for a few moments, "Wait, but isn't there… other people that you want to ask me about?"

"Nobody I actually want to know about." I answered firmly, looking down at my lap.

"Hey, hey, I'm not just talking about those people. What about- Hey, who was that guy you used to like? The guy your mom said you spent a whole summer blasting One Direction and crying in your room over."

"First off, it wasn't One Direction, it was the Neighbourhood. Second, that was literally three years ago."

"Oh, I remember who it was! It was Seth Rollins. Oh, he's doing great. He had that… what does Dad call it now? Universal belt for a while, but Brock came back and we all know how Vince McMahon feels about Brock-"

"Shane, I liked him when I was fifteen years old and that was only because he smiled at me and asked how school was going literally once." I interjected. Not to mention it would have literally been a crime for him to date me and he was with somebody else at the time, hence the entire summer spent crying to Sweater Weather.

"Alright, alright. I'll stop. He was too-"

"Old for me. Yes, I vividly remember the lecture about statutory rape and the age of consent from Mom and… Paul."

Not counting the rumbling of the car and the rush of the wind, there was a brief silence.

"So that's what you're calling him?" Shane asked lowly.

"What else do I call him now, Shane?"

The both of us just looked at each other for a few moments before he softly shrugged his shoulders.

"Fair enough."

Queens row houses had turned into Manhattan skyscrapers before the awkwardness had dissipated and one of us spoke again.

"So you didn't just take me to the city because?" I asked, crossing my arms am tightly.

"Your grandma's throwing a surprise dinner for you. Dad even took the night off from a show in Poughkeepsie for it."

"Oh god…" I responded, basically throwing my head into my hands.

"Now, while she's not aware enough to know that you don't want anything like this, she's aware enough not to invite anybody you're not on speaking terms with. It's just going to be them, Marissa and I and the boys." Shane explained. "And if you're really not up to it, I can always call and tell them you're too exhausted to come."

"That's a great suggestion, Uncle Shane, but will my absence tonight be held against me somewhere down the line if I don't?"

I looked over at the man just as he began to softly hum in thought. Eventually, he nodded, "Probably."

As night fully enveloped the sky, Manhattan skyscrapers gradually morphed into Bronx towers, Bronx towers soon became Westchester colonials and Westchester colonials eventually turned into sprawling, Connecticutian manors. I had officially returned to the Pride Lands, so to speak.

"Does it feel different?" Shane asked after he caught me staring at an estate that, lit up in the darkness, looked startlingly similar to the one I grew up in.

I softly scoffed, "It's felt different since before I left."

We continued down a narrow tree-lined road for a few minutes before taking a left turn onto a cobblestone stone path and towards a tall, wrought iron gate held up in between two fieldstone columns of comparable height. When we got close enough, Shane gingerly reached out his arm and plugged in a six digit code on a keypad located on the side of short concrete box just ahead of the gates. When I was little, the code used to be my birthday (090100). However, following a ferocious dispute between Shane and my mom during Thanksgiving 2005 over whether it was Declan or I that was the favourite grandchild, Grandpa had drunkenly trudged out to the gate in the middle of the night - wearing nothing but a dressing gown and slippers - and changed it to the date the Patriots had won the SuperBowl in 2002, muttering: "I hate every single one of you equally" the entire time.

The iron gates slowly opened on their own and Shane drove through. From there, it was only a short journey to an imposing, ivory-coloured Georgian abode, forty-feet tall and twice as wide. Lights from inside the house illuminated a rounded portico at the top of the front steps and, when I saw an older dark-haired woman standing under it, I froze stiff in the passenger seat until I realised it was just Marissa. When Shane's car finally came to a stop beside a large three-tier fountain in the driveway, she walked over to greet us.

"Oh, real quick…" Shane muttered as we exited the corvette. I turned to face him as the man reached into his pocket to retrieve a singular key, "This is for you."

I had been uncoordinated since birth, but I just managed to catch the tiny object after Shane threw it in my direction.

"What's it for?" I asked curiously, holding the key up to him.

"It's a key to our pool house back at home. You can stay there as long as you need." Shane answered.

I softly smiled; sure, my uncle could be painfully obnoxious a lot of the time, but there was no denying that he would always look out for me. "Thanks, Uncle Shane."

"No problem, kiddo." He replied.

I turned back towards the house and happily waved at Marissa as she got closer and closer. Despite the circumstances, I was genuinely excited to see her and my cousins - it wasn't like any of them were the ones to drive me away in the first place.

"Hi, sweet girl," Marissa beamed, pulling me into a hug. Sweet girl had been her nickname for me for longer than I could remember; ironic since, according to my mom, the first thing I ever did to Marissa was yank her hair and spit up on her in that exact order.

"Hey, Auntie," I said softly, throwing my arms around her.

"Do you need any help with your bags?" She asked, gently shifting me from side to side before taking a step back.

"Maybe if I had any." I replied, gesturing towards my tote bag before shaking my head, "It's a long story."

Marissa only nodded her head in acknowledgment before grabbing my hand, "Come on, nobody will admit it but they're all pissing themselves with excitement in there."

"Um, hello, by the way." Shane cut in, raising a single hand.

"Oh, I saw you two hours ago, I haven't seen this munchkin in over a year." Marissa pointed out, practically dragging me towards the slightly ajar front door. Even outside, I could hear the blare of football from the den, the yells of my cousins and the baritone voice of my grandpa. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I had missed going to family dinners. Sure, I felt oddly shielded from any pain that people could cause me on the other side of the world, but I also felt extremely lonely, and, no matter what was going on, I never felt lonely at a family dinner.

I stepped into the foyer ahead of Marissa, taking my sneakers off and placing them on the mahogany shoe rack by the door. The thermostat was set to freezing, as per usual, but there was just something in the house that felt like stepping into a warm hug. Again, I was immediately nostalgic for a place to which I could never return; I just wanted to walk into the house side by side with both my parents again, marveling at the crystal chandelier and the imperial staircase as if it was the most amazing thing in the entire world.

… Well, at least with the people I thought my parents were.

Echoing from the space in between the staircase, I could hear slow shuffling footsteps from around the corner. If I was standing in that very foyer a year before, I probably could have picked up who it was based solely on how they moved their feet. Unfortunately, when you moved half a world away with the intention of never coming back, it was those little things - like whose footsteps belonged to who - that were the first to slip away from your memory.

I was vaguely apprehensive; the nervous feeling you get when you haven't seen a family member for a long time and you were about to having wrapped itself around my entire soul. Shane and Marissa tried to give me comforting looks as I anxiously clasped my hands, but I knew I wouldn't feel any better until I finally saw somebody else's face.

And then, quite abruptly, I did see somebody else's face.

I grinned straight away at the figure standing in between the stairs and, almost immediately, they replied with a soft grin of their own. It set off something inside of me similar to when I had seen the Buddha statue when leaving Bangkok; somewhere in between the uncertain and ugly, there was something serene and absolute.

"Well, hi there." I called out.