Alexander Littlewood | Rena, Sarah, Sofia

He’d thought that it was painful enough the first time, watching her grieve him before he’d actually died, but this time - this time was different. Even without the physical pain, even without the promise of imminent death for both of them, even when he knew they were safe and was trying his best to make her realize that, too, his heart broke a little bit more with every mumbled phrase that escaped her lips. Maybe it was that in itself, the fact that she was so unsupported that her mind was putting through some of her worst experiences, that made it hurt so much. He wanted to take this from her, carry whatever burden the cube had triggered, make a difference. He wanted to make a difference. (Another part of the pain of the situation was his helplessness in changing it.) Some of the sentences he’d heard before, some only had that vague sense of deja vu that was probably just imagined, but every one of them made him want to do anything, everything, to find his way into her head and drag her back unscathed.

“I will not leave you.” His grip tightened as he leaned forward to stare at her with a strange fire behind his eyes. Maybe it was a coincidence that she’d said that specific memory at that specific time, but if there was the smallest chance that he could persuade her that he was wholeheartedly here, he would take it. He needed to make his words the truth, if only because of the weariness in her feverish whispers - because that was what it was, not grief or anger or any emotion but tiredness. Tired of trying, tired of people not doing the same for her. She’d said as much, between the lines, that she was the reason that people didn’t care enough to stay. He’d promised to be different, to be the one to show her that it wasn’t her fault, it was theirs, that she was worthy of the love she gave so freely. He’d promised, and as he should have always known, he’d broken his word. “I mean it, okay? I’m not gonna leave. Not this time.” Another chance to break her again - he’d lost count of which one he was on. Far past the second, that was certain.

Alex wasn’t sure how much she heard, how much she could process and understand if anything at all, but maybe he was saying this more for his sake than hers. To apologise for all the times he couldn’t, to at least try and make up for them, even if true forgiveness was long out of reach.

It was only when the panicked hallucinations arrived that he realized how peaceful her murmurs had been. If that was difficult, this was torture, and not only because she was going through so much more physically than before. It was seeing the darkest moments she used to hide so well, the intrusion of privacy made him feel guilty. Sofia offered commentary here and there - she’d appeared at some point, when he was too fixed on Rena to notice - but others she stayed in a loaded silence for, ones he could only assume involved Max or Viktor or even her.

Soon after one of those charged silences, Rena came to. Alex had a second to say something to Sofi, even though she’d noticed as he had - they had to, seeing as their attention was almost fully on Rena - before the woman in question bolted away from him in a matter of moments. No, no, nonono. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Her anxious rambling told him that it was not, in fact, okay, or even close to that, but he wasn't about to deny the only thing he could lie believably. Extending his hand palm up, as if he was greeting a fearful dog, he dropped to a crouch an adequate metre away or so from her. “I know I’m me, but I get not believing that. I do that, too.”

His voice was halting at first, as was usual, starting at a low tone barely more than a whisper and growing as his anxiety decreased. “You’re not truly white, but in the sense that every colour combined makes up you.” It crossed his mind that Sofi might be wondering what he was talking about, but that was the point, wasn’t it? To say something that only he would know, that he definitely couldn’t have told anyone other than Rena. “You’re blinding, and I used to think it was a bad thing. God, I can't even describe it. Solar flare, maybe, but all I’m doing is spouting bullshit and sounding pretentious. The point, Rena, is that you are the brightest shade I have ever seen.” If he could keep talking, if he could distract her long enough for her to forget what she was being distracted from in the first place, maybe they could get her out of here.

“And this I haven't told you before, so your mind physically could not be making this up, but your voice is something more like a light dusky blue, bit of pink, warm pastels. Streaky white, cloudy, I don’t even know…” It was in moments like these, moments when so much relied on his personhood, that he had less of a clue than ever of what made him himself. His sleeve had pulled up at some point - he’d been too focused on Rena before, one of the few things that made him forget - and his immediate reaction was to jerk it down again, make sure that none of the marred skin was visible. Maybe she’d seen it, maybe she hadn’t, but he didn’t want to run the risk of triggering her more than she already was.

“You don’t want to do this.” His voice dropped. “Trust me.” And there he was again, reusing age old platitudes with the impossible hope of adding meaning behind their hypocrisy. I’m the last person you should be trusting. Was it his imagination, that she wasn’t quite as worked up as she had been a minute before? Still on edge, still very at risk at ripping open her flesh for what looked like the umpteenth time in recent times, but possibly nearing the possibility of nearing safety. And so he kept talking, kept spouting random thoughts that were only vaguely linked to her in a manner he was sure she wouldn't understand.

“You think I didn’t hear you, I didn’t say anything about it. But I did. You want a cat, remember, because that’s a sign of a healthy marriage because that’s all you wanted and all you could never get. You don’t have a favourite colour because it’s too personal and vulnerable, but you love learning about other people and psycho-analyzing them so accurately it’s wild. You did that to me, one time, and I almost got scared. But that’s the problem, Rena. You can’t scare me off.” Now that Sarah was out of the room, it felt more comfortable saying things that could only be interpreted romantically, but the fact that he was saying them at all made him want to do exactly what he was trying so hard to prevent Rena from doing. “You have that - what’s it called? That bracelet with the cross on it, I should know but I don’t - that you wear on your right wrist, and one time I saw one in this charity shop and I almost bought it. I so almost bought it. I had to, because it reminded me of you, and I couldn’t, because it reminded me of you.”

rena | alexander, luka, max, michael, sarah, sofi

Even from her tainted perspective of the spinning room, something was different about the hallucination this time. This wasn’t how it went. Typically, the motion was the same, the dialogue varied. He gestured for her to come to him, he was always standing, typically near the door. “C’mon, it’s time to go home,” he’d say, in some assemblance of words or another. The first few times, she’d actually believed it. She’d wobbled over to him on shaky legs, trying to stumble into his arms. That had earned her a black eye, a forehead gash, and a sprained wrist in the first week. She’d tried to fall into his arms and only fell into the corner of the wall face-first.

After that, she’d stopped trying. She’d fallen into a monotonous, excruciating cycle of ripping open her flesh for another day’s worth of numbness and incoherence. If she thought she saw one of her loved ones, she didn’t even try to look at them. Fear held her captive, though the fear she felt previously was no comparison to that which she felt now, with what she could only imagine was a new ‘phase’ of hallucinations. It must have started a few days ago when she imagined Ivan had somehow snuck into her room. There was something very off about that encounter too. His accent was strangely American, and he didn’t look the way she had hallucinated him before. He was about the age he would be if he were still alive, and healthy. She typically imagined him at the age she had last seen him, bruised and bloodied in some fashion that caused her to break down.

Now Alex was here, crouched down, telling her things the Alex she had formerly hallucinated had never said to her. The one she dreamt was silent, brooding, more typical of Alex. This one was calm, comforting, as if talking to a child. Though her brain was incredibly foggy, it was more coherent than it had been in weeks, falling back into slightly more rational reasoning than she’d exercised in a long, long time. My brain must be trying to create comfort to survive. She vaguely recalled a case she’d studied at her university, something about children dying if they didn’t receive the comfort of touch or social interaction. That’s all this is, she thought, a coping mechanism to maintain life.

Yet, there was something curious about this new hallucination. Although she was shaking, both from the cold the same body that was trying to keep her alive was also creating as a response to trauma and from a great trepidation of what said body was capable of, Rena almost desired to look at him, to study him. She could feel his gaze on her, begging for reassurance in the way the real Alex always did. But, she had long given up the expectation that he’d come and rescue her, it was equally wrong and unrealistic to believe after she’d left him with specific instructions to move on with his life. Still, she almost met his gaze when he mentioned something peculiar–an argument about why her mind couldn’t be generating these things on its own. She almost spoke, though she hadn’t in so long. Not conversationally, not to anyone. Only to the hallucinations, which felt more like demons disguised as the people she’d once loved. Perhaps her vulnerability to them was what had scorned her, as it always did.

He spoke again. “You think I didn’t hear you, I didn’t say anything about it. But I did. You want a cat, remember, because that’s a sign of a healthy marriage because that’s all you wanted and all you could never get. You don’t have a favourite colour because it’s too personal and vulnerable, but you love learning about other people and psycho-analyzing them so accurately it’s wild. You did that to me, one time, and I almost got scared. But that’s the problem, Rena. You can’t scare me off.”

Her eyes welled up with tears, still avoiding the hallucination’s gaze. She hadn’t experienced an attack so personal before, but it was more painful to imagine that it was real–to open herself up to the vulnerability of believing in anything, at this point–than to continue to believe her own mind was betraying her for the thousandth time. As the tears spilled, running in streams down her pale cheeks, he spoke again. If it was a hallucination, why was it trying so damn hard to convince her of something she’d stopped falling for so long ago? What gain did it have, if it wasn’t an intelligent being?

“You have that - what’s it called? That bracelet with the cross on it, I should know but I don’t - that you wear on your right wrist, and one time I saw one in this charity shop and I almost bought it. I so almost bought it. I had to, because it reminded me of you, and I couldn’t, because it reminded me of you.”

The part of Rena that imagined things, that felt feelings, that part of her had imagined scenarios such as that many times before. She thought about what might remind him of her, and what that made him feel–what it made him do. It’d happened a thousand times, but not this one in particular. Slowly, mostly because the nausea and dizziness wouldn’t allow her eyes to move on their own at their normal speed, she glanced down to her wrist. She’d given Michael all of her possessions before she admitted herself here, and, apparently, that included her engagement ring, though that memory had disappeared from her mind. As her gaze began to lift, lacking any bit of trust in the figure before her, she moved too fast, her eyes shooting upwards, sending her center of balance crashing down. She crashed into the adjacent wall once again, then back the other way, trying to keep herself upright. Her reflexes failed her, but before she hit the ground, she found herself partially rescued by the figure. She still couldn’t bear to call him by his name, for fear that, like all the times before, he was just an apparition, a hallucination, a synonym for a lie.

He hadn’t fully caught her, but grabbed her arm enough that he’d created distance between her small frame and the cold, hard floor. He let her down gently, seemingly just as terrified of her as she was of him, though she couldn’t prove it. He was on the floor too, beside her. She wasn’t sure if she was shaking more or less now, if she believed more or less that this was a terrifying new level of these hallucinations. Slowly, because the room was spinning even more now, her fearful gaze found its way to his face, then to his eyes. She didn’t look away, neither did he. Yet, everything in her wanted to, it was still too powerful, even at her weakest point. She started to cry again. Never once was it sobs, it wasn’t the kind of crying she deserved to do after so many things had happened to her, even in the last two months. It was just silent streams of tears and an unflinching, stoic expression.

“I’m scared,” she whispered, studying his expression. His eyes were full of pain, but not his. She wasn’t sure how she could tell, but everything in her knew that he was, somehow or another, feeling her pain, not his. He winced, full of guilt. It was his face’s way of offering the apology his mouth would not say. His gaze was trained on her, and, slowly, tears still streaming down her face, she surrendered, moving a few inches closer to him. She touched his chest gently, still skeptical of the fact that he was his own self, a true, tangible being, before falling into his arms, her head finding the place it was always meant to be on his heart.

“I don’t remember anything,” she whispered after more than a few moments of silence. Her arms were wrapped loosely around his frame, her gaze trained on the wall. At some point, Sofia had slipped out, leaving the pair alone in the prison she’d been trapped in for days to weeks. “I’ve been drugged for so long I think I forgot my own name until it was you who said it.”

The pair of them were content in silence for what felt like minutes, the only sounds besides the faint thumping of Alex’s heartbeat coming from the chaos outside. They were no strangers to silence, especially when the silence they shared didn’t feel like silence at all. They were members of a dying breed who could communicate without using words. However, as all things come to an end, Alex’s phone buzzed, indicating a warning text from Sofi that Michael was on his way down to see what was going on. At the name ‘Michael,’ Rena had already practically jumped out of Alex’s arms, and was casually sitting beside him, several inches apart, her arms crossed. She wanted to say something to explain to Alex, to try to water down the truth behind the way she’d reacted, but as soon as she opened her mouth, the door swung open. Her husband entered before she could utter a syllable of what she’d wanted to.

“Rena,” Michael greeted, as he always did when he came on his checks. He seemed slightly surprised to see another figure, though he had been expecting it. Sarah had gone up to try to do damage control on the situation. “And, Alex, I’m assuming. From our engagement party, correct?” He stood against the opposite wall, not bothering to get down on his fiance’s level. He had a clipboard in his hand, as if this was another of his patient visits. “I would actually love to talk to you, while you’re here. Alone. Is that okay?” The man was calm, unassuming, not exactly what would have been expected given the circumstances.

“Look, I don’t know what you’ve been through with Rena but it’s obvious that there’s history there of some serious trauma. I talked to Sarah and she said that the general consensus on this floor is that Rena needs to stop distancing herself from the people from her past and letting them in, so she can start to accept some of the things that have happened in her life. What I’m saying is, I’d love for you two to continue to be friends. Actually, I’d like for her to be able to spend more time with you for the sake of her wellbeing. But, before I go planning anything, I wanted to make sure it was okay with you.”

At that moment, Sofi emerged from Rena’s room, sliding a slip of paper into her pocket. She smiled gently at the two men, but her eyes questioned Alex. Are you okay, what’s going on? “Everything okay here?”

“You must be Sofia,” Michael greeted, his expression casual. He glanced between the pair as if feeling them out to understand their dynamic. He seemed to settle on not just friends for Rena’s sake, probably lovers because they’re not siblings.

“That’s me,” she replied with a defensive edge. “Is there something you need?”

“It’s nice to meet you,” he replied in the same easy tone, either missing the tone of her reply or blatantly disregarding it. “I was just telling Alex that I think it’d be good for-”

“Rena to live elsewhere? Somewhere where the man who is supposed to take care of her treats her like a science experiment as soon as things get hard? I agree.”

“For the people from Rena’s past to spend more time with her.”

“I don’t like the implication that I’m someone from Rena’s past, but if she doesn’t trust you enough to tell you about the people in her life presently, more power to her, honestly.”

“I appreciate your concern about my fiancee-” Sofi bit her tongue for the sake of not revealing everything Sarah had told her in her moment of weakness. She let him continue. “But I assure you we did the best we possibly could with everything that has happened. Rena’s recent struggles have been devastating, and we are doing our best to help her get back to a better place.”

“Prove it. Talk to me like you’re her husband and not her doctor for just a second. Also, I appreciate your concern, but she’s my sister, which trumps the fiancee card. I’m taking her home with me, and if she chooses to live with you after my brothers and I nurse her back to health, that’s her choice. Being a doctor might be your priority, but being a sister is mine.”

“I’m sensing negativity from you,” Michael observed, “But, no need. I support whatever Rena wants and needs. Once she gets discharged, which, I assume is what you’ve come here to advocate for, I’m happy to give her the choice.”

…

“We wanted to give you the choice, so, what will you choose?”

The letter, Rena couldn’t get her mind off of it. Granted that no one had touched it, it was still sitting at the desk in their apartment, untouched, unread, unopened. Every word that Alex spoke was precious, it was fragile, it was something Rena needed to have in her possession. She couldn’t allow it to be thrown away, or read by someone to whom it was not intended. It was her job to protect him, and protecting him meant protecting the sacred scraps of paper he’d entrusted to her. “I’m going to go home with Michael,” she started softly, feeling constricted by the presence of the man whose name she’d uttered. Sofi was mad, and, since before, since she’d pulled away from the man she truly wanted to be with to preserve her image in the eyes of the one she’d chosen, so was Alex. But, it wasn’t like she could say, ‘I’m going back to a place I hate for a letter.’ She also couldn’t say, ‘I intend to break off my engagement and show up at your apartment tonight.’ It wasn’t that simple. “We have a lot to talk about,” she manifested, though she wasn’t entirely sure how. It was empty, it didn’t give off the impression that she was pleased with her own decision. Yet, she couldn’t look Alex in the eye, not after what had happened. She felt that things were different between them, and she refused to try to say anything to him until they discussed it, whenever that would be. She couldn’t bring herself to do it, to communicate with him wordlessly just because she knew she could. “I’ll check in with you both later, once I get settled. Thank you, again, for coming. It means a lot.”

“Let’s go,” Sofi said to Alex, fuming. She was silent most of the way home, until they’d reached the parking lot of Luka’s apartment. “I think we should go to that dinner tomorrow night.” She sounded defeated and pained, still angry and bitter and resentful, but starting to give up. “If she’s going to keep choosing him over and over again, we at least owe it to ourselves to make peace with it and let her go.”

It was a terrible idea, Alex decided for what must have been the eleventh time in the time it’d taken to take the stairs to Rena’s apartment, to have come here at all. To agree to the dinner was his first mistake, but to actually show up was unforgivable. The only reason he hadn’t turned tail, ghosted his person and the family she’d chosen to spend her life with - Sarah couldn’t quite qualify as a separate entity to Michael - was Sofi. The woman standing beside him had more than enough anger to carry the both of them through the shitshow he kenw the dinner would be.

He didn’t have the moment he needed to gather himself before the door opened. Michael, surprisingly enough, was the one to do so. (He’d pegged Rena’s fiance as someone more apt to leaving the little things to everyone else, but maybe this once he’d decided to make an exception. Or maybe his perception was completely wrong for all he knew.) Again, he found himself wondering what, exactly, had made Rena stay. The stability, the support; the options were endless. It all depended on which one he felt like obsessing over this time. He was bound to mess it up - he didn’t know what ‘it’ was supposed to refer to - and it was better this way. It had to be better this way. (Was she hurting, too? She was so good at hiding her pain, he wondered whether Michael even noticed.) With that usual rumination came the undeniable instinct that it would have been better, truly better, if he'd stayed away altogether. (He didn’t know whether he was referring to White Oaks, Romania, Rena, or any of the various scenarios it could have applied to.)

Michael’s grip was firm, just as he’d expected from the living proof of the perfect man. Alex didn’t think he imagined the way Michael’s gaze drilled into his for a moment too long, as if the man somehow knew everything that Alex and Rena had or hadn’t discussed, and everything they could never talk about again. They could never talk again, after this. Rena had made that perfectly clear that last day at the hospital. She made her choice, and now he had to accept that she knew best. If it was better for her, he had to respect that. (He ignored the sting in his eyes, the slight difficulty there was when he swallowed.) He had to respect that.

There was the uncomfortably cheery hello from Sarah, a hug that he was a second too late in dodging, and the entirely play-acted scenario of it all. Barely a few minutes in, and already his eyes darted around the room to the nearest escape route. He couldn’t do people - not this day, and not these people.

Rena’s was even worse. Maybe it was the way he couldn’t pull his eyes off of her while she seemed content on looking anywhere but him, maybe it was how they both avoided the physical contact the others had forced him to give, maybe it was the silence; at least both of them were self-aware enough to know that no half-hearted words could ever fill the gap that stretched between them. There was so much he needed to say, and nothing that he could. Maybe it was the knowledge that after all this time, after everything, he still wasn’t enough. He knew he was being self-centred, that he was making things all about him, that he was arrogant to believe that he could ever have been enough in the first place. Rena deserved someone special, someone who could take care of her, and they both knew he couldn’t do that. Relationships weren’t just love, he knew that. They were everything he could never fulfil. Then why was it still painful?

Maybe it was the way that, when she eventually met his steady gaze, he pulled away. Maybe it’s better this way.

After a reasonable and entirely too long period of time, Alex drifted from their fake smiles towards the balcony. (How many times had Rena spoken to Michael here, fought with him, kissed him?) Fresh air, fresh air was all he needed. Maybe that would cure the dull lightheadedness that refused to disappear. Besides, as much as he had mixed feelings about the city he was supposed to call home, anything was better than the strained small talk Sarah was insistent on encouraging.

After all this time, London couldn’t feel like home. Virginia was home, while Pax was there. It almost became that again, and Romania as well, when he met Rena. (What he was both trying to say and refusing to admit was that Rena was the closest thing to home he’d had in a long time.) Manchester, too, was home before everything that happened happened. But London? London was where he’d wanted to take Rena, London was the only place in England he truly loved, London was the only place he’d have been willing to show her. That was different now, obviously. The only thing he appreciated was the anonymity of the city, and he liked that for all the wrong reasons.

Those specific wrong reasons were making themselves all too obvious at that moment. The dizziness he’d pegged as exhaustion or lack of some arbitrary mineral - neither improbable, given the care or lack thereof he gave to his body - was something different, something less controllable, something far less socially acceptable. (He found it interesting that physical illnesses were so easily made room for, but anything less than tangible was pushed under the rug.)

He couldn’t lose himself; not here, not now. If he passed out or panicked anywhere near the others, that could only mean disaster. Not because of Michael, or Sarah, or even Sofia - the formers’ opinions were already ruined of him, and Sofi had already seen him on the verge of suicide in the chapel. No, it was Rena, which hurt more than it logically should have. Rena, who had once been his safe place for such a long time. (Still was his safe place, if he was being honest, which he most certainly was not.) Even those years they’d been apart, she was at least half the reason he was still breathing. Rena, the only person he could let hurt him again and again and thank her for it. Rena, the only person that truly mattered. And now, now that they’d lived and loved and lost and found each other again, their fragile haven was shattered. He couldn’t let her see him like this; he wasn’t sure which would cut deeper: to have her at least try to save him one last time, or to have her ignore him. Either way, he couldn’t afford any more pain, any more feeling. Not again.

He leaned harder into the balustrade, fingers clenching around the icy metal railing. Five things he could see, wasn’t it? He couldn’t remember, and he couldn’t care. Just one thing, that was easy enough. It was supposed to be easy, and it was the furthest thing from that right now. The cold stone seeping into his bloodstream, not something he could see - eyes closed was the only way to cope - but that counted, didn’t it? Did it? Cold, he could feel that. (Vaguely, he cursed himself for not bringing something thicker than the flimsy jersey he’d tossed on, but it felt as if he was feeling - seeing, more like - that from a distance.

Another breath, glancing up to at least pretend he was in control. He could see the stars, did they count? They always said to just breathe deeply, as if it was easy. There were plenty of easy things, and he had the impression that half of them would land him in a psych ward, but this wasn’t one of them. Just breathe, as if it was that simple.

He couldn’t lose it here. Not in public, not in front of the only person he trusted to see him like this and the only person he couldn’t. Just breathe. He was already grabbing his wrist with the opposite hand. Survival, surviving whatever level of hell this dinner was supposed to be, was more important than the disappointment he was sure he would see reflected in Rena’s eyes if she noticed it. (Was he still bold enough to believe she’d notice? Was he still bold enough to think she’d care?)

They were all disappointed, and he was still deciding whether he cared. Because guilt, that was an emotion. Emotions were tricky, emotions were messy, emotions were the only reason he was actually here tonight instead of alone at his flat.

You just need to breathe. (‘Just’?) He needed to run, to leave, to disappear before anyone noticed that he was there at all.The balcony; he could jump, it was quick enough for no one to see. It was quick enough for him not to stop himself. Where was the closest exit that didn’t involve breaking at least one bone? (Publicly, that is.) His fingers clenched, went completely slack, tightened as soon as he remembered what he was doing. The others, where were they? He thought about turning around to check, he thought about telling his body to cooperate, but neither had any result. At this point, the only thing keeping him upright - if one could call his position upright - was the balustrade and a sheer need to appear as calm as was possible. Breathe, just breathe. Breathe.

Heather Proudstorm | 22 | Eventing | Titanium "Storm" and Queen Of Spain "Armonía" | School Horse: WO Descendants Of Khan "Khan" | Mentions: Open.

Katarena Suta | Alex, Michael, Sarah, Sofia

It wasn’t a surprise when the doorbell rang, or when Sofi and Alex entered the apartment, but it didn’t stop the feeling that everything was wrong. The feeling of the expensive piece of jewelry burning a hole into her left hand was wrong. The feeling of discomfort that caused her to avoid looking everyone in the eye–but especially Alex–was wrong. The way she lingered in the corner of the room to avoid even the idea of touching him in an amicable way after the things they had been through was wrong. There was no one piece of this dinner, or this day, or this anything that felt right, but the capability of each respective party to pretend too well that everything was perfectly fine terrified Rena, it isolated her and made her feel as if she were two seconds from blowing up at any given moment.

As Michael said something about giving the guests a tour of the space, their eyes met. It felt as if every time they did, the world came crashing down around them, and this was no different. All of the hurt she felt came bleeding out, on full display for everyone around them. That was the problem with Alex: every time she was around him, she forgot she was with anyone else. It was just the two of them, nothing else in the world existed. Nothing else in the world mattered. Just them, their eyes, and the things they said that their tongues refused to. Still, it was the way his icy stare forcefully jerked away from hers that made her expression show even more hurt, that begged everything in her to stop the facade and blurt out everything she was thinking and feeling, for better or for worse. She felt Sofi’s gaze, then Sarah’s. Michael said something about the countertops. Pure granite. She agreed blindly to whatever she was supposed to while her eyes traced the outline of Alex’s face. Coarse, pained, seconds from crying based on the crinkling of his nose or the way his jaw clenched. Funny how that was ingrained in her memory, but she still failed to remember her fiance’s middle name. Or his favorite color. Or the year he was born.

Moments passed in an awkward attempt at small talk; a failed attempt because, of the participants, two were on an unobtainable level of superficial, one was irrationally angry, and the remaining pair had their minds floating in outer space, only focused on the other, only focused on survival, only focused on everything they couldn’t say or feel in the presence of the others. Eventually, the group split off. One to set the table, one to prepare the dishes, one to the bathroom (the closet actually, to cry in the only place she’d discovered could hide her from the other residents of the living space), one to the balcony, and the other to her own devices. Feeling the tension between Rena and Alex, Sofi felt conflicted about which to follow, but eventually decided on the latter for fear of lashing out on the former. Something in Sofi felt that Rena deserved the emotion she was currently sick with, if only for the decisions she’d recently made. Alex, on the other hand, deserved none of this, not in the slightest.

She gave him a moment or two alone before she found herself in the doorway of the balcony, arms crossed, shivering slightly due to the miserable December air. It was a few weeks until Christmas, and yet, nothing could lift any of their spirits in any way that mattered. Jesus himself could walk the Earth again, and Sofi was convinced it wouldn’t stop any of their tears from spilling.

“This is more miserable than we thought,” the slightest undertones of humor swam in Sofi’s bleak tone. He was worse, and her heart broke for him in a way she didn’t think it could. He was shaking uncontrollably, his movements desperate. He was willing himself to remain composed when all he wanted to do was break down, and she had no idea how to show the level of empathy that she felt. She decided honesty was the greatest form of love she could show him now. Now that they were here, now that there was no good escape route that didn’t sever ties with Rena forever, now that they both felt like prisoners in their own bodies with no hope for any moment beyond the ones that were already gone.

“I know I’m not her, but if she were here, what would she do? I know I can’t take her place, but I want to help you in any way that I can.” Now that she’s gone, and never coming back, and we’re stuck with the living body and the dead soul of the person we love more than anything in the world. Tears started streaming down his face, or perhaps a shifting of the light just revealed what had been there all along. Still, she was right. She would never be Rena. Even if she said that she trusted him, that she loved him, that she wanted to help him, her body screamed louder than the whisper of her words. The tension she carried when she was around him, as if she was always on edge and prepared for him to become a threat, the way she inched away from him rather than towards him, the paralyzing fear of initiating physical contact with him because she was afraid of what he might do, the aversion of her eyes when they met the scars on his body, it all said one thing: I’m afraid of you. You’re a monster, and I’m afraid.

A few moments passed. Sarah, having unreasonably terrible timing in everything, was the one to break the haunted silence with mentions of it being time to eat. They sat down together, Michael at the head of the table, Sofi across from Sarah, Alex across from an empty chair Rena came to sit in. Despite noticeable effort, she had botched her attempt at fixing her tear-stained, makeup-smudged face, and it was obvious to everyone where she had been and what she had been doing for the last matter of minutes. Other than Sofi’s burning gaze and Alex’s fleeting glances, no mention was made of this, and life went on. It was equally uncomfortable and odd just how easily the Taylors overlooked Rena’s state, brushing it off and pretending as if it wasn’t plain as day, right in front of them. It made Sofi even angrier, because this was the choice Rena had made. No one had forced her to do this, she wasn’t a victim. She was doing this to herself, inflicting this pain on her own person.

Falsified goodbyes were said after dinner. No one made it to dessert. Alex and Sofi cried silently in the car the entire way home, and the pain they shared caused them to linger in Alex’s driveway for longer than they’d anticipated. They said their goodbyes, none better than those said to Rena at the Taylors, and went their separate ways. That was supposed to be the end of their lives as they knew it.

Except it wasn’t.

It was well-past midnight when a knock sounded on the door of Alex’s apartment. The rain was coming down hard, and it had been for hours. It was a loud thunderstorm, the kind that made walls shake and reminded man of nature’s power. The temperature was just barely above freezing, though half of the rain had turned to ice, pelting anyone brave enough or lowly enough to be out in the streets at that hour. From the comfort of a warm house, it was but a spectacle, but to experience it closely, in the elements, was a different story.

Still, Rena walked at the fastest pace she could manage without breaking into a run. Her driver’s license had been temporarily suspended because of the last series of incidents, so she was left with no choice. Running implied that she was in any condition to be doing anything after weeks of allergic reactions to drugs, malnourishment, dehydration, and so on. She was pale, weak, and a shivering mess, not to mention the way that her mind had become a cloudy haze by the second block of walking. She knew this route instinctively, just as she knew the homeless man on the corner near the bridge, the one she always brought her leftover groceries to and listened to the stories of, just as she knew the faded glow of the broken stoplight on the next street over, and just as she knew the ominous feeling of Alex’s street, filled with brick buildings suffocated by overgrown ivy that hadn’t been loved in decades. Everything was a blur by the time she reached the final stretch of the long walk, made longer by her lack of fitness, and the only thing that had kept her alert was her unfounded fear of being harmed and never making it to her destination.

Perhaps it was less the fear of what would happen to her, and more the fear of never getting the sacred words off her chest she’d been so earnestly holding in for hours. Perhaps it was her anguish that had forced her to leave the house at three-something without a coat on, and without an umbrella.

Either way, by the time he opened his door, she was shaking and her lips and hands were an eerie shade of blue. She was absolutely drenched from the torrential rain she’d just walked several miles in, her arms wrapped around her trembling frame. Her mental state wasn’t much better than that of her physical state, her warm brown eyes communicating more effectively than her mumbled sentence fragments, which fought to escape her lips between shivers and convulsions from chattering teeth. She fell against the doorframe, weak and dizzy and generally unwell, trying her best to get out the sentences she’d come so far to speak to him.

“The…l-letter…y-your…words…i…w-went back…for th-them…couldn’t…fi-find…them…it-it’s...done…ov-er…couldn’t…let you…go…never…l-loved…h-him. Only you. I-i…l-ove…you…only…y-you…”

As her grip on the wall loosened, her small frame relaxed, falling to the floor from lack of strength. She wasn’t entirely unconscious, but the willpower to stay awake was leaving her with each mumbled syllable that left her body. “W-what…did…it…s-say…”

Alexander Littlewood | Sofi, Michael, Sarah, Rena

Sofi’s voice was just enough to pull him out of his mind, if only momentarily. He wasn’t completely sure what she’d said, or if she’d said anything at all, but whatever it was he was grateful, in some part of his heart. Right now, though, he wasn’t feeling anything other than an emotion he couldn’t quite place - something like grief, something like guilt, something like inertia. After all these years, Rena still had such a hold on his emotions, and he hated it. (He wanted to say he hated her, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.) She had no right to have this much power over someone she’d chosen never to see again. She gave away that right the moment she left with Michael. (What he wouldn’t give to change that.)

“Please, just–” Alex’s voice broke. He cringed at the way his chest heaved, at the way his cheeks were damp with tears, at the humanness of it all. “Don’t try to be her,” he finally finished with little more than a whisper, turning his face to risk the barest eye contact. Please don’t try to fix this. He was too tired to hide his messy emotions, and maybe that was why he didn’t see it at first. He was almost going to say something more, something vulnerable enough it’d earn himself a special kind of punishment whenever he came to his senses, something vulnerable enough to push him over the edge. Almost. It was that very eye contact, though, that stopped him. It was something about the way she looked at him, acted around him - pity, he might have said, or perhaps closer to fear. It was a risk that his sleeves were half-rolled-up, that he was here at all; but he’d thought Sofi wasn’t like that. If purely because of her association with Rena, there was some vague form of trust. Or so he’d thought.

For all her sympathetic words and practised supportive phrases, she was just as fake as the rest of them.

What was he supposed to say to her, anyway? He knew he wouldn’t see her again after tonight; Rena was their only link, and now that she was gone it was time to cut ties. Besides, the Petrovas were a part of the past, not whatever future he’d have to carve for himself after this night was done. (He hadn’t gotten further than the dinner yet, in all honesty.)

The evening hardly improved from there. Sarah and Michael were the ones carrying the conversation; Alex and Sofi staying silent for obvious reasons, and Rena most likely because of the grief shown clearly on her face. He almost reached out, he so almost reached out. It felt unnatural to leave her like that. (If Michael felt the same thing, he showed none of it.) But she’d made her choice. That night after she’d been discharged, he’d almost felt hope. That maybe, if he tried hard enough, did well enough, was enough, she might stay. By now, though, he was tired of trying. She’d made her choice, and they both just had to live with it.

All through the silent drive back, he couldn’t help but thinking, this isn’t how it was supposed to end. It would have ended at some point, he knew. Maybe they’d have gone their separate ways amicably, maybe one of them would have died or moved on or found their goals just didn’t fit; but not like this.

Not so soon.

By the time Sofia pulled up to his apartment, he was too tired and numb to say anything that might do even a little bit of justice to the limited, albeit wild, history they shared. They stood in stupefied silence for a few minutes, as if neither was quite ready to say goodbye to the chapter of their life that the other symbolised.

Of course they weren’t ready. Who could be, after everything they’d been through?

---

Luke Jansen was well-accustomed to London’s habit of collecting waifs and strays, as well as his neighbours’ strange habits and visitors, but even his eight years in the building couldn't have prepared him for opening his door at 3:08am to a blue-lipped, soaking wet girl he'd never seen before in his life half-collapsed against his door frame. And, judging by her paper-white pallor that was jarringly discordant with her hair, she wasn't far from fainting for real.

Luke wasn't a stranger to midnight visitors, given the nature of his job and his renown with the teens that he'd take in anyone, but generally their faces were somewhat more recognizable. He was half heartedly going through his memory to check if he'd met her in the past week, when the unfamiliar girl slipped forward. Not by choice, if her shaking had anything to say about it, and he just managed to catch her shoulders in time to prevent only worsening whatever injuries she'd sustained that had led her to his door. She was murmuring something beneath her breath that he didn't try to catch; feverish ramblings, skin hot to the touch despite the harsh winter weather she must have walked through.

Many might have been daunted at this prospect, but Luke took it in his stride. An almost unconscious girl was hardly the worst of his worries; he had a dying mother-in-law he pretended to be worried about,his usual group of kids to protect, and a husband who was equally unexcited and exhausted at the idea of his remaining parent’s imminent death. (Luke’s family had disowned him the day he came out as gay, and lost all hope for their black sheep the day he married his husband. Parents, in his opinion, were often more trouble than they were worth.)

“Shh, I'm going to take you inside. Cup of tea to warm you up, alrighty.” As soon as he made to pick up her shivering frame, however, her incoherent ramblings switched into equally incomprehensible protests at being touched. “I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. We need to get you inside and warm, though. Hypothermia waits for no one, or so they say.” He was about to try to pick her up again, or at least guide her into a standing position, when a man shifted out of the shadows. High cheekbones, dark hoodie, familiar set expression. “Alex.” Luke tried not to look too taken aback that the neighbour he’d spoken to all of twice had chosen this moment to pop by. “What a pleasant surprise.” If this night could get any stranger…

---

“Shit, Rena.” It was a moment before Alex registered the potential gravity of the scenario, and at first only his bare shock was visible; but it was as if that split-second reaction was necessary to kick his instincts into gear.

“Shh, Rena, it’s okay. I’m here, I’ve got you, you’re gonna be alright, okay?” Alex dropped to the ground, immediately replacing Luke’s arms with his own. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay.” He could hear Luke trying to say something - ask a question, most likely, on the strange situation they found themselves in - but in that moment, it was the least of his worries. She was shivering beneath his touch, and vaguely, vaguely, he was reminded of the countless times they’d seen each other like this; at least one of them unconscious, incoherent, or too sick to remember. Less faintly, though, was this: do you let Michael see you like this? Do you run to him when something goes wrong?

What came out, though, was, “We really need to stop meeting like this,” with a rueful smile that was hardly fitting to the situation and a lingering gaze that he was sure Michael wouldn’t approve of. He doubted she’d heard him, or that she’d remember it after she’d returned to the haven of her fiance’s home - her home, he had to remind himself - but nonetheless he couldn’t help it. It was something about the way her hair clung to her dripping skin, something about the way in between flutters her eyes were searching for his, or the way it felt natural to have her head on his shoulder, to be the one holding her as she fell apart.

Alex carried her up the remaining stairs to his apartment. The lack of significant resistance to being helped was the most worrying thing about the whole situation, and made him wonder how the hell Rena had managed to walk from her place to his without collapsing. It was, what? A ten-minute drive, and walking in the early hours of a London morning was hardly the safest thing he’d have recommended.

The doorway was soaked by the time they arrived - somehow, in his haze of hearing Rena’s voice from where he’d been staring out the window, he’d forgotten to close it.

Alex set her down on the couch - her gentle, steady breathing, her arms laced around his; was it only less than a month before, that that night had happened? - grabbing a blanket he’d tossed aside haphazardly a few days before and trying as best he could to get her warm again.

“Not the best of conditions, but we’ll figure something out. Just stay here while I put the kettle on, ‘kay?” He left out the fact that she was in no condition to run away, and ignored any protestations she might have; tea, as always, was the answer. Besides, it gave him the slightest excuse to be able to try to figure out what had brought her to showing up on his doorstep - technically, his neighbour’s - drenched, shivering, and at three in the morning. Could Michael have said something - done something? It was undeniable how on edge Alex was put by that man, but it was just as undeniable that those feelings could easily have been spurred by jealousy, by the fact that Rena had chosen Michael over him.

The high-pitched screech of the kettle was just enough to pull him out of the obsessive thoughts he was giving into. She’d made her decision, and they both had to live with that. That was all there was to it. Spoon clinking against the same mug he’d offered her that fateful night, he made his way back to Rena. It would have been funny, if it wasn’t so tragic, that no matter what happened they always found their way back to each other. It was exhausting.

After waiting what he deemed a suitable amount of time, and what most people would have called awkward silence, Alex forced himself to say the words that had been toying on his tongue for the past while. It wasn’t his place to ask, but he had to. He had to. “So.” There was too much to say, and far too little time to say it. Finally, he settled for something simple. “Are you going to explain why you turned up tonight, or are we going to sit in silence for the rest of the night?” With anyone else, it might have sounded sarcastic; but with Rena, he would’ve accepted any option that meant that he could coexist in her space for just a few hours longer. Silence was a language that he sometimes felt that only they were fluent in.

Rena / Sofi | Alex, each other

There had been so much movement between the sidewalk and the porch and the steps and the ground that eventually Rena lost control of her consciousness, but not until she’d fallen into warm, familiar arms. She was still fighting the kind stranger whose home she’d wandered to, up until she felt Alex’s presence nearby. She couldn’t place how exactly she knew, but she’d known. Even then, even in her altered state of reality. Then the ground around her shook, spinning as if she was on an amusement park ride. Suddenly, though she hadn’t moved any (in her mind, at least), she felt a warm, familiar body enclosed around her. He held her more firmly than the other man, with ease, with comfort, with familiarity. He smelled like him, his heartbeat sounded like his. Though he’d barely spoken, as soon as she was safely in his arms, she let herself slip into a state somewhere between unconsciousness and slumber.

The next time she woke up, she was staring at the ceiling of Alex’s apartment. It was still the same way she remembered it, with the lamp in the corner casting an ugly yellow glow on the whole room. Almost immediately, her eyes searched for him, needing to locate him before she could feel any sense of security, no matter how false. Her body betrayed her immediately. Even if she would have wanted to give off the illusion of slumber, the shivers that racked her body, thrashing her around the couch, gave her away. As she laid there, hardly in control of any of her limbs, her eyes met his. He was leaning over the counter, a mix of fear, concern, angst, and anger swirling his blue irises. The kettle had been screaming behind him for more than a minute, but he got lost in her eyes–in her. Eventually, he seemed to come to his senses, pouring the tea into mugs, finding a place beside her strewn-out limbs. She was still shaking, still broken, still hardly in her right mind. Her teeth chattered, making it difficult to breathe, difficult to survive. Her muscles ached. All she could concentrate on was him, in his entirety.

“I came to-” The doorbell rang. Outside Alex’s door stood Sofi, shivering in her beige dress coat. It was freezing outside, as Rena had already discovered, and even just standing in the elements was enough to greatly fluctuate the younger woman’s body temperature. Little drops of water adorned her light brown hair and dripped down her face, making her something of a miserable sight despite her best efforts to appear put together. And, even so, the courage it’d taken to make it all the way to his porch had already drained any remaining color from her face, along with any expression indicating confidence, so she stood there, shaking in her boots, wondering why she was here or what she was trying to accomplish at all. The truth is, she had no idea one way or the other. Her thoughts had consumed her, she’d spent the last few hours driving around reliving their lingering goodbye, and one thing had led to another, leading her back to his place. Just to make sure he’d got in okay, she promised herself, then she’d go home to her own family. She wouldn’t do anything crazy like ring his doorbell at almost four in the morning and say all the things she’d been stuffing. No, that’d be insane.

Rena’s warm eyes scanned Alex fearfully, questioning him. The way he was looking back at her answered all the questions she hadn’t asked: he wasn’t expecting any visitors. “No one knows where I am except for you,” Rena spit out, with only a few stutters and breaks here and there to allow for her body’s malfunctioning. She felt the need to skeptically add in a low tone, “that I know of, anyway.”

A series of knocks ensued. Rena paled. She couldn’t imagine what Alex was thinking right now, and the fear caused by the late-night intruder had stolen all the words right out of her throat. Surely he was seeing someone, or he’d given up the opportunity to be, and after the trainwreck of a dinner he’d endured, he’d realized it was finally really over and was moving on with his life. That made her extremely selfish for coming here, she realized, with great remorse. She never should have come. Though he looked as fearful as her, she decided playing that card was an easier escape than dealing with their problems head-on.

“You were expecting company,” she voiced quietly, convincingly. She hadn’t been in touch with her feelings for months at least, but especially not lately. Her lack of genuine attachment to Alex made it easier to sell all the emotions she wasn’t feeling. “God, I’m sorry, I’m selfish, I didn’t mean for any of this-”

“Alex? Open up, it’s me,” Sofi’s voice came from the other side of the door as Rena hastily collected the few things to her name. She was lightheaded from the extreme temperatures she’d endured, but the instinct to flee this situation overcame it. She wasn’t sure how far she’d make it once she left, but she just had to get out. The only problem with that was the fact that she only knew of the one exit, which was the door Sofi currently stood on the other side of.

When she heard her sister’s voice, something like betrayal and hurt flashed in Rena’s eyes. She swallowed, trying hard to mask the minimal level of emotion she felt towards the situation, which was still more than she’d felt in months. She’d rather keep living the way she already was, feeling absolutely nothing. “Oh, you’re seeing Sofi,” Rena added dejectedly, standing shakily in the middle of Alex’s flat, waiting to see what he was going to do about the entire situation.

“I know you’re in there, and I know it’s four in the morning, I just–I need to get something off my chest. Please, let me in?”

“She’s a good girl,” Rena said softly, “and you deserve that. What I was going to say, it doesn’t matter now, I’m sure we’ll talk another time.” No we won’t, I’m hurt and I won’t talk to you again unless you make me, unless you tell me this is all one big misunderstanding and chase after me and kiss me in the rain. But you won’t, this chapter of our lives is over. And I’ll be okay with that. Eventually. I might even want to be your friend. Eventually. But eventually means time, and I don’t know if the world will be spinning long enough to heal all our wounds. “I’m gonna go,” she smiled weakly at him, giving him a lingering kiss on the cheek as she walked towards the door. He seemed paralyzed by indecision, so she made the choice easy by proving that she would never be one.

As she opened the door, shock–and the same pain and betrayal Rena had displayed before–refused to hide within the depths of Sofi’s face, obvious and in plain view for all to see. “He’s all yours,” Rena said softly, weakly, weaker than her smile. She was cold, and there wasn’t any reaching beyond the cold exterior she’d put up higher than before to protect herself. “Have a good night,” she said softly, walking back down the steps and out into the night, feeling the terror of the unknown threats that waited for her down this street and beyond.

Sophie Visage | Cam, Julian, Kholo

The call came on an unusually windy spring day nearing the first of April. Sophie hadn’t been around for the best parts–solely because she wasn’t invited–but due to the tight-knit nature of her friendship with Julian, she had been the first to know about what had occurred. One of Kholo’s most predominant international accounts had called her, explaining that they were short a showjumping rider due to injury, and since White Oaks was bringing a few riders anyway, could they spare someone. Kholo had agreed, and, due to his recent success, chosen Julian. It had been an easy decision, considering the fact that he’d only just debuted in the pro divisions, and his winning percentage already landed him among the top riders at the farm. Initially, she’d been planning to keep Julian there as a standby in case something happened to one of the other, more experienced riders, but due to these circumstances, it was an easy decision to gift him the experience of riding at this level over one of her other riders. He was responsible, hard-working, and gracious, making him a much better representation of their stable than someone else. She knew that Cyrus Eliopoulos was a difficult man to ride under, but none better to endure his unrelenting standards and short temper than Julian. Her only regret was that it left her short a chaperone for the younger kids, who were taking a trip to the international festival as spectators. That was where Sophie came in.

“As I’m sure you’re aware,” the woman began, “I have lent Julian to a client for the first and second week of the festival. Though he doesn’t start until the fourth,” Sophie had to do the mental math, considering it started on the twenty-ninth of the month. “I think it’s best to invite another chaperone. I am considering inviting Cam or Conrad Fairfield, do you have a preference?”

“Cam,” she replied, a bit quicker than she had intended. She got quiet, and her face turned pink. Unfortunately, she had no control over the various colors her skin turned, and she didn’t try to explain any of it, for she knew she’d just dig the hole deeper. It already sounded like she was desperately and hopelessly in love with him–or so she thought in her self-conscious, high-functioning brain–and there was no real way out of it. She was hardly listening when Kholo countered, explaining that she was leaning towards inviting Conrad, and did she have an argument as to why Cam should come. However, after a few moments of awkward silence showing that Sophie was half-focused, she replied with as much confidence as she could muster. “Easy. Cam is more diligent, he’s better with kids, he has more energy, and what he doesn’t have in experience he makes up for in enthusiasm. He is my preference, and though it’s your choice at the end of the day, I know I would personally feel much more comfortable taking on this huge group of kids with him.” She backpedaled. “If you’re okay with it, of course.”

—

The team’s last week in Virginia was chaotic to say the least, with more last-minute rider changes than anyone was comfortable with, and more vet visits and ‘just double-checking’ vet visits than anyone thought was possible. Mountains of tack seemed to be piled everywhere, everything out of place, nothing concretely anywhere. On top of this, Kholo and the rest of the management team had been laxer in their dealings with curfew and other strictly enforced rules, wreaking that much more havoc and unnecessary drama. By the time Sophie and Julian made their way to the front driveway to meet all the adolescents they were taking, they were more than ready to leave Virginia and enter and entirely different kind of chaos.

During the week, Sophie had majorly avoided most of the illegal social happenings. This was partially because she didn’t want to be associated with anything going wrong right before their trip to Greece, and primarily because she was avoiding Cam like the plague in case Kholo had mentioned anything to him about how she’d advocated for him. She didn’t know him well enough to justify how strongly she’d defended his case, and she knew that if word got out, it’d go right to his head. On the other hand, Kholo had never officially confirmed that Cam would be the fill-in chaperone. She wasn’t sure which worst-case scenario was worse: spending three weeks with Conrad, or spending three weeks with Cam having full knowledge of her conversation with Kholo.

As they reached the front, a familiar figure stood, hands on his hips, waiting for them. He radiated arrogance, as he always did. She exhaled slowly and asked herself for the nth time why she’d asked for him to come.

“Cam,” Sophie greeted hesitantly, unsurely. Their eyes danced around each other, Sophie out of diffidence, Cam out of much more. “I’m glad to know you’ll be joining us. Have any of the kids or the other riders gotten here yet?”

Ivie Torres | OPEN

Somewhere in the middle of the chaos, White Oaks picked up several new hires that had transferred in from a barn down the road. Because of the success of their property, many of those surrounding were struggling to maintain their own, resulting in an influx of new hires of all kinds. The farm had recently purchased some new land and was preparing to build new facilities that would continue to put it on the map. With these changes, many people were taking on new responsibilities, leaving gaps open for new employees to come in. Among these new hires was a woman named Ivie Torres, a woman who had applied for three of the positions, receiving a mix of responsibilities with the promise of a more stable occupation once the expansion was complete. For now, she was a stable hand, an exercise rider, and a substitute eventing, showjumping, and dressage instructor.

As everyone else was moving out of the farm for their summer in Greece, Ivie was moving her things into a sunny room on the third floor of the girl’s wing of dorms. She didn’t have much to her name, nor a roommate for the moment. Or, so it seemed. She didn’t start work until the following day, so she had the remainder of the afternoon to herself. Since her old barn had shut down, she could no longer run the same trails she used to. However, she’d heard that somewhere in the back of this property was a link to all those surrounding. She wasn’t sure how well this portion had been maintained, since the local legend told of the pathways dating back to Civil War times. However, with hours to kill until sunset and nothing to do, Ivie was prepared to find out. Packing a few things in her backpack for her journey, Ivie set off towards the signs for the trails, hoping to find what she was looking for. Or, at the very least, adventure.