The following morning, another visitor approached the pod that Kyle had exiled himself to eight days earlier. Upon the sound of the slowly approaching footsteps, Kyle was shaken out of the work he had buried himself in for more reasons than just the desire to find them all a way out their current situation. He moved to the open doorway of the pod and glanced in the direction of those steps, his face showing a cross between surprise that anyone would be coming out there to see him at all now, and fear that maybe it was Ian coming back to express an even more violent outrage than he had already had.

Though, a moment later, it was not Ian who exited the trees, but Lili instead. And that fact shocked him even more. “Lili?” was his hoarse, painfully spoken greeting as she took a few shakier, deliberate steps toward him.

“Hey,” she greeted him in a voice that was equally strained as she looked his way, her eyes showing the immediate reaction to the bruising and swelling of his jaw that became clearer as she stopped several feet from the doorway he now stood in.

“There’s so many reasons why you’re the last person I expected to see out here at all. Not that I expected anyone else either, but still…” he attempted, still speaking just above a whisper as his eyes moved over her, doing everything they could to avoid looking into her own.

Lili took a slight breath as she set aside a bag she had carried with her, allowing herself a moment to find a response. “Well, I haven’t left the cabin in over a week, and you haven’t been back in just about as long. I figured it was time our paths should cross again.”

“I’m sure that the guys can’t be happy about you walking all the way here alone, all things considered,” he attempted, absently glancing back toward the pod’s computer once more, for no other reason than to continue to avoid looking directly at her right then.

Lili sighed slightly as she finally forced her own eyes away from his more than obvious injury and moved to take a seat on the log that he and Ian had shared briefly the day before. “Well, I haven’t made them very happy so far this week. What’s one more transgression, right?” she offered with a small shrug, which was easily replaced with the slightest flinch as she took the seat.

Kyle’s original response to her comment was easily replaced when he allowed another glance her way just as she took that seat and caused that split-second of discomfort to cross over her pretty though still excessively pale features. “Walking all this way can’t be good for you this soon,” he managed as he allowed himself only one tiny step towards the ramp that led downwards from the door of the pod.

“You channeling Jared now?” she allowed a short-lived smirk.

Kyle allowed another small sigh of his own, as well as the slight biting of his lip which of course caused immediate pain before he then managed to continue. “You’re obviously still pretty worn down after everything. I’m surprised he let you come at all,” he stated, biting back the urge to add ‘for more reasons than one.’

“Let me?” she returned wryly, which did cause Kyle to look down and away from her once more before she continued. “Ian and Jared are both exhausted after a week of looking after…her,” she swallowed slightly before forcing herself onward. “Ian wasn’t even awake yet and Jared was busy trying to get her to eat. He wouldn’t have even noticed I was gone yet, I’m sure. I left a note on his computer though. But like I said, I’ve been in bed for over a week. I needed a change,” she finished quietly.

“So as soon as they notice you’re gone, I’m sure they’ll be heading this way to haul you back. May as well save them the time and effort before it gets…ugly,” he decided on.

Lili just scoffed slightly before responding. “Looks like it already did,” she managed as she nodded toward his jaw line.

“Which is just one of many reasons it’s probably not a good idea to piss them off anymore and bait them into coming here looking for you, right?” he attempted to argue, though his voice seemed to lack any of its usual conviction.

“I made it clear in the note that I wanted to come out here, and if they still have a problem with it, then I’ll remind them that I’m not a prisoner, or an invalid, even if I am still in a bit of pain; staying locked in that cabin any longer is hardly going to help matters. All it does is make me dwell on everything,” she finished firmly.

“And you put all that in the note too?” he asked, trying not to allow any change to his current expression, as difficult as that was at that point.

“More or less,” she offered as her simple answer.

Kyle let out another heavy sigh as he finally allowed himself to step down to the ground outside the pod, after casting a wary look at the tree line to gauge whether or not the upset parties had begun making their way after Lili as of yet.

“I get that you don’t wanna dwell on…everything,” Kyle decided on the last word after a momentary pause. “But you really shouldn’t be here, Lili. That’s something I’m sure all three of us most likely agree on right now.”

“Why?” she asked without pause, which did catch Kyle enough to glance back her way once more.

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He swallowed hard as he attempted a response. “I’m sure you know why,” he answered sadly, eyes cast down again.

“Enlighten me,” she stated simply.

“Lili,” he paused in an attempt to find any words to respond with. “It took everything I had to already have this conversation once. I don’t think I have the strength to do it again. Please, just go, before things get any worse, ok?”

“Worse how?” she asked, her own conviction to continue that conversation not faltering nearly as much as his was.

“Like Ian coming out of those trees after you, and deciding that his fist didn’t get the point across quite well enough, since you’re obviously here right now, which I’m sure he is not going to be happy about in any way,” Kyle answered her, his tone almost pleading at that point.

Lili just shook her head and looked down, biting her own lip before replying. “Ian hasn’t been happy with me at all since I had the baby; Jared either. So like I said, what’s one more reason?” she finished, her own voice faltering a bit at last.

Kyle shook his head as he looked back her way once again. “Not even getting into how right or wrong your fears about them actually are,” he paused only briefly, “why do you even wanna be here, with me? It makes no sense, Lili. I’m the last person you should be near right now,” he finished, his own voice breaking as well.

“Then make me leave,” she stated simply.

“Excuse me?” he asked, easily caught by her response.

“If you don’t think I should be here, then make me leave,” she repeated in the same flat tone, almost as though daring him to do as she said.

Kyle scoffed as he looked back at her once more as though trying to decipher exactly what she was saying. He then had a slightly dark thought which he couldn’t help putting into words. “So, is that what you want? You want them to get so pissed about you coming to see me that they come out here and do something about it?”

It was then Lili whose face adopted the look of disbelief. “Do you really think that, Kyle? You think that on top of everything that’s happened to me since we got here, that that’s my big plan? To plot some intricate revenge against you now?” she scoffed as she shook her head, her own eyes downwards.

“You would be justified though, wouldn’t you? Especially after everything that’s happened to you,” he added in another hoarse whisper.

She allowed another shake of her head before responding to that. “I have a gun tucked into the back of my jeans as we speak,” she pointed out, which only caused Kyle to swallow hard as his body tensed at the admission. “I wouldn’t need either of them to take any kind of revenge for me. I could do it right here and now if that’s what I thought you deserved.”

“Then…why aren’t you?” he whispered back, at last keeping his eyes on her rather than looking away this time.

“Why aren’t you making me leave?” was her response, which did only cause further confusion to cross his face. “You said I should go, so why didn’t you make me?”

“Haven’t I done enough damage?” he sniffled, his eyes then dropping to the ground once more.

“Have you?” she returned pointedly, but soon continued. “And if you think it’s best that I leave, then how would making me do just that be considered ‘damage?’”

“Why do you keep answering questions with questions, Lili? Why are you even here, if it’s not to tell me how horrible a person I must be, or get that revenge? Why do you even wanna be anywhere near me after everything?” he pleaded with her desperately to give him an answer to any of those questions.

“What was the last question?” she asked thoughtfully.

“What?” he replied, caught again.

“The last question, ask me it again,” she stated simply.

Kyle looked even more confused, but gave in anyway. “Why do you even wanna be near me...” he stated, his voice trailing off slightly as he finished.

“One more time?” she asked with a surprising softness to her voice.

“Lili…” he began.

“One more time,” she repeated.

“Why do you wanna be near me…” he repeated once more, his own voice barely audible.

“So, let me see if I got this straight yet,” she began softly. “You want me to go away, but for some reason I won’t go away, and for some reason, you’re not forcing me to go away, even though that’s what you want me to do. So, if that’s what you want, and it’s not what I want, then why am I still here, if you can just make me do things I don’t wanna do, after all?”

That was when Kyle finally broke, unable to make sense of anything at that point when it came to his own terrifying abilities. He took a seat next to her and buried his face in his hands, obviously more than a bit distraught by the point it seemed she was trying to make.

“I don’t know what I made you do, and what you really wanted to do. I just don’t know,” he sniffled again, still burying his face to avoid having to see her reaction to this terrible break in all that self-assurance he tried so hard to pretend he had.

“There’s no way I can know either, Kyle. After all, that’s how it works, isn’t it? You make someone think that their thoughts are their own, but they’re really not. So, I can’t know how I supposedly ‘really’ felt all those times I was with you. But I know that right now, you want to be punished, you want to disappear, but I don’t want that. I know that I don’t wanna lose you, any of you. Not ever. So if what I’m feeling right now is the opposite of what you’re feeling, then it must really be my feelings right now, right?”

“I don’t know, Lili,” he admitted as he looked up at last, but still refused to look back her way as he wiped at his blue-gray eyes.

“Yes you do, Kyle. Right now, you know that this is really me, saying that I really don’t wanna lose you. I can’t say that I feel the same way about you that I feel about the man I gave my virginity to, or that I feel the same way about you as I feel about the father of my only child. But I know, without a doubt that I can’t lose any of you. And right now it feels like I already am losing every one of you, in one way or another,” she stated sadly. “Please don’t let me.”

“How will any of you ever be able to trust me again?” he had to ask.

“We still don’t know if you actually did mess with my head. It’s a crime that can never be proven, one way or the other. All we can do now is go forward. Backwards won’t give us any answers, no matter how much we want them.”

“But you don’t love me. Isn’t that proof that I had to have made you be with me?”

“Problem being that you’re using a false statement as your proof.”

“Pardon?”

“Read my mind right now, and tell me if you still believe that I don’t love every one of you, in one way or another,” she whispered as she accented the words with a gentle kiss, before taking his hand and gesturing for him to follow her back home, where all of them needed to find some way to move forward, once and for all.