Dreamer was waiting close to the agreed spot. He was taking care to stay in the shadow thrown by the trees. He wasn't even aware of doing it. The action was simply a second nature to him. Staying in the open or out of cover was anathema to him. Leonne had agreed to meet him there in the early morning and they would set out together for the day. He would teach her basic woodland skills and she would pinpoint the things that defined him as different. It was a fair trade. Given her inexperienced nature as a civilian, he had made sure to pack enough supplies to cover them both for several days. He did not believe they would need it, but he preferred being prepared. He kept scanning the horizon. It had been three days since they had last met in the village, where she had used her sister to deliver a message to him, telling him when and where she wanted to meet him. He was no expert on the matter, but he did not believe that such a thing constituted normal behaviour either.

Movement caught his eyes and he fell back, deeper into the shadows while his lenses overlapped and zoomed in on the speck in the distance. It was Leonne. He frowned when he realised a second person was trailing behind and identified the second speck as Cassy, her younger sister. He could not read their lips from this distance, but given their body language they seemed to be arguing. The latter animatedly, the former was simply annoyed. This was not part of the agreement they had struck. Had she betrayed him? No, unlikely. There had been no ambush in place, no hidden forces surrounding the forest and—

He sighed. Leonne was a civilian. She did not organise ambushes or plot dangerous betrayals. There likely was an unknown reason as to why she was not coming on her own and given the anger the woman exhibited, it was possible it was not a choice she had welcomed. He could understand that. Higher authorities could force through such things. Still, he would need to know the reason. He would hear them out. In a while. He would listen in on their conversation first. A mere precaution.

Leonne was grumbling every stop of the way, even as Cassy kept bouncing around her. She should have seen it coming. When she arrived in the village more than a week ago, with Dreamer beside her, the event had spread like wildfire. Her parents had already heard the story and six other versions besides in the short time it had taken her to say goodbye to him and walk home. Her mother had repeated her earlier lecture in giving good advice about weird strangers that she had given the first day Dreamer had arrived. Her father had waited until her mother was done, then took her aside. He had quietly told her to be very careful and that, just for safety's sake and to give everyone a chance to cool their heads, she wasn't to leave the village until he said so. She had been glad that he hadn't bought into any of the rumours floating around. Most of those had passed already, having been born from boredom and no minor bit of jealousy. Plenty of young, single men had courted her ever since she had returned from the city and she'd rebuffed all of them. Some more harshly than others. Still, it hadn't been pleasant when her mother had started another round of good advice and nagged her about how it was bad form to try and seduce a poor, stumped lad out of his money, even if, as she said, a fool and his money were easily parted. Thanks for the vote of confidence, mom, she snarked.

Now she was finally allowed out of the village and she would have been singing, dancing and skipping every step of the way, except her parents had forced her to take Cassy along. They didn't suspect Dreamer to be of the violent sort, that just didn't happen out here, where people had to band together. It was more done to leash Leonne. How delightful, she thought angrily as her younger sister struggled to keep pace with her large steps. That my own parents trust a stranger more than their own daughter. She chose to ignore every bit of trouble she had gotten herself into and the reputation she had established for herself because of it.

She reached the meeting place and started looking around. She had somehow expected him to have arrived there well before her, even if she was early. She searched for any signs of his presence, not having forgotten how he had seemed to disappear on their first meeting at the Wall. She didn't put it beyond the enigmatic man to be nearby.

Beside her, Cassy began to snicker. 'First time you go man-chasing and he runs away from you,' she teased.

'Or maybe he saw you,' she angrily countered. 'And your little gremlin-like face. I would run away too if I saw you.'

'You can't say that!' the youngest Gyhad protested. 'Mom and dad made you promise to take care of me! So you have to be nice to me!'

'I have to tolerate you,' Leonne corrected. 'And that's what I'm doing.'

'Well then,' Cassy huffed, puffing up her cheeks. 'Then I'll just go home. And you'll have to come with or mom and dad will have you for supper!' The girl turned around, hiding the broad grin of someone who knew they outplayed the other.

'Wait, wait!' Leonne sighed. 'Fine, you win. I'll play nice. I'd rather not stay under curfew for another week.'

Cassy's grin was almost intolerable as the younger sibling faced her older sister again, before the girl turned as pale as a sheet, staring at something right behind her. Leonne spun around and stared straight into the chest of Dreamer, who was standing mere inches away from her. Her eyes shot upwards and she found him looking down at her, his ever present sunglasses reflecting her face. Both Gyhads did the only reasonable thing to do in that situation. They screamed.

Dreamer waited until the two ran out of air. He did not really have any better options and he suppressed his instinct to silence them both. It wasn't easy, but he managed. Once their screams finally died out, he pointed to the north and set off. After a few steps he realised neither of them were following him and he stopped, looking over his shoulder. Leonne was the first to recover and shook her head, before an angry scowl formed on her face.

'You did that on purpose, didn't you?' she asked, before a pensive look replaced the angry one. 'No, I'm sorry,' she corrected herself. 'I didn't mean to accuse.'

'I did,' Dreamer admitted, easily. It was simply standard procedure to arrive from the least expected direction, if possible. 'Why did you scream?' he asked, tilting his head.

'I...' Leonne stuttered, looking confused. Then her anger returned, but she kept it under control. 'Because that is what people do when someone unexpectedly pops up right behind them.'

'I am not a threat,' he stated.

'That's irrelevant!' she shouted, her hands going up. 'You scared the crap out of me!'

He tilted his head again. 'How is that irrelevant?'

Something in the question gave Leonne pause and he saw her turning thoughtful. 'Because,' she said in a normal voice, 'that is how normal people react. How would you act if someone showed up unexpectedly, right behind you?'

He thought about that for a moment. He genuinely did not know. It had never happened to him before, so he had no definite answer for her. Lethal force was the likely answer, but he did not tell her that. He knew enough to know that that was a bad answer.

In the meantime, Cassy had regained control of herself and had begun to slowly approach him, realising he was just weird, but not scary. 'Wow!' she shouted. 'You're tall. And that's a massive backpack!' She walked around him, her earlier fright forgotten. 'Hey, can you carry me on your shoulders?'

'Cassy, you—'

'I can,' Dreamer answered. It was an honest answer. He could. Easily. Almost effortlessly.

'Sweet!' she cheered, before running towards him and jumping up the backpack, scampering upwards until she sat on his shoulders.

He tilted his head upwards, giving the teenager a curious look, before turning back to Leonne, who was gaping at the both of them with an open mouth. 'Is this normal behaviour?' he asked, feeling confused.

'No!' Leonne hissed. 'Cassy! Get down from there this instant!'

'I'm comfortable here!' the younger sister stubbornly refused. Dreamer couldn't see it, but the girl looked as astonished as her older sister that he had allowed it just like that. She hadn't expected it. Usually she did it to chase off annoying boys who were after her sister. None of them managed to tolerate her for too long and it was her way of protecting her sibling.

'Dreamer, I'm so sorry, I—' she fumbled over her words. 'I had to take her with me, my parents wouldn't let me out otherwise.'

'That is fine,' he replied, his voice, as ever, lacking any and all emotions. He turned around and began walking, keeping his pace deliberately slow. It was easier to do so with a human weight on top of him. Cassy was part of his squad, for now, as she was inseparably tied to Leonne, whom he had struck the agreement with. He would not suffer harm coming to her. He tilted his head as he wondered if civilians had a similar concept for a squad.

Behind him, Leonne's protests sputtered out, eventually accepting that Dreamer really did not seem to care about her sister being on top of him. Then she noticed that he barely seemed to notice her at all. Which was strange. Her sister wasn't a lightweight, yet the way she had scampered up him, over his backpack, should have pulled him off balance. Instead he had remained standing straight up, not even showing a sign of unease. Very curious.

She ran after him. 'Are you fine with teaching me some woodcraft today?' she asked once she caught up with him. 'I'll pay you back later,' she said. Her eyes flashed over to her sister.

Dreamer nodded, knowing enough about normal humans to understand the unspoken message. He appreciated that she did not mention the other half of their agreement. It showed that she was serious about keeping it quiet. He walked on in silence. He knew where he would teach the first lessons. This was something he could do.

Leonne followed him for the better part of two hours. During all that time, Cassy kept leaning one way or another as the teenager took great delight in her newfound height, while she kept herself busy with carefully observing Dreamer. It took her more than half an hour before she realised that he had been aware of it the entire time, but didn't react. Either her doing so didn't bother him, or he didn't find it strange to begin with. She was expecting it to be the latter and filed that tidbit of information away in her rapidly growing collection. Dreamer's mind was an enigma to her. She wondered what caused him to be this way and silently promised herself she'd find out, one way or another. Stars above, he was the most interesting thing to wander into the village since she'd been locked away there and she'd be damned before letting him escape.

And she knew there was more to him than a mere strange state of mind. His physical prowess wasn't normal. The backpack he was carrying looked like it was heavier than she was and the way he didn't budge an inch even with Cassy leaning every which way spoke volumes about his strength. Then there was his ability to appear and disappear at will, though she blamed that one on him being an expert at woodcraft rather than some mysterious superpower. A shudder ran through her when she recalled how his hand had laid around her throat. He hadn't hurt her, hadn't squeezed it shut, but the raw, unfiltered danger that he had radiated at that moment wasn't something she was going to forget anytime soon. Still, it was hard to associate the man who seemed to be on the edge of murdering her with the stone-faced mobile Cassy-carrier. The bouncing teenager on top of his shoulders made him look deceptively harmless.

She was so consumed by her thoughts that she bumped into him when he suddenly came to a full stop. She started falling backwards and let out a gasp when his hand firmly grasped her wrist. She looked at him, wide-eyed, her fear returning full force, before her mind kicked itself in gear and told her that he had just kept her from falling. She whispered her thanks, before looking around and realising they had reached the Ganbel. It was one of the few places where you could cross, the local bridge not withstanding, but it wasn't too safe. You could hop across the stones, but one slip and you'd be plunging into the rapids and nothing could save you then, not with the Third Falls being up slightly ahead. The current was, quite literally, murderous. And I nearly walked straight into it, she realised with a shock. If Dreamer hadn't stopped her, she probably would have gone straight over the edge. Suddenly she began to wonder if he had been studying her just as much as she had been studying him. It wasn't a comforting thought.

'We will cross here. I can carry you if you want.'

Leonne's face contorted. The offer may have been genuine, but she didn't quite trust him to jump from rock to rock while he held her in his arms. 'No thank you,' she said. 'I'm perfectly capable of making my own way across.'

'As you wish,' was all he said, before he jumped down, causing Cassy to scream loudly as the girl grabbed hold of his head, which wasn't necessary as he was still holding her by her legs.

Leonne let out a gasp and ran to the edge, only to spot him casually jumping from stone to stone, as if it was no effort at all. Cassy, adjusting as quickly as only teenagers can, went from panicked to ecstatic and began to laugh as Dreamer crossed the rapids with the same ease he had walked down the road before. In no time at all had he reached the other side, where he, for some strange reason, decided to put both Cassy and his backpack down. He turned around and watched her and all of a sudden she understood, causing her face to lit up red in a mixture of embarrassement and anger. He was keeping an eye out for her and getting ready to interfere should she be in danger. How annoying! She hopped down from the ledge and landed nimbly on the first rock. She tested her balance and was glad she had put on her good boots. She made sure she had a proper grip, before jumping to the next rock. She landed with ease and quickly traversed the crossing. A lot slower than Dreamer and with significantly more difficulty, but it wasn't too hard a task. She had done it countless times as a child. Even Cassy had done it a few times, though her parents were likely to murder the both of them if they ever found out. Once across, she gave him a smug glare. It bounced off him, just as everything else had done. She sighed. He could infuriate her, but the opposite was seemingly impossible.

To her surprise he didn't pick up the backpack again, but instead bounded into a surprisingly detailed lecture about the trail the both of them had left on the rocks. He spared her nothing. He gave her binoculars so she could look at the rocks she had first jumped on. She let out a string of unprofessional curses when she saw the imprints her grassy boots had left on the surface. Now that she was being told what to look for, the signs became visible. Dreamer proceed to explain to her, over the better part of an hour, how you could distinguish footprints on rocks, how that natural formations could be disturbed and what hinted at human behaviour rather than that of a wild animal. It was interesting, detailed and given to her in one constant stream of information until her head felt like exploding. Through it all she somehow managed to maintain a close eye on her lecturer and there were many things about him that were off.

For starters, he had a habit of not looking at the thing he was explaining. Something that may sound like a minor issue at first, but it caused her no small amount of trouble when she tried to find what he was talking about, until she realised you had to follow his fingers and only those. He had also repeated his earlier behaviour of tackling several things simultaneously. Talking about the splatter size of bird droppings while pointing at the way plants grew to indicate a possible main vector of wind was downright mind-numbing. She had given him an angry glare when she finally figured out that the two things weren't really related and to her surprise he had tilted his head, before nodding. He hadn't done it again.

Then there was his peculiar habit of forming sentences. He sometimes dropped parts of a sentence, stripping it down until there were barely enough words left in it to get the message across. That was often done by people with a very limited vocabulary or with speech-impediments, but that theory was shattered due to his frequent use of fifty credit words. She hadn't even heard of a vernal pool before he had mentioned it, let alone how the presence of indicator species could give hints at the pollution levels of the surrounding area. Another possible set of disorders was discarded.

Another thing she noticed was how he never approached what he was talking about. He kept a remarkable distance between himself and the subject of the lecture. Most people would approach it to less than a metre. She could count on one hand the amount of times he was less than two metres away of whatever he was talking about at the time. Which was made exceptionally noticeable due to how quickly his hands darted all over the place in quick, jerking movements. She briefly considered ADD or some variant, especially since he was constantly turning his head. She ended up burying that line of thought a few moments after thinking it up, because he was paying attention to everything that was happening around him. So he did not have an attention deficit either.

She scratched her head in confusion. He showed the signs of dozens of different disorders that she could trace his irregular behaviour back to, but every single one of them ended up in a dead end, because he also showed signs of things that weren't found in such people. She would have gone with the autism spectrum disorder. He made no eye contact when speaking and his hand gestures were kept to a minimum. The tilting of his head was pretty much the only one he actively showed her. On top of that, whenever she didn't understand something, he would pick up on it and rephrase what he had said earlier, continuing until she grasped it.

She didn't know what to make of him. There was no pattern she could discern behind his behaviour. Nothing she could link it to. He was an enigma. That was her professional opinion, at least. There was also the matter of just who he was. His name made no sense, the way he moved was either way too fast or unnaturally clumsy, his knowledge about trailblazing was bottomless and he was rich to boot. Her mind was spinning all sort of insane tales, varying from the more mundane idea of him being the mentally ill son of a rich tycoon, to the extremely delusional theory that he was a lobotomised criminal or volunteer from some behind-the-scenes medical facility. The only thing she knew for sure was that he was rich, acted like an idiot savant and was trying to fit in with the rest of the village without standing out too much. Which meant that to her, poor, bored soul that she was, he was a delightful breath of fresh air. Provided he did not kill her or did other untoward things to her, but she figured that if he had wanted to do something like that, he'd have done it already.

Cassy, who wasn't nearly as interested in the meticulous lecture as her older sister was, was rapidly growing bored out of her mind. Bereft from her earlier seat, she started running around the area, turning over fallen logs for bugs, climbing trees to search for bird nests, stalking past the edge of the Ganbel and throwing stuff in it and doing what a bored teenager generally did in a forest. Leonne clearly was too occupied with studying the strange guy and any time she had tried to sneak into the conversation, the man had simply dragged her into the lessons. And she didn't particularly care for the way that bird songs changed when a human being or other large predator was moving through their habitat. She had finally managed to subtly slip away from the two and breathed a deep sigh of relief when they went deeper into the forest. She felt vaguely guilty that she wasn't with her sister, which was why she had been sent along in the first place, but she had tagged along with the expectation that it would be fun! And it had been! At the start at least. He had shown up out of nowhere, which was really cool! Then she had climbed on top of him and he didn't mind, at all! She had screamed again when he had crossed the river and she'd been terrified that they would fall into the water and drown, but he had jumped across so easily! It had been fun to see her big sister getting nettled as well. But now? Now she was bored. And that just wouldn't do.

She waited until her sister and the strange guy were gone from her sight and then made a beeline to the ledge. She threw a handful of leaves down and then tried to run along with them as they raced down the rapids. It was stupid, silly and simple, and she had the time of her life with it.

Leonne was so captivated by the twin activities of trying to keep up with the excessive stream of information flowing forth from Dreamer and trying to subtly study the man, that she didn't notice Cassy's absence until he brought it up. She twisted around and scanned her surroundings, but he was right. Her sister was gone. Likely playing around somewhere, no doubt. 'It's fine,' she shrugged. 'She's likely around here somewhere.'

'She is near the river,' came the neutral answer.

Leonne eyed the man in disbelief. Was he suggesting that he could hear where her sister was?

'She is humming,' he elaborated, seemingly catching on to her thoughts.

'That… doesn't really make a difference now, does it? Not with the Ganbel right next to her.'

'It does,' he said. The man didn't ooze confidence, but rather a sort of surety that made her begin to believe that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't lying. It was still utterly inconceivable. Or maybe he just believed that he could hear her. That wouldn't mean it was the truth, just that he believed it to be so.

'So,' she began. 'Now that she's gone, shall I start upholding my part of the bargain?'

'Yes,' came the simple answer. 'What do I need to change about my behaviour to no longer appear different?'

Well that was straight to the punch. 'For starters,' she ventured,' you might want to take off your sunglasses.' If it were any other person, she would have leaned in and taken them off. Few people objected to an attractive young woman closing in on them and having someone else take the action usually helped a patient to take that first step. Yet she wasn't that daft. What little body language she could read of him told her that doing so would be an incredibly stupid idea.

Given how his first reaction was to take a full step back and the air around him turned threatening, she knew she had made the right call. She raised her hands defensively. 'I won't do it! It's just a suggestion!' And just like that, that raw danger he had been emanating disappeared again. She became aware of how tense her muscles had become and let out the breath she had been holding in.

'I will not take them off,' he stated. 'Suggest an alternate plan.'

That little sentence provided her with a wealth of information. It was said in a tone halfway been commanding and begging. A very peculiar combination. That, and the choice of words was just plain weird. 'Right, sunglasses stay on. That's fair. Well, one thing that jumps out is the way you move.'

'What about it?' came the immediate question and she jumped.

She willed her heart to calm down, as she slowly realised that it was a genuine question, without a hidden threat behind it. 'I... Well... Look at how I move.' She slowly walked around, as she always did. 'When you move it seems forced. As if you're not used to it. Most people in the village think it's because you're drunk half the time.' She looked him up and down. 'But it's not, isn't it? Is it some sort of muscle disease? I won't judge you for it! Anything you tell me will remain strictly between the two of us! It's patient confidentiality!' She cringed when she realised just how that could be interpreted. 'I mean… well.. Not that you're my patient, but—'

'It is no disease,' he said, interrupting her rambling. He tried to mimic her movement, but once again it seemed unnatural. Forced. Her eyes went wide when he suddenly reversed direction and had crossed several metres in the blink of an eye, ending up in front of her again. 'I have tried,' he explained, ignoring his invasion of her personal space. 'I cannot get it right. My body will not let me.' He tilted his head. 'Are there things I can do to compensate it?'

She mulled it over. As long as he was walking strangely, it would inevitably cause people to think he was weird. There had to be a medical reason underlying his strange movement, though. Nobody who was born right did that. 'There must be something causing it,' she returned to her earlier point. 'Maybe not a disease, but something else. Have you visited a doctor? You could visit Catie and have her run a check up on you. It wouldn't hurt and—' she froze.

The air around him was thick as thunder clouds as he stepped even closer to her, lowering his face until it was level with his. She gulped loudly. She would have fallen, but she was unable to move, incapable of looking away from his eyes, even if all she saw were her own reflected in those sunglasses. 'No doctors,' he told her. 'No check up. The cause is irrelevant. I need a solution. Not questions. I have taught you how to spot trails. I expect you to uphold your end of the bargain.'

Then he pulled back and she crashed to the ground, gazing up numbly at him. That wasn't human, she thought. The sheer aura that he surrounded himself with at will was something straight out of a movie. And it was real. So very, undeniably real. She was suitably cowed, yet at the same time her interest was piqued even more. As was her self preservation instinct. 'If I cannot, what will you do?'

'Search for another option,' came the immediate answer, as if it was clear as day to him. But that wasn't what she had meant.

'With me, I mean.' She was taking a risk here, but if she was reading him right, then as long as she was useful...

He tilted his head. 'I do not understand.'

She willed her body to stop trembling. 'If I cannot help you,' she whispered from the forest floor. 'What will you do with me?'

He looked at her for a bit, as if he was trying to understand a deeper meaning. 'Our agreement would be annulled,' he finally said.

She got up, her legs still shaking. 'You won't get angry?' she asked. 'You wouldn't hurt me?'

'I do not get angry,' he began, before his forehead creased in a deep frown and his face turned thoughtful. A moment of silence drifted in between them. 'No, I do not,' he concluded. Then, with a tilt of his head. 'Why would I hurt you for being unable to help me?' he asked, audibly confused by the question. If he had been more normal, she suspected he would have sounded baffled rather than merely confused.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Leonne looked at him for a good long moment, before something inside her broke under the tension and she started to laugh. It began as a small giggle, before gaining in strength and before she knew it, she was down on the floor again, tears streaking down her face as heavy sobs tore themselves free from her lungs in between two bouts of hysterical laughter.

She tried to get a grip on herself, she really did, but all she could do was ride out the wave. And in the meantime Dreamer stood here, with his head tilted in wonder, worsening her predicament.

When she finally managed to collect herself, she stood up again, shaking her head. Get a grip, Leonne! she admonished herself. Sure, he had hit her with a flash of emotions she had in no way been prepared for, but she was the alumni of her year and a renowned psychiatrist! She was better than this. 'Right. Okay,' she panted, forcing her heart to beat at a more sedate pace before it would end up jumping out of her throat. 'With that established,' she began, before realising that she was taking him for his word, which might be a terrible mistake. She noted a lack of worry in that regard and filed that away for further research when she was at home, where she would be able to collect her thoughts in peace. 'If you want me to help you, I wil need to understand why you behave the way you do. It is easier to fix something at the root.' She didn't wait this time and already had her hand raised mid sentence, pre-empting another frightening experience. 'If you do not wish to tell me, I wil respect that. It will make my task easier if you do, but I will respect the boundaries you set. I just want you to be aware of that. I wil reiterate that anything you tell me will stay between you and me. It would also help me if you elaborated on why you want to appear normal. There are plenty of people who possess some strange quirks and some folk do their very best to stand out from the others.' She gave him an imploring look, one she hoped would relay her honesty and hide her personal desire to peel apart his mind for her own curiosity. 'The better I understand you, the better I can help you.'

He went quiet. Eerily quiet. He didn't stop moving, his head still sharply turning from one side to another, but he didn't make a single sound. She waited. Began to count the seconds passing by once she realised his face had become inscrutable once more. A minute ticked by. Two. Five. Ten. She practised patience. Fifteen. Twenty. Thirty. She felt sweat run down her back. Her stomach began to grumble. She ignored it. This was the most interesting person she had ever encountered in her entire life. She didn't want to risk losing him. Not when the alternative was being locked up in the village again. She wanted to learn! To explore! See the world! And, barring that, she at least wanted to do her damned job.

'I wish to act normal,' he suddenly whispered with a hint of emotion in his voice.

It took all she had to not let out a feral scream of joy.

'Because I wish to become normal,' he finished.

She reasoned that he didn't mean that in the way most outsiders would have. 'Why do you wish for that?' she whispered back, her mouth dry, her heartbeat resonating in her ears.

The silence returned. She started counting again, only to belatedly realise that his head had stopped moving. This was a different silence. She felt watched. Closely watched. No, more than that. She felt as if he was staring through her body, straight into her mind and soul. She held her ground, refused to look away, feeling she'd miss the opportunity of a lifetime if she did. And counted. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty.

She had lost count at least twice when his body language changed. He seemed tired. She corrected herself. He didn't look tired. He looked exhausted. More akin to a dead man walking than a living being.

'Because I need to live,' he whispered, his voice barely audible. 'And I have run out of reasons to.'

She didn't dare breathe. Didn't dare blink. Her mind pulled the simple sentence apart and dissected it, before homing in on every separate particle of it. This was the essence of it. The reason why. It was cryptic, barely told her anything, yet at the same time it was a wealth of information she had been ill prepared for. She dismissed the basic idea of him being suicidal. This wasn't a cry for attention. This was something far beyond that. She studied him, every aspect of him, meticulously so. He seems old, she realised with a shock. Weary beyond what his years indicated. 'Tell me more,' she mouthed, barely enough air in her lungs to give voice to the words.

He sucked in a deep, slow breath. His gaze remained aimed at her, but it lost its focus. His lips moved, but he said nothing, as if he was struggling with the words. 'I have nothing to live for,' came the eventual answer. It was laced with frustration.

It didn't tell her anything, but she didn't mind. It felt as if she was traversing a minefield. Growing annoyed or rushing this would only result in disaster. 'But you used to,' she said, gleaning the hidden kernel from between his words. 'What changed?'

His demeanour changed. Vastly so. He stood up a little straighter and his focus was fully shifted onto her, a burningly intense gaze strafing her. Yet it didn't hit her directly. It was as if he was looking at her, but not for her. As if she was a goal, but not his target. Cold waves of fury roiled off him, battering her defences. His chin slowly sagged to the ground and she became aware of a strange sort of creaking. Her eyes darted around in search of the sound, before landing on his hands, now balled into fists. Stars above, she was hearing his bones. She looked back at him and found him gnashing his teeth. Suddenly, taking her off guard and forcing her to take a single step back, his face flashed back up and she found herself eye to sunglasses once more. 'Because,' he hissed, and she recognised the emotion for what it really was. 'I failed.' The words cut, the raw feelings that they were coated in were like knives. Self hate. Stars above, he blames himself, she realised. But what could it be? What could he possibly blame himself for that wrecks him to this extent? He didn't seem the frivolous sort, or one to take life lightly. Everything he had done had given her the impression that he was always prepared and extremely capable. Or was that because he failed once? she wondered.

'How did you fail?' she asked, unable to keep some trepidation out of her voice, worried she'd cause another outburst.

His hand cut through the air in a sharp, dismissive gesture. 'That is irrelevant,' he said, the stone wall sliding across his face once more. Her eyes went even wider as she realised that the emotion was gone again. He had shown her a part he clutched deep inside. The origin of the problem. As she had asked. Now it was hidden again, buried underneath his self control. Which, given the raw, deep wound that it contained, had to be made of steel. 'You asked. I answered.' His eyes were on her again, tracking her and she once more felt like prey. She didn't mind, this time. She had made headway. Significantly so.

'Yes,' she replied, giving him a careful smile. 'You did.' She thought about what he had told her. It was the tip of the iceberg and she knew better than to make false assumptions based on how normal humans would come to that conclusion. He was different, that much she was sure of. Unique. Dangerously so. Yet that same unknown danger attracted her like a moth to a flame. It set alight her long stifled passions and reawakened her desires to learn, to discover.

If she had a pen in her hands she would have clicked it while taking notes. Lacking that, she chose to ask her next question. 'So you failed. Why does that make you feel as if you lost the reason to live?' It was a cruel question. Possibly painful. Possibly lethal. If he lost his self control, took offense at it, he might end up attacking her. It wasn't uncommon for psychiatrists to meet such a fate. Usually they had people around them to prevent that. Or had their patient tied down. She believed that she didn't need to fear that particular fate. Dreamer's self control was damn near perfect.

'It was why I lived,' he replied.

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the cryptic answer and instead settled for a nod. 'It was your reason to live?' she asked. It was an empty question, meant to further her rapport with him through sympathetic small talk. So when he shook his head with surprising intensity, it took her off guard.

'No,' he said. 'It was why I lived,' he repeated, stressing the last word. 'Why I was alive,' he elaborated.

She didn't get it, but understood the importance of the unexplainable distinction. How are the two different? she thought. She was about to ask him to further explain the difference when a sharp, panicked shriek rang through the forest.

The both of them turned at once, one faster than the other. 'Cassy!' screamed Leonne. She ran towards the river. Beside her Dreamer's hand grasped hold of a tree, before he launched himself from it at blistering speed. Leonne's mind took notice of his movements as he blinked out of sight in a heartbeat.

They hadn't been clumsy in the slightest.

Dreamer had several reasons that warranted his urgent response, even if it meant breaking his cover by acting like the superhuman he really was.. Leonne had given her word that she would see to Cassy's safety in return for being allowed on this mission and, as her squad leader, it therefore had become his responsibility as well. Since she was part of his squad, the girl, assigned to her, became so as well by association. There were no parameters present that superseded the iron clad rule of saving your teammates. There was also the matter that if she were to die, it would complicate his mission. Suspicions would be raised towards him. So, simply put it meant that he could not afford to not interfere. The woman called Leonne had genuine classifications. Nightmare had meticulously tracked her background information. It was likely her attempt was genuine and she was his best option at tackling the devastating flashbacks that kept haunting him. His body could take the stress and the self inflicted wounds. His mind could not. The damage was accumulating. He was a sentient weapon without direction, without cause. His last order, to live, was becoming exceedingly difficult to execute. An unused weapon was worthless and that was what he was. Without a goal. Without purpose. Unacceptable.

But for now he had a very clear goal. He cleared the distance in a handful of seconds, reaching the Ganbel even before the first scream had fully faded. His lenses already tracked the edge, his mind telling him where the sound originated from. He saw her hands, clinging to the grassy edge with the desperation of a dying man. Then it was torn out and she fell. The splash was all but instant, the girl had no time to scream. Calculations ran through is mind as combat drugs native to his body began flooding his system and enhancing his senses. Volume of water. Heat. Memories of how the rocks had been located. How the stream had been pushed up or down. Estimated velocity of the current. Newtons moved. Average duration of a girl's ability to hold her breath. Impact durability.

The conclusion he reached was not favourable. He loped past the edge, lenses sliding neatly in front of one another. Useless. The stream was too fast. Too rough. He couldn't find her. Think. Mass and surface area of her body. Impact strength of the water. Effects of calculated vectors. Obstacles deforming the projected path. Think faster. Be ahead of the moving calculation.

Behind him Leonne could be heard, slowly making her way through the forest. Irrelevant. Data not needed. Not a threat. Not a factor. Ignore. Where is the girl? Water would carry her out of his reach in seconds. Only one chance. His eyes kept flashing back and forth, scanning the surface for even the most minor of irregularities. Take it in. Compare it to the image of the stream he had seen earlier. Search. Project the path. Bubbles breached the water! There!

He didn't think about the potential cost of his course of action. He had a goal. He launched himself off the narrow edge, sailing through the air with all the grace of a brick and slammed into the water with enough downward force to sink through the bottom of the rapids in one go. He saw her on the way down. Wounded. Blood trailing out of a long gash on the palm of her hand. In front of him. Not behind. Good. He stretched out his arm, felt her waist slam into it. He curled it up, forcefully pulling her down. The force pushed him off balance, but he hit the floor still. Felt her bones creak under the pressure of his strength and that of the river. Irrelevant. Pain was not death. His free hand shot into the stone floor like a spear and he found a hold. Good. He slammed his feet down and launched himself up. He didn't get far, the current instantly getting a hold on him. Without footing his weight was useless. He went higher still, the last of his upward strength carrying him higher. Close to the surface. Not through it. Close. Close enough. Using his own body as leverage, his arm holding the drowning Cassy shot up. It breached the water. Narrowly. Barely. Enough. The girl tasted air. Gasped. Her lungs kickstarted themselves. A final heartbeat resounded through her chest and vibrated all the way to his arms. Then she was out. Tossed aside like a ragdoll. Free from the river and out of danger. Mission success.

Then he fell down again as his weight dragged him to the bottom once more. Second mission parameter added. Survive. He slammed his arm down again, felt his fingers dig through stone. Felt one break in the attempt. Irrelevant. Muscles compensated. Pain of no consequence.

New situation. He had pinned himself down, not moving despite the current tearing at him. Unable to go up. Unable to breach the surface. Unable to reach the edge. Unable to move. His mind told him how long he would have before running out of breath. He had time, but no way up. No way out. Danger. Danger.

Rapids could not be countered. Could not be taken out. Plan around it. Third Falls behind him. After that, surfacing possible. Caution, deep fall. Possibly fatal. Possible to slow down descent? Difficult. Success of survival otherwise? He looked around, trying to see through the turbulent stream, forcing his eyes open despite the stream hammering them. He saw little, but began forming a map in his head when a pebble slammed into his left eye like a missile, perforating the durable membrane. He closed his good eye instantly. Chance of survival otherwise, zero. Slow death through drowning. Would his breath last until after the Third Falls? Had to. Yes, would if this speed kept up.

Bereft of a choice, he let go, allowing the current to swallow him. He spared one last thought on his current squadmates and knew issues would arise from this. Then he was slammed into a rock with enough force to dent several of his ribs and all of his attention was focused to his immediate need for survival.

Leonne reached the river just in time to spot her sister crashing onto the shore. She ran over to her, any and all thoughts in her mind evaporating at the sight of her wounded sibling. 'Cassy!' she screamed. She slid to a halt in front of her, narrowly avoiding a painful crash. She grabbed the girl by her shoulders and pulled her up, before the teen began to violently retch. Several pints of water later, the girl was still heaving, but her lungs were greedily sucking in the fresh air. Leonne looked her over. Cassy's hands were covered in small scratches, blood pouring from them. It nearly sent her in a panic, before she realised that the red wasn't dark enough. Blood mixes with water, part of her mind supplied. Then she spotted the massive discolouration happening on her sister's skin, easily visible through her torn clothes. Pink skin was rapidly turning dark, the first signs of the mother of all bruises. Leonne grimaced at the sight of it and guessed that there likely were damaged bones underneath, if they weren't broken. 'Cassy!' she repeated, turning the girl's head and forcing her to make eye contact. Her younger sibling looked up at her and panic and pain were warring for superiority in Cassy's eyes. The pupils, however, dilated. No concussion, Leonne thought with relief. At least there's that. Then her sister threw herself at her, arms tightly wrapped around her waist as the floodgates broke open. Leonne ran a hand tenderly through her wet hair while whispering consoling words, while simultaneously checking for any head wounds. 'There there,' she reassured her. 'You're safe. You had quite a scare.' She softly rocked her back and forth. 'It's alright,' she comforted. 'It's alright. You're safe.'

The words were as much for her own benefit as for her sister. She had only recently nearly gotten the poor girl killed and now this. Granted, this time it wasn't her fault, but she had still promised her parents to take care of her baby sister. She had let her curiosity and hunger for excitement get the better of her. Again. She should have—

Several alarms went off in her mind, all in the very same moment.

'Cassy,' she asked, her voice rife with a myriad of emotions and breaking apart as she spoke. 'Where is Dreamer?'

She barely heard the answer. She didn't need to. She knew. She had seen the speed at which he had launched himself towards her sister. Had seen how her sister had crashlanded onto the shore. She didn't need her sharp intelligence to connect the dots. He had jumped after Cassy. Into the rapids. He had saved her sister. And now...

She looked at the river, at the unforgiving currents, and shivered. He was in there. In there. Her mind recalled how she and her father had thrown logs into the stream when she was younger. How they had splintered on their way down stream. How the logs were all but disintegrated before they got a hundred feet. And Dreamer had jumped in. Tears ran down across her cheeks and she grasped her sister tightly, trembling uncontrollably at the sudden knowledge that a man had just died. He had died to save her sister.

In that moment Leonne wasn't a highly educated psychiatrist. She was nothing more than a young woman, who had not yet seen much in life and was unaccustomed to the concept of violent and untimely deaths.

Dreamer felt his body impact on another rock in the water. He had tucked himself into a ball in an attempt to somewhat steer his traject with his limbs. He wasn't too successful, but he believed it had lessened the crashes somewhat. At the very least he had stopped hitting his head since he finally had managed to manoeuvre himself face first down the stream. He had felt something crack during the last impact and that wasn't a good sign. He just hoped it had been the rock giving out. The alternative was dangerous. He didn't feel concussed, so that either meant he was fine or that the damage was far worse than he thought.

It wasn't difficult to focus on that while the current was barreling him downriver at breath taking velocity. He was used to multi tasking and his body ran on auto pilot anyway. He had forced his shoes off earlier, freeing his feet, gaining a little bit extra awareness. His senses detected another subtle shift in the water and in that same instant his arms shot out as he slammed his hands onto the rock. He tried to grab hold of it, but the smooth surface offered his damaged fingers no grip and the current pushed him off. He tried to reorient himself again and this time he succeeded before hitting the next obstacle. He was hoping to crash into a large enough rock, so he could halt himself and exit the river by climbing up, but so far he had not been that fortunate.

It was a dangerous situation he was in and he knew it. He couldn't breath, visibility was near zero, several of his fingers were broken, possibly a collarbone as well, his knees likely showed cracks, his only way out was by going down a waterfall and, if he survived, he would have to find a way to explain his survival to the villagers. From all those issues, only the last one managed to affect him. Everything else was intimately familiar to him. The prospect of death had never fazed him to begin with and pain was nothing more than an unpleasant sensory input. The thought of losing one of, if not the last chance at fixing his broken and dying mind was a lot less easy to bear. He needed to get out of the river, before the waterfall. He could still explain that. Falling down would kill a normal human. Could kill a Genesis. He was annoyed with himself for not fully scouting out the terrain beforehand. If he had, he would have been able to steer himself towards the right type of rock. As it was, he was blind. Figuratively in one eye, literally in the other. So he kept being pulled closer and closer to the Third Falls, unable to do anything about it.

He hoped the girl was still alive. Physically she should have been within acceptable parameters, but he had learned long ago that shock could kill as well as a knife through the heart. So he hoped that she had survived. Because if she hadn't, he would have failed to uphold Leonne's promise. Another wound that would be. One more to add amongst the others. Another token of unacceptable failure. Another dead squad member to add to an already far too large list.

The water around him began flowing differently and he instantly knew why, even before the dull thunder of the waterfall reached his ears. He turned around, fighting the pressure to regain some mobility and slammed his fingers into the floor. The stone didn't yield at first and another finger broke, but he tried again, letting his weight carry him to the bottom entirely before repeating the attempt. This time two of his fingers broke through and he had a handhold. For a small moment he stopped his descent. Then his fingertips were torn off and he resumed his path. He refused to give up, turned his body around and, with his fingers unable to do the job, slammed his foot down instead. It worked. Stone fragmented under the inhuman force, his dense muscles and artificially crafted skin letting him, narrowly, break through the surface. He paid no heed to the little, sharp fragments that were forced into his skin. He had to hold on.

Because he was now hanging halfway over the cliff, water raging all around him as gravity forced it into a violent descent.

He opened his good eye and tried to look, but the water made it impossible to see. He spent one more moment going over his options, slowly stretching out his hands in search for anything he could use, before he gave up and accepted that here was only one way out.

He relaxed his foot and let himself slip over the edge.

It was a long trip down. He had opened his limbs to slow his descent. Anything his limbs touched was grasped with all the strength the wounded Genesis could muster. It didn't stop his fall. Every time his fingers, arms, legs or toes would be forced loose in an instant or the rock he grasped for would simply crumble under the pressure. Every impact also further damaged his body. Dents appeared in his bones, skin was torn open, blood poured out of dozens of small wounds, but he didn't give in. It never even occurred to him. To him, it was a simple matter of fighting until one could fight no more. It wasn't a matter of pride or being stubborn. He simply was Genesis.

Then he impacted the water with the force of a meteor. With his limbs stretched wide and open, the surface tension had absorbed a solid part of the impact. He had calculated his skin to be more durable and he had been right, even if the front of his body had partially cracked open and everything not covered in blood, sported ugly bruises. He was not yet fully down, however, and his velocity pulled him straight to the bottom. A sharp pain ran through his arm as it was impaled on a sharp rock, before his chest slammed onto the floor of the river. He heard and felt his ribs protest for a brief moment, before eight of them broke in an instant. He bounced up again, resisted the urge to gasp for air and began crawling to the edge. The current was weaker here, even if it still pushed him along, but as he willed his broken fingers to grasp the rocks on the floor, he began to regain his hold. One pull after another he made his way to the shore.

He breached the surface and filled his lungs with much needed air, before taking stock of the situation. He was quite sure he knew, but he might have hit his head so he needed to check regardless. He checked his body for massive bleeding and found none. He had no issues taking in air, even if every breath was accompanied with a sharp pain in his chest. He looked at his fingers first, then the rest of his limbs. All his fingers were broken and he was short two fingertips, but they were still usable so that was fine. His arms spotted large bruises and his right forearm wasn't working the way it should. Given the large piece of rock sticking into it, that made sense. He yanked it out and a small trickle of blood spurted from the wound, his body already beginning to seal off the damaged area to prevent further blood loss. He looked at the deep gap in his arm and flexed his fingers tentatively, checking how much of is mobility remained. Aside from a significant loss to the dexterity of his fingers, it still functioned within acceptable parameters. He had also broken the toes on his left foot and both his knees were damaged.

Overall that meant that he was still functional. He could reach Nightmare with ease and get himself fixed, so he moved all of that down as a secondary priority. His first priority would be the Gyhad siblings. Should he meet up with them or not? He did not know. Could not predict them. How could he explain his survival? He turned around and took in the waterfall behind him. It confirmed what he had already known. If he had been human, he should have died. He hadn't. It had been close, but he had survived. If he had not been able to arrest his fall at the very top, he likely wouldn't have. He would have been carried too far out and would not have been able to slow his descent. The water would not have broken open before his body had. Yes, he confirmed without emotion. I would have died.

His lenses turned towards the cliff as he planned his next move. In the end his training made the decision for him. His squad was up there. He would go back to them first. He wouldn't yet let them see him, but he would check up on them. There was a chance they were not out of danger yet and had to be taken care of.

The irony that he thought this while sporting more wounds than any human could possibly survive was lost on the Genesis.