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Unfortunately, for Autumn, avoidance was not going to last very long. Because Thorne knew what she looked like (or at least, her incorporeal form), and he knew the sound of her voice, and he had a damn good memory.

He also really liked taking out his anger at the gym.

He wasn't sure why he hadn't just done this in the first place instead of running off for nine days (alright, he knew damn well why, but the regret wasn't any easier to live with) but now it was almost daily that he came to run or box or burn his lungs out exercising until it felt a little easier to breathe.

That was how he found Autumn.

No crows involved.

Thorne wondered for a second - should I? Bad idea? - and then sighed and thought, <******** it. Because Lucas and Rylan had all but pounded it into his head how much of a poor life decision it was to run away from things. Again. Twice. A lot. Like he was addicted to doing. Still working on getting over. So Thorne meandered up, taking languid, easy steps until he was right behind Autumn.

"Hey," he said, hands on his hips, bending so that he was eye level with her, "fancy meeting you here." A crooked smile, gentle and harmless. "Nice guns."

Oh. Oh.

Thorne had wondered what Autumn had felt when they'd been released from the mansion. After he'd tucked his tail between his legs and run, he'd wondered about them all. About whether or not she was alright after the trauma she had been through. After all of that time spent building something, only for it to be turned against her.

He hadn't expected this.

"Autumn," he said, sounding surprised, concerned, verging on frantic, "Autumn, no. I'm not - why would I...?" He straightened and moved around the bench in one fluid movement, dropping down to crouch in front of her so that he could see her more clearly.

"You aren't the person I blame," he said softly, reaching and touching her forearm gently, gently enough that she could pull away.

Because yes - he had suffered. The trauma had nearly wrenched him away from two men he could learn to love, from a home in the making, no matter how much Ashdown seemed bent on tearing it all down. The trauma had driven so far into his mind that he'd been on the verge of a panic attack every minute of every day for the first two. But it wasn't Autumn that had caused it. They were both victims. He couldn't fault her for the pain she'd been forced to endure and the manipulation the Fae had dragged her body and soul through.

"I was - going to ask if you alright, but it looks like we both got shaken pretty badly, huh?" Thorne smiled, his expression tilting crookedly on his face. He wanted her to look at him - to - to not shake like that, as though he were about to beat her down for something neither of them had control over.

"I suppose we could start over though, first, yeah?" Thorne bit his lower lip. "My name is Alexander Thorne. Though, I guess you knew that already, huh?"

Thorne listened. To everything Autumn gave him as an explanation. He listened, and when it was over, his eyes rose to her and he cocked a lopsided smile, everything about him wired, but not with tension.

"So I guess that makes us, what? Obligatory friends now?" He stood up, stretching his hands above his head, muscles unwinding. A grateful hiss burned through his throat and the dreamer glanced down at Autumn, dropping his hands to his sides and rumbling. "I'm sorry you saw that. But there's really no going back in time and changing what happened."

One hand on his hip, Thorne cocked his head to the side, glancing down at Autumn. "I spent nine days running away from two guys over this Other Ashdown s**t and I nearly lost them for it. It was a spiral. Don't let what happened in that place do the same ******** spiral to you. I'm - not fine. But I'm getting there. And I don't want you dead."

He paused, lips quirked into a half-smile.

"I am kind of hungry though, if you'd like to actually sit down and talk like regular people for once. I know a burger joint down the road from here. Best damn milkshakes I've ever found."

"Only if I buy the next round," Thorne retorted, his mouth quirking into a grin. "I think I can live with that deal though." It was strange to accept Autumn so easily, but he did. Maybe it was because he'd had enough trauma, all of the aftermath of it. All of the negative emotions that cycled through him daily, sometimes to the point that it was impossible to breathe.

His eyebrows lifted in amusement the mention of his - were they his boyfriends? Really, he wasn't sure himself.

"Don't congratulate me yet," he said with a scoff, "I might be on my way to bed with both of them but the amount of spooky s**t Ashdown is crawling with is - getting to them, I think. And I don't know how, because we all seem to have selective muteness about the subject." He shrugged, thinking about the strange flare of temper in Lucas, the way Rylan had been bested by a bird last week.

And then Autumn spilled so many secrets to him in a matter of a few minutes that Thorne was left reeling from the payload of information, his expression caught between surprise and disbelief. And then he let out a laugh, deep in his throat, and wrapped a companionable arm around her shoulder. "That definitely means we're obligatory friends now. Glad to know that other people want to ******** him, by the way. He seems not to think that way himself."

He laughed.

"Don't worry," he said, a familiar wicked spark in his chest, "They'll blow your mind to heaven and back."

Thorne walked after her, keeping pace with ease thanks to his easy few inches on her. They were out of earshot before she started talking, and Thorne listened to everything she had to say. It was easy - almost too easy to swallow - her description of them, of their kind, of the enemy, of everything.

"You know," Thorne said, "A month ago, I would have said you were crazy. And now - now it just makes sense, and isn't that almost worse?" He laughed, but it sounded strange and conflicted. He glanced at Autumn and cocked his head, eyes ghosting with something like contemplation, like the onset of steel and determination.

"I ******** everything up the first time I was in that - that place. Other Ashdown. I'm not going to make that mistake again." He shook his head. "I can't afford to. So... so what do we do? Those of us that are involved? I understand wars, and human violence. But this? What side are we even supposed to choose?"

"And what? Are you telling me that we're... what, caught in a cycle of reincarnation?" Thorne laughed, but the sound was humorless. "What the hell, Autumn. So we're not crazy. We're not going insane. We're just... pawns to some greater fight?"

"Werewolves?" His tone dipped, sardonic and disbelieving. "You're joking." And then she mentioned Lucas, and the color drained from his face. His eyes widened, and then everything - everything inside of him ached. It was like being stabbed, being shot. Autumn could have taken another prosthetic spider out of her purse and attacked him with it and it would have been better than this.

He waited - barely - until they were seated in the diner, out of earshot of most of the milling people that also frequented it. To the outside observer, they were just two gym rats ready to stuff their faces with milkshakes and burgers to the sound of crappy 1950's tunes. And then he turned to her, his eyes violent and terrible.

"What do you mean? About Lucas - what... what do you mean. Autumn." His tone was suddenly pleading, dangerous and deadly. "I cannot hurt him. I refuse to hurt him, you have to realize that. And what the hell do you mean he's on the other side? Did he... was that his choice? I'm not going to fight him. I can't." He pressed a hand to his eyes, violent and shaking with a new restless desperation. "s**t, Autumn. s**t."

Eloquence had gone out the window, and now Thorne saw it again - the memory - the false memory...

Lucas, his blood, his two arms. The pain of it all, the remembrance of being torn open, ripped apart.

The waitress came by and he forced himself to order. And then he looked at Autumn, his eyes wild.

"And what do we do? If they don't remember us... what do we do?"

Thorne sucked in a breath and swallowed all of the ******** pain inside of him to listen to what Autumn had to say. It was hard - it was more difficult than anything he'd done in recent history, but he did it anyways, staring at her, watching, waiting. His jaw worked at words, but he slowly realized that what she was saying was this: they were both crazy, but they were both on similar paths.

Had been since a life they'd shared in some other place, some other time.

"You know," he said slowly, wonderingly, glancing at her as he bit the straw between his teeth, "I was once told - happiness isn't something solid. It slips, and comes and goes. Sometimes for only a few minutes, sometimes for years. We'll spend our whole lives reaching for it, the way we reach for other things." Love, peace. Lucas, Thorne thought. He worked his jaw and continued. "I don't need to be happy. I just need to save them."

He paused and smiled at Autumn. "You know? And maybe... in doing that, I'll be happier than I've ever been. I think you know - I think that's part of why you're telling me all of this - that it's going to hurt like hell. And maybe we fail. Maybe we die and start again. If this is a cycle, I guess we just have to keep walking forward, right? I'm glad - I'm glad even now that I chose freedom. I want you to know that. And I'm glad that you're here with me. But I hate - that there are sides. That we have to draw lines in the sand." He paused and looked at her, worrying his bottom lip before asking, "Can we remember? Memories... slippage from that world before. Do we ever remember?"

He leaned back in his seat as a new song came on, some ratty old 1950's pop song from another place, another time. He looked at the ceiling, contemplating, touching the wound, open and bleeding inside of him. He thought of Lucas. He felt every part of his body where the man had touched. He said, "I know." He looked down at her. "I know." He smiled, and it was terrible. "So what? We save him from himself? I guess this is what a lose-lose situation feels like."

He bent his head and chewed at the straw, vibrating restlessly, painfully in place.

"Told you," he added, pointing a french fry at her. "Look you're an obligatory friend, Autumn. You should know food is my second greatest love in life." He wondered if she'd seen it - his mom in their house cooking. The way she'd taught him how to make buuz and suutei tsai. Before the fire. Before everything.

He paused and sighed softly. "He will. I think... I think he's already heading there." He smiled, bitterly. He remembered that second meeting. The mention of monsters, the questions hanging in between them in the air. It made sense now. And it hurt that he was only just catching on, and that Lucas had swallowed his secrets down and down and down. It hurt. He looked up at Autumn and his eyes were wild, and vivid, and only for her. "We'll bring him back. Together." A pause. And then - "We'll come home from this war, or die trying. Yeah?"

Thorne shook his head and sighed. "I just - want him to know." He smiled. "That he's loved. Now. Of all times. How do you say that to someone though, when all of this is happening?" He shook his head and glanced up at her.

"I guess it's a good thing I kept in shape. So," he hummed, his mouth quirking into a darker smile, on the edge of something else, "Magic, huh? How do I learn?"

"I don't think fate has ever been about deserving happiness or not," Thorne retorted, but his smile was half-wry. "I imagine though, that of all the things I'd fight for, happiness of others would be it." He flicked his fingers at her, pulling the spoon out of his empty milkshake and sticking it into the container of all overflow that always came with it. "And the people I love."

He shook his head, a grim line drawing over his brow. He was glad for Autumn's openness. It was something he hadn't had in awhile from most people. And it was refreshing, and new, and he thought maybe it would be alright to help her try and save people - even at the expense of their own happiness. Their own safety. That was what he was willing to risk, after all.

"Well if I complained about all of the things we didn't deserve in life, I would never shut up," Thorne said to Autumn, his lip curling in amusement. "But I'd rather just accept it and move on to what we can do. I - " He paused, struggling. "I need people though. To help me save him - them. I don't think - as much as I wish I could, I don't think I can do it on my own." He shrugged, feeling the knot of guilt and anger and sadness inside of him like a bomb waiting to go off.

He didn't want to think of how it would feel, how close it would get to the surface, the next time he saw Lucas and knew what secrets the other man held. It wasn't fair - it wasn't fair of him to demand Lucas to give over everything that hurt him, everything that was driving him mad (because Thorne remembered the night in the apartment the second time, and Lucas admitting that he thought he was becoming a monster) but they'd said they would try, didn't they? They'd said -

"I had a memory. Once. I thought it was just some of the supernatural s**t playing around with us all, but. Now I'm not so sure. And it was - " Thorne smiled, his expression humorless. "I think in another life he killed me, Autumn. And I can only imagine what it did to him in the aftermath, if his mind was still there enough to recognize the blood on his hands. I don't think there's a thing I wouldn't do now - knowing - to stop that from happening again. And that's scary. What I'd do for the people in this town - for Lucas and Rylan especially - it's scary."

He finished off the burger and picked at the fries, dipping them into the milkshake leftovers like eating might save him from the embarrassment of confession. He raised his brows at her proposal though, a smile slowly edging across his face. "I think I can live with that trade off," he said with a laugh, "because if you're a slut, I'm a ******** whore. I think we can do something about staying fit though - you've got serious guns, and if I didn't have something I'd like to be doing every night, I'm not sure I would live outside of a gym or a track course."

He shrugged, tilting his head back and staring at the ceiling. "Based on will, huh?" He sighed out, the sound wild. "The first time I went there physically was to that mansion, and I haven't gone back yet. I think - I want to though."

He looked down at her, eyes frighteningly clear. "The only way out is through, right? I want to know more. About what happened. About what is happening, and can, if we don't fight it."