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Thorne is in Other Ashdown playing with this strange ability to touch and effect things in Ashdown itself when he sees a shadow out of place. He's standing at the edge of Coalsmoke, the warehouse looming over him like a black eyed vessel in the grey drizzle.

He wasn't necessarily aware of where he'd been before or what he'd been doing. It was like stuttering to a start in the middle of a dream, or a play he hadn't known he was a part of. His eyes flick up to Coalsmoke and down to the spot where he thought he'd seen a strange shadow just moments before.

Against every bone of better judgement in his body, he goes looking for the source. He walks away from Coalsmoke into the ugly grey veins of the back end of Ashdown, nothing but rundown warehouses and abandoned drives, overgrown fields and scarred alleys full of dumpsters, of rot and ruin.

He doesn't call out.

If something is here in Ashdown for him, it will know to come and find him first.

Thorne tilts his head at Noeh's appearance. His eyes widen minutely - a breath of surprise - before he burns out and smiles at her, the expression haunting, ghost-like, before it drops. He's glad she's alive. He hadn't known she had survived. He lifts a hand and waves back.

"Noeh," he says, the only thing he says out loud. The fondness in his tone is unmistakable, but a question lingers there too.

He closes his eyes and bows his head to her.

Granting permission.

Thorne blinks awake and looks at Noeh. He is used to her presence now. Some would call him foolish for trusting her as implicitly as he does, but he has little else to lose from it. And she is better to him than most.

"They let her," he responds, and his voice is too tired for anger, but a dark tremor runs through it, considering. It softens though, and he reaches out, pulling at one of the soft feather-brown curls of her hair. "Thank you," he says, and it's all he can say, because the enormity of relief behind it is deafening, and he is sure that Noeh can feel it, can hear it in the fault lines of his voice.

He is scared. And she keeps him quiet. Keeps it at bay. I won't let her hurt you, not again, she says, and Thorne breathes out. It is a sharp sound that say that he believes her. That he understands.

"And you?" He asks. "I don't want to let her hurt you either."

But he isn't strong enough for that. He doesn't know if he'll ever be.

At the question, he only tilts his head. Of course he remembers, it is one of the few good memories left. He misses the plants from that place, if nothing else. If no one else but Noeh, he misses their quiet language and their fondness for him in return.

"You know I'm yours," Thorne responds, an easy acceptance of whatever it is that she needs to teach him. His eyes flare, wild-bright but refined. Waiting, wondering. Curious.

Lead me.

Thorne nods, his expression raw and hungry. He aches with failure. He hadn't been able to help Noeh, back then, only himself - so what was the point?

"That doesn't mean I still wouldn't want to protect you," he remarks, his voice a whisper or a shout for the intensity of it. He follows her without question. Of the few people he trusts implicitly anymore, Noeh is one, for her treatment of him in those three months.

He watches her the way someone watches a star or a storm or a goddess. There is something half-reverential in his expression.

"Hiding?" he echoes, catching up to look at her. His eyes lid, lower. "How?" he asks, because he believes her. "I want to be able to stand up to them. To be as strong as them."

He looks up at Noeh, searching.

"So teach me."

Thorne lets it go.

Instead he looks up at the church, his hands hanging loose and restless at his side. He has avoided places like these for a long time. He can still hear the hymnals. He remembers what it was like, sitting in confession.

Noeh asks him for a memory, and Thorne looks at her, curious. Sharp.

"When I was seventeen," he starts, halts, and continues, viciously low, "my friends - they stopped looking for me. Noticing me." He curls his fingers inwards, as though he can feel the scars he carries. "At first it was deliberate. But then - it was just - habit."

His mouth stills and he breathes out before adding, "Or my father. Without a drink, I was as good as a lamp-post to him."

"It's alright," Thorne responds, soft and raw. "They are what made me."

He looks at Noeh with a fierce sort of sadness, the kind stemmed from the failure to protecr. He understands the differences between them and it is unfair. Awful and unfair.

"Yes," he says, "of course I'll go. What must I do?"

Thorne looks at her. Mirrors, he wants to ask, why mirrors? But he only tilts his head. Nods. There's something cryptic here, something unknown, but he has quickly learned better than to ask questions that he knows will not be answered. Not the way he wishes for them to be.

"If it's for you," he says, "I won't. I'll be careful."

He reaches out and touches her head gently, a soft and fond gesture.

"Where should I look for you when I come back?" he asks.

When.

No more if's.

"As you wish it," Thorne says, and lingers in that moment for as long as he can. And then he takes his hand back, flexing his fingers, wondering, and bows his head.

"I'll see you soon, Noeh," he says softly, fondly, desperately.

And walks away.