"Wake up."

Willow wondered what was so important that she had to be woken up from the best sleep she'd had in forever. If anyone but Daniel had been shaking her shoulder, they might have gotten third degree burns in reply.

"This isn't another car swap, is it?" She growled, holding her jacket tighter around her shoulders. They'd gotten out in Las Vegas, only to get back on the road in a bus for another two hours. After "stretching their legs" in St. George, Utah, Willow thought that they might get a hotel room or three to spend the night, but Emma called up two more Taxis for them. They had been driving for hours, all through the night, and Willow was bored out of her mind.

"Emma says we're here." Daniel whispered.

Willow peeled her cheek off of the cool glass and looked out the window. It was almost pitch dark outside, and if it weren't for the two streetlights over a parking lot, she would think they had just stopped on the side of the road.

She got out of the car, hopefully for the last time, and looked around. As her eyes adjusted, she saw a building nearby. Its lights were off, but it seemed to be kept in mildly good condition, with a wood sign proclaiming "Glen Haven General Store," just within the reach of the light.

There were some other buildings down the road, but she could just barely make out their profiles against the darkness. The road itself seemed to stretch on forever in either direction.

"Welcome to Glen Haven, Colorado." Joan motioned to the pitiful excuse of a town with her arms spread wide.

"Shh!" Starling- Sam, Willow reminded herself- told Joan, his hissing much louder than Joan had been.

"We're staying here?" Daniel asked. Did the General Store double as a motel?

Emma finished settling the payment with the drivers, neither of whom seemed to have any complaints at the insane amount of cash that she handed them. They got back into their cars and turned around in the parking lot, driving off the same way they had come.

Opening the duffel that Daniel was carrying, Emma drew out several flashlights, passing them around among themselves.

"Follow me." She said. Willow got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as Emma led them away from the buildings, away from the light of the streetlamps, and off the road. Into the woods.

"You think the path is still here, Emma?" Sam asked in an exaggerated whisper, holding Emma's hand tightly.

"Doesn't matter if it is, we'll find it soon enough."

"Isn't this like a national park, though?" Roxanne asked. "Are we trespassing?"

"That's on the other side of the road," Emma assured her, vaguely gesturing over her shoulder. "Rocky Mountain National Park stops at Glen Haven." As she spoke, the ground they were walking on took a steep turn downwards.

"You didn't have a problem with trespassing this morning," Joan pointed out. AJ hooted with laughter, and Rebecca had to smack him soundly on the back before he regained breath.

"Technically, now that was yesterday morning." Roxanne said, trying to salvage her pride.

"How do you know so much about this place?" Rebecca asked. "It's barely even three buildings, I don't think it's even on any maps."

Emma squeezed Sam's hand tightly before she answered. "This is where we grew up."

They never found the path that Sam mentioned, but Emma seemed to know where they were going. They kept walking, dull colored wet leaves rustling beneath their feet. Willow finally tore off her shoes, having enough restraint to carry them rather than toss them off into the woods where no one would be able to find them. She didn't like the dampness, but her calloused bare feet didn't slip nearly as much as her flats did, for which she was grateful.

Birds began to sing in the distance.

"Sunrise." Sam said, smiling up at the dark sky.

"Sunrise?" AJ asked.

Sam pointed up at the trees that they walked past. "The birds are waking up. That means the sun's gonna rise," he smiled blissfully, as if they hadn't been awake and driving all night.

"I've never seen a sunrise." Daniel said.

Emma slowed down, but she didn't stop walking. "Look over there," She pointed to her left. "It'll start to get brighter soon. The sun's gonna come up from over there."

Daniel looked off to where she'd pointed, nearly tripping over AJ and Roxanne several times as he stared into the darkness, determined to be the first one to see the sun rise.

He collided with Joan as Emma stopped the group suddenly. She had recognized a certain tree, running her fingers over a smooth section of its bark.

"Just ahead now," She told them.

Willow stopped at the tree to try and see what Emma noticed, flashlight clasped in her hands as she shone the beam up into the leaves.

A small section of the bark had been sanded down nice and smooth, making it easier to carve a crude heart shape around four letters: "MR + EP".

What on Earth did that mean?"

"Willow!" She was startled to see that they had walked a little farther than she expected, but Daniel's shout wasn't alarmed, he was calling out to her.

"Daniel, what is it?" She ran to catch up, the beam of her flashlight bobbing back and forth furiously to catch up with the others.

Daniel pointed down, through the break in the trees. "The sun's rising."

Although she was anxious to get some cover and get to sleep, Willow let herself stop to follow Daniel's gaze. A bright red, furious ball of light was just barely emerging over the tops of the trees in the distance. The sky was already reacting to it. Pink and yellow outlined the horizon, and the clouds left out from last night reflected a bright orange, while the rest of the sky faded off into a soft blue.

"You don't get anything like this in LA." Roxanne shook her head.

"Yeah, the Hollywood sign blocks out all the cool colors." Joan agreed.

"I have never seen a sunrise before," Joseph mused.

"You haven't?" AJ asked.

Joseph shook his head. "The sun does not reach our city at the bottom of the sea." He lamented.

"Oh right," AJ chuckled lamely, "You're from underwater, I forget."

"It is fine," Joseph assured him.

Willow bit her lip. "It's beautiful." She whispered.

Emma let everyone watch for a few minutes, but they needed to get to cover before it was too light to hide.

"Come on, we're almost there." She said. Everyone else had turned off their flashlights by now, but Willow kept hers on, just in case.

Just below them, the mountain they'd been walking down all night leveled out, but the forest continued, fanning out around a deep blue pond. On the other side of the pond was a grayish-blue warehouse, with a rusted red roof.

As they approached the old building, Willow could see faded circus posters plastered over the cool cement walls. Once again, she wondered what they could possibly mean.

"Well, here we are," Emma said without fanfare. "There's a lake for swimming and purifiers for drinking water, and the trees provide cover, but there's no power. Sorry." Emma said. The lock on the warehouse's one door was rusted, but the key she produced out of her pocket somehow worked. The door itself was going to take a bit of coercing.

"Do we have any cleaning supplies in these bags?" Willow asked as everyone chucked their flashlights back into the duffel. She rummaged through the duffels carried by Daniel. There were their clothes, the flashlights, and a few PJs leftovers, but not much else in the direction of necessities.

"We can get some stuff back in town!" Rebecca said.

"It's still way too early for any of those places to be open, though," Joan yawned.

Joseph nodded. "Perhaps it would be best to just rest for now. Then we can gather supplies when our thoughts are more collected."

"My spells aren't that strong, but I can hide us from magical detection." Roxanne offered. She picked up a few pine needles from the forest floor, twisting them between her fingers. "I think I've got the spices I need to make it work, at least for now."

AJ tugged on the door, groaning with effort to make it budge. "Uh...little help here?" He asked, nearly hanging off the door handle.

Daniel cracked his knuckles, stepping up with Joseph. They both pushed against the rusted door, slowly but surely sliding it open.

It was an absolute mess. Old tent tarps and poles, some broken, lay strewn everywhere, as well as dust, cobwebs, and worn wooden crates that said things like "elephant feed" and "magicians tricks. NO PEEKING".

"Oh boy." AJ sighed.

Emma coughed. "This may take more work than I thought. Roxie, do you know any quick-cleaning spells?"

Roxanne really did laugh this time. "Please, I'm not a house-elf."

"What's a house elf?" Willow's head tilted curiously.

Everyone but Daniel stared at her, not wanting to be rude with whatever was said next.

"Maybe we can find some money in the budget for a book or two." Rebecca offered awkwardly.

"Well, even if we can't go shopping for supplies yet, we still need to clear a space to sleep." Joan kicked at a box full of clown props. A whoopie cushion wheezed pitifully in protest.

"I'll work on setting up those protection spells." Roxanne opened her little crossbody purse, assembling her tools as she stepped back outside.

Rebecca ran her hand over a long wooden pole, laid down the center of the room. "Maybe we can build something out of all this old stuff." She mused out loud.

"What would you build? We've already got a shelter." Daniel pointed out.

"True, but it seems like the roof could use a little more reinforcement," She said, looking up at a tiny ray of sunshine, poking through the crack in the roof. "And anyways, it's always fun to make stuff."

Willow wrinkled her nose at the spider's web above a pile of bug legs. They didn't have things like dust and bugs lying around at N-Corp. It was too likely to interfere with experiment results.

"Hey, um, Joseph. Once we empty out the place, maybe you can move some water from the lake across the floors. It won't sterilize it all, but it'll make the rest of cleaning easier." And she wouldn't have to touch the bugs.

"Good idea, Willow. You are quite clever." Joseph said. He handed her a pile of old rotting newspapers, which she promptly turned to ash with a highly concentrated flame.

"Thank you. I never went to school, but all those years in that lab taught me to problem solve." Willow said.

Emma watched Willow thoughtfully. "It is almost the end of summer, school's coming up soon, do you think we could get enrolled at the local high school?" She had formed a sort of assembly line with Sam, AJ, and Daniel, passing junk in between each other to toss it out the door without having to move very far.

Willow took a deep breath in. "I don't think that's... An amazing idea. Okay, I think it's a bad idea," She admitted. No one was cleaning very much at the moment. At this rate they were never going to have a decent place to sleep.

"I'm not exactly good at socializing, as you clearly saw back at the Vault. Or holding my temper... And we're also on the run, so..."

"You can practice with us until it starts." Emma reasoned. "And you have to go to school, or you'll never make it out there in the real world, no matter how stupid school is."

"Dangit, I thought going on the run would get me out of school!" AJ harrumphed.

"We're on the run," Willow echoed AJ, pointing to herself and Daniel "If we show up in public, they'll call the police and take us away, it's not possible for us to go."

Emma stayed calm. "I wouldn't suggest it if I thought that it would get you in trouble. I chose this place because I know from experience that almost nothing from the outside world reaches here, and almost nothing in the town ever gets out. We can't stay locked up in here on our own. That's just like the vault."

"Yeah, but at least here we get to go outside." Daniel said.

"Yeah, I guess so," Emma admitted. "If you're just worried about being recognized, then we can disguise you."

"How?" Willow asked.

"Dye your hair, little bit of makeup, no one recognizes you." Sam waved at her like one would a ridiculous magic wand.

Willow frowned, fingering her almost-black waves of hair subconsciously.

"It might be worth it." Daniel said, after a moment of consideration.

"But you know why I like my hair as is." Willow felt slightly betrayed at this.

"I do, I do," Daniel said in a rush to assure her. "But you always talked about going to school if you ever were allowed to. You've got the chance now, we both do. So let's take it."

Daniel's past was almost unknown, but Willow knew that she had a life before N-Corp. However, repeated brainwashing made her doubt the already fuzzy memories. Looking at everyone else in the room, she knew that she had missed out on so much of what was considered a normal life. School could help her have an actual life, but there was also the probability of someone figuring out that Walter Nathaniels claimed her as his daughter, and turn her them in to Nathaniels or the Crusaders for the possibility of a reward. That would get them either captured, or force them to go hide somewhere else. Willow didn't enjoy road trips as much as some people, and she didn't know how many safe houses out in the middle of nowhere that Emma had.

Emma ran a hand through her dark brown hair, chewing nervously on her bottom lip. "I'm sorry, I just realized how terrible I sounded, and making it sound like you had to do it...I just...I want to help you guys, and if you can tell us how, that would be amazing. If you don't want to go to school, that's fine. We can find another way to teach you guys."

She put on a bright smile, but there was guilt in her eyes.

She was trying. She was trying so hard, and Willow realized that each of these people had their lives changed the moment that they set foot inside N-Corp, just like she had. Any of them could have backed out, yet here they were, trying to make a normal life possible for two human experiments.

If they could be that brave, then so could she.

"Okay, I'll dye my hair."

Even though it was her decision, and the idea of actually attending a school did sound somewhat intriguing, the only thing that Willow was truly happy about was her newfound freedom. All she wanted to do now was curl up tightly to keep herself warm while she got her first good night's sleep for the first time in years.

Emma could see that Willow was feeling stressed, and felt the overwhelming sense of everything that had happened within the last day slowly falling upon herself.

"We can talk about it in the morning though, after we've gotten some rest." She decided.

Willow was pleased that they could agree on something. She started pulling on some heavy broken equipment to try and move it outside. They were making progress. With the above-average strength of both Joseph and Daniel, the old warehouse was over halfway emptied, with a pile outside for salvageables and for unusable junk. Rebecca was blowing dust off the circus tarps without too many holes using her mind-powers, easily folding the huge fabrics into bedding mats that could cushion the ground beneath the sleeping bags Emma and Sam had brought.

Daniel and Lord Joseph somehow climbed up on the roof to nail down some planks over the holes speckled among the reddish brown shingles.

Half an hour later, they'd cleared a space that looked cozy enough for the nine of them to rest. Joseph and Daniel handed out the sleeping bags. The tarps would have to do for pillows. Even so, Daniel considered this a step up from sleeping in a sterilized pod locked up in N-Corp's Vault.

Emma leaned against the dirty, yet cool, wall of the warehouse as she glanced out the lone window in the warehouse. The sill was tarnished and peeling, the glass itself coated with dirt and cobwebs. While the town a mile up the mountain was just waking up, they were getting ready to go to sleep.

"This has probably been the craziest day of my life, and I've trained with Phoenix." She found herself staring at one of the circus posters on the wall, of a woman with a strange face riding a three-legged elephant with one ear.

Finally, Roxanne came back in, the light of the rising sun illuminating her chubby form in the doorway as she leaned against the wall.

"That should hold us, for the day at least," She yawned in a manner most uncouth. "I'll check it again when I wake up."

Joan and Sam helped her over to a sleeping bag with a tarp mattress, where she instantly fell asleep.

"So now what?" Willow asked. Her legs were itchy and bare, and if she had to be in her skirt for much longer she might set their secret base on fire.

"We get some sleep." AJ nodded to Joan, who leaned against the most comfortable spot on the wall, Roxanne's head on her lap for a pillow.

"Grab a spot on the tarp anywhere," Joan waved at the sleeping bags, sounding just as tired as Roxanne had been.

"All of you, rest. I will stand guard and ensure that Roxanne's spell holds." Joseph said, his scythe-like sword strapped to his back.

"Are, are you sure?" Emma asked, intercepting him in the doorway. "You know you don't have to stay with us. You should go back to Alexandria, tell your queen what you learned about N-Corp."

"My Queen has the information. Sam helped me to send it to her." Joseph smiled kindly at Sam, who had already cocooned himself within a sleeping bag next to AJ's.

"She will decide what is necessary to do with it." Joseph concluded soundly. He nodded in the direction of Willow and Daniel as they placed their sleeping bags within an arm's reach of each other.

"All of you need my help more."

Emma wished she knew why it was so hard not to blush. "Thank you, for everything. I'll take the next watch shift?" She asked, unsure herself if she was asked or stating.

"That would be wise, yes." Joseph gave her a kind smile before ducking out of the warehouse to patrol their woods.

Emma settled into a sleeping bag next to Sam, running her hands through her static-y hair.

She didn't fall asleep for a long, long time.