The town of Cocari was really two towns: one above, and one beneath. The city was created spread out, according to legend a mining town and a series of farms coming together to form their own little economy before it was regulated by the kingdom. It wasn't condensed like the main kingdom, so everything froze here. The temperatures were so dangerously low enough that they had created an intricate series of tunnels beneath the city, so that people could get from building to building without freezing to death. In the wintertime, the tunnels became their own little festival filled with markets and shops. Locals called it "The Icebox".

Ramona had never ventured up this way for a reason. Though a renowned trader's dwelling, well-known for its innovation, Ramona despised the cold. The light freeze in the kingdom was enough for her, it had taken her three years just to get used to that alone.

The locals were getting prepared, however the festival wasn't up and running because apparently it wasn't cold yet. Ramona's insides were already shaking, she couldn't imagine it getting much worse.

According to Leif's diagram and side notes, the tunnels were going to be filled with people who were carrying heavy objects and shuffling around. There shouldn't be a problem getting the prince out, it was just getting in.

Leif's diagram pictured a spotty labyrinth, with disjointed areas and scratches that signaled collapses or breaches or other issues. He didn't remember everything, but as he claimed, he knew it when he saw it. That wasn't a lot of help.

"I think..." Ramona was bone tired. It was mid-morning, with everyone bustling about. She needed to liven herself up, but she couldn't. She'd been up too long. "I think we need to actually get some rest."

Leif shook his head, then his stomach growled. Ramona snickered at that. "Also, we should probably get food."

She didn't want to spend too much time in the city. There may be a lot of tourists, but she looked too different to not get noticed. Another problem with Leif not being able to speak meant that she would have to, and if she didn't already look different enough from these moon-faced dirt-haired people, she certainly sounded foreign. If there truly was someone already chasing them, then familiarizing the locals with their little group was the last thing she wanted to do. 

"We get food, then we make camp somewhere."

Leif shook his head. He pointed downwards and stomped.

"I don't think either of us are shape-up enough to pull this off."

Leif started marching off in the direction of the town, and Ramona grabbed him by the hood. He let out a choking noise and stumbled back.

"I said no."

With the back of his hand he slapped her away and began miming at her things so quickly she was not able to keep up.

"Look paranoia," she muttered. "My gun's kickback is going to knock me over, and I'm worried that you're going to eat the prince once we find him. We're not ready. I admit, I should have thought of this sooner, but we had other problems," she flicked his shoulder and he winced.

With a pinched pout, he nodded. Then he gave her an inquisitive look, thoughtful in a way. The dominant eye gazing at her was one she wasn't truly sure he could see out of, and he reached out and touched her hair. She smacked him and he shook his head. Grabbing a bracelet from his wrist, he gave it to her.

"I have an actual hair-tie," Ramona replied. He then gestured to her coat. She patted it and shook her head. "I'm not getting rid of it."

He gave her a hooked finger and a gritted smile. He was right, she was pretty identifiable with it on. However, it was all she had that she'd actually spent the time making her own. She sighed. "I'll nest it somewhere, how's that?" she asked. However, when she took it off, he began flailing his arms and hitting his sides. "What?"

She looked down at herself and chuckled. The blood from when she was grazed in the chest had made its way down her gray shirt. There was another problem in which she looked like the traveling marketplace, pouches and knives strapped onto her on every hitch she had. The other trouble was the crown, which she had tied around her belt loop and then tied again around her waist. 

Leif pulled the coat back over her shoulders and patted her.

"For the better, eh?" Ramona laughed. Then she stopped and buttoned up. "Good, it's too damn cold here anyway."

Finding food was agitating to say the least, and Leif was not happy. Many of the people here did not take kindly to foreigners, with the first two restaurants not allowing Ramona to order. The third time, Leif just went up and pointed. The order took over a half an hour, meaning there was too much time spent in the city according to him.

Out in the woods, they found an alcove where they could be blocked from Cocari. They built a fire, the wind having a cutting cold to it.

Leif was scribbling furiously in her journal. Ramona had resigned herself to no longer letting it be a personal journal. Thankfully, she hadn't been stupid enough to put anything truly revealing about herself.

"You writing a novel there, hotshot?" Ramona joked. Her lids were half-fallen and she was sprawled on the grass, but she promised to stay awake until he was done. He returned her comment with a smirk, then crouched down to meet her on the ground.

The Curator worked for the King Owain Banner and Queen Deirdre .

"You've got to be kidding." Ramona felt heat rising to her face. "This whole operation was done by our new fucking king and queen?"

Leif put a finger to his lips and hushed her. Ramona sheepishly recoiled and nodded at him, and he breathed a sigh of annoyance.

Her mind was already firing questions, connections, and admittedly worry. If this was an operation created by the people who now had the throne, this was an ongoing operation for who knows how long.

Ramona read on, but it didn't answer much. It was more about Leif's choices.

First, we wanted to start over. Then things went sour. My family got scared. So I put them on a boat and sent them over to what I assume is your home country. No one here would be caught dead on a permanent trip to Merrine. That's where I'm headed next.

"That makes one of us, I suppose," Ramona said. She handed Leif back the journal. He blinked at her, a little surprised. Ramona assumed Leif thought she was trying to go back home. Ramona clarified, "if I end up back there I'm no better off than I am here. Really, I'm just trying to go somewhere new."

He smiled and nodded, then flipped to the next page and scrawled on it.

Honestly, I never thought I'd even have a chance.

"Well, I barely know what we're doing next. I know we've got to find some abandoned tunnels and get by some guards. Who knows if the prince is even still alive?"

Leif shrugged and sighed. Then he gave Ramona a thumbs up. Ramona furrowed her eyebrows and gave him a thumbs up back. Leif chuckled and scooted away from her, smirking like he knew something she didn't.

Since he volunteered to take the first watch, Ramona was able to get some sleep. Before she turned over, she raised one of her guns to him.

"Can I trust you?" Ramona asked.

Leif pressed his lips together and nodded. He took the gun from her hand. Ramona closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Then she felt metal at her temple.

"Asshole, I didn't hear you click the safety off."

The safety clicked off, and Ramona opened her eyes. Leif had a smirk on his face, then removed the gun, patting her on the head. Ramona swatted him away.

"Son of a bitch, just trying to damage my calm, aren't ya?" He laughed and gave her a curt, faux-serious nod. Then grabbing her journal, he tucked it into her coat. "Thanks," she mumbled.

It was the first time in a long time Ramona actually felt a little safe. It was the first time in a long time someone was keeping tabs on her, making sure she was going to be alive another night. Tension she didn't know she was holding relaxed for the first time in forever, a tension lodged in her sternum, held between her lungs, so she couldn't breathe fully until it melted.

Finally, Ramona slept.

--------------------------------------------------

Everything was blurry, the soil of the woods mixed with the cream-blend sky until her reality mixed in with everything else on her mind. Ramona was seeing double, or triple, that is. Awake enough to see the starless sky and frozen ground, with grass a muted green. Home, where the bluer than blue sea met with the peach sky, and when the sun set, a flash of green set everything into motion. The waves grew and swallowed the shore, the sunshine bloom of the sky wilted and became the blackest of night until there was only stars. At the same time, everything was frozen, a cold that Ramona had only experienced twice at home but also felt so normal. The sea wasn't bright as it was deep and ominous, more dangerous and reckless. The night was made of powder and smoke, like the world never became warm even in the morning.

The waves were still rough though. The salt burned Ramona's tongue, and waves assaulted her. She hadn't been laying in the water before, but now she was being buffeted. The world around her looked like the soothing ocean she grew up with, but it treated her like the rough seas she was smuggled on. Constant pushing and prodding, all the more daunting, until her heart was racing and she felt like she was being hit by her own mind.

A gunshot rang, and everything went dark. Ramona had hoped that the gunshot was part of the mixed dream, but her face was wet, and the liquid was too warm, not like the frigid sea. Her eyes opened wide and she threw herself off the ground, gun in her hand and pointing wildly. Two men stood in front of her, one about to throw a knife. She shot him, then shot the other.

Behind her, she heard "Goddammit!"

Breath ragged, she wasn't thinking. Who did she just kill? Were they civilians? No, no, they were holding knives. Someone else was here, and they knew whoever she had killed. What if they were soldiers of the town? For some reason that felt unlikely.

Warmth streamed down her cheek. Her mind was such a frenzy she'd forgotten about the someone had been shot.

Turning to her left, she saw Leif. Blood coated his neck and pooled in his sweatshirt, making it sap-like and black. This wound wasn't like the shoulder wound. There was no humor in his eyes. There was no life to his face, even his fear weak.

"Oh-" Ramona shuddered and touched her face. Breath came out in quiet gasps making her lungs burn. It was his blood, his blood was all over her, all over him, all over the floor. She then grabbed for him. "Leif!"

She gripped his arm with iron in her veins, panic rising in her throat. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, she was screaming it in her head but nothing could come out of her mouth. She bared her teeth and began shaking her head, then Leif hesitated - an off kind of move.

With one finger, he raised a shaky hand to his lips. Eyebrows raised and eyes unfocused. Ramona touched his face and tried to read him, but she couldn't. His mouth moved, but everything was blurring. For a moment, she thought he might speak, words on the death bed. But she knew she'd hear nothing from him than the wheezy breathing that comes from a shot to the lung.

"You're gonna be okay," she whispered.

"You are quite the quickdraw!"

Around a tree, another man emerged. Shorter, beaten, but not as bad as she had seen before. Nice clothes, replaced, whatever he had been wearing ditched and probably forgotten. Along with Leif's friends, she was sure.

Raising her gun to shoot, Ramona geared it to go again. Before she could pull the trigger, however, Leif caught her arm. She glanced down, and saw him shaking his head again. She jerked away from him, and as his arm dropped like a weight, she immediately regretted it. In turn, Ramona took one hand off the gun and reached for him, but never took her eyes off the curator.

Ramona clenched her jaw. "Do we know each other?" Hostile and sarcastic, hoping to convey she'd bite his head off if he got too close.

"Not as well as I'd like," he snorted and held a gun in his hand, but didn't move to aim it. In fact, he put it away. "You certainly know how to pull a lot of stunts. Saw you at the little fest. You made it far!"

"You're looking better than I remember."

He smiled. "Good memory. Then again, I'd be devastated to learn that you didn't remember the man you auctioned off to the highest bidder."

Ramona smiled with gritted teeth. "You give me too much credit. I fed you to vultures. Figured you useless," Ramona trained her gun on his head. "Still might."

He stuck his hand in his pocket and gave her a quirk of his brow. In the shadows of the trees and the glow of the moon behind the cloud, he looked like well-fed death. "Quick mouth too. Not sure if I like it." He glanced over her, at the two men she'd killed. "I figured they'd kill you before I'd have to bother with you, then you killed my fucking team."

"Eye for an eye; you kill my team, I kill yours." Ramona felt gutted saying that aloud. Leif wasn't dead, not yet. Glancing down at him, as his eyes started to lose light, she knew her words weren't wrong. His blood felt as though it boiled on her face, heated by guilt and shame. Her chest felt tight and her eyes started to water, but she'd be damned if she cried in front of this bastard.

"Team?" he looked over their campfire, staring at her with a gleeful curiosity Ramona wanted to shoot. "I thought you pulled him as a hostage?"

"He's the quietest hostage I've ever had, gotta say, it's something to appreciate," Ramona quipped. Then she patted his face, and she swore she could feel him smile under her fingertips. She choked down a sob.

"My name is Rory."

"Didn't ask."

"I've got a proposition for you," he said.

"Don't bother." Ramona was so damn tired, she could have died right then. It would have been better, had it been her. "Either way, aren't you already in on the whole operation with our prince?"

The curator gave a sheepish grin and shrugged. "What can I say, I don't like my earnings getting cut."

"So you thought you'd rig the entire damn thing. Which is why you set this whole thing up." Your greed has ruined damn near everything, Ramona thought.

"Look. We both don't have teams anymore, and we both came all this way. That's a lot of money to just let slip through your fingers." He had a swagger she wanted to stomp out of him. A gun was too good for the bastard, she wanted to beat him dead for what he did to Leif.

"Leave me alone!"

He tsked her again, and she shot at his foot. Leaping back, he raised his hands up and took a step away.

"Got it, you have a gun, I'll leave you to your own devices. Stupid girl. Since you obviously give a damn, don't you realize that you're just wasting a life on nothing now?"

Ramona glanced down at Leif. His breath was shallower than before, his eyes completely glassed over.

"Can you hear me?"

A bit of a nod. Blood had dribbled down his chin. His gaunt face looked agonized, tortured and pinched in pain. He coughed.

"If you're smart, you'll meet me at the restaurant I found you two at earlier. Should have been more careful, but then again, fatigue is its own killer." Rory's amusement at this horror got Ramona to consider shooting him again, but the weight of Leif was too much to bear. "Hurry though, I don't care to make the same mistake you two did."

With that, Rory sunk back into the night. Ramona didn't trust it, keeping her gun out.

Then she snapped, and she dropped everything. She didn't give a damn if she were shot right then, or if the whole town was coming to burn her alive. This had gone far enough.

"Leif, Leif, listen to me. Listen to me, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I wanted to tell you to go home and I should have. I'm so so sorry. Your wife. Your baby," she panicked and placed her hand over his wound. Her breathing wound up. She felt like she had been electrified only to carry the weight of the world, forced into a continued existence. "I don't know what to do," she gasped out. He tapped her fingers, a motion so light she thought it could have been rigor mortis.

"I'm not made for this," she cried. "I wasn't meant to do this, I wasn't meant to do any of this! I can't--"

He moved a bit more forcefully, and coughed up more blood, only to start gasping for air. She held her own breath. It was the first time she admitted those words aloud. The first time she acknowledged aloud, to anyone, that this wasn't really her. Yet she doubted he understood. Leif patted her hand and smiled briefly, raising his thumb for a thumb's up.

It startled Ramona so bad that she burst into tears. She was going to miss him, and she knew she shouldn't, but she couldn't help herself. Ramona was terrified of being completely alone again. In an odd way, he was a friend. In an even worse way, he was her closest friend.

Ramona didn't want to cry over his death, but couldn't help herself. Maybe he appreciated it. Beyond that, there was nothing else she could do.

She held his hand as he faded. He didn't try to say anything to her, only shaking his head even moreso when she just repeated the same apology over and over and over. Eventually, his eyes lost all focus and clarity. His breathing shook so badly until eventually it just gave out entirely.

Leif looked exactly the same, but entirely different. No longer the hostage she took only a few days ago - she knew more about him than she'd dared know anyone on this rock, with no ulterior motive either. She wished she didn't.

Ramona knew it was awful, but all she could think about was how awful this was for her. How she'd really overstepped it this time. A man with a family, with a plan to help his family, dead because of her. She wanted to scream.

The curator - or Rory - was awfully right, though. If she stopped after all this, it would have been for nothing. This knowledge she had about him, all that he wrote in her journal would mean nothing if she didn't carry it with her. Blinking at this revelation, Ramona knew what she needed to do.

With a shaky hand, she grabbed for the ring around his neck and ripped it off, looping it around her own. She then went for the sole of his boot and grabbed the picture of his family. If they really did make it to Merrine, and she actually got the money without getting killed herself, maybe she could still do something.

Would that be enough?

She touched his blood that marked her face, reached for the way the wound stained her blouse. She knew she should clean it off, but she felt worse in doing that. What was the point in hiding what she'd allowed?

With a sigh, she pushed herself onto her feet. She needed to hurry. She needed to stop sobbing, stop gagging, get rid of the panic. She started looting him for weapons. Grabbed his knife, grabbed his wires, she even found gunpowder.

Just a few hours ago, she felt like part of her stress had faded. Now it was back ten-fold. All of her plans had failed, and now she was stuck working with the lunatic that had murdered the most real relationship she'd had in a long time. A relationship she built with a man who couldn't even fucking talk.

"I'm sorry I can't give you a proper burial, Leif," Ramona said aloud. She took a step away and stopped. She wasn't able to just leave his body out like this in the cold. Ramona wasn't sure if it was better or worse that their fire hadn't completely burned out beside him. Then she had an idea.

Pushing his body closer to the flame, she put the gunpowder bag in her mouth and bit down.  She tried to curl his body around the burning embers of their measly fire. Untying the string to the gunpowder, she flung it out towards Leif and sprinted back behind a tree. Then she shot.

A bright flash towards the sky, and flames sprawling. Properly blown up, so much so that the tree above her was singed. Everything was ablaze, so hot she could feel it from where she stood. The fire wasn't going to die for a while. Not with the dryness of the grass and the death of the trees. Hopefully, it would all burn to ash. 

"This is the best I can do Leif, out with a bang" she said. Placing a hand over her heart, feeling the weight of the ring, she said the only thing she could remember from the funerals at home. "It's time for you to head towards the horizon."

With a nod, Ramona ran from the burning wood and never looked back.

A/N I don't usually like doing author's notes, but I thought this chapter needed a bit of an explanation. I know it's long, and it might have continuity errors (please let me know), but admittedly I just needed to get past the block leading to Leif's death. Also, I know it's not the most pick-me-up chapter, but I hope this addresses at least some of the concerns of compassion from Ramona.

I'm hoping to start updating more often now. Thanks for reading!

-- _huckleberry