Trees. We had been walking endlessly for what felt like miles and all we had seen was trees.

We had searched endlessly for the first building we had entered before the Eradication began. We had hoped to find a vehicle to sneak out with or at least a way to flee from there. Even finding the entrance would have been ideal, for from there, if we walked straight, we would've found the plain area that the helicopter had landed on a month ago.

However, the large building seemed to be gone. We searched the perimeter of the Eradication for what seemed like forever, yet we couldn't find anything. We did find a small, dilapidated building nearby, but it didn't compare to the extravagant one which we had been in only a few weeks ago. That one seemed to be nowhere in sight. It had vanished.

Not that it was possible for a building to just vanish. There wasn't any other explanation for what was happening, though. Aster told us to ignore it. He told us to keep going and to never look back.

My mind couldn't help but think back to the Eradication, though. We had left so many questions there. Where had everyone gone? Why was the fence gone? Who shut off the lights? My brain was crushed by the weight of the unanswered mysteries. I wanted to take a moment to sit down and to discuss it out loud. I'd feel reassured to know that everyone else was wondering the same thing. At least then I'd know that I wasn't just imagining everything.

I had asked Aster many times in the past few hours about taking a break. Every time he had denied my request. "We have to keep going," he had told me. "There has to be a way out of these woods. It's nearby...I swear..."

Hours later and we were still walking through the forest. The trees will never end...

The sky dimmed. My feet ached with every step. It took everything within me to not give in to my heavy eyes and to not sleep on the soft earth underneath me. I looked over. Tilly looked weak and tired, too. I couldn't help it. I asked once more for us to stop.

Aster took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He let out a long sigh, his shoulders sagging. "I get it, I'm tired, too. But we have to get out of here. We're almost there, then we can rest."

"Aster," I said gently, "who knows how long we're going to be walking for? I...I don't think that we're close to wherever we're going."

He sighed again. "Where are we even going at this point?"

He didn't protest when I placed my hands on his shoulders and gently pushed him onto the ground. He sat against a nearby tree trunk. Aster rested his head on his chest and closed his eyes. For a minute I thought that he had fallen asleep. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me. "Well? You wanted to stop."

Startled by the remark, I stood closer to Tilly. She clutched onto my hand. I raised a brow at Aster. When he didn't open his eyes, I sighed and drug Tilly over to another tree. She curled herself into a ball and fell asleep. 

I sat down next to her unconscious figure. Though tired, I couldn't find it in myself to close my eyes. Not only was my head pounding from the immense amount of questions I had, but I was now confused by Aster's shift in behavior. It felt like this sour attitude had lingered with him since we had escaped. But why? Wasn't he happy that we were free?

Or maybe he was thinking about the fact that there was only so much time before we were going to need food and water. One of these days we were going to accept that we were lost and would shrivel where we stood. I could understand why his mood would shift by the thoughts. No wonder no one tried to stop us when we escaped. They knew that we were a lost cause, anyway

At last, I slid down and sat next to an unconscious Tilly. I rolled my sore next. Every muscle in my body felt tired. I couldn't remember the last time I had properly slept. I lowered my head and allowed myself to drift to sleep.

I continuously woke up throughout the night. My thoughts always filled but never seemed to empty. Any time I had a split second of peace, I grew so anxious by it that I awoke. Every time I looked over to see if Aster was still there. I wasn't sure why, but I was worried that he would sneak away while Tilly and I were sleeping. He was always there, his eyes closed shut and head rested against his chest.

The last time I woke up, Aster was awake. He was looking up at the sky. His glasses were held firmly in one hand while his other was in his mouth, his fingernails clasped tightly between his teeth.

I couldn't help but smile. "That's a bad habit."

Aster looked at me, his eyes wide. After a moment his tense shoulders relaxed and he smiled. "Yeah, I know."

I looked over at Tilly. She was still asleep. There was no use in waking her up. It was still dark, and I didn't want to travel through the woods during that time. We would leave when the sun went up.

I slid over and sat next to Aster. He scooted over so that I could rest my back on the tree trunk. We remained silent for quite some time. I traced my finger through the dirt, not drawing anything specific. Aster coughed. I looked at him. He didn't say anything. He had just wanted to break the silence.

"...So," I said.

"So."

I chewed on the inside of my lip. "Don't you want to talk about something? I mean, a lot of stuff has been going on."

He looked up again. This time he willingly lingered in the silence. I stared at my shoes, trying to hide my disappointment. There was a lot we could talk about. But did he just not want to talk to me? Did he expect me to be the first to say something? I noted through all of the topics we could cover right then. But which to start with?

"Can we talk about us?" he finally said.

Well, I didn't want to start with that one.

"What about us?"

"Well," I felt Aster slide a little further from me, "how did this all start? I just don't understand why we're like this in the first place."

I sighed. At this point, I couldn't remember what had made me angry. Was it when Corbyn had told me that he was flirting with her? It was certainly the moment that I had stopped visiting him at the bathrooms. After a while, though, I could see that we had been tense further than that. There was the moment where he had beat up the guards. Marcus told me that it was because Aster had thought I was dead. Why had he thought that? When I tried to ask, he got angry. That had made us tense throughout the Welcoming Ceremony.

And when I looked even further, I could see the moment before the Pestilention where he had denied my alliance request. I hadn't managed to fully trust him when we were running the course together, either. It seemed that the only moment where we had been perfectly fine with each other was between when we had kissed that one night and then the end of the Pestilention. Before and after that, there had always been an unsettling feeling within me when we talked. Even during the two years which we were apart for.

Had we technically only been in a relationship for those few weeks where things had been fine? Had we ever been in a relationship at all?

"You," I finally replied. "You started this."

"How-"

"We need to talk about something else," I quickly interjected. Aster's lips remained parted for a second before closing. The corners of his lips lowered imperceptibly. He scooted away from me, though only far enough for me to barely notice. "What are we going to do? We can't keep walking like this forever, Aster. We need food and water, but we don't know where to go."

He nodded. "I climbed a tree while you guys were sleeping. All I saw was trees. We may be walking for a while."

"We can't do this forever," I said, shaking my head. "Again, we need food and water." I stood up, suddenly needing to walk around. It helped to clear my cluttered mind when I walked back and forth. "I can't believe we did this. We had moved too fast. We should've waited longer to make a better plan before just going and-"

"But then we would've had to fight," Aster muttered. I looked down at his hunched figure. He was hunched over, tracing over the scribbles I had made in the dirt earlier. I sucked in a long breath. He was right. It was either one of us died and we lost Tilly, or we left. We didn't really have an option.

My stomach ached. I couldn't imagine going on like this for much longer. How had I managed during the Pestilention? I guess a month of malnutrition leads a person to dismiss the aching pit. The Eradication, though unbearable food, fed us, though. I was no longer accustomed to proceeding on the way that we were going to. But we couldn't just stay in one place, for that would lead us nowhere.

The Eradication. If not forward, then we may as well have gone backward. It was already abandoned, and surely there was food left in the kitchen that we could scavenge. We could sleep in the beds for a night, pack up some resources leftover, and replan what we were going to do.

It seemed like our best bet to me. Aster frowned throughout my entire explanation. Once I was finished he shook his head and stood up. He wiped the dirt off of his pants and adjusted his glasses.

"What if there are guards there? We would just be walking into a trap," he pointed out.

"B-but we don't have any other option. We need to do what's best for us to survive, Aster. What we're doing right now isn't it."

"No, no, no." Aster rubbed his temples. "That's suicide, Kat. We need to just keep going."

"The last time we were there, it was abandoned. I highly doubt that they came back. Besides, we wouldn't stay long. Just a day or two to-"

"No," Aster said firmly. "That's final."

I curled my fingers into fists. He hadn't even allowed me to finish my sentence. "Well, then what are we going to do?"

"The sun's almost up. Let's wake Tilly up and start walking again."

I clenched my teeth. That was really better than my plan? At least I promised some hope and salvation. If guards were still lurking around there, which I highly doubt they were, we could run back and at least know that our fate was inevitable.

Why did I have to listen to Aster? No one crowned him the leader of our trio. We should all be anonymously agreeing on what we were going to do. If this was the way that he was going to be, then I didn't want to stick around to see how much more of a pain he was going to be.

"You know what?" I said. "I don't need you to tell me where to go. I can go back to the Eradication if I want."

Aster had crouched down and was about to wake up Tilly. He stood up and turned to face me. His face was expressionless and his usually gentle eyes were cold. "Then go."

His words stung more than they should have. I swallowed down the lump in my throat and started walking back to where we had started.

I don't need him. I'll be fine on my own.

It was hard to tell when the sun had risen, for the clouds packed the sky so tightly that it felt like it had never turned to day. The fog drizzled and nipped at my cheeks. I ducked my head in a futile attempt to protect myself from the cold. I hope that Tilly's doing alright in this weather.

I couldn't think about Tilly. That would only overwhelm me with guilt. I had just left her without asking if she wanted to come with me. I was just so irritated with Aster that I hadn't thought about what would happen if I left her with him. Would he be able to take care of her? I was always the one that did that. Was she going to be okay?

I closed my eyes. She was going to be fine. Aster wouldn't allow Tilly to be put in danger. No matter how much I disagreed with the way he was thinking, I could still trust Aster to do the right thing.

I needed to focus on getting myself back right then. If I could find supplies, then I could potentially go back to them. I would be able to show Aster that I was right and save us from starvation and dehydration. This was for them as much as it was for me.

The silence seemed to take over. I didn't have anyone to talk to or anything to do to pass the time. How much time had gone by? Probably only a couple of minutes. How many miles had I walked? Hardly half of one. How many miles would it take to go back to the Eradication? I sighed. This was going to take much longer than I thought it was going to.

I had finally made peace with myself when another idea popped into my mind: what if this was a mistake? What if leaving Aster and Tilly was a risk to all of us? Who knew if I would even make it back to the Eradication successfully? And what if I did, then came back to Aster and Tilly only to see them dead on the floor?

No. I can't think like that. This was the right choice. We were all going to be fine. I just needed to get to the building without driving myself crazy.

That was nearly impossible. The silence had made it so that doubtful thoughts took over. They submerged me in a fog so thick that I seemed to inhale it. It tightened my lungs and made it so that I couldn't breathe. Images of mine and my friends' lifeless bodies seemed to appear more and more with each step I took. It came to the point where my feet felt like iron. The steps grew more and more unbearable until I stopped completely. Breathing heavily, I squeezed my eyes shut again. Please go away.

Turn back. Make sure that they're okay. The thoughts barely seemed to be my own. It felt like they came from another figure entirely. They tickled my ear with their lips. Then, taking me by my hands, they gently turned me around and led me away. I followed, my mind numb. Go back. You need them.

The walk back seemed like a blur. I knew that it didn't take long to get back since I hadn't gone that far. The person with me had assured me that they would still be there. That Tilly was still trying to wake up from her slumber. She would be itching her eyes and yawning, while Aster gently rushed her awake. They weren't there. The voices had lied to me. They had left without me.

They couldn't have walked too far, though. I kept walking. They would stop again, and we'd acquaint. I would apologize for leaving the way I had. Aster wouldn't refuse to have me back. He would never.

A loud noise nearly knocked me off my feet. I looked up. A large helicopter was flying through the sky, sinking so low that it nearly brushed the trees. My eyes widened. Oh no.

"Aster! Tilly!" I cried and started to run.

Hey everybody, and welcome to the beginning of The Insurrection!! I am so excited to share the potential ending to "The Devil's Playground" series. Where do you think Aster and Tilly are? And what's the helicopter for?

If you enjoy the beginning of this story, make sure to vote, to comment, and to share this story with your friends. Stay amazing, and tune in for more!! :)

This song is called Willow Tree March by The Paper Kites. Enjoy!