(A/N: did this one relatively quickly please tell me if addie's prose gets too "artsy" and something doesn't make sense because i do want to go back through it and edit)

rule 2: don't make a scene

When we hit the fields, which are all the shades of molten gold that could ever be seen by the eye, the group slows down even though Red is trying to push us past the tractors. All the machinery roots around like deer pushing their antlers into the soil but they can not see or understand us and it is only this knowledge that keeps my heart still when they approach us, grumbling.

We find somewhere to sit when we hit a field between two fields and my feet press into dry grass, my shoes disappearing as I fling them off. They disappear as they lose their point of connection with my body. Even though we are safer the red sky is rich with dread and I sit in the pale grass and Trace purses her lips, revealing the pink curves of her lower lip. I want to touch a finger to each groove and my finger reaches forwards. I hold her face and run my thumb across her face.

Trace raises her own hands and holds my face, putting her fingers through my hair. She sighs "this must be the most beautiful field I've ever seen" and then quickly, almost inaudibly, "the wheat looks just like your hair" and her hands brush my neck and I almost laugh because it feels like being kissed by a butterfly but I am so still right now, so still, because I don't want the moment to fly away out of my cupped hands.

When my breath turns in my body again I say "do you truly think so" and she nods, so close that I can taste her. She is flowers and the smell of the day during the setting sun made real.

"Of course" Trace brings my hair back behind my shoulders and her hands move down to mine so we are holding each other, a second away from doing something even though there is nothing to do and Trace kisses me on the cheek. All the sunlight rises into blood red and a sigh leaves my lips with hers.

The two of us hold each other together and my body shakes as if the monster in my heart is going to burst out of me and I will be ill again. I cough as I leave her, my body suddenly convulsing, and I think it might (it can't).

"Are you okay" Trace asks with iridescent eyes full of light, squeezing my hand to keep it mine and all my fingers compress as if they are going to splinter.

"Yes" I promise "Please kiss me again" I say under my breath.

"What?" she asks.

"It's nothing please don't listen to me" I say but if she could only kiss me again I think I might cease shaking and maybe what ever is wrong might be fixed for good, sealed by her lips into the darkest well of her body but I can't tell her that and I'm not entirely sure why. My body shakes again and I bite back bile and I am too excited and I keep choking whole body coiling up.

Trace holds me very carefully and the others emerge back into view on all sides as Dylan explains to the middle kids who will be doing the hunting for the night and they nod resolutely already imagining flesh under sharper teeth. I can see in their eyes that they are hungry for the hunt as for the food itself and I lean into Trace's side so that our dark outlines are almost one and they can't see me.

"They can't hurt you" teases Trace, "They're on our side"

"I know" I say very quietly but I don't want anyone else at my side and no one is there except Angel and did Angel have a maxim for this because I don't think so but if she did and I don't remember it maybe I am in trouble now. "Where's Angel" I offer very meekly because maybe Angel knows what to do because of course Angel always knows what to do.

Trace's lips wrinkle back into a frown and her brows crease slightly "She's not here" she says and then with that look Trace gets when she is about to make a mistake she continues "We could go after her" and she has my hand.

Almost everyone save for Kali and Elle have disappeared somewhere and I nod because being here almost alone with them is just as bad. Fire eyes and knife eyes both look at us sideways and our held hands and they are so full of want and fear and it makes me sad and scared and my breath picks up just a bit. I follow Trace into the woods but I lose her hand when she shifts into a small dog and tastes the air. I want to tell her she is a very beautiful dog but also that's weird and I kind of want her back because my hand is cold even though it's warm outside. This is something I shouldn't tell her, probably. I can still feel where she touched my face and maybe I should never shift again if it means I can keep that sensation there, burning warm and cold like light.

Trace moves back and almost falls into my arms before pointing dead forward into the woods.

"It's dark" I protest. I cough again.

"I know but I'm bored and we're not safe out there either" Trace insists with a devious smirk and she is so beautiful and so brave. "You're okay" she asks again which is so sweet I think it might rupture my heart so I nod and my hair shakes and my body is a little off but not much so I guess that's O.K.

"Kiss me please it helps" I whisper so far under my breath she can't hear it as we start talking again because I would hate to impose but I need that right now.

Then the darkness echoes back: "I want you" but it isn't my voice and someone has a hand on a hand, I can sense the shifting of bodies on a log in the woods with such incredible accuracy I feel all my self leaning forwards into a tunnel.

Trace puts a finger to her lips and bends the curves of the world around us to hide. Her powers are always barely noticeable when she can control them but the night is asking for the touch only she can give so we fold into the darkness of a corner, hidden out of view of reality, and she peers around the corner and offers me up to see a distorted view of Angel and Red.

Angel leans her head on his shoulder with the article out and Red is nodding again very slowly but his face is pursed into a perfect mask of confusion and they're not talking about the article so very slowly Angel puts it away.

"I don't understand" Red says puzzling something out in his mind and I can see all the gears turning as they turn in Trace and I and Trace is either estatic or afraid and I can't tell which but I can't ask because they will hear and if we have ever been absolutely dead for doing something it is right now we're so bad.

"I want you" Angel repeats "That's what you're supposed to say"

"What are you talking about" Red mutters his voice dropping like a stone in the pit of his throat.

Angel explains "I need someone else to watch the kids I've been looking into this and I've been doing it entirely wrong" and there is the cut of something resembling a smile across her face like a long fracture.

Red says "I have Dylan and Kali on it but if you need some extra assistance from time to time you can always just ask" and puts a hand on her shoulder reassuringly.

"Thanks" I say very low under my breath and I can see the whites of Trace's angry eyes and I shrink back as far into myself as possible.

"That's not what I mean and I need you to kiss me" and my heart says "yes" and my heart says "no" and I think I might be intruding on Trace but she loves me and it's not like that and I asked and she's so sweet and Red's already in love with someone and Angel wouldn't do this and Angel is doing this right now and it doesn't make any sense and I think someone is leaning in.

Red bolts up and says "Angel you just like the idea of me"

Angel cries "I just love ideas they are all I love" and her voice is being wrest out of her throat and her face is redder than the sun, which is long gone, and her fists are tight.

"Please leave me out of this" Red says and he has his shoulders up all the way and his glasses fall, leaving him practically blind and he looks so small when she rounds on him furious and her eyes are searching through and past him and Trace is clenching me so tightly I don't think I can breathe. I begin coughing furiously. "I don't know what's gotten into you and--" he pauses.

Dylan emerges around us, rupturing the place where the world breaks, and Trace's eyes say run and Dylan's face says run and I think I might catch the beginnings of his Veritas but then I realize it's just his arms shifting and he has nature's greatest weapons at his disposal and he says very loudly "what the fuck is going on" and Red says "it's fine" back but he's raising a hand for something and I collapse on myself in the middle of the clearing dark liquid gushing from me.

"Addie" Angel says and she keeps saying it like it will draw me back from the edge of something and Red has his hand held up to grasp something.

"Sorry" I say as she drags me upwards, bringing me back to camp and I keep saying that until it loses all meaning. My mouth tastes like blood.

She puts me down in camp in the softest pile of grass she can find. Trace collapses at my side and they're looking over me and the others are staring too, at least, whoever else is there. Gillian has flesh piled at her feet, the dull eyes of what were once living animals staring up at her and us as she grimly stares into our souls and notes that Trace and I still have our hands perfectly interlocked. Trace is keeping me just above the verge of a dark sea, stilling my breath, and I whisper "I'm totally fine" and choke back something sinister in my throat. Again.

"Addie how much of that did you hear" insists Angel angrily then looks to Trace "did you get her sick" and I want to scream no but I'm already slipping away so I grab her hand again. Trace and Angel argue overhead briefly and Angel brings my head up towards her chest so she is clenching me like a doll. I feel my body failing to respond, the strings that tug the bones and muscle around unresponsive, and I close my eyes and succumb to darkness.

---

I wake up at twilight and the others are still arguing over me. Trace sits with her arms tugging her legs in, rocking herself back and forth a bit, and her shoulders are hunched. She raises a hand to a dark marking across her face and I reach out to her with one hand.

Things were going so well, I think.

Please kiss me, I think, but this is a bad time.