Dean

I slept awful, but I can't complain. At least I got some sleep in.

The sun is shining brightly in my eyes when I wake up, and I squint harshly just to be able to see as I sit up. Yawning, I tap my wrist to display the time and see it's almost seven o'clock. We need to get moving, which means I need to wake Ella up. I hate waking her up, she sleeps so peacefully it seems so evil to disrupt her, but it's what I have to do.

Turning my head to look at her, I find her already awake, sitting towards the sun as if she's watching the sunrise. I open my mouth to speak, but I close it almost immediately. What would I even say? After our argument last night, I wouldn't want to talk to me if I was her. I can still hear her words playing repeatedly in my head about what she thought aliens were. "And Dean? I thought this before I even knew about your kind." For some reason, her words always tear through me like shreds, and I think that may be another reason I don't care for the girl.

Picking up my pack off the dusty road, I open it and dig around for more crackers, only to find out there's none left. Luckily, we still have some peanut butter, but not much more to supply us for very long. "Ella," I say after a moment. "There's no crackers left, so we'll just have to eat the peanut butter plain, okay?" She doesn't respond, the only sound coming from her is the sound of her breathing. "Ella?"

"I'm not hungry," she whispers, and the shakiness of her voice gives her away. She's crying.

I remember teasing her about crying, saying it was weak, but when your whole world is falling down around you and you live by emotion, crying seems pretty accurate. I feel ashamed of the things I say, and I wish I could apologize, but between my filthy pride and hers, it wouldn't get us anywhere but back into the heated conversation I'm trying to avoid.

"You need to eat." I don't want to push her, I don't know when she'll go off like a bomb, but she will eat and drink. "And drink, we only have the one bottle left and we need to make it last."

"You can't keep forcing me to eat and drink."

"Yes, I can. You're my responsibility and I have to make sure you're taken care of." She scoffs at me, and I remember how infuriating she really is.

"I'm not your responsibility. Stop helping me, Dean, ease your conscious with something else besides me. I don't want to have a part in what you do." I watch her hands reach up and wipe her eyes, and I can't help but look away. I've seen her cry before, so many times it seems, but this feels different. This feels like an emotion that should be private, one where I shouldn't even be here.

"I'm not helping you to ease my conscious, I'm helping you because I want us both to survive, it's the least we deserve after everything we've just went through."

"Do you ever get over it?" She asks, catching me off guard.

"Over what?" I ask as I open the lid to the peanut butter, my stomach shouting at me in it's grumbly tone.

"Loss. Does it ever go away?" I'm surprised by what she's asking me, but I'm more surprised that she's even talking to me after all I've put her through. Of course, she's a girl, and no matter how mad they are, they like someone to be there for them. Enemy or friend, it's always nice to know if someone cares. But I know she thinks I don't, which she's wrong about. I don't like her, not one bit, but I would be devastated if something happened to her. I'd never admit that to her, but I would.

"No," I answer, not even having to think about it. "There's always going to be a hole in your heart, but you just move on and not dwell on it." I shrug, even though she can't see me, and swipe my finger along the inside of the jar and welcome the nutty taste on my tongue.

"It's so hard to move on, when there's nothing around you but emptiness and negativity." Her shoulders shake, and I know she's talking about me. I hate how she always puts the blame one me. She's not innocent in this relationship, she always pushes and pushes and then I snap and she pleads innocent. My face still stings from last nights episode, but I actually did deserve that. No amount of pushing should have ever caused me to say what I did.

Standing up, I walk over to her, and hand her the peanut butter without looking at her face. I can already imagine what she looks like, cheeks puffy, eyes red, nose blotchy, lips plump from chewing on them. I hate the way she looks when she cries, it reminds me of every bad thing I've ever seen, and I hate her for reminding me of that when she doesn't even know it.

"I don't want it," she refuses, but I push it towards her anyway.

"If you don't eat some, I'll shove it down your throat." I can't see her expression, but my words must have done something, for she takes the jar and begins eating. Good, I think, but I don't say it out loud. "We'll have to get moving soon, I want a head start on the day." I also want to find something since we don't have much food and water to live on.

"Okay," she mumbles, her voice a mixture of emotion and filled with peanut butter. "Here," she holds out the jar to me. "I'm done." I want to tell her to eat more, but I'm not going to push it. I'm just glad she agreed to eat anything at all.

Putting the jar back into my pack, I swing it over my back before asking her if she's ready to go. She answers with a nod, and our feet carry us down the road that we've been traveling for what seems like forever.

**********

Hours. It's literally been hours of traveling, and my face is burning from the sun. I don't remember it being this hot the whole trip. The sun shines down on us, and I'm ready to collapse from exhaustion. I don't want to go any further, I just want to sit down and rest. My mind begins to think about how little supplies we have left, and it keeps me going.

I look over at Ella. Her face is red and blotchy from sunburns, but she doesn't look sad anymore, and I'm actually glad about that. We're having enough trouble this trip, I don't need a companion who's going to sit around and mope, no matter how hard the situation is.

My legs ache with every step I give, and I remember the first day we were out here together. I felt so alive and agile and now I feel slow and painful. Funny how a few days in the hot desert can change a person. I don't even know if you could call me a person, but I'd like to consider that although I'm from an entire different dimension, I am very similar to humans and I have a soul. That counts as something, right?

I want to laugh at myself. I kind of always wanted to be human, a part of me, but there's the other part that would always hold onto the fact that I was a Norovian, and I'm thankful for that part of me. I'm not a human and I never will be. I'm an alien to this planet, and alien to Ella, and nothing will ever change that.

"How are you feeling?" I ask, hoping she's tired too so we can take a break.

"Fine." One word reply...

"Are you tired?" She shrugs. "Ella, you have to let me know, I can't just--"

"Yeah," she interrupts, "I am slightly tired, okay?" Her voice isn't angry, just exhausted. That makes two of us.

"Let's rest, just for a few minutes then. It won't hurt." She nods and sits down on the dusty pavement. I follow, and the awkwardness hovers over us as we just sit there, not saying anything. "Do you want some water?" I ask as I pull the bag off my shoulders.

"Sure," she replies, and I'm glad she was willing to drink this time.

Scrabbling through the pack, I pull out the warm water bottle, and hand it to her. She takes a gulp and hands it back. I take a quick sip, trying hard not to focus on how good it feels against my dry throat, and put it back away.

The silence is over us again, and I can't help but feel that I need to apologize. I've never apologized to a human before, but that doesn't mean anything. I've never done or said anything to a human that I've said or done to Ella, and I'm kind of glad she was my first human to do all that with. I don't want to apologize, I think she should apologize too, but I said far worse things. And humans run on emotion and hormones which makes them hold more feeling.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, hardly even audible to my own ears. "I shouldn't have said that about your mom, it was...it was uncalled for." Her legs are crossed, and her eyes are settled on her hands that are interlaced in her lap. She doesn't blink, she doesn't look up, she just sits there, and for a moment I feel embarrassed I even apologized, despite how right it may be.

"Don't apologize, Dean," she says after a moment, her voice empty. "It's not going to make anything any better or change anything."

"Does that matter? That's not the point of this apology. I'm not trying to change anything, I'm trying to say that what I said was uncalled for. I didn't expect you to accept it, but I thought it might make you feel slightly better. I've never done--"

"Let me guess," she half laughs, before she looks up and her eyes lock with mine. "You've never apologized to a human before, which makes me another first? Stop experimenting with me, Dean. It's like you don't even care about what happened, you just wanted to apologize to a human for the first time, it's like when you helped me and all that. I was the first and I can't help but believe that you only helped me just to see what it would feel like to help a human, well, was it worth it? I don't need your petty experiment apology, I just don't need it." I go from wanting to comfort her, to wanting to slap sense into her. How can she think after everything we've done for each each other that she's just an experiment?

"It's your species that experiments with us," I retort. "I'm not experimenting with you, Ella. I just want to move on from the things I said, and you can't move on unless--"

"Unless? No, you never move on from words, you should know this if you know so much about us. I will never forget what you said, okay? It will never move on from my brain, it's branded there for life and a little apology that's not even sincere isn't going to smooth it over."

"You don't think it's sincere?" I begin to laugh. I'm beyond sick of her not seeing that I actually care. It's really starting to annoy the crap out of me. "I wouldn't freaking apologize to you, Ella, unless it was sincere. How dense can you be? My pride doesn't let me apologize to just any human, I felt bad, okay? Yes, I have feelings. If you ever told me what I told you, I would never talk or look at you ever again."

"Yet, you expect me to be okay just because you said you were sorry?"

"No. We're different in that way. You have the power to accept the apology, and I would never even consider it."

"Who says I'm considering it?" She barks.

"Who says you're not?"

"I am. I don't forgive you."

I smile. "And you say we're totally different?" She rolls her eyes, and stands up on the dusty road, brushing the dirt off in the process.

"Get over the fact we have things in common. I don't want to be reminded continually."

"Last time I knew, this country was a free one, and I can remind you whenever I'm up to it." Her face turns red from anger, and I want to laugh at her. I just apologized and now I want to laugh at her. Wow.

"You're so annoying," she sighs.

"Did you think I was going to change? Honey, I'm always going to be this great." I can almost see a ghost of a smile playing on her lips, but it's gone as fast as it came.

"We had better start off again, it's kind of cooling down, so it'll be easier to travel." I just nod at her, before collecting my bag and throwing it over my shoulder.

We set off once again, my legs thanking me for the break. As my feet carry me farther and farther down the road, I can't help but almost believe that despite how much she says she doesn't forgive me, I almost believe she does. If you don't forgive someone, would you talk to them? And even with the sadness she has shown this morning, I still can't help but think that she forgives me, even just slightly. I'll take anything, honestly. I wish I didn't care what she thought, but for some reason I do. It's like when she calls me an alien, my whole body seems to ice over. It always feels like she's calling me the worse thing she can think of, and isn't it a terrible thing? Being called an alien means you don't belong, and she's right. I don't belong here, I belong elsewhere.

The sun is lowering on the horizon, and I'm so glad that another day is almost over, just so I can lay down and sleep. If Earth ever goes back to being whole again, I can't wait for the day I receive a new bed. I would kill for a mattress right now, no matter the cost.

Ella is breathing deeply next to me, and I can tell that she's barely got any energy inside of her left. The pink and orange cascading across the sky, tells me that we can stop, even if it's not dark yet, we both need the rest. "Let's stop, I'm tired and you look beat. We did pretty good today, it won't hurt for us to rest earlier than usual." She doesn't even argue, just nods and sits down without even a second consideration. "I told you before," I begin as I sit down as well. "That you can always tell me when you're tired. You're a part of this trip, remember?"

"I don't want to hold us behind, and get barked at later for it," she replies, her face holding total seriousness.

"Glad you think so highly of me," I begin. "I wouldn't bark at you for being tired, if you need a rest, take it. Your health is important, especially since we're stranded in the middle of God knows where, and I don't want you passing out or something worse to happen. There aren't any doctors around in case you haven't noticed." I send her a small smile, letting her know I'm not being rude.

"I know, but I just want to get somewhere too. I don't want to be out here anymore, the sun is way too hard on us." She's about to lay down, and I quickly put the pack under her head, before it reaches the road.

"I want to get somewhere too, and we will. We'll get there."

"Why did you give me the backpack?" She asks, ignoring my previous statement.

"I've used it every night as a pillow, I think it's your turn to use it."

"Does this also mean I have to carry it?" She teases.

"Yep," I lie. "No, I'll still carry it. I can't sleep during the nights anyway, from it being too cold, so what use do I need comfort for if it doesn't even help? Especially when you sleep like a rock."

"I do not," she defends. "I just sleep anywhere."

"Exactly. Like a rock."

"No, sleeping like a rock is when you sleep through everything like loud noises and stuff. Holy crap, do I know something the great Schloric doesn't?" She smiles, a full smile, and the world feels okay for once. It's good to know she's smiling again, I couldn't get through this trip if she was only going to give me half smiles and full frowns.

"Perhaps," I sigh, pretending to be hurt. "I'm appalled with myself."

"You should be." This time, I smile at her.

"I can see that I'm not the only one here who's a smart aleck," I mumble.

"Of course, not. I can't let you have all the fun now, can I?" The sky is turning into a dark purple, and the cold is rushing in to greet us all around.

"Of course, not." I reply, hoping she'll sleep closer to me tonight, so I can at least get a decent night's rest.

Instead, she just lies there, and stares at me. Her eyes look almost black in the light darkness, and I feel as if they're portals where you could lose yourself and never be found again. The way she's looking at me is a way that romantic people in movies look before they kiss. But I know better, Ella wouldn't kiss me to save her planet. I wouldn't kiss her either, so I guess it's mutual.

"Good night, Dean," she whispers, before rolling over as the darkness and cold rolls over us.