Cooper knows he's not taking this as well as he wanted to. The brave face he thought he had been putting on wasn't nearly as opaque as he had wanted it to be. Carol keeps looking at him with pity in her eyes and his father continues to keep his distance from him and what had happened to him. As if refusing to acknowledge it will make it go away. Will make Cooper whole again.

He gets his father settled into his hotel room. He spends an hour across the hall in his own hotel room trying to make love to Carol only to find that he can't seem to stomach it now that he's back in the town. Where her ghost has more power over him. Where he can feel her eyes on him and he can't shake the feeling that she'd call this betrayal. He can feel Carol's disappointment and she falls asleep angry but not with him though he wishes it was. It would be easier that way.

But Cooper can't sleep. Silver Pines makes him restless. It whispers memories to him in the shadows. The winds hold a laughter he chases and sometimes if he listens carefully he can hear the sigh of her voice saying his name as it rustles through the trees. Silver Pines reopens old wounds. Makes the rage rise up in him. Reminds him that he needs revenge to finally bind the cuts to his soul. But not as much as he just needs to know what happened to her.

Cooper slips from his hotel room and enters the forest in the middle of the night. It doesn't take long. He takes five steps out of his hotel and he's standing at the mouth of the forest. He holds his breath as he crosses that line of dense trees. He walks until he's certain he's far enough inside that he can be heard by the forest but not by anyone who might be listening back at the hotel.

"Silver Sight!" he calls to the trees. "I know that message was for me. I'm here. I know you remember what happened to me. What happened to her. And I need to know. I just want to know where she is."

He waits in the silence. He spots an owl with impossibly large golden eyes. Bright as stars in the night sky. He senses a hint of familiarity from this owl but he shrugs it off as impossible and continues to wait. Cooper doesn't know that Silver Sight sits in a tree up the mountain too far away to make it to him before he decides he's waited long enough to make a fool out of himself and leave. He doesn't know that the wind takes his words up to Silver Sight who watches with his forest's eyes as Cooper turns away, defeated, shoulders sagging, pride bruised, to walk back to the hotel.

Cooper doesn't know that Silver Sight waits until he's out of view to climb down out of the tree. Cooper doesn't know that Silver Sight feels bad for him, and wishes more than anything that he could return what Cooper has lost. But he doesn't know how.

--

The next day Cooper and Carol go to the precinct. The beige building is set into three sections, one for the recreation centre and gym, one for the cops and the other for the Fire brigade. The precinct is in the middle of it all.

When Cooper walks in with Carol at his side he knows the looks he gets aren't because he's there with a bombshell. He isn't greeted with familiarity and pats on the back. There are no "how's your job"s, or "how have you been"s. Regardless of the fact that he's their Sherriff's kid. The whispers kick up and burn his ears because he knows what they all think of him.

If Carol senses his hesitance she says nothing. She strides up to the new sheriff in charge until this is all settled and begins to talk while Cooper hangs back. His eyes have scanned the small bullpen and found the back of someone familiar. Someone he was really, really hoping he wouldn't have to see.

As soon as Aaron Sharrow turns around his friendly face falls into a dangerous glare. Cooper finds himself taking a step back. He might have turned and ran had Carol not reappeared with the Sherriff in tow.

"The infamous Cooper Booth," he says with a big grin that tells Cooper that the man doesn't mean it in the way that everyone else in the office would say it. "I'm Sherriff Andrew Paxton from the town of Redbank on the other side of the mountains."

The two men shook hands warmly. Though Redbank was Silver Pines' rival in every way, Cooper was glad that the man in front of him seemed competent enough to not put much credit to the rumours that swirled around him.

"Due to your connection to the case I can't divulge too much information. But your girlfriend here says that you're willing to help," he continues and Cooper nods eagerly.

"Good, Chief Alo needs help with the trackers. We're going to go after Silver Sight."

Cooper's blood runs cold. This is what he wanted, of course. To be part of the team going on the search for Silver Sight. He did not want it to be with Aaron, who apparently went by Alo now that he had been appointed Chief of the tribe residing in Silver Pines.

Cooper can only nod hoping that no one can sense the fear that's building up in him. Aaron is waved over by the Sherriff and that look of dangerous glare darkens a couple more shades of dangerous as he approaches them. He sneers at Cooper in an animalistic sort of way, while Cooper holds the challenging glare with a proud tilt of his chin and a squaring of his shoulders.

"Alo, this is Cooper, I'm sure you know him, everyone knows Cooper Booth after all. He'll be helping you with the field search for Silver today."

To his credit, maybe Andrew Paxton had no idea just how deeply the bad blood ran between Cooper and Aaron. Maybe he was trying to be nice. But that stupid grin on his face was not helping matters as Alo or Aaron or whatever turned his disgusted glare to him and then back to Cooper.

"And what is the boy who forgot going to do?" Aaron snaps. "Is he going to get lost up in the mountains? Gonna get eaten by a bear?"

"Oh stuff it, Aaron," Cooper growls back. "You can blame me all you want but I'm a victim too."

"YEAH! That we know of! One of these days I'm going to find out what happened to Ruelle, I'm going to prove you were the one to kill her and then I'm going to make you pay!"

He's said her name. The one name that sets Cooper back to that rainy night and the guilt comes pouring down at him all over again. He's about to throw a punch, all his muscles have tightened to do just that. But Andrew Paxton the idiot acting Sherriff has stepped in the way.

"Now, now, boys. I get that you two have some differences but, Alo, you need all the help you can get going through those woods. And there's nothing in the old files that points to Cooper having anything to do with your cousin's disappearance. So for today, I'd appreciate it if you guys worked together nicely, without you losing Cooper in the forest, or letting him get eaten by a bear. Do you guys think you can do that?" Andrew asks.

Aaron's eyes narrow at Cooper who glares right back. Cooper had always been the one who behaved, Aaron had always been the one to instigate. "Stay away from me, Booth," he warns before walking away.

Cooper stands there, shaking out of anger and everything else that's come to him. When he feels a hand brush against his arm he knows its Carol but he can't shake the feeling that saying her name has conjured her. That she's reaching out to him to soothe him like she used. He knows for the rest of the day he'll be haunted by her. He'll be unable to shrug away the memories that will fly by his eyes as he goes through the familiar places of his childhood. One that has always been intertwined with her. Aaron did this on purpose. Just to torment him.

Like no one else in the Silver Pines, Aaron hadn't forgotten. Aaron still knew exactly where to put his blame.

--

The forest is quiet, just like it was the previous night. Cooper is already on his toes, searching the dense foliage for any glimpse of something silver. He's so distracted that he doesn't hear a single thing that Aaron is saying to the other recruits.

Cooper isn't blind though. Everyone out to help Aaron with the tracking is from his tribe. And none of them have ever believed that he was innocent. He's avoided their eyes so far and he can continue to do so. All he needs is for the group to start moving so he could start his search in earnest.

"Did you hear that, Booth?" Aaron snaps coming to stand in front of him. Reluctantly Cooper pulls his eyes away from the forest to stare at him. He doesn't tell Aaron he wasn't listening. Aaron has already assumed he wasn't and will most likely explain again.

Aaron rolls his eyes and starts all over again. He's talking about rules. About what to look for, and that under no circumstances were they to run off after Silver Sight on their own. If they see something weird, they were to call the others. Simple. Cooper couldn't have cared less. He wasn't there to help them, he was there to help himself.

He nodded as quickly as he could to get Aaron and his disapproval out of his face. And then as soon as he was given the okay, he headed off towards his designated area. He knew he was supposed to stay on the path, but he doubted he'd find what he wanted on the path. If he wanted a face-to-face chat with the asshole who left that message for him then he'd have to think like a deranged forest-dweller.

Cooper crashes through the underbrush disturbing all the wildlife around him. He could have been delicate about it if he really wanted to, but he didn't. He wanted to get the forest's attention, he wanted to get Silver Sight's attention. He wanders through the forest that used to be so familiar to him trying really hard not to remember. But it doesn't work.

He remembers running through these trees chasing a long black pony tail. He remembers climbing through thick branches, following a pair of worn pink high-top sneakers. He remembers stolen kisses beneath the stars. Sleepless nights in tents while camping with the friends. He remembers carrying injured, sometimes bloodied, animals out of the forest while she followed with the dismantled trap. He remembers holding her to his chest. Her fingers intertwined with his. Her lips on his. The way she'd smell after a run. How she always managed to make him smile even when he was utterly furious with her. Pain blossoms in his chest and he's breathless.

It hurts so much that he's stops walking. He doubles over, bracing his hands on his knees as he gasps for air. The pain is as raw and ragged as the day it was inflicted on him and as per usual, now that he's in the forest and all those memories have flooded to the surface, Cooper cannot hold it in anymore.

"Goddamn it! Why have you brought me here?" he screams to the trees. "For God Sake! Have I not suffered enough? Just tell me what you remember! Tell me where she is! I JUST WANT HER BACK!"

Silence answers him, as it always does and Cooper feels foolish. He knows he can't have her back, not when she died fourteen years earlier. So, in case someone heard him screaming, he plans to the tell them that he meant her body. The body that was never found. That's what he wants back. And in reality that's what he'll have to content himself with because the dead don't come back to life no matter how much you loved them and wished them to.

Cooper forces himself to drink from the canteen he has slung over his shoulder, hoping the motion will calm him down. It doesn't. But it does help him focus just long enough to recognize that someone is standing across from him. This someone is standing at least twenty feet away, hidden mostly in the shadows, they're standing staring at him. Cooper has to squint but it doesn't take long to for him to realize that the person in the distance is wearing fur. The sun peaks out of the clouds just long enough to illuminate the sleeve of the person's coat.

White fur.

Silver Sight.

Immediately Cooper is running. He is calling out. Wait. Stop. Please! But Silver Sight is running too and Cooper can't keep up. He hasn't even come close. All he can see is flashes of that greyish white fur as it weaves in and out of the trees. If Cooper didn't know any better he'd say that Silver Sight was leading him somewhere.

Cooper couldn't think about anything other than catching up.

He vaults over upturned trees, barely manages to swats away low hanging branches and flinches when he misses one and ends up getting slapped across the face. He's crashing through a bush that's up to his knees, one he was planning to jump over but, at the last minute, decides not to. He's one foot in the bush and one foot out when he hears a horrible snapping sound and then he's jerked to a stop and slamming into the ground.

Cooper growls to keep himself from screaming. The world has come to a dizzying halt, Silver Sight is gone and Cooper feels ridiculous. He forces himself up and turns over, parting the branches of the bush he finds the problem. His foot is caught in a bear trap.

Poaching and hunting is illegal in the Silver Pines Forest, so this trap shouldn't be here. But Cooper can't think about that now. The trap hasn't broken his ankle yet, the fact that he wore hiking boots has saved him from that injury, but just barely. He knows that he's bleeding and he can feel the trap squeezing the feeling out of his foot.

He tugs and pulls and struggles to find that hidden catch that will free him but he can't. The longer he's in the trap the more of a panic he finds himself in. He has no idea where he is, how far away from the search party he is, or if he has service. He pulls out his phone quickly to check. Nope. No service.

He tries not to be frantic, but he can't help but panic. He wants to scream. Instead he busies himself with the tugging, the sharp edges of the trap cutting up his fingers.

He doesn't know when it happens but when he looks up he's surrounded by fireflies. A million little twinkling lights drifting around him and the surrounding area. The forest has stilled, there's no wind or whispers, it's as if everything around him has calmed. Despite it all Cooper feels much calmer himself.

He watches the lights float around him, the forest blurring into dappled greens with golden sparkling stars and he figures it's the blood loss. He's going to die in this forest. He hasn't found her, but maybe they'll be reunited in death. She had always been into that poetic shit.

It all shatters the second he hears growling. He doesn't have time to react, he spots the wolf running towards him, a blur of dark grey moving through the trees. The fireflies careen off path as he crashing through them. All Cooper can do is raise his hands to keep those sharp teeth from reaching his neck.

He's using a lot less strength then he figured he needed to wrestle a wolf off of him. He's holding the wolf by the neck, his fingers embedded in the course fur. Its paws are on his shoulders, it's teeth white and snapping. His fingers brush against something in the fur, something leather. A collar. This wolf is wearing a collar. Wolves don't wear collars.

He spots the glimmering of something other than the fireflies, which seemingly have vanished. He spots a few letters etched into the grime covered gold medallion that hangs mostly hidden by the fur.

E-R-----L

He knew that collar. He had helped get it fitted once the smaller one was out grown. He had held down an adolescent dog as she struggled to get it around his neck. But he had gone missing the night she had.

The trap springs free and the wolf slowly steps off of him. Cooper scrambles away from the wolf/dog even though his ankle protests and spots another wolf crouched near to where his foot had been pinned. Or at least he thought it was a wolf.

Until it stood up.

Silver Sight was smaller than Cooper thought he would be. No more than five foot three, five foot four at most. Long black hair, he could see the braid poking out from under the hood. The wolf fur looked authentic, tufted up and wild. It looked nothing like it did the last time he had seen it, which was pristine, well-groomed and on the previous Chief, also known as Aaron's dad. Now it was matted and wild, like a real wolf, but those glossy glass eyes were gone. Nothing but empty eye sockets stared back at him.

Every now and then the fireflies would line up with those empty black voids illuminating them. Making the eyes glow like embers in a dying fire.

The fur itself was basically just a tunic, the head basically a hood. But as Silver Sight was small, it hangs a little lower than it should have. The hood covers everything, the snout of the wolf covering the face. The tunic hangs down to mid-thigh. His hands not even visible and only the glint of some metallic looking claws gleaming in the forest light setting off a blood red glow. And Silver Sight was wearing pants, army green cargo pants, with heavy pockets. And a pair of petite looking, very worn, hiking boots.

So Silver Sight had to go shopping at some point if he had regular people clothes.

But that wasn't at the forefront of Cooper's mind at that moment.

"Why did you bring me here?" he snaps.

Silver Sight cocks his head to the side. He looks like a confused dog. If Cooper wasn't injured and scared he would have tried to knock the look off of him.

"You left that message for me, why?" he tries instead.

The voice that comes out from under the hood isn't what he expects either. Light, airy, not as deep as he thought. Almost like a breath of wind carrying two words.

"Did I?"

"Don't play that game with me!" he cries. "You know what happened to me! Just tell me!"

The wolf head bows.

"You're not ready to hear it yet."

"BULLSHIT!" Cooper thunders from the ground. The wolf sitting beside Silver Sight bristles. But Silver Sight himself seems unaffected.

"I've been ready since the day I woke up! I need to know, now TELL ME!" he demands but Silver Sight remains silent.

They stare at each other and Cooper feels that tough guy exterior crumbling. He's so close. The answers are right there, locked up in the psychopath standing before him. Before he can stop himself the tears come.

"I just want her back. Please, tell me where she is if you won't tell me what happened," he pleads angrily swiping the tears away.

"I cannot."

"Why?" his voice is hoarse with unshed tears and heavy emotion. He's sick with trying to hide it.

"Because I don't know where she is."

Cooper looks up. There's a spark in him at that moment. Silver Sight, who was supposed to know all that went on his forest, didn't know where she was. Could that mean that she wasn't in the forest? Had her body been moved somewhere else? Was it possible that she was still alive?

His eyes fall on Silver Sight again and his petite and almost fragile looking frame. He takes in all the details he previously glossed over in favour of his inquiries. The reddish gleam is hardened tree sap. So the claws are used for climbing and not gutting. The pockets look heavy, as if they're filled with things. If he could take Silver Sight down, he could probably find an ID. The bit of hair he sees looks clean, and all in all he looks well fed and taken care of, which mean he had a roof over his head, a fresh supply of food and somewhere to wash.

Already he was devising his own theories.

Silver Sight turned, exposing the skin of his neck. Smooth and tanned, naturally tanned, not an out in the sun tanned. Even that skin looks silken and delicate in the glow of the fireflies dancing around them.

When he turns back around Cooper can feel a sort of tenseness around him.

"You need to walk straight," Silver Sight says. "Just follow the path you created and you'll be brought to them."

Cooper looks him up and down and realizes this is his only chance.

"I need help up," he tells him.

Silver Sight pauses, he can feel the gaze piercing him from under the hood. For a moment Cooper thinks he won't help him. But slowly the claw is pushed away and a small hand appears. Hands grimy with dirt, nails worn to the nub from the bad habit of nail chewing.

A rough and calloused hand is thrust out at him. It doesn't feel warm to the touch, but instead mild. Like the temperature in the forest. But there's enough heat and a faint pulse that Cooper can feel reminding him that the person attached to this hand is real and alive.

He's pulled up. He's shaky on his injured leg, and his other leg has pins and needles. Before Silver Sight can pull away, Cooper lurches forward, trying to hook his hand in the fur. He needs to pull down the hood. He needs to know who's underneath it.

Silver Sight pivots, his other hand reaching up to push Cooper away. The claw hooks his shirt and tears it, some of his skin gets caught in the crossfire. It burns his shoulder and he loses his grip on the hood. He stumbles back against the tree and when he looks up again Silver Sight is gone.

So are the fireflies.

So is the light.

With nothing left to do Cooper walks forward like Silver Sight instructed. He feels sore and tired but he forces himself forward. It feels like a longer walk. Probably because he's limping. He wonders why the forest is suddenly so dark.

He wanders a bit more until he spots lights up head. Too big to be fireflies. As he gets closer he realizes its flashlight beams. It's night time. How the hell did that much time go by while he was talking to Silver Sight?

He hears Carol calling his name and he's rushing forward. Desperate for something familiar and normal. He ends up collapsing in her arms with the moon above him and the stars twinkling like they hold a secret.

But Cooper is certain he knew what it was.

--

Cooper was taken to the nearest hospital to get looked over and patched up. He heard from Carol that he had gone missing in the late afternoon. It was immediately assumed that Chief Alo had lost him on purpose, despite him swearing that he hadn't. He was the one who organized the search party for him and had seemed remarkably calm about the whole situation. Which only made Carol more frantic and certain that Aaron had done something nasty to him.

She was highly unhappy to hear that Aaron had nothing to do with.

She had been shocked to hear that he had found Silver Sight.

And downright livid when she found out what Cooper had gone into that forest looking for.

But that was probably because Cooper hadn't admitted it to her. Sherriff Andrew Paxton had been much more observant then Cooper had expected. He had deduced exactly why Cooper had shown up, guessed the meaning of the message and figured that if Silver Sight showed himself it would be to Cooper.

He had been right on all three hunches.

While Cooper was waiting to be discharged he got questioned. By the Sherriff. By the angry girlfriend. By the nurses. By himself. Andrew seemed to find it funny with the way his mouth smirked upward when Cooper answered.

"So you got nothing from him?" Andrew repeated.

Cooper nodded. "I got one thing," he snapped.

"Oh yeah and what was that?" Carol snaps, still angry with him.

"Silver Sight's a woman," he tells them with a triumphant smile on his face. And he's met with stunned silence.

"How do you know?" Andrew asked.

"Soft, light, high pitched voice. Small stature, small frame, woman hands. Guaranteed, Silver Sight is female," he explains.

Andrew writes down the observations. "Alright, I guess we can widen our search parameters now. Thanks for the tip."

He leaves shortly after that, leaving him alone with the fuming Carol. She's silent a moment before she leans forward to glare even more intently at him.

"This needs to stop," she growls, her voice dangerously low. "This obsession you have with her is becoming dangerous to your health. Let her go before she kills you too."

Cooper says nothing. He's grateful that she hadn't said her name. But he doesn't know how to tell Carol that it's not possible. He needs to know what happened that night. And he'll die chasing those answers if he has to. Without the barest hint of hesitation.