Cooper was back.

He didn't announce himself at the police station.

He didn't search Carol out.

He didn't tell his father.

He returned to the hotel. Ignored the strange looks he got from the hotel staff. Went up to his room and apparently just went to sleep. Carol had returned to the hotel and cried out in both panic and joy.

Where had he gone? She had wanted to ask but she had just burst into tears and thrown herself at him.

She had been happy to see him. He just wanted her off of him.

They were sitting in the hotel, she in one of the uncomfortable chairs each room had and he on the bed. There was space between them because Carol was angry and Cooper was determined to be distant. This was not the reuniting she had pictured in her head since the morning they found his car abandoned on the side of the road right by Ruelle's memorial.

"Where have you been?" she snaps.

She'd accuse him of running away with another woman if she wasn't painfully aware that the only woman he seemed even remotely interested in anymore was dead.

Cooper stares at her. His face is calm but his eyes the same colour they are when he wakes up from a dream about Ruelle, and suspicion creeps up on Carol.

"I don't know," he answers.

"Why did you go up there?" Carol tries again. She tries to keep her tone light but the frustration seeps into it.

"I was searching," Cooper replies.

Carol tries not to growl. Tries not to let it show that these answers in three words or less are killing her.

"Do you have any idea how worried I was? How worried we all were?" she hisses. She is absolutely seething with rage, she can't even contain it anymore.

If Cooper has any guilt in him it would show on his face, but apart from a lowering of his eyes away from her there's nothing on his face.

"Probably pretty worried," is all he has to say.

At this Carol does growl, loudly. With all the frustration she can muster. Cooper doesn't show any emotion, it's like it's been stripped of him. That rage, those shadows on his face, they're all gone.

It's like an empty puppet has taken his place.

Carol stands and begins to pace. She doesn't look at Cooper, she doesn't have to. He isn't looking at her, he's looking at the ground.

"What were you searching for?" she asks. "Why couldn't you have taken me with you? Or told me where you were going? Why did you have to do this by yourself?"

Cooper's eyes turn back to her, that sky blue is still there taunting her. She knows she wasn't the one to bring back that colour in his eyes.

"I went looking for answers," he replies. It's the first time his voice isn't light and airy. There's finally some depth to it, but none of the warmth she's used to is there. He stands to stare at her, finally his face is showing something other than mild disinterest. He's angry. "And I didn't tell you because it's none of your business."

He walks past her and goes to the door. Her heart lurches into her mouth. She just found him. He can't leave her again. But she doesn't beg him to stay.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" she asks instead.

Cooper pauses, his head cocked over his shoulder, those blue eyes shadowed by the hair hanging over his eyes. "Yes," is all he says to her. The door shuts quietly behind him but she cringes as if he slammed it on her heart.

Carol immediately goes for her phone.

[-----]

Cooper had tried to shower the cave off of him.

To wipe off any proof that he had been with another woman, let alone the woman of his dreams. But he knows it hasn't worked, he can feel her on him as if he never left her side. As if they were still making love on that pallet.

He tries to shrug off the feeling that he's betraying her. This jolting tug at his heart that leaves him staring at the forest from the window not sure how he got there.

He's tired too. So once he's on the bed he finds himself asleep, dreaming of Ruelle, of windy summers and gray green eyes that call to him. Before long he's awoken by a cry of dismay too soon for his liking.

He's not ready to see the woman he's supposed to be dating. The one who had come with him in his time of need. The one who had been there when Ruelle had been off playing Guardian of the Forest.

He endured her sloppy kisses after she threw herself at him. He allowed her to cry over him while he debated internally about what he was doing.

Was he back with Ruelle? In the world of the living, no as she wasn't a part of the real world. But in the spirit world, yes. For his heart had always belonged to her and it was there with her now.

He held Carol at arm's length and deflected her attempts to sleep with him. He was too tired. The experience too harrowing.

And when she realized that the anger came.

She wanted to speak of where he was, but he couldn't. He didn't have a convincing cover story yet. Hadn't thought of one and he would because the questions wouldn't stop with her if he really had been gone as long as Aaron had said he had been.

Cooper stayed quiet even though it clearly frustrated Carol. He couldn't answer the questions she was asking. He wouldn't give Ruelle up to her. Not until he knew more. So he repeated the mantra that struck him down when he was eighteen.

I'm fine. I don't remember.

When he can't handle it any more he retreats to his father's room. But his father's silence and unwillingness to talk to him about Ruelle or where his son could have disappeared to for more than a week was something else entirely. His father had given him a stiff hug but otherwise didn't want to talk about it. All that mattered was that Cooper was back, he had said. But that wasn't enough.

Cooper tried to talk to him. Ask him what he knew about the night that Ruelle was killed.

His father had been off that weekend, had been off to their tiny deer blind up in the mountains, a shack at most that his father used for hunting. Had he seen anything, had he heard anything?

"Son, why can't you let this go?" his father had asked him, pity shining in his eyes. And a glimmer of something else. Something Cooper couldn't quite place.

He stands away from his father, watching as his dad is packing his overnight bag.

"Where are you going?" he asks, trying not to sound like a lost child.

"Up to the weekender," he says quickly. He was going up to the deer blind? Why? His son had just been missing for a week or more and he wanted to leave as soon as he came back?

His father must have noticed the distraught look on his face because he continued.

"With you back I can head up, you're not planning to do any more disappearing acts are you?" he asks following it up with a throaty laugh as if joking about the situation would make it better. Or make it go away. "To be honest, sitting here idly in a hotel is boring, son. At least up at the weekender I'll have something to do. Not to mention it will get that girlfriend of yours off my back. Thinking she can lord over me just cause she has that badge. We all know how she got it, don't we?"

He makes that comment about Carol with a hint of malice in his voice. One Cooper has heard before when referring to the other women Cooper has brought home, or other women he's had to work with. He always thought it was because his father didn't think they were good enough for Cooper that maybe those girls he worked with really were incompetent but now he's not so sure.

It's hard to see when one's role model had flows, especially sexist ones. But his dad's generation is prone to -isms such as those ones. He's not sure now is when he wants to battle his dad on his long-standing prejudices.

His father walks to the door without even trying to give Cooper a hug or to say goodbye and Cooper starts to feel lost again. Desperate to keep something familiar around him as his world tilts on its axis.

"Don't you want to know if I found anything?" he asks and his father stops.

When Harvey Booth turns back to look at his son there's something on his face that freezes Cooper. Something about the hard glint in his eyes makes him warry, not just to protect Ruelle but himself. Like a long buried instinct is telling him to run.

"Did you find something?" he asks a hard steel edge to his voice.

Cooper swallows his fear and tears his eyes away from his father's rigid glare. "No. Nothing."

His father softens and clasps a hand to his shoulder in a sort of affectionate way. "If you need me you know where I am," he says and then he leaves.

Cooper stood there alone, feeling like a boat unmoored and adrift. He didn't know where to turn.

To his father who's aversion to talking about Ruelle was bordering on dangerous?

To his ex-friend who lied to him for eighteen years?

To his should be ex-girlfriend who was trying desperately to keep a hold of a heart that never even belonged to her?

He knew of only one place he could go to get answers. There was only one place he truly wanted to be.

So, Cooper returns to the forest.

He has mixed feelings about being there.

He's nervous. Nervous about seeing her again. Over thinking how this will go.

Will she still remember him? Will she envelop him further into his arms? Are the spirit animals going to appear and tear him limb from limb?

He's not sure but it doesn't stop him from walking through the trees.

He knows better than to call out her name. He walks in silence, listening to the rustling of the leaves and the sounds of the wildlife in the forest.

He didn't realize he was heading anywhere in particular until he ended up in the clearing with the waterfall, which made no sense as that was farther up the mountain and he hadn't been walking that long.

He didn't ask questions though, not that he thought he'd get answers, because a large silver dog is bounding towards him. He gets to his knees to ruffle the dog's fur, to call him a good boy and rub his belly as his tail wags.

"Who's a good Errol?" he's saying over and over as he rubs the dog in all his sweet spots and the dog whines in happiness.

He can feel when Ruelle joins them. The way her presences slips over him like a warm embrace is what alerts him. He looks up and she's coming towards him, the silver fur sleeked out, the hood down so he could see her face and the smile lighting it up. He stands to greet her, though no words pass between them.

His hands reach for her, pulling her in by her shoulders. His mouth claims hers and he roughly devours all she has to offer. Her arms wrap around his neck, her fingers tangle into his hair. Each movement is a familiar motion reminding him of when he was younger and neither of them had a care in the world. He swears he can still taste the cinnamon and sunshine.

His chest is bursting with all the emotions. The wonder of having found her again. The desire to hold her close and never let go. The fear of their situation and how to navigate it so they come together when it's all over. The anger of being lied to, of not knowing what could have happened to her. The love he feels for her seeping back into the cracked corners of his heart he never thought would feel again.

For a moment nothing's wrong. Cooper's world is no longer rotating on a different axis. He no longer feels like he's suffocating or that he's drifted out into unchartered waters with nothing to pull him back in. All he feels is her and for now that's all he needs. And then he hears the crack of a branch and his world comes crashing down on him again.

Errol is on his feet and growling, Ruelle is disentangling herself from him while wildly looking around. When her eyes turn back to meet his he sees betrayal in them and it's like a blade of ice is plunged into his heart.

There isn't much for him to do, there isn't time for him to say anything. Within seconds their little clearing is swarming with the local cops, both from Silver Pines and Redbank. Guns are up and they're encircling them. There's nowhere for her to run, though she hasn't tried to.

The whispers blow in the wind as the forest begins to sway in an angry torment. Ruelle merely stares the faces down. Some of those faces have recognized her, some of those faces are soon to be ex-girlfriends staring at them with eyes filled with reflective rage. Cooper can't feel anything except fear. He wants to go to her, he wants to shield her from them, tell her to go back to her spirit world behind the waterfall.

But there is nothing he can do but watch. To surrender.

Errol is told to stand down by people he either doesn't remember or doesn't care to listen to. Only he, with his raised fur and snarling face seem to pose a threat. And yet it's only Errol who gets away unscathed. Disappearing into the trees before anyone can grab him, with only a look from Ruelle to prompt him.

They are both taken. Hands forced behind their backs. He winces as he watches the cold metal encircle her wrists, the click of them locking into place sounding more like a thundering clap.

The look on her face, the confusion of it all, her shrinking away from touch seems genuine and like the acts of an abused person. She's no longer the stoic, unflinching, otherworldly protector of the forest.

She was just Ruelle.

Confused.

Lost.

And Scared.

The shame and guilt of what he had wrought burned through him, keeping his eyes firmly set on the dirt as they were dragged out of the forest. His captors handled them roughly though they put up no resistance and made no attempt to run. It's not until they get in the car that the reality of this sinks in.

Even the forest looks angry. All around them the wind moans. The trees sway and bend in an angry dance. Vengeful branches sweep down at the path intent to catch anyone they can. The sky darkens. And somewhere, deep in the forest a wolf howls.