Episode Four, Part 3:

W h e r e ' s   M y   L o v e ?

"ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ʙʟᴇᴅ, ɪ'ʟʟ ʙʟᴇᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴀᴍᴇ. ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ꜱᴄᴀʀᴇᴅ, ɪ'ᴍ ᴏɴ ᴍʏ ᴡᴀʏ.'"

Atlantis walked out the room, feeling Eryx hot on her feet as if he wasn't finished with her. Zara was waiting outside, completely forgotten by Atlantis as she hurried to mask her pained expression. 

"Mom, I need to talk to you." 

"Actually-" Eryx interrupted, halting Zara's movements as she began to walk over to her daughter. "I think its best if I talk to Zara alone. I'll send her out to find you when we're done." 

Zara looked between the two, barely registering the tension between them. She nodded towards Atlantis, smiling, oblivious to what the man she loved had done. "I'll find you in a bit." 

Atlantis' heart dropped to her stomach, Eryx's eyes shinning with victory. He pulled Zara behind him, lacing his fingers through her's as they disappeared out of sight. 

The tears were fighting to spill, but Atlantis held them back, a throbbing in her head as she held it all in. With no one around, she could hear a voice sounding from down the hall, her feet carrying her towards the noise to find Dreea. 

She was holding a radio up to her mouth, listening in for a response. Atlantis hovered in the doorway, debating when she should speak, how long she should wait until she interrupted. 

"Why did you leave like that?" 

Dreea turned over her shoulder for only a moment, not even flinching at the sudden voice from behind her. Atlantis entered the room, walking over to stand facing her. Dreea was perched over the counter, one quick glance at the girl before she diverted her attention back to the radio. 

"Dreea, it's Kodiak. I can hear you. What is it that you needed to tell me?" 

"Turns out Wynn was right about where Riv is." She paused, letting her words settle as Atlantis shot her an urgent look. "It's the DeadLands."                                                                                  

"DeadLands?" Atlantis muttered under her breath, her eyes frantically darting across the room, her mind trying to comprehend what she was talking about. 

"Okay." Kodiak radioed back, the channel static and cutting out. "We're running low on supplies, but we can manage another day. I'll let you know when I have an update." 

Dreea muted the radio and returned it to her waistband, looking up at Atlantis expectantly. 

"Well?" 

"I-" The girl stuttered, nervous how to approach someone like her when she always seemed so...uninterested. "What are the DeadLands?" She ignored the fact that she didn't get a response to her previous question, something telling her that this one was more important. 

"The DeadLands isn't anything." Dreea sighed. She was pushing the back of her hand in between the crook above her nose, almost as if she was being weighed down by stress. 

"But you-" 

"I know what I said." She beat her to it. Dreea rolled her eyes, then, seeming to  have noticed the way Atlantis retreated from her question, stepping back as she tried to figure out what she had done wrong. "It's the desert that surrounds everything here. Including Riders, Third Nation, and any other clan that might be around - what keeps us trapped here. Its just miles and miles of nothing. A place where all life flees from." 

Atlantis nodded, grateful to Dreea that she had answered but uncertain if she should show that to her. "And you think my sister's out there?" 

Dreea frowned, quickly shaking the emotion away from her face. "Riverly, is out there, yes." It was subtle, but Atlantis couldn't deny the way she had corrected her. As if River wasn't the only one to oppose the idea of them being related. 

"Is that what you were talking about when you left earlier? That you got what you wanted to hear?" 

Dreea nodded. 

"But how can you be sure? I was there too, and I didn't hear him say anything about a desert." 

"He didn't say a lot of things, Atlantis. He didn't say that he knows where she is, but he does, or that he's responsible for what happened, but he is." 

Atlantis' head dropped down, looking to ground ashamed as the truth only seemed to become more evident as time went on. She'd had all these dreams about reaching the ground, about being part of a family, about waiting on a father that was coming to rescue her, and they were all wrong. As if it was that if she could dream them all over again, she'd wake up afraid, sweating from the lies that haunted her unconscious mind, begging to stay awake until the memories passed. 

"He said it without meaning to. In a way that people wouldn't notice. You know, if he listened back to what he said, I'm sure he wouldn't even be able to see, himself. But he forgot who he was talking to... Me. And I don't miss." 

Atlantis admired the confidence she had, but more than anything, that she was able to figure out where Riverly was, give them even a hope that she might return. 

"What was it exactly that gave it away?" 

Dreea hesitated before answering. She usually didn't tolerate this amount of questions, nor care to answer them if they were people she didn't know, but there was something abut Atlantis - despite how much Sol disliked her - something about her that reminded Dreea of her missing friend. 

"He said it was easier to imagine her dead than suffering out there in the middle of nowhere. The DeadLands is the only place that could be 'the middle of nowhere'. Everywhere else is either occupied by a Clan, or known lands to us... And if any other Clan were to have her, it would Riders, and they'd use it to their advantage against us. Make a deal or something. The only problem, I guess, is where abouts she is. Which direction did they go in: north? South? And how long have they been out there? Kodiak and the others only went out there yesterday, and River's been missing for 5 days." 

"So its not a case of if they can find her, but if they can get to her while she's still alive?" 

Dreea only nodded again. She dropped her head briefly, eyes grazing upon the floor as a wave of emotion hit her. Atlantis hadn't ever seen her shed feeling like this before, and she didn't think that many people had either. Even though she had recovered herself within seconds, stood up straighter and blinked away any possibility of tears, the image stayed with Atlantis, screaming how important her sister was to everyone. 

- 

It had taken a while for Wynnlow to fall asleep. In the same way that your body can still feel like its moving after walking for miles, there was a running in Wynnlow's feet that kept him up, that tried to pull him to where he was supposed to go. 

He sat up in his tent. Any other day, the 5 hours of sleep would weigh him down, but it felt like he had already wasted too much time. He couldn't sit there any longer and pretend that Sol's fate wasn't in some way shaped by him. And he couldn't deny that she wouldn't feel the same way, as it was only months ago that she had risked everything to free his people from Riders. 

Quietly, so as to not disturb Aeryn from her sleep beside him, Wynnlow tugged his shirt over his head and began to pack everything back into bag, including his water bottle which he still refused to use. He pulled the straps over his shoulders and crawled to the exit of the tent, zipping it open to reveal the hazy orange sky of the early morning. 

"Wynn?" Aeryn's voice was confused and delicate, comforting to Wynnlow just by the sound. 

He bit down on his lip, closed his eyes as he realized he had been caught. 

"What are you doing?" 

Wynn turned around to face her, his eyes full and clouded with guilt. 

Aeryn sat up, blinking away the tiredness. "You were gonna leave?" 

"I was just trying to cover a bit more ground. You know, get as far as I can before we have to turn back." 

Aeryn sighed, her gaze softening as she pulled herself out of her sleeping bag. "Wynn, hun, I really think you need to consider that we might not find her. That we probably won't find her." The last words seemed to hurt her as they escaped, but there was some relief after they were said. 

She reached for his hand, but Wynnlow pulled away, shaking his head a little as if to reject what she confessed. He climbed out of the tent before she could change his mind, and hurried to walk past all the other tents and further into the DeadLands. 

"Wynn!" Aeryn called out behind him. She was now outside, hurrying to catch up to him, but her little legs couldn't keep up. 

At the sound of her yelling, the rest of the group were lulled from their sleep. Both Quill and Kodiak emerging from their tent to see what was happening. 

"Wynn, what do you think you're doing?" Kodiak yelled, standing up and wiping the sleep from his eyes. 

Wynn turned around to look at him, seeing all the faces poking out to witness the scene. 

"I'm going to find my friend. I'm not wasting anymore time." 

"Wasting? Wynn, it's called 'sleeping.'" Kodiak called back. 

Wynnlow rolled his eyes and stormed over to the boy, coming close into his personal space. "The longer we spend in one place, the less time we have to actually find her. Maybe you're okay with just doing your best, but I think this deserves just a little more than that." 

Ares had now made his way to the group, standing beside Quill as the two of them whispered something to each other. They walked over and grabbed onto Wynnlow's arms, pulling him to one side, nodding to Kodiak as if to say they would take care of it. 

Wynn refused to look at either of them, frustrated that they were getting in his way. 

"Wynn..." Ares spoke, trying to get his attention. "Wynn, why does this matter so much to you? Why do you care so much about her?" 

"Yeah, is it because you were the last person to see her? Like, do you blame yourself or something?" Quill searched for an answer, hoping that he could dig deep enough. 

Wynnlow stepped back, looking at them both in disbelief. As if he couldn't believe they didn't understand why he so desperate about this. 

"Because where do we go without her? Huh?" His voice bellowed out suddenly, sure to wake up any of the others if they were still asleep. The power in his voice seemed to move him as well. "We tried the Bunker, and it didn't work. If we go back to Basilisk, Eryx will make us prisoners. If we defect to Riders, they'll kill us. Without Sol, there is no place for us. Don't you get it?" 

He turned to face Kodiak who he knew had been listening in, but he diverted his eyes away like he was ashamed that he wasn't the one causing as much of a scene about it like Wynnlow. 

"We'll go back to Basilisk. Kodiak will talk to Eryx, I'm sure. Make some sort of peace deal to let us stay. Our family is still going to stay together, Wynn." 

"No he won't." Wynnlow said, gesturing to Kodiak. "No, it wouldn't work like that." His voice was calmer, disappointed. You could hear the hope sizzling away. 

"He's right." Kodiak stepped over, then addressing his deceleration to everyone. "Even if Dreea and I both went up against Eryx, nothing we say will matter. He did this to her. She is out here somewhere." 

Quill's features softened, looking between Kodiak and his brother, realization settling in that the news wasn't a shock to Wynnlow. 

"You knew that? That's why you led us out here?" 

Wynnlow shook his head to deny his suspicion, dropping his eyes down to hide the tears brimming above his cheeks. "But I knew she wasn't anywhere we had looked. I knew something didn't feel right about Eryx, and she told me when I saw her that she didn't feel like anyone wanted her as Nobel, so I figured when she wasn't there when we returned, it was because of him." 

"She said that?" Kodiak's voice wavered with guilt, his eyes already glimmered with tears. 

Wynn could only nod, Aeryn's words ringing through to him about her not returning, and how he could now how much that would tear Kodiak apart. 

"Saving her seems like a pretty good redemption." He looked to Kodiak, hoping he would get the hint. "Are you with me?" 

-

four // part three