"I mean, when shit started to go down in the city a few of us were talking about like, what to do. Where to go. And I'm the one with the most food," she swallows, hand running up her jaw to a hollower cheek.

Sebastian remembered her face being so full and round and soft, like the moon on a hazy night. Now there's a furrow as deep as the tills in her soil right between her brows. That used to only appear sometimes, and now — hm. He wonders if Sterling does as he did: running a thumb gently over it as if to iron out the crease; his hand flexes compulsively.

And she continues: "I mean, me and Marnie, and Pierre, but no one wanted to stay in town and I guess the big old barn was too spooky without her there so..." the hand now stops, a single finger over her lips. The farmer's famous thinking pose — she would stand in front of shop shelves for minutes at a time like that, claiming she was slow at calculations, but really just slower to commit.

"So everyone just came here, basically?" His boots find a little pebble to kick and join them on the meandering path towards the coop.

"Yeah. Shane and Jas were the first, and then Penny with Eloise and Vincent. For the longest time we thought it was like, a weird age thing, right? Cause Penny, Haley and I were all fine and so were the kids." The farmer stops to pluck a piece of hay off the top of her head, then Sebastian's shoulder. The stuff gets everywhere. "It wasn't until we realized Leah was... missing, and hearing all the stuff on the news, that things got fucky."

"What happened to Hayley? Was it like, a delayed reaction?" He posed the question as gently as he could, which is to say, not very much at all. The farmer shook her head almost imperceptibly.

"Some gang of bandits rolling through town. She had gone back to her house, I don't even remember why. When we went to check we found," swallowing more tears, as if she could let them out anyway. "We found her. Just completely..."

His hand reaches out to steady her, stretching between her shoulder blades, and she lets it rest there. Her voice is full of vitriol: "What they did to her, I'll never forget or forgive. I hope they rot. I hope I get to kill them."

"So that's why you guys have the, uh—"

"Boy clothes. Yeah. I mean, here on the farm of course it's safe enough. Isolated enough... But you never know who might show up," she looks at him, unblinking, and there's something unsaid hiding behind those green doe eyes. "Even if it's supposed to be Alex, you just never know."

She hums: "I wasn't smart that day."

"You were always too much of a look before you leap girl anyway. I don't think it does any harm to... you know, do something like that once in a while," Sebastian is as purposeful with his words as his walk, desperately trying to find them as they're spilling out.

"Until it kills me. And these days it actually might," she says with a shrug that dislodges his warm palm from where it had crept to — right on that left scapula, a hard little knot, that spot that hurts the most when she's stressed.

There's a silence that settles between them, not uncomfortable. Simply there. Like the weight of tired apathy that neither of them (that, really, no one) could really ever shrug off anymore.

They've reached the fence sectioning off the cattle and the chickens and the crops from the living area; although Seb did hear rumors that some nights, Shane and Sterling would spend it over in that far shed rather than the big house — despite any desperate pleading from its mistress.

Everyone has their coping mechanisms, he supposes. And are slaves to them now more than ever.

Sebastian leans against it, his back cracking loud enough for them both to hear and chuckle lightly. That's enough to break the surface tension and for a question to babble out: "So you and Sterling got together when he moved out here?"

"No. We had been together... a little bit at that point," she is leaning too, the opposite direction, out towards the vast expanse of land and trees and horizon with that glorious, haunting, perfect, nauseatingly perpetual sunset. "It all came out of nowhere. I don't think we were ready for this to make us as serious as we've had to be."

Sebastian feels numb; he's not sure what he should be feeling, except that if he moves he might make a sound he regrets so he tries to not even breathe. She takes his silence as permission to keep murmuring: "I mean, serious in terms of our... personality. As people. Although I guess it's not wrong to say in the... other aspect. Neither of us were ready for... a relationship at all. We fell into it, and I guess at this point there's... bigger fish to fry."

Those peachy little lips do that thing when she's really thinking now, pursing and quirking up into a side pout. Like her body is fighting to keep back anything that shouldn't be said.

"I can imagine it was weird timing. Pretty soon for you. That would've been, what. Four months after I moved?" He was always the one who was better at math... and she at word choice, because she barbed back with:

"We met basically the week after you left me."

He can't even look over at her to see her shaking slightly. She'll say it's from the strangely frigid breeze coming down from the mountains behind them, and not the weight of her feelings. Now the silence was uncomfortable.

But the farmer breaks it eventually: "I'm not mad about it, anymore. But I don't need your judgement over choices I made, after you took a big one away from me."

"It was for the best, for us. Everything I did, was for us."

Her voice has remained so matter-of-fact: "If that were true, we would've done long distance."