***I feel much better about the flow of this chapter, hopefully from here on out it will stay that way, also, thank you for all the comments, seriously. You guys are getting me through this!***

I discard my hoodie and shoes under a random tree and keep moving. The chicken has made me realize my true hunger but I want to be far away when that family finally wakes up. I'm not sure how long it will take them to notice things missing, but I want to be safe. Handlers will be searching for reports of theft.They know I'll be in need of supplies. Any tip off could send them in my direction.

The rain comes not long after, it spits down from the clouds in a steady sheet. The large trees do well to keep me from it, but soon everything is touched. I let the rain hit my head and my skin. I pause a moment to breathe it in and feel it. How long has it been since I've felt the rain? Hello friend. I say and the rain kisses my cheeks. I smile, it's small, but I feel my lips curve and I know it's real. I'm back.

I'm an hour into my hike when I realize that I forgot to search for a map. I stop mid stride and curse loudly, "You're such an idiot Adie." I say and then I shake my head and laugh angrily.

"Yes you really are." I spin the hood of the jacket falls back away from my face. My vision flips and water pools around my fingers.

Aiden steps out from under a tree. He's still wearing his clothes and jacket but I see the straps of a bag on his back and there is a black beanie pulled over his head pushing his hair along the tips of his eyes.

"Shit." I let the water fall away from my fingers. Aiden steps closer and I see that he's completely dry. The rain falls steadily around us, but it's as though he's in a bubble, the rain curves away from his body and falls the earth.

"Thought you'd given me the slip?" he steps closer, our bodies only a foot apart.

"I was hoping, yes."

"You forget," he whispers, "I can see you in the rain." He closes his eyes and I feel a pulse in the water, a tugging. Aiden's lips curve and then he opens his eyes to see me for himself. I shiver and the rain pulls away, as though someone has just put an umbrella over my head. "Is that better?" He whispers.

"How'd you do that?"

"I simply focus my desire to be dry." His voice is still quiet, "And the water responds." He blinks and the rain pours onto us. It beads onto the fabric of his hoodie and slips down his cheeks. "Now you try."

I lick the water off my lips and swallow. Dry, I want to be dry. The rain lessens, but doesn't deflect away. I look at Aiden. He's still watching. "It's not working." I say. And why should it? The water is a part of me and I'm a part of it, we're connected.

"You're trying too hard. "

"Maybe the rain is just being stubborn."

The rain pushes away from us, like parting curtains, it flows away from our bodies. "The rain isn't stubborn, it's not anything, and it's not a living creature Adie. Because our power comes from our minds, our emotions are weaved into that power. Whatever we're feeling at the time increases when we use our power, we push our emotion into our connection. If we're scared then we might perceive water to being angry to try and put a reason to our fear. If we're angry, we might perceive the water to be eager, or angry along with us. The water doesn't have emotion, but we give it emotion."

"That's not true." I say remembering the river and the rain the night I saved Henry.

"Yes it is, trust me..." He says and then the rain falls upon us again.

"I don't want to trust you."

The rain continues to fall upon us and Aiden sighs, and lowers his gaze "And you don't have to..."

I take a deep breath and think about how I wish to be warm and comfortable, how the cold has begun to settling into my body like a permanent resident and how much I hate it. And before I realize what I'm doing the rain pushes out and off my body. A small smile touches Aiden's lips and water drips off his chin. He shouldn't have to be wet and cold either just for teaching me. And the rain pushes further, until both Aiden and I are dry and surrounded by rain.

I study his face, and he keeps his on mine. There is a hint of a beard on his chin and around his lips, it darkens his face and yet it makes his eyes look wilder. This is the face of a betrayer. And yet, and yet there is something else that I cannot ignore. He's a human, and may have made mistakes, and he may have been pushed beyond his boundaries, but despite that he helped me. He saved my life and I saved his.

I let out a deep breath, "I won't run from you." I say looking into the darkness, away from his watchful gaze. "But that doesn't mean I like you being here."

"I understand."

I nod, "Is that all of the lessons for tonight?"

"Yes, if you want."

"Good, I'm starving, let's find someplace to dry to sleep and have some food." I walk away from him and try not to push my emotions into the rain.

We eventually find a large tree and push the water away from its roots and pull it out of the ground. We create a patch of dry land and together we collapse, our backs against its large trunk and watch the rain fall through the darkness. The forest is quiet, even the animals, it seems, have decided to stay dry tonight.

I pop a can of tuna fish open and eat it with my fingers, Aiden unzips his bag and pulls out a sandwich wrapped in tinfoil, and then he pulls out a map and a flashlight. I stare and him while the crunch of lettuce fills the silence. The map lays open on his knees and he shines the light down onto it. After a few seconds he seems to notice my gaze, he looks up."What is it?"

"You snagged a sandwich?"

He looks down at the lettuce sticking out from between the slabs of bread, meat, and mayonnaise. "Yes?"

I toss my now empty tuna tin into the woods, not caring if it doesn't decay for a hundred years. "Well screw you and your sandwich."

"Would you like half?"

"No." I dig through my bag and pull out a small bag of potato chips. "Where did you get your stuff anyway?" I move closer to study the map, it's a jumbled mess of green spots and elevations and old fire roads which have been penned in by someone.

"There was someone hunting." He says looking at the map, I have a feeling he's a little more practiced at seeing what he needs to see on it. "He was kind enough to have some lovely things for me in his truck. I'm sure he'll just assume that he misplaced his bag or forgot it at home." He finishes his sandwich and stuffs the tinfoil into his bag. I look out into the rain and wished I hadn't tossed the can out there.

"So where are we?"

Aiden shrugs, "I'm not one hundred percent sure."

"So how does this help us?" He smiles and turns to look at me, "It doesn't until we figure out where we are."

"Great." I say.

"But." He holds up his finger. "I have a general idea. See, the hunter marked in these roads by hand, which is where I found him hunting." His hand trails along the pen lines. "And you found a river by going south," he trails his finger along a thin blue line until it hits a small road, "and the house you stole from was somewhere around here, but when you left you went east an hour and then I caught up to you." He runs his finger along the paper, "Which means, we're probably somewhere around here." He twirls his finger and makes a large circle around a large patch of green on the map.

"Well that's helpful."

"It is, if we know our general location, we can plan on where to head, or at least a good direction to head in." He looks at me again, "Do you have any thoughts? You are after all the one leading us, I'm just following."

I shrug, "I'll think about it in the morning." I shove the empty potato chip bag into his hand. "I'm going to sleep." I put the backpack under my head and pull the hood up and curl into a ball, but I'm dry and the rain surrounds us like a protective barrier. Even though it's cold, I feel safe and content. I fall asleep to the sound of Aiden stuffing the potato chip bag into this backpack.

Images flash before my eyes, sequences of them like a picture book. I travel through forests and rivers. The sun rises on my right and sets on my left dozens of times and then I reach a mountain. I follow the gulley and travel along its top. And then the smell of pine and wood smoke fills my noise, I see a cabin come into view. I hear gentle singing, safe haven.

I sit up, jerking my body from sleep. Birds sing and chipmunks chatter all around us. The forest is quiet in the morning light. The rain is gone but it's still cold. I rub my nose and blow warm air into my hands. "Aiden." He's sleeping quietly, his head resting on his bag, his mouth open slightly, "Aiden." I hit his leg. He slowly opens his eyes but when he focuses on my face they open fully and he sits up.

"What's wrong?" He looks around the forest like he's expecting an attack.

"Nothing is wrong, I just...I think I know where we're going."

"Tell me again how you've made this decision?"

The sun is warm on our backs and we both took off our jackets an hour ago. Winter is coming, but today the sun is showing its brilliance. "It's a dream I had..." It still sounds crazy when I say it but it's there, the image of me traveling with the rising sun on my right and the setting sun on my left. We're going north.

"Right, but why go north because of a dream? It gets colder in the north, and the snow isn't something to laugh about, we're out in the open here. We should be headed south, to we're it'll be warmer and easier for us to survive without relying so much on other people."

The smell of wood smoke and pine trees fill my nose. "It's more than a dream." I say softly, there is something tugging on my mind and I'm struggling to bring it forward. A woman's voice and man's voice, but there are no faces, no words, just their tones and the word safe haven that spins in my head.

Aiden puts a hand on my shoulder but slap it off, "You're more than welcome to go south." I say, "But I'm going north, there is something I'm supposed to find. I can feel it."

"And I'm following you."

I roll my eyes and keep walking, "So why don't you use this time and do something useful? Start answering my questions."

"What do you wish to know?"

"You said before that the government picked up the children and babies of known Misfits gave them names...does that mean that the government gave me mine?"

"Yes." Aiden says from behind me. I keep my eyes on the forest ahead of me, but my hands tighten around the straps of my bag. "Did they give you yours?"

"Yes." He says again. "Did you ever find it curious how similar our names are?"

I hadn't really thought of it before, but now that he mentions it's I can't help but realize that our names are similar. "Sure." I say.

"The government went down through the alphabet and simply assigned names to Misfits." He steps up beside me, "So that means we were found around the same time. Strange to think about isn't it?"

"When were you...you know...found? Do you remember your parents at all?" A woman's lullaby and a man's frustrated voice swirls through my head then disappears. I press my hand against my temples, reaching to remember. But it's gone again, why do I feel so empty when I cannot hold onto these wafts of images and smells? What am I missing?

"Are you alright?" Aiden places a hand on my arm. I pull it from his grasp and step aside. I didn't even notice that I'd stopped walking.

"I'm fine. Just tell me if you remember your parents."

"I have vague recollections of my father, but no, I don't remember them. I was two years old when the government found me and placed me into an orphanage.

"How do you know that?"

Aiden looks at me with an expression I cannot read, "I was their dog, don't forget."

I nod and look away, "So you're what? Twenty?"

He nods, "Good guess." I shrug, "Are you sure you're alright?"

"I'm fine...just...let's keep moving." I push onward and Aiden falls in step beside me.

Aide and Aiden, and then I think about Steven. When was he picked up to get a named assigned to him that started with an S? I think about the photo in his pocket, Steven knew his parents, and he wouldn't have ever accepted one of their names. He would have never told me to call him Steven if it wasn't his real name.

"Aiden, are all orphans assigned names?"

He shrugs, "As far as I know. I mean, I guess if they were picked up later on in their years and would actually remember their real names, then maybe not. I mean, at that point their almost guaranteed to be picked out as Misfits anyway, so they might not have bothered."

"What do you mean they would be picked out as Misfits?"

"I mean if your parents had raised you then you'd remember them, they would have taught you about the ability to connect to water. You would've known who you are. Even if you didn't end up with the connection the government would still have tagged you as a Misfit because you would have known the truth. Orphans who are raised by their parents never last long, more often than not they are tagged early and put in place where they won't be able to spread any rumors or cause any trouble."

I think of the crumpled photograph in Stevens' pocket; us Misfits have to stick together. Promise me we'll stick together. Steven had known the truth. Even then, he'd known his parents, known that he was a Misfit. Did he even get to leave the orphanage? Did he spend his thirteenth birthday in a dark cell with a blindfold over his eyes?

I grab onto a tree and bend over. Vomit burns my throat. My hands shake and I spit. "Adie, what's wrong?" Aiden steps next to me, avoiding my sick on the ground.

"Nothing." I say, "It's nothing I just..." I shake my head.

"Don't tell me it's nothing." He says dropping his bag, he opens it up and hands me a water bottle. I rinse out my mouth and drink a few sips then hand it back.

"It is nothing, I just...I knew someone who grew up with his parents, an old friend. He, he always knew what he was."

The forest is silent, and then Aiden sighs, "I'm sorry Adie."

"Don't, we were kids, I never thought about him until after the Handlers came for me. It's not like we were close." I straighten and take a deep breath. "I'm being stupid."

"It's not stupid." Aiden says, "It shows that you care."

"Right, I'm sure puking would really show someone how much I care about them. He'd be so proud." I walk away from him, "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"Then don't, why don't you tell me why you keep grabbing your head?"

"I don't keep grabbing my head."

"Yes you do."

"Just shut up!" I yell at him, "Just-shut-up." His eyes harden, but he doesn't say anything. "I just wanted some answers. I only want you to teach me my potential. I don't want to know you're life story, and I don't want you knowing mine, is that clear? We're not friends. I don't even trust you. So just stop asking me questions like you give a damn." I take a deep breath through my nose."I need some room to breathe. I think its best that you stay far back from me." I step backward then turn around. I pick up the pace and stomp over logs and furiously push away branches. I don't hear Aiden, and when I look over my shoulder, I don't see him either.

I turn back and keep walking. Tears slip down my cheeks and I don't move to wipe them away. Tears, I feel, are much more caring than vomit.