Gunned | SatoSere

Chapter 32 - Found

Serena shrugs and decides not to trouble him with the minor details. "Long line. Must've been really popular today."

Later on, though Serena and Miette are on better terms than they ever were, and a devastating duo out in the field, they still bicker incessantly from across the roundtable of the conference room.

"Can't you two stop trying to kill each other?" Ash groans, gripping the sides of his temples. "You two were doing just fine on your mission yesterday!"

"Well if she would-!" Miette starts, but then comes to a screeching halt once she sees something different on Ash's wrist. There's a bracelet of vibrant colors, woven in multicolored threads. "What is that?"

Ash follows her gaze and holds his hand up, looking at the bracelet and then back at her. "A bracelet. I'm sure you've seen one before?"

"No shit!" Miette bites back. "But why are you wearing something that looks like that?"

"I made it. Do you have a problem?" Serena says defensively.

"It's ugly. That's the problem. I could've made one better," Miette retorts and the bickering resumes.

Dawn leans over to whisper to Misty. "You think it's too late to ask Serena to make me one too?"

"Yeah, for me too!" Gary whispers, joining in on the mute excitement.

"I'm not getting in the middle of that," Misty decides with a roll of her eyes. "But maybe it wouldn't hurt to want one too."

Their arguments always end at a stalemate and Ash sighs tiredly to himself. Serena and Miette will act like nothing happened, and follow the usual ebb and flow of their relationship. But Ash doesn't have it in him to say anything else because in all honesty, it reminds him a lot of how him and Miette were years ago.

"I can't believe she's going to annoy the shit out of me for the rest of my life," Miette grumbles to Ash one morning.

Ash doesn't comment on the way that Miette has implied that she can see forever for them both. They were becoming more like sisters, though Serena and Miette would loathe to admit it.

It fully comes as a surprise one day, however, when he sees one of Miette's snipers, with a multicolored threaded bracelet tied around the barrel. Ash doesn't ask out of respect and instead, kisses Serena a little harder that night.

In the blink of an eye, a year passes since the day Serena first arrived.

She doesn't outwardly acknowledge the anniversary, but subconsciously, it brings bouts of nightmares that rouses her from her sleep. Her eyes fly open and she's met with a pale canopy of midnight blue, and the slivers of moonlight that slip from the windows and curve over her blanketed body. She turns her head and finds Ash sound asleep, raven hair splayed over the pillow and his arm wrapped protectively over Serena's waist.

She sighs and sinks further into her feathery pillow. It was just a dream. A very vivid reliving of all the events in the past year, but still just a dream. She slowly raises her hand to look at her fingers, a little calloused, but clean from the blood she had just witnessed in her memories. She drops it back down and peers all around the room that was once Ash's before Serena moved her things into it.

"You might as well, there's plenty of room. You end up sleeping here all the time, anyway."

"Are you asking me to move in with you, Ash?" Serena teased.

It made the leader sputter, but not deny. Ash eventually recovered. "One day, I'll ask you to come live with me in our own place, but for now, will you stay here?"