They moved to an apartment in the bustling city of New York, a two bedroom in Brooklyn that they rented with Bash and Kenna, where they had to take the subway to Manhattan and back every day to work and for school. Where the heater didn't always work as well as it should, there was a permanent leak in a corner and they were permanently looking for somewhere new to live. But none of that mattered, because they were here, and together, and life didn't feel like something to be chased or imagined anymore.

After Claude's graduation party, a couple of years afterward, they visited the woods again. Kenna had stayed in the city, and Bash was staying in town for a few days more to catch up with his old work friends, but Mary and Francis didn't feel the need to stay any longer than necessary after seeing the kids.

They were supposed to drive the rented car to the next town over where they would catch their flight back, but they looked at each other immediately after driving by a particular huge tree they'd carved their names on when they were 17, and her smile as she caught his hand said quite clearly: one last time.

They parked by the side of the road, Francis swearing that if the car got stolen and he lost his deposit she would be to blame, and she retorting that if someone dared steal a car in this town then they deserved it.

The woods were quiet as they walked, Mary pointing at the now dried up swamp from when they were still in kindergarten, and the bent tree he'd fallen from and broken his wrist in the 3rd grade; the whole forest somehow less vivid around them, even sadder than it seemed back then, but the memories as alive as ever.

When they arrived at the clearing, it was only to find that what used to be their cabin, the place where they had found solace and in each other since they were children-had been knocked down.

Maybe someone had found the condemned building and deemed it unsafe so they had it bulldozed, perhaps the weather had finally made it crumble (even though it had always seemed stronger and larger than life)-but the truth is that there was nothing left in front of them now but ruins, the bones of the house bare and thin like matchsticks.

Her fingertips trailed over Francis' hand as she walked past him, to wander through the ruins of their old hiding place. He surveyed the outside of the place, wondering if the big room had always been as small as it seemed now.

He kicked lazily at a fallen beam, watching Mary as she stared at the old mattress on the corner of the room, that they didn't move or gave away when they left just in case someone else would come upon this place and give it more history. She didn't look sad, instead there was a quiet acceptance hanging in the air, which they both felt.

She was looking down at something on her hands, rubbing it against the hem of her dress. Tight in her fist, later to be shown to him, was one of the old bullets that they used to play with when they were six, that had somehow withstood more than a decade inside the old, now destroyed cabin; she ran her thumb over the imperfections on the metal, looking at the F and an M carved in childish scrabble.

She turned to look at him, meeting his eyes and shrugging. He offered his hand to the dark eyed girl in the middle of those woods, standing in the middle of a wreck of memories, like he had always done, and she hurried to hold it, pulling him along so they could start the trek back to the rented car and away from here.

They walked away for the last time, hand in hand.

It didn't bother them as they thought it would, to find that refugee gone, after so many years of memories, love and heartache.

It was never the house they were running to anyways.