Fletcher had lived in Carsden for a long time. He'd started a new life there, and had spent his youth getting to know the locals and figure out his place in the world.

Twenty four years he'd stayed in the town, and in that time he'd grown attached to the people, the town itself, and the surrounding area. He loved Carsden, and he felt like he owed the community a debt that he was more than happy to repay.

But, despite how small and reclusive the town was, Fletcher's life had been anything but peaceful.

When he was six years old, he'd had a vision. It was unlike anything he'd had before, or since.

In that vision, he saw a woman. He knew her name was Kira, and he knew that they were close friends. She stood before him, next to a pile of leaves thrown haphazardly into a pile. Each leaf had been different, and each leaf had glowed a brilliant orange.

He'd walked towards the pile, and with each step memories had trickled into his mind as if from a dozen waterfalls. He'd looked up at Kira, and she'd stared back at him with a gaze like smooth stone; harsh with a hint of softness that seemed to stem from familiarity. They shared a few words in that fleeting gaze. He had a feeling that they would soon meet again.

Fletcher couldn't remember if he'd ever reached the pile, but when he woke up the next morning, he remembered everything.

He remembered who he was, everything he'd been through, everything he could do.

He understood that this was his latest reincarnation after he'd suffered severe injuries at the hands of someone who he knew as Summer; someone like him.

The day before, if someone had said this to him, he would have taken it as a fairytale, rather than fact. It was a complete change, a whole new understanding of his world and the things in it. But, this wasn't like he'd had a strange dream. It was so deeply true and comfortable in his mind that he had no doubts that it had all happened.

He could remember himself, his past experiences, everything so vividly. Dreams just weren't like that.

From the following day onwards, Fletcher spent his time figuring out where he was and what had happened since he'd last been alive. Every time he reincarnated, the time difference from when he'd last been alive was different. It could be days, months, years, even decades. The visions never came at the same time either. The pile of leaves was a constant, but the person present changed with each dream. For the last two, it had been Kira.

Fletcher spent the next month or so working through what he knew and practicing his abilities. It was difficult to work anything out without anyone else there who knew what he was going through; it was like he was trying to learn how to walk again, except this time he couldn't see.

This was why, after a month had passed, Fletcher left Carsden for the first time in that life. He melted into the wind, and swerved around houses, trees, people, heading towards a goal that was still unclear.

His body seemed to have gone invisible. He was a consciousness, but he was spread across this gust of wind, held within a clutch of multicoloured leaves. He thought, and it moved. He pictured, and it headed towards wherever he imagined.

Getting back into the swing of this odd flight was much easier done than he had anticipated it to be. He had done it a lot in the past, he remembered that clearly. It had lost its brilliance after the first couple hundred times, but with each reincarnation it regained its awe again.

He traveled to the place that he had his last memories of. He'd been in the same body then as he was now, with the same name, but different parents, a different upbringing. This wasn't the first time he'd been alive, and it wasn't the second.

It had confused him for a while, when he'd first really thought about how all of this worked. How could he always be in the same body? How could he keep the same memories? Eventually, he'd given up asking these questions and accepted that this was his life. No one ever seemed to know, it was just accepted amongst the small group of those like him he'd come across.

He dropped from the wind at the edge of a forest. It smelled comforting, familiar. He could almost imagine it was welcoming him back.

This was the Forest of Change: it was where he'd spent the last minutes of his previous life.

"Summer," Fletcher muttered to himself. He slid between two trees and beneath a large root that stuck out from the ground like a chipped steeple.

It was odd being so small in this forest. He found it hard to connect what he could see to his past when he was little over half the height he had been the last time he was here. Despite what he now knew, he was still in the body of a six year old boy.

Part of his mind didn't seem to have adjusted to these changes. Part of him wanted his mum, wanted to go back to Carsden and ask his friends to come out to play tag at the Backstreets. They could stay out later than usual, because it wasn't a school night.

He remembered this odd division in his head from his previous reincarnations. He was physically and - partly - mentally still a six year old. He had six year old desires and fears, just as he had had all other times. It usually took a while to adjust to such a big change.

He was scared, he was excited, he was annoyed that he might miss dinner. What would his parents think if he didn't show up?

These were all thoughts that he chose to register and deflect. The child part of his mind wasn't very dominant, so it didn't take very much to get rid of these worries.

He'd been worried at first that his parents would notice him acting different over the last while, but they didn't seem to have picked up on anything. He went to school, came home to get changed, went out, and returned for dinner. The only difference was that he no longer hung out with the people on his street as much. Instead, he spent his time connecting with his abilities and contacting those he'd known before everything had gone down.

Six year old Fletcher walked along a path of downtrodden dirt until he began to recognise the trees around him. There was a slim horizontal mark on one of these trees he knew, near the bottom of the trunk. If you didn't know it was there, you wouldn't see it at all.

He'd been the one to carve it himself, he recalled fondly. It had been on one of the days he'd spent with Summer. They'd marked the forest so they would never lose their meeting point. Summer had had the idea, and they'd spent an entire day looking for a stone sharp enough to make the slim, clean cut that they wanted. It hadn't seemed like a day at the time; when they spent time with each other, hours could have been minutes.

Fletcher thought of her when he ran his finger across the gash in the tree. It was further into the forest than he remembered it being, but it was definitely the right tree. He turned right, and headed into the foliage, away from the path.

Walking gave him a lot of quiet time to think about his memories and really analyse what they meant to him. The very last thing he could remember was a battle. It had been explosive, he recalled that well. It was all very blurry in his head, but things had been like that in previous reincarnations too. He just had to connect the pieces and work out what happened from them.

The battle had happened here, amongst these trees, and further up the mountain, too. The details were foggy in his mind, but he wanted to remember, so he kept walking. Summer was in some way connected to all of this, and if he could find her again, maybe she could help him through all of this.

Around him, evidence of how vicious the battle had been began to appear. There were patches of melted ground, trees turned to cinders and ash. There was a faint smell of burning wood, but the wind kept it at bay. He wondered if it was him doing it.

The path began to curve upwards after a while, and the burned and scorched remains of moss, trees, even rock in some places, built a deep pit of dread deep in his stomach.

With each step, old memories came forth in his mind. He'd had something to do with this battle as well, which only made him feel worse about this whole thing. Part of him considered going back right now, but the other part of him kept walking.

A bit further up, Fletcher came to a sharp turn in the path. To his left, the path continued. To his right, there was a six foot tall wall of rock. He hesitated a few steps along the path. Something made him feel like he should be heading the other way. It was an inkling from the back of his mind, perhaps from a suppressed memory that made him begin to climb the wall and walk along the path at the top. This path was rocky, littered with leaves and scorch marks. The smell of burning lingered in the air.

He walked for a while, trusting his feet to stop him from falling over any stray rocks, until eventually he came to a place that made his knees weak.

Everywhere infront of him, the ground was scorched and scarred. There were lacerations in the ground deep enough to swallow him whole. It looked like a small fire bomb had been set off.

It was then, staring at all of this and the one patch just off centre that was still green, that Fletcher suddenly remembered everything. He fell to his knees amidst the ash, fighting to keep his breathing deep. The last thing he wanted to do was panic now.

~~~~

It had been about seven years previously. He'd been good friends with the seasonal representative of Summer, and he had been for some time.

He had met her through a friend, and had recognised her as a fellow representative. They had met when he was in high school at fifteen years of age.

He himself was the representative of Autumn; season of change and endings, cosiness and hope. It was the beginnings of the end, but he'd always seen it as the turn of a new leaf, a chance to start afresh and see that all isn't bad. It was a bit of a romanticised approach, but it made sense to Fletcher. 

It was a title he'd had for as far back as his memory stretched. It came with a number of abilities as well. As Autumn, Fletcher could make a room comforting just by being present within it, he could manipulate the wind, and he could dissolve into leaves carried within it. Those were his main abilities, though sometimes there were other small things he could do, such as heating up a room quicker through a fire, but they didn't come up much, and he didn't really use them.

Summer was his best friend. They were closer than close, spending hours, days in each other's company with ease. Summer was beauty. She was heat and life and joy. She encompassed all of these traits better than anyone else ever could.  He was in awe of her. She walked into a room, and took up the whole place without so much as a word.

Fletcher couldn't deny that he loved her more than life itself, and she loved him just as dearly in return, but they were friends. They were never romantic, they never went any further than cuddling together under a sheet of stars. Neither of them were interested in going any further with their relationship.

Months before the end, Fletcher has noticed a very obvious change in Summer.

She had always been very kind, very giving, very empathic with those around her. Sometimes, it became too much for her, and she'd breakdown in his arms. The injustices of the world affected her more than they had any right to, and Fletcher could do absolutely nothing about it.

It had first started when she'd exploded at him out of nowhere. Fire had burned across her skin, and her eyes had been darker than he'd ever seen them before. Tears had been streaming down her face, sizzling and turning to steam in mere seconds. It had been the beginning of a vicious and destructive storm.

Fletcher hadn't been able to stop it.

Their relationship had suffered a lot during that time. Summer seemed unstable. She couldn't cope with the injustices she saw, couldn't fix everything that she felt she needed to. She became enraged at the drop of a pin, and cooled in half that time.

It was hard to be around her, and many people left to let her fix whatever was going on by herself, but despite it all, Fletcher stayed to help her through. How could he leave her when she needed someone so badly?

She would lash out and break down into wracking sobs that shook her like a leaf. She would go silent for days on end, caught in a trance he couldn't lead her out of, but still, Fletcher stayed to keep her as safe and well as he could.

He didn't try and restrain Summer at all, neither did he try and force her to open up and talk. Of course, Fletcher did try and keep her as comfortable and happy as he could, but nothing seemed to really work. 

Whenever he caught her in one of those rare periods where she seemed okay and asked her what was going on, all she would say was that she couldn't take it, she couldn't go on knowing what was going on. She couldn't handle how useless she felt.

Seeing her like this hurt Fletcher more than anything else could have. It felt like something was slowly and painstakingly carving his heart from his chest. He wanted to help her so badly, but the battle inside her mind locked him firmly out. All he could do was keep her healthy, and hope that someday she'd feel better, someday he could meet her in the light of day again.

After months of helping her, staying with her, visiting her every free hour he had and making her food if she hadn't eaten any, she did something he hadn't seen before.

He had come over to her house after work and walked inside to see her sitting up on her couch, staring at him without so much as an inch of warmth. That alone had made his stomach drop.

Fletcher had walked toward her, using his abilities to try and heat the room up a bit, comfort her without touch. It didn't seem to have any effect; Summer was a glacier, and he was trying to melt her with embers.

She spoke to him after what felt like hours. He'd remained standing. Usually, he would make some sandwiches for her, and put on whatever it was he'd bought her for dinner that night. He tried to make things as easy as he could for Summer, but he would also give her things to do should she feel like it. That day, he'd brought his car with bin instead of walking the five minutes or so to her house. He'd been planning to take her out for a walk in the town centre nearby. They could get something nice for dinner, and she could spend some time with nature. It was something he tried to do every few days, when she seemed up for it.

Today, her voice was gravel. It was not a good day. "I don't want to see you for a while, Fletcher. You're doing little but remind me of what little help I can be to this world. This is something I have to do alone. I need some time away from you before I hurt you, or you hurt me more than you have already," he wasn't sure if it was her words, or the lack of emotion in her voice that hurt him more.

She'd said hurtful things to him before, but this was very different. This was more cutting than usual, and said without so much as a hint of anything, not even the sadness he'd grown accustomed to hearing in her voice. "I understand that I might not be doing the right things to help you, but I really want to do what I can. I want to help you through this, Summer, please don't push me away," He kept his voice even, giving away as little as he could about how he really felt about all of this.

She kept her stone gaze firmly on him, "You're not helping me, Fletcher. Keeping you around has been a mistake. I want you to go, and I do not want to see you again. I can help myself; I know exactly what I need, and what I don't need is you," she kept with her initial point, her words practically burning at the edges. He had a feeling that no matter what he said, she wasn't going to shift. But how could he leave her?

Fletcher could feel emotion at the back of his throat. She came before him, she always would. He didn't want to hurt her, he didn't want to upset her, and he didn't want her to say any of these words to him. But, it seemed, all of these things had happened.

"I was going to take you out for today, just around the town. Could we talk more there? You could get some fresh air, and we can go to the antique store over by the forest, if you want," maybe he could find out more about her reasoning here, maybe he could see what was going on within her mind.

Summer's eyes were suddenly ablaze, "What do you not get? I do not want you here. I don't want to see you, or speak to you, or hear from you again. I am done with you, Hallidans. Get out of my sight before I do something that'll show you just how much I loathe you at this moment in time," still, there was that lack of emotion, the complete and utter void where something else should have been.

Fletcher felt his eyes well up at the edges. He fought to keep the lump in his throat down and clenched his hands into fists at his sides. The wind whirled scattered twigs and leaves into rough, messy piles outside. Maybe he'd been around her too much recently, maybe his persistence had really only been detrimental to her condition. He told himself that this was just whatever had happened to her that was talking, that she didn't really think so lowly of him.

Once he was sure his voice wouldn't shake, Fletcher replied, "Okay, I understand. I'll leave you alone for a bit to be by yourself. There's some fresh vegetables and meat in the fridge and bread in the breadbox for you. I'll come down next week to see how you are. Take care, Summer, I hope you feel better soon," he smiled softly at her, his voice quiet and ever so slightly muffled by emotion.

When he realised she had nothing more to say, he turned and left, locking the door behind him. He made it all the way to his car before the first tear fell and he realised what had actuary just happened.

Each of her words had been a punch to the stomach, and he couldn't help but blame himself a bit, for being unable to help her, for not being strong enough to stick around and talk it out more. Surely, he could have said more. He could have made her see. The tears kept flowing. Fletcher placed his arms in his steering wheel, and buried his head in them.

Ten minutes or so later, Autumn managed to steady his breathing enough to calm himself down. He sat up and stretched his arms over his head, and then looked at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were red and puffy, and his cheeks were stained with tears. He used the back of his hands to dry his face and arms off, then started his car.

He left without looking back. It would have been too painful for him to try.

~~~~

The next week was a complete and utter rollercoaster for Fletcher.

In his long life, he'd had a lot of experience with the different sides of the human psyche. He'd been through heartbreak, fury like nothing else he'd ever known, happiness that had made his heart feel like it was going to burst, fear so strong the feeling had stayed with him for weeks, and sadness that had rendered him all but unable to talk for months.

He understood the many emotions that people could go through, and he'd experienced most if not all of them himself. But, the way he felt over that week was unlike anything he'd been through before.

He'd been so incredibly angry at himself that he'd had to skip two days of work just to go somewhere remote and release his rage on a small corpse of trees. It was an almost blinding rage that had seemed like it would never end. He'd cut through the trees with leaves, thrown with such strength by the wind that they severed the trunk completely in half.

It was the more destructive and harsh side of Autumn that others seemed to see. He knew that if he'd gone to work, something bad would have happened; it wasn't like it hadn't before when he'd been in a state of rage similar to this.

The day after that, Fletcher's anger had lessened, and he'd gone into work, overtaken instead by sadness that he could difficult to hide. He'd worked as the manager of a department store in a big town a train journey's away from the apartment he stayed in. It was an alright job some of the time, but more often than not, it was stressful.

On one hand, this distracted him for a few hours from thinking about Summer, but on the other, it was added stress, and that played with his emotions nearly as much as she had.

By the time the week ended, Fletcher had calmed down again. He still planned to stick with his plan to go and see Summer once the week was up. She may have exploded at him a bit, but he had to make sure she was okay. He couldn't leave her in such a state for any real length of time.

So, Fletcher walked up to her house. He could tell before he'd even come through the gate that something was up. There was a note left on her door for him, inscribed in her usual uneven print. It said 'I'm sorry for what I said. I've gone to fix things. Don't look for me. ...Summer

The note made him pause for a few minutes. There was something about that note that tugged at his memories, really pulled at his mind in some way he didn't at first understand.

Then it clicked.

I've gone to fix things.

She'd said something like that a while before, when they'd been walking through the forest, towards their spot. Summer had said something off hand, about harnessing her power to fix all the problems of the world. Summer was a healing force, right? It could be used to fix everything, she was sure of it. She said she could do it, and she'd said someday she would.

He hadn't taken any of that as meaning anything at the time, but now it made sense. She planned to train, to use the sun to her advantage, call upon every ounce of her powers to fix the world. It was madness. It was something Summer would absolutely have do, if she believed it would help.

Fletcher had never dissolved into the wind so fast. He hurtled through the air, the note gone in a blur behind him. In minutes, he landed in the forest, at their usual spot. There were charred sticks littering the ground, patches of singed and smoking grass further up the path. Fletcher swallowed thickly as he surveyed this scene, and then he started to run up the path.

They'd went this way only a few times, but he knew it well enough to follow without getting lost.

Fletcher ran until he came to a crossroads. The path led one way, a stone wall blocked the other. Which way could Summer be? What if he was already too late?

He looked at the ground in both directions. To the left, there were a few crumbled leaves and seeds across the dirt. To the right, there was only stone. But, maybe there was more further up. How could he be sure? He looked both ways. Even if he was wrong, was there any wrong in checking the top of the wall? Fletcher could himself pulling himself up before this thought had fully competed.

He stood at the top and looked along the other path. There were still no traces of burning up there, or anything else that suggested that where Summer had been. Autumn took a step backwards, and the ground crunched beneath his feet. When he lifted his shoe, he saw a patch of dark brown grass. Extreme heat. It had to be this way.

Fletcher started running again, until this time he saw her.

She stood in a huge field of bushes and grass, burns and scorch marks strewn across the ground in all directions. She had her arms at her side, head towards the ground. Even from where he stood, Fletcher could feel the heat from his friend. She seemed to glow with heat, the air around her vibrating from it.

As he watched, she jerked, and a stream of what looked like pure, concentrated heat shot out from her. It struck the ground and burned right through the dirt, shoving it aside with invisible hands.

"Summer! What are you doing?" Fletcher shouted, jogging to a stop just ten feet away from her.

Summer turned to him with dark eyes. There was definite emotion in her now; rage that seemed to have manifested into this heat that sizzled in the air all around them both, "I told you not to come here. Why would you disobey my wishes?" She snapped, throwing her arm forwards and shooting a bolt of concentrated heat right at Fletcher.

He reacted quickly, calling the wind to his aid to deflect the bolt and jumping to the side. The current sliced up his arm like a hot knife through candy floss, melting his skin before his eyes. The pain was incredible, he could feel the blisters forming, but now wasn't the time to be worrying about that. Now as the time to help, more than ever.

"I know what you're planning to do, I can't let you do this to yourself, or to everyone else here. The sun can't fix problems, I'm sorry, but its only going to hurt people," he shouted back at her, keeping his voice as level as he could with his arm feeling like it was being ripped at by a thousand jagged thorns.

Summer shot another blazing bolt of he's his way. This time, Fletcher was more prepared, be dropped to the floor and blew it apart with the wind. It was impossible to tell where the wind would be, or where exactly the heat was. His shots were wide and erratic, they had to be.

Summer spat at him venomously, "It's a chance. I can't feel this useless forever, I have to do something about it. I can harness this power, let me do it, Fletcher. Let me do it or I'll have to mark you as my enemy," he couldn't get over how hard her voice was, how set she was on this. Something must have really snapped within Summer, he saw that now more clearly than ever before. She was wrapped in some terrible delusion.

Fletcher tried to extend his aura, tried to comfort her with the hope of autumn itself. It was more difficult to do with the pain he felt, but he could feel it working, even if only slightly, "Please, Summer. I don't want to be your enemy, but I can't stand by and let this happen. You're going to kill yourself, you're going to hurt all these people," it didn't matter to Fletcher that she could be reincarnated at some point in the future. She'd remember all of this too, and he knew that would hurt her when she did. Someone as pure as Summer wouldn't be able to live with the thought that they'd killed so many thousands of people, maybe even more than that. He was doing this for the sake of everyone.

"So be it. I can't let you stop me here," she sighed slowly, and raised her other hand as well, "I'm sorry, Etch, I'm so sorry," her voice cracked with these words, and then she turned to face him fully, and shot a spear of heat without any hesitation. Fletcher felt it scald him before it end got close. He tried to deflect it with wind, anger building within him from the use of his abilities in this way.

The wind cut through the heat, and picked up stones as it fired straight into Summer. The stones slashed her sides and neck, drawing what looked like fire rather than blood from her. For just a second, she stumbled back, clutching her neck to see how badly cut it was.

Then she was back again, firing two beams of heat at once. Fletcher couldn't see them at all. He could only watch her hands, could only guess where they were.

This time, he didn't dodge fast enough, and the heat smacked him clean in the chest. It knocked him off of his feet and into the ground, his skin sizzling from his stomach to his chest. He lay dazed for a few seconds, unable to see anything in front of him.

Meanwhile, Summer turned away. She held her hands up and closed her eyes. The air began to buzz around her, generating enough heat to melt the stone at her feet into lava. She called the sun to her, using every inch of power available to her, ignoring the burning she felt across her own skin. Heat pooled around her, absorbed into her skin and the air around her.

Then suddenly, Summer was thrown forwards, just as the heat gathered, just as flames began to flicker around her body.

Fletcher.

He held onto her tightly, his aura encompassing them both, his entire body practically aflame with heat. "It's okay, it's okay, let go," he could see the tears in Summer's eyes now, and up this close, the veiled hopelessness in her eyes. His aura seemed to have an effect, he realised in those last few seconds, while his skin steamed and his body went into shock from the heat.

Even with the heightened endurance that came with his abilities, the natural sturdiness of his skin, Fletcher could feel that this was the end.

But, at least he'd managed to stop it, at least people would be safe.

No, not quite.

"I can't... I can't let go... it's all here. It's all here. It's..." BOOM.

The heat expelled, and Fletcher remembered nothing more.

~~~~

Now, six year old Fletcher stood in that same place, staring at the patch of grass where he'd stayed with his friend. He stood up despite the trembling of his knees and headed further into the mess left by the heat.

Down the mountain, he could see the effects of her destruction. There had been a small town at the bottom, with maybe a couple thousand residents. The entire thing was ash, all of it burned to pieces. The destruction stopped just after the town, ending in jagged, black lines in the ground.

The memories shook Fletcher, even if he'd prevented it going any further. The idea that someone so pure, so nice, so perfect and giving, could become so hell bent on an impossible goal, was horrifying to him. He wondered if he could have prevented her being destroyed like that, if there was anything he should have done differently. He hoped not, he really, really did.

Six year old Fletcher stared down at the debris for a few minutes more before a tear slid down his cheek. He'd failed his best friend when she'd really needed him, that was what stuck with him the most of all of this. He hadn't known what to do, and he'd been unable to see the bigger picture, and so he'd failed.

It was something he would carry with him for the foreseeable future, until he could make it right. To do anything at all, he would have to grow up. In this lifetime, he had to find Summer, he had to make things right.

He had to make sure he lived a good life, helped people as best he could. Those people had died for him, because of him just as much as they had because of Summer. It was his job to make sure they hadn't died in vain, even if he could tell no one the real story of what had gone done.

Fletcher dissolved into the wind once again, and headed back to Carsden. Time would be good. He needed time. Time would get him through all of this, time would be his healer, just as it had been every other time.