This chapter has taken far, far too long. And I'm not saying that in exasperation.

To all my faithful readers, who have beared with me throughout these long months of silence, I owe you a massive debt, not to mention an apology and an explanation. Without your guys's support, I don't know how I could keep going. There's a lot of truth in the concept that an author lives for feedback: it inspires us, tells us what we're doing well and what we can do better. And most importantly, it lets us know people are just interested, which makes all the difference in the world.

Anyway, onto the explanation. I've struggled, so, so much for, nearly a year now, just with this chapter. And that's because, simply put, there is no way I could maintain the parallels and correlations to the level I've done so far. I'm not trying to say that I don't have the skill to do it, but it's hard to work with what's not there. I was comparing a story of days to a story of years, and the time difference is really telling from here up until the rest of the Time Gears have been found - in the future and the past. I would have tons of ideas for themes and plot twists in the future/backstory storyline, with absolutely nothing to correlate in the past storyline. I tried. Really I did. But it just wasn't going to happen

Finally, end of this past marching season (October), a crazy idea occurred to me on the bus ride home. What if... I rolled with how my ideas were flowing, instead of fighting it? Opt out of the dozens of parallels per chapter and go for a more broad parallel in Spanning Time's whole storyline?

I sent the idea to a few people whose opinions on Spanning Time I trust, and got a thumbs-up from them, so now, you see the result before you.

Part One of Spanning Time, "The Nature of Trust," ended with Chapter 8. Now, we start Part 2, "The Nature of Friendship," which will focus much more on the backstory while still touching on the present plot. And in Part 3, "The Nature of Resolve," Spanning Time should return to its usual format.

Also, a very special thanks to ScytheRider, who - in addition to giving this chapter its title - has been an incredible source of support for me in this fic. I do not lie when I say that Spanning Time probably would have died a long time ago if not for him.

Thank you all once again, and I hope you enjoy the chapter you've waited so long for.

Part 2: The Nature of Friendship

Chapter 9: Closing the Distance

He'd had a large internal debate during the first leg of his journey, wondering which way to go. Go north, and he would reach the first Time Gear, the one at the Underground Lake, sooner. Go south and collect the one at the Limestone Cave first, and when he finally finished collecting them all, then he would be much closer to Treasure Town and Miranda and Chlora. Each path had its own merits, and its own disadvantages.

In the end, he'd chosen to go to the Underground Lake first, simply owing to the fact that, in the end, he had no idea where the Hidden Land actually would be, and therefore had no proof that ending near Treasure Town would leave him any better off than if he didn't. Additionally, it gave the members of the Wigglytuff Guild who were alerting the Guardians of the real reasons behind his efforts time to reach that Ditto down there. Not that the Ditto had been particularly challenging the first time, but fights cost him time none of them had to spare.

The only disadvantage was now he had to delay, slightly, to give those same messengers time to reach Mesprit. No matter which way he went, there would be some sort of delay, a delay even now he felt he couldn't afford. But in the end, if he had to delay by moving slower or by fighting, moving slower would win. Fights could have a lasting impact. An injury would slow him down more than waiting for any messenger would.

Besides, delaying gave him the time to think and worry about the horrified realization he had made as he had left Treasure Town. Miranda didn't remember the promise she had made when they had travelled back to the past, that it would be worth any sacrifice to create a better future. And what was worse, now she had something to lose, someone who would be as hurt by Miranda's disappearance as Miranda would hurt from leaving her. How could he have been so stupid to forget, when even the other night he had tried to encourage Chlora to reunite with her family to try to minimize the effects of this travesty?

But there was no use worrying about it now, he reminded himself over and over, hoping each time was a little more effective than the last. Miranda – and Chlora – were focused on finding the Hidden Land. He needed to focus on finding the Time Gears.

He would have to cross this bridge when he came to it.

Through the next few weeks, Miranda and I, though not perfect, were an ideal team. In the same way that we had realized what we needed to do in facing the Sableye at Dusk Forest, and later at Treeshroud Forest, and came together to fight, we came together as we search for the place Celebi had told us to find. Without conscious thought, we turned to each other, if we both needed someone to rely on, and without any other real options, chose each other. It was trust, absolute trust, without friendship, a very different experience from the time I'd shared with Celebi.

It didn't help that I never really said much, but I just couldn't shake the impression that trying was pointless. She couldn't have understood a word I said even if I did. And since I kept quiet, she tended to as well.

In addition to the discouraging silence, after several weeks worth of travel, another problem slowly became appearent. We knew that Celebi's parting directions to us had only been rushed in order to give us crucial moments we needed to escape, but the vague description of "west" was proving inadequate for us to find the Crystal Cave she had mentioned, at least not by anything more than sheer luck. And luck, which had gotten us through a number of scrapes up until now, appeared to have deserted us, leaving Miranda and me to guess which general way we were supposed to be traveling in. If we drifted, or went too far, we had no way of knowing. We couldn't even tell if we were still going west; all means of identifying the cardinal directions – the sun, the stars – all of it had disappeared with the collapse. Even I, for all the traveling I'd done, didn't know how to help this situation.

When I look back on this time, however, it is not without a hint of shame. Of all the discouragement we'd faced in that first leg of our journey, I was directly responsible for a great deal of it. Miranda and I had an almost perfect sense of each other's physical needs, catching on very quickly if the other needed to rest or eat, but I didn't notice for the longest time how my silence was hurting Miranda emotionally. Had I realized what was going on, I would have talked to her all the sooner. Words of friendship in comfort, or really words at all, even in another language, are better than nothing.

It was finally after we'd stopped to rest one time, that Miranda looked up at me from underneath the tree she was sitting beneath and said, in a quiet, almost sad voice, "We're lost, aren't we?"

I started slightly, not having expected her to speak, and turned and stared at her. I'd grown used to the silence, this being the first time in a long while that she'd spoken to me, and the first time I could remember since Celebi had left that it had been in a conversational tone.

Misinterpreting my silence, she went on, "I mean... we've... been looking for a long time but we haven't really found anything. We don't even really know what we're looking for. It's a cave, right? That's what Celebi said. I know that a cave could easily be in these mountains, but... there's just no way we can search them all. And for all we know we've missed it already."

I looked down, considering the point she'd brought up, one I'd been coming close to acknowledging for a while. It was true, what she'd said. We'd found nothing at all since we'd parted ways with Celebi, and by this point, I think it was safe to say we had no idea where we were going. But at the same time, what else were we supposed to do? We had no other ideas to follow, no leads to pursue. Going back could easily have the same problems as going forward, assuming by some miracle we managed to follow the exact path we'd taken to come this far. The only thing I figured we really could do was to keep pushing forward and hope we stumbled across it.

Unfortunately, I was too busy thinking to notice her voice getting slowly more upset and agitated as she spoke, which was part of a larger problem. I was failing to realize that Miranda's hope was running out.

"Look, what is your problem?!" Miranda's shout made jump, "You do nothing at all but just ignore me. I know I'm not Celebi and I know I can't understand you, but for Arceus's sake, talk to me! Do something!"

Her voice cracked a little at the end and she whipped away, and she continued, sounding as though she was trying very hard to keep her feelings contained, "I know I can't understand you, but something is better than nothing okay? I'm sick of the darkness, sick of the silence. M-my whole life as I've known it has fallen apart. The least you can do is not ignore me."

Then she buried her head in her knees, her shoulders quivering slightly.

I stared at her shock, not quite sure what to do. Part of me wanted to wonder what in all the world this was about, but the other suspected that there was some truth or insight in what she was saying. But for all we'd been together, for all that we seemed aware of each other's needs, her emotions were still foreign to me. Fending off Wild Pokemon for the both of us, helping her over rough terrain, those I could easily deal with. Here, I was unsure. Still, there was no denying the fact that I needed to do something.

Finally, hoping that I was doing the right thing, I got up, walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. Miranda tensed up slightly and made as if to throw my hand off, then stopped and relaxed, her breath gusting out of her in a sigh. Wiping at her eyes quickly with her wrist, she turned and looked at me.

Her eyes were slightly red, but her voice was steady as a rock when she finally said, "I'm sorry I yelled at you. It's just... I'm homesick, I guess. I want to go home, and I want to see my friends and family again. I want everything to go back to the way it was before I screwed up."

I removed my hand and sat down next to her, her words making me think slightly. I turned to glance in confusion at her, only to find her staring back at me.

"I... I'm guessing you probably want to know what I did, and if that's the case, frankly I'd rather not talk about it right now," she said stiffly.

Slightly put off, I looked down. This whole thing was so much harder than it looked, trying to understand Miranda. Having never had a home of my own, or family to really care about, I didn't understand the emotions she was feeling at that moment. The only thing that inexplicably presented itself was how I'd felt when we'd had to separate from Celebi. I hadn't examined these feelings too deeply before this point, having ignored them as I had accepted the necessity of the split. It was only now that I really acknowledged the fact that I missed her a great deal. And as that occurred to me, a second fact presented itself.

I would miss Miranda too, if she left.

Maybe it wasn't exactly how she felt, but it was a start.

At that moment, I realized that she had begun speaking again as I thought.

"I want to go back so much..." she whispered quietly, "But I can't. I know I can't go back, and that just makes it all feel worse. But... but if I did go back..." she hung her head miserably, "Dusknoir's hunting me now, just because I crashed into you. If I went home, he'd go after them too, wouldn't he?"

I looked at her solemnly. "He would."

Miranda blinked, surprised by the sound of my voice, but her mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile.

It was the first time I could remember talking to her personally, without Celebi to translate for us. And while we had by no means cemented our friendship with this incident, it was the start something.

---

Our "conversations," initially, were quite awkward, with very little meaningful communication actually taking place, owing to constant miscommunication and topic switching. It was quite frustrating for me, and I have to admit I felt silly doing it. I would often have to resort to the absurd pantomime I'd feared I would have to, trying to get Miranda to actually understand the meaning of my words. Miranda, for her part, slowly started progressing, regarding the whole thing as a game or challenge, abiet a deadly serious one she was determined to win. Initially, she would try to respond to what she thought I was saying, which, given the fact that she was rarely completely right, tended to cause a lot more problems than it solved. However, she eventually realized this, and started to shift from replying to what she supposed I had meant to trying to guess what I actually had. Eventually, I noticed that she was taking less and less time to figure out each meaning of what I said. And we were both more at ease for it, and as she got better, I began to feel less and less foolish.

It was a crude form of communication, not really suitable for describing or explaining things to each other. Discussions on what we ought to do next or where we ought to go were generally out of the question.

But there were times – times that came without warning or explanation – that we would understand each other perfectly, on a deeper level than words.

"Ugh!" Miranda sat back, scowling down at the pile of sticks in front of her. "This is supposed- to- work-!" She punctuated each word by striking two rocks in her hands together, aiming them at the pile.

She had been endeavoring to once again start a fire, for reasons that were beyond me. This time, however, without Celebi's help, she was not having any success.

"I give up," she said finally, tossing the rocks over her shoulders and carelessly knocking the pile aside with her hand, "I guess I should have tried to learn how to identify rocks. I'm not sure if either of those were flint anyway. I mean, I've held flint before, but I don't know how to actually identify it out of other rocks, so... I'm not an expert or anything."

"Is that a human thing, the flint?"

She frowned, and I knew she was thinking, working out the puzzle.

"You're asking about the fire?" she guessed.

I shook my head.

"The flint?"

I nodded and she smiled.

"Flint is just a kind of rock that's supposed to be really helpful when making fores. You strike them against each other and they make sparks. Humans used to use them when they would stay overnight in the woods or mountains, to start fires as you probably guessed," she explained, "They called it 'camping,' I think. Only humans today... don't really do it anymore, unless they're on a dare. People think you're insane if you do. I've never really got why."

"Perhaps because of the Pokemon?" I suggested, "The wild ones, who will attack you as soon as see you?"

She titled her head to one side, "Hm? I have no clue on that one, to be honest."

"Pokemon," I repeated, pointing to myself, then, lacking other examples, broadly gesturing to the mountains around us.

She frowned, puzzling it out. "Plants?"

I shook my head.

"Forests?"

I shook it again.

She bit her lip, then seemed to get it. "The Pokemon?"

I nodded.

"But..." she paused, mid-protest. She had been in enough skirmishes with me by now, so she knew what the Pokemon could be like. And through that, she understood the reasoning behind my response.

"Could be..." she said finally, laying back and staring up at the lightless sky, "If the Pokemon are so hostile and attack as soon as they see you..." she winced, "Yeah that'd probably be it, or at least, it was why humans started avoiding leaving towns. Now we just don't. We've forgotten why, though that's true about a lot of things..."

For a while neither of us spoke, lost in our own thoughts. I myself wondered, as I'd done a lot recently, about Celebi. It was as if the earlier conversation that I had had with Miranda had opened up a dam of concerns and worries about my friend, one that I hadn't realized existed until then. It worried me what might have happened to her, that she might have been captured, as much as she discounted the possibility. The irrationality of this worry frustrated me, given how many times she had already escaped Dusknoir. I could only suppose that part of my anxiety had to do with separation; Celebi and I had never separated in such a way that we couldn't find each other again. She had said she would leave word with Azelf, but as we'd accepted earlier, we probably had completely missed his location, and would be lucky to find it again for a while-

"I guess the only thing that's weird to me," Miranda's voice interrupted my thoughts, "I mean, I know you're right, it makes perfect sense... but at the same time, I look at you, and I look at Celebi, the two Pokemon I know best, and you're not like that at all, so what makes the difference?"

Her question took me by surprise. It wasn't as if the hostility of other Pokemon had never crossed my mind. But I'd always thought of it more in the context of before the paralysis versus now, rather than the future Pokemon themselves.

"Were you ever like that?" she added, glancing over at me.

It wasn't anything I'd considered before, so it was a little while before I shook my head, finally saying, "No, I don't think so. Life was different then, and a lot darker. I wandered for a long time, without purpose. But I didn't attack, except in self-defense, or perhaps over food..." A hint of doubt crept into me as I thought about it more. How many times had I had to fight to get a spot to rest, or for an incredibly rare piece of food, or simply because a Pokemon was being too hostile to let me pass? How different had I actually been?

Miranda's mouth twisted slightly. "You're not sure, are you? I couldn't understand most of what you said, but you sounded like were uncertain by the end of it. But you would never be able to tell now. So what's the difference?"

I thought about it. What was different? What had made me change? I'd always wandered, purposelessly and monotonously, until...

"Celebi," I said aloud, "I met Celebi."

She seemed to understand what I'd left unsaid. "You started looking for the Time Gears with Celebi." I glanced over, and she was on her side, looking at me intently, "Well, wait, not looking for the Time Gears, but trying to fix the future, you know what I mean! That's right though, isn't it?" I nodded.

Rolling back onto her back and looking up, she mused, "Perhaps the difference is purpose. Before, you, like all the Pokemon in the world right now, were focused just on survival. You only cared about things that threatened that, or simply had the potential to threaten it. Now we both have a goal. It's riskier, and we may end up in a lot of trouble for it... But I think it's much more satisfying, don't you? I'm happier now, I think, even though I might die for it, with a goal like this, than living a long, safe life with nothing to work fro except making sure I don't die."

"Agreed," was all I could say to her speech. She spoke with such conviction, so much that I couldn't help but feel her words strike some kind of chord within me. Silence fell between us once more as we both seemed to contemplate what she'd said.

Suddenly, her voice interrupted the silence once last time.

"Um... do you think you could maybe... scoot a little closer?" her voice was faintly embarrassed, "It's just, I never got the fire started and it's a little cold. Don't get the wrong impression or anything!"

I raised an eyebrow, wondering what in the world she could be talking about, or why she was embarrassed. Then I sighed, got up off the rock I'd been sitting on and sat down next to her. "Get some sleep," I said. "We'll need to get moving soon."

"Mkay," she mumbled, her breathing becoming slow and regular.

I kept watch as I always did when Miranda slept – one of us always stayed awake to keep watch – but I couldn't help but think about the words she'd said, and a thought began to form in my mind...

It was better to live a short life filled with purpose, than a long, empty one...

All feedback is appreciated. Chapter 10, I SWEAR will not take as long. It is already more than halfway written, if nothing else.