Where There's Smoke

Genre: romance/angst
Rating: PG (K+)
Word Count: around 1500
Summary: Issac, recovering from the injuries dealt to him at the Jupiter Lighthouse, discovers that a deeper hurt lurks beneath the surface. Isaac x Jenna
Notes: For the awesome-possum Mellu! (I don't know if there's a forest near Contigo, but let's assume that this takes place in a tree cluster on the world map.)
Warning: Florid prose ahoy.

None of it made sense. Nothing at all. And the camp air was suffocating, caustic, like gobs of noxious fiery sick-stuff had wedged in his throat. Combined with the apprehension that froze his lungs and fountained up from his chest, Isaac could not bear it.

He moved toward his companions – Garet, distrusting, Mia, reserved, even Ivan on edge – perception distorted by newfound malaise. Garet seemed intent on appearing surly, and grunted (though in pursuit of the noise came a nod) when Isaac murmured something akin to needing to relieve himself in the woods.

Of what, precisely, he did not think it necessary to tell. Nor could he have, if prompted. Because like all else he had experienced in the last few days, it did not make sense. Perhaps it made the least sense of all.

However, of this he was sure: all was brought by sole catalyst. The indecision, the longing, the confusion, and even the vivid pain. Everything came flooding back when he caught glimpse of her – a leviathan of old memories garnished by new troubles.

Jenna.

How ironic that he would liken a fire adept to the storm. (More precisely, The Storm.) I would be forever her face he saw streaked with rain and river water and tears, her voice he heard above the wind when the storm came calling in his waking dreams. She had her heart broken that night, in Vale. I cannot watch that happen again.

Truly, his world revolved around her. In the tales his mother had spun, and the slim selection of poetry his house had kept, love (if indeed it was love at all) was a glamorous and indeed very enlightening experience. Isaac, on the flipside, did not think it particularly enjoyable. Still, he needed desperately to unfurl each of these emotions for her. Needed her to laugh in his face and coolly assure him the sentiment was unrequited. Needed to feel the hot distain he knew lurked beneath the surface, even in little Jenna. And perhaps it is this that made it so fitting when she peeked through the mist, trailing the campfire smoke behind her.

She was the first to speak. "Isaac. Isaac, I wanted to, I – " she stammered, before jumping up and simply throwing herself across his recumbent form. Her chest slammed hard into his, sending knives into his muscles. He locked his jaw to keep from whimpering as a wave of nausea surged through him. Letting out a long, shuddering exhalation, he tried to both embrace and simultaneously shove her away.

This had certainly not been the confrontation he was expecting. An icy glare, a passive 'come sit by the fire, your friends are worried'; even a torrent of virulent lexis. Felix (no, the enemy) was, after all, her brother. To embrace the likes of him now was treason. Long before the Lighthouse, he had decided that he could live with her distain. But he could not – not now, not ever – bear to break her heart.

"I'm sorry," Jenna whispered, sliding from his body and into the humus that adorned the ground beside him. "I had forgotten that you were hurt."

"You have nothing to apologize for. Whereas…" And he didn't want to continue, because finding the truth would either condemn Jenna and her companions, or it would prove that he and Garet and Mia (and even Ivan) had been grossly misguided all this time. That everything he'd done was a mistake – that it meant nothing. Isaac didn't think he could take either, at this point.

So instead, he took her hand. It was calloused from handling the sword that hung at her side even now and clammy from the moisture in the air. But somehow, everything seemed warm. Her hair crackled with static and energy and as he dipped his head into it he felt at once consumed and inebriated by fire. (He wondered if he, then, felt cold as stone.) He brought his hands down around her shoulders without thinking, hugging her close.

"I've always loved the rain," she murmured, and at first he did not understand. How could she, after all? "Let me show you."

And as the first drops fell she thrust her head back to catch them on her tongue. Giggling, she took his chin in her hands and pushed up, and together they drank in the storm and the trees and the smoke all in one, as though it were a mystical cure all – a drought to alchemize their fears and trials to something altogether more exalted.

He had almost forgotten what it was like to sweat, his world had been cold for so long. It smelled spicy and alive and human and he couldn't get enough. The way the rain sloughed off his upturned face and forced the tang of his own salt down his throat, the way perspiration and water spilt into each other and formed a layer over his skin – lubricant and, somehow, almost soapy…

It was as though the gods had lit a bonfire between their bodies and all he could (really, truly) feel was Jenna, Jenna, Jenna.

"Warm," was all he could manage to say (and he felt ridiculous for it, but it felt as though he had not spoken for a long while, and that beside her, words suddenly took on greater meaning). She nodded, and he smiled.

But with it came pain. The impermanence of the moment nearly made his throat constrict and the apprehension well up once more. The knowledge that the forest, Jenna, this, was merely a reprieve, and that its cathartic properties were only temporary.

He mightn't have enjoyed this quite so much if she didn't kiss like rain and taste like fire. Piquant, unknown, she danced under his touch, trailing her tongue across his cheek and drinking in of him as well as of this place, ingraining the moment in her senses as he was.

To Isaac, she was the moment. She was the clouds of white that tumbled from their mouths when they exhaled, the dim, earthy smell of the forest, the quiet of the forest (and the only noise that mattered), the contours of the bark he felt were etched into his back. She was the embers of fire, and not the destructive blaze. The hickory smoke that clung to her like the sweat of flames, and hung about, turning the very air to Jenna.

Give us this day.

He knew everything and nothing. (Which was really, truly, nothing at all.) The moment was over.

And this night I will be content to sleep alone.

"Still we have the counsel. Nothing is decided until then," he reminded her gently. He could barrel into the unknown no longer. Those days were over.

Give us this day, and tomorrow I will endure without her.

Jenna raised her cheek from his shoulder and traced the rain streaks down his chin and neck. "Felix would never hurt you. I know some of this seems mixed up and nothing makes sense right now, but… he'll let you join us, no matter what. You were friends before the Storm, and you can be so now."

"True," he said, though the conviction usually accompanying the word remained noticeably absent. Friendship, he had learned, tended to fade in light of tangible desires. And conflicting purposes. The way he looked at me atop the Venus Lighthouse… And when he and that 'Alex' character took you back in Vale… And still, there was a greater question left unanswered.

He wished she had not understood his prior actions so fully, been so forgiving. He wished the sight of him had filled her with loathing. And he wished, above all else, that he had not tried so hard to keep this moment in his mind. Because now he would have to break her heart. "Even if your brother gave his consent," (and he is careful not to say her brother's name; that familiarity is lost to them) "I'm not sure if we would. Or could."

He grit his teeth as Jenna jerked away, jarring him from the hollow in the tree roots. Something inside him shifted, and exploded into an effrontery of spiraling blaze inside his chest. Its sharp beginning was nothing compared to the persistent pulsation that emanated from his chest and up through his lungs, but he betrayed nothing.

There must have been a tightness about his lips, however, and Jenna saw. But she did not care.

"I hear it's cold in Prox. I suggest you find a jacket."

She turned her back on him and disappeared into the spindly birch and mist of evening. Her soft foxtail hair, whipped into strings and tangled from the rain, bade him a similar adieu.

And the wisp of smoke vanished clean away.

Fin

Isaac is a contradictory fellow, isn't he? Ah, well. We can excuse him; he's confused.

This is the first time I've ever written fan fiction for Golden Sun. Constructive criticism is both adored and sought after!