I don't own Golden Sun. Camelot does. I don't own "Nobody". Five for Fighting does.

Special thanks to Triad-kun for helping me out, it's been way too long since I wrote something like this. …Please leave all defectiveshipping comments at the door.

Nobody

by: Akiko Date

The door creaked open. Garet knew it was Jenna. Any of his other friends would have knocked. Jenna was the only one that was allowed, by unspoken agreement, to come in unannounced. She pulled off her cloak, shedding rain water in the entry way and hung it up next to his own. His was still dry, when he had seen the rain pattering against his window that morning he had decided to stay in.

She didn't say anything in greeting, just slipped off her shoes and sat down in the overstuffed arm chair he wasn't able to get rid of because she loved it so much. The cat enjoyed it, too. When she wasn't curled up in his lap. Or off sleeping in his shoes.

Jenna had given him that cat nearly a year ago. She had found her starving and shivering out in the rain on a day that could have been then, soon after his house had been constructed by his family. She had asked Garet to take care of it. Garet hadn't liked cats, but Jenna had threatened to injure him so he had taken her in anyway. Now he didn't even get annoyed when she slept on his head.

Take off your shoes
Take off yourself
Take off your rented mental health
Take off your raincoat
Settle down

Jenna sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. She had left it down again. He liked it when she left her hair down, even though she kept playing with it and it ended up sticking up in odd places. She looked at him and settled back. He didn't move. They often talked like this.

"How are you?" he finally said.

"I'm good," she nodded. "How have you been? I haven't seen you lately."

"I've been all right," he shrugged his shoulders.

"Locked yourself in here with your books, right?" she got up and walked across the room so she was closer to him, standing next to the writing table that he had turned his chair away from to make full use of the light of the fire. She leaned over and began reading the titles of his small collection of the shelf built in the wall. No one else knew that he liked to read despite the titles lined up right in his front room. Her auburn hair cascaded in a silky wave over her shoulder and caught the light of the fire, shining gold, red, and rich brown. "Maybe we can go to Vault when it stops raining. Get you some books."

"I'd like that," he smiled.

Take off your nightmare and your frown
There is a place for you to go
To see another ringer in a rock show
Take my pretense for a time
Cause I want to say to you

She was close enough that he could spell the warm, ginger scent of her hair and clothes. After a moment she moved away from the shelf and stood in front of him. "I had that nightmare again."

"Which one?" he asked. He knew that he was the only one who knew about her nightmares. She told him every single one that she had.

I'm nobody without you
My long lost friend

"I was all alone," she said simply, walking to stand in front of the fire, running one hand along the almost new mantle piece. He knew the nightmare she was talking about. The one where she was alone, completely, and no matter how much she cried or screamed no one ever came to her rescue.

"If you were all alone and you screamed I would come," he reassured her with the same words he used every time she came to him with that nightmare.

She turned and smiled at him. "I'd do the same for you."

If you're not here to hear me scream
Then am I silent like a dream?
Where all the dragons are my friends
Each night we meet our bitter ends

He returned her smile. She looked away after a moment, maybe a moment too soon, and looked over at the window, sighing and walking aimlessly towards the middle of the room. Jenna never could stay still. It was one of the millions of tiny details about her that he mulled over in the middle of the day, when he was looking at a page rather than reading it, when he was lying in bed about to go to sleep.

"It kind of scares me," she said. She wasn't looking at him. "Sometimes I think you're the only one that would come. You're the only person who understands. It's just…"

"I know," he nodded. Now he stood up, but only to stand in front of the fire. He wasn't sure if he could look at her now.

Do I need you to make me real
Like Wheeler spinning his own wheel
Quantum strings within my brain
Popping sanities insane

"We killed people," she said in a voice barely audible above the crackling of the flames.

Garet stared into those flames, mesmerized by their changing color and shape. By the soft edges that scorched the already charred logs. "I know."

"Everyone else…"

"I know."

No one else ever mentioned it. Their other friends wouldn't even think about it. They joked and laughed when they told people of their adventures saving the world. They never mentioned who had to die along the way. Saturos and Menardi. Karst and Agatio. Nearly their own parents. When he had been younger he'd been idealistic enough to think that they had been sacrificed for a greater good. That they had been evil, had deserved to die.

He couldn't hide behind that mask anymore. Because he knew that no one deserved to die. It didn't matter who they were or what they had done.

I'm nobody
Without you
My long lost friend

He didn't hear her move, but suddenly her hands were curling around the fabric of his shirt and she leaned her forehead against his back. She was so close he could feel her breathing. He could feel her frame shaking under the weight of everything he knew she had been carrying around for well over a year. He didn't move, his back rigid for a while.

Not everybody has a brain
Not everybody's going sane
Not everybody wishes well
Not everybody's heaven's hell

"Why are you the only one that understands me?" she whispered, her grip tightening. "No one else will ever talk with me about it. But you…"

Sometimes there's someone to blame
Sometimes a place for shame
Sometimes good's better than bad
Sometimes good's better than bad
Sometimes good's better than bad
Sometimes you're better than me

And he turned around and pulled her into his arms. She returned the embrace, just as tightly.

They stood like that for a long time. It could have been forever and he wouldn't have minded.

"Jenna…"

"I know."

Heaven fell on herself tonight
As the devil met me in the wishing well
And in that moment I found myself knowing
That in the end it's just about you and me
Nothing's smaller or larger
Though dragons are good for the soul
Nothing can be better than baring yourself for another
Hoping for scrutiny, ridicule, and indulgence

All of the insanity of the last two years ceased to exist for an instant. "I've always wanted to tell you…"

"I know."

He finally, reluctantly, let her go. She took a step back. His hands were still on her shoulders. She was looking at him with an intensity that he had thought he would only see a shadow of when the storm took her family. An intensity he thought had died again when he saw her kneeling on the blood covered stone tiles of the Mars Lighthouse Aerie, sobbing her eyes out and holding her mother's cold limp hand.

Therein lies the balls, and the mind, and the heart
As fear is truly the Mindkiller
When nothing is left
Everything is gained

"I love you," he finally said, softly. And as he looked into her intense eyes he knew he would never need to find the words to tell her that everything would be all right again.

Because maybe everything wouldn't be all right. Maybe it would. Only time would tell. And it didn't matter nearly as much as it had only a few minutes before. The words he had never spoken but had always tasted in his mouth had finally broke free.

You see I wish I was a poet
But I know as we go round and round
Though endings are never ever happy
It's the happy moments along the way
That in the end
Make it
Okay

She gave him a smile like the sun coming out of the clouds. "I love you, too."

I'm nobody
Without you


Thanks again, Triad-kun!

Hope everyone enjoyed it! Happy Valentine's Day!