Worth Reaching For

By Vilya

Disclaimer and such: I don't own them.

This is for Akiko's fic challenge, her newest one. I realize Ivan and Sheba aren't in this story, but there were an awful lot of characters to deal with as it was, in such a short span of time. Thus, at the time of this story, Ivan is in Kalay and Tolbi, settling things, and Sheba is in Lalivero.

Onward! To the reading!

He fell. He skidded back a bit, and then stopped, glaring up at her.

"She took you out again, Garet!" Isaac laughed, hands clutching his stomach from the power of his state of humor. "That's eight in nine!"

"The ninth," Jenna insisted, "was because he came up with the brilliant idea of hiding behind my front door on a cold day at midnight."

"A cold day at midnight?" Garet asked, grinning from his spot in the dirt. Jenna turned her glare on him, and his grin evaporated.

"And I shall continue to beat you," she went on hotly, "until you stop being so predictable! Honestly, you make the same moves every time! It's easy to win, even in a fair fight!"

"Have you been cheating?" Isaac asked, feigning shock. Jenna grinned. Garet wisely kept his thoughts to himself.

"That's not your concern. Besides, even if I have, what's past is past, and none of us can change it. What time is it, Isaac?"

"Thank Mars Kraden isn't here. He'd pull that infernal compass out of his robe and try yet again to tell time with it." Isaac shook his head at the memory, then squinted up at the sun. "Maybe an hour to dinner. Why?"

Jenna sighed. "I promised my mom and Felix that I'd be back before dinner, to help cook it. Well, to cook it, actually. I'm not really good at helping rebuild. Fire's more destructive than constructive."

"I'll save myself from a bashing and won't make a joke of that," Garet remarked, pulling himself to his feet and brushing dirt from his shoulders. "Want my help?"

"Thank you, no. I don't think I like Crisped Pebbles."

"The last thing I cooked for you was Laliveran Chicken!"

"Oh, really? Fooled me. Come on by for dinner if you want, I'll make enough!" Grinning and waving, Jenna left them in the plaza, hurrying up the rough, broken stairs—what remained of them—to the new site of Vale. It wasn't far from the old site of Vale, really, but the plaza was no longer the lowest level. It was somewhere in the middle.

In her hurry to reach the top of the stairs, Jenna stumbled, one foot slipping off the stone in a shower of pebbles. She fell forward, catching herself before she could begin to slide downward, and sighed in relief. It was a long way down.

"Jenna?" asked a voice, and a shadow fell across the stairs in front of her. Recognizing the voice, and its soft accent, Jenna looked up and took the hand offered her, pulling herself to her feet again.

"Thanks, Picard," she said, grinning.

"Do not mention it," he replied, returning the smile. "That had the makings of a long fall."

"It did, but I didn't take it. Hey, Felix wanted to talk to you about…oh, Mars, I've forgotten! Something about your ship, I think. He asked if you could come by after dinner?"

"I should be able to," Picard considered, nodding slowly to himself. "I am not nearly as busy as I once was. But what interest would Felix have in my ship? I cannot recall him having a real interest in it."

Jenna shrugged. "Felix is odd sometimes, these days. If you want, you might as well come for dinner, too. Isaac and Garet will be, and probably Mia. She usually ends up at our house around dinner."

"That," Picard said, laughing, "is because she spends most of her afternoons in the new sanctum, carrying on…debates…with the Great Healer. You just happen to live in a convenient location." In an unknowing imitation of Isaac, Picard shaded his eyes and looked up at the sun. "I'll be there, then. Thanks for inviting me."

"I owe you because you're not going to tell anyone that I nearly fell down the stairs," Jenna said, with just a hint of a threat in it. Picard nodded, still grinning, and then continued down the stairs. Satisfied, Jenna skipped the last two steps and turned toward her house.

It was larger than her old house had been, but not too much larger, and every time she came to it this way she felt it was facing the wrong direction. Instead of south, the door now faced west, and the setting sun. It was farther from the river, too.

"I'm home!" she called, pulling the door closed behind her. That was another thing she'd had to get used to. Her old door had opened inward.

"Good, because Felix just ran out and someone needs to make dinner and I'm busy!" Jenna sighed and shook her head. Her mother could be so absentminded sometimes!

"I know, that's why I'm back early, remember?" she yelled up the stairs, then turned to regard the kitchen. "Now…what to make?"

Eventually, she settled on an old recipe of Dora's for stew, and set about chopping vegetables on the counter. The door banging open startled her, and the knife slipped.

"Ow! Felix!" Jenna glared accusingly at her brother, who was standing in the doorway with a bemused look on his face. "Knock first, or something!"

"At my own front door?"

"Felix!"

"I'm not part of kitchen duty," he protested, misinterpreting Jenna's fury. "I'm going back up to help Mom." He bounded up the stairs two at a time, leaving Jenna glaring heatedly after him, the knife gripped in one hand. Infuriated, she returned to chopping vegetables, though it became something of a massacre.

"I'm pretty sure they were dead before you started with them," said a quiet, amused voice. Jenna looked up again and found Mia sitting at the table. "The vegetables," explained the Mercury Adept, gesturing to the pile of murdered produce on the counter. "What are you making that requires such fine chopping?"

"Stew," Jenna grumbled, staring in frustration at the countertop, then looking up at Mia again. "How did you get in?"

"I was sort of following Felix, and he left the door open."

"Oh. Well, as long as you're here, want to help cook?"

"I'd love to, actually," Mia said, standing and joining Jenna behind the counter. "I eat here far too often without repaying you."

"Garet's coming tonight, so we need to double the recipe," Jenna remarked, smiling. "And you don't owe us anything. It's payment enough seeing half the village rebuilt and the other half nearly there."

"I owe you something, at least. I eat here practically every night."

"That's because you spend all your time up at the new sanctum—"

Mia turned a light shade of pink. "What? How…who told you?"

"Picard," Jenna replied with a grin. "Do you win the argument?" Mia floundered about for an answer, flustered, but was spared having to give one.

"Jenna! Could you come up here? We need another set of hands!" Felix's voice was casual, but it sounded like he was holding something heavy.

"How many times have you heard that one before?" Mia asked conversationally as Jenna rolled her eyes and headed for the stairs.

"Three too many," she decided as she took notice of her brother, struggling under a pile of long boards and a crate. Felix and Ida, hearing her, stared, but spared her any questions.

"Come on, sis, take that crate off the top. It needs to go in my bedroom." Ignoring her anger with her brother for a moment, Jenna lifted the crate out of his arms and lugged it down the hall, pushing open the door of Felix's room and dropping it next to his bed.

"Thanks!" he called, and she took it as her cue to head back downstairs.

"That was odd," she said to Mia, who had finished the vegetables and had them in a pot. "He didn't really want anything special."

"Felix has been acting strange lately," Mia agreed as Jenna took over the cooking again. "Then again…things are very different, living like regular people."

"We are regular people," Jenna insisted. "Just a different sort of regular. The sort that listens to the voices in their heads."

"The voices in our heads actually had substance."

"Substance, maybe. I'd question sanity."

"There was no question there. Just a definite lack." They laughed, and Jenna smiled to herself, as well. She felt happy, and that was something she'd missed during her travels. Saving the world left little time for really enjoying oneself.

"Jenna! Mia!" This was a new voice, and it came from right over their heads.

"Isaac?" Mia asked, sticking her head out the window and looking up. "He's on the roof!"

"Come on up here! You can see how far the village has come from here!" Isaac called.

"He just likes to be up on a roof," Jenna insisted, but she walked outside and climbed up the ladder anyway, with Mia right behind her. The three of them turned to face the plaza, which was now surrounded by houses in various stages of reconstruction, and a few tents. "Wow, Isaac! You're right! We really have come a long way."

"It's wonderful," Mia agreed. "We'll have to bring the others up here after dinner. Vale will look just wonderful in the sunset."

"Isn't this how we were that day, right before going to Kraden's?" Jenna asked, and Isaac nodded distantly. "You still fixing holes in your roof?"

"No, but it seems like I've done everyone else's." Sighing and laughing, Isaac headed down the ladder, and Mia followed him, hurrying back into the kitchen and to the stew. Jenna, however, remained there on the roof, looking down at her new home.

I lost my home once, and all the memories that were within it. I won't lose it again! She stood there for a good fifteen minutes more, watching life go on down in the plaza and out among the houses. The world had finally righted itself.

She wasn't sure what happened then, as she turned and headed for the ladder. Her feet were whisked out from under her and she pitched forward, trying frantically to push herself back onto the roof but meeting only empty air with her hands. She saw the ground below her, but she flipped over midair, and suddenly it was the edge of the roof, rushing away from her.

She felt the thud as she struck the ground, and heard a sharp noise like someone stepping on a stick. The pain caught up with her then, and the bright blue sky above her went dark.

She could see the wood of the ceiling above her, each individual board, the knots and stripes running through them. She could hear voices downstairs, talking quietly over dinner. A soft breeze blew in through the window across from her. It smelled like autumn and changing leaves. Her blanket was balled up in her fists as she glared at the ceiling.

It had been three days. She had fallen off the roof, and woken up to Mia, Felix, Isaac, Picard and her mother gathered around her in a worried circle. The faces of Felix and Mia had concerned her the most; her brother had been openly upset, which he never was, and Mia's eyes had held controlled calm, which she never was, not toward Jenna.

Angrily, she pounded her fists on her mattress. Why did it have to be this way? She had been so happy…everything had been right again! Why did it always have to blow up right when it was settling down?

They had told her, of course. Felix had been speechless, but Isaac knew her well enough to know to tell her, and not to hide it. Her fall from the roof had paralyzed her, from the waist down, leaving her legs useless. She couldn't stand or walk anymore.

Or fight, she thought bitterly. I'll never beat Garet for the ninth time out of ten. I won't run up the stairs to my house again, or climb the ladder onto the roof to look out at Vale, or hike all the way up to the ruins of Mount Aleph with Picard to listen to his flute, or stand in the kitchen making dinner…

Thoughts like this will get you nowhere, she chided herself. She sighed and fought back the tears that threatened to show her weakness.

Mia and Picard, Isaac and Felix and herself all thrown together couldn't do anything to change her situation. They'd tried. Mia had assured her that, with enough time, she might be able to walk again. Jenna had nodded, but inwardly she had laughed in sarcasm. It would be pointless to ask for miracles.

She had spent three days in bed, doing little besides eating and sleeping, and trying her hardest not to be depressed, though that got more difficult by the hour. Every time she would tell herself that everything could go back to normal, yet another activity that was now no longer within her reach came to mind.

Someone was coming up the stairs. She did her best to look like she was asleep, but she knew she'd never be able to hide that from Felix. But it wasn't him standing there in her doorway.

"Maybe she really is sleeping," Garet suggested, and Isaac looked up at him—it was a distance of few inches, now—and frowned skeptically. "I didn't think so either."

"I'm up," Jenna said quietly, opening her eyes and staring at her ceiling again.

"We came to ask if you'd like some dinner," Isaac said, stepping into the room. "It was really good," he continued, as though suddenly forced away from his original thoughts. "Felix has become a much better cook since our travels."

"What do you two really want?" Jenna asked, and she heard Isaac sigh and Garet laugh quietly.

"She's good, Isaac. Come on, you knew she'd know." Garet continued laughing, and Jenna threw herself up into a sitting position, glaring at him until the laughter subsided and he took a step back. "We want you to stop being so down about this, Jenna."

"Why? What's wrong with how I am now?"

"It's not like you're deaf or blind or anything!" Garet argued back, fire blazing in his eyes. "You still have everything you used to have! You can't sit around up here and be…depressed, and volatile!"

"She's volatile by nature," Isaac reminded him with a small smile. Garet waved the comment away, continuing to stare straight at Jenna.

"I mean it! Enough of this feeling sorry for yourself! You heard Mia say you could still walk, someday! Why don't you try to—"

"Get. Out." Jenna fixed them with her cold stare, and it seemed that she was trying to force them from the room through the power of her mind. "Now."

"But Jenna—"

"I SAID NOW!" she yelled, and Garet backpedaled out of the room, Isaac following calmly after him. Once she was sure they'd gone, Jenna rolled over onto her side, burying her face in her blanket and scrubbing fiercely at her tears.

How dare they suggest I just keep proving to myself that things will never be the same again?

The breeze was fresh, at least, Jenna decided. She was sitting outside, under one of the trees near the front of her house. The embarrassment of having to be carried outside had felt awful, of course, but it was nice to be out here in the sun and the wind, and not cooped up in the house all the time.

She was facing away from her house, though—she couldn't stand to see Felix or her mother working on it when she could not. She knew it was childish, but she felt she should be allowed at least a little bit of such.

It had been a week. A whole week of being…something of a lesser person. Not quite the girl she had always been. Jenna sighed and pulled at the grass, making a small pile of uprooted blades. It reminded her of Isaac fixing the roof, and she sighed again, more resignedly this time.

So this is the way it's going to be. Fine. I'll live this way.

But I won't give in to it.

"Jenna! I've been looking for you!" Picard's voice came up over the ledge, followed shortly by the Lemurian himself, grinning widely and with a spark in his gold eyes.

"Like I would be anywhere else," Jenna mumbled, but a smile fought hard to appear on her face. It was not easy to be in a bad moon when either of the Mercury Adepts were around and happy. Picard seemed especially cheerful this morning, and wasted no time in making his point.

"You're right, you are incredibly easy to find. I have had an idea. Will you come with me?"

"Come with you where? And how?"

"To the ruins of Mount Aleph. And I can carry you on my back, if you would like. Or you could walk," he added mischievously.

"I can't walk," Jenna said defensively, angrily. "Why do I want to go all the way up there? To be reminded of one more thing I can't do?"

"To be reminded, indeed," Picard said vaguely, and Jenna groaned in frustration.

"Fine, then. But it better be worth my time," Jenna cautioned threateningly. Picard, after almost acrobatically lifting her piggyback style, laughed shortly.

"I believe at this point that everything is worth your time, as you have all your time in which to give things worth."

"What?"

"Never mind."

Jenna was lost in her own thoughts for most of the climb, coming out of them only when Picard set her down on a large stone, taking a seat opposite her. Grinning, he pulled his silver flute from its bag at his waist and polished it lightly against the hem of his shirt.

"You brought me here to listen to your music?" Jenna asked, at once annoyed and honored. She really did enjoy that flute music, especially here in the clear air.

"Not quite," he said, turning the instrument in his hand and holding it towards here. "I brought you here to play it."

"What? But…I don't know how!"

"Certainly you can get one note out of it," Picard insisted. Hesitantly, Jenna took the silver flute from him and studied it. It felt cool and smooth, almost resilient in her hands, and she gently held it to her lips, covered a few of the holes with her fingers, and blew. What came out of the flute was indeed a note, but not a recognizable one.

"Oh, that was terrible!" Jenna complained, glaring down at the flute. Picard laughed quietly.

"It sounded like that the first time I played, as well. But my mother was quite serious about it, and told me I would have to find my music on my own."

"Your…mother?"

"Oh, yes, the flute was really hers. I had not seen it for years, until we went to Lemuria again that day, and my uncle gave it to me. I had forgotten how to play, mostly, and had to learn the whole thing over again."

"But your mother taught you first! Didn't that matter?"

"Of course it did!" Rather than the darkness she expected, Picard's voice was light and happy. "Having learned from her first made relearning all the more precious to me. It made it a goal worth reaching for. Go ahead, try again; don't be random with it this time."

Taking a long breath, Jenna brought the flute to her lips again and covered every hole but one. Gently, softly, she blew into the instrument, and this time it rang with a single pure note, carried down into the village on the strong breeze.

"Wow," Jenna whispered as Picard took the flute back from her. "What was that?"

"It was a G," he said decisively, standing and stretching. "One of my favorites. Shall we go?"

"Alright," Jenna agreed, not really minding needing to be carried this time. There was something else on her mind now, something she was certain was important. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but she seemed to be getting closer to it as she drew nearer her house.

Picard set her down again under the tree and seemed about to say something else, but Felix came out of the house behind him and pulled him aside, speaking quietly. Jenna only half-wanted to hear what they spoke of; the other half of her was far too interested in studying the scenery. Quite suddenly, things didn't look so grey anymore.

It was only as the sun began to sink into a rosy sky that she realized. Perhaps she would never walk again, or fight or run or dance. But perhaps she would. As long as there was that hope…

I'll try. Whatever it takes…I have to know! I have to know if I can ever be…normal again! Resolved to try, Jenna smiled. And even if I never walk…I'm still who I am. I'm still…everything that makes me me.

He fell. He skidded back a bit, and then stopped, glaring up at her.

"Mia!" Garet said angrily. The Mercury Adept laughed lightly, grinning mercilessly down at him. "That isn't fair!"

"It isn't fair that I beat you five for five?" Mia asked devilishly, offering her hand to help him up. He took it, grudgingly, and Isaac and Picard grinned at each other.

"Face it, Garet, soon even Kay will be beating you in a practice fight," Isaac mocked playfully.

"Kay already beats him in fights," Picard remarked just as wryly, and they shared a laugh again.

Jenna smiled at the scene from her place beneath a tree, a book open in her lap. Shading her eyes and looking up at the sun, she sighed. Six months…

"Have fun, you guys!" she said, closing the book. "Mom wants me home to help with dinner!"

So saying, and with the greatest of smiles, she rose to her feet and hurried up the stairs to the level of Vale that held her house.

Ta-da! The end! I hope you liked it Aki!