The loud bang of the gun shook the earth, or so it felt to Ian. Time seemed to slow down as he screamed something unintelligible and twisted towards Wanda. It was too late. The bullet hit her on the left side of her chest, where her heart was. She jerked violently backwards, and blood spurted. She shrieked and writhed, even as she fell to the ground.

Melanie and Ian rushed to her side while Jared shot the Seeker in a blind fit of rage. The Seeker fell to the ground and lay still, shot straight through the head, but nobody took any notice as blood, red as poppies, seeped out and stained the sand.

Too late, too late. The words reverberated through Ian's head. He fell to his knees on the hard gravel, hardly able to see through the tears that cascaded in waterfalls down his cheeks.

Wanda's wordless shriek of agony had been cut short as she vomited a fountain of blood, sticky and glumpy. Melanie gently took hold of her head and turned it to the side so that she wouldn't choke. Her blond tresses were matted with her own blood.

"Wanda!" Ian sobbed, clutching her thin, trembling hand.

"Jared!" Melanie looked up at him, silent agony written across her face. "Medicine...?"

Jared shook his head mutely, horror in his eyes. He knelt by Wanda's side and took her pulse. "Mel," he choked. "We didn't bring any."

"She'd dying!" Ian yelled, turning to Jared. "She needs a body!"

"We don't have a body!" Jared replied harshly. "We need to bring her back to the caves as quick as we can."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Ian cried, slipping his hands deftly under Wanda and picking her up. Despite his best efforts not to jostle, she moaned in pain. Her breathing was shallow. Blood was pooling at the corners of her mouth. She stared up at him balefully with those enormous grey eyes. "Hurts," she mouthed, unable to form coherent words.

"Wanda," he muttered to her furiously. "You just hang in there, okay? We're going to get rid of the pain."

"Jared!" Melanie exclaimed. "Sprint to the Jeep, and pick us up. We'll make better time that way!"

Jared didn't waste time on an answer. He simply took off, his longer legs taking him at a faster pace than any of them could match.

"Ian, maybe it would be better if you set her down until Jared gets here," Melanie suggested.

Ian looked down into Wanda's ashen face. She simple shook her head slightly, then closed her eyes. "I think she's better right here," he said testily. He knew Melanie was only trying to help, but he was just so worried. If Wanda wanted to stay in his arms, he would keep her there.

Soon the Jeep came roaring onto the scene. Jared didn't even bother switching the engine off. He flung open the driver's door, but it was unnecessary as Melanie was already opening the back door for Ian to climb in with Wanda. Melanie slammed the door, and Wanda winced, eyes still closed. Ian rested her head in his lap and wiped some of the blood from her mouth with the hem of his shirt.

Jared jumped back into the car, and took off in a flurry of red desert dust.

The air conditioner was turned on full blast in an attempt to fight the relentless heat of the desert, but Wanda was shivering, so Ian told Melanie to turn it off.

The skin around Wanda's lips was turning a horrific, unnatural blue. The jeep hit a bump, and because of their speed, the car was airborne for a long moment before it slammed back into the ground. Wanda's slight body jerked and she gasped, her eyes flying open. She began scrabbling at her chest, tears falling freely from her eyes.

She stared up at Ian, her eyes frightened. She opened her mouth, and more blood trickled. It fell into Ian's lap, but he didn't care. More blood gushed from Wanda's mouth, but she didn't seem to notice. She was trying to say something.

Ian bent his head until his ear was at her mouth. "What is it, love?" he murmured.

At first, she uttered only a breathy gurgle. But finally her desperate attempts yielded a croaky whisper.

"Ian" she whispered hurriedly. "Pet isn't going to survive this. I can feel her body failing right now. The only thing that's keeping her awake is my presence. I just—" she coughed, and her whole small body shuddered violently. Ian wondered how all that blood could possibly have fit inside her tiny body. But it kept coming. "I love you," she mumbled lowly, her hands grasping weakly at his. Ian squeezed back. "I love you so much. Can you- get Mel?"

"Mel!" Ian hollered.

Melanie had climbed from the front seat to the spacious back within seconds. She held Wanda's face between her hands, and Ian leaned back to give them some privacy. The two murmured a few sentences, and Wanda started coughing again.

Melanie scrambled back to the front, and took the driver's seat from Jared. Jared forgot all about his masculine dignity for a moment and took the same route to the back as Melanie had— over the seats. He landed in an unkempt pile of long limbs next to Ian, but quickly sat up and looked down at Wanda.

He made a low sound in his throat. His face was etched with something akin to regret. He reached a gentle, strong hand out to stroke Wanda's face, and her eyes opened. Bruises already surrounded them just from the effort of keeping Pet's heart beating.

Wanda attempted a smile for him, for the man whom she still couldn't help but love. But she wasn't in love with him, like she was with Ian. It was love left over from her time inside of Melanie's mind. Nonetheless, Wanda still harboured fond feelings for Jared. He was like a big brother to her, as Melanie was her big sister.

Ian looked out the window as Wanda and Jared exchanged a few murmured words. She raised a shaking hand to touch his face. Her pale hand brought his head down to hers and she kissed him gently on the lips, telling him everything in a gesture that she couldn't in words.

When Jared sat back up, tears were running down his cheeks.

He leaned over the seats and spoke quietly to Melanie.

While they conversed in low tones, Ian and Wanda stared at each other wordlessly. His hand cupped her head and his other hand stroked her face lovingly.

The realisation had dawned on him as he stared out the window. They were still about ten minutes away from the caves, and Wanda didn't have that long. If they used a phone to call for help, no doubt the Seekers would zone in on a random call in the middle of the desert. They would zoom out here, find the body of the dead Seeker, and put two and two together. The small community of humans that Jeb's caves had saved would be decimated.

Jared, Melanie and Ian came to a silent decision. Melanie pulled the Jeep to a stop under an overhang of rock that jutted from a small cliff. It wasn't a full cave, but it provided cover from being spotted from the sky, and from the choking heat.

All three of them huddled around Wanda's prone form. Melanie and Ian held her tiny hands as her breaths slowed. Her face relaxed as she let go of Pet's heart. She opened her beautiful grey eyes one last time and a single tear trickled from the corner. It ran down the side of her face and landed on Ian's lap.

As her eyes lost focus, and she lay completely still in the back of the car, Ian felt as if his heart had been ripped out and stomped on, then put back into his chest, but it didn't function right anymore. It was like somebody had taken a knife to it, and cut away the bit that harboured joy and love. That part of Ian's heart had leeched out of him as the life had bled out of the girl he loved.

Her prone body was still warm in his arms. Her grey eyes gazed lifelessly out the window. Melanie was in Jared's arms, sobbing. Ian could hear the blood thudding in his head. His ears rang, and he knew he had to get out of that confined space. He gently placed Pet's body on the floor of the Jeep, and roughly pushed open the door. Heedless of Melanie's and Jared's well- meant warnings, he ran.

He ran for what felt like hours. He ran until his tongue was a leaden roll of sandpaper in his mouth, and swallowing was like shoving a razor blade down his throat. He ran until all exposed skin was red from sunburn, and his feet throbbed inside his boots. He ran until the sun set and it was dark, and the heat was gone from the landscape, leaving only the chilly wind that bit at his raw skin and the moon that was so much more empathetic than the merciless sun that smiled with its glorious rays even when beautiful, optimistic, generous people were murdered by their own kind.

Ian finally fell to his knees in the freezing sand, and cried. He hadn't thought he had any water left for tears, but it seemed he did because he cried until the moon was low in the sky and the birds were singing.

By then, he was sprawled on his back in the sand, numb inside.

The sun rose the next day. Ian rolled onto his stomach and buried his raw face in the sand.

The sun set. Ian didn't move.

The sun rose and set so many times he lost count.

His reason had now returned, but even if he wanted to return to the caves and face his cohort, he couldn't. He was too weak to move. So hungry and dehydrated.

He simply slumped back into the sand and passed out.

When Ian came to again, he had to blink a couple of times to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. He opened his eyes again and simply stared at the ceiling, not really caring.

And then he remembered. His blissful numb was shattered by the realisation that Wanda was gone. No, not gone, like she'd gone on a raid, or to the bathroom, or to visit Melanie. She was dead.

Ian found it near impossible to reconcile that fact with his reality.

He closed his eyes, once again sinking into the welcoming, merciful arms of sleep.

The next time Ian woke, there were faces above him, and a cup at his lips. Liquid from the cup trickled into his mouth and he jerked at the vile taste, spitting it all over the hand that held the cup. His eyes travelled up the arm, and met Melanie Stryder's fierce amber- brown eyes that were the gentlest he'd ever seen. He almost thought that she was… sympathetic. Then he thought that she probably knew exactly what he was going through. She had tried to kill herself, and when she woke up from the dead hosting a soul inside her body, she had realised that she had lost something much worse than her life— she had lost her true love.

Melanie knew exactly how he felt, and she ached for him because his pain was so fresh and so blunt. He knew with certainty that Wanda was never coming back. There was no chance that she had somehow survived because he had seen her eyes lose focus, had held her lifeless body in his arms.

Melanie knew what it was like, so she refrained from saying anything even as she wiped his spit off her hands with a wet cloth and tried to tone down the glare she knew she was probably sending him for spitting out his medicine all over her.

Ian sat up and simply looked around him. He recognised all the people gathered in the makeshift infirmary— these people had been his and Wanda's closest friends out of those in the caves. Melanie. Jared. Jeb. Jamie. Lillie. Doc. Kyle and Sunny (those two were so close that they classified as one person anyway).

Ian couldn't meet any of their gazes. He knew he was probably a mess. Wild hair, red skin, bruised eyes from lack of sleep. He'd lost weight, and was immensely dehydrated.

Days had passed since Wanda's death. Ian stood up, albeit still a tiny bit off balance, but nobody said a word as he strode past them and out the door, not thinking, but letting his feet take him where they pleased.

He ended up at the graveyard that was slowly accumulating numbers. He walked past Wes's and Walter's graves, and the nameless male Healer's grave, and tiny graves that could only belong to souls that had been murdered prior to Wanda's interference in Doc's practises.

And then he found her grave. It was so pitifully small. Wanda had been removed from Pet to be buried. The people in the caves had found it unfair to bind Wanda to a body she hadn't liked, even in death.

Pet's body was buried next to her, but Ian hadn't come here for the girl he didn't know. He knelt down beside the newly dug path of sand that was only a bit larger than his head, and was at a loss of what to do. He knew that he should have a speech prepared or something, as he had missed her burial ceremony, but he hadn't thought that far ahead. Just being here with her— would it be too cheesy to say soul?— was enough.

Ian had no idea what he would do tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. He had no idea if he would ever be ready to love again. He didn't know if he could keep his promise to Wanda not to ever hurt a soul, even if it was a Seeker, after a Seeker had taken her from him.

But Ian forgot all about the future when he closed his eyes, suddenly realising how weary he was.

He lay down on the soft, cool sand beside his love's grave, and went to sleep under the gentle moon and glinting stars.