First off, I want to thank everyone who's been reading, reviewing, and following my story! It means so much to me and I really appreciate all of you. I'll try to keep uploading regularly; my goal is one chapter a week. I want to make sure these updates are really good, plus I'm pretty busy with school right now, but come May I'll have a lot more time to write! Again, thanks. (:

{ TODD }

I'm startin' to wake up more often and I'm able to stay away for longer. The girl, Viola, she starts bringing me food and medicine. She says it's been a week since I woke up the first time. She seems tense and nervous when she comes in, and she never meets my eyes. She's real pretty, I notice as she rubs a salve on my pink-scarred chest. Her hair falls over her shoulder and her small, delicate hands are intent on healing my skin. I sigh as the burning in my chest goes down. Thanks, I show to her. She presses her lips together and nods.

We've fallen into a bit of a pattern: Viola puts a hand behind my shoulders and helps me sit up so I can eat the stew and bread she's brought me. I eat in mostly silence. Then we talk for a bit until I get too tired. Ben tells me she waited for me to wake up. Viola Eade waited for me to wake up. I don't know why she would.

The memories are starting to come back a little, and I can see Old Prentisstown, where I grew up, and I can see Ben and Cillan and the farm and the sheep and Manchee and they Mayor –

Every time I think about something sad or bad there's this sorta block in my brain and I can't remember anymore. I think my body's tryna tell me "That's too painful, better not think about that." There's lots of those moments. Ben's been helping me remember what happened before I… passed out? Why am I even hurt in the first place? Ben hasn't got to that part yet and I need to know why. But I guess Viola knows.

Viola?

She tenses on her old cot. She doesn't sleep there anymore, for some reason she thinks it might be wrong, but I don't think I would mind her stayin' –

"Yes?"

How did I get like this? All beat up and passed out?

I hear her almost inaudible sigh, see the cloudy pain in her eyes even though she's not lookin' at me. Her knuckles are white as she grips the frame of the cot. I've noticed she does that a lot when we talk about my old memories. "It's a long story."

I think I've got the time.

I watch her swallow and can almost see the gears in her brain turnin' as she collects her thoughts. "You were shot."

I was shot?

By who? When? Where? Why?

Viola leans forward. I see her hands fold and unfold and notice a pink scar on her wrist, and I get the urge to reach out and touch it for some reason but I just keep eatin' the warm stew that she brought for me. "You were shot by a Spackle, the Sky. You remember the spackle, right?"

I nod, and a shot of electricity shoots through my head. There's something bad about a spackle and a knife… I wince. I think she can feel my pain because her hand twitches towards me, like she wants to touch me but holds herself back. She frowns.

"Yeah, we had a kinda… tense relationship with the spackle, for a lot of reasons. But anyway, you had just fought with Mayor Prentiss and beat him when the Sky came and he mistook you for him, and he fired his weapon."

There's so much buzzing in my brain from my body trying to protect me from the pain that I set my food down and lean forward some. My head's pounding and I think someone's groaning – and then I realize it's me and Viola's hands aren't held back anymore and she touches my shoulder –

And there's something so comforting and familiar about her hands that I think I want her to hold me –

I don't know why, but she just feels so right but she's making my head hurt but she's not done talkin' –

"Todd, we thought you had died. You weren't breathing or moving and you were bleeding all over…" She pauses and I think she has to catch her breath or somethin' but I can't tell 'cuz my eyes are closed and I'm just worried about listenin' through the pounding in my head – "But Ben, he heard some of your Noise, so faint, I almost didn't believe him. And you remember that Ben was healed by the spackle? Well we put you in here, and… six weeks later here we are."

When I look up, her eyes are shinin' and she's just leanin' towards me and her muscles are tremblin' just the slightest bit and I can tell, I can feel the bottled up intensity of how much she missed me, and it feels good to know that, even if I don't know how I feel about her.

I think she holds a lot in, this girl called Viola. I wonder what she would say if she had Noise, or if she was a part of the Land. Her hole of silence surrounds me like a blanket and I have to look at her face and her body to guess at what she's thinkin'. And by the way she sets her teeth and sticks her chin out a bit she's tryin' to shove all that emotion down into her belly and keep those tears in her eyes because I won't understand what she's cryin' about and that hurts her more'n anythin' else.

And I wonder if she's ever gonna be okay.

What happened while I was asleep?

She sits back and squares her shoulders. "Lots. The new settlers came and are starting to spread out. There's talk of sending a group of scouts to look for the best places to start building new towns. With the hundreds of families still orbiting this planet, they want to start landing soon."

Her frowned eyebrows say "I don't know what to do."

Her white knuckles say "I'm scared."

Her slumping shoulders say "There wasn't supposed to be so much pain."

But her eyes?

Her eyes are just sayin' "Todd."

Viola leaves soon after, takin' my empty bowl and the salve with her. The sun's up in the sky and leaf shadows shake across the roof of my tent. I'm bored and startin' to hate sittin' still all day long –

All of a sudden, I can see myself and Viola in the swamp, near Old Prentisstown

Not see, but I'm me, and she's her, and she's smaller and her hair's shorter and she's got such big eyes –

And she's just said her name for the first time –

And I can feel the rush of my heart as I think Viola –

And now I'm starin' back up at the canvas tent and I think I might throw up –

Can't the room stop spinnin'?

And I have this ache in my chest that comes from beyond the smoke veil –

From the Todd that knows.

Smoke veil Todd Hewitt is hurtin' because he knows things.

He's seen so much and lost many. I think maybe if he were here I would sit him down for a chat.

I think he might cry if we did. Because he's got a gash so deep on his heart that there's only one known medicine that could heal him –

But he doesn't realize it's right in front of him, but I can see it –

And I recoil at his pain –

And I wonder if it's better not to know if it hurts so much.

{ VIOLA }

Talking to Todd is always difficult. Just all the knowing and not knowing, all the doubt and pain that struggles to the surface of our interactions. And his presence in the Heart is nothing like his Noise used to be.

I wonder how long it will take to tell him the story, start to finish.

Ben's gone in to talk to Todd now. Todd seems less confused when Ben's around. I assume it's because he actually remembers Ben from his youth. The timeframe of his memory lapse confuses me: it seems that everything of the past year and a half has been compromised, but everything else is intact. Todd is merely a boy who lived in Prentisstown with two father figures. From what Ben tells me, the Land had to literally erase the suffering of recent events from his mind. The pain was the thing holding him back from us. Waking him to those memories with the little strength he had could have killed him, or worse, broken him forever. I shudder.

The sun is warm on my face as I sit on a hollow log that spans a brook. This place has become mine, hidden away so I can think. I go here as the halfway point of my daily walk. I've been watching the trees' branches undergo their transformation from bud to sprout to fledgling leaves. The grass on the banks of the water is slowly reviving with sun and the drizzling rain that's been falling every few days. Here, I'm alone with my thoughts and the earth.

Today, my thoughts are about Todd's eyes.

There's so much depth to them, such confusion. There's pain, but it's restrained in a way that I that I don't understand. From his tortured thoughts, there's got to be more to his memories than I know.

Because when I touched him…

There was a sudden harmony in his presence, like the pieces of a puzzle falling in to place, and I know he felt it. I saw the pain leave his face and the pressure of his shoulder on my hand almost broke me, because for some reason his body remembers me, trusts me, even if his memories can't.

And although I don't know how,

He still is My Todd.