(Serious) Author's Note: Thanks to krikanalo, richards25 and Theonewhoweaveswords for reviewing the last chapter! The support is appreciated :)

Chapter Ten

Violet was terrified.

She came round with the helicopter still spinning madly in the air. Feeling sick with dizziness, she tried to get to her feet, but found Arlo and Klaus to be slumped over her, both of them unconscious. Jacques Snicket was nowhere to be seen, as he had clearly decided to save himself, but he had at least left three parachutes for the children. Sadly, they were out of Violet's reach as she lay on the floor of the aircraft, pinned beneath the weight of two teenage boys.

Suddenly there was another almighty crash, and everything disappeared to black once again.

When Violet woke the next time, she felt as though she was on fire. Then, opening her eyes, she saw the it is wasn't her that was on fire, but the remains of the helicopter that lay sprawled all around her. She was in a small crevice, almost completely covered by the twisted metal above her, and wondered if anyone else survived the fall. Except from ringing ears, a splitting headache and a few cuts and bruises on her lower back and legs, Violet felt alright. No major damage had been done.

Rolling over on her back to look towards where she had seen a shaft of light come into her small space, she saw a figure silhouetted in the space, lying next to her. She quickly identified the person as Arlo, who was lying on his side away from her, looking out at the world beyond the wreck. She could also see that her friend had fared much worse than her in the crash, a phrase which here means "had a massive gash in his leg where a shard of metal had cut through him, and his blood was pouring into the Hinterlands earth around him."

Violet, suddenly concerned for Arlo, called out his name, but the boy by her side, reached up and clamped a hand over her mouth, pointing out towards the land beyond the wreck.

Violet struggled to stay quiet once she saw what was waiting outside.

Past the torn metal and embers of the burning wreck that had once been Jacques Snicket's helicopter, there was roughly a mile before the tall walls of the Firestarter base loomed in the mountains. But in between Violet and the mountains, she could see many men heading towards the wreck. She didn't realise quite how close they were until once walked into a gap from the wreckage, barely ten feet from where Arlo lay. Both Violet and Arlo edged backwards, so that nothing of them was sticking out for the men to see. Several more congregated - where "congregated" here means "gathered" - in a gap in the wreckage nearby to Violet and Arlo. The debris had spread out over quite a large area, so it was easy for men to navigate through it.

As all the men then split up to search through the wreckage, Violet spotted who she thought to be their leader; a tall, slender man with two hooks instead of hands. Terrified further by this man who was standing just fifteen yards from her, Violet diverted their attention to the men who were rummaging through the debris for survivors, such as Arlo and herself.

Eventually the men grouped together again at another point of the wreckage, and Violet saw them pull free a limp figure, who they dragged out of the wreckage towards their leader. It took Violet only a moment to realise that the battered and bruised figure that the men were carrying was Klaus. Soon she found herself crying silent tears uncontrollably as her last relative was carried away from her, and there was nothing she could do about it. What had happened to him in the crash? Violet thought. He looked unconscious, at best. I hope he's alright...

After the men left, Arlo and Violet stayed huddled together in the warm embers of the debris for many hours, until they were finally sure that the coast was clear, an expression that here means "all the men had returned to their base, and Violet and Arlo were alone in the wreck of Jacques Snicket's helicopter."

Arlo clambered out of their small crevice in the wreckage, hesitantly got to his feet and tried to walk away to search the wreckage, but collapsed as his injured leg gave way from under him. Most of the bleeding had stopped, but the wound was still painful, and his leg was weak.

"Arlo!" Violet cried, who slipped out of their hiding place to help her friend get back to his feet.

"I'll be fine, Violet," Arlo insisted as she ran to his aid, but as he attempted to get back to his feet, he collapsed to the ground again, where he lay on his back, exhausted.

"You're not fine," Violet said, leaning down to take Arlo's hand to pull him to his feet. Reaching over Arlo's shoulder to give him balance, she led her friend away through the wreckage to the flat land beyond. She sat him down and leant him against part of the wreckage, hidden from the view of the base.

With Arlo safe for the time being, Violet returned to the debris field to scavenge supplies from the fallen aircraft. All around her lay twisted, melted strips of metal and glass, covered with scorched marks from the burnt aviation fuel. Taking care to only touch cooler parts of the wreck, Violet slowly began a more methodical search of the wreckage than the Firestarter men had earlier. For a while her search was fruitless, but she eventually located where the luggage compartment of the helicopter had been. Due to the way the helicopter had landed, the luggage compartment was one of the most complete sections of the aircraft remaining. However, the section was almost completely encased in ruined pieces of metal. She could look in, and see that Arlo's and Klaus' luggage, along with her own, was still in there intact, but there wasn't even a large enough gap in the metal for Violet to reach her arm in.

Then she suddenly had an idea.

She ran over to another section of the wreck where the glow red-hot metal could still be seen in the centre of a mound. Picking up a long shard of metal that lay nearby on the floor, Violet fed one end into the red-hot mound, heating up on end of the shard of metal that she held. Eventually, the metal began to glow red-hot, at which point she quickly pulled it from the mound of metal and carried it over to the metal prison that held her belongings.

Her idea had been to use the heated metal as a sort of crude welding torch, using the heat to melt the metal encasing her bags, and melt the joints, allowing her to fold back the metal, and reach in to retrieve her belongings. Luckily, the day was warm as the sun shone down that afternoon, the metal had already been heated to a burning temperature, and it only took Violet a few minutes to prise a way into the ruined luggage compartment. She dragged out her own rucksack, and then heaved out Arlo's heavy one after it. Then, looking down into the opening, she saw Klaus' rucksack, which pained her. For a moment she stood there, looking into the compartment, wondering where her little brother was, and whether he was alright. After her encounter with Count Olaf two weeks before, she knew what the Firestarters were capable of. Thinking again of Count Olaf, she realised that her father and brother were injured badly, and her mother and sister were missing, presumably captured by the Firestarters. She had no home, and only the belongings in her small rucksack. She was in the middle of nowhere, and completely alone.

Well, alone except for Arlo. Unlucky, injured Arlo, who was now entirely dependent on a girl in distress herself.

Violet couldn't imagine that anything could get any worse.

At the same time, she knew that she had to carry on. It was up to her to bring her family back together again. She knew where Klaus had been taken. She just needed to find a way in. Maybe, with Arlo's help, everything could still turn out alright.

She returned to Arlo with their two rucksacks and their tent, to find that her friend's condition had improved. He was still unable to get to his feet, but the bleeding had stopped completely and Arlo seemed to be coping with the pain much better than he had been before.

That evening, as the sky turned to blue once again, Violet cared for Arlo, putting up their tent by herself, and making sure that both of them were well fed with food and water from Arlo's rucksack. The food did him a lot of good; he might not have been able to walk, but by that evening, Arlo had recovered some energy and had returned to his old, talkative self.

By the time that the moon rose high in the clear Hinterlands sky, the roles of the two young inventors had been reversed. Violet was sitting alone outside the tent, huddled up, her arms cradling her knees, looking up at the night sky. She was too troubled to sleep. How could she sleep with her family lost, and scattered all over the country? She didn't even know if most of them were alive or dead.

"You alright, Violet?"

It was Arlo, who crept out of the tent to see what was up with his friend.

Violet looked back at him and smiled sadly. There were tears in her eyes once more.

"I can't sleep," she said quietly.

"Too much on your mind?" Arlo asked as he sat down next to Violet, to which she nodded.

"Why has everything turned out so wrong?" she said quietly, in a voice that lacked all of her usual confidence.

Arlo had no answer to that, but tried his best to console her.

"We can make a difference, you know," he said comfortingly. "It doesn't matter what the numbers are if you have logic and reason on your side. Good tactical thinking can solve any problem."

Violet sighed.

"Maybe," she said. "But I can't think straight anymore. I've lost everyone, Arlo. I don't know where mother is. I don't know where Sunny is. I don't even know if they're alive. Klaus has been captured and father's badly hurt. We've got no house, no money. The only things I own are the clothes I wear and the contents of that rucksack."

"Look," Arlo said soothingly, putting an arm around Violet comfortingly as she started to cry once again. "I know what it feels like," he whispered. "There's a reason my father lives alone with me and Anna, you know. I never had a chance to save my mother. I know what the pain is like. And yes, the loss is horrible, but over time, you'll learn to accommodate the pain, and grow used to a new, different life."

Violet looked up at Arlo, and imagine a younger child, weeping for his dead mother. For once, she felt as though things could be worse. And she didn't know whether her parents were dead or not. Not yet, anyway. For Violet, at least, there was still hope.

"Do you rememeber her?" Violet asked through the tears. "Your mother?"

Arlo paused for a moment, taking his time to answer.

"Not much," he said finally. "She died when I was four, you see. She was off on some V.F.D. mission. I didn't really understand much at that age. All I knew was that she wouldn't be coming home anymore."

"How did she die?" Violet asked, but immediately regretted it when she saw the pained look on Arlo's face. "I'm sorry," she apologised.

"Don't be sorry," he said. "You didn't know. And I don't, either."

"Don't know what?"

"How she died," Arlo said quietly. "And I don't want to know, either," he said thoughtfully.

"Why not?" Violet asked.

"I've grown used to the loss," he said. "Yes, the grief is still there, but I've accepted fate and moved on. To know what happened to her would just complicate things again. I don't want to know."

"I'm sure that she died a noble death," Violet said, trying to cheer up Arlo, but he shook his head sadly.

"I don't know about that," he said. "Sometimes I wonder whether there is a noble side in this schism. Most of the fighting seems pointless."

"Well, now I have a reason to fight," Violet said confidently. "I've got a family rescue. And I hope to get us home in one piece."

Arlo laughed at that, and extended his arm around Violet so that the two sat together in a loose embrace. Violet leaned in towards Arlo, returning his embrace, laughing with him.

"We'll have to see about that, Violet," he said. "But I'm sure we can find a way. I'm sure that together, we'll manage to figure something out."

A/N: If you liked today's chapter, please feel free to review! Any ideas, tips or constructive criticism are welcomed :)