Enjoy and review.

Vicky's POV

It was kind of weird being back to this... Nothingness... After feeling so strangely alived again. The new emptyness I created to protect myself feels disturbed, wrong, like the lines that sorround me, keeping me from feeling anything, keeping me from getting hurt are so thin they could break in any moment, so easily.

Tom was looking as lovely as usual, though his face didn't have that same happyness mixed with excitement it usually had, that expression that made him look so adorable and beautiful. He didn't quite look like the Tom I knew now, but he was still the boy I had to stop adoring for my own good.

The signs of people were completely gone, like they had vanished into thin air.

"Or maybe the helicopter picked them up. That's how rescue teams work" Chris had said.

Great, that's just great! We'd spent a whole day following nothing cause they were already gone. Awesome.

"And didn't you think about saying something a few hours before?" Tom said.

"I just thought about it, sorry" he mumbled.

I sighed and stopped.

"We should go back then. Alex must be freaking out" my poor friend. If we gave her just one more thing to worry about, she would explode, seriously. Mentally, though, of course. I knew she had to be worrying a lot about me, about seeing me like this again, but I needed to protect myself to be able to protect her.

Christopher sighed "Told you it was a waste of time" he mumbled.

"Complaining won't help" Tom said. This was the most productive and longer conversation the three of us had had so far.

The boys had already started walking back towards the same path we'd come from, following out own footsteps, when, from the corner of my eye, just by chance, I saw a small wolf staring back at me in the distance. I froze. Instinctively, I leaned fowards, but without moving my feet so I wouldn't alarm the wolf, and reached out to grab Tom's arm. I let him go as soon as I realized what I was doing; protecting him instead of protecting myself.

"What is it?" he asked, his voice weird. I couldn't tell the feeling behind it.

"Wolf" I said. Chris turned around faster than a lightning "Climb up a tree"

Tom and I were the closest to each other. We both hurried up the same tree while Chris climbed up another one that was just a few meters away. His backpack fell on his way up.

"Damn" he complained. And then they say Alex complains a lot! Our dear pilot's attitude has changed since the accident. He was about to climb down but I stopped him.

"No! Stay where you are, Chris" I yelled at him.

"Oh, come on, it was one little wolf" he said as he kept climbing down.

"I'll go for him" Tom said.

I looked down in horror as Tom climbed down awkwardly; he had no experience, I can tell, he's so slow. I wanted to hold him in my arms, to protect him and never let him go, but it was like I was trying to hold sand on my hands and it was slipping away so easily. I had to take this feelings away from me, stop caring about him, but you can not always tell your heart what to think or feel, can you? It's so... Annoying!

"Tom-" I choked, my voice too low for him to hear.

I looked up as I heard Chris screaming and saw two big and fierce wolves standing on their hind legs, making threating sounds and trying to reach him with their mouths. Chris was climbing back up quickly. I wanted to say 'I told you so', but instead I was busy pulling Tom up; I could take care of the 'forgetting-about-him' part once we were out of here and he was safe.

"Stay where you are!" I yelled at Christopher "And obey me, dammit!"

"Jeez, where did those come from!?" Tom asked as he leaned against the free, standing on a big branch by my side.

"They are fast and very intelligent. Do not underestimate them. Just because they are animals, it doesn't mean they are stupid"

For just a few minutes we watched as the animals started to calm down, but they did not leave; one more wolf joined the two others and they laid down on the ground, all next to each other, just a few meters away from Chris' tree. Oh, jeez, this is a problem. Big time.

"What do we do?" Chris asked from his tree. He had a frustrated look.

"I don't know." I said.

"You don't know?" he repeated.

"Hey, I'm not a survival manual, ok? I just know stuff"

"Just tell him something so he can follow an order, I think that could calm him down" Tom whispered without looking at me.

"Well... I guess we should wait" I said loud enough so Chris could hear too.

"Wait for what?"

"I don't know! Just wait!"

I sat in the branch I was standing and sighed; this just couldn't get any worse.

I took off my backpack and carefully balanced it on one branch. I didn't dare looking up to see what Tom was doing and desperately needed to have something in my hands and be busy with it. At least walking gave me something to think about. Waiting -and now just waiting, but waiting for nothing because you have no idea what you're waiting for- wasn't the best thing for me to do now. It wasn't the most convinient time to be stuck in a tree with Tom.

How long would we be here, anyway? How long it be before the wolves got tired of waiting and they left? And, even if they did leave, climbing down would be very risky; they could simply hide and attack us once we think they're gone.

I should have never left Alex alone, she had no idea how to survive on her own, she must be going nuts.

Suddenly I felt like crying, everything was falling down into pieces again.

Oh, God, what have I done?