It was the sun that woke her; the warmth of it on Jackie's face a contrast to the slight chill of the room. The weather was changing — she could feel it. A gradual thawing as time moved the days along into Spring.

She turned slightly, moving closer to Eric, the steady in-out of his breath a quiet call to the beat of her heart. Her arms wound gently around his waist, and she rubbed her cheek gently on the jagged flesh of his back; a soft heat emanating from the raised skin there that was almost palpable.

She closed her eyes as her heart wrenched, and unbidden, Ebele's face and words and a memory from another place and time swam forth and brought her vividly back in time.

"Dey will be there always," said Ebele gravely, her eyebrows drawing together in an expression of regret.

The air inside the hut was cool despite the stark heat of the afternoon outside. Sunlight filtered subtly in, glinting off the glass jars and many bottles neatly arranged on the shelves in Ebele's home. Smells, both pungent and aromatic clung to the air.

Jackie raised fingers to her forehead, pressing them between her brows to ease the headache born of fatigue and stress and heart ache.

She glanced at Eric's sleeping form, at the poultices and blood stained bandages covering the ravaged flesh and forced back tears that seemed to always be in danger of falling. "Will they always hurt him?" she asked Ebele, her voice coming out in a broken whisper.

The medicine woman sighed, her gaze too, falling over Eric. She moved to lift up one of the poultices, and picked up a clean cloth to dab at the clear fluid leaking from the skin under.

"Burns... Dey are... dee-ficult. And Meester Erik's are—," she stopped, shaking her head, and her eyes met Jackie's over Eric's body.

"Da scars, dey will be there always," she repeated. She replaced the poultice on his back, and even she couldn't quite hide the tremor in her hand as she made to inspect his progress underneath the bloodstained bandages. She exhaled heavily. "And da pain... Da pain, eet will ne-vah completely be gone."

Jackie choked back a sob. Her eyes fell onto Eric's face, pale and sweaty despite the coolness of the air, and his ragged breathing tore at her heart. She nodded, and her fingers trembled as they hovered over his cheek. "He will live though, right?" she looked up at Ebele pleadingly, asking for the hundredth time the question to which answer will determine whether she lived or died too. "He's got to, Ebele, he just has to."

Ebele looked at her, her heart going out to the young man on the cot and the girl who would have him live through anything by her sheer will alone.

"Keep da infection from setting in, and we will see," she said at last.

Jackie drew in a deep breath, feeling the roughness of his scars against her cheek and the warm scent of his skin settled itself around her heart.

He came awake slowly after a while, and she tightened her arms around his body, wishing to protect him from all the evils and harshness of the world. She blew gently on the ruined skin, and followed that with a line of kisses to the edge of his shoulder, and then rested her chin there and watched him come awake.

"Hey you," she said in a scratchy sort of whisper, her heart still raw from memories of before, smiling as he blinked up at her, an unguarded, sleepy expression on his face that was a bit dopey, a bit grouchy, and many kinds of adorable.

He grunted and she laughed softly. But then, a telltale grimace that he could not quite hide shadowed his features for a moment, and she bit her lip as she watched him push himself stiffly into a sitting position. The column of muscles in his neck and upper back tightened, and as always, she remembered Ebele's words.

Her heart gave a familiar wrench and she drew herself up to her knees behind him, thumbs starting at the base of his neck, and then with a light but sure touch, did what she could to knead some comfort back into tangled muscles.

She would usually keep up a steady stream of chatter, but he was quieter this morning, and so was she, so she concentrated on alternating between kneading and caressing, and before long, felt a gradual loosening under the thick scars. One of his hands came up to cover hers near his shoulder, and she leaned forward to his ear, "Better?"

He responded by dragging her hand towards his lips and turning his head to press a kiss to the heart of her palm. "Yeah," he replied, and then a small smile. "Better."

They remained that way for a while, watching the sky outside lighten further, until he said quietly, "I never did thank you for taking care of me all that time ago."

She buried her nose in his neck. "I would've died without you."

He smiled at her melodramatic answer. She caught him, and insisted, "I would've."

"Okay."

"Imagine if you did. Then I would've to have dragged your body home with me to your mother," she muttered darkly.

He barked out a laugh and she allowed herself a small smile. "I was terrified, Eric," she admitted, realizing she had never told him before. She shuddered, remembering how she had felt when the roof of Afia's hut had caved in. For a moment she could feel the heat of a raging fire in her face.

And then what came after. She closed her eyes in memory.

She heard him draw in a harsh breath. "I'm sorry, angel."

She turned to look at him, ignoring the answering pang in her heart. "You were always too noble for your own good, you know," she told him, a lightness to words that belied her true feelings.

He snorted. "Hardly."

"You are," she retorted, and pushed herself forwards to settle in his lap, her arms still loosely around his neck. "Brave too," she added softly.

Pain clouded his eyes briefly. "They all died," he reminded her matter-of-factly. There was a long moment and then he said, "Desta died. Even though I had saved him."

His words struck chords in her. "I know." She drew in a shaky breath. "I know." Her arms tightened around his neck as she thought of the happy little boy that had brought her so much joy. Her eyes closed at the brief flash of pain thoughts of Desta still brought.

She felt him shift and opened her eyes to see his head bowed low over hers, and she leaned forward to whisper against his temple. "You fought everything to give them a chance, Eric."

He was silent for a long while, and she wasn't sure if he heard her, but then he straightened and spoke.

"You asked once if I had buried my ghosts."

She nodded, remembering the night when he had first come back to Point Place. "And you said you had accepted them," she said, quoting him softly.

He looked down at her and smiled. "Yeah, I did." He grew pensive, and she waited with her head against his shoulder, feeling the steady beat of his heart against hers.

"I didn't want to bury them, Jackie," he said at last. "I can't." He seemed to struggle with something inside him and her heart went out to him.

"Eric—," she started to say, but he shook his head gently, rubbing a lock of her hair between his fingers.

"I want to... honor their memory. Honor it with everything that I choose to do with my life."

She understood, finally. "And that was how you chose to go on. How you did go on. How you can go on."

A brief smile flitted across his face. He nodded. "Yes," he said simply.

Her brave, brave man. She felt his arms come around her, and she leaned up to kiss the ragged scar under his jaw, and she felt herself fill with something so intense and full that she wasn't sure that if the time came if she could ever let him go.