Author's Note: First of all, you guys, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR "DAY OF DOOM" HERE. So if you don't want to be spoiled, turn back immediately. I mean, right away; the spoilers start instantly.
Anyway, if you're determined to read ahead, then just as a warning, this story probably sucks. I really just needed a way to get my feelings about DoD out, as well as give a bit of resolution to a few things that happened therein. (Also, okay, I just wanted to write a bit of Amian friendship-with-romantic-undertones. XD)
So, seriously, spoilers ahoy:
"I'm so, so sorry about Natalie."
It was the first thing that she had said to him all afternoon, and they had been sitting in the Cahills' spacious library for nearly an hour, sharing the same table. Sharing the same heavy silence.
Mere weeks ago, Ian never would have imagined that one name could have such power, to bring fresh tears to his eyes, even after he thought that he'd cried them all out. Even after Natalie had been captured by those Vespers—he had been cold, aloof, strong, Kabra-like.
But Natalie was dead. Isabel was dead. Vikram might as well be dead.
Ian was alone, feeling more alive than dead himself. Like some kind of restless specter, pale and disheveled and silent, haunting the hallways of the Cahills' mansion. He hadn't had the courage to go home yet and face the vast, empty vacuum of the Kabra estate. He couldn't do that, not without Natalie. It had been awful enough after he and his sister had emancipated themselves after the Clue Hunt—going home to the mansion without their mother, Ian being forced to listen to Natalie's half-stifled sobs in Isabel's closet.
He could remember, more recently, Natalie crying again. Holding her in his arms, watching the tears streaking down her dirty, wan cheeks, reunited with her at last. Thinking about how nice it would be to be free of this entire blasted Vesper situation, to just go home and catch up with his sister. And Natalie's eyes had told him that she thought the same. But soon after that… So soon after that…
With perfectly terrible clarity, he recalled the way his sister had charged at those Vespers' dreadful Doomsday machine. Her amber eyes had glinted like fire, full of determination and true Cahill spirit. She had swung at the machine with the metal bar, resolved to end the Vespers' plans right there and then. Ian had looked at her with admiration. She was brave, he had thought; she would make a fine Lucian leader someday, he had thought.
And then, abruptly, there was no "someday" for her anymore. Her promising future was gone, erased in an instant by a cruel, merciless act of destiny. He remembered the horrible sound of the electric current passing through Natalie's small body, the way she'd frozen stiff, then collapsed with a terrible, irrevocable thud to the floor. How he had tried desperately to revive her, restart her heart, bring his little sister back from the dead. But he had failed.
Failed. And now, she was gone forever. No matter what he did now or how much he offered to pay or who he could blackmail or threaten—Natalie was never coming back.
The thought pushed the first tear over the brink. He could feel its warmth, trickling down the side of his cool face.
The old Ian would have brushed it away, but the bedraggled shade that sat in his place now decided not to bother, told him that it didn't matter; if anyone dared to ridicule him for mourning his sister (the only person who could have possibly understood him and still cared for him nonetheless), then Ian would kill them on the spot.
"Ian?"
He didn't want to look up from the smooth surface of the hardwood table. He didn't want to meet Amy Cahill's gaze and see all of the awful pity therein.
He knew that she was only letting him stay here because she felt sorry for him, because she thought that he really had nowhere else to go (not that he did, not really). Maybe she was even concerned about what he might do if left to himself for very long. Cause serious harm to himself or to someone else… It was ridiculous of her to think such things about him. He felt far too empty to even contemplate any sort of action, whether to cause benefit or detriment to anyone.
"Hello? Ian?"
He wasn't sure that the others even wanted him here. In fact, he was fairly sure that they definitely didn't. They just didn't want to go against Amy and throw him out, that was all.
Daniel's—no, Dan's, he amended semi-consciously—eyes held that terrible pity, as well, perfect mirrors of his older sister's. Pity was slightly better than their former hatred, Ian supposed, but not by much. And Fiske and Nellie were the same way. They still didn't like him, really, just felt sorry for him.
The little boy, Atticus Rosenbloom, Dan's genius friend—he regarded Ian with obvious apprehension, as if he was scared that he might snap at any second. Atticus tried to be polite to him, but Ian could tell that he wasn't very fond of him. (Ian didn't necessarily blame him. He wasn't too fond of himself sometimes. Standing there uselessly, looking on while his younger sister rushed to her death…)
And then, there was Atticus's brother, Jake. Jake couldn't stand having him around, and he didn't do much to even try and hide his distaste for Ian. Perhaps he viewed him as some new form of competition or something; Jake did seem to have taken over the position of Amy's boyfriend, now that Evan was no longer in the picture.
But Ian wasn't sure why Jake would view him as a threat. He really had no interest in pursuing Amy Cahill right now (although if he had wanted to, he could have stolen her from that American idiot in a heartbeat). He had no intention of ever forming any sort of meaningful relationship ever again, at this point. It hurt too much, losing people that one actually bothered to care about.
But oh, well, if people wanted to misunderstand his intentions, he wasn't going to correct them. It wouldn't be the first time that people had misjudged Ian, and anything that he said probably wouldn't help much, anyway. (Also, he just didn't enjoy talking much these days. It was a waste of breath, and breath was precious, especially since certain people didn't have any more breath to waste on frivolous things like talking. How he missed the sound of Natalie gabbing on and on about her Prada.)
"Ian."
Frivolous talking. Maybe it was fine if the others didn't want to speak to him. He had liked it just fine, the past half hour, when Amy had sat down at the table across from him with a book and said absolutely nothing. The silence was heavy, full of things that probably needed to be said but wouldn't be, but it wasn't really a negative thing.
"Um, Ian?"
Unlike now, when she continued talking to him and trying to get his attention, even though he was making it fairly clear, he thought, that he wasn't interested in carrying on a conversation with her. And the way she kept saying his name—like she was speaking to a small child that she needed to be especially delicate in dealing with…
"Are you all right, Ian? Can you just answer me, please?"
Something inside Ian just broke. "I'd prefer not to answer such idiotic questions," he snapped, adopting the thickest, most superior accent he could muster. "If there is anything at all about my behavior, Amy, that has given you the slightest impression that I'm 'all right,' then let me assure you: it's all in your head. There is nothing 'all right' about anything in this world, and if you believe otherwise, then there is not only something wrong with the world, but something gravely wrong with you, as well."
Finally, with those shameful tears gone, he looked up at Amy Cahill's face. Her green eyes were wide, her mouth hanging open in an inelegant "O" of shock. His words had actually brought out her stutter, which he hadn't heard in ages.
"I-I…"
She looked wounded by the acid in his tone. There were actual tears brimming in her eyes. Maybe Ian should have felt sorry about that. But maybe it would show her a fragment of the pain that he felt, and teach her to think next time before she asked him such a ridiculous, thoughtless question.
Yet, somehow, even now, there was still pity evident on her face. "Ian…" she started again timorously.
He frowned. "Don't look at me like that. And don't say my name that way. It's annoying."
Now, she looked a bit indignant. "Why?"
"Because I'm tired of being only tolerated, but even that is better than people who feel sorry me and pretend to have some semblance of understanding about the way I feel."
"But…"
"Don't argue with me. You don't understand me, Amy. None of you do. Now, can we stop talking? I'm tired of this conversation."
Ian stubbornly returned his gaze to the table, drumming absently, unrhythmically on the cool wooden surface. Frivolous conversations just weren't for him anymore. Silence—silence was good. Libraries were specifically designed for silence, after all.
If only Amy had gotten that memo. "Well, maybe you need to have this conversation, Ian. I'm tired of you just drifting around everywhere like some kind of ghost. You're not acting like yourself. We're worried about you!"
"Why?" he asked. There was a hollow quality to his voice, like he had already detached himself from the discussion and was merely asking in an attempt to shut her up.
It didn't work. "I don't know—maybe we actually care about you," she said sharply. "Our mistake."
The silence fell around them again, even denser than before. It wasn't such a pleasant thing this time, Ian reflected. Amy still looked quite hurt. And she looked like there was something left to say, but it didn't leave her lips. Or maybe she was waiting for him to say something…?
"I suppose you're expecting me to say I'm sorry," he said.
She nodded.
"Well, I'm sorry if I offended you. But I'd appreciate it if you would just leave me alone."
"For how long?"
"Preferably forever," he said immediately.
Her frown deepened. "You can't mean that."
"I can, and I do." Ian paused. "When you truly care about someone, you can't just get over it instantly and go on with your merry little life."
Amy bristled, as if she took his comment as a personal insult. "What's that supposed to mean? Are you telling me that I didn't care about…?"
She couldn't finish, but it didn't matter. He knew exactly what she was referring to. "About Evan," she was going to say.
The way her lower lashes sparkled with tears again confirmed it. For a long moment, she couldn't speak.
And yes, Ian thought, Sometimes, I do think of telling you that. Because Evan had died almost at the same time as Natalie, which automatically made Ian feel some vague sort of kinship toward him. And anyway, he hadn't been a horrible source of companionship in the Comm. Center—not that he'd ever admitted it.
"For… For your information, I cared a lot about him," Amy said finally, a note of bitterness in her quiet voice. "He was there for me, far more so than he had to be. He was good to me. He had this way of making me feel like I was the most special person in the entire world, even when I felt like I was worthless. After… A-after everything that happened during the Clue Hunt, he managed to give me faith that not everyone in the world was out to stab me in the back."
Whether she intended it to or not, the implication in her words stung a little. It was instinct to lash out in return.
"In that case, if he was so wonderful, how could you move on from him so quickly?"
Ian's tone was casual, indifferent, as he lowered his eyes to the tabletop as if in boredom, but the words he used were damaging. He knew this. He just didn't care. (Wouldn't let himself care, even if someone was trying to reach out to him, because caring only resulted in hurt. Like with Natalie.)
He only raised his gaze again at the sound of a soggy sniffle coming from across the mahogany table. Tears were pouring freely down Amy's cheeks now, and her teeth were clenched over her lower lip in a fruitless effort to keep it from quivering.
"M-my love life isn't your concern, Ian."
He folded his arms, his face blank (though that wasn't very unusual, as of late). "I never claimed to be concerned about it. I'm just stating the truth—you got together with that Rosenbloom boy about two minutes after your boyfriend died. And I'm hardly exaggerating."
Amy flicked a tear away with visible contempt. "Why can't you say anything nice when you finally decide to open your mouth and speak to us? You don't have to be mean. I mean, I know that you never really liked Evan…."
Ian sighed, finally coming to the realization that he wasn't going to get his silence now, no matter what sorts of rude things he said to her in an attempt to shut her up.
"He was all right, really. A bit overeager at times, and the way he hung onto your every word like some kind of lovesick puppy could be irritating…. But he was a decent fellow—maybe too decent, even. And decency is a rare quality to find in our world. He was rather nice to have around on a bad day, I guess. I suppose you could say that he grew on me a little."
She smiled faintly, though the teardrops still glimmered in her eyes, making their green color stand out against the puffy redness of the rest of her face. "Thanks."
"What?" He feigned incomprehension. "I wasn't saying those things for your benefit. I was just paying my respects to an ally… seeing as I didn't attend the funeral. It's only the proper thing."
Amy raised an eyebrow. The silence descended over the library again—though, of course, it was broken before Ian was allowed to get too comfortable.
"And it's none of your business, but Jake… is special. I don't know what it is. Sometimes, when you spend a lot of time around someone, going through something so intense… it just happens that way."
Briefly, he flashed back to the Clue Hunt. At the time, he'd thought that was the most intense thing that he would ever experience. And during that time, he supposed that something of a romantic nature had "just happened" between himself and Amy. But he didn't like dwelling on the Hunt for too long; it brought back too many memories of Natalie and their mother.
"I guess that I know what you mean," he said with a shrug.
Vibrant color seemed to flood her cheeks, though perhaps it was just blotchy redness left over from when she'd been crying. A knowing look flashed across her face.
"Oh," was all she said.
It occurred to Ian that he didn't know how Amy had even found out about his one-time feelings for her. He certainly hadn't told her; he had been going through a phase of low self-esteem at the time and had been too reluctant to make those feelings known. He didn't particularly care to bring up the topic now, when it had already become moot, but even so, Ian Kabra didn't like not knowing things.
Maybe Natalie let it slip at some point, just to bother me….
No. He wouldn't think of Natalie. It only made that deathly cold feeling sweep over him again, making him wonder if perhaps a large part of him hadn't died along with his sister. He began drumming his fingers on the table again, trying to divert his attention elsewhere. But he still felt cold. That irritating, burning prickle in his nose was starting up again, the way it did when he was thinking hard about not crying when it was all that it felt right to do.
Amy seemed to notice the memories taking hold of him again. Thank goodness, she didn't say anything this time.
No, she just took hold of his fingers and clutched them tightly. Her hand was so much smaller than Ian's, and it was shaking slightly. He noticed a long, fresh scar across the back of her hand, presumably gained in the last stand against the Vespers.
She was crying again. Without the slightest sound this time, as if not to break the sacred silence that Ian liked so much, but she was definitely crying. Salty beads gleamed in the light as they rolled down her cheeks.
But there was still that determined set in her jaw, the one that had made her a better leader than Ian would have dreamed possible two years ago. She was resolved to make him feel better, he realized. Which was strange, because the only things that he had done here were to wander around purposelessly and occasionally upset Amy and the others somehow.
She still feels sorry for you, a voice in his head reminded him. Shouldn't that offend you?
Maybe not. Pity or not, it didn't feel too terrible to know that someone wanted you to be happy, whether you resisted that person's efforts or not. And Amy's hand was warm; he could feel it pushing away a bit of that dreadful cold feeling, though not all of it.
You know, if Natalie could see you right now, she would tease you mercilessly.
The thought—silly as it was, and as much as it logically ought to have depressed him again—made Ian break into a genuine smile. Possibly the first one he'd worn since Natalie's death.
Amy couldn't read his mind, and obviously, she came to her own conclusions about why he was staring at their intertwined hands and grinning. She jerked her fingers away, losing a great deal the softness in her gaze, even as she gained even more noticeable redness in her face.
"D-don't get any wrong ideas," she said. "I'm just getting over… over Evan, remember, and I'm going out with Jake."
"Wrong ideas?" Ian scoffed. "You're misunderstanding me again. I wouldn't pursue a relationship with you if someone paid me—and I'm poor now."
Oh… That had come out a bit rudely again, hadn't it? Amy's cheeks continued to burn, and the anger returned to her face. (At least it was better than sadness.)
"Excuse me?"
Ian winced. "Sorry. What I meant to say was, I'm not very interested in forming any kind of relationship. With anyone, not just you. Ever."
Now, she looked surprised for an entirely different reason. "Never?" she said. "Why not?"
"What kind of idiot would set himself up to experience the same kind of heartbreak when he loses another person he truly cares about?" He rolled his eyes. "That would be stupid."
Amy seemed to be under the mistaken impression that he was insulting her again. Why did she automatically assume that everything that came out of his mouth was meant as a direct affront to her?
"I told you, I didn't ask for something like that to happen with Jake. It just did…. I can't help it if the timing was incredibly bad."
Well, there was one thing that he could say for Amy Cahill and her determined silence-breaking: she could push away that hollow feeling inside of him. What he was feeling now… was more like the urge to irritate her, like at those old "reunions" back when her grandmother had been alive. But Amy would have to understand—at least he was feeling something, right?
"I can't help but wonder if you just needed someone to cling to in such a distressing situation," he said levelly, "And maybe Jack was the closest person around."
Yes—the instant, angry flush in his persistent companion's face—amusing. "I'm not one of those people who always needs to be dating someone! And his name is Jake, not Jack."
"Funny, he seems like more of a Jack to me."
She glared, but she didn't take the bait. "I'm not scared of being alone. It's just that moving on is better than drifting around forever and never being able to do so." Her face softened. "If you stay in the past forever, Ian, it never gets a chance to become the past."
"I don't understand what the problem with that is," said Ian. "That would imply that it's still the present, and…"
"And you still can't change it," Amy said, cutting him off knowingly. "No matter how long you dwell on it, thinking of what you could have done differently, you won't get another chance to do it over again."
He didn't answer. Of course he knew such a simple fact as this…. But at the same time, he had been reliving Natalie's death for weeks, trying to figure out all of the ways he could have prevented it.
Amy continued speaking, heedless to his thoughts. "I know that, because I go back, too. To Evan—how I should have been watching him more closely; he wasn't a fighter; I should have kept an eye on him, warned him…. And there are other things that I should have done differently, too: spent more time with him while I still had the chance, noticed sooner how Dan was getting depressed,… not let my mother run back into that fire…."
She was tearing up again, but even so, she didn't look very vulnerable. That same determination still flared in her eyes, more forceful than the tears, the resolve that made Ian think, She's a very remarkable young woman, a thought that had been previously reserved for his sister and few others… and definitely not a Madrigal.
"But I didn't," she said, "And I can't change it now, no matter what I do. So either I can linger on it forever and let it eat away at me and ruin my life… Or I can move on with my life. Moving on too quickly is better than never letting yourself move on at all, isn't it?" She paused, catching her breath, and stared at him quizzically. "What are you smiling at?"
Ian hadn't realized that he was smiling at all. "Nothing."
"What?" she insisted.
"Nothing, I said." It wasn't as if he was happy, really—still just amused. "It's just that I never would have imagined that the shy, nervous Amy Cahill that I used to know would willingly give such a long and passionate speech… especially to help me."
"Well, why shouldn't I want to help you?" she said.
"I could probably name a few reasons. But I feel like you have already made up your mind, so there isn't much of a point."
"No, there isn't." Amy shot him a friendly smile, warm and genuine.
The Vesper threat is over and done with now, Ian thought to himself with hesitance. If they aren't around to cause trouble… and take away anyone that I try to care about….
What kind of naïve thoughts were those? He'd been around the idealistic Cahills for too long. Whether the Vespers were currently out of the picture or not, friendship still wasn't an option. The Vespers would come back, or some other threat would arise….
It isn't even an option, Ian. Don't be an idiot.
He started to stand up from the table, a frown deepening on his face.
"Where are you going?" Amy asked. She looked bewildered, as if she had sensed a sudden drop in the room's temperature.
"Back to your guest room. And I really don't want to be disturbed, thank you."
He turned toward the library doors, but it wasn't long before he heard a chair being pushed back and the sound of feet racing after him.
"Wait a minute, will you?"
He ignored her.
"Ian, wait." A pale hand clamped down on his arm, firmer than he had expected.
Even so, he brushed her off, without looking her in the eyes, and continued toward the doors.
"Ian!"
The next thing he knew, he was being tackled. Or, he might as well have been, because the force of Amy's unanticipated hug almost knocked him off his feet. And in fact, even if it wasn't intended as a tackle, he still wasn't sure that it wasn't an attack of some sort, since her arms were wrapped around his neck so tightly that he would have thought that she was attempting to strangle him, if he hadn't known her better.
"Amy, let go of me," he choked out, squirming a little.
"No," she said firmly.
He tried again—even though part of him was already aware that it was futile. "Let go, now."
"No!" she exclaimed, as if he had just proposed that she throw him off a cliff or something. "I'm not going to let you go… or we both know that you're just going to go up to your room and retreat into your own head and stop talking to us again!"
"And that would be such a bad thing?"
"Yes!" Her mouth was so close to his ear that her upraised voice caused him to flinch. "Sorry. But… I've already been through this with Dan. He got depressed after the Clue Hunt, started to ignore me sometimes."
Amy continued to cling to him as she talked. Ian just listened, because he was smart enough to realize that, if he tried to interrupt her or get away, she would probably just tackle-hug him again.
"We had understood each other so well that it was almost like we could read each other's minds," she said, her voice breaking, "But suddenly… he was so distant that I couldn't reach him anymore, no matter how hard I tried. Ian, I… I don't want to go through that again."
He paused, taking this in. He could feel tears seeping through the fabric covering his shoulder. It would have been easy to just wrap his arms around her in return, but again, becoming marginally close to anyone was not an option anymore.
"So, what you're telling me is—what, exactly?" he said slowly. "You felt like you had lost Danie… er, Dan… and you don't want anything like that to happen again? Don't tell me that you've decided to think of me like your brother, Amy Cahill. I don't think that I could tolerate that right now."
She shook her head. "No. Nothing like that at all."
Her arms were still encircling his neck, like twin boa constrictors or something. This felt uncomfortable. It was making it difficult to breathe.
"Well, why don't you just go cling to Jack? He would like that, I think. Whereas I have little interest in being Boyfriend Number Three."
Amy recoiled immediately, releasing him from her death grip. Her face had taken on that seething scarlet color that clashed so badly against her hair. "What? F-for your information, it's not like tha…! It's Jake, not Jack…. And I…"
Ian took his opportunity to escape through the library doors. A golden opportunity, just like silence. Which he would have a lot of once he made it back to his guest room in peace—assuming that Amy didn't come running after him again, trying to comfort him.
She did. Or at least, she did come running after him. She didn't seem intent on doing any kind of comforting now, however. She seemed far too busy with trying to justify the situation with the Rosenbloom boy (justify it as much to herself as to him, Ian thought).
"I already told you, I can't help the way things turned out! If… If we went through so much together, Jake and I, that it made us close. It's not like I expected it to happen. I really cared about Evan, and i-it's not like I wanted that to change…."
With a sigh, Ian turned around. Amy was standing several yards back—with no intent to come any closer to him, it seemed, which was fine—and there were tears pouring down her face again.
"Look, Ian… Y-you don't have to say things like that. Can't you see that I already feel awful? Evan died because of me—because he cared about me, and helping me is what brought him into this mess. He cared enough to die for me… even though I was cheating on him. It's not like I wanted to do that. But… I didn't want to break his heart…. So instead, he got a b-bullet put right through it… and I-I never even got to apologize…."
Whether he'd been trying to escape from her a moment ago or not, she was sobbing so hard now that he could barely make out her words. She looked absolutely miserable, and Ian realized that, even if she had seemed content over the past few weeks, how could she have been happy, truly? It was a coping mechanism, just like Ian's retreating into his own shell.
The Vespers had broken Amy, too. She just didn't want to admit it, because for some reason, everyone else seemed to have decided that they were going to lean on her and depend on her to be the strong leader.
Too much pressure, all bearing down on the shoulders of someone who is too young to carry it, thought Ian. Perhaps he knew how that felt.
He tried to think of something encouraging to say to her. "Er… Well, maybe it's good that you didn't apologize. He didn't know that there was anything for you to apologize for…. And maybe he died happily, not knowing. In his eyes… maybe dying to help the girl he loved was good enough."
No, that wasn't right. Amy was crying even harder now, the tears falling as fast as rain down her flushed cheeks.
"Jake said he'd die for me. He told me that he had loved me ever since we met. And… I said I loved him back. W-we thought we were going to die at any minute. I thought, 'What do I have to lose?'" She sniffled, trying to brush the moisture from her face. It was coming down too fast. "'I love you' are three huge words, and… I haven't really known him long enough to know whether or not I mean it. But… I d-do like him. And it made him so happy…." She sniffled again. "Do you have a tissue?"
Instinctively, Ian reached into his shirt pocket, where he had always kept a handkerchief once upon a time. But it wasn't there. Of course it wasn't—he was a disheveled wreck these days. His hair wasn't even combed correctly.
He held up his empty hands and shook his head. "I don't, sorry."
Amy sighed and took a moment to collect herself, to slow (if not stop) the flow of tears spilling from her eyes. "It's fine. It's just that… I feel like you and everyone else keep judging me for this…. And I would judge me, too. I remember how I always hated those girls who went from one boy to another, and I would think, 'I bet they don't even care about any of them.' But that's wrong—I did care, about both of them, and I didn't want to hurt anybody, and…" She cast a mournful look up at the ceiling. "And somewhere along the line, things got out of hand."
"As you say here, 'no kidding,'" said Ian.
She looked like she wanted to punch him. He hoped she wouldn't, because he had seen her throw some very nasty punches against the Vespers.
But no, she just hung her head. "I couldn't help it. No matter how much you try and fight it, sometimes, you just can't help but care about someone."
"Are you still talking about yourself here, or have you gone back to trying to convince me to be friendly?"
She blinked in surprise. Then, slowly, a tearful grin spread across her face. "I wasn't meaning it that way, but since you're taking it like that… Sure."
Ian paused. It wasn't even an option. But… "Amy, about what you told me when you got back from the hospital… Did you really see Natalie and Isab—my mother?"
She nodded.
"And were they really… happy?"
Amy's eyes seemed to shine with earnest (or maybe it was from crying, but Ian preferred to think that it was earnest). "Yes."
"So, if I mourn Natalie for the rest of eternity… it's essentially pointless?"
"Exactly. She's happy, and she wouldn't want you to be anything less. You don't deserve that."
Amy Cahill never ceased to surprise him. Saying things like that, things that she wouldn't have dared say two years ago or even more recently than that. Words that gave him some kind of strange, warm feeling in his chest, that drove out the cold, void feeling of losing his sister. Amy was certainly something else—in a good way, though.
All right, so maybe the most basic, casual kind of friendship wouldn't be too detrimental.
For some reason, she seemed stunned—paralyzed, even—when Ian bridged the distance between them and enveloped her in a hug, even if it was a light, tentative hug. Honestly, he was rather amused to see her turn brilliant red yet again and start to stammer incoherently.
"What is the matter, Amy?" he asked all too innocently. "I thought you wanted me to start being more friendly."
She tried to glower (a rather pitiful attempt, ruined by the embarrassment and shock that was still on full display on her features). "B-but this is not what I meant!"
"Oh?" He grinned. "Should I just go back to my room and resume ignoring your existence, then?"
"No!" Again, the close proximity of her voice to his ear caused Ian to flinch. She started again, more quietly. "I mean, please don't do that. But all the same…"
"You'd prefer to have more personal space?"
"I…" Amy hesitated. "Well, I guess we both need a hug right now, don't we?"
He didn't answer. He couldn't, really, because Amy was hugging him again, and she didn't look sad or cross anymore, and it felt… nice (the hug, or the fact that she was happy, or perhaps both at once).
Of course, there was that irritating, nagging voice in the back of his mind that told him, She doesn't need this right now, and you most certainly do not.
But Ian tried to shut this out. Friends were permitted to hug, weren't they? Especially after they had gone through something so shattering and life-changing and, well, intense. Especially something that, truth be told, had broken them both and was now in the process of slowly putting them both back together in ways altogether different then they had been before.
Ian allowed himself to smile into Amy's unkempt auburn hair. "You know, I think we'll make out just fine, in the end."
He felt Amy's body instantly freeze.
"What's wrong?"
"You don't have to say it like that."
Ian was genuinely perplexed. "What did I say?"
He couldn't see her face, but she sounded sheepish. "'Make out,' you said…."
"What?" He groaned. "You just have a twisted mind. For the last time, I am not flirting with you."
She seemed to relax.
He snickered. "Believe me, if I was going to come onto you, Amy, you would know it without a shadow of a doubt. And it would work like a charm."
Amy let go of him instantly, glaring. "Knock it off, Ian." But she didn't really look upset.
"What?" he said. "Don't friends tease each other?"
This simple question brought a wide smile to her face. "I think you're right. We really will make out just fine."
"It, Amy. Make it out just fine."
"Oh." She flushed for what seemed like the hundredth time that afternoon. "Sorry, that's what I meant. 'It.'"
"Of course you did."
She glared, still blushing furiously. "Stop flirting!"
"I told you, I'm not flirting. I just find it amusing to make you turn so red."
"Are you always this obnoxious?"
"No," he said, trying to stifle a chuckle. "Usually, when I'm feeling my best, I'm much worse."
And suddenly, Amy burst out laughing. And Ian laughed, too.
They would make it out just fine.
Author's Note: Stop lying, Ian, you're flirting. (But at least you're not moping and refusing to talk to anyone anymore, right? XD)
Anyway, again, I'm aware that this probably sucked. It's basically unedited, as well as the fact that half of it was written when I was either reeling from the end of "Day of Doom" or half-asleep. (I know: the times I choose to write...) But I just wanted to write about how Ian deals with losing his sister (and Isabel, but I'm not sure that even her Dying Moment of Awesome could manage to redeem her in his eyes), as well as write about how I think Amy would feel about the whole Evan/Jake thing (because let's face it: she was OOC for a great deal of Day of Doom, and even before that, I feel... and I wanted to at least give that the bit of justification I could, because it confuses/bothers me).
...And, again, I wanted to write some Amian to make up for the traumatizing sadness that was Natalie and Evan dying in DoD. :(
So... hope you liked it, and review, please? :)
~Lily