WHAT YOU WISH FOR
Chapter FIVE!!
Friends and Family


Jesse slid off of Janus' bed and slumped on the floor. She lay there for a
moment, panting, then noticed something small and flat and dusty under the
bed. Curious, she reached for it.

It was an old, tattered book, whose pages had once been blank, but now were
filled with Janus' neat, hard-edged handwriting. The ink was blue, spreading
purple at the edges from age. She remembered this book. Janus had usually
kept it in a jacket pocket, close to his heart. In it were poems, thoughts,
memories... Secrets. She'd only actually touched it once before, when Janus
had dropped it and she had picked it up to give it back to him. He had
snatched it away, looking horrified. And now... He'd left it behind? Jesse
cautiously flipped through the pages, half-expecting Janus to come storming
into the room, angry that she'd found his notebook. But the door remained
closed, the house was still and silent.

Jesse read a few snatches of writing here and there, looking for something
that might help her understand Janus-the things he had done, why he had done
them. As she turned the pages, she noticed some of Janus' sketches, mostly
of people she didn't recognize. One of the pictures was actually a painting,
done on a scrap of canvas and pasted into the book. It looked like her. A
lot like her. But the date on the page read OCTOBER 17, 1513. That was
hundreds of years before Jesse had been born, so who-she turned the page,
looking. On the back, scribbled hastily on the buckled, aged paper was
"Maria Amoura Hunter, 1513."
Hunter? Janus' mother...


Jesse cradled her broken arm, now set in a pink cast, as she sat in the
seat next to Janus on the Dragonfly. Janus was staring out the window
boredly.* Thinking, * Jesse guessed, then blinked and looked again. * No...
Looking for enemy planes... No rest for the wicked, I guess, which means
Janus doesn't get any rest either. * She watched his blue eyes, reflecting
the light from outside but still dark with emotion, with... Guilt? Maybe it
was because of Estre. Jesse sighed. Maybe she had taken it too far, maybe he
had his reasons... But...

"Where are we going again?" Janus asked suddenly, turning his fiery-cold
gaze on her. Jesse jumped and blushed a little. She'd been leaning rather
close.
"South America," She finally managed to say. "Not back to that awful
temple, thank goodness. To see my mother."

Janus turned a shade of white that made his dark blue eyes stand out even
more. "Y-your what..?"

"My mother," Jesse replied, casually turning away from his burning stare.
"You know. Dad and my mom are divorced... So my mom lives in South America."
She turned back to him and asked, "You * have * a mother, don't you?" And
immediately wished she hadn't.

"I... I used to," Janus replied softly. "But I've... I've been alive for
awhile, and since she really didn't have anything to do with... What
happened..." He looked back out the window. "She died of old age a very long
time ago." And he refused to say another word for the rest of the trip.

Jesse had hoped that the warmth and colors of her mother's town would lift
Janus' mood, but he seemed bored with it all. He stepped out of the plane,
straightened his collar, then looked around at the scenery and seemed to
just dismiss it all. * I hate that haughty attitude of his, * Jesse found
herself thinking. * Can't he appreciate anything? * Then she remembered that
he'd been around for almost five hundred years, and concluded that he'd
probably seen it all a few too many times.
"You think the doctor and the boys will be all right by themselves at the
compound?" Janus asked, more out of a need for conversation than actual
worry.
Race came around the other side of the plane from the cockpit. "They're *
his * boys," He said darkly. "Benton isn't incompetent." An unsaid 'unlike
you' rang loud in the silence.
Janus didn't even bother to give Race his characteristic frosty glare.
Something was bothering him. He was thinking about Estrelania, about what
she'd said to him to hurt him. 'She's got red hair, right? Just like your
mother...' Janus brushed dust off his coat nervously. Jesse really was just
a younger version of his own mother-and if Estella-
"Janus? Janus, come on, let's get in the car before my dad loses it." Jesse
cast a worried glance at her father, who was looking decidedly murderous.
Janus hastened to the car, for a moment losing his cool, collected
demeanor, And sat in the backseat with Jesse. Race was sitting in the
passenger's seat up front, and someone Janus didn't recognize was driving.
Janus eyed him warily. Jesse caught him. "Something wrong?" She whispered.
Janus indicated the driver, leaning closer to Jesse to keep the
conversation to themselves. "I don't know him..."
Jesse glanced at the driver, then back at Janus. "So? Neither do I-he's a
chauffeur. He drives. It doesn't matter who he is."
Janus looked out the side window. "I'm a guardian. It's my job to know who
he is. To protect you."
Jesse felt warm all over, and she smiled. "Well if you want, you can ask
him for his credentials when we get there. I'm sure he won't mind too much."
Janus was still staring out the window. "It might be too late by then... Oh
well... I suppose if something happened I could take care of it, but..."
"But?"
Janus covered his eyes with his hand, sighing. "But I'm so tired..."

Jesse turned a few more pages. She saw a page with a lot of close, hastily
scribbled writing, and one line in bold, capital letters that read
IMMORTALITY IS A GODDAMNED CURSE. Jesse winced. She'd never heard Janus
swear past the occasional 'dammit!' that he hissed when he was angry, and
seeing it here, she almost couldn't believe that it had been he who wrote
it. She kept turning the pages.
She found a few pages that had what seemed to be pieces of poems on them,
one or two-lined rhyming sentences that didn't seem to fit together-"Glass
diamonds, glass roses, glass women and glass prose... Everything is made of
glass, everything is made to be broken and swept up by the pretty maids in
Miss Mary's garden." Under this, written in small, light writing, as if the
words themselves were thinking, was "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does
your garden grow?"
Jesse shook her head and got back up on Janus' bed to read. If she hadn't
known him personally before reading his notebook, she would have thought
Janus was insane. "But he-he wasn't," Jesse said aloud. "He was just...
Smart... And..." She trailed off and paused at another page.
"How old am I? Seventeen, fifteen, four hundred ninety seven... I thought
my life ended when I left my hometown, only to have it end once more in the
jaws of those dark waters. I have a three thousand year sentence for
something that I never did, or didn't mean to do, anyway. I think having to
live this long is punishment enough, and I haven't even carried out a third
of my sentence..."
Jesse was slowly beginning to realize that maybe the Janus she had known
was not the real Janus... That what she had fallen in love with was a mask
of politeness and duty that wasn't really him at all... It scared her to
think of it.


TO BE CONTINUED...

((You know what, I barely think anyone's reading this anymore... If this vow
of silence stuff keeps up I'm not gonna waste my time on this fic any
longer... Poo! I need feedback, I need reviews...
Sigh... Ja ne.
--Samalander))