Disclaimer: *Chibi Trunks tugs uncomfortably at the leotard. Jack sits on the ground, sharpening the end of his sign to a point.*

A/N: I see that you all liked the last chapter. ^.^ Don't kill me!

Something about Jack's character that you should all be aware of: he is the staple character that goes chibi without meaning to, despite (and without losing) his serious demeanor. So think Vash, think Kenshin, think Kyo, think irked Inu Yasha. Continue! ^.^ Please don't kill me.

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Petrified Tears
chapter 106



He smiled as he saw her approach, too-long blue jeans and a bright red tube top, a white dress shirt tied over top, two pigtail-braids swinging in the breeze. As much as he would have liked to avoid her right now, he really didn't want to. As angry as he was pretending to be, he was happy. This was his Pan.

Seeing him, she broke into a run, waving a hand high above her head, a full-fledged smile like he hadn't seen in ages, bright across her face and in her eyes.

"Jack!"

He was still supposed to be mad at her, and he tried to force away the smile into a frown, but as she collided with him, arms wrapped tightly around him, knocking them both back several feet, he couldn't help it. Arms lifted of their own will, encircling her.

This was the reunion he'd wanted.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, refusing to let go and refusing to let him let go, knowing that he didn't want to, and that he wouldn't continue hold her to if she didn't make him. "I didn't know…I honestly thought…"

He scrambled out of her grasp, gripping two shoulders and pushing her away from him, pushing away the subject completely. He didn't let himself smile, didn't let himself show any real emotion, but he knew she knew he was happy, knew she could feel it inside of him, just as he could feel her stiffened muscles through the overshirt.

"Shouldn't it be snowing here?" he demanded. "Shouldn't you be wearing something a little more substantial?"

She relaxed and smiled in relief. "It's only middle of spring back home. Middle of autumn here. The air won't be chill for another week or two."

"'Home'?" he repeated gingerly.

She shrugged, her eyes looking away as if it was just a slip of the tongue. His hands fell to his sides; something had happened. Something monumental that she wanted to run away from.

"But I thought…"

"We were never engaged," she told him. "It was a scam of his mother's. She wants us to be, but we're not even together-"

"But you want to be."

She blinked startled blue eyes and looked up at him. "What?"

"Don't tell me it's a lie when you want it with all of your heart to be true."

She smiled shakily and relaxed again, grasping one of his hands and tugging him down the busy street, her hand in his making him feel a little more comfortable in the city, a little more like he belonged here. At least with her.

"You always have been able to read me."

He shrugged, a movement that seemed to accuse her of the same.

"What happened, Pan?"

The morning sky was strangely clear, clouds drifting lazily overhead. They paused at a corner, waiting for the light change, losing themselves in the crowds they had often gone out of their ways to avoid back home. Two sets of hands found two sets of pockets. He turned his eyes to the ground a few feet before them, she lifted her face to the sun. The silence was comfortable, saying more than words ever did.

Some time after lunch found them in a little diner, Pan ordering him coffee and herself a soda in a language he didn't understand, a few other words leaving her lips that he might have recognized, but that didn't register. A waitress returned, carrying a large platter of rice balls.

Onigiri, Pan told him as she picked one up and held it before his face. He tried to push her hand away and lay no claim to hunger, but she wouldn't let him, and he reluctantly obliged, taking the rice ball and tasting. It wasn't bad, but then, he'd always loved rice.

She laughed as he ate around the fish he'd known would be inside.

They'd said nothing since he'd broached the subject, and he didn't mind. That was the way they'd always been, and the way they'd probably always be. Sure, they had once been able to talk for hours on end, and had, but then they had discovered each other's love for expression, for warm silences. And that was that. Any other conversation felt wrong to them, talking out loud said too little.

Sometimes even said too much.

Slouching back in the half of the booth he'd claimed, he looked out the window, watching a little girl pull her brother down the street, both of them laughing. He came up behind her, scooping her up into his arms and slinging her over his shoulder, spinning them both around once or twice before she wriggled back down to the ground and dragged him onward.

"So Mr. Wonderful finally cracked," he said quietly, smiling privately to himself, looking at her out of the corner of his eye as he watched the happy expressions of the children as they ran past.

Pan froze and lowered her rice ball to her plate.

"Jack?"

Steel blue eyes turned to face her and he smiled. "The guy's crazy for you, Pan."

A blush rose up from her neck across her face, coving every exposed inch of skin from the bust up. Her face tilted towards the table, but instead of that lovey-dovey-happy-girl look he'd always seen on Molly's freckled face, Pan looked confused, downright lost even.

"I noticed," she said quietly, pushing away her plate.

She said nothing more and he turned away his gaze, lifting his eyes to the pink and purple clouds overhead in the yellow sky, acutely aware of how late it had grown, as if he were watching sand pour through an hourglass.

"He says he loves me," she said as she left some money on the table and stood, leading him out of the diner. She shrugged her shoulders out of her overshirt and she played with the sleeves nervously, unfolding them and picking at the button holes in the cuffs. "Last night before I went home. He told me."

"And you told him?"

She sighed and let go of the sleeves, letting the shirt hang from her forearms like a shawl. Blue eyes lifted to the skies as they found themselves in a residential area, looking past the telephone and electrical lines that seemed to create a net between the streets and the heavens, not letting angels descend, or the fallen ascend.

"And you told him?" he prodded, eyes growing hard as he watched her. She sighed.

"Nothing."

"What?"

"Nothing. I told him nothing. I stood there and stared at him. And then I freaked. I fought my way past him and to my father. I…" She blushed. "I ran out of there so fast that I forgot to stop and get my things from his sister's room…your card was in the back pocket of my khakis too."

"Just like you to know exactly how you feel and not tell anybody, even when the opportunity's been handed to you."

Blue eyes bore into his own, she scowled angrily.

"Hypocrite."

He shrugged it off, as if saying that at least he owned up to it. Beside him, she sighed, stomping her feet a few times. He smirked as she threw a little fit, taking the time to tug on the pant leg of his cargo khakis, adjusting the way they fell onto his sneaker.

"What am I going to dooooo, Jack?" She turned to him, tugging on his arm, her eyes pleading for help. Big blue orbs of confusion looked up at him, and he couldn't help but notice the tears that he doubted she was aware of.

This was really tearing her up inside.

"What you always do: act like nothing happened, and then let it all pour out when you're alone with him."

She took half a second to glare at him before jumping a little in aggravation and throwing herself against him dramatically. He chuckled lightly, standing still, letting her have out the emotions that she'd been bottling since the previous night and who knew how long.

"It doesn't work that way," she mumbled into his shirt. Rolling his eyes behind his glasses, he raised an arm and patted her sarcastically in the center of her back, like a brother would.

"Why not? It's worked with me for the last four years. You and Molly both. I don't see how this is any different." He didn't soften his voice for her, didn't fill it with sympathy. He just lowered it, pointing out the obvious like he always did, if maybe a little gentler than normal.

"You never…it's just different."

He pushed his hand back into his pocket, feeling almost foolish as they stood on the sidewalk right before each other, her head fallen onto his shoulder, himself acting as if she were a few paces off.

"How is it different."

"Jack…you never…"

"What didn't I ever do," he prodded, his voice soft and almost actually gentle for once. She sighed against him, shaking her head. "What? What didn't I do?"

"You never did," she whispered quietly.

There. It was out into the open. No regret or sadness was in her voice, just the fact that she'd never felt that way or wanted him to.

He was more a brother to her. A friend who she trusted above all others.

And what she said was true. There were things that could be forgiven as a friend, but not as something more.

"Why'd you freak, Pan."

She straightened and they started walking again. Around them the sky darkened into a million purples, dark blue and black clouds clustered on the horizon. Pan pulled her overshirt back on, wrapping it tightly around her from a wind that wasn't much more than a breeze.

"You really don't know how you feel about him, do you?"

She shook her head lamely and threw herself down in the grass of a moonlit yard. Cautiously, waiting for someone to come out and yell at them, he lowered himself down next to her, laying back and looking up at the stars. She flopped back next to him, pillowing her head on her hands, and sighed.

"I left the country to find myself. Also, to get away from him. The concept was just too weird…I mean, ok, he's my best friend, so I guess that's ok, but everyone I know looks at us like brother and sister. That's just…"

"Wrong," he supplied, propping up both knees and folding his hands on his chest. Beside him, she nodded.

"And I guess I did…I mean, ok, so I didn't date in Cali…except for that one really awkward night that we cracked and gave into everyone at Bicycle. But, I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. It felt nice not to have to worry about liking anyone for a change, and not having to worry about leaving someone behind or something like that. And when I got home, it was just like it was when I was dating in high school. Sure, deep down I knew that he was more than a friend, but I was more than content and actually more than a little happy with the way things were. Things were relaxed, really homey, you know?"

"Being content isn't always being happy."

She sighed and flung both arms out to her side, one slapping him hard in the chest. His eyes bulged a little and he struggled for a breath of air, but he said nothing and merely grasped her hand, playing with her fingers.

"You're not helping me," she whined.

He shook his head with a smirk, knowing that she was aware that he knew everything that had happened since she'd left, but that she was clueless about how he knew. A few moments passed, the stars brightening above, the sun completely gone.

"Things have just been really confusing this last week…," she started quietly, "and then there was that staged dinner that I wasn't aware of until it fell into my lap…that he wasn't aware of, and then last night… What am I supposed to think, Jack?"

"What do you want to think?"

She didn't answer then. Above, the heavens stretched, the moon peaking above the treetops. Life on the streets died, all became still. Nobody came out demanding they lay on someone else's lawn.

"You sound like you just need to get away for a while, figure things out for yourself," he mumbled, pushing his fingers through hers, curling an arm under his head.

Beside him, she smiled.

"Get up," she said quietly, getting to her own feet. When he made no motion to follow her orders, she leaned down and grasped his hand, hauling him up.

"Why?" he asked, amused, watching as she tried to get his knees to lock.

"I want to go flying. I want to show you something."

He raised an eyebrow, but complied, letting her wrap two arms stronger than his own around his middle, feeling the familiar sensation of swallowing his stomach as they slowly left the ground.

The universe seemed to stretch out before them as they flew lazily through the skies, or rather, as Pan darted this way and that and he did his best to hold his own in a hovering position, short blond hair ruffling madly in the wind.

Stars lay before him, manmade stars that filled the island country, shaping it before him and beneath the clouds, some stars so bright to be blinding, others so dim he might have missed them if he hadn't been staring down there for a while.

"Isn't it absolutely gorgeous?" she breathed, attacking him in a hug from behind. Grateful that she didn't let go, he grasped both her arms and stopped fighting gravity, letting himself relaxed.

"It's like the map of the light that they sold at the fair last winter," he mumbled, and she giggled quietly.

"It is a map of the lights, silly. Only it's real. It's not a photograph."

"It's amazing."

Clouds drifted around them, brushed up against them like fingers might touch water. Already on the eastern horizon he could see the skies growing lighter. The water below them was almost so dark as to be black, but shone a bright electric blue where the sun's light touched it. He didn't want to think about how high up they might be, didn't want to think about how thin the oxygen was. He was thankful he had never been a heavy breather.

"This is what I was babbling about all those years back in California," she said quietly. "These are the lights of Japan I wanted to show you. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing so beautiful."

He smirked, looking back at her through the glare of stars above and below that lay across his glasses.

"I can think of a few things."

She blushed, but then shook her head, turning them towards the ground.. "I should probably get you back to the hotel, your grandfather's probably worried sick." Immediately, his heart started racing in anticipation, and she didn't disappoint him, letting them freefall and drift and twirl and roll.

"Do you know what you want to do yet, Angel?" he yelled back at her over the wind, gripping to her arms, knowing she hated being called that.

She laughed, leaning them into a tight spiral, until there was no up, there was no down, there was only the air, only them, suspended somewhere in time, somewhere between dawn and midnight.

"I take this as a yes?"

"I know what I need to do, yes!" she yelled back, pulling them away from gravity until they drifted lightly on the breeze, the air smelling of sweet salt and memories.

"You know what I want?" he asked her as she banked away from the lights below them, towards the black-blue seas, descending so close that the spray from the waves surrounded them, that he could have reach down and touched the water below had he wanted to.

"What do you want, Jack?" she asked, pulling him close to her as they landed on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Before them, the world was starting to light with pinks and yellows, soft lilacs and softer indigoes.

They stood side by side, not needing to look at each other, not wanting to.

"I want to get married."

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A/N: *hides* Don't hurt me! I'm getting there, I swear! I'm not stalling! Review? Gagh! *dives under desk as crazy readers come after her*

-Panabelle ;P
All will be explained in time, and yet time just doesn't seem to exist anymore.

P.S. To whoever asked, no, PT is NOT going to have a sequel. I'm sorry if I aluded to that.