(A/N: Lust Jaw now has it's own guest fanart section! Check it out on my website, under the WA fanfiction area. Submissions are always welcome! )
Virginia did not posses the calm needed to fall asleep, though she wanted to dearly. She lay down limply on the bed, pillow squeezed firmly between her arms, like how one would hug a favored stuffed toy or another sleeping person. Her mind wandered freely to places she could not remember, a strange conscious blankness enveloping her where time seemed not to exist. This was the pit of grievous depression. Her face was pressed against the soft pillow, one hand dangled off the edge of the bed, slack and disregarded. Virginia just didn't care.
She had heard many different voices in the room, familiar, yet she didn't bother to try and recognize the differentiating pitches and tones, it was all just a kind of background noise that made no imprint on her at all. There was talking, fragments of speech, questions and a short but heated argument, accompanied by the sound of somebody being beaten mildly by a stick. Virginia blinked, coming out of a reverie she hadn't realized she had undertaken. Her right pistol holster pressed into her side as she lay down, suddenly reminding her of the task at hand. That was right, they were going to kill Clive. Understanding this, her eyes began to water again, hands curling slightly into the mattress of the bed and off the side.
As she did this, her hand made contact with another's, and she hesitated, disconcerted. Somebody was holding her hand. They were wearing gloves, a soft and thin variety of leather with the tips of the fingers cut off, the skin underneath slightly colder than an average person, but not by too much. Virginia felt a small squeeze, and the other hand holding hers tightened their grip. She understood. "Jet?"
"Hn."
"What's going on?" Her voice was roughened a little by a long period of total silence, like someone just waking up from a long slumber. Brushing her face up against the pillow rubbed away the tears just bordering on her eyes, comforted by the android's soft yet callous voice. It seemed like some time had passed, the air was cooler and the room darker, haunted by the shadows of night-time. It was night, filled with darkness.
Jet was sitting on the empty space of the bed that did not have Virginia on it, the boy sitting upright with his head bowed and his hand holding Virginia's, listening in on the conversations downstairs. It had been running for a long time. Gallows had burst into the room a while ago waving a piece of paper wildly and ranting something too rushed to be understood, followed by the meeker brother who tried to calm Gallows down and decipher his words. Halle quickly shut him up, insulted him a couple of times and managed to rationalise exactly what he said. Catherine came soon after, a small book under her arm, and joined in the discussion. From then on, tension rose and Jet sensed a bizarre wonder mixed with fierce hope. It sounded like the Baskar brothers had discovered something.
But Jet didn't want to interfere. He didn't understand what was going on very well, and decided that the best way for him to help things was to stay clear out of the way. He polished his ARM again, reloaded the weapon with silver ammunition, and sat down beside Virginia until she would notice him, truth be told, he was a little worried about her. Which was strange, because he had never worried about her before. "Not much. I think they think they might've found out some stuff." Hesitating for a moment, Jet let go of her hand and lightly touched the back of her head, her hair was incredibly soft and smooth, a pretty dark brown. Jet expected some kind of negative reaction for doing this, but all Virginia did was close her eyes and sigh.
"I don't know what to do… I can't… I don't wanna fight him. What are we going to do, Jet?" She went quiet afterwards, as if expecting Jet to give her an answer that'll make it all better. Creating a sigh for himself, the silver-haired boy stared at the ceiling dully, his focus directed inwards. He didn't like to think about things too much, because thought inhibited action, and action was crucial for a drifter to secure his income and his life. Jet was a doer, not a thinker. But, there comes a time when the most impulsive man has to stop and think, and for Jet, he had finally reached that time, because he himself had no concrete idea on what action he was going to take.
"Dunno." He said simply, shrugging his shoulders slightly and finding himself lightly stroking Virginia's hair, biting his lip as he did so. "I guess we'll do what we have to do, it's as simple as that." At his words, Virginia began to sob quietly, and the sound was abhorrent to Jet's ears. "No, look, don't cry. Drifter's aren't supposed to cry." He berated her gently, uncomfortable with his current situation. True, Virginia was a girl, and girl's cried a lot, but she was also his loudmouth leader, and he had to make sure she kept her composure. Jet had to put faith and hope in his leader.
The boy had a flash divine inspiration. That was it. Hope. The thought entering his mind, Jet's Hope Shard glowed lightly in his inventory, the boy pulling out the golden slab and placing it on the bed, in front of Virginia's face. Taking her hand once more, he set it upon the medium and lightly pressed down with his own, making Virginia feel the warm carved insignia on the plate. Almost immediately, her tears stopped, banished by the holy light of the dragon Guardian. She looked at the slab with a mixture of wonderment and calm, hearing Jet speak above her with words she had never expected the silver-haired boy to say.
His violet eyes were distant and unusually filled with emotion, his sense of self absorbed into the words he was relaying, the only physical contact to Filgaia made by the touch of Virginia's hand over his. It was almost as if Jet had gone to another place for advice. "I've changed a lot in the past year," He said slowly, "Not by much, I guess, but enough to make everything seem a little… different. I only saw what I needed to see before I met all of you, and I just skipped everything else, like the world only had one dimension, and that was to secure my income. You listenin'?"
Virginia nodded, distantly hearing another argument start up behind her, but the words were lost in the sea of influence Hope Shard was giving her, overpowering the sadness. And Jet, Jet was it's conduit. He spoke again. "Then, when I got used to travellin' with all of you'se, and was involved with the planet's future, I didn't really give a damn about it, at first. But, gradually, that changed. I finally saw how the grass was dyin' and the trees were gone, somehow I remembered them being there in the first place, so it was a shock to notice that they were all gone. As Adam Kadmon, the healed Filgaia was my first memory, and I had only just remembered it."
Adam Kadmon. Virginia would never had expected Jet to call himself by his real name. It was an artificial word, like a label or barcode for a scientific experiment. And the sad thing was, it was Jet's total and absolute truth. But he had already accepted it, and it bothered him no longer. This was one of the many things that made Jet exactly who he was. Not human, perhaps, but a damn decent individual that Virginia took pride in calling her friend. Yes, one of her closest friends.
"My point is," He continued, "I was lookin' at the world from just my own point of view, I saw only what I wanted to see. Findin' out who I was made me see the world from Filgaia's point of view, everything as a whole, and it…" He went quiet, inwardly deciding whether or not he should be telling Virginia this, "It scared the shit outta me. It was like," He searched for a good describing situation, "Like I had a huge chest of gella, and every day I took a coin out and spent it on stuff. By the end, when I opened the box, nothing was there, and I wondered where the hell all my money went. Does that make sense?" He scratched his mop of silvery hair, abashed.
"Actually, it does." Virginia answered quietly, Jet's words making her feel a little better, although they seemed to have no bearing on her immediate problems to date. In truth, she never would have expected the android to have such a mature approach to life. She belittled him sometimes because he looked so young, but his soul was really as aged as her own, perhaps even more so. Hope Shard's warmth spread up her arm, rushing into her chest and making her feel contented inside. She was calm.
"I saw it that way," Jet nearly whispered, deepening his digression, "And only a little while ago, I started to wonder how other people saw it as well. Your problem, I think, is that you're seeing this only from your own point of view. Think about how Catherine, or even Clive, must feel. If you were Clive, and you had all the same problems and sins as he does, what would you want? You're bein' selfish, what you want can't always be the way things have to be. Sometimes things aren't meant to be fair." Carefully, he slipped the Hope Shard back in his pocket, rubbing his hands uncomfortably. "And all you can do is hope you are doing the right thing. Like treasure, justice can't be found everywhere."
Slowly and carefully, Virginia shifted her weight and sat up on the bed, setting her feet onto the cold stone floor. Jet was sitting right next to her. Turning, she looked straight into his eyes, the oddly unnatural violet hue, and took his hand again, trying to summon up her own strength. "Justice can't be found everywhere…" She echoed, smiling ironically. "I suppose as a drifter, I should've known that by now. But you're right, Jet. I keep expecting to see justice because that's what I want to see, and it probably won't happen as often as I want it to." Virginia looked up at the ceiling, feeling Jet's arm move around her back and draw her closer. "What would Clive want?" She asked herself in puzzlement.
Jet snorted, the answer fairly clear to him. "What would you want if you had a heap 'o bodies and guilt on your mind? What would you want if you had killed and you knew you were gonna do it again? Simple question, if you ask me." The Airget-lamh was sitting quietly in Jet's lap, filled to maximum capacity with the bullets that would end Clive's suffering. He admitted this freely, he and Clive were still friends, and as friends, Jet would complete the task. Catherine was indeed a true drifter and human being, if she was able to realize this as well. From that moment on, Jet had finally found respect for her.
She lowered her eyes, leaning gently into Jet's side. "I would want to be stopped." She sighed, giving in. "You're right, and Catherine's right too, I shouldn't have yelled at her. She has enough stress to go through without me adding to the burden. Geez!" She shook her head heavily. "I must've sounded so unreasonable! I can be really stubborn at times."
"I think the right word is 'bitchy'." Jet replied without thinking, not giving much thought to what he was going to say. Virginia shot a glare at him, and the young android suddenly feared for his life, whether he was armed or not.
So it was supremely fortunate that Gallows had decided it was the perfect time to crash their little conversation. Literally, crash. Bemusedly, Jet wondered if Gallows was the only person in the world capable of falling up a flight of stairs, because that was exactly what the big Baskar did, stumbling to his knees at the top step and looking up at his two companions, impatience all over his tanned face. Suddenly conscious of the position both the young drifters were in, Jet and Virginia immediately broke apart, going red at exactly the same time. It was not in their intentions to be caught like that, but Gallows was too frenzied to notice. "Ginny! Jet! Come down here right now! All of us gotta talk, we've found somethin' big!"
xxx
As Jet and Virginia walked down the stone stairs of the Baskar house, Catherine glanced sharply up at them from the notes Shane had obligingly translated into plain english for her. She could still hardly believe her eyes, barely daring to hope that what she saw was true. Halle had the original copy nearby, and the elder was making her own conclusions based from the evidence Gallows had brought her. Suffice to say, it was truly amazing what he had found, Halle even had to catch herself from openly praising the boy near his friends, something she never would have thought of doing before. It looked like Gallows was actually good for something after all.
Catherine no longer looked as sad as he had a few hours ago, still melancholy and somber, but she was now carrying a vulnerable flicker of hope, showing up as a sense of pent-up release within her soul. Seeing Virginia walk slowly up to her, she smiled openly and hugged the younger woman, beginning to cry for an entirely different reason. The tears were one of relief, not sorrow. The drifter leader was surprised for a brief second, then patted her on the back as Catherine got rid of the obstruction hindering her composure.
Shane was beaming, proud at Gallows for his discovery. "There is still hope," He informed them all, lacing his hands together and smiling, "Hope in the darkness, hope in despair. With faith, hope can deliver us a better tomorrow." Bowing to no-one present in the room, Shane praised a particular Guardian lord openly, glad for it's indefinite support. "Thank you, Zephyr." Placing one hand over his heart, he drew a trail across his chest and bowed once more, the method one of acknowledging a prayer.
"You found something?" Virginia asked as Catherine broke the hug and wiped away her tears, never letting go of the piece of paper Shane had given her. She looked down on it again, it was a long and dangerous shot, but maybe they might have a way to save Clive's life from eternal damnation. Saying nothing, she passed the sheet to Virginia, letting the drifter draw her own data from the document. Her legs becoming weak, Catherine settled down in her spot next to the fire, close to her husband's ARM. It was a list of many different items, some Virginia had heard of before, but others unidentifiable and simply outlandish. "What is this?" She asked, cocking her head to one side at Halle, from which she expected to get all the answers.
As Halle paced, she began to chant, the words complicated and foreign. "Arnica, Aconite, Ambrosia, Mandrake, Curare." Tapping her stick on the ground at the pronunciation of each word, she looked expectantly at her grandson, Gallows. "Now, prove to me you're not completely hopeless and inform the young lady of the significance of my mantra." Bizarrely, Gallows did not back down and grinned openly, nodding obediently to the elder.
"Sure! I may suck at everything else when it comes to Baskar religion, but herblore and chemistry are my specialty! It's just like cooking, you know!" Halle threatened him silently with her stick, prompting the priest to rush on further with his explanation. Gallows sweatdropped at the underlying intimidation and continued. "Anyway, I found these notes in the agricultural section of the history documents," He started to pace airily, like he was some kind of grand teacher conveying information to a bunch of eager students, "They're about six hundred years old, so I don't know how reliable they are, but they record a lycanthrope case and the steps taken to fix up that specific mess."
Shane took over momentarily. "This case was unlike all the others we had looked through. It was cured not with a silver purification, but a much more difficult and arcane one, for the inflicted lycan was none other than the son of the Baskar elder in that era. The threat of loss was so great that the family of the lycan made pilgrimages to the shrine of Odoryuk, the life Guardian, for advice on how to exorcise the curse cast over the body. Sacrifices were made, but their prayers were answered. Odoryuk spoke to the family, and gave them a complex formula to counter Luceid's influence."
Virginia's eyes widened. "A cure?"
Gallows was able to nod. "Yeah. It's a cure. But," He lowered his tone slightly, "According to this, we have to give it to him before the three days are up, and in his lycan form at that. So, we might have to fight him after all. And, these ingredients are bloody difficult to find, I don't know it we can get them all at this time of year. We can only hope." Gallows finished, glad that he had found a way to help.
Catherine laughed, relieved. "If Clive can save Kaitlyn, then maybe we can save him after all! All we have is hope, but that is what will give us power and determination. I believe," She said with resolve, "I have faith in all of you."
Jet spoke up, verbalizing the collective thoughts of all the people in the house. He smirked. "Yeah. It ain't over yet."