Disclaimer: I don't own the Forbidden Game series. I don't own Jenny, Julian, Zach, Tom, Audrey, Summer, Michael, or Dee, or any other characters mentioned, etc.

Notes: Onto the Jenny confronting Zach, which I'll write in under six hours like the last chapter … huzzah for madness and boredness. And onto the answers of reviews …

incarnated soul: Thanks for the first review and the author watch; not a wise move with all the rubbish I write, but still :P Wasn't sure if anyone would entertain this, let alone read it. When I think about it, Julian should have been angry, I suppose. Will the fact that it was a dream suffice for an excuse? ::cough:: Crappy excuse, I know… And thanks for telling me about the 'no italics' thing (damn typos ¬¬)

ck: Eep, someone noticed. Believe me, I'm very aware that Julian gained Jenny's forgiveness before he died BUT It was a dream. A crappy excuse, I know, but I have had a lot of dreams when people act absolutely nothing like they usually do. I tried to put the fact that Jenny forgave him into this, but it didn't work very well. Forgive me for clinging onto Julian's typical self, instead of the humbled person he became at the end of 'The Kill.' Thanks for reviewing too ::smiles::

I got banned halfway through writing this, for spending too much time writing … doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Time to introduce conflict and all nasty things (the fact that I read a VERY funny Forbidden Game fic halfway through this didn't help XD Must go sober myself up now. A nice angst fic would be nice.)

---Chapter Two---

"Jenny, are you okay?"

Stopping in the process of forcing her arm through the sleeve of her denim jacket, still slightly damp because she had pulled it out of the dryer before it had finished, Jenny nervously eyed the look that her mother was giving her from the kitchen table. It was a searching look, with a slightly suspicious edge to it; her mother had taken to looking at her like that since the incident last year. Jenny supposed she deserved it … taking, no, stealing six hundred dollars to buy a plane ticket to her grandfather's old house, and then calling from Pennsylvania in the middle of the night for someone to get them home after the final game against Julian, not uttering a word to anyone what had happened …

When she thought about it, her mother did have a good reason to be suspicious of her, though she wasn't really in the mood to answer endless questions at the moment.

"No. Why?" She asked, pushing her arm through finally and zipping up the front, hoping that this wasn't going to be one of those conversations that went on for hours, ending with her mother crying. She had taken to doing that a lot lately as well.

"Well …" Shaking her dark honey hair – so like Jenny's – out of her eyes, her mother intertwined her fingers and looked down at them, like she was checking if her nail polish was chipped. She always did that when she felt awkward, though that didn't happen very often. But simply the fact that she felt awkward, Mrs Thornton, forever the cool level-headed woman, was enough to stop Jenny's fingers on the zipper. "You had another nightmare last night, didn't you?"

How the hell did she know? Jenny sometimes had the feeling that her mother could read her mind, and she had the uncanny ability to know when something was wrong, even if it was simply like a bad day at school, or if Tom had snapped at her over some petty little thing. Jenny's fingers fumbled on the zip of her jacket, clicking nervously together; she was never very good at hiding when she was nervous.

"How'd you know?"

Her mother hesitated, obviously wondering how to say as she shook her head again, "… you screamed in your sleep … again."

Oh God. Not again.

Jenny had suffered from nightmares more after the Games, but after what she had been put through, who wouldn't? She knew for a fact that Audrey still had bad dreams of the ride of Love and Despair, and after Summer's ordeal, it would be a long time before the tiny girl could sleep with the light off again. She wasn't sure if Dee, Zach, Michael or Tom still had nightmares of what had happened, but one thing was sure: their encounter with Julian and the realm of the Shadow Men was going to be something that haunted them for a very long time.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Jenny's mother's voice cut through the thread of thoughts, bringing her back to reality with a jerk. Her tone was soft and concerned, and it reminded Jenny of Julian's voice in her dreams. The memory of that dream sent involuntary shivers down her spine, and Jenny shuddered slightly, something that the watchful eyes of her mother caught instantly.

"What's wrong?" She sounded like she thought Jenny was having a fit or something, not just a little shiver, her voice panicky. Wrapping her arms around herself, Jenny turned her dark green eyes to her mother and she forced a smile to reassure herself as much as the woman sat at the table.

"Nothing. It was just a little kids dream last night, that's all." Knowing her mother wasn't convinced, she hastily made at exit through the living room, across the tiles and into the hall way and the front door. Picking up the black woollen gloves from the small table near the door and pulling them on, she called to her mother, "I'm going to Zach's, okay?"

"Isn't it a little early?"

Jenny looked at the clock hanging on the wall: 9:18am. What with it being a Saturday and the weather having dropped to below zero, it was very possible that Zach wouldn't be out of bed yet. But … she needed to talk to him. Now, if not sooner, and this wasn't really one of those things you could talk about over the phone.

"I gotta talk to him about a school project," Jenny heard herself saying as she wound a scarf around her neck and picked up her house keys from the glass dish resting on the hall table; her father insisted that the doors would always be locked after their house had been broken into last year, though the doors hadn't even been touched then, "It's due in for next week and we've left it a little late."

Please don't ask me any awkward questions, please don't ask me, please please please –

"Call us if it's late when you decide to come home, okay? I don't want you walking home in the dark."

"Aunt Lil will probably give me a lift home if I ask," Jenny called back, thanking the heavens that her mother hadn't questioned anything. She felt slightly guilty as she gripped the door handle; she hated lying, especially since there had been no need to lie to her mother. It was like Jenny wanted to keep this secret, like it was humiliating or something … shaking her head slightly, Jenny opened the door, "See you later Mom!"

"Make sure you work hard on your project!" Jenny heard her mother call as she pulled the door closed with a click and Jenny locked it behind her before making her way down the path to the gate. Cosette hissed at her as she walked by, looking sodden and furious as she squinted up at her owner, and she took a swipe at Jenny's hand as the seventeen year old stooped to pet her. Jenny withdrew her hand quickly as the cream and grey cat shot off, it's tail in the air, and she frowned; Cosette had only started biting and scratching after Julian had gone.

Making her way down the road, her boots clacking gently on the pavement, Jenny wondered if she was doing the right thing. Julian could be lying – as he had reminded her on several occasions, he was not hide-bound to tell the truth. Saying that, he rarely lied. He withheld information, he would obscure the truth, but he didn't often lie.

It wasn't …sporting, to lie. It wasn't fair.

Why was she thinking this? Jenny slowed a little from her brisk walk, a little unsure as she thought about it. It was a dream. Julian was gone, unless someone had carved him back onto the rune stave, and he would have come to her in person by now if it were so, not appear in a dream talking about Zach, of all people. And he wouldn't have been so … spiteful if he had returned, since they had been on friendly terms of sorts when he'd died, because she'd wanted to help him, forgiven him. But … he'd said he was still gone in her dream. So he was still gone, then? But he appeared in her dream, and …

… this was enough to give anyone a headache.

Realising that she was rapidly coming to Zach's house, Jenny came to a dead stop. She had to decide now. Either to go and ask him if what Julian had said was true, to just visit him, or to simply go to Dee's or Audrey's until she decided. The last choice seemed very appealing, indeed, more so than the first two. Damn Julian! It was his fault that she couldn't get the picture of Zach kissing her out of her head. It had not been Zach, it never was or had been Zach, and Jenny knew very well that her cousin never thought about her romantically.

But …

… what if Julian wasn't lying. She hadn't really thought much about of the dark room incident after they had escaped from the paper house, having locked Julian inside the closet in her nightmare. Simply seeing Zach back to normal, apathetic and silent again, it had been like it was ridiculous, impossible. No matter what Julian had told her in the basement.

"You want to watch out for that cousin of yours, too. He really does think about you, you know. I took that impression from life." Jenny could even remember the look on his face when he had told her, a look of wild, angry blue fire. Jenny had laughed then, nearly hysterically at the thought of Zach, her cousin who paid no attention to girls, only lenses and cameras, actually … wanting her.

He'd shown interest in girls recently though, she supposed … a week or two after they had returned to California, Summer had walked into Jenny's house, giggling hysterically and jibbering incoherently. After Jenny had gotten her to calm down, Summer blurted out that she'd gone to Zach's to get a book, and he had simply leaned toward her when they were talking and kissed her. It had been such a shock, so unusual; cool Zach, distant Zach, making the first move on a girl. Summer had told Jenny because Zach was her cousin, she didn't think he would mind her knowing, and sure enough, when she phoned him later, he had told her it was true. He wasn't jubilant, true, but for the first time in too long, Jenny had heard a warm edge to her cousin's voice, and when she had seen him and Summer out together, his eyes had been so warm, rather than his normal winter-cool.

It hadn't lasted long, true. Three weeks, a month, but he had been happy when they were together, regardless of what people were saying at school. That was why they had split up; because of the laughing at school, mocking them, the sun-bunny and the cold artist. There was no mercy for Summer because the sympathy of her disappearance had long faded. Winter and Summer don't mix, they said. Zach remained indifferent, uncaring that they laughed at him, but it had upset Summer a great deal, and one day, someone had asked them in the hallway if Zach asked to photograph her naked, amid the sniggering and laughter of his friends.

It had been awful. Summer burst into tears, Zach keeping his silence but his face was white and pinched as it always was when he got angry, his grey eyes flashing. Tom had gotten into an argument with the guy, getting to the point where they were about to throw a punch, but a teacher had broken it up, dispersing the crowd that had gathered around the sobbing Summer, who was kneeling on the floor and clinging to Zach as though her life depended on it. About five people got dragged into the principal's office, one getting suspension for two weeks, but that didn't fix what had happened, and that night, away from the curious eyes of Michael and Audrey, they had agreed that they should stop.

"You shouldn't, you two," Audrey had said to the sun-bunny as Summer announced this the next day, "You shouldn't break up just because of all these … these … " she deliberated for a moment, trying to think of something bad enough to call them, " … pig-headed, shallow, moronic idiots."

Zach wisely enough avoided the interrogations of Audrey for the next few days, keeping to the photo lab and sharply moving stealthily out of the way when she appeared in the corridors, usually tailed by Michael. Audrey wasn't nosey, but she considered herself the expert in relationships in their group, and since Summer and Zach had now proven themselves apart of the relationship-hunting market in her eyes, the seventeen year old had set her sights on giving them advice to get them back together. Michael, forever the insatiably curious one, had taken to following her to see what was happening, like it was his favourite soap opera or something.

After a while, fortunately, she had stopped, though Audrey often pointed out people on the streets to Summer and Zach, simply to see if there was any reaction. Summer had had several boyfriends since, thanks to Audrey's love of matchmaking, though Zach never seemed to find a girlfriend after that. Not that Jenny or anyone else knew about anyway. Zach protected his privacy.

Prying her mind away from those thoughts and back to the main … dilemma, Jenny frowned, her brush-stroke eyebrows knitting together. Jenny was becoming awkwardly aware of the fact that she had been stood in the middle of the pavement for the past ten minutes, and her feet were getting cold in her boots.

"You want to watch out for that cousin of yours, too. He really thinks about you, you know. I took that impression from life."Julian had said.

If she asked him, she didn't know how he'd take it. It would be like proclaiming her undying love for him or something – he might distance himself from her even more than he already did. Oh God, might? No, he'd shut her out completely, no might about it.

Oh God.

Damn you Julian.

Damn it damn it damn it …

Jenny sighed, sending breath crystals about her face, then she glanced at her watch. 10:25am. Zach would probably be awake by now. Jenny vaguely remembered that Zach had told her he was going out today, so she needed to get moving now, or she'd probably miss him.

The thought of agonising over this all day was enough. Jenny turned and walked quickly down the road towards Zach's house, muttering under her breath.

"Damn you Julian …"

--o--

"Good morning Jenny." Her aunt smiled as she let Jenny in, the woman still dressed in her pyjamas; evidently, she hadn't been awake long.

"Morning Aunt Lil," Jenny nodded, moving forward automatically to kiss her aunt's cheek as the door was closed quickly behind her to shut out the cold. Aunt Lil rubbed her hands together as Jenny took off her gloves and scarf and hung them up next to the door, taking off her jacket as well, "Is Zach here?"

"Zach's upstairs Jenny," her aunt nodded, still rubbing her arms to get rid of the sudden cold.

"Still." Her uncle called from the living room. Jenny turned to her aunt, a questioning look on her face as Aunt Lil shook her head in her husband's direction.

"Zachary's not been going out much," she muttered to her niece, as though to prevent Zach's father from hearing. Unfortunately, the man seemed to have super sonic-hearing or something, for he called back straight away.

"When does he go out? It's not normal, he's seventeen for God's sake."

"Zach enjoys his own company," Aunt Lil replied loudly, rolling her eyes.

"How normal is that? Most guys his age are going out every night so their parents have to drag them back in at stupid hours in the morning, not sitting in their rooms writing goddamned stories or fiddling with cameras in a converted garage."

As he continued ranting in this vein, Aunt Lil sighed in exasperation before motioning upstairs.

"He'll be in his room Jenny."

"Thanks."

Turning away from the continuing argument about her cousin, Jenny made her way upstairs, each of the steps creaking under her feet. Moving across the landing, Jenny came to a halt in front of the door of Zach's bedroom.

What now? She could still back out. Turn around, walk out the front door and go home, or somewhere. She could still …

Lies. All of it. Of course they were all lies. She couldn't back out. She had to know. She didn't know why. She just had to.

Even though every cell in her mind was screaming for her to stop it, Jenny reached out and knocked on the door. "Zach? Can I come in?"

After a moment or two, there was a murmur of 'yes.' Opening the door, Jenny stepped into the room, and spotted her cousin sat at his desk opposite from her. Closing the door with a click, she walked over and looked over his shoulder at the typewriter he was typing at, his face intense as his fingers flew across the letters. Zach had taken to writing a lot a month or so ago, and a typewriter seemed to suit him (for some reason, Zach didn't like to write on computers.) Unlike when he quite eagerly let Jenny look at the prints and photographs he created, he was very protective of his stories.

"Hey Zach. What are you writing?" She asked as he finished one page, pulling it out carefully, putting it onto a pile of paper next to him and sliding another clean piece of paper into the writer. She tried to look at the work he had written already, but with a quick movement of his hands, her cousin turned over the paper so she was looking at the blank side.

Jenny had expected as much, so it didn't bother her. Walking away and sitting on the blue duvet of Zach's almost scarily tidy bed, she idly looked over the contents of his bed side table as he typed; a book or two, a note, written in a scrawl Jenny recognised as her cousin's writing, an excerpt from 'Dante's Inferno', and a rock. Jenny picked it up with a slight frown, turning it over in her hands and examining it carefully. Could it be …?

No mistake. In Zach's true nightmare, Jenny had found him crouched beside a black canvas, streaked with silver, and he kept putting this rock onto the paper. Jenny knew he had kept it from the nightmare, talking about still wanting to do the photograph, but in the year that had passed since the Games had stopped, she hadn't seen it, it being one of those little details that she'd pushed to the back of her mind. Unimportant. Just one of those little things.

Why'd he kept it for so long?

Still holding the rock in her hands, Jenny looked over to her cousin, still staring intently at the typewriter as his brow furrowed in concentration. The main reason she usually came to visit Zach was because he listened. True, he was too good at listening and not very good at talking, but Zach was always a good person to turn to when she needed someone to simply listen to her problems. Not if she started crying though; Dee or Audrey were better people for that, and she knew Zach felt awkward if she flung her arms around him and started sobbing uncontrollably. But her cousin always listened, and he never repeated anything she said, whether she asked him not to or not.

"Zach," Jenny began, like she did every time she wanted him to listen, "Can I talk to you about something?"

The sound of typing stopped, and with a scraping noise that raised the hairs on Jenny's neck, Zach turned his chair around to face her, his face politely curious, though Jenny knew her cousin too well to be fooled by the act he put on for her. She could feel her heart thumping painfully in her chest, wondering madly why she was doing this, jeopardising her longest friendship and possibly driving Zach so far away from her that she wouldn't be able to get him back.

"Well …" Closing her eyes so she wouldn't see his face, Jenny took a deep breath that sounded like a sigh, " … do you remember the first Game?"

"Yes." Of course he did. As if he would ever forget.

Jenny was shaking. Every brain cell, no, every cell in her body was screaming over and over again for her to just shut up, laugh and shake her head, say it didn't matter and carry on. What the hell was she doing, for Christ's sake?

"Jenny, are you alright?"

She opened her eyes to see Zach's brow furrowing again, this time with concern. She realised that her eyes were watering, and she blinked furiously to get them away before he'd see –

"Jenny, are you crying?"

Dammit! Her cousin stood, shoving up his flannel shirt as he reached inside his jeans pocket, producing a packet of tissues; Jenny vaguely remembered that he caught cold easily, so he always seemed to carry tissues with him. As he passed her one, he sat next to her on his bed, watching her mop up her tears clumsily as he waited for her to speak again. His eyes had warmed fractionally, as they always did around Jenny, and that simply made her feel more self-conscious.

After blowing her nose and crumpling up the white tissue in her hand, the rock resting in her lap, she took another breath before beginning again.

"Zach … in the first game …" Jenny repeated, trying to steady her voice as she spoke, " … before I came into your nightmare …"

It was now or never. Damning herself to Nilfheim and back for doing this, she looked Zach straight in the eye and spoke in a voice that was just above a whisper.

"Julian … he appeared in your studio in the paper house … I thought it was your nightmare because … because … "

Don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't, oh please God, don't …

"What?" Zach looked slightly unnerved by Jenny's sudden breakdown, as though he didn't have a single clue how to deal with it. Most of the time, if there was a near-hysterical girl involved, Zach's philosophy was to be far, far away. She didn't blame him, to be honest.

Trying to calm down for both their sakes, her face flushing with shame, Jenny took several deep breaths and then she spoke that sentence.

"He made himself look like you."

The silence was almost deafening, roaring in her ears. His eyes shone with something she couldn't recognise, but before she could look closer, it vanished.

"What do you mean?" He asked carefully.

"He made himself look like you." Jenny whispered, nearly too quiet for her cousin to hear. "And … I thought he was you. I thought it was you going through your nightmare. So I didn't push him away when he collapsed … or when he kissed me."

Jenny heard the sharp intake of breath, and she closed her eyes again. She'd said it. If he questioned, she'd have to explain further and she really didn't want to do that.

"Let me get this straight," Zach's voice spoke, simply level and empty, though it shook slightly. "He appeared in the garage room that led to my nightmare."

"Yes."

"He looked like me."

"Yes."

"And he pretended to be me."

"Yes."

"And … he kissed you."

"Yes, Zach." Jenny answered.

"And you didn't push him away."

"No."

There was silence again, then the sound of a heavy sigh as Zach obviously tried to understand this.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Jenny opened her eyes, startled to see her cousin's cold eyes flashing with … anger? No, but something close to it. Had she made him angry with her?

His face was pinched and paling, the dark circles below his eyes more pronounced than usual, "Why are you telling me this now?"

Jenny turned her eyes away, "Julian appeared in my dream last night – "

"He's back?" There was a note of panic in his voice, like there was in all her friend's voices if she even simply mentioned Julian's name in their company.

"No," Jenny shook her head, "Nothing like that. But he reminded me of what happened … and what he had said when we were in grandpa's basement."

"What did he say?"

"W-What?"

Zach's face was more intense than ever, burning with a sort of fire Jenny had never seen in his face before, "What did Julian tell you in the basement?"

"He said …" Jenny was shaking furiously; this was going so much worse than she imagined, why hadn't she just not said anything? "He said … that I should watch out for … you. Because … you think about me, that's why he chose to appear as you …"

She trailed off, her eyes dropping to the floor and her hands picking up the rock again as he stared incredulously at her.

Zach was wearing an expression that looked so out of place on him, it almost made him look like a stranger to Jenny, the girl who'd known him all her life. Zach had kept up barriers against everyone for a long time just to keep everyone around him at arm's length, so when they dropped, it made him look … different. Vulnerable. Just like everyone else.

"I'm sorry Zach," Jenny whispered as he got to his feet, as though he couldn't bear to sit near her.

"You believe him?" Zach snapped suddenly, as though trying to make it a lie, though the look of fright that flickered in his eyes confirmed everything. Jenny stood up, dropping the rock onto the duvet as she lifted her hand up to touch his arm, but he flinched away.

"Zach, don't do this."

"Leave me alone," he snapped again, the walls sliding back into place a thousand times thicker, and Jenny stepped back, blinking back tears again. He had raised his walls against her, knocking her back and away from him, because he didn't want her near him. And she'd never get back in.

"Zach, please, I just want to –"

"What?" Zach questioned, taking a step toward her. "What do you want to do?"

Jenny met his eyes squarely, her own eyes leaking over, "To … apologise … and to just talk."

"I'm sorry Jenny, but I don't think so." Zach shook his head, seizing his running shoes from next to the desk and yanking them on.

"Zach, don't you think you're overreacting?" Jenny asked, grabbing the sleeve of his shirt as he straightened and made for the door.

"No."

"Zachary, please, I just want to – "

He turned, and Jenny's eyes widened again as she felt Zach kiss her. Not a cousinly kiss, not their customary peck on the cheek, and even that would be from Jenny, because Zach was never really affectionate. But … he was holding her against him, and his mouth was pressed against hers. And …

… even though she loved Tom more than anything in the world …

… even though Zach was her cousin, and it was wrong …

… even though she knew she shouldn't …

… Jenny didn't pull away. She wasn't sure if she had simply stood there in his arms or if she had responded, but either way, Jenny didn't pull away from him, even as he wrapped his arms so tightly around her that it hurt.

Then he pulled away and he was gone, running off down the stairs as fast as he could. She heard the front door slam, and her uncle's cry of 'Finally! He's left the house!'

Jenny touched her lips, sore from that kiss.

"Zach …"

"You want to watch out for that cousin of yours, too. He really thinks about you, you know. I took that impression from life." Julian had said.

"Oh my God …"

--o--

He was running as fast as he could. To get as far away as he could, far away from her, his mother, his father, his home. Far far away. He didn't want to see her again.

How could he show his face again?

Damn it damn it damn it! How could he have been so stupid?! He'd kissed her, for God's sake. There was no way to hide it now. If he hadn't been so stupid, he'd have still been able to deny it, even though she would have seen right through it anyway. How the hell was he supposed to talk to her again, how could he face Audrey, Dee, Summer, Michael after this? Hell, how was he supposed to talk to Tom Locke again without passing out from the guilt?

It was wrong. It was filthy, because they shared the same blood. How many times had he gone over that in his head? He tried to stamp it out, purge his mind of thoughts of her, he really did, but it never worked. It hurt to see her with Tom, like it had hurt to see her with Julian, and that's why he had got angry with her, because she did all that without even realising that it hurt him. That was why he kept even her away from him, because he wanted to deny it, he wanted to hide it, because he was ashamed.

Was there something wrong with him? Was it like how madness had supposedly ran in the family? Had his mother or father just past on a gene that made him look at Jennifer Thornton, his cousin and oldest friend, of all people?

He'd thought because he had actually liked Summer, watched her, he thought he might have finally squashed the feeling out, but …

…

Even as Zach came to a halt, close to collapsing from exhaustion, even as he sat on the bench on the edge of the woods covered in frost, empty because of the cold and ice, even as he watched his heavy breath cloud in front of his face as he put his head back and stared at the white sky …

… even as he damned himself, he smiled faintly, because Jenny had kissed him back.

Authoress notes: I claim Zach/Jenny ::grins::

I know Zach's behaviour at the end of this was out of character, but he was angry and angsty :P. I'm not too sure whether to carry this on, or finish it here, because I'm bad at finishing stories ;;; I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did (I loved writing this, by the way, uwee hee.)

Review please. Criticism very welcome, especially if I got something wrong. I lost inspiration as I reached the end (mainly because I was crying with laughter because I read something about Zach being an alien ) so I'm sorry for it's dwindling quality towards the end. The kiss at the end wasn't something I planned into this either, it just … happened.

I'm sorry I put that quote in so often, but I liked it ::laughs:: Tell me if you want this continued or not, ideas and such, and I may write another chapter.

-SC / MyHeartBleeds-