Lalalala: Lol. Well since you insist on harrassing me, I suppose I'll update ahead of schedule once more. (wink) I'm glad you like this story. Please enjoy, and I look forward to your reviews, as always! (smile)

Moonfyre: I'm terribly sorry to hear that your vacation was a fiasco. Kick back with some warm tea and get some good reading in. Maybe that'll help. Warm baths are always good too. (smile) Please take care.

Raine Ishida: You know, I have no idea what's going on with fanfiction's editing system. These errors aren't in my chapter when I upload it, I promise. I think it's when I make the corrections on the website. I think this is the last chapter where I did that, but I'm pretty sure this chapter is safe. Thanks again for pointing that out.

Silver happily left the company of the crew and passengers of his ship when they docked at Bedua. After two days he'd finally been fed up with the rudeness of the crew, the arrogance of the captain, and the inadequacies of their entire operating system. How a fool the likes of such a man had ever advanced to the rank of Captain, Silver would never understand. If he had had more time he would have probably sat the officer down and given him a talking to, but the circumstances at hand would provide for no such opportunity.

With Morph at his side and his satchel in his hand, Silver made his way quickly away from the docks and sought out the hospital. Of course, this task might have been simpler if all the buildings didn't look alike! Frustrated, Silver looked from side to side, up and down the main roads and back alleys.

"Are none of these streets labeled?" he grumbled to Morph as they continued their way through the labyrinth of nameless dirt roads. His cyborg eye, now reddening with anger, snapped to and fro in an attempt to find his destination. When he still found nothing, his frustration grew even more. "Or any of these buildings, for that matter? And have they ever heard of color?"

It was unfortunately true. Everything seemed a dingy shade of brown, including the haze that surrounded the streets and the planet's sun.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the kid was dead by now, as filthy as this place is!" Morph stopped and cooed, staring questioningly after his master as he stormed through the muddy streets of Bedua's most populated city. "C'mon Morph!" he hollered after the shape shifter. "Better try and find that hospital before we need it ourselves."

Another hour of wandering had Silver's blood pressure nearly sky high (his face now nearly matched the hue of his cyborg eye). He was beginning to consider just quitting and trying to find it tomorrow when Morph erupted in a chorus of festive chirps and coos. Silver glanced in the creature's direction questioningly, his face growing long as he watched his only companion hover further and further away from him in a swift, daring motion.

"Morphie! Get back here!" he growled. When the creature did not return, Silver sighed and followed after him, swimming through the throngs of alienoids and grumbling all the way. "Blasted little...I swear I'll...this had better...arrrg...MORPH!"

A familiar chirp caught his attention off to the left, and he turned his gaze to find the blasted little critter dancing spasmodically around a small, but neatly printed wooden sign that read: HOSPITAL. Silver's lower lip jutted out in annoyance as he glared reproachfully at the wooden sign.

"Yeah, yeah, good job, Morph," the cyborg grumbled as he scooped his pet up in his hands. He refused to admit that they'd passed this place several times. Thankfully, Morph was unable to talk, and therefore unable to rub it in his face ever reddening.

Silver had never been so glad to have a mute companion.

When he approached the desk at the end of the lobby, a tiny young human woman behind it glanced up and gasped. Apparently, she had never seen someone of such...well, she had never seen somebody like Silver before.

"I'm here to see someone," he said as nicely as possible (He was still fuming over the quest for the hospital). "Can you help me, ma'am?"

"Who are you here to see, sir?" Her voice quivered.

"Someone claiming to be Jim Hawkins."

The woman's brow raised happily. "Oh! You must be Mr. Silver!"

He frowned. "Yes," he admitted. "How did you-"

"The academy called." She grinned brightly. "They said to expect you."

"Oh." That's right, Silver thought as the woman prepared a mass of paperwork. Sarah had informed them that he would be visiting. "So, can I see him?"

"Just a moment. We need you to sign a few things."

Silver sighed. He hated paperwork of any sort, and the idea of signing his name gave him the distinct feeling of signing away a part of himself. If nothing else, he was well aware of the fact that he was giving the hospital distinct proof that he had been here. A perfect record if the authorities would ever become increasingly hot on his trail again. He cursed himself and prepared himself to sign anyway, knowing that there would be no other way to settle this.

She handed him a stack of neat white sheets and a pen. "Take your time sir."

Nodding his appreciation, Silver shifted through some of the paper. He was rather impressed to find that they had this young man's entire medical record here in these few little bits of paper, even documentation of his periods of consciousness and what he had been able to tell them. This he poured over a little more carefully. Surely if this person was Jim there were a few things that he would have gotten wrong here. Grinning, Silver began to read:

September 15th, subject awakened at 10:25am. Gave the following information:
Name: Hawkins, James Pleiades
Date of Birth: October 29th, 1626
Age: 17
Home Planet: Montressor
Mother: Sarah Ann Hawkins
Father: John Silver

Silver stopped his reading at that very last line. Why was he listed as this young man's father? Who would have know that Jim had even met Silver before? His first thought was to ask the nurse about it, but he immediately realized the folly of such an action and stopped himself. Instead, he signed the papers as directed and delivered them back to the nurse when he had finished.

"This way sir," the nurse declared. Silver, his mind still buzzing with questions, halfheartedly followed with Morph trailing behind him. She opened the nearest door and directed him to the very last bed nearest the window. He thanked her sincerely with a bow and began to make his first steps toward the bed...

Much to Silver's relief, the nurse had closed the door behind him. This gave him the opportunity to creep slowly toward the bed, for he wasn't prepared to approach it immediately. Ideas and temptations began to sift through Silver's already heavily laden mind. He first thought to interrogate the young man, asking him how he knew all about Jim and what he had heard about John Silver. His second thought was to ask no questions at all and to simply throttle the boy in his sleep for ever daring to toy with his and Sarah's hopes of finding Jim. There were other thoughts and desire that followed, each more gruesome and less rational then the first, yet somehow Silver managed to keep his twitching hands at his side as he passed the second to last bed and inched closer and closer to the one that held the young man who had started all of this. Stopping to allow himself one last, calmed breath, Silver prepared himself for the most devastating disappointment of his life.

He stepped forward, pulled back the curtain that divided this bed from the rest of the room...
...and nearly vomited.

There were burns up and down almost the entire left side of his body. Burns so severe that Silver's mouth hung agape for many moments just to take in the audacity of the image before him. It had eaten away at least several layers of skin, and even with all the obvious medications that had been applied to it, Silver knew right then and there that they would never fully heal. Those wounds would eternally linger upon that body until its last days. He could see also that some of the hair on his head had burned away, though in the few months time that he had been here it had begun to grow back. Someone had apparently taken the effort of evening it all out for him as well, though it did little to improve his ghastly appearance. His eyes were swollen and sunken in, and the once strong frame of a youthful body had become waxen and waned. His breathing was shallow, and a cough often erupted from his dry and cracked lips.

Upon seeing all of this, Silver only just noticed after taking into account all of these injuries, that the young man lying in the bed before him was no imposter. It was Jim, or instead, what was left of him. The young boy that he had met two years ago on the Legacy; the young boy that had saved his life twice and had grown rather quickly into a young man that had made Silver proud; the young man that had become one of the top students at the Interstellar Academy, and yet still remained in close contact with a dear friend who was known to be a pirate and could only be defined by society as a ne'er-do-well, was now the young man lying helplessly here in a hospital bed on some forsaken planet, fighting for his life against injuries the like Silver had never seen before.

And in the twinkling of an eye, Silver's heart broke.

He took a step backward, allowing the curtain to close on that horrible image for a slight moment so that he might regain himself.

'Pull it together John,' he started to tell himself. 'You knew it might be like this.'

But the truth was, he hadn't. He hadn't expected to find Jim at all! Once he had left Montressor, Silver had resolved himself against the idea of ever seeing Jim again. For good. He had come here to set an imposter and the academy straight once and for all. Silver and Sarah had wanted nothing more to do with it, with any of it. They simply wanted to be left alone. That was all.

But here he was now, staring down upon the broken body of a young boy whom he had loved as a son, and finding himself utterly inadequate in ways he had never known before. And as if to prove some meager point he could suddenly hear Sarah's words ringing in his ears like the seven trumpets that announced the end of time -- "And if he dies there, John? What will you do? Idly sit at his bedside and watch as the pain and the poison and his injuries overcome him? Will you watch Jim succumb to that?"

Silver shook his head. Curse her, she had been right. There was no way he could do that. It was too painful.

'But you can't leave him here to die alone,' said his brain. 'It will hurt you, but it's not fair to him. Someone has to be here for him.'

Morph cooed quietly and nestled himself against Jim's chest. He seemed to take comfort in the beating of his young master's heart, and cooed calmly once more, nestling his head down in the hospital shirt that poorly covered the young boy's wounds.

Sighing, Silver knew that even if he wanted to leave, his tiny little friend might now allow him to. Shakily, he nestled himself into a nearby chair and gently took Jim's hand in his own. Immediately, he began to plan a long and detailed letter to Sarah that he would most likely start tonight.

Jim was lost in dreams: a flurry of panoramic, confused images that had no tie to each other. The only coherent thing in his mind was a lullaby that he could recall his mother singing to him when he had been young. He first recalled her singing it the day his father had left, and she had sang it often from that point on. For some reason, he was hearing it again now in his dream.

'I sleep all day. What makes me feel this way?'

Images from his young childhood suddenly flew by his unwaking eyes. Days where he and his mother had played after the patrons of the inn had long since vanished into the night or into the solace of their rooms.

'Everything's a bust. And everything keeps losing my trust.'

He saw his mother holding him at eleven years old; crying into his shoulder and promising that she would always and forever love him and be there for him no matter what. The day his father had left them for good.

'Where do we begin with this unhappy ending?'

He saw himself in school, getting pushed around and made fun of for not having a dad. Running away from the playgrounds in the daytime to come crying into his mother's arms at home, telling her everything the kids had done to him.

'Where do we begin after all that's been done?'

Jim going back the next day and beating all of them up. Jim getting sent home; his mother being so disappointed in him.

'And how do we begin to say: I forgive you?'

He saw himself goofing off in school, when had finally begun to fall behind in his studies. Jim recalled that time well. It was when he had finally given up on a future he had believed not worth striving for.

'And how do we begin to repair this family affair?'

His mother, holding him late one night during a really bad rain storm. Her careworn face nestled comfortably against his head, which was hidden deep in her arms out of fear.

'I think about the never ending way that my day never seems to want to end,'

His mother working hard to keep the Benbow afloat while he goofed off and wreaked havoc elsewhere.

'I think about the loneliness of losing a friend.'

Silver reaching out for him, trying to save him from a fall that would surely end his life.

'Don't take it away from me. Don't take away the one love that matters.'

A new image: his mother weeping at a nameless grave. A large, looming figure at her side.

'And I'll get well, you'll see. You're all I have; you're my family.'

Jim, his mother Sarah, Silver, Morph and B.E.N. sitting around the family table, eating and talking and laughing merrily.

'Is there ever enough love? Ever enough?'

His mother and Silver.

'Where do we begin picking up the pieces?'

His mother again at a nameless grave, but this time the figure was more identifiable. Could it be who he thought it was?

'Where do we begin after all that's been said?'

"I just don't want to see you throw away you're entire future!"
"Yeah, what future?"

'And how do we begin to say: I still love you?'

His mother and Silver again, a sly smile being cast between the two of them. Jim standing on the sidelines, watching with amazement.

'And how do we begin to repair this family affair?'

All three of them sitting together, as though it were one big family portrait. Then, suddenly darkness. But the words continued on.

'Don't take it away from me. Don't take away the one love that matters. And we'll all get well, you'll see. We're all we have, we're a family...'

Aside from the unfamiliar weight upon his chest, Jim became oddly aware of a presence at the side of his bed. Naturally, his first instincts told him that it was either a doctor or a nurse, but as he waited he found that they did not leave. Quite the contrary, this person seemed quite decided on staying for some time.

A pair of very strange hands suddenly took one of his up and held it gently. Had Jim not been in so much pain, he might have jumped from surprise. One was obviously flesh and bone because it was warm and strong. The other, however, was cold and deformed. It was though it were made of...dare he say it? Metal?

'No!' Jim thought as his heart pounded in his chest. 'It couldn't be! There's no way!'

A chirp rang in his ears, a most familiar and welcome voice. It was all the proof he needed.

Jim opened his eyes and turned his head.

"Silver?"

The cyborg looked up, his own eyes growing wider with astonishment.

"Jimbo?"

Song lyrics from "Family Affair" by Abra Moore.