(A/N: The writing updates for this fic are growing further and further apart. I think that's because I'm putting a little more effort into each chapter than I did before. I really am enjoying this J/V, and in this chapter I try my hand at fluff for the first time. I hope I did it right.)

The silence, that was hell.

People never understood the true horrors of war unless they were the ones fated to come back to the battlefield after the fighting was over, to stand in the middle of a barren wasteland strewn with corpses and carrion birds and be ordered to clean the whole thing up. To write to each fallen soldier's loved ones and explain to them why they were no longer alive. To deliver the terrible news themselves. It was not real combat, but it was the true, vicious bedrock of the war.

Even in a smaller scale of things, the concept was still the same. Jenny the Baskar looked over the large cavernous room and gagged at the sight of the dead mosquito's body, pressing her hands to her mouth and turning away in time to keep herself from retching. It had been shot full of holes in its face and it was bleeding clear insectile blood like a small river onto the floor. The carcass steamed and fizzled in front of her, stinking of watery streams of that weird phosphorescent glow. It seeped into the earth like illuminating urine, continuing to keep the whole area brightly lit. What had it eaten earlier to create such an eerie glow? Well, it no longer mattered now.

Jet was a second, smaller lump on the ground, his body twisted into an unnatural position. There was no blood on the floor around him, but he looked like a dropped child's toy, one that had been mauled by the family dog. He had fallen from a great height, she had seen it happen right before her eyes, so he probably needed urgent medical attention.

He raised himself up from the floor by his elbows a little, shivering like his legs had been crushed by a tremendous rock. They were crumpled beneath him. Gritting his teeth hard, Jet tossed his head back and screamed.

Jenny found her legs and ran for Jet, wincing as the hard rock tore at her feet and made her stumble in some places. She watched Jet heave hard and claw at his chest raggedly like an alien was about to burst out of it. Hysterical fingers tore a gash in his shirt, revealing a sliver of his skin beneath. Jet's face scrunched up in a look of utter agony, the face of one who could feel one's own organs failing beneath him. His throat and lungs had locked themselves closed, his windpipe feeling like it was closing up to the size of a pinhole.

The fall had been nothing. The energy it had taken to use the accelerator technique, well, that was a completely different story.

She grabbed him as Jet was about to fall onto his face, steeling his body against hers. His wet shirt and short jacket clung to his body like a damp second skin, and now that she was close enough to touch Jet, she could feel for herself how he was shivering due to the cold clothes and the heat of his fever, both at the same time.

No, perhaps he was trembling for a third reason as well. Fear. She had to do something. She was no medicine woman, even if she was a daughter of the Baskar tribe, but that was no excuse for her to not do a thing. She owed her life to Jet. "It's alright, don't panic!" She shrilled frantically into Jet's ear, raising her medium-wielding hand. She was only thirteen years old, barely come of age, so she was inexperienced in the art of the medium. But some of them knew recuperative spells. She had to see if she could do the same thing.

"Odoryuk, Guardian of Life, I beg of you, ease this boy's pain! Please heal him!" She cried, upon the verge of tears. A faint blue glow emanated from her hand and she pressed it against Jet's chest, over his heart, where the pain seemed to be. He moaned as a response and tried to shrink away from her touch, it felt like stinging fire to him. Cringing, she tried the technique again. She wasn't even sure what kind of spell she was trying to cast. It was useless.

Extra footsteps drew near as Jet started to audibly gasp for air, breathing frantically against the girl's small chest. It took a few seconds for her to realise that he wasn't just making random choking noises, he was trying to form coherent words, calling out for somebody lost in the dark.

"Virgini…a. Vir…gin…ia. Oh… God pl…ease, make her… come back…"

His reached his hand out, past Jenny's body, then his pain wracked face broke down into a tired, wounded smile. Virginia dashed through a bend in the tunnel and came into proper view, bone dry and panting, a wind crest in her hand. She had probably used it to get across the larvae pond without getting wet. Noticing the frightened little girl and the shaking outlaw in her arms, she ran to them, calling out his name.

"Jet! Jet! Oh Gods, what has happened to you!" She skidded to her knees before him and Jet pulled himself away from the Baskar girl, falling into Virginia's arms, some very basic part of his mind telling him that Virginia was good for him, that Virginia was a familiar face. If he was closer to her, everything would be all right. Besides, she was warm, as warm as she could possibly be. Warmth equaled safe.

Jenny glanced at the other woman with panic-riddled eyes. "I'm sorry! The monster had me trapped, it was going to feed me to its children, but then Jet came and he fought the monster by himself! He saved me! But then, he did something that made him move very fast, and afterwards, he just collapsed and started to scream!"

Virginia held up a hand to silence her if she was preparing to say any more. "That's enough for now. Help me get these wet clothes off him, or he'll freeze to death!"

The Baskar girl nervously complied. Together they began to strip the clothes off Jet, his jacket and his wet, clinging shirt, along with his shoes, socks and scarf. Jet growled out in the midst of his pain and tried to slap Virginia away when her hands moved towards the buckle of his pants, so she begrudgingly left those on. She hoped it wouldn't lower Jet's temperature too much. Jenny had searched around the area and brought back her grey shawl, it had fallen from her shoulders when the monster had brought her inside. Virginia took it from her and began to rub it vigorously across Jet's upper body, trying her hardest to rub warmth and feeling back in.

It had scarcely been two minutes since Jet had fallen, but a great section of the chamber wall blew open and small cracks ran along the area around it, weaving like a spider's web. Two men kicked and pushed at the rubble still blocking them inside until they were able to scale over it, Clive having a little bit of extra trouble because of the large ARM strapped to his back. The hole they had made was a few meters up from where the floor chose to be and they dropped down gracefully, keeping their balance. Clive adjusted his glasses. "That took a little longer than was expected, but now we seem to be here." He said.

Gallows had cocked his head slightly, listening to something that was below the wavelength of sound. Intuition, perhaps. "Hold it." He said abruptly. "Something seems wrong. Something smells wrong too." He caught a glance at the dead mosquito and grimaced in understanding. "Yeah, that thing there would be it."

Clive squinted into the darkness. His eyesight wasn't that good, and it was even worse while he was underground. Largely it made him feel like a mole. "Is that Virginia and the child over there that I see, Gallows? Or could it be something else?" They walked forward, moving towards the shapes that were on the other side of the den. When they recognised who was there, their walk broke into a run.

The Baskar Priest took over. "What's wrong with him?" He asked the two girls.

"He's having another fit." Virginia answered with a steely voice. "Gallows, can't you help him?"

"Move out of the way!" Clive cried, elbowing Gallows away and reaching for Jet. He seized the boy by the shoulder and pulled him towards himself, reaching into one of the inner pockets of his coat for an item. He procured two small, white pills and forced them down Jet's throat, hating to be so rough but knowing that time was the most important factor. He rubbed Jet's throat a shade too hard, trying to coax the boy's involuntary reflexes in order to make him swallow. He did, and Clive let go, moving away.

"Alright." Gallows grumped, annoyed that Clive had forced him away. "Stretch him out on the floor and tilt his head back so that his airways are clear." Virginia and Jenny did this hastily, working side by side. Gallows hovered over them anxiously. "Right, now I'm going to press down on his heart real hard six times, and as soon as I'm done, Ginny, I want you to seal his mouth with yours and give him four strong puffs of air. We'll wait for six seconds and if he doesn't start up by himself again, we'll do it again and again until he does."

"What's going on?" Jenny asked miserably, tugging on Clive's coat sleeve.

"Jet has stopped breathing." Clive said sternly, the expression on his face grisly. "His heart is not beating at its proper rate and it needs stimulation in order to get back into proper order. If that can be done, then his breathing should continue. It is called arrhythmia."

Jenny still did not understand. She did not say it out loud. Instead, she prayed. Meanwhile, Gallows and Virginia were trying their hardest to resuscitate Jet, the large Baskar priest with his palms on top of the other and pounding Jet's chest like he was trying to squash a bottle full of water, calling out each push to Virginia who counted them single-mindedly. She breathed hard into the boy, trying her best to keep her breath under control, but it was difficult because of her repressed hysteria. Jet's lungs were inflating when she breathed into him and deflating when she pulled away to wait, but in the time between they were as still as a corpse.

"Dammit!" Gallows grunted, receiving no reaction. Clive was close by, watching quietly. He hoped those pills that he had given the boy would kick in soon. He was no stranger to the harshness of a heart attack, he had learned under the wing of an elderly man who had had two of them in his lifetime. Clive had been there both times. Berlitz and Jet were two very different people, but still, experience helped.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity full of torturous waiting and hoping, Virginia breathed one last puff of wind into Jet's lungs and the silver-haired youth contorted underneath her, arching his back and ripping his mouth away from hers, tilting his head to the side and coughing raggedly. He started to take deep whooping breaths, kicking Gallows feebly away and curling up on the floor. It was most likely that he wasn't properly conscious, but at least he was still alive.

Virginia's face looked wearied. "Thank God." She said weakly, wiping at her eyes, her hands grimed with dirt. She left a little dusty smudge on the side of her face. "Gallows, you saved his life."

"Naw, we all did." The Baskar demurred, standing up onto his feet. "Every single one of us. Right?" Smiling, Virginia nodded her agreement. Jenny blushed, trying to catch up with everything that had happened so fast. Gallows looked at Clive. "What was that stuff you gave him? I didn't know you kept drugs on you."

Clive raised his hands in defeated refusal. "It was a compound designed to thin the substance of blood in Jet's body. I believe it contained codeine. It was my hope that with his blood thinned to a proper degree, it would be able to pass through his heart more easily and keep himself alive. I am not sure if it worked or not, but…"

Gallows raised an eyebrow. "Where did you get a hold of something like that?"

"It is nothing special." Clive admitted, sweatdropping. "It is… baby aspirin. It cures… um, headaches. Works well on children." He said this meekly, then laughed.

"Well, wonders never cease." Gallows replied, sighing.

xxx

Black sand. A twilight sky. The desert.

Jet was watching the dunes and the dark sky, a thin layer of orange sunset separating the two from one another. For miles and miles around, the black sand appeared to be undisturbed. He was sitting on a flat rock beneath a withered and gnarled tree. Adam Kadmon was there beside him, though he was standing instead of sitting.

"Where am I?" Asked Jet out loud, but when his mouth opened to form the proper words, no sound ushered forth. He was silenced, and yet, he was still speaking. The drifter blinked once in surprise.

Adam Kadmon looked at the boy in knowing bemusement. He scuffed at the sand a bit, curiously shifting it around, but not a grain moved. "Where do you think you are?" The Filgaia Sample replied cryptically. "This is a desert of no winds, of calm volcanic sands, of no footprints left behind. A desert of no heat, and a desert of no frost, either."

"No living creatures." Jet concluded, understanding and turning back to look at the wasteland.

Adam Kadmon smirked, flicking his red and white scarf over his shoulder. He was three times the age of Jet, the Jet that should have lived a long natural life. "Yes. This is the Wandering. The last, long, endless drifter flight. When released from their mortal forms, it's the nature of spirits to wander the entirety of existence in all its forms, until they are called back to mortality again. There isn't a second in your eternal life span, Jet, in which you do not wander. This is the beginning of your next great journey."

"Life is a journey," Jet agreed, "Where you take a million different pit stops along the road. Maybe death is just another kind of pit stop. Hell, maybe life is just another kind of pit stop. This desert… It looks… so long… so tiring…" Just watching it was making him feel weary.

Sympathetically, Adam Kadmon set his hand upon Jet's ethereal shoulder. "The one thing we can be certain of," The specter of Jet's older self said, "Is that in the Wandering, souls from the past can join up again once more."

"I hope so." Said Jet, and then he was gone.

xxx

Outside.

Jet noticed the change only by the enormous, violating bright light that had suddenly appeared all around him, something he was now unused to. Though he squinted his eyes shut as firmly as he could, a vibrant red glare still managed to pierce through. He tried to curl up into himself, as if the act would shut himself away from everything that was bad and painful. The strong, cradling arms he was in prevented him from doing that, and he was unable to pull himself away. Somebody had carried him out of that terrible den of beasts, either Gallows or Clive, or one of the Baskar rescue company that had followed them. It was so utterly degrading to be carried like a wounded child, but Jet was no longer able to care.

His heart felt weak and sore, possibly enflamed with some kind of disease, or the embarrassing uselessness of old age. The pain was still there but it felt more or less tamed now, it had drained virtually all of his strength and now he felt as helpless as a newborn kitten. Sounds came and went lopsidedly, powerful or normal on one side, but fuzzy and distorted on the other side. The light was far too strong for him. He kept his eyes closed.

Time was too hard to measure. At some point he was placed with the utmost of care upon a tarpaulin outside, although he could feel the hard grasslands beneath it. The blanket he had been wrapped in was replaced, as it was damp with residual larvae water and sweat. The newer blanket he felt about him was handled by a person in purplish pink, somebody familiar, of course, but too difficult for him to see. His eyes had only been open a slit now, to filter out the bright sunlight through the lashes, but he opened them properly in the hopes that he could see who it really was, desperately praying that his eyesight had not been damaged as well.

Virginia was beside him, trying to keep the injured boy warm. He had been completely limp and lifeless up until this very moment, it had been disconcerting for her, but Clive, who had been carrying him at the time reassured her that Jet's consciousness had been turned inwards naturally, where it would not be harmed from his fall. He was only in a state of shock now, trying to heal. Now he opened his eyes and he looked at her. At first his gaze seemed to shoot through her, but then his eyes refocused and he looked at her, recognising her for who she was.

Her arm was supporting his back, propping him into a sitting up position. The blanket was wrapped securely around his front, holding his arms down against his sides. Virginia watched him try to move his left arm. His strength was so poor that the blanket itself was enough to barricade him from success. All that healing and growing he had done in Baskar Colony, the harvest he had sown and reaped, it was all for nothing. It had become less than nothing, Jet seemed to be far worse. A hundred times worse. He appeared to be, and Virginia's heart shuddered just to think about it, close to the verge of death.

But he could see her. He could see her.

That counted for something, didn't it?

Jet opened his mouth to say something. All that came out was a hoarse whistle. Virginia silenced him by gently hooking her finger under his chin and pressing his jaw closed. He obeyed her action implicitly, there simply was nothing else for him to do. Virginia smiled at him kindly, tearfully. "You don't have to say anything, Jet. Save it for when you feel better. I'm not mad at you, I know that's just how you are."

Just how he was…

She could hear herself saying that. Jet was a drifter, was a Sample, and was her love. He was so small and helpless now, so weak. The plague inside his body had broken him, was breaking him, and what other job did she have but to watch? The answer presented itself to her now, in stark black and white. She had to watch Jet die.

Her beautiful sad smile crumpled before him, and Virginia let go of Jet in order to raise her hands to her face and cover it, beginning to weep. Sharp, muffled kittenish sobs began to emerge from her, despite the girl trying her best to smother them away. She was not mad at him, even though he had acted like a selfish asshole on so many occasions. She was nor mad at the Council of Seven either, who had made this boy in that tragic, fatally flawed way. And, strangely enough, she was not mad at the monster that had brought on Jet's second heart attack, monsters were hardly sentient, they could not be blamed. She was mad at herself, absolutely furious that there was nothing more she could do to make Jet's life a better place.

Jet was sitting up all by himself. The fact that this was now a major accomplishment for him seemed several different shades of sad, but Jet did not notice or feel this at all. Sitting up made him feel dizzy. His mouth worked clumsily, his vocal chords feeling like dry sticks in his throat. He wanted to talk to her, to say things to her while he still could. And the one plea that was most prominent in his mind at the moment was;

"Vuh… guh… ginia. Ownt… ki…"

He wasn't sure if his balance had overcome him, or if he had moved of his own free will. Jet shifted his arms slightly, which caused the blanket bound around his body to slide down into a little pool within his lap, revealing his bare shoulders and front. Jet's eyes were dull and downcast, ashamed. He could not even speak the proper words. He fell forward slowly, clumsily but with some kind of careful precision. Virginia pulled her hands away from her face and gasped when Jet pressed against her and pushed her onto the ground, the crown of his head accidentally bumping against her chin.

So they were both there now, Virginia lying flat on her back with a barely comprehensible Jet on top of her. His faintly wiry body was wracked with palpable tension, but also utter resignation. His unclad arms reached out to grasp at her as best as he could, one slipping behind her waist, the other moving to rest near the back of one shoulder blade. Jet's head rested safely upon the crook of her neck and her collarbone. It was almost a weak, tender hug.

"Jet…" She said uneasily, moving her own arms so that they encircled around his back. The boy shook his head slightly, refusing whatever it was that Virginia was going to say, in the off chance that she was going to order him to get off, now. They were at a quiet campsite upon the foot of the Zenom mountains, Clive and Gallows could come by at any time, along with the rest of the Baskars.

When Jet shook his head, a small trickle of something wet rolled down her neck. Tears? She had never seen Jet cry before, such things almost seemed to be beyond him. It made Virginia want to cry again herself. "Oh Jet…" The way he was holding her, like a child clinging onto an article of comfort, it didn't seem like he was going to rise again until he had finished crying. That way she would not have to see the tears on his face.

"I… hym sorry. 'M sorry… fuh being a jerk. This has never happened to me… before…"

His voice was coming back. That was good. His harsh breathing made the words rough around the edges, and his body felt light, much lighter than Virginia had remembered it before. He had covered up the failings of his body with big haughty words. Like a magician performing a simple card trick, he had lead people to believe that he was rapidly recovering, while in private he had properly stoically fretted as his body struggled to get back up to proper speed.

Soothingly she caressed the nape of his neck softly, in the hopes that it would help him feel calmer. Of all the people in Filgaia, he had chosen her to be honest to. To be weak to. Sometimes he was a bastard, most times, actually, but he could also be the opposite as well. This was the first time he had really, honestly tried. It said a lot about Jet's strength of mind.

Was it not Virginia's duty to be an emotional crutch for him to lean on, whenever he needed it the most? She thought so. Jet sighed against her caressing hand, and she spoke in a quiet, agreeable voice, the choke of her recent weeping fit carrying in her tone like a scent on the wind. "I know it's very scary for you right now. Anybody with real common sense would be as frightened as you are. So it's alright for you to cry now, Jet, if you really need to. I'm the only one here that'll notice. I won't say a word."

The boy stiffened slightly, like he had been accused of a crime. "'M not crying." He rasped, hoping that she would not notice his reddened eyes and his slightly running nose when he sat up again, if he ever would. If he bluntly admitted to her his weakness so easily now, well, he might as well go find a sharp knife and get down to the business of cutting his own balls off right now. She could suspect as much as she wanted to, she was entitled to that, but he would not confess to it openly and freely.

Virginia knew he was going to say that. She smiled. "Okay then. I believe you. Take as long as you want."

He took her up on her offer. His tears had only been ephemeral, so they had just about stopped at the beginning, but still he clung onto her, like an island in rough surf, like she was the last connection he had to a world he had once been on top of. Eventually his arms lost the strength and tautness that they had once had and went lax around her body, his head cushioned against her breast. Tentatively Virginia got her elbows beneath her and pushed herself up with her lower arms, attempting to sit up herself while at the same time trying not to disturb Jet. She half expected him to whine and grab onto her even tighter.

But that was not the case. He had slid lower down Virginia's body when she had moved, and now she could see that Jet's face was relaxed and peaceful in the midst of calm oblivion, in a place where he could not feel any pain. The deep breathing was a pretty good giveaway too. "Jet?" Virginia called softly, just in case he could still hear her, placing a hand against the side of his face. His fever was cooling down some, and that was a blessing sent from above.

Jet did not answer her. He had fallen asleep.