Hello everyone and welcome again. Sorry for the delay but been very buisy with new ventures. But nevertheless, here we go.

This chapter came to me just by looking at an odd tree in my back yard. I love nature as much as I love the city in their tranquil states, and this is why I'm having Aleutian and Locke bond at the edge of the badlands. The first section of the chapter was easy to write, but the following was a pain. I ended up writing the Wesson part LONG HANDED and let me tell you, I perfer the computer. My style and how I think when I go along is a lot better on a word prosessor than with a pencil. I'm not too happy with it to say the the least...possibly cause I was writing and thinking it up on the fly.

But onwards with Locke and his lost son...helping him to be found.

Disclamer: (see if I can remember this) I observe the rights of the oginal creators of their respected characters and am not seeking profit from this.

Also would like to give thanks to Azure Inu for the review.

Enjoy!

Here Today

by: Mauser

The tree had been choked at one point in its existence, perhaps, by vines that parasitically used the long eastward curving trunk as a crutch to feed off the sunlight and the rain. Years must have become prolonged while the struggle for photosynthesis waged on. And in the end, the host became the victor as the antagonist vines were cast down to the ground over the years, adding to the never-ending cycle of life.

But not with out leaving scars.

Aleutian never moved from the stone foundation where he stood, lost in his thoughts as he studied the odd looking tree. Yes, there were other trees around him that towered to the heavens, their branches twisting as if their symbiotic cells were attempting to become artist. But what made Aleutian stop, what made him stare, what made him reflect with this tree becoming the flashpoint of it all was the scars it bore. The vines had left deep trenches in the bark that curved around it like a spiraling staircase.

It was then that Aleutian wondered if it felt pain as much as he did.

"What type of tree is that?" Locke asked Archimedes. In a way, the question was almost directed to himself. He'd never ventured to this part of the world and the nature that inhabited it was alien but yet breathtaking to him. To their immediate left towered a five story cliff face that seemed to act as a border to an ancient grass covered switchback that descended the mountain which they were traversing. Past his son and the mesmerizing tree lay the continuing rolling summits of its brethren in the far off distance, overcast by a light haze that was more like lingering fog. To the right, a shrub and boulder littered valley that only stretched at least a quarter mile across before it tackled an adjacent mountain had more curvature to it. Rain had recently soaked the area before the sun came out to dry the land. The red, grey and tan face of the vertical ridge had darkened from the water, only leaving traces of its former, dry glory as minuscule patches.

But even with the winding path up ahead being clear of trees, there still lay a few on the right side of the ridge: one in particular grabbing Aleutian's, and now Locke's attention.

"A mountain maple I presume. Considering the small size of it and the triple shaped leaves, I can't be too far off. But it looks to have stray from its growth patterns, mate," Archy replied after a long musing.

A shallow nod. "But it's still prospering, no?"

"Yes..."

Locke let a smile form on his face. "Can you see inside of the tree, Aleutian?" he asked, hearing Archy's voice trailing off in his thoughts.

His son turned his head over to the right, showing a hint of agitation from losing his tranquil stare of the tree. It faded just as fast as it came, however his scars seemed to have never flinched as they seemed to have brightened in contour thanks to the late-morning sun. The air was still. Silence had gripped anything that was machine, replaced by calls from birds and droplets of water that fell from leaf to leaf. Thick white clouds littered the blue sky, never showing a hint of the dark grey anger of the rain that had once plagued the valley, leaving nothing more than a glimmering emerald paradise.

A sparrow found a place to rest on a high limb of the maple tree. Its chirping song filled Aleutian's ears and made him glance up, all the while his father's question still lingered in his mind. Somehow he felt the urge to smile and he did. With it came the wind, rifling through his dreads like gentle fingers that also caressed his face, fur, and skin with the coolness of the breeze. There, he was glad he had his jacket off, tied between his back with the straps of his pack.

The moving air was ecstacy to his lost soul.

Reaching up he placed his right palm on the tree. He channeled his will power to his sight and fought to see past the blackness that consumed the image in his head. Tracing up the edge of the lightly grey trunk of the tree, he saw the same image that he would see with his natural eyes attuned to his surroundings, but he couldn't see the inside of it. Not this time.

"Have I really strayed from myself?" he asked the sentient being inside of him. "How can I not see the rings of the..."

His realization snapped his hand back from the rough bark. He tried to hide his feelings, tried to bury them in the deepest of crevasses of his heart.

But he failed.

The mental thoughts seemed to float on the wind, finding their way across the fifteen foot void to Locke. And there he saw the image of the premature egg in the womb. Angish of the sight took hold of his heart, wondering if Aleutian had peered deeper into it, finding if he had a son or daughter in the egg as it laid nestled in his equal. Locke shook his head invisibly, putting away the hurtful image of an innocent baby lying helplessly in the womb as the mother died.

With his thoughts back to his son, he took the needed steps to close the gap. "Don't be afraid," he said evenly, "you still can see. I believe in you that you can."

Aleutian felt his father stop right behind his shoulder, but he still kept his eyes closed. "I can't see anymore..."

"...No, it's not that you can't...it's that you don't want to," Locke shyly whispered. "Don't let images from the past make the present's become far removed. You can do it, Aleutian...just don't be afraid."

"Fear is the killer of a trained mind," came Lopper's words that echoed to Aleutian at that instant. "If thou fears, then thou is dead; physically and spiritually."

"He's right Aleutian. Don't let fear tramp over who you are," added Locke. He could see his son's agitation from having his thoughts picked out of the air. "Touch the tree; see through the darkness. Project light where it has never been shown. See how it lives."

Aleutian stuck his hand out but hesitated to touch the maple tree. He was about to draw it back and continue on his way when Locke reached out with his three fingered gloved hands and pushed his over Aleutian's, being mindful to not get stuck with the curved spikes of his son's day old gloves.

"See, Aleutian. You can do this. I have faith in you...like your mother always has."

He trembled with sadness from his father's words, only finding darkness within his sight.

"It's pitch black...just like my heart!"

With his left hand, Locke forced it around the locks of his son's head, whispering to calm him: "See, Aleutian; close your eye's and see. Wish for light...wish for warmth."

Locke mind-meld with Aleutian. Archimedes brought himself over from Locke's shoulder and pressed two of his arms on Aleutian's cranium. At first the sight was blackness to them, like staring into a starless night sky. Even over the grip of his father's hand around the back of his head, Aleutian fought to concentrate.

"I can't!" he protested.

"Yes you can. You are not defeated in life and you are not defeated here today. Your brother has shown you this. Believe in yourself, Aleutian! For your family believes in you."

Aleutian kept staring into the blackness of the tree, fighting hard to see something more than that. He knew what to look for, but the image was never coming to him.

"Ask for it, lad," Archy suggested somberly.

Blue soon replaced darkness; however in a blur.

"Yes...that's it. Open your sight to it," urged Locke in a whisper.

And then came the trickle of light, spanning the ringed spectrum image of the wood to Aleutian, Locke and Archimedes.

"There...was that so bad?" asked Locke into the young Guardian's ear.

Aleutian fought to expel a relieving sigh. "...No. I can see again, father. I thought it was all lost in me."

Locke gently shook his head as he kept his eyes shut. "You've never lost it, Aleutian. You've just kept it away from you because of the pain you feared. Don't let your unborn child stop you from being who you are. Don't let your equal's death linger in your heart while others need it."

Aleutian felt the urge to cry but he kept his sight fixed inside the tree, tracing and counting the rings with the circular picture he witnessed. Somehow it seemed sharper, well tunned but with the same blurry circle that limited his overall view of it.

"The tree is only a sapling, dad."

Locke could hear the flex in Aleutian's vocal cords; sadness mixed with joy. "Yes, it is. How many rings do you see?"

"Seven...what does that mean, father?"

Locke smiled briefly, for he was teaching his son again. Something he never thought would come so soon and be this easy. "It means that it's probably seven years old. Rings sometimes are formed when the tree speeds up its growth cycle due to climate change. Sometimes it slows down as well, leaving larger gaps between the rings."

Aleutian followed his inner-sight up the tree, tracing the seven rings as a pathway to the top. When he reached it, he was met by sunlight that almost blinded him with white-out in his head. Changing the spectrum with just a mere thought, he could see he was looking inside a leaf. Shifting the image down towards the ground, he saw the sight of him and his dad down below with Archy resting between them.

"Can you see further?" Locke inquired graciously.

"What do you mean?"

A shallow breath. "I mean can you magnify your sight to see the smallest of objects?"

"I don't know...I've never tried."

"So what's keeping you?"

"Umm..." Aleutian trailed his voice off that he knew was going to bring an excuse that wouldn't be feasible as an answer. Instead, he pushed himself to see closer. It took a long while for him to concentrate harder, feeling for a brief moment that his task was a waste of brainpower.

But the result proved other wise.

He felt like he was gliding again in the absence of his winged machine. Green fibers gently flowed up as his inner-sight magnified, seeming as if he was falling. He urged himself to see deeper into the make up of the leaf, passing round materials that he knew where arteries or something. Being curious now, he picked one and glimpsed inside of it. There he was baffled along with his dad: green cells were rushing through what looked like slim tributaries that either merged into one another, or branched out. Aleutian had seen images of this only as pictures in a crudely made textbook when he was at the schoolhouse with the children of Mathias' crew. He never once fathomed that he would see the miracle of life with his own sight.

And for Locke it was a spectacle to behold. "I never knew cells could travel this fast in a tree."

"Neither have I, father," gasped Aleutian. "This is truly amazing. I never knew I could do this. I just...took it for what it's worth."

Locke smiled broadly as he took his hand away from Aleutian's, still having his other around his son's head. "We never take things as they are, son. Your brother believes in looking at things from outside the box; seeing if other possibilities exist to achieve a goal. It's something that I had instilled in him and he uses that teaching like a religion."

Aleutian let that digest in his mind as he backed away from the maple tree. Sighing, he took a long look at the ground. "I did too at one point. Why I never came back home. I saw the problem and I tackled it the best way I knew how."

"I know Aleutian...that's what makes you and Knuckles, Guardians."

"...But I don't feel that way, dad," Aleutian admitted evenly, "I mean...I feel that I–"

"–Abandoned your people?" Locke asked rasing a brow.

Aleutian sunk his head down, turning away from his father. "Yes," he finally sighed in defeat. Taking in a deep breath afterwards, he slightly turned his head back to his father and took the first steps of admitting his pain.

"I...I never knew how much it hurt, father, until I saw my brother; grown and... and had become a better echidna than me." Aleutian forced himself not to cry, mustering his free-will to continue on. "He made me question my duties only after I questioned his. He made me remember dad...just seeing him full of pride and devotion, he made me remember..."

"...What you said you would do for him?" Locke affirmed.

Aleutian somberly nodded. "Yes. My duties to him and our kind that I pledged to do. Not some blood-right linage...but me! My promise!" He shuddered hard, mopping his head around to the north, shielding his tears from his father; "My promise!"

Locke waited after a few hard shunts of tearful cries came from the back of Aleutian. He waited before he brought the real truth to him. "She wants you back, Aleutian."

A curt shake of the head. "How do you know?"

Locke didn't answer that question. "She wants her equal back. She wants her Guardian back."

"...HOW DO YOU KNOW!?" snapped Aleutian along with his tempered body and a pointed finger. "You never once met her, and you never once cared about her!"

Locke stiffened his face to match his son's. "I do now! Isn't that enough for you?"

Aleutian dropped his hands to his side while staring down his father. "No...she's dead now thanks to you and Archimedes! I only have her as a stone and portraits..."

"...and your dreams!" Locke seethed out. "Don't you ever blame us for her death, son. We may not have done what we were supposed to do for you...but don't go blaming us for her death! You know that charge is as hollow as your hatred towards me now." Locke dropped his voice down, soothing the anger inside him. "I am willing to make things right with you. I admit that it took your mother to slap me straight to focus my true duties to you...but I am willing to ease our differences here today, and tomorrow, and however long it takes. Like your mother, I want my son back as well.

"And so does your soul-equal."

Aleutian dropped his head down to the ground, waiting for his tears to fall to his feet. "I don't believe she wants me back...after what I done to her. After what I haven't done for her."

"Son," Locke said in stern sympathetic tone, "she called to me this morning with your name on the wind. She wanted me to see your dreams--"

Aleutian fired back with a snap of his head, "No! You wanted to see my dreams!"

Locke shook his head with a grimaced face. "Then why did she apologize for you? Why did she plea for me to help you?" He could see his words were having the effect he knew would come. Aleutian was starting to gape. "And why did she scream your name out in end as she faded from you?" Locke held a short pause before he answered for his son. "Because she wants her soul-equal back."

Aleutian kept starring at the ground, his face shimmering from his tears that rained down over his long scar.

"So where do I begin?" he finally asked in defeat.

"You need to let go."

Aleutian stood there, shaken to say the least. "No...I can't! Not to her..."

Locke took two long strides to his son, grabbed his right hand and thrusted it back to the bark of the tree.

"Do you believe that even when you now believe in yourself?" Aleutian's sight flashed to the insides of the tree again over his father's words. "Look at the life that is thriving around you, Aleutian. We are here...we are here among the living as the living."

Locke then guided Aleutian's hand to his own chest. "Do you see your heart beating?"

A quick hesitation before a tearful nod. "Yes, father."

"Then you are here among the living! Your heart still pumps free in this world and there are people who depend on it to keep beating for their very lives. Your family...your true family depends on your heart to beat freely without being burdened with the dead." Locke swallowed and shifted his gaze. "You need to let go, Aleutian. For our sake."

He stared down at his bare chest, seeing his heart beating as he felt it. Clearing the image, Emi-La's face flashed to him in return: her textures, her love, her kisses; Aleutian didn't want to leave them in the furthest parts of his mind, feeling he was replacing her in the dark; in the cold over him. "I'm not going do that! Not now...not ever!" he cried out to himself

Turning around, Aleutian took a deep sigh and found the motivation to march away from his father. With his face grimacing over the frustrations of the decisions he didn't want to make, he started to feel alone once again with his painful thoughts. And for some reason this time...he hated it.

A shallow cough shifted Doctor Hartman's gawking attention to the door behind him. What professional mind set he still possessed was expelled when his hazel eyes fell on Lar-Na's immaculate figure.

"How is he!?" she asked bluntly, finding the brown echidna's eyes were venturing lower than she wanted them to go. She bleed a smirk when he hesitated.

"Um...stressed: his pulse rate is through the roof and he's not even awake! I was about to check it again until you honored me with your..."

"...I'm taken, hotshot!" Lar-Na growled, smothering Hartman's cordial comment without any hint of remorse. She caught his gaze wondering passed her bare naval once more and there was only one Echidna who could undress her physically and mentally. That was her Field Marshal. Something she let him take full advantage of before she let him sleep off the night's expedition.

She was still sore.

But with her estrogen suppressed, she had to check on Wesson. "How long has he been out?"

Hartman turned back to the thing that was his patient. "Two hours," he answered after a quick check of his wrist watch. "Is there any suggestions you can give me on how I should examine him? I'm honestly afraid to touch him."

Lar-Na walked across the room and stopped at Wesson's bedside, showering him with some resemblance of caring from her green eyes. Like her husband, she too had a soft spot for the young sergeant, however, still caring for the rest of the detachment who were hustled together back on Angel Island. Just more so for Wesson. Especially after what he accomplished that night.

She noticed the medical staff could've done more than just push an I.V. into his natural hand. Nothing else had been done, saved for striping away his pride and dignity along with his boots and BDU's for a hospital gown. Even for her it was degrading to see him how he was.

Letting her face show her indifferent thoughts, she finally replied, "Just keep fluids in him and he'll be fine."

"Fine!? His heart rate is 'ah hundred and fifty! And he's out! How old is he by the way; that could be a great help!?" Hartman thought he knew the answer just by looking at the Legionnaire, but his correction was about to send him in a fury of medical rants.

"Seventeen," Lar-Na answered with an exaggerated sneer.

"Seven...he's gonna have congestive heart failure by the time he's thirty!"

"He'll be lucky if he can see that age, Doctor."

The way she said it, cold and unforgiving as her jaded eyes never left Wesson's sheeted body made Hartman retreat his observations. Everything about his patient seemingly came clear, although his conclusions were still clouded by his lack of understanding of the technological replacement parts that littered Wesson's body. Sure he has attended to patients with bionic limbs, mostly from construction workers who didn't observe the think-safety rule before severing their arm off with a saw. But Wesson's substitutions for skin, fur, arm, and eye sent Hartman's ten years of medical practice back to pre-med, wishing that he'd paid more attention in shop class rather than daydreaming about tooling around someone's insides.

Hartman found no need for a medical history. His tedious and very cautious examination after the routine insertion of the I.V. line told him more about the half cybernetic Legionnaire than Lar-Na needed to elaborate–that was if he found the courage to ask her. Searching for a pulse on what was left of the boy's throat, Hartman ghastly discovered Wesson's left carotid artery was removed, replaced by what felt like a plastic tube that infused with the adjacent artery under the skin. Even there he couldn't find a pulse. The right side didn't fair any better, however; noticing that he was ripped to pieces overtime and engagements. What was odd, though, was Wesson's bionic locks looked to have been voluntarily replaced with clean cuts just at the roots, making his observations that Wesson was willing to bleed frightening evident.

With his thoughts simmering in the long silence, Doctor Hartman let his curiosity ask his next question; one he was aching to know:

"What makes a seventeen year old become this stressed out and hardwired?"

Lar-Na held a short pause as she crossed her arms. "He's a recon scout," she replied evenly, her eyes never going out of focus from Wesson. "To tell you the truth, hotshot, my equal knows more about him than me. But to give you a bit of an idea about why he isn't relaxed: his life is in a constant state of ending every time he gets a mission." She held another eery silence for Hartman to digest her remarks. "He's outlived his life expediency now for more than three months."

A long silence filled the bare white walled room that had little to offer for accommodations. Once again, Hartman found himself stupefied but trying hard not to show it. He could've stopped for Lar-Na's sake. She already knew that he, and ever one else in Albion, were nothing short of spineless fools. They carried on with their daily lives unchallenged, bowing to each other for greetings and on numerous occasions casting carefree smiles under what Lar-Na perceived their shield as a bubble surrounded by an unforgiving world. Their lack of resolve nauseated the deepest pits of her stomach.

That was until Stenson swaggered in to their sweat, though, smiling and smelling of battle. Before they engaged in their mating ritual–something they did after a successful operation– he elaborated what had transpired without flinching the gleam in his uncanny eyes. There, her reservations of Gala-Na and the rest of her pacifist bunch showed a glimmer of light that they weren't totally deprived of a guts. She then stopped herself from being consumed in a frenzy of laughter when Stenson told her about Wesson's message, but instead concentrated on her husband's worried face as he explained Wesson's run through Deer Wood Forest, telling her that the boy had changed.

She had to come and see for herself.

Hartman pushed his intimidated thoughts aside and resumed his duties. Remembering where he did find a pulse on Wesson's left wrist, Hartman placed two fingers over Wesson's artery and began counting the heartbeats while watching the seconds tick by on his watch...

Never in all his life had he seen someone snap their eyes open so quickly. Time resembled a photograph as Hartman stared for the moment he had at Wesson's cybernetic ocular, never minding the natural pupil. It was then that he thought fear was gripping his throat as he never thought it felt so cold. But with panic heighten his senses, Hartman found it wasn't fear but Wesson's bionic hand crushing his windpipe without so much of a strain showing on his snout. The pain and lack of air commanded Hartman's hands to rush up to his throat, all the while his knees began to buckle under the immense weight of his overloaded senses.

Lar-Na waited a half-second more before she stopped Wesson from ripping out Hartman's windpipe, knowing full well that the sergeant was acting on instinct rather than pure impulse to kill him. "Sergeant Wesson, EASY! You're not in the field; you're in a hospital!" she snapped, feeling justice had been served.

If it wasn't for Lar-Na's overbearing voice filtering into Wesson's psyche, another single thought from his adrenalin charged mind would've killed Hartman where he kneeled. Releasing him with a snap of his mechanical fingers, Wesson watched the doctor finish his journey to the tiled floor, Hartman finding air never felt so good to breath.

Casting the sheets aside, the Legionnaire slapped his bare feet on the floor beside the gasping echidna and scoured the room with his burning eyes that projected his hollow temper. Soon, his senses filtered back into his swirling head, finding what was left of his fur body becoming chilled in the cold air with his right leg becoming tight with pain.

"Where is she?" he finally said, his gritty voice making the room colder.

"Where's who?" retorted Lar-Na, finding herself stepping closer to Wesson's right side.

"Nata-Le!" Wesson seethed, shifting his piercing eyes down to the white coat of Hartman. "Where is she, cretin!?"

Hartman didn't answer. He was still massaging his throat while trying to breath.

Something inside Wesson told him to take his temper to the next level. He couldn't fathom as to why his voice in his heart told him to pick the stunned doctor off the ground, but in an instant, he had his bionic hand wrapped around Hartman's lab coat and lifted him six inches off the ground.

"Where is she and don't let me ask again!"

Lar-Na gently placed her calming fingers down on Wesson's furred shoulder that supported his replaced arm. "Stand down, Wesson," she said in a calming voice, one that the young sergeant hadn't heard since he met her.

He didn't flinch.

"Stand down, Sergeant Wesson. Please obey my request." She waited and yet still nothing.

"Is she alive?" Wesson finally asked in a trembling voice, his crimson eyes never leaving Hartman's petrified face. "Did I succeed?"

"Yes," replied Lar-Na with a lowered tone, "now put him down, Wesson. I still have as much say over you as Stenson does, so obey my order!"

It felt like an evolution had passed when Wesson finally broke his strained, burning face. "As you wish, Mistress." And with that, he lowered Hartman gently back to the ground and released him.

For a moment, Wesson stood rigid in silence, the fog of sleep never looming in his racing mind. Additional physical feelings soon replaced his mental anguish, telling him to look over his body for the pinprick in his hand that helped bring him back to reality. Never thinking twice about the pain nor the consequences, he pulled the I.V. needle straight out from the top of his hand, never grimacing from the pain. It wasn't long before his life's elixir oozed out and trickled across his fingers.

"I want to see her!" he demanded with resolve painted firmly on his face.

"What was that?" Lar-Na asked surprised.

Wesson's chest rose as he breathed in deep. "I want to see her now!"

Asking for reasons why ended right there. Instead, she lowered her jaded eyes towards Hartman, seeing that he was still trying to collect himself. "Okay, hotshot! Now you need to start answering questions."

Shaking his stunned head, he swallowed hard to clear his very sore throat and said, "She's upstairs, second floor, in orthopaedics or surgery last I heard..."

"Which is it!?" Lar-Na snarled. She hated indecisiveness–people got killed because of it.

Hartman began to stammer. "Um...surgery."

Easing her tempered face to one of sorrow, she tuned to Wesson. He never looked so eager to hit the door. "Get your pant's on, and I'll go with you."

Wesson gave a depressive nod, his seething sight never leaving hers. "Thank you, Mistress."

Lar-Na reflected how long it had been since she toured through a hospital that was still standing. Months she concluded, but she still hated the atmosphere that bellowed out from every room and corner; like death was waiting in the shadows for a helpless victim. Seeking sanctuary from her dreary surroundings, she kept her psyche entertained with Wesson's back. His bare feet slapped on the cold floor with his marching strides suppressed to a limp, perhaps, compounded with anxiety that he couldn't explain. But Lar-Na knew–she knew now what Stenson was so worried about. Something that would need to remind him that it was actually okay.

Within a few steps Wesson saw his destination to his right, the room number that Hartman finally divulged still burning in his mind. When he was about to round the door he stopped suddenly as a nurse with a surgical mask over her muzzle began to exit, pushing an aluminum cart that caught Wesson's attention in a yearning heartbeat. Atop it laid a bundled white sheet, purple stains lathering at an end that Wesson knew to be blood. There, he felt his heart sink even further as repressed images that he, himself, experienced only six months earlier; the phantom feeling of an arm that was never there, denial before anguish.

When he turned into the room, he could see Nata-Le was feeling just that.

Her shallow sobs filtered over the beeping of machines, her head turned away from her next challenge in life that she didn't want to face. Wesson couldn't tell if she was shivering from the cold environment that speared through the tan hospital blanket or that she was scarred and lonely. It must've been the latter as he became disgusted when he saw no resemblances of loving parents in the room. Instead, a masked covered doctor whose blonde hair had never seen a comb in months. Wesson knew the sight of a mom and dad all too well; he longed for it since he was ten.

Looking for relief from his emotions, he urged himself forward to her bedside, passing the red echidna doctor who ignored him but turned away for the door. Lar-Na eased her elegant figure as a door jam, stopping him quickly but with a disarming gaze. She said nothing as the physician took off his mask.

"She's one lucky girl. Are you her mother by chance?" he asked, his professional gaze never leaving hers.

"No," she replied, letting her eyes drift to the bare back of Wesson. "Is she going to get a replacement?"

"Tomorrow." A tired sigh; "But she needs to rest. I just wish her parents were here. They were supposed to be contacted by now, but no show."

Lar-Na bowed her head in agreement, feeling the warmth of the image in front of her that thawed the frigid room. "She'll be alright. I'm positive she won't be alone tonight."

Looking down upon her pink fur, Wesson's natural eye glistened in the florescent light as he found it hard to breathe over his withering emotions. Every whimpering pant she took made him want to do the same. But he held on. Swallowing hard, he desperately fought to discipline his voice. This time he was successful as his emotions won out in the struggle.

"Nata-Le?"

It took more than a moment for her to ease her head over, her cherry red face lighting up in horror as her eyes met Wesson's. It wasn't his fault that he needed the hideous cybernetic parts to go on with his life, but he felt it all the same. His face dropped with guilt as he raised his hands up to plea for calmness. "No...no. It's okay. Don't..."

He cut his whimpering voice short after see the emotional damage that he was trying not to cause. His face was far removed from the equation, however it was his cybernetic arm that was doing more harm than good. There he coward, turning away so he didn't hurt her anymore than how she was presently. But to his bewildered, frustrated mind, she reached over with her right arm and grabbed his replacement arm with a firm grasp. Her blanket and sheet draped down to the floor, exposing her bandaged nub that shot anguish to Wesson's aching heart.

A long silence drowned the room, Lar-Na finding herself watching intently as two totally different worlds were seeking understanding with each other.

"Does it hurt?" Nata-Le whimpered to Wesson, her eyes striking her question and her soul deeper into his.

A shaking breath. "Only when you're alone."

"Will I?" she asked tearfully, fearing that her friends and quite possibly her family might alienate her because she wasn't normal anymore.

Wesson could see the anguish she was fearing through her eyes. "I will be here tonight...and the next. You have my word."

"You will?" she sobbed in surprise.

A long nod. "I will."

Sniffing her nose, she let a tearful smile consume her red cheeks, letting silence give her thanks as she looked onto Wesson. The rest of the night he stood sentry by her bedside, watching her fall asleep without a word.

Lar-Na hovered by the door longer than she knew she needed to. It was there before she left, before her lungs began to choke again, that she realized what Stenson was fearing. They had lost Wesson...and she would let him stay lost.

Please review and tell me what you all think. More to come; I promise.