Forgiven Yet Not Forgotten

The warmth was beginning to fade from her hand. He could feel it. Her life stood on the edge of a knife, dangling between light and demise. Yet had they had found out a second later, she would have left him. Torn held her hand in his own. He had no intention for this happen. He whispered to the failing body in the bed. "My sweet Janovah...I forgive you." He got up slowly, still weak from sickness. He kissed her forehead carefully in the dark. Her lifeless body lay still, attached to bleeping machines, breathing audible. He carefully exited the small room located in the Intensive Care Unit. As he made his way around the hospital, he spotted a figure. Seem was leaning against the wall, looking somewhat bored. Torn's anger grew.

As Seem began to walk around the corner, Torn decided to take care of business. "Hey, you! You are not going anywhere!" Seem stopped and turned around. His face turned to stone with fear of who he was facing. Torn strode up and grabbed Seem's orange scarf. He wheeled him around lifted him from the ground. Seem was at least a foot shorter than him.

"Let me make something clear to you, shorty. Janovah married me, not you. Keep your little hands off of her, or there will be some pain. Got that?" Seem looked dertermined and angry. He said, "Well, if she loves you so much, why did she kiss me? Why did she let me love her? Why did she let me touch-" Torn cut him off. He dropped Seem, wheeled back, and slugged him in the nose. Seem grasped at his nose as he cried out.

Torn turned around a corner, down the dark hallways of the hospital. As he passed by he saw a team of doctors rushing into the phsychiatric ward with a gurney. On the gurney was a girl, about fourteen years old. She had a distressed and crazed look, and was clutching a keyboard tightly. She was screaming frantically, "NO! THE ALIENS ARE COMING! THEY'VE ALREADY COME! STOP THE MOLE PEOPLE!". On her clipboard dangling off the gurney, it said, Name: Happy Jak, a.k.a. Artlantiskeeper. Mentally disturbed, caution, may bite. Torn thought to himself, 'Wow, THERE'S a wacko for you.'

Janovah could feel her life slipping away. Deliverance was so very close. Her heart stopped, and she slipped into a dream-like aura. She closed her eyes as she could see people gathering at her bedside.

In a haze, she saw Haven City…it was being destroyed. A great giant mech towered upon the smoldering ruins of her home. She heard Samos's voice cry out. "You were born to destroy the darkness, not become it!" from the machine another voice echoed over. "It's OVER, Samos! I don't want to save the world, I don't want anything more to do with these goody-goody ways. I only desire…power."

There was a great explosion as her vision was filled with white…

Her eyes were open, suddenly alert with reality. Doctors were running about the ICU checking machines.

Torn sat in the waiting room, his eyes closed in silent prayer. Like most of Haven, he was devoutly religous. Had his loyalty to the lord, Kalilicah slipped too much? 'My god, Kalilicah, return my love to me, please, I ask of you,' he pleaded in my mind. 'Give unto me my Janovah.' He continued his prayer, 'If she cannot be spared, have mercy. Let her be graced with eternal life in Ahayweh, where her love for me will go on until my time has come.'
He finished his prayer, hoping he had sounded grateful and pleading.

As a child growing up in the Wasteland, Janovah had never questioned being an athiest. She was taught that there was nothing after death, and no reward came for the struggle you had to endure to scrape out a life in the miserable desert; but were they right? Is there something more?