Silver Fire

At first glance, she’s nothing but a dirty, emaciated body - staggered too far out into the desert, lost to the elements which make life here so impossible. But he sees the laboured rise and fall of her chest, sees the way she chokes back water when it’s offered, and against all odds, she’s alive.

Then she opens her eyes, and the sun is reflected back at them, silver fire shattering the shade of the tree she’s managed to drag herself to. He feels his own face close into hardness. He doesn’t have to look to feel the abject horror of his chosen family. They are of one mind in this. She - it - would have been better off dead.

It’s so nearly dead moments later when Kyle lifts his machete to hang over it's neck, but Jeb - mad old Jeb - stays the execution.

So it enters their home.

This is their home. A fraction of peace they’ve managed to find in the apocalypse. It might well be the last place on earth the buggers hadn’t previously infiltrated, and now there’s one in the fucking storage hole.

Never mind that it staggered to Jared when it saw him for the first time, his name on its lips like it had dragged itself across the desert out of love for him. Never mind that he wouldn’t leave a dog down here, enclosed in this tomb. Never mind that it had crawled out of the hole they’d put it in, diving in front of Jared, crying, “I’m what you want, leave him alone…”

Never mind that as his hands wrap around it's neck, it just looks like a girl. When he lifts it bodily from the ground, the weight barely registers. A mistreated, miserable girl who has been damaged repeatedly by his family, and whose death might come at his hands after all.

Later, he stares at his hands in the empty room he shares with Kyle, and he knows he would have done it, and it would have stained his soul irreparably, and he is sick with gladness that Jeb’s gun arrived when it did.

He doesn’t go back for a while. When he does, he feels it viscerally again, the way it's flesh gave way under his hands. But he blinks and it's neck isn't between his hands after all, and he’s just sat peering into her hole with Jared. It’s a beaten dog, huddled in a cage.

He sees the puzzle piece bruises he left on it's neck, the perfect match to the shape of his hands, and he feels that same nausea rise back up in him.

She - it still looks like a body, but it unnerves him how frightened it is by even the mention of the seeker they’ve been taking it in turns to watch. When he gets in the way of the fist Jared tries to turn on her - It - again, he’s secretly glad for it, although his jaw snaps together at the punch, which smacks into the same bruises his friend put there a few days ago. It feels like the beginnings of penance, although he’s not sure what he’s paying for yet.

He hasn’t known Jared like this. Sure, he'd been a mess when he’d first come here a year or so ago, dragging Jamie back and forth in front of the cave system, but he’d always kept that last shred of control, even in those first few days. Now he’s a man possessed, ravaged again by the guilt of leaving his girlfriend behind to this fate. Ian can see it in his eyes, and he’s relieved when Jared agrees to leave for a few weeks on a raid.

Ian doesn’t expect to see her in the kitchen space. He pauses, dry bread half way to his mouth, and he’s not the only one. When Doc gets up to follow them on their tour, he stands too, food forgotten, drawn magnetically inwards. Later, when he’s asked by Lucina, he will joke that someone has to be there to stop Jeb getting his head screwed by the bugger, but the words taste like ash now and he chokes on the lie. There’s no deception here on her part, he's almost certain, and also he can still feel his hands forming that necklace of bruises on her, and if he could claw his own hands off to forget the feeling of her flesh giving under his fingers, he would.

I wish it had never come here.

No - the thought is dismissed as soon as it forms. That’s not true any more. He doesn’t understand why it - she, he supposes - would come here, but some part of him is fascinated by her choices. And he realises, suddenly, that the world is not black and white, humans against souls, but can be something vastly more complicated, if he’s willing to look. And he is looking, now.

Now that she’s been allowed to bathe, he notices how much more human she looks too. No - not human, he supposes. But like… a person.

He compares her now to the dirty scrap of a creature they’d found in the desert, and realises for the first time that she’s pretty. Not just the face she wears, but the flash of fire behind her eyes. They’re hard to look into, like the mercury in them might flay him alive and then immediately cauterise the wounds. But he keeps looking.

The word falls off his tongue as he and Doc trail Jeb and the girl on their little tour of the caves, and it gives too much away, “She’s not giving away any trade secrets, are you sweetheart?”

He’s saved by the sarcasm, but he didn’t mean to say it at all, and the term of endearment falls all-too-easily off his tongue.

There’s a lot he does subconsciously, these days. He finds himself working alongside her. It’s good for him, actually - he’s had a strong work ethic since the day he was born, his mother used to say, and he likes to work in silence. That’s good for her, too. It has the added benefit that others stay away from them.

He sits in the evenings in the hot seat by the oven to hear her stories, chasing that flash of silver fire in her eyes when she forgets, wrapped up in her memories, that she’s still a mouse in a snake pit. The urge to defend her, to shield her from the snakes, is stronger than he’d thought possible. He hasn’t sorted that particular need out just yet, but he acknowledges it now. He's surprised to find that he likes her quiet company. He wants to protect her, this alien girl. From his… family.

With Kyle gone, he is always the tallest person in the room, but he has never felt smaller than when her stories wrap around him, and she speaks of other worlds, other lifetimes which she existed in, before his grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents were children. Further back, her stories stretch. If she leaves here, she’ll continue on, outliving the body she wears, outliving the children born here now and their great great grandchildren. Perhaps outliving the planet itself. He is not sure anyone else obsesses over this, the way he does. He wants to know her every story, so he questions her relentlessly, in her evening sessions and then while they work together in the field or anywhere else. She is a window into a wide world he can’t begin to fathom, and her stories consume him. He dreams intermittently of her ice planet and of the singing bats a thousand years away, and his dreams are limned with silver fire.

On the night his brother returns, he finds himself stood between them. One lone friendly snake in the viper pit that’s suddenly boiling with rage again. “Things changed while you were gone,” he says. He’s never understated anything so much in his life, “she’s not a danger to us.”

Jared calmly asks Jeb for his gun, and the beat of silence which follows is thick with tension. Ian still stands in front of her, arms loose by his side, knees relaxed. He weighs his chances: Jared and Kyle are motivated, but they're also tired, and he can probably count on Jeb, on Doc… perhaps some of the others to help him disarm them if it comes to that, hopefully before he gets shot in her place.

Jeb sounds altogether too calm when he finally says, “Don’t happen to have it on me.”

But Jared isn’t deterred, and Ian sees the way his hands ball into fists again. “It would be more... humane if you were to find that gun fast.”

Ian plants his feet, more firm now, “Please, Jared, let’s talk.” There’s no way he’s going to stand by and let this happen.

The kid feels the same - Jamie is horrified by Jared’s violence. Ian is, too. But Jamie has more influence on Jared, and it’s the kid who stays this second (or third, or fourth?) execution event.

Jared and Kyle stalk from the room together with the others, and he remembers how to breathe again.

When she darts from the kitchen moments later, horrified by what had nearly happened, he almost follows her. Jeb puts a staying hand on his arm instead.

He doesn’t see her again until the next day, in the kitchen. Doc had needed him in the way he is always needed after a raid, eyes hollowed out by grief by his broken oath to Do No Harm, and already stinking of the white alcohol they brew here. He spends the night outside with a shovel, and silver blood staining his hands.

It’s the first time he makes the connection to her eyes, burying the human bodies. They look almost perfect, apart from small incisions in their necks and the splattering of silver blood. He’s seen that exact colour a thousand times by now, in her eyes. He’s witnessed Doc’s failed attempts for years, buried scores of bodies, which he always hates. But it’s never bothered him quite like this.

In the dark, where they think he can't hear them, he's heard murmurings all night of the raiders who are unanimous about this - she must be next on Doc’s gurney, even if that means digging another grave. It’s all he can do to hold his tongue, but he returns inside first, unwilling to let her die like that. When he sees her and Jamie by the big field he hurries over, despite his bone-deep weariness, and takes her arm. It makes him feel better to hold on to her. But there’s something more pressing than even that unbidden thought.

“There you are,” he pulls her along with him, into the narrow mouth of a tunnel, “let’s duck in here for a minute.”

Jared is not far behind Ian, and Kyle is with him. They were in the hospital too, with Doc. Then they were outside, shovels in hand. The bleakness on their faces had mirrored his own.

Their voices pass by the impromptu hiding place. They’re giving too much away, he thinks - she’ll make the connection. She’ll realise what they want, or what they've been doing all night.

As they disappear down the hallway, he looks down at her for the first time, first at her hands which are holding a stack of dishes, and then, when she tilts her face up to his, at the new bruises which patchwork across her face.

His hand is nearly at her chin before he realises what he’s doing. She flinches, and he drops his hand quickly.

“That makes me sick, and worse… knowing if I hadn’t stayed behind, I might have been the one to do it.” His hands flex by his sides, feeling again the nauseating way her flesh felt under his fingers. It’s horrifying to even think about now, with the feeling of corpse still imprinted in his skin.

“It’s nothing, Ian,” she defers.

He shakes his head, still reeling with the horror of his attempted murder of this girl, and the other murders he's complicit in, and everything he's had to do in the last decade and worst of all, the way they've all treated this gentle soul. “I don’t agree with that,” he tells her.

Jamie disappears, asking him to keep and eye on Wanda, and it’s the easiest thing he’s ever agreed to. Then Ian notices again what’s in her hands, and takes them from her. He does feel silly, with her carrying things and him with empty hands. “Chalk it up to gallantry.”

He turns away before she sees the way his expression relaxes into an easy smile in response to her confusion.

He leads her away from the danger, up to the cornfield, where he tries to force her to relax. She's not very good at it. Her stubbornness is one of his favourite things about her, but he’s tired after his long night outdoors. When she notes the dirt on his skin, on his face, he nearly flinches away from the truth of it. He is sure the guilt is written in large strokes across his face, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

They are quiet for a while after he avoids answering her questions, and he thinks again about the girl in front of him, trying to separate her from Jared’s Melanie. He’s heard Jeb’s theory, that his niece is in there somewhere, too. It’s why the raiders brought so many back this time. Why he was out all night digging graves.

He doesn’t think she’ll lie to him, “Is she still in there with you? The girl whose body you wear?”

He’s not sure what he wants to hear - that it’s a fairytale, and that humans don’t have to live an existence like that, trapped in there with the souls, or that it’s true, and there’s hope for the future of humanity after all.

There’s a very long moment where he thinks she won't answer him at all. But evidently she trusts him enough to whisper, “Yes. Melanie is still here.”

He’s not surprised, it turns out - her actions make so much more sense if they’re motivated by the girl inside her who loves her brother and loves Jared.

“What’s it like? For you? For her?” he asks.

She explains it to him - the crowded mind, the influences not her own, and what would happen to him if he were caught. They’re quiet after she tells him what would happen to her - shipped off-world to a planet a lifetime away. They’d all be long dead by the time she even got there. It's an uncomfortable thought, and they lapse into an uneasy silence.

He looks again at her face after a long moment, and is struck anew at the marks left there. Some of them might scar. “When Doc sobers up, we’ll get him to take a look at your face.”

He reaches for her, and she doesn’t flinch this time when he turns her face to the light. He feels his expression shutter at the marks left there.

They deal with her dishes, and he takes a few minutes to scrub off his filthy arms and face and neck in the black bathing room. Together, they return to the kitchen, filling with people. Jamie is there, too - Ian nods at him. They’re forming a strange little truce, the Protect Wanda Coalition. He wonders idly about making t-shirts, and if Jamie would wear one. Then realises he's verging on deliriousness.

They eat in silence in the unusually quiet room. Ian doesn’t mind - he’s not sure he has it in him to sustain a conversation, he’s so tired. He needs to be somewhere he can make sure she’s safe for a few hours.

“Where did you sleep last night?” He thinks he already know the answer, and he nods when she confirms it. The storage cave. “I can sleep there now, and you can be inconspicuous beside me.”

A crease forms between her eyes, “you can’t watch me every second.”

“Wanna bet?” He’s almost slurring his words now.

They go together to the dark little hole. She tries to reason with him as they walk. “Ian, what’s the point of this? Won’t it hurt Jamie more, the longer I’m alive? In the end, wouldn’t it be better for him if -“

He cuts her off, disliking the train of her thought intensely, “We’re not animals. Your death is not an inevitability.”

She’s quiet, and he thinks she might be weighing her own mortality. But then she says, “I don’t think you’re an animal.”

He looks sideways at her through heavy-lidded eyes. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

Then, up ahead, there's a dim light in the tunnels. He’s suddenly awake, like he’s just downed litres of coffee. He presses on her shoulder, trying to make her stay. They both know who it is. Ian leaves her behind him and rounds the corner, feigning surprise when he sees Jared. His eyes are hard, jaw set.

Jared’s chilling voice matches his icy expression, “Come out, come out, wherever you are…”

Wanda appears behind him. He can tell by the way Jared's face twists cruelly as she comes into view behind him, hugging the wall. He wants to talk to her and she agrees, but the conversation sounds wrong, now - Jared insists on calling her it, like they all did in the beginning.

He doesn't like any of it, but she can make her own decisions. Once he’s convinced that Jared won’t turn his fists on her again, he squares his shoulders, looking down at his friend where he sits on the mat by the hole.

“Her name is Wanda, not it. You will not touch her. Any mark you leave on her, I will double on your worthless hide.” Ian sees her flinch at the threat, sees the surprise in Jared’s expression, and thinks he’s probably made his point. He turns, stalking off into the darkness, fighting his own instincts to linger out of sight.

He doesn’t see her until the next day and his eyes catalogue her new collection of bruises tightly, although none of them look like they were inflicted by Jared. He still thinks about making good on his threat, anyway.

And life sort of… settles again, in the caves. He’s had several fights with Kyle, but that’s nothing new, they’ve always been able to wind each other up. He’s told his brother in no uncertain terms that Wanda isn’t to be touched, or bothered, and he repeats the same threats he gave Jared, that Wanda has someone in these caves who will fight on her behalf, even against his own brother. Kyle is incredulous. He doesn't get it at all, just sees the alien in Wanda, not the kind little soul. But he doesn't have to get it, he just has to stay the fuck away from her.

Ian thinks Kyle takes it in, but… he never quite knows. He stays with her, as much as possible.

Doc is struggling with Walt, but none of them had known quite how dire the situation was until recently, and that night in the kitchens, the usual questions about Wanda’s lives turn specifically to medicine. They all have mortality on the brain. When Wanda demands an explanation, he has to tell her - he can barely keep anything from her any more.

He nearly doesn’t say it. It’s like he’s said to Jamie, she’s too self-sacrificing for her own good, but he’d heard Walt last night, crying out for Wanda through his pain. “He’s been asking for you,” he says, reluctantly. “Well.. he says your name, sometimes. It’s hard to tell what he means - Doc’s keeping him drunk to help with the pain.”

Wanda is aghast, of course - both at the pain her friend is enduring and the barbarism of their pitiful attempts to help him. “Can I see him?” She asks, sorrow in her burning eyes, and he can’t help but say yes. Especially when it’s Walt’s final wish.

They go together to Doc’s clinic with Jamie. They pass his brother, whose face turns nasty when he sees them together. Very deliberately, shoulders squared, Ian reaches for her hand, wrapping her cold fingers in his much warmer ones. A warning.

Once they’ve passed, she tries to extricate her hand, “I wish you wouldn’t make him angrier.”

But he’s sick and tired of making excuses for his brother, so he disregards that, and doesn't let go of her. “If Kyle can’t accept Jeb’s rules, then he’s no longer welcome here,” he tells her. It’s an echo of the conversation they’d had the other day, the last time the brothers had really spoke to one another.

Wanda doesn’t speak again on the long walk to the hospital.

When they enter the room, it smells like the alcohol. Doc is snoring, but Walt is conscious. Ian watches as the man’s gaze alights on Wanda, sees the peace that seems to settle over him so suddenly. She’s tentative, perhaps horrified by Walt’s tortured face, but he nudges her forward. He knows she wants to be near him, but can’t quite work out what Walter needs, and he mimes holding his hand. She kneels beside the bed, her fingers curling around the old man’s, and she gives him the last bit of peace he might have expected.

He notices Doc stirring, and motions for the man to be quiet. She’s murmuring softly to Walt now, wiping cool cloths across his forehead.

Doc’s been here with Walt for a few days now, so Ian sits with him again, as he’s been trying to do when he gets a few free moments. He likes the other man a great deal, knows he can rely on his kindness. He’s become somewhat of an ally in his fight to keep Wanda alive, another member of his and Jamie's coalition.

Ian tells Doc about the class tonight, what the others want from Wanda - miraculous healing, he supposes. Throughout their quiet discussion, he keeps one eye on where Wanda sits on the cool floor.

When they try to leave, he sees how upset Wanda is by Walt's distress, and he knows then that she won’t leave now until she’s dragged out by the hair. He glances around, hating the way she’s hunched on the floor, then pulls the spare cot over to her, lifting her easily on to it. “Do you think you can sleep like that?”

She nods, eyes wide, and he smiles gently at her, “Sleep well, then.”

He looks down at her, and suddenly he’s moving very slightly towards her, their eyes locked together, to do - well, he’s not exactly sure what. To comfort her? Perhaps press a kiss to her hair? He reels at the unexpected thought, stopping himself before she notices how he’s swayed towards her.

Instead of dealing with that particular instinct, he lifts Jamie from where he’s dozing on the other cot, and they leave the cool hospital room behind.

He tosses and turns that night, and when sleep finally claims him, she appears again in his dreams with feathery silver wings, and a smile on her beatific face.

In the morning, he’s not sure what the symbolism is of her, appearing to him as an angel. She looks altogether more rumpled than the face in his dream when he returns to the hospital to retrieve her for breakfast, and then when he returns once again with food for them both when Wanda can’t be spared.

Jared’s gone out again, to try to find some miracle, some medicine which might help with Walt’s pain. It’s a bit of a futile effort. They’ve been before - all of the old medicines are gone now, replaced with strangely homogeneous bottles with vague names. They don’t trust any of it.

When he leaves the hospital again to do some of the work he's been avoiding, the tension in the caves is palpable again. He catches Lily’s arm when he passes her, and she explains in brief sentences that the Seeker is back, that it’s looking for Wanda. He almost wheels about to go straight back to the hospital but she stops him - they have to pack things up, in case they have to leave quickly. There’s protocol for this, sometimes practised but never before used. He’s put to work immediately in the store room, gathering goods to pack into the trucks for if they have to abandon the cave system. Packing for an evacuation. He’s so caught up in the task that he doesn’t go back to the hospital room for several hours. And when he does, Brandt’s there, eyeballing Wanda.

Ian is abruptly furious. How is this still happening? How, after all these months of this gentle soul being here, can anyone still mistrust her? He puts himself between them, right in Brandt’s eye line, and he doesn’t leave again, even knowing what is happening in the caves. He can feel Brandt’s hard gaze, boring into his back, even with Walt’s agony echoing in the cave.

It’s awful. Wanda is white, her usually tanned face drained of all colour. He wants to wrap his arms around her, to protect her from Brandt and the others, and from the horror of seeing her friend die.

Wanda asks him to take Jamie away later, when the sound becomes unbearable. He agrees, and though he shoots Doc a pointed glance, he trusts his friend to not let Brandt do anything too stupid while he keeps Jamie away.

He nearly goes back several times in the night. Brandt returns to the main rooms early the next morning, seemingly having had enough of the dark hospital and the screams. Ian pulls him roughly aside, away from the others.

“Don’t go near her again,” his voice is tight and controlled, but he lets the boiling fury flash in his eyes. Brandt nearly spits in his face in response, but Ian looms over the smaller man, hand fisted in the front of his jacket. “I mean it. I’ll know. Don’t even fucking look at her.” Brandt nods, still angry, but aware of his disadvantage.

Jared is back a few hours later, and he somehow managed to come through with the morphine Walt needs, and it’s only then that Ian allows himself to relax a bit. Wanda will grieve, but she’s borne witness to Walt's pain. She’ll know it’s necessary.

The sun hasn’t yet risen when he wakes. Unusually, Kyle is gone from the mattress where he usually snores next to Ian. It’s not like him to be up so early. He feels the unease shift in his gut when his brother doesn’t return, and something makes him get to his feet, pull on yesterday’s shirt, and leave his room, just to make sure she’s… still with Doc and Walt.

Ian makes it to the main room, lit faintly red by the rising sun and the mirrors, when… he hears it. He shouldn’t hear it, has no right to hear it, but sound travels in unexpected ways in these caves, and when her shattering scream reaches him in the large room, he is moving before he can quite comprehend exactly what might be happening. The urge to rip something apart, to get to her, to break himself to reach her, rips through him and each breath is a knife to the chest as he sprints across the room. Jeb has heard too. He’s there, suddenly, by the tunnel, and his gun is in his hand.

Ian snatches at the weapon, and he only has to say his brother’s name and Jeb relinquishes the rifle to him. Ian hasn’t quite worked it out yet, but his mind is a mantra of No, not her, not Wanda, No.

There is only her scream, and the way it echoed in what must be the - the river room. And a cracking, which rends the air between them - a sustained groaning which he can’t place, even as he hears her again, “Help me! Somebody! Help!”

His eyes take a moment to adjust to the dark room as he skids to a halt beside the entrance. The gun is already at his shoulder. He hasn’t shot a gun since those dark years on the run with Kyle. If you’d asked him just weeks ago if he would ever turn it on his brother, he’d have scoffed, but the gun is raised now and he knows he won’t hesitate if - if - “Wanda? Wanda!”

The scene is not what he expects. There is only her slight body, the hulking form of his brother a dead weight in her arms, precariously balanced, and she’s screaming at him to help, to get down, to disperse his weight.

The jarring tableau on the floor and effort it takes to heave his brother’s weight off of her body stalls his mind for the moments it takes to save them both, but it’s not long after the immediate danger has passed and he’s dragged them all out of the way that the truth of what has happened clarifies in his mind, and the burning rage returns.

“What… the hell… happened?”

She lies. He knows she’s lying, has always been able to hear it in her voice. She tells him the floor caved in. With them at the edge, together.

“What did he do?” Without waiting for the answer she’s desperate not to give him, he tilts her face upwards and sees the damaged skin in the light. New wounds on old scars. His hand just barely ghosts across her cheek, and even now, in the horror of this moment, he never takes any single, burning touch lightly.

“He tried to kill you.” It’s not a question. The realisation sits like bile in his throat, but there’s no other explanation. He can picture it. His brother, shoving her toward the burning river that would carry her away, never to be seen again, “He was going to throw you in the river…” a shudder, completely unbidden, wracks through him at the thought of that burning, painful death. He would never even have known what had happened to her. His chest is tight.

He shoves the weight of his brother off him. It’s suddenly unbearable. That Kyle would - to -

He wraps his arms around her, more tightly now. His breathing is still jagged but different now, like he’s run a marathon. Fuck, why can’t he catch his breath?

“I should roll him right back in there and kick him over the edge myself.” He’s not joking, but Wanda is horrified, even when his voice turns cold and sure, as he explains the rules Jeb laid down in no uncertain terms, “There’ll be a tribunal.”

She tries to pull away from him but he can’t let go; not now, not yet. He tightens his grip instead, his forehead pressed to her shoulder. His hands are still shaking, fisted around the damp material of her top. She’s frightened again, trying to explain, trying to pull him away from the anger, the fear… “Ian, he’s your brother," her voice breaks.

His brother, who he's trusted with his life one million times. Who he sleeps beside every night. Who he thought had understood. Perhaps it is his fault. He's driven Kyle to this, by defending her. The thought of her burning and drowning in that stream flashes in his mind again. Her scream echoes.

“And you are…” he could say a lot of things to her, and none of them are appropriate now, “you are… My friend.” He finishes, lamely. His voice breaks, like hers.

You’re my whole heart. The best person I’ve ever known. The most beautiful soul. I am so goddamned in love with you…

Best left unsaid.

She’s hurt again, worse than before. Her leg, her face. He puts the gun in in her hands and it almost rolls right back off, she’s so unwilling to hold it. He laughs sharply, though nothing is very funny. How could anyone be afraid of her? How could Kyle...?

He carries her like she's made of glass through the network of tunnels, careful not to jostle her injuries. Jeb’s gun balances uncomfortably in her open palms. He vows silently that this is the last goddamn time she is hurt in these caves. He resists the urge to crush her against him again, and their gazes lock together as they pass through a beam of light. The sharp reflection of her eyes is a comfort, now. When did it become the thing he is most comforted by?

“I’m… very glad you weren’t hurt, Wanda. Hurt worse, I should say.” It’s the very least of his feelings, and it feels safe, for now.

Of course, one of the things he loves most about her is her gut-wrenching stubbornness, but he wants to shake her when she sticks to her story in which the floor magically bashed in the back of her head, smacked her leg about and left nasty bruises on her ribs.

He doesn’t have to be told what mark a punch to the gut leaves. He’s a similar enough size to Kyle that he could probably line his clenched fist up with her bruises and find a perfect match. The mark, apart from any of her other injuries, is absolutely damning.

“Let me guess. You fell on a rock,” He tries hard to keep the ice from his voice, but he’s still reeling, off-kilter.

“Good guess,” she whispers, and the sound cuts through him. But they’re bringing Kyle here, and he can’t have them in the same room, not if there’s even the slightest chance his brother might try to finish what he started.

“I’ll get a place ready.” He sure as hell wouldn’t be sharing the room with Kyle any more, anyway. She starts to protest, but his finger is gentle on her lips, his question for Doc, “Is it ok to move her?”

Wanda protests, of course, wanting to be with Walt, and he reluctantly agrees to leave her. He can’t bear the thought of her here alone, and he barely trusts Jared to protect her.

“She’s been through hell in the last couple of days,” he warns the other man, voice layered with frost again. “Remember that.” He wishes he could say more, to get it through Jared’s thick skull, but he can’t - not now. There’s still too much to think over, and he's already shown his hand in the gentle way he put her down when they first got to the hospital room.

He returns his attention to her, and lets her eyes sear into him for one long moment. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not.”

He’s silent, feeling the burning glint of her eyes on his face. He pauses for just one moment, weighing it up, feeling the curious gazes of the others on him. Instead of explaining himself, he lets himself kiss her - finally - his lips pressed fiercely to her forehead, breathing in the smell of her hair. Then, like a coward, he ducks out of the room, eyes tight with some combination of leftover rage, agony and a soul-deep, solid joy.

He returns to the room he’s shared with Kyle since they got here. There’s no remorse as Ian pulls open baskets of belongings, dumping Kyle’s out into the hallway. He clears the low table beside the bed, too. Even moves the rumpled picture of Jodi Kyle keeps under his pillow. He looks at the beds for a moment, before piling all the bedding onto the left mattress, his own - he can’t bear the thought of Wanda in Kyle’s bed, so it has to be his. He’ll sleep on the floor, or outside in the corridor, where he can watch if anyone is coming. But he won’t leave her alone again. Perhaps not ever, if he can help it.

With that solidified in his mind, he returns to the hospital, only to find his brother snoring - he barely spares him second look - and a sheet covering the body of Walt, which makes his heart lurch uncomfortably in his chest.

She’s unconscious again, tucked away on a cot in the back, but before he can let the returning fear overwhelm him, Doc is there, explaining the leftover morphine.

He’s achingly gentle as he lifts her, ignoring Jared’s sullen arguments not to move her, and leaves, barely glancing at his brother as he goes. Back down the long corridor to her new room, where he tucks her quietly into his sheets, brushing the hair away from her damaged face, and settles down to wait.

These feelings are new. In the before times, as a high school athlete, he’d never had any problems attracting attention from girls, but he’d never let anything distract him from his dream of professional football. He doesn’t think about that time much any more. It’s futile to imagine where he’d be now, if he’d been able to take up any of the offered university scholarships and been able to live that life he’d worked so hard for.

Everything had changed, right when he was on the cusp of 18, and that dream had died before it had even really begun.

It’s all gone now, of course. It hardly bears considering. His long legs and well-drilled stamina served him well on the run, and the focus he’d always prided himself on had kept them alive more than once. And now he is here, and the world is unrecognisable to the teenager he’d been, but… but if it brought her here, was it worth it, after all?

There is a very real possibility that he will lose his one remaining blood relative, but he views even that clinically, now. He can’t bear the thought that the one person he trusted implicitly for so long would do this to Wanda, when Kyle knows - when he’d surely guessed, at least, that Ian loves her. He lets the betrayal suffuse him, sinking into his bones and hardening his feelings. Perhaps his relationship with his brother will never be the same again. Perhaps it won’t matter, if Kyle is dead anyway.

It’s hours later when Doc knocks on his door. With Kyle still sedated in the hospital wing, Ian is needed outside. He sighs, his eyes still on the girl next to him.

“Will you stay with her?” Doc nods, and Ian stands, bones aching.

He has dug more graves in his life than any person should ever need to. It’s a relief to be outside under the stars, of course, but he would make the burning soap or work in the hot kitchens a thousand times if he could dig one less damned grave every so often.

Reluctantly, he leaves her. Jared is outside when he gets there, face already lined with sweat. Brandt, too, who doesn’t meet Ian’s eyes. Jared nods once at Ian, their tensions set aside for now as they perform this burial rite together.

The physical exertion wipes most of his ability to think too much about his grief for the gentle old man he’d thought fondly of, but the one recurring thought is how fucking glad he is that Wanda will never be buried. Even long after his bones have whittled away to nothing in this godforsaken place, Wanda will exist somewhere in the universe. It should unnerve him, like it used to, but now he is only glad.

Will he be back in a few days, digging a hole larger than the rest, for Kyle?

They silently keep digging.

The stars shift overhead while they work, and eventually the grave is deemed deep enough. The men stop, hands ruined with exertion, and they return to the caves to gather the others. The only sound is their heavy footsteps, and a spade dragging behind one of them in the dirt.

Ian goes straight back to Wanda, still sleeping like the dead in his room. With Doc’s blessing, he carries her outside, ignoring the angry, buzzing whispers that follow him and the girl in his arms. She’s unconscious for now, but she’ll come around soon and he wants to be outside before that happens. Doc, beside him, carries a mat from the hospital for her.

They’ve already begun the ceremony when she wakes, eyes refracting the millions of stars above. He doesn’t flinch.

He helps her pay her last respects to Walt. After everything she’s done for him, she has more right than half the people there to do so.

It is strange, to hold her like this, but he’s become used to the weight of her in his arms. It puts him more at ease to know she can’t be grabbed by anyone else when he has her. He does not look at his brother. Afterwards, when he sets her back on the mat and her searching eyes study his face, he lets her see the deep weariness he often hides from others. He's powerless to hide from her.

When Doc puts her back under, he’s stung by how guilty he feels at the look of betrayal on her face. “Sorry, honey,” he whispers, when she’s too far gone to hear him.

He lifts her again, ignoring the hostile looks of his friends, and takes her back inside to the dark safety of the caves. He returns to his room, returning her to the sheets and bundling her back into them, as though that alone might protect her.

He returns to his vigil. He is tired, deeply tired, but it’s like he can’t shut off his mind. The only peace he gets is here, leaning against the wall of his room on Kyle’s mattress, where he can watch her as she sleeps. Was it only this morning that he’d found Wanda teetering on the edge of the terrifying river with Kyle? Perhaps that was yesterday - it’s certainly late enough. Time blurs together. He’s not getting enough sleep.

In the morning, Kyle will be tried in front of the inhabitants of the caves. He should sleep before then. He doesn't.

She wakes again, just as the light begins to shift, hinting at the dawn to come. He is stiff where he sits. He’s hardly moved at all, hardly blinked. His eyes feel sandy.

Once she’s awake, he leaves to retrieve food for both of them. There are perishables, and when he sees the Cheetos in the box under the workbench, he snags a packet. It’s worth it for the way her face lights up when she sees them, and he laughs at her expression, genuinely delighted that she’s so pleased.

“Thank you,” she’s finished the bag, now. And her face is serious again, grave in the early light. “For more than the Cheetos, you know. For so much.”

He meets her seriousness with his own, “You’re more than welcome.”

Her eyes are piercing. They seem to look right into his skull. Every thought is laid bare to her, as they always are, but he thinks she might see it now, for the first time. He doesn't lower his gaze from her.

They arrive together, to the game room. Wanda struggles to walk the whole way and it takes a lot for him not to sweep her into his arms again, but this is the best unwitting physical testimony she can give against his brother, since she still won’t give up the actual version of events.

Kyle is alone in the middle of the room. His face, almost the perfect twin to Ian's own, might as well be that of a stranger. Ian steels himself for this - however much he cares for Wanda and wants her safe, he is not immune to this betrayal. Kyle acted first. Ian can’t betray his brother, when his brother has so thoroughly destroyed the trust between them. But later, this will be agonising.

The tribunal is brief. He says what he needs to, and his hand is strong when it rises to vote against his brother remaining in the caves. This is an example to the others - to Brandt, to Jared - that he won’t let this happen again and they’ll abide by Jeb’s rules or suffer the consequences. If he'll side against his brother, he'll sure as hell side against them, too. He spends the whole tribunal acutely aware of the girl beside him and the way she shivers, and when he puts his arm around her and feels the stares of the others on him, he knows how publicly he’s aligning himself with her. But he can no longer bring himself to care. Let them stare.

When it’s over, and Kyle has been effectively pardoned, the tension is broken in the way it usually is - with a game. He’s content to sit this one out, to maintain that united front with Wanda, but he’s convinced to play, and in the end it doesn’t take much convincing. Not when she tells him she wants to watch, even though she’s lying again. He rolls his eyes, but gets to his feet anyway, stretching his cramped muscles automatically.

He’s excited enough to play that he nearly misses Jared and Wanda, when Jared helps her to the edge of the field. Nearly, but not quite. Like a magnet, his eyes are drawn back to her, to see if she’s watching him. She isn’t. She’s looking up at Jared like he hung the stars in the sky, and it smacks him across the face. Her eyes meet his then, behind Jared, and he feels the way his expression tightens. Can he really compete with Jared? Is he ready for that? He takes a deep breath, and turns away.

Ian loves football. He once thought of it as his destiny. It’s the thing he takes most joy in, in this strange afterlife. Even with the distraction of the audience, this is the one thing he is truly good at.

He’s still on a high from a spectacular goal when they pause, and he appears at Wanda’s side with handfuls of the granola bars, next to Jamie and then - Jared. They exchange a long glance, sizing one another up. The pile of granola bars they've amassed between them is almost comical.

Then he and Jared are allies, when Kyle approaches, their faces locked in identical hard expressions.

Kyle is Kyle - and he says exactly the wrong thing, as always, “I’m not sorry. I still think it was the right thing to do.”

Ian shoves his brother, forcing him into taking a step backwards, but Kyle continues, “Hold on, I’m not done.”

Jared is as angry as he is, “Yeah, you are.”

“No I’m not,” Kyle batters on, regardless of Ian and Jared and their clenched fists. “I don’t think I was wrong, but you did save my life. So I figure, a life for a life. I won’t kill you. I’ll pay the debt that way.”

The air leaves Ian’s lungs in one long rush. “You stupid fucking jackass.”

Kyle has the stupid audacity to laugh in his face, “Who’s got a crush on a worm, bro? You gonna call me stupid?”

He’s ready to hit Kyle again, but Wanda intervenes. Too good, as always. Too gentle and altogether too trusting. Ian’s eyes don’t stray from his brother as he walks away. She might forgive Kyle, but Ian is finished giving his brother chances.

He’s distracted after the game by Kyle, though he feels his anger slipping away. Distracted enough that he almost misses Jared approaching Wanda, pulling her gingerly to her feet. Ian gets there at the right moment to catch her before she stumbles, his arm sliding around her. It’s incredible how natural it feels. “I’ll get her where she needs to go,” he tells Jared.

They have a stupid stand off, and Jared doesn’t let go of her hand, even when Ian sweeps her up into his arms again.

“I can carry her,” Jared says. But Ian is ready to call his bluff. He holds Wanda out, away from where she’s tucked comfortably against him. It's ridiculous posturing, he knows, but he can't help himself.

“Can you?”

Jared stares for a long moment, before he finally lets go of her hand. Her fingers are purple. Even with that particular battle of wills won, Jared insists on following along, asking him about Kyle. But it doesn’t matter, anyway. “I’m not letting her out of my sight,” he tells Jared.

Wanda answers instead, “It will be fine, Ian. I’m not afraid.”

His eyes snag on hers, silver and blue fire. “You don’t have to be. I promise - no one is ever going to do something like this again. You will be safe here.” He’s made himself this same promise before, but it feels firmer to vocalise it in this way, with Jared bearing witness. And if Jared is warned off by it, all the better.

He stops outside his destination. He doesn’t have to see Jared’s face to hear the disbelief in his voice, “Your room? This is your better place?”

“It’s her room now.” It’s true - she’s already spent more time here than either she or Jared probably realise.

When he asks again, Jared opens the door for them. He puts her gently down on his mattress, straightening her leg and the pillow beneath her head. He probably shouldn’t take her at her word - they’re both still exhausted - but when she tells him he should sleep here too, he feels that sick satisfaction when he sees Jared recoil from the corner of his eye. She’s already half asleep. He brushes his hand over hers, then leaves her to face Jared in the hall.

He’s been expecting this conversation for a few days, now. They’re lucky that Wanda is so tired, probably already asleep. There’s a lot of posturing as they size one another up. He’s never been in this position, certainly never with someone he thinks of as a friend.

“Is there something you want to say to me, Jared?”

Their faces are twins again in the gloom, both equally hard. “That girl in there… that body doesn’t belong to her.”

Ian bristles. Surely it doesn’t matter, anyway, when separating the two now means death for both. “Your point?”

“Keep your hands off it.”

Ian has to laugh, lowly, though it isn’t really funny. “Jealous, Howe?”

“That’s not really the issue…” Ian listens, with wavering patience, as Jared puts the point to him. That his girlfriend is trapped in there with Wanda. And it’s a compelling argument, he’ll give Jared that.

But Wanda has earned a life here too, he’s absolutely sure of that.

Jared is quiet, after they've each said their piece.

Then Ian opens his stupid mouth again, “don’t get worked up. Wanda isn’t exactly human, despite the body. She doesn’t seem to respond to… physical contact the same way a human would.” It’s perhaps more than he should give away, but they’re being honest with each other.

He’s been too honest. Jared laughs - actually laughs - and Ian feels white-hot jealousy spear through him, because he knows immediately that he’s wrong, after all. He’s tried to convince himself that’s why she doesn’t respond to him, and it helped for a bit, but obviously he was wrong.

It hurts more than he thought it would.

“She is quite capable of responding to physical contact. She’s human enough for that.”

Ian can’t think, can’t articulate any thoughts beyond the image that suddenly plagues him. Wanda, with Jared. Jared's face, altogether too smug, swims a bit before him.

“Jealous, O’Shea?”

Ok, he deserves that. His voice is strained, “Actually… I am. How would you know that?”

An experiment. An experiment. Ian tunes Jared out after that, the roaring in his head drowning out the words anyway. He nearly lunges for the other man, suddenly furious. Jared never thinks of Wanda. Just of his girlfriend. He barely stops to consider this whole other person who has wants and fears and - and who loves him. And he's taken advantage of her. He’s experimented on her.

“Get out of here. Stay away from me for a few hours.” Ian warns, through gritted teeth. He turns his back on Jared, going back into the room where she’s asleep, not waiting to see if Jared does something smart for once in his fucking life, and actually listens to him.

Except Wanda isn't asleep, she’s been listening. Her searching eyes meet his immediately in the dim room, and he realises his mistake - how much sound travels. He considers, for one wild moment, bolting away so he doesn't have to face this, but instead he steels himself. He has to take this chance. He closes the door behind him.

“So…” he finally says, “what do you think?”

They talk quietly in her room. He thinks he’s been extremely obvious, but perhaps he should have been more forthcoming, especially when she seems so - confused. That someone might love her. “I like you very much, Wanda.” It’s the very least of it.

The crease appears between her eyes again, as she tries to reconcile it. And he takes his moment, because… he might never have the chance again. If she tells him no, he’ll back off. He picks up her hand. It’s very familiar now, but this time, the action feels wildly different. He holds her hand in both of his, and his long, pale fingers tangle with her smaller ones. Then he goes beyond what they’re both used to. He tries hard for nonchalance but fails to meet it, his breath quickening as his fingers trail up her arm. He hears her suck in a breath, and they both see the trail of goosebumps that follows his fingers up her arm.

“Does that feel good or bad to you?” He doesn’t meet her eyes until after he asks it. The confusion all over her expression is - difficult to take.

He can see her internal wrestling, for the first time, sees the flickering in her eyes that belies the conversation going on in there. He’s not sure how he’s missed this before.

“Wanda?” He prompts her, gently.

“Melanie says bad,” it shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.

“What do you say?”

“I say… I don’t know.”

Well, that’s better than bad, he supposes. And it’s not no. Her eyes rise, finally, to meet his again. “I can’t even imagine how confusing this all must be to you.”

She agrees, but he pushes his luck, and his fingers return to their trailing path on her arm. There - the tiniest hint of a shiver. She’s not completely unmoved.

“That… what you’re doing… makes it hard for me to think.”

Perhaps he’s been starved of affection for too long, because even as she asks him to stop - which he does - he’s elated that he can affect her at all. But there’s still the other girl, in there - a stumbling block.

He pulls away when she asks, and then he tilts his head to one side, considering for a beat. Then, “Melanie Stryder?”

The way she starts, he’s not entirely sure it’s just Wanda’s reaction, and he knows for sure then that while Melanie and Wanda are both in there, this will never be what he wants.

Still, he goes on, “I’d like the chance to speak with Wanda, privately, if you don’t mind.”

Her nose wrinkles, and he sees the way her eyes flash in the dim light as Mel makes her opinion clear. It’s like he can hear the whole internal conversation, but he asks anyway, “What did she say?”

“…She said no.”

He laughs at that. Her self-editing is abruptly hilarious to him.

Then, he sobers. “I can respect that. I can respect her.” And he really does - he’s glad that someone has been there for Wanda, even when everyone else was trying to kill her. In another world, he thinks, he’d like Mel a lot, but - “Kind of puts a damper on things, having an audience.”

Her eyebrows pull together sharply. He lifts his hand from hers, the pads of his fingers under her jaw, lifting her face up towards his. And his thumb is at the corner of her mouth, her lips just brushing his skin. He thinks about Jared, who apparently doesn’t care about consent at all, and about how that doesn’t matter anyway, because Wanda deserves someone who loves her for her and not for the shell of her body.

She looks at him, and there’s sorrow in the planes of her face. “You don’t really feel that way about me, you know,” she breathes, “It’s this body… she’s pretty, isn’t she?”

This feels like a test, but it’s one he knows the answer to already, without thinking about it. He nods, just once, “She is. Melanie is a very pretty girl. Even beautiful.” Even with the scarring. His hand moves to brush very gently over the marks he is personally responsible for.

He sees when Wanda’s face falls, like she - doesn’t like that? And he rushes to continue, “But, pretty as she is, she’s a stranger to me. She’s not the one I… care about.”

How can he explain how he’s never watching just the face? He watches the way the skin around her eyes crinkles when she smiles, or the line between her eyes that appears when she frowns, or her screwed-up nose when she's annoyed, or the way her eyes get huge when she sees something that horrifies her, or the way her fingers flex in his hand - that’s what beautiful to him. Not the features, but how she uses them. It’s not Melanie’s voice, but Wanda’s kind words, her pathetic attempts at sarcasm, her quiet, fascinating stories that he hears, and turns over in his mind. It’s not the body, it’s the soul.

He tells her all of this. Her eyebrows crease, like she can’t believe him, but that doesn’t matter - he has a long, long time in here to convince her otherwise. He kneels before her, now. Like he’s pleading or praying. “I’ve never known anyone like you.”

She’s still shaking her head, unbelieving. “Body and soul - two different things, in my case.”

“I wouldn’t want it, without you.”

“You wouldn’t want me without it.”

He returns his hand to her face. It rests back there, gently, like he has magnets in the pads of his fingers that sit just there at the corner of her mouth.

She could live forever. He still thinks about it, sometimes. She will continue on, beyond them all. But in this moment, she is here, caught in his hands, and - surely he has to take his opportunity? Before she wanders off again?

“Don’t you think…” He pauses, gathering his courage. “That maybe you should make the most of what time you have? That you should live while you’re alive?” While she’s alive here, with him, he means.

He doesn’t hesitate any more. He tilts her face up to his, and he brushes his lips very gently across hers.

He maintains, as a point of pride, a tight leash on his self-control. It takes every ounce of that now to keep it light when he kisses her again. He locks his hands in place so they don’t fist in her hair and in the material of her shirt. He restrains himself - just barely - from pulling her in tighter, from deepening their first kiss. But he also can't tear himself away. He barely manages to pull himself a breath away to whisper against her full lips, “Good or bad?”

She doesn’t move away, not exactly, so when she answers, all in a rush of hot breath, he feels it fan across his face. “I - I can’t think.”

He’s elated, “That sounds… good.” And he relinquishes a tiny bit of control, for one moment, pressing his mouth more firmly against hers. He catches her lip between his own, like he wanted to before, and the taste of her is almost overwhelming.

When she asks him to stop, he does at once. He locks his hands together, away from her, to stop himself from reaching for her again. “At least nobody punched me,” in spite of her rejection, he’s grinning, absolutely flying.

He sees that internal dilemma again in the light grimace Wanda wears. A crinkle between her eyebrows.

Later, he’ll see both sides of it, will feel the tearing jealousy more fully when he considers that Melanie wants Jared, will never want him, and Wanda - Wanda also wants Jared. But he will give her time. This is all so new to both of them.

In the room now, he’s still practically giddy. “Time is on my side,” he tells her. “One day you’ll wonder what you ever saw in Jared.”

It doesn’t take Jared long to retaliate, in the form of Jamie skipping happily into the cave to tell Wanda that she can move back into the cave with him and Jared, isn’t that nice?

Jamie doesn’t see the naked sorrow in Wanda’s eyes when the kid says, “everything will be just like it was before!” But Ian does, and it hurts him too.

Ian’s irritated, but he should really have expected it of Jared. His competition. When Jamie catches him rolling his eyes, he frowns. “You want something, Ian?”

“Sure, kid. I want you to tell Jared that he’s shameless.”

The raiders have been gone for weeks this time. With Jamie as well as Jared gone, Ian has been selfish about the time he spends with just Wanda, without the distraction of the others she cares about. When he tricks her into taking a break from work, kicking the ball around with him and Wes and Lily, he’s delighted at the way she takes to it. They’re a good team - he might have known they would be.

When the others give up and the two of them play against one another, he lets her win, deliberately fumbling the ball towards her and letting goals slip past him. But she stops him, fire in her eyes over his coddling, and says he can sleep in her bed until they’re back if he stops letting her win. He barely has to look at the next shot he makes, dead centre in her goal on the other side of the cave, to know it’s good.

He even takes his chance to tease her over their bet after he beats her soundly, his arm thrown around her shoulders as he tells Lily, “Jared’s Melanie objects to me.”

He stumbles a bit at the thought, caught up momentarily in the consent issue of it all, but Wanda is lonely and he is too, and he’s perfectly capable of being selfish when he needs to be.

Then Jared times his return impeccably to the caves, like he’s been lurking outside to let Ian get his hopes up again, only to return and steal her away again, probably tossed over his shoulder, laughing maniacally.

That’s not really fair to Jared, but the image still makes Ian feel better.

He should have known. He should have thought to stop her from racing back to the hospital to demand Doc’s opinion on Jamie’s injury. Of course, Jared was never going to stop snatching bodies on their trips, not when he had so much motivation to continue now, his girlfriend within arm's reach. Ian had assumed that after the last time and after Walt, Doc’s nerves wouldn’t take it any more and it had officially ended, but when he hears her blood-curdling scream and follows her in to the hospital, he sees it exactly as she does.

Bodies, mutilated, mercurial blood splattering the walls and the faces of her enemies, and God, he doesn’t blame her - he hates them, too. The thought of Wanda, dissected like that, turns his stomach. For the first time, he understands the chilling scream she lets out, “Monsters!” He agrees with her.

He has to be physically restrained from following her by Jared - fucking Jared - as she disappears, and he turns on the other man violently, shoving him away, the horror naked on his face.

He's only delayed a few moments, but it's a few moments too long, and she's fast when she wants to be. They don't find her for hours - he’s been desperately searching the caves for her, trying to keep it quiet that she might have vanished altogether, so that someone else doesn’t find her. When Lily grabs him as he darts along a corridor by the east field, he whips his arm from her grip, stress and fear making him sharper than he might otherwise have been until she tells him where Wanda is.

He crawls into the space next to her, angry that he missed her curled up in this low corner when he’s been searching already in here, twice, but deeply relieved that she hasn’t vanished into thin air.

Her silence unnerves him but on some deep, molecular level, he understands it. He extinguishes the light when she flinches away from it, and he sits with her. When she finally sleeps, he makes the mistake of moving her, pillowing her head in his lap, his hand stroking her dark hair gently as he wills some peace for her. The way she reacts when she wakes up, hours later, means he doesn’t try that again.

He leaves briefly to relieve himself and find some food for them, the hollow aching in the pit of his stomach not entirely to do with hunger as they sit in the darkness and he watches helplessly as she tries to starve herself.

When she sleeps again, he watches her face, still agonised in dreams, and tries desperately not to think of her never leaving this room. He resolves that he’ll drag her out himself before she puts herself in more danger. Especially while Jamie is in Doc’s hospital, the angry red stripes in his leg growing more prominent every time Ian pulls himself away from the game room and the girl inside, consumed by grief. He fists his hands together to stop himself from reaching for her.

He’s at his wit’s end when he leaves next time - he has no idea how long it’s been, only that he can’t bear her giving up in this way, and he finds Jeb, who sees the hollow look on his face and offers his help if he'll, "eat something, son, for the love of God."

He knows the relief he feels is written all over his face when he returns and she’s unfolded herself from her ball, eyes clear when they look up at him once more, and it’s all he can do to stop himself reaching for her in the darkness.

Jamie is very sick. Ian has spent enough time around him these last few months to feel sorrow, but hardship and loss are a part of life here, and perhaps he has experienced just enough to make him cold. Or perhaps his priorities have shifted to wrap around just one other person.

She pulls him from the hospital after she’s seen Jamie, eyes frantic with fear, and asks him to do exactly what he wants to do, to kiss her like he wants to get punched.

He does, because he’s only human, after all. Oh, he tries to fight it momentarily, barely brushing his lips against hers like he did once before, because he hasn’t lost himself entirely yet. But when her arms wrap firmly around his neck and she pushes up onto her toes, pulling his lips down to hers, he’s completely undone. The burning - he wasn’t prepared for the burning - rips through him, a wildfire unchecked, and it forges something fundamental and new deep within him. For the first time he feels her responding, feels the sharp edges of her fingernails rake in his hair, feels her wild breath. His body presses hers into the cave wall and it’s unlike anything he thought he’d ever get to experience again, but - but something isn’t quite right. Something else is going on. He feels the moment she gives up, and breaks the kiss, and - an experiment. That’s what he is. Because she’s lost Mel.

He wants to kill Jared all over again for planting that particular idea in her mind.

Luckily, he knows just how to overwhelm Wanda into finding the other girl inside their mind again. Unluckily… it can’t be him that does it. He finds the Jared, and disappears before he has to witness something he knows his battered heart couldn’t take.

As she sobs over Jamie afterwards, he feels her agony keenly - and, he supposes, the agony of the other girl too, found by Jared, still tucked away in Wanda’s mind after all. When she volunteers to go on a raid for medicine, he feels his heart contract painfully at the thought of her out there, where her seeker might find her, take the body he’s become so used to, and send Wanda on a thousand-year journey to somewhere he can barely imagine. He thinks he’d let a lot of people lose legs and limbs and their lives before he allows that to happen.

Plenty of time to consider that later, when Jared disappears with her for twelve hours. Ian is not normally prone to violence, but Jared has been causing him headaches for months now, and if they don’t come back…

He sits while they’re gone in the hospital, mostly, figuring that someone should stay with Doc and watch over Jamie. He sleeps so fitfully, tossing in his cot, and Ian watches his young face, so like the one Wanda wears. He’s never been a religious type, but while he sits here, watching over the kid, he thinks about praying to whatever exists in the universe - perhaps he’ll even pray to the aliens, if they’ll unwittingly save him.

Afterwards in the hospital, when she’s performed her miracle, the gentle rise and fall of Wanda’s stomach under his head finally eases his breathing. It’s a reminder that she’s here, that she made it back and saved the boy and that she’s alive. He holds her hand to his face, needing the contact. It is soft against the stubble of his jaw, still unshaven after their days in the game room. He breathes in the scent of her skin - salt, creosote, a strange sweetness from her miraculous medicines, and it grounds him like he’s never felt grounded before. His thumb is on her wrist and though it looks perfect again, he can feel the difference, the slight hardness of scar tissue below the skin, and he knows with utter certainty that the first life he'd sacrifice for her would be his own. If she asked him.

So when they go out into the world, he goes too. He didn’t even need to worry quite so much - she’s a natural.

Perhaps they should have kidnapped and brainwashed one of the aliens years ago.

He hadn’t expected to find so much joy out here, when their raids are normally so tense. It’s a whole different experience with her. Once or twice when he’s driving and she’s in the passenger seat of the van, he holds her hand across the console and her eyes flash at him, molten silver in the sunlight, and they might be anywhere else. It might be a normal afternoon and they might just be any two people, not two aliens falling in love after the end of the world.

(He’s assuming a lot, there. But he can love her enough for the both of them.)

There’s a moment when they watch the inter-species family from the hotel room, where his wildest imaginings escape him for a moment, and the child between the two parents takes on her sweet little smile, her flashing silver eyes, and abruptly he realises that he has not forgotten how to want something deeply in his soul. He settles for the ice cream she takes such great pleasure in bringing him. It is enough that she is here, that she is his friend, that she cares for him in her own way.

Even when they return to the caves, after the shocking grief of Wes’ death, and the anger that the seeker is here in their home, alive, and still trying to hurt her, the hurt is tempered by the first true bit of hope he’s felt in a decade.

“I know how to do the thing you’ve been hurting so many people and souls to do. And I - I’ll show you.”

He has been chillingly naive. He thinks of all of the moments between the extraction of the seeker’s soul, the healer, even when the second healer’s soul commits suicide, where he might have stopped and thought for a moment about Wanda’s endgame. He knows she thinks of it as having betrayed her species, but maybe he thinks she’s softened by other things - perhaps by him - and isn't solely motivated by the girl inside her any more.

When Kyle disappears, he still doesn’t work it out. He’s surprised by how delighted he is to see Jodi again, even though Kyle is an idiot. So when he finally hears Wanda quietly uttering, “I have to go, Sunny, just like you. I have to give my body back, too,” he is so thoroughly blindsided that he suddenly sees red.

“What?”

And the despair on her face confirms it.

“Wanda,” he manages to grit out, stood over them, reaching for her. The dread flickers across her face, and he knows deeply exactly what she plans to do.

Suddenly, he’s drowning. Perhaps she’s planned to not even say goodbye.

How could she even think it? The thought sends spears of agony through his chest, to where his heart might have been if she hadn’t torn it out. Later, when he’s more rational, he is able to argue her case, that she’s become so necessary to life in these caves that she’s more important than the girl whose body she wears, but in the moment all he can think is, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.

He can’t be here any more. He's staring, stricken, at her face. But he can’t let her go either - not if she might have Doc cut her out of that body at any moment. So he pulls her, too roughly, upwards. His hands shackle around her wrists. He shakes her with more violence than he means to, removing Sunny from where she clings to Wanda’s arm. It’s a blur. He might even have kicked his brother in the face, but that bit is secondary to his urge to drag her away from her self-imposed walk to the gallows. Jared tries to stop him. He takes great pleasure in landing a solid punch on his friend and enemy’s jaw. He’s wanted to do it for a long time. Jared reels back from the force of the blow.

“Ian, stop,” she begs him. But he can’t. He pulls her with him, past Jared in the dark hall.

“You stop,” is all he can hurl back at her.

He’s half out of his mind with fear and anger as he drags her away from the people who are so desperate to take her away from him.

He might have dragged her further but he’s not so lost in his own turmoil that he doesn’t hear when she lets out a whimper of pain. He stops, thoughts still swirling wildly, but her pain focuses his attention back solidly on her. “Ian, Ian, I…” she doesn’t seem to be able to order her thoughts any more than he can. But he promised himself once that he’d never let anything hurt her again and here he is, dragging her violently around like a rag doll.

When he pulls her up into his arms he’s gentler, but he takes off at a sprint, sure that everyone who sees them is aghast at his caveman act, and completely unwilling to explain himself.

He kicks open the door to his room, setting her down on his mattress, and seals them in with a bang which echoes down the hall. For a moment, he stands over her, heart pounding, gasping for breath. She gets to her knees, reaching for him, but he forces the words, which drum on the inside of his skull like a mantra, out. “You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me.”

“Ian,” she whispers, and her voice breaks over his name, “You have to see that I can’t stay. You must see that.”

It’s unbearable, the look on her face in that moment. It cleaves him in two. “NO,” he shouts, though he doesn’t remember making the decision to do so. He regrets it immediately, the way she flinches away from him. Then he drops to his knees before her. He clings to her, his arms tight around her like he can hold her here if he just holds on tightly enough.

He doesn’t remember the last time he cried. Time and this hard life have deprived him of the inclination to share his emotions, but abruptly he’s sobbing into her skin, a great outpouring of grief for this girl and the way she feels she has to continually sacrifice herself for people who have hated her from the start.

“No, Ian, no,” she’s pleading with him. He can hardly hear her over his own desperate, shaking sobs, but he feels the vibrations deep within her. He moans her name.

“You can’t leave,” he’s never been so sure of anything, but she shakes her head, crying in earnest now too.

“I have to. I have to.”

They cry together for a long time, for this half life she leads and for the way he loves her.

He quiets before she does, his arms still tightly wound around her. When her tears dry too he shifts her in his grip so his arms are around her shoulders, her face pressed to his chest. There is so much he should say, but he begins with, “Sorry. I was mean.”

She shakes her head against him, and he rests a hand on the back of her head, her face still pressed in to his shirt.

“We have to talk about this, Wanda. It’s not a done deal. It can’t be.”

“It is.”

He shakes his head violently, like he might be able to refute it that way, “How long have you been planning this?” But he already knows.

“Since the Seeker.”

He understands that she might have felt like she needed to trade her life for the other soul’s. That’s exactly who she is as a person. Suddenly he’s angry again. “Just because Doc knows now… that doesn’t mean anything. If I’d thought for one minute that it did, that one action equalled the other, I wouldn’t have stood there and let you show him. No one is going to force you to lie down on his blasted gurney. I’ll break his hands if he tries to touch you!” There it is again, the violence rising up in him. But not directed at her. Never again.

“Ian, please…”

“They can’t make you, Wanda! Do you hear me?”

He hardly knows what he’s saying, but when she tells him she’s doing it for the other girl she loves in there, the white-hot pain threatens to pull him under the surface again.

“But I love you,” he chokes out, finally. “Doesn’t that matter?”

“Of course it matters. So much. Can’t you see? That only makes it more… necessary.” Her face is so sincere, but every time he thinks he cannot be hurt more, she skewers him again.

But he’d give this up, he’d give up his half-claim on her, if it meant she’d stay - that much is achingly clear to him.

Still, he has to ask, “is it so unbearable? To… to have me love you? Is that it? I can keep my mouth shut, Wanda. I won’t say it again. You can be with Jared, if that’s what you want. Just stay.”

Perhaps he is more masochistic than he thought.

Her hands reach for his face, “No, Ian! No. I - I love you, too.”

He feels the thickening lump in his throat as she continues. “Me, the little silver worm in the back of her head. But my body doesn’t love you. It can’t love you. I can never love you in this body, Ian. It pulls me in two. It’s unbearable.”

Unbearable, it clangs through him, and he closes his eyes. For the first time he’s trying to shield himself from her. He can’t bear much more. Perhaps this is the point that his self-preservation kicks in, finally shielding his poor heart from this continuing onslaught.

Then she pulls herself to him, her arms winding around his neck, and he responds without thinking, his arms curling around her where they belong. Her lips meet his, fusing them together. She tastes like salt.

He feels it then again, as he had before. The fire ripping through his soul, soldering them together, but this time he feels her there too, present in the fusing, and it changes her like it has already changed him a thousand times. It's incredible how right it feels, when everything has felt so wrong for so long.

He tastes it when she starts to cry again, kissing the tears as they appear on the tops of her cheeks. “Don’t cry, Wanda. Don’t cry. You’re staying with me.”

If he says it enough, will she be convinced? Will she forge herself to him, as he has to her?

“Eight full lives, and I never found anyone I would stay on a planet for, anyone I would follow when they left. I never found a partner. Why now? Why you? You’re not of my species. How can you be my partner?” He feels it then, the desperate, dangerous hope - that she might stay with him.

“It’s a strange universe,” he offers her, forehead pressed against hers in the dim room.

“I love you,” she says in response, and he feels the way his heart shudders in his chest, so strongly it might burst out of him.

“Don’t say that like you’re saying goodbye.”

She shakes her head, “I, the soul Wanderer, love you, human Ian. And that will never change, no matter what I might become.” She is saying goodbye. He can’t keep her here. He’s not enough to anchor her to this world. “I would always love you, always remember. You will be my only partner.”

His hold on her tightens, and he feels his despair threatening to drag him down again. “You’re not wandering off anywhere. You’re staying here.” She tries to protest, but this is bigger than them, now. He’s sure of it. He can argue this case. “We need you.”

“No one’s kicking me out, Ian.”

“No. Not even you yourself, Wanderer.”

He kisses her then, and it's firmer, a little rougher, his hand in her hair. And he has to ask, “Good or bad?”

“Good,” she confirms.

“That’s what I thought.” He kisses her again.

He pulls her to her feet, the and the slightly dazed expression on her face matches the turmoil in his gut. “Where are we going?” She asks him.

“Don’t give me any trouble about this, Wanderer. I’m half out of my mind.”

He will have this tribunal, and she will abide by whatever is decided, because he can’t make this argument alone - not when he is not enough to hold her here.

He gathers the few people he needs. He doesn’t miss the way that Wanda eyes Doc, then Jared and the others.

“Okay,” Jeb begins, “Wanda, what’s your side?”

“I’m giving Melanie back.”

Her argument is short, and he can do the same. “We need Wanda here.”

The others consider it, and Ian tries to count which way the votes will go. He is sure Jared will be selfish, that he will want his partner back - wouldn’t he do the same, in that position? Jeb is harder to read, because Melanie is his niece, but he thinks he might be able to count on Doc. The hospital could be changed so drastically by the soul medicines which only Wanda can get for them.

Then he hears the lie in her voice when Jared asks what Mel wants and Wanda says, “She wants her life back.”

Why lie? Because… Mel agrees with him. Perhaps the most unlikely ally he could have expected, in this group. But as soon as the thought occurs to him, he knows he’s exactly right. Ian narrows his eyes at Wanda, “I bet she agrees with me. She’s a good person. She knows how much we need you.”

“Mel knows everything I know. And the Healer’s host knows more than I ever did. You’’ll survive, just like before.”

Ian’s eyes are on Jared, now. His friend and rival. He wonders if, after this, they will ever be the same again after one of them is denied the only thing they want. Jared looks back at him, and his eyes register the same thing. Their friendship splinters further, groaning under the weight of it all, threatening to disintegrate completely.

“That’s Melanie’s body!”

“And Wanda’s, too,” how can they not understand that? Wanda isn’t just inside the body, she is it - the two are intrinsically linked, and removing Wanda isn’t an option at all.

“You can’t leave Mel trapped in there - it’s like murder, Jeb.”

“And what is it that you’re doing to Wanda, Jared? And the rest of us, if you take her away?"

“You don’t care about the rest of anybody! You just want to keep Wanda at Melanie’s expense - nothing else matters to you.”

Jared’s not wrong, but, “And you want to have Melanie at Wanda’s expense - nothing else matters to you!” Ian glances at her then, hating the way the pain chills his words until they’re like ice in this hot cave. He feels detached now, almost, like his body can only bear so much more of this debate over her life. “So, with those things being equal, it comes down to what’s best for everyone else.”

Jared’s face is twisted with rage, and Ian is sure his is exactly the same. “Cool it, boys!” Jeb orders, “This is a tribunal, and we’re going to stay calm and keep our heads.”

But how can he be calm, when this is Wanda’s life?

Jeb starts, “Wanda’s right -“ Ian tries to lurch upright, and the older man turns on him instantly, “Sit yourself back down. Let me finish."

He sits, slowly, every muscle tensed to - he’s not sure what, exactly. He’s desperate to hit something, to expel some of this energy that courses through him still.

“Wanda is right, Mel needs her body back,” Ian nearly stands again, the fight or flight reaction in him tensed to grab her and run if he has to. Jeb sees him immediately, a cautioning hand up, “But I don’t agree with the rest, Wanda. I think we need you pretty bad, kid.”

Jared speaks again through gritted teeth, “So we get her another body. Obviously.”

And it is obvious. Some soul who’s been in a body for a long time, with the consciousness gone - he loves Wanda but he doesn’t love her for the body she’s in. He feels the atmosphere change, even feels some of the tension release from his sore muscles, but she hardly lets the thought land at all, “No! No!” She’s absolutely frantic.

“Listen to me carefully, Jeb - I am tired of being a parasite. Do you think I want to go into another body and have this start all over again? Do I have to feel guilty forever for taking someone’s life away from them? Do I have to have someone else hate me? I’m barely a soul any more - I love you brutish humans too much. It’s wrong for me to be here, and I hate feeling that.” She’s crying again, and he can’t bear it.

He moves unconsciously towards her, almost crawling to get to her, “It’s okay, honey. You don’t have to be anyone else.” He won’t let this happen. He won’t.

He flinches when Jeb asks her why it’s different on other worlds. To be a parasite. He hates that word now. He might never be able to use it again without thinking of this agonising tribunal.

“This is… a pickle.” Well, they can always count on Jeb for a little levity.

“Jeb-” he starts, at the same time as Jared does. He shifts his gaze, hard, to the other man.

“Jeb,” she echoes, more quietly, “You don’t have to decide right now.”

So Jeb doesn’t.

And when Ian wakes up, he’s alone.

He knows it before his eyes are open. The space he fell asleep curled tightly around is vacant. It isn’t even warm. She’s long gone. He should have known she might do this when she asked Jeb to postpone his verdict, when she refused to see Jamie or the others as they ate, when they saw Kyle with Jodi’s body in the hospital. When he wrapped himself around her, back in his room and he felt the way she trembled. From exhaustion, he’d assumed.

When she whispered, “I truly love you, Ian. With my whole soul, I love you,” like she was telling him -

He’s on his feet in half a second, sprinting to the main room as his brain scrambles to catch up, but then - he sees her. Was he wrong, after all? He catches her arms, the relief surging through him, and the smile is just spreading across his face when he realises who he’s holding on to. Ice floods his veins.

He drops Melanie’s arms like they’re causing him physical pain. He staggers backwards a step. He’s too late. He stares into the face of this stranger, horror crawling up his spine. He’s too late. She’s babbling suddenly, her eyes dark and lined with tears, but the fire, the molten heat in them, is gone. He’s too late.

“…she’ll be fine. Fine. She’s fine.”

He tunes in to what she’s saying a moment too late, still reeling, then sorts the words out in his mind. They’ll get another body for her. He feels like he’s aging by the second, every moment that she’s not here. The weariness threatens to pull him under completely. They stare at each other.

It’s not confusing, not really. She’s there, in front of him, but she’s also not at all - he doesn’t know this girl, whose agony is written in deep lines on the face he loves. He nearly reaches for her, but it feels so wrong - she is an alien in this body to him, not Wanda. It’s so jarring. Her grief-stricken expression is not the same as the one he saw when Wanda grieved for Walt and Wes and the souls in Doc’s clinic. She is not the same.

He thought he’d done all his crying last night with Wanda, but apparently he hasn’t yet plumbed the depths of his grief. His vision blurs. The world looks wrong with this girl in front of him, instead of the face he’s so used to. Even though it's the same face. The more he looks, the more the similarities flake away, leaving only a stranger behind.

But she’s fine. She’ll be put in another body. She’s alive.

He doesn’t know what to say to this girl, who keeps almost reaching for him, as though she’s having the same muscle-memory issues he is.

“Do you want to… go to her?” He starts. He’s bewildered. But yes - yes he does want that. He can’t be here any more, anyway. “She’s with Doc,” Melanie tells him.

He follows her to Doc’s clinic. “I couldn’t stop her,” she begins.

“Did you want to?” The words are crueller than he meant them to be. The tight grip he has on his self-control is slipping. He’s clinging to it, but it will only last so much longer.

“Yes.” She replies, very quietly. “Because she… she is my best friend.”

He nods in the darkness. This makes sense to him. Could anyone truly know Wanda, and not love her as desperately, as all-consumingly, as he does?

“But you must have wanted your body back.”

“Not if it meant losing her.”

His feet speed up unconsciously, until he’s almost running again.

“She’s not leaving this planet,” he barks, as though this girl might have any influence any more.

Melanie is quiet for one long moment and he hears the pain in her voice, “That was never her intention. She was making that part up, so you wouldn’t argue with her. She wanted to stay here… she planned to, well, to be buried here. With Walter and Wes.”

The agony whips through him again, deeper this time. This is a worse option - so much worse. He would have borne it, ultimately, had he known she lived somewhere in the universe, but for her to die - “No,” he manages to rasp out, and it’s like his legs have failed him. He stops, almost staggering. His hand, where it has flown out to brace against the wall of the tunnel, is the only thing which keeps him from falling to his knees.

Melanie is still talking, a nervous tic Wanda never had in this body. He can’t hear her over the ringing in his ears. “How could she - how could she think of doing that to me?” The fury is there again, stronger now. How could she want to die, rather than stay here?

“She loves it here,” Melanie offers, trying to explain, “She doesn’t want to live anywhere else.”

He is angry - for the first time, angry at Wanda. “I never thought of her as such a quitter.”

“She’s not,” Melanie snaps back at him. “She… she thinks she’s tired of being a parasite, but I think she was just plain tired. She was so worn out, Ian. Losing Wes like that… she blamed herself. And more than any of that,” she continues, ignoring his protestations, “Loving you while… loving Jared. Loving Jamie and thinking he needed me more. Loving me. Feeling like she was hurting us all by breathing… you can’t imagine how she…”

The anger drains from him. She’s right, it’s not Wanda’s fault that they’ve pulled her repeatedly in all these directions.

“I didn’t know Jared was following us,” Melanie continues.

And there it is - Jared. Jared knew, or at least suspected something would happen. He had followed Wanda. And Jared was right.

They are quiet on the last approach to the hospital. Finally, he asks, very quietly, the thing he is most afraid of. “Do you think she really does love me, or was she just responding to the fact that I love her? Wanting to make me happy?”

This, after all, is the crux of it. The intrusive thoughts he’s had all along. He stumbles on, “I’m only asking because I don’t want to be a… a burden when she wakes up.” He is nearly whispering by the time he finishes, caught in this final confession to this girl who loves Wanda as much as he does.

“It’s strong, Ian. The way she feels about you is something else. She loves this world, but so much of the reason she couldn’t leave was really you. She thinks of you as her anchor. You gave her a reason to finally stay in one place after a lifetime of wandering.”

He inhales. Exhales. “Then that’s all right.”

They are rounding the corner now to the hospital, nearly there. “Don’t rush,” he suddenly tells her. “When you go to find her a body. Take your time. Make sure you find one she’ll be happy in. I can wait.”

“Won’t you be coming with us?” She’s startled, but he’s already shaking his head.

“I don’t really care about that part. You know what she needs. I’d rather be here with her.”

Then they’re in the hospital and Doc is there, in his hands a silver tank which he pushes to Ian. And so he holds her in his hands. Hibernating, but still here. Not gone. He clutches at her, fingers curled around the silver coffin where she sleeps. She will not leave him. He will not dig this grave. Not for her, not ever.

Jared is there, now - has he been here the whole time? Ian still kneels, cradled around the love of his life in his hands, but he spares a glance for the other man, “Thanks.”

“I owe her,” Jared responds.

Ian nods, his eyes only on her. He doesn’t know if Jared sees, but he assumes from the quiet that he has. He leaves with his girlfriend, alone with Doc and the tank.

So Wanda doesn’t want to be selfish? Well, he can be selfish for both of them. Perhaps she’ll hate him. It doesn’t matter. He only knows that if she were buried in that dark grotto he’d have to dig the grave big enough for him too. “Wanda…” it’s a whisper this time, just for her, though he knows she can’t hear him. But just in case she can, “Sweetheart, you are not leaving me.”

He barely leaves the hospital for the weeks it takes. He sees Doc re-insert Sunny into Jodi’s body, sees the softness in Kyle’s face when she reawakens with obvious joy at still being here. He exchanges a long glance with Kyle. Perhaps there’s something in the O'Shea genes predisposed to love these little souls.

He rarely sleeps, eats only what’s necessary to keep himself going. It feels like her mourning period, but at least it’s temporary this time. He goes to sleep with her cool glass coffin held tightly against his chest in his cot in the corner of the hospital, and wakes up once the skin of his chest has warmed the box each night by a few degrees. He talks to her all the time, like on some level she might take any of this in. He’ll tell her all of it again when she wakes, if she can bear to be around him.

When Jared and the others return with a body, he hardly spares it a glance. It’s a little thing, pretty, but it might as well be a doll for all he cares about it now.

They try to reawaken it for a full week before Doc approaches him, where he sits on the cot in the corner, the cryotank still cradled in his hands.

“I want to do it.”

Doc nods, unsurprised, and helps Ian out of his stiff seat. He scrubs up in the way Doc still habitually does, relinquishing the silver box for a few moments while he splashes water in his face as he does so. Doc makes the incision, and Ian takes a breath before unlatching the tank.

She is exactly the colour he knew she’d be, the colour he sees behind his eyelids in his dreams. He is more gentle than he’s ever been when he holds her in his hand, the cryotank disregarded. She is so graceful, so delicately beautiful. It perfectly reflects who she is. By now he’s seen other souls, but there’s something about this one that captivates him more thoroughly. Some of the others look away, blinded by her silver light, but he doesn’t tear his eyes away. He will never see her like this again. And what a privilege it would be, to be blinded by her.

She’s put into the body that will be hers, and the wound is healed before it begins to bother him - it would now, he thinks - it’s amazing how quickly the body becomes meaningful once she’s in it. The opposite to his reaction to seeing Melanie for the first time.

His hands reach down to curl around her little silvery one while she sleeps, and even the colour of her skin feels like an outward manifestation of her true form. He will not forget who she is, in this body - the two are irretrievably linked for him now, body and soul.

“Wanderer? We’re all waiting for you, honey. Open your eyes.” She’s stirring from the spray they’ve administered, and his heart is caught in his mouth. He hears her breath catch and he knows, for the first time, that she’s hearing them.

He brushes featherlight kisses across her face, on her lips, both eyelids. He is desperate to see her eyes, and then they flutter open. The relief rushes through him, the absence of the pain he’s been carrying around with him for weeks, and he feels his lungs open up again. Finally.

His hand touches her face, “Wanderer?” And she turns to him like a flower opening to the sun, all gold and bronze and with that silver fire in her eyes. Different, but entirely the same, too.

“Ian? Ian, where am I?” The voice is higher than he’s used to, but the cadence - they way she says his name, is just the same. “Who am I?”

“You’re you, and you’re right where you belong.”

He feels the cracks in his bruised heart begin to re-seal, as she takes in her surroundings again, the muscle that loves her forged anew in this moment. It will take time, he thinks, to forgive her - but they will have time here, after the end of the world. In the dawn of a new one.

Jamie is telling her about the time she missed, about how they found this new body, about his time sat here in this room, holding on to her, and afterwards: “I held you in my hand, Wanderer,” he murmurs, just for her, “And you were so beautiful.”

She’s still so uncertain, so nervous in this new body - he feels the same anxiety, that she’ll hate him, that she’ll beg to be removed again, that same fear that she’ll turn herself in to the seekers and leave after all.

“You don’t mind staying here too much, do you, Wanda? Do you think that maybe you could tolerate it?” He rests his hand back on her cheek. He can't stop touching her, he might hold on to her until he dies, if she lets him. If she agrees to stay. He brushes the clouds of hair from her face. It’s already an unconscious gesture. Her cheeks flush at the touch. That’s - different. He’s not used to her responding to him quite so blatantly. He’ll never have to question whether she wants him again.

She agrees, finally, and he can’t help but kiss her, even in front of this audience, and he doesn’t hold himself back. He expels every bit of love and agony he has for her into that kiss and he feels the difference when he touches his hand to the side of her neck and feels her wildly fluttering pulse under his fingertips. He thought of her as a flower before, but he was wrong. She’s the sun. He’ll never be the same again.

It does take some adjustment. He’s been aware for a long time of the way she looks at Jared, and a shadow of that remains. Before, he might have thought that he would experience some of the same confusion, but he never does. Melanie was before, and this is now. He even exists on good terms with Mel, and they’re almost unbeatable together when they team up for football. But it’s incredible to him how quickly he shifted from loving that body so deeply, to feeling mostly apathy towards it. But it was never about the body, he knows that firmly in his soul.

Wanda is so little, now. The urge to protect her, to remove anything which might cause her harm by any means necessary has been there for a long time already, but now he can't escape it. He is constantly aware of where she is, even when they’re supposed to be on separate chore rotations. That fear still lingers, that she might disappear again and he might not be there soon enough. Or Jared might not follow her, now that he doesn’t care any more. Mel is a good ally. If he isn’t with Wanda, she is. The two of them keep their heads ducked together, whispering constantly. Everything he and Jared do is discussed and analysed, and nothing is off limits between them. He might have minded his feelings and actions being talked over so much, but it’s not really any different to how this all began.

He knows that Mel feels the same anxiety he does over Wanda, that she might fly away after all. He still dreams about it sometimes, that moment when he woke up and she was gone. In his dreams he doesn’t get there in time. He rounds the corner to Doc’s hospital to splattered silver blood and screams. He wakes up, gasping, and it’s worse because she’s not there. Most nights he lies very still, trying to calm his breathing by counting the stars through the holes in in the roof so he doesn't wake Jamie.

Sometimes that’s not enough, and he repeats his dream-path to the hospital. He doesn’t go in but waits in the doorway until he sees the rise and fall of her chest in the dark room, before returning to his bed to lie awake until dawn, when he can go back to her.

He knows she chafes a bit at the attention she gets now so he tries to internalise it as she adapts to this new life. The last thing he wants is to push her, because this body might not respond to him any more than her last one, and everything feels so new between them again, but he can’t help but pass a hand over the back of her hair when she’s beside him, and when she’s not with Mel, one of her hands is almost always tucked inside his own. But he doesn’t kiss her again, the internal struggle between showing her how much he loves her and wanting her to feel safe with him ultimately winning out in favour of caution.

If she decides she doesn’t want him, if this new body is pulled towards Brandt or Doc or Sharon, or any of the others, he will not fight her because this will be enough. He has known the agony of her loss, and he would endure it again. If she wants to keep things platonic forever or wait a few years before she makes a decision, that will be enough too.

But he can’t deny the relief that sweeps over him when, in the darkness of the game room, Jamie not-so-subtly declares that he won’t be sleeping in Ian’s room any more. He and Wanda both freeze, her hand tense in his, and as always he wants her to be comfortable. So he pauses for just a moment before he tugs her down to the mattress next to him. He keeps hold of her hand, even with her lying firmly in the middle of the mattresses, deliberately not touching him anywhere else.

“Is this okay?” He whispers to her.

“Yes, thank you.” She’s too polite, stiff on the bed, until Jamie (he really has to find a way to thank the kid) knocks into her, and she shifts away from him and into Ian’s arms.

He’s as surprised as she is, but he’s also only human, so he takes his opportunity to hold her in a way he hasn’t allowed himself to in all this time.

She turns to face him in the circle of his arms, and her silver eyes shine in the dim light of the lantern as she repeats his earlier question, “Is this okay?”

He nearly laughs out loud, can barely stop the grin on his face when he presses his lips to her forehead. He breathes in her scent. He will never get tired of seeing her eyes fixed on him. He won’t ever take any of this for granted again. “Better than okay.”

They’re quiet for a moment, and he realises what Jamie has pushed them towards, the conversation they’ve been dancing around. “Wanda, do you think…” he pauses, unsure how to continue.

“Yes?”

“Well, it looks like I have a room all to myself now. That’s not right.”

“No,” she agrees quietly, “there’s not enough space for you to be alone.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” he tells her. “But…”

How can he phrase this? The last thing he wants is to push her away, to allow thoughts of her, still in love with Jared or someone else, to intrude again. He steels himself for rejection, winding a strand of her hair between his long fingers just in case it’s the last time she lets him do it. “Have you… had time to sort things out yet? I don’t want to rush you. I know it’s confusing… with Jared.”

He’s faltering over words, agonising over this, so he’s surprised when she laughs quietly. “I was giving you time to sort things out. I didn’t want to rush you - because I know it’s confusing. With Melanie.”

How could they both have been so blind? How could she even think - the one goddamn thing he’s always been clear on is that they are not the same person, even when they sort of were. He’s never conflated them.

“Melanie isn’t you. I was never confused.”

“And Jared isn’t you,” he hears the smile in her voice, and his breath catches in his throat. But a little of that old pain, that burning jealousy, still lingers.

“But he’s still Jared. And you love him.” It’s not really a question.

“Jared is my past, another life. You are my present.” Her hand fists in his shirt, right over where his heart races in his chest.

They’re quiet for a moment. He can feel her fluttering pulse too, and he’s suddenly overwhelmed again by her, in this deeply unromantic place surrounded by their friends and family. “And your future. If you want that.”

“Yes, please.”

He hasn’t kissed her at all since that first moment in the hospital but it’s as natural as breathing to kiss her now, and his molten metal soul forges him into something new once more. Friend. Lover. Husband. He will be it all for her or none of it, whatever she asks of him, as long as he never has to wake up alone again. As long as he doesn’t have to dig a grave for her. As long as she’ll let him be consumed by her silver fire.

It’s a strange world. The strangest.

Notes:

I simply cannot believe I am writing The Host fanfiction in the year of our lord 2023, but Ian's perspective wouldn't leave me alone after re-reading the book and then suddenly this happened.
If anyone is still out there, thanks for reading.

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