The Host - Before And After The Rain

Chapter 2 - Raging Sea

I turned my back for a second to put the door in place. When I turned back she was sitting, hands outstretched to me as an offering. Empty hands. I was a raging sea, and all Wanderer had to offer me was the lonely vastness of desert.

"You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me." The waves crashing endlessly inside my chest.

"Ian," she whispered, "you have to see that... that I can't stay. You must see that."

I didn't have to understand a damn thing.

"NO!"

She cringed, scared with the strength of my cry, with the weight of my pain. Suddenly, the weight was too much for me too and I fell on my knees, burying my head on her belly, clinging to her waist, trying to imbibe her, take her into me. Tempest. It was the word that came to mind, a storm at sea. My whole body was out of control, trembling at the sound of sobs uncontrollably leaving me.

"Ian, please. Don't feel this way. Don't. I'm so sorry. Please."

She was crying too, taken by my pain and perhaps by her own.

"You can't leave."

"I have to, I have to" she said amid sobs.

She was really suffering, after all. It wasn't a selfish decision. I knew better than that and her tears falling down on me told me I was right all along. She cared about me too. But Wanda had to be Wanda. That's why I fell for her, because there was not a grain of selfishness in all the vastness of the desert that she offered me. She had her reasons. She wanted to give Melanie a chance to live and to Jared the chance to be happy. She wanted to give Jamie his sister back. Again, however, she and I were losing in the bargain.

"Sorry. I was mean."

"No, no. I'm sorry. I should have told you, when you didn't guess. I just... I couldn't. I didn't want to tell you - to hurt you - to hurt me. It was selfish."

Selfish. Not really. We would have to be selfish now. I would be selfish for us both if I needed. Everyone, including her, trying to protect Melanie. For it was my duty to protect the woman I loved. Especially when, apparently, I was the only one who would.

"We need to talk about this, Wanda. It's not a done deal. It can't be."

"It is."

No way!

She decided that since the Seeker. Certainly, when the only secret that guaranteed her safety was revealed to save her enemy, she thought now she would be obliged to save her friend. Not if she had to give up her own life for that. I would not let her, I would break Doc's fingers if he came near her.

"No one is making me. I didn't show Doc how to do the separation so that I could save the Seeker. The Seeker's being here just made me have to decide... faster. I did it to save Mel, Ian."

And who will save you, little wacky?

"She's trapped in here, Ian. It's like a prison... worse than that; I can't even describe it. She's like a ghost. And I can free her. I can give her herself back."

It was hard to fight that logic. I didn't mean Melanie any harm. I even cared a little about her, because she was important to Wanda. But someone needed to put Wanderer in the foreground, as she never did.

"You deserve a life, too, Wanda. You deserve to stay."

"But I love her, Ian."

Someone also had to put me in the foreground.

"But I love you. Doesn't that matter?"

"Of course it matters. So much. Can't you see? That only makes it more... necessary."