The two of them sat there in silence for several minutes. Rose stared down at the table, her brow furrowed in thought. Jack leaned back in the chair, his hands folded over his lap, and closed his eyes for a moment."Do you think we"ll get to her in time?" Rose said, breaking the silence.
Jack opened an eye and looked at her. She was still staring seriously at the table surface, her hands clenched into fists tight enough to turn her knuckles white. He sighed and leaned forward, his chair creaking as he did so.
"I think Ellie"s a tough girl. She"s certainly tougher than I am." Jack said. "I mean, she"d have to be, growing up with you."
He said this last comment with a smile, but Rose gave him no response. After a moment"s awkward silence he spoke again, scratching his head uncomfortably.
"I think we need to hurry. I think we"re going to do our best." He said. "That"s all we can do, really..."
Rose brought her hands up to her face, burying her face into them. After a moment, she began to sob quietly, her body shaking gently with each breath.
Seeing this, Jack felt an instinctive urge to reach his arms around the girl and comfort her, but his painful experiences with physical contact with the girls made him think better of doing so. All he could do is sit there and feel useless.
As he sat there and looked at her, he noticed the wound on her sword arm from earlier. It"d never been bound, and he could see that it was still slowly weeping blood, and starting to become inflamed. Jack wasn"t a medical expert, but he"d read a couple books about field medicine for a game he"d been playing a few years back, and what little he had learned told him that if it wasn"t cleaned and bandaged pretty soon, the chances of it getting badly infected got much higher.
He looked around for moment for his pack to grab some water and linen from it, until he realized that they"d completely forgotten to pick their packs back up after Ellie disappeared. Which meant he was going to have to head back out there and grab them, if for no other purpose than making sure they didn"t unexpectedly end up taking up legs and walking off.
Jack sighed, and stood up. Rose lifted her face up to look at him, her teary eyes looking at him questioningly.
"We"ve left our packs back at the outskirts of the city. I"ve gotta run grab them before they disappear." He said, turning to go.
"No," Rose said, shaking her head. "Stay, please."
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Without thinking, she reached her hand out and grabbed Jack"s wrist.
Jack went to pull away, but stopped almost instantly when he realized something startling.
She wasn"t burning him.
Her hand was still very warm, borderline hot, but it wasn"t scalding like before. As his eyes shot down to her hand in shock, Rose"s eyes grew huge, and she jerked her hand away.
"Oh no! I forgot! I"m so sorry! Are you okay?" She said, her face becoming even more distraught.
Jack looked at her hand, then back to her face, bewildered.
"No, I"m.... I"m fine. For some reason, you... didn"t burn me." He said.
Rose"s face shifted from one of shock and worry to one of surprise and confusion.
"Wait, what? Really? I didn"t?" She asked.
Jack shook his head. "No, really, you didn"t. I"m just as surprised as you are."
The ifrit looked down at her hand, then back to Jack, her face taking on an almost unreadable expression. She looked down almost shyly.
"In that case.... will you please hold me?"