It was over. It was over, and now he was going home.

Kleiver drove through the desert, anger bubbling just beneath the surface. Everything had just gone to shit the past few weeks, and the icing on the cake was that he'd failed to get his revenge. To get Veger's revenge...

The Wastelander's grip on the steering wheel tightened as his thoughts went to his sidekick. His friend. That day was so recent, but it seemed so long ago. He had been ready to take on the toughest racers in the world, and then... and then Veger got sick. Real sick. He'd never felt a fear like that before in his life.

He remembered that day vividly. He practically broke down the monastery doors in his hurry to get help. Scared the crap out of the monks, but he hadn't cared. Seem had come running to see what all the hubbub was, and when she saw Veger... The poor girl looked devastated.

Seem was trembling when she took the ottsel from him. She touched Veger's face gently, ignoring Kleiver's pleas for her to hurry up and help him already. She shook her head and started to tear up. Grieving eyes met his, and she said the words that broke his heart.

"He's already gone."

Kleiver couldn't believe it. After everything the little rat had lived through, this was how he died? Sick and weak, like some common pest. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. Veger was a Wastelander, damn it, and he deserved better!

In a rage, Kleiver lashed out. He didn't care what he hit: monk, furniture, wall; he just needed to break something. He ended up knocking over a shelf. Artifacts tumbled to the floor, scattering this way and that. Monks cried out in horror as some shattered, sending sparks of various colors of eco into the air.

And then it happened. They couldn't figure out what caused it. Kleiver didn't care. All he cared about is what it meant. He hadn't seen it, and likely would've kept destroying the monastery's property if he hadn't heard Seem gasp. It wasn't a horrified gasp, like her monks. It was a gasp of wonder, of... joy?

Kleiver whirled around, curious. When he saw what she was looking at, he gasped as well. Veger was... moving! His chest was rising and falling and his fingers were twitching. His breath was shallow and erratic, but he was breathing.

Seem ran off down a corridor. Kleiver wanted to follow, but the rest of the monks stopped him. He wasn't allowed in that particular part of the monastery without Seem's express permission. Instead, he was forced to wait in the entrance hall, wondering what was going on and praying that it wasn't just a fluke, that Veger really had come back to them.

Several hours passed before Seem returned. She led Kleiver to the room they had set Veger up in, and explained that he was still gravely ill. They didn't know what had revived him, but whatever it was, it was no guarantee that he would live. They had taken some blood and were running tests to determine what made him sick in the first place. Hopefully, they would get the results in time to begin treatment.

Kleiver spent the next couple weeks by Veger's side. The ottsel wasn't comatose, but he slept a lot. He regained consciousness on rare occasions, but when he did he was delirious and incoherent. He could barely eat without throwing it back up, and he was becoming frailer as time passed. If the illness didn't kill him, he would surely starve to death.

Shiv had come to Spargus to find out why Kleiver hadn't shown up. Kleiver had explained what happened, and Shiv seemed less than impressed. He warned Kleiver that Mizo wasn't someone you wanted to snub, and Kleiver said that he would be happy to race for Mizo once Veger was well again. Shiv questioned why Kleiver would blow off that kind of opportunity for a mangy rat, and Kleiver questioned why Shiv would want to be punched in the face. Shiv left shortly thereafter, nursing a black eye.

Eventually, the ottsel had a moment of lucidity. During that moment, he told Kleiver to go ahead and race. He'd be fine watching the tournament from afar. Kleiver promised that he'd crush Jak and bring home that trophy, and Veger assured him that he'd be catching hell if he didn't.

That was the last time they'd spoken. Now Kleiver was back in Spargus, having failed twice over. He hadn't defeated Jak, and he hadn't won the championship. He wasn't looking forward to getting an earful from that little rat, that was for sure. He could hear Veger's incessant bitching now: "How could you lose? You had the perfect racer! I thought you were good at this shit waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Resigned to the inevitable whining, Kleiver tromped up the monastery steps and unceremoniously shoved his way through the door. The monks inside looked at their visitor with a mixture of surprise and annoyance. Just because he was an alderman didn't mean he had the right to waltz in like he owned the place, after all. Not that Kleiver ever gave two shits about common courtesy.

"Welcome home, Kleiver," one of the monks said with obviously forced civility. "What brings you to our humble monastery?"

"Just comin' to check up on Veger," Kleiver grunted as he walked across the foyer towards the door leading to the infirmary.

The monks looked at each other. "Um..." one of them said. "He... isn't here anymore."

Kleiver stopped halfway through the door. He turned and stared at them, as if half of his brain wasn't registering what they'd just said, and the other half just stopped working from sheer shock. "... What?"

"He, erm, checked out a week ago," the monk said.

"Did no one tell you?" the first monk asked.

Kleiver didn't answer, instead barreling down the corridor, ignoring the monks' protests. He nearly knocked over several people carrying various medical supplies before he found the room he was looking for. He threw the door open, only to find that the monks hadn't been playing a cruel joke. The room was empty, and looked like it had been for awhile.

"... No..." This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening! Okay, Veger was still in pretty rough shape when he left, but he was recovering! He was supposed to be getting better, and now he'd been dead for a week? And why hadn't he found out about it earlier? Why hadn't he stopped in to say "howdy" whenever he was in town? The tournament had dragged him back to Spargus often enough. Surely he could have found time to at least make sure Veger wasn't dead.

Numbly, Kleiver left the monastery. Directionless, he wandered through Spargus's streets until he ended up at the Arena. There were no fights going on today, and it was eerily quiet as he ascended the stairs and sat down in the entryway. He stared out into the Arena, the one thing in the city that hadn't changed in the past year.

Now that he thought about it, a lot more than Spargus's layout had changed. Since the loss of their main adversaries, the Marauders, and a radical shift in how the government functioned, Spargus was starting to become... civilized. From what he'd seen of Haven and Kras, Spargus was looking more and more like them, but with less of a social stigma against carrying large weapons.

The Wastelander sighed. He didn't have much of an opinion on the direction Spargus's progress was taking, but Veger had been thrilled. He didn't complain about the state of things as much as he used to, and it became less of a chore to convince him to leave the house. In fact, in the last few days he'd been healthy, he seemed almost... happy. Okay, maybe "happy" was a bit of a stretch, but he wasn't the utterly broken pile of misery that he was when he first arrived.

His friend had been so close to actually being happy. When he talked about how he thought Seem might actually let him into the monastery to do research, his words carried an almost child-like glee to them. Kleiver hadn't realized that Veger was capable of being excited over anything, but there it was. And he seemed to have grown a sense of humor during his time in Spargus, even if it was of the snarky everyone-but-me-sucks variety, and the grumpy little shit sometimes actually smiled and laughed.

Why hadn't he appreciated his friendship when it was there? Why hadn't he noticed how sick Veger was and tried to get him help? Why did the Precursors see fit to cut him down now that he was finally turning his life around? It just wasn't fair!

"It just ain't fair..." Kleiver murmured.

"Life isn't fair. Also, who are you talking to?"

Kleiver gasped and looked towards the source of the voice. He could hardly believe his eyes. Before him stood Veger, looking for all the world like he hadn't spent several weeks wasting away in a hospital. He was clean, and while he was thin, he didn't look so frail that a gentle breeze could snap him in half. He was smiling serenely, something Kleiver never thought he would see.

"V... Veger?" Slowly, Kleiver reached towards his sidekick and... yanked his ear.

"Ouch!" Veger yelped and slapped the hand away. The smile was gone, now, replaced by a scowl as he rubbed his ear. "What was that for?"

"I... I thought y'were a ghost." Kleiver's face split into a grin. "Yer alive!"

"Of course I'm alive, you dolt," Veger said, "why wouldn't I be?"

"The, the monks said ya'd... 'checked out'," Kleiver replied.

"They meant it literally. As in, I was discharged because I'd recovered." Veger coughed. "... Mostly."

Kleiver sighed. He was so relieved. Everything that had happened in the past year wasn't for nothing, after all. Veger was alive, Veger was healthy, and he could continue rebuilding his life. All was right with the world.

"Now, I've been meaning to talk to you about your performance in the race..."

Yup. Everything was just peachy.

Closing comments: Believe it or not, this whole fic was actually written for the purpose of leading up to the end of last chapter. Veger falling ill and Kleiver's subsequent freak-out was meant to be the climax, the big emotional thing, but the fact that Veger almost died at least twice beforehand kind of killed the impact. Oops :P

I also meant for As Your Voice Fades to be the end. It was going to be longer, and I was going to leave it ambiguous as to whether Veger survived or not and leave you to fill in the blanks. However, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to make an ending ambiguous and still satisfying. Then I was going to bite the bullet and just make him die, but I've had plenty of misery thrown at me IRL lately and I didn't want to add to it.

Plus, I thought that this would make a good prequel to another fic idea I had ;)