I've just realised the way I'm progressing this is a bit strange (in terms of linearity) lemme know if there are problems.

After all, my brain is dead XD

Enjoy!

Jaspert Sharp, decorated war hero, is a tired, tired man.

Much too tired for one barely past his twenty-sixth year, with a loving wife and a happy child, but the war had left nobody unscathed – untouched – by it's lacerating reach.

Even now, years later, old wounds still ache. Not wounds of the body – long healed – but rather maladies of the mind, of memories.

Each morning as he drags himself from his warm bed into the biting pre-dawn cold, Deryn is there, humming softly by the front window, a mug of forgotten coffee at her arm.

He remembers a time, long ago when one voice had been two and her melancholic, blue eyes had glowed with love – with joy – as they stared into another's.

He remembers a time, long past, when his sister had been truly happy; content.

But that time is long gone now, devoured by the war.

Every time he opens his heavy oaken door and looks down the tidy white stones that pave the way through a happily vivid and vibrant garden, he's struck by a harsh mix of bitter irony.

Five years ago, he'd opened this same door to something radically different.

The rain hammers down relentlessly, the deafening racket all too similar to the sound of clanker bullets chipping away at dwindling cover. Jaspert stands at the door, briefly struggling with a mangled umbrella before casting it aside, gruffly muttering under his breath.

"All this for the sodding mail…"

He takes a moment to brace for the harsh trials ahead before wrenching open the door and storming out into the gusting sleet. Walls of half-frozen water – clouds of half-melted ice – batter against him, blinding him as frozen needles numb his skin and flesh, penetrating to the bone. Still he strides on, forcing his way forward and as he reaches the end of the pavement, his squinting eyes are drawn to an approaching shape.

He calls out and though he's sure the words are lost to the winds, the figure perks up, hurrying it's pace. Suddenly the rain seems to part, like wildly flapping curtains and then she's standing there – others might not, but he'd recognise her any day.

Deryn. His sister. He hasn't seen or heard from her in months and the surprise visit lightens his insofar dark day. His lips are parting to shout a greeting through the howling wind when a few things catch his eye.

Firstly, Jaspert notices his sister has let her hair grow out far longer than her disguise could manage, the soaked blonde strands flinging around her shoulders. Then there is the sodden dress clinging to her legs; Jaspert knows his sister has always hated dresses, has always fought tooth and nail not to wear the blistering things. There's a pulse of dread in his gut that spreads with the dawning realisation that something bad has happened.

A closer look at her face only bolsters those fears; her eyes are glazed – empty – almost unseeing and Jaspert reckons there are rivers of tears mingled with the rain tracking down her cheeks.

His arm is rising to grasp her shoulder when she tackles him in a fierce embrace and though he can't hear it, he's sure she's sobbing strangled cries into his shoulder, can feel the way she trembles against him over even the battering of the winds.

As they stand there in the midst of a raging storm, Jaspert wonders what could break his sister's once indomitable spirit.

He should've known it would happen. He'd known how they both felt, had seen it in both their eyes – sapphires, emeralds – as they'd shared not-so-secret lover's gazes. He'd met the boy, spoke to him, fought him; known him. He should've realised something like this was bound to happen. Should've seen the suicidal hero complex that brewed under those green lenses. But he'd let it go, given his barking approval even.

There were days when, though he wanted to take back his words, to rage and hate the blistering idiot that'd gone and died on his sister, he would remember better days – tender gazes and fervent embraces – and he'd lose the will to regret that decision.

After all, how many others in this world of rigid stereotypes could bring themselves to love his boyish sister as she deserved, for who she was?

She'd begged him – Begged! His sister never begged… – not to tell ma and he eventually agreed. If he'd sent Deryn home to their mam like this – without the will to fight, to live – he feared she'd lose herself, forget who she was. Instead, he'd simply given Deryn the spare room with the quiet words.

"Stay as long as you need."

"Time is the best remedy of all," he'd once heard people say. 'What a load of clart,' he thinks, remembering those dark days when he'd had nothing but empty rooms, bitter regrets and too much time for company. 'No,' he'd decided, because he remembers the way joy, vigour – life and purpose – had crept back into his sisters eyes as she raised her newborn daughter. Remembers the way weariness and burden had been vanquished from his own mind as he watched the young grow.

'It's finding a reason to go on, that heals these old wounds.'

Jaspert leans against the shadowed wall and listens to the innocent tinkling of the children's voices.

"What'cha doing there, Dyl?" Sophie asks – 'boisterous and loud,' he thinks with a slight smile and a flash of old memories.

"Makin' a cake," his son mutters after a moment, quiet-like, as if he doesn't want his younger cousin to hear – which is a squick silly 'cause she'll just ask again.

Jaspert tries to imagine the look on his little niece's face. After all, Sophie has always despised the so-called 'girly arts', amongst which baking is sure to sit, and idolised Dylan for his acceptance of her free-wishing. Apparently, his son had taught her how to free-climb onto roofs, how to trip people into puddles of mud and how to punch 'em proper-like. To see him cooking… well tha—

"You're wearin' an apron! A pink one!" she nearly yells, incredulity lending to her volume and Jaspert can't help but grin.

"It's the only one we've got!" He can almost hear the blush in his son's escalating voice.

At this point, Sophie's voice begins to falter and Jaspert figures she's too busy gaping at the whole spectacle to speak anymore. Just as the silence is becoming a squick uncomfortable, her voice finally rushes back and she splutters the first words to come out.

"Why are you baking a barking cake anyway!"

The man peeks around the corner as his son turns to face her, brow set and eyes alit with determination.

"For my da, you ninny!" She flinches back at the word – da… – and the sharp fire in his son's eyes dims, softening as he moves slowly to her side.

Struck by her reaction, Jaspert realises Sophie Sharp is already five years old, yet she has never known her da; has never felt his green eyes, swelling with pride, rest on her nor the strong-but-gentle touch of a father's embrace. He wishes he could fill that gap, but inside, he knows he can't. Not for Sophie. Not for Deryn.

"…What's it for?" she asks after a moment, trying to pump strength back into her trembling voice.

Jaspert is about to step into the room, urged on by old regrets stirred anew, when his dear son, two years her senior, claps a brotherly hand to his cousin's shoulder. She looks up into Dylan's glimmering sky blue eyes as he grins – unfalteringly – and finds the edges of her own lips are tugging upwards.

"Well, you see…"

And when his son's done explaining, Sophie can only grin brilliantly and bounce excitedly as Jaspert turns and walks down the hallway, a fierce pride for both children welling up within.

Belatedly he realises he doesn't remember much of what his son said, he'd been too caught up in the way Sophie's eyes had lit up like twin suns as her sorrow was banished.

Who could've known that the next day would bring news of a dead man amongst the living?

That's when he realises that, while his family had saved him from that desolate depression, his sister's family had still been incomplete – a missing piece in her puzzle.

Until now.

Deryn had never given up hope that her boy would turn up again.

He can see it for an instant as she reads the boffin's letter, can see everything that'd been torn away snap back into place. He realises then that though he'd helped his sister heal, she'd never made a full recovery, the rippling scars on her heart never quite fading.

He realises that even though his gut tells him this'll end badly, he can't bring himself to deny his sister's happiness, no matter how unlikely. So he steers her out the front door and as she bids farewell, some semblance of her once-brilliant grin in place – eyes dancing – he realises how much he missed his stalwart little sister, who'd ran around in pants, getting into fights and laughing the whole while.

When the three of them are standing before him – the amnesiac, the broken heart, the genius – telling him the 'tragic' story, he finds his sister's eyes, still shining with thinly veiled hope and quashes the 'I told you so' grumbling of his gut.

When the boffin tells him that they want Alek to spend more time with Deryn, to stir his mind – rekindle that fire – that it might bring back his forgotten memories, Jaspert slides his hard gaze to the other man.

Years spent comatose in a bed have taken their toll, Jaspert can see it in the milky paleness of his skin, the way his flesh, deprived of fats, clings to bone. But still Alek stands tall – regal and proud – and Jaspert figures nobody can forget their very nature.

For a long moment, sharp blue eyes stare into burning green ones, searching for hesitation – weakness – but there is nothing. Even without his memories, the determination Jaspert sees in Alek's eyes is eerily familiar.

The understanding springs on him in that instant, that it doesn't matter even if the sod never remembers his past. Because not a day after coming back to the world, after meeting his sister for the first time again, the two of them have already devoted themselves to each other.

He looks once more to the other man standing tall, eyes set – a fierce effigy of purpose – and tells him, gruffly to mask his quiet happiness, to get inside.

So this time we look through Jaspert's eyes, for several reasons, most prominently because he's a very under-explored character and his relationship with Deryn isn't given much attention (anywhere, really). I thought he was a pretty cool dude though, how many guys in that day and age would sneak underage little sisters into the airforce.

Nevertheless, it was a bit of gamble and many a frustrated block was encountered xD

Feedback and critique will be appreciated as always, and I hope you all enjoyed this (and the things to come) C:

Thanks for reading!