A/N: Hello! This is my first story that isn't Twilight related, so I'm very nervous about it! This story is based on the book by Stephenie Meyer, The Host. I haven't read The Host nearly as many times as I have read Twilight so I'm pretty sure I didn't hit the nail on the head with this, but I'd thought I'd give it a try. No flames please! I'm just trying to extend my writing abilities! Reviews and constructive criticism is encouraged though :)

This is Jared's POV during the moment that Jeb and his crew bring Melanie/Wanderer down and into the caves for the first time.

Warning: Rated T for language!

Note: This is a one-shot so I will not add anymore chapters!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Enjoy :)

Familiar

(Jared's POV)

My hands gripped the wooden end of the aged shovel. The two things were quite similar – the shovel and my hands. Both were rough, my hands severely calloused, though I didn't remember a time when they weren't.

I could feel the muscles wrench in my back as I plunged the metal end into the dirt. Purple dust replaced the air as I heaved the shovel upwards, this time feeling the flex of the muscles between my shoulder blades, the tightening. None of this was unfamiliar.

"Don't you ever quit?"

I didn't turn around. I knew who it was. Instead of responding, I grunted.

The voice sighed. "Why the hell do you work so late anyway? The corn grows just fine. We don't need your sweat all over it."

I shrugged, balling up the end of my torn up shirt and wiping it across my damp brow. "Gives me something to do." I thrust the shovel back into the hard rock floor, gritting my teeth as the vibrations shot up my arm painfully. Yet another thing that was habitual.

Ian's footsteps were echoed thuds as he lazily circled the room, his eyes wandering over the fissures in the towering ceiling. The cracks where the moonlight spilled in became shadowed as he passed beneath them, and my body tensed at each alteration of brightness. Instinct.

"Did you want something?" I muttered, propelling my foot onto the flat metal part of the shovel, still watching Ian out of the corner of my eye.

"Nah," he shrugged, glancing at me. "Jeb's out doing God knows what and it's my turn to wait up for him."

"Ah."

"That old man's gonna run into a whole army of them, one day, if he keeps up these little expeditions of his."

I didn't answer him. I was falling into a rhythm now with the shovel as the solid rock gave out into a form of dark, less dense soil.

"Hey, did Jamie tell you about the…" his voice broke off, fading until it was replaced by the heavy sound of footsteps. We both turned towards the sound that echoed from the far tunnel, the strident clang of my shovel fell mute.

It didn't surprise me when Jeb stepped out from the shadows. He's the only one that could make that kind of noise – heavy yet constant.

"Back so soon, Jeb?" Ian teased. He chuckled warmly, but the wholehearted sound ended on a false note, almost like a young girl's nervous giggle. I watched his face as all traces of humor dispersed and his dark eyebrows dropped over his puzzled eyes.

My eyes shifted to Jeb. He caught my gaze fleetingly but turned to stare at Ian.

If I had been taught anything these past few years, it had been to learn how to read faces. You could tell a lot by looking at someone's face. Jeb, for one, was currently bothered, anxious even, and that was not familiar.

"I need you outside, Ian." We both stared at him for a long moment and his pale blue eyes suddenly narrowed in threat, "Now."

"What's going on?" I demanded, gripping the coarse wood on the shovel.

"Nothing you have to worry about," Jeb answered, but his words were a lie. His face gave him away, even though he was still staring at Ian, I could tell.

"Get a move on, Ian. Kyle's already waiting in the tunnel."

Ian glanced back and forth between Jeb and me before taking a step towards the tunnel.

"What the hell is going on, Jeb?" I just about roared through gritted teeth. There was something he didn't want me to know about, and despite the shield that had been solid and thick in my mind for a very long time, I feared the worst.

Associated with fearing the worst came one name: Jamie.

Another name had once been in the category, but my shield hadn't splintered that much. I knew what would hurt me. That name was buried, in the very core of my being. Retrieving it now would be suicide.

My knuckles tightened in protest as I gripped the coarse wood. "Where's Jamie?"

"Jamie's fine. The boy's sound asleep." Jeb glanced over his shoulder, at the ceiling, at the shovel, everywhere but at me.

His eyes then snapped back towards Ian as if he had just remembered that he was standing there. Jeb's hands ushered him towards the tunnel. Ian complied.

"I'm coming too," I insisted through clenched teeth, letting the shovel drop from the hand that had become stiff with pain. I stalked towards the tunnel, daring anyone to stop me.

"No you're not," Jeb said, his voice calm, as if we were discussing what to have for breakfast rather then something he was intentionally hiding from me.

I ignored him, and made it halfway across the vast room when his composed voice called out, "It's one of them."

My feet stopped moving and I eyed the old man carefully.

His gaze had finally settled on mine and my body tensed. The uneasiness was almost completely hidden on his relaxed features. Almost.

"Why do you believe I shouldn't go?" I had chosen my words carefully. He noticed.

"I believe you shouldn't go because I want to live." His eyes narrowed at the implication, and I waited. He turned his back to me and nodded towards Ian. Ian threw me a wary glance before disappearing down the halls. "Try and have a little one-on-one chat with your temper while we're gone," Jeb muttered over his shoulder. I could hear the depleted clink of bullets dropping into the barrel of his gun as he whistled his way into the ebony shadows. "We'll be back."

I didn't move for a long time. My eyes narrowed, attempting to peer through the impenetrable darkness. I could hear voices filtering down the tunnels now. Whatever was happening was quickly becoming an event.

My fingers involuntarily curled into fists as I held my breath. What were they saying? I was confident that my lungs would rapture until Sharon stepped in. She stared at me with a hateful scowl on her face, though I couldn't be certain if she was particularly annoyed with me, the scowl was a permeate fixture on her face most of the time.

My body was motionless as my eyes followed her. She walked slowly around the perimeter of the immense space, her eyes bottomless slits of black.

"What's going on?" It wasn't as much of a question as it was a command.

One thin eyebrow rose, making her small forehead wrinkle with the effort. "Jeb, didn't tell you?" Her question was laced with resentment.

I didn't have a chance to answer her – nor did I want one – because the echoed conversations were nearing, and I could feel the vein in my forehead pulse with rage.

I tried to remember what Jeb said about my temper, but that just made my blood boil a little hotter.

Maybe the dust was getting to the old man. Or maybe he was developing a disease that Doc's never heard of before. Or maybe he was just plain, old. But there was something wrong with him. I'd seen one of them before, and my temper had been just as bare as the others, if not more placid. I knew how to keep my mouth shut, at least.

My pulse thundered in my ear as the murmured conversation came closer. A few people were already trickling into the room. Every single person was eyeing me furtively. My fingers became taut and began uncurling and then curling into my palm. The fist I had made clenched tighter as the hushed sounds became clearer and I could make out my name being said.

The large group finally filtered into the room, everybody searching until their gaze could settle on me. The different range of emotion displayed confused me. Pain. Pity. Fear. Apprehension. Concern. Anger.

The faces were everywhere, circling me almost, where I stood immobile in the center of the room.

Abruptly, I snapped.

"Somebody better tell me what is going on. Right. Now. Or I swear to God…" My lips had curled back over my clenched teeth as my eyes darted around the room.

The murmured revelation wove through the onlookers. And then, it immediately stopped. All of the faces I was staring at, looked, wide-eyed over my shoulder.

"Jeb says he found one of them," I turned around sharply. My eyes set on Andy, Paige tucked against his side. Paige's gaze was one of the few that showed pity. Andy's displayed the more popular emotion, anger. "Says he knows the body." Andy's jaw stiffed and his eyes narrowed. "Says you're quite familiar with it as well."

"Andy," Paige whispered anxiously, "Jeb told us not to tell him."

Andy ignored her, refusing to break the death stare he was giving me.

I was less then concerned with him, however. My body was working too hard, trying to block out everything. My chest turned to ice and I could no longer hear my heartbeat. I was numb.

"You know who it is." Andy's livid gaze had become reproachful. My jaw shuddered at the attempt to clench even tighter.

"Andy," Paige whispered in disapproval, though it was a weak attempt.

"That girl of yours, Jamie's sister."

Melanie. The name rushed through my head like water breaking through a dam.

The hushed conversation returned and Andy stepped back into the crowd.

My mouth was suddenly dry and each breath of air I inhaled tasted bitter. They got her.

I swallowed the pungent air. I swallowed the sorrow too. They both scratched my throat on the way down.

And then something clicked in my mind. They went out to kill her – it. They're killing the body. Echoing inside of my head was the sound of the bullets jingling, dropping into the barrel of Jeb's gun.

The sound reverberated there for a long time, drowning out the tense conversation in the room.

One question, however, obtained my attention. "Should we wake, Jamie?"

"No," I barked through my raw throat. "Nobody tells the kid. Ever."

Everybody seemed startled by my outbreak. How long had the sounds of the bullets hitting against one another been playing in my head?

I glanced up at the ceiling. The moonlight areas had disappeared. The crevices webbing through the thick rock now let it a dull gray light. Sulfur hung in the air like dust.

Dawn. Jeb already shot it by now. I suppressed the mental image that accompanied that thought. It's not Melanie, though. So why should it matter?

I had to conceal a flinch every time I thought her name.

The entire room eventually dulled in sound, until the silence was so piercing, I could hear water dripping in the caves. The people closest to the eastern tunnel suddenly leaned in closer towards the blackness, their faces masks of concentration.

"They're back," somebody hissed.

I was angry that the words made my stomach drop.

As the echoed steps drew closer, the people near the eastern tunnel began to back up. The people near the west began to advance. Soon we were nothing more then a clump of hissing people.

I, fell dead center.

The footsteps ricocheted endlessly off of the cavern walls. There was more then just Jeb, Ian and Kyle, I was sure.

The babble of voices was disconcerting as my chest ripped in half as the footsteps neared closer. I wouldn't allow myself to think about it, though the physical pain was inescapable, the thoughts effecting my emotional pain could do a lot more damage if I allowed them to overthrow me.

I hadn't even noticed that room had become deathly silent. The footsteps had stopped.

My eyes darted towards the eastern tunnel. Though I was still blind from the new light that had filtered through the fractured ceiling, I shoved my way through the frozen crowd.

When my eyes had finally adjusted, they widened.

"No!" My mind roared, at the same time my body screamed, "Melanie!"

The two different reactions were the cause of the ripping sensation in my chest. My hands clenched even tighter until I could feel my finger nails digging into the thick skin.

In front of me, the golden skin radiant beneath the brilliant light of the ceiling, was Melanie. Not Melanie, I reminded myself. Melanie's body.

Even at that moment, even though I knew there was a creature inhibiting her mind, coursing through every vein of her body, she was still the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. My chest collapsed painfully.

Finally her eyes meet mine, for the briefest second, and my anger flared. This creature took away Melanie's life. It took her away from me forever… and then brought me back her body so that my ache would always bare an image. At least if the body never came back, I could always hope…

And then, when I didn't think my body could be tattered anymore, it called my name. "Jared!"

She flung herself towards me and my entire body became rigid, my teeth clenching so hard that my head ached from the pressure.

My first instinct was to hold my arms out and catch that familiar body into an embrace and never let it go. But my anger seeped right through the very thought of instinct, but it wasn't until she ran through a particularly bright shaft of light, did I resolve my reaction. The light happened to catch it just right, the silver sheen beneath the ebony of her pupil.

Her hands reached out for me, but my arms were longer, stronger.

The back of my hand came in contact with the side of her face, and I could no longer feel anything. It's not Mel. It's not Mel. It's not Mel.

The thing inside wasn't Mel, but the body belonged to her. I flinched when the sound of her body hitting the ground echoed dully in room. The whimper that followed was enough to make me take a deep breath.

The deep breath strangled painfully in my throat as I watched Jeb walk towards it, his hand half-extended. Before he extended it any further, however, he glanced at me. His gaze was hard and demanding, and I scowled at the expression as I walked forward. And then I scowled at it. I didn't like the flash of pain of felt when it's eyes met mine, the vivid color I remembered so clearly was dark and dull with pain and fear. It's NOT Melanie.

Jeb's eyes managed to become demanding and soft at the same time. Damn that old man.

My breath came out angry and harsh through my teeth as I took a step back.

Jeb's lips pressed together as he extended his hand fully towards the trembling thing. My eyes narrowed ominously at the smile that brewed beneath his vacant expression, as he used both hands to help it to it's feet. My narrowed eyes quickly focused on it as I noticed the way it seemed to study me.

Too much like Melanie, I thought uneasily. The urges thrashed around inside of me as I stared at her – it. I'd thought about it before, exactly what I'd do when – if – Melanie ever returned.

Though, when I had thought about it then, killing her, had not been as high on the list as it was now.

My mind quickly evaluated this list that I had built up and my teeth clenched.

Scratch that. Killing it was the only thing on my list now.

I had no other options.