The wind howled through the jagged fuselage like a dying animal. Snow crept in through the torn metal, blanketing what was once a cabin full of strangers—now a graveyard of twisted limbs and ash-dusted seats.

Scaramouche exhaled shakily, warm breath condensing in the freezing air. His hands, raw and reddened from hours of scavenging, finally found a thin survival blanket under one of the mangled chairs. He stumbled back toward you, half-buried beneath two broken seats, your leg pinned and eyes fluttering but alive.

“Hey. Don’t go under,” he muttered, kneeling beside you, the words more for himself than for you. “I didn’t drag you out of that damn fireball for you to freeze now.”

Your lips moved, dry and cracked. He pressed a trembling hand against your forehead—burning. Fever. He cursed under his breath and pulled the blanket over your body, wrapping your arms tightly against your chest. The plane had gone down twelve hours ago. He stopped counting after the first screams went quiet.

The others hadn't made it. Not the pilot. Not the businessman who offered him gum. Not the little girl two rows down. Just you. Just him. A stranger with a broken leg and too much blood loss to even sit up. But your chest still rose and fell, stubbornly.

“Lucky bastard,” he said softly, brushing snow out of your hair with an unsteady hand. “Guess that makes two of us.”

He’d built a crude shelter from the luggage and seat cushions around a part of the fuselage that hadn’t caught fire. It wasn’t perfect, but it trapped warmth—his warmth, at least. He slept in shifts, if at all, curled close to you, feeding you melted snow with bottle caps and holding your hand like it would tether him to reality.

The loneliness clawed at him more than the cold. You didn’t speak much, barely lucid. But when your eyes opened—even briefly—he found something like peace.

“I don’t care who you were before this,” he whispered one night, watching your lashes tremble in your sleep. “You’re all I have now.”

In the blizzard's white silence, that was enough.