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“If that’s what you want, then sure. I’ll do my best to mourn for you too, the whole death package.”

“And this is how the ending is supposed to happen. With you going back to your normal boring life, and me fading out like I was originally supposed to.”

“Live so that I didn’t give up my life for nothing.”

Sean drifted in and out of consciousness, but could only use the word ‘consciousness’ loosely.
At one point he had a distinct impression of something big being forced down his throat, a stinging sort of pain and a clenching ache in his stomach. He vaguely remembered waking up momentarily to a world of white and strange beeps before the pain worsened and stars dominated his vision instead.
But w
hether he was awake or not he heard the same things, felt the same pain. It was always that voice, so familiar yet at the moment he couldn’t place it. It kept saying things that he couldn’t
decipher, but
a part
of
him knew those things were real. That voice had been real.

When he woke up properly, meaning with adequate sanity and for longer than half an hour, it was to the sight of the white beeping world again. Except this world and this situation were so familia
r that it was just plain ironic and, if the circumstances were not what they were, laughable.
He hated hospitals, he decided. He hated the whiteness of the walls and the bedding, the noisy monitors and the curtains that blocked out all the light. That was when
it
all came back to him, in one huge wave of recent memories and disjointed speech. Lake. Drew. Idiot. Gone.
It placed that strange empty feeling, the feeling of something missing, he had felt ever since he had awoken. Drew was really gone. He wasn
’t just dead-but-still-here
-in-ghost-form-instead, he was gone. Properly gone and he couldn’t come back in any other forms this time.

It felt like a gaping hole – it could have been a crate
r
for all Sean knew- had reopened inside him and sucked every part of him into it. He was glad that it happened to be late at night and no doctors or nurses were in the room, because he didn’t want to be sedated. He wanted to feel the pain and savour it, because it wouldn’t be fair for him to be able to escape
it
after what he had done. Drew was gone because of him. He had now killed him
twice.
It didn’t matter that Drew wanted him to have his body back, it was
still
his fault. His fault it happened in the first place.

And so he very calmly turned into
his pillow, and used it to muffle his screams.

He woke up again, three days later with his body in less pain than before,
and he was pretty sure there was someone else in the room with him.
He was proved right when he rolled onto his side and blinked into focus the sight of a huddled form curled up in the chair beside his bed
like a cat
. On closer inspection he recogni
sed the bedraggled
red hair and large winter coat. Ali. It took a minute for the name to come back to him, and even longer to work out why she was sleeping next to him. He realised that she must have been the one to bring him to this hospital, and that she probably thought he had tried to kill himself. Like eve
ryone would now think.

He let out a forlorn sigh, and waited. She looked so peaceful sleeping that he didn’t have the heart to wake her up, and nor was he looking forward to the inevitable conversation. She’d treat him like a broken doll, all fragile and capable of shattering into pieces at the slightest touch, and then ask h
im why he’d done it and try to
understand and
look at him with those big, brown
eyes of hers all filled with pity. Just imagining it made him cringe, but it was better than explaining the truth to her.

When she finally did awake however, it was not what Sean had expected. There were so many emotions
suddenly whirling in her eyes – fear, sadness, relief, understanding – that he was taken aback by the intensity of them and found his mouth dry. He tried to speak, tried to somehow comfort her, but his throat burned.

“Sean? Is it really you?” she asked quietly. He was confused by the question, but nodded anyway. Relief was now the dominant emotion on her face, and her lips cracked into a tiny smile. “Good, I’m glad. Oh Sean, I’m so glad.” She moved forward and grasped his hand and there were tears welling in her eyes, even though she refused to let them fall.
The sudden contact gave him a pleasant jolt; it was the first bodily contact he’d felt in months.
‘Please don’t get all emotional on me’ he wanted to say, but he still couldn’t speak.

“W-water,
” he managed to croak out, and she leapt back
nervously.

“Of course, sor
ry. I-I’ll just go get you some.
” She left the room, returning a few minutes later with a cup. She helped prop him up on his pillow and he shakily drank, the water cooling his burning throat and allowing him to speak.

“Thanks,” he whispered hoarsely. “My throat kills.”

She looked away. “That’s because they had to pump your stomach to get rid of the pills.”

“Yeah, about that…” He had been about to start a long explanation of why he had ‘tried to kill himself’ and assure her that he was okay now and definitely
not
depressed, that it had all been an accident and he wouldn’t be so reckless again. But then he realised that there was somethin
g wrong. The look on her face
wasn’t confusion or worry, it was sadness. Despair. The sort of despair he was feeling as well.

“It’s okay,” she said softly, as if she somehow knew the direction of his thoughts. “You don’t have to explain. I already know everything.”

He only just remembered to breathe and he was pretty
sure
his hear
t monitor was speeding up. “You
know?” he forced out painfully, and she seemed to predict what he would say next and spoke for him.

“
Yes, I know everything.
And yes, I’ll explain.”
She paused for a moment,
shakily
swiped at her wet eyes, and continued. “
A few days ago Drew
kissed me while we were out on the field. At the time I still thought it was you, Sean, but then he told me who he really was and how that presence I’d been feeling was actually your soul. Of course I didn’t believe him at firs
t, who would? The idea of these
I
mprints, it was just crazy. But he showed me his eyes and…” she trailed off, falling silent for a second. “Do you know what made me believe him, though? It wasn’t the eyes, or his explanations, it was you. All along I’d been wondering about that presence I felt, because it always made me feel safe. And a part of me
knew it was you, because it’s
the same way you make me feel.”

“That’s crazy,” Sean murmured.

“Yeah, it probably is. 
It was you that day thoug
h, wasn’t it? You wrote ‘eat’ on
to my dresser.” Sean nodded. “How did you do it?”

“I found a way to
make a part of myself solid for a short time,”
he explained quietly. “Did you
already know, that day when you made him promise to go fishing with you?”

She looked confused for a second, before a sad glint surfaced in her eyes. “Oh, that. Drew whispered in my ear that you were there, watching, so we tried to act normal even though…”

Sean narrowed his eyes. “Even though what?”

“Even though we both knew it was our last conversation,” she whispered, and this time one tear managed to escape and trickle slowly down her face.

“So you knew,” he clarified. “You knew about how he died saving me four years ago, about what he was planning to do. You knew he was going to switch places with me again.” She nodded mutely, and more tears followed now. And even though Sean knew he was being unfair, that it was completely irrational, he couldn’t help but be angry at her. “Why didn’t
you do something?
You could’ve stopped him, or talked him out of it.”

She shook her head. “It was his decision, and I had no right to interfere,” she said.
“And
I know it’s selfish, but I wanted you back.”

“I never wanted to come back,” he snapped. “He forced me to accept this body. I should have died, not him.”

“It’s not -”

“Don’t lie and tell me
it’s not my fault
.”

“It’s not a lie.”

Sean didn’t answer, and instead glared stubbornly at the wall, ignoring the prickling feeling behind his eyes. This was stupid. After that first breakdown, he thought he’d
never be able to cry again. But
here he was, fighti
ng to control his emotions
, being as pathetic and childish as he had always been. He could almost hear Drew there, beside him, saying “Wow, you’re crying
again
? You’re worse than a girl
.” It was only his imagination though, because he wasn’t there. He was
gone gone gone
and Sean wondered if it would ever really sink in.

The guilt was overwhelming again. It was okay when he was lost in dreamless sleep, but just thinking about Drew now caused a chain reaction of emotions to surface and boil. The pain and guilt together felt like acidic blood dissolving him from the inside out, and it was unbearable.
He was vaguely aware of speaking, saying something along the lines of “I want to die,” but he wasn’t in his right mind and he couldn’t be sure. He’d never felt the urge as strong as he did now. He wanted it, he wanted it so much at the moment that just thinking about it made relief flood through him. He wante
d to die and even the score. He didn’t deserve to live, not when he
had stolen it from the idiot who was too noble for his own good and would’ve grown up to save lives.

He was pushing himself up, off the bed, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the guilt. He couldn’t hear anymore, except for his heartbeat reverberating in his ears, and his eyes darted to the window. How high up were the
y? Would the fall be fatal? No.
Too far away. It was probably locked. There was an IV attached to him, if he pulled it out would it eventually kill him? Well, it was a good way to start. He grasped the tube and tried to wrench it out of his arm, but before he could he felt two hands close around each of his wrists and hold them to the bed.

Ali’s terrified face swam into view, and the red tint on his vision slowly dispersed. That urge, that horrible longing for death, was receding sl
owly and Sean breathed in unsteadily
, trying to blink a
way the fog shrouding his mind and stop the shivers coursing through his body.
“Sean?” she whispered cautiously.

“Al…?” He suddenly realised his face was wet, but he couldn’t work out if i
t was her tears or his own. “
I don’t know what happened.” He swallowed thickly. “Oh god, I’
m going mad aren’t I? I’m sorry.
”

She didn’t say anything, but without words the fear in her expression was clear enough. He suddenly realised how close she was, she was practically straddling him and her face was mere inches away. Maybe it was just expecte
d for things to happen like they did
, or maybe it had been a long time in coming, but when she leaned further down and softly placed her lips on his Sean was not surprised. Instead he was relieved, because the strange warm sensation rushing through him at
the contact was like morphine.
It made his chest feel lighter and his mind blank, something he desperately craved.

“I said do you love her? Now answer my bloody question.”

“
I don’t know at the moment, but maybe if I had more time I would.”

The short memory skimmed the surface of his thoughts, and he could hear Drew’s voice saying those words again.
He had kissed her as well,
and he had liked her on some level as more than a friend. Sean turned his head away from Ali, breaking off the kiss, unable to look at her. He expected her to get off the bed, blushing furiously and mumbling an apology, but instead she stayed in the same position and her eyes bored into him.

“Sorry,” he said quietly.

“Is it because of Drew?”

He was surprised at how intuitive she was. “Yeah,” he a
dmitted hesitantly. “H
e really liked you, Al.
And it feels wrong, like I’m taking something else away from him.”

She smiled sadly. “He would have wanted it, you know. And you have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to do that. But you’re right, it feels wrong.”

He was surprised that she was agreeing with him, but also glad. He had expected more tears, maybe a heartfelt ‘Is it me?’, and honestly he just didn’t have the mental capability to deal with it at the moment. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “It’
s just
too soon. I’m so tired at the moment
.”