Chapter One: Remembering

I once read in a book that dying is like falling asleep or abruptly being knocked unconscious. It can happen a lot of ways, too. We're frail creatures, after all. You might have an accident, or get caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time... there are just so many ways to die, and its so easy to slip away, almost like you were never there in the first place.

My death, however, wasn't an accident.

It began, and ended, with the loudest bang my ears had ever heard.

It hurt... the heat on my head, the flash of agony, the deafening thunder... it really, really hurt.

But just as quickly as it came, everything faded away.

Coldness... an odd emptiness.

It was then that I knew it was over.

I drifted away from the street where my body was lying, down through darkness, slowly becoming more comfortable.

Everything had gone black... nothingness.

No color.

No light.

No sound.

Nothing but an endless void that stretched on and on.

The shadowy tendrils of death fit me like a glove, and a warm one at that.

They cradled me in unseen arms and whispered loving things in voices that I couldn't understand. I didn't struggle when the feathery fingers slid over my eyelids and lips, and I may have even smiled a little. There was no more pain... no more suppressing my tears... no more need for the numbing ice to keep the shattered pieces of my heart intact.

It was really over.

I had done it.

On my seventeenth birthday, I, Suzanna Darling, had ended the mistake my parents had made seventeen years ago.

My own life.

The realization that everything was over comforted me, soothing the agony that had been festering within my soul for years. Strange flashes of confusion and delirium washed over me, making me forget everything, even my own pain. Memories old and new vanished from my consciousness, leaving behind only the deepest of exhaustion.

It pulled everything away from me.

I was about to give into the darkness of death when a voice suddenly filled the space around me. I no longer had ears, formless as I was, but my entire being resounded with it.

"You are me... " it whispered. "Not me as I am... but me as you are..."

It sounded like my own voice.

Strange.

What? I silently questioned. Who are you?

"Ah... I can feel your anguish... like poison, painful... what have you done?"

Even in death, I still somehow managed to feel a little confused.

I killed myself, I silently explained. I'm dead. It's better this way.

"No, it is not. You are beginning to forget everything. You've truly stopped breathing."

Breathing?

"Breath."

What is breath?

"It is life."

The voice echoed, but I was getting too tired to pay attention. The shadows deepened around me, soothing the ache that I couldn't even remember.

"I will not let you do this... not here, not now. Your heart... it is brave. I feel it. Brave and pure."

Brave? I asked, finding the word strangely unfamiliar. What... does that... mean?

"Bravery is something you have," the voice explained. "Something that lies deep inside your heart."

I am brave?

"Yes... ah... I feel you... so strange, as if we are connecting," the voice breathed. "You are myself, yet you are not happy? Why is this?"

I fought to remember.

But for the life of me, I couldn't, and everything was growing ever so fuzzy.

I don't know, I silently explained. I don't remember.

"Have you ever been happy?"

I knew, deep down, that I must have been at some point.

Yes.

"Then... why are you so sad?"

I didn't know. But something deep within my consciousness tugged at me, making me hurt.

"Your pain... loss. What... did you lose?"

I couldn't remember, but I knew I'd lost something.

No.

No, not something, someone.

"Someone?" the voice asked. "Who?"

I don't know.

"Was it someone important? Someone... you loved?"

Someone... I loved... I thought slowly. Love...

Love.

I remembered that word.

My heart abruptly shattered into a million pieces and the agony came roaring back.

I was suddenly standing in the same spot I'd died in, right outside the downtown Chicago metropolitan amphitheater, staring at my mitten-clad hands through vision that swum and flickered like an old movie. Snow touched my nose and I glanced up, but the sun was long-since down and it was completely dark outside.

Then I turned, and there he was.

Handsome upturned blue eyes framed by ridiculously long eyelashes, and his hair, the beautifully long black hair he was so proud of, framing his rugged face in thick strands, draping across his shoulders and sliding down to his waist in glossy strands as dark as the sky. His lips, smiling at me with an expression of half-lidded adoration and love.

His hands, large and calloused.

His proud aquiline nose.

The dimple in his left cheek.

Every line of him, every curve, every angle.

Dakota.

My love. My other half. My reason for living.

My soulmate.

I wanted to scream, to cry, to wail in anguish. I didn't want to remember, but it was like a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. And I did. I remembered everything. I remembered the gunfire erupting in front of the theater, not too far away from us. I remembered people screaming and running in every direction. I remembered being shot in the arm, and cradling Kota as he bled to death in my arms, breaking my heart, shredding my soul, ripping my sanity.

Leaving me behind in the world that had never wanted me.

But that had all happened three months ago.

Dakota Freeman had died on Christmas Eve, the night of his eighteenth birthday.

And I was here, lost in this darkness, because I had just taken my own life in the same spot he'd slipped away from me, on the evening of my seventeenth birthday. The memories all flooded back and brought with them waves of pain that would have made me scream in anguish had I a physical form.

"Ah... such pain... I cannot bear it. Be this death or a dream, you will not remain unhappy. I will save you. You are going to live and love again. I swear it."

Never, I hissed, shutting the doors to my mind and huddling in the dark. I'm not brave... I won't love anyone, ever again. Leave me alone.

I didn't want to love anymore... the very sound of that word had brought this crushing pain back to his heart... the pain that wouldn't leave if I didn't forget.

I shrank away from it.

Darkness closed in on me.

Nothing penetrated the silence as I finally descended further and further into my subconscious. The void of death wasn't frightening; in fact, it was soothing after experiencing so many whirling thoughts and mental traffic jams.

"Please," the distant voice called, rousing my fading consciousness. "Please, don't give up. There are many here who would need you much more than myself! I beg you, do not let yourself fade!"

People needed me?

Lies.

Nobody needs me... I whispered. My life was nothing more than a mistake.

"All life has meaning, even yours! You are not a mistake! Look forward! Don't fade into the dark! Don't give up!"

I already gave up a long time ago. I can't keep going anymore... I just want to sleep. Go away.

And I pulled away.

The blackness was absolute... unending yet solid, and even behind my lack of vision, I could see nothing and everything stretching before me. Infinite possibilities and dreams awaited me in the void. I was just about to drift off when a tiny blue light abruptly broke through the darkness and cut through the shell around me like a knife. I recoiled from the force, blinded as the crack began to widen and more light spilled through to the blackness, dissolving it.

I wanted to hide from it, but with no body I couldn't move.

Leave me alone! I cried, wanting nothing more than to shy away from the light. Please! Go away!

Whoever it was didn't listen.

I saw from every direction and yet, no direction all at the same time as two blinding blue arms the size of skyscrapers reached out to me, arms that were glowing like fire, and I couldn't move as they wound around me being in a tight but gentle embrace. I let out an unheard wail as the intruder to my eternal darkness snared me like a fishhook.

I felt nothing but warmth from the hands around me as I was yanked upward, jerked away from the shadows where I had been curled like a fetus.

"Live. Breathe."

Then, the glowing blue figure let go of me and I flew towards the distant yellow light.

Back to life.

Whether it was even possible to live after a bullet to the brain, I didn't know, but the light grew so blinding that the darkness dissolved behind me.