Shoot me.

Shoot me, shoot me, shoot me.

I should be working on other fics (and I do plan to... and in the near future, no less!) but this just came to me.

When I should be sleeping.

Awaiting the arrival of my yaoi manga in the mail is starting to get to me, I suppose.

Dedication:

ChaosGarden: Who patiently waits for my fan fic-y spew and appreciates it so very much when it arrives. I adore our "let's swap juicy yaoi pictures" buddyship. So very kinkeh. xD

BurningDivinity: Who I miss terribly and love oh so very much. When you read this, you are in fact required to comment. And pick up your phone every now and then! Damn...

Everyone and anyone who reviews. I fookin' LOVE reviews! Make my day, yesh?

Musical inspiration:

"Rette mich" - Tokio Hotel

Ja.

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No one ever really thinks about what it would be like to really be the last person left alive in the world. The world is after all, a big place. Much larger than the worlds we make for ourselves, wrought with our own pathetic angst and weak minded bitching. We spend so much time in that world alone as it is and it damn near kills us.

But to be truly alone...

This has been my reality now for six months. Not a sign of anyone anywhere. Not at the market or the train station or anywhere else. I even checked the houses around here for signs of people hiding. Nothing. Not a damn thing. There's barely even evidence that I'm not the only thing to ever exist here. All the beds are neatly made, cabinets fully stocked and every single floor looks recently vacuumed.

It's exceptionally creepy.

And I miss my family terribly. I miss Sora's laughter, my mother's cooking and even my father's disapproving grunts about everything I say or do. My friends I have learned to live without, though Olette's face still nudges it's way into my dreams from time to time. I miss them, but the thought of family makes my gut squirm.

More than anything, I want to know what happened. What fucking happened?! At first, I think "infection". The spawn of too many nights spent watching zombie movies all alone in the dark. I considered perhaps a sickness that took them all peacefully. But then... why not me? And where are the bodies? There's no sign of struggle anywhere. No blood or fingernails embedded in walls as a testament to the owner who was dragged away in a fit of tears and panic by an unknown force. It's as if they all simply disappeared.

I remember...very little, really. I was at the beach with Sora and his idiot friend with the light hair who's name it pains me to remember at all. We were in the water, my parents trying without gain to make themselves a little less pale, spread out on vibrant towels on the sand. I was staring down into the water, at a little seashell poking up through the white grains, my reflection barely visible on the water's surface.

And then I remember waking up. Just... waking up. Maybe something terrible happened to me and I've blocked it all out. Perhaps that's it! Repressed memory. Something devastating happened at the beach to Sora, my parents and that airbrained silver-headed bozo. Desperate to keep myself sane, I removed the memory from memory.

But that still doesn't explain where they all went.

Some days I just feel lost. Like I'm wandering up and down the streets that are so intensely familiar... for the first time. The usual spot feels foreign and cold to me and my bed doesn't feel quite right. The walls are unfriendly and the garish yellow brick seems to stare me down as my shadow passes along the aged stone. Sometimes I call out to the silence just to hear a voice... but it doesn't echo like it used to. Even in the tunnels, my voice falls flat.

Once or twice I heard a voice come back to me. But it wasn't my own. It belonged to someone I knew once. A long, long time ago it seems. At first, I thought it was Sora's. I ran down every street, screaming his name with tears in my voice only to find that the echo had faded back into the non-existent wind along with any hopes of finding my brother. I sat for hours in the train station and I cried into my knees.

I paced and I screamed and I begged the motionless steel monstrosities... why. The station had become special to me. Here, I felt some warmth. Once or twice, I caught snippets of voices. My mother's mostly. It was comforting, though I knew it was only me losing my mind.

Eventually I stopped talking to myself and made an uneasy truce with the silence that pressed in on me from every side. I stopped listening for the voices and eventually, they stopped finding me. I withdrew completely from the unnervingly still world outside my window with it's perpetual golden, glistening sunset. I felt like I wanted to run away but there was nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide. All alone, I was as exposed as I'd ever been.

Over time, I stopped caring for myself. I let my dirty blond hair grow into my eyes so like the waters and sky of the beach from forever ago. My fingernails were crusted with dirt and dried skin from my elbows and my sheets stank of sweat and other unpleasant unmentionables.

For a time, I wanted to kill myself. Not out of sadness. I was never really sad about the whole thing. I just didn't want to be so alone anymore. Maybe if I died, I'd find my family... and my friends. And Twilight Town would be alive again with all the familiar faces I came to love and despise. Maybe I was just stuck in some kind of purgatory and everyone else had moved on.

But there was no way for me to die. No knife would go deep enough, no rope held long enough and none of mom's usual medication was present in the cabinet. So here I stand, at the precipice of my grand idea for ending it all. I've thought for so long about it and 'followed my heart' to this conclusion. All I have to do is give up.

Somewhere deep inside me, something is telling me to just give up. To lose my will to keep going. Lay down on that unfamiliar bed with no intention of getting out again. So, dear friend, my consciousness, it's been wonderful talking to you. You've kept me so very well entertained and occupied up till now and I thank you. Perhaps when I close my eyes this time, I won't need you to keep me company.

It feels so good to just let go.

"Sora?" the rough voice of a male nurse in pale blue scrubs cut through the dull chatter and general noisiness of the room. A brunette picked his head up off his hand where it lay on the table. It was clear he'd been sleeping.

"Yeah?" croaked Sora with sleepy hoarseness.

"I'm afraid he's gone."

"He....can't be." reasoned the boy, standing up. His parents rose around him with the same expression of disbelief.

"You said he'd be fine!" bellowed the man with eyes like Sora's. "You said he'd respond to our voices and that he would wake up! You said he would be fine!"

"I said there was a chance he would respond." the nurse corrected. "But with comatose patients, chance is just that... a probability. It's never a promise. I'm very sorry for your loss but there's nothing I can do."

"Was he in pain?" the frail voice of a woman cut through the tension.

"He didn't appear to be. Facial expressions are rare and hard to read but... he appeared to be smiling. In an odd sort of way." the man in scrubs seemed incredibly uneasy but attempted to soothe all the same.

"Why did he die? Why didn't it work?" Sora whispered to the floor.

"We don't fully understand the mind of a comatose patient. Usually when they come out of it, they have no recollection of what happened while they were asleep. Some remember being in their homes the entire time or in a far off place they wished they could visit. But they're always alone. Which is why the voice of someone they love can.... it can sometimes provide the comfort needed to bring them back." he sighed.

There was no response from the mourning family aside from the occasional shudder, so he continued.

"But the longer someone remains in a coma, the less chance they have of coming out. They start to believe it's real. They slip deeper and deeper into their own minds until not even your voices will reach them. And...at that point... it's usually far too late."

He had said his peace, but still the nurse shifted uncomfortably in his athletic shoes.

"You may go and see him if you like." breaking the uneasy silence, he turned and left the bereaved family to their silent screaming.

In a matter of moments, Sora stood over his dear, dead Roxas who was already beginning to turn a faint yellow against the hospital sheets. He smiled and stroked the hand that had been cold long before the boy's untimely death.

"I'm so sorry." he whispered, still unable to wipe the smile from his lips. His brother had looked simply glorious standing there in the water, before that jackass surfer collided with his skull. The board had hit perfectly, damaging all the right areas of the brain. But he hadn't known that. All he'd seen was something amusing in the water. And that's all he'd remember.

In the months following the funeral, Sora found himself unable to sleep. He'd often lay awake in Roxas's bed, smothering himself with the unwashed sheets, hoping to catch the scent of his brother that was quickly fading from the fabric. There were times he really did think he was crazy... for on certain nights when he lay upon the bed, it was already warm. And at daybreak, if he listened hard enough, he could still hear his brother's voice. Tiny, desperate and distant. Calling his name over and over to the deafening silence.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I decided not to make it happy.
Terrible, I know.

But I really wanted to play with the idea of a coma. Isn't that kind of what Sora was in for a year anyway?

I read somewhere that you're conscious inside your mind the entire time and that you can hear voices when people speak to you. But I wouldn't know. I've never been hit that hard in the head.

It probably came out terribly and for that, I apologize.
But it's far too late and I'm far too nicotine-deprived to try and fix it.

Tear me a new one as you see fit.

The button is right here, below my mindless ramblings.

Have at it.