Trying to get back into the swing of things by writing this short little ficlet; the idea burst from my head while listening to the track "Sun", from Thumbelina. Reminded me of a song Betty may have sung to Simon, before he went completely insane in the membrane.

Anyway, here we go. Wish me luck, everyone.

Once, there was the sun,

Bright, and warm, and wonderful,

Shining like the love within my heart….

Thumbelina

It wasn't the type of day to be marred by a heavy jacket, though that afternoon had been set late in the month of November and the forecasters, behind the headlines of 'possible nuclear warfare' called for snow-showers sometime in the week. No, the day he stepped foot into the apartment after fifteen endless days of relic-hunting, Betty felt the sun beam as if summer had come once again.

"Simon…"

Intertwined with her fingers, the coffee cup nearly shattered onto the tile floor, splattering its contents everywhere as she stuck her eye to the peephole, mildly shocked and a wee frazzled that she had company on such an eventless Sunday afternoon such as this one. She hadn't expected his arrival for another week, perhaps even more, as an explorer friend of Simon's had relayed a message saying the trip had been postponed; why, she had asked, and he could give her no answer. And, excluding her fiancée, she gave no one else reason to come over; Betty had been an antisocial girl for most of her life, substituting friends and social events for books and chemistry. The few friends she did have had enough sense to call before simply waltzing on in.

"Simon?"

Yet, from the moment the door-bell rang and the few wasted seconds she spent gathering herself to open the door, she had felt an unreasonable sense of excitement. As if she were made of air, the walk through the living room, kitchen and dining room, felt weightless. By the time the door had come upon her, she almost felt faint, her heart was racing with such vigor and her breaths became short, pitiful gasps.

"Simon!"

And to see him on her doorstep once again, that lopsided grin and goofy hair-do the same from all those weeks ago, the weightless sensation ended abruptly; there was no place else she would rather be than grounded with the man she loved.

Outside, the world was in the process of freezing over. Yet inside, they fared no better; the only difference between the two was the fact that Betty had never seen a future outside their shared abode.

As the weeks began to drag on, and the television stayed off for days on end, leaving the two in a broken silence brought on by Simon's deteriorating health and her fear of losing him, she began to realize the awful fact that her future was crumbling right in front of her eyes.

And she could do nothing about it.

"Simon," Betty spoke sternly, mimicking a mother figure as she tipped the glass of tea against her spouse's lips and wiped away at the edges of his mouth as the tea dripped down them, "Simon, drink this honey. Please. It will make you feel much better."

He groaned, making a sound somewhat similar to a word, but it bubbled in his throat and died seconds after; his stark white hair nearly slapped Betty in the face as he shook his head vigorously, and the tea fell from her hands. Shaken, she yanked the cup from its place on Simon's lap, yet the remains of the beverage had already spilled; she could no longer assist as the searing tea landed on his uncovered arms and legs, tearing at the skin it touched.

She gasped as the burns appeared on his thighs and knees, and sprinted into the kitchen, racing to gather the freezing washrag to try and ease some of the excruciating pain she had accidentally inflicted on him.

"Baby, oh my god I am so sorry," rushing back into the den, the cloth poised like an anti-burn weapon, she laid it on his legs, on top of the tea-damaged areas, "Simon, sweetheart, are you-"

She stopped. Looking up at her husband to be, she could see nothing written on his ice-like features indicating anything had went wrong. He mumbled incoherently, and, in a sudden decision, Betty removed the cloth from his burned thigh, stomach hardened to see the bubbling, marred flesh from his leg.

Yet Simon had no burns.

"Betty!" the shriek jolted her onto her feet, as Simon flailed in the chair, like a fish out of water.

"Betty! Betty, please!" he screamed, shrieked, in a shrill tone she had never heard in all the six years she had known him; he sobbed her name, eyes darting wildly around the apartment as if he suddenly realized he had been left alone, unable to grasp that Betty was there, Betty was right next to him.

"Simon," she spoke low, whispering against his ear as he sobbed continuously, "I'm right here, sweetheart. I'm right here…"

"Betty! Don't leave me, please! Don't leave me! It's tearing me apart!"

His arms flailed out, catching her right in the stomach, but she didn't let go. Rather, holding on tighter, she continued to whisper sweet nothings in his ear, the things he always loved to hear from her, back in the time where the sun couldn't have shone brighter, and the world wasn't so dark. He kicked her, hit her again, and Betty was sure that he had left a bruise.

"I'm right here, Simon," she whispered, and freely began to let her own tears fall, simultaneously with his, "I'll always be right by your side."

Still, he cried out her name, screaming himself hoarse, until the hours of sunlight ran out and rapidly, the world began to approach nighttime; and even then, as he sobbed himself to sleep, Betty sat right there next to him, crying just as he was, in unison.

She was tired, physically and mentally; physically, Betty felt as if her skin had endured fires from the hottest pits in hell, grafted onto her flesh and not quite the same skin as a few weeks ago, and mentally, dead. Like much of the world had become, only a handful of days after the sky had lit up with a blinding white light and she suddenly woke to a world of once-was, Betty felt dead.

She sat next to him, hand in hand on what once was their bed; outside, the winds howled and the snow piled in stacks of twenty feet or more, covering the streets and people below them. The roof was gone, blown off to God-knows-where from the initial attack, and Betty only had to look a few feet in front of her to see how the weather fared outside. Positive aspects about nuclear winter; forecasts didn't need to be predicted by the Meteorologists anymore.

Now, it was just snow, snow and more snow.

Coughing into her palm, the pale flesh streaked red by her blood did not faze Betty in the slightest; rather, she simply wiped the fluid onto the mattress, forever ruined by debris and soot. Simon stirred just lightly, mumbling once again. In his other hand, he clutched the gold relic found during the expedition, where it was intertwined within its fingers, its red gem glinting brightly.

Betty felt a surge of anger just looking at the damned thing; taught to believe that science had an explanation for everything, it completely conflicted with her views to acknowledge that the crown had something to do with Simon's loss of sanity, but ever since that first day, he had been off. Telling her how he could hear the crown in his head, loss of his regular colored hair in place of a white, frizzy mane…when she looked close enough, Betty could even see a tint of blue in his skin, and his temperature had dropped to inhuman degrees.

"That crown, Simon," she shivered, speaking over the howl of the wind, "I should have never fooled around with the crown."

Granted, Betty doubted it would have deterred the end of the world, but had it not been for the crown's interference, maybe—

"Maybe I would've had someone to spend my last day with," she finished, brushing stray stark hairs from in front of Simon's eyes. He did not move, and she didn't stop herself from laying her head in his lap, and crying softly.

Outside, the wind howled and the snow fell. The sky, a bluish and white mix, showed not a trace of the sun; how she would've loved to see it. Though he felt colder than a block of ice itself, Betty couldn't fight the grip of exhaustion, and Simon's slow breathing became an unspoken lullaby amidst the chaos. She shivered, teeth chattering in her skull, as her eyes began to slip.

"R-remember that day we got on the t-topic of kids?" Betty coughed again; the red spilled against Simon's knee, trailing down, but the two took no notice, "you w-wanted to name our son something r-really funky, what was it again? N-norder or Neptor or…s-something weird, and we got into a fight cause I laughed at it? I-I always wanted to tell you t-that I was s-s-sorry. As long as w-we can claim him as our own…Norder, o-or Nepter is a g-great name."

The urge to sleep became almost overwhelming, and the pain in her chest made it unbearable to stay away for much longer. As her breathing slowed and darkness became an escape, she was slowly started by a weight on her head.

Looking above her, Betty almost became shocked back to life when the face of Simon, features contorted as if in great distress, looked at her with sad eyes.

She laughed weakly, a pathetic, almost silent sound in her own ears, "Good morning, love."

His lips twitched, as if trying to form unreachable words and the crown in his hand clattered to the floor. Simon ran a discolored hand over Betty's face, wiping the red that stained her cheek.

"Buh…Buh.."

Betty smiled, placing a finger against Simon's lips, preventing any attempts to speak. The wind howled, and the snow fell so high, she swore it could almost reach their fifth floor apartment. Yet there was nothing but silence when she concentrated on him, running her fingers through his hair until her arm became weak, and she resorted to simply enjoy the minutes they had left in each other's presence.

The exhaustion hit like a brick, and she could no longer maintain eye contact as her lids became made of stone, and her vision blurred and dotted.

"Simon," she whispered over the sounds outside, and though she doubted he could even hear her anymore, she spoke the mantra over and over against the nearly blaring wind.

"I'll always be with you, Simon. Always."

The sounds of a world in carnage no longer fazed her; as the piling snow and howling weather outside disappeared, and all she could feel from the Earthly world was the soft shaking of Simon as he held her close and sobbed, she wondered if there was sunlight in darkness.

"I love you, Simon."

And as he held his dead fiancée in his arms, Simon wondered the exact same thing.

Depressing fic over!

No time to review; just posting this crazy mo'fo and seeing if you guys approve!