AM: Something small I wrote for a friend about a month back when I was looking to improve my writing, so she asked for Chex and, well, this sort of happened. I've been wanting to write something along these lines for about five months. I just didn't know how to phrase the work. Anyway, enjoy a little bit of Chex

"Ha, ha! Blamo!" She's gone now; just like that.

"Wow, that explosion was awesome!" They just brushed it off, thought it was a show!
"What explosion? I didn't see it!" Their voices seemed to just melt away, all that mattered now was to get out of, here. The image of her fleeting form entering the ship was all he could recall for that brief moment.

He barely registerd Tuckers query. "Uhh, Church? What should we do?" Did it really, always fall upon him to know what to do? He may be the leader, but if he couldn't even stop his girlfriend from merely entering a ship, how on Earth should he be able to command a team? The answer was simple, he couldn't.
"Do whatever you want, I'm going home." Church's response was purely sullen. For now, all he could do was drag one foot after the other, thinking over all the things he could never actually say to her.

The base quickly became his only objective. He should merely spend the night, then go home, where ever that is. Perhaps home no longer existed, for it had always been with her; sweet Allison. The other two seemed to be following him, a small agreement thrown in from his aqua team-mate.

A small chance to have a small shot at getting his thoughts out presented itself to Church about an hour later. They had all returned to the base and he and Caboose were sat up top, for once in companionable silence, something Church had thought to never get in this god-forsaken place he know as Blood Gulch.
"Church?" He actually sounded polite. Perhaps this time he should grace the rookie with a response.
"Yeah?" Tex was still on his thoughts though, it's not like she could ever leave after all of this time.

"You ever wonder why we're here?" He had no idea what had come over him, the response wasn't at all apropriate, but he had to just get this out there; no matter how low the chances of his fellow blue understanding were.

"You know Caboose, I used to not care. I just went along with orders, and hoped that everything would work out for me. But after all that's happened, you know what I've learned? It's not about hating the guy on the other side because someone told you to. I mean, you should hate someone because they're an asshole, or a pervert, or snob, or they're lazy, or arrogant or an idiot or know-it-all. Those are reasons to dislike somebody. You don't hate a person because someone told you to. You have to learn to despise people on a personal level. Not because they're red, or because they're blue, but because ya know them, and you see them every single day. And you can't stand them, because they're a complete and total fucking douchebag."

He knew as he was speaking that Caboose hadn't registered a word he was saying, and the brief silence that ensued was all the proof he needed.
"I meant why are we up here in the sun when we could be stood down there in the shade?"

Of Course the idiot wouldn't have a moment of clarity, that's just what he was talking about. Caboose was the idiot he spoke of. "Oh, yeah, okay let's go stand in the shade."

He only stayed there for a few brief moments, waiting for the sun to begin to set. His entire body felt drained and at that moment, the alluring call of hs bed was all that mattered. His team-mates seemed to recognize that he had to have his time, for they both knew to leave him with his thoughts and memories.

Removing his armour was a surprisingly lengthy process that evening, when he finally managed to shake himself from the stupor that he had built himself into. His helmet came off first, a great rush of air rushing to cool his face. He hadn't realized how stuffy it was until it was gone.

He took a brief moment to gulp it all in, for it seemed as though he were starved of oxygen. It hurt more now than that moment that she had first died from that grenade, when everything had only just begun.

After a few minutes he simply bundled himself into his bed, burrowing under the covers in an attempt to block everything from his mind. Night tugged at his strained consciousness, and he simply allowed himself to descend from the real world where everything, including his mind, ached; to dreams where nothing had to be real, nor did things have to not exist.

She looked beautiful, simply lying there, hair flowing out behind her like a warm, inviting waterfall of the summer. Her face was clean, and angelic for the first time in years, and she finally looked simple. Free from worry, stress or pain, none of the emotional trauma she had suffered or even a single scar to tarnish her skin. It was the simple scatter of freckles and nothing else. She looked human.

A beautiful smile lined her lips when her eyes carefully fluttered open and she registered Church sat before her. It's a shame he didn't know her when she was like this, so much purer and real. "Leonard, how're you?" She sat herself up slowly and beckoned him down to her own level.

With a smile that felt forced and as unreal as she was, Church lowered himself to the floor and sat opposite her, legs stretching across the floor while Allison rivalled him with crossed legs. "You look as good as I feel, I hope you can say the same?" It was obvious that she hadn't been fishing for a compliment, but that she was more searching for his level of welfare.

It didn't need to be said, that he obviously remembered all, while she, very little. "Oh, I remember everything." Her bright statement left him with no doubt that anything had to leave his lips, for she understood his mind at the moment.
"Well, not everything, obviously, else I would be feeling the pain of it all." There wasn't a millimetre of room left for doubt; she knew his thought before it even began to form.

It was obviously disturbing, for she knew his own thoughts as well as he did; kind of like the AI's. Was this what it was like for her? Allison had obviously understood Leonard's discomfort, for she didn't respond, and allowed him to voice everything thereafter. "So, is this some way of getting to say goodbye?" He didn't need any prompting to ask the question, it was already there, set as though it were placed by someone.

Allison didn't seem to respond to his question, or thoughts, or anything that followed, her figure seemed to be growing dimmer and more translucent. She simply sat, watching him speak with those beautiful, tantalising eyes of hers, blinking as a form of acknowledgment that she was listening.

He sighed, and grasped at her hands, pulling her towards his lap, just pining for the comfort of holding her close, and just feeling her, being with her. "You know I love you right Tex?…Allison? His throat hurt, why did it hurt so much?
"I don't know how I'm going to live without you in my life, or my memory, but I've got to try."

Logic was forgotten, it seemed, for the memory of Allison always had seemed to bring her back before. Should he, just this once, forget her?