This is a follow up / continuation of my one shot, "Shouldn't Be Here" and you don't have to read that one for this to make sense but I just needed to write this.

Caution: possible feels for both stories (if you haven't read SBH yet..)

"Maybe we stick around here for a while."

Oh, how he wishes they could have stayed.

...

He imagines her in a white dress.

He knows it's stupid, impractical - also impossible. He had never even seen her in such a setting, never seen her in such an outfit. He can picture it though.

Her standing there, her white dress skittering against her knees with the wind. Her long blonde hair flowing down her back, and wisping around her face. He can picture her wearing those scuffed up cowboy boots - because that was just the kind of girl she was - and he can imagine her eyes, big and blue and vast like the ocean, gripping him close, carrying him away.

"What changed your mind?"

Sometimes he feels like he's drowning, gasping for air, reaching for her and being so close, close enough that he can feel her under his fingertips. She was right there, right in front of him, his life vest that he needed so desperately; and then in a blink of an eye, in the shot of a gun, in the rush of a wave, she was gone and he disappeared beneath the water, settling at the bottom of the ocean floor. Gone.

"She's just gone."

This place, this safe zone, it smothers him. He doesn't fit in here, he can't blend in like the rest of them and everywhere he looks, he sees her. She should have been here, she should have made it here. A girl like her, she deserved a place like this. Sometimes, he finds himself wondering how different things would have been if they had walked through those gates together, her beside him, him beside her - because he knows, if that day had ended differently, he would not have let her out of his sight again.

I wish we could have stayed.

Would he have felt different? Would the walls still suffocate him or would she make it all alright? Would she smile and play that piano that he knows is sitting in that room over at Eric and Aaron's - the room he never goes in. He can't; because he can picture her too vividly there, can see her sitting there in the flickering candle light and can hear her soft voice flowing around the room. He can't go in there, can't look at that faded baby grand, he loses her all over again when he has to turn away and walk out the door.

"I know you lost something back there."

No, he doesn't know. No one knows. They couldn't possibly understand what he lost because sometimes, even he doesn't know. He lost her, but he lost something else, something in him he didn't even know existed before her. She changed him. He let her.

"She saved your life too, right?"

Sometimes, he wakes up in a cold sweat, her name on his lips and he'll see her there, her hair blowing around in the wind slipping through the open window and she will look over at him and smile and he will blink and she will disappear.

I wish you'd stay.

He whispers to the dark. Things he wishes he had gotten a chance to say to her. She deserved to know, deserved better than what she got.

I'm sorry.

I miss you.

Why did you leave?

I need you.

You.

You changed my mind.

I wish you would stay.

He imagines her in a white dress. He knows it's stupid, impractical - also impossible. He had never even seen her in such a setting, never seen her in such an outfit. He is grateful for it though, for his mind to always see her as this ethereal creature, forever out of his reach, because if he had imagined her as anything else, he would never know that this moment was real.

He can see her. Crouched down beside a dying fire, her hair pulled back and covered in dirt and she's wearing jeans and a faded flannel shirt and even in this state, covered in mud and guts, she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

A twig snaps beneath his boot, his crossbow sags in his arms and she looks up, her eyes immediately catching his. That ocean is back, pulling him in and for a moment, he almost feels like he's drowning.

She smiles.

And suddenly, he can breathe again.

"Oh."

Please, please stay.

...

I've been going trough some stuff lately and while I won't bother you all with specifics, just know that I am trying my hardest to get my stories updated, it's just hard to write when there are so many things going on but I promise, I am still around :)