Another installment in my one-shot series. As always, I let you guess which character this story is about, but give plenty of clues so it is pretty easy to figure out. Anyway, this story was pretty difficult to write for me. I love the character, but it's one of those characters that I really don't quite understand, and, as a writer, I find it difficult to write from this character's point of view. So, here is my latest installment:
I Regret That You're Gone

Summary: Before you, my world was a lonely place. But now, now that I know what it was like to have you, I know what true loneliness is. – another character's one-shot reflection on season 4 events.

Before you, my world was a lonely place. But now that I know what it was like to have you, I know what true loneliness is. Because now I know what it was like when you were there. Someone who understood me, and who cared for me no matter how freakish the rest of the world thought I was. You were someone who loved me and knew me. But now you're gone. I regret that I wasn't enough to keep you here, that I wasn't enough to help you deal. Most of all, I regret that you're gone.

Part of me understands why you left – why you needed to run away. The rest of me, it doesn't understand how you could leave me, after everything we were to each other. We moved in together, and I thought we had become each other's family, to replace the screwed up ones we left behind. But then you ran back to yours, and left me here, alone.

I remember the day you left – that day we went to see your parents. The long drive, listening to the loud music that was pumped through the speakers in Jay's car. Me, sitting it the back seat with an overly quiet Emma, trying to figure out why she came along, and, more importantly, why you invited her when you saw her standing there by Jay's car. You were angry, and upset, and I tried to understand – I really tried – but I couldn't understand what you had been through. I couldn't understand why you wanted to go see the same people that sent you away so long ago.

You went to the door, and the rest of us stood around, standing by the car, waiting. We were all silent – even Jay. It was like some part of Jay understood what was going on, and even he wouldn't interrupt the tension of the moment. Then you came back, still as angry as you were before, and I felt the fear that I had been trying to hide melt away. You were coming back – to me. Emma was wrong, you didn't need to do this, and it was all a mistake.

We left, and Jay suggested that, since we had traveled all this way, we might as well head to the beach. I had just wanted to get out of here, to get far away, but you had agreed with Jay, and that was how we found ourselves on the beach. And I discovered things about the past you never talked about with me – and I discovered that it was a past that Emma knew.

You wrecked the jet ski, and I thought you were dead. I felt my heart stop – you were all I had in the world to call my own. But that guy saved you – I guess you found some closure there. After that, you left us, to go sit on the beach by yourself. I wanted to come and sit beside you, and try to make you talk some more, so that I could try to understand. But I stayed away, because part of me knew you weren't ready to talk to me. Emma, of course, went over to you after a while. Part of me wishes I knew what was said, but I never asked Emma, even on that long trip home. All I knew was that you went back, to your old home.

You were gone for so long that time, and I left Jay and Emma, standing by the car, talking, to go stand closer to your old home. I had thought about going up to the trailer to find you, but I couldn't. I stood there, waiting, until you came out.

You came towards me, and I saw how red your eyes were, and I knew you had been crying. I tried to get you to come with me – I tried to get you out of there – but you stopped me. I felt my heart stop as I suddenly knew my biggest fear – the fear I had harbored since we started this trip – was coming true. You were staying -- but more importantly, you were leaving me.

I barely remember getting into the car and slamming the passenger side door, with tears running down my cheeks. I vaguely remember sitting in the seat, staring into nothingness, as I cried. Jay and Emma said nothing to me, for most of the trip home. The occasionally talked to each other – mostly to figure out the essentials of the trip, such as whether or not we needed to a bathroom stop or to get something to eat. I could feel how uncomfortable my crying was making Jay just as much as I could feel Emma's sympathetic eyes glancing at me every so often. But there was nothing they could say to me. I had lost my entire world that one day.

You called and talked to me, two days later. I could feel you trying to explain, but I didn't want to listen. All I could think about was – you were gone, you left me, you ran away. You asked for me to pack up your things, and send them there. I felt that tiny flare of hope for you deciding to return disappear as if it was doused with ice water. You were everything, and you left, not because you had to, but because you chose to.

I felt my friends watching me closely after you left. It felt like they were holding their breath, waiting for the moment I would take out my pain on my arm with the slice of a shiny blade. Sometimes, at night, as I lay in bed in our apartment with Bueller curled up in a ball beside me, missing you with everything in my being, I want to. I want to find my old CD case, and find a way to control my pain. But I don't, because I'm going to be strong – on my own.

But I'm not really alone. I have friends who are there for me. Friends like Marco, who came and stayed with me the night after Bueller died. Friends like Ashley, who has always been there for me. Friends like Craig, who understands what is like to always be something that you cannot change. Friends like Alex, who had the strength to tell me what I needed to hear – not what I wanted to hear, but what I had to hear.

It was because of Alex that I'm here, now, sitting in my old room in my mother's apartment. It feels strange that I've come home – it feels like a pair of jeans that don't quite fit anymore, and are ripped and torn in so many places, but you don't want to throw the pair away because of the comforting softness of the worn denim. But, as I sit here, looking at the four walls of my old room, listening to the noises my mom is making in the kitchen as she cooks supper – sober, I don't feel quite so alone. I regret that you're gone, because I miss you, but as I sit here, listening to the old noises that reminded me of what it was like here before my mom became a drunk, I finally start to understand why you left. You understood something that I couldn't, until right now, this very moment. No matter how bad it got in the past, there's still no place like home.