A/n: So, for some reason I really like this quote (and I actually read the book before I saw the episode American Dreamers, mind you), and it inspired me. Well, it's my first venture outside of FlackAngell, so I'm sorry if this doesn't seem natural. Enjoy and review!

Set two months after Aiden's death.

Four Memories Worth Keeping

"But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly, leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is a name." – Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney.

Daniel James Messer sat in an apartment that looked like it hadn't been touched for months. The cream colored couch he was sitting on had spewed dust when he casually plopped down. The smell of the dust mixed with a familiar perfume. That perfume that drove him crazy trying to describe. The closest he had come to that feat was telling her that it smelled 'aquamarine.' Of course she made fun of him for such a nonsensical comment, but that was the best depiction of the scent. Somehow, said aquamarine perfume had managed to latch itself to the atoms that never seemed to leave this place.

The floorboard by the door creaked, and his head spun in the direction fast enough to give him whiplash. No one was there. Of course there wasn't. No one came here anymore. The only person to walk through the primered door since it had happened was the landlord and himself. Besides, the floorboards always did that.

"Get a grip, Messer. You know it's impossible." He told himself as he stared straight ahead again.

"Talking to yourself?" The all too familiar voice sounded from behind him. It was the voice he yearned to hear after Mac or Stella had chewed him out for some idiot move he made.

He continued to stare ahead through dust-speckled glasses. "Cause hallucinations apparently aren't enough of a craziness indicator."

He was met with silence in return and, for a second, thought that a higher power had taken pity on his silently grieving mind. But the fates never played nice ball with him, and he heard her sigh.

He pressed the palm of his hand to his stress marred forehead. His stomach churned in anxiety, and his back began to clench in pain from the tension. "I just want it to stop! I'm tired of hearing you voice telling me useless shit I don't need to know! I want to be able to be my own person and not go through WWAD? every time I consider something remotely stupid!" Danny was met with silence again, but he knew this wasn't the end of his mental torture.

"Look, Messer, I'm sorry, but-"

"Shut up!" The hand on his forehead slapped down on the couch, and the dust formed a mushroom cloud to coincide with his nuclear temper flare. "You aren't sorry! You can't be sorry! You're a stupid hallucination! So shut the fuck up!"

His chest heaved from the outburst, and the sun cast a hazy, blood red glow against the dust he turned up in his tantrum.

The voice of his past was eerily calm, "What makes you so sure it's a hallucination this time? What makes you so sure that it isn't a head game this time?"

"Cut the crap."

"How're you so sure?"

"Because you're dead, Aiden!" By then he was standing yet refused to turn around. "Because you didn't know when to stop. You crossed a line, and you can't get back over."

She ignored the second outburst and proceeded as calm as before, "Turn around."

"No."

"Why not?" The voice was indignant and edged with anger now.

"Because your voice won't come back until I have another mental snap. I can't- The last one was at work yesterday. Mac nearly had an aneurism. Told me to talk to the grief councilor. I decided to come here and hear your voice again."

"Just trust me, Messer. Please?"

"I can't do that, Aid. I'm sorry, but- I just- I can't go through the same thing over and over again." His voice was somewhere in between sorrow and regret. "Listen to me. Saying sorry to a hallucination or whatever you are."

"Look." Her voice was demanding and rough, a clear antithesis of his own melancholy tone.

The lighting had turned a deep maroon which meshed dark depression and fiery anger. Just as the red haze had mimicked his earlier fury.

"Why won't you just listen to me?" Danny knew that tone. It was the one she had specifically reserved for the not so special occasion of his idiocy.

"Because I almost forgot you, Aid. I almost forgot your eyes and your nose and you hair. I can still see every detail about you but they're starting to fade. I just wanna forget."

"You wanna forget?"

"The more I forget about ya, the easier waking up gets. The easier keeping my service weapon in my apartment gets."

"What the hell, Messer?"

"Yeah. Louie then you seemed like too much so I got smashed, went home, then stared at it for hours at a time. It was kinda poetic. The way it glinted at me just daring me to do it. That's personification which would make it actual poetry." He smiled humorlessly.

"What the fuck, Messer? Why would you consider something so fuckin' stupid?" The maroon glow darkened with her increasing intensity.

"When did you start droppin' the effe bomb?"

"When I figured that I had to live up to your expectation of your hallucination of me." Like venom from a snake's fangs, resentment dripped vehemently from her voice. "God. Are you crazy?"

"Asked the hallucination angrily."

"This isn't one of yours or Flack's stupid jokes. You just told me you tried to commit suicide because your brother went into a coma and your best friend died!"

"But I didn't do it."

"And I didn't plant evidence, but I still got fired!"

"That's different, Aiden." His voice was sobered and solemn. "It's not the same."

"That's B.S., Danny, and you know it is." The maroon continued to deepen and the room's glow was beginning to reach amethyst.

He sighed in annoyance and ground his teeth together to keep from making a snide remark that he'd probably already said to her multiple times. That wasn't a complete hardship. Everything he said in the last fifteen minutes had been along the same lines as the exact same conversations he'd already had with her 'ghost.' This one would be different though. He knew how it would end if he didn't.

"Aid? what happened to us?"

"What're you talking about?"

The calm, deep amethyst now filled the room, leaving the only void of color to be Danny's silhouette that was stretched across the room in the late summer sun.

He pulled a creased photo, which looked like it had been folded and refolded thousands of times, from his wallet. "What happened to when we were happy to be together? Look at the pictures."

"I can't believe you still have that."

The photo had been from one of those three dollar mall photo booths. The first picture on the strip of paper was of a laughing Aiden in the bottom, left-hand corner trying to pull an equally laughter filled Danny into the frame, but only managing to get half the blond into the screen. The next one down was of the two of them with the same joyful expressions stuck to their faces except this time he was completely in the photo except now his glasses were on her face and both were looking screwy-eyed at each other.

Continuing down, the second to last picture had changed mood from silly to the sort of feeling you get when you were around your first crush. Although the picture was in black and white, it was clear that Danny's face was a soft color of pink. His reason for color was because her lips were gently pressed to his left cheek. Her eyes were closed, and, though the glasses had been returned, his eyes were visibly glazed over.

The last one had morphed from childish romance to something more fierce, primal, and instinctual from the awkward affection portrayed in the former photo. This time, instead of on his cheek, her lips were locked unashamedly with his. His hand was pulling her closer to him by the base of her neck and him to her by the shirt's fabric on his collar bone. He noticed indifferently that that was the shirt he had worn yesterday.

The picture strip slipped softly from his hand and twirled its way to the floor. It came to a rest at his feet, split between the purple glow and his shadow.

Danny pushed his glasses up to wipe away tears that had been unshed at her funeral and memorial service. He picked up his cell phone that was left on the couch side table and moved towards the door, but her voice stopped him.

"I remember that day. It was the day Mac fired me. You took me to the mall to cheer me up. That was the day 'us' officially began."

His knuckles were white from clenching the cell phone that was beginning to whine from the tension put on it. In one swift movement, he turned, and the phone flew from his hand. His furious cry was muffled by the sound of shattering glass. The violet glow was gone. What was left were shattered fragments of red, maroon, and amethyst glass from the vase that had been on a collision course with his now broken treo.

"What'd I say about dangerous?"

"Shut up! You don't remember that day! You can't remember that day! You aren't real! You're just a waking dream that won't stop haunting me every time something reminds me of her!"

She continued still, "You were gonna leave memories of us."

"There is no us! Why can't you just get that? There was me and Aiden: best friends, good team, and- more. You're not her."

"Dan-"

"Stop. Please?" His voice was weak and quiet. "I just want to live a day without her being the first and last thing I think about. Please? I need it to stop-" Since the first plea, his voice had been steadily rising to the shout that was brought to an end.

"Enough." It wasn't a yell of anger, but a breathy plea. "No more. I promise."

"Well, that seems kinda self serving."

Expecting a snarky reply, Danny didn't hide his confusion when the only sound he heard was the absence of. Half of the way through the step towards the door, he spun on his heels. Retrieval of four images and emotions were the only thing he cared about in that moment. That and leaving an unspoken statement they'd confessed to each other in the cover of darkness a month after her firing. Stuffing the memories back into his wallet, he watched the last glimmer of sunlight sink below the line of the Hudson and took a deep breath of her aquamarine smell. Closing in on the exit, he made a choice that was long overdue. As Danny shut the door behind himself, he caught sight of the building's super.

"Yo, Mr. Sheen!"

"Ah, Mr. Messer. Come to pay this month's rent on Miss Burn's apartment?"

"Uh, no. Actually, I'm here to tell you that I want you to take my name off the rent and to give you this." In his hand was the bronze key to the woman of his memories. "I won't be coming back."

Finito!

A/n: Hmmm. So this was kinda dark for me, and I hoped you all liked it. But I won't know unless you tell me, so you need to review. Anyways, thanks for reading. And since DnA is so frequently unread, I really don't care if it's a day, week, month, or year after this has been posted. I'll take all the reviews I can get.

CI