A/N: So...hi guys (please don't kill me for not updating sooner!). The Christmas period is over and I've decided my New Year's Resolution will be to write as often as I used to, so I have a creative outlet (besides my saxophone) from university.

There is a reason this update has arrived so late, mainly that I have been focusing on improving from the problem that originally inspired me to write this story. When I began writing this, I was in a bad way due to what someone did to me, and I tried to channel some of my feelings and thoughts into the first few chapters of this story, since it helped me to deal with my issues. The support I received and the comments about the realism of Apollo's feelings in the first few chapters filled me with relief, and were enough of an inspiration to help myself out, and recover from what another person made me feel, so thanks to all of you who read this.

I felt brave about writing this, and in a way I felt proud that I had found a way to channel my energy away, and now I am recovering, I hope continued support will help me keep writing and see this story through to the end. Anyways, please enjoy and as always, reviews are appreciated to let me know what you think.


Ema still hadn't rested, she was still frantic, desperately searching for a glimmer of hope, or her friend's body. With no hope, she wanted to find some solace or to feel closer to him, it was then that she found a record of his father's death, along with where he was buried.
"Perhaps if I go there, I can feel closer to him." Her voice rose into the dead air around her and sat still, in the deathly silent office around her. People were confused, in mourning of a talented man, of Apollo, and there was a loss of hope floating around in the stillness as well.

-x-x-

"Matthew!" A voice called. "Matthew!" A bashing on the door.
"Go away!" He grumbled groggily, turning onto his side on the pathetically hard metal bed that squealed beneath him.
"Matthew!" There was a click of a lock near him, he growled. He twisted round again and there before him at his eye level were pale blue scrubs. "Wake up silly."
"Leave me the fuck alone!" He growled, desperate for a hit of something, anything, he needed it.
"Matthew, you know I can't." The voice was more stern, and earned a better response from the man, as he sat himself up on the bed. He was met with a familiar face, the newbie of the centre, a young woman by the name of Catherine, who, bless her little heart, had already been assaulted by one man in the centre and threatened by another and almost strangled by a woman in the month she had been working there.

...Then again, what do these 'nurses' expect when they have keys to our rooms

"I thought this place wasn't a prison." The man groaned, his voice an octave lower than it was naturally meant to be.
"It isn't." The girl said, confused as she set the box she was carrying down on a table nearby.
"So what's with the shitty prison grade beds, the windows that don't open properly and blinds that don't shut out the light, televisions that don't even work and staff who invade our privacy at will?" He slammed his fist into the mattress and his voice gradually became louder with each statement.
"You people submitted yourselves!" The girl snapped, her young eyes filled with tears, it was hard to imagine she was only a year younger than the man before her. "And I came to deliver your parcel, which has been screened and checked for any drugs, before you ask or attempt to take it apart, and it's clean. Now good day to you, sir!"

She made an effort to vocalise her disapproval of the man by slamming the door shut behind her.
"Lock the door!" The man howled. "Stupid bitch." He grumbled to himself as he hoisted himself up , which required far more effort than it should in one so young, and reached for the key before locking the door, he made a point of leaving the key in the lock; it would make a few extra seconds of privacy before they forced the key out the lock anyway.

He paced around the room impatiently for a while, as if he was caged like a zoo animal. In zoo animals though, such behaviour would be deemed 'stereotypic' here, it was 'withdrawal'. He need to be in this place; a building deemed to be the same as the cage a battery hen made itself at home in, that, he had to remember. He needed something to stop the 'withdrawal' symptoms (as far as he was concerned such symptoms didn't exist, there was nothing wrong with him in his mind), it was then that the box caught his eye.

A plain cardboard box, looking almost like the inside packing for something much larger sat atop the table where he ate, alone, everyday. He approached it with caution and shook it rather curiously to reach the same conclusion as the young girl, whatever was in the box wasn't going to be the fix he so desperately wanted.

He wanted to ignore it, wait for the cleverly concealed hit of drugs he needed in another package that should have been arriving the same day. He failed however, since something about the package intrigued him, so he gave up his waiting game for the second parcel and sat at the table with the box.

Much like the previous recipients of the same box, he did the same routine of analysing the next box, noticing the name, tossing the box to the side, then checking the envelope and finally picking up the CD.
"Nurse!" He called down the hall, Catherine appeared.
"Oh...it's you, what do you want?" She asked.
"My package, it contained a CD, I wish to listen to it in the privacy of that box I call home." He didn't mean to sound sarcastic, however the look on her face implied it had come across as such.

The CD player was a poor quality device but it functioned, so he plugged it in and sat as close to the speaker as he could, his paranoia telling him to make sure nobody else could hear.

"Man...what happened to you?" The voice was like a knife to the throat.
"Apollo!" The man declared in delight, almost as if Apollo was in the flesh before him.
"Don't be so excited." Apollo knew this boy better than he knew himself. "I assume this got to you, I simply had this sent to the last address Chastity told me over a year ago, when I last asked them about you and I still make the effort to go and see them often."
"Ch-Chastity!" A name that struck a chord, deep in his heart.
"They were ok you know, when I saw them last, Chastity and Meghan, I mean." Apollo said reassuringly. "And before I go any further, I should probably tell you I'm not."
"W-what!?"
"More of that later, but first, I want you to sit, and listen, don't twitch, don't do anything, just sit still!" The voice snapped.

"You were a little older than me. Almost three years old when the one year old baby boy, me, was left in the orphanage in the middle of the night." Apollo sighed. "None of the kids knew who bought me there, they mocked me, they made fun of me when we were a little older, because I was there alone. No idea who my parents were, I wasn't taken away like all of you, I was dumped there, nobody loved me." He whimpered. "That's what you all said anyways."
"What do you mean 'you all'? I never-!"
"You did it too, for a while." Apollo fell quiet. "Then they started beating me."
"They were horrid." A vague flash of memory flooded to the man's mind.

-x-x-

Apollo's little, why are the bigger kids beating him?

Matthew rushed forward to see the commotion. Apollo was on the floor, cuddling himself to protect his softer sections from receiving more blows.
"Nobody loves you! Your files are empty!" A girl spat, kicking him hard in the hip.
"S-shut up!" Apollo cried out in pain through the floods of tears streaming down his face.
"I need to help him, but the big kids are far to big for me to fight whilst in a crowd like that." He began to scan the room in a panic. He couldn't get near the crowd, or he'd be pulled in.

A howl of pain erupted from Apollo as Matthew filled the last of the balloons he had found with paint from the bottles they'd been using earlier.
"Jack?" He knelt down and glanced under the table to see Apollo's room mate. "What are you doing?"
"I'm hiding, they said they'd kill Apollo if I went to get help." He sniffled.
"Don't be silly, hey give me your slingshot, I want to help him." Jack shaking, held out the slingshot.

He loaded the first balloon, filled almost to bursting with green paint, he took aim at the ringleader, a girl named Jess, a snobbish brat.
"Hey!" Matthew called out, attracting the attention of the crowd just in time to launch the first balloon straight at the ringleader's face. The balloon burst upon impact, coating her with a think layer of green paint. Her immediate reaction was to cry out. Whilst the others were distracted trying to stop her crying, he took aim at the others, by the time they all fled to go get the warden of the orphanage, they'd all been coated in a rainbow of paint.

"Hey man, you ok?" He knelt down by Apollo.
"I...I think so." He groaned in pain as he tried to sit up.
"Here." He stood back up and held out his hand, when Apollo took it, he hoisted him up on to his feet. "Let's go find Sommer, she'll heal you up." He smiled.
"T-thanks, but why are you helping me?" The young Apollo asked helplessly.
"Those big kids shouldn't have attacked you." He smiled.

-x-x-

"From then on, we grew as friends, I became part of your friendship group, with Jack and Chastity." Apollo sighed.
"You were a good guy, just a little quiet." The man on the metal bed smiled at the CD player.
"Jack was adopted out when I was, when we were eleven, we'd just moved into the new school, we were finally growing up." Apollo knew what he was going to say wasn't Matt's fault but he had to know never the less. "Rana, my foster mother, she made me transfer to a private school, I longed for you guys, to return to the old school, I was desperate."
"Why man, you knew they wouldn't listen!"
"I was gone for...a year, then when my foster parent's relationship broke down, my foster dad moved me back into the school, as I'd been begging for a year."
"Apollo..." Matthew knew where this was going.
"You changed."

-x-x-

"Apollo?" The girl had been looking at him curiously for a while now, she was sure it was him, he even had the same confident air about writing in the English class as her old friend. She chased him down the hall and after another call he turned around. "Apollo!" She declared in delight, wrapping her arms around his neck and bouncing up and down in delight.
"Chastity!" He declared in delight.
"W-what are you doing back here?" She asked over excitedly.
"It's a long story, but hey, I finally got my wish."
"Look, we'll go find Jack, ok?" She snatched his wrist and went charging down the hall, Apollo in tow.

"What the hell is wrong with you man!?" Jack yelled at Matthew.
"Fuck off Jack!" He yelled back.
"What's happening with your eyes?" Jack asked curiously.
"Leave me, the fuck alone!" He grabbed Jack's collar and lifted him into the air.
"Guys!" Apollo screamed out, breaking free of Chastity's grip despite her protests. Jack was dropped to the floor and Matthew went pale white.
"A-Apollo!" He cried out. Then turned and fled.

-x-x-

"You duped us good you know." Apollo's voice rang out above the memory.
"Duped?"
"You were older than us, and rumours were travelling in our year group, Chastity picked up on them first." Apollo recalled. "'Hey Apollo, have you heard about Matthew's friends?' She'd began, 'there's rumours they're doing drugs!' We all cast it off, none of us entirely sure what these rumoured drugs were."
"I knew that was where this was going!" Matthew flared with anger.
"Chastity had been adopted too, but she grew so close to you you both decided to start a relationship, and Jack and me became even better friends to you when we were in high school." Apollo should have sounded happy, but his voice was heavy with sorrow.

"When we, Jack, Chastity and I, were seventeen, I recall being sat in homeroom. I was reading a textbook for my advanced maths class when Chastity came rushing in, tears in her eyes." Apollo felt a distinct pain when he recorded this section of the CD. "We still had no idea about you, and your...current situation, even then."
"Chastity was crying?" At seventeen, he was with Chastity still, what happened then? He couldn't remember.
"I thought you and her had had another argument..." Apollo was quiet for a brief moment.

"Except you didn't argue, did you?"
"I don't remember, did we?" His memory had gone as of late.
"She was pregnant, seventeen years old and with baby."
"Meghan!" He declared in response.
"You were growing distant from us at this point, me and Jack, along with Alia and Trinity took it upon ourselves to support her, and to find out about you and what was going on." Apollo's voice had suddenly lost all emotion.

"Your girlfriend was pregnant, your friends desperately trying to get you to show her the love and care that she needed and you decided to do what?" The lawyer's voice suddenly rose in volume and pitch and anger took over. "You were getting off your face!"
"I..." He wanted to be angry, scream back, but he couldn't, not only would it attract the attention of the nurses but he knew he couldn't, he had no excuse.
"Your girlfriend, she needed you. Your friends, you betrayed us. You saved me, you took me in, you gave me friends, and you lied to me, you were selfish." Apollo was crying on the CD. "She didn't mean it, but Chastity was causing me additional stress I didn't need, turning up at mine and my dad's door, in floods of tears complaining of a problem with you, or a problem with her unborn child."
"Apollo...I'm so sorry." Matthew cried out.

"Then I got the phone call none of us wanted. You were desperate for cash, we knew that, since your only acknowledgement of the baby in Chastity's womb was money...but you were arrested." Apollo knew he probably wouldn't remember this event, his brain long since scrambled by the drugs. "Caught in possession of an illegal substance."
"I...don't remember."
"You were in jail when your daughter, my god-daughter, Meghan was born, and you've never even seen her, not through want of us trying."
"What are you on about?"
"Do you remember when I went to visit you in prison? Meghan was pushing a year old by this point."

-x-x-

"Apollo..." To say that Matthew was only nineteen, a year older than Apollo and Chastity; he looked aged well beyond the years. It was rare that Matthew still received visits.
"Man, you look old." Apollo said honestly as he took his seat.
"What are you doing here?" His voice was husky, the abstinence from the drugs Apollo assumed.
"I hear it's almost time for you to leave here, maybe you should go see Meghan in a centre, like Chastity asked."
"That bitch is fucking Jack, I couldn't give a shit what she wants."
"So you know about that..." Apollo fell silent for a while, this was a low, Matthew was his friend, even after all the stress and pain he had caused, and here he was denying his daughter her father.

"Chastity's relationship shouldn't change the fact her daughter needs her daddy." Apollo was only being honest.
"I'll see her." Matthew grumbled.
"Promise me." Apollo held out his hand.
"Promise." He shook his hand with a firm grip.
"And do yourself a favour, get off the drugs, don't come back here again." Apollo had begun to take a keen interest in law, and he knew it was highly likely Matthew would be back here.

-x-x-

"You broke that promise, and in all honesty, I can't believe Chastity kept giving you chances right up until a year ago." Apollo sighed. "I decided to help you out, lend you some cash I scrounged up from my part time job, and where did you spend said money?"
"I..."
"Legal highs! Anything and everything! You were always at nightclubs smoking or snorting something!" He fell silent.

"I was torn." Apollo began to cry again. "My best friend was doped off his face all the time, and if people found out about you, I could lose my scholarship, I could be rejected from law school." Apollo whimpered. "But you needed me."
"Man, please don't, please don't say what I think you're going to say, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!"
"My foster father had left me some money, just enough to live comfortably for the first year of college, you stole it all. You bastard!" Apollo roared out.
"I didn't mean to...I mean...the money was just sat there."
"I suppose I can look upon it that at least you admitted yourself into rehab with said money, but you didn't did you? You were picked up and dumped in one by the police." Apollo was sobbing.

"You stole my college money, I had to work two jobs and do a full time study just to live! Yet I still loved you, I still cared!" Apollo fell quiet.
"I'm sorry man! I'm sorry!" Matthew was in floods of tears himself. Some of the things Apollo had said had become nothing but distant memories, surrounded by a thick cloud of drug induced fog. His daughter, his girlfriend, Jack, Apollo...his childhood, all were rushing back like a stampede of elephants.

"What can I do to repay you?" Matthew began to pace around his room. "Please, anything, just say."
"It's too late to repay me." The voice fell flat, silent once more.
"What?"
"I killed myself." He was blunt and to the point.
"No! No! No! No!" He screamed out, crying.
"It wasn't just you, this box is making its way around to the people who influenced me take this decision, there are people on here from my past, and from my present." Apollo was honest, he didn't want Matthew to make the decision to die, he wanted to change his life, scare him into it. "I need you to understand something Matthew, this box isn't designed to ruin your lives, this is a warning, change. Please, please you daughter needs her dad, she's a beautiful girl, and you only have one life, don't disappear into a drug haze. Stop cruising through various rehab clinics you admitted yourself to you wasteful junkie, and think about the lives of those who need you the most, instead of your selfish little bubble." There was a growl at the end.
"I promise! I promise! Just please! Tell me you're kidding! Tell me you're not dead!"
"I want you to do something Matthew, there is a person who is collecting the letters from the PO Box written on the envelope. They are arranging my funeral, I asked them to collect the true feelings of the box's recipients for the final event of my life. I implore you."

-x-x-

The nurses sedated the crying and howling Matthew, assuming he was desperate for another hit of something. The CD was in shattered pieces on the desk, the sealed envelope containing the feelings of Matthew for the CD, the friend he longed to see after so many years and never will again, stained with spots of blood from where Matthew had been smashing the CD.

"Poor thing." Catherine had come into the room the following morning. "Wonder why you took such a major relapse all of a sudden." She glanced across at the table and the fragmented CD upon it. "I knew the CD player was a bad idea." Matthew continued to sleep before her. She simply took the box into her hands and the letter and headed to the mail department.

-x-x-

"I need to go somewhere." Her head was low as she stood before her chief.
"Where?"
"I need to be alone." Ema was crying again, it had become a common sight recently, the death of Apollo and the lack of a body had taken its toll on her.
"Ema, take the rest of the day off, in fact, take tomorrow off too." The woman rose and placed a calming hand on her shoulder.
"I...that won't be necessary, I will be in, in the morning, I just need to deal with a problem today, I beg."
"Ok, be safe." The woman smiled, her face sincere, her smile warm.

Ema stopped the car at the bottom of the hill, the gates to the cemetery part way up the hill. She had made an effort to get changed, she didn't think her usual attire of lab coat and skirt was appropriate. She locked the car door and trekked up to the gate, she had no idea where the grave was, so began her search at the graves immediately in front of the gates.

-x-x-

"It's been a long time." Apollo knelt down, placing the roses, the flowers he remembered smelling as a child all the time, in front of the gravestone. "I know what I'm doing is wrong. I just...I need to know whether or not it's my time to give up hope of living in this realm, or to give up and head to the one where you call home." He reached out and touched the headstone, ran his fingers along the golden letters that spelled out his father's name.

"I wish I knew you..." He sighed heavily. The graves around him were not pauper's graves, and neither was his father's, clearly the last of this man's money was put into making his grave a sight to impress for his son. The picture etched into the gravestone was one that always bought a smile to his face, it always gave him a memory of the smell of cotton candy that had often filled his nostrils as a baby.

-x-x-

She'd been descending down to the bottom of the hill when she noticed the grand graves at its base, and immediately she knew she had found the grave she had been looking for, etched in golden letters visible from this high up was the name of Apollo's father.
"There's a person there...maybe a relative of Apollo's or his father's?" She said to herself before calling out. "Hey!"

She had begun to rush down the hill, but before she reached the bottom, the person had disappeared, almost as if he had vanished into thin air.
"I wasn't imagining things, who was that person?" Ema quickly scanned the area around her before kneeling down at the grave. "What pretty flowers." Then she sat down in front of the grave and patiently stared at the stone, admiring its beauty and feeling closer to Apollo.

-x-x-

Apollo sighed with relief, he'd not been spotted bolting off behind a nearby tree.
"Ema? I miss you..." He whispered, before slipping off to a back exit of the cemetery.


A/N So yeah, you have my word that I'll be writing more often, as always PM me 'When Was Your?' questions (and nagging if you feel I overlooked yours) or leave them in reviews as I'm looking for a good choice to write about. And also as always, like my page on Facebook for various updates and things :D

Hope you've enjoyed reading ~ EvilWaffleS