A/N: Here's chapter ten and chapter 11 is in writing at the moment. I'm nearly done with that one. I hate it when I find something I enjoy and I have to wait ages to finish it, and I've done this with my other stuff (which I'll be going back to after this), so I made a vow to finish this in one go. I hope I stick to it.

Anyway, enjoy. Can you let me know if you're still enjoying it/ if it's going downhill if it does, please. Thanks ^^

Chapter 10: Together

"Come on then, Jess," Dad called upstairs. "We're going to go now!"

Finally, I thought. I had been waiting for about an hour, trying to draw. It was impossible; my hand wouldn't stop shaking. He didn't have to call twice, the second I heard him I leapt from my bed and tore down the stairs. Dad was waiting by the door, twiddling his thumbs. I'd tried to go on the radio, but I was getting no response for some reason. Maybe he'd be on when I got back.

Dad didn't look right. Usually, he was gruff and to the point. He was a 'no mess' kind of guy who was the rock of the family. Today, on the other hand, he looked like a wounded lion. His eyes were glazed and he was obviously deep in thought. His hair was sticking up, slightly, and ruffled. "Aren't Mum and the rest of the family coming?" I asked.

He shook his head. "We don't want to overwhelm you," he said, avoiding my look. What was wrong with him? He never said things that cared about my feelings. I can't remember him ever saying something like that. It was ever since he had seen me with Leslie and he had gone outside to talk...

I followed Dad to the car and sat next to him in the car. We didn't speak in the car, but Dad did keep opening his mouth, then closing it a second later without saying anything. Once we reached the hospital, all he said was: "We're here."

The hospital was just a dismal as before, but I felt different. I still blamed myself, and every now and again I would feel awful, but after hearing what could of happened I felt relieved as well. Dad, after checking in at the desk (which was a different one, this time), led me through the corridors on auto pilot. He knew exactly where he was going. It's a good thing he was with me; I wouldn't have a clue where to go if I was on my own. This place was like a maze.

When we reached the ward, Dad stopped me. "Remember what I said, Jess," he explained. I frowned. "You have to be strong for her. Don't freak out..."

"I'll be all right, Dad," I said, trying to smile.

That wasn't strictly true. Now that we were outside, I felt like I was going to be sick. "I'm not going to ask," he said. "I'll leave you alone when you're in there, I'll go and get something to eat. Do you want me to leave you with her parents?"

I had already thought about that. Whilst I didn't want to, I thought that they had the right to talk to me if they wanted to, since it was me who put them through this. My feelings weren't important any more. I'd lost that the moment I got into Ms. Edmund's car. "Yeah," I said. If you kept sentences short, you didn't have to be emotional.

Dad nodded. "I'll just come in with you now," he said, leading me into the ward.

Once again, the room was empty bar one bed. Flashbacks of yesterday hit me so hard they almost took me off my feet. Leslie was falling again, I was crying, I was walking through the hospital, I was begging the silent Leslie to forgive me. All of these were falling together into one thought; it was painful.

Leslie's parents looked up at me, together. They smiled. "Hello Jess," Bill said, nodding at me. "Hi Jack."

"Hello," Dad grunted.

We headed closer. There were no doctors this time, just the five of us. I was about to reply, when Leslie caught my eye. "I don't have to be a genius to realize this," Judy smiled at me. "Come on, Bill."

"But..." Bill said, looking from his wife, to me, to Leslie and sighing. I couldn't blame him, I wouldn't want to leave Leslie's side for anyone.

"We can see Leslie more, we don't have to follow the visiting hours, Jess does," Judy said, squeezing her husband's hand.

Bill nodded, after a moment of thought. "Let's go get something to eat," Dad said. I said a silent thanks to him, he knew exactly what I wanted. "I'll let the doctor know that Jess is in here." Bill and Judy nodded at Dad.

"We'll see you in a bit," Bill said, squeezing my shoulder when he left me.

The chat went on for longer than that, I'm sure, but I was fading in and out of consciousness. One moment I was completely aware of the outside world and, the next, I wasn't. It felt like just a minute ago I was at school, and just an hour ago that Leslie had fallen. Leslie...

There she was, lying there alone in the hospital bed. Her eyes were still shut, but her hair looked more combed today: her mum must have combed it for her, it was still messy at the fringe. Leslie's spirit needed to get out somehow, maybe it was fighting its way through by messing up her hair. Her skin was also pale, and I'm sure she would shiver if she were awake. Taking a deep breath, and checking no one else was in the room, I walked over and sat beside her.

"You'll never guess what happened, Leslie," I said, summoning up the courage to speak to her. Obviously, she didn't reply, but staring at her peaceful face and talking to her was comforting and made me feel like this was just another of our games in the forest.

"I got this radio off my dad," I explained. "He thought no one would be on it, but there was one person. I didn't know who he was, but he told me that you were at Terabithia." Still no reaction, but, if she were awake, she would have said something like "wow".

"Yeah," I said, answering my image of her replying. "How could he know? That's what I thought. He told me you were going to fall. It's because of him that you're still alive..." As I said this, I stared at her. She looked in between death and life. People lie to you about death, they don't look like they're asleep when they are laid out. All the life is gone, you couldn't think that they were dead. Leslie was different, she was somewhere in between. She was so alive, so much more than me, that seeing her like this was a shock. However, there was still something there. It was so hard to explain.

"It was me, from the future," I said, still staring at her shut eyes. "It's impossible, I know, but he knew things that we never told anyone." I stopped. "He said something, something horrible..." I sighed. "He said that he had grown up where you had died..."

I was begging for a response, now. I had to know she was still alive, that the future wasn't set in stone. My future self said he couldn't remember Leslie, maybe that means she'll die. Is that it? "You're fighting, aren't you," I smiled. "You wouldn't lay down and be beaten. You're in there, right now, battling with the dark master."

I smiled at the thought of Lesley dancing in Terabithia. "That's what you're doing, you inside Terabithia, protecting the Terabithians," I stopped. "Am... am I there?"

Dad had told me not to cry, but it was getting harder every second. "You can't leave me," I begged. "You're too important."

What if she died? Would this be the only way I ever saw her again? "Leslie..." I whispered. "Your hair is so messy," I tried to laugh. It didn't work. Before I knew it, my hand was reaching out to her. "Let me help," I smiled. I pushed the strands of hair out of her face and behind her ear.

Feeling her skin against my hand brought me to tears, they were unstoppable. I felt connected. "What if you'd died? I would have had to grow without you," I rubbed my face, trying to rub the tears away before they left my eyes. "The future me sounded so sad, I know he wanted to see you, one last time."

I could feel the connection, now. For some reason, I could feel the pain that my teenage self could. "He said that he wished he'd been there for you," I whispered. "He told me that he was scared you missed him, that he wasn't there for you when he needed you most. I said that I should have been there..."

"I shouldn't have got in the car," I muttered, putting my head in my hands.

"Remember the rain?" I asked, after coming back to the real world. "We came back to the house with P.T?" In the future, I wanted more than anything to tell Leslie how I felt. I wanted the chance to say it before that chance went forever. What if this was that chance. "Your face, as you turned back and ran, was the last time I ever saw you. You looked so happy."

"I said..." I gulped, hard. I found my future selves emotion winding into mine. "I said that I was glad that it was that image that I lived as I grew up. You were always happy, Leslie, not like me..."

I looked at her hand as I continued. "I was an idiot," I laughed, but it was hollow. "Remember on the bus? You wanted to look at my drawing and I pulled away, annoyed with you. I was so, so stupid... I'm so glad you knew, you offered me gum and didn't give up on me. Even then you didn't give up on me."

I couldn't take my eyes off her hand. Trying not to think about it, worried this was the last time I'd even see her, I reached over and took it in my own. The second I did, my heart swelled up and I needed to take a deep breath. "I gave up on you..." I wept. "I left you for a teacher, when you wouldn't give up on me even when I didn't want to be your friend." I gulped again, trying to force words out before I couldn't speak any more. "I'll never do that again," I promised. "Never, I will never abandon you again. If you come back, you'll have a protector in me..."

"That's my duty as your king," I whispered. "A real wouldn't do this to his queen. I don't deserve you as a friend." I could feel the spirit of a second person inside me, these were my words... but they were his as well. We were connected by more than a radio, and the more I spoke the more I felt it.

"When you wake up, I'll do anything you want," I said, squeezing her hand gently. "We need to make a safer way to get across the water, though..." I thought about it. "When we go back to Terabithia, we'll build a bridge... or something like that, so you'll never be hurt again."

I could feel my throat tightening. There was something I really wanted to tell her, but I couldn't... it was too hard. Not speaking again, I sat there in silence, beside her. Hand in hand, with all else unimportant, everything pointless except this connection between me, my future self and Leslie...

xXx

I couldn't think about school, whatever little concentration I usually had was gone completely today. Time, however, didn't have the decency to speed up. It dragged on like it had a vendetta against me. Perhaps it did, maybe time itself had affection for Leslie: she was definitely worth it. Maybe I had offended it by cutting her life short, in youth. That might be it, I certainly deserved it.

I didn't go home, I couldn't until I had stopped what happened to Dad. I had ruined it for Mum and, now that I gave it more thought, I couldn't bare to look at her until I changed what happened to her.

I was crying... suddenly, and inexplicably, I was crying. It was so bad I had to park the car at the side of the road. Something was coming into my mind, a new memory from the past. I couldn't see it yet, it was like an incomplete film at the moment. Had Jess done something? Had I actually changed something. I felt detached, I felt like my mind and spirit was elsewhere, with somebody else.

Then, as instantly as this feeling came, on image did. It was still, but I could see it clearly and feel it in my head. "You're holding her hand," I said, shutting my eyes and falling into it. "I'm holding her hand as she sleeps." I put my head in my hands. "Thank you, thank you, I can feel her again."

Then, almost as abruptly as the connection was made, it disappeared. "You told her," I whispered. "You told her how I felt, you told her how sorry I am..." I couldn't believe it, she knew. "She must of heard me," I reasoned. "People hear things in comas..."

"No!" I shouted to myself. I even made myself jump. "I can't be distracted now!" Jess was at the hospital and I couldn't risk not being there when he got back. What if he decided that he didn't have to wait for me? What if he thought everything was better now? Dad would be gone forever and I owed it to him, as my dad, to rescue him, even if he didn't love me as much as the rest of them.

I drove with the intensity of the sun, determined to reach the shop as fast as possible. When I got there, my body was leaning forward so far that my chest was touching the steering wheel. I fell out of the car, not bothering to lock it behind me, and sprinted at the shop. "Come on, come on, don't let me have missed him!" I muttered, fiddling around with the key until I finally unlocked the door.

Without wasting time, a vaulting over the now empty stand in the middle of the room. "Come on, come on, come on," I muttered. I tried to push the plug into socket, but kept missing. "Damn it!" I shouted. "Get in there!" I almost broke the prongs before I finally got it in, and that would have been really bad.

"Hello?" I said into the microphone. I waited. "Hello?" I repeated. To be honest, I was hoping it would be like last time: the second I got on he was there to. But no, it wasn't. Now that I think about it, I would still be at the hospital with Lesley and wouldn't have gone on the radio when I got home from school. I was safe, for the moment.

Now, all I had to do was wait...

What had happened at the hospital that made me feel this way. All I can remember was holding Leslie's hand and incredibly intense emotion. I think... I think I was, somehow, connected with the younger me. I think he had felt all the emotions I had over the five years and they had struck him in one moment. He was feeling how I did, and he told Leslie what I had felt. He had promised her something... but I couldn't remember what.

I really wanted to ask him exactly what happened. I wanted to quiz him until he couldn't take any more questions and was exhausted from having to relive a memory over and over again. But I couldn't. As important as it was for me, I could ask him later. I couldn't waste any time, not even a second. May Belle's memory, despite what she had said, wasn't very good, so I had no idea of the time it happened. However, Dad had taken me to the hospital. I don't know how I was sure of that, I couldn't remember it, but it definitely happened.

Nothing else mattered now, I had to save my dad.