"Don't, don't do it! Are you insane?"

Whose that? Where am I? I could hear voices whizzing around in my head, but everything else was unclear. I saw nothing before me. I had no hands nor feet. My surroundings were nothing but darkness with no boundaries, no end in sight. Those voices... they were the only clear thing in my mind and yet they still blurred from moment to moment. Some of it didn't make any sense. Was I hearing correctly?

"George, stop this!" Akira. That's his voice. Wait, why is he crying? Where am I exactly?

"It's the only way, Akira. I will have you restrained if need be." Ace's voice was panicky as well, a strange thing to hear.

"You've killed them. You killed all of her comrades...all those innocent bodies they were using too. What happened to protecting innocent people, George?"

"They used me. I won't let that slide." Oh, I get it now. The aliens got what they wanted, they out smarted Ace. Maybe they got Urara...maybe not. But they got far...far enough for Ace to kill the other three. I'm... I'm the only one left. His pride was hurt...just enough for him to snap and take innocent lives. Of course it's all in the sake of protection. If Ace had sent that missile to the ship during the Enoshima incident...those would have been casualties in honor too. That's going to be his excuse, eh?

"She will leave his body before you can kill her. She's better than the rest of them." Akira was sobbing like I'd never heard. It was a miracle I could understand a word he was saying. He was so loud...so very very loud.

"Not if I shoot him in the head like I did the others."

"But you're not going to do that! Ace, you can't kill Natsuki." Akira whimpered before I heard him fall to his knees. "I will never forgive you for this. Do you understand me, George Ace?"

"I'm sorry."

It has been said that when you see the ocean for the first time, it's an experience you never forget. As a child who grew up on an island, I've never been able to pin point that exact moment. It's a memory too old and far too insignificant. The ocean has always been there just as the sun has. In that moment after George Ace apologized my senses flipped and suddenly I could see again. The shock of incoming colors made my eyes grow wide to readjust. Akira was there with George Ace... and I realized we were home. We were on the very pier I fell off of, and the ocean was behind them. It had been too long. Taking away my ocean was like taking away the sun. I needed it to live, just as I had needed it when I died. As Akira ran up to me, screaming words I could no longer hear, I thought it fitting to have my ocean together with him. Even though he hasn't always been there, and would never be a constant...he means just as much.

From then on I felt nothing. I heard not a word come from Akira's lips as he lashed out and cried. My eyes wavered and fell onto Ace, ashamed and standing behind him, gun still in hand. Had he shot me? I thought that for a moment before looking myself. Akira's hands were drenched in blood. I looked down to my shirt and saw where the wound had blossomed from. Was this mercy? Could you call it that? Ace's decision to shoot me in the head had been wavered by Akira's pleas and he'd gone for my heart instead. Was is mercy to let me die in his arms? Or would have it been any easier to watch me go down clean?

"It's okay, Akira." I said knowing it wouldn't be too long. All Akira did was shake his head. He had me on the ground applying pressure to the wound then, hoping for a miracle.

"I can't hear anything..." My eyes closed for the first time since I'd gained my sight back. It's so much nicer here...where I can't see. I'm so tired. But Akira was shaking my arm, hoisting me up as the stretcher came to pick me up.

I wondered if I'd ever see those beautiful eyes again. They followed close as we sat in the back of the ambulance. My vision was fading once again as the sounds were coming back, but none of it was comforting. Just the sound of Akira whimpering along with the sirens going in one ear and out the other.

I'm not sure how long I've been here in the darkness, thinking about everything that has happened and everything that may still be to come. Is this what it's like to be dead? To see nothing...to hear nothing. I've been talking to myself for days on end, hoping for whispers. Hoping that remembering and keeping my thoughts alive will bring me back. But honestly I don't know what's going on. I don't know what this is. This isn't the death Yuki had, nor was it the one that Haru spoke of. I am lost.

The last thing I remember was Akira calling not my name...but someone else's.

"Yuki..."

Y-yuki?

"Yuki, if you can hear me I need a miracle."