Shinigami-cat: I was listening to way to many depressing songs lately, I don't know why… I OWN NOTHING!

Trees and Snow

Gilbert was in shock. He couldn't believe what had happened to Matthew. He hadn't had a panic attack like that in months. He could still remember that dead look in his eyes. It was that emotionless and glazed look in his Birdie's eyes was too similar to that of a corpse. It made Gilbert shiver. He hated that look. It was horrifying.

'Why did this have to happen to him?' He thought miserably. He looked down at the white floor of the hospital waiting room. Gilbert was lucky enough for Samuel to actually give him a lift to the hospital in Rivertown.

He could still remember the car ride there. He stayed as quiet as possible, not able to talk to the older man. It didn't seem to matter to either of them if they spoke to each other or not. They were both too worried about Matthew to care about their own disagreements with each other. Gilbert just wished he could see Matthew soon, but they needed to speak with Samuel first.

'Please be alright.' He thought to himself over and over again. 'Please… I-I can't lose him… Not my precious Birdie… Whatever's watching over him, please keep him safe.' He looked down at Kuma and sighed a little. He had decided to grab the bear before leaving. He hoped that could give it to Matthew if he was allowed to see him.

He squeezed the bear's stomach a little. "It's not fair…" He whispered. "Why does Matthew have to suffer like this? What the hell did he ever do?" He dug his nails into the toy, growling a little. As he did this he happened to feel something hard inside the stuffed animal.

Curiously he shifted the shape closer to the fur and felt around it. It was hard and flat like a coin of some sort, but it was too thick. He couldn't tell what it was but he thought it might be metallic or made of glass. '… What the hell is this? Is this supposed to be Kuma's heart or something symbolic like that?'

Suddenly Samuel sat down in the chair next to Gilbert, making the albino teen jump. "H-how's Matthew?"

"They are keeping him over night." Muttered Samuel. He sighed a little, running his fingers through his hair. "They have no idea what's wrong with him… Physically he's fine, but he's just not all there in the head… Shit, is he going to be like this forever?"

Gilbert gritted his teeth a little. "No… I think it's just the time of year that's been getting him down. "He… he's just paranoid about everything because he got attacked around the same time last year… and getting into all that supernatural stuff isn't helping him either."

"Yeah… Fucking damn it." He growled darkly and looked over at Gilbert. "Why were you sneaking around my house?"

Deciding it would be best to come clean, Gilbert told Samuel everything. "My parents came back, found out I was gay and dating someone that used to be in an asylum… Let's just say that they were less than impressed. My friends couldn't let me stay with them so Matthew's been hiding me in his room so I had somewhere to stay. He didn't want you to get angry at him for helping me."

After that things between them got painfully quiet. Neither of them seemed to have anything else to say to each other anymore. They both sat their quietly as nurses and patients went about their business.

After what seemed like hours a nurse walked over to Samuel, smiling a little. "He's awake now. You can go and see him if you like. I'll take you to his room."

"Thanks." Muttered Samuel he stood up and sighed a little. "You coming too Gilbert?" Gilbert nodded and quickly flowed Samuel and the nurse to Matthew's room.

"Before you go in I should warn you both that he's… not quite all there." Said the nurse.

"What do you mean?" Asked Samuel. "Is he in a coma?"

The nurse shook her head sadly. "Not really… He's awake and all his vital signs are functioning properly, he's just not responding to anything. It's like the lights are on but no one's home. It's a mental issue and he might need to be moved to a special ward." Gilbert didn't like the sound of that. He knew she actually meant an asylum. She opened the door and let them both inside.

Sitting up on the bed was Matthew. He was leaning back a bit against the headboard and gazing emotionlessly out the window. The hospital gown he was wearing was just slightly too large on his small frame, making him look even smaller. He looked like a doll. It was scary.

Samuel was the first to move. He sat on the chair next to Matthew's bed and gently put his hand on the teen's shoulder. "Hey, Matthew? Can you hear me?" The teen didn't respond. "You're going to have to stay here for a while… I-I'll visit you when I can… Just get better okay?" He slowly got up and walked towards the door. "I'm going to talk to the doctors for a bit…"

When he was gone, Gilbert walked over to Matthew. "Birdie? I brought Kuma for you."

He held out the bear for Matthew to take, but the blond didn't even seem to notice. If it wasn't for the fact that he was blinking every so often and his chest was rising and falling with each breath the albino would have thought that this was nothing more than a well-made doll. With a small sigh, Gilbert put Kuma on Matthew's lap and placed on of Matthew's hands on it to stop it from falling over.

It was such a sad and pathetic image. It just made Gilbert's heart break. "Birdie please, say my name or even look at me… Give me some sign that you're still here with me… Please?"

Matthew's gaze remained unmoving and he continued to stay still. This was really scaring Gilbert. When Matthew had previous panic attacks he would always be relatively normal after, but this time it was different and Gilbert had no idea what he could do to fix it.

He sighed sadly and sat in the chair next to Matthew. He took Matthew's fee hand in his own and gently squeezed, half hoping that he would get a response from him. He knew that it was pointless, but hope was all he had. 'Why are you like this? Matthew… Birdie… please… Do something, anything. Please?' He pressed Matthew's knuckles against his lips. 'I love you so much Birdie… Please don't be like this… I'll wait forever for you to come back to me.' He smiled a little. 'Almost sounds like he's going to die or something.'

He shivered a little at that thought. He didn't want something like that to happen to Matthew. He didn't even want to contemplate such a thing. "This has never happened to you before… Why now? Can't you just pull this kind of stuff on me now… You were getting better damn it. Don't leave me here alone…"

Gilbert looked up at Matthew's emotionless face, sighing sadly. He wanted there to be some kind of response, but there wasn't. Matthew was just gazing off out the window with his lifeless gaze. Gilbert bit his lip a little and followed Matthew's gaze out the window. There wasn't much to see, just a few buildings and the forest. There was always the forest.

He looked back at Matthew. 'Life isn't fair is it?' Gilbert reached out and gently caressed Matthew's face, he still felt warm to the touch but at the same time he still felt too cold. It made Gilbert's heart sink deep in his chest. It was painful to see him like that. He slowly leaned forwards and gently kissed Matthew on the lips. He pulled back and sighed sadly. Matthew's expression remained unchanged.

"I don't know what I was expecting…" Muttered Gilbert sadly. "Damn it Matthew, what happened to you? Just come back to me already!" With no response at all the albino decided to leave. "I'm sorry Birdie… I really am." He got up and started to walk to the door. There wasn't anything else he could do for him.

"… Trees… Under the trees…"

Gilbert turned around quickly. It was quiet, but he had heard it loud and clear. Matthew had said something. Yet he still looked like a lifeless rag doll. Unmoving and unchanging. It was chilling, but Gilbert couldn't just let it slid. He walked back over to Matthew and cupped his face, gently tilting his head to face him. "B-Birdie? Did you say something?"

Matthew just looked at him with dead, lifeless eyes. There was no emotion behind them at all. With a heavy heart he let go of Matthew's head, watching it flop back into the ever present gaze out the window. Gilbert frowned a little and looked back out the window. 'Trees?'

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Once Gilbert was back he grabbed his things from Samuel's house and decided to make his way to his grandfather's house. He doubted that Samuel would have let him stay any longer. With a heavy heart he knocked on the front door and waited to be let in.

When the door opened his grandfather looked at him in mild shock. "Gilbert? What are you…?" His eyes wandered to Gilbert backpack and he nodded knowingly. "I see… You know where your room is."

Gilbert smiled weakly and slowly made his way inside. In his grandfather's house his room was on the bottom level. Not that he minded that much. As long as he had somewhere to stay he was fine. When he got to his room he flopped down on the bed and sighed miserably. All he could think about was Matthew's lifeless body and cold, empty eyes. It made him sick to his stomach.

He wasn't sure how long he was there for but he must have been there for an hour or something, but it must have been a very long time because his grandfather came in to check on him. "Gilbert? Are you hungry?"

Gilbert sighed and hid his eyes with his forearm. "Nein… I feel sick."

"… Do you want to talk about what happened?" His grandfather was not a very emotional person. If he was willing to discuss something it just showed how concerned he really was. Gilbert appreciated the gesture.

"Matthew had a mental breakdown." Muttered Gilbert. He choked back something that sounded similar to a sob and gritted his teeth. "He was getting better damn it. Why the hell does this keep happening to him? He looked like a damn corpse in the hospital! Matthew… Birdie… It's not fair!"

His grandfather sighed a little. "Life isn't fair… But he will get better. Just give it some time. I'm guessing he's still there? In the hospital I mean."

"Ja… Why does he have to look so dead? What did he ever do?" Gilbert's words were coming out more like growls now. "They said they might send him back to that godless asylum… If he went back there he'll never get better. He'll just stay there and get worse and worse until he dies! It's not fucking fair damn it! If I could take his place I would."

"Don't say that!" Snapped his grandfather. "Stop acting like this! There's no reason to act like this! How can you expect to help him if you're depressed and wishing for things that haven't happened?"

Gilbert growled a little and rolled over onto his side. "Just… just leave me alone damn it… I just… I want to be left alone for a while, okay? Today's just been too much…"

His grandfather sighed a little and left Gilbert alone. "If you care about him so much you'll get your act together for him."

When he was gone, Gilbert rolled back onto his back and looked back up at the ceiling. He knew his grandfather was right. He wanted to help Matthew in any way he could and he couldn't do that while he was a nervous wreck. He would have to put all that emotional baggage behind and get his head back in the game.

'Okay… no more depressing thoughts. Birdie needs my help and I need to figure out how to do that… I just have no idea how to do that at all.' He bit his bottom lip and knitted his eyebrows together in frustration. He wanted Matthew to get better as quickly as possible. He never wanted him to go to that asylum again. 'Damn it… What can I do? What can I do to make him better? Why is there never an easy solution to this?'

He gritted his teeth. He let his mind wander back to the words he thought he heard Matthew mutter before he left. "Fuck. Why the hell was he talking about trees? Was he even talking about them? This is so frustrating! Trees, trees, trees! Fucking trees! What the hell? Why the hell? Fuck it! I'm getting frustrated over nothing! It's not like this is The Evil Dead!"

Trees were nothing he should have been concerned about. They were just plants. Plats that were just rooted there to the ground. Though he did have to admit that the forest did look very foreboding at night.

He rolled onto his stomach and kicked off his shoes. It was pretty late at night and he assumed that his grandfather wouldn't let him skip school for no good reason. 'I need to get some sleep… Maybe I'll figure out how to help Matthew tomorrow? I hope so…' With much effort, Gilbert fell into an uneasy sleep.

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Without much thought or reason, Gilbert's dream started off with him sitting in a boat that had run aground along the banks of a river. With not much idea where he was, the albino got out of the boat and started to walk around a bit. He was surrounded by tall trees that were deprived their leaves. Probably winter time.

As he continued to walk he noticed the ground started to change. It was no longer dirt, but slowly became covered in a thin layer of snow. 'Weird? Why am I dreaming of snow?' The glistening, white snow seemed to make a small pathway through the forest. A trail if you would. Curiosity getting the better of him, Gilbert followed.

While following the snow path he took time to look at the trees. They seemed be burnt. Some of their ash mixing in with the snow, turning it black as night. It was creepy, but oddly beautiful. A white light floating by the trees drew Gilbert's attention away from the snow. It looked like a firefly, but larger and more smoky.

The little light payed no attention to Gilbert and slowly drifted along the path. If the albino looked down the path he would see more and more of these lights bobbing down the path. They seemed to be going somewhere specific.

Frowning a little, Gilbert followed them. 'Where are they going? What are they doing?'

More of these strange ghostly white lights appeared further along the path. It was like these creatures were drawn to it for some reason. Gilbert tried his best not to touch them in case they decided to attack, but they just didn't seem to care. Even if he walked into one it just seemed to flow past his skin, similar to fog. It was strangely beautiful.

After what seemed like forever the lights seemed to congregate around a tree before slowly making their way up to the sky. The snow path made a large ring around the tree, dipping around a mound of black earth. Gilbert looked closely at the tree, noting how it curved and beat in peculiar ways . It reminded him a little of Tim Burton's signature creepy tree that's in every one of his movies. But it reminded him of somewhere else. Someplace he had been to many times before. He shrugged it off. It wasn't important at the moment.

He drew his attention away from the tree for a second to look at the mound of dirt. It looked like it was completely made of ash and there seemed to be something oozing out of it. Gilbert took a hand full of snow and sprinkled it on top to see what colour it turned. It slowly turned blood red. There was blood oozing out of the ground.

Gilbert's eyes widened in shock. "W-what the hell?"

He slowly reached out to couch the ash, but before he could an skeleton's shot out of the grave and grabbed his wrist in a death grip. Gilbert screamed and tried to pull his arm away but it was no use. The skeleton wasn't letting him go anywhere. Slowly the arm tightened its grip, bones started to grow knife ravaged skin and fingers turned to knifes, easily cutting into Gilbert's flesh. It had him.

With one last powerful tug, Gilbert pulled his arm out of the creature's grip, cutting his hand off in the process. As the albino's blood mixed with the black and white snow his vision blurred and he fainted.

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Gilbert woke up with a gasp. That dream was freaky and bazar. "W-what the fuck just happened? It… It got me but…" He looked down at his hand and his blood went ice cold. There were thin paper cuts along his wrist where the creature had gripped him. "H-how?"

TBC

Shinigami-cat: Yep… Please review?