Chapter Thirty Six: Ghosts Part III

Somewhere…

Freddie began walking on the endless dark path not knowing where he was going. He had to have been travelling for hours, but the path seemed to go on forever and ever. Ironically, Freddie wasn't even sure whether he was still on the path right now which meant he could have been going in circles the entire time. Tired from all the walking, the brunette boy stopped and lay down on the ground. The ground was hard and cold, but he was too tired at the moment to even care. He lied on his side as he blew out a tired breath.

His eyes slowly began to close as he slowly drifted off to sleep. He woke up a while later when he heard a sound coming from in front of him. The brunette boy looked around for a couple of minutes before he began to become overtaken with sleep again. This time though before he could fall asleep the sound he heard became ten times louder. Freddie sat up scared as he looked around again.

"Who are you?" He shouted." Show yourself!"

No response came in return much to the chagrin of Freddie. He got up and decided to continue walking to find any sign of life in the empty area. As he continued walking he couldn't help but feel that someone or something was following him. He found himself looking over his shoulder a couple of times when he felt something tingle on his back, but he would look to see nothing but darkness. He continued walking when he noticed something in the far distance. Freddie squinted and noticed that it was a bright light coming from an opened door. He blew out a sigh of relief as he finally found a way out. He was about to begin walking when the ground began to vibrate. He noticed the floor behind him beginning to crumble and fall into oblivion. His eyes lit up with fear as he turned back to the light and began to run as fast as he could towards it. The ground crumbling behind him was reaching closer and closer as Freddie did his best not to look back. He was so close to reaching the light when he felt the ground crumble underneath his heels. Desperate, Freddie closed his eyes and jumped towards the light hoping he would make it.

Much to his relief he managed to hang on the edge of the ground near the door, but his relief soon vanquished when he looked below him to see nothing but pitch black. To add to his anxiety the part of the ground he was hanging on began to crumble as wall and Freddie closed his eyes preparing for the fall. The ground crumbled but before he could fall down into darkness he was stopped.

Freddie opened his eyes and looked up to see someone holding onto his arm to prevent him from falling. The figure pulled him up and into the room he tried getting into.

"Thanks." Freddie stated relieved as he stood up and dusted off his jacket. He opened his eyes once he thought it was safe and looked around. He noticed that he was in a kitchen probably of the mysterious figure. The back of the person was facing Freddie as they were preparing something.

"Welcome Freddie." The voice said as they turned around.

Freddie stared at the face of the person in confusion, shock, and disbelief as he realized who it was.

Vega Residence

Tori was tossing and turning in her bed as she tried to force herself to go to sleep. Despite her efforts for several minutes she was unable to sleep. Her mind began to wonder back to her fight with Trina after she ditched her boyfriend's big day.

"Is this really how Trina and I feel about each other?" She thought to herself as she stared up at the ceiling. She was so lost in her thoughts that when she heard a soft knock on her door she flinched scared.

"Who is it?" Tori asked, trying to regain composure.

"Trina." The voice replied.

Tori closed her eyes and blew out a breath. "Come in." The door opened and in came Trina as Tori sat up cross legged on her bed. Trina leaned against the wall as she looked at Tori. The younger Vega tapped the part of her bed in front of her and motioned for her to sit.

Trina nodded and took a seat cross legged in front of Tori. The pair avoided eye contact as they looked around awkwardly.

"I never realized how much I liked your room until now." Trina stated, finally breaking the silence.

"I thought you always hated my room?" Tori questioned, raising an eyebrow. "You said that I decorated it like I was a four year old."

"Yeah well, I was wrong… about a lot of things." She whispered. The air in the room became tense as the two sisters looked at each other.

"Like?" Tori asked. She was kind of intrigued over the fact that Trina may possibly be apologizing to her, but she wasn't expecting a miracle like that to happen.

"Like what I said about you." She exclaimed. "Look I know that I haven't been the best older sister in the world, but that doesn't mean I don't care about you."

"Well you have extreme ways of showing it!" Tori retorted. She didn't want to start another fight but instead lay out all the emotions she had been bottling up.

"Fair enough." The older Vega agreed. "But I didn't come up here to say just that." Tori nodded and waited for Trina to continue. "You were right about everything. I am a narcissist and that's the reason why I don't have a boyfriend or friends. Whenever I see you I'm so jealous. You're exactly who I want to be every day, someone loved by everyone and has such an amazing life. I guess the reason I made you do some of the stuff you did was because I wanted you see my world. It may have been selfish of me, but my inner self kept assuring me that nothing would go wrong, but it did and for that… I'm sorry."

Tori looked up at Trina who was anticipating any kind of response at the moment.

"I'm sorry too." Tori replied as she began to spill her soul out. "I never meant to say any of the things I did, but my anger clouded my brighter judgement. I know that you care about me, but I was just too ignorant to notice it. Trina you will always be my older sister and I love you. I just wish that we didn't have to fight as much as we do. I'm sorry that it may seem like I'm gloating my life to you, but in truth I'm not. I just wish that we both could live lives where we could be like regular siblings and I want to try to make that effort if you're willing to as well."

Trina smiled and nodded as tears began to flow from her eyes. "Of course I'm willing to sis." She answered as she embraced her younger sister with a hug.

"I love you Trina." Tori whispered as the tears began streaming down her face as well.

"I love you too Tori. I love you too."

After the two broke their sibling hug, Tori heard a familiar voice come from downstairs.

"Is that Cat?" Tori asked, confused.

"Yeah it is. She came with Carly and Brad." Trina replied.

"Brad?" Tori asked again confused.

"He's their friend from Seattle. Come on I'll introduce you." Trina replied as she stood up. They were about to walk out of the room, until Trina stopped them. "FYI, I saw him first so I get dibs."

Tori rolled her eyes as she looked at her sister. "I happen to have a boyfriend already."

"Too bad." Trina exclaimed. "Brad's really handsome."

"Can we just go?" The younger Vega replied as she playfully pushed her older sister out of her room.

"Sure, I'll be right there." Trina stated. "I just have to see if I can find him on The Slap."

Tori rolled her eyes again as she descended downstairs. The older Vega waited for her younger sister to go all the way down before she went into her room and shut the door. She dialled the number and waited for the person to answer.

"Hello?" The voice answered.

"Hey, it's me Trina." She replied. "Look I know you didn't expect me out of all people to call, but please just hear me out."

"You've got five minutes." The voice replied much to the delight of Trina.

She was motivated in changing herself and it started with fixing some things she did wrong.

Meanwhile…

"No way!" Freddie replied disbelieving. "DAD!?"

"Hello son." He replied.

Freddie looked closely at his father from head to toe. He looked exactly like the memories of him he had.

"So what's the matter son? You look troubled." He questioned, as he took a sip of his coffee.

"Well." Freddie started, still trying to get accustomed to looking at his dad. "I'm just really confused at the moment to be honest."

"Why's that? You've always been a straightforward kid growing up. When you were younger you wouldn't even have two different flavour ice creams on the same cone."

Freddie chuckled at the statement. "Yeah well lately I've been as tangled up as you can get. I'm really not sure who I love?"

"Well your mother usually handled dilemmas like this since she was the soap opera watcher, but it looks like you could use some good fatherly advice, which is why I'm here." Mr. Benson replied.

"In Seattle I thought I had everything lain out." Freddie explained. "I was going to graduate from Seattle University with Carly and propose to her once I landed a job. We would get married and have a kid or two and live happily ever after. But that's where I went wrong entirely."

"You two broke up?" The older Benson replied rhetorically.

"Yeah." Freddie replied, sighing. "It was a misunderstanding, but our break up may have been for the worst or best judging by how you look at it."

"You mean if I were to look at it like a Creddie fan?" He replied, jokingly.

"Hey how do you know about that?" Freddie asked, as him and his father shared a chuckle. The brunette boy simply looked at his father and smiled. He wished he could stay like this forever and just be away from everything.

"Ghosts get memos too I guess." He replied, shrugging his shoulders.

"So this IS a dream." Freddie replied disappointed. He would have wished it was reality, but unfortunately it wasn't. "Anyways as I was saying, Carly and I broke up and I ended up staying with Jade. Little did I know that I had developed very strong feelings for her, feelings that I didn't even know existed until we kissed in a janitor's closet during a friend of mine's party."

"So at this time you were in love with both Carly and Jade?" The older Benson questioned.

"Now you know where my confusion begins." Freddie responded, as he leaned back in his chair. "Carly and I's relationship was tight-roping across a dark abyss, but my feelings for her were still strong."

"Though at the same time, your feelings for Jade was just as strong." Mr. Benson said, finishing his son's sentence.

"Exactly and I was so confused, but Sam helped me figure it out. You probably got the memo about her right? In case you didn't let me describe her: she loves ham, is obnoxious, likes punching me, carries a butter sock-"

"Yes son I got the memo!" He replied, interrupting Freddie. "So you said Sam helped you figure it out?"

"Oh yeah." Freddie replied getting back on track. "She helped me figure out that I thought I still loved Carly, so I broke up with Jade and got back together and everything seemed to be going back to normal until-"

"Until what?" Mr. Benson asked, concerned.

"Until I had a dream or what I would like to call it a reality check." The younger Benson replied. "In my dream, I saw myself re-witnessing the breakup of Jade and I and in my heart I felt something. It was like a voice shouting at me saying that I made a mistake and I also realized that to be true. Now here I am stuck with whether I'm in love with Carly Shay or Jadelyn West? What do I do dad?"

Mr. Benson looked at Freddie intently as he was thinking of a way to help ease his son's mind. He began to wince as he realized what extremity he was going to have to put his son through in order to help him decide.

"Okay look son. I am not going to decide for you, but I'm going to force you to decide now." He answered.

"What do you mean?" Freddie asked, raising his eyebrow.

"Look I'm about to do something that will give you a guaranteed decision as to who you love, but you have to agree on three things." He said hastily. "You need to hurry because right now time is of the essence."

"Okay, what are the two things?"

"Number one you have to first and foremost agree that you'll do this even without knowing what it is. And lastly, whatever happens I want to be sure that this won't cause a rift between you and I. Number three, I love you and your mother so much and I just want you guys to know that I am alright." Mr. Benson explained as a tear fell from his eye. "So what do you say?"

Freddie smiled at his dad. "I love you too dad. Now let's do this."

The older Benson nodded. "Okay take my hand." Freddie complied as he took his father's hand.

"You might want to shield your eyes." Freddie's dad whispered as the room began to shake around them. Freddie used his free hand to shield his eyes as the ground below began to shake as well.

While his eyes were shut, the memories he shared with Carly and Jade began flowing in his head nonstop. Finally, when the atmosphere became calm he opened his eyes to see his dad looking at him.

"Where are we?" Freddie asked his father. He looked around and saw two lights, one to his left and one to his right.

"It's time for you to decide." He firmly said. The two locations with lights each produced a different scene.

Freddie's eyes lit up when he saw the two scenes. He looked at his dad with a look in his eyes as if to stay "you're insane".

"This is the only way!" He exclaimed, as if he was reading his mind. "Your heart will guide you. You either save Jade from those two robbers breaking in to her house or you save Carly from being hit by the taco truck."

Freddie began to inhale and exhale rapidly as he saw the robbers and taco truck going closer and closer to the two girls.

"FREDDIE!" Both girls screamed for help. The brunette boy looked at the look of panic from both girls faces as they anticipated him to save them.

"PICK FREDDIE!" Mr. Benson shouted.

Freddie looked left and right frantically before making his decision. He turned to face that direction and ran to save the girl his heart told him to.

Vega Residence

"So how long has he been missing for?" Tori asked nervously. She saw how frantic the trio was since the moment she stepped downstairs.

"It's been hours now." Brad stated before murmuring to himself. "Freddie you better be alive when we find you, otherwise I am going to revive you just to kill you again."

A knock on the door interrupted Tori before she could respond. She opened it and was stunned to see André standing there.

"Hey André." Tori managed to say.

"Hey Tori." He replied nervously. "I want to talk to you. It's really important."

"Hey Harris." A voice called from behind. The duo looked to see Trina making her way downstairs.

"Sup Trina." He replied casually. Tori looked back and forth between her boyfriend and her sister wearing a confused and surprised look.

"When did this happen?" Tori asked the pair.

"Like I said, we need to-" André managed to say before the sound of a phone ringing interrupted him.

Everyone turned to look at Cat. She picked up the phone and made her way to the terrace outside.

"What's up Jade?" Cat asked.

"Hey I've been trying to text and call Freddie, but I haven't gotten any response. I'm starting to get really worried do you know where he is?" Jade asked, concerned.

"He's been missing for hours now. We're trying to track his phone." Cat stated as her concern began to radiate from her voice.

"Okay, if you find out tell me where he is okay?" The black haired girl replied.

"I FOUND HIM!" A voice shouted from inside.

Cat ran inside to see Mr. Vega looking at his laptop screen wearing a happy look. The rest of the group piled up behind him.

"Well where is he?" Carly asked anxiously.

"He is at…" Mr. Vega said as the location loaded. "A MENTAL HOSPITAL?" The entire group shouted confused. They all looked at each other in shock.

"Did you get that Jade?" Cat said to her phone still trying to figure out why Freddie was there.

"On my way there." She replied, before hanging up.

"Let's go!" Carly exclaimed running to the door as the rest of the group sans Mr. Vega followed.

AN: And that's the end of the chapter. I hope everyone enjoyed it. Pretty ironic that Freddie and Sam both end up checking themselves in a mental hospital eh?

Okay, here an important question. Everyone knows it's coming down to Creddie or Jeddie, but if Freddie picks Carly who would you want to see Jade date instead or if Freddie picks Jade who would you want to see Carly date instead?

I would REALLY APPRECIATE SUGGESTIONS!