PRESENT DAY, LOCATION UNKNOWN

She can't breathe.

There's darkness all around her and she can't even see her hand in front of her face, doesn't even know if she's holding up her hand in the first place. She's numb. There's no feeling in her body. There's just darkness and the cold and the overwhelming feeling that she can't breathe.

Life doesn't come back to Leslie all at once. Actually, if she was told right now that she's dead, she would believe it. She feels dead. She feels empty. She feels so abandoned and it's all she can do to try and think, think, think— try to remember what got her here in the first place.

Memories and colors flash through her mind and it's the only light she can see. Images of Pawnee High School, the feeling of panic coursing through her body. Her feet hit the ground and she's running, breathing, gasping, trying not to cry. Every step towards the door is another dangerous one, closer and closer to the end of the line, and she keeps looking over her shoulder. Looking side to side. Up, and down. Through the windows in the classroom doors.

She sees empty hallways and the behind the scenes, excited chatter of students ready to graduate. Her speech is crumpled in her fist and shoved into her pocket, all but forgotten, no longer a priority. It's time to go. She'll worry about her speech later.

She feels fear, deep in her bones, shaking her to her very core. It is terror, plain and simple, the kind reserved for horror movies and crime scenes, nothing that was ever supposed to happen to her. It's the kind of fear that keeps her moving even when she desperately wants to stop, that carries her legs farther than she ever thought they could. And all she knows is there's no time for distraction, she just needs to go, go, go.

Leslie sees Ben.

Ben, who's grumbling down the hallway with his hair mussed up. Ben, who shoves his hands in his pockets and purses his lips and tries and fails to act casual and nonchalant. Ben, who would smile at her and breathe that gentle sigh of relief when she smiled back, who would take tiny steps closer to her, who would look at her more deeply than anyone ever had before. Ben. Ben, who's been bitter. Who's been a little bit broken. Who's been pretending they're nothing more than rivals again, and Leslie is unsure how much more of this she can take.

She's been willing to put this whole thing away for a long time now. She wishes she knew how.

But they run into each other and even her automatic response is anger. She has no time for this, and now her binders and her sanity are scattered across the floor, Ben awkwardly asking for help above her.

It's tense. It's awkward. It's hot and cold and back and forth and it's not right. But she's screaming at him and he's calling her an ass and maybe she's acting this way because it's where she's most comfortable. Maybe because this has always been the routine, and she needs familiarity now more than ever. She can't tell him anything, can't explain to him what's going on, so she opts for anger. Frustration. Bitterness.

He feeds into her. He explodes just as easily as she does, when fueled. He always does.

And Leslie kind of just wants to cry and tell Ben she's sorry, she's sorry for right now and for yesterday and for last week and for the last four years. She's sorry for every mean comment, everytime they made each other cry, every moment that made their lives hell. Because while he might still be existing in his simple world of rivalry, to Leslie, all those things look minuscule now. They look like nothing, tiny arguments that only hurt them, that produced no winners and two losers. It's all slipping away from her and she just wants to say sorry before it's too late, before her world changes for better or worse, before she gets hurt and she can't work her way back out of this pit she's fallen into.

But instead she snaps at him, pulls her books away. She pointedly tells him to refer to her by her last name, because first names feel too personal now. If her first name comes out from his lips one more time she might just break, and she can't afford to break right now. So she calls him Wyatt, calls him mean, a jerk, every insult under the sun. And looking down on herself, on this little memory from graduation day, she can clearly see herself fall apart. The shaking of her voice and her hands, how her hair is knotted and tangling, her face red and sweat breaking out across her brow. There are bags under her eyes and the louder she yells at Ben, the harder the tears threaten to come, overwhelming her, consuming her until there's nothing left of the old Leslie Knope.

And Ben is the only one to notice that day. Everyone assumes it's because school is ending, or graduation nerves. But Ben looks at her and he sees something that no one else does. He reaches for her. She's scared of his touch. His brow furrows and there's real concern in his eyes, a touch of affection that makes her choke up and want to scream even louder. But a classroom door opens and Leslie jumps, broken out of her reverie, reminded of the task at hand. There's no time to get distracted by Ben's gentle hands and soft eyes.

She just has to go.

She is a flurry of color and tangled hair and bright binders as she hurried down the hall, leaving Ben behind her. She doesn't even consider if this will be the last time she sees him, because she doesn't know the danger coming her way, not quite so deeply. She knows, somewhere in her brain, that she's running out of time. She recognizes vaguely that she has to get to her car for something, something important, and she has to do it before graduation. There's a ticking time bomb and it's putting pressure on her, propelling her forwards, the wind howling in her ears.

Check the windows. Check to the sides. Check ahead of her. Look behind her shoulder.

Wind, laughter, shouting, crashing. Whispers, pain, darkness, gone.

And it all leads back to now, in this pitch black, trying to find out how to regain feeling. It comes back to her slowly, agonizingly so, starting in her fingertips. She stretches then gently, curls them against her palms, just reveling in the feel of her own skin, no matter how rough and calloused it might be right now. Next is her cheek, and the sharp, cold feeling of a metal floor, freezing her brain to the point that her face feels burnt. When her arms come to life, she slowly becomes capable of pulling herself off the floor, gasping as she goes, noting just how weak she is, how shaky she is.

It's still too dark.

There are tiny dents and divots up her arms that she surveys, realizing they're cuts, some deeper than others. She runs her fingers along her wrists and finds the cool metal wrapped there, keeping her in place, digging into her skin and pinching until she can feel the slight warmth of her own blood. It's almost therapeutic, running it between her fingers, because it's the best way to remind herself that she's still alive. She's still human, she's still here, this is really happening. And if she's ever going to get out of this, she needs to be capable of staying in the present, staying inside her own head instead of slipping away.

Her eyes never adjust to the darkness, so she resorts to sitting cross legged on the floor and stretching her arms out, feeling around her for any signs of where she might be or how to escape. Her palms touch only the metal of the floor, the chain of her cuffs around her wrists, and nothing else. She grasps for her pockets and there's still nothing. Her phone is missing, her belongings are nowhere to be found. All that's left in her jeans pockets are a crumpled up piece of paper, filled to capacity with tiny cramped handwriting, for a speech to end all speeches addressed to Pawnee High's graduating class.

If it's all she has, she'll hold onto it. She'll keep herself tethered to it.

But gripping that stupid piece of paper in her cut up palm, above anything else it just reminds her this is real. She's not home, she missed graduation, and she has no idea where she is. It's cold and dark and slightly damp and her entire body aches deeply, all the way to the bone, every limb a miracle to move, just breathing a nightmare to follow through with. Her lungs burn with every inhale and she shakes on the exhale, over and over until it becomes harsh, burning hot tears, the kind that surprise you by how quickly they come, but you can't force them to go away.

The ache in her body spikes in her heart, and this new pain is one of the more emotional kinds. She fights and resists the tears but they rip from her throat with a loud gasp, tipping her over, her knees to her chest as she screams into her lap. And as much as she wants to be strong, to keep her chin up and tell herself she will get through this, for once she can't find that power inside her. She's a light that's flickering out, so close to dying, too erratic to be of any use to anyone anymore. The world is just darkness and the sun won't come up, and she is lost, so lost, turning into something she doesn't recognize.

She can't do this. She can't do this.

For the briefest of moments she regrets everything that brought her here, everytime she stepped out of line. She regrets taking the fall and firing her shot and opening her mouth. She regrets keeping it all to herself, regrets letting herself explode, and she regrets leaving Ben that day, when he asked her if she was okay, when he gave her that tiny opening to let herself in, but she couldn't do it. She couldn't fucking do it.

Leslie curses herself for being Leslie Knope, and she wishes she were anyone else, anyone at all. She wishes she were back home, tucked into bed. She wants to grab her phone and goddammit, she wants Ann, sweet and beautiful Ann, who never did anything wrong. She wants to wrap Ann in a hug and hear her say that everything is going to be alright, Leslie. Everything is going to be okay. She'll tell her that every thirty seconds until she can calm down, until her breathing is even and she finally starts to fall asleep. Leslie tries to picture this now, closing her eyes tight and picturing bangs and skirts and warm smiles, the kind of reassurance only a best friend can give.

But it's just cold. Any image of Ann is swept away into the abyss and Leslie is still lonely.

She wants Ann, but something even harder strikes her in the gut, and Leslie cries out for her mother. Her mother, of all people, when she doesn't remember the last time she hugged her, or even told her she was proud. Marlene, who is known for being severe and hardworking and ambitious and has never once been to any of Leslie's events, who never even planned on going to her graduation, because she doesn't have a single warm, motherly bone in her body.

But Leslie cries for her mother.

She thinks about running to her mother, Marlene's fingers brushing deftly through her hair, the tickle of her nails at her scalp. She would hold her daughter tightly as she cries, rubbing up her arm and up her back, whispering shhh into her ear. Shhh, pumpkin, it'll be alright. I'm here, I'm here.

"Mommy?" Leslie whispers, nothing more than a tiny whine from deep within her most vulnerable and desperate thoughts. "I'm scared."

Marlene kisses the top of her head, brushes tiny blonde baby hairs from her forehead. "That's okay, baby. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to cry, sometimes. You don't have to be strong all the time."

"But a Knope is always supposed to put on a brave face."

She laughs, a carefree sound that lessens the tightness in Leslie's chest. "Not always. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is let yourself be broken."

Leslie cries for a version of her mother that doesn't exist, and will never exist, trying to envision warmth and walks in the park and chocolate chip waffles to eat, wrapped in a homemade quilt. Having her mother tuck her into bed, sending Ann a text that she loves her, calling Ben deep into the night just to talk, just to hear him breathe.

It's not real, none of that is real. And now even the possibility is nonexistent, that tiny rope she held onto most her life slipping away from her, leaving her grasping and reaching and mourning something that doesn't exist. She can't even see their faces, but that imaginary little ball of love sits in her heart, trying to keep her warm, until eventually that, too, will flicker out and die just like she will.

So she's done with crying. Leslie screams.

She screams for help, for answers, for anything. She begs, even, on her knees, until her throat is raw and her voice is hoarse. She screams as if she's dying, and she only has seconds left to live, her entire life depending on it. The sound echoes and it ricochets off the walls, into empty space, and she knows, somehow she just knows that she is somewhere that nobody can hear her.

Nobody but one.

A door opens somewhere, releasing a tiny sliver of light that blinds her instantly. Leslie throws her arm over her eyes, recoiling from the brightness, from the shadow, from the footsteps.

Someone speaks.

Leslie recognizes that voice.