Title: Beside You

Summary: Do not take what you have for granted, for all you know it could be an illusion.

POV: Second Person

AN: It's short but it literally doesn't need to be any longer and it's 3 pages longer than it was supposed to be anyway XD

It's… warm.

Despite the earlier cool bite of the wind, the forest shrouded in the fading blanket of night was warm. There was no chill, no wind nipping at the skin through your clothes despite it's vicious grip on the cloak shrouding your body as you pulled open the cabin door. The thick branches of the trees by the edge of the stream soaked in most of the rising sun's light, casting thick almost harsh shadows against the turf and rocky shoreline and making visibility difficult.

However, the dark doesn't bother you. Rather it twists and turns in your mind's eye, manipulated by the heavy weight of the many things on your mind.

The rocks of the gravel pathway crunch delicately beneath your worn out brown boots, shoes that have gone the whole journey with you even through the moments you simply just can't remember. The soft rustling of branches is soothing as you walked, nature softly urging you away from the industrialized world you lived in on a daily basis only to swallow you up and teach you how to breathe again.

You take a deep breath, the paint on your cheeks causes the skin it covers to tug slightly awkwardly and the air smells of something unique to nature. It's humid, heavy in your nose and just salty enough that it lightly stings the back of your throat before a breeze chases it down with it's cool untainted air.

If you strained your ears just slightly you could hear the distant lapping of salty waves against the wide canal docks of the water based city.

You found yourself lucky that you lived outside the bustling city. The loud city was important for your work and your keen nose for information and details, but you needed a place that your mind could sort through all of it's data and simultaneously just relax and unwind, which was the definition of your home.

Your home was surrounded by the thick tall aspen and birch trees, bordered by an innocently trickling stream and winding pathways that a year ago, were still in progress, but it was still your home. Your personal cabin in the woods that nobody else knew the exact location of.

It was brighter now as your feet thunked softly over the sturdy wooden bridge over the stream who's rolling happy bubbling spoke of the memories you had of it. You could see the sparkling blue of the canals in the distance now, and the untamed undergrowth and bushes that carefully hid your home from it's niche here in the woods. However… there was almost a weight to the woods this morning.

The trees' shadows loomed longer over your short frame and the surrounding grass than usual. Terrifying the small blades of grass into wilting in fear and the flowers refusing to bloom in their presence.

It also felt oddly quiet even with the faint cheery music within your ears, almost as though the wild-life itself knew what was going on.

You stopped once your feet hit the grass of the other side of the stream's bridge and you crouched down, eyes focused on the green grass around you.

With slow movements, you plucked a couple blades of grass and held them out on your palm as though expecting something to happen.

The grass held in your hands suddenly shimmered, before it exploded into rainbow colored shards. The random paper thin polygons was a stark reminder of just how much your brain was being fooled at this very moment, even as a breeze tickled your face and swept the multi-colored polygons up into it's grasp.

Gravel softly crunched nearby.

"Hey."

The voice was a little rough like usual, but it doesn't take long for you to realize that it was lacking something. Something you hadn't noticed and you should've noticed from the get go. It lacked the rasp, the rasp she had had in her voice long since you both were small and innocent little children.

How did you not notice it was missing till now? Had it always been that way?

Wood creaked beneath the other person's feet as they approached and you shut your eyes, not that it mattered. You could still see the white numbers of the digital readout in the corner of your blackened vision.

Four-thirty-five pm.

There had been only a mere couple hours since your faith in the world around you had shattered. Just like the grass had in your hands moments ago.

You could feel her shadow on your arm now as she stood beside you, the cool whisper of the sun's absence tickling your skin.

"You okay?" The question, one you heard plenty of times before, was more complicated than you had ever your life guessed it would be.

How were you supposed to respond to that in a time like this? Lie and say you were fine? Deny that the world as you knew it had just fallen apart?

Doing that went against your morale code, not to mention the promise both of you shared with one another. Something you only remembered now, after she had intervened and broken this world's laws for some unknown amount of times. Your memory was still fuzzy in some spots, fuzzy in the parts that told you this world wasn't the world you were born in and thereby fuzzy in parts of your memories of her.

Grass groaned and complained along with cloth that rustled as she took a seat on the grass beside you, sunlight reflecting off of the sides of her glasses in your peripherals. She looked as unruffled as she always did as you looked at her out of the corner of your eye, but you knew it was simply a mask.

How long had she known? How many others knew the truth like the two of you did? You had so many questions, so many things you were desperate to ask or find out about, but… none of it would come out. Every time you opened your mouth you felt it go dry and nothing would escape your mouth.

"How…" your lips and tongue finally formed a sound, part of a question, but quickly gave up and decided to let the shock take hold of them again.

However she understood, just like she always did.

"From the beginning," she said and stretched out one of her legs while she kept the other tucked into a half indian style position, her typical sitting position. "I wasn't affected by the blockages to the same point like everyone else, it merely made my memories fuzzy, not disappear."

You found yourself nodding and all of the small unusual things she did finally made so much more sense. The melancholy you'd find on her face at night on the nights she would spend a couple hours out on the balcony lost in her thoughts; the kind of smile she'd give you if you pointed out somewhere as one of your favorite places; and that look in her eyes like she knew something in you was different, was missing, but never admitted what it was.

Well you knew what it was now.

It was your missing memories that she had seen missing in you, your memories of your promises, experiences, and growing up together. She had known all along but kept it from you till she had gathered what information she could and like usual, broken and bent the rules that she had to to make a difference.

What were you to do now? You didn't have time to alert the rest of the world what was going to happen tomorrow, not when everything had been already set into motion for today's events.

You couldn't save them, at least not right now.

You leant your weight to your left until your head bumped and rested against her shoulder. Seeking warmth and something to comfort your spinning mind as it strained to keep up and get on top of it all.

She leaned into you as well, giving away, just to you and you alone, how much of a weight all of this had been on her.

"What do we da now?" The words rolled off your tongue in a half whisper. Your birth accent finally leaked back into your voice now that you finally had access to everything you had gone through since you had been born those long nineteen years ago.

The question was heavy. Weighted with the silent question of what you two should do as the only two in the remaining nine-thousand occupants of this crushing digital world who remembered their lives before the fateful event November 6th, four years ago.

"We fight," she told you softly and the rasp in her voice was comforting, comforting as a reminder of just how real she was unlike the world around them.

"How?"

"I dunno yet."

You lifted your head and looked up at her, looking into the half-grim half-peaceful face of your childhood friend who had become so much more since you were both kids. "You always 'ave a plan Ki-Lii," you pointed out the flaw in her logic and she made a sigh that you knew well and it made your heart slow with dread.

"I do have one," Caylee admitted and looked over at you. Her blue eyes were lacking the familiar deep brown of her birth color, just another thing you had somehow missed noticing for four long years.

"Ima not gonna 'ike it am I?" You sighed and opted to look back out apon the now setting sun.

"Not one bit and I'll tell you later, but for now…" she agreed and followed your lead, "I'd rather watch this last sunset with you Argo."

The paint in whisker-like marks on your cheeks felt more noticeable as ever but you didn't flinch as your hood was knocked back off your head by a gust of wind. Your messy curly blonde hair hid parts of your deep brown eyes when the wind settled and you didn't pry. You knew full well that if she wanted to treasure this moment then you probably did too, even if you didn't know her reasoning behind it just yet.

But you would find out, and it would be all too soon when you do.

Then your world would tear itself apart once again, but this time…

...she wouldn't be there beside you to show you the way.

End

Beside You is a Prequel to "Lost Memories", telling the reader of Argo's point of view throughout the beginning of it all.