Dedicated: To Chelle and Ariala.
Disclaimers: I don't own them. I don't make money off of this. Suing me will only get you a whole lot of nothing.
Friends 'til the End
My friend is probably dead. The world will most certainly die without him. And I am afraid. My muscles are burning with the effort of fighting the waves to reach Ash's still, floating form. There is salt water in my mouth, seawater but not. Tears. I've cried an ocean of them in my heart, this ocean. I'm fighting my tears to reach Ash and when I do reach him I don't have enough strength to make the swim back to shore.
Tracey made me take a towrope and now he brings us into shore. Me, exhausted from fighting two battles, and Ash a dead (please don't be dead) weight in my arms.
"Ash, Ash, you have to wake up!" I shake him, trying to rouse him so that he can fulfill whatever destiny is before him. So that he can save us. He won't wake up, won't move and I share one, helpless look with Tracey. We are doomed.
And as much as I love my friends, it's not them that I'm worried about right now. It's not even my family and it's certainly not me. It's Brock. Does he know that the world is ending? Is he frightened by it? Does he miss me, know that I miss him? Does he know that I love him?
Brock, I never told you. I couldn't. The time was never right and then you left. And I could not do it in the letters that we exchange. Oh, Brock, what I wouldn't give for you to know now. I wouldn't expect you to love me. Just to know that I love you, to know that my heart is a gift freely given, without the need for your love in return. I wish you knew.
I meet Tracey's eyes again. There are tears there and remorse. His thoughts have gone the same direction as mine have. A love that he cannot share his last moments with. There was a girl, on his home island. He left her to seek his life's work and his mentor. She sent him on his way, telling him to find his fate. She would not, she said, hold him back.
He planned to go back to her. After he met Professor Oak he said he would return to her. Marry her, have children with her. Be with her. He won't have that chance now, and in his heart, he has been making his own good-byes.
I catch a sob back in my throat. There isn't time. "You can't…" I murmur to Ash's still figure. Can't give up, can't die. Can't let us down when we're counting on you. There's too much that has been left unsaid. I never told Brock how I feel. Never told you that I love you like my own twin. Haven't told Tracey that he is the older brother that I would have wished for, if I'd known to wish.
The world is ending and I am afraid.