A/N: As silly as it may sound, I had a strong urge to post something today. Anything! This story isn't supposed to be up yet! But I want to see what your reactions are. Anyway, if anyone remembers that song fic I did a long time ago called 'Tears In The Rain', this is the sequel I was talking about. You don't even have to go read the fic again if you haven't read it yet (though, me being the review-obsessed person that I am, would be much obliged if you did ^-^). Please do enjoy.

Existence- Prologue

I've always thought I'd live to see my enemy die.

But I guess that's going to be just about impossible, now. An ironic turn of events, isn't it? But what's more ironic is what's happening, now, as I write this final eulogy. It is not a eulogy for my own death, but for the one who remains alive. The one who I must accept as the final victor.

If I had known things were going to be this way, there would be so many things I would have done differently. Kept my priorities in check. Stopped flying in the clouds and been 'more down to Earth'. Stopped chasing fantasies that I could never catch up to. But sometimes, on that pathway of life, you are swept away by a flood and are forced to head in an entirely different direction. I was swept away by something that had been completely out of my hands, and now I'm about to drown under the waters and accept the inevitable.

I'm never, ever going to blame my mother for this. That was a mistake I had made before, and I feel terrible about it. But at least now I can ask her for her forgiveness, right?

I always thought that if I had died, it would be the blame of an entirely different person. My true enemy. My true rival. My true equal.

I say equal now because I realize we would never be able to beat each other. He may be self-deluded in his own contempt that he may think otherwise, but deep down inside he knows it as I do. We would remain at equilibrium no matter how many battles we'd fight, no matter how many times we'd try to kill each other, no matter how many schemes we'd come up with. Remain balanced. That is, until something completely foreign entered the war, and took one of us away into darkness. I suppose that I had always assumed it would be old age to claim one before the other, but that didn't turn out to be true in this case.

Sometimes, when we live, we forget what it means to be alive. Who we choose to surround ourselves with, who we choose to affect, what we make of ourselves- all of these cease to matter until we meet our end. We often ignore the subtle things that aren't so subtle in the long run.

But what does the 'long run' matter anyway, when it won't come for awhile?

Not exactly good reasoning. Because you never know when your long run is going to end as abruptly as the life right beside you.


**********Two Months Earlier**********


Dib sat on the edge of the cold, steel bed, grumbling to himself and shifting his eyes nervously from the table of utensils and jars down to the floor. His father stood placidly next to him while his sister sat on one of the guest's chairs by the window, reading some book about the practice of exorcism of cats. The clock above the door ticked slowly away, taking its sweet time as the large hand moved toward the twelve and the little hand toward the three.

Dib sighed, staring out through the window beyond where Gaz sat, wishing he could be out there, enjoying the warm noonday sun, relaxing under its sleepy rays as he dreamt up his future success as an alien-catcher.

It had been a week since he'd first gotten the letter in the mail. The 'Death Warrant', as Gaz had so bluntly called it when she thought he wasn't listening. The letter that took the doctors twenty pages just to say one, simple thing.

People always told Dib that he had his mother's eyes. Or his mother's nose. Or his mother's chin. Someway or another, Dib had something in common with her. But all too late did everyone realize that it was *too* common. By twisted fate of genetics, he had the same virus that she died from so many years ago. Like her, it was caught too late to do anything. Like her, he would die a slow, painful death. Like her, it was just around Christmastime. The time for loving, caring, joy- the time for a death.

The door swung upon, and Dib was jerked from his thoughts. His pale face peered curiously at the tall man who had stepped in; long, striding legs and brown loafers. A white lab coat that resembled Professor Membrane's hung from his shoulders, and he bore a somewhat tan face. Wavy black hair that nested just beneath a shiny blind spot at the very apex of his head, and thick, black-rimmed glasses sat atop his oblong nose.

His face curled into soft smile as his eyes rested on Dib, but Dib knew from experience over the past week that it was nothing but pity. Pity and self-delusion that 'everything would be okay'. All too used to such treatment, Dib simply smiled amiably back.

Despite his discontent with the doctor's pity, he already was beginning to like this man. He greeted the family and went straight to the point: Dib would be admitted into the hospital any time within the next few weeks, when his family was ready to give him up. He would remain in their care for research of the virus, and possible testing to try and extend Dib's life. It was never said, but Dib knew the tacit length of his stay. He would remain there until his death. Until his subsistence was cut short. Until his body would give up the fight to the virus that killed 100% of the people that contracted it.

He would reside in a children's ward of others who had the same sort of extreme cases of viral infestation. The doctor even jovially informed Dib of a boy slightly younger than his age staying there with the same virus, whom he would be sharing a room with.

His father and the doctor then lowered their voices and spoke more to each other than Dib himself. He tuned them out and looked toward his sister, who had taken her eyes off the book only once in the entire conversation. Like Gaz losing herself in the book, he lost himself to his thoughts in the scenery beyond the window. The fall season was apparent as the golden tips of the sun dipped its grace into the leaves of the trees; some leaves slowly drifted to the ground, accepting their defeat as the stronger ones held on. A strong gust of wind blew through the city, and an old woman holding a little boy's hand pulled her hat down over her head so it wouldn't blow off. Some kids off to the side were throwing their backpacks off, glad to be out of school for the day, and creating piles of some of the flaming leaves as they fell from the trees.

For once, Dib missed school. He hadn't been in it in over a week, and distantly wondered if they'd even recognized that he wasn't there. He didn't care if they were relieved that there was no 'crazy boy' around to 'rant about monsters and aliens and things that don't exist'. He just hoped they noticed; that someone would speak up and say, 'Where's the crazy kid?', and for one, fleeting moment, they would see that his chair was empty.

He tried to keep his mind off the one thing that edged dangerously to the surface. He had close to two months left. Two months, and then he would meet his defeat. Leaving... the-alien-which-shall-not-be-named to conquer the Earth. He would be leaving the planet he had sworn to protect vulnerable to the menace with green skin. And that troubled him, because there was nothing he would be able to do about it.

But he couldn't think about things like that now. /Think about the trees/ Dib instructed himself. /Think about the fall, and the fact that you're not in school, bored out of your mind./ He coaxed his mind into leaving his worries behind and focus again on the winter-in-motion scene before him. The sun was already dipping closer to the horizon, the sky in the distance tainted with dark blue, and it didn't even seem time yet for nightfall. But time would soon come. Time, like so many things, is inevitable.

Dib glanced up again, realizing that his father was calling his name. The doctor had left, he noted, and even Gaz had shut her book and was standing near the door, giving him an unreadable glance before making her way out. They weren't going home just yet. First Dib would be forced to gaze down the halls of his new "home".

Membrane took him to the ward of the hospital that he'd be staying at, hoping that the boy wouldn't be as uncomfortable when he would leave home for the last time and come here for good. But Dib could only stare solemnly down the halls with the checkerboard floors and dull white walls, realizing this scene alone was all too real for him. Even a week ago he didn't believe it, and even now he didn't believe it. But slowly, his mind moved into acceptance. And acceptance Dib feared more than anything else, because it also meant acceptance of defeat.

This section of the hospital wasn't as quiet as the rest of the sectors were; there were other kids there to fill the void of their looming demises. Some sat in wheelchairs, riding down the halls as if it were a game with their flushed-faced nurses chasing behind them, yelling at them to stop. Some walked along with their arms resentfully attached to a tube, and the tube attached to some packet of clear fluid. Some were even strolling normally, laughing every so often as they stopped to talk to one of their friends. Their viruses had not yet had taken a full effect on them.

They were all normal kids, just like him. All within themselves, they contained a different viral that would have the same effect on most of them. Dib could not help but look down the halls with a sense of belonging. In a sick, sad way, he somehow fit in here more than he could have ever fit in at school. He was in the 'inner circle' of this society, of this clique.

He was home.


A/N: Hope you all liked that short little treat. And I also hope I can finish it before Christmas. X.x' Expect soon a couple chapters to a top-secret fic I've been working on.... probably on Tuesday, to be exact (I'll be 17. WOO! Get off the roads, because I'll be driving through! No, seriously. Get off. I can't afford another driver-runs-over-innocent-pedestrian ticket) Anyway, you'll see what fic I'm writing *very* soon. Heh, heh, heh.