The next day I woke not to my usual alarm – in other words, Perri's finger prodding me hard in the ribcage – but to a bout of uncontrollable coughs. By the time they subsided, my breathing was laboured, and my throat coarse. My head and vision were swimming dangerously, and I felt strangely hot and cold at the same time.

In other words, I felt like complete and utter shite. 

With a groan, I rolled over to look at the electronic clock on the bedside table. It read 8:26am. I blinked, rubbing my eyes, thinking that I had read it wrong – but when I looked again, it was still the same. I had been asleep for three hours longer than normal. And on training day too. Perri would want to have my head.

Propping myself up onto my elbow, I blearily squinted at Perri's bed. It was untouched – she hadn't gone to bed the night before.

I grumbled something under my breath and slowly dragged myself out of my bed. My head spun all the more, my vision becoming blurred. As soon as it cleared away, I shook my head slightly and stepped forward, only to have a curious shiver run down my spine. I grabbed the quilt off of my bed and wrapped myself in it, and shuffled towards the door. Outside, I could hear the television murmuring softly.

I pushed the door open slowly and peered out. On the floor in front of the TV was Perri, leaning against the low coffee table, legs splayed out in front of her. She still wore the jeans and button-down shirt she had been wearing the night before, and her eyes had a slight glazed look to them. Lying on the table next to her was an empty syringe or two – I had only a vague idea what they had been used for. There was also a coffee mug, half empty with the ice cold drink. Obviously, she had gone into one of her more depressed moods during the night.

As silently as I could, I shuffled into the room and sat down onto the couch, cocooned in my bed quilt like a caterpillar. She didn't respond to me – didn't even acknowledge my presence in the room. And that was how we remained for the next couple of minutes: neither of us saying a thing, just watching the news recap the local events of the past day. Nothing serious had happened – well, serious by our standards, in any case. There was the usual amount of shootings, murder trials and rapes, and one or two cat-up-the-tree type stories. But no blood-draining massacrers or serial murderers.

Finally, during an ad break, I broke the silence.

"Good morning, Perri."

"Morning…" She responded quietly, automatically, distantly. I shifted slightly in my seat, and sniffed. My nose was very runny. I pulled my quilt around me tighter.

 "What… what happened to training this morning?" I asked. There was no response at first. Then she turned around, leaning one arm onto the coffee table as she looked up at me. Her face was still void of emotion.

"Steve… how old are you?"

I blinked, surprised at the question. It took a while for me to answer, mainly because I had lost track of dates.

"Seventeen. Turning eighteen."

Wow. I had left my home a whole year and a half ago. Time flies so quickly.

Perri sighed, laying her head down onto her arm, looking up still.

"So young, and yet, already so consumed by the night," she said in an almost wistful tone. I only looked confused. She shook her head. "Don't worry about training today, Steve. You're taking the week off."

Obviously, I wasn't that great at hiding my confusion, because she actually explained her reasons for her decision – a very rare occurrence.

"Look, Steve – you're still just a kid. You don't want to die having never lived the best years of your life – just because of the vampire world. You need to start enjoying yourself more, to, to live life, and just forget about all your worries and stress, even for a short while," she paused, taking a breath, then continued. "Or – or you'll end up like me. A depressive wreck who relies on bloody drugs –" she cast a dark glare at the empty syringes "-to keep herself going. Believe me, it's not a fun life." She laughed bitterly. Still, I made no comment – my mind, for some reason, was acting very sluggishly this morning, taking its time processing what she was saying. Perri sighed again.

"Steve, what I'm saying is that this week, you're going to forget about hunting and fighting and killing and vampires and vampaneze. This week, all you're going to think about is being a normal teenaged guy."

I blinked. This tiny, automatic action was enough to snap Perri back into her normal self, for, the next instant, she had jumped to her feet, hands on hips, brow heavily furrowed.

"Think of it as training, dammit! Now get up, and go have a goddamned shower!" She stopped, then grinned savagely. "Or the movie I'm taking you to today will end up being one of those pathetic girly teenybopper comedy-romances!"

 Eyes widened, I quickly scurried back into the bedroom, discarded my quilt, grabbed some clean-looking clothes and ran into the shower – all in under twenty seconds. I guess Perri had that sort of effect on people. Well, on me, anyway.

By the time I stepped out of my boiling hot shower, I heard the faint thump of loud music playing from the lounge room. That was a good thing, normally – she usually played music to get herself feeling better. Which meant now, she would be feeling better.

Drying myself off with the soft towel, I paused as I had to sniff again. And again. My nose wouldn't stop running. With an irritated sigh, I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose until it was free of the gunk. I pulled the tissue away, and was just about to wrap it up and throw it away when the colour of my snot caught my eye. I blinked. Then I swore.

It was green. Green mucus meant infection. Bad infection.

I had a cold.

Outside, Perri's loud music pumped on.

Sure, to most people, the statement 'I have a cold' wasn't much to worry about. Just pop a few pills and you're set, the cold's gone. But I was different. I had a much lower immunity system than normal. If I caught a cold, it would be like catching a case of very bad pneumonia. And by very bad, I meant 'no possible hope for recovery' bad.

"Hey, kiddo, you haven't fallen down the toilet, have you?" Perri called over the sound of her music. I frowned.

"Just because you do doesn't mean everyone else does, Perri!" I called back, to distract her. I faintly heard her laughter.

She was happy now. Not in that depressed mood of hers. I felt a tug in my chest, and I realised – I want to keep her happy. Over the months that I had been with her, she had become more than a teacher – she was my sister, my mother, my friend. And to keep her happy, I would do anything. Even spend the day acting like a normal kid. Which meant I would have to hide my cold.

I began to swear again, but was cut off by another rough bout of coughs. I grabbed another tissue just in time to catch the phlegm before it flew out of my mouth. By the time it finished, I was leaning on the sink, hot forehead resting on my arm, breathing heavily.

Slowly, I looked up, at the mirror positioned in front of me. My reflection – pale, other than the two bright spots of red on my cheeks – glared back at me. In my mind's eye, I could see another set of eyes – a strange mixture of green-blue, framed with long brown lashes, in a young, carefree face. The face itself was topped with a mop of messy dark brown hair, which never seemed to have any style to it, and yet always managed to look good.

The face of my best friend.

He was gloating.

Once again, I barely managed to keep myself from smashing the mirror then and there.

I stepped out of the bathroom several minutes later, smelling horribly. Perri, who had been standing in the centre of the room head-banging and air-guitaring to the song playing, paused when I appeared, one foot on the table, her face split in half with a grin. I realised then that the singer wasn't singing in English, but some other language, his deep voice strangely comforting and perfectly suiting the dark, fast melody of the song.

"Enjoyed the shower today, didn't we?"

I shrugged.

"I like to take advantage of the fact we get free water. Anyway – what's playing?" I asked. She grinned.

"Rammstein. German death metal slash industrial. They rule, don't they?" I didn't have time to answer, though – a particularly fast guitar solo began playing, and she turned away to accompany it with her own imaginary guitar. Shaking my head, I slipped passed her to go to the bedroom. She stopped as I passed, sniffing the air – then quickly clutched at her nose.

"Pee-yoo! Apprentice of mine, I need to teach you how to use proper cologne!" She called as I quickly hurried off. When I reached the bedroom, I paused, just to rest my head against the wall. I had never actually told Perri about my medicine. It kind of just slipped my mind.

The movie we saw that day turned out to be a vampire movie. It wasn't at all accurate – like everything Hollywood made these days – but still, it had a good storyline, and was overall enjoyable. When the credits began rolling, I made to stand up, but Perri grabbed me by the end of my coat and yanked me down again. I looked at her, bewildered. She just winked, tapping her nose.

We snuck into the next movie without having to pay. It was better than the first – one of those plotless action movies with the muscle-bound main character, the hot female D.I.D (who Perri couldn't stop insulting the whole way through) and the loyal sidekick put in for the teenaged girl audience.

We stayed for the movie after that, too – this one was a sort of romance comedy, about a whole bunch of people mixing up their identities and falling in love with the wrong people. Or something to that effect. Perri and I used the last of our cold popcorn to throw at the screen, jeering at the horrible acting.

We were halfway through our fourth movie – one of those thriller-horrors about a psychic boy and his two friends trying to find their way out of a house filled with ghosts with only a damaged video camera and a restless spirit to aid them (the best movie I'd seen all day – I was actually getting scared at some points in it!) – when the attendants finally figured out that we hadn't left our seats for the last eight or so hours. They came in and told us to leave. So, laughing, we did, running out of the dark room amidst a shower of hisses and shushes and people crying 'Shut up!'.

When we got out into the brightly lit hallway outside, Perri collapsed against me, laughing so hard that I thought she would burst. I was laughing too, trying my best to support her, but ending up stumbling backwards into the wall.

I began to cough, my laughs petering away. Soon, my head was spinning wildly again – so wildly that I couldn't even stand straight. Promptly, I sat heavily on my backside, my breaths loud and haggard. Perri stopped laughing, looking down at me, her face filled with concern – I think. My head was spinning too much to be able to tell what was going on with her face. My own face was uncomfortably hot.

"Steve?" She asked worriedly, kneeling down next to me. "Steve, are you all right?"

I looked up at her, watching her grey eyes swim this way and that. The corners of my vision began misting up, the whiteness slowly picking its way along until it threatened to cover the whole lot.

"I think I'm going to faint," I said lightly.

And then the next thing I knew, all I could see was white, and all I could hear was rushing air, and strangely – music. Rammstein had set up their stuff in my head and were playing a personal concert, just for me.

And vaguely, so very far away, I could hear a voice. It was calling to me.

She was calling me home again.

----

A.N Mwuaha! New place for my notes. .

adrew-needs-to-write : Oodnadatta? I thought that was just a password for something in a war book! O.o Well, I'm from Sydney. Mwuah. Thanks! .

Funkynerd : Hehe, yay! I've made someone like him! does a little dance Actually, when Perri moved, she did, in fact, move to QLD. Tell me, why is it so damned cold at the moment here? I'm wearing a jumper! In QUEENSLAND! That ain't supposed to happen! dies comes back to life to read the rest of your fics

And to Dave: Thanks! Uh… slow? Wow. This is actually quite fast for one of my stories. My original fic (shameless plug! 'Chase the Moon' - go read it at , woot!) is only four chapters and at 41 pages… does again

I'm sorry for the drawn-out faint. I fainted the day I typed this, so I really wanted to describe how it actually feels. Much fun. . I've typed the next chapter up, but I'm kinda stuck on the one after (which will, I promise, have  a lot of action!). So it may take a while for that chapter to appear… scampers off

THANKYOU!

(And more shameless plugs: Rammstein rules!)