Disclaimer: However much I wish I owned DPS (other than on DVD), particularly Nuwanda, I don't.

A/N: Okay, something I came up with at 10 at night. It should probably be burned, but oh well. I really don't care with this one.

"Gotta do more, gotta be more."

But in that smoky cave, we're just being us. Living for the moment while the self-proclaimed "ladies' man" of the group goes on with a saxophone solo that's actually pretty good. And Knox wonders why women swoon! I really need to get out into the air with all this smoke, it's bound to be bad on my asthma, but I'm just so transfixed in the moment that I don't care. I look around the cave and it's sort of the stereotypical guys' club.

The ladies' man, as I said before, and the hopeless romantic who's bound to have written something about the girl he's been stalking (although he refuses to admit that it's stalking), our fearless leader whose idea it'd been to come to the old Indian cave in the first place, the nerd...geek...whatever you want to call him, but he's my friend. Then there's the one that's so painfully shy that his quietness is almost annoying. But who am I to talk? I hardly say more than twenty words at a time. Is quietness even a word? Me, I'm just the quiet gangly one, but I enjoy every minute of it. I wish desperately that this night, this moment, could last forever. Because right now, we're not thinking of becoming doctors or lawyers or bankers or pleasing our fathers. We've just abandoned ourselves to the moment and, for once, we are more. For once in our lifetimes, we're living up to our own expectations and no one else's. Not our fathers, not our brothers, not our teachers. Just us.

"Pitts? Pittsie?" I'm jerked from my thoughts as I look up at Nuwanda.

"Huh?"

"Didn't you hear what I said?" I blush with shame as I wipe the tears out of my eyes, only to feel more come.

"Yeah." I feel like such a girl as my chin trembles and I try to keep back the tears. "Are they sure? I mean, absolutely positive?"

"What do you mean, 'are they sure'?" Nuwanda's face grew red with anger and more tears. "Are they sure he's dead? Yes, they're sure! How can you not be sure, with a bullet lodged in his brain! How can you-" he choked for a minute, and when he spoke again, his voice was a little above a strangled whisper, quivering with tears. "How can you not be sure?" He turned away from the rest of us.

We weren't allowed to see him cry, no one was. He was Nuwanda, and Nuwanda didn't cry! But Charlie Dalton did. Finally, I let my tears go, too, as Charlie collapsed onto Steven's bed, sobbing. Just hours ago, we'd all seen him, invigorated from his triumph on stage. And now, I'd just received news that he was dead. Shot himself in the head. My body was numb all over, I couldn't believe it...wouldn't believe it.

"It was his father," I said angrily, trying to keep the tears in my voice to a minimum. "His father made him do it. If it weren't for his father, he'd be happy and alive and...oh, God!" I buried my face in my knees as I curled up and started crying again. I felt Steven's hand on my shoulder.

-x-

"But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red! Where on the deck my captain lies, fallen cold and dead." Neil read the poem aloud. Being curious where Keating had gotten his title of "captain," we decided to look up the poem he had mentioned. I furrowed my brows as I listened, wondering why Keating had picked such a depressing poem. "But I with mournful tread walk the deck my captain lies, fallen cold and dead," Neil finished.

"Well, now that that's outta the way," Nuwanda said, pulling out yet another centerfold with a poem on it. No respect for the classics, but that was fine. This wasn't about the classics, it was about us and our poetry and what we felt.

-x-

"Look, there's something here called an honor code, and that means that if a teacher asks you a question, you tell them the truth!" Cameron stood defending himself. Charlie sucker punched him, and I almost did the same as Cameron scrambled to his feet out of harms way. "You just signed your expulsion papers, Nuwanda! But you guys aren't too late to save yourselves, and if you were smart, you'd do the same thing I did!" Meeks put a hand on my shoulder, seeing me tense up.

"He's not worth the expulsion," he whispered in my ear. I took a deep breath and counted to ten before even saying anything, and by that time Cameron was long gone.

"It's not fair," I muttered. Knox and Charlie turned around and looked at me.

"What was that?" Knox asked.

"It's not fair," I repeated, a little louder. "I mean, it's all Mr. Perry's fault and who's getting blamed for it? The Captain! If Mr. Perry had just let Neil act in that play, then none of this would've happened. I mean, they're just blaming the Captain because they need a scapegoat, that's all! He had nothing to do with Neil dying! Nothing!" I flop down onto a couch and put my face in my hands and my elbows on my knees. "And that little brown nosing, shoe licking fink isn't helping things any by tattling to the administration!"

"Pitts!" Even Charlie's eyebrows were raised in shock. None of them had heard me call anybody a name before, never mind string more than two sentences together.

"What, Charlie? You expect me to sit around and just take crap from him?" I pointed so suddenly at the door that Steven flinched and Knox had to jump a foot to the left to avoid getting poked in the eye. "No. I'm putting the blame where it belongs, this time! It's Mr. Perry, and the Administration, and no one else!"

"Alright, Gerard, we believe you," Steven said, patting my shoulder a little. I could tell he was still a little afraid of me. He wasn't called Meeks for no reason.

Except for Nuwanda, for obvious reasons, the rest of the Dead Poets were asked to speak at Neil's funeral. Most of them were short and to the point. "Neil was a good, dedicated friend," blah, blah, blah. When I got up to the podium, it was like a lump of the notoriously sticky Hellton oatmeal was stuck in my throat. I swallowed hard and tried to keep my voice steady, unsuccessfully.

"Neil was...a wonderful friend, a wonderful person. I don't think there was anyone that didn't like him. He was a friend, a leader, a confidante, and most importantly, his own person. And, although the title of "Captain" belongs to someone else, and some of you know who I'm talking about, some of you don't, I've lived that night over and over in my head, and the more I think about it, the more that I think that this fits perfectly." I cleared my throat and pulled out a piece of notebook paper with my messy scrawl on it. "O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done! The ship has weather'd every rack; the prize we sought is won;"

-Fin-