Many, many, many thanks to Wyndmir, Sullen Shadowhawk and Secret Plasures!

And now, my luvlies, may I present the last chapter (but don't worry, there's still the little epilogue!)

(Everyone thank Wyn because she was so very worried over Curt... ;-)

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Chapter Fifteen: "Free"

He walked in…and froze. Curt sat in the floor, pale and swaying, a vein in the inside of his elbow spiked and the plunger of the syringe depressed. He knew something was not right. He just did...

"Don't!"

The word had just flown from him. What the hell are you thinking, Brian? Funny -- he hadn't thought of himself as Brian for a while. He referred to himself even in thought as "Tommy" now. He doesn't bloody know you anymore. You don't know you.

But he had looked up. The syringe was empty save for the red pulled back into it as he pulled the needle from his skin, but Curt had looked up. His bloodshot grey-blue eyes had met with the shadowed stranger's clear blue ones.

"Bri?"

And then his eyes were rolling back, closing. "No!" Brian didn't know he had yelled it out loud, but he had. He ran over to Curt's side. "Curt! Dammit, Curt!"

The eyes fluttered open. They tried to focus on the man above them, but did not quite succeed. "Bri? I always... I hoped you'd be...the angel to take me to hell." His roughened voice, so endearing, was almost a whisper, broken.

"No, Curt. Don't. It is me. It's Brian. Don't go." God damn -- how much did he shoot up with? How much did he bloody take? Obviously more than enough. Curt's lips, already beginning to tinge blue, curved in a soft smile as his eyes rolled back once more. The eyelids that slid slowly down over them were the same almost lifeless shade as his lips. Brian shook him. "No -- Curt!" But the body so familiar to him was limp and heavy in his arms. Just moments before he had been living, breathing, walking about, talking to that damned journalist.

Curt Wild was dead now. And that was it.

The tears welling in his eyes disturbed him. He tried damned hard never to cry. It reminded him of the day after Curt had left, after their fight and the break up...breakdown. His breakdown. Brian looked down upon Curt. He looked so...peaceful. So perfect in that grungy way as always. The black shirt he wore was simple, yet beautiful upon him. Brian slipped his hand around Curt's right one -- it was bloodied; judging by the sparkling shards he lay in, Brian figured Curt had put his fist through the mirror over the sink -- it wasn't the first time Curt had broken something out of intense emotion, but most assuredly it was the last. His brown and yellow leather jacket was wadded beneath the sink. Brian pushed back a fall of yellow-blond hair from Curt's blue-tinted ashen face, the blood from Curt's hand that had gotten upon his own streaking the light hair. The death-pallor wasn't as stark thanks to the lighter hair, Brian mused darkly. It would have been almost unbearably...there...if Curt had gone back to his natural deep brown hair colour. It was wild...Curt had always been pale -- not pasty, just quite fair -- and it looked so wild to see him coloured blue. The red Brian remembered from wild nights, from anger as well. Maybe brown in a tan -- that would have been fine. But he'd never imagined blue...

He bit the inside of his lip as he ran his thumb lightly over the cold lips, which were softly parted. Lips he recalled so fondly. He had missed Mandy's hands and Curt's lips. He pressed a kiss lightly to Curt's forehead and stood, laying his dead love carefully to the floor. And then he backed away. Out the door, leaving Curt there almost exactly as he had fallen, needle beside him on the yellow-tiled floor that glittered with broken glass, red staining the inside of the syringe, his belt still around his arm, blood -- just a drop -- oozing from the point where he had inserted the deadly needle.

And Brian -- no, Tommy, once again -- walked out the door. He pressed himself back into the shadows as the journalist walked by. He didn't cringe at the anguished cry that he heard through the bog's door.

Brian Slade had died with Curt Wild, finally.

And he was Tommy Stone once more. Out to be the next big thing once again.

He walked from the pub quickly out the back door. If Shannon found out he had been down here, she'd flip...

(The lyric in the page break is from "Ladytron" by Thom Yorke)