Author's note: I'm sorry this chapter is so long, I kept adding stuff to it. Get your glitter and paper ready and don't cry: CRAFT!
Phil jumped to his feet, knocking the table as he did, making his cup fall onto the floor and pour out hot chocolate everywhere. He flung open the doors and looked about. His heart was beating faster than it should have been and his legs were shaking like branches in a storm.
He didn't want to bring his eyes downwards – he knew that he would see something horrible if he did – but he couldn't put it off forever and he slowly gazed downwards to see, lying on the road in front of him, a body. Phil's jaw dropped in utter disbelief.
There was no traffic on the road – if the horn he had heard had been from a car, it was long gone now. This couldn't be right: London was usually so busy.
"DAN!" Phil cried at the top of his lungs.
Stumbling over to the body, he dropped to his knees, his eyes watering, not believing what he was seeing. It was, indeed, Dan. He was covered from head to toe in blood, some of it still oozing out of his arm and across the cobblestones to trickle down a drain nearby. His phone lay beside him, the screen completely smashed and bits of glass still gouged into Dan's palm, now covered in his lifeblood, no longer clear but stained with red: dark, thick red.
His ankle was twisted in an odd position, facing inwards just over 90 degrees.
And his face… that was the worst: it was covered in scratches and gashes, still steadily bleeding, and his eyes were closed but not squeezed tight. It almost looked as if he had expected what was coming and decided to just let it happen.
Phil felt ill just looking at him, his head cloudy and his vision blurred,
"Dan?" He repeated, quietly as if he was expecting a reply, "Dan?"
He kept repeating it, getting louder each time, shaking his friend back and fourth – trying in vain to wake him up.
"Dan!" He yelled, one last time before his tears fell and make their way down his face, some dripping off his cheekbones but most trickling down to his chin. He gritted his teeth as a sharp pain shot through his heart as if somebody has stabbed him with a knife. He could feel his stomach turning.
"Dan…" he coughed as he choked back the tears, "Dan, wake up!"
But nothing happened. No movement, no breath, no nothing. It was like his nightmares that he'd had every night, but in those dreams, he would have woken up by now.
Phil buried his face in Dan's shoulder and closed his eyes, breathing in his familiar warm scent, hoping that if he closed his eyes and thought hard enough, he would wake up and Dan would still be there and he could have a hug and everything would be all right.
But however long he thought, when he opened his eyes, he was still there.
He could still hear Dan's voice in the back of his mind, playing itself over and over again, the last thing he had said: 'I'll be right back'.
They were his last words. No. They couldn't be – Phil wouldn't allow it. Yet they were.
Dan wasn't coming 'right back' like he said he would: he wouldn't be coming back at all.
"…Dan… wake up…" Phil pleaded again, breathing into the neck of Dan's black coat that covered his bloodstained t-shirt (it was his favourite t-shirt: the black one with the solar eclipse on it, the one he always wore), "…Dan, we… we have to go home."
No reply.
Of course there wouldn't be.
And this was when the ugly truth hit home: Dan was dead and there was nothing he could do to bring him back.
Tender, kind-hearted Dan who would do anything to make his friends happy.
Dan, who would never willingly hurt anybody, who had the deepest eyes, who could always make you laugh, who you could never stay mad at for long, who gave the cosiest hugs, who could always forgive, who would keep you warm, who could listen to you whenever you felt down, who had some of the best ideas and who you could always rely on to be there for you, even when he himself was sad.
That was Dan. And now he was gone. His smile was gone, his laugh was gone, his life was gone… And suddenly Phil's world was very dark indeed. Phil wasn't one to be depressed: his world had always been very bright and alive. Alive wasn't sad, was it?
Phil supposed it was when it's over. Everything is.
He wrapped his arms around his friend, not even caring that his hands were getting covered in blood, and laid his limp form on his lap, running his fingers through his dark brown hair.
"You said you'd always be there…" Phil breathed, quietly, "But where are you now?" And one last lonely teardrop fell from his eye and onto Dan's coat, sinking into the fabric and leaving a stain.
They stayed there like that for quite a while, Phil's eyes closed tight and tears dripping steadily down his face. And he waited. He waited for whatever would happen next. Something was bound to happen, he was sure of it.
But nothing did: the world stayed silent and the air was still.
"I suppose I'll have to go now, Dan," he whispered, his tears choking him, his eyes still closed, "Don't worry: I'll leave everything in your room exactly how you left it, and I'll clean every day, and I'll take good care of myself, because I know you wouldn't want me to be sad forever. I guess this is the end of Dan and Phil, huh? Well, goodbye Dan… I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you when you needed me the most, like you were for me. And I know you can't hear me, but I want you to know that I'll always miss you very much. And one day I'll find a new friend, I suppose, but they won't be as good as you, and they'll find me drawing cat whiskers on my face, eyes full of tears, and they'll ask me what's wrong and I'll hand them our book and I'll tell them all about you."
Phil stood up then and opened his eyes.
The world around him was pitch black. It would be, of course. After all, his sunshine was gone.
He felt a bit guilty leaving Dan there, but no harm would come to him, he supposed. And even if it did, he was already dead.
Phil began to walk into the darkness – because that was the only place left to go – but just as he did, he heard a strange noise.
It wasn't the sound itself that was strange, it was the fact that there was sound, it had been silent so long that Phil had forgotten what noise sounded like. It was a rumbling that grew louder and then suddenly a horn blares, agonizingly strident. How could anything dare to be so loud at a time like this?
He turned to face the noise and saw two bright lights speeding towards him: headlights. Illuminating his tear-stained face.
He was frozen to the spot and his legs refused to move however hard he tried. He supposed this was how Dan must have felt…
The headlights got closer and closer and closer until they were right in front of him, and suddenly, all that he could see was light.
