A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed (and those who simply read too). I am amazed at the response I've gotten from the first chapter. Thank you.
Thanks once again toSallyJetson for the beta.
Chapter 2:
He stares at the skyline and wonders at the seven million people inside. Would they have done better? With them would he have survived?
He thinks back to the week before it had all happened. He had been happy, in love, nothing could touch him.
And it hadn't. It rarely did in his life. Besides the fight that had ended his baseball career, it had always happened to those around him, to him it was less severe.
His brother, his partner, and now the boy down the hall. All dead while he'd done nothing. Done nothing at all.
He couldn't save them, couldn't stop them from their fates. All that's left are their empty shells: comas, ashes and tiny crates.
While he can deal with those he meets in death, he has trouble dealing with the dead he has met in life.
And he will have no more of it.
The dead don't ask him to save them, to protect them or to cure them. They simply ask how and why and who. This he can handle. This he can deal with. And this will be his future.
Dealing with the dead, and forgetting the living.
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She stares at the skyline. Seven million people rise everyday, make their way to work, have lovers, have families and live their lives.
It had always seemed so easy, one foot in front of the other, following her path, always something new to discover.
And now she doesn't know how people do it. What is the point of it all? To push on ahead only to fall?
When you reach an obstacle do you go around, back or over top? And how do you find the courage and energy to decide when it all seems so pointless and you're frozen with fear inside?
The days and hours tick by and slowly the fear and powerlessness of fate overtakes, while numbness settles deep in her bones, only feeling pain as he continues to turn away, never pausing to give her the time of day.
They had been happy once she was sure, though now her mind fights to remember those times, like a dream one tries to grasp as it slowly slips pass.
How could times like those have existed? How could her happiness and joy change to such loneliness and confusion?
And yet she isn't alone.
The clock continues to tick and she needs to decide.