A/N: Okay, so I have to say I'm really pretty excited about this story right now. I love how this chapter turned out, even though it was actually nothing like I'd planned. So anyways, I hope you like it and I am really rather sorry about the terrible updating schedule I have going. I just want it to be perfecto.

Enjoy, pretty please :)

No, I can't take one more step towards you
'Cause all that's waiting is regret

"Clare, I just—" Mark took a deep breath on her doorstep. "I just want to talk to you."

But Clare's mind was still foggy with thoughts of that night. It felt like so long ago. It was so long ago. Ancient history, really. She didn't know what to think.

I hear you're asking all around
If I am anywhere to be found

There at the school dance, Clare let herself be comforted for once in her life. No longer the one to wipe away tears, which had so often been the case with Darcy, or the one to spew kind words of reassurance, like with Alli. No. This time Clare gave herself over to be the one comforted. To have her tears wiped away by a forgiving friend. To let herself hear the consoling words of Elijah Goldsworthy as he softly laid an arm around her shoulder against the Degrassi Community School lockers.

Clare didn't know what to think. Whether she should even let herself be open to such comfort. Such reassurance and relief. Such vulnerability.

So she stopped thinking and merely sat there with her friend instead.

But I have grown too strong
To ever fall back in your arms

"Can I ask you something?" Eli asked for the second time that day, an indiscernible amount of time later. Soft but clear, an almost serious quality to his tone.

Clare smiled in spite of herself. This whole not-thinking-thing seemed to have the desired effects. "Ask away," she murmured, not bothering to feel self-conscious.

"Do you remember the day we first met?"

Clare closed her eyes, head resting against the locker, tilting up towards the ceiling. "Yes," she breathed. How could she forget? "You do know how to make an entrance."

Eli let out a little laugh, though Clare could sense he was only building up to his real question. But he started off slowly, for her benefit, not yet solemn. "It was the first day of school and you were walking with Alli and—" Clare braced herself for the inevitable name. "Fitz." She didn't even wince.

Eli continued on as if without pause. "And Alli went and threw your old glasses in the street and I pulled up and ran them over." The two smiled slightly at the memory. "Unknowingly, of course," Eli clarified with the smallest of smirks. "And then…" This time the pause was deliberate, forcing Clare to open her eyes at him.

"And then," she spoke for him, almost cautiously as if the memory were playing itself over in her mind in slow motion. Which, for the record, it was. "You complimented my eyes."

"Probably not the brightest move on my part," Eli acknowledged, "Considering the way you were holding hands with your boyfriend right at the time."

Eli's lips turned upwards in a half smiled while Clare's expression immediately turned blank. No longer was she not thinking. It always came back to Fitz

"Then," Eli gently pressed on, still building up to his real question of the evening. "He punched me," Eli remembered, the smile still on his face, oddly enough. He seemed to find the memory quite funny.

"I remember," Clare admitted quietly.

But again, Eli acted as if uninterrupted, though he brought a supportive hand down into hers. "But you know, it didn't really bother me. Not then. Not even now…Well," he chuckled. "Maybe a little bit then," Clare didn't even smile. So Eli cut the jokes and turned solemn.

"But not anymore," he spoke decisively. Knowing full well what he was about to say. As if he had known all along. "Because he may have hit me, but he hadn't gotten me where it really hurts." Eli tried to lock eyes, but Clare stared at a distant spot on the opposite wall. Eli's voice lowered. "But hearing what he did to you? Seeing you this morning? This way tonight?" He softly brushed a loose curl behind her ear. "That's where it gets me. Where it really hurts. I hate to see you cry, Clare. I hate to see you hurt. Broken like this."

Clare looked down at their two hands intertwined. She knew she was lucky to have Eli as a friend right now. She cleared her throat. "So what's you question, Eli?"

Vaguely, he smiled a small sort of melancholy grin. Of course she knew he still had his question. "My real question is…if you had known the way this would all turn out that day…would you have changed anything?" His thumb ran soothing circles on the back of her hand.

Clare bit her lip. She didn't want to cry anymore. "Honestly?" Her voice was shaky and hoarse.

Eli nodded.

"I—"

But Clare never got the chance to finish. Because in that moment, that's when she became painfully aware of the knife glinting in a tight closed fist at the end of the darkened hallway.

And now you're back
You don't get to get me back

"You what, Clare-bear?" Fitz's voice ricocheted across the empty hallway's walls. "You wish you'd never met me?" he spat. The enmity seemed to echo somewhere inside the deep recesses of Clare's heart. Insidious.

Fitz continued walking toward them, though stagger would be the more likely term. The blade, shining face down in his right hand.

His shouting grew with more hostility than ever. "You wish you didn't love me?" Fitz lifted his hands in the air, showcasing the knife for all to see. "'Cause I know you do! Come on, just say it! We both know it!" Hatefully, he gestured with the dagger in hand to first Clare, and then Eli. "We all know it here!"

Shivering, Clare couldn't stop her hands from shaking as Eli stood up, taking a firm stance between the two of them. Clare didn't even know how she managed to get up off her feet.

Terriefied, forlorn, empty. "I…Mark." Broken, beaten. "I can't." Shattered.

"No." Shaking. Fury. "No. You don't mean that." Fitz edged closer. Clare could already smell the alcohol on his breath. The smoke in the air, radiating off his jacket.

Shaking. Vulnerable. "I can't."

Eli's voice of reason somehow tried to fight a way through. His hands were raised as if displaying a white flag. "Just let it go, Fitz. Just leave her alone."

"Let it go? Let it go? The hell I'll let it go! To fucking hell I'll let it go!" Closer and closer, he towered over Eli, enraged with viciousness and a terrorizing sort of intensity. "Why is it that you come off so fucking superior and so goddamn bossy all the time, huh?" Fitz gave Eli a hard shove with the handle of the blade. He backed him into the corner as the two left Clare further and further behind. "You think you're so much better for Clare, don't you?" Fitz's voice reached a new level of earsplitting capacity. "You think you know what she wants? Well." Mark was in his face now. Practically snarling. "You. Don't. Know. Anything."

Clare felt her legs give out from under her. "Mark. Mark, please." Her hands still shook with every breath she took. "Please. Please don't do this." Trembling hands, tearful heart. "It's me you want." Quivering fear. "Don't hurt him. Please."

But Fitz never looked back. "Shut up, bitch!" he ordered right before he plunged the dagger forward.

Leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart

Eli fell to the ground as Clare let loose a shriek to wake the dead. Eli's eyes rolled back in his head and his knees hit the floor.

"What did you do?" Clare could hardly find her voice by the time she stopped screaming. It was barely above a whisper. What had she done to deserve this? Maybe she brought it on herself, breaking her promise to God. But Eli? What had Eli done to deserve this? What did anyone do to deserve this?"

Fitz could only stare from his now empty, cold-blooded hands to the knife piercing Eli's side, tearing through his blazer and seeping through red. Mark's face completely drained at the site. "I—I didn't…"

And then he ran.

You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
Don't come back for me
Don't come back at all