A/N: Thank you so much for the awesome reviews! This story is almost finished and then there will be a sequel...

"I love you -
I've loved you all along.
And I miss you,
been far away for far too long.
I keep dreaming you'll be with me
and you'll never go..."

-Nickleback

After Natalie had fallen asleep, Lizzie went to the kitchen and washed up their dishes from supper. There was still about half an hour to go before Mickey would get home, so she sat down on the couch and flipped on the television. She clicked absently through the channels and stopped on Wings, the only halfway decent show on. She scooted to the middle of the couch and lay her head down against the armrest. The next thing she knew, Mickey was shaking her gently awake.

"Hey, sleepy head."

She sat up with a start. "Oh my gosh, I'm sorry, Mickey! I didn't even feel sleepy when I lay my head down. What time is it?"

He laughed. "Don't worry, it's not that late, only about 10:30. I'd just let you sleep, but you didn't look very comfortable."

"No, not particularly." She stood up and rubbed at the crick in her neck. "I'd better go, my mother's going to wonder what happened to me."

"I'll walk you back," he said opening the door for her.

"I don't think I'll get lost," she laughed.

They walked slowly across the yard, neither of them saying anything until halfway across Mickey stopped and turned to her.

"You know, you should stand up to your mom."

Lizzie rolled her eyes. "It's not a question of standing up to her, Mickey. It's a question of making it though the day with my sanity. It's hard to explain if you've never lived with her."

"How long are you planning on staying with her?"

"Hopefully not that long at all," she said. "I wouldn't be there at all if she hadn't of moved me out of my apartment."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I helped moved your stuff, but only because she was just going to have someone come and get rid of it all."

"Thanks, Mickey. I know it probably wasn't easy to be around her."

"Well, your mom's still scary, but I can handle it," he said. "By the way, though, what was with all the broken mirrors in the bedroom? There was glass everywhere!"

Lizzie gasped in amazement. Mickey, unknowingly, had just given her incontrovertible evidence that she hadn't been dreaming. Not that she didn't believe it was real, but to have actual proof that she and Fred had been together made her all that more anxious to get back to him. She smiled at Mickey. "I could tell you, but you wouldn't believe me."

"Try me."

She shook her head. "Maybe some day." She certainly didn't need everyone thinking she was nuts right now. "So, Natalie's getting big," she said, changing the subject.

Mickey grinned. "Yeah, I know. I can't believe she'll be seven this winter. I remember when I was that young. It doesn't seem that long ago," he mused. "She's crazy about you, you know."

"She's a sweet kid," said Lizzie, smiling.

"Yes, she is. She's not the only one who's crazy about you, though." He stepped closer to her and before Lizzie could move back, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her full on the lips. She turned her head to the side, breaking the kiss and moved back, out of his arms. She scrambled for something to say that wouldn't sound horribly cold. "I'm sorry, Mickey," was all she could think of.

Even in the moonlight she could tell his embarrassment from his body language. "No, Lizzie, I'm sorry," he said, quickly. "I just...I thought there was something between us... At least there seemed to be before your accident," he added quietly.

She winced. Yes, before her accident there did seem to be something between them, but today was a lifetime removed from the status quo of three weeks ago. Three weeks ago, she didn't know the things about Fred that would lead her to fall in love with her former imaginary friend. As patient and understanding as Mickey was, she thought that would be a bit too much for him to handle. "I'm truly sorry, Mickey. Things have...changed since then."

"What could have possibly changed?" he asked, confused. "You were asleep!"

She sighed, couldn't he just drop it? "Let's just say I had a revelation while I was sleeping. Listen, I'm really sorry, Mickey," she said, hoping she sounded like she meant it.

"Yeah, okay, Lizzie." He sounded defeated. "I'll see you later."

They turned their separate ways and walked away.

The next day at breakfast, Natalie told her dad the story that Lizzie had told her about Fred. (Complete with her own explanations about how Drop Dead Fred wasn't her imaginary friend anymore because he'd had to go and help Lizzie find her way home and how Lizzie had to find a magic mirror to take her back to him so they could live happily ever after.) Mickey wasn't amused. He thought about the things Lizzie had mumbled through her sleep the long nights that he'd sat with her before and after the doctor's had put her in the coma. Things began to fit together in his mind, but he didn't like the picture they made. He didn't like it one bit.

Lizzie ended up taking the bus and going to her doctor's appointment alone the next morning. Her mother had been on the phone when she came downstairs, listening intently to someone on the other end of the line, and had interrupted the caller just long enough to hand her the address of the doctor and bus fare. Lizzie found her behavior exceedingly odd, but wasn't about to complain. Even a few hours without her mother was better than nothing. She picked a seat near the back of the bus and sat down, resting her head against the window.

["Hey, what are you up to?"]

["Guard duty."]

["Guard duty? What are you guarding?"]

["Not much at the moment, but there always has to be someone stationed at Marmoreal's front gate so I thought I'd earn my keep."]

She grinned, trying to imagine Fred having to stand in one place for more than 30 seconds. ["Sounds boring."]

["It is. What are you doing?"]

["Going to the doctor."]

["Which one? It's not the green pill doctor is it?"] he asked, nervously.

["No, silly, just the regular one, to take the cast off my arm... My mom was acting weird this morning."]

["I'd be more surprised if she was acting normal. Why, what did she do?"]

["She was on the phone and then just handed me bus fare and shuffled me out the door without her. You know my mom, that's not normal. It kinda gave me the creeps."]

Fred did know her mother. Well enough to know that Polly Cronin sending her daughter off on the bus, (which her mother considered to be beneath herself to set foot on), to the doctor no less (where she would normally try to take charge over Lizzie's welfare), was out of character for her.

["You need to be careful, Lizzie. You didn't tell anyone that you're having conversations in your head with Drop Dead Fred, did you?"]

["Of course not, I don't want to get sent to the loony bin!"]

["You know they stick electrodes in your brain there and fry them like eggs."]

She laughed, causing the person across the aisle from her look over. ["I don't think they do that anymore. I think now days you have a choice of sedation or 'lobotomization'."]

["I don't think that's a real word, but I like it,"] he said, amused.

["Thanks, I made it up myself."]

There was a pause. ["Lizzie..."] Fred's tone changed and Lizzie knew the next thing he said wouldn't be joking.

["Yes?"]

["I miss you."] He couldn't even describe how much his heart ached for her.

She sighed. ["I miss you, too."]

Fred glanced up to see his brother, Tarrant, walking towards him. Neither said anything, Tarrant merely came and stood beside him and crossed his arms, looking off into the distance beyond the castle. Fred sighed, he might as well get it over with.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

His brother looked at him out of the corner of his eye. "Tha's a pretty piss poor apology, but I s'pose I should feel lucky you're here to be tellin' me it at all."

"Want me t' take it back?"

"Nay, tha's fine."

Both stood, unspeaking, for a moment until Fred asked, "What was in the red vial?"

"Wha' d'ya' mean?"

"You know what I mean. The red bottle ya had with ya. What was it?"

Tarrant smiled. "Water."

"Figures."

A companionable silence fell over the brothers, together watching the traders make their way up the long road from the Tulgey Wood into Marmoreal.

She waited impatiently as the saw cut through the layers of plaster surrounding her arm and elbow. Finally the doctor broke away the cast to reveal a limb in much need of exercise and sunlight. That wasn't what Lizzie was interested in, though. She looked at her left hand...and wasn't disappointed. There on her ring finger was not a ring, but the shadow of the ring she wore somewhere in another place and time. A dark brown discoloration in her skin encircled the finger. The doctor noticed it as well.

"That's odd, " he said, looking at her hand closely. "Did you have a ring on when you were in your accident?"

"No, I didn't."

"Hmm..." He shrugged, confused. "Well, sometimes people bruise in strange places and patterns. I'm sure it's harmless."

"I think it's pretty neat," she said, examining it.

Lizzie took the bus back to her mother's house, the smile on her face never dimming.

[Hey, guess what?] she thought as she walked the block home from the bus stop.

[What?]

[The ring...you can tell where it is. There's a brown shadow of it around my finger.]

[Really? I guess that explains why you can still hear me.]

[The doctor thought it was a bruise.]

[Isn't that a weird place for a bruise?]

[I don't think he knew what to make of it otherwise. He seemed a little perplexed.]

Fred laughed. [Hurry up and find a mirror so you can perplex them even more.]

[I'm trying, I'm...,] she groaned, Mickey was one her mother's porch swing. [Crap.]

[What? What's wrong?]

Lizzie sighed. ["Mickey's waiting to talk to me."]

["Why?"] Fred asked irritably.

["Probably because I told him to 'piss off' last night. In not so many words."]

["That's my girl! Wish I could have been there."]

["I'm sure if you had been, he wouldn't be talking to me today."] He probably wouldn't be talking at all, she thought to herself. As she neared the porch, she noticed that Mickey didn't get up as he normally would have. In fact, he looked rather...upset. It made her nervous.

["Kick him for me."]

["Hush, he looks...mad. That's odd."]

Mickey looked up at her, serious and unsmiling. "Have a seat...please," he said indicating the swing.

Lizzie looked at him, confused. She knew she'd embarrassed him last night, but he certainly hadn't seemed angry about it. She felt an urge to just run off the porch and never come back. "I think I'll stand," she said. "What's this about?"

"It's about Natalie." He looked up at her with a seriousness she'd never seen him have before. "You told her a very interesting story last night."

It was Lizzie's turn to be thrown for a loop. That was the last thing she'd ever thought about...Natalie retelling her fairytale about Fred to Mickey. She wished she had a way of finding out exactly what she'd said. She decided to be obscure. "Oh yeah? Which one?"

She jumped as he slammed his fist down on the seat of the swing. "Damn it, Lizzie – don't play ignorant with me. You know perfectly well what you told my daughter."

"I just told her a story, Mickey," she said, evenly. She stared him down, unwilling to show him just how nervous he was making her.

He stood up and she took a step back from him. "You know, I kept thinking all last night about what you said - about how something changed between us while you were sleeping. Then this morning, Natalie explained it all for me," His eyes fixed on her, as cold as steel. "This is about those crazy dreams you kept having, isn't it? This is about Fred."

Lizzie's heart jumped, and her blood seemed to turn to ice in her veins. "What are you talking about?" she whispered.

"The dreams, Lizzie, before you woke up in the hospital. You kept rattling on and on about Fred and how much you loved him," he practically spat the word out. "I ought to know what you were dreaming, I heard it every night for two weeks!"

Lizzie was done talking. "I've got to go, Mickey. My mom's going to be wondering where I am." She turned and walked towards the door.

"You think it's real, don't you?" he called after her. She turned back to look at him, but said nothing. "That's why you were looking for mirrors, wasn't it?" He took a deep breath and said in a much calmer, almost saddened voice, "It wasn't, Lizzie. The doctor told us that patients in induced comas can have dreams that are so vivid that they think they were real when they wake up. They can even hear voices in their head."

"I wasn't just a dream, Mickey. I was here and nobody could see me. Not your sister, not my mother, nobody – only Fred. The mirrors at my apartment – I broke one because it freaked me out that I didn't make a reflection, and Fred broke the other one before I looked into it. That's why there was glass everywhere." She held up her left hand. "This isn't a bruise – it's a shadow of what is really there, somewhere."

Mickey shook his head, unwilling to accept any proof that what she was saying was actually true. "It's not real! You've taken things that have happened and twisted them together into some bizarre fairy tale."

Lizzie stared intensely at him a moment and said quietly, "I don't care what you or anyone else thinks. If I'm crazy, I'd rather be crazy and love him and believe he loves me than be sane and know it wasn't real."

"Look, Lizzie, I admit, there were a lot of weird things that happened when you were a kid that can't be explained unless Fred was real, at least on some level, but if what you're saying is true, that means he knew you when you were a child. Do you know how creepy that sounds?"

She supposed she understood how he could think that was strange. "He's actually younger than I am now," she said, softly, more to herself than Mickey, "he's just lived a lot longer."

"I really think you need to tell the doctor about all of this," he pressed. "It isn't normal. You need to get some help."

She laughed and shook her head. "You may think I'm crazy, but I'm not going out of my way to make everyone else think I am, too. I'm happy, Mickey, can't you just leave it at that?"

He stared quietly at her, and Lizzie thought he was probably weighing the choice of her sanity versus her happiness – and perhaps his happiness. "You'd better go inside," he said, finally.

"Yeah..." She turned the knob and entered her mother's house. Mickey followed her in and shut the door, locking it behind them. Her heart raced frantically. In the foyer stood her mother, Dr. Ryland, and four nurses in white scrubs. One was the freaky, black-belt nurse she remembered from her last encounter with the doctor with the green pills.

"What's going on?" she whispered.

["Lizzie, what's going on?"]

Frightened tears began to form in her eyes. "What's going on?" she cried to her mother.

["Lizzie! Talk to me! What's wrong? What's happening?"] Fred could feel her trembling with fear.

Polly Cronin looked at her stoically. "We've been worried about you for quite a while, Elizabeth. When Mickey called this morning and told me about the crazy things you told his daughter and the trips you've been taking looking for magic mirrors, I knew something had to be done about it."

Lizzie spun around, facing Mickey. "You told my mother?" She advanced on him angrily, fire in her eyes. "You bastard!" she screamed. "I can't believe you told my freaking crazy mother about him!" She slapped him - hard. Two of the nurses came up behind her and grabbed her arms, restraining her.

Fred was beside himself with worry. Why wasn't she answering him? A new emotion now flew through her to him – betrayal. ["Lizzie,"] he pleaded, ["please - talk to me!"]

["Mickey told her! The bastard told my moth-..."]

That was as far as she got. Dr. Ryland jabbed a syringe of Haldol in her carotid artery and pressed the plunger down. Lizzie collapsed, unconscious, into the nurses arms.

In Fred's mind, the part that was Lizzie's fell silent.

A/N: About Lizzie and Fred's ages – I figure Lizzie was about seven when Fred got shut up in the jack-in-the-box and then the movie says '21 years later', so that would put her around 28. Freddie was 24 on Horunvendush day and only spent about a year mortal after that, so that would put him physically at around 25-26, even through he's lived much longer. In reality, he should be around 40 if he hadn't lost the 15 years that he was gone from Underland. That would fit with why Tarrant is so much older in the movie, even though I've put him only 2 years older than Freddie growing up. That's how Lizzie ends up being physically older than Fred.