I sat up against the cell wall with Sam by my side. She was lazily picking at the sandwich that sat between us and, though I had tried a taste when she had offered me one, I couldn't make myself eat. I was too focused on the heat I could feel from Sam. I was so tempted to reach out and grab her; I wanted to feel her heartbeat and her chest rise and fall with every breath. I wanted to touch her and remind myself that alive really did exist. My best friend was dead; my sister was dead. I wanted them back because there was so much that I hadn't said to them yet. There was so much that they hadn't said to me yet … like the fact that they were dating.

It hurt that they hadn't told me and I couldn't understand why they hadn't. Did they think that I wouldn't be okay with it? I would have been. I was okay with it, knowing now. There was no one on this Earth that I thought was good enough for my big sister. I thought the same thing about my best friend, though. I didn't think there was a woman out there who deserved Tucker. It was almost … almost right that they ended up together. And, it would have been easy to do the whole obligatory scaring-my-sister's-boyfriend routine with Tucker who knew better than anyone else.

There were only two things about Tucker and Jazz being together that bothered me. The first was that the girl Tucker had slept with had been Jazz. Jazz having a sex life was fine – but my being aware of Jazz's sex life was not. The second thing was that they hadn't been able to tell me. For all I knew, Elliot had just said it to fuck with me.

I fanned the pictures in my hand, staring down at the plain white backs. I hadn't looked at them yet. I was so unsure of what they could be that I was afraid to. Would they show me the Jazz and the Tucker that I wanted to remember? Or would they show me the Jazz and the Tucker that Vlad wanted me to remember?

I took a deep breath and glanced at Sam. She was looking off into the distance, lost in her own thoughts. I wondered if she knew the truth about Tuck and Jazz, since she had been friends with both of them. I wondered if they had been able to confide in her like they hadn't in me.

Breaking the silence of the last few hours, I whispered to her, "What he said about Tucker and Jazz … Was it true? Were they seeing each other?"

Sam looked at me, surprised at my voice. I could see her metaphorically putting her kid gloves on before she answered me. "Yeah. I found out about it after I returned to Amity. They wanted to tell you, but they didn't know how, especially in the aftermath of our break-up."

That hurt to hear. It wasn't about not trusting me. They hadn't told me because they were protecting me. There were so many things that I wondered about; so many answers that I would never get from the two of them.

"I … Were they happy together, Sam?" It was the answer I needed the most and she had to have it. I didn't know what I would do if she wasn't able to answer me. "That … That's all the really matters now."

I swallowed, feeling like I was about to cry.

"Yeah. They really loved each other. I can promise you that," Sam assured me.

Love. Jazz and Tucker had been in love.

"Good." What more could I have asked for? I looked at the photos in my hand and played with them. I glanced at Sam and asked, "Will you look with me?"

Sam nodded and then she moved her sandwich so that she could crawl closer to me. I inched nearer to her and my knee grazed hers. Where I sighed at the human contact, Sam shoved me away.

"Careful," she said and I waited for another lecture about touching her. "You're far too cold for that."

Both in body and heart.

"Right, sorry," I whispered.

I looked back down at the pictures in my hands. The only things that I would have to hang onto Jazz and Tucker in here; really, the only link I had to the outside world.

"Ready?"

No. I'd never be ready for this. I didn't answer her. Instead, I just flipped the picture over. A whine exploded from my throat as I took in the image of Jazz. Or what was supposed to be Jazz, anyway. That lifeless, destroyed body lying in a hospital bed was not my sister. She had tubes attached everywhere on her body. Her bruises had turned yellow, making her look sickly. I could only imagine how I would have teased her, if things had gone better ("I had no idea you were auditioning for The Simpsons"). I wanted to think about that; about how life would have gone if she had woken up or never been attacked at all, but my brain wouldn't let me shy away from reality.

My thumb stretched out over her face but I was scared to touch the photograph, as if I would accidentally mar or erase her, I wouldn't have been able to handle it if I had done that. I felt like I should say something to her, as if she could still hear me. "Jazz, I'm so fuckin' sorry. I should have been a better brother."

Likely, she already knew both of these things. Jazz was always smart like that.

I was grateful as Sam turned to the next picture. I couldn't bring myself to look away from Jazz but I didn't want to look at her like this anymore either. I didn't want to see her in the hospital. I wanted to remember her as a kid, bossing me around; as a teenager, standing by my side when I thought that she would reject me; as my sister.

The next picture was her headstone and I swear to fuck that my heart stopped. My eyes slipped across her full name, only to catch on the epitaph: If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever. I felt my heart break at the words and I forced myself to move passed them, onto her birth date and then to the day she had died: August 22nd.

"Holy fuck."

I couldn't look at this anymore. I moved onto the next picture and it didn't get any easier from there. Just seeing my parent's faces would have been enough to break me, but they were standing by Jazz's closed coffin. I seized that picture in both hands and I pulled it close to me, taking in every aspect of their faces. I had done this. I had put this pain on their faces by not being enough. I badly wanted to tell them that I was sorry, but I would never get that chance. I wondered if they would even get the chance to bury me or if I would just disappear completely.

I put the picture down. Like with Jazz, I didn't want to remember them in mourning. I wanted to remember them happier. I picked up the next one and, just as quickly, put it aside. It was a picture of Jazz's mourners, all of them crowded into church pews. I could see my parents, sitting at the forefront of the picture and Vlad and Elliot were sitting next to them. Although I knew Vlad was around my parents, actually seeing him next to them made me angrier than I could believe. Just as I was setting the picture down in the pile we'd already looked at, Sam snatched it from me. I whipped my head around to glare at her – why, of all pictures, did she want to look at this one?

But then she bent the picture, hiding Vlad and Elliot, and I saw who she was looking at. Her parents had gone to Jazz's funeral. Sam clutched the picture to her chest, tears slipping down her cheeks. She missed her parent as much as I missed mine. Slowly, so as not to startle her and to give her time to shake me off, I put my hand on her arm to soothe her; to remind us both that we were not alone.

"It's not fair. None of this is," she sobbed.

Of course it fucking wasn't. The next picture I looked at was Jazz in her coffin. The world was so far from fucking fair that I couldn't even bring myself to say anything. I put the picture of Jazz in her coffin away. I couldn't stand to see her surrounded by white satin, the collar of a dress she never would have worn in life visible around her neck. The next picture was of her death certificate, which I didn't fucking need to see. How many times did Vlad have to rub what had happened in my face? One last time, at least, as I looked at a picture of Mom and Dad, bent over Jazz's hospital bed, their hands twined together. At least they had each other. They were always each other's strength.

I didn't think the next batch of pictures could hurt more, but they did. Seeing the end of Jazz's death was painful but seeing her life was nearly enough to do me in, because she would never laugh again; would never hug me again; would never tease our parents again. The first picture was of my high school graduation. I don't think anyone was more proud of me than Jazz was, because she knew how hard it had been for me to get here; had helped me in my struggle as much as she could. I had one arm around her shoulders as we stood on the steps of Casper, Mom and Dad standing behind me, holding onto my shoulders. That day, we had gone out for an expensive dinner and then, when we had gotten home, they'd even let me drink champagne (which was not all that it was cracked up to be, but no worse than the cheap beer that I had choked down during parties).

The next picture in the pile I had never seen before. I was sure that it had been snagged from my house, from one of my parent's haphazardly shoved together photo albums that I'd never bothered to look through. It was taken right after I was born. Jazz was settled in one of the awkward hospital chairs, looking dwarfed by it. But even her tiny size dwarfed my newborn one. I was probably only a day or so old in the picture. She was smiling down at me, holding me in her toddler arms. I was asleep. Even then I probably knew that she would never let me down.

The next photo was from when I was about ten years old. For once, Mom and Dad had decided that we were going to get a professional family photo taken. Mom had painstakingly coordinated our outfits so that we were all in matching shades of green. Jazz had teased Mom for being neurotic, which I had found funny considering how anal my sister had been all of her life. Despite how we had all protested the matching outfits and the stiff photography session, Mom had been happy with the results. Even months later when she finally noticed the orange jumpsuit peeking out from Dad's green turtleneck.

The next picture was from the Christmas before last. Dad always handed out Santa hats as soon as we walked down the stairs so it wasn't surprising that Jazz and I were both wearing one in the picture. We were sitting in front of the tree, opened gifts sitting by our sides. While we opened our gifts we always threw our wrapping paper at one another. That Christmas, Jazz had gone a step above that and had covered me in tinsel; I'd retaliated at once, covering her in the glittering decoration. As a result of our war, we were both covered in paper and sparkles although we were smiling from ear to ear.

I nearly smiled at the memory and I was half-looking forward to the next picture; the next happy memory. I didn't get one. Instead, it was an image that I had desperately been trying to forget: Jazz, lying in the street, after her attack. I threw the photo to the ground and raced to our toilet hole, throwing up inside. After that bastard had beaten her, he had stopped to take a picture, waiting for the day that he could torture me with it. I stayed there, my head hanging down, tears dripping from my face, until I heard Sam's voice.

"Tucker!"

My tears fell harder at her tone. If Tucker looked anything like Jazz, I wasn't ready to see him. But I had to. I took a few deep breaths, wiped my eyes and I crept back to Sam's side.

"Holy mother of fuck!"

I wasn't ready for that. No, no, no. I wasn't ready to see Tucker trapped in his hospital bed, bright red cuts covering his face. I looked away and reached for the next one, wanting to flip through the hospital ones as quickly as possible to get to the better memories. The next one was his headstone. I couldn't make myself look at it. Tucker wasn't buried under it. He couldn't be.

"Oh my God!" Sam exclaimed.

"What?"

Sam pointed at the date on Tucker's headstone. "He died on October 1st."

October. It was already October. My mind rejected the idea. It couldn't be October. That meant … that meant we had been in here … I stopped the mental calculation before I could finish it. It meant we'd been in here far too long.

"We're never getting out!" Desperation filled Sam's cry and while I wanted to break down with her, I couldn't. I had to be strong.

"Yes, we are. We're going to be okay, Sam." Well, she was going to be okay. "Vlad can't get away with everything. He's going to pay for everything he's done."

I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to guarantee that, but I knew it was going to happen. Karma, at the very least, was going to fuck Vlad.

"But why is he doing all of this? Why go to such extreme lengths? What is it he wants?" Sam looked at me, her large eyes begging for answers that I didn't have.

"I have no idea," I said, and it pained me to say it. If I knew the answers to those questions, maybe I could have rewritten history. "But he will pay."

The next picture was of Tucker's parents. I wondered how they were doing. Tucker was their only child; their pride and joy. They had poured all of their love into Tucker to make sure that he was the best person he could be. I didn't think they would ever recover from losing Tucker. None of us would. The picture after was his funeral crowd. I spotted my parents sitting behind Tucker's. Mr. and Mrs. Foley had always found my parents strange but, as close as Tucker and I were, they had grown to like Mom and Dad. At the forefront of the picture was Tucker's closed coffin. My eyes locked onto the glossy black lid. Nothing I could do would revive him, but I could take revenge for this in his place.

Sam's trembling hands picked up the next picture. This time it was a picture of Tucker in his coffin. His facial wounds had either been healed or covered up, but this face looked even less like Tucker than the boy in the hospital bed had. He didn't look like my best friend.

I reached for the next picture and promptly put it to the side. I felt Sam's gaze on me and explained, "Death certificate."

Sam picked up the next picture, and I felt a small breath of relief. We had finally moved onto the happier memories. It was a photo of Tucker and Jazz. He was smiling wildly down at Jazz, who he had just scooped up against his chest. Seeing the way he was looking at her, the way she was looking at him, I could see that they were in love. It was like nothing else in the room existed … even me, because I had been the one who had taken this picture. We had gone to Tucker's after a venture to the library, trying to see if we could discover who the Box Ghost had been in life. Jazz had been picking on Tuck, for whatever reason. Tucker had said something like, "If you weren't Danny's sister, you'd be dead right now". And I'd told him that, as long as she didn't actually die, he could feel free to enact revenge. He'd grabbed Jazz then, and swung her up into his arms like she was in the picture. I had snapped the picture on a whim, right before he had hung her upside down, long enough for her face to turn redder than her hair. How had I missed it? How had I missed the fact that my sister and my best friend were flirting; had moved beyond flirting to a full-fledged relationship?

"I would have loved to have been able to be there for them," I revealed to Sam. I would have. I would have supported them. "I want … I want to go back."

I put the picture down, picking up the next one, thinking that all I wanted was the chance to make everything right.

Sam was looking down at the picture in my hands, one where Mr. and Mrs. Foley were standing next to Tucker's hospital bed, one on each side, each holding one of their son's hands. "We all want to go back."

I put the picture down and reached for the next one. "Yeah. Going back to about here would be nice."

It was a first day of school picture, one that my mother still insisted on taking even though Tucker and I were teenagers now and didn't want anything to do with the picture. In it, we were about fourteen years old. Tucker had one of his stupid red berets on his head (it had been his trademark until we were about fifteen), one that clashed with his green pants and long-sleeved yellow shirts. He was still wearing his awkwardly shaped geek glasses – before that school year was out he had traded them in for a cooler style. We were standing next to each other, half-glaring in the direction of my mother.

"What's so special about here?" Sam wondered aloud.

I couldn't help but look at her. Was she asking out of politeness or did she really care? Sam nodded and I replied seriously. "This was taken just before we lost our geek status. This is from when it was just the two of us. There was no Paullina to fuck around with me. There was no Dash that I felt I needed to impress. I wasn't trying so damn hard to retain a status I didn't even need. We would have just been talking about the popular life like it was glamorous, back before we realized it was a fuck load of work that would cost us our personalities; our friendship; and then so much more. If I could go back there, to that time, knowing what I did now, so many things would be different."

"Like what?"

I took a moment to think about my answer, wanting to give her something genuine.

"I would be so much smarter. I mean, I am so far beyond a fucking idiot it's probably really hard to imagine me holding on to any intelligence, but bear with me. I would know to stay away from the popular crowd; that they didn't mean anything. If Tucker and I were still losers when you came to Amity, we would have all been able to become friends the right way. And our relationship would have progressed the right way; I would know not to hurt you because you are worth so much more than anything I could ever offer you. I wouldn't have hurt Mikey, who I cast aside far before I realized I was even doing so. And Jazz and Tucker would still be alive because I wouldn't have learned how to be an unforgiving, conceited asshole. In short, everything would have gone right for me if I had realized that Paullina and her crew would never really be there for me and that they weren't worth what I thought they were." I laughed, although it was far from a happy sound. "It's all too hard."

I picked up the next picture, trying not to let her see that I was clearing tears off my face. Once I saw the next image, though, another few tears slipped down my face and a laugh exploded out of my mouth.

"Here. Talk about little dorks."

I passed her the picture and she laughed as well.

This picture was taken when we were eleven. It was the first time I had let Tucker choose my Halloween costume and it had been the last. He had decided that we should have a two-piece partner costume – a horse. He had claimed the head for his own, while I got to be the ass end of it. Inside of the costume had been sweaty and disgusting, not to mention the fact that I had been far too close to Tucker's butt while trapped inside. And the thing was still haunting me, to this day.

"The Christmas after that Halloween, I gave him the ass end for a present."

"And what did he do?" Sam asked, giggling at me.

"He gave it back to me for my birthday." I hadn't been expecting it although, when I had unwrapped it, I hadn't really been surprised either.

"And did you admit defeat?"

Like Danny Fenton would admit defeat, I snarled – a little snottily – in my head.

Aloud, I said, "Of course not. He just got it back for his eighteenth. I was expecting to see it again in December."

"Boys." Sam said the word as if it were a curse. She reached for the next picture, gasping at the picture before I could see it. Immediately, I was worried about the horror it would hold, but when I looked at the picture, I realized that Sam was horrified by it for an entirely different reason than I expected.

Phantom was in the picture. I only had to take a quick glance at it – taking in my young face, Tucker's red beret, Ember's eyes as he sucked her into the container, and one of Jazz's black flats in the bottom corner – to place the scene. I explained it to Sam, because it was easier to talk to her than to keep my thoughts locked inside.

"About eight months after I got my powers. You can tell because it's Jazz taking the photo." I pointed to her shoe. "And she didn't find out until about then. Of course, when she did find out, she was right there next to me, completely supporting me."

I put the picture to the side and picked up the very last photo of our small pile. I knew what was on the other side. If Elliot had taken a picture of Jazz after beating her, Vlad would have done the same thing to Tucker. I had been unconscious when Vlad had finished his attack and I had no idea how bad it would be. I just knew that it would be bad.

"I have to see it," I said, although I was talking to myself more than I was to Sam.

Still, she answered me. "I understand."

I took a deep breath, trying to prepare myself for what I was about to see, although I knew that it was impossible to do so. I turned the picture over quickly. Internally, I screamed at the image, in too much pain to even cry aloud.

Tucker's face was completely gone. His face was swollen beyond recognition and there was a layer of blood over his dark skin. Looking at him, splayed at an awkward angle on Vlad's floor, I wondered how he had managed to live until October and I was almost sorry that he had. If he was going to die anyway, I was sorry that he had been forced to hold on for so long and that he had to live with that pain, because looking at his face, I could see his agony.

I wished that I could save him from it and return him to the person he had been: eleven, beaming and sweat-soaked, dressed as a horse's head; fourteen, in a red beret and nerd glasses; eighteen and happy, where his biggest worry was about how he was going to tell his best friend that he had fallen in love with his best friend's sister.

Tucker, Jazz, I'm so fucking sorry.

I don't own anything recognizable. Thanks to my fantastic betas: Forever Sky.

~TLL~