A/N: Ok so I'm going to do something kind of weird right now. At the moment I'm kind of confused and stressed and I really need advice. I'm in my first year of sixth form (two extra years of high school instead of college) and since our school likes to get a head start on things I've already started on my university application.

The thing is, I've only just discovered my love of writing. So now I have two options, I could either choose the safe route and go study Spanish, or I could finish my second year and then go back a step to do an English course in college and get the grade I need to do a creative writing course in university. I don't know what to do and I'm so afraid that maybe I'm not good enough so I was wondering if you think that my writing is good enough.

I know it's a bit odd to be asking people I don't really know but I think I need a non-biased, truthful answer. Instead of the "I don't know" and shrug I get from my sister or the "Do whatever you want to do, it's your choice" I get from my mother.

So any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Ok I'm gonna shut up now so you can read this chapter lol.

"I'm sorry" the nurse said softly whilst inspecting my hand. "But no amount of blood or vamp healing powers can fix this, it looks as if all of the skin on this part of your arm is completely dead, every single layer. I've never seen anything like this before, you're lucky that it didn't reach the muscle or it would have to have been amputated."

"AMPUTATED?" Stan exclaimed as he stood beside me, holding my good hand as I sat on the hospital bed.

The first two times I had been in this room were quite happy occasions, the very first time was when I met Kenny and discovered that I had been uniquely marked and the second time I had just shared a kiss with Stan. But at that moment I felt numb. I felt like I had drifted outside of my body, or that I was a fly on the wall watching someone else go through all of this. If it wasn't for the fact that Craig's lifeless body was brought through here by principal Victoria and some of her helpers a few seconds ago I wouldn't even believe that all of today's events had actually happened.

"I said he's lucky that we don't have to amputate" the nurse corrected.

"Well then if you can't fix this and it's not completely lost then what can you do?" Stan had started to get both panicky and agitated by now. At least one of us was showing some sort of emotion though because I had been pretty much staring into space with what I guessed was a dazed look on my face for the past thirty minutes. I just couldn't get my head around it. He was there, two seconds ago, just happy to get control of his body back. Then the next second we had lost him again. How can something be given back to you then snatched away from you again in such a short amount of time?

Craig's words echoed through my mind:

"I don't have much time."

"I'm dying Tweek."

"I thought I would have more time."

He knew. Craig knew he was going to die. But... how?

"I want you to listen to me."

"I really, really need you to listen."

"You'll know when you hear it."

Why? Why did he want Tweek to listen? Could the twitchy blonde fledgling possibly be right? If so, even if Craig was still alive he was definitely not in his body anymore so where was he? Nah, he couldn't still be alive, it was impossible. But then why didn't his and Tweek's imprint break? More importantly what the heck was that weird black orb thing and why was it in Craig's body in the first place?

So many questions plagued my mind and I knew that I could get at least one of them answered by Tweek.

"Kyle?" Stan said, nudging me softly in an attempt to grab my attention.

But the trouble was that I felt so removed from everything that I just couldn't pull myself back to reality. I knew that reality was going to hurt, it was going to cut straight through my heart like a well sharpened knife and leave me broken. My dream like state numbness was far safer, I may have felt like every single nerve in my body had been disconnected so that I couldn't find any sense of feeling at all, but it was a lot better and easier than heartbreak. "Yeah?" I answered in a surprisingly emotionless voice.

"Um..." Stan replied, looking both taken aback and concerned about my sudden decent into non-responsiveness. "...We can go now, the nurse said that all she could do was wrap your wrist in a bandage so that no one could see it. It's all done now, we can go now, see?" he asked, lifting my now bandaged wrist up in front of my face.

"Oh, ok" I said, still sounding pretty detached.

We slowly and silently made our way back to the dorms. Stan attempted to drag me out of my trance by holding my hand, or wrapping his arms around me or placing small kisses on my cheek, but it was no use, I didn't really feel any of it because I had chosen to shut everything out.

...

When I opened the door to my room I saw Kenny and Butters curled up together on the bed. They were both zipped up inside Kenny's black hoodie and both sleeping. Kenny was sat on the bed with his back up against the wall with his arms wrapped around Butters protectively and Butters was curled up in his lap with his palms and face pressed against the darker blonde's chest. I could instantly tell that both fledglings had been crying from the puffy, red skin around their eyes and the long, shiny trails left by the tears that were there earlier.

I decided to leave them and went to stay in Tweek's room instead. I had already given Stan enough grief for one day and I felt like I needed to keep my promise to Craig, the promise I had made to take care of the paranoid blonde. So I gathered up my sheets and pillows and slowly tiptoed down the hall, gently pushing Tweek's door open. I felt a weak, ghost of a smile briefly touch my lips when I saw every single one of our cat's snuggled up around Tweek as he slept - in the end the exhaustion of crying, shouting and banging on the door had claimed his body and he had drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Then my eyes rested on the only other empty bed in the room... Craig's bed... and - to my discomfort - I slowly felt the feelings creep back into my system. I should have known I couldn't keep my guard up for long, I never could, I was just one of those emotional people, who go from one extreme to the other. The mattress still curved slightly from where Craig had been lying on it just a few hours ago, that's what got to me the most, it was like seeing something but not guite being able to reach it. He was there, he was there and it wasn't even that long ago. It all happened so fast. Too fast.

As I expected my heart was filled with a sharp, stabbing pain when I started to embrace reality once more.

I turned, storming right out of that room because I just couldn't take it. I couldn't be in that room, it wasn't right because that was Tweek and Craig's private space, that's where they first met. I couldn't go back to my room either as loneliness threatened to claim me and I just couldn't deal with feeling alone right then, so I did what my instincts told me to do... I knocked quitely and timidly on Stan's door.

Stan opened the door a second later, probably knowing that it was me. For a few moments we just stared at eachother. I felt so vulnerable, stood there in the hallway, clutching my blanket and pillow. I felt like a child, who'd had a nightmare and walked to thier older brother's room just so they could know that they weren't all alone in the world. Except Stan was so much more than someone I saw as a brother, he knew exactly how I was feeling and how to make the pain fade, even if he could never completely get rid of it. "S-Stan" I sniffed, desperately trying to hold back tears. "I n-need you, I don't want to be alo-" I couldn't even finish my sentence before I burst into tears, Stan catching me as I was about to drop to my knees and slowly sitting down with me instead. We were both kneeling on the floor, he hugged me as tight as he could and I sobbed into his shoulder so hard that no sound was coming out.

"Shhhh" Stan soothed as he smoothed a hand through my messy, red hair comfortingly. "I know. I know. It's ok Kyle."

"H-he was there- right there... a-and then he was just... gone" I choked out. "And the last real coversation I had with him, I... I told him that he was a pathetic asshole... What if he hated me Stan?"

"He didn't hate you Kyle, if he did he wouldn't have asked you to stay with him in his last few..." Stan paused to gather some composure. "...his last few minutes."

"My heart hurts Stan" I stated in a somewhat child-like way.

"I know Kyle, I know" Stan replied. "It's hard to lose someone, it's like when you're climbing up the stairs in the dark and you misjudge the top step and your foot falls through the air. You feel like you're just going to keep falling and the feeling of complete shock is never going to go away, but it get's better, trust me."

"H-how do you know all that?" I asked.

"Let's get out of the hallway first ok?" he replied, breaking the hug as he stood up and pulled me up too. I dragged my blanket and pillow into the room, perfectly comfortable with sleeping on the floor, but Stan pulled me down next to him in his bed. We were facing eachother and due to the fact that the beds really weren't the ideal size for two people, we were lying quite close to eachother too. Stan let out a shaky breath "Remember how I told you my room mate died?" he asked.

"Yeah" I answered tentatively, kind of dreading whatever he was going to say next.

"My room mate..." he took another calming breath. "... was my older sister" he admitted, bursting into silent tears himself.

"Stan, I had no idea. I'm so sorry" I said softly, cupping his face with my hands as he wrapped his arms around my waist and we both continued to cry. Then our lips were touching gently and our tears blended together and for the moment the world was a beautiful place again. We slowly broke apart, staring into eachother's eyes as Stan tightend his grip on my waist slightly. It's weird how being in Stan's arms was like finding a safe, warm, shelter in the middle of a storm. "I love you" I whispered.

"I love you too" he replied almost instantly, pressing his lips to mine again for a few seconds before we broke apart again.

"If you ever want to talk about it I'm here" I offered, he nodded thoughtfully. After a few more minutes of comfortable silence I asked "How come everyone in our group has suffered so much loss?"

"I don't know" Stan answered truthfully, tracing my mark with his fingertips like he did the other day. "But maybe that's why we all work so well together, maybe in a weird way we were all supposed to find eachother."

Before I could answer there was a loud knock on the door. I reluctantly moved away from Stan and crossed the room, opening the door to find Kenny and Butters stood in the hallway. Butters sniffing loudly as tears trailed down his face, he was resting his head on Kenny's shoulder. Kenny had his arm wrapped around the shorter blonde's shoulders, keeping him as close as possible. "F-fellas?" Butters whimpered. "Can we come in?"

...

About fifteen minutes later all six of us were squashed up together on Stan's bed, not wanting to spread out and use the other bed because we needed the comfort and reassurance that contact offered at that moment in time, besides all of the cats had taken up the other bed. We were sat with our backs against the wall, except for Butters, who was sat in Kenny's lap next to us with his arms around the taller fledgling's neck and his head resting against Kenny's shoulder. Wendy was sat on the end next to Tweek, she slung her arm around his shoulder comfortingly. Finally Stan and I were sat the other end and -not wanting to upset Tweek- we opted for just holding hands.

"Sorry -nngh- about your arm Kyle" Tweek appologized, playing with the hem of his shirt nervously.

"That's ok Tweek, you were upset and you don't know how to control your affinity yet" I replied with a reassuring smile, eventhough we were all still finding it hard not to cry, except for Tweek, who seemed oddly calm about this whole situation. "At least it didn't have to be amputated."

Ok, so Tweek did look like he was about to freak out after I'd used the word amputated but he was cut off when Butters blurted out "If I died would you guys miss me?"

"Of course we would" Kenny answered. "There would be no one around to cheer us all up with a dazzling smile and that cute, cheerfull voice you have."

"R-really?" Butters blushed.

"Yeah, and I wou-" Kenny was cut off as Butters suddenly just grabbed him and kissed him. The taller blonde's eyes widdened in sheer shock for a few moments before he began to kiss back. The kiss started to get a little bit too heated, especially with everyone else being sat right there next to them. So I kicked Kenny's leg -not with enough force to do actual damage, just enough to make him break the kiss.

"Dudes, if you want to make out go find another room" I stated.

Kenny smirked, obviously about to make an inapropriate comment, but this time it was Tweek's turn to interrupt "Craig's -gah- still not dead you guys."

Wendy started to argue "But Tweek he-"

"I know you all think I've lost my mind, but I'm telling you he is not dead" Tweek interjected deffiantly. "One of these days you're gonna realise that I'm telling the truth."

"Tweek what was that black orb thing that was inside him?" I asked.

"I'm -nngh- not telling you" Tweek answered.

"Why not?" I questioned.

"Because I don't like to talk about it, I don't like to think about what that thing was doing to Craig" he replied.

Ok so getting that answer may not be as easy as I thought.

A/N: I'd just like to point out that I had absolutely no sleep at all the night before I wrote this lol. So I'm basically hanging right now, I could fall asleep at any point lol.