Chapter Eighteen

~ Death the Kid ~

"No!" She exclaimed, tilting her head in laughter. "Stephen King is so much better than James Herbert!"

I shook my head in disagreement. "You're wrong."

"I am not." She spoke sharply.

"Are too."

"Am not!"

My breath was stripped slowly from its consumption inside my lungs. Everything that once sat perfectly inside me - until the cue of my rage - longed to reach out to her. Like it wanted to feel the existence of her skin, without the shield of my fingertips.

I inhaled deeply, trying to catch it. "Well, they are both extremely different writers."

"Oh yeah," she raised an eyebrow. "Give me one valid reason."

"I can give you two..."

She suddenly looked more eager, and drawn towards my lips with every word that escaped them.

"Reason one being that Stephen wrote a lot more horror than James."

She smiled, lightly. But still the room around us lit like the world was on fire - despite the miserable weather.

I continued, "and two being that James Herbert is better."

Her tiny palm stung as it collided with my shoulder.

~o~0~o~

She lay there beautifully. Her feet pressed against the headboard of the bed, her knees tapping each other rapidly like gravity existed deep within her skin. That's possibly why I had to fight the urge to keep my hands off her.

A tiny paper crane sat softly on the back of her fingers. It's paper wings casting dark and delicate shadows across her face as she held it above her. Her eyes glistening like wildfire as she watched it flutter with every breath that brushed against it.

"It's beautiful isn't it?" She asked, catching it's wings between her fingers.

But in all honesty - I could think of something that outdid every ounce of it's existing beauty.

I smiled, "yeah."

"Do you know who isn't beautiful?"

She looked towards me, her smiling eyes glimmering as they locked themselves with my own.

I looked away as I felt the heat run to my cheeks. "Who?"

She giggled, "Liz."

My laughter couldn't be contained. I threw my hand against my lips to catch it in my palm, but it still remained to echo throughout the room I sat in.

She too giggled as if innocence were a thing that existed only inside her veins. Like the purpose of it's existence was to define her, and her only.

And the sound she created within that exact moment - I honestly wished it could've been something to experience for an entire lifetime.

Her eyes, that smile. They made me want to hold her for a lifetime.

"Can I ask you a question?"

Her smile was gone. Replaced by an expression that was neither happy or sad, but of something that settled nervously in between.

"Sure," I stammered. "Anything."

She looked away from me, to the paper cranes that flapped between the blinds. Demanding their release from the metal that attempted to crush them into nothing.

She breathed deeply. "How do you not get depressed in a world, that expects so much from a little."

Real birds chirped from the window outside. Humming their hearts out, and making the most out of whatever time they had left, in this consuming world.

"I..."

She watched me as I hesitated. Eager for the answer that had formed inside my head and tried to climb it's way from between my lips.

It was my turn to breathe deep. "I try to accept the fact that I'm nothing."

"What?" She frowned. "I don't understand."

My DC's tapped against the ground. Syncing in with the birds that longed for me to join them, in the world where nothing cared.

"I tell myself, that no matter how hard I try, no matter what I do, I'll never be able to change the way society sees me."

She breathed again. But this time, slower.

I continued, "how I'm just a boy with the anger issues, the one who can't control their temper."

She looked so, so beautiful.

"But, I can change the way I see myself..."

I wanted her.

"And I decided, to see myself as nothing."

I needed her.

I sighed deeply. "Everything's better that way."

Suddenly, before words could escape her lips the door was pushed open, scraping up the paper cranes that once rested lifelessly behind it.

"Hey," the ginger bobbed nurse smiled. "Visiting hours are over, but feel free to come back tomorrow."

My chest ached slightly, but still I nodded towards her, and pushed myself from the chair beside the bed.

The green eyed girl remained motionless, her eyes now wondering away from my existence all together, as if there was another world that called for her existence, one that offered her everything I couldn't.

I brushed her pale knuckles with my fingertips. "I'll be back tomorrow."

She remained silent, oblivious of my presence entirely. Looking out at that world that must of been everything she wanted, everything she needed.

"See ya..."

Starting for the door, I placed my hands in my back pockets. Smiling awkwardly towards the nurse as I began to step past her. That empty feeling in my chest throbbing at the disappearance of the green eyed girl as I walked away from the bed.

My wrist was grabbed.

"You..." Maka sniffed. "You're not nothing."

The emptiness was consumed by my racing heart.

Her grip loosened, "you will never be nothing."

After that - the journey home, was the loneliest thing, I have ever experienced.