I woke up in a familiar bed and there was peace. A few moments of blissful peace before the memories rushed back and my heart dropped. My breaths came shorter and I nearly fell from the bunk in my struggle for peace. I needed fresh air, I needed space, I needed to forget.

It was dark and nothing was moving. There was a cruel stillness and tranquility, like the gods were mocking the guilt and sadness eating at my bones. I felt weak as I stumbled blindly through the black, trying not to feel like the blanket of sky above was choking me.

Each dreaded moment from the day before weighed on me like for each one a different organ had been petrified into stone.

All I could do was keep walking, lost somewhere deep within myself.

"Kerri!" Came a hiss from behind me. I spun around to a hand on my shoulder to see Dakota's moonlit face. Bags were heavy under his eyes and his cheeks were as red as his mouth with silent tears that he scrubbed away.

"Hi." I managed a tiny smile, sure my face was just as gaunt and ravaged.

"You look like Pluto." He told me, falling in step beside me.

"You don't look much better." I told him honestly.

We walked in an awkward silence and I felt the pain pull us both into its grasp.

"This sucks." His thoughts echoed mine.

"I just... I can't... They're gone." I said, my breath rattling in my throat. There was a finality in saying it out loud. A finality that made my knees threaten to buckle.

Dakota pulled me off the path. "Come on," he said, "let's go do something less depressing."

---

I winced as the burning liquid raced down my throat. "That is not KoolAid."

Dakota shrugged and took back the flask to take a swig of his own. "Maybe it'll help us forget."

He offered me another drink and I shook my head. "I don't want to forget. I don't want to remember either, but somehow forgetting seems worse. I don't want to forget that they were my friends, I don't want to forget the way they talked and smiled or their kindness or how they helped me to be a better person. If I... If I left the way they did, then I wouldn't want to be forgotten, because then it would all seem like a waste, you know? I mean, one day I will forget or I will leave and join them but I don't want that to happen right now. They deserve to be remembered and I owe it to them to remember."

Dakota flipped of the lid of the flask and tipped the rest of the liquor into the grass. I raised an eyebrow in question.

"You're right." He said, his tongue already slurring with the influence of his last gulps.

I sighed and lay back in the springy grass of Temple Hill. "This doesn't feel real." The faint stars spun above us as Dakota joined me lying down.

"It's a nightmare we can't wake from." He sighed.

The edges of everything was blurry and I tipped my head over to look at him, he was already looking at me.

"We're still alive." I told him.

"We are?" He asked.

I nodded, pushing myself closer to kiss him hard. He pulled me closer but I pulled away.

"I'm sorry," I told him, "I just needed to check that this was real and not just a dream."

He smiled knowingly. "So what's the verdict?"

"Definitely a dream." I said. Nothing would feel this blurry, this... detached in real life, would it? Weren't kisses meant to make you feel something? I felt nothing.

I shivered and Dakota pulled me into the warmth of his body as I struggled to talk through a yawn. "Don't yet... any ideas... just friends..." Was all I managed before my weighted organs pulled me with them into the murky depths of a nightmare.

Notes

This is not a happy chapter but don't worry, I'll get to the brighter stuff soon. I'm also sorry for the inclusion of alcoholic themes in this chapter, this is simply my representation of bad ways to deal with grief, I'll get to some better ways soon. Don't get too hung up about that if you don't condone that sort of behaviour because I don't either.
Despite the dreariness of this chapter, remember to smile and don't let the Octavian's in life get you down! :)

-Phoebe :)