I wrote this story as the scene where Pudge dies and then meets Alaska in the afterlife. Nothing belongs to me.

The ground beneath me is a hard and gray, damp with frigid water. I roll over onto my back and look up. There is a blanket of trees above me, green statues reaching for the sun. I sit up and find the source of the thundering noise in my ear. I am sitting on the concrete slab where me, Takumi, the Colonel, and Alaska would smoke and talk. I stand up, banging my head on the ripped lawn chair next to me as I clumsily rise.

"I didn't think you'd ever find me, Pudge." A voice slyly says behind me. I know who it is immediately.

"Alaska!" I gasp, turning. She is standing in front of me, a cigarette in her mouth. She holds a bottle of Strawberry Hill wine in her hand.

"Do you want a drink?" Alaska asks, already pouring me a cup. She sits down on one of the lawn chairs, and I settle in next to her. I take a sip of the pink liquid.

"Still tastes terrible," I say, referring to the wine.

"Still fulfills its purpose," Alaska says. "Here take this."

Alaska hands me a cigarette, and lights it while I grasp it between my thumb and pointer finger. I take a deep inhale of it, savoring the smoke. Smoking was never the same without Alaska.

"Why are you here?" Alaska asks me, staring off into the rushing water. It keeps splashing the shore and then dripping back, like it doesn't understand why it can't make its way onto land.

"You tell me first," I say. I have waited months to find out who Alaska truly was, and now we really were alone.

Alaska doesn't say anything for a while. She looks off into the distance and I watch her out of the corner of my eye. Her dark hair covers most of her face, the same brown as the trees behind her. Finally, she speaks.

"It doesn't really matter, does it?"

I shake my head. In the end, it doesn't.