10. Forward into a New Dawn

"Seven months…"

"Hmm…?" Brittany looked up from the television to regard Simon. "Did you say something?"

No. She had heard him. Definitely. She was merely challenging him to say it once more. Could be the 'Alvin' side of her; she'd probably imbibed his headstrong personality, and it was challenging Simon. Whether or not Simon was aware of this made no difference; he was stepping up to it.

"It's been seven months. 'Seven months', was what I previously stated." He fixed his glasses with a forefinger; a somewhat menacing lens glare made him look all the more intimidating. "Enjoying the program, Brittany? I never knew that you were a fan of wrestling."

She nearly told him 'hell no'. She was merely suffering through it for Alvin's sake. As far as she was concerned, it was like a favor. He was tired of watching her 'chick flicks' on her marathon movie nights, and she was obliging him. But she was somewhat happy to grant him the act of goodwill.

If only he didn't cheer so much while he watched through her eyes, she'd be even happier. "I'm fine with watching it," she fibbed as she gave him a dirty look. "And what's with the whole 'seven months' thing? Are you turning into a calendar or something?"

"Easy, easy!" Alvin cried from the recesses of her mind. "Eyes on the TV! You're missing the trademark moves!" Brittany acquiesced to his pleas and returned to staring at the television. She had to admit, while it was somewhat entertaining (damn the fact that she was beginning to think like Alvin!), the wrestling looked… staged. Pun intended.

"This is so fake!" Brittany muttered.

"Most of it's real!" Alvin defended. Brittany had to refrain from rolling her eyes at his response as it would only serve to give her crush a fit; the last time she did it whilst he was watching the television through her eyes, it made him dizzy.

"Whatever," she muttered in response to him. However, she noticed that Simon was still standing next to where she was sitting on the couch. "You still here?"

"This is my house, Brittany. Why couldn't you watch this inane drivel at your house?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Got outvoted two-to-one by my sisters. They wanted to watch 'Deadly Women'." Brittany had to suppress a shiver as she thought about the show's 'eccentricities'. "Guess they've moved on from MTV and watching 'Spice Girls' music videos."

Simon nodded. "And you… chose to move on to watch… wrestling," he deadpanned in a tone that was slightly reflecting skepticism. "Unbelievable."

"What's that 'seven months' business for? Reminding me when's your next birthday?"

Simon neglected to rise to the taunt. "It's been seven months," he said again. "I've waited. Seven months. If…" The blue Seville hesitated. "If he manages to wake now, he'll be able to retain his higher level thought processes, his mentalities. Proper fine motor control in all his actions. A decent conscience. After seven months, there aren't any promises or guarantees that he'll be the same Alvin… if he wakes up."

"When he wakes up," Brittany stated quietly, yet resolutely, "he'll be the same Alvin."

"You sound awfully sure," Simon observed.

"You sound awfully pessimistic," she bit back. "Aren't you his brother? Have some faith." At this, Simon's anger grew, but he managed to curb it, if only barely. He calmly took a seat next to the chipette and sighed; he was weary.

"Brittany… I'm tired." He took off his glasses and rested it in his shirt pocket. Everything looked blurry, but that still would have been the case had he kept his glasses on; his tears ensured that. "I'm tired of seeing his empty place at breakfast. I'm tired of seeing his empty seat at school. I'm tired of seeing his empty place on the school bus. I'm tired of seeing his empty place at dinner. I'm tired of seeing his empty bed next to mine when it's bedtime. I'm tired of not seeing my brother. And now… I get the feeling… premonition, hunch, omen… that he won't be the same when he wakes up." He rubbed his long-sleeved arms over his eyes in an effort to wipe away his tears but was only mildly successful. But in a strange turn of events, he started to chuckle, before it blew up into a mirthless laughter. "And to think… seven months ago, I would've given anything for him to change."

"… I'm sure he's fine," Brittany said at last. "He'll wake soon. I guess you're the one who's starting to worry me."

"It's not about me," Simon said abruptly, "this is about you."

"Huh?" Brittany fell quiet, wondering what this was all about. "Me?"

"My sight may not be perfect, but I've noticed these little… changes. You. You've changed."

Growing leery of his sudden change in argument, she tried to play it off with feigned ignorance. "Part of life, I guess. Growing up? Maturity?" Simon shook his head to her response.

"Negative on all responses," he pontificated. "Your stance on Alvin has changed, as have your entire profile. On the first night, Alvin saved your life at the expense of his own overall health. You were in shock, yet I could see that you hardly cared. The first few days, your behavior started to alter. You reacted to stimuli, situations, and people differently, as if you were having a mental breakdown. This still seemed normal to me; I thought that guilt was starting to eat at your psyche."

Brittany was silent. He had hit the metaphorical nail right on the head.

"Afterwards, you started to exhibit more paranoia, as if suspicious of people watching you. Behavior that is typical of people hiding something. You spent more time in the library than previous, researching. A friendly tip: you should delete your search history after using a public computer."

"Oh my God." Brittany covered her mouth in shock. "Did you snoop on that?! Doesn't anyone know the meaning of privacy?!"

"Researching comas and the nature of their occurrence." Simon's tone grew increasingly serious as he forewent listening to her complaint. "Afterwards, you started… talking to yourself, even more so than what is considered normal and healthy. After three months, your personality began changing to mirror that of Alvin's. Overall, you're no longer adverse to him, in fact, probably closer to him somehow, your personality corresponds with his and you speak to yourself as if you're speaking to him…"

Brittany was now deathly afraid that Simon was on to her secret.

"You might be manifesting an impression of Alvin in your subconscious," Simon theorized, "and unconsciously began to emulate him to lead yourself to believe that he'll wake up soon or worse, think he's still around."

"…" Alvin could no longer fake disinterest. "So what's he saying? That I'm fake? That I'm not real...?"

Alvin repeating in lame terms was nearly enough to make Brittany lose her temper. "Simon, that's crazy-"

"Listen." The chipmunk's instruction lost its veto authority vibe and sounded more like a request, "our families are friends. Best friends. Perhaps even more so." He sighed deeply. "I'm not accusing you. I merely said all of this out of concern. I might've already lost my brother-"

"He's gonna wake up!" Brittany nearly screamed in her tempest.

"-…Temporarily," he finished his earlier sentence as if he hadn't been interrupted at all, "I don't want to be the one to tell him when he wakes up that the girl he had blossoming affections for had to be carted off to the 'funny farm'."

"Damn it, Si! I knew you couldn't keep a secret!" Alvin bellowed. His volume nearly made Brittany's head ache, but she got it under control.

"I already know," Brittany mumbled in response to both chipmunks. "I appreciate the warning. Although Simon? I think Jeanette should teach you a little more empathy for others. And would it kill you to be more positive?"

His rebuttal was sharp. "Would it kill you to care more?"

=X=X=

Brittany's awakening was slow, her joints popping barely disturbing the sleeping of her sisters in the cool of the early morning. Her thoughts were a bit muddled; it was for a good reason. Her dreams were tormented by Simon's lecture the night before. "You know what, Alvin? You don't exist, and I'm crazy."

Apparently, he was awake as well. "I'm real. I know I am."

Brittany laughed to herself. "That sounds like something a figment of my imagination would say."

Although she wasn't alone in her mind, her thoughts were her last confidential fortress for privacy. She had to wonder…

What if Simon was right?

Had she really only conceived Alvin in her imagination?

It was horribly likely.

Her diary… no. She wrote in the diary, and he knew what she wrote. Because he was in her mind, right? As you write, you 'say' the words in the forefront of your mind.

She spoke aloud. She talked to him as if he were actually there. Wait… if she spoke words in her mind as she wrote, wouldn't that mean that he should hear if he were in her head? No… it was her own crazy way of convincing herself that he existed. He subsisted in her head, but not her mind. It was as if he was always right by her side, or looking over her shoulder.

Alvin's personality? Sure, she walked in his shoes. It simply wouldn't do if she spoke to an Alvin that acted like a Brittany. She, of course, well knew his mannerisms and the more she spoke to 'him', the more she acted like him. This was actually one of the many ways that a person developed new and different personalities… simply by believing that they spoke to another personality factor.

What about his suffering? She knew about it. He probably needed to get back into his body!

Of course not. That was merely a symbol of her impatience for him to wake from his coma.

But what about his hints, his little tips, his-

No… it was popular and common knowledge that 'the brain knows more than the mind'. The subconscious was aware of far more than the normal bandwidth of consciousness.

Then what about the flower in her diary?

No… She thought about it some more. She merely found that flower in the trash and pressed it. There was no proof that her mind didn't fabricate the story behind it.

In short…

Alvin was still in his hospital bed. Comatose. Dead to the world. Nothing more. She imagined an Alvin in her head that she could talk to, in an effort to console herself, to assuage her guilt for getting Alvin hurt because of her jay-carelessness, and to help convince herself that he was going to be just fine.

"So, Brittany?" Alvin called. "What's next?"

Brittany didn't answer.

"Yo, Brittany? Whatcha doing?"

Brittany's eyes slowly shut as she tried to ignore his calls, but as they slowly opened, aqua-ice slowly melting salty streams.

'Alvin? Are you… real?'

This was revelation. This was reality. This was truth.

…

But what of dreams…?

He was all a dream, wasn't he? If she had somehow manifested his presence in her mind, why? To comfort herself? Then what's the harm done by indulging in it?

'But that means I'm back to square one. I'm not rearing to go chasing after him anymore. I don't even know how he feels about me. If and when he wakes up, he'll just go right back to pranking me. Even if it is just like Ms. Miller said, he was doing it for attention-'

No.

What did Simon say?

'Wait. He said he had affections for me! There's… still… something!' Hope began to blossom, growing concurrently with her rise in emotion. She let herself off of the bed to go over to the window to look outside at the dawning sun; a slowly brightening aura looming out of the horizon. "Alvin?" She called quietly. Only one other heard her appeal.

"Yeah?"

"… Do you think…" The question sounded reluctant to leave past her lips, but it had to be said. "Do you think he loves me?"

"…" Alvin had an idea where this was going. He was already beginning to doubt his own existence; after all, one does not simply come to exist in another person's head. He felt real, but that wasn't enough. As he sat on the sofa, he noticed that the front door's knob was turning; soon enough, the door began to open, and bright light spilled from its entrance. He had no idea what it meant, but it felt… welcoming.

Like rapture.

"Alvin?" Brittany asked again. "Do you think he loves me?"

Alvin didn't reply right away. Instead, he got up and approached the doorway. It was like a wall of light and it was impossible to see beyond it. "Brittany, I know that I love you. I'm sure that he loves you too."

He then stepped through the doorway into the light with full intent and purpose.

…

Somewhere, far away, a pair of eyes woke from their slumber.

Notes:

WHEW!

-Damn, no author notes throughout. Felt like I was holding my breath for three months!

Oh… so THAT'S how long this fic's been going on for.

Did you all prefer it when I was quiet? Did it flow better?

Anyway…

-Well, this was my first experimentation that went down without any sort of plan. If you predicted that twist, I guess that means you could have written this fic better than I did because it surprised the heck outta me. But it felt logical, realistic and… skeptical, all at the same time. It answers a lot of questions and raises even more. You can't even be sure if he WAS a figment of her imagination, or he was real. If he was fake, where's the proof? If he was real, where's the proof? And the coincidences were numerous! I bet you're all like 'Wut the heck just happened?'

Me too. Me too.

I hope no one's disappointed, or raving 'WHERE'S THE REST OF IT!'. I'm too young to die!

-For the previous chapter, it was also an experimental idea. While yeah, I'm 'technically' a mature individual, I'm yet to write a 'mature' piece of work. I was just feeling my way into the area. Always wondered what'd be like to write a lemon, or something close to it…

Maybe I never will. Or anytime soon, at least.

The reviewer who criticized me about it, thanks. I needed that kick in the aft end. Everyone, tell Anonymous 'thanks' for the revamp! It did mesh better with the story. I even went back and substituted certain words for terms, and desensitized the theme a little bit more. I ain't a perfect being, but this was close to it.

-This story has two alternate endings, in addition to this one. I was thinking of tagging them on to this, but I decided not to and annoy you with these notes instead. I plan on writing a HUGE string of one-shots as one fic, combined with deleted chapters of stories (including ODAT's now infamous CHAPTER NINE in case anyone wants a repost), a few 'Slices of Life' chapters combined with Pop Culture, aforementioned alternate endings and more. Ideas galore!

Something to get excited about, I guess? But I'll wait until I finish AATC: Territory. It's not too long a wait.

-Finally, about Vos Mos Amplio's story (All According to Plan) that cameoed this one… yes. Yes, this was a SUPER WEIRD story.

Goodbye, everyone!/Valete omnes!

M. Ray 4 The Win.