Disclaimer: Don't own anything except the DVD.

A/N: Decided not to make this a oneshot, cuz I could. Meeks is my official favorite character, so I decided to do something with him, too. This one is to those out there that've ever had a crisis of faith. More to come, but I dunno when. I would also like to announce that I've revamped my profile and there is now a Rant of the Week, to be posted every week on completely arbitrary topics. Go ahead, clicky!

What God?

"His grades are suffering, Neil!"

"Then you'll help him, Meeks! Forget it, Pittsie, you're in."

I rolled my eyes and jogged along, giving up on trying to convince our self-proclaimed leader to back down. But what Neil was proposing was suicide!

"S-s-suicide?" I couldn't believe my ears.

"Shot himself in the head." Charlie gulped back his tears. I blinked and cleaned my glasses on my flannel shirt.

"But...but that's not like him, that's not Neil. Neil...it's someone else, it has to be. I mean, the chances of there being another Neil Perry are high and...and..." I broke off and looked down, trying to discretely wipe the tears away. I took off my glasses again and cleaned them on my shirt, wiping my eyes on my sleeve.

I looked over at Gerard's fuzzy sleeping form and remembered how hard Neil and I had worked with him to keep his grades up to keep him in the club, then I just couldn't stop it anymore. I couldn't stop the tears, couldn't stop the thoughts rushing through my head, all these illogical thoughts. I wasn't supposed to think this way, I'd never been prepared for it because it wasn't supposed to happen. Neil was supposed to graduate and go to Harvard and become a doctor and live. But it'd been stopped short. I couldn't believe...wouldn't believe it'd been by his own hand.

"It's not possible. It's not Neil, it's not him at all. I mean, what cause would he have? What cause? Not just acting, he'd know better than that. He...he..." I shook my head and buried my face in my hands. All these thoughts running through my mind...it was illogical, it wasn't black and white. Just the shady gray area, and I refuse to believe in that. Everything could be explained somehow, I knew it! But...this...it couldn't be explained.

-x-

"'I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life... to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.'" Neil read for the first time the poem by Thoreau that hadn't been read by a Dead Poet for nearly twenty years. I sat looking up at him in wonder. We'd really done it, we'd reconvened the Dead Poets Society. I took my glasses off to clean them and quickly replaced them. I can't help but have a foreboding feeling, though. I'm conscious of the rules and make an effort to obey them. I, however, unlike Cameron, don't harp on it.

"Suck all the marrow out of life" I thought. Carpe diem, Meeksie. You've obeyed the rules all your life. One night isn't gonna hurt you.

He was blaming the Captain for all of it! That little Fink! He'd seen the ship sinking, so he hangs the innocent to save himself! As I saw Gerard tense up next to me, I put a hand on his shoulder.

"He isn't worth the expulsion," I muttered into his ear, standing on tiptoe to reach it. He nodded slightly and relax. Quite honestly, I don't think there was a man in that room who didn't want to hit him, but I knew that'd get me nowhere but a new boarding school, a stricter one. And anything stricter than Welton...well, I just couldn't handle that.

Gerard read a poem at Neil's funeral. No, not a poem, the poem. "O Captain! My Captain!" And, indeed, Neil had been our captain.

"But I with mournful tread walk the deck my captain lies, fallen cold and dead."

I felt a tear run beneath my glasses, and was glad I'd already gone up. For some reason, all I could think about was Latin and hi-fi systems. Coping mechanism, I guess. But it bothered me that at Neil's own services, I couldn't muster it up to think about him.

"God works in mysterious ways," the preacher went up to the podium to speak.

God? I thought. What God? What makes God so special that everyone worships Him? What if there isn't a God, what then? I mean, He's only an idea, nothing more. He's never been proven. And I am a man of proof and science. Besides, if there was a God, why didn't He stop Neil from killing himself? Why didn't He show him other ways out? I furrowed my brow, crossed my arms, and slumped down in my seat. What God?

-Fin-