So I've been dead lately. Sorry 'bout that. :)

Pretty vague chapter, but should explain some. Hope you guys like it!

Disclaimer: I do not own TDI.

Three months had come and gone, since the day she'd woken up early due to an unsettling jolt in her stomach. The coffee was stale because she kept forgetting to make some of the new tin she'd purchased over two weeks ago. Her head spun and she felt kind of wasted. Oh, that couldn't be good.

She threw herself out of bed and headed towards the bathroom, dragging her feet across the worn carpet. There, Bridgette found herself in the very position she dreaded – staring face to face into a pair of distant green eyes. Without thinking she ran her fingers through and through the messy dyed heap she shamefully kept layered on her own head. She hated it now. She hated her reckless sixteen year-old self for dying her hair deep purple to begin with.

Taped onto her mirror was a photograph from ten years ago. Her mother had run around the whole park five times looking for someone to take it. Finally, the lenses focused in, catching all three faces in a single shot.

Bridgette turned away. These were dangerous places indeed. Eventually they led to the memories that followed soon after. Yet she still remembers the exact words printed onto the front page of the newspaper her father had read that one fateful morning. 'Woman, 33, instantly killed on Highway 104'. The night of the incident was her father's birthday. She remembers the two of them sitting in the kitchen, waiting for her to come home so they could all blow candles together. He hadn't moved a single inch all night, and only left the table in the afternoon to retrieve Sunday's paper.

Lydia Ryerson died with a small wrapped package in her arms, with a note that read 'Happy Birthday, Joe'. She'd just gone out to purchase his present, and was hit by a speeding car on her way home. Bridgette considered the absurdity of this. The police had it mailed. Her father hadn't opened it since, she recalled slowly.

Her apartment felt colder than usual. The bare linoleum floor felt like it could fall apart at any second. How long had she been living on her own now? One year? Almost two? She'd run away what seemed ages ago when her father hadn't come home from his 'business trip', finding herself standing on his doorstep. It was either that or be damned to a stray asylum for the rest of her teenage forever.

"I need a place to stay for a few weeks," she informed, with her luggage already in hand and her hair severely damp from the rain.

At first he looked at her skeptically. But he wouldn't need her reason right away. He would help her at any cost. That was just the way things went. "Sure," he agreed, already reaching for her second piece of luggage.

Then he helped her find this apartment. Made some sort of deal with the owner and got her a half-priced discount rate. Bridgette had moved in right away.

She broke away from her thoughts.

When he called, she had just uncapped the toothpaste and had her toothbrush just several inches away from her teeth. "Hello?" Bridgette murmured into the phone, kind of irritated.

"Can you meet me in twenty minutes?" Most of their conversations often started with bluntness, she mused.

"Sure" -- as she was already reaching for her favorite ripped pair of jeans, "Where?"

"Is outside your apartment building okay?"

A scoff. "Are the rest of the guys coming? You said we were going to egg Wychers's place later."

From the other end, she could picture him shaking his head. "No, just the two of us."

"Just the two of us," Bridgette repeated, partly because it sounded ridiculous and it wasn't what she was expecting. "That's fine. Though is there any particular reason as to why you-"

"Listen, just get down here and meet me, alright?" He'd raised his tone, but he didn't scare her.

"Sheesh. Fine." She'd rolled her eyes.

"Great, see you soon."

Present Day

She hadn't meant to cry. She thought she was stronger than that.

But it had been so long. How could she not? Bridgette drew backwards, then stepped in again closer, peering into the room through the rectangular glass window. She stared. She only meant to peek for a second, but as she looked, her eyes refused to tear themselves away. It was him alright. There was no doubt about it.

The second figure in the room had ludicrous curly red hair that fell lower than her waist. She'd never seen her before, but felt as if she had the right to know who she was.

And irrevocably, she hadn't meant for them to see her yet at the same time, she kind of hoped they would. Yet they did eventually, staring back with anxious faces.

Bridgette ducked, despite herself, hurrying down the corridor. As the likely consequences struck her, she quickened her pace. In a split second, however, she stopped, deciding she couldn't possibly keep going like this.

The hallways were dark, and she remained there alone. How many times had she felt like this now? The feeling was all too familiar. Eventually he caught up to her, putting her hands together firmly behind her back.

"When you told me we'd meet again someday, I didn't think it'd be under these circumstances," the words came with some satisfaction, even as he tied the rope around wrists.

"Neither did I," his words came a little more painfully. But Bridgette swore, in between Duncan's ruthlessness, she heard a trace of sympathy for the both of them.

Cody was sitting at the Collins' dining table by himself eating a plate of leftover pasta when Geoff came barging into the room carrying a million dollars. Only he wasn't a million dollars. Or anything, actually.

"I lost her," York High's supposed star quarterback said solemnly, watching slightly as his best friend's eyes widened. He dropped his fork with a loud clang to show he was listening. "She went west. It's embarrassing. After that I didn't have enough gut to go after her. Can you believe it? I just make the school football team and look what happens!"

Being the great friend he was, Cody enlightened that the pasta was kind of dry. Geoff gave in a sigh, holding the sides of his own head with both hands. He waited. He considered his options. He waited some more. Before deciding-

"I'll be back." He reached for the door.

"Again?" the brunet's voice cracked in disbelief. The blond nodded, sticking his head out halfway out the door.

Cody thought it over for a few minutes. "Well I'm guessing this time you're gonna want some company?"

There was no reply, as Geoff was probably down the street by then, but being the great friend he was, Cody ran after him anyway.

The I.I.B.I. Corp had the school surrounded. While the fuming passerby hollered and repeatedly questioned what gave them authority to do such, Commander Hatchet and his crew continued to set up a secure electric shield around the area. No one was permitted to enter, and no one was permitted to leave. This gave everyone yet another reason to fuss over.

The cheerleaders complained from the inward side of the hazardous fence, claiming they were in the middle of tryouts, and preferred to know they'd all be able to go home after they were through with their 'sis boom bah's.

"Relax, folks," barked Maclean, squeezing his way through the crowd to dictate. "These precautions are merely necessary. We're pretty sure there are two juvenile criminals in that very building, but stay calm. As soon as we catch those guys, we'll clear the area ASAP. Okay? Great. Now shoo."

The cheerleaders paled. Everyone else remained exactly where they were.

He walked away, paying no mind to the fact that clearly no one was satisfied. "How are we doing?" he asked his warden, the makings of his trademark smile covering nearly half his face.

Hatchet grunted. "We're doin' alright. Everything's almost set up, and now all we've gotta do is wait."

"Perfect," replied Maclean, flashing his impossibly white set of teeth, as he gazed over at York High, the same place he'd gone to highschool just twenty years before.

Geoff Collins could not believe it.

He made his way through the commotion, stopping dead at his tracks as he noticed the electric shield. And so he waited. And considered his options. Were there really any other options?

His blundering thoughts drowned out the voices calling out for him, the "Hold on buddy, I'm almost there!" 's from Cody almost a kilometre away, and the gophers of I.I.B.I. Corp, assigned to a strange and totally unrelated task, trying everything they could in their power to hold him back.

Nothing could hold him back.

With his eyes already ahead of him, he went for the shield, one foot springing his whole body from the ground, over ten feet up. And he made it, because at that very moment, the girl who probably hated his guts was on his mind.

How did we get here? That was the one thing they wanted to know, standing on the same rooftop as an armed criminal at 2am in the morning. Much to their dismay their memory of the events leading up to this didn't help explain any of it. The situation seemed obscure, and they all just wanted to go home and sleep.

Pfft, that wasn't happening anytime soon. At the very least it didn't even seem like it.

He knew he'd messed up. Somewhere along the way, he was leaving his tracks behind and he wouldn't be able to have them covered. If he'd only done things differently or done nothing at all from the very beginning, maybe none of this would've even come close to happening. The prisoners would've still escaped, but at least then he'd have nothing to do with what came after. Oh, who was he kidding?

Stupid. It described his feelings perfectly.

The punk grinned. He shot a bullet into the sky, the girl held firm in his other arm, and they all watched as the sparks flew. Geoff took a step back. "Hmph."

He couldn't bring himself to run, eyeing the girl and waiting and considering his options. Not under these circumstances. How did we get here? They'd tried to stop thinking that, but that was just as impossible.

All of a sudden the helicopters came, circling the area they were glued to, focusing their lights toward him. Their trance broke slightly, but not by much.

Duncan seemed worried. At first, until he began to laugh out of the blue, leaving the officers stunned.

"A shame it had to end this way, huh?" His statement clung, while he slowly took a step backwards, off the building, into thin air.

Three months ago

They did meet up, twenty minutes after Bridgette threw on a T-shirt and took the stairs because the elevator was out of order like it'd always been, in front of her tattered apartment building.

She found him, leaning against the fence, his eyes fixed towards the sky.

"Hey."

"Hey." Duncan muttered back. His voice was different than it had ever been, yet she couldn't place her finger on 'how'. She inched closer to him, not feeling blunt at all.

Bridgette challenged him to face her. "What's up?"

Her question struck something, she could tell. He looked away. Part of her wished she could read his thoughts, that she could take away his pain and suffer for the both of them. She owed him enough.

"Seriously. Want to go walk someplace?"

He looked at his feet. "Actually, I've got somewhere I need to be right now."

She thought it over. No.

Duncan said it after a beat. "Juvey," he went on, "The cops found out. About the drug deals. About everything. They're after me. I figured I might as well save them the trouble and turn myself in before I get into further shit.

"So yeah, I'll be going now. Hope you don't mind. Feel free to visit me at Cell 23 anytime. And take care of yourself this time, won't you, Bee?" This sounded more like him, but she didn't like one bit of it.

"No." Bridgette grasped onto his arm as he drew away, with no intentions of ever letting go. He pulled her into his arms. She sobbed into his neck, feeling a different set of tears intertwine with her own. Time went on without them. She felt like she was flying. She felt like she could die here. She felt complete yet completely empty.

She jerked up, finding herself under the covers of her own bed, still in the same t-shirt with jeans get-up she remembers herself in. Chills went up her spine. Bridgette glanced over to the window – wide open. The curtains blew with the wind that passed through them.

Wasted. There was that feeling again. Wasted and left alone, in a city of thousands of people she didn't know. She closed her eyes, allowing herself to fall apart.

And that, strangely enough, was when she dreamt of white walls and roughly twenty chairs.

So I lied. One more chapter to get this first arc wrapped up. :)

Hope you guys enjoyed! Haven't updated lately, so I don't expect many reviews on this at all, but I'd seriously appreciate it if you do.

And kudos to anyone who can guess what 'I.I.B.I. Corp' stands for. Hint: It has something to do with idiots.

Review with your guesses. :)