These are Katey's thoughts as she's on the plane leaving Cuba, from Dirty Dancing Havana Nights. This is a one-shot.

Disclaimer: I don't own Dirty Dancing Havana Nights, or any of the characters mentioned in this.

Katie's Point of View:

I stared out the window.

I loved flying, I always had. Suzie didn't like heights – she always took the aisle seat, hating the idea that she was in the sky without support. I loved it.

It was the freedom. The idea that you were heading to some destination unseen through the air and the sky and the very atmosphere. I loved plane trips – the seats, the people, even the food. I always loved flying. I always had. I always would.

Except for today.

It was beautiful – clear and sunny and perfect to be flying and looking at the sky and feeling free. I didn't feel free. I doubted I would for a very long time.

We were leaving. I had never thought of trips that way, not even when we were heading back from some extravagant vacation. I had always believed we were headed somewhere, going somewhere. Today, I knew we were just plain leaving.

Ahead of us were the States. Our house and my old friends and everything as it should be – familiar and faithful. And behind me was the one person I never wanted to leave.

The seatbelt felt like it was suffocating me as we took off. I had no reason to be on this plane. I had no reason to run from him. I didn't want to go and forget everything magical that happened here. In Cuba. The place that felt more like my home than the U.S. ever had.

I wasn't good at missing people. I hadn't really missed my friends from the States when we left, even though I didn't want to go. I was good at forgetting. It was hard to remember what my old room looked like. It was hard to remember why I had wanted it so clean and white and plain and perfect. Why hadn't I liked colour? Why hadn't I let go?

I couldn't leave behind everything that happened – everything I saw, and I did, and I was and I felt. I couldn't forget, not this time. Not Javier. Because he mattered more than that. Because this place and the feelings and the spirit here mattered more than that.

So I wouldn't forget. Just as I had promised, I was taking him with me. I was taking the girl who I was with him with me. I was taking the love and the magic and the dancing with me. I was taking his eyes, and his smile, and his hair, and his jokes, and his dancing, and his protectiveness, and his kiss with me. I wouldn't leave any of it behind. I couldn't.

But remembering wasn't enough. It was some sort of addiction to remember his dark eyes sparkling, but it was bittersweet. It was a glorious fantasy while you lost yourself in it, but when you returned to bleak reality, it just broke you further, knowing you couldn't have that. It shattered me to remember, and know that I was only remembering, that he was a part of my past, not my present.

But, in that, lay the tiniest shard of hope. No, he was not part of my present. But maybe, someday, he could be a part of my future.

I looked at the sky.