A/N: I actually wrote this final snippet before finishing the penultimate chapter. I don't usually like writing out of order but I was having a rough day and I just needed to get it out before it ended up breaking me down, and tearing me apart completely. My best childhood friend passed away a year and a half ago. She's not the first friend I've lost so permanently (this fic was inspired by a different instance initially, but in the last few years, it's been adopted by other agonies, making it a hybrid of my experiences), but it was the most excruciating, as she'd been ill for quite some time. Her birthday just came and went a few days ago. Every February, we were the same age for three whole days, before she surpassed me and I felt like I was spending the rest of the year trying to catch up with her, a perpetual game of tag based on the arbitrariness of age. This is the first year I can now say I'm older than her, and it's such an odd, unfamiliar feeling. It aches.

She had always loved to travel, to learn languages and collect new experiences (and friends). One of my favorite photos was of her in her Choi Kwang Do uniform, leg outstretched in a side kick, toes pointed at the Eiffel Tower off in the distance during her study abroad semester in Paris. She was small, at hardly five feet and 90lbs, but if anyone could topple monuments, it was my dear, much loved Be. That was just the type of person she was: athletic, good-natured, and mischievous.

We released her ashes into the Atlantic Ocean last year, hoping they'd travel to all the places she'd loved to visit, and to others she never got the opportunity to see. I wrote this final section thinking of her, and thinking of us and all the moments we shared. In my memories, at least, my dear friend remains healthy and smiling, joyful. Perennial.

...will be remembered for the price he paid.

No one warns you how much a slow death hurts. It's not peaceful, at least not in the initial stages. Bent on survival, your body fights for every heartbeat, every raged, rasping breath.

And, when no timely aid arrives to repair it, allocation - the precisely calculated shutdown of functions not essential to keep on, quite simply, existing.

This is probably something Zexion would find interesting. To me, it's agonizingly arduous, especially after how long I've waited.

Eventually, you become aware of blood. In the beginning it smells fuckin' terrible, sour and nauseating, a copper tang that permeates everything in its general vicinity. It's almost as bad as the pain.

Almost.

After all, it wasn't the blood that ultimately made me lose consciousness the first time.

~ o ~ o ~

I wake to pounding, not at my temples, but against something solid, impermeable, an erratic rapping. Then yelling. Indistinct, insignificant.

Cold. All I can think about is how I'm so fucking cold. November is a godawful, unforgiving month.

And then there was nothing. Nothing but dark, suffocating silence.

~ o ~ o ~

Strange dreams. He'd been having such strange dreams.

I wake to movement, to my head gently being lifted, shoulders cradled in another's arms. I want to help, to hold my own weight, but find the task too laborious. Even opening my eyes is a struggle, requires intense concentration.

Axi…

I see blond hair. Yellow, as intense as sunlight. A familiar shriek echoes in the back of my mind. It's softer, muffled by the passage of days, more memory than real-time sense.

I miss you, I want to cry, but all I can manage is a low, unintelligible tone.

And his eyes. If there was one place Axel wanted to lose himself in forever…

Such blue eyes. Then, a smile, one I never thought I'd see again. Before I can make sense of it, I feel my arm lifted, uselessly limp, irreparably red.

I remember the blood, just not whether it was his or my own.

There's pressure on my wrist. Blinding white pain. A pathetic whimper reaches my ears and it takes a prolonged moment for my stagnant thoughts to connect the sound to my own rasping voice.

"Shh," the familiar voice says.

Something is being lifted to my lips, and my mind flashes back to yesterday afternoon. The blond, the store. A beveled ceramic antique.

Weakly, pathetically, I try to turn my head away from the taste of blood.

The pressure on my wrist returns, this time on both arms. From far away, I hear myself let out a soft, strangled sob, then close my eyes as the tremors travel through my body in waves.

I remember unspoken pleas.

"Shh," he quiets me again.

"Soon now. Soon."

Then, true to form, I'm alone again, because he always ends up leaving me first.

~ o ~ o ~

The next voices I hear sound far away, but urgent. I don't bother to open my eyes this time. Only one voice matters, and he's already gone from me.

Soon now. Soon.

This is not how I imagined my life, let alone my death.

I'm hovering between the physical and an intangible something beyond, when…

Through his feverish gaze, a gasp gave him pause.

"Axel," Zexion said, his visible eye wide with shock. "You're…"

"Bleeding," I say, and attempt to offer a smile. Everything's a circle, and we keep coming around, round, round.

I hear a sob, and this time it's not my own, crack my eyes just a sliver and see blue.

Blue, blue, as fathomless as the sky at dusk. Blue, blue, but I can no longer distinguish between hair or eyes.

Again, I'm being lifted, this time rising on thin fabric between two strangers. It feels like I'm still dancing, limbs moving in small, erratic motions as my vision becomes an unfocused blur. I crane my neck in search of the voice, that desperate, wretched tone that keeps repeating my name. He should at least know he deserved so much more than I could ever emotionally give.

I want to tell him not to worry, that this is a beginning rather than any form of end. I want to tell him his science is flawed and fallible, that I know this now with certainty.

We're moving so quickly though, passing others, a flash of red hair, then familiar facial scars. Someone nearby reminds me of songs played with passion on a secondhand guitar.

Speaking is too much effort, so instead I just offer a final parting thought as the cold night air turns inward to engulf my tired body, my broken soul.

I'll come back for you, I think, hoping he'll know. Be patient, I silently explain. I'll come soon. One day ...shh.

Right now, I just want … simply need …a little more time to…

Grieve.