It had been over a month since Fallon left the hospital after the Barren Pines incident. She was one of the first discharged. Most of her injuries were superficial wounds, and despite the psychiatrists insisting that she wasn’t reacting “appropriately” to what had happened to her, they had no choice but to discharge the healthy teenager. Her parents stayed as long as they could, but after awhile, Fallon just wanted to be alone. She loved her parents, she really did, but after she left the hospital, they began to fight again. Why fight? If they didn’t love each other anymore, they just needed to get divorced. It wouldn’t change how much Fallon loved either of them, but it would make being around them far more bearable. Though she never told them, the reason she decided to leave France to go to school back in Destiny City was because of their constant bickering. Fallon had a lot of control over herself, but it was hard for her to be in an environment of chaos and negative energy. Positivity made Fallon feel happy and balanced. Her parents were only bringing her down and making her life much harder than it needed to be.

So she escaped to Destiny City – and fell headfirst into Barren Pines.

Her parents couldn’t remember the school, but Fallon did. She had memories of her first months – of Andeon and Imogen and even Leonette, who was no longer in the waking world. Thinking of Leonette made her heart sag in her chest. Fallon felt like Leonette was one of the only people who saw her for who she truly was and cared about her in spite of it. The teal-haired girl never got angry at Fallon, always made exceptions for her weird quirks, always smiled even when Fallon was frowning. And now she was dead. Though Fallon had done her best to block Leonette from her memory, it was nearly impossible, and she would find her slipping back in during moments of quiet relaxation. They hadn’t been dating technically, but Leonette was certainly the closest thing Fallon had ever had to a real relationship.

Thinking of Leonette was too painful, and so Fallon forced herself to think of someone else. A very unexpected face came to her mind – Laney Sutton. And it was that face that had Fallon clipping on a “Visitor” badge and click-clacking her way down the narrow hallway of Destiny Memorial once again. A few nurses paused to look at her – did they remember her? Fallon couldn’t be certain. Her purse bumped against her hip as she walked, her other arm holding a dark green bag from the bottom. Laney had survived Barren Pines, but she survived that prison only to be moved to a different one, the internal prison of a coma. Fallon had heard the news when Imogen gave her the list of survivors with a tiny asterisk by Laney’s name. Why had it taken her so long to visit? Laney might not have been a close friend – hell, she could be pretty annoying – but she was someone that Fallon knew, someone who had gone through the same things that she had.

Except Laney never woke up from the nightmare.

Turning down the next hallway, Fallon found the number written in cool steel gray outside each door, the tiny placards reading the names of those within. She paused only for a moment to read “Landscape Sutton” and then entered through the starkly white entranceway. A nurse was inside, switching one bag of clear liquid for another on her IV stand. Fallon smiled politely and waited for the woman to leave. The nurse shut the door behind her, leaving Fallon alone with Laney.

For a long time, Fallon didn’t move. The steady beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor stole the silence from the room, echoed only by Laney's deep and steady breathing. It was almost pleasant, actually, to Fallon's ears. Everything was constant, nothing varied. She loved the heart monitor liked she loved metronomes. It made her wonder why leaving the hospital had seemed so desirable to her before. Within its walls, there was control, there was consistency, there was peace. Her eyes fell to Laney, and she felt instantly guilty. Control, consistency, peace -- but no awakened body to appreciate it.

Crossing to Laney's bedside, Fallon glanced to her nightstand, moving a few things aside. She set the dark green bag on the floor and her purse in a chair. Bending down, she pulled a potted plant from the green bag -- a fern -- and set in on the nightstand. "I think you like plants," she said, feeling stupid for saying the words aloud. Could Laney hear her? Fallon often heard that coma patients claimed they could hear voices and sometimes even remember what was said to them. If that was true, then Fallon decided it was worth her humiliation to give Laney a moment of company. "You had an ugly plant at Barren Pines... I think. I mean, I remember it... sort of. Just like I remember everything sort of." Flashes of memory would come to Fallon from time to time, but she could never be certain what was real and what was a creation of her nightmares. Everything at Barren Pines was crystal clear for the first few months and then... blurriness. Like looking through frosted glass at her own memories. She could remember inviting Serenade over to her room on a date, but she could not remember how the night ended. She could remember auditioning to cater the school play, but she couldn't remember the actual performance. Were these all a result of the drugs that the organ ring doctors had given her?

Fallon scoffed. Was she believing that now too? No, Barren Pines was real... wasn't it? Lately, Fallon wasn't sure. Her eyes strayed back to Laney, fingers fidgeting with the little fern. "It's a fern," she said, placing one hand on the railing of the bed. "I don't know if you like ferns. I don't know what kind of name you would give this one either..." Fallon didn't like to name inanimate objects, but she hoped Laney might dream up one in her coma. Could people in comas dream? Fallon had no idea.

Seconds ticked by as Fallon stood over Laney's bed, trying to decide what to say to a person in a coma. After a moment, she shifted her weight and said, "I'm sorry this happened to you, Laney. I really am. You survived, yes, but... also you didn't. You're caught in some limbo between the rest of us." Each word made Fallon feel foolish. "I wonder what you're seeing in there..." Maybe nothing. Maybe just darkness. The thought chilled Fallon.

As much as she wanted to leave, Fallon also wanted to stay. She wanted to stand there until Laney woke up. She wanted someone to tell her that everything was going to be okay, that all of this happened for a reason that was too big to understand. In all of her heart, Fallon wanted desperately to believe that the friends she had lost had not died in vain. That she had not been stolen from her family and hidden away for no reason. But there seemed to be more answers than questions. The people who had perpetrated the Barren Pines organ theft were never found. So where were they? Off hocking body parts of her classmates, of Leonette? Again, Fallon felt a chill creep through her body.

Leaning forward, Fallon closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to never open them again. It was morbid, as if she thought closing her eyes for a moment would give her an idea of what it would be like to be in a coma like Laney, or to die like Leonette. She opened her eyes. "I am buying a horse," she said at last. It was easier to talk about herself when the other person had no way of responding. "I joined Crystal Academy's equestrian team. I have no idea what to expect, but on Monday, I will be joining their practices." The babbling account of her current life situation made Fallon feel at ease and so she kept going. She talked about Crystal Academy, and the other survivors, and her run-in with Sailor Virgo. She told Laney about the meal she was planning to cook at her next dinner party. She even told Laney she could come if she woke up in time, which in retrospect made her feel lousy. She rambled until she was sharing details about her parents' marriage that she had never said to anyone else.

By the time she finished, the sun was setting, and a nurse came by to tell Fallon that visiting hours were over and it was time to say goodbye. Fallon nodded, embarrassed that the nurse might have caught some of her rambling. Whatever her intentions had been, the visit to Laney had been therapeutic for Fallon. She said whatever she wanted because Laney couldn't respond. Laney couldn't judge her or share her secrets. And talking out loud made her feel good. Would it help Laney? Fallon had no idea. But she spent her afternoon trying to restore normalcy to her life, even if it involved talking to a girl in a coma.

Before she left, Fallon watered the little fern and promised Laney she'd make sure the nurse looked after it. Fallon could not promise to stop by every day, she knew she would never stick to it. Instead, she brushed a bit of hair from Laney's face, an oddly intimate gesture, and said, "I'll come back." And she would. Maybe not the next day or week, but at some point, Fallon would find her footsteps leading her back to this hospital room, if only to be reminded of what fate she could have had, how terrible the Barren Pines incident really could have been for her.

But Fallon was not Laney. When Fallon left, she returned to friends and family and school. Laney just stayed in the bed, alone, comforted only by the beep-beep-beep of her heart monitor, the little fern by her bedside bending toward the light.