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Andrew had been so pleased, he had hooked Miasma with a box of scareons. Yes, the little buggers were out of his hands. And then the other shoe dropped. He suggested she give one of them to Molan and casual commented that she practically married him at Prom.

And then she returned fire, "JACK, why are you so nosy? Don't you have your own confession to make?" While quietly admitting that Molan had indeed confessed first.

But he was caught off guard. His own confession? Did she mean Olivia? She totally meant Olivia.

“Wait what? Molan confessed first?” he could hardly believe it. But then his mind turned to other things. Like Olivia, his own feelings.

“Jack…” he mumbled. “Maybe I’ll have to ask him… No, bad idea, he hates me.” with all the icy passion of a blizzard in Halloween’s highest mountains.

The unexpected smack resounded through the hall.

"Listen to yourself! Who cares who confessed first. Does it really matter? If your feelings are that weak, then go ahead, pity yourself! You'll only have yourself to blame if she decides to find someone else because you lacked the courage to tell her how you feel."

She crossed her arms and stared him down.

"I have no obligation to help you, and could care less whether you take my advice or not. But I'll let you know this much. In all my life, I have never regretted my decision. Not even once. Every action I've taken was out of my own, free will, and it has made me into who I am today. I will never regret my action or take back anything I say, and neither should you."

He hardly listened to the words, fire and heat spouting off of him. Anger.

“You don’t Jacken understand! You don’t have to deal with everyone hating you just because you are a little on fire! Back home this is natural but here…” But here Olivia was terrified of him. There was a wall he could never reach across.

And the tower fell.

He just couldn’t deal with it, he tried to suppress the memory, hated himself for remembering this particular one, again. Greif was truly playing with him.

Still she found herself grasped in the throes of a deep confusion. Sitting down, sweetm00n dropped her weapon and put her head in her hands, as if trying to steady her own thoughts. Why was she even bothering with any of this? She couldn't even remember what had made her come this far. It probably didn't matter, her ... someone? Had once said that things forgotten are things unimportant. And so, sitting here with memories and emotions slipping away, it didn't really seem like anything was. Maybe puppets was the way to go. Maybe there wasn't anything really out there for her, past this. She didn't know, she couldn't remember. Lying back on the ground, she closed her eyes. She would wait here until the end and it all started making sense again.

He had fallen back again, breathing a little heavy, his smile having shifted into a toothy grin, but no more warm then previously. There was a slight sense of retribution to be had from hacking against the queen's form with his cleaver, but he wanted more. He wanted to keep going, to saw off every limb.

A strange feeling came over him, then. An enticing feeling, one full of hope, warmth and promise.

"Oh. Oh ******** yo----"

----

This was it. This was the one he was going to spend the rest of his life with, he was sure of it. They had met a year after he had graduated from High school, long after he had moved out of his house to live on his own, to get away from his mother. He had met her through a friend from work, one who had invited him over for drinks, who's own fiance had invited friends over as well. He had met her, and he had wanted her. He had wanted to make her his from the very beginning.

And he had wanted to control her completely every day afterwards.

It was love, though. That's what he had told himself at the time. He only hurt her, only said nasty things, only manipulated her through guilt and abuse because he loved her.

The Queen forced those memories of love out of him, that beautiful feeling, however fleeting it had been before things turned sour, before what it had become was no longer anything close to love. That was all that was wanted.

Her laughter filled his memory. That spill of long, pale blonde hair. Her smile, the light blue of her eyes. The memory that was the most clear and the least fragmented, was of the two of them lying together, in his bed, his arms wrapped around hers, his face buried in her hair, whispering in her ear how much he loved her, how happy he was that they were together....

-----

He pulled himself back. Back to that dark room, a hiss of air between his teeth.

"No, seriously, ******** you." He growled, taking a step back, away, not aware that others had been able to see it too. "You can't have that, you can't just take what you want to see! It was a lie. There was no love there." Who was he even talking to? Himself? The Queen? Was there anybody nearby that could even hear him?

Ripley's gaze naturally fell on the man standing nearby, watching as the memory of a memory - one that involved the pair of them - played out around him. He was distracted as he watched the secondary memory, flinching as he had to listen to those words a second time. To see Finn's hands grip his shoulders, forcing him to look at his face, to see the resolve in the other man's eyes...it hurt. Feeling it for the first time it had stung more than words could ever convey, and despite not having been real, they still stung.

In the memory, Finn's hands lifted from his shoulders, and that was where Ripley looked away. If he kept watching, he would be drawn to the faded memory of himself, and he would have to watch himself try to handle this, without showing how much he wanted to say something. It was simply easier to look away. He had to remind himself that it wasn't real in the first place. The love and the pain; nothing but false memories of a world that didn't - and couldn't - exist. It wasn't real.

The moment he reminded himself of this was the moment he realized that he was probably better off the way he was. If you couldn't love, you couldn't feel that level of deep, scarring hurt that would never heal. It was better this way, certainly.

A card was drawn for him, and though he had just finished watching the end of one love, he was treated to a memory of another:

He was sitting in the commons, ating his lunch alone as he tended to do; not many in his program ever ate there, preferring instead to either go home or to the bar. But he liked it here, because he liked to people watch. He ate at the same spot every day, or at least in the same area; it put his back to a wall, and gave him a great view of the entire place. An optimal point. Today, for the third day in a row, the table beside his was filled with the same people, crowded so tightly they were practically shoulder to shoulder. They didn't seem to mind, and Ripley often found himself curious as to why that was; but today, he realized something different about the group. The two with their backs to him were acting different today. His arm was resting across the back of her chair, his fingers toying with the tips of her hair. She was leaning a little more towards him, more than necessary despite the lack of room at the table.

He found himself watching them discreetly as he ate, observing the body language he was sure wasn't there yesterday...

Jabber found himself in his room. There was a moment of disorientation. Wasn't he just in that big big dark room with...It was a memory. There was a sound near him and he startled. He suddenly realized that he wasn't alone in his room. His father and sister were there as well. They were looking grim.

"So, are you sure about this?"

He blinked. What? What did they mean? Sure of what? Then it clicked again. He knew this place. He knew when this had happened. He had finally decided to ask his father if he could stop with the tutoring. He and the rest of the family knew well enough that it was doing him no good. He wanted to leave this house. He wanted to go somewhere where no one would know of nor compare with him with his great, perfect, older sister.

Ryou took a deep breath.

"Yes, yes I want to go. I want to go to Amityville Academy."

He had nightmares about her.

Sometimes he tried to forget about her. It was terrible and painful and awful of him to even think such a thing, and a part of him felt guilty about it; but a part of him couldn't help but try and forget, because he knew the extent of the pain that stemmed from someone dying, from someone leaving.

At least Nevada hadn't tried - and succeeded - to kill herself, unlike Patrick.

He remembered when she was not dying, though, and he remembered the bright smile on her face when he had told her about Shiloh, the knowing smirk on her lips and the playful nudge to his side. She'd been so happy for him, and for the first time in a long time, Ian had almost forgotten Patrick, forgot what it had been like without someone like Nevada at his side.

She was his best friend, and she was dying, and he couldn't stop it.

The anguish over losing her was deeply welled in the pit of Ian's stomach; a terrible ache that would never be soothed, no matter how much he tried to conceal it, to push it aside and pretend that it didn't exist. Things didn't go away if you just ignored them, something Ian was still struggling with.

Patrick's note was still fresh in his mind, written in his neat handwriting, on a plain sheet of notebook paper, the tone of it slightly apologetic (full of apologies, but never really apologizing), but mostly painful, mostly agonizing.

I'm sorry it had to be this way.

I'm sorry that I didn't say goodbye other than this, but I was never truly happy.

I can't be happy anymore.

I love you. I'll miss you.

Stay strong without me. I know you can do it.

(He couldn't do it.)

I love you.

He could remember Nevada's smile, her bright eyes, and maybe that was the key, maybe that was the way to hold on - to remember the good, not the bad; the light instead of the dark, the happy instead of the sad. Maybe if he was going to struggle to survive, the struggle could at least be a little easier by remembering that it wasn't always this way, and didn't have to be.

He missed Patrick; a pain that would never truly dissipate.

He missed Nevada, and she wasn't gone yet, she wasn't going anywhere (she was).

He was drowning without a way out, holding onto a life raft that was barely afloat.

K1ll didn't understand what was going on, but he didn't mind. He had been doing the quests, he had been fighting the monsters - when he found himself in front of the white queen, his immediate first reaction was that he had done it! He had beat the game. This was the special final level for all the people who had gotten to max points. A smaller voice in the back of his head that he always tried his hardest to ignore told him that was retarded.

Readying his weapon he looked down at it and frowned. The game had let him down again there. No gun. Not even a sword or axe. A boomerang. What kind of leet weapon was that? He had never seen a game where people headshotted each other with /boomerangs/. --- to becontinued im so busy OTL