That night, Micky had another nightmare. The first had been a hunger, never satisfied, and had left the auburn-haired girl feeling hilariously, yet creepily starved as she woke from it, mouth tasting of what could only be described as 'gross.' This nightmare was similar in the fact that she could feel it coming on as she laid down in her bed, pulling up the covers, the deja vu sensation making the Barren Pines girl c**k her head a little, pausing before closing her eyes.

Only this nightmare was much worse. So much worse.

The nightmare began like most do, especially when you watched too many horror-movies. It was dark. Impossibly, unnaturally, terrifyingly dark. It was the dark you never wanted to be in, because your eyes would never adjust. It just blanket you, threw you in the trunk of a car and left you there to wonder for hours on end. ‘Cliched,’ she had thought in an almost weak humor. Her eyes struggled to find purchase, anything that would let her focus, the lack of anything making her eyes hurt, pounding in their sockets to the time of her heartbeat.

"Micky..."

The voice, usually so familiar and sweet now filled her a sense with dread as it echoed a little in the nightmare world. She winced a little even, shutting her eyes despite how she could see nothing, swallowing a lump in her throat. 'No. Don't you dare involved her,' she thought a little fervently, laughing out loud despite herself, the sound bitter. Mackenzie knew even before turning around what she would see there. The movement was merely for show, improving the cinematic vewing in her mind. Elle Hammel stood behind her, her black gothic makeup staining black streaks down her cheeks, her usually mischievous gold eyes now terror-struck. "I don't want to die!"

The voice was high pitched. Scared.

The pain in her chest was near unbearable.

"You're not going to die," she replied with a light tsking, pulling her hands from pockets she hadn't remembered putting them in to stroke under her chin. As usual, Micky's voice was cheerful, her smile fake as she took Dream Elle by the shoulders, rubbing them as if she were cold, "I will run in and save you, right at the last minute.” What was she talking about? She didn’t know, but it felt right to say, so she continued, grinning like the idiot she was. Dream Elle’s tears only seemed to get fuller, gold eyes glazed over for an entirely different reason than the norm. It tore at her, seeing her like this. She was just about to tell her not to cry when pale, thin hands suddenly were gripping the front of her uniform, so real and solid and surprisingly warm, a face suddenly pressed hard against her chest. Again, that terror struck her, tearing the breath from the usually cheery student, and her arms automatically wrapped around the quivering, crying form, stupidly proud of the fact that she did not shake as she did so. Even so, it was getting harder and harder each time the girl, so affectionately nicknamed ‘hippy goth’, spoke.

“I really like you, and I don’t usually feel that way about people!”

She sounded so panicked. Make it stop.

“You’re not going to die. I promise.”

“How do you know that, O’Connell? How can you say that?”

A pause. They both knew the answer to that: she didn't. Micky’s grip tightened.

“I just… I just know, ok? It’ll be ok, hun. I won’t let anything hurt you. You’re not going to die. You’re going to stay right here with me.”

There was a laugh on Elle’s part, those warm hands wandering up her back, curling around her shoulders, cheek pressed against Mack’s collarbone. “… I never even got to know you that well,” she murmured against the black sweater of Micky's shirt, fingers brushing over the fabric as if memorizing it for another lifetime. The embrace would have been sweet and romantic, had she not felt like there was something foreboding about the way she was pressed against her, wistful.

“You aren’t dead, stop talking like you are." (She was panicking by now, jerking a little every few moments, frustrated. She could exercise no control over this situation. Helpless.) "You and I and even prissy little Ari are going to get out of here! We’re going to get out of this wretched school, and we’re going to tease the s**t out of Ari and watch her eat that stupid brownie you gave her and laugh and…”

“Shut up Micky, just shut up! It’s not going to happen, I know, ok?”

“No, YOU shut up!” Micky yelled uncharacteristically, taking Elle Hammel by the shoulders and slamming her gently into a wall she had just known was there, despite the darkness, “You are not going to die, you hear me? You’re not going to die…” She stopped, the words drifting off, a sob catching in her throat as she said this. her green eyes grew wider as she stared back at her friend, at her lover, tears she didn’t know she possessed anymore streaming down her cheeks, weak gasps for breath interjecting only when she couldn’t hold her breath any longer. She pulled the black-haired girl to her once more, fierce and angry and desperate to hang onto her.

“You’re going to be fine. You’re going to stay here, and everything is going to be ok. Everything is going to be ok…”

Neither of them believed the words spoken -- they both knew the truth.

The sobs were coming more freely now, one louder than the other although neither in any less pain, one girl pressed tightly against the other. They were soaking each other in their tears, not caring in the least. She didn’t know how long they stood there, her own arms clutching the other painfully thin girl desperately, not daring to let her go, Elle sobbing into her shirt. Finally, the gothic girl lifted her head, sobs died down as she did so, meeting her own green eyes with a look of accepting despair.

She started to disappear. Micky scrambled for her, clinging to her tightly, so hard she thought she was going to draw blood how hard her fingertips were digging into Elle’s back, sobs and screams of anguish echoing in her ears, only to find that when the goth's form completely vanished, they had been her own all along.

~~~

Micky woke up in a cold sweat, tears streaming down her cheeks, terror and sickness coiling in her chest like snakes. Immediately she shoved the covers off her bed, making a desperate dash for the bathroom, barely making it as she vomited up her dinner. For fifteen minutes she sat there, hunched over the bowl, crying silently alone in the bathroom, not due to the endless dry heaving, but the strange feeling of despair which had overtaken her -- something the usually peppy, upbeat girl had never felt so acutely before.

The next morning, she would stand stoic as the white-clad BP staff members stripped Elle's room, watching as she leaned against her own door frame, face slightly puffy but dry. A strange, oddly gothic diary would be clutched in one hand, fingering the binder as the other hand clutched a pair of miniature keys hanging from a chain around her neck.