Guide My Steps - A Zak Bagans Story

Dracula Weather

A/N: Gracie above!

"I felt you escape into empty space where my heart can't feel. Down in that darkness, you met all the things you feared, and I knew. I knew there was nothing I could do..." - Stomach It by Crywolf

*

"Are you sure you want to do this, Emie?" Aaron prodded once more. He had asked me the same question at least five times before, thinking he was going to convince me to let him get the rest of my stuff on his own. I absently tugged at the dog tags dangling around my neck, shaking my head to clear it. "I can do it by myself. He said it wasn't much."

"I know, Aaron," I sighed. "I just want to make sure everything is taken care of."

He raised a brow at me. "If this is a closure thing, I can stay out of it."

I hadn't thought about it that way. I tried not to let my brain wander too much around it all - the paps, the media plastering my face all over the cover of magazines, tabloids, internet articles. Then, there was Laura, her face twisted in her typical disgust, her blonde hair waving with every movement, her fierce gaze...and Zak...

He was there, pushed somewhere far in the back of my mind, haunting me like the demons, ghosts and ghouls we chased on the daily.

There hardly was a time when I wasn't thinking of him.

Little things would cross me in my day - anything, really - and an image of the ghost hunter would cross my mind, and it would cripple me. Sometimes briefly, sometimes for hours. Anything simple, small. A particular scent, a picture, his clothes that I haven't quite worked up the nerve to get rid of...it would break my walls down, brick by brick.

It would leave me laying on the bathroom floor, eyes stinging with bitter tears. My throat clogged with so many unsaid things - oh, there were so much I wanted to tell him.

Looking back on our relationship now, I began to miss the simplicity of it. Of the friendship, even if it was a lot more complicated when Laura was in the picture. At least I had him around. We were there when we needed each other, always willing to put each other before ourselves - well, things were resolved on his behalf, anyway. Especially with his newly found mutt nosing about.

How easy it was to not put a name to something, only to be crushed when they take the hand of someone else.

Anger would slash through my veins and tug at my heart when all of his promises would float by my ear in a mere inner whisper. Words were meaningless, I realized all too late. Actions told the story, words merely described the perspective.

Let me tell you, with the way Zak left me - so quickly, so randomly, so suddenly...I felt like some sort of third-person zombie. Observing silently from the outside, trying so desperately to speak or make some sort of sound to ask for help, much like the ghouls and ghosts the crew and I chased. I could only watch on helplessly as I succumbed to old habits, turning my back on the world and most who lived upon it.

As far as anyone was concerned, I was 'traitor' - the 'mastermind' behind he and Laura's star-crossed love. I never bothered to make statements. I didn't see much of a point in it.

My life certainly wasn't just simply gossip material to be broadcasted into plain sight. Privacy was much preferred, but that had been taken from me sooner than expected thanks to some idiot with an out of fashion hairstyle and cherry lip gloss.

Sometimes I would try to put everything together in my mind, and wonder where Zak was actually going. Who randomly packed up their house and decided that they were going to leave the place they called home without reason?