Wintertime (Frerard, Sequel to Summertime)

21: i love having a plot its so much fun well not for u its quite painful for u

"I don't even like him," Frank protested, his words half muffled into Gerard's shirt, "I just... no one should do that, no one... killing yourself, I just... there's always something, someone to live for."

"I'm sorry." Gerard choked out, both sharing the knowledge that suddenly everything was just a whole lot more about Gerard than it was his father. "I'm really sorry."

"At least you're still here, but he... he..." Frank choked out, "there's no goodbye, no apology, no happy ever after, none of that, because I had this stupid idea in my stupid fucking head that maybe he would have changed, gotten better, maybe married another woman, a nice woman, and maybe he would be happy, a nice guy, and maybe we could make it up again. I just wanted everything to be okay, but that's too much to ask, I know that, obviously and... I..."

"He's not stuck drifting, though, he's not connected to someone or something," Gerard began, pulling away from Frank a little, "he's moved on, to wherever's on from here, and he's not stuck relieving memories, in some sort of hell that's half here and and half there. The sidelines aren't a nice place to me, Frank, I'm one of the lucky ones in that you're so understanding, and that we're here, and that I didn't get cremated, because then I really would just be stuck watching you forever. Some people stay like that, some can never contact the person they're connected to. It took me years, remember?"

Frank nodded, grasping his hand. "I know, I just... I..." he turned, glancing over at the forest and the path he'd travelled down far too many times as a teenager, "you know how you can see memories?" Gerard nodded, "can we go to the place we first met? And can you describe it in great detail because I want to relive that one."

"Do you really?" Gerard raised his eyebrows, "I insulted the fuck out of you, I think we even hated each other-"

"We never hated each other, just hormones, we were teenagers, and stupid ones at that." Frank commented, "and well, that clearing, I haven't been there in too long, it's always been a special place for me, until you intruded and fucked my life up but let's ignore that for a moment."

"I'm sorry." Gerard joked, putting his arm around Frank as they headed towards the path, the taller man doing everything he could to focus on anything but the man holding the bleeding body of a woman, carrying her down the very same path they were headed.

-

Gerard's gaze remained fixated upon the man walking just a few paces before them, whereas Frank seemed to drift of in oblivion, his hand in Gerard's, his feet against the forest floor, but his mind definitely elsewhere.

The forest had hardly changed in ten or so years, only the trees seeming to curl in, and more leaves on the floor left the forest with that forever autumnal feeling, that only seemed to catch Gerard's attention then, because he'd known this wasn't normal, everyone had known that, but he'd never really considered the colours of leaves in a forest until now.

Because it was very obviously not naturally like that, and Gerard came to wonder if there was some other presence around here keeping it as such, in fact, it was almost as if the forest itself had been frozen and preserved for entirety, just like this in Autumn, destined to always be as such.

Gerard found himself stumped as to quite what he was supposed to think of it, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that nothing in Jersey was as it seemed, and the forest was most certainly no exception, and with that, his curiosity seemed to grow, as he wondered what lay underneath the surface of the rest of the world he knew so well; he wondered what was of his own home, he wondered what was of the graveyard especially: hundreds, thousands even of spirits, of souls, of memories, of worlds and lives forgotten and lost, pushed six feet under ground as if that would wipe them completely off Earth, but it wasn't like that.