'Till We're Over

Chapter Eleven: The Grief Chapter

I AM A TERRIBLE PERSON TO HAVE USED AN ENTIRE 1700 WORDS TRYING TO GET SKY'S PAIN ACROSS TO YOU GUYS D:

SEE, THIS IS WHY I HAVE A VERY SMALL SOCIAL LIFE

PEOPLE GET INTO A CONVERSATION WITH ME AND I SAY "YEAH, IM A WRITER" AND THEN I SHOW THEM ONE OF MY CHAPTERS AND THEY NEVER WANNA TALK TO ME AGAIN XD

Chapter Eleven: The Grief Chapter

Time: ten horrible seconds of anguish later

Place: the cave in the ocean by the cliff

Sky's POV

I love crying.

It's actually really healthy, you know. It releases a whole bunch of crap that you'd never want in your body. Plus, it relieves stress and lowers blood pressure and does all this other great stuff. Really, crying is underrated. Crying makes you feel better. Crying is a wonderful thing.

On the other hand, your problem is still there. It's not like it just magically goes away as soon as you've cried yourself a river. The problem stays – the ex that you still love stays with someone else, the favorite character you were rooting for stays on the wrong team. The best friend you've known for almost your entire life stays dead.

I hate crying.

"Jason, you can't bring him back. Nothing Sky brought down here will do him any good," Seto sighs as Jason rummages through the backpack I brought.

"That isn't helping," E-Ty hisses to him before turning back to me. He's got his hands on my shoulders but I'm still shaking with sobs that I'm barely holding in, and we're both on our knees but I feel like I'm about to fall anyways, and he's looking straight into my eyes in a way that I'm sure he thinks is comforting but really I can't even see him all that well, all I can see are my thoughts, growing and taking shape just as though my eyelids were closed and I were smack dab in the middle of a terrible dream.

With a shuddering breath and a shaking hand, I reach forward and push his headphones off his head and down to his neck, where they should be. Where they should have been.

No, I don't wish E-Ty were dead. But, yeah, I would have chosen differently had I known the truth.

E-Ty winces at the feeling of his headphones hitting his collarbone. "Sky, I'm sorry," he whispers for what must be the millionth time.

"Sorry," Jason laughs hysterically. "Sorry! He's sorry."

"Calm down," Seto says with a warning in his voice.

"I'm sorry," E-Ty repeats, and I blink, refocusing so that I can actually see the world around me rather than reliving the sight of Ty, dead on the ground and bathing in a pool of his own blood. E-Ty turned me away from that only a few moments after the realization hit that it was Ty, but the image is still burned into my mind. "I'm sorry, Sky. I didn't think he'd die – we wouldn't have done the switch if we'd thought he was going to die. I'm sorry, Sky, I'm sorry. We didn't realize he'd been hit in more places than one, didn't realize it was already so bad – we just, I- Ty thought that I was far more injured than he was – there was so much blood – but he also thought that he was injured enough that you would have to choose which one of us to save, and he knew you would choose him. So we switched, because he thought he could survive a bit longer, but he didn't think I could. And... I'm sorry, Sky, Notch, I'm sorry. I never wanted you to have to go through anything like this."

"So... so Ty wanted you to switch with him? It was his plan?" Jason asks, pausing in his search through the backpack.

E-Ty scowls at him. "Of course it was. I'm bad, yes, but you'd have to be downright heartless to knowingly risk putting someone like Sky through this kind of pain. I wouldn't have even considered getting Ty to switch with me had he not suggested it in the first place – no one could ever be that selfish." He looks back at me, and his expression falls into something more neutral. "I'm so, so sorry, Sky."