Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Demoria ❯ Chapter 2 ( Chapter 2 )

"Derek, Derek! Goddamnit, get up!"

 

At the sound of Tony's voice yelling in his ear, Derek bolted straight awake, yelping slightly as he fell over the edge of his small twin bed and nearly knocked his head into the nightstand in his haste to get up. Behind him, he could hear Tony sighing in exasperation at his clumsiness as he scrambled to get up, and he quickly turned around to face his friend with a mildly sleepy expression, tangles of black hair going into his face, his eyes baggy from the usual lack of sleep, and he blinked a couple of times to rid himself of the lingering sleepiness. He had to wonder for a moment, was it really already morning? It seemed like it hadn't been all that long ago that he had fallen asleep. . . . Then again, he had gone to be at four that morning, only to fall asleep at half past five when he was supposed to wake up an hour and a half later after he'd fallen asleep.

 

"What time 'sit?" Derek said sleepily through a stifled yawn, still trying to wake himself up after Tony's rude awakening. One hand reached up to rub his eye, but then quickly stopped as something was placed right under his nose. Something fresh, steaming hot, and that smelled delicious. Something that suspiciously smelled like blueberry mini-muffins that Derek knew Tony was an ace at making. At once, the ebon no longer felt so sleepy.

 

"Here's part of your breakfast, the rest are in the kitchen if you want another, but get dressed first," Tony said in a strangely motherly manner. Derek didn't really seem to notice anything except the muffin, which he was a little fixated on, but he was hanging onto the brunette's every word. Tony continued, "And it's seven o'clock now. And you have work in an hour. Which means it's time for you to get up. Here, now you may eat your first muffin of the day."

 

Without warning, Derek quickly snatched the muffin from Tony's hands, munching on it greedily as he began walking over towards the closet to pull out a pair of pants and a shirt. One hand a bit preoccupied with the blueberry muffin, his left hand awkwardly fumbled through the closet until it found a clean, plain white t-shirt that he promptly threw on the bed, which was then followed by a pair of baggy black jeans, which were so worn and old that they had turned a medium shade of grey and weren't really black anymore. Meanwhile, to the side, as the ebon finished off the muffin and began getting dressed, Tony just stood quietly and watched without care, making sure his friend did indeed get dressed instead of climbing back into bed like he normally did on mornings such as this.

 

"So, did you sleep well last night?" Tony asked casually, closing his eyes momentarily as Derek began to pull his pajamas off and replace them with his worn out jeans. Sure, he and the ebon had had gym class together back in the "good ol' days," which meant dressing out everyday and which meant seeing other boys in their underwear and all that, not to mention they were good friends and had grown up together, but sometimes you just had to close your eyes.

 

"For the most part, no," Derek said as he began to pull on his shirt, messing up his hair even more as he pulled it over his head. He then walked over to the mirror to take a good look at himself and see if he was fit for work as he straightened his hair simply by running his fingers through it, as he never brushed it. A healthy yet extremely tired-looking reflection stared back at him, and he took a moment to fuss at the dark circles under his eyes, the slight crook in his nose from where he had broken it at the young age of seven, and his mildly gaunt cheeks that always seemed to stand out on his face. But despite these notable flaws, he was quite handsome, as one of his female friends tended to tell him frequently. And he couldn't much deny that although he could be classified as anorexic-skinny, despite he had a tendency to eat everything in the house in one sitting.

 

As he looked at his reflection, he couldn't help but admire how his black hair messily fell to frame his pale, angular face. His cheekbones weren't exactly high, but they were right at that height where they were just noticeable and handsome, and his eyes definitely weren't anything to be ashamed of. If he had to pick a feature that he was most proud of, it was his eyes. Vivid blue in color like a pair of crystals, and full of depth and emotion wherever he looked, his eyes were very lovely as many had told him. If he tried hard enough, he could seriously get a girl talking to him just because of his eyes, but that was about the extent of it. He was unfortunately very shy, so he didn't get much farther than the realm of friendship with girls, unlike Tony, who could get girls to swoon at his feet wherever and whenever he pleased.

 

"Dreams again?" Tony said, opening one eye cautiously to see if Derek was dressed, and then opening both eyes when he saw that his friend was indeed ready, save for his shoes.

 

"Just one. Not to mention I only slept for about an hour and a half."

 

Tony sighed. "A, what was the dream about? And B, did the doctor say there was anything that could be done about your insomnia? You seriously need to get some sleep."

 

"So far, Dr. Diaz has prescribed me a number of pills to take when I go to bed," the ebon said as he began pulling on his shoes, "but none of them have really worked for me. You know pills and I just do not get along. As for the dream. . . ." Derek's brow furrowed slightly, and he paused in the middle of putting his shoe on while trying to think of just how to word what he wanted to say. At the mention of the dream, the Catholic looked slightly troubled.

 

"Well?" Tony said, a bit impatient to hear about this dream. He was supposed to be keeping a record of these dreams, and they were supposed to be leaving for work within the next fifteen minutes, after all.

 

Derek hesitated for another moment before saying, "It was very strange, actually, and very surreal and . . . occult, I guess you could say. I was dreaming that I was in a land of fire, without actually being harmed by the fire, and beside me was this . . . demon, who was telling me that there's a whole lot more to the world than meets the eye, and if I ever want to see it all, I'd best open my mind to the possibility of the impossible."

 

Tony listened carefully as Derek finished, and then said, "Demons? You mean like Satan and stuff?"

 

"Uh-huh. 'Cept it wasn't the devil that was beside me. It was just some random demon."

 

Tony's brow furrowed. "The last time you had a dream about demons, you had this paranoid thought that a satanic cult was after you. Is everything okay?"

 

"Yeah, I feel just fine," Derek said as he began lacing up his shoe again, turning to glare at Tony for a moment in the process at such an accusation. "And no, I do not think that there's some sort of satanic cult-thing after me. My mind's in just fine-perfect condition, thank you."

 

"Yeah, sure it is," Tony said in his slight accent, smiling as Derek glared at him with baggy eyes, giving the impression of a very crazy person who has just been disturbed by the last thing they wanted to see—another human. The half-Spaniard chuckled at his friend lightly, and he added, "C'mon, Dare. I know you want some more muffins, and there's more in the kitchen waiting to be eaten."

 

With that, Tony began heading into the kitchen, and shortly afterwards, after finishing lacing up his shoes, Derek followed, ready to eat some more muffins.

 

;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;-;

 

". . . so then I told him, 'As if! The only reason you hang around here is because you want down my pants, which I won't let you have your way with me, and that's why you get so aggravated all the damn time. Now get the hell out of my sight before Nikki gets here'," said Derek's friend, Anna, as she explained her most recent breakup to him. As he listened without really listening, she pressed on, saying, "And then he looked at me—and you should've seen the look on his face, by the way. He was completely stunned. But he just sort of looked at me, and then packed up his things and left, and I was like, 'Finally!'. It was a huge relief to see him go—are you listening to me?"

 

Dimly aware of what his female friend was saying, Derek nodded in acknowledgement of her impatient words, continuing to paint her portrait in his strange, occult style as he pretended to listen to her. Truth be told, he loved Anna with all his heart like the sister she was to him, but sometimes her rants could be a little distracting. With utmost attention, he continued to place each stroke of the brush with delicate care, only looking at her every now and then to show "interest" in her babble as he continued to paint the mural on her wall that she had requested. He'd been meaning to paint it for her for several months now, but he'd been so ill with a mix of insomnia and hallucinations that he hadn't been able to focus properly on anything (not to mention just sheer laziness had been part of the problem, too). Now, finally, he had the time and energy to paint.

 

"You are not listening to me," Anna said, her full lips turning slightly out and downwards in a sweet, childish pout as she tossed her curly blonde hair over one shoulder. She absolutely hated it when people didn't listen to her, and when she was upset about not being listened to, it very obviously showed.

 

Derek sighed, putting down the art brush as he turned to face her. Now was not the time to be dealing with Anna's childish antics, however cute they may be. "Anna, I am sort of listening, it's just really hard to listen when you have a one-track mind like I do and most of it's focused on painting something really nice for your friend. By the way, because you're my friend and because you've had to wait for so long on this mural, you only have to pay me half of what you would normally owe me."

 

Anna stared at him in surprise of his graciousness, blinking a little before her lips curled upwards in a happy smile. "How about I pay you in full and you consider the other half of what I pay you a nice tip? The art is lovely, and you deserve it."

 

"I—" Derek was going to say more, but just then at that very moment, a prickling feeling started creeping up his spine, he felt very cold and then very warm at the same time, and at the same time, something felt very, very wrong. He shuddered with fear and anxiety. He knew this feeling; he always felt it before one of his hallucinations. But this time, was it really a hallucination?

 

He could hear Anna's voice calling out to him, but the sound was distant and far away, caught in the sound of something else. Something that sounded strangely like flames. The ebon looked around, and sure enough, there was some sort of fire coming from the kitchen and beginning to slowly spread into the living room where they were. The only thing was, if he remembered correctly, they were in Anna's hair salon. . . . So there was no living room or kitchen. But, still, something looked awfully familiar about the scenery.

 

The scene was entirely engulfed in flames, and he could no longer hear Anna's voice. Instead, he could hear another voice—someone familiar, screaming, yelling for help, and it sounded like there was someone with them. Instinctually, Derek began moving through the burning archways towards the voice, looking for the source of it out of daring curiosity, since he was fully aware this was nothing more than a hallucination. If it had been a real fire, he wouldn't have gone any further than two steps, not being exactly the bravest person in the world.

 

As he rushed through the conflagration, instinctually moving to avoid any falling debris that came at him when he neared his destination, that feeling of something just not being right still lingered, and Derek shivered with the chill of fear as he neared one of the bedrooms. Something was beyond that door. Something was beyond that door that he needed to get through to, now. Yet, he was too scared to even move. He'd come this far, but fear held him back from going any farther.

 

The door shook violently, and Derek drew back slightly—the source of heat was greatest here, like being in the fires of Hell itself. As he stood there, it shook again, and he hesitated, his hand out towards the handle. Should he open it? Should he really open it and see what lay beyond that door? What about that screaming person? Should he continue on and find them? Before he could answer any of his own questions, a group of flaming floorboards broke loose from the floor of the attic above him, and he had just enough time to look up and scream as they fell down upon him. . . .

 

And then it was over. The hallucination was over, and he was back in the main room of Anna's hair salon, safe, sound, and not a scratch on him. No burns, no bruises, nothing. But even so, something just didn't feel right about the scene. Something felt very out of place, more so than it had ever felt before with any of his other hallucinations, save for the first one he ever had that took place before his sister died. In fact, this one felt exactly like that one. Like something bad had just happened, or was going to happen in the very near future.

 

"Derek?" Anna said, concerned. But just before anyone could say anything else, the sound of a phone ringing could be heard, of which neither Anna nor Derek went to pick it up, then there was the distinct sound of the answering machine, and then the voice of the person calling. To put it simply, it wasn't good news.

 

"Hey, Anna, this is Nikki," said the preppy female voice on the phone, "I don't know if you've heard yet or not—it just happened like five minutes ago—but, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news. . . . Derek's house just burned down in a fire."

 

She didn't sound like her usual, gossiping self. In fact, she sounded very upset and like she was shaking, almost like she had been crying. "A-and that's . . . not the worst part about it. There's a matter of T-Tony, too. He . . . He was . . . caught in the fire, a-and . . . oh, god. . . ." Nikki's breakdown could easily be heard over the phone, and Anna would've rushed over to the phone to pick it up and comfort her friend, but considering the current news, she was a little frozen with shock. As for Derek, well, he wasn't feeling too great at that moment with the news.

 

Tony, hurt? In the hospital? Or worse . . . dead. How could this have happened? What could've possibly happened to result in this? Was there anything that could've been done about it? If there was, why hadn't anyone done anything? A stream of questions ran through Derek's mind, all of them either angry or upset, and none of them answered by the cruel God that was supposed to look out for the world. The ebon clenched his fist into a tight ball as a means of keeping himself calm, holding it up near his face as he bit back tears. There were several things to be inferred from Nikki's words, and none of them were good. But, from what he understood by what she had said, if he was not mistaken, Tony was. . . .

 

No, couldn't be. Tony simply couldn't be dead. He had to be alive, because he was Tony, and people like Tony stuck around forever, or at least until you were so sick of them you stabbed them in the back to make them go away or slapped them to death. Then they were gone. But people like Tony didn't just simply kick the bucket in the matter of being there one day, then be gone the next as fast as someone snapping their fingers. It just didn't happen! It just . . . didn't. They got hurt, yes. But they didn't just get up and die! Or at least, that's what Derek would've liked to believe, but his hopes were crushed as Nikki regained her composure and continued speaking through the phone.

 

"They . . . t-took Tony to the . . . h-hospital to be examined," Nikki said as calmly as she could, though she was still obviously in tears from the occasional sniffle and soft hiccup of a wail that sounded across the answering machine. Her voice echoed distantly in the room now as Derek and Anna stood quietly in shocked silence, the both of them trying not to break down into tears at the loss of their friend. "They . . . think he was assaulted and then the house was burned down as a result of arson. Th-they're . . . investigating it n-now."

 

The answering machine finally ran out of time for her to leave anymore information, and it fell silent with a dull click, cutting her off. That left just Anna and Derek in the room to contemplate their woes, and what they were to do next. But this loss was a hard hit, and both could only stand there motionlessly as they tried not to burst into tears in front of the other. Tony had been their friend for so very long, ever since before high school. It had been the four of them: Derek, Nikki, Anna, and Tony, with Tony always acting as the leader and taking care of his little brother and sisters, and he had always been such a gentle sweetheart. But now . . . now he was gone. The leader and oldest "brother" of their group was gone, and it stung in a way that nothing else would. Truth be told, stung wasn't the right word for it. It was more like the pain of someone cutting out a piece of their hearts along with taking Tony from them.

 

There was silence for a moment longer, and then Derek suddenly turned towards the exit of the hair salon, his face set with an expression of disbelief and determination to know if what he heard was true. Tony . . . just couldn't simply be dead. There must be some mistake! . . . Right?

 

"Derek?" Anna called worriedly as she watched her friend hastily make for the door. From the sound of her voice, she was just on the borderline of bursting into tears, her big blue eyes made watery by the force of what she was trying to hold back. But even though she called his name, the ebon ignored her, exiting the building into the pouring rain outside. Florida had a way of doing that, despite its sunny name. One moment, it'd be clear, sunny, and perfectly happy—the next hour or so you'd have rain pouring down on your head like no tomorrow, especially in the summer. Today was just another one of those days.

 

The rain was viciously cold as it poured down from the grey heavens above, almost as cold as the rains in the winter, and Derek shuddered as he walked through the onslaught of water to his car. Despite that he was considered a "mentally unsound" person, according to his doctor, he was still permitted to drive so long as he didn't run over any pedestrians or such on purpose, not that he'd ever attempted to do anything of the nature before. He pulled the keys to his '92 Camry out of his pocket, putting the key into the lock and twisting it to the side once to unlock it. He did have keyless locks on his car, but he preferred old methods over electronic for reasons even he couldn't explain. Then again, Tony did say he could often pass for an old fogey if he wanted to, if it weren't for his young looks.

 

As he began to pull open the door of the car, he heard Anna call out to him yet again. "Derek, Derek! Wait!" she yelled, running towards him through the rain despite the hard work and much hairspray she had put into her delicate curls. Apparently, her looks didn't matter so much anymore as seeing proof that Tony was dead did, so the rain bothered her little save for a few shivers.

 

The ebon looked up at her, blinking owlishly in the grey mist, but then he quickly went back to opening the door and shoving himself into his own car. As he started it up, Anna went to say something, but then he rolled down the window and said, "Get in if you want to go. I'm not going to wait on you." His words were slightly cruel, but behind that rudeness was the sound of someone who was deeply troubled, of which Derek was very much so. He still had a notion that Tony was alive, and he needed proof of Nikki's words to know what was truth and what was the make-believe of his own mind.

 

"I'm going," Anna said sharply. "Just let me get in."

 

Once she was in and settled, Derek quickly backed out of the driveway (while of course paying heed to the road behind him), and then just as quickly drove out of the little section of town that Anna's salon was nested in, making his way for the opposite side of town where the hospital was. Rain battered down on the windshield as he drove, reminding him to flip on the windshield wipers so he could see, and as he drove along hastily, the car remained eerily quiet. Anna sat quietly on the passenger's side of the car, looking out the window into the dreary rain outside and watching pedestrians pass by on the streets in a hurry with their umbrellas open or with their hoodies or shirts pulled over their heads to keep the rain off.

 

It must be nice. . . . she thought as she watched a mother usher her child into the warm, dry arms of its father as the two finally reached their house on the side of the highway. It must be nice to not have to fuss over a dead loved one on a day like this, to be relatively normal and without hallucinations like Derek's. It must be nice to live a peaceful life.

 

Peacefulness. It seemed the sense had eluded the four friends' lives ever since they had first come together, and especially began to cleverly evade them when Derek became schizophrenic. Their lives had never been normal ever since the four of them—Nikki, Derek, Anna, and Tony—had come to know each other in high school, and even a little before. Anna was always getting her heart broken by some jerk she didn't know, her parents were emotionally abusive, and at one point she had even been anorexic—something that she still had a little trouble getting herself out of the mindset of. Nikki had grown up in a substance-abusing family, and as that was all she'd known all her life, she came to be a drug user, too. When she met Anna, she eventually went to rehab for it, and that started the bonding of one half of the group.

 

Compared to those two, Derek and Tony had it a little bit easier, or at least Tony did. Derek's father left him at an early age, leaving just his mother to take care of him along with his older sisters. That wasn't quite so bad, save for the fact that his mother had periods of depression where she didn't feel like doing anything, periods where she blamed everything on Derek and sometimes his sisters, too, and then she had her ups where she was fine and dandy. Tony, out of the four of them, had it the easiest—he seemed to have the good luck of the bunch, but when he met Derek, who bonded to him like a newly hatched duck bonds to the first thing it sees, that changed. Whereas Tony seemed to spread good luck, Derek did just the opposite—he took it away and replaced it with bad luck. Shortly after meeting Derek, who was already friends with Anna, Tony's luck changed drastically. He lost quite a few of his friends after becoming friends with the ebon, and his older brother, whom he'd never had too great a relationship with anyway, left the house and never spoke to any of his family again. But surprisingly, the half-Spaniard never blamed it on Derek; he just sort of kept hanging out with him nonetheless.

 

Before Anna knew it, they were at the hospital, and for a moment, she stared in surprise at the looming white building. They were here already? That quickly? From what she remembered, it took much longer than that to drive from her salon to the hospital. . . . Either way it didn't matter. What mattered was that Derek had found a parking spot and was already beginning to get out, leaving the blonde and her wandering mind to contemplate by themselves. Boy, he sure hadn't been kidding when he said he wasn't going to wait. Jerk.

 

Hurriedly, in order to catch up with her friend, Anna unbuckled her seatbelt and quickly clambered out of the car before Derek could lock her in on a whim. The rain was falling harder, even colder now, and there was even a bit of lightning flashing across the sky. As sparks of it flew behind the hospital, it looked strangely foreboding in the shadows cast by the change of the light, like something out of a horror movie, only this was for real. Anna shivered at the thought, shivering even harder when she reminded herself what she was here for. Derek didn't even seem fazed, if he was even thinking or noticing the same things.

 

Through the harsh rain, the two began walking towards the white hospital before them, which had turned grey with the rain dampening its concrete architectural frame. A few windows were lit here and there, making it appear slightly more welcoming, but for all purposes to the two it seemed like the dank cave of the sleeping dragon that the wary adventurer must enter to best the dragon and find out the truth of the villain's secrets, the dragon in this case being their fear and denial of the truth, and the villain's secrets being the truth itself of Tony's death.

 

Sudden, before they went very far, the two were stopped by a familiar voice calling out to them. "Anna! Derek! Wait up!" It was Nikki. Apparently she had come to the hospital to receive closure as well, and from the looks of things, she had walked from her house to the hospital, which was only a short distance away. Her dark brown hair was hardly kept dry by her hoodie, and both her hoodie and hair had turned a couple shades darker from the onslaught of water. Her feet were probably the only thing that were dry, being covered by heavy hiking boots that she liked to wear absolutely everywhere, no matter what season it was. And despite the current situation, she looked quite comical with her slight curls straggling into her eyes, her oversized boots covered in mud all at the soles, and herself being absolutely soaked. As for her expression, the look in her grey eyes said everything about her unhappiness.

 

Derek hesitated for a moment as he waited for Nikki to catch up, but once she was caught up, he was once again hurrying off in that quick stride for the hospital doors. After all, they only had so much time before the autopsy was performed. It could be tomorrow, today, NOW that it was being done, and they wouldn't get a chance to see for themselves what had happened to Tony. But if Tony wasn't dead, there shouldn't be any need to perform an autopsy . . . right? So said the ebon's hopeful mind as he strode into the hospital, where a single nurse was working at the front counter looking over some paperwork. To his left, a mother sat holding a young child in her arms, looking fairly bored as she filled out some paperwork, and an old man who looked to be in decent shape sat reading the newspaper as the news flicked through various headlines on the television above his head. It was calm in here, relaxed. Nothing like the sort of their lives. Those people had it easy. For a moment, Derek envied them, wishing he could take a stroll through reality in their shoes.

 

But he couldn't. He was schizophrenic, his best friend was possibly dead or dying, and his home had just been lost to a fire, with most, if not all, of his belongings. There was nothing to be happy about today, and if things were as he feared, there would be nothing to ever be happy about ever again, even with Anna and Nikki around. Not with Tony gone.

 

As the trio approached the front desk, the nurse looked up from where he was working and said politely, "How may I help you?"

 

"We need to see Tony Velasquez," Nikki said in a calmer voice than when she had been talking over the phone. She had apparently calmed down some ever since her call to Anna's hair salon, but she still sounded slightly upset nonetheless.

 

The nurse looked up from behind his square spectacles, peering over the tops of them to look carefully at the trio before saying professionally, "He's in ICU, and with the shape he's in, I'm not allowed to let anyone visit him. He's in a very frail state right now, and according to his doctor, stress from visitors may do more harm than good at this moment."

 

"So, he's alive?" Derek said, looking up hopefully.

 

"Barely, but—" Before the nurse could finish, there was a loud wail of a woman crying in the adjacent room, and both he and Derek looked up just in time to see the door fling open, revealing a well-dressed, slightly overweight man in a medical coat who looked to be in his mid-forties with his slightly grayed hair and wrinkled features. The woman in the distance behind him, who Derek could see was Tony's mother, was currently being comforted by another doctor who wore one of the most solemn expressions the ebon had ever seen. The older doctor was also wearing the same expression.

 

As the older doctor approached, he turned his sturdy hazel-eyed gaze to Derek and the two girls behind him, saying, "Are you three Derek Johnson, Annabelle Lee, and Nicole Harvard?"

 

Not liking the sound of the doctor's voice at all, Derek nervously said, "Y-yes, we are. Why? What's going on? What ha—"

 

The doctor held up his hand to gently silence the ebon. "I am Dr. Smith, one of the doctors who was foreseeing the recovery of Antonio Velasquez while he remained here. Unfortunately, though, he . . . just passed away."

 

Shock. Pure shock. That hope that Tony was alive and would be well just crumbled like a dirt clump that had been hit by a hammer at the doctor's words, and Derek said, "Wh-what? B-but how?"

 

Dr. Smith looked gravely at Derek, saying, "It was a mix of things, and not just any one cause. He had a number of severe wounds inflicted to his body, both burn wounds and various others that we are not sure of their origins, and his lungs were also damaged by the smoke he inhaled. He was badly hurt, and there was only a small margin by which he would've survived. In fact, I'm surprised he even made it here."

 

Numbness. Cold. That automatic loss of emotions that humans managed to do to themselves in order to keep themselves from being exceptionally overwhelmed by any one memory or thing, and then loss of memory later on to keep going strong. That was how Derek felt right then—that same emptiness inside, the same cold feeling that spoke of "just leave me alone while I contemplate things." That was all he wanted at that moment anymore, to be left alone. And who could blame him? Tony had been the older brother to him that he had never had, and he'd been the vice versa part. Now that was gone, poof, vanished. God had taken his big brother away from him, and he wanted to damn his God to the nine hells and sit in a corner and cry until he could cry no more, and then he wasn't sure what he'd do from there. Commit suicide? No, he was too cowardly. Plus, there was Anna and Nikki to look out for, and it was against his religion anyway. Find something new to make him happy? Maybe . . . but nothing would ever replace Tony. God, why did you have to be so cruel, the ebon wondered as the doctor gently ushered him into a seat.

 

"No, no, I'll be fine," Derek said numbly as the nurse from earlier offered to get him some water. Anna and Nikki were already seated, the both of them looking equally distraught as tears slid down their faces. But even so, Derek didn't really notice them. All that he was aware of was that Tony was dead. The words of Dr. Smith repeated in his head like a mantra, until he, too, began to shed tears, and he forced himself to not cry by biting his tongue as he wiped away his tears on the sleeve of his white tunic. He wouldn't cry. He simply wouldn't cry. Tony had told him that no matter what happened, to not cry over his dead body, and he, Derek, would honor that request. But it wasn't that simple. The tears just kept falling, however hard he tried to hold them back. And . . . damnit! People shouldn't see him like this!

 

After a minute or two, the ebon stood from where he was sitting, sniffling slightly as he rubbed his eyes, and he turned to Nikki and Anna and said, "Anna? I hate to just dump you, but . . . I've got some things to sort out. My home just burned down, so I need to find me a place to stay at least temporarily until I can get something set up."

 

"Y-you could stay with one of us," Nikki said as she hiccupped slightly as a result of crying. That was just like her, to say to her best friend to come stay with her when he was in trouble. Derek had stayed with her before . . . the stay hadn't exactly been his favorite. Sure, Nikki was like a little sister to him, but her house was just too disorganized and cluttered for his tastes. And Anna was far too pristine and OCD about her home, he had learned when staying there one time. So, staying at either was a touch out of the question. He needed something where he would be comfortable. Plus, company didn't sound so great, either.

 

"I . . . think I'll pass, sorry," Derek said with a wan smile. It wasn't that he didn't love either of his "sisters," it was just that he needed some alone time to brood on what was happening here. Plus, there was something that was bothering him that he needed to think on without anyone to bother him with questions of if he was all right or not, which he knew Anna and Nikki would do. Even though it was for his welfare, he didn't want that kind of imminent presence at his side all the time over the next few days.

 

Nikki was about to argue when Anna spoke up, seemingly able to tell what was on Derek's mind. "You go on ahead then," the blonde said with an equally wan smile, but still tried to look strong despite her pallid and frail appearance. The loss of Tony was a real strain on her, and it showed through very obviously. "Just be sure to give us a call when you get settled. You do have your cell phone, right?"

 

Derek nodded. He also had his wallet, which had his debit card to his bank account that held just over a couple thousand in it. It wasn't really enough to live on, but it would be enough to get by on until he could get settled. Or hopefully, at least, it would be.

 

"I'll . . . see you around. . . ." Derek said, a bit of a distant look in his crystal blue eyes as he bade good-bye to his two remaining friends. And with that, he walked out the door of the hospital, driving off into the rain to only God knows where.