Gerard woke up at something around four in the morning.

Gerard woke up for the last time and felt suddenly sick with the realisation that today was the shortest day of his life, and indeed the final one, and how, despite that, he was buzzing all over, and in truth, the coming of nothing, meant everything, and he did indeed wonder just how fucked up he'd managed to become throughout this all.

Gerard got to his feet and stumbled slightly through the darkness of the room: only pulling the curtains open slightly in order to reveal a mere fragment of light from the moonlight sky, but it was enough light to illuminate the outlines of objects in the room, and indeed, the bed, and the figure lying across it, having laid beside Gerard for a few hours prior.

For this was Frank's bedroom, and Frank's bed, and Frank's house, and last night was the last the sleeping boy: beautiful and unaware on the day after his seventeenth birthday, would ever see of him.

And Gerard was so very sorry, but so very certain that there was nothing that could be done anymore. He did however stand in the darkness: heart heavy in his chest as he looked over Frank's sleeping figure: part of him intent upon prolonging walking out quite yet, because this, this was the moment it had all be counting down to, and now Gerard was finally living just in the few hours before his death.

It was a clear sky, and would be a beautiful morning, although Gerard would not see it; he wouldn't see morning, he wouldn't see noon, and he wouldn't see sunset, he wouldn't see the sun fall back down to rise again, he wouldn't see tomorrow, he wouldn't see next week, he wouldn't see November, he wouldn't see December, he wouldn't see Christmas, and he wouldn't see the new year.

Instead they'd close his eyes on his body to make everyone else comfortable, because there was something about corpses with opened eyes that people found unsettling, and Gerard would lie there: condemned to darkness and nothingness forever, and god, god, he was fucking ready.

As fucked up as it sounded, he was excited.

He was both sorry and excited.

He was feeling something, and suddenly everything at once, and in the dark of Frank's room come four in the morning on November 1st, Gerard Way was a fireworks show of colour and feeling, but that was the thing about fireworks: their beauty and worth was temporary - short lived, and after those few seconds they'd crash and burn and fade away, and Gerard found his fate to follow much of the same path.

He found himself somewhat uncomfortable, and indeed guilty without just walking out, because he didn't want Frank to worry, he didn't want him to think of this as his fault, and now, it was far too late to wake him up and slip it in casually to conversation, but Gerard couldn't just leave, could he?

It'd leave an odd kind of gaping hole in his chest, and Gerard didn't want to die like that. Yet, within seconds, the solution presented itself within the form of a notepad and a pen.

Gerard ripped a sheet of paper from the notepad and clicked the pen, before scribbling some form of note: not putting too much efforting in concealing his handwriting this time, because what did it matter now? When he was dead, Frank could know everything, because when he was dead, there was nothing Frank could do that would affect him.

'I'm okay. I went out. Nothing's your fault. Love you. I'm sorry. Gerard.'

Gerard knew the note was hardly much, but Frank had the letter he'd written specifically for him, and Gerard was confident that he'd saved every blue inked draft letter he'd found along the way, and that he'd put this all together.

Gerard could trust in that, as he indeed wondered if there was much pointing in trusting in or indeed considering anything in regards to the time and the way the morning was closing in on itself.

He wanted to stay and watch Frank sleep a while longer, but he remained himself of the fact that Kat was an early riser, and that he most definitely didn't want to be stopped, and with that in mind, he let out a sigh: his body shuddering slightly as he placed the note down on the windowsill.

And before exiting the room, he laid his eyes upon Frank: beautiful as ever, and couldn't quite prevent himself from letting out a half hearted, pathetic kind of, "I'm never going to see you again," in the form of a whisper.

And in his sleep, Frank didn't even stir, because he was naive and would be naive until the very end. But right now, Frank was happy, and that counted for a lot, so Gerard held that to heart as he pulled the bedroom door open with a slight creak.

As he made his way out of the room; he chanced one final glance upon Frank, and caught sight of a ghost of a smile upon his lips, just for a brief moment. And with the click of the door behind Gerard, that was it.

That was it for them.

That was the end.

And Frank would never know what Gerard had whispered in the dark to him at four in the morning, and Frank would never know how he had to look back as he left, but perhaps those were things that Frank should not know if he ever wanted to live his life.

Because that was the thing; Frank had hopes and prospects and a future. Frank would be an adult someday. Frank would have a job, and a family, and Gerard... Gerard would have a pretty looking headstone, and a permanent taste of the ocean.

And although seemingly unfair, Gerard found himself beyond content with that.

He faced the hallway before him, finding it illuminated harshly in yellow tones, which radiated from a light upon the ceiling. As he found himself fixating upon the light, he noticed a small winged creature, a moth, fluttering around it desperately, and in that moment, it was the 13th all over again, and it was an early morning in a bathtub, and how he'd quite not yet managed to die.

But this time would be successful. Gerard had never been more sure in his life, and of course, he hadn't really wanted to die then - he'd just forgotten rational, and how to think straight, and let everything out in a mess of rage and pills and locked doors, and god, he fucking loved water.

He loved water that was too cold, and how your skin burned with ice, and how that was impossible yet so very real at the same time, and then in time, how you grew numb and accustomed towards it over time: losing your sense of temperature in favour of the cold embrace, and how, as you remained, you too lost yourself in it.

Water had this very real and very terrifying power to overwhelm you completely, and for that, Gerard had never been more grateful, because he needed to forget himself; he needed everything to fade away - he needed tones of blue gray stuck permanently in his eyes, because the landing light was too yellow, and there were people in this house that were still awake.

And that moth was so beautiful yet so taunting, very much like Frank.

Because the thing did indeed pull at his heartstrings and pull him a few weeks back, to a time where he'd felt glad for not having died, but Gerard pushed it aside, because it wouldn't be like that this time - it couldn't be like that, and of that, Gerard was so very sure.

The few people still awake in the house weren't of concern to Gerard, as they were very drunk people, and very drunk people were far too drunk to question what he might possibly be doing at four in the morning with such a sombre look in his eyes, and Gerard did indeed value that as the sole time that alcohol had ever held any worth to him throughout his life.

Of course, very drunk people was accompanied by the need to vomit everywhere, which was something Gerard wasn't at all very fond of, and felt instantly rather naseousness himself as he heard the bathroom door click upon and Lindsey Ballato stick her head out. "Frank, is that you because I-" She stopped, her eyes fixating upon Gerard instead, and offering him a small smile, "is he asleep?"

Gerard only noded, watching as Lindsey pulled her hair back from her face and flushed the toilet before stumbling out of the room before pretty much throwing herself to the ground in a vague sort of sitting position in the middle of the hallway.

"I feel fucking sick as fuck. Not good kind of sick either." Lindsey proclaimed: not really talking to Gerard, as such, but her eyes were fixated very firmly upon him as she spoke - this left Gerard feeling a little uncomfortable and somewhat obligated to reply, when the matter of conversing with a drunk Lindsey Ballato was really not something he'd planned to do on the early morning of November 1st, but he would never see her again, and his guilty continued to play on him.

Eventually, Gerard sat down beside her: just praying that she'd think to move or at least point her head the other way if she felt the need to be sick again. He reckoned she would, though, because Lindsey was someone he'd decided he liked, and there was always some basis for that.

"Maybe you shouldn't have drank so much?" Gerard found himself suggesting what was easily the most pathetic thing to say to drunk person at four in the morning on the day he planned to kill himself.

Lindsey shrugged slightly, "too late for that now. Anyway, me and Pete got into this drinking game - that was a bad idea. Fuck Pete, because who the fuck can sleep when they're this drunk? I fucking can't because I always feel fucking sick, and then he's passed out with fucking Kat, and I am here, and we are here, and my head fucking hurts, and I wish I knew you better because you're my best friend's boyfriend but I hardly know you at all, but you're quiet and shy but you're nice, and it's okay, because I will get to know you better just when I'm not so fucking drunk, I think."

Gerard felt his whole body tightening somewhat, because that was the thing: Lindsey wouldn't get to know him better, but it wasn't like he could just tell her that, so instead, he smiled and nodded along and pretended everything was fine, because that was the only thing he knew how to do properly.

"He fucking loves you." She continued, laughing slightly, "he's such a git. Fucking asleep what a git. Anyway I think I puked so much that I broke his toilet, so he fucking deserves it for being a git. Love him though, he's a fucking loveable git, isn't he? You would know, obviously - the expert. Fucking loverboy. You are so pretty though, I can see why he likes you: you're all pretty and awkward but prettily awkward and kind of messy but it just... you're like this fucking marble statue in a museum up on a plinth and you don't let anyone touch you or get close, and we're all just looking and wanting to know more because you're beautiful and mysterious, and he knows because he's the kid that snuck into the museum at night when no one else was there just to climb over the barrier and touch the statue."

Gerard looked at Lindsey for a rather prolonged minute: attempting to process just what the fuck she'd just said, before giving up and opting for the truth. "But Lindsey, I'm not a statue, I'm not some marble artifact. I'm a fucking person." He paused, "all Frank did was treat me like one. People don't do that, and it's not like it's unheard of to be quiet or not like being touched, or shy, or whatever..." Gerard quickly found himself lost in the passion behind his words, "I'm not some fucking metaphor or pretty fucking picture in your mind, I'm a fucking person. You can't sugar coat things like that. Don't make me pretty. Don't make me beautiful. I'm depressed and I don't take my pills, and I think about killing myself sometimes. I'm not beautiful and I'm not mysterious."

Lindsey sat in silence for a good few minutes as she attempted to process what Gerard had just told her in the state of mind she was in, and that was perhaps exactly why Gerard had done so, because in earnest, he didn't deem her at all capable of recalling very much in her current situation, and there was also the simple matter that he'd run out of fucks to give come the morning of November 1st.

Finally, she opened her mouth to speak, "Gerard, I-" Only to throw her hand back over her mouth in shock, as her face paled slightly, "I'm gonna-" She slurred her words slightly before hurrying to her feet and rushing into the bathroom across the hallway, and as Gerard heard the sounds of a groan, he got to his feet.

Taking his eyes away from the bathroom, he focused up back upon the light, but found the moth to have flown away from the bulb throughout the duration of his conversation with Lindsey. He gave a slight sigh, and took it as a sign that he should too.

And with Lindsey retching in the bathroom, he made his way downstairs and towards the front door.

-

Beyond the front door, it was all grey skies and varying unsteady tones of light, and empty roads with darkened corners that were only slightly illuminated by streetlights flickering dirty unsaturated shades of amber and gold.

There was a certain cold to the air, and Gerard found himself momentarily considering going back to get a jacket, because there was just something blatantly idiotic about standing out in the middle of a street at half past four in the morning in November, but there was something blatantly idiotic about worrying about being cold if you planned to off yourself within the next thirty minutes or so.

Because that's all it was. This was all there was left.

This walk.

This one walk up to the lake.

And then everything was over.

And his heart held a stronger presence in his chest, and each footstep was weighted much more than it should have been, and it was almost as if his body was aware of what was to come, and was fighting it somewhat.

Because there was, of course, that damn fucking survival reflex, that was buried somewhere deep within him - that part that yearned not to drown. This was the part that would battle: this was the part that would keep breathing, this was the part that would resist, and of course, this was the part of himself that Gerard despised the most.

It was only perhaps a ten to fifteen minute walk from Frank's house to the lake: a journey taking a series of winding roads, and then eventually an even more winding dirt path until you found yourself tucked away up in the outskirts of town by the cool dark water of the lake.

Gerard had never really opted to spend much time there; no one had, after all what was the point of visiting a lake when you lived by the ocean? What was the point in anything when there would always be something, and indeed someone better.

Gerard would never let himself be classed as Frank's best boyfriend, because what kind of good boyfriend went and killed themself the day after your birthday? That's right. Gerard was a terrible boyfriend, and a terrible person, and he knew he'd upset everyone in his actions, yet still, he held it like a badge of honour as he continued past dark, sleeping houses lined up neatly painted in shades of cream and brown, all with small front gardens and gravel driveways and chimneys upon the rooftops.

Indeed, everything about this town was so ordered and precise, and groomed, and prettied, that Gerard found distaste, and very much felt out of place as the shivering, teenage boy wandering through the streets at leaning in on five in the morning.

He wanted to watch the sunrise before everything fell apart. He wanted to watch, he wanted to watch himself die from someone else's eyes, and he wasn't quite sure why, he just wanted to feel it, to feel something, because he was so fucking numb, so fucking numb, and so fucking cold, and he wondered if he could catch hypothermia out here in the November air and wouldn't even notice because he was all numb and severed nerve endings and heavy weights on his eyelids and a lack of colour to his skin, a lack of shimmer to his eyes, a lack of kick in his heart, a lack of intent in the steady inhale and exhale cycle of his lungs, as if they were quite tired of it all: of breathing, of keeping up and running along after this run down sham of a body.

But it was all okay now.

Everything was all okay.

Everything was perfect as the end of a dimly lit street gave way to a dirt path that Gerard had perhaps gone as far as to burn into his mind, because this was the end - the least street he'd walk, the last house he'd see to his right: so many fucking lasts and Gerard wanted to count them - to make a list, to write about it in blue ink, because that was perhaps all he knew to do, but it was too late for that: it was too late for anything but the softness of dirt beneath his shoes, and the way he seemed to sink slightly under his own weight due to the slippery nature of the ground.

It had rained that night.

For once.

Gerard had the excuse to be drenched, but only when it no longer mattered, for he had figured out what had occurred in the lapses of his memory, for in the lapses of his memory, and indeed the lapses of himself, he'd become less conscious of a certain pressure and weight held by a certain date, and gotten impatient, but it had never quite worked. Of course, as to why, Gerard hadn't quite concluded, and indeed he perhaps never would, but as these thoughts would stay firmly on the inside of his head, it was perfectly okay to admit to his own failure.

His last failure, hopefully.

For this could absolutely not go wrong. There wasn't a chance in hell that he could let this slip, and of course, he'd brought precautions: precautions in the form of a pocket full of things to make it better.

Make something better.

Anything.

Gerard didn't care anymore, he just wanted to believe that it'd be easier, because he was such a coward when it came down to it, and terrible when it came to confrontation, and there was just something daunting about the importance of this all: of this one date, and of the shades of lighter blue looming over the horizon: the threat of the sunrise, the threat of the waking world, the threat of a tomorrow - a threat that worked to quicken his pace, until he finally reached the top of the hill.

Gerard found himself standing there, just a few metres away from the shore of the navy blue clouded mass of water that was the lake: looking over it, and letting out a muffled kind of choked sob, because fuck, this was fucking it, and god, fuck, fuck, this was fucking hard, somehow, the only thing he could do was hard.

This was all he'd wanted: right there before him, and somehow it was hard, and somehow Gerard was getting cold feet, physically also, but he bit his tongue, hard, and cursed to himself, before reaching into his pocket in search of certain precautions, as he allowed his eyes to fixate upon the beginning hopes of a sunrise, and then flicker down across the town to the shoreline.

There was beauty within it all: beauty within this place, beauty within everything, as beauty was subjective, yet definitely omnipresent. And Gerard recalled how Frank had called him beautiful, and how that had meant so much and yet nothing at all, because Frank was just a boy, just a boy who loved him, just a boy who he'd known a month; Gerard wondered if that was really long enough to fall in love with someone.

Gerard came to grips with the fact that standing here now he would never know, and indeed, there was a whole fucking plethora of things he would never find out, and yet, he found himself oddly content with that, because today was November 1st and this was how it had to be.

Gerard kicked his shoes off by the shoreline, withdrawing a small handful of pills from his jeans pocket, and glancing over them with a sigh: as Kat had taken away his own personal supply of medication, he'd resorted to other measures of acquiring them, and the pills that lay in his palm had once been in the medicine cabinet in Frank's house.

He hoped they weren't important to anybody, but then again, the thing hadn't been locked, and Gerard would never know, so he opted for shrugging it off, and glancing back across the town: burning the sunrise into his eyes before clasping his hand to his mouth and downing the pills.

His throat burned slightly as he swallowed them, but that was the last thing on his mind as he drew his gaze over the lake and stepped forward, because this was it, and it is now.

This was the fucking end.

And Gerard took a moment just to breathe: to fucking breathe and try not to fucking cry, but dear god, he was fucking crying, and- fuck. At least there was no one there to see him cry, but, he found himself judging himself in their place, because this had been hyped up as all he'd ever wanted, and yet he was crying.

Always fucking crying.

Always fucking pathetic.

Always such a mess.

And nothing could ever change that, despite the bringing of an end to that always.

Because there was always an end.

Always an end.

Always a way out.

It just wasn't always the good or easy option, and that was certainly one thing he'd learned throughout October.

But October had come to an end nearly five hours ago, and it was 4:58 in the morning, and Kat was an early riser, and Gerard was scared.

Gerard was scared.

Scared of everything.

Scared of the world.

Scared of falling.

Scared of not letting go.

Scared of never even getting close.

But he pulled himself together eventually and swallowed hard, and took the first step into the water just past the shore; it reached his ankles and instantly brought on the numbing kind of cold that lit up his body like sparks, and Gerard could never quite figure out as to just what had gone so wrong in his brain to make him like this.

And maybe with time, those pills would have fixed him, but it was just too late to find out now.

Gerard stepped further, the water at his knees, and he was already so wet and so cold, and physically shivering all over, and it was fucking wonderful, because the cold was breaking through the numbed shell of his emotions, and he was feeling: feeling sharp spikes of a white kind of pain that had him squirming, and everything was screaming at him to get out of the water, but he just didn't want the scream to stop; he'd let himself go out with a ringing in his ears if that was how it had to be.

He'd be all echoes and whispers and unresponsive muscles as freezing water pulled up to his waist. And he considered whether he'd even be able to get back out at this point, because the slope of the lake was gradual at first, and he was already several metres away from the shore, and he here was: really doing this, really fucking doing this.

As he stepped forward: deeper into the water, he found his head suddenly becoming very light upon his shoulders, and the whole world beginning to spin around him slightly, and Gerard wondered if he should perhaps feel somewhat concerned, but here he was: with water up to his elbows, and his limbs beginning to seize up with the overwhelming cold of it all, because fuck, it was so fucking cold, and fuck, fuck, fuck.

Gerard had found himself so concerned on the matter of making it through the water, that he had even momentarily forgotten about just what this was all to achieve, but as he found himself in the position to offer one last thought to his situation and Frank still asleep in bed, with a haphazardly scrawled note to find upon waking, his head grew lighter, and thought seemed to render itself incomprehensible.

With little else left to do in a world that seemed to be spinning around him, Gerard stepped forward once more, but found himself slipping slightly as he did so, and finding that the gradual slope of the lake had become much less gradual in a very short space of time, because suddenly there was nothing beneath his feet for quite a while downwards.

Gerard attempted to force himself forwards, but instead found his whole body ceasing to respond, and his limbs simply crumbling under any attempt to exert force or action within them, and his whole body folding in upon itself as his head disappeared underwater, and his vision blurred slightly.

Water poured into his lungs: cutting through his throat and burning out his insides, and fuck, everything hurt. Everything fucking hurt: it stung, and Gerard hadn't expected it to hurt like this; Gerard hadn't known what to expect, as he had assumed it to be so temporary, but time seemed to have thrown itself into slow motion, as minutes dragged themselves out to be rather permanent.

Lights and blurry shapes in the place objects, the vague echo of bubbles and a ringing in his ears, a stinging all over, a burning sensation throughout his body, and a total lack of control: there was nothing to him, there was nothing to his limbs - there was this lake, and there was his vision growing darker, and there was the end.

And Gerard couldn't help but grow panicked at the burning inside him: a simple reflex, much as the response was - the response to breathe, but there was nothing to breathe at the bottom of the lake, and his insides only continued to burn. Everything continued to burn: drenched with water, he was on fire, and he'd never felt anything so strongly before.

He burned, and he ached, for in the last moments before death, he'd never felt so alive.

For there was fire, there was light, there was pain, and then there was nothing.

-

When Frank woke up, it was twenty past nine that morning, and the room was full with the golden toned rays of morning sunlight, leaving him confused, as he stood with the certainty that he'd closed the curtains last night before getting into bed.

Because they had: him and Gerard, they'd closed the curtains and kissed some more and lay down under the covers, and he'd fallen asleep first, but he'd awoken briefly at three in the morning and found Gerard sleeping soundly, and that left his worries soothed, and made everything just that little bit more okay and allowed him to drift back to sleep.

But come twenty past nine, the bed was empty, and as Frank came to realisation just what an empty bed and an empty room meant, his heart was pounding in his chest, and he disregarded all sense of fatigue and the desire to stay curled up under the covers forever in favour of a search for answers, because Frank couldn't help but jump to conclusions, and then force himself backwards, to think inside the lines of the box he wanted to tick, because he wanted Gerard just to be downstairs, or in the bathroom, and in his head, he built him up as so, and with every thought, his own vision of the world only grew more vivid.

And for a moment, just a moment, Frank stood there in the sunlight: alone and contemplative, and hating that he was losing grip, losing grip on the facade he found himself so desperately clinging to.

It was then that his gaze fell upon the slip of paper Gerard had left for him five hours earlier: 'I'm okay. I went out. Nothing's your fault. Love you. I'm sorry. Gerard.'.

Frank swore he'd reread the note at least several hundred times, because it served as an explanation yet not an explanation he was eager to accept, because by 'went out', Frank suspected that Gerard had hidden self away at the other side of town once more, and that whole ordeal was not one he wanted to endure once more, with Kat yelling at him, and that whole mess surrounding the pills.

The fucking pills.

Frank found himself doubtful as to what kind of difference they could really make, but then again, that wasn't for him to decide; he wasn't a medical professional, just someone who cared - he just hoped that whatever came of this, Gerard would be happy.

Because that was all Frank wanted: for the two of them to be happy, and for there to be some perfectly shaped elusive happy ending: for it to be smiles all around, and for him to find himself stood in the November that he had dreamed of at the start of October, and not alone in his bedroom on the day after his birthday, clutching a note with worry, and then trying to suppress the worry, because he was all over reactions, and sometimes he made himself sick with it all.

And then, Frank's phone was vibrating in his pocket, which gave him quite the start, as for just a moment, he'd managed to forget that he even owned a cellphone, let alone the fact that someone was calling it, and it was in his jeans pocket, and on vibrate. But within the space of several moments, Frank finally managed to pull his sleepy, anxious self into a somewhat competent state of mind.

It was Kat who was calling him, which left Frank a little confused, because weren't they literally somewhere else in his house, and he most certainly didn't live in a mansion? But he didn't quite manage to ponder that long enough before his thumb fell over the 'accept call' button and he put the phone to his ear.

"Hey," he began: his tone inquisitive, and a little confused, but overall positive - hopeful.

Kat's tone of voice was world's away from Frank's, and that was immediately evident. "Fuck... fuck... fuck, Frank, he isn't with you, is he? Gerard. Because I went home. I went fucking home, because I don't like showering in other people's houses and I- that's all so fucking irrelevent, I-" His words seemed to seize up in his throat as he spoke, "and I... Gerard's not here, and I... there's... he left this- this thing on his desk in his room, and I-" Kat's words came to a halt as they let out a rather abrupt, breathy kind of half sob.

"Kat?" Frank's heartbeat suddenly began to pick up, "no he's not here, but he left this note for me: saying that he'd gone out. So I guess that's just it - maybe he'll be back, or should I go back up to that hill to look for him again I-"

"That's not the only note he left, Frank." Kat's voice was suddenly very unstable: changing in pitch and tone as he stumbled over the words with extra caution as if they were made of a very fragile glass. "This is... this is... this is- fuck, Frank, you need to get out of the house now, you need-"

"To come over?" Frank asked: struggling to comprehend exactly what was going on, but finding himself very fucking aware of the panic in Kat's voice.

"No, Frank- fucking... fucking go to the lake, fucking go there now!" Kat's voice rather rapidly and unexpectedly ascended into a yell, "because fuck, please say it's not too late, please I- fucking, I-"

Frank was still largely unaware as to what was actually happening, but he was very, very aware of the panic and distress evident in Kat's voice, and therefore simply grabbed a jacket and made his way out of his bedroom and out the front door without anything in the way of a question. "Too late for what?" Frank finally dared himself to ask as he began to jog up the road towards the lake: still holding his phone to his ear, and fuck, he was pretty sure he forgot to probably close his front door, but somehow, now, that seemed utterly irrelevant: something was wrong, something was so very wrong, and Frank could feel it now: through and through, like a sickness rotting his bones.

Kat let out a choked sound once more, "I fucking... this fucking note- fuck, he left- he's left, he's left like six fucking pages just written in notes, and I'm trying to read but his handwriting's so fucking messy and I- I'm crying, and everything's blurry and fuck, I think- I think... I think, Frank, I think he wants to kill himself."

And it felt like all the blood had just drained from Frank's body as he immediately stood still in the street.

Because no.

Fuck, no.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

This couldn't be happening.

Kat had to have been mistaken.

But they weren't.

Kat didn't tend to be wrong about things.

But Frank couldn't bare the weight of that truth under the circumstances.

Because it just couldn't be true.

It just couldn't-

He just-

He-

Frank was pretty sure he managed to shortcircuit his brain by the time Kat's voice reappeared once more.

"Frank?" Kat's voice was unsteady like before, and overly punctuated with equally shaky breaths, "I- I-... Frank, just... just get to the lake." And the pleading tones in his voice brought Frank into a sprint: with little regard for caution or control as he made his way down one final street and up to a dirt path, listening to the sounds of Kat's breathing growing ever more shaky and unstable as he stumbled to the top of the hill: almost slipping twice in the process, but suddenly none of that mattered at all.

Because suddenly everything so very real, and suddenly so very ice cold, and yet on fire at the same time, for at the water's edge were Gerard's combat boots and a trail of footprints leading into the lake, but no trail leading back out.

And Frank didn't cry. Frank didn't feel like he could cry; Frank just felt empty, too fucking empty, as if the steadying of his heartbeat was the hardest thing in the world, and in such a reality, there was no place for crying, and Frank tried to focus on the shallow intake and exhale of breath, but found himself incapable: found his heart stuttering and stopping and pounding and his whole body shuddering all over, because this couldn't be true.

This couldn't be true.

And yet here it was.

It was real: despite everything, it was real.

Despite every I love you.

It had been this way all along.

Frank could only wonder how he could have done this. How could have done this to him and to Kat, and to everyone who loved him, and fuck- no, it had... it couldn't- and he found himself tempted to walk in right after him, to fucking find that body, to fucking bring him back somehow, or to prove that it wasn't there at all- because this had to be a hoax, this had to be a cruel fucking joke, but it was nothing, nothing at all, but real.

"Are you there yet?" Kat's voice reappeared once more: stumbling over his words like before, "is he there? Fuck, is he there? Is he there yet?"

"Y-yes." Frank choked over the response.

"He's- he's okay, what's he- can you- I- fuck, Frank- what's going on, I- he's okay, he's-"

"He's there." Frank continued: his words like heavy weights on his chest: like an anchor to the bottom of his ocean. "Not here. He's there. In the lake."

And it was saying it aloud that finally had Frank crying.

Because that made it more real than it could have possibly been before: more real than what lay right before his eyes.

"No! He- no," Kat choked out, before falling into a sob. "How do- how do- you're not sure- you can't be sure- you can't, you-"

"His boots. At the shore, and..." Frank took a step closer towards the shoreline, "footprints," he suddenly felt like being sick, "into the lake, but not back out again, and I-" Suddenly his gaze fell upon something in the sand.

A sentence written in the sand beside the boots just away from the reach of the water: 'I wish there was another month between October and November so we could have had more time, but it was always November 1st. Always had to be this way.'

-

so hey lmao

i am emotionally dead

writing this really fucked me up actually

i feel so weird

i feel like a part of me died

anyway

i hope u enjoyed ???

and theres gonna be an epilogue and then thats it

i love u guys ok pls don't kill urselves honestly this fic made me think about the subject of death and suicide so much and i just i feel so weird just like i can't explain i just i could fix this i could go back and make him live i have that power but I'm not going to do that and i can't do that really because that wouldn't be how it went down properly that'd be lying and gerard was always special and i miss him.

i think u should maybe listen to chemicals by tigers jaw thats one of my main songs for this fic

bye lov u ok