Blue and Yellow

---Back to NORMAL P.O.V---

I didn't know where I was, but for some reason I didn't want to be there. I knew I should be somewhere else, I just didn't know how to get there. I couldn't really move, I was sort of suspended. I ached internally, but it was from lacking something more than a physical pain. I was pretty sure that where ever I was I wouldn't be able to feel physical pain any more.

I just laid there, sort of in a limbo type state, not really knowing what to do next. All I knew was there was somewhere else I was suppose to be, and it was giving me this nagging feeling at the back of my head. Like I should know it, or how but I couldn't place it. Like it was on the tip of my tongue yet I couldn't say it.

"God I hate that feeling," I commented to myself.

I didn't know if I said it out loud or in my head, either way I heard it. And now I remembered why I had hated the feeling. Bert.

I wondered what he was doing. I missed him. At least I think I missed him, I couldn't tell here. So I settled for thinking about him. And the more I thought about him the more the answer to my problem came closer and closer to the front of my brain. Now I remember what helped me before.

"This time I'm not go...."

"..ing to watch myself die," I heard myself say.

But this time I really did hear it. Because it sounded like shit. I tried to move my hand since it felt like it was being held still by something. At my words and my sudden movement I felt whatever was holding my hand down stir. Then move.

"Eli?" I heard a familiar voice say, in a voice that sounded about as shitty as mine.

"Hello Bert," I said as I turned my head to the side to look at him.

He was sitting in a chair at my bedside, my hospital bedside in fact. How I was in a hospital I would later find out. But now I just wanted to look at him. He had been lying half on my bed, holding my hand. His hair was dirty and disheveled, well more so than usual. There were bags under his eyes, and more scruffy growth on his chin. He kind of looked like shit. But never the less I was happy to see him. I had missed him. For what felt like forever. I tried smiling.

"Ow," I said as my face started to hurt from smiling.

"Don't, don't do that, you'll hurt your stitches by your eye," he said as he lifted a hand up to my face but yet not touch it.

I wanted to feel his touch.

I looked at him harder and saw tears in the corners of his eyes.

"Why the tears?" I asked.

"All of it?" he asked back.

"Start with the most recent reason and we[ll work our way back from there," I said, wanting to know.

"They said, they said, Uhh that another hour or two and you could have come out with brain damage. If, if you came out at all," Bert said and I could swear I saw even more tears form in his glorious hazel orbs that always held such sparkling laughter.

Gently I reached out a hand and brushed the tear that had just started to drop off his eye and placed my hand on his cheek.

"I'm not going anywhere. Brain damaged yes, but we knew that already," I joked.

It made him crack half a smile at least. It was a start.

"Now tell me how I came to be at a hospital when the last thing I remember was going down again, only this time cracking my head into the corner of the coffee table," I said as I placed my hand back at my side, but reached my fingers out to grab a hold of his.

"I got to the cafe late because of work and asked Krissy where you were. She said you had left with some guy earlier after waiting for me for so long. I got a weird feeling because you always said you only knew us here. I asked her if he had left a name. She had said he left his name as Devin. At his name I felt the life drop out of me, I had remembered you crying and screaming out the name Devin during your panic attack after the hospital visit. So I went to look for you because I knew something was off. But I didn't know where you were, because you had never told me. So I freaked out then thought things through. I had remembered you saying that you lived within walking distance from the park the first night I had met you, and that that had been right before you moved into the Haven. I traced through my memories and remembered you mentioning something about a blue apartment building and never anything about a house. So I drove down every street within a twenty minute walking distance from the park checking every blue apartment building. Which just to let you know they're a lot of," Bert said.

I felt a smile crack on my face, or try to, but I knew it was going to get bad. And I knew I was going to have to explain things to him. Everything in fact.

"I finally found it and got a way in. Up at the apartment door I knocked several times and called out and never got an answer. Then I got really freaked out. So I knocked really hard and the door opened a bit. It was unlocked and left open just enough that I had knocked it open. So I went in. And when I flipped the lights on I saw, I saw... I saw you lying on the floor in a funny angle with blood on you. I tried to get you to wake up, but you wouldn't. And I was freaking and called 911. They brought you here and having been working on you ever since. And I haven't left since," Bert said, now having wound his fingers with mine.

"A couple of things, one I have some explaining to do. I haven't told the whole truth this entire time exactly," I said quietly.

As I felt Bert squeeze my hand I heard my mantra one more time and took the courage it gave me like always. So I opened up, and told Bert everything. Everything. Well except for one tiny detail, one tiny detail about a certain line from a song.

-xXx-

"So that's it all. The entire sad truth. But I'm pretty sure that I'm all fixed now, that things are better. I was saved I guess," I said, folding my good hand and newly cast'd injured hand across my chest.

We were silent for a moment or two. And I had expected it. I had just unloaded a lot of information on Bert, a lot of information he wasn't expecting. Not only had I told him about my life with Devin, but with every other boyfriend I had ever had that had been just like him. Finally I felt, well more like heard, Bert move from his spot. I felt the bed shift down a bit from added extra weight. I turned and looked at him. He had perched himself next to me and looked me in the eyes. I had always said I could read a person by their eyes, any person no matter how well guarded against the world. I could read them. It was one of the things I loved about Bert, his eyes. His whole world was laid out in them, his whole being. And they were always bouncing with light, a sparkle that came from the laughter contained in them. And I knew after a few instances we had shared that he could read me through mine, and I liked the fact that he was able to understand the things I portrayed there. But this time when I looked into his eyes I couldn't read anything. There was a guard up that I couldn't get around and I was scared.

"Eli, I, I may not be a knight in shining armor able to save you and take you away to where it's perfect. In fact I'm slightly dirty, in unwashed clothes and I haven't shaved for a few days. But what's new. But I, Uhhh, I was. I was wondering if I could kiss you?" Bert asked as I stared into his read-less eyes.

At his simplest of questions that seemed to take so much out of him I felt my own eyes start to well up. I was speechless. Wasn't this what I had wanted? What I had thought I had been missing. As I came to my conclusion I felt a tear fall down my cheek ever so slowly.

"I think we can arrange for a suit of armor," I said as I leaned in and placed my lips on his.

It was soft, and sweet, and innocent. And I loved every minute of it.

When we finally broke apart we just sat there, faces inches apart, eyes closed and took in the moment. I eventually felt Bert shift his position so he was off my bed again and back in his chair. I missed the feeling of his weight next to me all of a sudden and I didn't want him so far away in the chair, but I knew it was best with the condition I was in.

After a few seconds of silence I watched Bert raise his head up and look at me. His eyes readable again. And I sighed.

"I just want to know one thing. How'd you do it? How did you manage to survive all this time through everything? Are you Wonder Woman?" Bert asked.

I knew the last question was his attempt to lighten the mood of his serious questions. And I think I loved him for that, for how he always wanted to lighten the mood, never wanted anything to get too bogged down. And that for some reason made me want to fill in the last little detail to my story.

"Hand me my purse," I said holding my good hand out for it.

With a questioning look on his face Bert got up and got my purse and then handed it to me. I opened it and saw what I was looking for and pulled it out. Placing my purse on the other side of me I motioned for Bert to come closer. I pushed play on my disc man and went to the correct song. I held the headphones up and looked at Bert.

"Because of this," I said as I put the headphones on his head.

As soon as they were on his head I pushed play on the song that I had listened to on repeat for so long.

I let him listen.

"This time I'm not going to let myself die," I mouthed along with the words I knew he was hearing at that exact moment.

His own words in fact. His voice singing them. As I pushed stop after the line had finished playing I looked up into his eyes. Searching. For something. And then I found it.

He understood.