My eyes snapped open as I lurched forward in the seat I was sitting.

“Whoa!” Nick exclaimed, obviously startled by my sudden movement. “Good morning sunshine!”

“Where am I?” I gasped, not liking the feeling of sweat dripping down my forehead and neck, making my flesh sticky. Though I was sweating like I had just ran a marathon, my face felt extremely clammy.

“Where are you?” Nick repeated, “You’re in my car.”

I looked around the first time, realizing what Nick said to be right. But… how did we get here? Weren’t we at Kevin’s house?

Nick took his eyes off the road for a bit to glance over at me in concern, “You alright buddy? You waking up out of a dead sleep scared the shit out of me… almost made me swerve off the fucking road.”

“Where are we going?” I asked, making sure I hadn’t had a vision of us going to Kevin’s house.

Nick’s face scrunched up in confusion, “I’m uh… I’m bringing you back to your place?”

“Why?”

“What’s with all the questions dude? Are you sure you’re alright, if you want we can go back to Kevin’s…”

There it was; so we were at Kevin’s. “No…” I rasped out, “I’m just… I can’t remember is all.”

“I can’t imagine… you did pass out.”

I shot a look over at him, “What?”

Nick shrugged, “I don’t know… I had sat down beside you on the couch, accidentally ‘touched you’, and the next thing I know, you were out. Took a while for you to come back around, but when you finally did, you kept saying that you just wanted to go home… we walked you to my car, and not even two minutes into the drive you were out again.”

I swallowed hard, feeling how completely dry and parched my throat felt, “God, why the fuck don’t I remember this?”

I felt Nick sulk a bit, as if he felt bad… but what for? “Look man, I’m sorry.” he apologized. Sorry for what? “I really didn’t mean to touch you, I guess I forgot and tried to give you a reassuring hug or some shit… you can tell I’m a fucking blonde.” he was mentally kicking himself.

I shook my head, “Hey, don’t worry about it Nick. I guess I just… I have to learn how to manage it is all, so people won’t be afraid to touch me. With each time it happens, it’s really not so bad…” I looked over at him, to make sure he was registering what I was telling him, “it’s like the pain kind of lessens with each… episode.”

“So, why did you pass out?”

I shrugged, “I’m still kind of new to this… my body and mind hasn’t fully adjusted to the fact that I can… ‘become’ someone else. It’s kind of a lot for me to handle, all at once, yanno?”

He nodded, but I knew he didn’t understand. “This is all surreal… it’s kinda like you’re that chick from X-Men, except for the fact that you don’t kill people with one touch.”

“Rogue?” I asked in a monotone voice. Leave it to Nick to try to find a shred of humor in any and all situations.

He smiled, “Yeah. To an extent, must be kinda cool.”

It was far from cool Nick… far from it. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of water in here by chance, would you?”

Nick gave a small nod as his eyes darted from the road to the back of his car, “Yeah, I actually a bottle back here somewhere…” he grunted out as he tried to turn his body to reach for the bottle, but keep himself straight to keep the car in control on the road.

I felt the car swerve to the side, rearing up behind another car that was in front of us in the other lane. “Just focus on the road Nick!” I lightly exclaimed, bringing Nick’s attention back to the road. I slowly released the tight grip I had on the arm rest part of the door when Nick had straightened the car back onto the lane we were on.

“Well, if you want it, it’s somewhere back there.”

I nodded as I removed my seatbelt. Just as I rose up in my seat to reach towards the back of the car to search for the bottle of water, the sound of screeching tires rendered me completely still. There I was, partially up over my seat, with no seatbelt, when I had looked forward to see the car in front of us swerve drastically to the side, hitting another car in the other lane as it tried to avoid whatever it was in front of us.

Both Nick and I gasped when we seen that it was a large hauling truck that had came to a sudden stop for some reason. Nick tried his best to swerve out of the way of hitting the truck as well, but it was too late… we were gonna hit the back of the truck. There is NO fucking way I’d survive this shit… I had just taken off my seatbelt and I wasn’t sitting properly in the seat. I tried to lower myself back in my seat as quickly as I could, and just tried to prepare myself for the impact, and possibly a quick death.

I glanced over at Nick and everything was set into slow motion from there. The car swerved, but it wasn’t fast enough to clear us from hitting the back of the truck. Nick’s eyes glazed over to me, and I remember screaming “NO!!” yet I heard nothing escape my mouth. I watched in horror as Nick’s side of the car was partially smashed in from hitting the back of the truck, causing Nick to jerk harshly back from the impact. The windshield had shattered, raining shards of glass in slow motion. I was too wrapped up in watching what was happening to Nick, that I didn’t even realize that I was flying forward out of my seat.

The car continued to spin out on the road and had actually launched me from my seat and right through the windshield. I closed my eyes… this was it, there’s no way I’d fucking survive flying out of a moving vehicle. I remember the blinding pain of the flesh of my face, chest, back and arms being torn open from the broken glass, like a butcher making clean cuts through thick pieces of meat. I felt myself flying through the air, if only for a moment, before my body landed hard on the pavement and rolled for a bit before I finally came to a stop.

The darkness that surrounded me was inviting, but a light far off in the distance was beckoning me. I noticed the more I accepted the darkness to take me under, the less pain I felt, but the more I found myself attracted to the light, all sorts of new pain continued to wrack my body every second. As much as I wanted to let myself succumb to the painless invite, the light seemed to attract and lure me back that much more. I so wasn’t ready for the pain that I’d be greeted with upon forcing my eyes open.

I cried out immediately; like a little kid who had just broken a bone for the first time, I couldn’t stop crying out, in hopes that someone would hear me and help take this pain away. Slowly, I tried to push myself up from the road, looking down at my arms that were painted with my blood. The sight of my blood alone was enough to freak me the hell out and make me cry out in pain even more. Shards of broken glass protruded from my arms, palms, and even my chest. In that moment it reminded me that I shouldn’t even be alive… there’s no way I should’ve fucking survived this accident and going through the windshield, no way. That’s when I remembered something…

Nick.

“NICK!!!” I sobbed out, a new pain hitting my body like a ton of bricks just from yelling out. I tried my best to look around to see where Nick was, and about ten feet away from me was Nick’s car, upside down, resting on it’s rooftop.

I pushed myself up from the ground, and though it hurt like a fucking bitch to do, I tried to stand up to make my way towards the car to check on Nick. Wrong move. I immediately screamed out and collapsed back to the ground, the unbearable pain was enough to tempt me to slip unconscious again. Pushing it all aside, knowing that I had to get to Nick, I looked down towards my leg, where the source of the pain was, and began sobbing. My left leg was surely broken; the bone had completely broken in half, and part of the bone had burst through my flesh. “Oh god!” I sobbed out. As if the sight of my own blood wasn’t enough, I now had to deal with my mangled leg, which made me completely sick to my stomach.

“ALEX!!!!!!!!!!!” I heard someone scream out.

My attention immediately snapped back towards the car, where I saw slight movement going on. From a distance, I could clearly see Nick trying to dislodge himself from the seatbelt that held he strapped to his seat, dangling upside down.

“Nick!” I rasped out, my voice surely going hoarse. “Hold on, I’m coming to help you, okay?” How the fuck was I going to do this?

“I… I can’t get out, I’m stuck!” I heard him shout back.

“Don’t move, just hold on, I’ll be there to get you out!”

There was no way I’d be able to get up on my legs with a bone protruding out of one, so I did the next best thing. Crawl. I whimpered and gritted my teeth to keep from crying out; the pain I felt from using my hands which were decorated with sharp, jagged pieces of glass to drag my dear weight across the road, ten feet away to where Nick was just excruciating.

I needed to keep my mind off of me and what I was feeling… then I thought of my ability. Perhaps if I tried to focus one someone else’s energy, it would take my mind and feeling off of my own pain for a moment; at least long enough for me to get to Nick before passing out from the sheer exhaustion and pain. As I continued to crawl my way towards Nick, I glanced around, looking for innocent bystanders that I could tap into, but for some fucking convenient reason, they were nowhere near us. Our car had skidded quite a way from where the cars had came to a stop. I could feel them off in the distance, making their way towards us, but not close enough for me to focus in on their energy.

Instead, I tried to focus in on Nick, but doing that brought me double the amount of pain. It rendered me motionless for a while, the pain being enough to want to pass out. I quickly tried to back out of tapping into Nick’s feelings and resorted with my own. Okay, I was at least five feet away from him, just five more feet to go!

“Nick?” I called out again. “Look, I’m almost there, can you not free yourself at all?”

He fell silent for a while, trying to observe why he was stuck. “No, I don’t think so… the fucking seatbelt won’t budge.”

“Alright, just remain calm buddy, I’m almost there…”

“AJ?”

I didn’t like the sound of his voice. “Yes?”

“What’s that smell?”

My eyes immediately glazed over the car, and widened. Gas was spewing forth from the mangled tank, leaking all down the sides of the car, pooling on the road around him. “It’s gas Nick.”

“It’s WHAT?!” he shouted, freaking out even more.

I was such a fucking dumbass to tell him that and freak him out even more. “Hey Nick, hey!” I called out to him, trying to get him to focus on me. “Look, I need you to remain calm for me buddy, okay? It’s just gas, I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, okay? I’m gonna get to you and I’ll get you out of that car, just… remain calm and focus on me Nicky, okay? Talk to me.”

“I, uh…” he faltered with formulating a sentence, obviously thinking of the gasoline that was pouring out around him.

“Hey, I said talk to me, don’t worry about anything else okay… talk to me.” I coaxed as I tried to crawl to him even faster.

“I… I can’t AJ.” he stuttered out, sobs now wracking his body. “I-I-I can’t talk or focus on anything else or not think about it because the car is still running… and with all this fucking gas around me, I can‘t do it Jay!”

When he said that, my heart seriously dropped. Tears quickly welled within my eyes, threatening to spill over any moment… not because of the continuous pain I was in, but I was now beginning to realize that I wouldn’t make it to Nick in time. “Stop it, I’m going to get you out of there Nick.”

“STOP IT!!” he shouted out in tears. “JUST FUCKING STOP IT AJ!! DON’T COME ANY CLOSER, GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HERE, PLEASE!!”

The fear and pain that emanated from Nick hit me like nothing I’ve felt before, and for that moment my eyes actually managed to roll up into the back of my head. I seriously had to fight it and focus back on getting my brother out of that car and away to safety. I had to remain optimistic, I just had to. There was no way this was going to happen to us… no fucking way.

“Nick please, just stop talking!” I cried out, fighting to not let my emotion get the best of me. “I’m not fucking leaving you in there. I’m gonna ge-” I stopped in the middle of my sentence, hearing the familiar sound of a flame being ignited.

My eyes shot over towards the hood of the car where the flame had ignited from the damaged engine. Using the very little amount of strength I had left within me, I quickly pushed myself up from the ground and managed to stand on up, making sure that my banged up right leg supported all my weight. I began hobbling even closer to the car, but the flames had engulfed the whole front of the car and was creeping through the broken windows, where Nick was.

The sound… I’ll never forget the sound of Nick crying and screaming out in unbearable, excruciating pain. Tears streamed down my face as I watched the flames begin to burn my best friend, my brother alive. His screams and cries were blood-curling, a sound that would forever stay with me and haunt me for the rest of my life. I watched helplessly as he tried his best to squirm away from the growing inferno, but it was no use.

I continued to make my way towards the burning car, figuring I’d get close enough to die with him. There’s no way I’d watch him fucking die and allow me to live on with these last haunting images I’d have of Nick, no fucking way. I stopped though as everything had gone back into slow motion… the flames had finally grown close enough to meet up with the gasoline.

I looked up into Nick’s eyes, as his tearful blue eyes bore back into mines. The last thing I remember was a huge, immense explosion that had managed to knock me clear off my feet, and I felt myself fly back. The sound of the exploding car was deafening, and the heat from it all was extremely intense; I could literally feel my skin curl back and burn. After what seemed like forever of flying backwards, I finally felt myself make impact with the ground, once again.

There I laid, on my back, with new injuries and pain wracking my body. But slowly, with every passing second, my body and mind was growing numb. Maybe it was finally death here to greet and accept me this time. I honestly wouldn’t care… I don’t want to live through this, especially without Nick, who I was sure was dead. Darkness came back to claim me, and this time I didn’t fight it.