Dream A Little Dream Of Me

[Maria Graziano]

Time doesn't typically drag on in the life of a working mom. Every moment is frantically occupied and every action is hurried until the clock strikes midnight and yet another day has passed. After spending four years of her life -- or at least what she had thought was four years of her life -- as a working mom, the battle with boredom and a stare down with a slow moving clock was a foreign concept to Maria. At least it had been a foreign concept until she had awoken in Holliswood Hospital. Her morning session with Koy was torturous. Maria had evaded her questions and sullenly stared out the window. Eventually, Koy had given up, realizing that Maria had shut down the idea of therapy for the day and released her from the session ten minutes early.

But that had only been ten more minutes to fill.

By late afternoon, Teagan had enough of the pouting. She snagged Maria by the wrist and dragged her into the dayroom. Light poured in from the open windows along with a nippy spring breeze. Taneth was sitting at a table with a coloring book in front of her and Jake beside her shuffling and reshuffling the same deck of cards over and over. They were such an unmatched set -- his stony silence coupled with her bright silliness. Yet, they were constant companions. Teagan dropped to a seat beside Taneth and the girls giggled as they shared crayons and the coloring book page.

The rest of the group (save Kalamere who was buried in a book by the window but seemed to be intently watching the discussion over the top of the book) was just a couple feet away in an array of semi-comfortable chairs and a couch in the midst of some heated debate. With a weak smile to Jaycy and Kalinda, Maria sank to a seat on a corner of the couch with a heavy exhale. She had no desire to involve herself in whatever the argument du jour was but was hoping to at least find monitoring the debate mildly distracting.

"You're an asshole," Jaycy was saying to Harris as she tipped her head in greeting to Maria.

Harris shot her a grin in return, ignoring Maria's presence for now. "Yes, I am but I am still right."

Jaycy leaned back against the couch with a smug smile on her face, shaking her head in return. "No, you're not. You're just being a jerk."

Maria was struck by how much she missed the RhyDin version of Jaycy suddenly. Sure, she and Jaycy and Teagan were some sort of walking joke. You know? The blonde baroness, the redhead baroness, and the brunette baroness walk into the Arena? She'd seen more than one of those in the media coverage. However, it felt good to be part of a sisterhood. It felt good to feel like there were other women who cared about her. The power that they held over the Council was exciting and the work they were doing for the Foundation was invigorating. One day it would all come to an end, though, at least for a little while. Everyone could see it couldn't they? One day something would happen and that detente that they had built would come crashing down. Baroness would be pitted against baroness. It would be the biggest challenge of her life but in the end one would walk away as the top female duelist currently in the Arena.

...Or at least all that would have happened if it were real. But it wasn't. That wasn't her reality. This was. Maria pursed her lips at the thoughts. It seemed like she was losing her battle. Ideas of RhyDin were becoming more and more real to her. That coupled with the dreams was a disturbing mix.

Harris huffed, tossing his hands up into the air in frustration. "Superman can legitimately fly! For crying out loud, he's the man of fucking steel. There's no way he's not the strongest super hero."

"I still say that Batman's way hotter," Kalinda added in, glancing up from the nail file she had in hand.

The line of thought seemed to be growing close to actually irritating Harris. He narrowed his eyes at Kalinda as if she was refusing to play by the rules of the game he had laid out. "How does who is hottest impact which one is the best equipped to kick bad guys' asses?"

"Haven't you ever heard of the power of the smoldering eye?" Kalinda refused to be goaded into bickering. Instead, she issued a sultry smile towards Harris who rolled his eyes in reply.

Maria let her head rest against the back of the couch as she sunk deeper into the cushions, closing her eyes tightly against the harsh afternoon light. Her head pounded. Her joints ached. Breathing felt like a chore. She almost felt.... sick. And there was a lingering feeling that she kept trying to push away. It almost felt like Tical was with her. Not Dr. Carter but her Tical. The RhyDin Tical. His touch. His scent. His voice. At times, she was sure that he was just over her shoulder but she would look and there would be nobody. She was slipping back. That had to be it. She must be slipping back into her fantasy world. The idea of retuning should scare her but he wanted her back and he seemed so confident that she belonged there. That was her Tical -- always confident, stubbornly determined, but with this inexplicable soft spot for her.

Her brown eyes were forced back open. The temptation would be ignored. That Tical was not real. Adie was not real and that world was not one she wished to return to. A better life could be found here in reality with Catherine and Justin.

Matt sat nearby stacking his fist-sized colored rocks on the coffee table in a triangular formation as if they were cards or beer cans. He paused in his effort to flick a glance towards the conversation. "What about Captain Planet? He was kind of cool."

"No," Harris stated, pointing a finger Matt's way. "You have just lost your right to participate in this conversation."

"So Christian Bale or Val Kilmer?" The question was posed from Jaycy to Kalinda.

Kalinda drew her finger to the corner of her mouth with a twist of her head in a thoughtful expression. Maria was quite sure that Kalinda could trip and fall flat on her face and still be sexy on the way down. Eventually, she gave a shrug in response. "Actually, I was thinking George Clooney."

"George Clooney played Batman?" Jaycy twisted her features in confusion as she tried to place the movie. It was almost as if instantly there was not another soul in the room except for the two of them. Ever since the group therapy session when Kalinda had suggested that she'd like to literally beat the pants off Jaycy in a rousing game of strip poker, the pair had been inseparable.

"He was," Kalinda nodded. "In the one with Michelle Pfeiffer. Or was it the one with Arnold Schwarzeneger?"

"Arnold hasn't been hot since Kindergarten Cop," Jaycy responded with a roll of her eyes.

A low vibrating noise caught Maria's attention. She realized that it had been there the whole time but like the hum of a refrigerator her mind had dismissed it as unimportant. Although it seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, somehow she knew it was originating from behind the door. The door. Her eyes always found it whenever she was in the dayroom. The day walking to Dr. Carter's office with Kalamere had not been the last time that she had seen a staff member slipping out and locking the door behind them.

Maria piped in, straightening her posture on the couch. "Do you hear that noise?"

"I don't hear anything," Teagan responded, looking up from the fairy in the coloring book she was filling in. There was concern in her blue eyes as her light gaze found Maria's darker eyes. Maria tightened her bottom jaw before turning her eyes back to the conversation at hand.

Taneth chose that moment to drop her purple crayon and thrust her closed fist into the air. "By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!"

Matt laughed and clapped his hands in delight. Evidently the blue opal said something about the imitation that Matt agreed with because he nodded to it and laughed heartily once more. Taneth's declaration coupled with Matt talking to his rocks once again caused Harris to groan in pain. "I don't know why I try to have an intelligent conversation with you all."

"What's behind that door?" The words slipped out of Maria's mouth before she could stop them. She just couldn't peel her eyes off of it. The humming seemed to be growing louder. And was there beeping? Like the beeping of the hospital equipment in her dreams?

"Shut the hell up, Maria, and stop obsessing about the damn door," Jaycy said sharply. Then as if instantly feeling guilty for her tone, she attempted to draw Maria into their conversation. "Who's the hottest Batman?"

Maria pursed her lips as she stared at the sole green door in the entire building... or at least the portions that she'd explored. Not wanting to attract any more attention to the decreasing stability of her mental state, Maria managed to answer the question. "Adam West."

"Who?" Kalinda's nose crinkled in confusion and, yeah, even that was sexy.

Harris grinned at the campy Batman reference and pointed a finger at Maria. "I love you!"

The beeping grew louder and suddenly they were whispers. For a split second, she almost thought that she heard Myria's voice coming from the other side of the door. "I need to get out of here," Maria mumbled beneath her breath as she shoved herself to her feet.

Ignoring Teagan and Jaycy's looks of concern, Maria kept her head tilted downward, keeping her eyes on the tiles beneath her feet as she traced a path out of the dayroom. The conversation picked up in her wake as Harris found some new sort of way to berate Matt. Their voices disappeared but the humming did not. Along with the steady beeps, it followed along behind her, threatening to overtake her even though she increased her path through the hallways.

Turn after turn, she navigated blindly without any real sense of where she was going. All she knew was that she had to escape that noise. She had to stay here. Only she would have a fantasy world in which she hated her career path, feared constantly for the well-being of her family, and was pretty universally thought to be a trouble-making pain. She did not want to go back. Her pace picked up to a jog as she glanced over her shoulder ensuring that the humming and beeping had not taken on a physical presence. But there was nothing there. Only an empty hallway stretched behind her and before her.

Suddenly, she reached for a door and swung it open to escape from the hollow void. The chosen room wasn't even identified until its owner lifted his head in surprise to take in her sudden appearance and frightened expression.

"Maria?" Dr. Carter stood from his chair, dropping his pen onto the note he was writing but remained behind his desk.

Her eyes turned to him and drank him in. In a shirt and tie with a suit jacket thrown over the back of his chair, he was dressed more professionally than the RhyDin Tical typically did but it didn't hide what shouldn't be there -- the muscular build of a professional athlete. When would a hard-working, dedicated psychologist have the time to maintain that body? Something wasn't right. Yet, her mind didn't linger on it long for with the long once over of the man before her came the rush of feelings that she had been busy burying since she awoke from her delusions. They took her by surprise and suddenly her mouth was moving out of her own control.

"I know I've just said that you're a friend that I have sex with and that I don't want this to become overly complicated but I miss everything about you. I never told you what I should have. I love you."

Dr. Carter's shoulders drooped and he exhaled heavily. If Maria thought that her words would somehow shake free a bit of the Tical that she knew, she was wrong. "Maria, you need to stop this--"

However, she still failed to be able to get control of her tongue. Her mind knew that with every word she was distancing herself from any chance she had of returning home to Justin and Catherine. Each word was just another step to proving just how crazy she was. Still, they kept coming in rapid fire as her temper flared. "Shut up and listen to me! I would not have risked our friendship if I wasn't in love with you. This is about more than just some really great sex.... and it is really great sex. The best I've ever had, in fact. I love the way you stand up to me. I love that you aren't afraid of my temper. I love the way you let me make my own mistakes. I love that you've always got my back no matter how wrong we both know that I am. And I'm tired of people telling me what I feel is fake. This is not fake. This is my reality. I've been in love with you for a very long time."

The raised voices had drawn attention and a rap on the door that she left open was followed with Dr. G'nort/Gary sticking his head in. He frowned disapprovingly at Maria before addressing Tical. "Need anything?"

The same disappointed frown had settled on Tical's face. He saw her only as a patient, a patient that just had a major set back. Instead of addressing her directly, he spoke to Dr. Gary. "Maria needs an escort back to her room."

Hurt and fear twisted into rage. Her hand reached forward to grab a signed baseball off his desk and launched it straight at the diploma that hung over his desk. Having noted on an earlier visit that the ball had been signed by the great Bill Dickey, she instantly regretted the action and feared the wrath of the great Gods of Baseball that her brothers worshiped. The ball landed on target, cracking the glass frame and then both diploma and ball crashed to the floor.

"I can walk just fine there all on my own," she shouted at Dr. Carter before brushing past Dr. Gary to stalk back down the hallways of Holliswood Hospital. Clearly, she better get used to them. After that performance she wouldn't be going anywhere for a very long time.

[Maria Graziano]

Tears began flooding Maria's eyes several steps outside of Dr. Carter's office. By the time she had traveled half the length of the hallway her sight she had lost her battle to keep them in check and they spilled over onto her cheeks. Around another corner, onslaught of tears had blurred her vision but she plunged blindly ahead anyway. A hand trailed down the wall at her side. Each step felt labored and each breath was a struggle. It felt like an elephant had backed itself up and sat down on her chest. Pressing her back against the wall, she sank to a seat on the cool tiles and listened. The beeping had stopped but the humming was still there low and consistent.

Jake rounded the corner suddenly with Taneth twirling in circles at his side. How she walked like that without getting dizzy was anybody's guess. They exchanged a look as they saw Maria sitting on the floor of the hallway and without a word they swept her way. In unison, they took seats on either side of her and Taneth leaned in to rest her head against Maria's shoulder, slipping her arm through Maria's closest one.

"Hey," Jake stated in a strong, clear voice. Maria realized it was the first time she had heard this Jake speak at all.

She sniffled back her tears, lifting the hand that Taneth hadn't claimed to swipe away the tears on her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I had a bad session."

"Dr. Carter is an ass," Taneth whispered in her singsong tone. Had the word "ass" really just come out of Taneth's mouth? Much as she felt the first time she heard Adie use the word, Maria was torn between laughing and strictly informing her that ladies don't talk like that.

Instead, she just nodded her head in half-hearted agreement. "Yeah, I don't feel like I belong here."

"You've been here a long time. Probably too long. Maybe it's time you go out and face your life now." It was the tone in Jake's voice that grabbed Maria's attention and caused her gaze to lift from her sneakers to him. He sounded like the wise old man in a movie imparting knowledge crucial to the end scene.

Maria hesitated before responding. "I don't know how to do that."

"I think you do," Taneth whispered sweetly in her ear. The humming in the background vibrated loudly in time with the beat of Taneth's words.

The humming. Taneth and Jake. The door. They were all telling her something. The pieces came together in her mind. She needed answers. It was time that she reached out and grabbed them. "You're right. I think I do," Maria whispered softly. Then with the decision made, she freed herself from Taneth's embrace and shoved herself to her feet, motioning for them to follow as she immediately began hurrying down the hallway back in the direction of the dayroom. "Come on."

With the pair on her heels, she entered the room to find the group was still in relatively the same positions that she had left them. Teagan had taken her spot on the couch with Jaycy while Kalinda sat in a worn chair nearby. Harris was still perched on the arm of the couch and Kal was by the window with a book still in hand. The debate had moved on from the most powerful superhero to which breakfast food was the best after a night of heavy drinking. It seemed a subject that they were all particularly well versed in. Maria settled her hands on the back of Kalinda's chair and interrupted the debate which seemed to be leaning towards scrambled eggs and hash browns.

"I need your help. All of you." The words were surprisingly easy to say. Maria never would have imagined that asking for help would have been so easy.

Silence fell over the dayroom and Kalamere pulled his book away from his face to give Maria an inquisitive glance. Jaycy and Kalinda exchanged a look while Harris squinted at her in confusion. Eventually, though, when the initial shock wore off, Harris nodded the group's acceptance without even asking what they were signing up for. "Of course we'll help you," he stated firmly.

A soft smile broke on Teagan's face as she chimed in, "Tell us what you need, Maria."

[Maria Graziano]

"Sartan, come quick!"

Teagan's cry interrupted Sartan as he was pulling a turkey and cheese sandwich on wheat up to his mouth in the break room of the second floor of Holliswood Hospital. He heaved a heavy sigh as he set the sandwich down and rose to his feet. Teagan had disappeared from the doorway but he spotted her rounding a hallway headed in the opposite direction so he broke into a jog to keep up. He wondered if the "emergency" this time was a stopped up toilet (in which he would have to explain to her for the upteenth million time that he was not maintenance before calling a janitor to fix the problem) or a bold spider that had made its home in the corner of her windowsill. It always seemed to be something.

Her path led to the dayroom and Sartan followed to find chaos ensuing. Kalinda and Jaycy were on their knees beside Harris who was laying on the floor and as Sartan drew closer he found that the blue haired narcissist was in the middle of a seizure. Foam slipped down the corner of his mouth and he shook uncontrollably. Kalinda and Jaycy were calling to him but neither were getting a response. The rest of the group was standing around the room in shock of what they were witnessing. Just as Sartan reached for the walkie talkie at his hip, another body crashed to the floor.

Taneth gave a shriek. Kalamere was now in the midst of his own seizure. Thick foam bubbled from his mouth as his limbs twitched violently. Sartan cursed under his breath and immediately started towards Kalamere. As he sped past Teagan, she reached out and freed him of the key ring that hung from his belt with a swift, fluid movement. The shock of his key ring being lifted caused Sartan to skid to a halt. "Teagan," he sternly admonished, turning towards her to take them back. However, as she took a quick step back a force striking Sartan in the abdomen drove him backwards several steps onto a chair. Recovering his senses from the blow he found that his attacker was Harris who suddenly was no longer having a seizure but tackling him onto a chair.

"What the hell?" Sartan shouted angrily as Matt tied his arms behind his back with a couple of shoelaces and Harris stepped back, wiping the remaining Alkaseltzer foam from his cheek.

Kalinda shot Sartan a sultry smile as she dropped onto his lap to pin him into place on the chair. "Just get comfortable and enjoy the show, handsome."

Through it all, Maria remained by that sole green door. Each breath had become increasingly labored and her entire body was coated in a layer of sweat. She was sick. Clearly, she was sick. Her whole reality suddenly felt off. It was almost as if it wasn't reality at all. Teagan jingled the keys at her with a triumphant smirk. It was too easy. This whole thing had been to easy. Then almost as if on cue, the incident became a lot less easy.

"Nobody told me that we were playing cowboys and Indians today," Dr. Gary/G'nort growled as he entered the day room after having heard the ruckus to find an orderly bound and stuck under a patient. His hands landed on his hips as he surveyed the guilty looking group. "Now let Sartan up and apologize."

They all remained frozen in place, not willing to give up that they had failed but not wanting to risk disobeying a direct order from their psychologist. It was Taneth who stepped forward and lifted her finger to point towards the broom closet. "In the closet, Doctor!"

Dr. Talanador's jaw wasn't the only one that dropped open in surprise. The hush that had followed Dr. Talanador's order was nothing compared to the deafening silence that followed Taneth's command. Eventually, Dr. Talanador recovered enough to regain control of his mouth. "Excuse me?"

"I said get in the closet!" Taneth's annoyed tone bounced off the walls in the room, echoing as if she had shouted it into the depths of a great valley. Jake stepped forward to loom over Dr. Talanador, crossing his arms before his chest. With each step closer that the ox-like man took, Dr. Talanador backed a step towards the closet. Jake's stony silence and mysterious background made his looming presence all the more intimidating. A bright grin cracked Jaycy's face and she quickly hurried forward to swing the closet door open.

"This is ridiculous. What do you all think you're doing?" Both anger and fear had infected Dr. Talandor's voice. The inmates were taking over the asylm. The air was ripe with revolt and rebellion and the patients of the second floor were giddy with anxious excitement. Dr. Talanador's words were cut short as Jake reached out to give him a firm shove. The shove caused him to stumble back several steps passing into the and into the broom closet. Jaycy slammed the door shut and Harris rushed forward to help her hold it in place, leaning their entire body weight to hold the door shut. Dr. Talanador's muffled threats of punishment could barely be heard even had the group been listening. Maria's hand brushed over the pale green paint while the others snickered over the sort of things that they could get away with while their orderly was tied up and their psychologist was locked in a broom closet.

"Maria, catch!" Teagan called, launching the keys that she had taken off of Sartan across the room.

Maria reached out to catch them but just before they landed in her hand, a larger one reached out to snag the keys mid-air. Maria turned to find Dr. Carter standing at her side. His features were hardened with anger and he was shaking his head at the scene. His free hand reached out to grab Maria roughly by the arm to give her a sudden shake. "What did you start here, Maria? This is over. All of you back to your rooms. Right now!"

Suddenly a red rock came zipping into Maria's line of sight and struck Dr. Carter's left temple. He went down like... well, like a rock. His unconcious body crumpled to the floor and the keys clattered on the tiles, sliding up against her right sneaker. Matt let out a gleeful laugh, shoving both fists up into the air. "Score!"

While a round of congratulations was shouted to Matt with even Harris joining in on the chorus, Maria released a ragged exhale and bent to pick up the keys. The green door called to her. Laying a hand upon it, she could feel it vibrate beneath her palm as if it were alive with electricity. The answers to all of this were so close. They were heavy in the air. The boulder to her memories was about to be removed. She fumbled with the multiple keys on the ring in the lock until one key slid in easily and twisted. She heard the lock cylinder click free.

"Maria, don't!" It was Myria's voice. Maria turned on her heels in confusion to find her sister and her husband entering the dayroom. Where had they come from? Visiting hours weren't until evening. Why had they suddenly appeared in Holliswood Hospital. Jake stepped forward to place a hand on Justin's chest and Teagan followed his lead, grabbing Myria by the arm. Neither of them fought the resistance. They only looked on with heavy disappointment on their faces.

Her eyes narrowed at the pair of them. There was something off. She just couldn't place it. Her shoulder lifted in an apologetic shrug for Myria and Justin. "I have to," Maria whispered to the pair before turning back to the door. Her hand reached for the door, turned the knob, and then the door was swung open.

The view on the other side struck her like a vicious punch to the gut.

[Maria Graziano]

A misty gray fog filled the room on the other side. Everything was in black and white as if it were an old TV show that she could walk right into. She didn't walk in, though. Instead, she remained in place, examining every bit of the scene on the other side of the door. There was a hospital room filled with flowers, childlike drawings that she could only assume were from Adie and her niece, and "Get Well Soon" cards. The other Maria -- the real one it would seem -- lay in a hospital bed hooked up to all those machines that she had heard beeping and humming. The real Tical was there as well. He was too tall for the chair he was in to be comfortable to sleep in but that seemed to be what he was trying to do. An elbow was situated on the arm of the chair, his head was resting in the opened palm, and his sneakers were kicked up on the end of her bed.

Maria turned back to take in Holliswood's dayroom while a hand lingered on the doorknob as if afraid that if she let go, the door would close and she would be stuck in one life or the other. However, Holliswood began to disappear. The walls faded into blackness. Even the floor beneath her feet disappeared so she was hovering in darkness. Then the faces vanished one by one. Dr. Carter and Sartan. Jake and Taneth. Matt and his rocks. Kalamere and Myria. Jaycy and Kalinda. Teagan waved with a sad smile before she too blinked out. The only one left in this black void with her was Justin.

Justin.

The boulder was removed from her memory and the pain of that memory seized her chest in pain just as it had when she had first been told the news. He looked on as she remembered why being married to Justin was so impossible. Justin was dead. A shocked sob struck her as the wave of physical pain ebbed. Quickly, Justin came forward to wrap her into a hug. The look on her face was all he needed to know that she now remembered the truth.

It had been months after Tony disappeared. She had been down two brothers suddenly and the police brushed this incident off just as they had brushed off Chris. Just another teenage boy who got involved in the wrong crowd and either ended up dead from a drug deal gone bad or had run off to free themselves of a rather large, obnoxious extended family. Justin had been at her side through the whole thing. He had pounded the sidewalks with her searching for them. He had held her when she had cried herself to sleep. And he had begged her to get out of the city with him one weekend. His folks had a place upstate with a ton of land and a weekend free of studying and searching for her brothers seemed like the solution. And it probably would have helped. However, Maria had refused. She and Myria had plans to check out a couple wooded lots that would have been easy to dump bodies into. They had been reduced to searching for their brothers' corpses. Justin had gone on alone. She had gotten a call from him Friday night to let her know that he had gotten in safely and he had promised to call the following evening as well. But Justin never called. His father had called instead. Justin had an accident while four-wheeling on their property. He was dead.

And now a dead man's arms were around her, squeezing her tightly to him. "I'm so sorry, Maria," he whispered softly. "Your mind made up the rules. I had to play along. I'm so sorry."

"You're real?" Maria choked back sobs, pulling away just enough to find his face.

Justin twisted his lips into a wry grin, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "I'm real enough, I suppose. I would think that this experience would have taught you that reality can be subjective. I'm here. You're here. We're talking. That's what's important."

They stood alone in the blackness but there was a growing light from behind Justin as if a train was approaching in the distance but from the warmth and swell of the light, she was sure it wasn't a train. Her lips pursed in thought, shaking her head slowly in disbelief. "So is this, like, a near death experience or somethin'?

He glanced over her shoulder to eye the woman laying unconscious in the bed through the doorway behind her and then he gave a nod. "You definitely look pretty near death to me and I think it's safe to label this an experience."

Maria smiled warmly up at him and reached a hand up to draw down the smooth line of his bottom jaw. She had never allowed herself to love again as she had loved Justin. It had been free and open and magical. Too many men in her life had let her down. Justin had merely been the final straw. Her father had been the first and then their had been that guy on the block when she was fifteen and then the death of her uncle followed by the disappearance of her brothers and finally the loss of Justin. "I always thought that Satchel Paige and Secretariat would be waiting for me on the other side," Maria quipped in return.

"So you could walk into heaven flanked by two other great, temperamental, ego-driven athletes," Justin teased with a laugh. "Sorry to disappoint."

His humor warmed her for a moment but then it faded as the situation before her began to slowly sink in. Her smile gradually disappeared and she twisted to glance over her shoulder at the hospital room. There were so many people waiting for her but there were also so many messes. She was hiding here in Holliswood for a reason, wasn't she? Part of her had wanted to die. That's what she'd cried in her sleep, hadn't it been? Let me go. I'm too tired to fight. I want to die.

They weren't letting go, though. Tical was there in the hospital room and somehow she knew that Kheld and Myria and Ria and the boys had been in and out as well. Then there were the dreams -- Kalamere, Jaycy, and Teagan. They had all visited. And, God, Adie. How could she be so willing to give up on Adie?

"You can't keep living like this. You have to make a choice," Justin stated softly as she continued to watch the scene on the other side of the void.

Her brown eyes turned back on him. A frown had settled on her lips and seemed there to stay. "I either die or I return to my body and be open to love in all shapes, sizes, and forms? These after school moral lessons are beneath you, Justin."

"They probably are but this is your mind, you know. If it's corny, it's all your own fault," Justin replied with a soft smile lingering. He never did wither under her glare. Neither did Tical. She glared and he smirked in response. She realized now that she had always needed a man to stand up to her rather than skirt around her temper as Bode had. "And you don't get to decide whether you live or die. Nobody has that sort of power. You are clearly dying in there. You have the option of fighting for your life or giving up."

"I loved you, Justin." The words slipped out of her mouth because she had not said them nearly enough when he was alive.

"And I loved the girl you were right back, Maria. But you're not that girl anymore, are you? You're a woman. RhyDin has made you a woman with responsibilities and people who rely on you." He reached up to draw a lock of her dark hair away from her face and tuck it behind an ear.

"I gotta go. I gotta at least fight this," Maria whispered, taking a step backwards towards the open doorway.

"I know. Go on," he stated, his hands slipped off of her hips as she took a step away from him. ""There's no need to say goodbye. We'll see each other again."

She lifted her hand in parting before turning on the heels of her sneakers and taking a determined step through the doorway and back into her life.

[Maria Graziano]

((I can't resist posting the ending without posting a link to this.))

For better or worse, Maria awoke in reality. Her reality. The beeping had stopped. Evidently she'd reached the point in her recovery in which the constant monitoring of her vitals was no longer needed. With a heavy exhale of air, she lifted a hand to rub her forehead, brushing her dark hair back away from her face. The last twelve hours since she had regained consciousness had been a blur of brief moments of clarity within fitful bouts of sleep. She'd learned that Adie was safe at Bode's from Ria and her ma. The doctor had gleefully advised that the parasite that had infected her was now out of her system. Even Marty had briefly stopped by and given her a Madness update.

This was the first time she felt like herself, however.

With a groan of effort, she reached for the button to prop the head of the hospital bed up more. The whirl of gears caught Myria's attention from her phone and she was instantly up from her chair to reach Maria's side. "Hey. How're you doin'?"

Maria allowed her hand to slide off of the button. A cup of ice chips on the tray looked inviting but even the mere effort it would take to ask for them seemed beyond her. She lifted a single shoulder in a shrug and twisted her lips into a wry, tired smile for Myria. "I'm alive."

"Yeah," Myria grunted in reply. The tone suggested more than the word betrayed. It told of the worry her sister had experienced when the answer over whether or not Maria would survive wasn't so clear and it told of the relief she felt to find her sister off monitors and talking. None of this could be expressed, though. It was not the Graziano way. Instead, Myria gave her phone a shake. "I should call Tical and Tone. They wanted to know when you were awake."

"Not yet. I'm not awake yet," Maria stated as she scooted over in bed towards one side of the rails.

Myria narrowed her eyes at Maria in confusion. "You look pretty awake to me."

"Not for long I won't. I want to sleep a bit more before I try talking, bribing, or threatening one of these doctors into transferring me to GnomCorp so I can get into a tank and be ready for my duel tomorrow," Maria responded as she patted the edge of the bed. "Lay down."

The words caused Myria to hesitate in indecision. Not only was her older sister suggesting that she fight a duel less than forty-eight hours since she emerged from a coma but now the usually standoffish Maria was asking for actual human contact? Should she get a doctor? Maria still had to be feverish. Maria merely patted the bed again and Myria gave a shrug, setting her cell phone before dropping onto the space that Maria had given her. "I think that coma made you lose your mind."

"Maybe it did, My." Maria gave a soft laugh as she curled in close to her little sister. Smiling as serenely as she was capable, she gave up the fight to keep her eyes open. They drifted shut as she leaned her forehead in to rest against Myria's. "But you're never going to guess who all was there while I was in the process of losin' it."