Shad could see Dante right in front of his eyes whenever he closed them. She wasn't there...anymore...but he could still see her. And each time it was the same, the exact position and expression that had been all of her reality as she faded into nothing. That same slight smile, the one that looked so wrong on her face, just because it was a genuine smile that had nothing of her normal cynicism or sarcasm. That same outstretched hand, silently pleading for help that Shad couldn't give her, even if he had known how.

He shouldn't have been thinking of her. He knew why she had had to go. She couldn't continue to exist in this world, not when she wasn't supposed to be real. And she should have realized that too. After all, she had forced him to do much the same thing when he had been like her, trapped in a state that shouldn't be possible in a world where he didn't exist. She didn't belong here, no matter what she might have said, and it was better, for both her and for him, that she just disappear rather than continuing to cling to the last shreds of the same power that had allowed him to return to reality.

And he hadn't even liked her. She was annoying. She never shut up. She was constantly harping on him to be "more of a man," despite the fact that he had never acted in any way that would be considered "unmanly." And she had pressed and prodded him into summoning up the power to return himself to a reality that he would have been better off. She had forced him back into a body that would have been better off dying...leaving him stranded to eventually fade from lack of material support. He should have hated her.

But instead, he couldn't help but pity her. She was much the same as him, a sort of ghost trapped outside of the body that she couldn't even remember anymore, in a world where she shouldn't exist. All she had really wanted was to save him from the same sort of existence that she was having. And instead of continuing, as he would have done had she not forced him back, she had faded upon emerging from the long nightmare, a look of pure horror on her face as she realized that she couldn't continue as she was in her state now that she was back in the real world.

That last look on her face would haunt Shad forever, even he told himself that he didn't care.

And that was how Shad spent most of his days, trapped in a body that couldn't respond to his thoughts, thinking about a girl who had forced him back into the situation despite the fact that he was sure that he would be better off never going back. That was how he was when the doctors entered the room, making one-sided conversations with him and knowing that he was probably coherent enough to answer back, but that he couldn't even make his brain respond enough to make his mouth move and form the words that would give him a link to someone outside of himself.

That was how he was when they wheeled the other person into the room, the first patient he'd seen since he woke up, as they had him in a single that provided him with a bit of privacy, even though he couldn't enjoy it, and wasn't sure if he wanted to. The person, a young man who couldn't have even been old enough to be out of high school, stared at him, and Shad had the feeling that the other could tell that, even though he couldn't move enough to indicate it, he was watching the other just as intently. And, though he was fairly sure that he hadn't closed his eyes, even unintentionally, as Shad stared at the young man, he saw superimposed over his vision the face of Dante.

He blinked once out of surprise, the only motion he could still summon at will, and the vision faded. But, he could still see Dante staring at him, through the strangely sunset colored eyes of the young man in the wheelchair, and she was smiling.