For a second I think about how easy it would be to pass back to the other side, to walk straight into the laboratories and offer myself up to the surgeons. You were right; I was wrong. Get it out.

And in that moment, the wordless thing passed between us, the thing that wasn't quite love but was so close I could believe in it sometimes.

that's what it was like waking up in the crypts. no-longer-dead. but without her. like burning alive.

Maybe next time, but probably not.

It will kill me, it will kill me, it will kill me. And I don't care.

Fear. Blame. Don't forget. Mom. I love you. -Lauren Oliver, Delerium

I'm not scared, if that's what you're wondering. The moment of death is full of sound and warmth and light shooting away, arcing up and up and up, and if singing were a feeling it would be this, this light, this lifting, like laughing... The rest you have to find out for yourself.