( based on this. )

“I didn’t think you were gonna come.” Sarah mused, sitting beside him on the porch.

Neither did he. Casey’s legs ached with temptation to run off down the street, but he hadn’t quite regained his strength yet. He just shook his head, staring down at his hospital bracelet - tangible, plastic shame wrapped too-tightly around his wrist.  His mouth hung slightly open, but he had nothing to say. The words were stuck, garbled and incoherent in the back of his throat.

If he tried to get the words out, what kind of guttural sound would he make instead?

It felt like a dream, sitting outside a home that was no longer home - that looked nothing like home, his whole life hanging in the balance by a fine thread, yet he felt entirely hollow. Sitting on the outskirts, outside himself, he wished that thread would finally snap. Send him back to reality, or send him away all together, he had no preference.

Sarah set a cup of coffee down beside him, but he didn’t touch it.

“I kinda thought you’d tell me to get lost,” Sarah went on. She always hated an awkward silence, but pity did funny things to people. He apparently looked pathetic enough for her to try and work past it.

“I don’t know why I didn’t.” Running his fingers through his hair, he finally cracked a smile, a sluggish tug at the corner of his lip, faint but the most he could muster. “Maybe I really have lost it.”

“Why me, Casey?” Sarah asked.

His eyebrows furrowed. The sudden urgency only added to the dreamlike feeling he’d already been struggling with. “Why you?”

“Why was it me you texted and not Christian?”

Casey rolled his eyes. “If it was my choice, I wouldn’t have texted either of you.”

“Well, you did,” Sarah snapped. “You can hide behind being f***ed up if you want to, but you did make a choice.”

“Look, I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“You never do, do you?”

“I don’t really have to at this point.”

“What would Savannah do without you, Casey?”

Another turn in his stomach - the same one the bracelet had caused. When Casey finally brought his focus on Sarah, her eyes were glazed over, but any tears were quickly swiped away once she caught him looking. He turned his head too, tensing his jaw, trying anything to hold his own tears back. Dying didn’t terrify him, but losing all sense of himself did. The wait for the thread to snap was getting to be excruciating. “I know…”

"Listen, I’m sorry for what I said...” Sarah let up, but still wouldn’t look at him and he couldn’t look at her either.

Casey shook his head. “You weren’t wrong. I deserved it.”

“That’s not true... I didn’t think you’d -.”

“I’d do it?”

“Yeah…”

Casey looked down at his hospital bracelet again - tangible shame, tangible disappointment, tangible fear. He scoffed through his nose, finally hauling himself up off the steps. “Trust me, neither did I.”

“You’re not gonna see Savannah?”

“Not like this. I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell her anything yet, okay?”

“Sure.” Sarah came to her feet too. “Look, I meant it when I said I was sorry.”

“I know.” Casey started off to his car. It wasn’t that he didn’t accept it, he just still wasn’t sure it was owed to him. “Thanks for everything.”