FicWad

Famous Last Words

There is nothing welcoming about my death. There is nothing relaxing about being dead. Not so far, anyways. My pain goes no where, and there’s a burning sensation on my feet. Well, maybe that’s because I’m standing in hell. Just a guess.
“Listen, Ezra.” I hear in the back of my head. The voice sounds like Aria’s. Aria isn’t dead. Is she? Is she here? No, good girls go to heaven. Am I dead, or not?
I go to look around hell again but it’s gone. I don’t see a single thing but darkness.
“I know I can’t make you stay,” I hear Aria continue. I focus all on her voice, because my other senses are gone.
“And I know I can’t change anything about your cruddy life, but come on, Ezra, where’s your heart? Please? Can you just try? Just, take a breath, come on, breathe… breathe, Ezra!”

Bright lights that cast a shadow flood my sight. There’s nothing here, though. There’s no light, there’s no darkness, and there isn’t even the absence of darkness or light. There’s not even the absence of matter itself. There simply lacks all forms of atoms. Except for me. I’m standing in the mist of nothing but for some reason I can hear a soft crying that isn’t my own.
My chest burns. It’s rippling with electricity that I’ve never felt. I’m vibrating. I’m shaking. I’m being hurt.


And for some reason I see a shining that isn’t in my sight.
My eyes are shining bright. These bright lights have nearly blinded me, but I can see more than I ever had in my life.
I’m not in hell. No, there’s no light in hell. Not like this one. Not a glorious glow.
I was wrong.
I don’t want to die.

Zap.

I complain a lot about the pain cancer has brought me. Physically and emotionally.
But I have never in my life been so happy to be in such amounts of pain.
I’ve been given a second chance.



Aria’s POV.

It takes three days for Ezra to wake up and speak. One night, when everyone has left for the night, and I’ve stayed back, his fingers twitch just a little. I watch them, thinking maybe, just maybe, he’ll finally wake up. Without opening his eyes, he reaches out his hand until I take it.
“Ezra? Can you hear me?” I ask, timidly.
He talks softly, but what he says makes perfect sense to me. “I am not afraid to keep on living”
He tells me.
“I’m not afraid.”
There’s been a huge breath stuck in my throat since he went into a coma, and finally it comes out all at once.
“Thank you for not dying.” I whisper in his ear.
His eyes open slightly, and I think I see a new glow in them.
“Would you just,” He stops, coughs and closes his eyes again. He breaths deeply for a few seconds, struggling incredibly. I eye the nurses button, knowing I’m supposed to call them if anything changes. But for some people, I just can’t make myself invite a stranger into this moment.
“Just kiss me already”
Ezra Fitz, I thought you’d never ask.


Ezra
I can honestly say that lying in bed for three full weeks has not gotten boring. Not yet, anyways.
There was so much I hadn’t learned about Aria. So many things about her I never notices. Like the way she talks, the way she moves her fingers over her phone to pull up some funny video to lighten up the mood, the stories she tells and the secrets she has, the places she wants to go.
She stays the night most nights. I look over at her, reading on the couch next to my bed. I smile. I see her lying next to me, and I open my mouth and tell her words I thought I’d never speak.
“Aria, I decided something.”
“What’s that?” She asks, absently, not looking up from her book.
“I’ve decided to live the rest of my life awake and unafraid, asleep, or dead.”
That gets her attention. She looks up. “Really?”
“Yeah. I’ll never be awake and afraid again. I am not afraid to keep on living.”
“Well that’s great.” She smiles.
“And another thing,” I say. “I am not afraid to walk this world alone.” She gets up from the coach and walks over to me.
“But you aren’t alone.”
“I mean without you.”
Her face falls. “What?”
“I mean, if you stay and forgive me, that’s amazing. But if you want to leave and move on with your life, that’s fine too. I just wanted you to know that.”
She doesn’t get a chance to reply to me.
Maria, my favorite nurse, comes in the room with a smile on her face.
“Good news, Mr. Fitz. You’ve been given the all-clear to go home. Unless, of course, you want to stay here to see my pretty face every day,” She jokes, smiling.
I laugh and look at Aria. “Nothing you can say could stop me from going home.”