(there are two alternate endings to this story! this one is shorter, darker and more haunting, while the next one is more magical and happy. if you want the other one, skip this chapter!)

As Fia floated, she dreamed. 

She dreamed of all sorts of things, from sunny days with friends to stormy voyages aboard ancient ships. And yet they all shared a common theme. 

Every single one of these dreams, of these visions, ended in death. 

Fia crashed her car into the guiderail on a cliffside road, shooting off into the sky, the air filling with screams yet no hope of mercy. There were no survivors. 

A wave rolled over the ship's frail railings, crashing her into the metal bars. They creaked and failed, depositing her into the sea, where she inevitably drowned. 

There were more, of course. They flickered through her head, taking up only a few seconds each, leaving behind nothing but a lingering feeling of terror. 

One, though, made a mark. It took up the entirety of five seconds and then was gone, and yet Fia couldn't stop thinking of it. 

Death by light leap and then force field, a unique combination reserved for elves. With effort Fia grabbed for that one death, holding on tight, unwilling to let it leave. 

She pulled harder, bringing the vision back to the surface, and it became her reality. 

Suddenly, everything make sense. The other dreams were simply that--nightmares, trying to convince her that she was theirs. But this one, it was real. 

And then there they were, her friends, staring down at Fia's body with terrified and shocked expressions painted onto their beautiful faces. 

Clio turned away and retched, returning with a pale face and eyes covered. Phase kept wiping his eyes with his knuckles, and Jolt seemed unable to remove his gaze from the corpse sitting in front of the three children. 

The force field had long since disappeared, freeing them to do whatever they'd like. 

Jolt turned, revenge in his expression and tears in his eyes. He stared at Grady until the older man took a step back, raising his hands in submission. 

"You killed her," Jolt said, breathing rapidly though he'd done nothing that should make him out of breath. "A fifteen-year-old girl, orphaned two days ago. And you thrust her already-dying body into her friend's force field without another thought."

His tone was dangerously still, his whole body tense. 

"You call the Neverseen murderers, evil people who would do anything to fulfill their selfish dreams. And yet who are the real murderers here? Who are the people who would let a child die just because of her mistakes, of to which parents she was born to?"

He let Grady and the rest of them fill that in themselves.

Grady's expression vanished, eyes rolling into the back of his head as he crumpled, caught only barely by Edaline. 

"What did you do to him?" Alden asked, his attempt at formal, polite conversation failing miserably with the shake in his voice. 

Jolt's stony expression was unfaltering, even in moments of death. "I did nothing. He did this to himself."

Alden strode towards his friend, brows knit in worry. He gently set a single finger on Grady's forehead, whispering an apology before concentrating. 

And then leaping back, breathing loudly, eyes wide. "I'm sorry, Edaline," he whispered, quiet enough that Fia was sure her friends couldn't hear. 

Edaline fell to the ground, weeping, cradling her broken husband in her arms. Fia focused her gaze on the despairing woman, knowing that her life would never be the same. 

Sophie could heal broken minds, Fia knew. But Grady's mind had already cracked, irreversible thoughts filling his headspace until it couldn't take it anymore. Even healed from insanity, he would not be the same person. 

Guilt was a funny thing, because it did not just disappear. It came to be inside a mind and then wormed itself in, refusing to leave even when memories did. 

Clio was curled into herself, hands covering her face as she cried, silent except for a hiccup every few seconds. 

Fia wanted, more than anything, to console her. She wanted to grab her hand and hold it tight, to never let go. 

But she could not, for she was nothing but a thought, a memory. She existed only as an onlooker, watching lives happen. 

The moment passed. Elves lived long and so did their memories, and so it was a long, long, time before Fia truly began to fade. 

"I once knew a girl named Fia," Jolt told his great-grandchildren, smiling from his yellow Councillor chair. 

Students of the Neverseen academy, studying under Miss Clairvoyance, read of the hero Summon, who brought down a powerful Emissary and saved the mission. "May she live a long life in your memories," Clio vowed, and yet Fia did not matter to the students, and so she was forgotten. 

Shine thought of Fia as she lay dying, hands clutching the bullet hole in her middle, human police officers surrounding her as if they could do anything. 

Phase wrote about his life-defining mission in his goodbye letter, leaving it for his boss, Lady Clairvoyance, to find. He pulled his cloak over his head and held his cobalt blue crystal to the light, smiling. 

Fia's breath stopped, akin to the time it first had all those years ago, and so it was that she was forgotten.