Tori knew she was supposed to be the one in charge of this situation. Still, she was scared.

She'd have to be an idiot, of course, to assume that Trent didn't dabble in some questionable things, what with being smack dab in the middle of the Los Angeles rock scene. He had been evasive enough when she asked him about some of his less-than-admirable qualities a few days before.

Despite all of this, she wasn't quite prepared for what she had walked in on at that party, or what came afterwards. Just looking into those foggy green eyes gave her the keen, sinking feeling that this was far from the first time he had done something like this. In fact, her intuition told her that it had already long since gotten bad.

As long as she had been dead, Tori's intuition had never been wrong.

So she grabbed him by the neck and pulled him out of there, despite his protests and the looks his oddball friends gave her. That one in the dress had cast her a particularly nasty glare; it was all Tori could do not to reach out and give him a good slap across his overly-angular jowls.

When they got back to his place, it was clear that Trent hadn't taken the rescue very well. He yelled at her, angry, insisting that he didn't need to be saved; there was no use in keeping him around, anyway. Try as she might to ignore these statements, each one sent a stabbing pain to Tori's motionless heart.

She loved him, as the fact of the matter was. It might not have been logical if she was living, but she felt that, as his personal savior, the affection was wholly justified. She didn't just want to save him; she was pretty sure, at this point, that she needed to do so. If not strictly for his well-being, then for hers.

Much to her relief, it didn't seem to take him long to forgive her, at least enough for him to fall to his knees, crying as his arms had clumsily found her waist, looking for anything to steady him, offer him some stability in the midst of his life's steady shattering.

Hoping to bring him comfort of some kind, Tori returned his embrace.

She tried her best to assure him things would be okay, that it would all be better in the morning.

Still, when Trent pulled away and wiped his face on his shirtsleeve, he offered one fact that she had overlooked.

"I won't be able to sleep," he stated, his almost-monotonous speech cut off by small cracks in his voice. "What I took... it makes my heart race."

Tori's stomach sunk. Right. That's what stimulants did.

Trying to make the best of it, she rose to her feet.

"Right," she said brightly, as if she had known all along and already had a plan. "Well, then, let me go get you something to drink to help calm your nerves a little. Just sit down on that couch right there. I'll be back in a jiffy."

Wordlessly, Trent obeyed as Tori headed for the kitchen.

After a few minutes, she reemerged, mug in hand. She pushed it into Trent's shaking hands, only for him to eye it suspiciously. "What is this?"

Tori rolled her eyes as she seated herself next to him. "Tea, of course," she responded. "Did you really think I'd spring for coffee or alcohol, what with your condition?"

Trent didn't reply, simply lifting the mug to his lips as he continued to tremble. After quietly sipping for a while, he pulled away, casting a sidelong glance Tori's way.

Finally, he spoke. "I'm... Sorry."

His voice seemed slightly slurred, if one listened close enough. Effects of the drugs, Tori knew.

"I'm just..."

He paused again, looking at her for a long while. Tori flinched slightly as he reached out towards her face, -- what was he going to do? She almost let out a sigh of relief when she found that he was only brushing a strand of hair away, keeping her eyes from being obscured from view. Still, once their gazes met, she found that the moment was almost too intimate for comfort.

After seeming to struggle with it for a long time, Trent finally found the words to express the question that he seemed to want to ask so desperately. His hand fell away.

"Why are you so convinced that you're gonna save me?" he asked. His voice didn't carry inflections of anger anymore, -- just confusion, and a hint of sadness.

Nervous, Tori gulped before answering. Involuntarily, her eyes broke away from his. Instead, they traveled down to her hands as she futilely picked at her cuticle.

"Because," she said, "you deserve to be saved."

Though her eyes weren't on him, she could imagine the frustration on Trent's face as he sighed loudly.

When Tori looked back up, she was met with the frustration that she had been expecting. Trent scratched at the back of his neck, feverishly, compulsively.

"But why?" he pressed. "Why me? Why not somebody with cancer, or another depressed guy who has to worry about leaving kids behind, or some kid who has their whole life ahead of them? Why should you worry about me, of all people?"

There was something in both his expression and his voice that broke Tori's heart. None of those words were for show or attention. He meant it, all of it.

For whatever reason, he didn't think he was worth the life that he had.

God knows, she knew how that felt.

"Trent."

Though she spoke quietly, he immediately lifted his head upon hearing his name.

She forced a smile onto her face, a false sense of comfort as she asked the question that could make or break both of them. "Do you like yourself?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "At all?"

He lowered his head once again, a curtain of dark hair falling over his face, concealing something. "No," he said. "Not particularly."

There were so many things Tori could have done then, -- and, truthfully, she was tempted to do all of them.

She could have just held him, let him cry. She could have grabbed ahold of him and forced his sleeve up, confirmed what she had suspected when she first arrived, only to see his bleeding hand. She could have told him that she liked him enough for the both of them.

But she didn't do any of these things. Instead, she simply told him the truth.

"Well," she said. "You should value yourself a lot more than that."

He looked back at her. Though he didn't say anything, she knew what he was thinking. Once again: why?

For lack of a better word, Tori was frustrated with Trent's apparent lack of self-worth. She felt sorry for him, of course, -- in fact, that was an understatement, considering how his pain made her ache.

Still, ugly truths were in order here.

"You need to be here," she continued, making damn sure the urgency showed in her voice. "Trust me, I know. I have reasons."

He eyed her expectantly, as if giving her a challenge.

Tori fugured that unspoken challenge was one to accept.

"You need to finish that album that you're working on, for one thing," she started. "Because, honey, it is going to make a big splash in the industry. The ones that come after it, too."

Though he still appeared skeptical, Trent perked up slightly at this. "Really?"

Smiling, Tori nodded her head. "Yes," she confirmed. "After this record, babe, you'll be in hog heaven. You're gonna be hailed as a musical genius."

Looking over at him now, she could tell that he wasn't feeling quite as downtrodden as when they had come in. In fact, he had a faraway, dreamy look in his eyes, though she wasn't quite sure if it was the result of the good news or an effect of the still-potent coke.

Whatever the case, she hated to chase that look of near peace away with what she planned to say next. Still, it had to be done.

Tori frowned, lowering her voice as she made her next point. "...and I also know that, if you don't stop sometime soon, it will all be over within five years."

As she had predicted, this statement brought Trent right back to reality. "Over? You mean--"

He left that sentence hanging, waiting for Tori to respond. Knowing that he already had the worst case scenario in mind, she simply nodded.

This bit of information seemed to fill Trent with anxiety in no time flat.

"Jesus." He took a shaky breath, reaching one shaking hand up to run through his hair, -- a nervous tic Tori had picked up on in recent days. "What am I supposed to-- How do you..."

He chuckled, an empty sound. Fitting, considering absolutely nothing about any of this was funny.

In the end, he just ended up staring at his guardian angel with wide green doe eyes, trying his hardest to worm his way out of this corner he had backed himself into. "You know all of this for certain?"

Tori hummed a grim confirmation in reply. "I'm one hundred percent positive."

Voice breaking, he was able to force out one more vital word. "How?"

"How will it happen?" Tori asked.

He nodded in return.

"Well, I can't say that for sure," she said. "Possibly by the hand of the needle... or that snorting mess you were pulling back there... or maybe your own demons will overcome you, wrestle you out of your own willpower when you're too off-your-ass to care. Maybe it'll be an accident, or something done under false pretenses. Maybe you'll be all alone, or maybe, just maybe, that Brian will be there with you. Or he'd be long gone, and you'd both know that you never said goodbye."

She paused to look at him then, to see how he was taking it. As predicted, he looked scared to death, even paler than he was before. He shook like a leaf, knees pulled up to his chest.

Tori reached for his hand in an attempt to soften the blow a bit, to remind him that she was there to pull him out of it, regardless of whether he liked it or not. Relief filled her when he took it.

She gave that hand a reassuring squeeze as she continued to speak. "I don't know how it would happen, but I know it'd be between now and ninety-nine," she said, her voice soft.

She held onto his hand, tighter, as if he could slip away at any moment. "And you're supposed to have a long life ahead of you, mister."

Save for the shaky exhale that followed this exchange, neither of them said anything. They simply sat in the dark in total silence, fingers intertwined.

After at least fifteen minutes, Trent spoke up again. "Tori?"

"Hmm?"

He kept his eyes focused on Tori, allowing her to see the drug-muddled fog from earlier seem to melt away. "You'll stay, right? If I do this, if I try to get clean... you won't just up and leave me, right?" He paused, biting at his lip until a small dot of blood surfaced. "I don't think I could take it, you know. If you went away now."

Even as her unbeating heart proceeded to do something between shattering as if it were glass and melting like candle wax, Tori took note of this moment of vulnerability, -- no doubt, an important piece of the puzzle that she was putting together to create him, a disjointed masterpiece.

That one bit of truth, a testament to the frightened little boy that she knew still lived inside of him, underneath all the rage and insatiable needs, brought her one step closer to removing that detrimental barrier between them.

At the moment, however, she figured she could save that for another day. After all, she had a promise to make.

"Of course," she replied. "I'm here for the foreseeable future. No need to worry about me. In fact..." She leaned in closer to him, forcing a playful grin. "...if I were you, I wouldn't even worry about closing my eyes. 'Cause you can bet your life that I'll be here when you wake up."