the buddy system / lrh 🍒

28:life support (epilogue)

Katherine sighed, breathing in the winter air as she made her way downstairs, bundled up in various layers with nothing but the early morning sun illuminating her face in the darkness.

Seeing Luke at the hospital every morning during break or any time she had free time, really, became a daily routine for her ever since the whole incident. It was the least she could do for him, even if he may not ever wake up.

"Katherine?" Ashton called from downstairs, curiously. "Are you heading down to visit Luke?" He asked as soon as her small figure came into sight.

"Yeah," she nodded, silent as she packed her bags for the day which always seemed to contain a rose in it. Luke's brother had mentioned at some point throughout the months that Luke loved roses, probably due to what a hopeless romantic he was inside.

Katherine then made it her job to give him a rose every day she was with him, for every day she continued to hope and pray that maybe, maybe the world would love her and he would just open those pretty blue eyes and tell her it'd be okay.

"Katherine?" Ashton questioned, more gently this time. "You know that you're not alone, right? i'm still right here and i've always been here" he continued, taking her hand comfortingly, as if his warmth had the capability of healing all the frustrations of the past several months.

"I know," Katherine sighed, swinging her bag over her shoulder and smiling at her brother, her beautiful, kindhearted brother that she loved so fucking much, it hurt more than the pain Luke gave her. "I never forget that you are," she stated simply, earning a nod from the older sibling.

"Now, lets go see your boyfriend, Mikey and Calum are already there."

---
Katherine had gotten used to the smell of antiseptic that seemed to practically radiate off of the hospital walls, it had been 7 months of being her daily, anyway and 7 months since the accident.

She was used to the smell, the tears in rooms filled with people she didn't know, the beeping of a heart monitor, the stained floral wallpaper, and even the sight of Luke his skin as white as snow and his eyes forever closed as he laid in a hospital bed, his heart beating slowly, so slowly that Katherine feared that one day it would just stop all together.

The shitty part was that she didn't want to be used to it, and the thought plagued her every time she walked through the glass doors of the hospital.

"Good morning," Ashton greeted the old lady at the desk, Edna, as they walked in. She smiled sadly at them for a brief moment, as she did every day, knowing that the two of them had been visiting for months now with no sight of improvement in their friend. It was as if she knew he was out of time, out of hope.

It honestly disgusted Katherine.

Sighing, the red headed girl followed her taller step-brother into the usually opened room that was brightly lit and crowded almost every morning considering that they all came to visit him, no matter what, even if it was just for a second.

But it dawned on her that today was different right when she saw Michael sobbing on Calum, who held him tightly, kissing at the top of his head in sad attempts to soothe him.

"What's going on?" she questioned, furrowing her eyebrows as she rushed over to her friends as the adults talked inside the room they refused to let them in. "Why's Michael crying?"

"They want to take Luke off life support, said there's no hope," Calum mumbled, sniffling as the words escaped his mouth, the words that practically shattered Katherine's heart.

Luke was going to die. The love of her fucking life was going to die and she couldn't do anything about it. She would never laugh at his jokes or tease him about his dolphin obsession or held him while he cried. She'd never do any of that ever again.

"He can't die. That's fucking insane," Ashton mumbled breathlessly, as if the information of Luke's impending death was a weight against his lungs.

But he was.

And Katherine knew it was over.

---

Katherine entered the brightly lit room, watching the boy she loved for probably the last time as chaos unfolded around her, tears, screams, hell, something that felt as if it would never end, would refuse to end.

Today was the day they would completely cut Luke off from life support, the day he would slip past her fingertips into absolute nothingness, and god did she dread this day.

She'd give everything to take it all away, to flashback to the very beginning, when Luke was alive and well and absolutely beautiful.

Katherine took a seat beside his bed, taking his cold hand in hers gently as tears welled up in her grey eyes, the eyes that Luke had loved, yet he wouldn't anymore.

Slowly, she opened her mouth, an ocean of words escaping her lips for the small strip of hope that he might still hear her, that he might still wake up and come back.

"Hey, Luke," she said, her eyes glazing over his pale exterior, emotionless, a complete stranger to her. The Luke she knew would've been smiling and cracking jokes. "It's me, Katherine," she continued, slowly, taking inn the silence that became so normal between them.

"I just came to tell you, if you're listening, that i.. i love you, Luke. I love you and i want you to wake the fuck up so i could yell at you," Katherine joked, half-heartedly as tears rolled down her cheeks.

"My point is that in a few hours theyre going to take you off of life support and you're going to be gone, and i haven't even known you that long. I want to know more about you and thats funny," she laughed, practically choking on the saltiness of her own tears, like she was drowning in an ocean. But he was the ocean and she wanted to drown.

"It's funny because the first time i met you, i wanted to kill you. I wanted nothing to do with you, but in twenty four hours you taught me how to follow the whole buddy system because the buddy system is like loving someone, right? You take care of your buddy, make sure you're buddy's okay, and make sure your buddy doesn't end up like us, broken. But Luke, there is no system if i don't have you, so please just wake up. I love you," she explained, breathlessly as she sobbed, looking up at his pale face for the longest time as if she was taking his features in before he was completely gone forever.

And with that she stood up and began to leave because maybe it was meant to be like this and maybe Luke was just supposed to be a lesson to teach her how to love and most importantly, how to follow The Buddy System.

"Goodbye, Luke."

"Who's Luke?"

                               The  End
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or is it?