t.A.T.u rock. I currently have nearly all of 200km/h In The Wrong Direction on mp3 in both English and Russian! ^^;

I'm in an angst-fic kinda mood, and I suggest you all download this fic's theme song [in both languages], it's very… erm… tinkly. The fic is very short, I apologise.

Theme song: "30 Minutes" – t.A.T.u

Reshat'

Out of mind

Out of time

To decide

Do we run?

Should I hide?

For the rest

Of my life

Clicks of clocks, door latches and breathing apparatus.

Bleeps of pagers, computers and heart monitors.

Breaths of him, the nurse with the clipboard, and the patient in the bed.

Taste of the minted gum he'd eaten earlier, salt reacting with his saliva and disinfected air brushing his tongue with each breath he took.

Lights of red, green and blue, dancing on the coloured screen that decided life and death, with each dancing, intricate line.

Weight of his clothes, his hands and a burden weighing a thousand-fold the weight of himself on his back and in his chest, wrapped around his very core, dragging him almost off the chair and into the abyss below him.

Confusion plaguing his mind, angst tearing at his soul, self-guilt beating him inside and out, pathetic images gouging his eyes out with every blink.

And did he mention complete, one hundred percent blame?

No?

Add that on, too.

Can we fly?

Do I stay?

We could lose

And the more

Men it takes

To make plans

Or mistakes

They say the worst thing a parent can do is bury their own child.

He used to believe that.

Now Ash would have shot that theory down within a second.

At least when they're dead, they were dead. It was final. No decision-making, no agonizing choices to make in the shortest time, no nurse coming in periodically informing you of the countdown that was constantly thudding down to zero in your ears. No ifs, buts or maybes rattling around your already confused mind, wrenching your heart as you tried to compute endless possibilities.

But what if they who were living were already dead? When your body was alive but your soul had passed through to the next world, or whatever awaited us at the end?

And what if they weren't, by some twist of fate, they were still alive; somewhere inside them, they were hiding? What if you made the wrong decision, and instead of being merciful, you became the murderer?

And it wasn't even his child, to begin with. But when your best friend suddenly turns into your next-of-kin, when you finally recognise something you knew all along, that they meant more and were more to you than a friend…

…and their life rested on your shoulders in the metaphorical sense, not the familiar physical sense…

It was something someone like him could never do. To hold the balance of life in his hands, able to destroy it or save it at the flick of a switch, to keep her light in this world until her time came… or decide that it was her time and let her slip away.

And each option seemed so right and yet so wrong.

30 minutes, a blink of an eye

30 minutes to alter our lives

30 minutes to make up my mind

30 minutes to finally decide

30 minutes to whisper your name

30 minutes to shoulder the blame

30 minutes of bliss, thirty lies

30 minutes to finally decide

On one hand, he had the easy option; leave things exactly as they were right now, praying and hoping on a small shred of faith that he had left in his soul, to keep her on the earth just in the vain hope that she would carry on the odd-breaking trend they set together; cliffs were just steps, boulders a pebble, an attack was nothing but a gust of breath to them, so why would this be any different? But on the flip side of keeping her here, was she even here at all? The injuries she had could have killed even Bruno himself, and she was less than a quarter of his size; surely there was no way that her soul would stay where it was near impossible for her body to as well.

But there was the tiny voice in his head that kept voicing "what if?".

What if her odds were better than what the nurses and doctors and vets all said? What if tomorrow, she'd improve? But he couldn't ignore the salted burns of his tears when he'd sobbed into Misty's shoulder as Joy reeled off the list of injuries, felt the slow steady sting of broken skin when he'd attacked a wall in a fit of desperation and the ache in his shoulder as Brock had wrenched him away, the throb of his bruised spine from the impact, the creak of a rib he was sure was holding together by a thread and the slow static rise and fall of the hairs on his arms as his skin contracted into fearful bumps.

And how dare he have the audacity to try to ignore the slow, seeping crimson that had stained into his shirt, the way she had whimpered into the crook of his arm, the way he had watched that useless light above the door like a Fearow guarding its young, the way his stomach twisted further into a sailor's knot with each bleep of the machine, the way something in his chest pulsed with angst with every heartbeat.

Who was he to decide whether someone lived or died? Who was anyone? But then, what if right now they were denying Fate what she rightly had come to claim? Should she have left by now? Was he keeping her past her time? Wasn't it fitting that she die doing the things she loved, not of age, lying decrepit in a basket, her glossy fur matted and dull? At least, to die in battle would be honourable for one such as her.

Carousels

In the sky

That we shape

With our eyes

Under shade

Silhouettes

Casting shade

Crying rain

It had been so sudden, he reflected later, the accident happening, the rush they made to the ER, the decisions he was forced to make, being bombarded by social worker jargon and complicated medical terminology that he didn't understand nor comprehend; he knew that had his mind been clear, things would have been different.

He had no idea how they would be different, the different possibilities tied into a knot of thousands of millions of infinite alternate lives they had lived, and he knew that it did not do good to dwell on what ifs.

But late at night, without her on her pillow purring in her sleep, the silence was tangible, thick, choking. He hated it; felt cold despite the other warm body that lay curled in his arms, hated how all he saw was her in the bleak.

Hated how his grief made him replay his dreams.

But he knew that it was the past, which had passed, and knew that she would not like him dwelling, would not like the depression he sometimes slipped into.

It was just a new wound, slowly healing, the scab picked off by remembrances of the past. One day, he understood, he would look back on her memory with a fond smile, a laugh, and there would be no taint of grief nor guilt.

He owed it to her memory.

Can we fly?

Do I stay?

We could lose

We could fail

Either way

Options change

Chances fail

Trains derail

But in the not yet so distant past, Ash looked up at where Nurse Joy had entered the room. "Mr. Ketchum," she said solemnly, and Ash rose to his feet. "I'm afraid we need a decision." And everything came crashing down as he cast a last lingering look at the tiny yellow form lying in the oversized hospital bed.

He took a deep breath and changed the rest of his life.

30 minutes, a blink of an eye

30 minutes to alter our lives

30 minutes to make up my mind

30 minutes to finally decide

30 minutes to whisper your name

30 minutes to shoulder the blame

30 minutes of bliss, thirty lies

30 minutes to finally decide

[A/N] – I felt like some angst to balance out the obscene fluff in RB8. ^^ The title, Reshat' [Решать] is Russian [Latinised] for "To Decide" according to translate. ru – something which is a theme in the theme song and is a theme in the fic.

*blink*

^^;;;

Awful, I know. Sorry for this fic. ^^;