Name: I See You

Rating: PG-11

Summary: Nick Powell reached his goal of being an author. But he hasn't forgotten his past and who shaped it so dramatically and suddenly.

Disclaimer: I do not own Nick or Annie. I only own the interviewer.

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I don't care what they say
I'm in love with you
They try to pull me away
But they don't know the truth
My heart's crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I...
Bleeding Love, Leona Lewis

"Nick Powell, it's good to have you with us."

The man opposite Nick wore a smile weathered by many years presenting the same expression. The glimmer was gone. The interest had faded. Only the obligation was the same thin length.

Nick had to force the same smile, though he was reluctant to share the same pleasantries with someone who wasn't even curious about him, not even a morsel.

He shook the man's hand, stretched out across the dais, nodding amiably. Might as well put on a show. "It's nice of you to have me."

The man, the silver plate on his sport coat (and the itinerary which Nick had been following for the past few weeks) identifying him as Braydon Scott from Time Magazine, settled back in his seat, squirming against the pouched leather chair. The clipboard balanced in his lap ricocheted, long fingers extracting the pen and fiddling with it.

"So, you're twenty-two years old, fresh out of college, and you've just had your first novel published—"

"It's technically categorized as a book." Nick interrupted. Braydon Scott gave him a puzzled look. Nick sighed, bracing his elbow on the armrest, then waved his hand. "Nevermind."

"You've just published your first book, curiously titled I See You. Can you tell us what it's about?"

Nick straightened, inhaling and rubbing his hands up and down his jeans. "Well, first of all, it's more or less a piece of nonfiction, as everything that happens in the book happened to me."

"Wouldn't that classify it as an autobiography?"

"I suppose so, yes." Nick considered. "Though I don't like the idea of autobiographies because, to me, you have to have done something pretty damn spectacular or special to have anything interesting to write about at my age. And that hasn't exactly happened to me."

Braydon Scott nodded, popping the pen cap on and off.

Nick leant forward, elbows on his knees. "Look, I don't want people to know what happened and not bother picking up the book. Because this one is very important to me. But I will say, without giving too much away, it's a story about two invisible people, two people with absolutely nothing in common and how they come to know more about each other than anyone else. It's about how even the two most invisible people can be seen by one another and how being invisible can…I don't know. You see things, you learn things, when no one can see you."

Braydon Scott furrowed his brow at Nick, pressing him, pressuring him. But Nick laughed, clenching his shoulders and releasing. "I'm not spoiling the ending, man."

"All right," Braydon Scott said, eyes darting off to the side. A couple of the cameramen surrounding them fidgeted uneasily. He looked down at his notes, clearing his throat. "So, you're saying that this book is autobiographical, though you don't like saying so. It comes from an experience when you were eighteen, when the girl that tried to kill you saved your life."

Nick nodded slightly. "Yes."

"When that happened. I remember. Your story was a big one. It was a tantalizingly sweet turn of events, whatever happened between you and that girl."

"Her name was Annie Newton. Annie Newton." He drew out each word individually, obtrusive. "She wasn't just some girl, as you keep saying."

Braydon Scott, noting the tone of defensive hitched in the young man's voice, cleared his throat again, averting his eyes. "Right, Annie Newton. You didn't do any press after you recovered. Annie Newton died. You seemed to disappear completely. You went off to college as if nothing had ever happened. Then this book surfaced and within it you've claimed that you were…stuck in some sort of limbo."

"Yes."

"You could see everything, hear everything, but no one could see or hear you. Except Annie Newton. That's how she saved you. You helped her."

Nick pressed his lips together. "Yes."

"Don't you think people will find your claim to be…pretty outrageous? You're selling quite a story here. It goes beyond logic."

"Yes." Nick replied with a shrug.

"How do you justify that?"

"It can't be. I admit that it is very unlogical, what happened to me, but I know it happened. Because I remember everything."

His voice grew low, emphasizing the intensity and sincerity of what he was saying. He was not lying. He hoped people believed that. He wouldn't lie about this, about her. She was too…too…too something that he still couldn't put his finger on.

Even if she had died saving him, she had been real. They had been real.

A momentary silence blanketed the two men. Braydon Scott uncrossed his legs, then crossed them again, creating a triangle.

Nick raked his hand through his dark brown locks, trailing down to subconsciously graze the piece of cold metal under his shirt. He withdrew the necklace from his collar, instinctively squeezing the praying angel between his thumb and index finger.

Braydon Scott's eyes pinpointed to the necklace grasped in the young author's hand. "The cover of the book is the necklace you're wearing, correct?"

A poster of the cover was hung to Nick's right; laid against an almost sky blue background, the silver angel was draped in a cupped hand, the silver chain spilling over the pale wrists. Nick stared at it, inspecting it, how the cursive lettering flowed sweetly, how his name looked so distantly foreign.

"Correct. It's actually Annie Newton's. She had it when she died. She put it in my hands. I tried to give it back to her brother, but he didn't want it." Nick shrugged.

"And you kept it, all these years."

It wasn't a question. It wasn't a statement or matter of fact. It was a realization that breached the tongue of the gentleman in front of the young man. A man with his life settled and secured realizing the weight of his subject's words, meaning, truth.

Braydon Scott stared at Nick, studying him for the fault line that would cause a tremor within the conversation. Waiting for the shake up and ultimate end.

But it did not come. Nick merely stared right back at Braydon Scott, lips limp, unresponsive, impassive. His fingers proceeded to play with the angel, his personal angel.

Nick suddenly leant forward with all the caution of startling an animal, bracing his elbows on his knees. "I keep this necklace, I wrote this book, because if I don't…I have to. For her. Because no one else will remember. And I want people to. I want people to know about the girl that saved me. I want people to know who she really is. And no as this…broken girl who…tried to kill me.

"Because that's not how I see her. She'll never be that to me again."

XXXX

What you are about to read is not a story about me. It is not a story of what happened to me that May night. It is not a story of my almost-death. It is not a mutilation or belittlement of Annie Newton.

It is not about Annie Newton. It's is not a story about Nick Powell.

The story which you are about to read is not hers, or mine alone, but ours. It is a tale of mistakes, of change, and of connecting with the invisible.

I never saw anyone die before. I suppose that not many people actually do.

Until she, Annie Newton, died in my arms.

Her hand was covering mine, smeared with blood, her blood, never again to be mine. The necklace that she had kept hidden like the humanity that only I ever got to see spilled out from between her fingers, slipping into my palm, it's coldness shocking. The angel burned my skin.

I gazed down at her, studying her angelic face. The tainted countenance of loss, of hatred, of protection had washed away with everything else. For the first time she looked at peace.

I wanted to give her that moment, however small it may have been, to rest in silence. Any aware fiber in my body screamed at me to call for someone, to forget my own needs and help her. Because she had helped me. She had saved me.

Yet I didn't move. I just lied there, feeling her body next to mine, feeling the warmth slowly vanishing.

If I could have given her one thing in return, it was peace.

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A/N: There you have it. There wasn't much else. If you didn't get the ending, I decided to end the story with what I thought Nick's prologue of I See You would have been.

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