Every year at the start of the same month, Bellona adored the arrival of fall. It was like watching a movie just to relive your favorite part: there's the familiar but brittle beginning, the lively middle, and then the climax: fall. The protagonist finds the strength to push through whatever struggle the screenwriters deemed them worthy of, and they go home to their fateful happy ending.

She hated it this year. The season didn't inject any sort of preternatural strength in her veins as it usually did. She wished it had, because maybe then she wouldn't be dreading her fate - the one carved in stone specifically for her at her life's impending resolution. Or maybe it was because of the cancer that she couldn't muster anticipation for the season's first brisk air. The chicken and egg discourse often entered her mind in moments like these, plucking at the threads of her inner tempest until they grew strained, because when in matters of theory was it possible to discern the true cause from the effect? The attempt only proved to drive one mad.

She supposed the same was true for those lucky enough to experience love. Did a human love someone for who they were, their sleight-of-hand beauty tricking them into loving even the ugliest of their inner truths? Truths that were much more alluring for the way they had remained camouflaged for so long? Or did the loved learn to fill in the gaps of their being simply because they learned to cherish the lover?

This discovery was one that was individualized based on experience, and the fact that she might experience it was a hope that found itself nestled in the innermost places of her heart. But, again: there was cancer. Cancer would take that chance from her, too. It seemed to be the mantra of her very life at this point.

"Hey, Bell."

Bellona had been so engrossed in the paperwork on her desk, and so distracted by a headache that plagued her, that she hadn't noticed Sam approaching her. Which, in hindsight, might have been a sign that a receptionist position wasn't the best assignment Mrs. Darrow had given her.

"'Oh, sorry," the apology slipped from her lips like a practiced preface, habitual even if no sense of fault bloodied her hands.

Sam frowned and cocked his head to one side, causing clumps of his hair to brush across his forehead. "Sorry?"

Bellona shook her head. "Just forget I said that, I'm sor...uh, nothing. Can I help you?"

"Well, I hope so." Sam's head was still tilted, but no longer in confusion. It harmonized with his fluid posture: his hands gripping the edge of the counter nearest Bellona, his shoulders slumped in the sort of inherent ease she'd learned was synonymous with him. The thought that she'd had months to become so familiar with him made her chest swell.

So did the casualness with which he said, "I was hoping to take you to dinner tonight." A momentary pause ensued, and then he rushed to add, "I know you're a working woman and everything-"

Bellona laughed, cutting him off. It was the sort of giggle that Sam always said reminded him of children, running through a field to find easter eggs or waking up to a pile of presents on Christmas day.

"So," Sam prodded. "Can I take that as a yes?"

A small flame burning beneath the skin of her cheeks, she nodded. "But where?"

"Where?"

"Well, yes, where you take me is definitely a deciding factor."

A quick spurt of laughter burst the seal between Sam's lips, tore through the invisible glue that held them together when he wasn't speaking or smiling. His eyes glinted. "So if you don't like the place I choose, you're not gonna go with me?"

Bellona made a quiet humming noise, as if she was thinking, and then murmured, "Pretty much."

Sam pressed a hand into his chest, fingers creating a five-stripe striation across the Stanford Law logo on his crimson crewneck. His jaw dropped in mock offense, and he scoffed, but before he could speak, Bellona hurried to say, "In my defense, the barbeque place you chose last time was awful. I genuinely don't know how they're still in business."

"Well in my defense," he insisted. "You told me you liked barbeque food. You said you loved to eat at those kinds of restaurants!"

"Yeah, well, not that one."

Their banter quieted for a moment, and the two sat in silence, content to do nothing but gaze at one another. It was almost like there was a warmth radiating off of Sam, and Bellona could feel it every time they were together. He made her happiest days even happier, his joy permeating her skin and her feelings and even her saddest thoughts until it was all she could feel. But it wasn't the type of warmth that had a toll - she didn't need to trade for its comfort with heat exhaustion and sunburnt shoulders, trading pennies of health for nickels of pleasure. It was the type of warmth that almost made her forget about the icy death that neared her.

A bell sounded, sharp and fleeting. Bellona lifted her cell phone to see if the sound had come from it, but the screen was blank except for the time that blinked at her: 10:51am. No notifications. She glanced at Sam to find that he was doing the same, but the tips of his mouth were downcast, reaching for the floor as if they wanted to match the drooping of his shoulders. His warmth had dampened, if only by a little.

"What is it?" Bellona asked, a hint of panic suddenly tainting her voice. She'd never seen Sam like this, never once seen him look so dejected. At least, not aside from the times her sickness was the topic of conversation, but even then he tried to hide his sour mood from her. Now, he wasn't even trying to disguise his gloom with his usual cheerfulness. He'd been caught off-guard.

"Uh....nothing," he said, shoving his phone back into the pocket of his jeans. The loose denim made a rustling noise. "I just...I'm sorry, will you excuse me for a second? My brother just texted. He wants me to call him, so..."

"Oh! Of course. You don't have to apologize."

Despite Bellona's insistence that Sam's departure was not problematic, he muttered a quick "sorry" before turning to the door, head bent the whole time. He opened the library doors just enough to squeeze through, and then there was a click. He was gone.

Bellona turned back to the stack of papers in front of her. She tugged at the ends of her hair. She pulled at it until it was straight, and then let go and watched it collapse into tight curls once more. She shifted in her seat, flipped mindlessly through the paper stack, pulled at her hair again. Grew sick of it tickling her neck and tugged it, not painlessly, into a low ponytail. A few front pieces flew out and prodded the skin at the edges of her face.

She couldn't focus. She was supposed to be organizing a section of the school's research catalog so that her supervisors knew what to order for the next semester, but it suddenly seemed so insignificant compared to the waning uncertainty of Sam's sibling struggles. Bellona had no idea what was bothering him, and she knew if she asked, he would only give her an LED smile. Filtered light, fake light. A false brightness. Not the pure sunlight he usually emanated.

So she was left to wonder. And wonder she did.

She wondered what it was about simply seeing his brother's name on his phone that could make Sam so unnerved. He hadn't shared much about his siblings, other than the fact that his brother Dean hadn't been pleased when he'd shown a desire to go to school. His sister Millie hadn't shared any explicit displeasure, but she hadn't approved, either.

Bellona had never prodded past asking about fond childhood memories, and she had no intention to. Every time Dean and Millie were brought up, Sam's jaw tightened and his shoulders grew more square, almost instinctively so. It seemed like a subject that would only blossom a poisonous sort of pain for him, the kind that would seep into his mind, his muscles, and eventually to his heart, seizing it until it didn't beat and Sam didn't know how to be vulnerable anymore. How to be alive anymore.

"Psst," a voice hissed from a few feet away, distracting Bellona from her thoughts just enough that she could look to the side, where the owner of the voice practically bounced in her chair.

"Um. Yes?" Bellona struggled for words. Susie Kurz was staring at her expectantly, huge brown eyes blinking. She'd never spoken much to Susie. She didn't even know how far she was into her Stanford Law career, other than that she was less far along than Bellona and Summer were.

Susie rolled her eyes like it should have been obvious what she meant, even though she'd only made one noise. "Is that your boyfriend?" she asked.

Bellona was silent. She wasn't quite sure what to say, how much to share. Susie Kurz was the type of girl to whom popularity came easily, like her body knew it was owed to her, the same way it demanded access to oxygen. Her silky red hair and slim figure made it so. But she wasn't the type of girl who inhaled popularity and exhaled kindness.

Eventually, she gave a slight nod. "Yes."

"Oh, he's cute!" Susie mused, the notes in her voice lifting to create a teasing melody.

A blush creeped up Bellona's cheeks, relief brushing weights off her shoulders. Maybe this conversation would go well, after all. Maybe Susie knew to betray her accustomed brusque manner for a gentler demeanor. Maybe, since she was well aware of Bellona's ailment, she would choose to sprinkle sugar over each of her words. Maybe-

"But," Susie frowned. "Don't you think it might not be the best idea? You know, to keep him in a relationship that might not last very long?"

Bellona blinked. "What?"

"Well I'm not trying to be rude, I just meant because you're sort of sick and all," she quipped, as if her final words were a bandage that would heal the hole her words had created, the paperthin syllables rolled neatly inside of a bullet, metal casing giving frail words enough strength to wound.

Aggrieved but trying to maintain a sense of congeniality, Bellona opened her mouth to reply. But, just as her lips peeled open, they clamped shut, her eyes following suit. She let out a sharp whimper and pressed her fingertips against her temples, squeezing as if the mortal physical power could ease that which the most enlightened mortal minds could not even understand.

Amidst her pain, she could hardly make out rustling from the area where Susie was sitting. Within seconds, there was a hand on her back, and impotent whispers of comfort were tumbling from the younger girl's lips.

A symptom of brain tumors was headaches. Migraines. Bellona knew that, and she'd been experiencing them for weeks now, but even prior knowledge could not prepare her for the agony she felt when they arrived.

"Water," she managed to gasp, chest rising and then falling, repeatedly in quick succession. "Please."

Susie's hand disappeared, and Bellona slid further down in her chair. She plopped her arms onto her desk, head settling in the crook of her arms. Minutes passed, though it felt like hours, and then: "Bell?"

She grimaced. Internally groaned. Wincing a bit at the pounding in her head, she lifted her eyes to meet those of the boy who stood in front of her. Sam had returned, and his eyes were filled with a violent thunderstorm.

"I have to go," he said. "But are you okay? Is something wrong?"

Without a moment's hesitation, Bellona shook her head. She instantly regretted it. The pain that pooled in her skull - in its corners, its frontal lobe, its edges - pulsed. She forced a smile, hating that its wobble made it less believable.

Sam's eyebrows pulled together. "Are you sure?"

Bellona nodded. Sam didn't need to know. She didn't want him to know just how bad her symptoms were getting. She didn't want him to know that she woke up to an ocean every morning. Every dawn, salt poured out of her eyes in steady streams, soaking into the crumpled waves of her bedsheets. Her mind stormed in fury, angry that her weakness had allowed it to be poisoned. Furious that she didn't have some immortal power that would rid of the cancer before it had even thought to visit.

You failed me, it moaned. You failed me and I won't let you forget it. I will haunt you, I will riddle you with pain every morning that you wake, I will make you remember your human fragility with every step you take.

She didn't need its help to remember. She remembered every time she saw Sam. It wasn't hard to forget that she would never have the chance to love him.

An indistinct "okay" snuck out of Sam's mouth, but it sounded like he was trying to convince himself that he believed her.

"So why do you have to go?" Bellona asked, pleading with her mind to ease its wrath if just for a moment, so that Sam would not be able to tell how strained her words were.

"It's my sister," he answered. "She's in the hospital."

Bellona gasped. "Oh my gosh. Is she okay? What happened?"

"I don't know. I don't, I don't even know where they are, because Dean -"

Sam's words came to a halt, and suddenly his hands were tugging at his hair, the nerves in his hands wanting nothing less than to tear the thick strands from the scalp that nurtured them. Bellona had never seen him so flustered.

"Hey, hey, it's okay." Bellona's words hurried out in a whisper, and she stood, reaching across the counter that divided them. Her fingers brushed his arm and cemented themselves there, grasping the wrinkles in his sweater.

"The call dropped out," Sam managed to say through a tight throat. "It dropped out before Dean could tell me what hospital, or even what city. And I tried to call back like fifty times but he didn't answer and oh my God what if it's bad and I don't get there in time because I don't even know where to go?"

Bellona yanked the receiver off the phone that sat on her desk, and placed her free hand on the left side of Sam's face. He was looking at the ground, and his eyes closed slightly when her skin brushed across his, so she turned his face to be parallel with hers. His eyelids fluttered.

Bellona let out a shaky breath. She'd experienced a situation like this before, when her mother had first started making visits to the hospital. Her cell phone had dropped the call with the nurse before she could ask which hospital her mother was being kept at. She'd only known one way to resolve the issue.

"What's Dean's cell phone provider?" she asked, words rushing from her mouth in a staccato.

Sam frowned for a moment. "He...he uses a burner phone, I don't know. I only have his number."

"Maybe you know who the phone manufacturer is...?" Bellona chose to ignore the oddness of the matter. She'd known people to use burner phones on occasion, but what kind of business had Dean wrapped himself in that he always used a burner?

"Ah...no," Sam answered. His voice wavered. "He usually uses Motorola, but sometimes it's different."

Bellona nodded. That would have to be enough.

She started to pull her hand away from Sam's cheek, but there was a tug on the tip of her middle finger. Her eyes turned back up, bouncing to where her hand was being held hostage, and saw that Sam had pulled it back to his face and pressed his lips against it. His eyes were closed when he mumbled, "Thank you, Bell."

Her skin tickled where his lips moved. She gulped. "You're welcome."

Hesitantly, she stole her hand back and dialed in Dean's phone number, digit for digit as Sam recited it to her. It rang. And rang. No answer. She clicked the receiver into place, then picked it up again and dialed the number for Motorola's customer service line after finding the number on her laptop. A customer service representative answered, and after a quick exchange, the woman on the other end of the phone was able to give Bellona the location of her "lost phone". Bellona relayed the location to Sam.

"How - how did you do that?" he sputtered, scrawling the address down on a crumpled, stained napkin he'd pulled out of his jeans pocket.

Bellona shrugged. "I've lost my own phone enough times to know how to get it back."

She started to tell him a story about how she once lost it in another state after a flight to visit extended family but, remembering Sam's rushed circumstance, she clamped her jaw tight.

"I'm so sorry, bab- uh, Bell," Sam's words were jumping and tripping over each other as they came out, and she pretended not to notice his hands shake as they shoved the now-vital napkin back into his pocket. "I have to go, I..."

The young man's face grew ashen, his dread a powder coating every inch within seconds.

"What? What is it?" Bellona scrambled to her feet, taking half a second to squeeze her eyes shut against the pain in her skull before she raced around the desk to where Sam stood.

"Your appointment," he groaned. "I was supposed to go with you to your doctor's appointment tomorrow morning. Oh God, I'm so sorry."

Guilt and disappointment swam together in her stomach, spewing their contents into every liquid that sustained her and then splashing it into the rest of her body. She'd been looking forward to having him there with her, but that wasn't a thought that she was proud of having. Not when his sister was in such a critical state and he was miles away from her.

"It's okay." Bellona was half convincing Sam and half convincing herself as terror started to constrict the walls of her heart. She'd never gone to an appointment alone before.

"Are you sure?" Sam asked.

His voice was so hopeful, so desperate. Bellona's shoulders couldn't bear the weight of being the one to tell her that it didn't feel okay, even though she never would've asked him to stay with her over his own sister. His own blood. The thought would never live in her mind as a concrete consideration.

"Absolutely."

Bellona forced a smile onto her features. She allowed it to encompass her expression, hoping that it would coax her emotions into matching. That it would tease her inner turbulence until it realized it was bested, and there was nothing in Bellona's soul that would exist in contentment at being outdone.

Not until recently, at least. The diagnosis often stole more from her than a steady future. It had started to steal the fire at the very center of her spirit now, too. Little more than a spark remained.

The smile did not reach inside. Her feelings didn't race to match her grin.

Sam nodded. He breathed a tense "okay" and pulled Bellona into his chest, one hand pressed against her lower back and the other creating a vise around her shoulders. He let five seconds pass before he leaned back to press his lips against her left temple and then her right in slow, gentle succession.

"I hope your headache gets better soon," he said, a whisper of a smirk brushing across his mouth.

Bellona's cheeks presented a tight-lipped smile. He knew she was lying all along. Sam gave one quick, playful tug on her ponytail and turned toward the exit.

Bellona stood there and watched a small part of her heart run out the door. She stood and watched, and thought, and never did. She never did anything, never took action, never chased him. She wasn't even sure if she should allow the inherent desires of her body's very lining to see its end, if she should allow her fingertips to act on those desires by pulling out her phone to dial his contact.

It would be unfair. It would be cruel, at the very least, to make him stand with her over the cracks that were splitting the earth at her feet. To scream and cry and reach out to touch him with a smile and a warm embrace, distracting him from the cavern that was opening in the ground to swallow her. It would swallow him, too, if she didn't stop reaching for him.

Bellona sat in her chair, put her head in her hands, and began to cry.