BAD ENDING:
WARNING YOU ALL RIGHT NOW FOR FEELS

        “Is she-”

        “Yes, we need to make sure of-”

        “What if we added some-”

        “I'm sorry, we're trying, but she just won't-”

        Fragments.
        That's all they are, all your poor mind can gather from the garbled mess in the blackness. None of them making sense and all of the nonsense words float around in your brain before they sink below the dark waters of your consciousness again. The blackness surrounds you, only a pinprick of light upon the horizon to orient yourself with. Sometimes it seems that if you could only reach far enough you could grasp it- but no. You always fall short. Every single time you get close you get a fragment and then it flutters out of your reach. You do not know who or what you are, you are merely blackness and fragments and light.
        It all mixes together, the fragments and the darkness and the light all swirl together making a mess of things. Then, one day, the fragments stop. It's silent, and no matter how many times you reach and reach and reach oh so desperately towards the light to pull yourself out of the blackness it always floats away.
                                            Have you figured it out yet?

~???? POV~

        “Hey, did you hear about the rumor going around about her?” My assistant and I glance at each other worriedly. There's only one person here who they could be talking about.
        “No, what?”
        “They say that she's been here as long as the building has. That, and she's never woken up. Not even once. Sometimes they'll get a little bit of something, but other than that, it's like she's dead.”
        “That's impossible. This building was built almost seventy years ago.”
        “But what if it isn't?” I take the opportunity to walk over to the young ones, my assistant trailing behind. They glance up from their table as I cast a shadow over it, paling slightly. My reputation is well known.
        “H-hello! Do you need something?” They look at me nervously, glancing about.
        “Your break time is over. I suggest you go back to work.” My voice is ice and they quickly stand up and scamper off. My assistant takes a step closer to whisper in my ear.
        “What do we do? If that's going around, someone's bound to find out the truth at this rate. It's not like it's that easy to hide, with the constant records and all. On top of that, her one visitor does the same thing.”
        I sigh, tucking a loose strand of my graying hair behind my ear. I've been working in here for a long time now. Ever since I was a doctor fresh out of grad school, I've been working on her case. My nickname has become the 'Storyteller', but that's not important right now. What matters is that no one can know the truth about HER. Only the doctors in charge of HER can know, and I've chosen this bubbly young woman to be my replacement.
        “I don't know, but it's time to return now. We should see if anything's changed.” My assistant huffs and rolls her eyes. I know it's boring because nothing has ever changed, but I keep hope that it just might one day. That's becoming harder now though. They're going to replace me soon. I know it; I can hear them whispering about it. 'The Storyteller has lost her touch' they'll say. 'Nothing's happening' they'll say.

        We walk into the room, and sure enough, she's still laying there peacefully in the bed. She looks sound asleep, but we know better. The machines are beeping in a slow but steady rhythm, making look like she's almost asleep except for the fact that her brain has almost no activity whatsoever. When I was younger, I figured out that if you talk to them, involve them into a story, their brains will remember to turn themselves back on. Hence the name of Storyteller. It's always worked, except for this one case. No matter what I do, she remains sleeping.
        Her (h/c) hair lays sprawled out onto the pillow, and her (e/c) eyes are hidden behind her closed lids. (F/n) (L/n) has been in this hospital for almost seventy years now, never aging in the slightest. I've been here since almost the beginning, watching over her and telling her stories in hopes to re-ignite her brain as it lays dormant. I've become desperate as of late, especially with the talk of replacing me. They'll just assign someone to watch her, to merely do their duty and nothing more. If she doesn't wake up, then oh well. This last story I told her was of her own past (from what I've gathered and interpreted) and what could be if she would just wake up. Nothing happened. Time and time again nothing happened, until I got to about seventy years ago. The event that put her here in the first place. I began to see sparks as her neurotransmitters begin sparking again, indicating that there was brain activity. I continued talking and telling her story to her, but she still didn't wake up.
        As I reflect upon this, her visitor arrives. She only has the one. No one else shows; no family, no lover, no one. And yet he is here, almost everyday, hoping and praying for some sign of change. He grew as excited as I when I told him about her brain beginning to function again, but the excitement died down as she didn't wake up any farther than that.
        “Is she still...” He trails off, never able to say that she is trapped within her own sleeping mind.
        “Yes sir, she's still in a coma. Nothing has changed.” He walks to the side of the bed, as he always does for the past seventy years, and grabs her hand gently within his own. They are two ethereal beings, both standing still in the river of time as it ebbs and flows around the rest of the world. They are immortal, neither able to age and grow old.
        I once asked him how he knew her and how she came to be this way, and he reluctantly told me her story. They were soldiers together, in WWII. She was a spy for the Americans and working undercover in Italy. The two of them became close friends – him being under the original impression that she was a man – and fought side by side. A group of rogue soldiers had attacked and massacred their camp, sot he two of them fought them off as the others escaped to safety. They were the last two out. As they were running one of the soldiers threw a grenade at them. She noticed before he did, and pushed him to safety while she took the blast. Because she was so close to the center of the explosion, her head suffered too much damage and retreated within itself to heal. Except, it never came back out.

        He always speaks to her about various things, hoping that one day she'll be able to hear him and wake up. He never leaves her side until he absolutely has to, sometimes even bringing one or both of his brothers along.

~NO POV~

        The routine continues on it's never-ending cycle yet again, except now the Storyteller has left the story. Storyteller was replaced with a Watcher, the assistant cast aside, yet he still came to her side day after day after day. She had saved his life, and he was forever grateful for that. He blames himself for the whole ordeal even though the fault was not his own and he could not have prevented it. It pained the Storyteller greatly to see them like this: the two brave soldiers reduced to a shadow of their former selves all because of one catastrophic explosion that caused seemingly irreversible damage.One was doomed to dwell within her mind, oblivious to the world around her; the other, to stay be her side and eternally pray for her to awaken.

        One day the sun was shining brighter than usual, casting a serene golden glow over the room. All within the room was not serene, however. Machines and alarms were beeping and screeching and wailing and nurses and doctors frantically ran around to silence them. Without the Storyteller's stories to keep her above the darkness constantly trying to drag her under, her mind fell prey to the darkness within. Her body was shutting itself down, no longer able to keep itself functional without it's mind.
        He was standing there, his yellow-green eyes wide and his strong legs barely able to hold him up. It's obvious to him that she's failing, that she will never wake up, that she will never be able to see the world around her ever again. His presence in the doorway casts a long shadow on the tile behind him, shaking as much as he is as the full force of his emotions slams into him. As the machine flat-lines, he's finally able to force out the words past the lump in his throat as his vision goes blurry and his eyes burn with the tears now streaming down his tanned face.

                         

“I never even got to tell her thank you....”