"Asshole!" Erin snarled at Lewis Romero, shoving her middle finger in his face as the security guard pushed him towards the Devil's Flight exit, the raucous chanting of 'hey ho, let's go' echoing behind them. She knew it had only been by accident that he'd slapped her across the face, but she also knew that she'd have a better chance of hell freezing over than she ever would getting an apology from him. And she knew that if he hadn't started being an insensitive prick to Wendy, who was clearly very upset, then it never would've happened in the first place.

She took a deep breath, allowing Ian to tuck her under his arm as they headed for the ride's exit. The pain in her face was sharp and throbbing, but it would eventually disappear, much like her anger over the whole situation. She was a little disappointed about missing the ride, but after the shit show back there she now just wanted to go home. Once they rounded the corner of the ride exit, Ian guided Erin towards the wall, allowing Wendy, Lewis and one of the security guards to overtake them.

"Are you okay?" he asked gently, dropping the arm that was around her shoulders down to her waist while examining her sore cheek with his other hand. Erin nodded, but winced as he touched her.

"It stings but I'm fine," she answered quietly, glancing around at the others, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Wendy had stopped walking. "What about you? Are you hurt?"

"Took a couple kicks to the shins, I'm fine," Ian replied, much too dismissively for Erin's liking, before his eyes darkened and he clenched his jaw. He growled, "I could fucking kill Romero."

"Me too," Erin sighed, placing her hand gently on Ian's arm. "But right now I just want to go home."

"Of course," he said, guiding her back towards the exit as Wendy suddenly ran past them.

Ian wrapped his arm back around Erin as they walked, Wendy's screaming behind them mere background noise against the rage pumping through his body. He cradled the back of her head and pulled her closer, kissing her swollen cheek. Ian had never liked Romero; he was loud, arrogant and thought he was untouchable, but this incident had elevated that level of dislike to an almost unparalleled hatred. Lewis was lucky there was security there to break them up quickly, otherwise he would have stopped at nothing to smash the guy's head in. Nobody cracked his girlfriend across the face and got away with it, accident or no accident.

Wendy's screaming had now caught Kevin's attention, and he began bolting back up the exit tunnel, the security guard hot on his heels. Ian swiftly guided himself and Erin out of their way, checking the expression on her face to make sure he hadn't startled her. The fact that she still looked so shocked and pained infuriated him even more, to the point where he could feel his body start shaking and his chest tighten.

Familiar anxiety was twisting cruelly in with the anger now. Ian could feel his breathing becoming painful and rapid. His father had knocked his mother around while he'd been alive; and now, when anything happened to one of the few people he cared about it sent him on such an intense spiral of rage and panic and powerlessness that it ate him alive. He tried to breathe, hoping not to catch Erin's attention because she was the one that was hurt right now and he needed to be there for her. He forced his eyes ahead. They were almost out of the exit tunnel now. He just had to try and focus on getting her home so he could look after her properly.

The cool night air was soothing on Erin's face as it flooded around her once she and Ian were out of the Devil's Flight exit. All the pain from the slap and the adrenaline from having to break up the guys' fight had flushed her face so much that her skin felt like it was on fire. She closed her eyes, allowing the cold to wash over her as Ian continued to steer her away from Devil's Flight. Once they were a few steps away from the exit, Erin felt Ian's arm fall away from her shoulders as he stopped walking. Erin stopped too, glancing around the area. Ashley, Ashlyn, Frankie and Lewis were almost out of sight. Erin looked back towards the Devil's Flight exit, remembering what had happened with Wendy and Kevin.

"I wonder what happened to Wendy?" she said, something sad and uneasy settling in her chest. Erin had felt sorry for Wendy, seeing her having a panic attack in front of everyone. She'd had more than a few herself and knew that there was nothing worse than having one in public with everyone staring at you. That was why she'd reached out when she noticed Wendy looking worried in the line for the ride; she'd hoped to ground Wendy with the knowledge that even though she felt like she wouldn't be, she was actually totally safe. Although her own anxieties, and the reaction from Wendy's boyfriend and friends, had left Erin wondering why she'd even bothered.

"Yeah um..." Ian started to reply, but stopped. Erin looked at him, concerned by the shakiness in his voice. He was staring blankly at the ground, slightly hunched over with his hands resting at the top of his legs like that was the only thing holding him upright. She silently gasped, moving straight over and placing her hand on his arm, thinking he'd downplayed how hurt he'd gotten in that fight, but when she felt how violently his body was shaking she knew exactly what was happening.

"Hey," she whispered soothingly, cupping his face in her hands. "Hey, look at me, look at me. I'm fine, see. I'm fine."

Erin's heart broke a little every time she saw Ian like this. He always knew exactly what to say to her when she was spiraling, always seemed so together. She just felt frozen when the shoe was on the other foot. She frantically encouraged him to breathe deeper, reassuring him that she was fine over and over.

Just as Ian was beginning to calm down, several blood curdling screams ripped through the air. Erin gasped in shock, dropping her hands from Ian's face and grabbing fistfuls of his jacket as they both shot their heads in the direction of the sound.

The screams were followed by a heavy creaking, and then both of them watched on in paralyzing disbelief as the Devil's Flight coaster came off its tracks, sending the students who had remained on the ride plummeting to their deaths, exactly how Wendy had said it would.

"Oh shit," Ian exclaimed as he watched the carts crash to the ground, instinctively backing himself and Erin further away from the coaster.

"Oh my god," she whimpered, covering her mouth with her now shaking hands. Ian tucked her back under his arm and began steering her away from the roller coaster, searching for the quickest route back to the parking lot. It was time for him to take care of her now. In a twisted way, the roller coaster crash had snapped him back to reality.

People were frantically running towards the crash site, and Ian silently cursed their morbid curiosity; mostly for running to go and gawk at the mangled wreck of a roller coaster and the people who were on it like it was some fucked up museum exhibit, but also because they were creating a stampede and that was only going to stress Erin out even more. Crowds made her anxious, and additional anxiety was the last thing she needed right now.

They eventually made it to the parking lot and located the van, Ian unlocking it before helping Erin inside. He didn't start the van up immediately; they just sat there for a moment, looking back at the lights still blinking all around the amusement park like nothing had happened.

"Did you want to stay with me tonight?" Ian asked Erin, who was still staring blankly out of the window at the amusement park, her eyes wide in horror.

"Yeah," she whispered in response, hugging her arms against her chest. Ian hadn't been expecting a verbal answer, just a nod or shake of her head. It was obvious that she needed the silence to process what had happened. Ian knew it was the first time Erin had really seen death up close. The only person in her family who had died was a grandfather she'd barely known. She'd never experienced something as catastrophic as losing a parent like he had, even if that parent had been an abusive piece of shit.

Ian felt very desensitized to death; he'd forced reminders of its inevitability into his brain until the biological realities of the human condition became a comfort to him, something better than the horrific turmoil of emotions that grief created. Death was everywhere, and accidents like tonight happened all the time, albeit usually ones that were more statistically likely. It was better to remember that than be swallowed up completely. Sure, it had been unpleasant watching people he'd gone to school with for years die horribly, but he couldn't allow himself to get caught up in thinking about it when Erin needed him.

Ian started the van, immediately shutting off the stereo when Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine began screeching through the speakers. This journey needed to be silent, and Ian needed to concentrate on getting them home.

Erin startled as the van lurched out of park, having zoned out completely while she replayed the sight of the coaster crashing over and over in her mind. That could have been them. They could have died. She kept picturing it, imagining that it was them falling off the tracks from a great height and crashing to the ground. She tried to force herself to stop it, to try and focus on right now, focus on the fact that it wasn't them, that they were still here. Somehow, that stroke of luck was all because of one girl's panic and a slap in the face. She silently let out a harsh laugh; she never thought she'd ever be thankful for a slap in the face. She also realized that she needed to call her parents and let them know that she wasn't coming home.

"My stuff," she said panicked, suddenly unable to remember where the bag containing her wallet, keys and cell phone was. "Where's my stuff?"

"You left your bag in the back babe," Ian answered, his voice steady against her racing thoughts.

"Oh yeah," Erin responded, blinking as she remembered leaving it there when they arrived at the amusement park. She felt around in the darkness for her bag, breathing a sigh of relief when her fingers found the strap. Once she had the bag, she opened it and grabbed her cell phone, her hands shaking as she searched her contacts for her home phone number.

Her heart hammered in her chest as the dial tone whined, and she closed her eyes and hoped that her dad was the one who answered. Erin hated her mother; she was the kind of person who nothing and nobody was ever good enough for, and Erin was one of her greatest sources of disappointment. She couldn't cope with the thought of being interrogated about the crash, or being asked about the circumstances that had led to her and Ian getting off the ride. It had been hard work getting her mom to warm up to Ian, and part of that had involved hiding his history of school fights from her. She would see the bruise from Lewis's slap in the morning, but by then, she would have time to prepare herself. Erin almost cried with relief when a male voice called 'hello' on the other end of the line.

"Dad?" she asked, almost desperately, hoping that she hadn't just imagined his voice.

"Yeah Erin, what's up?"

"I um…" she started to say, but her voice died in her throat. She swallowed, willing herself not to cry.

"Hey honey, what's wrong?"

"There…" she stammered, swallowing again so she could force the words out. "There's been an accident at the amusement park."

"Is everything okay? Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine, Ian's fine," she reassured her father, the aching reminder of her white lie spreading an almost judgmental pulse of pain through her cheek. "But the roller coaster crashed and we were supposed to be on it."

"Oh. Oh god," her dad replied, and then began humming as he tried to think of the right words to follow up with.

"The people on it were killed," Erin stated, sparing her dad from stumbling as he tried to find the right way to phrase what he was surely anxious to know.

"Well I'm glad you're okay," he said, his voice steady and relieved.

"Yeah me too," sighed Erin, a wave of tiredness hitting her suddenly. "But I really don't want to be alone tonight so I'm gonna stay at Ian's."

"Okay," her dad replied, relief that it was him and not her mother on the other end of the line hitting her again. Her mother would have probably demanded she stay at home instead, just to make this experience worse. She'd begrudgingly accepted Erin sleeping at Ian's house because of early mornings and late nights at work, but this was different, and also a school night. Although Erin suspected that school would definitely be closed tomorrow. Her father was much more understanding and diplomatic, and he actually trusted Erin.

"Just take it easy and I'll see you in the morning," he continued. Erin felt calmed by her dad's words, closing her eyes against the blurry street lights as she relaxed a little.

"See you tomorrow dad," she said, keeping her eyes closed and picturing her dad's face, a comforting image to block out the constantly replaying reel of crashing coaster cars lurking in the back of her mind. "Love you."

"Love you too."

It wasn't a long drive back to Ian's house. After hanging up her cell phone, Erin hadn't opened her eyes again for the rest of the journey. Ian half wondered whether she'd fallen asleep, but her eyes fluttered open once she realized the van was parked in the driveway. They got out of the van, and Ian let them in through the side door. Inside the house, the kitchen light was off, but Ian could hear the TV on in the family room, which meant that his mom was still downstairs.

Once they made their way through the house, Ian told Erin to head upstairs while he told his mom what had happened. She didn't need to hear him go over it again, seeing it had been stressful enough. He told his mom everything, including the fight that got them off the ride. His mother had always worried about the amount of fights he got in, but she let him off for this one. Without that fight, he wouldn't have been standing there to tell the tale.

The realization of that fact hit him like a gut punch. He'd been so focused on trying to keep it together and make sure that Erin was okay, that it had only just occurred to him that he'd almost died tonight. He'd almost died, and it barely even registered. He laughed to himself, earning a concerned look from his mom. He explained that he was simply thinking about how bizarre the turn of events the night had taken were. Another realization then sunk deep into his chest. Not only had he almost died, but Erin had almost died. The thought of that happening made his whole body numb, and he was overcome by a clawing desperation to go her and hold her as tight as possible.

Ian found Erin curled up in the fetal position on his bed, still in her hoodie and jeans. He didn't say anything, just sat down next to her and ran his hand soothingly down her back. She sighed, but Ian couldn't tell if it was a sigh of comfort or pain. He knew that he was going to spend the rest of the night accompanied by violent intrusive thoughts of her dying in that accident, but he had to concentrate on making sure she was okay.

He honestly didn't know what he would do if anything were to happen to her. She was his safety; he loved her more than he'd ever loved anyone. She was the person who taught him how to trust, how to live instead of just survive. She made him start planning for a future, instead of just battling through each day as it came. She made him forget what a terrible place the world was. He looked down at her, wishing that he could take all her pain and distress away.

"I feel really strange," she said, her voice low and shaky.

"Tonight was traumatic," Ian began, still trailing his hand down her back. "People feel lots of different things after witnessing a traumatic event. It'll pass."

"I know but," Erin sighed, sounding almost frustrated with him. He tried to think something more empathetic, less clinical to say, but couldn't. Taking a clinical, factual approach to life helped him push painful feelings away, but he knew Erin couldn't do that like he could. Hell, hardly anyone could do that like he could. Sometimes facts were comforting to her, but other times she needed to be left with her feelings. Ian was glad that she wasn't as jaded as he was, but it did make helping her hard sometimes.

"Hey, maybe we should go take a shower," Ian suggested.

Erin nodded in agreement. She wanted to be out of these clothes; they were just reminders of what she'd seen, what had almost happened to them, but her body felt too heavy for her to move. She let Ian guide her into a sitting position, before watching him get their pajamas from under the pillows and helping her to her feet.

Her body felt like it was being operated by someone else as she walked across the hall to the bathroom, the lights too bright, her feet weighed down. She hoped that the hot water would wash this exhaustion away. She desperately wanted to go back in time to one hour ago where this hadn't happened, when she had just been happily living her life without ever having to confront her own mortality.

She would never admit it to Ian, but Erin was much more afraid of death than she ever let on. He always seemed so composed in situations where her first instinct was to panic. She knew that he battled his own demons, but he was genuinely unfazed by the concept of death, and she wished that she could be more like him in that respect. She knew that most things forming common fears and phobias in people were actually very safe. But death, the idea of consciousness just ceasing, was deeply unsettling to her.

She also wished that she could more composed like Ian because her anxiety always managed to convince her that she was weak and her emotions were an inconvenience to everyone around her. Ian hand managed to reassure her that for him at least, that was certainly untrue over the course of their relationship, but being raised by such a dismissive mother had led her to internalize a lot of those negative feelings.

Erin sat on the toilet seat, struggling to keep her eyes open as Ian turned the shower on. Once the water was warm enough, she peeled off her clothes and stood under the spray. The heat from the water was soothing, like she'd hoped it would be. She tilted her head back, running her hands through her hair as the water covered her face, trying to picture all traces of the amusement park being washed off her and down the drain.

Ian cleared his throat by way of asking her permission to move under the shower head, and Erin slowly shuffled out of his way, grabbing hold of his arms to keep herself from slipping. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the tattoo on his upper left arm. It was a jawless skull and bone balanced on top of a book. He'd got it when he turned eighteen to cover up some scars there, and he'd asked Erin to design it.

She'd felt so touched when he'd asked her to do it, when he even went as far as to say that he wanted her to design all the tattoos he had planned. Erin had never had much confidence in herself, and Ian had always encouraged her long before they were even together. She remembered straddling his lap as he lay on his bed, drawing on his arm with a pen to get the scale right.

Erin smiled to herself at that memory. That was what she needed to be concentrating on now instead of what had happened tonight; all of the good moments in life, the good moments that she would get to go on having, because luckily she was still here.

"What?" Ian asked when he noticed Erin's smiling, happy to see it and eager to know what had caused it.

"I was just thinking about how lucky we are," she replied, smiling when she noticed how pleased he was that she was no longer ruminating about the accident.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good," he said, placing his hands on her waist after pushing his hair out of his eyes. She moved hers to grip his shoulders, stepping closer to him. "It sucks that the accident happened, but it happened and there's nothing we can do about it. But what we can do is focus on our lives now and be grateful that we got off that ride."

"Yeah, you're right," she agreed, noticing a flicker of temptation to say 'I know' or 'I always am' cross his face. She rolled her eyes, but smiled at his predictability, breathing a sigh of relief when he pulled her in for a hug.

This was exactly what Erin needed. This was normalcy. She closed her eyes and forgot herself under the force of the hot water until she almost couldn't breathe from the water running down her face, then she scrubbed herself clean and helped Ian wash the gel out of his hair before stepping out of the shower. Once she wiped the smeared remnants of her make-up off her face and put on her pajamas, she finally felt like herself again.

Back in the bedroom, Ian told Erin to pick a movie for them to have on in the background while they tried to sleep. A sense of uneasiness returned to her then, unsure of what images would come to her in her dreams. A part of her suddenly didn't want to sleep at all, just in case the dread crept back in, but another part of her was desperate for rest.

She studied Ian's film collection, squinting against the strain in her eyes as she read the familiar titles, frustrated for the first time in her life that it was mostly horror movies. She didn't want to watch any more death tonight, even if she felt like she'd be asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

She settled on Child's Play, since the chances of a possessed doll wreaking havoc on small town Pennsylvania were nonexistent and she happened to find the film amusing. Before she could even get comfortable in bed Ian was next to her, pulling her body against his. She sighed at the contact, twisting around so they were face to face.

"You think you'll sleep okay?" He asked. Erin didn't know the answer.

"I don't know," she said, sighing. There was already a creeping sense of unease trickling through her, but she didn't want to worry him.

"Well don't feel bad if you wake me up, okay," he reassured her. Ian was no stranger to insomnia, so Erin doubted he would get much sleep, and she suspected her night would go the same way if she had any dreams about the accident. It warmed her heart that he was willing to sacrifice what little sleep he usually had to make sure she was okay.

"Okay."

"I love you," he whispered, wrapping his arm tighter around her.

"I love you too," she replied, leaning in and kissing him before rolling over so her back was pressed into his chest.

Erin closed her eyes, trying to focus on the feelings of comfort and security flowing through her as she drifted off to sleep. She was fine, Ian was fine, they were both here, alive, and that was all she could have asked for. If she could focus on that, focus on all that they had in front of them, then she could hopefully push the events of tonight from her mind.

Ian listened attentively as Erin's breathing slowed, stroking her arm and her hair as she finally fell asleep. He knew that he wasn't sleeping any time soon, so he settled for making sure that her sleep was restful. He hated seeing her as upset as she had been tonight, but he felt like he'd done a good enough job getting her through it. Maybe he wasn't such an unsalvageable disaster after all. He tried closing his eyes, but felt a spike of panic. He didn't want to spend the night dreaming of horrific things happening to Erin, so he settled for staring blankly at the ceiling until either she woke up or exhaustion claimed him. They were the lucky ones, he reminded himself. They had escaped tonight with their lives and that was all there was to it. Ian knew that his lingering thoughts were irrational, but he was never very good at fighting the parts of his brain that liked to torture him.