"But it was like we were walking backwards, you know? We might as well have been walking backwards, because we sure as hell weren't going forwards and with the snow and the wind and the ice we would've been better off just standing still but we didn't, you know? We kept going, even though we couldn't see and I was bleeding all over the place but I couldn't feel a damn thing 'cuz it had all gone numb hours before and we just kept telling ourselves 'a little further just a little further we're almost there we'll survive this' and we knew it was a lie. Complete and utter bunk, but we said it anyway..."

You trail off, looking up expectantly, waiting almost patiently and silently for once. The hand on your cheek is warmer than anything you've felt in a very long time, and the heat shocks your eyes open, wide enough for the whites to show, bright and panicked, around your heavily dilated pupils.

Feverish and delirious and dying, your gaze never once wavers, the memory still keeping you in a grip so powerful that it will crush you in the end.

They will find you eventually, alone in the snow; you will be smiling, your eyes still open and the warmth of a foreign hand still clinging to your face.