Because of Saving Me

So officially, that was the best Valentines Day in the world.

Basically, sparing the "gory" details, I was kidnapped on the thirteenth and taken hostage in the cliffs at LaPush, about three hours from the actual reservation.

God, it was amazing.

Everything smelled like sea salt, and there were these little yellow Posey-looking flowers all over the place, frozen. It was bitterly cold, but neither one of us could really feel it, so we spent those three days camped out there, sleeping in a sleeping bag in this itty-bitty tent, all curled up and cozy.

We drove back on Thursday night, passing through LaPush, where several of his friends were glaring at us as we passed, and actually reaching my house at about midnight. He couldn't stay; he was getting sick again (probably my fault, he said jokingly) and had to take care of a newly formed wolf back at home, so he dropped me off, kissed me goodnight, and left.

I slept soundly and dreamt of the sea and the sand and huge rocks with carvings of wolves on them while I danced around, laughing.

Nothing good lasts around here, though. Ever.

The next morning, Esme told me Zach had called to say he wasn't going to be able to be at school that day, which wasn’t a big deal. He had the flu, common for the wolves, and had been working with the new kid all night, making him exhausted beyond belief.

I drove to school in Edward’s car (he was still at Bella’s – it was a Valentine’s thing), and pretty much just slept through the first three hours. Not literally, of course, but it felt like it.

Then, of course, came lunch.

Honestly, I don’t know what happened. It could be that there wasn’t anyone to sit with me and distract me since both Annora and Zach weren’t there, but whatever it was happened so quickly and suddenly that… Well, let me start over:

I walked to lunch alone, tempted to just skip it since no one was there with me. But, thinking of Edward’s displeasure over this itty bitty fact, I decided to suffer through it and grabbed a tray, walking through the line.

“Hey, sexy!” Some new kid called out, obviously not from a small city and ready to prove to his new friends that he was so-called cool. “Aw, come on, babe! Turn around and talk to me!”

I turned around and looked at him darkly before turning back to the food line.

“Aaaw, she loves me. It’s okay, sweetheart! Ditch the boyfriend and get you some Pennington!”

So he was Kyle Pennington; the rich kid from San Francisco that everyone had been gushing and having mini-heartaches over (that I’d felt, thank you senior class). I’d make sure to remember that to put on the headstone. I took a deep breath, trying to calm down, surprised that I was actually getting this angry.

“You’re the only non-screwed up member of your family, babe! I know this! And God, your boyfriend is that one Zach dude? Come onnnn! He’s most definitely gay, honey! Come over here and I’ll show you what a real man’s kiss…”

Two seconds. That’s all it took.

I had Kyle Pennington’s ass pinned up against the wall, three inches from my face quicker than his friends could start to laugh.

His green eyes read my ferocity before I could spell it out. I could feel my eyes shift darkly and the panicked look on his face made me smile.

“You damn well don’t know a thing about who I am, Kyle,” I sneered, “and I wouldn’t go advertising how much of a badass you are until you can resist being held up against a wall by a girl much shorter and very much prettier than yourself.”

Underneath my hand, I could feel his quickened heartbeat, echoing through his jugular vein.
Blood pounding.
Heart racing.

My eyes glazed over and the hunger returned.
I remembered it.

Her name had been Mira.
She’d smiled so pretty.
Her hair so black.
She was so weak.
So warm.
So good.
So… fulfilling.

I lost all control and snarled, leaning forward, teeth bared…

I was ripped away and landed on the floor, tackled by a mass of flesh, as Kyle crumpled to the floor. People started screaming, some running for Kyle, as I was rocketed out of the building by whoever had caught me.

DAMMIT, my mind roared, and I lashed out at the human barrier.

Whoever it was yelled an obscenity and put me in a hold, now limping, taking me farther and farther away from the school.

We reached the edge of the woods, and whoever held me slammed my head against the closest tree, the resounding pain registering only barely in my mind, the words spoken almost vanishing into thin air as I threw out one last kick towards them…

“Jesus… No…!”


I blacked out and my thoughts spiraled away into confused and crazed ideas, burning out into memories…

Mira. Mira, Mira, Mira…
She had been at the same party I’d been to; the one that everyone in Boston who was no one was at; the party for the freaks and the misguided.

I found her as I stumbled out, drunk with the smell of liquor. She was originally from London, though her family had immigrated to the states only years before, as she had just finished telling her boyfriend’s friend. She was drunk, too drunk to focus when I found her, crying softly by the brick wall. The only reason I noticed her was because of the gash on her cheek, bleeding profusely, unaware that my crimson eyes had caught her. Her boyfriend had been there; he’d committed that mark on her head. Her pain was killing me, blinding me, and instinctively mad, I reached out and grabbed her by the arm.

The bone broke, and she cried out, but I silenced her.

She was the ninth and tenth; the one that I remembered most. She’d been pregnant.

I screamed, waking up, and tried to put my hands to my face; to black out the light, but I couldn’t. They were tied down beside me, shackled in rope and steel, materials that I could usually bend as easily as anything, but was too weak to even fight now.

“Are you about finished?” Edward said sharply.

I opened my eyes and cringed. I was tied to a tree.

“Oh my God.” I whispered. “What did I do?”

“Well, you broke Kyle Pennington’s leg, which he’s more than likely not too happy about, and then…”

Alice placed a hand on his shoulder and shook her head, wincing.

“…some other things, which are not the best things you could’ve done.” He finished lamely.

I started to sob uncontrollably. “Oh my God. Oh my God…!”

“Clara, sweetheart, it’s going to be okay.” Carlisle said soothingly, and then to Edward, “Please, be nice. I’ve got to get something to clean her up.”

Alice followed him as he headed away, looking back at Edward warningly.

Edward nodded, seeing what only he could see inside of her head, looking uptight. “I’ll try, and yes, you might as well.”

His eyes moved back to me, where he stood, watching me cry for a good five minutes before sighing and kneeling down beside me, breaking the rope and undoing the bonds, taking my wrists and rubbing them so the pain would go away.

I just sat there as he did it, limp and crying, my eyes not really looking at anything, feeling almost delusional.

He let my wrists go, and used his thumbs to wipe away my tears.

“Clara, it really is going to be okay.”

I shook my head furiously.

“Kyle’s been told that he tripped, and the rest of the school believes it. They didn’t see you, Clara. They heard the retorts, they saw the scene, but you were so quick that it didn’t register.”

I winced, crying even harder. “I almost killed him… I was so close…”

Edward looked appalled – he obviously hadn’t known that. He opened his mouth, and then shut it.

I pulled my legs up to my chest and buried my face.

Edward sat back, watching me somberly.

That night passed so slowly; Carlisle came back with Alice and Jasper, who were trying fruitlessly to convince me that it was alright (‘I don’t know what the hell happened, but she’s not affected by what I’m doing’ Jasper exclaimed in earnest to Carlisle) as he cleaned me up. Eventually, after getting no response, they left, Edward still there, staring across at me, a haunted look on his face.

Alice came by a while later, looking worried, and nodded over at Edward who shook his head and tightened his lips, his expression unchanged, motioning that she could leave. After another few moments of pure silence, he spoke:

“When I was younger, several years after I found the Cullens, I almost exposed us. I killed people, Clara. I won’t ever forget it, but you have to be forgiving of your own kind.”

I shook my head, tears drenching my sleeves.

I heard him stand up and hesitate; I felt the pain he had in his eyes when he looked at me, and the earnest pain in his heart that bored into mine – like he knew something that I didn’t; something that was going to hurt me even worse.

At the last moment, when he was about to say something, he changed his mind and shook his head, turning and leaving me in the woods.

Midnight came swiftly, and then it was dark for what seemed like forever.

I heard footsteps and smelled wolf before they even thought about approaching.

“Clara Hale?”

It wasn’t him; my heart sank and I was quiet.

“Clara…” Dhart approached and sat next to me, embracing me, surprising me.

He was crying.

I had a feeling that I was connected to this, and I sighed through my own salty tears and readjusted myself, hugging him back.

I don’t know when it was, the time seemed to bleed together immeasurably, but I fell asleep, dreamless, like some part of my brain had decided to take mercy on me for once.

When I woke up, I was in my bed, Edward in the chair in front of my desk, watching me blankly.

“Get your jacket,” he said blandly. “I have something to show… and tell… you.”

We took his Volvo, and I just stared out the window, thinking about how I’d lost control. It was so stupid to just lose it over that stupid kid. It wasn’t the first time I’d had a kid pester me like that, but it was the first time I’d ever retaliated, or even hurt someone.

God, I was really going insane.

“Clara, we’re here.” Edward said softly, jolting me back into reality. I’d forgotten how fast he drove.

We were in Seattle.

I looked up at him, uncertain, and he just motioned for me to follow him. I undid my seatbelt and stood up out of the car, looking at the hospital looming before us.

“I don’t want to see him.” I said plainly. “I don’t want to see Kyle.”

“We’re not here to see idiot Pennington.” Edward said smoothly, sadly. “We’re here for someone else.”

I was confused, and slightly mollified by the idea, but as soon as we set foot in the door, I wanted to leave.

The antiseptiky smell haunted the corridors; the wait staff looked exhausted; people were dying here and I could feel the pain of it all.

“Edward…” I whispered, panicking.

“Clara, I know. Just… You want to be here.” He said.

“No. No, I don’t.”

He heaved a sigh and took my hand. “Come on.”

He led me through the halls, up an elevator, and through more passageways of the Seattle hospital until we reached room 121.

I was hyperventilating.

“Edward, please,” I begged. “I can’t see anyone right now after I’ve…”

He opened the door, and I froze, staring at the patient a minute before gingerly stepping foot in the room.

"How did this happen?" I said, my throat dry all of the sudden.

“He had some internal bleeding,” Edward said, his voice hollow. “Alice called him, telling him that she saw you attacking Kyle and killing him, but he didn’t stop. He went to your school, stopped you from bloodying up Pennington, and almost had prevented the whole thing…”

“So I did this.” I said in revulsion, the epiphany dawning on me with a morbid taste, bile creeping into my mouth. “I almost killed him by fighting him off.”

“He’s in a coma, Clara.” He said, his voice cracking. “They don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

I didn’t know the person in the bed, I tried to tell myself. It was someone else.

Dhart looked up at Edward from one of the plastic chairs, his eyes red and his hair messed up. “You didn’t tell her that her fiancée was unconscious?”

“No.” he said quietly, “It was better to give her a night of rest before breaking her heart.”

I glanced at Edward, who looked back at me wistfully. “You didn’t think he didn’t tell me that he was going to ask you to marry him over the weekend? Come on, Clara. He’s had it on his mind for a while.”

“We were going to wait for a year or so.” I choked out.

“I know,” he said, softly, looking sympathetic. “He asked me about that, too, and promised that he loved you, no matter what. He said that you couldn’t do anything to make him not love you.”

Right then and there, my heart shattered into a million pieces, every ounce of pain possible soaking up through my skin.

I was shaking so much that it hurt, and almost fell as I made it to the bed.

Zach. My Zach.

I crawled into the bed, next to him, and wrapped my arms around him, laying my head on his chest, sobbing. The hospital gown felt so unnatural – like I was just laying on some plastic-feeling paper, yet the paper was so warm, and with a heartbeat that was slower than normal, almost back to a human rate.

“I’m so sorry,” I cried. “I am so, so sorry!”

And scared. I was scared beyond anything I’d ever experienced. There was nothing that could keep me from this fear; it froze my insides and for once, it was harder to breathe than I thought possible.

He looked too wrong here; he was wild and free, and now here he was, confined in a bed, motionless.

I reached under the covers and took his hand, holding it tightly, the looseness of his fingers making me wince.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked through my tears, “I could’ve been here when…”

“He wasn’t ever conscious, Clara.” Edward said, his voice breaking slightly. “He wasn’t conscious when we found him, and he didn’t wake up once in the transition here.”

I fought the urge to scream in agony with this new knowledge. His pain jutted out towards mine, though it wasn’t actually much since he was comatose, but it made me want to take it all; to not just feel it, but to steal it away from him, so that maybe he would make it through this.

Oh, God, I loved him so much! He couldn’t be taken away from me now! We needed each other!
…I needed him!

Dhart walked over to the bed, his eyes full of his own sadness, tears gathering in the corners. His lip trembled. “He knew you were the one for him, Clara. He loved everything about you.” He blinked, and the tears rushed down his cheeks silently.

The three of us stayed there, Carlisle coming in and whispering words of comfort to me every now and then, taking his temperature, inserting more IV’s – until closing.

When Carlisle came in the final time, I was feigning sleep, just so I wouldn’t have to believe any of this was actually going on. After he left, whispering something to Edward, Edward came and picked me up effortlessly, following Dhart outside.

I couldn’t have fought if I had wanted to.


At three AM, I woke up, crying again.

I didn’t tell anyone, though I’m sure most of them knew, sneaking out of the house and running to the hospital, where Carlisle was sitting with him in his down time, reading.

He looked up as I entered, but just nodded and continued back to his book.

I crawled under the covers, beside Zach, and wrapped myself around him, my left hand fidgeting with the white gold ring that he’d placed there only two nights before.

He’d kissed me, hard on the lips, and spun me around, both of us laughing in the chilly air and collapsing into our sleeping bags that we’d zipped together. For a long time, he just kind of sat there, his head rested against his elbow, and when I’d laughed and asked him what he was doing, he said that he was thinking about how good everything had been; how even though there had been hard times, that somehow, they were just obstacles that we’d helped each other over.

I shivered next to his warm body, remembering.

He told me he loved me, more than anything else in the world, and that he would always look after me better than anyone could. And then, as we were both falling asleep, he sighed, and I almost couldn’t make out whether it was a dream, or if he was sleep-talking, and said, ‘if I asked you to marry me tonight, would you?’ and I said yes; that I loved him forever, and always had. He gave me this lovely smile, it was heavenly and I swore I would always make him smile like that, and proposed right then, underneath the sleeping bags, the wind whispering lullabies in our ears.

“Please, please, please come back.” I whispered, resting my head on his heart again, the rhythm coaxing me to sleep. "I don't want you to go yet."