I don't own anything

a/n: I haven't had time to write this series for a long time now & I just wrote the oneshot I promised would come like, literally, an hour ago, so here you are. :)

It slots in just around midway through chapter 66, but, obviously, before chapter 1 of the as yet unposted sequel.

She fights.

She punches and scratches and wills herself to make it through, if only for the sake of her child…internally. She's aware that, no matter how much effort she puts into flailing her limbs, to moving her head to look into those sapphire eyes she adores so completely, she can't. Her body is locked and entirely inaccessible to the brain inside of her, the one that's whirring as she fights to remain here.

The absolute maximum she can manage is to blink, to slowly close the lid of skin over her shining (because that's all they've ever done, you know, is to be iridescent and striking) grey orbs, because it takes so much effort to even do this. All she wants to do is protect her baby, to ensure it survives by keeping her heart-

But her heart doesn't beat, does it? No: it's still and immobile, just as it has been for well over a millennia; it is magic that brought this child to her, nothing else, when you think about it, isn't it? She's nothing special, just a regular girl turned into a vampire-it's this baby that's the startling thing.

And yet, no matter how hard she fights, the pain grows with every moment that passes; she's weakening, fading away into the churning sea of souls sucked away in childbirth, her enigmatic spark disintegrating…because she's no longer stunning, splendid, marvellous; she's almost no longer even Amelie, Founder of Morganville, for her body is dying. And whilst there are no evident marks for the retraction of her into, well, her in her attempts to save herself, she is. There's no other way for her to survive…and, yet, all her hopes may already be in vain.

For if fate wants her to die, she will.

Amelie: ruler, lover…mother- but never a fearless warrior. Never has she been the one to run into battle, unless absolutely confident there is no chance of anything other than complete victory. Yet now, when the fate of the contents of her stomach is at stake, she'll fight a futile battle, to try and stay for this baby-and damn fate. Even though there's no chance.

Because, no matter what Claire or Myrnin says, science is something controlled by fate-and what fate wants to happen, science cannot prevent. If she is destined to die, she will die…and, whilst she wants to fight this for reasons more numerous than can be said, she knows it will happen. But that doesn't mean that she can't try.

So Amelie fights: she scratches and bites and twists and screams-but there is no point; nobody can tell what she's doing, the absolute Herculean effort she's putting in. The spark inside of her, the life source that makes her Amelie, begins to flicker-an ebbing fire, one doomed for extinction, with no hope of rekindling. There is nothing for her to do as she feels the pressure of Sam's hand on her own, begging her to stay, pleading with her to fight for them, their little family. But what he doesn't know is that she can't fight any harder. She's at her peak.

Then she slips. Her stronghold on the world before her slips further out of her grasp-and no matter what she latches onto, she continues to fade: vibrant colours into dim watercolours, ones never to be distinguished from one another again. Even her baby can't save her; she's going to be preserved through her offspring, yet she's not going to be here. She can't.

Amelie's control on reality fades, and the blurry images of Sam, Myrnin, and Claire all fade away into the shadowy world of darkness. Once a respite, a retreat of sorts, yet now her impending doom-the place where she finds out what-if anything-comes after death for a vampire.

No matter anything she shrieks to herself, no matter how hard she strives to get out of this locked body and return to her life, she can't. All she can do is fall. Crash and burn, ripped into shreds of her former being…incomplete without her family – that's everything she's going to become, nothing more.

She doesn't give in; she would never give in. Yet there comes a point where fighting no longer seems to have any consequence on how she stands in the position of loosing her own body-and that's when she simply lets what will be, be.

Her arms seem to open wide as she thinks this, the realisation that this could very well be the end dawning on her-and then it's too late to change her mind. The gradual slipping away of the past few minutes seems to quicken, to pick up speed as though there's now no looking back. And so, taking on an almost luminous highlighting, Amelie almost rises from herself, a phoenix from the ashes of oppression and death.

She's prettier here, free of the lines of worry creased on her real face; this plane, be it mere metres above her own body, eradicates anything other than the soul-even though she wants to cling onto every precious memory, cling onto life and her child and her husband and everything that makes her life so…content.

Amelie's an angel; she's stunning, both in beauty and the wholesome soul within her, as she floats above those who don't seem to realise that she's there–because, to them, she's not. She's in the body, fighting to stay alive (or whatever a vampire's state of being can be called) as hard as she can, and there's no way she's going to leave.

But then she begins to float away; there's nothing tying her to this room anymore, it seems, not her husband or her body and her offspring or even Myrnin, her longest friend. The only slight tug, it seems, is from the child that is fashioned to be her much descended daughter, the descendant of Ariana and her past.

As Amelie 'floats' past Claire, there's a force that's stronger than anything else-and it seems to be stronger than even death, for Claire seems to be refusing to let Amelie die. There's no way that they're allowed to be separated; their souls cannot be parted-at least yet, anyway. Yet the faded state of Amelie's soul means that she's currently no longer able to be part of this world; she's gone, a mere shadow of her former self, a whisper in the wind of time, and so Claire must go with her.

They must be together, of course.

And so, with a clatter that even manages to make its way through into this plane, her descendent falls to the floor, her face as peaceful as Amelie's in this state of comatosis, the stage prior to complete death. They're together, Amelie's soul floating as though she's a regal princess of death also, Claire's own unmoving as, together, they make their way through time and space.

And make their way through the veil that separates life and death.

Please don't favourite without reviewing.

I'll be posting the sequel to Struggles With What's Right & What I Want, called Carnage & Bloodshed, in the next few days, if I get enough interest generated from this oneshot.

Vicky xx