Beep. Beep. Beep.
Counting the seconds. The breaths. The heartbeats. His heartbeats, to be exact.
It's like a car crash, she realizes. A really horrible one that she can't quite stop looking at. Instead of twisted metal and broken windshields, tubes and wires hooked up to a variety of machines. Instead of blood, a clean and crisp white hospital room. Instead of dazed survivors, a dark-haired boy lying with his eyes closed, unresponsive, most likely unable to feel her hand resting lightly over his.
Instead of sirens, the steady beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor, the tapping of doctors' shoes down the otherwise silent hallway. It's quite enough for Clare to hear her own shallow breaths. In, out. The beeping lets her know that he's still alive and the breathing lets her know that she is.
"I think they're dead."
One year this September. That's how long she's known him. Less than one year. Three hundred sixty-five days. Eight thousand seven hundred sixty hours. Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes. One year. It doesn't seem so long. But in the space of fifty-two weeks, so much can happen. And she would know.
Yeah. It's like a car crash. And all that implies.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
She feels sick, thinking about it. Physically ill. But she knows from the hour and a half spent in the too-clean bathroom that there's nothing left in her stomach.
The two of them don't exactly have the best track record with cars. His girlfriend, his first love, his Julia, struck by a drunk driver late at night. Crashing his hearse to try to regain her favor, to try to resurrect the trust he no longer deserved. And now… this.
There are no words for this.
Only a few months ago, she was here, in this hospital, under similar circumstances. Similar, and yet so, so different. Because last time, he was gripping her wrist so hard she was bruised for days afterward, begging her to stay, to love him, to help him, and she couldn't, because she was fifteen years old and she just couldn't. So she left. Heartbroken, but confident that it was the right decision, that it would help them both heal. Heartbroken, and not really thinking at all.
It was the right decision.
She knows it was.
Heartbroken. What a nice, simple word to describe the feeling of splitting apart inside. What a nice, simple word to describe your boyfriend crashing his car for you on the anniversary of his previous girlfriend's death and almost ending up dead himself.
That was then. April twenty-second. She can clarify that, sort it into the ever-increasing file labeled When I Nearly Died Inside.
There are no words for this.
Is a year enough to get to know someone? She thought that a few months were sufficient. That was before. Before Eli showed his insatiable desire for revenge. Before he almost died for the first time- at least, the first time since she'd met him. Before he almost ended up bleeding to death with Fitz's knife imbedded in his side. And that was when Clare realized that she didn't really know Eli at all.
But he charmed away her doubts because he was a good person then and he's a good person now.
It really is like a car accident. A horrible tragedy that she can't stop looking at. Because as much as it hurts to see him like this, broken and battered and barely hanging on, she can't glance away, even for a moment. Just in case.
Just in case? In case of what? In case he wakes up?
The countless times he held her hand. Reached out and intertwined his fingers with hers. You'd think that his hands would be cold but they're not. Warm, hot almost. If you catch Eli in the right mood, everything about him is warm. His hands and his smile and his eyes- especially his eyes. Dark green and shining at you. The windows to his soul, and that's how Clare knows that he's a good person, he's always been a good person and he always will be, because eyes don't lie.
But he's not holding her hand now. His fingers are limp under hers and his skin is too cool, as if he's already dead.
Tears burn behind her eyes, but she can't cry. She feels almost as if there's no water left in her body.
And she finds herself whispering, "I'm sorry, Eli. Sorry for everything."
She can't quite understand what she's sorry for but it doesn't matter. The five stages of grief; denial, bargaining, anger, depression, acceptance, and she seems to be stuck in a mixture of them all and nothing matters except he's half dead (maybe a little more than half) and she's sorry.
She's so, so sorry.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
But there are no words to describe this.
A/N: This is the prologue. The actual story will start around three months before this, aka the day after Degrassi lets out for the summer. This is my rewrite of that summer, because I refuse to accept that Clare just moped around and bitched about the whole "my ex is going to be my stepbrother" thing. And... I'm a total Eclare fangirl at heart.
Warning: There will be an OC, and she will be one of the main characters in this story. I promise that she won't be a Mary Sue. Cross my heart and hope to die.
Written because I reject the idea of Cake, not only because they have no chemistry to speak of, but because now they're siblings. That's, like, unofficial incest, isn't it?
The story is named after the song Famous Last Words by My Chemical Romance, which I do not own, nor do I own Degrassi or any of the characters. If I did, Eclare would never have broken up. And Eli wouldn't be bipolar. And Imogen would be schizophrenic (though who knows, she might actually be).
I hope you liked it so far! Review please! (And I apologize for the hugely long Author's Note. They'll get shorter, I promise.)