The Black Balloon Contest
Title: Dear Agony
Your pen name: TwiBoy
Characters: (in order of appearance) Emmett, Jasper, Rosalie, Bella
Disclaimer: Mrs. Meyer owns the Twilight Saga, all Twilight characters and related references. Breaking Benjamin owns the title from which I drew my inspiration. I don't own a damn thing.
Warning: Heartfail, heartfail, heartfail. Spouse/Child death. Not one stitch of happy in this piece.
To see other entries in the Black Balloon Contest, please visit the C2 page: http://www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/c2/78669/3/0/1/
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I'm gonna be sick. God, wake me up. This isn't really happening. Please shut him up…just shut him UP!
He's holding my hand, even though I know for a fact that he doesn't want to. I can see his lips moving, but the only words I can hear are, "they're gone" and, "they tried everything they could to save them".
Rosalie. Bella. Gone.
Why did he have to tell me? The man who has treated me like the bane of his existence ever since I took his sister on our first date eight years ago? The man with the same jade colored eyes as my Rose? Why did he have to tell me that my wife and daughter didn't survive?
Why did I survive?!
Why am I not crying?
I want to puke. I want to pick something up and throw it. I want to hit the man holding my hand with the telephone sitting on the bedside table. Why won't he shut up?
I blink and I'm standing between two stainless steel tables. My beautiful, statuesque wife is lying on one, covered to the neck with a starched white sheet, my pint-sized princess covered the same way on the other while I'm hunched over a pair of crutches, darting my eyes between both tables. I'm in complete and utter physical agony trying to hold myself upright and want so badly to stab the doctor with a crutch for asking me if I want a chair or if I'd like to actually try some pain medication.
Nearly tripping from lack of coordination with the crutches, I reach out to stroke Rosalie's face; a face that had been utterly flawless since the day I first laid eyes on her, no doubt since the day she was born; a face that is now riddled with superficial lacerations, bruises, and the discoloration that means she is gone forever. Instead of touching her face, my hand flits at the last possible moment to her hair. Thick, blond, lustrous, soft as silk. Touching her hair I can handle. Touching her face and feeling the chill of death, I cannot.
Rose. Rose, I love you so much.
With great trepidation, I turn my head to the table on my other side and nearly collapse under the weight of the physical pain and the overwhelming anguish of seeing my two-year-old daughter's lifeless body. With a shaking hand, I grasp a lock of Bella's glossy dark-chocolate brown hair and watch the strands slide through my fingers as I turn my palm to face the ceiling. My eyes then become transfixed on her tiny pursed lips, tinged a fatal blue.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the doctor reach out to touch my shoulder.
"You lay one finger on me and I'll fucking end you," I growl.
I blink and I'm at the grave site. A gleaming white casket with an obscenely large spray of blood-red roses to my left, a grotesquely small matching white casket with an equally sizable spray of white calla lilies to my right.
I'm in a wheel chair because I managed to re-dislocate my hip after a failed attempt to walk without an aid in the hospital. Some people add insult to injury; I add injury to injury. Of course, refusing medicine to at least take the edge off the pain may be considered adding insult to injury, but I'm not concerning myself with logistics at this point.
The preacher's wife reaches out to touch my shoulder and I twist in my chair away from her just as I feel my brother-in-law's hand tighten around my own.
God help me, I want to hit him so badly.
"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want..."
I want my wife and daughter back.
"...He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters..."
The waters here are anything but still.
"...He restoreth my soul..."
My soul is dead.
"...He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake…"
I don't want to be lead anywhere for anything.
"...Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me..."
Death completely engulfs me, I fear life and I'm alone.
"…Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me..."
I find comfort in nothing.
"...Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies..."
My only enemy is the one who took my family.
"…Thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over."
My cup is empty.
"…Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever."
And surely pigs will sprout wings and fucking fly across the Pacific.
"Amen," the preacher concludes.
"Amen," I croak.
I still haven't shed a tear.
My erratic thoughts are cut off by a nauseating, throat tearing wail.
I blink and I'm sitting up in bed. My t-shirt clings to my body, glued to my skin with cold sweat, and the screaming hasn't stopped. Jerking my head towards the door and seeing him standing in the doorway, panic-stricken and sleep ruffled, I realize the screaming is my own.
"Emmett," he rasps.
"Oh God, Jasper, I can't take it…make it stop. Please!" I can't see him past the glaze of tears, but seconds later, I feel the mattress of my bed dip to accommodate his weight as he wraps me in his arms. He envelopes me in a vice of limbs and pulls me to half sit in his lap, pressing my wet face into his shoulder, rocking me like an infant.
"I want to, believe me when I say I do," he sobs.
"I have nothing left to give," I whisper as I try to bury myself in Jasper's embrace.
Exhaustion forces my eyelids to slip closed and I begin to drift into a horrifically fitful sleep. So, I'm not a hundred percent sure if I actually heard him answer, "I'll give you everything."
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A/N I do plan to continue this following the conclusion of the contest. Should you add this story to your alerts, know that it will ultimately be a slash fic. Thank you for reading.
