What if Wanderer died? What if Jared didn't arrive in time? What could have happened, but didn't. From both Wanda and Ian's POV.

Ps. I wasn't very content with Stephanie Meyer's ending to the Host. So here I go, writing my own ending.

Pss. I own nothing.

Life After Death

As I took another breathe, I saw the three stars again. They were not calling to me; they were letting me go, leaving me to the black universe I had wandered for so many lifetimes. I drifted into the black, and it got brighter and brighter. It wasn't black at all - it was blue. Warm, vibrant, brilliant blue… I floated into it with no fear at all…

Ian

They look at me with pity. I hate pity.

They glance at me from out of the corner of their eyes, like I won't notice or something. They act as if I've developed some incurable disease, and am at deaths door.

Truth be told, I feel like I'm already dead.

Like my heart has been torn out, and my soul destroyed.

My Soul.

As ironic as it sounds, Melanie's the only one I can stand to be around. She knows how it feels, to be half-dead. She feels the pain of losing a dear friend, a sister. Actually, I don't think there's a word to describe what Wanda and Melanie were to each other. They were so close and cared so much, and hurt so much, always together in unison, that I think they became more than just themselves. They became each other as well. Melanie has all of her memories and knows all of her stories. Sometimes she says something and I think that Wanda never left.

Sometimes I think that this is some sick horrible trick, and Melanie would turn out to still be Wanda and Wanda would say to me, "Ian, it was only a joke. I'm still here! Get it? A joke?"

But it's not a joke, it's not a trick. It is real and I've seen the proof. I saw her body. I held her in my hands and cried.

I buried her.

How can you exist when your soul is gone? How do you live after you've died?

How did any of it come to this?

Wanda

I was completely surrounded by blue. It was a vibrant warm color, quite the opposite of what I'd expected. I'd been expecting a dark endless sleep, an empty void, or an infinity of nothingness. Souls weren't supposed to have an afterlife. When we died, that was it.

But I was here.

Where was here?

I moved my feelers experimentally, and they flowed up and down at my command. I was not hurt. I was not bleeding. And I definitely wasn't sleeping, or in any sort of cryotank: I was completely conscious.

Hello? I called, hoping someone would hear me, help me, explain to me what this was…

Hello?

Far away from me, somewhere beyond the ether and the blue, I thought I heard a whisper of a response.

Hello.

But perhaps it was only an echo.