DISCLAIMER: I do not own CDF, Darren Shan does.
A/N: Review please! I will cry if you don't… nah, I will set Evra on you; he can be very vicious when he has pink-eye. :P
SUMMARY: He needed to say something to her, something that played on his mind day and night but when he needed to say it, he was too late. Arra/Larten, character death, based on Arra's death in the book.
TITLE: Time
Larten's point of view. Flips from past to present but you should get it.
Time could not pass slower. The dark walls dripped with the damp and I sat in an unusual, uncomfortable silence.
Arra's slow, shaky breaths pierce the air that we have shared equally between each other. She opens her eyes slowly, then a little faster, and then they are open and staring up at me. I feel every ounce of her pain, every sharp stab she feels shoot through her, shoots through me too. She is beautiful, even with the seeping wound that has brittle, dried blood surrounding it. I smile and take her hand, squeezing it tightly and then a little more slack. She returns my grin, dazed and confused, and I wonder how I can live without this. Her bleary eyes close and re-open, the sombre cave becoming clearer as she blinks.
Alone, I thought about her. She was more than a vampire, than a mate, she was a soul-mate. She was maybe the only one who understood me. I stared blankly at the wall, tears penetrating my icy features. She was gone now, it was okay, it should have been okay. It was not though, nothing was okay because no matter how much I tried to, I could not forget the fact that I had lost possibly the most important person in my life. I blinked the tears away to look at the light swinging to and fro on the ceiling, flickering the night away with Arra's soul and I sigh. She was and still is, even through death, my only true love. The light flickered out and I was not only left in a hollow, lonesome silence but complete darkness to. I curled up into a ball, the evening cold stabbing at my skin. I am a vampire so I do not feel cold easily but every stab of frost thrown at me tore and bit, punched and kicked, wounded and broke me until I was a mere shell with no meaning, a powerless being with no use, a bitter metal chamber with no usage anymore… a worthless nothing. Seba emerged from the dark, a new bulb tight within his hand.
"Larten?" I looked up at him, a blank, unseeing expression displaying on my face and mumbled,
"Hmm?"
She tries her best to sit however the flailing attempts and painful grunts seem to defeat her voice and power so she slumps back into the covers and sighs.
"You are a fighter." She smiles feebly, all hope and need for life drained from her dull eyes which fail to sparkle, no matter how much I stare at them. She pulls me closer to whisper in my ear.
"Larten?" I nod confused, worried and angry, all pulsing in my glare. "Do not leave me." I shake my head, squeezing her hand tightly in a reassuring way.
"Never." I mumble and notice the way her head falls into the coffin, the way her eyes flutter shut, the way she seems completely vulnerable. "Arra!" I shout, a million thoughts running in my head. "Arra! No, I need to tell you something!" I shake her vigorously. Needy pushes almost topple her over the edge of the coffin but I continue to push and pull her, to thrust her shoulders back and forward in a forceful way. Needy glares shake my vision, make me look from left to right, make me unsettled and I fall to her body. She is cold. All life is drained from her and I cry. I cry to the high heavens because nothing warrants holding it back anymore. I have no reason to bottle it up so I wail through Vampire Mountain, I mark the death of a great vampire, I scribble and scrawl it upon reality, I lose grip and I fall. "Arra I love you! For Christ's sake I love you. May the Vampire Princes and Gods strike me down if I lie but I tell the truth, you are my everything, I cannot live without you so please, I beg you, wake?" She remains motionless and I sigh shakily, tears smearing my pain upon my face. Her blood spills onto my hands and I stare at the red emblem of reality. It is real. It is true. It is gone. I cannot believe it, I will not believe it, I have to believe it.
"Try to rest, you must." I turned my back upon my friend and father figure, need and pain striking my words dead.
"How can I?" I spoke in harsh, cold toned and felt a hand tumble onto my shoulder.
"Larten, you must not dwell in past affairs, she would not want this and you know it." I nodded slowly as tears became evident in my eyes, I hauled myself to my feet and made my way outside to the outer of the mountain were we sat three days ago. The sky was a dull, dark blue but the stars still shone like fireflies and the mountain still appeared as stark and as miserable as it had that night when I meant to tell her but I could not. I had the words planned, neatly aligned in a perfect sentence but they did not add up, they did not seem to be spoken like I had planned, she'll never know. I just could not tear myself away from that fact that somewhere up in the sky, beyond the clouds, beyond the many planets, beyond the unknown, there is a tall, slim vampire with long brown hair and hazel eyes that shone like the stars themselves but I knew, that was just a fantasy. Seba pulled me up from the ground and smiled, finally managing to rip my eyes from the deceitful sky above me.
A/N: Well, hope you enjoyed. I know it's not very good but I wrote it in half an hour so I was pretty proud! :D Reviews welcome as always.