Disclaimer: I don't own anything associated with Twilight
Authors note: These ideas for one-shots just keep coming to me! I promise I will be updating at least one of my other stories today but I have to write down these stray ideas or they wont leave me alone for long enough for me to be able to concentrate on any of my other stories…
Usually, I need to be in a certain mood for me to write a certain way. You know, if I'm happy I'll be able to write fluff and humour but if I'm upset that will be really hard to write.
I honestly wasn't feeling completely depressed when I wrote this though but it is my saddest story so far…I was actually crying when I was planning it out in my head…probably because I could see it all happening in my imagination and just thinking of the pain it would cause made me cry.
You're probably not even reading this so I'll just let you read the story!
Never leave me
Edward's POV
I tightened my grip around the small limp bundle in my arms, hoping, praying, that somehow the terrible thing that had just happened could somehow just disappear. I lifted my gaze from the lifeless body on the hospital bed to stare out the window. The rain outside pelted the window furiously, the bleak weather reflecting the immense sadness I now felt. Nothing mattered now. My life, my happiness, my hope, everything was completely destroyed.
To think, just an hour ago I was the happiest man in the world. And now, I was nothing, nothing but an empty shell. An hour ago I had a beautiful wife who I loved more than life itself and was about to be granted with the gift of a beautiful daughter as well. How cruel it was that both of them, the most important people in my life were snatched away from me in a matter of minutes.
My tears were falling freely as I looked back down at the beautiful woman who I had been proud to call my wife, who I had been lucky enough to love and who had loved my back. Her long light brown hair was limp against the pillow as it framed her lifeless face. My poor Kate, all she ever deserved was happiness and now…
A heart wrenching sob tore out of as that one thought caused the pain to explode within my. I moved my gaze to the small baby girl in my arms. My daughter, Chloe, a daughter who had her life snatched away from her before it had even begun, a daughter who I would never be able to see grow up, to laugh, to play, to do anything that she should have been allowed to do.
And the fact was; it was all my fault. I was a doctor, for God's sake. I could have saved them, I should have saved them. I should have done something, anything, instead of standing motionless in shock as my world, my entire universe crashed around me.
I grabbed Kate's cold hand in my, holding it tightly, refusing to believe she was really gone. She couldn't be, she just couldn't. I knew Kate. She told me she'd love me forever, to stay with me forever. She wouldn't leave me.
"Wake up, Kate. Please, wake up." I whispered desperately as I covered her ice cold face with feather soft kisses, my tears streaming down my face and onto her pale white one. "Please." I breathed out before being overcome with grief, sobs raking my body.
"Edward." My head snapped up towards Kate. Maybe, just maybe. But once my eyes found her face I knew it hadn't been her who had spoken. Her face was still the same deathly white as before as she lay completely motionless on the hospital bed. Just seeing her like that caused my crying to start up again, worse than before.
"Edward, come on, let's go home. You need some rest." I turned my head towards the door to see my mother, Esme, standing at the door, her eyes filled with tears. I shook my head. No, I couldn't leave them. What if they woke up and I wasn't here? They would wake up, they couldn't be gone.
"Edward, honey, come on." Her soothing whisper was right beside me, I hadn't even noticed her moving across the room to me. Esme had lost a child before she had had me or my brother and sister so she knew the pain I was feeling about Chloe but she would never, not in a million years, be able to know the pain of loosing the two most important people in the world to me. She still had my father, I had no one.
"She's gone, Edward, they both are." She chocked out, tears clouding her voice. Denial and pain ripped through me. No, she wasn't. She couldn't be gone. Not yet, not when we had are whole lives in front of us. My own personal defence mechanism kicked in, anger over coming the pain.
"No." I whispered as the anger and rage grew. What did Kate ever do to deserve this? She was perfect, beyond perfect. I would give up my life in a heart beat if it meant for her and our daughter to survive. "No."
"NO!" I yelled shooting up into a sitting position in bed, my body covered in a cold sweat and my breathing coming hard and fast. That memory had been haunting my dreams for the past six weeks, ever since I had found out Bella, my second wife, was pregnant with my child. The fear of loosing my wife and child again was almost too much for me to bear. It was eight years since I had lost Kate and Chloe but the pain was still fresh in my memory.
I looked around the darkness of the bedroom, stretching my arms out to search the bed around me desperately but finding it completely empty. My heart was pounding almost painfully against my ribs as I leapt out of bed and ran out of the room and down the corridor, all the while calling Bella's name.
I was panicking, I knew that, and it was probably an irrational fear but ever since 'it' had happened those eight years ago I had distanced myself from everyone and everything until I met Bella and she had convinced me to let her into my life, and now I was unable to do anything but worry when she wasn't near me. Anything could happen at anytime. That was a lesson I had learned the hard way.
"I'm in here." Just the sound of her musical voice calmed me but I ran, all the same, towards the direction of her voice. I had to see her to make sure she was ok. I slowed down slightly when I approached the open door that led into the room her voice had come from. I stopped in the door way, beholding the scene in front of me.
Bella was sitting at the side of the small single bed where a dark haired, tanned skinned eight year old lay, sleeping peacefully. Bella's daughter, Rachel, had been from Bella's first marriage but, like me, she had been widowed. Her husband, Jacob, had died in a car crash when Rachel was three.
"Edward, are you all right?" Bella asked quietly, her voice laced with concern as my eyes met her warm chocolate ones. "You had that dream again didn't you?" She whispered softly as she approached me and wrapped her arms around my waist, laying her head on my chest. Just the simple gesture erased all my fears and pain. I was lucky to have the chance to love again and I would do anything to protect that, and Rachel, sleeping soundly.
"Yes, I'm just worried. I don't want anything to happen to you or our baby." I murmured into her hair as I gently placed my hand on the small bump that was forming.
"Edward, I'm not going anywhere. I've already had one child and I'm fine, I'll be ok when I have this one as well." I wanted to believe her more than anything but there was still a chance that she wouldn't make it and I hated myself for thinking that way. She lifted her head and must have seen the doubtful look on my face. "I won't leave you, Edward, I won't ever leave you, I promise." She said so softly, so convincingly that I instantly believed her. She was right. Everything would be ok. We would be together for eternity. I was desperate for that to come true but however much I tried to believe it there was still a nagging doubt somewhere in the back of my mind.
Six months later…
I sat slumped in a corner of a small waiting room, my back pressed against the wall behind me as I clutched desperately to the few strands of reality I had left otherwise I was sure I would go insane with the grief. The sense of déjà vu was overwhelming as well as the pain that came with it. How could I believe I deserved to be happy when my only happiness was repeatedly torn out of my life in the most brutal way?
I looked down at the baby boy in my arms as the tears spilled from my eyes and onto his small round face. His eye lids fluttered a few times before they opened revealing two large brown orbs that reminded me of the ones I had loved so much. I choked out another sob as he stared up at me, unknowing about what had just happened, that he would grow up without a mother.
I shifted my gaze to the wall opposite me and just stared at it. I may have sat like that for a few minute of a few hours, I didn't care. I had lost Kate and Chloe during childbirth and now Bella too. What did I do wrong? What did they do wrong?
It was me, I was the reason they're dead. It they hadn't met me they wouldn't have died while giving birth to my children. It was all my fault. All of it, and there was nothing I could do to change it.
I heard muffled voices on the other side of the waiting room door and turned my head to stare blankly at it just as it swung open and Alice, my younger sister, came charging towards me.
"Edward, oh my god, I'm so sorry." She sobbed as she wrapped her arms around my neck. I wasn't sure if it was her tears I could feel against my cheek or my own but right now I didn't care. All that mattered was the little bundle of life in my arms and the eight year old girl who was standing just inside the door way.
My son squirmed in my arms, obviously unhappy by being sandwiched between my and Alice and started crying loudly. Alice pulled away from me, kissed my cheek and left me alone in the room with my son and Rachel. I didn't say anything to Alice as she left or even react to her presence. I just wanted to be along with my two children, I already thought of Rachel as my daughter. Chloe would be the exact same age as her if she had survived.
I opened my arms for Rachel and she came running towards me, clinging to me tightly and she cried into my shoulder. "Mommy's gone, isn't she?" She mumbled as she continued to cry, causing more tears to spill from my eyes and I nodded, unable to speak. What could I say?
Both my baby son had lost his mother and now Rachel had lost both her parents. With the pain stinging at my heart I would have ended my life right then if it meant I could see Bella or Kate or even my baby Chloe just one more time. But I couldn't, I swore to myself right then; I would look after these two children in my arms, protect them, make sure they were safe and well, unlike I had failed to protect there mother…and Kate…and my baby daughter.
The one memory that kept racing through my mind right at that moment, that would never leave me, that brought another round of pain and tears was Bella's voice, repeating over and over again, the one thing I knew she couldn't promise me but was the one thing I wished for desperately;
I won't leave you, Edward, I won't ever leave you, I promise...
A/N: Now I am totally crying just writing that…
I had an argument with myself over a happy ending or not but this way was more effective and was easier to write because of my mood…I'm not sure why because I don't feel particularly depressed…
I'm not actually sure why I keep writing in Edward's POV either…it's strange really.
Please review and tell me what you think!