Coven X – Chapter 10: Half Alive

Disclaimer: Not mine!

AN: ZOMG, I am really, really, really, sorry that I haven't updated for about a year. I am a moron on legs (… hang, don't most morons have legs?). Writer's block kills like a really bad sprain. Hope you'll enjoy this chapter; keep reviewing (19 so far… let's make it 20, agreed?)! Leave a review if you hate it, if you love it, if you think my interpretation of Edward is completely messed up. Leave a review even if you think I could do with a bit more plot, a statement with which I totally agree.

So, here goes with the last chapter for you to guess my second hand (MASSIVE CLUE THERE, PEOPLE) musician-of-the-titles. Bit of a crack-y one, though not so much as Chapter 9 (ZOMG people I am SO SORRY about how crap that chapter was, just re-read it and it E FLAT MAJORLY SUCKS).

Bliss

Endless bliss

Cool water in my veins

I'm freed

Freed from my bonds at last

Will I last?

No more fire

Quenched like my thirst

Bliss

And freedom

Forever

And ever

Edward

I'm yours

Forever

Free

From the pain

My angel

My Edward

I'm yours

Forever yours

Jasper

I could barely think as I gazed at Tanya, as her skin became gradually pinker and warmth crept through the air, as a quiet thrumming began to fill the air and her chest rose and fell, as the whole room seemed to separate off from reality and float away into nothingness, because this could not be – was not – happening.

The only thing that was holding me back from losing my mind entirely was the scent – the delicious scent – the scent of pain that is gladly endured – the scent of human blood gently permeating the air. Though I stood still now, my mind was racing.

Bella

My mind was empty of all feeling, of all emotion except pain. Tanya seemed to flicker and fade before my motionless eyes; images of every time I had seen her – the wedding, last January, in each photograph lining the walls of home and on each visit and in my mind and in my memories – would it ever end, the stream of pictures flowing through my mind? I knew somewhere, somehow, that I was seeing Tanya again, through my mind and my memories, because I could not face that most unendurable loss of all – the loss of a sister.

Edward

What now? Oh God, what now? I've killed her, I thought. My desperation must have shown, because I saw Kate's eyes flicker towards me, and I fought for control. Think, Edward, think!

But I could not think – there was nothing I could do to change what was happening. My thoughts trundled past slowly, so slowly that it felt dull to watch, like an old movie that I'd seen too many times to be interesting any longer. This feeling – loss, grief, pain – I had seen it all before. Too many times.

I had watched a hundred deaths – my friends, then my family, then my humanity – and my sight now clouded with the pain.

I knew inside that behind the superficial sting of Tanya leaving, there was the deeper ache of failure – my failure. Like a bruise to the bone, it resonated with a sick, dull, thud, a bluntness that could never be sharpened… I hated more than anything the fact that I had failed.

I had failed.

Alice

I watched the blood rise from her marrow, watched a blush creep across her forehead, saw the details of her physique changing millimetre by millimetre.

It was kind of interesting, actually.

But it's hard to concentrate on something like your adopted cousin returning from a vampire to a human state of physicality, reshaping the boundaries of your world and possibly ending her life in the process when you can see her after she's done all that – when you can see her after she's done all that.

In my mind, there was movement. A boy leant over her prostrate body, his face torn with grief; grief for what, I wondered vaguely. As the boy came more in focus, his features sharpened and ceased to blur, it was no shock for me to see that it was Edward. Of course, it was Edward.

He was shaking, shaking like a leaf in the wind. Shivering like a candle in a draught, guilt seeping across each movement, he looked at her no-longer beautiful visage with an expression of something that I could not identify.

It looked like shame.

And yet… the darkness clouding my eyes was still pierced by one shaft of light. A dark light – does such a thing exist? A dark light, offering us one last hope – a flickering light – blurred shapes drifting across the candle's flame –

***

Once that light had been the dark, but even sometimes we have to turn away from the bright light and look through the corner of our eye. Sometimes we have not to forgive, but to forget.

Sometimes we have to do that if we want to live.