Chapter 21 - Final chapter

You know, since I was little I always heard different things about the afterlife.

A long tunnel with a light in the end.

Golden streets on clouds.

Eternity with love ones.

Yeah.

This was nothing like that.

I literally felt nothing. Nothing at all. I was standing alone in the dark, as if I were a part of the darkness itself.

Just nothing.

It seemed like days, weeks, months, even years gone by but yet I feel nothing.

Sorry. I was wrong.

It also feels empty. Empty without her.

Jade. It's all I could think of this whole time. It's kept me sane in this neverending darkness.

Neverending darkness.

"Oh blah, blah, blah. Emo much? Sheesh, just hold on a moment."

Click.

Suddenly a light appeared above me. It looked like I was standing in a dark room and I looked above me to see a simple lightbulb with a chain hanging from nothing. I ruubed my eyes as they winced in pain. Then I saw where the voice came from. Standing in front of me was a guy, a regular looking guy with long brown hair that reached just below his ears. He wore a plain white vee neck t-shirt, blue jeans, and had a five o'clock shadow as if he forgot to shave the last couple of days.

"Hey there. Sorry about the wait. I literally got like a thousand customers coming through every day." He spoke nonchalant as if this were normal for him.

"Wait. Who are you? What is this place? What's going on? The last thing I remember was..." I struggled to remember. All I seemed to remember was her. Only her, she was on my mind and nothing else. I...

"Okay, okay hold on there for a minute champ. First of all, cut the inner monologue. I can hear every word going through that mind of yours. So just talk to me okay?" He ran his hand through his hair and sighed a little.

I just nodded.

"What is this place?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"There are many names for this place. The name I hear most of the time is Limbo. I just call it a waiting room." He smirked.

"Waiting? For what?" I had to ask.

His smirk disappeared.

"For judgement of course."

Judgement? Like heaven or hell kind of judgement? Am I dead?

"Hey! What I say about going all Twilight on me? Yes, this is that kind of judgement. I judge your soul, karma, nephesh, whatever you like to call it and send you packing." He waved his hand.

"So...you're like an angel or something?"

"I guess. I never really asked. Just call me...hmm Zen fits pretty good."

"Zen." Really?

He nodded.

"So let's get this over with." He walked toward me as I walked backwards in response.

"Hold on! I shouldn't even be here let alone be judged by you." I held my hands in front of me. Something told me that wasn't going to do much.

"Hey, relax. I'm just gonna touch your soul okay? It's like reading a book and this is the final chapter of your life."

I hesitated to ask.

"Is it gonna hurt?"

"Do you remember the warmest, most gentle, loving feeling of your life?" He asked me.

Jade's kiss.

"Yes." I smiled.

"Yeah...this is gonna feel nothing like that." He shoved his hand into my stomach as I screamed in pain from the burning sensation. A bright light encompassed us as everything around us began to shift. Next thing I knew, we were in another place.

A familiar place.

"This is..." Zen waved his hand

"Hollywood Arts. Why are we here?" I asked.

"I don't know. They're your memories, I'm only here to judge." He answered as we stood in the middle of the hallway. Then it hit me what this was.

When this was.

"This is the first day I met Jade."

"Jade? Heard that name a lot in your head." Zen replied as he tucked his hands into his pockets.

I nodded.

"The love of my life. I met her here on this day." I told Zen as I watched myself and Jade talk to each other at our...err their lockers.

"Hmm, love of your life huh? Well doesn't really tell me much so lets move on." He snapped his fingers as everything shifted again. Now we were in Tori's house, the night of our first kiss.

"Oh yeah, Jade was really the love of your life. Nice hair by the way, you should have left it long." Zen mocked.

"We danced around our feelings for years. We were best friends for a long time. Tori here was my first love. She helped me realize what love felt like and it made me see how I really felt for Jade." I confessed my most inner thoughts.

"Eh, sounds like you were a player to me." He smirked and patted me on the back.

"No, it wasn't like that..."

"I'm just kidding. I see beyond what your eyes can see. Let's continue." Instead of snapping his fingers this time, he clapped his hands and we were in Beck's RV as I watched myself in insulin shock.

Zen's eyes brighten up.

"Oh I thought I knew you. You were in my room for a spilt second. I never forget a face. Wow, it seems like those two really love you." We watched as Tori and Jade trying to bust down the window to save me. I never saw this, I was sort of busy dying and watching this made me realize how good I had it when I was alive.

"Yo, Bella Swan. Had enough of it?" I nodded as he started to do...the macarena.

"Shazaam!" He yelled out as we came in the middle of myself swinging a microphone at The Wood crew.

"Whoa, anger management much?"

"They caused me to separate myself from Jade and Tori because it made them act like jealous idiots."

"But..." Zen looked at me with his piercing hazel eyes.

"But it also gave me a friend in Trina and pushed me ahead to be with Jade." I answered in a sigh.

"Right. So that explains this." He whistled and next thing I knew I saw myself on top of Jade and...

"Whoa!" I covered Zen's eyes with my hand. "Dougie our way out of this memory okay perv?"

"Fine, fine." He clicked his tongue. "Party pooper."

Suddenly we were in a memory that I didn't want to be in. I saw myself beating down Ryder as I carried him to his door and proceeded to bang his head into it.

"Ahh and here it is. I was wondering what was that dark spot I was seeing in you."

"Dark spot?"

"Yeah, and just when it was looking good for you kid. This is pretty bad." He winced as I...the old me flipped Ryder onto the concrete and kicked him in the face.

"But he hurt Tori. I had to do something."

Zen just shook his head.

"Violence brings more violence." Zen spoke sadly as he snapped his fingers. Finally my memory came back to me What had happened to me and why I am here.

We were watching as I shoved Tori aside and got shot in place of her. I watched the look on Jade's face as I saw myself bleed and fall back onto the ground.

I will never forget the pain in her eyes.

Then I realized something.

It was all my fault.

I broke my promise on always making her happy and being with her forever. Just because I couldn't control my anger. It all led to this

"And so here we are." Zen stated as he pulled his hand out of me in a bright light. We were back in the dark room with the hanging light bulb, just the two of us.

"Yeah, I guess I'm going down huh." I said in acceptance. I caused not only my death but God knows what kind of pain for Jade, Tori, Trina and all my love ones because I made mistakes.

"Yeaahh, no. I did this to show you what you did and now you accepted your fate." He grinned at me.

"Come on, you gave your life to protect someone. That's like an automatic invite to the good life..well afterlife, you know what I mean." Zen clapped his hands together and rubbed them.

"So are you ready?"

I sighed.

Here I am now. The final step for moving on...

"I swear, if I have to tell you one more time about the inner monologue."

"Sorry. It's just hard you know? I finally got the girl of my dreams and I was..happy for once."

His face contorted into a look of pity.

"Yeah, I know. I hear it a lot, so here we go." He snapped his fingers as a wooden door appeared in the darkness.

"All you need to do is walk through it Robbie."

I nodded.

"I hope she can be happy again." I made my way toward the door.

"Wait, what?"

I stopped halfway to the door.

"I said I hope she can be happy again." I repeated.

I saw a look of amazement on his face.

"It's just..I hear a lot of 'I had so much to do, I love this person, I wish I had more time' but I rarely hear something like that. Trust me, that's saying a lot."

"Really?" All I wanted was for Jade to be happy.

"Yeah. Sorry, I just wanted you to know that. You can go now." His voice weaken a little.

I just smiled at him.

"Thanks for helping me."

He nodded.

"No problem, it's my job."

I turned and face the wooden door and stared at the knob. Here it goes, I better do it quick before Zen tells me to stop with my monologue. I reached out with my hand to turn the doorknob...but then I felt something weird.

I felt something wet on my hand. I pulled it up to my face and saw several drops of water on it.

Rain?

Suddenly rain came pouring down on me as I was getting wet and turned to Zen for an explaination.

"It rains in Limbo?" I asked him but he was too busy holding his hands out and laughing as he stared up into the darkness.

"Amazing! Truly amazing! Talk about rare, this is even more rare. To think, you actually met your soulmate!" He laughed as he looked back to me.

"What? What do you mean? What's going on?" I asked and he just smiled and walked closer to me.

"A miracle." Next thing I knew he shoved his hand back into me and I felt the pain coarsing through me once again.

Once again, I fell back into the darkness.

But this time...I felt...something.

This was the worse day of Jade's life.

No, her life was over. She had no life without Robbie.

She along with everyone important in Robbie's life were watching as the ER team was trying to stablize Robbie enough to send him to the OR. They had removed the bullet but the bleeding was unrelenting as they tried to stop it. She sobbed as Robbie's father and her own father tried to hold her back from distracting the ER team.

Everyone was trying to stop her.

Jade couldn't even talk as she watched the doctors work on Robbie. The blood was everwhere, even on herself as she refused to let him go until the paramedics came on to the scene. She felt so many emotions, she wanted to kill Tori for putting Robbie in that spot. He had to be the hero but he wouldn't want her to feel that way. She knew Robbie would have done it for anyone, to take a bullet for them and give his life.

'Please God, please save him. Please save...' her thoughts were interuppted by a sound she never wanted to hear.

A flatline.

She saw the doctors work frantically as they tried to bring him back to life. She sobbed even harder and tried to pull herself out of her father's grip. She wanted to be by his side, life or death. She needed him. She loved him.

After ten minutes she saw the doctor shake his head as everyone stopped the attempt to bring her Robbie back to life.

"Call it. Time of death, 8:43pm." She screamed out as she heard those cursed words. She managed to break out of their grips and pushed the doctors aside as she threw herself on top of her dead lover.

"No! No! No! You can't be dead! Stop playing! Come back! Come back!" She cried out as she stared at Robbie's face. She ran her hand through his hair as tears fell from her eyes and onto his face.

Everyone watched as Jade broke down and screamed at long dead Robbie. Even the doctors who had seen many emotional families never saw such pain from a single person for another.

"Please. Just please come back." She couldn't make the tears stop as they fell like rain. She knew he was gone, she knew her Robbie was gone forever. It just wasn't fair that they finally got to be together only to be torn apart.

It just wasn't fair.

It just wasn't...

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Jade's eyes widen as she heard the beeping of his heart come back.

"Robbie?" She whimped

She saw his eyes fluttered open slightly as a slight smile appeared from his tubed mouth.

"I can't believe it. His BP returning to normal and we got rhythm! Let's get him stablized and up to the OR stat!" The doctor yelled out as the ER team went back to work. Tori quickly rushed to Jade and pulled her out of the away.

"Come on Jade! Let them do their job." Tori pleaded as Jade nodded in realization that Robbie somehow came back.

Robbie came back to her.

Light.

I was surrounded by light and I felt...

Loved.

I felt...

Alive?

I'm alive? Last thing I remember was raining falling around me and I was about to walk through the door...

"OMG, are you still on the whole inner monologue thing?"

"Zen?" My eyes opened quickly only to closed again in pain from the lights in my hospital room.

My hospital room?

"I'm alive? But how? Did you.." I slowly reopened my eyes to see Zen leaning back on the wall smiling at me.

"Not me. Her." His eyes pointed to the sleeping form of Jade whose head was on my lap.

"Jade? But how did she.." Memories came flooding back to me. "The rain?"

He nodded as he tucked his hands in his pockets.

"Her tears was the connection between you and her. Love personified. Such an amazing thing." He smiled warmly.

"Connection?

He just smiled and looked up at the ceiling.

"Do you know that there are over six billion souls on this planet and that millions more have passed through my waiting room? Do you know how many of those have actually met their soulmates? Very little. It's a very rare thing but you just happened to be full of those aren't you?" He chuckled as his eyes made their way back to me.

"Really? I just thought soulmates was just a term people used to describe the ones they loved."

"Nope. Soulmates are a rare form of love that is almost never seen. So strong that it pulled you out of death."

"Death. I was dead."

"Yeah, for a while there you were. Seems like forever in my room doesn't it?"

I nodded. It seemed like an eternity.

"So you brought me back?"

He nodded.

"Wow, I don't know what to say. I mean thank you just doesn't cut it but thank you."

He shook his head.

"Like I said, it's my job. I judge souls and send them where I deem fit and it seemed fitting to send you back into her arms." He smiled.

I couldn't help but smile as I touched her hair gently.

"So I guess this wasn't the last chapter in my life after all huh?"

"Nope" Zen replied.

"It looks like your story will go on for a very long time. I guess I won't be seeing that last chapter for a while."

"I want to say sorry but I'm not." I said honestly.

Zen laughed.

"Yeah well, just remember one thing okay?" He replied as he stood up off the wall and grinned at me as he got ready to snap his fingers.

"What?"

"I'm awesome."

Snap.

Suddenly Robbie woke up again in his hospital room and found Jade still asleep on his lap.

He chuckled.

"Awesome huh?"

He heard whimpering coming from his lap as Jade slowly stirred out of sleep and her eyes met with his.

"Hi."

Robbie was awake. Her Robbie was awake.

"Hi." She couldn't think of anything else to say.

Tears started to form in her eyes as she threw herself into his arms and cried into his neck.

She kissed his neck between sobs as she continued to hold him.

"Don't ever leave me, please."

Robbie rubbed her back as he soothed her.

"Never again. As long as you love me, I will never leave you."

Jade smiled as she wiped her tears and stared into his brown eyes with her blue ones.

"Then promise me something."

"Always."

"Say yes to the next thing I ask of you." Jade said nervously.

"But I don't know what the next question will..."

"Please." She demanded but her voice betrayed her.

"Yes."

Jade smiled softly as she pulled off one of her skull rings and slipped it on his pinky.

"Marry me."

To say Robbie was surprised was an understatement.

"Really?"

"I know, we're young, we barely got together, our parents will object, You might change your..."

Jade's rambling was stopped with a chaste kiss from Robbie.

"Yes. Even though the man should really ask, I learned a long time ago that what Jade wants, Jade gets. Trust me, you have that power." Robbie caressed her cheek.

Jade rubbed her face into his hand and kissed it gently.

"You are my lover, my soulmate and my best friend. I love you Mr. Shapiro." Jade smirked.

'Soulmates are a rare form of love.' Robbie remembered what Zen had told him.

He pulled her into his arms as she laid down next to him. He was never going to let her go again

"I love you too."

"Mrs. Shapiro."

Well that 1 down

only 7 to go

so I'm going to post a poll on my profile and you can decide which one I post next (hurry you only got 3 days to vote)

just wanted to say thanks for reading this classic RADE story from zen (again it is his story not mine)

fun fact this was the first story of his I read (and my first RADE story also) so that's why I posted this one first

so which one should I post now?

anyway

I'm TheProwler saying

Thank You Zen