A/N: Again, thanks a whole lot to everyone who has reviewed this, and everyone who will review this last chapter ^_^ you guys all rock! This chapter goes along with the song "My Immortal" (my personal favourite Evanescence song) I especially liked writing this one, since I got to think back and mention all my favourite memories of IAHB (though some are a little bit stretched...) ^_^ You'll see, just read away ^_^

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Caitie was dead.

Jamie still found it hard to believe, yet at the same time, he was so sick of hearing it. It had been five days since the horrible event happened, and since then it seemed that was all anyone could talk about. He was getting fairly annoyed with hearing largely exaggerated stories of her suicide transfigure more and more each time it left someone's mouth. He was tired of getting sympathetic glances from every single persoon he passed in the hallways and in his classes. And most of all he hated the question he was asked at least twenty times a day.

"Are you alright?"

He was a rebel, he was tough. He didn't need anybody worrying about him, feeling sorry for him...

He was far from being "alright," but he didn't want anybody's pity.

*

"I'm so tired of being here

Suppressed by all my childish fears"

*

Jamie looked up at the wrought-iron sign of the Kingsport Cemetary. He was there.

He quietly hobbled off his motorcycle and kicked the kickstand down, careful not to crush the beautiful violet lilly he had brought with him; the third one he had brought for Caitie since her burial, and would continue leaving a single one on her grave everyday till they were once again united.

He paused for a moment to take in the wonderfully sweet smell of the flower's lightly fragrant petals, then proceeded to push open the creeky, rusted gate.

He headed towards the far right corner where Caitie was. Her dark granite tombstone stuck out like a sore thumb, its polished, shiny surface not yet weathered by the wind. He silently made his way to it, crossing in and out between the older graves, the dismal air the place radiated with succeeding in drugging him into a groggy, spaced out mood.

Kneeling down next to his girlfriend's side, he gingerly laid the flower at the base of the headstone, atop the loose soil that gave away her recient burial, not yet covered in bright green *living* grass. His hand hovered there for a moment, then retreated back to the warmth and comfort of his leather jacket's pocket as he stared down at the fragile looking plant, lost in thought.

*

"And if you have to leave

I wish that you would just leave

But your prescence still lingers here

And it won't leave me alone"

*

Half of Jamie wanted to leave right then as he felt white hot tears prickle his eyes, but something held him there. "Caitie..." he whispered, his fingers suddenly tracing the shape of her name etched into the sculpted block of granite in its fancy, cursive script.

Caitlin Michelle Roth

1987 - 2003

"The world was not worthy enough for someone as beautiful as you"

She was only sixteen! She was too young to die! Too young...

Oh, how Jamie wished to death that this could all be a nightmare! One he'd wake up from scared, but a dream none the less! Every day at school he half expected to find her waving at him from her usual seat at the back of their geometry classroom, and bitterly longed to see her playful smile once again greeting him by his locker, waiting for a quick kiss as the too of them headed to their first class together...

But she never came. She couldn't. She was dead.

*

"These wounds won't seem to heal

This pain is just too real

There's just too much that time cannot erase"

*

"Caitie...!" He could no longer hold back his sobs. His hands slowly clenched into fists as tears slid down his cheeks, screaming silently as they fell down to earth, leaving miniscule speckles of dark brown on the dirt where they landed.

*

"When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears

When you screamed I'd fight away all of your fears

And I held your hand through all of these years

And you still have

All of me"

*

Why? Why suicide? Of all the ways to go...suicide at sixteen. So what if she was having a bad childhood, if her dad got a little violent occasionally? She only had to last a little less than two more years! Two years and she would have been eighteen, a legal adult. She could have moved out, leaving her father and her old house as just horrors of her past. They could have gone to college together, could have even gotten married...

But none of that was going to happen.

Not now.

*

"You used to captivate me

By your resonating light

Now I'm bound by the life you left behind"

*

He missed Caitie. Every ounce of his entire soul ached with excruciating longing, just to see her again, to touch her, to hug her...He needed her. He needed her long, dark hair. He needed her usual black outfits, cleverly put together. He needed her gothic poetry, so gloomy and depressing, about being alone, misunderstood, hurting, some even about suicide. He remembered the last two lines of her latest one.

Fight fire with fire

Bring pain to end the pain

Just a few days ago, Jamie would have just considered them emotionless musings, nothing Caitie would adheire to. When she wrote about suicide and death, he only thought she was trying to live up to the gothic stereotype. Never would she ever consider killing herself.

But she had.

*

"Your face, it haunts my once pleasant dreams

Your voice, it chased away all the sanity in me"

*

And then there were the dreams. Oh, the horrible, horrible dreams.

No, not dreams. Nightmares. Twisted nightmares of a hiddeously morbid unreality.

Everytime he closed his eyes at night, he was met witht he same grisly images of torture. Each time it was the same scenario. Caitie was being killed and only he could save her. The methods of murder changed in each one; once she was being burned, then stabbed, drowned, poisoned, hung...And in each one, no matter how much he tried to hurry, he always reached her one second too late, and was forced to hear her bloodcurling scream as...

*

"These wounds won't seem to heal

This pain is just too real

There's just too much that time cannot erase"

*

He wanted the dreams to stop. They were emotionally draining him. From the moment he woke up in the morning, the memories of Caitie's deaths so vividly conjured up from his imagination was enough to ruin his whole day. It made him feel sick to his stomach, nauseous...He hadn't smiled in five whole days.

He doubted he would ever smile again.

*

"When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears

When you screamed I'd fight away all of your fears

And I held your hand through all of these years

You still have

All of me"

*

His mind drifted away, his eyes no longer looking at Caitie's grave, but at the new image recalled forth from time.

It was that fateful Monday morning again. As usual, he had found Caitie sitting under the school bleachers. He remembered when she showed him her black eye, then so casually mentioned suicide. He wasn't sure if she had been serious or not, but she didn't bring it up again as they went through four rounds of Poker, Black Jack, and Speed. Then, tiring of card games, Caitie pulled out her all-sacred poetry book. Said she wanted to show him a few new ones, wanted to know what he thought.

When he read them, he felt a numb sense of shock and uneasiness. The graphic details seemed so disturbingly real...one poem was about suffocation, another about overdosing, and the third on razors, but the thing they all had in common was they were all about a bitter, rejected girl whose live was so screwed up, she considered death to be the only answer to it all.

Basically, they were about Caitie.

The bitter, rejected girl she always wrote about was herself. Her poetry had been a cry for help and if he hadn't been over his head in denial, he could have recognized it, helped her...saved her. It was his fault Caitie had died. He could have stopped her.

She had hinted all this time and he had been so blind, he had failed to see her now obvious intent that had been staring him in the face since day one!

*

"I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone

But though you're still with me

I've been alone, all alone"

*

"It's my fault!" he spoke aloud through ragged sobs. "I could have done something!" He pinched his eyes shut with his thumb and forefinger, still muttering, "I could have done SOMETHING! But I got my punishment, didn't I? I had to sit and watch her die right in front of me! In my arms...!" His fists pounded the ground underneath him.

He needed to forget about Caitie's gruesome suicide, needed to get over it and move on, but how could he do that when his entire mind was plagued with visions of her, each one sending a fresh wave of nausea, guilt and sorrow over his already weary body?

His cries of anguish were nearly choking the life out of him as he gasped for breath inbetween sobs. But the more he tried to stop thinking about it, the more he inevitably did, until his entire body was writhing with the anguish of the memories as they all came flooding back.

FLASH

He and Caitie were in detention together, commiserating about the injustice of the school system.

FLASH

He and Caitie were on the room of the EMS building, throwing expired IV bags over the edge and watching as they made that satisfying splat as they burst on the ground.

FLASH

He and Caitie were going to Homecoming together to make fun of the jocks and over achievers, Caitie dressed as a football player, he as a cheerleader.

FLASH

He had just convinced Caitie that her preppy boyfriend was just using her to freak his parents out and the two of them were now plotting a way to get back at him.

FLASH

Caitie had gone to the motocross track where the squad was working, looking for him, though she wasn't aware he was riding at the time and yelped in surprise as he drove up behind her and hugged her.

FLASH

He and Caitie were sitting on the bleachers after school, and after her failed sit-in against the principal. They had been fighting over their friend, Brianne's, huffing addiction the whole day, but as a peace offering, Caitie had apologized and given him a framed flyer from her protest with the words "To Jamie, Always, Caitie" written on it, all the i's dotted with little hearts. He had kissed her in return and told her all was forgiven. Actually, that had been their first real kiss...

FLASH

He and Caitie were walking down the school hallway to their first hour class, Caitie trying to talk him into getting his nose pierced.

FLASH

He was on his motorcycle, Caitie sitting behind him, her arms wrapped tightly around his middle, her head resting against his back...

"No! No! Stop!" Jamie shouted, jamming his fingers into his ears (as though that would stop the thoughts in his head) and falling forward onto his elbows, his forehead brushing the ground. "Please! Stop! Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!"

*

"When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears

When you screamed I'd fight away all of your fears

And I held your hand through all of these years

And you still have

All of me"

*

He vaguely recalled what Val had said at Caitie's funeral, about not having to be sad, or miss her, because she would always be with us in our hearts.

Well, Val was stupid.

He should be sad. He should miss her. Caitie wasn't "with us in our hearts," she was gone, for good. He would never see her alive again.

What hurt the most was that he had never properly said good-bye. She had died while the EMT squad had been trying to save her, during which he had been so overcome with grief, words were far beyond his capabilities. Of course, the visitation was supposed to be when everyone said their fairwells, but Jamie thought they were dumb. You didn't say "so long" to someone an hour and a half after they left, did you? Well, Caitie was already dead. It was too late.

It was too late for anything.

He had loved her. She had been the one for him, he was sure of it. Never again would he be able to so much as look at another girl, not in a million years. He was destined to be miserable for the rest of his life...

That's when the most obvious solution popped into his head.

He would never again see Caitie alive. But there was still one way, the *only* way, to be with her again.

Fumbling in his pocket for a piece of paper and a pen, he hurriedly scribbled a fairwell note to his family.

This was how it had to be. This was how it was *meant* to be.

And, smiling for the first time in five days, he gathered his things, whispered "See you soon, babe," to himself, then hurried off to leave this world the same way Caitie had.

*

~Finé