Author's note: Thank you everyone for reading and/or favorite-ing this fic... but I'm sorry, this is the end.
The following night, Timmy awoke with a mission. He climbed out of his window, crept through Thierry's manicured lawn, avoiding security and leapt over the privacy fence that kept the home of Circle Daybreak's leader secluded from the rest of the world.
Unlike last night, Timmy eagerly raced through the streets, warm with purpose. He was going to see his Ember. And she truly was Timmy's. His sweet, innocent, ever so bright and happy Ember Delune.
Timmy laughed, amazed at how a mere twenty-four hours could change a person. Last night around this time, he was crying in his room lamenting about how unfair his life was. How he alone he was. How he didn't have any friends or anyone to love.
Today, however, it was as if a mystical sun had risen within Timmy. The clouds that had enclosed his heart were dispelled and warmth flooded his body. He was more content than he could remember, far happier than he ever was as Hunter Redfern's murderous little puppy.
As Timmy reached Ember's housing complex with its identical log cabins and green yards, he felt his dead heart began to beat. Faster and faster, flooding his body with heat born of new feelings he could hardly explain. He walked past a sign unseeing and sought out a familiar pink tricycle and a door with bright pink letters.
I wonder what we can see tonight, Timmy asked himself as he walked down the center of the road. His head turned back and forth toward each door he passed. Maybe I can sneak Ember into Thierry's place and show her the rose gardens.
Timmy saw the pink letters before he saw the tricycle sitting on the porch and smiled warmly. As he jogged up to the small cabin, he smiled, looking forward to tonight's adventure.
He didn't bother knocking on the door once he reached Ember's home. All the lights were off and the house was filled with the sound of slumbering. For now, he was content seeing where his most precious Ember lived.
Timmy peered up through the lace curtains on the windows, spying moving boxes along the walls. A small television with tin foiled rabbit ears sat on top of a crate and a couch of muted tones stood at the other end. Distantly, he could see into the kitchen where white cabinets lined the walls.
They must have just moved in, he thought moving to the next window along the side of the house.
This window sat before the kitchen sink and was lined by tiny green sprouts that might some day become flowers. Inside, Timmy could see a small table with three chairs, one with a little pink boaster seat belted to it. Bright stickers and plastic flowers were taped to the chair proudly exclaimed 'This is Ember's chair!'.
The refrigerator was covered in crayon drawings of random scenes seen from the eyes of the artist. A few Timmy didn't recognize, like the drawing of people sitting in chairs attached to circles by thin red lines. Or the one filled with pale bald little people dressed in bright smocks.
But others, like the drawing of a little girl with a bright smile and pigtails holding onto the hands of a man and woman, Timmy knew from his childhood. It was obviously a picture of Ember and her parents. The childish scrawl underneath was a good hint as well.
Moving to the next window sent Timmy into the backyard where he discovered a neat plot of flowers, half of which were missing their blooms. A plastic sand shovel lay next to a wilted daisy chain. Timmy got onto his tiptoes and peered inside.
A man and woman lay asleep in bed with their backs toward one another. Half emptied boxes lay all around them as they slept unaware of their observer.
Timmy watched as Ember's mother frowned in her sleep, revealing lines of disquiet around her face. He looked closer at Ember's father and noticed his brown hair, eerily similar to his daughter's, was coming in gray at his temples.
The next window the vampire child came to was edged in pink lace and cracked open, letting in the faint night breeze. It only took a small effort on Timmy's part to enter the room.
All around him lay pieces of his beloved Ember. A small table and chair with scattered crayons and pictures on top. Shelves crammed with a rainbow assortment of stuff animals. The walls were tacked with lively drawings of the happy little girl he had instantly fallen for. There was even a drawing of Timmy and her sitting on the wall beside the bed where Ember slept.
Slept attached to an I.V. and multiple machines.
It was only then that Timmy realized what the raspberry scent of Ember's shampoo concealed. The scent of death.
Bruised eye lids fluttered open revealing the animated light brown eyes he was so accustomed to and they blearily focused onto him.
"I didn't think the Grimmy Reaper would look like someone I knew." Ember muttered fuzzily. She rubbed her eyes and sat up with only a bit of difficulty. Timmy wanted to cry.
"Why do you look so sad, Mr. Grimmy Reaper?" she asked with an innocent cock of her head. "Don'tcha wanna take me to heaven?"
Tears fell from his eyes as he went to her side and gathered her into his arms. As his body was wracked by silent sobs, he felt Ember place her own arms around him and gently, ever so gently, rub his back.
"It's not fair." Timmy whispered. "The one moment I begin to dream…The only person—"
"Oh it's you." Ember said softly as she runs her fingers through his hair and pets him. "Timmy."
He lifts his head from her shoulder and tells her, "It's not fair."
"Boys aren't supposed to cry." She told him with a mere ghost of her normal laugh. "They're supposed to tough it out like a man."
"Manhood isn't determined by how tough one is" Timmy replied with a weak smile. "But by having the courage and strength to bare your heart and soul to the world."
"You made that up didn't you?" she asked with another weak giggle. He quietly chuckled and nodded.
"That was a good one." Ember told him. "You really should become an author when you grow up. You always say pretty stuff."
"You inspire them, Miss Delune." He replied and a rush of pink stained Ember's cheeks, finally receiving some health to her gaunt features. Timmy's hands reached out and gently cradled her face.
"You really do, Ember." He murmured. "Before I met you, my words were as bleak as an empty existence. There was no color or spark in the world. I was very alone."
Timmy smiled, lightly fingering a loose tendril of hair. "But then a wandering ember appeared and gave me back the hope I thought I lost so long ago. You showed me a new world where innocence and dreams could thrive. A place where I finally belonged."
"I'm sorry, Timmy." Ember said as tears fell down her cheeks. He held her snugly as she cried on his shoulder, pain squeezing his heart at her words.
"I feel like I've lied to you." She sobbed.
"You haven't."
"Yes I have!" she argued. "You thought I was healthy and normal. Not—"
"You are who you are. Illness and all." Timmy replied.
"But—"
"Tragedy can be a good thing for us." he said. "It brings out the best in those who are strong enough to face it."
Timmy pulled away from Ember with a sad smile, wiping away her stray tears with his fingertips.
"It can make one see just how great life is. Sometimes it can make one realize they are not as weak as they thought they were."
"But I'm not strong." Ember told him.
Timmy chuckled, "You're the strongest person I've ever met."
"If I was really strong, I would get better and Mommy and Daddy wouldn't cry all the time."
"You have a different type of strength, Ember. Your strength is one that is born only in very special individuals and rarely in one so young."
"So I'm special?"
Timmy smiled fondly and brushed her soft hair away from her face, cupping her cheek.
"Very special, so very much so."
He was rewarded with a smile that lit up the tomb like room. Weak and faded but shining like the moon and stars in his eternally night sky. Perhaps if Ember was healthy, that smile would become Timmy's sun.
But then, he would have never met bright little Ember Delune.
Timmy looked into her happy face and wondered what if? What if Ember, through some miracle, threw off the shackles of death? Maybe tomorrow doctors would sudden knock upon the door of the Delune's home with a cure to the ill Ember was cursed with. But one look at the little girl stole away that hope.
But what if he was to change her like Poppy was changed by her soulmate James? Timmy vaguely recalled the process which Hunter Redfern changed him… and he could easily call James himself to fill in the blanks in his memory. Then Ember wouldn't have to die. Then she could be with him…forever.
Timmy opened his mouth to break the Night World's number one rule. His lips formed to ask Ember if she desired to live forever. They formed the first words when a stray notion appeared inside his mind. Another question.
But aren't you cursing her the same way Hunter cursed you?
His hope crumpled in the face of that one reality. Yes, Ember would live. She would be able to have the strength for that starlight smile to shine like the sun.
But would she want to after realizing she could never grow up.
Would she smile when she was forced to leave her beloved mother and father? Would she be happy cursed with the same fate as Timmy? Feasting on the blood of perverts, never to see the glow the daylight and trapped in the body of a child for all time?
All because poor, pathetically sad little Timmy…
"Timmy?"
Ember's soft voice broke him free of his reverie and Timmy looked back at her. He could see Death's icy hand around her neck, preparing to end her life before his eyes.
"Yes, Ember?" he replied in a tear choked voice. She reached out and touched his cheek. Her hands were so cold…
"Would you become a famous writer for me?" she asked. "When you grow up, could you write all your pretty words down and share them with everyone?"
The tears in his voice spilled forth as he nodded.
"I'll send them so far that the angels in heaven will speak of them and say 'Those are for dearest Ember Delune'."
Her smile began to fade and twinkle out as the stars do at dawn. Her hand began to slide away with her life.
Timmy leaned forward , giving her a kiss on the forehead and whispered in her ear.
"It will be the only gift I can give to you."
Timmy left Saint Teresa Hospice chased by the dawn. He ran past the places that made up his and Ember's Neverland. The vacant amusement park stirring from its nightly slumber. The street musician closing his case after a performance. He ran beyond a toy shop where dolls made of the finest porcelain sat in their pretty gowns.
But Timmy could not out run the shattered dreams of what if.