A/N: Gyaah. I don't know what this thing is becoming, but if you think it's more My Immortal or "Draco In Leather Pants" than an epic, legendarily epic legend, do tell me.

...this thing's hit 17 chapters? Sorry for the bad chapter.

Chapter 17: Fate

Again. Why? Was it me or the curse?

I still couldn't meet their eyes. One girl was crying, and another was trying to comfort her, clearly on the verge of tears herself. There wasn't anything I could do to make up for such a thing. The only thing left for me was a confession, an apology.

I turned my head and looked Jenna straight in the eye. She wasn't crying.

She was smiling. Had I finally found someone like... no. Jenna wasn't the one I needed to apologize to. Even though her reaction was unfathomable, I had to apologize to the others. But no matter what I tried to do, no matter what I thought to reinforce my beliefs, I couldn't break through my own shame. It wasn't something I could just fix by saying sorry. The only thing I needed was to get them away. To avoid seeing the others' eyes. To avoid the guilt I'd brought upon myself just by being myself.

"Go. Just go. I'm sorry." The last two words came out slurred, as my chest heaved in reflexive jerks that brought no tears. Footsteps, interrupted at times by mumbling I tried not to hear.

"Just follow me, okay? It's happened, and we can't help her." A sob and the noise of fabric against fabric. "Did you see that? Don't tell me you didn't see. She shot her. She fucking shot her! She's not normal, okay? I just don't know what I should do." The ambiguity of the words cut even deeper than the feelings behind them. Was it me or the girl who shot me? Did she even look like the villain in a situation like this?

I stared into the cracked pavement until I couldn't hear the footsteps anymore. Only one noise remained. Excited, deep breathing. Jenna. She laid a hand on my shoulder and gently pushed my chin up with the other, forcing me to meet her eyes. The blue of her eyes seemed electric with adrenaline, and her voice, as painfully clear as the images in my mind, told me some words I never could've imagined she would ever say. "That was one hell of a show, Alaska girl! Way to make this night fun. Mind tellin' me how ya did it?"

What? She'd just seen me kill one of her friends, and she was talking to me as if I'd just shown her Paradise. "I'll tell you if you tell me why you're so happy." I made no effort to disguise the venom in my words. I poured all my anger, all my frustration, all my senseless rage into those words, spitting them out in a hiss I'd never known I could make. Her inane response just caused the sickness in my stomach to flare up again. "Yeah, my pa never let me out after school. I got home, and I had to stay there for the rest of the day. I guess he was afraid someone would rape me or somethin'. So watchin' you pull that off was awesome." I could care less about her past. What I wanted to know was how she dared to treat murder in such a way in front of me.

"You're not even angry? I just kicked your friend in half. She's goddamn lying right there. Are you sick or something?" The situation was surreal. Seeing Jenna smiling and chattering exitedly about the murder of a friend - I just couldn't deal with it. I had no idea how to solve this problem, and she dared to talk about it like it was just some show? "Nah, she wasn't really my friend. She was Maddie's, and I think she only hung out with her 'cause she was so screwed up. Seriously, she shot you. How can't I be happy when such a psycho's dead?"

She... This was so sick. She felt absolutely nothing. Was this girl really the chatty, optimistic Jenna I'd laughed with not even fifteen minutes ago? Then I realized what she made me feel.

With her here, nothing I did seemed wrong. Even though everything here was total chaos, even though this seemed laced with some morbid humor I couldn't see, she made me feel normal. She really was the companion I'd been looking for. I forced myself to smile on the outside. On the inside, I struggled to push away the human part of me. I couldn't allow myself to regret.

"You wanna know how I did it?" I had to be confident, strong.

"Yeah, of course. Tell me."

I bit my lip in panic, drawing blood to the surface of the tissue, just to feel myself bleeding for a bit. Even though she was screwed up, she was still human. I couldn't...

I had to. I put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her close in a single movement that left no room for afterthoughts. She was warm. Human. No matter how much I'd wanted to resist, I couldn't with her so close to me. I leaned close to her neck, feeling her shiver. Fear or excitement? I didn't have the time or self-control do decide. Without hesitating, I bit down as hard as I could just above her collarbone. I only felt my razor-sharp teeth cut through flesh and sinew, and then a wave of incredible pleasure flowed through me.

There was nothing except me and her - no, me and her blood. The only noise I could hear as the blood in my mouth from biting my lip mingled with hers was a faint moan, a testament to that we now shared more than just blood. The steady river of blood flowing into my mouth was cooling down, proof that the life was flowing out of her faster than it felt, but I couldn't resist draining the last lukewarm drops of life from her before carefully laying her down on the pavement, her body illuminated by a few flickering squared of light from the curtained windows of the houses beside us. What if I'd just killed her? I didn't even know how to transform a human anymore. What if Aro's plan involved -

Jenna groaned and slowly opened her eyes. As if in a daze, she lifted up one hand, pawing for a pulse with the other. Touching the icy pavement as if to compare the cold, her lips began to split in a wide, surreally childish way as she pushed herself up.

As if instinctively, she crawled over to the other girl's corpse and sank her teeth into her wrist. After draining what she could, she stared straight into my dazed eyes.

"You wanna go on? We were aimin' for the nuthouse, remember?"

So this was what I was going to be calling a friend from now. I could have laughed.