Release
Like tar in my body, binding my soul down to the edges. Keeping it prisoner. No way to escape. Never knowing how long it would it last.
How many hours had I spent in this bed, starring out the window? It seemed endless.
When Charlie died, I lost track of time lying here. I thought it would never end. That I'd die here.
That my body would grows roots, and they would twist and dig into the mattress.
But now, I knew that it would end eventually. Soon that tar would melt and soften, until my soul could drift off again. Only then would I be able to move forward. I'd get out bed and I'd do all the things I was supposed to do.
Wait for that thick black tar catch me again.
But for now, I'd just stay here. Stuck in it.
Empty.
Nothing.
How could he stand it? Days upon days, caught in the kind of silence that aches. There was a desperation in it, that pulled you in a hundred different directions.
There was nothing he could do about it. He'd learned that the hard way.
The days like this after Charlie died. After he was killed. That was when he decided to stop fighting me. He gave in and said he'd change me, after high school.
It feels like years ago.
Who would have thought I'd be scared to do it. After all the time I spent wanting it, pleading for it.
Now I'm horrified of it.
Scared I'll wake up and these horrid scars will still be there, branded into my skin for all eternity.
Rosalie, Emmett and Jasper believed they wouldn't stain my skin. That my changing would heal them.
Everyone else was torn between the knowledge of what the venom could do and knowing that the wolves were of a different world.
Their existence alone was just as miraculous as the vampires. Summoned by magic. Created to protect the humans and stop the cold ones.
How far did that magic reach? How much about it did we really know about it?
Alice said I shouldn't be scared. That when she looked into the future, she still saw me happy, but the visions were unfocused and blurred.
Yes, she could see me happy. But how long would that last? Was it just a moment in time?
She couldn't tell me.
When the room grew dark, he crawled into bed beside me. Pulled my back against his firm chest. Wound his arm around me.
Home.
Even with this horrid silence and sinking despair, he still hummed his approval at the close contact. Still buried his face into the back of my neck. Ending this day like it was any other.
I laid there in a daze with him. Something angry building inside of me. Foreign and alarming. A realisation forming, that I couldn't ignore.
He'd live like this forever. He'd allow it. Accept it.
How incredibly awful. How horribly unfair.
Unless I got him out of here. Away from the tar, that was reaching for him too.
If I accepted that I couldn't save myself from it, but I could save him.
But where to start?
How do save someone from sinking when you yourself are drowning?
I jumped from the bed and looked down at him. Confusion mixed into his expression of concern.
"What is it?" He asked cautiously.
I could see him. The anger. The pain. All of it.
I'd never know what it was like for him.
He always asked me to put myself in his shoes, but I couldn't bare the thought of it. The wondering alone, it had made me want to explode.
I knew I'd left something of myself in that garage, and I had no doubt that he had too.
I knew I couldn't get it back.
But maybe I could release it from the dirt and rotted wood?