Serendipity || Rosalie Hale

- 10 -

So sorry for the mistake! I accidentally updated the next chapter first! So sorry!

Daria had no idea how long she had been feeling the fire. The pain. But there was something else that helped her mind get off of it. Rosalie - at least she presumed it was her - had been holding her hand. Squeezing it, rubbing her thumb over the back of it. It was soothing and comforting.

Someone walks into the room and Daria knew that it was someone who hadn't been there before. There was a difference in footsteps.

"She's beautiful."

"She always has been."

"You know what I mean, look at her."

Rosalie didn't respond but Emmett's words had given Daria some sort of confidence. That she didn't look as horrible as she felt, that she wasn't a pile of broken bones and burned flesh.

Emmett left the room and Daria could hear everything. The way that the fabric of his jeans rubbed against one another, how he bumped the doorframe just slightly. The buzz of the light that was hanging from the ceiling. The rain outside tapping against the windows, the small droplets falling down from leaf to leaf.

Someone was watching TV. A comedy show. A very welcome distraction.

Daria tried to focus on the comedy show, while she also tried to move her hand once more. The burning was (very) slowly fading away from her fingertips and toes which meant that she was getting better.

She had to be. Daria was thirsty, parched, and she couldn't seem to make anyone understand that. How could anyone understand. She could speak, move, grumble.

There had to be someone to help her. To make the fire in her heart go away. But it only seemed to be getting worse, as if that was even possible. The steady - but fast - beating of her heart was picking up and it scared her.

"Carlisle?" Rosalie's voice was soft, clear, scared?

As Carlisle and Emmett entered the room, Daria could tell the difference between the two. Finally the pain was leaving her hands and feet, leaving a blissful and cool feeling behind. It made her focus enough that she could hear that Emmett had changed his clothes by the sound that the new fabric of his trousers was making.

Where the pain and burning had left her the ending of her body, it seemed to leave all other parts of her as well, trying to crawl back to the place where she was already hurting so much.

Her heart seemed to quiet everything around her. Even if she focused, there was not a sound that she could hear above the frenzied pounding.

"Listen," Rosalie told them.

"Ah," Carlisle said. "It’s almost over."

Daria felt a moment of relief before an excruciating pain shot through her heart. The fire was gone everywhere else, but it almost seemed as if someone decided to pour gasoline over the small part that was her heart.

The beating got faster and nothing she ever felt (not even the last few days? weeks? Months?) compared to the feeling of pain she felt. The fire flared up, sucking every last remnants of flames from the rest of her body to fuel the most scorching blaze yet.

The pain was unbearable, Daria wanted nothing more than to end it. In whatever way that would be. Her back arched, as if the fire was dragging her upwards by her heart before it slumped back on the table.

The fire was doomed, having consumed everything that was combustible; her heart galloped toward its last beat. The fire constricted, concentrating inside that one remaining human organ with a final, unbearable surge. The surge was answered by a deep, hollow-sounding thud.

Daria's heart stuttered twice, and then thudded quietly again just once more. There was no sound. No breathing. Not even Daria's. For a moment, the absence of pain was all she could comprehend.

Daria took a deep breath before opening her eyes.