Ruthless and Ivory (Twilight Fan Fiction)

Chapter 10: Truth

Chapter 10 - Truth

Sticky eyelids. I try. One hundred, seventy eight heart beats later. I still try to blink them free.

I float. Numb in all limbs. A weightless numb.

One unsticks. I blink that one. The ceiling is dark. The room is dark. Water swivels around me. A pool. Flickering light forms shadows above. Steam rises. My lips unseal. Cold air seeps through, making teeth alive.

Two hundred, thirty three heart beats later. I blink two lids free.

Now for my fingers... and then toes.

I don't know where I am, but I know what happened. I've been dreaming about it. Flashing images of two faces. One, exasperated with worry. The other...angry.

They saved me. Again. But in the rarest of ways. I felt the stab of the endless needle to my heart. I felt it. Through and through. It isn't often you feel your heart being stabbed... literally. It's crashing. Horrifying. Symbolic and physical. I understood and felt the meaning.

Charlie. They will find him next. My life. They have taken it away.

I couldn't scream. If I had filled lungs I would've. But I watched Edward shouting an order to Alice. The icy blue eyes left behind in a maze of corridors burned into my vision till I saw nothing. I was blinded. I blacked out. My heart stopped. The poison in his bullets did more damage than one hit. It did much more. Before everything went black, I was blinded by anger-until Edward's order to Alice appeared in a form of a sharp torment. He held down my convulsing body. Then I felt it.

Through and through.

My lungs filled. I sat up with a heave and filled them. They watched. My wounded arm lied lifeless at my side. It was forgotten. Its pain was nothing compared to what that felt like.

"Two seconds," announced Alice. She glanced at her watch briefly. Edward's jaw tightened. "Two more seconds and she would've died." She looks at Edward. "Why is it that my patient is hurt every time you bring her in?" She needed answers from him. Carlisle pressed a null button on his desk. She was never called.

I slumped down to my back as he growled at her. He was furious. But not at her. At me. At Carlisle. It was a joke to him. He knew it was me outside his door. He fired anyway. He wanted to scare me away. He didn't want to give me answers.

I watched Edward's retrieving back after he mentioned the doctor's name. Only his name and she knew. She understood. I blacked out. But not before feeling a creeping fear of the inevitable. The consequence. The punishment. He really will hurt me. I felt it.

My toes. I only feel this now. I lost count of heart beats. But it's alright, I don't start over. It will continue beating. I need it to continue. The pulsing is relief to my submerged ears. I float in a pool of worry and regret. Worry of what will come. Regret of, not what i did but what I failed to do. I needed answers and have nothing but a hole in my arm and a punctured heart.

My other arm moves. My index finds a solid surface over the water. I pierce through it. It cracks. All fingers push through a shell over the surface of the pool. Water sealed beneath where I float. I rub a cracked piece on my index and thumb. It's like a film of dried soap. I sit up. The shell cracks away from my cheeks, my arms, my torso. I push through. My slick soaked hair trails behind me. My whole body was submerged, leaving my nose, mouth and eyes above surface. My brows knit together at the oddness. It feels foreign. But what isn't in this place?

In nothing but beige rubber garments, I turn either way and see nothing. Nothing but an empty high ceiling black room, lit by flickering candles around me. They melt down to the floor in pillars of different sizes. The walls are of cement and full of grime. They use to be white. Old smoke stained sconces light a dim glow over the room. Pipes run up walls and around the ceiling until they disappear. A basement.