heartbeat // zayn malik AU

epilogue

"We'd remember tonight

For the rest of our lives."

- Birdy [Wings]

Renee screamed.

That was the first thing Zayn registered, and it wasn't just because her voice hit an octave above normal and nearly combusted his ears. Her scream marked its way through his mind and his heart like a fiery hot branding rod, simply because he recognized the heartbreak and horror hidden within it. 

It was exactly how he was feeling at that second.

When Valarie's eyes slammed shut, her head had sort of tipped back, her hair spilling haphazardly across his arm. She looked like a doll all of a sudden, her skin bleached pale save for two scarlet spots on her cheeks, where the battle-blood had yet to drain. The moonlight glistened on her hair (somehow he could still register the shine of the moon, even though it felt like the stars themselves had been ripped from the sky and made to cease their shining) and made her black lashes appear even thicker, and she'd always been small... she could've passed for a china doll on a shelf... Zayn was becoming vaguely aware that his thoughts weren't making sense.

Valarie would've hated being compared to a doll. She would've wanted him to look at her and take note of her scars and think of the pain she had died in (as if he could bear to think of that without driving himself fucking crazy) and have him think warrior. Not doll. Valarie, with the trucker's mouth and sword-sharp sarcasm, a doll?

Zayn laughed. It was a pathetic laugh and it sounded like he was insane.

And then he was crying, heaving and coughing on all fours with his fingers grating on the rough ground. Renee was behind him, her hand on his shoulder; he supposed it was intended to be a gesture of comfort, but it felt more like she was grabbing him to support herself. Louis walked over to her and pulled her into his arms, and an image of himself doing the same to Valarie flashed across Zayn's mind, and he lost it.

"Zayn, mate..." Cyphus had been toeing at Klaus's bloodstained body. Having confirmed the man was dead, he knelt in front of Zayn, his eyes grave. "I..." He trailed off, his voice breaking.

She meant so much to everyone, Zayn thought, biting down on his knuckles to hold back a scream. Even Cyphus, who was normally a rock of passive strength, had tears streaming silently down his cheeks. She thought she was too prickly to have true friends, but that's not true. She was loved so deeply.

The silverly-blonde girl lying to Valarie's left coughed.

"You okay, Tasha?" Cyphus said. Then did a double-take so hard that he overbalanced and toppled over.

It took several minutes for the girl to clear her throat, and when she finally spoke, her face was screwed up with pain. "I'm alive," she said in disbelief. "It worked. We did it together, and neither of us had to die-" She broke off, her eyes falling on Valarie. "Val?"

Zayn's mind was working too sluggishly; it felt like he was wading through molasses, trying to piece things together as they happened.

This was wrong. No. What had Valarie done? How had she managed to sacrifice herself and spare Tasha, even when they'd stabbed Klaus together? Zayn's mind spun. He felt sick. He couldn't process this right now. No, no, no...

He crawled over to Valarie, begging, literally on his knees. "Valarie, please, wake up. You can't do this, Val, you can't do this to me! VAL!"

Tasha was muttering. "I think both of us should be alive right now. This isn't right. It was either one of us stabbed him and died, but we thought if both of us did it... this doesn't make any sense."