Falling Awake (Unbreakable #2)

still the hot envoy from hell:

As if she had fallen asleep.

As if there was my Sleeping Beauty lying in front of me.

Made to be worshiped, made to be protected, made exclusively for me.

And I was staring at her, I kept staring ahead of me as I couldn’t take my eyes off her anyway. She was so damn stunning.

But she didn’t repay my gaze.

She didn’t laugh anymore.

She just lay on the icy ground exactly as she´d landed on it. A strand of hair fell into her forehead, but she didn’t brush it away. My Princess didn’t make a slightest move and her eyelids remained closed.

I felt her strength, her perseverance, and her tenacity pouring into my blood vessels. They filled every cell of my body. Like a drug, they literally dazed me. Still, at that nanosecond when I was able to move again, I got up to reach out for her.

I took her into my arms, I pulled her close, I hid her in my embrace. More than ever, I needed to feel her here with me. I needed to feel any signs that she was alive.

To say that I was scared?

No.

The feeling, racing inside me now tore every bit of me, every bit of my mind. It gripped my heart, making me realize that I had never experienced such pain before.

I’d never been so disconcerted before; I’d never panicked like this before. I´d never been so desperate as right now when I whispered her name into the darkness a million times, and she didn’t react.

Hauntingly beautiful, she just kept lying in my arms. So incredibly enthralling that I couldn’t help it. I kissed her forehead, I kissed her cheeks, her lips. I kissed every inch of her face, as if it should help. As if she really was Sleeping Beauty, and a kiss could bring her back to life.

It didn’t happen.

She was still lying motionless in my arms. She, the first and only girl that managed to make those damn tears fall from my eyes.

I didn’t protect her.

For so long, I tried so hard to keep her out of it. I resisted; I didn’t want her to know the truth so she wouldn’t be dragged into my world. Just so that nothing would endanger her. I rather let her hate me. And yet, it was me who hurt her. Who took her life.

Fuck!

Come on!

Come to your senses!

Do it!

Think of something!

I quickly pulled the phone out of my pocket, it almost fell out of my hand as I hastily searched for her name. Because she was the only one who could save me now. My only one, my last hope.

“You know, Lestrad, someone like people,” she told me when she finally picked it up, and I hated the accent she said the last word with, “usually sleep at night. Unlike you. If you’re calling me because of some…“

“Dammit, Mia, I need your help!” I interrupted her without hesitation. Without the slightest hesitation as there was no time for her bullshit. “I’ve never needed your help in my life as much as I do right now!”

“What did you do?” The angry tone disappeared from her voice. Instead, she became serious, and I suddenly felt rebuke screaming from her whole attitude. But she had every right to it.

“I forgot about the full Moon last month,” I began, but I couldn’t finish. Because my dear friend burst into guffaw. I was drowning in despair, and she was laughing. So much for our friendship.

“What?! You forgot about the full Moon?” She couldn’t even speak properly through her laughter. “How could you forget about the full Moon? Really, no kidding, I want to know. Tell me how you could forget about the only thing that keeps you alive?”

I took a breath to say something… not pretty. I was everything now, but not in the mood for her teasing.

“Oh, oh, I know,” she sighed, suppressing another giggling. “What’s her name again? Lara?”

I looked again at the girl she was talking about. I swear, she was more beautiful than thirty seconds ago. I still felt her pulse, but I had witnessed it so many times before to know better. I had two hours left. Maximal.

“Amelia, she’s dying!” I growled at her; all my patience gone. And the girl who had pulled me out of trouble so many times in the past fell silent in an instant.

“No!” She hissed at me. “Don’t tell me you did it again! After so many years!”

I took a sharp breath to suppress the wave of fury her words had evoked in me. Because it sounded… Hell, did she think I did it on purpose?!

“I would never hurt her! Never!” I wanted to shout, I longed to yell with despair, but instead my voice broke. Because it dawned on me, because I realized it. Amelia was right.

It was my fault.

If I had left her alone, if I had never spoken to her, if I had let her live her normal human life, she wouldn’t be lying helplessly in my arms now. My Princess wouldn’t be dying right now.

But I was a selfish bastard, and my irrepressible desire to keep the only happiness that Lara represented to me, won over me. I endangered her; I was the only one to blame.

“She touched me,” I said, almost whispering. “I forgot about the full Moon; I didn’t have enough strength to stop her. I screwed up, Mia, I screwed up epically. Only by thinking that I could ever be good for her…“

“Hey! Come on, Eric, stop it!” She interrupted me vehemently. However, it was a compassion I heard in her tone. Exactly the one she always tried to calm me down with. Now, it didn’t help at all. “Get those nonsense thoughts out of your head, okay? You better tell me; how do you think I can help you?”

Somehow.

Anyhow.

Just please, help me.

“Every action has its reaction. Everything can be circumvented somehow,” I said, explaining. “I need you to find a loophole. A way to bring her soul back, to turn the whole process around, if it´s necessary.”

My head dropped under the weight of my remorse, and I leaned against my Dove´s forehead. I really needed to feel at least the warmth of her body. Even though it was slowly fading away from her.

“Mia, she can´t die.”

I didn’t like the silence spreading after my words. I hated every second that ran against me.

“Do you remember the cemetery where my mom´s buried?” She finally asked. And I choked.

What?

She was fucking kidding me, right?

“Cemetery? Seriously?”

“Honey,” she exhaled heavily. Heavily enough for me to understand that she really meant it dead serious. “Most of my ancestors are buried there. The place is a huge source of energy, and I need it right now. I can’t do it alone, I won´t handle it by myself. I´m not that powerful.“

“I remember,” I nodded immediately, though it wasn’t quite clear to me what she´d just explained to me. But I didn’t care. At this moment, I totally didn’t care. Mia knew what she was doing, and I trusted her. I would go to the other side of the world if she wanted me to.

“How much time do you need to get there?”

I looked in front of me, I looked at my other girl, at my Babygirl, which had never let me down before. I relied on her, that it wouldn’t be any different now.

“Eric,” Mia spoke carefully, forcing me to return with my thoughts to her, “if the rest of her life fades, if she dies, I won’t be able to help her anymore.”

Out of the question!

No!

Under no circumstances!

“An hour,” I said decidedly. “If I push it to the maximum, I’ll be there in an hour.”

I wrapped one of my arms around my Dove´s back and slipped the other under her knees so I could lift her and carry her to the car. Still, I didn’t overhear it. My friend´s voice and her promise that made me to get up from that icy ground in the first place.

“I´ll be waiting for you.”

***

I saw her as soon as she jumped off a stone pedestal. Even though my brain was smashed to crap, I couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t changed at all. It had been years since we saw each other for the last time, yet I felt the same way when she hugged me without any unnecessary words.

She always knew how to cheer me up, it never took her too long to calm me down. I cared for her, I really cared for her because she was always there for me. More than once, she was getting my ass out of trouble and now, I needed her to find a solution for the biggest one.

“Listen,” she began, pulling away from me as she looked at me. And then she got stuck. But she didn’t have to keep talking, she didn’t have to say anything more, I still felt a hassle from the tone of her voice. And that was unacceptable. This just had to work out somehow.

“Please tell me you found something,” I begged, I beseeched, damn, I almost knelt down.

She nodded, giving me the answer, I longed for. And I swear, it must have been a load of size of Mt. Everest that was taken from my heart.

I didn’t wait whether she wanted to add something, I wasn’t interested in anything else. I pulled a blanket out of the car, which I´d bought at the market a month ago. I would sacrifice the whole heaven and hell now, just so I could turn back time, just so I could go back to that day. To that afternoon, when we were sitting on a wooden swing together and watching the restless waves.

Instead, I had no choice but to wrap the blanket around my Princess and carry her to lay her down on the stone pedestal in front of us.

It looked more like an altar to worship the Devil. There was only the blood of the victims missing. But I didn’t care. I’d even sign a contract with him if it could bring her back to life.

Anything.

“Honey.” Mia forced me to return back to reality. The fucking relentless tone didn’t disappear from her voice. The one which was yelling at me that something was wrong. That it wouldn’t be that simple.

I still didn’t care. I didn’t respect any excuses or obstacles, my Dove, only she was important to me. I took off my sweatshirt, I crumpled it, and laid it under her head so she wouldn’t lie on anything hard.

“Damn, listen to me!”

She achieved hers, my friend made me look up at her. She stood opposite me, she stood on the other side of my Princess, and I hated the desperate shade that filled her eyes.

“It can be reversed,” she told me softly. “I will return to her the energy you took away from her.”

“Then?” I looked at her blankly. Because yes! I didn’t fucking understand why she kept talking, why she wasn’t doing anything already.

“But I’ll take that energy from you,” she continued, probably having no idea how impatient I was just becoming.

“I still don’t see a problem.”

“But I can’t…,” she exhaled, ignoring the escalating tension in my voice. She just exhaled, perhaps pretending not to notice that she had stopped my heart with those three words. “I can’t give her back exactly the part which she gave you. It has already become a part of you, it can’t be completely separated.“

I see.

Sure.

Totally.

“Dammit Mia! What?!”

She rolled her eyes.

She really rolled her eyes at me now.

“Simply put, Eric, if I do it, if I give her back the strength you took from her, it won’t be exactly the same. A piece of you will pass on her just as a piece of her will stay in you. You will be bound, connected as a part of her soul will always stay in you and part of you will always stay in her.“

And why should I fucking mind?

“Perfect,” I smiled for the first time since I slumped to the ground in front of Lara. I smiled sincerely. After all, my Dove owned my thoughts, my breaths, my self-control. She owned me completely. Hell, I couldn’t wait for a moment to be truly bound with her.

“That’s not all you need to know.”

And just like that, my dearest friend threw me away from my cloud back to the ground.

“What? What else? Mia, c´mon! Can you stop driving me crazy and finally…“

“Consequences,” she interrupted me vehemently. One word, she said only one word that sounded sharper than a razor, and she immediately had my full attention.

“How will it affect her?” I asked without thinking.

“She won´t be probably affected at…”

“Do it!” It was all I needed to know.

“Goddammit, Lestrad! Stop acting like a child and listen to me finally!” She barked out as she frowned at me. But I followed her example, I frowned as well. Because he kept straining my nerves with nonsensical information. “You will be bound to her; she will become your weakness! If something happens to her, it will affect you too!”

Blah, blah, bullshit, we were just wasting time!

“Do it,” I exhaled, repeating one more time. None of this was interesting, none of what she´d told me. There was nothing more precious than my Princess. I didn’t care what would happen to me.

“If she dies and she dies one day,” Mia kept talking, ignoring my request. Her gaze fell on my Sleeping Beauty, she studied her as she continued just as quietly: “I don’t know how it will affect you. There´s a pretty big chance that you won´t survive… “

“Mia,” I might have growled at her. “Do it. Please.”

And Mia got stuck.

She looked up at me, she fixed her penetrating eyes on me. And there was a surprise, I recognized in her face. “You really do care about her…,” she whispered.

Willy-nilly, my sight dropped to the girl we were talking about right now. Fuck! It struck me, it hit me again, it hit me probably for the millionth time. The thought that I’d never seen anything more breathtaking. She gave the word caring a meaning.

“I do,” I said the most honest thing I could ever say. “Very much.”

I raised my hand to caress her cheek, I let my fingers brush her hair away from her forehead once more. She still looked like she was asleep, and I needed her to wake up. Suddenly, it was all I ever wanted in my fucking existence.

“That’s good,” Amelia broke the silence, and I didn’t miss it. I had the impression, as if she was pleased. Like truly honestly pleased. “Then there’s one last thing you need to know. I have no idea what the ritual will do to you. Basically, I will be drawing your strength out of you. It may…hurt.”

“Will I return to the state I was in when Lara touched me?”

She reliably caught my attention again as I needed to know it. I was dying back then at the rest area. And if I supposed to really die tonight, if something supposed to happen to me, I´d have to ask Mia for another favor. To drive my Princess home.

“No, honey, no,” she shook her head. “What Lara gave you will never be taken away from you anymore.”

Oh.

Nicely put.

It was also a gospel truth.

“Ready?” She reached out her hands to me, and I accepted them without saying a word. She placed them on my princess’s heart and took a deep breath.

I felt it immediately, the power of her words, the power of herself. But she wasn’t alone. I understood why she wanted to meet here, this place was soaked with the power of her ancestors, and she bound to them.

She used it on me, she used it against me, and even if I wanted to, I couldn’t do a damn thing. And for the first time, I realized how all my victims must have felt.

To say it fucking hurt?

I would underestimate the situation. All of a sudden, I had a huge problem to keep standing upright and not to slump down.

But for my Princess, I would suffer far more.

***