The Girl's Dark Mate (COMPLETED but currently rewriting)

2.2

"I am unable to describe exactly what is the matter with me; now and then there are horrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head."
Vincent Van Gogh

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Song: This is Gospel, Panic! at the Disco.
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He's crushing me to his chest, long arms wrapped tight around me, like a vice. He is running but I can't seem to be able to open my eyes.

My chest is burning from the inside out and blood keeps getting coughed out.

"Caleb," I start crying again, "can we just go to sleep."

"No, no, no Alice open your eyes! Alice open your eyes. Alice come on please! Please baby please." I can hear the cracks in his voice but can't bring myself to open my eyes.

"Caleb," I gasp out a breath, "I'm so tired!"

"I know. I know-"

"No I'm so tired! I want to go home...Caleb I want to home."

"I promise, I promise we'll go home and we'll go to sleep. I promise baby I promise. But right now you've got to open your eyes. Come on Alice just once. Once and we'll go home. And it'll just be me and you."

I forget for a second who exactly is talking, but I've come to the realization that I'm in love with this person. This person and their raspy voice.

He sounds so sad, so incredibly sad that I want to reach out and ask him why. And wipe the tears off of his high cheekbones.

"And we can talk about everything we haven't talked about yet, okay? How's that sound?"

He is still crying. Who in their right mind wouldn't respond to him and agree with him? Can't they hear the pain in his voice?

"Alice, Alice? You can't do this to me! Everybody leaves me but not you. You weren't supposed to leave me!"

There's a crushing weight in my chest and I find it too hard to listen to this man's beautiful voice. I try so desperately to get my chest to rise, but the pressure inside of my is building up and won't allow air into my throat.

"God, oh God. There's so much blood!"

Wipe it off, do something so this poor man doesn't have to suffer any longer!

"I love you. I love you. You know that right?"

Please be happy, I want to say, somebody loves you.

"Somebody help her! She's dying! Somebody...somebody please! Somebody-"

And his tears drown out my thoughts, until all I can think about is my love for this man and my sadness for him.

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There is an amber shaded stain on the floor from the spilled drink. The tall, tall man did not drink this. Many years ago he vowed to never touch the substance and he has kept to his promise.

In times of intense sadness he does not reach for a drink, but rather he chooses to fill himself up to the brim with self deprecating thoughts. His mind is reeling still, words cutting deep into him until thinking himself a failure would be too kind.

He wonders if he isn't something worse, something not too far off from an abomination, some sort of mutation, a slip in God's hands - yes! - that must be it. God, Himself, must have only created this tall, tall man in an aside in a conversation. Caleb did not have God's full focus when He created Caleb. So there exists gaps and cracks where thoughtfulness and consideration and all good things should have filled.

After his sister died, from a misguided notion that she would be satiated when becoming a monster like him, he also died. Make no mistake, he is very much so alive in the sense that a painting is alive. He is beautiful, in swooping arches of cheekbones and lips, and ugly so incredibly ugly inwards, in encompassing self hatred.

A girl that he loves in dying on the bed across from him. Not for the first time, it occurs to him that she isn't quite beautiful, almost but not quite. Still he finds himself fixated on her skin, so pale that it resembled snow, the color of her hair that was nothing short of the darkest night's sky, and the shade of her lips that was such a color so in between pink and red that he wondered if he would ever pin it down.

And good God her body, he swallows, trying to dislodge this badly timed lust. When he met her she hardly weighed over ninety-five pounds soaking wet, but gradually she'd filled out. Her cleavage almost spilled out of some of her tops and her hips flared out to the point that she needed to buy new jeans. He suspected that she didn't like the changes in her body, but God damn he couldn't look away from her thighs and a-

"The fuck are you doing?" Idris yells, taking in the room around him, noting the unsettling cleanliness of the room. It has been three days since his Alpha's mate has fallen ill. Idris's grandmother had a word for this kind of a sickness that doesn't quite translate into English but depicts the depression of a neglected mate. This depression manifests itself quickly into a literal illness that cause the gradual deterioration of health. This illness usually spans the course of at least ten years, but Idris suspected that the mark on Alice's neck and the fact that she was not a real werewolf has sped along the process of this sickness.

"Get out."

"Fuck you, the entire pack is left legit biting their nails of waiting. Their literally shitting themselves!"

"Idris I don't think this-"

"This pack isn't like it used to be, yeah? And they're not going to lay on their backs and take your bullshit."

This occurred to Caleb. The past two years with Alice by his side were spent building up his pack. Numerous lectures and class given on educating his pack that was near illiterate on their history. Numerous hour spent training the youth, creating the muscle memory of a warrior. Numerous sessions of therapy conducted by his mate to remedy the damage his sister and his father, namely, caused, and the overall distrust amongst the members of his pack. Not one person had truly trusted Caleb enough to lay their life on the line for him - until her. And after her, they thought that surely if Caleb could keep such a strong, resilient, and compassionate mate, then there must be something to Caleb.

So the strong, independent thinking pack would not be okay with being left out of the loop.

"Caleb! Get out of here and fix this."

"I don't think I can." He answers this honestly.

"Doesn't matter, go out there and smile and tell them it's going to be okay."

Caleb looks up and Idris and for the the first time in years they both had the exact same thought running through their minds: nothing, for a long time, was going to be okay.

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Song: This is Gospel, Panic! at the Disco.

Questions?

LSM

UPDATE WEDNESDAY AT 6:45 (PT)