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

2.5

"She turned her back to me while she was crying, and said: I wish I've never met you."

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Song: Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley
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ALICE'S P.O.V

I was stuck, far, far off in a reality that was uncharted. Maybe a dream, maybe death, but I certainly was not alive.

I remember only few bits of my former life: my sister (her pale hair and her steely gaze) and Caleb (I don't remember his face, but I can imagine that at one point I had found it remarkably beautiful). I remember a lot of pain associated with the name Caleb.

Physical and emotional and mental and psychological and everything that gave my life the effects of being far and few between.

"I hate you," There it is, the movement of pale lips moving and the crushing feeling that followed him saying this.

Why won't he move closer to me? Am I that disgusting?

He leans into me. His nose touches mine.

I love him. I love him.

His next three words did not cause my heart to soar but his voice saying it is glorious.

"I hate you."

Oh God, he didn't hate me did he? For a second I see the image of Caleb, tall and tanned and blonde, but his face remained blurred. If I reached out, just beyond the blackness I could grab him and pull him to me and never let him go.

"You'd have been so happy without me, so happy." That's him! I don't know how I can tell but I feel something deep within me stirring at the remembrance of him in a past life. The voice was so raspy and encompassing that I cannot imagine that it could be anyone else but him.

Maybe in my former life, maybe even in a life before that, maybe even before that, when souls were being created from stardust and particles to fine to see or accept into common knowledge. Maybe, then, we were made from the same particles, the same stardust, so that every time I found him in another life or reality, I recognized him as being the same. Maybe he was, always was, always will be, my other half and surely I'd only recognize my other half no matter if I was dead, or alive, or in another life - I'd know him.
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"If you wake up, you're going to leave here and go travel the world or something. You're going to live your life and not think of me and you're going to live. And you're going to be happy. God I just want you to be happy."

There he is again, talking to me from this other reality. I can't feel him, but I can hear him and his voice and when he chokes on his tears and when he's too tired to cry, when he talks and rambles on for hours.

"The pack is great Alice, I promise. Kara is really happy now too, you know since she she's gone back to school. Remember? I told you about that last November? Yeah well I think she just needed some purpose after being rejected. Because she's so happy Alice. She's so happy...I wish you could see her. You'd be so happy if you saw how well she is."

"I'm Alpha again too," he laughs, but I swear he didn't sound happy, "yeah Idris, remember he took over last June? Well I'm Alpha again. It's going pret- I mean, well, it's going."

He said his quite some time ago, maybe months. It's been 17 months since I've been here tumbling through the darkness without him and I can now remember small details of being in that reality. Caleb, my two sisters, Kara, Nova, and even Caleb's siblings.

"I can't breathe anymore Alice, I think I'm dying like this without you. I'm dying like this."

"The doctors told me that you aren't going to wake up. I understand this, and I still can't accept this. When I was young, very young, I remember hearing about your sickness. Some said that it was like your heart hardened after being neglected or abused.

"Alice I didn't know how to love and I still don't but why do I feel like I never have even got the chance to try?

"God we had two fucking years together and I feel like I don't even know you. We share the same soul and I don't know you."
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When the Spring came that year, Caleb told me it was beautiful. He said that he'd keep the windows open because it would be too much of a shame to not feel the air.

He talked so fervently about how we'd walk around the lake and through the woods when I woke up. He said that I'd be in love with everything, the rain that fell and seeped into the earth, the wind that wasn't unbearably cold, the leaves that fell to the ground making it appear to be ablaze with a fire colored with rose-gold.

I remember most vividly that he never said "if" I woke up, but "when" I woke up. That made me want to die.

"Alice I can't even control anything any longer. I'm falling apart," I can hear him being short of breath again, "I'm in between shifts all the time.  At the last pack meeting I had to leave early because I fell to the ground mid-shift and was stuck like that for two weeks. Otherwise you know that I would have been right here next to you."

That was his overarching theme, that he would be right next to me until he was sure that I died. I remember him telling me "wouldn't leave this Earth until you do Alice. I can't leave you like that. So I won't."
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Caleb prays now, even if I've never prayed, even if I barely believed in a God, he knew that I liked to, wanted to believe in one. So he prays himself to sleep. Every day after he finishes his duties to our pack, he comes back to me and talks, then he prays.

I don't think that he believes in a god, actually I know that he doesn't. I remember him so clearly saying "how can I relate to somebody doesn't speak? Who doesn't speak?". I think more than anything, that he wishes for some divine miracle that is beyond us.

"The only thing I'll ever swear to again is you, not God, you. You're the only thing I'll promise to, I'll pray to. Alice I swear to you, I believe in you isn't that enough?"

I think that in the dead of night, when he wishes for me, he can see over the edge. And over the edge is impenetrable darkness and maybe I lie there and maybe the only way to find me, to get to me is through God.

So he prays to get me.

"Now I lay me down to sleep," he can't breathe, "I pray the Lord my soul to keep," he literally cannot breathe, "If I should die before I wake," he does not wish to breathe, "I pray the lord my soul to take."

Oh Caleb.
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Song: Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley

Questions?

LSM

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