"Give Me Novacaine" is by Green Day. I don't know what I'm writing or why I'm writing it but I need to do something... So there it is.

---

I'm sixteen. I like to write and I like onions. I bite my fingernails and I read in the dark. I listen to music with my headphones on. I wear a Claggdah ring on my right hand.

I'm too young to die.

I watch the ground from this height. The streets are grey and my head is in the grey clouds. My ears finally stopped ringing but I can't hear the sounds of cars or people below. I just hear the wind, whipping me back and forth. Suddenly, I see red. And I know it's time to fall. So I fall.

When I hit the ground, I hear cracking sounds. Faintly, it registers to me that those are MY bones breaking, my ribs snapping and shattering. I do not feel it. Someone, a girl, bends down to look at me and gasps when she sees my face.

"Oh my God! Are you okay?!"

Bloodied laughter bubbles to my lips. Am I ok?

"I... I'll get someone!" I look at her. She's kind of pretty, the girl you take to Homecoming but not to Prom. She gets her eyebrows tweezed but they never come out exactly how she wants them to. She writes poetry and she keeps it in a green notebook with white flowers pressed between the first two pages. She's not happy. Who is?

She disappears fromview and I wonder what song would be playing right now if my life were a movie. Of course, the movie wouldn'tvery likelystart here. It might end here... Christ, don't think like that... Back to my soundtrack. Green Day might be sufficient.

I wonder when the girl will come back. My shoulderseemsuncomfortable in this position and I figure that it's dislocated. I wonderif the girl will come back.

People begin to gather around me and I see the familiar pink, strappy-shoes and red toenails. The girls bends down to look at me again and says, "There's an ambulence coming. You'll be alright. I promise. You'll be fine."

I want to smile at her, but I don't. My mouth is probably full of blood and I don't want to scare her.

She hesitates and puts her hand on my hair. Her fingers come up bloody and she winces. I metally try to reassure her. That's alright. I can't feel you anyway.

Someone asks what happened to me. Someone else answers, "She fell."

Bullshit. I jumped.

The girl looks at me and says "You're going to be fine" again. She's seen enough movies to know that you're supposed to talk to mortally wounded people. I look at her sideways. She watches all of those movies with her cat, Frankie, in her apartment on 12th Street. She has a decent-sized television but her DVD player is moody and works only on occasion.

"You'll be alright. The ambulence will come soon."

I tune her out. Not to be cruel, she's doing all she can, but I know a better way to keep myself occupied.

"How can she still be conscious?! Look at all the blood everywhere..."

I raise my eyes to see an older woman and a younger man. The woman has grey hair pulled into a conservative bun, with silvery wisps hanging around her ears. She wears a housecoat. I decide she must have come from the apartment building behind me. The one I swan-dived from. I smile when I think that she might have seen me float passed her window.

The "man" next to her can't be any older than eighteen; he is a boy. He looks at my (in all honesty) mangled body, my broken limbs, my blood pooling around me, with no expression at all. I know he's afraid, but he can't stop looking. I am a train-wreck.

I hear sirens. Sirens... Shit. I try to leap up and disappear down the alley but then I remember every bone in my body is broken. Oh... Right...

"There's the ambulence!" The girl is relieved and I hear her again. I look up at her and she is unnerved by my eyes. Most people are. She hesitates... then puts her hand on my shattered wrist. "You'll be alright."

"Yes..." I whisper and her large eyes double in size. They are honey-brown. "Thank you, Amy. Now, you should go home and feed Frankie. He misses you."

Her face pales and the ambulence arrives. Two men leap on me and I close my eyes. They are trying to see if I'm alive and when they know I am, they try to heal me. I know they are moving my broken body as little as possible, but if they did twist my shattered limbs further, I wouldn't know it. My eyes are closed, I'm not here, and I'm listening to the drums, the guitar, and the vocals of my soundtrack... Green Day sings me to half-consciousness.

Out of body and out of mind
Kiss the demons out of my dreams

Drain the pressure from the swelling
This sensation's overwhelming
Give me a long kiss goodnight
And everything will be alright
Tell me that I won't feel a thing
So give me novacaine

---

I know he's in the room and I hate him for being here. He fills the white room with his Darkness and I hate him.

"You're awake. Don't think you can fool me. I know you don't sleep."

"Why?" I hiss, my eyes still closed. I don't want to look at him.

"Why--"

"WHY?"

He pauses. "It is because you will not let yourself sleep. You force yourself to stay awake, for what reason I do not know..."

"Liar.." I murmur. My face gets hot, but I know I won't let him see me cry.

"Open your eyes, at least, Fade. It's never good to run from your problems."

I don't want to look at him. I just want to see the darkness behind my eyes, not HIS Darkness. I just want to hate him, and looking at him makes that harder.

He sighs, his patience with me wearing thin. "Fade..." I can hear in his voice that I am testing him and I know I don't want him to become angry and make a scene in my hospital room. I open my eyes and look at the Darkness in the corner.

His amethyst eyes glow dully with his distate and displeasure. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of meeting them with my green irises. Instead I trace the folds of his cloak with my eyes and think about how many strange looks he must have gotten when he walked in here. While some might have been off-put by his strange eyes, pale skin and dark locks, others were possibly drawn in. I do not let myself be drawn in. I stare at his cloak and stop when I begin to stare through it. I can't think.

"How do you feel?" He asks so nonchalantly that I can't help but answer in the same fashion.

"I feel fine, thank you."

"Perhaps you should have some orange juice. It will make you feel better."

"I don't want any goddamn orange juice!" I spit, my nonchalant air slipping a bit.

"Watch your tongue." He catches me in his gaze, and I melt into my pillow.

"Cole..." I whisper. His eyelids fall and he advances toward me.

"Fade... You brought this on yourself."

"I can't feel it. I can't feel anything." I hear my voice crack. I don't want to give into him, but his eyes took me when I wasn't trying to fight. But I don't think I could ever fight him and win...

He smiles because he knows what I'm thinking. "You cannot fight me, Fade, so do not try."

"I should be in pain--" I say through clenched teeth. "I should be dead."

"But you're not." He cuts me off and sighs, pale hands retreating into the folds of his cloak. "Fade, you must come to terms with who you are. You must accept the fact that you will not die as other mortals do. Your body will heal you quickly because of the power you possess. You cannot just hurl yourself off of buildings and expect to be greated by a peaceful state of nothingness. You are meant to train, to protect, to destroy--"

"I can't do it anymore, Cole. I can't be your page, I can't learn from you. It's your fault I'm this way--" Tears fill my eyes and I think every curse I know as I choke back tears.

"Fade, you cannot blame me for your misfortunes. And you cannot try to escape them by jumping, either. You're not allowed to jump. There is no way you can possibly leave me and you know that."

I cry and I can't stop. I don't feel my own fingertips when I brush my tears away.

"Don't deny me." He says it softly but there is a cold, sterness in his voice angers me.

"What do you know?!" I sob. I stare hatefully into his deep, purple eyes. "You don't have to be like this! You don't have to be what I am! You're not cursed like I am!"

"We're all cursed, Fade, every damn one of us, and I won't have you ever say you're above the others." I fall silent and hiccup. My sobs are dry but I can't stop shaking. He looks at me from under his dark locks and produces his hands to brush back his bangs.

"I won't let you think for a second that being the Light makes you some kind of martyr. I did not raise you to think that way. Weall BURN... You and I... We merely feel it more."

"I don't feel anything," I murmur bitterly.

"You can feel your power, and that is enough," comes his dry answer. "You feel the Light, your burden, as I feel my Dark. I do know, Fade... If anyone knows what you know... It is me."

I hate him more but I fall back on my pillow, exhausted. He reaches out and strokes my hair. Normally, I would close my eyes and pretend that he wasn't touching me because I can forget that I don't feel it that way. But this time, I stare at his long fingers as they caress my cheek and watch the touch over and over until I can imagine the feeling.

"Light-Fade... You can never leave me."

I know.