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The storm had begun before dusk, rolling in from the distant hills with a low, warning growl. By nightfall it had become a furious thing, clawing at the trees and shaking loose branches across the road. Carlisle had been on his way back from the village when he heard it: the scream of horses, the splinter of wood, the unmistakable sound of catastrophe.
He froze for only a second before he ran.
Mud clung to his boots, rain lashed at his face, but he didn’t stop. Something inside him twisted sharply, a terrible certainty blooming in his chest. He pushed harder, lungs burning, heart pounding.
When he reached the clearing, he saw what remained of the carriage. One wheel had shattered entirely. The rest lay overturned beside the crushed underbrush. And you were there, half beneath a fallen beam, your body still, breath shallow.
He stumbled to his knees beside you.
“Please,” he whispered before he even touched you, as if saying it might reverse what he feared. “Please open your eyes.”
You did, but slowly, like it cost you something each time your lashes lifted. Your face was pale beneath the rain, blood mixing with water along your skin in thin, dark rivulets. Carlisle’s hands trembled when he brushed your hair back, his fingertips icy with fear.
“You came,” you breathed, so faint he had to lean close to hear you.
“I’m here,” he said, his voice barely stable. “I’m right here.”
He tried to lift the beam, but you cried out softly, and he stopped immediately. Panic surged through him when he saw the crimson staining the ground, the wound he couldn’t mend with bandages or pressure or desperate hope.
“It should have been me,” he whispered, pressing one shaking hand to your cheek. “Not you.”
Your lips twitched with something like a broken smile. “You always say that.”
He swallowed hard, throat tight, vision blurring with rain and tears alike. “I can get help. I’ll carry you back to town. Someone will know what to do.”
But even as he said it, even as he slid an arm beneath you, your body sagged against him in a way that told him you no longer believed such promises. His heart rattled in his chest.
“Carlisle,” you whispered. “Stay.”
The single word stopped him entirely. He lowered himself onto the soaked ground, pulling you gently into his lap. Your head rested against his shoulder, your breath brushing weakly against his neck. He held you as though he could keep your soul anchored simply by refusing to let go.
Cold crept into your fingers first. He noticed it when your hand tried to grip his coat, only to falter halfway. He closed both of his around yours, trying to give you warmth he did not truly have to offer.
“Do you remember,” you murmured, each word softer than the one before it, “when you said I was the reason you wanted to become better? Kinder?”
He choked on a breath. “I meant every word.”
“You will be,” you said faintly. “Even without me.”
A sound left him then, something quiet and wounded, torn from a place he didn’t know he had. “Don’t say it like that. Don’t talk as if you’re already gone.”
Your gaze lifted to him, searching his face. Rain dripped from your lashes, or maybe tears. Your fingers curled weakly against his chest.
“I want to remember you like this,” you said. “Human. Warm. Trying so hard.”
He bowed his head, pressing his forehead to yours. “You’re not leaving me. Not tonight.”
Your eyelids fluttered, heavy and reluctant. “I don’t want to,” you whispered.
He held you tighter, arms encircling you as though he could shield you from the storm, from fate, from the slow unraveling happening beneath his hands. Your breathing began to falter, uneven and thin. Each inhale took longer to find, each exhale shorter than the last.
“Look at me,” he begged. “Please look at me.”
You forced your eyes open one last time. They found his, full of fear and love and the unbearable grief of a young man who had not yet learned how to lose.
“I’m not afraid,” you murmured. “Not if you’re here.”
Your fingers loosened. Your body stilled. Your breath slipped away with the rain.
Carlisle stayed frozen, his arms around you, his cheek pressed to your hair. The storm raged on, but he didn’t move. He held you long after the world went quiet, long after the warmth left your skin, long after the night swallowed the last of the light.
He stayed until dawn.
And in the centuries that followed, he never forgot the weight of you in his lap, the softness of your final words, or the moment he realized that immortality would never protect him from the oldest human pain in the world.