Disclaimer: This goes for the whole story, I own nothing!

IMPORTANT: So I have changed this story yet again. The plot changed alot in my head so the beginning chapters no longer fit, I wouldn't have been able to carry on with the last version because I didn't like it, you wouldn't have liked it and I would have just run myself into the ground writing a story I no longer enjoyed. I hope you understand my reasons for re-writing.

For Cirque du Freak, the story starts in the middle of Sons of Destiny: after Darren kills Steve and they are in the river; for Twilight it is set about two thirds of the way into Eclipse, before the 'battle-that-isn't-really-a-battle-at-all' and just after the graduation party.

With thanks to: My amazing beta With The What Now
Song suggestion: Sick Cycle Carousel by Lifehouse
Chapter 1: In Extremis
Darren POV

And then, in the lonely, watery darkness of the river, as all must do when the Grim Reaper calls – I died.

There was white. And there was only white. It encompassed me, surrounded me, suffocated me. It was bright on my heightened senses but not uncomfortably so, like it should have been. I blinked a few times, wondering where my body and my mind were, if I even had a body right now. The experimental wiggle of my toes sure felt like I did.

Was this the lake of souls? I could imagine going crazy in this place, the whiteness of it all would do my head in after a while. Was this paradise? Heaven? Hell even?

"Darren! Darren!" I propped myself up on my elbows, expecting pain that didn't arrive.

"Mr Crepsley…?" And there he was, in all his hideous, singed ginger glory. "Is that you?" I asked, sure now that this was some sort of after life since my ex-mentor was also/should have been dead.

I realised that there wasn't actually a floor. In fact, I was lying on something that wasn't there… but I could feel it and it was the thing that was holding me up. It was both there and not there in the exact same moment, much like the whiteness that surrounded me: both crushing and none existent at the same time. It was hard to think about so I concentrated on more pressing matters.

Mr Crepsley was gripping my shoulders and looking at me like he couldn't believe I was here either. During the time we had spent apart, I'd almost forgotten how ugly he was. It was hard to look at him but I couldn't pull my eyes away.

"Where are we?"

"I do not know." Mr Crepsley answered.

"Dead?" I asked, my voice surprisingly calm.

"Again, I do not know."

There was a rippling sensation over my skin like I was being watched. It was hard to gauge distance but Mr Tiny was walking towards us, both taking too long and arriving far too quickly for my liking. He looked positively furious, his body giving off an odd red glow.

"So," he hissed, poking the remains of my wet t-shirt with a scorching hot finger, "You thought you could trick me, did you? You planned this from the beginning, as soon as you found out! Didn't you? Didn't you?" He enunciated each sentence with another little jab in the chest.

"And to think you were always the one I wanted to win, but you double crossed me, didn't you?" He was jabbing at me with every word now. "This is my game!" He yelled, "Only I can change the rules!"

"What do you mean?" I yelled back.

"I even brought you your little friend here." He gestured to Mr Crepsley as you would to a stray dog.

"What are you on about? I'm dead!" I shouted in bewilderment.

"Oh, far from it." He hissed again. "You shall be punished for your deceit my son, that I can promise!" His declaration left me without a response but I wouldn't have been able to say it anyway.

In the split second after he finished speaking, the 'floor' that I was/wasn't standing on gave away and I plummeted downwards, my mouth forced open with surprise.

Both Mr Crepsley and I were thrown into the same tree wherever we landed. It wasn't old and strong enough yet so it buckled and fell backwards from the impact, nearly taking out a few others along the way. I both felt and heard my shoulder dislocating and then relocating itself at the wrong angle, my body went into spasm from the excruciating pain but my mouth wouldn't work the way I wanted it to, producing only feeble moans.

Mr Crepsley's body was slumped next to mine, our legs tangled together.

We were in some type of forest consisting mainly of pine trees covered in squishy green moss. It was eerily quite after the falling of the tree though my oversensitive ears would have been able to make out the small rustlings of animals in the undergrowth if they hadn't been overridden by the agony. I thought Larten had been knocked unconscious until his eyes opened.

We sat there, watching each other for a good ten minutes, breathing laboured, joints clicking at any attempted movement then groans of pain. Finally, using the surrounding branches for support, I tried to heave myself up off the ground but my deadened left arm was unresponsive from the elbow down and the pain in my right shoulder was too intense for it to be put to any purpose. My clothes were wet and my sodden hair dripped into my eyes, the chill of the water and a strong breeze that carried our scent downwind made me shiver.

The pain and the fatigue were so strong right now that death would have been a relief. But the relief was already on it's way for me, my semi-cognitive hand was clutching the gaping hole in my stomach in a failing attempt to minimise blood loss. I didn't know how long it would take for me to bleed to death in this state.

"What a pair we make." Said Mr Crepsley and chuckled dryly, he placed a hand on my knee (which surprisingly didn't hurt that much). It seemed that he wasn't as injured as myself although his shredded palm left blood marks on my trousers. It also seemed that he hadn't realised the extent of my current situation.

And since death seemed so imminent for me despite Mr Tiny's words, I knew that I should try to enjoy with these last few minutes of peace I had left with my old un-dead mentor without worrying him. It took effort but I plastered on a strained, glad smile and raised my shaking hand to place it atop of his. It took much more effort than should have been necessary.

"I missed you Sire." He said stiffly and hugged me to him tightly. The pain forced my mouth open in a silent scream that came out as a wheeze.

"I missed you too." I mumbled once he let me go, my body rocked back limply without any input of my own "Mangy, old bat." I croaked, trying another weak smile; I couldn't feel my facial muscles enough to tell if it worked. I rested my head back and closed my eyes, trying to find peace in this last moment but there were too many things I needed to say and do for me to find comfort.

"Some more scars there I see." He commented lightly but I didn't have the energy to re-open my eyes. "You are taller too. And broader how long has it been since I-?"

"I don't really know." I cut him off. "A year and a half maybe?" I could feel his gaze on me, no doubt trying to see how I could have aged that much in such a short amount of time. "The purge." I answered to his unasked question, it was a struggle to get my words out. There was no response so I assumed he'd nodded or done something to that effect.

"So you are a full vampire now?" Mr Crepsley asked. I started to shake my head but the pain travelled down my neck into my shoulder and I stopped.

"I was still going through it when I died…sort of died…" I corrected myself as an after thought and forcibly made my eyes open to peek sideways at him. He was nodding. My toes and fingers were starting to go numb and there was a tingling sensation in my lips. My end was coming, I could feel it yet I clung stubbornly to the last shreds of my life to spend more time with the man who had become more of a father figure to me than my biological father.

My faltering heartbeats felt precious now they were so numbered. I think I preferred my earlier death – if that made any sense at all. Before, I was so pumped full of adrenalin, I was caught up in the fight and though it was my personal choice to die, it was an obligation because the other option was unspeakable. I wasn't given the time to regret anything and I felt in control because I had decided to let Steve stab me, now I was waiting for the end. And we all know how bad waiting for something is. I had the time to think now of all the things I'd never be able to do.

Thank you, I wanted to say, thank you for everything you've done for me. You've been given a second chance, whatever life this, wherever we are, please do something with it, enjoy it, because I won't be able to. The words crouched under my tongue but my fatigued brain couldn't find the controls to make them leave. My lips were numb now and my teeth rattled around inside my skull, chattering uselessly from the cold.

"Larten," I whisper-said, licking my suddenly parched lips and forcing the words out despite the haziness that felt like a cloud had taken up residence inside my mind.

"Shhh!" He cut me off holding a hand up in the general motion for silence. But I needed to say this to him, before I wouldn't be able to.

"Thank y-"

He shushed me again so I tried my last little speech for a third time but there was no volume to my voice and my mouth opened sluggishly, allowing me only an incomprehensible slur. There was a black spot obscuring half of the vision from my right eye, it slowly grew in size. That growing blackness terrified me, because it was my timer, it told me how many mere seconds I had left until the eclipse of the blackness over my eyes would be complete and I would reach my final end.

I briefly considered if this was what Mr Tiny had meant by punishment, sending me off to all different scenarios to spend only a few minutes there where I would experience the terror of dying over and over again. Because dying was terrifying. There was time to think and regret and feel sorry and be strangely disappointed.

"I can hear voices." Whispered Mr Crepsley. I could only just hear his voice over the ringing in my ears but didn't try to listen to these voices. It made me wonder again where we – soon to be just he – were, we could be on another planet for all I knew, another universe, who knows how many little domains Mr Tiny had created to wreak his havoc in. The trees looked similar to those back on Earth but other life forms could look like anything for all I knew.

I forced my eyes open, not remembering when I'd closed them, the black shape was still there but as I blinked it changed, becoming smaller, then larger, then smaller again. I realised the view was slanted for some reason and the pain in my shoulder told me it was because I'd slumped down the trunk a little. I couldn't remember when this had happened either.

My hand felt warm with the blood as it trickled out of me. My life line, pulsing through my fingers; slipping away from me onto the cold damp floor.

Mr Crepsley was whispering something in my ear and I had to concentrate hard to hear it over the ringing. "-wary about other humans but we…-dical atten…-ly hope…-on, I…-you up."

My mind was wandering along with my eyes, they gravitated towards the sky which seemed very far away right now. The tops of the spindly trees swayed with the strong breeze, creaking ominously as if every single one of them was about to collapse at the same time. It was making me dizzy but I was smiling dopily at what could be my last view of the sky, so dull and grey and so very, very beautiful.

The throbbing pain that I had accepted turned into a intense, stabbing pain as something tugged harshly on my left arm. The pain brought me back from the edge, quietening the ringing in my ears and making the darkness over my eyes recede a little.

I wanted to tell whoever it was to stop because I wanted the release. And with every touch, there was more pain which brought me further and further away from that release.

Mr Crepsley was standing in front of me, gripping the tops of my arms and hauling me off the ground into vaguely standing position. My body was gasping from the pain but I wasn't in control of it anymore. My legs and fingers where still numb so I couldn't tell if I was standing on anything. I swayed when Mr Crepsley let my go, swayed like the so very spindly trees all around us but he caught me again before I would face-plant.

I blinked owlishly, still clutching the sodden remains of my ex-shirt to the hole in my stomach with red coloured fingers that I couldn't feel.

"Darren, Darren?" Mr Crepsley asked, something in my mind registered that we were the same height now. "We need to move. Come on." He pulled my left arm round his shoulders which stretched out my side and therefore my wound. I moaned.

The sound of my own pain gave me back my drifting mind though my eyeballs were still nomadic in their sockets. It made me dizzy again and I thought I was going to puke.

I coaxed my paralysed legs into a indistinct stumble which left me sweating and wobbly. Mr Crepsley was more dragging me than anything else but the hobble he'd acquired stretched my battered body out further so that every sag of my legs was a fresh wave of pain. And that pain was the only thing keeping me in consciousness. It gave me back my sight and my hearing and the feeling was returning to my legs and fingers.

I realised that he had puncture marks all over his legs, not as deep as if he had landed on the stakes fully, but where the tips had penetrated his skin. It made me curious as to how Mr Tiny would have 'saved' us but I pushed the thought away for now.

The pins and needles started after a while. It started as a prickling sensation on my scalp that soon covered my entire body surface and made me feel like my skin was alive. Noises made themselves known to my ears, talking but my brain couldn't function enough to make anymore of them than background noise.

Only the change in light levels made me realise we'd reached a clearing. I tried to raise my hand to shield my eyes from the harsh glare of the overcast sky but it wouldn't respond so I made do with squinting. I could make out the rough shapes of two beings but they could have had three heads for all I cared right now.

Mr Crepsley was saying something to them but the ringing was back in my ears. The figures were moving, one seemingly too fast and the other seemingly too slow, they were heading towards us and the shapes turned into colours and then distinctly human looking faces. There was a girl and a really pale guy with strangely coloured hair though that could have been my eyes right now.

Mr Crepsley let go of me for a second but my feet couldn't feel the ground and my legs couldn't hold my weight. I tried to stop myself from falling but my arms wouldn't respond either so I fell to the floor like an overbalanced mannequin. I landed on my dislocated shoulder and the pain just blended into the rest.

I was rolled onto my back by foreign hands. Mr Crepsley was looming over my head but he was looking elsewhere, his mouth forming words which I could only partly hear. "Please…hospital…help…" Cold fingers were exploring the hole in my stomach just when I thought the pain couldn't get any worse.

"I…my father…"

But the rest was swallowed by the ringing.

I'd never much cared about the weather before but now as I gazed up at the unyielding clouds I wished for the sun, one last glimpse at that far away glowing ball of gas before I died. My last sight.

Mr Crepsley was still kneeling over me and I needed to let him know how much he'd done for me during my vampiric years. I needed him to know. He wasn't looking at me and my tongue lolled inside my mouth. I tried anyway.

"Th…" I licked my lips. "Th-nk…Th-k y-y-y…"

And I decided that this really was a worse way to die.