Asthenia
by Annaleise Marie & Nachos4Children
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A/N: I own a crappy six-year-old Toshiba Satellite that enjoys crashing at inopportune times. I do not, however, own Twilight.
This story will be told in rotating POVs. I know this annoys some people, and the first chapter is really bad for it. But it will calm down after this, to only one POV per chapter (it'll switch between Bella and Edward for the rest) so please bear with me for this one. :D
-Annaleise Marie
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(BPOV)
"Damned stupid toaster," I muttered, shaking the offending appliance and glaring into the slots. "Give me my waffle!" I was late to class already. No class should ever start at seven in the morning. And on top of that, my toaster would not just give me my Eggo and let me go. "L'eggo my Eggo!"
I was taken by surprise when I heard laughter and spun around quickly, my heart thudding. Jessica, my roommate, was leaning against the door frame of the kitchen, her stupid, perfect, botoxed lips pulled into a smirk.
I disliked Jessica, but well, I had kind of put off finding a place to live until the last minute, so it was between her and this guy named Mike Newton whose flier read "Only hot girls need apply."
Right, I'm so sure.
As it was, I had now been caught in my pyjamas, fighting with a toaster, quoting commercial lines, and scared out of my wits by Jessica.
I gripped the counter as my face flamed up and my eyes slid out of focus.
No... Not this again...
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(EPOV)
Music Appreciation is the bane of my existence. First off, as a music major, I clearly already have an appreciation for music. I do not need a class to teach me how to do it. Second, it starts at seven in the morning. If I live to be one hundred and eight, I am fully confident that I will not once have had the urge to be up at seven in the morning.
As the professor droned on and on about Salieri, I let my eyes wander around the room. God, this place was packed with the textbook definition of 'band geeks'. Not one girl worth noticing. This was going to be a dull class.
No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than the door to the lecture hall swung open and a whirlwind of a girl stumbled in. And I do mean stumbled. From my seat in the first row, close to the door (all the better to escape with), I saw her shoe catch on the threshold and she lurched forward slightly, catching herself before the barrelled into the professor's podium. She straightened up, sweeping her long brown hair out of her face as a blush coloured her cheeks, her eyes downcast.
She muttered an apology to the professor and dashed to the closest seat as the lecture continued. Two seats down from me, she opened her book and bent over it, allowing her hair to fall in a curtain over her face.
Well, from the brief flash of her face I saw, she sure beat out the dogs in this class. In fact, she was quite pretty. Maybe this class wouldn't be too bad after all.
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(BPOV)
Why was he looking at me? I mean, yeah, he saw me trip, but really, I wasn't that fascinating. I hadn't even fallen down! A stumble was worth a chuckle, maybe a joke, but really? Ten minutes of staring? Why won't he look away?
I tried to calm my nerves, to not let it bother me and fend off the rush of embarrassment. I couldn't let it happen here, of all places.
But despite that conviction, I felt it getting harder to focus, my head getting foggy.
Why won't he look away?
"What are you looking at, asshat?" I demanded, turning my head to hiss at him. He looked surprised and mildly embarrassed for a moment to be caught staring. Well... good. Now he can know how it feels.
Sadly, I wasn't going to get to see him experience it, as I felt the last bit of my energy drain away and I slumped forward on my desk.
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(EPOV)
If I was taken by surprise by her sudden outburst, it was nothing compared to my surprise when she suddenly collapsed onto her desk, her head buried in her book. What was with this girl?
She wasn't moving at all. There wasn't even a rise of her back or shoulders to indicate she was still breathing. But she had to be, right? I reached out with my foot and nudged her leg. No response.
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(BPOV)
Did he just kick me? What the fuck was his problem? The second I could move again, I was going to give him a good kick for doing this to me.
"Professor?" I heard him call out in a smooth, deep voice. "I think this girl just passed out or something."
Well no shit, I wanted to spit at him, but I couldn't make my voice work. I mean, he was wrong, but that is what it would look like to most people.
I heard the class go into an uproar and groaned internally. I hated when people managed to witness this. I had actually managed to avoid having it happen in public for about two years now, but something about that guy staring at me...
I felt a hand wrap around my wrist and fingers pressing into the pulse point there. No... that won't work... The hand moved and the fingers pressed to the side of my neck. Please, don't let them think...
"She doesn't have a pulse," I heard the professor gasp. No, no, no...
I had to calm down. I had to get out of this.
"Someone call 911!"
No... I'm not dead!
I tried to calm myself, to beat away the fear. All you have to do is calm down, Bella, and this will be over.
The noises in the room all started to blend together in a cloud of panic as I retreated into my mind.
Calm down.
I concentrated on moving my hand, just a finger. I concentrated solely on that, instead of the voices, the cries of panic, the guy next to me, much closer now, talking on the phone to the emergency response operator.
I concentrated on pulling in oxygen, even if my chest wouldn't move. I concentrated on slow breaths. I needed to move. I needed to blink. I needed to speak. I needed to do something to alert them that I was alive.
"I don't know, she just had a fit or something and then collapsed," the deep, snarky voice reported.
A fit? I did not have a fit you snarky bastard!
The room went quiet, save a few scattered gasps.
"Miss Swan?" the voice of the professor asked hesitantly.
Had I said that out loud?
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(EPOV)
"I did not... have a fit... you snarky... bastard."
I spun around to look at the girl as the professor gasped out her name. There was a moments pause when we all waited for her to answer, and then her hands slowly moved to brace against the desk and push herself into a sitting position.
"What?" I asked, taken by surprise. Hadn't she been dead a second ago? She took a deep breath before opening her mouth to speak in that same halting tone.
"I said... I didn't have.. a fit... you snarky bastard," she ground out. She took another deep breath and closed her eyes.
I was speechless. This girl had just been dead, and now here she was, sitting up and calling me a bastard.
My kind of girl.
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AN: I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! - Annaleise Marie