A/N: Hey guys! I have been writing this on and off for a while now (most of it being written at like 3 in the morning =P), and figured it was about time I posted something up on this website, so here we go. This is also my first Fanfic, so plz go easy on me! And yes I am aware that this is one long-ass prologue, but just bear with me, ok?

Never Let Me Go- A Vampire Academy Fanfic:

Prologue:

My breath came out in strangled gasps, my lungs burning with such an intensity that under any other circumstance, I would have thought it excruciating. But right now my discomfort didn't matter. I didn't matter. Right now all that mattered was Lissa, and getting her out alive. They come first. The very words that had been drilled into my head since the moment I could think flashed through my mind, over and over, urging me to run faster.

Branches whipped past me, lashing out at my exposed skin, and I winced at the open gashes they left behind. My foot clipped a tree root and I cried out, splaying my hands out in front of me as I prepared to fall.

Only I didn't.

A hand snaked around my neck, yanking me upright by my collar, stopping me from falling face-first into the dirt. I turned to mutter a thank-you, but was rewarded with a solid shove to the back. The push was quick and unexpected, and sent me stumbling several feet before I managed to regain my balance.

"Move it, Hathaway!" Hans barked, "We don't have time for your lack of co-ordination!"

A bitchy retort came to my lips, and I had to bite it back with a considerable effort. I couldn't afford to go mouthing off at someone like Hans. He was the Head Guardian of the Moroi Court. The top dog. And no matter how big an asshole he was, he called the shots around here, and I had to accept that.

Shaking off my anger and mild humiliation, I broke into a sprint once again, desperate to stay with the group. The other guardians-I didn't know any of their names- parted wordlessly to let me up front beside Hans. The very moment I sensed strigoi, he wanted to be the first to know.

"Anything?" Hans whispered.

Still panting heavily, I assessed by body's current state. My lungs were burning, I was sweating like a pig, and now that I thought about it, I did have a slight head-ache coming on, but I felt no strigoi-induced nausea. I shook my head in response. He nodded sharply, and swerved abruptly as we rounded another corner of the dense forest. I skidded to the right after him, narrowly missing a tree. The other guardians followed, their footsteps virtually silent with a show of stealth I had yet to master.

I smirked. With any luck, we might reach the warehouse undetected. The odds were stacked high against us-afterall, there were only 10 guardians in my group, of about three groups in total- and god knew the element of surprise would be the only advantage we could hope for.

Just like that, my confidence shattered, and the nausea hit me full force. I doubled over gagging, and Hans skidded to a halt, alarmed. Ear piercing shrieks sliced through the forest's once-peaceful silence and black figures spilled from the shadows. I ripped my stake from its sheath as one of the strigoi charged towards me, her movements nothing more than a blur, and launched me against a far rock. I hit the boulder hard, pain exploding at the back of my skull, my stake flying out of my hand on impact. Gasping, I reached around, gingerly touching the back of my head. My hand came back slick with blood. I looked up just in time to see the strigoi walking towards me, her dark hair whipping about behind her, her crimson eyes glinting with an unholy light. A feeling of hopelessness began to swell up in my chest until I noticed something gleaming out of the corner of my eye. My stake.

Baring her fangs in a feral snarl, the strigoi swung at me again. I threw myself to the side, narrowly missing her blow as I fumbled for my stake. I swerved to face my attacker as she launched herself at me once again. My right hand lashed out, plunging the stake into her chest. The strigoi screamed in fury, and crumpled to the ground in a heap, the haunting red light fading from her eyes as she went limp. I winced at the sucking noise the stake made as I ripped it from the corpse, and watched as blood spilled from the gory crevice on her chest. I shuddered and leapt to my feet in search of Hans. I surged forward, passing the other guardians as they fought their creatures of the night. I found Hans in an instant, sparring with a strigoi on the other side of a tiny clearing.

To say Hans is an adequate fighter is one hell of an understatement. In the time it took me to get my ass half-kicked and eventually stake one strigoi, Hans had already slain two and was working on his third. Snarling, the strigoi leapt at Hans, arms outstretched, aiming straight for his neck. Hans tried to throw himself out of the way, but was no match for the strigoi's speed. They hit the ground hard, and Hans struggled frantically, desperately trying to wrench himself from the strigoi's bone-crushing grip. I watched, frozen with shock, as Hans' right arm shot out from underneath him, stake in hand, in one last attempt to save himself. The strigoi gripped his arm and wrenched it back at an impossible angle. A sickening crack erupted through the forest and Hans screamed. I knew instantly that it was broken.

But that one agonizing scream was it took for me to regain my mobility. Tightening my grip on my stake, I darted forward and sunk my stake into the strigoi's back, all the way to the hilt. The strigoi spasmed, its limbs flailing wildly before it finally went still, and I knew I had struck home. Panting, I wrenched my stake from between the strigoi's shoulder blades and shoved the corpse off Hans' shivering form. Gingerly, Hans got to his feet, nursing his injured arm. He gazed down at me momentarily, his usually stern brown eyes regarding me with a look of such gratitude, I was stunned into silence. But just like that, the moment was over, and Hans' eyes turned dour once again, and we stood in silence while he racked his brain for something practical and Hans-like for him to say. Finally he settled with a "Good work Hathaway.", patted me awkwardly on the shoulder, then turned and kicked the strigoi's body into a pile with his other two kills, and let out a pain-filled gasp when his arm jerked. I trudged closer to him as he bent down to retrieve his stake.

"Show me your arm." He stood up slowly and reluctantly held out his arm, and I gasped. All around his elbow, where the strigoi had gripped his arm, was completely shattered. Flesh sunk in in some spots, whilst tiny lumps, which I could only assume were bone fragments, swelled upwards, peppering his entire elbow. The entire area was covered with bruises. My gaze then travelled up to his shoulder, which was sticking out at an unnatural angle. The strigoi had ripped it right out of its socket. I touched it gingerly and Hans hissed.

"Sorry!" I flinched, and then decided it was best if I didn't touch it.

Hans mouth twitched into a gentle smile. "Never mind me, Hathaway, I'll be fine." A bunch of protests rose to my lips, but I pushed them back. Now was not the time to argue. Grimacing, Hans turned to access the rest of the group, and his eyes clouded over with despair. Strewn about the tiny clearing, were bodies, or what remained of them. Big hunks of flesh, polluting the once beautiful landscape. And blood, so much blood. But it wasn't the strigoi that we were mourning, it was the dhampirs.

Five blood-soaked dhampirs, torn to pieces, their eyes staring lifelessly up at the night sky which they could no longer see. Or ever would again.

"Jesus christ." Hans whispered, before rushing over to the remaining three dhampirs, of which I knew from one glance, would soon be two. They both sat down by the dying guardian, one of them-a woman- had his head cradled in her lap. The other guardian-a man- had his hand rested on the expiring guardian's shoulder. Hans dropped to his knees by the mans side, still cradling his bad arm. I stood back from them all, feeling detached from the scene. I could tell from a glance that they had all known one another for a very long time, whilst I didn't even know the dying man's name. So I stood back and gave them space while they said goodbye. Hans grabbed hold of the dying man's hand, his voice desperate, "Hang in there, Logan, you can pull through."

And how we all wished he would, but there was no hope. The bones around his heart were completely crushed. His breathing was shallow, and with each intake of breath came a gurgling noise from deep within his lungs. Logan was literally drowning in his own blood. Blood trickled out of his mouth as he entered another coughing fit. The only thing Hans could do was hold the man's hand, and stay with him until his last dying breath.

Logan convulsed one last time, and then went still. Hans let out a shaky sigh, and let go of the mans hand. He reached out and gingerly closed the dead man's eyes. He died a fighter, a noble death. They all did. And I know that when it is my time, whenever that will be, that this is the way I want to go.

The three living guardians stayed huddled in a group, their whispering too low for me to understand. However, there was one word I did manage to make out.

Dimitri.

Even hearing his name caused a sharp pang in my heart, and my hand flicked involuntarily up to my chest. Even after kidnapping Lissa and sending a wave of strigoi out to drag me back to him, only so he could kill me, I still loved him. I still loved him because I knew that somewhere deep within his demonic mind, the real Dimitri is down in there somewhere, trapped, and begging to be set free. And after tonight, he will be.

Slowly, my internal pain disappeared, only to be replaced by the most horrible physical pain I had ever felt in my life. I fell to the ground, screaming. Pain flared out, burning through my veins with such an intensity it took me a moment to realize that it wasn't my pain. It was Lissa's. Somewhere in that warehouse, Lissa was being burned alive. Now desperate, I pushed away Lissa's pain and sealed the walls of my mind, shutting her out. I got to my feet so fast I nearly smashed into Hans.

"What's wrong?" Hans asked, his voice stern yet confused.

"Lissa! She's in the warehouse, and she's burning!" I screamed, desperately trying to push past him, but he gripped me with his good arm.

"Let go, god dammit! I've got to get to her!" I was just about to wrench my arm from his grip, when I felt an all-too-familiar nausea stir within my gut.

"Strigoi.." I whispered, "Hans, there's more strigoi coming."

"How many?" He demanded.

"I don't know," I sighed, trying to focus, "two...maybe three, I don't know Hans, but they're coming fast." With a solid shove with his good arm, he propelled me forward toward the direction the warehouse was in.

"Go now and find Vasilisa. The bond will lead you to straight to her." I turned back to him and the other two guardians.

"But your fucking arm is broken! You can't fight now!"

"Wanna bet on that, Hathaway?" he asked, although it clearly wasn't a question he expected me to answer, "Go now, before she ends up dead!"

That was all the encouragement I needed. I turned, my hair arching out around me, and sprinted toward the warehouse.

After stumbling through the thick forest undergrowth, I finally reached the warehouse. I sprinted up to the door as fast as I could and jiggled the handle. It was locked.

"Fuck!" I spat. Sighing through my tightly clenched teeth, I took a couple steps backwards. When it came to kicking down doors, especially thick ones with steel hinges, I didn't have much experience, but hey, practice makes perfect. My right boot sailed out from beneath me, hitting the door with explosive force. The hinges groaned and wood splintered. My muscles tensing, I kicked again. More wood splintered, and the door groaned as it was ripped from its hinges, and came crashing to the floor. I stepped inside and what I saw almost made my jaw drop.

Inside the warehouse was a war zone. Everywhere the dhampirs and strigoi faced off in one big fight to the death, sidestepping and circling one another in a hostile dance. Blood curdling screams and cries echoed throughout the building, loud enough to make me wince. Already bodies littered the ground, a decent amount of both dhampir and strigoi, some staked, others with the their throats ripped out. Even a few stray limbs were scattered about the room. But regardless of how they died, there was always blood. So much blood, seeping out onto the concrete, like pools of liquid ruby. Suddenly, a strigoi noticed me in the doorway and swung at me, snarling. I dodged the blow and feinted to the right. The strigoi fell for it, and I ripped my stake from its sheath, swerved to the left and plunged it into her heart. She screeched in agony and fell to the floor, unmoving. I looked up the the other fights around me. Many of the strigoi were awkward with their strength and speed, and none of them had any fighting experience. They were all newly made clearly for this occasion and mostly human, and all incredibly inept with their powers, and that gave us one hell of an advantage. I had yet to see any dhampir-turned strigoi, thank god. The last thing we all needed was to come across a strigoi who knew how to fight.

I tore my stake from the strigoi's chest, and broke into a sprint, my boots pounding against the concrete as I followed the bond through winding hallways to Lissa. As I grew nearer, her pain got stronger and soon I was gritting my teeth to keep from crying out. I reached the end of the hallway, her pain now pounding in my skull and flaring out through my body, and wrenched open the door. What I then saw made my eyes go so wide I was surprised they didn't pop right out of my skull.

The centre of the room was ablaze, a flaming vortex swirling about with such control that I knew instantly was moroi magic. My gaze traveled across the room, past all the fighting dhampirs and strigoi, to set on Christian, his hands whirling about as he tried desperately to keep it under control, sweat pouring down his face. However it wasn't the fire that had me in such shock, it was the two people that were smack bang in the centre of the inferno. The two people whom I loved more than anything else on this earth.

Dimitri screamed and writhed in pain as flames licked at his chalky white skin, burning away a sickly amount of flesh as he desperately tried to both bat out the flames and protect himself from Lissa, his red eyes churning with rage. Lissa, who was just as badly burnt as he was, held a stake very tightly in her grip, her hands now all burnt and bloody from the flames, guiding it as she tried over and over again to pierce Dimitri's heart, but the blade never quite struck home.

"Oh my god...," my voice was barely audible as I stood there, frozen in shock. Suddenly, panic set in.

"Oh my god! LISSA!" I sprinted toward her, but she caught sight of me and sent a blast of compulsion through the bond.

No! Let me do this!

Her command hit me hard and I froze up instantly, unable to move. I just stood her, bewildered, until I managed to shake off the compulsion. She was too preoccupied to put any real force into the command, and and it only took me a few moments break it. But a few moments was all Lissa needed to seize her final chance. Tightening her grip on the stake, she put all the remaining energy she had into shoving it all the way through Dimitri's heart. The stake slid in awkwardly, clearing delivered by an inexperienced hand, but inexperienced or not, Lissa finally did it. The stake pierced his heart. And as it did, I felt the familiar bliss of her spirit magic flow through the bond as it did any other time when she performed a healing.

Except this was far more powerful than anything I had felt from her in my life. It was as if I had been struck by lightning, the powerful magic setting my nerves ablaze.

White light suddenly burst out around her, a light so bright that it made even the inferno look dull. It was as if someone had dropped the sun in the middle of the room. I screamed and fell to my knees, my hands shooting up to shield my eyes that I had a feeling was powerful enough to blind me. Judging from all the shrieks that echoed about the room, everyone was having a similar reaction.

For a few panic-filled moments, there was no bond anymore. I couldn't feel a single thing radiating from Lissa. No pain, fear, anger; nothing. What she had just done had overwhelmed our bond, numbing it completely.

Then just like that, the light vanished. It simply blinked out of existence, like a switch had been flipped. The room was silent, apart from a few small moans of confusion. That light must have toxic to strigoi eyes. It stung enough for me. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the dancing sparks from my vision. Slowly, so very slowly, my vision returned to me, and so did the bond.

Pure bliss surged through the bond, pumping my body with such pleasure I pressed my lips tightly together to keep from crying out. Finally, I looked up, and what held my gaze made my eyes swell up with tears of joy.

Lissa and Dimitri were on the floor, huddled up together. Both their clothes were singed from the fire. Angry red blotches marred Lissa's skin were the fire had struck her. Her hands and wrists were particularly bloody. I could see spots of gore where the fire had burnt skin completely away. Yet she seemed to be in no pain, nor did it affect the movement of her hands.

She was stroking Dimitri's hair.

While she sat upright, Dimitri lay sprawled around her, his head cradled in her lap. She ran her fingers tenderly through his hair, over and over again, as if she was comforting an infant. Her face, even blemished with the fire's merciless damage, was radiant and full of compassion.

From his previous state, back in the fire, I'd expected Dimitri to be singed and charred beyond recognition. But his now tanned skin was flawless, untouched by the fire's merciless flames. Finally, he turned his head to face me, and our eyes met. His eyes, a deep and beautiful dark brown, no longer bearing any sign of the red ring they had sported for the past few months, leaving behind big pools of gratitude, and despair.

A single tear slid down his cheek and lingered there, glistening like a liquid diamond.

And in that moment, I knew that everything I had done, every hardship I had endured, had been worth it.

And I was so preoccupied by this perfect scene that I hadn't noticed the battle start up again. I also hadn't noticed that there was a strigoi sneaking up right behind me. I didn't notice until it was too late, when he had knocked me out cold, thrown me over his shoulder and hauled me out into the night.

I resurfaced not long after, and was immediately hit with a tidal wave of agony flaring up all through my legs. I didn't have to look down at them to know they were broken. I simply lay gasping, my back freezing against the cold dirt and fallen leaves as I stared up at the night sky, the stars glinting in a way that seemed to be mocking me. Very slowly, I tried to get up, and pain hit me like a wrecking ball, and opened my mouth to scream. But it didn't come out.

Suddenly a hand flashed out of nowhere and clamped over my mouth.

"Shh, darling, we can't have any of that now, can we?"

I turned my head toward the voice, and was met by a pair of red-rimmed eyes so cold and evil there was no possible way they could've ever been human. The strigoi smirked at me, took his hand away from my mouth and grasped my shoulders, pinning me back down.

"M-my legs-" I began.

"Are broken, yes." He finished, plastering on another devious smile, "and I hardly broke a sweat doing it. You dhampirs really aren't as tough as you think you are." He stared down at me for a moment.

"What are you waiting for?" I rasped, "just kill me already."

He laughed, a cruel sound that sounded wrong as it came from his mouth. "Oh I have no intentions of killing you, of that I can assure you."

I was silent for a long moment, struggling to remain calm. Accepting my fate, I whispered brokenly, "Why me?"

"Because you are the perfect opportunity."

"For what?" I choked out between gasps.

"Revenge." His lips twisted into a cold and unnatural smile. I stared at him.

"Belikov's been walking all over me, treating me like a piece of shit," he practically spat out the last word, "Acting as though he's top dog, even though is one of the most recently awakened we've got. I'll admit it, there's no way I can possibly beat him in a fight, but now that I've got my hands on Belikov's bitch, this will do just fine."

"I don't understand." I mumbled.

The strigoi snorted, "Whenever Belikov isn't giving orders or killing people, he's obsessing over you. He made it perfectly clear that no one was to harm you during this invasion. That you were his. And sure, killing you would piss him off, but awakening you, however, would destroy him."

"Bastard." I spat out. He chuckled, and ever so delicately, slid a hand under my knees, and under the back of my neck, pulling me into his lap. I panicked, thrashing out despite the crippling pain, in a desperate attempt to get away. He crushed me against his chest, his grip as strong as a vice, and I cried out. Using one arm to hold me still, he used the other hand to gently turn my head sideways and lent down until his lips were at my ear.

"Welcome to your new life, Rosemarie Hathaway."

He sighed deeply, his breath on my skin a moment before I felt it. His fangs tearing my delicate skin, blood cascading down my throat and into my attackers mouth. But the pain of his teeth ripping apart my flesh was nothing compared to the unbearable, crippling pain of my blood being sucked from my body. It spread like poison, starting at my throat, the lingering pain pulsed through my entire being, throbbing with each beat of my heart. Finally the endorphins kicked in, and my blood-curdling screams then turned into moans. Drowning in a mixture of pain and pleasure, I stopped fighting it, and simply lay still until he was done defiling my body.

Finally, after what felt like eons, he stopped. Confused, I looked up at him wearily just in time to see him bite open his own wrist. Blood gushed out of the already healing wound. Gripping the back of my neck once again, he lifted my head slightly and put his bloody wrist to my lips. His immortal blood trickled down my throat, violating my body. However, I had barely gotten a few mouthfuls when I heard muffled footsteps from a distance.

Suddenly about half a dozen guardians burst into the clearing that I now lay in, all of them armed and dangerous. Upon sighting me, some gasped and froze up. Others surged forward to my aid. The strigoi shrieked and let go of me, and I tumbled from his lap into the dirt.

I heard muffled voices and people screaming my name in an attempt to get to me, but to no avail. All I did, all I could do, was lay there as the voices faded away and I slipped away into oblivion.

A/N: So what did you guys think? R&R!