Well ok guys…this is it I guess. The final chapter. You should probably know just for fun that I've never finished a story before in my life – original or fanfic – so..this is like a moment for me…I may cry. All I can say really is that you guys have been fabulous, you really have. Everyone who's reviewed this little story or followed or favourited it – you are wonderful, fantastic, amazing people and I just adore all of you. So thank you, thank you very much. Just know that writing this story is one of my favourite things I've ever done and definitely a pretty big achievement in my opinion : )

Also, if anyone's interested, my next story will be the one about all the Benedict's and it will be called Superman. I'm thinking it'll probably be up by the end of next week so hopefully you'll check that out (though obviously don't if you don't want to, don't feel obliged to read my writing!) and I will be writing a sequel to Lucky Thirteen though I'm not even going to think about it until after my birthday (aka end of April).

And the chapter title of this story is a bit of a clue…I can think of one person who might get it but I'd be interested to know if the rest of you do so feel free to review with what you think it means : )

Disclaimer: I've spent sixteen chapters telling y'all that I don't own this thing…hopefully you've got that by now : )

This chapter is for all of you…I would list every single one of you but I'm not entirely sure anyone would want to read it.

Chapter Sixteen

Samson

Thirteen

(And we couldn't bring the columns down, we couldn't destroy a single one)

I don't know where I am. Don't know who I am. My head is full of fog; swirling and twisting and spinning around, blinding me, suffocating me. Up is down and down is up and I want to open my eyes to look around me but every time I try something snaps inside my head and I'm falling – down, down, down, down. It feels like years before I start clawing my way up again.

All I know – all I can remember, the only thought in my head that makes any sense whatsoever – is that I'm not dead. I should be, but I'm not. And I have no idea why.

I can feel my heart flickering inside my chest; struggling, straining, toiling to keep on beating, keep on hammering. It wants so badly to keep me alive, to keep the machine that is my body from shattering and breaking apart, piece by indispensable piece. And I can't understand that either. Why would anyone want to stay in this place? Stay in this dark and murky world, full of shadows and pain. If the end is coming, if rest and peace and emptiness is on its way – why is my body still at war with its mortality, still fighting to stay intact, stay alive?

I wish I could remember my name, just my name. Everything has a name, I think desperately to myself. A named thing has a meaning, has a purpose. Without mine I'm just a body, just a shell. I don't mind dying, but I don't want to die empty. I want to know it wasn't all just a waste.

Vick

(But if you loved me, why'd you live me? Take my body, take my body)

I will have nightmares about hospitals for the rest of my life. You would never have thought a building so full of people – doctors running up and down hallways, nurses bustling between beds, patients waiting for verdicts they're not sure they want to hear – could ever feel this totally, impossibly empty.

It's like living in a tomb.

And if this is a tomb, then I'm just a mourner – visiting the grave, trying to hold on for as long as I can. And Thirteen, Thirteen's a ghost. Her body might be in the hospital bed next to me, wrapped in a web of tubes and wires and a thousand different monitors but her mind's flown far away, somewhere I can't reach it, somewhere I can't bring it back.

I can't even feel her thoughts anymore, pressing up against mine. It's like she's already gone, like the beeping of the heart monitor, the rise and fall of her chest, is all just some hoax, some elaborate lie.

This is all your fault, my thoughts whisper night and day. This is what happens to men who're willing to give up their family, their little brothers. They lose everything they love until they're alone. Empty and alone.

This must be how Callum felt. Shattered. Broken. Ripped in two. I can feel the anger tearing at my insides, feel the hate spilling into my blood, the fury chasing my heart, forcing it to beat faster than I could imagine. He must have lost someone he loved, must have had her ripped from his side. As much as I hate myself for it, as much as I can feel just the thought of it sending waves of nausea from my head to my toes, I think I understand. I think I can just about comprehend what he did.

Because right now, I don't care about right and wrong, don't care about good and evil. I want the whole world to burn, want to tear the human race into shreds and cast them into the ashes for daring to be happy, to be healthy – to be in love – whilst the one person who means more to me than anything else is wasting away in a hospital bed, ripped apart for a second time for no better reason than she feels like she has to fix everything that's wrong with life, that everything's her fault.

And yet…I must be going insane, my soul must be sinking closer to hell with every passing minute because no matter how much I understand Callum – how completely I can relate to what he must have felt – I do not have it in me to feel sorry for him. I will never forgive and I will never forget. And I replay killing him over and over again in the back of my head, and it's the only time I feel remotely alive.

Thirteen

(Don't wake me cos I'm dreaming, of angels on the moon)

There are faces in the fog. Eyes staring through the whiteness, hands reaching out to me. A woman with thick red hair and tired-looking eyes, a tall blonde boy with scars on his wrists but a wry smile on his face.

Mom, my thoughts whisper. Charlie.

I don't know who they are, don't know how I know their names. But as the boy steps forward and wraps me in his armsI know one thing for sure, for definite.

I want to go with them.

Vick

(Oh this is all for you, don't wanna hide the truth)

I keep the bullet they pulled out of Thirteen's chest in a jar in my pocket. When we first came to Denver hospital three days previously it was on the bedside table, but Trace tried to take it with him whilst I was asleep so now it lives in my pocket, the plastic digging into my skin with every breath I take.

If Thirteen dies, this will be all I have left. The only souvenir of a life that altered mine so entirely, that burnt brighter than the sun despite everything she'd been through whilst I was content to let mine fade out, dim down, die. The only part of her I'll get to keep.

I push a stray strand of hair from her face, tangle my fingers through her girls the way I did when I first kissed her. We didn't get enough of those moments – not enough kisses, not enough time at all. I wonder how long I'll be able to remember them if she dies – how long I'll be able to feel her in my arms, fitting there perfectly, not too small, not too fragile and yet still delicate, still the most precious thing I would ever get to touch.

I wonder if all I'll be able to remember is the way she looks now – wasted, trashed, fading away. Pale as a skeleton, barely breathing, so still, so quiet. If I could keep her with me just by holding onto her hand, I would stay here forever, I would wait by her bedside until time turned me into a statue. I would never let go.

And yet no matter what I do, no matter how tightly I hold on, she's flickering and dying before my eyes – falling farther and farther away from me with every passing second.

'She's lost a lot of blood,' Xav had said in the car to the hospital.

'She'll be fine,' I'd replied. 'She's a fighter.'

'Then you'd better hope she's got a good enough reason to fight.'

She's got me. She's got us. I'm her soulfinder, her other half. That's got to be enough to fight for – it's got to be.

I stare down at her, at the shadows under her eyes and the way her whole body shakes every time she breathes in. She's in pain. She's hurting.

It's like someone's stabbed me in the chest, like they've pierced a knife right through my heart and twisted. Because I want Thirteen to stay with me and I want to hold her and kiss her and spend every waking second with her. I want to marry her and raise kids with her and grow old and grey with her beside me. I want to get to tell her she's trouble and I want her to make fun of me every day for the rest of my life.

But I don't want her to hurt. I want her to be happy. I want her to be safe. I never wanted this.

I don't want her to die. But if trying to live is hurting her, if fighting death is just killing her faster, then I should let go. I should let her do what she has to do.

I love her too much to watch her suffer.

"Ok Trouble," I whisper. "Here's the deal." They're the first words I've spoken in days and the voice that comes out of my mouth doesn't sound like mine anymore. It sounds like the voice of a man that's been through hell and back, the voice of a man who's living in his worst nightmare. And I don't even know what I'm saying, just that I have to say it, just that I can't stay silent anymore. I need her to hear, need her to understand.

"I want you to stay with me, Ok Thirteen? I want you to stay more than you could possibly imagine, more than I even know how to explain. And if you stay, I promise I will never leave you ever again, I will stay with you for the rest of my life. And we can move back to the South if that's what you want because you're gonna hate how cold it gets in these mountains at wintertime. I'll quit my job for you because I know you think it sucks and it's what got us into this whole damn mess in the first place. I'll build a house for us to live in by a river just like the one you grew up in except I'm not leaving you like your dad did, and we can have as many kids as you want or none at all and you can name them whatever the hell you like except anything to do with the Sound of Music because I know you'll find that funny but they sure as hell won't. And we'll watch them grow up and find their soulfinders and for a while it'll seem impossible, it'll seem like they'll never make it, like they'll never find the one but we'll know it's not impossible because you found me, you found me and you changed everything."

I'm crying. I'm not sure I've actually cried since I was twelve but the tears are rolling down my cheeks and the sobs are building up inside my chest and all I want to do is scream. But not yet, not quite yet. There are things that still need saying.

"But at the same time Trouble, I know that you're hurting. And God knows you've done enough of that for one lifetime. It's not fair…for me to keep you here. Not if you don't want to stay. Don't stay because of me ok? Because I want you to stay, more than anything, you know that. But if you want to go, if it's easier for you to leave and go be in heaven with your mom and your brother then that's ok, you can do that, you can go. Don't worry about me ok? Don't worry about me because I will miss you every day for the rest of my life and there won't be a second that goes by that you won't be on my mind but that's not important ok? What happens to me just isn't important. This is about you, it's always been about you. So if you can stay, if you want to stay, then stay. Stay here with me. But if you want to go, I will let you go."

Thirteen

(I'm safe, up high, you're my protection)

I'm going. I can't stay here. Not where it's dark, where it hurts, where I'm all alone in the shadows. What is there to keep me here?

My mom reaches out her hand and I take it, lacing my fingers through hers. Take me away, I whisper to her. Take me home.

Charlie opens his mouth to say something, to ask a question, but suddenly, out of nowhere, another voice interrupts him. A deep voice, a quiet voice, a voice from another world.

"So if you can stay, if you want to stay, then stay. Stay here with me. But if you want to go, I will let you go."

I recognize that voice, know it better than I know my own. My blood calls out for it, my bones and my skin and every part of my feeble, failing body scream in recognition.

It's my heart, my soul, my perfect fit. The only person in the world who could keep me from floating away.

And suddenly it doesn't seem so clear anymore. I want to go, to be free and safe and at peace. I don't want to hurt anymore, don't want to be afraid. I want to be with my mom, be with Charlie because something tells me I've been waiting for them for a long time.

'I will let you go,' The voice said. But I don't want him to let me go. Part of me – a part I don't recognize, don't understand –doesn't want to go anywhere without him, doesn't want to leave him behind. It screams his name, it reaches out for him. It knows, better than my failing courage and weary brain that I will never find happiness, never know peace if he's not with me.

That it doesn't matter how much life hurts, how far I fall or how many pieces it shatters me into, as long as I have him, as long as I'm his and he's mine, none of the rest of it will matter. We're two halves of the same whole, two sides of the same coin. We were made for each other, meant to be together.

And we were never supposed to be torn apart.

Peace is waiting. Peace and serenity and rest.

It's not worth it.

I open my eyes.

(I'm coming home to breathe again, to start again)

Vick's staring down at me. The first thing I realize, the first thing that crosses my painkiller-deadened mind is how sexy he looks when he hasn't shaved in days. The second thing I realize is how much I missed him, how scared I was without him, how every time I have to leave him.

The third thing I realise is that I've never seen Vick cry before and I would give everything I have to make him smile, to make him happy. To never let him feel sad ever again.

"Jesus Christ Vick," I croak the first words that come to mind. "You've seriously got to stop hanging around in hospitals, it's freaking creepy and so not the way to pick up girls."

He just stares at me. Stares at me like he's never seen me before, or like he thought he'd never see me again. God I love him. I love him, I love him, I love him.

Then he smiles. Just a fraction, just a hint. But it's something. It's a start. And we have a long way to go before I'm anywhere near finished.

"Why is it almost every time I see you, you end up covered in someone's blood?" he croaks.

I shrug. Moving hurts, thinking hurts, speaking hurts – just lying still and breathing hurts but who gives a shit? He's Vick, he's Vick and he's here and he's mine. He's mine and Callum's gone which means I get to keep him. I get to keep him forever and this time I'm going to do things properly.

No more hiding, no more secrets. No more brokenness.

"Don't complain, you'd be bored if I wasn't around to keep you on your toes."

He squeezes my hand. I want to reach out and touch him, to trace the lines of his face with my fingertips. I want to kiss him. And yet every time I even think about sitting up pain surges through my body, electrocuting me, burning me alive. But I have time, I have all the time in the world.

I guess I'm just a lucky girl.

Well…that was it….was it any good? Was it worth it? Let me know in a review guys…just one last time?

Songs for the chapter are:

Well first up it's Samson by Regina Spektor (we couldn't bring the columns down, we couldn't destroy a single one). Following that it's All I want by Kodaline (if you loved me, why'd you leave me? Take my body, take my body). After that it's Angels on the moon by Thriving ivory, one of my all time fav sad songs which I fully intend on having played at my funeral..not that anyone wanted to know that (don't wake me cos I'm dreaming, of angels on the moon). After that it's Demons by Imagine dragons (oh this is all for you, don't wanna hide the truth), then Sober by P!nk which y'all probably already knew (I'm safe up high, you're my protection) and last but not least, Calls me home by Shannon Labrie (I'm coming home, to breathe again, to start again)