So, this story is an Alternate Universe, exploring what might have been had Bella been a stronger, feminist heroine. Begins with him leaving (the beginning of New Moon, I suppose?), and the variation from the canon storyline starts there. This is just a prologue. I envisioned the piece as a one shot, and I may come back when I'm done and edit it, put the pieces together (ha), or I may leave it the way it is. Or it may evolve into a chaptered, story-type fic. Right now, nothing's mapped out, but I was pretty happy with this little beginning, so I thought it was a good way to start off. Please read and review, I enjoy all kinds of comments!
Prologue
When he left, he took pieces of her.
He had broken her, that had been obvious. The injury wouldn't show up on an x-ray, and modern medicine had no answer for what he'd done, but she was the one who could feel the damage he caused. Broken heart, that was the terminology, but she would have died, literally, for a true broken heart, for an organ that resided with no beat, for veins that did not pulse. Pathetically, she preferred death to life without him.
But that wasn't true. Or, to be honest, it was only true at first, and then she resigned herself to the moping, the adjusting, the healing, the fixing, for what's broken can be fixed. He had broken her, she knew that, and even while she hated herself for that, there was nothing to be done but gather the pieces. When he'd left, when he'd said, I don't want you, he had broken her, but she could put herself back together.
He broke her, but he also took pieces. He took little pieces, pieces so tiny, so insignificant, that she didn't notice, not at first. Like a scavenger, he took the shattered glass that probably would never have fit her design quite the same again, but that were still necessary to making her whole. He took pieces, so that pieces were missing.
Edward broke Bella, but he also made it impossible for her to ever be whole again.