A/N: This is my second Fan Fic, and I'm still working on Tale of James, I'm just a little stuck and didn't want to waste bandwith and get your hopes up for another chapter only for you to see a long author's note telling you I have writers block. No offense to author's who do that. Anyway... I saw all the stories of Bella cutting, so I decided to write one. Please Read and Review.
Roses are red, violets are blue. I don't own, so you can't sue.
I was remembering. That's what the therapist said to do. Remember the good time. The good times would cause too much pain. So I remembered the bad. I remembered when I left her in the woods and joined my family in Alaska. I sat in my room unmoving for the first few hours. The scene just kept replaying in my head over and over. The words meaningless, but the pain in those beautiful brown eyes ripped me apart again and again. I looked around the room Tanya had set up for me. My music in various boxes, my stereo not yet plugged in, and my black couch. If my eyes could have watered, they would have at the sight of the couch. She had sat on that couch. I wanted to go over to it, just to smell it. STOP!, I scolded myself. I sat there for hours trying to overcome the urge to run back to Bella, to beg her for forgiveness, to beg her to take me back. That night, I broke the couch with a few well aimed punches.
The next day I tried listening to music, but every song on every CD reminded me of her. I threw every disk into the small waste basket and as I crushed the waste basket in my hands a dry sob escaped my lips. The next thing I destroyed was my stereo. I hurled it into the forest outside of the house. My family begged me to talk to them, but I shooed them away, closing myself within the boundaries of my mind. Esme hid how much I was hurting her the best. But after I heard Carlisle trying to quiet Esme's tearless sobs, I tried harder. I went hunting, spoke more, I even went shopping with Alice. But at the end of each day, I came home and stared out the window, wondering what she was doing.
One day, Tanya proposed a movie night. Emmet and Jasper dragged me in front of the television to join them. In the middle of the movie I looked at my family. Tanya was wrapped in the arms of her newly found beloved, Anthony. Rosalie was nibbling seductively on Emmett's ear, and Emmett was having trouble concentrating on Van Helsing. Alice was sitting on Jasper's lap and while they were actually watching the movie, Jasper's hand was rubbing Alice's leg. Esme and Carlisle were staring into each other's eyes as if there was no one else in the world. I pinched the bridge of my nose as their thoughts broke the barrier I had set around myself. I cringed at Emmett, Rosalie, and Jasper's sickeningly sensual thoughts but what broke me was Carlisle.
Does she truly believe that she cares more for me than I do for her?
They echoed almost exactly what I said to her before that night in the forest. I couldn't take it anymore. I needed to get out of the confines of the house. Tanya's movie night reminded me all too much of the times before I met her, every one in the family was paired off but me. A growl erupted from my chest and I jumped off of the couch. Everyone's attention snapped to me, but I didn't care. My anger was boiling inside of me. I was so tired of being alone. But I had to be alone, so she would be better. So she would be safe. I was doing the right thing. Wasn't It? My eyes snapped around, I needed to break something. My piano. The piano at which she had looked at me with amazement shining in her eyes when I played her lullaby for her.
"Edward, no, please don't!" Alice said. But her words fell on deaf ears. I grabbed one of the legs out from under it and snapped it effortlessly. I used the leg to beat the keys of the piano to bits. I ripped the wood apart. Any part of it I could get my hands, feet, teeth, on, was destroyed. In about three seconds I had turned a grand piano into a pile of sawdust, scraps, strings, broken keys, and metal. Exhaling jaggedly I stomped on all the pieces and then lifted the unmarred bench into my cold hands and threw it out of the window. As the glass shattered around the living room I ran out the door and without a backwards glance, turned away from my family.
Traveling. Tracking. Running. Hunting. She was on my mind with every activity. At one point I felt the hole in my heart that her absence had left. I curled into a ball holding myself against the pain. There was no way to escape it. It was inside of me, outside of me, and it should have killed me. Vampires can't feel pain like this, I thought while trying to cry tears once again. I'd had enough. The pain was too much. It needed to end. Days later I found myself in the airport. As I was about to ask for a plane ticket to Italy, I heard her voice.
Edward, no! I forbid you to hurt yourself.
I turned my head franticly, trying to catch a glance of her.
Edward, you can't go to Italy!
I froze. She was speaking to me! Her voice was echoing through my head. I wanted to hear it again. I said to the petrified receptionist. "One ticket to Italy, please."
She whimpered Edward.
"Never mind," I said and turned away and walked out of the airport. My mind racing. I was calculating quietly, I had to hear her voice again.
I never did. I went back different airports several times, but I think she knew I wouldn't step on a plane, not when there was a chance that I could see her again. I needed to see her again. The desperation clawed at my stomach, my heart, until I couldn't take it any longer. The next thing I knew, I was running back to Forks. My mantra was repeating again and again in my head. If she's happy I'll go. If she's sad I'll stay. If she's happy I'll go. If she's sad I'll stay. I ran to the familiar house and had to stop myself from instinctively climbing into her window. I noted that Charlie wasn't home, but I knew she was. I listened for her footsteps, her heartbeat, her breathing. She wasn't on the first floor. I used the spare key under the mat and slipped in the house. Just go in, see if she looks happy and then leave, I thought to myself.
I silently, slipped upstairs. I heard her moving around in her room. The fact that she was so near must have been what made me lose my balance. I tripped on the last step and the clunk sounded louder in the silence of this house. I froze.
I heard a pained hiss. She was in pain. Unthinkingly I burst into her room, and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Are you alright?" I asked.
Her eyes were clouded with pain and she went limp in my arms, and that was when the enchanting scent filled my nostrils. I smelled the blood that was dripping from the cuts in her arm. I pushed her away from me. I shook her, "Bella?" the bloody knife clattered loudly to the floor. My vision and memory blurred after that. But two things echoed in my head. The smell of her blood and how my pathetic attempts to keep the scent in my memory faded in comparison. The floral scent that I had once associated with her, blew away in a nonexistent breeze. She smelled a thousand times better than I could ever imagine. And my pitiful attempts to remember that smell circled my head now. Along with Carlisle thoughts when he ended up by my side in Bella's room Alice saw her. We've got to get her out of here now. Edward, you need to leave.
At first I didn't understand, did Carlisle think that I couldn't control myself around her, did he think nothing of the patience and restraint I had gained in my time with her. But the next word he thought to me cleared up all confusion. Charlie! Charlie, of course. Charlie would accept Carlisle being here, especially if he saved her life, again. But seeing me, the boy that had broken her daughter's heart. Whether or not she had moved on, no father wanted to come face to face with the boy that was responsible for his daughter's pain.
I ran. I ran to the spot that was near enough to be with her in an instant, but far enough away to keep from arousing Charlie's suspicions. My meadow. Our meadow. As I sat in the sun, I tried not to think about what I had seen, but the images just kept pushing themselves to the front of my mind. The blood, the cuts, and the knife. I forced myself to try and think of another reason, a logical reason. She bought a cat and he scratched her on the arm sometimes and then she was using the knife to cut a sandwich and slipped when she heard me fall on the steps. Or, she had fallen down a flight of stairs and bruised her arms and then one started bleeding while she was in her room. That doesn't explain the knife, the sick voice in the back of my head whispered. I put my head in my sparkling hands and tried to block out all thoughts.
Our- my meadow had been a stupid place to come. Memories of her were all over the place. "It was my meadow before it was our meadow." I said to the swaying blades of grass. It didn't seem convinced and neither was I. My brooding was interrupted by the buzzing of my phone. I was mildly surprised I still had it. I carried it out of habit, most likely.
"Edward," Alice breathed into the phone. "You need to get down to the hospital where Carlisle used to work. Right now!" But her thoughts told the rest of the story. Charlie is right behind me, the doctors, not Carlisle, say she'll be alright. I can't see anything about it. Take your time getting down here.
"Is everything alright?" I said. I didn't have to try very hard to sound worried.
"No, it's Bella. You know how I was coming down to visit her. Well Carlisle decided to drop me off, but we found her on the floor, bleeding." Alice's voice sounded scared and she added a whimper at the end of her statement. For Charlie's benefit no doubt. "Edward?" She sounded genuinely worried at my silence. I had been trying to listen to her thoughts, but she was just singing some words to a song in her head over and over again.
I ran and jumped into the nearest car. I was one hotwired car away from seeing her. Really seeing her, not holding her and having her snatched away moments later. That seemed how our whole time together had been. Snatches of time. A magical night together, and then the sun started to rise all too quickly. A nice lunch staring into one another's eyes, trying, unsuccessfully, to read one another's thoughts. The loud bell ringing too soon. I floored the pedal. Not caring if I ran over anyone. I had to get to Bella.
"Edward?" A very different voice was yelling at me now.
"Yes, Charlie," I said slowly.
"You need to calm down," he said. He wasn't Charlie, he was Officer Swan.
"What do you mean?" I spat, not caring if I was being rude.
"I can hear the accelerator in your car, you're exceeding the speed limit at a danger-" I snapped the phone shut and threw it in the backseat.
Too soon for anyone driving at a normal rate, I reached the hospital.
"What's going on?" I yelled at Alice.
"Well, Edward. You might want to sit down for this," The look I gave her kept her talking. "The doctor, not Carlisle, said Bella is demonstrating self-destructive qualities. She started cutting. But the thing is, you know how she is with blood. Well, she made herself sick. Throwing up, fainting and cutting, whenever Charlie wasn't home. She's malnourished and needs blood tr-"
"This is all your fault!" Charlie advanced on me his face was twisted in anger and hatred. "My little girl is in there dying because of you!" He put his face a hair's breadth away from mine and then he spat the worst accusation I ever heard, "If she dies it will be all your fault!
Instead of doing what the vampire part of me longed to do, break Charlie's neck, or what the human part of me, yell back, I dropped to my knees.
"Edward!" Alice cried.
I had taken away her life anyway. The whole point of my leaving was to save her, but I had only succeeded in hurting her worse. For now, she would die without her main reason, me. I shook my head, "No!" Alice tried to help me, tried to comfort me, but I was too far gone. Shudders racked my body, and then as if accepting the truth was a trigger, I was released from the pain that had burdened me for the past months. I started to cry.
The icy tears rolled down my cheeks and I didn't try to wipe them away. "I am so sorry, Charlie," I said. I didn't have to hear his thoughts to know that he was surprised by my apology. "I am so sorry."
Hours later, Bella was in the Intensive Care Unit. She hadn't yet awoken. I hadn't stopped crying. The tears came silently now as I watched her. I sat in the chair in front of the bed, Charlie sat in the chair next to her. The beeping of the monitor burned my ears. Every beep seemed to remind me that it was my fault that she was here. Beep beep beep. Edward left Edward left Edward left. I tried to turn away from her face, but I couldn't. The details that once held me with my amazement of their beauty, captured me with the beauty hidden behind the pain. The dark circles of sleepless nights surrounded her closed eyes. The bite marks of a girl trying to hold back sobs marred her perfect lips.
But there was a more haunting image than that of my beloved laying in the hospital bed. I tried to push the memory to the back of my mind. I closed my eyes, dragged them to the ceiling and then opened them again. I had already counted the dots on the ceiling. There were one hundred thousand, seven hundred and thirty two. But, as memories do, this one pushed its way to the front and with a fresh supply of tears I closed myself and saw my beloved's face when I had her in my arms in her room. Vacant, empty, and dead. I prayed to whatever God there was, that her body, her soul wouldn't follow suit.
If she had to die wasn't it better that she could "live" afterwards, and be happy. As I sat with my head in my hands I kept asking myself the question: Is it better for her to recieve kisses from the steel knife or silver kisses from me?
A/N: Wow this is really long! How was it? Bring on the flames. Should I continue or keep it a one shot? Tell me what you think.