Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.
Author's Note: This story was written as if Edward and his mother never died and Edward wasn't turned into a vampire. I'm always trying to figure out who he would be if he hadn't had those hundred years to change him. This is just part of what's been coming to me. The song One Good Time by the rapper Tech N9ne gave me this idea. I hope you all enjoy it, I know it's quite a ways off the beaten path.
Just One Time
Edward Masen was a good man.
He worked hard for his family at the Merchant's Square on Main Street, doing work he knew was too easy just to scrape by.
Battle wounds still marred his skin and more often than not his left shoulder, the one that had been dislocated for those last two months he was shipped out, would stiffen when he picked up a box full of oranges or potatoes. And when the weather grew really cold, he could barely use it at all if his mother didn't spend a few hours in the morning working it out.
He would cringe as her hands dug into his muscles and tendons, trying her hardest to impart in him the healing energy she knew was inside of herself. But Edward was never one to accept those things, and so the pain would linger and continue.
But no matter how excruciating it came to be, no matter how badly he cringed and growled, he never cried from it.
Not even if he wanted to.
At night, when darkness was tangible and he could hear his mother's soft snores crawl down the stairs and into his room, he would sit in the corner and try, try with everything he had to find the emotion inside of himself to make the tears fill his eyes.
Sometimes he would get close, he would fill his thoughts with his mother's sadness, his father's death and his own internal pain, and he could feel the edge grow close, the cliff as sheer as a mountain's summit. But never did they peak, never did they fall, and never did those tears he wished for so badly don his cheeks.
It was one night, after a fairly bad day down at the market, that the tears finally broke through.
His shoulder had been killing him all day, and even when his mother's hands were cramping from all the knitting she'd done that day, she sat and rubbed out his shoulder until the boy began to drift off to sleep.
And though Edward hadn't had a dream since he was little, he had one that night.
She was beautiful, it was the first thing he thought as he saw her.
Her hair was honey covered chocolate, her eyes as dark and warm as chicory coffee. But the look in those eyes was enough to make his unfeeling heart break in his very chest. Tears streamed down her eyes as she looked at him, her fingers twitching as if to reach out for him.
He felt a love for this girl, one he had never seen in his life, like he never had before. Sure he'd seen girls walk past him in the market, and a fair few had seen him back but this, it was as if she were seeing into his very soul.
And as he reached out for her, his arm lifting into the brightened sun, the look of his skin made him stop. He looked down to see his skin glitter like a thousand diamond facets in the sun. It was beautiful, but abnormal.
Fire burst down his throat as he took a breath, and when he looked up and into her eyes once again, he saw fear there. Fear nestled in the warmth of her eyes.
He awoke with a start, his heart pounding in his chest. Sweat covered his body and the sheets clung to him like a second skin because of it.
Then, he felt them.
His heart ached terribly, a deep, sharp pain inside of his vulnerable chest.
And the tears broke through, and began to caress his cheek.
And he sat there, his head between his hands, and he rocked himself back and forth. The tears he had wanted for so long dripping down his chin and onto his bare chest.
He cried for the girl, cried for the fear he had caused in her heart.
And he cried for himself, because he would never be able to steal that fear away.
And, because he knew he would never be able to steal her away.
Not as long as he was breathing.
Not as long as he was alive.
And then, he cried because of that too.
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