THIS IS AN EDWARDALICE. It was written as nothing more than an exercise in character development and thus should be read as such.

Toujours
Part I

"You won't leave me, Edward, right?" she asked, breathing in deeply. She knew she was ready for this, ready to start a new life, but she wanted to hear him say it for her once more, as she was human, once more before the pain.

"Bella!" he exclaimed, sounding shocked. "Leave you? Jamais, darling, never. You are my world, the most important thing to me... Don't ever forget that."

Edward was having an affair– Bella wasn't entirely sure when she had realized what was going on; he treated her the same way as he always had, seemed to be just as happy to see her when she entered a room as when they first began their relationship, and hadn't been unnecessarily nasty, as if he were exhausted with her presence; neither had he been unnecessarily nice, as if every breath she took was a reminder of some wild guilt.

But Bella felt an estrangement coming to rest within their relationship. Yes, Bella knew that things had– in a way she couldn't quite place– changed between her and Edward; and after 32 years of marriage, she knew that somewhere, somehow, something had gone terribly awry. The problems had been there for awhile, but the affair, Bella knew, was recent, much more recent. Of course, she could never figure out how she knew.

It was nothing she could understand. She tried telling herself that she was imagining things, because he smelled the same, acted the same, looked the same; his crooked smile was even the same, bringing to his face the same light and happiness that it had before.

Bella gave up on excuses the night Edward had said to her, staring glumly at the moonlight filtering through the canvas of leaves above them, even as his hands twisted through loose coils of her hair and his legs were entwined with hers, "I've never loved a single person more than I love you, Bella– Not my friends, my siblings, my parents..." He smiled weakly. "Then or now. Not a single person."

Bella asked, "So then what's happening? What's changed?"

Edward's reply was little more than the chiming of distant bells, and it seemed to lose half of its power beneath the wailing of the wind. "I don't know. I want more than anything else just to be with you– You are, you know, my other half; my light... My reflection, in a way. I can't even care for another person; thoughts of you always come first."

Edward's gaze had never faltered from the twitching leaves on the ground around them, and the misty light which seemed to bring them to life. She saw, then, as if the image had drifted, along with the tenuous beams of brightness, down from the sky, something in Edward she had never encountered this closely, and she was never more glad for it. She wondered if it would hurt him, if he became aware that she knew he was with someone else on other nights. She didn't want to be the reason for his sadness.

What she saw was the desperate need to get within her head, the scraping knowledge that her thoughts– the true meanings of words he could not hear, were constantly beyond him. He had called her his reflection; and she wondered if in being unable to reach her in this way, he felt that he could not reach himself.

She whispered, wrapping her arms around his stomach and kissing the bare skin of his shoulder, "Do you remember Narcissus, Edward? Trying constantly to reach the beautiful face in the water, he drowned."

Edward's laugh was a bitter bark which collided with the cold night air around them, snapping through the sky like rain. "Is that what's happening, Bella? You think I'm drowning in trying to get close to you?"

What reply is there to such a question? Bella thought, am I really so wise after only these short years– and they had truly seemed like short years– that I can understand him better than I understand myself? She thought, if our love is just as strong, then why are we sinking? Where does love fade to?...

Edward's voice brushed against the leaves, the sky, the glowing moon so far, far above; it trickled like water to the core of the earth, and seemed to twist like the wind through the stones littered on the ground.

"You're wrong, Bella. I'm not drowning in my love for you; I'm choking on an inability to love others."

"Edward," she said, and the birdsong and the crashing waves so far below were like a cry of agony against her tinkling voice. "I see–"

But he already knew.

"Alice!" He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her hair. "Stop trying to handle the future before it happens. There are choices still to be made... Whatever lies beyond this morning is a little later on."

She said, "Edward.

"...Edward, I think this is a bad idea."

"No," he replied in his low, musical voice. "It isn't."

"Edward, I'm frightened."

"You shouldn't be," he told her as he stroked his cold fingers along her cheek. The sky was darkening as the threat of yet another rain loomed before them; the water swirled below, the thrashing tides gaping like the jaws of a waiting monster... His eyes careened away from her face and out beyond the mountains that rolled ahead, searching perhaps for some message written on the wind. For a time it seemed to her that his view stretched all the way to the floors of the forest, or maybe to the clouds and whatever they hid behind their gray forms.

His mouth twitched even as the rest of him was more still than the eyes of whatever storms were heading their way.

"Alice," he murmured. "You shouldn't worry. No matter what you see for us... you know the future doesn't scare me at all."

The way Alice and Edward began their affair was this: Alice had a vision. She saw Edward, alone on a starry, clear night, watching the leaves flutter in the wind, shivering like they knew the deepest fear. She saw, almost surreally, herself, blending with the night as she stalked towards him, a lithe, animal-like dancer approaching her partner. The curtain falls and Alice sees a new vision: but it's the same place, the same twitching tree branches; she's in Edward's arms. Their mouths are locked together, her hands caught in his hair. He presses his arms against her tiny back, pulling her tightly into him.

Alice did her best to ignore the vision– she seemed to think that it would blow away like dust on the wind, but was finding out every day afterwards that it was more like the dust that cakes your skin, gets up below your fingernails and in your eyes. She went even further out of her way not to think about it when Edward was near, wondering what sort of decision her brother had made that would change the two of them so much, wondering if she could stop him from making it if she avoided thinking about it.

They were hunting with Emmett, each gone their separate ways, each looming in different shadows, searching for the right prey. The three of them were more quiet than the night itself, so as she slunk through the trees, watching, waiting for the right moment, she never realized that Edward was just ahead. She stepped out from under the foliage at the top of a tall mountain, silent as ever, and saw him seated just the way she had already seen him so many times, hands buried in his lap, eyes intent on the forest below.

Alice approached, wanting to turn back, and Edward looked over his shoulder at her with wide, confused eyes. She saw a strange sadness in his gaze, a part of him, her very best friend for so long, that she couldn't even recognize. His scent swirled gently toward her on the breeze, and she breathed it in guiltily, thinking that she should be anywhere but here– Alice knew she was past the point of no return. She sat down next to him, not saying a word, and trying not to think any.

"What's wrong?" she finally asked, knowing his moods and nuances just as well as Jasper could have.

Edward only shook his head. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sounds came out– his lips trembled like the leaves, and his eyes trembled like the gentle wind. Alice was waiting for Edward to make his choice– to say whatever it was he was supposed to say to change things. He knew she was waiting, but she could tell by the look on his face that he knew not what she was waiting for.

"What do you expect of me?" he whispered in a sad, broken voice. "What am I supposed to do, Alice?"

She realized that the words fit the situation, but that it wasn't what Edward meant. There was something else going on, some problem she couldn't understand, let alone fix– but he wanted her to, expected her to. She gazed at him with a growing worry, and the wind trickled past them, blowing his hair into his eyes and making the fabric of his clothes swish against his skin. It felt like it was pushing her closer towards him, but that couldn't have been it– it was all her.

Alice had never seen Edward more alone, more upset, not even in the times when he had lost Bella. This was different– it was like despite everything, Edward still felt as if Bella was unreachable for him, as if the problem was between them, not the distance that separated... as if this bothered him even more than never seeing her face again. She thought that in becoming alienated from Bella, it seemed like Edward was growing further away from everyone else as well. Alice realized that the decision was hers to make. She didn't want to see him so depressed, and she didn't want him to feel like he was isolated from the rest of his family.

Alice shifted forward, breathing deep. Edward looked back to her face, curiously, for he had glanced away, watching an owl overhead. He stiffened as he saw the vision in her head, but Alice's lips were already against his. A moment passed and he leaned away, but her tiny figure followed, molded against him. Alice felt guilty, so guilty, thoughts straying to Jasper back home, but it didn't matter anymore– she was already past the point of no return.

There are some sins that you can justify.

Bella loved Edward, more than she loved life, more than she loved her own self, more than she cared for the very earth she lived upon.

She also hated him, and she wondered if there was any crime worse than that. She felt herself growing colder and colder with each passing day, turning from him in those moments when he seemed like a child– tiny, scared, alone... In all the moments when he seemed to need her the most. If she was there for him, it might have salvaged some part of their relationship, but Bella felt helpless to go to him. It hurt just to know that somewhere out there was another woman who he went to when looking for solace, and it stung even more to see the guiltiness that had begun, in recent days, to cast a shadow over his beautiful face.

Bella wanted to know who she was, this other woman. She pictured Edward walking down the streets of Vancouver, seeing another of their kind across the road and talking politely, coolly to her, in that offhand gentlemanly manner he was so good at. And she would picture him at a different point of time falling into the arms of that same woman, imagining her hair to be like fire, and her eyes to be like pooling blood.

She never wanted to look at Edward's face again, picturing, always, the look that may have been in his eyes some nights ago, when maybe he was off with a woman Bella didn't know, but wanted to know at the same time as she wanted to pretend away her existence. She ignored Edward, for days at a time, but she never stayed strong. She ran back to him, always hoping he would be good enough to keep on caring for her, even if he'd met someone more beautiful, more intelligent, more graceful, more lovable than she.

Edward and Alice's affair could only be called such in loose terms– it was a stolen kiss every few months, when it felt like Bella and Edward were really crumbling apart, or a gentle embrace that lasted longer than it should have when Alice was too consumed with guilt even to be in Jasper's presence. It was chaste, if it was an affair at all. There was no sexual connection between them; it was all psychological. Edward wasn't going to Alice for physical release. He just needed the comfort, the emotional support it seemed like he could never find anywhere else.

Maybe that was why it felt like he was a worse traitor than Judas himself, because it wasn't even a physical need that pushed him away from Bella. It was just he himself, too scared to actually talk to her.

Edward had nowhere to turn to, no sanctuary where he could let his worries dissipate and find peace. He was like a tiny flame that clung to Bella when the wind blew by, expecting her to be his protection, his solace. Bella was the only thing he needed out of life for so long it felt like his family was a cloud drifting across the sky, moving forever farther from him. He was consumed, obsessed– he couldn't see past Bella's eyes, her hair, her full, inviting lips...

When Rosalie and Emmett went through a rocky patch that lasted over a year, fighting constantly, avoiding each other, even going so far that Rosalie almost moved out, the rest of the family showered them with support. Alice and Bella were constantly working on ways to solve the problem, Esme and Carlisle's worry was terribly apparent, and eventually, Jasper stepped in and managed to help the whole thing blow over by acting as a marriage counselor of sorts.

But Edward hadn't cared. Not in the least. He knew that seeing Emmett so depressed, no longer the grinning, obnoxious goof he always was should arouse in him some sort of sympathy. Rosalie's constant anger and bitterness should have made him feel concern for his siblings, some sort of desire to help them.

It didn't. Bella was there. She was his shield– he didn't need to go through the emotional stress of empathizing with his siblings. He just had to hide behind Bella and pretend it wasn't happening.

Eventually the knowledge that his family should have factored into his life somewhere along with her got to him, and even Bella's presence couldn't make him feel better. He was guilty, and moody, and being with Bella only made it worse. He was obsessed, thinking about her all the time, but never letting himself go to her. He wanted to learn to love again, to spend time with his siblings and not feel like he needed to escape to his wife, to talk with his parents and not wonder when she would be walking in the door. But he couldn't care. Even as he wanted to, he couldn't.

Then Alice kissed him, and something changed, he supposed, for better, it had seemed at the time, reawakening him to the world of caring for someone other for Bella. It wasn't until later that he realized it was definitely for worse that he and Alice let themselves get caught up in each other. Edward though it was like he was dropping into a pit with Alice, and there was no way out. They'd been going like this for over two years, behind everyone else's backs, and he felt like he was still falling, like he always would be. Even as he tumbled, the ground seemed to spiral even further away below him.

He thought he was isolated before. He knew better now. So this was it. Edward Cullen had discovered the meaning of true loneliness.