A/N: Stephenie Meyer was the inspiration for me to start writing romance of my own, really, so it's only fair that I finally write a Twilight fan fiction. It's my first, so when you review (because you're a good citizen, and you will!), please be gentle.
This is a somewhat pointless song fic to one of the most beautiful, tragic songs about lost love that I've ever heard – Almost Lover, by A Fine Frenzy. The fic takes place in New Moon, just after Edward leaves.
Enjoy.
XX
Your fingertips across my skin
The palm trees swaying in the wind
Images
The pain comes in doses.
Little doses, pre-determined by a force I don't know about, always just when I don't need them.
Flashes. Pictures. Feelings.
The tiniest things bring him back to me somehow, regardless of how hard I try not to think about them.
I can't listen to piano music anymore. Driving past that certain Italian restaurant while driving aimlessly around Port Angeles causes me certain nausea.
I've developed an unfortunate habit for waking up in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat, almost sure he's sitting there, watching me like he used to, that amused smile of his – so godlike in all its flawlessness – playing on his lips.
Lips I still long to kiss, even now.
He doesn't even have a name anymore. He's just…something.
An elusive phantom, an intangible essence. A ghost who has stolen the best of me, leaving me with only a void I'm never going to fill, and memories.
So many memories.
You sang me Spanish lullabies
The sweetest sadness in your eyes
Clever trick
I'd always known it wouldn't last. Always.
He'd told me from the very first day he wasn't good for me. He said he would leave, when I was in the hospital; he said he didn't want to hurt me, without honestly realizing that losing him would hurt me far more than the physical pain I'm sure to get into would.
And yet, he brought himself into my life anyway.
It was like a prolonged farewell, when we were together in those last few weeks when I was recovering from my incident with the Hunter.
Every time he'd look at me, there was something going on behind those pools of crystalline onyx – something turbulent and troubled – that he would deny when I asked about it. Every time we had to part, he said good-bye like eternity would pass before he could see me again.
Every kiss was sweet, tragic, desperate, savoring – as though he wanted to get one last taste of me to quench his thirst before he gave me up altogether.
During our nighttime meetings, when Charlie was safely in the realms of his dreams, he would sing me lullabies from all over the world when he was putting me to sleep. My favorites were the Spanish ones – the cadence of his voice, mixing with the gentle rhythm of his heartbeat mixing with the strong sense of beat behind the music, would lull my senses, soothe my aches, wipe my emotional palette until he was the only thing I could think, feel, breathe.
I would have my requests each night, which he would teasingly oblige; and although the same sadness he seemed to carry with him spilled into every song, although plans for existing without me were visible in that face that tried to give nothing away, although the limited time we had weighed down on us both like an anvil of epic proportions, I never thought that what I feared – what we both feared – would ever truly come to pass.
Until it did.
Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
If I said I was trying to let go, I would be lying, because I'm not.
Not really.
It's complicated, but I'm futilely telling myself not to think about him in order to trick my brain into thinking I'm attempting to move on. I think it's working, because by some means, I still exist as some empty shell of a person, and the futile instructions keep coming.
I order my stomach to stop sinking into my intestines during Biology when he's not sitting next to me. Demand my legs to keep walking, keep moving, when Mike Newton cheerfully escorts me to Gym.
I'm telling myself to do everything as normally as I can, but the thing is, I never really listen to myself.
I do think about him, my stomach sinks each and every day regardless of the frenzy my intestines go into, and my legs feel like sludge if I try to walk – something Mike noticed pretty quickly, even for him.
I just can't seem to let go of the notion that he's my savior, my dream, my necessity to live out the rest of a life that has never seemed longer. My Prince Charming, my Superman, my knight in shining armor – call him what you want, but he was all of those for me.
Where does the fairytale princess end up when her man inexplicably leaves her halfway through their happily ever after?
He's the beat in my heart keeping me alive, the air in my lungs that makes me breathe, the warmth on my skin comforting me, assuring me I'm safe. Charlie insists that he can't be my life, as I sometimes claim he is; but even if he's not, I know he's right up there with oxygen.
It would be a different matter entirely if I never told him how I felt, but the thing that hurts the most is that I did tell him.
I told him everything. Even the things I didn't want to tell him.
He knew what he meant to me. He knew I can't live without him. He knew he would essentially slaughter me by leaving me.
Yet, I walk alone to class (unless Mike is foolish enough not to pick up on my clear lack of enthusiasm) each day, empty.
We were almost something. That's what gets me the most, the thing that gets tears pricking my eyes more than anything else:
It's that we were so close – and now, as quickly as we converged, we've diverged once more, and instead of being there, we're stuck at almost.
Almost.
Which is just the same as saying nowhere at all.
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do
Well I never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me
We walked along a crowded street
You took my hand and danced with me
Images
One of my favorite memories of us that I muse on when I'm in bed and pretending to sleep for Charlie's sake is the time we went to downtown Port Angeles together, the night school finally ended.
I was still in my cast, of course, which led to my fear of walking in a crowded place – at night, when it's dark and hard to see, no less – but he only laughed at me.
"Silly Bella, nothing will happen to you if I'm with you." That's exactly what he'd said.
He parked the car, and he'd supported me around the packed streets, simply walking and looking around. We talked a little, but mostly, I concentrated on the consoling coolness of his skin under his thin shirt, the hand plastered firmly to the small of my back, the other hand gripping mine so tightly.
For someone so cold to the touch, he had a way of feeling like a warm bath I could sink into, a place I could feel like I was always going to be all right.
We walked for quite a ways, the smell of sweat apparent in the throng of people going about their business, and then he surprised me by suddenly taking my free hand and twirling me around once.
Of course, I nearly fell because of the cast, my shock, and my obvious lack of acceptable coordination, but he didn't mind it; he only continued to twirl me to a beat I couldn't hear in his own head.
My eyes had been questioning – and bewildered – but his weren't. His were playful, but oh so affectionate as he pressed his lips briefly to my forehead and went on dancing with me.
It was funny; we were surrounded by populace, who were screaming and moving and laughing and kissing and cuddling, but for those minutes we danced, it was as though the rest of them had vanished temporarily – as though we were the only two people on that street, the only two people in the whole world, because we were together and so in love that nothing and no one else mattered.
I was invincible, in those muscled arms under his golden gaze; I could conquer this world and countless others, so long as he was next to me the whole time, chuckling away as I made one bad decision after another.
But now, I'm not invincible. I'm not going to conquer the world.
I'm only going to lie back on my bed, thinking of him and the experiences we'd shared together, and wonder if he's going to conquer the world without me.
And every time the question comes to me, the answer will be the same – that the world is already his, and my personal one was easily swept up in the rush.
And when you left, you kissed my lips
You told me you would never, never forget
These images
Well I never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me
Charlie's been so frustrated with me, insisting I'm some sort of a zombie since he left, but I don't know what he expects me to do.
Go back to school, smiling and laughing as though I haven't got a care in the world?
Date Jacob Black, as Jake, Billy, and Charlie all wish I would?
Hang out with Jess and Angela in the quiet tourist attraction that is Port Angeles, chatting about the evils of Trig and Jess's love problems with Mike?
I can't do any of those things. It takes everything I have just to go to school every weekday, pretend I care at all about what I'm doing there. More than that…I don't think I can handle it.
I cannot go to the ocean
La Push, a spot used to enjoy, is melancholy and filled with thoughts of figuring out the secret he so zealously guarded; the secret ripping away at my tender lungs and drawing an extraordinary amount of blood that chokes me as nothing else can.
I cannot drive the streets at night
Driving at night reminds me of the particular night he saved me from a group of men who were certain to want hideous things from me – men who would snatch me up again happily because of the lack of his intimidating presence hovering about me.
I cannot wake up in the morning
Without you on my mind
Even waking up in the morning reminds me of waking up beside him, his smell and his hair and his skin and his breath, all enveloping me in the sweetest of morning imagery as he asked me (unnecessarily) if I slept well, before chatting with me as we got ready to go.
So you're gone and I'm haunted
He's with me in whatever I do, wherever I go, and I can't escape him – his invisible hold on me is too great, the reminders are too abundant and all-pervading, and it's like being trapped in a claustrophobic glass box that only shows me what I'm already far too aware of.
And I bet you are just fine
I feel like I'm dying, ever so slowly, in this wet, cloudy cocoon named Forks, and him?
He's gone…gone to a place far away from me, a place where there are no reminders left of me, and since he's still not here, he must be happy without me.
Happy to escape me, happy to be without me, happy to…
Happy to…move on without me, start over as he's so good at doing.
Did I make it that
Easy to walk right in and out
Of my life?
I'd like to tell myself that he's miserable in a place where I'm not with him.
I'd like to tell myself that he thinks of me often, stroking whatever is by him as he pretends it is my small, warm hand inside of his.
I'd like to tell myself he still loves me, that he still cares of me, that he still wonders what has become of me here in Forks, but I know it's a lie.
He's not miserable. He doesn't love me. He doesn't even think of me.
I'm nothing but a remembrance in the back of his busy, life-filled mind, and he?
He is nothing but another almost-lover – someone who nearly meant something epic, but chose to excuse himself just when I thought we were safe.
What more had I expected from a vampire forever on the run from humanity, anyway?