So here's my first ditty of my new life. I'm pretty happy with it. This is how I believe Edward's conversation with his family about him leaving Bella went. It's done in Edward's point of view, so I pray I didn't botch him too bad.
This one is dedicated to Shmee and Squee for reading over my first and second drafts, and to MissNebraskaLIVE, as it was her fic dubbed Fault Line that inspired me to get off my toosh and actually finish my version of the confrontation. Let it be known that I'm just a college student living off a partial athletic scholarship and mooching the rest of her parents. I am NOT, I repeat ... am NOT Stephenie Meyer. Though I wish I was ... then at least I could have SOME claim to Edward Cullen. And Carlisle. And Emmett. And Jasper. I'm done now.
Enjoy.
HL
"Don't do this, Edward."
With a flick of my wrist, I sent the front door swinging back into its frame as I stepped into the living room from the porch. My youngest sister was leaning against the banister of the staircase with her arms folded across her chest, shooting daggers at me with her eyes. I should have known Alice would try to talk some "sense" into me. I should have known that the scene that I was preparing to make had already played itself out in that tiny girl's head. It was like Alice and I were meant to be siblings; I heard everything and she saw everything. A one-two punch--we were the perfect offense and defense for a family like ours. But, I had been so trapped in my own thoughts on my run home that I didn't even notice hers ... didn't bother to listen in on her visions. It wasn't the first time I'd missed something. Of course, she's missed her fair share of things as well.
I strode into the dining room and sat down in the padded chair at the head of the table. I stretched out my legs, crossing them at the ankle, and laid my right arm out in front of me. I kept my left hand in my lap as I leaned back in my chair, my eyes staring at my clenched fist resting atop the antique wood. Slowly, I let my fingers straighten themselves out until my palm was pressing lightly into the delicate surface. I blinked once and took a deep breath in and out. The oxygen did nothing for my body physically, of course ... but usually the action served to relax me. Tonight, it did nothing.
I heard the soft clap of Alice's designer flats on the wooden floor as she came up behind me. I kept my gaze firmly on my now relaxed right hand as my sister's thoughts echoed clearly in my head.
"This is wrong, Edward. This is wrong and you know it. You can't do this to her ... to yourself! Neither of you will ever be the same again!" She directed the thoughts right at me instead of saying them out loud. Alice and I were fond of this type of conversation. We were good at it. And she was right about one thing: I was never going to be the same again, that was for damn sure. But today wasn't about just us. It was about our entire family.
"Will everyone come down here, please?" I called quietly, knowing full-well that every member of my family would hear me loud and clear. I had to wait but a few seconds only until Rosalie and Emmett were sitting down at the opposite end of the table. Carlisle came in next with Esme close behind him, taking seats in the chairs at my right. Finally, Jasper stepped into the room and sank into the chair next to Emmett. Alice sighed heavily and followed him, taking the last available chair.
With my family now present, I took another stab at trying to get myself to relax. But, my second deep breath did nothing for me either. Shaking my head once in defeat, I straightened up in my chair and brought my left arm up to the table to join my right. I folded both atop the dark-grained surface, but kept my eyes fixed downwards in a blank stare. I played around with the notion of working up to my big announcement, but the thoughts flying through Alice's head warned me that if I didn't say what I had on my mind immediately, she would announce it for me. So it was straight to the point, then.
"I'm leaving Bella."
I heard sharp intakes of breath from both of my brothers and parents. Rosalie stayed silent, and Alice sighed again. Already I was being bombarded by mental questions, the buzzing in my head growing more deafening by the moment, but I worked to tune them all out. I would be conducting this conversation aloud -- for everyone to hear.
"Why?" Esme breathed, breaking the lingering silence. Her deep gold eyes were reflecting the same shock as her expression.
"Because it's too dangerous for us to be together," I replied as smoothly as I could. "And I'm afraid we'll need to leave Forks altogether. It's the only way this can happen." It was the truth, of course, but I still had so much trouble saying it while trying to keep my voice and emotions even. This was something I had to do, and I didn't need my body suggesting to anyone otherwise.
"If you're talking about last night ..." Emmett started, but I cut him off quickly.
"It's not just last night, Em. It's every night. Every night, there's the chance that something will go wrong. One lapse in my control--a flick of my wrist, a twitch of my finger--I could kill her. I could kill her!"
"You're overreacting ..." Alice said in a more menacing form of her sing-song voice. I shot her a glare.
"Am I?" I questioned darkly. "Am I? You seem to forget how fragile humans are, dear sister."
"I've forgotten nothing, Edward! You aren't the only one in this family who enjoys her company. She's my friend, you know!"
"Well lucky for you friends can be replaced!"
"Oh! So I guess you're the only one making a sacrifice here, aren't you?! Poor little Edward loses his one true love while everyone else goes on being happy-go-lucky, is that it?!"
"She's more than that to me! She's so more to me then she ever will be to any of you! To all of you put together!"
"Both of you, stop it!" Esme said sharply, looking from Alice to me and back again with warning flashing in her eyes. I looked down in silent apology, and Alice busied herself with studying the front window to her left. Silence echoed loudly through the room, ruling supreme for a few seconds until someone else's voice broke the reverie.
"Edward, I ..."
I extended one hand towards Jasper and gestured to him to stay silent as I pinched the bridge of my nose with my other. He had already apologized more times than needed. I knew the guilt he was feeling over this; everyone in my family did. He thought that it was his loss of control during Bella's party yesterday that had lead to my decision when, really, it was just the action that threw my decision into sharp relief against the haze of my dilemma.
"Please, Jazz. Don't apologize again. I already told you I've forgiven you. Bella's forgiven you. What more do you want?"
Jasper shook his head once and spoke anyway.
"I'm not trying to apologize again persay, Edward, but perhaps you forget who I am," Jasper said slowly. I did nothing but stare at my brother as he spoke.
"I'm truly sorry for what happened yesterday, but you're using that one incident to try and justify this entire decision of yours. You've managed to get your head to believe that this is the best course of action, but your emotions are giving you away."
'Damnit,' I cursed myself internally. 'I guess I didn't have as good a hold on the reins of my emotions as I thought I did.' I cursed again as Jasper continued.
"I feel the pain you're feeling right now ... the anguish, the confusion. I've lived with you as my brother for long enough to learn your nature. These feelings are not going to pass for you. Do you really think that torturing yourself for the rest of your days is going to make life better for her?"
"Yeah," Emmett said, throwing his hand out to his side in a gesture that clearly said he agreed with Jasper. "You love her, Eddie--"
I hissed lowly at this. He knew I hated being called nicknames stemming from my given name--everyone knew. But, Emmett was obviously ignoring me and continued.
"--and if she loves you even half as much as you love her, then she isn't going to be miserable for a few weeks or months and move on like you think. She's going to be miserable for years ... She'll never get over the pain of you leaving her. It'll tear her to bits!"
"He's right!" Alice added quickly, snapping her attention away from the window and back to the conversation. "You think I haven't seen the way this is going to play out? You're not only going to condemn yourself to misery but her, too!"
"Edward, in all the years we've spent together, I have never seen you as happy as you are around Bella. And her ... she practically glows when she's with you. Do you really intend to give all of that up?" Esme whispered.
"Oh, will you all just shut up?!"
Rosalie looked up from her freshly painted nails with an annoyed expression gracing her picturesque face. But, she didn't look at me with that glare of death; she looked at everyone else.
"Can't you all see that Edward's decision is not only good for Bella, it's good for us all, as well? Without her around, none of us will lose control like Jasper did last night. She'll stay in the human world where she belongs, and we'll stay in ours. We can get back to the way our lives should be," Rosalie said smoothly, obviously quite proud of herself for deducing such a conclusion. Of course, Rose was always proud of herself. I quickly supressed my anger; how dare she twist my words into meaning something even remotely about herself?
"Rose ..." Emmett said reproachfully, a clear note of disappointment in his voice. She just shot him a glare.
"What?" she asked shortly, almost daring him to challenge her. Emmett just shook his head and looked away.
And suddenly, I was aware of something. The one person that I trusted the most in this family--the one voice I would listen to from now until the end of time, always full of reason and wisdom--had been silent since the conversation had begun.
I looked up and straight at the man who had been my father for the last ninety years. Carlisle's face was practically void of emotion as he stared back at me. Ignoring the rest of the voices buzzing in my head, I tuned into the one I had known the longest. His mind was running a mile-a-minute, not so much asking questions of me as he was of himself. He was running scenarios and possibilities through his head, contemplating them carefully, and dismissing them for others. All of them, though--every single thought racing through his consciousness--stemmed from one single question. It was one that I had already answered, though apparently not thoroughly enough for his liking.
Why was I doing this?
"I would like to speak to Edward alone," Carlisle said clearly, keeping his gaze firmly rooted in mine. There were no words from the rest of my family, but there was no movement from them, either. While the room was quiet, my mind head was ringing with the voices of my mother and siblings. They definitely wanted a say in this subject matter, and they feared that leaving would void their opinions. Luckily, Carlisle had enough experience with us all to deduce this from them without having to read their minds.
"You have all voiced your opinions in this matter," he said firmly. "Now I would like to voice mine in private."
No one moved for around three and half seconds. Then, slowly, Esme rose gracefully from her chair. She let her right hand trail across Carlisle's shoulders as she took a few steps towards me. She leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to my hair as she passed, then floated out of the dining room to another area of the house. Rosalie and Emmett were next to go, Emmett clapping me on the back encouragingly with a grim expression across his face. Jasper stood and took Alice by the hand, leading her towards the doorway with his eyes glued to the flooring. He glanced up as he passed by me, every one of his leonine features dripping with the heavy guilt he was still feeling about the situation. He cracked a small, still apologetic smile, then continued onwards out of the room. Alice shot me one last pleading look before being tugged away. Finally, Carlisle and I were alone.
"Why are you doing this, Edward?" Carlisle said after a long moment of silence. I shot an incredulous look at him from across the table. Was he seriously asking me this? Had he not been paying attention this whole time? But, one glance into his head told me that he was expecting his question answered nonetheless.
"I told you," I started carefully, being firm but respectful in my speech. "It's too dangerous for Bella to be around me ... to be around us."
"It is true that it is incredibly dangerous," Carlisle conceded, nodding once. "But that isn't the only reason, is it?"
I was silent to this, my head now racing. Another reason? Wasn't the danger enough of one?
"I don't understand," I said slowly as I prodded his mind for a clue as to what he was playing at. Carlisle shook his head, recognizing what I was doing. It was, after all, a fairly-common tactic of mine; one he of all people was very familiar with.
"No, son. Don't look for the correct answer in here," he said, tapping his temple with his right index finger. "I don't possess it. It is only you that knows how this question is resolved."
I searched my mind frantically for an answer, expecting to find it somewhere deep within my ever-waking conscience. But, the deeper I dug, the more lost I became. My face must have twisted into an expression mirroring my confusion, because Carlisle chuckled once and shook his head.
"You are overthinking this, Edward. You're overthinking something yet again," he scolded lightly. "Stop trying to find some intricate response that miraculously solves everything and just answer the question. Is the danger we pose to Bella the only reason you have to justify disappearing from her life?"
He had a point. I did tend to overthink things quite often. I mentally cursed myself for this as I had done so many times before and decided on a new plan of action. I was going to think about the question and the question only. Why, oh why, was I going to leave the reason for my very existence behind, thrusting myself into a never-ending ocean of dispair that I knew, deep down inside, I would never be able to escape from?
I stopped short. The answer was right there in my question ... A single, lingering word.
Existence.
Not life. Existence.
I was leaving Bella Swan so that she could have more than just an existence. I was leaving her so she could have a life.
I looked up at my father with both realization and agony in my darkening eyes. He looked back at me with his glowing gold ones, and I took a third breath in and out before speaking again.
"I'm doing this because I want her to have more than I can give her," I whispered softly, knowing that Carlisle's ears would hear my speech quite easily. "She deserves more than I can give her. I can only give her what my existence can entail. I cannot give her a life. She deserves to have a full, joyous, wonderful life with someone she loves ... with someone she cares for and who cares for her, as well. She should get the chance to finish growing up, get married, have children ... to grow old with the one she loves and look back at everything they've done with a smile on her face. And, if there truly is a God, her soul deserves its place in heaven. I cannot and will not take any of that away from her."
When I had finished my little speech of sorts, I realized that I had looked away from Carlisle and was now boring holes into my mother's antique table with my eyes. I glanced up again to meet his gaze and found him nodding minutely. At first, I thought my epiphany was all I had needed to get him to see things my way, so to speak. However, my hopeful expression changed to a scowl as I heard what was about to come out of his mouth.
"Are you sure she actually wants all of that?"
I growled lowly, not bothering to try and hide my anger. My father did nothing but raise both eyebrows expectantly.
He was right. I hadn't asked Bella what she wanted, but that was because I knew what she would say. My foolish, clumsy, beautiful Bella ... she would say she wanting nothing more but to be with me forever.
"I know what she wants," I said sharply, "but that doesn't mean she knows what's best for her."
"And you do?" Carlisle challenged. "If I recall correctly, Edward, you haven't been human for near a century."
"That's near a century more experience I've had with walking this world that she hasn't had."
"Walking this world as something other than what she is."
"Walking it nonetheless. Just because I'm forever frozen at seventeen doesn't mean I have the mind of a teenager."
"I never said you did. I merely stated that perhaps you don't know what's best for Bella any better than she does."
He was right yet again. Though, I've found that Carlisle was rarely wrong. Three and a half centuries of life, in whatever form, had given him wisdom beyond all of us. Finally, I gave up trying to reason with him. Every attempt I could make, he could more than likely come up with a fitting rebuttal. Perhaps it was time for a different plan of action.
"Please, Carlisle," I said softly, the defeat in my voice plainly obvious. "I just can't do this anymore. I don't want to pretend that I can give her anything close to a normal life."
Carlisle rose from his chair and stepped towards me swiftly. He rested his hand on my shoulder, glancing down at me with a reproachful expression.
"I'm only going to ask this once, Edward," he said smoothly. "Don't do this. Don't do it to Bella ... or your family ... or yourself."
We stared at each other for at least a minute. His mind echoed the same pleading request over and over again, causing it to ring in every corner of mine. Every reverberation of my Bella's name was like an electric shock, springing up suddenly and painfully and fading away too slowly to allow me any rest at all. But as much as I wanted to give in--to say that I had made a big mistake and that me wanting to leave was the most foolish thing I had ever deduced--I just couldn't. Even with my siblings' and parents' shouted pleas for me to stop this ... this madness I had created for myself, I couldn't. None of it mattered. I didn't matter. My family didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was Bella.
"I'm sorry, Carlisle. This is the way it has to be."
I had expected a longer period of silence before he answered me, but there wasn't one. Carlisle simply nodded and responded.
"Then so be it. I'll call the hospital and tell them I've received a rather sudden, sensitive offer ... somewhere in California, I reckon. I'll have Esme call the school and inform them that the family is moving out-of-state. I'll inform everyone else that we will be departing soon."
I took a deep breath once more and sighed.
"Thank you."
Carlisle squeezed my shoulder once before starting out of the dining room. "I hope you know what you're doing, son," he told me in parting before calling for Esme. She must have been lurking somewhere close by, because it wasn't long until I heard him exchange a few words with her and disappear up the stairs to the second floor.
And then I was alone. But only for a moment.
"You're going to destroy both her and yourself."
I practically threw my head into my hands and let out a growl of frustration as Alice's voice filled both my ears and my mind.
"You're definitetly not being the sister I need right now, Alice," I hissed. Alice snorted.
"Quite the contrary, actually. I'm being exactly the sister you need right now; one who tells you when you're making a big mistake," she countered. "And this is more than a big mistake. It's a monstrous one."
Suddenly, I pushed myself up out of my chair and spun to face her. Though I towered above her tiny figure, she held her ground firmly, glaring up at me with a mixture of fury and helplessness. I recognized the look; it was the expression she wore when she knew she was going to lose an argument but decided to plead her case anyways. Normally, I shared her helpless feeling when I saw it sneak onto her face, but oddly enough, I took a little comfort from it tonight.
"Do me a favor, Alice, as a sister," I said quietly. "Don't look."
"Don't look for what?" she asked lightly, trying to feign innocence. I shot her a scathing look.
"You know what."
"I'll watch the futures of whomever I choose, Eddie," she said, stressing the loathed nickname with everything she had. I growled rather loudly this time.
"And I ask you again, Alice. Don't. Look."
Alice growled right back menacingly. But, after a moment or two, she looked away in defeat.
"Fine."
Before I could hear whether or not her concession rang true, I turned and bolted from the house. I leapt the river in an easy stride and took off as fast as I could into the thickly-wooded forest, going to the one place I knew I could at least try to find some solace. The meadow. Tonight was going to be one of the longest nights of my existence.
I reached my chosen destination in record-time, which was good seeing as tearless sobs of agony were already building in my chest. I strode over to the edge of the clearing where I had first brought Bella and examined the trees. It didn't take long for me to find the one I had ripped a branch from in my demonstration of strength. Stepping over to it, I collapsed to the ground between the roots.
And I wept.