A/N: This is totally unconnected to anything I've already written, I promise. It's just a New Moon spin written after an idea I got while listening to the movie's impeccable soundtrack. I can't stay away. Enjoy!
Spun Out So Far
Put a lid on all that noise
Anya Marina, "Satellite Heart"
"Why haven't you told her yet, Edward?"
Carlisle's words are muffled, similar to how most people's thoughts are muffled. Edward Cullen can't focus on Carlisle's question; he can't focus on anything anybody has to say or think to him, all because everything ends up being overshadowed by Bella, Bella, Bella. Her name leaves a signature on everything he approaches and in the worst way possible. He should have known.
Edward has to find a way to leave Bella without his own signature attached to it.
"Why haven't you told her?" Carlisle repeats.
"Told her what?"
Edward has asked a stupid question, and they both know it.
It's been an eventful week. Early on, people have started to notice that Carlisle Cullen, the town's best doctor, has been in Forks for a while and hasn't really been aging by much (while in reality, he hasn't been aging at all). And then, just last night, the Cullens put on a disastrous eighteenth birthday party for Bella Swan, a woman Edward can't call just his girlfriend, but not his soul mate, either. The party itself was going pretty well until Jasper Hale, Edward's adoptive brother, nearly attacked Bella over the blood that was exposed due to a mere paper cut. Bella went home tonight with birthday presents and stitches to match, and Edward couldn't let himself spend the night.
It's all just one big, horrible coincidence.
It's also time for the Olympic Coven to cut their losses.
Everybody besides Edward has made plans since Carlisle pointed out townspeople's observations. Everybody besides Edward was going to move away. Rosalie can't wait to go to Paris, Alice wants to see Milan, and Amsterdam has captured Emmett's interest. Edward would have stayed in Forks with Bella. He's lived on his own before, though, and it's never been a big deal. Edward's been alone and lonely at the same time, but it's nothing new. Edward Cullen and loneliness go together like perfect lovers; the product of two negatives is a positive, after all.
Edward hates himself. He'd hate to have to deal with anyone like him because he's so horrible. He honestly wouldn't mind leaving Bella to be alone now. He hasn't made any plans on it, but they're in the process now. Amazing. Being alone is so easy for him; it's always been the easiest part. He can drop anything to be alone, and it will always be so, so easy that it's almost laughable. But for him to leave Bella in a way for her to understand… it's going to be the most difficult, hurtful thing he's ever had to do. He can survive the pain since he's felt worst pain, but she hasn't. Has she? He likes to believe that he's the most important thing in her world, but simultaneously, she's young; she doesn't know what her world is and what she wants from it, so she'll be slightly heartbroken, utterly confused, and ultimately understanding.
Weeks, he thinks. It will only take her a matter of weeks.
And it will hurt him, too—there's no doubt about that—but he'll do what he does best: blame.
"I'll tell her," he replies to Carlisle. "Tomorrow."
"Are you sure you want to do this?" That's only one of the things that Edward admires the most about Carlisle—he understands people's choices and doesn't become a dictator about them, but he still makes sure the right decision is being made.
"I'm positive," Edward says, and it's one of the most difficult decisions he's ever made. He finally has a choice, and he's choosing the most heartbreaking one.
This easy part will arrive soon enough.
High school is useless, so Edward doesn't go the next day. Why didn't he just enroll in college to save himself from the overflow of idiots? Then again, he's one of them. He fits in with the crowd for once. Dreams really do come true.
Edward goes to Bella's house instead, in the afternoon, once the rest of his family is gone on their separate yet connected ways. He'll catch up with Carlisle or Alice someday. He's not in a huge rush. Loneliness is his best friend, after all, and it wants to catch up with Edward over a few drinks.
It's time to clean up the mess before a slightly larger one happens. Vacant, quiet, and without any vehicles near, Edward walks around the house to Bella's familiar window. He's entered it so many times, they have history. The window is still a bit stiff, but this will be the last time. Everything here is for the last time.
On Bella's closed laptop, next to a bottle of painkiller pills given to her from Carlisle last night, are the boxes that contain Bella's birthday gifts: plane tickets to visit her mother in Florida, from Carlisle and Esme; a necklace from Rosalie; and a CD Edward made himself. It includes Bella's lullaby, but she'll never know. He's content with that, for the most part, but it's hard for him to lie to himself, to put a lid on all that noise he's giving himself in his own head.
Taking the presents and leaving the pills, he decides she won't need the painkiller at all. He'll be gone by tonight, so the pain she'll suffer in the long run won't exist. It's perfect, really. It's also terribly wretched in the fact that it had to escalate to Jasper nearly killing Bella for him to make this decision. That's always been one of Edward's many flaws: he waits until the very last minute, until everything has spun out so far of control that he's forced to commit some injustices of the worst kind all to escape the painful feeling of his heart under the absolute worst pressure. Edward has so many problems that he's simply become one. It's his occupation and his hobby. Amazing.
Also next to Bella's closed laptop and the painkillers is a single photograph, folded in half vertically and taped down to her desk. Edward sees only himself until he unfolds it and discovers it's a picture of the both of them. He hates it. He hates how he puts herself last, concealing all that she is like something ugly, all while glorifying a monster. He takes the photo and puts it on top of the stack of birthday presents, in which he puts under her single loose floorboard. She doesn't know anything about the looseness of the floorboard. It's better left unnoticed, similarly to a lot of things.
Edward stands next to Bella's purple, unmade bedspread, halfway falling off her bed. He takes it all in—takes in a handful of the last details of this part of this life, but not his entire existence.
The easy part will arrive soon enough.
At two o'clock, the time that school gets out, Edward makes his way to the forest area near Bella's driveway, but not to the meadow; Bella will never make it home in one piece from there. He loves her like he's never loved anyone—maybe for the fact that he can't read her mind or some other reason—but he values her safety above anything and everything. She doesn't deserve to experience the inevitable pain he's put her through and would put her through in the future, so now she won't have to.
And it might hurt Edward for a moment; this is one of the most difficult, excruciating things he'll ever be forced to do. But that's just a moment for him. He supposes it's nice to love and be loved, but he'd rather know all that he can possibly know, and to know all that whatever god there is knows. It's just a moment.
The grumbling and humming of Bella's truck can be heard from miles away, and as it gets closer, the difficult part does, too, but the easy part will follow. It always does.
Bella pulls into the driveway, just a bit off from her designated side; her father's police cruiser will be two centimeters closer to the center of the driveway than usual.
Bella, clad in her long, earthy coat, jeans, sneakers, and her hair pulled away from her face in a band, gets out of the truck and spots Edward, his hands in the pocket of the coat he wore last night. It's been a rough night.
Before she can say anything, he motions his head over to the trees and says, "Take a walk with me." She complies. She always has, and she always will.
She follows behind him, watching his bronze hair, and he leads her to a clearing not too far from where they came from. If things go well, she'll be able to find her way home, but there's still the chance she won't. She's sensible, for the most part, but when she isn't, she's completely lost.
He stops moving and turns around. Her brown eyes gaze up at him, falling in love with every time she glances at his face, whether she knows it or not. He doesn't have to read her mind to know she is.
"We have to leave Forks," he tells her, skipping the filler words and jumping to the point.
"Why?" she immediately asks.
"This can't happen anymore. I can't do this."
"Well—"
"I said I can't do this," he repeats. "I mean, we can't do this."
"I'll just have to find something to tell Charlie, then," she suggests, totally missing the point. "I'll go with you. I'll follow you anywhere."
He's positive of that; her everlasting desire is inevitably destructive.
"No," he says. "No."
"What do you mean by 'we can't do this'? How does that make any sense?"
Messy. That's all that this is.
"I have to leave, Bella. This is all for your protection."
"You know that's total crap, Edward."
"Then so be it. Bella, I can't do this anymore. We're not the right people for each other."
She takes a moment to think; he doesn't hear it. "Am I not good enough?"
He doesn't take any time to think about it. "No."
He hears her breathing stop.
"We're just completely different people," he says. "I'm lonely by nature, and you don't deserve to feel any pain at all—"
"Don't be so selfish!" she exclaims. "You cannot blame something as meaningless as last night on your perpetual loneliness, and that's because you're not a lonely person—when you're around me, you're not lonely, are you? You can't be, you just—"
"But I am. I am always lonely, Bella."
Tears burn in her chocolate brown eyes. He might miss that. "So I'm not nearly good enough. That's it?"
"That's exactly it."
She bites her bottom lip, almost drawing blood, but it doesn't bother him.
She can say so many things; she can use every insult in the book, remind him of all the time she's endangered her, and tell him just how selfish he really is, but she resorts to the cowardly self-loathing she knows all too well.
"I'm sorry" is what she says. Sorry is what he is. But not sorry enough, just in the way that she'll never be good enough, except she doesn't have to lie to his face, or rely on her own faulty personality traits to lie to his face. She's not that cruel.
But he is.
He lives in shades and shades of cruel. He always has; it keeps his weather strange and his life interesting.
He doesn't have the effort or kindness to give her one last kiss. Instead he turns around and walks away, blinking down to the ground, realizing what he's done.
He blinks back into reality, the one where Bella is still in one piece, innocent and not heartbroken, dressed in her coat and hairband.
He nods his head towards the forest behind him before she can utter a word. "Take a walk with me," he says. Just a walk. That's all it is. She obeys, just as he expected.
The easy part will arrive soon enough.
fin.