Stories of Symmetry
Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer and Pablo Neruda.
--
She is night, almost, and not just because it's the only time she sees him.
She is the darkest part of his life, the most mysterious, the most unsafe. And – like the night – she's also the loveliest, and the strangest, and the best.
He can feel his tan skin grow lighter as the days go by, but whether it's from lack of sun or her, he isn't really sure.
--
Jacob kisses a hot path up her leg, eyes darker than the sky.
"You'll kill me," she says, her voice low. "You'll burn me alive, Jake, I swear you will."
He chuckles, breath tickling her skin. "You'll die warm, in any case."
She moans, fingers sliding through his hair – pulling, tugging, white against black.
Jacob lets out a hiss, nips at her thigh in response.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, twirling a strand of silk. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"
He lifts his head up and kisses her. "I always knew it would hurt."
--
She still dreams, even if she doesn't sleep. Imagines a heartbeat, and not being cold all the time. Pictures what life would've been like, had she chosen a different path.
She imagines racing motorcycles, fearless, as the wind blows, and swimming in the ocean at dawn. She imagines soft folds of skin, losing the fair slimness of youth, wrinkles forming in the corners of her eyes.
She's not scared of it anymore. And she laughs at the irony: that all it really took to see the wrong choice – was to make it.
--
"What do you want?" Edward asks her one day, alone in the big white house.
"If I knew, I'd have it," she snaps. "You're not the only selfish one around here, you know."
"Yes, I know that," he sighs. "If it's him, Bella, I – I love you too much, I suppose. If having him will make you happy, I'll keep whatever part of you you'll give."
"I don't think you understand," she says. "I don't want to be…broken. I don't want to have half of my heart here and half of it over the treaty line." Then, quietly: "I don't want to be a monster."
"Oh, love," he laughs. "This is the wrong life for you."
--
Embry wants her gone, of course.
He doesn't say it out loud, or even in wolf-form, but Jacob knows.
It's in the look he gives him when his thoughts run to Bella, to the secrets and the sleep – it's in the way he growls and turns away.
Jacob can't be sorry, even if, sometimes, he's pretty sure what he's doing isn't right.
Love outweighs a lot of things.
(Even, Jacob thinks, those days when he sort of wishes Embry knew it, too, in death.)
--
"Extraordinary," he grins. It's early morning and light inches its way onto the bed. She laughs; scratches her nails lightly on his chest.
He shrugs, tracing a diamond facet of her skin. "That's what you are."
She's somber all of a sudden, tucks her head underneath his neck and sighs. "You would never say that about him."
Jacob lifts her chin up and shakes his head. "I'm not talking about the shine, honey."
--
Bella keeps a picture in her room, folded and creased and shoved into a corner of her bookshelf. It's not of Edward, though, or even Jake – it's her with Jessica, Angela and Mike, sitting outside the school, a rare day when the sun is shining.
It's not particularly special – Jess has her head on Mike's shoulder, smiling at the camera. Mike keeps one hand on her knee and turns away, laughing at Angela, who's pulling Bella into the frame.
What strikes her the most, though, isn't the blush in her cheeks, or the brown in her eyes, but the fact that she looks so happy.
She could have had a life, she realizes – and maybe without Edward, it wouldn't even be Jacob she was running to. Maybe it would be the friends she never got to know, the homework and gym classes, late-night girl-talks and throwing up from the first time she drank too much.
She could have had all of these things. She should have. And maybe, in the end, it wasn't the Cullens who messed with fate, but Bella.
--
"So you love him, then?" Rosalie asks, barely making note of the question mark.
Bella's eyes widen. "I'm married."
Rosalie snorts. "Didn't stop you from screwing him."
Bella doesn't answer right away, pushing her lips together until they turn as white as the rest of her skin.
"Why do you hate me?" she asks after a minute.
"I don't hate you," Rosalie tells her, shaking her head. "I can't hate someone I feel sorry for."
Bella looks up at the blond. "Don't take pity on me. I'm not like you – I got everything I wanted."
Rosalie laughs, the sound shrill in the silence of the house. "Oh, Bella. You really haven't changed, have you?"
--
Emily Young is pregnant by spring, and Bella finds a way to run into her, one lazy weekend when Edward is out.
She's big, and Bella thinks of all those clichés people say about pregnant women – but, the thing is, it's true – she's…glowing. Freaking glowing. She looks tired and has a hand on her hip like it's the only thing keeping her in balance, and her hair is frizzy and there's lint stuck to her clothes – but Bella's pretty sure she's never seen anyone so beautiful.
That could be me, she thinks, but the thought is fleeting. She gets immortality and strength, Emily gets babies and normalcy. That was the trade-off.
Bella buys a little yellow onesie, folds it up tiny and slips it into Emily's purse when she passes by.
It's not like she could ever use it, anyway.
--
They are lying in her old room, one day – she comes back sometimes, just to see things, perhaps.
But everything is exactly how she left it, down to the bracelet on the dresser and the book lying by the sheets. He picks it up, laughs under his breath, says, "Pablo Neruda, Bells? Somehow I'm not surprised."
She smiles and flips it open to a dog-eared page, reads, "Everything is so alive that I can be alive. Without moving I can see it all: in your life, I see everything that lives." She pauses, looks up at him. "That's your poem, Jake."
"No dirty limericks?" he jokes. "No 'my quivering hand moved over his –'"
"Shut up," she says, hitting his arm. "It's not all about sex, Jacob."
"Right," he sighs, looking away. "Guess that's why you never stay long, huh?"
"That's not what I –"
"S'okay, Bells," he shrugs. He takes the book from its place in between them, the sound of turning pages loud in the room. "I love you," he reads quietly, "I love you as certain dark things are to be loved – in secret, between the shadow and the soul."
She kisses his neck, stares at the sharp jut of his collarbone as he falls asleep. And in the blue-gray of the early morning, she slips underneath him without a sound, whispering, "I love you because I know no other way."
--
This creative universe makes pain the only thing that connects us all.
She knows this because she's been there: when the sun sets and there's beauty, but there's never anyone watching it. When the yellows fade to blues fade to blacks fade to nothing, and the stars are never quite as bright as the night before.
There is always someone hurting – always a part of everyone that's hurting – they may not know it, but it's there, always, underneath the heartbeat or the lie or the silence.
So it's not all that unusual, she thinks, that the one thing everyone desires is to be loved. Because without pain, there is no love. And without love, there is nothing to live for.
Perhaps that's what leads her to this end: caught between the heartache and the beauty. She wishes she could turn back time, but she can't – and, if she could, she doesn't really know if she'd be able to make the change.
Bella Swan (Cullen, Black, whatever) has always been selfish that way.
--
End