Forever
Summary: Edward reflects on what it means to be a vampire, while Bella changes. Ignores Breaking dawn, no Renesmee.
Please note that I suck at spelling .If you are a grammar Nazi, please go away. I mean it in a nice way :)
Edward could never shake the feeling that this was wrong. Sitting outside the door of his father's study as his new wife was screaming her lungs out. He sat with her through the first day, he held her hand and whispered calming words, hummed her lullaby. She just kept on shrieking. From his own experience of being stuck in three days of hell, he knew that nothing anybody could say would calm her. He finally stopped when he realised that the calming words where more for his benefit than for hers.
The second day he just stared at her, remembering his own transformation. How he thought that he was sent to hell for some offence he did not know about, maybe he disobeyed his parents to much; maybe it was for steeling that lollipop when he was five or when he drank whiskey with the older neighbour boys when he was fourteen. Whatever it was, the pain was all consuming he thought that everybody had abandoned him, that he was blind and alone burning in a place no one would ever find him. He begged and pleaded for God to forgive him, or to kill him. It was only later that he realised that Carlisle had held him through the whole process, whispering calm kind words to him just like he did for Bella.
When Bella started screaming for deaf to take her, begging to be killed he could not take it anymore. He could never say no to her, especially when she pleaded. That is how he ended up sitting outside the door of Carlisle office, Unable to be in the same room as her, but unable to move out of hearing distance of her screams.
He found solace in concentrating on her heartbeat, counting the limited beats. The knowledge that in a couple of hours he would never hear that sweet sound again, that knowledge saddened him in ways he could never explain.
Edward stared out the window and watched the sky turn from grey to black as time moved towards Bella's final hours as a human.
This was the right thing to do, right? Emmett said so; he was excited with the prospect of wrestling matches with a feisty newborn. Esme said so, the idea of adding to the family made her happy; she talked about how Bella would balance the family out ever since the day of the 'vote'. Alice said it was inevitable, that this is how it was suppose to be. Carlisle said it was the only way, Bella's presence in his life had changed him irrevocably, and he could never go back to a live without her.
Through her, he experienced what it was like to have a goal in his life. She was everything to him, the love of his life. Her kindness and selfless attitude was a contrast the monster that he constantly fought with, her presence in his life kept the killer in him subdued. He adored her naivety, it was refreshing when he lived with a family all with bloody pasts and horrific back stories, a underlining theme to their existences.
No matter how they tried to fit into the human world and pretend that they were not creatures of the underworld, pretend that they cared about cars, fashion, wrestling, interior design and advances in modern medicine. His family had their masks, distractions to help to fit into the mortal world... in to her world.
She was his mask, he always found his families 'obsessions' strange, who could care about fashion an auto mobiles when they all craved blood, they craved it constantly, fantasising about sinking their teeth into their neighbours, the people whose lives they mimicked the people who envied them.
There obsessions had another function as swell, fashion constantly changed, there was always a new, more advanced car on the market , better video games came out, medical advances was constantly being made, fashions in interior decorating constantly changed. All there obsessions was constantly in a state of being upgraded, changing and growing. And they are not.
When you live forever what do you live for? Put on a long enough timeline everything looses there importance. Who cares about getting good grades when you have matriculated over and over and will again and again? All the decisions that should be important becomes meaningless, what university you are going to?, what field of study your going into?, what city you are going to live in? Who are your friends going to be in highschoool, Important decisions for humans because they are only allowed to make them a limited number of times, for a vampire they are insignificant, for a vampire everything is insignificant.
That is why they have their vices, things they pretend to be interested in. It's a survival tactic; else their lives would become one big blur. Who would care about anything when they knew a better version will eventually take its place or that it will ultimately die or became outdated? Even time becomes meaningless concept to a vampire, when you have an unlimited amount of something it tends to loos its value.
That is why vampires put a lot of importance on their mates... unlike other living creatures they can't procreate. The only reason for forming romantic bonds is to ensure that you don't add loneliness to your isolated existence and well to have something to do for eternity.
Edward closes his eyes and imagines his blushing bride on their wedding day, he loves her blush, her clumsy nature, he loves all the little imperfections that make her human, he loves that he can't read her mind, most of all he loves that she changes, that she ages and that he can or could have experience it with her. But he is not that sure if he loves her. He is not sure if any of his siblings or his parents really loves each other, he can't be certain; he does not have his brothers' gifts.
He does not believe that vampires have the capability to experience love like humans, how can cold animated corpses who sucked the live force out of other to continue existing really have the ability to love. Even if they pretend not to be, they are essentially dead, the dead has no feelings, they add nothing to society, they are just remnants of times long gone.
Forming relationships and living in courts may just be a matter of convenience, all creatures even the non living ones has the natural urge to continue their existence and there is more power in numbers. His and the rest of his families marriages stem from the same place as their 'obsessions', things to pretend to love just to make their long lives a bit more meaningful.
The only difference is that their obsessions kept them grounded in the change in the world they live in while there mates kept them from loneliness and served as a reason to keep up with the changing world. Vampires can stand still for eternity if they wanted; they need to look for reasons to continue moving.
So Edward stares at his wife, screaming and shrieking as she goes through the last notable and important change that she will ever experience. He mourns the life that she should have had, getting married to him, going to college with him, joining the work force while he waited at their home for her to return, loving him, retiring, dying in his arms. He also mourns the life he should have had, joining her in the life she should have had, he could have experienced everything through her, Watched her go through the natural stages of live, watch as she grows form girl to women, watch as her youth and beauty started to fade, watch as she creeps closer to death. When she did die he would fallow her.
It would have been the closest thing to actually having the life sickness had stolen from him. The life Carlisle replaced with the meaningless existence he is currently experiencing. But that life has also been stolen from him, by members of his own 'family' as they voted 'yes'. They did not understand, Bella was his 'obsession' and his other half rolled into one.
She was what grounded him, made his life liveable, meaningful. But now she would become a animated corpse just like him, she will probably enjoy the physical and mental strength of a vampire for a couple of years like he did. But when the time comes when she should have experienced her human death passes without incident and the world starts changing to something unrecognisable and foreign, she will turn to her new family for support like he did.
And a couple of decades later when years pass and the world changes and changes again, and she realise she is unable to change with it, when she starts grasping how long eternity really is, when she starts pretending to like insignificant things just to keep herself from falling into total despair with the realisation that her whole existence is essentially pointless, she is on the other ring of humanity never able to join it, but never able to escape it. She will realise what it means to live when nothing is really worth living for and then she will truly be like him, his partner for all eternity.