Chromatic

ONE-SHOT. There are a million shades in the rainbow. Imagine you are the reason it even exists. ExB. COMPLETE

That colour.

I couldn't remove it from the cognitive awareness of my innermost thoughts. It swirled around, the shades wrapping around each other, twisting and melting together.

A chocolate brown. A kaleidoscope of mahogany.

Did the specifics matter? Not in the slightest. They all infiltrated my dreams. As I laid there, in the rumpled sheets of my lonely bed, I realized one factor and one factor alone.

She owned me.

She shouldn't have been there in the first place. Didn't I warn her? To save herself? I couldn't handle how she stared at me with those eyes, the red puffing around the edges. I could taste the saltiness in her tears, feel the wetness in my heart.

"Dammit, Bella! We can't keep this up! Go away! I'm not some puppy dog you think you can rescue and save."

"Please...just..." Her voice was too much. Begging. Praying. Whispering. "I love you."

It broke my spirit. My soul. That thread I was barely hanging on to.

But it didn't release the hold I had on myself.

My love for death was more than my love for her.

"Don't you see? I have no more fight in me, Bella. You can't change me. You can't change this..." With dismissal wave of my hand over my body, I turned back to the ledge of the highest building in the city.

This end, somehow, seem comforting. Knowing the end of my existence was near, seemed like a weight lifted off my shoulders. I would now forever stay away from her. She would mourn, of course, but it was better than the alternative. Life with me? That was not living. It was an eternal residence in hell.

The touch upon the lapel on my long camel coloured coat tickled the hairs just above my neck. Her fingertips felt like ice, cold and raw, cutting into my senses.

"Edward," she whispered. "You promised. You promised you would try. For me."

When I turned, when the city was no longer just below my sights, my knees buckled. How did she always know what would make me fold? I turned to look at her, the breath I was grasping for some sort of release

Bella Cullen, the love of my life, was more beautiful now than the day we met eight years earlier. Her cheeks were a rosy blush as the wind nipped at her delicate face. The tresses of her hair curled just below her shoulders, her hands lingered right around my neck.

Stretching, always reaching, never succeeding.

My breathing was labored, rugged from the excursion of walking up endless amounts of stairs. As numerous as the stars, all of this work, just to flourish in death. The irony of it all did not escape me.

My soul laid bare towards the earth, as I released the winter coat from my frigid skin. I repulsed even myself. How could she love me? How could she love this pale monster? I was a skeleton hiding in human skin, the replica of a sculpture that was never real.

The blue gown whipped around me, the city air taking hysterically laughing at the dust of my features.

With a feeble hand, I picked up one of the jars of paint I had carried with me.

"Do you see this, Bella?" I yelled against the wind. "This blue? It represents the loyalty you've had for me. Every step of the way, you've held onto some mindless hope. The innocence of it astounds me."

"Edward…" She reaches for me, but I turn away.

"The orange?" I continued, pouring it over my delicate skin. "It's your optimism. The way you idealize encouragement like a paintbrush amongst the strokes of my breathing; it's an extinguishing flame that dies every second."

She cries continuously, but I am too selfish to let her stop me now.

"The white…the purity of your most inner being, it floats to the heavens, Bella. The angels sing your name, while I aggressively flutter it away with the resistance inside of me."

The colours of the paint drip down, down, down. Down my body, along the concrete, floating to the abyss of the world below.

"But this Bella, this is black. This is I. This is death. Hidden in the mysteries of the unknown, I have lost the will to conquer it. I can fight no more. Not for you, not for myself."

With the last heavy sigh, I shudder my shoulders.

"It's just cancer, Edward. We can beat this! We can…the doctors said…"

She and I both know she is lying. Stage four of terminal brain cancer has ravished my full life within a few short months. They caught it too late.

"Ha!" I answered sarcastically. "Just cancer? Have you seen my brittle bones? Have you felt the abandonment that I have from my own life?"

Swallowing one last time, I glance at the colours which have blurred on my frame.

"I am empty. Hallow. Grief has swallowed me with its ravishing loneliness only to call on me at my last moment in an attempt to comfort. But you, my love, are none of these deadened shades of a sad prison. You are beautiful, Bella Cullen."

"You are a hue that exists in no parts of the earth. You are the complexion of a desire that only transpires to those that deserve your love. You, my Bella, are chromatic."

As I step off the ledge, I say to her my final prayer.

"Colour the world with your compassion as you have so dutifully done to mine."

Thanks for reading and stay beautiful.

XoXo,

ThisIsReallyHappening