"Not seeing is a flower."
"Minu ga hana."
DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN THE CHARACTERS BUT THE PLOT OF THIS IS MINE. I AM NOT BASHING AT ALL-THIS WAS SOMETHING THAT WAS IN MY HEAD SO I WROTE IT HERE...REVIEW IF YOU LIKE IT BUT DO NOT FLAME PLEASE.
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"You're pathetic."
He didn't stir, no, Edward never stirred unless it was feeding time and that was only every other week. Since Cathy had died no one in the family had come to stay with him in Charlie's old house. Mason, Cathy's son, was nearing an age where he couldn't travel.
Sometimes he wondered, where had all the years gone and then he would remember that mortal years slipped by like sand in the hourglass he would mourn he would sit in Bella's old dusty room staring out the window.
How it came to be Leah's job to watch him was something he didn't whole heartedly understand. It had something to do with Carlisle of course and the simple fact that Leah was one of the only wolves left from the beginning, of his time with Bella. Leah had never stopped phasing so she never aged and while she watched the man she loved leave her and marry someone else and die of old age she had not changed.
Emily had cursed her for it some fifty years back, from what Edward could take out of her head-Emily had been angry had been mad with her fever and had died alone with Leah.
"You're just going to sit there all day and all night? Christ, it's a good thing that this neighborhood is abandoned and that the road leads no where anymore. You'd scare people if it did." She crouched down in front of him and peered upwards. He could almost feel the blood rushing through her spidery veins.
"You're going to be a good boy for me alright? I'm going to lift you and take you to the bathroom ok? You need a bath-not saying you stink well a human couldn't smell it."
It was the most demeaning when she bathed him. She said that the sweet stink of him would make her dizzy. Sometimes, in his grief, Edward would forget to bathe just like he would forget to move from the window.
The warm bath water was soothing. Her hot hands were like fire on his body-he had given Bella baths like this when she was too old to move.
"I spent the week with Seth's family. He has a grandson that looks just like him." She began the awkward track of conversation. He wouldn't respond of course he never did. "I played it off really well, saying I was a long lost cousin from the sister who ran away. I called myself Mary. The oldest of those kids said I looked just like Old Aunt Leah. What a laugh."
His head tipped forward.
"Talk, please."
Her voice was just a whisper.
"Do you think I like this? Do you think that I like taking care of you, coming back to this old house almost fifty years since your wife died? I wouldn't be in this town if it wasn't for you, you know that?" She shook her head. "But you're so selfish you don't even care. You'd just rather sit around here and wait for some fucking sign from Bella. From the great beyond, she'll tell you to get off your ass and stop being such a little bitch about everything. She's dead Edward they are all dead. There is nothing here anymore there is no whisper of her voice or the scent of her hair. There is nothing here but the ghosts you make."
She said things like this all of the time, Edward was quite used to it, but it still hurt.
A pain deep inside his heart.
Fifty years.
Bella had been dead for almost fifty years. Bella hadn't ever loved him enough to tell him the truth Bella had cheated on him and confided in Jasper of all people. This final moment. Her final breath was Jasper's her words of obvious dislike of what they were.
"That bitch is probably fucking Jake in the after life not even thinking about you."
The movement was too fast for her to see, his ice cold hand gripping her in the kind of strength he hadn't exerted in over some 30 years, those fingers found her neck holding her against the remodeled tile-she had picked it, he remembered. She had said the house needed fixing.
"Don't presume to understand her or the decisions she made." He bared his teeth, his wild bronze eyes appearing yellow. "The level of stupidity that pours from your mouth makes me want to hurt you Leah, don't make me hurt you." His voice wasn't harried, wasn't loud enough to constitute as a shout but it carried the warning plainly: the topic of Bella was off limits.
"Y-you finally back from t-the dead old man." Her lips parted into a half choked laugh. "All I had to do was talk the truth."
"It is not truth."
"Sure it is." She gave him an almost comical smile and suddenly he found himself wanting to wipe that smile away and replace it with blood.
Her blood.
"She fucked Jacob when you were married. She had his kid. She whined and bitched about you all the time because you wouldn't give into her. A whiny little bitch a selfish child you took as your wife, don't assume that I don't know anything either okay? Who do you think was the first one to find out about that?" She grabbed his wrist tightly, his fingers loosening from her neck as she peered up at him. "I was the first to know it because I saw it."
"Stop." He implored but he could see it, the memory.
"It was in that meadow. Fucking in some sort of holy place I guess."
He saw it.
Why did Leah have to be so cruel?
"And do you know what the worse part was?"
"No."
"She called his name, over and over like a mantra and well, I was there I saw it, smelled it and my heart broke because I knew then what kind of person she was and how pathetic she had made all of the men in her life. Sure, she tried to justify what she did by spinning out her life story like poetry she always did that, but the truth of it was is simple. She wanted to live forever with someone pretty. She wanted to live in the arms of the man who could give her children and never held back. She got everyone else's happy ending. She got my happy ending. After that, I never let Jake touch me."
It was instantaneous. A blur of motion as fast as the wind as he slammed her once again against the tile, took her wrists in his hands and trapped her beneath his body.
And he kissed her.
There was no love in what he was doing as her hands tangled in his wet hair. No love when he grabbed her hips in bruising touches or when her legs wrapped around his waist.
There was nothing when they stumbled to that bedroom that carried no scent of the girl it once inhabited years before and when hey hit that bed, when his cold hands traced over burning flesh he felt no swelling in his heart.
It seemed like this was their way of getting back some of the lost pride Bella and Jacob had taken from them with every selfish act.
He never begrudged Bella. He loved Cathy even if she was Jacob's daughter and he loved Mason and all his children and would love them forever. But, a part of him was angry and sad and so terribly lonely. It seemed that Leah was the same only her salvation was her pride and her stubbornness that did not allow her to break down. How very different people they were.
He felt that barrier and broke past it without apologizing. He smelled that musty wolf's blood and licked up the tears at the corners of her eyes tasting the bitter salt and the anguish.
He felt empty when it was done, his body accustoming to her warmth still nestled deeply into what he could not even begin to fathom. He felt guilt as though he were betraying Bella in some way.
But Bella was dead.
Jacob was dead.
Cathy was dead.
It was all past now.
Nothing to do but move on.
He rolled away from the warm body and stared up at the dusty ceiling.
So many cobwebs.
"Fuck me." Leah groaned. He could hear her internal monologue. Still a virgin-not a virgin now. Giving it up to the leech.
"I believe I just did."
Her dark eyes turned to his, the flush at her cheeks adorable reminding him of Bella in the beginning.
No don't think about it now. Too soon.
"I don't love you." She said.
"I know."
"What we did...it was..."
Her words were not forming the way she wanted but it was clear in her mind. He understood. It was a long time coming.
She didn't have to come as much as she had to watch him and feed him or bathe him. It was her own curiosity and eventual fancy of him.
"I know."
Despite the fact that Bella still remained in his heart he felt himself believing that it wasn't the end. If not with Leah or with anyone he would still carry that pain.
Because no matter how many times he would be with Leah after this, touching and intimate caresses, it would always be Bella. His selfish stupid endearingly human Bella and he could assuredly say that it was the same for his bed companion. Sam and Jacob lined the scared tissue that was left of her heart. She loved them both they had both broken her for other women.
No, they did not love each other they didn't know how to love anymore.
But there was that deep understanding that same commiseration that left them both bereft and without the warmth they craved.
It would be a week later that Jasper and Alice would return to the house-Edward having vanished into a whirlwind of black from her visions. Up the steps they went, to the room they meandered.
And there was nothing there but a broken bed, the scent of musk, pine cones and sweet candy.
And a note in Edward's curling script.
Moving on.
It was just as Jasper had predicted after Bella had died without Alice's sight. The shadows of Bella had faded and Edward had finally returned and was happy.
In that little room Jasper could feel the lingering resonant of feeling; elation, trepidation and something else.
It may not have been love but it was close.
Camaraderie.
-Fin
(見ぬが花 )
"Not seeing is a flower."
Reality can't compete with imagination.
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In which Edward ends up with Leah and both heal each others wounds. I wont say that they are romantically involved-because they aren't. What happened between them was something that needed to happen. Fifty years of watching out for Edward he ended up becoming the best friend Leah had. Same could be said for Edward, Leah was all he saw other then family.
Yes, Leah was a virgin. Why? Because I can picture her waiting out to give it to the right guy and being genuinely old fashioned in that sense. She was waiting to marry Sam to have sex but they never got married. She waited for her relationship with Jacob to blossom and to turn into love but he began to sleep with Bella so it never happened.
After them, there was no one else.
Jasper thinking: "The shadows of Bella had faded and Edward had finally returned and was happy." Was directly mirrored from his thoughts in the first one shot, or prequel to this story: "One day the shadows of Bella would fade and Edward would return and be happy one day again."
I incorporated Jasper in the end of this story because essentially it began with him in the prequel. It only seemed right to end it with him and with his thoughts.
-Owari
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