A/N: First twilight fic in a while. Hope you guys like the angst! I've been dying to do this forever ^^
Blackest Night
He has left her but he is the one alone.
He took everything from her, everything that mattered and he wonders if losing his family to his own shame is his retribution.
Edward has always thought that he had seen hell, been living hell all his unborn life; all his so called eternity. But sitting there in the attic of not the home of some nameless family as it should have been but the attic of her childhood home in the valley of the sun, taking deep shuddering breaths he did not need and shaking uncontrollably, inconsolably he starts to believe that he is in a place far worse than hell.
He begins to pray for that hell; any respite from the pain he is feeling without the one person in the world who could ever (stupidly) see only the good in him.
Because he has hurt her and nothing he will ever do can make up for that.
Dear god, I have hurt one of your angels but please don't let her suffer…
But he knows these prayers are in vain because if there were such a god existing up in the skies, beyond the reaches of mortal eyes, hands or comprehension, surely he would never have allowed such a despicable monster like him to ever lay eyes on such a kind soul.
So he knows that no miracle will save her from what he has done.
He convinces himself that that is what's best; that she was better heartbroken than dead by his hands. At least her pain could not hold a candle to his, because if it did, if it ever could, he thinks that he deserves far worse than this apocalypse of self.
X x X
Just one look, he tells himself. Just let me make sure she is alright.
Four months.
He couldn't even last four months without seeing her. How is he supposed to last another fifty, sixty or god willing eighty years?
So he tells himself that this wont happen again, that after this he is clean.
[He finds this funny because he is so addicted to her, not only her scent but her, that he thinks of her as a drug. One he wishes he never had to abstain from. Then he kicks himself and berates himself and wonders what in the world am I doing?]
He sees her and she isn't smiling. This makes him angry; an angel should never have to be sad. What angers him more, feeds the monster inside the blackest pit of his heart is that for some reason he's happy because somehow it means that she misses him.
And it's then that he knows what a truly despicable monster looks like. Red hair, used-to-be-green eyes, pale skin, teeth as sharp as razor blades and a twisted look of pain he saw with each glance in his rearview mirror as he follows her in a rented car to Port Angeles.
X x X
He tells himself he'll leave by morning. That he just wants to watch her sleep, hear her true thoughts, know how she truly thinks and feels.
He wants to know for sure that she'll be okay; that he hasn't completely destroyed someone as wonderful as Isabella Marie Swan. He wants to make sure that he hasn't ruined one of the few people left in the world who is able to love each person with their whole heart and see only good.
He needs this.
So as she steps up to the group of awful men with even more awful thoughts he tries so very hard to fight the urge to sweep in and save her once again before berating her for being just so stupid.
But he knows how that would be received. He knows that she'll hate him, tell him to go; that she'd rather be ravaged by those awful beasts than saved by him, be touched by such a despicable thing who has crushed her once before.
So he doesn't and somehow she's alright but he knows that she's not. He knows that something in her made her walk towards the dangers of that night, despite Jessica's protests.
He doesn't spend the night.
X x X
Edward Cullen is no more. What is left behind of the boy who died of Spanish influenza in 1918 is a mere shell of a person. No longer human nor vampire, no longer holding even an ounce of life in a single cell.
He has become dead.
So seeking what once made him alive, in a moment of weakness he gets in a car, any car, hotwires it and drives. Where he's going he does not know. His body is merely acting on instinct to keep himself alive. To find refuge from the all consuming pain he has been living with for months.
He finds himself where he always does. In forks.
This is the last time, he tells himself. He will stay only long enough to see her, long enough to know that she is alright.
[Long enough to keep whatever is left of him alive. Long enough for him to keep whatever shred of heart or soul or whatever it is that he has, intact. Because he knows that if he leaves for good eventually he will break and come back on his knees begging her forgiveness. He also knows that if he stays, sees her happy or miserable he will either be torn apart that she could be happy without him or guilt that he had done this to her. And he will find himself on his knees anyway. Anything to make her happy.
So either way he is doomed and she is doomed. So he picks the road that will give him even the slightest reprieve from the all consuming void that is his existence. He does what he can to survive.]
He doesn't find her at school as he normally would.
He finds her at home.
She is laying in the backyard, stretched out on a white bed sheet surrounded by books, papers and Jacob Black.
Anger is the primary emotion that takes over his conscious. He knows this isn't fair. He asked her to move on, forced her to move on. But of all people why did it have to be Jacob black?
She was reading a book, a small smile on her face, him staring at her lovingly… the same expression that he used to see on his face in his family's minds each time they saw him with his beloved.
He said something he couldn't hear – something he didn't want to hear – and she began to laugh. It was more labored then it used to be, but not forced.
Edward knew he should have left then.
She was laughing, she was smiling, she was happy. She had someone. Mission accomplished; she was safe.
So why couldn't he bring himself to leave?
He watched the two for the rest of the day until finally night fell and the Black boy left her to her own devices.
Bella went inside to cook dinner.
Being irrevocably obsessed and in love with her he followed, hiding in the shadows of the house, out of sight. He listened to her hum her lullaby. Until she realized what she was doing, shook her head and wiped the tears from her eyes.
When she was finished, she ate her chili in silence, leaving the rest on the stove for Charlie. She wrapped one arm around her waist and curled her shoulders in on herself as if holding herself together, as if if she let go she would fly to pieces with the slightest shift. Every breath she took, now that she was alone was heavily labored.
[What have I done to her? He wondered. Had he hurt her so badly that even now as someone who was not him had reached out to her, seemingly mended her and cared she could not reach across the void inside her to meet that person? To be happy?]
Eventually she sighed, pushed her chair away from the table and shivering, walked up the stairs. He took in her scent after such absence and breathed in her very essence. He had missed her so. What struck him was that only a small amount of venom pooled in his mouth, his throat did not burn and he felt no thirst.
His very being shunned any path that would part him from Bella again.
So as he sat outside her door, listening to her steady breaths, until finally, still early in the night he finally entered the room that held nearly every precious memory he had ever made with her.
He sat there hours after Charlie came home. Then the screaming started.
Damnit, not again. My baby girl….What am I supposed to do?
He was horror struck. It had happened before.
"NO!" she was screaming, "Please don't leave me!" she begged.
He shook his head. He wished he could rush to her side, promise her the world, and promise to never leave.
But he couldn't.
So he left.
X x X
[She's dead. She'd dead. She's dead.]
That's all he can think as he rushes to the airport, blocking all thoughts around him.
[It can't be, he thinks, it's Bella. She's a constant. The world cannot possibly exist without her in it. It is impossible, it doesn't compute with his understanding of the world. How can she be gone? How can she not be here?
How could he possibly carry on without her?]
He didn't bother with buying a ticket. He merely snuck into the cargo hold, curled up behind a crate and broke down. He let it out; the horror of the last few months without her. The knowledge that forever without her stretched forward.
It tore at him from the inside like his heart had become corrosive and was eating at his very soul and self.
He laid there in the frigid solitude the skies provided and let the memories wash over him. They were his only respite.
He saw her shy smile as she sat across from him in the restaurant, blue blouse setting off her skin and making her glow. Entrancing him.
He saw her surprise and wonder as she stared at him in the meadow.
He felt the caress of her lips on his.
He smelled her tantalizing scent.
He felt her.
X x X
Warm…. He hadn't felt warm in so long.
Not since…well….not for what seems like several lifetimes to him. He knows he's about to see her again; somehow feels it, feels it within his very self.
He never believed in god, nor heaven. Not since his change.
But somehow he thinks that there must be someone merciful enough up there to allow him to hold her just one final time before he is thrown into the fiery pits, never to see the heaven she would call home.
The lingering warmth; the memory of her kisses and her touch…They are what keep him lucid; they are what keep him alive.
He unbuttons his shirt and steps forward.
Her voice sings to him now. He can hear her calling his name, calling him to her, calling him home.
"Edward!"
He tilts his head towards the sky, ready to leave this earth. He steps outward when he feels something familiar; Bella.
He remembers the hundreds of thousands of times she has tripped into his arms. Out of instinct he catches her as he always has and he thinks that maybe he's already dead. Maybe this is heaven.
"Amazing." He shakes his head, in total awe, because she's here. She's with him, "Carlisle was right."
Death that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power upon your beauty.
A/N: If I get enough reviews I might make this a full blown story; his whole absence throughout New Moon.
Hope you liked!
Sierra