Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and dialogue belong to Stephenie Meyer. Thank you.

Epiphany

Chapter One:

Option Three

"Bella stop this right now!"

"Go back to Jessica. You promised – nothing stupid."

"Keep your promise."

It was that last thing I expected to hear. It was his voice, velvet and lovely. But he was gone, and had been for so long now. The instant I heard it, everything became clear. I shook my head, trying to understand. As I stood outside this bar, staring at the four men in front of me, I knew he wasn't there, and yet, he felt impossibly close, close for the first time since… since the end.

I ran through the options quickly in my head.

Option one: I was crazy. Pure and simple. I'm sure that people have lost their minds for lesser reasons than losing part of their souls, as I had done.

Possible.

Option two: My subconscious mind was giving me what it thought I wanted. This was wish fulfillment – a momentary relief from pain by embracing the incorrect idea that he cared whether I lived or died.

Probable.

But, what if… What if my subconscious mind was telling me that he did care if I live or died? What if somewhere in my abnormally thick brain, a part of me still believes that he loves and cares about me? I know that my body believes he doesn't love me. I can feel it, the part of me that's missing, the part he took with him when he left and the hole that now remains. This entire time I've believed that he didn't want me anymore; after all, that is what he said. What if I have just been too stubbornly sure that he doesn't love me that I haven't even considered that I could have been mistaken? Would the truth be silenced, or was it trying to break through?

Option three: Edward loved me. The bond forged between us was not one that could be broken by absence, distance, or time. And no matter how much more special or beautiful or brilliant or perfect than me he might be, he was as irreversibly altered as I was. We had given ourselves to the other, I know because part of me was still with him. And now as I stand on this dark street in Port Angeles, as I hear his voice, I know that part of him is still with me. As I would always belong to him, so would he always be mine.
Unbelievable…

A/N: I know that this chapter is basically all of Stephenie's words, just rearranged, but I wanted to keep the essence of what Bella thinks the same. I promise my own original fiction will be presented in the following chapters.

Thank you for reading; please feel free to review.