The reunion in Volterra, the way I wanted it. My complaint: Edward is too damn restrained. I feel like the serenity of his actions as they are written in the book is at odds with the intensity of the emotions he would have been feeling. I'm not changing anything plot-wise, exactly, and I'm hoping to remain true to the characters as I understand them. Hopefully, this will just… spice things up a little. The dialogue is obviously changing too. Still Bella's perspective, but even she isn't so insecure as to not understand how Edward feels about her this time. I think he makes it all too clear. Also, we're going to pretend that since Edward doesn't actually reveal the vampires, the Volturi are willing to temporarily leave them alone… This scene does not extend past Edward and Bella's reunion, but you can imagine that Felix and Demetri show up after this scene closes, and things continue relatively normally from that point on.
Disclaimer: Okay, so I don't own Twilight. Stephenie Meyer does. I sometimes hate her with a passion for subjecting the world to squealing teenage girls with mush for brains. But… eh. She writes damn good fluff, I suppose. Good enough that I'm wasting time writing about it!
It was really him, no hallucination this time. And I realized that my delusions were more flawed that I'd realized; they'd never done him justice.
-New Moon, page 451.
"Edward!" I screamed. My voice sounded hoarse and unflattering to my own ears, but I was past caring – past caring about everything, about anything other than the man only a few yards away from me, who was about to cast his life away because he thought I was dead. "Edward, no!"
He seemed locked into pain as he stood there in front of me, his face twisted and his chest heaving with unnecessary breath. Was he afraid of the pain he was about to experience at the hands of the Volturi? No. I wouldn't let him die. A few more heart-wrenching steps, and it happened – I collided with him as hard as I could, just as he took the step that would place him directly under the blazing sun.
His pale arms caught me on instinct, but he was not thrown backwards out of the light as I had hoped. "Edward, we need to get back! They'll see you… They'll hurt you!" my babbling words seemed to have fallen on deaf ears, however, as Edward seemed to realize who he was holding in his arms.
With a shudder that sounded like a man breaching the surface of water and gulping gratefully at air, he pulled back just enough to look at my face. "Bella," he said, choked. "Oh God… Am I… dead? Is this…" he seemed incapable of forming complete sentences, and with a strength that nearly hurt, he tugged his arms tighter around me and pulled me impossibly close to his body, his face finding purchase in the crook of my neck. His lips trailed desperate kisses up the side of my jaw and rested there, his mouth open against my skin. I was busy trying not to hyperventilate, but I could still vaguely remember how important it was to get Edward out of the sunlight.
"Back here," I mumbled, letting my feet touch the floor and backing around him into the alley. He followed me easily, apparently unwilling to untwine our bodies from one another. He had kissed my jaw several more times before finding his voice again.
"God, Bella… I am so sorry. Y-you… When I heard you were…" He stopped talking abruptly and pulled back to look me in the eye; stepping back meant there was space between us, which cleared my head but left an ache in me that was difficult to describe. His eyes widened. They were coal black. "Are you… Are we alive?"
I nodded numbly and he released me suddenly as if my skin burned. Before I had a chance to be devastated by this behavior, he stepped back to me again: not touching, but close. His breath was shaky on my forehead as he spoke, his voice trembling with fear. "I didn't hurt you, did I? Just now? I didn't realize –"
"N-no!" the question had shocked me back into speech. With an air of abandonment, I threw my arms around his neck and leapt up, wrapping my legs around his waist in a wild effort to burrow myself into him and never let go. His arms caught me and pulled me to him. A strangled sound erupted out of the back of his throat and his head dropped down to my shoulder, as if he could not bear to hold it up any longer. Over the chatter of the crowd around us, I could hear him mumbling something into my skin, but could only make out fragmented phrases – "Bella… love… thank god… not dead… thank you… thank you… Bella…"
I tugged on his hair, trying to force his gaze back to mine. He seemed reluctant to look directly at me, and I wondered why – clearly, he was happy I was alright. An uneasy feeling of self-doubt suddenly stole over me – what was happening? He had left. He didn't love me. Was this just relief that I was alive? Relief that his abandonment hadn't killed anyone? The words poured out of me before I could stop myself – terrified at their escape, I wondered if this meant we would have less time together. The faster I understood the truth, the faster he could leave again.
"Why did you try and kill yourself?"
His eyes locked with mine, deadly black and full of indescribable agony. His answer was as simple as my question. "Because you were dead," he said, and on the last word, his voice cracked and he shivered, his entire being quaking with the thought. With a dreadful intensity, he spun around and pushed me back into the wall of the alley so that he caged me there, his breathing ragged in my ear. "You were… oh God, you were dead and I thought… The pain of it… I was surprised it didn't kill me immediately, but I suppose that's the curse of our kind – we can't die without special effort." He seemed almost unaware that he was talking, and yet his tone was conversational, as if he were discussing some medical theory with Carlisle. "Do you have any idea… to sit through a plane ride and to sit through their decision… I just wanted it to end, I was going insane… Wait a minute – how is it that you're here, anyway? How is it that you're not…"
He seemed incapable of repeating the word dead.
In the space where the word should have rested, he buried his face into my shoulder again and placed an almost harsh kiss there.
My voice sounded breathy and high when I spoke again, because I still didn't quite understand – didn't want to understand, if I were wrong… The hope that was bubbling up inside of me was sickening in its intensity. If I should be mistaken, I was worried I wouldn't survive it.
"You came here… what, because you felt guilty? Responsible for my death?" I sounded quite matter-of-fact, and Edward groaned lightly before pulling back and staring at me, confusion in his eyes along with a myriad of other things – pain, and shattering relief… worry, anxiety, curiosity… love? No. I wouldn't let myself think that.
"Of course I felt responsible," he said lightly, and the hole in my heart that had been instantly patched by Edward's touch started to shatter along a fault-line. "You were jumping off of cliffs, Bella…" He paused, as if he had only just realized something. "How the Hell could you do that to me?" Inexplicably, he was angry, and so was I.
"To you? You left, Edward! I wasn't trying to kill myself, but that's hardly the point. If I had died, I would have welcomed it! You left me with nothing with pain and misery and the memory of the life I could have had!"
"You promised you'd keep yourself out of trouble!" He said, still angry, but also agonized by my words.
"You promised it would be as if you never existed – and it wasn't. You were everywhere. You know, when Laurent tried to kill me, I –"
I was cut off, both my Edward's startled yell, and by the pain in my arm as he squeezed it a little too tightly in shock.
"Laurent?" He shouted, backing away from me and letting me slip back down the wall. I leaned against it, too emotionally and physically drained to think about holding myself up.
"He tried to kill me. The werewolves saved my life."
I almost enjoyed it, the way these words seemed to hurt him – he tugged at his hair and paced back and forth, spluttering and trying to make sense of this shocking news. "Werewolves?"
"Yeah, my best friend is one, actually. They saved me from Laurent. He'd been sent to find me by Victoria."
"What?"
"Yeah…" My voice was light, and while I tried to keep it from shaking, I watched Edward deteriorate slowly in front of me, going from half-crazed at my reappearance to completely insane with a dangerous mixture of fury and pain. "She apparently wanted to torture and kill me to hurt you. You know… mate for mate."
"Oh my God. What did I… I left you to… Jesus, I…" Apparently unable to find words powerful enough to explain his agony, he strode forward again, wrapping his arms back around me. We both seemed too weak to resist one another – I was still angry with him, my heart pounding harshly in my chest, but my arms found purchase in his hair and I pressed my face into his bare chest as hard as I could, needing to feel his body next to mine.
But still… He had left me, told me he didn't want me… and then after months of agony on my end, he had the audacity to try and kill himself?
"Edward," I began. He had been trembling and brushing his lips along my neck, but at the sound of his name he froze, seemingly awaiting judgment. "I'll… explain everything, I promise. Jake and the wolves… they're my friends, and they saved my life." He tensed and started to pull back, ready to argue. I kept my hands in his hair and forced him to meet my eyes – I knew that he could have resisted if he wanted to, but he allowed me to command him. "Just let me finish."
He nodded, his eyes burning.
"We can talk all we want about the wolves and about Victoria and about me throwing myself off cliffs later." I took a deep breath, and Edward mirrored me. He seemed as terrified as I felt about what my next words would bring. "Why did you leave me? You seem… I mean, it seems like it killed you to think I was dead, but if you don't love me anymore, then –"
"No." Edward seemed surprised that the word had escaped him, but he plowed on, keeping our eyes locked together. "I love you so damn much, Bella… I can't believe… How did you believe me? I thought I'd have to lie through my teeth for hours… I thought I'd have to force you to believe eventually, but… God, Bella… I've been in Hell since the minute I left. I've been… useless. Practically catatonic. I love you. I love you. And when I heard you were dead, I wanted… I needed my own life to end as soon as possible."
I felt my mouth drop open in shock, and Edward's eyes were bright and beseeching. He looked like he was cracking around the edges – relief at my continued existence battled with terror that I wouldn't believe, that I still thought he didn't want me… "Bella, I know I don't deserve your forgiveness. I don't ask for it – I… I need you to… I know I have no right, but please let me stay… please don't make me go… I… I need to be with you so badly. I know it's wrong to ask this of you, but I honestly don't know how to live without you."
He was begging. It was so odd to see such a strong and brave person like Edward beg before me. Of course I still loved him with everything in me, but was I ready to believe him? Ready to let him back in? What if it all fell apart again? My newly healed heart wouldn't survive a second break. He must have seen something like hesitation in my eyes, and his own black eyes smoldered with desperation. He dropped to his knees.
"I'm sorry to do this to you, Bella… I know that even if you hate me you won't want to see me in pain, and I'm using it against you. I'm… I need you to at least let me stay. Even if you can never take me back, at least let me stay with you. I'll do anything you want me to. Just give me this. If you don't, it will destroy me. I thought I was strong enough… but I can't be without you."
He was right – I couldn't bear to see him in pain like this. I dropped to my knees, bringing us level. I had to end this, and then we had to move – Edward and I had been existing in a bubble of our own for the last several minutes, but reality was close to breaking through. The alley we were in was fairly secluded, but it was still a cloudless day in Volterra, Italy, and we were still in the middle of a public festival. "Edward…" he stared at me, his eyes half hopeful and half terrified. "I'm not saying that everything's fixed or that we won't have to talk about this more, but… I need you to know…" The time for hesitation was over. "Edward, I love you."
His eyes blazed suddenly, bright and full of uncontainable euphoria. "Forgive me, Bella, for what I'm about to do."
"What –"
But he was already kissing me.
For a second, I was in shock, but then reality enveloped me and I took advantage of whatever he was offering, moving my mouth against his desperately. My hands jumped back to his hair and I reveled at the feeling of it against my fingers. His arms had wrapped so tightly around me that it was hard to tell where I ended and he began. One hand was raking through my own hair, and the other was supporting my back, protecting it from the rough brick of the wall… wait, when had we stood up again? How had I missed…?
His mouth was nearly rough against mine, slanting harshly over my lips again and again, and only when I thought my lungs would burst from lack of oxygen did I force myself to turn away, but Edward's lips did not leave my skin – they trailed a burning path down my jawline. I gasped in a lungful of air and brought Edward's lips back to mine. I could not stop, I was in a frenzy, and for the first time in our relationship, Edward did not appear to be pulling back.
Our breath mingled together as he pulled away to allow me more air, but he kept our bodies pressed tightly together. I could feel my chest pressed deliciously close to his, and my legs were around his waist again, my feet pressed against his lower back, tugging him impossibly closer. In the spaces between our kisses, he whispered my name to me again and again in reverent prayer, interspersed with "I love you" and "thank you", over and over. I honestly didn't know how we would ever stop, but an entirely new voice broke upon our isolated scene, and Edward froze, caging me tightly between his body and the wall.
"Edward Cullen, you selfish, idiotic… Do you have any idea what we've all been through?"
"Alice," Edward and I sighed together, and with great reluctance, Edward lowered me to my feet and spun around to face his infuriated sister. He kept me pressed closely to my side, his hand on my waist tracing comforting patters against the silver of skin between my shirt and the top of my jeans. I could feel my heart pumping fast from the kiss we had just shared, and although I was still overwhelmed by everything that was happening, I couldn't help but laugh at the expression on Edward's face.
"Alice, I'm sorry!" he said, and his voice sounded like that of a little boy, apologizing to his mother for stealing a cookie out of the jar.
Alice growled as I giggled. "Tell that to Carlisle. No, tell that to Esme. For that matter, Jas is not going to be too thrilled with you either, since I came here, risking my life, just to get you out of here. You pig-headed fool!"
Edward cringed into me, turning his face so that he could press a kiss against my hairline. "Dear God, this is not going to be fun, is it?" he whispered to me.
I laughed lightly, and my eyes met Alice's quickly. She still looked angry, but I could see the hope and delight bubbling up underneath. I turned back to Edward, to see him staring at me hungrily.
"You're not off the hook with me either, mister," I said. It was perfectly true, but the look of chagrin that crossed Edward's face was too adorably maudlin to ignore. "C'mere,"
Vaguely, I could hear Alice's happy squeals and the sounds of the festival around us as I brought Edward's lips back to mine.
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