AN: Don't own Twilight
This is what I think would have happened if Bella hadn't jump off the stupid cliff.
The window that had been closed for so long once again welcomed a chilled night breeze. Bella looked up from her book once she noticed the softly fluttering curtains and gasped when she met those amber eyes once again. Yet the controlled, cool Edward she knew was not the one standing at the end of her bed. Here she saw a man with fire burning in his eyes, passionate determination.
"I was wrong to leave you Bella." Her heart ached at those words, longed to believe in them despite the wound that his perfect voice had already dealt. She shook her head.
"You can't help who you love or don't love, Edward." Her face twisted in a desperate attempt to hide the pain that ripped through her.
"No, you can't. Bella, I thought that I could save you from me, that loving you would hurt you. I thought that I knew how to make your life better. " His eyes darted around the room, his shame palpable, but inexplicable in Bella's rejected mindset. She watched his face intently until he turned back to her once more, leaning down and supported himself on her bed, kneeling on the floor beside her. "But how could I have been so deluded? As if I could change the path your life would take, as if I could take all the pain for myself. It seemed strong, chivalrous at the time, to force you to walk the mortal path and live the life deemed for mortals." Her eyes clouded over with understanding, as she went back to that sad time in the woods.
He had never stopped loving her, he had meant to protect her. She could hit herself with how obvious it was, especially after the incident with Jasper. But how could he believe that her feelings were so fragile as to be replaced with life in Forks? If it weren't for Jacob, she would still be that shell of nothingness.
"You were wrong. Living forever doesn't give you the right to evaluate my fate and my feelings." She spoke with resolution, meeting his hungry eyes. Yet as she gazed into his face, she sensed a familiar adoration, one that she had watched from afar in La Push and had caused her no end of pain. "This isn't something I can walk away from, and I shattered when you forced me." Guilt flooded her as she saw the pain flash through his body, knowing that she was injuring him pointlessly, as she would love him now as if he never left.
His hand gripped her sheets until his downcast gaze shifted to the form of her legs under the comforter. Then he reached to gently caress her feet, moving up towards her shins as if in a trance, his face softened as though waking up from a nightmare. Bella reached to grasp his hand in hers, and his face jolted back to hers, ashamed of how easily he was distracted by her mere presence. Edward stuttered in his haste to explain.
"I was near a human who was about to commit suicide, and their thoughts were so poignant that I felt as though I was reliving the experience with them. They- he…his love had left him due to some contagious disease that she was ashamed of. She would have contaminated him, doomed him to die, if the two had grown any closer together. When she left, she told him that she couldn't love someone who didn't understand what she was going through. That day, the day he died, he had received a letter backdated to the day she died in the hospital, explaining that she had lied so that he could live his life healthy and without regrets.
His pain… I can't even describe what it did to me Bella. For days I thought about it, unable to banish the anguish that was carved into his body. After a while his face faded from my mind, and I thought that I had managed to think of other things, but all that changed was that your face appeared, scarred with that same tortured sadness."
Edward moved forward as he spoke, sitting beside her and burying his face in her neck, his fingers caressing her ear and cheek. "And it was then that I realized what a fool I was. What a fool I am. What a fool I would always be if I did not come back to you before it was too late." Edward pulled back to meet her eyes with a searching look. "What I am is dangerous, unnatural and will be loathed by many of the people whom care about your well being. But if you want me, then what right have I to deny you? I have been scared of the passion I feel for you for too long."
Bella gazed at him, feeling a burning sensation in her chest, stupefied until she felt the stream of joyous tears streaming down her face.
"Thank you…this…you…
Thank you." Her eyes fluttered closed as he gently kissed away her tears.