The Way I Love Her

Disclaimer: All the characters in the story are the property of Stephanie Meyer. I have borrowed them for my entertainment and (hopefully) your reading pleasure. I make no profit from their use.

This is how I imagine that it would have happened if Edward and Jacob had continued talking in the tent before the big battle in Eclipse.It's an idea that I have been kicking around for a while.

It came to me after reading Midnight Sun and Stephanie Meyer's description of how Edward came to love Bella with so much depth and emotion.

I have also incorporated some elements based on the Twilight Saga: Official Illustrated Guide. Let me know what you think and if you are interested in any more.

Chapter 1: What She Wants

It is a long, cold night up here in the mountains. Between my anxiety about my family in the coming battle and my annoyance at the fact that Jacob Black can keep Bella warm when I can't, I am utterly frustrated. The worst part is that I can hear, quite clearly, every thought that crosses through the mind of the werewolf. I suspect that some of them are designed to push my buttons without risking Bella finding out.

It is taking all of my will power to prevent the outburst that would surely wake her up and give him the satisfaction of getting under my skin. There are times when I feel like I am dealing with a child. However, in the nature of things in the supernatural world, he can't help himself. He is no more than an immature child, petulant in the extreme, and impulsive as hell.

Jacob and I completed our conversation at a point of stalemate, agreeing to maintain our truce until morning. Right now, I am insanely jealous of his overly warm body and his ability to hold Bella without turning her into a human icicle. He opens his eyes and then closes them again the smug look on his face matches his thoughts. He is picturing a scenario where they are in the tent alone together and he has convinced her to take off her clothes for better "warmth."

He turns up the volume in his mind and begins to envision exactly what he would do, how he would kiss her, touch her, and make love to her. It takes all of my self-control to avoid going over and snapping his neck and hope that the residual heat in his lifeless body is enough to sustain Bella's warmth through the rest of the night. But I know that I could not do that, no matter how much I want to.

My love for her far exceeds my jealousy towards him. I suppose that it helps that I don't, no better said can't, hate him. Once I put my mind beyond that moment of instant gratification that I would feel in ending his life, I can see the intense pain and sorrow that she would feel at his demise. Because she loves him, I cannot hate what she loves. The profound, depth of my feeling for her cannot even begin to contemplate being the responsible party for inflicting that degree of agony on her.

His problem, being the shallow werewolf that he is, is that he cannot imagine the kind of love that Bella and I share. The animal in him limits his ability to know her in the way that I do. He is incapable of seeing the complexity of her multifaceted emotions in this situation. He simply knows that she loves us both.

He is under the delusion that somehow this gives her a choice, and that if she were to look at that choice rationally (from his perspective) she would choose him. But she has chosen me, or not, as the case may be. There was never really any choice ever involved. She knows this and has even tried to communicate this to him. At least that is what I have discerned from his thoughts.

There is nothing rational about my feelings for Bella and her feelings for me. But they are not irrational either. Our initial attraction and subsequent relationship quite definitely fell outside of the boundaries of reason. Of course, whenever one is dealing with the supernatural world, the rules and laws of the natural world no longer apply. Once I accepted the fact that Bella and I were incapable of existing apart from one another, my focus shifted from protecting her from myself to ensuring her safe existence in this world.

Jacob wanted to know how it felt to lose her: how it felt to truly believe that she was dead. He might better have asked how it felt to walk into the fiery pit of hell. That would be a beginning to an understanding. Or perhaps it would have been better to imagine an empty nothingness of time and space.

What was I left with? Other than the vague, untested notion, that Carlisle had that we are not destined fall into such oblivion, there was no hope at all. The only shot that I had left to find and be with her again was that tenuous possibility that there might be an afterlife for our kind. And if there was, she and I might achieve the same destiny.

Did I deserve to be in heaven after all the human life that I had taken? Did their vile iteration of humanity absolve me of the crime of their cold-blooded murder? Bella believed so. She so desperately loves me that perhaps even the paradise that the righteous claim that heaven is, would be incomplete without me. Could it be that her goodness alone would earn me a spot at the table of everlasting peace and grace?

Is it possible that in some bizarre way, I am the angel she says that I am in her sleep? What an interesting, to put it mildly, concept. The angel of death transformed into the guardian angel, the vigilante to protector. Is it possible that even a small portion of her humanity could leech (no pun intended) into my own inhumanity and save me from the eternal damnation that I so richly deserve for my many sins, if I am worthy of her love in this world, will I be worthy of a shared fate in the next?

I must discuss this with Carlisle. This is just the sort of philosophical debate that he enjoys. Could it really and truly be possible that if I change Bella into what I am, it will be my salvation rather than her damnation? If this is even a possibility, do I risk her soul for it? But I don't dare mention it to her. Such a notion would make her twice as eager for the transformation.

It was so easy to tell Jacob that I would let Bella go if she chose him because I knew that it would never happen. Nothing that she feels for him can or will ever come between us. I know this as surely as I now know that I will not separate myself from her. In fact, although I continue to fight for her life and very humanity, I know, in whatever passes for a heart in a creature such as myself, that I had lost the battle before it even began. Alice saw her destiny as two options. If I did not kill her, I would change her. Since, by some miracle, I have not killed her already, she will undoubtedly be changed.

We cannot go on this way much longer. I cannot continue to deny her what she most desperately wants, as if I could really deny her anything. I can hold her off. I can delay the final action. But in the end she will win. I will let her win because it is the only thing that she truly wants. I cannot deny her that. I am not capable of denying her heart's desire. Perhaps that is why she is so loath to accept any other gift from me. It is more than what she most wants. It is the only thing she wants.