Immortality was a lie. For decades she had been withering away within herself, bleeding through the façade
It starts off simply. Looking through a window, and seeing a world moving and standing still. Rooted down still, so deep down that it was almost a wasteland thriving beneath the idea of the living. So she smiles pretty, pretends to breath and blinks her eyes.
(Somewhere in your hollowed out chest, is something you cannot find.)
She smiles past them, feeling the dead leering out from behind her eyes. Four years past, she's been frozen. She lives with those who have been dressing her like one of them, and spearheading each action that she dares to take.
To live forever, was meant to mean something. To be something. All she can see is her daughter blending through the skewed world-half alive and half dead. Claimed by someone of her past.
…
She does not understand the letter.
Printed words are meshed, spaces slanting before her. Commas blurring and sentences escaping her. What she does understand is the point.
Her mother's death. Car flipped over. Left for hours. Father's suicide. Hung himself. Basement of the house of memories.
She is (well)informed, so she crumples the letter and throws it in the decoration of the wastebasket beside her desk and begins to pack.
Not fast, with grieving playing fool with her actions. Not an aching slowness that makes her wither slowly. A simple pace that leaves her folding soft sweaters carefully and placing jewelry in the little pocket delicately.
He finds her, bronze eyes not comprehending.
"Where are we going?" He asks, voice glistening with doubt. She's so closed off to him, even more so now than before.
She looks away from the worn spines of books and towards him. The face she loved, the mask she detested. "I'm leaving for a few days. Just to get out."
It feels like an echo. Her mother's words once, how Renee left gripping her hand when she was a child. "Are you taking her with you?"
She walks away, towards the large window. Somewhere in the expanse of the world is her daughter, with her eyes and her hands and her once-upon-a-time fate. "No. I'm only going to be a few days. Maybe another time."
The maybe sounds defined.
She sets off, plane ticket in her coat pocket, passport in her hand.
(she loves the impulse of it all-if she hadn't been so miserably stupid, her heart would be a war drum now.)
Her daughter cries out for her, and her family watches with heavy eyes.
…
It's easy to feel alright in the woods of Germany when you've walked the stretch alone with nothing but an expanse of emptiness filling you. It's simple being okay when you're floating down the canals of Italy, feeling a world of such life pressing down so gently from around you.
She returns home like she promised, smiling just a little brighter. Hours float by, and soon days. She's no better than she was in that start-just a little heavier and a touch more of bitterness.
So she packs a bag for her daughter, and a bag for herself. Scribbles out a note to Edward-I will be back I will be back I will be back I promise I promise I promise.
They take a plane to Canada, and she has to feel the discontentment settling over Renesmee's thin shoulders.
They stand at the shore of cold oceans, and she breathes in chilled air that makes her feel alive. Her daughter watches and doesn't bother to even try to accept this life. She's already gone-death and fate and immortality have taken strict toll over her.
They return home, Renesmee peering through the woods to catch sight of a figure that shouldn't exist, and she's already eying the horizon to find the next awakening.
…
Alice wants to do her make up.
It's the return of her trip to Paris-her fifteenth sudden leavings. Alice just wants to ease her into this life, slowly through glitter and polish.
Pots of rich colours and mascara wands promising to thicken lashes. It takes her only eight minutes to realize. Gazing into the mirror with Alice's exact smoky eye, and the way her lipstick mimics Rosalie's. Alice holds up a bottle of perfume-Edward's exact favourite.
She feels caged.
Hollow and dead, with so little left.
So she stands, rubbing the lipstick off with her wrist and pushing away the perfume bottle. "I need out."
She can hear voices-Alice calling for her, Jasper trying to quell the rage burning within her bones, Edward just watching from the distance.
She packs. Snagging the warm cashmere sweater from the closet, the worn jeans from the floor. The book from the desk, the wallet from her purse. She's gone before she can blink, a backpack light on her back.
(This is what she has missed. Choice.)
…
They follow her two months later. She has an apartment deep within New York, with a mat that says home, and a framed picture of Red Square. She's reading a book in German, and doesn't bother to demand anything from him.
Edward stands still, pale skin almost grey. "You left."
"I know."
She has strength brimming at your words, with the voices of the damned singing praises in her veins.
He looks pained. "You weren't coming home, were you?"
Eyes closing, back straightening. "I am, Edward. Trust me-I am." He understands her misplaced words. He knows her, no matter how hard she has become, no matter how distant he always was.
His eyes turn black, and her own just mimic. She can play villain just as well from escaped convict. "What about her? Your daughter?"
"You took her away the minute she was born." The shadow of a girl that played with the dead deer with her teeth. The girl that eyed humans like they were below her. The one just dancing the tune.
The rolling hills and the lumbering forests fill her, mountains that unravel through rock and snow reminds her. Living is just an echo away from dying-and dying is just a heartbeat from living.
"Will you come back?"
God, Satan. She exhales, inhales. Tries to focus. Tries to be.
(she is.)
"Not this time."
…
(She made her bed. She lies down like the lamb to slaughter.)