She loved him so much that she was sometimes afraid that she would have to kill him before all was said and done.
It was only fair really. After all hadn't loving him killed her?
She'd done what she had felt compelled to do. She begged for the change and she was granted her wish. And she is like him now, like him forever. It is what had she longed for above all else.
No regrets… What an absurdly human saying.
Regret is a part of life and also, as she has learned, a part of death.
Still, she had gotten everything she wanted hadn't she? An eternity with her god-like love, a fallen angel who for reasons she still did not understand had chosen her to be his. Oh yes, this is what she had wanted. She had everything… well almost everything.
When she had been alive she had thought that her love for him could never be any greater than it already was. She had wanted him more than she wanted the breath in her lungs; she had loved him to death. She had though that no one had ever desired another as much as Bella Swan desired Edward Cullen and that no one ever would.
She had been wrong.
Bella Cullen wanted Edward Cullen with a fire that would have burned Bella Swan to ash.
She could never be close enough to him; she could never have him enough. She wanted to flow in his veins like blood, to rest in the marrow of his bones. She wanted to lie down in the lining of his skin and see with his eyes and speak with his hypnotic voice.
When she had been alive she had emphasized with Catherine's need only of Heathcliffe in order to survive. Ironically perhaps, in death she understood her even more.
Catherine was Heathcliffe.
Bella wanted to be Edward.
This is what Bella Cullen wanted.
She wanted what she could not have.
Blood does not flow in the bodies of the dead. She imagined the marrow of their bones as being like the core of a rotted apple, blackened and decayed. She wanted both of their souls to animate one being. It was not enough for them to be together, not nearly enough. She wanted to consume his death the way he had consumed her life.
She could not.
Perhaps when she had been warm, soft, changeable, human, perhaps then she could have merged the two of them together the way she aches to now. But Bella Swan would never have dared to try. She could never have understood the need.
Bella Swan was human and had desired only to be with him eternally, to live forever, to be immortal.
Bella Cullen was a vampire, a being designed to exist off the life force of others. She desired to be encompassed by him eternally, to find her existence in his, to be immortal.
Bella Swan did not truly understand immortality. She had never dared to try.
Bella Cullen understood all too well.
Bella Cullen understood that though she would exist until the end of time itself, her wish for immortality had not been granted. She was not immortal. An immortal is eternally alive. Bella Cullen was eternally dead.
If she had dared, if she could have predicted the desires that plague the dead, perhaps Bella Swan could have fused she and Edward together the way Bella Cullen so desperately wanted to.
It would not have been difficult.
She had all that was required for the synthesis.
She need only have used their opposing natures in the way that magnets use opposing energies to bind them together.
Her warmth fusing with his cold. Her softness with his invulnerability. Her life with his death.
It was too late now.
Too late for Bella Swan.
Too Late for Bella Cullen.
She was too much like him now: cold, hard, perfect, lifeless.
Eternally alike and eternally apart.
So yes she loves him, yes she adores him, yes she wants him so much that she can barely endure it.
But it is only now with hindsight as clear and unforgiving as winter that she can understand, and perhaps even morbidly appreciate, the great joke that has been played on her.
Bella Swan thought that Edward Cullen was too much for her.
Bella Cullen knows that Edward Cullen will never be enough.
It was not his fault. The blame was on her. Eternally on her.
Perhaps if she killed him, if she took every drop of dead blood from his lifeless veins into hers it would be enough. Perhaps if she cut out her own unbeating heart and replaced it with his it would be enough
They would be together then, not in the way Bella Swan had wanted them to be, but in the way that Bella Cullen wanted them to be.
Someday, perhaps.
Bella Swan had hoped that her death would be the consummation of their love.
That love was killing Bella Cullen still, killing her always.
Bella Swan knew what she would have to become to have what she wanted.
Bella Cullen knew that what she had become would prevent her from ever having what she truly wanted.
Bella Swan wanted an eternal life with Edward.
Bella Cullen wanted to find her life inside of him.
She could not.
He was already dead. Her life was already gone.