A Wounded Heart Will Forever Bleed.
Run...
Breathe...
Place one foot in front of the other...
Ignore the crippling wrench in your heart hauling you in the complete opposite direction...
Ignore the rational part of your brain that's repeatedly telling you that nothing good can come of you being here; that this can only ever end in total heartbreak...
Ignore the voice in your head taunting you and reminding you that you're a fool for allowing that tiny portion of your heart to hang on to even a whisper of hope...
Remind yourself that she chose him, not you... It'll only ever be him...
Remind yourself that this is going to tear up the remnant of your being, possibly forever...
Remind yourself that none of this even matters...you're dead inside anyway.
You burrow your massive paws into the desiccant earth below, churning it to a fine dust with your claws. You begrudgingly shift back to your human silhouette; your body raw, naked, and dirty from extreme stress and exertion. You stare at your exposed form, re-establishing yourself with how painful and real everything feels once the comforting protection of your wolf has faded. Your muscles are stiff and aching, your head filled with agonizing memories you have tried, but failed, to forget – an endless array of memories that are no longer bound. You haven't been civilized for a long time, both in spirit and body. It shows.
You groan, gripping your hair tightly in your fists and shaking your head frantically. You will away the horrifying images that plague your mind, images that have only intensified over time. You already long for the numbing, stoic sensation that only comes from living - feral and alone - in the darkness of the woods. You realize that you are dependent on your wolf now; it forms the only means of escape from the grief that, with every passing second, consumes you. It allows you to almost forget that the girl you cherish and love with every morsel of your foolish heart will soon be dead, or at best, an unrecognizable monster.
The salty taste of warm tears pooling at your lips torments you - your resolve wavering over every teardrop shed - but you tell yourself that you must see her one last time to alleviate the frantic turmoil in your mind...this is your sole duty. After tonight there will be no more what-if's, no more second guessing. Tonight will snap shut the book that is you and Bella, never to be re-read or opened again. Like your heart, it will remain on a shelf in a lonely house, gathering dust. Forever forgotten. Forever alone.
Your ears throb and ring, no doubt a result of the harsh pounding of your heart. You manoeuvre yourself stealthily behind a thick row of swaying evergreens that border the southern side of the Cullen residence, thankful that the tawny hues of twilight contrast with and camouflage of your massive form. You are not here to be discovered. You are not here to fight.
You part the dense foliage with your hands, gulping back the bile rising from your stomach, and peek through the tiny opening you have formed. Your head pounds like a sledgehammer against your skull, your hypersensitive orbs momentarily blinded by the blazing glow of what must be thousands of glittering twinkle lights impairing your vision. You squint your eyes closed whilst your pupils adjust to the intense glare, refusing to focus on anything else. Maybe its fates way of distracting you from what you are about to see, but once your eyes locate and come to rest on her, nothing else in the world can occupy your stare. Everything and everyone morphs into a hazy blur around you...she is all you see.
She is so beautiful. Her long mahogany hair ghosts down her back, glossy tendrils framing the heart shape of her face which is absolutely luminous in its joy. You can see her so clearly now. She blinks, her dark lashes fluttering against the softness of her cheeks. It is a softness that you are only too familiar with – you have touched her face many times before, both in dreams and not - but dreams filled with warmth and softness are a rarity now...in their place are eerie nightmares where her fire-y warmth has been replaced with a frigid chill; the velvety softness of her delicate skin with that of marble hard granite. You shudder. These are nightmares you cannot escape, wolf or not.
Your fixed gaze lingers on her rosy mouth as she beams up at her talented dance partner, who has been twirling her effortlessly and gracefully around the dance floor. You have never seen her so radiant and happy; her smile and the torture it inflicts weaves a tight web all around you, tangling you in its unrelenting grasp until you are unable to move. She is happy; she isn't yours...and never will be. The pain that thought evokes brings you to your knees, made worse by the fact that she is always just beyond your grip.
Bella's petite silhouette is perfectly accentuated in a delicate combination of both ivory and lace, the extravagant dress highlighting the slight, feminine curves that she always kept camouflaged under layers of unflattering clothing. Your mind wanders for a moment and you question whether her demure style was always merely for your benefit - to hide away the body you would never hold...never touch. But when had Bella ever acted with your feelings in mind?
Bella's adorable clumsiness is nonexistent tonight; she practically glides as she dances, despite the confining gown. The most painful thing is that she does not look out of place – in the way you imagined she would - amongst the many ghostly pale vampires present and beaming in the background. She is graceful, beautiful...confident. She belongs. She belongs in a world you despise...one you have dedicated and sacrificed your life to help eradicate. She belongs in a world where she will exist solely as your enemy.
You watch as Edward slowly approaches her, his smile matching hers as Carlisle passes his now-daughter-in-law over to her...husband. She wraps her lace covered arms around his stony neck, the bell sleeves of the gown coming to rest at her delicate fingers, the wedding band that joins her to him now permanently residing there. It glistens tauntingly as it meets your gaze - a figment of mockery in your mind, a reminder that she is now bound to another and any hope you have clung to is over. You have finally lost the long battle for Bella's heart. A battle that you never had any chance of winning. A battle that had never even really begun.
She belongs wholly to him now. Your heart shatters like that of a flimsy glass dropped carelessly on the floor. Tiny shards of it scatter all over the ground beneath your bare feet. If you move, the jagged splinters will tear you apart, but the pieces are so tiny...they can never be picked up and put back together, either. There is no painless way out for you. Your heart is beyond any form or repair. It always will be. You know in this moment that you've hit rock bottom, and that there is nowhere else to go from here.
You swallow back the sobs threatening to erupt from your swollen throat and unconsciously step forward, unable to stop the movement of your feet, ever remaining the puppet to which Bella pulls the strings. She staggers in true Bella fashion, then pauses, as her eyes struggle to meet yours from across the distance. You are suddenly all too aware that you are standing, bare and broken on your mortal enemies land with nowhere to hide, your demolished heart and soul exposed and raw for everyone to see.
Bella's beauty intensifies as her face lights up in realization of who she is staring at, looking at you as if she has seen the sun for the first and last time. She probably has. One tiny hand flies to cover her mouth, the other to press against her heaving chest. She smiles and it takes your breath away, but her smile is no remedy for your tainted soul. No, it is the opposite. It's like poison; contaminating your body in its path with its venomous sting. Every part of you wants her - your sodden heart the most, of course - but you know that's inconceivable... You have to let her go.
You stand, frozen, shaking and vulnerable and unable to tear your gaze away from hers; however, you are angry that she looks at you that way, like she doesn't see your pain. You are angry that she looks at you in the same way she looks at him. But the thing that makes you want to scream is that she can look at you like that...and there is not a thing you can do about it. You have to stand by and watch him make her happy whilst your spirit fades away into dust, swirling in the thick air surrounding you until you're an unrecognizable ghost of your former self.
She begins to move towards you with Edward trailing behind, insisting she stop. He can read your thoughts and from the tormented grimace on his face, he can feel your torture, too. She doesn't listen to him, though...she never does, and she shakes herself free from his firm grasp. She knows that you won't hurt her and she is right; you won't, but that doesn't stop you from spinning around and retreating; running away from the one thing you wish you could run towards, but you can't and so you flee, knowing you may never see her, soft and human, again. Your tears flow like tainted rivers as you whip through the woods, branches viciously biting at your skin with their razor sharp teeth. Vampire teeth.
Withered memories of her will be all that remains now.
…...
The warm sea breeze ruffles through your hair, prickling your feverous skin in its wake. You stare out at the endless ocean ahead, the inky sky and swirling black depths of the ocean below merging together to form a deep dark abyss. You wonder when this place lost its beauty, lost the serenity that lured you here throughout the years. You have thought here, you have cried here...you have lost yourself here. This is where you mourned your mother's death, Harry's too, and when the time comes to pass, it is here you will mourn Bella's.
Your eyes lower to your twitching toes; they drape carelessly over the craggy precipice, unable to find purchase against the solid earth beneath your heels. Your tears rest here, warm droplets beading on your skin as thoughts of the past exude. It was here Bella tried to take her life - in a time that seems like eons ago - plummeting from this very spot into the freezing depths below. Your fists clench, jaw twitching as you recall the days, weeks, months spent before that occurrence, investing all your time in comforting her. You had started to heal her - gradually closing up the gaping hole that Edward had spitefully ripped through her chest - one painstaking stitch at a time. However, after all that time - after all the time you had patiently suffered with trying to keep the boundaries of a platonic friendship in place because that's what she wanted, what she needed at the time - she still loved him, he was still the one she wanted, no matter what you did.
You tried. No one can ever doubt that. You fought, too...so hard. When she returned from Italy alive, you realized that you had to win her love, make her see that she could be happy without him. Your love for her ran far too deep, fighting was the only option left for you, so that's what you did, and after all the emotional brutality and Bella's persistent denial, you did win her love like you had intended to all along, but it still wasn't enough. She loved you, but she loved him more. You weren't enough.
You collapse to your knees, sobbing into the powdery grit that would leave noticeable indentations on the toughened skin there, and, resting your tired head in your hands, you begin to contemplate what you had done wrong, wondering if you could have done anything differently, something that would have secured her to you. It's too late for that now, anyways. She is no longer within your grasp.
You pound into the earth with your fists, coloring the gravel crimson with the blood oozing from your split knuckles. You yelp in agony as you do so, although the pain serves as no distraction from that of your wounded heart...the two are incomparable; one being merely a tiny pin prick, the other a jagged splinter that with every thought and every memory of her plunges deeper into the aching recess of your chest, chanting her name in a litany with each pulsing thud.
You vocally berate yourself for ever introducing the idea of cliff diving...something she knew nothing about at the time and something she wouldn't have even considered if you hadn't placed the foolish idea in her head. If she hadn't jumped, Alice would never have returned and Edward would have stayed away for good. You cry out at this realization, the ear-splitting sound of painful hopelessness echoing through the trees, reverberating through the darkness. If none of that had occurred, Bella would be dancing in your arms right now...referring to you as her husband and you would both be planning your future together – a future that would mean forever. Maybe you are to blame for her decision to marry him after all.
Your eyes widen when you feel a sudden but definite shift in the air behind you, the air becoming so thick you literally have to gasp for a single draw of breath. You stand, completely motionless, the heavenly scent of ripened strawberries and musky vanilla wafting in a haze towards you, clouding your senses and rendering you giddy as delicate, soundless footsteps approach your position on the precipice.
"What are you doing here, Bella?" you whisper, the salty tears of your incessant sobs saturating your tongue as they trickle inside your parted mouth. Her footsteps pause momentarily, before picking up their pace towards you once again.
She doesn't say anything as she stands beside you, gathering up the lengthy train of her dress to reveal tiny, dirty feet. She sits down at the overhang of the rocky height, you follow suit, her soft arm resting against yours, her slender fingers twitching against your hand which she is desperate to hold, but doesn't. She's a married woman now...she can't heedlessly touch you like that anymore.
"I know this is where you come to think. I came here every day when you were missing," she sighs softly, fingering the scalloped hem of her dress. "I would sit here for hours, just throwing stones into the ocean and watching the sun set. It made me feel closer to you somehow, the colors of the sun, its warmth reminds me so much of you." She smiles and closes her eyes, as if reminiscing, the soft moonlight illuminating the delicate skin of her face. "You know...you never know how much you love someone until you miss them, and I've missed you so much, Jacob."
You swallow thickly at her heartfelt words but remain eerily silent with your eyes still warily averted, frightened to show her the extreme depths of your emotions which are threatening to overwhelm you with their intensity. You feel the soft strands of her hair brush against your bare shoulder as it floats in the breeze, but you cannot look at her, doing so will destroy your already pathetically weak resolve. Your body, overwrought with need, aches for one last touch of her skin or soft kiss of her lips, but that is never going to happen again. Those rare, exploratory moments you had once shared are in the past now, never to be relived. It already feels like they never happened, like it was just your vivid imagination, or wishful thinking, or both.
You know she is here for one reason...you know that and no matter how much it's tearing you apart inside, this is reality...a reality that you have no choice but to face and a reality you will have to suffer an eternity for, because soon, she will be nothing but a memory, and you will be left with nothing but unparalleled dreams of a pale faced, doe-eyed girl who had once stolen your heart away, shredded it to pieces, and never returned it back to you.
"Jacob, I'm so sorry," she whispers through silent tears to you, the man she loves so deeply, but not enough...to you, the man who breathed life back into her body when she was hollow and raw and reached out and touched her precarious heart when no-one else could. She knows she has been careless with his heart, she would never forgive herself for the pain she has forced him to endure, but she couldn't help herself – there was just something about Jacob that she was unable to relinquish for not only was she in love with him...she needed him.
You sigh, and it is an action fuelled with all-consuming exhaustion, for you have heard those words so many times...too many times before. You are worn down – so tired of all the hurt, anguish and pain you feel within your crushed heart. You hope that someday the inner turmoil that's swallowing you up will gradually fade and you can repair what is broken, forgetting about the fear and torment you have lived with for so long...too long. But you know already that this is an impossible feat; the pain will always linger, it is a part of you now, just as she is, so deeply etched that it has left a permanent scar...one that will repeatedly bleed with every thought of her.
"I know you're sorry, Bella," you croak, your tone defeated but calm. "You tell me you're sorry all the damn time - almost as much as you tell me you love me. The words just slip from your mouth like a bad habit...like it's routine, but you've never done anything to prove your love for me – all you've done is hurt me, and the worst thing about it all is that you know you're doing it...you know how much it kills me and you still do it."
You risk a glance at her, your sudden burst of anger subsiding as quickly as it had risen. Her head is bowed, eyes fixed nervously on her twiddling fingers. Tears are dripping down her flushed cheeks in a steady beat. She looks so vulnerable, so breakable, like a porcelain doll, bearing no resemblance to the confident woman you had watched twirling around the dance floor merely moments ago. She was that girl in your garage again; tiny and helpless and ashamed.
Your fingers skim against her chin which you tilt towards you, gaining your first proper look at her beautiful face, so full of sorrow. Her eyes refuse to meet yours, probably scared of what she'll see staring back at her.
Brushing her tears away from her flaming cheeks with your thumb, you lean in closer towards her. She gasps, you sigh in exasperation. You're not going to kiss her as she expects. After all, the days of shamelessly fighting for her affections are over now, instead you brush your nose gently back and forth against hers...eskimo kisses...and now she's gazing into your eyes, a tiny giggle parting from her lips. So beautiful. You smile at the sound that makes your heart gallop wildly against your chest, she feels the increasingly rapid beat and lays her head softly there, nuzzling into your warmth as you cradle her to you with your palm, never wanting to let go of her softness. A heavy exhale escapes you. "You know, I always wonder whether loving you is worth it, but then I see you looking like this...and I know it is."
She says nothing but sniffles quietly, wrapping her arms tightly around your waist as wetness seeps down the ridges of your bare chest. It hurts so much to hold her like this, knowing this will be the last time you will ever feel the tenderness of her skin against yours. Moments like these, of love and comfort, will never happen between you again.
"Does he know you're here?" you murmur, your voice cracking with each word. She nods her head against your chest, her hold on you further tightening.
"Edward's not my main concern right now, but yes, as soon as I saw you run into the woods I ran after you. He followed. He's somewhere nearby. I couldn't just leave things like that between us; I needed to be alone with you, just for a little while, to explain to you...to say..." She trailed off, beginning to sob, but you already knew how her sentence was supposed to end: To say...goodbye.
You wrap your arms around her body, holding her close to you as your tears begin to fall once more, dampening her hair which clings to your fevered skin. "How many times do we have to say goodbye to each other before it's the last time, Bells?
A gut-wrenching sob erupts from her throat, and if you weren't so startled, you may have returned it. "I can't say a final goodbye to you, Jacob. Goodbye is too casual a word, it holds no feeling, no sentiment or truth to how I feel about you. Besides, I wouldn't just be saying the words to you...I'm leaving a huge part of myself right here with you...I'd be saying goodbye to half of my heart." She stares at you then, a pained expression wearing down her beautiful face as her bottom lip begins to quiver, and it takes every tiny shred of strength within you not to get on your hands and knees and beg her not to leave you. "What am I going to do without you in my life, Jake?"
You pause for a long moment, willing yourself composure. You cannot break now. "I wish I had an answer to that question, honey."
"You're gonna meet an amazing girl one day, Jake. One who will appreciate you in ways I never did...one who will love you for the wonderful man you are."
Her words tear through your heart for they are inconceivable...unimaginable. She is all you've ever wanted. She would always be the only girl you'll ever see. "I wouldn't count on it, Bella."
"Just promise me one thing. When you do meet her, love her fully and let her make you happy. Show her that breathtaking smile that you've always reserved for me and make a beautiful life with her."
She stands and you know this is it...your final goodbye. She's really leaving.
She cups your cheek with her hand. "I'll love you forever, Jacob," she whispers softly. "And even if I live for eternity...I'll never forget you. You'll always be the boy who made everything beautiful."
Edward's shadow ghosts across the tree line where he patiently waits for her. She goes to him, her fingers slipping slowly through yours as she stumbles away, sobbing. Her silhouette grows smaller in the distance, your body crashes boneless to the ground, shaking with an agonizing ferocity you've never experienced. Searing flames claw through your spine and you squirm into the rugged earth, your humanity slowly fading.
You can barely see through the torturous haze of pain as you watch them leave, their figures gradually disappearing in the mist of the woods, until it's deathly silent and you are finally, completely alone. She is gone. It's just you, now; you, your irreparable, mangled heart, and an endless ocean of pain.
The heartbreaking sound of a wolf's howl rips from your chest, penetrating the silence. Strangled sobs are all that follows.