Author's Note: For a long time, I've wanted to rewrite Breaking Dawn to better fit how I thought the story should have went. This is my attempt at doing so. Please leave a review if you take the time to read it!
This begins after chapter five in Breaking Dawn. Pre-wedding, wedding, and the first night of the honeymoon have already happened in my story just as they did in Stephenie's.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. Everything that belongs to Stephenie Meyer is just that, hers.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
Helen Keller
Suffocating; drowning on the flames consuming my body. That was my singular lucid thought.
Nothing could help me escape the wildfire charging through every vein, sinew, and crevice. More aware of myself than any other moment before, my entire body screamed with the agony of defeat. Time had lost all meaning, and I was suspended in space with only the suffering of a million deaths to comfort me.
A symphony of screams ricocheted through my thoughts, but I had no way of knowing if my lips were parting to release the sound or if it was all in my head. The paradox of my predicament was summed up by the hypersensitivity of every fiber of my body and the absolute loss of control. Different actions, thoughts, and reactions all blurred together simultaneously, and I was left with no way to ascertain the reality of the situation.
The absence of time was troubling. I was not sure how much of the torture I could withstand. Heat swelled over my skin in a crest of the torment as the flames meticulously laid claim to every part of me. Each rapid thud of my heart sent another hellfire surging through my veins.
A bout of screaming, this time worse than the first, disrupted my thoughts. Make it stop, make it stop, MAKE IT STOP.
But no one could. I asked for this; in fact, I begged for this. There was no going back. Edward could not stop this.
Edward.
Somehow, I rose through the torture to cling to that one word, that one idea, that one person. Edward; the reason for everything in my life, and now the reason for this. He was worth it. He was more than worth it. Barely treading above the ever present tug of misery, I chanted his name over and over. Even in the final minutes before we started my transformation, he still wasn't convinced.
"Are you sure, Bella?" He had pleaded. "We can wait."
"Listen to me. You promised. We both held up our parts of the deal, and now it's time." My doe eyes looked up to him pleadingly. "Please? I'm ready for eternity. I can't wait any longer."
My fists bunched into the soft fabric of his shirt in anticipation. Several thoughts crossed his mind, each causing a shadow to cross his Adonis-like features. Finally, he conceded.
"Isabella Marie Swan Cullen, I love you. No one has even been as sure of that as I am right now. I'm sorry for what you're about to endure, but I promise I will be by your side every step of the way. You will never know what this sacrifice means to me."
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, and I quickly brushed them away before they could escape. The sun was hanging directly overhead of the house, and it caused a dazzling display of Edward's skin. That's going to be you in three days, I reminded myself.
The memory barely had time to come into focus and replay before I was submerged in the sea of fire again. I willed my heart to stop beating. With each rushed spasm in my chest, the inferno eating away only gained more precedent.
I would have given anything to have a release, some way to have freed my mind of the pain. I still clung to thoughts of Edward. He was the anchor keeping me aware of reality. Instinctively, I clawed for his hand. I craved his touch, imagining that his cool skin would douse the sea of flames. The attempt was futile. In my mind, my hand was clawing at the crisp bed sheet, but I know outwardly it isn't. My hand can do no more than rest atop my pyre of down feathers.
If I couldn't have his touch, then I would still have Edward. Pouring all of my focus into the memories lurking in the shadows of my mind, hidden away by the smoky haze of pain, I returned to the morning before it began. Fighting against the onslaught of sensations, none pleasant, my mind seized a fraying thread linking me to a life before the conflagration.
Just last night, our honeymoon had started. Edward was still reeling from the bruises smattered across my pale skin from his end of our bargain. But I couldn't regret that night. I couldn't regret anything. Over breakfast, he swore to never attempt it again while I was still human. And that's what brought us to this moment. Without waiting a beat, I pushed away the half eaten omelet.
"Do it today."
"What?" Edward's reply made no attempt of covering his surprise.
"You heard me. There's no reason to wait now. We've exhausted the list of human experiences. I'm ready."
Silence was all that answered me for several minutes. Impatience marred my features. A puff of pent up air in an overly noisy huff sounded as I hopped off of the barstool. Before I could make a grab for the plate to clean it up, Edward had pushed the last of the omelet into the garbage can. With a practiced gentleness, he placed the plate in the deep sink.
Come back, my hoarse voice screamed out silently. Like before, the memory was gone. I'm disoriented. With each memory that teased the fringes of my sanity, I realized they're not in order. Time, right. Time didn't exist in this personal version of Hell. The myths and legends of fire and brimstone were well intact, though. At any moment, I expected Satan to rear his ugly head and welcome me to his legion.
It never happened, though. The only thing I could be sure of was the fire. I was utterly unsure of how Edward and his family had turned into their inhumanly beautiful forms. A pile of ash seemed the only thing I would be making after this.
How long had it been? How long did I have left? Those two questions were at the forefront in the race of thoughts surging through my psyche. The presence of Edward as my happy place grappled with dominance.
The sun over Phoenix had always been hot. You could see the heat rising off of the blacktop during the peak months. Mom and I could never afford a pool, so we were creative when we came up with ways to cool off. One of my favorite was the simplest; the water hose. We'd take turn spraying each other down, and it worked. It held the heat of summer in the desert at bay.
Right at this moment, I craved that same thing. Again, my instincts told me to find the coolness of Edward's stone skin. And by nothing short of a miracle, the heat started to recede.
The very tips of my fingers and toes felt it first. The torturous inferno turned to embers which were quickly snuffed out by a serene chill.
But something else changed, too. Before, my heart seemed to send the fire away, dispatching it to a new part of my body with each pulse. Now, it began to gather the feverish ache. Competing sensations raged within me. Relief that the end was near, but panic at the searing pain clinching my chest.
With each oscillation of my most vital organ, the heat retreated away from my hands and feet. It's going to end, I realized with a surge of unhinged happiness. Another beat, and my wrists and ankles were free from the chains of torture. The swell of my heart seemed like it could burst my ribs apart, though.
Staking a claim on time and escaping the insanity of infinity, each beat of my heart was counted in an effort to catalogue the passing moments leading to the end. Something was wrong, though. The more I counted, the quicker they came.
Was this supposed to happen? No one had mentioned this. The burning was the only thing anyone fixated on when telling the story of their transformation, and now I understood why. Could my heart survive? In the end, it wouldn't. It was doomed to die like the rest of me; all of it necessary for the chance to bloom into eternity. But was it supposed to sound so frantic?
Another fit of panic washed over me.
I'm not going to survive.
Edward and I worked so diligently at making our one-of-a-kind relationship work, and it was all for nothing. All of the love, the pain, the effort; it had been for nothing. The heaviest sadness I have ever known crept invaded every fiber of my being; body, mind, and soul.
In the split second that it took for the race of thoughts to capture my mind completely, more and more of my body had been relieved of the torture. My heart, though, was going into overdrive. The heat had left my extremities entirely, and the flames seemed focused on burning themselves straight to my heart.
The pain was indescribable. The thought of being reduced to ashes still lurked in the corners of my mind. I considered how Edward would deal with his new bride being nothing more than soot staining the shredded sheets of our honeymoon bed.
With an earth shattering pressure, the last stretch of fire resigned to my heart. Scream after scream announced the fact, but I knew no one could hear me. The exhilarating artic chill that claimed every inch of my body except my heart didn't matter. Multiplying every second, the fire in the pit of my chest drug me under and I relinquished my hold to reality. Where I was going, there would be no Edward. Blackness crept in, and I succumbed to the sadness.
A gossamer tent of flowers was all I could see as the ball of my foot uneasily met the floor and the heel of my shoe clicked against the polished wood. Frantically, my eyes raked across the scene laid out before me. And then, he was there and that was all I could see. At the end of the aisle marked by a pure white runner, my groom stood waiting. The pace of my breathing instantly increased, and a natural pull to him nearly pried me from Charlie's arm.
His face was perfect. The contours showed his happiness perfectly, and every female in attendance was surely dazzled by the display. Messy bronze strands stood in every direction, and my fingers itched to run through them.
Somewhere in the chairs Charlie and I were passing sat everyone who meant something to me, to us. My mom, Carlisle and Esme, Alice and Jasper, Emmett and Rosalie, my friends from school, Seth Clearwater; the one person missing was Jake. But as I made it to the end of the aisle, I couldn't think of Jake. Every thought was devoted to this perfect man who would soon be my husband.
As Charlie passed me off to the bride-groom, I took the opportunity to press my lips against his cheek though my eyes couldn't leave Edward. "Thanks, Dad. I love you."
The exchange was quick, and it left the stain of my lipstick against Charlie's blushed skin. But my time with him was limited to hours.
The vows were standard with only one deviation better equipped for our unusual relationship. My nervousness was kept at bay by the gentle squeezes of Edward's hands against my own. When it came time for me to speak, my voice was lost in the emotion of the moment.
"I do," I barely choked out, inaudible to everyone except those with gifted hearing.
Edward's was more a declaration, a loud and proud promise, "I do."
Soon enough, the rings were exchanged. Even my clumsiness decided to stay away for this moment, and I managed to slide the ring over Edward's pale perfect skin with no issue.
With that, we were married. I was bound to this man. Pastor Weber announced us to our family and friends, and then it was time for the kiss, the seal of our marriage.
At first, only our lips met. It was a soft and slow pressure. In a movement nearly too fast, Edward's hand rose to place palm against cheek to frame my face. My arms quickly threw themselves around his neck, and with the aide of my heels, we were standing even as our kissed turned more sensual. His grin against my coral pout was the first sign, and soon enough, he pulled away. I had forgotten that we weren't alone until Emmett's whistle elicited a few chuckles. But my eyes refused to pull away from the yellow brilliance of Edward's. His smile nearly touched the corners, and in that moment, everything was right in the world.
That was how I would remember Edward, full of pure and absolute happiness on our wedding day. It had been perfect then. How I wished it could be perfect now.
Wait. I'm not dead.
The thunderous and frantic pace of my heart still raged on and the fire was unbearable, but I wasn't dead. Edward, it had to be the thought of Edward. As always, he was my protector.
With one loud thud, my heart exploded away from the pain and stopped. As soon as it was silenced, the flames were extinguished. Finally, it was over. Relief washed over me, and the urge to let out a sob contracted my throat. That's when I felt it, the new burn. It was nothing like the pain I had just endured. This burn was more of an annoyance, a scratch at the back of my throat, a constant reminder of my reliance on the life elixir of others.
That's when I became aware of everything around me.
"Bella?"
His voice broke through the silence, and it was the best thing I've heard in my entire life. No longer dulled by the incapacity of my human hearing, Edward sounded like an angel. Each syllable was caressed by his tongue perfectly so. Beyond him, the wind billowed through the open doorway and rustled the sheer curtains. And further on, the signature sound of waves crashing to the beach reminded me of where we were.
My fingers flexed against the sheet, and I instantly feel every fiber of the material all woven together. A feather tickled my elbow, left over from Edward's destruction of the pillows from our consummation. Then, a smooth hand glided into mine. It was the same temperature as my own, and I was momentarily disoriented. Gone was the chill of Edward; we were equals now. The pads of my digits discovered the stony feel of his skin as they laced together with his.
"Bella? You can open your eyes. You're safe now."
The tickle of his breath against my hypertensive skin caused me to inhale a jet of air, but absent was the satisfaction. It was replaced by the taste of everything around me. I could taste the sun, airy and warm. Edward tasted the best, though. A menagerie of pleasant flavors all mixed together to identify my husband. Smelling had the same effect. Things I could have never imagined to have a scent do, and I found myself overwhelmed.
With one sense to go, it was the one I had been waiting on. For so long, I had wanted to view Edward's perfection with the keen eyesight of a vampire, to bask in his beauty. And now, the opportunity was mine. Fluttering apart, my lids uncovered my eyes. Instantly, his face was in my view. Each sparkling ray of reflection from the sun shined off of his skin. His eyes were even more endless now; true gates to his soul in the way they expressed his happiness at this moment, the culmination of our relationship. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to make sure this is real, because nothing prepared me for the unparalleled joy of this moment.
Never in my life had I been more positive of anything. Edward was mine, and I was his.