Come and Live by Madame Naberrie
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This is the last time you'll ever see me.
Topaz eyes, hardened like stone. Marble lips etched into a grim line.
She eyes the bottle clenched tightly in her left fist, her stomach clenching and unclenching, shivering and shriveling inside her abdomen.
It will be as if I never existed.
The slopes and planes of his marble face are burned into the inner skin of her closed eyelids, raw and red. She brings her palms up to press roughly against her eyeballs; she wants to reach in with her fingernails and claw his features out of her eyes.
There's a hole in her chest, a hole that she's been trying desperately to fill with sunny smiles and warm soda and greasy, too-warm, russet-skinned hands. But as fast as it fills up, the hole drains empty again. It doesn't matter that he's stayed away from her blood - his teeth are still sunk deeply into the tender skin of her neck, sucking her bone-dry.
I hate you, but even as she thinks the words, a sharp pain clamps like steel around her chest, reminding her that her thoughts are not her own. She wants to hate him, but she can't, because he. is. everything. She can't hate him, and she hates him even more for that.
He's killing her, still draining her, just like he always feared he would, except now it's just a little bit slower and it's too much, and the thought of dying just a little bit more every day is what gives her the courage to sit here on the rough carpet of her bedroom floor, fingers curled like steel around the little plastic bottle of her salvation.
It's been this way for weeks now; dancing on the end of things, realizing with a startling calm exactly what he (and it's impossible that his name still hurts so much even though she's as good as dead) was trying to tell her all along: your number was up the first day I met you.
But Jacob -- the other one, the sun, the air, all good, clean things - has begun to notice the change, the way her arm wraps around her chest, holding herself together again, like she did at the beginning. The way she keeps giving him long looks and begging him with her eyes, please, please understand and don't hate me when it's over, because I've been a lost cause from day one any way.
A mangled sound escapes her throat, something between a sob and humorless laugh, and she clenches her hand around the bottle so tightly that it hurts. She doesn't want to hurt him, she can't hurt him, but she'll never really be Bells, honey, for him and she knows how this all ends if she doesn't stop it now, and that would be the worst, the very worst thing, to let him have hope when she knows know there's none left.
It will be as if I never existed.
She stopped really existing a long time ago, and now she has to do the only thing she can do, the only kind thing for Renee, for Charlie, for Jacob, the thing that gives them a chance of a life afterwards, a life that isn't only I wonder how she is today, maybe I shouldn't have let her go and I shouldn't leave Bella alone again tonight and she smiled at me, she's getting better, she'll be better soon.
He's draining her, but she's draining them, so she's going to have to tear herself apart and burn the pieces.
She pops the cap off the bottle and spills the contents onto the floor. She lines up the white tablets neatly in a row, and eyes them with a clinical detachment, despite the swirling sickness in her stomach and chest.
Two. Four. Six. Eight. Ten. Twelve. Fourteen. Sixteen. Eighteen. Twenty...
She closes her eyes and counts them off in her head, and it feels like a little game - ashes, ashes, they all fall down.
"What the FUCK are you doing?"
Her human senses are not quick enough to fully comprehend what's happening, but she's suddenly being roughly pushed to the side, away from her neat little line of pills, a furious growl sounding from somewhere beside her. The force of the push sends her sliding into the wall and she slams into it with enough force to cause something from above her to dislodge itself and land with a soft thud against the carpet at her feet.
Her eyes remain closed for a few moments longer before hot fingers latch onto her upper arms, hard enough to bruise. Her eyes fly open on instinct, and she gasps at the fury written on on Jacob Blacks's face as he shakes her hard enough to make her teeth rattle.
"What the fuck are you doing, Bella?" Jacob roars at her, shaking her again. "What is this shit? Goddammit, answer me!"
Bella feels a laugh bubbling up in her throat and her vision tilts and swirls before her eyes. "I was playing a game..." Two. Four. Six. Eight. Ten.
"How many did you take, Bella?" he demands, hands clamping tighter around her arms until she feels his fingers have pushed past her skin and are gripping the bones themselves. "How many?"
"I didn't take any..." she trails off, her eyelids falling closed once again. Can't even do this right, can't do anything right...
"Don't fucking lie to me, Bella! How many did you take?"
The fog clears a bit and she's able to speak against the lump quickly bubbling up in her throat. "None, I didn't have any," she gasps out, keeping her eyes shut, don't look at him, it will break you, don't look don't look-
"Look at me, Bella!" Jacob barks, and her arms are beginning to hurt from the pressure of his hands.
She can't say no to him, she's never been able to say no, and her eyes are open and staring into his, black with fury...pooling over with tears. The clenching pain in her stomach returns and this, this is exactly what she never wanted...
"What are you doing, Bella?" he repeats, still enraged, but this time his voice is more of a gasp and the tears threatening to spill over his eyes are a contradiction to his fury.
The words spill out, tumbling out of her throat like she's a drowning woman, like water being beat out her chest and forced up and out of her. "I don't want to die, Jake, I don't want to die, but it's too late, I'm already as good as dead and I can't take it anymore, Jake, it's hopeless and I'm hurting everyone and I'm a selfish, disgusting person and I just want it to stop and I can't fix this any other way - " a gasp escapes from her throat and transforms her words into choking gasps and ugly, rasping sobs.
"Bella, Bella," he is saying, shaking her once again, but her lungs are seizing and her body is wildly malfunctioning and she can't understand him past the wild pulse in her ears. Her eyes fall shut once again.
She hears him swearing bitterly, fuck him, fuck him, fuck him, over and over, and he still doesn't understand, it should be fuck bella, fuck bella, fuck bella because Edward is gone and of course it's always been her fault because she wasn't enough and she's never enough.
"Bella, Bella, stop," Jacob insists firmly, and he pins her arms against her side. "You're not fucking dead, Bella, you're here, you're here with me, and you can't do this shit anymore."
"I'm being selfish, I'm hurting you, Jake, I'm hurting my family. I'll never get better and I'll always be this and I'm ruining everyone's lives, can't you see?"
"Bella, shut the fuck up," he growls. "This is the most goddamn fucking selfish thing you've ever done, thinking that we would rather you be dead than have to deal with your problems."
His hand presses right between her breasts, on her pounding heart. "It's still beating, Bells, you're still here. You can't give up, you're not allowed to give up. It's not an option."
"I don't want to fight anymore," she whimpers, and all the willpower - to live or otherwise - drains out of her body. She goes limp in his grasp and wants to sink into the earth and become nothing.
"Okay," he whispers, suddenly all softness and aching tenderness. His hands, hard against her body, suddenly become caresses against her skin. "Then let me fight for you."
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He does.
She stays in bed most of the time, only bothering to rise for the necessary things (school, her father decides, is necessary. Regular showering, she decides, is up for debate).
Jacob comes over when he's not patrolling and carries her, despite her protests, to the living room. He sits her down beside him on the couch and makes her watch stupid cartoons and laughs too loudly at things that shouldn't be funny to someone his age anymore. She sits besides him and tries to drown out the sound of his laughter with her own deafening misery, but sometimes she forgets and accidentally laughs out loud with him.
He brings her to Billy's house and cooks for her when she's tired of making food for everyone. He's a terrible cook, though she supposes she shouldn't expect much else, considering that he is an animal and will eat virtually anything. His food is bland and lukewarm but he shovels it down his throat with enthusiasm, sloshing his food around his mouth as he yammers on about inconsequential things. She takes small, polite bites and reminds him to not talk with his mouth open. He ignores her.
He talks her into going to First Beach with the rest of the pack. He wears nothing but his cutoff shorts, despite the fact that it's cold and grey and she's bundled up in a sweatshirt and a parka. He plays football with the boys and they wrestle and laugh with each other, snorting and punching and tumbling in the wet, clumpy sand. She eats two hot dogs at dinner and the boys tease her about her impending obesity. Jacob hugs her thin body against his hot chest and bravely defends her against the big, bad wolves' incessant taunts. Memories of thunderstorms and baseball games float away somewhere towards the back of her mind and she snorts coke out of her nose when she laughs.
He stays with her at night when the gaping hole in her chest tears open against the fragile stitches holding it together. She sobs and it's messy-blotchy skin and runny nose and ugly gasps for the air that never seems to find its way into her lungs. She beats against his chest and screams at him to leave, to leave her in her misery, but he never does. He holds her against his body until the ugly fit subsides, and she's trembling and ashamed when she whispers quietly into his chest that she didn't mean it. It takes him a few long moments before he responds, but he finally tells her he forgives her. For the first time, she feels accountable (I forgive you) instead of coddled (I'll love you blindly until the end of time no matter what you do).
Another year comes and goes when the pack finally catches a whiff of a sickly sweet scent dancing around the boundary line. Jacob insists on being with Bella at all times; he drives her to school and work and sits with her in her house even when she's washing towels or making casserole for dinner, but he tells her everything and for once, she doesn't feel useless. When Victoria finally crosses the treaty line and slinks into the woods just beyond Bella's house, Jacob is the one to rip her marble head from her throat. He comes back to Bella as his brothers burn the pieces, and he cries into the damp skin of her neck because that's twice now that he's almost lost everything.
He talks her into seeing a therapist. She rejects the idea immediately, because what is she supposed to say? Hi, my name is Bella, I'm fucked up because my immortal vampire boyfriend got bored with my mediocrity and left the country and now I'm trying to sort it out with my werewolf best friend. He ignores her attempts at evasion and insists that she look after her mental health (I can only fix you so much, Bells). She calls him an idiot, but she goes to see the stupid therapist and she talks about how she feels and it is not terrible. She swallows her childish pride like a bitter pill.
He takes her for walks in the summer time. She imagines that he's trying to be romantic, but it's sweeter than the jewelry and silk clothes and lavish gifts that always managed to make her feel so small. She can't even see her tiny hand within the grasp of his enormous, furnace-hot fingers. He swings their arms between them like children, grinning lopsidedly, and he ruffles her hair in her face. She yells at him to stop, slapping away his hands, but he pulls her to him and kisses her instead. It is warmth and softness and nothing she has ever felt before, and she forgets everything but his name.
She feels normal when, every Tuesday afternoon, she runs out of her English Lit class and throws herself into Jacob's waiting arms, squealing stupidly. People roll their eyes and she relishes in it, because making out in the middle of the U-Dub front lawn with her boyfriend is the first taste of happy-stupid-normal she's had in what feels like one hundred years of never being able to venture out into the sunlight.
They have sex. Lots of it. And when it's over, she lies there happily, tangled with tan, sweaty limbs, and she listens to his thundering heartbeat and thinks, I love life, I love living my life. She's startled and saddened that it's the first time she's ever thought that in all her twenty-two years of life.
They're at Charlie's for Christmas when she finally receives the call, eight years too late; a cool, smooth voice, like cold water sliding down a parched throat, breathes her name on the other end. Her blood freezes like ice in her veins and she sinks to the cold linoleum floor, phone clutched tightly in her hand. They speak for seven full minutes. He is deeply apologetic and she feels herself coming apart at the seams, but then she hears Jacob's boisterous laugh from the living room where he is watching some disgusting guy comedy with her father, and it gives her the courage to say, thank you for the call, but I am finally being human like you always wanted. She hangs up and ventures into the living room to watch the stupid movie, crawling into Jacob's embrace. With Jacob's hot arm slung around her shoulder, she finds the movie tolerable and the pain fast-fading.
She's never really liked the idea of marriage; it's a patriarchal institution designed to commodify and oppress women, Jacob. He laughs and tells her she's taken too many women's studies classes, but the conversation is brought to an abrupt halt when he silences her by flicking his hot tongue against her earlobe and whispers that he doesn't mind living in sin. They don't speak of it again.
They go to California because the sun never stops shining there, and once, many lifetimes ago, she told a quiet, strange boy that she didn't particularly like cold, wet things. Jacob doesn't sparkle in the sun; he gets sort of sweaty and musty-smelling but it's human and it's him and it's real. She writes and watches the blue ocean beat against the white sand. He works at the community center with troubled teenagers; turns out that he is pretty good at fixing things.
She's never particularly wanted children, but he loves the idea of clumsy brown-eyed children running around the house and destroying things. They dance around the matter for a few years, but Jacob proves himself the de facto victor when he impregnates her. She's terrified, but she finds it exceedingly difficult to be anything other than pleased when Jacob is so colorfully, infectiously happy, looking like he's won the lottery. I have, Bells, he whispers to her in the dark as they lie in bed, tangled around each other. I've won everything.
She toys around with exotic names for the last several months, imagining little Kayleighs or Landons or Cristiannes running around the house, but when she finally stumbles across the perfect name, she wonders how she didn't see it all along. Jacob is moved to tears when she tells him she'd like to name their daughter Sarah.
One day, when Bella feels more pregnant than should be physically possible, Jacob sits her down and tells her he has something he has to discuss. The look on his face triggers memories long forgotten (you're not good for me bella), but she would walk through fire if only this man would hold her hand, so she is not afraid. Bells, honey. She smiles at the endearment. I'm going to stop phasing.
Her first reaction is to wonder why. He smiles a soft, sad smile and presses his hand between her breasts on her heart in a gesture that can still bring her to tears.
I never wanted to live forever, he says. I only ever wanted to live with you.
She is filled with shame, then. Shame because not so long ago, she was a silly girl with a dream of forever who was willing to risk death and fire to never face uncertainty. Shame because not so long ago, she was a selfish girl who was too afraid of life to face the possibility of getting better. And shame because it's the most natural thing in the world for him to pick her over anything else, when for so long she picked anything else (death) over him.
It's difficult for her to drive with the size she's swelled to these days, so she takes a long walk alone instead. She passes rambunctious children, half-chased by exhausted parents, and young couples who seem to be just barely restraining themselves from groping each other in public. She walks alongside a few elderly men and women and the wrinkles and sagging skin of their faces release something sweet and heavy inside her heart. She finally meets the place where the earth meets the sea and it reminds her of where everything first began.
For the first time in many years, she allows herself to recall memories of a different time and place, when she was swept up into the supernatural world of romance and endless possibilities. She remembers passion and meadows and lullabies, and she remembers the sharp, aching end to her world. She remembers dying.
And then she remembers everything else.
Okay. Then I'll fight for you.
She remembers being coaxed to come outside, come laugh, come love. She remembers being coaxed to come and live. She rests her hand against the life growing inside her and she realizes the staggering weight of everything she almost foolishly tossed aside. She does not deserve this goodness, but she is profoundly grateful.
When she goes home, the sun has set and Jacob is waiting for her. She goes to him and kisses him, wrapping him up in her arms. I don't need forever. I don't need a prince or a perfect happy ending or anything other than this. I just want to live.
And they do.
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Fin.