This one-shot is based on a dream I had. I know it seems like a really far-fetched dream, but this is dead set the exact thing I dreamt. Sigh~ I wish my life was really like this…

This is the last story I will ever post on FF. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has ever read or reviewed or alerted or favourited my stories. Thank you and I wish everyone the best of luck in life.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Twilight Saga.

The Reality of Dreams

I slumped against my bedroom door, crying hysterically. My loud wailing and sobbing was loud enough to wake up the dead, not that they would be here anyway. Everyone was at his wedding.

It was the social event of the century, anybody who was somebody in this town was attending. Even if you weren't a high class socialite though, you would be watching it on TV. But I didn't have a TV in my room, so I couldn't watch it. The thought that he was about to marry someone else while I was lying on the ground in my room all alone made me even more depressed than I already was.

I had planned to go today. The dress I had been picked out was still in my wardrobe and my mother had woken me up especially early so that we could get ready. But now, I would never get a chance to see him again.

Maybe it was for the better. Yes, I could see how it would be best for everyone if the paths that we took separated, never to cross again, but why then did I feel as if a part of me was dying?

We met … how long ago? It felt like years, but in reality, I suppose it was only a few months. I guess that's what people mean when they say you get caught up in the whirlwind of romance.

Oh I won't deny that I was in love with him. Still am, of course. How could anyone not fall in love with him?

He was charming, sweet, and such a gentleman. A man like that is hard to find in today's world, so I should have expected women to be falling all over him and hailing the very ground he stepped on. I just didn't expect to include myself in that group of women.

All my pre-conceived notions of love flew out the window when we first made eye contact. What were those pre-conceived notions you might ask?

I didn't believe in love.

Though as I said, when I first looked him in the eye, they disappeared and I was transformed into someone who believed in love and all its powers.

Ugh, I sound like one of those sappy teenagers who devour romance novels and dream of their Prince Charming to come and whisk them away to his castle in some long-forgotten fairytale.

Prince Charming, ha.

So I saw him across the room at one of the social functions I had to attend. I should mention now that I belonged to the privileged society of the country, the upper class as one might call it. I wasn't ashamed of it, and more often than not I loved the dinners and theatre outings that went with being a high class elite socialite. I followed in my mother's footsteps, and she delighted in having a beautiful young daughter she could show off to all of her friends.

He used to call me 'beautiful'.

As much as I liked it though, I also liked the quieter side of life; going to uni with my friends Alice and Rose and hanging out with them and also their boyfriends as well. Being a normal person without having people watch your step to wait for you to mess up so they could rub you off. We were all from the same mould; growing up with everything we ever asked for and then trying to find our place in an unforgiving world once we'd grown up.

The event I had been attending had been mildly boring. Everyone's interest was on the fact that he was attending, and surprisingly, I found out that i was connected to him in some obscure way. He was the old school friend of Jasper, Alice's boyfriend. In the world I lived in, people thrived on obscure connections; you were only somebody if you knew somebody else.

My date was terribly boring, talking about some old and horrible painting hanging on the wall. I had yawned impatiently and glanced around the room when we locked eyes. But that connection was brief, as he was then obscured by the crowd.

I knew who he was instantly. Didn't I just say that everyone was excited due to his presence?

Later on in the night, making an excuse to my date about needing some fresh air – he didn't care, he was off staring at some other god forsaken painting again – I found myself out in the gardens. Funnily enough, or by chance perhaps, he had done the exact same thing.

We started talking, polite conversation at first. But then it turned into something deeper and more meaningful than I had ever shared with anyone else. Maybe it was the fact that the garden was dark and we were hidden from prying eyes, or that I had consumed some alcohol, making my feel more at ease in his presence than I normally would have been. Maybe it was that connection I had felt when we first looked at each other, but I felt more free in his presence than with anyone else I had ever met.

Soon enough, I felt his hand cup my cheek and I leaned into it. He leaned closer and the stars and moon above illuminated his handsome features. I'll never forget the way that my name slipped from his lips for the first time as he was about to kiss me.

"Bella."

From that moment on, any doubts I'd had about my growing love for the man disappeared. In between the information I'd heard about him, and the conversation I'd just had, add in the kiss of a lifetime, I knew that I'd never love anyone besides him.

That's when our whirlwind romance started. At first, at the functions where we both attended, we'd slip out for as long as we could without being noticed by our dates and talk. You might be rolling your eyes but they did always started off as innocent conversations. We were friends first, but then the insatiable connection would always pull at our hearts and remind us of the attraction we felt between us.

A few months, was it really that short? But it was long enough to make me realise that I'd fallen in love with him.

I'd compare us to Romeo and Juliet, Cleopatra and Marc Antony, and all lovers alike. You might have noticed a subtle thing linking them all together.

They all died.

As I had now died, inside. The sun was starting to set outside my window, and I knew now that the ceremony had begun. I couldn't bear myself to move from my position against the door, even though it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. My tears had dried, but my heart was continuing to weep.

I had died in every sense, in my mind and in my heart. My soul shattered and my spirit broken.

Should I mention that my date on the very first night I saw him continued to be so at every event I went to? Should I mention that it was because he was my fiancé?

I never, never wanted to accept his proposal. But my mother had made me. When I was younger, I had deluded myself into thinking that she cared about me, cared about my well-being, and this delusion had continued into my adult life. I should have known better.

She only cared about her social standing, how everyone else saw her. She couldn't see that her want for status destroyed the relationships with the ones close to her. My father saw this early, and that's why he left her. Not that she would have anyone know that. Oh no, no one could know that Renee Swan had been left by her husband. She made up a story that he'd disappeared during a fishing trip, and that he was now presumed dead.

My father accepted this. In return for never contacting her or me again, she gave him some of her money so that he could live peacefully in a remote town somewhere in America. After all, it was her family that was one of the elite, not his.

Even I didn't know the truth until a few years ago.

I lay down on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. I had no energy to go lie on my bed. Did I really want to relieve how I discovered my father was alive? What the hell, it wasn't like I was going anywhere soon. I might as well recount my life story now.

But my life story wasn't worth recounting, because if I did want to tell it, the majority of my story would be taken up by him. Although his involvement in my life was less than one percent of the years I'd lived, he'd make up most of it.

I'd been searching my mother's vanity table for something, I can't remember what. In it though, I'd stumbled across a few letters from an address in America. Curious, I reached for it, intending to open it, before my mother's shrill voice rang up the stairs. I'd hastily grabbed the thing she wanted and left the room, making a mental note to remember the letters.

About a week later, I managed to sneak into her room and take them out of the drawer. Upon opening them, I found three or so letters in my father's handwriting.

There was enough information in the letters for me to deduce what had happened to him. Despite being told never to contact me, he'd sent the letters in the hope that my mother's heart would open up and she'd give them to me.

Charlie should have known better, my mother was always cold, and the last few hours had only proven that to me more. No amount of explaining would ever get through to her.

I'd tried contacting him, but was always too scared that she would find out. But now nothing would stop me from finding him, after all, my mother had already as good as killed me. If she found out, what was the best she could do?

I'd explained to her that I loved him. She refused to listen; she'd already figured out my plan. "You're engaged to Mike!" she had screamed at me. "You will marry him and forget your romance with him!"

I suppose you wonder why she wouldn't be excited I was in love with him. After all, to her, love equalled marriage. If I loved him, the next step was for me to marry him.

The thing is, he was already engaged.

You've probably already figured it out; it's his marriage that I've been so hung up about, his marriage taking place right now that has killed me. The reason I was locked up in my room.

My mother knew that if she allowed me to attend the wedding, I'd try and stop it. That was my plan; to go to the wedding with the intention of stopping it. I'd beg for him to listen to me, to think about everything, and to look me in the eye and say he didn't love me when he'd said it a million times. Only then would I back off and allow the wedding to continue. If he didn't love me, there was nothing I could do about it.

But I didn't think he could say it if I asked him to. How many times had he whispered in my ear that he loved me? How many times had he kissed my lips, whispering words of sweet affection between kisses? And how many times had I responded in kind?

Yes, his date at all the social events had been his fiancée, just as Mike had been mine.

The wedding had been planned for almost a year, long before I met him. There had been much excitement when it had been announced, and much talk had been going around for half a year about it.

Does that not prove to you how much he loved me? He was willing to have a romantic relationship with me months before he was due to marry his fiancée. He knew if we were ever found out that there would be a huge scandal. He knew that his life was under the scrutiny of everyone in the country. Yet he proceeded to fall in love with me, a girl he had never met before. If that's not love, then tell me what is.

That's why I believed during all that time he would abandon the wedding. Why he would leave his fiancée for me. I was wrong.

Yesterday, he came and saw me in my own home. I had been confused, to say the least, and utterly thankful that my mother had not been home.

"Bella," he'd said after he'd sat down and we'd greeted each other, "I'm marrying Tanya tomorrow."

I gaped at him, mouth wide open.

"But … but I love you. You love me," I'd whispered. "How can you marry her?"

"I have to," he had whispered right back. "I don't want to, please Bella, believe me. The last thing I want to do is marry her when all I really want to do is marry you. But I have to do this, because you know what will happen if I don't."

"If you loved me, you wouldn't marry her. I know you love me so much, because that's exactly the way I feel about you."

"Bella, this wouldn't work anyway," he'd said, looking away from me. "When we met, I was engaged to Tanya, and you were engaged to Mike. We fell in love, but we were both promised to someone else. And we can't go back on those promises because of who we are, and how we must act in our society."

"Please, don't do this," I'd begged. "Please, Edward."

"I'm sorry," he'd whispered one final time before leaving me alone in the kitchen.

He was right; we were both engaged to someone else, and right at this moment, he was now marrying her, and in a few months, I'd be marrying my fiancé. But we'd fallen in love, and shouldn't love override everything else? I know he needed to do this, that his position made him obligated to her, and I know that I was already engaged to someone else, but I loved him!

After he left, my mother had returned and she knew immediately that something was off. I didn't tell her anything, instead seeming excited about attending their wedding tomorrow. I don't know how, but she figured it out though and confronted me this morning.

"You have some ulterior motive for attending this wedding, don't you Isabella? Out with it, why do you really want to go?" she'd asked.

After much interrogation, and a threat that we wouldn't go unless I told her, I told her the truth about us. In hindsight, it wouldn't have made a difference – if I hadn't told her, I wouldn't have gone, and I did tell and I still wasn't there.

So she'd banned me from attending and locked me up in my own room. It had been an hour since she left, and I knew the wedding was well under way.

I closed my eyes, tears trailing down my face and into my hair. I could picture it now; the judge would ask the assembled crowd, "If anyone knows why these two should not be married, speak now, or forever hold your peace." No one would say anything, and he would then go on to wed the happy couple.

I knew it had been impossible! Why had I even proceeded? Always before my head had ruled my heart, but with this situation everything had been turned upside down.

How could I have ever imagined a happy ending with the Prince?

He was obligated to marry Tanya, he had to marry her to be eligible for the crown. Their wedding had been set basically from the moment that the royal family had approved of the relationship. She came from the most elite family in the country besides the royal family, and she was perfect. Educated and beautiful, I paled in comparison to her.

Sure, I had managed to capture the heart of the Prince for a few short months, but who was I to marry him? I knew nothing of royal customs and I doubted the King and Queen would ever approve of me.

It was impossible from the moment I locked eyes with him.

His life would go on, living in the palace with his perfect wife. He would take the crown when King Carlisle died and he and Tanya would have a child to carry on the lineage.

My life would go on as well. I would marry Mike and we'd live together and I'd produce his children. I would always remember the love I felt for him, but maybe he would forget everything to do with me.

How would he dismiss our time together? Maybe he would say he never really did love me, and all he felt was a brief infatuation with a girl who he used to know. Or maybe he would claim that I had somehow forced him to fall in love with me, before he saw the light and saw that he actually didn't love me.

One thing I knew for sure, Edward Cullen had permanently walked out of my life.

Another hour slowly ticked by. I was sure it was an hour because I counted the ticks of the clock in my room, although I couldn't see it. I knew that the wedding had most likely finished by now, and my mother was at the reception. How would she pass of my absence? "Oh Isabella couldn't make it today, she suddenly became violently ill last night. How horrible, and when she so dearly wanted to be here to pay her respects to Prince Edward and his new bride…"

The thought made me sick enough to almost make her lie true.

7,128 seconds since my mother left, I heard a disturbance downstairs. I turned my head, the first movement I had made since my tears had dried up. It couldn't have been my mother; she should still be at the wedding reception. So who could it be?

Slowly, I got up off the ground and pressed my ear to the door. The door had slammed open and I could hear someone make their way up the stairs. I wasn't frightened, surprisingly, since if it were a burglar, they surely would have been a bit stealthier.

It didn't matter if they were a burglar anyway, since my mother had locked my door from the outside when she found out about my intentions for the wedding. I couldn't escape from my room, since I was too high up to climb down and the other windows too small for me to fit through. And there was no point trying to smash through some of the walls; we lived in a solid brick house.

My ear still against the door and my breathing quiet, I heard the person reach the landing and open one of the doors. They cursed, but I couldn't hear their voice properly. They opened all the doors on the landing until mine was the only one closed.

I backed away from the door, sitting on my bed. The doorknob rattled, but it was obviously locked. There was a moment's paused then, before the person on the other side kicked down the door.

It slammed open, and I gasped, not only of the destruction, but of the person on the other side of the threshold.

He was still in his tuxedo, which made him look even more devastatingly handsome, and he must have come straight from the wedding. His bronze hair was flying everywhere in complete disarray, and he had a fierce look in his eyes.

I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could register what was happening, he had crossed the space between us and his mouth was on mine.

I closed my eyes, inhaling his scent and moving my mouth with his. Shock registered in every particle of my body, but I was too distracted.

Eventually, we broke apart and he leaned his forehead against mine, breathing heavily.

"Edward," I said quietly. "What are you doing here?"

He opened his eyes and I looked into the emerald orbs that I had locked with that very first night we had met. He grinned and kissed me again.

"Isn't it obvious? I just came from a wedding," he said.

"And…" I glance down at his hands; no ring.

"I left Tanya at the altar," he admitted. "She'd only just arrived there when I realised that if I was going to marry anyone, I didn't want it to be her." He peered at me, love shining through his eyes.

"Me?"

"Yes, Bella," he breathed. "I didn't see you sitting next to your mother and I wondered where you were. I figured that you must have been forced not to come against your own will, so I left Tanya and came straight here. You know that hour car ride was the most excruciating hour of my life?"

"Tell me about it," I said. "For an entire hour I thought that the wedding had started, and you didn't … you didn't love me."

"I love you, Bella. Truth be told, I think I know what you would have done if you had gone. Stop the wedding and beg me not to marry Tanya, hmmm?"

"Correct," I smiled. I ran a hand through his bronze hair, revealing in how close he was to me. He wasn't going to marry her. My happiness at what I was hearing was so incomprehensible, and there was so much information for me to absorb.

"Well, when you weren't there, I started to panic. I wanted you to stop the wedding, and ask me not to marry Tanya, because deep inside, I didn't want to marry her either. I was just too much of a coward to stop it on my own. Bella, I want you to be by my side because it's you who I love."

I closed my eyes, letting out a long slow breath.

"I can understand if you don't love me anymore," Edward continued in a rush. "I mean, for almost a day you've believed that I was going to go through with it, and even though I always said that I loved you, you probably don't believe it anymore, and I can understand if for the rest of my life I'm going to have to prove it to you…"

"Edward," I interrupted, "Shut up. I love you."

A smile broke out across his face. Whenever he smiled, it was like the world lit up with him. And he was smiling at me.

"You really do?"

"Of course I do," I smiled back. "And there isn't anyone in the world I'd want to love more."

"I love you too, Isabella," Edward said, his hand reaching under my chin to kiss me once more.

~:~:~

I jolted awake suddenly, sitting up in my bed. I was breathing heavily, like I'd just run a marathon.

Running a hand through my hair, I glance outside my window. The sun had only just come up and the birds had only just started singing. It was an ordinary day in my life.

What a crazy dream I had just had!

I got out of bed and went into the adjoining bathroom, splashing cold water over my face, trying to get my thoughts in order. In my dream, I had somehow fallen in love with the Prince, and he had fallen in love with me. But we had both been engaged to different people, and that meant we couldn't be together. Then on the day of his wedding, he realised he did want to be with me, so he left his fiancée at the altar for me…

I shook my head, now brushing out the knots in my hair. Ridiculous. As if that could ever happen.

True, Prince Edward did exist, and he was engaged to that Tanya girl. Their wedding date was set for a few months from now, but I didn't even know him! The only connection I had to him was his being Jasper's old school friend.

And … I was promised to Mike. So there was another thing that was true. But I had never been to a function which he was supposed to attend to as well.

Like I said, ridiculous. It would never happen.

I walked down stairs a few minutes later, finding my mother sitting at the kitchen table, finishing her mug of coffee.

"Good morning, Isabella," she said, folding the newspaper away and standing up. "I was just about to leave."

"Good morning, mother," I replied, starting to get my breakfast.

"Well, I'll see you later then. Make sure you're on time to the dinner tonight. You're arriving with your friends, right?"

"Yes, Rosalie and Emmett are picking me up at six."

"Okay then. This dinner is going to be so exciting, what with the Prince attending and all."

I choked a bit on my food.

"What did you just say?" I managed to get out.

My mother stared at me in surprise. "Surely you knew that Prince Edward is going to be there tonight. Everyone's been talking about it for weeks. He's bringing along his fiancée. Didn't you hear?"

"No, I didn't," I whispered.

"See you tonight, dear," my mother said, kissing me on the forehead before leaving me alone in the kitchen.

Prince Edward was going to be at the event with his fiancée? At the same time I would be there with Mike?

Oh no…

The End

Thank you a million times over and may you all be happy and healthy. This has been ~crystalbutterfly84.