Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own Twilight.
It was funny how, even after she was gone, she was still around to taunt him.
Her voice rose up, unbidden, in his mind, the ghostly echo of a laugh, of a furtive whisper. He was always tense, waiting for her to drive up again in Billy's old truck, with the unfixable engine rattling away as usual.
(Hearing that truck always used to create a twitch in his hands. An urge that wouldn't be suppressed to fix it, even when he knew there was nothing more to do.)
But there was no more usual. The bloodsucker had appeared and ripped that all away. He was alone again, and suddenly he understood how Bella had felt, during all those long months when she had still been broken and unhealed.
(She had looked so fragile, then. Too pale skin and dark hollows under her eyes, small and underweight, as if the slightest touch from one of his hands would shatter her into a thousand pieces that he could never fix.)
The pack had learned not to mention her around him unless they felt like picking a fight. Even her name was too much to hear; the round, curly letters grew suddenly sharp and jagged, pricked at his skin and ripped holes in his heart.
(Bella, Bella, beautiful Bella, why did you have to go?)
He was worried, all the time. Even the leech had not been sure of their safety, had hesitated to bring Bella along. If a soulless bloodsucker had reason to worry, then there was definitely a problem.
(He ignores the whispers in his head that tell him that she might not be so soulless after all. The whispers sound too much like Bella.)
Every once in a while, he gets angry. It's a dangerous thing for someone like him to do (monster, freak, werewolf). His hands shake and the tiny house rattles. It's all he can do to stop, get outside, make sure he doesn't destroy everything his family has left in a fit of rage at an uncaring bloodsucker and the girl who cares too much.
(How could she drop everything and leave for one of them?)
Suddenly, he is the one in pieces. There are so many holes in him, he feels like Swiss cheese. (You're always thinking about food, she would complain, if she were only there to say the words.) Fragile threads of family, pack, and pride hold him together; they connect the cast-astray parts of his damaged soul.
He knows he should blame her for that. The others do, when they think he can't hear them, and he's too tired to fight them. They think she's stupid, throwing her life away like that; they think she's a traitor, for leaving with a vampire.
(He can't bring himself to tell them the truth – that to be a traitor, she would've had to be part of the pack in the first place, and she was never anything that he could call "mine.")
Best friend, he thinks. She is my best friend. Or is that was?
The world has been shaken like a child's snow globe. The floating specks of glitter have resettled in foreign places. He has no idea how to find his bearings in this foreign landscape.
(Can people really live without each other? Remain so close and yet so distant, speak and yet stay strangers?)
The answer is yes.
Wow. So after putting off writing anything Twilight-related for ages, I churn out two incredibly crappy fics in one day. My muse never ceases to amaze me...Please review!