Old Familiar Faces
(and four steps to a bittersweet lovestory)
1.
Every relationship that doesn't end in heartbreak or mutual breakup ends in death. Bella has always known this. …Still, she used to hope, for a few impossibly long teenage years, that theirs would end differently.
Ever since Edward's secret first surfaced, she'd imagined that he would change her. It seemed to be just a matter of time, before being human became too harmful. Before one of the Cullens' enemies finally became too frightening a foe, too much for a little human girl to handle. And then, she'd thought, Edward would be forced to change her. For safety's sake.
Her simplest dreams asked only for a few more human years, and then, after a plain day with the Cullen family, to be turned into a vampire. This was, to her, the perfect way to (figuratively) die. She had no problem giving up warm skin or steamed potatoes.
Of course, luck would have it that Edward thought differently.
2.
The end of high school finds Bella living alone in a far corner of Forks.
She owns a modest apartment, which is decorated sparsely and has hospital-white walls. The apartment complex can be found just beyond the Thriftway store, which sits along a busy stretch of highway and in constant way of rain.
Nearly everyone she knows has settled down with someone—Mike Newton has taken Jessica as his busybody wife, and Angela and Eric (who remain unmarried yet obviously devoted) have purchased a large, beautifully restored Victorian home with enough curb appeal to make even the Cullen family jealous.
The Cullen estate itself sits empty. Every year on her birthday, Bella climbs into a new rental car and makes the short drive to visit it.
Her old red Chevy had been parked when it was totaled in a drunk driving incident, and, when she received news of its wreck, she signed it away without seeing it. It now rests in a scrap yard, delivered there in pieces—which, if she's perfectly honest with herself, hold too many memories for her not to miss.
Still, every day, she shoves into a lonely, unfamiliar rental, only daring once a year to return to the Cullens' abandoned house of glass.
3.
It's never on the drive to the house that she cries.
Mostly she remains composed the whole drive there, and breathes in deep to steady herself once she reaches the beaten threshold. Occasionally it becomes hard to breathe when she first steps close to the door, but regardless of her physical or mental state, she lets herself in (the door swings open now anyway; the lock was broken in previous years), and stands in the front hall for a long while, to observe.
The majority of the furniture has been left behind, but all of the personal effects have vanished, leaving the décor to appear very stiff.
The household appliances were left plugged in, looking for all the world like they'd never been in a state of disuse; like they are tended to and used daily. Apart from the thick shield of dust that covers them, Bella can almost believe this illusion. Almost.
She nearly always wanders the long hallways. She traipses up and down the stairs, and feels the cool metal doorknobs outside every room, turning them over in her hands, and studying her face as it's reflected in each.
During her first, post-Cullen visit to the house, she'd shattered all of the mirrors, too afraid to see Edward's ex staring back at her. Now they lay broken, and despite how hard she is trying to heal, Bella knows she is broken too.
It's why she keeps coming back.
4. (an epilogue, of sorts)
Bella isn't sad most days.
She has a job at the hospital now, working in a wing she's sure Dr. Cullen never touched. She is a nurse with few friends but no enemies, a boring morning routine, and constantly stale coffee. (Plus a series of pragmatic rental cars.)
Her usual patients complain of body aches or sore throats; never anything too severe. She is courted by co-workers occasionally, and is used to flattery from her male patients.
It's been three years since high school let out—and longer than that, even, that she has been alone. After Edward departed from Forks, she withdrew from her friends and classmates, and eventually, Charlie and Renee too. These people are now just Christmas cards to her.
At work, the faces blur together. She has long since stopped imagining a beautiful yet cruel blonde girl, a slight and tight-lipped boy, a tall brute, a little pixie, or a boy with messy bronze hair.
So this time, when she sees Edward walk through the doors…this time, she knows it's real.
Fin
Author's Notes: I can't write. I'm sorry. I owe everyone a giant box of Naruto fanfics.
And stupid Twilight is distracting me from this. Stupid Naruto is distracting me from real fiction, for that matter...