Title: Ashes
Summary: "If you had told me at 16, when I lived with Renee in Phoenix that my life would be reduced to ashes… that ashes would play so much of a role in all my defining moments, I would have laughed." BPOV. AU from "the breakup" in New Moon. No real pairing - mentions BxE, BxJ.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Note: This has not been beta read, as the beta reader function on is not working and I've grown too impatient to continue waiting for it to work! If anyone would like to beta this (or anything else) for me, please drop me a line.
i.
Ashes.
It always does come back to ashes for me. If you had told me at 16, when I lived with Renee in Phoenix that my life would be reduced to ashes… that ashes would play so much of a role in all my defining moments, I would have laughed. No, that's not right. I wouldn't have laughed. I'd have walked away from you like you were one of the crazy people that Renee constantly warned me about. The ones you shouldn't get involved with in case they flip out and stab you. Yeah. That's what it would have been like. I was 16 and carefree and didn't understand what life was really like. Or at least what it would be like for me.
But that crazy person would have been right.
It started at seventeen, with James. Or really, with the Cullens. When James came after me, they saved me. I didn't see it, being busy dying at the time, but they pulled his body apart with their teeth and bare hands and burned it. My vegetarian friends had done it for me.
And it wasn't enough.
Edward didn't notice. Or if he did, he didn't know what it was or how to fix it. It was Alice who fixed it. Little Alice, who foresaw that we would be friends before I knew they existed. She knew what I would need and took it that night, the night of James and fire in my veins as real fire raged at the dance studio.
It took her a few weeks to work up the courage to give it to me. But the weeks were hard on her. Not as hard as on me, but hard enough. A few weeks of watching me jump at shadows and cling to the Cullen family like I was drowning and they were the only flotation devices in sight.
I knew Edward was confused. He thought I was scared of his kind now, and it caused him no end of consternation when I both seemed so afraid and at the same time stuck to them all like white on rice. His attempts as disengaging me from spending my every waking moment with them went down in flaming glares and harshly spoken words. It bothered him, but he was so wrapped up in loathing his own nature that he didn't look at it too closely.
Alice understood what no one else did. I just didn't believe that the nightmare was over. Yes, they had assured me that James was gone, but I had no proof. I hadn't seen it. And some irrational place inside of me kept screaming that he was waiting just out of sight, just around the next corner, waiting to finish what he had started.
When Edward, Emmett, and Jasper went on a hunting trip, Alice invited me to sleep over at her house. In between makeovers, pedicures, and feeding me clichéd slumber party foods gleaned from Alice's careful study of 80's teen movies, she slipped me a small container.
Knowing Alice, it was expensive, and at the absolute height of taste and refinement. It could have been a Tupperware container for all I knew about it. I looked at her quizzically, and she just stared at me. Not knowing what to do, I opened it up. I was expecting some sort of gift, maybe bath crystals judging from the movement when I shook it gently. When I opened it up, I was even more confused.
"Alice," I started hesitantly, "why have you given me a box of dust?"
I expected her to laugh and explain, but she just kept staring at me with those otherworldly eyes and the same unreadable expression. "It's not dust," she said slowly, her eyes willing me to understand. When there was no obvious light bulb over my head, she continued, "it's ashes."
And there was her light bulb. The world fell out from underneath me as I understood what she had given me. Closure.
As soon as she'd said that word, I knew what it was. It was James, or what was left of him. And I was really free. I laughed and cried at the same time, and she just held me close to her marble body and stroked my hair. She knew what it meant, and she knew not to speak of it.
When Edward came back, he saw the whole thing in her mind, and knew I was different, but he didn't understand. He didn't connect these ashes to the vampire that had tortured me. Neither one of us would explain, upholding an unspoken bond of sisterhood and friendship.
I kept the ashes on the top shelf of my closet the entire time I lived in Forks. Though Alice gave me hundreds or thousands of nice things throughout our friendship, I always treasured that one above all. I'm sure she understood that.
ii.
When Edward left me… Well, words fail me. I could say a thousand things, each more ridiculous than the last, all clichéd and hackneyed and none would come close to the absolute devastation that rocked my world.
Even worse, he made them all leave. I lost my love of a lifetime, the woman I knew would be my very best friend, and the family I had chosen as my own in one fell swoop. He told me he didn't love me, didn't want me, and I believed it. He shattered my very fragile self-esteem into a million pieces.
I went through life as a zombie, until Jacob Black, my childhood friend, forced his way back into my life with dedicated cheer and a careful dedication to not speaking of the Cullens and what had happened. He lit up my life and I orbited around him. He was my sun, and the center of my solar system in a world left cold and dark.
My life had taken yet another nightmare fairy tale turn, though. Edward was a vampire, I was a zombie, and Jake… Jake was a werewolf. It didn't matter to me, any more than what the Cullens were had mattered to me. He was still Jake, and he still shined, and shined for me.
Jacob knew the skeleton story of my life with Edward, my life with that whole family. Despite not consciously wanting to keep secrets from Jacob, I held back the story about James and his coven and the danger.
One day he found my very expensive box of ashes. Jacob and I fit together in a strange way. He was just naturally a part of my life. And when I saw him sitting on my bed, holding that box, with a torn expression on his face… I knew he wanted to ask me, but wouldn't because he would rather cut out his own heart than hurt me.
He was shocked at my presence, the only time I ever snuck up on him, and he opened his mouth to apologize to me. I opened my mouth faster and the story spilled from my lips in an unstoppable cascade of words.
It felt so good to just talk about it. The whole story came out, the story of Edward, and the Cullens. And James, Laurent, and Victoria. I told him the story and showed him my scars and he just listened. I explained Alice's gift to him, sharing a part of myself that I couldn't even share with Edward and wondered what was wrong with me.
Sometime in the middle of my outpouring, I started crying. I didn't even notice, but Jacob did and he just held me. When I was finished, he put my box back into my closet and never mentioned it again. He kissed me, and I let him, and that was the beginning, and an ending.
Jacob loved me fiercely and without fear. He had a confidence in the rightness of our relationship that Edward had never had. We slowly grew closer together, but never as close as he wanted.
The fragile little life I had carved for myself in the wake of the devastation was threatened by the return of Laurent and Victoria. They were searching for me, after revenge on me and the Cullens for the events with James.
The next months were tense as the pack danced a dangerous tango with the two vampires, all over me. My guilt at putting them in danger and shame at not being able to help crept in through the cracks of my already fragile relationship with Jacob. I was a wreck and I cried a lot. Over him, over the pack, and over Edward. Still, and always, Edward. Jake bore it with surprising grace, but I could feel the tension under the surface.
Then one night Jake brought me a gift. Laurent's ashes in a hand-carved wooden box. It only goes to show that I didn't deserve him, because he knew exactly what it meant to me. He watched me carefully put the box on the top shelf of my closet with Alice's gift, and told me that Victoria had fled. The pack had chased her south for miles.
He hugged me, holding me to him. It felt right and wrong at the same time, and it was something more than the gulf of Edward that separated us. Something had changed in our relationship and I knew it wasn't for the better.
iii.
A few weeks later a package arrived in the mail for me. It was another box, and the postmark was from South America. I opened it in the living room before even closing the door. It held another container, and in that was a now-familiar pile of grey ashes and a scrap of paper with one word written on it in familiar and painful handwriting.
Victoria
The world shifted inside my head and I saw everything that must have happened. Edward must have seen Alice's gift from inside her head, finally. And, being Edward, would have felt guilty it wasn't him that thought of it.
When the wolves stopped chasing Victoria, Alice would have seen where she'd end up, which Edward pulled from her head. I felt sick that he had put himself into danger over me and his misplaced sense of honor. He couldn't love me enough to stay, but he could risk his life for me.
I collapsed to the floor in my father's living room clutching the box of ashes in one hand and the note in the other, the door open displaying my misery for the world to see. I cried for what felt like hours.
I cried in relief, that the three vampires that had tormented me for so long were now gone, and I was finally safe.
I cried that he had left, and left me broken and bruised and bleeding and didn't care enough to look back, despite promising to love me forever.
I cried for Jacob, the love he felt for me, and the love I couldn't return. Not in a way that was meaningful and what he deserved.
I cried for the loss of the family and life that I had chosen, and had snatched away from me.
I cried for the loss of my best friend and would-be sister.
I cried because I was scared that I would never recover from him and the type of love he had shown me, the kind that came in fairy tales and songs.
Jacob found me like that, a sodden heap on the floor. He was frantic with worry, then found the box and paper when he picked me up off the floor. He flinched and folded in on himself like he had been struck, and I knew. Finding me crying one more time over Edward Cullen, the man he hated more than any other, was the final straw.
The pieces had connected in Jacob's head and he knew that I was broken, and this was the way it would always be. As long as we lived, as long as he tried, I would never stop crying over Edward Cullen.
He kissed me and said goodbye for what I knew would be the last time. I'd abused him too much. He looked like a wounded puppy as he made his way out of the house, looking lost and unsure for the first time since I'd known him.
A fresh wave of tears washed over me and I lost myself in the swirling mess of my pain and misery, and the misery I wrought in others.
The idea came from nowhere, but it must have been there all along. I got into my truck and drove to the cliffside in La Push. Without even consciously thinking of what I was doing, I ran forward and flung myself over the edge. My glorious freefall seemed to last forever and no time at all.
Scenes of my life and those I had loved and lost flashed in front of my eyes and I knew that this was the right decision. When I hit the icy water, it grabbed me like I was a long-lost friend and held me. I didn't struggle as it held me under, held me close. I wanted what it offered and took it freely.
As I was slipping away, I faintly noticed movement, and before I was gone, my head broke the surface of the water and I was towed towards shore. A frantic and broken Jacob gave me CPR as gently as he could until I coughed up water and my traitorous lungs took in air.
He drove me home without speaking, and I worried about what I would tell Charlie. Jacob carried me inside and dumped me on the couch before wandering off and returning with two blankets to wrap me in. The phone rang as I was settling in and Jacob answered when he saw I was in no state.
The conversation was brief, and only served to make me feel worse. The caller had asked for Charlie, and Jacob had said something about a funeral. I descended into a pit of self-loathing as I remembered about Harry, and berated myself not only for my weakness regarding Edward and my failure with Jacob, but also at my selfishness in forgetting the pain of my friends and family and taking Jacob away from the funeral.
I was nearly catatonic as Jacob helped me shower and get dressed, then made me eat before forcing me into bed. I was too tired to argue and quickly fell asleep. I was woken a few hours later by the shrill bell of the telephone, and knew Jacob was gone by the stillness of the house. I moaned as I reached for the phone and greeted the caller.
It was a frantic Alice. I didn't understand her urgency until she explained she was travelling with Edward and he had seen a vision in her head – the one of my jumping off the cliff, and drowning. Right as I was giving up, her vision flickered out of existence – when Jacob had saved me. They'd thought me dead, and his call to my house had confirmed in his mind. Alice had believed it too… until I'd flickered back into her visions a few minutes ago.
I felt a growing sense of panic inside me. I knew Alice was hiding something. She confirmed that I was, in fact, not dead and not planning on shuffling myself off the mortal coil any time in the near future. She made me promise to wait, and said she would come to see me within a week if I would just wait. I agreed, and she sighed in relief before saying she had to go to Italy. Now.
And then I understood. Edward had thought me dead and gone to the Volturi to ask for his own, just like he had promised me so long ago. A promise that should have been null and void.
I told Alice to hurry, for me, before hanging up without saying goodbye, unwilling to waste any more time. I went to their empty house to wait, taking basic living necessities with me. I sat in the room that had been his, unmoving for hours, reliving our time together and convincing myself that I could still smell him in this place.
And I waited.
iv.
Six days later, Alice returned alone.
As part of a ritual neither one of us really understood, Alice brought his ashes to me. I was too numb to cry anymore.
She told me of the trip to Italy and the tragedy there, though I think some part of me already knew. I knew now that he had never stopped loving me, despite what he said, and that broke me more than anything else that had happened, because it meant that all of this pain all around had been for nothing at all.
I also knew what this trip meant – I was a risk the Volturi would not tolerate. I needed to be ended one way or another. She spelled out my choices and I chose.
I knew what I wanted – without him, I had nothing to live for. But Alice wanted the other, and wanted it desperately. She had seen me as a sister and had been counting on it, she just didn't realize she would lose a brother in the process. She told me she needed me, and that she loved me. I loved her too, so I gave her what she wanted in honor of what we both had lost.
The family I had chosen welcomed me with open arms, sharing my grief. I had everything I had wanted without the reason.
All the threads of misadventure converged into one point, and here I was. Standing on the same cliff next to the beach with four containers of ashes, three stolen by Alice from my father's house.
I opened those first three one by one and poured the ashes out into the wind. I had nothing to be afraid of any more. I had already lost everything. My skin sparkled faintly as my arms twisted and bent in the summer sunshine on the deserted cliff top. The wolves, Jacob really, had granted me this last moment of privacy before I left this haunted place for good.
When they were gone, nothing but ghosts on the wind, I reached slowly for the fourth container. My hands trembled as I tried to open the lid and couldn't, my newly strong muscles not cooperating with what my brain told them to do.
Alice came up behind me and gently took my hand.
"You don't have to," she said, and I didn't.
We turned away, and walked hand in hand away from my old life, clutching the ashes of her dead brother and my dead love. I knew then I would keep them until my own ending, and my own piles of ashes. And I would ask whoever was left of the Cullen family to give me my final rest with him, mingling our ashes before losing them somewhere into the world.
We left the cliff top and climbed into one of the many flashy cars that her family, and now mine, owned and sped away. Away from Forks and La Push and any memories that I could manage to leave behind when we travelled away and to a new life.
Still holding on to ashes, until I became ashes myself.