Author's Note: I've been gone for ages, I know - no inspiration. This is my first fic in the Twilight universe, and I hope that I've managed to do it justice. As always, concrit is definitely appreciated. :)
Solace
It was easily the single most painful thing he had ever done. Were he a human and thus bound to the necessity of sleep, he knew that he would have had far more nightmares about that day than about all of the lives he had taken in his rebellious youth.
That was the only time that he had ever been grateful for her apparent imperviousness to his ability; it would only have been worse, if such a thing were possible, had he been forced to hear her thoughts, know exactly how much he was hurting her - not that he couldn't guess, of course, couldn't read the pain in her face just as well as he could read the thoughts of anyone else. But hearing her words, her voice, as she began to believe that he didn't love her, didn't really care…it would have been far, far worse - or, at least, that's what he tried to tell himself, trying to give himself some solace through the long days and nights that strung together to make up his existence. The knowledge that it had been done completely for her benefit, though enough to get him through the moments during which it had actually happened, was not enough to console him in the wave of misery, of comparative nothingness that followed.
But it had been done. He had promised her that it would be as if he had never existed, and he had kept his word. His pictures, the CD he had made her, every trace of his being had been erased - as far as she knew. Of course, he couldn't bear the thought of never being near her again, so in a moment of weakness, uncharacteristic sentimentality, he left them in her room - hidden under the floorboards, always near but never noticed.
That was the closest thing to a comfort he had, the knowledge that he hadn't truly left her. He felt guilty about breaking his promise - but, then, it wasn't really broken, was it? As far as he had known - and he knew her very well, to be sure, as well as anyone can be known - she wasn't in the habit of digging up her bedroom floor. To her, then, the promise was kept - no sign of his existence to her at all. Yet, to him, he knew that in a way he was still there with her. The way he always wanted to be, forever.