Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.

**Set after the motorcycle crash in New Moon.


Kaleidoscope

Every color hides a rainbow. Like Edward's eyes — black and blood red, so clear in their violent, triumphant rage. She wonders when she has ever seen him like this — awake and screaming. Of course, crippling pain and Vicodin tend to dampen edges, even the ones she longs for. New Moon AU.

•••

"Why doesn't cotton candy come in more colors? Pink or blue. It's so toddler."

He rips off a piece from his puff — bubblegum pink, just to flaunt the stereotype — and holds it in front of her mouth. The fluff crystallizes just around his fingers into a deeper, crunchy magenta. It's like a whole new universe of color to her heightened senses, and she laughs.

"See?" he says. "There's always more than you think. Every color hides a rainbow."

She rolls her eyes, but relishes in the slow collapse of sugar filaments between his fingers. She can almost hear them sinking. "Very after school special, Edward," she says. "Why can't you love me?"

He drops the half-crushed spun sugar in her mouth, but his fingers never brush her lips. The taste of the candy is almost as good as his touch, at least for now. It slides down her tongue, and the lingering stain tastes like a carousel calliope, a slightly out-of-tune hand organ.

She gasps and opens her eyes to look in Edward's. A topaz so self-aware, so aloof. Did his eyes always whisper like that? She wishes he would touch her, so she could understand what they're saying.

"Holy shit," she says, slowly. "What the hell did you give me?"

"You asked for it."

"I'm...not sure I want it anymore."

"That's usually how it works."

He's walking away from her already, further down the boardwalk. Frantic, she drops her cotton candy and hurries after him. Behind her, a kid shouts "Look mommy, purple cotton candy!"

And when she turns back to look she sees it is, after all.

...

Bella doesn't just take off from school unless it's something very important. Only now, he realizes he hasn't exchanged a word with her in three weeks. He thinks of her exhausted face, her cheeks painfully hollow from the weight she shouldn't have lost, and realizes what he should have known all long — she's lost her sense of self-preservation.

And the corollary to that? She's willing to die. She might even want it.

•••

A/N: Thanks for reading!