Author Note: Hey everybody

Author Note: Hey everybody! Sorry for the delay, but my life has very much changed in the past few weeks. This chapter is a bit short, but since I'm almost certain that the next chapter will be the last for this story, I couldn't write too much of the good stuff. Stephanie Meyer owns all this. Please tell me what you think!

I wasn't angry. All I had capacity to feel was horror and guilt and grief. My skin crawled with it. All I wanted was some relief. All I wanted was her face once more before my eyes and her body pressed against my chest. I wanted to be whole again.

The quickest and surest way was massacre. There was a festival going on today in Volterra, and the streets were crowded past their limits. The air was wet with blood and I had no resistance left.

My body remembered what human blood had tasted like. It had been such a respite from the constant burning in my throat. It had relieved me, and I needed some kind of relief desperately now. I wondered how many I could kill before the guard brought me down. Ten… twenty? Then death. Then nothing.

I stopped moving in the corridor I'd been rushing through. It was risky, holding still, my body needed to be DOING something, but I had to think and plan.

This is what the monster inside me wanted, and I surely was a monster now. My sanity and aptitude for good had come from Bella. I had no conscience now, I was sure of that. You can't murder the person you love and be anything besides a sociopath.

Once I had solidified the course of action I would take, I calmly moved closer to the festivities. I felt the human's hearts beating and smelled the coursing blood. I swallowed a mouthful of venom that had pooled in my mouth. So close…so decadent… I watched a young woman walk towards a flower stand two hundred yards away. I imagined moving silently behind her and parting her hair from her neck…

Then Bella was back in my eyes, a memory from our beautiful summer together. She sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed, on top of her fading quilt. She was reading a book and waiting for me to return from hunting. I slipped silently into the room and stared tenderly at her back, at its minute expansions with each breath. I saw her shoulders hunched and viewed her deep brown hair tangling down her back.

I moved forward and took in her scent then, ah…the sound of her heart. I moved, still unnoticed, to sit behind her and I wrapped my legs under hers, moving her onto my lap. All the while, my hands parted her long hair behind her, exposing her neck. I kiss each bump of her spine and buried my head between her ear and her shoulder. Exquisite. She sighed adoringly and relaxed into me, letting the book fall.

In Volterra, I cried out, and then gagged with realization. There it was. I could NOT attack these humans. Each and every one of them was part of the same species Bella was. Maybe they loved someone as she had loved me. No. No, no, no. What would she think of the monster I was giving into? The creature I was now deserved only her hate. I would leave this world not doing one more thing wrong by her.

Then, by what means? Bella, Bella, Bella. The cavity in my chest throbbed and clenched. I couldn't exist without her. I looked out at the sun hitting the stones. I had ruined so much for her. I couldn't even spend a day in the sun with her.

And then, that was it. I knew what I was going to do. I would simply step into the sun, shine for a brief moment, then let the Volturi ensnare me and eternity consume me. I would harm no one. I would just be some momentary alien creature to the humans. The loss of Bella crippled me once again then. SHE had loved me despite how I looked, so inhuman in direct sunlight.

I would wait until noon. The sun would be at its highest, the streets at their most crowded. This would also give me my last few hours with Bella. There would be no afterlife for me. All of the damned immortal existence I had left, I would spend on memories of her. My jaw unclenched at this. I had absolutely nothing left to lose and in my head, Bella smiled.

I sat, leaning against the wall and I shut my eyes. The mouth of the corridor was close enough to me for a quick end. Now, what memory of Bella to pick? There were of course, thousands. Each second with her was eternity. My many years before Bella meant very little to me. It felt like I'd only lived while she was alive. I HAD only lived while she had. Each day with her was a lifetime, and yet…any yet, we had had so very, very little time together. Six months and the purest paradise I'd ever felt and I destroyed it. Six months would barely register in the amount of time I could exist. It was less than infinitesimal but it was everything.

Now to the memory. I could feel her with me as I searched my brain. It was so hard to believe that she was dead when I felt her so much with me. Of course, the constant reminder was my unparalleled guilt that kept a constant ringing in my ears and a spear through my chest. With any kind of sympathetic grace, it would be over soon.

In my head, Bella frowned at me and stood with her hands on her hips. I couldn't help but smile. She was angry with me.

"Well, Bella? I told you I couldn't live without you," I explained to my beautiful delusion.

"Edward," she began, sending thrills through my spine. I was losing my mind and it was wonderful. "You are in no way allowed to kill yourself. Go home NOW."

My heart ached, "You're my home."

In my head she continued to scowl at me a perfect angel scowl. She could tell I wouldn't listen to her and she growled.

That made me smile. I fell in love with her anger from the beginning. There was something so self-assured and comical about it. I reached out to her.

"Love," I began, wrapping my arms around her petite frame, "I'm already dead. I didn't survive your jump either." My body shook at this.

She gazed up at me with those warm fawn colored eyes. "Stay with me, Edward. Don't leave me again." Tears collected in her eyes.

"Never again, Bella," I promised my hallucination, caressing her cheek with the back of my hand. "I'm never leaving your side."

It was a ridiculous promise. I had lost her forever. However, in this dream she was not lost to me and I could promise to keep her. She squirmed closer to me and I lifted her into my arms.

"I love you, Edward," She breathed in my ear.

"I will never stop loving you, Isabella," my voice shook with tears that could never fall.

"Don't," she commanded, touching my face, "We don't have much time left. Please, just spend it with me. Don't feel sad."

I was too willing to try to oblige the mirage. Too willing to kiss her hair and hear her heartbeat. I was enveloped in the memory of her that had come to help me cope with her death and mine. I kissed her lips, as softly as a butterfly moves its wings. She sighed into my frame. But I knew it was not perfect, it was not Bella. I would never be able to reproduce her correctly because I could never predict her. And so, in the back of my mind the clock moved determinately closer to the end of all things.