FAREWELL

by strcrssdlvr

Edward leaves Bella and she struggles through many difficult situations that lead to a reunion with her lost family. But how long will that reunion last when old enemies come to claim vengeance? Will any of the Cullens survive?

7. HOW DO YOU GET THAT LONELY

In the last chapter, Bella was saved from drowning and met a couple of the wolves—although she doesn't yet know that—and she learned that Victoria is hanging around. She makes the decision to fake her death and leave Forks in order to protect her father and find out information about her baby. Alice had a vision of Bella's jump that ended just before Bella hit the water (that would be when Bella realized the baby was real), so she and Jasper are on their way back to Forks, as are the rest of the Cullens. This chapter involves what happens when Bella disappears, though Bella's POV will be saved for the next chapter. It may get a bit intense or sad at some moments. You have been warned. Enjoy, lovelies!

7 ~ How Do You Get That Lonely?

"It was just another story printed on the second page
Underneath the Tiger's football score
It said he was only eighteen, a boy about my age
They found him face down on the bedroom floor
There'll be services on Friday at the Lawrence Funeral Home
Then out on Mooresville highway, they'll lay him 'neath a stone...
Did his girlfriend break up with him, did he buy or steal that gun?
Did he lose a fight with drugs or alcohol?
Did his Mom and Daddy forget to say I love you son?
Did no one see the writing on the wall?
I'm not blamin' anybody, we all do the best we can
I know hindsight's 20/20, but I still don't understand
How do you get that lonely, how do you hurt that bad
To make you make the call, that havin' no life at all
Is better than the life that you had
How do you feel so empty, you want to let it all go
How do you get that lonely

And nobody knows"

How Do You Get That Lonely? by Blaine Larsen

Tuesday, September 27 to Sunday, October 2

Charlie's POV

I remember absolutely everything about that moment. Even through the shock that accompanied it, I could recognize the irony of my situation. It was exactly 11:03 AM and I had just returned to the station after being called to the scene of a single vehicle accident caused by a young man who thought he and his motorcycle were invincible enough to take a slick curve with entirely too much speed. I watched them load the pieces of his mangled form into the body bag with a grim expression, wondering if the day would ever come where these kids would stop being so foolish and thanking God that Bella was level-headed enough to never ride one of those death traps.

Or, at least, she used to be level-headed. Over the past couple of weeks she had become unpredictable, and it scared the hell out of me because that just wasn't Bella. Edward had turned her into someone different, someone I didn't know, and I just wanted my little girl back. She was still in so much pain, though, and I had started to think that maybe I'd never see my daughter smile again. But then last night she had finally slept without screaming and I couldn't help but be optimistic. I had checked on her about once every hour just to make sure she was still in the house—which I felt was only reasonable seeing as how she had disappeared earlier in the day—and every time I cracked open her bedroom door, she was there, resting peacefully. I hoped that this was a turning point and she was finally starting to move on. I hoped that, someday soon, my happy daughter would return to me.

As I sat down at my desk to quickly gather some pamphlets on grief counseling and support groups for parents that had lost their children, my thoughts drifted away from Bella and back to the accident victim. Even after all these years, seeing gruesome sites like that still caused my stomach to turn. They were always so young, and the idea of visiting yet another family to relay the devastating news was not a task I was looking forward to. No matter how many times I performed my least favorite part of this job, it never became easier. Sure, we had our protocols of what we should say and how we should say it, but there was no painless way to tell parents that they will never again see their child alive and well. There was no cure for the grief that filled their eyes and flowed down their faces. There was no easy way to tell them that all their hopes and dreams for their son's future would never come to pass. I sighed as I glanced at the clock, and decided that I couldn't put off the task any longer, despite my overwhelming desire to do so.

As I stood up from my desk, my phone startled me by ringing. I don't know why, but my heart started pounding and I was shaking as my hand grasped the receiver much too tightly and I brought the phone to my ear. "Chief Swan," I said to the person on the other end of the line. Perhaps, in that moment, I had experienced a brief psychic episode because before any other words were spoken, before I even knew the identity of the caller, I knew that this one phone call would change my life forever.

The seconds before the caller responded felt like an eternity until, finally, he hesitantly spoke. "Charlie?" I recognized the voice instantly. After all, I had heard it just last night when he had stepped out of Bella's truck, said goodbye and disappeared, but it was different then. Last night, his words had brought me comfort. Today, his brief pause was all I needed to hear to know that the news he shouldered was not good. My lips trembled as I held back the flood of questions that filled my mind and allowed him to continue. "It's Sam. I—uh—well, Charlie you need to come down to the reservation. It's a—it's about Bella."

It was all there. The hesitation, the stuttering, the elusive statements; they were all staples of the phone call someone makes when they have bad news to tell you and they can't bring themselves to just spit it out. They were all the things I had done during the early years of the job when I had called loved ones of victims into the hospital or the morgue. But it couldn't be something like that. Bella was safe in school. And if something had happened to her, Sam wouldn't be telling me to meet him at the reservation. It must just be something he needed to tell me about last night, something he couldn't say to me with Bella around. Yes, that had to be it. My brain was screaming at me, telling me not to press for more information until I reached the reservation, but I couldn't help myself. "What about Bella?" I asked with more calmness than I truly felt. I waited impatiently for Sam to quiet his deep breaths and respond.

"Well, Charlie. We—we found her truck near the woods about thirty minutes ago. We've been searching all over the place, and we think we found her footprints but we haven't been able to find her. And then we went back to the truck and—well, there's something you need to see." I couldn't decipher his tone. It sounded sad and angry at the same time but there was something more there. If all my years of policing had taught me anything, I would surmise that he was feeling guilty. And I wanted—no I needed—to know why.

"I'm coming now. Where did you say you found her truck?" I was shocked at the steadiness of the words that left my mouth because my emotions were anything but stable.

"Near the turnoff for the cliff trail. If you drive down the dirt road a little bit, you can't miss it," Sam replied quietly.

"I'll meet you there," I said, then hung up the receiver, grabbed my coat and practically ran out of the office. My deputies might have asked me where I was going, they might have been concerned, questioning, but I didn't notice. I had only one mission right now: find my daughter.

Jasper's POV

No matter how many times it happened, it never became easier. Part of me was grateful for Alice's gift; it had certainly helped us on numerous occasions and it made my family's critical decision-making extremely easy. After all, what better way was there to make the correct choice when you can find out the outcome of your choices before you act?

But there was a selfish part of me that wished that Alice never experienced her visions, because when she did, it's like she has disappeared. As soon as her eyes took on that vacant, glazed appearance, she no longer existed on my emotional radar. When she was in the process of seeing the things that could happen, it was like everything Alice was had gone away and she became a mere conduit for information. Sometimes I worried that she would see something so horrid that she would never return to me; instead she'd just keep searching for new information, trying to find a different outcome for the future. I worried that I would lose her and, despite my horrendous past that would make one imagine I was incapable of such emotions, I loved Alice with my whole heart and soul. She had been the center of my universe, my sun, since the moment we met, and if she disappeared forever, if her visions one day consumed her, I feared I might fall, once again, into the darkness that had been wrapped around me since my early days of existing as a vampire.

It was days such as this that served to strengthen my fears of this occurrence. Alice had not formed more than a monosyllabic response to every statement I had made since we departed Isle Esme. And no matter how many times I tried to convince her to talk to me about what she had seen, she just sat there, shaking her head and staring off into the distance, searching. I felt her sometimes, her sadness and her panic practically tangible in the atmosphere that surrounded us. It was at these times that I knew she was with me and I tried to surround her with waves of calm, but it was like trying to fix a mortal wound with a band aid. Whatever she had seen had disabled her, and without more information, I didn't know what to do to make it right. She drifted in and out of feeling throughout the entire trip, sixteen hours of hellish torture until we were about 30 minutes outside of Forks driving west on route 101. At that moment, Alice finally looked at me and started screaming.

Charlie's POV

I didn't remember much about the drive to that dirt road. The entire time I had been concentrating too hard on coming up with logical reasons why, when I called the high school, Mrs. Cope had told me that Bella hadn't shown up today. Maybe she had a flat tire. Or she overslept. Or she was sick. Hell, I would settle for her just plain not feeling like going today. Anything would be better than what my instincts told me was going on.

I pulled up next to her faded pickup truck and quickly walked to the driver's side door to meet Sam and Paul. Both of them were looking at the ground as I approached, but when I reached them, Sam raised his eyes and spoke softly. "Hey, Charlie. It's on the seat—the note we found." I didn't register anything he said after that. My pounding heart was deafening as my eyes sought out the offending slip of paper. I could see her writing, it was a single line, but the words were indecipherable at a distance. The door creaked open slowly and my trembling fingers picked up the note as if it were a ticking time bomb. When it was close enough for me to make out the words, my breathing slowly stabilized.

"What's this supposed to mean?" I calmly asked the two young men standing before me. The words made no sense to me, but I could see in the brief look they shared before meeting my gaze that I was out of a very important loop.

Sam looked up to the sky for a moment, appearing to search for the right thing to say, and then the dams opened up and his words came out in a rush. "I'm so sorry. We should have told you last night. I don't know why we didn't; I guess we just thought that she wouldn't do it again. You see yesterday, when we told you we rescued Bella from drowning," he paused to catch his breath and work up the courage to continue "well, we did save her but what we didn't tell you was how she came to be in the water in the first place." My eyes narrowed and he looked away from me for a moment, clenching his jaw and taking a deep breath before he looked me straight in the eye again and said, "Charlie, she jumped. Off of the cliffs. Some of us do it sometimes for kicks, but this was different. We saw her up there, right before it happened. She just let herself fall and we almost didn't get to her in time. We told her last night that we knew what she was doing and she shouldn't do it again, but now…" His words trailed off and the meaning of her note started to sink in. But just in case I was incompetent, Sam continued, "We think she jumped again. Her footprints lead straight to the ledge, and she isn't anywhere in the forest or the water, that we could find. We weren't there to save her this time. We were too late. Charlie, we're so, so sorry."

If at first you don't succeed… That was the note Bella had left for me to find. Or perhaps she had left it for these two, the two who had saved her yesterday. The only two who would understand what she meant by the cryptic phrase. My thoughts raced. Had she tried again? Did she really—did she really jump off of one of the cliffs? My heart answered no. She was my baby girl, my daughter; she wouldn't have done something so stupid. She couldn't. It's just not possible. Why would she even think about it? Not because of him. She was smarter than that. She knew it was just a silly teenage romance, that he was nothing and she was everything. She had her whole future ahead of her, her whole life to live and enjoy. She couldn't be—I shook my head back and forth and backed away from the truck slowly. It's just not possible.

I wasn't sure when or why the tears had started, but my vision became blurred and my fists tightened and untightened around the cruel message. I hastily wiped the tears away and cleared my throat. There was no need to cry because Bella was fine. This was just a misunderstanding. I took out my cell phone and dialed the station. By the time I was through talking, I had made sure a missing persons report was filed and everyone in the small town was going to be notified to start looking for her immediately. She was out there somewhere, waiting to be found. Just like last time. We would find her. I knew we would.

Sam had said they didn't find her in the water below the cliffs and I chose to take that as a good sign. If she wasn't down there, she hadn't jumped. That was just the way it was. I kept telling myself she didn't jump, repeating it over and over again in my mind as Sam drove me back to the house in silence. He had apologized numerous times during the trip until I had yelled at him to stop apologizing because Bella was okay. She didn't jump. It was my mantra. It was the only thing keeping me from losing it.

The house was pitch black when we pulled into the driveway. It looked so strange and empty. Usually when I got home, the lights were on in the kitchen as Bella made dinner. Yesterday it was dark when I arrived, and I was scared then, too, but I had brought her home. She was okay. Today would be the same. She didn't jump.

Sam and I walked into the house and I turned on every light as I made my way to her bedroom. When I opened her door and flicked the light on, my eyes immediately fell upon the folded stationery lying on her bed. My heart dropped into my stomach and pounded there uncontrollably. Everything about the slip of paper was identical to the one that had been left in her truck. I took slow, painful steps toward her bed, not wanting to see her scripted words, but needing to see them all in the same moment. I swallowed hard and unfolded the note, the tears falling almost immediately. As I carefully read each line, all hope I had maintained over the past hour vanished into thin air.

Dad,

I don't know what to say to you other than I am sorry for the pain I know you will be in when you find this. If I felt like there was another way to handle the situation I find myself in, I would not leave you like this. I would try to move on and repair my shattered life. I would try to make you proud. But the choices I have made and the problems that resulted from them cannot be fixed and I have realized that everything about the life I knew ceased to exist on my 18th birthday. I am tired of acting as if I am still alive when I feel dead inside, so today I am going to stop pretending. I only hope that you love me enough to forgive me.

I love you always. Goodbye.

Bella

I read and reread her words until I could no longer see through the river of my tears. For the second time in my life, I cried so hard that I struggled just to breathe. But there was one key difference between this time and the last. When I had cried this way before, the person I had lost was not gone forever. I could still see her and talk to her and love her from a distance, even if she no longer loved me. I thought that had been the worst experience of my life, when Renee had left me and taken our daughter with her, but it was a sunny day in the park compared to this. Bella, my sweet girl, she was gone. I would never see her smile again; I would never hear her voice. I would never get to hold her and tell her everything was going to be okay. God, I couldn't even remember the last time I told her I loved her. Did she know? Did she know she was my shining star, my proudest achievement, that she made my world happier from the second she first entered it? Why hadn't I told her? Why was this happening? There were so many things I still needed to tell her. I just always thought we would have more time. But I was wrong.

Jasper's POV

I stopped the car along the side of the highway and desperately pulled Alice from the vehicle before she destroyed it, or herself, with her flailing arms. Luckily, I managed to get her behind the cover of trees and wrap her securely in my arms before any passerby had time to notice our unusual behavior. Every action was difficult, though, every movement I made torturous because Alice was making it so. The close proximity of our bodies infused our emotions into one giant mass of pain and I felt as though my head was going to explode. I sat on the ground, holding her in my lap, forcing myself to tolerate the throbbing ache coursing through my body as I hugged her tightly and rocked her back and forth. I tried to break down the emotions so that I could attempt to soothe her, but her grief was overwhelming. Shock, anger and despair were also radiating from her in sporadic waves, but nothing surpassed her sorrow. Alice's beautiful heart was breaking right in front of me, within me, her tiny body convulsing in tearless sobs, and I could do nothing but whisper to her that it would be okay—even though I knew I may have been lying—and wait until she was strong enough to tell me what the hell was going on.

I wasn't a complete imbecile. As soon as Alice stated that we had to return to Forks, I knew she had seen something related to Bella. I cringed as I thought of our human sister and what had transpired the last time I was in her presence. I could still smell her delicious scent; I could still feel the monster within me that had desperately wanted to take her life. I inwardly cursed at myself for being so weak. She was a part of our family; she had been ever since the day Edward realized he was in love with her, even if she hadn't known it. And I had attacked her, or, rather, I had tried to. I didn't even know how Edward could stand to look at me after what I had cost him. If I hadn't lost control that night our family wouldn't have left. Bella and Edward would still be together, becoming stronger as their love grew instead of falling apart. I shuddered to think what path I had set into motion with my failure as I rubbed my hands soothingly up and down Alice's trembling back.

The minutes slowly passed and she eventually quieted in my calming embrace. I sat there waiting, and, finally, my patience was rewarded by the sound of her quiet voice. "Jasper?" she whispered as she shifted in my arms slightly and looked up at me. The pain I saw in her dark eyes made me instantly want to hunt down and punish whoever had caused it, because they had taken the light away from her. Alice's spirit had been snuffed out, and I wanted to know why. She seemed to be struggling to form words, her brow furrowing in concentration as she organized her thoughts. "Jasper she's gone. I can't find her. I can't see her anymore." Alice started breathing heavily, crying as she spoke. "She just disappeared and I thought we would be in time to fix it. I had to fix his mistake." Her lower lip quivered as she continued softly, "But we're too late. I saw—I saw them—Charlie, I saw him—he was on the phone with Renee. He said she's—he said she's dead." Alice squeezed her eyes shut as if to block out the details of whatever she had seen and her petite hands held onto me as if her immortal life depended on it.

I stopped breathing. What had I done? What had we done? There were so many questions I wanted to ask, so many things that made no sense. But I knew that they would have to wait. If Alice's vision was correct, and I prayed with every fiber of my existence that it was not, what I needed to do right now was reassemble our family. I only hoped that I wouldn't be bringing us together just so that a tragedy could break us apart. My own hands were shaking as I pulled the small silver phone out of my jacket pocket and dialed Carlisle's number at an inhuman speed.

He answered on the second ring. "Hello Jasper. How's the island treating you?" There was an obvious smile in his voice; he probably thought I was calling to say that Alice and I were coming home. I only wished I had that news to share.

"We're not on the island anymore, Carlisle. We're headed to Forks. Alice—" Before I could finish, he cut me off.

"What? Why? I thought we all agreed to stay away, for our sake as well as Bella's. We all promised to honor Edward's wishes. Why on earth would you be going back there?" He wasn't angry; it just wasn't in his nature. He was curious. Carlisle was the rational one, the saint, the one that all of us looked up to and aspired to be. I wondered how he would fare once he learned the reasoning for our sudden return to rainy Washington. I wondered if he would have the strength to hold our family together.

I was about to tell Carlisle what Alice had said when she disappeared into another vision and then snapped out of it in a panic, clasping her hand over the phone and whispering, "Don't tell him. Not now. Edward can't find out this way. He can't be alone."

I looked at her in confusion but nodded at her request and said to Carlisle, "Alice had a vision. She said we had to go back. All of us. Even Edward. Especially Edward. Please, Carlisle, say whatever needs to be said to get him to come back. I can't give you the details now, but we will talk once everyone is back in Forks." I took Alice's hand and began walking back toward the car as I waited for Carlisle to respond.

"We'll catch a flight as soon as possible and meet you at the house. Edward isn't here, but I will call him and make sure he joins us. I'm going to warn you, though, Jasper, he's not going to be happy that we're going back. I hope you have a good reason." If only he knew.

As I made sure Alice was situated comfortably in the passenger seat and I walked to the driver's side, I said, "Our reasoning is legitimate. Just make sure everyone gets here fast, please. We'll see you at the house." I hung up the phone, shifted into gear and sped along the highway toward a place that I had never intended to see again.

Charlie's POV

Sam had followed me upstairs and he just stood quietly in the corner of her room as I read Bella's final words and lost every last shred of my control. He said nothing, because what could he really say? That he was sorry? What good were his apologies to me now? They wouldn't change what had happened. Bella was never coming back. After a while he left me to my grief and I knew he had gone when I heard the front door slam. My mind must have been unstable because I could have sworn I heard a wolf howling seconds after he left.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed before my eyes could shed no more tears and I forced myself to walk downstairs and pick up the phone. I dialed the number in Jacksonville and waited for the only other person who could share the magnitude of my pain to pick up on the other end of the line. When I heard her voice, so similar to Bella's, I almost broke down again. "Hello?" she said pleasantly, still unaware that her world was about to dissolve around her.

"Renée? It's Charlie," I stated emotionlessly. I knew I had to detach myself for the moment, or I would never be able to get the words out.

"Oh, hey Charlie. How's she doing? Is she getting better? I sent her an email yesterday but she never answered me. Is she there? Can I talk to her?" Just like every other time I had spoken to Renée, it was impossible to get a word in between her rambling questions. To be fair, though, I wasn't really trying because I still had no idea how to tell her. I didn't want to destroy her like this. I didn't want to say the words aloud. I didn't want this to be real.

I decided that I needed to just do it, though, so I said, "No, she's not here. Renée, something's happened." I don't know if it was my tone of voice or if her own parental sixth sense had just kicked in but I no longer heard her breathing on the other end of the line. I continued, "I found a note. And her truck. But she's gone. We're still looking, but, Renée, it's not good. We think—" My breath caught in my throat and I couldn't help but let out a sob before I said, "We think she might have killed herself." My heart broke a little bit more as the words sounded in my ears for the first time. And then a little more when I heard the crashing sound as the phone Renée had been holding fell to the floor with a bang. I waited on the line, hoping that Phil was there with her. I heard her repeat the word "no" over and over again as she started to cry.

After a few minutes, I heard a muffled voice and then Phil was on the line demanding answers. "What is going on," he practically shouted into the receiver. "Who is this?"

I temporarily sobered up, angry at his voice for some unknown reason. Maybe I just didn't want to talk to him because he had no way of understanding this. Bella was my daughter, not his, he couldn't possibly understand. My words were clipped as I said, "Phil, it's Charlie. Bella is missing. We are still looking for her, but I think it would be a good idea for you to book a flight for you and Renée to come out here. We think she might be—that she—" I couldn't do it. I couldn't hold it back anymore. The tears flowed freely as I finished, "There was a note and footprints to the cliff and we think she jumped." I was crying loudly now, all thoughts of upholding my masculinity as I spoke to the man who took my wife gone with the pain of my loss.

"My God," he whispered. "We'll be there as soon as we can." With that, he hung up the phone and I imagined him rocking Renée back and forth, telling her all the comforting words she needed to hear, soothing her in ways that I never could. I sank to the floor and placed my head in my hands, wondering if there was anyone left to comfort me.

Jasper's POV

We waited in silence for the others to arrive. Hours passed like days until, finally, I heard the sound of crunching gravel announce the arrival of their car. They all filed into the house through the garage door, all except one. The last I knew, the rest of the family had been staying together in New York; when Carlisle said that Edward wasn't there, I had assumed he just meant that he was momentarily out of the house. I wondered what was keeping him and hoped that Carlisle had been able to convince him to come. He needed to be here because the more I thought about it, the more I knew that Alice was right; he couldn't be alone when he was told this. He needed the support of his family now. He needed us to hold him together, because this news would shatter him.

"Where's Edward?" Alice asked before I had the chance.

"He's coming," Carlisle replied, noticing Alice's expression for the first time. "What's going on, Alice? What's wrong?" Everyone was now seated around the large dining room table, waiting for an explanation. Thanks to my gift, I knew, for the most part, how everyone was feeling at that moment. Carlisle was confused, and, after seeing Alice, worried. Esme, wonderful mother that she was, radiated compassion and understanding for our return, regardless of the reason. But she, too, was worried. Emmett was slightly anxious, probably the result of Rosalie's anger. And Alice, my dear Alice, was still in pain.

"He's going to need us now," she said quietly, looking at each of us, her eyes wide. She looked so young at that moment, so innocent. I hated that she had to see what she had seen. I hated that she had been given the responsibility of giving our family this ill news. "He's going to need us more than any of us ever needed anyone." The confusion in the room only grew stronger as Alice sat in silence. I heard her take a deep breath, such a human gesture, such a Bella gesture, and then she began to tell us all of her vision. "I came back because of Bella. I'm sure all of you have already figured that out—" Before she could continue, Rose cut her off.

"Oh, of course. As if that human hasn't already disrupted our lives enough, now we have to drop everything and run back here for her. I can't believe—"

"Shut up, Rosalie," I stated, my voice only hinting at the anger I felt. I struggled to suppress my emotions so that no one else would be affected by them and nodded for Alice to continue. But so help me, if Rose said anything to upset my wife I was going to forget that she was a lady, and my sister, and beat the snot out of her.

"Yesterday I was swimming on the island when I had a vision. I saw Bella. She was standing on the ledge of one of the cliffs." I heard Esme's breath catch and her eyes widened in alarm. "She closed her eyes, opened her arms and just—fell. I could see her expression so clearly as she was falling, she was completely content, not a hint of fear. And then, all of a sudden, it changed. She looked terrified. I saw her grab her stomach and then she just disappeared. I never saw her hit the water—the vision just ended abruptly." She paused, composing herself, and then continued, "I wasn't sure what had happened. I thought maybe someone saved her, that maybe she was unconscious or something and that's why I couldn't see her, why I never saw her in the water. The entire trip back here, I was searching for anything, any clue in my visions as to what may have happened. But I still saw nothing. And then, out of nowhere, I had a vision of Charlie. He was talking on the phone, and he was crying. And I heard him say it. I heard him say that she was dead. Bella's dead." The room was full of shocked expressions and emotions. Not one of us, including myself, wanted what she had said to be true.

I don't know how—perhaps we were all too entangled in the distressing story that Alice had told—but none of us heard him approach until he spoke with quiet fury. "What did you just say?"

Charlie's POV

I must have been the devil incarnate in a past life. I just couldn't see any other explanation: only someone inherently evil deserved this level of suffering. Apparently it was not enough that my daughter was dead. It was not enough that I was now standing in the middle of a cemetery burying an empty casket because her body was never found in the depths of the ocean beneath the cliffs. It was not enough that I was now more alone than I had ever before felt in my entire life. No, whoever ruled fate decided I needed to suffer more. That is why, as I was getting dressed in a black suit that I hadn't worn since ten years ago when my mother passed away, I received another painfully enlightening phone call.

"Hello, Chief Swan?" the woman's voice stated. I didn't recognize the caller then, but I would never forget her for the rest of my days. I knew it had to be someone calling about the missing persons flyers that had been posted around Forks and Port Angeles the night that Bella disappeared because no one addressed me as Chief Swan outside of the station's phone unless they were responding to the posters.

"Speaking," I replied flatly. I had limited patience when it came to these callers because for the past four days I had received countless phone calls reporting that people had seen my daughter at the bus station or the super market or walking down the street and I was tired of the lies. I was tired of Renée believing every word and holding on to the hope that our daughter was still alive out there somewhere. I knew better. Life just doesn't work that way. Bella had taken herself from us and she was now at her final resting place somewhere at sea. I didn't need to see her body to know in my heart that she was dead. Each time a lead took us nowhere, I saw Renée crumble a little bit more and she didn't deserve that. That is why I decided to have the funeral in the first place. She deserved closure, she deserved to heal. And so did I. I refused to live the rest of my life filled with false hope.

"My name is Lydia Cooper. I work at the Rite Aid in Port Angeles and just yesterday I saw the poster of your daughter, Bella. I thought she looked familiar so I asked my boss to let me go through the surveillance tapes from the past few days and, sure enough, she was there." She paused, perhaps waiting for me to say something, but I didn't. Bella was not there. She was not anywhere. When she realized I wasn't going to speak, she continued, "The tape was from the afternoon of the 26th. Now, I know that's before she is said to have disappeared and I know what everyone is saying happened to her and that you're holding a funeral for her today and I'm not trying to call to tell you that your daughter is miraculously alive." Well, that was a first.

So this lady was calling to say that Bella, if it actually was Bella on the tapes, went to a store last Monday. I hadn't known that, but I failed to see the significance of the information. "I'm calling because I have a teenage daughter myself and, if it were me, I would want to know." She paused again and I was left to ponder what this woman was talking about. What would she want to know? My daughter was dead; I didn't need to know anything else. But Mrs. Cooper kept right on talking. "Sir, I know the reports say that they haven't found your daughter's body, so there will be no way of verifying this information, but, well, what I'm trying to say is that your daughter, the day before she—uh—the day before she went missing, she came into the store and bought a pregnancy test."

Edward's POV

I was the world's biggest fool. I had never thought she would break her promise, but perhaps that was the problem. Maybe I just hadn't thought at all. I hadn't thought about all of the near misses that Bella had experienced since the day we met. I hadn't thought about the fact that the only reason she was still alive was because I had been determined to save her from fate's evil scheme to destroy her. I hadn't thought that I would never see her again. Even as I told her that I would disappear from her life, I always assumed that one day I would be strong enough to stay in the shadows and check up on her, watch her live her life normally as it should be, love her from afar. I just hadn't thought. And who was paying now for my mistakes? Absolutely everyone who had loved her. My family. Her family. Me.

When I walked into the house five days ago, I was so focused on preparing myself to lay into Jasper and Alice for breaking their word that they wouldn't return to Forks that I had successfully shut out the thoughts of all of my family members. Then, as I approached them, I heard Alice say the words that destroyed my life. Bella was dead. At first, I didn't believe it. I couldn't bring myself to consider that my reason for living had ceased to exist. It was all just a horrible mistake, I had instantly thought. Bella was alive and well and I would find her and beg her for forgiveness and we could be together again; I could wrap myself up in the warmth of her love and forget that any of this had ever happened.

I ran from our home, racing through the trees along the familiar path that would lead me to Bella's window. As soon as I had reached the house, though, I knew that it was empty; the soothing music of her heartbeat and the steady breaths of her fragile body were not there to send away the despair that was steadily creeping into my veins. I climbed the tree as I had done so many nights before and propelled myself through her opened window.

Bella's smell was everywhere, swirling around me, comforting me and stifling my fears by its mere presence in my lungs as I breathed it in. It felt like a lifetime ago that she and I had been here, connecting our hearts and our bodies for the first and last time. I sat on her bed and ran my fingertips over her pillow, imagining her head resting there, her hair splayed across the purple fabric in glorious disarray, her eyes lighting up with a smile that she had given only to me. My thoughts continuously shifted as I pictured her a million different ways. I heard her voice and felt her love and I wondered how I had ever managed to walk away. Sitting here, missing her, my reasons for leaving seemed so insignificant, so cowardly and utterly stupid. I needed to tell her that, I needed her to know that I was wrong and that my life was only happy when she was in it. I needed her in order to feel whole.

A flash of light in my peripheral vision abruptly brought my attention to Bella's desk. It was her cell phone, pushed to the corner, left behind and, for some reason, I couldn't look away. Like a moth to a flame, I was being drawn toward it, toward the flash that would illuminate so much more than I was ready to see. I picked it up, wanting to know if it held any clues as to Bella's whereabouts, but as the screen displayed the multitude of missed calls from Charlie and my sister, the light shone brightly over the blank pages that lay in a neat stack on the far right corner of the desk. The phone slipped from my fingertips and crashed to the floor. I quickly turned on the desk lamp and stared at the pages, praying that I was mistaken. To the naked human eye, the pages were bare, but as my own advanced vision searched the paper, all of my hopes vanished and I couldn't think or move or breathe. My eyes were glued to the slight indentations that her pen had left when she wrote on the previous page, the page where she had offered her apologies and scripted her goodbyes to her father. The plain white page was also filled with salty stains from where her tears had soaked through, and I imagined her sitting at the desk as she wrote the note, crying and sniffling and hurting because of me and my stupidity.

I placed my palm to the paper and squeezed, crumpling the cruel words in my clenched fist, though nothing could prevent them from being emblazoned across my memory. I stared into space; I was shocked and I didn't know what to do. Her goodbyes repeated in a loop in my head and I couldn't turn them off until, finally, it sank in. My Bella was gone. Forever. I instantly felt pain and anger and frustration and sadness and guilt and confusion and my knees buckled under the heavy weight of my emotional onslaught. My body overflowed with feeling and when I couldn't hold it in any longer, I cried out into the emptiness of her room, a strangled sound of a tortured, dying animal. Almost immediately, Alice was there, wrapping me in her embrace and telling me it would be alright. I jumped away from her and growled, my eyes crazed and my heart wild with fury at her words because it would most certainly not be alright. Nothing could ever be right again.

"Edward," she said softly, holding her arms outstretched in a stance of truce, "I know this is hard. I loved her, too, and I know what you are feeling and—"

I laughed at her words, my nostrils flaring in angry pain as I spat out, "No, you don't know, Alice. Jasper. Isn't. Dead. And until he is you will never have even the slightest fucking clue how I feel."

She crossed her arms and looked me in the eye, replying furiously, "You're right, Edward, Jasper isn't dead. He's killing himself with guilt, but he's not dead. And, obviously, you are the only one who lost Bella. Carlisle and Esme didn't lose the daughter you brought into their lives, the child that finally completed our family. I didn't lose my sister. I didn't lose my best friend. As usual, it's only you that is in pain, right?" My guilt came gushing to the surface; I knew I had hurt Alice with my words, and I wanted to apologize. But she wasn't done and she approached me and shoved me backward as she made her points. "Well, let me tell you something, Edward. I did love her. I never wanted to leave her. You did, and the fact that I listened to you and left her behind is something I will regret for as long as I exist. And I never wanted to have a front-seat view of her death, to feel the helplessness that went along with watching her literally fall apart until she made the ultimate decision to end her suffering. I never wanted the pain that came with the responsibility of relaying the news to our family that she was gone or the guilt that I can't escape because I didn't see her decision fast enough to prevent it. You want to talk about understanding, Edward, you want to compare and have a battle of who is hurting more, then maybe it's time you saw what I saw. Maybe it's time you grew up and realized that everything in this world isn't about you."

She opened her mind then and I saw everything. I saw Bella's pain in all its glory, I saw the way the light seemed to have left her soul, and then there she was, standing on the ledge. It was just a movie playing behind my eyelids, but I pleaded with her to back away as if it would somehow make a difference. I watched in my mind as she spread her arms and peacefully fell. But then something changed, something happened and her face contorted in fear as she neared closer and closer to the water. She had changed her mind, I was sure of it, but it was too late. In the blink of an eye, there was nothing, darkness. She had disappeared and I couldn't accept that. Alice should have seen her hit the water; she should have seen her struggling to live. I didn't want to watch that but I could never be satisfied with such an end as I had seen. Bella deserved better. She deserved to be saved from herself. She deserved to live.

Before I knew what I was doing I leapt from the window and started running. I heard Alice chasing after me, but I was faster, and I didn't plan on stopping. The trees passed by in a blur and I smelled their scent as soon as I crossed the line. I knew this was wrong, that I was breaking the rules, that I was putting myself and my family in danger, but both my head and my heart were too messed up for me to care. I heard Alice calling for me to stop, to think about what I was doing, but I didn't listen. I just continued to run until I could hear the ocean.

I stopped moving when the trees ended; I stared at the cliffs and listened to the waters below. I inhaled deeply and I couldn't deny that she had been here. Her scent was faint, nearly indistinguishable because of the wind and the weather, but it was there. I approached the edge and looked below to the dark liquid and the scattered jagged rocks as I heard Alice's cautious approach.

"Edward, what the hell are you thinking? Are you trying to get yourself killed? We don't belong here," she whispered, as if whispers could save us from detection on Quileute lands.

I looked at Alice, her eyes darting around in every direction, searching for the wolves, but I didn't answer her question, or make any moves to leave. Instead, I quietly asked a question that was burning in my mind. "Alice did they—was she—" I blew out a breath and looked away. "Did they find her body?"

She walked toward me and laid her hand on my shoulder, offering me comfort despite the angry words we had exchanged in Bella's bedroom, despite the fact that I truly didn't deserve it. But that was just Alice; she was kind and giving and loyal. She put everyone else first. Perhaps that was why she and Bella got along so well from the start—they were so much like each other in some ways. Alice turned me to face her and forced me to look at her, to not only hear the truth of her thoughts and her words, but also to see it in her eyes. "No, they didn't. Charlie has divers looking everywhere he thinks the current might have carried her because her body isn't at the base of the cliff, but, so far, they haven't found anything." Her answer gave me hope, and she must have seen as much because she said, "Edward, she's gone. They may not have found her body yet, and right now it looks as if maybe they never will, but she isn't coming back. I wish I could tell you that there is reason to hope, but I can't lie to you. I could always see her in my visions before; her future came to me so easily since the day she moved here. But after I saw her jump, I have been tirelessly searching for her and she isn't there. It's just emptiness, Edward. I know you don't want to believe it—none of us do—but her future simply doesn't exist anymore."

I nodded my head once in feigned-acceptance of her words and looked at my feet. I wanted to cry, but monsters didn't have the capacity to shed tears. Perhaps creatures like us weren't meant to feel this way, to feel vulnerable and human, but I did. I wanted to scream, because I was angry and guilt-ridden and I needed so desperately to see her and ask her why. Why she hadn't seen through the lies to the truth that was so obvious to me—that I loved her and just wanted her to be safe. Why she felt as though she had nothing left to fight for. And why—and for some reason this question deeply plagued me—why had she changed her mind only seconds too late? What had made her want to live when her actions had virtually guaranteed her death? I wished I knew and I wished that I could somehow reverse the hands of time so that I could fix her, save her. But I couldn't, not this time. Bella had needed me and I had failed her.

The sound of rustling of leaves broke through my thoughts and I knew we needed to leave this place. I wanted to stay, to search for Bella in the cold waves beneath us until the pain numbed within my soul, but Alice grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight before quietly leading me back into the forest. We were in danger, and the way she held my palm let me know that she wasn't leaving without me. I may have welcomed my battle with the wolves, my own demise, even, but I had to overlook my desires now and protect my sister. I would allow no one else to perish because of my selfishness. Alice never let me go as we slowly walked amidst the trees, nor did she say another word or open her thoughts to me. She was lost to her own demons just as I was lost to mine, and somehow we both knew that we needed to grieve in silence, together.

When I re-entered the house, Esme immediately wrapped me in her arms and held me gently. She whispered that she was sorry and that she loved me, but my face was blank and my arms were limp as she, and the rest of the family, offered their condolences. I heard them, and I felt their touches and their emotions, but nothing registered except the darkness that had taken over me, the darkness and the meaninglessness that I knew would be my life from that day forward. Bella had been the one to discover the light and the goodness hidden within my heart, and her unchangeable absence had quickly taken them away.

I slowly walked up the stairs to my old room. I closed and locked the door and was instantly assaulted by the scent of Bella. It was painful, but I needed to smell it, I needed to be connected to her in some way. There was a blanket that she always used to snuggle under laying on my sofa, and I wrapped it around myself and took deep breaths. I curled up on the cold black leather and drew my knees to my chest before I finally let myself go. I trembled and I sobbed and I ached as I descended into the hell that I had created.

I spent the next few days sitting in my room and allowing the memories of her to wash over me. It was my self-inflicted punishment. It would have been too easy to block out everything, to become numb and try to forget that the past ten months had ever happened. I didn't deserve to get off easy. I deserved to suffer. I would remember her. I would think about everything I had lost. All of the happy times we had shared were tainted with the knowledge that she would never be anything more than a memory now. Every thought I had of her was so vivid, it was hard for me to believe that it wasn't actually happening. Every memory was a waking dream that ended in the nightmare of reality. I closed my eyes and imagined what it was like to kiss her, to run my fingertips along her fiery skin. I could almost feel her. Almost. But almost didn't count.

In all of my days, I had never felt so alone. My family made their presence known, always knocking on my door and asking me if I wanted to talk, but I just asked them to go away. I was the odd man out again. I was the one who had no one to call my own. And now, more than ever, I couldn't stand the sight of my family members together. I couldn't stand that their loves, their mates, were alive and well. I didn't have any room within myself to add jealousy to my myriad of emotions, so I just distanced myself. After my fourth day spent in exile, though, I felt as though I was losing my mind. It was becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between the memories and the dreams of what could have been. Everything was starting to blend together into a fairy tale that became warped and twisted whenever a knock would sound on my door and I would remember that she was gone.

I exited my room and joined my family in the living area, all of us sitting together but lost in our own thoughts. Esme appeared in front of me after a while and knelt down to look in my eyes. Edward, sweetheart she said in her mind, brushing my hair from my face, they are holding Bella's funeral today. If you want to go, we will all be there to support you. I drew in a deep breath at that news and shook my head. I wasn't strong enough to mourn with her family and friends; I couldn't see the empty casket and expect to hold onto my last shred of rational thought. But, mostly, I was simply too much of a coward to face Charlie in light of what I had taken from him. Whether or not I was physically indestructible, I knew that emotionally I would be ripped apart if I were to get inside the mind of the person whose daughter had ended her life because of me.

I knew that I couldn't go to the cemetery, but I could also sense that I shouldn't stay here. Everyone's thoughts were guarded, and I could tell that it was a struggle for each of them to be around me. My entire family, in some measurement, thought I was to blame for this, even if they wouldn't admit it. I was inclined to agree with them, but it didn't make Jasper's emotional transmissions or the occasional leaked thought easy to bear. So I left, just stood up and walked out without a word. Thankfully, no one followed me.

I wandered aimlessly through the woods, until I realized that I hadn't been wandering at all. My subconscious had a purpose; it had led me directly to our meadow, the place that had been the setting for so many of my treasured private moments with Bella. I relived them all as the occasional patch of sunlight drifted across the sky and finally faded into night. And then, because her memory, her presence, was so strong there, I started to talk to her. I sat in the dewy grass and told her of all the ways in which she had brought me to life, the ways in which she had changed me, made me a better person, made me feel more of a man than a beast. I told her how much I had missed her over the past weeks, and the mistakes I had made, and about the future I wished we could have had. I talked to her for hours upon hours, I hummed her lullaby that, for once, soothed me instead of her, and then, as the sun began to set once again, I stood in the darkness, knowing that I was free to visit the place where her body would have rested if they had managed to find it.

Maybe it would have been easier on me if they had. Then I could have seen with my own eyes that she was gone. I could have looked at her pallid skin and known that I would never again see the scarlet blush that had a near-permanent residence on her cheeks. The silence that replaced the beating of her heart would have convinced the sliver of hope that existed somewhere deep within me that all hope was lost. Perhaps, then, I would have been able to let her go. I shook my head as that thought passed through my mind because I knew I could never do that. I would carry her with me wherever I went, tethered to my heart and my soul. We had always been tied together, our fates twisted and tangled into beautiful chaos; I just hadn't realized it until it was too late.

I ran in the direction of the cemetery knowing that this would be my last goodbye to her, to this town. I wasn't sure where I planned to go, but I knew I needed to leave this place behind for good. I would force myself to see where the consequences of my mistakes would forever be etched in stone, and then I would go and continue on with the miserable journey of my life. If I had thought that my death might bring me closer to Bella, that we would be able to meet again in the afterlife, I would have considered travelling to Volterra; I would have begged the Volturi to end my life. But I knew that, even in death, Bella and I would be different. She was an angel and I was a demon and I had thrown away our only chance to be together, despite our differences. I had tossed it aside as if it didn't matter and now I would have to live with that because my family did not deserve another loss. I had to act selflessly now, for them.

I passed through the gates of the cemetery, and then started walking along the path that Bella's mourners had left in the mud. When I reached the granite marker, guilt and despair flooded through me at an emotional magnitude that I wasn't aware I possessed. I dropped to my knees and stared at the cold, gray structure as the heavens cried and the rain poured down around me. I ran my stone fingers across the engravings as I read her name and the range of dates that she had lived in this world. Below that was a simple phrase "Our beloved daughter, you left us too soon. We will always miss you".

If I could have cried, my tears would have outnumbered the raindrops. If I could have died, my guilt would have caused my life to end at that very second. But I could not escape the destruction that I had caused; I would live for an eternity without the woman that I loved. And I would live forever knowing that I was the reason she had died. I hung my head and became a slave to my grief, hoping that somewhere, somehow, she would hear my thoughts and know that I was sorry.

I may have knelt there for minutes, or perhaps it was hours, but at some point in time, I realized that I was not alone. I heard his mind approaching before his footsteps sounded in the mud and grass behind me. His thoughts were incoherent, racing wildly from one to the next so that it was difficult for me to decipher exactly what he was thinking. There were a few things about his mind that I could tell, however, a few things that I expected and understood. The first was the misery that enveloped his very existence. His sadness and his pain were present in every idea. And nearly as potent were the anger and the blame. He didn't have to think my name for me to know that the thoughts that were dripping with the latter two emotions were reserved exclusively for me.

I didn't turn to face him or even acknowledge his approach. There was nothing I could do to bring her back and I doubted he would want to hear any words that exited my lips. As far as he was concerned, I was the reason Bella was dead; I had tricked her into thinking that I had loved her and then left her when she needed me most. Was that what she had thought before she died? Did she truly believe that I had never loved her at all? I saw the images that crossed his mind, his last memories of her more potent and crushing than any vision Alice had transmitted. I was filled with self-loathing, because I realized that Bella hadn't died only days ago. I had killed her the moment I walked away from her in the forest. I had killed her the moment I started lying. I wanted to face Charlie then; I wanted to make him see that it had never been my intention to hurt Bella, that I had only wanted to protect her. But what could I say that would make him understand? What words could I possibly use to explain all of this, to counteract his train of thought that kept repeating you killed my little girl?

I could sense him standing directly behind me, but I resigned myself to the fact that I could not fix this with apologies or explanations, so I did not turn around. I heard the thought cross his mind; I heard his conscience argue and lose. Then I heard the click and felt the hard metal as he raised his arm and pressed his gun to the back of my head. I knew that it wouldn't kill me, but I momentarily wished that it would. I longed for the bullet to destroy my body like I had destroyed Bella's mind. I rested my palm against her gravestone, hung my head and waited patiently for Charlie to act. I remained as still as a statue, listening to his thoughts, his accusations, feeling his pain as well as my own. I waited as his mind cursed at me for killing her, for killing both of them.

I didn't understand that last thought until an image flitted across his imagination before it was stored in his mind's realm of all things painful and off limits. The image was of Bella, smiling and happy as she rocked in her grandmother's chair and looked down lovingly at a bundle she held in her arms. It only took me a moment to realize that it was a baby, a rosy-cheeked infant with Bella's chocolate eyes and my unruly copper hair. It only took me two moments to realize that Charlie was painfully misinformed and suffering through another loss that was entirely impossible and unnecessary.

I should have dispelled his misconceptions immediately, brought an end to his outlandish notions, but after I had seen that image, the only thought my brain could produce was the question of why he was picturing Bella with a child, with our child. I had to find out, to get answers, because Charlie had just broken down a wall that I had carefully constructed the moment I started my relationship with Bella. Back then, I knew that we would never be able to start our own little family, that I was incapable of giving her a child, and I had decided to accept that as long as she could. I had locked away my innermost human desires and thrown away the key, but Charlie had somehow found it and burst the dam of wants that could never be. I had new dreams to contemplate now. I had new fantasies to create and lose all at the same time. And I needed to know why.

My heavy thoughts were intruded upon in the next moment when three things happened simultaneously. I heard her scream, I turned toward the sound and Charlie pulled the trigger.