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.

•••

At first, the pill is like a cloud of white, breaking into colors and coalescing beneath her. Then everything turns dark, and she finds herself standing in the middle of the forest. What the hell, she thinks, since when is Vicodin the ghost of heartbreak? But the phone starts to ring and here she is, reliving that conversation she can't forget anyway.

"Jake?" her then-self said. She was sitting in the car with a bloodstain so fresh she could smell it, holding that little orange bottle in her hand. She was hopeful, like being with him would erase the pain. Like he might save her.

Stupid, Bella thinks.

"How do you feel about yourself? Right now, I mean."

She didn't know that voices had colors then, but now she sees that his is braided with agony. Both kinds-bright and garish, bruised and turgid. Her betrayal was fresh, then, but it hasn't grown less painful with time.

"I...Jake, what do you want me to say?"

His anger was like a punch from the phone. "That you're a terrible person? That you hate yourself?"

"I hate myself."

What a strange color. Bella realizes that she's never seen her own voice before, but it's shot through with black veins that choke her other colors like killer vines and twist them in unnatural directions. Guilt, of course. She should have known it would choke her.

He seemed thrown by how easily she conceded. "Maybe...I didn't mean that," he said, far more gently.

"I don't want your forgiveness, Jake." Except she did.

"I'm not forgiving you."

A near-fatal blow.

"Why do...why did you love me, Jake?"

He's silent for nearly a minute. And then, "Because you opened the door."

She had decided to try. But she fucked it up and he closed the door.

When she hung up the phone, she didn't realize he had already dealt the killing wound. She sees now that it's just taken her three weeks to die.

She swallows another pill.

...

He calls her again, but he doesn't expect an answer. She hasn't answered any of his calls since leaving his place. With that many shrooms, it might be hours before she comes down.

He isn't going to think about the Vicodin.

He considers calling her father, when he finally comes in view of the carousel. On one hand, if something has happened, he should know. On the other, if she really did just get magnificently high on shrooms and...brought along her overdose-friendly pain meds by accident, — accident? Jesus, when did he get so hopeless? — he'd just make a bad situation worse. So he keeps the phone in his pocket, he keeps running forward.

It's chilly, and there's no one out here but the occasional dog walker and teenage couples.

So when he sees someone sitting on the beach, the encroaching tide creeping beneath her legs, he would know even without a burst of relief so visceral he almost loses his balance that he's found her.

•••

A/N: Thanks for reading!