Days turned to weeks, turned to months. I couldn't be sure. Time stopped meaning anything to me anymore.
I had shut myself down. It was the only way I knew to cope. I shut myself off in my mind, as well as I could, and contented myself with my own personal torment. I had earned it after all.
I stood motionless in front of the floor to ceiling windows, as I had for an unknown period of time. I stared out past the glass panes but I saw neither my reflection or the world beyond. Sunrise and sunset came and went. I hardly noticed.
Instead a long movie played through my head of everything wrong I had done, of everything I'd hurt her with over the past two years.
I did not even try to content myself with only my most recent transgressions. I remembered everything from the moment in the clearing to now. Every ounce of fear or danger from the moment she realized the harm James meant her until she left me here, with her name on my lips and hate in her eyes. The blood, the panic, the anger....
This personal hell was justice in my eyes. I deserved this. I deserved this for being selfish and wanting her to begin with. I deserve this for leaving her unprotected. I deserve this for failing my only mission these past months. It was all for nothing.
Victoria still walked the earth. Bella was a vampire... a vampire who absolutely loathed me.
A strangled choke stole up my throat in a pathetic effort to laugh. The only thing I'd ever really given a shit about in my whole life and I failed her on so many levels, one would think I was trying to do so.
I had thought that leaving would be for the best. For her best, that is. I decided for once not to think of me, and thought I would wrench my heart out in the process. Her face when I told her I did not love her I will never forget. To this day I still don't know how I walked away from those trees, how I left her there alone, in her grief.
I was only just now realizing what that possibly could have felt like.
I wanted to die.
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Some time after I had taken my silent stance at the window, thoughts began to drift down to me. I hadn't realized til this point that I had been so distracted by my own torment that I had shut my family completely away.
Yet they began to send me their thoughts with purpose behind them. They were worried. They missed me. I heard them and summarily ignored them. It didn't matter to me. I didn't deserve their affections.
Bella's voice drifted back to me slowly, softly, ringing with distaste in it's beautiful peal. "You destroyed my family, and you're well on the way to destroying your own." I grimaced and sighed.
"Edward." Her light, sweet voice broke in on my silence. I hadn't even heard her approach. This knowledge worried me. Alice's dancing gait was by far the easiest to identify of my family.
"Edward, you won't get anything accomplished standing here forever." Alice stepped in front of me and leaned up on her tip toes. A sad smile graced her lips, her childlike eyes dark and hungry as she brought up a finger to tap the side of her head. "Trust me, I know."
I grimaced. "Nothing at all? I suppose that means I won't hurt her anymore."
Actually... Alice's thought echoed in my head for a moment before continuing. Actually I can't be sure.
I brought my eyes up slowly to look at her, perhaps more angrily than I intended. "Alice..."
She sighed at me and closed her eyes, playing back what she had seen. For the first time in a long while I took the effort to actually listen to her.
I saw the days flying by, while I stood, motionless as a statue, grieving. There we a few half attempted interventions by my mother that never came to fruition. I winced again. I was hurting Esme. Again. And here I promised myself I wouldn't do that. More broken promises.
Apparently I was rather adept at that.
And yet, as I watched, however stilted, the daily life of my household, Alice's thoughts became a blank. I opened my eyes to question her, yet there she stood, eyes closed, still concentrating just as hard.
I pulled my eyebrows together and concentrated again. Nothingness. There was nothingness in her visions. It had all disappeared.
Her eyelids drifted slowly up to see the unspoken questions on my face. "I have no idea." She answered, "That's why I thought I should bring it to you."
I sighed inwardly. It took something of this magnitude for a sister, my family, to come and speak with me? The wrongness of my very life now struck me again.
"How long ago did you see this?" I whispered. I tried to keep the anger and bitterness out of my tone, but I had been using it so long that it was difficult.
"Just now, as I imagine whatever it signifies should happen before too long."
I eyed my sister again. It had been too long since she had hunted. Her dark eyes and bruised face held a weary expression. She caught my chagrin and smiled delicately.
I wasn't about to leave you here like that.
The knives in my stomach twitched again. Starving myself was one thing, but... little Alice....
"You should eat Alice." I sounded more like her father than her brother.
"Not without you." The ghost of a smile tugged at her lips.
I regarded her coldly for a moment before giving one sharp nod.
I regretted the action immediately as Alice squealed loudly and clapped her hands, dashing up the stairs.
It took no time at all for Alice to round up the rest of the family and inform them we were all going hunting. Though not all of them were quite as dedicated to waiting for me as Alice had been, they all breathed a sigh of relief and ran out the door.
As I walked out of the house and the fresh air struck me, I wondered idly how long I had been standing, unmoving. I had not realized that the air in my home had grown stale, dry, and dead. The smells of twilight assailed my nose as I took a step out on to the porch. I breathed deep of the forgotten smells and opened my eyes.
A red truck ghosted silently down the perfectly manicured drive towards the porch. I vaguely heard a small choking sound from my throat. I blinked once and the truck had stopped. I watched as I jumped out the passenger side of the truck to bounce happily over to the driver door. It was me but it... it wasn't me. It was a happier me, a younger me. An unburdened Edward.
I felt a tiny hand clasp mine supportively as I watched the scene unfold.
Out of the driver's door of the truck, I led her out by the hand. The sun glinted off her deep brown hair and she turned her face up towards the house. Her cheeks were flushed, a wary smile on her face. The Edward of my vision smiled indulgently at her, his face radiant, and towed her gently towards the house.
She was wearing blue. She was smiling. Her eyes flicked towards the door and their lovely, chocolate brown found me. It was similar to being hit by a truck. The breath knocked out of me as I stared at her in all her loveliness. I stood, waiting only for her torturous scent to reach me, yearning for it.
I blinked again. She was gone. There was no truck. There was no Bella. There was no gloriously happy me.
I felt my knees begin to give under me once more, but Alice was there. Her iron grip held me up, and she patted my hand as one would who had a child who refused to go to bed.
"Come now, Edward. We can do this later. You're weak. It's time to hunt."
I took a deep, filling breath as the smells of the forest invaded my senses. The burn in my throat that I had long ago locked away twinged dangerously, painfully.
I nodded once, then shot like a bullet away from the porch, away from Edward, and gave myself over to something else.
--------
I could hardly hear my own footfalls as I ran, unhindered through the forest. One mountain lion, two elk, and one grizzly bear later, I still wasn't satisfied. It occurred to me, in that small corner of my brain that was still somewhat human, that it must have been much longer than I thought since the last time I had eaten. In all fairness I could not recall the event at all. I mentally shrugged and ran on, the beast inside me having full control. I felt the strength begin to return to my limbs. The satisfying warmth spread down to my fingers and my toes and I pushed myself harder, and faster.
My family ran with me, close, but not too close. They kept an eye on me while they fed themselves sporadically.
A few more elk later I began to feel that familiar sloshing feeling that signified I was full. I felt Carlisle's thoughts prodding gently against my mind. Ready to go home, son?
I nodded once and rocketed away in the opposite direction I had been running. Towards home. It was time to decide what to do with myself. With fresh blood and renewed strength flowing through my veins I could not logically resume my post and the window, wasting away. There had to be something I could do. Anything. I had made a mess of absolutely everything, but if there was even one moment of a chance I could make that better for her, for my family.... I had to try.
I tried to plan as I ran. To figure out where she was, what she was doing, if there was any way I could help at all. As I wondered, we neared our home. I was waiting for the familiar smells of the building to creep up on me, when I was assailed by a new, wholely unpleasant, repulsive odor. Recognition flared in my brain, but I refused to believe it.
I glanced at my family. Everyone smelled it, but Carlisle glanced quickly at me and nodded.
As we neared closer, foreign minds began springing up in my awareness, and the things they were saying were not at all pleasant. Apparently, the had smelled us too.
Murderers... Their voices seemed to merge together as one, reverberating with anger.
Bloodsuckers... dangerous... deadly.
Realization was beginning to dawn on me as my family broke into the clearing.
Enormous, horse sized wolves. They stood in our clearing, facing my family, hackles raised, and snarling to match their thoughts. Three of them faced us, but we could all hear at least two more in the woods.
I should've... could've stopped... wasn't there....how DARE he....Bella.... one voice split off from the single mind of the rest. The thoughts sounded vaguely familiar to me, and I searched the faces of the wolves present. A large russet wolf stared at me with large black eyes as the tenor of his mind settled more comfortably in my memory, and I could not stop the gasp of shock that escaped me.
"Jacob...Black?"
His lips pulled over his teeth dangerously, snarling, as he lunged for me.
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Just a little bit of disclaimer here. It's been almost a year since I started this story, and I do apologize for the hiatus, but I obviously do intend to work on it and complete it as originally intended :D
Now, as for Edward's point of view, I'm sure there are a few people who are less than thrilled about that. I know Twilight was written primarily in Bella's point of view. However, this story is my adaptation of what New Moon would have been had Victoria reached Bella on the cliff. In doing so, most elements of the original story will be there, just in a different setting. Also, Edward's point of view in this immediate case is more relative to the story than Bella's. Don't worry, we will get back to Bella, I promise :).
As always, thanks again for the favorites/alerts/reviews. They make me smile.
And as always, I don't own any of these characters at all.
