x. permanence and fragilityBella does not return to Forks much at all anymore now that Charlie and Renée are both gone. There's no reason. But suddenly she keeps thinking of that place which may be the only one she'll ever think of as her true home and becomes restless, feeling like she needs to go back there now but not knowing why. She tries to ignore the feeling for months until she finally tells Edward, and without looking at her strangely at all he says, "Alright. If it's bothering you this much, by all means let's go." But his tone is strangely formal and controlled, and she wonders if he suspects who this is about.
She doesn't even worry about staying hidden. If by some crazy chance someone who would recognize her is still alive and living there, she certainly looks different enough now that she can tell them she's just a relative of Bella Swan.
It takes a couple days after she arrives for her to figure out that Jacob died two months ago. Maybe that nagging in the back of her head was just the unconscious realization that he was getting old enough that he may not be around in this world for much longer. She has never thought much about his current age and always continued to imagine him exactly as she knew him, but after all, she can do math.
Edward is so sorry and sympathetic that it practically melts her to see the sad way he looks at her for a while. He and Jacob may have been natural enemies as well as opponents in a dirty game, pulling ruthlessly in a tug-of-war over her, but any inclinations to still feel animosity toward him are clearly diminished. Death has a way of making things like that completely go away. He helps Bella inconspicuously find out where exactly he was buried. She wants to do the same for him that he did for her when she left his world. But the answer is just what she fears. His grave is somewhere in La Push. Where she cannot go.
"I'm okay. Really," she assures Edward when he finds her standing outside alone and asks her for a third time that day if she's all right. "It's just . . . I know I hadn't even seen him for the best part of a lifetime and maybe it's silly for it to matter this much, but I just can't believe he's gone. It doesn't seem possible."
Edward sits down on a patio chair and pulls her down into his lap. "You know he isn't gone," he says, and he puts his hand over her heart. She stares at his face in awe. It is like he has suddenly seen into her soul and easily found something she didn't even know is there. Still there.
Humans make this gesture all the time, touching their chests, saying "It's okay, the ones we love live on in here," but it does not mean the same thing. Because Bella's heart no longer beats. It is in a permanent state that will never cease.
After they leave Forks again, Bella is still very reclusive and quiet for a long time. Because she found the obituary to read it and it said, He is survived by his older sister Rachel Black, his wife Megan Cheung Black, and their three children; William II, Logan, and Bella.
There would have been no secrets at all between him and his human soul mate, of course. This one thing she does not tell Edward about.
She starts thinking a lot about one of the last dreams she remembers having when she could still sleep, prompted most likely by all of Jacob's comments about how things would have been. In the dream she saw exactly how it would have happened if things had been different that day after Harry died when Edward called the house and reappeared into her life just at the right time for her to still be all his. She knew when she woke up that the dream only meant she finally had a complete understanding of herself and her feelings, and of the way Jacob felt about her, and that she was not making her choice in any kind of ignorance anymore. Because in this dream that last kiss they shared before he went off to fight Victoria's army, the one he said should have been their first, really did happen first, there in her kitchen.
It amazes her how vividly she still remembers something like this from her human life, a mere dream; maybe her mind is just still able to fill in all the missing pieces she doesn't remember because she still knows exactly how it would go. Her mind was ringing in a panic as he leaned in so close, but as soon as he closed the distance with the most gentle and cautious kiss, everything in her head went quiet. It was okay. She could do this. She was okay - perfectly alive. Better than alive. He was as slow and sensitive as a surgeon opening up a patient, because he had her fragile, damaged heart and their friendship and everything in the world that mattered then held in his hands and had to handle it so carefully, not too much, not too fast. But she responded to it naturally, allowing him to ease her mouth open and raising her hands to his face. They lost themselves in it, completely forgetting about it if this was a strange time and place for a first kiss to happen, drawing it out for an unmeasured amount of time, always slow, and Bella felt more than heard him give a long, relaxed exhale of breath like a sigh before pulling away. Then they were just holding each other, Jacob pulling her tight against him. His touch was not delicate and careful, not feeling like something airy and cool that might just blow away, but strong, solid, and seizing.
She could feel his heart thumping as she held him close around his middle. Then he said in a slightly amused voice, "You're shaking like a rattlesnake."
She laughed softly into his hot chest. "Sorry. I guess in a way it's my first time . . . being with a . . . boy."
He laughed, too, and said, "I guess that's true." Then he turned his head to put a soft kiss on her temple and rubbed his hand up and down her back, warming it to be almost as hot as him, smoothing out her nervous trembling into relaxed, steady breaths. Then his two big hands took her by the waist and lifted her up onto the counter so that her head was then level with his, and he continued to hold her.
"Bella," he said very quietly. His voice had a kind of vulnerability in it she had never seen in him before - not then, in the dream. "I love you, you know."
He must have felt her breathing immediately slow, almost stop. After just a beat of silence he quickly added, "I'm sorry; please don't feel like you have to say anything back. I know this is still difficult for you, and I don't want to make you uncomfortable. But I just - "
That was when the phone rang, and this is the last thing she remembers of the dream.
It could have been like that if everything had happened just a little differently. Things could have been more simple. Or even more complicated. But no matter what there is no one thing that could have been changed to rectify everything. These things can't be blamed on just one person or thing. Edward should never have left her alone long enough for her to get that close to somebody else. She should have been more aware of her feelings all along, not just once she finally kissed him. Jacob should not have been so unforgivably kind, never giving up on her, always there for her even when there was nothing she could give him back.
Maybe they would not have ended up so hurt if the smallest, most seemingly inconsequential things had never been. If Bella had never learned to associate certain sensations relating to him with feeling safe and happy - the smell of his garage, the soothing and reassuringly constant sound of ocean waves, the throat-burning carbonation in a can of warm soda, everything always so warm. If only he hadn't kept his arm around her the night they were driving Mike Newton home in a way that made her feel strangely protected from him. If only he hadn't said "Bells, honey" in that desperate and scared way while she was still just barely conscious after almost drowning and his voice hadn't been the thing to make her realize she wasn't dead, she was alive, and God, what had she been thinking? If only he hadn't grown to look so different and she hadn't noticed that night she hurt her head and the dim light was so beautiful on his skin as he drove her to the hospital with no shirt on. If only he hadn't brought her some of his clothes to change into when she was soaking wet that night that changed everything, making her unable to help but imagine just for a moment what the soft flannel would feel like against her skin, big and warm and comforting like his body.
But love is not something that can be traced to one time or one action as its origin. The things that make one fall in love are subtle manipulations acting imperceptibly, never recognized for what they are until it's too late. Feelings develop because of a variety of things that make up a complex equation nobody understands. Beauty alone will not always start feelings of love, or else Edward would have loved Rosalie. The way someone treats you may be enough to plant the seeds, or may not be.
These are the things Bella thinks about now that Jacob Black is dead, because it has hit her so much harder than she ever could have expected. Her feelings for him were never made up of fragile little things that crumble with time. Those little things may be what attacks the fortress of the heart and opens it up to be vulnerable to someone else, but then love roots itself deep in the soul so that the removal of just one experience, one thing a person said or did that broke through the barrier, cannot possibly pull it out. Many of her memories of Jacob have now become faded and vague like a gallery of unfinished, dull-colored paintings, but the memories are not what matters. He is still as much a part of her as he ever was. She knows this now with painful clarity, but in such a strange way; she knows he is still with her because it hurts unbearably that he is gone and she knows he is still with her because it does not feel at all like he is really gone. And for the first time since Edward gently surrendered and finally bit into her neck sixty years ago, changing her, she wishes she was still able to cry. It is all too heavy to bear now that she is aware of it again, and she is trapped in this body with no release from it. Deep scrapes in stone do not heal like wounds.
And now she keeps hearing Edward's words he said to her long ago: "I cannot live in a world where you don't exist." This was completely true, but not in the way he thought. Maybe Jacob is dead, gone, but for Bella there will never be a world in which he doesn't still exist. As long as she is still living, it will be impossible for no part of him to go on, because it is too late for him to be severed from her. Even if it would be easier for her to forget him and she wanted him to disappear, always he would stay.
Many years ago when he gave her the bracelet with the charm he carved at the graduation party, he said he hoped it would help her remember him, and if he hadn't been in such a bad mood she would have assured him that she could never forget him. Whether she likes it or not, this is always true.