All remembered beauty is no more

Than a vague prelude to the thought of you --

You are the rarest soul I ever knew,

Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;

My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,

And when I think of you, I am at rest.

"To E.", Sara Teasdale

--

His eyes were on me for about three seconds before they flashed inexorably back to Jacob, now wincing in pain as he attempted to get to his feet.

Edward snarled. There was no other word for the low and menacing sound that ripped its way out of his chest. The timbre of his voice made my bones turn to jelly, made adrenaline surge in my blood and my extremities tingle with instinct. I had never before appreciated that as a vampire, he was, first and foremost, a predator. I couldn't believe how naive I'd been. Now I quailed in the face of his fury.

He stalked forwards, his muscles rippling as sinuously as a cat's, his lips drawn back over his teeth.

I was terrified. I knew that his baser instincts had taken over, that he had momentarily given control to the beast inside. If it had been Edward, and Edward alone, acting, Jacob would already be in shreds. It was the monster controlling him now, seeking to toy with his prey, to lengthen the slaughter, to enjoy it.

I found my voice.

"Edward," I shrieked, propelling my body forwards. He never paused or even threw me a glance – he continued in his stalking of Jacob, who suddenly looked very small and young.

I pushed myself even faster and somehow, my fingers fastened on the back of his shirt. I tugged at it desperately, my knuckles bone-white against the dark fabric.

"Edward, he hasn't done anything wrong," I cried desperately. I could not see my best friend massacred in front of me because of my own intense stupidity. I could not allow the man I loved to bear yet another crime on his shoulders.

A tremor ran through his body, yet he did not turn. "Bella, he was kissing you, *mauling* you," he spat over his shoulder. "Days after his filthy family put you in hospital, he's standing on your porch and pawing at you? Do you seriously expect me to just sit back and do nothing?"

Fear settled like a block of ice in my stomach. Obviously he'd acceded to my wishes and stayed away – stayed away, that is, until Alice saw my decision to contact him. I must have blurred right out of her sight afterwards. Obviously he had arrived too late to have overheard my conversation with Jacob.

And now I had to tell him... To tell him that...

My prior, selfish impetus to test him melted away with the horror that lanced through my body. Forget Italy, forget La Push, forget everything that had ever happened in my life, ever. This was the single hardest thing I would ever have to do.

"Edward," I whispered, my voice full of dread. Could he sense the tears in my voice? Could he sense the twin torments of fear and regret edging icy fingers down my spine? "Edward... I was the one who... Edward, I kissed him."

As if on cue, the weather broke. Thunder groaned across the heavens and the wind picked up, blowing my hair over my eyes. Rain started to fall, faster and faster until it was drumming angrily on the roof of the house.

And Edward had frozen. He was not even breathing.

I waited. My body was stiff with terror. I felt as though I had floated somehow above myself and was watching this entire sick scene through innocent eyes. I was not that girl, who had manipulated her best friend and hurt the man she loved, again and again. I couldn't have been so stupid. I was Bella Swan. I was mature, responsible, sensible. I always did the right thing.

I wished so much it was true. But as Edward turned, very slowly, on his heel to face me, I looked into his eyes and knew that I was the sole cause of the agony I saw there.

"You've made your choice, then?" he asked. His voice was very quiet and calm.

For a moment I didn't understand what he meant. Then the events of the last few days swirled round in my head and I knew a moment of horrified realisation as his words echoed through me.

I'm giving you a choice... I love you so much I would die for you... I am yours... Whatever you decide, I will always love you...

I wanted to deny it, to cry, to fly to him. But my limbs had frozen, my mouth open in a silent scream.

Somehow I couldn't move. My arms locked tightly around my torso and I struggled to remain upright. The entire world was fuzzy and disorientating. By now, red-hot claws of pain were ripping their way slowly through my body. My head spun around and around – all I could do was hang onto myself, attempt to ground myself, and gasp for breath.

"I... I... I don't... know," I wheezed, swaying where I stood. "I can't,... I just... I need..."

Edward swallowed once, hard, and then his arms were around me, gently picking me up and carrying me into the house. I peered over his shoulder and through the mist of rain and morphine I saw Jacob shaking his head, as if in slow motion, and walking away.

Nausea rippled through me. I felt as weak as a kitten – as exposed and defenceless as a newborn. And Edward was there. He was all I could hang onto as my head spun.

He laid me gently on my bed. In the space of time it took me to blink, a glass of water was balanced on my bedside table and a blanket was being laid over my legs.

His hand stroked my hair. "It's okay, Bella," he murmured softly. "I told you. You don't have to decide right away. I will never be more than a phone call away, and when you want to talk – whatever you decide, you..."

He paused to swallow, and if not for that pained motion, I would never have guessed at how hard this must be for him.

"You know where to find me," he finished. He hesitated, then leaned down to brush his lips softly against my cheek. The smell of honeysuckle and buttered sunshine washed over me, filling my lungs.

I breathed in deeply, barely feeling the cool rush of air accompanying his leaving as I fell deeply into a numb slumber.

--

A circle of trees surrounded me, hemming me in. I was lost in the forest and there were voices all around, hissing accusatory words. Everywhere I looked I saw a thousand faces, blank white eyes turned blindly towards me, and yet not a single one was what I was looking for.

Then I saw him, through the trees. His strong shoulders, his straight nose, his soft hair, a brief flash of his golden eyes. He stared at me coldly, then turned and walked away.

My feet were rooted to the ground, immobile. My mouth was open and I was straining to scream, but nothing emerged. The images began to swirl, the faces were moving, mouthing words...

The sound of my own scream woke me up.

My breathing tore frantically out of my lungs, too loud in the cold room. My hands, scrabbling at blankets, reached out and found nothing.

I threw myself upright, then instantly regretted it as the motion caused my back to snarl up in knots of pain. Gritting my teeth, I ignored the agony and fastened my eyes to the rocking chair by the window.

Nothing.

He was not there. All that remained to indicated he'd ever been there was my window, still left slightly ajar, and a certain hint of perfume in the air.

My heart twisted. Automatically I shifted onto my side, my knees curling inwards, my cheek coming to rest against the rounded bone of my patella.

How was it that even when the world around me was hazy and blurry, even as my life disintegrated into meaningless shapes, still just the scent of his skin, faint in the air, shot me through with warmth?

That was the whole problem. I felt so much for him, too much maybe. Every second with him felt like I was being pulled towards something so vast and infinite that it could swallow me whole. And when I reached out to find him gone, the fear of losing him no longer an idea but a fact – then I fell, endlessly, into that terrible void.

Being around him was a delicate balancing act. It was so easy to immerse myself in the task of loving him, of moulding my own personality over his love for me. I had lost myself like that before and it had led to disaster. I was scared – so scared – of it happening again.

I did not trust him, and I did not trust myself. What we felt for each other was too strange, too powerful. And it had led to so much pain that the joy it had also brought had retreated into the fog of my memory.

We had made the same mistakes, over and over, and it seemed as though we had never learned anything at all about each other. I was exhausted from untangling the knots of emotion in our relationship. Working things out between us would take so much effort, so much time and effort and patience, and I was so very tired.

Just for once, I wanted things to be easy, I wanted to not have to battle every step of the way to be with him.

I wanted to rest. But most of all, I just wanted to disappear. Everything was too much. The events of the past week were weighing heavily on my feeble, broken body, and I wasn't strong enough to bear the load anymore. I just wanted everything to fade.

I closed my eyes and swallowed, hard.

Giving up was foreign to me. I did not know how to do it

And so it came to pass that after a few more minutes of woebegone moping, I stumbled out of bed.

My feet hit the floor in exactly the wrong place – or exactly the right one, depending on how you look at it. A floorboard that I had never before suspected to faulty groaned and shifted, and I stumbled forwards, cursing as I stubbed a toe.

I looked around and down, reaching for the floorboard, about to shove it back into place. And I froze as a shy glint of silver winked at me.

I reached a trembling hand into the dark recess of the floor. But I knew, ever before my fingers touched the smooth hard plastic of a CD case, what I would find.

Maybe I had always known.

I drew them out slowly – the CD, the photographs, the airline tickets. Fanning them over and back in my hands.

It was as if something was happening deep in my body, something very slow but infinitely important. The foundations of my entire being were quivering in anticipation.

Like one in a dream, I was floating towards my dusty CD player. I was sure I still had feet, sure that my legs were still working, but in that moment I honestly couldn't have located them had anyone asked.

Barely a second later an unknown finger was pressing play.

When the first notes of the piano hit the air – that's when it happened. That's when every steeled lie I'd built up around myself in the past week crumbled helplessly to dust.

To the casual observer, nothing had altered. I was still standing there, my smelly bandages and damp jeans included, barefoot in the shag pile of my room's carpet. However, deep within me, something fused, knit back together and was baptised by the gentle falling of music.

I listened to this utterly pure representation of Edward's feelings. Of his love for me, crystallised into being with a few simple cadences and crotchets. Of his hope for our future, his longing for a human life with me.

I'd inspired the piece, he'd explained that very first day. He loved me and he loved music and so he'd tried to merge his two passions together.

It hadn't worked, though. This song, that had been meant to pay homage to me, only served to reflect the purity of his heart and soul. The depths to which he could love.

I did not deserve such devotion. Nobody did, but especially not me. I had treated his heart like so much garbage, flung his feelings to a dusty corner of my mind out of pure fear.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to break down. I wanted to shove everything I'd felt in the past few minutes into a corner of my mind, lock it down tight so it couldn't hurt anymore.

The song ended, drifting away on a final, melancholic note. And finally, I couldn't do it. Couldn't fight this anymore.

I took a deep breath then, and squared my shoulders.

It was time.

--

EPOV

I heard the soft footfall of her steps and the thudding beat of her heart before she was anywhere near the house. I felt so attuned to her. I was sure that by concentrating hard enough I would have been able to pinpoint exactly where she was, no matter what distance lay between us.

I had been reading in my room – or trying to, anyway. I put the book down, torn between many different paths. Part of me wanted to run to her side, sweep her out of the rain and bear her away to somewhere she could be safe and warm. Another part of me – the part most concerned with self-preservation – wanted to wait for as long as possible. To delay the inevitable, protect myself for as long as I possibly could.

The last time Alice had gotten any glimpse of Bella's future had been when she'd seen her picking up the phone to ring me. Straight afterwards she had blurred straight out of her sight. And I had neither seen nor heard from my pixie sister since.

Maybe it was meant to be this way. Better for me, to not experience the heartache to come before the event itself. Maybe it was better not to have to witness, first hand, the blank hole in Alice's mind that Bella should have occupied. To know it was caused by her bond to the wolf.

When I had arrived at her house to find them in an embrace, I had reacted purely out of instinct. I had witnessed, first hand, the turbulence in the mongrel's thoughts, had seen his desire warring with... with something that had been so murky and confused in his mind, so conflicted with feelings of self-disgust and twisted longing that even I hadn't been able to make sense of it.

Not that it had mattered, in the end. All that I'd been able to concentrate was the mutt's inner turmoil, his shaky grasp on his self-control, and I'd responded to protect what I felt to be mine.

I shook my head in disgust. Even after all this time I was still thinking of her as a possession, rather than the strong and independent woman she was. No matter how much the idea caused me to wince every time, I had to let go – to quell my more protective instincts and let Bella live her life.

Her happiness was all that mattered. Always. I had told her that I'd do anything for her, and I had been utterly sincere. There was nothing I wouldn't do to make her happy. Even if that meant stepping out of her life completely.

With a sigh, I headed downstairs to face my fate.

--

She was utterly drenched. I could see every tiny droplet of water clinging to her eyelashes. Rivulets ran down her forehead, tumbled from the edge of her graceful nose, hugged the bow of her lips, defying gravity.

She had never looked more beautiful. Inwardly, I groaned in disbelief. Was the universe that unkind – that it would present to me this vision and demand, simultaneously, that I let it go?

Her eyes beseeched mine for... For what? Strength? Forgiveness? Redemption? Whatever she wanted from me, she could have. I wished she could know that, opened my mouth to tell her, in fact, but she beat me to it.

"Edward," she sighed. Despite everything, she still uttered my antiquated name as though it were something holy. It escaped from her mouth like a prayer.

I bit my lip – unconsciously emulating the girl in front of me – and nodded for her to continue. Feeling the fissures in my heart tremble. But let them crack open – let them pull me apart and still I would bear it. I could bear anything for her.

"Edward," she repeated tremulously. "I've made my decision."

--