Characters belong to Stephenie Meyer.
14. Still Beating
10 years later
"I'm sorry, Edward. I'm so sorry. I wish I could take it back."
I couldn't see her face—her back, pale flesh and lovely, was showing. I tried taking a step closer, but found no success. An invisible force was keeping us together. Oh, if only I knew how imagination worked!
"Bella," I said, trying to keep calm. "Won't you let me near?" In my conscious mind, she held all power and every command that my whole being served.
I heard sobs. I tried banging on the stubborn wall, but nothing. Her will was more powerful than my strength.
She flinched when I growled in frustration. When she spoke, her voice held tender love, sadness, and regret.
"How can I let you near?" She asked. I couldn't see them, but I knew the tears were wetting her beautiful lashes.
Her question caught me off guard. I doubted I would find the answer, for I had never been dead long enough to examine such a state.
"Stop separating us, Bella," my Bella, won't you forgive me? "and we'll be together." She was running from me, and I could not let her.
Finding her unable to respond, I continued—
"There is no danger now, not when the only one who could die is me. And I would gladly accept that fate, but strangely enough" (here I grimaced) "I am unable to do so."
My ears were rewarded with her laughter.
I smiled, but not before the burning tears spread through my cheeks.
She was still facing forward, but she said, "Don't cry. I can't bear it."
I laughed, though it sounded like a sob or a cough. "But Bella," I whispered pleadingly, "you are the cause of my tears. Who else will I cry for? I hate what you've done to yourself, and I hate what I've become—"
"What have you become?" Curiosity described her. In the end, it killed her as well.
"I've become without you." Simple as that.
"That doesn't make any sense," she argued.
"I have a feeling you're only convincing yourself that." It was the truth; and she flinched again at my observation.
"Why are you doing this?" She was speaking so calmly, I was afraid she'd disappear. "I ran away from you—I'm sorry! But I know I did the right thing. We—" She stopped speaking, and I was about to say something when she turned to face me. She was bare naked, uncovered and so enchantingly beautiful.
But there was no way I would let my eyes venture away from her face. Her brown eyes were most communicative, and I needed all truth. Silly, for I was aware that everything was just another delusion.
Bella was looking at me, her expression unidentifiable. She looked vulnerable. Destroyed.
"What happened?" I punched the barrier again. Useless. "Bella, tell me what happ—"
She held her hand up. "I've just become without you."
How can I look at her, when I myself have hurt her, time and time again? I was looking at my most horrible crime, the most passionate of atrocities I've done.
"Can't we be together?" My mumble was covered with choking tears. I dared look up at her; she was smiling.
"Edward," she teased haughtily, "you know why I'm like this? Naked, I mean. No, you don't have to look away—I'm meant to be seen by you. We are, after all, in your little fantasy. It's only fair you get what you wanted—well, a peek at it anyway. All the rest, you have to get in reality."
I was stunned by her little explanation, and by the absurdity of it. "Bella, do you really think you could seduce me into happiness?"
She looked confused. Rightfully so, for Bella could practically do nothing and I'd be happy.
"Let me rephrase. Of course I'd be happy—I want you, in every way. I'd take you, in every way as well."
"So why won't you take me now?" She challenged. "I thought
"Because these daydreams—that's the only way to call them—last for only a second. When they end, you're not beside me anymore. And it just hurts, and I keep hurting, whenever I wake. It's as if you're calling out to me, but you're really not. When I grasp your realness, you disappear. I can't reach you."
Her gaze remained curious, but she closed her eyes and bent her head down. She covered her face with her hair whenever she was embarrassed.
I saw a few tears drop down the floor. "But I want to be with you, if only for a moment. It's the most I can give."
"You've been haunting me, mocking me, for ten years!" I hated how I raised my voice, and the way I wrung my hands together, as if a lunatic. "Bella, ever since you've left, you've been plaguing me with visions! For ten years I've endured seeing you in every step, every turn, and every glance! You're there, everywhere, but you're not!"
I saw pity in her eyes, though mine were clouded with tears. She was struggling, I could tell. She looked at me with a desperate look, trying to figure out whether to do something or another.
"If you really wish to leave me," I continued, "please do so, and leave me completely! Your apparitions, they don't give me hope, but disturb this pathetic silence I've been able to create over myself."
Bella was now on her knees, finding herself unable to stand. Alarmed, I ran to her direction, but the force, the inescapable barrier between us, would not allow it.
She was trying to fight back tears, and it only caused me agony when she hid her face in her hands. Her back was shaking with silent sobs, and I mercilessly punched and hit the separating wall.
"Edward... " She was repeating my name, and it sounded like a prayer. Looking at me then, her brown eyes were filled with everything that I had done to her—she was hurt, but torn between loving me or leaving me alone.
I collapsed on the ground, my legs giving out. My knuckles were scratched, and I fancied I would die right there.
"Bella," I whispered. "You won't have to explain anything. Just do what you want, but please—I beg of you—do not make me go without you. It's the one thing I can't do. Your feelings toward me will never change, I can see it. Why are you fighting against us?" She was miserable without me, so why was she holding back?
I knew then I would never find out the answer, even if she did return to my arms. In all honesty, I would not want to know the reason behind her going.
She called my name again, and I looked up to see her not there.
Standing up, I found myself no longer restrained. The room—and I wasn't sure what room this was, for it was only a vessel of boxes and walls—seemed empty.
I wanted to call out to her, but my lips remained shut. Nothing was stopping me, but I seemed to have lost all will.
Letting my arms go limp on my sides, the tears continued to pour to the ground.
Then a voice spoke from behind me—"Edward?" I quickly turned my head, and I immediately saw brown.
The water only increased the depth of her eyes, and I was captured, lost, in the sea of warmth. I could not speak; no words would describe her expression. She was happy, yet the tears told me a different story.
Her hair had stuck to some parts of her neck and face, and she'd never looked so beautiful. An inch of a distance from her did not stop me from clearing her face from her hair. My fingertips, destructible and sin-filled, were touching the purest of souls. But I would not let guilt take me away from her.
In another second, my tears became her tears, just like hers became mine.
"Edward," she gasped, as I fervently kissed her neck, and along her collarbone, "I'm so—"
"Don't be sorry," I gruffly said. "Just be with me." It was all I needed.
She stopped, and her hands remained their position tangled in my hair. Looking at me with the most unfathomable expression, she whispered, "Okay."
Between our kisses and murmurs of love, I became aware of the blinding light, the kind that crawled all over our skin until it devoured everything.
"Will you take me, and never leave me again?" Bella asked.
"Just tell me how." I was holding her wrist quite tightly, but it seemed her solidness was changing—decreasing in matter. She was slipping.
Don't let go! My mind said, but it was too late; I only saw white, then everything was gone.
But then something happened, something that never did before. As I was exiting my dream, I heard her voice: "I'm always with you, Edward. I'm sorry."
If you are confused, that's okay; I am too. But this chapter was just a dream, nothing but Edward's reappearing subconscious (but it is 10 years later).