The Twilight Twenty-Five
Prompt: Light
Pen name: Feisty Y. Beden
Pairing: Edward x Bella
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine, not mine.
Light
They always tell you that you see a bright light when you die. I don't know what I believed, before. I once had a dream that I saw the face of God, and it was so blinding and golden and bright that my whole body hummed with an unearthly joy. When I woke up, I felt cheated, somehow, that I had to return to my ordinary life after my brush with the divine.
When they first told me I was sick, I didn't believe them. I was seventeen. Teenagers are supposed to live forever. I didn't feel sick. Sure, I had some dizzy spells, and sometimes my feet would go numb, but I was just Bella the Klutz. That was my thing. But lying inside the MRI chamber, boy, that really makes you think about eternity, eternity in a box. I shivered in my cotton gown and thought of all the things I'd never get to do. It was real then, the clattering and banging, like my disease was trying to get at me and the chamber was the only thing keeping it away.
When Charlie and I sat with the doctors afterward, they showed us scans on the screen and used big words, and I tuned them all out. I couldn't believe it was really happening. Their mouths moved, flapping like puppets, but they weren't talking. It was just noise, like the clanging inside the chamber. I could tell Charlie was trying not to cry, and that made me sadder than any of the rest of it. It still didn't feel real to me. It was like I was watching a melodramatic made-for-TV movie about a young woman who had my face, tragically stricken with MS. I patted my dad's hand and said, "I'm going to be just fine. Don't worry about me." It must not have been the right thing to say, because he shut his eyes tight and clenched his fists even tighter.
We hadn't wanted anyone at school to know, but of course we had to tell the administration in case something happened during school hours. But they were all small-town gossips, and it wasn't long before everyone was treating me like a leper. "I'm not contagious!" I wanted to scream every time someone shied away from me in the hallway. My friends could barely talk to me—shit, they couldn't even look me in the eye. Things got so serious the minute I stepped into their conversations, like they were afraid that being happy would somehow offend me. "It's okay, guys," I'd say at lunch. "Just be normal around me. Please. I just want things to be normal." And they'd try halfheartedly, and that was even worse when they said nothing at all.
I was taking photography that term for my art credit requirement (if I even live until graduation, I'd think during my darker hours), and I never went anywhere without my 35mm Leica, a gorgeous little camera that had belonged to Charlie's dad. I started hiding behind the camera. Camera obscura, a camera predecessor had been called, Latin for darkened room, which reminded me of being in the MRI chamber. I'd be taking pictures of life around me, of happiness spied from a distance. With the barrier in front of my face like a hunting blind, people would act a little more normal, because I wasn't part of it.
Just like I wouldn't be part of it someday.
No, I'd tell myself, don't think like that. You don't know. People live for decades with this disease. But still, damn. I wished for the days when my biggest worries were having a zit on picture day or not having a date for prom. God, my troubles then were all so petty, and now I just wanted to be able to walk without stumbling or tingling. Just walk. How had I taken it all for granted before?
I enjoyed my time in the school darkroom though, hiding in the little closet to wind the spool to develop the film, shaking the steel canister once I'd poured the developer in. It always amazed me—what an act of faith, to fumble in the dark and feel around with your hands, hoping you'd wound the spool correctly, and then taking the film out afterward and seeing tiny pictures where before all you'd had were memories of what you'd spied for a fraction of a second through the lens.
I liked examining the film on the lightboard with a loupe, seeing the images of my friends in the negative, lips strangely white, skin purplish and alien. I wondered if that was what forever would be like, a life with flipped colors, everything like our world but just sort of different. The light from the lightboard was florescent white, cold and unfeeling, not like the golden light of the sun, but it was the manmade light that let me see the most of the negatives, decide which ones might be worth blowing up.
Edward Cullen was in my photography class. I'd been watching him for years. He never spoke. The nice thing about his always having been silent and dour was that there was no discernible change once word of my illness got out. He was constant. He made me feel normal—well, invisible, as he always had. But with the amount of change I was facing daily, it was nice to have something be the same as from before, when I was Just Bella.
I was always in the darkroom, and he spent a lot of time there too. He was kind of a loner. We'd sit at tables near each other, the only sound the water in the stainless steel sinks to rinse the chemicals out of the prints. Like being outside by a stream, but not. No, surrounded by cold, by metal, by manmade objects, the work of human hands, a faint shadow of the glory of the outdoors.
The photos, too, were just shadows of the lives that had flitted in front of the lens and been captured in a second onto silver gelatin. But the images would stay forever. My friends would always be captured at seventeen, ghostly, frozen in this moment of life, long after they had aged or were buried deep in the ground.
I was enlarging a photo of Angela, caught in a rare, natural smile, trying to decide which filter to use for the print. Did I want more or less contrast? How long to expose the photographic paper to the enlarger light? I carried the paper by its corners to the long sinks by the wall where the trays of developer and fixer patiently waited. This was the magic part. You had a white sheet of paper, and you would drop it into a pool of strange-smelling chemicals, count slowly while tilting the pan, and then the crystals would shift and fade or darken, the paper somehow remembering where the light had touched its face. And there was Angela's smile, giving out warmth and brightness even in the dim light and cold air of the darkroom.
"That's beautiful," someone said, and I jumped, dropping my tongs.
I turned around and saw Edward at my shoulder. Jeez, that boy could sneak up on you. It would have been creepy if he weren't so damn hot. "Oh, hey," I said. "I didn't know you were there."
"You're here a lot," he said. "More than you used to be."
I shrugged. "I like to be alone here, keep myself busy. It takes my mind off … things." I made a vague gesture with my hand.
"You used to spend time with your friends."
"Yeah," I said in a small voice, looking at Angela's face floating in the pool of fixer. "That was before…" I let my voice trail off.
"Before they found out," he finished for me. I nodded. "They treat you differently now?"
I laughed humorlessly. "You could say that." Goddamn it, I wasn't going to cry.
"Why?"
"Why what?" I asked, stalling.
"Why do they treat you differently? You're still the same person, aren't you?"
"Well, yeah. I guess dying isn't 'in' this year," I joked, trying to keep a light face on things. But then it all came spilling out in a tidal wave of bitterness. "God, I just want things back to normal. I mean, I'm not normal, but why do they have to treat me like I'm already dead?" It was too late. I was crying. My hands were covered in chemicals, so I didn't dare try to wipe my tears away.
"Here," he said, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbing at my face.
"You … carry a handkerchief?" I asked, trying to keep my breathing regular while he touched my cheeks with the square of clean cotton.
"Doesn't everyone?" he asked, puzzled.
I barked a laugh, which echoed against the bare, cold walls of the room and surprised even me. "No, not so much."
"Oh." He tucked the handkerchief away, a little embarrassed. He turned and left abruptly.
What the hell was that? I thought. He'd never said three words to me before.
It was often just the two of us in the darkroom during lunch and after school. My fingers were constantly numb from the chemicals or maybe the disease. I liked to blame the chemicals, because then I could at least pretend to be normal. The weirdness in my body had a real, tangible, non-disease-related cause. He talked to me a little every day, and I found having a disease made me less self-conscious about everything else. What did I care what Edward Cullen thought of me, since I was dying anyway? It's not as though he'd want to get involved with a girl who was already beginning to fade, like a Polaroid in reverse. Soon I would disappear completely.
When that happened, would I fade to light or fade to black?
Sometimes we talked—about photography, technique, shutter speed, whatever. He liked my camera. "That's an amazing little Leica," he said. "I haven't seen one like that since …" He stopped himself and shook his head.
"Why are you always in here?" I asked.
"I don't like being around a lot of people at once. It's too … noisy."
"Do you have, like, super-sensitive ears?"
He chuckled. "You could say that."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
And then we'd sit in silence some more.
I liked having him there. I noticed he watched me when he thought I wasn't looking. My peripheral vision was pretty good though. I liked being watched by him, especially when everyone else tried so hard not to look at me. At least I existed to him. I wasn't dead yet.
He was flipping through a stack of my 8x10 enlargements. "You're not in any of these," he said.
"Well, how can I be? I don't have a shutter release, and my arms aren't nearly long enough to point the camera at myself."
"There should be photos of you."
"Why?" I looked at him, feeling betrayed. "Because I won't be here someday?" He was supposed to treat me normally, like I wasn't dying.
He grimaced. "No," he said slowly. "You're just … I don't know. Never mind."
"I'm just what?" I asked, my heart hopeful.
"Nothing," he shrugged, and he left the room again. He was always doing that, wandering in and out of our conversations and the darkroom like an indecisive cat.
It was a rare, sunny day, and I decided not to be in the darkroom for once. I sat outside on one of the picnic tables, leaning back on the heels of my hands, tilting my face to the sun. I remembered my dream about the blinding light, the face of God, the nearly unbearable bliss. I could hear my friends running and shouting, throwing a Frisbee. I wasn't part of it. I wasn't part of their world anymore. I existed on my island of picnic table, drinking in the sunshine.
I didn't see Edward that day. Maybe he was out sick.
After school, I went back to the darkroom, hoping to see him, but he hadn't been in school, so it wasn't likely that he'd be here. And he wasn't. I made some prints and sat in the lit section of the darkroom, waiting for my pictures to be rinsed out. If you didn't rinse the prints long enough, over time they'd turn smudgy, contaminated with chemicals. I was feeling a little dizzy, maybe a little more than normal. I chalked it up to not eating much that day. I always had a concrete, normal-girl reason for the things that were happening in my body. I didn't want to acknowledge the disease. It was not doing anything to me. If I didn't acknowledge it, it wouldn't ravage my body. I'd force it to be imaginary.
It was dark outside by the time my prints were rinsed and dry, and I carried the stack with me out to the almost-empty parking lot. I didn't feel right. My knees felt like jelly, and my feet were weirdly numb. The last thing I remembered was falling. It happened in such slow motion that I was sure I could stop it, but my body had relinquished control of my muscles. I felt a sharp pain at the back of my head, then fluid warm and wet on my scalp, and then nothing at all.
I thought it would hurt more, but it was peaceful, kind of lovely. I was in my body, and I wasn't. And there it was, the most wonderful light, more golden than sunshine, warmer than flame. It's so beautiful, I thought, no longer aware of limbs or breathing or heartbeat.
She's lost too much blood, I thought I heard someone say. I wanted to hush the person. This light was sacred. There should be no talking.
You have to decide now, Edward, the voice said.
Edward? I thought. What does he have to do with this? Maybe it wasn't the same Edward at all. It was a common enough name.
Please, I heard someone say, someone with a voice like an angel. Please, the angel begged. Then a sharp intake of breath. But do you think it's what she would want?
Who were they talking about? I wanted to run into the light, except I had no legs. I couldn't see anything but light.
You love her, don't you? the first voice said. What does your heart say?
My heart? My heart is dead, said the angel.
Love. The word echoed in my head, and I wanted to wrap my arms around the light, my arms which now were as big as a universe, deeper than the sea. Love, I tried to say.
Did she say something? asked the angel.
It has to be now, the first voice said.
I heard something like a sob, but I couldn't see. What was his answer? I wondered, but then I felt searing pain, hotter than flame, but not like the light I had been bathing in. My arms were no longer as large as a universe, deeper than the sea. I was shrinking, frail, burning, consumed.
Where is my light? I thought. Don't take it away, I whimpered to myself. Please. I lost you once already, I thought, remembering my beautiful dream. I would have wept for the loss of the light, except I didn't know how to do that anymore.
***
She's waking up, I heard someone say.
"Thirsty," I said, swallowing a few times. I felt heavy again, contained. I could feel a body—my body—again. My eyelids felt like stone as I tried to open them. The light was so bright, so many colors at once. I'd never seen so many colors, at least not as intense as this.
She's here, said the angel from my dream.
It took a while for my eyes to adjust to this new world of brightness, vivid color, the noise of molecules shifting and stretching. And then I saw him.
"Edward?" I asked.
"Hi," he said, shy and looking at his feet. He turned away and said, "Carlisle, she's awake. She's okay." His face crumpled up, and he shook as if he were crying.
"Are you my angel?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said, still unable to look at me. "Here," he said, shoving some papers at me.
They were photographs—photographs of me. I was sitting on a picnic bench, leaning back and facing the sun.
"This … is me," I said.
"Yeah."
"You once said there should be photographs of me, didn't you?" That other life was hazy now, but this memory felt true. "Did you take these?"
"I did," he whispered, ashamed.
"Why? You never told me. You were going to, but then you stopped." I remembered that much.
"I … I wanted to say, because you are so beautiful."
"Oh," I said, not knowing where to look. "I don't really see it," I said, handing the pictures back, shaking my head.
"You're my sun," he said, touching my cheek.
"Oh," I said. "Say that again." I closed my eyes so I could focus on his voice alone.
"You're my sun," he repeated, and then I knew for certain.
He was my angel.
A/N: STICK A FORK IN ME; I'M DONE.