Once Bitten Twice Shy Chapter 26/?
Author: Lifelesslyndsey
Category: Twilight
Pairing: Bella x Peter
Summary: Clinging to Angel ideals, trapped in a vampire body, with very human urges. He was very confused. Peter was an indecisive vampire with an identity crisis. Bella was jaded and self-isolated. In short they were perfect for each other.
Rating: Mature audiences only for Language & Lemons
Word Count: 2,169
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Beta : Beta'd by my darling Vampish VixN who takes my story and makes it worth reading.
A/N *drops this off and runs away*
Previously
"Can you carry me to the bedroom?" Bella asked, looking up from the horror-scene that was the couch. The carpet squelched beneath my feet, no doubt from when Bella missed the bucket. "I'm too tired to walk."
"Of course you're too tired," I replied, fear and panic shattering my voice. "You just puked half your weight in blood."
"I think there was some waffle in there too," she replied, looping her arms around my neck. "We gotta talk, don't we?
"Yeah, we gotta talk.
Peter POV
"Don't turn me."
It took three words to crush my life to pieces, just like it had taken three words to make it what it was. I didn't want to hear it, didn't want to process the request. "Bella..."
"No, Peter," she said gently, lacing her fingers into my own. She scratched Peen between the ears with her other hand, leaning against the headboard of the warm bed. "It's my time. I thought I had more...but it's my time."
"Please don't leave me." It was selfish of me to say it. Selfish of me to want to keep her when she didn't want to stay. I knew in my head that this wasn't any kind of vendetta against me, that she wasn't leaving me. "I can't live without you."
I could see the rainbows in her tears and remembered our conversation about God at Yellowstone. They left wet trails down her cheeks, almost silver in lamplight. "You never finished your list."
She laughed, watery and broken. "I finished what was important. I got a tattoo; I spent an ass load of money on something stupid. Those silk-boxers? Sixty-eight bucks. Totally worth it, if you consider that we ended up fucking in a dressing room because of them. I met some one famous if you count Captain Kirk. Scared the shit out of myself on a boat. Saw a miracle happen when I got married, maybe even the moment I fell in love with you." She laughed, laying her head on my shoulder. "I may not have done 'shrooms, and I didn't see a donkey show, but I touched something magical that made it worth it."
"What did you touch?" I asked, amused beneath my sorrow.
"Oh I can't tell you," she informed me seriously. "It would ruin the magic."
"Bella..." I didn't know what to say. Didn't know how to plead my case, beg that she give up Heaven for me, even if she didn't know what she was giving up. "I can't live without you."
"You can," she promised. "And I will always be there."
"I'll never touch you again," I whispered, because all these fucking truths hurt too much to say out loud, like saying them out loud would make them real. "I'll never touch you, never kiss you. I can't live like that."
"Do you believe that we are meant to be?" she asked, out of the blue. "That we were destined to be together? That fate united us?"
I wasn't sure what I believed any more, I didn't have the energy to muster up my Faith. But in a way, a long and winding, twisted way, Fate had brought us together, or at least, something had. Had I not been on my mission from God when Jasper turned me? I didn't know if that was fate, or some cosmic mishap, and me a sad victim-bystander. And Bella, how had she come to be so tangled up in the Cullens? Her mother, of course. The Prophet had sent her, and what did that mean? I didn't know, and that scared me.
"I don't know about Fate," I said, though that seemed a lie. "But I know that we belong together."
"It's Faith, Peter." Bella said. "I don't believe that this is the end of my life. There is so much more that could be done. Death isn't going to stop me. You have to have Faith that this isn't the end."
"I can't believe that," I said to God, but spoke out loud so Bella could have the benefit of hearing it. "I can't live like that."
"You'll never be without me," she replied quietly. "If you think a little thing like Death can keep me from loving you, you're retarded."
"I don't know what you want me to say, Bella." I said at last, too tired to be angry, and too weary to do much else. "I don't know what you want from me. We could be together forever. You don't have to die."
She laughed sadly, thumbing away her tears. "You know, that's always what made me most sad for you Vampires. That you might never find your Heaven."
"How can you be so sure there is an afterlife?" The words spilled from my mouth with all the bitterness expected from one turned-out by his own kind. "How can you be sure you won't end up in six feet in a hole, and nothing else?"
"Faith," Bella said again, her trembling hands stroking down Peen's body where he laid curled in her lap. "I have to believe."
"I don't know how to be okay with this," I replied into the silence. "I don't know how to come to terms. I don't know what you fucking want with me! Why are you doing this!" It wasn't fair of me, of course, to blame her for this. I couldn't help it, it hurt too much.
"I'm not doing this to any one, Peter," Bella replied, as calmly as ever. "If God wants me to die, I die. Who are we to question that?"
'She's very smart, little brother.' Gabriel's voice echoed within me, the tingle of his grace skating across my skin. 'Her faith is inspiring.'
Bella's eyes went wide, and for a moment, I thought she could hear my brother too. 'She feels me, more faintly then you do, but the feeling is there,' Gabriel replied.
Gabriel's grace was a God-send and a curse, and I was torn between the comfort and the anger I still felt for him. 'Do not blame me, little brother. I never wish to hurt you.'
"I had the strangest dream when I slept," Bella said, no segue to the subject change, but that was Bella for you. "I died and all that waited for me on the other side was Peen, but he promised me you'd come too. Do you think good Vampires go to Heaven?"
"I don't know," I replied, because I didn't. No good vampires had died yet, but I knew all sins could be forgiven, so I thought maybe they did. Maybe they didn't, maybe the prize for not being a murderer was just the respite of death. Maybe you didn't go to heaven, but you didn't go to hell either, so it was still a win. I didn't know that.
"Do you believe that Edward is bad? That if good Vampires go to Heaven, he'll go to Hell?" she asked, looking up through her lashes from where her head lay on my shoulder.
"No," I said quietly. "He seeks forgiveness, even if it's only within. I think that's enough; wanting to be better, and working for it. I think that Edward doesn't believe he isn't damned, and allows that to rule him."
Bella nodded, smiling as if I had done or said something right. "He doesn't believe that there is hope for him. Without hope, he has no Faith."
I blinked. "So what you're saying is that you hope that Death isn't the end, you hope that believing will be enough to see you through?"
"That's Faith, Peter." She replied. "You have to believe."
"I believe." Of course I did. But as painful as it was to admit it, I almost wished she didn't. I almost wished she believed that death was the end. Then maybe she would stay with me, and I wouldn't lose her to the Heavens.
"And that is all what I ask of you."
xXxXxXx
No more was said on Faith.
The day passed with little more incident then a red-spattered Kleenex from one of Bella's coughing fits. "I knew I was sick," she said, balling the kleenex in her fist, and tossing it weakly to the trash can. We were on the balcony, tucked away in one chair. Bella curled into my lap, swaddled in blankets. "That day, that Tuesday? They told me."
"You were never going to Therapy on Tuesdays."
"I never said I was."
"It wasn't your anti-depressants they wanted to wean you off."
"It wasn't just my anti-depressants."
"You said you weren't dying."
"Didn't think I was, at the time."
"What was with the Road Trip?"
"I wanted to see the world. And I wanted to see it with you."
"The bucket list?"
"Every man has one."
"You lied to me."
"Never, not to you."
It went on like that, a back-and-forth volley of question and answer. I had only the comfort of her body, and the notion that she wanted to spend her dying days with me. We watched the sunrise, and Bella traced lines across my scars, smoothing her fingertips across the diamond-dust of my skin.
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," she hummed, "and sorry I could not travel both."
I laughed, low and hard, picking up at her silence. "And be the one traveler, long I stood. And looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth."
"Then took the other, as just as fair," Bella replied with careful precision. "And having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted wear."
"Though as for that the passing there, had worn them really about the same." I wanted to cry. There were no two paths for me, just the one I wasn't ready for. Robert Frost could burn in hell.
"And both that morning equally lay, in the leaves no step had trodden black," she whispered quietly against my chest. "Oh, I kept the first for another day, yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back." Her fingers traced lines up my throat, brushing across my lips as she spoke quietly into the evening. "I shall be telling this with a sigh, some where ages and ages hence. I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference. "
"You've known all along," I accused, no venom in my voice.
"We all know we'll die eventually," she agreed. "I knew the medication wasn't working like it used to."
"Is this my fault?" The question came out as a broken rasp, as if the words had choked me. "Did I do this to you? When you saved me from that fucking hovel?"
"No one did this to me, Peter," Bella replied gently. "It just happened. The world is my enemy. I just wanted to live before I died. I wanted to live with you."
"So all of this? This was your chance at life?" I asked, mouth pressed against her hair. It hurt, like a pain I never knew. This put the burning of turning to shame. I was breaking.
"No," Bella replied, twisting in my lap so that she could look at me as she spoke. "This was the last Hoo-Rah, so to speak. Think of it as a going-away party,"she laughed. "My chance at life was you."
It was too cheesy, too much, and I felt the pain I had carefully packed away bubble up inside me in the form of a choked sob. "I can't Bella, I can't."
"You can," she said. "You can and you will."
"You'll be gone."
"I'll be everywhere."
xXxXxXx
"Is there anything I need to do?" I asked, tucking Bella into bed long after the sun had risen. It had been a very long day. "Any one I need to talk to?"
"It's taken care of," Bella replied. "I took care of everything when I found out I was sick. Merchandise rights go to my mother. Book profits go to the Rez. I've set up a trust fund for Jamie that my mother doesn't even know about, and one for Leah and Jacob's baby too. My manager can list the apartment for sale and donate the profits to whatever charity she wants." She paused. "I left you the house in Forks. You'll always be welcome there."
I closed my eyes, to afraid to look at her when I asked. "Funeral?"
"Cremation," she replied without pause. "Pour my ashes in the Pacific. Off the cliff."
"I won't be able to come," I replied. "Not to the Rez."
"Jacob will let you," Bella replied. "He has that right."
"Bella..."
"Please, Peter? I want it to be you."
"Okay."
xXxXxXx
"Shh, it's okay. I'm here. I've got you," I did what I could, said what I could, soothing Bella through the most recent attack. Blood, water and stomach acid poured from her mouth, staining the white porcelain of the toilet a rusty pink. "Can't be much more."
She laughed, wiping her chin on the back of her hand. "There's always more."
"We'll get through this," I promised, smoothing her hair back, as I wiped the blood from her chin.
"Yes," she said. "You will."
A/N: Please don't kill the author before the story is finished. Who knows, maybe I change her!