*A/N* A little shortie to tide you over til the weekend. The return of Darkward.
*EPOV*
Saturday, September 16, 2006. I'd been dreading this day as much or more as I had been eagerly anticipating Bella's birthday just a few days ago.
Bella had been flying high when we returned from Montreal, thrilled by the adventure. And as much as I wanted to be able to keep her spirits up, I didn't have the faintest idea how to navigate today.
I know we had said we were starting over with a clean slate, and we had. But I couldn't pretend that a year ago today hadn't been the second-worst day of my existence, by a narrow margin.
September 16, 2005, only ranked second-worst because it precipitated the actual worst day when Rosalie had told me Bella had killed herself jumping from a cliff...because I'd left her, a year ago today.
I'd had to find out in a voicemail because I'd stopped answering my phone.
Edward, I tried calling, but you won't pick up. Nobody knew how else to break this to you, so I'm just going to say it. She's gone. Alice saw Bella jump from a cliff. She's on her way to Forks now to see what can be done for her father. I'm...so sorry...I...hope this means that when you're ready, you will rejoin us. Esme really misses you. We all do, she'd said somewhat grudgingly.
My skin iced over at the memory, but this cold I actually felt, bone-deep.
No, I couldn't pretend. So what were my choices? Ruin Bella's day, again, moping about what I had done to her?
I could leave for the day. Excuse myself on a hunting trip I didn't yet need so that I didn't have to burden her with my mood. But was leaving her on the anniversary of the day that I'd left her the best thing for Bella? I seriously doubted it.
"Edward, what's wrong?" Bella's groggy voice was immediately concerned. I'd been so preoccupied ruminating on how to proceed that I hadn't noticed she'd woken.
"Good morning, love," I said wrapping my arms around her and kissing her head. I sighed. If it hadn't occurred to her yet what reason I would have to be upset, did I burden her with that knowledge now, or wait until she'd at least had a chance to get up and use the bathroom, I thought with bitter sarcasm.
"Nothing's precisely wrong. Except for the date," I laughed once, humorlessly.
"Oh," Bella's voice went flat with understanding.
Oh, indeed.
The silence stretched out between us.
I took her warm hands together in mine and kissed them. "Bella, what do you need from me today? Tell me and I'll do it. Unless you tell me to try to forget, because that's the one thing I can't do," I said miserably.
"Well, that's kind of too bad, Edward, because I'm not going to spend one more second thinking about that day, and neither should you. I thought we already discussed this. It's behind us."
"Bella," I said softly, but my voice rose in intensity as I spoke. "That's just it. I can't. It's deplorable of me to say this to you, of all people, but that day was traumatic for me, too. I can't pretend like it didn't happen like this is just another Saturday. And leaving you, even just for the day to go be miserable on my own seems wrong, too. So what do I do?" I asked in a pleading tone.
Bella shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. "Have a vampire moment, Edward. Go beat up some trees in the forest. Do whatever you need to do to get it out of your system, and then come back to me."
I took her face between my hands and kissed her fiercely. "I will always come back to you," I vowed, and then I was gone.
Running. Flying. As fast as my feet would carry me.
*BPOV*
I sighed and flopped back down into the pillows. I'd known today would go something like this.
Clean slate or not, there was no forgetting for Edward. I could always tell when his mind went there. His face would go blank, but there was no hiding the tortured expression in his eyes.
The memory of that dark time, whenever it resurfaced, was like Jane living in his head, mentally zapping him to his knees.
It wasn't like I wasn't hurt over it, but not like Edward. To him, leaving me last year was tantamount to pushing me over the cliff with his own two hands. He had believed me to be dead, by his own doing, for twenty-four whole hours. And it had scarred him, scarred him horribly.
And as much as it destroyed me to think of a world without Edward, I couldn't blame him for it either. If I thought for even a moment that Edward had been taken from this world, I would have picked a taller cliff to jump from.
So if Edward needed a dark day, he could have it, but I refused to sit here and pick at old wounds when everything was going so right.
I hoped that, with time, this would be something that Edward could eventually let go of. Maybe once I was turned and my dying didn't seem like such a real threat to him...but only time would tell.
It was going to be a very long millennium if Edward was going to be all miserable three days after my birthday for the rest of time.
I'd been so relieved when he suggested on Isle Esme that we move on with a clean slate because I thought it would help him move on, as well as help absolve some of the guilt I carried for my transgressions with Jacob.
But the clean slate agreement seemed to act more like a gag preventing him from speaking his truth on the matter because as I was always reiterating, it was behind us, no more apologies needed. But maybe that wasn't the way to get past this. Maybe he needed to talk this to death.
Feeling my bladder start to protest, I finally trudged to the bathroom and got myself ready for the whole nothing I had to do that day.
Once I was showered and decent, as was my routine, I walked up the short path to the main house at the usual time for breakfast. I didn't have any expectation that Edward would be there, but I couldn't help hoping.
He wasn't. I pulled up my usual seat at the kitchen island and was immediately greeted by Esme who was serving me up a plate of french toast and bacon.
It never really got any less weird for me to let Esme dote on me like this. I even had some guilt about it, like I was taking advantage of her kindness in some way.
But when Edward had explained what it meant to her to nurture me with food like any mother would do for her child when Esme had been robbed of the opportunity to get to do that for her own child, it made it a little easier to suck it up and just say 'thank you.'
Esme looked uncomprehendingly at the empty chair next to me.
"Edward is...taking some time to himself today," I said, biting my lip.
Esme's brow knit together in concern. "Well, that doesn't sound like Edward."
"It's..um...the anniversary of the day you all left," I said uncomfortably, "and he's having a hard time."
"He's having a hard time? Well, that's rich," Alice snorted, unimpressed, as she pulled up the seat next to me.
"Be nice, Alice. Nobody hates himself more for what happened than he does. He felt like a jerk leaving me today, but I told him to go take some time and get the moping out of his system because I just don't want to think about it anymore. It's water under the bridge, and we're happy now, so why wallow?... But he doesn't see it that way. Not today, anyway."
"Bella, please don't defend him on this one. It doesn't help his case. I told him he was wrong. Carlisle and Esme told him he was wrong. He didn't listen, and he's not the only one who thought they lost you. We almost lost both of you because of his pigheadedness," Alice's tone was razor-sharp, but her golden eyes were filled with hurt.
How had I never realized that Alice nursed a grudge against Edward over that? I was suddenly horrified at myself for not fully considering how much Edward's leaving had impacted all of them.
A lifetime of self-worth issues had made me falsely assume that the only person in this equation that mattered to the Cullens was Edward. And while the instinct to protect and defend Edward ran bone-deep, I couldn't fault Alice for her feelings any more than I could fault Edward for his.
After all, how had I felt when Edward had tried to sever the ties between me and my friend before I was ready to make that decision on my own? And if he'd done that and then I thought Jacob died? I grimaced.
"You know," I set my fork down a touch too forcefully. "I told him to get out of here so that I didn't have to rehash all of this."
"Well, maybe it deserves some rehashing! Where was Esme's grand apology when he ran off and tried to kill himself without so much as a goodbye? Do you know what she got? 'Sorry, Mom.'" Alice scowled.
Esme flinched. "Alice," her tone warned, "don't bring me into this."
Alice didn't need to say the words out loud. Edward's actions nearly cost Esme another son.
I sighed. "Alice," I said softly. "I hope very much that you never have to figure out how to live without Jasper."
Alice's face softened. "I'm sorry, Bella. I'm taking my anger out on the wrong person," she frowned.
I looked at Esme who had pulled up a chair across from me, but she was looking intently at the marble countertop beneath her folded hands.
"Are you upset with him, too, Esme?" I asked. She looked up at me and seemed a little surprised by the question.
"I was, at the time. More than you can imagine. But I'm the very last person in this family who could hold what Edward did against him. I know all too well the pain of losing someone you can't live without."
A faint smile crossed her face then. "But now I'm of the position that all's well that ends well. You're both here and safe and happy. That's what matters."
Esme reached across the island and covered my hand, "But I hope you'll forgive me for saying that I'll be a lot less anxious once I don't have to worry about something happening to you!" She said ruefully with her other hand over her heart.
I waved a hand dismissively. "Nothing to forgive. I'll be less anxious when that happens, too. I think we all will."
*EPOV*
I'd run as far east as land allowed, standing at the top of the tallest oceanside cliff I could find, watching the dark water churn sinisterly below just before it crashed into the sheer cliff face.
Since the moment Bella took me back after we were reunited, I had done whatever I could to avoid thinking about the devastation I'd caused last year. It was too raw, too painful, too senseless.
But today, in remembrance, I relived those abhorred memories like Ebenezer Scrooge being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Taking two quick steps, I dove over the edge, plummeting 500 feet to the frigid water below.
Breaking through the surface, I didn't bother to swim. I just let the crushing force of the waves have their way with me as I watched the sequence of the very worst of my memories play behind my eyelids.
The look of crushed acceptance on Bella's face when I'd told her I didn't want her.
The heartbreak and despair on my mother's face and in her thoughts when I'd left them.
Charlie's grief.
Carlisle's disappointment.
Alice's fury.
Sam Uley's haunting recollection of finding Bella, cold, wet, and shaking, crying my name.
Jacob Black's memories of Bella, too thin, too pale, curled into herself.
Alice's vision of Bella jumping to her supposed death, a forlorn look of longing as she fell.
Rosalie's voicemail.
By the grace of God, Bella had forgiven me, taken me back into her warm embrace, and given me the most blissful existence a soulless monster like me could ever ask for.
But in the aftermath of my woefully misguided attempt to save her, I had come so very close to losing her forever. First to Laurent, then to Victoria, the Volturi had considered killing her right in front of my eyes, and then to the arms of my natural enemy, Jacob Black.
You'd think if I'd learned anything it was that nothing good came from us being apart, and here I was on this of all days tumbling around the Atlantic Ocean like a forgotten message in a bottle. How utterly pathetic.
I rocketed back up to the surface, suddenly desperate to get back to her, to get on with the eternity I would spend trying to make amends.
I was back within hearing range of our property in half the time it had taken me to run from it earlier this morning. I heard thoughts. Thoughts but no heartbeat. Why didn't I hear her heartbeat, I wondered, gripped by panic.
As I stormed the front steps of our house, I was stopped in my tracks by Alice sitting on one of the front porch rockers. She eyed my waterlogged appearance but said nothing of it.
"She's fine. She took her car out for a drive. But she gave me explicit instructions that neither of us should bother calling her until you and I had a chance to talk," she gestured for me to sit down in the other rocker.
I heaved a sigh and sat down, my sodden clothing making a squelching sound against the whitewashed wood.
I supposed I shouldn't be surprised that while I'd been absent, sinking in a literal sea of my own despair, my endlessly selfless wife had orchestrated a long-overdue reconciliation between Alice and me, without a thought to herself or her own pain.
I'd never deserve her, not if I lived for a thousand years, but I'd never stop trying to either.
*A/N* Thank you all for all the big smiles I had when reading your comments from the last chapter. As much fun as I have writing the laughs and lemons and fluff...well it wouldn't be much of a twilight fic if Edward wasn't emo AF from time to time, amiright? Ohh, Edward.