"You're a colorful soul in a technicolor world,
While you're living it black and white."
—"All We Are" by Andy Kong
(93 years and 3 days ago)
He was a shadow, drifting in between beacons of colorful, changing light. People came. People went. He stayed the same, watching them.
People who would wave goodbye without even knowing what they were leaving behind.
Him, captured in this life that he was stuck repeating— over and over and over.
Expecting different results.
(1 year and 3 months ago)
"Edward— look at me when I'm talking to you."
(It was another day, another pointless beginning and really, what else was there to say? What more could be possibly learned or heard or felt or experienced that he had not already done a thousand times over already?
Was this what their existence would boil down to? This charade? Pretending to move forward, reading the same stories, relearning the same tired concepts, seeing the same small people who would never know him, who would never know the awful truth of the world?)
The minds were droning on in the background and they were just as desperate as he was for something— anything to happen.
Except Rosalie's blathering.
"I don't want to talk to you. It looks like he does, though," he jerked his head in the direction of a reedy-looking sophomore, who was gaping open-mouthed at Rosalie, looking close to drooling.
The poor child flushed purple as Rosalie threw her hair behind her shoulder while simultaneously leveling him with a glare that could melt the Arctic. Impressive, he had to give her that.
"I asked you a question," she said, her tone clipped and slow, like she was speaking to an imbecile. Her perfectly annoyed face entered his peripheral.
"Are you really serious about this? Going off on your own again after what happened last time…"
Her voice trailed off. Concern looked odd on her face, not at all a sight he was used to seeing.
"… last time a half a century ago?" He finished her sentence for her.
He was being unnecessarily sarcastic and difficult, he knew this, but he was annoyed with her. Annoyed with Alice. Annoyed with Jasper, and Emmett, and Esme, and Carlisle… He had explained it too many times already and they continued to be difficult.
"I'm not in the slightest danger of losing control. Temptation is an impossibility."
"But I just don't understand why—"
"You don't have to understand anything. Besides, you do a fine enough job of that without me getting in the way."
"Ha ha," she drawled sarcastically. She drew herself up. "Buuuut… if you could just give us the smallest reason for leaving—"
"Rosalie, you don't believe you are being the slightest bit irritating?"
"— then maybe Mom wouldn't be so worried," she continued, like he hadn't spoken.
"Esme is not worried."
"She thinks you're depressed."
"I'm not depressed."
"You're something."
"I'm annoyed."
"Edward—" she finally cut him off, "talk to Carlisle if no one else. We know something is not right and we do want to help."
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
"We do care about you, you know." She sniffed haughtily, completely ruining the plea in her words.
He sighed and slouched in his chair— already in a foul mood— and it was only 10 o'clock in the morning. A remarkable accomplishment, really.
He knew, grudgingly, that she did really mean it the best way Rosalie could mean anything. She was not worried like Esme was worried per se, but the situation at home had become uncomfortable. And Rosalie did not do uncomfortable, as she liked to remind him— frequently and loudly.
"I'll think about it," he said after a few seconds of watching Rosalie pick at her nails. But he did roll his eyes.
Rosalie stuck her tongue out at him but her thought floated up into his mind anyway.
Thank you.
The whole conversation happened in the back of their dark Spanish classroom in muted voices, much too fast and low for their classmates to hear. Everyone else was already chattering quietly amongst themselves, not paying the badly dubbed Spanish version of "Alice in Wonderland" any attention. Mrs. Goff was too burned-out to care. She was flipping through a magazine, pretending to be unaware of the utter lack of control she had over her students.
He watched the awful movie silently for the remainder of the class, trying to remember what yawning felt like.
The bell finally rang. He dully shoved his memorized books in his bag.
Rosalie swept out the door, not bothering to glance back. No need, after all, when you have all the time in the world.
(Of all of his siblings, Rosalie had been there first.)
(The realization made him sad, though he couldn't exactly understand why.)
(60 years ago)
The feeling had intensified over years. He didn't even have the words to explain it to himself.
It was an aching loneliness, to feel people's minds so unbearably intimately, and know that it only went one way.
(10 years ago)
He had killed so many people that he was afraid to be alone.
Afraid of the return of The Monster when he would eventually emerge from the darkness of his own mind.
Esme had said he had always been melancholic but now he wondered if it was something else. The thoughts and emotions of others had become too much to bear, somewhere down the line. He could only feel the echoes of things that had happened to other people. It made him feel plastic and broken— like he had been wired wrong somehow.
His family could not understand.
Carlisle was a beacon of raw, unpolluted hope, matched in his kindness only by his soft-hearted mother. Emmett was not one to dwell in darkness, nor was Alice. Jasper was protected by his guilt in a way he hardly noticed. He had been ignorant to any other way. And Rosalie had deserved her kills through God-given right.
But he had killed. He had endured hearing the frantic thoughts of dying predators— of savage, barbaric humans.
(men)
It wasn't for blood. It wasn't because of thirst.
(The truth is something he cannot even admit to himself.)
(1 years, 3 months, 21 hours, 59 minutes, and 10 seconds ago)
It was the truth that was on his mind the moment that Bella Swan walked into the Fork's High School cafeteria.
(1 years, 3 months, 21 hours, 59 minutes, and 9 seconds ago)
It had been such an automatic thing, to follow where the crowd's attention suddenly sharply diverted.
It was like a dozen people had suddenly stood, turned, and pointed to the new object of their attention, like children ogling a shiny new toy.
He had automatically turned to look.
He had heard the vague gossip about the new kid from some random thought here and there over the past week. A girl, one of the new police chief's daughters, moving from sunny Phoenix. He hadn't paid too much attention, too focused on other arrangements. But now, he looked up across the cafeteria.
(It was like he hit a wall.)
An ordinary girl— a bit too pale, a bit too rigid— fussing with her lunch card, looking distracted next to a chattering Jessica Stanley.
She looked anxious, staring avidly in front of her, never once looking around.
He automatically reached for the strands that he could pick up, that he could follow to pick her brain find out why. And—
Nothing.
Not even a whisper.
His siblings sat next to him, pretending to eat. And didn't notice that the universe had just shifted on its axis.
He watched her for the rest of the lunch period, trying to reach behind whatever that was that shielded her voice from him.
At one point, she froze in her seat.
She looked halfway up from her lunch tray and he felt a stir of excitement. She was going to follow that instinct humans had, the reaction to look up at the feeling of someone watching you. She would look up and look straight at him.
But no.
She stared at the same spot in front of her.
(His intuition flickered. It was like she was staring at him through her peripheral. Like she knew exactly where he was sitting, and she was deliberately not looking there.)
Then she looked down, her face strangely blank. Revealing nothing. The people next to her chattered away and she made no effort to join them.
For the first time in a long time, he felt blinded.
When she got up to dump her tray and head to class, he got up to do the same.
He had waited for her to get up first. She headed outside and the chilly wind blew her hair back as she pushed open the double doors, blowing her scent right into his face where he was standing, not ten feet behind her.
He remembers feeling disappointed.
It was strange in how boring it was. Muted, like the air around her.
(But he couldn't explain the inkling of suspicion. Like he was in the presence of something extraordinary, hidden behind a veil.)
(1 year, 1 day, 10 hours, 21 minutes, and 52 seconds ago)
He didn't tell any of his siblings of the mystery of Bella's block on his mindreading.
He could not rationalize why he didn't want to. It wasn't like it was dangerous or important for them to know. But he did not want to tell them.
He was alone for a long time, surrounded by people who were not. Carlisle had Esme, Rosalie had Emmett, Alice had Jasper. He could feel their pity towards his loneliness in their thoughts more and more.
It was strange and petty, but it was still not enough to get him to tell them.
The mystery of Bella Swan was something that was his alone.
He had no classes with her.
He spent his time pondering over explanations to her strangely silent mind. Nothing seemed to fit. He followed the thoughts of the people surrounding her, his attention split between trying to solve the mystery and genuine intrigue in the kind of person she would turn out to be.
He was left unsatisfied.
People talked to her, excited with the new girl. They wanted to be the ones to get her to speak, to gain her friendship. A few of the boys wanted something more than just friendship.
But she never let anything slip.
She would smile, nod, and offer small commentary, just enough to get people to think they knew her.
He learned that she missed Phoenix but was getting used to all the rain. He learned that she had already read all the books in her English class curriculum. He learned she disliked being called Isabella. Not because she had said it aloud, but because he had watched her face twist unhappily when people said it to her so many times. He learned that she had a little sister that she absolutely adored, not because she said it outright, but because her face would light up every time she answered that question.
"Do you have any siblings?"
"Yes, one. A little sister."
It was the happiest he ever saw her.
(But the shield was on her face more often that it wasn't. It was in her every expression— she hid her emotions well but the reason behind the vague sadness in her eyes when the mask fell away eluded him too.)
In the cafeteria— the closest he ever was to her— her face was blank. She put more effort in her mask then.
Not once did she ever look in the direction of the Cullen table. Not even accidentally.
Not even when the table's favorite topic of discussion— the scandal of the adopted Cullen's relationships— took over the conversation. Her eyes stayed glued to the lunch tray in front of her. Every time.
(Which was what gave her away.)
(1 year ago today)
Before the murders, Bella had been an enigma, a mystery he would only ponder at in a distance.
After.
After, Bella was a shrieking ghost, haunting his every thought.
(9 months ago)
Exactly three months after the murder of her entire family, Bella Swan had finally come back to school.
That morning, he had learned from the frenzied thoughts of the school guidance counselor, Ms. Patterson, that Bella's schedule had been flipped around to allow for a counseling session in the middle of her school day.
She would see the school counselor once a week to check in and would finish out her history class online to allow for the change.
That wasn't what made his breath seize in his lungs.
Bella now had Mr. Banner's 6th period biology class for the rest of the school year.
(the beginning)
He wouldn't have thought that brown could burn.
But her eyes did.
It was the first time she had ever looked at him, despite already attending Forks High School for 6 months.
They scorched with such a fire that the moment she walked into that biology classroom, he knew in a fraction of a second that she absolutely loathed him.
This was before the rumors started, back when people would look at Bella and feel pity. Along with a sense of voyeuristic fascination for the entire tragedy.
She walked into Mr. Banner's class with a martyred expression, the face of someone asked to do something despicable but necessary for a short period of time.
She took the only open seat in the room. Right next to his.
(There was ash on the bottoms of her shoes.)
She had shorn her long brown hair to a jagged cut level at her jawline.
He remembered Carlisle's memory of that night— the fire had eaten away the ends of her long hair into a melted mess. The new cut was choppy and harsh, like she had hacked away at it with dull scissors. It made her look older— sharper. More damaged.
The unhealthy pallor of her skin made her look like she was cold.
The burn scars that swept across her forehead were so faint that he doubted they would scar. There was a beige bandage on the side of her neck that covered the worst of the burns on her neck. Overall, she had healed miraculously well, though he couldn't judge the progress of the other scars he knew were there— the ones that had encased her entire right side— because of her thick green sweater and jeans.
There were deep, dark purple circles under her eyes that were a screaming sign of proof to the extent of her grief in the past few months.
She could almost pass for a vampire, he thought, if vampires could look like they were dying.
He had never seen anything so painful to look at.
She was thin, almost dangerously so.
(Her eyes screamed.)
For whatever reason, Bella Swan hated him before he even spoke a word to her.
He stared at her small, pale fists for the rest of the class period. She never relaxed her tension, not even for a second. He could see the white bandage on her right wrist. It peeked out from where she tried to hide it, under her sleeve.
When the bell rang, she sprang up from her chair.
Her leg brace was secured tightly around her right leg— no cast. Carlisle had been adamant that her broken femur would heal with no complications. It had been a clean break.
It did nothing to her ability to storm out of the classroom without a backwards glance. She was the first to leave the class.
He could only stare after her.
Her mind, as always, remained frustratingly blank.
He watched her through the minds of others as she left. He saw her eyes change from her burning stare to an exhausted weariness, as if her display of loathing had absolutely drained her.
For the rest of the day, he watched her.
The hostility did not return with any other person— she kept her face down, hiding as much of the burns and the cuts as she could, her hair falling in front of her face like a thick curtain. She looked at no one. She spoke to no one, not even to those few who braved the throng to offer their condolences. Even then, she kept her head down, completely mute, until the person would get frustrated and leave. She was a zombie, acknowledging no one. He had been the exception.
The mystery burned.
(now)
"Bella, wait."
(wait)
(it is the first thing he ever says to her)
A/N: Time skips around a lot in this chapter. Time for Edward gets more distinct and significant when he meets Bella. In case you didn't catch it, Edward and "the truth" will be an important part later in the story.
(I have updated this chapter in May 2020. Nothing too big, just a few stylistic things)