Chapter Twenty-Four

The Cullens decided to leave Forks in early December. They would all be relocating, but in separate pieces. They had come to a consensus: temporary space would be beneficial for everyone. As much as they all preferred to stay in one place - and as one piece - for as long as possible, some space was needed. It wasn't because they were weak, though; it was because they were trying to be stronger. Carlisle and Esme had their eye on Syracuse; Alice and Jasper took an interest in Glasgow. Everybody had spent a long time in Forks. They would just be moving on like they usually did, but with less people and to different destinations.

Bella and Edward still had no idea where to go. Edward, whose memory was much better than it had been a month ago, was still as static as ever. It had merely been in his nature all along, whether mortal, immortal, or something else. He wasn't entirely ready to leave Forks just yet, but Bella had been ready to go since her forever with him had been obliterated. She had never believed - and she still didn't believe - that Edward had chosen mortality over her, and while he was somewhere between mortal and immortal now, it still wasn't enough. She had never expected her existence to be complicated like this. She should have known, though. She should have seen the turmoil from the very beginning, and she shouldn't have needed Alice's special ability to see it coming.

On a cold afternoon in December, Bella sat in the cottage with Edward. Bella had lost her mind, Edward had lost his, and they had both lost everything else, but Renesmee's shadow remained in the cottage, along with her belongings. She had spent so little time in the cottage within the last few years that it was like she had never left it for good.

Bella just couldn't hope Renesmee would come home anymore.

With a cushion between the two of them, both Bella and Edward sat on the couch, quiet and civil, but Bella was boiling underneath it all - more than the usual. Waiting on him, she had no clue how to contain herself. She didn't know herself at all anymore. The constant hostility she felt especially threatened to ooze from her now.

He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees. His palms touched, and they were placed against his nose and mouth. He stared straight and barely moved his lips when he asked her, "What are you thinking about?"

She kept still, sitting like the perfect, complacent porcelain doll. She could feel herself collecting dust. "I've been thinking about forever," she said. "You don't think so far ahead, do you?"

"I don't. Forever is a long time."

"I suppose it is."

"I still love you, you know," he told her. "I still love the woman I met here, in Forks."

A while ago, she would have melted at him saying this. A while ago, when she had been a fool, she would have hated him one minute and swooned the next just at him saying something slightly endearing. But she had been right all along: Edward Cullen was not an endearing person. That, she knew.

"I suppose you do," she replied.

The Cullens went their separate ways that afternoon, and Edward had decided on Reykjavík. Flying to Iceland had always been one of his favorite activities, so he imagined it would be his favorite place to live. Edward went out to his hangar to make flight preparations; he and Bella planned on leaving that night.

Bella, alone in Forks, felt her head spinning. She had done it. She had reached a nomadic point of madness. She had spun out so far from reality, so far from her expectations, and she had nothing. She had nothing to her name anymore, nothing she could control. It was time.

If she could no longer have the pure forever that she had anticipated on, then she would have to do what any other person would do: she would erase the ugliness that was left and do it all over again.

Bella poured gasoline into every room of the cottage, left it, and threw in not one lit match, but five, successfully setting fire to it. As she watched the small house go up in flames, she twisted off her wedding ring and tossed it into the fire. It turned to nothing, just like everything else.

If she could buy forever at a price, she would buy it twice. There was no way she would give it up. Would she create a new one? Sure. But would she give it up? Never. Now, she created a blank space. Erasing everything - all the memories of her love with Edward, all the memories of Renesmee, all the memories of any happiness - was going to hurt now, but it wouldn't hurt forever. Nothing lasted forever. She kept telling herself Nothing lasts forever as she watched the cottage be engulfed by flames. That little mantra was the only thing that sustained her.

And it was then that she realized she was just like every other person to ever exist. She was forever chasing after time. People - human or not - loved to leave their mark, to make the world aware of who they were and what they did to change it. Everybody wanted to live and die meaningfully, and for Bella, she just wanted to not be consumed by her surroundings. She didn't want this horrendous tragedy to be the story she wouldn't get to tell, the story that ruined her for eternity. It wasn't enough for her to live a lucky life - she wanted to be victorious in any ways that she could. All that she had left was her pride, and it needed to be fulfilled.

She watched the cottage and all its memories die away in the fire, with the flames starting to lick at her marble skin. She didn't know where this would lead her, or where she would go. All she knew was that nothing lasted forever.

Edward came home at twilight, but when he saw the uncontrollable fire that had engulfed the cottage, confusion and horror fell upon his face. Bella had been watching him from the shadows of the trees, meters away from where the cottage had been.

She emerged, looking as pretty as a picture. There wasn't a trace of ashes on her. She was just too good. But even though she couldn't see it, she knew there was blood on her hands. There was too much blood on her hands for her to see him like this for a second longer.

He didn't have to asked if she did started the fire or not. Instead, he asked her, "Why?"

She didn't answer his question. All she did was nod her head towards the woods. "Take a walk with me."

He followed her until they were deep in the woods, so deep that they could hardly see the orange in the sky. They weren't too far from what had been home, though; the smell of smoke was still prominent in the air.

Bella stopped walking and turned around to face him. "We can't do this anymore, Edward," was what she told him.

She'd never given much thought to how she would die. She would never die, though; it was almost like she had known that all along. She had known for a long time that she would eventually have her forever; she just hadn't considered the possibility of Edward not being a part of it. And she was fine with that now, as long as she would be eventually be peaceful.

Back in a previous life—an easier one, at that—she would have died for him. Everything she did would have been for him. She had lived for him, and when she thought about it, she truly had died for him. She had died everyday for him because it had been the right thing to do, and because she had thought it would all work out eventually. With her luck, she should have known that nothing would work out after all.

When she thought about it now, there was nothing right about it. Him, her, the idea of him and her. Maybe he'd known that it wasn't right, but he'd done it, anyway. He had been—since he definitely was not now—a villain like that. And of course, that was fine with her. She was a villainess. It was practically her middle name. They were a team, a pair, yet they were so far away from each other that he was now the lesser of two evils.

For some reason, he still put up a fight. He still thought that there was a love worth fighting for amid all the emotional imbalances and abuse that had ensued for what could have been an eternity. That hurt her more than anything else. "Why not?" he asked innocently, stupidly. "I thought we would repair everything once we got to Iceland."

"It's far too late," she said, her voice low and peaceful.

He said nothing. He knew.

How was it so easy for her to look so fondly in the face of complete innocence and plain, earthly beauty only to shatter it? To anybody else, it wasn't easy; it wasn't supposed to be easy. Everybody had their deal of difficult times to get through, but maybe she'd had just had too many times like this. Maybe she'd been broken somewhere in the middle of this journey, so these times weren't that difficult anymore. They were only difficult for people who had feelings. She wasn't one of those people. Having grown indifferent to pain and loss, that made a lot sense—almost too much sense, really.

She looked down at innocent green eyes filled with tears, but not quite releasing them, and he held his breath and prayed for his soul. She would pray for hers, too, but it was impossible to pray for something that didn't exist. It was impossible to hope for nothing.

She wanted to say she was sorry, but sorry was just another one of her phrases. It was so classic that it was almost sickening. She had been sorry for bleeding, sorry for crying, and sorry for living. Sorry hadn't done anything, and it never would. When the weak had nothing good of their own to give, what were they to do?

They were to take.

Sorry had no effect on monsters like her.

After this moment, she would erase everything that had ever been Edward and Bella. After this moment, there would be no trace of them or Renesmee or Jacob or anybody else associated with them. Nothing of any of them would exist after this moment. The memories of them would all be ashes, just like the cottage. His brain was practically blank still; he would be able to handle it and move on, knowing that he never existed, that Bella never existed, and that nothing concerning them mattered anymore.

But in this moment, he finally released a single tear. From all the years he had been capable of crying in front of her, he finally took the chance now. The tear rolled down his pale face, and his green eyes glimmered as more tears came out, but they had no effect on her.

Her hand traced his cheek, light as a feather. She knew keeping him away from the physical pain wouldn't numb the mental, but she couldn't afford to hurt him any more than she might in this moment.

"It will be as if I'd never existed."

Remedium

Fin.