Disclaimer: I don't own the Cullens or any of Twilight. I don't own the songs I'm using (Beauty From Pain By Superchick). Ileana's past is my past, though, except for the part where something ACTUALLY HAPPENS, so I guess the four characters I created to be Bella's coven are kind of mine, but it's not like I want them.
Ch.2
I panicked. I was already so cold, so numb, so empty. This darkness had been a part of me for so long that sometimes I didn't even notice its presence. It was like a second limb, paralyzed, slowing me down. I didn't like it one bit, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.
"What's on your mind?" Ileana said, leaning against my open door. I shrugged my shoulder. The world, darkness, icicles, flowers that don't belong. Emptiness; a dark, cloudy cave; a dark ocean; an eternal pit. What else.
"Oh, nothing," I said, shrugging. Oh, that's right, though. Ileana was a walking lie-detector. That was her power: to be able to tell whether or not someone was telling the truth.
Ileana stood there, shaking her head. She walked over to the stained white couch I was sitting on and sat down beside me. "What's wrong, Bells?" she asked. "I thought you got over it. Your sad, depressed empty stage."
She didn't know the half of it. She didn't know about my past. What did she think I tortured myself about, anyways? Maybe she thought I hated being a vampire. Maybe she assumed I missed my human mother, who had died centuries ago, too much. 'Don't cling to the past, Bella,' I told myself. I tried to smile. Ashamed of myself for some reason I didn't really comprehend, I stared into Ileana's pale ruby eyes. Such a wild child. But such a beautiful heart.
"You're so lucky," I whispered. No human could have heard me.
Ileana shook her head. "No I'm not. It took me a long time for me to get this far, Bells. Jedson is my…life, my soul, my passion, my….my other half….but it took him a long time to accept it. You don't know how much it tore my heart apart when I was human, Bella. Part of me was telling myself that I must of made the whole thing up, created an illusion in my head. I drove myself insane. I was so empty, my secret gnawing at my insides, knowing that I would hurt him if he knew, if my brother knew that I thought of him as anything more than a brother. At the time, I had thought it was impossible for him to love me back. I fascinated about it all the time, but I knew it would never happen. And then, it did. Slowly, Bella. Slowly, we started realizing that we were there for each other. And then, it all came crashing into the both of us, our bodies colliding…so much sexual tension relieved, but so much more, too. And as soon as we accepted it, it became so much more. But people were suspicious. People found out, Bella, and we had to retreat. I never told you this, Bella. I lied. We ran away together. It was impossible, and there were times that we hated each other because of all of the stress that came along with…well, breaking the law….and then, you know the rest. A miracle happened, something most people wouldn't think of as a miracle, but to us, it was."
"See, you're lucky. You have each other. I have no on e," I said.
"You know that's not true, Bells," Ileana said. "You have us." I couldn't help the tiny voice inside my head, betraying me, 'but that's not enough! It's not enough! It's not enough!'
I have my chance now. No. There was never a chance. I have to put it all behind me. Hate him, for what he did to me. Hate him, for leaving me stranded in the forest, empty and dead and torn apart. I couldn't help myself; in silent reverie, I felt my mind going back to one of my old memories.
Flashback
I had decided to kill myself a week in advance. Now, I know I said I didn't leave any notes, but this didn't count as a note. To me it was more like a ritualistic ceremony. I needed closure, a memoir to remind me of my haunted dreams when my ghost revisited Earth's feeble grounds. I needed to free myself of my pain, and the only way to do that was to bury it. At first I thought our meadow would be the perfect place, but something inside me was holding on to things that I wasn't supposed to allow myself to hold on to, and it…that thing inside of me, that…demon, you could call it….refused to contaminate OUR meadow. That demon, she was one stubborn chick. So many times, she had considered running after the love of her life. But then she remembered that he didn't love her; that he didn't love me. It was dark outside, and the metal fireproof safe that I had bought with my savings was heavy in my arms. I forced myself not to think of what was incased safely inside of it: the jars of my blood I had collected over the past couple of months. I was freezing. There were no stars in the sky tonight.
The lights go out all around me
One last candle to keep out the night
And then the darkness surrounds me
I know I'm alive but i feel like I've died
And all that's left is to accept that it's over
My dreams ran like sand through the fists that i made
I try to keep warm but I just grow colder
I feel like I'm slipping away
There was also a scrap of paper inside the fireproof box. Not so many words. I only needed one sentence, and it wasn't really a sentence. Just a doomed phrase that would never be seen by anyone. "It was always yours, Edward." I guess I could say that it had a double meaning.
After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I've cried my last, there'll be beauty from pain
Though it won't be today,
Someday I'll hope again
And there'll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain
My knees crumpled to the ground. My heart was in too much pain. It belonged to him , and it couldn't beat without him. I grabbed my shovel as if it was a sword and I was an ancient samurai, about to kill the evil villain that murdered the beautiful princess. I shook my head. I shoved the sword…no, shovel…into the ground, and watched as brown dirt was replaced with empty space.
I couldn't help myself. I keeled over and my tears fell into the hole. I brought my mouth to Earth's surface and I tasted the dirt. I didn't spit it out. 'If someone dared you to eat dirt, you could, right?'
His voice was just an illusion. He was nowhere near me, and he never would. Soon, I would be dead. I dug deeper and deeper. The muscles in my arms burned from using so much energy. I was tempted to bury myself alive, but what was the point? I was already buried alive.
My whole world is the pain inside me
The best I can do is just get through the day
When life before is only a memory
I'll wonder why God lets me walk through this place
And though I can't understand why this happened
I know that I will when I look back someday
And see how you've brought beauty from ashes
And made me as gold purified through these flames
As soon as the hole was deep enough, I lowered the box filled with my life-force into it. I started piling dirt on top of it, until the hole was filled and the ground looked exactly like it did before I came. My heart was now buried. I heard the sick, painful laughter of some stranger echo throughout the air, and then I realized that it was myself. I forced myself to stand up, and walked away from the burial site.
After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I've cried my last, there'll be beauty from pain
Though it won't be today,
Someday I'll hope again
And there'll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain
I stumbled on a bunch of broken tree branches as I was trying to find my way out of the forest. I guess I was lost, but it wasn't like I cared. Remember, in a week I was committing suicide. I couldn't see any harm in fate taking its path seven days earlier. It was getting darker outside, and colder. I was only half aware that the sun had already gone down. The moon was pale, its faint glow as white as the vampire family that abandoned me. STOP IT! STOP THINKING ABOUT THEM! I felt a dull ache pierce through my veins. Why did everything have to remind me of HIM?!! What did I do to deserve this? I knew I was a bland, unlikeable person, but what had I done wrong. I called out to God. "WHAT IS IT?! IS IT BECAUSE IDIDN'T STAY WITH RENEE OR PHIL? DID I NOT SEND ENOUGH TIMEWITH CHARLIE? WAS THAT B I GOT THREE YEARS AGO THAT HORRIBLE THAT I AM TO BECURSED THIS WAY? What was I thinking? There had been so many things I had done wrong in the past. When I was eight and I accidently broke Renee's favorite vase. And that night a couple years ago when I forgot to cook dinner. I deserved this. I deserved this pain that shattered every single bone in my body.
Here I am, at the end of me
Trying to hold to what I can't see
I forgot how to hope
This night's been so long
I cling to your promise
There will be a dawn
Life would go on for the rest of my family. Life would go on for the shallow bastards at school who pretended to be my friends just for the heck of it. Life would go on, but not for me. (Oh how wrong I was there!)
After all this has passed, I still will remain
After I've cried my last, there'll be beauty from pain
Though it won't be today,
Someday I'll hope again
And there'll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain
Back to Present
I awoke from my trance. I realized how empty my wide eyes must have looked, staring into space like….FUCK! Why does everything have to remind me of some sick, unnatural element of my past?!?
"I'm fine, guys," I said in a frail voice. "Or at least, I will be."
"It's time, Bella," Kelsey said, reaching out to hold my hand.
"Time for what?" I asked.
"Time to go to school, silly," Kelsey said, grinning. I couldn't help it – I smiled too. Her attitude was contagious. Sometimes I wondered if she had a second power.
I frowned. Why in hells name do I have to keep reminding myself of my past?
My past is supposed to be "Lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." I chuckled darkly, thinking about Roy Batty from Blade Runner. If only I could be so lucky. Four freaking years. Too bad he didn't notice he was in love until she died. Oh well, it's just a movie.
And then, hand in hand with my coven (well, OKAY, OKAY, I'll admit it. Maybe they're more like family) I walked out the door of our Victorian-style house. We hopped into our cars, and off we were….
Hopefully he wouldn't recognize me, but something told me that black hair dye and fake blue eyes wasn't going to hide my face; not my physical face, but the one that identified me for who I really was. Well, here goes nothing….
To Be Continued….
SO……? What do you think? Tell me, tell me, tell me! Say anything, really. The button is waiting to be clicked. Guess what? Its venomous, so if you click it you get to become a vampire. Hurry up, before the other reviewers use up all the venom! Your time is ticking!