Thanks to addicttwilight2. Standard disclaimers continue to apply.
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Better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there.
~ Otomo No Yakamochi
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Chapter Three: Blood
The city was full of pregnant women.
In their many and varied forms they waddled though the streets, casting a golden glow of happiness wherever they went, smiling serenely as their fingers stroked their bumps lovingly, back and forth, in an almost unconscious gesture.
Edward couldn't stop looking at them.
Some had wedding rings, some didn't. Some were preoccupied with getting home to their men to receive a much-needed foot rub, some were just concentrating on making it through the next few hours. Some were gloriously round with child, some sported flat bellies but carried their secret with pride all the same, basking in the beautiful mystery of new life.
One thing was universal. The clogging joy that filled them as they mediated on starfish hands and feet and eyes that blinked drowsily, on rosebud lips that tenderly suckled on a breast before stretching in a sated yawn, on the quiet mewls and bubbling laughter of infants.
No matter what other heartache these women were experiencing – be it the acidic feeling of latent morning sickness or the absent space in their lives the child's father should have filled– the elation that overflowed in their thoughts as they thought of their babies was ever-present, untainted.
He knew, logically, that not every woman on the planet was eager to fall pregnant, or glad when it happened. But it was so hard to hold onto that belief when he was faced with this tidal wave of happiness.
He felt sick to his stomach. How could he have so easily dismissed this part of womanhood? How could he have married Bella in the knowledge that she could never feel this way, could never experience the unequivocal magic of carrying a child within her body, holding her baby in her arms?
For the first time, he could contemplate Black's presence in her life with something other than blind fury. Looking at it from a purely academic point of view, he could understand how she would want him – want what he could give her out of life. Want to be able to touch her lover without fear, want to go to bed with him and wake up with him every morning, want to...
Want to carry his child...
Maybe that's why she had left him. Maybe she had fallen pregnant by Black and had known that she could no longer continue with the double life she'd so obviously been living.
He wrenched himself violently from his cursed thoughts. This was exactly why he'd failed last time, he told himself angrily. He'd been so consumed by the torture of not being with Bella that he had allowed Victoria to create opportunities that never should have been present, to slip through his grasp like quicksilver. And it had almost led to disaster.
He'd almost lost her then.
He was without her now. And dammit, but he just wanted to find her again. To see her, talk to her, smell her hair. Most of all just to understand why.
He closed his eyes now, focused on releasing all scents but two from his mind.
Underneath the dust and soot and pollution of the city, under the different shades of human blood that tingled delectably in his nostrils, he detected a faint, but very definitely familiar scent. He wrinkled his nose. Decaying organic material mixed with the scent of animal waste and a hint of – there was no other way to say it – wet dog assaulted his senses, making him hiss quietly as he registered the presence of an enemy. And yes, underneath the overpowering stench, a faint hint of freesia and strawberries sang to him.
Closing his eyes, he concentrated fully on the odours. His feet pulled him almost mechanically, his entire body straining around every corner, sure that he would soon see his wife, would soon know if she loved him, if she'd ever loved him, or if she truly wanted Jacob Black now.
He made his way through the city blindly. With his cursed vampiric memory and enhanced senses it was nearly impossible for him to walk in circles and yet somehow that felt like exactly what he was doing.
He gritted his teeth and tried again, seeking a new angle, a new side street. He found an alley where the faint traces of the dog's stench grew exponentially, but all markers disappeared straight afterwards.
He growled in anger. The smog and pollution of the city had stolen his wife's delicate fragrance from him. It was a dead end.
Turning, he unleashed his frustration onto the nearest object he could see – a large dumpster. The metal groaned as his fist punched straight through it. The unleashing of his feelings felt good, but only for a moment, after which he was doused in shame for not being able to control himself better. This unrestrained, feral creature was what Bella Swan had pledged her life to.
He inhaled sharply in grief, then froze.
There was a human standing at the end of the alley, staring at him, and now walking towards him.
Whoever it was, man or woman, he didn't care. He could feel a barrage of thoughts invading his subconscious but he heard none of them. The person could have been a saint or a murderer, it would not have mattered.
The only thing in his mind was that he was a predator, he was thirsty, and this human was too close to him, much too close.
He held his breath, longing for relief, for rationality, but found only raging need. His mouth pooled with venom.
"Are you okay? I heard something crash..." A musical, lilting voice. So, this person was a woman, then...
Of course the call of her blood did not hold even one-tenth the power over him that Bella's once had. But it was something, something hot and wet in his mouth, something to fill the aching hole inside him, something to bring him an ounce of satisfaction, of peace...
His eyes raked over her form, calculating, and he froze as he noticed long dark hair clinging gently to the nape of her neck. Her eyes were blue and intent as they looked into his.
He drew a deep breath, and felt flames scorch his throat with a black, dead heat. And still this woman, this vessel of hot, rich, sweet human blood... drew ever nearer.
There was a floral undertone to her blood, the earthy concentrated musk of lavender rather than the softer fragrance of freesia he so longed for. Even so, the scent was enough like Bella's that he froze in disbelief, sure for a moment that it was his wife wrapped up in a cunning disguise.
Everything suddenly just crashed in on itself, all his hurt, all his pain, all his longing. He crumpled, his body jack-knifing as he wrapped his arms around himself and sobbed, tearlessly, in the dirt of the alley.
"It's okay," the woman's voice murmured soothingly in his ear, and still he sobbed, shaking his head. Nothing was okay, nothing would ever be okay again. This woman and her lack of self-preservation and her ridiculous compassion at the distress of a man lurking in an alley were swirling reality around him again, so that when he looked up at her, he saw brown eyes where there should have been blue and imagined pale skin where there was tan.
"I'm sorry," he mouthed, and was amazed when the words actually seemed to make sense to her. He watched her lips as they moved, hearing but not understanding the sounds that bubbled out, and for a moment he could see the shadow of his wife's rosy mouth on this stranger's face so clearly that he swayed forward to steal a kiss.
The woman recoiled, her body freezing. That tiny, insignificant action, which would have barely been noticed by anyone, was his undoing. His and hers.
"Get away from me," Bella screamed. "Don't touch me. You're a monster. I don't want you. I'm tired, okay? I'm so tired!"
His eyes blackened. Fear and pain twisted in his gut. Somehow they formed a potent rage that tormented the beast inside, dancing around it, taunting it.
The woman's dark hair served as just enough similarity for his crazed mind. Never again would his wife flinch away from him.
Faster than the nameless human woman could understand, he shot up from the ground, bending her backwards, baring her neck.
He bit. And he drank.
Hot. Wet. Beautifully sweet in his mouth. He was a dying man in the desert and her blood soothed his thirst as it poured down his throat.
Her hands fisted in his hair, tugged desperately. He growled, remembering a time when that simple action had meant so much more than this. When it had been an unrestrained and passionate response to his kiss, rather than the desperate struggle of a dying animal. But it would all be okay, soon. His wife was here now, and he was making her eternal.
"You're ready now, then?" he whispered, his teeth an inch from her neck.
"Yes," she murmured back, her soft doe eyes looking deep into his.
The image hit him squarely in the centre of his chest – not just the physical picture, but the feeling it inspired. Bella in his arms, vowing to be his eternal partner, his everything...
"She's gone, Edward." Alice's voice was grim. "She's gone. It's over. I am... so sorry."
He froze in the act of drinking.
He was struck through with fear.
His wife. His wife... had left him. She was... wasn't here.
She wasn't here, and in the selfish need to grab her imagined form and never let it go, he was killing an innocent woman.
Edward recoiled viciously from the prone figure of his victim.
He raised a shaking hand to his mouth, disbelieving of his actions until he drew it back and saw it covered in blood.
He could hear them now – the thoughts of his prey. Her entire being was curling up under the fire of his venom, and still her mind lingered on the love she felt for the two small sons she'd left in the company of her treasured husband, the dawning knowledge and bitter regret that she would never see them again, her mind struggling to come to terms with the fact that her altruistic gesture had ended in this bloodbath...
He had taken this woman from her family, just as he'd wrenched Bella from hers. He had denied her the chance of watching her children grow, just as he'd attempted to do with Bella. He had... had...
If it could have been possible, in that moment, for him to vomit, he would have done so. The urge to undo what he had done, to pour this woman's life back into her body, to rewind time and freeze his actions, would have ensured that reflex.
But as he looked at her writhing form, he knew, with bitterly sane certainty, that there was only one way to end this. This woman did not deserve to be damned to the life he cursed daily, should not be subjected to this eternal hell, should not have to watch her sons grow and die from a distance, longing to touch them and yet unable to.
On more practical terms, he knew he was in no condition to properly train and counsel a newborn vampire who would understandably loathe the mere sight of him, and unleashing a bloodthirsty monster on the streets of Seattle would result in even more innocent deaths.
And so, the bitterness of his regret thick in the back of his throat, he reached down to the terrified human and placed his hands tenderly on the sides of her neck.
"I am so very sorry," he whispered in torment, then flexed his fingers gently, wincing as he heard the vertebrae snap.
The woman's body went limp and her eyes stared lifelessly into his own. And he could feel – could quite literally feel – whatever vestiges of soul Bella had returned to him flee his cursed, murderous body.
Then he was standing, moving, striding away from the woman whose blood he had drank and whose body he had mauled, away from the whole ugly mess he'd created. Moving quickly enough to be invisible to the naked eye, as if by dint of speed alone he could outrun what he'd caused.
He had no idea where he was going or what he would do once he got there. But he was moving, at least. That was good.
He'd find somewhere isolated, somewhere out of the way, where he couldn't hurt himself or anybody else. And he'd wait for things to make sense again.
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