Chapter 10: Hard Lessons and Tragic Endings

Edward

"Please do not do it, Edward." She beseeched me. I am sure if she was capable tears would have been pouring. Behind me in grey cloaks were Aro's most trusted, little Jane and her twin Alec, Dmitri and Felix. They were waiting to see what I would do.

Before me stood Alice, also cloaked. As they waited, as I deliberated, the sun crept higher in the sky. My chance would soon be gone. If I was going to go through with this it was now, and yet something in Alice's pleading struck a nerve.

"I've seen it all, and I am begging you not to do any of it. Come home with me, Edward. Come home and join us again. We miss you." She held out a second cloak towards me.

"Nothing matters anymore." I said tiredly. "I have nothing left to live for."

"You have everything." She answered in a low voice.

"She was my life, Alice!" I glared at her. "She was the only thing I have ever wanted. I could not keep her safe and I could not damn her so I left, but it was the worst thing I could have done. I buried my love alive and now I am following it into that grave."

"You don't understand!" Alice cried. "If you go out into that sun you will be punished but not how you think."

Behind me I heard Jane's sinister laugh. She knew what her master had planned for me should I expose myself but she was not telling. Jane is very big on torture.

"Then tell me, Alice. Tell me what could be worse than this?"

"Fine." She replied shortly. "If you step into that light Aro, Marcus and Caius have decided they will have you tortured until you beg for death, but you will not get your wish. Eventually Aro's offer will be given once more. I saw you accept it, Edward, even before you realised you wanted it."

I stared at her. How did she know I had even considered Aro's proposal? I had made no decisions, to my knowledge, about accepting it but here she was telling me I had. I could not fathom it.

"I would never become one of them."

"But you do, Edward, unless you come home with me now."

I finally let down my guard, let her into my head and listened to what she'd been trying to push on me. She had seen me accept a position in Aro's contingent, had seen me kill humans, drink from them. She saw me become the monster I had tried to tell Bella I was. The images horrified me.

"I cannot go back, Alice." I choked out. "But I do not want to become that."

"Then leave with me now. Once we are out of Volterra tonight you can go wherever you want, but please Edward, change your mind."

"She loves him." I stated, though my words seemed out of context.

"I think so." Alice nodded. "But we love you. I don't want to lose you. Come with me."

~O~

Numbly I lay in the snow and stared up at the stars. I had followed Alice, left Volterra, but I had not been able to face the others. Carlisle, my father and creator; Esme, my mother; Rosalie, Emmett, Jasper: I could not face them again. I had left Alice behind as soon as our plane landed. I was now somewhere in the middle of nowhere Alaska.

In my head were the memories I had of my last glimpse of Bella as she laughed happily and kissed him. As she gave her love to someone else. Shaking those unpleasant thoughts away I remembered instead the happiest moment of my life, the day she and I came to terms in the meadow. The day I lost my heart to a mortal.

I knew I would never stop loving her; I still wanted to die but the Volturi would not give me that which I wanted. It was either suffer alone, suffer with they who still claimed me as family, or become a worse monster than I already was. The choices were not very appealing, but the first was the most tolerable.

I had already decided to lose the name I had gone by for almost a hundred years and revert back to my human name. I did not want to be tied to the Cullens, did not want to know them any longer. They were reminders to what I was giving up. I knew I would need to get up soon, need to hunt, but I ignored the thirst. Instead I sighed and closed my eyes, sinking deeper into the snow.

Life would have to wait until the heartbreak ceased.

~O~

I don't know how long I lay there, how long it was before my eyes fluttered open. I had not slept, I was incapable of doing so, but I had drifted. I had allowed my mind to go free, thinking only of times before Bella, trying to get back to a time when I was not happy but at least I was not lost.

Edward…

The thought was not mine. It came from nearby and I struggled up from my snowy bed to see Tanya sitting nearby. She looked comfortable, as if she had been there for quite some time. Her eyes were focused on me, and they were black. She had not fed for a while. As I realised that I also recognised my own hunger.

"How long?" I asked. Tanya sighed.

"A week. Irina found you here. The three of us have been taking turns sitting and watching you."

"Did you tell the Cullens?" I asked. She hesitated but I did not need her words; I already knew her thoughts. She was concerned by my calling the others by their name as if it was not mine, and Kate had indeed sought Carlisle and told him of my whereabouts.

"Yes." She finally replied, knowing very well I had taken the answer from her. She looked away from me for a brief second then returned her gaze to mine. She was holding nothing back in her thoughts, she never did.

"Please, Tanya, not now." I whispered.

"I just need to know why."

"Because I love her."

"She is mortal."

"That does not stop you." I shot her a cold look.

"But I do not stay with one person," she argued. "I love them but I do not let them rule my life as you have let her do."

"I have never felt love like this before. It is new to me, and beautiful, but even the most beautiful things can hurt. I left her behind because I cannot see her as a monster like me, but with her I left my heart."

"You need to move on, Edward. You left her to keep her safe, so leave everything; the pain, the love, all of it. If you continue to hold it close you will never be able to stay away."

In Tanya's head I could 'hear' her memory of one man, her first after she'd gotten over the first year of fledgling bloodlust. She had loved him deeply but in the end had left him for his safety as well. She was trying to let me know I was not alone; though she ceased thinking of him one thought slipped through and I saw his death by her hands.

She was right, of course. In the end she'd not been strong enough to stay away, she had allowed her heart to do the thinking for her and he had ended up in a grave. I was headed down this same course.

I allowed a small smile to fly across my lips, gone as quickly as it had come. Tanya stood in one graceful movement and held a hand down to me, a peace offering of sorts.

"You do not need to forget, Edward…" She said. Though she did not finish this sentence aloud I heard it clearly.

You just need to let it go.

The lesson had been a difficult one to learn, and its ending was even more tragic than that. I placed my hand in Tanya's and stood up to face her.

"Thank you."

"I did nothing."

"Yes," I said gravely, "you did. Tell me one thing, though."

"Yes?"

"Did you really bury him, and do you actually still visit his grave?"

"Matthew was special, and yes to both counts. Is this relevant?" She furrowed her brow.

"More than you know."

I would do my best to stay away from Bella; I did not want her to be my Matthew. She deserved a life and she deserved to have the love of someone who could give her that, even if he was, literally, my mortal enemy. I could not resent her for finding that love, no matter where or who it came from, though I envied him the chance and the ability to give to her what I wanted…

Because some love is better than no love at all, right?