Time passed, long, blanks of hours I couldn't remember, and agonizing seconds of pain. I was aware when I had left the United States, because the language changed. I became Antonio Montez, and I began to lose my sense of myself.
One being couldn't survive this much torture, it was impossible.
Especially when he didn't want to try.
The lifeline was always tauntingly available, the plane ticket to Washington I bought then tore into shreds countless times. Her window was fixed in my mind, forever open. I just had to go back, scale the wall, and she would wake from her sleep, startingly beautiful.
Her mouth would open in a small "O", and she would fall into my arms. Sometimes, in my daydreams, she murmured my name over and over, sometimes she wept, staining my shirt with salty tears.
A couple times she backed away from me, her face twisted in pain and anger, and screamed out, "Don't touch me! Get away from me, Edward!" I would back away, and she would smash the window closed, but I didn't care, that hallucination was as beautiful as all the others, to hear her voice, to hear her say my name.
The daydreams swam up more and more often now, when I was out searching to pick up Victoria's scent, when I was talking to an unknown someone about something I wouldn't remember afterwards, when I was crouching in my rented room, curled into a ball, sobbing tearlessly.
I also seemed less like a vampire, for I could hear in the thoughts of the minds around me that my face was no longer beautiful, or at least more of a dark beauty. That my hair was no longer lustrous, that my eyes were brooding and dark, shadowed pits instead of enchanting gold.
I appeared clumsy, clumsier than she had, even. When someone's eyes, someone's smell, a song blaring out of someone's window, reminded me of her, I was no longer strong enough to keep from falling to the ground and staying down.
The small rooms I rented had grey walls, used furniture- nothing brown, that was her favorite color- always as quiet and still as a cemetary.
Still, I ran into memories of her at a daily basis. The landlady reading Wuthering Heights, as I passed by. "Claire de Lune" by Debussy sounding out of someone's car windows. When this happened, my chest threatened to rip itself open and expose my black, empty hole I had instead of the non-beating heart I had left in Forks.
All my CDs, DVDs, books slowly filled my wastebasket, as I picked them up and fruitlessly tried to distract myself.
Accompanying them were long letters in my once-perfect, now faltering handwriting I had written to her, apologizing, telling her where I was, what I had been doing that week if I remembered. No letters got sent.
"Bella," I wrote,
"I'm in Mexico City now, living in a room beehind a bar. I hear the raucous, loud voices, and it reminds me of that time in Port Angeles... how I hope you are safe, wherever you are.
"I hear them, and I imagine you coming into this room, scared. The faces of the men look different, not Mexican, but their expressions and thoughts are the same. I call out, warning you, telling you to go back, though no one can hear me in the other room above the drunken voices and music. Eventually you leave, as though you had heard me. Of course, no one entered the room; the door is still closed. Are you remembering me, as I remember you?
"I remember how you were such a trouble magnet- I hope you're not in danger now. I'm tracking Victoria, you'll be safe from her, I promise.
"Still, I am so anxious, and these daydreams come so often now. I fear I am going mad. If you saw me now, you wouldn't know me, for I now look like a monster on the outside as well as the inside. When you do get to heaven- I have no doubt that's where you'll go- look down on me, and know I am doing this for you.
"Loving you for all existence,
Edward."
Calls from my family in Denali came every couple months. They were worried about me- I could hear that in their voices. Rosalie, of course, berated me for being selfish. She told me how the family was dead without me, how the house rang with silence, with the memory of laughter and smiles. Tanya and their coven looked at them with pity, but not understanding. She didn't see why all this fuss was made over one insignificant human-
Once she got to Bella, I always clicked the phone closed.
Sometimes their calls awoke my simmering temper, and I screamed at them, ripping out obscenities, speaking like the people I now lived with. More times, I hardly heard what they said, preferring to sink further into the stupor that was constantly available whenever I closed my eyes and saw her face behind my lids.
The thirst, also, was getting to be a problem, but I still didn't bother to hunt. I began to see the blood swim in my mind whenever a human passed by. It was one time when I had just hung up from one of Rosalie's most aggravating tirades, and a woman on a motorcycle swerved, slipped on ice, and slammed into a tree. Blood began to gush from her forehead.
My instincts took over and a crouched, preparing to spring, my burning throat singing with joy. My muddled brain was beyond anything when I heard it.
Her voice, crying out in fear and horror. "No, Edward!" she called, as if calling down from heaven, my personal gaurdian angel. "No, you don't want to do this- think of Carlisle!"
It startled me enough that I straightened out of my attacking crouch.
"You can't do that, Edward. You know how disappointed I would be." Her glorious voice sounded angry now.
I ran from the scene, ran away from the alluring blood, ran from the temptation to do what hurt her.
So my throat hurt, but my heart hurt a thousand times more.
And my misery continued.
Stephenie Meyer owns everything.
To do the next chapter, I need the dialogue between Bella and Laurent in the NM scene in the meadow, as I don't have the book. If you can help out, please review, PM, or email me. Again, my email is "ginny underscore pwns at hotmail dot com". I am now number 57 on the New Moon waiting list at the library. !rolls eyes