Enjoy the final chapter in this fanfiction.
Disclaimer: I may have written a story in which I manipulated her characters, but Stephanie Meyer is still the rightful owner of the 'Twilight' franchise.
Bella clung to me, resting her cheek on my shoulder. Before, I might have pushed her off; now I didn't have the heart, so I tried to ignore it instead.
"Did everything work out, then?" said Carlisle, looking up from the book he was holding, 'Wicked'. From his smug expression, I could see he knew full well that everything had worked out, but not in the way I had wanted. It was Bella's cold skin that rested on mine, not Jacob's warm one, and that's how it would be. Forever.
"Yes," said Bella. "I knew that Edward would work out his issues with Jacob eventually." She kissed my cheek. Carlisle smiled, the kind of smile belonging to someone who knew far more than everyone else, and knew it, too. Not that it was difficult to know more than Bella. She was far too oblivious, or at least stubbornly oblivious. Maybe she just didn't want to see the obvious, that her perfect husband didn't love her, that her perfect life really wasn't all that perfect.
Sooner or later, she would realise.
"I'm going for a walk," I announced, gently pushing Bella away and standing up.
"Be careful," said Carlisle, still smiling. The only thing that would threaten us were other vampires, and if I couldn't sense them with my mind, it was very unlikely they were there, but I knew what he meant, to be careful of what I might see in the cottage, my real reason for walking in the first place.
"... So then I saw them kissing. Two men. It's so unnatural." Emmett's stupid voice. I wanted to punch him, but held myself in check.
"Don't be so insensitive, Emmett," said Alice, seeing me on the other side of the door. "I'm sure you're just jealous no handsome guys want to kiss you." She stuck her tongue out, and walked over to me.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Fine."
"You don't look..." She trailed off when she saw my expression, an intense amber glare telling her to drop the subject. "Well, alright then. If you need someone to talk to, I'm here." She gave my arm a small squeeze, and left me in peace. I considered once again putting Emmett out of his ignorant misery, doing the more informed world a great deal of good, watching him suffer silently, stupendously. But he was a vampire, so it would be next to impossible. And stupid. I gave up the thought again.
Alone, I walked in the twilight, back to the cottage. Through the window I could see Jacob, bending down ever so slightly, wearing no shirt. Renesme sat on the sofa, laughing at some silly joke he had told, or just the moment. He was laughing too, looking cheerful despite some embarrassment. I could see his perfectly toned muscles, his starlit nipples... I looked away. Carlisle was right, sadist though he was. I should have been careful. But he would never be mine, not after the lake, the kiss. All I had was Bella, the limpet I would never get rid of. No matter how much I would continue to grow to dislike her, I would never divorce her. I had pledged myself to her, words that couldn't be taken back. Even if Jacob had accepted me, I'm not sure I would have been able to break them, break my old-fashioned beliefs that the others still mocked me for.
Bella and I together, until death do us part.
The perfect life, frozen forever like a photograph, living our perfect life out in the place that barely changed. The insistently stupid lover and the one who would grow more and more distant as time passed, the perfect moments that wouldn't last forever, would be crushed by the passage of time and the loss of innocence. One day Bella would come to loathe me, loathe my disdain of her, loathe that we would not be separated until one of us died. Carlisle knew it. Alice knew it. The others pretended they couldn't see it. Only Renesme and Bella couldn't see it, blinded by their own love.
The perfect life would be no more.
I walked back to the house, where Bella greeted me by throwing her arms around me. Rigidly, I patted her back. She smiled. Carlisle, watching from the next room, also smiled.
To anyone else, it would have seemed a perfect life.
Absolutely perfect.
And so, we reach the end of this fanfiction.
Now that we are at the end, I would like to say that this fanfiction wasn't written by one person, but two: me, who wrote the chapters from Edward's point of view, and my co-author who wrote for Bella. We may not have always been consistent, but sharing the writing of a story with someone else has been great fun, so thanks go out to her for making this worth it.
Along the way, we decided to set each other chapter challenges, starting in chapter six and going right to the end. Including weird words, strange events to occur and plenty of other things besides, there were between three and five per chapter; if you can spot them (and better yet, if you can notice what certain ones are referencing), you will get epic bonus points and your name on a list somewhere.
Finally, for those of you who have made it this far, for anyone who's submitted a review or shown even remote interest, thank you for your support. I doubt this fanfiction would have continued to completion without you. You really have made it all worthwhile, so thank you.