I, of course, do not own any of the characters portrayed in this story. All of the characters are the property of Stephanie Meyer

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Running

All I knew was the running.

For days on end, I refused to stop. Something so mindless, so naturel…It was the closest thing to sleep I could possibly have.

So I ran.

I ran to escape reality, heading east with the path of night so that I wouldn't have to stop for the binds of daylight. Because If I stopped…If I let myself think, I was afraid of what I may find I had become. So for now, it was the only escape.

No, more than that. It was my only hope, to somehow outrun the pain, the knowledge of myself and what I had done nipping at my heels.

More than anything, I wished to simply dissolve into the barren winds whipping at my face.

That thought struck me, and I pondered it further.

If I kept running, could I eventually dissolve? How different really was I to a marble statue, besides being animate?..And even that was open to discussion as far as mythical creatures were concerned. Did I count as a being at all? Or was I simply a golem, a member of the damned doomed to walk the earth never quite alive, yet never quite dead…

The more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder if perhaps the constant running was taking its toll on me, and I actually was dissolving into the wind, like a stone worn through. The primary reason for this was the gaping, ragged,emptiness that even all of my carefully composed numbness couldn't contain. It felt as if a giant hole had been ripped through my torso, as if my heart really had refused to part with Bell-

Dammit!

I cursed as my legs locked and I fell to the ground, propelling into a nearby spruce tree that promtly fell over. The seething agony blinded my other senses. I wished for death more feverantly that I ever had in my too long, drawn out li-..existance.

I had thought her name! All of my carefuly constructed oblivion, in shatters.

Dammit, Dammit, Dammit…

I chorused in my head as all of the hurt I had been outrunning promptly caught up with me. My breathing came sharp and ragged as each and every mistake I had made along the way presented itself. Every precious moment with Bella cut me with barbed, knife edges, and every cherished memory had come to haunt me with the bittersweet errors of my ways. Every time I had taken her closer, less and less from her own world and more into my own, as a spider wraps an insect before it feasts.

There was nothing in the world worth this kind of agony.

Except for one girl.

Somewhere in then very back corners of my mind, something was trying to get itself noticed, something I had forgotten…But to figure out what it was, I had to commit to the implausible task of getting a hold on myself…Which I was already doing in the literal sense, my arms pressed tightly around my body as I tried to hold my empty sides together.

Every moment was a curse I was damned to live, every tick of the clock another of the endless reaching eternities in which I was doomed to suffer. It was impossible, unthinkable, that with each new second I was still alive. Even immortality didn't seem a good enough means to be keeping me alive at this point of agony, and I found the only thing thing keeping me from going and finding some other means of death was the promise I had made to Bella.

As long a she was alive, so would I remain to walk the earth.

But not a moment more.

It was agonizing. What was a human life span, 80 years? On one hand, I could barely will it to come soon enough and put me out of my misery. On the other, the thought that there could be a time in which Bella didn't exist made me sick with prayers of longevity.

Rain started to fall gently,the sharp sounds of raindrops hitting the foliage of the forest made making me wince into the smooth darkness of the night…Not that it made a difference to anything. None of the peace of this place could touch me where I was, jailed inside my own mind. It caused no relief to the burning that seemed to be eating me from the inside.

After all of my carefulness, one slip had opened the floodgates, and that one word I had avoided filled me like a drug. As much as I couldn't get enough, with each hit I knew I would only get worse.

Bella. Bella. Bella.

As each repetition drove its thorns deeper into the raw recesses of what had once been a heart, I knew I would pay for my sins when dawn came.

( A/N Please review this story and tell me if it's worth continuing! Any other feedback would also be greatly appreciated.)