Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight, the New Moon dialogues, parts of the plot and character names. All other plotlines, characterizations, and details belong to the author: Bronzehyperion. No copying or reproduction of this work is permitted without the author's authorization. ©2009-2010 Bronzehyperion. All rights reserved worldwide.

Chapter 13: DEATH BECOMES US

Waiting for hours

Hours turn to days

Days turn to years

I'm still here

He's at the funeral

Charlie was at a funeral.

He's at the funeral.

The boy's words –Jacob's words I recalled as I managed to match the voice to a face – had been angry and clear.

I tried to understand the emotion behind the words; the voice had been a combination of flat and hostile.

I realized that his intonation had been relatively friendly -or rather it had sounded neutral - until I had announced myself as my father; Dr. Carlisle Cullen. Naturally, given the history between his tribe and mine, this would spark a reaction in the boy. It was no secret his family was not fan of mine. The moment he had found out who he was talking to had marked the change in his verbal demeanor. It was a given he would not be thrilled to speak to any member of my family.

Plus, I put together as well – it probably made sense he hated my family even more now that Bella had died.

He must blame us. Blame us for interacting with Bella in the first place; for allowing us to get close to her. Blame us for even coming to Forks.

He must hate how irreversible all of that seemed now. His hate was masking his grief.

Wait? Why do I even care how the boy feels?

It was so clinical, the rationalization of the boy's words, until that final thought. It snapped me right back into the reality of things.

Bella was dead. Therefore Jacob Black had mentioned a funeral. The hatred in his voice would not change the words he had spoken.

Charlie was at Bella's funeral.

Bella's funeral.

The temperature in the crawl space felt like it had dropped to a chilling below zero. I knew it was not factually possible because it was a warm and humid Brazilian night. Still, my body felt like it was as icy as it felt when humans would touch a vampire's skin. Inside I felt colder than any temperature I had ever physically experienced. And I was used to a lot of temperature changes; the arctic Alaskan arctic air had never phased me, but now I felt like a lump of ice. I felt like what I must have felt like to Bella. Cold, ice-cold.

My shudders mirrored the coolness of like what Bella must feel like now. Cold. Still.

Dead.

The goose bumps were imaginary, but I felt them on my skin, like a sinister marking of sorrow.

Emotionally, a reaction seemed to be building. It was like a mathematical puzzle I could not solve. I ran past the words in my mind, tried them quietly on my tongue, and twisted them in different explanation but the conclusion seemed resolute and final.

Bella was dead.

I sat there, in that disgusting attic, waiting for some kind of sign. Some kind of relief. Something to break me out of this unfamiliar trance. I could feel my mind wrapping around the words; the horrible news, but my mind didn't give an appropriate reaction.

There were no tears to stain my cheeks, no outlet for the overwhelming emotions that were about to erupt from inside me like a volcano of despair.

I waited for it to happen, but it didn't.

Nothing changed. The solitude atmosphere remained quiet. My phone remained silent, which was good. I didn't have the strength to deal with anything. Anyone. If Alice was in Forks, then surely she'd be informing the rest of my family soon enough, or maybe she already had. And I couldn't deal with their pity, their sadness. I didn't want their possible acceptance of Bella's demise and their desire to move on. Well, that's what Rosalie had hinted at, so maybe it was only her desire.

I wanted to laugh. Loudly. I wanted an outlet. A change. I needed something to pull me out of this black reverie. Something that would proof me this was all a hoax.

This wasn't happening. This had to be a joke of some kind. I did not believe in the cosmic humor lingering in tragic events, but this had to be a mistake. Bella could not be dead.

It was laughable, the way I tried to reason, deep down inside I knew that. The way I tried to convince myself was near pathetic, but it was the only straw I had left to grasp.

Below me there were rumblings, sounds. Smells and interactions. Voices and thoughts.

There was life.

There was life going on around me. Time was still moving. This meant that the world was still turning. And if the world still turned than Bella had to be alive. After all, everything, every little thing in this world would cease to exist if Bella did.

Clearly nothing had ceased to exist yet, so it had to be a mistake for sure.

Yes, I was definitely grasping at the largest straws I could find.

I replayed the information I had again. Rosalie's words, Jacob's words. There was some strange anomaly about what they had said. Their words did not make sense, because they were wrong. The wrong sentiment, the wrong explanation. The words had to be untrue.

Bella... threw herself off a cliff two days ago. Alice saw it. But it was too late to do anything. I think she would have helped, though, broken her word, if there had been time. She went back to do what she could for Charlie. You know how she's always cared for him—

Rosalie must have misunderstood Alice. Alice must have had a false vision to try and get me to come to Ithaca. I knew I hadn't treated my family well. I knew I owed them a visit. I owed them much more than I continued to give them so Alice must have been eager to pull out all the stops, she must have been desperate to reunite me with the family, thinking conducting a fake vision was the way to do it.

Or perhaps she wanted me to go straight to Forks even. Alice may not be a pathological liar but she certainly knew how to bend the truth. So was that it? Was this her final push to get me to come back to Forks? Her demand for me to crawl at Bella's feet and beg her for forgiveness? Was that it?

I wondered briefly if maybe Alice had seen a different vision. Not the one of doom that she had clearly informed Rosalie about, but a more positive one. Maybe she had seen a future for me and Bella and in an ultimate way to persuade me to return to Forks she had faked a vision about Bella's death, in hopes that would be my final push to travel back to Washington.

It seemed like quite a cruel way to do this, but Alice was all about the theatrics. It would explain Rosalie's words as well. She had seemed to care very little about the news. Only wishing for things to go back to normal. Could the joke be on her then? Could Rosalie's wish for normalcy with the family about to be killed by the realization that Alice was trying to lure me back to Forks to have me unite with Bella and unite us all…

The more I thought of it, the more my mind tried to trick me into a state of it making sense. I grabbed this straw and held on to it firmly. Bella would never jump off a cliff. It was the most ridiculous assumption to believe she would do that. She knew better than to do something so reckless. Physically and emotionally. Not to mention the fact she had promised me she'd take care of herself for Charlie's sake. And I knew Bella. She would never break a promise.

Surely Alice knew this too. Bella was not the type of person to forsake a promise. If not for me, than certainly she would never break a promise to Charlie and Renée, even if they didn't know a thing about the promise she had made me. She loved her parents and she would not put them to this kind of suffering. I could not imagine an event so strong, it would literally force her to take her own life.

Still, it was one thing to have a misinformed Rosalie who told me Bella had died. Alice was a good manipulator. And her visions weren't always accurate, as had been proven before. She had seen Bella become one of us and that never came to pass. Also, she saw things based on people's actions and I was certain that no matter what, Bella would never simply jump off a cliff.

There was only one thought, one belief that protested strongly against what my mind was so eagerly rejecting by fiercely trying to embrace a lie.

One possible truth.

The boy…Jacob Black…would he lie? Would his animosity against my family run deep enough to sell a lie this big? Would he lie about a funeral, thus confirming Bella's death? I could not believe he would do that. Bella would never allow him to.

Unless his motives were the opposite of sincere, he'd gain nothing by pretending Bella was dead. His voice, dripping with bitter hatred had sounded honest, if anything. He wasn't playing any games.

And so I had nothing left but to conclude he had spoken the truth.

The one truth I would never be ready to face.

The problem with reality is it slams into you like a battering ram and there's no way to prevent it. It's unexpected, it knocks you off your feet and it's difficult to recover, especially when that truth is extremely painful. This truth was beyond pain. Beyond reason. If my mind had not been permanently set because of my immortality, I would have suspected I would go mad. That my brain would snap.

But it didn't. Nothing changed. Everything remained the same. The world hadn't halted and still moved. The words in my head didn't change that. The pain that was spreading from head to toe didn't change that. I could scream, kick and even kill but it would not change anything.

Bella was dead.

Dead.

I tried the words yet again but they still felt false. I wanted to call Alice for confirmation, but my phone lay silently at my feet. I contemplated rocking myself in one singular constant motion just to have some sort of movement, some sort of change, but I just sat there like a statue. Allowing the pain to wash over me.

Over and over, like crashing waves slamming into me, like I was pulled under. Even the monster was silenced for once. There was no temptation left for him, so he hung his ugly head in defeat and acceptance. The beast would never again be enticed into hunting the exquisite angel.

I would never be tempted by her scent again. I would never taste her fragrance on my tongue. Never feel her blush heat my fingers. Never.

What was I supposed to do now?

Bella was dead. Gone. It didn't make a difference that I played the words over and over in my head, hoping to find a new way to explain them.

It would not make them untrue, no matter how hard I tried.

No matter how badly I wanted them to.

What was left of me now? Left for me now? It wasn't like before. Before Bella.

There would never again be a "before Bella" kind of life. I would not be able to bear it. To go back to that monotony, knowing what I once had.

I could not go back and live with my family. The idea of seeing them go about life in pairs, observing me with pity and sadness evident in their eyes, made me cringe just thinking about it. I would not be able to deal with that day in, day out. I knew there wasn't even a sense of monotony left. No rhythm, no boredom. Just a large irreplaceable void that would never be filled. Not even with a every day routine.

As I sat there, close to complete catatonia I understood more than ever that time was meaningless. The marking of days were meaningless. Everything was meaningless.

The bridge. I had not only reached it now, but I was standing on the ledge. It was different than when I had first arrived here two months ago. I had been lost then; lost because Sao Paolo wasn't my home. Lost because I was alone. Lost because my heart was still with the one who…

The one who I had lost now. Forever.

This was my bridge and I was going to jump off, instead of trying to cross it.

The promise of finding an end soothed the aching a little and a strange determination came over me. I was going to finish this. It was unfair that this world, cruel and empty as it was now, would continue to turn when all I wanted was for it to stop turning. I wanted time to freeze. I wanted everything to stop to serve my selfish need for everything ceasing to exist.

Why was there still life? When mine was certainly over. It made no sense. The world was supposed to stop, life was supposed to end when Bella was no longer here. But everything kept moving. People were still loud and happy in the spaces below me. There were still sounds that pointed to human activity. There was no other apocalypse but my own.

This had to stop. It needed to end. If the world would not accompany me by simply stop turning, I would find my own way.

I'd find a bridge high enough to jump off. Not literally, of course since great heights could not kill me. Carlisle had tried that and it had failed to kill him.

Starving myself to death would also be pointless. I had stopped hunting regularly months ago and it didn't affect me.

I needed to resort to more definitive and desperate measures.

I thought back of a time when I needed to consider this before.

Last spring.

When Bella had almost died at the hands – and teeth- of James.

Almost.

I choked back more stone tears, knowing they'd never fall. I didn't even get that. I didn't even have an emotional release, apart from punching things. I didn't have the energy to do that. It would not bring Bella back.

This needed to stop. The ache inside me was slowly tearing me. It needed to stop.

The empty spot where my dead heart had silently beat for Bella.

It needed to stop aching.

My limbs, always so flexible, felt stiff from the position on the floor I had been in. I rose slowly and stretched. It felt unfamiliar, like I didn't feel my own movements. Like I was absent from my own body.

Detached from my mind.

I grabbed the phone and slid it in my pocket, before descending the narrow flight of stairs that led to the third floor. It was abandoned now, because all the activity had moved to the ground floor. There was a large window with white transparent curtains at the end of the hallway. I was drawn to it. The pure white of the curtains looked so innocent. The purity was calling out to me, weaving itself into the cloud of darkness that hung around.

I moved closer, feeling a near warm evening breeze against my skin. It was almost as warming as feeling Bella's breath on my lips.

A breath she'd never take again.

Focus, Edward. It'll all be over soon. You won't have to bear this much longer. Just remain calm and follow the plan.

If Bella was gone, I didn't want to remain. I didn't want to exist.

I pulled myself to the window pane with a few slow, dragging steps. I peeked out and noticed that a jump – or rather fall – would not be more than a few feet. Certainly not lethal.

You can jump, Edward. But it won't kill you.

I growled at my own subconscious. Of course a jump would not kill me. Unfortunately.

As I stood there, lifting one foot to climb on the edge of the window pane, I was shocked to realize that Bella had done the same. Perhaps she had climbed the rugged cliff area near the ocean – had it been near La Push…First Beach – onto a higher peek. Only to look down and find a black hole, ready and eager to suck her into its vortex of doom and death.

Why had that not stopped her? Why did she not know that she didn't have to do that? Had she been so utterly foolish?

Briefly I thought if perhaps a murder was possible, maybe someone had forced her.

But then Rosalie's words came back to me and this time I could not pretend Rosalie had been duped by a faux vision.

Bella…threw herself off a cliff…

Yes, she had been utterly foolish. She had done this willingly. She had taken herself away from me willingly.

Don't be selfish, Edward. You left her, my subconscious chided me.

Of course, I could not blame her. But that didn't mean I understood why she had done this. Why would she commit suicide?

The reason is not important. All you have to do is follow after her. In hopes of finding her somewhere.

I placed my other foot on the ledge, ready to jump.

I took a deep –unnecessary – breath and let myself fall.

I landed on the floor with a small thud but that was only because I didn't control the jump. I would have easily landed on my feet, if I had changed the angle, but I had chosen not to.

The hard sandy ground did not hurt me.

Nothing did.

I lifted myself from the ground and started walking. I reached inside my pocket and pulled my phone out. With it came a small piece of shiny material. It was slightly crumpled from being in my pocket so long.

Bella's image smiled back at me. It was the photo I had taken from her house.

I cringed at the pain of seeing her smile.

Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I passed a dumpster and threw my phone in.

My plan could not use any interruptions. From no one.

I stared back at the photo one more time before putting it back into my pocket.

Slowly I started walking, as if I was testing new limbs…heavier and unrecognizable. But the longer I moved, the easier it came. Before I knew it, I was running, faster. The streets were nearly abandoned, but I didn't care if people saw me.

They would not be able to keep my from where I was going.

No one could.

As I ran, I remembered. Another vision Alice had, back when we'd been in Denali.

I closed my eyes to recall it, allowing the air around me to guide me as my legs carried me as fast as they could.

Behind the lids of my eyes I saw the white stone arms – my white stone arms - sparkling in a light bounding off some dark place.

A stone wall perhaps, though it was very difficult to tell for sure.

I recognized the arms though. Those white stone arms were mine and they were not empty.

They were wrapped around the beautiful angel, the siren. The one who would heal everything.

I now realized what Alice had showed me back then, though I was not certain she had realized it herself.

It had been the image of my own demise. My final moments.

I nearly smiled at the peace I sensed in the memory.

I knew where to find a stone wall like in the vision. I knew how to achieve the vision itself.

I opened my eyes and picked up the pace.

Smiling.

I was going to Volterra.

I was going to die.

If you want to know when I update, follow me on Twitter. Twitter(dot)com(slash)bronzehyperion

We are getting closer to Volterra. These chapters are somewhat shorter, but they will be made up for once we get to the reunion stuff. Plus, pretty soon we'll get to meet those crazy Volturi. Always fun ;)

Reviews are welcome and appreciated!

First lines are from Longview's "Can't explain"

Happy Sunday!