Memory Awake

by lolausagi

In the world of Twilight, the characters have a tendency to be defined by their relationships. But who are they outside of them? And how do the women ultimately learn to connect, relate, and befriend each other? This is a canon-compliant story of the women of Twilight. Although their relationships will be touched on as major events, they will not be the main focus.

1. Prologue

Bella, Present

Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.

Part One: Life

LXIX

REMORSE is memory awake,
Her companies astir,—
A presence of departed acts
At window and at door.

Its past set down before the soul,
And lighted with a match,
Perusal to facilitate
Of its condensed despatch.

Remorse is cureless,—the disease
Not even God can heal;
For 't is His institution,—
The complement of hell.

There was a silence that hung around the early morning fog, as though it came packaged with the faint glow of almost-there sunlight. The crisp air felt cool, refreshing, filling the lungs with a sharpness that cleansed. It should have felt colder, Bella mused, standing on the edge of a snowbank. Instead it felt as comfortable as a mid-spring dawn. And although she despised the cold, she could not help but feel disappointed in its absence, her visual stimuli mismatching with her physical. The silence was welcoming when she was often overwhelmed by her senses, but she longed to hear the songbirds that would no longer approach her. She loved when the newborn snow was a blank canvas, but she yearned to see the small footprints of playful critters.

It had been years since Bella had become a vampire and Edward still had a tendency to fret about her regretting the change. She wondered if the age her husband was changed had to do with his black-and-white thinking, or if it was merely the trauma he experienced throughout his existence. Bella would never tell him, but there were things she regretted. She longed to visit her parents, see the wrinkles appear one by one as though numbering the stars. Thoughts of visiting high school friends for a simple dinner out sometimes entranced her, as menial as it sounded. She even regretted that her Edward would never fully emotionally mature, stagnant in stone.

Bella carried these thoughts around with her, like the battered copies of her beloved novels. The reality was, there would always be remorse. Naturally, abandoning Human Bella and the lives that were woven with her was a burden she would carry for the rest of her existence. But if she had chosen differently, she would have remorse for abandoning Vampire Bella and the people who cared for her now.

The pain did not bother Bella the same way it bothered Edward. She was no masochist, but she had accepted that life meant suffering. To her, it was proof that she had a soul. The alternative to suffering was… not existing. And that, she thought while smiling to herself, was unacceptable.