Today we watched another sign language video lesson and practiced for a while.
Afterwards we spoke of our ambitions for the future. Bella told me about how she wants to go to college and travel. She misses the sun and said she wants to see the whole world. Her eyes lit up as she thought of the possibilities. Her dreams are so big that she cannot see the edges of them to know quite what they are yet. Everything has potential and her future is wide open, she just awaits opportunity.
What a wonderful thing it must be to turn eighteen.
Of course in contrast I have no real ambitions left aside from finding ways to protect Bella and maintain our friendship.
The future stretches before me like a desert, endless but terrifyingly empty.
I can only have a handful of short years more seeing Bella with any kind of regularity. After that I suppose I shall try to write letters, but the pressure to use video and digital photographs is ever present and may rouse too much suspicion, making it impossible to risk much more than a yearly Christmas card and the occasional postcard. I know I am too weak to let her go immediately after graduation as I should.
I wish I could warn her not to grow used to me being at her side. Not to invest anything in me. As presumptuous as that is, I cannot resist indulging myself in the time she is willing to grant me now. But Bella should not have to worry about losing anyone at all.
Logic dictates that I should never allow her to get attached and should actively distance myself to save her future pain or confusion at my withdrawal. I am too weak though. One whisper and I am rapt, utterly powerless to pull away.
It is stronger than the blood frenzy even. Many times so.
Alice should not involve herself either. She sees herself and Bella becoming close friends, but how cruel it would be to do that? To befriend her knowing that Bella would have to grieve the loss of that bond all too soon? Alice says that she is the one with precognition, not I, but I fear Alice merely wants to become friends so badly that she is pushing aside her visions of the more distant future, where we will have brought untold pain and loss to Bella's doorstep.
I shall not be able to see Bella marry, and though her wedding would be nearly impossible for me to endure, I should dearly love to see her smile, as I know she will when her eyes meet her groom's on her wedding day. I want to see her happy and I know I cannot bring her any meaningful happiness. So I wish for her to find it in the arms of another despite the hollow ache the thought raises in my chest.
If I am lucky I might be able to ask her for a family photograph once she settles down and if she ends up having children, though I would never be able to play with them and see her likeness reflected in them first hand.
I shall look too young when Renee and Charlie pass over to be able to be the shoulder she deserves.
It will surely be the most agonising torment, pulling away. Each sweet moment is already shorter than the last. The distance between our ages is already growing irreconcilably.
And one day she will cease to exist and I shall persist. And what then of my promises to Esme?
My heart twists and tears just thinking of how our separation is so unavoidable. If only I could tell her what I am, then we could have many years together, talking on the telephone regularly and occasionally meeting in secret. Her lifetime will flash by in an instant of this infernal eternity, but to have not even a small fraction of that time left together pains me so.
I do not doubt that love exists. I merely doubt that it serves any purpose.
A/N: Please leave a review! Thanks so much to my wonderful beta wh1teow1, please show some love and read Moirai, a reimagining of Twilight for the new decade! Poor Edward, back in the doldrums!