A/N: Blanket disclaimer: the following is a work of fanfiction. I do not own and make no money from it or the original source materials, including additional misc lyrics and quotes.
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
- William Wordsworth "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"
I'd been so preoccupied by the size of the cliffs, by the obvious danger of their high, sheer faces, that I hadn't worried at all about the dark water waiting. I never dreamed that the true menace was lurking far below me, under the heaving surf.
It felt like the waves were fighting over me, jerking me back and forth between them as if determined to share by pulling me into halves. I knew the right way to avoid a riptide: swim parallel to the beach rather than struggling for the shore. But the knowledge did me little good when I didn't know which way the shore was.
I couldn't even tell which way the surface was.
The angry water was black in every direction; there was no brightness to direct me upward. Gravity was all-powerful when it competed with the air, but it had nothing on the waves-I couldn't feel a downward pull, a sinking in any direction. Just the battering of the current that flung me round and round like a rag doll.
I fought to keep my breath in, to keep my lips locked around my last store of oxygen.
It didn't surprise me that my delusion of Edward was there. He owed me that much, considering that I was dying. I was surprised by how sure that knowledge was. I was going to drown. I was drowning.
- Excerpt from New Moon, page 372
His voice in my head was as smooth as silk and sweeter still with his urgent pleas for me to keep swimming. Not that it was doing much good in motivating me as I hung helplessly suspended in the watery darkness. There was nowhere to swim to.
My limbs seemed almost paralyzed by the frigid water that had leeched the warmth from my arms and legs. The ravaging of the current didn't seem quite as intense now; it was more of a sense of dizziness, a surrender to the motion of the water.
It was quiet. Not silent, but certainly muted. I'd never really given much thought to what the ocean sounded like underwater. Had I not been more focused on saving my last breath of air, I might have given it more than a passing thought.
How long had I been like this? Did it even really matter? These last moments of my instinctual clinging to life felt like intangible, fluid things; to be observed from afar and let go. They simply existed, and within them, so did I.
I had always known that Edward would be the death of me. Naturally I had imagined it to be under much different, if bloodier, circumstances. As my subconscious called forth Edward's perfect face to the forefront of my mind, I devoured every flawless detail, fleshed out as if he also drifted in the deep alongside me. Even his panicked rage at my giving up was beautiful.
How lucky was I to see something so beautiful right before I died?
This, I decided as I scanned every inch of his marble-carved features, was happiness. Something I'd been robbed of ever since he'd left me behind. The burning in my chest as my lungs starved for air barely registered – why would it when I hadn't truly been able to breathe since that night? My limbs cramped with the icy cold that had settled bone deep, but despite that dull discomfort that became more and more distant, I was content. I closed my eyes; the water was so dark it made no difference to my vision.
All at once my head broke the surface.
The sudden burst of warm, humid air against my face was shocking compared to the numbness that had suddenly vanished from my body. I reflexively sucked in great heaving gasps of air, feeding my oxygen starved lungs like a dying man. Or a dying teenager, which I was certain I had just been.
I slicked my hair back from my face to get a look at my surroundings. Rather than the endless expanse of black, freezing ocean, I was sitting in a bathtub full of lukewarm vanilla scented water.
Not just any bathtub, I thought, as I yanked back the shower curtain. My bathtub: the tiny, cramped one that barely fit in the shoebox sized bathroom in my mother's house. The house that I hadn't set foot in since that last disastrous trip to Arizona.
Was this it then? Had I drowned after all? And if that was the case, why had my mind conjured up something so random? Or maybe I hadn't died yet. Maybe this was those last few seconds of oxygen-deprived brain activity where my mind was trying to comprehend or protect me from the trauma of drowning. It seemed a little far-fetched, but I was willing to accept it.
But why this bathroom? If I had to choose any of them, I'd think my brain would have summoned up the memory of the one in Charlie's house if only because that was freshest in my mind.
I leaned back against the wall to look up at the ceiling. Despite my confusion, I could admit that there was a definite comfort in seeing something familiar. When I was younger, Renee had gone through an art phase. Part of that had resulted in her painting whenever the whim struck her. Even my bathroom ceiling hadn't been spared from her paintbrush, the white paint interrupted by colorful fish and swirls of blue and green applied with a careful, if amateurish hand.
Drip. Water droplets fell from the tap in a steady drip that sent ripples across the surface of the bathwater. I blinked confusedly at the faucet – I clearly remembered Phil had fixed the slow leak the night before I left for Washington.
Drip. As if a light flicked on in my mind, I was aware of sound. The dripping of course, but also the sound of a vacuum being run somewhere beyond the bathroom door. There was even a low humming that came from the old light fixture over the bathroom mirror.
Drip. I looked down at my body. At first glance it was as I remembered it being. Pale skinned and slender, but still growing into the curves of a woman rather than the gangly child I'd been. I slouched down further into the water and extended my right leg straight out so that by foot was flat against the far wall.
Drip. My encounter with James had resulted in a broken leg, among other injuries, but while my leg had healed well, I had been left with a nasty scar from my shin almost up to my thigh. I was never certain if Edward had known about it, but I'd made sure to not wear anything that would expose it, lest the sight of it cause him pain. He always took things so personally. Even if it wasn't his fault, such as what happened at the ballet studio for example.
Drip. My eyes widened in disbelief as I looked at the limb. Small scars and the occasional bruise stared back; inevitable accumulations born from clumsiness. But that was all there was. There wasn't so much of a hint of the pale, jagged scar tissue I had become familiar with.
Drip. Something akin to horror creeped down my spine like an icy finger as I slowly raised my right hand up to eye level.
Drip. The crescent shaped scar where James had eternally marked me with his venom coated teeth was gone. In its place was a smooth expanse of ivory skin that hadn't so much as a paper cut. As if the scar had never been there.
It will be as if I'd never existed.
My leg dropped back into the tub as shock robbed me of the strength to keep it aloft. The sound of my heart roared in my ears, blocking out everything else. It beat like a war drum, a herald to the fissure in my chest I just knew was going to burst open and finally consume me.
And maybe it should. I welcomed it even. Anything would be better than having to relive those few months after he'd left me in the woods. Maybe Edward had been right about his God and Hell. Wasn't suicide a sin? I hadn't meant to die – it just kind of happened. It was an accident; an avoidable one, had I been in the right frame of mind. Surely I wasn't going to go to Hell because I wanted to hear his voice again. Loving someone to death wasn't worth that, was it?
I squeezed my eyes shut as I pulled my knees up to my chest before looping my arms around them. I squeezed with every last bit of strength I had – laughable though it was, given how much more overwhelming I remembered the numbing grief being.
But as the seconds ticked past, the fissure didn't open. It didn't open because it wasn't there. The hole he'd punched through my chest with his departure, that had excised my most vital organs, that had left ragged, unhealed gashes around the edges that throbbed and bled despite the passage of time was gone.
Not healed. If it were healed, there would have been some echo of that pain – an emotional scar that remained as a reminder of the once ugly wound. It was as if it'd never been there – I could barely call up the yawning empty feeling anymore.
No hole. No scars. No pain.
Besides my memories, I had no evidence Edward existed at all.
I looked up at the dripping faucet; the dull chrome distorted my features, but I could still make out the haunted look that had lived behind my eyes ever since he'd walked out of my life. But as I looked closer, I wondered if perhaps it wasn't quite as intense as I remembered it being. My time with Jacob probably had something to do with it, but somehow, I doubted that was the whole reason.
All at once I could no longer bear being in the bath; the feeling of drowning was still too fresh in my mind. I blocked out the sound of the drain as I pulled the stopper out and stepped out onto the dingy linoleum floor. Water dripped from my heavy mass of hair before I wrapped it in a towel before tucking another one around my body. The steam from the bath had fogged over the mirror. I hesitated in front of it before turning away. Apparently, I was in the mood to make the cowardly lion look like the terminator.
Steam billowed out behind me as I stepped out of the bathroom and padded down the short hallway to my bedroom. The door swung open on familiar squeaky hinges – again, something I remembered Phil fixing ages ago – to reveal my old bedroom. It was only a little bigger than my bedroom in Forks, embarrassingly disorganized but not unclean. Ever since I learned Edward had been climbing through my window at night, I stepped up in the cleaning department. Here though, there were books piled on the floor beside my bed, overflow from the positively bursting bookshelves. My small collection of CDs were housed below Renee's old CD player she'd given me when she'd gotten herself a nicer one. My computer, also old, but still newer than the one in Forks, took up most of the available real estate on my tiny desk, and what space was available was cluttered with stacks of papers. Homework, no doubt. Shoes and a shirt dotted the floor.
For a long moment I stood there in the doorway and soaked up the mundane sight. My bed was naturally unmade, the sheets and blankets twisted up in a reflection of the way I currently felt. Over the back of my chair was my favorite pair of ratty sweatpants I'd forgotten to pack. I shut the door behind me and rummaged through my dresser for underwear and my softest t-shirt. After I tugged on the sweatpants, I dropped into my desk chair.
After a few moments, I pressed my fingers against my pulse point. My heart beat strong and steady beneath the thin skin there – indisputable proof that I was alive. I had also begun to think that this wasn't a dream either. My dreams were usually very detailed, but this had the vividness of reality that my unconscious couldn't emulate.
Not a dream then. Which obviously answered my follow-up question as to whether I was dead or not, because dead people couldn't dream.
I drummed my fingers against the desktop as I stared at the wall without really seeing it, my mind trying to untangle what I did know from what I didn't. Almost an hour ago I had jumped off the cliff at La Push, but instead of drowning, I had woken up back in Arizona, presumably at a point in time before I'd left to go live with Charlie.
Good grief, was I really considering time-travel? Maybe I really was as crazy as Jake sometimes teased me of being.
Jake. The thought of the boy who'd become my own personal sun made my heart clench. I was suddenly desperate to rush to the phone and call him. To see reassurance from the boy who'd taken care of me in his own clumsy, teenaged werewolf way.
It was only the thought that he might not remember me that kept me from giving into that urge. I was still reeling from my lack of reaction over the loss of Edward; the potential rejection from Jake might actually leave me incapable of being whole again.
Instead, I looked over at the clock on my nightstand. Red digital numbers declared it to be half-past past six. My eyes cut back to the wall behind the desk where I'd pinned up a calendar. It was flipped to September, all the days leading up to the second Sunday crossed off. Which meant today was September 12th; tomorrow was my seventeenth birthday.
Time travel. Somehow, I had quite literally jumped back in time. The reality of the situation suddenly hit me like my old truck. Only it wasn't really mine anymore, was it? Or would be later in any case. Just trying to wrap my head around it was enough to make me nauseous. I leaned forward and put my head between my knees as I fought back the urge to vomit.
For a fleeting moment I wanted Jasper. I'd always hated his emotional manipulation (at least when he used it on me without my knowledge or consent) but now I really could have used his calming influence.
Once the nausea had passed, I realized I was starving. Another glance at the clock showed that Renee wouldn't be home for a couple hours yet; before I'd left for Forks, she'd often picked up extra shifts while Phil was gone to keep herself busy. It left me alone most of the evenings, but I'd never minded it. Now, as I walked through the house to the kitchen, I felt more like I haunted it than lived in it.
Poking around in the refrigerator rewarded me with sliced chicken, swiss, and a tomato. I sliced the latter and layered all the ingredients onto the last of the bread; I'd need to go grocery shopping after school tomorrow.
I snorted at the thought. Honestly, if I took out the vampire element and swapped out Renee for Charlie, my life in Forks had been very similar to life here. School and grocery shopping and hiding away in my books. Had it not been for Edward, I probably wouldn't have bothered getting to know anyone.
I leaned against the kitchen sink and frowned around the bite I'd just taken. My world really had been small before the Cullens had crashed into it – but it'd become smaller still once they'd accepted me. I couldn't recall spending much time with my human friends over the summer. Edward had been my whole life, my world revolved around him and Alice, my supposed best friend. But what kind of best friend cut themselves out of their friends' lives without so much as a goodbye?
An unfamiliar warmth burned to life in my chest. Anger, I realized after a long moment of consideration. It'd been so long since I'd felt it, since I'd felt anything, I hadn't recognized it at first. Wide eyed, I tore into my sandwich. No, I didn't want to feel angry. It was my fault he left, just like it was my fault Alice didn't say goodbye. If I hadn't been so careless, then Jasper wouldn't have been triggered into attacking me. He must have been so disappointed in himself; no wonder Alice wouldn't have wanted to see me again. If someone had hurt Edward like that, I wasn't certain I would have reacted much differently.
But the more I tried to rationalize it, the angrier I became. The feeling was so startling I halted mid-chew to glare at the phone that hung innocently on the wall. To keep myself from doing something rash, I scarfed down the rest of my sandwich and locked myself back in my bedroom. After a moment of deliberation, I quickly scribbled a note to Renee about not feeling well and turning in early, then taped it to the outside of my bedroom door.
The silence of my room was stifling. Another shocking realization. I'd shunned all music since he'd left. The memory of the stereo in my trash can flitted through my mind as I flicked disinterestedly through my music collection. It was nowhere near as diverse or expansive as Edward's had been, but it was full of my old favorites. For the first time in months, I selected a CD and turned the music up just loud enough to drown out the silence but still let me sleep.
I shook out the sheets and the comforter before crawling underneath them. I buried my nose into my pillowcase and sucked in a deep breath. The floral scented fabric softener Renee favored filled my nose and brought with it warm memories I hadn't thought about for far too long.
How long had it been since my every thought hadn't been consumed by or at least tangentially related to Edward and his family? Jake had managed to pierce through that blanket of preoccupation, but when I was alone with my thoughts, they always drifted back to the Cullens.
I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the glow in the dark stars I'd glued to the ceiling. The same ones I'd put up in Forks shortly after I'd moved in. I really was too old for them, but I'd been so desperate to make that little room feel a little more like home that I'd thrown them into the shopping cart without another thought. It was a relief that they still gave me comfort.
Exhaustion creeped up on me before I knew it. My limbs turned to lead as my eyelids drifted shut, incapable of remaining open.
The last thing I remembered seeing was those cheap little stars shining through the darkness of my room.
"Happy birthday!" Renee's voice sang out cheerfully from where she sat at the kitchen table as I emerged from my room the next morning.
"Thanks mom," I replied, and tried not to cringe. I'd never really cared for my birthday, something Renee had never quite caught onto. Or maybe never really cared enough to notice; Renee's birthdays were always a big affair, so perhaps in her mind it just didn't compute that I lacked the same zeal she did.
Eager to move on to something else, I hurried over to the refrigerator to make breakfast. Truthfully, I wasn't feeling all that hungry given that I was still reeling about having traveled through time. But it was better to force something down now than deal with a hunger headache later. I kept an ear open to listen to Renee chatter about her plans for Phil's return later in the week. She was still deliberating between taking him out to dinner or trying to cook something herself as I took a seat at the table.
I'd taken two bites by the time I realized she was staring at me silently.
"What?" I asked, a little defensively. I'd never liked being stared at, especially when I was eating. The sentiment had only gotten worse after Edward and I had gotten serious; around his perfection I felt inadequate and was certain I resembled a cow chewing it's cud when I ate.
"You're eating egg whites," she replied slowly.
I looked back down at my plate. On it was the vegetable and egg white omelet I'd made, along with half of a grapefruit. Still confused, I looked back up at her with a furrowed brow.
"It's just an omelet. Do you want one?"
"You hate egg whites," Renee answered with a shake of her head. "Are you feeling alright?"
I had just taken a third bite of my omelet as she spoke, and it was like her words flipped a switch in my brain. She was right – I'd always hated egg whites, and would refuse to eat them whenever she made them during the times she inevitably circled back to her health nut phase. I hated them so much I wouldn't even make them for her. For a second I just sat there with my fork still halfway to my mouth as I wondered when that'd changed.
Like all the major changes in my life, the source had been Edward. I couldn't quite pinpoint when it'd happened, but his suggestions about changes to my diet had come up during a conversation about his multiple medical degrees. I'd initially just laughed it off; having them didn't make him an expert on what, when, and how much I should eat. But somehow, I still ended up strictly consuming lean meats, fruits, greens, and grains. I was allowed one cup of black coffee a day, otherwise all caffeine, saturated fat, and artificial sugars were banned. Those restrictions didn't apply to Charlie, who I'd continued to cook normally for, albeit maybe a little healthier than he'd have chosen for himself.
I hadn't really given much thought to the change in diet beyond wanting to make Edward happy. The one time I did sneak an unapproved snack, his disappointment from finding out about it had killed any motivation to do it again. Eventually I adapted and didn't really think too much about what I was eating tasted like. And then when he'd abandoned me, food didn't really taste like anything anymore.
I took another bite of the omelet and promptly spat it back out into my napkin.
Whatever joy I felt at finally tasting things again was overshadowed by my bone-deep disgust toward egg whites.
"I'm fine," I said as I stood and scraped my plate into the trash. "It'd been a long time since I'd tried them, I thought maybe I might have changed my mind." Once I might have felt guilty for lying, but I didn't have any idea how to explain the events that led to me willingly eating a food I abhorred.
She came to stand beside me and gently pushed my shoulder until I faced her fully. It hadn't been all that long since I'd seen her, but I raked my eyes over her face, committing every laugh line and the precise shade of her blue irises to memory. She pressed the back of her free hand against my forehead. "You don't have a fever, but maybe you should stay home today. I know you weren't feeling well last night."
"Mom, I'm not dying because I ate some egg whites. I just wanted to try something different. It's really not that big a deal," I protested, even as I leaned a little into her touch. She didn't seem to notice.
"It is a big deal when my daughter, the biggest creature of habit I have ever been blessed to know, does anything outside of her usual routine." Her tone was teasing but the lines around her eyes creased a little more with worry. "If I'd known you wanted something special, I would've made something."
"It's just breakfast," I said exasperatedly. "And you're going to be late for work if you don't leave soon."
She then glanced over my shoulder presumably at the clock on the stove. With an exaggerated gasp that was pure Renee, she stepped away to rush back to the kitchen table.
"I'll get the dishes, mom," I said before pointing down the hallway, "You'll still have time to do your hair if you skip washing it."
"My beautiful girl, always so thoughtful." Renee smiled, as bright as a sunbeam. "I don't know what I'd do without you to help me in the mornings!"
"You'd be fine," I replied, even as my stomach tied itself in knots at the thought. If it hadn't been for Phil and his natural level-headedness, I never would have had the strength to leave my mother alone when I had. "Go on!"
I turned back to the cabinet to retrieve a bowl as she scurried down the hallway. The pipes groaned as the shower turned on, but I ignored their noisemaking in favor of staring down the contents of the pantry. My hand froze on the box of Count Chocula. Guilt weighed heavy on me for choosing something so unhealthy to eat, but I couldn't stomach the thought of even making eggs, let alone egg whites. The guilt remained as I filled the bowl with cereal and milk and didn't abate until the first taste of chocolate hit my tastebuds.
I'd just finished washing both her dishes and mine when Renee reappeared in the kitchen dressed and ready to face the day. The gauzy fabric of her tasseled gold and orange kimono fluttered around her like the fins of a fabulous fish, a bright contrast to her paint splattered white pants. Her long fingers were adorned with multiple rings that lent an artistic air rather than cluttered. Bold earrings and chunky heels tied the look together. It wasn't anything Alice herself would have worn, but I imagined she would have appreciated it all the same. My mother wasn't into fashion in the traditional sense like Alice was, but she knew what she liked and how to make it look good.
I couldn't help but smile a little as she twirled on the spot to show off her outfit from all angles. "Well? What do you think?"
"I think you're going to be late if you don't get out the door in about a minute," I said as I handed her the brown paper sack that I'd packed her lunch in.
She pouted at me and reached over to tap my nose. "Spoilsport. One day you'll learn to appreciate art when you see it."
If she only knew how I'd survived god only knew how many sessions of 'Bella Barbie' for the sake of Alice trying to teach me to appreciate the art of fashion.
She accepted the paper sack and pressed a kiss to my cheek. "I love you sweetheart. Come straight home after school, we'll go out for dinner tonight, okay?"
I cringed slightly. "Mom, it's fine, really, I don't mind cooking - "
"It's your birthday," she said firmly, her tone allowing no argument. Flighty though she was, my mother could out stubborn even the best of them. "At the very least we can let someone else do the dishes."
Her smile widened as I sighed heavily through my nose, giddy from the knowledge she'd gotten her way in this. "Just please don't let them sing?" I begged.
"I'd never do that to you," she assured, then disappeared out the door in a swirl of color and the scent of coconut perfume in her wake.
I gathered my schoolbooks and reflexively looked for my keys only to remember with jarring clarity that I didn't have a truck anymore. Before I'd moved to Forks, I'd been reliant on either public transportation, or in the case of school, my own two feet. While I didn't really need a vehicle here, I definitely lamented the lack of freedom having a set of wheels had given me. There wasn't really any money to get me a car, and I hadn't really cared enough to seriously save for one either. In hindsight, that was a poor choice on my part. I'd purposefully made my world so small, had erected walls so high, that even I hadn't been able to see how limiting they were.
If I wanted more freedom, then I had to get a part-time job; that's all there was to it.
But first, school.
Somehow melding into the crowd of my old high school was an easier adjustment than anything else had been so far. I didn't have friends here, so no one spoke to me as I passed through the halls and kept to the back of my classes. Stepping back into my old life felt like putting on an old coat – but as the day progressed, the more uncomfortable became. The old coat, while familiar, no longer fit.
I wasn't the same Bella I'd been when I'd lived here. I'd been given a brief glimpse into a world I'd never imagined existed – how did someone who possessed that kind of knowledge go back to the way they lived before?
Or did I take this opportunity to try again? My heart thudded in my chest as the thought. While the hole in my chest was no longer there, the memory of its agony echoed in my mind. I wanted Edward. I wanted to see him again, to be held in his cold arms and never let him go. I was so consumed with this longing that when the final bell rang, I realized I'd drawn a pair of dark eyes underneath Edward's phone number into my notebook.
The house was of course empty when I burst through the front door, just barely remembering to latch it behind me. I tossed my bag aside and hurtled around the corner to the phone on the wall.
But after I'd punched in the correct digits I'd long since memorized, my thumb hesitated over the call button.
He'd left me. No, he'd destroyed me, ripped my heart to shreds and threw it at my feet, before leaving me alone in the woods. I'd always been afraid that he'd tire of me – of plain, boring Bella – and honestly, I hadn't even been surprised when he'd ended things. I'd never been good enough for him, I knew that. How could a human ever be a good match for a vampire? That didn't even include the fact of my being his singer!
A piece of me, the piece that belonged to Edward wholly, died a little as I slowly put the phone back on it's hook. Because right there in that little kitchen, I understood that I was no longer the girl he'd known. If the girl I had been then hadn't been enough to keep him, what hope did the patchwork remains of a person I was now have? Edward would always be the same beautiful, perfect boy who could turn me into a pile of lovesick goo with a crooked smile. Perfect and enduring in a way I as a human could never hope to attain, let alone match. I slid down the wall to wrap my arms around my legs in a vain attempt to try to hold myself together. I fought with the voice in my head that demanded I reach for him anyway, that life wouldn't be worth living if he wasn't in it. Softer still was another voice, this one quietly offering that maybe it wasn't the boy I ached for.
Maybe, just maybe, it was the vampire.
He'd warned me about being the ultimate predator. Everything about a vampire was designed to draw in prey – they were also so grossly overequipped that they didn't really need to try very hard in doing so either. Their voice, their scent, their presence, not to mention the gifts that occasionally cropped up.
I had thought that my figuring out their secret had meant I was immune to their charms. That when Edward 'dazzled' me, it'd been his personality. But as I sat there crying on the kitchen floor, I wondered if maybe, just maybe, I'd fallen prey to the predator like everyone else.
I'd never been in love before him. Never dated, never cared to either. Edward was my first foray into the world of romance, and what an introduction it had been. Without him clouding the very air I breathed with his presence, I realized my mind was sharper than I remembered it being for a long time. Almost like a fog had been lifted.
Like a thrall that had been freed.
I took a moment to summon up the memory of his face. My heart panged painfully but I pushed through the ache. Even just the ghost of his face more perfect than anything I'd ever seen. I would always love him, and I knew I was always going to want the idolized version I'd built up and fallen in love with. The truth was I'd been willfully blind to what he was. How many times had I courted death? Every kiss we shared? Every night he climbed through my window? How much agony had he been in, tormented by the blood that sang so sweetly to him?
Maybe, just maybe, what we'd had together hadn't been what I thought it was. That I'd mistaken love to mean losing myself in someone else – but did the person I had lost myself in even exist?
How much of the Edward I knew was the boy who loved me, and not the predator who wanted to devour me?
I had loved him with everything I was. So much so that once he'd left, there'd been nothing left of me. Would it have been different if he'd been honest, if he'd just explained why it wouldn't work between us, if he'd let me choose for myself whether the risk was worth taking?
Maybe. But given everything I was now starting to suspect, I wondered if I would have been able to make an informed decision at all.
A memory from early summer filtered up from the depths of my mind. Edward had been out hunting with Carlisle, leaving me to spend time with Alice and Esme. Jasper had holed himself up in his study, Emmett commandeered the living room, and Rosalie had spent the whole night in the garage. However, when Alice stepped away to help Esme for a moment, Jasper and Emmett made an appearance.
Emmett had loudly proclaimed a sleepover wasn't complete without ghost stories, and that was how I'd discovered the bear of a vampire was a gifted storyteller in his own right. Each story had increasingly left me on edge of my seat with nervous excitement, but it turned to outright anxiety when Jasper finally decided to chime in. He spun a ghoulish tale about a vampire who kept exceptionally good smelling humans as pets with the intent to slowly feed from them until he either grew bored of them, or they died from blood loss.
At the time I thought he'd just been trying to one-up Emmett and scare me, but now I couldn't help but wonder if there was another reason behind it.
When I finally managed to peel myself off the floor, I couldn't help but feel like a jack o' lantern. All my insides scooped out and laid bare, but deep within there was a flame. Small and spluttering with doubts and anxiety, it still shone through the darkness that had been my companion for so long now.
I didn't have my own personal sun to save me from it this time. If I wanted to get better, to feel better, I was going to have to be my own light.
For a fraction of a second, I could have sworn I felt the little flame in my chest burn just a little brighter.
Your hands upon
A deadman's gun, and you're
Lookin' down the sights
Your heart is warm
And the seams are torn, and they've
Given you a reason to fight
- "Deadman's Gun" by Ashtar Command