Timeline not cannon: For this fic, Bella was 16 when she moved to Forks, meaning the events of New Moon took place when she 17. This story takes place 6 (ish) months after Edward returns to Forks. Her age doesn't play a major role, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Also, Jacob is villainised, if this bothers you, this one might not be for you.
Ruins
Drifting
The sounds of her screaming when they told her he was gone. Begging the officer to tell her he was lying.
I'll never forget the way her voice broke or how she fell to the ground.
Even now, looking at her, barring a resemblance of the person she was before his death, I can still hear it. Pleading, broken, shattered pieces on the floor. Revealing a wound, I could never heal.
Charlie was gone and only now, many months later, had she fully realised he wasn't coming back. Only now had she found a way to let him go.
From the outside looking in, it would appear that she had gone back to her normal life. It would appear that Bella was fine.
She started getting out of bed again.
She had gone back to school.
She'd been staying in touch with family.
She spent time with friends.
Except, she didn't leave the house unless to go to school.
Her mother called often, but Bella never answered.
She had alienated every human friend she had, leaving nothing but the dead and an overly attached werewolf, that I had to tolerate.
And when people asked me, I would tell them, that Bella was doing just fine.
Except for the fact that she wasn't.
"I need groceries." She mumbled as she searched through the refrigerator.
"We can go to the store." I offered, pointlessly.
She wasn't going to the store. I was.
"Yeah. Maybe…" she looked down across the room to me, forcing a smile before she looked back to the fridge.
"I might leave it until tomorrow." She muttered.
I smiled sadly at her, though she hadn't seen it. One day, I would offer to take her, and she would accept, but today was not that day.
"I'll go." I told her standing up from the dining room table to walk to her side.
She shook her head, trying to shield her embarrassment from me.
"You don't need to. There's plenty of…"
"Expired milk?" I asked glancing into the fridge, offering her a small and crooked grin that she actually returned.
I dropped my head down and kissed her cheek and she leaned into the gesture, as I curled my arm around her.
"I'll go to the store. You throw out the milk?" I told her, glancing back into the empty fridge.
"And maybe that…whatever that is" I told her, pointing to the Tupperware container that was holding something that looked quite alarming.
"Anything special?" I asked as I picked my keys up from the bench.
Bella still staring at the container in the fridge, her nose scrunched in disgust as she tried to recollect its contents.
"The usual is fine." She called out as I stepped outside, locking the door behind me.
I knew why she didn't want to come.
She didn't want their pity or their good wishes. She didn't want to talk about him with people she hardly knew, simply because they'd known him.
At first, I'd called it grief and had assumed that it would pass. Now I called it something else and simply tried to get her through the long days.
There was a brief hello to Judy, the lady who worked the register at night and I was stopped by Officer Thompson on my way out of the store. Both seeking information about Charlie's daughter, who they seldom saw anymore. And I told them what I told everyone. Bella was doing just fine. Even though I knew it to be a lie.
When I returned back home, because that's what it was now, my home, I found Bella sitting at the dining room table staring straight ahead, a book opened in her hands.
She hadn't heard me come in.
There was a time when I would have alerted her of my presence, calmly and quietly. But I couldn't bare to do it anymore. The forced smile and and cheery mask she wore was wasted on me.
I opened the refrigerator and started packing the food away.
"That was quick" she said quietly as she reluctantly drifted from the confines of her mind, back into the present moment.
"There wasn't anyone else there. Slow night I guess."
I didn't tell her about the people asking after her. It did no good to remind her that people noticed her absence in the world beyond these walls. Guilt was no cure for what she was feeling now.
I offered to make her dinner and she refused. To which I was happy. I didn't mind making her something to eat, but I knew every small task that she completed on her own was good for her wellbeing. I could only hope that one day she could return to her old self, someone that didn't see all these tasks as pointless, but once again seeing them as necessary.
There were things we had intended to save until marriage. Things that were now nothing but a broken promise. A promise we broke again and again, night after night without any remorse.
It had been a hopeless attempt to comfort her and nothing I had intended to go as far as it had. But in all honesty, I couldn't regret it.
There was a solace in it. A peace that came over the both of us. It was slow and warm, with no urgency or anxiety. It was a time to hold her close and be with her in a way I had never dreamed possible.
It wasn't the act itself but the connection it offered, not just to each other but to everything around us.
I was tied to her, and she was tied to me. Grounding each other on this earth, tethering us to a place we had once feared left us behind.
Because it didn't make time stop, like I always thought it would, time moved as it always had and there wasn't a single second that passed that went unnoticed.
She was different in that room. In our room. Traces of the girl I'd first met still remained, tucked securely beneath the sheets, where no one but me could find them. They lay waiting for the sun to set, for us to join them once more. Her smiles were still genuine, and her laughs weren't forced to pacify those around her.
She told me time and time again in that room, that the nights we spent together gave her hope for the following day. They made her want to stay here.
They made her believe that one day everything would be ok.