You said, "I'm sorry that you worry, but don't apologize"
I told you to forget me, but you stayed by my side
When I said
Don't try to make yourself remember, darling
Don't look for me, I'm just a story you've been told

Something surged in me, swelled like a heaving tide rushing toward land. When it crashed into the shore, it didn't stop.

My hand cupped his face. I pressed my lips to Edward's in desperate, happy fervor. And then my world exploded like a bomb.

Everything shook with the detonation, sparks like fireworks spraying across my closed lids. I felt my hands, once holding his face, morph into talons and latch onto my skull, desperately trying to hold everything in as I fell backward on to my butt under the barrage.

The sound like a dying cat reached me momentarily, a terrifying animalistic wailing, but I was too preoccupied with the assault of my memories to pay it much heed. Everything crashing into me at once and blowing up like a speeding gasoline tanker meeting a brick wall.

I saw Charlie's loving face, his strong, sure arms wrapping me into a one-armed hug. My beautiful rusted red dinosaur of a truck, parked in the driveway of the house that had stirred so much nostalgia I wanted to cry. Angela Webber and Jessica Stanley and Mike Newton and all of my friends, their smiling faces beckoning me from across the lunch room. Alice, bending me to her fashionable will and Rosalie detesting my existence. Carlisle and Esme and Jasper and Emmett. And Edward.

Had my eyes not been clenched shut in the gushing stream of my past, I would have seen two of his mesmerizing face; one, ruddy and clouded by my human eyes, in my mind and the other physically present next to me, shaking my shoulder. Yelling, panic welling in his divine voice.

Remembering Edward was like remembering to breathe. It was a sharp relief on intake, life-sustaining after holding it all in for so long. I sucked his memory in, wanting to hold it there longer like a warm blanket on a cold night, then blew it out so I could hear the proof of life in the whooshing billow. As rapidly as the torrent had come on, they began to sour, turning solemn, darkness closing in. I remembered that he was perfect, immortal, and I had been very human and temporary. With that came the memory of my time made of plaster in a hospital in Phoenix where he unyieldingly evaded my desires to become immortal with him.

And most painful of all, the inevitable trauma I had been dreading like a stalking creature in the night, hidden but rustling the bushes enough to remind me it was always there and waiting. Edward had left me. Edward didn't want me.

You're not good for me, Bella.

You're not good for me.

Not good for me.

Immediately my head snapped up, my eyes wide and their irises pinpricks. I stared into that heartbreakingly handsome face, my chest heaving, as my veins filled with acid. "Edward. You're... here."

The freshness of my memories, their hazy mortal perception, warred with my painfully clear vampire vision, trying to make sense of what I was seeing in front of me. It forced me to scramble backward on the heels of my hands and feet, trying to put distance between me and reality.

Edward had left me. Edward didn't want me. And yet, Edward was here. I remembered in painful clarity his confessions over me, the regret he felt, the consuming despair that was evidence in his eyes. If he really felt that awful, then why did he leave in the first place? It could only be the guilt of my death that was not even his fault.

"I'm right here, Elle. What happened." The concern in his voice and his outstretched hand were toxic, repelling, because if he knew I was Bella he wouldn't care. He hadn't before, he said so himself. And I wasn't Elle, not really anymore, which of course made sense now - IsabELLEa. And Masen. Of course he was suspicious. That moment had been a treasure of my mortal time with him.

I shook my head slowly, the other, more dominant half of my brain still grappling with the fact that he was here. My voice was a whisper. "You weren't. You left me."

"No, I've been right here. I'm worried, Elle, what happened? Did you remember something?" Voice slow, like speaking to a scared child, wanting to soothe. He still wasn't getting it. Then again, I wasn't being very clear.

I focused hard on his face, standing and stepping backward further yet as the unintelligible pain from before warped with fresh realization. It lashed at me, creating gouges in my back, and I panted heavily in the exertion of speaking through it. "No, Edward. You left me. In the woods. I remember. You left, and you never came back." My throat spasmed, fighting fear, pain, anxiety, heartbreak, but they were gaining ground and threatening to overtake me.

Bleak comprehension dawned on his face, wiped clean the well-meaning concern and replaced it with abject understanding. His golden eyes burned as they bore into me. I could see his mouth forming the words: No. How. Bella... Please. Please be real. Yet no sound escaped his lips.

I nodded my acknowledgement, swallowing hard as the acid in my veins ate its way through me.

"It's been me this whole time and I didn't even know it. You were right. But hey, look at it this way, you don't have to feel guilty any more. I know I'm a vampire now, but I promise I won't bother you. I'll stay out of your way."

Unconsciously I was still taking slow steps backward, moving away from the only person or thing in the universe that could kill me.

A look of blank confusion crossed his features, as though I weren't speaking in a language he could understand. "Won't bother me...? What do you mean stay out of my way?"

Now I was the one not understanding. I actually checked to verify I was speaking plain English and not some foreign, dead language like Gaelic before I answered him.

"Edward.." His name scalded me, coating my throat like hot wax. "You said I wasn't good for you. You didn't want me to become immortal, a vampire, like you. You didn't.."

I struggled to say these words aloud as they congealed in my windpipe. "You didn't want me."

I was still moving in reverse, desperation and panic beginning to creep in. I wanted to run to him, hold him, touch him, kiss him so bad it was becoming physically painful. I had to leave before I acted on impulse again, or else suffer him spurning me all over again.

While he hadn't moved since my memories came gushing back, petrified like staring into Medusa's face, now he leapt up and bolted towards me. I immediately flinched, bracing for the impact of abandonment yet again.

He stopped dead when I recoiled from him. His face looked as if I'd scoured my claws across his cheek, wounding him. "Bella.. I want you more than anything. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. I was a fool for leaving you. A selfish, arrogant fool."

So desperately did I want to cry, more deeply than I had ever wanted before. He didn't mean any of it, I was absolutely certain of that. How many ways did he plan to mangle my poor heart?

"I understand you feel guilty because you thought I had died, but I didn't. You can go back to how things were before. You don't have to keep acting like this."

Unfrozen, he swiftly crossed the distance between us, pulling me into a suffocating hug. I could hear him inhale deeply, his face pressed into my hair.

Without thinking I fought against him, flailing my arms and shoving him roughly away from me. Though the tears were unshed, they found an outlet in my voice.

"Stop it! Just stop, Edward! Haven't you hurt me enough already!? I can't take this any more. Please, just let me grieve in peace. It's hard enough without you saying stuff like that and acting like you care. I just... I just can't, okay?"

And through it all, it occurred to me that not once had he apologized. For leaving me, for hurting me then, or for hurting me more now. He had gouged my heart from my chest, and he wasn't even sorry.

He looked at me as though he were finally seeing me, insight alighting in his eyes. "Isabella Swan. I lo-"

I slapped a hand over his mouth without thinking. My voice sounded choked when I said, "Anything but that. Please. I know you don't mean that because if you did, you never would have left. Don't say that, now, after everything. It would kill me."

Since this began I had seen Edward look upset. Confused and hurt, sad, and even scared. Now, he look like a man burned alive at the stake: agony and horror colored everything on the perfect planes of his face.

I could see all of our past words going through his head like the end credits to a movie.

"Did you even consider how she felt? Did her thoughts and feelings somehow matter less than yours?"

"I remember.. more of a feeling than anything concrete, but I did care very deeply for someone as a human. Are you saying that if that person had died or.. Or hurt me, it would have affected my memory that much?"

"I loved someone too, but apparently they didn't love me."

"Even if that were true.. that was a century ago, Elle. They're dead, and they can't hurt you anymore."

The exact realization of how precisely hard and deep he had cut me open made his face spasm in pain and clenched his teeth in otherworldly terror.

His leaving had scarred me so vastly it altered my memory. Left me feeling that, in my profound uncertainty, I had been abused. I felt grim satisfaction that he was finally, truly, thoroughly understanding exactly the gruesome weapon he had wielded against me.

I knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that he did not love me. In the face of all of the evidence, the facts and rebuttals and cross-examinations, how could he possibly refute it.

He fell to his knees, dry sobs vibrating his body as if struck by lightning. "Oh God.." His perfect, melodious voice was a wail.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Bella. I truly am the most abhorrent kind of monster. What I did to you, it cannot be forgiven. The unimaginable pain I put you through. You are right, I did not take you into consideration nearly enough. I was too selfish, too pretentious.. To think I genuinely thought you could be happy."

He stopped and put his head into his hands, bowing it as if collapsing under the pressure of his speech.

Anger and grief welled in my chest, burned the acid of my veins away and left them raw and aching. I wanted so desperately to believe what he was saying was real and true. He had hurt me so much. And against it all, my foolish heart still loved him with every diamond-hard fiber.

Edward looked up at me now as he spoke, the flames of his torture flickering in his amber eyes. His hands curled into his lap, clenching and unclenching as the inferno ate at him.

"I only left because I couldn't stand the idea of you getting hurt for my sake any more. If there had been any way, if I had seen any other path, where I could have stayed by your side and kept you safe... I never would have left you, Bella. I know I don't have a soul, but if I did, I would love you with every single part of it for as long as I live."

My hands clasped over my mouth, and I drew in a haggard breath. I wanted to vomit, purge my body of the warring uncertainty and anguish and loneliness. I shook my head, unable to believe him. All I had known was betrayal.

I knew that if he began to plead, I couldn't withstand that. I would crumble, a sand castle washed away by the gentle, lapping waves. I tried to remember that he seemed happy enough when he was with me, as Elle - had laughed and joked and been snippy.

The perfect, immortal pictures in my head did not let me forget that in every look, every laugh and smirk and grimace, his eyes were still haunted. As much as I had tried to imagine him being happy, it always looked like he had a ghost perched on his shoulder, reminding him of the future he made for himself.

"I couldn't live another second without you in my life, Bella. I don't want, or expect, you to forgive me. I won't deserve your forgiveness for as long as I live. But please, let me try. Let me try to deserve you. I love you." His words were a whispered prayer, bargaining and wretched.

My head was moving without me having commanded it to do so, my body shaking with gasps that broke my bones and sewed my chest shut by a minute stitch.

"Try.. we can try. I'm just..." My voice wavered over the broken edges, the shattered glass of my life lying at my feet. "I'm so scared you'll leave again."

He stood, movements slow and intentional, and I vividly remembered him waiting under the tree at my house. So gently, unsure of my recoil, he lifted a hand and placed it on my cheek.

"I will never leave you ever again." His eyes were intense, swirling like melted gems. "I promise you on my life, my breath, and my soul, I will be with you until the day I am removed from this Earth."

Another memory, a conversation that seemed to have happened many forevers ago. I asked him, finally calm enough to speak clearly, "How long are you going to keep this up?"

He must have remembered too, because he said, "As long as it takes."

"Do you really mean that?" I repeated my line thickly, still so scared and yet wanting to trust so badly it made my ears ring.

"Unequivocally." He said. Firmly, with absolute certainty and determination.

When he leaned his head down to kiss me, he paused, questioning. Allowing me to say no this time, giving me the option that so long ago he had taken from me.

I didn't hesitate as I moved forward, meeting him, pressing my lips to his, finally feeling whole again.

A/N: THE END. WOW. What a wild freaking ride.

Hopefully the ending is satisfactory?! I feel like it gives Bella some agency without drastically altering the very fabric of who she is or her relationship with Edward. Or maybe she's still a simp - but I need a HEA damnit, so HEA you all get, even if it is chintzy.

As I have said before, thank you thank you thank you to everyone who loved and followed this story. I'm beyond words with how glad and amazed I am you all came along on this ride with me.

I'm now going to finish Payphone and wonder more "What Ifs" and recover from seeing ADTR last night (If you're wondering, I am Tails and my husband is Sonic. If you weren't wondering or don't care or don't know what I'm talking about, now you know regardless).

Thank you again.

- Hollenheist