Hey everyone! Currently very ill at the moment so I'm taking on a few oneshot projects that are less pressure, I hope you all enjoy :) Please give this little snippet a tonne of love, like yall have done with everything else I write :)
I watch her from the quiet places no one else notices. The curve of a tree branch swaying in the wind, the shadowed corner of the library window, the slanted roof of her old house where the shingles peel slightly at the edges. Always where the world blurs into stillness, because stillness is where I belong, a place unseen, unheard, untouchable.
From these hidden vantage points, I observe the fragments of her life, the ones no one else takes the time to notice. The way she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she reads, her lips faintly moving with the words. The rhythm of her steps when she walks alone, her head tilted slightly downward, as though she's carrying thoughts too heavy to share. I see the small frown she makes when her coffee is too bitter or when she thinks no one is looking.
These moments are mine. Or maybe I am theirs, bound to them by some unexplainable force.
In the quiet, I can almost convince myself that I belong here, among her world of fleeting seconds and fragile breaths. Among the mortals, with their fleeting lifespans and fragile bodies. The spaces I inhabit are unnoticed by her kind, thankfully so. Not that they would see me, no.
The stillness is a comfort to me because it mirrors what I am; motionless, unchanging, eternal. But it also sharpens the ache, reminding me that I am nothing but a watcher, a distant presence bound to observe but never intervene. Such things are forbidden for us. Even as I stand so near, I am a ghost to her, a fragment of light that will never touch her skin, never meet her gaze.
And yet, I can't turn away. Even when the stillness becomes unbearable, when urges press against my very essence, I remain. Because in her smallest, quietest moments, I see something beautiful, something worth the pain of existing just to watch her.
Bella Swan moves through her life with a kind of melancholy grace, as if she carries something heavy in her heart, though she rarely lets it show. Her days are ordinary, achingly so: coffee mugs half-empty, books scattered across her desk, music softly spinning in the evenings, late night walks, shopping with her best friend, karaoke nights, visits to her mother. She walks to work in the rain without an umbrella, eyes cast down, shoulders hunched against the cold. I imagine what it would feel like to hold one over her, though I never could.
I shouldn't linger. But her light, it's soft and golden, so faint it might be overlooked by anyone else. Not me. I see it radiating from the smallest of her moments, even when she doesn't see it herself. I should turn away, let her life remain untouched, but I can't help myself.
When she sleeps, I watch from the moonlit corner of her room, invisible but so near. Her breathing is steady, her face peaceful, though sometimes she murmurs things too soft for me to hear. I wonder what she dreams about.
As for me, there's nothing remarkable about how I appear. My reflection in glass is faint, more a shimmer of light than flesh and bone. My hair catches the silver of the sky; my skin gleams like marble in the half-light. Wings, unseen to her world, arch faintly behind me, weightless but powerful. I don't belong in her world, I'm too much of the other, the impossible, yet I feel tethered to it through her.
I know what the others would say: You'll burn. But Bella doesn't feel like the sun to me. She feels like the dawn; soft, hopeful, something I could only touch if I were willing to fall.
I stand on the very edge of the rooftop, high above the waking city, my wings tucked close behind me as half of my shoes hand over the edge. The dawn stretches over the horizon, painting the sky in hues of orange and pink, the light catching on the countless skyscrapers that rise like sentinels around me, but never quite reaching. The wind whips past, cool and unrelenting, but I don't feel it, not the way she would. Not in the way I wish I could. To feel it brush against my cheek, featherlight, like the touch of her fingers would be.
Yet as I linger here, the sun barely cresting over the jagged skyline, I can do nothing but watch. Observe. It's all I've ever done.
Present day, and she's in New York. The city that never sleeps. She moves through its chaos with a quiet determination, a softness that doesn't yield but weaves through the noise and rush like a thread of calm. She's different now, older, stronger, but there's still that familiar melancholy in her eyes.
From up here, she's a small figure in a sea of movement, walking briskly along the crowded street below. I follow her every step, my gaze fixed as though I could somehow preserve this moment, keep her safe by sheer will alone. But I know better.
The buildings hum around us, alive and indifferent. And I remain, balanced on the ledge of one that towers over it all, watching her as the morning unfurls, my wings trembling against the pull to descend. To close the distance between us. But I can't. I won't. Not yet.
The city suits her in ways I never expected. Bella moves through the crowd like she belongs to it, her brown hair tied loosely, strands brushing her face as she hurries across the bustling street. She's different from the quiet girl I first began watching.
She carries her bag slung over one shoulder, her free hand gripping a coffee cup, still half-full, as always.
I hover above the city's rampant streets, cloaked in the haze of early evening. The air is thick with noise; horns blaring, voices overlapping, footsteps clattering against the pavement, but my focus is fixed on her. She doesn't notice the way people step aside instinctively, like the world bends around her even though she doesn't demand it. That's the thing about Bella: her light is quiet, unassuming, but impossible to ignore once you've seen it.
Then it happens.
It's so sudden, so banal, that I almost don't register it. A cab screeches to a halt too late. A cyclist shouts, swerving. Her foot catches on the edge of the curb, the coffee slipping from her hand as she stumbles into the street. I'm diving before I even realize it, faster than thought, faster than the laws of this world allow.
But I'm not fast enough.
The impact is sickening, a sound I'll never forget. Time slows to a crawl as her body crumples onto the asphalt, lifeless. The crowd gasps, freezes, then erupts into panicked screams. I stand there, unseen, frozen in the blur of grief and disbelief. Her light - the golden thread that's tethered me to her for so long - snaps.
And I feel it, the loss, like something tearing through me. My wings, my form, my very being trembles from the loss. This isn't how it was supposed to happen. She wasn't supposed to end like this, on a street corner in the middle of a city that wouldn't remember her name tomorrow.
I step closer, kneeling beside her in the dissaray, my hand hovering over hers. I can't touch her. Not like this, not ever. But for the first time, I wish I could break every rule, shatter every law of heaven, and pull her back.
I watch her light flicker and fade, and I can't breathe, if breathing were something I did. The moment is frozen, like a shard of glass caught mid-fall, glinting in the cruel light of the dying sun. Bella Swan is lying on the street below, her still form surrounded by the swell of strangers, their panic and grief spilling into the air. But their sorrow is nothing compared to the storm raging within me.
She was young. She had years -decades- a whole lifetime ahead of her. This wasn't supposed to be the end. Not here, not now. Her light wasn't meant to be extinguished on a filthy street corner under a darkening sky.
The others are watching me. I can feel their presence like a thousand eyes. They speak no words, but their warnings echo in my mind, cold and absolute: This is the way of things. You must let her go.
Let her go? As if I ever could.
I start to hover, remaining close, as close as I dare, and the pull toward her is stronger than it's ever been. My wings falter, trembling with an ache that feels too human. I've watched her for years, through every small moment that no one else saw, and I could never touch her, never speak to her. And now, I'll never get the chance.
Her soul lingers, barely tethered to this plane, caught in that in-between place where the living and the dead blur. Purgatory. A place I am forbidden to go.
But I don't care.
The others shout their protests; You know the laws. You know the cost. But their words are drowned out by the sound of my own desperate resolve. If I can't save her, I'll find her. I'll meet her in that liminal space, even if it means breaking every rule, every oath, every tie to the heavens.
As I ascend, I know the price of what I'm about to do. Angels don't belong in purgatory. To step into that realm is to fall, to risk everything I've ever been. But none of it matters. Not the warnings, not the laws. Not when she's slipping further from me with every second.
I close my eyes, and with a single thought - Bella, wait for me - I let go of the light that binds me to the skies and plunge into the void, chasing the faint echo of her soul.