Edward
I can tell you I felt cold... colder than I had ever felt before. Every single part of my body felt it, but my heart most of all - my cold, dead heart..how long it has been since it uttered its last beat..it didn't feel. I was completely, and utterly, hollow, inside and out. I felt numb, yet at the same time, I felt more than I ever thought possible... every sense was a live, crackling wire ready to pop. I could hear the humans around me, smell their skin, hear the thump of their hearts pumping blood, I could feel the stone ground beneath me, the smooth wall at my back...my scorching thirst... yet I felt nothing at all...everything was...gone.
The absence of emotion was confining. I wanted to feel, i wanted to look my sin in the eye and cripple and crumble under the weight of my far overdue shame. The sin that led my darling to her own untimely demise. She jumped. It is so humbling, an emphasis on ones fragility, that one small leap can take your whole lifes purpose crashing down with it.
And I felt guilty...so much guilt, stronger than I ever thought possible. It was all my fault. The one person I loved most, the one person I wanted to keep safe... I failed her in the most irretrievable way.
Never again would i see those casm deep eyes awake to my loving gaze. Never again would i hold her in my arms, brush my lips across her hair, and inhale deeply. Never again would i witness a most obvious display of her bad coordination. Never again would she scowl at my teasing. Never again would she smile that smile at me. Never again. That i could not bear.
I remembered now..all the times she asked to be changed. I never understood it. I was blinded by my own self loathing, a dark, compromising cloud...the squids ink over my eyes, causing me to not see what i saw now.
I had been asking Bella to spend the rest of her life with me, all while refusing to spend the rest of my life with her.
And for what? Ill tell you what. It was cowardice in the name of chivalry. If id of only stayed...oh Bella...
"You're moping again."
Bella. The Bella ive been seeing for months now...maybe i am insane. I will gladly take the mental instability over being alone in my mind. She wears her prom dress...i love that one. I silently thanked my brain and induldged.
"you're still here?"
I replied, softly muttered with a vulnerable lilt.
She smiled, so innocently, so contendtedly.
"Course i am. Im in your brain, its kinda hard to get rid of me."
I smiled, though it didnt reach my eyes
"Ah...right."
She grew thoughtful for a moment, staring at my deadened, tired eyes.
"...Are you scared?"
"Of what?"
"Dying, i mean. Are you scared?"
I really did ponder her question. Was i? I didnt think id fully grasped that, in less than an hour, i would no longer walk the earth. There'll be no Edward, my love for my family, and Bella would dissipate and burn with me. I didnt want to die, but i simply did not have it in me to continue to live. But scared?
Yes. Yes, i was scared.
Where would i go? Surely not the same resting place as my Angel...no...there was no god for me to supplicate; No God to look to for guidance on the wild path that is and has been my life. Id regarded Bella as that, my guidance, my angel, my non pareil, my paragon of virtue. For all that was, is, and has been Edward cullen..she was the demiurge.
But now, without her..i felt...small. Like a child, who feels big and tough until their comfort blanket is taken away. They feel naked, vunerable, raw.
"thought so."
She quipped.
I didnt know what awaited me on the other side, and i didnt like that. I dont want to go alone...but i have to do it. Its all very conflicting. Suddenly, very much feeling like that little, skinny, sick boy in a cot in 1918, i spoke.
"Bella...can...can you stay with me..? I want you there when..when i go. I dont wanna be alone. Im scared."
She defied the typical Bella Logic, and actually didnt protest.
"i promise. Ill hold your hand if youd like?"
I nodded vigorously as my eyes stung with the tears that couldnt fall, my lower lip quivering, my voice wobbly and small.
"Please...and youll be there till the very end, right? You wont go?"
Her phantom hand stroked my cheek, i didnt feel a breath of it, but it was real enough.
"yes, ill be there, when you close your eyes."
I stood in the hall under the clocktower as the sunlight cracked through. This was it. I lazily shrugged out of my shirt and took another step as the bells clapper beat against the sound bow, initiating the first of the upcoming twelve chimes. I stepped forward, the wind tunnelling down the hallway, like angels calling me to my final place of resting. I said a silent prayer for my family, let Carlisle be well, lest Esme be too riddled with greif, let Rosalie find peace...even if that peace comes from my death, let Emmett be their rock, be the word of the silver lining in a storm, let Alice not blame herself, let Jasper be there for her as she needs, and most of all: wherever i may go...let it be with some form of my beloved..for this is the price i pay. The penance of my first love.
I let the memories flood my mind. Basking in them, my final thoughts.
Ring
"The new student, Isabella Swan. Daughter of the towns cheif of police, brought to live here by some new custody situation. Bella. She'd corrected everyone who'd used her full name."
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"I could hear them all, hear every insignificant thing they were thinking as it passed through their minds. But nothing at all from the new student with the deceptively communicative eyes."
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"Her scent hit me like a battering ram, like an exploding grenade. There was no image violent enough to encompass the force of what happened to me in that moment"
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"She was actually sort of pretty for a human, in an unusual way."
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"Yea i would fight for her. Against my family. I shuddered."
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"Whether she would settle for someone in this lackluster crowd, or wait until she was free from Forks, the day would come that she would say yes.
I saw her life as I had before-college, career... love, marriage.
I saw her on her father's arm again, dressed in gauzy white, her face flushed with happiness as she moved to the sound of Wagner's "Bridal Chorus."
The pain I felt while I imagined this future reminded me of the agony of transformation. It consumed me.
And not just pain, but outright rage.
The fury ached for some kind of physical outlet. Though this insignificant, undeserving boy might not be the one Bella would say yes to, I yearned to pulverize his skull with my fist, to let him stand as a proxy for whoever it would be.
I didn't understand this emotion-it was such a tangle of pain and fury and desire and despair. I had never felt it before; I couldn't put a name to it."
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"Could a dead, frozen heart break? It felt as though mine would.
"Edward," Bella said.
I froze, staring at her unopened eyes.
Had she awakened, caught me here? She looked asleep, yet her voice had been so clear.
She sighed a quiet sigh, and then moved restlessly again, rolling to her side—still fast asleep and dreaming.
"Edward," she mumbled softly.
She was dreaming of me.
Could a dead, frozen heart beat again? It felt as though mine was about to.
"Stay," she sighed. "Don't go. Please... don't go."
She was dreaming of me, and it wasn't even a nightmare. She wanted me to stay with her, there in her dream.
I struggled to find words to name the feelings that flooded through me, but I had no words strong enough to hold them. For a long moment, I drowned in them.
When I surfaced, I was not the same man I had been."
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"When change came for one of us, it was a rare and permanent thing. I had seen it happen with Carlisle, and then a decade
later with Rosalie, Love had changed them in an eternal way,
a way that would never fade. More than eighty years had passed since Carlisle found Esme, and yet he still looked at her with the incredulous eyes of first love. It would always be so for them.
It would always be so for me, too. I would always love this fragile human girl, for the rest of my limitless existence."
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"My skin was blazing with the most flagrant symptom of my disease. In the sun, I was less human than at any other time. And she thought I was... beautiful."
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"I laughed again, then pulled myself closer to her. With my lips against her ear, I began humming her song again, so quietly it was little more than a breath.
I could feel the difference when she crossed over into uncon-sciousness. All the alertness escaped her muscles, until they were loose and languid. Her breathing slowed and her hands curled ta gether against her chest, almost as if in prayer.
I felt no desire to move. Ever again, in fact. I knew eventually she would begin to toss, and I would have to get out of her arms so as not to wake her, but for now, nothing could be more perfect. I was still unused to this joy, and it didn't really feel like something a person could get used to. I would embrace it for as long as that was possible, and know that no matter what happened in the future, just having this one paradisiacal day was worth any pain that might follow.
"Edward," Bella whispered in her sleep. "Edward... I love you."
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I heard my angels voice yell, calling desperately for me. I could SMELL her too. I smiled.
I'm coming, my love! I bellowed back to her in my mental voice.
Bellas phantom was at my side, her sinless, ethereal hand in mine. I felt my throat burn with her scent...how extraordinary the mind is, that it can trick you into real touch, taste, smell and sight.
I drew my final breath, my hand clinging to hers as she guided me to my last resting place, i let the devastating love i felt for bella fill my very being, letting it shine from me, as if beams of it glowed from my fingers and my toes, and smiled as she whispered in my ear.
"Close your eyes, Edward."
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