Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I don’t want you to do anything drastic,” Bella said. “Okay? Can you promise me that?”

Edward’s head was spinning. He thought he might throw up.

“Okay,” he said quietly.

“It’s…” Bella paced, on hand on her hip and the other hand on her forehead. Edward was reminded of getting a scolding from a teacher or a disappointed parent. Bella seemed older than 21 sometimes. Having to baby her parents her whole life had left a mark on her. “It’s just… I need to process. Is that okay?”

“Okay,” Edward said again.

He’d been stupid. But that was probably too broad a statement. He’d been stupid his whole life. He couldn’t stop being stupid. He wanted to hit his head on the wall. He wanted to jump out the window and start running and not stop, not come back. He wanted no one to ever look at him again.

He’d really, genuinely thought that they could be perfectly fine after he decided to come back. He’d left her for months, vanished into thin air, and like some sort of idiot had thought that he could waltz back into his place in her life and that they could pick up right where they left off. Who did he think he was? Bella was glorious, she was like one single shining good thing in his life of monstrous garbage and he was just there to mess everything up again. He was there to smudge his filth on her perfection. Of course she would want him gone. She should want him gone. She was smart, after all, and perfect and wonderful and beautiful and incredible. Anyone so good as Bella Swan would want to see Edward Cullen dead in the ground and he couldn’t disagree with her.

“Say something,” Bella said pleadingly. She’d stopped pacing now and was standing across her bedroom and staring at him. She was between him and the window. He could just run past her and dive through it, right?

“Okay,” Edward said again. Bella groaned. “No, uh, I mean… I mean, okay. I mean. I understand. I’ll give you space.”

The words came out of him forced. He thought he was going to vomit.

“Don’t take this… Don’t take this too seriously,” Bella was begging him. “I know you get mopey. Don’t get mopey.”

“I’m not mopey,” Edward said but it came out cracked through the knot in his throat. He closed his mouth and stopped breathing in order to discourage the knot from growing.

“You really understand?” Bella said. Edward nodded. Bella nodded then too. Then, she stepped closer to him and put a hand on his arm, her fingers just grazing his skin, and pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek. His skin felt on fire. “Thank you,” she said.

She showed him out and he started walking and he didn’t stop.

He could have run home in minutes, but he slowed down, took his time, and stayed in the shadows. He thought many terrible things about himself on the way home and stopped a few times to control his sobbing.

He got home after a lot of wandering at around 4am.

Emmett was sitting in front of the TV with an XBox controller, sucked into whatever he and Rosalie were playing together. Edward walked past them, feeling hollowed out and empty and weak.

“Hey!” Emmett said and looked up when Edward walked in. Edward didn’t even try to respond.

He continued towards the stairs. He saw Emmett elbow Rosalie out of the corner of his eye and they paused their game and turned to stare at him.

Edward put one foot on the first stair.

“What’s up, dude?” Emmett said. He was surprisingly compassionate, despite how gruff he could seem at first glance. He was gentle and could read Edward like a book.

“Something else happen with that human girl?” Rosalie asked, historically less gentle. At least they both said what they thought when they thought it, blunt as can be.

Edward burst into tears and clapped a shaking hand over his mouth.

Emmett was up and at his side in seconds.

“Give us a sec, babe,” Emmett said to Rosalie and he followed Edward into his room.

Edward spilled everything through tears over the next hour and Emmett listened. He’d learned to curb his violent self-deprecation in front of his family after years of discouragement and Concerned Talks, just grateful that they couldn’t read his mind like he could read theirs. So although he left out that particular part of the story and let Emmett just infer, he told him everything else.

“I mean,” Emmett said. “She sounds justified, dude.”

“I know she is!” Edward cried. “That’s the worst part!”

Back at Charlie’s house, Bella pressed her face into her pillow and cried all night.

She’d put a lot of thought into this, but it didn’t mean that she still wasn’t terrified. It was literally taking everything in her not to call him right now and take it all back. The old fear was returning. Well, not even old. Just the fear, the fear of a few weeks ago barely, when he’d been gone, when months ago he’d left her high and dry. She knew she’d have another Bad Night tonight and was afraid to sleep.

But she didn’t call him back. This was her thought process. Some of it you may know, but most of it you don’t.

A few months ago, she would have died to get him back. She would have killed. She would have done anything. You know this. He was everything to her and she was nothing without the way he told her he loved her and the way he made her important, the way they clicked together like puzzle pieces, so natural and easy and she finally belonged. If she had known a few months ago that she’d have him back only to send him away again, she would have rioted.

Bella had not only lost her best friend that day, but she lost any semblance of self that she’d built through him and it tore out every single one of her insides and left her hollow and she crumbled. She’d felt like a husk, like something with a piece punched out of the middle. Like a rotting old house that had become so empty and uncared for that the ceiling gave way.

And so it had destroyed her.

But in the time that he was gone, she’d started to fill herself back up again. She’d made friends with Jake. She’d tried new things. Time had passed and slowly, the hole began to close.

This didn’t mean she didn’t still love Edward. It wasn’t that she didn’t still need him, and she was self-aware enough to realize that she depended on him maybe too much. But there was something else holding her up inside besides just him. Now, she knew she could stand without him if she had to. She had enough of herself inside that she didn’t need him to love her enough for the both of them-she could love herself. She could do it.

This was only part of the reason why Bella had decided to have this conversation with Edward about their relationship.

He’d returned two weeks ago. During this time, he and Bella were inseparable and Bella had taken to thinking about the time he was gone. This is part of what you might not yet know. Things had become a little different. Bella was a little different, and Edward was too. Time does that, of course, and now everything was thrown a little off-kilter. Their relationship, the way they interacted, the way they needed each other.  Everything was set just a little off and Bella had taken those two weeks to try to put them right again, but she realized that in order to do that, to have back exactly what they’d had before, she’d have to backtrack. She have to give up the things she’d used to fill herself back up again and she didn’t think that was the right choice.

She wanted him. She just also wanted herself, too.

At the same time, Bella was thinking about what it must be that Edward had inside him . What had happened to him during the time he’d left? How had he changed, shifted? Could they find comfortable spots within each other again and go from there? Was there something in him that held him up besides her validation so that they could move forward like that together, stronger people.

And did he know that he’d royally fucked up??

Bella was not convinced that Edward knew that he’d done wrong, not really. He’d apologized for leaving her, but something still felt unfinished to Bella.

After all, she had been traumatized . Her whole life had been dismantled. She cried herself to sleep for weeks, dreamed of his rejection for months, had felt everything inside her be pulled out. She still did.

And he’d, what? Kicked back? Wrote some sad poetry?

Bella wanted Edward back, but they needed to find their relationship and themselves again in context of each other. And Edward needed to realize that he couldn’t play with his partner’s feelings like that. He needed to change and now.

So Bella had decided that a little space would do the trick. And although she cried and felt panic all night, she was proud of herself for having done it. She felt stronger knowing she could do it. If he didn’t come back, which was the horrific fear that overtook her now, she knew that eventually, she would be okay because she was the first time. She had enough inside her to stand without him.

Chapter Text

Several months earlier, Bella had a birthday. She had it at the Cullen’s house because this was before they left. She was feeling a little anxious about it for various reasons, one being that she was not very interested in continuing to age past her best friend and two being that she was terribly uncomfortable being the center of attention and that’s exactly the kinds of situations that Alice was prone to putting her in. But this is, of course, a story that you already know. You know that she was decorated in gifts and was having a perfectly decent time until she cut her finger in the Cullen’s living room on a piece of paper.

Bella could see the change in Edward’s eyes and for a split second, when the blood had risen up on her finger, she’d forgotten where she was. She remembered again soon when she saw that change. His eyes were fixed on her finger.

“Edward,” she said, as if she was just trying to call him out of a daydream. The fear had not yet registered inside her. Her mouth had not yet gone dry, her stomach hadn’t twisted. Faster than she could even see, every one of the Cullens moved towards Edward and in the commotion, she was shoved and she slammed into the glass table behind her. Pain lit up her arm like an ice cold fire and she hit the ground. She cried out. Something was wet and hot, gushing from her arm, and she was still too stunned to make any sense of it and then Edward was on top of her. He pushed her to the ground and snatched up her arm, holding her wrist so tight that her bones strained.

“Get off!” She cried, stunned, and his mouth was on her arm, his free hand holding her down.

“Edward!” Someone else shouted and then he was hauled off of her, snarling. There was a small scuffle and then, Emmett, Rosalie and Esme dragged him off.

Finally, there was a minute of calm and in this period, Bella realized that this whole affair had began and ended in a matter of seconds, but that it had felt like every instant had approached her in a slow motion procession.

She sat there for a second, covered in blood and glass, staring blankly ahead and trying to understand what had just happened.

Then, Carlisle crouched down into her field of vision and time began to move again.

“Bella?” He said. “Hey. I’m gonna clean up your arm, alright?”

Bella nodded slowly and she numbly felt Carlisle take her arm.

“Bella, I want to stay!” Alice said and Bella looked up and realized she was standing over her with a pained expression. She had a hand cupped around her mouth. “But I just-”

“It’s okay,” Bella said weakly. “Go. Find Jasper.” Alice nodded and then turned around and ran and it was just her and Carlisle in the room together.

All she could see in her mind was a picture of Edward’s face. She’d thought maybe his eyes would be blank, but it wasn’t like that. His face was twisted up in rage, something she’d never seen in him. He looked like he hated her and wanted nothing more than to destroy her. Which she knew he didn’t, of course, but the image of his face that way, smeared in her blood, it hurt , she realized. She felt as though she’d done something wrong. She felt as though he’d come to her and told her he hated her. Her stomach twisted in panic and she tried to control her breathing.

Bella and Carlisle sat in silence for a minute as he worked and then the pain came back to her slowly as some of the shock and adrenaline wore off and she winced when he pulled out a particularly large piece of glass.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “You really got shredded here. It’ll be over soon.”

“Where is he?” Bella asked and Carlisle glanced up at her. His eyes were yellow and so, so pretty. That was something that struck Bella about vampires. There was never anything really so striking or even special about their features, but they all were so pretty anyway. And pretty really was the word for it, she’d decided a while back. They were pretty, like a delicate china set or a detailed marble sculpture. Like a fragile work of art instead of a person. Like something so refined, like they belonged to another world where there was no such thing as being clumsy or having a family that didn’t all quite fit together well or feeling awkward at eighteen. Like they were meant to sit on delicate couches with cups of tea in Jane Austen novels or romantic paintings. It was a world Bella wanted to enter, this world of eternity and delicate prettiness where all the rumpled corners and frayed edges of her life could be smoothed over and coated in gloss.

It was almost a little ironic too that she was thinking this immediately after having been attacked by Edward, surrounded by blood and broken glass and the image of his face, twisted and growling and slick with blood. She felt the terror in that image, in the way it was seared into her brain now, but there was something about the violence of it that seemed to fit his world too that she couldn’t put her finger on it. What romantic painting depicted this scene? What gothic novel did she want to disappear into? What beautiful fantasy of power and greek marble had Edward stepped out of?

“He’s outside,” Carlisle said quietly. “Hold on, let me get some more supplies.”

Bella waited as he brought back a first aid kit and helped her up onto the couch.

“I’m sorry,” Bella said. “There’s blood all over your carpet. I’ll clean it.”

“You will do no such thing,” Carlisle said scoldingly. “You’ll rest and feel better.”

With all the glass out, Carlisle began wrapping up her arm and wiping off the blood.

“Will he be okay?” Bella asked.

“He’s probably asking the same thing about you,” Carlisle said. “He’ll be…” Carlisle stopped. “He’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry about him. But, um… This probably will be hard for him to process.”

Hard for him to process. That was a way of saying it. Edward would take it hard. He was a puzzle to Bella sometimes. She wished that she could read his mind. His self esteem was a very fast and very painful rollercoaster and she could barely follow it well enough to understand where he was at any given time. She could guess right now, however, that it was probably very low.

She waited for another forty minutes for Edward to come back, sitting on the couch. Alice sat with her for a while and they didn’t say much and finally, Bella stood up awkwardly.

“Maybe he needs some time,” she said uncomfortably and she looked at the ground and put her hair behind her ear the way she did when she was feeling awkward.

“I’m sorry, Bella,” Alice said and she stood up. “I’ll talk to him, too, you know.”

“Tell him I’m not mad,” Bella said and then, she got in her car and drove home.

In bed that night, she texted him.

“Hey,” she wrote. “I’m not mad. I understand. Are you okay?”

There was no answer for an hour or so and then he finally replied.

“I’m so, so sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I already told you it’s okay,” she said. “Don’t worry about it, Edward, seriously.”

She nearly couldn’t sleep waiting for his response. She didn’t want him to feel badly but she also wanted reassurance that the renaissance painting branded behind her eyes of his face, furious and hateful, wasn’t a reflection of how he really felt about her. She wanted to re-paint him, put him back on the delicate couch with a porcelain cup of tea.

He didn’t respond for several hours and Bella was nearly asleep when he did.

“How is your arm?” He asked. “I dropped off some more first aid stuff at your house.” Bella bolted up in bed when her phone buzzed and then, she ran downstairs and threw open the front door, desperately hoping that he could somehow still be there alongside the care package of first aid supplies and ‘I’m sorry’ chocolates that he’d left on the stoop.

He wasn’t.

So this is what had happened before the Cullens left Forks and took all of Bella’s insides with them.

Chapter Text

One thing you don’t know about Bella Swan is that she was in college. She was studying literature.

She was reading Northanger Abbey at the time our story began. This is both relevant and irrelevant at the same time.

I mention Northanger Abbey because, for those who don’t know, it’s the story of a young girl who travels to an old, atmospheric castle with her friends to stay for a trip. It’s by Jane Austen. The girl is a teenager and she’s a romantic, both in the sense of romance and in the sense that the world appears rosy to her. She loves books and likes to imagine that she’s the protagonist in a magical story where she uncovers dramatic secrets and stumbles upon hidden murders. Unfortunately for her, this isn’t the case, and in the end of the book-now, if you’d like to read this book, you can skip the next line, although I won’t spoil much, I promise-at the end, she discovers that her friends have no dark secrets and she doesn’t live in a pretty painting. She lives in real life and everything is all so much better and so much worse than fiction.

So that’s why I brought it up that Bella was reading Northanger Abbey. Maybe one day, she’ll recommend it to Edward and they can read it together.

The summer had just started, so Bella was spending a lot more time at Charlie’s house instead of driving to seattle. She had a cheap little apartment up there, but she came home for the weekends and over breaks.

Two days after she sent Edward home, she called him up again.

He answered after two rings. One ring was the time he took to see her name on his phone screen. Two rings was the time it took him to panic.

“Hello??” He said and he sounded desperate.

She’d missed his voice. She suddenly felt a yearning inside her that almost threw her right out her front door and into her car to chase him down. It hurt . She remembered the way everything used to be easy.

She was standing in her bedroom, the light from the window dim and shady, pacing and she thought about his voice.

“Hey,” she said and swallowed and pulled her hair back with her hand anxiously.

There was a pause.

“Are you mad at me?” She said quietly.

Edward scoffed almost immediately.

“Me??” He exclaimed. “Mad at you ?”

He didn’t say anything else.

“Um, so,” Bella said.

“No!” Edward finished. He still sounded desperate. She wondered why she’d never noticed this desperation in his voice before. Was there a hole punched out inside him, too? Did he need to hear that she loved him as much as she needed to hear it from him? “I mean no, I’d never be mad at you, never. Are… I mean-” He choked and swallowed. “You’re mad at me. ”

“No,” Bella said. “I mean, that’s not exactly what I meant. You understand, right?”

“I mean, I think so.”

“I wanted to ask you on a date right now,” Bella said. Then, she cursed in her head and pressed a fist to her forehead in frustration. What kind of a line was that? What was all this?? This was a nightmare, that’s what it was. And he’d say something terrible to her soon about how much he hated her and how pathetic she was and then she’d wake up in tears in the morning and have to decide whether or not classes were worth attending today.

Edward was quiet and then he choked out, “I thought you’d never want to talk to me again.” He sounded like he was crying. Damn it. Of course he’d internalized this. This isn’t what Bella had wanted. But it would always be hard at first, right? They could work through this. Right?? Right??

Bella found it hard sometimes to put her thoughts into words. Sometimes all she could do was stammer when something hit her a certain way and that’s what she did now.

“What?” She said. “What, no. No, I-no.” She caught herself and pulled herself together. She imagined that she was talking to her mother in order to calm down. She had to be the adult here. “No, Edward. Look, let’s meet up. We can talk. I want to just do this slowly, that’s all. I just… Want to see you. Go on a date. Like, you know.” She pulled at her hair and paced around her room. “Like anybody else.”

“Okay,” Edward said. He coughed, but his voice was still thick. “Where would you like to go?”

When Bella was put into a situation where she had to meet up with someone, but she didn’t know how long she’d want to be there, she said they ought to meet up for coffee. That way, if things went south, she could chug her cup and pretend to get a phone call. A coffee date was supposed to be short.

So Bella said coffee. To be on the safe side.

They met at a place down the street. Edward was there early. Bella could see him through the store’s front window as she parked her car. He was sitting at a table, his head in his hands.

When she walked in, he looked up in a second and swiped at his cheeks. His eyes were a little red. He stood up stiffly.

“Hey,” he said miserably as Bella reached the table.

She put her purse down and then threw her arms around him. He stiffened further for a second, but then leaned into it and hugged her back. She could tell he was holding his breath.

When she pulled away, he rushed to get her chair for her and then sat back down himself. He wiped at his eyes again.

“I’m sorry for everything,” he said like the words burst out of him, like it was an accident and he wanted to reach out and grab the words and put them back inside him. He practically clapped his hands around his mouth. Then, once the words were out and he couldn’t take them back, he shrank a little. “I’m sorry,” he said again, quieter this time.

Bella nodded. Inside of her was exploding.

“Thank you,” she finally said because she didn’t know what else to say. She couldn’t quite… Well, she couldn’t quite say it was okay . Not yet. And she couldn’t fully say she wasn’t mad. She just didn’t want him to be like this.

“Do you want to get a coffee?” He said quietly after a tense minute.

“Sure,” she said, just so she could justify having suggested the place.

At the counter, he insisted on paying until she took his credit card out of his hand and put it in her pocket and then paid for it herself. Back at the table, she put it back into his wallet and slid it across the table to him again and then sipped her cup of coffee.

“So,” he said. “A date.”

“Yup,” Bella said.

“Um,” he said. “I haven’t been on a lot of dates.”

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Bella said. “You’re just supposed to, you know. Relax. Have fun.” She shrugged uncomfortably. She felt sometimes like she took up too much space and her body language screamed all about it. She didn’t know what to do with her hands or her arms or all of the rest of her. She pressed her hands between her knees.

“I never really went on any dates before you,” he admitted, which was something that he had only alluded to before. “I never liked anyone before you.”

“No one?”

Edward avoided her eyes.

“I know, I’m weird.” Then, like it had just hit him, he looked back at her. “I’m not trying to, um, manipulate you or anything. Or make you feel bad for me. I just, um. Ugh.” He looked back down again.

“It’s okay,” Bella said. “You can relax.”

He couldn’t.

She sort of wanted to ask more about the details of that (because surely he’d had crushes before. Right?) but there were more pressing issues at hand.

“I don’t want you to think I hate you,” Bella said. “I still want to be with you. I just want to take it slow.”

Edward nodded.

“Do you understand? That I love you?”

“I understand,” Edward said. “I love you, too.”

Bella was desperate to make this work. How could she make things go back to normal? She took a long sip of her coffee to fill the silence.

“Um. How’s your composing?” She asked once she put her cup down, trying to connect with him again, be friends with him again. “What have you written lately?”

“Oh,” Edward said and he looked down at his folded hands on the table. “Actually, I didn’t do much composing while I was gone.”

“Not even like, a half of a song?”

“Um. No. None.”

Bella swallowed.

“None?”

“None.”

Yikes.

“What about you?” He asked. “Read anything good?”

This was awkward.

“Nooope,” Bella said and she looked down into her coffee. “Well, actually I picked up something recently. Just the other day, is all.” She didn’t read much while he was gone, just what was required for school, and then she didn’t really enjoy it.

“What is it?” Edward asked.

“Northanger Abbey,” Bella said. “It’s a Jane Austen.”

“Do you like it?” Edward said and Bella thought of the castle and the mysteries and the beautiful picture she saw painted before her and she nodded slowly.

“I think so,” she said.

Chapter Text

The Cullen family had been thrown into something of a strange position after Italy. Edward walked on pins and needles. He avoided his siblings and parents as much as possible. It seemed as though they were on edge as well, unsure how to handle him. Carlisle watched his thoughts extremely carefully, but there was an icy edge of fear inside each word and Esme sometimes let her hugs linger on him a few seconds longer than normal. They were stiff around him. On eggshells.

Edward had tried to do something very terrible and drastic in Italy and his family didn’t know how to approach the hugeness of it. They were afraid. And the thing was, Edward was afraid, too and although he knew that his entire family loved him and wanted to support him, he felt very desperately alone and he thought a lot about it.

He hadn’t expected this. He didn’t know what he did expect. Well, he expected to not be here to deal with it, he supposed.

But anyway, he was living in some sort of bubble with his whole family right now and if any of them moved a single inch, it would pop and he didn’t know what would happen then. So he stayed still.

And now, he was on thin ice with Bella, too, and it’s just what he deserved.

That night, Edward sat on the couch in the living room, scrolling numbly through his phone and trying not to think of any one thing. Esme was in the room too, in an armchair, reading a novel. Sometimes, she'd laugh or hum at whatever it was she was reading and Edward would look up at her and watch her eyes move across the page.

Except, she was thinking about him, he realized.

He got pretty good at tuning people out sometimes. It wasn't a perfect on and off switch, but when everyone around you was constantly screaming all their thoughts and couldn't stop, it became necessary to learn how to retreat and just stop hearing. He'd trained himself to become wrapped up in his own thoughts or in distractions like his phone to the point where he sometimes wouldn't hear people calling his own name and would have to be shaken out of his thoughts. It appeared as though he was an incurable daydreamer, when in truth, he was just desperate for peace.

“Edward?” Esme was saying in her mind. Edward shifted awkwardly on the couch.

“Yes?” He said out loud and Esme looked up.

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry, I was thinking.”

“It's okay,” Edward said and he expected her to go back to her book, but instead, she set it down and crossed her legs and looked over at him.

“Couldn't concentrate,” she said.

“Is it not good?” Edward asked.

“I just have a lot on my mind,” she said and then she smiled gently at him.

Sometimes, people didn't think in words so much as they thought in emotions or concepts and Edward couldn't receive emotions like Jasper could, but he could read the language of thoughts. She was trying to send him love, but she was in pain, too. It hurt him to read that in her thoughts.

“Are you glad to be back in Forks?” She asked him. Edward didn't want to leave the mindless world of distraction behind, but he closed his phone anyway to listen to her.

“Yes,” he said.

He couldn't say no!! He’d uprooted his family once and then twice and it was his fault, so he had to just be okay with it. He couldn't tell them his real feelings because he'd asked for this. And besides, to say no would be too simple. He was conflicted. He was miserable. But he would rather be miserable in Forks than out of it.

“I am, too,” Esme said and she smiled. “Such a nice little place.”

“It is,” Edward agreed.

“How was your date today?”

Edward heaved a breath. So far, he'd realized, he'd cried every single day since being back. He was trying to stop.

“Good,” he said. Esme smiled patiently.

“Come on,” she said. “You gotta give me more info than that. I've missed sweet Bella, how is she doing?”

“Um, good, too,” Edward said. He sat up on the couch now. “We just talked. She seems different.”

“Different how?”

Edward didn't want to get into it, so instead, he shrugged.

“Just different. I dunno.”

Then, Esme got up and crossed the room and sat down next to him.

Was this going to turn into a Concerned Talk? He sifted through her thoughts, desperate to find the stiff discomfort and the pain that accompanied each one, desperate for a way to escape.

“I suppose time does that to people,” Esme said as she sat down.

“Except us,” Edward said. Esme laughed a little.

“I think even to us,” she said. “Change isn't something we can escape, but I think it's not something we should want to escape.”

“Yeah,” Edward said, but inside he was thinking about how he loved his mom, but that was a dumb statement. After all, if things hadn't changed, he and Bella would still be the same. If things hadn't changed, Bella wouldn't treat him like he was glass, like she hardly knew him, like she didn't want him around. Change was a bad idea.

“How have you been feeling lately?” Esme asked. So this was definitely a Concerned Talk.

“Fine.”

“Edward-”

“Really, I'm fine.”

“You can talk to me.”

“I know.”

There was pain in her thoughts. Edward wanted to curl up under a blanket and hide.

“I just wanted to let you know,” she said and she looked down and put her hand on his knee. It was supposed to be comforting. It wasn't. “Me and Carlisle love-” And suddenly, her voice cracked with tears and Edward felt every inch of him freeze in discomfort and terror. Esme sniffled and wiped at her face and started again. “Me and Carlisle love you so much and if you were to-to do something like that again, I just don't think I could handle it.” Edward’s heart broke. “We just want you to be happy, sweetie. What can we do to help you?”

This sucked .

“Uh,” Edward said quietly. “I dunno.” Could she make him not a terrible monster? Could she bring back his relationship with his best friend? Could she cure the deep-set ache, the heaviness, that he could never seem to ease from his heart no matter what??

“Will you promise me you’ll never do anything like that again?” Esme asked and Edward looked up into her face. She was wiping away tears and she reached over and took his hand.

“I promise,” Edward said quietly.

Esme reached over and pulled him into a hug and he hugged her back

He meant it, the promise. Mostly. Living forever was a curse and he didn’t want to do it. No one really would! And once Bella, his best friend, was dead, then what would be left for him here? The only thing he knew was that that day shouldn’t come for a long, long time, so he could make that promise now.

Chapter Text

At the beach, Bella walked with Jacob and they talked and Bella thought about how different she felt like Jacob had become, and so fast.

One thing you might not know about Bella is that she could read people pretty well and she could read Jacob Black like a book. She’d been seeing strange changes in him for a while now. He was angrier, maybe. She couldn’t put her finger on it exactly.

They were talking about Edward again .

“And what, you’re just going to go right back to him?” Jacob was exclaiming. Bella brushed her hair off her face with her fingers, her eyes on the ground, and tried not to get too angry.

“We’ve been over this,” she said. “We’re going slow. Are you even listening to me, Jake?”

“Leave him,” Jacob was pleading. “He’s bad for you.”

They’d had this conversation before, over and over. The script was old.

“Can we not talk about something else?” Bella said.

Suddenly, Jacob stopped walking. Bella stopped and turned around to look at him.

“What?” She said. Jacob had a funny look on his face. Oh, no, Bella thought.

“I need you to know,” he said. “That I’m in love with you.”

Jacob and Bella were friends and during the time Edward had left her, she and Jake had become even closer. Bella loved Jacob and he was her best friend other than Edward. But that was it. She didn’t feel anything different for him but that.

She stared back at his face now and was without words.

Jacob went on, some tired speech about how he would be better for her than Edward and here’s why and Bella felt her heart breaking.

Why couldn’t Jacob be happy to have her as a friend? Why wasn’t he glad that she was in his life at all, that she loved him? Was her friendship not enough for him?? She didn’t want to hurt him or break his heart, but her own heart was aching then. What she had to give him was never enough for him, not anymore, not since something inside him had changed. She missed the old Jake, the kid she used to play with when they were young, the guy who helped her fix bikes and made her smile when she’d never been more depressed in her life.

Then, his speech ended and he did something terrible.

Jacob grabbed her hand and yanked her towards him and then he cupped her cheek and pressed his mouth to hers. Bella tried to push him away, but he was like pushing a brick wall, he couldn’t be budged. All she could do was twist and push and yell and a few seconds later, Jacob let her go and she fell back.

“Augh!!” She cried. “You-you-” And then, she hauled off and socked him in the face.

Her hand exploded in pain and Bella pulled her hand back, horrified and filled with rage.

He’d kissed her! He’d forced his mouth on her mouth and he hadn’t let her go!

Who was he?!

Staring into his face that second, her hand a firework show of pain, Bella remembered several things at once.

One thing she remembered was Jake and her as kids, his sweetness and humility and his dorky grin.

A second thing she remembered was the hardness in his eyes now and the anger in the set of his mouth.

She immediately went home and she didn’t answer any of Jacob’s texts or phone calls.

Her next date with Edward was in a few days and she hadn’t planned on seeing him before then, but as she sat in her room the rest of the night and stewed over the events of the day, she couldn’t help herself from wanting to call him.

It was a strange impulse. She’d nearly gotten rid of it completely by the time he’d returned, this impulse to reach out to him, to send him things that reminded her of him, to tell him thoughts that came to her head, to confide in him. She’d nearly gotten rid of it because it had been so long and because each time she would feel that urge to text him, it was as though for a split second she’d forgotten that he wouldn’t answer and when she remembered, she felt his loss all over again and it hurt tremendously.

Now, not only did she feel this desire to tell him what had happened to her that day, but she was reminded that he was back now, sure, but he had been gone. That he’d abandoned her like something he’d gotten sick of.

So there was the sweetness in knowing that she had someone close enough to want to share things with and that he was finally back, but also the bitterness in knowing that there’d been a time when he was gone.

Her feelings were complicated. She texted him anyway.

“Don’t freak out,” she typed first because she knew that he would. “I’m fine. I just want to vent.” And then, she explained what happened and set her phone down and sat on the end of her bed.

In a few minutes, there was a hasty knock on her window and she jumped and looked over to see Edward sitting in the tree. I said don’t freak out, she’d thought bitterly and made a mental note to tell Charlie to cut down that damn tree.

She opened the window and let him in and when he saw the dissatisfaction on her face, he shrunk back a little.

“I freaked out,” he realized.

Bella smoothed her hair back with two hands and heaved a breath.

Edward didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He wrung them a little and then smoothed them down his pant legs and then crammed them into his pockets.

“I didn’t think,” he said. “I just, I really wanted to be sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” Bella said. “I just… Wanted to tell you.”

It was very difficult for her to be so detached. She wanted to leap into his arms half of the time and push him onto her bed and kiss him, but then she’d remember in the back of her mind the pain she’d felt when he left, like an alarm going off every time she wanted to get close to him again. She suddenly doubted herself. Was she going slow because it was the responsible thing to do or because she was afraid of his rejection again?

“Thank you for telling me,” Edward said. His voice was sort of like… Well, Bella didn’t know. A warm, fuzzy blanket. Familiar. Soft. “I sort of want to rip his head off, though.”

“Don’t,” Bella said and Edward sucked in his bottom lip nervously.

“I won’t,” he said. They were standing on opposite sides of the room, Edward stiff by the window and Bella sitting again on the end of her bed. “I’m, um, I’m not really that violent. I promise. I didn’t mean it, I just, um, I-”

“I know,” Bella said. Edward and his seesaw emotions. One minute angry, one minute crying, one minute trying to convince her he was monstrous and the other trying to convince her that he was ordinary. At this point, Bella didn’t know what Edward wanted her to think, or what he really thought. Why does this have to be so hard, Bella thought.

Her phone buzzed then. Bella picked it up. It was Jacob. She deleted the notification and put her phone back down.

“Are you upset ?” Edward asked.

“With you?”

“With him. But, um, I guess also with me. Are you upset with me?”

“I’m not upset with you, but,” Bella laughed a little and looked down and put her hair behind her ear. “Well, I could tear his head off, to be honest. Yeah, I’m upset.” Bella shifted awkwardly and hugged herself. “I love him, you know, really, we’ve been friends for years, but suddenly what I have to give him isn’t enough anymore. I punched him, too.” She held up one hand so Edward could see the bruises slowly forming. Edward looked angry and then heartbroken and he took a few steps forward. Bella let him take her hand and look at it. “It’s fine, really, don’t make a big thing out of this. I just punched him.”

There were a million things Edward could say now and most of them would have made Bella a little angry, whether he condescended to her or insinuated that she needed his help or that she had done the wrong thing, and she could hear all of these things in her head, but instead, when he looked up, he said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

Chapter Text

Edward and Bella’s next date was to the Seattle Art Museum. Edward tried on every outfit he had and stood in front of the mirror in his bedroom anxiously until Alice chose a button up for him.

“It’s exhausting being the only person with taste around here,” she said as she held a jacket up to him to see if it matched and she sounded weary but she was smiling. She pulled him further into the light and examined him for a minute.

“Do you ever think about how we’re stuck at our ages?” Edward said. Alice’s eyes slipped up to his face and in her head, he heard her groan pityingly. In a second, he saw her having conversations with their parents about his mental health about the Incident in Italy in her thoughts and he felt a wave of humiliation and bitterness and he reached up a hand to rub at his forehead as if he could scrub her thoughts from his mind. 

“Oh, yikes,” Alice said. “Aw, Edward.”

“So you guys talk about me?” Edward said. Alice put the jacket down.

“Not like that,” Alice said.

Edward stared at the ground and then he took the jacket from her hands and put it on.

He supposed he wasn’t really surprised. Something in him felt a little sick though and he couldn’t decide exactly what it was.

“It’s hard to control my thoughts,” Alice said quietly.

“Hard to control hearing them,” Edward said.

“Do you still want me to answer your question?”

“Sure.”

“I do think about it.”

Edward was twenty. Alice was twenty three.

“What do you think?” Edward asked.

Alice smoothed out the jacket around his shoulders and avoided his eyes.

“I think it’s both very lucky and very unlucky. But mostly it’s lucky. Do you think that mostly it’s unlucky?”

“I do.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

“They say your brain isn’t fully developed until 25.”

Alice laughed and finally looked at him.

“How are you gonna get on when you’re missing a piece of your brain, Edward?”

Edward tried not to grin.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I!” Alice cried. She turned now and shut his closet doors. “How will you manage? At least I’ve got three more years worth of brains than you.”

“Alice!”

Alice turned back to him.

I’m glad to see you’re smiling, she said in her head.

“I smile a lot,” Edward said.

“Of course,” Alice said, but she didn’t mean it.

Bella came by an hour later with her truck and called. Edward stared out the window at her car and picked up his phone.

“I was going to pick you up,” he said when he answered the phone.

“You snooze, you lose,” Bella said and Edward’s face cracked into another modest smile. He felt a warmness in his chest, a rightness that she had put there.

“Alright,” he said. “And if your car breaks underneath us on the way there?”

“It’s a truck, not a car. And if it does, you can carry me all the way back.”

“A lot on the line here, then.”

“Yes, a lot.”

This was starting off well. Edward told Bella he’d be right there and he hung up and then he tried to force himself to stop smiling but he couldn’t hardly control it. His heart felt like butterflies for her. It was a very unique feeling, something he’d never felt before, and it convinced him that Bella was something magical that God had sent to Earth as a beautiful, funny, clumsy, perfect blessing.

When she’d told him what had happened with Jacob, he’d felt rage and then sadness and then pity and then empathy and he still wanted Jacob’s head on a plate, but this was becoming an everyday thing and he thought, in the moment, he was so close to losing Bella again that all he wanted to do was forget Jacob and think about her and so he did. He tried to forget about his own anger and he only thought about her feelings and it turned out to be a pretty good choice.

This is something you might not know about Edward, but I need to make it clear that his struggle with feeling inhuman did not start when he became a vampire. It started when he was maybe twelve or thirteen and he had begun to notice that nearly every single person in the whole world was different from him. Everyone talked about dates and kissing, there was pressure to “like” someone, and Edward searched his heart desperately for a long time to find what he was missing and all he felt was an empty hole.

The drive to the museum was actually easy. He slid into the passenger seat and smiled at her and she grinned back big and he cherished every single thing about her, committing it to memory. It was an hour-ish drive up and they listened to music and laughed and joked and suddenly, Edward felt like he’d jumped back in time. Things were working again.

“You know,” she said as they pulled up to the museum. “The next date, you gotta plan it.”

He laughed a little awkwardly. They never really used to do formal dates so much as just… Hanging out. Which he supposed was the same thing, except with less planning.

“Okay,” he said. “You gotta give me some tips, though.”

“You really never dated anyone else?” Bella asked.

She stepped out of the car and shut the door behind her and he followed and shook his head.

“You were the only one who called my attention,” he said. “Unluckily for you.”

She looked at him from the other side of the truck bed and then looked back down and put a piece of hair behind her ear.

“Quit self deprecating,” she said and turned around. “You have to know how great you are.”

It was comments like this that kind of confused him and also sent his whole heart soaring at the same time.

Instead of answering, he came around the other side of the truck and linked arms with her and they walked into the building together.

Bella studied each piece of art long after Edward had lost interest, but that was okay because he took that time to enjoy her presence. Sometimes, unwillingingly, he remembered the taste of her blood in his mouth. It was hot and thick and bitter, like blood always was, and richer than animal blood, but it also seemed to light every cell in his body on fire.

He tried not to think about it.

They stopped in front of a painting of a couple in a field. Bella gazed into it quietly. Edward watched her face, holding his breath to discourage the thoughts of blood and relishing the silence in his mind. Being with her was the only time he wasn’t filled up with other people’s words. 

“This is lovely,” Bella commented after a minute.

“Mmhmm,” Edward said, still holding his breath.

“And it’ll always be lovely,” Bella continued. “All of this in here, it’ll always stay beautiful and perfect just… Forever.”

Oh man, are we doing this today, Edward thought.

“I bet they’ll love collecting dust in here for the next zillion years,” he added, trying to laugh it off, and then he pulled her away from the painting.

“The man in that painting looked like you.”

“What if we get someone to paint you , hmm? We could do that, if you want.”

Bella laughed stiffly. He was getting to recognize the different between her uncomfortable laugh and her real one.

“I dunno about that,” she said.

My family talks about me behind my back, Edward tried to force himself to say. He opened his mouth and tried to get the words out, but they wouldn’t go. It was like trying to slice out a part of his own heart-if, you know, his heart had been alive and real and not, like, solid stone. 

He wanted to share his conversation with Alice, but everytime he tried, he choked. It hurt like being stabbed, like he imagined being stabbed would feel. It hurt like the flu closing up his throat. Now there was finally a good analogy.

“Talked to Alice today,” he finally said.

“Oh?”

They stood in front of some sort of statue now-something kind of modern art-y. It looked like marble, maybe. Bella’s eyes traveled up and down it’s angles.

“Everyone’s talking about me at home.”

Bella tensed almost imperceptibly. She pulled him a little closer, until her cheek pressed into his shoulder. He could smell her hair and her skin and her blood. He allowed himself one breath in.

“What do you mean.”

“Esme, too, even. They’re just… Tense.”

“About Italy.”

Why, why had he brought this up.

“About Italy.”

Bella squeezed him even closer, her eyes on the statue, and she put what seemed like an absent minded kiss to his shoulder. Then, she lifted his hand out of his pocket and kissed his knuckles. He heard that sweet, tiny little kiss sound as her lips left his skin.

“I’m fine, is what I mean,” Edward said.

“Of course you are.”

“But I hate that they’re talking. It makes everything weird.” The house felt like a minefield, like the walls were covered in thorns and he could trip into it at any moment. 

“Are you talking about it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean do you want to talk about it.”

She finally looked up at him. Her eyes were so beautiful, so big and dark and gorgeous, he could just gaze into them for days. If her eyes turned any other color than dark brown, he’d riot. He’d just lose it, go feral. She didn’t even realize how perfect she was. He wished his eyes were that color.

“No. It’s just uncomfortable at home, that’s all.”

Bello looked away again and her put cheek back down on Edward’s shoulder.

“We should go out more, then.”

Edward loved the peace and quiet of being around Bella’s locked up mind. He loved the rest from the noise. But there was a challenge to finally being emptied out of other people’s thoughts. He was so used to it that when it was gone and all that was left was him in there, well… He wasn’t sure he liked what confronted him there.