451Author Note: I know I said I'd never finish this. But I'm getting kind of bored with blogging and thought that since this is my most popular story I kind of owe it a decent end. This will be short.
If they ever knew you at all
Then why are you still crying
My love, I'm slowly dying
If we really knew each other
Then how are still together
We stick forever
-Laura Marling, "Dreaming"
Fix me fix my head fix me please, I don't wanna be dead
-Black Flag, "Fix Me"
its a cold and its a broken hallelujah
Charlie came in every so often, just sat there at the side of the bed and looked straight ahead. He never said anything. Didn't need to. I knew what he was thinking.
He kept asking if I wanted to see Edward. Carlisle, too. Alice, when she forced her way into the room. Even Renee, when she had only met him once. Should I let him in, Bella? He's been in the waiting room for days.
"No," I said, because I couldn't, I wouldn't, "no."
Charlie asked me, "Was it because of him? Did he…do anything?"
I told him no, Edward didn't do anything. He never did anything. He was perfect.
Perfect.
"Bella," Carlisle said to me, checking my IV and writing on his clipboard, "we're going to send in a counselor for you. It will be completely confidential."
"I don't need a counselor," I said, because I didn't. I didn't need to talk to anybody, let alone some stranger with a name tag. I didn't need it.
Faces and names blurred together, those next days.
Alice would come in, beat around the bush and play with my hair and tell me about something she saw on the news or about a new dress she got. You'd think after years of never ending activity she would develop some more complex conversational patterns.
Mike stopped in, Tyler and Lauren and Jessica and Angela. All of them fidgeted, fidgeted. Like they wished they were somewhere else. I made sure they left quickly.
Esme brought me cookies. Emmett brought me a Playgirl. Jasper sat behind Alice, looking out the window. Jacob would stand beside me, staring with more intensity then a kid his age should have. He would try to engage me in conversation, asking what everyone else was asking-why, god, why?-but I would just shake my head and bury my face in my pillow and thank him, and apologize, and thank him again. I don't know what I was thanking him for, or apologizing for, or why? I didn't know.
Every visit ended the same:
Edward wants to see you.
No.
He came in the night before I was released.
I was lying down, looking, and there he was.
His face practically glowed beside the unlit beige walls, his hair gently rippling at the cool air blowing through the open window. He looks at me, hurt, betrayed, frightened. And sad, so sad.
"Hi," I said, because what else could I say?
Edward leaned against the wall, hands in pockets, gaze unwavering. Eyes black.
"Have you hunted?" I ask.
He didn't say a word.
We stayed where we were, in a not-quite-comfortable silence that seemed to stretch as long as the moon stayed in the sky. I fingered my hospital ID, my IV, my hair. Waiting, like when we first met. Waiting.
Suddenly, he was next to me, kneeling, his head ducked in his hands and his breath as erratic as I'd ever seen it.
"Please," he croaked. "Tell me what I did. Tell me what I can do. Please…just tell me."
I jumped a little and nearly hit my head on one of the several monitors hanging behind my bed. I'd never heard him cry, and I don't think I ever would. He wasn't, not really. Just breathing, so quickly and harshly I thought he'd die. I thought I'd die, just hearing it. Like it was some unholy keening of a hell hound. Like people weren't meant to listen.
My voice cracked and I held my hands tightly to my lap. "You didn't do anything, Edward," I said quietly. "This…this isn't your fault."
"Yes it is," he said. "God, Bella-I should have been there. I should have helped you, I should have…damnit, why didn't you tell me?"
After that, I was crying.
Crying because he was crying, because he knew and he blamed himself, because of Charlie, and Renee (in the cafeteria getting a coffee), crying because of Jacob, and because of me. Because I can't do this, I can't talk I can't talk, I can't speak. And that's all that he wants from me, for me to speak and tell him why why why? and I just can't.
I cry.
His scent engulfed me, his arms around me, his ice cold skin against my feverish head. And suddenly I was talking, speaking, babbling. I'm sorry, I sob. I'm so, so sorry, I'm sorry sorry sorry.
He's saying something, too, something like, "Its not your fault". Something like that.
The best part is I believe him.
And that just takes care of itself, doesn't it?
end