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Dream's Shadow

Summary:
This is my take on the over- and usually poorly- done plot. Edward leaves Bella again. She is changed and they meet again in the future. There will be a big twist! Requested by Iris. Banner by Iris!

Notes:
Try it! I know stories like this usually stink, but I thought I'd give it a try. I own nothing. Stephenie Meyer owns all.

24. Chapter 24

Rating 5/5   Word Count 547   Review this Chapter

I walk towards him as slowly as possible, at a human pace, like I could still trip over the perfectly flat sand.

Stalling, obviously. My intention is ludicrously apparent, even to myself. I am trying to put this off. I do not want to have to admit I lied to him. I do not want to leave him. Even less do I want to risk him leaving me, because that is the one thing I will not survive. Once, twice, but a third time is impossible.

“Edward.”

He turns to face me, and I feast my eyes for what may be the last time. He has every right to forbid me from his presence after this. I cannot expect as gentle a response as I received from his father, especially if the probability he doesn’t love me is true.

Oh, I could look at him forever! He is perfection embodied. Although it is night, his skin is radiant, not sparkling, truly, but shimmering like the sand and moon. The soft gleam does not succeed in distracting me from the angular alignment of his features. Symmetrical, sized evenly, placed ideally, each one beautiful, forming an even more perfect whole.

Perfect.

It is the best word to describe him.

Perfect.

It is what I will never be.

Even the change has not granted me the one thing I hoped it would. I prayed the venom could do the impossible. I wanted it to make me worthy of him.

To be that, I would have to be beautiful, and pure, and loving, and intelligent, and unwavering, and… perfect.

And I cannot be.

Why, if I cannot have it, must I desire the impossible?

I want to kiss him. I remember the taste and sensation of those lovely marble lips, cool and smooth as glass, gentle and hard, sweet…

His hair, almost human, still exceptional.

And the eyes I will soon share, but his are so much more than mine will ever be. They express a deep soul, one so alive and beautiful. Beauty I know exists.

“Yes?” His voice completes the momentary heaven. It is rich, deep- no, endless. I could hear forever truth in the echoes of it, and echo it does, on and on over the water and into my heart.

I’m stalling again.

I may as well do this quickly, like ripping off a bandage. I spend a brief minute stalling, then go for the fastest approach. I take the wig Alice all but welded to my head and yank it off.

My hair tumbles free. I turn away for an instant, unlace the corset-like contraption underneath my shirt, and allow that too to fall to the soft ground. Another Alice invention. “Jacob” apparently had a particular taste in shirts- those loose enough to cover the tight binding over “his” chest.

I am making up distractions, stalling with my internal chattering sarcastic monologue. Basically, I’m wasting time. Because I don’t want to say what needs to be said, what I can see he recognizes, what is the truest thing in the world and also the most painful.

“I’m Bella,” I whisper, “and I love you.”