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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.

36. Chapter 36

Rating 0/5   Word Count 595   Review this Chapter

Tanya laughs in the instant before she lurches in front of me… not aggressively, but protectively.

“Sisters, Eleazer, I move we do not kill Bella Swan. She hasn’t done any harm.”

“She killed Laurent!”

“Irena.” Tanya shakes her head, eyes wise and full of sorrow. “She didn’t kill Laurent. Laurent tried to murder her. Some friends of hers protected her by killing him. She wasn’t even there.”

Katrina and Carmen seem to be agreeing. Irena looks desperately at each and every one of them.

Then she screams. It is a blood-curdling, blood-thirsty, hopeless desperate sound, so wide and deep with misery I can feel it shake the fault line in my heart as it rattles the dishes and breaks the mirrors for miles around.

A slight exaggeration.

But I can feel the howl in my heart, and it kills me to know that because of me, someone suffers as I have.

Finally, she quiets, not to silence but to sobs. Deep, wrenching sobs… it is pure emotion being played out before me. It is all the pain I suffered but would not express. It is agony, pure and simple. I know the feeling, and I can sense distantly my arms winding around my torso to hold myself together.

“Oh, Kate! I loved him… I loved him… of all the men, all the hundreds of them… him… he was the one I should have been with… forever… I loved him… and he was a monster…”

I interrupt. “No, that’s not true. He wanted to be good… but we’ve all been tempted. He wanted to stay off human blood. And he loved you. I could see it when he talked about you… just before he died. Don’t hate the person you love. It’ll destroy you. Trust me…”

“Of course. I know a lot about Edward and trying not to hate him. Bella’s right, Irena. You can’t hate someone, anyone. Sometimes two people are compatible, but in a relationship there’s also circumstance, and that can go horribly wrong.”

I nod. It’s very true. “And two people… sometimes you love someone who loves you. Sometimes someone loves you but you don’t love them, or vice versa. Sometimes someone loves you, and you love them, but they hate themselves…”

“Which creates gigantic problems.”

Tanya and I share a distinctive look. It is named “Edward”. I have a theory he would have settled for loving her, with less than the cataclysmic love we share, just to make Esme and Carlisle and herself happy… if it weren’t for, first, his obsession with virtue, and second, his ridiculously low self-esteem.

I love Edward. But I think he could use therapy.

Tanya and I may be polar opposites, but anyone who spends enough time with Edward eventually has something in common…

“Irena, look. This isn’t about our problems. Yes, the man you loved is dead. Yes, you miss him. Yes, you probably want to kill me… but he wasn’t the one you were meant to be with. I know… Carmen and Eleazer, Carlisle and Esme, Jasper and Alice, Rosalie and Emmett… the kind of love… I know you loved each other… but there’s something more, I think. I hope. Love that’s enough to make forever worthwhile. I can’t make you stop hating me, or stop your pain…”

She smiles half-heartedly. “I’ll get out of your house now.”

“We should stay. Ask forgiveness…”

“You’re right.”

I look at them. “All right. I’ll call Carlisle.”