FANFIC POST: What Music They Make chapter 15/15, part 2 (Twilight)

[flowrs4ophelia]

When Bella came home that day, she went right to her bathroom to shower first as she usually did after she'd been away in Forks collecting an unpleasant wolf scent. Afterwards she found Edward waiting in their room, relaxing on the couch with his feet on the table listening to Nina Simone. She came up behind the back of the couch and leaned over him, putting her arms around his shoulders and planting little kisses on his neck. With his eyes closed and a content smile on his face, he just stayed still a while before finally pulling her over the back of the couch into his lap.

"Merry Christmas," he said. "Did you give the Uleys the gift?"

"I didn't see them," Bella said. "But Jake will give it to them. They'll probably just tell the girl it was something that belonged to his mother or something, not that it should make much difference to a five-year-old whether it's new or not."

Edward nodded. "I'm glad you thought of a better use for it than throwing it away. You have gotten rid of so many of your other things by now."

She shrugged. "When I decided to keep a lot of that stuff before I was turned, I thought I was getting rid of all the more important things. A while ago I couldn't have imagined letting go of my mom's blanket now that I've lost my mom. But now I still have ways of knowing what's going on with all the people I've left behind. And I've still got my best friend after all this time. That's all that matters, I don't need all the stuff."

He smiled at her, and then after a while he started to look deeply thoughtful. "May I ask you something?" he said, circling his arms around her waist. "It may seem like a strange question..."

"What?" she asked.

He sighed, thinking a while before he spoke again. "I spend so much time cursing that day I left you, hating that I ever did it and left you alone for so long because of the consequences. But sometimes I wonder if...now that you have known Jacob and had all that time becoming close to him, if you would ever really wish I could go back and undo it."

Bella looked surprised. "Of course I would," she said easily. "I mean-now that I know what I'd be missing by never knowing him like I do now, I guess it could be hard to give that up, but that's exactly why I never should have known-"

He held a hand up, stopping her, and said, "I suppose what I really mean to ask is if you really would have prefered to be completely alone that whole time, rather than end up hurting him."

"Yes. 'Prefered' is a strange word, but it just wouldn't be fair to say otherwise."

He thought a while, looking like he still had not gotten quite the answer he was looking for. "Alright. What if you had still come to know him that well but it was different, and he had never seen you as potentially anything more than a friend, but during that time I was gone you still fell in love with him? If it would have ended up hurting you but never him, would you want to give that up?"

She stared off into the air for a moment, looking like this question, much more than the others, had completely taken her by surprise. Finally she shook her head and said, "I don't know if I can really imagine that."

"Why?"

She shook her head more, still looking like she was thinking hard about it. "Because it just wouldn't have...You have to really love somebody to do what he did for me. But what's so strange to think about is at the same time, he was being so selfless all along; it's not like he had to have that certainty that I could eventually return his feelings as a motivation. He was my friend and he did everything he possibly could for me and took care of me while you weren't there, even though he knew I was in no condition to be able to be his girlfriend or anything like that anytime soon. Like you said it yourself, he was the one who stitched me up after you'd left me bleeding. He did all of that only to end up watching me run right back to the person who had hurt me so badly in the first place. But the thing is...I know that if he was given the choice to go back and do it all over again, knowing how it would end, he would. In a second. He would never choose to leave me all alone. And it's only that kind of love and that much kindness from somebody, and no less, that ever could have made me able to fall in love with anybody besides you."

Edward took that in and then nodded with understanding. "I suppose if he at least could never have any regrets about how it happened, that is somewhat of a relief," he admitted.

Bella smiled at him slowly, taking his face in both her hands to make him look directly at her. "I'm sure of this much," she said. "I couldn't be the person I am now without having known him. And yes, there's a part of me that will always feel things for him that can't ever be resolved, and I'll always have a hard time living with that. But more than anything else in my life, he is the thing that has showed me that people can survive and move on from just about anything. Even people like us, despite the fact that we change a lot less easily and a lot less often than humans do. And there are even times that I look back and I feel as if I was only living half a life with you before I knew the full pain of loving somebody else and knowing what could have been and then realized there was never anything perfect about us. Before then it was an escape for me, like a fantasy, not something that the ups and downs of reality could ever touch...

"But you can't just run and enjoy that kind of escape for eternity. You've got to put your feet in the ground and grow together at some point, even though it can hurt. And I guess that's how I feel about my entire relationship with Jacob, as painful as it's been at times. That's why I can't just move on and try to forget about him. He's been an integral part of my experiences and I can't exactly regret any of that now."

Edward was starting to smile very happily, brushing some of her hair back. "I don't know how you became this comfortable with yourself," he said with amazement, "but I hope you know how incredibly happy it makes me to see you this way now."

She smiled back. "Well, I'm happy," she said. "So maybe it's time you stopped dwelling on all your regrets every time I go away to see him. Maybe it was a mistake to get so close to him at first, but I'm better with him than without him now."

"Very well." Edward reached for his stereo remote to turn off the music. "We better go join our family. I know we don't usually give gifts, but I have a feeling I'm not the only one who cheated this year."

Bella laughed. "Wonderful, more stuff I don't need to take with me when we move."

"Regularly replenishing your supply of things you don't need is part of being a Cullen, sweetheart," he said with a humored grin.

"Because we already have everything we could ever need," she said with a warm smile.

He leaned in to kiss her softly and said, "That is quite true."

Then once when she came to Jacob's house in the early evening, she found him looking through magazines in bed with a cast on his leg and his head bandaged. As she came into his window, she noticed at once that he smelled differently than she was used to-still familiar and like him and just as intensely attracting to her as ever, but not as unique with that unusual sense of otherness his scent had always had before. His blood smelled like that of a normal human now. She did not have to find him recovering from what looked like severe injuries to understand very quickly what had changed.

"What in the world did you do to yourself?" she asked in a high and almost angry-sounding voice, carefully keeping as much distance from his bed as she could for now in the cramped little room. His smell was not only different but a little more potent than usual, gnawing at her senses from covered wounds.

"Me?" he asked, then laughed whole-heartedly. "It was some bimbo who ran a red light. You should see the car."

She let out a quick breath in a sound of contained frustration. "Well, it looks like you picked a good time to give up being able to heal."

He laughed again, like the words made little sense to him. "It was almost four months ago that I stopped phasing. Think I look older yet?"

The way he turned his face back and forth to let her see every angle could only make her laugh a little, for he was so banged up and bruised that if he had actually aged noticeably in the last few months it was the last thing she could tell. And making the question sound funny was surely his intention, for his bright white smile was shining out among the painful-looking discoloration of the rest of his face as the one unquestionably recognizable part of his visage.

It was certainly an unusual visit. Bella eventually helped him out of his room so they could sit with the television on, and she ended up practically waiting on him all day so Billy wouldn't have to. Then she stayed past the time Billy had gone to bed, sitting at Jake's bedside and talking to him. They kept making each other giggle and laugh like kids trying and failing to stay quiet at a sleepover.

Then after a while she wondered something aloud. "You think it's still possible for you to end up imprinting now?"

Jacob slowly and unsurely shook his head. "Most of the others talk like it's not a serious risk anymore once we've gotten to this point," he said. "But I guess we can never know for sure. Sam's gone back to normal now, too, but it still doesn't seem like there's anything normal about his love for Emily. They say even once you've aged it's not completely impossible to make the change into the wolf again...Maybe I'll never be completely normal again, not inside and out."

She nodded. "Well, that's true regardless. You're a guy who gets regular visits a few times a year from a vampire friend who you know is a vampire."

He smiled and nodded in agreement. Then with a new thought he asked in a light and curious tone, "Do you think you'd still be a little jealous if it happened?"

Bella didn't have to think for long before answering. "Probably a little," she admitted. "But not because of you imprinting. It would be a bit hard to see you with anyone no matter what...It was even kind of surprisingly difficult meeting Lilah that one Christmas, actually."

His face lit up in complete surprise. "Seriously?"

She smiled herself at the ridiculousness of the idea. "I know. Even though I know it's been a long time since you guys dropped the whole friends-with-benefits arrangement..."

"Good lord, I'm so glad we never actually called it that," Jacob said with a sudden laugh, seeming to find something cringe-worthy about applying that wording to his and Lilah's initial relationship.

Bella smiled again. "I don't know. Of course I realize it's so petty and unreasonable, but seeing how beautiful she is, and yet in such an ordinary and human way...It made me just the faintest bit envious. Maybe she never really had that much of you, but I suppose it was the one thing I've never been able to have from you anymore. When I first started seeing you again after being turned and found that you just couldn't really want me in a physical way anymore because of your strong natural aversion to my kind...Well, how could it not bother me just a little? Even though I knew it was probably better and easier for you that way, I couldn't help it."

He was grinning mildly. "Well, at least you're not going to smell awful to me anymore now," he said. "You can be sure we're both happy about that no longer getting in the way."

She looked for a while like she was trying to think as optimistically, but as she kept looking close at him, something else about the thought of him changing like this and what it meant was threatening to dull her smile. And after a stretch of silence, she finally got out what she had to say to him.

"You can't get yourself hurt like this, okay?" she said softly. "You can't. Not again. I can't take it."

Her tone was half joking, masking vulnerability. But he could hear the underlying fear in her words and understand the true meaning. And he knew she didn't really think his answer would make any difference, but he just smiled at her tiredly and said in his encouraging way, "Okay."

He was starting to look and sound very sleepy, and a while after that he closed his eyes. She leaned over him and softly kissed his forehead, closing her own eyes for a moment. She stayed that way lingering right over him a little longer than any close physical contact between them was usually sustained, bringing a subtle and small smile to his face as he was distantly aware of it while already starting to doze off. Then she remained sitting at his side, watching the slow and peaceful movements of his body as he breathed, for a few hours into the night.

Sometimes when she came here and found him sleeping, she would use her talent to invade his unconscious thoughts and manipulate his dreams so that he would sometimes wake up later aware that she had been there even without her having spoken to him out loud. Tonight she did this only to let him see her still here with him late into the night and to say to him as he was still asleep, I'm leaving now. Get better. Goodbye.

For Jacob, the dream did not stay coherent and orderly after she left, but took off on its own, drifting into other images and memories of her that he had dreamed of times before. Then he relived the half-remembered and half-imagined moment she had shown him once, the very first thing from her head she had ever used her talent to let him see: the two of them holding each other in his car at night, a light kiss on his shoulder...

He woke up with this image still in his mind, and he was alone. It was hard to tell how much of what he remembered dreaming had been manipulated, and there was something especially surreal and disorienting about waking up from the dreams this time. He reached up to his neck and then inside the collar of his shirt, running his fingers along his collar bone until he found the spot just at the top of his shoulder where his skin was ice-cold and there was still a tiny groove of a scar where Jane's sharp tooth had barely punctured him.

Even though it was Bella who had kept the venom from the bite from spreading, not caused the mark herself, when he saw it or touched it he always remembered the cold kiss she had left there forever, in place of letting all of him become something that could ever conceivably be hers. He closed his eyes again, smiling to himself a little before drifting back to sleep and feeling the peaceful sense of acceptance and safety it always gave him to acknowledge the way he was permanently marked there.

People heal. They do. Like the slow growth and budding of flowers, it is something that only happens delicately and without someone waiting and watching for it to finally happen.

Bella now wore the bluebird charm from the necklace Jane Healey had given her on her silver bracelet along with the wolf, and she could no longer think of Paul and Seth without also thinking of her. Every time she looked at it, she remembered that if she had never been turned that girl would probably not be alive. It was a reminder to herself of something she knew she had to accept in order to make things right. After an entire life of easily blaming and hating herself for things, she knew now that this could be just as harmful to others as the most selfish acts. There was a kind of cruelty and even meaningless easiness in self-punishment. Forgiving herself was the only real path to learning from the past and improving her life.

And maybe this was part of the reason she felt she had to keep seeing Jacob in order to preserve some important part of herself. Just sometimes. When she was with Edward, he made her feel beautiful and perfect and loved, like her flaws were just part of the way God had made her and she was proof that even monsters like them were his children. He could have made it easy to just start over and forget, because anything she did wrong he forgot. With him, she was always forgiven before the sin was even committed.

But with Jacob she felt like she was just what she was, just Bell, with everything undesirable that included. Nothing incredibly special. Forgiven, but perhaps not as easily or without any struggle. And still loved.

If it still gave her heart a stinging pang whenever she saw him again, she knew that was in part because being away from him in her still often dreamlike life with Edward usually made it easy to ignore the things she had lost and left behind, the sacrifices that life had cost. But she couldn't forget. Otherwise her relationship with Edward didn't even mean anything; it was just a life of constant denial and evasion, an illusion of perfection. She no longer needed that numbness from the rest of the world he could give her, and she found this meant her moments with him only made her happier than ever before.

Meanwhile, seeing Jacob was always like looking into a very honest mirror, because he had been so directly hurt by her and knew her weaknesses so well that her visits to him were like going to confession, a periodic reckoning. It was somehow impossible not to think more about what she thought of herself when she was with him. Having to control herself while being around his scent made it impossible not to stay completely aware of the dangerous risks she took every single day by being what she was now. He had come to represent to her a manifestation of all her mistakes, and though he was fine now and it helped her to be able to see that to move on, this made him a part of her life that could not go away. She knew this was how it was meant to be, even if for her it would always be partially painful. She was always aware of how ironic it was that he would now be her redemption.

At some point after becoming a vampire, Bella had made some gradual but extreme change into the kind of person who was willing to go out dancing. It spoke for how dramatically different she was now that she did not even think about how this would have once been so unlike her the first time it happened, but later she couldn't be sure whether or not Edward had realized it but neglected to point it out during the night for fear of upsetting the possibly delicate miracle that was Bella dancing in a public place. It was simply one of the great many things that she now couldn't find it in her to stubbornly pass up now that she had such a long time ahead of her to live and reading books and being with Edward could only fill so much of that time.

So at some time, without consciously making it a goal, she'd started saying yes to everything just for the hell of it. Going to see a World Series game with Edward and Emmett. Shopping for lingerie with Rosalie. Learning German as long as Jasper was studying it because he found it a lot less boring if he could practice along with someone else. And now, for the fifth time this year, going out to a club with Edward where they actually had to use alternate fake IDs apart from the ones they usually carried because they had just moved to their current city of residence two years ago pretending to both be fifteen.

As they moved energetically together among the crowd, Edward bending over at one point and kissing her arched neck as her arms were draped loosely around his neck, the flashing lights gave their snow-white skin a blue tint. Just about everyone near was aware of them, stealing stares at them instead of paying attention to the band playing on stage, unable to miss their matched surreal beauty and the elegant way they moved that somehow seemed just not quite natural. The large crowd filling the place tonight was giving it some added heat that was slightly uncomfortable for everyone else to move through, but of course neither of them ever broke a sweat.

"What are you thinking about?" Bella asked him at one point while the band was playing a more mellow song and everyone around them was now moving to the music in a more relaxed, swaying way.

Edward smirked. "I believe that's supposed to be my line," he said.

She just grinned. "You just won't stop smiling."

He raised his brow a little. "I was thinking...that we should get married."

She gave a short laugh. "Again?"

"Yes, again. You know, renew our vows. Emmett and Rosalie have done it several times."

"What makes you want to do this now?"

"It's just occurred to me recently that it seems right. In many ways you could say we have started over since the time we were first married. You are a very different woman now-not just physically, of course-in all kinds of incredible and positive ways. And I just have a feeling that you would enjoy the idea more this time, so this time it could be for both of us rather than mostly for me as part of some bargain."

"Hmm." Bella smiled mysteriously. "Well, I suppose you'd have to ask me the proper way if I want to marry you to really be sure."

He returned her slightly sly smile, and then he reached for her left hand and slid off his mother's ring that she wore there. She started laughing as soon as he immediately dropped to the floor on one knee in front of her, holding it out in offering. As the entire surrounding crowd noticed what was going on with excited smiles and all turned toward them to watch while the band's current song was ending, she wasn't even the least bit embarrassed by the ridiculous amount of attention like she once would have been.

If there was one thing Jacob could say with certainty about his life now, it was that he never felt alone. Perhaps there was something about the kind of ties between people in a pack-not that they were really a pack of wolves anymore by now, just a family that once had access to every intimate detail of each other's lives and had been originally formed as that-or perhaps in part it was the shared loss they had experienced together and which nobody else could ever completely understand that made it hard to imagine becoming separated. But after all the years, not one of them had moved away from this place or even grown apart from anyone else in the group in the slightest. Jacob had realized by now that even if he'd never imprinted on someone, the kind of bond he shared just with his circle of friends was perhaps a lot more remarkable and strange than he was usually aware of. Nobody normal had what he had.

The turnout at the party that his friends threw for him at the Clearwaters' for his thirty-fifth birthday certainly validated his lack of any feelings of loneliness. Sue had apparently been watching the skies nervously all day hoping it wouldn't rain because she knew everyone coming wouldn't possibly fit inside her house, but luckily everyone enjoyed sitting in lawn chairs eating hot dogs and cake the whole time without so much as a sprinkle. By the time it got dark there were still over a dozen people hanging around, including Charlie who was having a beer with Jacob by then and having a laugh over some story he was explaining about a bad experience attempting to enjoy fishing with Billy, so Sue put out some lanterns and it was still a couple hours before they called it a night.

But even after the older guests and the couples who had to get their kids home and to bed had gone, a group stayed out together consisting of the former werewolf bachelors and bachelorette plus Embry, whose wife and son were currently out of town; Quil; and Claire, who at age twenty-one had grown into such a tireless party animal it was no wonder she and Quil were meant to be. They ended up going over to the Calls' otherwise empty house and sitting around the kitchen table doing shots together until it was past midnight, being very loud as they laughed over stories they told despite all of them already knowing most of them.

At one point when several of them all suddenly had to use the bathroom at the same time and everyone had gotten up, Brady tripped right over the dog bowl on the floor and only brought Embry right down with him as he clumsily tried to catch him from falling. It made Leah and Jacob both drop to the floor where they were as they exploded into raucous laughter at the exact same time. Then Quil came back in, still zipping up his fly after very quickly relinquishing the bathroom to Claire, and found Leah leaning against Embry for support as she completely doubled over in laughter, everybody who was still in the kitchen suddenly collapsed together on the floor.

Soon after that Quil left to take Claire home because she'd ended up closer to being ready to crash than anyone else, and then just the remaining four of them went out together to walk along the beach. Embry was laughing at Leah and Brady as they played around like they were fifteen, Brady starting to carry her along on his back after complaining about her meandering slowly behind them all, when it suddenly entered Jacob's head: Bella's voice, like the nudging presence of another consciousness suddenly inside him, unmistakable but a little slowly registered as real in his less than sober state. She didn't exactly say anything except just a brief greeting of Hey, but then he saw an image of a wide view of the beach and of himself and the other three as distant moving figures from high up on one of the cliffs, everything appearing through her eyes in vivid contrast and detail despite how dark it was and how far away from them she had to be. It was all clearly just to tell him she was up there somewhere, watching him with his friends, waiting so he could have his fun with them for now and just checking in so that he'd know.

When Brady glanced at his watch twenty minutes later, he looked a little shocked. "Holy crap."

"Yeah, it's time to get the hell to bed," Embry said.

Looking around at all the others, Jacob said, "Go on, I think I want to stay out here a while."

"By yourself?" Leah asked, and he just shrugged in answer.

"I can't believe we're still out," Brady said to him with a light laugh. "It hasn't been your birthday anymore for almost two hours."

"Oh, good," Leah said in a dryly joking tone, "that means we can all leave."

"Aw Leah, c'mere," Jacob said, grabbing her close and squeezing her with intentionally overdone enthusiasm to annoy her.

"Oh, get off of me," she muttered as he forcefully kissed her cheek. But her arms had loosely found their way around him too, and then after he let her go she gave his chest a rough pat. "Whatever you're gonna do out here, don't drown, idiot."

He chuckled at that, something vaguely affectionate in his smile. His bones were starting to feel as unstable as water; as she turned away, he dropped down to sit on the ground, laughing briefly at himself when he landed rather fast and sloppily on his behind. Brady leaned over to clasp hands with him in an incomplete sort of handshake and then slapped him on the shoulder as he said goodnight, and then Embry stopped by him and kneeled to grab him into a hug.

"The girl's right, stay away from the water," he said, and Jacob laughed again and pat him on the back before Embry pulled away and then looked straight at his face. "Hey. I love you, brother."

Raising a hand to take hold of his shoulder firmly, Jacob smiled. "Yeah. You, too."

"I fucking love you to a million pieces. Happy birthday, okay?"

Embry then set his hands lightly on his shoulders as he kissed his forehead. Jacob gave a low, warm laugh as he stood up. "Get outta here," he mumbled after him with a happy grin, giving a final wave to all three of the others.

They were out of hearing range but not even out of sight yet when Jacob felt something being lowered over his shoulders and turned with a bit of a start to see Bella kneeling beside him.

"You don't have a body temperature of a hundred and eight anymore," she said as if he needed to be reminded, putting his jacket around him which she had evidently grabbed from his house. "It's a little cold."

He just stared at her face and slowly, adoringly smiled. Somehow he was especially happy to see her tonight.

"Happy birthday, Jacob," she said.

"You're a little late," he pointed out, starting to thread his arms through the sleeves of the jacket.

"I'm always a little late or early to come to tell you happy birthday. It's completely deliberate. Birthdays should be spent with the living, don't you think?"

He laughed. "I guess that's true...But you never completely miss it."

"No. I don't intend to ever miss one."

He frowned just a little at those words. "But it must be a little sad for you...Does it feel to you like nineteen years has gone by really fast?"

"Doesn't it feel a little like that even to you?" she asked.

He shrugged and said, "I suppose. But at the same time...what a damn life it's been in so little time. It's weird to think I've still got more than double this much time left if all works out well. What else could possibly happen?"

Bella just shook her head, smiling faintly.

He looked to the side at her thoughtfully and said, "And I guess you turned out to be the love of my life, as crazy as that is."

"I don't know about that," she said, raising her brow a little. "You've still got a lot of your life left."

"Yeah, but still, the phrase isn't necessarily reserved for the last person who you happen to love in the final years before you die," he said lightly.

"True," she agreed, echoing his absence of seriousness in her tone, and then she sighed. "I guess there just needs to be a whole new phrase invented for what you are to me."

After sitting still in thought for a while after that, Jacob slowly moved to stand up. She followed, guessing where they were headed and going right along silently as he started walking leisurely across the beach. At one point he stumbled ungracefully over a rock he couldn't see in the dark, and they both giggled as she had to grab him before he fell.

"Wow," he just said with vague embarrassment.

"This is funny," Bella said with an amused smile, threading her arm through his as they went on walking as if to help support him if he tripped again. "I've never seen you drunk before."

"I know. It's not really fair. I'll never get to see you drunk." With a sudden thought he flashed her a joking grin and asked, "So you feel like racing me now?"

This got a cheerful laugh out of her for a second. But at the same time the suggestion seemed to bring some of the night's more burdensome thoughts back into her mind, and right afterwards her expression became a little detached and blank and she couldn't seem to look at him.

After they kept going a while, he retracted his arm that she was holding hers around and took her hand in his instead. They walked holding hands the rest of the way to their familiar spot with the driftwood bench, still there after all these years though in much more weathered shape, and then their hands remained clasped when they sat on the ground in front of it with their backs rested against it.

"This has been a very good day," Jacob commented peacefully. "Now I've spent it with everyone who I care about."

As Bella looked to the side watching him closely, it seemed to be getting harder for her to smile.

"You okay?" he asked her, noticing her face.

She nodded. "Yeah. It's just strange. You...You really are thirty-five." As she said it, she somehow looked like she was seeing his face clearly for the first time in a while, as if she had not realized until just this night how different he really looked now.

He brushed it off with his familiar bright smile, the one that was still like a branding iron searing straight into her heart and automatically warming it, and it seemed to take ten years off of his appearance. "Still looking good, though, right?" he said.

She finally smiled again, a smile of genuine and natural warmth coming from deep inside. "Yes...In a way you kind of look better than you ever have, actually."

"You're not the first person to tell me that," he said with an amused look, sounding like it was something sort of funny and hard to understand to him.

"It's hard to describe. The older you get, the more...relaxed you are, I guess. More like the way you were before you ever even knew all those legends and my kind are real."

He shrugged. "I try."

She laughed a little. "You do more than that. You're probably going to live sixty more years out of sheer stubbornness. You just don't give up and get too worn down by anything."

He smiled, his chest shaking with a quiet solitary laugh. Then he looked at her again, seeing the still somewhat heavy look on her face as she just stared off at the ocean, and he nudged her lightly with his elbow. "Hey. What is it?"

She stayed silent for a few seconds. Then when she looked directly at him, for a moment she did not bother hiding the wistful hint of sadness in her eyes.

"I really love you," she said quietly, the look in her eyes very soft. Then she bowed her head down a little, looking away and smiling slightly like she felt kind of silly. "That's all."

He neither smiled or looked sad in response to that. He looked away from her with a thoughtful expression, and then he raised her hand in his and kissed the back of it, closing his eyes. Lowering it back down, he just said in a tone faintly echoing the cocky way he used to talk much more often, "I know."

Bella smirked mildly, inched closer to him and leaned against his side. He naturally bent his head toward her to rest it on top of hers, bringing his left arm back to rest across the driftwood log behind her so that his hand was draped over her shoulder. The cool breeze blew his long shoulder-length hair close to her face so that his scent was wafted past her in strong constant currents, but she did not even go rigid with the effort of resistance. Even though the urge to taste it again was always there, his blood hardly ever felt like a disturbance anymore, but simply a part of him. She just closed her eyes and drew it in, experiencing the smell of him fully just as she always had to hang onto every moment with him. She knew, as strange as it was, that the scent was something she would miss one day. The horribly powerful temptation it gave her that she could never give into was not what she would remember.

"I heard from your dad that the sun is supposed to be out today," Jacob said softly after the prolonged silence. "It's not predicted to get that sunny 'til later in the day, but I was thinking I'd like to stay out the rest of the night and see if there's a bright sunrise anyway...Will you wait and watch it with me?"

She smiled at the thought. If they saw a beautiful dawn, the sight would be just like the one portrayed in the painting of this place she'd given him long ago.

"Sure," she said softly. "I'll stay here as long as you want."

So together they stayed there. Even if the sun did not come out uncovered by clouds in the morning, it would be worth waiting together to see.

They always had to make the most of what they had left. There was nothing else left for them to do but find the meaning and beauty in the strange and tumultuous patterns of their inextricably bound lives. They were not lovers and they also were not just friends, not exactly, just as they'd said long ago they could never be. Bella knew probably neither of them could deny that it sometimes felt as if they were in some kind of a relationship in their own way; even without wandering from her commitments in any way, she got something out of her time with him that her relationship with Edward could not give her. He was never hers and yet he was, in a place strung between them invisibly and never physically manifest, in her thoughts she didn't have to tell him for him to know. In her thoughts she did show him. In vivid images of her and them together that still visited him in his sleep and could always make him feel amazingly young again.

They carried on this way so that the absence of the fulfillment of having became inconsequential next to just being and embracing what they were, seeing that wherever they were now was only where they chose to be and so there was little reason to be unhappy, learning to define their own destiny. It was him who had shown her how to do this and put her back together once again. They made up and painted their own sunrises in the darkness when there were none to see.

the | end

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