we have lost even this twilight
one. Edward Cullen : this is the last trick i’ll do
This is how he will remember her : little girl, frozen doll girl, her breath like a piece of black thread snagged on a tree branch, thin and catching. The forest and the wind and the leaves all vanish. The world closes in itself, and narrows down to this, to her.
He’s devoted hours to the study of Bella Swan; he can read her face like the sheet music of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. This is what she look like when she is dreaming of home. This is what she looks like when she is being stubborn. This is what she looks like when she is laughing at Emmett’s antics.
This is what she looks like when you are breaking her heart.
He allows himself one last weakness, pressing his lips to her forehead, knowing that it’s the last time he’ll ever touch warm skin, human skin, again. Her pulse thrums beneath his fingertips, and that’s what finally gives him the strength to let go. He’ll replay the sound of it in his head for the months to come, and it’ll be the empty lullaby that convinces him that he’s done the right thing.
Take care of yourself.
Then the world becomes a blur of green and brown, and he pushes his body to the its limits, reaching top speed, as if putting miles and miles between them will make him forget how her eyes swallow the light when she looked at him.
It’s all in vain, of course.
It will take him hours to realise that no matter how swiftly he runs, he will never outrun her.
two. Charlie Swan : fathers be good to your daughters
Going for a walk with Edward, up the path. Back soon, B.
It’s six, six thirty when Charlie gets home from the station. He isn’t too worried to begin with; Edward has been perfectly responsible in regards to Bella. Always brings her back on time, always flawlessly polite.
Seven thirty, there’s a basketball game on ESPN’s Sport Center but by the end of it, he realises that he can’t even remember the score, never mind who won.
Eighty thirty, he restrains himself from going to the phone. Bella is eighteen, and an old soul. She doesn’t need her father nagging at her every time she’s out.
Nine thirty, he calls the Cullens. There’s the long drone of the dial tone, and he pretends that that isn’t panic starting to shoot through his veins. They’re out, is all. Or maybe their phone is off the hook.
He tries the hospital next, and asks for Dr. Cullen. He’s put on hold and classical music plays for the longest three minutes and forty nine seconds of his life, the kind of music that Renee always used to play around the house. Debussy, maybe.
It’s not Dr. Cullen who answers the phone. It’s Dr. Gerandy. Only three things register : Cullens, gone, LA.
Ten thirty. Going for a walk with Edward, up the path. Back soon, B. He reads the note obsessively, folding and unfolding it, trying to decipher the message behind the words. He thinks of the way Bella’s lips shape the name Edward and tries not to remember another night in September, baby Bella on Renee’s hip and the words Don’t go thickening in his throat, choking him.
Eleven thirty, he rounds up the troops. Arthur Newton, and his son Mike, who is friends with Bella, James Weber, Darrell Taylor - he runs through his whole phone book. All of the men take up their Coleman lanterns and flash lights and spread throughout the forest.
Billy Black promises help. “Some of our boys down here at La Push,” he says, “Sam Uley and his friends, they know the forest better than any townsman, or any ranger, for that matter. They’re out on tribal business right now, but when they finish up, I’ll send them.”
Twelve thirty. He’s starting to get paranoid. He’s sure that the clock is mocking him. It can’t have only been an hour since eleven thirty. It must’ve been five, six hours, at least. At least.
One thirty. He’s making up a catalogue of all the times Bella’s gotten lost - in the grocery store, at the beach, by the town square. It’s almost more comforting to think of this, of her being lost, rather than the alternative - that maybe she chose to leave.
For good, this time.
She wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, he thinks, because it is easier to lie to himself than to consider - other alternatives.
Two thirty. Sam Uley emerges from the woods slowly as a priest with an offering in his arms.
Charlie insists on taking his daughter from Sam’s arms. He hasn’t carried her like this since she was eight years old, but the weight is almost a comfort, as if to whisper, She is here. She is real. She is here.
He feels like the host of some bizarre party as he looks at all the bobbing lanterns and lamps and flashlights of all the searchers, thanking each and every one of them for coming, for helping. Guests assembled in honour of Bella. A late birthday party, maybe, where the birthday girl is hidden away in her house, away from all searching eyes.
There are still a half dozen more calls that he has to field. Sandy Newton calls, relieved to know that her husband and son are coming home. That nice girl Angela, Janice Weber’s daughter, calls again for maybe the fourth time that night.
Yeah, we found her. She’s okay. She got lost. She’s fine now.
He tells himself that he isn’t lying to them when he says this.
Three thirty. He’s been wide awake all night, the tension humming like wires beneath his skin, but as soon as she is found, the wires go slack and sleep is a black wall, just waiting to slam into him.
So of course, the phone rings again. It’s Mrs Stanley, no trace of sleepiness in her voice as she says that there’s fires burning out on the sea cliffs of La Push. He rings up Billy about it, and everything clicks into place : bonfires celebrating the Cullens’ hasty departure. Billy makes up all sorts of excuses for them : They’re just teenagers, Charlie. We’ll make sure they put them out. Charlie knows that all he would have to do get those kids from the reservation to kill their fires is show them his daughter, pale as stone and just as unmoving. A monument to grief.
Bella’s sitting up when he gets back to the living room, and he curses Billy a few more times in his head for waking her up. Then of course he has to answer her questions about the call, and fill her in on his long, sleepless night. Minus the panic.
She asks where the Cullens went, as if she truly doesn’t know and he throws in an extra curse for Edward Cullen for making him break the news to her. For making him break her.
She refuses to talk about Edward. She shoots up from where she’s collapsed on the couch, and stumbles heavily up the stairs, into her room. He hears the click of her door, locking, her frantic footsteps.
And then there’s the sick thud of her body, falling.
He has to pound on the door for ages to get her to unlock it, a grown man shouting at his daughter, Oh god are you all right, just open the damn door, please, baby, you’re scaring me.
When she finally opens the door, she is leaning heavily on the frame, and she slumps into his arms, her limbs loose and clumsy, puppet with its strings cut. Her body is there, but when she looks into her eyes, she is miles and miles away.
It will take him days to realise that she’s never coming back.
three. Sam Uley : empty and waste is the sea
Sam and Jared and Paul aren’t out on the cliffs; they spend the night on patrol, wary, not completely trusting the news that the vampire coven has cleaned out of Forks.
Billy’s the one who gives them the call. “Charlie Swan’s daughter,” he says. “The one I told you about.”
He remembers her, vaguely; a shy girl at the beach, almost curled into herself, hiding behind her long brown hair. Laughing with Jacob Black. The one who had looked up sharply when the name Cullen was mentioned.
“She’s gone missing, in the woods.”
Sam almost phases before he’s out the door. He doesn’t need Billy to tell him that she may already be dead.
When he finds her, she is both better and worse than he expects. Little girl, broken doll girl. He holds the lantern close to her face, just to see her breath mist on the glass. Her eyes are blank marbles that reflect no light, and she looks as if ghosts have settled just underneath her pale, pale skin. He can easily imagine this girl being in love with a walking corpse.
With his acute hearing, he can pick up the faintest echo of her whispering, like the soft scratch of rain against a window, like the tapping of a spider’s fragile leg on a silken thread, the twist of a sparrow’s wings, going, going, gone. Her mouth shapes two words, over and over.
He’s gone. He’s gone. He’s gone.
When he picks her up, she weighs no more than an autumn leaf. Her lips move soundlessly against his throat.
You left me. You left me. You left me.
He forces himself to look at her, at the hollow accusation, at the brokenness, at the desolate waste land of her face.
It’s his mother’s face, when his father left her.
It’s Leah’s face, when Sam left her.
It will take him weeks to realise that he will be haunted by this face for forever.
four. Billy Black : it is only the passage from one day to another
He can’t pretend he hasn’t been waiting for the call. He’d tried warning her, more than once.
At least it’s over now. At least we can breathe. At least it’s safe. The Cullens are gone, and nobody is hurt. Jake won’t ever have to know the pain of his body ripping into that of a wolf’s. Bella Swan will live to see another sunrise.
The world didn’t end today, he thinks.
It will take him years to realise that it did.
five. Jacob Black : miles to go before i sleep
Billy refuses to let him drive the car there, refuses to let him go at all, so in a fit of rage, he decides it’s a good idea to hike the fifteen miles to Forks, at night, in September. He gets there at three in the morning, when everyone is spilling out of the Swan house. She’s been found, Mr Weber says, she’s sleeping now.
Sam Uley and his two cronies emerge from the living room; he hears, later, how Sam was the one to find her in the woods. Sam nods at Jake, like he has some kind of understanding, and Jacob glares and shrugs off his familiarity.
He gets a ride home from Mr Weber. Better than going back with Sam’s little gang.
If only I had been earlier, he thinks. If only I’d been the one to find her.
It will take him a lifetime to realise that no matter how early he arrived, he would always be too late.
~ end.
This is how he will remember her : little girl, frozen doll girl, her breath like a piece of black thread snagged on a tree branch, thin and catching. The forest and the wind and the leaves all vanish. The world closes in itself, and narrows down to this, to her.
He’s devoted hours to the study of Bella Swan; he can read her face like the sheet music of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. This is what she look like when she is dreaming of home. This is what she looks like when she is being stubborn. This is what she looks like when she is laughing at Emmett’s antics.
This is what she looks like when you are breaking her heart.
He allows himself one last weakness, pressing his lips to her forehead, knowing that it’s the last time he’ll ever touch warm skin, human skin, again. Her pulse thrums beneath his fingertips, and that’s what finally gives him the strength to let go. He’ll replay the sound of it in his head for the months to come, and it’ll be the empty lullaby that convinces him that he’s done the right thing.
Take care of yourself.
Then the world becomes a blur of green and brown, and he pushes his body to the its limits, reaching top speed, as if putting miles and miles between them will make him forget how her eyes swallow the light when she looked at him.
It’s all in vain, of course.
It will take him hours to realise that no matter how swiftly he runs, he will never outrun her.
two. Charlie Swan : fathers be good to your daughters
Going for a walk with Edward, up the path. Back soon, B.
It’s six, six thirty when Charlie gets home from the station. He isn’t too worried to begin with; Edward has been perfectly responsible in regards to Bella. Always brings her back on time, always flawlessly polite.
Seven thirty, there’s a basketball game on ESPN’s Sport Center but by the end of it, he realises that he can’t even remember the score, never mind who won.
Eighty thirty, he restrains himself from going to the phone. Bella is eighteen, and an old soul. She doesn’t need her father nagging at her every time she’s out.
Nine thirty, he calls the Cullens. There’s the long drone of the dial tone, and he pretends that that isn’t panic starting to shoot through his veins. They’re out, is all. Or maybe their phone is off the hook.
He tries the hospital next, and asks for Dr. Cullen. He’s put on hold and classical music plays for the longest three minutes and forty nine seconds of his life, the kind of music that Renee always used to play around the house. Debussy, maybe.
It’s not Dr. Cullen who answers the phone. It’s Dr. Gerandy. Only three things register : Cullens, gone, LA.
Ten thirty. Going for a walk with Edward, up the path. Back soon, B. He reads the note obsessively, folding and unfolding it, trying to decipher the message behind the words. He thinks of the way Bella’s lips shape the name Edward and tries not to remember another night in September, baby Bella on Renee’s hip and the words Don’t go thickening in his throat, choking him.
Eleven thirty, he rounds up the troops. Arthur Newton, and his son Mike, who is friends with Bella, James Weber, Darrell Taylor - he runs through his whole phone book. All of the men take up their Coleman lanterns and flash lights and spread throughout the forest.
Billy Black promises help. “Some of our boys down here at La Push,” he says, “Sam Uley and his friends, they know the forest better than any townsman, or any ranger, for that matter. They’re out on tribal business right now, but when they finish up, I’ll send them.”
Twelve thirty. He’s starting to get paranoid. He’s sure that the clock is mocking him. It can’t have only been an hour since eleven thirty. It must’ve been five, six hours, at least. At least.
One thirty. He’s making up a catalogue of all the times Bella’s gotten lost - in the grocery store, at the beach, by the town square. It’s almost more comforting to think of this, of her being lost, rather than the alternative - that maybe she chose to leave.
For good, this time.
She wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, he thinks, because it is easier to lie to himself than to consider - other alternatives.
Two thirty. Sam Uley emerges from the woods slowly as a priest with an offering in his arms.
Charlie insists on taking his daughter from Sam’s arms. He hasn’t carried her like this since she was eight years old, but the weight is almost a comfort, as if to whisper, She is here. She is real. She is here.
He feels like the host of some bizarre party as he looks at all the bobbing lanterns and lamps and flashlights of all the searchers, thanking each and every one of them for coming, for helping. Guests assembled in honour of Bella. A late birthday party, maybe, where the birthday girl is hidden away in her house, away from all searching eyes.
There are still a half dozen more calls that he has to field. Sandy Newton calls, relieved to know that her husband and son are coming home. That nice girl Angela, Janice Weber’s daughter, calls again for maybe the fourth time that night.
Yeah, we found her. She’s okay. She got lost. She’s fine now.
He tells himself that he isn’t lying to them when he says this.
Three thirty. He’s been wide awake all night, the tension humming like wires beneath his skin, but as soon as she is found, the wires go slack and sleep is a black wall, just waiting to slam into him.
So of course, the phone rings again. It’s Mrs Stanley, no trace of sleepiness in her voice as she says that there’s fires burning out on the sea cliffs of La Push. He rings up Billy about it, and everything clicks into place : bonfires celebrating the Cullens’ hasty departure. Billy makes up all sorts of excuses for them : They’re just teenagers, Charlie. We’ll make sure they put them out. Charlie knows that all he would have to do get those kids from the reservation to kill their fires is show them his daughter, pale as stone and just as unmoving. A monument to grief.
Bella’s sitting up when he gets back to the living room, and he curses Billy a few more times in his head for waking her up. Then of course he has to answer her questions about the call, and fill her in on his long, sleepless night. Minus the panic.
She asks where the Cullens went, as if she truly doesn’t know and he throws in an extra curse for Edward Cullen for making him break the news to her. For making him break her.
She refuses to talk about Edward. She shoots up from where she’s collapsed on the couch, and stumbles heavily up the stairs, into her room. He hears the click of her door, locking, her frantic footsteps.
And then there’s the sick thud of her body, falling.
He has to pound on the door for ages to get her to unlock it, a grown man shouting at his daughter, Oh god are you all right, just open the damn door, please, baby, you’re scaring me.
When she finally opens the door, she is leaning heavily on the frame, and she slumps into his arms, her limbs loose and clumsy, puppet with its strings cut. Her body is there, but when she looks into her eyes, she is miles and miles away.
It will take him days to realise that she’s never coming back.
three. Sam Uley : empty and waste is the sea
Sam and Jared and Paul aren’t out on the cliffs; they spend the night on patrol, wary, not completely trusting the news that the vampire coven has cleaned out of Forks.
Billy’s the one who gives them the call. “Charlie Swan’s daughter,” he says. “The one I told you about.”
He remembers her, vaguely; a shy girl at the beach, almost curled into herself, hiding behind her long brown hair. Laughing with Jacob Black. The one who had looked up sharply when the name Cullen was mentioned.
“She’s gone missing, in the woods.”
Sam almost phases before he’s out the door. He doesn’t need Billy to tell him that she may already be dead.
When he finds her, she is both better and worse than he expects. Little girl, broken doll girl. He holds the lantern close to her face, just to see her breath mist on the glass. Her eyes are blank marbles that reflect no light, and she looks as if ghosts have settled just underneath her pale, pale skin. He can easily imagine this girl being in love with a walking corpse.
With his acute hearing, he can pick up the faintest echo of her whispering, like the soft scratch of rain against a window, like the tapping of a spider’s fragile leg on a silken thread, the twist of a sparrow’s wings, going, going, gone. Her mouth shapes two words, over and over.
He’s gone. He’s gone. He’s gone.
When he picks her up, she weighs no more than an autumn leaf. Her lips move soundlessly against his throat.
You left me. You left me. You left me.
He forces himself to look at her, at the hollow accusation, at the brokenness, at the desolate waste land of her face.
It’s his mother’s face, when his father left her.
It’s Leah’s face, when Sam left her.
It will take him weeks to realise that he will be haunted by this face for forever.
four. Billy Black : it is only the passage from one day to another
He can’t pretend he hasn’t been waiting for the call. He’d tried warning her, more than once.
At least it’s over now. At least we can breathe. At least it’s safe. The Cullens are gone, and nobody is hurt. Jake won’t ever have to know the pain of his body ripping into that of a wolf’s. Bella Swan will live to see another sunrise.
The world didn’t end today, he thinks.
It will take him years to realise that it did.
five. Jacob Black : miles to go before i sleep
Billy refuses to let him drive the car there, refuses to let him go at all, so in a fit of rage, he decides it’s a good idea to hike the fifteen miles to Forks, at night, in September. He gets there at three in the morning, when everyone is spilling out of the Swan house. She’s been found, Mr Weber says, she’s sleeping now.
Sam Uley and his two cronies emerge from the living room; he hears, later, how Sam was the one to find her in the woods. Sam nods at Jake, like he has some kind of understanding, and Jacob glares and shrugs off his familiarity.
He gets a ride home from Mr Weber. Better than going back with Sam’s little gang.
If only I had been earlier, he thinks. If only I’d been the one to find her.
It will take him a lifetime to realise that no matter how early he arrived, he would always be too late.
~ end.