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Lights Out. by Lucille Marie






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[Reviews - 8]
Table of Contents
- Text Size +
Story Notes:

I love being in Edward's head.  But sometimes I need a flashlight....

A dark story of love lost...and found.

With the lights out...it's less dangerous.

 

Twilighted Supervisory Beta:  shabbyapple

Author's Chapter Notes:

Rosalie's phone call.  All dialogue is taken from New Moon extra "Rosalie's News" on steph's website.  Check it out...it's sweet!

A different interpretation and wording of thoughts.

Mild Midnight Sun spoilers, I guess...

The first chapter is long.  I had to get the whole phone call in, I promise the others won't be quite this massive.


As my cell phone buzzed in my pocket, my eyelids snapped open.  Even in this near black room, I picked up on the unwelcome light the flimsy shades had not managed to shut out.  My eyes were not strained, but I shied away from it; my eyes had been closed for awhile, I had long lost track of the minutes—or was it hours by now?

Of course, I was not truly asleep—I should be so lucky!—but ever since I had left that tiny nothing of a town that somehow became my home, I spent all of my free time trying to fall asleep.  I knew it was impossible, but for some reason it still seemed worth my time.

I did not long for rest—although the possibility of so effortlessly passing large amounts of time did sound appealing—but rather to dream.  I pictured the shadow of my former self who would have laughed at this; it was not so long ago that my internal confession of desire to dream was made.  The man that I used to be would have found this funny, but I found no humor in my situation.

I remembered my longings to dream, my longing to escape to a place where she and I could be together.  To leave the rest of the world behind, and find a place where we were possible.  This side of my past I understood.  This was the side of myself that I chose to be.

There was always a choice.  There had to be.

I left the part of me behind that was happy, the part of me that saw a point to this endless life, the part of me that had meaning.

I left that part with her.  I left that part for her.

For Bella.

The moment I thought the name, her face appeared in front of me, like a dream, like a ghost.  The face that haunted my days in Alaska, her eyes swimming with a mixture of hurt and confusion, were nothing compared to this face.

Her jaw set, her skin above her forehead unwrinkled.  Her hair, tidily tucked behind her ears, was slightly raised to the right by the breeze.  Her entire face was painted into a mask of almost businesslike calmness.  It terrified me.

But when I looked into those eyes, I saw everything.  Her eyes  now swam with more than just hurt and perplexity.  When I looked into her eyes, I saw pain and heartbreak. 

Worst of all: I saw betrayal. 

This face followed me, matched my every step.  It was with me, even in those rare moments when I managed to shove every last thought out of my head.

My mind blank, my eyes still saw Bella.

And the more I looked at that face, the less calmness I saw.  The corner of her relaxed mouth wrinkled with hysteria.  Her eyebrows furrowed in an expression of heartbreaking sadness.

As I looked into Bella’s eyes, I heard the phone continuing to buzz.

I wondered what news could possibly be important enough to disrupt my self-sentenced prison.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” I said, suddenly angry at the caller.

I flipped the phone open and recognized Rosalie’s number.  My mood shifted from black to red.

“What?” I answered, annoyed.

“Oh wow,” the familiar voice said, and I was struck with a pang of sadness.  I realized with shock that I missed Rosalie.  How strange.

“Edward answered the phone.  I feel so honored,” the voice snickered.

The feeling of sadness evaporated, and was replaced with irritation.  She was bored, and obviously trying to goad me.

Snapping the phone closed, I heard a small pop as the glass screen cracked.

“Leave me alone,” I whispered, closing my eyes.

Right on cue, the phone vibrated in my hand.  With the realization that she most likely would continue to call me until I played her little game, I flipped the phone open once again.

“Get on with it,” I said dully.

With a bubbling speed that sounded alarmingly like Jessica Stanley as she prepared to unleash a fresh tidbit of gossip, Rosalie said, “I thought you would want to know that Alice is in Forks.”

My eyes popped open and I stood up.  Realizing about a half second too late that I was currently in an attic, my head slammed into a beam. I grabbed a wooden board as it creaked and shook with the force.

I took a silent breath and tried to calm down.

“What?”

“You know how Alice is—thinks she knows everything.  Like you,” she laughed without humor.  She seemed nervous.

I didn’t care.

As I replayed Alice’s oath to not meddle in any of Bella’s affairs and to respect my decision, regardless of her feelings on the subject, I visualized delivering to her a torture that a vampire would find cruel.

What was she doing there?

Perhaps she had seen me returning to Forks.  Just the thought sounded downright therapeutic.  Giving in, and returning—becoming the man I once was…

But I wasn’t in Forks.  So why was she?

I could see her leaving as soon as she saw it—it was just like Alice to jump the gun—but I couldn’t understand why she remained.  Couldn’t she see that I wasn’t planning to return? 

Unless…

Perhaps I was not as strong as I thought.

I again choked back the laugh that belonged to my former self.  That part of me would’ve found it funny, or at the very least ironic, that I chose this moment to relive that conversation with Bella.

The conversation that took place after our first kiss.

“Are you still there, Edward?”

No, I almost answered.  Inside my head, I was already in Bella’s arms, her lips on my lips.

Clearly Alice had seen it.

No, I repeated.  I didn’t answer Rosalie.

“Edward?  Don’t you even care why Alice is there?”

“Not particularly,” I answered.

All that mattered was my overpowering desire to join her.  Followed by my overpowering desire to wring her neck.

“Well, of course, she’s not exactly breaking the rules,” my brow furrowed as her voice took a disarming leap from anxious to smug.

What?

“I mean you only warned us to stay away from Bella, right?  The rest of Forks doesn’t matter,” she continued.

My head swam in circles.  I blinked, trying to clear my thoughts?

Bella left Forks?

I supposed she had moved to Florida, to be with her mother.

So then, her bedroom…

Her pictures.  My CD.

I wondered if she had found them.

I briefly drowned in my own self-loathing as I silently prayed that she had found them, and kept them, instead of tossing them into the trash where they belonged.

“So you don’t need to be angry with Alice,” her voice suddenly became apprehensive again.

Alice.  Why was Alice in Forks?  I realized that it may have only been my personal bias, but it seemed to me that the only redeeming feature of that overcast little town was Bella.

“Then why did you call me, Rosalie, if not to get Alice in trouble?  Why are you bothering me?  Ugh!” I snarled.  Now that the conversation had nothing to do with Bella, I found myself completely uninterested.

“Wait!  That’s not why I called,” her voice rose in desperation.

“Then why?  Tell me quickly, and then leave me alone.”  I looked forward to the silence.

“Well…,” she hesitated, blatantly ignoring my request.

“Spit it out, Rosalie,” I snapped.  “You have ten seconds.”

“I think you should come home,” her words spilled out and I registered with shock that she actually listened to me.  “I’m tired of Esme grieving and Carlisle never laughing.  You should feel ashamed at what you’ve done to them.  Emmett misses you all the time and it’s getting on my nerves.  You have a family.  Grow up and think about something besides yourself.”

I nearly laughed out loud. But I was far too annoyed.

“Interesting advice, Rosalie.  Let me tell you a little story about a pot and a kettle…”

“I am thinking about them, unlike you,” she said angrily.  Don’t you care about how much you’ve hurt Esme, if no one else?  She loves you more than the rest of us, and you know that.”

Yes, I did know that.  For the first time since I had left, Bella’s eyes were lifted from my view, only to be replaced with Esme’s.  I was hit by a new wave of grief.  No more powerful, but enough to knock the support out from under my legs.  I sunk back to the ground.

“Come home.”

I wanted to.

“I thought once this whole Forks thing was finished, you would get over it.

“Forks was never the problem, Rosalie.  Just because Bella”—Esme’s eyes disappeared as Bella’s snapped back into focus—“has moved to Florida, it doesn’t mean that I’m able…Look, Rosalie.  I really am sorry, but, trust me, it wouldn’t make anyone happier if I were there.”

Again, I looked forward to the silence that would follow the end of this conversation.  As another wave of sadness coursed through me, I realized that saying Bella’s name out loud was the most pain I had felt since leaving home.

“Um…” She hesitated again.

I suddenly felt nauseous as some sense of intuition filled my body.

“What is it that you’re not telling me, Rosalie? Is Esme all right?  Is Carlisle—“

“They’re fine.  It’s just…well, I didn’t say Bella moved.”

Yes, she did.  She’d said, I thought once this whole Forks thing was finished…

What on earth was she talking about?

The anger returned to her voice.

“They didn’t want to tell you, but I think that’s stupid.  The quicker you got over this, the sooner things can go back to normal.  Why let you mope around the dark corners of the world when there’s no need for it?  You can come home now.  We can be a family again.  It’s over,” she finished.

I didn’t understand.  Her explanation did not seem to clarify anything, and I found my head once again swimming circles around a concept that she seemed to find very simple.

“Edward?” she seemed anxious again.

“I don’t understand what you are saying, Rosalie.”

There was a long pause.

“She’s dead, Edward.”

Ever since I had left Bella, my world had appeared to be in shades of gray.  There was no color to it, no life; I tried to block out what light I could by surrounding myself in a false darkness.

That was nothing compared to this.

My world before was lit by a candle, and it was enough for me to take care of things that were necessary.  I did not appreciate this life, my limited sight provided me no view of beauty, of meaning, of anything but a few glimpses I could catch in the dim light.

Suddenly, my candle was blown out, and I was surrounded by darkness.

My senses were all cut off, and I was hit with a boulder-sized helping of despair.

Surely, I was dead.  Life could not be this painful.

“I’m…sorry.  You have a right to know though, I think.  Bella…threw herself off a cliff two days ago.  Alice saw it, but it was too late to do anything.  I think she would have helped, though, broken her word, if there had been time.  She went back to do what she could for Charlie.  You know how she’s always cared for him—“

The phone cut off, I didn’t know how.  I had a nagging suspicion that I had hung up.  A moment later, I realized I had turned the power off.

Time froze.

 

 

 

Chapter End Notes:

So I'm back.  Didja miss me?

Do you even remember me?  It has been a while.

Well, I'm glad to be back writing, and I hope you're glad to have me!  I originally started this story from the point where Edward saw Bella as he stood under the clock tower, but that's not good enough, I don't think.

So I started here!

Hope you enjoy it!

-L.M.

P.S. As I was reading the extra that contained the dialogue and Edward's deepest, darkes thoughts, I found this line hilarious.  I literally laughed out loud:

No doubt I would have to grovel, were I to return.  I didn't mind that.  I could happily spend the next decade on my knees if I were with her.

That's what he said, Edward.  That's what he said.

Please read and review!

 

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