~Trigger warnings~

She taps the end of her cigarette against the ashtray with trembling fingers, sticky with blood, stained a deep red. The kind of red you don't see everyday, the kind of red that screams against your eyes long after you've closed them. The kind of red that never, ever stops.

It's a bit of a shitshow. The bathroom, her life, or lack thereof. And really, she can't even tell you where it all began to take a dive. There were so many points, minuscule and grand alike, that could be responsible. Personally, she likes to blame her birth, and as such, her parents.

It's really easy to blame the dead - they, like, don't even argue. It's actually the perfect defense, and she's told Leah this many times. It seems only fair that someone benefits from the knowledge that comes with experience, and it's not like she's going to use it.

Only people with something to lose, use logic. Only people with something to gain.

And, another free tidbit, she's learnt that it's actually not worth having those things. Life will take them away, and what life doesn't take, death will carve from you. They both feed on humanity like parasites, consuming, more and more and more, until you're a hole-punched husk with gaping wounds that burn in the wind.

But it's whatever. She's totally over it.

Just another law of the universe, or some bullshit like that. Sue's always going on and on about Fate or Destiny, things meant to be. She used to want to take that from the old bird, snatch it away from Sue like the universe has taken from her. Explain that Fate and Destiny are just hollow excuses for the cold, apathetic cruelty of random circumstance. That we are completely, utterly alone until we die and rot in the ground.

But spreading pain seems like it would take more effort than it's worth, and twice as pointless. She has better things to do, better ways to spend her day.

She brings the cigarette up to her lips, feels the smoke burn her lungs. Like breathing in embers and - huh. There's an idea.

The battered little notebook sits awkwardly in her back pocket, but she still can't move her left hand, can't even twitch her fingers yet. Maybe ever again; it's a risky game she plays. A horrifying game, she suspects, if she felt things anymore, and what does it say about Leah that the girl doesn't even blink?

She can hear the stomping now. Up, up, up the stairs. A gentle voice urging her mother to leave the bathroom door, to go downstairs and put on coffee. Bella likes that, yeah? I'm sure she'll appreciate it.

Bella doesn't, actually. She hates the taste of coffee, bitter and hot and harsh against her tongue. It tastes like despair and smells like agony.

But they keep handing her mugs and it would be very impolite to decline. That's what Renee used to say, anyway.

The doorknob twists and she sighs, tapping ash against glass. Leah curses under her breath and quickly closes the door, pressing back against it. Her dark eyes narrow, anger smouldering in that sort of breathtaking way of hers.

Bella wonders if she might ever touch the surface of the fury that rages in the unjustly persecuted. She wonders what it's like to have the strength of Atlas, carrying a world that rejects the very nature of your being.

Strength would be super handy, she decides and casts a glance around the room. Strength would probably keep her out of here, would drag her through life until she rebuilt her own.

Strength is not what she has, though.

Her brows furrow and she lets her head loll to the side so she can gaze up at Leah. "What do I have?" she asks in that rough, scratchy voice that just won't go away.

(She's eighty percent sure she still screams through the night. It's the only thing that makes sense.)

"Pain," Leah grunts and walks over to the sink, turning it on and looking for her bucket.

Pain.

Yeah. She's got a lot of that, these days. Enough that she's pretty sure it defines her. And to be defined by your pain… god. Why won't it take?

She glares down at her wrists.

Leah takes the pink stained sponge and scrubs at the mirror, a growl deep in her chest. The quiet one. The angry one. But she still doesn't know where to aim that anger, Bella is still waiting to receive it. "This is demented," she growls and scrubs harder at the smiley face of blood. "What if my mom came in here?"

"She's the one who told me to try drawing again," Bella mumbles and takes another drag. She experimentally wiggles the fingers of her left hand and sighs out the smoke. "Fuck."

"It's not fair."

"I was about to say the same thing. I'm following the rules - at, okay," she struggles to sit up properly in the tub, but the blood just makes her slide. So she gives up. "At this point, I'm gonna have to try and take off the entire hand, but it's excruciating." Leah whips the sponge, heavy with soapy water and blood, right at her and she winces. "Ouch."

"This isn't a fucking hospice, Bella."

"No," she agrees. "They actually help you there. This is a prison made of guilt."

Leah turns away, braces against the sink. "You're a selfish asshole."

"Murderer, too, don't forget that. Took your brother, didn't I?"

The bathroom door slams shut behind the wolf and Bella is left cold and alone.

But hey, she's used to it by now.

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.

.

The chill is nice. It's sharp and stings her cheeks in the wind, feels like little ice shards in her eyes, but it's distracting and boy, does she ever like distractions.

It's also maybe the only time she likes going out. Less people on the street, less looks aimed her way. Somewhere between pity and how one might look at a walking curse. The latter is her favourite, of course. The utter contempt, the fear, the repulsion. Love it. Love it, love it, love it.

Sue takes her walking, though she's not really sure why. They go grocery shopping a lot, and Bella carries the groceries. Henry and Leah were the only ones who knew how to drive, Seth was still learning, and Sue just can't bring herself to get behind a wheel now.

Walking is healthy, anyway. That's what she tells Bella and yeah, she's pretty sure she's heard that somewhere before. So she carries groceries while Sue chats about this and that, the town happenings, Leah's life, her life, the past. Mostly the past. Memories of the family before they were ripped apart.

It actually hurts quite a bit, so much that Bella often wonders if throwing herself in front of a truck would hurt less. She eyeballs the speed limit signs and wonders if they're fast enough. Surely someone is bound to speed.

"So you and Leah are fighting again," Sue points out and her breathe curls in the frosty air. Her eyes are old and tired, time lingering in the lines around them, memories wrinkling her face. Old but still so soft, so fresh and new and full of wonder, even after everything.

Bella feels like the charred trunk of a tree split by lightning, still smoking deep in the heart of the woods.

"Can it still be considered again if it never actually stopped?" she asks and hugs the bags of groceries closer to her.

When Sue laughs, Bella grimaces. She doesn't ever actually mean to bring joy back into their lives, it just kinda happens. And then they start to forget. But she can't. She can never forget and she has to remind them, has to take that joy away again, and it's easier to just not feel it.

It's so much easier to just not feel.

Sue hums and nods sympathetically, like she and Leah are just a couple of squabbling children. "It's because she cares, you know."

Bella sighs. "Yeah, she's dumb like that."

Once again, her eyes return to the road, tracking the cars. The bus that's coming up. That doesn't have a stop until the end of the block, that won't start breaking until it's well past them. One quick step, it's too icy for him to grind to a halt. He'll skid, at least, and-

Her sleeve gets tugged on, attention dragged back down to Sue. Back down to those soft eyes full of anxiety and regret, full of sympathy and compassion. "Don't," she begs quietly. "Don't do that to him, to me. It's not fair."

Stormy eyes regard her, unflinching, unchanging. Hard and raw, furious and apathetic at once, an agonizing oxymoron.

They stare at each other, life and death battling to win. A soft plea against a jagged refusal.

But Bella steps closer, away from the road. "So you all keep claiming. Life isn't fair, Sue, and death? Even less. Believe me."

"Thank you," she murmurs and hugs Bella close. Squeezes her tight, like she could squeeze the life back into the girl. She pulls back with a soft smile. "There's still some good left in you, Bella. She didn't take it all."

"Don't," the warning is low and rough, like gravel churning in a blender. Eyes black as the void. "Don't try to put that on me. Don't make me something I'm not. There is nothing left for you here."

"Bel-"

"He screamed for you."

Sue flinches back like she's been burnt, and it's the worst kind of flame. Cold and deadly, it seeps into your bones, leaving molten sorrow in its wake. "Stop!" she gasps and staggers back, holding up her hand. "Please, just. Just stop."

Remembering is a lot like dying. It's the closest Bella can get, and she wonders if reminding people might be a lot like killing. But it's not the closest she's gotten.

She blinks and shifts the bags, falling in step with Sue for a silent walk back to the house.

Bella is very good at killing people.

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.

.

She is an empty house.

Creaks and groans that might be pain, if a lifeless thing could feel pain. Shutters closed and doors barred off, not to keep people out - the house doesn't care if you enter, anymore. It can't stop you, won't stop you. The cracked shutters and pale door merely warn you against it, a half-hearted attempt to keep you safe. Inside are relics of a life abandoned, dusty and misplaced. Misused. Some days, there might even be enough to make a home again. Just a little bit of effort.

But a house can't try, a house needs people to be a home. And so it remains a derelict shell, a broken chest of a life long lost, cast adrift the sea of homes.

Her toes hang over the edge of the cliff, wind beating dangerously at her clothes and hair. Her arms are stiff, raised up towards her sides, refusing to bend or break even after all this time. Only to take another drag of her cigarette.

When did she start smoking?

She wants to be left alone. It's really the only thing she wants anymore, the only thing she asks of anyone. There is no peace, it's a warm lie she rejects at every turn, but maybe there's quiet. She wants quiet.

But life still clings to her like a phantom pain, her life desperately pulling at her, trying to drag her back. It doesn't realize she's not here anymore. It beckons Bella Swan, but Bella Swan died many, many months ago.

Noisy children march through the trees, yelling to and at one another. They barrel through anything in their way, twigs and branches snap, gravel crunches beneath shoes. Angry children. Ignorant of their effect on the environment, how their actions affect others.

"I'm gonna fucking throw her off this cliff!" Paul snarls, and wrestles out of Jacob's hold. He jerks forward until he connects with Leah's palm. "She deserves it!"

"He's not wrong," Bella says but knows they do not listen.

They never listen.

Leah shoves him back into Jake, holding up her arms to keep them back. "I, of all people, get to decide that. You don't know shit, Paul, so back off."

His face is twisted in rage, his body large and threatening but Leah is strong in every sense of the word. You do nothing to or around her that she does not allow. Paul tries, all the same. "She should be dead!"

A few of the boys flinch. Death is still scary to them, Bella has to remind herself. The Boogeyman haunting them, hunting them, creeping around corners and ready to snatch them up if they're not careful.

Oh, she wishes it were that easy. "Not for lack of trying, Paul, I assure you," she says with a flourished bow.

"Bella!" Leah snaps with a glare.

And Paul takes the opportunity to plough through her, stopping a foot away from the cliff edge. A foot away from Bella. "You fucking freak, is nothing sacred to you? Is everything a joke?"

"Life is a joke, Polly. Don't you get that?" she asks curiously. Another drag burns all the way down her lungs and she grins, wolfish and desperate. "But death? That's the funny one. Come on, laugh with me."

His breathing spikes, as does his heart rate when the girl chuckles. "Shut your mouth, half-blood. We lost people, good people, because of you."

"Could'a lost a few more, Polly," she teases. "You know, the ugly ones in the back. Thin and strengthen the herd."

His fists beat against her chest in one solid thwack! that sends her backwards off the cliff.

And he doesn't even have time to react, to consider what he just did, when Leah wrestles him to the edge and holds half his weight over. Forces him to look down at the choppy waters, the jagged rocks, the chaos that churns in The Devil's Mouth. She grabs his jaw when he tries to look away, forcing his face back there with a snarl. "You better pray she lives through that or you're going over next."

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Spit out of The Devil's Mouth, that's what they say. Awed whispers of disbelief and fear, that have them crossing the street to stay clear of her.

She's become a beacon of death, the unholy matron even the devil fears. A local legend terrorizing the res and its people, and good God. They love their stories, they really do. Science and facts and reason, they pale in comparison to the myths they weave, the tales they spin.

They don't care what happened, not really. How she became this way, only that she is. They don't care that she burned for a year. Bitten and left to turn for a day, only to be drained of venom and blood, just to recuperate and start all over. If she's a vampire, a human? Who knows. Empty, all the same. Stuck. Somewhere between life and death.

At least they have their legend.

Someone on the television screams, a hollow and pitiful sound. It's cheesy and such poor acting that Bella tries to roll off the couch but agony constricts her chest, like an anaconda of searing pain. Her ribs still haven't healed. So she huffs and drops back into the pillows, staring at the screen. "You know, she kept me in a shed very similar to this one."

The door falls off in the movie, startling the characters.

Bella grunts. "Mine was actually a little nicer. Had a workbench and everything. That's as far as I ever got to freedom. That damn workbench."

"Seth really liked these kinds of movies," Leah murmurs. Her eyes never drift from the screen. "Ghost stories and stuff like that."

"Ironic, considering he's probably a ghost now."

"Stop," Leah warns, her eyes cutting to the side in an annoyed glare.

Bella lifts her lip in a sneer. "No."

It's a dance they do, both too stubborn to give in, but neither knowing the other's motivations. A lot of people, well, not just give up but actually run from Bella these days. They get close, try to help, try to heal, only to be chased off. It's actually kind of amusing and her only means of entertainment these days.

But not Leah. No matter what Bella says, what she does, how hard she bites, Leah remains. Not even in the kind, caring approach Sue asks her to use. She's just… there. Always there. And Bella doesn't know why.

Of course, the reverse is also true. Leah sighs, long and tired, and shifts on the loveseat to look at Bella. "Why are you like this?"

"My mommy didn't hug me enough when she was still alive."

It earns a snort of amusement that would probably horrify Sue and surprises Bella. "Seriously."

And maybe it's because Leah is still here. Maybe it's that strength Bella envies. Maybe it's just Leah herself, but Bella finds her shoulders rising and falling in a shrug. "Everybody's gotta breathe somehow."(1)

Dark eyes scrutinize her silently, maybe trying to decide if she's being genuine or not. Leah frowns. "What did she do to you in there?"

Bella's black eyes remain trained on the television, images of the movie reflected back in them. "Very bad things."

The comfortable air that usually hangs around the two grows dark and heavy, sombre. Bella is… broken, Leah knows. The kind of broken that cuts anybody who even thinks of getting too close, the kind of broken that darkness seeps out of by the gallon. But she's somehow managed to keep the lighthearted, casual air about her that she's always had, and it doesn't make sense.

So when things get tense around Bella, it's… something. Leah's not sure what, but she doesn't like it. It feels a lot like the point of no return and she's been trying her best to drag Bella back from the line. They didn't… they couldn't save her the first time, but Leah can now. She has the chance, the opportunity.

But she's never saved anyone before and Bella isn't looking to be saved anymore.

Leah drags her fingers along the cushion of the couch idly. "I'm sorry we didn't find you sooner."

"Yeah. Me too."

Her frown deepens. "Do you blame us?"

"Nope."

"Do you blame… you know, them?"

Finally Bella looks up, eyebrows bumping up quickly in a question. "It's not a bad word, you can say Cullen."

She scoffs and shakes her head. "Do you blame the Cullens?"

"Nah," Bella sighs. "Edward warned me, many times, that he was no good for me. That they were no good for me. But they were pretty, they were different and unique, and interested in me. They were a secret and I was clever." She stares down at her palm, a dark chuckle on her lips. "All the books I ever read, that's what they taught me, that being clever was good. That you don't have to be pretty or popular or wealthy, you just need to be clever, and you'll get your Happily Ever After."

She would go back and burn every single copy, if she could.

"They don't tell you that it comes at a price. That to be clever, you must also bleed. That cleverness will take from you everything that it helps you achieve, everything that matters most." Bella clenches her palm into a fist and scoffs. "Pah. Happily Ever After... Happily Ever After is the match with which I used to light myself aflame and I've been burning ever since."

"It's kept you alive," Leah murmurs. She gestures to Bella's arm and neck, both covered in dozens of pale, crescent scars that sometimes overlap. "Clever enough to make it out of that shed."

And Bella laughs again, as dark as her eyes that slowly drag themselves up to Leah. Leah, who breaks the gaze of the damned, and looks away. "Oh, kid," Bella sighs in her gravelly voice. "The clever move would've been dying."

.

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.

Paul goes with her to her grave. He's been hovering lately and she doesn't like it, but she doesn't actually care enough to tell him to fuck off. She just kinda wonders if it's guilt for pushing her off the cliff, or… well, whatever else it could possibly be.

He doesn't say much when they hang out, if that's what they do. A lot like Leah, in that regard, but less angry. Surprisingly. She's not sure if she likes how attached the wolves are getting, she kinda misses the days where they actively snarled at her and had mini civil wars on the decision whether or not to keep her here.

She sighs, hands buried in her pockets, and looks up from her tombstone. Isabella Marie Swan. Loving daughter.

Kinda pathetic.

Was that all she ever was? Merely a loving daughter? All she will ever be known as? A bland, dreary little loving daughter to the rest of the world, and a walking curse to the Res.

She scowls, arms crossing and squeezing each other to keep from breaking her fist on the stone. Or maybe breaking the stone. Her strength still fluctuates these days. "What do you want from me, child?"

His head jerks up, off to the side and about seven graves down. He also scowls and she sighs. "Just because you're dead doesn't mean you've aged fifty years. Stop calling us kids."

"Hey, hey. Fuck you."

Paul flips her off and goes back to brushing leaves from the stone he's standing over.

Bella watches him for a moment, tossing her hand out at him and letting it drop. "Alright, just ignore my question then. Not like you followed me to a graveyard or anything."

His head pops back up, hair ruffled everywhere, looking very much like a human puppy. "Why do you keep trying to kill yourself?"

"I look good in a halo - you," she points an accusing finger at him and storms over. "You don't get to ask me questions, I ask the questions. You followed me and I'm, I am, I've been through shit."

"You and everyone else."

Her eyes widen and she reels back. "Are you fucking for real? I - not like this, Paul, you fuckwad."

"Watch your language," he huffs with a glare.

"I need you to frick off, Paul."

The boy rolls his eyes and stands back up, stretching his long limbs. He stares at her with hard brown eyes, scrutinizing. Studying. "So? Why do you do it? Aren't you already dead, kinda?"

"Being kinda dead hurts worse than being dead-dead. Happy?"

He sniffs and nods, brushing his fist against his nose. Seemingly satisfied by the answer but Bella just has more questions. "I figured."

"Great. Why are you following me?" she repeats and glances down to the grave he's visiting.

Seth Clearwater.

For fuck's sake.

She turns and heads back to her own, listening to him follow. "Sam's trying to convince the Council to let us kill you, or drive you off."

"So, what, you're first in line?"

"Normally," he smirks. "Leah thinks you deserve more, that this all happened to you, not because of you. Same with Jake, but he still can't look at you. I figure you wanna die, so the real punishment is keeping you alive. Not gonna let Sam and the others touch you."

Bella bends down to scoop up loose pebbles, sitting on someone else's tombstone to flick them at her own. "That makes more sense than my working theory."

"Which was?"

She flashes a smile that's not quite human anymore, that's tainted with death and a hint of fang. "We were becoming best buddies."

"I hate you."

"Oh, well, see - you can't be first in line for that."

He is at once large and all imposing, grabbing the front of her coat and yanking her up to her feet. His glare is something to behold. "I hope the rest of your days are filled with an anguish that never lessens even a fraction, that you're stuck here forever in a haunted nightmare that never ends."

"When I call you children," he's mildly startled to see red crack its way through the black of her eyes, "I'm not talking about your age." Her hand closes around his wrist, tighter than expected, and is wrenched from her coat. "You cannot threaten me, kid." She shoves him back and he stumbles in his surprise, catching himself on a tombstone. "Because I'm already dead." She gives a pointed look to his feet.

And he has to admit it's a bit of a power move, that he landed on her grave.

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.

.

Your home is your castle but she is the Old Bone King. The dusty, decrepit phantom dragging itself through an abandoned kingdom full of fractured memories that churn like broken glass in her mind. Her heart howls in its cage of bone, a mourning wolf screaming its grief to an empty field.

Bella doesn't like going home.

She's been back twice, this being the third, in the seven months since she made it out of the shed. It's been a while between visits though, enough time for a thick layer of dust to cover every surface. Enough time for the quiet to sink in and stain the house.

She doesn't like the quiet and maybe that's why it's been five months.

Maybe it's the memories, though. Acidic and devastating, as she runs her fingers along the top of Charlie's recliner. She can still hear the game playing in the background, his grunts and swears under his breath. She can smell his minty cologne that doesn't have an English name and she swears is actually a breath freshener.

She wonders if it would feel good to cry, if this is the kind of moment that deserves tears. She wasted so many through the years, so many on pointless, meaningless things.

This has to be worthy of something.

But she has nothing.

Only pain.

"They don't let me come here much," she says to the room. Her eyes stare down at the recliner. "I'm supposed to be dead, it'd be weird if any Forkians caught me creeping around the house. Not that I fought them too hard on it." She blinks and looks up into a remorseful pair of golden eyes. "So I'm not sure how long you've been waiting for me."

"Bella," Carlisle begins softly, gently.

(Always so gentle this one, despite his nature. Despite a stone body that houses the strength of the gods. She never knew how strong vampires were, not until the shed.)

But she shrugs away, all the same. "You're too late. They're already dead. I'm already dead."

"Bella, please."

And she waits, because if she is anything at this point, she is patient. Patient as Death, and twice as uneasy.

His eyes roam over her face, her neck and arm; her scars. His remorse shifts to regret and shame, his shoulders drooping. "We let you down," he says quietly.

"Oh, no," she laughs - and really, really laughs because it's funny. It's so painfully funny, the understatement of that sentence. "You well and truly dropped me, headfirst into a grave." His face crumples in pain and somewhere, in some life, she might have tried to comfort him.

But not today.

Not this life.

Instead, she merely watches as the guilt crashes over him like an unrelenting wave.

His hands run through his hair and - and there's a vague memory. She can see Edward in him, it's jarring and… upsetting. "I'm so sorry, Bella. I'm - I'm so sorry."

"Keep your apologies," Bella tells him with an apathetic shrug. "I don't care."

"This will kill Edward," he says to the floor.

"Then he's weak. This is… nothing." She scoffs and there's a spark of anger, but a spark, for the first time in a long time. "You… fuck, you Falsely Tragic Cullens. You think you know tragedy? Because you were sick and turned? Because you jumped off cliffs, got mauled by bears, and tried to vanquish Dracula? Go back to your cushy life of luxury, where you can drag another unsuspecting girl into your trap until you get bored."

His eyes, a dark amber, flick over her shoulder and back to her. "Bella, we never-"

"No! Okay? I was…" she shakes her head violently, chest heaving as a need for air comes from nowhere. "I was fine, I didn't care. But you come waltzing back in, late, to try and fuck with the pieces of me left? How dare you, Carlisle Cullen!"

"That's not what I'm doing, Bella. I promise you that I'm only-"

"Your promises mean jackshit to me," she snarls and the cracks of crimson are back, her eyes ablaze with fury. "You promised me a family and my parents were butchered in front of me. You promised me love, and I screamed in a shed for a year. You promised me a life with you all and I'm dead, Carlisle. I'm fucking dead."

"You don't look dead to me."

Carlisle glances over her shoulder again, to the girl standing in the Swan's house doorway. Her eyes are impossibly sad, sorrow clinging to her from the shadows of the room, but beyond that… a light of hope.

And Bella knows all this without having to turn around, because she replayed this moment in her head, over and over for a year as she died in the slowest, cruellest ways possible.

"Leave me alone," she growls and drops her chin to her chest.

The floorboards creak as she passes over them, ever closer to her broken angel. "I can't do that," Alice says softly, resting her forehead against Bella's back. "Please don't send me away."

"Why not?" If agony had a voice, it would match Bella pitch for pitch.

She's spun around, Alice's scarred hands around her wrists. Her pixie face to match, littered with little pale scars that look scarily similar to Bella's. "We've both paid too much to get to this moment," she answers.

Bella's fingers reach up to brush against the jagged scar on her chin, watching Alice's eyes flutter at her touch. "What happened to you?"

"Not anything that can compare to you," Alice murmurs in a strangled voice. She squeezes Bella's wrists, eyes brimming with tears that will not fall. Her jaw clenches, little body trembling with… chaos, Bella can see it. "I couldn't save you."

"Where were you?" Bella asks.

Asks the question that has haunted her the most out of everything that's happened. The question that kept her going, the question at the edge of the blades she dragged through her skin. At the bottom of The Devil's Mouth. The questioned that scorched her soul and surged through her venomous blood.

Alice shakes her head, swallowing painfully. "Italy," she chokes out and leans ever closer to Bella.

Ever closer.

The inch is agony that claws out of her heart, up her neck, to steal her words.

Bella doesn't have to wonder; Carlisle is helpful and kissed by the shadow of sorrow. "The Volturi found out about you. We had to… pay penance, and didn't know they sent Victoria until it was too late. She was supposed to - kill you, Bella, not t-torture you." He clears his throat, instinctively rubbing at his eyes that are glassy.

"She did." Bella blinks down at Alice, at the life she was supposed to have. "Both of those things. Where's Jasper?"

But just because you're supposed to have things, doesn't always make it so.

"Finding his place, as I've found mine." Alice presses closer, looking down at the two of them and back up. "Here, with you. Always."

Bella jerks backwards, sucking in a sharp breath. She watches Alice flinch and squeeze her eyes shut. "Fuck." She rubs at her forehead and turns back to the recliner. "Fuck!"

"Please, Bella," Alice says quietly. Bella looks back over her shoulder, meets the beseeching black eyes of her old best friend. The source of her broken heart. "I know I have no right to ask anything of you, but I'm going to. I'm going to be selfish and beg you to come with us. To come with me."

"I need a fucking cigarette," she grunts and pats down her pockets.

"Since when did you start smoking?" Alice asks in a hollow attempt to lighten the mood.

The light of the flame makes the red of Bella's eyes glow, and she takes a long drag while she stares at the two Cullens in her home. Her home. Why did she come back here? "Since I was struck by lightning."

Alice anxiously looks at Carlisle who nods and leaves without a word. "The sun is coming up, Bella. We don't have long to choose. We can't stay here, after all that's happened. The humans… it would be messy, and the wolves wouldn't allow it. If you don't send me away, I will follow you back across the border."

"They'll fucking kill you, Alice."

She nods and looks down at her feet. "I know."

"Oh, you…" Bella growls in her chest, hands clenched into fists. "I'm not - who I was. It won't be the same."

"Neither am I."

"I hate you."

"I love you," Alice says earnestly. Bella's heart thuds in her chest like a knife jabbed sideways. "I love you, Bella."

"Stop that," she snarls and crushes the cigarette in her fingers. "Don't say that." Bella stares at Alice, blinks twice. "I'm not going with you, I'm not joining your toxic family."

"Okay."

She staggers forward, cutting her hand through the air towards their feet. "And you're not following me back across the border, I won't have your death on me, too. I have enough ghosts screaming at me, I don't need yours, too. So just - get that out of your head, now."

"Okay."

"Go catch your fucking ride then!" She motions to the door.

Alice stares up at her, eyes wide and bleeding. Always, always bleeding, an ocean of blood that would drown the world. "Send me away."

"Go on, then!"

"No. I have… crawled on broken glass, with tissue paper knees, just to get here, Bella," Alice declares and her breathing is shaky, jagged. "Send me away, don't just let me go. Come with me or send me away."

Her eyebrows jump up when Alice blinks and looks toward the window. "What? What's - vision?"

"The wolves are coming. They know we're here," Alice says softly. Her lips tick up in a smile, small and… off. "You should go. This is a long time, coming."

What does… "Oh, hell no. You don't get to pull a fucking Edward and try to out brood me," Bella snaps. "My family was murdered in front of me, okay? I'm King of Fucking Emoland. Go get in the car."

"I can't live without you, Bella. If you give up on having any semblance of a life," Alice looks back up at her, "I give up on life."

"That's not fair."

"I know. I'm sorry."

The roar of Sam's truck echoes down the road. Bella grinds her teeth, storming over to the window to look outside. Still not visible, but she can hear them coming. She glares back at Alice who hasn't budged. "Oh, you just… fucking Cullen. I hate you!"

"I love you," she whispers again.

Esme's choked gasp of surprise is another dagger as Bella shoves Alice into the backseat and climbs in, the car fishtailing around and tearing down the road away from Forks.

Away from a life bathed in blood.

Away from a clinging end.

.

.

.

Bury Me Alive - We Are The Fallen, I think.