Disclaimer: I am not Stephenie Meyer and I do not own the rights to the Twilight Saga, Life and Death, or any of the accouterments in the series.

AN: Fair warning, depending on emotional state (hormonal pregnant woman here) this may be a slight tear jerker before the end.

Epilogue

It had been three and a half weeks since I'd left the Cullens, and I was finally returning, or I had returned to Forks, anyways. I was on foot now, my Camaro had found it's way into the ocean when I passed through Northern California... I really didn't feel guilty about drowning my car, because running on foot was faster.

After that, I visited my mom in Florida for a couple of days, not that she knew I was there. I had watched as her and Phil filled out a portion of a mound of paperwork to adopt a child one evening. And I had watched – on a surprisingly cloudy day – as Phil had coached little league at the elementary school my mom was now teaching at.

I didn't regret killing the man down the street from where my mom lived that had been running a meth lab. It had been a choice, a conscious one, just as that woman in Volterra had been. But unlike the woman, who'd likely been a loving mother that had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, the man had been a pig. Making the house explode after killing him had been only too easy.

Then I spent three weeks in Europe. The two humans I killed there, I also didn't regret. In fact, I'd actually hunted them down specifically. Edythe had used her mind reading to choose which humans to kill, and I could appreciate that, but as I didn't have that gift, I'd used what I did have – including a quick mind and a sharp nose.

It was the other things I'd done while in Europe that I'd begun to regret. Oh, I'd gone there with the best of intentions, but the road to hell was exactly that.

Because now, I still felt the grief from killing Dahlia, I still felt ashamed of destroying that car with the dead family, I still felt guilty for killing that woman in Volterra. And now... I also felt dirty from what I'd done while in Europe in a way I couldn't begin to explain. No amount of bathing – no amount of prayer – would ever cleanse me again.

So I snuck into my dad's house to check on him and say goodbye, because I knew I was never going to check on him again. I slipped into the house using my window as I had the first time I'd snuck in. My room was once again exactly the same as it had been. I stepped over to my computer and went online, erasing my search history. Then I shut the computer off.

As I exited my room, I noticed immediately how much cleaner it smelled. My peek in the bathroom revealed that the sink was medication bottle free.

I crept over to my dad's room, opening the door quietly. He was once again sleeping on his stomach, but there were no bottles of whiskey in the room, and for a change, he looked better.

He wasn't to where he'd been before I died, but he looked like he'd put some of the weight back on. He looked like he was getting healthy again. I was happy for that.

"I wish I could tell you this when you were awake, but I can't because I'm supposed to be dead. So I want you to know, I love you, Charlie, and I miss you. And I hope that you find happiness and peace. I'm sorry I won't be here to see it."

I shut the door and then left the way I came in.

…

I made my way through the forest to a center point. There were two options in front of me, two paths, but I wished those paths were different. I wished I was still the man I'd been two months ago.

Because, you see, if I was still good... I'd be standing in the forest, halfway between two destinations for a different reason. I'd be here because Julie was my sun, while Edythe was both my day and my night.

Edythe brought me to life in a way that no one else ever could. She completed my heart, quite literally the other half to me. She was everything I could ever want, everything I desired in my life. She could raise me up to heights that no one else ever could... and she could tear me apart with a single word. She was the one that made everything right, the best thing in my life... and the worst.

Julie, on the other hand, did not set my metaphorical heart aflutter. I could never kiss her, never be intimate with her, and in many ways, the love we shared was merely half of a shell. But she was the safer path, and perhaps the healthier one, because even if she did someday turn me away, it would not destroy me.

If that was the two choices in front of me still, I'd run towards Edythe, risk to my heart be damned.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the set of choices in front of me.

My choices were much more complicated... and much simpler at the same time. I could live a lie, or I could die.

If I went back to Edythe now, I knew I'd never be able to give all of my heart to her, I knew I'd never be able to truly love her the way I should because I'd always be holding a part of me back – as I knew I could never tell her the truth of what I'd done. If I did go back to her and tell her, she'd hate me, and I couldn't deal with that. So if I went back now, it would be with only half of myself, and she deserved better.

My other option was to go to the wolves, where they would surely kill me, because my eyes were a vivid red. It was the only form of atonement available for me though... which made it the only real option that I had left.

I knew that if I went to Edythe now and told her to let me go, she'd realize what I was going to do and she wouldn't let me, or she'd try to follow, and I didn't want her to die. I'd left her believing that there was hope, and I thought, with me going to the wolves to die, she'd continue to believe it, because she'd never know. I hoped that by the time she realized I'd never come back that she would be ready to move on with her life, that perhaps she'd believe I'd done the same with mine and not even look for me. I hoped that by telling her nothing, she'd be able to find love again and live on, without me, the way she deserved.

I took a step back.

And the reason I knew she wouldn't find out was because it was obvious that Archie truly wasn't looking for my future anymore, because if he had been, they'd have been there before I'd done what I'd done. I was a hundred percent certain of that. So no one but the wolves would know what happened to me, and they'd keep it a secret because they wouldn't want to start a war, the odds would be too even and the wolves would know that.

I took another step back. Then I spun and raced to the edge of what had been the Quileute border before Julie had dropped the treaty.

I fell to my knees there.

It took almost an hour, but finally a chocolate wolf eventually came up close to me. I didn't recognize her so I knew it had to be Quilla or Sarah, unless even more had shifted. She was bigger around the girth than Embrianna, but otherwise about the same size as her.

I knew my pitch black sunglasses protected my eyes so she currently wouldn't be able to see my eye color yet.

She let out a strange mix of a whine and a bark. I had no clue what it meant.

"You have to be Quilla or Sarah, I'm sorry I'm not sure which. Get Sam. Please." I reached up and pulled my glasses off so she could see my eyes. So she could know.

She looked at me for several seconds before she turned and raced away.

I bowed my head, closing my eyes as I waited.

…

Twenty minutes later, the sound I heard wasn't paws, it was feet.

I also knew who was coming toward me wasn't Sam.

The feet stopped in front of me, but I didn't open my eyes.

"No," she said, adamantly.

I opened my eyes then, looking at her so she could see for herself what the wolf had already seen.

She bent down and took my hands, yanking on my hands until I stood up the way she wanted me to.

"No," she said again as she pulled me over the border.

AN: That concludes Death & Rebirth: New Moon Reimagined. Please be on the look out for Rebirth & Affliction: Eclipse Reimagined. The prologue will be posted in probably half an hour.