I gave you a lifetime

A Twilight fan-fiction by Saffiya Scarlett

(A/N: I can't exactly explain when his is set… Suffice to say that it is… it is what would have happened if… oh, God. This too -blee- to put into words.

This is what would have happened if Bella hadn't gotten pregnant.

I'll, ahem, leave you to decide how.)

We never took any photos.

Why did we never take any photos?

As I looked down at the paper in my hands, for reasons completely unknown to me, I found myself thinking of photographs. We'd had such a wonderful honeymoon all those years ago, and we never, never once took a photograph of it. We never preserved the memories.

And that was all it was now.

Memories.

Not that she would ever know that…

I suppose I should have known that, sooner or later, something was going to make her snap. I said it all along, I know I did, to myself if no one else, but she always denied that she was that weak. She was too strong to be disturbed by having a vampire for a boyfriend, a fiancé, a husband… she was too strong to ever let James worry her. I distinctly remember her telling me that, in the ballet studio, all she had ever thought was that she wanted to die quickly. She wasn't worried about dying, so long as it was her and no one else. She was too strong. "Was" being the operative word. All she wanted was a fast death, not to suffer, and for nobody else to suffer in her place.

Shame, really, that ten years after she told me that, the exact opposite was happening. She was dying. And it was not going to be a quick, easy death. And she was not going to die alone, I knew that. I could feel it within myself. I would die with her, in spirit at least.

How ironic that one who didn't believe in spirit would find out what it felt like to lose it.

I should really have listened to her all along, I reasoned with myself, because if I had, I would have lived the life I never could, now. I'd persuaded her to go to Dartmouth; I'd persuaded her to get a job. We'd spent so long procrastinating, so long just saying "Oh, well, I'm sure one more year won't matter" that eventually I had run out of chances to turn her into a… a… a va-… into someone like me.

Alice had helpfully pointed out that I hadn't run out of chances; she had been in (almost) the same situation when she was turned. "She doesn't need to be in mint condition. She's only 27 for Christ's sakes! She'll heal!" Alice had laughed.

"No she won't." I told my sometimes favourite sister. "Physically, sure, she'll heal. There's nothing wrong with her, physically. Not anymore. But mentally, no. Not ever, Alice. She doesn't remember me now; how will she remember me after she turns?"

"It's all about you now, is it?" Alice asked, and I noticed that leaning against the white plastic chair-back she as still holding her breath. Alice wasn't good at hospitals. The smell of blood was a little too overwhelming for her.

"NO!" I screamed, fuming. "NO! Of course it isn't, Alice! How could you say that?"

"All I am saying," Alice continued, completely placidly, "is that she wanted to become a vampire, Edward. If all that's stopping you is her amnesia, I think you are being terribly selfish."

"Wha-?" I stammered, thinking, hard. I couldn't change her; I wouldn't change her. I wasn't going to let Alice win this battle, either. "Of course that's not all that's stopping me, Alice!" I said, trying to control the blatant fear and fury in my voice.

"So, what else is?" she asked. She wasn't going to back down either. And she still wasn't breathing.

"She's dying, Alice! DYING!"

"And you could stop that if you would just get off your high-horse and fulfil her one bloody wish from life, you moron!"

"ALICE!" Carlisle shouted, appalled, from the other end of the cold, white corridor. He was walking sternly towards where we sat, more papers in his hands. Alice stuck her tongue out at him as he sat down.

"What is it?" I asked, "is she getting better?"

"I'm sorry Edward. I'm so sorry. But there's no hope, not really… she's been that way for over a month now…"

"She could get better…?" I pleaded, feeling my last hopes for anything slipping away from me.

"Not really. Not unless…"

"SEE!" Alice screamed, raising her voice from the low whisper it had been in for the rest of the time. Some old women sitting further down the corridor eyed us suspiciously.

"Alice is right, Edward. The only way you can save her is to…"

I knew he was only saying that out loud for Alice's benefit; so that she could understand exactly how right she was.

But I was not going to buckle.

"Even if I did change her, Carlisle," I sighed, "she wouldn't be my Bella anymore…"

That was the first time that I had uttered her name aloud since the accident, and it fell strangely on my cold - metaphorically and physically, now - lips.

It gave me some little, tiny, flicker of hope.

But I knew it was pointless.

She was not going to get any better.

And if I was not going to give in…

"I gave you a life-time, but you gave me the time of my life…"

- Cliff Richard