Another A/N – jeez you must be sick of me by now.

Here is the alternate ending. Many people requested that I not post this and felt that it would take away from the power of the true ending or that it would show a lack of faith in the ending I chose. While this may be true, I’ve decided to post it anyways.

It’s not to appease the masses or anything like that. I’m not ‘giving in’ because a significantly large group of people hated the ending I wrote (though many were kind enough to praise my writing skills despite everything… thank you for that, seriously). I’m posting this because this was very nearly the actual ending and therefore retains a considerable amount of merit. It is actually the original ending I wrote but rejected in favor of the one I used.

Basically, I worked hard on it, damnit, and I have a wee bit of an ego so I’m going to be selfish and post it anyways. /diva moment

If you’re one of those people who hates that I’m doing this, please stop reading now. It will only make you angry.

I wrote two different endings (a partial reason as to why the update took so long) – one where Bella lives, and one where Bella dies. After much internal struggle and discussion with a friend (who I trust completely in fic and has mad writing skills) it was determined that the ending in which Bella died was more in tune with the overall characterization of the story. Neither one of us could really see where to take it if she lived. They were doomed to self-destruct each other because they were both too broken to be able to ‘save’ each other. Keeping that in mind, here is the alternate ending I wrote.

Setting: I tweaked it so that everything is the same and everything in “I’ll Be Yours” happened, this ending tags on in place of the epilogue. Consider it epilogue version 2.0. The accident was just as brutal, Bella was in just as bad a shape, everything to the last word happened.

The only difference is that love soldiers on and sometimes, miracles happen.

GREY
Alternate HEA Ending – Do Not Go Gentle

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

DYLAN THOMAS

Bella was gone. Forever.
“Are you okay?” Emmett asked. I wondered why everyone was asking that. ‘Okay’? What was ‘okay’? Was surviving an accident ‘okay’? Was losing a soul mate, someone who seemed to always understand you and see through you, ‘okay’?
“Yeah, I guess,” I muttered and was surprised that I meant it.
Bella was gone, but she hadn’t left me. I didn’t feel abandoned and hollow like I did when my parents had died.
I felt loved. I felt Bella’s love in my veins, as ridiculous as it sounded. Bella was still with me and always would be. Her song still filtered its way through my head, constantly changing as my thoughts and memories entwined themselves within the tumbling notes.
Bella would always belong to me, and I would always belong to her. She had given me the greatest gift I could ask for. She gave me her last words and her last breath.
I could not be worthless. I was worthy of Bella’s love and that was worth everything. It was more than anything. My life was worth something because Bella made it so.
I would live. I had to.
For Bella.

EPOV

I stared blankly at the driveway where the ambulance carrying Bella had just been. Already I could feel the pain of loss eating away at me. I longed to numb the pain and hide away in the stone barriers of my mind, but I forced myself to feel the ache of death.

Bella loved me.

Had… Had loved me.

She had fought to keep me and forced me to feel, even as she lay dying in my arms. I couldn’t lock my mind and free myself from the pain because I would lose her love in the process.

I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t make her last words in vain and throw away everything she’d given me. I would steal the meaningfulness of her death if I ran away from it.

Emmett was still gripping my shoulder. He was murmuring words of comfort to me but I could barely listen. I knew I should say something comforting to him in return, but my words failed me so I squeezed his arm in acknowledgement. He said something else but I was straining to hear the siren of Bella’s ambulance as it raced back towards Forks.

Carlisle was at work today, maybe there was something he could do. He had saved me, after all…

Stop it. She’s dead. Just grieve. Don’t hope – it hurts too much. I mentally scolded myself. Was I trying to make myself feel worse?

“Do you need assistance?”

I looked up in confusion at the young blond man who stood before me, staring anxiously into my face. He was eyeing me with concern and I fought to control a sneer. He was barely old enough to be a paramedic, what the hell was he doing at a scene like this? My first instinct was to tell him to fuck off and then walk away, but that was the opposite of who I wanted to be now. I wanted to feel pain. I wanted to live and experience things. The opposite of running away was to sit tight and face it.

Did I need assistance? Probably not. I had some medical gauze stored in the bathroom. A mild shudder went through me as I thought of the bathroom.

Shower. Bella. Naked skin glistening in water. Shame. Fear. Love. Care. Rejection. Broken glass. Bella’s tears. Bella. Love. Bella. Fuck.

“The blood’s mostly not his but I think he got cut pretty badly and broke his hand.”

I glared at Jasper as he suddenly appeared at the medic’s side. Alice clutched tightly to his shirt, her eyes red and her lips trembling as silent tears streamed down her face. He shot me a pointed look and I scowled but didn’t object as the medic crouched beside me and began examining my injuries. Part of ‘feeling’ was allowing people to care for you – even nosy, up-in-your-business pricks like Jasper, whom I loved like a brother and would take a bullet for any day.

“I’m going to take Alice inside and get her some tea or something,” he stated before leading Alice into the house. Emmett stayed beside me and watched concerned as the medic examined me.

I smiled at the squeamish look on his face as he studied my mangled hand.

“That looks broken for sure,” he said at last, his voice shaking. I wondered if this was his first day on the job. “I’m taking you in to the hospital. Uh, I guess I’ll get the stretcher.”

“I don’t need a stretcher,” I grumbled, dismissing the relieved looking medic. “Emmett, can you drive me to the E.R.?”

“Of course,” Emmett nodded and began to walk quickly to where his jeep stood. It was no longer running but was still parked at the awkward angle.

Don’t think about it right this instant. Just wait until later - then you can break down. Waiting is not hiding. Waiting is feeling, just at a more convenient time.

I climbed into the passenger seat of the jeep and winced as the cuts and bruises of my injuries began to make themselves known as the adrenaline lagged in my system. My muscles were on fire from the run.

“So you and Bella… you were… close?” Emmett hedged, clearing his throat awkwardly as we drove precisely at the speed limit – a first for Emmett.

“Yes,” I admitted hesitantly. “Drop it for now. I can’t do this yet.”

Emmett nodded and drove in silence the rest of the way to Forks.

When we got to the emergency room it was a hectic swirl of lights and emergency calls. It confused me. Had something else happened? Was there always this much fuss over one tiny, beautiful, dead girl?

I walked hesitantly towards the admitting desk in the center of the chaos, nudged insistently by my much larger, adopted brother, and frowned at the frazzled looking, grey-haired woman behind the counter.

“Hi, Betty,” I nodded, frowning as I realized I recognized most of the hospital staff.

“Oh my God, Edward,” she gasped as she looked at me. I shifted awkwardly and realized I had no idea what I looked like right now. I was probably covered in Bella’s blood and had contributed a significant amount of my own from my hand. “Were you in the accident too? Why didn’t they put you in the ambulance with that poor girl? You would have gotten here much sooner. They already have her in surgery.”

Surgery? Why would a dead girl be in surgery?

“Oh, no dear, she’s not dead,” Betty frowned at me and I realized I had been talking out loud. “She not doing much better, but her heart is strong. She must have something to live for, that one.”

I turned quickly and was about to race towards the operating room when an iron grip clamped down on my shoulder and held me in place.

“Let go,” I ordered, my voice calm but icy. “I’m going to find Bella.”

“Like hell you are,” Emmett replied with a hint of annoyance in his voice. “Bella’s in the OR and you aren’t allowed to go in there. You’re about as far from sterile as you can get, for one, and you would just screw them all up. You’re going to sit here and do what Betty tells you.”

“Fuck you,” I started and Betty was up on her feet in an instant, glaring at me.

“That’s enough Mr. Cullen. Follow me. You can sit on bed three and wait for the doctor. I’ll leave some scrubs here for you to change into. Your clothes are filthy and the last thing you want is to have that infected.” She waved at the mangled mass at the end of my arm to indicate my hand.

I scowled irritably as I allowed myself to be led to the bed and changed into the scrubs as indicated when the curtains were drawn. I could hear Emmett speaking in hushed whispers with the nurse outside the curtains but could not discern the words they spoke.

I wanted to run to the OR and demand to see proof that Bella was alive, but I knew my behemoth of a brother would stop that before I got a chance to get too far. This was especially true now as a lactic acid fire ripped through every muscle I owned.

I lay back on the bed and waited for hours before the doctor came. They were all too tied up with stabilizing Bella, utilizing each doctor in the OR with specific strengths just to keep her alive. They couldn’t even send her to Seattle for a better treatment facility until she was adequately stabilized, or at least that was what I gathered from the nurse’s chatter outside my curtained prison. The nurses cleaned the blood off and temporarily bandaged me, but I would have to wait for the operating doctors to finish their work before they could see me.

I knew they were keeping Bella here because Carlisle was the best emergency doctor in the North Western hemisphere and if anyone could save Bella, it would be him.

I waited.

I waited as Emmett brought me some coffee, despite a stern, disapproving glance from Betty.

I waited as chaos erupted once more and several nurses ran towards the direction of the operating rooms, my stomach sinking as I wondered if that was the end of it all.

I waited still.

“Let’s take a look at you now,” a familiar deep voice sounded and I opened my eyes, looking to see the source of it.

“Carlisle,” I sighed in relief. “What’s happening? Is she okay?”

“We’re waiting to see,” Carlisle replied solemnly. “There is a lot of swelling and trauma. It’s a waiting game to see how the surgeries took and we won’t know the full extent of the damage until after the swelling is reduced. I’ve done the best I could. It’s up to Bella now.”

I nodded, determined to keep hope for Bella, but I could feel what little blood remained in my face drain.

I grimaced as Carlisle unwrapped the bandaging from my hand, pulling roughly to disconnect the tissue from the dried blood and raw flesh of my injured limb.

“This isn’t from the car accident,” he murmured as he studied it. “Is that a wooden splinter? What did you do?”

“Punched a tree,” I replied flatly.

“Might I ask why?” he pressed, concern etched into his face. He looked so tired now - more aged than I had ever seen my usually youthful adoptive father. Tonight must have been incredibly difficult for him. It would hold a candle to what it had been like for me, or Bella. I swallowed roughly as the image of Bella collapsing in my arms replayed over and over.

She had been dead. I’d felt it. It seemed impossible that she was alive now, almost hard to believe. Was I deluding myself?

No, that was wrong. Carlisle was here. I was definitely in the hospital, I could smell it, and Carlisle would never lie to me.

“I was upset,” I mumbled, snapping back to the present and answering Carlisle’s question. “Obviously.”

Carlisle exhaled deeply, fixing me with a stern look. “What’s going on? You’ve been acting strangely for months now. Esme and I gave you space but I have serious doubts as to how effective that really is.”

“No, no,” I assured him. Space was exactly what I had wanted. If they had pushed things would most certainly have gone for the worst much earlier. Maybe that would have saved Bella from the accident though… “You’ve been great. It’s just… I… needed time.”

“Time for what?” Carlisle continued, his blue eyes focused on me. He wouldn’t let me avoid him. I didn’t want him to.

“Bella,” I admitted and I could feel my ears redden. My insides squirmed but I knew I couldn’t keep hiding, especially not after the display with Bella earlier. We had a connection that ran deeper than two strangers that lived in the same house and that was becoming painfully obvious to everyone.

“I thought so,” Carlisle nodded solemnly. “I had suspicions. You’ll have to move rooms before Bella gets home from the hospital.”

I looked at him in surprise. After everything that happened, he was speaking to me about room assignments? Where was the anger for sneaking behind his back or corrupting an innocent girl?

“When I put her in the room next to yours, I’d hoped that you two would be friends,” Carlisle explained, smiling slightly. “I figured that you would both be able to help each other with your issues and the loss of your parents. I didn’t think you two would become more involved than that. I didn’t even know if you would talk to each other.”

Carlisle frowned slightly, as if concerned about his lack of foresight that Bella and I may be romantically involved. He turned back to his work setting my hand and making sure the skin was clean before splinting and bandaging the injury.

“Exactly how involved with Bella are you?” he asked after a few moments of tense silence. I winced as a sharp pain ran through my hand.

“Can we not talk about this right now?” I grumbled.

“Did you sleep with her?” Carlisle asked, uncharacteristically nosy as he continued to bandage my hand. His motions were getting slightly rougher as his focus wavered slightly to me rather than the task at hand.

“I said I don’t want to talk about it right now,” I growled, fixing Carlisle with an icy glare.

“Then we’ll talk about this later,” Carlisle acquiesced. “But we will talk about it.”

I glared silently. I would be more open now, for Bella’s sake, but that didn’t mean I would leap into this whole ‘sharing and not hiding’ thing with my eyes closed and a big fucking smile on my face.

“Emmett, Alice, and Esme are over in the waiting room. You should sit with them and wait for news about Bella,” Carlisle sighed, running a hand through his pale blond hair. “She should be waking up soon if everything went well. You saved her life, you know.”

“What?” I asked, my breath catching. I thought she had died, how could I possibly have saved her life? He was the one that deserved that honor.

“The emergency team would never have gotten to her in time,” he explained. “They would have waited for the ‘jaws of life’ to show up. She would have bled out if you hadn’t pulled her from the wreckage where they could treat her.”

“Oh,” I said softly, stunned.

“I’m proud of you, Edward,” he added, turning away and heading back to wherever he needed to go. “Now go sit with your family. Bella will be awake soon.”

‘Soon’ was roughly six hours, five cups of coffee, and three cigarettes later.

Bella looked terrible. Her eyes were black, her lips chapped and an ugly bruise had formed on her temple. Awkward looking bracing held her still and she was so pale her skin had an almost translucent look to it. She looked like death warmed over.

Nevertheless, when I walked into the room her eyes instantly caught mine and I could see the warmth and love shining through them, even through the haze of morphine. I could only hope that she could see that love reflected back to her through my own eyes.

“Hi Bella,” I whispered, sitting down beside her with an embarrassed glance towards my family. They had all smiled at Bella as they entered but had stayed back at the doorway, watching me as I sat near her.

They knew. They all knew.

Bella’s eyes flickered to them and then back at me and I could see the comprehension in her eyes.

How much do they know, she seemed to ask me. I shrugged at her unasked question.

I sat there beside Bella, watching her as she lay there. My family moved closer eventually. Emmett propped up a ‘get well soon’ frog stuffed animal on her night stand while Alice gently smoothed her hair and chatted soothingly about the day and who had what message for Bella. Esme laid a knitted comforter from home over Bella’s hospital bed and murmured gently about how brave she was and that they would get her home as soon as they possibly could. All the while, I sat silently beside Bella, watching over her.

“I’m sorry, visiting time is over now,” an elderly nurse said, peeking into the room. “You’ll have to come back tomorrow morning.”

Esme nodded and kissed Bella goodbye on the forehead before leaving with Alice and Emmett trailing behind her. I hesitated by the side of the bed and waited for my family to leave, my palms sweating. I was much more nervous about all this now that I was willing to throw myself into it, and that my family knew.

“I love you,” I whispered awkwardly. Running a hand through my hair and ducking my head.

Bella still couldn’t talk. There were too many tubes, so she just blinked strongly indicating that she loved me too.

When we got home from the hospital I went to my room and collapsed into my chair on the balcony. I didn’t do anything as I watched the stars move across the sky and the light of dawn begin to break across the horizon. I just sat and watched, thinking about what had happened, what would happen.

I didn’t know what the future would hold for Bella. Carlisle had phoned to inform us that preliminary testing indicated that Bella would not be paralyzed, but her quality of life had yet to be determined. She had suffered extensive internal damage and the consequences could take months to be fully understood. Still, it was a start.

I nervous as I was about Bella’s physical health, I was also terrified to think of what might happen between us. Midnight visits would be more difficult. Our rooms were to be relocated so that Alice would live in my room, Emmett would take the loft, for whatever reason, and I was to be moved to Emmett’s basement suite. I suppose Carlisle figured it was safest this way, with my bedroom as far away from Bella’s as possible while remaining in the same house, but he was obviously unaware of my tree-climbing skills. I don’t think it would ever occur to him to cut down that tree. I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

I was still unsure whether or not it was the right thing to give in to my love for Bella. I knew I still had issues, issues that would eventually have to be discussed with Carlisle. I knew I had lost it in the woods, completely. I hadn’t even recognized Jasper, I had been so lost in my own head and my fear of living. The word ‘psychotic episode’ kept flashing into my thoughts, making me shudder in revulsion at the weakness of my mind.

I would try to be better, for Bella. I had to be. She was the best thing in my life, the most amazing thing to ever happen to me.

She offered the key to life and happiness. There were still issues, huge issues that needed to be dealt with. I had problems with trust and commitment and Bella’s night terrors probably wouldn’t be improved by anything that had happened in the past couple of days. Adding to the disaster of our lives, Jasper would still be apologizing to her at every chance he got thinking it was his fault as it was his car and his orders that got her in the accident in the first place.

My guilt would never fade for that. The true reason she got into the vehicle was because she was trying to save me. That detail had never escaped me and probably wouldn’t for as long as I lived.

Still, she had saved me - at least for now.

The future was unclear but I would do my best. I knew I was never meant for a happily ever after – the wife, the 2.5 children, the white picket fence, and the dog or any of that – but I knew there was more to life now that I could be whole, the other half of my soul balancing the light with the dark.

I would be hers always, as long as she would let me.