Short Stories and Oneshots

Thirsty for Your Love

Author: Bertie Bott

Platform: Fanfiction.net

Type: Twilight x Vampire Diaries

AU New Moon. Bella's lost herself to despair after being abandoned by Edward and finds herself n the cusp of giving up. Meanwhile, Damon's been drifting aimlessly since opening the tomb and discovering Katherine's betrayal. One day Laurent corners Bella in the meadow, but it's not Jake who appears to the rescue...

~

She could smell the dead leaves in the air. What had once been a meadow, beautiful and breathtaking when in bloom, was now in the wintertime a deadened clearing that reeked of neglect. There were no flowers smiling at her, no sunlight pulling out the green, blue, and purple hues of the blooms. Everything was gray and brown. Dull and lifeless – just like her. It looked like the vibrant life had been drained away and a haunted feeling settled firmly over her as she saw reflected in nature what she saw in herself.

Bella shivered, moving further into the clearing.

It'd taken much patience and effort to find this place. Jake had helped her out at first, but wasn't returning her calls lately. She imagined he'd gotten bored with her too, and she couldn't really blame him. A part of her felt relieved that he'd pulled away. It was exhausting trying to pretend to be alright when all Bella felt was empty. Soulless.

Dropping to her knees, Bella felt the small pricks from the dead grass even through her jeans. A cool breeze started and even though her body reacted instinctively by shivering, Bella felt numb to the coldness. It was like a fan trying to cool off a chunk of ice – futile.

How had it come to this, she wondered. She was eighteen years old but existentially felt like she'd lived eighteen lifetimes. Perhaps that was childish of her. Maybe she was overreacting in her heartbreak. First love, her mom had told her, was always the hardest to lose.

But it wasn't merely lost to her – it'd been taken. Cruelly, heartlessly, Edward had torn his love away, ripped it from her, leaving a bleeding gaping hole in her chest. Not only that, but he'd taken his family too. It was like they'd gotten a divorce and he'd received sole custody of them, and she had no visitation rights to the people who called her a sister and daughter respectively.

And lord did it sting knowing she was so easy to cast aside by them all. He'd been the epitome of indifferent as he broke her. Not once in their time together had Bella ever thought him to be the monster he professed to be, not until that day.

It will be as if I never existed...

"You lied," she spoke quietly, lost in the memory. "All you ever did was lie."

That was melodramatic, but very true. He'd promise he'd never leave her, told her that he loved her, that she meant more to him than his own existence. And when he got bored, he'd told her she'd forget about him. He'd promised that it would be as if he'd never existed, yet she saw him everywhere, was haunted by his words and memory.

She'd swallowed each lie from him, starved for his attention, desperate for his affection.

The hole in her chest fluttered and Bella wrapped her arms around herself in a foolish attempt to hold it together as it cracked under the weight of her grief.

But underneath the sorrow, the beginnings of anger and resentment began to stir. A quiet voice started whispering in the back of her mind – was a man who could abandon her in such a scarring way worthy of her love and devotion? Were the people who called her friend, called her a sister and a daughter, truly her family if they could abandon her without even a goodbye? What kind of family was capable of doing that to one they called their own?