Chapter Text
Bella’s POV
A day later, in the early morning, I sit at the kitchen table, on my second bowl of cereal (Lucky Charms, Edward shoots the bowl a horrified look), and idly scroll through the open laptop before me.
“Okay, hear me out,” I say. “What if I’ve been cursed?”
Edward sits primly across from me at the table with his hands folded neatly and arches one perfect brow.
“Cursed?” He doesn’t quite say it like a question. More like a challenge. I shove a marshmallow in my mouth and chew thoughtfully.
“You know. Like, I crossed some ancient Romanian grandmother, and now she’s got a doll of me with pins in it or something. That would explain the ‘glitches’. The whole ‘image in the mirror is spookier than it appears’ thing. Classic curse vibes.”
“I think the textbook definition of curses doesn’t include surveillance footage failing to pick you up correctly,” he counters.
“Maybe I’m just ahead of the times,” I say, gesturing with my spoon. “Old world vengeance meets modern analog horror.”
Edward doesn’t smile, but I spy a twitch at the corner of his mouth. A reluctant near smirk. His eyes, however, don’t match. There’s something tense beyond them. Something tight and unhappy.
“You don’t like my theory,” I say.
He shakes his head slowly. “I think we should pursue theories with empirical grounding.”
“Boring,” I mutter, bringing the bowl to my lips and slurping the milk.
We’d dragged the coffee table close to the couch last night and stacked it with books, printed articles, scrap paper with scribbles and Edward’s leather bound pocket journal, full of scrawls and diagrams that would make a conspiracy theorist weep with joy.
I nudge one of the books towards him with my foot. “Okay, Mr. Empirical, what do you think is happening?”
“I think,” he says carefully, “that you’re experiencing… instability.”
“Thank you, Doctor. But that’s just a considerate way of saying that I’m either glitching out of this reality, or I’m the pin at the centre of some sort of mass hysteria– both of which I am already equally drawn to.”
He doesn’t answer. He’s studying me. I can feel his gaze moving over me like a scan. Like he’s memorizing the way my hair falls around my shoulders. The shape of my hands. The fact that I’m still here, alive.
I take a sip of my coffee and lean back. “Say it.”
“Say what?”
“What you’re thinking. Don’t do that thing where you spiral in silence for several minutes and I have to guess what’s going on. We’re in this together, aren’t we?”
He blinks. “Is that how you see me?”
“You’re not exactly forthcoming, Cullen.”
Edward lets out a breath that isn’t quite a sigh. “I don’t want to influence your conclusions. This is your experience.”
I smile and set my bowl aside. “Just admit it. You’re freaked out.”
“I’m– concerned.”
“You’re freaked out.”
He doesn’t argue. That, more than anything, sends a chill down my spine.
I stand and begin to pace. “Okay, let’s take stock– we’ve got the weird surveillance footage of me, and oh, that man on the platform, right? My bizarre reflection, which, by the way, happened multiple times. The obituary thing. The strange woman in the coffee shop. The funeral photos. God, what else? Yesterday’s whole thing with the door and Freaky Clock Eyes. He stared at me like I was a bug in the wrong jar.”
I glance at Edward. He’s very still, statuesque. Terrified? Or pondering?
“And all the while,” I continue, hugging my shoulders, “you’re always there. Steady, cold, real.”
He looks away. “That’s not any sort of concrete evidence.”
“Feels like it.” I stop in front of him and place my hands on my hips. “Edward, be honest. Do you think I’m slipping?”
His eyes meet mine. “Yes.”
The words hit me like a punch, but I nod. I appreciate the honesty more than any comfort he could give me in this moment.
“Okay,” I say. “So what now? How do we un-slip me?”
He looks like he wants to say something. Badly. But he doesn’t. I crouch in front of him and tilt my head up to match his gaze. “You’re hiding something.”
“I always am,” he murmurs.
“Tell me.”
His hands twitch where they rest on his knees, then he slowly reaches for his journal and turns it towards me. The page he opens it to is a diagram. Not really a drawing, or a symbol. Just… threads. Dozens of threads, all anchored to one bright point in the centre.
“You are here,” he says, touching the centre.
“And the threads?” I ask.
“Everything else. Memories. Histories. Objects. Time itself.”
I frown. “I don’t think I really get it.”
“You’re like the anchor point,” he says softly. “But the threads are fraying.”
He doesn’t say it outright, but I can see it in his eyes: he thinks I’m losing connection to this world. That the universe is unraveling me, thread by thread. I swallow and look back down at the diagram. “What’s holding me together, then?”
He looks back at me a little sheepishly, like maybe he shouldn’t answer. Then says “perhaps… me?”
I blink. “You?”
His eyes sweep over the diagram again. “I think, um, when you–” he pauses, thinks about his words, “I think when you– or when I left you in the forest that day, something… fundamentally changed. And when I found you here again in Chicago, it was like pulling on a thread that isn’t from this world. I know it doesn’t… make a lot of sense.”
I scratch my head, trying to decode the meaning behind what he’s just said. “I think you’re losing me again, Edward. What do you mean, something ‘fundamentally changed’ that day in the forest? Of course something changed. My life changed that day. I think our break up in the forest ‘fundamentally changed’ the trajectory of my life .”
He sits back, wringing his hands once as though he’s trying to figure out how to very carefully splice his words together. “Yes,” he says, “I agree. Your life certainly did change on that day. I’m just thinking… maybe my presence is the thing that grounds you.”
“That’s wild,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s not how science works.”
“No,” he concurs, “but it’s how love works.”
The room is suddenly too quiet. Too heavy. I drop onto the couch and stare at the wall beyond his silhouette.
“So what, you’re saying that if you leave, I poof?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not willing to take the risk.”
I turn to him. “Edward, that’s a kooky theory. But if you’re somehow right, if I’m only here by virtue of you–”
“No, you’re here by virtue of yourself.”
“You don’t know that.”
He reaches out, tentative, and takes my hand. It’s cool, firm. I clutch it like a lifeline.
“You’re here,” he says again, quietly, “and that’s enough.”
We sit like this for a long while. Breathing. Thinking. We’d probably syncopate heartbeats if his moved at all. Eventually, I pull away and reach for my laptop again. “Well,” I say, “if I’m going to fall through the cracks of existence, I should probably do it with a game plan. Let’s look into shared delusions. Interdimensional travel. The Mandela Effect. Glitch in the Matrix testimonies. Mythology. I want everything.”
Edward looks at me. “Now?”
“Yes, now. We’re solving this.”
“You haven’t even finished your coffee.”
I shoot him a look. “You want me grounded? Pour my coffee in a to go cup and indulge my research spiral.”
He gives a low chuckle, and leans back on the couch beside me, watching as I open twenty tabs.
…
The sunlight is soft by the time I rinse my coffee mug and set it on the drying rack. I wipe my hands on a tea towel and glance towards Edward, who still sits on the edge of the couch, his chin resting in his hand, eyes watching me like I might disappear.
I clear my throat. “Okay, so I might have an idea.”
Edward raises a brow, encouraging me to continue.
“When I was still interning at The Sentinel, there was this professor who’d come in every few weeks to do op-eds. Fringe stuff– quantum consciousness, multiversal overlap, simulation theory. Honestly, most of the newsroom called him The Wizard, but, he had this way of usually being right… to some degree.”
“You want to talk to him?”
“I mean, who else can you go to when the fabric of reality is unravelling? A therapist? I’d end up in the loony bin.”
Edward’s expression tightens. “I’m not sure he’ll have the answers you’re looking for.”
“Maybe not exactly. But he might have language for what’s happening. And that could be something.”
He hesitates, then gives a slow nod. “What’s his name?”
“Dr. Felix Simeon. He teaches metaphysics at Loyola.”
Edward blinks. “You know a metaphysicist?”
“I know a guy with a ratty corduroy blazer and a lot of opinions. Close enough.”
I grab my phone from the coffee table and scroll through my contacts. “If he hasn’t changed his number…”
After a few rings, a gravelly voice picks up.
“Simeon here. If you’re a dean, I didn’t approve that syllabus. If you’re a student, I’m not answering emails. If you’re my ex-wife—”
“Hi, it’s Bella Swan. We met a few years ago at The Sentinel? You may not remember me, I was an intern…”
A beat. Then, “Ah, the intern who corrected my Schrödinger metaphor in print. I respected that. What can I do for you?”
“I… I have some questions. Weird ones. Would you have time for a chat today?”
A long, theatrical sigh. “Are you bringing coffee?”
“Yes?”
“Then come. My office has a door but no boundaries.”
…
The humanities building is surrounded by the cotton thick quiet of its post lecture lull. I lead the way, my boots echoing on the checkerboard tile. I still remember the distinct smell of this corridor, all floor wax and dry radiator heat, and it fills me with a certain nostalgic clarity. The last time I was here, I’d been bright eyed, and certain that the world made absolute sense. Now I’m not sure if I exist in it at all.
Edward walks beside me silently, hands in his coat pockets. His eyes flicker to each door as we pass, no doubt memorizing each detail with photographic perfection. His quiet vigilance comforts me more than I let on.
We stop outside room 212. The placard on the frosted glass reads Dr. F. Simeon - Theoretical Philosophy. Below it, a peeling sticker of Schrodinger’s cat.
I hesitate. “He used to leave his door open all the time,” I say. “Even when he was out lecturing. He has a thing about erasing boundaries.”
I knock twice. A muffled crash comes from inside, followed by a hoarse “One moment!”
Edward looks at me skeptically. I give him a quick grin. “You’ll see.”
The door opens with a squeak, revealing Dr. Simeon in a threadbare corduroy blazer over a Johnny Cash t-shirt. His greying curls stick up wildly, and he wears two pairs of glasses. One low on his nose, and the other perched high on his head like a crown.
“Is it Thursday?” he asks, blinking. “Oh, no, you’re not from the funding committee.” His eyes land on me. They squint. Then widen. “Swan?”
“Hi, Doc.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. You’ve survived journalism!” He steps aside, then casts his gaze on Edward. “And you’ve brought a statue to life. Good for you.”
Edward gives a polite nod as he follows me into the chaos. The office is even more of a mess than I had remembered. Stacks of coffee stained books, dusty print outs, a suspended mobile of planets turning slowly in the ceiling’s draft.
Simeon flops into a weathered leather chair with the erratic nature of a man who hasn’ slept. “So, what’s the scoop? Come to expose more lunatic theories at The Sentinel?”
I perch on the edge of a stool, hands clasped in my lap. “Well,” I start, “not exactly. I’ve come to ask you about something strange.”
Simeon cocks his head, interested.
I continue, “Weird question, first. Do you remember that woman you used to talk about? I think you brought it up in an op-ed. Some woman who thought she was living the wrong life?”
His eyes sharpen. “Martina Vargo. 2007. She came to me with a police report that listed her own death. Could quote her own eulogy.”
I exhale. “Okay, so maybe this won’t sound as crazy as I thought.”
Edward sits silently beside me, watching.
Simeon leans forward, elbows on the tabletop. “Tell me everything, Ms. Swan. You’d be amazed at what I’ve already heard.”
I take a breath, “I think something’s… wrong with me.”
He gives an amused snort. “You, and the rest of the human race.”
“I’m serious,” I say, “I’ve been seeing things– glitches? That’s what I’ve been calling them? People who shouldn’t exist. Versions of myself that are distorted and fractured. Sometimes the girl in the mirror looks just like me… but she doesn’t move right. And… I saw my own obituary.”
This quiets him. He leans back slowly, his eyes narrow behind his glasses. “Go on.”
I glance to Edward, who gives me the tiniest nod.
“There hae been several… anomalies. Mirrors acting strangely, photos coming out wrong. People don’t remember that they’ve just spoken to me. And then sometimes, it feels like I’m slipping. Like the air around me forgets I’m in it.”
Simeon is quiet for a long moment, then he stands, moving to a cluttered whiteboard at the back of the room. He picks up a marker and begins to scrawl.
“Tell me,” he says without turning, “when did this start?”
I think for a moment. “I’m not sure. It was subtle at first. I had this sense of deja vu for a long time. I chalked it up to burnout, stress. But then, things got louder…”
“Louder…” Simeon echoes.
Edward finally speaks, his voice smooth and low. “The world is misremembering her.”
Simeon pauses mid scribble. “You’re not just here for moral support, then.”
“I’m here,” Edward says carefully, “to keep her grounded.”
Simeon turns, his expression more serious now. “Interesting. Fascinating. Terrifying.”
He moves toward a pile of books on a sagging shelf and shuffles through them with maddening disorganization. “This reminds me of the phantom tether theory.”
I tilt my head. “What’s that?”
“It’s an idea some of us fringe folk have floated,” Simeon says, holding up a paperback with a cracked spine. “That sometimes, through grief or obsession, a person can anchor a consciousness that doesn’t belong in this timeline. Like accidentally dragging a version of someone back from an alternate branch of reality through sheer emotional force.”
“That sounds like sci-fi,” I say, frowning.
Dr. Simeon looks at me and grins. “Of course it does! Doesn’t mean it can’t be true.”
Edward’s posture stiffens significantly. He looks down at his shoes like he’s been caught. I make a mental note to ask him about it later.
Simeon flips open the book to a two page spread with hand drawings. From what I can assess, it looks like an illustration depicting many separate timelines all bleeding into one another. “And when someone is dragged through to a reality that is not their own, incidents can present like psychic hauntings,” he continues, “strange anomalies contradicting memories. The universe, you see, tries to erase the outlier. Patch the breach.”
“So what then,” I ask, “am I the outlier?”
“Maybe,” Simeon says, a little gentler now. “The theory is only a theory. Perhaps something or someone is keeping you here. Perhaps the universe knows it.”
My laugh is hollow. “The universe thinks I’m a glitch?”
Simeon smiles again. “It’s only a theory, Ms. Swan. There are an infinite number of them we can explore. This one, however, just seems most fitting for your situation. Perhaps, you are an exception!”
I swallow. “That’s not really any better, Doc.”
Edward stands, the legs of his chair scraping softly against the tile. “If what you’re saying is true,” he says to Simeon, “what happens if the tether beaks?”
I can see the cogs working in Simeon’s head, he’s already had the answer before Edward’s even finished asking the question. “She disappears entirely. It would be as though she never lived this life to begin with. Or, that’s what’s theorized, rather. Until then, the universe becomes more aggressive in its attempts to eradicate the alien.”
I rub my arms, chilled. “There was a man at my door yesterday with clocks for eyes.”
Simeon looks almost delighted. “Exactly!”
Edward, less so. Dr. Simeon pushes his chair back and begins rummaging through a teetering pile of file folders on a side table that looks like it may have survived a minor earthquake. “There was something…” he says, “ah, yes. This one. This one gave me goosebumps.”
He opens a manila folder labeled in sharpie VICTORVILLE CASE - WANDERING PHANTOMS.
“Victorville?” I ask, leaning over.
"California. Woman went missing for four days. When she returned, she claimed she’d been stuck in a loop. Kept waking up in the same hour. Doors led to nowhere. Her own reflection blinked at the wrong time. Police thought it was a psychotic break, but she described anomalies down to the timestamp."
I thumb through the documents. Crumpled notebook pages covered in shaky handwriting. A polaroid of a woman in perhaps her early forties, hollow eyed. A copy of her hospital intake form. On it, written: Patient claims to have witnessed her own funeral. Unclear etiology. PTSD suspected.
“Did she have a history of mental illness?” Edward asks.
Dr. Simeon shakes his head. “Nada. Clean. Former NASA technician, too. Math brain. Sharp. She wasn’t the kind to make things up. She told me the scariest part was that nobody else seemed to notice when she vanished. Not even her husband.”
“God, I feel like that’s happening to me,” I murmur.
Simeon steeples his fingers. “I believe what you’re experiencing could be equated to a tear. Like a snag in the fabric of your continuity. And these tears… may grow if left untreated.”
Edward shifts. “And how do you treat something like this?”
Simeon swaps his nose glasses for his head glasses and leans back. “Well, the going theory is that you don’t treat it, per se. You either align reality with what the universe wants, or you succumb to the anomalies.”
I look to Edward again, my heart thudding. I suddenly remember that night in the alley, the strange certainty I’d felt before I turned to find him. The warmth in my body when we touched, and how the world seemed to still around us. Anything to remove myself from where I really am right now, hearing the words I’m hearing.
Simeon rifles through another folder, and produces a blurry photocopy of what looks like an old oil painting. It shows a woman in sepia tones, her face turned away from the viewer. Her outline seems to shimmer, like she’s not quite a part of the world around her.
"Fifteenth century. Artist anonymous. But legend says the subject was someone who had died and been brought back. It was said the world never fully accepted her again."
I stare at it, stomach uneasy.
"These things don’t happen often," Simeon continues. "But when they do, the world reacts. Like antibodies. It tries to heal itself by evacuating what doesn’t belong."
“I just… I need a solution,” I whisper. “I’m supposed to just accept being deleted?”
“Ms. Swan,” Dr Simeon begins, quietly now. “I don’t believe I have all the answers you’re looking for. Without directly observing your lived experience, some of this, I am afraid to say, may be beyond my depth.” He turns back to the pile of folders and picks a few out, “but take these,” he continues, “and perform your own research. I know you are quite capable. And please, do let me know if and when I can be of further assistance.”
I take the files and put them in my bag, giving Dr. Simeon a nod. “Thank you, Doc. This was really enlightening. I’ll be in touch.”
“Godspeed, Ms. Swan.”
…
Before leaving campus, I tell Edward that I’d like to bring him somewhere special.
“Oh?” he asks, tilting his head.
“There’s a garden on the rooftop of the sciences building,” I say.
When we step up into the greenhouse, the shift in atmosphere is immediate. Warm, moist air clings to my skin, heavy with the scent of soil and chlorophyll. The city sounds dull below us. Up here, time seems to move a little slower.
Edward, for the first time in a long time, seems to be smiling to himself.
“Deja vu?” I ask while passing through the arch of climbing jasmine, “or just another glitch?”
He gives a soft laugh. “I was just thinking about that field trip sophomore year to the greenhouse. You nearly passed out from the humidity.”
“I did not pass out. I merely… swooned.” I step aside to let him pass, brushing a vine out of his path. “Big difference.”
“You swooned when they explained photosynthesis?”
“I swooned because you were looking at me like you wanted to bethrothe me.” I slow, my fingers skimming the edge of a wooden planter box overflowing with thyme. “Was that your version of flirting?”
“I’ve improved,” Edward says, “marginally.”
We wander deeper into the greenhouse, winding past infant banana trees, tomato vines, orchids in mesh baskets. A bee hovers near my arm. Edward steps closer, not swatting. Just shielding.
“I used to come here when I needed to clear my head during my internship,” I say. “It helped me feel… more connected to reality. I guess now I’m trying to figure out if that’s even possible.”
He watches me sit on a stone bench nestled in between the ferns. My eyes lift to the canopy above us, the sky barely visible through the lush green foliage.
“It’s strange,” I say. “Talking to Dr. Simeon, hearing someone say things I’ve only felt. I don’t think he’s entirely wrong. But I also don’t think I’m dead. Or from a different timeline.”
He says nothing. The sunlight halos around us in streaks, painting Edward’s face gold. It’s not enough to cause him to glisten, but just enough to make him appear angelic, unearthly. “Do you think I’m crazy?” I ask.
“I think,” he says, taking a seat beside me, “that the world doesn’t know what to do with someone like you.”
I blush. “That’s either really poetic or deeply insulting.”
“Maybe both.”
We sit in the warmth of the greenhouse, the tension between us like the charged air before a summer storm. I turn to him suddenly. “Thank you. For staying. For helping.”
Edward’s answer is barely a whisper: “Always.”
The stone bench radiates the day’s warmth, and the air around has now divulged into notes of citrus and tomato leaves. I can hear the song of the insects above and the occasional soft creak of the greenhouse’s frame adjusting to the heat.
I angle my knees toward him slightly, our thighs bruising. Not enough to make full contact, just enough to make my breath catch.
“You’re quiet,” I murmur, eyes fixed on the hand Edward has resting on his knee. Pale, still, sculpted.
“So are you,” he replies, voice almost reluctant, like it costs him something to speak. The silence between us isn’t awkward. It’s like a pull, a draw. A slow tide rising with each second.
I lean back slightly, tilting my face back up to the glass ceiling. “I guess I don’t know what to say,” I reply. “Everything feels unspoken, but loud… like a dream.”
He looks at me then. Really looks. The kind of gaze that threads itself directly between my skin and bone. I feel suddenly and irrevocably known.
“You aren’t dreaming,” he says.
I turn to him.
“I’ve tried to dream about you every day for the past ten years,” he continues, “I know the difference.”
My heart lurches once, deep and hard, like a drum in my chest. I reach for his hand, instinctively, softly. He doesn’t pull away.
He turns his palm up, like an offering. Then curls his fingers around mine like they’re something precious. A gesture so small, and yet it makes my stomach flip.
“Your hands are warm,” he says.
“They’re always warm,” I reply.
“I remember.”
Our eyes meet. The air feels sweeter.
“Forks was so chilly, it was cold even in the greenhouse, do you remember?” I ask. “You gave me your gloves.”
He smiles. “You kept them.”
“You knew?”
“I watched you press them to your face when you thought no one was looking.”
I feel a blush bloom across my cheeks. “God, that’s embarrassing.”
He shakes his head slowly. “It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.”
The silence that follows trembles with vulnerability.
“Edward,” I whisper, fingers tightening around his. “What are we doing?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. His other hand lifts and cups around my face with infinite care. His fingers explore the curve of my cheek, the slope of my ear, the line of my jaw. He pauses here, cradling.
“You’re not the same,” he says.
“I know, I’ve changed.”
“How you’ve grown.”
“And you,” I say, “are holding your breath.”
He blinks, realizing I’m right.
I lean into his palm, pressing my lips to the centre of it. Pecking just once, though it makes his shoulders shudder like he’s been struck.
“Try,” I whisper.
He drops his forehead to mine. Hand still at my cheek. My palm against his chest. We stay like this, leaning into one another, oscillating breaths. Lips just an inch apart.
“If I kiss you,” he rasps, his voice almost shaking, “I won’t be able to control myself. I know it.”
“I don’t want your control, please, Edward.” I’m nearly pleading.
He tilts his head, his nose brushes mine.
And yet– we don’t kiss. Not yet.
Instead, his hand slips to the small of my back, drawing me fractionally closer. My body melts into his, a warm puddle against cool marble.
“I’ve waited so long,” he murmurs “I thought I’d lost the right.”
“You didn’t,” I say, thumb brushing his cheekbone. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
Our lips hover. My breath fans across his mouth. His fingers thread into the ends of my hair, careful, reverent, trembling just slightly. I feel the tension unspool in me like a ribbon pulled loose. My body aches from the closeness.
“You can kiss me,” I say.
“I know.”
He doesn’t. Not yet.
The moment is still blooming. Still unfolding like the flowers above.