Edward remembered little of his dying days—only the fever burning through his veins, the weight of loss pressing on his chest heavier than any sickness. You were gone. Taken by the same merciless hand that gripped him.

When he opened his eyes to this new, cold existence, Carlisle’s voice was a distant echo in his ears. A second chance, he had said. A gift. But Edward knew better. There was no gift without you.

He searched, at first. Quietly. Desperately. In the yellowed ledgers of hospitals, the graveyards overgrown with ivy, the abandoned homes with doors swinging on their hinges. Your name was always there—etched in stone, whispered in death notices.

Gone.

He told himself he had imagined the way he sometimes heard your voice in the wind. That the faint perfume of lilacs—the one you always wore—was only memory, not reality. That you were not the shadow he saw slipping past the crowded streets in a blur of skirts and laughter.

Years turned into decades. The world changed, and Edward changed with it. New faces, new cities, new reasons to pretend he belonged. Yet the ache remained, a hollow space behind his ribs where your heartbeat used to echo.

But eternity is a long time.

And fate has a memory longer than death.

One rainy evening, nearly a century later, he caught a scent—a familiar warmth wrapped in something impossibly alive. It drew him to a small town. A library. A girl standing between the dusty shelves, turning pages with the same delicate hands he used to dream about.

He forced himself forward, every step slow and careful. He couldn’t scare you. He couldn’t risk losing you again.

Clearing his throat, he let his hand brush the shelf beside you—casual, practiced.

“Hello,” he said, voice steady despite the chaos inside him. You turned, wary, eyes a bright newborn crimson. No recognition. None.

Edward swallowed hard.

“Do you know where this book is?” he asked, lifting a random slip of parchment he’d grabbed off a table—a title scrawled in faded ink. He didn’t care what book. He just needed to speak to you, needed a reason to keep you standing there.