Twilight fanfic: THE LAST SLEEP (pt. 1)
Title: The Last Sleep
Characters/Pairings: Bella, Jacob, Edward, Rosalie. Jacob/Bella, some Edward/Bella.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: character death. (piles of angst.)
Summary: AU, Post-NM: When Bella's future is abruptly altered by brutal circumstances, she seeks comfort in an impossible balance between her life with Edward and a restrained relationship with Jacob.
No one knew that Bella was in the woods.
It had started with the slamming of a screen door, Bella’s frustration with Charlie brimming into some uncharacteristically loud frustration, boots squeaking in their bothersome chippers against the wood. Coming home, she’d practically smelled the argument brewing when Charlie had commented on Edward’s absence being an exception to the rule, like he was noting it as an opportunity. Just past dusk she was three knife chops into a carrot when her frustration from one of her father’s irritatingly passive-aggressive comments about “that Cullen kid” had made the knife slip into her finger. With the flicking hand motions of the immediate stinging, she’d peeled out one cutting remark and knew then that it was starting.
“Honestly, Bells, are we just going to pretend that the last several months-what he did to you-that none of that happened? That I didn’t have to watch that happen to my daughter?”
“That would be fantastic.”
Then he tried to mention her best friend. The name had barely made it out of Charlie’s mouth before she’d stiffened in resistance to the pain of the subject, snapping back, “That’s not fair. He won’t talk to me, he doesn’t call-And you know that.”
“It’s all the more reason I’m worried. What’s his big grudge against the Cullens? He never seemed to buy into Billy’s stories, it can’t be that-"
“So you trust his opinion over mine!?..." This next part would feel like such a waste of words, a demonstrative lie: "What if I told you I was going to marry Edward, Dad? Would you maybe try to get used to him then?”
“Are you?”
It hadn’t been the truth, but it had seemed like the best example for laying it out to him. She feebly replied, in a tone sounding like a question. “...Yes. Eventually.”
“Oh, this isn't like you. What, is he pressuring you? Why in God’s name are you thinking about getting married already?”
“He’s not...” Her voice had started weakening with watery anger, at him and herself, for all the impossibility of honesty. “He’s not like you think.”
“Bells-”
“You’re not listening to me...” She’d just thought, Dammit, maybe even said it out loud, and stomped into her rain boots while her father tried to reason with her, his words blurring together and never reaching her. She couldn’t know about the last thing he’d said because she was going out the front door into the spitting spring rain outside, and then she’d taken a good distance by storm until she was somewhere far into the woods, probably somewhere close to the blind path she’d wandered morosely that other time.
She was messed up about that too, today. Her mood was scorching up the wire, and she couldn’t quite tell why, couldn’t calm herself down. Accompanied with the drowning of her senses into the dripping rain and endless trees, her stress catapulted into a bottomless apathy, and she hardly cared about the fact that she was probably going to end up lost.
So, as it happened, she was angry when it came. Her blood was rapid and charging, the very sweetness and the scent becoming some whole other beckoning invisible red ghost.
In the damp cold of that deep May night in Forks, exactly a month before she was to graduate from high school, Isabella Swan was found in the darkness of the forest by a strange man named Ivan. His eyes were red as cherries.
She saw the details immediately when he approached her: the stance, the leisurely walk of a moment that was only the blink of one night amidst a century. The paleness of the skin when it came into view, and the obvious hunger under the brows; the fact seemed to reveal itself rather slowly, suspended and clutching onto every stitch of realization in the half-minute before he appeared fully to her, and then flashed her an inviting sentence of a smile.
Hatred moved in her helplessly, a drowning emotion packaged pointlessly through the sudden adrenaline. She could tell the difference by now, and suddenly was seized as if in realization that the evil had no end. They were perhaps not everywhere in the world but still always anywhere, and so very few were like the ones she knew. She could tell exactly what kind he was.
She acted before the shock of her sudden and viciously ironic plight could overtake her, and spoke. Her voice came out shaky, immediate.
“My blood wouldn’t be very good for you.”
The tall inhuman man had brown hair, with a general slight and starved appearance that made his obvious strength somewhat mocking. He wore a honey-colored shirt that lent a soft glow to the snow of his skin. He lived up to the unimaginable beauty as well as the terrifying confidence of so many vampires Bella had met before, and on all the occasions that Bella had been just a flashing movement away from the fatal hunger, she had trembled and only managed to protest weakly for her life. This night, though, Bella was not only shaking but bridled by genuine fury that seemed heightened by a refusal to accept the genuine danger; She thought in a rapid daze: Death or life, how long would such an event take to settle into Alice’s mind? Could she have already seen Bella standing in the woods in such obvious danger? Surely they would be looking for her already?
And just maybe, the wolves...
She would have to stall him for as long as she could.
This may not be very difficult, considering the bemused expression he had on his face at her comment. He was even too astonished to speak at first, but seemed to hardly doubt that he had the upper hand. He blinked, and smiled.
“You know what I am?”
“Yes,” Bella replied. Her voice was not without obvious fear, but defiant.
He tilted his head in curiosity, and she knew he would at least entertain her protests in light of this interesting information. “But how can that be?-Would you like to sit for a while?”
“I’d prefer to stand at my own funeral.”
He laughed in loud, genuine amusement, a sort of musical echoing bark like a bobcat yawning. “I see, I see...Really, you are kind of endearing. May I ask your name?”
She made a point not to look around, not to look like she was thinking about breaking a run for it, because she knew better, and she wanted him to know she knew better. Even with her knowledge of the fact that any escape without help was completely impossible, the instinctive and powerful urge to flee was still nipping at the back of her mind. But she looked the man right in the face and replied, “Bella.”
“Ah.” He bowed his head. “My name is Ivan. And can I say that I’m surprised-”
“You should listen. You realize the company I keep would be very unhappy if you hurt me, don’t you?”
“...Right-So you have managed to befriend a few? You realize that’s quite rare...”
“There isn’t much I don’t know about vampires,” Bella interrupted. “Anything I don’t know I plan on finding out eventually.”
Ivan, finally seeming to consider some hesitance with her, nonchalantly stepped aside to lean against a tree. “You mean that they want to...”
“Yes.”
Seeming slightly surprised by this situation, but all the while certainly amused, Ivan seemed to weigh a variety of thoughts pertaining to both the astonishment and inconvenience of the situation. As his thoughts thickened, Bella tried to figure out how many minutes had passed, as well as a flimsy estimate of how long it could take her vampires to get to her, assuming, of course, that they knew she was in danger. Her frantically muddled thoughts could not begin to speculate whether they’d first go searching through all the forests in Forks at top speed, or if they’d race to her house to follow her scent from there. Edward’s average from her house to his was four minutes, and then maybe it was one or two more minutes to where she stood from there; and considering the urgency...
Her thoughts were interrupted by Ivan laughing again, seeming very light-spirited about the situation at hand. “This is very, very strange. Kind of a fine entertainment. Look, enlighten me: Why?”
Bella swallowed. “Why...Do I want to...”
He nodded.
His curiosity was going to save her life; she had no room to feel that any question was too personal. She swallowed, trying to calm the detectable racing of her heart. “I’m in love with one.”
Rather than showing a particular amount of surprise, Ivan seemed to consider her answer for a while and resolve that it made sense. She decided in that anxious pause to ask him a question, which felt strangely like she was actually trying to stimulate conversation. “I’m sure you’re just passing through Forks?”
“Of course,” he replied, smiling as if this really was a polite meeting. “And I was surprised to catch the scent of so many others, here and there. So far I’ve distinguished five...It’s particularly strong in the woods, and near the school. I thought it was very curious. Are they all a family?”
“Yes,” Bella spoke solidly, but with her hands wringing together, allowing a pause so that her ears could pick up any sign of approach. There was nothing but the quiet slaps of rain, branches creaking against each other. “The Cullens. You haven’t heard of them?”
“I have not.” His amused face brightened at the promise of this gossip. “Though I’m sure they are talked about-a clan of that size? I’ve never even...”
So Bella explained that there were actually seven, and told him all of their names, all the guises and occupations they put on so that they could live among people. She left out details of any of their gifts, but mentioned that Carlisle was well-acquainted with the Volturri, which seemed to interest him. He seemed quietly pleased with any information she could give him, so she wavered on, attempting to bury her fear under the countenance of one who was granting privileged information. This seemed capable of charming him, but she weakened. In every second that no one saved her, her nerves continued to slowly decompose. When her bravery snagged in her throat and she could hardly say anything more, her arms crossed over her chest protectively, and as if sick to her stomach, she weakly walked over to a large log Ivan had previously invited her to sit on, and lowered herself onto it, waiting.
He was eyeing her curiously, obviously not understanding why her fear would escalate over the minutes, perhaps having concluded that her previous confidence was merely utter stupidity. When her shivering glance met his eyes, she realized there was a good amount of cold wetness streaming down her cheeks.
How long. How long had she been in the woods with this monster. Edward. Where are you?
She looked away from Ivan as he sat down next to her. After a brief moment, he produced a square of paisley cloth from a pocket and held it out to her. In a kind of senseless automatic reaction, she took it with her hand but could only hold it on her knee, clenching it so tightly that her knuckles paled.
“Hmm. I’m guessing you realize now that as long as I burn your remains and cover my tracks well enough...” Of course she’d heard that before, in the woods from someone like him...
She was closer to sobbing now, a faint wail escaping from her chest. When she replied, her voice was hateful and strangled.
“Act like a gentleman, would you.”
He chuckled.
The rain was stopping.
“He’s going to tear you apart,” Bella choked out. “He’ll find out-he’ll find you...Someone will find out...”
Ivan relished her desperation with a smirk. “And why are you so sure?”
Bella’s arms tightened in their shaking restraint as he reached his hand over and rested it lightly on hers.
She glared down at his white fingers. “I guess you could say I have friends in strange places.”
Instead of laughing at her, he pressed his lips together and examined her badly covered horror with genuine interest. After a moment he said quietly, “You are a fascinating young woman, Bella. I’m quite happy we met. I don’t think you’ll understand this, but it should give me a unique kind of pleasure in taking your life.”
Then Bella gasped, not out of a heightened fear from what Ivan was just saying, but in realization; at lightning speed, her mind, dwindling frightfully into the corner of the imagination that impossibly attempts to grasp the experience of death, the concept of blackness, of perpetual ignorance and thoughtlessness, had made her realize in one flinching shock why Alice did not know that she was about to be killed.
Ivan was disinterested in immediately restraining her when her whole body flicked up: she jumped off the log and ran forward a few steps, and she began screaming a name she had not mentioned to him; calling for a man, an other creature.
The wind seemed to pick up as the cold hand clenched fiercely around Bella’s wrist.
It broke.
I expected my skin and my blood
to ripen, not be ripped from my bones;
like fallen fruit, I am peeled, tasted,
discarded. My seeds open
and have no future.
-Wendy Rose
“It’s awful to be dead. Oh my God, she’s so cold.”
-Louise Erdrich
==================
He heard his name being called-screamed -and it was close enough to be his own voice, too close to what he’d been looking for.
His monstrous paws darted into the clearing, and halted.
Her eyes met his and he saw it in her expression before he saw how that fiend, its smell stinging and vile, had its teeth locked on her, just around the soft bone at the point of her shoulder. Her blood was spilled all over her clothes, and in one sharp flicker of a millisecond, Jacob was reminded of the fear of another day: the clouds churning angrily through the skies, water spilling from their sopping hair, the discoloring beach, and the way her shirt, wet, clung lovingly to the bones of her shoulders as he beat the death out of her lungs, again and again, praying for her eyes to meet his.
The thought burned like a bat to the head and Jacob’s head was filled with fury; the rest were coming from the side, but he didn’t wait. He charged forward and ripped it away from her, teeth gnashing and claws cracking, a thunderous roar chilling even the four others who came into the gap and saw the two fierce figures disappear through the trees, one already seeming victorious in the weight and speed of violent loathing.
They took her to Jacob’s house.
Soon enough Bella’s best friend came running into his yard and there was Leah on the little porch with a cigarette, which she dropped in a fumble, and her eyes widened almost fearfully as if she’d heard a banging sound when she saw Jacob’s face.
He bolted through the front door and he heard her screaming before he hurried with a sickened look into the next room to see all the tall boys surrounding the girl, every one wearing an expression of near-nauseated unease.
She seemed incapable of opening her eyes or even reacting to anything but the pain; he’d never asked her about it and he had no idea it was supposed to hurt this bad. Her face winced in whimpers between the almost-constant screams of what was surely the worst burning she’d ever been in; Jacob could have never imagined her like this, her nerves so completely crushed...
“Bells,” he choked. The others moved quickly to let him through, and he was down on his knees, reaching for her hand...
As if it scalded him to touch her, his hand flicked quickly away: her hand was already shockingly cool.
Jacob’s mind felt around in desperation, until he remembered. Her scar...
“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Jacob yelled shakily, “It just happened, maybe we can do something-She told me before she’d gotten bitten, and he just sucked the venom out...”
He had her lifted up against him, but there were several exclamations at his blundering madness and somebody was already grabbing him strongly at the shoulders and pulling him back.
“Are you crazy, you’d die before it did any good-”
Embry tightly held him back until Sam, tightly reasoning, said to Jacob, “It’s too late. Can’t you see she’s bitten all over? Both her legs...”
For a moment Jacob looked at her, biting his lip until the tears started running hot down his face.
As Billy Black came slowly forward out of the corner, Jacob seemed to notice for the first time that his father was in the room. He just grimaced and moaned, “Dad...”
Billy’s face was so vacant, it looked like he was only tiredly heading over to look out the window for a while before heading to bed; and he did stop next to the couch and glance out the window as if there wasn’t a girl twisting around in excruciating pain, her heels recoiling sharply into the couch like she was trying to bury herself into its torn spaces.
But his hand seemed to act on its own accord, and his fingers twisted through a tangled mess of her hair that was hanging off over the armrest, lingering for one moment, and then letting it escape from him like air.
He had to be thinking, Not Charlie’s girl. But to everyone who saw the tall tensing boy get up, cringing into the far wall like he couldn’t stand to watch anymore, this was the end of Jacob’s girl, the silencing of a favorite sound, loss of hearing, loss of sight.
After a long moment it was Paul, his eyes watching Bella’s agony with pity and disgust, who said, “We ought to kill her.”
Jacob didn’t flinch; the rest were frozen in anticipation of what he would say.
Paul reasoned, but seemed almost afraid of speaking. “It’s our job, isn’t it? Newborns are the most dangerous. Either way. She can’t be here when she’s...”
A few pairs of eyes looked to Sam, whose face looked deeply troubled, but the most measuring of the whole group.
After a moment of consideration, he just said, “Jacob...”
From where he stood with his body buried against the wall, still not daring to look over at Bella, Jacob closed his eyes, his breath heaving for a long moment. For a minute all that was heard was Bella’s helplessly dwindling whimpers, and Jacob seemed to speak just to shut that out when it simply became too much. His eyes were as decisive as they could manage as his gaze turned over to Sam, but they all knew there was really only one choice.
“Take her to them.”
==================
When Sam, alone, appeared at the Cullen house carrying Bella’s writhing, ripening body out of his Toyota and up to their porch, the reactions were speechless. There was no confusion as to what was happening to her.
Edward Cullen, his composure shaken, looked at his sister. “Why didn’t you...?”
Alice was the least able to quite grasp the tragedy but nonetheless looked unquestionably unsettled, and said nothing. But Rosalie, her expression pained, sinister, and more fierce than any of the wolves had ever seen, glanced acidly at Sam, and grated, “Because of them.”
“We had a rogue in the forest,” Sam explained. “Only some thirty minutes after we first caught scent of it...Well, Bella just happened to be in the clearing. If no one had found her at that very moment...”
By now the entire family, examining Bella’s cringing form with shock, shared the same look of amazement. There was a foreboding feeling, like a burning odor in the air; everyone understood quite numbly that this was tragic and terrible, but the very reason why was lingering somewhere, snickering wickedly from Bella’s chilling wails.
“The one that attacked Bella...” Sam’s voice was now tightening, quavering, “He wasn’t alone. That’s why we got thrown off looking for the first scent we caught...The other, we found closer to the border of the forest. She...”
“No-!” Edward now heard it in Sam’s carefully controlled thoughts, and his face contorted in misery as he practically fell against the white banister on the porch. The rest waited fearfully for Sam to finish.
Sam had lost his composure at Edward’s outburst, but the rest were waiting fearfully for him to finish. He pressed his knuckle to his mouth, then forcibly brought it back down. “Her dad came looking for her. She killed him. Charlie Swan’s dead.”
Emmett cursed. Alice buried her face into Jasper’s chest.
With a tense, guarded look, Carlisle came forward and took Bella into his arms, carrying her quickly into the house. Esme watched her with heavy silence.
Sam then answered the question smoldering in Edward’s eyes. “Jacob destroyed the one that got Bella. Tonight we will burn the remains of both of them close to the border.”
That was all for Edward, who turned out of his tense stance to go after Carlisle, after Bella.
The rest-his sisters, brothers, and Esme-exchanged looks of desolate expectation, and then turned away from the last they’d ever see of Sam Uley, and went into the house, shutting the door behind them.
==================
There is an at times romantic but also disastrous human tendency to assign destiny to coincidence. For someone immortal, someone who will see the chance occurrences of not just one but many lifetimes, this tendency is only flirted with in occasional fancy. After many occasions of just barely possible circumstance, a person granted with eternal life, after a time, could casually monitor and perhaps even calculate the probability or frequency of that one-in-a-million, that chance meeting of two long parted, or a certain beautiful type of snow.
But Bella’s circumstance was somehow unavoidably eerie, strangely astonishing to every single one of the Cullens. Bella would come upon her new existence, and recoil, falling victim to the mortal assumption that she had been sentenced, punished.
It was because of this profound shred of her past nature that Bella sought no peace with her new one. It was because of this she could not fully change.
==================
Bella opened her eyes and knew it was the last time she’d ever wake up; it was a strange thing, like what it would be like to fitfully fall asleep, to furiously lie still.
The first thing her eyes focused on was the reflection of herself in the great glass window at the back of the Cullen house. Her mouth fell slightly open and quivered like she was afraid of that perfection in the mirror, calling itself her self. Someone was running a comforting hand over her head; in the reflection, she saw Rosalie with the deepest look of defeat and grief. The strangeness of that affection was horrible, and Bella had to stand up and get a better look. She immediately felt the speed of her reborn body, the lightness of her awesome strength as she moved to stand and glance over into the window. She gasped slightly, and then her breath drew more deeply at the astonishment of that empty action, the air pushing bothersomely into her inconsequential lungs.
She gaped at herself in the glass, never imagining she would be this beautiful; closer to the door of the bedroom, Alice gave a tentative look.
And then Bella realized, and realized. As surely as her feet were on the floor, this was not a dream, and this was an after to the before: A door slamming, twigs flitting by her angry body in the dimness of the woods, and a creature.
“Charlie...”
Edward’s hand had closed firmly around her wrist before she could make it to the door, a sad first of being able to touch her so strongly. She felt his voice at her ear, sounding more tortured than he’d ever sounded before, with her hearing ripped raw and anew.
As it was whispered, the newness of Bella’s skin became heavier, still and cold: she felt as if she had been freezing solid for a hundred years, now anciently sharp, fossilized. Instantly, one hand felt for another wrist. Without looking down, she could feel that her bracelet was gone.
She felt she would surely tumble as she limped-but then glided like a ghost-back over to the window. Her alarmingly white hand came up to cover her face, stopping stuck in paralyzed disbelief over her mouth.
They could see that her eyes, looking like translucent hard candies, held more than the sadness for Charlie and her mother’s grief. Where human eyes would seem in a daydream, hers seemed fixed and searching, farther away than any of them could see. She would begin to always do this, to look outside of the windows to the impossible depth, the swallowing trees.
That evening being the first night she would have to occupy herself instead of having her vividly telling dreams, she sat in the window and listened. From the haze of afar she heard the agonized pitches of not just one but several wolves howling; her arms jolted with the reminder, her fingers tensing as if she was still in pain, still transforming. Edward had been watching her, anxiously helpless, and his expression became pleading as she reacted just the same as ever to the pain of someone who was more than miles-some life-away now.
In a gasping moan, she whispered, “I can’t...”
But there was no can or cannot; nothing to be done or not done or undone or redone. There was only existence and an always tasting far less sweet than she’d expected; it now seemed less like living, less like being, when coupled with the impossibility of doing anything else.
==================
Bella wouldn't hunt...
Characters/Pairings: Bella, Jacob, Edward, Rosalie. Jacob/Bella, some Edward/Bella.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: character death. (piles of angst.)
Summary: AU, Post-NM: When Bella's future is abruptly altered by brutal circumstances, she seeks comfort in an impossible balance between her life with Edward and a restrained relationship with Jacob.
No one knew that Bella was in the woods.
It had started with the slamming of a screen door, Bella’s frustration with Charlie brimming into some uncharacteristically loud frustration, boots squeaking in their bothersome chippers against the wood. Coming home, she’d practically smelled the argument brewing when Charlie had commented on Edward’s absence being an exception to the rule, like he was noting it as an opportunity. Just past dusk she was three knife chops into a carrot when her frustration from one of her father’s irritatingly passive-aggressive comments about “that Cullen kid” had made the knife slip into her finger. With the flicking hand motions of the immediate stinging, she’d peeled out one cutting remark and knew then that it was starting.
“Honestly, Bells, are we just going to pretend that the last several months-what he did to you-that none of that happened? That I didn’t have to watch that happen to my daughter?”
“That would be fantastic.”
Then he tried to mention her best friend. The name had barely made it out of Charlie’s mouth before she’d stiffened in resistance to the pain of the subject, snapping back, “That’s not fair. He won’t talk to me, he doesn’t call-And you know that.”
“It’s all the more reason I’m worried. What’s his big grudge against the Cullens? He never seemed to buy into Billy’s stories, it can’t be that-"
“So you trust his opinion over mine!?..." This next part would feel like such a waste of words, a demonstrative lie: "What if I told you I was going to marry Edward, Dad? Would you maybe try to get used to him then?”
“Are you?”
It hadn’t been the truth, but it had seemed like the best example for laying it out to him. She feebly replied, in a tone sounding like a question. “...Yes. Eventually.”
“Oh, this isn't like you. What, is he pressuring you? Why in God’s name are you thinking about getting married already?”
“He’s not...” Her voice had started weakening with watery anger, at him and herself, for all the impossibility of honesty. “He’s not like you think.”
“Bells-”
“You’re not listening to me...” She’d just thought, Dammit, maybe even said it out loud, and stomped into her rain boots while her father tried to reason with her, his words blurring together and never reaching her. She couldn’t know about the last thing he’d said because she was going out the front door into the spitting spring rain outside, and then she’d taken a good distance by storm until she was somewhere far into the woods, probably somewhere close to the blind path she’d wandered morosely that other time.
She was messed up about that too, today. Her mood was scorching up the wire, and she couldn’t quite tell why, couldn’t calm herself down. Accompanied with the drowning of her senses into the dripping rain and endless trees, her stress catapulted into a bottomless apathy, and she hardly cared about the fact that she was probably going to end up lost.
So, as it happened, she was angry when it came. Her blood was rapid and charging, the very sweetness and the scent becoming some whole other beckoning invisible red ghost.
In the damp cold of that deep May night in Forks, exactly a month before she was to graduate from high school, Isabella Swan was found in the darkness of the forest by a strange man named Ivan. His eyes were red as cherries.
She saw the details immediately when he approached her: the stance, the leisurely walk of a moment that was only the blink of one night amidst a century. The paleness of the skin when it came into view, and the obvious hunger under the brows; the fact seemed to reveal itself rather slowly, suspended and clutching onto every stitch of realization in the half-minute before he appeared fully to her, and then flashed her an inviting sentence of a smile.
Hatred moved in her helplessly, a drowning emotion packaged pointlessly through the sudden adrenaline. She could tell the difference by now, and suddenly was seized as if in realization that the evil had no end. They were perhaps not everywhere in the world but still always anywhere, and so very few were like the ones she knew. She could tell exactly what kind he was.
She acted before the shock of her sudden and viciously ironic plight could overtake her, and spoke. Her voice came out shaky, immediate.
“My blood wouldn’t be very good for you.”
The tall inhuman man had brown hair, with a general slight and starved appearance that made his obvious strength somewhat mocking. He wore a honey-colored shirt that lent a soft glow to the snow of his skin. He lived up to the unimaginable beauty as well as the terrifying confidence of so many vampires Bella had met before, and on all the occasions that Bella had been just a flashing movement away from the fatal hunger, she had trembled and only managed to protest weakly for her life. This night, though, Bella was not only shaking but bridled by genuine fury that seemed heightened by a refusal to accept the genuine danger; She thought in a rapid daze: Death or life, how long would such an event take to settle into Alice’s mind? Could she have already seen Bella standing in the woods in such obvious danger? Surely they would be looking for her already?
And just maybe, the wolves...
She would have to stall him for as long as she could.
This may not be very difficult, considering the bemused expression he had on his face at her comment. He was even too astonished to speak at first, but seemed to hardly doubt that he had the upper hand. He blinked, and smiled.
“You know what I am?”
“Yes,” Bella replied. Her voice was not without obvious fear, but defiant.
He tilted his head in curiosity, and she knew he would at least entertain her protests in light of this interesting information. “But how can that be?-Would you like to sit for a while?”
“I’d prefer to stand at my own funeral.”
He laughed in loud, genuine amusement, a sort of musical echoing bark like a bobcat yawning. “I see, I see...Really, you are kind of endearing. May I ask your name?”
She made a point not to look around, not to look like she was thinking about breaking a run for it, because she knew better, and she wanted him to know she knew better. Even with her knowledge of the fact that any escape without help was completely impossible, the instinctive and powerful urge to flee was still nipping at the back of her mind. But she looked the man right in the face and replied, “Bella.”
“Ah.” He bowed his head. “My name is Ivan. And can I say that I’m surprised-”
“You should listen. You realize the company I keep would be very unhappy if you hurt me, don’t you?”
“...Right-So you have managed to befriend a few? You realize that’s quite rare...”
“There isn’t much I don’t know about vampires,” Bella interrupted. “Anything I don’t know I plan on finding out eventually.”
Ivan, finally seeming to consider some hesitance with her, nonchalantly stepped aside to lean against a tree. “You mean that they want to...”
“Yes.”
Seeming slightly surprised by this situation, but all the while certainly amused, Ivan seemed to weigh a variety of thoughts pertaining to both the astonishment and inconvenience of the situation. As his thoughts thickened, Bella tried to figure out how many minutes had passed, as well as a flimsy estimate of how long it could take her vampires to get to her, assuming, of course, that they knew she was in danger. Her frantically muddled thoughts could not begin to speculate whether they’d first go searching through all the forests in Forks at top speed, or if they’d race to her house to follow her scent from there. Edward’s average from her house to his was four minutes, and then maybe it was one or two more minutes to where she stood from there; and considering the urgency...
Her thoughts were interrupted by Ivan laughing again, seeming very light-spirited about the situation at hand. “This is very, very strange. Kind of a fine entertainment. Look, enlighten me: Why?”
Bella swallowed. “Why...Do I want to...”
He nodded.
His curiosity was going to save her life; she had no room to feel that any question was too personal. She swallowed, trying to calm the detectable racing of her heart. “I’m in love with one.”
Rather than showing a particular amount of surprise, Ivan seemed to consider her answer for a while and resolve that it made sense. She decided in that anxious pause to ask him a question, which felt strangely like she was actually trying to stimulate conversation. “I’m sure you’re just passing through Forks?”
“Of course,” he replied, smiling as if this really was a polite meeting. “And I was surprised to catch the scent of so many others, here and there. So far I’ve distinguished five...It’s particularly strong in the woods, and near the school. I thought it was very curious. Are they all a family?”
“Yes,” Bella spoke solidly, but with her hands wringing together, allowing a pause so that her ears could pick up any sign of approach. There was nothing but the quiet slaps of rain, branches creaking against each other. “The Cullens. You haven’t heard of them?”
“I have not.” His amused face brightened at the promise of this gossip. “Though I’m sure they are talked about-a clan of that size? I’ve never even...”
So Bella explained that there were actually seven, and told him all of their names, all the guises and occupations they put on so that they could live among people. She left out details of any of their gifts, but mentioned that Carlisle was well-acquainted with the Volturri, which seemed to interest him. He seemed quietly pleased with any information she could give him, so she wavered on, attempting to bury her fear under the countenance of one who was granting privileged information. This seemed capable of charming him, but she weakened. In every second that no one saved her, her nerves continued to slowly decompose. When her bravery snagged in her throat and she could hardly say anything more, her arms crossed over her chest protectively, and as if sick to her stomach, she weakly walked over to a large log Ivan had previously invited her to sit on, and lowered herself onto it, waiting.
He was eyeing her curiously, obviously not understanding why her fear would escalate over the minutes, perhaps having concluded that her previous confidence was merely utter stupidity. When her shivering glance met his eyes, she realized there was a good amount of cold wetness streaming down her cheeks.
How long. How long had she been in the woods with this monster. Edward. Where are you?
She looked away from Ivan as he sat down next to her. After a brief moment, he produced a square of paisley cloth from a pocket and held it out to her. In a kind of senseless automatic reaction, she took it with her hand but could only hold it on her knee, clenching it so tightly that her knuckles paled.
“Hmm. I’m guessing you realize now that as long as I burn your remains and cover my tracks well enough...” Of course she’d heard that before, in the woods from someone like him...
She was closer to sobbing now, a faint wail escaping from her chest. When she replied, her voice was hateful and strangled.
“Act like a gentleman, would you.”
He chuckled.
The rain was stopping.
“He’s going to tear you apart,” Bella choked out. “He’ll find out-he’ll find you...Someone will find out...”
Ivan relished her desperation with a smirk. “And why are you so sure?”
Bella’s arms tightened in their shaking restraint as he reached his hand over and rested it lightly on hers.
She glared down at his white fingers. “I guess you could say I have friends in strange places.”
Instead of laughing at her, he pressed his lips together and examined her badly covered horror with genuine interest. After a moment he said quietly, “You are a fascinating young woman, Bella. I’m quite happy we met. I don’t think you’ll understand this, but it should give me a unique kind of pleasure in taking your life.”
Then Bella gasped, not out of a heightened fear from what Ivan was just saying, but in realization; at lightning speed, her mind, dwindling frightfully into the corner of the imagination that impossibly attempts to grasp the experience of death, the concept of blackness, of perpetual ignorance and thoughtlessness, had made her realize in one flinching shock why Alice did not know that she was about to be killed.
Ivan was disinterested in immediately restraining her when her whole body flicked up: she jumped off the log and ran forward a few steps, and she began screaming a name she had not mentioned to him; calling for a man, an other creature.
The wind seemed to pick up as the cold hand clenched fiercely around Bella’s wrist.
It broke.
I expected my skin and my blood
to ripen, not be ripped from my bones;
like fallen fruit, I am peeled, tasted,
discarded. My seeds open
and have no future.
-Wendy Rose
“It’s awful to be dead. Oh my God, she’s so cold.”
-Louise Erdrich
==================
He heard his name being called-screamed -and it was close enough to be his own voice, too close to what he’d been looking for.
His monstrous paws darted into the clearing, and halted.
Her eyes met his and he saw it in her expression before he saw how that fiend, its smell stinging and vile, had its teeth locked on her, just around the soft bone at the point of her shoulder. Her blood was spilled all over her clothes, and in one sharp flicker of a millisecond, Jacob was reminded of the fear of another day: the clouds churning angrily through the skies, water spilling from their sopping hair, the discoloring beach, and the way her shirt, wet, clung lovingly to the bones of her shoulders as he beat the death out of her lungs, again and again, praying for her eyes to meet his.
The thought burned like a bat to the head and Jacob’s head was filled with fury; the rest were coming from the side, but he didn’t wait. He charged forward and ripped it away from her, teeth gnashing and claws cracking, a thunderous roar chilling even the four others who came into the gap and saw the two fierce figures disappear through the trees, one already seeming victorious in the weight and speed of violent loathing.
They took her to Jacob’s house.
Soon enough Bella’s best friend came running into his yard and there was Leah on the little porch with a cigarette, which she dropped in a fumble, and her eyes widened almost fearfully as if she’d heard a banging sound when she saw Jacob’s face.
He bolted through the front door and he heard her screaming before he hurried with a sickened look into the next room to see all the tall boys surrounding the girl, every one wearing an expression of near-nauseated unease.
She seemed incapable of opening her eyes or even reacting to anything but the pain; he’d never asked her about it and he had no idea it was supposed to hurt this bad. Her face winced in whimpers between the almost-constant screams of what was surely the worst burning she’d ever been in; Jacob could have never imagined her like this, her nerves so completely crushed...
“Bells,” he choked. The others moved quickly to let him through, and he was down on his knees, reaching for her hand...
As if it scalded him to touch her, his hand flicked quickly away: her hand was already shockingly cool.
Jacob’s mind felt around in desperation, until he remembered. Her scar...
“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Jacob yelled shakily, “It just happened, maybe we can do something-She told me before she’d gotten bitten, and he just sucked the venom out...”
He had her lifted up against him, but there were several exclamations at his blundering madness and somebody was already grabbing him strongly at the shoulders and pulling him back.
“Are you crazy, you’d die before it did any good-”
Embry tightly held him back until Sam, tightly reasoning, said to Jacob, “It’s too late. Can’t you see she’s bitten all over? Both her legs...”
For a moment Jacob looked at her, biting his lip until the tears started running hot down his face.
As Billy Black came slowly forward out of the corner, Jacob seemed to notice for the first time that his father was in the room. He just grimaced and moaned, “Dad...”
Billy’s face was so vacant, it looked like he was only tiredly heading over to look out the window for a while before heading to bed; and he did stop next to the couch and glance out the window as if there wasn’t a girl twisting around in excruciating pain, her heels recoiling sharply into the couch like she was trying to bury herself into its torn spaces.
But his hand seemed to act on its own accord, and his fingers twisted through a tangled mess of her hair that was hanging off over the armrest, lingering for one moment, and then letting it escape from him like air.
He had to be thinking, Not Charlie’s girl. But to everyone who saw the tall tensing boy get up, cringing into the far wall like he couldn’t stand to watch anymore, this was the end of Jacob’s girl, the silencing of a favorite sound, loss of hearing, loss of sight.
After a long moment it was Paul, his eyes watching Bella’s agony with pity and disgust, who said, “We ought to kill her.”
Jacob didn’t flinch; the rest were frozen in anticipation of what he would say.
Paul reasoned, but seemed almost afraid of speaking. “It’s our job, isn’t it? Newborns are the most dangerous. Either way. She can’t be here when she’s...”
A few pairs of eyes looked to Sam, whose face looked deeply troubled, but the most measuring of the whole group.
After a moment of consideration, he just said, “Jacob...”
From where he stood with his body buried against the wall, still not daring to look over at Bella, Jacob closed his eyes, his breath heaving for a long moment. For a minute all that was heard was Bella’s helplessly dwindling whimpers, and Jacob seemed to speak just to shut that out when it simply became too much. His eyes were as decisive as they could manage as his gaze turned over to Sam, but they all knew there was really only one choice.
“Take her to them.”
==================
When Sam, alone, appeared at the Cullen house carrying Bella’s writhing, ripening body out of his Toyota and up to their porch, the reactions were speechless. There was no confusion as to what was happening to her.
Edward Cullen, his composure shaken, looked at his sister. “Why didn’t you...?”
Alice was the least able to quite grasp the tragedy but nonetheless looked unquestionably unsettled, and said nothing. But Rosalie, her expression pained, sinister, and more fierce than any of the wolves had ever seen, glanced acidly at Sam, and grated, “Because of them.”
“We had a rogue in the forest,” Sam explained. “Only some thirty minutes after we first caught scent of it...Well, Bella just happened to be in the clearing. If no one had found her at that very moment...”
By now the entire family, examining Bella’s cringing form with shock, shared the same look of amazement. There was a foreboding feeling, like a burning odor in the air; everyone understood quite numbly that this was tragic and terrible, but the very reason why was lingering somewhere, snickering wickedly from Bella’s chilling wails.
“The one that attacked Bella...” Sam’s voice was now tightening, quavering, “He wasn’t alone. That’s why we got thrown off looking for the first scent we caught...The other, we found closer to the border of the forest. She...”
“No-!” Edward now heard it in Sam’s carefully controlled thoughts, and his face contorted in misery as he practically fell against the white banister on the porch. The rest waited fearfully for Sam to finish.
Sam had lost his composure at Edward’s outburst, but the rest were waiting fearfully for him to finish. He pressed his knuckle to his mouth, then forcibly brought it back down. “Her dad came looking for her. She killed him. Charlie Swan’s dead.”
Emmett cursed. Alice buried her face into Jasper’s chest.
With a tense, guarded look, Carlisle came forward and took Bella into his arms, carrying her quickly into the house. Esme watched her with heavy silence.
Sam then answered the question smoldering in Edward’s eyes. “Jacob destroyed the one that got Bella. Tonight we will burn the remains of both of them close to the border.”
That was all for Edward, who turned out of his tense stance to go after Carlisle, after Bella.
The rest-his sisters, brothers, and Esme-exchanged looks of desolate expectation, and then turned away from the last they’d ever see of Sam Uley, and went into the house, shutting the door behind them.
==================
There is an at times romantic but also disastrous human tendency to assign destiny to coincidence. For someone immortal, someone who will see the chance occurrences of not just one but many lifetimes, this tendency is only flirted with in occasional fancy. After many occasions of just barely possible circumstance, a person granted with eternal life, after a time, could casually monitor and perhaps even calculate the probability or frequency of that one-in-a-million, that chance meeting of two long parted, or a certain beautiful type of snow.
But Bella’s circumstance was somehow unavoidably eerie, strangely astonishing to every single one of the Cullens. Bella would come upon her new existence, and recoil, falling victim to the mortal assumption that she had been sentenced, punished.
It was because of this profound shred of her past nature that Bella sought no peace with her new one. It was because of this she could not fully change.
==================
Bella opened her eyes and knew it was the last time she’d ever wake up; it was a strange thing, like what it would be like to fitfully fall asleep, to furiously lie still.
The first thing her eyes focused on was the reflection of herself in the great glass window at the back of the Cullen house. Her mouth fell slightly open and quivered like she was afraid of that perfection in the mirror, calling itself her self. Someone was running a comforting hand over her head; in the reflection, she saw Rosalie with the deepest look of defeat and grief. The strangeness of that affection was horrible, and Bella had to stand up and get a better look. She immediately felt the speed of her reborn body, the lightness of her awesome strength as she moved to stand and glance over into the window. She gasped slightly, and then her breath drew more deeply at the astonishment of that empty action, the air pushing bothersomely into her inconsequential lungs.
She gaped at herself in the glass, never imagining she would be this beautiful; closer to the door of the bedroom, Alice gave a tentative look.
And then Bella realized, and realized. As surely as her feet were on the floor, this was not a dream, and this was an after to the before: A door slamming, twigs flitting by her angry body in the dimness of the woods, and a creature.
“Charlie...”
Edward’s hand had closed firmly around her wrist before she could make it to the door, a sad first of being able to touch her so strongly. She felt his voice at her ear, sounding more tortured than he’d ever sounded before, with her hearing ripped raw and anew.
As it was whispered, the newness of Bella’s skin became heavier, still and cold: she felt as if she had been freezing solid for a hundred years, now anciently sharp, fossilized. Instantly, one hand felt for another wrist. Without looking down, she could feel that her bracelet was gone.
She felt she would surely tumble as she limped-but then glided like a ghost-back over to the window. Her alarmingly white hand came up to cover her face, stopping stuck in paralyzed disbelief over her mouth.
They could see that her eyes, looking like translucent hard candies, held more than the sadness for Charlie and her mother’s grief. Where human eyes would seem in a daydream, hers seemed fixed and searching, farther away than any of them could see. She would begin to always do this, to look outside of the windows to the impossible depth, the swallowing trees.
That evening being the first night she would have to occupy herself instead of having her vividly telling dreams, she sat in the window and listened. From the haze of afar she heard the agonized pitches of not just one but several wolves howling; her arms jolted with the reminder, her fingers tensing as if she was still in pain, still transforming. Edward had been watching her, anxiously helpless, and his expression became pleading as she reacted just the same as ever to the pain of someone who was more than miles-some life-away now.
In a gasping moan, she whispered, “I can’t...”
But there was no can or cannot; nothing to be done or not done or undone or redone. There was only existence and an always tasting far less sweet than she’d expected; it now seemed less like living, less like being, when coupled with the impossibility of doing anything else.
==================
Bella wouldn't hunt...