warning: some fairytales may crack under pressure (bella, tanya, jacob, nessie) pg13
Title: warning: some fairytales may crack under pressure (or three happy endings forever couldn't cure)
Fandom: Twilight
Pairing/Characters: Bella (Edward/Bella); Tanya, Kate (Kate/Garrett); one-sided Jacob/Nessie
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 814
Spoilers: Breaking Dawn
Summary: Behind her, the last drop of blood saturates a lump of snow and it reminds him of Snow White and simple needle pricks that start the story.
“We’ll only be gone for a little while.” The we stinks in her eardrums, sliding inside her brain like fizzling acid, and she has the strangest compulsion to wipe her ears on her shoulder. “This place, it just reminds me too much of…” Kate rarely starts a sentence that she doesn’t finish, but the thought trails off and any fool can see where it ends. Their mother, Irina… ghosts, undead to the third degree. This house is full of empty places.
“Eleazar and Carmen will look after you.”
Tanya wants to remind her that she doesn’t need taking care of, but a pain twist in her stomach and she wonders, after all these years, how true it really is.
Kate smiles as if she knows (how dare she assume that what is in here is ripe for the plucking) and kisses her on the forehead.
“My sister.”
There’s an I love you playing experimentally on her lips (she’s not the type for such sentimental things), or perhaps it’s really humming stay, but before Tanya can decide Kate and Garrett are gone.
Alone, the last single Denali sister. It feels like being an endangered species and she’s never felt so breakable.
*
The doubt creeps in like a frost in spring, unbidden and unexpected. Bella realizes all at once that not only is she married at eighteen (she has flashes of her mother and rented tuxes in front of dime store preachers and oh. this is what déjà vu feels like.) but she has a child on top of it all. The nasty rumors circulating her wedding become more vicious in hindsight.
That Bella Swan got herself knocked up, alright. I knew that Cullen boy was too good to be true. Wonder how long that marriage will last. No longer than her mother’s, I guarantee it.
And the time keeps ticking onward toward an unforeseeable end. She thought she’d stop aging when her body did, but the days go by and she still feels older, even more so now that there’s nothing standing between her and forever.
Forever. The word never seemed as heavy on her tongue.
She stops letting Edward into her mind for fear he’ll hear her doubts and panic (she can predict the guilt flooding his eyes and she can’t stand the image) and he stops asking for entrance. She’s not sure which comes first, and she doesn’t know if he senses her reluctance and refuses to push her boundaries or if he’s simply grown bored with the landscape of her mind. But the insecurities don’t end up washing down with the blood in her veins and she goes over the latter constantly, picking at it during her sleepless nights and watching in fascination as the sharp points of its ramifications make her bleed. She longs for sleep, to let her mind wander in a dark abyss and she’d even take the nightmares if it meant a respite from reality.
But it’s silly, she reminds herself. Edward is all she’s ever wanted.
Right?
*
They stand like solitary salt and pepper shakers on a pristine table cloth, the snow laid out pure at their feet.
“I’ll race you,” Nessie sings out excitedly and Jacob nods wearily, not bothering to follow with any semblance of speed.
She turns out to be a selfish woman, in the end. Bella is oblivious, seeing only the little girl she protected in the womb and dressed in frills, but he notices Edward wince at her thoughts sometimes, unable to be drawn into the illusion by the pangs of fatherhood because he hears the truth as his gift. Sometimes it’s a curse, Jacob supposes.
He knows on some level that she doesn’t love him, not as something more than territory to be wielded and bargained for. She won’t have him, yet won’t let him go, tugging on the bond that ties him to her like puppet strings. And he’s helpless to stop her.
Her hips sway gracefully as she skips toward the herd of deer, her footsteps silenced by the snow so she doesn’t have to be as careful in her approach. Jacob guesses her whole life has been muffled footsteps; an endless game of playing with toys that can’t fight back. She’d never had to fight for attention, love, affection, and he can see the dripping watermarks of it all over her soul. She pulls him close and whispers mine the way some might whisper love.
The deer lands with a thump at the base of a gnarled tree (she’s always been beautiful when she hunts) as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and turns on him with a smirk.
I win.
Behind her the last drop of blood saturates a lump of snow and it reminds him of Snow White and simple needle pricks that start the story.
But she’s no princess.