be afraid of the cold; they'll inherit your blood, pt. v: roar (edward) pg13
title: be afraid of the cold; they'll inherit your blood, pt. v: roar
fandom: twilight
character(s)/pairing(s): edward pov; edward/bella, the volturri, carlisle
rating: pg13
word count: 5200
spoilers: breaking dawn au.
notes: this is the last part of 'five times bella never got turned into a vampire'. title and opening quote (translated) from regina spektor's 'apres moi.' this isn't me working out my issues with e/b at all, i have no idea what you're talking about.
summary: au. the volturri find them on their honeymoon.
February. Get ink, shed tears.
Write of it, sob your heart out, sing.
While torrential slush that roars,
Burns in the blackness of the spring.-
“Ap`res Moi”, Regina Spektor
v. roar
The end arrives while we’re honeymooning in Europe which, of course, was my first mistake: thinking we were out of harm's way anywhere on the same continent as the Volturri. But I thought we would be safe. I thought we had more time. I thought-
Regardless, I was wrong. They found us.
I suppose to Bella it would seem that the events that followed occurred rapidly, perhaps even in the blink of an eye, too quickly to even register. But for me it was with agonizing slowness; just enough time to see everything slipping away, but not enough to do anything to stop it.
One moment Bella was chatting away in the hotel bathroom about the spot where Jane Austen wrote Pride & Prejudice, and the next the room was eerily silent.
“Bella, love?” I called, rising from the bed, “Did you fall in?”
The grin slipped from my lips as I rounded the doorframe.
Alec, Demetri. Felix. Another nameless guard I didn’t recognize. Bella’s wide-eyed gaze as she stared at me, terrified, from above Felix’s large hand as he clutched her neck, holding her flush against his wide chest. Before I could react, Alec’s power wafted into my mind, rendering me mute and paralyzed, but not unaware, as I fell to the floor. Demetri’s black boots scuttled into my line of vision just before a bag was placed over my head.
Objectively, everything went quite quickly after that.
Our shared cell was iron-lined, thick enough to block out the guard’s thoughts outside. With only Bella as my company, it was the most silence I’d had within my own head since I was human, but with my racing thoughts I couldn’t enjoy it. She was still unconscious. Though she would be alright, I stared down at her, pained, knowing it was I who had done this, who had set these events in motion.
I took the moment to consider what the Volturri had in mind. They must not have decided what to do with us yet, or else Jane would have marched us straight to Aro and we both would be dead.
Maybe we were awaiting a judgment for our infraction against the law. Maybe they were still calling dibs. But perhaps they were simply playing games with us, like batting at an injured mouse with cat claws. I couldn’t be sure.
In time Bella came around, and I had to share the information I had gathered about our circumstances; namely, that I knew nothing.
With the passing of the days came no word, and the dumped bits of meager food rations for Bella. Her thirst was quenched by a dripping spickett in the corner. I could hear her stomach protesting as two days turned into three, then four, but I could do nothing to help her. I was totally powerless. And it wasn’t just her hunger; her desperation grew as well. Despite all the danger she had been strung through, she still had never expected this.
“We were always sorta doomed, weren’t we?” she murmured, stunned, and I didn’t want to tell her no, because that had been my assumption from the beginning, but yes seemed like a brutal answer. The glass is only half-full as long as it doesn’t shatter to pieces.
“Don’t say that,” seemed to be the only medium.
“But it’s true, isn’t it? From the beginning you were always one breath away from killing me. And if it wasn’t your own bloodlust it was someone else’s. But if Carlisle had never changed you, you would have died decades before I was even born. Maybe it’s not me who’s the danger magnet. Maybe it’s us, together.”
Her hair ran like silk from between my fingers as I swept a stray strand behind her ear, her pulse thumping unevenly millimeters beneath the pads of my fingertips.
“I can’t believe that.”
There. That was close enough to the truth not to be a lie.
The realization of our circumstance came to me as one of the guards broke the iron seal around us to dump a tray of unappealing food into the room for Bella.
I wish this fucker would just bite the bitch already, he thought thuggishly, Demitri’s got two on him turning her, but he’ll probably just drain her. At this rate I might beat him to it. Aro might as well just send down the kill order now since he’s taking so fucking-
With that the slat snapped shut, and I was left sitting in strangled silence.
“He’s waiting me out.”
Bella paused over the tray, turning to me with confused eyes. My heart sunk when I noticed she was even thinner and more sunken than yesterday.
“What are you talking about?”
“Aro. He’s letting us wait here until I turn you. Or until my bloodlust becomes so intense that I kill you.”
The blunt words lingered in the air like gun smoke, blue and sulfur and deadly.
Understanding dawned bright and awful in Bella eyes, but instead of horror I saw determination illuminated there in the aftermath.
“Do it,” Bella pleaded, her expression wild, “Turn me.”
I looked at her helplessly. “No. Not like this.”
She locked her jaw, her gaze scanning the space over my shoulder as if it held the tools to convince me. Her eyes whipped over to meet mine again.
“In Alice’s vision, the one where I’m a vampire?” I nodded low, pained. “Am I happy?”
I got the impression that she was asking not for her own knowledge but to prove a point. Of course she knew; I’d heard her once in the wee morning hours after having returned early from a hunting trip, asking Alice to repeat the details of that vision over and over, like the constant replay of a favorite movie scene until the tape crinkled in the rewind.
“Yes.” I swallowed, knowing I was losing ground. “Alice seemed to think so.”
Bella raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you know? You saw it in her head for yourself.” I gave my head a little shake, not knowing how to respond. She was right, I had. Bella’s expression turned suspicious. “What are you really afraid of?”
I tilted my head away, unable to meet her eyes. I feared losing her forever to bloodlust, despite how irrational it was, and I feared that the eyes of an immortal would finally see how much better than me she was. But neither of these were the dark reasons that clouded my judgment, that haunted my consciousness at every turn.
“I don’t know why you’re being so stubborn. It’s this or die for us now, and I’ve already told you it’s what I wanted from the beginning. I know you want it too, you’ve told me yourself. Why are you making this so damn difficult?!” Her breath puffed out in angry huffs like a bull faced with crimson, and if this were a different situation I might have laughed at her indignation. Such a sharp-tempered girl. She’d make an excellent vampire, a tiny voice in my head told me, and the thought sobered me.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” I whispered, shamed, because I could already hear her response in the air.
“But I’ve already told you-“
“I know what you’re saying. Now. But in forty years? Seventy? When your friends are all living their lives and your parents die and you want to have children? What then? I know you’ll grow to resent me, because how could you not? And I don’t-“ I hesitated, because this was the worst part of it, the most selfish part. “I don’t think I will be able to live with myself when you do.”
Bella was silent and I grew worried that my confession was the final nail in the coffin of our short-lived marriage. But when I raised my eyes to her face, her expression was speculative. I furrowed my brow.
“You don’t think you’re good enough to keep me happy. That I’ll want more.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded as if it were one. To my great surprise, she laughed, for some reason tickled by the idea. “Bella Swan too good for Edward Cullen.” She giggled once more before sobering, looking quite cross with me all of a sudden. “I thought we’d learned this lesson.”
“I-“ staring at my fingers, at a loss, “I have no idea what you mean. Have we been trapped by vampire royalty before and forced to choose between our death or your change? Because I think I would remember that.”
She smacked me playfully on the shoulder, “No, dummy. I thought you weren’t going to let your own stupid opinions about vampires take away any of my choices again,” she raised her eyebrows, daring me to protest, “Last time you did that, we both almost died. Twice. Right in this building, if my sense of direction is correct.”
It wasn’t, but I understood her point. It didn’t mean I agreed.
“That was different.”
“How?” Bella spread her arms wide as if to encompass all the ways in which I was wrong, “Step one, Edward thinks Bella is in danger from big bad vampire things. Step two, Bella swears she loves Edward in spite of the danger, maybe even a little because of it,” I raised an eyebrow, but let her continue, “Step three, Edward decides he knows what’s best for Bella and shields her anyway. Step four, disaster occurs. The only part we’re missing here is that last one and it’s only because it hasn’t happened yet. But it doesn’t have to! We can still make this right.”
I could tell that this argument was fraying her already thin nerves, but this had been brewing for a long while.
She continued, this time using her ‘let’s be reasonable’ voice.
“I know you just want me to be happy, to do nothing that could cause me pain. But I’m the one who should decide what those things are, even if you think you know better than I do. This always second guessing me…” she paused, meeting my gaze with a harried, stern expression. “It shows me that you don’t trust me to make my own choices.” I opened my mouth to protest vehemently, but she spoke over me, “I know you don’t see it that way. But that’s how it feels. I need you to respect me enough to let me have this.”
I sat down heavily, releasing a lungful of air like I was dropping a brick. Did she really think I didn’t respect her? I did, of course, immensely. But this wasn’t 1918, I reminded myself grouchily. These days respect towards women, towards your beloved, wasn’t waiting to marry them before seeing them naked, or refusing to curse in front of them, or handling them like a mantle-piece treasure. It was seeing them like an equal, and treating them as such. I suddenly got the feeling that I’d been going about the last two years of my life very wrong.
“I love you,” I said, because it was all I could think to say.
Bella soft smile dissolved into fear as the bolts in the heavy door clanked when they were unlocked, and I rose to my feet swiftly. She pressed herself to my side and I wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders, ready to shield her if need be.
Jane’s expression was bored when she appeared across the doorway, and her thoughts were of a similar brand of apathy. She glared at Bella as if she were doing the vampire some inconvenience for existing, before meeting my hard gaze.
“Aro wishes to speak with you.” What she didn’t say was that the ruler was concerned that I hadn’t killed or turned Bella already, and he was hoping to speed the process along with more ultimatums. From her thoughts I could tell the rest of the guard were similarly anxious, and there was a good chance they’d try to convince Aro to let them have her. I tensed, but stepped forward, knowing I had no choice.
The damp, dark corridor gave way to sandstone, then an elevator, and I wondered how many vampires had ridden this same one on their way to their doom. I wondered if any of them had found the humor in the Italian musak, had died laughing inside. I didn’t suppose many, but immortality can give one an odd sense of humor.
More guards were waiting just outside the great hall, and I gripped Bella’s hip in my palm as they stared at her jugular hungrily, and they considered just how much trouble they’d be in if they ripped her away from me right then and drank. Thankfully Aro’s instructions had been precise; they wanted us both alive. For the mean time, at least.
The crowd parted for us, leaving us just inside the semi-circle surrounding the thrones. I was puzzled at first by the numbers. Usually the handing down of edicts and the often bloody application of them was a job handled by the three rulers and a small handful of guards, not the entire court. But I spotted some of the oldest and most powerful in the room, and it made me increasingly nervous.
Then I read their thoughts.
They were here for the show.
“My young friends,” Aro greeted happily from his perch, as if he hadn’t been keeping up locked in a dungeon for a week, but in the guest house by the pool, “It’s such a pleasure to see you both well.”
I could have laughed. I almost did.
I didn’t even need to read his mind; judging by his pinched expression, nothing could be less true. He was puzzled that I hadn’t succumbed to the call of Bella’s blood and I was shocked when I picked up that he was afraid if I took too long I really would kill her; he wanted her a vampire, not dead. Before I could dig deeper and figure out why, Caius was slithering forward, a scowl as ever embossed on his face.
Bella tensed, remembering how happy he had been at the idea of slitting her throat before.
“This is ridiculous, Aro. Just finish this.” Bella quivered at my side, but I couldn’t assure her it wasn’t her death Caius was championing. Not this time.
It was much worse.
Aro spoke up, glancing at his fellow king like he was embarrassed for his bluntness.
“Yes, well everything in due time.” He tittered happily, turning his eyes to my wife. “And you Bella? I apologize that we don’t keep much that’s appealing to humans in the way of food, but this time I made sure to be prepared for your visit.”
A tray somehow rolled out from the crowd, topped with grapes, figs and a leg of some kind of meat. All probably items Aro could recall from his human days; he gestured sweepingly toward it and Bella leaned forward involuntarily before catching herself. I knew she must be starving, fed barely more than scraps for days, but she retreated warily. She knew better than to accept such seeming charity.
Her eyes rose to my face with a question as I scanned Aro’s thoughts. I nodded.
“It’s safe,” I murmured in her ear.
Bella cautiously reached for a grape, plucking it from the stem like she was afraid it might bite her back. But she popped it into her mouth with no further incident, and she quickly grabbed another.
The crowd watched this exchange with fascination and, when Bella began to eat, disgust. Most were too old to recall the appeal of human food and, unlike me, found the sight of humans feeding to be revolting. I just thought she was beautiful regardless.
“Do you find the amenities to your liking?” Aro questioned with a half hopeful, half calculating smile.
Bella paused to downcast her eyes, a picture of subservience. But from the tight way she fisted the back of my shirt I knew she was irritated by the show.
“Yes, very much. Thank you Aro.”
Bella was just putting another string of meat in her mouth when Aro spoke.
“I’m glad. It’s best to enjoy such things while you still can.”
She froze, still mid-chew, and cast a wide-eyed look on the mastermind. She swallowed thickly, but didn’t speak.
“He’s going to offer us a position in his guard,” I explained stiffly, placing a lilt of sarcasm on the word offer. There really was no choice. “Or he’ll kill us both.”
Aro looked to me as if exasperated that I’d ruined a grand surprise.
“You could choose to join alone, of course,” he offered me kindly, and Bella bristled.
“And if we refuse?” I gritted out, already knowing the answer.
“We aren’t in the business of being denied,” Caius explained coldly.
Denials were on my lips, hateful spit building in my mouth to be reared back and shot like ammunition, but then I felt Bella’s soft, tiny hand on my cheek. I looked down into her wide, brown eyes and I knew immediately I would do whatever she asked of me. If she wanted me to lay down and be crucified right this instant, I would.
“Do it,” she pleaded, and I was reminded of the conversation we’d had just before we were sent for, and all the lessons I’d learned because of it. “It will be fine as long as we’re together.” Her warm hands pressed into my chest, and I nodded weightily.
“Delightful!” Aro clapped, jarring us out of our solemn exchange and reminding us of our audience. We both stared at him blankly for a moment, waiting for our marching orders, before he gestured impatiently. “Well? On with it then.”
Bella squeaked. “Here?” She quaked like a baby bird.
I glanced around pointedly at the gathered vampires, then met Aro’s eyes. Surely the moment Bella’s blood hit the air we would have a mob on our hands.
“I assure you that our friends have no intentions of hurting Mrs. Cullen here. They have excellent control over their baser natures.” I raised an eyebrow and Aro chuckled. “When they’re ordered to, that is.”
I took a rattled breath and turned to Bella. Her eyes met mine, but beneath the fear I saw her trust in me, shining out like a beacon. Without it, I don’t think I would have had the courage to lean down to her ear.
“Whatever happens, know that I love you.”
I felt her mouth the same words back to me, and gave a quick little nod as my lips found her throat. I sent a prayer up to whatever imagined or real god that was listening that somehow we could see through this, alive and together. I hoped someone was taking notes.
My teeth clamped down on her neck. Then all hell broke loose.
(грохочущая)
The parking lot was teeming with teenagers, the crowd awash with a rushed babbling as each group attempted to finish gossiping before the first bell. I leaned back against my car and resisted the urge to begin chipping off flecks of silver paint in my boredom. Surrounded on all sides by spoken and thought words that I had heard a million times in a dozen different dialects and decades, my mind sought out the one consciousness I wished to hear. A generically pretty blonde intentionally brushed past me as she climbed down from the high passenger seat of her linebacker boyfriend’s truck, but I blocked out both her hopeful thoughts and the wordless rage of the boy as I honed in on the other side of the lot.
A flash of brown hair and a wink.
I relaxed minutely, never having truly been worried. Pushing off from my car, I nonchalantly strolled into the school, heading for my English classroom. It was a tiny room swimming on four sides by walls papered with posters of Shakespearian plays and pleas to read over the summer, but I was thankful all the same for a little breathing room. There was a time, just after our escape from Volterra, that my family never would have allowed me to be unattended like this, so exposed.
I could still remember the screams just after I bit Bella, both hers and that of the ancient vampires around us falling victim to teeth and claws. Drinking barely a drop more than was necessary to secure her change, I sealed her wound with a swipe of my tongue and backed away against the wall, Bella in my lap with my arms wrapped around her. In the clamor of panicked thoughts and bloodlust it was difficult to discern the hunters from the hunted, the wails of a final death versus the battle cries. I saw a flash of fur moving among the crowd rushing towards the exit but dismissed the idea quickly. Until I picked out a web of thoughts from the tumult. The pack mind.
And then a clearing formed and I was faced with the unquestionable sight of Alice tearing Jane into pieces.
Carlisle found us first.
“Edward,” he breathed, suddenly on his knees beside us. Bella let out a keening cry, nails drawing blood from her own palms. “The change?”
I nodded, pushing a tangle of her hair back from her sweaty forehead. She quieted slightly at my cool touch but the stitch of pain wrinkling her eyebrows remained.
Carlisle tilted his head down to examine what of Bella he could, considering I was still wrapped protectively around her, and seemed to determine everything was normal, considering.
The battle still raged around us.
“We organized as soon as we were sure you had been taken here. We weren’t sure how to proceed at first, anything other than a suicide mission, but thank God for Alice.”
I gathered the rest from Carlisle’s mind. Alice had had a vision of a faction already forming among the Volturri’s own ranks. It became clear that some within the guard - a sizable group if the identities of the fallen were noted - believed that Aro’s personal interests were beginning to outweigh his duty. Various incidents, including the guard’s inaction against the newborn army, led many to realize that the rulers many counted on to carry out justice were becoming vain and inflated in their power with few results to back up their claim. It was decided that something needed to be done.
Once my family and our alliances - the wolves, the Denali clan, numerous nomadic friends - had agreed to join their ranks, the rebels poised to strike.
I could still recall the lavender smoke clouds rising amongst the towers of Volturri as I turned with Bella in my arms to board Carlisle’s plane, tinting the sunset an eerie violet and green, like a day-old bruise.
The new order was more rule-bound but decidedly more predictable and, perhaps most importantly, one that was supremely in the Cullen family’s debt.
I was shaken from my thoughts by a whiff of freesia down the hall, and I glanced up from my locker to meet a familiar gaze.
Penny for your thoughts?
I smirked and turned to grab my French book, knowing she could read my amusement in the bow of my cheek.
I’m fairly sure that would be a waste of money.
Bella bent down to take a drink from the fountain, the spray of water falling just short of her tongue.
What did I tell you about dwelling? It’s really your least attractive feature.
I checked my phone in the hollow shadow of my locker, partially to look busy and partially to get Alice off my back by responding to her text messages.
I thought you said that was my control issues?
I felt her moving down the hall toward me, but I didn’t glance up.
Oh, right. Forgot about that. Second worst then. Third is your incessant correcting.
I felt her fingers flit along my wrist that was peaking out of my back pocket in a movement too quick for human eyes.
Save me a seat.
I smiled contentedly, slamming the aluminum face of my locker into place and walking the opposite direction as my wife, a girl that by anyone else’s guess I didn’t know at all.
Bella likes to play games. It’s as if some parts of her were totally inverted in the change, leaving her bold and fearless, craving the power of all eyes on her now that she knows they’re not staring to be rude; they just can’t look away.
I might have interpreted it as vain if I hadn’t seen it through her eyes. It isn’t attention she wants, not exactly, and in this way human Bella and vampire Bella are one in the same; the attention is reassurance, a compliment paid to half-unwilling, half-desperate ears. What she’s really after is the thrill of it and here the two aspects of herself collide. This is just another cliff to jump, another set of handlebars to grip. Only now I’m there to ride by her side.
She’s devious in that collected way that never hurts anyone in any way but their pride. All her years reading through the lives of hundreds of women leading hundreds of lives resolves her to walk down many paths, hand in hand with a husband that she knows would never leave her. She’s curious, like a child questioning a fairytale, and I can’t help but oblige her.
I had thought that the differences between human and vampire would terrify me, would cause me to curl away in horror at her red-dampened lips and tawny eyes like I was looking at a stranger. But instead it vindicates me to see her confident and self-aware, traveling the world as if she were prancing across a map laid flat on hardwood. I find that she is the same in all the ways that matter; my love for her is rooted inside the deepest parts of her soul and nothing will ever change that.
At first I feared for her bloodlust, knowing it would pass but dreading the time until then. But thankfully, along with my thoughts, she has also inherited my memories of how to maintain self-control, the pain of my guilt when I couldn’t. She struggles, but not for long; she’s a quick learner.
Bella turns out to have a flair for the dramatic, for storytelling, and she blames it on all of the Shakespeare rotting her brain. (Her human life might have been a tragic romance, but her vampire life is certainly a comedy of errors.) Each new disguise is like new outfit, and she loves trying on people in a way that she had never appreciated trying on clothing.
We’ve been a wealthy couple from France (she still giggles when she thinks of my accent), a musician and author on the verge of their big break in the city, runaway teenagers living on the road. We’ve been Izzy and Eddie, Isabelle and Eduardo, Isa and Ed, but most often we don’t like the name of another’s on our tongues (even if it’s supposed to be us).
Sometimes we’ll buy pairs of abandoned luggage in airport baggage claim, laying out the contents and making up characters to match what we find. We’ll launder the clothes, tailor them to fit if necessary, and wear them like costumes. We read the books packed away inside, take on the accents of the bag’s intended destination (we have to guess which airport was home, based on whether the clothing inside was clean or dirty), and fill our ears with the CDs found. We construct elaborate set ups for how our two characters know each other; we’ve been business associates, lovers, a divorced couple sharing custody of a child, classmates on a band trip. When no connection comes to us we pretend to meet in bookstores, or waiting rooms, or by running into each other on crowded streets.
I would be just as happy to tuck ourselves away in an isolated cabin for years. To rid ourselves of the influence of the outside world. And we have, Bella knowing my desires and surprising me with a property in Canada in early fall, bought with shared wealth, and snowing ourselves in, not surfacing for any reason other than to hunt until the snow melted mid-spring. Bella is content to hide away with me, but our games excite her, bring her alive, and I can’t deny her that. In a way I feel that I’m regifting her with something I’ve taken from her; she can’t have her own human life, but she can have thousands of others. And I’ve grown to enjoy our performances; I’ve listened in on millions of lives, but I had barely lived mine for so many years.
Occasionally we’ll rejoin our siblings and play with the teen angst factor on the high school stage, pretending to get caught in closets and bathroom stalls and backseats in the student parking lot, passing dirty notes in that obvious, over the desk fashion that always gets them read to the class. We’ve been cheerleader and nerd (this one was my idea, and whenever my mind wanders to her paneled skirt she gets that warning look in her eye. Don’t even think about it buddy; never again.) Sometimes we even pretend to hate each other, volleying nasty insults over Tuesday surprise sandwiches in the cafeteria, pretending to trip each other and spreading rumors and protesting when we get paired together in every class (because we share nearly every one by design). Eventually we’ll cave, never lasting until graduation, and plan that epic slap-slap-kiss knock down drag out in the quad during lunch period, where everyone is there to watch. (These days are her absolute favorite; loves the tizzy in their minds when she slips her tongue into my mouth, like carbonation inside a glass.) A few will say they knew the infamous enemies would hook up all along, and I have to agree.
But this one has to be my favorite.
“Hello.” She jumps, her fingers curled up inside her hoodie sleeves and her eyes fluttering over my shoulder, seemingly unable to meet my eyes. “My name is Edward Cullen. You must be Bella Swan?”
She nods jerkily and I have to hide my grin. (She was always so good at this part.) Bella’s eyes meet mine, (brown brown brown, and even if they’re contacts it still kills me) and her lips curl for the smallest of milliseconds.
The teacher might be droning on about human bone cells instead of mitosis, and we both might be secretly listening to the girl named Abby behind us thinking about how she’s sure the two of us will be high school sweethearts, but it still brings me back to that first day I spoke to her so many years ago. I resist the urge to change history and lean over to kiss my wife.
Patience.
fandom: twilight
character(s)/pairing(s): edward pov; edward/bella, the volturri, carlisle
rating: pg13
word count: 5200
spoilers: breaking dawn au.
notes: this is the last part of 'five times bella never got turned into a vampire'. title and opening quote (translated) from regina spektor's 'apres moi.' this isn't me working out my issues with e/b at all, i have no idea what you're talking about.
summary: au. the volturri find them on their honeymoon.
February. Get ink, shed tears.
Write of it, sob your heart out, sing.
While torrential slush that roars,
Burns in the blackness of the spring.-
“Ap`res Moi”, Regina Spektor
v. roar
The end arrives while we’re honeymooning in Europe which, of course, was my first mistake: thinking we were out of harm's way anywhere on the same continent as the Volturri. But I thought we would be safe. I thought we had more time. I thought-
Regardless, I was wrong. They found us.
I suppose to Bella it would seem that the events that followed occurred rapidly, perhaps even in the blink of an eye, too quickly to even register. But for me it was with agonizing slowness; just enough time to see everything slipping away, but not enough to do anything to stop it.
One moment Bella was chatting away in the hotel bathroom about the spot where Jane Austen wrote Pride & Prejudice, and the next the room was eerily silent.
“Bella, love?” I called, rising from the bed, “Did you fall in?”
The grin slipped from my lips as I rounded the doorframe.
Alec, Demetri. Felix. Another nameless guard I didn’t recognize. Bella’s wide-eyed gaze as she stared at me, terrified, from above Felix’s large hand as he clutched her neck, holding her flush against his wide chest. Before I could react, Alec’s power wafted into my mind, rendering me mute and paralyzed, but not unaware, as I fell to the floor. Demetri’s black boots scuttled into my line of vision just before a bag was placed over my head.
Objectively, everything went quite quickly after that.
Our shared cell was iron-lined, thick enough to block out the guard’s thoughts outside. With only Bella as my company, it was the most silence I’d had within my own head since I was human, but with my racing thoughts I couldn’t enjoy it. She was still unconscious. Though she would be alright, I stared down at her, pained, knowing it was I who had done this, who had set these events in motion.
I took the moment to consider what the Volturri had in mind. They must not have decided what to do with us yet, or else Jane would have marched us straight to Aro and we both would be dead.
Maybe we were awaiting a judgment for our infraction against the law. Maybe they were still calling dibs. But perhaps they were simply playing games with us, like batting at an injured mouse with cat claws. I couldn’t be sure.
In time Bella came around, and I had to share the information I had gathered about our circumstances; namely, that I knew nothing.
With the passing of the days came no word, and the dumped bits of meager food rations for Bella. Her thirst was quenched by a dripping spickett in the corner. I could hear her stomach protesting as two days turned into three, then four, but I could do nothing to help her. I was totally powerless. And it wasn’t just her hunger; her desperation grew as well. Despite all the danger she had been strung through, she still had never expected this.
“We were always sorta doomed, weren’t we?” she murmured, stunned, and I didn’t want to tell her no, because that had been my assumption from the beginning, but yes seemed like a brutal answer. The glass is only half-full as long as it doesn’t shatter to pieces.
“Don’t say that,” seemed to be the only medium.
“But it’s true, isn’t it? From the beginning you were always one breath away from killing me. And if it wasn’t your own bloodlust it was someone else’s. But if Carlisle had never changed you, you would have died decades before I was even born. Maybe it’s not me who’s the danger magnet. Maybe it’s us, together.”
Her hair ran like silk from between my fingers as I swept a stray strand behind her ear, her pulse thumping unevenly millimeters beneath the pads of my fingertips.
“I can’t believe that.”
There. That was close enough to the truth not to be a lie.
The realization of our circumstance came to me as one of the guards broke the iron seal around us to dump a tray of unappealing food into the room for Bella.
I wish this fucker would just bite the bitch already, he thought thuggishly, Demitri’s got two on him turning her, but he’ll probably just drain her. At this rate I might beat him to it. Aro might as well just send down the kill order now since he’s taking so fucking-
With that the slat snapped shut, and I was left sitting in strangled silence.
“He’s waiting me out.”
Bella paused over the tray, turning to me with confused eyes. My heart sunk when I noticed she was even thinner and more sunken than yesterday.
“What are you talking about?”
“Aro. He’s letting us wait here until I turn you. Or until my bloodlust becomes so intense that I kill you.”
The blunt words lingered in the air like gun smoke, blue and sulfur and deadly.
Understanding dawned bright and awful in Bella eyes, but instead of horror I saw determination illuminated there in the aftermath.
“Do it,” Bella pleaded, her expression wild, “Turn me.”
I looked at her helplessly. “No. Not like this.”
She locked her jaw, her gaze scanning the space over my shoulder as if it held the tools to convince me. Her eyes whipped over to meet mine again.
“In Alice’s vision, the one where I’m a vampire?” I nodded low, pained. “Am I happy?”
I got the impression that she was asking not for her own knowledge but to prove a point. Of course she knew; I’d heard her once in the wee morning hours after having returned early from a hunting trip, asking Alice to repeat the details of that vision over and over, like the constant replay of a favorite movie scene until the tape crinkled in the rewind.
“Yes.” I swallowed, knowing I was losing ground. “Alice seemed to think so.”
Bella raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you know? You saw it in her head for yourself.” I gave my head a little shake, not knowing how to respond. She was right, I had. Bella’s expression turned suspicious. “What are you really afraid of?”
I tilted my head away, unable to meet her eyes. I feared losing her forever to bloodlust, despite how irrational it was, and I feared that the eyes of an immortal would finally see how much better than me she was. But neither of these were the dark reasons that clouded my judgment, that haunted my consciousness at every turn.
“I don’t know why you’re being so stubborn. It’s this or die for us now, and I’ve already told you it’s what I wanted from the beginning. I know you want it too, you’ve told me yourself. Why are you making this so damn difficult?!” Her breath puffed out in angry huffs like a bull faced with crimson, and if this were a different situation I might have laughed at her indignation. Such a sharp-tempered girl. She’d make an excellent vampire, a tiny voice in my head told me, and the thought sobered me.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” I whispered, shamed, because I could already hear her response in the air.
“But I’ve already told you-“
“I know what you’re saying. Now. But in forty years? Seventy? When your friends are all living their lives and your parents die and you want to have children? What then? I know you’ll grow to resent me, because how could you not? And I don’t-“ I hesitated, because this was the worst part of it, the most selfish part. “I don’t think I will be able to live with myself when you do.”
Bella was silent and I grew worried that my confession was the final nail in the coffin of our short-lived marriage. But when I raised my eyes to her face, her expression was speculative. I furrowed my brow.
“You don’t think you’re good enough to keep me happy. That I’ll want more.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded as if it were one. To my great surprise, she laughed, for some reason tickled by the idea. “Bella Swan too good for Edward Cullen.” She giggled once more before sobering, looking quite cross with me all of a sudden. “I thought we’d learned this lesson.”
“I-“ staring at my fingers, at a loss, “I have no idea what you mean. Have we been trapped by vampire royalty before and forced to choose between our death or your change? Because I think I would remember that.”
She smacked me playfully on the shoulder, “No, dummy. I thought you weren’t going to let your own stupid opinions about vampires take away any of my choices again,” she raised her eyebrows, daring me to protest, “Last time you did that, we both almost died. Twice. Right in this building, if my sense of direction is correct.”
It wasn’t, but I understood her point. It didn’t mean I agreed.
“That was different.”
“How?” Bella spread her arms wide as if to encompass all the ways in which I was wrong, “Step one, Edward thinks Bella is in danger from big bad vampire things. Step two, Bella swears she loves Edward in spite of the danger, maybe even a little because of it,” I raised an eyebrow, but let her continue, “Step three, Edward decides he knows what’s best for Bella and shields her anyway. Step four, disaster occurs. The only part we’re missing here is that last one and it’s only because it hasn’t happened yet. But it doesn’t have to! We can still make this right.”
I could tell that this argument was fraying her already thin nerves, but this had been brewing for a long while.
She continued, this time using her ‘let’s be reasonable’ voice.
“I know you just want me to be happy, to do nothing that could cause me pain. But I’m the one who should decide what those things are, even if you think you know better than I do. This always second guessing me…” she paused, meeting my gaze with a harried, stern expression. “It shows me that you don’t trust me to make my own choices.” I opened my mouth to protest vehemently, but she spoke over me, “I know you don’t see it that way. But that’s how it feels. I need you to respect me enough to let me have this.”
I sat down heavily, releasing a lungful of air like I was dropping a brick. Did she really think I didn’t respect her? I did, of course, immensely. But this wasn’t 1918, I reminded myself grouchily. These days respect towards women, towards your beloved, wasn’t waiting to marry them before seeing them naked, or refusing to curse in front of them, or handling them like a mantle-piece treasure. It was seeing them like an equal, and treating them as such. I suddenly got the feeling that I’d been going about the last two years of my life very wrong.
“I love you,” I said, because it was all I could think to say.
Bella soft smile dissolved into fear as the bolts in the heavy door clanked when they were unlocked, and I rose to my feet swiftly. She pressed herself to my side and I wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders, ready to shield her if need be.
Jane’s expression was bored when she appeared across the doorway, and her thoughts were of a similar brand of apathy. She glared at Bella as if she were doing the vampire some inconvenience for existing, before meeting my hard gaze.
“Aro wishes to speak with you.” What she didn’t say was that the ruler was concerned that I hadn’t killed or turned Bella already, and he was hoping to speed the process along with more ultimatums. From her thoughts I could tell the rest of the guard were similarly anxious, and there was a good chance they’d try to convince Aro to let them have her. I tensed, but stepped forward, knowing I had no choice.
The damp, dark corridor gave way to sandstone, then an elevator, and I wondered how many vampires had ridden this same one on their way to their doom. I wondered if any of them had found the humor in the Italian musak, had died laughing inside. I didn’t suppose many, but immortality can give one an odd sense of humor.
More guards were waiting just outside the great hall, and I gripped Bella’s hip in my palm as they stared at her jugular hungrily, and they considered just how much trouble they’d be in if they ripped her away from me right then and drank. Thankfully Aro’s instructions had been precise; they wanted us both alive. For the mean time, at least.
The crowd parted for us, leaving us just inside the semi-circle surrounding the thrones. I was puzzled at first by the numbers. Usually the handing down of edicts and the often bloody application of them was a job handled by the three rulers and a small handful of guards, not the entire court. But I spotted some of the oldest and most powerful in the room, and it made me increasingly nervous.
Then I read their thoughts.
They were here for the show.
“My young friends,” Aro greeted happily from his perch, as if he hadn’t been keeping up locked in a dungeon for a week, but in the guest house by the pool, “It’s such a pleasure to see you both well.”
I could have laughed. I almost did.
I didn’t even need to read his mind; judging by his pinched expression, nothing could be less true. He was puzzled that I hadn’t succumbed to the call of Bella’s blood and I was shocked when I picked up that he was afraid if I took too long I really would kill her; he wanted her a vampire, not dead. Before I could dig deeper and figure out why, Caius was slithering forward, a scowl as ever embossed on his face.
Bella tensed, remembering how happy he had been at the idea of slitting her throat before.
“This is ridiculous, Aro. Just finish this.” Bella quivered at my side, but I couldn’t assure her it wasn’t her death Caius was championing. Not this time.
It was much worse.
Aro spoke up, glancing at his fellow king like he was embarrassed for his bluntness.
“Yes, well everything in due time.” He tittered happily, turning his eyes to my wife. “And you Bella? I apologize that we don’t keep much that’s appealing to humans in the way of food, but this time I made sure to be prepared for your visit.”
A tray somehow rolled out from the crowd, topped with grapes, figs and a leg of some kind of meat. All probably items Aro could recall from his human days; he gestured sweepingly toward it and Bella leaned forward involuntarily before catching herself. I knew she must be starving, fed barely more than scraps for days, but she retreated warily. She knew better than to accept such seeming charity.
Her eyes rose to my face with a question as I scanned Aro’s thoughts. I nodded.
“It’s safe,” I murmured in her ear.
Bella cautiously reached for a grape, plucking it from the stem like she was afraid it might bite her back. But she popped it into her mouth with no further incident, and she quickly grabbed another.
The crowd watched this exchange with fascination and, when Bella began to eat, disgust. Most were too old to recall the appeal of human food and, unlike me, found the sight of humans feeding to be revolting. I just thought she was beautiful regardless.
“Do you find the amenities to your liking?” Aro questioned with a half hopeful, half calculating smile.
Bella paused to downcast her eyes, a picture of subservience. But from the tight way she fisted the back of my shirt I knew she was irritated by the show.
“Yes, very much. Thank you Aro.”
Bella was just putting another string of meat in her mouth when Aro spoke.
“I’m glad. It’s best to enjoy such things while you still can.”
She froze, still mid-chew, and cast a wide-eyed look on the mastermind. She swallowed thickly, but didn’t speak.
“He’s going to offer us a position in his guard,” I explained stiffly, placing a lilt of sarcasm on the word offer. There really was no choice. “Or he’ll kill us both.”
Aro looked to me as if exasperated that I’d ruined a grand surprise.
“You could choose to join alone, of course,” he offered me kindly, and Bella bristled.
“And if we refuse?” I gritted out, already knowing the answer.
“We aren’t in the business of being denied,” Caius explained coldly.
Denials were on my lips, hateful spit building in my mouth to be reared back and shot like ammunition, but then I felt Bella’s soft, tiny hand on my cheek. I looked down into her wide, brown eyes and I knew immediately I would do whatever she asked of me. If she wanted me to lay down and be crucified right this instant, I would.
“Do it,” she pleaded, and I was reminded of the conversation we’d had just before we were sent for, and all the lessons I’d learned because of it. “It will be fine as long as we’re together.” Her warm hands pressed into my chest, and I nodded weightily.
“Delightful!” Aro clapped, jarring us out of our solemn exchange and reminding us of our audience. We both stared at him blankly for a moment, waiting for our marching orders, before he gestured impatiently. “Well? On with it then.”
Bella squeaked. “Here?” She quaked like a baby bird.
I glanced around pointedly at the gathered vampires, then met Aro’s eyes. Surely the moment Bella’s blood hit the air we would have a mob on our hands.
“I assure you that our friends have no intentions of hurting Mrs. Cullen here. They have excellent control over their baser natures.” I raised an eyebrow and Aro chuckled. “When they’re ordered to, that is.”
I took a rattled breath and turned to Bella. Her eyes met mine, but beneath the fear I saw her trust in me, shining out like a beacon. Without it, I don’t think I would have had the courage to lean down to her ear.
“Whatever happens, know that I love you.”
I felt her mouth the same words back to me, and gave a quick little nod as my lips found her throat. I sent a prayer up to whatever imagined or real god that was listening that somehow we could see through this, alive and together. I hoped someone was taking notes.
My teeth clamped down on her neck. Then all hell broke loose.
(грохочущая)
The parking lot was teeming with teenagers, the crowd awash with a rushed babbling as each group attempted to finish gossiping before the first bell. I leaned back against my car and resisted the urge to begin chipping off flecks of silver paint in my boredom. Surrounded on all sides by spoken and thought words that I had heard a million times in a dozen different dialects and decades, my mind sought out the one consciousness I wished to hear. A generically pretty blonde intentionally brushed past me as she climbed down from the high passenger seat of her linebacker boyfriend’s truck, but I blocked out both her hopeful thoughts and the wordless rage of the boy as I honed in on the other side of the lot.
A flash of brown hair and a wink.
I relaxed minutely, never having truly been worried. Pushing off from my car, I nonchalantly strolled into the school, heading for my English classroom. It was a tiny room swimming on four sides by walls papered with posters of Shakespearian plays and pleas to read over the summer, but I was thankful all the same for a little breathing room. There was a time, just after our escape from Volterra, that my family never would have allowed me to be unattended like this, so exposed.
I could still remember the screams just after I bit Bella, both hers and that of the ancient vampires around us falling victim to teeth and claws. Drinking barely a drop more than was necessary to secure her change, I sealed her wound with a swipe of my tongue and backed away against the wall, Bella in my lap with my arms wrapped around her. In the clamor of panicked thoughts and bloodlust it was difficult to discern the hunters from the hunted, the wails of a final death versus the battle cries. I saw a flash of fur moving among the crowd rushing towards the exit but dismissed the idea quickly. Until I picked out a web of thoughts from the tumult. The pack mind.
And then a clearing formed and I was faced with the unquestionable sight of Alice tearing Jane into pieces.
Carlisle found us first.
“Edward,” he breathed, suddenly on his knees beside us. Bella let out a keening cry, nails drawing blood from her own palms. “The change?”
I nodded, pushing a tangle of her hair back from her sweaty forehead. She quieted slightly at my cool touch but the stitch of pain wrinkling her eyebrows remained.
Carlisle tilted his head down to examine what of Bella he could, considering I was still wrapped protectively around her, and seemed to determine everything was normal, considering.
The battle still raged around us.
“We organized as soon as we were sure you had been taken here. We weren’t sure how to proceed at first, anything other than a suicide mission, but thank God for Alice.”
I gathered the rest from Carlisle’s mind. Alice had had a vision of a faction already forming among the Volturri’s own ranks. It became clear that some within the guard - a sizable group if the identities of the fallen were noted - believed that Aro’s personal interests were beginning to outweigh his duty. Various incidents, including the guard’s inaction against the newborn army, led many to realize that the rulers many counted on to carry out justice were becoming vain and inflated in their power with few results to back up their claim. It was decided that something needed to be done.
Once my family and our alliances - the wolves, the Denali clan, numerous nomadic friends - had agreed to join their ranks, the rebels poised to strike.
I could still recall the lavender smoke clouds rising amongst the towers of Volturri as I turned with Bella in my arms to board Carlisle’s plane, tinting the sunset an eerie violet and green, like a day-old bruise.
The new order was more rule-bound but decidedly more predictable and, perhaps most importantly, one that was supremely in the Cullen family’s debt.
I was shaken from my thoughts by a whiff of freesia down the hall, and I glanced up from my locker to meet a familiar gaze.
Penny for your thoughts?
I smirked and turned to grab my French book, knowing she could read my amusement in the bow of my cheek.
I’m fairly sure that would be a waste of money.
Bella bent down to take a drink from the fountain, the spray of water falling just short of her tongue.
What did I tell you about dwelling? It’s really your least attractive feature.
I checked my phone in the hollow shadow of my locker, partially to look busy and partially to get Alice off my back by responding to her text messages.
I thought you said that was my control issues?
I felt her moving down the hall toward me, but I didn’t glance up.
Oh, right. Forgot about that. Second worst then. Third is your incessant correcting.
I felt her fingers flit along my wrist that was peaking out of my back pocket in a movement too quick for human eyes.
Save me a seat.
I smiled contentedly, slamming the aluminum face of my locker into place and walking the opposite direction as my wife, a girl that by anyone else’s guess I didn’t know at all.
Bella likes to play games. It’s as if some parts of her were totally inverted in the change, leaving her bold and fearless, craving the power of all eyes on her now that she knows they’re not staring to be rude; they just can’t look away.
I might have interpreted it as vain if I hadn’t seen it through her eyes. It isn’t attention she wants, not exactly, and in this way human Bella and vampire Bella are one in the same; the attention is reassurance, a compliment paid to half-unwilling, half-desperate ears. What she’s really after is the thrill of it and here the two aspects of herself collide. This is just another cliff to jump, another set of handlebars to grip. Only now I’m there to ride by her side.
She’s devious in that collected way that never hurts anyone in any way but their pride. All her years reading through the lives of hundreds of women leading hundreds of lives resolves her to walk down many paths, hand in hand with a husband that she knows would never leave her. She’s curious, like a child questioning a fairytale, and I can’t help but oblige her.
I had thought that the differences between human and vampire would terrify me, would cause me to curl away in horror at her red-dampened lips and tawny eyes like I was looking at a stranger. But instead it vindicates me to see her confident and self-aware, traveling the world as if she were prancing across a map laid flat on hardwood. I find that she is the same in all the ways that matter; my love for her is rooted inside the deepest parts of her soul and nothing will ever change that.
At first I feared for her bloodlust, knowing it would pass but dreading the time until then. But thankfully, along with my thoughts, she has also inherited my memories of how to maintain self-control, the pain of my guilt when I couldn’t. She struggles, but not for long; she’s a quick learner.
Bella turns out to have a flair for the dramatic, for storytelling, and she blames it on all of the Shakespeare rotting her brain. (Her human life might have been a tragic romance, but her vampire life is certainly a comedy of errors.) Each new disguise is like new outfit, and she loves trying on people in a way that she had never appreciated trying on clothing.
We’ve been a wealthy couple from France (she still giggles when she thinks of my accent), a musician and author on the verge of their big break in the city, runaway teenagers living on the road. We’ve been Izzy and Eddie, Isabelle and Eduardo, Isa and Ed, but most often we don’t like the name of another’s on our tongues (even if it’s supposed to be us).
Sometimes we’ll buy pairs of abandoned luggage in airport baggage claim, laying out the contents and making up characters to match what we find. We’ll launder the clothes, tailor them to fit if necessary, and wear them like costumes. We read the books packed away inside, take on the accents of the bag’s intended destination (we have to guess which airport was home, based on whether the clothing inside was clean or dirty), and fill our ears with the CDs found. We construct elaborate set ups for how our two characters know each other; we’ve been business associates, lovers, a divorced couple sharing custody of a child, classmates on a band trip. When no connection comes to us we pretend to meet in bookstores, or waiting rooms, or by running into each other on crowded streets.
I would be just as happy to tuck ourselves away in an isolated cabin for years. To rid ourselves of the influence of the outside world. And we have, Bella knowing my desires and surprising me with a property in Canada in early fall, bought with shared wealth, and snowing ourselves in, not surfacing for any reason other than to hunt until the snow melted mid-spring. Bella is content to hide away with me, but our games excite her, bring her alive, and I can’t deny her that. In a way I feel that I’m regifting her with something I’ve taken from her; she can’t have her own human life, but she can have thousands of others. And I’ve grown to enjoy our performances; I’ve listened in on millions of lives, but I had barely lived mine for so many years.
Occasionally we’ll rejoin our siblings and play with the teen angst factor on the high school stage, pretending to get caught in closets and bathroom stalls and backseats in the student parking lot, passing dirty notes in that obvious, over the desk fashion that always gets them read to the class. We’ve been cheerleader and nerd (this one was my idea, and whenever my mind wanders to her paneled skirt she gets that warning look in her eye. Don’t even think about it buddy; never again.) Sometimes we even pretend to hate each other, volleying nasty insults over Tuesday surprise sandwiches in the cafeteria, pretending to trip each other and spreading rumors and protesting when we get paired together in every class (because we share nearly every one by design). Eventually we’ll cave, never lasting until graduation, and plan that epic slap-slap-kiss knock down drag out in the quad during lunch period, where everyone is there to watch. (These days are her absolute favorite; loves the tizzy in their minds when she slips her tongue into my mouth, like carbonation inside a glass.) A few will say they knew the infamous enemies would hook up all along, and I have to agree.
But this one has to be my favorite.
“Hello.” She jumps, her fingers curled up inside her hoodie sleeves and her eyes fluttering over my shoulder, seemingly unable to meet my eyes. “My name is Edward Cullen. You must be Bella Swan?”
She nods jerkily and I have to hide my grin. (She was always so good at this part.) Bella’s eyes meet mine, (brown brown brown, and even if they’re contacts it still kills me) and her lips curl for the smallest of milliseconds.
The teacher might be droning on about human bone cells instead of mitosis, and we both might be secretly listening to the girl named Abby behind us thinking about how she’s sure the two of us will be high school sweethearts, but it still brings me back to that first day I spoke to her so many years ago. I resist the urge to change history and lean over to kiss my wife.
Patience.