Night 52: M111-M120 Hallway

[sanguinario]

When the intercom rang through the cold room and the lights shut off in time with the click of the unlocking door, Edward remained where he was, staring at the space where the liquefied dinner had been sitting. For the second time that day, he wondered if he could starve here. Being in no condition to hunt and having no energy to keep the rotten,

Comments

[vitale]

Bella could practically hear a clock ticking the minutes away, even though she knew it was impossible. Every second that passed only meant ever second that the blood wasn't working -

Until.

When Edward spoke, the teenager's eyes widened, her heart stopping a beat as she watched as he flexed his hand. She remembered lunch, and the fact that he hadn't even been able to move his fingers when she had seen him. In fact, when he had touched her face; it was like someone had twisted them and left them in the strange positioning. But now ...

"Claire, it's working!" Bella cried, turning to look at her roommate as she sat on the other bed. She still felt ... well, bad was an understatement, but there was no time to think about that right now.

Turning back to Edward, Bella's head lowered as she tried not to cry from pure joy. She had cried enough today, and she didn't need to do it again.

At Peter's question, her head lifted, and she rubbed her eyes with her knuckles anyway, trying to stop her eyes from burning. "Ah, I can do it. Since he still owes me from doing that from a while ago," she turned and gave Edward a look, remembering the time he had gone out looking for her after her search for bandages, and he only ended up hurting himself more. He had bandaged himself, the stubborn fool. "You guys have already done too much. Seriously, I owe you forever."

[autophoenix]

As pleased as she was to see that the burns were mending just as slowly as her own ability worked, she couldn't bring herself to share in Peter and Bella's enthusiastic joy. It was her only solace at this point. It wasn't that easy for her to just forget how hurt she was -- the painful, awkward silence as the burns first began to heal hadn't changed that, and neither had their sudden focus on it.

Instead of being a distraction, it was just a reminder. A painful one, that even if she did all she could to help, it still wouldn't be enough to earn their trust, or have hers returned. It just made her want to leave instead of sharing in the celebratory smiles.

But, she didn't. She wouldn't. The smile she gave Peter in return for his was the most genuine one she'd manage. He deserved to see that she really was happy it worked, and it was easy for that moment to focus on it. As she turned to look at Bella, though, all of the enthusiasm fell out of it and it became hollow, hiding a bitterness and poorly at that.

"Yeah. Great," it was all she could manage, and it was a curt and hollow response. Instead of trying to muster up something better, she turned her attention to Edward's question, brows knitting together in confusion the harder she thought on it. It made sense, when she thought back on it -- the nights that she'd gotten cut up. After the mirror shard with Elle and by the mirror itself with Bella, though the latter was worse than the former, she'd felt thoroughly exhausted in the morning. Like her body had more taken out of it than it was ready to give.

Not to mention the fact that she always seemed to be starving around breakfast time. It was the first time she'd really put any thought into it, but the explanation seemed obvious in retrospect.

"That's normal. The fatigue. It'll be worse in the morning when the healing's done, and it's probably better if you get as much rest as you can. You should probably eat a lot for breakfast tomorrow, too. I don't know why but … it always seems like that helps me recover faster." Science wasn't her strong suit, and she wasn't exactly prepared to explain the metabolic reasons for why the rapid regeneration of cells would require the additional fuel and energy.

[sanguinario]

"No, but thank you," he slowly replied to Peter's offer, trying to attempt a smile and more or less forming a halfhearted grimace. "I can tell you've done this before." Well, perhaps not attempting to nurse a wounded and starving vampire, but some kind of first aid training. He recognized it in himself and in what Carlisle had taught him - or attempted to.

He turned to Claire, having no expectations but being perturbed by her hollowness anyway. He didn't really know the girl at all, but she was... bitter. That was strange. Her thoughts were a torrent on top of the detached voice she used verbally, and it was too much for his tired brain to sort out. He just knew there was something there, but he didn't know why or how it had risen so suddenly. Was it some strange aversion to sharing her blood? Normally he could understand that sentiment in his own detached sort of empathy, but seeing that her so-called ability was what she made it out to be...

He would have to investigate that later.

For now, what he wanted to do was - surprising to him - sleep. His eyes were heavy-lidded, but he managed one last gesture to the girl. "Thank you, really. I hope I can find something to do to return the favor." He had enough of a mind to be worried about her mention of eating and something about metabolism - though that part wasn't vocalized - and the fact that something was wrong in his body, like an overbearing weight was slamming his head towards the ground.

And then he fell back against the bed, completely dead weight and out cold.

[human_sponge]

With both Bella and Edward declining his offer about the bandages, Peter figured he might as well take them at their word and save his supplies. And so he slowly stood up instead, dusting off the knees of his sweatpants. He couldn't help smiling slightly when Edward seemed to recognize that he had some experience in the area. "You could say that," he responded modestly.

While it was clear that Claire was still bothered by the fact that Bella was hiding things from her, she nonetheless gave Edward the best advice that she could; Peter respected that the girl's anger at the situation wasn't stopping her from helping in the ways that really mattered.

He was, however, startled when Edward promptly passed out on the bed, laying as still as if he was dead. That obviously wasn't the case, but it seemed that he'd been more tired than he'd realized.

Peter moved over to Claire, wanting to be there as a support, even if it was in an unspoken way. He glanced from his niece to Bella and shrugged. While it was obviously a huge breakthrough to know that Claire's blood could heal here, now the moment had passed and he was left to wonder at what came next.

"So was that all you two were planning to get done tonight?" he asked the girls. "I'm not sure how much time we have left..." Would it be better to try and head out somewhere when it was almost guaranteed that they wouldn't get far, or to stay here where things might get awkward after a minute or two? Well, it was Claire's decision as far as Peter was concerned.

[vitale]

Bella looked at Peter as he stood up, taking a few steps back from Edward as well. It appeared that Claire's Uncle had some kind of first aid knowledge as well - that would come in handy, she figured. If anything should happen to someone.

Not that she wanted one of them to get injured enough to the point of first aid, but still.

Bella turned back to Edward just as he passed out against the bed, and for a moment a wave of panic washed through her. How could she not worry, considering her vampires weren't supposed to sleep, but here he was, dead to the world? ... But then, she supposed, her vampires also weren't supposed to retain burns or stab wounds or anything else like that, so it made her point moot. If Edward could sleep at night, then she was sure he could pass out from exhaustion due to the blood that was currently circulating in his body. Maybe if I let him sleep he's heal faster, she thought to herself, chewing on her bottom lip before turning towards Claire and Peter once again.

"I ... I hadn't thought about after," she admitted sheepishly. "We had hoped to find you, and we did, and that was as far as we had gotten ..."

Turning back to Edward, she sighed. "Though I should probably stay here with him, just in case."

As she turned back towards her fiance, once again her shadow caught her eye. Zipping her head to the wall, she frowned, worry slowly starting to fill her. She wasn't just seeing things. "Plus, my eyes are playing crazy tricks on me right now, so it might be for the best. I'm just not used to the lights after so long, is all."

Plus, she was sure Claire wanted to get away. She could practically feel the disappointment crashing off of the girl in waves.

[autophoenix]

It wasn't until Peter approached and questioned their further plans that Claire even realized Edward had fallen asleep. Her attention had been grabbed by the floor the more she let herself get caught up in the negativity of her own thoughts and she'd missed him passing out entirely, so she looked surprised when she looked up to glance at Peter and realized Edward was asleep. So much for the excuse of giving him and Bella some alone time that had already been ready to roll off her tongue.

Bella seemed to have her covered, though, which was just an added frustration in some ways as much as it was a relief. Instead of fixating, as she was prone to do, Claire stood up, giving Peter a grateful look. Having him there had turned out to be an emotional necessity rather than something that would just be a practical idea, what with him already having the syringe.

"It's probably better if you stay with him for a little bit in case he wakes up or something anyway. I mean, he'd probably want you here, and if your friend comes back …" There it was. Venom, a perfect excuse, one that Claire hadn't found before first opening her mouth and declare that she wanted to get out of there. "We probably shouldn't be here when he does, he didn't look too happy to see us."

With a terse smile, she shifted her gaze back to Peter and nodded toward the door. A quick and tactful escape needed to happen ASAP, or Claire was only going to continue to grow exponentially frustrated with the mistrust that Bella had fed into.

[human_sponge]

It looked like everyone was on the same page in terms of what to do next, which basically boiled down to himself and Claire leaving yet again. However, this time his niece seemed to be eager to get out, and that probably had a lot to do with how she was feeling about her roommate at the moment. Peter was tuned in enough to realize what Claire had to be going through currently, and he didn't want to force her to do anything she didn't want to, especially seeing how his job here was done.

"Yeah, watch after him," he advised Bella with a nod. "He might come around again, and he'll need you to help distract him from the pain." Chances were that Edward was in a much more tolerable amount of pain now that the burns had healed somewhat, but despite that he was probably still going to be feeling pretty terrible. If anything would distract him from that, it would be a talking to his girlfriend.

He wasn't sure why Bella's eyes were playing tricks on her, but it could easily be due to a lack of sleep. Hallucination due to sleep deprivation was common, and their sleep patterns here were ambiguous at best.

"You should try to take it easy, too," he said as his parting statement before leading Claire over to the door once more. He wasn't sure if the girl had it in her to be polite right now, so Peter took it upon himself to wave back to Bella before stepping out into the hall.

[And back again.]

[vitale]

(switching places with edward with permission.)

Bella watched as Claire and Peter left, waiting until the door shut before she let out a deep sigh. Tomorrow's going to be awkward, she thought to herself, chewing on her bottom lip. She had to talk to Claire somehow, to explain to her that it wasn't that she didn't trust her, it was just for the better.

Maybe this was what Edward had meant all those months ago. It's better to not be friends with me.

Looking towards her (unconcious?) fiance, she moved towards his desk, plopping herself down in the chair and covering her face with her hands so she could think. At least one thing had gone according to plan this night; from her spot, she could see Edward. He looked like he was healing quickly, even more so now that he was asleep. That had to be good, right? She had to hold tightly onto that glimmer or hope, or else she was going to seriously lose it.

Or maybe she already had. Suddenly, Bella froze, eyes going wide as she stared straight ahead at Edward. Something was off, and with that other announcement that just sounded ...

When she realized what was amiss, every cell in her body urged her to run, but she couldn't.

Bella's face went pale as she slowly turned her head, looking at her shadow on the wall. She was sitting, but her shadow ... her shadow was standing next to her, as if another entity all together. Heart pounding in her ears, she realized that something else was amiss about her shadow; it seemed to have grown larger, nearly twice her size, like it was someone else entirely ...

Turning slowly back towards Edward (she noted out of the side of her sight that her shadow's head moved in her direction when she looked away from it) Bella too in a gentle breath, not moving towards him, not moving at all. She didn't want the shadow to be close to him, should it change again. "Edward," she said as loudly as she could without disturbing things, "Please wake up."

The distress was obvious in her voice, her words shaking as her hands fisted on top of the desk.

[sanguinario]

Edward was quite accustomed to being afraid - not for himself or his family, if he was being truthful, just for Bella. That was changing as he himself was. His eyes opened, blurry, staring up at the white ceiling, and he realized he didn't remember falling asleep. The end of the night already? It hadn't seemed so -

Edward.

He scrambled up into a seating position on the bed, groaning when the movement awakened his head with the pain that accompanied the movement: it hurt. A lot. In comparison, however, it was manageable. Looking around blearily, he didn't see his roommate, seeing Bella instead.

What? But if she was still here - the others had left? It was still night? Then how the hell had he woken up? Had he honestly lost consciousness? He couldn't remember the sensation of passing out if it'd ever occurred while he was human, but he imagined this must be the aftereffects: the colors of the room blurring together, the sound of her voice almost too loud. The pain was dulled, and he found that he could move relatively easily, but it too a moment for his mouth to catch up. "They're gone?" he asked and winced; his own voice was too loud as well.

This was getting ridiculous. Nothing made sense about his own body anymore. Was this a human feeling? Convinced that, in some situations, they had no control over it at all? He shook his head, allowing the pain to clear his vision.

How long had he been out? What had happened?

Of course, even in his exhausted state, he had priorities. "Are you all right?"

[vitale]

She watched as Edward stirred, and breathed a sigh of relief when his eyes opened and he stared up at the ceiling. Suddenly he was sitting up, and she stood up herself, concern washing over her face as she went to move - but the shadow out of the corner of her eye had turned to look at Edward this time, and she instantly sat down, not wanting to cause any more attention to it then she already was.

"They're gone," she told him in a soft voice, running her fingers through her hair as she leaned back against the chair, her eyes looking towards the floor as a sardonic laugh escaped her lips. "I think Claire wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, so I ... told them to go. Kind of. Sorta. And I think Peter knew how upset Claire was, so he took her away."

She didn't want to talk about it, really. She had accepted things as they were.

Out of the corner of her eye, it looked like her shadow was laughing, shoulders shaking with silent laughter. She wanted nothing more than to tell the shadow to shut up, but she made no move, made no obvious mention of her being bothered by the shadow.

However, everything was given away by her posture. Sitting rigidly in her chair, her back was straight as a board.

Standing up suddenly, she remembered how he was still starving, and her scent wasn't making things anything better. Moving, Bella walked across the room and to his roommate's desk, standing in the corner. Her eyes watched as her shadow followed her across the floor, slipping onto the floor as if someone had spilled ink. Once it was on the other side of the room, it moved next to her, standing behind her once again, head pointed in her direction.

But she showed no sign of acknowledgment. "How are you feeling?" she asked, folding slightly in on herself. "Would you like me to leave? It'll be easier for you that way."

[sanguinario]

He nodded at first then, finding it was giving him a headache, abruptly ceased the movement, holding his fingers up to his forehead. He could move them with relative ease, thankfully, without worry of the skin melding the digits together. They had been some of the lightest burns, and had been nearly vanquished by the blood. Any movement at all left him a little woozy, but he couldn't seem to sit still. It was hard to focus on anything at all, but at least he could concentrate on his own movements.

Focusing on her question, Edward remained silent for a moment before speaking, staring hard at the floor of the room. He thought his shadow was a little darker than it should be. "It would be, but I hope you won't. But I can't stop you," and he chuckled to himself darkly.

That hurt too, too much after a few vibrations through his torso, so he stopped.

Talking was only increasing the burn in his throat, but there were still so many pains to feel at once that one never seemed more encompassing than the other. He could starve beside her, but he would never - was that why she seemed to be acting so stiffly? Even if she had assured him she was not afraid of him, he had doubts. He always had doubts. He always would about that. Edward looked up, tilting his head to listen to her tone better, noting her posture. The edges of her figure blurred in and out of focus, not aided by the fact that it was hard to hold his head steady. "You look worried. You don't think - I'm not thirsty enough to hurt you. I won't."

And since he didn't want her to argue:

"I'm sorry about Claire. She doesn't like secrets." What a succinct way to state the obvious. "But she thinks I just have an ability. It worries me."

[vitale]

"I can stand outside the door if you'd like," Bella added, chewing on her bottom lip as she tried to think. She didn't want to hurt him even more than she probably already had with the little stunt that she pulled tonight. She hadn't even thought about what would happen when Peter touched Edward's skin! How could she forget such an important thing?

Her mind had been clouded by worry. She still couldn't really think straight, honestly.

However, at Edward's comment about him hurting her, Bella's eyes widened with surprise. "What? I'm not worried about that! I'll never worry about that. I'll always trust you. You have to know that by now, Edward. I mean, come on," at that moment she lifted her hand, wiggling her fingers to remind him of the fact that she was wearing Elizabeth's ring (not that she was sure he forgot.)

"It's," she paused, chewing on her lip as she wondered what to say. She didn't want to freak Edward out, especially in the state he was in, but ... "My ... shadow. It's not me," she told him in a soft tone, crossing her arms over her chest, hands in small, tight fists. "Something is happening - that announcement. I don't know what's going on, but I'm ... that's what I'm worried about. Not you hurting me. And besides, if you allowed me, I'd be the first one to give you some blood. In a heartbeat."

But, like Edward, she also didn't want him to argue, so she continued with the topic of Claire. "It's ... it's fine," a shrug of her shoulders, followed by a sigh. "I mean, I'll get over it. I'm just not looking forward to dinner tomorrow, is all. That's going to be delightfully awkward."

"And I'm so sorry about that," Bella added, sinking into his roommate's chair, her hands covering her face. "I wasn't thinking straight - I'm still not thinking straight. I should think of something to tell her. Maybe tell her there's something special about me and you were just covering ... or maybe ..." she was going to go crazy with worry. "I don't know," she mumbled, her body lowering so her cheek rested against the desk, her face turned away from Edward so she was forced to look at the wall and her abnormal shadow. "Maybe I'll say if we tell her what you are, that means I'm going to die because of some crazy curse or something. I saw that on a TV show once. It might work."

[sanguinario]

He heard everything she had to say, listening silently on the bed, his whole body wavering back and forth between intense pain and the urge to sleep. He'd never felt like sleeping before. It was quite odd.

Despite the fogginess in his mind, he tried to sort through everything she was saying, despite the fact he didn't recall hearing an announcement - or he didn't remember what had been said. It was very hard to stay conscious as it was, and the small room was already too full of stimuli to effectively concentrate on only one at a time. The Claire situation was pressing, but it was very hard to bring himself to really care what the girl thought of him; his only regret was that he might have been the cause of ruining what friendship they had begun.

But that could be dealt with. "Your shadow...?" He lifted his head, his neck straining with the weight, watching the dark reflection of her on the wall. It was hard to focus on, because his eyes kept making it look like it was moving when Bella was still. "I don't understand."

[vitale]

After what felt like an eternity of knowing Edward, Bella could see the signs that he wasn't doing well, but whatever he was feeling, he wasn't showing it. Internal torture, she had called it a few nights ago, but apparently this was real pain, and he was still mum about it. She sighed at the thought; he still didn't want to tell her about it because he didn't want to make her worry.

"Don't worry about it," she said in a hushed tone, waving a hand. Her shadow, meanwhile, remained still. "I'm sure it's nothing important. Just one of those trick things Landel does to the patients sometimes. You really should rest, though, since you're still healing and everything, and I don't want to hinder that already more than I am, so maybe I'll just wait in the hallway."

Suddenly, however, her train of thought was silenced when yet another announcement sounded, this time the head doctor once again, talking about something that she couldn't quite focus on. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her shadow grow a bit before suddenly clicking back into place of her original form, however ... it was wearing different clothes. A large puffy jacket - cold weather?

At the words "We were all wrong", something changed. It was a whisper, like there were other people in the room with them, when she knew that wasn't possible. Moving towards the door, she was instantly stopped when suddenly her shadow zipped to the front of the door ... and proceeded to step out from it. However, it looked exactly like her - she could see all of her features, however muted and darkened, looking more like dust than an actual shadow.

The shadow gave Bella a look, turning to look at Edward on the bed for a moment before back at the former, shaking her head as if disappointed. "Leaving him again?" the voice said in a hushed tone, as if being repeated by numerous others, slowly flickering into one single, very familiar voice. "You haven't even been engaged for more than a few weeks, and you're already trying to leave him. You're pitiful." the words you're pitiful were finally spoken in her own voice, and Bella's eyes widened as the shadow took another step towards her, causing her to take steps back herself.

"That's not what I-" she found herself saying to the shadow, eyes wide and face pale. What was going on? "That's not what I was doing!"

[sanguinario]

He wasn't particularly fond of listening to others when they told him not to worry over something, but at this present time he was willing to do so. The patient room seemed relatively safe with the door closed, barring them off from the rest of the institution. Though he felt he shouldn't trust the lights - why leave them on at all after so many nights left in darkness? - it was still somewhat of a comfort. Not to him, not with his excellent vision in the dark, but perhaps in general.

Edward felt himself dozing off though he was going to insist once again that Bella stay, his back became ramrod straight when the newest announcement went off. Sinister, perhaps, but he never really paid close attention to them -

Leaving him again?

"What?" Was she talking to him? But the question didn't -

She was talking to someone else. When he looked, he could see it: that inky shade of Bella's he thought he had seen moving. It wasn't shaped like her, and it wasn't following her movements. If Bella hadn't responded to the sentence, he would have been convinced he was hallucinating from his fatigue. Since he knew Bella was not often suffering from bouts of schizophrenia, he blinked, gaping and closing his mouth like a land-wrecked fish.

Eventually, he forced his words out. "Is your shadow talking?" A dark feeling ran through him at his own question, pushing him to his feet off the bed. His knees were unsteady, however, and he promptly fell to the floor, surprised enough only to catch himself on his hands before slamming his face into the cold tile... where a face was watching him.

It bubbled up from the tile itself, black and thick like ink, red flares where the eyes would be in a human face. The shape was all angular, sharp corners for the jaw and the outline. It was a shape that seemed very familiar to him, one he often saw in his head, reflected at him out of an ethereal plane of glass.

And it spoke with his voice, but in a deeper timbre than Edward himself had.

"Aren't you used to that by now?" it questioned, and the vampire had the distinct impression it was grinning, though there was no physical evidence of that. "Simply waiting for the moment that she finally loses interest in you. You'd like to kill her now. All that blood - such a waste."

[vitale]

She had no idea what was going on. Bella's heart was pounding in her chest as the shadow took another step towards her, hands shoved into the pockets of the heavy coat. It was an exact clone of what she had looked like the day Victoria had attacked -

"I don't know what's going on," she told Edward, trying her hardest to look away from the shadow, but she didn't want it to go near Edward. What if it tried to speak to him? Or touched him, or -

The shadow turned to look at Edward for a few moments before turning back to look towards Bella, shaking it's head slightly. "Hurt him again because of your own selfish reasons, did you? So, apparently breaking his heart wasn't good enough for you, you had to find a way to break his skin as well." The shadow moved around her then, moving towards Edward as he suddenly began to get off of the bed. "Selfish, selfish, selfish. Poor Edward."

She didn't know what to do or say. "That's not true," she cried, opening her mouth to speak once again when suddenly she heard the sound of a body falling to the floor. Turning around, she saw Edward on the ground, and instantly she moved towards him, falling to the floor to help him up -

But the shadow was in front of her, and her next words caused Bella to freeze completely.

"You know how Edward hasn't touched you lately? Not embraced you, or kissed you ... or told you that he loved you? Well," suddenly the shadow was next to her, her lips close to her ear as she whispered. "It's because he's disgusted by you. By the fact that you kissed Jacob with those same lips you kiss him with ... the same arms you embraced him with, you touch Edward with. He doesn't touch you because you disgust him."

She couldn't believe it. She didn't want to believe it ...

But it made sense. what if he was disgusted by her? She had broken his heart; she could still see his expression, hear the way his voice cracked as he spoke to her. She had broken him, and she had done it even though she knew what she was doing.

She couldn't speak. She couldn't even bring herself to look at Edward. Eyes wide, she could feel the burn of tears threatening to fall, but she pushed them back, not wanting to let the shadow win -

"You're nothing but a whore, Isabella Swan. You deserve no one." The shadow crooned, letting out a soft laugh after. "You should just give up and die."

She dragged her voice out from where it had been silenced, a strange sob like sound escaping her lips as she tried her hardest to fight, to not listen. "No," she whispered, a pitter patter sound suddenly hitting her ears. She had no idea what it was until she suddenly realized that her vision was blurred. She could see the small plops of water as her tears hit the ground, the sound louder than anything else in the room at that moment.