Punching Miss Austen (a AU Twilight fanfic)
Punching Miss Austen
AU for canon divergence. Rated M for language. Starts circa mid-Eclipse.
Many thanks to my excellent betas from Project Team Beta: Klooqy and torisurfergirl
Discliamer: I'm obviously not Stephenie Meyer, and not making any profit from this work, since I can't seem to write romance without snark.
“I often want to criticise [sic] Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
- Mark Twain in a letter to Joseph Twichell, 13 September 1898
It all starts when Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 is assigned for analysis in English class. Any normal teenager would augur ill from such an assignment. But Bella Swan has never been a normal teenager, so she doesn't know what's hit her until it's too late.
Actually, when you're human and in love with an immortal vampire, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments” seems like it was written just for you. (Possibly other lovers have thought the same before her. But none were correct.)
She reads it to Edward in their meadow, her spine cold as she leans against his marble side. “Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come.”
She rushes through the next four lines. Of course, Edward has always told her that old age will not alter his love. It will never alter him, but how can she know if her love for him is not “Time's fool” - based on his eternal youth? She wants to thrust the thought from her mind as sacrilege, but thoughts can't just be discarded like that: once thought, they become a part of you.
She shudders.
Once again, she's thanking her household gods that Edward can't read her mind, because now he's whispering the sonnet to her in his silken voice.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
Where else has she heard those words repeated with such understanding and emotion? Oh, yes, Marianne Dashwood in the film version of Sense & Sensibility. Marianne, the wind whipping harshly at her hair and drenched clothes, gazing at the home of the perfect man. The perfect man who forsook her.
She wanted to die too.
“Who? Bella, my love, my dearest, you're frightening me.” She realizes she must have spoken her thought aloud.
“Oh, I uh...was...the sonnet reminded me of Marianne Dashwood, you know, saying it in the film.”
Of course he immediately knows what she's talking about. With his photographic memory he remembers the film better from watching it once with her than she does from watching it at least once a year since she was fourteen.
“Bella, love, are you comparing yourself with her?” The anguish in his velvet voice alerts her to his real question: Are you comparing my...leaving you...to Willoughby's desertion of Marianne?
“No, no! You weren't selfish like Willoughby. But...” she trails off as a wry smile turns her mouth. “Marianne was rather...difficult, wasn't she? We neither of us bear comparison to Elinor; she didn't bend.”
He looks at her unblinkingly, like he always does when he's wishing he could read her mind. She looks away and begins to run a hand through her hair, looking for the frizzy-textured hairs she compulsively pulls out. She finds one, but it's at the top of her head and it hurts to pull on.
She sighs. “We'd better go. I told Charlie I'd be home to make supper.”
She hadn't told Charlie that and Edward knows it.
In her bedroom, she goes to her bookshelf and runs her fingerlingeringly over the spines. When she first came to Forks she had brought only a small collection of favorites. She had been sure she would start collecting second-hand copies and broadening her literary palate. But Edward had swept into her life in a trail of sparkles and blood. Between running from vagrant vampires and running to the vampire Vatican, she hadn't had time to expand her book collection. Still, the sight of the beloved names sends a surge of longing into her throat. Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, The Complete Works of Jane Austen. Bella's finger stops there on the largest volume and she smiles wryly. Of course this isn't really the complete works-it's just the six novels. Bella had intended to read some of Austen's unfinished works or juvenilia, but more important things had come into her life. Things like keeping fast hold of her soul mate-who she can't live without; things like trying not to break the heart of her best friend-who she also can't live without. Oh yeah, and the fact that if her mom can't come visit her at graduation she might never see her again. That and a thousand other minor annoyances that come from an intimate acquaintance with the supernatural world.
Nope, Bella Swan-girlfriend of a vampire-does not have time to read a trivial author like Austen, who wrote about country dances and strawberry pickings and whose greatest mystery revolved around the gift of a piano. But as she flips through the pages, a name catches her eye, and she remembers when she last read this book.
“Edward Ferrars was not recommended to their good opinion by any peculiar graces of person or address. He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing.”
Bella snorts. Her Edward was recommended to her good opinion by being handsome. Not that his inhumanly-beautiful-looks have the same effect on others, such as her palpably uncomfortable father or her openly antagonistic best friend.
“Why did Elinor marry boring Edward?” she wonders as she settles into bed with the awkward tome.
“Not everyone has your passion for dead leaves,” Elinor has just remarked, when the door slams. “You home, Bells?” Charlie calls.
“Yeah. Just going to bed early. There's roast in the fridge.” She looks at the clock. It's nine o'clock and Edward will be arriving at her window soon. But...she wants to figure out why Elinor loved Edward Ferrars, so she walks to the window and flips the latch down.
She pulls on a pair of wool socks and huddles in the covers, curled around the tome. But it's too much; she can't bear to hurt Edward. She opens the window.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The next Sunday, Edward is hunting with Emmett and she is sitting in Jake's garage, bouncing an empty soda can on her knee. Things are uncomfortable between Jake and her since she announced that she'd be turning into a vampire at graduation. There's not a lot that's safe to talk about anymore, and she can only feign interest in car-parts for so long. She pulls the big volume out of her bag.
She finishes Sense and Sensibility while making vague sounds of acknowledgment to Jake. He's telling her about how Mrs. Call had decided to go for a walk in the woods just as Embry was coming home from patrols stark-naked.
“He was almost home, and he had to keep dodging behind trees. Quil had just phased and was finding the whole thing so funny he decided to get closer. Well, he saved Embry's hide. He 'forgot' he was a wolf, and bounded out into the open, sending Mrs. Call running, screaming.”
She still hasn't figured out why Elinor married Edward Ferrars-he was like a male version of Bella herself: awkward, plain and boring. She idly flips through the book. Now, Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey was interesting. He could take up any subject with ease, even that of how Catherine has just learned to enjoy a certain flower.
“I am pleased you have learnt to love a hyacinth. The mere habit of learning to love is the thing.”
“Huh.”
“What is it, Bells?”
“Oh, just thinking.”
“Yep, angsty, emo, poor-me thinking's all that's going on here,” Leah says as she ambles into the garage. “Black, it's your turn to patrol. You can torture everyone in dog form now, and leave behind your delightful conversation with Miss Thumb-screws here. You two are a pair from the gods. The kind that made vampires.”
Leah plops down on the couch beside Bella and reads the cover of Bella's book. “Jane Austen?” she says in a high, affectedly girly voice. “Well, that's not reading, lovey-dove. It's an attempt to paint this ugly world in pink and make asshole men look like God's gift to girls.”
Bella ignores her and continues reading.
“Give it to me, Swan. I'm bored and even this shit can't be as bad as Jared's and Sam's sappy minds. I need a good laugh.”
Bella isn't eager to give her precious volume to this termagant, but Leah pries her hands off the book.
“Cut it out, Leah,” Jake says.
“I'm doing you a favor, Jakey-boy. Now you get to spend a few more hours with your 'soul-mate' before she dies.”
Jacob flinches. “Well, I guess I've gotta go.”
* * * * * * * * * *
The next week she's back in La Push, spending another awkward afternoon pretending it's funny that Quil, Embry and even Billy have joined the hating-Bella-Swan club first founded by Victoria. Yes, she notices that the boys quickly remember “chores” and “homework” at home when they wander into the garage and find her there. Yes, she notices the look in Billy's eyes, too.
“So, a funny thing's been happening with Leah,” Jake says. “She's talking funny, like more formally, less swearing and stuff, but you still feel like she's laughing at you. And she keeps thinking about this guy named Austen, but as soon as his name crosses her mind she blocks us out with all this weird girly sh-sorry, uh, stuff about dresses and dancing and picnics.”
“Huh. That's weird,” Bella manages to say, between contemplating Edward's seraphic face and whether Charlie will really buy the planned alibi for her disappearance after graduation.
“She has been tired - I mean more tired, we're all beat - during patrols, like she's been having late nights. But none of us know any guy named Austen, so she must be driving somewhere to see him. Except Embry saw her bedroom light on an hour after she'd gotten back from patrols last night, so she must be sneaking the guy into her room. But we can't smell him! Do you know of any creatures, human or otherwise, without a smell, Bells?”
Bella giggles. “Everyone smells the same to me, Jake, except Ed-” her voice dies off as his face hardens. “Actually, you smell really good too, Jake.” And now she's blushing and he's getting that look of pained-longing in his eyes. She has to avert disaster. “So, what's Leah been saying that's weird?”
“Oh. Right. Hmmm. Well, Sam was telling her that he was giving her the night off and she asked why. 'Just to be nice,' he said. And she said-oh, let me think-she said, 'I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them a great deal. Not that liking you is a temptation, Sammy. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.'”
“I've heard that somewhere before,” Bella muses.
“Yeah, I dunno, it sounds like something someone in some old movie would say.”
Bella jumps up. “Jake, she stole my book!”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Bella tentatively raises her hand to the Clearwaters' door. But before she can knock, the door is flung open and Leah towers above her. “Who did you come to torture, Swan?”
“Um. How did you know I was here?”
Leah taps her nose, while still sternly gazing down on Bella.
“Well, I actually came to torture you.” She tries to infuse joviality into her tone, but Leah's expression remains fixed. “About my book. You kind of stole it.”
Leah smiles. (At least Bella hopes it's really a smile.) She leaves the room, but pirouettes back in, holding the heavy volume aloft in one hand. “Do you have time to be scolded, Emma?” she asks.
“What?”
“You think you're so superior to everyone else because you read classic literature and shit, Swan. But you understand what you read about as well as you grasp the reality of vampires. (Not well, hon. They eat people. People like you; like your dad.) Do you really think that the big ending of your dear Auntie Jane Austen's stories is marriage?”
Bella just stares at her.
“Well, I've got news for you, Regency Princess. The big denouement is when the heroines realize they've been selfish bitches who've made life miserable for everyone around them.”
Suddenly, Bella is angry. “I've read the fucking books!” She's so surprised by the unfamiliar sound of a real swear-word passing her lips that her next sentence wavers. “I'm not an idiot.”
Leah smirks. “Oh, no, honey. I stopped thinking that after you went to Italy. Then I knew you were a damn clever monster.”
For the third time in her life, Bella hauls off and punches a werewolf. Leah, of course, doesn't flinch. But as her hand begins to throb, Bella conjures the comforting image of genteel, prissy Miss Austen staring in horror at bright red blood trickling from a gash on her lip.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Chief Swan comes home that night to find dribbles of tomato sauce and chocolate-cake batter drying on the cupboard doors, and his daughter hunched over a sink full of dirty dishes, sobbing. Tentatively he lays a hand on her back and clears his throat. Suddenly, she throws her arms around him and buries her head in his shoulder. “Welcome home, Dad. I made lasagna and chocolate cake,” she sniffs.
“Uh, thanks, Bells?” his voice lifts in question, but she releases him and turns to the sink for a glass. “So, uh. The tears...”
“I broke up with Edward.”
“Oh. So you realized you didn't love him that--”
“I DO love him! So damn much!” Her scream ends in a hiccup.
“Yeah, of course.” He touches her shoulder again.
“Look, Ch-Dad, it's kind of hard to explain.” She reaches for a huge volume sitting amidst the spilled flour on the kitchen table. Awkwardly, she opens it, drags it off the table and shoves it at him with one hand. “Highlighted passage,” she says and dashes up the stairs.
It's the first and last time Chief Swan ever reads Jane Austen, but no obsessive Austenite ever got more pleasure from a passage than he does as he reads: “I did not love only him;- and while the comfort of others was dear to me, I was glad to spare them... And after all that is bewitching in the idea of a single and a constant attachment, and all that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on a any particular person, it is not meant - it is not fit - it is not possible that it should be so.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
It's three weeks before Bella goes to La Push again. And then, when she finally goes, Jacob is on patrol. And so the next time. And the next. The fourth time, when Billy opens the door, and says, “On patrol,” she wants to scream. Instead she cries. “Don't you know the effort it takes me to get out of bed every morning, go to work, try to be nice to Charlie when he doesn't understand! You don't care what I've given up! Why does everyone hate me? Well, I hate everyone too! Especially you!”
Leah happens to be passing. “Good job, Swan,” she calls. “I can't tell if you're on your way to becoming Lucy Steele or Mary Musgrove, but either way, the unceasing attention to self-interest is admirable!”
“I'm sorry,” Bella whispers to Billy.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
She doesn't go about apologizing to everyone she's wronged. Being an avid reader doesn't make her less afraid of the starkness of words. But she thinks; she keeps telling herself that people don't really hate her, they just hate how she acts. (But they do hate her. Even Jessica won't speak to her.) She tries not to sulk when her “friends” at Forks High ignore her, and when Billy still answers the Blacks' phone, telling her Jacob is “on patrol”. (But she knows he isn't always, so she cries herself to sleep.)
Getting over being a selfish bitch isn't easy. The third time Bella finds herself typing “I miss you; come back,” to Alice, she cries as she clicks “delete contact”. Wearily, she dials the phone. She's so surprised her mind goes blank, and she just stutters when Jacob's deep voice answers.
“Is it okay if I come over?” she finally whispers.
A pause. “Yeah. Any time, Bells.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The 304th time she tells herself, “Not everybody hates me,” she actually believes it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Bella has now reached a point of happiness which few people can boast of. I shall not say at what moment she ceases to pine over Edward and learns to love Jacob almost as much as he does her; aware that the time ascribed to this process is directly related to the degree of my readers' hatred for our heroine. I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it is quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Bella first refers to Jacob as her boyfriend, when Mike inquires what she's doing after work.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
In the months that follow, Bella even expands her literary tastes. (Only a little; she's not Harold Fucking Bloom.) She laughs at Dracula, she tries to reconcile herself to the failed dreams in Middlemarch, and she even persuades Jacob to read The Sound and the Fury with her. (“This thing's more confusing than pack-mind to a new wolf,” he grumbles.) Four years later her college thesis is entitled Praise That I Was A Man: Robert Browning's Celebration of Human Imperfection.
Two months after graduation she's celebrating vows that would have seemed a failure to her at 18. She's pledging herself to Jacob Black “in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” With Shakespeare, Austen, and Jacob, the word death no longer sounds like “the edge of doom”.