L'ETRE ET LAME -- CHAPTER VI a Twilight fanfiction
CHAPTER VI
“It’s hard not being able to sleep,” Bella admitted. It was 4:18 pm and she and Jasper were standing on the back porch watching the sun disappear behind the swaying treetops on the horizon. She swung one foot back and forth like a metronome, trying to remember what it was like to fidget. “Did you feel the same way, at first?”
“Not so much at first; I was pretty busy. I miss it more now though.”
“Eating too,” Bella went on. “I never realized how much time we-humans I mean, spend just eating and sleeping. A lot of time.”
Jasper nodded and gave her a wistful, outsider’s smile. “That’s exactly why there’s so much ritual involved. Sharing a table, sharing a bed. Special meals for celebrations and holidays. Sleeping single to sleeping double,” he offered. Jasper passed his gaze over the browning expanse of land that sloped away from the house and gave way to the encroaching pines a half-mile or so in the distance. Bella followed it to where a couple of deer were grazing just their side of the tree-line. There wasn’t much ceremony to hunting, she thought; it was strictly instinct and drive. No time for “pass the dressing,” or “Geez, you want some beans to go with your salt?”
“It’s natural to take the unavoidable parts of life and make them special or ceremonial in different ways,” Jasper concluded.
There was a brief silence as Bella tried to think of something to say. “Mmm. I can see how. . .sex-if you got married first, or had an exclusive relationship, how that makes sex even more special than if it were just. . . you know, casual. So, I can see the ritual, or whatever, there,” she fumbled. “I didn’t really make the connection so much with eating before.”
“True, but I’m not just referring to sex. Sleeping can be just as intimate.” Jasper spoke carefully, as if weighing the truth in his words as he spoke them. It had been a very long time since he had last slept. “To be unconscious--entirely and willingly vulnerable--in another’s presence, that’s a form of intimacy too. An issue of trust. Like sex. Humans get to enjoy both.”
An echo of a memory drifted through Bella’s mind and she thought back to her own essentially sexless relationship with Edward. She remembered Edward in her bed, the feel of his cold skin under her cheek as she lay against his chest. She remembered rolling over into the empty space where his body had recently cooled the sheets. That was one of the first things she wrote about in her computer diary. Bella let herself enjoy the memory for a moment, when a tiny breeze tickled a lock of hair against her neck and another memory swept in like a flood: Edward’s fleeting kisses and the shuddering little line he drew with his lips from her cheek into the sensitive hollow just under her ear. She recalled trembling as he drew breath against the tender skin there, and a painful longing rushed through her as she stood on the porch. It was followed quickly by desire before being displaced almost immediately by horror-having remembered who exactly she was speaking with.
If Jasper picked up on her sudden lustfulness--and he must have--he hid it well. Bella was grateful when he nudged the conversation back to sleeping
“Sleep is healing. It’s an escape, and our minds need time to rest, especially during stressful times,” Jasper said, giving her an understanding nod. “There is a way you can create some down time for yourself. I took it up a couple of decades ago when Carlisle suggested it to me.”
“What?”
“Meditation.”
“Reeally?” With an effort, Bella dredged up a memory of Renee taking her to visit a swami during a meditation seminar in Phoenix. “Do you wear a turban?” She grinned, trying to imagine Jasper with a long beard and thirty extra pounds.
“I believe Alice would have a fit if I even thought about it,” he said, offering Bella a smile in return. “But you don’t need to have or do anything “special” to meditate, and it I find it very. . . .”
“Restful?” suggested Bella.
“No, it’s not necessarily about resting. Meditation is more about living in the moment, just taking stock of where you are, taking time to be. It’s soothing. It’s healing to just be and to be aware of being. I’ve offered to teach Edward a couple of times. . . .” Bella flinched without meaning to. Every time her lonely ache seemed about to wear-off someone brought up Edward’s name, or a memory would sprout up again from her increasingly barren memory.
“Sorry,” Jasper said, and Bella gave him an embarrassed shrug. “Well, if you want to learn some time, I’ll be happy to teach you,” he offered. “It’s quite simple. No turbans required.”
However simple Jasper said it was, Bella sort of thought meditation would be beyond her. Then again, Jasper could probably teach a hummingbird to meditate. She had spent the last three days with him-to avoid Tanya at first, but now she simply enjoyed his company. Bella was starting to think he enjoyed hers as well.
They would sit on the porch or in the open dining room reading or talking, and Bella found that he could talk and that, when asked, he had a lot to say. He was bright, and well-read. He seemed to know a bit of everything, and Bella would have found it intimidating but that he never tried to make a show of it.
He spent one afternoon schooling her in the basics of game theory (which she found interesting if challenging). The next, they talked about 19th century British literature, and she was only a little embarrassed to realize he knew more about it, though liked it less, than she did. Not only had he read Austen and Dickens but Chaucer as well because he could handle both Old and Middle English--though he said he preferred Greek. He had read the dramatists as well as the philosophers and historians.
“Why not Latin too?” Bella asked him, staring down bleakly at a copy of The Birds, by Aristophanes.
“Latin’s fine for religious texts. I’ve got nothing against ‘em, just that I prefer the ideas of the Greeks to those of the Church.” It tickled something inside of her when Jasper lapsed into his slight southern accent. She hadn’t known of Maria or his background before but Jasper had told her the story when she remarked on his pleasant drawl. He was sharing personal things with her now, and hearing the accent--the one that the Cullens and the Denali family must have already been familiar with--made her an insider.
“The Greek stuff scares the crap out of me,” Bella admitted, fanning through the pages with a frown. “Our psycho English teacher in Phoenix had us read a translation of Oedipus, and, it was hard to read, but at least the story was good. But sad. And the whole theme! It was like, “live right, try to avoid doing bad stuff-and dodge horrible prophecies-but get hit by the bread truck anyway.”
Jasper laughed aloud, and it made his face light up like the morning sun cresting a hill. “That’s very Greek, actually.”
“Argh.” Bella shook her head and re-shelved the book. “Maybe someday I wrestle with the ancients again. For now, my brain is full.”
“How do you feel about cartoons?” Jasper asked.
Bella blinked at him. “You like cartoons?”
“What, Emmett’s the only one who gets to have a sense of humor?” he asked, feigning offense.
The next thing Bella knew, Jasper, Kate and Irina were arguing and laughing over which Looney Tunes were the “most classic” and downloading them all for Bella’s viewing pleasure.
Back on the porch, the breeze kicked up a notch, and Bella pulled a handful of hair back from her face and flipped it into a loose knot at the base of her head. The sky was grainy violet as dusk settled in.
“Did you ever think of teaching?” Bella asked.
Jasper gave her what she thought of as the “twitchy-eye,” a little quirk of the eyebrow that spoke more than all of Jack Black’s spastic contortions combined.
“Not really,” he said dryly. “Not until paper becomes obsolete in the classroom. And it would probably help if my students didn’t have blood anymore. I’d have to wait until they all have borg-juice in their veins.”
Bella rolled her eyes at him. “You won’t have to wait that long. And you’ve got to have something to look forward to, right?” It was the same encouragement he gave her when the reality of endless days first began creeping in. “Have goals, things you anticipate and strive for.” She quoted him verbatim. “Plus, I think you’d be good at it. I think you are good at it,” she said.
Jasper regarded her carefully for a moment and Bella could feel him testing her with his peculiar sensitivity--gauging her sincerity? The thought shocked her. Jasper couldn’t possibly have insecurities, could he?
“You didn’t argue about the borg-juice,” he said.
Bella groaned. “Please.” But when she looked into Jasper’s eyes, she saw something glinting there like a lovely new idea.
* * * * *
Sometimes Bella was glad she couldn’t sleep because she knew the nightmares would come. Even in her waking moments the memory would sometimes assail her--the rending sound of the tent side that she tore as easily as old lace, and the shriek cut short by a dying gurgle.
And the blood. Oh, God, the blood. The worst part of the nightmare would be the rush of blood-lust through her, and how well she liked it. The way the warm, viscous fluid collected in the seams between her teeth and coated her tongue. How it soothed her tortured throat.
Bella spat toothbrushy foam into the bathroom sink and sighed. The other vampires humored her in this, giving her their unused bathroom props and an unopened tube of Crest. She didn’t tell them that she brushed only as a form of behavioral conditioning. Every time she began to think about the taste of the blood again, she brushed with the toothpaste, which made her feel sick.
She spat again and rinsed out her mouth, pausing to stare hard into her own eyes before straightening up. She pressed her face to within a hand-breadth of the bathroom mirror to gaze into the once-familiar features. Her irises, which had been a darkening garnet with tiny gold flecks, were fiery ruby once again.
She heard Jasper’s footfalls in the hallways, recognizing them by the long, measured stride. They stopped outside the door and she jerked up away from the mirror, afraid of being caught.
“Mail, Bella.”
She nearly ripped the door off the hinges in her excitement. Jasper was smiling and he handed her a tidy white envelope with her name written in fine script on the front. In his other hand, he held a larger manila envelope which was opened and had probably contained the one she now held. The return address read J. Jenks.
“Just a precaution,” Jasper said, seeing the direction of her look.
“You got one too?” she said.
His smile widened a bit.
Bella gave a choked squeal, delighted for the both of them. She clutched her letter to her chest and darted past Jasper and into “her” room. She closed the door behind her, ruing the brief second such an action had cost her. Bella’s hands didn’t shake but something inside of her did as she carefully tore a strip from the top of the envelope.
She slipped out the paper and flipped it open in one motion. She took in the entire letter at a glance, and her heart would have stopped if it could have.
Dearest Bella,
I miss you more than you know, Love. I’m so sorry I can’t be there to help you now and I promise to make it up to you.
Alice assures me that we will all be together soon.
Please do not worry about us. And please believe you are in my every thought.
With all my love,
Edward
Bella squinted down at the letter, and though she had it memorized after the first reading, she read it again. Then again.
To say that it was a gross disappointment would be been inadequate but true. Bella could scarcely believe what she was seeing. She turned the paper over, just to make sure there was nothing written on the back. Nothing! She had typed pages upon pages about him, spent hours thinking of him, trying to recall his features, even flipping through the Denali family’s photo albums to rememorize his face. And he had sent her less than one hand-written sheet. She wondered suddenly if Jasper had kept other letters from her, but dismissed the idea knowing he’d do no such thing.
She walked out of the room past the kitchen where Irina was decorating a wedding cake. A recent little side-business of hers-all the Denali women had one.
“You heard from Edward!” She dropped the bag of icing and bounced forward, eager for news. She stopped mid-stride at the look on Bella’s face. “Are you all right? What’s wrong?”
Bella waved her off. “Fine. It’s fine.”
Bella went to the basement to find Jasper, but he wasn’t there. Outside, she found Kate who directed her north.
“He looked like he wanted to be alone,” Kate warned, as Bella turned to sprint up the trail. Bella ignored this and followed Jasper’s most recent scent for several miles up the sparsely wooded ridge behind the house. In spite of her exceptional new senses, Bella might have blazed right past Jasper, if she hadn’t caught the sparkle from his cheek as a breeze shifted a branch above him. He was seated-actually seated-on fallen snag. And he was still, eerily so, even for a vampire. Bella caught the worry etched across his features, like deep grooves in a wood block, before he was even aware of her presence. He stared blankly at her for a moment before realizing she was there, and then his face took on a carefully bland expression, the only tension lingering in tiny lines at the corners of his eyes.
“What’s going on?” Bella noticed that her voice was trembling. “What did Alice say?”
Jasper rubbed his hand across his mouth. Once, Bella would have been tempted to keep talking, but being with Jasper had shown her how silence worked. Eventually he was compelled to fill it.
“What do you know about werewolves?” he asked.
“What?”
Bella just shook her head in stunned disbelief as Jasper revealed the secret of the La Push reservation, the continuing expansion of the pack and, most importantly, the Cullens’ treaty with the Quileute.
“Oh.” She breathed and sat down hard next to him.
The muscle knotted in Jasper’s jaw and he gave one sharp nod.
“So, I broke the treaty,” he explained bleakly. “And it’s worse because your father is a. . . special case. He’s close friends with Billy Black and Harry Clearwater, and they’re both members of the tribal council, and the council looks as you--at least in this situation--as a loss of someone affiliated with the tribe. And whether you’re a vampire--or dead--the result is much the same for your father.”
Bella groaned at the thought. It was hard enough to accept someone else’s death, but it was harder to accept your own, in the eyes of those who loved- who love-you. She still held on to the idea of going back to Forks from time to time and peeking in on her father. In her more fantastic imaginings, she saw herself making him Grandma Swan’s stroganoff and leaving it in the freezer for him. It was crazy, but still tempting.
“Are they in danger, Edward and Alice and everyone?”
Jasper grimaced. “I don’t think Alice is being honest about how much.” There was a sudden edge to Jasper’s anxiety, and Bella cringed.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay. You should be able to feel your emotions without worrying how they affect me.” Bella steeled herself because she meant it, and it was clear that Jasper was struggling. “What’s keeping them in Forks then? Why are they still there?”
“God only knows.” Jasper smacked the manilla envelope hard against his leg. “I have no idea what the hell Alice thinks she saw. Maybe, she thought we could all eventually go back to Forks in the future if Carlisle could renegotiate the treaty. If the tribe could be convinced that this,” he waved a hand, indicating Bella’s new vampireness “was your choice.”
“It was!” she agreed quickly. “I mean, basically!”
“Basically,” Jasper repeated. “But I should have pushed it. I should have made them leave with us.” Jasper ran a rough hand through his hair and slapped it against the log. A sheet of dry bark crackled and slid to the ground. “I was trusting Alice.”
“Should I call. . . whoever? The chief or the council and tell them I’m okay?” Bella suggested, anxious to play any role that could help.
“If it was going to make any difference, we would have had you do it by now. I suppose I should just be thankful the pack didn’t take them all out already. It’s pretty damn good of them. Of course, I don’t know what the rationale is. Maybe it’s just because. . . what happened wasn’t Carlisle’s fault. Or Edward’s. Maybe there’s only one justice here, and only one who really deserves it,” Jasper said. “And that’s why they’re keeping me away,” he added, voice soft, but rough with frustration.
Bella pinched her eyes shut. She had the vaguest recollection of one other vampire being destroyed. She couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to Jasper. And then she realized that the rest of her vampire family was still within striking distance and nearly buckled double with fear.
“What if I could just go back some day and show them that I’m okay?”
“You aren’t “okay,” Bella. You’re a vampire now,” snapped Jasper, clearly exasperated. “You’re a defacto member of the Cullens’ party, just like Alice and I are. Whatever holds for the rest of us holds to you as well.” He was deadly serious now and Bella felt small as she ever had. She managed a nod.
“Either way, it looks like things are pretty much settled in Forks and that Alice and the Cullens will be up here before Thanksgiving,” Jasper added. Bella tried to give some sound of relief, or sign of pleasure, but her voice wouldn’t work. Jasper saw her discomfiture and pulled himself together. Then he pursed his lips and let out a bit of air as he tapped his own envelope against his knee.
“Now, what about you?” Jasper glanced at Bella’s letter, the one she had almost forgotten, still pinched between two knuckles of her fist. Bella flipped the envelope and blinked at her name, written in Edward’s handsome smooth hand. There had been so many things she had meant to ask Jasper, but not a one of them seemed to make any sense right now; there weren’t even words. Her head swum with werewolves, and treaties, and a brand new terror for her family that she wouldn’t even have thought possible mere minutes ago. Jasper said that everything was ok, that the family would be returning soon, but then why was he so worried?
“Nothing,” she croaked. “It’s ok.”
Jasper turned on the log, squaring his shoulders to her as if getting ready to dig in and rummage for the truth. Then he suddenly seemed to decide against it, and he kicked his legs out in front of him and crossed his feet on the ground.
“I’ll see you later then,” he said. “I’ve got some things I need to think through.”
“Oh, all right.” Bella nodded and kept nodding as she rose. It was the first time Jasper had ever dismissed her, and she walked away on lead-heavy legs
* * * * *
“You want me to go hunting with you?” Tanya cocked her head and regarded Bella from narrowed eyes.
“Yes,” said Bella.
“You need to go now?”
“I’d like to go now.”
Tanya, tapped her fingers against her thigh, looking wary. Bella almost found it funny; she wasn’t trying to be scary, she was trying to be brave.
“All right then. Let’s go.”
Bella had paced around the house for nearly an hour after returning from her “chat” with Jasper, and she was glad to be back outside, even if it was Tanya she had with her.
They didn’t speak as they loped through the countryside. Bella was in no hurry; she was a turtle when it came to conflict, she preferred to withdraw into her shell. But this needed to be done. Tanya made an effort to edge Bella away from all of the human trails, and high into the foothills Bella took out a female mountain goat. She felt braver once her throat hurt less.
She picked her way down the slope to find Tanya standing over an exsanguinated fox and sucking daintily on her index finger. They joined together for the trot back home.
“I appreciate you trusting me,” Tanya said.
Bella gave a brief huff of a laugh. “I suck at holding a grudge. I might manage a little on this one though.”
“You’ve got good reason.”
“I do,” Bella agreed. She watched Tanya from the corner of her eye as they skimmed over the rolling landscape.
Tanya was beautiful and clever; she could reasonably expect her pick of men, even one as desirable as Edward. For the past several days, Bella had been asking herself if she wouldn’t have done the same thing in Tanya’s place--whatever it took to gain an advantage for the most available male; it would be a lie if she said the idea would never have crossed her mind. As a human she had ignored and overthrown friends for Edward’s company. She planned to turn her back on her parents-her father whom she loved despite the distance between them, and her mother whom she once had considered her best friend. She had determined to stick a knife into every one of them, simply to have Edward and his family in their place.
Tanya stopped suddenly, and Bella pulled up short beside her. The sun was going down now, and the last of the light poured down honey rich on the two women and they shaded their eyes against it.
“I really am sorry, Bella.”
“I know. I am too. And I don’t plan on ever killing anyone again, whatever else happens.”
There was a beat.
“What do you mean?” asked Tanya.
“I mean whatever Edward chooses.” Bella watched Tanya watch her; Tanya placed a free hand on her hip and cocked her head, assessing. “That doesn’t mean I won’t fight for him,” Bella continued, “but I want you to be clear on my choice. I want to do the right thing. I won’t kill people.”
“I know that. I never really doubted it,” Tanya admitted. “Those people’s deaths are as much on my head as they are on yours. Maybe more so.”
Bella shook her head and the hair whipped over her shoulders. “This isn’t about you.
Or, not really. I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s not fair to expect Edward will want to be with me--not right to expect it.”
Tanya shot her a look of disbelief almost verging on disgust. “He wanted to be with you as a human, you think he won’t love you now? Now that you’ve killed some people? He’s killed too, you know. We all have, except for Rosalie.”
“I know he has,” Bella snapped. “But I was a human before, and a novelty. Edward couldn’t read my mind. Maybe that was all it was, and maybe he’ll be able to read it now.” The possibility made Bella’s stomach roil, and the blood inside her belly seemed to gurgle. If the novelty was gone would Edward want her anymore? And could she hold him to his earlier professions of love?
“And I won’t ever know for sure why he’d want to stay with me, even if he does. Like, if a guy gotagirlpregnant. . .” Bella sped through the analogy; it was a clumsy one, but it was the only one she had managed to come up with in the past hour of contemplation. “And so maybe, they get married and all. But then, would she ever know for sure that he had married her because he loved her and that they would have gotten married whether she got pregnant or not? Or, would she always wonder if she was an obligation to him?” In the real-life vampire-scenario, Edward’s sense of honor made such an obligation seem likely. And frightening.
Tanya nudged a lump of granite with her toe, and it bumped down the hill, bounding further and higher with each bounce. They both watched it until it came to rest in some sort of sprawling vegetation.
“What about marriage?” Tanya asked.
“What about it?”
“When people get married, they make commitments to one another,” Tanya explained. “Doesn’t this create an obligation between them? Do you think they’d eventually doubt the other’s sincerity if times got difficult? And if so, why do so many people embrace that sort of obligation?”
“People don’t accidentally get married. . . and they get divorced all the time,” Bella argued.
Tanya was sharp enough to follow Bella’s reasoning. “I thought you said you wanted to be a vampire. Wouldn’t this have been your choice, if not your timing?”
“I did, but Edward didn’t want me to.”
“Ahh.” Tanya straightened almost imperceptibly--hopeful again, thought Bella. Her heart sunk. It was hard knowing she was just a kid, not anything like Edward. Neither talented, nor brilliant, nor beautiful. It seemed so obvious standing next to the lovely, ancient vampire. Maybe that was the reason why Edward wouldn’t change her, whatever he said. He didn’t want her forever. She needed to accept that possibility no matter how it hurt. The sooner the better.
Suddenly, Tanya shot a hand out and jabbed Bella on the arm in a friendly jostle that nearly tossed her on her butt. Bella stared at her shocked, but Tanya laughed.
“Frankly, I doubt there’s any hope for Edward and me. I’ve been after him for better than forty years,” Tanya admitted, begrudgingly. “Besides, I can see why Edward likes you. Now.”
Bella sniffed. She wasn’t sure what Edward saw in her to begin with but she held her tongue.
They started back home, chasing their own shadows as they stretched long and gray before them. It had been a relief, to get things out in the open with the woman she saw as her rival. It had helped that Tanya had wronged her; it had put Bella in the stronger position. Putting her fears to words had also helped. Facing the possibilities head-on felt strong, but deeper down, she was in agony. What if Edward truly didn’t want her anymore? That was what his letter must have meant. It wasn’t flowery or passionate; he didn’t want to give her false hope.
And it wouldn’t be just Edward she would lose. Bella wanted everyone-everyone vampire. Esme and Carlisle as the mother and father she had given up. Emmett as the sibling she had always wanted. Alice as the bosom-friend. Rosalie, well, she’d have to tolerate Rosalie if she wanted Emmett. And Jasper-but how did he fit in?
Bella had once harbored a romantic notion of Edward changing her. She thought that having his venom in her veins--of him being her source of new life--that she would be “his” is a profound, intimate way. Flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone.
So then, what was Jasper to her now? He had been her rock, her comforter in the darkest, most frightening moments of her new life, and those feelings were fertile ground for deep roots. She had never felt the brotherly kinship with him that she had with Emmett, nor any romantic designs. What she felt with Jasper was what she had previously felt for Carlisle, but more so.
Bella checked herself hard. Jasper he would have been put off by that kind of familiarity. She didn’t want to burden him with it, or embarrass herself. She had already determined that no obligations should exist here, not for Edward and, therefore, not for Jasper either. She would get that particular emotion well under control before she got back to the house.
Still, she was excited to see him. The normally imperturbable Jasper might be playing Nancy Griffith in the den, singing slightly off key. Bella would wait till he finished the song then tell him about her talk with Tanya. He would be proud of her for finally taking the bull by the horns.
As the approached the house, Bella caught the scent of car exhaust, and they found Irina standing alone in the den, hands twisted together.
“What’s wrong?” Tanya asked.
“You need to be calm, ok?” she said, replying not to Tanya, but to Bella who hovered in the entrance.
“What is it?” Bella demanded.
Irina approached her slowly, arms extended in a placating manner. “Sit down, please.”
“Tell me!” Bella’s already considerable worry was ratcheted up by Irina’s hesitation, and she was ready to choke the words out of her if need be.
“Now,” snapped Tanya, sensing Bella’s frame of mind.
Irina shook her head apologetically, and reached out to take her hand. “He’s gone, Bella. Jasper left.”