Illegal Post: Bonne Foi
I love this chapter, by the way.
Title: Bonne Foi
Author: Amethyst Jackson
Category: Drama, Romance
Rating: M
Summary: AU. Edward Masen was changed in 1918 and abandoned by his sire. He feeds on human blood, unaware of any other way…until he stumbles across college freshman Bella Swan for a night that will change everything.
Disclaimer: A writer is like a goddess in her universe…but only one writer is making the money off Twilight, and that’s Stephenie Meyer. These are her characters, and I’m just having fun with them.
Chapter Seventeen
Darkness had fallen by the time I reached Forks, for which I was grateful. Very few people were out and about, and it allowed my car to pass through the streets unnoticed. The last thing I needed was Chief Swan spotting my car in town when his daughter wasn’t. Especially if she’d talked to him tonight.
I found a dark, deserted road where I could pull my car over, and then I got out. I needed to find the Cullen house, and to do so, I would have to find a scent trail to follow. That shouldn’t be too difficult in such a small town, but I never had been the best tracker.
I wandered around the perimeter of the town, clinging to the cover of wooded areas. I knew they didn’t live in town, as the images in Carlisle’s head showed deep tree cover, and I was looking for a trail leading out of the town.
It was probably smarter to stay outside of the town limits. Being secluded would sharply decrease the risk of exposure, and it would certainly make it easier to sense unexpected visitors. Given their hunting preferences, the location in the wilderness was probably convenient as well.
Perhaps I should consider changing my place of residence if I was going to be living the same lifestyle. I didn’t hold out any hope that I would be miraculously cured of Bella’s presence in my head to allow me to hunt humans again; she was there even now, nagging at the back of my mind.
About halfway through my circuit, I caught the scent of vampires. The trail went straight through the trees, which suited me perfectly. I followed it carefully, not wanting to lose it in my haste. It wasn’t Carlisle’s scent; one of the others, then.
It wasn’t long before the trees began to thin and a house came into view. I approached carefully, making enough noise to alert the few that were home. Surprising vampire was only a good idea if one was looking for a fight.
I was a few feet away when the short, black-haired one called Alice appeared on the front porch.
“Hello, Edward,” she greeted me with a smile, as if we were old friends. “I see you found the trail I left you. I’ve been expecting you.”
“Expecting me?” I wasted no time in searching her mind. There were things there that didn’t make sense - scenes of things that had never happened.
She gave a light-hearted laugh. “Yes, I happen to see the future. As soon as you made the decision to pay us a visit, I saw you arriving. I’m Alice, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said dryly. She laughed again.
“Come inside, Edward,” she said, beckoning me forward with a wave of her tiny hand. “It’s only my husband Jasper and I here. Carlisle is working at the hospital tonight, and I sent the others away. They wouldn’t have been any help at all. I tried to make Jasper go, too, but he’s rather protective.”
She said all this as I followed her up the short steps and into the house. The space was entirely open, lined with large glass windows, painted in light colors. It was as if they’d hired an interior decorator for the place.
In the corner, next to a crackling fireplace, sat the scarred blonde vampire, evidently named Jasper. He was tense and wary, scrutinizing me. He was clearly the military chief of the clan - the large, burly one might be the blind warrior, but Jasper was every bit the strategist.
“Edward, this is Jasper. Jasper, Edward. I should warn you, Edward, that there isn’t much you can hide from us. I can see what you’re going to do, and Jasper can read your emotions.”
“Interesting.” And you can’t hide a damned thing from me, either, I thought to myself.
“What are you feeling so smug about?” Jasper asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Jasper,” Alice chided, “Don’t scare him off.”
“He’s hiding something,” Jasper returned, narrowing his eyes at me. Inexplicably, I felt the overwhelming urge to divulge my secrets to them, and the emotion was certainly not organic. I knew exactly where it was coming from. Nevertheless, I was helpless to fight it.
“I can read minds,” I said, almost unwillingly. I glared accusingly at Jasper’s satisfied expression. “You did that, didn’t you? So you can manipulate emotions as well as read them.”
Jasper’s response was an unrepentant shrug.
Alice sighed heavily and unnecessarily. “Sit down, won’t you, Edward? It seems we have a great deal to discuss.”
I sat on the perfect white sofa and Alice perched on the arm of the chair Jasper sat in.
“So,” Alice said pointedly, “Why don’t we start with why you came, Edward.”
I shifted on the sofa, more for something to do than any discomfort. “I want to know why you do it. Why do you abstain from drinking human blood? Why do you live in the human world?”
Alice frowned. “Those are good questions, but you’ll find we all have different answers. You might relate most to Jasper’s story.”
Jasper looked up at her before beginning to speak. “I’m sure you’ve heard stories about the vampire wars in the south. Vampires creating armies of newborns and training them to fight one another. I was changed as a part of those wars during the Civil War. I was a soldier, and I was one of the vampires chosen to keep order and to train the newborns.
“I quickly grew jaded with that lifestyle. I saw so many human lives ended prematurely for a meaningless cause. There was no end in sight. My gift made life difficult for me. Every time I killed, I felt the fear of my victims. Surrounded by newborns, I felt their constant rage and desperation.
“Eventually I escaped from my creator and went searching for some sort of peace. That was when I met Alice; she showed me another way to live that I’d never considered before.”
I understood Jasper’s problem. Seeing myself in my prey’s eyes had been disturbing, and I had adapted, learning to take my prey from behind, giving them little time to comprehend their fate before they were gone.
I looked to Alice. “And you? What is your story?”
“You’ve been reading Sartre, haven’t you, Edward? Oh, don’t look so alarmed. I’ve been keeping an eye on you and Bella. We’ve all been concerned about her and curious about you. But we were talking about Sartre. You know his key phrase: existence precedes essence. I have had very literal experience with that concept.
“I woke without any memory of my human life, you see. To this day, I remember nothing. I only know what I have found out since. It was a great deal of work even to learn my own name. I only had my visions to guide me, but they showed me my future - meeting Jasper, joining Carlisle. My visions showed me Carlisle’s reasons for protecting human life, and my lack of human memories cemented my resolve. How could I take a human life when mine had been stolen from me? How could I take away all those precious little things that I wanted so badly for myself and had no memory of experiencing?”
“‘Precious little things?’” I questioned.
Alice smiled patiently. “Eating, sleeping, sweating, celebrating birthdays, having families…all those things humans can do that we can’t. Things that Bella Swan do.”
Bella… Her name brought about an undeniable ache, but I couldn’t avoid the sight of her in Alice’s head. She was remembering Bella in high school - picking at her food in the cafeteria, stumbling around in gym glass, on crutches after her accident. I winced, but she was right. Bella’s humanness was…precious. She was precious when she talked in her sleep, when she smiled in enjoyment at the taste of something, when her hair was damp with sweat after a strong climax.
“You miss her,” Jasper remarked with a smirk. I wanted to smack the smug look off his face. He just laughed. “It’s better if you don’t fight what you’re feeling.”
“Bella has nothing to do with this,” I growled.
“Of course she does,” Alice laughed in that irritatingly carefree way of hers. “You told Carlisle she was the reason you stopped hunting humans. She is your reason for abstaining. Maybe she’s your…raison d’être as well.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’ve only known her for a month.” Just because Bella had turned my world upside down didn’t mean she had to stay in it.
Jasper shrugged and said, “I’d only known Alice for a day when I knew she was my mate. We’re vampires, Edward. When change comes for us, it’s complete and instantaneous. You can’t go back to the way things were. Not ever.”
“Just think about it, Edward,” Alice chimed in. “You might find that things are much simpler than they seem. For now, why don’t you stay with us a few days? See how we live for yourself.”
I narrowed my eyes at the petite vampire, sensing by her scattered and random thoughts that she was deliberately avoiding thinking about one thing in particular. She was hiding something, and I didn’t like it.
“Okay,” I agreed. I didn’t particularly care to return to all the places that were now saturated with Bella, and Alice was giving me more motivation to stay in this new enigma.
“Excellent,” Alice enthused. “The others will be back in an hour and twenty-six minutes.”
I blinked. “Your gift is very precise,” I commented.
“Not always,” she replied, “but things tend to get more predictable when Emmett is involved, certainly.”
“How exactly did you all come to be together?” I wondered. I had heard Alice and Jasper’s extension of the tale, but I didn’t understand how the coven had begun in the first place. I somehow felt the answers to those questions would lead me to my own answers.
Alice and Jasper continued telling their story, from when they met to joining Carlisle’s family. The time passed so quickly that I was surprised when I heard three other vampires approaching, none of them bothering with stealth. I could hear the burly one barreling through the forest, reliving his latest kill - a large, angry cougar. His mate was irritated because his games with the animal had gotten blood in her hair. The third was wondering what was happening here, trying to picture what I would look like. Clearly Alice had kept them informed.
It wasn’t long before they were piling in the plate glass doors on the back of the house which looked over the river. All three stopped short, appraising me. Carlisle’s mate, a very beautiful brunette, was the first to step forward.
“Hello, Edward,” she said with a gentle, matronly smile. “I’m Esme.”
I felt compelled to stand for this woman, obeying the long-buried instincts of the gentleman my human mother had bred me to be. She was all kindness, all concern, and she held herself with a dignity that demanded respect. And she, too, seemed to belong to another time. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Esme.”
Emmett stepped forward, grinning jovially while mentally deciding he could take me in a fight, which I had to disagree with. He held out his right hand and wrapped his other arm around the blonde, who was all wariness. “I’m Emmett,” he said as we shook hands conventionally, “and this is my wife, Rosalie.”
I nodded politely and introduced myself formally. “I’m Edward Masen.”
Alice took over then, recounting all the things we’d covered before their arrival. Emmett was very curious about my mind-reading, wondering what kind of outrageous things I’d heard. Esme wanted to know about my relationship with Bella, but she didn’t ask, and I was grateful for that small blessing. Rosalie was an amusing specimen - astonishingly vain, yet somehow loyal to a fault. She saw my intrusion as a threat to her family’s security in the small town, especially considering my proximity to the Police Chief’s daughter. Somehow, it always came back to Bella.
I asked to hear the others’ stories, and Esme told me how her human life had come to an end, how Carlisle, the lonely doctor had chosen to save her, having treated her before as a teenager. It was difficult to watch the memories in her head - her abusive husband, the child she’d never forgotten, and her desperate leap from a cliff. She and Carlisle had quickly fallen in love, and knowing her desire for a child, he had decided to turn Rosalie.
“I was brutally raped and beaten,” Rosalie told me coldly and bluntly, staring me down like I was going to do the same. “They left me for dead, and Carlisle found me and changed me.”
I saw in her head what she didn’t say out loud - how she had hunted down and killed each of her attacks without tasting a drop of their blood. She was formidable, this Rosalie, and unfortunately, I already seemed to be on her bad side.
“I was hunting a few years later when I found Emmett,” she went on.
He flashed a grin as he took up the story. “I had a bad run-in with a bear. She found me and brought me to Carlisle to be changed. I woke with this angel standing over me and never looked back.”
…Well, ‘angel’ was not the word I would used to describe the glaring vampire.
“And you’ve all kept with Carlisle’s diet all these years?” I couldn’t fathom how they could do it, how as newborn vampires they had resisted at all.
“There have been a few mistakes over the years, but generally, yes,” Emmett said with a shrug. “Rose and Carlisle are the only ones who have never slipped.”
Emmett had no shame about his ‘mistakes’, but I sensed that the others all did. Again, I couldn’t understand why. They were vampires; it was our nature to long for human blood.
“Can I ask why you do it? I don’t completely understand.”
Rosalie scowled at me. “Should I become a monster like the men who ended my life, preying on weak and innocent humans?” The remark was pointed, and her thoughts told me this was exactly what she accused me of doing with Bella…and it was true, wasn’t it? I couldn’t deny that I had taken advantage of her. So why did the presumption make me so angry?
“Personally,” Esme murmured, cutting into the tension, “I remember how it felt to lose my child. I could never take someone else’s child away. It’s too cruel.”
“And you?” I asked Emmett. In a way, his answer interested me most, since he was the only one without a tragic ending to his human life. The bear attack was unfortunate, of course, but it was also completely his fault. What reasoning had he come up with for his lifestyle?
He laughed. “Well, I like people in general. They’re just too similar to us to kill, you know? Feels kind of cannibalistic. Besides, where is the challenge? Humans are so slow and weak. I’d much rather take on a grizzly any day.”
Well, that was different. But I could appreciate the simplicity of his philosophy.
“Carlisle’s coming,” Alice announced a propos of nothing.
“Perhaps he would like some time with our guest,” Esme suggested.
Alice smirked ironically. “He’ll have to get in line. Come on, Jasper,” she said, tugging him out of his chair. “I’ll talk to you again later,” she told me. It sounded like a warning.
She and Jasper flitted outside, headed for the woods. They were feeling…affectionate after telling their tale. I was glad they chose to take their activities away from the house. I’d never much enjoyed witnessing others’ sex lives.
“I want to talk to you now,” Rosalie said, and I understood what Alice had meant by ‘getting in line.’ She glanced sharply at Emmett, who took the hint and stood to leave.
“Esme, you want to show me how your latest project is going?” I took from his thoughts that Esme was restoring a nearby cottage.
“Sure,” she went along with the ploy. But as they were on the way out the door, she hissed to Rosalie, “Be nice. He is a guest.”
Rosalie rolled her eyes and waited for them to leave. Once she was satisfied of their distance, she leveled her stony gaze on me. “Look,” she said briskly, all business, “I don’t know who you are, really, and I don’t care. What I do know is that what you’re doing with Bella Swan is wrong. Alice said you dumped her tonight, and you should stay away from her. Get out of her life and let her be. She doesn’t need to know she fell in love with a monster. That’s a horrible revelation for any girl.”
I bristled, unsure why this angered me, but it did. “I did not dump her,” I protested.
Rosalie laughed harshly. “Talk about beside the point. What you aren’t denying is that you are, in fact, a monster. If you have any conscience at all, you’ll forget about Bella Swan.”
She was out of the room before I could argue. I was still sitting there, mulling over her words, when Carlisle came in still wearing his lab coat.
“Edward.” He wasn’t surprised to see me. “When Alice told me I’d come home from work to find you brooding in the living room, I thought she’d been exaggerating.”
I chuckled darkly at the image of myself in his head. “It’s been something of a rough night.”
“You rejected Bella.” It was a statement, not a question. He took the chair Jasper had been sitting in. “Why?”
I’d been trying to figure that out all night. “I don’t know. I just…panicked. I mean, I don’t even know what love is, and it seemed wrong, somehow, to lead her on… Or maybe I’m just a monster. Is that what I am, Carlisle?”
“You are what you choose to be, Edward,” Carlisle said seriously. “If you don’t want to be a monster, then…don’t be.”
It was something Sartre had written, I realized. …the existentialist says that the coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero.
Could I become a hero so easily?
“Edward, may I be quite frank?” Carlisle asked, sensing my weakness.
I nodded.
“I think you’re here because you’re suffering a guilty conscience. Your appreciation for Bella’s humanity has made you feel sorrow for the lives you’ve taken, whether you consciously know it or not. Now you feel badly for causing her pain. If you want to atone for your past, Edward, the only way is to change for the future. The only redemption is in the choice to be different.”
I saw what he was implying. I could make the choice never to drink human blood again. I could become worthy of the love of someone like Bella. If I wanted it badly enough, I could.
Did I? Was that what I wanted?
I didn’t know, but I did realize that there was no going back. My life until now had been meaningless, and it wasn’t something I could go back to. I had been bored with feeding from humans for quite some time. The novelty of hunting animals would likely wear off just as, if not more, quickly, but if I was to be bored either way, wouldn’t it be better to end the lives of non-sentient beings, creatures who didn’t think and feel such complex things?
Yes, I could make that decision. But what about Bella? I had been wrong in taking her for granted and ignoring her growing emotional attachment. But what was the best thing to do for her now? Was Rosalie right? Was it better to let her move on, to heal, to forget? It didn’t feel better, but I didn’t trust my own feelings anymore.
“Why don’t you take some time to think on it?” Carlisle suggested as if he were the mind-reader. “Explore the area, perhaps. It’s beautiful country. But be careful - the dawn is breaking, and it’s going to be a sunny day.”
I took his advice and wandered out the back of the house, over the quiet river. I followed the sound of thoughts to the little cottage where Esme and Emmett were still talking. It was a quaint little place. It occurred to me that Bella would love it, and then I had to turn away. Thinking of things that would make Bella smile only emphasized the fact that I was no longer one of those things.
I was exploring the thick wood when the sun finally rose. Its rays were weak through the morning fog and the canopy of leaves above me, but even so, I could feel its heat on my skin. That, too, made me think of Bella, and I realized I was going to be in a pathetic condition if I couldn’t go a few hours without thinking about her.
I was still bogged down with such sad thoughts when I heard the approach of Alice’s tiny feet. I watched her hop up into a tree with a wide, low-hanging branch. She patted the space next to her.
“Step into my office, won’t you?”
I took the invitation and swung myself up to her perch.
“You’ve been reading Sartre, haven’t you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “You know, I think you’re making this whole ‘love’ issue a lot more complex than it really is, but it’s actually very simple. You’ve read ‘Existentialism and Humanism.’ ‘There is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving.’ You may not realize it, Edward, but you’ve been loving Bella for quite some time. Taking care of her, fulfilling her needs, doing things simply to make her happy…those are all things we do for those we love.
“I know you’ve been alone for a long time, but you still have those instincts which tell you to do those things. You still know how to care for another being. That’s all it takes to love someone. And if being with Bella is something which brings you joy, I can’t comprehend why you wouldn’t want to love her.”
Did I want to love her? Was that the cause for my inexplicable desire to take care of her? I could keep lying to myself and justify it as keeping her around for the sex, but…that was obviously a flawed excuse. It had become more than sex. I longed for her company now. I longed for her laughter, her approval.
I did want to love her.
But was that enough? As much as I had a choice, I also had to face the responsibility that my choice would affect her as well.
“Rosalie is wrong, you know,” Alice commented, eying a glittering dewdrop on a leaf above her. “Her heart is in the right place, and if this were any other case, I would probably agree with her…but Bella Swan is an extraordinary case. Her future, you know, is pretty lonely without you in it. A thousand things could come along to change it, I suppose, but right now, it looks as though she’ll never love again.
“When you were together, though, I saw a different future for her. She was one of us, and she was happy. The fact is that Bella has a choice as much as you do. And if you choose her, and she chooses you, and you’re both happy, then who is anyone to argue with that?”
There was one distinct flaw in her reasoning, that being that Bella couldn’t really choose a future with me without knowing what I was. But I could tell her, eventually, and she would still have the choice to stay or walk away…I had to get her back first, though…
“Ah,” Alice sighed, closing her eyes. The future suddenly spread out in her mind, and I saw Bella, golden-eyed, skin glittering in the sunlight, smiling at me across a spring meadow. The promise of it took my breath away.
“There, now,” Alice smiled. “The future is all cleared up. Go to her, Edward, and apologize for being such an ass. And then never take her trust for granted again.”
Title: Bonne Foi
Author: Amethyst Jackson
Category: Drama, Romance
Rating: M
Summary: AU. Edward Masen was changed in 1918 and abandoned by his sire. He feeds on human blood, unaware of any other way…until he stumbles across college freshman Bella Swan for a night that will change everything.
Disclaimer: A writer is like a goddess in her universe…but only one writer is making the money off Twilight, and that’s Stephenie Meyer. These are her characters, and I’m just having fun with them.
Chapter Seventeen
Darkness had fallen by the time I reached Forks, for which I was grateful. Very few people were out and about, and it allowed my car to pass through the streets unnoticed. The last thing I needed was Chief Swan spotting my car in town when his daughter wasn’t. Especially if she’d talked to him tonight.
I found a dark, deserted road where I could pull my car over, and then I got out. I needed to find the Cullen house, and to do so, I would have to find a scent trail to follow. That shouldn’t be too difficult in such a small town, but I never had been the best tracker.
I wandered around the perimeter of the town, clinging to the cover of wooded areas. I knew they didn’t live in town, as the images in Carlisle’s head showed deep tree cover, and I was looking for a trail leading out of the town.
It was probably smarter to stay outside of the town limits. Being secluded would sharply decrease the risk of exposure, and it would certainly make it easier to sense unexpected visitors. Given their hunting preferences, the location in the wilderness was probably convenient as well.
Perhaps I should consider changing my place of residence if I was going to be living the same lifestyle. I didn’t hold out any hope that I would be miraculously cured of Bella’s presence in my head to allow me to hunt humans again; she was there even now, nagging at the back of my mind.
About halfway through my circuit, I caught the scent of vampires. The trail went straight through the trees, which suited me perfectly. I followed it carefully, not wanting to lose it in my haste. It wasn’t Carlisle’s scent; one of the others, then.
It wasn’t long before the trees began to thin and a house came into view. I approached carefully, making enough noise to alert the few that were home. Surprising vampire was only a good idea if one was looking for a fight.
I was a few feet away when the short, black-haired one called Alice appeared on the front porch.
“Hello, Edward,” she greeted me with a smile, as if we were old friends. “I see you found the trail I left you. I’ve been expecting you.”
“Expecting me?” I wasted no time in searching her mind. There were things there that didn’t make sense - scenes of things that had never happened.
She gave a light-hearted laugh. “Yes, I happen to see the future. As soon as you made the decision to pay us a visit, I saw you arriving. I’m Alice, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said dryly. She laughed again.
“Come inside, Edward,” she said, beckoning me forward with a wave of her tiny hand. “It’s only my husband Jasper and I here. Carlisle is working at the hospital tonight, and I sent the others away. They wouldn’t have been any help at all. I tried to make Jasper go, too, but he’s rather protective.”
She said all this as I followed her up the short steps and into the house. The space was entirely open, lined with large glass windows, painted in light colors. It was as if they’d hired an interior decorator for the place.
In the corner, next to a crackling fireplace, sat the scarred blonde vampire, evidently named Jasper. He was tense and wary, scrutinizing me. He was clearly the military chief of the clan - the large, burly one might be the blind warrior, but Jasper was every bit the strategist.
“Edward, this is Jasper. Jasper, Edward. I should warn you, Edward, that there isn’t much you can hide from us. I can see what you’re going to do, and Jasper can read your emotions.”
“Interesting.” And you can’t hide a damned thing from me, either, I thought to myself.
“What are you feeling so smug about?” Jasper asked, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Jasper,” Alice chided, “Don’t scare him off.”
“He’s hiding something,” Jasper returned, narrowing his eyes at me. Inexplicably, I felt the overwhelming urge to divulge my secrets to them, and the emotion was certainly not organic. I knew exactly where it was coming from. Nevertheless, I was helpless to fight it.
“I can read minds,” I said, almost unwillingly. I glared accusingly at Jasper’s satisfied expression. “You did that, didn’t you? So you can manipulate emotions as well as read them.”
Jasper’s response was an unrepentant shrug.
Alice sighed heavily and unnecessarily. “Sit down, won’t you, Edward? It seems we have a great deal to discuss.”
I sat on the perfect white sofa and Alice perched on the arm of the chair Jasper sat in.
“So,” Alice said pointedly, “Why don’t we start with why you came, Edward.”
I shifted on the sofa, more for something to do than any discomfort. “I want to know why you do it. Why do you abstain from drinking human blood? Why do you live in the human world?”
Alice frowned. “Those are good questions, but you’ll find we all have different answers. You might relate most to Jasper’s story.”
Jasper looked up at her before beginning to speak. “I’m sure you’ve heard stories about the vampire wars in the south. Vampires creating armies of newborns and training them to fight one another. I was changed as a part of those wars during the Civil War. I was a soldier, and I was one of the vampires chosen to keep order and to train the newborns.
“I quickly grew jaded with that lifestyle. I saw so many human lives ended prematurely for a meaningless cause. There was no end in sight. My gift made life difficult for me. Every time I killed, I felt the fear of my victims. Surrounded by newborns, I felt their constant rage and desperation.
“Eventually I escaped from my creator and went searching for some sort of peace. That was when I met Alice; she showed me another way to live that I’d never considered before.”
I understood Jasper’s problem. Seeing myself in my prey’s eyes had been disturbing, and I had adapted, learning to take my prey from behind, giving them little time to comprehend their fate before they were gone.
I looked to Alice. “And you? What is your story?”
“You’ve been reading Sartre, haven’t you, Edward? Oh, don’t look so alarmed. I’ve been keeping an eye on you and Bella. We’ve all been concerned about her and curious about you. But we were talking about Sartre. You know his key phrase: existence precedes essence. I have had very literal experience with that concept.
“I woke without any memory of my human life, you see. To this day, I remember nothing. I only know what I have found out since. It was a great deal of work even to learn my own name. I only had my visions to guide me, but they showed me my future - meeting Jasper, joining Carlisle. My visions showed me Carlisle’s reasons for protecting human life, and my lack of human memories cemented my resolve. How could I take a human life when mine had been stolen from me? How could I take away all those precious little things that I wanted so badly for myself and had no memory of experiencing?”
“‘Precious little things?’” I questioned.
Alice smiled patiently. “Eating, sleeping, sweating, celebrating birthdays, having families…all those things humans can do that we can’t. Things that Bella Swan do.”
Bella… Her name brought about an undeniable ache, but I couldn’t avoid the sight of her in Alice’s head. She was remembering Bella in high school - picking at her food in the cafeteria, stumbling around in gym glass, on crutches after her accident. I winced, but she was right. Bella’s humanness was…precious. She was precious when she talked in her sleep, when she smiled in enjoyment at the taste of something, when her hair was damp with sweat after a strong climax.
“You miss her,” Jasper remarked with a smirk. I wanted to smack the smug look off his face. He just laughed. “It’s better if you don’t fight what you’re feeling.”
“Bella has nothing to do with this,” I growled.
“Of course she does,” Alice laughed in that irritatingly carefree way of hers. “You told Carlisle she was the reason you stopped hunting humans. She is your reason for abstaining. Maybe she’s your…raison d’être as well.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’ve only known her for a month.” Just because Bella had turned my world upside down didn’t mean she had to stay in it.
Jasper shrugged and said, “I’d only known Alice for a day when I knew she was my mate. We’re vampires, Edward. When change comes for us, it’s complete and instantaneous. You can’t go back to the way things were. Not ever.”
“Just think about it, Edward,” Alice chimed in. “You might find that things are much simpler than they seem. For now, why don’t you stay with us a few days? See how we live for yourself.”
I narrowed my eyes at the petite vampire, sensing by her scattered and random thoughts that she was deliberately avoiding thinking about one thing in particular. She was hiding something, and I didn’t like it.
“Okay,” I agreed. I didn’t particularly care to return to all the places that were now saturated with Bella, and Alice was giving me more motivation to stay in this new enigma.
“Excellent,” Alice enthused. “The others will be back in an hour and twenty-six minutes.”
I blinked. “Your gift is very precise,” I commented.
“Not always,” she replied, “but things tend to get more predictable when Emmett is involved, certainly.”
“How exactly did you all come to be together?” I wondered. I had heard Alice and Jasper’s extension of the tale, but I didn’t understand how the coven had begun in the first place. I somehow felt the answers to those questions would lead me to my own answers.
Alice and Jasper continued telling their story, from when they met to joining Carlisle’s family. The time passed so quickly that I was surprised when I heard three other vampires approaching, none of them bothering with stealth. I could hear the burly one barreling through the forest, reliving his latest kill - a large, angry cougar. His mate was irritated because his games with the animal had gotten blood in her hair. The third was wondering what was happening here, trying to picture what I would look like. Clearly Alice had kept them informed.
It wasn’t long before they were piling in the plate glass doors on the back of the house which looked over the river. All three stopped short, appraising me. Carlisle’s mate, a very beautiful brunette, was the first to step forward.
“Hello, Edward,” she said with a gentle, matronly smile. “I’m Esme.”
I felt compelled to stand for this woman, obeying the long-buried instincts of the gentleman my human mother had bred me to be. She was all kindness, all concern, and she held herself with a dignity that demanded respect. And she, too, seemed to belong to another time. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Esme.”
Emmett stepped forward, grinning jovially while mentally deciding he could take me in a fight, which I had to disagree with. He held out his right hand and wrapped his other arm around the blonde, who was all wariness. “I’m Emmett,” he said as we shook hands conventionally, “and this is my wife, Rosalie.”
I nodded politely and introduced myself formally. “I’m Edward Masen.”
Alice took over then, recounting all the things we’d covered before their arrival. Emmett was very curious about my mind-reading, wondering what kind of outrageous things I’d heard. Esme wanted to know about my relationship with Bella, but she didn’t ask, and I was grateful for that small blessing. Rosalie was an amusing specimen - astonishingly vain, yet somehow loyal to a fault. She saw my intrusion as a threat to her family’s security in the small town, especially considering my proximity to the Police Chief’s daughter. Somehow, it always came back to Bella.
I asked to hear the others’ stories, and Esme told me how her human life had come to an end, how Carlisle, the lonely doctor had chosen to save her, having treated her before as a teenager. It was difficult to watch the memories in her head - her abusive husband, the child she’d never forgotten, and her desperate leap from a cliff. She and Carlisle had quickly fallen in love, and knowing her desire for a child, he had decided to turn Rosalie.
“I was brutally raped and beaten,” Rosalie told me coldly and bluntly, staring me down like I was going to do the same. “They left me for dead, and Carlisle found me and changed me.”
I saw in her head what she didn’t say out loud - how she had hunted down and killed each of her attacks without tasting a drop of their blood. She was formidable, this Rosalie, and unfortunately, I already seemed to be on her bad side.
“I was hunting a few years later when I found Emmett,” she went on.
He flashed a grin as he took up the story. “I had a bad run-in with a bear. She found me and brought me to Carlisle to be changed. I woke with this angel standing over me and never looked back.”
…Well, ‘angel’ was not the word I would used to describe the glaring vampire.
“And you’ve all kept with Carlisle’s diet all these years?” I couldn’t fathom how they could do it, how as newborn vampires they had resisted at all.
“There have been a few mistakes over the years, but generally, yes,” Emmett said with a shrug. “Rose and Carlisle are the only ones who have never slipped.”
Emmett had no shame about his ‘mistakes’, but I sensed that the others all did. Again, I couldn’t understand why. They were vampires; it was our nature to long for human blood.
“Can I ask why you do it? I don’t completely understand.”
Rosalie scowled at me. “Should I become a monster like the men who ended my life, preying on weak and innocent humans?” The remark was pointed, and her thoughts told me this was exactly what she accused me of doing with Bella…and it was true, wasn’t it? I couldn’t deny that I had taken advantage of her. So why did the presumption make me so angry?
“Personally,” Esme murmured, cutting into the tension, “I remember how it felt to lose my child. I could never take someone else’s child away. It’s too cruel.”
“And you?” I asked Emmett. In a way, his answer interested me most, since he was the only one without a tragic ending to his human life. The bear attack was unfortunate, of course, but it was also completely his fault. What reasoning had he come up with for his lifestyle?
He laughed. “Well, I like people in general. They’re just too similar to us to kill, you know? Feels kind of cannibalistic. Besides, where is the challenge? Humans are so slow and weak. I’d much rather take on a grizzly any day.”
Well, that was different. But I could appreciate the simplicity of his philosophy.
“Carlisle’s coming,” Alice announced a propos of nothing.
“Perhaps he would like some time with our guest,” Esme suggested.
Alice smirked ironically. “He’ll have to get in line. Come on, Jasper,” she said, tugging him out of his chair. “I’ll talk to you again later,” she told me. It sounded like a warning.
She and Jasper flitted outside, headed for the woods. They were feeling…affectionate after telling their tale. I was glad they chose to take their activities away from the house. I’d never much enjoyed witnessing others’ sex lives.
“I want to talk to you now,” Rosalie said, and I understood what Alice had meant by ‘getting in line.’ She glanced sharply at Emmett, who took the hint and stood to leave.
“Esme, you want to show me how your latest project is going?” I took from his thoughts that Esme was restoring a nearby cottage.
“Sure,” she went along with the ploy. But as they were on the way out the door, she hissed to Rosalie, “Be nice. He is a guest.”
Rosalie rolled her eyes and waited for them to leave. Once she was satisfied of their distance, she leveled her stony gaze on me. “Look,” she said briskly, all business, “I don’t know who you are, really, and I don’t care. What I do know is that what you’re doing with Bella Swan is wrong. Alice said you dumped her tonight, and you should stay away from her. Get out of her life and let her be. She doesn’t need to know she fell in love with a monster. That’s a horrible revelation for any girl.”
I bristled, unsure why this angered me, but it did. “I did not dump her,” I protested.
Rosalie laughed harshly. “Talk about beside the point. What you aren’t denying is that you are, in fact, a monster. If you have any conscience at all, you’ll forget about Bella Swan.”
She was out of the room before I could argue. I was still sitting there, mulling over her words, when Carlisle came in still wearing his lab coat.
“Edward.” He wasn’t surprised to see me. “When Alice told me I’d come home from work to find you brooding in the living room, I thought she’d been exaggerating.”
I chuckled darkly at the image of myself in his head. “It’s been something of a rough night.”
“You rejected Bella.” It was a statement, not a question. He took the chair Jasper had been sitting in. “Why?”
I’d been trying to figure that out all night. “I don’t know. I just…panicked. I mean, I don’t even know what love is, and it seemed wrong, somehow, to lead her on… Or maybe I’m just a monster. Is that what I am, Carlisle?”
“You are what you choose to be, Edward,” Carlisle said seriously. “If you don’t want to be a monster, then…don’t be.”
It was something Sartre had written, I realized. …the existentialist says that the coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero.
Could I become a hero so easily?
“Edward, may I be quite frank?” Carlisle asked, sensing my weakness.
I nodded.
“I think you’re here because you’re suffering a guilty conscience. Your appreciation for Bella’s humanity has made you feel sorrow for the lives you’ve taken, whether you consciously know it or not. Now you feel badly for causing her pain. If you want to atone for your past, Edward, the only way is to change for the future. The only redemption is in the choice to be different.”
I saw what he was implying. I could make the choice never to drink human blood again. I could become worthy of the love of someone like Bella. If I wanted it badly enough, I could.
Did I? Was that what I wanted?
I didn’t know, but I did realize that there was no going back. My life until now had been meaningless, and it wasn’t something I could go back to. I had been bored with feeding from humans for quite some time. The novelty of hunting animals would likely wear off just as, if not more, quickly, but if I was to be bored either way, wouldn’t it be better to end the lives of non-sentient beings, creatures who didn’t think and feel such complex things?
Yes, I could make that decision. But what about Bella? I had been wrong in taking her for granted and ignoring her growing emotional attachment. But what was the best thing to do for her now? Was Rosalie right? Was it better to let her move on, to heal, to forget? It didn’t feel better, but I didn’t trust my own feelings anymore.
“Why don’t you take some time to think on it?” Carlisle suggested as if he were the mind-reader. “Explore the area, perhaps. It’s beautiful country. But be careful - the dawn is breaking, and it’s going to be a sunny day.”
I took his advice and wandered out the back of the house, over the quiet river. I followed the sound of thoughts to the little cottage where Esme and Emmett were still talking. It was a quaint little place. It occurred to me that Bella would love it, and then I had to turn away. Thinking of things that would make Bella smile only emphasized the fact that I was no longer one of those things.
I was exploring the thick wood when the sun finally rose. Its rays were weak through the morning fog and the canopy of leaves above me, but even so, I could feel its heat on my skin. That, too, made me think of Bella, and I realized I was going to be in a pathetic condition if I couldn’t go a few hours without thinking about her.
I was still bogged down with such sad thoughts when I heard the approach of Alice’s tiny feet. I watched her hop up into a tree with a wide, low-hanging branch. She patted the space next to her.
“Step into my office, won’t you?”
I took the invitation and swung myself up to her perch.
“You’ve been reading Sartre, haven’t you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “You know, I think you’re making this whole ‘love’ issue a lot more complex than it really is, but it’s actually very simple. You’ve read ‘Existentialism and Humanism.’ ‘There is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving.’ You may not realize it, Edward, but you’ve been loving Bella for quite some time. Taking care of her, fulfilling her needs, doing things simply to make her happy…those are all things we do for those we love.
“I know you’ve been alone for a long time, but you still have those instincts which tell you to do those things. You still know how to care for another being. That’s all it takes to love someone. And if being with Bella is something which brings you joy, I can’t comprehend why you wouldn’t want to love her.”
Did I want to love her? Was that the cause for my inexplicable desire to take care of her? I could keep lying to myself and justify it as keeping her around for the sex, but…that was obviously a flawed excuse. It had become more than sex. I longed for her company now. I longed for her laughter, her approval.
I did want to love her.
But was that enough? As much as I had a choice, I also had to face the responsibility that my choice would affect her as well.
“Rosalie is wrong, you know,” Alice commented, eying a glittering dewdrop on a leaf above her. “Her heart is in the right place, and if this were any other case, I would probably agree with her…but Bella Swan is an extraordinary case. Her future, you know, is pretty lonely without you in it. A thousand things could come along to change it, I suppose, but right now, it looks as though she’ll never love again.
“When you were together, though, I saw a different future for her. She was one of us, and she was happy. The fact is that Bella has a choice as much as you do. And if you choose her, and she chooses you, and you’re both happy, then who is anyone to argue with that?”
There was one distinct flaw in her reasoning, that being that Bella couldn’t really choose a future with me without knowing what I was. But I could tell her, eventually, and she would still have the choice to stay or walk away…I had to get her back first, though…
“Ah,” Alice sighed, closing her eyes. The future suddenly spread out in her mind, and I saw Bella, golden-eyed, skin glittering in the sunlight, smiling at me across a spring meadow. The promise of it took my breath away.
“There, now,” Alice smiled. “The future is all cleared up. Go to her, Edward, and apologize for being such an ass. And then never take her trust for granted again.”