Cracked Chapter 6: Family Feud
Title: Cracked
Fandom: Twilight
Genre: Humor/Parody
Rating: T
Main Pairing: Bella and Edward
LJ Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Also on ff.net
Summary: Welcome to an experiment in dark humor, with alternating emphasis on the "dark" and the "humor." To tell you the truth, I'm not sure where exactly this story is taking me; unlike my other stories, the whole thing isn't prewritten. Hopefully it's still fun, though. My thanks to Ms. Meyer, for creating such memorable characters and for not minding that we all play with them.
Today’s chapter is less humor, more darkness. Again, I like it anyway.
Previously: Bella + Edward + Tyler on weed + hospital = awkward confrontation.
From Midnight Sun Chapter 4: “Visions”
Even a good man sees evil days…
Edward heard this in his mind, like an echo chamber. It was there when he went back to school after leaving Bella at the hospital. Naturally his teachers wanted him to answer questions about the accident. Rosalie was expecting him to say that Bella hit her head and was hallucinating, not that she knew much about Bella’s actual condition. It was damage control, standard procedure after potential exposure like this. Subterfuge and sabotage. The least reliable witness is the eye witness, and it was Edward’s job to make sure everyone knew it.
However…
“Do you have any idea how Tyler Crowley and Bella Swan are?” Mr. Banner asked. His concern was so uncharacteristic that even if Edward weren’t a mind reader, he’d have known it was false. “I heard there were some injuries…”
“I wouldn’t know,” Edward shrugged, glaring Bob Banner into submission. (Most people can only either shrug or glare successfully, but doing both at once rarely scares anyone. The fact that Edward pulled it off indicated his devotion, both to Bella, which he wouldn’t admit, and to the fine art of glaring.)
Mr. Banner’s little fantasies of having two less students to deal with in the future were quickly replaced by the cold dread of being axe-murdered by disgruntled teenagers in his sleep. Whoever found his body would undoubtedly find his Disney Beauty and the Bestiality stash, and his mother would be disgraced while his ex-wife would crow to whoever would listen that he’d always been a freak who demanded degrading things from her, which was categorically untrue. He didn’t discover animated pornography until long after the divorce, and sex with Marcy had always been straight and boring, but that wouldn’t stop her from soiling his reputation and giving his mother angina. So it was probably wise not to piss the Cullen boy off too much, just in case.
“Take your seat, please, Mr. Cullen,” Bob said politely.
It was the wrong thing to do, not maligning Bella’s potential testimony, but Edward couldn’t make himself go through with it. She was rude at the hospital, but so was he, and it was perfectly natural for her to be curious about what she saw. Should she be slandered for that?
“Of course she should!” Rosalie said when he posed the question between classes. She cornered him when she overheard his conversation with Banner and found it lacking. Proof positive that no good deed goes unpunished. “This isn’t the time to be a chivalrous gentleman, you moron. You screwed up, you’re in a position to run interference, and you’re not doing anything you should be doing to deal with the problem.”
“What’s it going to accomplish, Rosalie?” Edward demanded. “If I say she was hallucinating, don’t you think it’s going to spawn more interest in whatever she has to say? When she walks back into school and her friends and teachers are all telling her I said she was seeing things, when normally I don’t talk to anyone at all, let alone spread gossip, do you really think that’s going to inspire her not to say anything about me or what happened?”
Rose had no answer, but Edward didn’t like the malicious tone to her thoughts as she stalked off.
Oh, yeah, Emmett thought at him in Spanish class, by the way, Rose and Jasper are totally gonna off the girl later.
One reactionary panic attack later, Emmett and Edward were hiding between classroom buildings. Emmett, still casual as ever, was trying to have a rational conversation about it.
“You have to admit, the girl’s a security risk.”
“Don’t you think letting your wife and your brother kill her is a greater risk?”
Emmett had already considered this. Which was why he had already convinced Jasper and Rose to wait for a family meeting before they killed anyone. And yes, that was exactly how he phrased it. Fortunately “Mom and Dad” were home when the kids got home from school, so they could all sit down and discuss homicide together calmly and reasonably. Esme viewed the proceedings with extra apprehension-there were already stress cracks in the dining room table from the last family meeting. And you thought your family was bad.
“This is my fault,” Edward began, trying to sound mature. “I’m sorry I acted so hastily, but I can’t say I regret saving her life.”
“I knew it,” Rosalie groused. “You’re going to bitch and moan and act all depressed, like always, but when it comes to actually taking care of the problem, you’re going to make us deal with it, like always.” Nothing says mature, adult discussion like immediate blame and hyperbole that curves so much it’s a blatant lie.
“What ‘always?’ What the hell are you talking about?” Edward said, frustrated that rationality was out the window so quickly. “I’m not the one who keeps accidentally feeding on people or bringing trouble to our house, so you can point your ‘always’ at someone else, Rosalie. The last time we were in danger of exposure was when Maria came to Calgary for a visit, which first of all, was not my fault, because I wasn’t the jackass who told her how to find us, and second, we resolved it by leaving the area.” That wasn’t precisely true; they didn’t resolve the situation so much as escape suspicion, but that didn’t stop Maria from killing four cancer patients and a cardiac patient housed in a hospice. She didn’t like the one with kidney failure-the excess fluid in his body made his blood taste too salty.
“So are you trying to say this isn’t your fault?” Rose demanded. “Because I didn’t see anyone else making a spectacle of themselves today. Just you.”
“I’m saying I’ll leave.” Something in Edward rebelled at the idea, but he ignored the feeling as best he could. “If I’m not here for the girl to scrutinize-”
“Absolutely not,” Esme insisted. “Your place is here.” She had missed her son terribly during his one-week absence, much more than was proportionate to the length of time he’d been away. Even if it was only temporary, even if she could call him on the phone every single day, even if she could have daily internet video conferences with him, the thought of him gone tore her up inside. Edward could hear this. He knew exactly what her family meant to her, which is to say, more than the life of a 17-year-old girl who never hurt anyone. It bothered Edward that Carlisle didn’t realize that about his own wife.
“Well I’m certainly not going to let my sister ‘take care of it’ like some Mafia hitman, Esme,” he replied, responding both to Rosalie’s plan and Esme’s silent support of this plan. Esme averted her eyes but did not move, lest she attract Carlisle’s attention.
“Leaving won’t solve anything,” Emmett said. “We need you. You’re the mind-reader. You’re the one who’ll know the word on the street about us.”
“Try not to sound like such a cheesy cop show,” Edward retorted. And they call me the theatrical one.
“He’s not wrong,” Esme countered. “And if you leave, the girl will get suspicious.”
“That doesn’t mean she’ll be able to do anything about it,” Edward said. “This is the twenty-first century. Nobody in this country believes in immortals anymore, vampire or otherwise. Even Anne Rice got bored with us.”
“The girl doesn’t have to think you’re a vampire or an immortal,” Rosalie argued-she hated Anne Rice, who was largely regarded among their kind as the Madonna (circa the Blonde Ambition Tour) of the vampire world. “She just has to think you’re different, which I understand is already the case, ‘albino Clark Kent.’”
Edward cast a sidelong glance at his father. Carlisle shrugged, remembering the text message he sent to his family members. “I thought it was funny.”
“Except that it isn’t.” Rosalie sighed. “It’s a problem.”
“Why are we even having a debate about this?” Edward asked. “What is the benefit in killing an innocent girl?”
“I should think that’s obvious,” Rose answered. “The benefit is that she doesn’t get to tell anyone what she saw. It’s nothing personal.”
Edward snorted. “Nothing personal, my ass. It’s her life. There’s nothing more personal than that.”
“Don’t give me that look,” Rose said. “You can’t get around the truth with humor or rhetoric or picking our brains. The girl saw too much, and eventually she’ll talk.”
“She was discharged hours ago,” Emmett reminded his wife. “And I guarantee her friends have already started calling to check on her now that school’s out. If she’s got anything to say, it’s too late to stop her from saying it.”
“I don’t believe she will,” Edward said immediately, though he wasn’t half as sure as he tried to sound. “She knows what it would look like to people. I made sure of that when I spoke to her.” And he hated himself for it, but better that than what his sister had in store.
“You have no way knowing what she’ll say, or when, or to whom.” Rosalie wasn’t willing to buy into any of Bella Swan’s assurances of silence-few humans ever kept another’s secrets as well as their own. “I’m not hearing any viable solutions other than mine. We can’t afford to let rumors circulate.”
“Well we can’t just kill her and everyone she’s already spoken to,” Esme said sensibly. It was perhaps the first sensible thought she’d had all evening. Rosalie’s persistence was starting to worry her. “A body count would only attract attention, and not just from the humans.”
“Then we can all leave,” Edward offered. Though this thought was just as painful as going away by himself, it had the benefit of keeping the rest of the family where he could see them. “Heaven knows I’ve had to do it over and over again for the lot of you.”
“I don’t want to leave,” Rosalie complained, restraining herself from stamping her feet, but just barely. “I like it here. We almost get to be normal, and we’re nearly done with high school.” Evidently it had not occurred to Rosalie that normal human beings didn’t have conversations quite like this one. Or marry their brothers.
“We don’t have to start over from scratch,” Carlisle pointed out. “We can easily relocate to Portland with our current identities. It’s not a cross-country move, and there are more universities there. If we stay in Forks, you’ll have to either ‘go away’ to a decent university or enroll here, and you know how you hate community college. Honestly, I don’t know what we were thinking moving to a tiny town in the first place.” Actually, what he had been thinking was that Rosalie had yet to complete a college degree since 1993, because no matter where the family settled down or how long they stayed, she was always taking one trip or another to a new country, and not two-week vacations, either. Her nomadic behavior was inconsistent with her claims of a desire for a settled life, so Carlisle had given up on trying to please her and just tried to find a place with a hospital in need, access to forested areas, and plenty of cloud cover.
But his daughter didn’t see it that way.
“You were thinking of him,” Rosalie fumed, glaring daggers at Edward. “Him and his burden of mind-reading, and how hard it is for him to hear so many thoughts. ‘Edward, Edward, Edward.’ Everything you do is always for him. What about me, Carlisle? Doesn’t what I want matter at all?”
“Rose…” Emmett warned her. He loved his wife, but she was forever taking things too far, and she was slow to listen when he tried to temper her.
“Is this Jan Brady crap for real?” Edward squawked-he’d have been laughing if the situation weren’t so serious. “What’s next? ‘Mom loves you best?’”
Well she does, Rosalie didn’t say. What’s more, she wasn’t wrong.
“Do you even hear yourself?” Edward asked. “You just went from complaining about our secret being compromised, to whining that you want to pull out of a potentially compromised location, to blaming all our problems and our residence on parental favoritism. You don’t think any solution to any problem is viable unless you come up with it. Is there something wrong with your brain?”
“I might ask you the same question,” she hissed. “You think running away is going to change what that human saw, but it won’t. It is what it is. You broke the rules, not me, so you can’t complain.”
“I most certainly can!”
“Rosie,” Emmett tried again.
“The girl dies, Edward.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Because you don’t want to have your car shipped to Oregon? Because you can’t get enough of these local human boys staring at your ass? Is that really worth killing for?”
“Don’t start your judgmental garbage with me,” Rosalie nagged. She was a veteran nag. She had taken the trophy in the Husband Calling Contest at the Illinois State Fair three years in a row. “Yes, I like admiration and the paint job on my M3, but that’s completely beside the point.”
“No,” Edward pounded his fist on the table, only just remembering not to exert enough force to completely destroy the wood, “that is exactly the point. You’ve never once fed on a human in almost eighty years, and suddenly you’re ready to make this one a midnight snack because you don’t want to be inconvenienced? I am begging you to see reason.”
“You really are pathetic and foolish,” Rosalie sneered, even as the crack in the wood grew under Edward’s fist. “I’m not going to eat her. She already has a head injury-I can make it look related. What do you take me for?”
For one moment, all Edward could see was the hurt in Bella’s face in the hospital hallway. Why pull me out of the way?
“We’re supposed to be good people, you heartless shrew!” Edward roared. “How far are you willing to go? If she talks and the humans think she’s hallucinating, are you going to kill them anyway? If her neighbor’s kids look out the window and see you sneaking in and out of her bedroom, are you going to slaughter them, too? Don’t you have a conscience at all?” But Rosalie didn’t even acknowledge his outburst.
“Baby, maybe we should rethink this,” Emmett said uncomfortably, his own conscience finally putting in an appearance. “You can’t just kill the police chief’s healthy daughter within twenty-four hours of a prior near-death and expect him not to order an autopsy.”
“Carlisle would be the one to perform it,” Rosalie grinned.
And that grin was her mistake.
“Enough,” Carlisle groaned. Technically he couldn’t get a headache, but that didn’t stop him from massaging his temple as if he did. Goddamn teenagers. “I’ve been waiting all afternoon for you to come to your senses, Rosalie, but it’s clear that you’re unable. You will stand down, and you will do it now.”
“Carlisle,” she replied, uncertain and growing nervous. She could tell-she could always tell-when Edward was trying not to smile, whether it was in victory or, in this case, relief. “It’ll work.”
“It wouldn’t,” Carlisle assured her. “Even if I was willing to go along with your…plan, I’m the one who examined her x-rays and told her there wasn’t any major damage. It’s my signature on her discharge sheet, no one else’s, and at the end of the day I’m the one who will be held accountable. At the very least Charlie Swan will suspect medical malpractice, and that’s if he isn’t automatically concerned about foul play. Either way, he’ll call in the county medical examiner, not me. Then I’ll come under scrutiny, and so will the rest of us when they do a thorough background check and realize everything from my birth certificate to my driver’s license to my medical degree are all high-quality forgeries. That will end your privileged life rather quickly, don’t you think?”
“We can’t just leave witnesses,” Rosalie tried. “The Volturi-”
“Are not here,” Carlisle spoke over her. “But I am, and I refuse to allow my family to commit premeditated murder.”
“Since when?” Rosalie challenged him, shaking off the restraining hand Emmett placed on her shoulder. “You’ve allowed it before.”
Carlisle made the barest suggestion of a growl. It was enough to silence any further protest-he never growled. Rosalie had forgotten he was even capable of it. “Bella Swan is not a rapist, and she has not wronged you. You’re not trying to exact justice; you’re trying to justify the cold-blooded killing of a child. You, the same young woman who cried for two days when I told you you’d never have children of your own, who went on the warpath because a group of men assaulted you and left you for dead. I don’t know who you are right now, but it’s not the person who’s been funding women’s shelters for the last sixty years in an attempt to reclaim her lost humanity.” The look he gave her bordered on disgust. “I don’t know why you suddenly don’t care about that anymore, but if this…thing you’re acting like is what you want to be, I suggest you go upstairs, pack your suitcase, and get the hell out of my house. You’re not currently under suspicion, so nobody in this town will give a damn if you leave.”
“Carlisle-” Esme tried.
“No, Esme. She’s gone too far,” he cut her off. With a glance at Edward, he added, “If it hadn’t been for the Swan girl mentioning it, Tyler Crowley probably would have bled out and died today. It turns out he has a vitamin K deficiency I didn’t know about. A girl who shows concern for the man who nearly killed her is worth saving. I’d like it very much if our family could continue to be worth saving, too.”
Rosalie lowered her eyes and relaxed the fists she’d held clenched-in this way, Carlisle knew she would obey.
Jasper, however, was another matter. As a lifelong pragmatist, he didn’t particularly care about Carlisle’s bizarre morals, Bella’s goodness, sibling rivalry, or living a life of luxury. Certainly, he didn’t have a personal grudge against Bella the way Rosalie seemed to-Bella’s status as a person wasn’t part of his equation. He didn’t care about whether anyone thought he was a good man, or the last vestiges of his humanity, at least not today. He cared about one thing, and that was protecting his mate from potential danger, whether it came in the form of merciless Volturi enforcers or humans with pitchforks.
“Jasper…” Edward warned. “You heard Carlisle.”
“You gave no thought to the rest of us when you took unilateral action this morning,” Jasper said simply. He usually played along with the family dynamic because it made Alice happy and because he genuinely liked these people most of the time. But the ‘my house, my rules’ argument didn’t work on him; unlike his siblings, Jasper didn’t have daddy issues that overruled his sense of autonomy, and everyone, especially Carlisle, knew it. Jasper was once a commander of men, then of vampires; he wasn’t in the habit of blindly obeying illogical orders. Backing Edward felt like a short-sighted course of action and he wasn’t going to do it. “Because of you, that human has probably already told her cop father everything, and he probably knows his daughter well enough to be sure when she’s being serious. By morning he’ll have more than a few questions he’d like answers to, and that puts Alice in danger, whether we leave this place or not. I for one think it would be prudent to kill both of the Swans. It shouldn’t be hard to cut a brake-line when they’ll be traveling together and frame someone else for it. Chief Swan’s bound to have human enemies-he’s made a number of drug busts recently, including today’s.”
Rosalie kept still, but Edward could sense her glimmer of hope at Jasper’s no muss, no fuss approach. So he suggested, in no uncertain terms, that if either one of them so much as daydreamed about making an attempt on the Swan girl’s life (he meant to include her father, but he wasn’t thinking of Charlie), that he’d mutilate them in ways that weren’t anatomically possible.
Jasper found this hilarious-wrestling matches aside, he thought Edward was weak. “You’d have to be her twenty-four hour bodyguard to pull that off,” he laughed. “You can probably protect her from me for a little while, but eventually you’ll have to leave to protect her from yourself.”
“Or,” Alice spoke for the first time, “he would just need some help from me.”
Startled, Jasper looked to his wife, waiting. With Alice, it was always best to wait for some elaboration.
“If you try to kill her, I’ll just tell Edward in advance, and he’ll stop you,” she explained. Stop him, she admonished Edward silently, not hurt him. “And if you succeed in killing her, then I’ll leave you forever.”
“Alice,” Jasper said slowly, bewildered by her emotions. She was perfectly serious, and Alice was not the kind of immortal who dealt in absolutes, not with a gift like hers that proved how the world, and people, were always changing as time inevitably passed by.
“I love you for wanting to protect me. I love you, period,” she told him. “But the thing is, I’m going to love her, too.” With a pointed look at Edward (he seemed to be getting a lot of those today), she said, “And so are you.”
“WHAT?” everyone shouted simultaneously.
“That’s preposterous,” Edward denied.
Alice showed him one vision. Just one, hazy and distant, but it was all he needed: Bella holding Edward’s hands in her own, looking up at him, smiles on both their faces, mutual trust and adoration.
“Oh, god.” If he could, Edward would have been sick. Not because he found the idea repulsive, but because he didn’t, and it frightened him that he could feel that way at all, let alone about Bella. And before anyone gets all insulted on Bella’s behalf, let’s remember that we’re talking about someone with no memory of puberty.
“She’s human,” Rosalie said emphatically. “And ugly.”
“You’re so transparent,” Alice said cattily. “Jealous, much?”
“Jealous? Try incredulous,” Rosalie laughed (a little too forcefully). “She’s a puny mortal with beady eyes and stringy hair. Oh, and let’s not forget the part where she’s a worthless human. Why would Edward love that?”
“I was human when you found me,” Emmett said quietly, “and I’d just been maimed by a bear, so you can’t say I was particularly good-looking or worth anything.”
“That’s different,” Rose insisted. She wasn’t so much bothered by the memory as she as by the mournful tone with which Emmett brought it up. Because in addition to being insensitive, she was also clueless.
“I was human when Carlisle found me, too” Esme piped up. The girl she’d been so willing to see killed an hour ago was suddenly a beacon of hope, to be protected and defended. “And I’m sure I didn’t look like much.”
“Yes, but…you were dying,” Edward reminded her, and everyone. “Bella’s not dying.”
“She could be,” Emmett said thoughtfully, his eyes on Jasper, who was still staring at Alice.
“But she’s not,” Edward stressed, grinding his fist into the tabletop. The stress cracks grew by several more inches. “Jesus Kickboxing Christ, and you people accuse me of putting us all at risk.”
“I’m not making it up, Edward,” Alice said. “She’s going to be my best friend.” Silence momentarily enshrouded the room as everyone except Alice paused to reflect on what that poor mortal girl would be subjected to as Alice’s Best Friend.
I say we perform a mercy killing, Rosalie grumbled internally, though it was an empty threat at worst. “We don’t even make friends with humans,” she said aloud.
“I do,” Carlisle reminded her. “At work. All the time. When you work eighteen hour shifts with people, it’s impossible not to.”
“So do I,” Esme trilled immediately. “Whenever we live someplace where I have a job or an apprenticeship, I make human friends.”
“Not with people who’ve seen you toss a van like it’s a bean bag,” Jasper argued. “And you certainly don’t bring them home for dinner.”
“Son, if Bella was going to talk, don’t you think Alice would have said something by now?”
“Well we can’t just do nothing,” Emmett crowed over the growing din. “It doesn’t solve our problem.”
“Nobody’s saying ‘do nothing-’” Carlisle shouted back, and then everyone was full-on yelling.
“That’s exactly what you’re saying!”
“What if she’s his mate? We can’t just leave her, or kill her!”
“You’re hearing what you want to hear!”
“If anyone here should be accused of selective listening-”
Crack!
“Damn it! Now you’ve broken another table!”
“That’s why I keep telling you to buy your tables at Ikea!”
“Who gives a shit about the stupid table? Remember the part where the Volturi might find out about this?”
“It’s not like humans have never gone crazy, made up stories about vampires, and escaped execution before.”
“Please don’t bring Bram Stoker into this. He wasn’t crazy, he was in showbiz, and he was friends with Oscar Wilde. Nobody was ever going to take his vampire sightings seriously.”
“Why don’t you just admit that you’re taking too big a risk because you’re coddling Edward?”
“Why don’t you just admit that you’re a spoiled drama queen with no respect for anyone? I’m still waiting for an apology, young lady.”
“I am sorry. That you’re all stupid.”
“Hey, we’re not the dumbasses falling for a human who isn’t even dying. Stupid is sitting at the other end of the table.”
“I’ll leave,” Edward said again to whoever would still listen.
“You will not,” Alice ordered him while the room around them boomed with insults and rhetorical questions. “It’s not even an option anymore.”
“I can’t just stay here and let it happen, Alice,” Edward groaned, sounding wretched and loser-y. “It would ruin her life.”
You can’t leave her here alone, or she won’t have a life at all, ruined or otherwise, Alice whispered into his mind. There, do you see it? If you’re gone, if there’s no chance of her having a future with you, then she’s just a human who knows too much. Jasper will kill her if you go, and no one else will fight him. Not even Carlisle, for all his peacock posturing. I don’t want that, but I can’t prevent it on my own.
The argument continued, with Rosalie pronouncing Edward mentally deficient and Emmett declaring him to be the unluckiest son of a bitch this side of the Smoky Mountains. Esme was trying to quiet everyone down, but she couldn’t help thinking of Edward and his human with unrestrained glee-she hated that she was the only one who hadn’t seen the girl’s face yet and wondered if any of her other children would be willing to get in trouble so she’d have an excuse to make a trip to the school. For once a family discussion didn’t end with a fistfight, but that didn’t mean it ended well. When he was reasonably certain that no one would harm Bella, Edward took flight (the chicken) and the couples all split off not long after.
“Why didn’t you back me up?” Rosalie growled at her husband. They’d gone north to Lake Pleasant, cautiously checking for humans before they stripped off their clothes and silently dove into the water.
Emmett thought carefully before he spoke. He’d made mistakes in the past, everyone knew that, but those were failures at the mastery of his own instincts, not calculated plans. While it was in his nature to get over it eventually, that didn’t mean he was proud of killing people, especially not right after it happened. Rosalie was different-she’d never experienced any real regret at killing her attackers, at least not that he knew of, but she’d always prided herself on never spilling a drop of human blood, not even a taste. That was her nature. Her cavalier attitude about Bella Swan’s death was very likely to either a) wear off once the deed was actually done and throw her into depression, or b) change who she was entirely in a way Emmett wasn’t prepared to go along with. But he couldn’t just say all that to her, because if she didn’t feel like someone was on her side, it would only drive her further. So instead, he said:
“You don’t need me to fight your battles for you. You’ve always done that perfectly well on your own.”
“Does that mean you disagree with me?” Rose asked, everything from the twist of her lips to the set of her shoulders making it quite clear that there was definitely a wrong answer to that question. They stood chest-deep in the lake-their body density didn’t allow them to float with the same natural ease as a human, so a serious conversation couldn’t be conducted when they were making an extra effort to tread water.
“I wasn’t aware that loving you meant I’m obligated to agree with everything you say.”
“Well…no…not obligated.”
Emmett took one of his wife’s hands and studied it. “When I first saw you, I believed you were an angel. And even though I know that was just a product of my dying mind, I’ve always thought of you that way.” He looked her square in the eyes. In the low light, they were almost ice blue. “Is that still true? Or am I still just the ignorant, worthless human dumb enough to get taken out by a bear and fall in love with a vampire?”
Meanwhile, back at the undead homestead…
“I don’t see how you can feel that way,” Carlisle sighed. He and Esme had retreated to their bedroom, seeking quiet and reconciliation. Contrary to what Edward thought, Carlisle wasn’t unaware that his wife had been willing to sacrifice Bella Swan’s life to preserve her family. However, he knew her motivation came from a place of love, not that different from Jasper’s self-preservation, whereas Rosalie’s came from selfishness. That’s why he felt more forgiving of his wife and son.
Which was total bullshit. Self-preservation is inherently selfish, even if it is instinctive. Over seventy-five years of marriage will see a wide range of rationalizations, or it will see divorce. Most vampires who believe in marriage don’t believe in divorce.
“It has to work out,” Emse answered him. She was truly the most loving person Carlisle had ever known, but her ‘hopeless romantic’ side sometimes got her-and everyone-into trouble. Finding Rosalie had been pure chance (though Rosalie herself refused to call it serendipitous), but it was Esme who first suggested to Carlisle that Edward would be happy if he only had a mate.
“Darling, I love your optimism, but things don’t just ‘work out’ because you want them to.” Carlisle didn’t know it, but he sounded very much like Bella sometimes did when speaking to her mother. “People have to work things out with actual work.”
“True,” Esme conceded. “But it sounds like Alice is willing to be an ally.”
This did absolutely nothing to comfort Carlisle, as Alice had been Esme’s “ally” when they last lived in Alaska. Technically all Alice did was help Esme with the timing, choosing to live in Denali during a period when none of the females but Carmen had any long-term partners. The results had been less than spectacular. The word harlot had been thrown around more than once, as had the words prude, completely psychotic, and total misunderstanding before finally culminating in Please leave, while the friendship between our clans can still be salvaged. Having Alice as an ally wasn’t by any means a guarantee.
Alice and Jasper, who had run southeast to a favorite spot on the Bogachiel River, were having their own conversation, and although the words were simple, the answers weren’t.
“Alice, have you seen or are you just ignoring the very real possibility that this is all going to end in that girl’s death?” At her expression, Jasper clarified, “I don’t mean me. With the way that girl smells to Edward…”
“I know that,” Alice admitted. “I didn’t let him see, because I knew he’d only freak out, but I also saw other possibilities. Her death. And her…change.”
“Oh Lord, here we go,” Jasper groaned. “Alice, sugar, we can’t just collect people like stamps. The Cullens have been doing it for over ninety years, and it just has to stop. It only draws more attention, which is what we spent all evening fighting about.”
“It’s not like that.” Alice looked away, and Jasper knew her well enough to know what she wanted without her having to say it.
“Why, Alice?” Jasper wanted to know. “Why is it so important to you that this girl come to love you? We’re here, aren’t we? You have me and every ounce of my devotion. You have five other vampires who universally love you and are willing to call you family. Nobody wants this human thing with Edward to happen, not even Edward. So who is all this really for? You?” He looked away to the Olympic Wilderness, to which his young brother had beat a hasty exit. “Him?”
“I know you don’t see it,” Alice said. “But it’s not for just one person. Yes, it’s for me. I don’t have limits to the amount of love I have to share. It’s also for my brother. He’s lonely and cranky and irritated all the time. And because of that, so are you. Don’t you see?” She pressed a hand against Jasper’s face. “If he’s happy, you can be happy, too.”
“And what about this girl whose future you’re so keen to meddle with?” Jasper asked.
“I’m not meddling, I’ve seen-”
“Stop.” Jasper pulled his wife’s hand away from his face and shook his head, though he kept her hand in his. “I’ve agreed not to harm her because I believe in you, but don’t call this something it’s not. There are times when you see the future because that’s just what it is, and there are times when you see a possibility you like and force it to happen the way you want it. Usually the latter involves vampires and humans, and it doesn’t always work. So tell me whatever it is you didn’t tell everyone else in there.”
“First of all,” Alice said quietly, “I’ve been watching Bella’s decisions all day. I thought it might change when her mother called over and over and over, but she’s gone to bed now, and it’s perfectly solid. Bella’s not going to say anything at all.”
Jasper was surprised. “Really?”
“Yes, and I didn’t engineer that. In fact, I think that’s part of why I see them ending up together,” Alice speculated. “Possibly.”
“While I admit that’s a relief to hear, it’s not the basis for an interspecies relationship.”
“Ew.” Alice scrunched up her tiny nose. “You sound like those humans who derive an unhealthy enjoyment from donkeys. Edward and Bella are two sentient, free-willed beings.”
“You told your brother that he’s going to fall in love with a human girl who doesn’t seem to like him,” Jasper reminded her, “and his immediate reaction was denial, followed by fleeing out the back door. Even so, you’ve not seen a single possibility in which the girl’s life doesn’t intersect with ours. What does free will have to do with it?”
Edward had indeed fled into the mountains and rainstorm as fast as his immortal legs would carry him, wondering how the eyes that had stared at him with such pain today could ever look at him any other way. Could she possibly be that forgiving?
Yes, he mused, she would probably forgive him because she thought him a good man who was having a bad day. Edward wanted to be a good man, but he didn’t see that he had a simple, clear-cut way to do that. A good man wouldn’t run away from home and leave Bella alone with homicidal vampires, but he was a homicidal vampire. It was so much easier to be a good man when he was human, Edward decided. Not that he had much memory of that time-the memories came in bits and pieces and were rarely about anything profound. But it just seemed it would be much easier to be a good man if he weren’t every day fighting against his own nature. Humans thought their lives were so complicated, but really they were too lazy or scared to just do the right thing.
And anyway, Alice was wrong. He didn’t believe himself to be in love. Love was kissing and sunshine and rainbows, wasn’t it? Edward didn’t feel any of that. Bella was intriguing, sure, but that didn’t mean love. He had a certain amount of respect for her-probably less than he had for his vampire parents, but well more than he had for any other human her age. He wanted good things for her-mostly that she wouldn’t somehow become his next meal, but also that her head would feel better soon; that wasn’t love. It grieved him in ways he didn’t understand to even think of being away from her, but that wasn’t love, either. He would gladly kill his sister just to keep the girl safe, but that really wasn’t love-he wanted to kill Rosalie at least twelve times a year. And now he was in a feud with his entire family over the girl, and the subject of another matchmaking plot, when all he really wanted was to continue to live his peaceful, meaningless existence on his own.
Why in the hell did he bother saving her again?
“Ah,” Edward whispered to himself; finally he remembered the entire quote, from the Dhammapada of all things. Even a good man sees evil days, as long as his good deed has not ripened; but when his good deed has ripened, then does the good man see happy days.
Edward doubted very much that he’d ever get to see those happy days. But he decided he could be okay with that, just so long as his good deed-and Bella’s life-had a chance to ripen. It wasn’t love, he told himself, just a choice, an effort to be a good man in a world that wasn’t made for him to be one.
Because if this one part of humankind could think the best of him for even one moment, maybe the rest of the world didn’t have to.