2003
The day had gone quiet with the very sudden and instant drop of the sun that had left the sky no time to stain purple and pink and instead convert directly to black. It was a still winter night, the crisp kind that made fingers turn blue and lips chalk white if you weren't wrapped up properly. Snow fell with the ease of butter gliding across a sizzling pan and landed so heavily that shoveling would take hours the next morning. In the midst of this weather beneath a canopy of bone-white branches, Bella Swan crouched, shivering.
It had been hours but still she refused to turn back. Not when that monster was prowling the hallways awake, mutinously trudging back and forth between her empty bedroom and the stairwell no doubt drunk and mindless. She'd warned herself that she should stay, but what was a warning in comparison to a six foot five drinker who was angrier than hell? No way was she going to stick around and now there was no way she was turning back. The wind howled above her and around her. It was still better. Anything was better than Ted when he was intoxicated.
He liked to embarrass her. Anything to get a quick laugh out of his clumsy daughter, the one whose anger was so easily provoked as his own. Ted liked to push her around because he liked to have power even more so than he liked to drink. He'd been let go from his job five years ago and ever since had taken it upon himself to cripple everything he came in contact with. He lusted for control.
And so Bella crouched, her hands stuffed into her pockets and her skin going the kind of numb that surpassed little feeling and entered the strange state of pain. The snow fell. The night darkened further and the wind howled so closely to her ears that she bit her lip in fear.
It was at this point that she heard the growling, like a low rumble of snare drums before the bang of a gun. Because she couldn't sit still any longer she popped up from her crouch and peered into the darkness all around her. Ten years old, she was small and wide-eyed but still intelligent enough not to move lest she provoke whatever was out there. Her throat whimpered but nothing came from her lips. If she was to be killed, she would do it in a dignified, Discovery Channel-esque manner.
"It's okay." She heard this somewhere far off, as though it were a whisper amplified to a low, low moan. A man was speaking. Pinching her arms closer to herself, she decided to stay abruptly quiet and wait for the growling that coincided with the gentle voice to come closer. She was no longer afraid to be mauled, more, she was afraid to be caught and taken back home.
Out of the blackened trees, a snow-white man with hair bleached a very pale blond emerged with his fingers stuffed into his heavy coat pockets and his smile casual and lopsided, as though young attractive men generally took long routes through a winter nights' forest. When he spied Bella, tiny and shivering in her thin winter coat he cocked his head to the side and held out one hand to her.
From behind him, a boy popped out of the shadows and made his presence known. He was wrapped so tightly in dark black material that only his cheeks and nose remained exposed to the winter air. His lips were pursed in confusion as Carlisle halted before Bella. The scene was all so strange and confusing that Bella had to admit she'd lost her fear in a state of sudden wonder. The small boy, her size, sized her up from afar as the taller man straightened his hat.
"Well, see here!" He sighed, his voice a musical limerick that played with Bella's ears. "Are you lost?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Come with us. We can take you home."
The trust the man emenated was overwhelming, but Bella drew back. She recognized him now. He was the doctor that worked over at the big hospital that Ted took her too sometimes when she fell or had to say she'd done so in the place of something a little more revealing to her father's personal life. Carlisle Cullen was an adult and she knew him well but this didn't stop her from backing away hesitantly and eyeing the path to the river, planning her escape.
"Bella?" She cringed. Now it was certain that she'd have to go home. Carlisle raised an eyebrow in wait for her speech, then wandered close to her regardless of the way her shoulders hunched backward and her eyes clenched shut. "I'm sure that your father is very worried."
"He isn't!" Bella cried suddenly, her voice weak from exposure to the cold air.
"Dad," the red haired boy Bella knew now to be from her class, Edward, whined eagerly. His cheeks had gone red. "I'm cold. Let's go. Mom is making hot chocolate."
Carlisle kept his eyes on Bella as he responded carefully to Edward in a light, accepting tone. "You're right son. Let's get going. Bella, would you like to join us?"
She took a step back toward the cusp of the forest, sighed, and nodded eagerly. She finally took the outstretched hand that, while frozen and as white as the snow around her, seemed to comfort away all of the worries she's been harbouring.
xxx
2006
The Cullen's extravagantly large home towered before Bella as she shamefully climbed the front steps holding her belly with both arms. It was summer and the sun was hot on top of her hair that had grown a considerable amount in the past years. It just touched her waist and wreathed her in brunette locks; she would've given anything to have the guts to chop it off at the neck to relieve herself of the heat. Still, the pain in her lower abdomen was worse. With burning cheeks, she raised one thin wrist to the door and knocked with pale knuckles that had been chapped and dry from work.
Her best friend, Edward, opened the door with a huge smile on his face that tugged back to show all his teeth. Of all his family members, he was the only one who seemed to grow at all. Behind him, Esme stirred a bowl of chocolate substance that whisked lighter and lighter into a fluffy cream. Her smile was as radiant and young as it had been three years before.
"Hello Bella!" She greeted cheerily.
"Bells!" Edward cried, throwing his arms around his friend. A boy of thirteen, he was gangly, ordinary and sweet. His hair was almost always a dishellved mess of red and his green eyes constantly mischievous with intent to find his strange means of entertainment; he always had a way to make Bella laugh even through some of his more dangerous antics.
He pulled back from her slowly. "Mom and I are making-"
Esme raised a finger to her lips. Edward turned back, grimaced, and smiled again.
"Are you gonna come in?"
Bella looked from Esme to Edward with a strange fear twisting up inside of her. They had seen her through injuries explained and injuries she could never detail to them, they had been there for her through bullying and teasing and even her nightmares and deepest dreams. They were her friends and still, still, this was so hard. She clenched Edward's hand and tried not to avoid their eyes as she asked if Carlisle were home.
As if on cue, Carlisle dodged into the room in his usual casual, graceful way. He greeted her shortly with a suspicious, "What's up, Bella?"
"I, uh." She finally looked away from Edward's piercing green irises and found solace in the dirty toes of her sneakers. "My stomach..." She clenched where it hurt and sighed. "And I'm bleeding. I... it hurts. I don't know what to do."
Carlisle gave a sidelong look to Esme, who immediately passed him the bowl of chocolate and strode in front of Edward with a calm, slightly bemused look on her face.
"Come with me." She instructed, and pulled Bella along after her up the stairs and into an immaculate bathroom where she explained the monthly function that prior to that day, Bella had never understood.
Later, as Carlisle dimmed the lights in the kitchen and Esme gracefully flitted through the room with a massive chocolate cake balanced on a silver platter Bella was fully educated on the intimate details of being a woman. She was no longer concerned about the pain that gripped her so tightly she could have keeled over and cried. It was almost motherly in the way that Esme knelt down to kiss her on the cheek and wish her a very happy thirteenth birthday.
xxx
Present Day.
Edward had his hand wrapped around Bella's, his long fingers warm and comforting as a horror movie played out on the screen before them. The violent scenes were very near gruesome but Bella didn't cower with Rosalie and Alice, Edward's new sisters on the couch in the living room. Instead she watched with a less-than-fascinated disinterest. It was as though after seeing a real monster first hand she was disensitized to the drama.
Bored with this realism, she turned to look down at Edward's hand on hers. It had been blossoming between them for a long time now and still stirred her at night when she woke up hot and confused and wished he was there with her. She was convinced that he was right when he said he couldn't imagine his life without her. She knew that things were better when he was around.
He caught her looking and, despite the nudges shared between his brother's Emmett and Jasper, looked her in the eye with a smirk that made her heart leap in a way horror movies would never inspire. He beckoned her forth with nothing but a shared link, a thought that they could both find comfort in.
She could feel his heart beating, it was so close to hers.
He had less than a day to live.