Looper
Disclaimer: the characters and all recognisable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer - this is a work of fan fiction, except for the legends and histories of the Quileute that, of course, belong to them. I pay my respects to their gods.
Thanks to BanSidhe [ruadh sidhe] and Feebes86 for betaing and pre-reading.
[AN: Every time there is a BD premiere, I keep wishing that it had never happened… and then I had a thought… what if it didn't happen?]
Bella sat in the diner waiting for Charlie. He was late again. This new town was getting on her nerves; the endless rain. The bare minutes of sunshine before the clouds rolled in again. She thought about asking her father if she would need one of those daylight lamps. Like the people above the Arctic Circle used before they succumbed to madness caused by long days of winter darkness.
The door jangled as a woman came in. Now that's what she should have worn; a cloak. It was very stylish and oddly ageless. But she wore very large Jackie Onassis style sunglasses that covered her eyes. Sunglasses? In Forks? It seemed odd. Sunny, Forks was not.
Bella went back to her book but looked up in surprise when the woman slid into the booth bench opposite her.
"Ah…" Bella said, "this seat is taken."
"Isabella Marie Swan," the woman stated.
"Yeah… and?"
"I don't have much time." She spoke low and urgently. Something about her seemed familiar.
"I don't know you."
The woman laughed. "Yes, you do."
She was extremely pale. As pale as Bella thought she might get if she kept living in this damp little town.
She spoke again, "It all starts in the parking lot."
"Who are you?" Bella hissed at her.
"I am you. And please stop reading Wuthering Heights. All the people in it are universally cruel and awful. It has no redeeming characters, not even the narrator."
"O-okay." That was what she was reading, but the book was under the edge of the table. She didn't think the diner table looked grease free enough to place it on the top on the table. The woman could not have seen it from her seat.
"The parking lot at the high school," the woman repeated.
"What? How can you be me?" Bella asked.
"Don't argue with me. I really don't have time. Just trust me. Or trust you. I've thought about it-"
She started to look slightly manic to Bella. Her voice was still low, but her words were spoken so quickly that they startled to tumble over each other. "-whatever you do, do not be in the parking lot on the morning of Tuesday the 25th January. You must not be there. Tyler is the key. And the chains on your tyres that Charlie will put on for you."
"Tyler Crowley? The basketball player?"
"Is he? I wouldn't know."
"Why is this so important?" Bella asked.
"Because if you continue on your current life path, things will go very bad for you; for everyone."
"My current path?"
The woman looked over the top of her sunglasses at Bella and she almost recoiled in shock. She had red eyes. Completely red, not just that her eyes were blood shot, but the entire eye colour, iris and all was blood red. "They are supposed to be golden… like his."
His?
Wait a second… she had seen weird coloured eyes already that day.
Edward Cullen's eyes were golden. Was he the 'his' the stranger referred to? It had to be him. She had met him today and he had been spectacularly weird. But she had noticed that he and all of his family had tawny eyes. "I met him today," she tried.
"I know. That's why I chose this day. He was epically weird today. Glaring at you and holding his breath in science."
"Yes." Crap. How did she know that? Was this person really her?
"He has already gone to Alaska. He will be absent from school and will only return next Monday. You must avoid him. You must."
Blood shot. Blood red. Her mind was skittering from one theory to another. Blood.
Bella thought of something completely freaky weird. "What is he? I know he is not … real."
"He is a vampire, as are his entire family."
"He's a vampire?" she whispered.
"Yes. One that you must avoid."
Bella was annoyed. She had been oddly attracted to the tawny eyed boy. This was unbelievable. Vampires? As if they actually existed? "I thought he was intriguing and he is certainly beautiful. He looks like a Greek god."
"Don't you dare!" the other her insisted. "Don't you think he's infatuated with you and you love him! It isn't love. It's not forever!" The woman pointed a perfectly manicured finger at her. "It's simple blood lust. He is the predator and you are the prey. That he will not work out until too late and after he has made you one of them. When you no longer have human blood in your system, believe me, he will not be interested in you anymore. You cannot be his singer with no blood."
"Singer? What the heck is a singer?"
"Ugh." The woman seemed irritated with Bella. "Your singer is the one human whose blood calls to you."
"It sings?"
"Yes."
"How did I … I mean you … get here?"
"A new vampire joined the Volturi with time bending skills, but that's not important right now. Just believe me when I tell you that Edward is not worth the death of everyone you have ever known. He's really not. He's not even that good in bed… never marry a virgin." She gave a delicate shudder.
Bella blinked. "Everyone?" She had trouble following the rest of what she had said.
"Even Renee and Phil Dwyer. His whole baseball team is killed in a tragic bus accident. Not that he is even with them, yet. He will sign with the Florida Suns from Jacksonville." She paused. "And do tell him to be careful sliding for home. Or maybe not… "
"T-this is r-real?" This stranger knew too much about her and her life to be a freak. And her future? Did she really know her future?
"Of course it's real." She glanced around suddenly. "I have run out of time." She gave a nervous high pitched giggle. "Time… ha ha. Tyler. Remember."
She stood suddenly and glided out of the diner, a tad too quickly.
Bella had no idea how to even start comprehending what had just happened. She was in a very odd mood when her father finally arrived for their dinner. He put it down to her still dealing with the recent move to the small town.
She thought it over in bed that night.
Was she her? She had looked a little older than Bella, not a lot older, but she looked so different. As if she had spent thousands of dollars on her clothes and shoes. Those sunglasses alone must have cost a fortune. She looked the way Bella might if she had finally learned how to apply makeup and style her hair properly.
Her future self.
Maybe it really was?
If so, she looked … inhuman. And clearly unhappy with the way her life had gone. So unhappy that she had travelled back in time to warn her past self.
"My head aches," she said to her empty bedroom.
She spent the weekend doing domestic chores and then was back at school on Monday. It was snowing. She was horrified - she hated snow. At lunch she realised there were five people at the table in the corner – Edward was back at school; Bella immediately felt unaccountably self-conscious and nervous.
Edward was back at school after a break of some days. Just like the woman had told her he would be.
He actually spoke to her in Biology. He was odd, but not as weird as last time when he seemed to be holding his breath. She accidentally touched him when they were working on some slides. It made her jump; he didn't feel… normal.
She found herself telling him all about her mother and why she had moved to Forks. That was weird, too. She didn't usually blab all her secrets to virtual strangers.
She had almost forgotten about the rest of the strange woman's warnings, until the morning of Tuesday the 25th January. At the breakfast table, Charlie told her he had put chains on her tires. "Lots of ice on the roads," he said.
"Chains?" she squeaked. The weird meeting came flooding back. She had talked about chains on her tires.
She had better speak to this Tyler guy. And today.
She was so jittery that she left the house hurriedly after slipping over once on the icy path. She drove to school quickly. Almost sure in the knowledge that nothing would happen to her here. The parking lot was the key; she had told her that. She was sure she knew which boy was Tyler. That Lauren girl who had shown her around and appointed herself as Bella friend, had seemed to be interested in him. He was a jock, she had said.
She parked very close to the school, hopped out of her truck and walked back towards the entrance to wait. She wanted to grab him before he got into the parking lot.
She noticed the Cullens drive past her. The five of them were in a silver Volvo that Edward was driving. He seemed to stare at her as he drove. She shivered. He seemed creepier today. Painted with the brush of fear; just the lightest touch that made him significantly less attractive. Now she seemed more aware of how different the whole family seemed. She noticed that he and the oddly tiny girl, Alice waited by his car.
The others went into school. Edward stared at her intently.
She recognised Tyler from his dark skin. He was driving an older style van.
She waved at him eagerly as he approached. He stopped in the middle of the drive. He had been going a little too quickly, but seeing the pretty girl waving at him had made him brake.
"Isabella?" he seemed astonished that she would speak to him.
"It's Bella," she corrected him.
"Bella," he repeated.
Horns honked behind him as he caused a traffic jam.
"Get in, before we cause a bigger scene."
She opened the door. She clambered into the van. She wasn't entirely sure what she was supposed to be doing. Stopping him from doing something in the parking lot. But if she was with him, then it was okay. At least she thought it might be.
"Good morning," she chirped at him, as he started the van.
He gave her a cocky grin. "It is now," he said.
She laughed. She was thinking that she would never have spoken to him except for the fact that her future self had told her to.
Tyler was thinking that Bella Swan was pretty even if she wasn't his usual type. A little nerdier than he usually liked them.
He hit the patch of ice and the van went into a skid. He turned the wheel and slammed his foot on the brakes but the van skidded across the parking lot and crashed.
It crashed right into Bella's red truck.
She was thrown forward into the dash. Tyler hit his head as well on the side pillar and was bleeding. Her truck had a large dent in the back of it, but was otherwise unscathed.
The thought that she might have been standing near it, when the van hit gave her chills.
The school insisted on calling an ambulance even though she swore that she just had a headache. Through her pain she could see Edward still glaring at her from the other side of the parking lot.
She and Tyler went to the hospital in the same ambulance. By the time the equally odd Doctor Cullen, Edward's father, got to see them in the Emergency Room, they were flirting up a storm.
Tyler invited her out on a date and she said yes. Maybe Forks wouldn't be so bad after all?