Disclaimer: Any and all publicly recognizable characters, settings, lyrics, writings, etc. are the property of their respective owners/creators. Any and all original content is property of the author, who, in this case, happens to be me. In other words, I don't own Twilight, I just manipulate SM's characters into bastardized versions of themselves.
Summary: In an alternate universe that picks up where Edward left in New Moon, Isabella is existing contentedly on the other side of the world. She has been changed despite all of Edward's precautions but he hasn't a clue. When fate steps in and brings the Cullens to Isabella, the changes in her wreak havoc in their hearts and on the rest of the vampire world. AU, canon couples, rated for future lemons.
Thanks to my usual suspects for your love support and, dare I say, adoration. I heart you.
Prologue - Secrets and Lies
Grasping his hand tightly seemed like the most logical thing to do even though our reunion had only taken place three weeks ago and it had been a truly bittersweet affair. But I did it anyway and I felt an immediate comfort wash over me as his fingers twined with mine.
"Curious," said one of the dark-haired ones, leering almost salaciously at us. His gaze roved over my body and it made me feel dirty and cheap and I repressed the strong urge to shudder. "Curious indeed."
The fingers twixt within mine tightened marginally. He reads minds, I reminded myself. He knows.
"Curiosity, brother?" the white-haired one spat, rage and red-hot ire turning his words into aural venom. "Curiosity?! What kind of insanity are you entertaining now? Let us be done with these lawbreakers and quick. I hate to waste my time on such... Inconsequential matters."
"He doesn't know, Aro?" a voice of honeyed velvet spoke, sending a thrall of lust down my spine. "Perhaps you should take a moment and inform him, let him know just how much you intend us to live."
I could feel the fury from the white-haired one spike as he stood and glared back and forth from the voice beside me to the one named Aro.
"You intend for them to live, Aro? What is this betrayal he speaks of?"
"Calm, brother Caius, calm. The young one speaks the truth. Partially. I do intend them to live, but under circumstances."
"And those circumstances are?" white-haired Caius seethed, his eyes narrowed into slits.
"Unacceptable," the honeyed velvet beside me spoke again, preempting the one named Aro's terms. "Our family has wronged no one. We should not have to beg and grovel for our continued existence."
"Are you then saying that your coven is being unfairly persecuted, young Cullen?"
"What I'm saying is that we refuse to made an example of to eradicate your irrational fears, Aro."
"And what is it that I fear, young one?" dark-haired Aro asked, his tone almost sweet in it's condescension.
"You fear that one day our whole world will know just how useless you truly are."
I sensed his rage a mere millisecond before it flashed through his eyes. Tightening my hold on Edward's hand, I threw out my shield and braced myself for the onslaught to come.
Chapter I - Ghosts of Lifetimes Past, Part i
It's hard, being the fifth wheel in a coven of five. Especially when members of said coven are feeling particularly... Amorous.
"I'll be out hunting if anybody needs me," I said quietly. The closest I got to an acknowledgement was a muffled 'mkay' from one of the bedrooms upstairs. I sighed and shouldered my purse before swiftly running out into the crisp, spring Irish air.
I ran all the way to Dublin, pausing in the shadows of an abandoned storefront to pull on my lightly tinted non-prescription glasses. The sweet, delicious smell of human blood permeated my senses, causing my throat to constrict in need and thirst. I shrugged off the dry burn and stepped out on to a crowded street.
I wasn't truly out hunting. I just needed to get away. Loneliness is such a shitty companion and I was in no mood to entertain him today. I just wanted some contact that didn't remind me that I was slated to be lonely for the remainder of my existence.
I walked to the Temple Bar district, heading straight for the Oliver St John Gogarty Pub. The place was a particular favorite of mine; the crowds were just short of rowdy and it was easy to get lost within them. I could happily sit and people watch for hours without anyone noticing me.
I slipped into the establishment as inconspicuously as possible, ordering a Guinness and taking it to a dark, secluded corner. The smell of the stout in front of me made me want to retch but the alcohol-infused blood called to me like the finest of wines to a connoisseur. Perhaps I'd get drunk tonight after all.
There was a party of tourists in the pub tonight, Americans by the smell of them. They were celebrating one of their party's birthdays and being particularly rambunctious. I watched them interact with each other and with the native Irishmen that gave them wide berth and another jilt of loneliness shook me on my stool. I missed this, being with people. By nature, I was normally a solitary individual; but fate had forced me to into a solitude that was devoid of all but those I shared this life with. I scowled into the dark brew in my hand, the bitterness and resentment washing over me before I could do anything to prevent it.
I hate how I remembered. I had been living this life- or half-life as Gerrard once deemed it- for five years now and I couldn't seem to run from my memories. Siobhan and Liam had told me countless time just what a prodigy I was, that I was so different from normal vampires. I hated that, too, in tandem with remembering; as a human I hadn't exactly been normal, and apparently and as a vampire I still couldn't follow the goddamn 'rules'.
"Bella?"
Instantly I was on guard. I hadn't been called Bella since before I had been changed. I insisted on Isabella now because as much as I had hated my full name, hearing 'Bella' made all the pain just so much more worse. I turned towards the voice and I nearly bolted out of the pub in shock.
Mike Newton and Jessica Stanley.
Fuck. Me. Dead.
Well... Sort of.
"Holy shit, Bella Swan!" Mike exclaimed, walking towards my tiny table. Jessica let out an ear-piercing squeal that made me want to rip my own ears off. She ran towards me shrieking my old name at the top of her lungs.
"Oh, my God, Bella! Bella! Christ, how are you!"
Jessica hurled herself at me, enveloping me in a hug and all I wanted to do was push her off and run away. I found it sort of ironic since I had just been contemplating my own loneliness.
I hugged her back lightly, holding my breath and making sure not to make any skin-to-skin contact, and pushed her away lightly when she showed no signs of backing off. Mike stepped up after her and hugged me as well, trying to kiss my cheek, but I skillfully dodged it.
"What are you guys doing here?" I asked, still somewhat bewildered at finding them in a pub in Ireland. The last time I saw either of them was at our high school graduation, and even then I was happy to see them go.
"We're on this exchange trip for school," Jessica gushed, looping an arm around Mike's and settling in on a stool across from me. I laughed internally at her blatant display of possessiveness over Mike. You can have him. "And we're spending the semester traveling abroad."
I nodded, recalling vaguely that they both had decided to attend USC after high school.
"So what have you been doing with yourself, Bella?" Mike asked, staring at me intently, like he knew there was something different about me but couldn't quite put his finger on it. "Last I heard, you had pretty much just disappeared."
I cringed a little. I never really knew the consequences of my actions once Gerrard had found me and changed me. I probably unconsciously avoided them.
"Erm, yeah." I let out an uneasy chuckle. "I'm actually living here in Ireland now. Just a little ways outside if Dublin."
"Oh, wow! That's so cool!" I wanted to slap the insipid right out of the two of them as they 'oohed' and 'aahed' over the superficial bits of information I was giving them.
I tried my best to tune them out as they began to regale me with stories of Forks and our former classmates. It wasn't until I heard Jessica say his name that I really started to pay attention.
"So did you ever hear from Edward Cullen again? I mean, it was really pretty shitty of him to break up with you the way he did."
You don't know the half of it, little girl, I thought bitterly. "Uh, no, I never heard from him again."
"I actually tried looking them up when I got to California," Jess continued, almost as if I hadn't even spoken. "But I came up totally empty. Oh, well. Did you hear about Lauren and Tyler..."
It was useless after that. Stupid Jessica had opened the floodgates and there was no stopping the deluge of memories. As image after image crashed through my head, I felt myself mentally drift further and further away from the pub. I needed a 'drink', and quick. Stealthily poking at my cellphone under the tabletop, I set it to ring as if someone was calling. 'Swagga Like Us' began to play and I excused myself from the table and away from the two unwanted figures of my past.
As I feigned a conversation, I laid out my hunting strategy: I'd use the beautiful but lost tourist route and convince some drunk Irish cad to 'help' me. Simple, easy. I walked back to the table and put on what I hoped was an appropriate expression.
"Sorry about that, guys, but I've got to go." I gathered up my purse without sitting and shrugged my shoulders apologetically.
"Boyfriend?" they both asked, although Mike's tone of voice seemed more crestfallen than Jessica's.
"Uh, no, roommates," I lied. Thank God Maggie wasn't here or she'd be rolling on the floor in laughter at the shit I was about to spew. "I'm supposed to meet up with them and grab a bite to eat..."
"Oh, alright! Don't let us keep you." Mike held out a cardboard coaster and I took it. Written on it were a bunch of phone numbers and email addresses plus an address for a hostel just off of O'Connell Street. "Keep in touch. And maybe we can get together before we leave Ireland."
I nodded and waved goodbye, trying to leave the pub as inconspicuously as I entered but I could feel the two of them staring at my retreating back.
"Whoa," I heard Mike whisper to Jessica. "She really has changed a bit, huh."
"Yeah, I'm not quite sure what it was, though," Jess mused before giving up her too difficult train of thought. "Oh, well. C'mon, Evie looks like she's looking for us."
I sighed in relief as I was forgotten and I ducked out of the pub into the cool night. I was glad that I hadn't gone with the 'kidnapped and presumed dead' story Gerry had tried to convince me to use. That would've resulted in something a little messier than I had to deal with tonight.
I ran out of Temple Bar using dimly lit back streets until I hit a seedy tavern across town. I tossed my cardigan into an alley I walked past, reminding myself to pick it up later, and strolled into the foul smelling establishment. Immediately heads turned my way when the jingle of the door sounded and I spotted a particularly nasty man eyeing me lasciviously from the bar.
"Hello, excuse me?" I called to the bartender, being conscious to drop the Irish accent I had picked up over the past few years.
The bartender, an obscenely skinny bald man with yellowed and rotting teeth eyed me warily before slinking closer. The sneer on his face made me want to smash his head into the grimey bartop.
"Wha' yer wont, girly?" he spat at me. "Tis no place for a lass like you, this here place."
"I'm lost," I stated plainly. I rattled off the address of Mike and Jessica's hostel. "And I've got no cab fare."
The bartender laughed cruelly and I ignored the whispered comments I could hear from around the dingy bar. He turned away for a moment and when he turned back he was sliding a cocktail napkin my way. On it, I saw written instructions on how to get to the hostel. I thanked him and scurried out of there, hiding in the alley I had left my cardigan in. I waited and sure enough, five minutes after my departure the pervert who was eyeing me from across the bar exited the dilapidated building and began walking up the street towards me. I pretended to be fumbling with my purse just at the mouth of the alley and I heard him come up behind me.
I let him grab my waist and pull me into the alleyway. I went limp in his arms and I held my breath because his clothes smelled absolutely foul, just as bad, if not worse, as the stout I had ordered at Gogarty's earlier. He threw me to the ground and I huffed slightly in annoyance (these were my favorite jeans and here he was, ruining them) as he covered my petite body with his. I could hear him whispering to himself and I decided I'd had enough of the foolishness. Lifting my arm, I jutted my palm into his forehead with enough force to render him unconscious. He stilled, immobile for a half second, before slumping on top of me like a sack of wet cement.
"Eugh." I accidentally inhaled as I stood. I briefly considered stripping him nude but decided not to. Slinging his dead weight over my shoulder like a second purse, I ran out of Dublin towards home.
AN: Now, now, don't worry, children, I'm still running Winter Games. I just prefer to post on Twilighted before I post here on FFN so once AMPF gets validated, it'll be back to chapters 7 and 8 then I'll start posting some of this story while I revise WG. Confused? Just a little? Don't worry, just take it all in stride. And if you're looking for something else to read, check out my oneshot for the twigirlsnextdoor's 'Will You Marry Me Contest' entitled Kisses And Love Won't Carry Me 'Til You Marry Me. And vote for it while you're there, cuz... You all love me. :)
Lovesssssss, Lu(squared)
