Disclaimer - I don't own Twilight or the original characters, I only borrow for fun, no copy-rite infringement is intended.
A/N - Happy mothers day to all those who celebrate it today.
This was my entry to the Crazy Days of April One Shot Contest hosted by Free Writers and Readers and it came in third place. The prompt was 20th April, Look a like day.
It is unbeat'd so please expect the unexpected when it comes to extra commas :)
"I've brought your Scotch, Edward."
Disturbed by the gentle voice, I glanced up from my papers and smiled softly. She hovered for a second, a glass held in her outstretched hand. I nodded towards the edge of the desk then followed the movement as she carefully placed the heavy bottomed, cut crystal tumbler down.
"Thank you," I replied, simply.
She straightened then frowned. Clearly unhappy with the position of the glass, she hesitated briefly before inching it a few millimeters to the right. I settled back against the padded leather of my desk chair, a finger at my lips and watched with calm interest as she repeated this process at least a dozen more times, each time repositioning the drink an infinitesimally small distance away from where she'd started. If I didn't intervene, it would most likely be dark and she would be exhausted before she was happy with the placement.
When the sadness in my heart expanded to a painful level, I stretched out a hand and laid it on her wrist, stilling her.
"It's perfect just where it is, thank you."
She sighed, her eyes flickering back to the glass. I knew it bothered her immensely, the fact it wasn't properly aligned and was therefore a less than perfect offering meant she felt she'd somehow failed me.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her eyelids pulling closed so she didn't have to look on the wrongly placed drink. Unable to bear it any longer, I brought her hand to my lips and placed a gentle kiss against her knuckles.
"No, I'm sorry." I said, squeezing very gently. I didn't want to hear her apologize when in truth it was I who had failed her. "Why don't you find Alice? She may need some help with the laundry."
Her hand slid from under mine, the worry induced wrinkles smoothing a little from her forehead as her beautiful brown eyes were revealed once more. Glossy and infinitely deep, holding more secrets than I would ever know and the promise of shining with pure love and for a moment it was her looking at me again.
Bella...my Bella, the one and only.
My heart clenched in sorrow and I stifled the gasp as a pain, as sharp today as it always has been lanced my chest.
Against my will, my mind retreated back through the years and I remembered her, lying in the bed like a broken china doll. All rasping breaths and dry lips under a tangle of necessary, but ugly plastic tubes, each one supplying the drugs and oxygen that were drawing out the inevitable conclusion. Her once pale skin the color and texture of aged parchment. It wasn't fair; she was too young to be there, too fragile to suffer that way, too good entirely for such a hard and cruel world.
The quiet click of the study door closing behind her shattered the painful memory and, in a bid to refocus my attention, I opened the journal and reached for a pen.
April 20th 2065
Despite my best efforts at gene therapy and extensive reprogramming, BC5 is still exhibiting powerful OCD tendencies. Whilst these behaviors have regulated somewhat following my intervention, with such limited resources at my disposal, I fear I am as close as I am likely to get to eradicating it completely from this model.
I noted her compulsive behavior on the first day of her existence, when she brushed her teeth for over an hour, refusing to stop or use less vigorous strokes, even when her gums began to bleed and the toothpaste was foaming pink. That was the tip of the iceberg. Any task, no matter how menial became an quest for obsessive perfection, regardless of the pain or damage to herself or those around her. A little glass shuffling is truly a vast improvement.
A rare ray of harsh spring sunshine crept it's way across my desk like spreading liquid until it illuminated the scotch in my glass. It cast glittering reflections in all directions, a myriad of cinnamon and amber lights dancing on the polished surface of the mahogany wood, reminding me of the auburn highlights in her dark hair. Still thoughtful, I closed the leather bound book, drawing a finger along the grainy cover and turned my face to watch the manicured grounds beyond my study window.
Alice was outside, busy pegging laundry to the line. The gentle breeze playing with the ends of her hair, as she moved with maximum efficiency. BC5 trailed behind, her hands clenching into tight fists over and over behind her back, as she tried to resist the urge to rework the higgledy, mismatched pegs Alice had left in her wake. With hindsight, laundry may not have been the best task to assign her.
The pull of the journal drew my eyes back like an iron filing to a magnet.
They were all in there. Every single one of them. Cataloged and dissected on those lined pages, their flaws and quirks laid bare for anyone's scrutiny.
All of them were to varying degrees examples of my failure to recapture the essence of their donor.
I'd been a presumptuous fool. Human nature and the brain were so incredibly complex and yet I dared to think myself intelligent enough to recreate what evolution had taken millennia to create.
Of course, BC1 had been the first and the one I'd had the highest hopes for. As she'd lain on the steel, medical table; eyes closed, still as the dead, I'd held my breath. She'd appeared so perfect, smooth alabaster skin, long glossy lashes and dark brown hair. To any onlookers she would've looked just like Bella had, when she'd been placed in her coffin awaiting our final respects.
She stirred and, tingling with anxiety I moved a little closer, not wanting to miss a second of her "birth". The moment when her eyes would open and I would be the first thing she saw. Would she be confused, or frightened? I'd prayed she wouldn't. The memory chip inserted into her brain contained speech patterns, information about modern life and a copy of our wedding video. I hoped it would be enough to embed both myself and the love I'd shared with Bella into her psyche.
My beautiful Bella. My wife...my whole life.
She hadn't been my first love, not even my second, but she had been the love of my life. The most spiritual, all encompassing and compelling relationship and the one I would forever yearn to recapture.
I'd harvested Bella's DNA shortly before she passed away. As a doctor, specializing in genetics she'd trusted me when I'd said I wanted some samples to run additional tests upon. I'd felt a pang of guilt at deceiving her into parting with the material I required, but it wasn't enough to make me regret my experiments. If I could've just found a way to recreate her, I'd have had her love all over again.
BC1'S eyes twitched and I'd leaned a little farther over the table, my face hovering a few inches above hers, that view took me back to my wedding night and so many nights thereafter when I'd sunk into her velvet depths and watched her face transform in ecstasy with my name on her lips.
Her eyelids had tightened slightly before fluttering open, the pupils dilating as my face had snapped into focus. She took a sharp intake of breath as my own lungs had burned with the strain of holding on to my own air for too long.
Would she scream or push me away? It had been a pinpoint moment of exquisite agony. I'd looked for the answers in the depths of her liquid brown eyes, the tiny amber flecks fixing me in place, anchoring me in the present by giving me something to cling to.
"Edward," she'd whispered, her voice low and breathy making my body relax.
"Bella," I'd answered, a relieved smile on my lips as my soul sang with joy.
Tentatively, her fingers had inched forward until she'd connected with my chest, her touch made my eyes roll to the heavens. I'd done it, I'd played God at his own game and come home with the prize.
"Aaaahh...Edward."
Her groan, coupled with the more urgent grasping of her hands instantly refocused my attention.
"Eeeedwaaard," she moaned, "I neeeeed you."
My heart skipped a beat. It would've been so easy to fool myself into thinking it was really her.
Without warning, she'd pulled hard on my shoulders and I'd lost my footing, half tumbling on top of her.
Something had gone wrong, her arms and legs were coiled tightly around my torso, effectively trapping me while her hips ground relentlessly against mine.
"Fuck me, baby. I want you real bad," she'd whispered, licking around the edge of my ear, her husky breathing loud and desperate.
I'd started to panic when one of her hands had moved between us fumbling with my belt buckle.
"Control yourself, please." I'd managed, my voice squeaking with alarm as she'd first gripped, then rubbed my length firmly through the fabric of my trousers and my traitorous body had reacted by swelling in anticipation of the act.
"Hmm, yeah baby," she'd said, delighted at having invoked a visceral reaction.
Some men might have called me a fool for wanting to pull away from such an open invitation, but that wasn't how I'd wanted any intimate time to be.
My Bella would never have been so...forward. She was a sexy glance, gentle kisses, whispered words with a slow trailing hand and damn it, that was what I wanted again, the chance to feel loved and desired and not like a desperate, rutting stag.
Disgusted with myself I'd eventually managed to pry away from her grip, leaving her perplexed.
"Don't you want to fuck me, Edward?" she'd asked, her eyebrows pulled together in a deep frown. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No," I'd replied. "You didn't do anything wrong, but I can't make...have sex with you."
I'd stopped myself from saying make love, not that it mattered,with my refusal BC1 had stopped listening, those hands, that had so fervently sought out my manhood were now otherwise employed, rubbing between her own legs.
I didn't hang around to watch the show. Feeling hollow I left the room, quietly closing the door behind me. I leaned against it before slumping to the floor, hot tears making my eyes prickle.
It was a crushing blow.
Over the days her tenancies toward nymphomania only grew stronger. She spent most of her time naked, rubbing herself against the wooden bannisters, like a pony with an itch to scratch and the day she'd discovered the joy of sitting on top of the washing machine had seen her doing laundry like a possessed woman.
These days, and unable to sate her carnal desires, she rarely leaves her room. Occasionally, on warmer afternoons, when the air is still and my study windows are open her desperate grunts and moans drift down to fill my ears with the heavy weight of sadness.
Because I was a fool and as obsessed as Doctor Frankenstein himself, I continued to play God unchallenged.
As they all had been, BC2 was an exact replica of Bella, perfect down to the sprinkling of pale freckles across the bridge of her nose. Just as with BC1, I'd held my breath, awaiting the moment she would look at me, but she never did wake up and I have always tortured myself with the thoughts that she might have been the one.
BC3 self harmed to the point of severe mutilation, requiring both and Alice and I to spend an inordinate amount of time keeping sharp objects out of her reach. Even so, she has an incredibly inventive nature and we rarely risk leaving her alone for more than a few minutes.
BC4 doesn't like me. Not one little bit. She tolerates Alice and the other BC models, but for some reason I trigger an outpouring of absolute hatred whenever she sees me. With that in mind, I tend to keep sharp objects away from her too, blunt ones too for that matter, after all, I'm not as agile as I used to be.
It's no more than I deserve. I'm a selfish, monster who was so desperate to hold onto the one good thing in my life that I'd created an army of flawed automatons.
"Uncle Edward," Alice spoke so softly I almost missed it, but the gentle hand on mine was enough to pull me from my musings. Blinking away the disappointment and regret I noticed how dusk had already crept in to paint the room with charcoal shadows.
"Have I been here all afternoon?" I asked, momentarily disorientated and she nodded, a genuine smile gracing her pink lips.
"I didn't want to disturb you, but it's getting late and I'll need to go home soon."
I nodded. She was actually my nieces daughter and a good girl, freely giving so much of her time to me.
"Do I need to do anything?"
"No, the Stepford Wives are all tucked up, and I did a sweep of BC3's things before I settled her down."
I scrunched my face up at her nickname for the Bellas, but held my tongue. I knew humor was her way of dealing with my mess and I didn't know what I'd do without her. Alice I meant. Since turning eighty five last year, my arthritis and dizzy spells make so many mundane tasks difficult for me.
I watched as she twirled around to leave, my empty whiskey glass in her hand.
"What will happen to them?" I asked, my voice barely audible. "When I'm...gone I mean."
The words withered on my tongue. This was the unspoken question and I couldn't bear to see the life flashing in Alice's eyes, so young and bright.
"I'll look after them for you, of course."
She made it sound so simple and I suppose to her twenty year old mind it was. Here was a problem for which she held the solution.
But it wasn't and never could be as simple. I sighed heavily.
"And what about when you're gone, who'll take care of them then?"
For a second the smooth skin of her brow furrowed before she shrugged.
"Well, I expect I'll have children one day, they'll watch them. But don't worry, I'll figure something out."
And there it was. The key to immortality and it had been under my nose the whole time and I was too dumb to have realized it.
I'd thought by genetically reproducing Bella I could've captured her essence and held her with me forever. When all the time I should have given her what she herself had always wanted.
Children.
A living reminder of her existence, and someone worthy of gifting the surplus of love in my broken heart, not some immortal but fundamentally flawed facsimile.
Remorse lanced me. I'd always been too busy, working away and chasing my career goals, thinking we had plenty of time to start a family...but fate had other plans of course.
For the last forty-five years they have taunted me, living statues. Existing alongside me, but never changing, never aging. Frozen reminders of my stubborn vanity and the tear that would forever be in my soul.
There you go, something different. I Hope you enjoyed it and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Claire xx