Life Goes On
Set Post-Breaking Dawn. Just about life with the Cullens.
Disclamier: I don't own em. All are property of Stephanie Meyer that genius.
The waves lapped at my feet as I stared out across the ocean. I wondered idly how long it would take me to swim across it. Probably no more than a day, but I couldn't be sure. I would have to ask Alice how long it had taken her and Jasper all those years ago when the Volturi was coming for us. Had it really only been fifty years? It seemed like only yesterday. We were living in Alaska now. Had been for the last twenty years or so, moving from small town to small town so that Carlisle could satisfy his need to help the less fortunate, and Alice could complain about the lack of shopping, and society in general. I was content to follow Edward. My home was wherever he was.
A pair of arms snaked around my waist and I leaned back into Edward's chest, enjoying the feel of his breath tickling my ear. "Jacob and Nessie will be home in less than a day." he whispered. I smiled. He knew me so well. Even after all this time without any sign of the Volturi, it still made me anxious to have them out of my sight for very long. To have any of my family out of my sight, and the protection of my shield was nearly more than I could bear at times. But Renesmee had wanted to visit the Amazons, and, I suspected, wanted some time alone with Jacob. Not really something I wanted to think about, even after having five decades to come to terms with the fact that my best friend had imprinted on my daughter. It seemed like a lifetime ago that Jacob had been professing his love to me, begging me to choose him. I guess in a way it had been.
"Seth and Embry will be relieved to hear that. They've missed him." Seth and Embry had never imprinted. They'd chosen to continue phasing rather than leave Jake without his pack. Leah was still physically in her twenties, having imprinted on Quil and Claire's son, ironically enough named Sam. Both were still a part of Jacob's pack, and they too had chosen to stay with him for as long as he needed them. Quil was the only member of Jake's pack who was aging, and he was physically nearing his fifties, within years of Claire. "Of course they will. Leah is driving them mad." I laughed at Edwards exaperated tone. Some things would never change. Time, and imprinting, had tamed her attitude and even her distaste for vampires somewhat, but she was still Leah. We would never be close, even though Charlie and Sue had officialy made us step-sisters a few years after I'd been reborn, but she was no longer openly antagonistic.
Charlie had passed on ten years ago, in his seventies and still sticking stubbornly to his "need-to-know-only" view on life with the Cullens. He'd refused to let Renesmee and I be cut out of his life. Even as he'd watched her mature to adulthood in less than a decade, and watched as year after year passed and neithe I nor any of the rest of the Cullens aged, he'd never once asked a single question or given any hint that he suspected the truth. I'm sure he did. Charlie was far from stupid, and he knew the Quileute legends as well as I did, but he was stubborn. Sue had died shortly after my father. Renee was still alive, but Phil had passed on as well. Edward and I had set her up with the best care money could buy, but I could only visit her at night, while she slept. Renee believed that I had died along with Edward and the rest of the Cullens in a tragic plane accident forty years ago. Watching my parents age and die only made me more grateful that I would never have to go through that with the rest of my life. It was one of my greatest reliefs in life that I would always have my family, both vampire and werewolf, with me. Concievably for the rest of eternity. Speaking of family...
"Are Rose and Emmett back yet?" I asked Edward as we ran back towards our house in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. "They returned about half an hour ago. That's why I came to find you. They've brought Garrett and Kate back with them." This news made me happy. It had been months since I'd seen any of our Denali cousins. "Tanya, Eleazar and Carmen are still in Africa then?" I asked. Edward nodded. When we reached the house, mere minutes after leaving the beach, our entire family was gathered inside. A rarity that.
Esme was arranging flowers and talking quietly with Kate about her new re-modeling plans, while Garrett and Emmett discussed their latest wrestling match in detail with Jasper. Rose was playing the piano softly, and I could hear Carlisle flipping through a book up in his office. I could smell the stench of werewolf coming from the kitchen, and could tell from the arguing that Seth and Embry were in there fighting over who got the last piece of pie. They, along with Jake, lived with us. He could never be away from Renesmee and she had no desire to live apart from her family. We had become so accustome to each others own reeking smell that it was just past bearable for us now. Leah and her Sam shared a house with Quil and Claire as far away from us as Jake would allow. It was only a couple minutes run away, but it would take two hours to drive there for a human, not that any human would be insane enough to travel that far off the main highway.
Alice, who had been sitting on the stairs glancing through a catalog of some sort, flitted over to my side and beamed up at me, which instantly made me suspicious. "What are you planning?" I asked her and watched her eyes narrow at the suspicion in my voice. Emmett and Jacob laughed at me about it, but as far as I was concerned, Alice was the most terrifying of us all by far. Jasper, Edward, Rose and Renesmee understood of course. They'd all been on the wrong end of one of her schemes at one point or another. Me more than any of the others. She had forced me through prom, at least three times now, not to mention my over-the-top graduation party, even more over-the-top wedding (which I stubbornly refused to thank her for), not to mention the french lingerie and year after year of horrific birthday partys and wardrobe re-hauls. I'd taken to having my daughter hide the clothes I truly loved, just so Alice couldn't find them and replace them with ones that were more up to her own standards.
As much as I loved here, there were times when I would have been perfectly content to rip her apart and dance around the pyre of her burning limbs. Like after my last disastrous birthday party, when the entire family, including our daughter and all the wolves, had walked in on Edward and I taking advantage of the empty house. It had been 10 years and Emmett was still cracking jokes about it.
"You're going to say yes." she beamed at me, eyes twinkling. She linked her arms through mine and I sighed. Sometimes I wondered if she didn't just tell us that she would win, so that we would go along with whatever it was she had planned without argument. "And what exactly is it that I'm agreeing to?" I asked weakly. She handed me the catalog she had been looking at. "We're going back to school." she said brightly.