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Nightmares have always been there.
Always a part of her. Ever since she was a child. She's always had them. There's no reason why. No explanation. She's always had nightmares. Maybe it's because she doesn't allow herself to fear during the day. Because she never wants to give into fear. In her dreams she can't escape from it. Can't run away. The reason doesn't really matter. They have always been there.
And she knows they are never going away.
There's no cure for it really. It's not so bad. She's grown used to it really. There are not much nightmares that scare her anymore. Most of the time – before she goes to Forks – she wakes up and simply turns around and goes back to sleep. It's normal. They are a part of her. An annoying part, but a part nevertheless. They are never disappearing. So why think about it?
They are always there.
Children always have nightmares.
She thinks that perhaps fairytales are not so great. They always seem to give children nightmares. Because really who cares the prince wins and they live happily ever after. The images that stay behind are the dragons that attack and the freaky cats and the monsters. All children have nightmares. It's normal. An inevitability.
Children fear the dark. They fear the monster under the bed.
A monster that has never been there. Monsters don't exist. – she never thinks much about this. She prefers not to. Vampires and werewolves she can handle. She can't handle if there really is a monster that hides under children's beds. That's to weird. – She even once dreams of the three little piglets. And running away from the big bad wolf. – later when she's older and knows the truth she will find this hilarious. – she also has nightmares of Alice in wonderland. She never tells Alice Cullen this. Really there's no point. She dreams of being lost in the dark woods. – when she thinks of her childhood nightmares when she's older she begins to wonder if perhaps they weren't some kind of prophetic dreams.
But it's normal. Children always have nightmares.
Most children grow out of it.
They grow up and the nightmares disappear. Sure everyone has nightmares every once in a while. But not every single night. But she does. She wonders if perhaps there is something wrong with her mind. – after she meets Edward and realizes he can't read her mind, she knows there is something wrong with it - They don't disappear with her. They just change. Shift over time.
It's not about the monsters anymore. It's not about the darkness.
It's about stupid stuff really. She dreams of giant spiders. She dreams of being stuck in small rooms. Once she even dreams of almost drowning. She dreams of Dracula and a werewolf and the monster of Frankenstein. She really hates the love her mother has for old horror movies. – seriously is she seeing the future in her dreams or something? This is becoming to weird. – But she's used to it by then.
So she doesn't really care anymore.
She remembers her worst nightmares.
Before she moves to Forks. When she's still a child. When she's younger. It's the year Jake's mom dies. It scares her more than she'll ever be able to admit. She lets him lean on her. She never thinks about doing it differently. But it scares her. It scares her mother as well. She's always had nightmares.
Those nights are the first time she wakes up screaming.
She dreams of her mother dying. She dreams of her father disappearing. She dreams of cars and crashes. And pain and blood. She dreams of losing her father without seeing him again. She dreams of being left all alone in this world. Her mother has to call her father almost every night. Just so Bella can hear he's alright. She's scared. – Later she discovers she wasn't the only one. Jacob had those kind of nightmares during that time as well. She finds this comforting somehow. The knowledge that she wasn't alone. Of course she feels guilty instantly. – The fear of losing a parent is buried deep inside.
For the first time ever she is glad when she goes to Forks.
She's grown used to it.
They have always been there. They've been there for so long that she doesn't even really care anymore. The nightmares of dying parents fade eventually. Just like all the others. She doesn't wake up screaming anymore. Sure she still has them. But at leas she can forget them the second she opens her eyes. She hopes those kind of nightmares never return to her.
Then suddenly her entire life changes.
It's always been her and her mom. Sure she spend the summers with Charlie. But for the most part it's her and her mom. Then suddenly there's Phil. And though she likes him and thinks it's great that her mom has finally found somebody, she can't help but feel scared. Scared that her entire life is changing. And she can't do a think about it. The night they get marries she's home all alone.
She dreams of her mother disappearing and being all alone.
Nobody comes when she screams.
In Forks the dreams are different.
She dreams of her mom. She dreams of loneliness. At some point (one of the first nights) she even dreams she drowns in the rain. The rain that will never stop pouring down. She dreams of woods. She dreams everything around her is green. She dreams she is green as well. Those dreams don't scare her. If it hadn't been because Edward mentioned some of them, she would have forgotten them.
Then suddenly there is a real monster.
The monster stares at her from the other side of the room. It jumps over her. It bites her and breaks her. It tries to kill her. It looks at her with red eyes. James is dead. But that doesn't mean that her nightmares disappear. It's a flood of memories and things that could have happened. It's the knowledge that her mother could have been there. She wakes up shaking from those dreams.
Jake is worse than the monster under the bed.
He's real.
She never dreams of Jasper.
She thinks she might have. At some point. Dreamt of the brother that tried to kill her. If it weren't for the fact that he left her. That he left her alone in the woods. Doomed to repeat the same words over and over in her head. She runs trough the woods and she's lost. – Somewhere in the back of her mind she is reminded of an almost forgotten nightmare. – she' lost and scared.
Those nightmares are the worst.
She wakes up screaming. It's just an endlessness of nothing. And it scares her. She thinks that perhaps if those nightmares weren't there she might have already forgotten. But those dreams are there. They scare Charlie as well. Nightmares are a part of her. She's grown used to it. But these are beyond any nightmare she has ever known. She wishes there was a cure for it. A way of not dreaming. But there isn't. – when Jacob presents her with the dream catcher she thinks that might help. But it doesn't. the nightmares are still there – They're never fading away.
The darkness almost swallows her whole. She wishes for the monster under the bed.
For any other dreams but these.
Then suddenly there's Victoria.
And the pack. She tries never to think of those nightmares. She doesn't want to. As soon as she opens her eyes she wants them to disappear. She wants to forget they were ever there. That's probably why she never noticed the shift. Why she never noticed that the nightmares actually changed. She has no real explanation for it. The endlessness. The nothing. Disappears.
It's replaced by something else instead.
She dreams of Victoria. She dreams of the pack. She dreams of Jacob being thrown through the air. She dreams of fights. And then one by one the pack dies. And there's blood on her hands. And then Jake is gone. Gone and she's alone. All alone. She wakes up screaming from those dreams as well. Her father never notices the difference.
It takes awhile to realize that she got her wish. Other dreams came.
She didn't want these either.
Worse is yet to come.
Volturi. The name alone makes her shake. Some nights she dreams of running over the square and arriving to late. Of Edward dying. She never thought she'd say it. But those are the good nights. Those are the nightmares that don't scare her. Not compared to the Volturi. She dreams of Jane and Alec and Aro and whatever the other ones are called. And they scare her.
Worse is the image of Jake facing of to them.
Or any of the pack. Or any of the Cullen's. – Even in her nightmares she denies what's obvious. She denies it's Jake dying that scares her the most. –She wakes up screaming from those dreams. She never thought it would be worse than those other dreams. She screams and cries. And Edward tries to calm her down. But he never truly succeeds. After all nightmares have always been a part of her.
And there's no cure for it. Not really.
It's not until much later.
When she suddenly realizes something. It's the night she goes to La Push. The night she hears Billy tell those stories. After she is returned home. And she falls asleep in Edward's arms. That's when the nightmares return. She screams and cries. And he holds her and tries to calm her down. That's when she realizes the cure. What's always been there.
She never has nightmares around him.
She hadn't realized it but she does in Edwards arms. She fell asleep in his arms. After she jumped of the cliff. She fell asleep. And there were not dreams, no nightmares. In his arms. – when she thinks about it she realizes that she never had nightmares when she fell asleep at the Black's either. She remembers comforting little Jake once after a nightmare. But she never had them there – And tonight it's the same. She fell asleep in Jake's arms. And there were no nightmares. The second she's out of them, and in Edwards, the nightmares are back.
There is a cure after all. She wonders if it means something.
It's cold the next night.
She's never really noticed how cold it is. She sits on her bed. Reading a book. And she shivers. She misses the warmth. It was always warm around Jake. When she was with the pack. She doesn't do it consciously. She never truly realizes what she's doing. Until she has done it. Until she realizes what hit means. She simply gets up.
She gets up and closes the window.
And she freezes. It's closed. She's closed the window. She feels like she's closed the door to Edward. She takes a deep breath. Waiting for the hole in her heart to open up again. It doesn't. it's stays closed. She closes her eyes. A voice deep inside of her – a voice that sounds like Alice – tells her to open the window again. But she doesn't. She walks away from the closed window. She gets in her bed. And falls asleep.
There are no nightmares that night. Maybe it's because he isn't there.
Maybe it's a coincidence.
She screams again the next night.
She's alone. He hasn't come by. She knows he will have questions. But she spend all day with her dad. She did this on purpose. She did it so she wouldn't have to see him. She's thinking of the right words. She's trying to figure out what it all means. She falls asleep early. And screams into the night. And she can't handle it. Her father is working nights so it doesn't really matter.
She gets up and drives away without thinking about it.
She knocks on the door to find Billy's concerned eyes. She hadn't realized how late it is. She hopes he's there. Billy looks at her and tells her to go to his room. He's sleeping. She thanks him and simply rushes inside – the distant memory of rushing past him to get to Jacob comes up – she opens the door and there he is. Sleeping peacefully. She takes of her shoes and lies down.
She puts her small arms around him. She pulls close to him.
Unconsciously, as if he knows she's there, he puts his arms around her. And pulls her closer to him. The warmth surrounds her. She falls asleep instantly. – she doesn't even think about Edward. She doesn't think of the fact that her future must have disappeared. That he'll be worried. That he might come looking for her. None of it matters. – All that matters is that she's in Jacob's arms.
And the nightmares finally disappear.